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Basic Trope: When an event at the beginning of a story is repeated or referenced near or at the end of a work, series, or franchise.
- Straight: At the beginning of the story, Alice knocks on Bob's door. At the end, the situation is inverted, where Bob does the same to Alice.
- Exaggerated
- The first and last words are the same.
- The story begins in the middle of a sentence, and ends with a sentence fragment that flows into the first fragment.
- The story begins in the middle of a word, and ends with a part of the word that flows into the first word.
- The entire second half of the story follows themes and motifs of the first half, only in reverse.
- The story begins and ends at literally the same point in time.
- Downplayed: Alice knocks on Bob's door at the beginning, and Charlie knocks on Daniel's door two thirds of the way through.
- Justified:
- Alice knocked on Bob's door to cheer him up. Now Alice is sad, so Bob wants to cheer her up in the same way.
- Alice is remembering how she got into the mess for which she's about to be (wrongfully) arrested, the last scene repeats her seeing the officers nearing her house to show that we have reached the present.
- Inverted: Foreshadowing
- Subverted: Bob appears to be walking toward Alice's house, but instead goes into the alley between two houses...
- Double Subverted: ...only to go back to knock on Alice's door.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: An event is neither repeated nor referenced throughout the story.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Bob just knocked on Alice's door like she did to his before!"
- Invoked: Charlie comes up to Bob and says, "Hey, remember how Alice knocked on your door in the beginning? You should definitely do that now for some closure.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob starts to repeat what Alice did at the beginning, but decides against it.
- Discussed: "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the first and last words in this work were the same?"
- Conversed: "Hey, it's just like in the beginning!"
- Implied: Bob starts to do what Alice did at the beginning, but the work ends just as Bob begins.
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