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* AdaptationalFriendship: In the book, Kevin knows Matt in their respective capacities as cop and pastor but they're not friends. Even their acquaintance is strained since Matt underwent SanitySlippage post-Departure. In the series, they are mentioned as having been old friends and Matt is a close friend of Kevin Sr (Kevin's father): Matt goes to Kevin Jr's birthday party, regularly visits Kevin Sr., and at the end of Series 1, he becomes Kevin's SecretKeeper that he killed Patty.
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* WasJustLeaving: In "A Most Powerful Adversary", Kevin comes to Virgil's house and bumps into a tense situation between Virgil and his grandson Michael. Virgil resolves the situation by announcing that Michael was just leaving which the latter grudgingly does.
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* AxisMundi: The Season 2 opener is called "Axis Mundi", and it's implied to be that this is how the characters, especially Nora, feel about Jarden ("Miracle") in Texas, a town where nobody departed. The rest of Season 2 is about dissecting the understandings and beliefs of the miracles in Miracle and why it might have been chosen (if it even was).
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* ShapesOfDisappearance: The credits for Seasons 2 and 3 depict the Departed through this trope. Through a series of photographs, those who "departed" (the 1% of the population who inexplicably disappeared) are represented by the cut-out of their body, which is replaced by a natural landscape, such as stars or sea.
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* GriefInducedSplit:
** In general, the Sudden Departure is mentioned to have caused a ton of divorces and separations, with people randomly abandoning their kids and lives.
** The Sudden Departure provided the impetus for Kevin and Laurie's divorce, which begins with a long separation after she leaves him for the Guilty Remnant. Neither vocalize their grief in obvious ways, leaving it ambiguous if it was the grief of the event that caused their separation, as neither was happy before, or if their specific experiences during the Departure caused it. For Laurie, this was the disappearance of her and Kevin's fetus from literally inside her womb mid-scan, and for Kevin, it was the Departure of the stranger he was cheating on Laurie with.
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''The Leftovers'' is an {{Creator/HBO}} series created by Creator/DamonLindelof and Tom Perrotta (based on the latter's [[TheShowOfTheBooks novel of the same name]]) which debuted in 2014.

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''The Leftovers'' is an {{Creator/HBO}} series created by Creator/DamonLindelof and Tom Perrotta Creator/TomPerrotta (based on the latter's [[TheShowOfTheBooks novel of the same name]]) which debuted in 2014.
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* BabiesEverAfter: The ending of Season 1 has Nora finding Lily on Kevin's doorstep. This saves her from leaving Mapleton and probably committing suicide, and allows her to stay very happy (by Nora's standards) throughout Season 2. Brutally subverted at the beginning of Season 3, as we find out she gave custody back to Christine, but the principle is still played straight in that this leads to the dissolution of Kevin and Nora's relationship and Nora's DespairEventHorizon.

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* BabiesEverAfter: The ending of Season 1 has Nora finding Lily on Kevin's doorstep. This saves her from leaving Mapleton and probably committing suicide, and allows her to stay very happy (by Nora's standards) throughout Season 2. Brutally subverted Subverted at the beginning of Season 3, as we find out she gave custody back to Christine, but the principle is still played straight in that this leads to the dissolution of Kevin and Nora's relationship and Nora's DespairEventHorizon.
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* BizarroApocalypse: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. The Sudden Departure happens, instantly disappearing a small percentage of the world's population...and they are never seen again and no answers come as to what happened. The world then appears to go on as normal, but as time passes, more and more strange things begin to happen: Nora is apparently healed from her intense grief by a single hug; a man who may be God gets mauled by a lion on a sex boat; Kevin Garvey comes back from the dead (multiple times); and numerous other very strange things happen. The series as a whole is mostly focused on trying to live a "normal" enough life in the face of a totally inexplicable apocalypse.
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Uncanny Valley is IUEO now and the subjective version has been split; cleaning up misuse and ZCE in the process

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* UncannyValley: Done deliberately to creepily devastating effect. The dolls of the Departed, particularly the ones deposited in [[spoiler:Nora's house, with their wide glass eyes]].
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moving to recap page


* LastDayOfNormalcy: Via WholeEpisodeFlashback, "The Garveys At Their Best" flashes back to show the characters in their final twenty four-hours before the Departure. There are some hints that [[VaguenessIsComing something is coming]]: Patti, now a damaged psychiatric patient of Laurie's, is convinced that some unspecified calamity is about to happen; a drain lid blows off in front of Kevin; and a stranger asks him if he's "ready". Other than that, everything is very normal: Laurie and Kevin are still married (and Laurie is hiding her pregnancy from him), Chris is in college, not affiliated to any cult and is fighting with his birth father, Jill is a perky and happy teenager, Matt is celebrating his birthday with his not-yet disabled wife, and Nora is dissatisfied with her home life and suspects that her husband is cheating on her. Then the Sudden Departure happens, and nothing is the same again.
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* LastDayOfNormalcy: Via WholeEpisodeFlashback, "The Garveys At Their Best" flashes back to show the characters in their final twenty four-hours before the Departure. There are some hints that [[VaguenessIsComing something is coming]]: Patti, now a damaged psychiatric patient of Laurie's, is convinced that some unspecified calamity is about to happen; a drain lid blows off in front of Kevin; and a stranger asks him if he's "ready". Other than that, everything is very normal: Laurie and Kevin are still married (and Laurie is hiding her pregnancy from him), Chris is in college, not affiliated to any cult and is fighting with his birth father, Jill is a perky and happy teenager, Matt is celebrating his birthday with his not-yet disabled wife, and Nora is dissatisfied with her home life and suspects that her husband is cheating on her. Then the Sudden Departure happens, and nothing is the same again.
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* CelebrityCasualty: Creator/GaryBusey, and the entire main cast of ''Series/PerfectStrangers'', are among the 1% of the population who Departed. Except Mark Linn-Baker, who survived, but faked his own Departure due to the experience of all his castmates disappearing. If we believe Nora at the end, they actually didn't die, but were mysteriously transported to another world or dimension. This is left ambiguous, though, and the whole world mourns them as if they died.
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This isn't abandoned, it's resolved


* AbortedArc / CliffhangerCopout: In Season 2, a great deal is made of Matt potentially raping his wife Mary (although, admittedly, without knowing it), who becomes pregnant despite being comatose. This is quickly brushed over in the final episode of Season 2, where one line confirms that Mary ''did'' wake up and so Noah was conceived consensually, possibly due to the MoralEventHorizon such an act [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil could have been for Matt]].
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* JigsawPuzzlePlot: Subverted somewhat. The show opens on a world where 2% of the world's population suddenly vanished one day. The show's plot has the majority of characters trying to figure out why this happened and potentially how to reverse it, uncovering other new mysteries along the way, but the show's theming heavily implies that searching for answers to these questions is a painful and pointless endeavor.

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* JigsawPuzzlePlot: Subverted somewhat. The show opens on a world where 2% of the world's population suddenly vanished one day. The show's plot has the majority of characters trying to figure out why this the Departure happened and potentially how to reverse it, uncovering other new mysteries along the way, but the show's theming heavily implies that searching for answers to these questions is a painful and pointless endeavor.
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* JigsawPuzzlePlot: Subverted somewhat. The show opens on a world where 2% of the world's population suddenly vanished one day. The show's plot has the majority of characters trying to figure out why this happened and potentially how to reverse it, uncovering other new mysteries along the way, but the show's theming heavily implies that searching for answers to these questions is a painful and pointless endeavor.
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* EveryoneIsGoneEpisode: Various episodes show flashbacks to the inciting incident, where a small but significant percentage of the world's population simply disappeared, and deal with the trauma of people literally disappearing in front of others' eyes.

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