End of an Age - TV Tropes

"An era may be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted."

— Arthur Miller

There was a time our lives and the world were new and full of wonder, when innocence and curiosity led people to explore, trust each other plainly, make amazing discoveries, invent amazing technologies, or simply make awe inspiring works of art.

Then it ended.

It can be because we, or the world we are born into, have grown up. It seems smaller by comparison, understandable; no longer mysterious, full of adventure and romance. Children can't grow up to be famous explorers if there are no new continents to explore (space or the deep sea floor being expensive future exceptions), and some works of art made with the expertise of long dead masters can never be truly replicated, whether sword or song. This is what the End Of An Age feels like: tragic, cynical and full of loss.

There are many plots and stories that evoke this trope to add the bitter in a Bittersweet Ending, or less commonly as something to be fought against in order to preserve the Age or at least the relics thereof:

An Adventurer Archaeologist inspired by stories of The Time of Myths and other bygone wonders may make it their life's work to prove it existed, and the story becomes a quest for a MacGuffin or other unique relic of the time.
If it's a Coming of Age Story, it can be children trying to live one last adventure before growing up because Growing Up Sucks, or even trying to grow up... only to discover they've lost something in the process.
Or most heart-wrenching of all, destroying said Age or its relics to keep them out of dangerous hands, perhaps even having to do so simply to survive. This can be done by The End of the World as We Know It or by genocide.

If magic is involved, it becomes a case of The Magic Goes Away. If it's technological, then Lost Technology. And if it's religious, see either Death of the Old Gods or Götterdämmerung. See also, Here There Were Dragons and Doing In the Wizard. Firearms Are Revolutionary, or a Villainous Ethics Decay, can be a major cause of an end to an age.

For the opposite where the age of wonders is just beginning, see Dawn of an Era. See also After the End and Humanity's Wake. Remnants of a past age may be kept in a Fantastic Nature Reserve. Supertrope of Twilight of the Old West, Twilight of the Supers, and Soiled City on a Hill.

Limited Real Life Examples Only: real life examples must be for some sort of cultural, economic, political or technical shift that affected a world power or otherwise changed lives on a continental/global scale.

A No Recent Examples, Please! rule also applies to real life examples, which mustn't be added until at least five years after the era is believed to end.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

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Comic Books

Astro City: "The Dark Age" explores how the optimism of the The '50s and The '60s transformed into an era of public skepticism in their leaders, the rise of violent and reckless "heroes", and more. At the end, it is agreed that this age ended when Samaritan averted the Challenger disaster^noteIn the very first issue of Astro City and ushered in a new, brighter era of inspirational heroism.
Batman:
- Batman (1940) #400 is the last story of the Pre-Crisis Batman, and ends with: "And so the night of resurrection nears its end, but when next he strides forth from this dark womb of bats... it all begins anew. 'Hello again. Beware... forever.'"
- Golden Age Batman's story ends with Only Legends Live Forever, where an older, widowed Bruce Wayne dons the cape and cowl one last time to help the Justice Society of America stop Bill Jenson, a thief given magic powers. He defeats him, but dies doing so, and the story ends with his funeral. What makes it the end of an age, specifically for this version of Batman, is that unlike most continuities, the Legacy Character trope is defied; when Dick Grayson decides he'll take over as Batman, Helena Wayne (Bruce's daughter and the Huntress in this continuity) tells him not to, instead suggesting that he continue fighting crime but as his own man, since "only legends live forever - not the men who make them".
- One of the key themes at the heart of The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory is the Gotham mob and traditional criminals in general having to come to terms with their own increasing impotence as the age of flamboyant supercrime begins.
- Batman: No Man's Land was created to function as this in a sense in order to bring Gotham from the 80s and the movies influence into the 2000s, as well as to break Batman's "urban legend" era.
- Batman R.I.P., Last Rites and Whatever Happened to The Caped Crusader? all acted as the "death" for Post-Crisis Batman as a whole, with the mythology as a whole moving on from the Bruce that was born from Year One towards Dick who became the new Batman and what that entailed for Gotham's legacy. This lead to a new Batman saga with the prologues of Batman: The Black Mirror and Batman Gates Of Gotham and ultimately beginning with Night of the Owls.
- The end of the 2010s saw four different finales that ended a respective era to Batman:
  - Dark Nights: Death Metal is the culmination of everything that began with The Black Mirror and Night of the Owls with Batman as the living prophecy of the demon Barbatos and his helm, the Batman Who Laughs, and the Court of Owls.
  - Batman Annual #2 (2017) is the first official ending to the Rebirth run begun in the pages of Batman (Tom King), that is, until the poor reception of a plot twist mid-way through the run (Bruce and Selina's wedding not quite going to plan) left DC with dwindling readers, necessitating them to pull the plug and relegate the events of the annual to a non-canon 'Black Label' timeline. The book that spun out of that, Batman/Catwoman, was what tied up the remainder of King's plots.
  - The Joker War gave a second, and official, ending to the DC Rebirth run as well as a conclusion the hero-foe relationship between Batman and the Joker with Batman leaving Joker to die and finally accepting the death of Alfred Pennyworth.
  - Fear State finally ended the gritty Gotham that was born out of the New 52 with the destruction of Arkham Asylum and Gotham finally looking towards the future.
Crisis on Infinite Earths is about the end of the multiverse and the birth of the universe. Several other comics came out at the same time dealing with each hero's personal End of an Age.
Dracula vs. King Arthur ends with the Knights of the Round Table dead and Camelot in ruins after the war with Dracula. Arthur knew well before going into battle this was going to happen. And as a final request, rather then rebuilding the kingdom, that Excalibur and the Holy Grail be returned to the Lady of the Lake in hopes of his kingdom's subjects making their own future.
Dungeon: The Early Years: A knight asks if Hyacinthe will avenge his father's death by the traditional way (duel with the offended party one at a time), Hyacinthe says he will use the modern way (slit everyone's throat while they are sleeping). The knight goes away mourning the end of the romantic era, and chronologically this is the last book of Early years where all the other stories will take place in Dungeon Zenith, where barbarism rules and Hyacinthe becomes a bitter Dungeonkeeper who attracts adventurers to die in his castle.
Earth 2: After Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman died fighting off Darkseid's invasion, the world considers the "Age of Wonders" to be over. Five years later, superheroes start to appear again.
Gold Digger (Antarctic Press): Magic and magic users still exist but the age of magic is over and most magical beings retreated to other realms some time ago.
The Golden Age: The series is about the transition between the Golden Age of Comic-Books, and the end of World War II, with all the Justice Society and All-Star Squadron members inactive or retired, and the start of the Silver Age in the mid-50s.
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The series has this as an overarching theme. As Scrooge travels and learns from everyone he meets throughout the latter part of the 19th century, he is a witness to the end of the Frontier-era. The age of the riverboats ends as the railroads take their place, the cattle barons' time comes to an end as the Great Plains are divided up into homesteads, the great gold rushes are at an end, and the Twilight of the Old West finally occurs in 1890, as the frontier is officially closed, America has been settled, and the great names of yesteryear pass into legend. Finally, Scrooge becomes part of legend himself as he participates in the last gold rush in Klondike, finally striking it rich at the top of the world.
Kairos: Strongly implied. Thanks to Nils, the dragon king is killed before he can complete the steps needed for Anaëlle to inherit magical powers. Without it, this makes it difficult (if not impossible) to run things from here on. So she'll be the first of her lineage to rule the Dragon World without her family's magic. Whether it will simply be her who can't use magic or if any future heirs she has will be bereft of magic is up for debate. What's more, she decides to end the monarchy in favor of a democratic system, marking a new era for her people. Either way, her world will never be the same again.
The Multiversity: By the time The Just #1 begins, the legacies of famous superheroes have not seen any real battles since the previous generation had put an end to war and crime, instead living their lives as celebrities. However, after years of complacency, Earth-16's era of peace comes to an end with the rise of Alexis Luthor.
The Sandman: The overarching narrative sees a major dramatic shift in the affairs of the supernatural. The "Season Of Mists" arc sees Lucifer, the Lord of Hell, resign from his position and moving to Earth to explore new possibilities for himself, leading to his own comic series. The "Brief Lives" arc, in which Dream and Delirium go on a trip to find their missing sibling Destruction, describes how many supernatural figures that were once present on Earth are now fading away as they're running out of believers to keep them alive. The series as a whole ends with the death of the current incarnation of Dream, Morpheus, and the coronation of his successor, Daniel Hall, as the new Dream of the Endless.
Superman:
- At the end of Crypt of the Frozen Graves, Supergirl quits her work as a junior photographer in San Francisco news station KSF-TV, leaving her bully and enemy "Nasty" Luthor -the last remnant of her college years- behind, and leaving the Adventure Comics magazine after a forty-four issues run.
- Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is about the end of the Silver Age Superman legend and all the myths surrounding him.
- Legion of Super-Heroes (1984):
  - Superman & the Legion of Super-Heroes (1987) ends with Superboy dead, putting an end to the age where the Legion made frequent trips to the past and had ties with the present day heroes.
  - Magic Wars, wherein all magic in the universe gets destroyed, marks the end of both the book and the original Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes. The next book, set after a five-years time-skip, would retcon the team's story and feature adult, jaded heroes.
The Transformers (IDW):
- Transformers: Last Bot Standing: The series is set in the far future with Rodimus hiding out on a distant planet long after the rest of the Transformer race has died off. In addition to being a hypothetical "last story" for the Transformers franchise, the series is also the last Transformers series put out by IDW after a 15-year tenure.
- The story "The Death of Optimus Prime" (for once, it's not literal) brings an end to the Great War, which had loomed over the Autobots and Decepticons for several million years, especially the countless ones brought online to fight in it. The Transformers: Robots in Disguise and The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye are about what it means when the defining struggle of your species is technically over and nobody is quite sure what to do now or how to move on.
  Fulcrum: But there's always been a war! That's like saying there's no more blue or - or the weather's stopped!
The Ultraverse: This is also the idea behind the comics. The superheros were Human Popsicles from the last "golden age" of men. Or demons. By the way, we are the tenth generation, while they were the ninth.
In Watchmen, Ozymandias declares this to be the whole point of his plan to end the escalating cold war. The era of cooperation between the US and the Soviets means the end of superheroes. The world needs peace through rule of law and not the derring-do's of masked vigilantes.

Fan Works

Arcanum: With the closure of the Azure Archives after the Grimm incident, and the revelation of noted Azure Arcanist Merlot's crimes, Ren anticipates that the Azure itself might be coming to an end. There are rumors of imminent sanctions from the other Collegiums, and with the awful publicity and no longer having the Archives to entice initiates, it's very possible that Arcana's scant applicants will dry up completely.
The Code Geass fic The First Servant, which takes place after Zero Requiem, chronicles not only the end of one era but also the events leading to the end of another. Which involves Empress Nunnally's death and the final downfall of the Britannian Empire.
1983: Doomsday Stories has this trope as one of the overarching themes. The world as we know it ended in 1983, with the remaining Nations doing their best coping with the new one taking its place. On the other hand, it's also treated as a Dawn of an Era: humanity's rebuilding, Survivor-Nations are finding their place in the brave new world and the pre-Doomsday Nations are coming to terms with their ultimate fate.
Pony POV Series: The G2 world is shown to have been a Golden Age of pony civilization, surpassing even the modern day of G4/FiM (according to Luna, the ponies of that period had even landed on the moon, technology that the FiM ponies do not have). It's been seen from two different perspectives — first from Celestia's, and then from the main seven G2 ponies' — how this period came crashing down when Discord's brother Destruction basically nuked the planet back to the Dark Ages in order to prevent the G3 world from coming into existence, thereby preventing the errors of that period from causing universal collapse.
With Strings Attached: When the four first meet Grunnel, he speaks longingly of the good old days when monsters and Tayhil roamed around and the skahs happily slaughtered them. But the skahs were too efficient and killed everything off, and for the last ten years Baravada has been in the grip of the Rusting: there's nothing for the skahs to do any more, no one is breeding (though Grunnel doesn't talk about that), even the populated places are falling apart, and the gods won't do anything about it. The four have to fake being sympathetic, as they are Actual Pacifists and disgusted by Grunnel's joyous descriptions of piles of bodies. And later, they are not at all happy about inadvertently providing the means to reverse the Rusting. Though they do manage to prevent that.
In The Keys Stand Alone, Durothé tells the four about the world of her childhood as the “sorely missed Era of No Gods.” C'hou, or whatever it was called back then, was as flawed and imperfect as any world with many countries at more or less a medieval level—but the arrival of real gods made that period look like paradise in comparison.
The subject matter of Eugenesis deals with the end of war on Cybertron, but there's hell to pay first.
Romance and the Fate of Equestria: Legend of the Goddesses shows Celestia and Luna's childhood in a village populated entirely by alicorns, and that alicorns possess a Battle Aura which surrounds them at all times. Four hundred years later, for no adequately explained reason, alicorn birth rates have dropped, the males of the race are gone altogether, and so they're integrating with the other pony races, while those who do live no longer have auras, not even Celestia and Luna themselves.
A New World (Iced Fairy) depicts a Gensokyo where Yukari has long since died. Without her to smuggle human meat from the other side of the barrier, human-youkai relations degrade to a far harsher balance than Reimu could ever have dreamed of, beginning a slow descent into oblivion. Ran and Keine fear this is the start of Gensokyo's death, but Maribel arrives with time to spare to prevent this and begin reversing the stagnating effects. As it turns out, Yukari successfully predicted her death and all ensuing events, and arranged her final trap to usher Gensokyo, Luna, and all of Earth, into the Dawn of an Era.
A Spark of Ice and Fire: Barristan Selmy and Jon Arryn believe this is the case with the arrival of Agatha Heterodyne. With her inventions of guns and engines (to name a few), Barristan fears that the time of knights and honourable battle is over, while Jon believes he is simply too old to see the new world the brilliant Spark will create.
Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness, which takes place after the events of Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night, has one in the form of Yuuka Kazami. Whereas Reimu, Marisa, and Alice—the other mainstays from the PC-98 era—have all undergone major changes in their lives since the events of Mystic Square, Yuuka is the only one still fully sporting her physical appearance^* and attacks from the games in question, not using any patterns from Phantasmgoria of Flower View. Following her battle with Megas, she takes note of the increasing number of powerful figures that have been making themselves known and finally decides to get with the times, starting with her hair.
In Everybody's Gotta Leave Sometime, the Peanuts gang have just found out that their creator is retiring, which entails the end of their eternal childhood. After their last get-together they'll part ways, perhaps forever, and from that moment on, they'll grow up and eventually join the adult world.
It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door: The end of the old world was ushered in by the great war between the deer; as Lady Falalauria eventually reveals, they are responsible for magic being required to keep the world running in most areas outside bastions like the Everfree Forest.
Lady Falalauria: You ponies must manage nature because we deer broke it.
By the end of the Marvel Universe fanfiction FIRE! (DarkMark), several heroes like Captain America are dead and so are most villains (or for them exiled to another planet). Most surviving heroes (Spider-Man, the original X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Thor) decide to retire or move out of New York and are succeeded by another generation of heroes.
The fallout from the Paranormal Liberation War in The Best Case Scenario, if you're being "realistic" causes the complete and permanent dissolution of Japanese hero society, with heroes being forced to retire or be integrated into other first responder services or the military.
Near the end of Mastermind: Strategist for Hire, the League of Villains, with the help of a recently-defected Hawks, attacks the Hero Commission and exposes their corruption, leading to its collapse. Whilst Hero society had been suffering blows from them ever since All Might's death at the USJ, this ends up forcing it to restructure.
The Abridged Series as a concept has faced this in the lead up to the 2020s. Rewriting a long-running anime series as a parody is a demanding task that can be expected to take years to complete, so unless content creators can generate revenue per episode, they'll inevitably have to call it quits after a while. Factoring in copyright feuds leading to episodes being taken down and creator's personal issues causing Schedule Slip and it ultimately doesn't give audiences a reliable source of entertainment. By 2020, one of the longest-running series Dragon Ball Z Abridged was announced to be effectively over with any possible continuation to be done as web animation. (Said continuations, DragonShortZ and HFIL, are more akin to straight up fanfiction, concepts being 'what happened a year after the Cell Games' and 'what if Goz and Mez tried to reform the villains' respectively.)
Code Prime: Fall of Britannia and Rise of the Decepticons (the two chapters that form the climax of R1) see the dissolution of the Holy Empire of Britannia, with the Decepticons moving in to take their place. Come R2, the last remnants of the Empire have been captured/killed off by the alien warlords, and all that remains of Britannia are the quasi-independent Euro-Britannia, and Marrybell's Glinda Knights (whom are in hiding).
The Weaver Option: The finale of the "Black Crusade" arc sees the end of the age of Chaos Undivided. With Malal assuming the seat of Fourth Chaos God, Anarchy has returned and the age of Chaos Divided has begun.
Extended Stay: The fanfic ends with Warden and Mistress leaving Superjail along with their youngest child to go live in the White House, but not before handing the reins of Superjail and Ultraprison over to the twins. Thus, their eras as wardens of Superjail and Ultraprison come to an end.
Queens of Mewni: Given how it's literally prophesied when a new age would begin (when the heir to the throne is born just before sunrise, she is a Star Queen destined to usher in a new era), it's obvious when an era is about to end, and Solena (The Early Years), Festivia (Age of Ascension), Galaxia (Age of Heroes), Heaven (Dark Age), and Moon (Renaissance) oversaw the end of their respective eras. Thematically, though, the last three era changes play this trope straighter than the others due to how much change occurred-going from the Butterfly Kingdom being a strong military power to its lowest points in history, then back to a revival of the kingdom's prestige and influence, to the Cleaving, the end (and return) of magic, and a destructive War of Two Worlds that left most of Mewni's population dead.
A Is A: A primary theme of the story Be It Ever So Sold Out, There's No Place Like Home. While at first the teams present in Springfield think it is all because of Burns and his diabolical plans, conversations with several Springfield residents mark the realization that the town is finally moving forward, and that the most they can do is help them stay alive as the status quo changes.
A Thing of Vikings: It's established as far back as the first chapter that Berk unlocking the secrets of riding dragons is simultaneously this and it's opposite trope, meaning the end of dragon hunting as a profession (espescially as dragons are seen as more than mindless beasts), Christendoms stranglehold of Norse society, and the end of various kingdoms as they end up swallowed up by the growing Berkian kingdom.
At the Centerfold of the Storm: It's all but stated that the reason Jack Hench set up the bounty on Kim is the fear that, if left unopposed, she'll be the end of villainy as he knows and loves to exploit. And as the fic goes on, it's clear this fear isn't entirely unfounded: by the start, most of Kim's Rogues Gallery are either behind bars, have pulled a Heel–Face Turn, or are in a financial slump (WEE has had to downgrade from a Worldwide Evil Empire to Worldwide Evil Enterprises), and towards the end Henchco's servers are hacked by Global Justice, meaning that it's only a matter of time before they're taken down.

Films — Animation

Cars 3: The NASCAR-style stock racers like Lightning McQueen are quickly being sidelined by new GT3/Le Mans-style racers such as Jackson Storm. The movie ends with Lightning retiring from racing, Passing the Torch to his new friend and protege Cruz Ramirez.
At the end of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, the dragons depart en masse to the Hidden World to wait until humans are ready for them to return. Over the years, they fade to myth.
This is a major theme in The Illusionist (2010) as nobody wants to see stage magicians anymore and nobody believes in magic.
Kung Fu Panda 2 has this as a theme of the story as the advent of the cannon threatens to make kung fu irrelevant and useless in battle. However, Po averts this spectacularly by discovering an effective kung fu Catch and Return technique to defeat cannon fire, making kung fu still a vital skill in battle that can counter artillery. Furthermore, Po rather casually makes it clear that he can teach his friends this technique, which means it will be spreading throughout China in due time.
Monsters, Inc. centers around an energy crisis, with the source of energy being the scaring of children. While Henry J. Waternoose initially attributes it to newer generations of scarers not being good enough, he finally admits to Sulley that times have changed and that scaring isn't a good enough resource of energy anymore. This fuels his villainy through kidnapping children to extract screams from them for energy. By the end of the film, scream-based energy is rendered obsolete with the discovery of laughter as a higher-yield source of energy.
Once Upon Australia depicts both the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period and the demise of the megafauna of Pleistocene Australia, with the larger animals (non-avian dinosaurs/large marsupials such as Diprotodon) dying out and smaller animals (Cretaceous mammals/small marsupials such as bilbies, with the addition of thylacines) outliving them.
The Sea Beast: Early on in the film, the King and Queen inform Captain Crow that the kingdom's days of relying on ragtag crews of monster hunters like his are coming to an end, as they intend to use a massive war ship crewed by the Royal Navy to deal with the monsters. In the end, ultimately, a different age ends — the age of monster hunting, following Maisie exposing the royal family's lies about monsters.
The ending of Song of the Sea. Saorise regains her coat and sings her song, ushering all of Ireland's fair folk across the sea to Tír na nÓg. She also sacrifices her selkie coat to remain on Earth with her human family, taking with it the last remaining bond to the fairy world.

Films — Live-Action

In 13 Assassins, the age of samurai is drawing to a close, which is reflected in the conflicting ideas about justice among the main characters.
20th Century Women, which is set in the summer of 1979, depicts that time as the tail-end of a time period brimming with new optimism and carefree fun after The Vietnam War finally ended and the worst of the Nixon years were over, an ultimately brief era that stopped once The '80s rolled by and new fears about the Reagan era and the AIDS crisis took over.
This trope is invoked by name in the Dutch film Admiral, which partially takes place at the beginning of the end of the Dutch golden age. At the funeral of Michiel de Ruyter, the eponymous admiral, one of the aristocrats mentions his death heralds the end of an age. See Real Life - Early Modern for more information.
Africa Addio follows the twilight of European colonialism and the ensuing turmoil in 1960s Africa.
Apocalypto: The Mayan civilization is on its last legs, and the Spaniards arrive to the Americas.
The Artist is set during the twilight of silent films and the emergence of talkies.
Atomic Blonde is set in November 1989 just a few days before the fall of the Wall in Berlin, which means the end of the Cold War.
Avengers: Endgame does this for the first twenty-two films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, retroactively known as the Infinity Saga. By the end of the movie, the original six Avengers are no more. Tony and Natasha have sacrificed their lives to defeat Thanos, Clint once again retires and reunites with his restored family, Banner's arm is damaged from using the Stones (it's fixed by the time of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, however), Thor leaves Earth to join the Guardians of the Galaxy on their adventures after deeming Valkyrie the ruler of New Asgard (although he leaves that team early in his fourth film), and Steve, after going back in time to return the Stones to their original locations in history, chooses to return to 1940s to live a full life with Peggy.
The lightning strike to the clock tower in Back to the Future (1985) arguably represents the beginning of the eventual decline and decay of Hill Valley's town square. Or, in a broader sense, it perhaps symbolizes the end of America's 1950s post-war boom.
It's largely only subtext in the film, but the novelization of Beowulf (2007) makes it clear that for the Norse people the dawning of the age of Christianity means the end of the age of myths and legends, something which Beowulf greatly resents.
Boogie Nights deals with the end of the close-knitted 70s, 80s porn producing subculture and the rise of the open market porn industry. Little Bill, played by William H. Macy, appears in the 70s scenes, frequently complaining about his wife. However, at a New Year's Eve party, ushering in 1980, Little Bill shoots his wife dead, says "Happy New Year" to the shocked partygoers, and then shoots himself in front of them. The scene sets the tone for the grim, uncertain 1980s after the carefree, hedonistic 1970s.
Brotherhood of the Wolf is this for Ancien Régime France. It's the 1760s, the ideas of The Enlightenment are in fashion among the intellectual elites, with the protagonist Fronsac clashing with the more conservative locals. The movie's Bookends take place decades later during The French Revolution brought about by said Enlightenment ideas, with one of the younger characters, now an old man, somberly reflecting on how the old world needed to change before being dragged away by a mob.
Casino details the rise and fall of The Mafia's control of Las Vegas casinos from the '70s to the '80s. After they got busted, the corporations took over and started Vegas's brief family-friendly period. Protagonist Sam Rothstein laments the steep dip in hospitality and the change of demographic from classy gamblers to reckless families and elderly people with money to throw away.
Daughters of the Dust: Peazant family matriarch Nana fears that in leaving the island, her family will forget its Gullah roots and become assimilated.
Deadpool & Wolverine is this to every pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, but especially the X-Men (Film Series) made by 20th Century Studios prior to their buyout by Disney. As per usual with a Deadpool adaptation, the film features a heavy dose of Leaning on the Fourth Wall End-of-Series Awareness and ends on montage of clips from all of the pre-MCU movies set to "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day.
Downfall is about the end of World War II for the Germans, the end of the Nazi era, and the crashing down of the fantasy world that the Nazis had constructed as the Allies move in.
Dragonslayer. The end of magic and dragons, and the start of Christianity.
Farewell My Queen: This is Versailles in 1789, so it is the very end of the Ancien Régime.
The Farmer Takes a Wife takes place against the backdrop of the Erie Canal losing its importance to the emerging railroads.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: ruminates on the twilight of the optimism of the 1960s in America. Johnny Depp says the famous "Wave Speech in voiceover while peering out a window.
In The Flintstones (1994), Mr. Slate announces the passing of the Stone Age with the invention of concrete.
Played in Forrest Gump. Many have interpreted Jenny's death from a disease that might be AIDS as being symbolic of the death of the 1960s/1970s counterculture in the early 1980s.
GoldenEye is the James Bond film where Bond definitely said goodbye to the Cold War (including In-Universe), what with all the Communist and Soviet symbols (like the Vladimir Lenin statues and the Kolkhoz Woman) being smashed or collapsing in the Title Sequence and the cemetery of Soviet statues in the film proper. And M now treats Bond like a "dinosaur" of that bygone era.
Good Bye, Lenin!: The end of East Germany and, more broadly, the end of communism in Europe.
The Green Knight is set in the late days of the reign of King Arthur. Camelot’s prestiege is waning, Arthur is no longer a young, powerful king, and his knights have grown tired of fighting new battles. In terms of environment, the outside lands are either littered with bodies from finished battles or in the midst of deforestation. The ending suggests either that Arthur’s nephew Gawain could either be the last of the Arthurian age, the start of a new dishonorable era, or the start of a new generation to continue Camelot's legacy.
The historical film Harry Tracy follows the titular Western outlaw as he has become the last of his breed and is now on the run from the rapidly-modernizing country and it's government.
In the last segment of How the West Was Won ("The Outlaws") there's a running theme that the days of hot-shot gunslingers and train-robbing outlaws are almost at an end, with all the most famous examples of each having died already. The big showdown between Marshal Zeb Rawlings and outlaw Charlie Grant is portrayed as one of the last of its kind as the West loses its wildness.
The final third of Into the Storm (2009) showcases the post-war period. It has a very melancholic feel to it, displaying the definitive end of the British Empire and the downfall of Winston Churchill and the sort of Imperialistic, larger-than life politician he represents.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: The final remnants of Jurassic Park/World are about to be completely destroyed in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption, which will wipe out the remaining dinosaurs once and for all (we're not really told what exactly happened to the other islands). The plot revolves around the characters trying to save a small number of them from extinction and by the end InGen's monopoly on cloning technology and the dinosaurs isolation from the mainland also comes to an end.
A subgenre of samurai films deals with the Meiji Restoration, a series of civil wars in 19th century Japan that saw the downfall of the samurai class and its rulers, the shogunate, as the effective rulers of Japan, in favor of the royal family retaking direct control for the first time in several hundred years. Historically it was also the Dawn of an Era, as it resulted in the abolition of Japan's traditional caste system and rapid industrialization and Westernization, which culminated in the nation becoming a superpower of East Asia from the turn of the century until her decisive defeat by the United States and its allies in World War II.
- The Hidden Blade has the shogunate's samurai being forced to adopt Western weapons and tactics, even training to run in Western style. It's something of a deconstruction, as the film portrays samurai culture as not nearly what it's typically romanticized as: the lords and samurai are either corrupt or take Honor Before Reason to stupid extremes. Protagonist Munezo Katagiri ultimately discards samuraihood altogether to become a tradesman, which also lets him marry his lower-caste sweetheart Kie.
- The Last Samurai is an American-made version of this, very loosely based on the Satsuma Rebellion. American Civil War and Indian Wars veteran Nathan Algren initially works for the Imperial government training their new army, but becomes enamored of the samurai traditionalists and changes sides as they make their Last Stand against the Western ways.
- When the Last Sword Is Drawn tells the story of the Boshin War from the perspective of The Shinsengumi, chiefly Yoshimura Kanichiro and Historical Domain Character Saitou Hajime, fundamentally portraying them as noble men fighting for an ultimately losing cause because their sense of honor demands them to.
Logan takes place in a time when, by the year 2004, no new mutants were being born. It is now 2029, and the mutant population is in rapid decline.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The film dramatizes the fall of Tsarist Russia. Count Witte describes it in such a way.
Count Witte: None of you will be here when this war ends. Everything we fought for will be lost, everything we've loved will be broken. The victors will be as cursed as the defeated. The world will grow old, and men will wander about, lost in the ruins, and go mad. Tradition, restraint, virtue, they all go. I'm not mourning for myself, but for the people who will come after me, they will live without hope. And all they will have will be guilt, revenge, and terror. And the world will be full of fanatics and trivial fools.
No Time to Die is promoted as being the final James Bond film to feature Daniel Craig as 007. As such, multiple plot threads from throughout his movies are wrapped up, culminating in the death of Bond himself in a Heroic Sacrifice and opening the door for another Continuity Reboot. The final line of dialogue really seals the deal.
Madeleine Swann: I'm going to tell you a story. It's about a man. His name was Bond. James Bond.
A recurring motif in Ocean's Thirteen, various characters remark at different points at how the casinos and heists in Las Vegas have changed around them ("You're analog players in a digital world"). The changing of the times also divides the crooks of the setting between the heroic Gentlemen Thieves who abide by the codes, and the villain of the movie, who sees the modern Las Vegas as an excuse to betray it.
One of the themes of the first Once Upon a Time in China, lamenting the fading of Kung Fu in the face of modern weapons. Particularly exemplified by Anti-Villain Master Yen. Furthermore, the increase in westernization among Chinese people emphasized on how the characters deal and cope with it.
All in one film, Pacific Rim covers the end of the Kaiju-free Earth, end of the Jaeger's golden age, and lastly the end of the Kaiju era...perhaps.
In the Pirates of the Caribbean series, there is an ongoing theme that the end is near for the era of Wooden Ships and Iron Men - an age of freedom and adventure that has been memorialized ever since. Indeed, the series takes place vaguely in an early-to-mid 18th century setting, the very end of The Golden Age of Piracy. The seemingly unstoppable progression of sequels has rendered this theme somewhat awkward and ironic.
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the Black Pearl is briefly referred to as "the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean".
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Cutler Beckett had a speech about how the world was changing and there would soon no longer be a place for pirates like Jack Sparrow.
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Sparrow and Barbossa had a similar conversation; the point gets driven home when they stumble upon the body of the Kraken.
  Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place.
  Jack: The world's still the same. There's just... less in it.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides hammers the point home even more so with the Spanish destroying the Fountain of Youth at the end of the movie.
Pretty Baby depicts the end of Storyville, a Red-Light District of New Orleans during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Roger & Me: The film highlights the end of company towns and the businesses that promised lifetime employment, in favor of a more globalized, greed driven world.
Moore: [narrating] As we neared the end of the twentieth century, the rich were richer, the poor, poorer. And people everywhere now had a lot less lint, thanks to the lint rollers made in my hometown. It was truly the dawn of a new era.
The 1984 Alan Bridges film The Shooting Party takes place on the country estate of an aristocrat shortly before the start of the First World War. The film's principal theme deals with the fact that not just the war but modernity itself will soon make the main characters' culture and lifestyle obsolete.
The Shootist is a John Wayne western set in 1901, at the absolute tail-end of The Wild West-era. Carson City, Nevada has electrical street lighting, cars and dry-cleaning, and the newspapers announce the death of Queen Victoria marking the beginning of The Edwardian Era. Wayne plays J.B Books, an aging gunslinger hoping for a chance at one last good gunfight before his cancer claims him, knowing full well that he is an anachronism in a world moving on. On an eerie meta-level, the film also marked the end of Wayne's film career (he was diagnosed of stomach cancer and passed away three years later) and the classic western that Wayne embodied; few westerns were being made by 1976, and the ones that were had no patience for "white-hat cowboy vs. black-hat cowboy" conflict.
Singin' in the Rain is set during the beginning of the death of The Silent Age of Hollywood and the massive overhaul that ruined the careers of many silent film actors.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country ends with the final mission of the original Enterprise and her crew. In a way, especially for fans, it was emphatically the end of an era. It also had The Federation finally make peace with their long-time arch-rivals, the Klingons, marking the end of the Cold War era in Real Life.
The Old Republic in the Star Wars universe, shown in its final stages of decline in the prequels. In the original film (A New Hope), Obi-Wan describes the good old days of the Jedi Knights to Luke.
In The Suckers, Great White Hunter Jeff delivers a speech to Barbara about with growing environmentalism and the spread of game preserves, it is big-game hunters like himself and Vandemeer who are now the endangered species. Possibly this played better with audiences in the early 70s, but to modern viewers it comes across as self-indulgent Narm.
Sunset is about both the end of the Old West and the end of silent movies.
The Hungarian film Sunshine chronicles Hungary's fall from glory, from the upbeat optimism of the Habsburg Monarchy to the bleak and fatalistic 1956 Revolution against the Soviets.
In Top Gun: Maverick, Cain says this to Maverick before Maverick is sent to train the pilots, saying that his kind is headed for extinction. True to Cain's word, it seems to be heading this way, as Iceman has passed away from throat cancer and Maverick's career is all but over. Cain also means this about pilots in general, as the future of air combat seems to be focused on unmanned drones.
Underground (1995) is about the dissolution of the united Yugoslavia, which the film mourns. Many critics did not appreciate the film's romanticizing of Tito's communist regime.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit links the construction of the Pasadena Freeway to the end of old-timey Los Angeles culture, represented by The Golden Age of Animation come to life. For anyone who knows the history of LA, that was actually somewhat Truth in Television. It's the freeway that was a major factor in the basin's development and subsequent suburban sprawl. However, the freeway was actually built seven years before the film is set, making it strange that the very idea of a "freeway" is presented as a novel concept that everyone but Judge Doom thinks Will Never Catch On. Also, living cartoons never happened.
The Wild Bunch is set in the Twilight of the Old West, with aging outlaws heading to Mexico and taking on One Last Job.
Discussed in Yamato. Kamio, being one of the surviving crewmen of the eponymous battleship, has spent the past few decades mired in Survivor Guilt, unable to move on. By recounting his tale to Makiko, he is finally able to acknowledge that the Showa period has come to an end and let go of the past.

Live-Action TV

The Advisor's Alliance:
- Cao Pi's ascension to the throne formally ends the Han Dynasty and begins the era of the Three Kingdoms.
- While the Wei Dynasty will yet continue for some time, Sima Yi's death at the end of the series marks the transition of power to his sons and a newer generation.
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda exists in a time where the great civilization known as the Commonwealth had fallen. Cynically, attempts to recreate it have so far simply resulted in corruption of power.
Babylon 5 uses this lightly at the end of the Shadow War. While it emphasizes the new beginning for the younger races, there are mentions that with the passing of the Old Ones the universe has lost some of its mystery and wonder.
Birds of a Feather (1989)'s sixth series finale, "Christmas in Dreamland", was the final episode to have Alun Lewis and Peter Polycarpou appearing as Darryl and Chris (not counting archive footage in the Clip Show, "The Chigwell Years") as in "Cheers", Douglas McFerran would take over as Darryl, while David Cardy would play Chris for the first time since "Substitute" eight years prior.
Most of the Powers That Be, and even the demons in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, are tired, and of mixed blood with humans. The True Demons left long ago. Angel actually managed to interject a sense of sadness that this had happened with the character of Illyria, an Old One (the gods among the True Demons) in a Fish out of Temporal Water role.
Community: In Season Four, the study group grapples with the fact that their college careers are coming to an end and they will have to go out into the world again. Season five subverts it by bringing most of the cast back together again. The sixth and final season finally confirms the trope by having the remaining main characters leave one by one for various personal reasons, leaving only two by the end of the Grand Finale.
Cranford chronicles the end of the agricultural age in England and the coming of the Industrial Revolution, as symbolised by the railroad. Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the three novels the TV series was based on, also wrote a nonfiction book about this transition, called The Last Generation in England; material from this was also used for the show.
The Deuce is about the changing times in the entertainment district of Times Square. Initially dominated by pimps and hookers, it becomes an epicenter for the Golden Age of Porn as well as Mafia-owned bars and sex shops. In the final episode, Vince returns after many years away and sees that the refurbished, clean and wholesome district is nothing like he remembers, though he imagines all the old characters he used to know still haunting its street corners.
The last episode of Dinosaurs brings this theme home after suggestively dancing around it for most of the series.
Earl: Dinosaurs have been on this Earth for 150 millions years, and it's not like we're going to just... disappear.
The final episode of Duck Dynasty, in which Si Robertson leaves Duck Commander to be a back-up singer for ZZ Top, was literally named after this trope.
Game of Thrones: In the show's Grand Finale, the death of Daenerys, the exile of Jon Snow and the destruction of the Iron Throne all together represent the end of the Targaryen dynasty and most, if not all, of the influence Valyria had on the Seven Kingdoms.
- House of the Dragon: Over a century and a half before the conflicts of Game of Thrones, the Succession Crisis turned Civil War between the Blacks and the Greens marks the end of decades of peace and prosperity under the reigns of Targaryen kings Jaehaerys I and Viserys I.
Heartbreak High (1994) wraps up over the course of Series 5. The few reamining students from Series 1 and their additional classmates finish their exams and move on with their lives, leading to a new set of major characters taking their place. The few who stayed behind to repeat Year 12 eventually drop out. The final episode deals with Hartley High being closed down due to wear and tear making it infeasible. The last 2 series would commence at a new school, by which point it was basically a new generation.
Kamen Rider Zi-O was meant to commemorate the end of the Heisei era for Kamen Rider, with the show's plot bringing back elements and characters from all nineteen previous shows from that period in some form. The post-plot special Zi-O vs. Decade later served as one for Tsukasa Kadoya/Kamen Rider Decade, the protagonist of the previous Milestone Celebration series before Zi-O who had served major roles in various crossovers; there, he seemingly dies from several wounds accrued over the course of the special, and accepts it as the end of his journey despite the lack of the typical fanfare that had been afforded to the entire rest of his life. Though Tsukasa has reappeared in the franchise since then, his influence in crossover content is minimal and is all but stated to have passed his mantle to Ascended Fanboy Ho-Oh Kaguya Quartz/Kamen Rider Legend.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In the first few minutes, we learn about how Morgoth destroyed the Two Trees of Valinor and turned the city of Tirion into a wasteland. As a result, the Elves had to leave for Middle-earth where they fought in the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age against Morgoth and His servant, Sauron.
- By the end of Season 1, what was once the beautiful and picturesque Southlands was destroyed by Orodruin's eruption which turned everything into the hellish wasteland known as Mordor. The Southlanders lost everything and had to leave, and now the former Southlands belong to the Orcs.
Miami Vice: The second-season finale, "Sons and Lovers", functionally ends several design-related and overarching plot threads in the series, due to transitioning to a new creative team (Dick Wolf took over from Michael Mann as executive producer) between seasons. In this episode, a plot thread left dangling from the first few episodes of the series is functionally resolved (via the reappearance [and eventual death] of Angelina Calderone), while several elements, like Crockett's Bren Ten sidearm, Crockett and Tubbs' longer hairstyles and their pastel-themed outfits, make their final appearance here.
The O.C.
- The gang graduate high school at the end of the third season. Additionally, Marissa is killed in a car accident, so the episode also marks the final time Seth, Ryan, Summer and Marissa are all together.
- Season 4, and the series, concludes with Seth and Ryan going to college, and the Cohen family moving out of Newport Beach.
One Tree Hill
- The fourth season concludes with the majority of the cast graduating from Tree Hill High, with the season finale showing the teens attending their last high school party - appropriately, on the day that the computer systems are updated for the following year and they are officially no longer high school students. Out of universe, Season 5 picks up following a Time Skip of 4 years, effectively splitting the show into two distinct eras.
- Season 6 marks the final time that the Core Five (Lucas, Nathan, Peyton, Haley and Brooke) are all together, with Lucas and Peyton leaving Tree Hill between seasons.
There are multiple examples within Power Rangers, most of which reflect production changes happening behind the scenes.
- The second season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers featured "The Power Transfer" during the original Red, Black and Yellow Rangers departed the team - marking the end of the original line-up of Power Rangers.
- Power Rangers Zeo sees Billy, the last remaining member of the original five, step down as a Ranger and ultimately depart the series.
- Power Rangers Turbo opens with the team graduating from high school and saw Zordon and Alpha-5 depart as the Rangers' mentor figures, and by the end of the season, the remaining Rangers left over from Mighty Morphin and Zeo had all been replaced.
- Power Rangers in Space is officially considered the end of the "Zordon Era" with this being the final season to directly carry on from the previous iteration of the franchise, and fittingly, Zordon's death. Subsequent seasons would introduce a new set of Power Rangers and tell a complete story over the course of the season on a yearly basis.
- Power Rangers RPM, which took place after the computer virus Venjix has nearly destroyed humanity, ends with Venjix defeated and humanity free for the first time in years. One of the final shots is of a single flower growing in the wasteland outside of the city, a symbol of life persevering even after it's near destruction. It was also nearly the end of Power Rangers entirely, and preceded the first year where no new adaptations were made whatsoever—until Saban swooped in and bought the rights back from Disney, most fans figured this was the end.
- Power Rangers Cosmic Fury was meant to be the final installment of the original continuity; a reboot was planned to follow developed in partnership between Hasbro and Netflix, before ultimately being cancelled after some time in development hell, with Hasbro instead partnering with 20th Television to develop a new Power Rangers series for Disney+, although it has not yet been clarified if said series is a reboot or not. Cosmic Fury is also the final saga to be filmed in New Zealand and to use footage from Super Sentai, with Hasbro opting for purely original footage going forward.
Revolution takes place 15 years after the Blackout stopped electricity from working and ended human civilization as we know it. The events of the series mark the end of the post-Blackout scavenger period where the desperate survivors tried to build a new life for themselves in a world without electricity. The young people coming of age barely remember the pre-Blackout world and new nations have formed on the ruins of the old USA.
Rough Diamonds: This drives the plot of the series as the Wolfson family is forced to adjust to the changing landscape of Antwerps' diamond business. The Wolfsons are traditional Hasidic Jews and have been Atwerp diamond brokers since the beginning of Antwerp's diamond district. They survived wars and revolutions but in the present, their family business is on the brink of ruin. Decades earlier, the family patriarch was able to make diamond deals worth millions of dollars on the strength of his word and reputation alone. His children cannot get a loan from a bank and their business partners refuse to give them credit. They have to engage in increasingly shadier deals that could not only ruin the family financially but also send most of them to prison.
The typically much darker second series of each generation in Skins is pretty much this for the end of the age of teenage rebellion and innocence and the beginning of adulthood and responsibility. The Gen 1 finale rammed it home with the group's separation, while Gen 2 wove it through the series and addressed it on a more individual level.
Sons of Anarchy: The death of John Teller caused the Sons of Anarchy to transition from a group of irreverent, free-spirited toughs into a dedicated criminal enterprise. When Jax Teller assumes leadership, he promises to take the club fully into the modern age and turn it legitimate. Unfortunately, he largely fails and becomes a tragic figure. In the end, the remnants of the club must struggle on as a lesser, more low-key and principled club.
This is occurring in the background of The Sopranos, which was broadcast around the Turn of the Millennium. The show depicts The Mafia in decline and struggling to adapt to a changing world. Tony Soprano is shown to still be rich and wield significant local influence, but his gang is gradually losing the neighbourhoods and businesses they used to control to new competitors or the forces of gentrification. It's highlighted in an episode in the final season when Patsy and Burt try to extort protection money from the manager of an obvious Starbucks stand-in, but find that as a tiny cog in the corporate machine, he doesn’t have the authority to pay them, and a multinational corporation isn’t intimidated at the prospect of one of their hundreds of stores being vandalized. Finally, they resort to threatening him personally, but he can’t even pay them under the table because his bosses will notice the discrepancy in the books and fire him.
Stargate SG-1: The Stargate system is a leftover from a much older galactic civilization. Most of the dominant alien races barely understand the technology they use, and the ones who do are dying or gone. This is a type 2, as Terran humanity is implied to have potential equal to or greater than the old powers, but things will probably still keep declining for a while. The advent of the Tau'ri (Terrans) brings about the downfall of the thousands-year reign of the Goa'uld "System Lords" (who arguably were a society already in decay but still held power over most of the galaxy).
Star Trek:
- Star Trek: Enterprise: In the mid 22nd century the development of higher capacity warp engines represented an end of an era for the Earth Cargo Service as ships equipped with these engines could make cargo runs much faster than older ECS freighters. As Captain Keane noted in "Fortunate Son" the era of slower warp drive engines was coming to an end, and ECS Captains would have to use ships equipped with higher capacity engines just to stay in business.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Borg invasion and Battle of Wolf 359 marked the final end of the Federation's isolationism and decades of (relatively) peaceful space exploration. Going forward, the Federation began to take a much more active role in the domestic policies of other space empires and focused more on military preparedness.
- Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery reveals that in the mid 31st century, a cataclysm called The Burn destroyed millions of warp-capable ships and nearly ended interstellar civilization. The Federation saw the end of its dominance in the Alpha Quadrant, collapsing from 350 member worlds to just 38, while crime syndicates like the Emerald Chain rose to fill the power vacuum.
Upstairs, Downstairs depicts, through the changes in the Bellamy household, Victorian England slowly yielding to modern Britain (with the Revival guiding the following household to the end of the pre-WWII and Cold War era). Downton Abbey does the same with the Crawley household.
Vikings: The last season chronicles the death knell of the golden age of the vikings. The last of the great heroes, such as Ragnar and his sons, have mostly died out, and characters frequently state that we will never see their like again.
Walking with Dinosaurs: The final episode, "Death of a Dynasty" is about the last days of the dinosaurs, after over a hundred million years on Earth. Even without the comet, they're on the way out, between a poisonous environment and newer species outperforming them.
The Wire: Subverted. As a motif throughout the show, characters are constantly proclaiming that it's a "New Day" in whatever circle they run in, and now everything will be better. But it turns out that this new era is essentially no different than the last era.

Music

The Blue Öyster Cult anthem Golden Age of Leather is about the last stand of old unrepentant Hell's Angels for whom the world has got too small, who choose to go out and die in a blaze of glory:
There passed from man to man
A wanton child, too dead to care,
That each would find his pleasure as he might;
For that fantastic night was billed
As nothing less than the end of an age,
A last crusade, a final outrage...
Puff the Magic Dragon is about the end of childhood innocence and imagination, not pot.
Ice-T's "Gotta Lotta Love" is about the Watts Truce ushering in an age of peace.
Woke up the other morning. I heard a rumor. They said the gang wars was over...
The song "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, which relates to the replacement of Radio as the national medium. In an interesting side note the music video was the first (and last) one to ever be played on MTV. In producer/composer Trevor Horn's own words, he felt that "an era was about to pass".
The Bruce Springsteen song The River is about a man who steadily has to give up his dreams and face the realities and responsibilities of life, with the eponymous river symbolic of those dreams.
But I remember us riding in my brother's car,
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake and pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?
Or is it something worse?
The Pepe Deluxé album Queen of the Wave depicts the downfall of Atlantis and the loss of their advanced knowledge, due to the Atlanteans' own corruption and the machinations of an evil wizard.
Sabaton's song Shiroyama combines this with Last Stand to cover the fall of the samurai and the end of Japanese feudalism. The song itself is about the bravery of the last samurai in the face of the Curb-Stomp Battle they were on the receiving end of. The 500 Satsuma samurai are outnumbered 60:1 and armed with swords against Imperial guns — the fact that they even survive until dawn is impressive.
Imperial force defied, facing 500 samurai
Surrounded and outnumbered
60 to 1, the sword face the gun
Bushido dignified
It's the last stand of the samurai
Surrounded and outnumbered

Until the dawn they hold on
Only 40 are left at the end
None alive, none survive
Shiroyama
The Vaporwave genre as a whole likes to depict a grainy, consumerist, faux-nostalgia of The '80s and The '90s, and the unspoken rule is that the 9/11 attacks are the cutoff point for this era. To that end, the album News at 11 by 猫シ Corp. extends this to the very moments right before the terror attacks were announced on the morning of September 11, 2001, at the extreme end of the era.
Radio Tapok's original song "Tsushima" mournfully describes the Baltic Fleet as "the last fleet of the emperor". Historically, the Russo-Japanese War cost Tsarist Russia almost her entire navy and was a massive blow to the nation's prestige, becoming one of the factors in the build-up to the Russian Revolution.
Don Edwards' song "Coyotes" is about an old cowboy who is the last remnant of the Wild West as the modern industrial age is beginning.
Then he'd look off some place in the distance
At something only he could see
He'd say all that's left now of the old days
Those damned old coyotes and me

Myths & Religion

The Bible has several examples:
- The loss of a "Golden Age" in this case is the "fall of man", and being cursed with sin, suffering, and death.
- Both destructions of Jerusalem are this for the Jews.
- The Book of Daniel compares the four ancient empires around the Mediterranean (which reigned over the Israelites) area to metals: Babylon is gold, Media is silver, Persia is bronze, and Greece/Macedonia is iron. (Some interpretations have it Babylon, Persia, Greece/Macedonia, and Rome.)
- According to some interpretations, inverted in Revelation, where the result of the Final Battle between God and Satan will result in the Dawn of an Era that restores humanity to its former glory.
Dharmic religions (mainly, but not limited to, Hinduism and Buddhism) has the Wheel of Time, with ages beginning and ending in perpetuity like the seasons. An age typically come to an end due to evilness (World Half Full or goodness) of men have exceeded the threshold of that age. Sages usually see the current age as part of a long decline in morality, and claim that the old time was better, but the better time had to go because people lost righteousness and began to misrule the world. With the ending of the age of wisdom, people also lost superhuman powers, lifespan, and the capacity for morality.
The Trojan War is often believed to be the event that put an end to the Heroic Age of Classical Mythology.
Celtic Mythology: The Mythological cycle ends with the gods defeated by the incoming Irish people and leaving for the Otherworld, ending the time of the gods and other supernatural races openly walking the earth and ruling as kings, and beginning the age of heroes like Cu Chulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhaill.
The concluding Arthurian myths, depicting the fall of the King's forces to foreign invaders and the disappearance of Merlin. Not very surprising, as they initially emerged as patriotic tales by Britons who were fighting the Anglo-Saxon invasion - and eventually lost, effectively The End of the World as We Know It for them.
Norse Mythology: Ragnarok is The End of the World as We Know It and "The End of the Time of the Gods" but life will continue after them and a new era, with new gods, will come about.

Podcasts

Commented on by the Yeomra twins in the Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe? episode Dark Legion: Death's Door. While they're completely on board with destroying Earth and harvesting all of humanity's souls, King Yeomra is a little sentimental since Hell's put so much work into this world, and it will take millennia before they can create a new one and start the harvest over.

Professional Wrestling

Shane Douglas throwing down the NWA World's Heavyweight Championship is generally seen as the final nail in the coffin of the National Wrestling Alliance and the old territory system. The NWA still exists, but to call it even a shadow of its former self would be an overstatement.
The death of Giant Baba and the mass defection of the roster to Pro Wrestling NOAH was the end of All Japan Pro Wrestling as a major force in Wrestling.
The Death of WCW marked the moment that wrestling in the West became an effective monopoly, with only one "major" national promotion left.^note
After SummerSlam in 2014, the Big Gold Belt — arguably the most recognizable and beloved championship belt design in wrestling history that had appeared on pro wrestling TV for nearly three decades — was permanently retired.^note
In January 2024, Vince McMahon, the man who had dominated professional wrestling in North America since The '80s, resigned as the CEO of WWE.

Roleplay

Open Blue's Backstory has the Iormunean Imperium, precursors (based on the Roman Empire) who were more or less the greatest civilization in the world... until they turned a blind eye to some heretics, causing their goddess to turn her back on them while they were in the middle of a war against invading barbarians.

Tabletop Games

BattleTech: The Amaris Civil War and the Fall of the Star League marked the end of humanity's golden age, and the start of two centuries of seemingly endless war between the Successor States. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg...
- The attrition, technological decline, and total warfare seen in the Succession Wars ended with the recovery of the Helm Memory core which saw the resurgence of lostech, and the Clan Invasion, who brought with them technology that had either been forgotten since the Fall of the Star League or completely unheard of altogether.
- For the Clans themselves, the destruction of Clan Smoke Jaguar and their loss in the Great Refusal lead to the end of the Clans' Warden/Crusader philosophy.
- ComStar's decision to become a neutral, secular organization led to a schism, where its religious fundamentalist side split to form the Word of Blake.
- The Second Star League's disbandment not only led to the final extinction of mankind's dream of being united under a single benevolent banner, but the beginning of the Word of Blake's outstandingly violent "Jihad", which saw the return of both WMDs and the death of MechWarriors being seen as hi-tech knights in shining armor.
- During the Jihad, the Homeworld Clans saw their Invader brethren as being irrevocably "tainted" by the Inner Sphere's "barbarianism", leading to the Wars of Reaving that left four Clans destroyed and the two groups permanently estranged from another.
- Finally, the era of peace that endured since the end of the Jihad came to a screeching halt on "Gray Monday", when the entire HPG Network shut down simultaneously, mysteriously, and indefinitely. Faster-than-light communication became impossible, with political boundaries changing dramatically as ancient enemies took advantage of the confusion and chaos. And thus begins the Dark Age...
- The Dark Age ended with the fall of Terra to Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon and their subsequent Trial for who would become ilClan. The Wolves won, proclaimed the birth of a new Star League with their Khan at its head, and so began the current era...
Dungeons & Dragons:
- Eberron featured the imperfect but relatively idyllic continent-spanning (in theory) Kingdom of Galifar, which allowed slow yet steady improvements in sapient rights, Magitek, concepts of justice, and educational standards... until finally an ascension dispute broke out and the five provinces collapsed into over a dozen warring states over the course of a hundred years. When the dust finally cleared, nationalism, distrust, and cynicism ran high. Many of Galifar's achievements remained, but not the optimistic outlook that allowed them in the first place. For those not paying attention, it's World War I in fantasy-land.
- Forgotten Realms:
  - Ancient Netheril was a highly developed magocracy where even servants used minor magics, Magitek was used routinely and most main cities were made of mountaintops cut off, overturned and enchanted to float. When all magic across the world "turned off" for a short while, the empire fell — literally. The same event damaged the 'Weave' which supports all magic on Toril, so the goddess who guards it curtailed access to prevent more damage and the greatest spells of old Netheril just don't work anymore. Now even their minor artifacts are guarded jealously by new owners.
  - Subverted by the epoch of Myth Dranor. It's known as a lost Golden Age (magical Renaissance and goodwill festival), but, with all its wonders, it wasn't completely idyllic, nor was its technology absolutely superior — for example, some Myth Drannan magic items are vulnerable to explosive overload, while modern counterparts aren't. Additionally, the end of the age led to a proliferation of the arts.
- Nentir Vale takes place 100 years after the collapse of Nerath, the last great human empire. Towns and villages are pretty much states unto themselves and there's no central government, so the heroes are usually all that stand between a community and the dangers of the wilderness. The history of the setting also has other collapsed empires, making the rise and fall of nations cyclical.
- The last book of the 3.5 edition was Elder Evils, which introduced various Elder Evils capable of wiping out whole campaign worlds — or, at the very least, radically altering them. According to interviews, the idea was to give players the option of wiping out/changing their old campaign worlds to make one more compatible to the new system.
Exalted:
- The world had an incredibly advanced state of magical technology in the First Age, when the godlike Solars ruled over everything. Then their servants rebelled, replacing their system with the less-advanced Shogunate. Unable to maintain the Solars' technology, they've slowly lapsed into more and more primitive societies, aided by a massive plague and an invasion of the chaos beyond the boundaries of reality.
- The First Age itself took place directly after the Primordial War, which culminated in the Three Spheres Cataclysm, which retgoned nine-tenths of Creation right down to erasing existential concepts and possibilities. Those outside Creation at the time (Fair Folk, etc.) describe the High First Age as a "tiny, burnt-out remnant" of what Creation used to be.
- The game proper takes place during the Second Age, and specifically very shortly after the return of the Celestial Exalted — such as the ancient Solars — and after the machinations of the remnants of the Primordials begin to come into play. A concept emphasized on and off in official material is that, due to the sheer scale of plots that are only beginning to come into their final stages and the immense gravitas of the Exalted themselves, the period of the mortal and Terrestrial civilizations that marked the Second Age is itself coming to a close.
Gamma World D20, the Darker and Edgier version of the setting, has some feel of this. Humanity had advanced science to an incredible degree, with robotics, bio-tech, genetic engineering and nanotechnology not merely possible, but commercially available — that's right, you could create your own life-form in your living room, and do it legally. Then came the catastrophe, and, well, most people barely know how to build crossbows and forge swords, or maintain old-fashion slug-thrower type guns, never-mind create technology that manipulates matter on the atomic level, maintain robots with human (or greater) levels of intelligence, or design whole new lifeforms from scratch.
Magic: The Gathering: The Time Spiral block concluded with almost all of the original, godlike planeswalkers dying or becoming human to save The Multiverse, and more limited, mortal planeswalkers rising to take their place.
Old World of Darkness had a sense of Gotterdammerung. For instance, Mage: The Ascension had a group of magi called the Technocracy using the power of belief to erase the fantastic from existence. Changeling: The Dreaming was probably the worst, though; the period of fae influence on the Earth was described in terms of seasons, from "Spring", when myth was vivid and the fae interacted fully with humans, to "Winter", when the Dreaming is mostly cut off from Earth and everything fantastical withers and dies. And most of the game takes place in Autumn...
- And now, in Mage: The Awakening, we have the fact that, in the time before history, there was a great civilization of all-powerful mages (Atlantis) who, through their hubris, brought about the creation of the Abyss (a great gulf of anti-reality between this world and the higher "Supernal" world), which led to the destruction of Atlantis, the scattering of mages, the loss of much magical lore and artifacts, and the general weakening of magic. Things have been getting worse ever since.
- Similarly, in Werewolf: The Forsaken the Uratha believe the Material World and the Spirit World used to be one, until the death of their great ancestor Father Wolf tore it apart. Despite not technically being a "paradise" (depending on who you ask), the general consensus seems to be that everyone's worse off for it.
- Vampire: The Requiem has its own example in the Camarilla, the vampiric government of the Roman Empire. It wasn't perfect, but it was the one time when there was an overreaching body of vampiric politics that oversaw the span of the "known world"... and it fell when Rome did, making modern vampiric politics almost entirely local with occasional feuds between covenants.
- Vampire: The Masquerade: Enoch, the First City, where vampires and humans coexisted.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse lore states that the Weaver, the Wyrm and the Wyld worked in harmony at one point until the Weaver ensnared the Wyrm and the latter went mad and hellbent on destroying the world from within.
- Demon: The Fallen: the titular Fallen know that they were better off before...erm, the Fall. To the best of their less-then-perfect memory, everyone else around was better off, too.
- Ironically, the fact that every other splat's having its Dark Age makes now the Golden Age for Hunters. They might not readily agree, but imagine them trying vampire hunt in Enoch or witch hunt in Atlantis, and you get the idea.
Secrets of the Third Reich has this as a backdrop for the setting. Albeit the world is slowly turning more and more into this as World War II drags on and on.
Shadowrun by FASA adapted the idea of different Worlds or Cycles from the Mayan calendar. The Sixth World started in 2011 with the renewed rise of magic (our own magicless world was the Fifth Age), but there had been previous ages, many thousands of years ago, where magic was far stronger, strong enough that everyone could do magic and Horrors from Another Dimension had broken through and walked the Earth. This was the setting of Earthdawn, another Tabletop RPG by FASA.
Warhammer: The End Times; the Old World was completely destroyed, with almost all the characters slain in the final battle against Chaos (with only a small spark recovered by Sigmar to create a new set of realms). Out of universe, Games Workshop used the End Times as a sendoff for Warhammer Fantasy, concluding the story to make way for Age of Sigmar. Fan reactions were mixed, to say the least.
Warhammer 40,000 has the Dark (or Golden, if you ask the Adeptus Mechanicus) Age of Technology, when mankind first colonized other planets and created amazing technological advancements. Most of the fanciest stuff used by the Imperium are barely understood and often nearly irreplaceable relics of this time.
- The general underlying theme of humanity in 40k is that it is doomed to die a long, slow death from not only its own beliefs but also the vast hordes of unimaginably strong aliens, traitors and daemons. But that is very far away and right now has lots of explosions and chainsaws.
- For a specific point, the Horus Heresy killed the Emperor's dream of a unified, secular human empire, plunging the Imperium into the theocratic Crapsack World is is today.
- The Eldar are no better off — most of their greatest achievements came before the Fall. It's unclear in their case, however, how much this comes from loss of knowledge or lack of the resources required to put that knowledge to use. The Eldar are rather deep into this twilight. The only real consolation that the Eldar have is the growing strength of a new god to replace their dead pantheon, a god of the dead that grows stronger with each slain Eldar. Essentially, he will reach such great power when the last Eldar dies that he will be able to kill Slaanesh... but all the Eldar will still be dead.
WitchCraft. The future iteration Armageddon deals with...well, Armageddon. Though instead of what everyone expected (The Old Gods vs. the Fallen Angels vs. The Heavenly Host with mortal and immortal creature caught between them), an Eldritch Abomination came in and waged war on everyone—and it's winning, forcing the groups to team up or die.

Theatre

Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto, the era of art and openness sponsored by Lorenzo de' Medici "The Magnificent", which will end when he dies, and he's very ill. The song "Primavera", based on the painting by Sandro Botticelli, shows this most directly.
A heartbreaking moment towards the end of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The main characters realize that as thrilling and exciting as their adventures and lifestyles were, they have to accept the fact that they're over and they need to move on. Or do they? The show ends on a high note.
[We] must accept the con is done,
But now and then you may recall,
the moments when you had it all.
You had the charm, you had the talent—
and by god, you had some fun.
It was a ball, it was a blast,
and it's a shame it couldn't last,
but every chapters got to end you must agree!
Spring Awakening is this in spades.
Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen chronicles the end of an age. In Das Rheingold Wotan is warned that a dark day is dawning for the gods. By the end of Siegfried, Wotan's power has been broken by the destruction of his spear and also the last of the giants is dead. In Götterdämmerung the gods are finally destroyed, the dwarf Alberich who made the ring of power can only appear in his son's dreams and the ring itself is cleansed by fire and returned to the Rhine from which it came. Humanity are left alone in the world to make their own fate free of the corruption of supernatural beings.
Hair is considered the end-marker of the golden age of musicals that began with Oklahoma!.
The Sound of Music was the last musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together before Oscar Hammerstein's death in 1960.
Spies are Forever: The ending reveals the theme of the show is the passing away of the glamorous era of Tuxedo and Martini espionage as the world grows more high-tech and automated.

Web Animation

Puffin Forest: The end of Malikar Campaign. When the end of the Covenant War came, the gods withdrew from the world, divine magic faded, and gave way to the rise of Magitek and steampunk technologies. The players lived to see this, as they had been granted the Boon of Immortality.
The end of Volume 3 of RWBY sees the destruction of main setting, death of a few major characters, a massive tonal shift in the narrative, and the reveal of the series' Big Bad which would lead to a major expansion of the series' mythology.

Webcomics

And Shine Heaven Now: 1999, in which the masquerade is broken and humanity as a whole become aware of the existence of the supernatural, due to Millennium's worldwide vampire attack.
It's a night that will be branded in the collective memory of the world for generations. Everyone who lived through it came out with a story to tell. The people who took shelter, and the people who took a stand. The people who lost things they could never recover, and the people who found ways to gain. It will be years before anyone truly understand what the scope of what it means to live in a post-'99 world. Which is why Seras is kind of relieved that there are still a few Nazis left to shoot. At least that part’s easy.
The end of Bob and George was seen as the final death knell for the 2000s-era sprite comics. The fad had been dying out for years, with Screw These Comics, The Primer Chronicles, and more all ending only two or so years prior, but Bob and George ending was the last nail in the coffin.
In Kill Six Billion Demons, leading up to the climax of Book 4, Mottom explicitly calls this out as herself and the rest of the Seven, demiurges who each rule a slice of the multiversal Wheel, come to a final battle with their rogue member, Jagganoth. She turns out to be right. Herself and Mammon die shortly after Jagganoth reveals his war form, Solomon David is presumed defeated but his status is unclear, as is Jadis', and Incubus and Gog Agog have both also broken their original pact, fleeing the battle and joining forces with Jagganoth respectively. Only the newest demiurge, Allison, the heir to Conquering King Zoss, seems to be in anything close to fighting form.
In Linburger, the Cyll were once were the typical fantasy elves, with long lives and high class. Unfortunately, some strange, catalclysmic event happened in the distant past, stripping the Cyll of their long lives, and now they live in slums with the other Demihuman races.
In Yosh!, the magic in the world was sealed away in the distant past after the Magi abused it and were beaten down by a unique individual who was completely immune to magic. The story begins in a world that looks much like our own, a few years after some of the sealed magic was released, causing a world-spanning magical event. The results of that event include Cat Girls, Talking Animals, and Functional Magic, among other things.

Web Original

The Second Russian Civil War brings this about in the AlternateHistory.com timeline The Death of Russia. By the time the brutal conflict finally concludes after three long years, Russia goes from a continent-spanning nation at the forefront of history and culture for centuries to a bombed out and fractured wreck that will never reach its old heights again. While the people and culture still live on in some form through the successor states and a lively global diaspora, Russia's story as a united and influential power is over.
In the AlternateHistory.com timeline A More Personal Union, the conclusion of the Great War completely alters the course of European history, as the Hapsburgs lose control of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, while the latter also loses its northern half to Denmark and Poland.
The first two years of The Questport Chronicles take place in the millennia-old eponymous village. Then a jealous magician destroys the village, and the next two years of the Chronicles are concerned with the survivors searching for a new home.
Serina:
- The Thermocene-Pangeacene transition ends with the extinction of 99% of Serina's species, with a handful of survivors clustered near the south pole. After this point, while life does recover, the birds are not as dominant as they once were as the tribbetheres start taking over many of their old niches over the next 100 million years.
- The death of the last woodcrafter informally marks the end of the early Middle Ultimocene, and the beginning of the Ocean Age.
- The end of the Ocean Age and the Middle Ultimocene with it is marked by the Serinarctan coal seam fire, the death of Brighteye and the woolly wumpos, and the sea stewards being transported to a new world. The sea steward's departure, combined with the extinction of the icefishers due to their ice refuge melting, also marks the end of the first age of widespread sapient life on Serina, as the subsequent Hothouse Age is one of brains vs brawn.
- Following the Serinarctan coal seam fire, anoxic events and lack of food due to rising sea levels kills off most vertebrate life in the oceans, leaving the molluscs and sea shoggoths to take over the seas. While the dolfinches barely hold on in the form of the surf scoter, its descendant species no longer dominate the seas as the group once did, having to share not only with the ants and snarks, sea dragons, and fellow avian survivors like the pygmy pretenguin descendant species and sea ravens, but also newcomers such as secondarily aquatic burdles, seahorses, aquatic sawjaws like the swampsaw, aquatic scroungers, foons, and the whiskerwhale skuorcs (alongside their closest relatives).

Web Videos

The British Railway Stories: As the story went on, it started dealing with the looming shadow of modernization and dieselization with increasing severity. The final episode is of Allen waiting to be scrapped in a siding.
URealms Live, with the death of the Sun Dragon Phanto, the once peaceful Realm where Elves and High Bears were immortal and could only feel emotional pain ended, and the six Children of the Sun Gods became the source of all the Magic in the Realm, from Light to Dark.

Western Animation

Adventure Time could be thought of as a sort of inversion; the Age that ended to become the world seen in the show is actually modern Earth. When the apocalypse happened, it apparently led to the introduction of several new species, magic, and adventure (making it seem the more wondrous of the two). But yet, episodes dealing with the setting's past give it a nostalgic and tragic feel. The end of one episode set 1000 years in the future reveals that the Candy Kingdom will share this fate.
Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5: The series' ending sees the two Sentient civilizations - Blue and Red - fully restored. Only now, having grown tired of conflict after warring for eons, the two sides finally come together to make lasting, true peace.
Justice League: The Martian Manhunter used this term almost verbatim on Lex Luthor in the first season of Justice League, when Lex Luthor is outwitted for the first time by the teamwork of the Justice League, something Superman can't do by himself. This marks the shift of Luthor's grudge from Superman to the entire Justice League, and also the increasing trend of supervillain team-ups since the existence of the Justice League made it tougher for the villains to act alone.
The Legend of Korra:
- It's made clear in the second season that people are becoming increasingly less connected with the spirit world then they were in the original series, though the modernization of the setting has led to breakthroughs in technology, such as automobiles, radios, telephones, etc., making it somewhat bittersweet.
- The second season ends another era, with the spirit world no longer separated from the human world, and Korra's connection to the past Avatars being severed. Quite the change.
- Season 4 ends with Prince Wu dissolving the Earth Kingdom monarchy after centuries of rule (and misrule) by his family line, giving the people of the Earth Nation a real choice in deciding how to govern themselves.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Season 9 has Celestia and Luna abdicate the throne in favor of Twilight Sparkle, thereby ending their time as Equestria's rulers and protectors.
In the Peter Pan & the Pirates episode "First Encounter", Peter said that when he cut off Hook's hand (illustrated by a Scream Discretion Shot), things in Neverland would never be the same again.
The Simpsons: Spoofed in the Season 10 episode "D'oh-in' In the Wind", where a couple of hippies say that the 60s ended the day they sold their VW Bus — December 31, 1969.
Most of Steven Universe takes place during what the Gem Homeworld dubs "Era 2", which begun with Rose Quartz shattering Pink Diamond. When it was revealed to the Homeworld Gems that Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond herself all along, the episode "Together Alone" officially marked the beginning of "Era 3".

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