First Girl After All
Alto: "You were that girl..."
Sheryl: "You just realized?"—Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye
After years of episodes and movies it's the Final Battle, the Grand Finale, the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny and The Hero descends emotionally to save the Second Girl in the Love Triangle from impending doom. After all that's happened it looks like just maybe the Second Girl is actually going to win the Love Triangle, but as their eyes meet The Hero suddenly has a flashback to his childhood from out of nowhere. There's a girl in it, and as she turns around her face is revealed and... It's the Second Girl! They first met when they were children! But wait! This could only have possibly happened BEFORE he met the First Girl. This can only mean that the girl everyone thought was the Second Girl is the First Girl After All.
First Girl After All can be used as a narrative technique of concealing a character's first Love Interest for as long as possible until the moment when she (or he) is finally revealed to the audience, usually at or near the climax of the plot. This is usually accomplished either by never making it clear who the First Girl is, or by misleading the audience into believing that another character is the First Girl. It often goes hand-in-hand with First Girl Wins, but rather than subvert it, a writer uses First Girl After All to embrace it without giving the romantic resolution away to a Genre Savvy audience. In a romance plot, this can be considered a Plot Twist if this happens before a romantic resolution is reached.
The trope can also be used as a Continuity Nod if this is revealed after they get together, such as bumping shoulders in a hallway during a flashback that was on screen for a completely different reason, an encounter which can have the byproduct of being this trope.
Related tropes include Love Triangle, First Girl Wins, Forgotten Childhood Friend, and Childhood Friend Romance, any of which may be involved, as well as either a Flash Back or a Prequel.
As this is generally only revealed toward the very end, the example list is generally filled with spoilers and potentially ending spoilers'. Read at your own risk.
WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.
Anime/Manga
- Macross Frontier pulls this in the movie version. Almost immediately in the first part we find out that Alto and Ranka already know each other and Sheryl was only just arriving on the fleet for the first time. It seemed pretty clear that Ranka was the first girl, but then near the end of the second part Alto has a flashback to his childhood when he was still in Kabuki, when he met and inspired a young and unknown preteen singer named Sheryl Nome, establishing that she was the first girl all along.
- RahXephon is an extremely odd example of this.[context?]
- Martian Successor Nadesico has this within series continuity with Inez Fressange, aka cute prologue girl Ai displaced in time by 20 years, give or take a few millennia. However, she's still not the first girl if you count Akito's backstory, and still doesn't win.
Comic Books
- When Mary Jane Watson's origin was finally written in the mid-1980s, it was revealed in Amazing Spider-Man #259 that though they did not meet face to face before their first date in ASM #42, Mary Jane had been aware of Peter for years before, having observed him raking leaves through the window of her aunt's house and even feeling a bit attracted to him while in her early teens. Later the graphic novel Parallel Lives revealed that she even had figured out that he was Spider-Man in the night Uncle Ben was murdered.
Live Action TV
- In Babylon 5, we go the entire series believing Lennier came first in the Sheridan-Delenn-Lennier Love Triangle, as Lennier appeared in the first season, while Sheridan was not introduced until season two. The Prequel movie though has a scene where Sheridan and Delenn actually did meet, very briefly and without introduction (or seeing each other, but they did exchange a few lines), during the Earth-Minbari War, ten years before Delenn met Lennier.
- Coupling sort of has this. The episode "Remember This" shows how Patrick met, and was interested in, his final love interest Sally before he started with Susan. Before this point, it was assumed that Patrick had only been with Susan before breaking up in the first episode and taking an interest in Sally.
- Played with in King of Queens: a priest that worked at Camp Unity, the summer camp where Carrie and Doug attended as kids recalls seeing the two meeting, which they don't recall. Carrie latches on to the memory, which she interprets as a sign of fate. Hoever, Doug later talks to his mother who reveals that he never attended Camp Unity at all: his parents sent him to "fat camp" claiming it was Camp Unity. The kid Carrie met turns out to be Danny. Doug then agonizes as to whether he should tell Carrie the truth.
Film
- Total Recall. We're first introduced to Melina during an opening dream sequence, but the First Girl seems to be Quaid's wife Lori. Later in the film, we find out that not only is his marriage a Fake Memory, but he knew Melina years before the story proper began. Assuming it wasn't all "just a dream", of course.
Literature
- Araxie Haldane in King Kelson's Bride. After events conspire against Kelson's first two attempts at matrimony, he decides to propose to his cousin, and we learn he and his other cousins played with her (and her sister) when they were children. Kelson hadn't seen her since then, and there's no portrait of her among the other portraits collected for his consideration, so he spends a lot of time wondering what she looks like before they meet again.
Western Animation
- A later episode of The Simpsons reveals that Homer and Marge met as kids but didn't remember.