Interquel

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    What? Continue the story when the beast wasn't the beast anymore?

    Timon: Waaaait, wait wait wait, hold on a second. Three? What's with the three? No, no, no, the three has got to go.
    Pumba: Timon, you can't use Two! There's already been a Two!
    Timon: Mmm, you've got a point there, big fella. It's not a sequel, anyway.
    Pumba: Yeah, more like a Behind-the-scene-quel!
    Timon: A what-a-who-quel?
    Pumba: Oh, you know, an Inbetween-quel!

    —The Lion King 1½ teaser.[1]

    Also called a Midquel, this is, quite simply, when a new entry in a series is a sequel to one existing entry, and a Prequel to another, or alternatively takes place during a Time Skip in an earlier entry rather than continuing the story. This device is often used to expand a portion of the story only touched upon in other entries, or if more story is desired but there's no logical place for it either before the beginning or after the end. Happens a lot in Video Games, since story has only recently become a major part of design. A more cynical creator might use it to cash in on a franchise without having to advance the Story Arc. Not that we want to name names, or anything...

    Compare Prequel, POV Sequel.

    Examples of Interquel include:

    Anime & Manga

    • Cowboy Bebop The Movie is set sometime during the last third of the TV series and features the team at the high point of their arc before things all start coming apart.
      • Specifically, it occurs between episodes 22 and 23, judging from background details ("Cowboy Andy" in the samurai getup he adopted after 22, the events of 23 not yet happening).
    • The second season of Suzumiya Haruhi rebroadcasts the episodes of the first, with new episodes inserted in between, in the correct chronological order.
    • One of the manga adaptations of Darker than Black is set between the two seasons, as are the side-story OVAs to be included on the second season DVDs.
    • Getter Robo manga has two. Shin Getter Robo was made because Ken Ishikawa wanted to explain how thigs went from Getter Robo G to the shape they were in Getter Robo Go and answer such question as why Ryoma was scared of Getter Rays in Go or what happened to Benkei. Then there's Getter Robio Hien: An Earth Suicide, based on Ishikawa notes, set between Go and Getter Robo Ark.
    • Gundam is full of those, most notably with Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, set between the original Mobile Suit Gundam and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, explaining the origins of Titans, antagonists from Zeta. There are also several sidestories taking place during first Gundam.
      • Gundam SEED on similiar note has Gundam SEED Astray manga, which takes place during events of SEED and tie several of it's loose ends. Which itself has two interequels, who were published at the same time as original manga - Red Frame manga and Blue Frame novel, focusing more on the pilot of titular mecha, overlaping with Astray at several points.


    Comic Books

    • All of the Firefly comics, apart from Float Out take place between the end of the series and The Movie.
    • The "Spike" comics take place near the end of the last season of Angel... sort of. They're not exactly Canon, which is lampshaded.
    • The Arrival takes place between and during episodes of season 1 of Transformers Animated, except the last issue, Rise of Safeguard, which takes place between the third and seventh episodes of season two.
    • Disney used the term "inbetweenquels" for all the "B" (and in one case, "C") chapters of Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
    • Some of the Gargoyles comics have references to episodes, giving a rough idea of where the comics fall into the continuity.
    • Marvel Comics produced Amazing Fantasy #16-18 in the 1990s to bridge the gap between Spider-Man's debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 and The Amazing Spider-Man #1, where his adventures continued due to Amazing Fantasy being canceled.


    Film


    Literature

    • The Chronicles of Narnia: The entirety of the fifth (or third) book, The Horse and His Boy, occurs in the middle of the Time Skip before the final chapter of the first book, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. The Pevensie siblings are twentysomething kings and queens, and they haven't returned to England and de-aged yet.
    • The Redwall series has a bunch of these, particularly for Martin's lifetime. He was one busy mouse.
    • Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are currently releasing a new Dragonlance trilogy (The Lost Chronicles) that fill in the gaps between the books in the original Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy.
    • The eighth novel of The Dark Tower, The Dark Tower takes place chronologically between the fourth and fifth novels of the series.
    • Because the books in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos (Dragaera) novels are not written in chronological order, the majority of them are interquels. Dragon deserves special mention, as due to its telling of multiple separate-but-related plots, it takes place both before and after the book Yendi.
    • Orson Scott Card loves doing this with his books. The entire "Shadow" series (Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hedgemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant) all take place alongside/in-between Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide.
    • The Alan Quatermain books by H. Rider Haggard. The first, King Solomons Mines, introduces the character, already an old man; the second, Alan Quatermain, kills him off. Some of the other books in the series fall between them, although most tell of his younger days.
    • This trope is a major feature of the Deryni portion of Katherine Kurtz's works. Several short stories, the Heirs of Camber trilogy (published 1989-1994) and the Childe Morgan trilogy (first published in 2003 and still incomplete as of 2011) are set between the Camber trilogy (published 1976-1981) and The Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy (published 1970-1973).
    • Both volumes of Brian Lumley's aptly-titles Necroscope: The Lost Years take place during the Time Skip between the second and third Necroscope books.
      • Due to how he ended the series, his subsequent short stories and novellas have all been plugging into barely there gaps too.
    • Robert Lynn Asprin's Myth Adventures series got one, Myth-ion Improbable, in 2001 that was set between the 3rd and 4th books (released in 1982 & 1983, respectively).
    • In a probably rare occurrence, the The Han Solo Trilogy of the Star Wars Expanded Universe manages to be an interquel, an outerquel, and a prequel. The trilogy as a whole was a prequel to ST:ANH as it ended just before Han met Luke and Obi-Wan. But there were already books that told of Han's adventures before ST:ANH. The "Han Solo Trilogy" puts these older novels between the second and third new novels. So the third new novel is an interquel between the old novels and the movie and the trilogy is an outerquel to the older novels.
      • The Star Wars EU is packed with interquels, really. Timothy Zahn's The Thrawn Trilogy took place five years after Return of the Jedi; the New Republic was still fighting a defiant Empire, the Empire's capital world had been taken over, Han and Leia had married. When this trilogy jumpstarted the EU, and a lot of novels explored the years after that, others took on the intervening space. And there's always intervening space and new stories to tell.
      • Shadows of the Empire is worth noting as a multimedia interquel designed to have every tie-in a movie set between ESB and ROTJ would have - a Novelization, a video game, a six-issue comic book, a soundtrack, toys, trading cards - without the movie. There was even a trailer.
    • The Dresden Files book "Side Jobs" contains several stories that took place between one story and another and quite conveniently tells the reader exactly where they fall in the series chronology. The main appeal of the book is the story that falls in between the last released book "Changes" and the upcoming "Ghost Story."
    • All the Doctor Who Missing Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures are in the gaps between TV episodes. The final Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles, was released in June 2005, when the revival series and its New Series Adventures tie-in line with the Ninth Doctor had started.
    • The Mary Russell series, in O Jerusalem!, goes back and explores what Holmes and Russell did while they were hiding out in Jerusalem in the middle of the first book.
    • More than a third of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels were written to slot between the existing stories, often expanding on NoodleIncidents or historical events that occurred geographically and temporally close to previous novels.
    • The first book in the Pern series actually starts the chronologically latest Arc (9th Pass). Everything since then has been an interquel between a chronologically earlier title and the 9th Pass.
    • A majority of the Warrior Cats Expanded Universe is made of interquels, many of which take place between The Original Series and The New Prophecy.
    • Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is set 80 years after the second part of A Canticle for Leibowitz, but over five centuries before the third and final part.
    • The 13th Honor Harrington book, A Rising Thunder, begins one month before the end of the 12th book, Mission of Honor.
    • Book four of Ranger's Apprentice has Will going back to Araluen, still Halt's apprentice. Book five skips about five years and sees Will getting his first assignment as a fully-fledged Ranger. John Flanagan said that while he was writing book six, he realised missed an entire story there, so he wrote book seven, which details Will's final months as an apprentice and his graduation. Book eight continues where six left off.


    Live Action TV

    • Two of the Babylon 5 movies, Thirdspace and The Lost Tales, are both interquels. Thirdspace takes place somewhere in the fourth season, and The Lost Tales takes place between the final season's penultimate episode and the series finale (mind you, there was an eighteen year Time Skip between the last two episodes).
    • Battlestar Galactica: Razor has an A plot which takes place between the Season Two episodes The Captain's Hand and Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I, a B plot that takes place between the time of the Miniseries pilot and the first eight-or-so episodes of Season One, and a C plot that takes place during the Cylon War.
    • Technically, every Power Rangers series between Power Rangers SPD (taking place in the year 2025) and the actual year 2025 will be one of these.
    • A twenty-minute midquel released before season 6 of The Shield follows up on the events of the fifth-season finale. The Strike Team attends the funeral of their colleague, Curtis "Lem" Lemansky, and reflect on his time with the group.


    Radio

    • Torchwood: The Lost Files was set between series 2 of Torchwood and the miniseries Children of Earth except the last one since the team basically ceases to exist at the end of Children of Earth and hasn't been reformed by the beginning of Torchwood: Miracle Day. Also, this means Ianto can be in it.
    • The Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and post-2005, Eighth Doctor Big Finish Doctor Who stories are set in the gap between episodes of the Doctor Who TV series that have already been chronicled. There's also a series of Fourth Doctor audio dramas produced by BBC Audio released from 2009 onwards.


    Video Games

    • The Street Fighter Alpha series is set between the very first Street Fighter and the Street Fighter II series. The more recent Street Fighter IV series is a Non-Linear Sequel set after Street Fighter II, but before the Street Fighter III
      • Kinda. SFA 1 was a straight-up midquel. SFA 2 was a complete remake of SFA 1 that also advanced the plot a little with the introduction of Sakura. SFA 3 was (pretty obviously) a complete, if clumsy, wrap-up of all of Alpha and II's loose ends taking place an indeterminate amount of time after SFA 2. Much later, SF 4 came out as a pre-SF3 midquel and a (very ham-handed) resuscitation of the Shadaloo storyline. Of course, the console version threw the first part out of the window by tossing Makoto and Dudley into the mix. And then came SSF4, which introduces Hakan and Juri, both with completely new angles, revamp's Cody's (an Alpha original) storyline, and tosses in Ibuki for good measure...meaning that it takes place before, during, AND after SF4. Yeah, gotta figure there's a reason Capcom is notorious for this.
    • Given that the Castlevania series covers nearly 950 years of time, the majority of entries are interquels of two pre-existing games.
      • Thus far, Lament of Innocence is the first, and Dawn of Sorrow is the last. Given the nature of both of those games, it's likely that any future games will be interquels between those two.
    • The Legend of Zelda has four interquels: Link's Awakening, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, and Twilight Princess. The Oracle games also hold the distinction of being sequels to each other via New Game+.
    • The Metroid Prime trilogy, that take place between Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus, and within that, Metroid Prime Hunters, which by Word of God takes place between Prime and Prime 2.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is both a interquel between Resident Evil 1 and 2 and a sequel to 2. The first half takes place a day before the events of 2, but then Jill falls unconscious for a whole day after she is injected with a serum that cures her from the T-Virus. The events of 2 transpire during the whole day that Jill is asleep and she regains consciousness after those events are over.
    • Devil May Cry 4 takes place between the 1st game and the 2nd.
    • Fire Emblem Thracia 776 (the fifth FE released) takes place between shortly before chapter six and the end of chapter eight of the previous game, Genealogy of the Holy War.
    • Daxter shows how the eponymous sidekick managed to bust Jak out between the first and second games.
    • Ace Attorney Investigations takes place before and after the events of the third game, Trials and Tribulations, and is itself a prequel to Apollo Justice.
    • Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2 is an interquel taking place near the end of Kingdom Hearts, overlapping Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, and ending right before the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II.
    • Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is an interquel that starts with a retelling of the first game and leads up to the events of the second game.
    • The Unnkulia games had a prequel (Unnkulia Zero), followed by an Interquel (Unnkulia One Half).
    • Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom is actually an interquel set between the first NES game and Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos. While the English version's manual does somewhat imply that the game is set before Ninja Gaiden II, most people didn't notice it and assumed that Ninja Gaiden III was a standard sequel. The Japanese version always had it clear that it was an interquel.
    • Mega Man Network Transmission's story takes place between the events of Battle Network and Battle Network 2. The game was released after Battle Network 3.
    • Most of the Caverns of Time missions in World of Warcraft fit this description. The Caverns of Time allows players to visit points in Azeroth's history mostly to help the Bronze Dragonflight prevent the mysterious Infinite Dragonflight from altering the past. Of the four Caverns of Time instances, one takes place before any of the Warcraft games (Opening the Dark Portal), making it a Prequel. Two more instances recreate and expand on key campaigns in Warcraft III (Culling of Stratholme and Battle for Mount Hyjal), making them arguably Interquels or arguably POV Sequels, depending on whether you regard the original versions as the real timeline or the Caverns of Time versions. The remaining one, Escape from Durnholde Keep, is definitely an Interquel, set years after Warcraft II and years before Warcraft III and featuring a storyline never shown in any released game.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog CD is apparently after Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (as Tails is playable in the game's 2011 re-release), which was under development around the same time as CD, but before Sonic 3 and Knuckles.
    • Halo 3: ODST takes place DURING Halo 2. Specifically, right after Master Chief goes through a slip space rupture.
    • Trilby's Notes and 6 Days A Sacrifice, the final two games of the Chzo Mythos, are both interquels to the first two games. What is interesting is that 6 Days A Sacrifice includes a part that makes takes place after the second game, set after 6 Days, technically making it part-sequel.
    • Both versions of Ys IV are set after I and II, but before Wanderers From Ys / The Oath in Felghana.
    • God of War - Ghost of Sparta on PSP is set between the 1st and 2nd games in the series.
    • In between Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are Dead Space Extraction developed for the Wii and an interquel also named Dead Space for the iPhone.
    • Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions has a plot which works its way between existing story arcs of the comics, evidenced by the presence of certain characters who died in their canon. Deadpool even lampshades this by asking Ultimate Spider-Man where he thinks the game fits into the canon.
    • Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge took place in between the two Nintendo 64 games Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie.
    • Forever Kingdom is an interesting example. It is a Prequel to Ever Grace, chronicling the events of the main character Darius before the original game. However, those events are happening concurrently to Sharline's path through Ever Grace, which took place before Darius', making it both a Prequel AND an Interquel to the original game.
    • The House of the Dead 4 is an interesting case. Although ostensibly a midquel taking place before 3, it's probably more accurate to call it a replacement for 3. Apparently big time jumps were all the rage at the time 3 came out (cf. Tekken 3, Garou: Mark of the Wolves), Sega realized that there really wasn't anywhere to go from there, and so decided to make 4 a more traditional follow-up to 2.
    • The Force Unleashed provides a look at the time between the Star Wars prequel and original trilogies.
    • The third and fourth generations of Pokémon take place at the same time as first and second generations. The fifth one is a pure sequel, takin place a few years after Gen II/IV.


    Western Animation

    • Disney Animated Canon
      • Most deliberately coined with the title The Lion King 1½- although ironically in TV Tropes terms, it's more of a POV Sequel.
        • With a touch of Point-Of-View prequel since some of it takes place before the movie (ie section before Timon meets Pumbaa).
      • The two Beauty and the Beast direct-to-video titles, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas and Belle's Magical World, are these, taking place during Belle's long stay in the Beast's castle in the original film. This is likely because the nature of the Happily Ever After ending, in which everyone in the castle changes back into humans, makes sequels pointless.
      • Bambi 2 is an interquel because it takes place right inbetween when Bambi's mom dies and when it instantly shifts to happy springtime songs. Apparently more than a few people thought the first movie was a little too quick in the mood change.
      • The same goes for The Fox and the Hound (film) 2.
      • And Tarzan 2.
      • Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch Has A Glitch and its accompanying short film The Origin Of Stitch both take place after the first movie and before Stitch: The Movie.
    • Both Star Wars: Clone Wars and Star Wars: The Clone Wars occur between Star Wars Episodes II and III, but only the latter is really an interquel; the first one was released between Episodes II and III.
    • Bionicle 3: Web of Shadows takes place within the last ten minutes of the previous movie (which is itself a Prequel, making it an Interquel on two levels).
    • The Direct to Video installments of the An American Tail series can be viewed as interquels between the first and the second movie.
    • The Animatrix bridges the gap between the first and second films of The Matrix trilogy.


    Web Original


    Multiple Media

    1. ↑ The ironic fact being that some countries saw the release of the film with the 3 still on the end
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