Nostalgia Heaven

Basically, this is any scene that's either a dream or a portrayal of the afterlife, where characters with a deep connection whose relationship mainly blossomed in a particular place, are seen again there, usually in a bittersweet way.

If they died after Planning for The Future Before The End, they may end up keeping their date after all.

The key point is that it involves the person dying (or having a near death experience) and going to a heaven-like place. Sister Trope to Died Happily Ever After comparable to Lost Love Montage.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples of Nostalgia Heaven include:

Anime and Manga

• In episode 29 of Wolf's Rain the dead or dying Toboe has a vision of himself as a cub with his beloved human Granny (whose death he always felt guilty over).
• The end of last episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion if you get past the Mind Screw location.
• When Kakashi dies in Naruto, he sees his Sensei and old teammates again.
• In Fruits Basket, after Kyoko dies, she's reunited with her husband at the beach where they had their first date.
• Not death, but Code Geass has the drug "Refrain", which makes users believe they are living in the past.

Comic Books

• A variant is used in Hitman's final arc, with Tommy's Dying Dream of seeing all his friends again in a version of Noonan's Sleazy Bar where the only rule is "You have to leave your guns at the door."

Film

• In Titanic, Rose apparently died and went to the Titanic as it once was.
  • Actually, the DVD commentary said that could be what happened, or Rose is just dreaming that whole thing.
• This was also the plot in The Shining, where dead people stay in the hotel forever as ghosts at a 1921 (1945 in the book) party.
• The end of Gladiator.
• A spoilerific scene from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows takes place in what appears to be King's Cross Station.
• The entirety of What Dreams May Come starring Robin Williams is related to, or references, this trope.
• At the end of the AIDS Drama Longtime Companion, the three protagonists are joined on the beach by everyone who died for a huge party fantasy sequence.
• Somewhere in Time: Richard and Elise are reunited in Fluffy Cloud Heaven upon Richard's death.
• In the Japanese film After Life, it is the job of the afterlife workers to help the recently deceased to identify the happiest moment in their life and film a re-enactment of it, and when the subject watches the film they enter that moment for an eternity.
• Requiem for a Dream: One of the main character's mother basically goes to her Happy Place and stays there, imagining her son marrying the girl of his dreams.

Literature

• The Lovely Bones mentions that each person's heaven is based on an individual vision of what made him/her happy in life. Susie's includes a high school (because she had eagerly looked forward to going to high school, but was murdered before she could do so) and her own duplex (because she wanted one when she was alive).
• The Chronicles of Narnia: At the end of the last book; the characters see the professor's old home, which had been destroyed. It turns out they are in heaven ("The England within England, the real England"), where "no good thing is destroyed".
• In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, heaven is a mixture of this and Mundane Afterlife: it's whatever place the person had the fondest memories in (or in some cases, the only memories).

Live Action TV

• This happened a time or two in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys where Herc went to the Elisyan Fields and saw his wife and kids.
• When Eko dies on Lost, he is seen as his young, pre-warlord self, walking arm in arm with his beloved brother, Yemi.
  • The whole series ends like this, with the main characters crossing over to a "place you made together, so you could find each other" before all meeting up, regaining their memories of their lives, and moving on together into whatever is next.
• The whole series of Life On Mars (in the 1970s) and the Spin-Off Ashes to Ashes (1981) is a continuous version of this trope, though it is somewhat subverted as it isn't explained how or why they end up there. It happens briefly in Ashes to Ashes as the protagonist Alex sees her dead parents. Only it is revealed in the final episode of Ashes to Ashes that everybody is dead and their world is really a purgatory dreamed up by Gene Hunt to prepare them for heaven. So basically, two T.V. series where the premise is this trope.
• The end of Russell T. Davies' Casanova.
• Heaven on Supernatural is like this, but because you become distracted by the projections of your friends/family, instead of actually getting to meet up with your loved ones, the characters who find out are decidedly unhappy. They describe Heaven as less of a paradise and "more like The Matrix".

Music Videos

• Used in the Flobots Handlebars music video, where the main character is killed by his childhood friend, and the last shot is a recall of the first scene with him and his friend riding bikes.

Theater

• Sort of at the end of Delovely

Video Games

• Silent Hill 2 would be a deliciously twisted version of this.

Western Animation

• The American Dad episode "Rapture's Delight" (which may or may not be canon) starts off with Stan at home, being upset with how Christmas is going off perfect. During church, many characters, including Steve and Haley, are ascended into heaven during the Rapture, where it's revealed that everyone gets a personalized Heaven. When Stan reveals his wilingness to leave Francine to get into Heaven, she runs off with Jesus. Years later, the Earth is a hellhole filled with demons, and Stan is alone and misses Francine. Jesus returns to Stan, seeking his help as Francine had been kidnapped by the anti-Christ. He helps rescue her, so she and Jesus get out alive, but Stan dies. He is then escorted into his personal heaven, and in a surprisingly heartwarming moment, it's just like the beginning of the episode, but Stan is perfectly happy with how it is.

Real Life

• Allegedly near-death experiencees commonly report seeing family, friends, acquaintances in "the white light" that presumably is the afterlife.