Not Quite Forever

When someone says that something is forever, but it turns out it's not. Sometimes it is Lampshaded with "Forever is a long time." This is sometimes Played for Drama, and other times it's Fridge Logic.

This can range from how long a Sealed Evil in a Can stays in a can to how long best friends stay friends. It can also be used when breaking an oath that was supposed to last forever. Usually, before people realize Who Wants to Live Forever?, this applies. There are many times this trope can be applied.

Tethercat Principle is almost the exact opposite of this trope.

Examples of Not Quite Forever include:

Film

• From Peter Pan:

Peter: "Tinker Bell! I hereby banish you forever." Wendy: "Please, not forever." Peter: "Well, for a week then."

• Played for Drama in The Fox and the Hound. First, there's:

Tod: And we'll always be friends, forever, won't we? Copper: Yeah, forever.

• • Later:

Tod: And we'll keep on being friends forever. Uh, won't we, Big Mama? Big Mama: Darling, forever is a long, long time and time has a way of changin’ things.

• Lampshaded or explained in Tim Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
• In Airplane!, a disc jockey announces his station is "WZAZ in Chicago, where disco lives forever!", seconds before the eponymous plane destroys the station's transmission tower.

Literature

• The whole plot of Isaac Asimov's The Last Question starts with this trope:

Adell: "All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever." Lupov: "Not forever." Adell: "Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert." Lupov: "That's not forever." Adell: "All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?" Lupov: "Twenty billion years isn't forever."

• Inverted in Terry Pratchett's Eric. The protagonist wishes to live forever and he is brought back to the actual beginning of the universe.
• In Lord of the Rings, Aragorn tells Treebeard that the humans will never forget his deeds. Treebeard says: "Never" is too long a word even for me. Not while your kingdoms last, you mean; but they will have to last long indeed to seem long to Ents.
• From Winnie the Pooh;

I used to believe in forever, but forever was too good to be true.

Live Action TV

• From the X Files episode "Tithonus", during the immortal Alfred Fellig's Who Wants to Live Forever? speech:

Scully: What about love? Fellig: What? Does that last forever? Forty years ago, I drove down to the city hall, down to the Hall of Records, Record Archives, whatever they call it. I wanted to look up my wife. It bothered me I couldn't remember her name. Love lasts... 75 years, if you're lucky. You don't want to be around when it's gone.

• In an episode of LazyTown, the group of friends turn on Stephanie and break their "friends forever" promise. The song that follows is enough to break anybody's heart:

"I hope that / We will be friends, tomorrow Right to the end, / And then we will Wipe away tears and sorrow. / If we can be friends again..."

• • Another episode has Robbie Rotten obtain a genie and wish for all the healthy food and exercise equipment to disappear from Lazytown. It does! ...Too bad he forgot to specify he wanted them gone *forever*.
• In Bewitched, Endora gives Darrin three wishes, and makes Samantha believe he used them to be with another woman. When the truth is discovered, but it turns out that she actually did give him three wishes and he just hadn't used them, he uses his first wish to summon Endora, proving that he still had them. The second?

Darrin: "I wish that your mother would stay out of our lives forev-" Samantha, who realizes that literally speaking, that means never seeing her mom again: "Darrin, no!" Darrin: [Sighs] "-for two weeks." [Endora vanishes]

Music

• Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light:"

And when the feeling came upon me Like a tidal wave I started swearing to my god and on my mother's grave That I would love you to the end of time I swore that I would love you to the end of time! So now I'm praying for the end of time To hurry up and arrive Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you I don't think that I can really survive

• The 1979 Judas Priest song "Rock Forever". The song just friggin' stops! Couldn't they have just had a gradual fading out, so we could pretend they rocked forever?

Newspaper Comic

• This Garfield strip.
• Pearls Before Swine: According to Rat, when a man says to a woman "I'll love you forever", he means three months. "Forever and ever" adds another six weeks.

Web Animation

• Apparently expected by Homestar Runner when he is told he must stay with the demon in Strong Mad's creepy painting "for all eternity". He spends the last part of the episode asking if eternity is "over" yet. That said, he did appear again outside the painting, so either the trope or Negative Continuity was invoked.

Western Animation

• One episode of SpongeBob SquarePants had SpongeBob and Squidward on strike. At the end of the episode (after SpongeBob destroys the Krusty Krab... it's a long story) Mr. Krabs says that to pay him back for destroying the restaurant, SpongeBob and Squidward are going to work for him....FOREVER! Cue a "One Eternity Later" card, and we see SpongeBob's and Squidward's skeletons sitting in the Krusty Krab.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson in the year 1974, to his cynical father: "No way, man! We're gonna keep on rockin' forever....forever....forever....[cut to 1996, and a suddenly "uncool" and morose older Homer] "forever....forever....forever...."
  • Attorney Lionel Hutz once helped a client with a false-advertising lawsuit against The Neverending Story.
  • In a similar case, we find out Mr. Burns's house has a bottomless pit.

Lisa: "It couldn't possibly be bottomless." Bart: "Well, for all intents and purposes."

• An episode of Animaniacs has Wakko essentially sell his soul to a Swedish-accented Death for a Swedish meatball (this being a parody of The Seventh Seal, which was a Swedish film). Death drags Wakko down to the netherworld with him, with Yakko and Dot in hot pursuit; once there, they find their brother reduced to a passive mind-slave who is forbidden to do literally anything, even talk (except when someone talks to him first). Yakko and Dot demand that Death set Wakko free - and he tells them that they will be reunited with their brother if they can beat him in a game of checkers. Well, they do - and Death then reveals that when he said Yakko and Dot would be reunited with their brother, he meant that they'd be imprisoned in the netherworld, too! Since they're now trapped for all eternity, the siblings refer to Death as their father and urge him to play with them; their pranks and annoying behavior drive him absolutely berserk. What really drives Death to the breaking point is when Yakko cheerfully says: "Just think, we get to be here forever and ever and ever and...." "Maybe I was a bit hasty," Death says, and he tells the kids they're free to go - for now. Someday they must return, but Death hopes that it won't be for a very long time!
• Twice in Xiaolin Showdown.
  • At the beginning of the second season.

Wuya: You didn't think I'd stay in that box forever, did you? Omi: Well, another thousand years would have been nice.

• • When Dojo turned evil for an episode.

Master Fung: It has already begun: a thousand years of darkness! Kimiko: Why a thousand? Master Fung: It is actually 962 years, but "a thousand" sounds more ominous.

• Nightmare Moon was banished permanently, for 1000 years.

---

Rats! I really thought this trope page would go on forever!