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Such a plot device has been used in every sci-fi universe I've been interested in. It's not even funny.
Galaxy's Edge did a pretty cool take on this with the billionaires who fled a dying earth and became the Savages who lost their minds in the deep black. The remaining humans on earth built FTL like 20 years after they left and had like 3000 years to establish a galaxy wide Republic before they encountered the insane Savages who spent all that time experimenting on their own and trying to become actual gods.
Back in my day the quest to reach spiritual enlightenment by ascending to divinity was a proletariat tradition. Is there nothing these bourgeois assholes won't co-opt?
Yeah generation ships and surprises are old.
A classic example, non-stop, goes back to the 1950s, for example.