Abstract The distance conjecture states that for theories with moduli coupled to gravity a tower of states becomes exponentially light in the geodesic distance in moduli space. This specifies how effective field theories break down for large field values. However, phenomenological field theories have no moduli, but a scalar potential that deforms dynamical trajectories away from geodesic curves. In this note, we speculate on how one should generalise the distance conjecture, in asymptotic field regimes, to include a scalar potential. We test the generalized distance conjecture in a few cases, demonstrate a link with pseudo-/fake supersymmetry and apply it to the ekpyrotic scenario in cosmology. For the latter we observe that the pre-uplift KKLT potential could provide a stringy embedding of ekpyrosis away from asymptotic regimes in field space.