Member Berries

Sometimes, after a franchise has Jumped the Shark, become a Franchise Zombie, or been Ruined FOREVER, it will enter a phase in which new entries rely more on nostalgia and callbacks to the "good" installments than on trying to tell interesting new stories or create famous new moments and lines of their own. This is the dreaded Memberberries stage of a franchise's life cycle.

Memberberries are often the result of a failed attempt to get a franchise back on track. They also frequently coincide with time-travel soft reboots.

Note that callbacks alone do not constitute Memberberries. There must be a popular perception that a franchise has declined in quality, and the events and lines being referenced must have happened long enough ago to be associated with feelings of nostalgia. If a particular line, trope, or running gag existed before the franchise jumped the shark, then continued examples of it do not count as memberberries even after the shark has been jumped.

Named after the sentient purple berries from season 20 of South Park, who tried to invoke people's nostalgia for political gain.

Anime and Manga

 * The Gundam franchise is no stranger to this trope.
 * In a meta sense, the Char Clone, when done poorly, is this trope by virtue of trying to ape the original and making it so obvious it comes off like cheap pandering, Generally, the better ones have something distinctive that sets them apart, while the worse versions are obvious ripoffs.
 * In-universe, they've even discussed and deconstructed the trope in relation to this trope why Memberrying Char is a bad idea with Full Frontal and Zoltan Akkaenen in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and the immediate followup Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative.
 * The Mobile Suit Gundam SEED franchise tends to get panned for a lot of nostalgia reliance to the point of being a crutch, especially in the sequel series, where they blatantly pastiche entire plot arcs and even mecha from the UC series, while letting the story itself suffer by not fixing its preexisting flaws.

Film

 * Ghostbusters - One could argue this kicked in as soon as the second movie, which did a lot of lifting of the basic structure of the first movie in terms of plot and simply mimicked its tropes. Given the second movie relied on constant pastiches of everything the first did, right down to the Soul Jar plot twist, the entire second movie falls into this trope.
 * Jurassic World - "That first park was legit!"
 * The Matrix Resurrections - The second trailer and the movie itself both include clips from the first movie and re-creations of the first movie's most famous scenes. It gets so bad even the in-universe characters start commenting on it at one point.
 * Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens - practically the trope codifier due to being the butt of the jokes in the South Park episode that is the trope namer.
 * Terminator Genysis - Literally recreates scenes from the first Terminator movie. Oh, and why is the T-1000 in this movie wearing a cop uniform? Because the T-1000 in the second movie wore one.

Live-Action TV

 * Star Trek


 * Started suffering a mild case of Memberberries in the last season of Star Trek: Enterprise, which consisted mostly of prequels to and origin stories for stuff that was seen in other shows/movies
 * The Memberberries really kicked into high gear in Star Trek: Into Darkness, which was basically two hours of "remember The Wrath of Khan? Yeah, I 'member!"
 * Star Trek: Discovery started off trying to do its own thing, but then spent most of season 2 reminding audiences of Spock, the original Enterprise, Captain Pike, and Number One.
 * Star Trek: Picard is literally nothing but "remember The Next Generation? Yeah, I 'member!" with a tiny amount of 'membering Seven of Nine from Voyager.
 * Star Trek: Lower Decks would require its own subpage just to cover all the memberberries powering it.

Professional Wrestling

 * The Montreal Screwjob, while infamous and shocking for its time, has become an example of this trope because so many scriptwriters for many wrestling promotions have attempted to recreate its shock value in many angles since, with the worse examples falling squarely into this trope.

Video Games

 * Mission Pack Sequel games, in general, can be accused of this trope, especially if they bring barely anything new to the table and just more of the same from previous game entries. The worst examples are when the sequels are clearly leaning on the Nostalgia Filter yet do everything worse than the better games they imitate.

Real Life

 * In a philosophical sense, this trope is called putting old wine in new bottles. Tropes Are Not Bad in this case when in doing so they revive interest in older concepts, like how the Renaissance revived a lot of interest in Greek and Roman culture, which led to a large outpouring of widely beloved art and stimulated literacy throughout Europe.
 * Politics in general has some of the more cynical politicians throughout history pandering to this trope in order to win over voters who believed earlier political eras were better than their current one.