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{{trope}}
[[File:ThreeBats 3338.jpg|link=Batman|frame|If they remake it often enough, maybe people will forget about [[Adam West]]'s version.]]
The writers of a particular work are about to start working on a continuation story, but they have an irreparable issue with the prior continuity.
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Maybe [[Continuity Lock Out]] is preventing new fans from being attracted to the series. Maybe [[Continuity Snarl]] has made writing an interesting plot increasingly difficult and tedious. Maybe the last episodes of the series were so disliked that subsequent episodes would suffer from being associated with it. Or maybe the writers just want to take the series in a new direction or style.
The solution? Initiate a '''Reboot''', sometimes called a '''Continuity Reboot'''.
A '''
Due to inconsistent use, the differences between a '''remake''', '''reboot''', and '''re-imagining''' are sometimes unclear, and many things that were called remakes or re-imaginings prior to 2005 would have been called reboots if they'd been made after 2005 (or if ''Batman Begins'' had been made many years earlier). In general, a '''remake''' will tell more or less the same story as the original work, a '''re-imagining''' will start off at a similar point but go in a completely different direction (as ''Planet of the Apes 2001'', ''Battlestar Galactica 2003'' and ''Ghostbusters 2016'') or take an extremely different route to reach the same endpoint (''Robocop 2014''), and a '''reboot''' will tell a completely new story without giving the slightest shit about where the previous continuity started (as in ''Batman Begins'', ''X-Men First Class'', and ''Rise of the Planet of the Apes''), though it may share a similar starting point with a previous continuity if both were adaptations of a story from a different medium (as in ''Man of Steel'' and ''The Amazing Spider-Man''). There is also the '''loose retelling''', which may overlap with reboots or re-imaginings. For example, ''Friday the 13th 2009'' was a loose retelling of the first four F13 movies, and is probably best described as a re-imagining of the "extremely different route to reach the same endpoint" variety, while ''Man of Steel'' is a hard reboot but has also been described as a loose retelling of the first two Superman movies.
Some types of reboots don't ''completely'' disregard previous continuity. A '''partial reboot''' will decanonize some of the previous continuity, but not all of it, and pick up where the original movie or a much earlier sequel left off. Reboots of this type include ''Superman Returns'' (which disregarded ''Superman III'' and ''IV'' and picked up where ''Superman II'' left off), ''Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles'' (which disregarded ''T3'' and picked up where ''T2'' left off), ''Terminator: Dark Fate'' (which disregarded everything from ''T3'' onward and picked up where ''T2'' left off), and most things with ''Halloween'' or ''Highlander'' in the title. A '''time-travel reboot''' will acknowledge the previous continuity, then use timey-wimey balls to wipe it all out anyway (as in ''Star Trek 2009'' and ''Terminator <s>Gene</s> <s>Geny</s> <s>Gine</s> the fifth one)''. And then there are the ''X-Men'' movies, where ''First Class'' was intended to be a reboot, but then ''Days of Future Past'' retconned it to be a prequel to the X-Men trilogy while simultaneously using time travel to wipe out the events of the X-Men trilogy, because Hollywood writers are great at logic and planning things out.
Frequently, a Continuity Reboot will include one (or more) [[Tone Shift]]s, usually to whatever is considered the best money-maker for the target demographic, [[Darker and Edgier]] being the most common, but could just as easily be [[Lighter and Softer]].
Sequels that don't erase any previous continuity, but also have very little dependence on it, are sometimes incorrectly called '''"soft" reboots'''. However, they are reboots in the same way "alternative facts" are facts and "social justice" is justice (or in other words, '''not at all''').
A close relative of the regular [[Retcon]] and [[Cosmic Retcon]]. The most extreme example of a [[Retool]]. Compare with [[Alternate Continuity]], [[Adaptation Distillation]], and [[The Remake]], not related to [[Story Reset]]
{{examples|suf=s}}
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* ''[[Casshern Sins]]'' is a [[Darker and Edgier]] reboot of ''[[Neo-Human Casshern]]'', featuring a radically different and more cynical interpretation of the eponymous protagonist.
* Part 6 of ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' ends with {{spoiler|the [[Big Bad]], Pucci, activating his final stand, Stairway to Heaven, which speeds up time and causes the universe to end and reset according to fate}}. As a result, Part 7, AKA Steel Ball Run, is a [[retool]]ed alternate timeline of Part 1 with many parallel characters, but a new setting and a new battle system that seems to combine aspects of the Ripple (from Parts 1 and 2) and Stands (from Parts 3-6).
* ''[[Bubblegum Crisis
* ''[[Dirty Pair]] Flash''
* The 1994 ''[[Science Ninja Team Gatchaman]]'' OVA.
* ''[[Gall Force]]: The Revolution''
* Both ''[[Tenchi Universe]]'' and ''[[Tenchi in Tokyo]]'' for the ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' OVA, and afterwards there was a return to the original ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' OVA continuity.
* Every time ''[[Negima]]'' gets a [[Adaptation Overdosed|new adaptation]], it tends to be in a new continuity. Only the original manga and the most recent{{when}} set of [[OVA]]s seem to share continuities.
== Comic Books ==
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* ''[[Casino Royale]]'' was intended as an Continuity Reboot of the [[James Bond]] movie series, showing Bond as a 00 agent on his first mission, and giving the movie a much more [[Darker and Edgier|realistic and serious]] setting and style than those before it.
* ''[[The Incredible Hulk (film)|The Incredible Hulk]]'' (2008) was possibly the quickest a franchise has been rebooted. To give you an idea of how fast: 5 years and after a ''single'' movie from the previous "continuity". They had been trying to do it in a way that the first film could be counted or discounted as the audience saw fit, but [[Edward Norton]] insisted on changing the details of the origin to make them incompatable.
*
* ''[[Superman (film)|Superman]] Returns'' was a partial
** ''The Man of Steel'', released in 2013, served as both a hard reboot of the Superman film series and the first movie in the DC Cinematic Universe (which is about to get a time-travel reboot in the form of the Flashpoint movie).
▲* ''[[Superman (film)|Superman]] Returns'' was a partial Continuity Reboot. It was intended as a Broad Strokes type of sequel to ''[[Superman (film)|Superman]]'' and ''[[Superman II|II]]'', while it [[Canon Discontinuity|completely ignored]] ''[[Superman III|III]]'' and ''[[Superman IV|IV]]'', and was intended to restart the film series. However, no further sequels were made.
* ''Halloween: H20'' ignored all the ''[[Halloween (film)|Halloween]]'' movies that occurred after ''Halloween II'' (in the original continuity, [[Jamie Lee Curtis]]' character had died before part IV).
** Also, [[Rob Zombie]]'s two ''Halloween'' films.
* The 2006 version of ''[[The Pink Panther]]'' starring [[Steve Martin]] as Inspector Clouseau starts with a clean slate and only two characters held over from the original series (Clouseau and Dreyfus). Its 2009 sequel is simply titled ''The Pink Panther 2'', avoiding the original series' [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]].
* ''[[The Karate Kid]]'' has a new movie, staring Jaden [[Will Smith|Smith]] as the titular kid and [[Jackie Chan]] as the old mentor. It borrows elements from the [[First Installment Wins|first film in the series]].
* The 2009 ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' movie
* The ''[[Godzilla]]'' series first
* ''[[The Punisher]]'' has had three films, none of which is connected to the other in any way. It also beats out ''[[The Hulk]]'' for turnaround time, four years to Hulk's five.
** This was largely because the second film was actually successful. War Zone was intended as a direct sequel, and became a reboot only when Thomas Jane dropped out.
* The ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider-Man]]'' film series was rebooted with ''[[The Amazing Spider-Man
* ''[[Friday the 13th (film)|Friday the 13 th]]'' was
* Cloud Ten Pictures is aiming{{when}} to reboot the ''[[Left Behind]]'' film series, starting with the first book.▼
* The original ''[[Highlander]]'' had four
▲* Cloud Ten Pictures is aiming to reboot the ''[[Left Behind]]'' film series, starting with the first book.
▲* The original ''[[Highlander]]'' had four direct sequels ignoring each other. The reboot of the first movie is currently in [[Development Hell]].
* The [[Fantastic Four (film)|''Fantastic Four'' film franchise]] was [[Fantastic Four (2015 film)|rebooted in 2015]] with an ill-considered partial [[Retool]] that made all four about the same age, the Storms black (except for Sue, who was adopted), and the space flight origin turned into extradimensional travel.
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*** There never was much chance they could do it right, because doing it right requires ignoring some of the accepted conventions of 'action adventure TV' in today's climate.
* ''[[Kamen Rider Skyrider|The All-New Kamen Rider]]'' (a.k.a. ''Sky Rider'') and ''[[Kamen Rider Black]]'' were originally intended as reboots of the [[Kamen Rider]] franchise, but they ended up being in the same continuity as the original shows (for ''Black'', the [[Retcon]] occurred in its sequel series ''[[Kamen Rider Black RX]]'' when the ten previous Riders guest-starred in the final story arc). The franchise's Heisei era (from 2000 and onward) was a reboot into a new multiverse, of which the previous Riders' single shared universe was ''not'' part of... until ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' reincluded it in the multiverse.
* The 2009 ''[[V-2009]]'' series is a
*
* There was a 2009 miniseries version of ''[[The Prisoner]]'' that took the basic concept of the Village and a few character names (such as Two and Six), then took the whole thing in a totally different direction (including providing an explanation for the existence of the Village that would be impossible in the continuity of the original series).
* ''[[The Tomorrow People]]'',
* ''[[Land of the Lost]]'' was another children's TV show from the '70s that got a re-imagining in the '90s. It got a theatrical re-imagining in 2009.
== Tabletop Games ==
* The ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' was a reboot of the tangled continuity of the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]''.
* The fourth edition of ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' discarded the backstory and cosmology used in previous editions.
== Video Games ==
* Due to plots being optional or of greatly decreased importance in video games relative to other media, video games have always treated sequels and remakes far more interchangeably than any other medium has. This has necessitated the use of genre-specific terminology; for example, ''Doom II'' is a "story sequel" to ''Doom'', ''Doom 3'' is both a "sequel" and a re-imagining but not a "story sequel", and ''Doom (2016)'' is a re-imagining but not a "sequel" or "story sequel". ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' and ''Civilization: Beyond Earth'' both serve as "story sequels" to the main ''Civilization'' games, but the ''Civilization'' games don't actually have defined stories or continuities to begin with... and, for that matter, neither do ''Alpha Centauri'' or ''Beyond Earth''. In this context, the idea of a "reboot" as an entity distinct from a "sequel" or "remake" '''does not exist in any meaningful sense'''. Any list of video game franchises in which some entries disregard the events of other entries would be nearly indistinguishable from a list of '''every video game franchise that ever had more than one installment'''.
== Web Comics ==
* The main comic of ''[[Ultima
* ''[[Melonpool]]''.
* ''Zortic''.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'':
**
** Rebooted again in the 2012-2017 series.
** [[Turtles Forever|It's an]] [[Alternate Universe]].▼
** A fourth cartoon, ''Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'', premiered in 2018.
* Ditto Spider-Man being updated first in ''[[Spider-Man: The Animated Series]]'', then the short lived MTV CGI series, and ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]'' and now a currently unnamed cartoon, based off of Ultimate Spider-Man.
* And X-Men with ''[[X-Men: Evolution]]'', cashing in on the film with its own interpretation and continuity separate from the rather faithful (in a [[Broad Strokes]] sense) 90s cartoon.
** And then rebooted again 8 years later with ''[[Wolverine and the X-Men]]''.
* ''[[He-Man and the Masters of the Universe]]'' had a 2002 "20th Anniversary" reboot.
* ''[[G.I. Joe]]: [[G.I. Joe: Sigma 6|Sigma 6]]''. Later done with ''[[G.I. Joe]]: Resolute'', as well
* ''[[My Little Pony]]'' has been rebooted three times: once with ''[[My Little Pony Tales]]'', again with the [[Direct to Video]] [[My Little Pony G 3|movies of the 2000s]], and once again with the series ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|Friendship Is Magic]]'' in 2010.
* Similarly, ''[[Strawberry Shortcake]]'' also has two reboots: the first in 2002 and the second in 2009.
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** The 1990s TV movies [[Retcon]] Race and Hadji's initial addition to the team (placing it before Rachel Quest died, unlike the original series), and also make Jessie Race's [[Luke, You Are My Father|unknown]] daughter from his previous marriage to Jade (in ''The New Adventures'', Jessie was the daughter of Dr. Bradshaw, a fellow scientist).
** The first creative team behind ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures|The Real Adventures]]'' added a few [[retcon]]s of their own: they aged the characters a couple of years, modernized them and the technology they use, and completely ignored anything created between the original ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' and their own show. Notably, the character of [[Golem|Hard Rock]] never existed, and Jessie is Race's daughter from a previous marriage to archaeologist Estella Velasquez, whom he's known and cared for all along. They were also going to retcon the way Rachel Quest died, but the show was canceled before the episode was animated.
* ''[[Thundercats]]'' got ''[[Thundercats 2011|ThunderCats (2011)]]'' in July 2011, and then ''Thundercats Roar'' in 2020.
* Going by [[Filmation|Filmation's]] Batman as the first [[Batman]] cartoon, ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'', ''[[The Batman]]'', ''[[Batman: The Brave And The Bold]]'', and ''[[Beware the Batman]]'' are all reboots. ''[[Batman Beyond]]'', however, is set in the same continuity as ''B:TAS''.
{{reflist}}
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