Negative Continuity: Difference between revisions
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* Likewise with ''[[Ranma ½]]''. Within individual arcs, a [[Game-Breaking Injury]] would be a serious matter, the Tendo home would be all but demolished and the characters would have to repair it, someone would get in deep financial trouble and stay that way through the end of the plot, or someone would land in the hospital with a full-body cast. All this damage will be undone by the next arc with nary a word from anyone. The only permanent change was the destruction of the Saotome home ([[Status Quo Is God|to force the family, Nodoka included, back into the Tendo household]].) This was even lampshaded once in the ''early anime'' when Genma tended to Ranma's neck injury and said it would take a week ([[Don't Explain the Joke|the time between episodes]]) to heal.
** Corollary: Should any specific fighting theory or technique come into play during a big fight (Ranma's shorter limbs in his female form being a disadvantage, using the opponent's aggression to create the Hiryushotenha, turning a boulder into gravel by poking it in just the right spot, etc.), said theory or technique will play a critical role in that fight, after which it'll be utterly irrelevant for the entire remainder of the series.
* The [[Anime]] ''[[Galaxy Angel (anime)|Galaxy Angel]]'' is ''made'' of
* In ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'', negative continuity is ''[[Anthropomorphic Personification|personified]]'' by a being known as The Great Will of the Macrocosm, who resets things at least [[Once an Episode]]. Though this is also [[Subverted Trope|subverted]] insofar as the Will is not always available, and also episodes 22-25 have [[Gainax Ending|dramatic elements]] and more or less logical continuity for significant events. Throughout the series, there is also a slight bit of continuity in with all the general weirdness. Then the next episode, aptly titled "Going Too Far" jumps right back to this.
* Nicely subverted in the anime ''Crayon Shin-Chan''. A [[Snap Back]] is expected when Shin accidentally blows up the family's house at the end of one episode, but the event is actually followed by an arc in which the family lives in a cramped studio apartment while the house is rebuilt.
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** In a notable exception, the album ''Les Retours d'Iznogoud'' (''Iznogoud's Returns'') tries to explain how things returned to normal after some of the vizir's most infamous adventures. It does not always work, as many of those returns end with Iznogoud in an equally uncomfortable situation. That just raises further questions!
* The concept of "Hypertime" - outlined by Mark Waid and [[Grant Morrison]] as, basically, a way to remove the possibility of continuity errors in [[DC Comics]] while freeing writers from the need to remain consistent with the works of previous writers - could be described as "negative continuity through ''total'' continuity." The main points were (1) every story ever written did happen and is [[Canon]], even the stuff that [[Series Continuity Error|contradicts the other stuff]], however (2) every story takes place in its own [[Alternate Universe|discrete world]], and (3) the writer of any given story gets to decide which previously-written stories did and didn't happen in the "world" his or her story is taking place in, and therefore can just toss out anything they don't like and [[Hand Wave]] discrepancies with earlier stories by saying [[Canon Discontinuity|"that never happened in my world."]] While the idea has its proponents, most tend to feel it causes more problems than it solves, not the least of which is the fact that the only people comfortable with its "anything goes" approach to continuity are the people who never minded continuity errors to begin with. It's now implied that Hypertime has ceased to exist because {{spoiler|in the future (a relative concept since he's already a time traveler), a more competent version of [[Booster Gold]] will [[Cosmic Retcon|deliberately eliminate it]]}}.
* Less obvious but almost as intrusive as Hypertime is DC's "Ten Year Rule" (closer to twelve years since the One Year Later issues), which in the late '90s-early '00s almost unambiguously stated that no matter when you're reading a given comic, Batman and Superman started their careers 10 years ago, and they were the first significant superheroes to debut since the Justice Society disbanded in the 50s. Other heroes began their careers within the following year and the Justice League was formed roughly at the beginning of the next year. Between this and the fact that some stories weren't [[
* Marvel has a similar rule to the above, but they don't play quite so hard and fast by it; their flagship characters have aged about
* Despite [[Don Rosa]]'s attempts to create a duck "continuity", the vast majority of writers gleefully ignore it at their leisure, but just as is the case with ''[[The Simpsons]]'' there are occasional continuity nods. Several stories have ended up with Scrooge ruined, for instance. Still, 99% of all duck stories use negative continuity, making it possible for [[Donald Duck]] and Huey, Dewey and Louie to be surprised at seeing, for instance, dragons, even though they've seen much stranger things at least a hundred times.
* In the [[Anthology Comic]] ''[[The Beano]]'' Lord Snooty one of the older strips in the comic first appearing in the first issue is a victim of this. Originally the character was an upper class child who liked to run off and play with working class kids, then the kids appeared to live with him with no refernece to the past, After disappearing from the comic for about a decade Lord Snooty then appears in a Beano retirement home (he is still a child physically though) at one point in 2001, he briefly appears again in a longer Kev F Sutherland strip as normal and then by Lord Snooty the Third it is implied he is dead and Lord Snooty the Third's grandfather. Whilst characters which are still children eg Dennis the Menace interacted with him whilst they were both still children and some of these characters also interacted with Lord Snooty the Third whilst they were both children as well.
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== Live Action TV ==
* A few specific examples of this are called out below, but really, until fairly recently this was more the rule than the exception in American sitcoms.
* ''[[Married... with Children]]'': The Bundy family routinely caused great destruction, wound up in jail, or accumulated massive debts in their adventures, but everything was [[Snap Back|back to normal]] at the start of the next episode. One of the few times the show HAD continuity from episode to episode was during the [[Story Arc]] where the Bundys visited
* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' has no problem with contradicting earlier episodes. Lister is a pantheist in Series 3 and an atheist in Series 5. He went from having never asked Kochanski out when he had the chance (Series 1) to having gone out with her before being subsequently dumped (Series 4). And he had his appendix removed twice (though one of the novels attempted to [[Hand Wave]] the issue by stating that he in fact had two appendices). And so on.
** Between the two appendix removals (in the series), his body was rebuilt by the DNA machine. That actually kind of makes sense.
** Of course, the series did have a fair bit of time travel, [[Wild Mass Guessing|which could well have altered the backstory of the show]].
* ''[[The Mighty Boosh]]'' is hardly the type of show you'd expect to find continuity in anyway but it has a surprising combination of both [[Reset Button]] and [[Snap Back]] plots. One episode has a main character die only to have him rescued from hell by another, upon returning he's asked "I thought you were dead" only to respond with something to the effect of "Yeah, I'm back now" which is treated very nonchalantly. In other examples, Bollo the gorilla dies on one episodes ending only to appear again later. And one [[Egregious]] example involves them employing a [[Snap Back]] on [[Backstory]]
* ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' has a recurring character named Artie Kendall, who introduces himself and explains his backstory to Conan on every appearance, at which Conan shows no sign of having seen him before. This is particularly unusual given that Artie is a singing ghost.
** On the short-lived ''Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien'', there was a recurring character named Cody Devereaux, to capitalize on the "brooding, emotional vampire" craze. In every appearance, Cody would get sad, run outside, and spontaneously combust in the sunlight. There would even be a graphic with his year of birth and year of death. Whenever he would appear again, Cody would be fine.
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== Newspaper Comics ==
* ''[[Pearls Before Swine]]'' does this intentionally. It's even lampshaded by the characters, e.g., "Didn't that whale die a few years ago?" "Yes, yes he did." And then the strip continues as if nothing happened.
* ''[[Beetle Bailey]]'': Only a few major events covered by [[Story Arc|story arcs]] have continued to be
== Radio ==
* Milton Jones in ''[[The Very World of Milton Jones]]'' has a different backstory every episode, usually involving completely different parents, jobs, love interests and hobbies. Of course, [[Rule of Funny|this is just to set up]] a [[Hurricane of Puns]].
* A common device in radio comedy, where the audience would often consist of whoever happened to be near a radio set at the time. For instance, ''[[The Goon Show]]'' would often have major characters blown up, bankrupted, thrown into prison, killed by wet elephants, or otherwise removed from the story before bringing them back the following week. There was at least one character (Bluebottle) whose ''entire schtick'' was getting killed in every episode. Bluebotle is also a case of far shorter-term
* ''Old Harry's Game'' is full of negative continuity.
** The Professor's character is originally called Professor Richard Whittingham, but in later series he becomes Professor Richard Hope.
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* Honorable mention: Each route in the games to ''[[Tsukihime]]'' and ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' have [[Multiple Endings]], although each ultimately has a "True" ending and a "Good" (or "Normal") ending, which are not the same. The ''[[Tsukihime]] Kagetsu Tohya'' exists mostly in a dream and doesn't follow on any particular ending, and ''Fate/hollow ataraxia'' is in a time-loop and the same applies. ''[[Melty Blood]]'' takes place after an [[Alternate Universe]] that was [[Word of God|supposedly an unreleased route]] of ''[[Tsukihime]]''. Some endings are 'more canon' than others, but it's still nigh-impossible to reconcile them all. Especially since Kagetsu Tohya's dreamworld incorporates elements of all the endings.
** The [[Galaxy Angel (video game)|Galaxy Angel]] gameverse also had a sequel series, ''Galaxy Angel II'', where elements from all the endings occurred (most obvious in Lily's character chapter, where her form of initiating Kazuya into the Rune Angel-tai includes re-enacting scenes from every Moon Angel's story).
* The first three ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]'' games do have a canon. It starts with Cortex making Crash, then he gets defeated on his blimp, finds the [[Green Rocks|crystal]] and sets the plot of Crash 2 into motion, where at the end his space station gets destroyed. Start of Crash 3 then shows this released [[The Man Behind the Man|Uka Uka]], and by the end N. Tropy, Uka Uka, and Neo Cortex are all trapped in time. This is where the
* ''[[Goemon (series)|Ganbare Goemon]] 2'' ended with the revelation that {{spoiler|Ebisumaru was actually a woman trapped in a man's body, a curse that was undone by the end of said game}}. [[Canon Discontinuity|This was undone]] in future installments as if {{spoiler|Ebisumaru was always a man. This may have been done to prevent him from becoming a possible love interest of Goemon's, since Omitsu was established as a major character in the following game}}.
* In ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'', there ''is'' an overarching storyline across all six games with consistent characters and villains. However, Negative Continuity is rampant in the area designs: the internet and some recurring real world places (like Sci Lab in 1, 3 and 5; Netopia Castle in 2 and 4) are redesigned in every single game, and there is an almost completely different set of locations to visit in each game. ACDC Town and its houses had all the same design in the first three games, but were heavily redesigned after the graphical revamp of the fourth game. The only place that never got a redesign was the school in ACDC, which never appeared outside of cutscenes in the final three games.
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** Don't even forget the ending, since it seals off hopes of a canon sequel, but they're making one anyways.
* Averted in ''[[Ever 17]]''. Although the constantly restarting storyline simply does not add up at all, like anything that doesn't add up in the story, it eventually somehow does get explained.
* [[Word of God|ZUN has been quoted]] as saying that this applies to the ''[[Touhou]]'' games. And it certainly was true for the five games on the PC-98. The series kind of remained like this immediately after the move to Windows with the sixth game [[Continuity Reboot|completely ignoring everything before it]], but the next few games at least mention the events of the previous Windows games. Then ZUN started writing [[Universe Compendium
* The ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' series has some outside of the main canon. You can kill any charakter and they can still come back in the ending or next game.
** Averted and played with in Mortal Kombat 9. Apparently everything up to Armageddon happened and Raiden tried to reverse it all with time travel, Resulting in a very different series of events. Averted in that each character apparently still has their own side stories, which do not run canonically with the main story.
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* ''Speak With Monsters'' is technically a case of [[Deep-Immersion Gaming]], but both gamers are [[The Roleplayer|roleplayers]] and neither are often shown, so their out-of-game personalities and thought processes don't often impact the comic. And since they recycle the same characters over and over, from the reader's usual perspective the same characters are [[They Killed Kenny|dying over and over]].
* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', some of the EGS:NP storylines. Like this [http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/?date=2008-09-19 one].
* ''[[Chopping Block]]'' doesn't even keep the main character's personality constant from strip to
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* ''[[Madness Combat]]'' used to be like this until recent episodes.
* And [[Pico]] and friends from ''[[Newgrounds]]'' have flashes and games resetting continuity despite the fact that Pico and friends die in most flashes. Justified in that most Pico flashes nowadays [[Depending on the Writer|are done by all sorts of Newgrounders]].
* ''[[Retarded Animal Babies]]'', also hosted on [[Newgrounds]], takes full advantage of
{{quote|'''{{spoiler|Cat:}}''' We can go back {{spoiler|Donkey}}! We can go to a place where we will be young and retarded forever! We will never grow old. We will never get smart. And we will never realize what a [[Crapsack World|horrible place this world truly is]].}}
** And then, Bunny attempted to destroy the entire universe. Needless to say, while he succeeded...
* ''[[The Demented Cartoon Movie]]'' is 30 minutes of
* Zorc of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'' has "DESTROYED THE WORLD!" ''([[Laugh Track|canned laughter]])'' at least a dozen times, according to Bakura.
* [[The Spoony Experiment|"There is no continuity, there is only Insano"]]. Spoony is determined to introduce a [[Multiple Choice Past|new possible origin story for Dr. Insano]] in nearly every episode he appears in. [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Is he a version of Spoony from another universe?]] [[Final Fantasy I|Did Spoony get a doctorate and travel back in time to give his past self all the science he could ever need?]] [[Kickassia|Is he the Mr. Hyde to Spoony's Dr. Jekkyl?]] Or is he one of the Schlumper brothers? All we know for sure is that the guy loves him some '''[[For Science!|SCIENCE!]]'''
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* ''[[South Park]]'': Kenny's repeated deaths, for starters. Oddly, the characters are somewhat aware that Kenny's died a lot. This is occasionally [[Lampshade]]d. The kids' ages are also an example of this; they did at one point go from third to fourth grade, but [[Comic Book Time|they've been in fourth grade for close to a decade, despite going on summer break several times]]. Also, the 14th season episode "You have Zero Friends" revealed that the kids were born in 2001, meaning they were not alive for the first five seasons of the series.
** It should be noted that, during the Coon episodes, it is eventually stated why Kenny is always alive later.
** Some faux-[[Clip Show
* ''[[Superjail]]'' has some of the most bizarre examples. Usually happens about once per episode.{{context}}
* ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'': Shorts often ended with inescapable doom, or other seemingly-permanent bad things (like the destruction of Dexter's lab on several occasions, or ''the whole planet'' getting destroyed by a huge meteor shower in "Let's Save the World, You Jerk!").
* ''[[Duckman]]'': Lampshaded when the character Ajax was beat up and placed in traction. He mentioned that he would be in perfect shape tomorrow due to non-FDA approved drugs. Another example: The amount of grievous bodily harm that Duckman puts his secretaries Fluffy and Uranus through, only for them to be back to normal by the following episode; this was lampshaded by Uranus in the first episode, when [[Ambiguous Gender|s/he]] comments that being stuffed makes them "very resilient."
* ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]]'' frequently ends with deaths/mutations/evils run amok that don't carry over to the next episode.
** The fan webcomic ''[[Grim Tales from Down Below]]'' explains this as a case of [[Death Takes a Holiday]]
* ''[[Invader Zim]]'': The world has been dragged trillions of miles off course and major characters have been turned into bologna or had their organs replaced with household objects, and yet virtually every episode starts as though nothing unusual has happened. Again, there are occasional callbacks.
* ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'': Both Norbert and his brother Daggett suffer this by getting themselves in all sorts of trouble in end of almost every episode. It's mostly from other animals in the forest, and the humans especially.
* ''[[Sealab 2021]]'': The [[Running Gag]] of Sealab blowing up repeatedly. [[Lampshade Hanging]] occurs in the third episode, "Radio Free Sealab," when Marco tells Captain Murphy, "Once again, your stupidity has killed us!" before the explosion. The show also plays with this
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' has an interesting trend in having mostly
{{quote|'''Mr. Burns''': I'm sure your replacement will be able to handle everything. Who is he, anyway?
'''Smithers''': Uh, Homer Simpsons, sir--one of your organ banks from sector 7-G. All the recent events of your life have revolved around him in some way.
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* ''[[Aeon Flux]]'': The title character died in every single ''[[Liquid Television]]'' short, usually at the end and once near the very beginning. Justified in that a later episode explains Aeon to actually be a series of identical clones.
* ''[[Drawn Together]]'' applies this trope endlessly, with characters dying several times an episode, spouses of otherwise unmarried characters showing up for one episode and then vanishing, the Earth being conquered (and all characters killed) by robot insects with hats, etc.
* ''[[Futurama]]'' lampshades this once, when Fry declares that the most important thing in sitcoms is that "When the next episode starts, everything is back to normal"... as the camera pulls out on the burning ruins of New New York, which
* ''[[Megas XLR]]'': Not only does Coop destroy the garage (and often house) where he lives every time he takes Megas out, but he often destroys New Jersey ENTIRELY. It's always fine the next episode. Lampshaded vaguely in an episode where Coop needs money and says: "I don't have any cash; my mom took away my allowance for wrecking the house again," and again in an episode where Coop destroys the city (again!).
* In ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'', many episodes has Eustace being turned to stone, eaten by a dragon, stuck in space, etc., or Courage turning into a helicopter, or Muriel becoming a puppet, but everything was back to normal by the next episode. Also, villains would come back and not be remembered. One noted exception is the character Le Quack, where it is actually explained how he comes back and why no one recognizes him.
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* ''[[Camp Lazlo]]'''s continuity can't make up its mind. Although a fair amount of things ''do'' stay with the continuity, some cases go beyond [[Status Quo Is God]]. Camp Kidney built five years ago one episode? Next episode, it's decades old. How old the camp is, how long the characters have known each other and more change from episode to episode, yet things like Edward owning a doll and Lazlo renaming the newspaper remained until the show ended. Edward being able to drive the cabins like cars was even promoted from a one-time gag to a plot element in the next season.
* Very few things that happened in episodes of ''[[Ren and Stimpy]]'' carried on into later episodes (they lived in a different place every episode), but one of the things that did get carried from episode to episode was Stimpy's first material possession (a litter box)... until it was destroyed.
* ''[[Kim Possible]]'' had mostly a negative continuity. [[Character Development]] was [[Status Quo Is God|always nullified]], the destroyed [[Supervillain Lair
* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' is very guilty of this, but averts it with the episodes with [[Boisterous Bruiser|The Scotsman]].{{context}}
* Just about every ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' episode has Negative Continuity. In one, Squidward and SpongeBob were turned into snails, and in another they were turned into fruit and about to be eaten by the Flying Dutchman. Seems to be happening a lot less often in the newer seasons, but definitely true of the first few, at least.
* ''[[Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi]]'', given that the premise seemed to be to just put the character in [[Played for Laughs|antic inducing situations for 7 minutes]], and then start anew in the next short. It does become a bit of a head scratcher when skills the two have acquired simply vanish, and little bits are blatantly
* [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in ''[[Code Lyoko]]'': Thanks to the [[Reset Button|"Returns to the Past"]], any injuries or problems the kids face can be easily resolved and the [[Status Quo Is God|status quo]] unchanged, even for no real reason. The only exception is death, though the series did end up trying to decrease the RTTP power by giving a consequence for its overuse. Even with the [[Reset Button]], the first season still had a bit of unexplained negative continuity, such as certain characters never being mentioned again. The later seasons stopped doing this, as a side-effect of not using the returns to the past in [[Once an Episode|every episode]] any more.
* ''[[Count Duckula]]''. Nearly every episode ends like this, with the castle destroyed, or having train-tracks running through it, or having the characters stuck without the castle in another country and having to hitch-hike home. One episode had them complaining about this, and how it takes FOREVER to get back home.
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