Story Reset/Playing With
Basic Trope: The story is set back a few chapters and re-writes those chapters to fit a new story arc.
- Straight: In Universe - All Just a Dream often portrayed here.
- In Real Life - A writer or group of writers didn't like the last 4 issues of a 25 issue comic-book story arc, instead of a full Continuity Reboot they simply reset the story back to issue 21 and continue from there.
- Alternatively - The fans didn't like so they ignore everything past issue 21 and write Fan Fiction of what they feel happened.
- Justified: The time-altering super hero Chronos needs to save his girlfriend from being slaughtered after she was already mutilated and dead, so he rewinds time to a significant point and changes history and thus the outcome of the story.
- Lampshaded: "Didn't we do this before?" -- "No you must be imagining it."
- Inverted: Everything DID happen but it just all looks like it is happening again.
- Subverted: The story 'appears' to go back a few chapters but in reality we find out it hasn't reset, only the point of view has...
- Double Subverted: ..But then you realize the point of view is that of the villain and it IS changing the story!