Snap Back

Chris: But mom, what's dad gonna do about a job?
Lois: Well Chris, you remember that episode of The Honeymooners where Ralph lost his job but at the end he didn't get it back?
Peter: Oh yeah, that always bugged the crap outta me. What was up with that?

[roll credits]

—Family Guy

Similar to the Reset Button, except that the writers make no attempt to get rid of the plotline's ramifications by story's end. Instead, things are back to normal by the start of the next episode with no explanation.

Repeated use of Snap Back may, for good or bad, cause Negative Continuity. For use of Snap Backs from a character's (non)-developmental point of view, see Aesop Amnesia.

Compare Unexplained Recovery. See also Continuity Reboot and Status Quo Is God. Now has a Playing With page.

Examples of Snap Backs include:

Anime

• The plotlines of Urusei Yatsura frequently devolve into total chaos—accompanied by either massive property damage or a run-from-the-lynch-mob chase scene—but the chaos is always resolved offscreen between episodes.
  • The other half of the plots end up with something apparently permanent happening to Ataru: getting split into two exact clones, or getting trapped in an alternate dimension, or getting his house overrun with mirror-demons, just to name a few. All of these consequences always end offscreen by the next chapter.
• Ranma ½. Twice in the series Ranma learns advanced and absolutely devastating martial arts techniques—the Hiryuu Shoten Ha and the Moko Takabisha—but when their plotlines are over we never see them again. (Well, not until the Ranma movies...) In the manga, however, he continues to make use of the techniques, probably because drawing a tornado or energy blast that takes up one panel to half a page is much easier than animating them.
  • To be fair, they didn't actually show up in the stories after they were first introduced in the manga all that often either. Most of the stories where Ranma went up against major-league opponents, and was thusly required to use them, came out after the anime was cancelled.
  • However, both of them were very situational, and have severe limits when Fridge Logic is applied to them. The Moko Takabisha requires confidence to power it, and can thus essentially only be used in a fight Ranma has practically already won. Most such fights are resolved instead with a Megaton Punch. The Hiryu Shoten Ha requires both the opponent to be extremely angry, and a physical spiral motion. In most serious fights, Ranma would have no idea where his opponent's Berserk Button is to get them pissed enough to use the Hiryu Shoten Ha on them.
  • The series also had plenty of romance-related snapbacks, usually whenever it looked like someone might finally make some romantic headway, or Ranma might drift away from Akane Tendo.
• Itoshiki apparently dies in one episode of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei and runs away after being unable to figure out if he is really himself in another. He's back next episode without explanation.
  • He actually is killed by his female "admirers" in the class in the middle of one episode in Zan, and is alive in the next scene. Maybe it never happened? Maybe he just got better? Does it matter?
  • Of course, this is Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei we're talking about.
• The Team Rocket trio gets this in Pokémon, arguably in every episode that ends with them blasting off again, but three notable instances early on in the series stand out: 1) Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon in which they are last shown sealed inside a cave with the aforementioned Pokémon, who were previously implied to be aggressive predators. 2) Abra and the Psychic Showdown, in which Jessie and James are left paralyzed for the entirety of the episode after an encounter with Sabrina's doll, and 3) Viva Las Lapras, in which Team Rocket is arrested at the end, in one of the few times in the entire series (the previous time it happened had a scene where they dug out of prison). Cassidy and Butch have gone to jail several times, but it's usually stated that Giovanni springs for their release, something he's unlikely to do for Jessie and James.
  • Happens to Ash at one time, in a way that almost lampshades it. At the end of one episode, Ash gets accidentally turned into a Pikachu. The next episode starts just in time for the spell to wear off.
• Mugen, Jin, and Fuu die in one episode of Samurai Champloo. This episode is never mentioned again and the characters are alive again in the next episode. This is never explained.
• One early filler episode of Fairy Tail has Natsu, Loke, Gray, Lucy, Erza, and Happy all swap bodies, then learn they have half an hour to reverse the spell before the effects become permanent. With Levy's help they figure out how to undo the spell in the last minute, but there's only time to return Lucy and Gray to normal, and Levy accidentally swaps the whole rest of the guild while she's doing this. The episode promptly ends, and everything is back to normal the next time, in spite of them referencing it in a non-filler episode later.
• In a chapter of Franken Fran, Officer Kuhou is surgically transformed into a Cute Monster Girl. A few chapters later, she is seen as a human again, with no explanation about how she was turned back.
  • The character Officer Kuhou in that and later stories maybe a clone, she stated she self that she doesn't know if she is the original in chapter 21 page 13. Officer Kuhou: I Remember! Am I Real!? Am I A Clone!?, Franken Fran: calm down, calm down. Its all the same.

Comic Books

• Grant Morrison's run on JLA is rather infamous for its rather extreme snapbacks. Premised on the idea of the JLA being an allegory for a pantheon of gods, it was decided that the JLA (being made up of seven of the heaviest of the heavy-hitters in the DCU; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, & Martian Manhunter) would only tackle huge, often literally world-shattering events. Threats included but were not limited to: an assault on Earth (okay, San Francisco) by renegade angels from Heaven, a war between two nigh-omnipotent djinn that threw the Earth and moon around like basketballs, not one but two mass invasions by White Martians, and (as a grand finale) a massive galaxy-killing superweapon that was defeated by granting temporary superpowers to THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EARTH. The snapback from that final arc (awesome though it is) is enough to give you whiplash.
  • What needs to be explained? The entire human race had Superman level powers so they could fix the damage they'd caused then their powers disappeared. The heroes had already contained the major conflicts and Maggeddon hadn't actually reached earth yet. His only influence was heightening aggression.
• The Donald Duck & Co universe is notorious for this. No matter how extreme the events in a story, they're nearly always somehow undone at the end and never referred to in any later tale. The protagonists may be run out of town, Duckburg may be the victim of a natural disaster, or astronomers may discover that behind our Moon there is a smaller moon of pure gold, but when the next story starts, all of the events have been magically undone. The most obvious example is Uncle Scrooge's money bin, which is completely destroyed countless times. Some things seem to be unalterable, though—while Scrooge may lose his money bin, the Beagle Boys never seem to be able to steal his money (except, ironically, in their very first appearance).

Film

• The first Transformers film has Bumblebee regaining his ability to speak. In the next two, he's again talking in sound bytes without explanation. Also, the films keep ending with a very public battle between a ton of robots that no Weirdness Censor could possibly cover up, and yet the Transformers are back to being a secret only conspiracy theorists believe in by the next film.
  • Averted in the third film where it is revealed that the final battle in the second film resulted in the Transformers becoming public knowledge.
• Pretty much what happens to nearly every Bond Girl whether they survive or not. By the next film, Bond's moved on with no mention of the women from the last movie.

Literature

• The books of Robert Rankin's Brentford Trilogy appear to follow one another, except each one contains sufficient destruction to make the next impossible.
• Ephraim Kishon has died and sometimes even gone to hell at the end of several of his short stories. Of course, it didn't exactly last.

Live Action TV

• Both played straight and subverted on NBC's Medium: while every episode, and indeed the entire premise of the show, is about how Alison has significant dreams, every time she wakes up from a dream and is upset, her husband Joe tells her to go back to sleep, because it was "just a dream". However, in the episode where their youngest daughter Marie requires glasses, she does indeed wear them again the next episode.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 often does the Snap Back within the episode itself. One episode had Mike turned into a small, ventriloquist dummy-esque robot in the second host segment due to the effects of a wormhole the SOL was traveling through, and stayed that way until the next commercial break. Right after the break, he returns to normal with no more explanation than "I'm back!"
  • Of course, the most common example of Snap Back on Mystery Science Theater 3000 was Frank getting killed by Dr. Forrester. In every case, he was back in the next episode, looking none the worse for wear. When Frank left the show, Dr. F sang a touching song called "Who Will I Kill?", and in an episode of Cinematic Titanic, Frank lampshades it by saying blithely, "In my experience, you can die and then come right back in the next episode."
• Star Trek: Spock steals the secret of the Romulan cloaking device, but the Federation never develops their own or learns how to counter it until the time of the next series. In a later Revision, it is explained that Starfleet has a treaty with the Romulans forbidding them from developing cloaking technology.
  • Surely it would be quicker to mention the times that Star Trek DIDN'T do this? Big character events, like Miles O'Brien mentally living through a 20-year prison sentence, or Picard recovering from Cardassian torture, or pretty much any time any new phenomenon/discovery/ technology is integral to the plot, are completely forgotten and everything is back to the status quo by next episode. Even the death of Kirk's son went completely unmentioned for two movies. The one notable exception to this would be Picard's assimilation by the Borg, which returned repeatedly to haunt him over the years.
    • Also, Tasha Yar. For a while. But not that long a while.
    • Tasha is one of the hardest aversions in television, especially given how little consequence her death was to the plot of the episode. She was remembered and mentioned in several episodes including the series finale. It seems to have had the greastest impact on Data who briefly had a "relationship" with her in the second episode, something he references during First Contact after the series finale (though he didn't reference her by name, only in terms of how long it had been since the last time he'd been physically intimate.)
• A strange example: "Isaac and Ishmael", the third season opener to The West Wing, was prepared as a Very Special Episode reacting to the 9/11 attacks. During the opening sequence, the actors, out of character, outright state that the episode is "a storytelling aberration", and that the audience should not try to fit it into the series Story Arc. The episode falls right in the middle of a Cliff Hanger, and series continuity proceeds directly from the preceding episode, "Two Cathedrals", to the next, "Manchester". While later episodes imply that the events of the episode are not, strictly speaking, non-canonical, they emphatically do not occur at any specific point in the series continuity.
• On Saved by the Bell, Zach Morris works to understand a girl and her father who are very stand-offish in a Two Part Episode. As it turns out, they're homeless and live in Bayside after it closes each day. There's a bit of a Tear Jerker conclusion when Zach allows both of them to live in his house...whereupon they are never seen nor mentioned by anyone again.
• In the final episode of Series 1 of the The IT Crowd, Jen sleeps with Moss, Roy sleeps with Moss's then-girlfriend (who also happens to look just like Roy's mother), and Richmond sleeps with the head of the company, Denholm Reynholm. Everything is back to normal at the start of Series 2.
• Several character, but especially Baltar, in the new Battlestar Galactica series. Multiple early episodes end with him being convinced he is an instrument of God, while he's dismissive of the notion again at the start of the next episode.
• On Seinfeld, Jerry and Elaine attempt to maintain a sexual relationship in addition to their friendship. This naturally backfires, and the end of the episode appears to be Jerry and Elaine's friendship reaching an abrupt end. By the next episode, it's like nothing ever happened.
  • This is due to Larry David thinking it would be the series finale. He'd always been against hooking Jerry and Elaine up, and only did it as a present to the execs on his way out. When the show was unexpectedly renewed, everyone agreed it was best to just sweep everything under the rug.
• On iCarly, Sam spends an episode doing a Girliness Upgrade because she's worried guys (and Pete, specifically) don't like her because she's too much of a tomboy. In the end, Sam has to give in to that tomboyish side to protect Carly from a bully. Pete and her end up walking out together because he likes a girl who can kick butt. He's never heard of again.
• In the second episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, after Liz goes crazy and tries to kill everyone, she is given a lobotomy to remove her Psychic Powers. The next episode, she still has her psychic abilities, like nothing happened. Not that the show strives for continuity...
• On Boy Meets World, a few of the wackier Eric plotlines in the final season had endings that led to this. For example, "The Honeymooners" ends by showing him being boiled in a big soup pot by Hawaiian natives, yet he's back at home with no mention of this in the next episode.
• An unusually serious example: In the The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "Mona Lisa's Revenge", K9 zaps the Mona Lisa and the Abomination back into paintings-along with himself. Next episode, everything's back to normal with no explanation.

Video Games

• At the end of Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst, you see a picture of the cleansed and cheerful Ravenhearst Manor. At the start of "Return To Ravenhearst", not only is it back to being a creepy, trash-filled house loaded with bizarre door locks, but it's been that way long enough for the local town council to have condemned the building.

Web Comics

• Goats used this trope to allow the comic to continue after frustrated aliens annihilated the Earth on a whim, killing or destroying everything relevant to the comic's canon. However, when the Earth conveniently returns after a week of guest comics, the characters remember everything (in the first comic after the Earth's destruction, a character asks, "Remember that time the Earth was destroyed?") making it either a Lampshaded or Subverted trope, depending on how you look at it.
• Penny Arcade does this a lot, but in a particularly notable storyline, one of the two protagonists accidentally kills his wife using a technique he learned from a video game, and goes on to win $20,000,000 in a lawsuit. The Snap Back is described in the protagonist's own words thusly: "Money's gone. In my grief, I paid a Mad Scientist twenty million for a cybernetic replica of my dead wife. It was my wish that it look, feel, and behave just as she did." The next panel keeps it from qualifying as the Reset Button, as said replica is simply a bucket on roller skates, and his wife does indeed return without explanation.
  • They almost never use continuity. Jokes and character traits, as well as characters can repeat, but they even once cancelled the final strip of a 3-part arc for fear of creating continuity. 3-part arcs are the longest anyone gets one Penny Arcade that aren't called Twilo, Casp or the Cardboard Tube Samurai.
• Bob the Angry Flower is mostly a series of one-shots with very weak continuity. Since Bob is both powerful and amoral, it could be no other way. But one of the books includes a UN Field Guide to Bob and his various weapons and devices, which lampshades the lack of continuity and justifies it as the diligent efforts of the government. (Never let Bob near the button that blows up the Earth, since we barely managed to put it back together and ressurrect everybody last time.)
• Subverted and lampshaded during the transition between The Apple of Discord (a joke-a-day comic that had been heavy on Snap Back) to the spinoff comic, Apple Valley (an ongoing story comic with little-to-no Snap Back that grew out of Ao D) . Several characters go out drinking, only to wake up several states away from home with no idea where they are or how to get home. Thinking the 'joke' done, they wait around for the comic to return to normal, and are horrified when it doesn't and they realize they now have to walk home.
• On Plus EV, Harold won a lot of money and lost it again, lost weight and gained it again... and so on.

Web Original

• In The Motley Two, one of these happened some time in the past, due to unknown temporal chicanery. Subverted In the effects do not go unnoticed by the general populace.

Western Animation

• The original Aeon Flux shorts often ended in her violent and occasionally gruesome death. In half (the pilot, 5 from second season, 2 from third season) of the episodes, the series would have her suffer some apparent terrible fate, and only one episode gives any explanation for why she was around the next episode. A Fanon explanation is that the various Aeon Fluxes are clones. This is unconfirmed, Peter Chung has stated his distaste for Word of God. The supporting evidence is from one episode did feature an Aeon clone (and if you're not paying attention, you'll think there are a lot more—but the others are just women that Trevor made dress up like Aeon). Another episode (beyond the eight) features Aeon dying multiple times, each time coming back without explanation. This episode is notoriously difficult to make sense of, and in a bizarre twist, it's the only episode in the entire series which makes a reference to another episode.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force liberally uses snapback at the end of every episode, whether it's really needed or not. No matter what happens, the next episode will have totally restored the players to start. Thus Carl's house still stands despite the fact it's been destroyed several times. Shake is still alive despite being killed at least three times. Frylock moves into his own apartment in one episode, declares he's never coming back (and he really means it, even refusing to be asked back), but is living at the Teens' house again in the next episode. The lack of continuity is never fully addressed, and considering the wackiness of the show, it's arguably not even a problem. A Running Gag on the show is centered around the only character who does not get a snapback each time, M.C. Pee Pants.
• Chowder manages a particularly impressive Snap Back after the show basically deletes itself.
• Literally every episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. Something horrible and irreversible always happens to a member of the cast (usually Eustice), but none of these changes ever remain for longer than that episode.
• Lampshaded in an episode of Family Guy; as the characters walk off, they comment that Peter has still lost his job, and he compares it to an episode of another series with a similar Snap Back, then expresses his disapproval of the notion. Roll credits. This is then subverted in the following episode, which involved both a job hunt and taking a new job. The show recycles the "Peter loses his job, gets a new one the following episode" plot, but it isn't as glaring as Recycled Scripts usually are, since in three of the episodes it's the B Plot.
• Any time Fred Flintstone got fired.
  • Also any time an episode ended with Fred still in deep, deep trouble with Wilma.
    • Marital issues get worked out.
• Lampshaded in the Futurama episode "When Aliens Attack." After convincing the Omicronians to stop attacking Earth with a fake 1999 TV broadcast, Fry says it's a law of television that "By the end of the episode, everything's always back exactly the way it was." The camera then shows an external shot of the building, with surrounding New New York in flames and the Statue of Liberty crumbling. Despite this, by the next episode, everything is back exactly the way it was.
  • Don't forget in the episode "Cryonic Woman", Fry loses his job at Planet Express. At the end he asks Farnsworth if he'll rehire him, but gets rejected. By the start of the next episode, he's back to being a delivery boy.
  • As the above lampshading implies, Futurama uses this trope all the time. In one episode, Bender has a doomsday bomb in his chest, which he detonates at the end of the episode ("Antiquing? KABOOM") while all the other protagonists are standing right next to him. Everything is back to normal by the next episode, and the explosion is never mentioned again, giving Non Sequitur Scene a whole new meaning.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy has a number of episodes that end like this, including (but not limited to): Mandy accidentally wishing everyone on Earth was gone except for herself; Grim, Mandy, Billy, and Irwin regressing back into babies and disappearing; Endsvile getting turned into a giant cheese pizza; all inhabitants on Earth (including Mandy) having Billy's genes and traits (big nose, egg-shaped head, dumb); Mandy's smile causing the universe to fall apart and transporting Grim, Billy, and herself to Townsvile as the Powerpuff Girls; Nergal forcing everybody in Endsvile to be his friends by way of mind control (as well as the viewer in breaking the fourth wall); and Grim, Billy, and Mandy fused together as some Tetsuo-like creature due to the Apple of Discord. No matter what though, by the next episode, everything's back to normal.
• Hey Arnold!!
  • "Rhonda's Glasses" (Rhonda gets glasses; by story's end, she eventually decides on a non-geeky pair)
  • "Harold the Butcher" (Harold has to work at a butcher shop; by story's end, he's been appointed as an afterschool apprentice butcher), as well as every other "learned lesson" in the series.
  • "Mugged": Arnold learns martial arts. Where is it for the rest of the series?
  • (In some cases in the final season, this was easily dealt with by doing it to a lesser character, and then shoving him into the background for the rest of the series, e.g., "Chocolate Boy".)
• Almost every episode of Invader Zim ended in this manner. (Like the one where Dib and Zim get turned into bologna. However, in that specific case, in another episode Dib references the situation, and how he and Zim worked together to get out of it.) As such, perhaps a better example is one in which Zim is sent hurtling into a sun.
  • There's a few other good examples, like the one where Dib ends up trapped in an Irken-designed cage while being beaten by a monkey, as Zim watches, and meanwhile Gaz has a robotic Dib maid (meaning Membrane will not question where Dib is.). Who could have let him out of the cage?
  • Or the one where Zim's brain-sucking monster attacks him, which I always felt was supposed to kill him.
    • It also seemed like Zim died at the end of The Wettening. "HELP! HELP! AAAH! I CAN'T BREEATHE! I-"
  • In fact, when Dib mentions the bologna incident Zim simply screams "YOU'RE MAKING IT UP!" Whether this counts as Zim being Zim or canon discontinuity is up to the viewer.
• Any time George Jetson got fired.
• In Kim Possible the Non-Action Guy Ron learns ass kicking Monkey Kung Fu, but only actually uses it in a very few episodes, most of them monkey-oriented. Shego and Drakken are left Trapped in TV Land, but appear again without comment. Kim and Ron become involved with international law-enforcement organisation Global Justice, but they're usually saving the world on their own. It's not for nothing the producers said that any continuity happened by accident. When the series was renewed for a fourth season, things started to carry over a bit more.
  • Lampshaded in the one episode. "Aren't you a master of mystical monkey kung fu?" "Eh, it comes and goes, you know?"
  • At the end of the episode "Monkey Ninjas In Space", an army of monkey ninjas following a prophecy decide that Ron is their leader, and Kim and Ron are left wondering what to do about them. The monkeys are never mentioned again, and Ron being the "ultimate monkey master" actually is, but only in the Grand Finale.
• Happened in almost every single sketch of Monkey Dust where people are brought back to life so they can repeat the same gag in a slightly different way.
• Subverted, and possibly parodied, on My Life as a Teenage Robot. In one episode, Jenny had accidentally thrown Sheldon into space with a bunch of Jenny-worshipping aliens. Several episodes later, Sheldon shows up again, but is now an old man, thanks to an apparent lifetime traveling at relativistic speeds trying to get back to Earth, and Jenny doesn't recognize him at first.
  • They got the time-bending effects of relativity backwards.
• Happens a few times in Pinky and The Brain: for example, in one episode Brain invents a machine to make Pinky as smart as he is; his plan backfires and both of them end up reversing the process on themselves and becoming idiots. The episode simply ends with the two of them sitting in the cage, both now too stupid to operate the machine. Next episode, they are back to normal.
  • That's hardly the most notable example from Pinky and The Brain—best one is the one where everyone in the world is transformed into a yodeling Swedish giant and Pinky and the Brain shrug their shoulders and just accept it. Or the one where everyone is transferred from the real Earth into a fake version of the Earth made out of papier-mache, and the real Earth subsequently explodes. It was a show that epitomized Negative Continuity.
• At the end of some episodes of Ren and Stimpy they sometimes get killed or in one particular episode they end up having to be sewn together to keep each other alive, and by the next episode everything is back to normal.
• Rocket Power, "That Old Skateboard" (Sam finds an old skateboard; by story's end, Otto and Twister have had to fix it)
• Common in Samurai Jack, notably so when Jack learns to "jump good" in order to fight the rather large Aku. Nothing seemed to stop Jack from slaying Aku and/or getting to the portal and they...just cut it short there! No explanation, no flashbacks, no nothing!
• Sealab 2021 uses snapback at the end of nearly every episode, when Sealab is destroyed.
• Frequently parodied in The Simpsons. For example, the episode "The Principal and the Pauper." Also in "Homer Loves Flanders" wherein Lisa comments on the effect, playing with the Fourth Wall. And there's that ep with Bart and Lisa in 3rd grade where Skinner says: "What this episode has taught us is that there's nothing better than the status quo," and promptly puts them back in their respective grades.
  • Also somewhat subverted in The Movie, as the opening for the first episode of the next season shows that Springfield is still being rebuilt.
  • Also Lampshaded in The Movie itself; Ned Flanders can't remember the word "continuity".
    • One episode, wherein Homer gets in trouble with a Las Vegas pit boss after losing Bart and held hostage, and Marge ends up in prison for selling expired prescription drugs in a yard sale. This leaves Lisa to fend for herself and Maggie, something she apparently always thought would eventually happen. The episode ends with her saying that she'll look for work in the morning....by the following episode, everything has been resolved/never happened in the first place.
• South Park: Just about every episode (in the first few seasons) involves Kenny dying in some horrific way, but he's back to normal in the next episode, even to the extent of phasing him back in at the beginning of a two-part episode when he died in the first part. Kenny is eventually Killed Off for Real in an episode heavy with Lampshade Hanging, the boys dreading the possibility that Kenny might die.
  • He is eventually brought back but very rarely dies and is often given very little to do.
    • Finally subverted hard in "Mysterion Rises". After 14 seasons, it turns out that Kenny is completely aware of every single death. And going right into a Crowning Moment Of Funny, when Kenny gets fed up with the gang and decides to just go to bed and get a good night's sleep. ... By shooting himself in the head.
    • Furthermore, we learn that nobody - except for his parents - ever remembers any of Kenny's deaths. Which is why nobody is ever surprised to see him alive again the next day.
• Unagi from Sushi Pack lampshades the inevitable Snap Back after his teaming up with the Pack in Lights On, Lights Off:

Unagi: Well, I guess we have to go back to being archenemies.
Ikura: Do we really have to?
Unagi: Yup, we do.

• The Weekenders, "To Tish" (Tish's name is being used as a word; by story's end, she's "playing along")
  • Given it was a fad, it probably just faded.
• What about every single Looney Tunes character? They're always blowing each other up and it never lasts more than one scene. Occasionally you will see Sylvester or Wile E. Coyote covered in bandages/walking with crutches at the end, but at the start of the next episode everything is back to normal.
• In the Metalocalypse episode "TributeKlok", Murderface falls out of a helicopter (which is up pretty high) into an angry mob. The next episode, he's perfectly fine. This is especially confusing considering that Charles Ofdensen, after being beaten almost to death at the end of season two, now has a scar on his face, showing that the show does have SOME continuity.
• In the final season of Teen Titans, the Brotherhood of Evil recruits nearly every villain that ever appeared in the series despite the fact that some (like the Puppet King, Kardiak, and Malchior) were incapacitated the last time seen.
• This has happened a few times on Jimmy Two-Shoes. Two episodes have Lucius and Sammy falling into an infinite abyss, only to be out by the next episode. Lucius also suffered a Villainous Breakdown in one episode, only to be cured in the next.
  • The show often does a Snap Back within the episode itself-for example, in one episode, a hairspray turns Jimmy into a giraffe, then he suddenly turns back to a human without explanation.
• This happens in the Fairly Oddparents all the time. Granted, in many cases the show would end if it didn't return to the Status Quo. However, it seems pretty jarring when the characters become Genre Savvy, the most notorious example being Wishology, in which Timmy Turner FINALLY begins making mature decisions without magic and concerning his fairies. He, also, uses the magic when he does have access to it in a mature way. By using this Reset Button this causes all sorts of Negative Continuity on the show's part.
  • Especially notable is that at least two episodes ended with Vicky in jail, and it doesn't stop her from coming back in the next episode. Considering her parents fear her, one has to wonder who bails her out.
  • This is another show that often does a snap back within the episode itself, like the time when Foop was cut in half, only to be cured in the next shot.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum. Some episodes ended with characters being eaten by monsters, getting morphed into toasters, puppets and frogs, being blown up, sent into space, getting sucked into rips between space-time continuums, turned into talking dust, but by the next episode, everything is back to normal.
• Doctor Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb is always back to normal by the start of the next episode, no matter what horrible thing has happened to him. Lampshaded in one episode where his daughter says, in response to a boy noting that Doofenshmirtz has just blasted off tied to a giant fireworks rocket, "He'll be fine. He blows up all the time."
• A lot of Spliced episodes result in a snapback. One particularly notable episode ended with Entree dying when he falls off a cliff, his brain flies out of his head, and he gets crushed by a giant boulder. He's fine by the next episode. Other examples include:
  • "Stomach on Strike": Peri lives inside Entree as his heart, stomach, and brain. He's back out by the next episode.
  • "Clones Don't Care 'Bout Nothin' Either": Peri and Entree sail away from Keep Away Island to escape their clones. Next episode, they're back and their clones are never heard from again.
  • "Two-Arms Joe": Peri loses one of his arms and Joe gives him a mechanical one instead. He has his arm back by next episode.
  • "Walkie Talkie Spinesuckie": Entree's baby eats everyone's spines and Entree throws them in a volcano. They're all fine by the next episode.