History Main / PlotArchaeology

* Franchise/TheDCU usually does this with certain events in its history, reviving old (and more than finished) issues and collections just for the event's sake. Some examples are seen in the ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'' event where all the historical tiles of DC had one more number (i.e. if a collection finished on issue 405, the ''BN Special'' is the 406) and even some {{crossover}}s with actual characters as seen in events like ''ComicBook/ZeroHour'' and ''ComicBook/{{Convergence}}''.
** A major offender is ''ComicBook/BoosterGold''. Being a time traveller, Booster has had various numbers which were continuations of past events stories and ''still being part of them as tie-ins''. Some examples are in ''ComicBook/DCOneMillion'' and ''ComicBook/ZeroHour'', usually made even decades after these events finished and still count as part of their collections.

** The sixth-season ''Next Generation'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E18TheChase The Chase]]" revealed that the reason most aliens in the Trek universe were humanoid was due to an ancient and long-extinct race, the Progenitors, having seeded the galaxy with their DNA after discovering they were alone in the universe, a reveal which would surely have had colossal implications in-universe. While Expanded Universe material often made use of them[[note]] often combining them with TOS' [[Recap/StarTrekS3E3TheParadiseSyndrome Preservers]] -- though that didn't make a lot of sense considering the latter were confirmed to have been active only a few centuries before[[/note]], it was never mentioned again in canon... [[spoiler:until the final season of ''Discovery'', '''31 years''' after their first appearance, where a quest to locate the [[LostTechnology technology]] they used to seed the universe with life becomes the subject of a season-long story arc.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': The two-parter "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut" ended with the reveal that Linda Cartman is hermaphrodite and Eric's father but the identity of his true mother remained a mystery to his frustration. This was eventually revisited over a decade later in the season 14 two-parter "200"/"2O1" where it's eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Linda isn't actually hermaphrodite and his father is Jack Tenorman.]]

A plot arc that was [[AbortedArc incomplete and forgotten]], and then suddenly brought back out of the blue to continue the plot arc itself. This is distinct from the ContinuityCavalcade and ContinuityPorn tropes in that it's not just a ShoutOut type situation--the plot arc is resumed, essentially where it left off.

Compare TheBusCameBack, HappyEndingOverride, ConclusionInAnotherMedium and SequelEpisode. Contrast AbortedArc, which this may be a later result of. See also UnCanceled, PostScriptSeason, and {{Continuation}}.

** Following ''ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse'', the ''Mutant Massacre'' storyline was revisited, with Dark Beast and Gambit being {{Retcon}}ned as having participated in the event.[[note]]Dark Beast, who's studied under his world's Sinister, experimented on the Morlocks. The mainstream Sinister found out and got pissed at his work being "misappropriated", and duped Gambit, to Remy's eternal shame, into recruiting the Marauders.[[/note]]

** Polaris's origins danced back and forth over whether she was Magneto's daughter, until Chuck Austen's run on ''Uncanny X-Men'' made it explicit that yes, she was. But it added a new wrinkle that she'd discovered the wreckage of the plane crash that killed her mother was ''magnetized''. However, this was forgotten about for some years, until the end of Peter David's run on ''X-Factor'', in 2012, which finally ties up the threads, revealing Magneto wasn't the one who killed Susannah Dane, rather it was Lorna witnessing her parents having a vicious argument, which upset her enough to kick-start her Mutant powers then and there.

* ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy:'' In the first story, in ''Marvel Super-Heroes'' #18, Charlie-27 finds his family have been shipped off to a Badoon labor camp, where the conditions will kill them if he doesn't get there in time. The next time the Guardians appeared, in ''Marvel Two-in-One'', there's been a TimeSkip and the fate of Charlie's family goes unmentioned from there on out, until the final issue of ''Marvel Present'' confirms that Charlie was unable to rescue them.
* ''ComicBook/SheHulk2004'': In the second volume of Dan Slott's run, She-Hulk is shown a BadFuture created by an event called the Reckoning War for which she is apparently responsible. What this war is or how She-Hulk causes it were never explained in the book and it was ignored after the issue it came up in. In 2021, Marvel announced a crossover event titled "Reckoning War", which will finally explore the eponymous war, 17 years after it was first mentioned.

* ''Comicbook/XMen''

** In ''ComicBook/{{Onslaught}}'', the X-Men use technology to remotely view the moment when Onslaught was created, when Professor Xavier attacked Magneto back during ''ComicBook/FatalAttractionsMarvelComics''. Onslaught is also revealed as the cause of the X-traitor message that motivated Bishop to travel to the past.

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Who sent the assassin after Bran in "The Kingsroad" is a major DrivingQuestion in the first half of Season 1, but while the books confirm the answer during the events adapted in Season 4, the show just lets it slide until season 7, where it's confirmed that [[spoiler:Petyr Baelish sent the assassin, a change from the books, where he only opportunistically lied about the dagger's origin]].

* The First Evil from ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' makes a one-off appearance in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E10Amends Amends]]". It shows up four seasons later as the BigBad. A script involving the First that they didn't use for Season 5 became the basis of the video game ''VideoGame/BuffyTheVampireSlayerChaosBleeds''.

* The First Evil from ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' makes a one-off appearance in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E10Amends Amends]]". It shows up four seasons later as the BigBad. A script involving the First that they didn't use for Season 5 became the basis of ''VideoGame/BuffyTheVampireSlayerChaosBleeds''.

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'':

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* Many of the subplots of [[{{VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft}} World of Warcraft: Legion]] are conclusions to plot threads dropped long ago.

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Compare TheBusCameBack, HappyEndingOverride, TheResolutionWillNotBeTelevised and SequelEpisode. Contrast AbortedArc, which this may be a later result of. See also UnCanceled, PostScriptSeason, and {{Continuation}}.

* Unicron in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' first appears and is dealt with at the end of season 1. After being mostly forgotten for the following two seasons, he reappears to follow up on his plans in the series finale movie ''Predacons Rising''.

** In ''ComicBook/{{Onslaught}}'', the X-men use technology to remotely view the moment when Onslaught was created, when Professor Xavier attacked Magneto back during ''ComicBook/FatalAttractionsMarvelComics''. Onslaught is also revealed as the cause of the X-traitor message that motivated Bishop to travel to the past.

** A major offender is ''ComicBook/BoosterGold''. Being a time traveller, Booster has had various numbers which were continuations of past events stories and ''still being part of them as tie-ins''. Some examples are in ''ComicBook/DCOneMillion'' and ''ComicBook/ZeroHour'', usually made even decades before these events finished and still count as part of their collections.

** The Third Summers Brother. In 1993, Mr Sinister casually refer to Cyclops having "brothers", then corrects himself. This arc got aborted when Fabian Nicieza left the X-titles before he could reveal that Adam X the X-Treme was Cyclops' half-brother. Over the next ten years, the concept was never referred to. (Robert Weinberg thought it was Apocalypse, but also left the book before he could say so). In 2004 Creator/ChrisClaremont suddenly brought it up again and revealed it was Gambit, but that was in an AlternateContinuity. Then, in 2006, Scott and Alex finally met their younger brother Gabriel Summers, a.k.a. Vulcan – unfortunately, Vulcan's backstory makes it impossible that Sinister could have known about him in order to make that casual offhand reference. Eventually, in 2021, Adam X was confirmed to ''also'' be Scott's half-brother. Notably, Sinister didn't mention a specific number of brothers – only that Cyclops has more than just the one brother he was aware of at the time.

** In ''ComicBook/{{Onslaught}}'', the X-men use technology to remotely view the moment when Onslaught was created, when Professor Xavier attacked Magneto during ''ComicBook/FatalAttractionsMarvelComics''. Onslaught is also revealed as the cause of the X-traitor message that motivated Bishop to travel to the past.

* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': In one storyline, Calvin needs to make a report on leaves, which he gets two aliens named Galexoid and Nebular to make for him in exchange for doing the report for him. He flunks, of course. Several strips later, when winter comes, Calvin gets excited to go sledding, when Galexoid and Nebular show up at his front door, covered in snow and apparently angry over not knowing about winter being a thing on Earth. Hobbes helps by giving them his and Calvin's Christmas stockings to wear, which is all it takes to warm them up and placate them.

** ArcWords sometimes get planted before they're even used in a this-is-leading-up-to-something fashion. We get a briefly-seen newspaper mention of "Saxon" being ahead in the polls midway through new series Series 2. Nothing is said of it until "Mister Saxon" becomes a mystery figure of Series 3.
** River Song was introduced in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E8SilenceInTheLibrary Silence of the Library]]" and quickly dropped, then brought back with the Eleventh Doctor.
** There's a gag mentioned in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]" that UsefulNotes/ElizabethI, due to getting involved with the Doctor in some fashion, is "no longer known as the...''...''". This plot thread is used prominently in big chunks of "[[Recap/DoctorWho50thASTheDayOfTheDoctor The Day of the Doctor]]", which details this involvement.

* A major plot point in the first season of ''Series/Lucifer2016'' is Amenadiel attempting to coerce his brother Lucifer into returning to Hell because the place is falling apart since there's no one to rule over it. Amenadiel later has a HeelFaceTurn and the state of Hell remains unadressed for the next several seasons until the finale of season 4 when a group of demons attempt to do the same [[spoiler:and Lucifer is forced to leave Earth.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated,'' Porter C. Powell makes a single not-terribly-memorable appearance in the first season and it doesn't look like he's intended to return. In season two, he does... with a vengeance.

** The true identity of the Hobgoblin. The villain first appeared in 1983; his true identity, fashion mogul Roderick Kingsley, had first shown up three years prior but according to his creator Creator/RogerStern, he didn't plan on Kingsley as the Hobgoblin until much later, and that initially he didn't have an idea for who the Hobgoblin was, and instead planted a number of {{Red Herring}}s before deciding shortly afterwards that Kingsley was the culprit and he planned to reveal it after a long buildup in imitation of the original Green Goblin reveal. The problem? Stern quit, or was made to resign halfway through the MythArc and with his consent, later writers who disliked the identity of Kingsley, decided to spin wheels and continue the mystery indefinitely leading to several more RedHerring -- Flash Thompson, and a thug named Lefty Donovan -- before in a desire to wrap up and clear house, Ned Leeds was KilledOffForReal and then, in an AssPull, "revealed" as the "true" Hobgoblin all along because the writers (and readers) had gotten tired of the mystery and decided to introduce a ''second'' Hobgoblin, mercenary Jason Macendale (hitherto a minor villain known with the alias Jack O'Lantern), who quickly and unintentionally became a BigBadWannabe. It wasn't until 1997 that Stern was invited back and allowed to wrap up the story as he originally intended it -- quite remarkably, the Kingsley idea was still internally consistent to the story and caused no real plot holes (if you pay attention, at least).
** Creator/GerryConway's graphic novel ''Parallel Lives'' which was about the Peter and Mary Jane Watson romance plugged in holes and developments made by the likes of Marv Wolfman and Roger Stern and Tom Defalco. Marv Wolfman had Mary Jane cite her parent's divorce as reasons for rejecting Peter's proposal, Roger Stern conceptualized Mary Jane's family history and background and hinted at her knowing Peter's secret and Tom Defalco revealed that Mary Jane rejected Peter's proposal and left New York to Florida because she couldn't deal with him being Spider-Man. Conway who originally wrote and developed Mary Jane's character after Gwen's death took up the baton which left it ambiguous as to when Mary Jane knew his identity and for story reasons, and to reconcile different parts of her character (Lee-Romita's Mary Jane who was a party girl) with later developments (she had HiddenDepths and was putting on a mask) decided that Mary Jane knew right from the start, that she glimpsed Peter as Spider-Man on the night Uncle Ben died, and then revisited moments in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship which showed her keeping a knowing distance from him at various times.

* At one point in ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries,'' ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} blasts former partner ComicBook/LexLuthor with a ray that (like many instances of FamilyFriendlyFirearms) doesn't seem to hurt him much for what appeared to be intended as a killshot. Much much much later in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited,'' we find that [[spoiler: ''that's because it actually wasn't.'' Brainy put his data inside Lex in case he was destroyed, and this backup of himself was now needed. Enter... [[FusionDance Lexiac]]!]] ThePowersThatBe have said that they'd actually planned it the day they wrote the zapping scene, they just didn't have the right opportunity to use it for a long, long time. Lucky for them the DCAU lasted long enough to do it.

* ''Series/StrangerThings'': Season 2 episode "The Lost Sister" reveals that Martin Brenner, the BigBad of the first season, survived his apparent demise. This is completely unadressed for the rest of the season and the entire season 3. Brenner eventually returns in the fourth season.

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague:'' Late in the series run, it's revealed that Brainiac was TheManBehindTheMan, influencing the actions of the villains in the Cadmus Arc, specifically [[spoiler: [[SharingABody hijacking the body of Lex Luthor]]]]. Although Brainiac had made prior appearances as reviving in a different body as an UnexplainedRecovery, ''this'' particular reveal originated as far back as an episode of ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'', eight years prior. [[WordOfGod The creators themselves admitted]] that it was reviving a thread they deliberately left, rather than re-interpreting it after the fact.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': The Season 1 episode "Driving Miss Hazy" deals with [[TheDitz Leni]] attempting to get her driver's license, only to [[StatusQuoIsGod fail twice]]. As the series went on, this goal wasn't brought up (barring a brief mention in the Season 5 episode "Electshunned") or attempted again until the Season ''6'' episode "Driver's Dread", where she finally succeeds.