Line #18 PlayingWith/ResetButton


1	'''Basic Trope''': A plot device that returns everything to the status quo.
2	* '''Straight''': After a horrible day where Alice loses her job, is dumped by her boyfriend, and has her house forclosed all due to one silly mistake, she discovers a magical MacGuffin that returns everything to the day before and she makes different choices to avoid all of the undesirable events.
3	* '''Exaggerated''': After a world-ending disaster, all of Alice's friends are dead, the major government's have been overthrown, all of mankind has been enslaved by powerful aliens that wiped out nearly half Earth's organic population, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking her favorite coffee shop files for bankruptcy]], Alice makes a wish on a star, and just like that, everything is sent back in time to where absolutely ''none'' of the catastrophe had happened, thus giving nobody even a good reason to even think about it.
4	* '''Downplayed''': During an adventure, Alice's party gets roughed up, she breaks a leg and Bob dies. They use a magical talisman, that heals all their injuries, fixes her leg, but Bob remains dead.
5	* '''Justified''': The MacGuffin allows Alice to go back in time and make adjustments to the timeline to keep the horrible things from happening.
6	* '''Inverted''': The MacGuffin upsets the status quo and creates a CrapsackWorld.
7	* '''Subverted''':
8	** After the aliens invade, Alice finally reaches the magical amulet that's supposed to fix everything. She waves it around and says the magic words, but nothing happens.
9	** Alternatively: It repels the aliens, but fails to repair the damage caused. The world is never the same.
10	* '''Double Subverted''': Until she gets upsets, throws it to the ground, causing it to shatter, and the aliens are gone.
11	* '''Parodied''': There is a literal reset button that Alice carries around with her everywhere just in case something goes wrong. She uses it every time a monster attacks, every time she says something that angers a friend, [[MundaneUtility or when she rips her skirt, or steps on a bug.]]
12	* '''Zig Zagged''':
13	** The device fixed everything, but it seemed to have created new things as well. Like that [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment unicorn over there]].
14	** The device brings things back to normal by [[WellIntentionedExtremist destroying things and building them back up]].
15	* '''Averted''': No device is used to fix everything and the characters end up solving their problems with actual hard work while suffering casualties and never ending up returning exactly to the way things were before.
16	* '''Enforced''': "The plot has taken a very bad turn and we don't know how to undo everything we did. Let's just put in a magical device that fixes everything."
17	* '''Lampshaded''': "Push this button and everything is fixed, just like that."
18	* '''Invoked''': The magical fairy queen decides to use her unlimited cosmic power to return things to the way things were after evil strikes.
19	* '''Exploited''': The villains are all about preserving the status quo. Knowing that Alice has a magical MacGuffin that can reset everything, they completely trash the city whenever she accomplishes anything, forcing her to use it and returning everything to the way they like it.
20	* '''Defied''':
21	** Alice has the chance to travel back in time, fix her mistakes, and return everything to the way they were before, but decides that taking the easy way out is not the best way to solve all her problems.
22	** Alternatively: She takes this opportunity for all it's worth, and makes things better (and different) than they were before.
23	* '''Discussed''': "If we push this button, everything will return to the way they were before? What are we waiting for?"
24	* '''Conversed''': "That's it? They say a few magic words and it's like nothing that occurred ever happened? What a cop out! What's the point of all that?"
25	* '''Deconstructed''':
26	** Alice likes things exactly the way they are. Whenever something happens that might upset the status quo she is currently living, she summons her magical forces and returns things back to the way she likes it. Nothing ever changes for Alice in her village. Nobody ever changes and technology never evolves. Nobody dies and nobody suffers sickness or grief for long, but nobody ever matures and nobody's quality of life improves either, even if they are given the chance. Alice's village becomes a land stuck in a single moment, living blissfully, but without change.
27	** Alice uses the power to be a tyrant by resetting everything that she doesn't approve of.
28	** The resetting includes people's memories of the event...[[GroundHogDayLoop so they're incapable of acting differently, and it inevitably all happens all over again.]]
29	* '''Reconstructed''':
30	** Alice eventually gets bored of it and decides to let just a few things slip past her magic. Just a few.
31	** Alice has a ripple-effect proof memory, and eventually figure out how to prevent the cataclysm that required the reset button. After a few time...
32	* '''Played For Laughs''': Alice misses out on the special sale for a delicious one-in-a-lifetime cake because Bob got to the bakery first, so she decides to go on an adventure through hell and back to retrieve the magical MacGuffin just so she can go back and eat it before he does. [[ShaggyDogStory And then she realises the cake was not as delicious as she had hoped it was.]]
33	* '''Played For Drama''': The magical MacGuffin resets everything back to normal, but only activates after Alice sees one of her friends die a CruelAndUnusualDeath every time. And because ''only'' she remembers everything that happened before its activations, she ends up having {{Past Experience Nightmare}}s of every violent death she was ForcedToWatch through, while the others go about their days blissfully unaware of their prevented demises, wondering why she was suddenly acting snappy and nervous every now and then.
34	----
35	Don't you wish everything would go back to the way they were before you read this page? Back to the ResetButton.
36	----
37	%% Optional items, added after Conversed, at your discretion:
38	%%

Context PlayingWith / ResetButton