Continuity Cavalcade / Live-Action TV

Examples of Continuity Cavalcade in Live-Action TV series.

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• In the premiere of 24: Live Another Day, when Mark Bodreau, the White House Chief of Staff, opens Jack's file we briefly see a list of confirmed kills Jack's made throughout the course of the original series.
• Bones: Season 11, Episode 18, "The Movie in the Making". A television crew is following the cast around, documenting the relationship between the Jeffersonian and the FBI, and this provides plenty of opportunities for everyone to reminisce about past plots and deceased characters.
• Breaking Bad: In the Season 5 midseason premier, after Hank discovers that Walt is the mysterious Heisenberg, he goes through an old evidence box that contains pictures of people and items from previous episodes all the way back to Season 1.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In the first episode of the final season, "Lessons", a shape-shifting villain takes, in quick succession, the form of every Big Bad from the past six seasons (barring Angelus and Willow in favor of Drusilla and Warren), and finally, Buffy herself.
  • Season 5 finale "The Gift"'s Previously on… turns into a rapid-fire clip show of the entire series up until this point.
• "Something Wicca This Way Goes", the Series Fauxnale of Charmed (1998) has the girls discuss several of their past adventures as they try to come up with a way to defeat Zankou, and in particular has several references to Prue.
• The entire series finale of Chuck is one big parade of Continuity Nods, bringing back: Fulcrum, the Ring, the Wienerlicious, Jeffster!, Casey's Desert Eagle, and Mama B, and heavily focuses on the entire history of the Intersect mythology including references to Bryce, Stephen, Ted Roark (virtually unmentioned since Season 2) and Hartley/ Volkoff. In fact, much of the entire final season itself serves the purpose including appearances by Daniel Shaw, Director Graham and Sarah's adopted little sister who was mentioned once in the series's fourth episode, and was never brought up again prior to that point!.
• The CSI final-season episode "Merchants of Menace" heavily featured the trade of 'murderobilia' (memorobilia connected to serial killers), allowing the writers to make Continuity Nods to multiple serial killers previously featured in the series. The first scene alone makes mention of the Strip Strangler (a somewhat forgettable serial killer from the first Season Finale), the Blue Paint Killer (who hadn't even been mentioned for several seasons), and Nate Haskell, and one of the Miniature Killer's miniatures plays an important role later in the episode.
  • There's also the series' 300th episode, "Frame by Frame," which - in addition to bringing back Marg Helgenberger at Catherine for a series of flashbacks - ends with a long pan over of distinctive pieces of evidence from past cases, all while The Who's "Best I Ever Had" plays.
• Desperate Housewives:
  • In season 6 premiere there's a shot from Paul Young's earlier life filled with this. It's then taken up to eleven in a brief scene of a garden party, where practically everyone from season 1 is present despite of some of them not being seen in the series in six years. This means they hired several actors years past to sit in a garden chair for three seconds.
  • Shows up again in the series finale — the very last scene shows the ghosts of many of the major and supporting characters who have died over the course of the show, watching as Susan moves away from Wisteria Lane.
• Dinosaurs: "And the Winner is..." begins with Earl and Fran taking Baby to the Chief Elder to have him given a proper name one year after his birth. When Earl asks Fran why they didn't do it sooner, she tells him it's been a busy year for them, citing the events of previous episodes. First, Earl had to learn the Mating Dance ("The Mating Dance"), then Ethyl moved in ("Hurling Day"), then their kids got a pet caveman ("Employee of the Month"), then Robbie had his howling ("The Howling"), then Charlene's tail grew in ("Charlene's Tale"), then they all went on a game show ("Family Challenge").
• Doctor Who:
  • An early example: at the end of "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve", Steven, after a very severe What the Hell, Hero? moment, announces that he's leaving for good. In the TARDIS, the Doctor, now without companions, has a little Thinking Out Loud in which he talks about his first three companions, all of whom had left. Then new companion Dodo shows up, along with Steven, who changes his mind, and the Doctor explains to Steven how much she looks like his granddaughter.
  • "Robot": Upon first regenerating, the Fourth Doctor starts enthusiastically babbling lines out of context from various Third Doctor stories ("The brontosaurus is large, and placid.") before passing out again.
  • "Logopolis" has the Fourth Doctor flashing back to all that particular Doctor's companions and several of his major villains.
  • "Castrovalva": The Fifth Doctor, newly regenerated, runs through the personalities of the First, Second and Third Doctors before settling on his own.^note A testament to Peter Davison's acting abilities. He even finds Two's recorder.
  • "Resurrection of the Daleks": When the Doctor's being mindscanned, decreasingly distinct pictures of every one of his companions from 1963 onwards appear on the screen, running in backwards order (although they forget Leela).
  • "The Caves of Androzani": As Fifth Doctor dies, he hallucinates all his companions (of that incarnation) gathering around encouraging him to regenerate. And the Master encouraging him to give up and die.)
  • Upon regenerating from Six to Seven, the Doctor tries on the outfits of five previous regenerations before settling on the outfit Sylvester McCoy would wear for the remainder of the Classic series.
  • "Remembrance of the Daleks" has Coal Hill School (mere weeks after the departure of Susan and One), the book on the French Revolution Barbara pulls out in the first series, the Dalek Emperor, references to Omega and Rassilon, and has a precursor to UNIT, including a Liz Shaw Expy.
  • "School Reunion" has the Tenth Doctor and Rose meet former companion Sarah Jane Smith. Rose and Sarah Jane, each trying to prove herself to the other, take turns naming the strangest things they've seen during their travels. The two manage to reference over a dozen storylines in about half a minute.
  • A few new series episodes have gone out of the way to reference the previous Doctors. They all appear as sketches in a notebook, projections from an alien data-storage device, a vision through a psychic headbutt and holograms shown when the Eleventh Doctor explains that Earth is under his protection.
    • Similarly, "Meanwhile in the TARDIS Part 2" (a between-episodes bonus clip) features the TARDIS showing Amy photos of several previous companions, and "Clara and the TARDIS" does the same with Clara.
  • "Utopia": The Reveal at the end links together the Chameleon Arch introduced in "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", the Face of Boe's cryptic last words from "Gridlock", and the mysterious "Harold Saxon" folks have been mentioning all season as the return of the Master from the classic series.
  • For the Tenth Doctor's final regular episode (before the series of 4 one-off specials), all of that incarnation's companions and recurring associates returned: Rose Tyler (and her mother, Jackie), Mickey Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, K-9, Martha Jones (and her mother Francine), Captain Jack Harkness, Harriet Jones (ex-Prime Minister), and then-current companion Donna Noble (and her mother Silvia and grandfather Wilfred). The two parter also featured cameo appearances by characters of the contemporary Spin-Off shows The Sarah Jane Adventures (Luke Smith and the computer Mr. Smith) and Torchwood (Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper). Nearly all of these characters are seen in the opening moments of the episode, during the opening credits.
  • "The End of Time": The bar scene in Russell T Davies' last episode as producer and head writer (before his departure and 2023 return) contains eight alien species from the show's history (two of whom are Human Aliens), four of whom have only made one full appearance. And the song playing is a cover of the one the Chorus Girls performed in "Daleks in Manhattan".
  • "The Pandorica Opens": Many alien races are included as members of the Legion of Doom, including one-off and little-seen species such as the Roboforms and Hoix, Torchwood's Weevils, and the Atraxi.
  • "The Almost People": A Ganger duplicate of the Eleventh Doctor goes through impressions of the First, Third, Fourth and Tenth Doctors before catching up. For bonus points, it's actually Tom Baker's voice asking "would you like a Jelly Baby?"
  • "A Good Man Goes to War": The Battle of Demons Run has the Doctor assembling an army of one-off characters from previous episodes. In addition to the new characters Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax, his army included the pirates Henry and Toby Avery, a squadron of Dalek-enhanced Spitfire planes, and the black marketeer Dorium Maldovar. For bonus points, Rory went into battle in full costume as "The Last Centurion", and was introduced as such by Amy in the opening (the latter was lampshaded, as Rory wonders aloud why the Doctor had him do so and never gets an answer).
  • "Asylum of the Daleks" boasts every Dalek model ever built, and recreations of some missing ones.
  • "A Town Called Mercy" has the Doctor naming the last few major villains of the revived series.
  • "The Name of the Doctor" has appearances by all eleven Doctors up to that point — the Eleventh obviously still played by Matt Smith, and the other ten using a mixture of body doubles and archive footage. In actual fact, it's all twelve Doctors, as the story introduces John Hurt's War Doctor at the end. There's even a scene showing the First Doctor and Susan stealing the TARDIS, with Clara's help.
  • "The Day of the Doctor" tops the Series 7 finale with all thirteen Doctors — since it includes the first official appearance of Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor — charging into the fray during the climactic battle (again, via archive footage).
  • "Time Heist": Images are played of the Androvax, a Sensorite, Captain John Hart, Abslom Daak, a Slitheen, a Terileptil, the Gunslinger and the Trickster. In the case of Abslom Daak, this firmly cements him as a Canon Immigrant.
  • This one-minute long trailer has over 60 Doctor Who references in it.
  • "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar": The Skaro scenes include a vast number of older Dalek designs, including classic Daleks in their original blue and silver, a Special Weapons Dalek from "Remembrance of the Daleks", and the return of the "bracketed" Dalek Supreme design from "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End".
  • In The Doctor Falls, while discussing the Cybermen's Multiple-Choice Past, the Doctor claims them to all be the result of "Parallel Evolution", listing Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, along with Marinus from the comic The World Shapers
    • In a later scene, when the Doctor is listing his victories against them, he mentions Telos, Canary Wharf, Voga, Planet 14, and the Moon.
• Likewise, the final episode of Farscape served up a Continuity Cavalcade during it's "previouslyOn" segment, by showing clips of almost every one of the previous episodes in about five seconds.
• The Frasier episode "Don Juan in Hell Part Two" has Frasier hallucinate that Lilith, Diane, his first wife Nanette and his mother are all giving him unhelpful advice about his love life. At one point he opens the door to escape and sees "every woman I ever dated!" as numerous previous Girls of the Week crowd in the doorway.
• Game of Thrones: Tyrion's trial in "The Laws of Gods and Men". In addition to being a Darker and Edgier echo of Tyrion's trial in Season 1, Ser Meryn Trant recalls how Tyrion "educated" his nephew in "Garden of Bones", Cersei recounts his threat to turn her joy to ashes in "The Prince of Winterfell", Varys brings up his threats to Joffrey in "Mhysa", Tyrion himself brings up Varys' reassurance that some men will never forget he saved the city, Shae brings up numerous details of their affair throughout the series, and Jaime brings up Tywin's thousand year dynasty speech from "You Win or You Die".
• In the first mid-season finale of Glee, the kids do a performance for Mr. Schue after winning Sectionals - with all the choreography being a mashup of previous numbers. In the series Grand Finale "Dreams Come True", everyone who was a member of New Directions for more than an episode appears in the final number "I Lived" ^note  with the exception of Melissa Benoist (Marley) and Damian McGinty (Rory) who cited schedule conflicts, Cory Monteith, who was dead, and the Warblers, who made up the super choir and allowed the New Directions to compete their final year and were then promptly forgotten.
• Gossip Girl's finale "New York I Love You XOXO" features cameos by nearly every major recurring character (plus Hilary Duff shot a poster), most during the reveal of Gossip Girl's identity.
• One scene in the House finale featured several familiar faces from the past. The episode as a whole saw the return of every former team member plus Stacy. That's every significant character who appeared in a double digit number of episodes (plus Dominika, who appeared in 6), except Cuddy. They just couldn't get Lisa Edelstein.
• The final episode of season 6 of How I Met Your Mother, "Challenge Accepted", has references throughout to a variety of gags, such as Lily's body-pillow of Marshall and the return of the driver, Ranjit.
  • One episode of season 7 ("Ducky Tie") has Barney, Lily and Marshall rattle off a list of six women Ted has dated or flirted with who have appeared on the show up to that point. CBS released an extended cut which lists 26 additional women Ted has flirted or slept with (who have all also appeared on the show), inspiring a fan edit revealing the total number by the finale to be 87.
  • One episode of season 9 ("Gary Blauman") has a "where are they now" sequence for many of the characters throughout the series.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
  • In "Thunder Gun Express", Frank commandeers a tour boat and begins regaling the Japanese Tourists with plots from previous episodes.
  • "The High School Reunion" features wall-to-wall references to past episodes, bringing back a lot of one-off characters and referencing things that happened previously in the series.
  • "The Gang Recycles Their Trash" is entirely based on continuity nods. The gang starts rehashing their old jokes, causing Dee to keep asking, "Haven't we done this before?" In response, the gang starts actively recreating some of their past schemes. Many of the jokes from past episodes are recreated with a new twist.
  • "Frank Falls Out the Window" features a range of references to previous episodes. Frank and Charlie make Grilled Charlies and Rum Ham before Frank falls out the window and thinks that the year is 2006. The gang tries to reenact scenes from early episodes with a new twist to convince Frank that it's still 2006 and get him to give them all his money. Frank has flashbacks to the original scenes until he finally figures out that it's the present day.
• Journey to the West (1996) has the Imposter Exposing Test moment when the Centipede Demon, a powerful shapeshifter and strongest villain in season 1, turns into Tang Sanzhang. After Sun Wukong's X-Ray vision fails to reveal the imposter, the three pilgrims then quizzes the two Tang Sanzhangs with a dozen questions that Calls-back on past events, including who's Wukong's brother-in-arms, where Bajie became a rich nobleman, what Sanzhang wrote on Wujing's hand in their first encounter, which country did Bajie become a prince, which villain defeats Wukong and reverts him to feral form, and so on and forth.
• Kamen Rider Double's summer movie Forever A to Z/The Gaia Memories of Fate has several of the people that W has helped (be they former Clients, Victims, or reformed Monsters of the Week) crowded together at the base of Fuuto Tower watching the Final Battle. Their belief in Double seems to be what helps unlock CycloneJokerGoldXtreme.
• Kamen Rider Fourze's movie Everyone, It's Space Time! has a scene where Gentaro is getting curb-stomped by the villains and his friends reach out to all the people he's helped over the course of the series, using The Power of Friendship to create the Fusion Switch.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In "The Great Wave", Halbrand lists all the things Galadriel did since she arrived in Numenor, which includes acting entitled, demanding ships, insulting the Numenorians, defying the Queen's orders. He wonders how none of those things quickened Miriel's pulse. Galadriel remembers that only after demanding to talk to the King of Numenor, Miriel sent her in prison for sedition.
• Murdoch Mysteries
  • In the episode "Winston's Lost Night", Winston Churchill is surprised by the other names in Inspector Brackenreid's autograph book, all Historical Domain Characters from previous episodes.
  • In the episode "Murdoch on the Corner", an Establishing Shot of Constable Crabtree's home includes his shares ("Who Killed the Electric Carriage?"), his Business Machines Co. stock ("Invention Convention") and his novel Curse of the Pharaohs("The Evil Eye of Egypt").
  • The episode "The Incurables" is really one long Continuity Cavalcade, as Murdoch and Dr Odgen try to solve a murder in the incurable women's wing of the local Bedlam House. All the inmates are returning characters who were put there in previous episodes.
• In a 10th-season episode of NCIS, the team goes through a box of props and costumes from past undercover cases, calling back to at least three previous episodes. These include Tony and Ziva passing themselves as married assassins, Tony spying on arms dealers disguised as a street performer, and Abby briefly getting a tech support job for an online sex site.
  • The Season 12 episode "House Rules" takes this further, as Gibbs's Rules are referenced repeatedly in McGee's narration, and often accompanied by flashbacks to previous moments in which said rules were invoked, broken, or otherwise referenced.
• Every episode of Police Squad! ended with Frank listing all the other arrestees that that episode's culprit would be joining in prison, although this never got to very high levels as the show only had 6 episodes.
• The Legend War is one of the Gokaiger concepts brought over to Power Rangers Megaforce, which starts as an adaptation of Tensou Sentai Goseiger. At first, it's seen only as Troy's dream, but it's yet to be seen (although very likely) if it wasn't exactly a dream. Also, the small Power Ranger figures lining the walls of the team's base (which are modified Ranger Keys from the teams that were adapted for Western audiences) counts as this too, at least while the show is going about adapting Goseiger.
• Red Dwarf:
  • Back to Earth featured a continuity cavalcade when the boys from the Dwarf are transported to the real world.
    • In the sci-fi shop They Walk Among Us, Rimmer finds a piece of artificial snake skin, "like the one the polymorph turned into", a reference to the Series 3 episode "Polymorph". A moment later, when Kryten beams a photo of the Red Dwarf cast onto a nearby television screen, the TV is showing the iconic clip from "Polymorph" in which Kryten is removing Lister's rapidly shrinking boxer shorts (actually the polymorph) when Rimmer walks in on them.
    • Noddy, the clerk at They Walk Among Us, has a number of suggestions on how the crew can find propmaker Swallow's business establishment, Nose World:
      Noddy: I know! Holly HOP Drive!^note  Used in the Series 2 episode "Parallel Universe".
      Rimmer: Back on Red Dwarf. (others ad-lib similar comments)
      Noddy: Er... matter paddle!^note  Used in the Series 4 episode "Meltdown".
      Lister / Rimmer: It's on the Dwarf! / Back on Red Dwarf!
      Noddy: Timeslides, where you walk into a photograph and (makes slurping noise)!^note  Used in the Series 3 episode "Timeslides".
      Kryten / Lister: It's on Red Dwarf, sir. / Back - on - Red Dwarf!
      Noddy: Got it! Beam there!
      (the Red Dwarf crew groan)
      Lister, Rimmer: (in unison) That's Star Trek!
      Cat: Yeah!
      Kryten: That's not us, sir. We don't do that, sir.
  • Earlier, the episode "Demons and Angels" had Lister refer to visiting a parallel universe (in "Parallel Universe"), seeing time run backwards (in "Backwards"), playing pool with planets (in "White Hole") and giving birth to twins (between "Parallel Universe" and "Backwards"). None of which is as amazing as an edible Pot Noodle.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures, a spinoff of Doctor Who, shows and mentions many of Sarah Jane and Jo's prior adventures with the Doctor in "Death of the Doctor". The ending alludes to the status of many previous Doctor Who companions.
• The ending of the Scrubs episode "My Finale" has JD walking down a hallway full of every character who appeared in more than one episode, and a few that only appeared in one. Except Franklin.^note The actor who played Franklin was in NBC's Heroes at the time, and wasn't allowed by NBC to guest star for the finale, as Scrubs was airing on ABC at the time. This was after ABC and NBC had fought over which channel would air season 8.
• The final episode of Seinfeld had a lot of minor characters on the show coming back to testify against the main four.
  • And the season four finale featuring the culmination of the year-long story arc about the Show Within a Show featured various characters from the season watching the pilot.
  • In the episode "The Andrea Doria", George tries to prove that he's suffered more hardships in his life than Mr. Eldridge, an Andrea Doria survivor. He tells the stories of what happened to him in various earlier episodes.
• With the exceptions of Lana Lang, Pete Ross, and Whitney Fordman, just about every original cast member came back for the Smallville series finale.
• In Stargate SG-1, one episode required every Stargate in the galaxy to be linked together. A dozen Stargates from various worlds that SG-1 had visited in the past, including Earth's main Stargate and the original Alpha Site, were then shown opening.
• The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Shattered" is all about revisiting the events of previous episodes thanks to a Negative Space Wedgie.
• Super Sentai:
  • In GoGo Sentai Boukenger, there's a fight in the Precious bank, where every Artifact of Doom from the whole season is kept. Satoru and Ryuuwon do battle with many a MacGuffin of the Week that hadn't been mentioned since its original appearance.
  • In the opening scene of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger all the teams from the previous 34 series are shown (minus some Sixth Rangers) creating a Badass Army. The series itself is one big Continuity Cavalcade, as characters from the past 34 series makes a return practically every other episode. Between the actual episodes and the tie-in movies, all 34 have at least one returning character making an appearance.
• The Ultra Series, being a Toku long-runner, tends to have these:
  • Ultraman Taro have a brief history lesson of the war against Alien Empera in the 25th episode, with an illustration of Empera's monster army depicting over a dozen different monsters from the previous shows.
  • An episode of Ultraman 80 have the UGM crossing the Monster Graveyard, and seeing the various souls of kaiju defeated by past Ultramen, including Goldon, Arstron, Kingsaurus III, Vakishim, Eleking, Alien Icarus and Tyrant.
  • Ultraman Mebius have their resident defense force, Team GUYS, utilizing documents compiled from all past Showa Era teams, labelled under Document SSP, Document TDF, Document MAT, Document TAC, Document ZAT, Document MAC and Document UGM.
  • Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle, being set decades after the extinction of the kaiju, has the ZAP SPACY computer displaying data and info from various past monsters from the show. Right in the first episode, a quick glimpse of the database reveals Chandora, Alien Mefilas, Twin Tail, Gudon, Birdon and Saramandora.
  • Ultraman Taiga have an episode featuring an Alien Chibull Mad Scientist whose kidnapped captives, as shown in a shot of his laboratory's interiors, includes Alien Galo, Dethmon, Purana, Baby Samekujira, Lim. Eleking and Baby Vadata.
  • Ultraman Z introduces a Space Pirate enemy named Alien Barossa whose arsenal consists entirely of pilfered weapons, including a cape made of Sartan fur, Dada's shrink gun, seeds from the Juran plant, Juda Specter's Bat Caliber, Mold Specter's Bat Axe, Alien Magma's Magma Saber, Alien Babalou's Babalou Stick, Zamusha's Hoshikirimaru, Mecha Zamu's Sword Zamber, Alien Gapiya Abel's machete and Raiding Swords belonging to Valis Raiders.
  • Another member of the same race appears in the very next series, Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga, and once again this Alien Barossa gets to show off his stolen treasures against the series' other Treasure Raider, Ignis, where their assorted stolen goods include a Maga-basser feather, Alien Zarab's portable electric brain, an Okorin Ball parasite, a Bugdalas scale, Gilfa's head blade, a miniature Desimonia, Kodaigon The Other's Sea Bream companion and a Gorothunder club.
  • An episode of Ultraman Decker is set on a long-abandoned TPU Moon Base, which contains deactivated prototype models of numerous robotic kaiju from previous shows. A quick glance and one can see a Lovemos, a King Joe, a Legionoid, a Galactron, and if one knows where to look - a severed Rudian arm.
• A lot of spells the Russos have used over the course of Wizards of Waverly Place come back in the Grand Finale, either as an answer to a quiz question or a spell that they use in the competition.

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