Continuity Lock-Out in live-action TV.
- 12 Monkeys embraces Time Travel Tropes to such a degree that the plot becomes insanely complicated, particularly from the second season onward. There's very little As You Know dialogue, and later Previously on⦠segments will simply be gibberish to newcomers.
- Angel, from the end of the first season on, became increasingly arc-driven, to the point that season four required that you be familiar with many of the developments of the past two years to grasp the complexity of Jasmine's advance planning. Network execs reacted to this by insisting that season five be much more typical, revamping the entire location of the show and substantially modifying the mission of the main characters.
- Most of the jokes on Arrested Development barely make sense unless you have an intimate knowledge of the episodes that have come before (and, in some cases, the ones that come after). This is why the show developed something of a cult following once it was released on DVD.
- The promotional efforts for season four do very little to convince those who didn't watch the first three seasons they should watch the fourth due to it revolving around in jokes which are Pandering to the Base.
- Arrowverse: Legends of Tomorrow can be very difficult to follow if you haven't watched Arrow and The Flash (2014), the shows it spun off from, first. Most of the main characters debuted on one of those two shows, where their Super Hero Origins, the important relationships in their lives, and major life events (like Sara's death and resurrection, or Stein's previous Firestorm partnership with Ronnie) were all established, with Legends itself only explaining those events briefly.
- Goes to another level in Season 2, where the Legends are fighting a Villain Team-Up of bad guys who are also all from The Flash and Arrow, a new main character is introduced who's the ancestor of the hero from Vixen, and the show's first full crossover with Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl occurs.
- It's possible to watch Seasons 1 and 2 of Ashes to Ashes without first seeing Life on Mars - which introduces you to Gene, Chris, and Ray, and tells Sam Tyler's story - but if you haven't seen LoM by the time A2A hits Season 3, you're almost completely lost. Sam and what may or may not have happened to him play a huge part in the ongoing battle between Gene, Alex, and Jim Keats, and virtually all of 3x05 - the return of DCI "Bastard" Litton - is nigh-incomprehensible if you haven't seen LOM. Fully understanding 3x07 and 3x08, which pull a Cosmic Retcon on LOM and cause anyone who watched it to immediately start second-guessing everything they know? Forget about it.
- Babylon 5 freely admitted that it was a "novel on television", and no one starts reading a novel in the middle. J. Michael Straczynski said he dislikes the use of Previously on⦠segments, preferring instead to have characters recap the plot with As You Know speeches, which is arguably worse.
- JMS was one of the first people to realize the Internet's potential in directly communicating with fans. Among other things, he would sometimes post messages stating "If you've got friends who you've been trying to talk into watching the show, the block of episodes coming up should help catch them up on events."
- The 2000s Battlestar Galactica. The series premiere follows immediately from the events of the pilot miniseries, which was not initially included on the Season 1 DVD, and any given episode relies on the viewer being aware of plot details introduced several episodes or seasons earlier.
- Breaking Bad. Miss one episode? You're screwed! Except for "Fly". This was presumably a large part of why the show got mediocre ratings for its first three seasons, despite critical acclaim, but the ratings shot up when the series came to Netflix, as being able to easily watch every preceding episode at any time made the series much easier to follow for newer viewers.
- Better Call Saul compounds upon this issue by being just as continuity-heavy as Breaking Bad but as a direct followup with many of the same characters and plot threads, it is basically required to watch all of Breaking Bad (and, to a lesser extent, El Camino) first in order to fully understand the story due to a very large number of Call Forwards and numerous episodes showing Saul's fate in the present day as a Cinnabon manager in Omaha.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- The show could be somewhat guilty of this, especially during the fourth season and onwards. The most egregious example comes during "This Year's Girl/Who Are You", where Faith re-appears. It's assumed that the viewer knows her history, and despite this being lampshaded by newcomer Riley ("Who's Faith?"), very little explanation is given, and you'd better be watching the spin-off too, 'cos otherwise you won't see the end of this mini-arc or know what to make of Angel's appearance a few episodes later.
- Interesting is that this trope functions in-universe too. The Scoobies are a very self-contained group with their own in-jokes and insider information that makes getting close to them very difficult and makes miscommunication practically a given.
- And God help you if you pick up the Season Eight comics after a substantial time away from the show. Why is Dawn a giant? Why does Xander only have one eye? Why is there an army of Slayers running around? How did they become a paramilitary organization?
- Lampshaded again in a hilarious, fast-paced exchange between Buffy, Giles, and Principal Wood in "Lies My Parents Told Me" while discussing all the things that have happened to Spike.
- Happens in-universe when Joyce has to learn what it means that her daughter's a slayer.
- The resolution of "Chosen" also hinges significantly on a plot device that originated on the Angel episode "Home" and only found its way to Buffy via a crossover episode on the other show. Good luck making sense of what was going on if you weren't watching both shows religiously.
- Community can sometimes fall into a sort-of meta-example of this trope; something of a Troubled Production, its tendency towards Leaning on the Fourth Wall meant that it often referenced the behind-the-scenes issues it faced in the form of Take Thats and Biting-the-Hand Humor. However, since it also had a tendency to lay the meta-humor on a little thick and really go to town with OTT and out-there plots and jokes, this could all become a little overwhelming and off-putting for viewers who weren't aware of and/or didn't care about Dan Harmon's various issues with the network he was working for and just wanted to watch a half-hour sitcom. While most of the viewership could be relied upon to get the references, being the sort of trendy media-savvy behind-the-scenes-immersed fandom types who eat this kind of thing up, the fact remained that this didn't exactly help attract a wider audience, as the show continually struggled to attract ratings large enough to prevent it from being either repeatedly meddled-with or outright cancelled.
- Degrassi's status as a Long Runner franchise frequently delves into this. The series has run since The '80s, and certain plot points or storylines demand familiarity with previous incarnations, such as Degrassi Junior High or Degrassi High.
- Degrassi: School's Out! demands familiarity with the two prior shows, as a large part of its Darker and Edgier content is centered around the relationship between lead character Joey Jeremiah and minor character Tessa Campanelli (who largely appeared in blink-and-you-miss-it cameos in prior episodes), along with plot threads that directly followed on from previous episodes, including characterization (for Wheels) from the early seasons of Junior High. More overtly, Wheels references a girlfriend named Wendy who only appeared in a tie-in series of books centered around various students.
- Degrassi: The Next Generation launched itself into syndication with a pilot, "Mother and Child Reunion", that directly followed on from the events of School's Out!, despite being released nine years after the aforementioned film. Emma Nelson is the grown-up baby seen in Junior High and High, Joey and Caitlin's relationship (and him cheating on her with Tessa) is discussed, and the titular Class Reunion is full of references to what happened in prior shows. This phenomenon may also be why a scene where Wheels apologizes to Lucy (who is blind as a result of the car crash he caused a decade earlier) was pulled from U.S. airings, as it relied on specific information from School's Out! that referenced their conversation.
- "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" the seventh episode of Next Generation's third season, is this for U.S. syndicated airings. A character who (to audiences only familiar with this specific show) randomly appears at a bowling alley, is shown to be in conflict with Snake for an unexplained reason, and makes oblique references to driving drunk and causing the Death of a Child. To viewers unfamiliar with Wheels, he might as well be a random guest star who shows up to provide An Aesop about how people can't stop fighting to stay alive, even though his appearance functionally resolves a plot point 11 years in the making.
- Claude's suicide in High is brought up long after the fact within Next Generation, specifically in Season 10 when Snake talks with Eli about finding Campbell's body. The same goes for Tessa Campanelli, a character who gets obliquely referenced almost every time Joey and Caitlin interact, but rarely gets any more discussion than being the one Joey cheated on her with.
- This occurred later on in Next Generation, as events that took place early on in the series were repeated nearly Once per Episode. Manny and Emma often reference past events including Manny's promiscuous past, Manny's relationship with Craig, and the fact that they've dated/liked several of the same characters. One season even had graduated characters have post-secondary adventures that were completely unrelated to Degrassi, confusing new viewers who might wonder why certain characters are at university or college and never directly interacting with the main cast.
- Doctor Who:
- This trope is often blamed as one of the contributing factors to the cancellation of the original series. Amongst a lot of other issues that the show was facing at the time, the fact that a fairly large portion of the stories broadcast during the early-to-mid 1980s seemed to hinge upon the audience being aware of characters, events and storylines which hadn't been seen for upwards of ten or even twenty years didn't make the show any easier to watch. Matters weren't helped by the fact that this was well before VHS and DVD was prominent enough to allow people to catch up on the old stuff, and that a lot of this old stuff had been deleted from the archives anyway, meaning that even if the technology had existed, the original material didn't (one of the worst offenders being the 1985 serial "Attack of the Cybermen", which requires intimate knowledge of two sixties serials which were completely or partially missing at the time). While the show eventually got better about this and later stories tended to either downplay the continuity references or incorporate them more effectively (particularly during the 1987-1989 seasons), the damage had arguably been done since the ratings had fallen drastically by this point.
- The show did an entire season as one fourteen-part serial for 1986, The Trial of a Time Lord. The producer was aware that viewers might find this difficult to follow and wrote recaps for the continuity announcer to read out before each episode, although due to a mistake these weren't used for the first few episodes (and on the first episode to use them the wrong one was read out).
- Back in the early days where the story format was the multi-part serial, showing up in the middle after having skipped a couple of episodes often meant you would have no idea at all what was going on. This got a lot easier to deal with as the writers (starting from around the Pertwee era) became better at structuring serials and having characters quickly and organically recap events. Initial US syndication of the series got around this by having a narrator provide recaps before every episode.
- Also one of the problems with the TV movie β they'd included enough from the old series without properly explaining it that it wasn't going to make nearly as much sense to anyone unfamiliar with Doctor Who. Given that this was long prior to YouTube and BBC America, most Americans knew little to nothing about it, and while it tossed in all kinds of plot points from the series it failed to give them nearly enough context. This is mentioned specifically on the movie's DVD commentary. Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann in particular thought that the first act of the movie should have opened up with the TARDIS landing in San Francisco (sans interior shots), thus saving the whole Bigger on the Inside thing as a big surprise for the audience during the later scene where Chang Lee steps into the TARDIS. Instead, we see the large TARDIS interior right off the bat, with no context.
- In the new series, the later into any given series an episode occurs, the lower the likelihood of a casual viewer having any clue who the characters are or what is going on, at least in terms of ongoing story arcs (individual episodes tend to remain stand alone). Some episodes also make references to events/characters from the classic series, though rarely in any fashion that would "lock out" first-time or casual viewers.
- The franchise has sometimes used "continuity lockout" concerns to its advantage in terms of merchandising. For example, around the time the Sontarans were reintroduced into the series during the 2008 season, a DVD box set of all four original-series stories featuring them was released.
- In the Modern Era, the showrunners explicitly consider introductory episodes featuring new Doctors to be jumping-on points, requiring no previous knowledge of the show beyond the basic concept. The introduction of a new companion is likewise often also treated in this fashion. However, while Nine, Eleven, and Thirteen's debuts follow this concept to the letter, Ten and Twelve's don't quite do so (possibly because each had the same showrunner as the previous Doctor did):
- "The Christmas Invasion", the Tenth Doctor's debut bridging Series 1 and 2, assumes familiarity with Rose, Jackie, and Mickey's specific relationships to the Doctor β who is sidelined for much of the story due to regeneration sickness, leaving them to carry the action. Also, Ten's choice to bring down Prime Minister Harriet Jones at the end means more to those who saw "Aliens of London"/"World War Three" and know that she was supposed to lead Britain into a new Golden Age according to Nine. A newbie might be better off skipping to the first episode of Series 2, "New Earth", as a jumping-off point (it does feature the return of a villain from Series 1, but their concept and significance are quickly summed up).
- "Deep Breath", Twelve's first story and the Series 8 opener, not only carries over Eleven's companion Clara Oswald but also the Paternoster Gang: a motley trio of a Silurian woman, her human wife, and a Cloudcuckoolander Sontaran who becomes their butler, who all live together in Victorian England where the Silurian is a consulting detective for the police! The next episode, "Into the Dalek", is also problematic for newbies because this Doctor is one of the grouchier, less socially skilled ones; those unaware of Clara's past with the amiable Eleven may well ask why she's travelling with Twelve (the denouement of "Deep Breath" explains it). It's not until Episode 3 ("Robot of Sherwood") that Twelve's more whimsical, likable side is first seen at length, with an opening scene that sums up the show's premise to boot.
- Occasionally, mid-Doctor-run episodes feature content that avoids continuity lock-out by organically incorporating dialogue and scenes that help explain the show without stopping the story. The Series 9 two-parter "Under the Lake"/"Before the Flood" runs down most of the concepts of the series β ranging from why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside and the relationship dynamic between the Doctor and his companion to discussions about paradoxes and fixed points in time. (Reminding audiences of the latter also helped cut down on extensive exposition in that season's finale, "Hell Bent", which "Before the Flood" turned out to foreshadow.)
- This video of fan reactions
during the 50th anniversary demonstrates this beautifully. Long time fans recognized the voice of Tom Baker almost immediately, while newcomers mistook him initially for Peter Capaldi until they saw the face. - After several seasons' worth of this trope, the Series 10 premiere β actually titled "The Pilot" β was specifically intended as a fresh start for new or lapsed viewers after Series 9 tied up some ongoing storylines. It introduced the first new "traditional" companion since Series 7 and much of it and the following two episodes were devoted to introducing her to the Doctor and his world before the Story Arc fully kicked in and picked up a dangling plot thread. The first teaser for the season even had the tagline "See the universe anew".
- The annual Christmas episodes of the revival era and any other out-of-season specials are generally regarded as separate from individual seasons and initially get standalone DVD releases. Some may not be included in the regular rerun rotation of the show, either. Unfortunately, while a few do work as standalone adventures, any special that serves as a Doctor's Grand Finale, "The Snowmen", "The Day of the Doctor", "Last Christmas", and "The Husbands of River Song" rely heavily on the events of previous episodes and/or have plot developments vital to later ones. While most of the specials are eventually packaged with the regular seasons for "Complete Series" box sets (and a "Complete Specials" box set for David Tennant's final stories), fans who rely on DVD releases to keep up with the show can't afford to wait for those without risking spoilers. "The Day of the Doctor", "The Time of the Doctor" (Eleven's Grand Finale) and "Twice Upon a Time" (Twelve's Grand Finale) were never collected in Complete Series box sets, but rather larger "Complete [Insert Actor's Name Here] Years" packages and/or other themed collections.
- A frequently criticism of Series 12 is that it dives right into this problem, as a lot of its "nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-again" type revelations hinge not just on knowledge of the modern series or the classic series, but specifically knowledge of a forty-year old plot point from a story that even the classic series itself mostly ended up ignoring and that very few, even among the die-hard fans, were exactly clamouring for further development of. Specifically, the fact that in The Brain of Morbius several faces who are apparently (but somewhat ambiguously) pre-William Hartnell Doctors can be seen on a screen when the Doctor engages in a psychic mind-battle with Morbius.
- This trope is often blamed as one of the contributing factors to the cancellation of the original series. Amongst a lot of other issues that the show was facing at the time, the fact that a fairly large portion of the stories broadcast during the early-to-mid 1980s seemed to hinge upon the audience being aware of characters, events and storylines which hadn't been seen for upwards of ten or even twenty years didn't make the show any easier to watch. Matters weren't helped by the fact that this was well before VHS and DVD was prominent enough to allow people to catch up on the old stuff, and that a lot of this old stuff had been deleted from the archives anyway, meaning that even if the technology had existed, the original material didn't (one of the worst offenders being the 1985 serial "Attack of the Cybermen", which requires intimate knowledge of two sixties serials which were completely or partially missing at the time). While the show eventually got better about this and later stories tended to either downplay the continuity references or incorporate them more effectively (particularly during the 1987-1989 seasons), the damage had arguably been done since the ratings had fallen drastically by this point.
- Dollhouse: Joss Whedon loves this trope. This was particularly true of the s2 episode "The Attic": the concept of the Attic had been mentioned only once since the previous season, and there was no explanation of who Mr. Dominic is (and he hadn't been seen or mentioned since season 1, either).
- Farscape. The show would have been more successful if this trope hadn't intersected badly with Growing the Beard. According to articles, the network executives cancelled Farscape precisely because of the Continuity Lockout.
- Fringe avoided this problem during seasons one and two, thanks to its heavier focus on self-contained Monster of the Week plots, with the occasional Wham Episode for the longtime fans. According to JJ Abrams and the other Fringe producers, they specifically wanted to make the show more accessible and avoid the impenetrable-for-newbies style progression that Lost did. However, by the time season three came around, the plot became too tough for new viewers to follow, so the show's structure became far less episodic. It's understandable though, as the more procedural feel of the first two seasons would have watered down the major plot developments (with many of them reaching Mind Screw territory) that season three unraveled.
- Game of Thrones is absolutely unforgiving of latecomers. Even with the recaps that start each episode, there's not much that can be done to help somebody who is forced to remember events from Season 1, Episode 1 to make sense of half of Season 6, Episode 6. For their part the producers realize this and so the Blu-ray releases include optional on-screen concordances to help bring viewers up to speed on characters and locations.
- Try watching Glee mid-season without the "previously on" segment to clue you in. The pregnancy plot was confusing enough in context. One can only imagine trying to watch an episode that contained that plot without knowing the context. Averted in the second season, however.
- Grey's Anatomy, a Long Runner, which, as of 2019, now in its 15th season (it launched in 2005) may seem like a Patient of the Week medical drama (and it can be, at times), but there are continuity nods and an occasional Call-Back to earlier episodes. The show attempted trying to use a Jumping-On Point for newcomers in 2014, 2017 and 2018, but this show is equally as problematic as Arrowverse for a newcomer.
- The Good Doctor (created by the same team as House, and the show being a Foreign Remake of the Korean series Good Doctor), focusing on Dr. Shaun Murphy, who is on the autistic spectrum, is also prone to this but it's a Downplayed Trope, even though it has Patient of the Week as one of its main hallmarks. There is a Myth Arc running through the series - which will make little sense if you haven't seen the pilot episode, and each season has a developing Story Arc with a Continuity Nod to earlier events. It's not as bad as some franchises, but it's one of those shows that viewers can't just jump into.
- Haven has an issue that combines British Brevity with a layered Myth Arc with Cerebus Syndrome that makes jumping into it in the middle impossible. Particularly since the show just goes full steam ahead each episode and doesn't really bother to provide recaps for the sake of the audience. In season four, newcomer Jennifer acts as The Watson and that helps a bit, but she catches on quickly and that plot point fades away in a couple episodes.
- Heroes. Good Lord, Heroes. The writers really wanted to give the impression that there were characters with powers everywhere, which is one of the reasons it was so interesting and complex. On the other hand, even viewers who watch every week could be confused with all of the new characters and old characters simply disappearing. Plus all of the Face Heel Turns and Heel Face Turns. Just buy the DVDs. It's more comprehensible that way.
- Around 20-25% of How I Met Your Mother consists of flashbacks — not just distant flashbacks to the characters' youth, but flashbacks that occurred during the show's run, during distinct canonical periods of the show's run, and precise episodes or even scenes of the show's run — and is full to the brim with running gags, in jokes, huge quantities of detailed backstory, and plot elements and assumptions that are rarely if ever lampshaded and utterly inexplicablerly inexplicable if you haven't seen the previous (or sometimes, like Arrested Development above, even future) episodes (or flashbacks, or flashforwards) that explain them. The only reason the show isn't the most insular and locked-out show ever broadcast is because of Future!Ted's narration, which reminds viewers of events or situations relevant to the episode at hand and often recaps essential plot points with a quick "Kids, remember how I told you about..." so that at least the plots make sense, even if many of the jokes and character reactions will leave new viewers scratching their heads in bewilderment.
- In Treatment really requires the viewer to watch every episode in order, even if you don't like one (or more) characters and want to skip them from week to week. If you do not view every episode, you won't understand what's going on later in the week or in the series.
- Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, the adaptation of Kamen Rider Ryuki suffered from this. Why? The writers wanted to tell a complex story as befitting the source material (which is immensely convoluted) instead of the self-contained Monster of the Week episodes of, for example, Power Rangers. The problem note was that the show was targeted towards children who probably thought they could skip an episode and catch up the following week. This had caused viewers to become confused and the ratings dropped and eventually the show was Screwed by the Network to the point that the final two episodes NEVER got to air on American television.
- Speaking of Kamen Rider, there's Kamen Rider Decade, which has the titular rider visit alternate versions of the 9 past Rider Worlds. This might not sound so bad, except key plot details are kept the same - while the main rider in the alternate version of a world is not the main rider from the world represented by that series, chances are that if you've seen an AR version of one of the 9 previous Kamen Rider series, you can figure out what was the plot twist in the original version.
- Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has this pop up about three times in-universe, with different characters being away from the story on some of its key events for some reason note and it shows. It can also induce this in viewers, but they at least have the episode recaps and outside sources.
- The Showa era as a whole has this to an extent - with the exception of Kamen Rider Amazon, all the series would have the previous riders show up at some point, either in the series or, in the case of Kamen Rider Super-1, a movie; however, Kamen Rider BLACK averted this, by having no previous riders show up, nor any connections to the previous shows; however, Kamen Rider BLACK RX played this straight by having the first 10 riders show up later on. Outside of the aforementioned Decade, Heisei-era shows largely avert this outside of crossover films.
- Lost. There's dozens of major and minor characters, all of whom have their own unique and complicated backstories. The fact that these backstories often intersect in unlikely (and often downright implausible) ways makes things even more confusing. Many people who started watching halfway through the show found a little humor in the fact that the show was called "Lost".
- The season 5 premiere features Hurley giving a hilarious rant about EVERYTHING that happened in the first four seasons, which is quite fun to watch with people who haven't seen anything else about the show.
- By the final season ABC was running multiple clip shows per season plus weekly reruns with the important continuity details annotated on-screen.
- Love Island, a British TV reality show, tends to suffer from this a lot as of the 2015 Continuity Reboot. Although every season is self-contained, the actual episodes are not, and even the Filler episodes have to be watched to make sense. If you miss one night's episode, you miss quite a lot of subtext, in-jokes and every season's Romance Arc. This was one of the major criticisms of the 2019 season as viewers who missed an episode would not get why Lucie Donlan was criticized for being tomboyish (even though some viewers see her more as Tomboy with a Girly Streak) and Zara McDermott's faux Alpha Bitch moments as well as the Wes Nelson/Megan Barton-Hanson Story Arc. It's a series that's hard for a newcomer to get into, as much as anything in the sci-fi or mystery genre.
- Mad Men suffers from this in spades. The episodes are generally not self-contained, and most of the subtext is built upon episodes from previous seasons. The problem is that this series built on subtext. Viewers must watch from the absolute, S1E1 beginning. The Previously on⦠segments absolutely do not help.
- The Mandalorian, the Star Wars franchise's first-ever live-action TV show.
- The first season ends on a Wham Shot revealing that the Big Bad owns the Darksaber, a unique black-bladed lightsaber connected to Mandalorian culture. People who haven't seen the animated shows The Clone Wars and Rebels will not understand the significance of this beyond that it's a lightsaber, especially not the fact that the Darksaber was last seen on Rebels in the possession of Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze.
- The second season pulls in a few characters from the animated shows with zero introduction, which, like the Darksaber, leaves both Mando and some viewers feeling vaguely uncomfortable at why these people are such a big deal. It also brings back the Dark Troopers, who haven't been seen since a certain '90s video game. Plus, it ends with a cameo from the original-trilogy era Luke Skywalker.
- The third season, which Disney ended up omitting from the first wave of Mandalorian home media releases, continues from a crossover with The Book of Boba Fett. People who either skipped or forgot about that show don't get an explanation as to how Mando obtained an N-1 Starfighter as his new spaceship, or regained Grogu, whom the Season 2 finale sent away to receive Jedi training from Luke Skywalker.
- When Netflix aired Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, viewers were left wondering who any of the characters are. That's because Tokyo Stories was the fourth season of the show from Japan; literally three seasons and a full-length movie's worth of Character Arcs and Character Development pre-Tokyo Stories were missing. Netflix partially resolved this by streaming the first three seasons as simply Midnight Diner, but since the rights for the first and second films still belong to its Japanese producers, a couple of Plot Points within Tokyo Stories that rely on knowledge of the films will be lost on the audience if they never got a chance at watching both movies.
- Minority Report (2015) was a One Season Wonder due in part to this trope. It is a Sequel Series to the 2002 film, which wasn't readily available at the time, and is all-but incomprehensible to viewers who hadn't seen the film recently.
- Once Upon a Time seems to be heading this way. Watching one of the later episodes without being caught up will be totally incomprehensible, since it has no consistent structure and the episodes build on what has happened before. There are around ten or so main characters, and literally dozens of significant/notable characters, and at least two plots running simultanously due to the switches between real time and time in TEF.
- It got so bad that the premier of the second season was prefaced by an hour-long program with the sole purpose of catching up the viewers on the various plot threads and backstories (something that happened in each subsequent season as well, probably in hopes of averting this.)
- Orphan Black has a complex network of conspiracies, hidden agendas within hidden agendas, a fair number of Walking Spoilers, and a plot that progresses at break-neck speeds. Missing any individual episode may mean missing a crucial plot twist, or even several of them. Also, many of the characters are not what they seem, so you have to pay close attention their Hidden Depths and Character Development to understand their actions.
- ITV Genre Mash Up Edutainment series Police, Camera, Action! started out in September 1994 as standalone episodes, but Continuity Creep set in over the next few years, with these episodes slowly introducing elements that would be mentioned in later series:
- "Don't Look Back In Anger", which aired in November 1997 and was supposed to have been a Clip Show, but made references to previous episodes that a new viewer wouldn't be familiar with.
- "Learning the Hard Way", which aired 19 January 1999. Although it was a Clip Show (celebrating three years of the series so far) and a Milestone Celebration, it was difficult for a new viewer who hadn't seen the show before, introducing concepts like driver safety tactics and references to the earlier 1994-1996 series, why or how a Los Angeles helicopter pilot acted as a citizen journalist (which made no sense unless you'd seen the 1996 series).
- The show then attempted a Jumping-On Point with the episode "What Drives You Mad", which aired in January 2000, but this trope was Zig-Zagged, as a Very Special Episode in July 2000 included a few call-backs to older episodes.
- "Danger Ahead", which aired 7 August 2000 is actually an Innocuously Important Episode of the series.
- Power Rangers Beast Morphers's final episodes rely heavily on viewers remembering from past Power Rangers series, the big one being Power Rangers RPM as it ties into The Reveal in the second-to-last episode.
- Quantico relies heavily on plot twists and serialization, not to mention tracking two time periods (the past, where Alex Parrish and the other characters are training at the FBI Academy, and the present, where Alex has been accused of blowing up Grand Central Terminal) that trade off every twenty minutes or so, and the Opening Narration mostly only introduces the premise. Good luck keeping track of what's going on if you miss an episode.
- The Sarah Jane Adventures:
- An early version of "Secrets of the Stars" would have featured aliens named the Mandragora who had last appeared on Doctor Who in the 1970s. This was one of the reasons why they were replaced with the Ancient Lights in the final product β the story would have been relying too much on one from decades ago and thus locked out the young target audience. But this didn't stop episodes being produced that featured characters like the Brigadier and Jo Grant, in particular Jo, who hadn't even been mentioned on Doctor Who for nearly 40 years, yet much of "Death of the Doctor" required familiarity with the character to truly appreciate β though short of not doing the story at all, this is unavoidable.
- In another episode, Sarah Jane hacks a probe on Mars to redirect it just as a pyramid was about to come into view. The only explanation Sarah offers viewers and her sidekicks is that there are some things man wasn't meant to find. Only someone familiar with "Pyramids of Mars" during the days of the Fourth Doctor would know about Sutekh the Destroyer.
- The Stargate franchise has been accused of this. A newbie coming it at the eighth season of Stargate SG-1, for instance, is going to need some help understanding who and what all those species are meant to be about. Some people almost gave up after sitting through the first episode β without seeing the movie first. "Who are all these people?!" Somehow it did not occur to the writers that it carried over a whopping six characters from the movie without bothering to give them any proper introduction, in addition to introducing five new major characters in this episode alone. The fact that they moved through Abydos and Chulak in large crowds didn't help. Starting with "Emancipation", when it became obvious that they were focusing on a four-person team, things started to look more manageable.
- Sons of Anarchy is heavily serialized. Essentially, Seasons 1-3 and 4-7 have largely continuous plotlines.
- The Star Trek franchise was reset precisely because of this trope. The original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager largely averted this by focusing on "crisis-of-the-week" standalone episodes that could be watched in (almost) any order, without sacrificing narrative. By the time Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was knee-deep in the Dominion War arc, you'd have to have watched the prior seasons to understand the main conflict and the various interpersonal conflicts. Star Trek: Enterprise also took this trope to an extreme point by having many episodes only serve to tangle up continuity even further by trying to resolve plot holes and conflicting elements from previous series.
- The "Mirror Universe" episodes in DS9 and Enterprise assume you have knowledge of the MU episodes from the original series (and, in DS9's case, the earlier seasons). Granted, that's one of the original series' most iconic episodes, but it's not as if everyone watching the modern Star Trek shows had seen the original.
- A large reason why the Enterprise series finale, "These Are The Voyages", was such a polarizing episode was due to the B-plot (which was a concurrent side-story to the Next Generation seventh-season episode "The Pegasus" - if you've never seen the episode, you're lost as to why Riker is mulling over a decision to tell Picard about his involvement with an illegal Federation cloaking device).
- In-universe, the Voyager cast, being stranded in the Delta Quadrant with no contact with the Federation, is entirely unaware of what's going on in the Alpha Quadrant. By the time they make contact with the Alpha Quadrant for the first time, the Alpha Quadrant is in the heat of the Dominion War... and the Voyager crew have never even heard of the Dominion note .
- One of the biggest issues with the franchise was the approach that everyone watching it is a devoted Trekker and not someone tuning in for the first time. Despite plots that wrapped up neatly at the end of (most of) the episodes, it treated its large and complicated universe as if everyone watching already knew everything about it. While a casual or first-time viewer might have heard of Vulcans or Klingons (even if they might not know all the particulars), this definitely could not be said about Data, Q, Betazoids, Ferengi, Romulans, Bajorans, Odo, the Dominion or even really the Borg.
- This even happened with a Fan Fic series, the immense, long-running Kraith saga by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and about 40 other people. Lichtenberg began the stories in 1969, then allowed other writers to contribute stories in the Kraith universe. As stories piled up and what was and wasn't officially "canon" Kraith became more difficult to determine, a writers' guide was provided along with a quality control committee — keep in mind this is for a fan fiction series. Numerous players and multiple scorecards later, Kraith simply ground to a halt. The introduction of Sondra Marshak as a chief Kraith Creator didn't help — Lichtenberg even flat-out said that her plots were like a kitten wound up in a ball of yarn.
- Succession, a HBO drama launched in 2018 has had this problem from the start. Early episodes used to have a Previously onβ¦, but as the next two seasons went on, it dropped the Cold Open sometimes. The context on why the family members were arguing over sale of the family business, and who the sales were too, plus Waystar Royco could be confusing to a new viewer. Also, it has a large cast and even the One-Shot Character may get a mention further down the line, confusing some new viewers. For example, the significance of Kendall and his fractious relationship with his ex-wife Rava could be seen as confusing to some viewers, or Shiv's fighting with her husband Tom.
- Supernatural, especially since season 4, when the angels started getting involved. Considering the show's high HSQ, watching a newer episode without following the story makes for bizarre and incoherent viewing. Take season 4, episode 16: "So, the guy torturing that dude who looks like a paedophile is the good guy? What are the angels stabbing each other over?"
- Super Sentai: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger zig-zags this trope. While the series isn't a sequel, and it doesn't involve the alternate world plot that Decade has, it does feature all 34 previous sentai teams. However, like Decade, representatives from the previous 34 sentai teams show upnote , except these versions are the canon versions of the rangers, although much like Decade, there are tribute episodes to certain Sentai. How much of a lockout depends on the tribute episode in question - some, such as Now More Road Safety and Lion, Run will not spoil the corresponding sentai if watched before said sentai; others, however, such as The Serious Rebellion and The Guaranteed Showy Samurai and Wings are Eternal, on the other hand, contain characters related to a major twist near the end and mention that plot twist. Interestingly enough, its American adaptation averts this trope.
- The Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood was sometimes reliant on continuity from its parent show, and its writers stubbornly refused to explain the connections any more than was absolutely necessary.
- Torchwood's main character, Captain Jack Harkness, is shrouded in mystery. Some of his backstory is revealed on Doctor Who, while some remains hidden. A viewer of Torchwood alone could wait forever for explanations that already happened on another show. The same is true of the Torchwood Institute itself.
- The Series 1 episode "Cyberwoman" assumes a familiarity with the Doctor Who Series 2 finale episodes for viewers to understand why the villain is so frightening. Without that information, viewers would be baffled by references to recent historical events that bear great significance to the plot.
- Series 1 never really explains why Jack is taking loving care of an amputated hand, either.
- The reason behind Jack's jarring personality shift at the beginning of Series 2 is only vaguely alluded to within the actual series. The viewer would have had to have watched the three-part Doctor Who Series 3 finale to understand this.
- Ditto for Jack's brief cameo in the Doctor Who special "The End of Time", his sole 2010s appearance in the parent show. You would have had to have seen Torchwood: Children of Earth to understand why he was drinking away his sorrows on a space freighter rather than fighting aliens in Cardiff. This was especially an issue given how seriously non-child-friendly Children of Earth was!
- Later entries in the Ultra Series tend to be guilty of this. Ultraman Mebius is the biggest offender as viewers will need to be familiar with the Showa series in order to understand many of the references to past events the series makes. Many other entries (like Ultraman Orb, Ultraman Ginga, Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle, and Ultraman Zero's stuff) tend to feature monsters and Ultras from older shows, so some degree of familiarity with them is needed with the major entries of the franchise. The Ultraman Zero movie Ultraman Saga, for instance, contains spoilers for Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Cosmos.
- The Walking Dead is heavily serialized, features a massive revolving door cast who frequently die and evolve, changes locations occasionally, has had four showrunners with different styles, and each season takes about five months to air, divided by a seven month hiatus, so new viewers really ought to watch the show in chronological order from the first episode unless they want to be confused.
- In more recent seasons, since The BBC did a soft Continuity Reboot of Watchdog in 2015, a consumer-focused show, this is a rare example of a consumer show/documentary having Continuity Lockout which means that new viewers won't always know what's going on and may have to resort to the iPlayer to understand. This is a show where there is No Antagonist (apart from human nature as the antagonist) and the only Story Arc is consumer issues.
- Weeds tends to reveal major plot points in the current arc each episode, making it very difficult to get on track if you miss even one episode. Watching an episode in the middle of the season with no previous context will make no sense.
- HBO's The Wire offers very little exposition to explain or remind the audience of past events that are referenced or provide context for the current scene. Even in the first season it would be almost impossible to truly understand everything that is going on without having watched from the beginning.
- So bad in The X-Files that even a paperback fan book couldn't sum up the mythology of some of the episodes in less than three pages. It doesn't help that the show's continuity is all over the map.
