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"Thank goodness everything is back to normal! Which is the only way it should ever be."
"Status quo, you know, is Latin for “the mess we're in”."
A more extreme version of Failure Is The Only Option, in which almost nothing changes. This usually happens in a series with no overarching conflict. The reasoning is probably that they want the audience to instantly know everything about the characters and situation, without having to bother with such things as "what happened last episode". For example, they may use a theme tune that tells us everything we need to know. Much like Failure Is The Only Option, any changes at all are resolved with a Snap Back or Reset Button.
And God forbid anyone change the status quo of the real world.
This trope is especially true for cartoons, where networks want to be free to broadcast reruns in any convenient order or lack thereof. Cartoons with Story Arcs have slowly started becoming more popular over the past decade or so, perhaps influenced by the popularity of the many, many anime series which have an ongoing continuity. It's still especially common in sitcoms, though — and as a result, there are plenty of Broken Aesops created by the fact that, although characters have learned their lessons or attempted to improve their predicaments, nothing ever really changes.
Negative Continuity is what happens when the writers become too aware of the ramifications of this: they change anything and everything every episode, knowing that absolutely none of it will ever stick.
For the opposite, see Nothing Is The Same Anymore.
Examples:
- Gilligans Island
- The Simpsons, with a few exceptions.
- An accusation sometimes leveled at Star Trek Voyager.
- Love Hina manages to reset practically every character or relationship development, even finally getting into Tokyo University or Naru shouting she loves Keitaro at the top of her lungs when he is only a few feet away seems to have no effect whatsoever.
- Averted by the end, thankfully. Sometimes at the last possible second, but averted. Still doesn't make up for them toying with it earlier.
- Though not entirely bound to the trope, Ranma ½'s only means of advancing its story appear to have been introducing new characters (possibly explaining its over time rather large cast), or having an existing character learn a new combat technique (usually to little lasting avail). Two of the story's main features, the relationships of the characters and the curses that some of them carried, remained set in stone despite the characters' many attempts to alter them one way or another.
- It's not just Ranma ½ - this pretty much describes every Rumiko Takahashi regular series (swapping "curses" for "mental hangups" and "unkillable bad guys" where applicable). Maison Ikkoku being the sole exception, and even then, change took 96 episodes to arrive and stick.
- This is painfully common in Inuyasha. Naraku proves to be such an unkillable bastard that he manages to maintain his status as the Big Bad for several hundred chapters, and is generally always the Man Behind The Man for every other villain who doesn't happen to be a Monster Of The Week.
- Marvel/DC Comics live by this trope. The worst offender of this being the "One More Day" arc in the Spider-Man comics that made at least half the known Spider-Man comics null and void.
- The marriage of Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Mary Jane has long been a sticking point in the craw of Marvel; long before "One More Day," the entire Clone Saga was created just to give them a big fat Reset Button to undo it with. And again, it invalidated a good chunk of Spider-Man's history, until it slipped into Dork Age status by fan demand.
- The irony being that the 'status quo' that many of these retcons are returning to hasn't been the state of affairs of at least twenty years; arguably, for most of the readers, Spider-Man's marriage is the status quo.
- The X-Men will never succeed. Mutants will always be Hated And Feared. Why? Because Wangst sells more books, and True Art Is Angsty. How's that for a Downer Ending?
- Hal Jordan's Green Lantern again! Thank goodness that 14 years of Kyle Rayner filler is over, right? Thanks a bunch, Dan!
- Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel actually didn't believe in this, but was forced into it by the editors at DC: he wrote a story in 1940 in which Superman tells Lois Lane his secret identity, and it isn't magically retconned away at the end of the issue. The story was drawn and inked before DC bosses got cold feet and scrapped it. Nearly 60 years would pass before Clark Kent and Lois finally hooked up.
- Pretty much every MMORPG, as covered in Perpetually Static. There are exceptions, though...
- Ever Quest II, for example, has occasional events that change the political landscape of the world, usually coinciding with expansions. Gameplay doesn't change much unless you're in one of the new starter cities, but the status quo is sometimes allowed to change.
- Also, EVE Online. Player organizations can and do control large areas of the game, and ownership changes all the time depending on how the latest war is going.
- This is largely the case in World Of Warcraft; Gnomeregan is never going to be reclaimed no matter how many billions of times the players clear it. An even worse example is the troll faction being displaced from it's home isle by a single 10th level character that any of their town guards could butcher.One notable exception occured with the release of patch 2.4, where the Captured Super Entity the Blood Elves used to create their own paladins escaped, and its entire captivity was revealed to be a divine Xanatos Gambit for the purpose of motivating the leader of the Blood Knights to swear fealty anew to the Light - which she did, willingly and enthusiastically. Even though the existing status quo was only slightly over a year old, many players called Dork Age on the change.
- Also, when someone opens the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, they are going to stay open after the event concludes, and all associated benefits, including a mount and a fancy title, cannot be gained anymore. The developers are said to be going to treat Frostmourne in roughly the same way.
- WOW does, however, manage to noticeably avert the trope with the Death Knight starting zone, which makes elaborate use of instancing to change the world a player perceives as the plotline progresses - a town full of hostile human units at the beginning is later inhabited by friendly undead units, for example.
- Kingdom Of Loathing lampshades this by revealing that nothing (literally) the player can do has an effect on the place.
- In Plane Shift, since the game hasn't reached version 1 yet, time is officially frozen and all changes to the world are accomplished via Ret Con. The only exception this troper can think of is the brief "Crystal Eclipse" storyline that bridged versions 0.3 and 0.4, which introduced two new gods and left a definite mark on the game's history.
- City Of Heroes flirts with this from time to time. While some villain groups have seen sufficient progress (especially the Fifth Column's eventual destruction and reformation into the Council), many fans have wondered just *how* many times, say, Countess Crey has to get arrested for murdering the original Countess Crey and taking her place for it to stick. The game never offers a reason why she's said to be in jail at the end of the story arc, but gamewise, her company and her persona are still just as effectively evil as ever.
- Also how many times the "Save Statesman" arc could possibly make any logical sense. You'd think the Freedom Phalanx would at least tie a bell around his neck to stop this from happening so often...
- City of Villains players know that there is no placating Blue Steel, no matter how hard they try.
- Face it: Ash's Pikachu is never going to be a Raichu. This is explained in a few Kanto episodes, most notably when the Vermillion Gym match has it face its evolved form. In-universe, it's a matter of pride. In real life, it's because they'd have to redesign the series' iconic mascot.
- Bulbasaur —while not quite as popular as its teammate— has this same dilemma when it shows signs of evolution (unlike Pikachu, Bulbasaur evolves by level). Once again, it's explained as a matter of pride. It's likely really because Ivysaur and Venusaur, while more powerful, aren't as cute. Bulbasaur has a Crowning Moment Of Awesome as a result when it uses the Solarbeam attack for the first time.
- On this note, Ash will always hit the Reset Button whenever he finds out about a new set, ditching the Big Three of the last in favor of the next. Don't even start on Team Rocket, who are perhaps the masters of maintaining the status quo of being villains.
- The Get Backers do not make a profit. Ever. On the off chance their task is performed to one hundred percent perfection and their client is on the up-and-up, they'll spend it almost instantly.
- Neither do Dragon Hunters.
- Ditto the crew of The Bebop (as far as their financial fortunes went, at any rate)
- And again ditto Lupin III. There's also the egregious example of the movie Island of Assassins, which ends with Lupin and Fujiko both trapped in a blimp that they can't leave without activating a lethal poison, and with the one known antidote explicitly shown to have failed. Needless to say, it never comes up again.
- Seven Days has essentially no character development. Frank and Olga never get their relationship past the flirting phase. Donovan never gets to backstep (or do much of anything else). Ramsey still hates Frank's guts all throughout the series even though Frank stuck out his neck to protect him on multiple occasions.
- Futurama lampshaded, deconstructed, and parodied this trope in an episode about television. When the main cast is forced to reshoot the final episode of Single Female Lawyer to prevent an alien invasion, Leela (as the titular character) decides to accept a marriage proposal. This angers the aliens, who proceed with their invasion until Leela improvises an ending that would result in her character remaining single, placating the aliens. (The fact that real life shows often destroy the status quo during the final episode is ignored.) The aliens are satisfied with this ending, and leave peacefully. With everything back to normal Fry has a short monologue (serving as a Spoof Aesop) about how things should always go back to normal at the end of an episode. The Camera then cuts to a devastated New New York, most of it having been destroyed during the episode. Of course, the status quo is restored by the next episode, so it's not actually a subversion. But it was a pretty good episode.
- This Troper believes that this qualifies it for a Double Subversion.
- Or played dead straight. Either works.
- After the end of the series and Bender's Big Score changed things somewhat, fans have taken to accusing The Beast With A Billion Backs of needlessly bowing to this trope.
- CtrlAltDel recently managed
 this, despite one of the characters becoming pregnant, by having her subsequently miscarry.
- Looks like it's going further With Ethan and Lilah possibly breaking off the marriage.
- Let's hope CTRLALTDEL does not fall into Wangst territory.
- Too late, there goes the video games store...◊ this comic is slowly falling into Code Geass levels of chracter f' off.
- And there goes Lillah. Code Geass levels of chracter f' off, CONFIRMED.
- Whoops, false alarm, looks like everything's back to normal (relatively). (Before the strip immediately above, Christian had already given the store back, as the whole buy-the-store thing was just a distraction so he could steal Lilah.
- As irritating as this trope can be in light-hearted series, it's even moreso in serious drama. Spooks has managed to hit both Anyone Can Die and Status Quo Is God, the latter for destroying half of south-east England, murdering the Royal Family, killing the parliament and leaving one of their main cast on death's door, before revealing the whole thing was a training exercise.
- The new edition of Warhammer 40000 states that mankind has entered the Time of Ending, with the long-awaited fall of the Imperium imminent. This troper has yet to speak to any fans who beleive this will actually happen.
- The webcomic Sexy Losers had a rule, declared early on by its creator in his annotations: "Everyone is locked into their sexual perversion of choice." This did mean, unfortunately, that his characters had little wiggle room - note how quickly the storyline "The Seduction of Madame X" cuts off; by the seventeenth time he's recycling jokes. Eventually, the series came to an abrupt halt, which This Troper interprets as the writer realizing he was out of things he could do with the characters without breaking his rule.
- Duck Tales — and, in fact, any other appearance of Scrooge Mc Duck — is oddly obsessive about this trope, even to the extent of Scrooge very rarely managing to walk home with the treasure he's seeking. Do they really think that an extra million or so dollars would have any effect on the lifestyle of a man with five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents?
- Anime filler naturally can't affect the overall plot too much. Two interesting examples from Naruto
- Sasuke is in the hospital at the end of the Search for Tsunade arc but gets revived in time for the Land of Tea filler arc. Since the next arc begins with Sasuke in the hospital, he gets injured again in the filler.
- In the Fuma Clan filler arc, Naruto and Sakura fight Kabuto...but since he's too major a villain to kill off, it turns out to be someone else in disguise.
- Family Guy had an episode in which Peter musters up the incentive to lose weight and get healthy, resulting in a fit, handsome guy. Of course, this being Family Guy, the episode ended with him falling into a vat of lard and becoming fat again.
- But Family Guy changes on occasion: Peter lost his job at the toy factory permanently (at the end of the episode, they point out how odd it is that the status quo has not been restored). Cleveland and Loretta separated and stayed that way. And a future episode will show Bonnie finally giving birth (she's been pregnant for 100+ episodes)
- Moral Orel presents a possible subversion. It took ten episodes (out of the third season's 13) before we saw anything of the aftermath of the major events of the second season's finale, "Nature," where Cheerful Child Orel calls out his father. However, the reason for this is because all those episodes take place before and/or during "Nature."
- Godzilla will always come back to either A) fight other (possibly more evil) monsters, B) Destroy a major city (Usually Tokyo) or C)Both. No matter HOW many times the JSDF try to stop him. Even when Godzilla IS defeated, he manages to come back in the next film.
- In the Web Comic The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, Bob's roof will always, somehow, get repaired after having been destroyed earlier in the story. Lampshaded by the fact that it is unapologetically a Running Gag.
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