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"Thank goodness everything is back to normal! Which is the only way it should ever be." — Marge Simpson, The Simpsons
"Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'." — Ronald Reagan
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 title sequence 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 surrounding 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. Or, perhaps, simply as a result of a generation of Americans and other Western audiences (implied by the previous statement) growing up with more complex media as the Eastern audience had the generation before along with the increasing availability of personal creative display via the Internet. 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.
It can be very difficult to juggle an unchanging status quo without gradually turning off your audience; characters and situations which never change tend to get stale after a while, and audiences can get a bit tired of seeing the Reset Button being pushed every time it looks like something might happen to change things — especially if the thwarted change was potentially more interesting than the current status quo.
This aspect can also often apply to Shipping in well... fiction in general. Ever get the feeling that while a certain story may enjoy some Ship Tease but only the fanfiction seems to be the only stories that actually develop these insinuated romances and the writer(s) would like to keep it that way? Ever notice how many times there are characters whose sole purpose in the plot is to be a perpetually unrequited love interest? (Though granted often enough if that is the case then the script will just LOVE to remind us every chance it gets.) Fortunately while there are some cases in which it can either go in a good way or a bad way. But there is a pretty darn good chance that many stories will love to imply potential romances every chance they get but whether if they actually do anything BUT imply them can be a different story.
Status Quo Is God is a very powerful trope, even more powerful than the notoriously powerful Happily Ever After trope. It often happens that a show will be the kind of show that lends itself to Happily Ever After endings and usually has them. But sometimes, a story can't have an ending that is both happy and maintains the status quo—thus, these two powerful tropes are in conflict with each other. When this contlict occurs, it's likely that the status quo will be maintained, and the ending will be less happy than it might have been if not for Status Quo Is God.
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.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- In general, whenever an anime movie is released, it is treated as little more than filler and rarely if ever affects the plot of the main anime thanks to the movie being produced after the anime.
- Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Movie plays with this trope, as the characters literally mention how many powerful cards they have that they will never use again, and how they will never mention the events that happened in the film again.
- The Netherworld is never mentioned after Poltergeist Report.
- Bleach: Memories of nobody does this but they actually have an explanation. Similar to Pokémon: The First Movie it can take place any time in the anime's story arc but at the end, everyone is forced to forget the events of the film so naturally no one would remember it. Especially since nobody would believe them if they did.
- Subverted in the first couple of Digimon movies, in which the first three actually explain something important to the backstory of the Adventure arcs such as the events at Highton View Terrace, DNA Digivolution being seen for the first time, and Willis who was mentioned briefly in Adventure 02.
- The first Fullmetal Alchemist anime ended with a film that acted as a conclusion to the anime's story in a subversion.
- Similarly, the Digimon Tamers movie Runaway Locomon also acts as a sequel to the events of the series.
- Dragon Ball Z did this with sagas. Yes, the new Big Bad comes in and kills a bunch of main characters, and a couple cities nobody cares about, but at the end of the season, there will always be a Dragon Ball hunt, and things will be restored. Until the next alien/robot/wizard comes out the sky and starts killing people again. Although to be fair, Vegeta does change, if only very slowly.
- 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. In fact, when the story got to the point where it had nowhere to go but to change, the series ended.
- 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 (So far...), and even then, change took 96 episodes to arrive and stick.
- This is painfully common in Inu Yasha. 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.
- Which explains why Inu Yasha lasted so friggin' long. Seriously, is there a trope for "super-long series that maintains the status quo because people don't stop watching it?"
- While the series is very episodic, one of the movies can be very guilty of this. Namely by two aspects of the movie such as a rather questionable quote from Sesshomaru: "I am Sesshomaru and I protect no one!" And earlier in the movie Inu-Yasha's necklace got broken and was free from Kagome's "Sit Boy!", but unfortunately at the end of the movie Kagome tricked Inu-Yasha into putting it back on.
- Though to be fair, in one of the other movies it was debatable, namely on how Inu-Yasha and Kagome had a tender makeout scene. (Fans of the pairing needless to say generally loved it. And even certain folks whom normally don't like it appreciated this movie for actually doing something with it than the endless tension that goes on in the series. However it's an anime movie based on an anime TV show, so therefore it's not canon.)
- 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, and Ash is apparently only allowed to have one full-evolved Pokemon per season. 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 crappy 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.
- Or will be billed for the collateral damage they racked up on their mission, or have their fees taken by the outside contractors they hired to assist them, or Paul will just take their payment as part of the payment for their monstrously huge tab...
- 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.
- 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.
- The same filler arc features Orochimaru. Also as a disguised filler villain. Speaking with villain-disguised-as-Kabuto. Amongst themselves. In character as Orochimaru and Kabuto! Though presumably the idea was that Orochimaru left these disguised villains behind in his base as decoys, the way it was presented manages to combine all the worst aspects of Never Trust A Trailer within the context of the episode itself.
- This also applies to any filler arc that has at least some potential to get Naruto close to finding Orochimaru and/or Sasuke (Mizuki, Bikochuu, Land of Sea, Three Tails). In the Treasure Hunt arc, Tsunade threatens to send Naruto, Hinata and Kiba back to the academy if they fail — they obviously don't.
- She was probably lying in the first place.
- The Three-Tails filler arc focuses on the struggle between Konoha and Orochimaru over the Three Tailed Beast. If you read the manga, you know that Akatsuki manages to capture it, making the outcome no longer a surprise.
- The "perpetually broke" version of this trope was given a unique triple subversion in One Piece. Despite being pirates, the Straw Hats don't usually have much money around. In one anime filler arc, they finally have gotten their hands on a pile of gold, but they end up in tightly secured Marine base. Just when they make it back to their ship and are on their way to freedom, they realize that all their gold was confiscated by the Marines. Just when you think they'll sigh and suck it up, they turn around and break into the base to get it back. A couple of islands later, they have it converted to cash and, soon enough, two of their three hundred million Berries is stolen and spent before they can get it back. But at the end of it all, the money went into materials used to build them a kick ass new ship.
- In Movie 4, in which they enter a contest with the same amount of berries as the worth of the aforementioned pile of treasure, they win the contest, but are forced to leave before they collect their winnings.
- In Excel Saga, the Status Quo literally is a god(dess).
- Keroro Gunsou is particularly devoted to this trope. Let's face it, Keroro will continue building Gunpla and ticking Natsumi off, Tamama will continue eating candy and obsessing over Keroro, Giroro will continue to be infatuated with Natsumi and shine his guns, Kururu will continue being a jerk and eating curry, and Dororo will continue to sit in a corner and cry. NOTHING SHALL CHANGE.
- Lampshaded in one episode where Momoka visualises herself still watching Fuyuki quietly from a corner. In the future. Where both are well into their eighties. Apparently the Japanese are known to age well, but still...
- This happens to the U.C universe of Mobile Suit Gundam the Federation will never turn competent and stop hiring Complete Monsters and the Zeon movement will never stay dead.
- Actually, Zeon finally gets put to rest in Gundam F90, in a battle with the Oldsmobile Army on Mars. At which point, the Federation only gets worse, until it becomes completely irrelevant by Victory Gundam.
- Harima will always be in love with Tenma
- To Heart 2: After thirteen episodes and five OVAs, the Unlucky Everydude still hasn't chosen a girl out of his Unwanted Harem.
- In Gintama, no matter how many jobs the protagonists take on, they will never make any profit. And the rent never gets paid. Ever.
- Subverted with Gintoki's sword. It is revealed in one episode that in case one gets broken, he just orders another from a galactic shopping channel and has it customized so it looks exactly the same as the previous one.
Comics
- Marvel/DC Comics live by this trope. They've really put themselves into a Catch-22 situation, they can change things around and kill off characters and whatnot, but killing popular characters will cause an uproar among fans; if they pursue their current strategy of keeping things the way they are, then people get to come on this wiki and put them here in this trope for not changing anything.
- It's a little more complicated than that. Things can and often do change in comics over years and decades, but there's always the the possibility of another writer or editor coming in later and changing it back. Other times, a writer may introduce a change that is intended to be temporary, but allows them to spend a few issues (sometimes even a whole year) exploring a new concept. If it proves popular enough, it can even become a permanent change... that could end up getting changed back years later by a new writer that preferred things the old way, and/or wants to bring the character "back to his roots". The latter is a big part of Running The Asylum.
- For example, old Batman foe the Riddler reformed in 2006 and has become a private detective, which not only is he good at and indulges his obsession a bit, but also seems to be changing him morally for the better. But nobody, anywhere, expects it to last (unfortunately).
- Charles Xavior of the X-men was first introduced as an invalid who uses a wheelchair.
Several times during the comic's run, Xavior has regained the use of his legs. It is only a matter of time until something comes along to reverse this situation; whether by undoing
whatever allowed his legs to heal, or by sustaining a new injury, like a broken back. How
many times has he has his spine snapped? That wheelchiar is his status quo.
- The Archie Comics Love Showdown storyline promised that Archie would chose either Betty or Veronica once and for all. The four part story ends with him choosing Cheryl Blossom, but was followed up with a special that essentially sets the situation back to normal.
Films
- Godzilla will always come back to either: A) fight other (possibly Eviller Than Thou) 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.
- Though this case could be more Strictly Formula than Status Quo Is God.
- Comic book writers like to subvert this. In Planetary the Four kill off the Kaiju in their crusade against weird and recently in Marvel Civil War it was explained that the arrival of Japanese Superheroes allowed Japan to put an end to it's Kaiju attacks. Moral of the Story: the way to kill off a status quo is with another status quo.
- High School Musical has a song all about this.
- This results in Sharpay possibly being more empty-headed and bitchy by Senior Year
- Two words: James Bond.
- Never grows old or changes his name or call number, even after 50 years, countless adventures, and a dozen or so different actors. Never receives any permanent scars or disabilities from battle wounds. Never marries, fathers children, catches a disease, or even gets a morning-after call from the Bond Girls he slept with in previous movies (the recent Daniel Craig films are an exception and they're at the beginning of the Bond timeline). Any new techno-toys Q gives him will vanish before the next movie.
- He actually *did* get married in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The marriage didn't last long, however, as she was killed shortly thereafter., so everything was pretty much back to basics by the next film.
- Indiana Jones: see James Bond. He finds lost treasures, and they're never heard from again. The Lost Ark? Somehow The Government packs it away, and doesn't even X-Ray it or anything. The Holy Grail? He drops it and loses it! The Crystal Skull? Reunites with its body, and flies off to space... and another dimension.
- We do see the arc of the covenant again, in one scene of Crystal Skull it falls out of a box in a government warehouse.
- Count Dracula always comes back.
- The Ice Age movies feature a shrew perpetually in pursuit of an acorn and destined to never catch it. He sometimes successfully manages to grab it but always loses his grip and ends up losing it and getting frozen in the end, just out of reach of the acorn. In the third movie, he finds a love interest and secures the acorn, but ends up being separated, loses the acorn, and gets frozen in an iceblock again, presumably not to be thawed until Ice Age 4.
Literature
- The Red Dwarf novel Backwards, written by Rob Grant (who co-wrote the original six seasons of the television show). In this book, the "best end" Grant could come up with was having everything revert to as it is in the TV series, in spite of two of the cast dying and the other two being reverted in age by 10 years.
- The novels of P.G. Wodehouse, which typically begin with a disruption of the status quo — an engagement broken off, a cook threatening to resign, Bertie growing a moustache — and end with its restoration. Jeeves is the archetypal status quo-restorer.
Live Action TV
- According to producer Ron Moore, the new Battlestar Galactica makes a conscious effort to avert this trope, the idea being to introduce irrevocable change on a regular basis so the show doesn't stagnate and become the same episode over and over again. Some viewers naturally experience possible side-effects.
- Chuck. Every time Chuck and Sarah are finally, properly going to get together, Bryce pops up, meaning that all the relationships are reset by the end of that episode. As of the Season 2 finale, Bryce will not be able to do this any more, unless they introduce undead. ...which they did, restoring the status quo.
- Gilligans Island
- Obviously this series was built entirely around this trope — i.e. it's all about how they want to get off the island; but that would end the series, so it can't possibly happen.
- Years after the series ended, there was a special where they did get off the island. There was a sequel to the sequel, as well, where they returned to the island and converted it into a tourist destination. Needless to say, it just wasn't the same.
- Psych. Shaun and Jules and their relationship. They’ve never really displayed any overt affection towards each other, but Shaun has turned down some relationships with characters that would obviously change the dynamic of the show because of some unspoken thing that they’ll get together eventually.
- This season Shaun has a girlfriend and Jules is starting to be open with her feelings for Shaun as well so this may change soon.
- British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf tends to subscribe to this most of the time. It doesn't matter if one of the crew is turned from robot to human, or if reality itself is collapsing, status quo will almost always return. Exceptions are made for the start of the 6th, 7th and 8th seasons, where a new Status Quo will be applied for the rest of that season, no matter how little sense it makes. This even includes bringing back a former character, who had left to go hop around the multiverse at random. However, because it's a scifi-sitcom, this series has a decent excuse.
- 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.
- It's partly, though not entirely, justified by the show's Time Travel premise: that virtually all the onscreen character development gets literally reset-buttoned at the end of every single episode must make the situation infuriating for Frank, since he's the only one who can remember any of it.
- 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.
- An accusation sometimes leveled at Star Trek Voyager.
- Voyager fits the Failure Is The Only Option trope far better. They did not stick to a status quo; there was a lot of Character Development. Watch "Caretaker", then watch "Endgame" and tell me the characters haven't changed.
- Actually, Status Quo Is God is a much better match. Character Development is pale at best. Note that both "Caretaker" and "Endgame" have characters doing things they would never have done in most episodes. Besides that it is important to note that characters changed with just about every episode due to the fact that there were so many authors involved. What really makes this show a good example of Status Quo Is God is how every change to the crew or ship, or anything else notable (besides the eventual character development, but as noted even that does not always hold true) is undone by the end of the episode. Even when the Voyager has traveled a lot, they keep being confronted by the same aliens. They only manage to avert this trope twice during seven seasons. First is when Kez and Seven are switched, second is when they take the Borg children aboard.
- Prior to Deep Space Nine (and arguably The Next Generation), this was the standard procedure for Star Trek. Likewise for the Star Trek novels, to not interfere with any of the shows or movies.
- Recent novels set in the original continuity have subverted this, with mixed results. (Your Milage May Vary.) The upcoming Star Trek Online MMO also subverts this, since events mentioned in the new movie ( The destruction of Romulus) has also tap-danced all over a large number on Trek's status quo.
- Lampshaded by That70s Show. Kelso complains at length that he's gone for the entire summer and nothing's changed. The minute he leaves, Jackie and Hyde are all over each other.
- If Status Quo Is God, Babylon 5 regularly commits deicide. Drastic, lasting changes often occur from episode to episode. Even in one relatively standalone episode from Season 2, an entire race is killed off.
- When's the last time an episode of Monk actually changed something in the contiuity. Even the "Trudy bomb" is losing its' impact because the last several episodes that involved her case in some way didn't change anything or reveal anything. Monk has been mired in its' own status quo for quite a long time, and even the season finales haven't really changed anything. Considering it's in its' final season, you'd think maybe the writers would open up a little to change, since tehy don't really have future seasons to worry about.
Music
- Yeah, Status Quo are great, aren't they!
Tabletop Games
- The new edition of Warhammer 40000 states that mankind has entered the Time of Ending, with the long-awaited fall of the Imperium imminent. However, The End Of The World As We Know It is very, very unlikely.
- On the other hand, the series has seen the introduction of new races, and changes to old ones — the Tyranids, for example, are a vastly different force from the Genestealer infiltrators that first attacked the Imperium.
- The whole point of Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 was that the world is always almost about to end.
- You can't really blame GW for forestalling the inevitable galaxy-wide apocalypse at this point — things have gotten so bleak that if anything major does happen, whether it be the Imperium collapsing, the Necrons fully awaking, or what have you, it'll change the background so much that the galaxy could very well die. Yes, all of it.
- White Wolf is not fond of this trope. In the original version of The World of Darkness, any apocalypse foretold in a gameline would come to pass when that game went out of print, ending with the Time of Fire when the oWoD ended. The new one is designed as a more static universe. Likewise, Scion has the Overworld War take noticeable steps between the three main books.
Video Games
- 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.
- And the in-game story advances with each expansion, as well...
- 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 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.
- ''Tabula Rasa' was a bit of an exception - for example, there were bases which were constantly changing ownership as each of the opposing sides stormed to take it back. This did have some effects on gameplay, though they weren't so huge (when the base wasn't yours you couldn't use it's teleporter (and any other stuff like shops etc) and you also lost access to the mission givers there, so sometimes you had to mount an attack on enemy position just to get a quest if you were unlucky :)) Of course, TR never grown as much as Richard Garriot intended, so we might have seen more examples of this if they didn't discontinue it. And also, to an extent, the original Ultima Online allowed players to build their own houses and in some cases whole cities (on some shards). This troper remembers a shard which was even meant as a fairly realistic world, so it had complicated population replenishment, even migration and such and just as the official real economy (just like EVE Online above). How could Asian-style MMORP Gs ever replace UO? :)
- 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 its home isle by a single 10th level character that any of their town guards could butcher. One notable exception occurred 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. This occurs in more than one place in the expansion; for example, after one completes the quest to kill Varimathras, he disappears for good. Thanks to something called 'phasing', this can happen for all players.
- Not anymore! Cataclysm. The entire old world is getting a huge revamp, including tearing certain zones asunder and flooding others! Old Azeroth will never be the same.
- Most Nintendo games follow this rule, at least, the major iconic ones anyway. No matter what, Peach will always be captured again and Mario will try to save her. Link is in a similar problem with Ganon and Zelda. Though the former set is willing to bury the hatchet every once and a while.
- And in Metroid, despite being one of the first Nintendo (and really, video game) franchises that has continuous plot development and runs in a furthering continuity, will always have Ridley return. It doesn't matter how thoroughly and dramatically Samus kills him in the last installment, he'll be back in the next. Sometimes multiple times in the same game. No canon explanation has never been given for his constant returns, he just does and no one (but the fans) question it.
- Sonic Adventure had some character development for Tails (who decides to do things on his own now instead of relying on Sonic all of the time) and Amy (who says that she's "going to make that Sonic respect me!" instead of just following him around everywhere like a crazed fangirl) that was conveniently absent come Sonic Adventure 2.
Web Comics
- Averted in Schlock Mercenary, where their fortunes have shifted up and down, having gone through multiple ships, and have lost and gained secondary characters on many occasions.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del recently managed this, despite one of the characters becoming pregnant, by having her subsequently miscarry.
- Ethan now OWNS the video game store, which he's renovated himself. And he and Lilah are now officially married. That sounds to me like actual plot.
- Sexy Losers had a rule, declared early on by its creator in his annotations: "Everyone is locked into their sexual perversion of choice." This meant, 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 may have been the writer realizing he was out of things he could do with the characters without breaking his rule.
- In 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.
- The cast of Sore Thumbs was missing Cecania's special ability to sell games when she went off to Romania, so Harmony got a ridiculous boob job. Once they brought Cecania back, Harmony had them removed.
Web Original
- Completely averted, and possibly subverted, in the Whateley Universe. While it is played with using Jade, by later in the series, Don Sebastaino of the Alphas is in the hospital, Tansy is running the Alphas, and Jade now has breasts and gender reconstructive surgery that works!
- The very Wall Banger-y end of H2K9.
Western Animation
- Code Lyoko literally does this with the Reset Button. Until the fact that XANA becomes more powerful with each Return to the Past was revealed, every episode ended with everybody on the verge of death when the time warp wiped the problems away.
- Unfortunately, the story also starts falling into a larger sort of status quo as it develops, one so immutable that it allowed fans to start predicting the outcome of the show's cliffhangers in advance. No matter how many times characters like Sissi and Jim prove their usefulness, they'll never be exempt from the Masquerade. There will never be more Lyoko warriors than the four main cast members, and Franz Hopper will never be devirtualized. This trope's prevalence as the show went on was only made all the more frustrating by the official website offering fan polls on things like "which supporting character should become a Lyoko warrior".
- The Dragon Hunters, like the Get Backers, never do lasting profits, despite all of Guido's schemes toward this end.
- Duck Tales — and, in fact, any other appearance of Scrooge McDuck — 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 ten cents?
- No, but whatever he might say, Scrooge isn't doing it for money, but sense of adventure he can't get behind the desk. Considering that usually if he got the treasure, this would essentially say it's perfectly OK for a rich American to steal the national treasures of some Third World countries, the status quo ending is infinitely preferable. Don Rosa has even made a story or two that lampshade this fact.
- "Saying it's perfectly OK for a rich American to steal the national treasures of some Third World countries"? Duck Tales is based on Indiana Jones, and doesn't he specialize in doing exactly that, each time? I don't recall him getting any government's permission to raid their lost arks.
- Jones is usually trying to prevent the treasures from falling into wrong hands, justifying him taking them to safety. Scrooge on the other hand just wants to pad his trophy room. Don Rosa's The Treasury of Croesus actually gives some length to the issue of theft of national treasures, making the reader cheer for the fact that Scrooge doesn't get his hands on the treasure.
- Well, that sort of argument also ignores the fact that quite a few national treasures have been lost because the government had basically figured that they had a few years to loot the place, or simply because they had a choice between preserving their cultural treasures and averting With This Herring for, say, the people cleaning up the mines and ammo littering the farmland. If you've got a choice between losing my national treasure to some Rich American or just plain losing it...Charge him for the privilege.
- The comics that Duck Tales is based on are even worse, and that extends to comics that don't feature Scrooge at all. This is understandable, since there are probably hundreds of artists in many different countries making the comics, and most of them ignore the other artists. Depending On The Writer, the stories may instead have Negative Continuity.
- The Barks and Don Rosa comics have some continuity, just read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
- With the McDuck books, there is continuity, but it's done by author instead of having one for the entire series. Most writers will callback to previous stories they created but will ignore the ones made by others so as not to mess with anyone's long-term story plans. The exception is Don Rosa, who considers all Carl Barks stories canon to his own universe and has written several sequels to Barks tales.
- Family Guy had an episode in which Peter gets plastic surgery, 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. Even worse was the episode where Lois gains a lot of weight after Peter's vasectomy. In the end she has quickie liposuction and surgery and ends up looking exactly as though she had never gained the weight at all. Never mind that in real life, such surgery is extremely invasive and has a long recovery, not to mention the fact that the body undergoes permanent changes if it has been obese (like skin stretching).
- 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 Bonnie finally had her kid, with whom she had been pregnant with for over six seasons.
- Recent seasons have subverted this, with Brian's lasting relationship with Jillian (Okay, they broke up in the end, but they were together for about a season's worth of episodes.)
- This trope is occasionally lampshaded. Peter once told Bonnie that she's been pregnant for six years, have the damn kid already. Also, Lois got fired from Fox News. Why? Who gives a damn, the episode is over and everything is back the way it always is (her words, more or less).
- There was also the time Peter was declared legally retarded. Lois who he burned earlier comes back with no damage done, though she will smell like fries for weeks. Also in the episode where Peter's father-in-law goes bankrupt. His wife who has married Ted Turner divorces him for no good reason.
- Family Guy does make reference to some recurring themes. For example, when the Griffins are on the run (Chris saw someone rob a store, IIRC) and end up in Texas, Peter mentions that he is "legally retarded". The resulting scene is another one-shot joke making fun of Texas, but it is a little bit of continuity.
- She divorced him to get his money and go back to the love of her life, Mr. Pewterschmitt. Oh wait, isn't it well established that they hate each other and were only together for the money?
- 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.
- 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.
- BBS may have parodied it during it's opening roll call, when we see Amy with much longer hair. Bender accidentally burns it off an instant later, leaving her with her hairstyle from the series.
- Averted in Gargoyles, for the most part. Eliza's brother becomes a Mutate for instance and remains that way, a process that takes place over several episodes; later episodes deal with Talon's impromptu clan and responsibilities. Broadway shoots Eliza by accident and develops a series-long hatred for firearms. The eventual reveal of the Gargoyles to the world at large springs the Quarrymen into the forefront. And so on.
- No, wait, can't count the Quarrymen, never happened.
- You can count Xanatos evolution from simple adversary to husband/father/friend, Angela and Goliath's relationship as daughter and father, Matt Bluestone's raise from conspiracy-nut friend-kept-in-the-dark to Properly Paranoid Illuminati member and trusted insider, the evolution of several of the villains with their backstory, Demona alone...
- However, the trope is invoked a bit with the universe's rules of time travel and the Phoenix Gate: to wit, everything that has happened will happen, and even if characters are placed in a position to change the backstory, they will not succeed.
- Goof Troop featured an episode where Goofy was elected mayor of the city, but curiously that never came up again.
- No matter how many times Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible learns to use Mystical Monkey Power Kung Fu, learn to deal with his fears of monkeys and Camp Wannaweep or has become special for just anything, he will revert back to his status quo in the end of the episode or before the next.
- He did stay on the football team, leaving his mascot days behind.
- And he kept dating Kim. And kept his job. All which took place in the Post Script Season...
- 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".
- The Powerpuff Girls has this all the time. In one episode, the girls travel so fast that they are warped to the future, where for 30 years evil has reigned. Out of complete stress and confusion, they try to escape from it all by traveling so fast they they warp back to the present time, thus achieving Status Quo.
- Oh yeah, whenever the city is in ruins, its back to normal the next episode. Few things remain destroyed, an example being a bridge in a nearby city.
- The Simpsons, with a few exceptions.
- Played with in some of the few episodes which avert this trope; many of them feature endings that make it seem like the status quo will once again be restored, only to change it up on the viewer at the last second. The classic example is the episode where Milhouse's parents divorce; the episode ends with Kirk singing a romantic song for Luann in a last-ditch attempt to win her back. It looks like we're in for a heartwarming reunion, until Kirk asks her to come back to him and she replies "Oh God no!" They stay broken up.
- They DID eventually get back together, but that was ten seasons later.
- When Lisa became a vegetarian, she stayed a vegetarian.(Only because Paul McCartney wouldn't do the show otherwise)
- Also when Maude Flanders's died, she stayed dead.
- Danny Phantom uses it some of the time, with the more notable instances being the end of Reality Trip, where Danny mindwipes everyone except the people who knew prior to the start of the episode. For that matter, he bounced back unusually quickly from the extremely intense encounter with his future self.
- Hank Hill is never going to be a manager. The one time he DID become a manager he managed to blow it... in 10 freaking seconds (and it wasn't even near the end of the episode).
- Phineas and Ferb takes this trope and turns it Up to Eleven in just about every episode. No matter what nigh-impossible project the boys create, it will always disappear within a matter of seconds as a result of Perry and Doofenshmirtz. Like every other trope that the show revolves around, it's been lampshaded to hell and back.
Real Life
- European politics from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to the start of the Pax Britannia in 1815 revolved around the "Balance of Power", meaning any state that grew too powerful or ambitious (and in the process disturbed the existing balance of power) usually found itself at war with a coalition led by the next-greatest power. This is why no one has ever conquered all of Europe.
- Hell, you could even count the two world wars as Balance of Power politics, with the two greatest powers (Britain and Germany) on opposing sides.
- Which eliminated both as world powers and the US and SU rose up to become the next balance. What happened after the SU fell depends on your poltical views.
- Status Quo is never God in Real Life (in spite of what some people would like), because History Marches On.
- Reminding everyone of Y2K, or any other end of the world hysteria, which beforehand people are on the edge of their seats expecting big change, stocking up on food ann... nothing. Status Quo Maintained. See you in 2038.
- Gotta make it past 9/9/9 first!
- DONE!
- Now let's see you get past 12/21/12!!
- Don't you mean 21/12/21?
- And 10/10/10, when the date on the computer causes them to enslave humanity.
- There are 10 types of people in the world...
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