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"End of the World" Special

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Bastian: Fantasia has totally disappeared?
Childlike Empress: Yes.
Bastian: Then, everything's been in vain.
Childlike Empress: No, it hasn't. Fantasia can arise anew, from your dreams and wishes, Bastian.
Bastian: How many wishes do I get?
Childlike Empress: As many as you want. And the more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become.
Bastian: Really?
Childlike Empress: Try it.
Bastian: My first wish is...

As a conclusion, the protagonist (or in rare cases, another character) has the power and opportunity to completely remake the world as he sees fit. This can serve as a final exploration of the character and his values, or of the overall message of the show. It can be thought of as the ultimate expression of the goal to Take Over the World.

A more heroic example of the villainous ambition to remake the world In Their Own Image. May manifest as a World-Healing Wave. In video games, can be a form of Multiple Endings and especially Last-Second Ending Choice. Related to Reset Button and Outsourcing Fate. Subtrope of Retconjuration.

Since the end of the world generally also takes place at the end of the story, there be UNMARKED SPOILERS ahead (otherwise, the page would look like swiss cheese).


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • The Big O: In the episode "The Show Must Go On", the character Angel enters a mysterious control center to apparently become the Director of Paradigm City, then appears as a Humongous Mecha to erase the ruined city from existence and replace it with a slightly tweaked version of how it existed at the start of the series. This is only one interpretation; nobody really knows what that episode was about. The third season was supposed to provide an explanation for this, except there was no third season despite the second having paid off its budget in time for renewal of a possible third season.
  • Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure: A variation occurs when two separate universes are merged into one, which contains the best parts of both (according to the subconscious wishes of the protagonist, facilitated by the godlike power of his Humongous Mecha).
  • Future Diary: God is dying and looking for a replacement. This is one of the privileges of the winner. Yukiteru ultimately wins, but is so broken up over Yuno's death that he doesn't do anything but sit around for a thousand years.
  • Generator Gawl: The eponymous Gawl gains the power to reinvent the universe after nearly dying.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya:
    • In the first season, the final episode (broadcast order) involves Haruhi, a girl with godlike powers, on the verge of unconsciously destroying the world and creating it anew out of a combination of jealousy and boredom. As a matter of fact, the entire plot of the series revolves around preventing Haruhi from doing such a thing. The kicker is that it may have already happened at least once, but nobody is totally sure.
    • Kyon gets the choice in the fourth novel, Disappearance. Nagato creates a new world where he's a normal high school student and he's forced to choose to start this new world and end the previous one, or return to his old world filled with weirdness he claims he hates. Guess what he chooses.
  • Magic Knight Rayearth: Hikaru ultimately becomes the pillar (the person who makes Cephiro into an image of her mind) of Cephiro after two seasons of strife. Her choice is to ultimately end the Pillar system and to move the power of shaping the world to its inhabitants instead, allowing her to leave and making the world not prone to destruction because of the emotions of one person. The manga ending breaks the fourth wall when Hikaru asks the reader to come up with a new name for Cephiro.
  • Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi: At the end of the series, Sasshi summons Eutus, who releases his true power as a super ultra Onmyou Mysticist, who then proceeds to do what they always do — but this time, he does it right. He even includes Eutus and Mune-mune.
  • My-HiME: At the end of the series, Mai actually rejects the power to reshape the world as she sees fit, arguing that it is immoral.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • In End of Evangelion, Shinji has the choice to complete the Instrumentality of souls, turning all of humanity into one dreaming soul where there can be no pain or loneliness, or to reject it, and free humanity to live as a collection of individuals. He chooses the latter option, allowing all humankind to return from Instrumentality.
    • Rebuild of Evangelion puts a more hopeful spin on this concept by once again placing a different version of Shinji in this situation, but this time giving him the maturity and resolve to help others and take responsibility for his actions. Instead of destroying humanity and resurrecting it in a ruined world, he destroys all of the Evangelions that caused humanity's problems and creates a new world free of their influence, while getting an opportunity to help his friends and family find peace.
  • Princess Tutu: Fakir breaks the control Drosselmeyer has over the town and decides to write his own ending to the story, then destroys the machine used to make the story. It's implied that his ending restored the town and its people to the way they would have been without the story, as anthropomorphic characters are now fully nonhuman, the story characters return to the story and live happily, and the human characters lead happier lives and can come and go as they please. The end has Fakir working on a new story, full of hope.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Madoka makes a Wishplosion that causes the universe to be recreated to accommodate her desire for no more witches in the past, present or future. This also Ret Gones her from reality due to the erasure of her own witch.
  • RahXephon: The eponymous RahXephon is not just a Humongous Mecha, but also an artificial god which eventually grants this power to its pilot. This is revealed through All There in the Manual.
  • Scrapped Princess: Pacifica is given the choice to free humanity from its enforced prison or leave them there in blissful ignorance of the real world.
  • Serial Experiments Lain: The titular Lain eventually decides that the thing most wrong with the world is that she existed at all, and removes herself from existence.
  • Tenchi Muyo!: The three Choushin goddesses do this at the end of the third OVA, although the only real change they make is fixing the damage the villain did, rewinding time to before it happened, and reverting the villain to an infant and removing his powers.
  • The Vision of Escaflowne: Dornkirk tries to create a utopia where everyone's desires will be fulfilled. Essentially, this Zone of Absolute Fortunate grants everyone, to a small extent, the power to achieve their desire. Unfortunately, as there is a war going on, most desire the death of their enemy. Whoops.

    Comic Books 

By Creator:

  • Comics writer Grant Morrison is particularly fond of this trope.
    • At the climax of their run on Doom Patrol, Danny the Street (a sentient fragment of a lost, fantastic world) expands to become Danny the World, filling the 'real' world with mystery and significance.
    • In the final issue of their run on New X-Men, Jean Grey uses the Phoenix force to amputate a dystopian future and release her husband from despair and grief into the bargain (although that wasn't Grant Morrison's decision; they were told to by the editors to make room for the Relationship Sue).

By Series:

  • At the end of the Superman storyline Emperor Joker, Joker, being The Joker, destroyed the universe. Afterwards, Superman supervises Mr. Mxyzptlk rebuilding the universe, with the help of the Spectre.
  • Fantastic Four: Reed Richards once did this to the entire multiverse by using the Ultimate Nullifier against Abraxas.
    • He does it again in the epilogue of the 2015 Secret Wars. Having been granted the power of the Beyonders, he works in conjunction with his son to recreate the multiverse, starting with the 616 universe. The most immediate difference is that Doom's face is restored.
  • The premise of the Marvel Crossover event House of M when the Scarlet Witch goes insane and uses her powers to remake the world so that mutants are the ruling race. At the end, she does it again, reverting the world to normal but leaving the mutant population at a tenth of its former size.
  • In The Invisibles, the character of Dane is, according to some, the new Buddha, who helps 'deliver' humanity into a new state of existence in the final issue (his last words, and the final words of the series, being "Our sentence is up").
  • At the end of the main Nodwick (print comic version) story arc, Yeagar receives the power to make the world perfect for himself. Fortunately, it's been explained to him that anything he changes may cause undesirable side effects, so he restricts himself to tweaking a few details that change his party's immediate situation from "certain doom" to "a winnable fight".
  • This seems to be what happens at the end of Alan Moore's Promethea and Miracleman.
  • In Valiant Comics' Solar, Man of the Atom, Solar has done this subconsciously, and is later implied to have done it many times without even realizing it (and a few times deliberately as well).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • At the (rushed) conclusion of the conflict with Mammoth Mogul, Tails — now the more-or-less omnipotent Titan Tails — uses his power to overcome Mogul, then gets to recreate the universe. He leaves it the same as it was before, except with Mogul sealed away.
    • The Genesis arc had Eggman used the Genesis Wave change Sonic's world and leave it vulnerable enough for a full Robotizication. Sonic defeats him, only to learn the GW is causing the universe to be unstable. He then uses a powerful Chaos Control to change everything back to normal.
    • This happens again in Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, only for Eggman to interfere and cause a Cosmic Retcon in their universe.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Dark City (1998), the main protagonist John Murdoch frees the world from the shackles of The Strangers and recreates it to be a better place for all those who inhabit it.
  • At the end of the first Highlander film, Connor MacLeod wins this after defeating the last remaining Immortal; a vaguely-described ability to influence world leaders using the collective knowledge and wisdom of the other Immortals, or humanity, or something.
  • In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Arthur Dent is given the choice to make changes to the rebuilt Earth. The only change he makes is to remove himself and Trillian by leaving to explore the galaxy.
  • The first The NeverEnding Story film ends this way, as the page quote indicates.

    Mythology and Religion 

    Literature 
  • Happens at the end of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (second book) to Linden who uses the opportunity to remake several important natural laws.
  • At the end of Dean Koontz's short story "A Darkness in My Soul", a psychic goes on a Journey to the Center of the Mind and finds God trapped in the psyche of an insane genius. He then absorbs God's powers and uses it to abolish the oppressive society that Earth has been ruled over and removes all weapons of mass destruction, as well as removing the evils that plagued mankind.
  • At the end of Brian Stableford's Day of Wrath, Mark Chaos gets the opportunity to reshape the galaxy as he sees fit, and is told to choose between the worldviews of two mutually opposed time travelling well intentioned extremists. Chaos, naturally, decides to Take a Third Option - he leaves the galaxy exactly as it is, to follow it own destiny.
  • In the book Good Omens, Adam is encouraged to greatly reshape the world and rebuild it to his design, but decides to simply let the world continue. He does make sure his quaint old-fashioned village stays that way and doesn't move with the times though.
  • In the Horus Heresy series, this trope is played with twice in the "maybe vision, maybe time travel" sort of way:
    • First, Horus is whisked to the future where the Empire has been stagnating for thousands of years, the Emperor rules as a living god to all his subjects, and half the Primarchs (Horus included) seem to have been wiped from history. He decides to "fix the galaxy" by turning against his father...not realizing that he was being directly lied to, and that vision would come about because of his treachery.
    • Later on, Alpharius has a similar experience, and has to choose between siding with the Emperor and watching all of Mankind continue to stagnate and bloat until Chaos implodes and destroys the galaxy, or side with Horus to help him win, the universe goes through hell for a couple of centuries, then Horus has a "My God, What Have I Done?" moment and starts a(nother) self-hating civil war that wipes out the rest of humanity but saves the cosmos at large. He joins Horus, figuring a race-wide Seppuku was better than the end of everything; what actually happens is basically the worst parts of both outcomes.
  • Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series ends with the destruction of everything bar the main character, who is tasked with creating a new universe. He decides to screw that and just recreate the old one.
  • Isaac Asimov's famous short story The Last Question ends with the computer acting as the last repository of the knowledge and ability of all intelligent life in the universe, having continued to increase in sophistication over the millennia, saying "Let there be light!"
  • This actually happened twice in Mistborn, once (as is eventually revealed) by the Lord Ruler a thousand years before the first book, and again by Sazed at the end of the original trilogy. Given the nature of how things work in the Cosmere, the trope is also likely to apply to other works by Brandon Sanderson.
  • In a rare non-ending example, the main character remaking the world as he sees fit is a major plot point in The Neverending Story.
  • In Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Once Joshua Calvert finds the Naked God, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, or at least a machine left behind by such, it gives him the opportunity to save the world from the invasion of the dead and the opportunity to reshape the Galaxy as he sees fit. He promptly relocates the entire Confederation outside the Milky Way to form a tight star cluster, making interstellar travel much easier, thus forcing Humanity to become much closer socially and ideologically, as well as physically.
  • In Ra, the Virtuals win the war and destroy Earth. One of the main characters is able to upload all of the inhabitants of physical Earth into a simulation of her own design. She chooses to give it perfect continuity with the real world as understood by everyone but the Wheel Group and the protagonists.
  • Confessor, the final book of the Sword of Truth series, does this in spades. Richard Rahl, once he opens the Boxes of Orden and acquires godlike powers, takes the opportunity to tweak several things about his world that have always bugged him: removing the poison from red fruits in the Midlands, bringing back the Temple of the Winds, and balancing the magic flowing into the world thus resulting in a rebirth of wizardry. Oh, and lest we forget, Uplifting millions of people from across the world who disagreed with his personal beliefs and dumping them on a parallel planet with no magic and no afterlife. Included in the Brave New World was his sister, though for some reason she wanted to go.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Sort of happens in Ace Lightning - except that Mark only has the option of deleting Ace's "world" (i.e. the video game) from his hard drive, and he chooses not to.
    • Technically, anyone with sufficient programming skills could have changed the game further, but the resident Geek wasn't in on the secret back then.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Parting of the Ways": Rose absorbs the Time Vortex and acquires godlike powers. Once she's used them to solve their current problem, the Doctor absorbs the energy into himself before it kills her (providing an excuse for him to regenerate into a different actor) and removes the inconvenient godlike abilities from the plot. Rose uses her powers to wipe out the Daleks (except for the ones who survived in another dimension), to resurrect Jack Harkness (a little too well, as it turns out), and to write the words "Bad Wolf" across time and space to cause this chain of events.
    • "The Big Bang": The Doctor reboots the universe with Big Bang Two, but it's Amy who has the power to bring back everything that was erased by the crack, by trying really really hard and remembering. This includes her parents, and the Doctor himself.
  • Invoking this trope is the Helheim Forest's MO in Kamen Rider Gaim. It attacks various worlds it views as having 'stagnated', causing a world threatening invasion by it and the Inves. Whoever manages to fight their way to the Golden Fruit is creates for the world gets the opportunity to either perform a Heroic Sacrifice to undo the damage, or remake the world however they please, becoming a Physical God.

    Video Games 
  • Avalon Code: This concept is the plot of the whole freaking game.
  • Blazblue Central Fiction ends in something similar to this: Ragna, realizing that he's the very Central Fiction - the "dream that God observes", having pacified the "girl in the Master Unit Amaterasu" and absorbed all of the desires of most people he knows (with his Soul Eater power), he goes on to create a new world that doesn't focus on him and erases himself from the world.
  • At the end of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Kain can choose to sacrifice himself to restore balance to the world, or rule Nosgoth as the king of vampires. The later games in the series go with the assumption he chose world domination.
    • Later games reveal that the first choice would throw the world into even greater unbalance eventually. Which doesn't stop those who don't know it (all but Kain and a select few) from hating Kain's guts for his choice.
  • At the end of Breath of Fire IV the heroic Ryu merges with the insane Fou-Lu to become the greatest of The Endless. The player's choices determine whether Ryu dominates the new entity and casts the Endless out of the world, or Fou-Lu dominates it and ends humanity.
  • The city-building gameplay elements of Dark Cloud could be considered an expression of this concept. The male protagonist is gifted by the Fairy King with a magical apparatus called the Atlamillia which endows him with the creative potential to salvage lost resources from the previous world stored in Atla and rebuild that which was destroyed by the Dark Genie during the game's opening.
  • DC Universe Online: Happens at the end of the Source Saga. In the raid "The Source Wall" in the "Dark Knights" episode (a loose adaptation of Dark Nights: Death Metal), after Perpetua is defeated, Wonder Woman uses the power of the Source Wall to restore the multiverse to close to its original form, although Batman says he'd have liked to change more things.
  • In Deus Ex, the protagonist has the option to rule the world as a transcendent being, as a conspirator, or to plunge the world into anarchy.
    • In the sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War, the player may choose to force transcendence on the people, ally with a secret government, ally with an anti-technology theocracy, or destroy everybody — with unforeseen consequences.
    • The ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution offers the player a similar choice - while their decision won't leave them in control of the world, it will be the deciding factor in how the world interprets, and ultimately responds to, the events of the game. The player can choose to broadcast one of three variations of a message that will result in anything from completely unrestricted augmentation research to its outright ban, or take a fourth option by ensuring none of the messages are broadcast, allowing humanity to decide things for itself.
  • Fable II ends with your character getting the keys to the Spire, the reality altering device that Lucien fucked you over so many times to try and power. Here you must make a Sadistic Choice: raise your family (who Lucien has murdered) from the dead... or raise the thousands who died in the Spire's construction in their stead. Or just get a lot of money.
    • Of course, you're never allowed to use it to make your own world like Lucien was going to, oh no...
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is based heavily around this. Beings called Star Singers are capable of choosing between a nearly infinite number of alternate worlds, and all magic makes subtle use of this. The villains' desire to exploit this. In the end the heroes gain the true version of the ability, allowing them to create an ideal world rather then just selecting a flawed one.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, the character must choose whether to save the Republic from the Sith, or become their new leader and continue the war. Notably, the sequel allows you to set what choice your character made in the first game and alters the plot accordingly, although the differences are minimal and do not affect the main storyline.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • A Link to the Past ends with Link touching the Triforce and making a wish on it to revive several people that had died, and generally give a happy end to everyone he's met.
    • Similarly, in A Link Between Worlds, Link uses the Triforce to restore the Triforce of Lorule, reversing that world's inexorable decay as a result.
  • Makai Kingdom begins with Lord Zetta destroying his Netherworld, and much of the game is about rebuilding it piece by piece by conquering new territory.
  • Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Alrevis has a twist on this: The main character has the power to remake the world right from the start, only he doesn't know it, yet.
  • Mass Effect 3's Multiple Endings has four perspective outcomes:
    • The Destroy Ending, where you intentionally damage the Crucible and cause it to send out an energy wave that kills all synthetic life in the galaxy, including any friends or comrades you made along the way, resulting in the end of the Reaper Threat but also killing countless synthetic lives, essentially committing genocide of an entire class of lifeform. However, if you didn't build your military strength adequately before confronting the Reapers, the damage instead sends out a wave that kills everyone, essentially ending ALL life in the galaxy.
    • The Control Ending, where Shepard uploads themselves into the Crucible and takes control of the Reapers, rewriting their directives and ordering them to retreat back to dark space. Depending on Shepard's moral disposition, the Reapers either become benevolent guardians that protect the Milky Way from danger, or ominous wardens of the galaxy who intend to bring peace and security to the Milky Way's inhabitants - whether they want it or not.
    • The Synthesis Ending, where Shepard jumps into and is vaporized by the massive energy stream in the center of the Crucible. This results in an energy wave firing from the Crucible that basically rewrites everyone in the galaxy into a single, new unified form of life. With no differentiation between organic and synthetic, the Reapers' no longer have the need to follow their directives, and join the reformed Milky Way to begin rebuilding and developing a Utopian society.
    • The Refusal Ending, where Shepard instead elects not to utilize the Crucible. Without its power, the Reapers successfully take over the Milky Way and complete their cycle, but thanks to Shepard's' and Liara's contingency plans and work on the Crucible, the next cycle is able to use their information to defeat the Reapers for good, though it isn't elaborated how.
  • The entire journey of Mother 3 is to see who will summon the Dark Dragon first, and how they'll use it to recreate the world. In the end, despite Lucas pulling the last needle, the world is still destroyed, but the ending implies it was at least for the better... maybe.
  • Oracle of Tao: Ambrosia does this in the most literal way possible. The world before this is a Dream Apocalypse centered around her and she makes it real.
  • Penny Arcade Adventures: The metaplot of the game is that the world goes through a continual cycle of destruction and rebirth, becoming more horrible and deranged each time. The Brahe clan has conceived a plan to stop this cycle by preventing the world from being reborn and therefore sending everything to oblivion. Tycho, one of the protagonists, breaks from his clan and instead tries to seed the next rebirth with a perfectly good individual: his niece Anne-Claire. In the end, he succeeds.
  • A recurring plot element in the Shin Megami Tensei series:
    • The main plot of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is set after The End of the World as We Know It in a world-in-potentia called the Vortex World. Various factions, called Reasons, are fighting over who gets to recreate the world as they see fit. Although the main character, the Demi-Fiend, is a demon and cannot build his own Reason, he can champion whichever he chooses and rebuild the world in that Reason's image. The Demi-Fiend can also choose to reject all the Reasons and restore the world as we know it or maintain the Vortex World. Another ending was introduced in the Maniax expansion, in which the Demi-Fiend throws his lot in with Lucifer and destroys the world before joining the fallen angel on a Rage Against the Heavens.
    • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, you either use the Schwarzwelt to bring humanity under the control of God, use it to bring humanity under the control of the demons, or destroy the Schwarzwelt instead of changing the world with it.
    • In Persona 2: Innocent Sin, after Nyarlathotep destroys the world, Philemon tells the heroes that they can recreate the world with their wills for the better, but lose their memories of each other. Three of them imagine better futures for themselves but the last member doesn't want to forget, causing the next game's plot, Eternal Punishment.
    • Devil Survivor 2 plays with this by establishing the Akashic Records are, metaphorically, the program reality runs on. Said program, to continue with the metaphor, can be edited, deleted or recreated depending on who's currently controlling it. One can choose to use the Records to edit Earth to suit a perfect egalitarian world, a ruthless meritocracy, replace the current admin of the Records with a more sympathetic one, restore reality with the archived file on the past world (with varying success on averting a Vicious Cycle), or outright destroy the Records and make it impossible for any admin to ever rise again.
    • Shin Megami Tensei V throws you in the middle of an ongoing conflict between the myriad gods and the angels of the God of Law, fighting whether to create a world that ever-changing and diverse but doomed to descend into chaos or a world where God's will is the only will that rules a world of peace and happiness. You also have the choice to either destroy the only means of creating the world and letting humanity figure out the rest or create a new one that doesn't rely on gods or demons to prosper.
  • The Infocom Interactive Fiction game Spellbreaker ends with the player confronted by his Evil Twin, created as a result of Equivalent Exchange, who it turns out has been manipulating the player into gathering the Cosmic Keystones he needs to remake the world in his own image with himself as its god. The player has only a narrow window of opportunity to sabotage his "End of the World" Special; it's possible to accidentally unmake the entire universe as a result of removing the centerpiece of the tesseract entirely, but by replacing it with something non-magical, the universe is remade without magic, and without the player's evil doppelganger.
  • Super Mario Galaxy. At the end of the game, Bowser's galaxy collapses into a black hole that sucks up the whole universe and blows up all of existence. Rosalina creates a brand new universe.
  • The path towards getting the best ending in Valkyrie Profile involves the destruction of Asgard and eventually Midgard, however, it also grants Lenneth the power of creation, which she uses to restore the world and everyone in it, including Lucian, and becomes the new world's Lord of Creation.
  • At the end of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Shulk effectively becomes a god. He creates a new world for everyone to live in because the previous one was collapsing, but then relinquishes his power and becomes mortal because he wasn't very comfortable with the idea of a god controlling the path of fate, preferring that people choose for themselves.

    Webcomics 
  • In Homestuck, this is what's supposed to happen: the players cause the apocalypse in their own universe, but through playing the game they get to make a new one. Unfortunately, things haven't gone quite according to plan.
  • Irregular Webcomic! destroyed all of time and space, when in every single story thread simultaneously, someone mucked with time. With everyone dead at the same time in an endless expanse of gray, the troublemakers all figured out how to restart all the story threads at the same time. Every one of the threads is now in a reboot.
  • In minus., the eponymous character simultaneously resurrects every human and beast to have ever walked the earth, crushing both the current inhabitants and the freshly-risen dead. Through a conference of the Smartest People Who Ever Lived, it is decided that everyone should just stay in the afterlife. The extraterrestrial creators of human life decide to turn the newly empty Earth into a theme park showing what Earth was like right before everyone died, which is then visited by ghosts. And that's the end of the comic.

    Web Original 
  • In To Boldly Flee, the fourth-year anniversary special of Channel Awesome, a massive, living retcon threatens to consume all of existence.
  • Subverted in the short story Chaos Theory: the story ends with Bria building a new world order. When this is pointed out, she falls apart.

    Western Animation 
  • In The Angry Beavers episode "Millennium Beavers", Dagget and Norbert are chosen by a mysterious disembodied voice and whisked away to a mysterious void to create a new universe after the ending of the old one. When the brothers screw things up with their squabbling, the Powers That Be decide to give up and continue on with the previous universe, putting Dag and Norb back where they belong.
  • During the first season of Ben 10: Omniverse, Ben uses Alien X to restore the universe after the Anialargh suddenly destroys it. Since Alien X is an omnipotent Reality Warper, he can remake the universe in any way he sees fit. Ben tries to remake it with no changes whatsoever, but ends up slightly changing his favorite smoothie shop and gaining a sweet hoodie anyway.
    • The series finale ends up doing this as well, though it isn't remaking his own universe but instead making a completely seperate, brand-new universe within the show's larger multiverse. The episode also serves as an end to the "classic" continuity, leading some fans to theorize that the reboot that followed takes place in this new universe.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated ends with the gang using the Heart of the Jaguar to destroy the Eldritch Abomination and rewrite history. While it's not explicitly stated that the gang was able to affect the recreation of the universe, it still ends up being a "perfect world" where Crystal Cove is a normal town, the supernatural really doesn't exist (except for Scooby, of course), and the gang all have bright futures ahead. Only they — and, oddly, Harlan Ellison — remember that this isn't how things always were.
  • The South Park "Imaginationland" trilogy ends in a similar way to the Neverending Story example stated above. Imaginationland (the place where every being ever imagined by humanity — from deities to fast food mascots — lives) gets nuked and reduced to an empty void, but Butters as The Chosen One rebuilds it as it was before with his dreams and thoughts. But still gets grounded by his parents in the real world.

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