Negative Continuity - Television Tropes & Idioms

Very little on Drawn Together can be considered canon. If you try to find continuity on this show you'll drive yourself nuts. The only thing that's consistent is we try to make the show as funny as possible. And we'd never let a little thing like continuity get in the way of that.
—Bill Freiberger, Executive Producer

Continuity has always been a bugaboo for writers, the requisite for things to make sense and follow some form of narrative logic. A requirement that provides scribes with all manner of headaches, hairsplitting, and plot-hole-induced dementia. Nevertheless, many shows go out of their way to pay careful attention to every little detail that goes on in their worlds. The Universe Bible is king; nothing can happen that doesn't fit the existing history. Other shows are less exacting, and an occasional continuity error will be glossed over for the sake of the current episode's plot.

And then there's these.

Not only is there no established continuity, but the show is free to completely wreck the continuity and be assured of a full reboot by the start of the next episode. Burned a hole in your favorite outfit? Don't worry, it'll be better next episode. Burned down your house? No worries, it will be back next time. Turned into a frog, died, destroyed the universe? No problem!

The expectation of a new episode reboot is so strong that, in extreme cases, simply having continuity can count as a subversive gag (for example, the letters CHA appearing on the Moon in episodes of The Tick) or simply the creators getting a kick out of teasing the viewers that have been around long enough.

Generally constrained to American animated shows, or to shows with that style of "cartoony" humor. Often employs Ping Pong Naivete to allow the humour to work. Often gives the feeling of a very Unreliable Narrator (even if there isn't one to begin with).

Examples

Anime

Urusei Yatsura: Plotlines inevitably led down to anarchy, chaos, and lynch mobs running around by the end of each episode, but all injured characters and buildings would have undergone Snap Back by the next episode.
The anime Galaxy Angel is made of Negative Continuity. The only times an episode counts is when they're introducing a new regular cast member, such as Milfeulle, Chitose, Normad and the Twin Star Force.
In Excel Saga, negative continuity is personified by a being known as The Great Will of the Macrocosm, who resets things at least Once An Episode. Though this is also subverted insofar as the Will is not always available, and also episodes 22-25 have dramatic elements and more or less logical continuity for significant events.
Nicely subverted in the anime Crayon Shin-Chan. A Snap Back is expected when Shin accidentally blows up the family's house at the end of one episode, but the event is actually followed by an arc in which the family lives in a cramped studio apartment while the house is rebuilt.
All through Adventures Of Mini Goddess, especially with regard to Gan-chan. Lampshaded in the finale.
The Urotsukidoji series. The original, Legend of the Overfiend, ended with the world being destroyed. The sequel, Legend of the Demon Womb began with the world good as new. And the pattern was well and truly set.
Doraemon.
Samurai Champloo uses negative continuity in two episodes right before the end of the series. The first one, titled Cosmic Collisions, introduces the characters to a group of dead people that are always searching for a buried treasure that never existed in the first place. The episode ends and everyone gets killed by a falling meteor that destroys the surrounding area. The next episode, Baseball Blues, shows the characters competing in a game of baseball against an American team and everyone on the team gets severely injured or killed in the end (it's never satisfactorily explained if they actually get killed or not), while the finale shows everyone in perfect health and in exactly the place where they had been headed for the entire series.
Leiji Matsumoto's works are known for this. Many of the shows based off his manga and stories, such as "Galaxy Express 999," "Space Cruiser Yamato/Starblazes" and the various "Captain Harlock" shows, share characters but present vastly different backstories and do not attempt to reconcile the character's actions between the shows. It should be noted, though, that this is not quite an intentional case of negative continuity, but rather gaps caused by each show being produced by an entirely different creative team.

Comic Books

In his many failed atempts to become Caliph instead of the Caliph, Iznogoud has been petrified, turned into a dog, lost in a labyrinth, sent back in time, sold as a slave, and worse. Nevertheless, everything is always back to normal for the next episode a few pannels later.
- In a notable exception, the album Les Retours d'Iznogoud (Iznogoud's Returns) tries to explain how things returned to normal after some of the vizir's most infamous adventures. It does not always work, as many of those returns end with with Iznogoud in an equally uncomfortable situation.
  - From the same Authors, no matter what crippling defeat Asterix and Obelix inflict the Romans in general and Caesar in particular, or what moral lessons the Gauls might have learned, Status Quo is maintained at the start of the following album.

Literature

Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey novels are notable for each book taking place in a slightly separate universe to the one before it. This is most notable in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the spacecraft Discovery is bound for Saturn and finds the Monolith on the surface of its moon Iapetus, whilst 2010: Odyssey Two has the ship bound for Jupiter and the Monolith in orbit between Jupiter and Io. 2061 seems to broadly be compatible with 2010, except that the lifespan of Lucifer (the second sun created out of Jupiter) is only 1,000 years whilst the coda to 2010 says it is 20,000 years. Clarke himself admitted that the pace of scientific discoveries about Jupiter during the writing of the series made creating a single continuity for the series difficult and he regarded each book as being set in a slightly different universe.
Similarly, Clarke seemed to also regard the three Rama Cycle books cowritten with Gentry Lee as being set in a somewhat different universe to his original Rendezvous with Rama. This may be less to do with continuity concerns and more to do with the fact that Lee wrote the bulk of these stories in a very different style and tone to Clarke's writing.
HP Lovecraft was known to disregard continuity whenever it suited him. The name "Old Ones" referred to both gods like Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth but also strange alien races like the one in The Shadow Out of Time. Likewise he has claimed that the "nightmare plateau of Leng" is in Asia, Antarctica and an otherworldly dreamland in various stories.

Live Action TV

Married With Children was pretty egregious in its use of Negative Continuity. The Bundy family routinely caused great destruction, wound up in jail, or accumulated mass amounts of debt in their adventures, but everything was back to normal at the start of the next episode.
- One of the few times the show HAD continuity from episode to episode was during the story arc where the Bundys visited England. This is subverted at the last minute by having the story end with Al locked up in the Tower of London, sentenced to subsist on bread and water, seemingly for life (which is actually taken as a HAPPY ending by Al, since it gets him away from his horrible family.) Next episode, everything is back to normal.
Red Dwarf has seen no problems with contradicting earlier episodes. Lister is a pantheist in Series 3 and an atheist in Series 5. He went from having never asked Kochanski out when he had the chance (Series 1) to having gone out with her before being subsequently dumped (Series 4). And he had his appendix removed twice (though one of the novels attempted to handwave the issue by stating that he in fact had two appendices). The original crew complement increased from 169 in Series 1 to 1,169 by Series 4. Then when Seasons 6 and 7 took place entirely on a Starbug, the shuttle itself was expanded drastically from its original two rooms. When Lister eliminated a white hole with a planetary trick shot, they weren't supposed to remember that... but Lister demonstrated that he did remember when he compared the improbability of such an experience to that of eating a good pot noodle.
- Quite egregiously, one episode revolved around discovering a device that allowed the ship to travel through time, but specifically not space—so they couldn't use it to get to Earth immediately. The very next episode revolves around them suddenly using the device to travel to Earth, without any explanation at all.
- The television special "Back To Earth" employed a kind of positive Negative Continuity: despite ending Series 8 with Red Dwarf destroyed, Rimmer running from the Grim Reaper (after kicking him in the balls to evade death) and the rest of the main cast in a parallel universe, Back To Earth starts with everything seemingly back to status quo... except later we learn of a fictional "series nine" that bridged the gap between the last televised series and the special.
The Mighty Boosh is hardly the type of show you'd expect to find continuity in anyway but it has a surprising combination of both Reset Button and Snap Back plots. One episode has a main character die only to have him rescued from hell by another, upon returning he's asked "I thought you were dead" only to respond with something to the effect of "Yeah, I'm back now" which is treated very nonchalantly. In other examples, Bollo the gorilla dies on one episodes ending only to appear again later (same gorilla, he talks, its that kinda show). And one egregious example involves them employing a Snap Back on Backstory. Howard reveals that he doesn't play instruments because he signed his soul over to the Spirit of Jazz to become a musical genius and now every time he picks up an instrument the Spirit of Jazz controls him. This isn't remedied in any way at the end of the episode but the very next episode open with Howard playing a guitar with no ill effects or explanation.
- In addition, the first series presented Vince as Howard's apprentice at the Zooniverse, but later ones claimed they were the exact same age and had only been apart for a week.
  - Ages are really inconsistent on this show - a few episodes had a running joke about Vince and Howard being the same age even though they didn't look it (to the extent of showing flashbacks where Vince is a small child and Howard is exactly the same), but a later episode stated that Howard was ten years older than both Vince and Harrison.
The Law And Order franchise, arguably.
Late Night with Conan O'Brien has a recurring character named Artie Kendall, who introduces himself and explains his backstory to Conan on every appearance, at which Conan shows no sign of having seen him before. This is particularly unusual given that Artie is a singing ghost.
The Goodies were arrested repeatedly, caused massive amounts of damage, had at least 2 separate sets of children and, on one occasion, the entire world was destroyed. And then they're back to normal again next time.
The early-'90s Chris Elliott comedy vehicle Get a Life featured the main character getting killed at the end of several episodes, ony to return in the next episode with no explanation or reference to his previous death.
The Young Ones often destroyed their flat, each other, and the fourth wall all in a single go. All are back by the next episode (fragile as ever).
Borderline example: the Russell T Davies version of Doctor Who, in particular, merrily revises the past it makes for a more dramatic story. For instance, when, in "School Reunion" Sarah Jane Smith returned, her personal history had gotten Retconned so as to make her reunion with the Doctor have that much more of an impact on her.
- Word of God says that the Time War changed some bits of history around in ways not even the Time Lords could anticipate, which may justify this (and, if you like, explains the countless continuity errors the show had even before the relaunch.)
This trope is one of the charges frequently (and not without some justification) at Star Trek Voyager.

Newspaper Comics

Many gag-a-day Newspaper comics will show repeated holidays (particularly Christmas) but never show the characters getting older (particularly if those characters happen to be children). This gets a bit confusing in series such as Calvin and Hobbes where other events in the series do show some continuity.

Radio

Milton Jones in The Very World Of Milton Jones has a different backstory every episode, usually involving completely different parents, jobs, love interests and hobbies. Of course, this is just to set up a Hurricane Of Puns.
A common device in radio comedy, where the audience would often consist of whoever happened to be near a radio set at the time. For instance, The Goon Show would often have major characters blown up, bankrupted, thrown into prison, killed by wet elephants, or otherwise removed from the story before bringing them back the following week.

Video Games

Honorable mention: Each route in the games to Tsukihime and Fate Stay Night have Multiple Endings, although each ultimately has a "True" ending and a "Good" (or "Normal") ending, which are not the same. The Tsukihime Kagetsu Tohya exists mostly in a dream and doesn't follow on any particular ending, and Fate/hollow ataraxia is in a time-loop and the same applies. Melty Blood takes place after an Alternate Universe that was supposedly an unreleased route of Tsukihime. Some endings are 'more canon' than others, but it's still nigh-impossible to reconcile them all. Especially since Kagetsu Tohya's dreamworld incorporates elements of all the endings.
- The Galaxy Angel Gameverse also had a sequel series, Galaxy Angel II, where elements from all the endings occurred (most obvious in Lily's character chapter, where her form of initiating Kazuya into the Rune Angel-tai includes re-enacting scenes from every Moon Angel's story).
Let's not even get started on Crash Bandicoot...
- The first three games do have a canon. It starts with Cortex making Crash, then he gets defeated on his blimp, finds the crystal and sets the plot of Crash 2 into motion, where at the end his space station gets destroyed. Start of Crash 3 then shows this released Uka Uka, and by the end N. Tropy, Uka Uka, and Neo Cortex are all trapped in time. This is where the Negative Continuity begins, as it's never explained quite how he recovered to race go-karts with Crash in time for CTR. After that, it sort of deteriorates with different developers messing around with the franchise, earning it an eventual Continuity Reboot.
Ganbare Goemon 2 ended with the revelation that Ebisumaru was actually a woman trapped in a man's body, a curse that was undone by the end of said game. This was undone in future installments as if Ebisumaru was always a man. This may have been done to prevent him from becoming a possible love interest of Goemon's, since Omitsu was established as a major character in the following game.
Left 4 Dead is an interesting example. Developer commentary reveals that originally, each of the four campaigns was going to be interconnected as one long campaign. The developers did away with this when they realized that subverting the rescue operation at the end of a campaign to set up the next campaign made for a Downer Ending, and thus got in the way of the enjoyment. As a result, each campaign only exists within its own mini-canon, despite all of them using the same characters. Taking this one step further, survivors who die in one stage of a campaign are inexplicably resurrected at the start of the next stage, unless they die in the finale.
- Not so fast. Subtle hints abound that there is in fact a logical progression, and some people that have written on the saferoom walls have notes in later campaigns that tell a story in themselves. Valve like detail.
This is the case with the Super Mario Bros series, where Shigeru Miyamoto said that there wasn't a continuity simply because it'd limit the development of future Mario games (hence the Reset Button basically occurring at the end of every single Mario game when the world is saved).

Web Animation

Space Tree The Space Tree used this a lot; in one early episode, a character is killed and replaced with an evil robot (but is mysteriously better in the next), while in another, the entire universe is destroyed.
Webtoon example: Happy Tree Friends always results in most, if not all of the characters featured in each episode dying a horrible death of some kind. Despite this, all characters are alive and well the very next episode.
Similarly, Homestar Runner's Teen Girl Squad has at least one of the girls die in almost every episode, but come back in the next.
Madness Combat used to be like this until recent episodes.
And Pico and friends from Newgrounds have flashes and games resetting continuity despite the fact that Pico and friends die in most flashes.
Retarded Animal Babies, also hosted on Newgrounds, takes full advantage of Negative Continuity to kill/maim the main cast (especially Bunny) each episode, only to have them back by the next. In one later episode, the entire universe was destroyed by one of the cast when he tried to f*** a black hole. Surprisingly, the series actually reveals why it has Negative Continuity (aside from Rule Of Funny): in one timeline the cast grew up; while they ultimately became successful adults (somehow) they also became smart enough to realize that their world sucks. Cat, who became a Mad Scientist, then invented a Physical Law Usurper, which gave them all the chance to go to a place outside of normal space and time, where they could remain blissfully ignorant forever. As a side character in a later episode notes, "they exist in a continuity proof bubble, like a bunch of Kennys from South Park!"
Cat: We can go back Donkey! We can go to a place where we will be young and retarded forever! We will never grow old. We will never get smart. And we will never realize what a horrible place this world truly is.

Web Comics

Penny Arcade rarely keeps continuity for more than one three-panel strip at a time; in news posts there is a running joke about the struggle against "dreaded continuity". Despite this, there are continuity nods, such as a watch that passes to the victor when one character kills the other.
PvP once parodied this when character Cole needed a trip to the dentist. He cheerfully told the dentist to go ahead and do whatever he needed and heck, forget the anesthesia, because Cole would be all better in the next strip anyway. The dentist then informed him that PvP isn't that kind of comic. Cole spent the next few strips at home, recovering and in a great deal of pain.
The Non Adventures Of Wonderella frequently has the characters get mutated, zombified, killed, or otherwise just given seemingly-permanent changes that get disregarded by the next strip. Not to mention all the times that the city got destroyed, everybody in it changed into sharks, etc.
Casey and Andy, a comic about two mad scientists and their neighbors, routinely kills off the two titular stars, only to have them get right back up and continue on. In one strip in particular, the big bad of the day (It's always a girl scout) kills one by disintegrating his body below the neck, and, two panels later, he gets back up, only to have the girl ask how he did that? "Did what?"
Le avventure del grande Darth Vader has several episodes acknowledging the continuity of other episodes, but often has characters being decapitated by the protagonist, only to return as if nothing happened when their presence makes for a funny situation again. However, the two things are not mutually exclusive: an episode has a character acknowledging another character's death and return, only to have the "resurrected" character reply: "Yeah, I remember I was dead too, but people don't care about that."
VG Cats. Leo has been aborted from time and recovered, only to head back in time and cut off both his past self's arms. He got better from that, too.

Western Animation

South Park: Kenny's repeated deaths... just for starters. Oddly. the characters seem to be somewhat aware of Kenny's having died... a lot.
- This is actually lampshaded at one point, where Kenny's mother is shown giving birth... to a small kid dressed in a red hoodie (!) who they, in honor of his recently-deceased big brother, decide to name Kenny. This is implied to be a regular occurrence...
  - Prior to this, during the two-part episode dealing with the revelation of Cartman's parentage, Kenny dies during the first episode and then simply re-materializes in the second. His friends simply say "Oh, hi Kenny" and move on like nothing unusual happened. This of course implies that this method of return is quite commonplace.
Dexters Laboratory: Shorts often ended with inescapable doom, or other seemingly-permanent bad things (like the destruction of Dexter's lab on several occasions, or the whole planet getting destroyed by a huge meteor shower in "Let's Save the World, You Jerk!").
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Has so little continuity that recurring character M.C. Pee Pants' whole gag is that he doesn't benefit from a Snap Back.
- This trope allows them to get away with, say, Frylock refusing to move back even after the others beg him to in the episode "The The".
- At least one episode of ATHF alluded subtlety to the premiere episode, featuring a giant robotic rabbit, by showing a large bunny-shaped hole in the side of the mall. This regardless of the fact that the undefeated rabbit was never seen again.
- Let's not even get started on how many times the characters have been killed off (except for Frylock). Sometimes, they come back in the very same episode. Master Shake probably leads the death count, closely followed by Carl. This even proves bad for him in "The Marines": Not even suicide can stop him from joining.
Frisky Dingo subverts the regularity its Adult Swim brethren engage in this trope by slavishly adhering to a linear chronology, to the point that almost every single offhand joke, reference, act or item becomes integral to the plot. For example, while attempting to make Crews Enterprises profitable by selling action figures, Xander happens to see Killface on television, and decides to use his likeness. To obtain his approval for the rights, instead of merely asking Killface, he decides to bug his apartment with a fax machine that delivers an invitation to an invention competition in Las Vegas. To make it look legitimate, they have underling Watley create something stupid to compete, and he creates "ant-farm keyboard". Killface plans an elaborate Elvis-themed production to win the money he wants, but Xander, who wants to go off and have sex with a waitress he met, awards the victory to ant-farm keyboard. Later, Watley attempts to dispose of the ant-farm keyboards while also transporting nuclear waste, but gets distracted by a gathering at the Annihilatrix (where the rest of the cast has journeyed to in the meantime). While he parks in the parking lot, Grace Ryan falls off the annihilatrix and into the nuclear waste. She ends up with radioactive ants that take over her brain and turn her into a beastly supervillain named "Antagone", who later had a giant, hideous ant baby that ends up killing off most of the cast. To sum, an idea about action figures resulted in a giant, murderous mutant ant baby. In addition, considering that whole "death of most of the cast", it almost fits that the show has gone kaput due to creative differences between its creators.
An episode of Duckman lampshaded this when the character Ajax was beat up and placed in traction. He mentioned that he would be in perfect shape tomorrow due to non-FDA approved drugs.
The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy: Frequently ends with deaths/mutations/evils run amok that don't carry over to the next episode.
- When the Grim Reaper is your plaything, and often is the cause of those deaths/mutations/evils... why wouldn't you be able to reboot your universe back to a point that it was for status quo?
- The fan webcomic Grim Tales From Down Below explains this as a case of Death Takes A Holiday - Billy and Mandy's life timers ran out long ago, but Grim can't bring himself to reap them.
Invader Zim: The world has been dragged millions of miles off course and major characters have been turned into bologna or had their organs replaced with household objects, and yet virtually every episode starts as though nothing unusual has happened.
- The bologna incident is brought up again by Dib when he tries to get Zim to help him uncurse Gaz in the episode Gaz, Taster of Pork, only for Zim to shout back "You're making it up!"
- Let's not forget Tak's ship crashing into Dib's lawn at the end of "Tak, the Hideous New Girl"; it had a vital part later in "Dibship Rising" and "Backyard Drivers from Beyond the Stars".
- Characters apparently can and do come back from the dead, too. Take this exchange during a boot camp episode:
  Zim: Skoodge? I thought the Almighty Tallest killed you.
  Skoodge: Yeah... but I'm okay now.
What makes this extra funny is there's no way Zim should have found out he was killed, either.
Sealab 2021: the Running Gag of Sealab blowing up repeatedly. Lampshade Hanging occurs in the third episode, "Radio Free Sealab", when Marco tells Captain Murphy "Once again, your stupidity has killed us!" before the explosion.
The Simpsons has an interesting trend in having Negative Continuity with the occasional Continuity Nod. Characters will often comment on a previous episode's events, such as Homer's Mr. Plow job when he took off Flanders's roof to use as a snow plow, or Mr. Burns and Krusty the Clown not recognizing Homer and Bart, even if someone points out all the major things they've done to them. It doesn't usually affect the plot for that episode other than a joke.
- In fact The Simpsons have managed to make something of an art of using a Continuity Nod to lampshade the lack of continuity. For instance, "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge" refers to "The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons"... by revealing the Simpsons have had an elephant in the back yard for nearly three seasons.
- This is parodied in one episode where the family cat, Snowball II, dies and is replaced by a succession of new cats, all of which die quickly. Eventually they hit Snowball V, who Lisa says they'll just call Snowball II to save money on food dishes and pretends the whole thing never happened. Principal Skinner calls her on this, saying it's a cheat, but Lisa shuts him up by referencing an equally deliberate piece of Negative Continuity from earlier in the series (namely, the fact that "Skinner" isn't really Skinner).
- And, of course, every single one of the Simpsons Halloween Specials.
  - However, this is more of A Day At The Bizarro than a continuity issue.
- The Simpsons does have a FEW permanent continuity changes:
  - Lisa became a Vegetarian in "Lisa the Vegetarian" and has remained so. (This was one of the stipulations Paul McCartney had for appearing in the episode)
  - Also, Lisa remains a Buddhist, and has been so since "She of Little Faith", and turning 8 eight years old in the very first season. She's been 8 ever since.
  - Maude Flanders (and, to a lesser extent, other dead characters) are still dead.
  - The Sideshow Bob saga
  - Apu started off single, got married and became a father to octuplets.
  - Barney Gumble, the show's resident drunk, became clean-cut and sober and stayed that way for three seasons. Now he is implied to periodically fall off and on the wagon from episode to episode depending on what joke is required.
- Another example of Negative Continuity in the series though, is that there have been to date at least 3 separate occasions where the school year has ended, with Bart graduating from 4th grade and Lisa from 2nd grade each time.
- And let's not even get started on the flashback episodes. Since everyone stays the same age, their pasts move forward through time to compensate, so various episodes show Homer and Marge going to high school in the 70's and 80's, while others show them already married with kids by the 80's, and a recent one shows them still dating in the 90's.
Aeon Flux: The title character died in every single Liquid Television short, usually at the end and once near the very beginning.
- Justified in that a later episode explains Aeon to actually be a series of identical clones.
Drawn Together applies this trope endlessly, with characters dying several times an episode, spouses of otherwise unmarried characters showing up for one episode and then vanishing, the Earth being conquered (and all characters killed) by robot insects with hats, etc.
Receives a Lampshade Hanging in an episode of Futurama. At the end of the episode, Fry declares that the most important thing in sitcoms is that "when the next episode starts, everything is back to normal"... as the camera pulls out on the burning ruins of New New York, which is - of course - back to normal by the next episode.
- However, subverted by the series as a whole. While some of episodes did have this, the series, unusually, also had continuity and explicitly stated timeline, a canon, and at least one running storyline-that involves Nibbler and even ties in the seemingly unimportant, yet awesome, Roswell episode-and is hinted at from the first episode, where you can see Nibbler's shadow as Fry gets pushed in.
- One recurring Negative Continuity is the minor character of Scruffy the janitor. Every time he appears, none of the main cast acts as though they've ever seen him before.
- Probably the strongest subversion possible with this trope is the end of Bender's Big Score. In short, Bender destroys the fabric of space-time, the sky cracks open, white blankness fills the screen and Bender proclaims "Well, we're boned." Since we have the end of the universe used as a quick gag and this is a DVD movie special rather than part of the series, everything seems set up for Negative Continuity. However The Beast With A Billion Backs uses the resultant crack in the universe to fuel its plot of inter-dimensional date rape.
  - Hell, in a deleted storyboard on the Beast with a Billion Backs, they show an alternate opening, with the 'Last time on Futurama..." the space rip, and an attempt to start the opening, with Bender cutting in yelling, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! There were like a thousand unresolved plots in the previous episode. What about those?"
Megas XLR: not only does Coop destroy the garage (and often house) where he lives every time he takes Megas out, but he often destroys New Jersey ENTIRELY. It's always fine the next episode. Lampshaded vaguely in an episode where Coop needs money and says: 'I don't have any cash, my mom took away my allowance for wrecking the house again'.
- In one episode, Coop has to fight monsters and also get to the video rental place by 5 in order to return a tape. As expected, the destruction ends up destroying nearly the entire city, but Coop manages to put the tape into the (mostly destroyed) rental building slot. He congratulates himself at making it, to which Kiva notes "And you only had to destroy the entire city to do it. Again!"
In Courage The Cowardly Dog, many episodes has Eustace being turned to stone, eaten by a dragon, stuck in space, etc. or Courage turning into a helicopter, or Muriel becoming a puppet, but everything was back to normal by the next episode. Also, villains would come back and not be remembered. One noted expection is the character Le Quack, where it is actually explained how he comes back and why no one recognizes him.
- Also the episode Ball of Revenge, which features a team-up of many early season villains who have grudges against Courage. However, this is led by Eustace, who doesn't seem to remember that some of them have already tried to kill him.
Tom Goes to the Mayor not only has Tom meeting the mayor seemingly for the first time in every episode but the episode "Spray a Carpet or Rug" actually ended with Tom's suicide and subsequent descent into Hell while "Bass Fest" ended with the death of seemingly everyone but Tom. In both cases the next episode begins with everything back to normal.
- This has been somewhat explained by the creators as the fact that Tom is stuck in a kind of Hell: every new episode, he goes to the mayor with an idea, and something absolutely terrible happens to him. Then, everything snaps back and he gets to be tormented again. And again.
Family Guy had Peter turned into a huge muscular man, had Lois turned into a supermodel, and had also Stewie turned into a fat blob. The next chapter, they're all back to normal. The most catastrophic chapter, where the Y2K bug launches every single nuke in the USA, ends as All Just A Dream.
- Sometimes, they resolve the major changes by the end of the episode, but almost always in a tongue in cheek way. For example, the episode where Meg becomes a star model/singer had her willfully choose to go back to her old self (even though outside of being treated as a sexual object, everything was still just way better for her). On one occasion Lois returns to normal after a job and as Peter questions the sequence of events she asks if he really wants to know that badly. He doesn't, and so we get no explanation.
  - Notably subverted with Peter's various jobs. Every time Peter gets fired, if it's not resolved in the story, you can guarantee he'll have to get a new job next episode.
- In Lois Kills Stewie, at the end of the episode, after Stewie's ascension to ruling the world and later death at the hands of his parents, it cuts to Stewie climbing out of a virtual reality simulator. Brian comes over and Stewie explains that none of it was real.
  Brian: ...if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish, only to find out that none of it really happened, I mean… you don't think, that would, j— be just like a giant middle finger to them?
  Stewie: Well, hopefully, they would have enjoyed the ride.
  Brian: I don't know, man. I think you'd piss a lot of people off that way.
  Stewie: Well, at least it didn't end like The Sopranos, where it just cut to black in mid-sen— <cut to black>
  Take That!
The Power Puff Girls frequently had Townsville getting physically smashed or going up in flames. It was always perfectly fine by the next episode (even though the episodes are probably very close together, since the characters never move on from kindergarten).
The Land Before Time series is positively egregious in this regard, constantly resetting character traits and ignoring all the times when they finally got to paradise.
Beavis And Butthead frequently had the title characters get severely injured or their house trashed (if not completely destroyed), but everything was always fine by the next episode.
Camp Lazlo's continuity can't make up it's mind. Although a fair amount of things do stay with the continuity, some cases go beyond Status Quo Is God. Camp Kidney built five years ago one episode? Next episode, it's decades old. How old the camp is, how long the characters have known each other and more change from episode to episode, yet things like Edward owning a doll and Lazlo renaming the newpaper remained until the show ended. Edward being able to drive the cabins like cars was even promoted from a one-time gag to a plot element in the next season.
- Logical explanation: foreground details have continuity, background details don't.
Very few things that happened in episodes of Ren and Stimpy carried on into later episodes, like for instance in at the end of some episodes they would get killed, the universe being destroyed, them being horribly mutilated, their house being destroyed, them living with a human or being homeless,etc. One of the very few things that carried from episode to episode was Stimpy's first material possession (a litter box) until it was destroyed.
The newspaper comic Lio has frequently ended strips with the title character or his father's demise, but they will always be fine for the next day's strip.
Samurai Jack is pretty guilty of this ~~every now and then~~.
- Notable exception: The episodes with The Scotsman.
Kim Possible had mostly a negative continuity. Character Development was always nullified, the destroyed super villain lairs were always rebuild, etc. The reason was admittedly that the creators didn't care much about continuity. This was however changed during Post Script Season.