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 are 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). Not to be confused with Dis Continuity.

Like Status Quo Is God, but more deliberate and/or explicit.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

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.
- Like wise with Ranma 1/2. Within individual arcs, a Game Breaking Injury would be a serious matter, the Tendo home would be all but demolished and the characters would have to repair it, someone would get in deep financial trouble and stay that way through the end of the plot, or someone would land in the hospital with a full-body cast. All this damage will be undone by the next arc with nary a word from anyone. The only permanent change was the destruction of the Saotome home (to force the family, Nodoka included, back into the Tendo household.) This was even lampshaded once in the early anime when Genma tended to Ranma's neck injury and said it would take a week (the time between episodes) to heal.
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. Throughout the series, there is also a slight bit of continuity in with all the general weirdness.
- Then the next episode, aptly titled "Going Too Far" jumps right back to this.
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 had Negative Continuity in two episodes just before the end of the series. The first one, titled Cosmic Collisions, introduces the characters to a group of dead people who are always searching for a buried treasure that never existed in the first place. The episode ends and everyone is killed by a 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 is severely injured or killed in the end (it's never satisfactorily explained if they actually were 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 on 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.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni seems to be a case of this. The main characters kill each other and then the next arc opens and everything's fine. Of course, it turns out to be something very different going on.

Comics

Literature

Arthur C Clarke's Odyssey novels are notable for each book taking place in a slightly separate universe than 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: Odyssey Three 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 shows Lucifer still shining brightly 20,000 years later (it also slightly changes the timeline of the Leonov mission from 2009-2011 to 2010-2015). 3001: The Final Odyssey, meanwhile, retcons almost everything, shifting all the events of the first two books into the 2030s or thereabouts and reworking the ending of 2001 into something much more dry and technical. 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.
- Arguably, if one includes the films 2001 and 2010, no two (or more) of the six entities are entirely consistent with each other.
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.
Robert Rankin's Brentford ~~trilogy~~ octalogy keeps the Reset Button firmly held down at all times - Brentford itself has been repeatedly destroyed/heavily damaged and on occasion, had the Great Pyramid of Giza teleported directly on top of it, world changing events are promptly ignored in later books, secondary characters disappear without a trace and almost the entire main cast was wiped out in book 3.

Live Action TV

Married with Children: The Bundy family routinely caused great destruction, wound up in jail, or accumulated massive debts 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.
- 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 and ten that bridged the gap between the last televised series and the special. Series creator Doug Naylor has expressed that he would rather not make an attempt on series 9, due to the odd cliffhanger.
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 Gag 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.
- Actually, there is a pretty strong continuity on most stuff character-related (hell, several episodes even bring back victims and/or criminal from previous episodes). The Negative Continuity comes mainly from the Attorney offices being generally unable to remember if they ever dealt with a similar case.
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 when it makes for a more dramatic story. For instance, when, in "School Reunion" Sarah Jane Smith returned, her personal history had been RetConned to make her reunion with the Doctor have 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.)
  - To be fair, it's a time travel show. They change the past every week. Logically, that would always change the timeline and thus anything that is established or accomplished in one episode could easily be undone by the changes they make to the timestream in the next episode. Timey Wimey Ball can justify just about anything. Sadly, non-time travel shows don't have this kind of excuse to fall back on...
This trope is one of the charges frequently (and not without some justification) leveled at Star Trek Voyager.

Radio

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.
  - Valve has announced a downloadable episode that takes place between the first and second episode.
  - And the sequel will be one continuous story as the characters make their way across the Southeastern US.
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).
- This isn't entirely the case with the RP Gs, however, where events in past games are occasionally referenced.
In Drawn to Life: The next chapter for the DS, Galileo is nowhere to be found for some reason. It's not even said where he went to.
Averted in [[Ever17]]. Although the constantly restarting storyline simply does not add up at all, like anything that doesn't add up in the story, it eventually somehow does get explained.
Averted in Umineko no Naku Koro ni. After the first episode of the visual novel, the main story restarts, but the focus switches to a meta-story in which Battler and Beatrice see the main story repeat over and over again.

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.
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.
- And then, Bunny attempted to destroy the entire universe. Needless to say, while he succeeded...
The Demented Cartoon Movie is 30 minutes of Negative Continuity.
Zorc of Yugioh The Abridged Series has "DESTROYED THE WORLD!" (canned laughter) at least a dozen times, according to Bakura.

Web Comics

In Flying Man and Friends, continuity reboots are handled by Reverse Continuity Rabbit. In his first appearance, the rabbit restores the landscape in the aftermath of an atomic blast that nearly caused the suicide of one character.
Penny Arcade rarely keeps continuity for more than one three-panel strip at a time; in news posts there is a Running Gag 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.
In Bob The Angry Flower, Bob has repeatedly raised vast evil armies and reduced the earth to ashes, or fed ever living thing into the mouths of gibbering Lovecraftian horrors, complaining all the while how people just don't have his vision. It never sticks.

Western Animation

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 alluded subtly to the premiere episode, featuring a giant robotic rabbit, by showing a large bunny-shaped hole in the side of the mall, although 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.
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~~ orange 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 (in an effect very similar to Prince's respawning in Lexx). 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.
- Subverted after the episode "Kenny Dies" when he stays dead.
  - It gets even better; at the end of the sixth season, amongst other events, Cartman ate Kenny's cremated remains, allowing Kenny to possess him. Then, a few episodes later, he gets exorcised but the spirit wanders off who knows where. Finally, in the closing moments of "Red Sleigh Down", Kenny walks onto the screen, and again his friends don't consider this unusual.
Dexter's 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!").
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 mostly 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.
- The Negative Continuity was parodied in "Homer Loves Flanders", where Homer and Flanders do become good friends and Lisa laments to Bart that because of such a radical change in character, they would no longer have any wacky adventures. However, at the end of the same episode, it pretends to be next week episode, shows that Homer hates Flanders again and Lisa and Bart looking at each other with excitement.
- 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.
- 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.
  - This recent episode lampshades the whole thing at the beginning, including Bart commenting that he's "never heard" of the 1990s — a decade he helped define.
- This troper is expecting Skinner to stop bringing up Vietnam and switch to Desert Storm sooner or later.
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.
- In one episode, Mayor Poopenmeyer mentions that Global Warming was a hoax. In another episode, Leela mentions that Global Warming happened but was canceled out by Nuclear Winter. In a third episode, Global Warming is in full swing and Professor Farnsworth has to find a way to stop it.
- 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.
- Well, that's more of Strange Bedfellows I'd say.
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 Victoria Principal's Dream.
- Well Peter and Lois were seen going back to normal. Peter gets distracted by his handsome self that he loses control driving and crashes to a lard factory, which turns him fat again. Lois is told by Peter and her father to go back to her normal self. Stewie is unexplainable. When it shows Peter (Who got back to his fat self) in the hospital, Stewie is .... back to his skinny self with no explanation.
- 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.
  - Actually lampshaded in one episode where Lois actually makes a point about Peter still not having a job, only for him to reference another series (This troper doesn't remember the exact one at the moment) where just this trope would happen, using this as explanation.
  - It was The Honeymooners.
- 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)
- Averted in the James Woods episodes, where there is shown to be a very clear continuity.
The Powerpuff 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).
- Averted in one episode where Townsville was undergoing renovation/reconstruction, presumably from all the fights the PPG have had there.
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 its 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.
- Also, they live in a different place in every episode.
Kim Possible had mostly a negative continuity. Character Development was always nullified, the destroyed Supervillain Lairs were always rebuilt, etc. The reason was admittedly that the creators didn't care much about continuity. This was however changed during Post Script Season.
Samurai Jack is pretty guilty of this ~~every now and then~~.
- Notable exception: The episodes with The Scotsman.
  - The combined awesomeness of the Scotsman and Jack causes the fabric of reality to stabilize if only for a little while.
Just about every SpongeBob SquarePants episode has Negative Continuity. In one, Squidward and SpongeBob were turned into snails, and in another they were turned into fruit and about to be eaten by the Flying Dutchman.
Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, given that the premise seemed to be to just put the character in antic inducing situations for 7 minutes, and then start anew in the next short. It does become a bit of a head scratcher when skills the two have acquired simply vanish, and little bits are blatantly reversed. Such as Yumi's fear of squirrels in Season 1 met with her love and devotion to squirrels in Season 2. Also Kaz's love of watching professional paint drying, contrasted with his later attitude of what a waste of time it is.
Justified in Code Lyoko: thanks to the "Returns to the Past", any injuries or problems the kids face can be easily resolved and the status quo unchanged, even for no real reason (in the start of one episode, a new character falls for Sissi. After the RTTP, he falls for someone else instead, with no real cause). The only exception is death, though the series did end up trying to decrease the RTTP power by giving a consequence for its overuse.
Pretty much any classic cartoon you can think of as well. Popeye, Tom And Jerry, Looney Tunes, the list goes on. Sometimes the continuity doesn't even follow through from scene to scene, where a character can be horrifically injured in one scene and two seconds later be completely fine.