|
|
|
|
|
Nothing Is the Same Anymore
|
"EVERYTHING I KNOW IS A LIE!!!"
For many shows, the Status Quo Is God. However, there are series that have the guts to seriously change their premise, or at least to shake up major parts of their story, and really mean it. No Reset Buttons, no Snap Backs, no way to restore the comfortable status quo. Nothing Is the Same Anymore is Exactly What It Says on the Tin — the setting, or the characters' situation, has changed significantly and irrevocably, for better or for worse, and now the characters have to deal with it.
The trick is to do it without Jumping the Shark, which can be a difficult task.
As there isn't an easy out if it all goes wrong, the writers tend to have to resort to desperate measures like All Just a Dream to attempt to undo the damage. This rarely goes well, and can even result in a Franchise Killer. Pretty much the only hope is a well-executed Continuity Reboot.
See also Wham Episode, Freak Out, Post Script Season, Breaking the Fellowship, Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome, and Ascended Fridge Horror.
SPOILERS AHEAD. You have been warned.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Legend of Galactic Heroes pulls this three times after Whamtastical episodes involving two deaths and one invasion.
- The Eclipse in Berserk is as Earth-shattering an example of this as can be imagined. Though as the pre-Eclipse story was essentially the longest ever flashback it loses a little of its impact. Only a little though.
- Even that got drastically changed when Griffith manipulated Skull Knight's power to fuse all the planes of existence together.
- Code Geass developed somewhat gradually for a while. The Black Knights would win small battles and recruit allies and basically consolidate their power overtime, sure, but they never made grabs to free Japan rapidly, and no major characters died nor were any important Knightmares permanently destroyed. Then episode 22 rolls around and jacks the plot into high gear quite quickly, forcing the Black Knights to try and retake Japan all in a single day. Unfortunately for the Black Knights, they weren't quite ready yet.
- The final four episodes of R2 take it to a whole new level. Lelouch spent the majority of the series working towards Britannia's destruction. Lelouch is now the Britannian emperor. Suzaku spent the majority of the series trying to capture or kill Lelouch. Suzaku is now Lelouch's bodyguard. Kallen spent the majority of the series as Lelouch's most devoted follower. Kallen is now desperately trying to kill Lelouch. The Black Knights were under the command of Lelouch and working towards liberating Japan. Lelouch conquers Japan, again, forcing the Black Knights to ally with Schneizel (their former enemy) in order to try and liberate it from Lelouch.
- Mai-Otome: In a Wham Episode a little past the halfway point of the series, Nagi conquers Windbloom and deposes Mashiro, while Nina's jealousy boils over, leading her to finally fight Arika, accidentally killing Erstin, who in turn had just turned out to be a Mole, prompting the previously Uncannily good Arika to fly into Unstoppable Rage. Oh, and nearly the entire cast is depowered. Ultimately, the Garderobe academy is nearly entirely abandoned as the central setting of the show while the main cast, largely in a state of freaking out, is dispersed to the wind. Even the opening credits change (albeit one episode too early, somewhat spoiling the surprise).
- Arguably, so too does Mai-Hime, where halfway through the premise changes from A straight Magical Girl show with teenage girls fighting monstrous orphans and taking down the Big Bad American Conspiracy in the first half to: The HiME festival where they have to fight and defeat each other until only one remains, which means possibly killing the other and at least killing the other's most important person.
- Season three of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX , starting when the heroes start chasing down Cobra. Apart from the bad guys, even the regular students are shown to be rather jerkassy, and not just in their elitism. And Yubel. The show is far darker from then on until essentially the end.
- Episode Eight of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Some people try to apply Fanon Dis Continuity to the remaining episodes, as they simply cannot accept Kamina's true role as a Decoy Protagonist.
- In Pokémon, the English version had a song called "Everything Changes", which pretty much explains this trope perfectly. This is made even more poignant considering the constant character changes and location changes in the series.
- Best Wishes! pretty much embodies this trope: Ash used to catch 6 Pokemon throughout a whole region. We're not even at the half-way mark and he already has a team of eight, excluding Pikachu. Also, Team Rocket has become competent, and have ditched most of their running gags. Another huge change is teased with Meowth getting fired from Team Rocket, but it turns out to have been a ruse.
- 20th Century Boys combines this with Your Princess Is in Another Castle all in one hell of a Wham Episode which ends in a Time Skip, where about a third of the way through the Big Bad Friend actually manages to completely screw over our heroes and become prime minister of Japan. Cut to 15 years later and it's a bona-fied Villain World, with the main character from the first third presumed dead along with most of his Nakama. The series does this again about two thirds of the way through when someone takes the Big Bad's place and releases a virus killing about a third of the world's population. Cut to 3 years later and things are '''much''' worse than before, setting things up for the finale.
- Xam'd: Lost Memories does this after the Zanbani is damaged during battle and is out of commission until the Series Finale, both Akiyuki and Nakiami leave the Zanbani and are separated, and Furuichi kills himself when Haru rejects him for Akiyuki. But what really cements the trope is when Nakiami sells her iconic red wave rider.
- School Rumble revolved around Harima's attempts to woo the girl of his dreams, until he mistakenly declared his love for someone else.
Comic Books
Fan Fiction
- The status quo in Dept Heaven Apocrypha took its first big hit with Kylier's accidental Mind Rape of Nessiah. It Got Worse, and although the conflict in that plotline is solved for now, it looks as though their relationship is never going to recover.
- It happened again when Seth cheated on Meria the morning after they first slept together. Both characters (and those around them) were hit hard; the jeering of the unworthy masses has put the former in a Heroic BSOD that she's only now recovering from, and the latter has completely lost most of her carefree demeanor.
- Two Step departs from the usual Left 4 Dead four-survivor ensemble when the ship Coach, Rochelle, Ellis and Nick were on sinks. Nick is injured by a Witch and ends up left behind, and most of the story is about him traveling completely alone. The ensemble aspect returns a bit later on, but it doesn't last long - Nick ditches them at a safe place later on. Another mechanic that is discarded is the "kill lots of zombies", as it's implied that the Commons died or mutated more during the course of the story, reinforced by the fact that the only zombies encountered are Special Infected. Even the immediate objective of the survivors changes from 'find someplace safe' to 'find someplace warm and make it safe'. Oh, Nick gets a dog, too.
Film
- A very few films, such as Full Metal Jacket and Psycho manage to produce a NITSA effect by killing the apparent protagonist mid-way through the film. Trail of the Pink Panther seems to do this to Inspector Clouseau (the ending reveals he survived), but that's because all of Clouseau's scenes in the first half are actually deleted scenes from The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Peter Sellers having been dead for almost 2 years when this film was made. The film was intended as the gateway for a new protagonist to enter the series with the next film and wasn't even conceived until after Sellers' death.
Literature
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe New Jedi Order series. They killed: Chewbacca, Anakin Solo, Borsk Fey'lya, Admiral Ackbar, The Hapan Queen Mother Teneniel Djo, and Mon Mothma. Oh, and started Jacen Solo on the road to the Dark Side that would later lead to his death.
- The Blood Books, in Blood Pact: Vicki becomes a vampire.
- Late in the Animorphs series, Marco is forced to reveal what has been going on to his father so that the two can fake their deaths and go into hiding. At the same time, Visser One is killed, giving Visser Three full control of the invasion and allowing him to use his more direct tactics. A little bit later, the Yeerks find out that the Animorphs are human, a fact that they had spent the entire series trying to keep secret, forcing them and their families into hiding.
- Changes, the latest book in The Dresden Files. By the end of the book, just about everything in Harry's life has changed. Up to and including the "life" part.
- Harry Potter has several WHAM Episodes that effectively change everything.
- The first, and perhaps the biggest in terms of how the plot of the series changed, was the death of Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. His murder marked the point in which the books stopped playing around with being "kids' books" and started getting down to the meat of it.
- And of course, that's also the book where Voldemort went from a decrepit spirit trying to regain a body to his full strength, with magical protection against Harry and his returning minions to boot.
- Lampshaded in the film with Hermione's line at the end, "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" Said line got prominently featured in one of the trailers.
- The death of Dumbledore in the Half-Blood Prince meant that the only person Voldemort ever feared is gone and that Hogwarts is no longer the safest place in the Wizarding World.
- The death of Scrimgeour in the Deathly Hallows resulted in a coup d'etat, with Voldemort running the Ministry of Magic. The Power Trio was forced to go on the run throughout the entire book while everyone else had to deal with being in a Police State run by the Death Eaters.
- A Song of Ice and Fire seems to delight in flipping its readers' expectations as to who the main protagonist of the series is, at critical moments of every odd-numbered book:
- In A Game of Thrones Eddard Stark is beheaded about 90% of the way through, after the entirety of the book up to that point had been acting like he was the main hero.
- In A Storm of Swords it's Robb's turn to go, after having taken over from his father as the seeming hero of the story and the one king in the war the readers were set up to root for.
- In A Dance with Dragons Jon Snow is murdered by his own men after a series of unpopular management decisions, without ever learning the truth about his origins and despite virtually every reader assuming he's the "ice" half of the song alluded to in the series' title. The "fire" half, Daenerys, loses the entirety of the power base she'd spent the entire series up to that point building up, while her own nephew Aegon, previously having been assumed dead, is revealed to be alive and leading a campaign to retake Westeros, which is what everybody assumed Daenerys would do. Aegon's claim to the throne is actually even stronger than Daenerys' ever was, which leaves her fate questionable at best.
- To be fair, the fate of both Snow and Daenerys are left ambiguous. The only thing Martin enjoys more than killing his main characters is playing with the expectations of his readers. While it's true that Jon Snow was stabbed multiple times this is not a clear death sentence. Snow would not be the first to escape the seemingly certain jaws of death in Martin's epic.
Live Action TV
Mythology & Religion
- The Bible has both historical and religious examples.
- Historically, Babylon destroys Jerusalem and takes the Israelites into captivity, ending the Davidic dynasty of kings.
- Religiously, Jesus' life and death, which replaces the Mosaic Law with principles like the Golden Rule, erases God's favoritism towards the Israelites, and changes God's modus operandi from sponsoring a physical country with borders that need defending inhabited by a single race to sponsoring a spiritual nation separated from earthly war and politics populated by anyone who wants to serve God.
- And then, a few decades later, Jerusalem gets destroyed again, this time by the Romans, and the Diaspora happens.
- Norse Mythology has the death of Baldur by Loki, Odin has one of Loki's sons killed in return, and when Loki gets mad about this and insults the Aesir, they capture and bind him. It's at this point when Loki turns from Trickster Archetype to Big Bad and Ragnarok turns from being prophecy to inevitable occurrence.
Newspaper Comics
Tabletop Games
- The Spellplague that marked the transition of the Forgotten Realms from Dungeons & Dragons from 3E to 4E was essentially this. Not everyone took this change well.
- Long before that, The Time of Troubles transitioned the setting from 1E to 2E. Interestingly, the transition from 2E to 3E was merely Handwaved, the only significant change being the return of Bane. Although the final line of "Die Vecna Die!" (one of the last official 2E modules, whose purpose was largely to be an in-universe explanation of the changes) was "Nothing will ever be the same again."
- When a Critical Shift goes down in Feng Shui, if the PCs have no way of reversing this, it is essentially this.
Toys
- BIONICLE's story went in a relatively steady pace for the initial three years, but after that, every succeeding year trampled over the previously established status quo until there was almost nothing left of the original plot. In "short":
- 2001: Six Toa arrive on a besieged tropical island to stop the Makuta and awaken Mata Nui.
- '02: The heroes go through a Mid-Season Upgrade.
- '03: A former important supporting character becomes the Seventh Toa, the Makuta is seemingly killed. The islanders rebuild themselves to be stronger.
- '04: Whole Episode Flashback to the ancient city of Metru Nui. Turns out the entire story up to this point was a lie, and there were more Toa and Makuta, and various other organizations, and way more islands.
- '05: Continuing the Flashback, Metru Nui is in ruins.
- '06: Metru Nui, in the present, is repopulated. Every character adopts a new life. Six former side characters become Toa. A secret organization is revealed. Makuta returns.
- '07: The new Toa change permanently and one of them is Killed Off for Real. The original island from '01 is demolished.
- '08: The island is fully destroyed as Mata Nui awakens, but Makuta takes over his body, thus the villain wins. Tons of characters are killed off. We find out Mata Nui is actually a huge robot and every character is a malfunctioning mechanoid, and as such, the whole story is the result of an unintended glitch.
- '09: We're introduced to a brand new world, Bara Magna. Mata Nui makes a new body and wins a war for the locals. Meanwhile, the original universe becomes a vile Crap Sack World.
- '10: Makuta is offed, the entire original universe and every place we've seen is destroyed, Mata Nui goes back to stasis, Bara Magna becomes the beautiful Spherus Magna, every mutation done to characters is reversed, and the leader of the original group of Toa is de-evolved into his original stature. Lots of important characters get killed in side stories. Oh, and the Bionicle franchise ends.
- '11: The untied plot threads are further complicated in official web-serials, and seemingly every new chapter rewrites the story in some way, some spectacularly so. The writer must be aiming to set a record.
Video Games
- The first 3 games in the Rainbow Six series established the series as a groundbreaking tactical shooter, with 1-hit-kill realism and the importance of squad-based mission planning over twitch-and-shoot reflexes. The latest games in the series are standard linear-level first-person shooters, with Rainbow Six: Vegas even having regenerative health.
- It evolved, but the original games required twitch-and-shoot reflexes because the The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard. It took until Raven Shield where it was feasible for your team to have a turnover rate, as opposed to everyone being either alive or wiped out.
- Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Splinter Cell: Conviction change the series from being about Sam Fisher, badass SIGINT Ninja battling terrorists for a secret BlackOps branch of the US government, to being about Sam Fisher, badass fugitive on the run from the US government for a crime he didn't commit (although gameplay in Double Agent at least is largely unchanged, as Sam is surprisingly well-equipped for a supposed outlaw).
- Final Fantasy VI had the Big Bad pretty much destroy civilization halfway through the game.
- As a meta example, Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to focus on gritty futuristic city adventuring rather than high fantasy. Although the status quo had already been changed considerably by the Steam Punk Final Fantasy VI, VII goes all the way: the opening sequence shows a character holding a glowing fantasy-style crystal for about five seconds, and zooms out to show a massive, filthy, neon sci-fi metropolis. That one scene just about crushed any obligation to include castles and princesses in the series forever.
- Jak and Daxter was a typical Naughty Dog platformer with a forgettable plot, it's two sequels though that send the characters into the future were much darker GTA style games, with a much deeper story.
- Arguably, The Neverhood's Battle of Robot Bil completely changes the tone of the remainder of the game. For a Widget Series-type story with bizarre settings and lots of bizarre humor, you would hardly expect your only allies abruptly getting killed off, leaving you all alone inside the creepy Big Bad's place where no bizarre humour can even exist, with hint messages from Willie discontinued for obvious reasons.
- Metroid Fusion has the Metroids being extinct. Unfortunately, every other Metroid game that came out after this (back in 2002) has been set before Fusion! Metroids keep being bred, and killed off in the last 2 games before this (storylinewise, those being Super Metroid and Metroid: Other M. If there is a game set after Fusion, it will either seriously shake up the plot, or somehow Metroids will exist again, keeping the former Status Quo.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is a similar case, permanently sealing Ganondorf, the Triforce, the Master Sword and Hyrule itself deep under the ocean in a finale based on letting go of the past and accepting "the winds of change". Of course, the only games set after Wind Waker are the two DS games, with the second taking place in a new Hyrule. All other games set after Ocarina of Time take place in an Alternate Timeline.
- World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the Nothing Is the Same Anymore Expansion. While the first two expansions each opened a new continent without touching the old world, bar minor details, this expansion tears the status quo and runs over its remains on a steamroller. Azeroth is hit by the eponymous Cataclysm, some zones are left completely wrecked while others change hands, and virtually every zone has its questing experience significantly revamped.
- The first third or so of the original Shin Megami Tensei was Urban Fantasy Just Before the End. That probably tells you what the rest of the game is set in.
- This is a major part of Mass Effect 2. After Shepard is brought back from the dead he/she tries to bring the old crew back together but most of them have moved on or do not want to join him, including his/her old love interests. Only two of the old squad members rejoin and they have changed during the two years. The new Normandy is not quite the same as the old one. Since Shepard now works for Cerberus and not the Alliance military people react differently to him/her.
Webcomics
- Webcomic example: Starslip Crisis when it became Starslip: The main characters starslipped into a universe where starslip drive was outlawed and almost immediately afterward crushed Katarakis' evil plans before they came to fruition (since the "present time" in this universe is two years earlier than the one in the previous universe), causing Vanderbeam to keep/regain his position as captain. The loss of the starslip drive then caused the Terran Consortium to collapse and be repurposed as the "United Star Configuration". The Fuseli is then decomissioned and turned into an orbiting space museum while Vanderbeam and his crew are reassigned to the starship Paradigm, thus making the strip a bit closer to traditional Space Opera. Jovia is still dead, though.
- And Vanderbeam's suit has become the uniform... somehow.
- The utter destruction of Azure City and the Sapphire Guard (including Big Good Lord Shojo) results in the splitting of the main party, the death of the main character, and the seeming total victory of the forces of Evil in The Order of the Stick.
- Several hundred comics later, Roy is back to life and the party has been reunited, partially returning to the status quo... but not entirely.
- Sluggy Freelance does this occasionally, but the most recent arc hit this hard. Hereti Corp finally manages to capture Oasis, Riff and Zoe are trapped in an apparently dystopian world, and Torg is slowly going insane from all of this. Oh, and Torg, Bun Bun, Sam, and Sasha are now working for the Minion Master to lay low, but that's pretty minor compared to everything else that happened.
- In Questionable Content, beginning at strip 500 when Faye tells Marten how her father had committed suicide in front of her.
- John Kossler, author of The Word Weary, states in About section that he tries to avoid Status Quo Is God and make any changes he makes to his characters stick.
Western Animation
- Daria: The final episode of season 3, "Jane's Addition," marked a major change in the series. For instance, it introduced Tom Sloan, who would become a major love interest of Jane and then Daria while Daria finally gets over her infatuation with Trent when he lets her down on a school project. Furthermore, it marked the discarding of the series' Reset Button to begin a Story Arc in which all the characters begin to mature while facing situations that would change them forever.
- Proving that barriers were meant to be broken, Transformers: Beast Wars did this on Saturday morning while advertising toys. At the start of each season, natch. Season two shook things up a little by introducing the Transmetals, altering the planet, etc.; season three shook things up a lot by destroying the Axalon and forcing the Maximals to move into the Ark, putting them on the defensive until the series finale. And that's to say nothing of... well, it's on DVD, and it's worth seeing.
- You forgot the part where they killed off several beloved characters, one in the most gut-wrenching way imaginable.
- The third series of Transformers Animated is also seen as being very different than its predecessors, starting with Sari being revealed to be a robot and going from there. Its tone is also much darker than the earlier seasons- onscreen death starts up, for example.
- Of course, this all pales in comparison to Transformers: The Movie, which neatly divides The Transformers into what could be easily mistaken for two entirely different series.
- ReBoot did it very well. After an episodic first season in which Status Quo Is God, a Wham Episode kicked in, changed everything, gave the new premise some time to settle in, and then did the same thing again.
- For those interested, the first Wham Episode had Bob expelled from Mainframe and into the Web. Enzo was now left as the new guardian. After a few episodes, Enzo was defeated in one of the games, and in order to avoid being Nullified he had to change his Icon so that the game took him with it instead. And to hammer the point home, a Time Skip came right after.
- Basically after that episode, there is no Status Quo anymore. Wandering the net only lasts a few episodes before switching to searching the web and then switching to reclaiming Mainframe from Megabyte. Season 4 deceptively tries to reestablish the old Status Quo, but then throws it out the window with Megabyte taking over in the Cliff Hanger.
- The third season of The Venture Bros. ended with Brock quitting the OSI and leaving the Ventures, all the Hank and Dean clones dead (rendering the main characters killable) and 24 dying.
- The end of the first season was a pretty big change, too: The boys died. They came back in the second season, of course, but it confirmed that the boys were clones, which was only hinted at before.
- Er, 24's head had been blown completely off of his body in an explosion and fell in 21's arms. On fire. Dying isn't really the word here, so much as quite obviously completely dead.
- The Avalon and Gathering storylines in Gargoyles completely rewrote the Gargoyles' situation. Xanatos pulled a Heel Face Turn, and the Gargoyles returned to their castle. Owen and Puck were revealed to be the same person and Puck was (mostly) depowered. The Phoenix Gate has been destroyed. And there's gargoyle clans everywhere in the world. So many conflicts were resolved that, just to provide more season fodder, The Masquerade had to break.
- Frisky Dingo tried to do this in almost every episode. Friends and enemies switch sides with blinding speed, Season-spanning quests get cut off anticlimactically, and maybe three-fourths of the main cast get Killed Off for Real.
- The first episode of the retooled Doug invoked this trope.
- South Park invokes this in the episodes "You're Getting Old" and "Ass Burgers", in which Stan starts seeing and hearing everything as shit, and from there it spirals out — Randy starts a career as "Steamy Ray Vaughn", Carol divorces him and moves downtown with her kids, Stan no longer has any friends, Cartman and Kyle become friends, Cartman creates a food franchise, and the President of the United States is a duck. All of which were undone in the end... just as Stan was starting to look forward to what the new status quo had to offer.
- Young Justice: The first episode of the second season does this thanks to a Time Skip.
|
|
