No Ontological Inertia / Western Animation

• The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: At the end of "Ship of Ghouls", when the Monster of the Week, in the guise of a ship's captain, is returned to the Chest of Demons, the ship itself disappears.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius once had an episode where Jimmy used his Hypno-beam to make his parents think that the next day was his birthday in order to get a chemistry set... instead, the Hypno-beam's power makes them think that every day is his birthday. After eventually getting sick of it, Jimmy decides to unhypnotize them, only for the party clown to take the Hypno-beam and accidentally destroy it in a misperformed party trick. The next day his parents tell him that (assumably because he's had so many birthdays) that he's now 18 and going to college, but they were just faking it and destroying the Hypno-beam really made the hypnosis end (the bill for the clown was still there, though).
• Angel Wars: A demon named Discord looks like he's made of living volcanic rock, and has the ability to encase angels and angelic starships alike in obsidian. But when he's destroyed, the obsidian crumbles, freeing both the ships and their crews.
• Ben 10: In one episode, a giant tick-like alien lands on Yellowstone Park and begins sucking all life in the area dry. The Tennysons are in the area, but are unable to stop it immediately due to the usual aliens proving ineffective. By the time Ben finally learns to use the new alien of the week, the entire area is gray and dead, the usual geysers are spitting poison, and the ground is brittle and breaking apart in large floating chunks. After the tick is destroyed, the background literally turns green and lush again in mid-conversation, and the gunk that Ben has to wash off the Rustbucket is the only evidence that the tick was ever there. Why then did the gunk remain? Just to make life suck for Ben.
• Castlevania (2017): "Labyrinth": A monster called the Stone-Eye Cyclops lurks in the catacombs under the city of Gresit, turning anyone who it comes across to stone so it can feed on their terror as they're left trapped and fully conscious in their bodies. Because the Cyclops is using its magic to keep its victims trapped in stone, killing it undoes the spell and frees its victims. Unfortunately, it only restores the body as they currently are. If the statue happened to be broken before...
• Conan the Adventurer: Happens more than once, to the point where one character is bewildered when this trope doesn't work.
• DuckTales (1987): In one episode, a magical golden duck artifact with the power to turn things into gold has unleashed a magic wave that is turning the world into gold. Scrooge and the guy who accidentally started the whole thing are rushing to return the artifact to the shrine fountain it came from. They eventually reach the shrine just ahead of the magic effect and throw the duck into the water even as they're turned to gold too... and then everything is returned to normal.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • "Whishy Washy": Cosmo and Wanda turn into teenagers thereby getting rid of their child, Poof, yet the result of a wish they grant beforethen remains, as does Timmy's memory of Poof.
  • "Mooooving Day": Those who drank the milk don't remember anything they said or did after Timmy releases them from the mind control and restores Dimmadome Acres back to its former state with the Mega Fizzy Juice.
  • "Timmy's Secret Wish": Subverted; Foop, wanting Timmy to lose For the Evulz, provided the final example that sealed Timmy's guilty verdict, which resulted in his faries being revoked and any wish, or product resulting from one, disappearing to an isolated island. However, Foop didn't realize that since Timmy wished for Poof, and an anti-fairy can't exist if the regular one doesn't, that would mean he would disappear too. In short, in not thinking about the results of the trial and just wanting Timmy to suffer, Foop ended up Hoist by His Own Petard.
• Gargoyles:
  • Sort-of subverted in an early episode, when Demona cast a spell on Goliath, transforming him into her thrall as long as she carried the original spell (or at least, the page from the book it was written in). While the book and the page that the spell was written upon were both recovered and Demona defeated, the counterspell wasn't, thus leaving Goliath stuck as a slave to whoever held the spell and fully aware of his actions and unable to stop himself. Elisa, however, came up with an elegant solution; she held the page with the spell written on it in her hands and commanded Goliath to live the rest of his life as if he'd never been put under that spell in the first place. Needless to say, it worked.
  • Generally averted, however. Spells cast tended to have permanent effects until either a counter-spell was used or an escape clause was evoked. Even Oberon's Children tend to follow these rules.
• The Gilligan's Planet episode "Too Many Gilligans" featured an alien cloning machine that began cranking out copies of the cast until the landscape was filled with them. When the machine was destroyed, all the clones vanished.
• In the final story arc of Gravity Falls, the demon Bill Cipher and his otherworldly minions have invaded Gravity Falls and transformed it into a chaotic land. In the series finale, Bill Cipher is destroyed, causing his extradimensional minions to be sucked back into to their own universe and everything Bill did is reversed.
• Happens all the time in Martin Mystery; whatever effect has had a monster on humans (like turning them into zombies) will be completely reversed once the monster is beaten/captured/banished. Another example: in one episode, a geode was used to bring dinosaurs back to life. But after the geode is destroyed, the dinosaurs it created immediately disintegrate.
• Miraculous Ladybug: Almost every single episode other than the first episode of the two-part Origin Story plays the trope more or less straight, as all the damage caused by the super villain of the week OR Ladybug and Cat Noir is undone when she tosses her Lucky Charm in the air, creating a World-Healing Wave.
  • However that's specifically Ladybug's power to restore everything. Most of the time even after the Akuma is reverted and purified the effects of their power still sticks, until Ladybug uses her restoration power. The one major exception is Scarlet Moth in the season 2 finale. When his weapon (which was boosted to allow him to create infinite Akumas instead of just one) is broken, all the Akumas are instantly purified as well as anyone affected by their abilities like Darkblade's enslaved knights, even though this usually requires Ladybug to personally fix. Another exception happens in "Félix" when the heroes are fighting Lady WiFi, Princess Fragrance, and Reflekta - Princess Fragrance gets turned into a Reflekta clone during the fight, but doesn't stay that way when the trio are de-akumatized.
    • The fact that this trope is averted without the use of Ladybug's Lucky Charm is Played for Drama in the New York special, where it's revealed that the Lucky Charm can only fix the damage related to a specific villain or situation; when Ladybug and Cat Noir are unable to save Paris from a sentimonster because they were both away at the time, the damage caused is permanent, and they were lucky that it wasn't as serious as it could have been. Also, in season 5, Cat Noir ends up using his Cataclysm on Monarch, and is horrified at having done so despite him being a villain, especially since it can't be undone without Ladybug's Lucky Charm, which Monarch escaped with (and presumably disappeared when she de-transformed).
  • Basically Ladybug using her compact or Cat Noir using his Cataclysm to Destroy the Villain's Weapon is what causes the villain to de-akumize back into their true form of the human that was possessed in the first place, leaving them with no memory of what has happened up to that point.
  • A slightly unrelated aversion happens in the episode "The Collector" - Hawk Moth's plan specifically relies on an akuma sticking around to carry out his orders after he temporarily renounces his Miraculous, because he plans to akumatize himself to throw Ladybug off his trail, and akumas won't work on the Butterfly Miraculous's owner.
• An episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot involved Jenny being turned into a rampaging monster by a tiny machine that had infected her. As soon as the machine was removed all the changes were undone in seconds right before the camera. The thing that makes this particularly egregious is the fact that Jenny is a robot, but then again, so was the thing that infected her in the first place (done by the Cluster.)
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: This tends to happen when villains are defeated.
    • Rescue at Midnight Castle: When Tirac dies all of his magic is undone. The skies turn clear and sunny, the castle turns into a tree-covered hill, and his guards and monsters turn back into the birds and butterflies they used to be.
    • "The Magic Coins, Part 4": Ponyland has been reduced to a lifeless desert, but all it takes is a little rain for it to become green and full of plant life again right in the next scene, which can't take place that much later since the visitors to Paradise Estate are all still there.
    • "Crunch the Rockdog, Part 2": When Crunch is depowered, everything he petrified is instantly returned to its original form.
    • "Somnambula, Part 2": After the crystal that Somnambula relies on for her powers is broken, her victims return to physical youth, her creations vanish as if they'd never been and she instantly loses her stolen youth and returns to being an old crone.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Secret of My Excess": Spike's greed causes him to grow into a larger dragon progressively over the course of the episode, until by the end he is a rampaging dragon the size of a small mountain. When he realizes that he was wrong to be so greedy, Spike immediately, and magically, poofs back to his original size.
    • "Inspiration Manifestation": This is subverted twice. First, Spike tries to invoke this by eating the spellbook that got Rarity Drunk on the Dark Side. This accomplishes nothing, as Rarity retains her dark magic powers and corrupted behavior. It takes a Curse Escape Clause to set her right again. Second, even after the spell breaks completely, the changes Rarity made to Ponyville still remain. It takes three princesses all day to reverse everything.
• The Owl House:
  • In "The First Day", the majority of students and teachers at Hexside get their magic eaten by a basilisk who was posing as a school inspector, causing them to pass out. After Luz and the detention students defeat the basilisk, it somehow dispels the eaten magic and it returns to everyone.
  • In "Young Blood Old Souls", Eda is sentenced to petrification, which is said to be irreversible if completed. However, despite parts of her body turning to stone, when the spell is prevented they don't stay that way. This is taken even further a season later, where Belos slowly petrifies Luz, only stopping when it has almost spread throughout her entire body, yet she is completely fine afterwards with no side effects.
  • In "Eda's Requiem", Eda discovers that her curse can cause anything around her to rot into dust if she uses Bard magic. Later on, when she and Raine are using this against some of the Coven Heads, they almost get affected themselves until Raine convinces Eda to stop so she can still be around for Luz and King. When it is stopped, everyone who was affected are completely fine with no lasting effects.
  • The above is repeated in "King's Tide" when Eda's curse almost causes her to rot again when it interferes with the Emperor's draining spell. Raine saves her by removing her arm, and although it had spread through most of her body, it goes away immediately and only her arm turns to dust.
  • In the same episode, almost everyone who is affected by the draining spell passes out or is significantly weakened, but after the Collector puts a stop to it, everyone immediately starts waking up, and Hunter is back to full strength instantly despite the fact that he could barely stand by the time the spell ended.
  • Averted hard in "Thanks to Them", where Hunter is left Covered in Scars after getting possessed by Belos, whose remains spread throughout his body and leave a lot of damage after he exits, almost killing Hunter and requiring a Heroic Sacrifice from his Palisman to save him.
• Phineas and Ferb: In the episode "Just Our Luck", Doofenshmirtz invents a "Stinkelkrampen-Inator" which reverses types of lucks each person has, and intended to use it on Roger; it hits Candace, who becomes extremely lucky, and it hits the kids, who experience misfortune for their Big Idea. Once the inator is destroyed, it causes all the lucks to be reversed back to the way they were before.
• Ghostbusters: A recurring element in The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters is that any damages done by the Ghost of the Week are reverted after the ghost is caught or defeated.
• Samurai Jack; In Season 5, Jack meets an assassin named Ashi, whom he eventually redeems and starts a romance with. In the penultimate episode, she is revealed to be Aku's biological daughter, and after briefly being subject to a Villain Override she uses her new powers to send Jack back to the past to kill Aku. However, a little while later she realizes that since Aku was destroyed in the past, she and her sisters were never conceived in the future, and she fades away to nothingness in Jack's arms.
• Part of why Gang leaves Crystal Cove at the end of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. After they destroy the Evil Entity that has manipulated everyone for hundreds of years, everything it ever did is erased from history. All of the cases and all of the monsters are now gone. Furthermore, this means everyone that the Evil Entity's curse would've corrupted got to live happy, healthy and productive lives (especially the gang's families); the entire scenario weighs heavily on them since they're five of the only six or so people on the planet who still remember the original timeline. As for the other person, it turns out to be Harlan Ellison of all people (who is able to remember multiple timelines due to being a "genius") and has become the new Mr. E. He's invited them to study at the new university he is at and will grant them plenty of new mysteries to solve.
• The Simpsons:
  • In a Treehouse of Horror episode based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, in order to de-vampirize Bart they have to kill the head vampire. (It doesn't work, since the vampire-slayers turn out to be vampires themselves, and in this universe vampires apparently benefit from ontological N-Word Privileges.) They also didn't kill the real head vampire. The episode ends before the only human (Lisa) can, so it's never revealed if it would have worked.
  • Zigzagged in another Treehouse of Horror episode, when a witch turns Homer into a mishmash creature. Killing the witch undoes his transformation... except for his chicken undercarriage, which he can conveniently use to lay eggs to feed his family.
• Sofia the First:
  • Zig-zagged in "The Curse of Princess Ivy". While all of Ivy's color-draining spells are immediately undone after the curse is broken and she is sent back home, the Laser-Guided Amnesia caused by her dragonflies are not.
  • In "Day of the Sorcerers", spells cast with a Medusa Stone are permanent and can never be undone, but if the stone is broken, any spells cast with it will be immediately undone.
• South Park:
  • Invoked (sort of) in Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers: Henrietta is apparently brainwashed by emo plants bent on world domination, causing her to switch cliques. When the others confront the plants they discover that the whole thing was a scam and Henrietta only became emo by the power of suggestion. Afterwards they let Henrietta save face by pretending that "killing the plant leader" freed her from their control.
  • Played Straight in Pinkeye. A newly zombified Kenny turns the other inhabitants of the town into the walking undead, prompting the boys to fend them off with the use of chainsaws. Kyle is informed killing the original zombie magically turns everyone back to normal, which it does, but that's tough luck for everyone who was already hacked to bits by then.
• Space Ghost episode "The Sorcerer". The title villain changes Jan and Jace into giant versions of Blip (the Team Pet monkey) using the powers of his magical wand. When Jace grabs the wand away from him and breaks it, the spell is broken too and Jan and Jace turn back to normal.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • "Moist Vessel": The terraforming fluid tears through the Cerritos, creating all sorts of messes both in the corridors and on the hull. Once Mariner and Freeman Technobabble up a solution, all the growths revert to orange dust with nary a sign of ship damage. (This includes O'Connor's injuries from having a huge rock fall on him.) Averted with the Merced, which is beyond saving and has to be abandoned.
  • "Strange Energies": Once Ransom's strange energies are neutralized, the changes that he made on the planet instantly revert back to normal — the Ransomites return to their normal selves, the twisted buildings return to their old shapes, and the moon he zapped into oblivious pops back into existence.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Averted in "Marco Jr". Destroying a painting that was causing Marco's body to transform doesn't stop the process, as the ash that the painting became still has the magic enchantment on it. Star and his parents find themselves having to take a personality test for him in order to overwrite the spell instead.
  • "Conquer": Meteora, formerly known as Miss Heinous, has been rampaging through Mewni, shooting people with her newfound laser eye powers that take people's souls, leaving them in a lifeless state with black eyes, with her growing bigger every time she does so. Seeing this happen before at the hands of Toffee, Star tries to get to the Magic Sanctuary where there is a substance that can revive everyone it's happened to, but fails. In the end, after Meteroa is turned into a baby, everyone's souls are automatically restored and they revive, saving Star from having to make loads of trips there.
  • Once Star destroys the Realm of Magic in "Cleaved", the entire dimension collapses and magic's effect on everything vanishes; Mina and her Solarian warriors are depowered, the deadly wounds inflicted on their victims disappear, portals and dimensional scissors no longer work, beings made of magic like Glossaryck, the Magic High Commission, and the unicorns native to the Realm of Magic die outright, and Star's cheekmarks disappear. Even a physical wound Marco received from a unicorn shortly beforehand vanishes without a trace.
• Steven Universe:
  • "Onion Trade": Onion uses a Replicator Wand to flood the entire town in millions of cheap plastic toys, and then replicates cars to throw at the Gems. When they finally get the Wand back Garnet destroys it, causing all the duplicates to disappear.
    Garnet: I'm not cleaning up this mess.
  • Subverted at the end of the "Diamond Days" arc. Steven successfully convinces White Diamond to join her "sisters" Blue and Yellow — plus Steven himself, who carries Pink Diamond's gem—in healing all of the corrupted Gems on Earth. By combining their powers, they're able to permanently restore the Gems to their pre-monstrous forms... however, most of those Gems were corrupted for thousands of years, and they retain qualities of their beast forms even after being brought back to their original selves.
• Averted in the Superjail! episode "Jean And Paul And Beefy And Alice".
• In Superman: The Animated Series, this is true with Mister Mxyzptlk's powers. When he's banished back to his home dimension, everything he did is instantly undone; most notably, victims of Forced Transformation are restored to human form. (Although Lois, whom he turned into a horse, still wants to eat the carrot he was feeding her, and questions why when she notices.)
• In the Sushi Pack episode "But is it Art?", once the Ominous Pipe Organ The Collector used to bring famous paintings to life is destroyed, the "art zombies" immediately return to their canvases.
• SWAT Kats:
  • In the episode "Chaos in Crystal", the Monster of the Week, Rex Shard, transforms large swathes of the desert near Megakat City into crystal, as well as many kats, the prison he broke out of, and the water in the Megakat Reservoir. Transforming Shard back into a normal kat fixes it all, except possibly for the Warden, whose crystallized body was clearly shattered, but that was left unresolved.
  • Most episodes involving Dr. Viper and his mutations are also included. Anti-mutagens apparently are "reverse mutagens" and capable of shrinking bloated, mutated creatures back to normal, rather than stopping further mutation.
• In the first season finale of Transformers: Prime, Unicron unleashes a whack of natural disasters all over Earth, including loads of tornadoes and a humongous tidal wave that rises above the cityscape. After he's been defeated, the wall of water plainly freezes mid-air and promptly falls apart, and the blowing winds also disappear.
• Winx Club: In the Season 5 finale, Tritannus' trident is destroyed by Bloom, causing all of his spells to be undone.
• Averted by Martian shapeshifting powers in Young Justice (2010). If Miss Martian is knocked unconscious (or, in one episode, drained of her abilities by the supervillain Parasite), she doesn't revert to her natural form. Which makes real-world sense, since that would itself be shapeshifting. Obviously, once she makes a change she doesn't need to spend willpower maintaining it.

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