Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Nothing Is The Same Anymore / Live-Action TV

Go To

Events of Nothing Is the Same Anymore for Live-Action TV.

  • Each season of The 100 ends with the whole premise of the show being completely changed.
    • Season 1 was all about the kid delinquents on Earth trying to survive and build a society on their own, while the adults remained on the Ark trying to keep the space station alive. By season's end, the kids' camp has been destroyed and the Ark has crashed to Earth, reuniting the kid and adult characters.
    • Season 2 was all about the shifting conflicts and alliances between the Sky People, the Grounders, and the Mountain Men, with Clarke coming into her own as her people's leader. By season's end, the Mountain Men are all dead, Clarke has left her people, and the conflicts between human societies look to be overshadowed by the arrival of A.L.I.E., the demented A.I. program that destroyed the world 97 years ago.
    • Season 3 splits its focus between the A.L.I.E. plot and intensifying tensions between the Sky People and the Grounders. By season's end, both are seemingly resolved... only to reveal that a second wave of nuclear armageddon is about to arrive, giving everyone only a few months to live before the world ends... again.
    • Season 4 is all about trying to find some way to preserve at least a small fraction of humanity after Apocalypse 2. By season's end, the new apocalypse has hit, the world's landscape has been completely altered, and what's left of humanity has had to isolate itself in a few secure locations, forming whole new societies from the mish-mash of people gathered there. Oh, and there's a six-year Time Skip, resulting in huge changes to the characters and their relationships, and there's now a spaceship full of pre-apocalypse Human Popsicles arriving to re-colonize Earth.
    • Season 5 ends with perhaps the biggest shakeup yet, as Earth is finally left completely and utterly uninhabitable, and the only option remaining to our characters is to go into suspended animation and head off on a hundred-year voyage to an alien planet. This is such a monumental change to the setting and premise of the show, this season closes with a title card proclaiming this the "End of Book 1".
    • Season 6 is about the main characters trying to find a place in Sanctum, a city on a distant moon led by the theocracy of the Primes. The conflict has some rough similarities with Season 2 and Mount Weather, but with very different dynamics because of how the characters have changed since then. True to the show, it all gets blown up at the end. All of the Primes except Russell are dead and Sanctum is in complete disarray, as the people now know that the Primes aren’t gods and the attempt to cover it up wasn’t finished. There’s also the escape of Sheidheda, meaning another rogue AI is on the loose though no one knows where or for what. Finally, there’s the appearance of Hope, Diyoza’s daughter, and the mystery of the anomaly taking the series closer to Space Fantasy than Science Fiction.
  • 24 very often changed things up, but the final two seasons easily deserve special mention:
    • The seventh season saw Counter Terrorist Unit, or CTU, being decommissioned, a rogue Jack Bauer forced to ally with the FBI, longtime characters Bill Buchanan and Tony Almeida respectively dying and going through a Face–Heel Turn to get revenge on the man who murdered his family.
    • And somehow the final season managed to top it. It seemingly went with something closer to the status quo from early seasons in the series, with Jack and Chloe working with a newly recommissioned CTU in New York to protect a foreign president... then two thirds in completely threw it out the window with said President dying, Jack's love interest also dying, former Big Good President Taylor pulling a Face–Heel Turn and siding with series Big Bad Charles Logan to protect the masterminds behind both deaths to preserve a peace treaty, Jack snapping because of her betrayal resulting in him pulling one as well by going on a bloodthirsty rampage, and Chloe now desperately trying to expose the former's cover up while stopping the latter.
  • The factions, their members, and the motivations changed between each season of The 4400. The first season was simply dealing with the immediate need to understand the incident and deal with the displaced people. Season two was more of the long term effects of what the event would cause (Including many people who also wanted powers joining a clear Church of Scientology knockoff), and the government trying to use the abducted. Season 3 dealt with more violent actions and strife among the people. Season 4 began the introduction of the super-power serum to the general public (Although it had a 50-50 rate for powers or death), and the pseudo-religious movement to save the world. The 4400 had more changes season to season than most other shows, and it more or less worked.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • There's one near the end of the first season that synchronized with the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier with the reveal that HYDRA has been hidden within S.H.I.E.L.D. since its inception, and that the Clairvoyant was actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who used his security clearance to stay ahead of the Team. By the end of the season, Coulson has become director of S.H.I.E.L.D., which at the moment consists of himself, the five agents under his command, and the agent in charge of their one and only base of operations. It's a pretty jarring change from the massive Government Agency of Fiction we were introduced to when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was first formed.
    • Season 2 then ended up with Terrigen being dropped into the ocean, meaning it will activate the Inhuman gene around the world, leading to a mass awakening of super powers in the MCU.
    • Season 3 ends with a six-month Time Skip, which reveals that Coulson has been replaced as Director, and Daisy has become a renegade vigilante.
  • Alias did this quite regularly, in fact, one could say the only parts of the show where things were the same for a significant period of time was Season 1 to mid-Season 2, and early- to late-Season 4. It even shook up the seeming entire premise of the show (a show about a spy) in the first episode (a show about a double agent father-daughter team.)
  • Andromeda started with this as its premise, when The Captain is thrown 300 years in the future to find his society has collapsed. He focuses on putting things back the way they were, but along the way things keep changing on him. The last season had them primarily planet bound in a mostly artificial solar system in another dimension.
  • Angel massively reinvented itself multiple times over its five seasons. The biggest of these events comes in the finale of Season 4, when Angel and company start working for the Big Bad. And in the comics, the entire city of Los Angeles is plunged into Hell.
  • For the first two seasons, A.N.T. Farm was about a group of child prodigies attending high school, but come Season 3, and the setting is changed to a special boarding school for child prodigies, thus leaving out half the original cast.
  • Arrested Development did this quite a lot. Notably, somewhere in the second season, Buster has his hand bitten off by a loose seal. For the rest of the original show's run, Buster does not have a hand (he wears a hook, prosthetic hand or nothing on his hand at all from time-to-time). During Season 4, he gets a new hand, of sorts, but due to the season's Anachronic Order, this isn't fully explained before it's glimpsed on screen, causing what seems like a Series Continuity Error, which is probably intentional given how the series operates.
  • The Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) promised big changes were coming, and it didn't fail to deliver. Most notably Oliver Queen is killed for good, the worlds of both Supergirl and Black Lightning permanently merging with the world of The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Batwoman after previously existing on separate Earths than the other three shows, and several DC media properties have now been linked as part of the franchise's larger multiverse, up to and including the DC Extended Universe.
  • Battlestar Galactica did this twice.
    • Season 2: "Lay Down Your Burdens I & II" ended with the humans giving up the search for Earth, to settle on a substitute planet instead. Two years later, after getting settled, the Cylons show up and enslave them all.
    • Season 4.0: "Revelations"; Peace is declared between the fleet and the rebel Cylons, who have been made mortal and apparently been reduced in population to a single Base Ship; together, the two factions locate Earth; and upon landing on it, discover the uninhabitable, radioactive ruins of a city that looks remarkably like New York.
  • Babylon 5 had many, many such moments, as almost every episode left the world different than it had started. In fact, "Nothing's the same anymore" is the last spoken line of Season 1, spoken by Commander Sinclair. After the assassination of the Earth Alliance president, Delenn in a chrysalis, and Garibaldi being shot you can understand why Sinclair feels that way.
  • Three episodes from Better Call Saul, the spinoff to Breaking Bad, stand out:
    • "Pimento": Despite presenting himself as Jimmy's ally all season long, it's revealed that Jimmy's brother Chuck has stymied Jimmy's law career behind his back for years.
    • "Lantern": Chuck finds himself drummed out of his own law firm, both directly and indirectly due to Jimmy's schemes, and ends up committing suicide.
    • "Plan and Execution": Jimmy and Kim successfully ruin Howard's career, as in the process of confronting him, a Not Quite Dead Lalo enters and kills Howard due to being witness to him.
  • The Big Bang Theory had an episode dedicated to this called "The Change Constant". After Sheldon's discovery of Super-Asymmetry wins him his long-desired Nobel Prize, he starts attracting unwanted attention from various members of the media, and Amy gets a makeover that puts him off. But what truly drives him over the edge was the sight of the long-broken elevator back in operation. He and Penny then have a discussion about change, and the inevitability of it.
    • Earlier, the introduction of Amy Farrah Fowler as (initially) Sheldon's Distaff Counterpart, who gradually becomes Sheldon's Love Interest and later, wife, despite Sheldon not being interested in any other women.
    • Howard dating Bernadette, which finally led him to finally abandon his The Casanova traits.
    • Raj losing his selective mutism trait in Season 6's finale.
  • Billions:
    • By the end of Season 3, Chuck has been fired as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York while Bobby's protege Taylor has surreptitiously left Axe Capital to start a competing hedge fund. Chuck and Bobby let go of the feud that has driven the whole plot of the series up to this point and begin scheming together to get back at their respective enemies.
  • The premise of the sitcom Bosom Buddies had Kip and Henry, two struggling NYC ad men, moving into the Susan B. Anthony Hotel due to its dirt-cheap rent. But since it's a women-only hotel, they disguise themselves as "Buffy and Hildegarde", supposedly Kip and Henry's sisters. By the second season, the storylines focus on their ad business, and the entire recurring cast knows Kip and Henry's secret (though the two continue to live in the hotel and pose as women for the other residents.)
  • Boy Meets World actually does this surprisingly well after Cory graduates high school and prepares to head to college, and coming to terms with the fact that he'll be leaving home, Mr. Feeny won't be his teacher anymore, and that his favorite restaurant has closed and a new establishment has taken over. In the end, Eric tells him to take a bite of a cheeseburger from the new restaurant, and when Cory admits it tastes good, Eric explains that not all changes are necessarily bad and can be for the better if we're open to new events occurring in our lives.
  • Breaking Bad is famous for its fast-paced plot that isn't afraid to change the status quo every few episodes (leading to a pretty severe case of Continuity Lockout). Still, a few episodes stand out:
    • "...And the Bag's in the River": Walt kills Krazy-8 as a safety measure, which made him regret it heavily. He becomes Walt's first deliberate kill in a career of many other kills.
    • "Grilled": Tuco is killed by Hank as Walt and Jesse flee the spot, and now don't have anyone to exchange meth.
    • "Mandala": Walt meets Gus Fring, who agrees to be their dealer full-time with Gus offering a million dollars per month, which Walt accepts.
    • "Phoenix": Walt's daughter Holly White is born, Jane threatens Walt to out him if Jesse doesn't get the money, and Walt lets Jane die when attempting to patch things up with Jesse, being a direct accessory to the death of an innocent person for the first time in the series.
    • "ABQ": Walt's cancer goes into remission, and Walt and Skyler separate after he tells her one lie too many.
    • "No Mas": Skyler correctly guesses that Walt is involved in the drug trade, and Walt has no choice but to admit it. The "Fawlty Towers" Plot in the first two seasons is out the window for good.
    • "Green Light" and "Mas": Though definitely not as Whammy as a lot of other episodes in this show, they deserve mention for having Walt quitting his teaching job and receiving an offer from Gus to cook meth full-time. At that point, it becomes clear that Walt is no longer a respectable family man who cooks meth on the side to pay the bills—he's a professional meth cook who pretends to be a respectable family man for appearance's sake.
    • "Sunset": The iconic RV is trashed by Walt and Jesse once Hank almost gets very close to them.
    • "Half Measures": Walt kills the two drug dealers who killed both Combo and Tomas, saving Jesse barely in the nick of time. But this makes Gus furious, permanently souring the secure job opportunity Walt had. Season 4 becomes a cat and mouse chase between Gus and Walt due to that.
    • "Face Off": Walt successfully assassinates Gus... but he poisons Brock in the course of his plan, blows up a ward of an elderly nursing hospital, and makes an innocent neighbor a possible target of Gus's hitmen, making it clear that he's become a Villain Protagonist.
    • "Fifty-One": Skyler has had enough of Walt murdering Gus, and states to his face that she hopes his cancer comes back.
    • "Say My Name": Jesse quits the meth business after being overwhelmed by the guilt of the death of Drew Sharp, Mike is busted by the DEA and leaves the meth business, but not before pissing off Walt with "The Reason You Suck" Speech, leading to Walt killing him, one of his first acts of pure rage.
    • "Gliding Over All": Hank finds Walt's copy of Leaves of Grass with a dedication written by Gale, and realizes that he was the "W.W." referenced in Gale's notes.
    • "Blood Money": The friendly relationship between Hank and Walt has gone for good, as both of them become sworn enemies to each other, with Hank maddeningly wanting Walt to be behind bars. Oh, and Walt's cancer is back.
    • "Confessions" and "Rabid Dog": Walt sends Hank a fake confession tape, intended to frame Hank as Heisenberg, permanently destroying any semblance of reconciliation. Jesse finds out that Walt poisoned Brock, and the dynamic duo of Jesse-Heisenberg comes to an end. And Jesse subsequently allies with Hank.
    • "Ozymandias": THE ULTIMATE EXAMPLE of this trope in this show. Hank and Gomez brutally die in a shootout against Jack and his gang in spite of Walt's begging; Walt is forced to requiesce $68 million to Jack (only Todd's mercy allowed Jack to spare Walt and his cash); Jesse was Made a Slave and shipped away to certain doom, not before knowing Walt was behind Jane's death as well; Walt Jr comes to know about Walt being Heisenberg; Skyler mistakenly attributes Hank's death to Walt and attacks him with a knife, with Skyler and Walt Jr finally turning against him; Junior calls the cops on Walt, leading to his public exposure as Heisenberg; Walt takes off with Holly as she was the only one not aware of her father's truth, only to return her back to Skyler when he realised he's not capable of a family life anymore; and Walt disappears from Alberqueque with Saul's cleaner for a new life. The Status Quo Is God issue is literally grinded into the dust (like Ozymandias) and disappears forever.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Season 3 ends with the main cast graduating high school. The rest of the show takes place either in college or at Buffy's house.
    • The last television episode had Willow activating all the potential slayers' powers so that there isn't a Chosen One, two, or whatever. The Season 8 comics have entire armies of slayers. Also, the Masquerade is finally broken and the world at large is made aware of the supernatural, plus the many deaths in the final battle against The First.
  • Charmed has several:
    • The death of Andy in the Season 1 finale is the first major (permanent) death, and from there on, the Demons attacking the sisters become more powerful and the stakes bigger.
    • The death of elder sister Prue in the Season 3 finale is one of the most infamous cases in TV, twice as shocking considering the amount of times the sisters have cheated death up till then. The subsequent seasons are deeply affected by the tragedy, and all characters have to learn to live with it.
    • Phoebe and her sisters having to vanquish a Source-possessed Cole is a turning point in her character from which she never truly quite recovers.
    • Chris breaking Piper and Leo up has major consequences for everybody. It takes years for Piper and Leo to get their family dynamic back, and the relationship between the sisters and the Elders deteriorates from that point and is never quite smoothed out again.
  • Chuck did this multiple times as it underwent very slight Cerebus Syndrome and made the Big Bads of each season become more and more involved. Biggest changes: the end of Season 2 when Chuck got the Intersect 2.0 ("I know kung fu!") and the end of Season 4, when Chuck and Sarah get married, the heroes break with the CIA to form Carmichael Industries, and Morgan gets the Intersect while Chuck is without it.
  • Season 4 of Community ends with Jeff graduating from Greendale, finally bringing the show's central plotline to a close. The next season (the first after the show was Un-Cancelled) begins with him getting a job as a professor, shortly followed by the Study Group being rebranded as a committee dedicated to improving the school. The drastic change to the status quo is further reinforced when Pierce unexpectedly dies a few episodes later, and leaves his fortune to Troy—prompting him to leave Greendale to sail around the world in order to claim his inheritance.
  • A Different World was the perfect representation of this trope. It shows how students' lives change when they graduate from high school and leave home to go to college, and again when you leave college to go into the real world.
    Walter: [To Dwayne] Just remember when you finally do leave here, it's a different world out there.
  • Every regeneration in Doctor Who is a mild example of this.
    • The Troughton-Pertwee switch is worth special mention. None of the characters are maintained, the Time Lords are introduced for the first time, and the Doctor no longer travels in time and space (though after a few years this returned) and the Doctor starts working for UNIT. On top of this, on the production side the series switched to color and a slightly larger budget allowed for greater use of location filming and action sequences.
    • The later series managed this in its first episode. The Time Lords are extinct, the TARDIS' interior has changed dramatically, and the Ninth Doctor shows up after having just recently regenerated (and changed his wardrobe) offscreen.
      • In the next, he begins the plot for the entire new show by revealing he's the last of the Time Lords.
    • In "The End of Time", the Tenth Doctor says goodbye to all of his former companions (yes, all of them), regenerates alone, and effectively destroys the TARDIS control room in doing so. By the end of "The Eleventh Hour", the newly minted Eleventh Doctor has a regenerated TARDIS, a new sonic screwdriver, a new companion, and a bowtie. And all of this occurs after the revelation that the Time Lords committed atrocities almost as bad as those of the Daleks in their final days, and that the Doctor actually ended the Time War to stop his own people from destroying the universe.
    • The revelation in "The Name of the Doctor" that the Time War was ended by a previously unknown incarnation of the Doctor, and that the Doctor was so ashamed of his actions that he kept that incarnation a secret. After that, in "The Day of the Doctor", we have the bombshell that Gallifrey survived the Time War after all — thanks to a handy piece of Gallifreyan technology that allowed all incarnations of the Doctor (past, present, and future) to cross timelines and join forces.
  • Earth: Final Conflict was notorious for significant cast turnover, resulting in a new group of main characters every season or so. The most drastic plot change happened in Season 5, where the show ditched its V style plot entirely for something more closely resembling Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but without any depth at all.
  • Season 4 of Eureka seriously shakes up the status quo by transporting five main characters and Dr. Grant to an alternate timeline where their relationships, personalities, or jobs may be very different. This lasted until the series finale.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • In his debut episode, "Going Rogue", Leonard Snart proclaims that the existence of a superhero like the Flash completely changes the game, making most criminals irrelevant unless they can adapt.
    • In his next episode, "Revenge of the Rogues," Snart manipulates events in such a way that the Flash exposes his existence on live television, and reveals to his partner that this was the real point of their endeavors.
      Snart: Now everyone knows he's real, which changes everything. Again.
    • The first season finale sees a wormhole ripped open in the universe due to Eddie Thawne's suicide to prevent Eobard Thawne from ever being born. This ends up opening the door to the Multiverse, revealing several alternate worlds and realities co-exist with the Flash's, to the point that it's even allowed him to cross over into worlds from other comic book shows.
    • The second season ends with Barry, past the Despair Event Horizon, going back in time and saving his mother from the Reverse-Flash, changing history and creating an Alternate Timeline.
    • In the episode "Killer Frost" Barry is forced to quit his job as a CSI. However, he's able to get it back a few episodes later.
  • This happens two times in Frasier 's run, both of them taking place in Season 7. First time is half way through the season when Frasier, under the effects of painkillers for his back, blurts out to Daphne that Niles is in love with her. Afterwards, Daphne begins to develop feelings for Niles in return, leading to Unrequited Love Switcheroo. Which eventually leads to the events of the end of the season when Daphne abandons her wedding to be with Niles and they finally become a couple. It is fully cemented when Daphne, who has almost always called him "Dr. Crane" up to that, finally calls him Niles.
  • Friends:
    • Half-way through Season 3, when Ross cheats on Rachel note  the dynamics of their relationship literally never go back to be the same.
    Rachel: I can't... You're a totally different person to me now. Now this has changed things... forever...
    • They eventually got back together in the series finale, in another example of this trope.
    • Later in the show, Ross gets married and Monica and Chandler sleep together. Ross's marriage ends almost immediately, and they keep teasing a quick and quiet end to Monica and Chandler's relationship. But they continue dating, stay together and end up getting married. Their marriage is the start of the Friends 'growing up' and tellingly the series ends with them moving to the suburbs with their children.
    • At the beginning of Season 6, Chandler moves in with Monica and Rachel moves in with Phoebe and later Joey, changing the dynamic of comedic duos.
    • Rachel's pregnancy at the end of Season 7.
    • Phoebe dating Mike and their subsequent marriage in Seasons 9 and 10.
  • In the third season finale of Fringe, the timeline is reset so that Peter died in 1985. While Peter does return and Olivia does eventually recall the prior timeline, this change is never reverted. This means that a fair portion of the things we saw from the first three seasons, including character relationships, never happened or happened in wildly different ways. And the finale of the fourth season deals with the Fringe Team getting freed out of amber in 2036, after having been encased there 20 years earlier. For Season 5 (and thus the rest of the series), they join The Resistance against the Observer occupation in this dystopian future. And in the last episode, there is yet another timeline reset, resulting in in the Observers (at least of the kind we got to know them) never coming into existence.
  • Game of Thrones, though based upon a series of novels that had been around for over a decade, was lauded by some critics for having the guts to kill off one of the primary protagonists, Ned Stark, played by Sean Bean, who had been prominently featured in the promotional material for the series, in the ninth of ten episodes. Indeed, as the series moves along, Martin's gut-wrenching style will likely be pushing the limits of what a TV audience is willing to endure with regards to the characters they love the most. Much like in the books, the Red Wedding in Season 3 kills off protagonist King Robb Stark, his mother Catelyn, and his wife Talisa, effectively ending the Stark-Lannister conflict that has been the backbone of the series thus far. In the Season 5 finale, another major protagonist, Jon Snow (who is also from the Stark family), is betrayed by a group of his own men, fatally stabbed, and left bleeding to death in the snow. In Season 6, upon his resurrection, being murdered in a mutiny by his own men causes him to leave the Night's Watch and pass on command. In the season finale, Jon is proclaimed the King in the North by the Northern lords after he retakes Winterfell with his sister Sansa and he prepares to defend the realm against the Zombie Apocalypse [1], effectively ending the other backbone of the series (as the focus on the Night's Watch storyline has been shifted away).
  • The Good Place is known for doing this a lot. Among the biggest expamples:
    • In the Season 1 finale, Eleanor figures out that the group is actually in the Bad Place, and Michael is revealed to have been a demon all along.
    • Early in Season 2, Michael gets in trouble after his fake Good Place experiment turns out to be a failure, forcing him to team up with the group to avoid negative repercussions.
    • At the end of Season 2, the group are brought back to life and given a second chance to prove that they deserve to get to the Good Place—and the show (temporarily) abandons its afterlife setting entirely.
    • At the end of Season 3, Eleanor helps run another fake Good Place as an experiment to determine whether people can overcome their flaws. For the first time in the series, Eleanor is helping other people get better instead of trying to get better herself.
    • The penultimate episode of the series has the Soul Squad actually enter the Good Place properly, despite numerous fake-outs, and finding out that even the Good Place is not without its own horrific flaws. This and the final episode are the only episodes to not focus on the Bad Place storyline anymore.
  • Heroes:
    • When Claire regenerates in full view of the Company Man, blowing the Masquerade that Noah had spent fifteen years of manipulation setting up and keeping up.
    • At the end of the show, when Claire leaps from a Ferris Wheel to the ground and places her bones back into place in full view of every news network in America.
  • House:
    • The series ended Season 3 with the departure of Dr. House's entire staff, to be replaced with new staff members for Season 4. Then they all came back, but in supporting roles with the new team taking most of the camera time. Then at the end of Season 5 House goes crazy.
    • The final season was missing a major supporting character (Cuddy, replaced by Foreman, a former team member and new Dean of Medicine after Cuddy's departure). The final episode brought back everyone who had ever been on the team for at least a cameo, including the dead one (Kutner) and Amber (never technically part of the team proper and also dead).
  • The Season 4 final episode of iCarly has an Ass Pull which confirms Sam is in love with Freddie, who already has an existing thing with Carly who might be hiding her own hidden feelings for Freddie. The creator of the show accidentally leaked most of the episodes from Season 5 (he removed and replaced the picture). If the episode titles are true, it will destroy the Status Quo Is God element of the show, and ramp it up into a full fledged Love Triangle.
    • The Grand Finale ended with Carly moving to Italy with her father, meaning she can't host iCarly with Sam anymore (at least for a while), but the good news is she and Freddie are now together.
    • Subverted: After a five episode stint, everything went back to the way it was before.
  • iZombie:
    • The series starts with Liv trying to hide the fact that she has become a zombie and using her new powers to help solve murders. At the same time, the Corrupt Corporate Executive who is indirectly responsible for the zombie virus tries to capture zombies so he can experiment on them. In the Season 2 finale, the executive is dead and his corporation has been bought out by a Private Military Contractor company that seems to be entirely composed of zombies. All of Liv's friends now know she is a zombie and are trying to deal with it.
    • Season 3 deals with the general public slowly finding out about zombies and an anti-zombie vigilante group starts killing zombies. The season ends with the entire world finding out about zombies after thousands of people are deliberately infected by the virus. Season 4 opens with Seattle being closed off (complete with walls and soldiers) from the rest of the U.S. People inside try to handle life with the more elite folks carrying on like normal while the rest handle the changed dynamic. Liv can be completely open about what she is and folks just shrugging off her personality changes while Filmore-Graves continues to supply brains to the public. Also, Clive notes how the police face a challenge solving crimes in a city often close to anarchy, not to mention where people can come back from the dead.
  • The final episode of Jessie has Jessie finally accomplish her Series Goal by becoming the lead character in a show about a super nanny, but she can't be the kids' nanny anymore and leaves them for good. Christina also becomes a stay-at-home mom so she can spend time with them in Jessie's place.
  • Jeremiah invokes this by name, in Episode 8, "Firewall". Jeremiah and the rest of the crew discover that not everyone over puberty died in the Big Death, and that many of the survivors are former US military holed up in a place called Valhalla Sector. Who once they're sure the disease is gone are planning to roll out a military dictatorship based on superior firepower: helicopter gunships, when no one outside has anything better than basic firearms.
  • Spoofed in the first episode of The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale. When Mankini announces he's returning as One-Piece Man, Joel's response is a shocked "My God. This changes one thing."
  • Kamen Rider
  • The first season of Loki ends with the Sacred Timeline, which the Time Variance Authority worked so hard to protect and maintain, being completely undone following the death of He Who Remains, allowing his evil Variants to once again terrorize the Multiverse. Things go From Bad to Worse once Loki discovers that not only do Morbius and B-15 don't remember him, but the TVA itself has been taken over by none other than Kang the Conqueror.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The end of Season one changes Middle-earth's geo-political situation forever, the Orcs are stronger than ever, The Bad Guy Wins by completely terraforming the Southlands and turning them into Mordor, rendering all the good guys' efforts to nothing. But what is even worse for every party involved, even the Orcs, is that Sauron is back on game.
  • At the end of the third season finale of Lost, the flashbacks are revealed to be flash forwards. This Tomato Surprise is not just what changes everything however (though it definitely qualifies as a Wham Episode). What indicates the permanent change is the undeniable proof that characters make it off the island. As of now, the show is no longer an Ontological Mystery. The outside world begins to play big roles in the ensuing events, and it becomes a more clear-cut conflict driven storyline.
  • The soap opera Loving had its opening narrator for its final storyline, "The Loving Murders", declare that "Loving will never be the same." It was right — soon after the storyline ended, the remaining main cast moved from the old setting, setting up its spinoff series, The City.
  • Three key moments have changed things forever on Merlin: Arthur impulsively kissing Guinevere, Merlin being forced to poison Morgana in order to break a fatal spell over Camelot, and King Uther's death.
    • As of the end of series four, Camelot now has a Queen: Guinevere.
  • Mr. Robot has a few hard-hitting ones due to Elliot's nature as an unwitting Unreliable Narrator.
    • Elliot kissing Darlene, shocking her as she reveals she has been his sister all along. Elliot, wanting to get to the root also finds out that Mr. Robot has been his supposedly-deceased father.
    • The next episode after that where its revealed that Mr Robot isn't real, he's just Elliot's split personality.
    • The next episode after that where Mr. Robot and Tyrell successfully execute the Five/Nine hack, and the world falls into a great recession.
    • The finale of Season 2, where Angela is brainwashed by the Dark Army, Cisco is killed and Darlene is forced to be a mole, and Tyrell learns of Mr. Robot personality and shoots Elliot.
    • "kill-process" and "fredrick-tanya": Whiterose blows up 71 other buildings for Stage 2, killing thousands of people, Angela undergoes a massive Sanity Slippage, Price turns against Whiterose, and Trenton and Mobley are framed by the Dark Army and are killed, bringing fsociety to an end.
  • The first episode of Mr. Show has a character musing about this, commenting "Wow, [X] has really changed. At first it's sad (his friend has "changed" into a jerk), then it's over little things (the leaves have "really changed") then it gets kinda obvious and expected ("Look at that caterpillar. Wow, it's really changed. Now it's a butterfly, thinks it's so big. And then . . .
    Ernie: Wow, look at that traffic light, wow it's really changed... (A bus arrives)
  • NCIS: The sudden killing of Kate at the end of the second season completely changed the dynamic of the series. The subsequent introduction of Ziva saw NCIS virtually become a different series.
  • The Muppet Show: In Season 1, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew tested his inventions himself, which all inevitably blew up in his face. His first appearance in Season 2 seems to be going this way...until a little redheaded Muppet appears from behind the computers. Bunsen introduces this critter as his new assistant, Beaker. Beaker remained for the rest of the series, and quickly became part of the main Muppet cast thanks to his popularity with audiences.
  • The Office (US) has significant points where the story changes for good.
    • Jim and Pam kiss at the end of the Season 2 finale, after which Jim transfers out of Scranton.
    • Scranton Branch absorbs Stamford, leading to the addition of Andy Bernard (who will go on to become a major character), and Karen Filippeli, a significant recurring character.
    • Roy learns about the above-mentioned kiss and is fired from Dunder Mifflin after trying to kill Jim.
    • Jim breaks up with Karen after the interview in New York, and finally asks Pam to a date.
    • After the Dinner Party, Michael and Jan split up putting an end to their on and off romance that started in Season 2, and putting on a bus Jan, who was previously an important secondary character of the show.
    • The aptly titled episode in Season 7, "Goodbye, Michael" where Michael leaves Dunder Mifflin for good to be with Holly (who wants to be near her parents) full-time. This causes major instability for Scranton Branch as they keep going through new managers till the ante-penultimate episode in the series.
    • The ante-penultimate episode: Andy leaves Dunder Mifflin to pursue his dreams, and Dwight becomes the Regional Manager (for good).
  • The first season finale of Once Upon a Time: the Curse is finally broken and Mr. Gold unleashes magic into Storybrooke.
    • Season 5 ends with Gold signing over control of Storybrooke to Mr. Hyde, who is introduced alongside other characters from the Land of Untold Stories (thus expanding the show's scope well beyond fairytales and fairytale-inspired works), while the Evil Queen is separated from Regina and becomes her own person.
  • The original main setting of Para Pencari Tuhan, Kampung Kincir, is destroyed by a flood in Season 11, forcing the characters to spend the season in a refugee camp before going their own ways. When they gather back to live in a new neighborhood in the next season, many old characters do not return and the remaining ones meet new characters.
  • From a Meta Perspective in Power Rangers, Power Rangers in Space made nothing the same anymore for earth in the present day. Not only did it end 6 years of continuous storytelling and defeated the group of bad guys they'd been fighting for all that time, but due to a full on Alien Invasion being stopped, now Earth's culture and technology level begin steadily changing. It began with them building a space colony to explore, but following this they created their own Ranger Powers, their higher education began reflecting a more galactic perspective, aliens began living on earth, and more importantly EVERYONE knows about who power rangers are.
  • In Primeval, Season 1 ends with Cutter coming back from a trip to the past and realising that he has changed time so he is in an entirely different timeline and quite literally, nothing is the same any more, up to and including one of the main characters no longer existing. This isn't rectified (as yet) so the show changes format fairly drastically for Season 2.
  • Prison Break was notorious for this; shifting between the characters breaking out of prison, being fugitives on the run, and being forced into breaking other people out of prison.
  • Red Dwarf did this twice. Firstly in Series 6, where the crew lose the eponymous ship, and once again when they get it back at the end of Series 7 — but all the crew that died in the very first episode are re-instated, so the ship is fully populated for the first time since that first episode. "Back to Earth" seems to set this up by them going back to Earth, but it's another squid like the despair squid at the end of Series 5 (Back to Reality), which also appeared to set this up by them supposedly being in a video game the whole time. Status Quo Is God in these cases. Series 3 also changed the premise slightly, going from isolation to a more action-adventure show.
  • For Saved by the Bell: The New Class, a Spin-Off of Saved by the Bell, it's the two-part Season 4 finale "Fire at the Max" where the iconic Max diner is destroyed by fire. The same episode sees the last canon appearance in the franchise by one of the original cast other than Screech or Mr. Belding with a cameo by Slater. In hindsight it also serves as the last episode of Rachel Meyers, the only 'New Class' student character to have remained from the first couple of seasons.
  • Scrubs:
    • Season 4 ends with J.D. finally moving out of Turk and Carla's apartment, and finally finishing his residency and becoming a full-fledged attending physician—and with Elliot leaving Sacred Heart. While the last change is dialed back pretty soon into Season 5 after her endocrinology fellowship is cut short, the first two would have permanent ramifications throughout the rest of the show, allowing J.D. to gradually move past his codependence with Turk and his role as Dr. Cox's disciple.
    • In the second episode of Season 7, Kim gives birth to J.D.'s infant son Sam—shortly after J.D. realizes that he doesn't love her anymore, and ends their relationship. The consequences of this would echo throughout the rest of the series, seeing J.D. balancing the day-to-day struggles of life as a doctor with the struggles of co-parenting a baby with his ex.
  • The Series 2 finale of Skins downplays this. On the one hand, one character died, two others left for America and the rest of the group parted ways. On the other hand, an entirely new cast was introduced for Series 3, thus restoring the status quo of a teenage school drama.
  • Season 4 of Sons of Anarchy opens after a 14-month Time Skip after most of the core cast are sent to prison at the end of the previous season. When they get out, almost everything in Charming is different: the Charming Police Department has been disbanded, Unser is retired and living alone in a trailer, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department has taken over law enforcement in the town, Jax and Tara are raising an infant son together, Opie and Lyla are planning their wedding, Jimmy O'Phelan and Agent Stahl (the show's two longest-running antagonists up to that point) are both dead, and Jax got a haircut.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand has radically different dynamics in each of its seasons, to the point that they're all given different names. Spartacus: Blood and Sand is actually just the first season's title.
    • Season 1 focuses on the ludus in Capua, where Spartacus endures slavery while forming shifting rivalries and alliances with both the other gladiators and his master. It ends with about half the cast dead.
    • The second season is a Start of Darkness for the first season villains at the Capua ludus, before Spartacus even arrived. It was filmed to give the actor who played Spartacus, Andy Whitfield, time to recover from cancer. He died anyway.
    • The third season has a recast Spartacus and his gladiators waging a guerrilla campaign against Roman soldiers. Actual gladiator matches make only cursory appearances after their saturation in the previous seasons, and they actually destroy the Capua arena halfway through the season. It ends with more than half the cast dead.
  • The early seasons of Stargate SG-1 had the team cast as outmatched, fish-out-of-water soldiers exploring a hostile and alien galaxy in a desperate fight against the galaxy's technologically superior rulers. About halfway through the show, Earth became the most powerful faction in the galaxy, and the tone of the show switched to Earth being sort of the galactic police, protecting the rest of the galaxy from external threats ranging from the interstellar mafia to alien invasions by hostile lego bugs or Crystal Dragon Jesus crusaders. Which makes the idea of the Stargate program being a secret all the more ridiculous, really.
    • There was also a gradually growing international presence. At first only the US and presumably Canada knew about the SGC (Canada by default: a Canadian general officer is second in command of NORAD, and Canadian personnel work in Cheyenne Mountain and would eventually have to wonder what the hell was happening in the basement). Then the Russians had to become involved when they gained the second stargate, and were hesitant partners (and sometime rivals). Then the UN Security Council had to be informed when external threats became too obvious to hide. And by the end of the series multiple nations had starships and the Antarctica and Atlantis teams were fully multinational.
    • Another big change came at the beginning of Season 9, which introduced Cameron Mitchell as the replacement to Jack O'Neill, and reintroduced new team member (or tag-along, originally) Vala Mal Doran. Although Vala was temporarily transported to the Ori galaxy, she returned, and both she and Mitchell stayed for the rest of the series and into the movies. O'Neill continued to have guest spots and was mentioned regularly, but never returned as a main character.
      • That was also a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as O'Neill was slowly phased out of the show per Richard Dean Anderson's request, so he could spend more time with his family. It also just made sense, as by that point Colonel O'Neill was in his 50s, an age at which you'd expect a highly decorated Air Force officer to be promoted to at least Brigadier General and no longer be personally involved in field operations.
    • While the cancelled Stargate Universe focuses more on the crew of the Destiny, a few episodes deal with Earth being in a state of Space Cold War with the Lucian Alliance, which has grown from an obscure criminal group to a major power in the galaxy. In fact, this is evidenced in the Universe pilot when an Earth battlecruiser is having trouble fighting off several Lucian Alliance Ha'taks, which have been cannon fodder for a long time now. This is clear evidence that the human leaders of the Lucian Alliance are not stupid and are perfectly willing to innovate (something the Goa'uld had trouble doing). Later on, the Lucian Alliance is conducting spy missions and terrorist strikes on Earth using advanced tech.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation: The two-part episode "The Best Of Both Worlds" did this with the first Borg invasion and the Battle of Wolf 359. Its effects are not fully felt within the remainder of the series proper, but they have long-lasting implications for the 24th century Trek universe, as seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Picard and even animated entries like Star Trek: Lower Decks. The Federation becomes far more militarized with a greater emphasis on preparing for new unknown threats. Starfleet balloons from barely being able to scrounge up a mere 39 ships to a massive fleet of thousands within a decade of the battle. This is what enables them to tackle the Borg in future engagements, and makes the Dominion War far less overwhelming for them than it would have otherwise been. Often, "Wolf 359" is marked by characters as that tipping point that changed the Federation forever in much the same way 9/11 is referenced in real life as the day that changed the psyche of the Western world.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did this partially when they introduced the Dominion. Although it retained its interest in the Bajorans and Cardassians, the headaches of running the station, and the usual space opera elements, a hefty dose of war epic took over the rest of the series (and mixed in with all of the above).
      • In the DS9 novels, Bajor finally joins The Federation. Kira moves from a Militia Colonel to a Starfleet Captain, Ro Laren becomes chief of security and starts a relationship with Quark, Odo sends them a Jem'Hadar, First Minister Shakaar is killed off because he's possessed by evil aliens and Ben Sisko returns from the wormhole, and settles on Bajor with his family in unofficial retirement. And that's just for starters.
      • The recent TNG novels are also working to make Nothing The Same Anymore (for instance The Borg eat Pluto! It's hard to Handwave that sort of thing away later). Basically, with the Canon focused on Prequels, the 24th century has been left wide open for the novels to have some fun with.
      • The even more recent TNG (and their associated crossover) novels have gone even further. The Federation and Klingons were devastated by a Borg invasion, but the Borg were ultimately defeated and are now gone, forever, with billions of former drones now having their own minds back and losing their tech (including Annika Hanson, now the ex-Seven of Nine).
    • Although not on TV, the setting of the new Star Trek MMO is based on this: the setting is the start of the 25th Century. The Klingons and the Federation are back at war, the Romulan Empire is barely holding together after Romulus was destroyed as per the new Star Trek reboot), and more.
    • After poor ratings with the initial standard Star Trek "just jet around exploring the galaxy" plot, Star Trek: Enterprise did a similar "war epic" upgrade, sending the cast on a journey to battle a hostile alien race that had launched a massive 9/11-style attack on Earth.
      • This was then followed up with a confusing time-travel storyline, which led to another change to multi-episode stories.
    • Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery takes place in the 32nd century, over a hundred years after the Milky Way took a hard left turn. A galactic cataclysm called The Burn devastated civilization as we've come to know it. The Federation has collapsed to a fraction of what it once was, with member worlds (including founding members like Earth and Vulcan/Ni'Var) going it alone.
  • Stranger Things had the finale of Season 3, in which Billy is killed by the Mind Flayer, and the Byerses left Hawkins due to the Starcourt Mall wrecking Joyce's business and [[spoiler: Hopper seemingly dying, and Eleven leaving with them.
    • Before that, Season 2 had Owens create Eleven's birth certificate, allowing her to leave freely without any government interference.
    • Season 4 finale: Vecna is revealed to be the creator of the Mind Flayer and the Greater-Scope Villain of the series, he then later kills Max (although she's revived by Eleven, she is either comatose or brain-dead), Hawkins undergoes a mass exodus due to Max's temporary death causing an earthquake, and the Upside-Down begins merging with our dimension, fulfilling Vecna's prime goal of the season.
  • Supernatural:
    • The end of Season 4. Not only do we have Lucifer rising from hell and kicking off the Apocalypse, the four horsemen riding and the Angels going into full out war mode, there is also a significant change in the relationship between Sam and Dean after the betrayals and secrets of the previous season.
    • Season 6, where it was revealed that when Sam's body was resurrected at the end of the Season 5 finale, he came back with no soul.
    • The addition of angels in Season 4 has changed a lot about the progression of the the show.
    • The addition of the Men of Letters Bunker in Season 8 has changed the format of the show and since then Sam and Dean have had home base of their own which now appears in many episodes.
    • The finale of Season 8 has Crowley regaining some his humanity through being injected human blood, Naomi, the head of Heaven's largest faction of angels, dead at the hands of Metatron, Castiel's grace being taken by Metatron, Sam reaching a Heroic RRoD, and Metatron casting all of the angels out of Heaven.
    • Season 11: Lucifer is running free again, Metatron is dead, The Darkness and God depart Earth, the existence of a British chapter of the Men of Letters is revealed, and Mary Winchester, a character who was killed off in the first five minutes of the series premiere, is resurrected.
    • The finale of Season 12: Crowley, Rowena, and Castiel are all dead (the latter two get better though), Lucifer and Mary Winchester are trapped within a parallel dimension where the Apocalypse passed, and Lucifer's Nephilim child, Jack, is finally born.
    • Season 13 ends with Lucifer stealing Jack's grace, rendering him human, only to then be killed by Dean. Dean is then possessed by the Alternate Universe Michael.
    • Season 14: Jack kills Alternate!Michael but in the process burns out his soul. He's slowly corrupted into an amoral Psychopathic Man Child, culminating in him accidentally killing Mary. After this, God returns and offers to help the Winchesters kill him; when they ultimately refuse, God reveals himself to be a sociopath who takes enjoyment out of their suffering. In retaliation for them no longer following his script, he kills Jack himself and then unleashes all the souls in Hell.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles pulled this off several times, but the biggest was Cameron has traveled to the future with John Henry, John Connor travels to the future with the T-1001, who we've learned has been working with the Resistance by creating an anti-Skynet program in the past, while another program exists that is trying to destroy the pro-resistance program. And now that John Connor is in the future, he was never in the past to lead the resistance, so no one in the future knows who he is.
  • The Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries was just one big Wham Moment after another, to the point that many fans thought it would turn out to be Torch the Franchise and Run. It had already started at the conclusion of the previous series which killed two of the main cast. This series further stepped up the Wham by brutally destroying the remaining team members' base, killing another teammate and leading to the main character leaving Earth after being forced to kill his own grandson. Plus Gwen becomes a mother. Torchwood's fourth series, Miracle Day, continues the trend with a ten-episode arc set largely in the USA, with new protagonists in addition to those who survived Children of Earth. By the end of the season two of the new protagonists have died and one of them has become immortal.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess shook things up with "The Deliverer", which saw Gabrielle commit her first kill (thus losing her blood innocence), the introduction of Dahak and the beginning of the "Rift" arc. A shaken Gabrielle even laments, "Everything's different now."
  • Season 3 of Wynonna Earp seems designed to upend the status quo as much as possible. Only two episodes in, Dolls is Killed Off for Real, then midway through the season Doc becomes a vampire, and then in the season finale the Earp Curse is finally broken, while Peacemaker is reforged into a Flaming Sword.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top