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The Bus Came Back / Live-Action TV

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  • 24 had Milo Pressman, who inexplicably disappeared after Day 1, suddenly return in a major role in Day 6, his absence explained as him having been working in another CTU division. He is eventually killed. This caught several people by surprise since 24 is notorious for its rampant Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
    • Mike Novick was written out of the show at the end of the second season after being fired by President Palmer. He returned midway through the fourth season as the assistant to Charles Logan, lasting all the way to the end of season five where he aided Jack after discovering that Logan was the Big Bad.
    • Jack's ex Audrey Raines and her father James Heller were announced to be returning in the upcoming Live Another Day miniseries(aka "Season 9"), after both characters were written out at the end of the sixth season. Heller is the new President of the United States (and suffering from Alzheimer's) while Audrey is married to the new Chief of Staff, who wants Jack out of the picture in any way possible.
    • Also in Live Another Day Tzi Ma returns as recurring antagonist Cheng Zhi in the final three episodes.
    • Charles Logan returns for last 8 episodes of season 8.
    • Before a lot of these every series regular (and every recurring character except for Chloe) was either written out at the end of season 3 or got Put on a Bus in the interim between it and season 4. Of those series regulars, Tony, Michelle and Palmer all returned in season 4 ( with the latter two eventually dying in season 5's first episode and Tony dying in the middle of season 5 and eventually coming Back from the Dead to create a particularly convoluted version of this trope) and Kim returned in seasons 5,7 and 8, while Wayne Palmer returned in seasons 5 and 6. Chase Edmunds though stayed on a Long Bus Trip.
    • 24: Legacy has the return of Tony Almeida.
  • More actress-wise than character-wise, but Rachel Dratch returned to 30 Rock for the first time since the first season for its season 5 Live Episode, this time playing a wacky foreign janitor. Liz even comments, "Haven't seen you in a while."
  • After being written out at the start of season 5 of Alias, Weiss returns eight episodes later in S.O.S. to help sneak APO out of Langley.
    • Will Tippin's bus returned twice after he was written out at the end of season 2. Once in the third season and again for the 100th episode in season 5.
  • When René and Edith of 'Allo 'Allo! accidentally travel to London, they meet Hans, who had been stolen away by the Communist Resistance to England a few seasons previously. He now works for the British government and speaks English.
  • After leaving The Andy Griffith Show as a regular, Don Knotts returned as Barney Fife for at least one episode in each of the remaining seasons. Not quite often enough to be Commuting on a Bus, but still a notable variation of the trope.
  • Angel:
    • Cordelia got one in the last season, though it was something of a mixed visit.
    • Kate comes back in After The Fall.
    • The Groosalugg returns in After the Fall, long hair and all.
    • After leaving Wolfram & Hart toward the end of Season 2, Lindsey makes a surprising reappearance about a third of the way into Season 5 and recurs throughout the rest of the show's run.
  • Annika (2021): Jake, Morgan's therapist and Anika's boyfriend in Season 1, pops back up in episode 2.4 when Annika runs into him at a conference. They start things back up again.
  • Young Mr. Grace returned for a very brief cameo during a birthday celebration for his older brother in the episode of Are You Being Served? titled "Roots".
  • The Army Game: The characters of Maj. Upshot-Bagley and Sgt. Maj. Bullimore left at the end of season 1, but returned for the fourth (and final) season.
  • This happens on Arrow with Roy Harper, who has to leave Starling City after Season 3, due to faking his death to protect Oliver Queen's identity as the Arrow. He later returns in a Season 4 episode.
  • Dr. John Dixon on As the World Turns was written out without explanation after actor Larry Bryggman left the show over a salary dispute. Several years later, when the soap was canceled, Bryggman returned, remaining the last couple of weeks through the final episodes, with the explanation that Dr. Dixon had taken a position at NIH.
  • From Babylon 5:
    • Jeffrey Sinclair returns for the season 3 two-parter "War Without End".
    • Susan Ivanova is put on a bus at the end of the fourth season, and returns for the finale. An odd example, since the finale was originally intended to air at the end of the fourth season as well; the show was unexpectedly renewed, and so the finale was held off until the end of the fifth season.
  • In the original Battlestar Galactica, Dirk Benedict's character Starbuck returned in a single episode of Galactica 1980 after being put on a bus (due to Galactica 1980 being set at least 20 years into the future.
  • In Bones, Zack only really comes back once after being Put on a Bus to a mental institution, in "The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond". (He appears in two other episodes, but one is a hallucination and the other is a Whole Episode Flashback.) He returns at the end of season 11 and then season 12.
  • In Boy Meets World:
    • The bullies' leader, Harley, was sent to military school near the end of the second season and almost immediately wound up being replaced by Griff Hawkins. Harley returns for one third season episode which pits him against Griff (after which neither are seen again).
    • During the last episode of the high school part, Minkus makes a return, lampshading the Put on a Bus trope while he's there.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Oz and Riley both get these. For Oz, it's "New Moon Rising"; for Riley, it's "As You Were". They both appear again in Season 8 for a bit.
    • Whistler appears in Season 9 and reveals he was behind Angel's actions in Season 8.
    • Actress Elisabeth Röhm (Kate Lockley) left to be on Law & Order and vanished without explanation in Angel from season 2 onward, but makes a comeback in the Season 8 comics because of course, comics aren't hindered by pesky things like acting contracts. (She appears in Angel: After The Fall as a new member of AI in Aftermath.)
    • Simone in Season 9; last seen executing the general at war with the Slayers, is driving around San Francisco, armed to her back teeth, promising that she won't let the world forget about the Slayers. This...this can't be good.
  • Season 13 of Canada's Worst Driver had one of Season 11's bad drivers and winner of the unwanted title return as a nominator for one of that year's bad drivers. Which Andrew points out every chance he gets.
  • On Charlie's Angels, Jill Munroe returned for several guest appearances after leaving as a regular following the first season. These return appearances were actually contractually obligated, as part of a settlement to a lawsuit brought by producer Aaron Spelling against Farrah Fawcett over her early departure from the show.
  • El Chavo del ocho: La Chilindrina’s absence from the show was explained as her living with her aunts in Guanajuato. In reality Maria Antonieta de las Nieves left to work on a series for another network. The series was unsuccessful so for the next season La Chilindrina came back.
    • Don Ramón also returned to the "El Chavo" for the 1981 season of Chespirito. It was not to last, but at least the series reprised many of his classic episodes.
  • Characters who are Put on a Bus in Chuck seem to come back more often than not. That's including Jill (arrested early season 2, returns towards the end), Daniel Shaw (twice: in the penultimate Season 3 episode, and then again in season 5), and Alexei Volkoff (arrested mid-season 4, returns for the finale)
  • Community: After disappearing after the second season, Professor Duncan returned for Season 5 with an explanation that he'd been looking after his sick mother in the meantime.
  • Both A.J. Cook and Paget Brewster were forced out of Criminal Minds by Executive Meddling (reportedly because CBS needed to free up funds to bankroll the spinoff) during the sixth season. Outcries from the fans, the actors and even the writers (if one reads between the lines in "J.J.") led to the producers agreeing to bring the two of them back for Season Seven (though the cancellation of the spinoff helped there). Brewster left after Season Seven on her own accord before returning again in Season Twelve, while Cook consistently remains to this day.
  • Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle on CSI; eventually, this turned into a borderline between this and Commuting on a Bus. She's listed as a regular, but always misses a handful of episodes each season. William Petersen was rumored to be returning as well, but though he had a brief cameo in one ep, it was decided he wouldn't return for more yet, so as not to take the focus away from Catherine getting put on the bus.
    • Sophia Curtis got a one episode return as well.
  • CSI: NY sort of did with Aiden Burn, but it was more a Bus Crash—she only showed up in a couple of flashbacks and got Stuffed in the Fridge in the main plot ep itself.
    • Mac's ex-girlfriend Peyton, who returned in one episode a few seasons after her departure.
  • Desperate Housewives: After leaving Wisteria Lane in the first episode of seventh season, Orson Hodge appeared once again in "Assassins". However, it was just for that episode and his storyline with Bree wasn't resolved. He later returned again in the final season.
  • The Doctor Blake Mysteries: Danny Parks, who left at the end of season 1, returns in "Family Portrait" at the end of season 5 as a sergeant in a Melbourne station.
  • With characters coming and going on a regular basis in the British sitcom Doctor in the House and its sequels, it is inevitable that a few buses returned.
    • Robin Nedwell as Duncan Waring left after Doctor in the House to appear in The Lovers, but returned for Doctor in Charge as the new central character; Waring was said to have been a research doctor in Baltimore during the events of the previous series.
    • Martin Shaw as Huw Evans left Doctor in the House after one series, but returned as a nervous expectant father in the Doctor at Large episode "Mother and Father Doing Well".
    • Jonathan Lynn as Danny Hooley left after the second series of Doctor in the House, and returned for the Doctor in Charge finale "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?", having been struck off (unbeknownst to his friends at St. Swithin's).
    • George Layton as Paul Collier left after Doctor in Charge to start in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (Collier was said to have gone out for coffee and not come back until after his friends Waring and Stuart-Clark had also left the hospital to become ship's doctors), but returned as a regular for the final series in the franchise, Doctor at the Top.
  • Doctor Who:
  • Most famously on The Dukes of Hazzard, with Bo and Luke returning after being absent for most of the show's fifth season due to contract issues with actors John Schneider and Tom Wopat. (Unlike most examples of this trope, the bus brought them back not just for a visit, but for good.)
    • Deputy Enos Strate, who'd left Hazzard in the third season for his own short-lived spinoff show, returned at the start of season five (just as Bo and Luke were leaving). He also stuck around for the remainder of the show's run.
  • Earth: Final Conflict has Liam Kincaid, the main character for seasons 2-4, disappear under strange circumstances in the season 4 finale in a case of Never Found the Body. He finally comes back, just in time for the Grand Finale.
  • ER had Carter return for four episodes in season 12. Susan Lewis, absent from seasons 3-7, returned as a regular in seasons 8-12 before leaving again. Jeanie Boulet showed up in an episode of Season 14. In the show's 15th and final season, all of the departed regulars from the original cast, including the deceased Mark Greene, came back for guest appearances.
    • Specifically, in the final season:
      • Carter ends up essentially becoming a member of the main cast as the series closes, appearing in "The Beginning of the End:, "T-Minus-6", "What We Do", and "Old Times", and "And in the End...".
      • Doug Ross and Carol Hathaway reappear together in "Old Times".
      • Mark Greene and Robert Romano (who had both previously been killed off) show up in a flashback in "Heal Thyself".
      • Abby Lockhart and Ray Barnett reappear to help send Neela Rasgotra off in the series' antepenultimate episode.
      • Kerry Weaver, Elizabeth Corday, Peter Benton and Susan Lewis all come back for the series finale to specifically meet up with John Carter's character, and all of them (minus Lewis) had made additional appearances earlier in the season.
      • Finally, several recurring characters reappeared throughout the season, including Jerry Markovic, Lydia Wright, David Morgenstern, Kem Likasu, Reese Benton and Rachel Greene (the latter, Mark's daughter, done to help to bring the series full circle).
  • On Eureka, you'd think sacrificing himself to save continuity would be enough to get Nathan Stark out of Carter's life for good. Nope; he comes back. Turns out he was just a technology-induced hallucination. But this is Eureka, after all.
    • Taggert was a regular recurring character throughout seasons 1 & 2, then he inexplicably disappeared after the season 2 finale. He finally made a return for 1 episode at the end of season 3, in which he alluded to his sudden departure as a Walkabout. He then returns twice more for the season 4 and 5 Christmas Specials, but never manages to make a full return to the cast.
    • Dr. Trevor Grant was the major Arc Character for season 4's first half, leaving once his arc was concluded. He makes a much welcomed (by the cast) return in the series finale as the new owner of Eureka, buying the town and GD at Fargo's pleading after the government decided to pull all funding and shut them down.
  • Richard Dawson, host of Family Feud from 1976 to 1985, returned to host the final season of the 1988 revival (1994-95 season).
  • Father Brown: In "[[ Father Brown S 10 E 1 The Winds of Change]]", Now Chief Inspector Sullivan returns to Kembleford after a run-in with a corrupt superior in London, and at the end of the episode finds himself transferred back there indefinitely.
  • Janette was brought back for one season 3 Forever Knight episode, though that ep is not well liked by fans.
  • A French Village: Kurt is shipped to the Eastern Front after it's found he was in a relationship with Lucienne, as she's French (forbidden by German military regulations). Müller is also transferred to Kiev. In a later season, both return.
  • Happens frequently in the final two seasons of Friday Night Lights, with Lyla Garrity, Tyra Collette, Landry Clarke, and Jason Street returning for one or two episodes apiece after departing Dillon, and Matt Saracen for an impressive six, including the series finale. In fact, the only main character not to return for a sendoff at some point after their departure was Smash Williams.
  • From Frontline, Geoffrey Salter reappears 19 years later in a fourth season episode of Rake.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Hot Pie returns in Season 4 when Brienne and Pod stop by the inn where he works. It turn's out he's gotten much better at making wolf-shaped bread.
    • Rickon Stark and Osha come Back for the Dead in Season 6 after going off on their own at the end of season 3.
  • On Gilmore Girls, Jess apparently has several round-trip tickets. His whole slew of issues came together and he ran away from town, only to be grudgingly dragged back to town to reclaim his car and attend his mother's wedding. He leaves town again when Rory impulsively rejects him and then resurfaces in Rory's life again to see how she's doing only for Rory to sadly reject him again.
  • Glee: Sam moved away between the second and third seasons due to contract issues with Chord Overstreet, only to return for good in "Hold Onto Sixteen".
  • Gossip Girl:
    • Georgina seems to have several round-trip tickets.
    • Jenny also returned briefly for a couple of episodes in season 4 after being Put on a Bus in the season 3 finale.
  • Grey's Anatomy has been using this infrequently as part of when current characters need to be put on a bus themselves:
    • Cristina leaves by running into Preston Burke and being recruited to run some magic sci fi hospital in Switzerland full of 3D printers.
    • Arizona ends up moving to ease the tension regarding her custody dispute with Callie and it's at minimum hinted the two might get back together.
    • April leaves after getting back together with Matthew Taylor and does non profit work with the homeless.
    • When it's time for Jackson to leave, He gets back together with April (who conveniently has broken up with Matthew again), and the whole family as a unit moves to Boston so Jackson can run the family foundation.
    • Technically the bus doesn't come back at all since the character's never on screen, but Alex leaves by telling everyone via letter that he got back together with Izzie who secretly had the frozen embryo babies from they froze during her chemo ages ago to raise their kids together.
  • In Growing Pains, Luke (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns briefly in the final episode. Oddly enough, he didn't technically interact with the cast face-to-face. He simply spoke to Mike on the phone in one scene. He was only a part of the cast towards the end of the series so there wasn't a long time between his departure and return.
  • Hannah Montana:
    • Dantzig disappeared after season 1, and then randomly reappeared for a season 3 episode. He was never seen again afterwards.
  • On Happy Days:
    • Richie and Ralph Malph returned for an episode (with Richie coming back again for the series finale).
    • After having departed for their own ill-fated spinoff, Joanie and Chachi made a few guest appearances during the season they were absent before finally returning for good in the series' final season, once their spinoff had been axed.
  • Janice on Head of the Class came back for graduation (the final episode), despite having gone on to college.
  • Highlander did this with three characters. Charlie DeSalvo left the series in late season 3, then returned in the second ep of season 4, where he was Killed Off for Real. Fitzcairn and Richie were variants of it. Richie was an alternate universe Richie in Duncan's visions, and Fitzcairn showed up only in flashbacks. (Fitzcairn, having been killed off in his second appearance, is in the unusual position of having shown up more often after the bus than before.) Tessa did once as well, with Alexandra Vandernoot playing her in a season 2 ep in flashbacks and playing a different character made to look like Tessa via Magic Plastic Surgery in the main plot of the ep.
  • Randy returns for the last Christmas special of Home Improvement.
  • On House, Cameron leaves both Princeton Plainsboro and Chase. She later comes back to finalize her divorce from the latter in a nice way.
    • To a lesser extent Chase and Freeman also qualify. Never completely leaving the show, but taking new jobs and making only cameo appearances while House builds a totally new team. Both end up finding their way back onto his team and retaking their full cast member status.
  • How I Met Your Mother: Ted's first serious girlfriend in the series is Victoria, a baker he meets at a wedding. They break up near the end of season 1, and she's not seen again for 5 seasons. Ted finally runs into her again in season 7.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • In the original series, after star Hiroshi Fujioka's leg was shattered during a stunt gone wrong, protagonist Takeshi Hongo went overseas to foil more of Shocker's plans while Hayato Ichimonji, the second Kamen Rider, took care of Japan. Hongo returned almost 30 episodes later and the two heroes fought side-by-side for 12 episodes, but then Ichimonji himself went overseas for training. He eventually returned for the final five episodes, and the Double Riders (as they're officially known) have been an inseparable Dynamic Duo ever since.
    • In Kamen Rider OOO, Akira Date goes abroad in episode 38 to get the shrapnel in his brain removed, but returns in the final three episodes to fight alongside his former apprentice, Goto.
    • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, in a special focusing on Hiiro Kagami/Kamen Rider Brave, brings back three villains representing each era of the franchise: King Dark from Kamen Rider X, Takeshi Asakura/Kamen Rider Ouja from Kamen Rider Ryuki, and most notably, Foundation X from the first three post-Decade seasons.
  • In Knight Rider, after Patricia McPherson had a disagreement with producer Glen A. Larson by the end of the first season, she was written off the show, and her character Bonnie was never seen through Season 2. Due to lobbying by her co-stars, David Hasselhoff and Edward Mulhare, she was brought back to the show for Season 3. In the Season 3 opener, where we learned that she decided to continue her studies upstate in San Francisco. After that, she would return to the Foundation to stay for the remainder of the series.
  • In Last of the Summer Wine the character of Foggy Dewhurst, who had exited at the end of series 8 to run an egg-painting business, returned to the show in series 12. The bus quite literally came back, as the first time we see him he's riding into town on a bus. Seymour, the character he was replaced by (and is now replacing), had just left town (and the series) on a different bus.
  • Brian Cassidy of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit transferred out of the unit in mid-Season 1 and was pretty much forgotten until he showed up as an undercover officer working a case — in the finale of Season Thirteen.
    • If this applies across an entire franchise, then Captain Cragen counts, with his casting in SVU being his return bus trip. He was Lt. Anita Van Buren's predecessor on the mothership show for the first three seasons.
    • In other cross-franchise examples, Executive ADA Michael Cutter make four appearances in Season 13 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit after his own show, the original Law & Order ended in 2010, and Lt. Alexandra Eames makes two appearances in Season 14 of L&O: SVU, her first appearance since the ending of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in 2011.
      • Eames and Goren also get this in the Season 10 premiere of Criminal Intent, after both departing in the second episode of the ninth season.
    • On Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Alex Cabot came back.
      • But then she left again. And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.
    • Recently Casey Novak also came back for an episode.
  • Mad Men gives us a few examples.
    • Of the former Sterling Cooper employees who didn't jump ship for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce at the end of Season 3, Ken Cosgrove returned for good while other characters reappear occationally
      • Ken Cosgrove shows up for one episode, disappears again, and then joins SCDP after coming to a truce with Pete. He is a regular character in season 5.
      • Duck Philips shows up twice, both times not only hammered drunk but obviously far, far Off the Wagon. Ranting and raving, he fights Don, because Don is also drunk, and came in with Peggy. At the end of season 5, Peggy meets him in a restaurant to get some career advice and this time he is actually sober.
    • Paul Kinsey returns in season 5, really down on his luck and a member of the Hare Krishna. He is subsequently given a bus ticket to California so he can get away from the cult and start a new life as a movie scriptwriter.
    • Two other more minor former Sterling Cooper employees show up again; both had left well before the sale of Sterling Cooper to McCann Erickson.
      • Smitty Smith resurfaces at the agency of Don's (self-declared) rival's Ted Chaough (pronounced "Shaw") in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword".
      • After being let go for drunkenly pissing himself at a meeting with Samsonite in Season 2, Freddy Rumsen reappears in Season 4, a member of AA.
    • Rachel Menken popped up in one episode after her affair with Don ended to let the viewers know she got married. Don uses her husband's name (Tilden Katz) to get into a seedy underground casino as part of Freddy Rumsen's send-off. She also has a brief appearance in a Season 7B episode as the result of Don having a case of mistaken identity with a waitress who resembles her.
    • Midge (the commercial artist and the first of Don's mistresses that we see) shows up again in Season 4, having since become a heroin addict and prostitute.
    • Glen, the creepy son of the Drapers' neighbor, returns in Season 4 as a key player and Sally's friend.
  • Cynthia, the girl who liked Malcolm, on Malcolm in the Middle. She moves to Europe in that episode. Another episode she comes back more developed.
  • Married... with Children: The actor playing Steve Rhoades left in season 4, but made 4 guest appearances in later years (3 in-character, 1 as a pirate).
  • The Mentalist had CBI Director Gale Bertram leave at the beginning of season four so his actor Michael Gaston could join the main cast of Unforgettable. After Unforgettable was cancelled after its first season, Gaston got his old role back.
  • Several characters return in series 5 of Merlin, most notably Mordred (with a Time-Shifted Actor) but also Queen Annis, Princess Mithian, King Odin and the sorcerer Alator.
  • Midsomer Murders:
    • Troy makes a brief guest appearance at the end of "Blood Wedding", as a guest at Cully's wedding.
    • Jones, having left after the end of Series 15, makes a guest appearance in "Last Man Out"; operating undercover as member of a semi-professional cricket competition. This is a Continuity Nod to Jones' skill at cricket as displayed in "Secrets and Spies".
  • Mimpi Metropolitan:
    • Alexi stops appearing after episode 12 since Melani no longer works in Alexi Show after that episode. Alexi comes back to Melani's life anyway in episode 23.
    • After last being seen antagonizing Alan and Prima in episode 26, Wawan starts visiting Pipin again in episode 36.
    • Juna leaves the dorm for a while when he gets casted in a movie in episode 38 and returns in episode 43 after the filming is done.
  • Sharona returns for an episode of Monk in season 8.
    • As well as for one of the novels, aptly titled Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000:
    • Joel Robinson and TV's Frank both returned for the tenth season premiere, Soultaker.
    • The Season 12, Episode 4 episode The Day Time Ended featured the return of Dr. Erhardt, who had been reported missing at the start of the second season.
  • We get this in NCIS: Ziva, who'd left in season 10 and was later presumed dead 3 seasons later, when Tony DiNozzo leaves due to her leaving behind his daughter, eventually comes back in season 16 to warn Gibbs that he's in danger. She was eventually put on a bus again after her role in Season 16 was done.
  • Coach was on New Girl for exactly one episode before being written out; the actor, Damon Wayans Jr., only shot the pilot, then couldn't join the show after it got picked up because his current show Happy Endings was renewed. After Happy Endings did finally end, Coach was written back in.
  • Presumably out of respect for Phil Hartman, Khandi Alexander returns as her character Catherine Duke (who had left the show in the previous season) in the NewsRadio episode in which Hartman's character Bill McNeal dies.
  • Nightwatch (2015): Holly's former partner Gavin (who appears in the first two episodes of S1) comes back in S3.
  • NUMB3RS
    • Larry comes back in The Art Of Reckoning after being in space as Peter MacNicol returned from his stint on 24 and fully returns to full cast in the season four premiere.
    • Megan comes back in the season three finale after Diane Farr returns from maternity leave.
  • Odd Squad:
    • Olive and Otto depart in the Season 1 finale "O is Not For Over", but briefly return in the Cold Open of "First Day" as part of a video that Professor O is showing to promising Odd Squad Academy agents-in-training. They would later go on to appear in Odd Squad: The Movie in major roles, with Olive also making a voice-only cameo in the OddTube episode "Interview with Olive".
    • Similarly, Oscar departs in the Season 2 episode "Oscar Strikes Back", but returns for Odd Squad: The Movie.
    • Odd Todd, the Big Bad of Season 1, returns in the Made-for-TV Movie Odd Squad: World Turned Odd after being defeated in "O is Not For Over". He then returns in the Season 2 finale before departing from the show entirely.
    • While Otis leaves the show entirely after the Season 2 finale, Olympia returns as a voice-only cameo on the second season premiere of OddTube.
    • Oona also leaves the show in the Season 2 finale, but makes a voice-only cameo in an episode of Odd Squadcast, the show's podcast.
    • Oprah is a zig-zagged example. The Season 2 finale, presumably the Grand Finale, had her leaving for the Big Office upon her being promoted to the position of the Big O. Then Season 3 was announced, and she returned to the show as the Big O before the mid-season finale "End of the Road" became the presumed Grand Finale. However, 13 more episodes were ordered for the season, and the mid-season premiere "Odd Off The Press" showed her being Put on a Bus to help the Odd Squad Space Unit, ending her run on the show for good.
  • One Tree Hill:
    • Haley returns from being on tour to work things out with Nathan in the final moments of the second season finale, "The Leavers Dance", after quite literally being put on a bus in "The Hero Dies in This One", ten episodes beforehand. Although technically Haley is still a main character throughout these ten episodes, she only makes limited appearances.
  • The Outpost: Naya vanished after Season 2, but in Season 4 it's revealed she just moved to another town and reenters the story.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Tommy, the original Green Ranger left the show two times, due to his powers being drained. During his first return, near the end of the first season, Zordon temporarily recharges his powers. His second return in the second season has him take on the mantle of the White Ranger.
    • Power Rangers Zeo
      • Jason, the original Red Ranger, left the series during the second season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers along with Zack and Trini. He returns in Zeo, when he briefly inherited the powers of the Gold Ranger.
      • Rita, Zedd, Finster and the Tenga Warriors, left at the start of the season, but came back halfway for an Evil Versus Evil against the Machine Empire. (Rito and Goldar don't count because they never left the series at that point) In the Tengas' case, it'd count as Back for the Finale if the Power Rangers franchise ended with Zeo.
      • There was also a two-part episode featuring the Alien Rangers from the previous season teaming up with the Zeo Rangers.
    • Jason and Kimberly appeared in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie.
    • Power Rangers Turbo featured Zordon and Alpha 5 returning to Eltar and leaving Dimitria and Alpha 6 in charge of the Turbo Rangers. They returned for the ceremony where Tommy, Kat, Tanya and Adam passed their turbo powers to another set of rangers. Zordon also appeared in the two-part finale.
    • Power Rangers in Space:
      • Justin and Adam return for one episode each to team up with the Space Rangers.
      • Almost all major villains from previous seasons are revealed to be part of the United Alliance of Evil. Their impending conquest of the universe is a major threat to the heroes.
    • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy:
      • The Space Rangers return for a two-part episode in which they team up with the Galaxy Rangers to fight against their evil counterparts, The Psycho Rangers.
      • Karone, the true identity of Astronema in the previous season, returns to become the new Pink Ranger after the death of Kendrix.
    • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue sees the return of Trakeena, who wans to destroy the earth as revenge on the Galaxy Rangers. Said Galaxy Rangers join the Lightspeed Rangers to stop her.
    • Power Rangers Time Force has Vypra return from the dead to team up with Ransik. The Lightspeed Rangers join up with the Time Force Rangers to stop this alliance. Dr. Fairweather also makes a cameo, revealing she married Joel.
    • Power Rangers Wild Force:
      • The Time Force Rangers and former enemies Ransik and Nadira help the Wild Force Power Rangers against a trio of Mut-Orgs, unholy fusions between Mutants and Orgs.
      • The episode "Forever Red" features a Milestone Celebration episode with every prior Red Ranger up to that point (with Rocky being the only omission, Aurico appearing in his morphed form only, and counting Quantum Ranger Eric) returning for a battle against the Machine Empire. Bulk and Skull also appeared, running a resort called Bulkmeier's.
    • Original Sixth Ranger Tommy returned in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder as both the new team's mentor and as the Black Dino Ranger. The Ninja Storm Rangers, as well as their allies and their enemies from their season returned for a two-part episode.
    • Power Rangers S.P.D. had villain Zeltrax and the Dino Thunder Rangers (Tommy only appeared morphed because Jason David Frank was absent).
    • Power Rangers Mystic Force had Piggy from S. P. D. appear.
    • Similarly to the one in Wild Force, the show's 15th anniversary episode (in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive) features a mishmash team of past Rangers returning for a special two-parter, consisting of Tori, Kira, Bridge, Xander, and Ensemble Dark Horse Adam, who hadn't been on the show in nearly a decade.
    • In Power Rangers Samurai,
      • One half of Those Two Guys, Bulk, is back for the first time in nine years, and as a recurring character rather than a short cameo for the first time in thirteen to fourteen years. The other half, Skull, appeared in the finale for a cameo.
      • The Red RPM Ranger appeared as well for an extended episode. Though JUST The Red RPM Ranger, and even then it was an instance of Fake Shemp as he appeared masked the entire timenote .
    • Power Rangers Megaforce rectified that with a lot of past heroes as guest stars, but it was mainly for the finale.
    • Power Rangers Ninja Steel's crossover special "Dimension In Danger" featured several returning rangers, namely Tommy, Rocky, Kat, TJ, Wes, Trent, Gemma, Antonio, Gia, and Koda.
    • Power Rangers Beast Morphers had perhaps the biggest number of returning buses in the franchise: All three Dino Ranger teams, Sledge and his gang, Goldar, Dr. K, and most shockingly of all, Venjix, who is revealed to have been the true identity of Evox all along.
    • Power Rangers Dino Fury has Big Bad Lord Zedd get resurrected. On a more minor note, Mick Kanic from Ninja Steel makes a brief reappearance in the first part of the show.
    • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always, being a Reunion Special, has multiple rangers return for the 30th Anniversary. The most notable return is that of Aisha, who hadn't been seen since the end of the original series when the rest of the Mighty Morphin rangers had made a reappearance either unmorphed or through a Fake Shemp beforehandnote .
    • Power Rangers Cosmic Fury features the return of Heckyl from Dino Charge, now as the Dark Ranger.
  • Primeval: Jenny Lewis leaves the A.R.C. team partway through series three. She shows up towards the end of series four when an anomaly forms at her wedding.
    • Danny Quinn returns just in time to stop his brother Ethan in season five.
  • Red Dwarf:
    • The hologram Rimmer is Put on a Bus in the second episode of Series VII, going off to become the next Ace. Although the next series adds a nanobot-created human Rimmer to the cast, Word of God has since stated that the Rimmer seen in Back To Earth onwards is the original one, although why he returned and the fate of Nano-Rimmer (last seen on the seemingly collapsing Red Dwarf) remains unclear.
    • After not being seen since Series 2 back in 1988, with the character (post-Hattie Hayridge) lost and presumed destroyed, Norman Lovett's version of Holly returned at the very end of Series 7 in 1997, in preparation for a full-time return in Series 8 (1999). In fact, one of Holly's first lines upon his return is, "He's back. Kicking bottom or what?"
  • Resurrection: Ertuğrul: Having been absent since the beginning of season 1, Yigit and Dundar finally reappear near the beginning of the next season. Bamsi Beyrek also counts (Though he returns far earlier that season).
    • Dogan returns to the spotlight a few episodes into season 3, having been disguised as a merchant in the Hanli Market.
    • Sungurtekin Bey, who previously appeared in season 2, shows up a good way through season 4, helping his brothers eliminate Sadettin Kopek as he begins to spread his influence in Karacahisar.
    • Selcan Hatun reappears midway into season 5, after having not been seen since the end of season 2. Likewise, her husband Gundogdu shows up a while later, and he even helps Ertugrul fight against Albasti/Beybolat.
    • An example from season 1, Emir Al Aziz. He seemingly disappears from the picture after Titus cuts all ties with him and murders Al Aziz’s uncle, leaving him a sobbing wreck. Toward the end of the season, he makes one last appearance visiting the Kayis as they prepare migrate to new territory before vanishing permanently from the script.
  • Sanford and Son: Good ol' Grady returned, then, seemingly not learning his lesson, did an equally short-lived spinoff after the parent show was cancelled.
  • Smallville:
    • Pete Ross returns for an episode... With powers! ... and for Product Placement.
    • Subverted with Whitney's supposed return. He was actually shapeshifting villain Tina Greer.
    • After being Put on a Bus at the end of Season 7, Lana Lang returns in Season 8 for a five-episode mini-arc.
    • Brainiac returns, sans evil, after what we thought to be his final defeat. He's been reprogrammed into Brainiac 5 by the Legion of Super-Heroes (instead of a descendant, he is the fifth iteration of the same very-hard-to-kill machine).
    • Lex Luthor was widely believed 'dead' after the events of the Season Seven finale, but returned for a couple of episodes of Season Eight as a crippled figure in a hospital bed who was later blown up by Oliver Queen, and finally returned in the series finale, where his body has been restored to full health via a series of transplants taken from his own clones to create a fresh new body for himself.
  • Stargate SG-1:
  • Saturday Night Live Chris Parnell got fired or "not renewed" as they say on the show and then was bought back and had a career on the sketch show that lasted a full eight seasons.
  • In Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • "Yesterday's Enterprise" was originally supposed to be a Back for the Dead episode for Tasha (using ripple-effect time travel to get around the fact that she was already dead), but it got a Cosmic Retcon into the more general version of this trope in order to allow her to have a Romulan daughter who was a fully grown adult in the present.
    • Next Generation also has Wesley Crusher himself, who gets Put On A Shuttle to Starfleet Academy before returning for three episodes: one where he fights the spread of a brainwashing game aboard the Enterprise, one where the group of stunt pilots he's part of is charged with and reprimanded for trying a dangerous maneuver that killed a member of the team and a third where he returns to the Enterprise on leave, only to resign from Starfleet in order to save a Magical Native American settlement from getting kicked off their planet due to a Federation-Cardassian treaty. A Wesley cameo at Riker's wedding was filmed for Nemesis, but mostly didn't make it into the final movie (he is visible at the edge of one scene at Riker and Troi's wedding). He also had an appearance in an episode where Worf visited a parallel universe where Wesley had the role of a tactical officer because he'd never left in this timeline.
  • The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Fury" features Kes returning to the crew, harboring some sort of Irrational Hatred for them.
  • St. Elsewhere: Nurse Shirley Daniels returned to St. Eligius twice after going to prison for shooting doctor-turned-rapist Peter White: once for an appendectomy, and once in the series finale.
  • Storage Wars has Dave Hester, who departed the show under murky but acrimonious circumstances, with him even filing a lawsuit against the A&E network. A couple of seasons later, the lawsuit was settled and Hester returned to the show, his Jerkass persona now cranked up to eleven.
  • Suits has Trevor, who leaves for Montana to escape angry drug dealers... only to return at the end of the season. On learning Mike has gotten together with his ex, Trevor, being the good Toxic Friend he is, promptly heads to the law firm to reveal Mike's lies.
  • Supernatural: Death Is Cheap on a long-running fantasy show, so it happens quite a bit.
    • Castiel has a Face–Heel Turn in Season 6, goes power-mad and dies early in Season 7 in a Heroic Sacrifice that was widely believed to be permanent. But ratings tanked, fans rebelled and it turned out he was Not Quite Dead by the end of the season.
    • Ellen and Jo are introduced in Season 2, disappear, and then return to help the boys stop the Apocalypse in Season 5.
    • Ellen and Jo die in Season 5, but Ellen returns in an alternative universe episode in Season 6 where she is happily married to Bobby. Jo returns in Season 7 as a ghost to confront Dean.
    • Bobby Singer dies in Season 7. However, the character was so popular, he returns in either ghost form or alternate universe form, at least once in all subsequent seasons.
    • Charlie Bradbury dies pointlessly and is brought back as an alternative universe Charlie.
    • Many one-off characters like Lenore the friendly vampire, Missouri Mosely, Sarah return in Back for the Dead stories.
  • Taskmaster: After appearing Once a Season for the first few series, Fred the Swede stopped appearing (due to moving back to Sweden and otherwise getting on with his life). He returned "by genuinely popular demand," by means of a video call on an iPad strapped to the head of a patriotically coloured dummy, in the Series 13 episode "You Tuper Super."
  • The Ropers guested in a Three's Company episode following the death of their self-titled spinoff show.
  • Top Gear: in a special episode marking the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise, Richard Hammond briefly interviews one of the stunt drivers on the set of Skyfall, Ben Collins, formerly The Stig.
  • Tracker (2001) did this with Jess, a few eps after her departure.
  • Rose of Two and a Half Men manages to return twice. The second time offers no explanation as to where she came from and where she ended up after the episode, but that's not unusual for Rose... she's a little loopy.
  • The Traitors: The contestants are asked to place themselves in order from Most Likely To Win to Most Unlikely To Win in Episode 1. Amos and Kieran are removed from the show after placing themselves at the Most Unlikely To Win end of the line. They return to the show in Episode 5, where Claudia Winkleman reveals they were never eliminated from the show, and that the only ways to be eliminated are banishment or murder.
  • Ultra Series:
  • The Untamed: After Mianmian tells off everyone who slandered Wei Wuxian at Golden Qilin Tower, she leaves the Jin Clan and isn't seen again... until some time after the Time Skip when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji encounter her while heading for the Burial Mounds. She appears for long enough for the audience to know that she's fine and doing much better living as a rogue cultivator than as a disciple of the Jin Clan.
  • Vicki and Anna return as ghosts that can only be seen by Jeremy in The Vampire Diaries. Later, Matt can see Vicki.
  • Having fled to Australia halfway through the second season of Veronica Mars, Duncan returned for a brief cameo in the finale.
  • Basically everyone who'd been Put on a Bus to Mandyville (except Mandy) came back for Leo's funeral in one of the last episodes of The West Wing. Ironically, one of the few departed cast members not to put in an appearance was Sam Seaborn, who would return an episode or so later, and appear in several more remaining episodes.
  • Every living former main cast member and all but one living recurring character (Ziggy Sobotka from season 2) made some sort of return appearance in the last season of The Wire.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place: The Wizards of Apartment 13B story arc loves this trope. So far, Mason, Gorog and other Wizards who've played large parts in certain episodes come back, and in the final episode, revealed thanks to a commercial on Disney Channel, Juilet comes back, although it may or may not be her, since it is Gorog they're dealing with here.
    • On could also say that they came back because of Executive Meddling, in that they didn't want to lose the Alex/Mason shippers to another franchise - and because TPTB wanted to stamp any hint of anything un-Disneylike between the siblings.
  • You Me Her: Andy left Nina offscreen between Season 2 and 3, returning near the end of the latter... just as Nina's moving on.

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