Continuity Creep

Sam: Remember when we used to just... hunt Wendigos? How simple things were?
Dean: Not really.

— Supernatural, "Two Minutes To Midnight"

Continuity Creep is the tendency of a TV show or comic book that starts off with an episodic Sitcom, Adventure Town or Monster of the Week format, which then begins to accumulate more and more Continuity Nods and ongoing storylines. Or if it starts off with each episode containing a single self-contained story, and ends up with sprawling plots that span multiple episodes, it has undergone continuity creep.

In a comedy show, this trope is often a symptom of Cerebus Syndrome, but it can occur independently. In a dramatic or action-adventure show, it's often a sign of Growing the Beard. Arc Welding is this trope applied retroactively. "Too much" may result in Continuity Porn. See also Kudzu Plot, when instead of a series sprouting references to past events, it sprouts open-ended mysteries for use in future events. Often more noticeable in Long-Runners. Generally averts Aesop Amnesia and Status Quo Is God.

Compare Not So Episodic, in which the early one-off episodes turn out to not be one-offs after all.

Sometimes writers use this trope intentionally, as part of their overall plan for the show: the early standalone episodes allow the viewers to become familiar with the setting and characters, so when the Myth Arc begins, they'll understand the context and stakes.

Examples

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Anime & Manga

Most of Pokémon: The Series is an episodic, formulaic Monster of the Week style show with an underlying Myth Arc. The Sinnoh and Kalos sagas are notable for being quite a bit more story-driven, having a wider array of plot threads and more consistent buildup to both their respective League Conferences and villain arcs. Likewise, Journeys has plots for Ash who enters the World Coronation Series to officially challenge Leon after losing to him in a friendly battle, Goh who wants to meet Mew again and Chloe who wants to figure out what her goal is in life.
Fullmetal Alchemist started off as a real Adventure Town-type show, with Ed and Al travelling to various places throughout the country and solving various problems. As more and more of the plot began to unravel, however, the series began shifting into telling one, continuous story with almost no breaks or time leaps in between episodes.
Witch Hunter Robin starts off as a fairly dull Monster of the Week affair; however, about halfway through, it suddenly develops an ongoing plot. Same with The Big O.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! manga was about Yugi playing a Game of Shadows in every chapter until the author switched focus to the card game, at which point it gained an actual overarching plot.
Hayate the Combat Butler has a plot involving Athena, Mikado Sanzenin and Nagi's mother, the pendants, and Wataru's mother.
Bleach did something similar to this for a while. For the first dozen or so chapters, it was a light horror-comedy with "Hollow of the week" stories and some of Ichigo's friends getting attacked or empowered every so often, before becoming a straight action saga.
The World God Only Knows started off as a Girl of the Week story with Keima making a different conquest in each arc. After awhile, some of the girls become recurring characters, and once the Goddess arc begins, a few of the previous girls become major characters.
Rurouni Kenshin was about Kenshin having sword fights and such in the Meiji era. Then the plot went further into his backstory, and while the series had never been lighthearted, it got a lot darker, including the death of his first wife and the faked death of Kaoru.
Trigun began as a progression through a series of Adventure Towns before the Myth Arc (only barely hinted at previously) kicked in around halfway through.
Inverted with the anime version of Blood Blockade Battlefront. The first season had an ongoing arc throughout the season that was an anime original. Season 2 however was purely episodic with two unrelated two-parters being the only big continuity. That said, there are nods to previous events all over the place even with the episodic nature. And the manga itself has thus far remained purely episodic.
Dragon Ball starts out as a very comedic, almost episodic affair, and while the story did keep moving forward with little status quo, it didn't really develop itself much either. The longer-form Red Ribbon Arc starts the move out of this trend once Goku meets Upa, Bora and Tao, and the Demon King Piccolo arc signals a proper transition with the death of major characters and the use of backstory for the plot rather than for simple worldbuilding as before. True to form, the aftermath of this arc leads directly into the next one with the story not over, which would apply to all future arcs as well, including the split from Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball Z induced by the anime.
Early chapters of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War were (seemingly) self-contained Battle of Wits between Kaguya and Shirogane, though Continuity Nods and ongoing plots become far more common as the series goes on, especially after the fireworks arc.
The World of Narue: While the manga still slips into "episodic" slice-of-life chapters, from chapter 30 onwards hint of an overarching plotline start to emerge, connected to the mysterious entities called "Serpents", who seem to have the ability to mess with timelines.
After the first 20-odd chapters, the Happy World! switches from a more episodic format to an ongoing story.
Fist of the North Star started with one-off arcs that usually involved Kenshiro and his two child companions, Bat and Lin, wandering into a new town and helping the local townsfolks fend off whatever evil gang or organization was threatening their lives. It isn't until the introduction of Kenshiro's adoptive brothers that it becomes more focused on the actual martial arts schools and the fates intertwined them.
Moriarty the Patriot starts off with each chapter an individual noble to be murdered or dealt with and slowly grows while William's plan to save the empire is revealed.
The manga version of Negima! started out as your typical Harem series, before turning into a Darker and Edgier Shounen action series. Supposedly this is because the creator, Ken Akamatsu, who had already done a harem series, was tired of it and wanted to make a shounen series, but the Editors wanted another harem series because of the popularity of his previous work, Love Hina. So he opted to give them what they wanted at first, and then slowly turn it into what he wanted. This genre change however, is not present in either of the Anime adaptations, both of which maintain the Harem genre throughout their runs.

Comic Books

Jhonen Vasquez does this quite a bit.
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac began as a series of random, one-off strips. After a while, the comic evolved so that each issue told a longer story, and a full-fledged Myth Arc was in place by the end. This was deliberate.
- Squee! was intended as a return to one-off silliness, but ended up with an ongoing plot in the end.
The comic version of Sabrina the Teenage Witch started with one-off stories because Tania del Rio (the writer) had orders from her editor to do the stories Archie style. However, she slipped in some continuity slowly over each issue. By the time she got a new editor (who also happens to run Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)), the "Four Blades" plot was already underway.
Lampshaded in the between the chapter meta panels in Empowered.
But in the course of these throwaway "stories"... He says I developed a, quote, "personality"... and a boyfriend... and a nice set of body-image issues, thank you very much... and, well, voila... this goofy mess somehow wound up morphing into a, quote, "real comic". A "real comic" in which, you'll notice, I still seem to get tied up a lot. That's not my idea of a "real comic", but whatevs.
In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (1989), this is intentional from the start, but it's still rather odd to find out that a small event from the fourth comic ends up being important for the climax of the series.
Garth Ennis's run in The Punisher MAX. The CIA's disastrous attempts to recruit him in "In The Beginning" is brought up in "Mother Russia," and a couple of characters have very important roles in "Up is Down and Black is White", "Man of Stone" and "Long Cold Dark". Yorkie from "Kitchen Irish" crops up again in "Man of Stone" and "Long Cold Dark". "Mother Russia" is a crucial part of later stories "Up is Down and Black is White", "Man of Stone", "Long Cold Dark" and "Valley Forge Valley Forge." The events of "The Slavers" has a bearing on "Widowmaker."
DC and Marvel superheroes can be considered this in general. Back in the Silver Age, every story was a self-contained plot. Over the years, comics added more and more continuity until the modern soap-opera style of storytelling resulted. This, of course, led to a large amount of Continuity Snarl, more so on DC's end than Marvel's, due to DC being an amalgam of characters from a myriad of authors and bought-out companies (most notably Charlton Comics), while nearly all of Marvel's A-list names spawned from the mind of Stan Lee (i.e. it was easier for the Generalisimo to recall and/or retcon stuff he himself had written than it was for DC authors who may have had to research character that DC themselves may have not created, like Captain Marvel).
For the first several issues the Sonic the Hedgehog parts of Sonic the Comic were mainly just full one-shots that never really related to one each other. Issue 8 started a sense of plot but it took several more issues of on-and-off one-shots until it came into full effect.
Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets starts off as a fairly straightforward Victim of the Week series about a shady government agent named Agent Graves, who offers wronged people a chance at taking consequence-free revenge with a handgun and 100 untraceable rounds of ammunition. Initially, Azzarello just uses unrelated standalone stories to examine the moral dilemmas inherent in the concept of revenge, with Graves as the only reappearing character. As the series goes on, though, some of the previous Victims of the Week return to become recurring characters, and a sprawling Myth Arc gradually becomes apparent as the characters figure out their connections to one another and work to uncover Agent Graves' motivations for seeking them out.
Attemped in-universe in 'Mazing Man. Comic book writer Denton Fixx attempts to create continuity in the "Adventures of Zoot Sputnik" series' he's been assigned to write, but his editor/publisher insists that continuity doesn't matter because nobody reads more than one or two issues anyway.
The three first Noob comics consisted of short gags and short stories, some of which would need to be affected by Negative Continuity for the timeline to make sense. Comics 4, 5 and 6 all had a single comic-spanning story and comic 7 caught up with the franchise Myth Arc just in time to cover a franchise-wide Wham Episode.
The Doctor Who Magazine comic strip began with self-contained multi-part stories about the Fourth Doctor, with little continuity between them (and not making much effort to make them fit into the TV show continuity). This changed when the strip's protagonist changed to the Fifth Doctor, with the writer Steve Parkhouse ending up making the entire Fifth Doctor run fit into a single broad myth-arc, and then launching the Sixth Doctor's era with the ambitious, complex, and very long "Voyager" arc. Since then, the strip has moved back and forth between these poles - the later Sixth Doctor strips after Parkhouse left, and the Seventh Doctor strips, were mostly episodic, but the Eighth Doctor strips had several long-running arcs. After the TV show was relaunched, the Ninth and Tenth Doctor strips were episodic to avoid any conflicts with TV continuity, but the magazine editor and the strip's writer took advantage of the Tenth Doctor's final "specials-only" year in 2009 to have a long-term arc revolving around the mysterious past of the Doctor's amnesiac original companion Majenta, and subsequently the strip has gone back to long-term arcs lasting roughly a year each.
The first few volumes of Atomic Robo had standalone stories, but Ghost of Station X began an ongoing storyline in the modern-day-set volumes (though stories set in the past are still relatively unconnected to each other).
For the first decades of Superman's existence, his stories -as well as his spin-offs' Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl and Legion of Super-Heroes- were self-contained one-offs with little continuity between them. During the 1950s, though, DC started getting picky about canon, and some events like teen Clark Kent becoming Superboy, the discovery and retrieval of Kandor or the arrival of Supergirl became set in stone. By the early 1960s -before the Marvel Era- the Superman books were adhering to fluid but firmly established continuity, and DC began publishing multi-part storylines like The Unknown Supergirl, The Death of Lightning Lad and The Immortal Superman, all of which had long-lasting consequences.
Aria (1979): With the exception of the two-parter "Les Chevaliers d'Aquarius"/"Les larmes de la Déesses", the earlier books are all standalones adventures. Starting with "Janessandre" (where the sculptor from "La Montagne aux sorciers" and Glore from the aforementioned two-parter come back), the series regularly references earlier storylines.

Fan Works

Marvel/DC After Hours (a.k.a. I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC), an online video series, started out as a simple parody of the "Buy a Mac" ads with Spider-Man and Superman discussing the relatively sorry state of movies based on DC characters compared to Marvel's. Gradually more characters were introduced until it completely morphed into a story-driven and occasionally quite moving piece of work, all while keeping the comic-based humor intact as various characters continue to praise or lament their latest films.
A Growing Affection starts each book with a series of shorter arcs which lead into a longer arc at the end. The exception is book 3, which is a set of four medium length arcs.
Friendship is Witchcraft is another comedy achieving this status through reoccurring jokes. The first episode is little more than a collection of random gags with some amusing quips about the source episode's plot. Over time however, many of its best early jokes were referenced such as Fluttershy's status as a cult leader with Rarity as a follower, Applejack's war crimes, Pinkie's gypsy powers, Sweetie Belle is a robot, Twilight's villainous plans etc, and crafted a fairly coherent story with distinct characters. All while warping the original episode's plot into something barely unrecognizable from its source.
Ancienverse's stories seem to be standalone, until Turbulence connects them suddenly to each other by Dalton's motivation for acting being Ancien, while also connecting it to the full anime at large.
Ebott's Wake was originally intended to be around 60 chapters long and have a different plot featuring a custody battle for Frisk between the Dreemurrs and Frisk's biological parents. According to the author, the storyline underwent massive changes with the introduction of Jordan Cater, expanding the scope into a long-running trilogy.
The first stories of the Dark Mark's Fan Verse were short one-shot fics set in the same loose continuity. Then Kara of Rokyn's first multi-part story came out, and the entire thing ballooned in size until becoming comprised of several tightly inter-connected multi-part multi-arc series.
Zelda's Honor: The first act and most of the second do not require casual readers to know a lot about Zelda lore and mythos to enjoy the fanfic. However once they reach Act 3 and the ending, the creep has grown so large that some readers might have to bust out the Hyrule Historia to understand all the references.

Films — Live-Action

James Bond: The series was not big on continuity, until the Daniel Craig era. While Skyfall was made standalone and looked as such, Spectre picked up where it left off and connected it to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace (both of which already formed a narrative arc), and No Time to Die picks up where Spectre left off.
The original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) takes place in an unspecified location ("Every town has an Elm Street.") and antagonist Freddy Krueger is a mysterious figure, with his ability to terrorize in dreams left relatively unexplained. A very effective Horror film in its own right, the sequels (of varying quality) developed the mythology around the character, gradually revealing the central location as Springwood, Ohio, as well as Krueger's history and tried to provide some detail as to how he gained his ability to enter dreams. They also eventually confirmed the original implications that he was a pedophile, which the earlier films could not explore. (This was all, of course, coupled with the more familiar incarnation of "Freddy" as a comedic killer, so hardly perfect.)
The Halloween underwent this, with the original film being an effective and suspenseful Horror film on its own, and the first sequel continuing the story, intending to conclude the Michael Myers storyline, while revealing that Laurie Strode is Michael's long-lost sister, who doesn't know about the familial relationship between them. When later films returned to the character, they tried to add increasing complexity that many audiences felt reduced the menace of the central character. Although the series has since been rebooted more than once, the reveal has long been respected as canon, and elements of the fourth through sixth films, such have been alluded to as well.
The first three movies in the Mission: Impossible film series were each largely self-contained, connected only by Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames. However, a few characters carried over from III to Ghost Protocol; Simon Pegg's character Benji was elevated from a minor character to a team member and Brandt's backstory obliquely involves Julia, Ethan's wife from III; specifically, he thought she was killed while he was protecting her, but it turns out her death was faked. Rogue Nation has even more continuity, with the bulk of characters from the previous film returning in supporting roles, Benji getting even more focus, and a major subplot dealing with the fallout from the previous movie. Fallout is a direct sequel to Rogue Nation; Solomon Lane from that film is part of the Big Bad Duumvirate, the remnants of the Syndicate are still out in the world as a terror-for-hire organization, planning nuclear strikes on major religious centers for a client, and Julia even plays a minor role in the climax. Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) even came back for Dead Reckoning a whopping 27 years after his last appearance in the first film.
Zig-zagged with the Godzilla franchise. The original Showa series (1954-1975) was known for its extremely loose continuity, featuring (at most) the occasional token nod to previous installments, and very few consistent characters apart from the occasional recurring monster. By contrast, the Heisei series (1984-1995) is a pretty tightly plotted seven-part saga with several running plot threads, stories that often lead directly into each other, a consistent group of protagonists, and a definitive grand finale (Godzilla vs. Destoroyah) with a plot that ties directly into the events of the original film. But the subsequent "Millennium" series (1999-2004) arguably has even looser continuity than the original Showa series did, with more than one film explicitly taking place in an independent alternate continuity separate from all previous movies in the series.

Literature

This is true to a certain extent in The Dresden Files. The first few books introduce us to the various factions and old friends of Harry whom we've never met before; but it gets to the point that they can play off each other, and you can have complex stories with multiple enemy factions each seeking something and getting in each other's way.
The first two Harry Potter books are, more or less, standalones. The serialization picks up throughout the third book and then really gets going in the fourth book as it's the middle point in the series. Once Voldemort comes back at the end of that book, the story goes into full-blown Myth Arc. This was intentional on the creator's part, as the books were planned as a seven-book arc from the beginning. However, there are a few hints of the eventual arc in the first book with regards to the three Deathly Hallows (spoilers) ^note and the blood magic between Harry and Voldemort. There are even more in the second book which set up Voldemort's backstory and the Horcrux plot without being called them at that point. Some of the latter had to be trimmed due to Executive Meddling and was put into the sixth book.
The first few books of A Series of Unfortunate Events were narratively and geographically discrete, and had only a handful of recurring characters; then The Austere Academy introduced the Quagmires and VFD and sent everything in a significantly more arcish direction.
- The first few books were later retconned into the story arc by the Unauthorized Autobiography.
- Initially the series was only supposed to be four books, but when Snicket decided to extend the series he needed a larger story arc to connect the books. Enter VFD.
Discworld. In the first few books, Ankh-Morpork was a generic fantasy city that Terry Pratchett could burn down for the sake of a gag, and Bad Ass was "a village in the Ramtops" with no suggestion of any further society. Now it's impossible to set a book in Ankh without worrying about the Watch, the Times, the wizards and CMOT Dibbler, and the Kingdom of Lancre is just as narratively dense, if still more sparsely populated.
- The wizards are a specific example. In the early books the UU had a different Archchancellor every time we visited, and the faculty were just whatever random characters the plot required (and the Librarian). Then he introduced Ridcully, and with him the Bursar, the Dean, the Senior Wrangler, the Lecturer in Recent Runes, and Ponder Stibbons. Paradoxically, this stability means that the UU has changed more in the later books, since it's got a fixed point to develop from.
  - A (common) moment of genius on the part of Pratchett though - in the earlier books the wizards all had names, and consequently died. Then he introduced the usual suspects, didn't give them names, and they became recurring characters. The only exceptions - Ponder Stibbons (who's too smart and cowardly to die), Ridcully (who's too stubborn to die) and Rincewind (who's too fast to die, and in any case isn't so much a wizard as a wizzard) all, in some way, behave very differently from the standard Discworld wizards. The in-universe justification is that all of the old-school wizards killed each other off.
The Vlad Taltos novels, set in Dragaera, were originally supposed to be able to stand alone, and aren't written in chronological order. Author Steven Brust admitted that this becomes less realistic as he continues to develop the series.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures tie-in novels began in early 1997 with a Monster of the Week format, albeit, one with lots of references to the show. However, starting with the 6th novel, Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies later that year, the seeds of a Myth Arc were sown, and by the 23rd novel, Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum's Unnatural History, published in 1999, the series was in full on Continuity Lock-Out with storylines that wouldn't be sort of-tied up until 73rd and final novel, Lance Parkin's The Gallifrey Chronicles, published in 2005.
Hamlet's Hit Points: In "Surprised by Story", Laws argues that narrative crept into the Tabletop RPG medium as an unbidden and unintended side effect of inventing Experience Points: if not for them, each Player Character's slate would be wiped clean after every dungeon, precluding any meaningful Character Development and with it, any storytelling.

Live-Action TV

Smallville's first season is mostly made up of freak of the week episodes, and generally becomes more arc-based.
Stargate SG-1 has generally gone for a Half-Arc Season format, but as it went on, the arc episodes became more numerous, and the standalone episodes got rarer and rarer. The Anubis arc was a particularly notable example, as it lasted for several seasons.
Friends started off as a series of one-off episodes that didn't really affect each other. As it went on, continuity became more important, partly with Monica and Chandler's evolving relationship but especially Ross and Rachel's.
Kaamelott started as mostly Sketch Comedy, but as Alexandre Astier grew more self-confident, it got spiced by more and more continuity (including Retcon at some point) and half-serious story arcs. The Movie, Kaamelott: Premier Volet, continues the series' story and sets the foundation of a story arc to be developed over a trilogy.
Boy Meets World went through a similar evolution: season 1 was a highly episodic Kid Com. Season 2, which moved to a High School setting, started experimenting with running storylines (the bullies needing to break in a new leader, Shawn being forced to move in with Cory and then Mr. Turner), and by season 5 the show had become fully serialized (Shawn reconciliing with his long-lost half-brother, Cory and Topanga having another Make Up or Break Up arc, Shawn and his new "serious" relationship with Angela, Eric and Jack adjusting to college life...).
A typical Buffy the Vampire Slayer season starts off with Monster of the Week episodes and gradually builds up to the finale Boss Battle. Ensuing seasons were increasingly storyline-based — the final season was notably Darker and Edgier, with barely any standalone episodes.
Its spinoff Angel went through the same evolution, ultimately having a giant epic storyline that lasted 3 seasons(!). Angel then proceeded to devolve back into the much lighter monster of the week episodes in season 5 (including one that turned Angel into a puppet), before going back to an overreaching storyline about halfway through.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had this happen progressively over its run, starting out with mostly standalone episodes with a few arcs in the background and getting more and more serialized over time. Star Trek: Enterprise had this happen too, but more suddenly: its almost completely standalone format was abruptly changed to a serialized year-long story arc for its third season. The fourth season dialed it back down to Half-Arc Season levels, but at the same time kept the serial nature of the show by making most of the standalone stories into two- or three-episode "mini-arcs".
Dollhouse had a similar evolution to the two Joss Whedon shows above, starting with generally stand-alone episodes and not really delving into the series long Big Bad until the last two episodes of the first season. One might wonder if this is Joss's preferred method of story building.
Reaper started off as a Soul of the Week show, but about halfway through season one it started with the demon rebellion arc and examining the thorny questions of who Sam's dad is most likely candidate is The Devil himself. Simultaneously Growing the Beard and developing Cerebus Syndrome.
Farscape fits this trope perfectly, as nearly the entire first season was a series of stand-alone, Fish out of Water stories focusing on John fitting in with the crew with an extremely loose over-arching story that almost never came into play. This changed drastically in Nerve the 19th episode, which introduced Scorpius and got the actual story moving. The continuity began to creep in more and more in Season 2 and eventually took over in Season 3 where every episode helped forward the overall story. Sadly, this ended up being the death of Farscape as the show developed Continuity Lock-Out and failed to bring in any new viewers between Seasons 3 and 4, causing the network to cancel them.
Doctor Who began as a series of isolated stories set in various Adventure Towns in time and space (although the characters did evolve throughout the season). However, the second season saw its first major reference to the past in the form of the return of the Daleks, after they had all died, with the Hand Wave explanation that this adventure took place before their destruction. This and future seasons saw an increasing number of recurring elements and characters. It wasn't until the seventies that the narratives started to become definitely interconnected, and in the eighties this turned into Continuity Lock-Out and Continuity Porn. The new series, while still containing series and multi-series long arcs (with a few stand-alones) has dialed back on the Continuity Lock-Out, if not completely. That is until Steven Moffat took over New Who in season 5. Since then, all of the seasons have been connected by a long over-arching story about the identity of the Doctor and new orders and secret organizations seeing him as a threat. The show returned to the series-long arc format once the Twelfth Doctor took over.
Torchwood started off with Monster of the Week style for 2 seasons. Season 4 is the longest single story in the entire Whovian universe.
Power Rangers began as a very episodic show, with the only continuing plot of note in the first season being the Green Ranger arcs. Season 6, Power Rangers in Space, brought the continuity creep in alongside a year-long Crisis Crossover. Every season of the show since then, while self-contained and having brand new casts yearly, continues to focus on hefty plots. It really started earlier, right around season 3, which featured very few standalone episodes, almost every plot being multi-parters that each also connects into overarching plots. For example, in the arc that introduced Katherine, she helps Rita and Zedd capture Ninjor, the Falconzord, and Kimberly's pink power coin. While the power coin plot was resolved by the end of that arc, the other two weren't resolved until the later "Master Vile and the Metallic Armor" arc. And one stand-alone after that, the season saw the Alien Rangers arc, which helped to really shake things up.
The Pretender did start out teasing some over-arching mysteries (Jarod's origins and who killed Miss Parker's mother), but early episodes were largely episodic - focusing on Jarod's pretends and Miss Parker's pursuit. By Season 2, these and newer storylines started to gain prominence alongside the existing formula. By the last season, most episodes featured something that would be relevant to another or hint at something larger in store for viewers.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, starting about halfway through its second season, when it starts to transition away from Terminator of the Week format.
Supernatural was originally a pure Monster of the Week with enough ongoing storyline to tie it together, but with each season that storyline has mutated more and more into an increasingly complex Myth Arc, to the point where everything in the protagonists' lives has been part of a greater celestial plan (which are in turn part of even greater plans, which are in turn part of even greater plans... Because destiny).
Journeyman was headed this way before it was axed.
Chuck started off as a Monster of the Week show, but then introduced Fulcrum as the season enemy in the second season. This trope really kicked in during the last third of the second season and has kept up since then.
Despite its roots as a spinoff of Dallas, Knots Landing's first season was largely episodic, with more of a family/neighborhood drama than a soap. In fact the first season of Dallas was episodic, as well.
Season 1 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started out episodic, but later incorporated more Call Backs and continuous plots.
- The first midseason finale, "The Bridge", reveals that Centipede was the same group controlling Akela Amador via Explosive Leash, and they're now using the same technology to control their Super Soldiers.
- Two episodes later, we find out that recurring, seemingly independent, villain Ian Quinn is actually working for The Clairvoyant, the mysterious Big Bad behind Centipede.
- The last several episodes of the season tie into Captain America: The Winter Soldier with a story arc that is the culmination of much of what has happened on the series since episode 1.
American Horror Story started off with no continuity between seasons, but this eventually changed, with each season since the fourth (Freak Show) calling back to others:
- Freak Show brings back two characters from Asylum, which is set chronologically after the former.
- Hotel brings back characters from Murder House and Coven, some of whom reappear to get killed off, and adheres to lore that was established in the former, i.e. ghosts can't leave the site where they were killed.
- Roanoke calls back to Murder House and Coven, mentions the setting of Asylum (also bringing back a character from that season), and depicts the ancestor of two characters from Freak Show
- Cult features a fictionalized version of a character from Freak Show and depicts Charles Manson, who was established as being a disciple of a character from Hotel.
- Apocalypse is an outright crisis crossover that brings back half the main cast from Coven as well as other characters from Murder House and Hotel, and features an in-universe film inspired by one of the subplots from Asylum.
Curb Your Enthusiasm always had realistic continuity with episodes referencing previous events, but the first season was the only one that didn't have a season-long story arc. Season 2 and 3 had a recurring story that tied the whole season together, even though not all episodes had anything to do with it; the other seasons went back and forth on how dominant the arc is, with seasons 4 and 5 relying almost entirely on one continuous story, while 6 through 9 have a theme running through the season but the episodes being mostly standalone.
Why Don't You (Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Do Something Less Boring Instead)? began life as a summer holiday magazine show on The BBC, with an ever-rotating cast of kids from different BBC regions giving the viewers fun activities to do during the holidays. Under the pen of Russell T Davies, it somehow acquired a science-fiction tinged through-story and a regular "star" in the form of Ben Slade, who moved from the Welsh gang to the other gangs, initially playing a Mad Scientist version of himself, and then, when he became too old to be a Why Don't You...? gang member, an AI based on the "real" Ben's personality.

Podcasts

This is true of The Magnus Archives. Season 1 consists almost entirely of isolated, one-off stories, the only form of continuity being an Arc Villain who is present in a few of the stories and defeated in the final two episodes of the season. Season 2 introduces a few season-spanning plot arcs (like the investigation into Gertrude's death, Sasha's involvement with the Not-Them, and the being known as "Michael"), although most episodes are still standalone. From Season 3 onwards, the show fully embraces a series-long Myth Arc involving the Powers and Jon's ascension as the Archivist; every episode's story now ties into the larger continuity (and it's revealed that all of the previous standalone episodes did as well).
Season one of Residents of Proserpina Park is mostly episodic, with a few minor plot threads here and there. Come season two, however, and the show has become full-on serialized. One episode often directly leads into the other, and there are season-wide arcs and plot threads.
The episodes of Twilight Histories written by Jordan Harbour started off self-contained before developing a light continuity, mostly the occasional nod or brief reference to a previous episode

Video Games

In a way, the "Zenithia trilogy" of Dragon Quest (games IV-VI). Despite large differences in the world maps of the games, the lack of connections between the games' plots, and there being very few ties between IV and V and almost none between VI and the other two, fans did argue that there were faint clues that the three games took place in the same continuity (like the Loto/Erdrick trilogy that comprises the first three games). This was even after series creator Yuji Horii said in an interview that the three games were intended to only be linked by the recurring appearance of a heavenly location named Zenithia. However, with the DS remakes, it's now official that the three games do take place in the same continuity, especially with a bonus quest in VI spelling it out that IV and then V take place in the future after VI.
King's Quest wound up with this. The first two or four (depending on your point of view) games were pretty episodic. But then you have King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, where the Big Bad is motivated by revenge for events from King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human, and the ending of King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! directly leads to King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, which makes a lot of references to King's Quest III, and includes an incriminating letter linking three of the series villains to the same secret society. King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride hits, and the plot of that game directly ties back to King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella ...And it all resets to Negative Continuity with King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, but few even consider that to be a King's Quest game.
The Kirby games' continuity creep is arguably one of the most well-known and egregious examples of the medium in recent memory, even if the series' general formula hasn't changed too much. While the series has always made frequent references to its past history (most notably through bringing back previous characters and bosses), the original Kirby games' plots mostly boiled down to Kirby going on adventures to stop a Monster of the Week from wreaking havoc. However, following Shinya Kumazaki's appointment as the series' director, the franchise has increasingly put more focus on its lore, continuity and worldbuilding with little signs of stopping. Starting with Kirby Super Star's Updated Re Release of Kirby Super Star Ultra, the games began a trend of using pause-screen Flavor Text to directly flesh out the nature or backstories of boss characters, with the following Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Kirby: Triple Deluxe and Kirby: Planet Robobot using these pause-screen descriptions, along with in-game character dialogue and environmental clues, to flesh out their own narratives and conflicts even further and further. In particular, the Kirby games under Kumazaki's direction have also increasingly alluded to the possibilities of certain elements, characters or antagonistic forces seen across the series' history having connections to each other in some way, with Kirby Star Allies even giving a possible insight into the origins of the titular Kirby himself.
The first The Legend of Zelda games had so little of a connecting storyline, that most fans thought it was just the same story, retold over and over and over (a misconception still held by some today). Then came The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which had an implicit connection to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past's Imprisoning War (later confirmed in the 25th anniversary encyclopedia Hyrule Historia to be the result of one of three possible aftermaths of Ocarina's story where Link is defeated), which then continues to Majora's Mask. Wind Waker also had a direct connection to Ocarina, the first game to explicitly confirm a timeline with more than one Link, with two sequels, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks clearly following this story too. Twilight Princess, though mostly only seen through hints in-story, was confirmed by Word of God and Hyrule Historia to follow the "child" Alternate Timeline at the end of Ocarina (a different one to the one Link to the Past follows).
Although the Mario & Luigi games have never had any overarching plot line, they've gradually accumulated enough Continuity Nods that there is a clear serial progression between games. Partners in Time has the least amount of references to its predecessor, Superstar Saga, with a cameo appearance by The Dragon of the previous game being the only significant plot connection. Bowser's Inside Story had many more connections, with the aforementioned Dragon becoming the Big Bad and the plot of Partners in Time being mentioned several times in side quests. Dream Team has the most connections with its predecessors, with the Fairy Companion of Bowser's Inside Story filling the role once again, the Block-like Broque Monsieur and Broque Madame revealed to be members of an entire Brock race, Beanbean Kingdom races being prominently featured again, Bowser retaining his leitmotif and Vacuum Mouth from the previous game, and the Running Gag about Bowser being unable to remember Luigi's name finally getting resolution by the end. Paper Jam dials back some of this, but does still make reference to games outside the Mario & Luigi series .(Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker for example), brings back characters that have not appeared for a while (Toadette and King Bomb-omb) and gives some of them a lot of characterisation like the Koopalings (in comparison to past portrayals anyway). The games also have a minor character arc for Bowser where he goes from a Harmless Villain in Superstar Saga to the Big Bad of Paper Jam. Luigi also goes through minor character development, becoming a little bolder and not quite as cowardly as the series progresses.
The Mega Man series almost never has a storyline to speak of. The Mega Man X series, especially later on, tend to have self-contained plots with a Continuity Nod here and there and Character Development. The Mega Man Zero series quite clearly continues one from the other, with major references to the previous games, the series' own convoluted backstory, a couple to the X series and a nod or two to points from the Classic series. Between the two Mega Man ZX games there's a pretty significant Time Skip, but both games are also heavy on nods to all the past series. Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force, being RPGs, naturally are more story-heavy to begin with.
Metal Gear gradually got more complicated as the titles progressed. Metal Gear was reasonably straightforward, as was Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, but matters became more complicated with Metal Gear Solid, with a dramatically more intricate plot and connections to the prior games, but that was still comprehensible on its own. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty drastically complicated matters when it came to continuity both within the game and to those prior. In particular it introduced the Patriots, the Greater-Scope Villain who for the rest of the series were the indirect focus, with the past three games retconned into being aspects of their cat-and-mouse game with Big Boss and Liquid Snake. The subsequent games set prior to the previous three all indirectly led to the Patriots' creation and tied aspects of them together, while they were major players in the Grand Finale, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots that tied up almost every single plot-thread from previous games that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (set before the original Metal Gear, and largely focused on the later-made prequels) hadn't.
Ratchet & Clank didn't experience continuity creep so much as it got a Continuity Crash. While the PS2 games did acknowledge past games such as the aftermath of Drek's defeat and Ratchet living in Megapolis, by and large the story was there to provide laughs and an excuse to go to a new level. Up Your Arsenal provided a brief spike where an extended backstory was important and new missions were, for the first time, not primarily delivered through amusing advertisements. But with Tools of Destruction the story and villain were directly personal to the heroes with great amounts of world-building for the first time, and the story was told over multiple games (with the themes revisited in another). The series hasn't really looked back since.
Space Quest had the same progression. The first three games were quite episodic, but the fourth game? The villain from the second game is now a Virtual Ghost and a little ticked off about being killed by a janitor. Time Travel gets involved, and soon Roger is up to his eyeballs, going back to the first game and getting asked about the slot machine he broke, going to his future and getting punished for something he technically hadn't done yet, and finding out about his Kid from the Future and future wife. Well, that leads into the fifth game where he tries to better himself by going to the space academy, and meets said future wife. If she dies, it's a Non-Standard Game Over for Roger due to temporal paradox. The sixth game mostly stands alone, but Roger is shown to have a collection of inventory items from previous games.
The Tomb Raider series initially had little or no connection between the games, but since Crystal Dynamics took over things have gotten more unified and focused.
The first few games of Touhou Project had no continuity, to the point that no one is entirely certain whether the sixth is a Continuity Reboot or not. The next few included characters from and references to earlier games, and were accompanied by some manga and short stories in the same setting, but it still didn't amount to much. Then we got some serious attempts at world building around the time of Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith, and the plots of official releases, video game or otherwise, have been increasingly linked since.
In its early years, Warframe's plot was mostly focused on episodic events that added in new game modes and enemies to fight. Starting with Ties That Bind, though, the storyline became more connected, with 2014 seeing the game gain a structured narrative, while 2015 saw the release of two major Wham Episodes, Natah and The Second Dream, that permanently altered the direction the game would go in.

Web Animation

Ostensibly, one of the reasons Rooster Teeth ended Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles at Episode 100 was to put an end to the continuity creep and continue writing for the series from a point where newcomers could enjoy the show without Continuity Lockout. While they succeeded, the series from that point forth became much more plot-based, and a good number of the Call Backs still require familiarity with all the older episodes (as opposed to just episodes from the most recent trilogy, Recollection).
Robotbox and Cactus: While very early episodes tended to only have a short interaction between Robotbox and Cactus, and episodes up to number 15 were self-contained stories that stood alone, episode 16, "Outside the Box", was the first to have a plotline that continued into the next episode, and two multi-episode arcs were made since, with the final eleven episodes being one long story arc.

Webcomics

The Order of the Stick started off with just the gang being in a typical D&D dungeon, which became a simple storyline about defeating a Big Bad, and has since branched off into multiple long-running, complex storylines to the extent that individual strips are all but incomprehensible unless one reads the whole archive. (The book collection even added more strips at the beginning to make the story fit together more smoothly.)
Ctrl+Alt+Del began as a gag-a-day strip, but soon developed into a series of multi-month-long stories divided by one-off gags.
Honestly, this trope describes whatever the hell happened with Bob and George about a thousand times better than Cerebus Syndrome.
Sort of example: minus. was usually standalone strips that occasionally had pieces stretching over multiple strips. However this strip started a series of events that caused the death of everyone on Earth and went on for 25 strips until the end of the entire comic!
Unicorn Jelly started as a simple, cute fantasy tale of a witch and the transgender blob who loved her. It has hit major Cerebus Syndrome, and spawned not just a universe with its own well-defined but very alien physics and Bizarre Alien Biology, but a Multiverse of Alternate Continuity and several spinoffs. This diagram is supposed to explain the various alternate universe and Time Travel plots in JDR's webcomics; good luck making sense of it...
Starting well before most webcomics did, Sluggy Freelance could be the Ur-Example. It has some stories that last months. And a collection of looser storylines that run parallel to each other, alternating from the sidelines to the foreground but never completely ending, for years. And this is talking about a webcomic that updates daily with barely a single interruption. The Archive Panic is heart attack-inducing.

The first three story arcs of The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! (that is, the first three years' worth of stories from the strip's heyday as a weekly printed strip at Penn State) have negligible continuity with each other. It's only in the fourth story arc that the various threads start intermingling into an elaborate world full of space empires, dragons, and artificial life forms.
Irregular Webcomic! originally had unrelated gags in each theme, then an ongoing story in each theme, and is eventually had a massive ongoing story involving almost every theme. Mentioned in the rerun commentary:
Continuity tends to grow as works of fiction mature and get more of a history behind them.
Maybe I should start a new webcomic which begins with a rich story-based tapestry with a detailed background, and then devolves into disconnected gags with no ongoing story or continuity.
Invoked in Skin Horse, which was pretty continuity heavy from the start, but nonetheless took the time to lampshade it (the "simple" beginnings they refer to, in addition to not being that simple, are actually only the first week of strips):
Shaenonn: Remember when this was a simple strip about transvestites psychoanalysing lions?
Jeff: I go where the muse takes me.
Sinfest had little to no regard to continuity in its earlier years. But extended story arcs began taking shape before so long. And old throw-away gags from earlier days have also been brought back and expanded upon, including Squigley's ability to fly his couch while high and Criminy not thinking to call Amber back after their date.
Nebula was mostly self-contained and humorous antics early on, though by #7 the different comics were interconnected enough (with on-going and complex storylines) that the authors started including links to prior installments in The Rant.
Adventurers! was a simple gag comic about RPG clichés at first. Continuity creeped in little by little, starting with introducing more party members for the team, and later with story arcs about the Eternals, Khrima's generals, and the elemental relics. Minor characters who seemed to exist only for simple jokes (Gildward^notewho initially didn't even have a name, Spybot, Chookie, Cody, Argent^notewhose proper name was never revealed, etc.) started recurring and became significant, and many had backstories revealed.

Web Original

According to Word of God, the Whateley Universe started out like this. Six authors writing inter-related short stories about their characters. It evolved into over a dozen Canon authors and ongoing arcs.
SCP Foundation started off just with pages on the various, isolated SCPs, but the site has developed stronger continuity thanks to stories about the Foundation members themselves and, especially, thanks to later SCPs being used, collected and/or produced by various anti-Foundation organizations such as the cult of the Serpent's Hand, rich people club Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd., and Alternate Universe institute Alexylva University. However, it's also split into so many parallel canons that there's a section of the wiki dedicated to keeping track of them.
Inverted with The Hard Times. Older articles had a number of recurring characters, including the bands Gutter Sluts and xClearlyxStraightx, and running gags, like the existance of a Hard Style subsection of the magazine, but those were phased out over time in favor of a purely single-gag style.

Web Videos

The Slender Man Mythos initially just consisted of a few blogs and YouTube series that were all independent of each other as far as continuity went. The only links were Slender Man's appearance and his attributes, and the latter tended to be somewhat subjective. But with the accumulated references to previously made blogs and the development of the Core Theory, the continuity of the Mythos now is quite impressive. Newcomers may actually feel overwhelmed by how much they have to keep up with.
Atop the Fourth Wall started out as a series of text reviews looking at bad comics before transitioning to a standard video review show. Eventually it started gaining story arcs that occurred in conjunction with the reviews, Linkara started receiving a regular supporting cast, and some events from the story arcs even ended up affecting the reviews.
In Philosophy Tube, the character of "The Arsonist" started as a simple metaphor for explaining how fascist ideology can spread in liberal societies. Over time, however, Abigail fleshed him out into an actual character with a name, backstory, and supporting cast, even giving him something of a story arc. As of the release of the "Islamophobia" video, it's been established that his name is Ivan Schmitz, he previously burned his wife to death for having an abortion without his permission, "The Firefighter" is his son, and his sister is a Tory journalist and political commentator named Adelaide Sweetley-Schmitz who's apparently having an incestuous affair with him. He's also gone into politics, and is campaigning to become Mayor of London.

Western Animation

Invader Zim became more and more self-referential after the episode "Tak, the Hideous New Girl" (especially since Dib got a spaceship at the end which he would later try to continually replace). If it wasn't cancelled, it would have developed a Myth Arc about Operation Impending Doom 2 failing at the hands of the Resisty, and the story would have culminated in a movie.
Justice League initially had two- and three-part episodes that didn't really affect each other (except for the recurring villains). Then they started throwing in short arcs that built on the plot of previous DC Animated Universe series, such as the season two premiere, which was a follow-up to Superman: The Animated Series's finale. And then, even the completely standalone episodes would still have brief moments suggesting continuity: the slow buildup of UST between John Stewart and Hawkgirl, and the very subtle bits of foreshadowing pointing towards the season two Grand Finale. Then Justice League Unlimited went all-out and used overarching plots that took half the season to resolve—CADMUS in the first two seasons, then the Secret Society in season three. It's generally agreed that the growth in continuity was concurrent with an upswing in quality.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold also started off as a series of done-in-one stories (with the occasional two-parter). Then in the second season, the toy company demanded an arc concerning Starro, which was told through the Cold Openings before being resolved as a two-part episode. To a lesser extent, the final season does this with Equinox, who was supposedly killed in the first season, but returned to seek vengeance on Batman and the JLI.
Code Lyoko, once enough episodes were in circulation for viewers to know what the hell was going on. It actually started with an unexplained In Medias Res opening.
Transformers continuity became substantially stronger after the animated movie. Headmasters continued this trend with episodes that, while for the most part self-contained, were intended to be shown in a particular order. Masterforce then had a full-on Myth Arc.
- Beast Wars started out episodic, but after the first season finale it developed continuous Story Arcs.
- Transformers: Animated began with almost entirely self-contained episodes, and later on more and more episodes became continuations of previous ones. Story editor Marty Isenberg says this is his preferred form of writing.
The Venture Brothers started off random adventures parodying Johnny Quest, by the second season it all became interlocking and connecting stories, some of which purposely aired out of order.
Daria was completely episodic in its first three seasons, with only an occasional Continuity Nod. Then the season three finale saw Jane get a steady boyfriend, and the remaining two seasons and two movies turned into an occasionally quite moving examination of this change to the status quo as well as Quinn showing some Hidden Depths.
The Fairly OddParents! fell into this for a period, when they realized they had enough previous material to do so, with multiple episodes featuring Timmy's previous wishes gone wrong returning for revenge on occasion. This is especially prevalent in the episode concerning Unwish Island, as well as Timmy's Secret Wish and the Wishology trilogy. Since around the latter, however, these stories have declined back to the more familiar episodic structure with relatively little ongoing continuity, save a few references in the tenth season to Timmy's Dad suddenly becoming rich.
From the first few episodes of the third season onward, Phineas and Ferb had finally become a show all about referencing itself.
ReBoot was episodic until ABC canceled it. The move to another network allowed the writing staff far more freedom, and this trope followed suit.
Adventure Time began going in this direction after the second season finale, although the process was relatively gradual at first, with mythology episodes being separated by relatively typical adventures by the show's standard. By the fifth season, however, the series began to suffer from a severe case of Cerebus Syndrome and building up a long list of sequel episodes as well as flashbacks and ongoing story arcs, with fewer episodes able to stand on their own, culminating in three mini-series - Stakes, Islands and Elements.
Amphibia started off as a primarily episodic comedy with sprinkles of continuity, except for the Season 1 finale. Then toward the latter half of Season 2 it became more serialized in advancing the Myth Arc, before Season 3's premise became based entirely on the events of Season 2's conclusion.
Teen Titans (2003) started off using Half-Arc Season's: most episodes were self-contained, with only four or five episodes per season contributing to its Story Arc. Around the 3rd or 4th season, references to events in past seasons started to be made. Culminating in the final season becoming almost completely serialized.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic began experiencing this in its third season, with several episode plots being outright continuations or sequels to previous episodes. From the fifth season onward, FIM would utilize the Half-Arc Season, with episodes also having regular call-backs and references to previous adventures.
Regular Show remained episodic for most of its run, but began to revisit previously established plot elements and build upon them more readily after its second season. There was a much larger emphasis on story arcs concerning character relationships since the fourth season. The final season, "Regular Show IN SPACE!" was fully serialized.
The Amazing World of Gumball tended to avoid continuity for much of its first two seasons, with the exception of "The Finale", where they explicitly lampshade this, causing everything to come back at once. During the course of Season 3, however, continuity became a regular thing, most notably after "The Shell" in which Penny breaks out of her shell and starts her relationship with Gumball, altering the status quo for the first time. From that point on, the show would have its fair share of Call Backs, Sequel Episodes and even some inter-episode Foreshadowing and Cerebus Retcons setting up a larger Myth Arc, but the large majority of episodes still work as standalone stories.
Wander over Yonder Season 1 is comprised of goofy standalone stories with a just pinch of continuity present in a few episodes, mainly the later ones. Season 2 has a Myth Arc that primarily occurs over four episodes, but still concerns many of the self-contained stories as well, without causing Continuity Lockout .
Littlest Pet Shop (2012) has a pretty pronounced case. Season 1's episodes are all completely independent of each other, with continuity limited to featured characters making background appearances later on. Later seasons would have episodes that build upon previous episodes, most notably "Blythe's Big Idea", which serves mainly as a setup for at least five episodes later into the season. In addition, each season finale has Blythe make a leap in her status in the fashion world, and the following season's episodes are written with that in mind. By Season 4, the entire season would become one big Story Arc with numerous references to the previous three seasons.
Samurai Jack had little continuity before its cancellation in 2004. It mostly followed the Strictly Formula of Jack either trying to go back to the past (and failing), defeating mercenaries sent by Aku or resolving a local problem. In fact, the Scotsman was the only recurring character besides Jack and Aku. In contrast, when the show was revived for its fifth season in 2017, those final episodes formed a serialized story with many characters returning.
All Hail King Julien started out as a comedic series of stand-alone episodes with some callbacks and continuity. The end of the second season introduced a dramatic cliffhanger that led to a mini-arc regarding Julien's parents the following season. After that, a seemingly minor Brick Joke ended up becoming a major plot point in the last few episodes of season four, which ended in another cliffhanger that sets up the fifth season, Exiled, which features a large Story Arc that resolves said cliffhanger.
Steven Universe began as a fairly episodic Monster of the Week show where Steven and the Gems fight creatures, solve mysteries, and deal with personal relationships. As the first season continued a Myth Arc started to build with the mid-season finale hinting at a greater plot. From there, the plot grew exponentially, with various character moments coming back and several innocuous background events gaining greater relevance. The protagonists meet more concrete recurring antagonists and even creatures like the monster defeated in the pilot made a few returns to further explore the show's backstory.
South Park is a very unusual example. While most famous for killing off the same character repeatedly in amusing ways despite all continuity, early seasons actually had a number of small continuity nods, as well as ongoing storylines concerning teacher Mr. Garrison, which often played as subplots in otherwise standalone episodes. After the sixth season, which featured multiple minor arcs, the show began veering a little closer to Status Quo Is God although still with the occasional Call-Back or Running Gag scene. More famously, however, it experimented with ongoing storylines from the eighteenth to twentieth seasons.
- The sixth season, again, was particularly filled with story arcs, mostly relating to the fallout from Kenny's "permanent" death the previous season and the boys' efforts to move past it by hanging out with Butters, Tweek, and eventually Kenny's spirit trapped in Cartman's body. Another storyline considers the death of Ms. Choksondik and Mr. Garrison's promotion to Fourth Grade Teacher as he comes to terms with his sexuality and finally discards his Sentient Puppet Mr. Hat.
- The second half of the twelfth season featured a few common threads, with the main boys confronting their own unpopularity at school across four episodes in "Breast Cancer Show Ever", the "Pandemic" duology, and "Elementary School Musical". None of this is intentional, and the episodes stand on their own.
- The eighteenth season unintentionally fell under this. "Gluten Free Ebola" only happened to carry from the previous episode for convenience, but a Running Gag involving Randy Marsh lying about knowing the musician Lorde, and being forced to impersonate her, was mistaken by a journalist for suggesting he and Lorde were one and the same. The next episode featured a reporter by the same name uncovering that Lorde is indeed Randy's alter-ego. This became a running gag throughout the season, and Arc Welding brought this and many other gags together for the season's final two episodes, which tried to create a cohesive storyline. Multiple episodes also happened to comment on issues in technology as well. Matt and Trey flat-out admit on the commentary this all happened accidentally at first. (So, really, the first eight episodes can mostly stand on their own.)
- The nineteenth season featured heavier continuity, introducing new character PC Principal to kick off an overall arc about political correctness - however, again, the first seven episodes mostly focus on their own subject matter and stand alone, with topics such as the upcoming presidential campaign and Yaoi fan art. Like the previous season, the final three episodes of the season tried to tie everything together into one cohesive storyline, though the final episode maintains its own theme on gun rights as well. The season is often described as serialized due to the ongoing themes.
- The twentieth season was infamously fully serialized, with one long storyline broke up over ten episodes, with only a few carrying individual identity. The concept proved too ambitious for its own good, especially when the actual presidential election messed up the creators' planned storyline, resulting in an Aborted Arc and a conclusion for the other threads that many did not find satisfying. Even the final two episodes themselves made fun of the show's serialization.
- Season 21 returned to a format closer to Season 19, with one or two plot threads running throughout the whole season but the episodes themselves being mostly standalone.
- The episodes "200" and "201", as well as South Park: The Stick of Truth were all willing to utilize Continuity Cavalcade to their full advantage as love letters to the shows' fans, and the latter was seen as driving the show's swing towards serialization.
Craig Gerber's two shows, Sofia the First and its spin off series, Elena of Avalor , both follow this. Regarding the former, it started out with simple one-and-done stories with the occasional callback. Most episodes from season 2 onward build off of previous episodes in some way. This is taken up to eleven in seasons 3 and 4, with the Secret Library and Mystic Isles arcs. In the case of the latter, though it maintains the same TV-Y rating as Sofia, it has a much tighter story arc starting at the beginning. It has standalone episodes, but sequel episodes and continuity callbacks are increasingly more common.
The Adventures of Puss in Boots's first season is extremely episodic, while the second season starts off with seemingly episodic plots, they all have a cause and effect that directly tie each other together before building up to a plotline that the rest of the series continues to follow up on.
As Rick and Morty has gone on, it's slipped more and more into a heavier emphasis on continuity, backstories, and established lore, much to the chagrin of Rick, thanks to the appearance of characters like Evil Morty, Rick Prime, and Story Lord.
Morty: Woah. Dead wife?
Rick: Yes! Now everyone can shut up about it!
Sonic Boom has a Negative Continuity policy for the first season, but ramped up to this for the second. Plot elements and characters from before became more frequent, there were multi-part episodes and even some lasting changes to the status quo. One episode even revolved around resolving the character arc of a secondary character introduced in the tie-in game, Fire and Ice.

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