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Un-Canceled
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The noise you are hearing is the sound of thousands of nerds cheering.note 

Peter: Everyone, I've got bad news: We've been canceled.
Lois: Oh no, Peter, how could they do that?
Peter: Well unfortunately, Lois, there's just no more room on the schedule. We've just got to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for terrific shows like Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That '80s Show, Wonderfalls, Fast Lane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, FreakyLinks, Wanda At Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute With Stan Hooper, Normal, Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The $treet, American Embassy, Cedric The Entertainer, The Tick, Luis, and Greg the Bunny.
Lois: Is there no hope?
Peter: Well, I suppose if all those shows go down the tubes, we might have a shot.
Family Guy (taking this trope the wrong way), "North By North Quahog"

That rarest of all television phenomena. A show that has been condemned to the fiery pits of cancellation is resurrected by the same executives who sought to destroy it... or different executives who want to right the wrongs of the previous ones.

Most times, this means a show is picked up by a cable channel or other network and put back into production. Very rarely, a show will be resurrected by the same network.

The biggest causes are either a campaign by fans (along with a compliant creator), or high sales in other media, such as DVD. If the show is not popular enough to warrant a whole new series but an ending is in demand by fans, then a TV movie, miniseries or new season may be ordered to Wrap It Up.

More common is creating a Revival or Series Franchise.

If the show got enough advance notice of its cancellation to have a Grand Finale, being Un-Canceled transforms it into a Series Fauxnale, followed by a Post-Script Season.

If an arc is what's un-canceled instead of a whole show, that's Plot Archaeology.

If a show is not actually canceled, but comes close before a last-minute renewal or a marginal decision to renew, that goes on Only Barely Renewed.

But if the show only got revived only for the ratings and most of the cast is not in the show, or there's too much change in budget and qualities, the revived show could go to a case of Seasonal Rot. If the show revival is made because the creators do care for the show, it can be better than the show in its pre-revival.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Toonami, Cartoon Network's sensational anime block launched in 1997, hit a speed bump thanks to an aggressive 4Kids-imposed Retool that left it in a more lighthearted territory - and pigeonholed the fanbase. Eventually, incompetent scheduling, poor variety of shows and the infamous year-long Naruto filler arc led to its end late 2008. However, just like with Family Guy and Robot Chicken, [adult swim] struck again! On April Fools' Day 2012, they aired a loving joke broadcast of Toonami, suspiciously aimed toward an ulterior motive: test the waters to see if the block was really that cherished. A Twitter feed for viewers was added for viewers to express their interest in a possible return and the fandom proceeded to flood the feed with pleas to revive the block. Rumors the return was a hoax were dispelled when Steve Blum, voice of Toonami host TOM himself, and Kyle Hebert, a fellow voice actor with equal stature got involved. One month later, licensing deals were struck, and Toonami returned for good.
  • Getter Robo had the manga end on a nasty cliffhanger during Getter Robo Ah due to the magazine it was featured in being cancelled and Ken Ishikawa being unable to find a replacement to continue publishing in before he died. 14 years passed with Super Robot Wars being the only medium in which Getter remained...then suddenly, it was revealed that Ah is getting an anime adaptation, Getter Robo Arc.
  • The Inuyasha anime was canceled in 2004 after four years on the air when it was beginning to overtake the manga. Five years after, in 2009, a 26-episode follow-up series titled Inuyasha: The Final Act, was commissioned in order to adapt the remaining chapters now that the manga itself had concluded.
  • Pantheon High was one of Tokyopop's Original English Language (OEL) manga series, and like most of their OEL, it was canceled when the US economy dipped and Tokyopop restructured. After about two years, the third and final volume was released on the Tokyopop website.
  • Slayers lasted 3 seasons in its original run, ending in 1997. A fourth season was planned, but the main cast's other commitments, along with various production issues, kept it from happening...for 11 years. Season 4 finally aired in 2008, with a fifth season arriving the following year.
  • Sailor Moon's original run in the US was cut short after only 65 episodes in its original syndicated run. After leaving syndication, it re-surfaced on USA Network, where it was once again, cancelled after failing to find an audience. However, once the show ended up on Toonami, it finally garnered itself an audience, which resulted in the show being continued with more episodes.
  • This actually happened to the English dub of Dragon Ball Z back in the late 1990s. After two seasons worth of 67 episodes in its first run, the show was cancelled in 1998 due its failure of gaining a substantial audience. When the episodes started to air on Toonami, it got much more popularity, and Funimation started dubbing new episodes in 1999.
    • Dragon Ball Z Kai received this treatment as well thanks to the U.S. market. Despite good ratings, the lack of revenue in the merchandise caused it to be cancelled at the end of Cell Saga, meaning the Buu arc was left unadapted. However, the series proved to be so popular on Nicktoons TV and Toonzai that it led to the Buu Saga being commissioned a year and a half later.
  • Ranma ½ was originally canceled in Japan after only 18 episodes due to its time slot being in competition with another, more popular show. It however, continued several months later with a different time slot.
  • The Mysterious Cities of Gold aired its second season 30 years after its first season finale.
  • Sonic X ended its series after 52 episodes. But after the Grand Finale, 26 more episodes were made for the North American audience. Interestingly, all 26 episodes would also have a Japanese Dub.
  • The Big O's original 13-episode run ended inconclusively. The series became so popular in America that [adult swim] helped to produce another 13 episodes three years after the original run (that run also ended inconclusively, but Adult Swim lost interest).
  • Lupin III: Part 1 had poor ratings and was cancelled, but due to popularity in reruns was later brought back as Lupin III: Part II.
  • The anime adaptation of Durarara!! had a fairly satisfying ending, but still had some unresolved plot threads, and only managed to adapt the first three novels of the series. After finishing in 2010, a second season was finally announced in 2014 that would be divided into three parts. The first part aired in January 2015, the second part aired in July 2015, and the third part aired in January 2016.
  • When Hiramoto Akira’s popularity soared with Prison School, it made publisher Kodansha revaluate the cancellation/indefinite hiatus of Hiramoto’s previous work, Me and the Devil Blues.
  • The Flat Earth/Exchange was originally serialized from 1991 to 1994 in Patsy, but the story abruptly halted when the magazine was discontinued. It was resumed in 2001 under Enterbrain.
  • Throughout 2002-2006, Full Metal Panic!'s anime adaptation had three seasons and one OVA, but there was plenty of source material that had not been adapted in animated format. Over nine years later in October 2015, it was announced a new anime season was under production which eventually aired during 2018.
  • Originally, Funimation's dub of D.Gray-Man only covered the first 51 episodes of the 2006 series. Between 2010 and 2016, the localization was cancelled due to licensing issues between Funimation and Dentsu (the Japanese licensor). However, in 2016, after getting the license to the 2016 follow-up, D.Gray Man Hallow, Funimation managed to secure the license to the second half of the 2006 series. They eventually dubbed and released the remainder of the series.
  • Otokozaka ("A Man's Hill"), a martial arts manga by Masami Kurumada published from 1984 to 1985, was canceled after only six months in serialization, ending with an infamous cliffhanger of the main character running down a brick road and the kanji mikan (未完, "Not The End") displayed. It resumed serialization almost 30 years later in Weekly Playboy (no relation to the American Playboy magazine) in 2014.
  • After several years of complete inactivity following what most people took to be a definitive conclusion, Code Geass eventually got two Compilation Movies, with minor changes to make way for a third movie that continues the story.
  • Maison Ikkoku's dub was canceled by Viz after 36 episodes due to poor VHS sales, and the subtitled version was similarly canceled after 64 episodes. Viz released the show to billingual DVD after Inuyasha's success (both shows were created by Rumiko Takahashi), continuing the dub/subtitles from where they left off, and miraculously finished all 96 episodes. However, most of the dub cast was replaced for the newer episodes, and the sales were still low, so the final DVD boxset was a RightStuf.com exclusive.
  • The Bleach anime originally ended in 2012, leaving the manga's final arc unanimated. In March 2020, it was announced that the show would be returning for an adaptation of that final arc, with a later announcement confirming the first episode of the final arc would air in October 2022.

    Asian Animation 
  • YooHoo & Friends was meant to end after one season in 2009 with 26 episodes (52 segments). It was suddenly bought back in 2013 and ran for two more seasons before its re-cancellation in 2015, ending it with 65 episodes overall. In addition, the new seasons had a different art style with new character designs, and a new plot.

    Comic Books 
  • Manhunter was originally slated to be canceled after issue #25, but fan demand convinced DC to continue for 5 more issues. After those five, it was canceled again until fan demand convinced DC to give Manhunter another chance. Then it became a backup Feature for Batman Streets of Gotham. The backup feature was cancelled after only a year.
  • Sonic the Comic (the UK one) had an uncanceling in the form of a "Head approved" fan revival.
  • The comic book Spider-Girl has been canceled and uncanceled so many times it's easy to lose track, including the latest time at issue 100 to restart again with 1 (which was far from guaranteed at the time).
  • X-Men, the comic book series, was canceled after seven years of horrible sales and no popularity (it was revived nine months later, but only published reprints of earlier issues). It was basically seen as a poor-man's version of the Fantastic Four. Then it was rebooted with all new characters like Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus, along with minor Hulk villain Wolverine. Under the skilled writing of Chris Claremont, it became Marvel's flagship title throughout the '80s and '90s.
  • The Transformers (Marvel) was intended to be just a 4-issue mini-series but after it got positive feedback, it was made into a series, which ended with issue #80. Decades later, The Transformers (IDW) wrapped up the story with a twenty-issue limited series (taking it from issue #81 through #100) titled '"Regeneration One''.
  • The original run of Quantum and Woody was canceled after 17 issues. Fan fervor prompted Acclaim to resurrect the series a year later, picking up where the previous issue left off with a fourth-wall-breaking phone call.
  • Omega Men was originally given a 12-issue commitment, only to be canceled after 7 due to low initial sales. However, a combination of fan support on social media, critical acclaim, and Tom King's rising profile has convinced DC to restore its 12-issue run, with the door open for additional issues.
  • Superman:
    • Though Supergirl (Rebirth) officially ended at issue #20, DC announced after its publication that it would be returning (with unchanged numbering) as a spinoff of Brian Michael Bendis' Man of Steel (2018).
    • Super Sons was suddenly announced to be cancelled in the February 2018 despite strong sales and a loyal readerbase, with the final issue being published in May 2018. Cue mass backlash on all forms of social media. Three months later, a monthly twelve-issue maxi-series titled Adventures of the Super Sons was announced with Peter Tomasi and Carlos Barberi as the writer and artist again.
  • Iceman and The Unstoppable Wasp were two of many titles released and cancelled around the time of the Marvel NOW! (2016) initiative. Both were created in the hope that they'd appeal to a diverse audience, including demographics who didn't traditionally read comics (Iceman had been revealed as gay and Nadia Pym was a new Legacy Character with an entirely female supporting cast). While the titles themselves had low monthly sales, strong trade paperback sales saw Marvel decide to resurrect both titles — with Iceman as a mini-series this time — to build on that success.

    Eastern European Animation 
  • Hungarian Folk Tales: The first season was made in the late 70s. More and more were produced in the 80s and 90s. More episodes were independently produced in the 2000s after the original production company, Pannonia Film Studio, went bankrupt.

    Game Shows 
  • NBC gave Battlestars a second chance in 1983 after its original run ended a year prior. Much like the original, the revival also lasted six months.
  • The Ohio Lottery's Cash Explosion was briefly cancelled in favor of a new show, Make Me Famous, Make Me Rich. It quickly flopped, prompting Cash Explosion to return the following year.
  • Double Dare (1986):
    • Nickelodeon tried a spin-off on the FOX network, Family Double Dare, where it ran for 13 episodes. Two years later, Family was revived as an in-house production on Nick.
    • After seven years of reruns, Nickelodeon revived it as Double Dare 2000 where it ran for two half-seasons.
  • NBC uncanceled Fear Factor (of all things), years after the network ran it into the ground with constant celebrity editions. The revival aired briefly in the 2011-12 series before being re-canceled.
  • Nickelodeon GUTS had a short-lived revival as My Family's Got Guts thirteen years after its cancellation.
  • NBC cancelled High Rollers in 1976, revived it in 1978 and screwed it over in 1980.
  • NBC cancelled Jeopardy! in 1975 only to bring it back and Retool it almost four years later. It was cancelled again after five months before being uncancelled again in 1984 where it has been running in syndication ever since.
  • GSN ran Lingo for five seasons (2002-07), itself a revival of a short-lived 1980s game show. And it's come back in 2011 with a Hotter and Sexier format and Bill Engvall hosting - a revival that was also canceled after one series.
  • The original Match Game (1962-69) was on NBC's chopping block after 13 weeks, until writer Dick DeBartolo suggested to Mark Goodson that they spice up some of the questions. He approved (given they were already cancelled), viewers picked up on it, and NBC spared it.
  • After having good results with re-runs in 2012, GSN also revived Minute to Win It.
  • PAX had a game show called On the Cover which aired two episodes in May 2004 before getting yanked. It returned in slightly Re Tooled format in September but was re-canceled by year's end.
  • The short-lived Pay Cards! was briefly revived as Super Pay Cards!.
  • Pyramid:
    • In 1973, CBS canceled the first of the series, The $10,000 Pyramid, after a season. Six weeks later it was snapped up by ABC, where it ran for six years.
    • CBS canceled The $25,000 Pyramid in December 1987 and replaced it with a game show called Blackout. When that show tanked, $25,000 came back from April to July 1988 but only as a stop-gap measure until the revival of Family Feud was ready.
  • After cancelling it in 1990, NBC gave Scrabble a second chance in 1993. The revival lasted five months.
  • The game show Shop 'Til You Drop aired on Lifetime from 1991-94 before it was canceled. It returned on Family Channel from 1996 to 1998 and got canceled again. Then it moved to PAX, which aired a new version from 2000-02 and got a retool from 2003-05.
  • The Singing Bee aired for one season on NBC before it was canceled. The show was brought back in 2009 on CMT with a new host (Melissa Peterman over Joey Fatone) but mostly the same format — albeit skewed toward the network's Country Music audiences.
  • Reruns of Supermarket Sweep moved from Lifetime to PAX. After some time, PAX began producing new episodes.
  • Amazingly, Three's a Crowd was given another chance on GSN.
  • Wheel of Fortune:
    • Incredibly, this happened in its early days on NBC daytime. NBC president and CEO Fred Silverman made two attempts to cancel the show in 1980. The first was to make room for a failed talk show hosted by David Letterman, but was never followed through; the second was to make room for a spinoff of Another World called Texas and was actually followed through to the point that several staff members (including announcer Charlie O'Donnell) left and a series finale was taped. However, Silverman was later ousted, and his replacement, Grant Tinker, reversed the cancellation decision, cutting Letterman's show to an hour, and the show managed to progress unharmed. Wheel would only gain in popularity come the 1980s, especially once Pat Sajak and Vanna White took over and the (still running) nighttime syndicated version began in 1983.
    • And then it struck daytime again. Pat Sajak left daytime in January 1989 to host a talk show for CBS, and while the out-of-his-element Rolf Benirschke did the last six months of that run, NBC and Griffin simply could not come to a license agreement due to The Price Is Right adding viewers while Wheel remained steady. NBC announced the show's end in mid-May, only for CBS to renew it the next day. After NBC's last show on June 30, the show took a two week hiatus before premiering on CBS July 17; Bob Goen was chosen as the new host on July 7. The show's subsequent ratings never approached that of the NBC era, even after hopping back there in January 1991, and it was cancelled September of that year.
  • CBS dropped Tattletales in 1978 after a four-year run, then brought it back in 1982 for a two-year stint after a series of 4 PM news-magazine shows (slotted in after the soap Love of Life was canceled) failed to click.
  • Similarly, the 1974 CBS game Now You See It was revived fourteen years after the original was canceled to replace Card Sharks which itself was brought back five years after NBC canceled it. The revival of Now You See It ran only three-and-a-half months.
  • The Price Is Right with Bill Cullen was doing fine until the sponsors played around with its NBC nighttime time periods, at which case ratings eroded. NBC wanted a new sitcom, Harry's Girls because it skewed younger than Price did, so Price was on the chopping block. ABC stepped in and popped more for Price than NBC was willing, so the game lived on from a new network.
  • Concentration ran a healthy 14+ years before NBC axed it in 1973 (accounts vary as to why), only for Jim Victory Television to get licensed to create a new syndicated version that same year. Goodson and Todman were subcontracted to produce it.
  • Panel Quiz Attack 25 ran for 46 years on Asahi TV before it was canceled in September 2021 so the network could attract younger viewers. App-based network BS Japan Next picked up the show as part of its launch package in March 2022, expanded it to an hour, and re-titled it as Panel Quiz Attack 25 Next.

    Literature 
  • Anthony Horowitz intended the ninth Alex Rider book, Scorpia Rising (2011), to be the series' Grand Finale (barring a prequel focusing on the character of Yassen Gregorovich). However, a few years later he was working on a collection of previously published short stories set in the series' universe, and found he missed writing for the characters so much he decided to revive it with a new entry, Never Say Die, which was released in 2017. Another new book, Nightshade, is scheduled for 2020, with Horowitz expecting there to be at least one more after that.
  • The Children of the Red King series originally was to end at volume five after Charlie got his father back, but many fans begged for more and so three more books came out.
  • R.L. Stine's Goosebumps wrapped up its original run in 1997, with the Goosebumps 2000 spin-off lasting through 2000. In 2008 Stine brought the series back as Goosebumps Horrorland, recapturing much of the original series' success and lasting until 2012. The franchise has since evolved into Goosebumps Most Wanted, which as of this writing is still going strong.
  • I Am Not a Serial Killer is not only a rare literature example, but one in which it was "renewed" years after initially ending. Dan repeatedly insisted that he was satisfied with John's story being over after the first trilogy, but eventually realized that there was more to tell and pitched The Devil's Only Friend to his publisher. In another twist to the usual, the followup was almost universally positively received by fans.
  • Liaden Universe: The first three books of the Liaden series did not sell well enough for the original publisher to want to commission sequels. Disappointed, the authors got day jobs and went on with their lives for the next several years while, unbeknownst to them, a significant Liad fandom was growing on the Internet (to the point where "When will the next Liaden book come out?" was a question in the SF fandom newsgroup's FAQ).

    When the Internet arrived in Lee & Miller's neck of Maine, they were startled to find that not only were fans clamoring for the next book, but the title of it, Plan B, had already been decided for them. With this fandom behind them, Lee & Miller were able to find a publisher to continue the series, and cranked out seven more books (as well as two collections of the short stories they continue to self-publish in chapbook form every year).

    Then the series was uncanceled again when Baen picked it up after that other publisher, Meisha Merlin, went out of business. Four more books were added to the series (though two of them had already been written as fan-funded draft manuscripts), then other sequels and prequels were contracted. To the fans' delight, the series now shows no signs of stopping.
  • The original Sherlock Holmes stories were immensely popular, but Arthur Conan Doyle was sick of writing them, so he killed Holmes off. After huge fan outcry (one of the fans allegedly being Queen Victoria herself), the publishers asked Doyle to write more. In response, Doyle named what he believed to be an impossibly large fee. The publishers paid it, and Doyle wrote more Holmes stories.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 24 was cancelled in 2010 with the expectations that a film adaptation would follow up the few lingering plotlines left. With the movie in development hell and the cancellation of Kiefer Sutherland's show Touch (2012), it was announced the show would be revived as a mini-series entitled 24: Live Another Day.
  • When 7th Heaven was canceled after 10 seasons, its final episode got such unexpectedly stellar ratings the CW network decided to revive it for one more season, unfortunately it wasn't too well-received by most and the ratings plummeted.
  • FOX cancelled American Idol after 15 seasons. Following a brief hiatus, ABC revived the series in 2018.
  • One of the shortest uncancellation cycles on record belongs to America's Most Wanted. In 1996, Fox canceled the series even though it was still one of the fledgling network's highest-rated shows, as Fox attempted to establish a Saturday night comedy block to take advantage of NBC's dwindling dominance of the evening. After then-FBI director Louis Freeh, police departments across the country, the governors of 37 states and more than 200,000 letter-writers complained about the decision, Fox hastily reinstated the series, and it suffered only a six-week hiatus. It also kind of helped that the new sitcoms bombed badly and that Fox realized Married... with Children and Martin should have never been moved to Saturday night in the first place. In 2011, the show was reduced to a series of quarterly specials on Fox, as well as regular showings on Lifetime TV, but it chugged along until 2013.
  • A.P. Bio was cancelled after its second season by NBC, only to be revived for a third season by Peacock a couple of months later.
  • Are You Afraid of the Dark? was cancelled in 1996, then renewed for one more season in 1999 with an all-new cast.
  • Arrested Development was canceled in 2006 after three seasons, ending on a massive cliffhanger. For the next few years a movie was reported to be in development but never came to pass, though Netflix picked up the series for a fourth season which debuted in 2013. A fifth season aired in 2018 and 2019. No news about a sixth season has come up, however, with the cast being a little too busy, Portia di Rossi's retirement from acting, Jessica Walter's passing and Jeffrey Tambor's misconduct allegations, it seems very unlikely.
    Season 4 Poster Tagline: Back From Getting Canned
  • Babylon 5 was canceled by PTEN one year short of its 5 year arc. They wrapped it up as best they could by the end of Season 4, but then had to create a whole new story arc when they were picked up for a final season by TNT.
  • A few years after the British version of the Channel Four comedy show Balls of Steel was canned, an Australian version premiered in 2011 for The Comedy Channel. While one could consider it a Foreign Remake (as it does add some localized acts to the mix), a few of the more prominent recurring acts from the British version (particularly Olivia Lee and Neg Dupree) participated as well, meaning that it could considered to be a de facto continuation of the British version.
  • BattleBots was canceled in 2002 after five seasons on Comedy Central, but got brought back by CBS College Sports in December of 2009. It then ended up getting uncanceled again, getting a six episode revival series on ABC, beginning on June 1st 2015.
  • Batman (1966): The series was cancelled in 1968 by ABC and picked up by NBC a few days later for the fall. Unfortunately someone destroyed all the sets (over 200K in 1968 money) and NBC voided the deal.
  • Baywatch was originally an NBC TV series which was canceled. David Hasselhoff, the show's star, arranged to buy the rights to the show and have it continue as a syndicated TV show, where it was very successful.
  • CBS ended Beakman's World after getting 65 episodes in the can (the standard number of episodes needed before a series could go into syndication back then). An outpouring of fan support convinced them to give it one more season. The comeback was so late it resulted in an assistant change.
  • The Australian version of Big Brother ran from 2001-2008 before it was suddenly cancelled. Four years later, it was just as suddenly given a revival on a rival network. The same thing happened with the British version.
  • Apparently the first anyone working on Blake's 7 knew of the fourth series was when it was announced at the end of the last episode of the third. The BBC's Director of Television, Bill Cotton, was enjoying the episode so much he phoned the transmission staff mid-episode and told them to announce that the show was returning.
  • Breaking In was initially cancelled by FOX in 2011, then it was unexpectedly un-cancelled and re-tooled in 2012, only to end up cancelled once again.
  • FOX cancelled Brooklyn Nine-Nine after five seasons, then got revived by NBC near-immediately. The show was cancelled on May 10, 2018 to massive fan outcry, including many celebrities with no affiliation with the show such as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Guillermo Del Toro, Michael McKean, and Mark Hamill. After Netflix and Hulu turned the show down, NBC (the network that produces Brooklyn Nine-Nine and that aired all the other shows created by Mike Schur at the time) announced the day after that it had picked up the show for a sixth season.
  • Cagney & Lacey was canceled by CBS in 1983, after two seasons. A letter-writing campaign persuaded the network to bring the show back; four more full seasons aired, plus four (!) Made For TV Movies in the mid-1990s. Thus, unlike many of the shows on this list, its post-uncancelation run was much longer than its pre-cancellation run.
  • Charles in Charge was brought back in syndication in 1987 after it was dropped by CBS after only one season in 1985.
  • In 1989, as part of its attempt to revive NBC's old Mystery Movie lineup ABC had new seasons of both Columbo and Kojak commissioned 11 years after they both ended in 1978. Although Kojak would only last one season, Columbo's revival managed to be successful enough to last a few more seasons and even after that continue with a near-yearly series of television movies all the way to 2003.
  • Cobra Kai was given a fifth season in 2021, this is in spite of the fact that Netflix had informed the creators that the fourth season would be the last, and they had mapped out the entire season with this in mind.
  • The Comeback was canceled by HBO after its only season in 2005, only to be brought back for a six-episode second season nearly a decade later in 2014.
  • Community, a series that spent its life constantly on the bubble, was finally cancelled by NBC after its fifth season. However, at the eleventh hour, literally on the final day the cast's contracts were due to expire, Yahoo! Screen picked up the show for a sixth season, which premiered online in 2015, fulfilling the series' ''SixSeasons'' part of WordOfGod's SixSeasonsAndAMovie hashtag.
  • ABC cancelled Cougar Town during its 3rd season. Shortly afterwards, TBS picked up the series.
  • CNN had the show Crossfire, which was a "nuanced debate show" where two politically opposed pundits would sit apart from a guest and argue with them. After The Daily Show host Jon Stewart made an appearance on the show, the show received criticism for it's concept, and the show would be canceled within weeks. It would be revived in late 2013, however the revival didn't take off, and the show was cancelled again less than a year later.
  • After an incredible 10 years, ABC greenlighted the return of Cupid. It was described as a re-imagining, suffered the same fate as the original, and quickly faded away.
  • F/X canceled Damages during its third season. The show's producers took the show over to DirecTV, who picked it up for two more seasons.
  • ABC cancelled Designated Survivor after two seasons, but Netflix later picked up the series for a shortened third season to air in 2019. It was cancelled again afterward.
  • By 1985, British sci-fi institution Doctor Who had weathered Moral Guardians, inflation, and lackluster scripts... but when a new BBC controller who had never liked the show came in, its number was up, with the series being cancelled at the end of its 22nd season in 1985. The resultant outcry made the newspapers and talk shows (and even spawned a "We Are the World"-style charity record that has become an admitted mistake for all involved), and 18 months later, it returned; unfortunately, the ratings started to slip after it was put in a time slot against popular Soap Opera Coronation Street, and in 1989, it was cancelled once again. A failed pilot TV movie in 1996 notwithstanding, it wouldn't return as an ongoing TV series until 2005. It has since become one of the most successful works of fiction on British television.
  • A&E suspended Dog the Bounty Hunter several times due to incidents involving the Chapmans, but always mad it back on the air with new seasons due to fan outcry and closed-door negotiations. It finally ended its run in 2012, though CMT then picked up a new version for 2013 in which Dog travels around fixing up failing bail bond agencies in a style similar to Kitchen Nightmares.
  • Due South, multiple times. The show was originally cancelled by CBS after its first season. It was then renewed, and "Letting Go" was filmed to keep the fans from wondering what happened after the finale. It was cancelled again at the end of Season 2, with the production company going as far as taking down the sets. A group of Canadian production companies banded together to fund the show, and it returned for two more seasons. Callum Keith Rennie also replaced David Marciano as Ray Vecchio (because Marciano had already moved his family after the apparent cancellation and didn't want to move back).
  • Despite decent ratings and being one of the best reviewed science-fiction shows of all time, Syfy ended up cancelling The Expanse in May 2018 due to a contract dispute between the network and producer Alcon Entertainment. This led to SEVERE fan, media and celebrity backlash. After successfully mounting a fan campaign that was literally like no other (including but not limited to: 130k+ petition signatures, an airplane banner, sending the Roci into space, creating boxes of Protomolecule jello, a "Miller's Low Life" beer, trending at the top of every social media platform, and upticking live ratings by a whole 100k) to revive a series, Jeff Bezos (himself a fan of the books and series) announced that Amazon Studios has purchased the series for all future seasons as a Prime exclusive.
  • Fame was brought back in syndication.
  • The beloved 1950s family sitcom Father Knows Best was cancelled by CBS after its first season. A letter writing campaign got the show picked up by NBC the following fall.
  • NBC cancelled For Your Love after one season, then it was picked up by the WB for another 4 seasons.
  • Foyle's War: Though cancelled abruptly after the fifth series, negotiations led to a renewal for another three. These later series had a marked change in plot and a more irregular release schedule, with gaps of 2-3 years between series.
  • The Game (2006), after two years worth of outcry and a move to BET. It's proven to be one of the most successful examples of this trope. Not only did the show's re-runs on BET get better ratings than the CW's first airings, the season 4 premier got 7.7 million viewers, which was a first for a serialized drama/comedy on cable. All the more impressive, considering what network The Game came from (CW) and where it went (BET).
  • NBC dropped Get Smart after four seasons, only to have CBS pick it up for a fifth.
  • Gilmore Girls was revived by Netflix for a new season consisting of four 90-minute episodes in 2016, plotted by the show's creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, who had left before its final season on The WB.
  • FOX cancelled Grounded for Life after one season, then picked up by the WB for four more seasons.
  • MTV's Headbanger's Ball was finally brought back in 2003 after the original show was cancelled almost a decade earlier.
  • Hee Haw had a 20 year syndicated run after a brief 2 year run on CBS.
  • It's a Living ran for two seasons on ABC from 1980-1982. After a three year hiatus, it was brought back in syndication, where it ran for four seasons.
  • JAG started life on NBC for one season, before being canceled and immediately snapped up by CBS, where it ran for nine more seasons, and eventually spawned the NCIS franchise.
  • The cancellation of Jericho (2006) in 2007 lead to a strange campaign where fans sent nuts to the network to persuade it to reverse the decision. The network eventually announced a further seven episodes would be produced and "please stop sending us nuts". The nuts were later given to charity.
  • In late 2012, AMC announced that The Killing had been cancelled. Thanks to a deal with Netflix, they announced its return in 2013.
  • Lassie was brought back for syndicated seasons.
  • Reality show Last Comic Standing seems to only survive in 3 season blocks. It ran its first 3 seasons, then got canceled. Then it came back and ran for 3 more seasons, and then got canceled. Now it's back again. Make up your minds!
  • Despite strong ratings, ABC Cancelled Last Man Standing after 6 seasons. After a one year hiatus, Fox announced the pickup of a 7th season.
  • Law & Order was abruptly cancelled in 2010 at the end of its 20th season. In 2021, NBC announced that the show would return after a decade-long hiatus for its 21st season.
  • LazyTown was uncancelled in 2013 with Stephanie now played by Chloe Lang.
  • After three seasons Fox decided to cancel Lucifer (2016). This led to major outrage, especially as the third season finale left off on a cliffhanger created specifically to get a renewal. Much rallying on social media by fans as well as some of the cast and crew to #SaveLucifer led to Netflix deciding to resurrect the show.
  • Mama: Based on the novel Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes and the film I Remember Mama with Irene Dunnenote , Mama ran from 1949 to 1957. It was one of TV's first "institutions", with millions of families tuning in on Fridays. In 1956, CBS canceled Mama in response to sponsor Maxwell House's complaint that their ads weren't substantially increasing sales. The show's producer, Carol Irwin, headed a successful letter campaign.
  • Mama's Family: Canceled by NBC in 1984 after only two seasons, it was brought back in 1986 in first-run syndication, lasting for four more seasons. (Thankfully, as most fans seem to enjoy the syndicated seasons more.)
  • Medium was canceled by NBC in the 08-09 season, and then picked up by CBS.
  • M.I. High finished the main Story Arc and was cancelled. The BBC decided on a reboot and a sixth series will air in 2013 (albeit with some changes to the formula - St. Hopes is gone and there are now four spies instead of three).
  • The Mindy Project was cancelled by Fox, but then picked up by Hulu for a 26-episode fourth season.
  • ABC's reality show The Mole became this when it returned to ABC in the summer of 2008 in its original format.
  • The Belgian series De Mol was canceled in 2003 after 3 seasons and then brought back in 2016 after a 13-year gap.
  • Murphy Brown was cancelled in 1998... only to be uncancelled nearly 20 years later in 2018... and then subsequently cancelled again.
  • The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo was uncancelled for a fourth season after a IATSE strike targeting the show cancelled production during the third season. This had the side effect of CINAR taking over as co-producer and production moving to Montreal from the Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida.
  • Comedy Central canceled Mystery Science Theater 3000 after a seven-year run, the show was then shopped around. Fans lobbied to other networks to bring the show back, even to the extent of buying a full-page ad in Variety bemoaning the loss. It was eventually picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel. Three years later, it was canceled again, though it has two Spiritual Successors: Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax. In 2015, a successful Kickstarter campaign raised $5.7 million (far more than the $2 million goal) to bring back the series for an eleventh season on Netflix, which premiered in April 2016. A twelfth season arrived in November 2018, after which Netflix canceled the series... and then in April 2021, series creator Joel Hodgson announced his intention to start his own streaming platform for the purpose of bringing back the show and creating new related content; the Kickstarter campaign announcing this easily surpassed its $2 million goal within a day.
  • Nashville was cancelled by ABC, with the fourth season finale Cliffhanger advertised as the "series finale," but was rescued by CMT for a fifth season.
  • New Amsterdam (2008), about an immortal detective, was canceled by Fox before the first episode even aired. However, they ended up airing it due to the WGA strike and it got a fairly good response. But it is FOX, so they rendered the show gone just the same.
  • ABC originally cancelled The Odd Couple at the end of its first season. Strong ratings for repeats that aired over the summer of 1970 convinced them to bring the show back, and it lasted for a further four seasons.
  • After almost four years, Netflix cancelled the reboot of One Day at a Time (2017). Two months later, it was revived by the Pop network, making it the first online series to be revived by a cable network.
  • Overhaulin' originally aired on TLC from 2004 to 2008. Four years after it was cancelled, it returned to the air on TLC's sister channel Velocity.
  • The Paper Chase John Jay Osborn Jr is a 1971 novel that was adapted into a 1973 film, then adapted into a TV series that ran for one season on CBS in 1978 before being canceled. The series was syndicated on PBS for several years before being revived on Showtime in 1983, with much of the cast returning, to run for three more seasons.
  • Party of Five initially lasted only one season, before being brought back by a small-but-zealous fan campaign. The threat of cancellation still loomed over its early second season, until viewership spiked after a surprise upset Golden Globe win for best drama in 1995, beating out then-primetime favorites like ER and NYPD Blue.
  • Police, Camera, Action!: Uncanceled in 2002, then 2007, and then 2008, and again in 2010!
  • Power Rangers Contrary to popular belief it only happened once, when Disney officially canceled it after RPM and Saban brought it back under Saban Brands. Though it had several close calls before. note 
  • Primeval was canceled in 2009 only to be revived in 2011.
  • After Punky Brewster ran its course on NBC prime time, it went to daily-strip syndication where new episodes followed the run of repeats of the prime time series.
  • Subverted with Raumschiff GameStar: After it officially ended in the fifth season with an "Everyone Dies" Ending, nothing was heard about it for five years. Then in 2009, the producers announced a new season and even released a trailer for it. However, half a year later, it was revealed to be a case of Real Trailer, Fake Movie, and the third season of RSGS's Spiritual Successor started publishing instead.
  • Reading Rainbow is a triumphant example of this trope. Commissions for new episodes of the show stopped in 2006, and in 2009 PBS pulled the funding and broadcast completely, and a day just before the Emmy for which the show won no less. Showrunner LeVar Burton, however, wouldn't take no for an answer and immediately sought to buy the rights to the name and past episodes, and seeing the potential of tablet computers, started a project to put videos and books featured on the show on the iPad. The project was met with critical acclaim when it launched in 2012, and requests started pouring in for the app to be ported to other platforms, resulting in a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project further and hitting an astonishing record of US$6.5 million, the highest funded project at the time, at the end of the campaign. The app has now been ported to Android and its derivatives, and there is also a version accessible from web browsers, with support for more platforms coming soon. And the additional money is used to fund access to the app for underfunded classrooms in the US. Additionally, new segments are now being shot for the app and for the YouTube channel. It's a glorious comeback for the franchise, and for LeVar.
  • In 1999, Red Dwarf ended on a cliffhanger. Co-creator and head writer Doug Naylor attempted for some time to get a movie off the ground, but in 2001 approached the BBC about to make a new series and the BBC replied with the comment "we are no longer interested in the audience Red Dwarf used to provide". The show eventually returned on cable channel Dave in 2009 with a 3-part adventure and was a massive ratings success for the channel, even beating the original channel that Red Dwarf used to air on in the rating (BBC2), a bout of hilarious irony on the BBC. Three additional series and a television special have aired since then.
  • Ripper Street was cancelled after two series, a lot in part because it was so expensive to make. Then Amazon stepped in with extra funding, and its third season debuted on Amazon Prime in the UK in 2014. Amazon then announced in May of 2015 that is going to produce two additional seasons.
  • Roseanne was cancelled by ABC in the middle of its 2018 revival despite sky-high ratings after Roseanne Barr was fired for making a racist joke in one of her tweets. However the show was later brought back in the form of a spinoff titled The Conners, but with Roseanne's character killed off.
  • Roswell has both cases. It was -apparently- first canceled by the WB on the first season, which promoted the fans to launch a "Tabasco" campaign, in which they managed to send 6,000 bottles of Tabasco to the executives. On the second season, the show was canceled again, even if the fans did send 12,000 Tabasco bottles. UPN picked it up for a third season, after which it was canceled for good.
  • The 2007-2008 season of Scrubs was supposed to be the last but, due to the Writer's Strike, the show didn't exactly end in a satisfying fashion. It moved to ABC.
  • Sledge Hammer! was canceled after the 1st season, only to be renewed for a second season after the last episode got higher than expected ratings, which created something of a dilemma for the writers. Expecting to be cancelled after the first season, the season finale featured Los Angeles as well as the titular character being vaporized by an nuclear bomb. They got around this by claiming at the start of the second season that the first-season finale was five years in the future, giving themselves room to run the series for another five seasons. Naturally, the show was canceled soon thereafter.
  • NBC canceled Southland to make room for Jay Leno's prime time show, but was saved by TNT.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series is perhaps the most famous example of this trope, even though technically it was not actually cancelled. The story goes that, as the end of the second season approached, the producers caught wind that NBC was considering cancelling the series and reached out to the sci-fi fan community, generating hundreds of thousands (Wikipedia says a million) pieces of mail in support, leading to NBC announcing on-air the show's renewal for one final season.
  • Showtime canceled Stargate SG-1 after the fifth season, and was then picked up by Sci-Fi. And was canceled again after the tenth season, with the fanbase split between those who wanted it to continue and those who wanted it to happen two seasons earlier. MGM decided to just go direct-to-DVD this time around.
  • SurrealEstate: In October 2021, a month after the first season ended, the show was announced as canceled. Months later in May 2022, this decision was revealed to have been reversed, with a second season now planned for release in 2023.
  • ABC axed Taxi, but it jumped to NBC and lasted for another season, before dwindling ratings finally took it down.
  • NBC announced the cancellation of Timeless on May 10, 2017, despite massive popularity and positive reviews among the fans. Due to massive fan outrage which resulted in the show even trending on twitter after news of its cancellation broke, as well as some quick negotiating between Sony (the company that owns the series) and NBC, the show was quickly renewed three days later, in what was possibly the quickest turnaround for a cancelled show in recent history.
    • And then it was cancelled again in June 2018, leading to more fan outcry. A month later, NBC caved again, but only partly — while the show wasn't given another season, it was given a two-hour TV movie to serve as a Grand Finale, thereby keeping the series from ending on a massive cliffhanger.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959) was initially canceled after its third season. The show meant to replace it in the CBS lineup didn't last, and the show was brought back for a shorter season of hour-long episodes. Rod Serling had taken a college teaching position by this time, which is why he doesn't appear on the same set as the actors during season four. Ratings were good enough to justify a fifth season, which brought the running time back to half an hour.
  • Unforgettable is the rare example of a show that did well in the ratings, but not well enough for CBS's ratings standards. It was killed at the end of its first season, but was renewed for a summer run on CBS for its second season because of TNT and Lifetime looking to snap it up. It did well enough as a summer show that it was renewed for a third season. After the third season, it was canceled again, only to be revived by A&E for a fourth season.
  • Veronica Mars was canceled by The WB after its third season. It was revived in a 2014 crowd-funded film and a fourth season produced by Hulu in 2019.
  • After ten years of nothing but repeats and some unaired material, Whose Line Is It Anyway? is coming back. The American version was revived by The CW in 2013 after six years off the air.
  • Young Dracula was canceled in 2008, therefore leaving it at a cliffhanger at the end of Season 2. Three years later (thanks to fan-led petitions and general interest), the third season ended up premiering on the 31st of October, and the show went on to have a fourth and a fifth.
  • The X-Files was uncancelled in 2016 for two more seasons after being initially cancelled in 2002.

    Music 
  • Roger Waters took complete control over Pink Floyd in the early 1980s, releasing the album The Final Cut as finale. In 1985 he left the group and declared it dissolved. When the remaining members still wanted to continue he took them to court. Finally, in 1987 an agreement was made that allowed Gilmour and Mason to continue using the name: Pink Floyd was uncanceled.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Warhammer 40,000: The Dark Heresy spinoff game was released, canceled and Un-Canceled within the space of a month. The game, which fans had been looking forward to for decades, comes out. The entire print run sells out in two days. A few days after that, Games Workshop says it's getting out of roleplaying games because literature is easier to publish for profit. Once the gnashing of teeth dies down, Fantasy Flight Games picks up the license. This had the secondary effect of visiting Laser-Guided Karma upon the profiteers who had, on announcement of the cancellation, bought up every copy they could in the hope of selling them for silly money on eBay. This also had something of a longer-term effect, where several veteran designers and writers at Games Workshop left the company in the late oughts, only to contribute to Fantasy Flight Games, who currently publish all of the Games Workshop-licensed Tabletop RPGs. This then happened again in 2017, when Fantasy Flight lost the license; the books were simply re-listed under the new publisher and put back on sale in digital format.
  • White Wolf, having canceled the Old World of Darkness in 2004, began creating new material for it again in 2011 with the 20th anniversary editions.

    Theatre 
  • The Broadway production of Waitress ran from April 2016 to January 2020, but to celebrate the reopening of Broadway after the COVID-19 Pandemic shut it down, it returned for a limited engagement at a different theater from September 2021 to January 2022. Composer Sara Bareilles briefly returned to the role of Jenna, and several other Broadway cast members returned to their roles as well.
  • Beetlejuice opened on Broadway in 2019, but was slated to close in June 2020 to make way for the revival of The Music Man, which was contractually tied to a run at the Winter Garden Theatre. The COVID-19 pandemic meant the show acutally closed in March. However, it was announced in September 2021 that the production would reopen in the Marquis Theatre in April 2022.

    Video Games 
  • In a rare video game example, see Golden Sun. Originally one game split in two (released in 2001 and 2003, respectively) due to length, it received acclaim and developed quite the following, and even though the second game technically wrapped the story up, many believed there was enough loose threads to make a sequel. According to Word of God, the first two games were just the prologue, and Dark Dawn starts the series proper.
  • Several Mega Man sub-series have experienced this at some point or another.
  • For the longest time Street Fighter was considered to be a dead series by Capcom (outside of re-releases and crossovers). Then, after years of clamor from fans, Capcom made an announcement and hell froze over for Street Fighter IV.
  • The possibility of a new Marvel vs. Capcom being made was considered nil because Capcom no longer had the license to make the games. Then in 2009 they got a deal to re-release Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for download (minus the in-game shop, instead having everything unlocked at the outset, which was completely missing the point) and, about a year later, they announced Marvel vs. Capcom 3. The Devil's heating bill must've been off the charts.
  • Duke Nukem Forever. After years and years of basically being Vaporware (indeed, it was considered the poster child of vaporware; Wired magazine's "Vaporware Awards" at one point retired it from consideration just so it would be possible for other titles to win), it was then canceled...only to be picked back up by Gearbox a few months later. And then it finally got released. There's a lesson here. And it is this: Always, ALWAYS bet on Duke.
  • APB: All Points Bulletin appears to have been saved. It's even going free-to-play this time, though it's too early to determine how much of an Allegedly Free Game with Bribing Your Way to Victory it'll end up as/with.
  • Dragon Warrior went on a very extended hiatus in North America after Dragon Warrior IV was released in 1992. Enix apparently had intentions to localize one of the next two games on the SNES, but these efforts died when they closed their American branch in the mid 1990s. The series was resurrected eight years later when Enix brought over a Game Boy Color compilation of the first two Dragon Quest games, but the release of Dragon Quest VII the year after really cemented the uncancellation of the series in America. Then plans for bringing the Dragon Quest IV remake to the U.S. were scrapped when the original development studio shut down. It took seven years and the Square-Enix merger before the U.S. finally saw the PS1 version's bonus content on the DS.
  • Metal Gear Solid: Rising wound up being cancelled in 2010 when development ground to a halt. Thankfully, PlatinumGames stepped in to help get the game finished, which they succeeded in doing, releasing the game in 2013 as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
  • Largely unaware to western audiences, the Glory of Heracles series was popular in Japan, with its fourth game last made in 1994. The series then gained a 5th chapter in 2008 (2010 to western markets, and also the only one localized outside of Japan). One advantage of the series is that the games are largely self-contained, with minimal continuity spanning the various games.
  • Due to already having their hands full with then-upcoming titles DeathSpank and Swarm, Hothead Games was forced to cancel the third and final episode of Penny Arcade Adventures, leaving it as a written story on the Penny Arcade website. Then, in August 2011, Zeboyd Games (creators of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World) announced that they have taken up the mantle, and they're even going to make a fourth episode too, which will show us how the Precipice universe ties in with the standard Penny Arcade universe.
  • Pikmin: Pikmin (2001) was remade on Wii, with the remakes coming out in 2008 in Japan and 2009 in the rest of the world. Pikmin 2 was planned to get the same treatment, and the remake for it came out in Japan, Australia, and Europe in spring of 2009, with the American version never getting a release other than vague hints like "Q2". It was quietly cancelled. In 2012, the American version was surprisingly uncanceled and released that June — just over three years after the Australian re-release hit store shelves (and even then, it was released under the Nintendo Selects label... which is usually only used for budget re-releases).
  • La-Mulana for Wiiware outside of Japan fits this trope.
  • Word has it that Bayonetta 2 was originally canned by SEGA. Then on September 13th, 2012, the game was announced to not only be on the Wii U, but to also be published by Nintendo (who were the only company willing to fund the game).
  • Asheron's Call 2 was revived by Turbine during Holiday 2012.
  • The creator of the original Nexus War pulled the plug in a Grand Finale, but the series was quickly brought back to life by Nexus Clash, a fan-created Spiritual Successor.
  • Super Robo Mouse was originally announced for the Wii U eShop before getting cancelled, but then the creator got motivated by playing in an arcade and decided to un-cancel Super Robo Mouse and release it as a multi-platform game.
  • MOTHER was stated to be released in North America, but due to the NES being at the end of its life cycle, and the SNES taking off in popularity, Nintendo canceled the English release after it was finished. Nearly 30 years later, the game was finally released on the Wii U's Virtual Console as EarthBound Beginnings in order to differentiate itself from EarthBound (1994), which was released first.
  • Nintendo's QOL (Quality of Life) project was originally said to be "on the back-burner" before it was later stated to be continuing development.
  • Dr. Kawashima's Devilish Brain Training: Can You Stay Focused? for Nintendo 3DS was originally cancelled in Europe and Australia back in 2013 before they re-announced it for a 2017 release in the April 2017 Nintendo Direct.
  • The Play Station Vita port of Read Only Memories was cancelled in October 2017 after developer Midboss trying and failing several times to get the game to work properly on Vita. On December 9 of the same year, it was announced as no longer being cancelled and then was released.
  • The bankruptcy of Telltale Games led to all of their upcoming games being cancelled, including the final two episodes of The Walking Dead: Season Four. However a month later it was announced that Skybound Entertainment would work with the original team to finish the game.
  • After two decades of silence and only two remakes coming out, the Wonder Boy series was revived after a failed kickstarter for a spiritual successor fangame caught the eye of the series creators. They gave it official footing and support, being eventually released as Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom in 2018.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines released in November 2004 (a terrible time to be a new game on the market) after an infamously Troubled Production and utterly bombed due to stiff competition alongside being pushed out the door too quickly for a Christmas release. But its dedicated fan community and status as a cult masterpiece (along with brisk, continuous sales numbers for a game that couldn't even be beaten in its original state at release) has seen it receive a sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, slated for release in 2020, the better part of two decades later.
  • Changes to the Neverwinter Nights premium module program, and the program's eventual cancellation, led to several modules in production never receiving an official release. With the Updated Re-release, two such modules, Darkness Over Daggerford and Tyrants of the Moonsea were finally completed and given a retail release.
  • Many mobile games by Halfbrick Studios were removed from App Store and Google Play in 2018 due to lacking resources to make them GDPR compliant and not being profitable enough. Two year later, Halfbrick would enter the partnership with Krome Studios, who would work on bringing them back with new content added, starting with Monster Dash.
  • The sequel to the franchise Baldur's Gate was originally cancelled when Black Isle Studios was closed. The games went through a chain of Enhanced Editions of the original games made by Beamdog, until the continued interest in the franchise lead to the development of Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios, twenty years later after the original instalments concluded.
  • Metroid Dread. While its existence was leaked in 2005, it was never officially announced to release that decade. Or the next. The game was originally in development for the Nintendo DS, only to get cancelled twice due to series producer Yoshio Sakamoto's disappointment with the hardware. The game's concept would be revived following the release of Metroid: Samus Returns, with Sakamoto being impressed with the work MercurySteam had done with the title, and the game would release in 2021.
  • Star Fox 2 was in a nearly complete state before being cancelled in 1995, very late in the SNES's life cycle, though the ROM of it would leak on the Internet. In 2017, Nintendo officially released the game, included with the SNES Classic.

    Webcomics 
  • Several days after Jodie Troutman announced that she was pulling the plug on Lit Brick, a ton of fans came out of the wood work to bemoan the loss, convincing her to do regular updates again. Amusingly, this came after she took the trouble to draw comics detailing what happened to nearly every main character in the series, and finished with an epic goodbye to her readers.
  • Sailor Ranko has been plagued by real life troubles of the writer and the lead artist. It released 8 and a half chapters (306 pages) in the first 19 months, then 8 pages in 2 years, then took a 10-year hiatus. In September 2021 it suddenly came back and finished the 15-chapter first volume in about a year. The writer announced that the subsequent volumes will be donation-driven, but as of September 2022 the comic continues at at least half the previous rate.

    Web Original 
  • Homestar Runner was originally cancelled in 2009, with it being un-canceled in 2014.
  • Bonus Stage Lasted 87 episodes, cancelled via Creator Backlash and financial woes and it would ultimately be passed down to a guy on DeviantArt five years down the road.
  • The Nostalgia Critic was retired in September 2012, after both a final episode and a Fully Absorbed Finale in To Boldly Flee, as his actor thought the character had ran its course. In January 2013, his return was announced with "The Review Must Go On", with the catalyst being The Odd Life of Timothy Green. The episode announced a few changes to the show's format by way of him and the Nostalgia Critic character negotiating with each other; namely, that the show would no longer be beholden to a strict weekly schedule and that there was no longer a "cutoff date" for what the Critic could discuss (as he previously only reviewed material from the 1980s and 90s, with rare dives into the early 2000s). The show also started having more sketches, featuring the actors who worked on Demo Reel, the show Walker did during the interim (with "The Review Must Go On" doubling as the finale for that project).
  • YouTube critic and ranter Benthelooney, eventually cancelled/ended his rants after the third part of his "Nick Rants" series. However, his other collections of videos were so successful, and things have angered Ben so much, that he decided to surprise his fans, by reviving/uncancelling his Rants series on February 10th of 2012 with Ben Rants: Celebrities
  • CLW Entertainment: This eventually happened to the Ninja Hattori fandub. It was originally cancelled along with the Perman fandub, but Collin eventually continued dubbing Ninja Hattori.
  • Coppercab's videos were almost done for, when his channel got hacked by someone that he had known in real life that got annoyed by his supposed arrogance. However, Coppercab fought for the rights back to his channel and succeeded by only dying his hair and doing a dance/rap video, and uncanceled his videos from that moment on, ever since. There are rumors that this was staged.
  • The Massive Multi-Fandom RPG: Season 3 of the roleplay ended abruptly once the GMs began experiencing burnout, and all seemed to indicate that this was the end of the story, especially since the GMs began to consider all of the roleplay one huge pile of rubbish. A couple of months later, however, season 3.5 was started again as an attempt to conclude the story, with a different, simpler premise that doesn't demand as much from the players. (And then it fizzled out as well, unfortunately.)
  • Team Fortress 2 Youtuber Muselk frequently claims each episode of "Extreme Rancho Relaxo" or "Map Tips and Tricks" will be the last. It never sticks.
  • In-universe example in the SuperMarioLogan episode, "Bowser's Depression". Bowser's favorite Show Within a Show, Charleyyy and Friends gets cancelled in favor of its spin-off, Fishy and Friends note , which puts Bowser in a deep depression. At the end of the episode, Fishy gets cancelled, and Charleyyy is put back on the air.
  • Googlebrains was going to quit YouTube in general, but he changed his mind, instead opting to drop the "uploads every Friday" schedule.
  • Matthew Santoro decided in January 2012 to stop making videos, but changed his mind in June 2012, when he started making videos again.
  • Battle for Dream Island: Thanks to a combination of Creator Backlash, jacknjellify's AdSense being disabled, and personal projects getting in the way, Battle for Dream Island Again was all but confirmed to be cancelled, with BFDIA 6 never coming to fruition. However, exactly 10 years after it was originally meant to come out, BFDIA 6 was finally completed and released to the public, bringing BFDIA out of cancellation.
  • CNN shut down their Great Big Story division in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to produce content. In 2023, CNN licensed the brand out to WhyNow Media, who subsequently took over the brand's social media accounts and began producing new content under the name.

    Western Animation 
  • 64 Zoo Lane ended in 2003, but was uncancelled years later in 2010.
  • Adventure Time's staff got the memo that they were working on the final season in the middle of said season's production, forcing them to scrap many of the story plans they'd made under the assumption they'd get an least one more season order. Things were quickly wrapped up in a one-hour Grand Finale, but the development of the HBO Max streaming service and the need for various production arms of the then newly-formed WarnerMedia to create original content for it resulted in Cartoon Network greenlighting the Distant Lands miniseries just a month after the show ended.
  • The producers of American Dad! announced that the show would end after its tenth season so FOX could renovate its Sunday night line-up. TBS, which had recently gained the show through a syndication deal, decided to renew the show for a twelth seasonnote , and it has stayed on TBS since.
  • Babar originally ran for 65 episodes on CBC between 1989 and 1991. In 2000 however, an additional 13 episodes were randomly ordered by Teletoon from Nelvana, although it did retool the series significantly and featured an entirely new voice cast (most of whom had previously appeared in Nelvana's 1999 Babar: King of the Elephants movie).
  • Beavis and Butt-Head ended its initial run in 1997, after creator Mike Judge decided to spend some time on other projects, like King of the Hill. It got a brief one season revival in 2011, and was brought back on Paramount+ (originally ordered for Comedy Central) in 2022, for two seasons, alongside a new movie.
  • Bubble Guppies initially ended after its fourth season in October 2016, but due to its continued popularity (and merchandise sales), it was revived in June 2019.
  • Celebrity Deathmatch. The first revival just lasted two seasons, though, and the episodes that aired weren't well-received by fans. A second revival was announced some years later, this time with original creator Eric Fogel back on the production team.
  • After ending in 2007, a new season of Code Lyoko premiered in 2013 under the name Code Lyoko: Evolution, and as a live-action series shown only in France.
  • The Critic started on ABC, cancelled after a month, brought back for the summer, cancelled again, picked up by FOX for another year, cancelled again, rerun on Comedy Central, picked up by UPN (which never actually aired episodes of the show), and finally had 10 flash-based webisodes on atomfilms.com and shockwave.com.
  • Dexter's Laboratory lasted two seasons until 1998, and three years later returned. But the two seasons that followed are often hated because they lacked input from series creator Genndy Tartakovsky (who was busy with Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars), had a change in artwork, had different writers and voice actors (most notably, Dexter's VA Christine Cavanaugh had retired, so Candi Milo was called in as her replacement).
  • After three seasons, Nickelodeon canceled Doug in 1994 due to contractual issues, despite having originally ordered sixty-five episodes. While this allowed creators Jim Jinkins and Joe Aaron to retain the rights to the characters, they were nonetheless furious at Nick and refused to work with them ever again. Soon after, Jinkins and Aaron were approached by Disney, who had then just purchased ABC, and that gave the series another chance, running for more three seasons before it was canceled again when said network got into a similar contractual dispute.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy was originally going to end after 52 episodes, with the episode Take This Ed and Shove It. Its continued popularity led to Cartoon Network ordering three holiday specials and two additional seasons, before the creator decided to scrap that final season early in production in lieu of a television movie. As such, the Season 5 finale "Fistful of Ed" was marketed as the final episode, while the two Season 6 episodes that were too far along to scrap aired as "lost episodes" the following year.note  The series ended a year after that with the airing of Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show.
  • The Fairly OddParents! was cancelled and renewed four times over the course of its ten season run, as a result of it not getting ratings as high as a certain sponge, yet still performing better than every other animated show on the network. The show was originally planned to end with Season 5 and the crossover special "The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3: The Jerkinators!" (which was intended to loosely act as a joint finale for both it and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron). Afterwards, Seasons 8 and 9 were both intended to be the final seasons of the show, before it finally ended with Season 10. Creator Butch Hartman joked that the network would reliably take him aside and renew the show for another season or two as soon as he'd leave each wrap party.
  • Family Guy is most likely the Trope Codifier, as uncancellations have become more common since it was uncancelled for the first time. Brought back by FOX after a long hiatus once DVD sales took off and reruns on [adult swim] brought in better ratings than what it had on FOX, who realized exactly how much money they stood to make off the most popular cartoon since South Park. What's especially notable here is how in the returning series premiere, Peter recited an excruciatingly long list of FOX shows that Family Guy was canceled to make room for but were themselves inevitably, if not always abruptly and swiftly, canned (see the page quote for all the shows that tried and failed at replacing Family Guy).
  • Futurama:
    • The series got four made-for-DVD movies years after its original Fox run was over, thanks to the impressive ratings the reruns pulled in on Adult Swim. These movies were successful enough for Comedy Central to pick up the series, with the show lasting four years on the network. This appeared to be the end of things, outside the odd The Simpsons crossover or audio play, but then the show managed to nab a third run of episodes a decade later by way of Hulu.
    • The cold open of "Bender's Big Score", the first DVD movie, is the first of many jokes the show would make about its inability to die.
      The Professor: Good news, everyone! Those asinine morons who cancelled us were themselves fired for incompetence!
      [The crew cheer loudly]
      The Professor: And not just fired, but beaten up too! And pretty badly.
      [The crew cheer much less enthusiastically]
      The Professor: In fact, most of them died from their injuries!
      [The crew are visibly uncomfortable, except for Bender, who laughs]
      The Professor: And then they were ground up into a fine pink powder!
      Fry: Why?
  • George of the Jungle (2007) originally ran for a single season that ended in 2008, but in 2015, Teletoon suddenly commissioned a second season. Due to the rights to the show having changed between seasons however, this new season retooled the show significantly and was produced by a completely different studios with none of the cast and crew for Season 1 returning.
  • Very poor ratings on its series premiere caused UPN to axe Home Movies before it was able to even finish its first season. In 2001, one [adult swim] executive said he liked Home Movies, and [adult swim] later revived the series, airing the unaired UPN episodes and ordering three more seasons.
  • For several years, the idea of bringing back Invader Zim was thrown around at Nickelodeon due to its continued popularity in reruns, but never fully stuck because no agreement could be made on how to budget the project (the high financial cost of the show was a major reason for its original cancellation). The property would eventually see a comic book continuation that started in 2015, followed by a television movie a few years later for Netflix.
  • The Jetsons and Jonny Quest, two Hanna-Barbera shows that ran for one season each in the 1960s, were both revived with new episodes produced for syndication in the 1980s. Boomerang did not show these episodes as often; the consensus is that they are of much lower quality than the original runs. On the other hand, at least in the case of the Jetsons, the original voice cast reunited for the syndicated episodes.
    • H-B did the same with Yogi Bear in 1988, using the background music from the original 1961 shorts and introducing a new character, Ranger Rubideux.
  • Johnny Bravo lasted one season in 1997, and its uncancellation two years later (minus creator Van Partible) is often considered better, but not by people that liked the first season. Then it was uncanceled again in 2004, with Van Partible back at the helm.
  • Johnny Test originally ended after its third season, due to the shutdown of Kids' WB! in 2008, but was resurrected the following year when Cartoon Network began ordering new seasons, ending the show with its sixth season.note  was then uncancelled again in 2021 for two more seasons when Netflix noticed the high ratings it was posting on the streaming service.
  • KaBlam! was going to end with three seasons, wrapping season three up with June giving Henry a kiss, and them becoming an official couple. Fans made noise, and a fourth season was created (to the annoyance of some fans, Henry and June's relationship was set back to being "just friends" (for a little while)). A fifth season was on the way, but Nick cancelled it before it began.
  • A Kind of Magic originally ran from 2006 to 2009 with one season, and then presumably ended. A second season was suddenly announced, but it was postponed for the longest time until February 2018, when the show came back with 52 episodes (which the first season only had half of). There doesn't seem to be any sign of a third season, possibly leading to the show's re-cancellation.
  • King of the Hill was going to be cancelled after Season 11. That season's finale, "Lucky's Wedding Suit" was explicitly written as a series finale with cameos by various recurring characters. However, fan outcry led Fox to renew it at the last second, and the show ran for another two seasons. As of 2023, it's announced the show will be back again this time on Hulu.
  • Max and Ruby stopped making episodes in 2007 and got cancelled that same year, but the show later returned to making new episodes starting in 2009 and with a few new voice actors. The show later ended in 2013, only to get un-canceled again in 2016.
  • Noddy's Toyland Adventures initally ended with the 39th episode "Noddy The Dancer" note . However, the show was uncancelled five years later after the popularity of The Noddy Shop, which aired the shorts from this series in the United States, causing thirteen new episodes to be produced specifically for the second season of the show. But even that wasn't enough to fufill the demand, as there were 25 episodes in Noddy Shop's second season, resulting in 11 earlier Toyland Adventures episodes being reused and one episode to not feature such a segment.
  • Phineas and Ferb originally concluded in 2015, followed by a Disney+ movie in 2019. But in 2022, it was announced that it would be revived, possibly because of its continuing popularity with not just kids, but also the older fans.
  • Pingu was originally canceled after Season 4 in 2000, due to the declining popularity of the series. Three years after HIT Entertainment bought the rights to the series, it was revived for two additional seasons before being canceled again in 2006. 11 years later, Mattel (current owners of HIT Entertainment) contracted Japan-based Polygon Pictures to produce another revival, Pingu in the City.
  • ReBoot aired two seasons between 1994-1996 and was canceled by ABC because of the Disney buyout. They even had a sly dig at them in the final episode of the second season by calling the enemy vehicles Armored Binome Carriers (ABC's). "The ABC's, they turned on us!" "Treacherous dogs!" But the show was co-financed by YTV in Canada so they managed a decent Syndication deal and eventually produced a third season in 1998 that wrapped up the major plots and gave a happy ending to the characters (although left hints towards a new story arc). Then after being picked up by Cartoon Network and started doing well in the ratings, they helped finance a fourth season in 2001 that resolved the few remaining loose ends. Only to end on a Cliffhanger which had to be resolved in comic book form due to expecting a fifth season.
  • Rescue Heroes aired for one season on CBS then was unceremoniously canceled when CBS opted not to renew their programming deal with studio Nelvana. It was much more successful on Teletoon, the show's Canadian channel (and technically the home network for the series), and Teletoon wanted another season. Kids' WB! picked the series up a year later for two more seasons, and gave the show major changes, such as delving into Darker and Edgier situations and some character redesigns.
  • After Samurai Jack ended its run on Cartoon Network in 2004, creator Genndy Tartakovsky spent the next decade trying to get a theatrical Finale Movie produced in-between other projects. Nothing worked out, but its continued popularity after all that time meant he was successfully able to pitch a fifth and final season for CN's late-night sibling channel [adult swim], which aired in 2017.
  • Robot Chicken did a sketch where the show was supposedly canceled and then uncanceled after creators Seth Green (yes, him again) and Matt Senreich repented to Cartoon Network's execs; in reality, the show was hugely popular at the time and there was no question that it was green-lit for another season. It's since become a running joke that Robot Chicken gets "canceled" at the end of every season and "renewed" at the beginning of the next. Even if it means they have to get Seth MacFarlane to help them.
    "Wow, Seth MacFarlane, you can do anything!"
  • In the spring of 1976, Joe Barbera was at lunch with ABC head of children's programming Michael Eisner. Joe quietly said "CBS is cancelling Scooby-Doo...would you be interested it it?" Eisner's eyes popped wide open and he said "When can I have him??!" CBS dropped Scooby on August 7, 1976 (replaced by Scooby expy Clue Club) in preparation for his move to ABC where he'd have a ten-year straight run.
  • Sheep in the Big City was initially cancelled after the first season finished airing in the summer of 2001, but popular demand led to a second season being ordered in the fall. The series was cancelled again after the second season in 2002, this time for real.
  • South Park. Both Comedy Central and creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were uncertain that the show would even draw mediocre ratings, let alone become a massive cultural phenomenon, so only six episodes were ordered. Parker and Stone put the bulk of their attention elsewhere with films such as BASEketball, but once South Park unexpectedly became Comedy Central's highest rated show and a hit among pretty much everybody from high schoolers to big name celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld, everyone scrambled to quickly create four holiday-themed episodes ("Pink Eye", "Starvin' Marvin", "Damien"note  and "Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo") to tide fans over, followed by three more episodes to round out Season 1 and establish South Park as a full-fledged series.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants was originally supposed to end with the 2004 movie. However, the show's continued popularity led it to be revived the following year, and SpongeBob is still on to this day.
  • Star Trek: Prodigy was cancelled by Paramount+ and erased from it streaming service in 2023 despite a second season already being greenlit and announced as forthcoming. Tax write-offs and Hollywood Accounting were allegedly to blame for the show's erasure from Paramount+, and after a vocal and dedicated fan campaign to see the series saved by another network, Season 2's episodes, finished and unfinished alike, were sold to Netflix to air in early 2024. This marks the second such time a Star Trek show was saved by a fan campaign, the first time being the Original Series all the way back in 1968.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars was cancelled in 2013 after Season 5, with the remaining episodes airing in 2014 as Season 6 under the label "The Lost Missions". It was later brought back in 2018 for a proper conclusion, with Season 7 debuting on Disney+ in February 2020.
  • Totally Spies! ended with a Grand Finale in 2008 after five seasons. It was renewed for a sixth season in 2013, and another one ten years later.
  • Tuca & Bertie only got one season on Netflix in 2019, but its Acclaimed Flop status caused it to get picked up by [adult swim] for a second season in 2021.
  • After being cancelled back in 2006, Xiaolin Showdown received a reboot, Xiaolin Chronicles, in 2013.
  • Young Justice was canceled after its second season ended in early 2013, with the final tag blatantly confirming the oft-hinted-at alliance between Darkseid and The Light. note  Despite a passionate campaign from fans, Cartoon Network wasn't swayed. However, a third season would be made for DC Universe and begin airing January 2019, followed by a fourth season for HBO Max at debuted in 2021.

    Real Life 
  • Indiana Beach was originally shut down by Apex for financial reasons, but the local government went out of their way to make sure Indiana Beach got a buyer. "Permanently" on their "Permanently closed" graphic is now crossed off on their Facebook and Twitter blogs.
  • The theme of the 2020 Myer Melbourne Christmas Windows is "Christmas is Uncancelled", since the COVID-19 Pandemic, and in particular the outbreak in Australia, including Melbourne and the state of Victoria, led to genuine fears that people would be unable to celebrate Christmas (and in fact the Myer Christmas Windows themselves were announced as being cancelled in September). Thankfully, the state managed to not only get the outbreak under control, but eliminate community transmission of the virus, allowing celebrations in a somewhat normal manner.
  • G4TV is an example of an entire television network getting revived, having originally shut down in 2014 before relaunching as an Internet-only presence in 2020, followed by the return of its cable channel the following year. It didn't last long however, shutting down once again after barely a year on the air.

Statler: You know, I don't think this show deserved its second shot on TV.
Waldorf: I don't think it deserved its first!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!

 
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All the shows cancelled by Fox

Peter sadly tells of all the shows Fox made to replace them. It's quite a large list.

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