Snap Back

Richard: Somebody think of something, I can't hold 'em off forever!
Nicole: No! This is it! It's all over! The end of the Wattersons!
Gumball: The only thing that can save us is reality being completely reset by some kind of magic device!
[The episode ends abruptly]

— The Amazing World of Gumball, "The Finale"

Similar to the Reset Button, except that the writers make no attempt to get rid of the plotline's ramifications by story's end. Instead, things are back to normal by the start of the next episode with no explanation.

Repeated use of Snap Back may, for good or bad, cause Negative Continuity. (Entries on this page that start with "Every episode of..." should probably be on that other page instead.) For use of Snap Backs from a character's (non)-developmental point of view, see Aesop Amnesia.

Compare Unexplained Recovery for when the Snap Back concerns one specific character, and They Killed Kenny Again when it's the same character over and over again. See also Continuity Reboot, Negative Continuity, and Status Quo Is God. Could be used to subvert May It Never Happen Again.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

One early filler episode of Fairy Tail has Natsu, Loke, Gray, Lucy, Erza, and Happy all swap bodies, then learn they have half an hour to reverse the spell before the effects become permanent. With Levy's help they figure out how to undo the spell in the last minute, but there's only time to return Lucy and Gray to normal, and Levy accidentally swaps the whole rest of the guild while she's doing this. The episode promptly ends, and everything is back to normal the next time, in spite of them referencing it in a non-filler episode later.
In a chapter of Franken Fran, Officer Kuhou is surgically transformed into a Cute Monster Girl. A few chapters later, she is seen as a human again, with no explanation about how she was turned back. The Officer Kuhou in that and later stories may be a clone; she states herself that she doesn't know if she is the original in chapter 21 page 13.
Officer Kuhou: I remember! Am I real!? Am I a clone!?
Franken Fran: Calm down, calm down. It's all the same.
Pokémon the Series:
- Happens to the Team Rocket trio arguably in every episode that ends with them blasting off again, but three notable instances early on in the series stand out: 1) Abra and the Psychic Showdown, in which Jessie and James are left paralyzed for the entirety of the episode after an encounter with Sabrina's doll, 2) Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon in which they are last shown sealed inside a cave with the aforementioned Pokémon, who were previously implied to be aggressive predators, and 3) Viva Las Lapras, in which Team Rocket is arrested at the end, in one of the few times in the entire series (the previous time it happened had a scene where they dug out of prison). Cassidy and Butch have gone to jail several times, but it's usually stated that Giovanni springs for their release, something he's unlikely to do for Jessie and James.
- Happens to Ash at one time, in a way that almost lampshades it. At the end of one episode, Ash gets accidentally turned into a Pikachu. The next episode starts just in time for the spell to wear off.
Mugen, Jin, and Fuu die in one episode of Samurai Champloo. This episode is never mentioned again and the characters are alive again in the next episode. This is never explained.
Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei:
- Itoshiki apparently dies in one episode and runs away after being unable to figure out if he is really himself in another. He's back next episode without explanation.
- He actually is killed by his female "admirers" in the class in the middle of one episode in Zan, and is alive in the next scene. Maybe it never happened? Maybe he just got better? Does it matter?
Space☆Dandy:
- The first episode ends with the main heroes dying in an explosion. They're fine in the next episode, though QT questions it during the preview.
- Numerous other episodes end in such a way that the series couldn't possibly continue, but snaps back and continues anyway. The Series Finale eventually reveals that all of these episodes are canon, thanks to the existence of The Multiverse.
The plotlines of Urusei Yatsura frequently devolve into total chaos — accompanied by either massive property damage or a run-from-the-lynch-mob chase scene — but the chaos is always resolved offscreen between episodes. The other half of the plots end up with something apparently permanent happening to Ataru: getting split into two exact clones, or getting trapped in an alternate dimension, or getting his house overrun with mirror-demons, just to name a few. All of these consequences always end offscreen by the next chapter.
In Gugure! Kokkuri-san, characters can die or get maimed, and the world and reality can change, but nothing would really affect the plot or character dynamics as most everything go back to normal by the next chapter/episode. In fact, the characters express surprise when one story actually gets carried over for more than one chapter.
Gintama: Usually operate on Status Quo Is God, with things mostly back to normal at the end of a arc when the problem is solved, but a few episodes end in a unresolved situation, with the resolution happening offscreen before the next one. For example, the body swap arc end up with most of the main cast turned into giant living poop (literally), and a few episodes conclude with one or several characters in the hospital, only for said character to be fine by the next episode.
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes: Whatever the situation of the character at the end of a episode is, things are back to normal (well, as normal as Milky Holmes get) at the start of the next one. This is averted on one occasion, after Kokoro is taken home by Irene at the end of episode 3. When the main characters come across G4 in the following episode, they notice that Kokoro is missing and wonder where she is.
A slight aversion for Akazukin Chacha: Episode 19 ends with Dorothy, Shiine's master, trapped in a dungeon at her childhood home, then she's absent for much of Episode 20. In Episode 21 (the Hot Springs Episode), she's back in the countryside near the magic school with no explanation as to how she was able to get out (Fridge Logic suggests she realized she had magic powers and poofed her way home).
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: "...of the Dead" ends with everyone but Garterbelt being turned into a zombie, with Panty and Stocking noticing that they probably won't end up reverting back to normal. The next episode, everything is back to normal with no explanation. The recap episode even shows that the zombie apocalypse really did happen.
The Detective Conan franchise:
- With few notable exceptions (such as Heiji Hattori, or members of the Organization), whenever anyone notices Conan is significantly smarter than he should be or that most of Kogoro's deductions while awake come from hints dropped by Conan, they invariably forget about it by the end of the episode. For example:
  - In "Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages" (when Takagi and Conan are trapped in an elevator with a bomb and believe they're going to die), after Conan has demonstrated a remarkable degree of intelligence and maturity, Takagi asks Conan "who [he] really [is]". (And Conan replies, "I'll tell you…in the next life!") However, nothing is ever made of this after the episode is over—Takagi drops right back into oblivious Butt-Monkey mode.
  - In one two-hour episode where Ran suspects Conan is Shinichi, she observes that he is always "coming up with things" and makes a point of interceding with Kogoro to give him free reign to make his deductions—even lending him a pen to make notes. However, in subsequent episodes (the rest of the series thus far) she is back to scolding Conan for wandering around and "interfering with Kogoro's investigations", and picking him up and hustling him away whenever a police officer complains about a little kid at the crime scene.
  - In another episode where she suspects Conan of being Shinichi because his cellphone beeped when she sent Shinichi an email, she notices how Conan is stage-managing the investigation through hint-dropping—but again seems to forget all about it after she is convinced she was mistaken.
  - It is very much an either-or proposition: outside of the episodes where she suspects Conan is Shinichi, Ran by and large fails to take notice of his unusual intelligence—or if she does, it is trumped by his young age.
- This was somewhat averted after a long while. Many of the less-oblivious characters around Conan (and some guest investigators from other precincts) eventually came to realize that he keeps noticing useful stuff and that things he tends to say (supposedly) at random end up leading them on to solve the cases. Satou caught onto his usefulness almost immediately (and is so sharp in general that Conan has come to realize he dares not pull the "Sleeping Kogoro" act when she is around lest he risk her catching on).
- The "death" of Noah's Ark at the end of Detective Conan Film 06: The Phantom of Baker Street can be said as one, to prevent the risk of adding in another Canon Immigrant as people who knew Conan's secret are, otherwise, important characters.

Comic Books

Grant Morrison's run on JLA is rather infamous for its rather extreme snapbacks. Premised on the idea of the JLA being an allegory for a pantheon of gods, it was decided that the JLA (being made up of seven of the heaviest of the heavy-hitters in the DCU; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter) would only tackle huge, often literally world-shattering events. Threats included but were not limited to: an assault on Earth (okay, San Francisco) by renegade angels from Heaven, a war between two nigh-omnipotent djinn that threw the Earth and moon around like basketballs, not one but two mass invasions by White Martians, and (as a grand finale) a massive galaxy-killing superweapon that was defeated by granting temporary superpowers to THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EARTH. The snapback from that final arc (awesome though it is) is enough to give you whiplash. The entire human race apparently suffers no consequences, societal changes or other effects from acquiring superpowers, fighting a galaxy-killing superweapon, and then losing those powers again; in fact, they never even bring it up. Not even in a "Oh, it's Batman: I sure wish I had superpowers again right now" kind of way.
Sabretooth. During 2014's AXIS, he was inverted due to a spell gone wrong by Scarlet Witch & becomes a good guy. He tries to find his own Wolverine, by following Logan's example. He tries to atone for his past, but he's not trusted by anyone. He eventually had a budding romance with Monet St. Croix in Uncanny X-Men (2016). He was very protective of her, to the point he let her feed on him after she's cursed by Emplate & becomes a vampire. The run is cancelled due to Resurr Xion, and Creed was shown to have run away with Monet in the last chapter. His inversion showed signs of slipping, but he tried to fight it -using his desire to help Monet as motivation. He knows he's not the man his inverted self is, but doesn't wanna be a monster again. He vows to be something other than the lie or the truth. Since 2017, he's has been starring in Pak's Weapon X vol 3. He's no longer wearing his X-Men costume, he's back to hating Wolverine, and just wants to kill people again. AXIS nor his inversion have come up, and his entire relationship with Monet has been dropped with no closure.
The Disney Ducks Comic Universe is notorious for this. No matter how extreme the events in a story, they're nearly always somehow undone at the end and never referred to in any later tale. The protagonists may be run out of town, Duckburg may be the victim of a natural disaster, but all of the events have been magically undone. The most obvious example is Uncle Scrooge's money bin, which is completely destroyed multiple times (or in one case, forced to move elsewhere due to the city planning construction that would have to go through it, only to of course be back in its typical spot next story). Some things seem to be unalterable, though — while Scrooge may lose his money bin, the Beagle Boys never seem to be able to steal his money (except, ironically, in their very first appearance).
- Sort of lampshaded in one Don Rosa story where the money bin is totally destroyed and Scrooge (after managing to retrieve all his money) comments on how lucky it is that he has a "pre-fab bin" on standby in case of just such an emergency.
New Krypton introduced an entirely new status quo for the Superman franchise, with the title book being taken over by Mon-El, Nightwing and Flamebird taking over Action Comics, and a new planet full of Kryptonians being created. By the end of the event, New Krypton was destroyed, Flamebird and the new Kryptonians were all dead, and Mon-El and Nightwing were sent back into the Phantom Zone so that Superman could reclaim his two ongoing titles.
Because of DC Comics' New 52 Continuity Reboot in 2011, this occurred during Grant Morrison's Batman run. Prior to the reboot, Dick Grayson was serving as Gotham's Batman, whilst Bruce Wayne was dealing with matters on an international level as another Batman; when Morrison picked up his story after the reboot, Wayne was the sole Batman again and Grayson was back to being Nightwing to match up with the rest of the New 52 comics without any sort of explanation, whilst Barbara Gordon - long retired from the Batgirl role prior to the reboot - was back in the costume, replacing Stephanie Brown in the role.

Fan Works

This is both subverted and lampshaded in You Got HaruhiRolled!, when Kyon tells Yuki that she can't talk about what happened in an earlier chapter because "after a chapter is over, nothing is canon. It all resets."
Ultra Fast Pony:
- In "Makin' Babies", the main cast are turned into babies by a miscast magic spell. The episode ends with them still stuck as babies. They're adults again in the next episode, with no explanation or even acknowledgement that the baby incident happened. The series creator lampshades this with his description of the episode: "I had a canon once. It was awful."
- Subverted elsewhere. In "Out With The Old Characters", Apple Bloom burns down the schoolhouse, which reappears in later episodes. The explanation comes in the next season's episode "Granny Smith Is Mean": The schoolhouse burns down again, then reappears in the very next scene. Sweetie Belle comments, "Aw, they're getting really fast at rebuilding the school."

Films — Live-Action

Transformers (2007) has Bumblebee regaining his ability to speak. In the next two, he's again talking in sound bites without explanation. Also, the first film ends with a very public battle between a ton of robots that no Weirdness Censor could possibly cover up, and yet the Transformers are back to being a secret only conspiracy theorists believe in by the next film.
James Bond: This happens to nearly every Bond Girl whether they survive or not. By the next film, Bond's moved on with no mention of the women from the last film, though that changed in the Daniel Craig era with the arc of his Second Love Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) in Spectre and No Time to Die.
In The Pink Panther series, there's the matter of Dreyfus. In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, he crosses the line between everyday villainy and Cartoonish Supervillainy, and the film ends with him being disintegrated from existence. In the very next film, he's in the same situation as he was before (being released from an insane asylum) with nary an explanation.
In the first Darkman film the artificial skin would break down after being exposed to light for exactly 99 minutes. In the sequel, Darkman works with another scientist and manages to create a new version of the skin which can withstand light for about half an hour longer. In the third film the time limit is again 99 minutes without explanation, other than the fact that the third film was originally filmed as the second.

Literature

The books of Robert Rankin's Brentford Trilogy appear to follow one another, except each one contains sufficient destruction to make the next impossible.
Ephraim Kishon has died and sometimes even gone to hell at the end of several of his short stories. Of course, it didn't exactly last.
For a while, it was common for Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt Adventures novels to end in sweeping global changes... that were promptly ignored by later novels in the series. These endings have included such things as the creation of a perfect "Star Wars" weapon system that would make nuclear war impossible, and the United States annexing Canada.
Roys Bedoys: In “Don’t Stay Up Late, Roys Bedoys!”, Roys, due to sleeplessness stunting his growth, becomes shorter than his friends. However, by the next story, they’re back to being all the same height.

Live-Action TV

LazyTown: A lot of episodes will have humorous misfortune befall Robbie at the end, like accidentally making a ton of clones of himself or being ejected to the moon. He's always fine come next episode.
Both played straight and subverted on NBC's Medium: while every episode, and indeed the entire premise of the show, is about how Alison has significant dreams, every time she wakes up from a dream and is upset, her husband Joe tells her to go back to sleep, because it was "just a dream". However, in the episode where their youngest daughter Marie requires glasses, she does indeed wear them again the next episode.
MST3K often does the Snap Back within the episode itself. One episode had Mike turned into a small, ventriloquist dummy-esque robot in the second host segment due to the effects of a wormhole the SOL was traveling through, and stayed that way until the next commercial break. Right after the break, he returns to normal with no more explanation than "I'm back!"
- Of course, the most common example of a Snap Back on MST3K was Frank getting killed by Dr. Forrester. In every case, he was back in the next episode, looking none the worse for wear. When Frank left the show, Dr. F sang a touching song called "Who Will I Kill?", and in an episode of Cinematic Titanic, Frank lampshades it by saying blithely, "In my experience, you can die and then come right back in the next episode.".
Police, Camera, Action!, a Genre Mashup of documentary, Edutainment Show, Reality TV and Gearhead Show does this almost every episode, with the explanation being that it's a "training exercise", which it most often is. Of course, any deaths etc. are strictly not real, even if it is Reality TV, and this being a bit more serious Reality TV, it's justified. Next episode, Alastair Stewart or the actors with him are back to normal, although this cannot be said for the individuals in the Real Life footage they have sourced.
Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
  - Spock steals the secret of the Romulan cloaking device, but the Federation never develops their own or learns how to counter it until the time of the next series. In a later Re Vision, it is explained that Starfleet has a treaty with the Romulans forbidding them from developing cloaking technology. Justified in-episode by acknowledging that cloaking technology is an ongoing arms race. Spock: "Military secrets are the most fleeting of all"
  - Kirk's brother dying is completely forgotten and everything is back to the status quo by next episode.
  - In the episode "The Changeling," Uhura is mindwiped, and the last we hear of her she can only speak Swahili and is being retaught how to read. She's back to normal by the next episode.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Character events such as Picard recovering from Cardassian torture or having lived an entire virtual life on another planet, are not addressed in later episodes. The one notable exception to this would be Picard's assimilation by the Borg, which returned repeatedly to haunt him over the years. Another would be Geordi's brainwashing by Romulans to assassinate a visiting Klingon, from which he's recovering at the end of the episode with Troi's help. It's not only never brought up again, but unclear whether he's rid of the brainwashing. You'd expect he would be removed from duty until they could be sure, as he's a security risk, but no, everything was the same in the next episode.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Miles O'Brien's traumatic fake 20-year prison sentence that culminated in a suicide attempt is never mentioned again.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In the episode "The Cloud" the replicator "fuel" is running low, which prompts the Voyager to venture into the eponymous cloud in hopes of siphoning materials to refill it from within. By the end of the episode, they have failed to do so, but in the next one there is no attention paid to casual use of the replicator.
A strange example: "Isaac and Ishmael", the third season opener to The West Wing, was prepared as a Very Special Episode reacting to the 9/11 attacks. During the opening sequence, the actors, out of character, outright state that the episode is "a storytelling aberration", and that the audience should not try to fit it into the series Story Arc. The episode falls right in the middle of a Cliffhanger, and series continuity proceeds directly from the preceding episode, "Two Cathedrals", to the next, "Manchester". While later episodes imply that the events of the episode are not, strictly speaking, non-canonical, they emphatically do not occur at any specific point in the series continuity.
On Saved by the Bell, Zach Morris works to understand a girl and her father who are very stand-offish in a Two-Part Episode. As it turns out, they're homeless and live in Bayside after it closes each day. There's a bit of a Tear Jerker conclusion when Zach allows both of them to live in his house...whereupon they are never seen nor mentioned by anyone again.
In the final episode of Series 1 of The IT Crowd, Jen sleeps with Moss, Roy sleeps with Moss's then-girlfriend (who also happens to look just like Roy's mother), and Richmond sleeps with the head of the company, Denholm Reynholm. Everything is back to normal at the start of Series 2.
Several characters, but especially Baltar, in Battlestar Galactica. Multiple early episodes end with him being convinced he is an instrument of God, while he's dismissive of the notion again at the start of the next episode.
Seinfeld:
- Jerry and Elaine attempt to maintain a sexual relationship in addition to their friendship. This naturally backfires, and the end of the episode appears to be Jerry and Elaine's friendship reaching an abrupt end. By the next episode, it's like nothing ever happened. This is due to Larry David thinking it would be the series finale. He'd always been against hooking Jerry and Elaine up, and only did it as a present to the execs on his way out. When the show was unexpectedly renewed, everyone agreed it was best to just sweep everything under the rug. That said, it is given a very brief Hand Wave in "The Pen", when Jerry's mother asks him what happened. He simply responds that it "didn't work out."
- At the end of "The Airport", George is trapped on an airplane with a serial killer. In the next episode, he's back in New York alive and well (as "well" as George gets, anyway).
- The end of "The Soup" has George banned from Monk's Cafe and sitting alone at Reggie's. Obviously, later episodes have him sitting back there with Jerry and the others talking about nothing, but with little to no explanation as to how.
- George seemingly gave up his philosophy of always doing the opposite off-screen between seasons. He still keeps the job with the Yankees he gained as a result of this philosophy, though.
On iCarly, Sam spends an episode doing a Girliness Upgrade because she's worried guys (and Pete, specifically) don't like her because she's too much of a tomboy. In the end, Sam has to give in to that tomboyish side to protect Carly from a bully. Pete and her end up walking out together because he likes a girl who can kick butt. He's never heard of again.
In the second episode of Garth Marenghis Darkplace, after Liz goes crazy and tries to kill everyone, she is given a lobotomy to remove her Psychic Powers. The next episode, she still has her psychic abilities, like nothing happened. Not that the show strives for continuity...
On Boy Meets World, a few of the wackier Eric plotlines in the final season had endings that led to this. For example, "The Honeymooners" ends by showing him being boiled in a big soup pot by Hawaiian natives, yet he's back at home with no mention of this in the next episode.
Adam was shot in a mid season finale in Degrassi...and then he gets better by the premiere of the second half of the season and only brings it up twice (and one of these time, it was a one off line that was played for laughs).
- Sinner was also shot and the only mention of it is when he wears a sling for his whole five second scene in the next episode.
An early episode of Father Ted ends with the atmosphere-sucking Father Stone being allowed to live in the Parochial House forever. He's never mentioned or seen again in the rest of the series.
In the Dinosaurs episode "Green Card", Mr. Richfield fires all of his tree pushers because there are no more trees for them to push. Although they do get hired back at WESAYSO by the end (to build a wall to keep four-legged Dinosaurs away, as they are blamed for the bad economy), we never see the trees fully grown back. The next episode we see them at work shows them working as if they hadn't previously run out of trees. Also, while most of the fired tree pushers get hired back, Richfield denies re-employment for Roy, who had just married Monica. We never see him get his job back (though the public changes its racism of four-legged Dinosaurs after they save the lives of those who got injurred building the wall to keep them out).
Friends: Chandler goes to Yemen to fend off Janice in "The One With All the Rugby". He's back in New York in the next episode with no explanation of how he got home.
The Muppet Show:
- In the episode with Kaye Ballard, the band decides to quit the show because they dislike the theme song, and during the end credits only Rowlf is in the orchestra. The band is back in the next episode with the Mummenschanz as if no conflict ever happened.
- In the episode with John Cleese, Gonzo's arm gets stretched longer after he catches a cannonball. When Gonzo asks the guest star for help, Cleese merely stretches Gonzo's other arm as well as his legs. After this Gonzo is not seen for the rest of the episode, and his condition isn't mentioned.
Married... with Children:
- One episode ended with them being turned into chimpanzees. Which they don't actually react to:
  Peggy: So, I guess we're monkeys. (No-one responds as they continue watching TV)
- Another episode has Bud fighting and resisting from being taken over by his "Inner cool self". At the end, his cool self has complete control of his body and it just ends there.
- Other episodes have ended with Al committing suicide by jumping from an airplane, getting rendered nearly catatonic from a wrestling match, or being locked away in the Tower of London.
NewsRadio used this frequently when the network would try and force the writers into a plotline. Probably the most jarring example is when Jimmy James hired a woman named Andrea as an efficiency expert. Andrea proceeded to demote Dave, promote Lisa in his place, and fire Matthew. This went on for a couple of episodes... until one episode Andrea was suddenly gone, Matthew had his job back, and everything else that happened in the arc was completely undone, except for the Dave/Lisa switch, without any explanation whatsoever.
Series 7 and 8 of Red Dwarf shifted the status quo of the series quite a bit - first by having the hologram of Rimmer Put on a Bus and replacing them with an alternate universe version of Lister's old girlfriend, Kristine Kochanski, and then by them finding a version of Red Dwarf that had been rebuilt by nanobots with all of the original crew alive and intact, including Rimmer. The final episode of the season (and the original Series Finale) ends with a cliffhanger where Rimmer is trapped alone aboard the ship as it's eaten apart with microbes. Cue the series being Un-Cancelled, and the series is right back to the status quo of Lister, Hologram Rimmer, the Cat, and Kryten alone aboard a perfectly intact Red Dwarf with almost no explanation given as to where everyone else went (besides Kochanski, where it's stated Kochanski left to attempt to find a way back to her own universe - finding her was a brief Series Goal before quietly being dropped), how Rimmer dealt with the microbes, or how he died and became a hologram again. In "The Beginning", Rimmer is about to launch into an explanation of how he saved the ship from the microbes before being cut off.
Frasier would occasionally have episodes ended with situations where Frasier would, by all accounts, be completely embarassed and have his reputation ruined (and a few episodes, such as "The Seal That Came To Dinner" and "Deathtrap" even ended with him and Niles being arrested), only for the next to begin with him once again being a relatively beloved public figure.

Radio

Several episodes of Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off end with Giles apparently facing certain death, only for him to be back to normal for the next one without explanation or acknowledgement.
While The Men from the Ministry doesn't quite enter Negative Continuity as some events are referenced in later episodes, but no matter what our "heroes" manage to screw up, everything is always back to normal by the next episode.

Video Games

Guilty Gear: Many characters' movelists in Xrd omit the newer moves from Accent Core and its revisions, returning them to their #Reload state. In turn, some of the tactics that had been patched out, such as Sol's dreaded Dust Loop, are back in full force.
At the end of Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst, you see a picture of the cleansed and cheerful Ravenhearst Manor. At the start of "Return To Ravenhearst", not only is it back to being a creepy, trash-filled house loaded with bizarre door locks, but it's been that way long enough for the local town council to have condemned the building.
In Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters it ends with Captain Quark shrinking down to action figure size, and just left like that yet in the next game, Tools of Destruction he is back to normal.

Web Animation

In Happy Tree Friends the characters die in every episode and yet they are alive and well in the next episode. For about 30 seconds, but still...

Web Comics

Goats used this trope to allow the comic to continue after frustrated aliens annihilated the Earth on a whim, killing or destroying everything relevant to the comic's canon. However, when the Earth conveniently returns after a week of guest comics, the characters remember everything (in the first comic after the Earth's destruction, a character asks, "Remember that time the Earth was destroyed?") making it either a lampshading or Subverted Trope, depending on how you look at it.
Penny Arcade does this a lot, but in a particularly notable storyline, one of the two protagonists accidentally kills his wife using a technique he learned from a video game, and goes on to win $20,000,000 in a lawsuit. The Snap Back is described in the protagonist's own words thusly: "Money's gone. In my grief, I paid a Mad Scientist twenty million for a cybernetic replica of my dead wife. It was my wish that it look, feel, and behave just as she did." The next panel keeps it from qualifying as the Reset Button, as said replica is simply a bucket on roller skates, and his wife does indeed return without explanation. They almost never use continuity. Jokes and character traits, as well as characters can repeat, but they even once cancelled the final strip of a 3-part arc for fear of creating continuity. 3-part arcs are the longest anyone gets one Penny Arcade that aren't Twisp, Catsby or the Cardboard Tube Samurai.
Bob the Angry Flower is mostly a series of one-shots with very weak continuity. Since Bob is both powerful and amoral, it could be no other way. But one of the books includes a UN Field Guide to Bob and his various weapons and devices, which lampshades the lack of continuity and justifies it as the diligent efforts of the government. (Never let Bob near the button that blows up the Earth, since we barely managed to put it back together and resurrect everybody last time.)
Subverted and lampshaded during the transition between The Apple of Discord (a joke-a-day comic that had been heavy on Snap Back) to the spinoff comic, Apple Valley (an ongoing story comic with little-to-no Snap Back that grew out of AoD) . Several characters go out drinking, only to wake up several states away from home with no idea where they are or how to get home. Thinking the 'joke' done, they wait around for the comic to return to normal, and are horrified when it doesn't and they realize they now have to walk home.
On +EV, Harold won a lot of money and lost it again, lost weight and gained it again... and so on.
Powerup Comics has a bizarre Meta Fiction example: The comic was put on hiatus after (fictional) "creative differences" between Shadow and Chug. The comic came back abruptly in late 2016 without addressing this.
In The Motley Two, one of these happened sometime in the past, due to unknown temporal chicanery. Subverted In the effects do not go unnoticed by the general populace.

Western Animation

In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, this is usually what happens with Robotnik or his dumb-bots. However, when his base is destroyed in "Robo-Ninjas", one of the last episodes, for the rest of the series it stays gone, averting this.
The original Æon Flux shorts often ended in her violent and occasionally gruesome death. In half (the pilot, 5 from second season, 2 from third season) of the episodes, the series would have her suffer some apparent terrible fate, and only one episode gives any explanation for why she was around the next episode. A fanon explanation is that the various Aeon Fluxes are clones. This is unconfirmed, Peter Chung has stated his distaste for Word of God. The supporting evidence is from one episode did feature an Aeon clone (and if you're not paying attention, you'll think there are a lot more— but the others are just women that Trevor made dress up like Aeon). Another episode (beyond the eight) features Aeon dying multiple times, each time coming back without explanation. This episode is notoriously difficult to make sense of, and in a bizarre twist, it's the only episode in the entire series which makes a reference to another episode.
The Amazing World of Gumball: Many episodes end in ways with situations barely resolved by episode's end, but they change back by the time the next new episode premieres.
- Deconstructed and subverted in the season two finale "The Finale." It starts off as a Clip Show, but as the Wattersons begin to reminisce, various townspeople come to them demanding restitution for all the damage they've done over the previous two seasons. After failing to make amends to the townspeople and having to escape jail, they reason that the only way to get their happy ending is to take their destructive habits up to eleven and cause more trouble than ever before. This ends up causing the entire town to form an angry mob and corner them in their home, with Gumball proclaiming that the only way out of this is "some magical device that resets everything." Smash to Black, and the episode ends abruptly. Come the very next episode, everything is back to normal for the Wattersons without any mention to those events.
American Dad! frequently uses this trope. There have only been three permanent changes to the show's canon: Hayley's marriage to Jeff, the death of Miriam Bullock, and Terry being Put on a Bus.
- Stan has lost a finger in at least two episodes, but is still normally shown with all eight fingers.
- Klaus dies at the end of "Buck, Wild", and is back to life in the next episode.
- Duper has died twice.
- "Rubberneckers" ends with Stan being sentenced to six years in prison for insurance fraud. The next episode has Stan free and it's never mentioned again.
- "The Shrink" is the most extreme example: Stan, Francine, Steve, and Hayley are shrunken using the CIA's Shrink Ray, which Stan then throws away. At the end of the episode, Roger eats the family. In the next episode, they are all alive again and back to their normal sizes.
- Stan and Francine die at the end of "Hot Water", although it was intended to be the series finale.
- "Ricky Spanish" ends with Roger, under his most evil persona yet, getting Steve thrown in jail. Steve gets out, but he's now a stoic, muscular criminal who swears revenge on Ricky Spanish. By the next episode, Steve is back to being a scrawny nerd.
- "Rapture's Delight" is a extreme example, everyone except Stan and Francine are raptured, and Stan finally goes to Heaven at the end of the episode with his own personal Heaven being a recreation of his personal life before the Rapture happened, only with Klaus being dead. By the next episode, everything is back to normal and the events of the episode are never mentioned again.
- "Brave N00b World" ends with Earth being destroyed in a nuclear armageddeon and aliens trying to recreate life on Earth after discovering a stray ball of ice cream from a destroyed Chinese culture pod. By the next episode, everything is back to normal and everyone is alive again, as if the events of the episode never happened.
- "A League of His Own" ends with Francine trapped in a port-a-potty in a warehouse far away from Langley Falls. By the next episode, she's back in Langley Falls with no explanation as to how she got out.
The American Dragon: Jake Long episode "Dragon's Breath" ends with the reveal that Trixie and Spud's souls somehow got switched after the villain was defeated. By the next episode, they're back in their right bodies with no explanation as to how the swap was undone.
Like many of its other contemporary cartoons from the late 90s-early 2000s, a number of episodes of The Angry Beavers have ended with everything from Earth being frozen over thanks to a space junk beaver dam blocking the sun, Earth's core being destroyed resulting in 99% of the planet being covered in lava (with the only apparent survivors being Norbert, Daggett, Stump, and a lizard), Norbert and Daggett being transformed into single-celled organisms or humans, or Daggett being stuck at the beginning of time, but everything and everyone is back to normal by the next episode.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- The show liberally uses a Snap Back at the end of every episode, whether it's really needed or not. No matter what happens, the next episode will have totally restored the players to start. Thus Carl's house still stands despite the fact it's been destroyed several times. Shake is still alive despite being killed at least three times. Frylock moves into his own apartment in one episode, declares he's never coming back (and he really means it, even refusing to be asked back), but is living at the Teens' house again in the next episode. The lack of continuity is never fully addressed, and considering the wackiness of the show, it's arguably not even a problem. A Running Gag on the show is centered around the only character who does not get a Snap Back each time, M.C. Pee Pants.
- Surprisingly averted in the movie, which shows that the Aqua Teens used to have a brother made out of concentrated chicken nuggets, but was then devoured by a lion. It's never explained why HE didn't get to use the reboot button.
Archer, a show that's heavy enough on continuity to reach lockout levels, nonetheless has one example of this in "Nellis". The episode starts with Archer saying that he's on the no-fly list (and the fictious no-train list) but the very next episode starts with him in an airport, flying to meet Lana's parents. The episode also has him invading Area 51 and stealing a plane by impersonating a CIA official, which is something that the show wouldn't normally gloss over.
Many episodes of CatDog end with the titular Conjoined Twins suffering an unpleasant predicament, only for things to be back to normal in the next episode. Two of the most notable examples are losing their house to the Gopher in "Home is Where the Dirt Is" and ending up permanently trapped inside a Mean Bob movie in "Spaced Out".
Chowder manages a particularly impressive Snap Back after the show basically deletes itself.
Literally every episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. Something horrible and irreversible always happens to a member of the cast (usually Eustace), but none of these changes ever remain for longer than that episode. It's not Negative Continuity, however, because villains return and reference their previous exploits and backstories remain consistent.
This didn't happen too much on Dexter's Laboratory due to the lack of continuity in general, but "Let's Save the World You Jerk!" ends with the Earth destroyed by a wave of meteors. Later episodes of the show were set on a still-functioning Earth.
This happens in the The Fairly OddParents! all the time. Granted, in many cases the show would end if it didn't return to the Status Quo. However, it seems pretty jarring when the characters wise up, the most notorious example being Wishology, in which Timmy Turner FINALLY begins making mature decisions without magic and concerning his fairies. He, also, uses the magic when he does have access to it in a mature way. By using this Reset Button this causes all sorts of Negative Continuity on the show's part.
- Especially notable is that at least two episodes ended with Vicky in jail, and it doesn't stop her from coming back in the next episode. Considering her parents fear her, one has to wonder who bails her out.
- This is another show that often does a snap back within the episode itself, like the time when Foop was cut in half, only to be cured in the next shot.
Family Guy: Many episodes usually end in ways that have that are barely resolved by the episode's end, only for everything to be back to normal by the next episode, the only things that have actually remained permanent are when some characters are Killed Off for Real.
- Lampshaded in one episode; as the characters walk off, they comment that Peter has still lost his job, and he compares it to an episode of another series with a similar Snap Back, then expresses his disapproval of the notion. Roll credits. This is then subverted in the following episode, which involved both a job hunt and taking a new job. The show recycles the "Peter loses his job, gets a new one the following episode" plot, but it isn't as glaring as Recycled Scripts usually are, since in three of the episodes it's the B Plot.
- Subverted in "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing." At the end of the episode, Peter is found guilty and given a prison sentence for blowing up a children's hospital. However, his sentence is only a week long and he is told that he will be out next Sunday at 9, just in time for the next episode.
- In "La Famiglia Guy", Peter has Brian killed for finishing his last can on cream soda (he would have killed him for eating his chicken parm from the previous night, but stopped his assault when Lois brings home steak sandwiches on ciabatta), only for Brian to immediately show up in the next scene as if nothing happened. Then Stewie kills him for eating his Stella D'oro breakfast cookies, but that doesn't stop Brian from continuing to appear in the episode alive and well. At the end of the episode, he gets killed again by Lois for drinking the rest of her white wine, but to no one's surprise, he's in the next episode, death be damned.
- In "The Candidate", Joe is disintegrated by a laser fired by the military for asking too many questions. In his next appearance, he's alive and well with no explanation as to how he was resurrected.
Fanboy and Chum Chum. Some episodes ended with characters being eaten by monsters, getting morphed into toasters, puppets and frogs, being blown up, sent into space, getting sucked into rips between space-time continuums, turned into talking dust, but by the next episode, everything is back to normal.
Any time Fred Flintstone got fired from Slate Rock and Gravel Company or when the episode ends with him still in deep, deep trouble with Wilma.
Futurama:
- Lampshaded in "When Aliens Attack." After convincing the Omicronians to stop attacking Earth with a fake 1999 TV broadcast, Fry says it's a law of television that "At the end of the episode, everything's always right back to normal." The camera then shows an external shot of the building, with surrounding New New York in flames and the Statue of Liberty crumbling. Despite this, by the next episode, everything is back exactly the way it was.
- In "The Cryonic Woman", Fry loses his job at Planet Express. At the end he asks Farnsworth if he'll rehire him, but gets rejected. By the start of the next episode, he's back to being a delivery boy.
- As the above lampshading implies, Futurama uses this trope all the time. In one episode, Bender has a doomsday bomb in his chest, which he detonates at the end of the episode ("Antiquing? KABOOM") while all the other protagonists are standing right next to him. Everything is back to normal by the next episode, and the explosion is never mentioned again, giving Big-Lipped Alligator Moment a whole new meaning. Though said explosion happens literally right as the credits start rolling, and Bender has a line after the explosion, making it seem less dire.
- The original FOX run's final episode "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings" notably had Leela deafened and only being able to restore her hearing by putting on Calculon's ears, while Bender was tricked by the Robot Devil into giving away his crotchplate, rendering his "Bite my shiny metal ass" catchphrase an empty insult. Both of those developments were ignored by the direct-to-DVD movie era, though in Bender's case there's a possibility that it wasn't too difficult for Bender to regain his crotchplate, as the Robot Devil simply disposed of it in a trash can at the Planet Express building after making the deal with Bender.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy has a number of episodes that end like this, including (but not limited to): Mandy accidentally wishing everyone on Earth was gone except for herself; Grim, Mandy, Billy, and Irwin regressing back into babies and disappearing; Endsville getting turned into a giant cheese pizza; all inhabitants on Earth (including Mandy) having Billy's genes and traits (big nose, egg-shaped head, dumb); Mandy's smile causing the universe to fall apart and transporting Grim, Billy, and herself to Townsvile as the Powerpuff Girls; Nergal forcing everybody in Endsvile to be his friends by way of mind control (as well as the viewer in breaking the fourth wall); and Grim, Billy, and Mandy fused together as some Tetsuo-like creature due to the Apple of Discord. No matter what though, by the next episode, everything's back to normal. Many of these examples could probably be explained by Grim being a Reality Warper, though.
Hey Arnold!:
- In "Rhonda's Glasses," Rhonda gets glasses; by story's end, she eventually decides on a non-geeky pair. Said glasses don't show up in later episodes.
- In "Harold the Butcher," Harold has to work at Mr. Green's butcher shop to make up for stealing a ham; by story's end, he's become an afterschool apprentice butcher. This was never brought up again, and was conspicuously absent from Hey Arnold! The Movie, when Mr. Green sadly mentions that he has no one he can leave his butcher shop to when he retires.
- "Mugged": Arnold learns martial arts. Where is it for the rest of the series?
- Nearly very other "learned lesson" in the series seemed to suffer from this on occasion. In some cases, especially in the final season, this was easily dealt with by applying a change to a lesser character, and then shoving that character into the background for the rest of the series, (e.g. "Chocolate Boy").
Almost every episode of Making Fiends has ended in a Snap Back, except for web episodes 18-21.
Invader Zim:
- Almost every episode ended in this manner. (Like the one where Dib and Zim get turned into bologna. However, in that specific case, in another episode Dib references the situation, and how he and Zim worked together to get out of it.) Zim simply screams "YOU'RE MAKING IT UP!" Whether this counts as Zim being Zim or Canon Discontinuity is up to the viewer.
- There's a few other good examples, like the one where Dib ends up trapped in an Irken-designed cage while being beaten by a monkey, as Zim watches, and meanwhile Gaz has a robotic Dib maid (meaning Membrane will not question where Dib is). Who could have let him out of the cage?
- Or the one where Zim's brain-sucking monster attacks him, which supposedly would have killed him.
  - There is always the possibility that Irkens can survive having their brains eaten.
- It seemed like Zim died at the end of "The Wettening". "HELP! HELP! AAAH! I CAN'T BREEATHE! I-"
- This has continued into the comic series. Issues can end with things like the Earth getting kicked into the sun by a Star Donkey (which ends up being snapped back by the end of the very issue it happens) and Gaz taking over the Earth after body-swapping with Zim, but ultimately it'll all be ignored by the very next issue.
Any time George Jetson got fired from Spacely Space Sprockets. Heck, one episode ended with the entiety of Spacely Space Sprockets folding, and George going to work for the competition, with his boss following suit.
This has happened frequently on Jimmy Two-Shoes.
- Two episodes have ended with Lucius and Samy falling into an infinite abyss, only to be out by the next episode. Lucius also went insane on two separate occasions, only to be totally cured by the next episode. And then one episode ended with Miseryville being completely destroyed by a giant insect monster, only for the city to be completely fine in the very next episode.
- The show often does a Snap Back within the episode itself for one-off jokes. For example, in one episode, a hairspray turns Jimmy into a giraffe, then he suddenly turns back to a human without explanation. Another episode, Heloise's hair gets eaten by Beezy, but in the following scene, she's got it all back again.
- A few episodes have even ended with the conflict never being solved, like "Cellphone-itis", where Beezy's cellphone dependency ends up saving Lucius, or "Jimmy, Don't Be a Hero", where Lucius finds out from Samy that he still owes Jimmy for saving his life. Those problems are completely forgotten by the next episode.
Kaeloo: Several characters have been blown up, decapitated, launched into orbit, trapped in different dimensions or time periods, committed suicide, etc., but everyone is perfectly fine by the next episode.
In Kim Possible:
- The Non-Action Guy Ron learns ass kicking Monkey Kung Fu, but only actually uses it in a very few episodes, most of them monkey-oriented. Shego and Drakken are left Trapped in TV Land, but appear again without comment. Kim and Ron become involved with international law-enforcement organisation Global Justice, but they're usually saving the world on their own. It's not for nothing the producers said that any continuity happened by accident. When the series was renewed for a fourth season, things started to carry over a bit more.
- Lampshaded in one episode. "Aren't you a master of mystical monkey kung fu?" "Eh, it comes and goes, you know?"
- At the end of the episode "Monkey Ninjas In Space", an army of monkey ninjas following a prophecy decide that Ron is their leader, and Kim and Ron are left wondering what to do about them. The monkeys are never mentioned again, and Ron being the "ultimate monkey master" actually is, but only in the Grand Finale.
- Drakken's lair is always rebuilt by his next appearance; Ron's attempts to improve his popularity or social standing never stick; Kim cedes the captaincy of the cheer squad to Bonnie at the end of "Number One" but is back in the role later. The last is the only one given any onscreen justification (Kim predicts that Bonnie will get tired of the hard work of being squad captain).
- So The Drama even verges on Broad Strokes, such as rolling back Kim's learning to reject peer pressure and the hierarchy of the school "food chain", or Bonnie's Character Development to return her to her original role as Alpha Bitch.
The Littlest Pet Shop (2012) episode "A Day at the Museum" ended with the seeming addition of a main character, a triceratops named Minling. By the next episode, Minling is nowhere in sight, and everyone acts as if she never existed. It seems the writers wanted to do a Gainax Ending just to say they did. (The show loves to parody a lot of things, including tropes)
In the Metalocalypse episode "Tributeklok", Murderface falls out of a helicopter (which is up pretty high) into an angry mob. The next episode, he's perfectly fine. This is especially confusing considering that Charles Ofdensen, after being beaten almost to death at the end of season two, now has a scar on his face, showing that the show does have SOME continuity.
Happened in almost every single sketch of Monkey Dust where people are brought back to life so they can repeat the same gag in a slightly different way.
Subverted, and possibly parodied, on My Life as a Teenage Robot. In one episode, Jenny had accidentally thrown Sheldon into space with a bunch of Jenny-worshipping aliens. Sheldon shows up again in the episode that aired with the previous one, but is now an old man, thanks to an apparent lifetime traveling at relativistic speeds trying to get back to Earth (which actually works the other way), and Jenny doesn't recognize him at first.
The OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "We've Got Fleas" featured K.O., Rad, and Enid being turned into a puppy, a cat, and a rabbit respectively after being bitten by Crinkly Wrinkly. They eventually find out that they can't turn back to their normal selves and end up resorting to wearing costumes of how they were before they became were-creatures. By the next episode, everything is back to normal.
- Ultimately subverted when the episode "K.O.'s Video Channel" reveals that they're still animals, but just now wear more realistic costumes than what they previously had.
- Played straight in "Soda Genie", where Rad is transformed into a burger by a Jackass Genie and is still a burger at the end of the episode, but by his next appearance he is back to normal without any explanation.
Phineas and Ferb:
- Doctor Doofenshmirtz is always back to normal by the start of the next episode, no matter what horrible thing has happened to him. Lampshaded in one episode where his daughter says, in response to a boy noting that Doofenshmirtz has just blasted off tied to a giant fireworks rocket, "He'll be fine. He blows up all the time."
- "Agent Doof" lampshades this at the end, when Candace is faced with other characters (even her mother) turned into babies. She vocally declares that she hopes it wears off before the next episode.
Happens a few times in Pinky and the Brain.
- In "That Smarts", Brain invents a machine to make Pinky as smart as he is; his plan backfires and both of them end up reversing the process on themselves and becoming idiots. The episode simply ends with the two of them sitting in the cage, both now too stupid to operate the machine. Next episode, they are back to normal.
- The episode "It's Only a Paper World" ends with everyone transferred from the real Earth into a fake version of the Earth made out of papier-mache, and the real Earth subsequently exploding. It was a show that epitomized Negative Continuity.
The Planet Sheen episode "QuaranSheen" had Sheen make up an illness called dance fever so he'd have an excuse to not go to the ball with Oom and the series' villain Dorkus taking advantage of this by tricking the Zeenuians into believing that dance fever was contagious in spite of Sheen's claims so that Sheen would be thrown into a cave. The episode ends with nearly the entire main cast quarantined, but everything is fine in the next episode.
The fourth season of Rick and Morty ended with what appears to be a massive shift to the status quo: it's revealed Rick did clone Beth at the end of the third season, but because he did so in such a way that disregards all responsibility for the choice, the entire family completely loses respect for him and strips him of all his control. The fifth season premiere, however, doesn't address any of this at all, with only a Hand Wave mention of Space Beth in the second episode.
Rocket Power, "That Old Skateboard" (Sam finds an old skateboard; by story's end, Otto and Twister have had to fix it)
The Rugrats episode "Visitors From Outer Space" concludes with a Or Was It a Dream? ending, where, after having an alien abduction dream, Tommy wakes up safe and sound in his crib, but then we see Angelica still stranded on the desert planet digging around for something to eat. By the next episode's first segment, she's back on Earth with her family.
Typically Samurai Jack episodes end with the status quo being maintained. Jack survives unchanged, Aku escapes death, lesser antagonists are killed or defeated utterly, whatever plot device Jack was planning to use to return to his own time is realized as a fake, destroyed, or taken by someone else. Now and then it isn't, and then this trope comes into play.
- In Season Two Jack learns to "jump good" in order to fight the rather large Aku. Nothing seemed to stop Jack from slaying Aku and/or getting to the portal and they... just cut it short there! No explanation, no flashbacks, no nothing! It is made even worse when it is given a Continuity Nod in a later episode.
- Then there's Jack actually managing to get his hands on the time-travel-related bauble of the episode and keeping it, fighting off Aku and looking at the intact gems in his hands with satisfaction. They are never seen or referenced again.
Sealab 2021 uses a Snap Back at the end of nearly every episode, when Sealab is destroyed.
Frequently parodied in The Simpsons.
- For example, the episode "The Principal and the Pauper." Also in "Homer Loves Flanders" wherein Lisa comments on the effect, playing with the Fourth Wall. And there's "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade" where Skinner says: "What this episode has taught us is that there's nothing better than the status quo," and promptly puts them back in their respective grades.
- Also somewhat subverted after The Simpsons Movie, as the opening for the first episode of the next season shows that Springfield is still being rebuilt.
- Also lampshaded in the film itself; Bart can't remember the word "consistency".
- "We're on the Road to D'ohwhere", wherein Homer gets in trouble with a Las Vegas pit boss after losing Bart and held hostage, and Marge ends up in prison for selling expired prescription drugs in a yard sale. This leaves Lisa to fend for herself and Maggie, something she apparently always thought would eventually happen. The episode ends with her saying that she'll look for work in the morning.... by the following episode, everything has been resolved/never happened in the first place.
- In "There's Something About Marrying", Homer gets a marriage license and holds weddings throughout the episode. At the end of the episode, Lisa, apropos of nothing, declares, "Well, that's the end of Dad's wedding business." This leaves Bart to ask, "Why?"
- The Bizarro Episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" ends with the family trapped on what is effectively the island from The Prisoner (1967). They're back home by the next episode with no explanation.
South Park:
- Just about every episode (in the first few seasons) involves Kenny dying in some horrific way, but he's back to normal in the next episode, even to the extent of phasing him back in at the beginning of a two-part episode when he died in the first part. Kenny is eventually Killed Off for Real in an episode heavy with Lampshade Hanging, the boys dreading the possibility that Kenny might die. He is eventually brought back but very rarely dies and is often given very little to do.
- Subverted in "Mysterion Rises". After 14 seasons, it turns out that Kenny is completely aware of every single death. And going right into a Crowning Moment Of Funny, when Kenny gets fed up with the gang and decides to just go to bed and get a good night's sleep. ... By shooting himself in the head. Furthermore, we learn that nobody - except for his parents - ever remembers any of Kenny's deaths. Which is why nobody is ever surprised to see him alive again the next day.
- "Trapper Keeper" is perhaps the only episode in which one of the boys' homes (Cartman's, in this case) is explicitly shown being destroyed. Of course, it's fully intact again in the next episode.
- Taken to hell and back with the two-parter "You're Getting Old" and "Ass Burgers": the former averts it by ending on Stan giving into his new and strictly pessimistic world-view (i.e., everything literally looking and sounding like shit) and having his move out of town with his newly-divorced mother, with no sign that anything will ever be the same; then played as straight as possible at the end of the latter where Stan comes to accept that life doesn't just "go back to normal" like a sitcom and that the only way that he'll ever grow as a person is if he accepts change... followed immediately by everything snapping back!
- In "Go Fund Yourself," the boys quit school to form a start-up company, and spend most of the episode telling their former classmates to "go fuck themselves." After their company inevitably fails, they're shocked to find that the expected snap back never happened, as everyone is still mad at them in the next episode.
A lot of Spliced episodes result in a Snap Back.
- One particularly notable episode ended with Entree dying when he falls off a cliff, his brain flies out of his head, and he gets crushed by a giant boulder. He's fine by the next episode.
- "Stomach on Strike": Peri lives inside Entree as his heart, stomach, and brain. He's back out by the next episode.
- "Clones Don't Care 'Bout Nothin' Either": Peri and Entree sail away from Keep Away Island to escape their clones. Next episode, they're back and their clones are never heard from again.
- "Two-Arms Joe": Peri loses one of his arms and Joe gives him a mechanical one instead. He has his arm back by next episode.
- "Walkie Talkie Spinesuckie": Entree's baby eats everyone's spines and Entree throws them in a volcano. They're all fine by the next episode.
- "Bite, Shuffle and Moan" ended with a Zombie Apocalypse and everyone except Peri turning into a zombie (Which ends with Peri stuck on an 10 ft wide island with his zombified friends coming closer and closer...). Somehow it just fixed itself...
- "Mole-sters in the Mist" dealt with Smarty Smarts shrinking everyone, so the Shrunken Peri and Entree team up with (The now equal size) tiny mole like creatures called Mole-sters to help fight back. Though at the end the Mole-sters double cross them, instead of growing the main cast back to normal, the episode ended with the Mole-sters making themselves human-sized and keeping the main cast as pets.
Plenty of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes result in these. In one, Squidward and SpongeBob were turned into snails, and in another they and Patrick were turned into fruit and about to be eaten by the Flying Dutchman. Multiple times, Bikini Bottom has been crushed, blown up, and destroyed. No matter what, everything is back to normal by the next episode with absolutely no explanation.
Squidbillies, which is created by the same team who made ATHF, takes this to a whole new level. Some characters end up dying, and will reappear in the same scene just after a camera switch. It soon gets so insane to the point where the entire cast is pretty much made up of Iron Butt Monkeys
While Steven Universe normally has continuity, Steven's TV is destroyed multiple times throughout the show only to return the next episode in perfect condition with absolutely no explanation.
One of the factors of Superjail!, although sometimes you'll see continuity carried over. Examples include the season 2 finale leading into season 3's premiere, and the Mistress' hippie conversion being referenced later in that season. Most episodes tend to end in bizarre ways, or with most inmates killed off (to return again later).
- Had the show not been renewed, the Mind Screw ending of the "Time-Police" two-parter would have been treated as "the end of the world". Obviously things got a little better.
- "Terrorarium": The Superjail inmates and staff are left in a wasteland from the aftermath of giant bugs attacking. They then realize that they're trapped in a snowglobe... which is being thumped on by the Twins. Who are surrounded by numerous copies of themselves and all laughing.
- "Dream Machine": The Twins' meddling with the Warden's Dream Machine causes reality to rupture, and the Warden to wake up in the real world (in live-action and played by Tim Harrington of the band Les Savy Fav).
- "Cold-Blooded": Superjail freezes over completely, leaving the Warden to get his tongue stuck to Alice's breasts.
- "Mayhem Donor": Jared gets his body shredded up and winds up having to be a Frankenstein-monster of body part grafts that the Doctor found from dead inmates. He's back to normal by the next one.
- "Ghosts": Pretty much all the inmates die and become reincarnated as plants, which are then mowed down by the Warden.
- "The Trouble with Triples": The Twins are forcibly taken on a ship back to their homeworld "for an eternity of overlording" (while their Triplet brothers are left abandoned back at the jail). They came back in the next episode anyway. It's been said this episode may be revisited, or that they'll just never mention it again.
- "Planet Radio": Alice is mutated into a were-catbeast to do ballet fighting moves in a parody of Cats, along with several inmates... but the latter are all slaughtered by Jailbot (even Jean and Paul, who usually escape such fates). Jared also winds up crushed to death by the Twins, and Lord Stingray finds his old airship and escapes in it.
Unagi from Sushi Pack lampshades the inevitable Snap Back after his teaming up with the Pack in "Lights On, Lights Off":
Unagi: Well, I guess we have to go back to being archenemies.
Ikura: Do we really have to?
Unagi: Yup, we do.
In the final season of Teen Titans (2003), the Brotherhood of Evil recruits nearly every villain that ever appeared in the series despite the fact that some (like the Puppet King, Kardiak, and Malchior) were incapacitated the last time seen.
Many episodes of Teen Titans Go! end with characters in an irrevocable predicament (usually death), but all will be restored to normal the next episode. Examples include "Ghost Boy", "Super Robin", "Tower Power", "Parasite", "Nose Mouth", "Breakfast Cheese", "Hose Water", "Tower Renovation" and to an extent, "Gorilla", all season 1 episodes.
The Weekenders, "To Tish" (Tish's name is being used as a word; by story's end, she's "playing along")

Examples:

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