Maybe the reboot doesn't quite work, proving to be an Audience-Alienating Premise to fans of the original and new viewers just aren't interested (again, for the same reasons). Perhaps the reboot is warmly received, but fans still want more from the original timeline. So, how do you rectify the situation?
A sequel set in the same continuity that goes back to the roots of the original, while forgetting the remake ever happened. You bring back the original cast and continue the story while making loving Continuity Nods to truly tap into nostalgia.
Forms of this include:
- Non-Serial Movie: It's not quite a reboot, but can also be an Alternate Continuity. Can sometimes be done to bring back well-loved characters, especially in Anime.
- Non-Linear Sequel: It's a sequel, but not in canon with the Continuity Reboot.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- After the Digimon Adventure continuity was rebooted with Digimon Adventure: (2020), the original continuity was continued with Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning, a film focusing on the Digimon Adventure 02 cast set after the events of the Digimon Adventure tri. movie hexalogy and Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (which released in theaters a little over a month before the first episode of Adventure: aired).
Comic Books
- DC Comics:
- John Byrne's run on Doom Patrol was notorious for being a full-on reboot that completely discarded the events of every preceding volume, Byrne's stated reason for this direction being due to concerns that relying too much on prior canon would alienate new readers who weren't up to speed on the previous comics. Reception wasn't great and led to the series being cancelled at 18 issues, afterwards Geoff Johns seized the opportunity to have the events of Infinite Crisis create a Cosmic Retcon that reinstated all the preceding Doom Patrol comics' events as canon, though this didn't completely discard the events of John Byrne's run, as Negative Man, the Chief and the finally resurrected Elasti-Girl as well as Nudge and Grunt (two of the additional teammates introduced in John Byrne's run) were retained afterwards (with Nudge and Grunt even returning at the beginning of Keith Giffen's subsequent run, albeit only to kill off Nudge and have Grunt run off with Nudge's body), which would indicate that the events of the John Byrne series still happened in some form.
- The "Retroboot" of the Legion of Super-Heroes brought the original incarnation of the Legion back into continuity, following two hard reboots. The Retroboot team were introduced in The Lightning Saga; the team's history pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths was restored, while all Post-Crisis developments (including the "Five Years Later" soft-reboot) were subjected to Canon Discontinuity.
- Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: "Vendetta" by Josh Elder seems to take place in a never reached point in the Wonder Woman (1987) (Post-Crisis) continuity, where Amazons Attack! (2007) never happened and instead things played out in a trajectory that made sense with the plot Greg Rucka had been building before the story got derailed by events outside of Wonder Woman's book.
- DC Rebirth was a line-wide example, following the mediocre reception of the New 52 reboot. More specifically it was a soft un-reboot, "revealing" that some people and elements were more like their earlier selves than it appeared, and some characters formerly deemed not to exist merely hadn't been encountered yet and were also more like you remember than not.
- Dark Nights: Death Metal and Infinite Frontier brought the Rebirth-era Myth Arc to a close and restored not just the pre-New 52 continuity to canon, but had it so that all past continuity was merged into one, with Broad Strokes employed to make it all work. Generally in practice, continuity tends to bow closer to pre-New 52, but with characters introduced in the New 52 era kept and their history tied into the pre-existing continuity.
- When Rogue Trooper was rebooted in 1990, he was replaced with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute named Friday, who survived a similar massacre of his fellow G.I.s. Things got really messy when both continuities were merged, which eventually led to the original Rogue being killed off. After Friday's story was finally concluded and the entire Tor Cyan solo stories that emerged from Spin-Off Mercy Heights were done, Gordon Rennie began penning new stories set during the original Rogue's hunt for the Traitor General.
Films — Live-Action
- The 2009 remake of Children of the Corn was followed by Children of the Corn: Genesis, a film which appeared to be set in the original continuity that began with the 1984 version of Children of the Corn. Oddly, Genesis was then followed by Children Of The Corn Runaway, a sequel to the 2009 remake, which was in turn followed by another remake, Children of the Corn (2020).
- Death Race 2000 got the Darker and Edgier remake, Death Race in 2008. After two Death Race straight to DVD prequels, a sequel to the original called Death Race 2050 came out in 2017.
- The Freaky Friday (2003) sequel Freakier Friday, released in 2025, disregards Disney Channel's 2018 adaptation to instead continue from the last big-screen retelling of the story.
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the third film in the original Ghostbusters continuity, which started with 1984's Ghostbusters. This comes after the underwhelming results of 2016's Ghostbusters (now known as Ghostbusters: Answer the Call), which was a Continuity Reboot. It even makes a point of parroting the 2016 version's line about "there hasn't been a ghost sighting in 30 years" as if to say, in no uncertain terms, that the 2016 version never happened and this is Ghostbusters 3 for all intents and purposes (or 4 if you count the video game). Even more notable, the son of Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman, is the one who took charge of the film. Its sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, drives the point further home by confirming the events of Ghostbusters II are still canon, whereas Afterlife played coy about them.
- The Halloween franchise is an interesting case as it kind of downplayed it, then inverted it, and then played it straight. The series was initially intended to be an All Hallows' Eve-themed Anthology series with each film having a different story, which is why Halloween III: Season of the Witch dropped the Michael Myers storyline of the first two films. After H3 bombed, Michael Myers was brought back for the rest of the franchise starting with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Then the inversion came with Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection only canonizing the first two movies, but Resurrection flopped leading to a two-part full Continuity Reboot by Rob Zombie. Then it was done one more time with Halloween (2018) being an alternate sequel to the original Halloween (1978) that disregards not only the Rob Zombie reboot and its sequel, but also all of the original film's other sequels.
- The Mummy (2017) was supposed to begin the Dark Universe. It tanked, the Dark Universe was scrapped, and a year later, another direct-to-DVD The Scorpion King film was made, meaning the world of The Mummy Trilogy is still the most recent iteration of this particular Universal monster's world. Even further, a fourth film (and, this time, full fledged unreboot) seeing the return of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz was announced in late 2025, which itself is set to come out after another, separate reboot by Lee Cronin in 2026.
- The Omen: After the film series was remade, The First Omen, a prequel to the original, was made.
- Happens in-universe in the Scream series with Stab, Scream's fictionalized version of itself based on Gale Weathers' True Crime books. The Stab series became a Franchise Zombie starting with the fourth movie, which featured no returning characters from the first three because, after the third, Sidney sued the producers to stop them from exploiting her story any further. In the fifth film, we learn that Stab 8, directed by Rian Johnson, proved far more experimental and met such a furious fan backlash that the killers, two Loony Fans of Stab, are actively seeking to erase it. Believing that Stab's Glory Days were when it was Based on a True Story, they seek to create what they call a "re-quel", a new Woodsboro killing spree featuring the first film's protagonists Sidney, Dewey, and Gale that, when adapted to film, would take the franchise back to its roots.
- Inverted with the Superman Film Series. After Superman III and IV, planned reboots titled Superman Lives and Superman: Flyby didn't work out, so the next film, Superman Returns, returned to the continuity of the first two films starring Christopher Reeve, ignoring the third and fourth. Superman Returns itself turned out to be a disappointment, so the franchise was completely rebooted with Man of Steel. The original timeline is still referenced in the 2019 TV adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which has Earth-96 Superman — Brandon Routh reprising his role as Superman, but now also the version of Superman from Kingdom Come — commenting that (after Lex Luthor uses the Book of Destiny to mind-control him into fighting with Earth-38 Superman) it's not the first time he's fought himself, referencing the events of Superman III.
- Texas Chainsaw 3D follows the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, ignoring the 2003 remake and any other sequels.
- Wonka is a Broad Strokes prequel to 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with the "Pure Imagination" and "Oompa Loompa Doompa-Dee-Do" songs appearing and the distinctive appearance of the Oompa-Loompas but ignores Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from 2005.
- French film Les Visiteurs: Bastille Day was made 15 years after Just Visiting, the 2001 American-produced remake of the original 1993 film Les Visiteurs, and ignores it. It is a genuine sequel to the 1998 sequel to Les Visiteurs, Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time.
Live-Action TV
- Battlestar Galactica creator Glen Larson wanted to make a second season that would start with Starbuck waking up from a dream where Galactica 1980 happened.
- The Chucky series shares continuity with the original Child's Play movies and not the 2019 remake.
- Cobra Kai is a Distant Sequel to the original The Karate Kid. The creators initially confirmed that all four of the original films are part of its canon, but The Karate Kid (2010) was not. However, this was no longer the case after the release of Karate Kid: Legends, a crossover movie in which Ralph Macchio's character of Daniel LaRusso from the original films and Cobra Kai and Jackie Chan's character of Mr. Han from the reboot team up to train a new student (with its story establishing that Mr. Han knew Daniel's former teacher Mr. Miyagi, whereas The Karate Kid (2010) was originally a completely standalone entry).
- Evil Dead: Several years after Army of Darkness, the series got a reboot with an all new cast starting the story from scratch... or so we thought. The cameo by Bruce Campbell's Ash at the end kinda leaves it all up in the air. However, a few years later, the story returned to series protagonist Ash Williams with the TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, which featured none of the characters or scenarios from the remake film. Word of God always said the remake was a Stealth Sequel and there were hopes of a crossover movie where Mia met Ash or having her appear in the TV series but they never came to pass. Evil Dead Rise also featured a new cast but heavily implied that both the original trilogy and TV show and the 2013 film are still canon to it.
- Seven years after the original Perry Mason series starring Raymond Burr ended its run, The New Perry Mason, starring Monte Markham in the title role, had an unspectacular run of fifteen episodes from 1973-74. Over a decade later came the made-for-TV-movie Perry Mason Returns, which brought back the surviving cast of the original series (including, above all, Raymond Burr) while disregarding the New reboot.
- Star Trek: The 2009 reboot creates a new parallel timeline of Kirk-era movies (officially the "Kelvin timeline" but sometimes nicknamed "Nu Trek" or the "Abramsverse"), but is still a very loose continuation of the events of the original timeline in the sense that the divergent timeline was created by the actions of time travelers from the original one. Come 2017, the sixth live-action series of the franchise, Star Trek: Discovery, is also set in the Kirk era but in the original "prime" timeline. Star Trek: Picard, debuting in 2020, is set in the prime timeline as well, although it's a sequel to Star Trek: The Next Generation, not a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series like Discovery — and it does take into account what the 2009 film said about Romulus having been destroyed in the prime timeline (an event that led into the Time Travel that created the Abramsverse). Discovery would later confirm that the Abramsverse still exists alongside the Primeverse, with at least one crossing between the 'verses having occurred as part of the Temporal Wars.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- When Wizards of the Coast launched Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, in addition to an assortment of drastic rules changes, the decision was also made to effectively turn the edition into the Ultimate Universe of Dungeons and Dragons: the "base" setting was switched from Greyhawk, which had been the presumed core of both editions of Advanced D&D through to Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, to a completely new setting called the Nentir Vale; The Multiverse of the Great Wheel was replaced by the new World Axis cosmology; and in general the game's lore was rewritten to sharing only Broad Strokes with what came before, as opposed to the "build up, expand and sometimes Retcon" approach that had characterized the lore shifts from 1st to 2nd to 3rd edition. Individual settings were also re-written to conform to this general structure, even the more unique Eberron setting, which now included Baator and the Abyss despite how ill they fit its established lore. The result was incredibly controversial, and the subsequent Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition actively marketed itself as a return to the original lore, which made it hugely successful... although, ironically, it would also begin heavily retconning its own lore after its initial debut, and by the end of 2021 would be as different from 3rd edition as 4th edition had been when it came to lore.
- The Forgotten Realms setting underwent a drastic lore shakeup during the shift from 3rd edition to 4th edition. The timeframe was advanced to a full century after a magical apocalypse known as the Spellplague drastically altered the cosmology and the landscape. This proved so unpopular that a new magical catastrophe called the Sundering was introduced to effectively retcon the setting back to being as close to what it looked like in 3rd edition as possible for 5th edition.
- In 2004, the World of Darkness franchise was rebooted with a new series of games set in a new continuity. However, in 2011 the original setting was given a new lease on life in the form of the 20th anniversary editions of Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension and Wraith: The Oblivion, which were later expanded upon with entirely new supplements. This proved so successful that in 2015 they not only announced that Vampire: The Masquerade would be getting a 5th edition, but that the rebooted setting would have its name changed from World of Darkness to Chronicles of Darkness to distinguish the two. Not quite a straight example, though, since Chronicles of Darkness remains its own distinct continuity and continues to get support alongside the Classic World of Darkness.
- In 2014, Warhammer got a Soft Reboot in the form of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar but the original setting got a new lease on life thanks to Total War: Warhammer. This eventually led to the announcement of Warhammer: The Old World in 2019, though Age of Sigmar would continue to be expanded upon after.
Video Games
- In 2006, Hudson Soft attempted to reboot the Bomberman series using a Darker and Edgier aesthetic with the game Bomberman Act:Zero. Act:Zero was such a critical and commercial disaster that it ultimately killed Hudson Soft and sent the franchise itself into dormancy as well. When Bomberman did eventually receive a proper revival (now under the stewardship of Konami), it reverted back to its cartoony designs and aesthetic and has stuck with them ever since (a few outliers like Bombergirl notwithstanding).
- After Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Konami shifted the Castlevania franchise from Metroidvanias to a Darker and Edgier 3D Hack and Slash/Beat 'em Up approach, with the Lords of Shadow trilogy serving as a Continuity Reboot from 2010 to 2014. Said trilogy garnered mixed reception and Lords of Shadow 2 would conclusively wrap up the story without leaving any plot threads hanging, while Konami would temporarily exit the mainstream gaming scene not long after due to a combination of controversies (most notably the highly publicized departure of Hideo Kojima after the release of Metal Gear Solid V) and the company wanting to focus more on pachinko machines and mobile gaming. When they resurfaced in the AAA sphere and made an effort to revitalize several IPs under their umbrella (Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Bomberman, etc.) with remakes, compilations, and/or genuinely new titles starting in the late 2010s and early 2020s, their first order of business was to return to Koji Igarashi's canon with Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, a 2019 mobile title set between the Demon Castle War of 1999 and Aria of Sorrow. In 2026, they would then announce Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, the first major (read: console and PC) release set in the original continuity.
- After Devil May Cry 4, the next entry was a reboot called DmC: Devil May Cry with an entirely new take on the Devil May Cry mythos by a different developer (Ninja Theory of Heavenly Sword and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West fame). The next game after DmC was Devil May Cry 5, featuring the original continuity, characters, and developers (including longtime series director Hideaki Itsuno) while only a making a few references to and taking some gameplay elements from the reboot continuity.
- Doom³ reset the original Doom series' canon to start over fresh. While Doom (2016) initially appeared to be another reboot, its direct sequel Doom Eternal reveals that the 2016-verse is actually a Stealth Sequel to the classic games, with the original Doomguy eventually dropping out of Hell and onto Argent D'Nur sometime after the events of Doom 64, where he was taken in by the Night Sentinels and eventually remade into the even more powerful and badass Doom Slayer.
- Double Dragon IV was a direct sequel to the original Double Dragon trilogy (specifically based on the NES versions of the game rather than the arcade originals) released in 2017, almost 26 years after Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones was released on the NES. The series wasn't exactly dormant during those years, as there were plenty of pseudo-reboots and remakes of the first game released in-between. This created a bit of a Sequel Number Snarl, while there was never an official "Double Dragon IV" prior to 2017, the SNES game Super Double Dragon was mostly considered to be fourth game for many years, since there was a later U.S.-developed fighting game tie-in to the 90s animated series titled Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, but neither game were set in the continuity of the original trilogy.
- F-Zero: Maximum Velocity was a Soft Reboot for the F-Zero series after F-Zero X with an all-new cast of characters and locales... and none of them were seen again after this installment, because F-Zero GX instead picks up where X left off timeline-wise, with all the same characters in addition to some new ones.
- Heroes of Might and Magic: After Ubisoft bought the rights to the Might and Magic franchise, the Heroes game line was given a Continuity Reboot (starting with Heroes of Might and Magic V) and completely removed from the original universe in favour of a new one named Ashan that had only very obscure lore connections to the prior games. This lasted through the sixth and seventh Heroes games and the first-person RPG spinoff Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, as well as the tenth mainline Might and Magic RPG game, subtitled Legacy. However, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, the eighth game in the series, returned to the original setting of Enroth for a Prequel, undoing not only that hard reboot but also undoing the soft reboot that happened in Heroes of Might and Magic IV when the setting moved to the planet Axeoth (in the same galaxy as Enroth, where Enroth's survivors fled through portals after their world was destroyed).
- During the 2010s, Namco would start a fresh reboot of the Pac-Man series, starting with drastic redesigns for Pac-Man and the ghost monsters in Pac-Man Party and solidified with Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. This also extended to most media that wasn't focused on the new universe, such as the framing device of the Pac-Man Museum compilation and the crossover in Mario Kart Arcade GPDX. After the show was Screwed by the Network, the second video game received poor sales, and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U using the classic design gained positive reception (per Masahiro Sakurai's desire to use said design), Bandai Namco shifted back to the original design and universe with a more classic-based design in Pac-Man Pop and revisiting the Pac-Man World series via remakes (though with some of Pac-Man's family members, most notably Ms. Pac-Man, receiving new designs and names due to legal issues with At Games).
- The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy (itself a reboot of the original Prince of Persia series) was followed by a reboot, Prince of Persia (2008), which performed poorly, so the next game, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, returned to The Sands of Time continuity as if the reboot never happened.
- Ratchet & Clank (2016) is either this or an aversion, depending on who you talk to. Two-thirds of the game is a direct Remake of Ratchet & Clank (2002), but the other third of it (as well as the overall universe and the context it all takes place in) is taken from the movie, giving it a reboot flavor. On the one hand, despite fans clamoring for a similar remake of Going Commando, the next Ratchet game was Rift Apart, which returned to the universe of the PS2 and PS3 games, fitting this trope perfectly. On the other hand, the 2016 game entered development well after the movie it's based on did, making it much closer to a one-off Licensed Game similar to Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.note
- Zig-zagged with Star Control. SC3 was developed by a different studio and was poorly received by fans for major changes to gameplay and lore. The original creators of SC1 and SC2 have also stated that they don't consider the third game to be canon and have pledged to make a true sequel to SC2. However, Stardock purchased the naming rights and eventually released a reboot titled Star Control: Origins that takes place in a separate continuity and features (almost) none of the original races. An agreement was reached between Stardock and the original creators to allow them to use the assets, storyline, and names from the first two games to create their own sequel that ignores SC3 and SCO (which they have titled Free Stars: Children of Infinity, also re-releasing SC2 as Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters on Steam). On the other hand, Stardock left open the possibility of a sequel to Origins.
- Several Tomb Raider spinoffs — Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and its sequel, Lara Croft: Relic Run, and Lara Croft GO — use the character design and voice actress from the first Crystal Dynamics era (the Legend-Anniversary-Underworld trilogy) despite being released after the 2013 reboot. The reboot's continuity remained active, however, and its entries retained a considerably higher budget.
Visual Novels
- In the Ace Attorney series, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney was meant to be a Soft Reboot of the series after the conclusion of the Phoenix Wright trilogy. It takes place after a Time Skip, features a new protagonist in Apollo, has a mostly new cast with very few returning characters, and is a little bit Darker and Edgier than Phoenix's wacky antics. Fan reception was mixed. The next mainline game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, while still taking place post-Time Skip, brought back Phoenix as the main character, brought back more original trilogy-era characters, had a tone more in line with the old games, and generally tried to distance itself from Apollo Justice. Ironically, Dual Destinies is typically seen as one of the weaker entries in the series while Apollo Justice was Vindicated by History to an extent, with many fans believing it deserves a proper continuation... which it sort of got in the next mainline entry, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice.
Western Animation
- Downplayed with Blinky Bill; the 1990s animated series got a CGI reboot in 2015, with a new TV series the following year. Despite the reboot's sizeable marketing push, the new movie and series angered many fans of the original, so modern merchandise later went back to using the more widely accepted 1990s designs of the characters.
- The critical and financial failure of The Powerpuff Girls (2016) led to the new continuity it established (which saw the girls being recast among other controversial changes) being discontinued following its conclusion in 2019. Further depictions of the eponymous Powerpuff Girls since then (such as in MultiVersus) have been based on the original 1998 versions, complete with bringing back the original voices.
- After the 2014 Rainbow Brite series failed to make an impression due to poor marketing, later merchandise for the franchise — as well as Crayola Studios' reboot
— went back to the more-well known 1980s designs for the characters.
- After the critical failure of VeggieTales spin-off/reboot series VeggieTales in the House (which made a number of changes to the show that nobody, especially the show's fanbase, appreciated), the series was rebooted a second time in the form of The VeggieTales Show, which scrapped the characters' controversial redesigns in favor of updated versions of their more familiar "classic" designs and ignored the changes made in In the House in favor of going back to the original show's roots. The only references to In the House that have been made since have been the occasional cameo of characters introduced during that show (and even then they have pointedly never been any of In the House's Scrappies), redesigned to match the show's normal art style.
