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Soft Reboot
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"Rumors are swirling about another Gremlins film. It probably won't be called Gremlins 3, but it'll have Zach Galligan in it as Billy Peltzer. He'll have a cameo warning a new kid about the Mogwai and the three rules. So it's not a remake, it'll technically still exist in the Gremlins universe and time, but— who are we kidding, folks?!"
— Mr. Plinkett, discussing Soft Reboots in his The Force Awakens review

You have a classic property, one that's made money hand over fist for you for years, perhaps decades, but now, it's getting a little long in the tooth. Maybe it's dated, maybe recent installments have tarnished its name, maybe it's just bogged down in Continuity Lock-Out. Perhaps you've just finished the story you wanted to tell, or you're still telling that story and don't want to ruin it yet. Or maybe you've finally been given the budget to make the entry in the franchise you'd wanted to make years ago but couldn't afford.

Resetting the thing to bring in new fans sounds like a good idea, but maybe the core storyline is still interesting if you can get rid of the bad superficial elements that accumulated around it over the years, or peel back the exaggeration of its problems over time; maybe you're about to release it into a wider market where they never got the previous entry while pleasing existing fans; maybe you want to make a straight sequel but have to take a new direction because of drastic creative team changes; or maybe you're simply afraid of the backlash to a Continuity Reboot.

What to do? Well, perhaps a "softer" approach will serve. Instead of starting over, dip into the Troper Well and pull out a way of explaining you're not really tossing away the classic stories the fans love. There are many ways to accomplish this:

  • Use a Time Skip, allowing you to introduce a new generation of characters and a few old favorites popping in for a Continuity Cameo while also facilitating a Same Plot Sequel.
  • Create an Alternate Timeline that diverges from the "main" timeline thanks to time travel shenanigans, so you can do a fresh, modern take on iconic scenarios while the main timeline exists in parallel (see The Multiverse).
  • Do a Retool where the setting, scenario and tone are significantly changed, cumbersome or outdated aspects are dropped and you can start over with a fresh perspective.
  • Make it a Prequel where the characters are given a Coming of Age Story, typically with younger actors to serve as an introductory point by avoiding excessive continuity that will drive off new audiences.
  • It's a side story taking place in the same universe and may briefly feature characters or situations the old audience is familiar with but largely emphasizing the new crew.
  • The original is treated with Broad Strokes, making events Shrouded in Myth or include a Discontinuity Nod in a way that audiences can keep what they like or discard what they didn't without breaking the current story.

Essentially, a Soft Reboot has many elements of a reboot, and feels a lot like one, without actually getting rid of the old continuity. Contrast the "hard" Continuity Reboot, which is starting over from Day 1. Barring few exceptions a Soft Reboot will still retain much of the original cast, costumes and locations while a Continuity Reboot will try to replace it all. Compare Un-Reboot when a new installment, following a full Continuity Reboot or Remake, is canon to the original and can overlap with this.

Not to be confused with a Soft Reset or Canon Discontinuity.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Dragon Ball: The Saiyan Saga counts as one for the manga in general, beginning with a Time Skip and full-blown Genre Shift that completely changed the status quo, introduced concepts that would become franchise mainstays going forward, and established a very different tone compared to the Emperor Pilaf-Piccolo Jr. Sagas. It was enough of a shift in tone that the arcs post-Piccolo Jr. warranted its own anime Sequel Series to follow up on the original in the form of Dragon Ball Z, despite the manga still running under the original Dragon Ball title. That it serves as a decent introduction to the overall series despite being in the middle of it is one reason Dragon Ball Z managed to be such a success in the States despite getting localized before its predecessor.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam F91 was intended to be one for Gundam as a whole after Char's Counterattack wrapped up more or less all the ongoing character arcs from the previous installments, featuring a completely new cast of characters and a new antagonist faction rather than yet another Neo Zeon group. This didn't really stick, though and most subsequent (non-AU) stories have been side stories to the original Mobile Suit Gundam or interquels (though Sunrise did promise to focus more on late-UC stories going into The New '10s and beyond, as evidenced by Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative, and a theatrical adaptation of Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash).
  • The Pokémon anime did this with Pokémon Horizons: The Series. Horizons follows up on the globetrotting approach taken by Journeys, but it's most notable for being the first season of the show to not feature Ash Ketchum (or any past character) at all; instead, it focuses on new protagonists Liko and Roy as they travel the Pokémon world with an adventure corps known as the Rising Volt Tacklers.
  • Seven Heavenly Virtues (2018): While the show takes place in the same timeframe as Seven Mortal Sins, it doesn't follow the same continuity nor does it continue the same story. Instead, it focuses on an entirely new story with a softer tone.
  • Transformers:
    • The Transformers: Robots in Disguise anime (Car Robots in Japan) is a weird one: created at a time when the Beast Wars franchise was at a low ebb in Japan, but also when pretty much everything took place somewhere in the G1 timeline. As a result, while nothing in the original series contradicts G1, the actual G1 cast is very conspicuously absent and the conflict is totally unrelated. The American dub of the series would make it a fairly definitive hard reboot, mostly by changing character names to their G1 counterparts... while the Japanese take moved in the exact opposite direction, with later stories managing to squirrel Car Robots into a mostly forgotten period of G1. Notably, the series to follow, Transformers: Armada, was definitely a hard reboot in both countries.
    • Conversely, Transformers: Cybertron is the third part of the Unicron Trilogy in the West, but a Continuity Reboot in Japan as Galaxy Force (before future Canon Welding). The series was initially conceived as a proper sequel, but Galaxy Force was produced as its own thing. The English dub tried to Hand Wave it into continuity by making the "Unicron Singularity" the fallout from Unicron's destruction, but overall, there are huge discrepancies between Cybertron and past series, and the previous continuity doesn't factor much into the plot anyway. The end result is more like a reboot than its puported status as a sequel.
  • The various Yu-Gi-Oh! anime spinoffs are designed to tell standalone stories each time, but Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's at least try to maintain a semblance of continuity. GX is set as a direct sequel to the original Yu-Gi-Oh! and features tons of cameos and Continuity Nods to the original series while focusing on an entirely new cast, setting, and lore. 5Ds is set in New Domino City and is all but stated to be a Distant Sequel, with Tetsu Trudge, a very minor one-off character from the original series, becoming an Ascended Extra in 5Ds, but otherwise has nothing to do with Yu-Gi-Oh! or GX whatsoever. Starting with Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, the following anime did away with this aspect entirely and are set in new universes each series, save for Yu-Gi-Oh! GO RUSH!!, which is a Stealth Prequel and a Stealth Sequel to Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS.

    Asian Animation 
  • Bima-S is an animated reboot to the main show (Bima Satria Garuda) instead being a follow-up, due to Reino Barack, the original creator, not handling writing duties for S.
  • Turning Mecard R takes place in the same continuity and references prior events that happened, but has a new setting and cast of characters. For example, Na Chan's mother in the reboot is a writer who wears glasses, though her incarnation in the original Turning Mecard series, while also wearing glasses, lacked any detailed lore.

    Audio Plays 
  • The Eighth Doctor Adventures had several since the series began in 2001 as part of Big Finish Doctor Who's Monthly Range, mainly being done to avoid Continuity Lock-Out and being accomplished through a Time Skip. The first was when the Eighth Doctor was given his own unique range called The New Eighth Doctor Adventures, which is set some time after the previous audios and gives him a new companion while having minimum references to what came before. After four "series", a second soft reboot occurred with the Dark Eyes boxsets, which while having a few referencing the The New Eighth Doctor Adventures essentially reset the status quo by giving the Doctor new companions and the audios taking on a much darker tone. This has remained the core storyline since then, but a third soft reboot called Doctor Who: The Time War reset the status quo again by taking place much further into the Doctor's life and shows him being dragged into the conflict between the Time War and the Daleks, again having very few references to the previous audios.

    Comic Books 
  • A company-wide example is DC Rebirth. After the hard reboot New 52 relaunch made so many unwanted changes to the DC lore that it alienated their fanbase and potential readers, DC integrated as many aspects of the old pre-Flashpoint timeline as they could. The result was that characters were rerailed, old favorites returned, and core aspects of the lore were fully restored after being removed entirely, all while cleaning up much of the Darker and Edgier tone which some felt was an attempt to resurrect the maligned Dark Age. It still takes place in the post-Flashpoint continuity, but many would say it feels proper again.
  • Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribic's Eternals is a soft reboot of Jack Kirby's The Eternals, with many elements building on Neil Gaiman's previous soft reboot. The first issue reintroduces the characters while showing just how they fit into the Marvel Universe, while also acknowledging some of the continuity that came before in ways that the readers will understand. And much like X-Men (2019) (see below), it also uses data pages to convey a lot of Worldbuilding information.
  • Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2018): The opening pages of the first issue, in addition to Miles' updated Biography entry from the Spider-Geddon Handbook, addresses the Continuity Snarl regarding Miles' origin from the Ultimate Universe. Miles' backstory is tweaked to state that he originates from one of the Battle Worlds from Secret Wars (2015), but only has vague memories from it.
  • Punisher (2023) is a soft reboot of The Punisher, following up from the aftermath of the previous run, and having a similar premise, with the biggest difference being Joe Garrison taking up Frank Castle's mantle.
  • Superman has Action Comics #241, which introduced a vastly different look for the Fortress of Solitude and a different explanation for how it functioned, and came right before the introduction of a lot of other major elements of his 1960s-and-onward stories, such as Brainiac, Kandor, Bizarro, Supergirl, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Because of this, while DC has never explicitly made a statement on where it sits in continuity, many fans treat it as the "true" start of Superman's Earth-One Silver Age incarnation.
  • X-Men:
    • "Giant Sized X-Men #1" and the following X-Men #94, which got rid of most of the original team so it could focus on new main characters, and beginning the franchise's future of having tons of characters.
    • "Adjectiveless" X-Men #1-3, the last stories of Chris Claremont's seventeen-year run, which re-established the X-Men's status quo after the lengthy Muir Island Saga with a (relatively) small team, with some of Claremont's previously running plotlines just gently forgotten.
    • X-Men (2019), which started in 2019, was repeatedly described as a reboot for the entire X-Men brand that's still in-continuity with the Marvel Universe. The new Krakoa status quo is introduced and serves as a launch point for several series, with other series exploring its many facets and its resurrection protocols allowing for dead characters to return. Characters very rarely make explicit reference to prior continuity — though they still do, occasionally — and there's a time jump that distances the current stories from the most recent X-stories. The well-worn idea of mutants being hated and feared is paid lip-service but gives way to distrust of Krakoa specifically as a political entity, while mutants going extinct is used to motivate the new status quo, rather than as the status quo.
  • The 2017 Youngblood relaunch has a largely new cast of characters, a Setting Update, a restarted numbering of issues, a new art style, a different tone, and a general theme that largely criticizes the '90s Anti-Hero archetype that series was known for. It even titles itself as Reborn! That said, it is fully in the same continuity with the '90s comics and freely references past events from the original era, and even feels like a sequel in many ways as it is a reboot.

    Fan Fiction 
  • The Two Commanders is this to the author's prior work, Conquest in the Name of Advancement! — while some acknowledgements are made to the prior story, The Two Commanders expands on concepts that were not focused on in the original, with Word of God even discouraging readers from reading the first story to avoid confusion with how certain plot elements are handled.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • The Creative Closing Credits for 22 Jump Street implies this of the film's relation to the 21 Jump Street (1987) TV series, where the current Jump Street officers meet the original cast, thirty years later, calling them "legends." The previous film already had some connections, such as Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise's characters ultimately suffering a Death by Cameo.
  • J. J. Abrams has a bit of a knack for this:
    • 2006: Mission: Impossible III is a Soft Reboot of the film canon; the first two films are still canonical to it, but III marked a shift from an episodic approach with Negative Continuity, to full-on recurring characters with loose story beats connecting them.
    • 2009: The rebooted Star Trek films take place in an Alternate Timeline, with an aged alternate Spock's presence confirming that everything that happened in the original Star Trek universe still happened... just not to this continuity. Word of God always maintained that said original timeline still exists; it was eventually re-visited in Star Trek: Picard.
    • 2015: The Force Awakens, which takes place 30 years after Return of the Jedi, is the first Star Wars film since Lucasfilm was purchased by Disney, and the first film to feature no involvement from George Lucas, is considered this, being largely a Same Plot Sequel that takes a lot after the first ever Star Wars film, A New Hope. Straight from the opening crawl, the Jedi have been destroyed again with Luke stated to be the last of them again. The Empire is resurgent in the form of the "First Order", and the Republic which had been restored by the Rebel Alliance is functionally destroyed by them around the midpoint, leaving only the "Resistance". Leia is back in an administrative and conventional military role after being teased to become a Jedi in the future, and even Han is a smuggler again. In light of the Prequels in particular, after Anakin brought balance to the Force and ended the Sith, new darksiders are around who are Sith in all but name. The inimitable Mr. Plinkett, who provides the page quote, discusses this at length.
  • The Batman (Film Series) underwent this by its second half, marked by the switch of directors from Tim Burton to Joel Schumacher. Batman Forever nominally takes place in the same continuity as Batman (1989) and Batman Returns, but it changes the design of Gotham, introduces a new cast — including doing away with Michael Keaton as Batman, replaced by Val Kilmer — and goes over Batman's origin after Batman (1989) did the same. Alfred's and Gordon's actors still stay on for this and the next movie Batman & Robin (1997), where Kilmer was in turn replaced by George Clooney.
  • Both cinematic adaptations of Charlie's Angels (the 2000s duology and the 2019 film) are this to the original TV series. They each feature different actors as John Bosley (Bill Murray in 2000, Patrick Stewart in 2019) and focus on new teams of Angels, but they're all set in the same continuity. (The 2011 television series, however, was a hard Continuity Reboot.)
  • DC Extended Universe: Due to a rotation of upper management, every couple of films could be considered a soft reboot in trying to distance itself from the movies that came before in some form.
    • The Suicide Squad is this to Suicide Squad (2016). The film only reuses four characters from the original movie. One of the original characters dies before the opening credits and another dies at about the midpoint. It follows a new story and new team. The events of the first movie are implied at best but also Harley just shows back up as part of the team again, with Birds of Prey (2020) ignored as well.
  • The official trailer for Ghostbusters (2016) implied that the new film would be a soft reboot of the series ("30 years ago, 4 scientists saved New York") but the film turned out to be a complete Continuity Reboot and the line was referring to the actual movie.
  • G.I. Joe: Retaliation was made in response to the lukewarm reaction to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which was considered too high-tech to the point of lacking tension (everyone had a tool or vehicle to solve the problem), too many characters showing up and dropping out of the narrative and relied too much on slick CG for their action scenes. Retaliation grounds the series by having the main team killed off in the first act and reducing the cast to a handful of people who are short on supplies and resources, officially disavowed, and labeled as rogues and terrorists. It still technically follows Rise of Cobra, but the tone of the movie is decidedly different.
  • The Grudge (2019) exists in the same continuity as the American trilogy and was similarly produced by Sam Raimi, but features an entirely different cast of characters and retains only the same basic concept of the previous films.
  • The Halloween series did this twice, not counting the Continuity Reboot in 2007.
  • The James Bond films also used to work like this. Each time the lead actor changed, the series was effectively soft-rebooted. The effect is most palpable with Timothy Dalton's first movie The Living Daylights which also had new faces for recurring characters Miss Moneypenny and Felix Leiter, and Pierce Brosnan's first movie GoldenEye which also had a new Moneypenny, an entirely new stand-in for Leiter and a new, female M. Both movies also happened to invoke Remember the New Guy? with Russian characters Bond was familiar with, yet had never appeared before. It helps that the series, for the most part, never really had much continuity to begin with, beyond the occasional Continuity Nod to the death of Bond's wife Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. All this changed with Casino Royale (2006), which was a hard Continuity Reboot and established a firm continuity for the franchise that persisted all through the Daniel Craig era.
  • Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is this for the 1995 film Jumanji, in it the eponymous boardgame reinvents itself as a videogame, and it contains nods to the original movie, like showing the shack where Alan Parish lived for 26 years.
  • Jurassic Park:
    • Jurassic World recognizes the events of Jurassic Park (1993) but glosses over or ignores the events of the sequels, the movie is essentially a re-telling of the first movie, while moving the overarching story into a new direction.
    • Jurassic World Rebirth resets most of the plot developments of the previous three Jurassic World movies, has no returning characters, a brand new locale, and is a completely self-contained story that doesn't require seeing any of the other movies for additional context.
  • Mad Max: Fury Road recasts Max with a new actor and is a semi-Same Plot Sequel to The Road Warrior. There are points of visual continuity with the previous movies and an Actor Allusion that might be a returning character, but character ages and the timeline are wrong and it isn't possible to reconcile everything perfectly. Not that it matters, though. According to George Miller, Max is meant to be a legendary figure in the Wasteland, with each film's story representing a different tale told about him.
  • MonsterVerse:
    • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) is a soft reset of the franchise. Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island, though very different from each other in tone, both presented the universe as fairly realistic and grounded aside from the presence of giant monsters. Monarch is depicted as a fairly small outfit in both films, relying extensively on the U.S. military to get anything done. King of the Monsters ups the ante considerably with the addition of more monsters (one of whom is an extraterrestrial) and reimagines Monarch as a massive organization with incredibly advanced technology and seemingly endless resources.
    • Godzilla vs. Kong follows the same direction but takes it even further, moving the setting into the near-future and adding even more advanced tech via Apex Cybernetics, and going much further into the pseudoscience of the "Hollow Earth" the previous films had only alluded to. The end result is a barely recognizable as the same universe that the 2014 film established.
  • Ocean's 8 takes place in the same continuity as the George Clooney films, but Clooney's character has supposedly died and the film follows a new cast of con artists.
  • Pacific Rim: Uprising takes place a decade after the first film in an almost unrecognizable setting and features an almost completely different cast of characters, including Stacker Pentecost's previously unmentioned son Jake. It's also a Same Plot Sequel with a much Lighter and Softer tone and visual style, seemingly intended to give the property a fresh start since it was released nearly five full years after the original.
  • Not only is Scream (2022) an example, it also (as per series tradition) discusses this trope, which it refers to as a "re-quel." The film treats all of the prior films in the Scream series as canon, with references to their events littered throughout, but the focus of the plot is mainly on a new cast of teenage protagonists modeled on those of the first film, with series protagonists Sidney, Gale, and Dewey now in supporting roles. It is speculated that the killer is attempting to create one of these for the Stab series (Scream's in-universe Ripped from the Headlines version of itself). This turns out to be correct. The killers Richie and Amber believe that the best Stab films are Based on a True Story and that this is why the series lost its way after the third, eventually bottoming out with Stab 8, an extremely controversial revisionist take on the series by Rian Johnson (with explicit allusions made to the divisive reception of The Last Jedi). As such, they carry out a new killing spree that they hope will inspire a new movie to return Stab to its former glory.
  • Star Wars: The prequel films had a dramatically different visual style compared to the original trilogy, trading a Used Future for more of a Raygun Gothic. The plot was also centered more at the heart of a democracy in crisis compared to a ragtag Rebellion fighting The Empire. This was largely intentional by George Lucas, as he wanted the films to have their own identity and tell a story he was truly invested with.
  • Thor: Ragnarok is basically this to the previous two Thor movies. Instead of the mostly High Fantasy take, it's a Planetary Romance that owes a lot to 1980s sci-fi (particularly Flash Gordon), and the slapstick has been ramped up. Thor spends very little time on Earth, so the human supporting cast is nowhere to be seen, and after two movies of A God I Am Not, the Asgardian characters outright call themselves gods (which is more in line with the comics).
    Taika Waititi: We basically just destroyed everything that went before. It's what Ragnarok is: the death of the world and its rebirth. This film is a rebirthing of all those characters. It's like a reboot, but we didn't have to recast.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer the series takes up where the film leaves off, except that it considers the original screenplay to be canon and not the actual film, which wound up quite different than Joss Whedon wanted. In particular, Buffy was apparently expelled from her old school for arson ("that gym was full of vampi...asbestos"), which did not happen in the film. Eventually, a comic called The Origin was made that told Whedon's version of the story.
  • Doctor Who has had many over the decades, often coinciding with a change in showrunners and/or Doctors.
    • When the show came back in 2005, showrunner Russell T Davies could adequately be described as a man utterly terrified of continuity running amok, like in the 1980s. Information about the Doctor and the show's lore was tightly controlled and parceled out in the tiniest possible portions. When it became an enormous hit, he relaxed this policy (cf. Sarah Jane's return in "School Reunion"), but never truly abolished it. Even the montage of previous Doctors in "The Next Doctor", the most 'for the fans' moment in his tenure, was included solely on the suggestion of producer Julie Gardner, whose judgement he trusted specifically because she was not a classic Whovian. Both Davies and his successor Steven Moffat also rapidly established potential Cosmic Retcon "crisis" events during their eras to explain why things they didn't like in continuity might not have happened any more — the Last Great Time War for Davies, and the destruction and recreation of the entire universe in "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang" for Moffat.
    • Davies did this again in a bigger way with "The Giggle": The Fourteenth Doctor doesn't regenerate into a new form but instead performs a "bi-generation", splitting Fifteen off as his own incarnation. Fourteen decides to retire on Earth (until he is ready to regenerate into Fifteenth for real), while Fifteenth is busy having adventures of his own. This effectively allowed for a smooth transition from the original revival series handled by BBC Wales to a new era handled by Davies' new production company.
  • Hawaii Five-0 (the 2000s series) to Hawaii Five-O (original). They're in the same continuity as each other — a Killer of the Week from the previous series appeared in a straight-up sequel episode in the reboot — but the fact that both series' main casts are named the same is left unmentioned.
  • The Heisei era of Kamen Rider is one to the Showa era. While the Showa era had overarching elements like the characters of Tobei Tachibana and the Great Leader, the Heisei era shows, despite taking place in the same universe as the Showa ones (as the Crossover movies show) all focus on storylines that are entirely contained within their respective seasons. Effectively, each new series is its own Soft Reboot that presents a new setting and characters, while keeping some Recurring Elements like transformation belts and "Kamen Rider" as the title of its heroes.
  • Power Rangers:
    • After the Zordon era was wrapped up with Power Rangers in Space (which was intended to be a finale to the series as a whole), Power Rangers Lost Galaxy went the same route as its progenitor and centered around a completely new team, villains, and setting, with touches of the old guard like Alpha-6, the Space Rangers' ship, Bulk, and Professor Phenomenous showing up in minor roles.
    • The following series, Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, went even further than Lost Galaxy by containing absolutely no elements of the Zordon Era or Lost Galaxy except for the team-up episode.
  • Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is one of the original Pretty Little Liars, taking place in the same continuity but in the different town of Millwood with a new group of Little Liars and A.
  • ReBoot: The Guardian Code is a Soft Reboot of ReBoot itself, featuring a side story of Users entering the Net to stop Megabyte, who'd teamed up with a User called the Sourceror. The original cast appear in the final episode in minor roles, seemingly having no memory of the events of the original show. This implies either the show takes place in an Alternate Universe or there was a Reset Button pushed that restored them to a previous state.
  • Star Trek:
  • Strike Back had two of them: Seasons 2 (Project Dawn) and 6 (Retribution) both started from scratch with new characters and plotlines.
  • Ultra Series:
    • While the original Showa-era entries in the '60s and '70s all took place in a single continuity, when the series returned in the Heisei era (the '90s) it started constantly rebooting in most new installments, with little-to-no contact between continuities. But eventually, all these continuities were established to take place in a Multiverse; allowing each series to begin fresh with a new Ultraman on a new Earth while still heavily referencing the old series — for instance, some of the new heroes are Spin-Offspring sons of the earliest ones, and others engage in Power Copying prior Ultramen.
    • The earliest example was 1971's Return of Ultraman, only the third Ultraman series, which starred a hero (later designated "Ultraman Jack") that was an Expy of the original Ultraman after the quite different Ultraseven while still being in direct continuity with both. Ultraman Neos is similarly a back-to-basics installment that attempted to mimic the classic series, featuring straight Expies of both the original Ultraman and Ultraseven (though this was during the Heisei era when every installment was a hard reboot, and it only became a soft one in retrospect).
    • Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga is largely an updated remake of Ultraman Tiga made to celebrate Tiga's 25th anniversary. However, besides the fact that The Multiverse is already well-established at this point, one character displays knowledge of the events of Tiga and makes it clear to the audience that Tiga and Trigger coexist in different universes. One episode even has Tiga make a guest appearance to fight alongside Trigger. The following season, Ultraman Decker, is a similar remake of Tiga's own successor Ultraman Dyna.
    • Right after Trigger and Decker, Ultraman Blazar ended up being a bit of a reboot for the franchise as a whole, rather than remaking any specific entry. The previous decade (including Trigger and Decker) had involved showier and more toyetic aspects like elaborate Invocations of Ultraman's power, form changes, and scenes of the hero showing off the toy-scale gear; as well as heavy legacy elements like crossovers, Power Copying of prior heroes, and frequent recycling of old kaiju. Blazar was instead Revisiting the Roots and eliminated or downplayed a lot of that, being a standalone series that minimized the flashier aspects and brought it more in line with older series. The following entries would be closer to Blazar's approach than the ones that came before it, establishing Blazar as a new direction for the franchise instead of just a one-off.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Deadlands: The Weird West is in an Alternate Timeline from the older editions of Deadlands, created by a Cosmic Retcon in Deadlands Dark Age that ended The American Civil War with a U.S. victory (albeit delayed compared to Real Life), whereas in the original timeline the Confederacy had used black magic to win the war and become independent.
  • BattleTech received one after FASA was shut down and the property switched hands to WizKids, releasing a new game under their Clix system titled MechWarrior: Dark Age. Set about 70 years after the end of FASA's timeline, most of the original factions have fallen off in the aftermath of the Word of Blake's Jihad, leading to a new status quo revolving around a "Republic of the Sphere". Later material would downplay this to some degree, revealing that the pre-existing factions aren't quite as down and out as initially suggested,note  and that the early material saying so was in-universe Republic propaganda.

    Toys 
  • The 2009 Bara Magna line of BIONICLE was meant to be this, taking place on a new planet, setting up a new plot and cast, removing signature elements like Masks of Power and element-wielding Toa heroes — but still carrying the same aesthetics with some differences, i.e. helmets replacing masks, Glatorian having element-inspired armor but no in-universe powers and ground vehicles replacing flying craft. The 2001-2008 Myth Arc concluded with Makuta winning, so the ongoing story was put on temporary hold. This soft reboot only lasted half a year, after which the previous eight years of lore spilled back into the story, bringing back masks, elemental powers, Toa, and continuing the plot from where it had left off, but this time from a new perspective. The Direct-to-Video movie of that year hinted at past events but didn't go in depth for the sake of new fans. This setup lasted until 2010, when LEGO discontinued the series, which they had been planning since at least 2008 — effectively meaning the Bara Magna saga ended up as a Retool that was doomed from the start, despite there being plans to go on for at least two more story arcs and exploring even more new planets.
  • Series 8 of SuperThings, the Kazoom Kids series, acts as a Retool of the brand, revamping the concepts. With the addition of the new Kazoom Kids, human-object hybrid characters instead of the object-only characters, new concepts are established into the series, and object-based characters have their objects repeated from past iterations far more. The webseries establishes that the canon is the same, however, as there is an "origins recap" episode that goes through a brief explaining of the original canon of the brand.

    Video Games 
  • Baldur's Gate III does this to the original Baldur's Gate saga even if it was concluded: brand new game mechanics, new protagonist with a different background, completely new story set more than 100 years after. But there are references to the originals, and some returning characters that help tie the stories together.
  • Blaster Master Zero III reveals that the Blaster Master Zero trilogy is set roughly 10 years after the events of Chou Wakusei Senki - Metafight, the original Japanese version of the Blaster Master series. The series successfully disguises its status as one by pretending to be a full-on Continuity Reboot for most of the first two games, with Zero being a remake of Blaster Master with a similar plot but introducing elements from later Blaster Master games (and hints at the revelation as early as its true ending).
  • Crash Bandicoot:
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is the first game in the Devil May Cry franchise to be fully directed under Hideaki Itsuno's watch, and given its nature as a prequel, it features plot points that contradict or Retcon those from DMC1 (directed by Hideki Kamiya), most notably the revisioning of Vergil's character.
  • Diablo IV deliberately reversed the trends seen in Diablo III, which had led the franchise in a Lighter and Softer direction. The game earns its tagline, "Return to darkness", by embracing a darker, dirtier tone in both presentation and story. The near extinction of humanity in the time skip since the last series has reduced humanity to a new dark age, the High Heavens have gone silent, and the Horadrim are all but gone. The idea of humans becoming mighty Nephalem was also quietly dropped and the heroes of the last game are dead or missing.
  • Doom (2016) was marketed as a return-to-form for the Doom franchise: a lone Space Marine fighting The Legions of Hell in a MegaCorp facility built on Mars, just like the "classic" 1993 Shareware trilogy, thus new players could enter and enjoy 2016 without ever playing the previous games. However, the appearance of the protagonist with the epitaph "Doom Slayer" and Apocalyptic Log information found throughout the game suggests the character is actually the "Doomguy" from the old games, though lore entries in 2016 simultaneously conflict with that theory. The sequel Doom Eternal sets the record straight: The Doom Slayer is Doomguy, who locked himself in Hell from the ending of Doom 64 fighting the demons for an unspecified amount of time. Due to the dimensional nature of Hell, Doomguy wound up in an Alternate Universe, where Hell follows him to the world of Argent D'Nur. Doomguy fights with the Argenta against Hell and becomes the former's champion, whereby he turns into an Empowered Badass Normal that is the Doom Slayer from the Makers. Leading an offensive into Hell, the Slayer is trapped and found by the Union Aerospace Corporation, leading up to the events of 2016.
  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard is one to the Dragon Age franchise. While the game is the continuation of Inquisition, very few choices are ported over from it (and none from II or Origins), returning characters pointedly avoid mentioning details of their life in the last decades, and there are plenty of Exposition Dumps to make new players used to the setting.
  • Dynasty Warriors: Much like its sister series, Dynasty Warriors: Origins shook up the usual formula after a seven-year hiatus by focusing only on the first half of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (hence the title). Revisiting the Roots was also much more of a factor compared to Samurai Warriors 5, with Origins returning to the tried-and-true Hack and Slash conventions of most previous installments (albeit with some extra flourishes like issuing commands to allied NPCs and the introduction of a parry mechanic) after Dynasty Warriors 9 made the controversial decision to add open-world gameplay into the mix.
  • The Elder Scrolls: There is a 200-year Time Skip between Oblivion and Skyrim, after the first four games in the main series (as well as the Dungeon Crawler spin-off Battlespire) all took place over a span of roughly 34 years. This essentially made the game act like a soft reboot, while still being able to fit into the timeline.
  • Fallout and Fallout 2 were isometric turn-based RPGs both set in post-apocalyptic California and tended to be focused primarily on the issue of survival in a world after nuclear war. Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4 are set significantly later (with 3 and 4 being set on the other side of the country), have more focus on the Retro Universe setting and indications that the pre-Great War era was, in some senses, a Crapsack World, and instead of showing people just trying to eke out an existence show civilization rebuilding with the major conflicts not being simple survival but what type of societies will emerge. In addition, 3 abandoned the turn-based combat system and isometric perspective in favor of an FPS with RPG elements, with future games following suit. Fallout 76 does however revisit the post-apocalyptic survival themes of 1 and 2, being set only 25 years after the Great War (and thus prior to the events of any other game save for the prologue of 4, which starts right around the moment the bombs start dropping).
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake is this for The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, keeping the Compilation lore in Broad Strokes but including only minimal appearances from Compilation characters, and using appearances for the characters based on combining their Compilation looks with their classic appearances. There's also a lot of Revisiting the Roots and Character Rerailment, with characters who had been reduced to one major character trait in spin-offs reappearing here as well-rounded and complex individuals. The Values Dissonance of both the original and the Compilation has also been re-examined: the game excises the insensitive racism, sexism and homophobia of the original, but also the sympathetic Shinra portrayal in the Compilation, in favour of focusing on the need for radical political change and the dignity of the communities of people in Midgar living in Shinra's shadow. At least, such appears to be the case up until the game's Twist Ending, where it turns out that Remake is actually a Stealth Sequel to the original game via Alternate Timeline, with several characters now having precognition of future (past?) events, while Sephiroth — who may or may not be a post-Advent Children Sephiroth — is actively working to prevent the course of history from playing out like it did in 1997.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • The God of War series has one with the PlayStation 4-exclusive 2018 entry of the same name and its sequel God of War Ragnarök. Kratos returns as the main protagonist, now much older (even sporting a Time-Passage Beard), and has a partner in his travels in the form of the son he had with his second wife Faye, named Atreus. The gameplay also has a very different feel as the combat is now more Hack and Slash than the Greek era's Stylish Action button-mashing, and the setting switches to Midgard and interacting with characters from the Nine Realms of Norse mythology, but it is in no way a Continuity Reboot as it takes place decades after the events of God of War III, and there are many references to Kratos' past actions as the Ghost of Sparta and Greek God of War, of which deeply haunt him into the present.
  • Halo Infinite was described as a "spiritual reboot" of the Halo series by its developers. It directly continues on from the events of Halo 5: Guardians, but it also takes a Revisiting the Roots approach to its gameplay and narrative while establishing a new status quo for the Halo universe moving forward. Indeed, the events of Halo 5 and its aftermath are discussed in cutscenes and audio logs (mostly in regard to Chief trying to discover Cortana's ultimate fate), but the game feels more inclined to start something new, making it feel like we missed the actual Halo 6.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic IV: The game starts with the previous setting blowing up, with almost all of the major characters dying and only a handful of survivors escaping to another planet. This was done specifically because New World Computing was having trouble keeping the continuity straight across all of the Heroes and Might and Magic games, so wanted to work with a clean slate.
  • The Hitman series got a soft reboot via the World of Assassination Trilogy, which goes out of its way to avoid mentioning the more gonzo sci-fi elements found in past entries, but as a whole was primarily designed to give the series a consistent continuity. Hitman (2016) describes the other games in ways that don't strictly contradict Codename 47 and the later references to it, while the tie-in Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman comic goes out of its way to fix various plotholes between the games pre-Absolution, as well as establish a consistent backstory for 47, Ort-Meyer, Subject 6, and Diana). The trilogy mentions a few of the missions from the previous games (Beldingford from Contracts, D'alvade from Blood Money, and Hayamoto from Silent Assassin), and the "Legacy" cinematic shows off the canonical kills for one target from each of the earlier games, implying they all happened even if the storylines around them didn't.
  • Killer Instinct: Due the last game being released way back in 1996, the 2013 game for Xbox One went for this trope to avoid Continuity Lock-Out for the benefit of newcomers to the franchise. While the 2013 has been frequently referred to as a reboot, certain story threads of the prior games are still acknowledged, such as the nature of Jago's tiger spirit (actually the spirit of Gargos) and Jago and Black Orchid being half-siblings. Most notably, the character Tusk is revealed to be an ageless immortal, meaning he is the same exact character as the one from the second game (set in the prehistoric past due to Time Travel) rather than being a Legacy Character (as is the case for Kim Wu and Maya Fallegeros).
  • The King of Fighters XIV overhauled its presentation compared to the previous King of Fighters games, namely by being the first mainline installment with 3D graphics. It also brought in a new protagonist in Shun'ei and a new storyline officially introducing The Multiverse to its lore (though protagonist switch-ups were already a common occurrence with each new Story Arc). Interestingly, despite being intended as a Jumping-On Point for newcomers (with the backstory indicating that it's been many years since the last KOF tournament to reflect the Sequel Gap), XIV is probably the most continuity-heavy start of a new saga to date, requiring knowledge of not only previous entries but entirely different SNK series and IPs in order to fully grasp the story. To drive the point home, one of the official titles of this particular arc is "The New Age", in stark contrast to the preceding arcs being named for either their heroes or antagonists.
  • Zig-zagged by the "Wild Saga" entries in The Legend of Zelda series: Breath of the Wild was initially stated to be set in the Zelda timeline somewhere (Zelda continuity is complicated), but taking place thousands of years after each potential timeline branch, meaning it could be in any of the three (or they could've even merged back together). However, its direct sequel Tears of the Kingdom muddled the situation over whether this era is a soft or hard continuity reboot, as TotK provides a completely different origin for Ganondorf and the Kingdom of Hyrule as a whole, stating that Hyrule was founded by a union between the Zonai and Hylians while Ganondorf became the original Demon King by stealing a Zonai Secret Stone. However, this isn't the first time we've seen a new kingdom of Hyrule be founded or a new incarnation of Ganondorf be born, and the curse that lead to continuous reincarnations of Link and Zelda was supposed to be eternal, so the idea that these games are untold thousands of years into the future still holds up.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda is set in a different galaxy from the Milky Way, over 600 years after the original trilogy, with the characters having gone into stasis at about the same time as the events of the second game and in intergalactic space during the events of the third game, allowing the creators the opportunity to not have the climactic events of the Mass Effect trilogy (and the different endings and player choices) be referenced. This is lampshaded at one point when a news broadcast mentions they've sent a message back to the Milky Way but haven't heard a response yet.
  • Max Payne 3 went in this direction due to the fact that practically every named character from the first two games was dead by the end of Max Payne 2. Max has gone from being a cop in New York to a bodyguard in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Tonally, the game feels less like a film noir and more like a modern summer blockbuster. Also, the run-and-gun gameplay of the first two games is abandoned in favor of slower, cover-based gameplay. Why Max went from New York to Sao Paulo is also addressed in several flashback levels.
  • Mega Man:
  • Metal Gear Solid is a continuation of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, but heavily redesigns the gameplay and characters while also releasing into a market that never got the previous entry (and only a garbled version of the entry before that). The fact that the games have nearly identical plotlines goes on unremarked, and Campbell remarks that the previous game is now in Broad Strokes by stressing that only he and Snake truly knew what happened in Zanzibar Land. The tone of the game is now much darker and cinematic, and the addition of voice acting and camera angles allows the characters to express significantly more complex emotions, with Snake going from a funny, quipping Action Genre Hero Guy who uses strange gadgets to a much broodier and more subdued character.
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • Mortal Kombat 9, although marketed as a remake of the first three games, is actually one of these. The story follows the immediate aftermath of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, in which Shao Kahn emerges victorious in Armageddon, leading Raiden to send a message to his past self about the future that holds for him. Thus the game focuses on Past Raiden's attempts to change destiny, and while it's not necessarily for the better, it does alter the events going forward. Fans have dubbed the game, alongside its sequels Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11, the "Rebooted Trilogy".
    • Mortal Kombat 1 once again refreshed the series' lore, albeit in a much grander way than Mortal Kombat 9. The game focuses on the timeline created by Liu Kang after he became the new Keeper Time in one of the possible endings of Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, and many characters, relationships, and plot developments have significantly changed. It is eventually revealed that both potential endings of Aftermath are canon; the main villain is Shang Tsung from a timeline where he became the new Keeper of Time, and he has been attempting to subvert Liu Kang's timeline so only he reigns supreme in the whole multiverse. Not only that, but Liu Kang later finds out that everyone in the cast has alternate versions where they reign as Keepers, calling upon the more heroic ones to aid him and his champions in the final battle.
  • Persona 3 can be considered this to the Persona series. Persona 3 was the game that introduced many of the elements that the series would continue to use going forward: the protagonist being a wild card and assigned the Fool Arcana, Igor being in charge of the Velvet Room, Social Links, and emphasis on the day-to-day school life of the protagonists. In-Universe, Persona 1 and Persona 2 are rarely referenced (with the bulk of said references occurring in 3), leading to Persona 3 effectively being the "first" game in the modern Persona storyline.
  • Paper Mario: Sticker Star is one to the Paper Mario games, with a new gameplay style, more paper-focused theming and lower amount of plot and unique characters. Despite fan backlash, this would become the template for the later games in the series, including the crossover with the other RPG series.
  • Puyo Puyo went through this shortly after Compile lost the series to Sega for good. Puyo Pop Fever, Sega's first major entry in the series, established an all-new setting and all-new characters. The only links to Compile's games are original protagonists Arle and Carbuncle thanks to an inadvertent dimensional warp; even then, Arle isn't given any more prominence than the minor characters while Carbuncle is an Optional Boss. Starting with Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary, the series slowly reintroduced characters from the older games and gave Arle more prominence, but with varying levels of changes applied to fit with the rest of Sega's characters.
  • Rayman Origins is one to the Rayman series, bringing it back to its 2D platformer roots while going in a dramatically different direction (being much more momentum and speed-oriented). Origins also tweaks some of the character designs to account for Rayman being the only one of his kind and only sparsely brings up the events of previous games unless you interact with Polokus, who mostly vaguely alludes to them. The Rabbids also go completely unmentioned, and the game shows no signs that they ever set foot in the Glade of Dreams, suggesting they were completely excised from Rayman canon. To wit, Rayman would next encounter them almost 12 years later, making a surprise comeback in DLC for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, "Rayman in the Phantom Show".
  • Resident Evil:
    • Resident Evil 4 completely retooled the gameplay into a much more action-oriented style with an over-the-shoulder perspective and resolved basically every lingering plot thread from previous games with a brief, minute-long cutscene at the very beginning, going for a much Denser and Wackier tone throughout. Unusually for this trope, the Player Character is shared with a previous game — namely, Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 2, having been recruited as something of a personal bodyguard to the U.S. President and his family after surviving Raccoon City.
    • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard went for a completely different feel with its gameplay, which trades the third-person perspective and action-oriented focus of the previous three numbered entries for a first-person perspective based around inventory management, uses a completely new focus character with no ties to the previous heroes, and doesn't make its connections toward the other games explicit until late in the game.
  • Sakura Wars (2019) is a soft reboot of the Sakura Wars franchise, following a decade-plus hiatus since Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. The game takes place in the same series setting, albeit a decade after the last game, with a new Imperial Combat Revue taking center stage (led by a veteran of the original organization), as well as changing the combat system from turn-based tactics to real-time hack-and-slash.
  • Samurai Warriors: The fifth title serves as a soft reboot of sorts, focusing on the earlier parts of the era, particularly those regarding Nobunaga, akin to the first installment of the series. Many characters from previous titles were cut from the roster and many returning ones had their personalities and story roles drastically changed. Even the series' poster boy, Yukimura Sanada, is nowhere to be seen because he'd be too young at that time.
  • Shantae: Half-Genie Hero is this for the Shantae series. The previous entry, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, had Shantae work with her longtime rival Risky Boots, and at the end of the game, the two part on amicable terms. This gets at best an obscure passing reference in this game, where Risky Boots is once again the main villain. To cap it off, the first level of the game is a semi-remake of the intro stage from the original game. One of the Scuttle Town villagers hangs a lampshade on this by way of Leaning on the Fourth Wall. At least part of this may have been because Pirate's Curse and Half-Genie Hero were initially in development at the same time, so it was uncertain which would come out first. Regardless, the status quo from Half-Genie Hero carries over to Shantae and the Seven Sirens. That said, characters and concepts introduced in Pirate's Curse (and Risky's Revenge, from which Pirate's Curse was a direct follow-up), such as the Barons, do appear in Half-Genie Hero, and Shantae recognizes them.
  • Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, despite seemingly being a Continuity Reboot, actually appears to be this type of reboot. There are very few references to previous games while the appearances and personalities of Holmes and Watson are altered, presumably in an attempt to appeal to modern fans of the character. However, the events of the previous games, most noticeably The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, seem to have happened at least in Broad Strokes, allowing the game to ignore the timeline of the previous games while still continuing the story overall.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic Adventure served as the Sonic franchise's first soft reboot. Simultaneously a bid to recapture old fans and gain new ones, it overhauled the art style from bright and surreal to be more muted and realistic. The character designs for most characters were also overhauled to be lankier and "edgier" instead of the softer, round designs of the classic games. Finally, Sonic Adventure was the first game in the franchise to have an in-depth story, being much Darker and Edgier than the Genesis games and including much Character Development for most of the cast. Sonic Adventure's direction would go on to define the franchise from that point forward.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was openly described as a reboot in articles and press releases leading-up to its release, maintaining the existing continuity and gameplay but featuring a massive Tone Shift away from the colorful landscapes of the previous games to a highly wrought and exotic setting typical of Final Fantasy, with Dr. Eggman notably receiving a redesign to do away with his cartoony, egg-shaped body. With the failure of '06, however, Sega quickly backpedaled with Sonic Unleashed, which basically did away with the Adventure-'06-era gameplay of open-ish level design and multiple playable characters in favor of making Sonic the major focus of the franchise going forward while introducing the divisive "Boost" gameplay consisting of more linear level design and a Boost meter. Another notable element of this era was the reduction of Sonic's portrayal as a goody two-shoes, which had dominated his characterization from Heroes to '06, in favor of restoring his Mascot with Attitude personality.
  • The Soul series has Soulcalibur V, which jumped ahead 17 years, replaced much of the longstanding cast with successors, and featured a new storyline. In fact, the game's director, Daishi Odashima, originally wanted it to be called Soul Edge 2, in order to mark a new direction for the franchise. Unfortunately for Odashima, said "new direction" did not take with fans at all. As a result, Soulcalibur VI promptly returned to the original setting. Later plot developments would add wrinkles, however: V still exists in the new timeline, but is considered by both Cassandras as a horrific Bad Future that cannot come to pass. Unsurprising, as in that timeline, her sister Sophitia is dead, her niece Pyrrha becomes a new host for Soul Edge, and her nephew Patroklos exists as a Tautological Templar.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • The original Super Mario Bros. was itself one of these. The game is a large departure from prior Mario games such as Donkey Kong (1981) and Mario Bros., which had shown urban-themed environments in comparison to SMB's fantasy kingdom. It also introduced new sets of characters, including a new antagonist. It could have been a completely new series were it not for the return of Mario and Luigi.
    • Super Mario 64 served as another one, especially in the West, where it marked the point at which the Western canon (Mario being a plumber from Brooklyn, the name "Princess Toadstool", and so on) was brought into line with the Japanese canon. It also marked a paradigm shift for the franchise, moving away from the "run to the end of the level" formula of the 2D games in favor of a more open world "collect-a-thon" game that was afforded by the new 3D technology.
  • Super Metroid continues the continuity of the first two Metroid games, but in terms of gameplay essentially acts as a loose remake of the original Metroid, taking place on the same planet, with roughly the same plot and the same boss enemies along with a few new surprises.
  • Syberia: The World Before is effectively a sequel to the original Syberia trilogy, retaining the puzzle-oriented gameplay and the wintry atmosphere. However, previously central elements such as the Voralberg automatons and the Youkols are relegated to the background, with a wholly new plot and cast taking their place. The World Before also abandons the previous games' Road Trip Plot in favour of a story mostly set in and around a City of Adventure.
  • Thief (2014) was originally marketed as a reboot of the Thief universe, following a character who appears to have a drastically-different origin story (he no longer gets a "power" from a mechanical eye after having one ripped out, but gets it from looking directly into the Primal Stone's energy). However, as the game goes on it, it gradually becomes clear that the game is actually a Stealth Sequel to the original trilogy, which takes place several hundred years after the events of the original trilogy: both the Keepers (the overriding magic-wielding Big Good) and Karras (the Big Bad of Thief II: The Metal Age) in various bits of lore and art found throughout The City. The Clocktower appears to be the same one seen in the "Life of the Party" mission in The Metal Age, while an abandoned chapel, "Our Lady of the Iron Litany", appears to be an abandoned Hammerite chapel. The "Queen of Beggars" is implied to be either a descendant or the last remaining member of the original Keepers, while the Keeper Library (visited in Thief: Deadly Shadows) is visited midway through the game, lying derelict underneath the House of Blossoms. There are also suggestions that the Garrett in this game is a descendant of the original Garrett, via a sidestory where the player can find bits of lore about the latter within Moira Asylum.
  • The Touhou Project series has a reboot between the fifth game, Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square, the last game for PC-98, and the sixth game, Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the first game in the Windows series (though it actually happened with the release of the seventh game, Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom, as extra material from the sixth game makes it clear it was written in mind with PC-98 being canon). From all the characters in the PC-98 era, only four reappear in the Windows era, two of which are the series main characters Reimu and Marisa. The works in the Windows era sometimes reference the PC-98 games, but never in a way that solidifies their canonicity. When asked about this, series creator ZUN merely stated the PC-98 games are "canon until contradicted by a Windows game."
  • Both Wolfenstein (2009) and Wolfenstein: The New Order are this for the 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein and each other, featuring the same villain Deathshead and the Kreisau Circle from that game, but incorporating elements of a "Black Sun Dimension" and an alternate timeline where the Nazis won WWII, respectively. The New Order also includes the return of Caroline Becker from the 2009 game, though noticeably different from before. RTCW is a more traditional run-and-gun experience, Wolfenstein (2009) is more Call of Duty-esque, and The New Order attempts to blend the playstyles together. This is even more apparent with TNO's standalone expansion, The Old Blood, which is for all intents and purposes a remake of the first chapter of RtCW.
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon is one to the Like a Dragon series at large. For the first time since Yakuza 4, it introduced a completely new cast of playable characters, complete with a new protagonist in Ichiban Kasuga, as Kazuma Kiryu's journey had reached its end in Yakuza 6. It also introduced a new setting, as a majority of the game is now set in the Isezaki Ijincho district of Yokohama instead of the Kamurocho district of Tokyo, as was series tradition since the original game. Furthermore, whereas the previous installments in the series were open-district Beat 'em Ups, this one is a Turn-Based JRPG (while still maintaining the open-district nature of the previous titles) akin to Dragon Quest or Persona. The subtitle being a translation of the series name in Japanese would also allow Sega to ease international players into its use when they dropped Yakuza as a franchise title going forward with the eighth game (in favor of Like a Dragon, a literal translation of the original Japanese title of Ryū ga Gotoku), further distinguishing Kasuga's games as a new beginning. The story also contains major changes to the status quo, namely the dissolution of the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance, which pave the way for new conflicts and factions going forward.
  • Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim is one for the Ys series. From this game forward, the series starts making a serious effort to craft a consistent Ys lore. However, all games to follow also treat the pre-Napishtim games in Broad Strokes where they acknowledge them at all, and Ys III and IV have both been replaced in the canon by remakes. Napishtim itself is more or less disconnected from the prior games aside from a couple of recurring characters, with prior events being of no real importance.

    Visual Novels 

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • Beavis and Butt-Head: The 2022 revival, starting with the movie Do the Universe, is essentially this, with both a Time Skip and Retool in play. To get Beavis and Butt-head caught up with a modern audience, they're taken from 1998 and dropped in the 2020s, so that the two can be more versed in the technology and culture of modern-day viewers. And for the setting of 2020s Highland, only Van Driessen and Tom Anderson were kept while the previous supporting cast of Daria, McVicker, the previous Burger World manager, Buzzcut, Todd, and the Stevensons are either gone or heavily Demoted to Extra and we're introduced to a few new recurring characters in Cody, Ellen, Smart Beavis and Butthead, and the new Burger World manager, with some one-shot characters like Keith, Audrey, and Glennis thrown in to add color to the duo's life. Many (though not all) of the old elements of the 90s show are shed and the revival essentially has the two start over with new lives in a new era that only has a few ties with the past but can still stand as a starting point for younger fans to get into the show without necessarily knowing everything about the 90s series.
  • Batman Beyond is effectively this to Batman: The Animated Series. While taking place in the same continuity and made by the same people, Beyond is set in the fifty years after TAS and the tone is very different to match. Whereas TAS used a retro Art Deco style (or "dark deco") to evoke the image of old serials from the '30s and '40s, and featured an Anachronism Stew all over the place that gave the impression of a retro city, Beyond takes its futuristic setting in stride aspects like with mutagen, Bio-Augmentation, Animesque influences, sleek and conceptual designs for their buildings and vehicles, and is more likely to remind one of AKIRA or Ghost in the Shell than '40s serials. Furthermore, there's a new man running around as Batman, the teenage Terry McGinnis, as opposed to the standard Bruce Wayne. Even the music is a contrast, favoring dirty industrial rock and electronica as opposed to the orchestral themes of before.
  • DuckTales (1987) can be watched as an independent storyline compared to the original comic, and a few details of the pilot don't actually gel very well with the comic lore (most glaringly, the fact that Huey, Dewey and Louie apparently aren't yet Junior Woodchucks). However, it can also be seen as a continuation of the comics; all a reader of the comic needs to know is "Donald has gone off to the navy and so Huey, Dewey and Louie are living with Scrooge in McDuck Manor", and they're good to go. (Despite the minor Continuity Snarls this creates, the 2010 DuckTales comics confirmed it takes place in the same continuity as the comics.)
  • 2017's The Magic School Bus Rides Again takes place in a similar continuity to 1994's The Magic School Bus and seems to have featured the same events, but it also has the characters in modern times despite their lack of aging.
  • My Little Pony:
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016) serves as a soft reboot of The Powerpuff Girls (1998). The girls are still heroes, the old villains are still around, but Pokey Oaks Kindergarten is torn down early in the show (due to a clumsy moment on Bubbles' part) and the girls are sent to Midway Elementary School (apparently it's a K-12 school), the girls often fight newer foes instead of the old ones, Miss Bellum is Put on a Bus, their personalities have noticeably changed, and they now can create Hard Light constructs with little to no mention how they could.
  • The original, long-run Thomas & Friends series has had this treatment four times:
    • Series 8, the first season officially produced under ownership of HiT Entertainment after Gullane Entertainment was bought out in 2002, had a number of changes made to fit the new take on the franchise after Series 7 and was also planned by Sam Barlow to get Thomas back onto American television after three years of being strictly on home media during Series 6 and some of Season 7. Following the plans to comply with programming mandates with Creator/PBS, there was no longer an ensemble cast besides the main characters, instead the cast was the Steam Team, consisting of eight members, Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, Percy, Toby, and Emily. Veterans of the show going far back as 1984 such as Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell had left following their retirement with music composer at the time, Robert Hartshorne taking their places with Ed Welch only doing the songs and the theme song. David Mitton meanwhile had quit the show because of his frustrations with the company during the productions of both Seasons 6 and 7 for lacking creative freedom. The continuity remained mostly the same from the classic series, albeit not as consistent as it was previously, morals had become simpler for kids (sometimes, blatantly spelled out), the writing style became more simpler than the original run, the main characters had been written more analogously for younger children (Emily got a personality overhaul as her bossier traits were inspired by Comics/Peanuts character, Lucy Van Pelt), educational learning segments were included into TV airings and DVD releases for younger audiences in order for the kids watching to interact with Thomas and all of his friends, the engines' crews were less prevalent than in the original run, and the camera equipment had changed from the 35mm film cameras to the new digital cameras that could go up to 50fps (PAL) and 60fps (NTSC).
    • 2009 and 2010 saw the releases for Hero of the Rails and Series 13. Retooling Thomas into a fully CGI animated production animated by Nitrogen Studios in Canada and all of the characters now having voice actors in episodes and specials going forward (for both dubs in this case).
    • In February 2012, after production of Blue Mountain Mystery and Series 16 wrapped up production, Creator/Mattel had bought out HiT Entertainment and changes were made once again. The show would still be animated in Canada, but now Arc Productions had taken over (up until their unfortunate bankruptcy in 2016), dialogue was becoming more natural once again, the characters have eventually started recovering from Flanderization, Andrew Brenner had taken over from Sharon Miller following Series 17 up until the BWBA season, Series 23, the amount of narration was toned down completely making this season finally be where CGI truly lifted unlike the Nitrogen era and Series 12, the rhyming and alliteration and the three strikes formula was almost eliminated, there was an ensemble cast of characters beyond the Steam Team once again than ever before, and most of the characters that were largely absent have returned like Duck, Bill, Ben, Daisy, Oliver, Toad, etc.
    • The original show was retooled one final time in 2018 with the Big World, Big Adventures! era. Following that era, Edward and Henry were demoted to be secondary characters following their respective departures from Tidmouth Sheds and Nia and Rebecca's filling in their places respectively, Thomas would be globetrotting around the world (which was actually a concept basis pitched by former US voice actor for Thomas at the time, Martin T. Sherman, in an interview from 2020 before it would be picked up as a miniseries of YouTube videos from 2015-2016 called "Really Useful Around the World" and later on in the main show two years after the miniseries ended and a year after Series 21's conclusion), and learning about different cultures in one half (as inspired by the movie, Big World! Big Adventures!) and another half where he's working on Sodor, episode runtimes have returned back to being 7 minutes after ten years since the model series had ended, Thomas would also be the narrator by Joseph May in the US and John Hasler in the UK, and almost all episodes would have a fantasy sequence relating to the theme of the episode.
  • Winx Club underwent a soft reboot when it was revived by Nickelodeon in 2011. While the continuity remains the same, the Winx return to regular students attending Alfea despite graduating in Season 3, and reverted to perpetual teenagers like the first three seasons.

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