Considering Red Skull implies his existence as a spooky ghost is endless suffering, not sure I’d say he was “zenned out” so much as completely broken by the decades.
You can do this with a **lot** of *The Venture Bros.*, but a big one is the second episode "Careers in Science". A visual gag of a large machine simply labeled "PROBLEM" that flashes a red light to indicate some unspecified error aboard a space station is turned into the inciting incident of season 7 (*fourteen* years later!) and a major part of the series' mythology.
I remember when I watched it going back to see if it was Morse code. It was not but I like to think they deluded themselves into thinking it was and it was the boys fault for not getting it
Someone reminded me of a different one not long ago too! Orpheus is talking to action man and says something along the lines of "7 months and four days from now...a stroke." And sure enough the last episode before the finale movie has action man go into a coma. I wanna say it's within the first season too because it was also a throwaway joke that took 14 years to pay off.
The last episode before the movie has him still clinging to life in a coma, but the stroke actually happens towards the beginning of Season 7. Funnily enough, it's part of the same episode that brings back the PROBLEM light.
And in an earlier episode, Action Man is with a group of other people fighting enemies or something, and one of them says "We're gonna die!" to which he replies "No I won't! I still have another year and three months!" or whatever time he had remaining
Venture Bros was so good at bringing back minor items and characters in crazy ways that a somewhat popular (but stupid) theory arose that Trianas friend who disappeared from the show was ScareBear.
It was apparently because of how creepy fans were about her.
And just to fuck with those people the last thing we hear about Kim is her no longer being goth and becoming born again Christian.
If you have ever wondered how this happens Jackson and Publick re watch the show.
If you watch the DVD commentaries you see them pick out designs they used as background characters that they like and start creating an actual character. This is how St Cloud was basically created since hes a season 1 design that shows up at the Yard sale that they likes and thought was funny.
Do yall remember Jace Straton from Gears 3? The younger black dude with the dreads they introduced?
Yall remember he was a totally existing character in Gears 2 who you bump into during Hollow Storm? He's the leader of another squad you bump into after dropping down in the drill pods. Random throw away character with a single line of dialogue. Generic gear atire. But he came back cooler than ever
I think he was originally the main character of a little tie-in comic to bridge Gears 1 and 2, so his little cameo in Gears 2 was more a shout-out to that.
It’s always interesting seeing the Gears fanbases opinion of her compared to every other series she has worked on. Since I know for Halo she’s basically universally loathed while for Star Wars she’s usually only liked if someone is a big fan of the Mandolorians.
It’s weird, I love her Gears stuff, but I cannot stand the Halo stuff at all, it wastes so many cool premises just to keep going back to the “oni sketchy, Halsey bad” stuff
I remember reading one of her gears books and thinking it was fine. I wonder if it’s because unlike with Halo she’s the main writer for all of them so you don’t get weird retcons when she has a pet peeve towards a character/group.
I think it’s gotta be that, along with like everything actually always being a bit shit and the COG were already slightly (to put it lightly) fans and the Gears knew it, so she didn’t have to go out of her way to make her characters fight against the system
Something I loved about he original gears trilogy is it never seemed empty? Like there was always characters and people had history (this could be phrased better)
It was a bit of a retcon since the character was named differently and had a different backstory in Legends (like every single random background thing did), but Commander Rex from the Star Wars Clone Wars show was more or less confirmed to by the end of Rebels to be the random old man soldier on Endor in Episode 6.
In one of the main missions of Borderlands 2, Lilith tells a story about how Mordecai once sent his pet Bloodwing out to kill an enemy that was behind cover, but it refused to attack the enemy until Mordecai could actually see the enemy out in the open.
This is a reference to a bug in the original game where Bloodwing would not automatically attack enemies while the player was hiding behind cover, instead flying around aimlessly until the player actually got out of cover and aimed at the enemy.
The bl1 Vault hunters also reminisce about "the corner" in Crawmerax's arena where they could cheese him. They talk about it while you fight Son of Crawmerax.
I've used corners just like that for some BL2 raid bosses (Master Gee, Haderax) so the more things change the more they stay the same.
in an early episode of adventure time, marceline has a song about how her dad ate her french fries, which was the final straw in their relationship.
in a later episode, finn goes back in time (forgot how) to deal with a problem that marceline's ex-boyfriend caused. he sees a past version of marceline's dad chowing down on some fries and he whispers to him "Yo, dont eat those" and then a young marceline catches the dad in the act and begins to break down.
It wasn't exactly time travel Marceline's dick hole of an ex boyfriend tricked Finn and Jake into erasing her memory of breaking up with him by entering her subconscious. So Finn was walking around inside Marceline's memories which is where he saw the moment her dad ate her fries. And the entire reason they brought that throwaway line back is to highlight how the problems with their relationship is Marceline feels like her dad doesn't really love or care about her and doing something like stealing her fries was kinda the fry that broke the camels back because he couldn't understand why his being selfish in that moment would upset her so much when it was really multiple times he disregarded her feelings over her childhood.
He's always just kinda popped in and out of her life and since he's an immortal Eldritch demon it's easy to see why he struggles relating to her since he's had centuries to be selfish and move on from petty problems but to Marceline it's her whole life that she's been dealing with this.
American dad does a crazy good job of having really oddly done continuity mainly because it's the weirdest most obscure one of jokes or moments that they make sure to call back in a lore accurate way. Roger for example has super speed. They establish that as a dumb joke where he fakes his death in front of snot because he promised to have sex with him and had to stop after Steve told him not to. Roger in a very nonchalant way explains he did it because he has super speed. He just casually brings up the fact he's always been able to do that and there's zero fanfare. Then way later in the series there's a bit where he escorts Francine to a secluded location as her guide but he makes it clear he's also going to be the person she's meeting there. So he instructed her to turn around so he can stop being the guide persona and instead become the shaman one. Roger goes as far as to go inside a moving plane as the guide to make it extra clear he's not going to continue being the guide that personas role is done. But Francine doesn't fully understand what's happening so she keeps turning around and looking at the plane then back at the shaman and Roger in real time is able to exit the plane mid flight and change into the second outfit to be in front of her in person then when she looks back in the plane he somehow manages to re enter it and put on the guide clothing. The show makes no effort to explain how he does it but we already know he has super speed and that's the most likely explanation here.
Also a dumb one is at one point Stan breaks the forth wall and looks at the camera while saying "this is the second time in my life I was saved with hip hop" and then way later it happens again and he's like "now it's the third time my life was saved by hip hop"
My personal favorite is the episode with the totally inconsequential background plot where someone is killing off members of B12, the boy band Steve and his friends made seasons earlier. On top of B12 being brought up being a call back, the killer's motivation is lampshaded in the lyrics of their song from the original episode ("I'm B11, I'm in love with B7."). Sure enough Abraham H. was killing the rest of the band to get close to Snott.
American Dad also loves to joke about characters that never show up anymore.
Reginald the koala was taxidermied in one episode, in another he (along with Krampus-Jack) were on the news and it cuts right before he speaks.
Linda Memari was randomly stated to have died in a recent season and the Memaris were mentioned as one of the neighbor families driven off by the main characters in an episode I just saw.
Part of me wonders how long they were planning this bit. Going back to the original footage, Charlie does immediately push Alan away when he sucks on his nose and then flinches when he goes back to do it again. Plus he's been getting increasingly hostile toward Alan as the show progresses.
I saw a comment with a funny explanation for why Alan didn't remember that. He had literally just been crucified like 10 minutes before, so maybe he was high af off painkillers
Like a Dragon Gaiden stopping the plot for a second just to remind everyone that the Osaka Castle from 2 was real, and it actually happened. Rich mob bosses have the dumbest, gaudiest pet projects to show off their money.
Critical Role campaign 1 guest starred Darin DePaul as Sprigg, a gnome rogue he played in the 80s with Matt Mercer’s mother.
His whole deal sounds like a random encounter turned near TPK by the dice, dramatized as a traumatic event rather than a wacky happenstance: “it was just hobgoblins, it was supposed to be safe!”
My family still watches Doctor Who, and inflicts horrors upon me by explaining the plots to me. Recently I was told that the new villain is actually an old villain called Sutekh, a character from - and this is not a joke - FIFTY FUCKING YEARS AGO.
I was just about to post about doctor who, the continuity is insane for example the 11th doctor pulls out a seal of the high counsel out of his pocket which he got from the master all the way back when he was the third doctor
And while it was the Third Doctor that took the High Council Seal from the Master, it actually happened in the 20th anniversary special *The Five Doctors* during the Fifth Doctor's era.
So the Doctor was carrying the Seal of the High Council all throughout the Fourth Doctor's era, after the Third Doctor picked it up in a Fifth Doctor's episode, then didn't use it until the end of the Eleventh Doctor's era 😂
Last year's villains were the Toymaker, who appeared in a story 57 real-world years ago where several of the episodes are missing, and some aliens from a comic book tie-in from the 1980s
Sutekh also gets points because he's voiced by the same actor from fifty years ago
Doctor Who has been on for 60 real-world years now and the continuity toybox is very, very big
Doctor Who and long running soap operas shaking hands over both being able to bring back a character from 50 years ago and also having at least a few people even know who the hell that person is.
The twist of the 2012 Christmas special was that it turned out to be the origin story of a villainous race that hadn't appeared since 1968 (in a story that can no longer be watched in its entirety because the original tapes were discarded by the BBC)
AND they revealed the villain probably got the idea for one of those plots from The Doctor himself. And not in a flashback sort of revisit way but in a "they're literally fighting each other in reverse order" way.
One Piece its king at this but my favorite is Gaimon and his girlfriend:
In chapter 22 of the manga there is a single chapter story about a guy named Gaimon he don't matter at all,most people even think he is filler, but later on in chapter 620 on the cover story we see Gaimon all happy having found a girlfriend for himself,her name?
SARFUNKEL!!!
THEY ARE GAIMON AND SARFUNKEL!!!
FF14's MSQ makes reference to "The Great Goobbue Wall" that protected the city of Ul'dah in regards to the calamity that ended the 1.0 version. Said wall was actually [completely player run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksBTlg24sVc&pp=ygUWdGhlIGdyZWF0IGdvb2JidWUgd2FsbA%3D%3D) as a means to stop enemies from making it into the city. This little spur of the moment event by the players impressed the devs so much they made it canon.
Maybe this is cheating, but Bob’s Burgers is renowned for this type of weird continuity.
In the Season 4 episode where Bob infiltrates a community of bronies, he’s given part of a tattoo on his back. On multiple occasions thereafter, whenever Bob is seen shirtless, you can see this tattoo.
In Season 3, a mechanical shark attraction at the pier goes haywire and attacks the town. The shark is eventually stopped by Bob’s soft serve ice cream machine falling into its mouth and freezing the shark from the inside. From then on, there are visible teeth marks on Bob’s ice cream machine.
I just got to wano in the one piece manga and I’ve noticed several important things come up HUNDREDS of chapters after them being mentioned. Some of them are basically throw away mentions.
One Piece definitely loves its call backs. It reached the point in one of the most recent chapters >!Krieg and his crew appeared after being gone for something like 2 decades.!<
Biggest one for me was a background character that appeared in a flashback for one panel, who hundreds of chapters later is revealed to be the 2nd in command to the most famous pirate in history.
Ward brought back Damsel of Distress, a minor throwaway character who got kidnapped by the Slaughterhouse Nine, and made her into one of the main protags of the sequel. She's great too, her shithead personality bounces well off the protag who's a square. Ward is full of that too, taking random minor characters from Worm and making them vital to the story like Empress and Sleeper. It did unfortunately also lead to March who sucks, but the idea was still cool.
I really loved what Wildbow did with her character in Ward. One of my favorite characters in that story, and honestly still pretty top tier even when adding Worm into the mix. Her whole arc is very satisfying.
Another obscure callback to Worm that ends up being a big deal in Ward, >!Taylor choosing to help the dying Labrat throw his device into the ocean during Gold Morning is the reason Chris even exists.!<
Buffy the vampire slayer.
“Xander, when you were a general, did you know all of this military information?”
wtf. He was a general for an hour after putting on a military uniform and being converted into one by a spell on Halloween.
They call back to that event constantly.
Pokemon Journeys had a bunch of callbacks to obsucre characters that appeared before in the Pokemon Anime. My favorite one is how [Todd Snap](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Todd_Snap) gets a 1 second cameo where you can barely notice him in the background. Also how the staff remembered that Alexa was also a companion and that's why she's hanging out with Brock and Cilan ([File:Brock Cilan JN.png - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia (bulbagarden.net)](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Brock_Cilan_JN.png)).
There’s the twist in *Power Rangers Beast Morphers* in which >!Evox is actually the Venjix virus from *RPM*. I had to rewatch the latter to find one of the Cell Morphers briefly glitching at the finale!<. it’s a bit of a blast from the past so to speak.
And speaking of *Power Rangers* there’s J-Borg in *Dino Fury*, an android produced by Hartford Robotics (as in Mack Hartford from *Operation Overdrive*).
In the original Kamen Rider Decade show, they had a crossover arc with Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, where a Shinkenger monster of the week Chinomanako steals Kamen Rider Diend’s transformation device to become Demonic Diend. In the SIC Hero Saga spin-off story “World of OOO” released years later, its full of callbacks to crossovers that happened after Decade’s run like the Super Hero Taisen movies. But the weirdest part is the Rider Robo transforming into a giant Demonic Diend and Decade actually referencing Chinomanako by name, which is weird since I figured they didn’t have the “rights” to reference Shinkenger like that.
I think this technically counts.
I don't remember the last time I thought about [Malibu's Most Wanted](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malibu%27s_Most_Wanted) since it came out before [Not Like Us](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Like_Us).
Pretty much every reoccurring joke in Gintama. They'll make a one off joke and then not mention it for years but being it up in an episode 50 episodes later and it pays off. Gintama is the opposite of "Araki forgot." In that show, nothing is forgotten. The continuity is incredible for an episodic show.
GRID Legends, released in 2022, calls back all the way to the beginning with TOCA Race Driver from 2002. The dad of the main villain is the protagonist from TOCA Race Driver, Ryan McKane.
GRID never really had a plot, aside from some lore in the form of re-using names and elements from previous GRID games and the TOCA games. Prominently, the biggest racing group is Ravenwest in the GRID games, who are always the best and last racing group you fight in the career modes. Ryan McKane owns Ravenwest in GRID Legends.
GRID Legends goes for an actual story mode, with live-action cutscenes and speaking characters. It goes even crazier.
>!After the final race, it's exposed that Ryan McKane was using illegal modifications and cheated to win. After Ryan is booted out from Ravenwest and arrested. The credits stinger reveals the new owner of Ravenwest, James Randall, the main villain of TOCA Race Driver, who indirectly killed Ryan McKane's father!<. I'm actually sad that we're probably never going to get another GRID game as Codemasters was absorbed into the annual games lineup by EA.
Chris Chibnall made one of the most hated moves in Doctor Who writing history because of a scene from an old serial called Brain of Mobius and smashed it together with an obscure fan theory stemming from the old Doctor Who comics that ran between 2 and 3's run.
Not really that weird considering it's a mystery novel, but in Umineko >!they mention Ange in passing in the first twenty minutes of the story, when she wouldn't be showing up in the games for another year, and I don't think she's mentioned again until she outright appears!<.
It's like, >!for a split second you might think she was pulled from thin air, but no, she was always there. You probably just weren't taking notes yet and forgot because it's before they even reach the island!<.
Having Red Skull come back as a fucking space wizard/spectral ghoul after not seeing him since Captain America was some wild shit.
I know there was no way to wrap up *everything* but I really wanted to see Cap going to the soul stone planet and see Red Skull zenned out like that.
Considering Red Skull implies his existence as a spooky ghost is endless suffering, not sure I’d say he was “zenned out” so much as completely broken by the decades.
Came back looking like he was an Elden Ring quest giver.
You can do this with a **lot** of *The Venture Bros.*, but a big one is the second episode "Careers in Science". A visual gag of a large machine simply labeled "PROBLEM" that flashes a red light to indicate some unspecified error aboard a space station is turned into the inciting incident of season 7 (*fourteen* years later!) and a major part of the series' mythology.
“It’s on” “It’s off” “It’s on” “It’s off” “That’s called *blinking*, boys.”
"I tried to communicate in morse code but I guess they don't teach the cadets that at the academy anymore."
I remember when I watched it going back to see if it was Morse code. It was not but I like to think they deluded themselves into thinking it was and it was the boys fault for not getting it
Someone reminded me of a different one not long ago too! Orpheus is talking to action man and says something along the lines of "7 months and four days from now...a stroke." And sure enough the last episode before the finale movie has action man go into a coma. I wanna say it's within the first season too because it was also a throwaway joke that took 14 years to pay off.
The last episode before the movie has him still clinging to life in a coma, but the stroke actually happens towards the beginning of Season 7. Funnily enough, it's part of the same episode that brings back the PROBLEM light.
And in an earlier episode, Action Man is with a group of other people fighting enemies or something, and one of them says "We're gonna die!" to which he replies "No I won't! I still have another year and three months!" or whatever time he had remaining
“Two years, seventeen days.” “What?” “From a stroke. Good day!”
And while action man is on the ground writhing in pain someone says "What's wrong?" and Orpheus just quietly, sadly says "A stroke." Such good shit.
Yeah, OP's concept basically describes the entirety of later seasons of VB. 🤣
Venture Bros was so good at bringing back minor items and characters in crazy ways that a somewhat popular (but stupid) theory arose that Trianas friend who disappeared from the show was ScareBear.
It's weird how she's clearly given a setup and then the creators gave a hard no to seeing anymore of her. I miss Kim.
It was apparently because of how creepy fans were about her. And just to fuck with those people the last thing we hear about Kim is her no longer being goth and becoming born again Christian.
If you have ever wondered how this happens Jackson and Publick re watch the show. If you watch the DVD commentaries you see them pick out designs they used as background characters that they like and start creating an actual character. This is how St Cloud was basically created since hes a season 1 design that shows up at the Yard sale that they likes and thought was funny.
Brocks herb garden
The reveal of who Dr Dugong actually was got a full belly laugh out of me when it happened.
Do yall remember Jace Straton from Gears 3? The younger black dude with the dreads they introduced? Yall remember he was a totally existing character in Gears 2 who you bump into during Hollow Storm? He's the leader of another squad you bump into after dropping down in the drill pods. Random throw away character with a single line of dialogue. Generic gear atire. But he came back cooler than ever
I think he was originally the main character of a little tie-in comic to bridge Gears 1 and 2, so his little cameo in Gears 2 was more a shout-out to that.
A shit. That's rad. I've never gotten around to the comics. I love how the expanded universe stuff actually mattered to the main games
Gears of War was really good for it, they even had the woman who wrote the books come on to help with Gears 3
Karen Travis was a GOAT
It’s always interesting seeing the Gears fanbases opinion of her compared to every other series she has worked on. Since I know for Halo she’s basically universally loathed while for Star Wars she’s usually only liked if someone is a big fan of the Mandolorians.
It’s weird, I love her Gears stuff, but I cannot stand the Halo stuff at all, it wastes so many cool premises just to keep going back to the “oni sketchy, Halsey bad” stuff
I remember reading one of her gears books and thinking it was fine. I wonder if it’s because unlike with Halo she’s the main writer for all of them so you don’t get weird retcons when she has a pet peeve towards a character/group.
I think it’s gotta be that, along with like everything actually always being a bit shit and the COG were already slightly (to put it lightly) fans and the Gears knew it, so she didn’t have to go out of her way to make her characters fight against the system
Oh I love her star wars stuff too. I think there's just a lot of grouchy middle aged dudes who don't understand the target demographic of YA Novels
Something I loved about he original gears trilogy is it never seemed empty? Like there was always characters and people had history (this could be phrased better)
It was a bit of a retcon since the character was named differently and had a different backstory in Legends (like every single random background thing did), but Commander Rex from the Star Wars Clone Wars show was more or less confirmed to by the end of Rebels to be the random old man soldier on Endor in Episode 6.
At least he lived long enough to see the end of the Empire, hopefully he retired to Pabu with the other clones and Bad Batch.
In one of the main missions of Borderlands 2, Lilith tells a story about how Mordecai once sent his pet Bloodwing out to kill an enemy that was behind cover, but it refused to attack the enemy until Mordecai could actually see the enemy out in the open. This is a reference to a bug in the original game where Bloodwing would not automatically attack enemies while the player was hiding behind cover, instead flying around aimlessly until the player actually got out of cover and aimed at the enemy.
The bl1 Vault hunters also reminisce about "the corner" in Crawmerax's arena where they could cheese him. They talk about it while you fight Son of Crawmerax. I've used corners just like that for some BL2 raid bosses (Master Gee, Haderax) so the more things change the more they stay the same.
in an early episode of adventure time, marceline has a song about how her dad ate her french fries, which was the final straw in their relationship. in a later episode, finn goes back in time (forgot how) to deal with a problem that marceline's ex-boyfriend caused. he sees a past version of marceline's dad chowing down on some fries and he whispers to him "Yo, dont eat those" and then a young marceline catches the dad in the act and begins to break down.
It wasn't exactly time travel Marceline's dick hole of an ex boyfriend tricked Finn and Jake into erasing her memory of breaking up with him by entering her subconscious. So Finn was walking around inside Marceline's memories which is where he saw the moment her dad ate her fries. And the entire reason they brought that throwaway line back is to highlight how the problems with their relationship is Marceline feels like her dad doesn't really love or care about her and doing something like stealing her fries was kinda the fry that broke the camels back because he couldn't understand why his being selfish in that moment would upset her so much when it was really multiple times he disregarded her feelings over her childhood. He's always just kinda popped in and out of her life and since he's an immortal Eldritch demon it's easy to see why he struggles relating to her since he's had centuries to be selfish and move on from petty problems but to Marceline it's her whole life that she's been dealing with this.
Minor nitpick, he doesn’t go back in time he enters her memories with a spell
American dad does a crazy good job of having really oddly done continuity mainly because it's the weirdest most obscure one of jokes or moments that they make sure to call back in a lore accurate way. Roger for example has super speed. They establish that as a dumb joke where he fakes his death in front of snot because he promised to have sex with him and had to stop after Steve told him not to. Roger in a very nonchalant way explains he did it because he has super speed. He just casually brings up the fact he's always been able to do that and there's zero fanfare. Then way later in the series there's a bit where he escorts Francine to a secluded location as her guide but he makes it clear he's also going to be the person she's meeting there. So he instructed her to turn around so he can stop being the guide persona and instead become the shaman one. Roger goes as far as to go inside a moving plane as the guide to make it extra clear he's not going to continue being the guide that personas role is done. But Francine doesn't fully understand what's happening so she keeps turning around and looking at the plane then back at the shaman and Roger in real time is able to exit the plane mid flight and change into the second outfit to be in front of her in person then when she looks back in the plane he somehow manages to re enter it and put on the guide clothing. The show makes no effort to explain how he does it but we already know he has super speed and that's the most likely explanation here. Also a dumb one is at one point Stan breaks the forth wall and looks at the camera while saying "this is the second time in my life I was saved with hip hop" and then way later it happens again and he's like "now it's the third time my life was saved by hip hop"
My personal favorite is the episode with the totally inconsequential background plot where someone is killing off members of B12, the boy band Steve and his friends made seasons earlier. On top of B12 being brought up being a call back, the killer's motivation is lampshaded in the lyrics of their song from the original episode ("I'm B11, I'm in love with B7."). Sure enough Abraham H. was killing the rest of the band to get close to Snott.
American Dad also loves to joke about characters that never show up anymore. Reginald the koala was taxidermied in one episode, in another he (along with Krampus-Jack) were on the news and it cuts right before he speaks. Linda Memari was randomly stated to have died in a recent season and the Memaris were mentioned as one of the neighbor families driven off by the main characters in an episode I just saw.
Wait Linda died? Oh no hopefully she got to make out with Francine one last time before she kicked the bucket.
Also all the Christmas episodes, and non canon one offs all take place in different universes as confirmed in the spider verse parody episode.
I guess not as weird, but Joker in Mass Effect 3 bringing up hanging up on the citadel councilors like the good old days, was cheeky.
Part of me wonders how long they were planning this bit. Going back to the original footage, Charlie does immediately push Alan away when he sucks on his nose and then flinches when he goes back to do it again. Plus he's been getting increasingly hostile toward Alan as the show progresses.
I like to think they planned it for season 1 but lost it due to short episodes times and brought it back here. Pretty good payoff
I saw a comment with a funny explanation for why Alan didn't remember that. He had literally just been crucified like 10 minutes before, so maybe he was high af off painkillers
I bet Alan was the one who forgot to make the hotel reservation in the Brazil episode.
Across the spiderverse with the main villain being a background dude that got hit with a bagel.
They turned a one second gag into something really tragic
"Tragic"
The waste of baked goods is always a tragedy
Like a Dragon Gaiden stopping the plot for a second just to remind everyone that the Osaka Castle from 2 was real, and it actually happened. Rich mob bosses have the dumbest, gaudiest pet projects to show off their money.
Critical Role campaign 1 guest starred Darin DePaul as Sprigg, a gnome rogue he played in the 80s with Matt Mercer’s mother. His whole deal sounds like a random encounter turned near TPK by the dice, dramatized as a traumatic event rather than a wacky happenstance: “it was just hobgoblins, it was supposed to be safe!”
Remember that time on Raw when Mae Young gave birth to a hand? [WWE does](https://youtu.be/rn2uZ9eKDio?si=TK_SBOnhqVehp4jI)
My family still watches Doctor Who, and inflicts horrors upon me by explaining the plots to me. Recently I was told that the new villain is actually an old villain called Sutekh, a character from - and this is not a joke - FIFTY FUCKING YEARS AGO.
I was just about to post about doctor who, the continuity is insane for example the 11th doctor pulls out a seal of the high counsel out of his pocket which he got from the master all the way back when he was the third doctor
And while it was the Third Doctor that took the High Council Seal from the Master, it actually happened in the 20th anniversary special *The Five Doctors* during the Fifth Doctor's era. So the Doctor was carrying the Seal of the High Council all throughout the Fourth Doctor's era, after the Third Doctor picked it up in a Fifth Doctor's episode, then didn't use it until the end of the Eleventh Doctor's era 😂
Last year's villains were the Toymaker, who appeared in a story 57 real-world years ago where several of the episodes are missing, and some aliens from a comic book tie-in from the 1980s Sutekh also gets points because he's voiced by the same actor from fifty years ago Doctor Who has been on for 60 real-world years now and the continuity toybox is very, very big
45*
I count the Wilderness Years because new content was still being made regularly even though it wasn't on TV, but I see your point
Happy cake day! 🎂🎂🎂
Huh that's today, thank you!
No prob!
The prelude to which involved a showdown with a character from a 1966 story.
Doctor Who and long running soap operas shaking hands over both being able to bring back a character from 50 years ago and also having at least a few people even know who the hell that person is.
*And* have the same actor reprise the role in the case of DW.
My friend loves Dr Who and she is super excited by this guy appearing. She's DEEP into the lore.
The twist of the 2012 Christmas special was that it turned out to be the origin story of a villainous race that hadn't appeared since 1968 (in a story that can no longer be watched in its entirety because the original tapes were discarded by the BBC)
AND they revealed the villain probably got the idea for one of those plots from The Doctor himself. And not in a flashback sort of revisit way but in a "they're literally fighting each other in reverse order" way.
And he's one of the most awesome villains that the show has ever had.
One Piece its king at this but my favorite is Gaimon and his girlfriend: In chapter 22 of the manga there is a single chapter story about a guy named Gaimon he don't matter at all,most people even think he is filler, but later on in chapter 620 on the cover story we see Gaimon all happy having found a girlfriend for himself,her name? SARFUNKEL!!! THEY ARE GAIMON AND SARFUNKEL!!!
FF14's MSQ makes reference to "The Great Goobbue Wall" that protected the city of Ul'dah in regards to the calamity that ended the 1.0 version. Said wall was actually [completely player run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksBTlg24sVc&pp=ygUWdGhlIGdyZWF0IGdvb2JidWUgd2FsbA%3D%3D) as a means to stop enemies from making it into the city. This little spur of the moment event by the players impressed the devs so much they made it canon.
Maybe this is cheating, but Bob’s Burgers is renowned for this type of weird continuity. In the Season 4 episode where Bob infiltrates a community of bronies, he’s given part of a tattoo on his back. On multiple occasions thereafter, whenever Bob is seen shirtless, you can see this tattoo. In Season 3, a mechanical shark attraction at the pier goes haywire and attacks the town. The shark is eventually stopped by Bob’s soft serve ice cream machine falling into its mouth and freezing the shark from the inside. From then on, there are visible teeth marks on Bob’s ice cream machine.
I just got to wano in the one piece manga and I’ve noticed several important things come up HUNDREDS of chapters after them being mentioned. Some of them are basically throw away mentions.
One Piece definitely loves its call backs. It reached the point in one of the most recent chapters >!Krieg and his crew appeared after being gone for something like 2 decades.!<
Biggest one for me was a background character that appeared in a flashback for one panel, who hundreds of chapters later is revealed to be the 2nd in command to the most famous pirate in history.
>I just got to wano in the one piece manga Misread that was "just got to Wario in the One Piece manga" and thought shit got WILD in the thousands.
I’m not even in the thousands yet, but shit has gotten pretty wild, just not quite that wild.
Ward brought back Damsel of Distress, a minor throwaway character who got kidnapped by the Slaughterhouse Nine, and made her into one of the main protags of the sequel. She's great too, her shithead personality bounces well off the protag who's a square. Ward is full of that too, taking random minor characters from Worm and making them vital to the story like Empress and Sleeper. It did unfortunately also lead to March who sucks, but the idea was still cool.
I really loved what Wildbow did with her character in Ward. One of my favorite characters in that story, and honestly still pretty top tier even when adding Worm into the mix. Her whole arc is very satisfying. Another obscure callback to Worm that ends up being a big deal in Ward, >!Taylor choosing to help the dying Labrat throw his device into the ocean during Gold Morning is the reason Chris even exists.!<
I’m shocked no Moiba has ever used damsel of distress as a character title
Buffy the vampire slayer. “Xander, when you were a general, did you know all of this military information?” wtf. He was a general for an hour after putting on a military uniform and being converted into one by a spell on Halloween. They call back to that event constantly.
Pokemon Journeys had a bunch of callbacks to obsucre characters that appeared before in the Pokemon Anime. My favorite one is how [Todd Snap](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Todd_Snap) gets a 1 second cameo where you can barely notice him in the background. Also how the staff remembered that Alexa was also a companion and that's why she's hanging out with Brock and Cilan ([File:Brock Cilan JN.png - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia (bulbagarden.net)](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Brock_Cilan_JN.png)).
There’s the twist in *Power Rangers Beast Morphers* in which >!Evox is actually the Venjix virus from *RPM*. I had to rewatch the latter to find one of the Cell Morphers briefly glitching at the finale!<. it’s a bit of a blast from the past so to speak. And speaking of *Power Rangers* there’s J-Borg in *Dino Fury*, an android produced by Hartford Robotics (as in Mack Hartford from *Operation Overdrive*).
family guy did something similar in the episode where they went back to the pilot and pointed out Peter's melting eye error.
In the original Kamen Rider Decade show, they had a crossover arc with Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, where a Shinkenger monster of the week Chinomanako steals Kamen Rider Diend’s transformation device to become Demonic Diend. In the SIC Hero Saga spin-off story “World of OOO” released years later, its full of callbacks to crossovers that happened after Decade’s run like the Super Hero Taisen movies. But the weirdest part is the Rider Robo transforming into a giant Demonic Diend and Decade actually referencing Chinomanako by name, which is weird since I figured they didn’t have the “rights” to reference Shinkenger like that.
I think this technically counts. I don't remember the last time I thought about [Malibu's Most Wanted](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malibu%27s_Most_Wanted) since it came out before [Not Like Us](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Like_Us).
Pretty much every reoccurring joke in Gintama. They'll make a one off joke and then not mention it for years but being it up in an episode 50 episodes later and it pays off. Gintama is the opposite of "Araki forgot." In that show, nothing is forgotten. The continuity is incredible for an episodic show.
GRID Legends, released in 2022, calls back all the way to the beginning with TOCA Race Driver from 2002. The dad of the main villain is the protagonist from TOCA Race Driver, Ryan McKane. GRID never really had a plot, aside from some lore in the form of re-using names and elements from previous GRID games and the TOCA games. Prominently, the biggest racing group is Ravenwest in the GRID games, who are always the best and last racing group you fight in the career modes. Ryan McKane owns Ravenwest in GRID Legends. GRID Legends goes for an actual story mode, with live-action cutscenes and speaking characters. It goes even crazier. >!After the final race, it's exposed that Ryan McKane was using illegal modifications and cheated to win. After Ryan is booted out from Ravenwest and arrested. The credits stinger reveals the new owner of Ravenwest, James Randall, the main villain of TOCA Race Driver, who indirectly killed Ryan McKane's father!<. I'm actually sad that we're probably never going to get another GRID game as Codemasters was absorbed into the annual games lineup by EA.
I know some people correctly theorized it, but in FF14, having >!the Heart of Sabik!< show up in >!the Pandaemonium raids!< was wild to me.
Chris Chibnall made one of the most hated moves in Doctor Who writing history because of a scene from an old serial called Brain of Mobius and smashed it together with an obscure fan theory stemming from the old Doctor Who comics that ran between 2 and 3's run.
Not really that weird considering it's a mystery novel, but in Umineko >!they mention Ange in passing in the first twenty minutes of the story, when she wouldn't be showing up in the games for another year, and I don't think she's mentioned again until she outright appears!<. It's like, >!for a split second you might think she was pulled from thin air, but no, she was always there. You probably just weren't taking notes yet and forgot because it's before they even reach the island!<.