Revival

"Let me assure you fans of the old Price is Right that this is your favorite game still based on the pricing of merchandise with wonderful awards for smart shoppers. We call it The New Price is Right because we have some exciting new games that you'll enjoy right there at home with our Studio Audience, and we're going to get that first game going right now."

— Bob Barker on the first-ever episode of his version of The Price Is Right

The show's so nice, they did it twice. Or thrice.

Pretty much every fan's dream is to see their beloved series return to the airwaves, and every once in a great while, it actually happens, occasionally as the reaction to a particularly successful Reunion Show.

The Revival differs from other forms of remake and adaptation in that it remains (more or less) in continuity with its predecessor. The show may differ in some substantial ways,^note in fact, a Revival is often far more different from the original than a remake would be, particularly with regards to casting, but it is nonetheless a continuation of the original series, rather than a second attempt at visiting the same material. The revival is often confused with the continuity reboot, which generally wipes the slate clean and starts from the beginning with a different cast and crew.

A Revival differs from a Sequel Series in scale and in the passage of real-world time. It typically revisits the characters or their world some years later, and features occasional references back to events in the original series.^note Ideally, these references are very occasional, as they tend to alienate new viewers. Referencing past continuity too often gives the new show the feel of Fan Wank. It is not strictly necessary for any of the original characters to return,^note though this depends on the nature of the show: shows set in the "real world" typically need a character (or family) to link the incarnations, while in Speculative Fiction, the universe of the show can serve this purpose, but when they don't, you can usually count on one of them to return as a Special Guest, see Continuity Cameo. Often, a front-line character from the original series is now Older and Wiser, and promoted to the position of The Mentor.

The Revival is something of a crapshoot. When reviving a show, the makers have access to a ready-made audience, improving their odds of success. However, if the revival is too much like the original, (mostly unfavorable) comparisons to the original are inevitable, and they run the risk of being inaccessible or irrelevant to the new audience.^note After all, the show which spawned the revival had long-since died. Conversely, If the revival is too different, it alienates fans of the original, and there are few foes more formidable than an enraged fan-base. When it fails, it fails spectacularly. When it succeeds, it tends to last longer than the original, though it does not always attain the same cultural status. When a work makes fun of the concept, see Reboot Snark.

In Theatre "revival" has a slightly different meaning, closer to a straight remake. Any production that has not been performed in a significant amount of time and is brought back to the stage is called a revival - usually it will be recast, sometimes it will get bonus material added in the form of a new song or two, sometimes the production values of the show such as the set design will get a revamp. The Tony Awards give separate awards to revival productions including Best Revival of a Musical and Best Revival of a Play.

See also Un-Canceled, which is the restoration of the original, largely unchanged, as opposed to a new series based off the old. The differences are sometimes entirely behind-the-scenes. Compare After Show, which usually immediately succeeds the original show and typically involves at last a partial change in cast or setting. An Irregular Series might result from a revival, especially if it takes the form of sporadic TV movies rather than the original's regular release. From the Ashes is a way to do this more subtly and with a fresher setting and/or cast.

For the 2012 Image horror comic, check Revival. For the 2014 Stephen King novel, see Revival. For characters surviving death, see Resurrection Tropes.

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Examples

Anime

• Macross is fairly unique among other anime series in the fact that it goes through constant revivals every few years with a few movies, OVAs, and mangas sprinkled in between. First there was the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that aired from 1982-1983. Macross 7 was aired from 1994-1995 and was based on a colony ship with two main characters from the original series being carried over. The 2008 series, Macross Frontier, takes place several decades after Macross 7 in a different colony ship. The 2016 series, Macross Delta, takes place eight years after Frontier on already colonized planets.
• Rebuild of Evangelion, for the original Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• Lupin III first aired on TV from 1971-1972. It got so popular in reruns, that it was brought back as New Lupin III in 1977. And again in the 1980s as Lupin III: Part III. The fourth Lupin TV series, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, is a revival set before the first three, a Prequel. And then the fifth and sixth TV series followed. And that's not counting all the movies.
• Sometimes, classic Japanese shows are revived into newer ones. Himitsu no Akko-chan, Sally the Witch, Magical Princess Minky Momo and GeGeGe no Kitarō are four examples of this.
• Getter Robo was revived with Getter Robo: Armageddon, and since then, it has spawned Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo and New Getter Robo.
• SSSS.GRIDMAN is the animated revival of the 1990s cult classic toku Denkō Chōjin Gridman
• After one year out of air, the original Yo-kai Watch anime returned in April 2019, now titled Yo-kai Watch!, returning to the original timeline with Nate and the old Yo-kai designs. Naturally, Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside ended its run wrapping its Story Arc. As with the latter series, Nate uses a model of the Yo-kai Watch Elda (dubbed 'K') and the Yo-kai Arcs (probably to tie-in with Yo-kai Watch 4). Then, history repeated when the series ended to make way for Yo-kai Watch Jam - Yo-kai Academy Y: Close Encounters of the N Kind; after said series wrapped a post-script arc^note None of its characters or plotlines made into the videogame adaptation, Yo-kai Watch♪ premiered, this time with Nate using a slightly-modified original Yo-kai Watch model.
• Tenchi Muyo! is an odd duck. After the franchise's hey day in the 90's, it seemed to have ended the OVA series Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki with a lot of unanswered questions. Suddenly, the franchise was revived with Tenchi Muyo! GXP and the 3rd OVA installment soon after. It would be a few years later when Ai! Tenchi Muyo and the fourth and fifth OVA installments arrived.
• Dragon Ball Super is the 2015 revival for Dragon Ball as an animated series, after the manga ended 20 years earlier in 1995 and the anime in 1996. While it's technically a Midquel, it more than qualifies because it started 20 years after the manga with consistent involvement of its creator, Akira Toriyama, and marked Dragon Ball's return to its most popular format.
  • Super is an interesting case because the series still lived on before that via many, many video games, as well as the various dubs in the Western market on TV and released on home media. There was a gradual lead-up to Super over eight years: first was the animated one-shot Dragon Ball: Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!! in 2005, then the Dragon Ball Z Kai refresh of Z in 2009, and then the big one: Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods in 2013. This proved popular enough to warrant more consistent creation of anime content, including Super and several more movies.

Automobiles

• The MINI, launched in 2001 by BMW is one such example. However, it's not a Remake and is a Continuity Reboot of the original - larger, fatter and heavier than the original. Not to mention that 1.6-litre engines and diesel were never available in the original.
• The original Fiat 500 is a supermini that is considered utterly terrible in some nations (even the United Kingdom). Its revival, produced since 2007, was launched in the United States sometime in 2011 (where such vehicles are considered as Americans Hate Tingle).
• Volkswagen Santana, which is basically the 1981-1988 Passat with some slight changes and engine changes. The Other Wiki has a full article. Supposed to end production in 2012...
• The Talbot brand, owned by Peugeot, which disappeared from the automobile market in 1986, but is now coming back, with Peugeot-based models. Few people realized how much of a Chekhov's Gun the Talbot brand was to Peugeot-Citroen...

Comic Books

• A number of The Disney Afternoon shows have been revived in the comics pages, including Gargoyles by Slave Labor Graphics, and DuckTales (1987) (in Uncle Scrooge comics), Darkwing Duck, and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers by Boom! Kids. Neither publisher was able to hang on to the licenses very long, however.
• The original Legion of Super-Heroes was revived after 28 years of alternate continuities, futures wiped out of history, etc. They even got the old writer and old cover logo.
• Captain America may have the most successful revival of a comic character in American history. The original Captain America Comics ran for 9 years, while the second revival in the Silver Age onward has lasted, off and on, over forty!
• Marvel also did this to many of its Riverdale-style humor titles. Many of them became part of Marvel's typical superhero universe. Venus became an Agent of Atlas, Patsy Walker from Miss America became Hellcat, and Millie the Model weaves in and out of mainstream continuity.
• IDW Publishing established its own line of Saturday Morning Adventures label miniseries that revive iconic cartoons for long-standing franchises, including G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), and Dungeons & Dragons (1983).
• I Hate Fairyland was revived in 2022 for an additional 40 issues, focusing on the now-physically adult Gertrude being forced to return to Fairyland.

Eastern Animation

• The 70s Mézga family was set for a 2005 revival, under the title "A Mézga család és a (sz)ámítógép" ("The Mézgas and the Computer" or "The Mézgas and the Nonsense Machine"). Continuity was mostly ignored, with the characters reverting to their original ages despite having been aged up during the original run's three seasons. Blöki the dog could talk, which was previously exclusive to the more wacky and fantastical second season. Due to budget issues, the revival didn't last beyond two half-length test episodes.
• The Rabbit with the Checkered Ears was revived in 2018, 42 years after it had ended, but only lasted for a single episode because the still living original creators weren't fond of the changes, such as the inclusion of a new female character who ironically wasn't even in the episode. To top it all off, this aborted revival has no official home media or streaming release, it only airs on TV every couple years and its existence has barely been acknowledged since.

Film

• The 2000 Samuel L. Jackson vehicle Shaft was not a remake of the 1970s blaxploitation classic Shaft. In fact, Richard Roundtree reprised his role as the original Shaft, who was the uncle of Jackson's character. Then there was Shaft in 2019, with both older Shafts appearing and introducing a third-generation Shaft.
• Referenced in Galaxy Quest, where the Star Trek spoof show the main characters acted on was revived in the end of the film.
• Jurassic Park was moribund since the third film back in 2001... then came Jurassic World in 2015.
• The Star Wars film series has undergone two revivals after the Original Trilogy (1977-1983). In 1999 the Prequel Trilogy started with Episode 1, The Phantom Menace, sixteen years after Episode 6, Return of the Jedi. In 2015 the Sequel Trilogy started with Episode 7, The Force Awakens, ten years after Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, in 2005 (and a change of hands from 20th Century Fox to Disney). Note though that Star Wars is a unique case, as its Expanded Universe non-film media was still going strong through animated series, comics, videogames etc. years after Revenge of the Sith until the sale, which led said Expanded Universe to be Canon Discontinuity decanonized as Star Wars Legends and a new one has spawned since with plenty of live-action and animated content created specially for Disney+.
• Released sixteen years after the original Blair Witch Project the surprise sequel Blair Witch goes back into the woods with a new inevitably doomed group lead by Heather Donahue's brother in a desperate attempt to find her after new footage is posted online.
• The Matrix was dormant film-wise since Revolutions in late 2003, until The Matrix Resurrections was greenlit for a 2021 release.

Live-Action TV

• Though not the first example, surely the most famous is Star Trek: The Next Generation, which spawned the modern era of the Star Trek franchise. Set a century after the original, it returned to the fictional world of Star Trek: The Original Series with a new starship and crew.
  • And yes, there was even a Shout-Out or two and a Special Guest from the first series from time to time; DeForrest Kelley (Dr. "Bones" McCoy) had a small guest appearance in the premiere episode, sparking a "send-off" tradition where a character from the previous Trek series would appear in the premiere of the next; Spock became a focal character for two-part episode and even his father Sarek had an episode revolving around him.
  • Scotty also made an appearance, after being locked in transporter for decades. He managed to show his old school engineering beats the new engineer.
  • This almost happened a few years earlier with Star Trek: Phase Two which was going to be the headliner for a new Paramount cable network. This eventually morphed into Star Trek: The Motion Picture while some of the scripts written for the show were used in Star Trek: The Next Generation during a writer's strike.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds functions as one for the first pilot of The Original Series, Star Trek S1 E0 "The Cage", 58 years after it was shot. It has also been described as owning the record for the longest time between the pilot being shot and being picked up as a full series.
• Due in part to the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, about the same time, WKRP in Cincinnati was revived as The New WKRP In Cincinnati, which returned to the titular radio station a decade later. Some of the original characters remained, some had departed, but most made guest appearances.
• The 70s sitcom What's Happening! was updated to What's Happening Now!, starring nearly all of the original's surviving stars as older version of their characters.
• Get Smart was briefly revived with Maxwell Smart promoted to Chief of CONTROL over his own son Zach in the new Get Smart.
• Gladiators (2024): The show is a revival of Gladiators, which was itself an adaptation of American Gladiators. There's a strong element of Revisiting the Roots and it owes more to the original ITV Gladiators series than to the Sky1 revival that followed it.
• Another of the rare successful examples is Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, in which David Carradine almost-reprised his original role, playing Caine's Identical Grandson.
• In 1997, Knight Rider was revived as Team Knight Rider with a new cast and concept. It fell victim to a homicidally enraged fan-base.
  • And in 2008, a new revival was spawned by a TV movie. The fan-base has proven substantially less homicidal this time.
• The Brady Bunch was briefly revived in the 1980s as The Bradys. It violated the usual rule by transforming from a Half-Hour Comedy to a Dramatic Hour Long, and suffered in the ratings for it; in an attempt to rescue the show, the producers tried to turn it back into a comedy by arbitrarily inserting a Laugh Track into the existing dramatic plot line! Prior to The Bradys, there was also a short-lived comedy series called The Brady Brides, which ran for six episodes and featured Jan and Marcia as newlyweds.
• On the other side of the pond, Are You Being Served? was briefly revived, reuniting the department store clerks as the caretakers of an inn into which their pensions had been invested in Grace and Favor (aired in the US as Are You Being Served Again. Many of the cast members have speculated that had the show originally aired under that title, it might have succeeded, as it appears that most of the audience did not realize the show was a revival).
  • Another attempt was made in 2016 but faced poor reviews.
• A revival of Blake's 7 set years after the original with Avon as The Mentor was announced in 2003, but appears to have been scrapped.
• Doctor Who was revived in 2005 after sixteen years during which only Expanded Universe material and a single Made-for-TV Movie was produced. While the show was deliberately ambiguous to audiences about whether it was a reboot or a revival for its first season in its new form (though the producers always intended it as a revival), it was made clear partway through its second season that all of the earlier show definitely was still in continuity. It even put the long break in as a plot point: during the missing period (on the Doctor's personal timeline, anyway), the Last Great Time War happened, rendering the Doctor the Last of His Kind (and regenerating him offscreen into Christopher Eccleston). The show squeezed the mystery of what precisely happened for all the drama and suspense they could. The revival has made a few Retcons concerning the original series, but then again Doctor Who tended towards Broad Strokes continuity for much of its original run as well. Because the 1963-1989 and 2005-present iterations of the series differ quite vastly in tone, format, and style, not to mention the 16-year gap, fans and this wiki have come to describing the show's first 26 seasons (plus the TV movie) the "Classic Series"/"Classic Who" and the 2005 revival the "Revival Series"/"New Series"/"New Who".
• After The Muppet Show ended and the Muppets went on to make movies, two attempts were made to revive the show as a TV franchise. Neither The Jim Henson Hour nor Muppets Tonight were as successful as the original. More recently, the show has been revived in Comic Book form.
• Game shows are quite popular targets for revivals:
  • The current incarnation of Jeopardy!, originated by Alex Trebek, is the second revival of the original, which was hosted by Art Fleming from 1964 to 1974. A short-lived revival/Retool aired from 1978-79, also with Fleming.
  • Password was revived several times, including Password Plus and Super Password in the late 70s and mid-80s, then Million Dollar Password in the late 2000s.
  • NBC revived the classic quiz show 21 in the early 2000s.
  • The most famous version of the Match Game (i.e., the orange shag carpeted version with Gene Rayburn, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, and questions leading to "boobs" as an answer) was a revival of a more staid 1960s format.
  • The current version of The Price Is Right (1972-present) is a more tricked out version of a 1950s game show of the same name. The original was mainly limited to bidding on prizes, while the current version used that as a launching pad for a wide variety of pricing-related games.
  • To Tell the Truth had revivals in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
  • The Pyramid franchise was revived in the 1980s with The (New) $25,000 Pyramid and The $100,000 Pyramid, the latter of which was itself revived twice, first in the 1990s with John Davidson and again in the 2010s with Michael Strahan. It came back as Pyramid in 2002-04 with Donny Osmond, and again in 2012 as The Pyramid on GSN.
  • Family Feud was revived twice: first from 1988-1994 with Ray Combs (then a post-script season with original host Richard Dawson returning), then the current version from 1998 onward. The latter has been hosted by Louie Anderson, Richard Karn, John O'Hurley, and Steve Harvey.
  • Let's Make a Deal ran from the 1970s to the 1980s. It was revived in the late 2000s with Wayne Brady as the host. Many people liked Brady's take on the show and former host Monty Hall approves of Brady's performance.
  • Whammy is the revival of Press Your Luck with the set being updated to a more modern look and the iconic Whammy character being rendered in 3D animation instead of the cartoony 2D animation. Many people hated the changes to the set, format, and host Todd Newton acting over the top, but others like the show on its own merits, and it still airs in reruns despite only airing for 2 years.
  • Press Your Luck itself launched a prime time revival on ABC in 2019.
  • And Press Your Luck was a revival of a 1977 show called Second Chance. On similar lines, the 1960s game P.D.Q. was revived in 1973 and renamed Baffle.
• Mission: Impossible was revived in the late 1980s with Peter Graves reprising his role as Jim Phelps and Bob Johnson returning as the voice on the recording, though the rest of the Impossible Missions Force personnel were new characters and the technology was updated (for example, the famous self-destructing reel-to-reel tape became a self-destructing CD). Many of the original scripts were recycled nearly verbatim for the revival.
  • This is actually an unusual case that was the result of a last minute change. It was originally going to be The Remake, with a new cast playing re-imagined versions of the same characters, with most (or all) of the episodes just being remakes of episodes from the original series. This changed shortly after Phil Morris was brought on. He was originally going to play his father's character (Barney Collier) from the original series. At the last minute, they changed the premise to be a revival/continuation rather than a remake, changed his name to Grant Collier, and made him Barney Collier's son, setting the stage for a Real-Life Relative moment when Greg appeared as Barney in an episode.
• Hawaii Five-O was revived as Hawaii Five-0.
• The Tomorrow People was briefly revived with the help of Nickelodeon in the early '90s. Though the premise was largely unchanged, it drew more heavily from American kids' show tropes — particularly, taking Adults Are Useless to comic extremes. Neither this revival nor Big Finish's subsequent audio revival of the original series directly referenced each other, though the latter has made some very oblique references that might be taken to either canonize or decanonize the revival, depending on how you interpret them.
• The Spy Couple show The Avengers (1960s) was revived as The New Avengers in the 1970s, and lasted two seasons. It uncomfortably straddled the line between the original series's ludicrous plots and the growing fashion for grittier, meaner shows such as The Professionals.
  • ...which was made by the same people who made The New Avengers.
• Genre Anthology shows are easy to revive because they lack continuing characters. For example:
  • The 1959 series One Step Beyond came back in 1978 as The Next Step Beyond.
  • Alfred Hitchcock Presents was revived in 1985...
  • The Twilight Zone (1959) was first revived as The Twilight Zone (1985), then received a third TV version in The Twilight Zone (2002). A fourth version, The Twilight Zone (2019) with Jordan Peele taking over the Rod Serling role, was released on the CBS All-Access streaming service in 2019. (it was also revived as Twilight Zone: The Movie and a radio series.)
  • The most successful anthology revival was the new The Outer Limits (1995), which ran for seven seasons beginning in 1995. The original The Outer Limits (1963) ran for two.
• Leave It to Beaver was revived during the 1980s, with the 1983 Made-for-TV Movie Still The Beaver, and the 1985-89 series The New Leave It To Beaver, both focusing on the life of the adult Beav.
• The Munsters was revived in 1988 as The Munsters Today.
• The 1978-80 British Series All Creatures Great And Small simply returned to the air with its original cast (bar one) a decade after its run had ended. In the intervening time, supporting actor Peter Davison had become a much bigger star, thanks to his stint on Doctor Who. Since the original series had ended with the main characters going off to fight in World War II, the time gap was readily explained by shifting the setting to after they'd returned to the practice of veterinary medicine.
• Beverly Hills, 90210 has been revived (fittingly enough, by The CW) as simply 90210. Original cast members Shannen Doherty, Tori Spelling, and Jennie Garth have all reprised their roles (if only for guest parts), and Jason Priestly set to direct an episode. The CW is now doing the same for the similar Melrose Place.
• Red Dwarf was revived with three new episodes, the three-part story Back to Earth, after 10 years off the air. Three additional series (airing in 2012, 2016 and 2017) and a television special ( The Promised Land in 2020) have aired since.
• Double Dare 2000 for the original Nickelodeon Double Dare.
• After an 11-year absence from the airwaves and a 6-year absence from any form of media, Kamen Rider Kuuga inaugurated the return of the Kamen Rider franchise. The title of the first episode? "Revival".
• Rab C. Nesbitt returned in a Christmas Special after a ten year gap, and got a full series in 2010.
• Eerie, Indiana was revived as Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension. It lasted just one season of 15 episodes.
• James Garner reprised his Maverick role in the short-lived 1981 series Bret Maverick.
• The Love Boat was revived with The Love Boat: The Next Wave.
• Dragnet, the '50s TV/radio series, was revived in the late '60s, then again in 1989 (as The New Dragnet) and yet again in 2003 (as LA Dragnet). And that's not counting the two feature film adaptations.
• Degrassi (formerly titled Degrassi: The Next Generation), which ran from 2001 to 2017, is a revival of The '80s series Degrassi High (which was, in contrast, an immediate Sequel to Degrassi Junior High), set in the present day while including a few recurring characters from Degrassi High as adults.
• Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, with Bob and Terry (and Terry's sister) still played by the original actors, ten years later and in colour.
• Danny Thomas' Make Room for Daddy was briefly revived as Make Room for Granddaddy in 1970.
• TNT had one for Dallas from 2012 to 2014. The new show focused on the children of JR and Bobby and featured Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy once again playing the roles that made them famous. Hagman's death contributed to the show's decline and cancellation.
• There have been two failed attempts to revive The Time Tunnel. The first one, in 2002, resulted in a never-broadcast unsold pilot;^note it's available on DVD with the original series the second one, a few years later, didn't even get that far.
• The Monkees were revived in First-Run Syndication as The New Monkees at about the same time as Star Trek: The Next Generation. It only lasted a handful of episodes.
• Primeval, axed in 2009 due to budget problems, was revived for two more seasons in 2011.
  • The new Canadian series, New World, could be seen as a revival because it fits in with the continuity of the original series, taking place after the events of the last episode. Its first episode features the longtime protagonist Connor Temple traveling to Canada to oversee the development of an anomaly research center there.
• The Metal Heroes franchise and specifically, the Space Sheriff Series, will be revived in 2012 with the release of Space Sheriff Gavan: The Movie.
• The Australian fantasy series Round the Twist was revived in 1999 for two new seasons after an eight-year hiatus.
• A third season of Twin Peaks was announced in October 2014, 24 years after the second season ended, and broadcast in 2017.
• Ash vs. Evil Dead, a Starz TV series continuation of the original Evil Dead movies from same the creators, including Bruce Campbell starring as franchise protagonist Ash Williams.
• Mr. Show, the HBO Sketch Comedy show from The '90s, was revived on Netflix as With Bob And David about 15 years after its cancelation. Most of the original cast reappears.
• In 2015, Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson launched a Kickstarter project to fund a new version of the series (with an entirely new cast) more than 15 years after the end of its original run. The project raised over $5.7 million (setting a new record for the largest amount ever raised for a video project via crowdfunding), and the revived series was released in April 2017, released on Netflix.
• MythBusters announced in late 2015 that their 2016 season would be the last. However, on March 31 2016, just days after the series finale aired, The Science Channel announced that they are rebooting the franchise, and are on the search for a new generation of MythBusters. Many believe it to be an April Fools' Day prank. However, since the news was widely carried and since there's no retractions, it's assumed that the revival is real.
• Will & Grace originally ended in 2006, until it was revived for 10 more episodes in 2017. Its run was soon expanded and a second season greenlit, all before the first new episode aired.
• Hunter (NBC): The original series ran from 1984 to 1991, plus a couple of Made-for-TV movies in the 1990s. There was also a very short-lived revival in 2003 starring an older Hunter and McCall that was Cut Short after only five episodes.
• Roseanne returned in 2018, about 21 years after it concluded. It also retconned away many of the more controversial aspects of its ninth season to the point of Canon Discontinuity. However, despite strong ratings and a renewal for another season, Roseanne Barr's alleged racist tweet about a former Barack Obama advisor led to ABC quickly cancelling the series, effectively ending the show at ten seasons. ABC soon announced an After Show called The Conners.
• French kids puppet show Les Minikeums was terminated in 2002, after two years of being Screwed by the Network. It was revived in 2017, with a new cast of characters. The revival was cancelled in 2021.
• The French-Canadian Romantic Comedy Moi...et l'autre originally ran from 1966-1971, eventually having gotten revived in 1995 up to 1997, 24 years after its initial end. Nearly all of its living stars returned as older versions of their characters (with the janitor Gustave replaced with his son, due to his actor having passed away a few years prior, and Francois replaced with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute).
• After a less than favorably received ending, it was announced in October 2020 that a Dexter revival was in the works. It was confirmed that Michael C. Hall would be returning as the titular character, with Clyde Phillips (who oversaw seasons 1-4, often considered the better era of the show) returning as showrunner. Both Hall and Phillips publicly acknowledged the original finale was unsatisfying and said they hoped that the new season would be a chance to give the show a better send-off, but also stated that the revival would not undo or retcon anything that happened in the other seasons. They also said that the new season would follow on from the original run, and the same amount of time will have passed in the show as has passed in real life. After much speculation, Showtime finally released a teaser trailer in April 2021, confirming the new season would air in the fall of 2021. The revival limited series, titled Dexter: New Blood is set to premiere on November 7, 2021.
• iCarly (2021) is a revival of iCarly. Despite being considered a separate series, it shares the same continuity as the original, albeit set roughly a decade later, with Miranda Cosgrove, Jerry Trainor and Nathan Kress reprising their roles as Carly, Spencer and Freddie respectively.
• Birds of a Feather ran from 1998 to 1998 on the BBC. 16 years later, it was revived by ITV, where it proceeded to run for an additional 3 series.
• Reboot (2022), despite the name, is about a revival of a fictional sitcom almost two decades after it went off the air. All four original cast members and the original showrunner return.
• Boris originally aired for three seasons in 2007-2010 and was followed by The Movie in 2011. After 11 more years, a fourth season was released which features most of the original cast plus some new entries, only this time the characters are working on a different Show Within a Show.
• Party Down was a famous case of a well-reviewed show that never got a chance. After getting canceled in 2010, it got a third season 13 years later.
• Frasier got one of these in 2023, almost two decades after the original series went off the air.

Professional Wrestling

• The Calgary Territory goes back to at least 1930, although it is best known for its 1948 revival as Stampede by the Hart family. The Stampede promotion fizzled out in 1989, four years after Vince cleaned it out, but was revived again in 1999.
• Former NWA member Southern Championship Wrestling, a Tennessee based promotion founded in 1982 by Jim Crockett, has seen revivals in Georgia (later 80s-1990), North Carolina (94-2004) and Florida(1998-2010+).
• JWP Project closed its doors in 2000 after a string of retirements and deaths, one of which being the in ring case of Plum Mariko. It was quickly revived as JWP Joshi Puroresu before the year was up by Command Bolshoi however and ended up reviving Zenjo's Tag League The Best when it folded in 2005.
• A year after All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling shutdown in 2005, Tajima Planning Corporation attempted a revival called New AJW, which lasted until 2011.
• In 2006 WWE attempted a revival of defunct wrestling federation ECW as its third "brand"; however, Executive Meddling on the part of Vince McMahon pretty much destroyed any connection to the original except the name and a handful of wrestlers. And even the handful of wrestlers (save one) were gone within a couple of years. A year later, WWE would revive FCW as a developmental brand, which was only slightly less In Name Only, having more in common with Ohio Valley Wrestling and Ring of Honor(complete with fans chanting "This Is Wrestling" to Low Ki and Bryan Danielson) but had more positive critical reception(so naturally was broadcast to less than one percent of potential audiences than the former).
• Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling started up in 1989 and shut its doors in 2002. After several spiritual successors kept the FMW wrestlers employed for thirteen years, it was officially revived in 2015.
• IWA Pueto Rico lasted from 1999 to 2012, when it was killed off by the combination of apathetic television networks and internal sabotage. From there, former members of its roster were mostly seen causing trouble in a new fed called the World Wrestling League, even temporarily taking over High Voltage and renaming it Impacto Total after IWA Puerto Rico's flagship show. But in 2018 a truce was made and IWA Puerto Rico was officially revived as a separate show from all of WWL's.

Tabletop Games

• Space Hulk got a limited edition revival from Games Workshop.

Toys

• After a six-year absence, the G.I. Joe action figure line was relaunched in 1982 with smaller figure size, a team concept, and an actual enemy to fight in the form of the Cobra organization. The revived figure line would continue until 1994. After several failed attempts at new lines, the 1980s "Real American Hero" figures would themselves be revived in 1997.
• Heck, even the lovable Weebles toy line that originated in the early 70s recently got a revival as you can obviously see in this commercial that surprisingly has a techno remix for the catchy jingle that obviously describes what happens when you push them around!
• Popples had three of these: one in 2001, another in 2007 and another one to come in 2013.
• Puppy Surprise was revived in 2005.
• Strawberry Shortcake had two: one in 2003, and another in 2009. Another reboot happened in 2021, however there was no tie-in toyline accompanying it.
• New incarnations of Care Bears have been released every decade since the 80s.
• The Furby was revived twice: once in 2005 (which got a special on Nickelodeon called Furby Island), and a very successful one in 2012, which was the top-selling toy of the year in 2012, and even got merchandise, much like the original Furbies.

Video Games

• Nintendo dropped a whole bunch of these at E3 2010, with the announcements of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn for the DS, and Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS; none of these series had any releases in the prior five to ten years (and up to twenty years in the case of Kid Icarus).^note Okay, Kirby had a healthy stream of portable releases in that time, but he hasn't been seen on a console in a while. The next year supported Kirby's console revival with Kirby's Return to Dream Land, a classic-styled Kirby game (the first on a console since 2000) where Epic Yarn was one of the series's departures from the standard formula.
• Getsu Fuma Den was released as a Famicom game, and fell out into obscurity for decades. However, being a Cult Classic in Japan and newly-formed interest in the overseas prompted Konami to do a sequel/expansion game with the subtitle Undying Moon.
• Gunstar Super Heroes takes place after Gunstar Heroes, but has the exact same basic story starring characters with the exact same names as the original (though the two plots do diverge after a while).
• Persona 3 released after a six year Sequel Gap with a different development team than Persona and Persona 2. It was vastly different in tone and gameplay than the previous entries, and more-or-less soft rebooted the Persona series, setting in place the Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World formula that Persona 4 and Persona 5 would follow.
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was a failed attempted of reviving of the Sly Cooper games. While the game was initially a success among fans and critics, Sony swiftly pulled the plug on continuing the series despite the game's massive cliffhanger due to not meeting sales expectation. Fans disowned it, critics gave negative re-reviews, and Sanzaru Games became a pariah among the video game community, now seen primary as developers of Franchise Killers.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge revived the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) series in video game form (also homaging the tie-in games by Konami), 26 years after the last episode. There are several elements that suggest it is a continuation, mainly the Technodrome left in a state of disrepair, much like it was in the series finale.
• The 2023 Toxic Crusaders game revived the eponymous cartoon, 32 years after its short-lived run, and the developers confirmed that it acts as a "Season 2". As a bonus, it incorporates characters and plot elements from other Troma properties.

Webcomics

• Fans! has had two revivals. It began as an independently-published print comic book in 1999, only for the creators to cancel it within the year due to lackluster distribution and sales. They revived it eight months later as a webcomic, which ran until 2005 when writer T Campbell felt he'd brought the story to its proper conclusion. In 2008, he planned to do a one-shot Sequel story as a donation drive incentive, but found he had so many ideas for new stories and characters that he and artist Jason Waltrip instead relaunched the webcomic entirely, picking up five in-universe years from the previous storyline. This relaunch lasted until 2012, when Campbell once again felt the story had reached a suitable ending.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs has revived the series in late 2020 as a Hulu streaming series, 22 years since its last episode. They heavily mock the trend of rebooting/remaking successful shows, and flatly admit they are sellouts for being in a revival themselves.
• Lucky Luke, the adaptation of the comics of the same name, had lasted only one season and 26 episodes in 1983-1984 when Hanna-Barbera bowed out after an unsuccessful US run (and despite its success in Europe). It was renewed in 1991 with animation studio IDDH replacing Hanna-Barbera and 26 more episodes were added, which made the series adapt pretty much the whole René Goscinny run of Lucky Luke and then some.
• In 1997, The Real Ghostbusters was revived as Extreme Ghostbusters, with Egon heading a new team. The original Ghostbusters returned for its first season finale.
  • And, on that note, 1986's Filmation's Ghostbusters was a revival of 1975's live-action series The Ghost Busters—here, Jake and Eddie were the sons of the originals (Kong and Spenser, respectively).
• Transformers does this constantly. At first there was Beast Wars, which took place in the same continuity as Transformers: Generation 1 and as such fully fits the definition of a revival. After that, Hasbro decided to go the way of Alternate Universes with Transformers: Robots in Disguise, the Unicron Trilogy, Michael Bay's movies, Transformers: Animated, and Transformers: Prime
  • This only applies to the Transformers fiction though. The toyline as a whole has never had a break from production at any time since it began in the 80s.
• Also from Hasbro are the My Little Pony cartoons. Less frequent than Transformers, but nonetheless they've had three or four different cartoons. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has experienced a massive explosion in popularity, due in no small part to the fact that the creative director is Lauren Faust of The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends fame,^note Who apparently didn't particularly care for the original cartoons, and was a little skeptical when her bosses told her this is what they wanted her to be doing, who bent over backwards to make the show enjoyable for parents as well as the actual target demographic.
• Xiaolin Showdown was revived in the form of Xiaolin Chronicles, in early 2013.
• Voltron Force hit the airwaves in June of 2011, reviving the the series with several nods to the original in the first few episodes alone.
• Ōban Star-Racers was released in 2006, and lasted for 26 episodes. In 2017, the show's developers and creators announced that a sequel series is in development.
• The Scooby-Doo franchise ran a new series every few years from the late 60s to early 90s. Since then they've managed this several times in the new millennium with the live-action movies, What's New, Scooby-Doo?, Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue!, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?.
• The 1993 cartoon Biker Mice from Mars was revived in 2006, complete with character redesigns and a new alien race called the Catatonians replacing Lawrence Limburger as the main villain, though there were a few callbacks to the original series and Limburger even attempts to regain his stride a couple of times.
• Toonami is an example of a programming block that got this treatment.
• Samurai Jack was a show that originally ran on Cartoon Network for four seasons from 2001 to 2004, and was then cancelled. But due to popular demand, it was eventually granted another (final) season by [adult swim] in 2017, resulting in a 13-years gap between Seasons 4 and 5. Although it follows the same continuity, the fifth season differs significantly by obviously no longer being a show for children.
• Forty-seven years after CBS cancelled it, Wacky Races got rebooted for the Boomerang streaming service. It retained four of its original drivers while acquiring new cast members and a focus on the drivers over the races themselves.
• X-Men: The Animated Series was announced to return as a Disney+ show called X-Men '97, and will pick up where the first show left off.
• In 2021, The Proud Family was revived as The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. Despite a number of retcons (such as Suga Mama's backstory being changed and Michael now being gay instead of Camp Straight^note While the writers have claimed that Michael was always meant to be gay, there were a number of episodes in the original series hinting that he had a crush on Lacienega), it contains a number of Call Backs to the original series (including flashbacks using clips from the old show), confirming it to be a continuation.
• In 2023, two decades after it originally ended, Clone High was revived for a second season, which concurrently picks up on the show's plot 20 years after season one's cliffhanger ending.

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