Win Back the Crowd

24 Following

• Attack on Titan:
  • A meta example. Many people who weren't into anime (or had since grown out of it) have checked out the show thanks to its growing popularity, and it's caused the anime fandom as a whole to be back in the game on social media sites like Tumblr.
  • Complaints that the story moves too slowly seem to have been answered by everything after Chapter 50, with most of the following chapters being a Wham Episode of sorts.
• Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, with its combination of violent action and a tragic, emotional story of Star-Crossed Lovers, helped out by Studio TRIGGER's visually impressive animation, won praise from critics, fans (of Cyberpunk 2077 and the original RPG), and even the RPG's creator Mike Pondsmith. This revived interest in the Cyberpunk franchise as a whole after 2077 had become the subject of derision and mockery due to being absolutely riddled with bugs on release. The popularity of Edgerunners, by contrast, brought many new players to 2077 and the RPG alike, and the video game's fortunes have been further improved by positive reception to the release of the Phantom Liberty DLC, accompanied by a major overhaul update.
• Gundam:
  • After the near Franchise Killer that was Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, Gundam Build Fighters has revived faith in Gundam as a whole and proved that a series like Model Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G can work as an actual series.
  • A good chunk of the fandom considered the Build Fighter shows to be side-stories due to their Lighter and Softer nature and for being based on just the model kits, while the franchise "proper" (i.e. the shows where mobile suits are actual giant robots) continued to flounder by following AGE with the pretty but ultimately confusing and disappointing Reconguista in G, leaving the Build Fighter series as more of a "hold the line" effort. Luckily Iron-Blooded Orphans seems to be bringing back a lot of the enthusiasm dampened by AGE and G-Reco.
• After the poor reception of Jewelpet Kira☆Deco!, the fifth season was made more similar to the general feel of the third season in order to win back the Periphery Demographic.
• Pokémon the Series:
  • Many fans dropped out partway during the Johto arc due to it being packed with filler, as well as potentially interesting storylines being scrapped, most infamously the GS Ball. ^note The device was supposed to build up Celebi's debut until it was decided to give it a starring role in Pokémon 4Ever instead, so the storyline was quietly dropped as soon as Ash gave the GS Ball away to a Poké Ball expert for study However, Hoenn won many fans back, due to better animation, characterization, and pacing.
  • After Sinnoh, many dropped out during the Unova arc, due to what was perceived as bad characterizations for the main characters. But the Kalos arc, with Ash's Character Rerailment, a new director, and certain announcements exciting the fanbase, a lot of people came back.
  • The Alola arc had a hard time gaining fans due to its Denser and Wackier nature (the fact that the games it was based on were actually Darker and Edgier compared to their predecessors didn't help), the redesigns of the characters, and the school setting. But then came the announcement that Misty and Brock would be making a guest reappearance for the show's 1000th episode, and interest was regained with the lost crowd.
• Pretty Cure: Doki Doki! PreCure was an attempt by Toei to win back the fanbase. This one has quite a story behind it. Three years before Doki Doki, the precure of the year was HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, which was almost completely different from its predecessors. It was both Darker and Edgier and at the same time Denser and Wackier, and the main characters are just plain badass. The change enticed a lot of people, mostly from the Periphery Demographic. The next two precures after that adhered to the older formula (read: made for little girls), and this put off the new fans. Doki Doki is an attempt to create something that replicates the success of HCPC while still keeping the primary audience. The result is something that can be described as either Made of Win or a total Cliché Storm. Because of that, HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! is attempting to try again, this time mixing elements of the older ways and the ways pioneered by HCPC while adding some new ideas of its own (like deliberately trying to make the blue Pretty Cure be the main character instead of the pink one)... at least, at first, because it ended up crashing and burning in its second half even worse than Doki Doki did. This has since led to a major change in the higher-ups that produce the series, leading then-current producer Hiroaki Shibata to be Kicked Upstairs to Toei's Tokusatsu department. This has ironically made Go! Princess Pretty Cure take this mantle instead, to a much greater degree of success than the past two seasons.
• Studio DEEN was once one of the most respected animation studios in the industry during the '80s and '90s, being responsible for big hits like Urusei Yatsura, Ranma ½, and Rurouni Kenshin. Around the mid-2000s, though, their quality generally plummeted and they developed a major reputation for poor animation and mishandling of source material (due in large part to their poorly-received adaptations of Fate/stay night, Log Horizon, and the infamously bad Pupa), and became generally mocked among greater anime fandom. The phrase "DEEN finds a way" became shorthand for poor quality all around. Their fortunes began to reverse in January 2016, however, as DEEN animated the breakout hit KonoSuba (where their usual dodgy quality actually enhanced the show's humor) as well as the critically acclaimed Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, and now DEEN is ironically being hailed as the next savior of anime. Furthermore, both Kono Suba and Rakugo have been greenlit for second seasons. The former was not unexpected, considering it was the best-selling anime of Winter 2016 by a country mile, but the latter was a real shocker, especially as it is a Josei show which historically does not sell well.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. The previous series of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL was derided for being more childish than other series and neglecting older summoning methods. ARC-V addresses these points by having a darker, complex plot that incorporates all summoning methods, and making the characters unique, but retaining a lot of the humor and quirks that fans loved about ZEXAL.

• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf:
  • After years of quieting down and declining in popularity, the show became famous again with the season Mighty Little Defenders. Many people who had stopped watching the show came back to watch the season Mighty Little Defenders because it was the most exciting and unique season in years.
  • When the Dunk for Victories season was put on iQiyi, originally the episodes beyond around episode 6 were restricted to VIP, but the season later had the VIP removed, and the entire season was free to watch for a while. But due to the factor of the season's dwelling popularity, the VIP restriction was put up again as Creative Power Entertaining's strategy of this trope.

• Mercedes-Benz did this twice with the E-Class (sedan and stationwagon models only):
  • The 2009-2015 Mercedes-Benz E-Class W212, the fourth-generation wasn't a bad car, indeed it was an improvement over the great 1995-2002 E-Class W210 and good 2002-2009 E-Class W211 models, but some owners felt it had lost its way in terms of build quality and model choices; during this era, build quality wasn't awful, but wasn't 100% bulletproof either. The 2013 facelift brought back owners who would otherwise have bought an Audi A6, or even the Lexus IS sedan, partially due to engines like the E400 with its 3.0-liter 328hp V6 that offered a good alternative to the gas-guzzling 4.7-litre 302hp V8 engine, and also the E400 4MATIC model. Also, trim levels in European markets such as the Dutch specifications of Edition, Ambition and Prestige - or SE, SE Premium, Elegance and Avantgarde in the United Kingdom were popular. Downplayed in that the E-Class's popularity hadn't declined totally, it had just been seen as weaker than in previous years. However...
  • The W213 model launched in 2016 as a 2017 model year brought back some owners to the Mercedes fold due to the then-new hybrid model which was an improvement over the earlier 2013-2014 model, and if you were rich enough, the E450 with its 3.0-liter 357hp bi-turbo V6 engine. The addition of fleet-focused Business Solution models won back business customers who went for the Ford Mondeo as a fleet car, despite the substantial size and price gap between them. However, Americans could not get these models; for 2017, only the E300 (with a 2.0-liter 241hp V6, not a 3.0-liter as the badge denoted and E400 with a 3.0-liter 329hp V6 were offered; Canadians could get it only as all-wheel-drive with the same engines.

Marvel Comics

• At one point Fantastic Four and The Avengers were dwindling properties at despite the fact that they were the company's flagship super-teams and in the case of the "FF", the oldest series. With not particularly stellar talent working on each book, The Dark Age of Comic Books seemed to be making idealistic superhero teams irrelevant. After the mixed reception of the Onslaught Crossover, the two teams were thrown into an alternate reality, leading to the reviled Heroes Reborn. This ended up being set up for Heroes Return and Status Quo Is God, returning the titles back to their former glory with very popular creative teams.
• Spider-Man:
  • The comic hit a massive creative nadir with the anti-climactic conclusion to the four-year-long Hobgoblin Saga, which was blotched by behind-the-scenes drama and the decision to kill off Hobgoblin in his civilian identity in an unrelated story, denying fans a final confrontation and sticking a third-string villain in the costume to keep the character around. But Marvel managed to pull their asses out of the fire with the decision to FINALLY marry Peter and Mary Jane off, which resurrected interest in the character, along with the acclaimed storyline Kraven's Last Hunt, the hiring of Todd McFarlane as artist for The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) and the introduction of Venom. The Reveal by Hobgoblin creator Roger Stern that the man who had been killed off was NOT, in fact, the real Hobgoblin, but rather his brainwashed stand-in, allowed the final confrontation between him and Spidey that the fans were initially denied.
  • The title hit this again in the mid-'00s after the disaster of his unmasking in Civil War and the universally-reviled One More Day storyline as new writers were brought in who kept trying to replace Spidey's supporting cast and rogues gallery by creating their own set of third-string villains and characters. It hit its own nadir when they had the Lizard cross the Moral Event Horizon and later undid the Sacred Cow that was Kraven's Last Hunt. Enter Dan Slott, who took over the title as the sole writer and generally made the series enjoyable again, though the run has not been without its detractors, and his Superior Spider-Man (2013) story was fairly controversial, though it enjoyed the best sales for the series in quite some time.
    • After several years of being consigned to just the newspaper comic strip, Peter and MJ's marriage was brought back to the forefront for the summer of 2015 during the Secret Wars event, with Dan Slott penning a five-issue story called The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, focusing on an alternate version of Peter and MJ raising a young daughter called Annie and taking on a dictator called The Regent. The series proved very popular and a year later it was given its own ongoing title where the Parker family all fight crime together as a superhero unit, not unlike The Incredibles.
    • Following the events of Superior Spider-Man, Black Cat underwent a shock Face–Heel Turn, turning violent against Spider-Man, almost killing Aunt May, and set her sights on becoming a ruthless crime Queenpin. Fans of Felicia were understandably livid at this. Writer Robbie Thompson attempted to give Felicia a sympathetic motivation for her turn in the pages of Silk and developed a frenemy relationship between her and Cindy Moon, but that only lasted until Felicia found out Cindy was spying on her. Finally, after three years of dissatisfied fans crying foul, Felicia was quickly set on the path to redemption in both Venom Inc and the pages of Defenders, where she lost her crime empire and was given a motivational speech (by Venom, the creature that once shattered her nose) to be a force for good again.
  • In mid-2018, Nick Spencer took over as head writer of the Spider-Man title. His writing is often cited as a much-needed return to form for Spider-Man, with many fans who abandoned the series years ago returning. Early issues are quick to address the most frequent criticisms of Slott's writing, and one decision in particular that received praise is the reunion of Peter and Mary Jane, who resumed their relationship for the first time since One More Day ten years ago.

DC Comics

• Batman (Grant Morrison) was seen as this too, as an overdose of crossovers, questionable storylines (Batman: Hush, Batman: War Games, and War Crimes), and fans getting sick of the modern "Bat-God" take on the character had soured fans on Batman. Enter Morrison, who rejected the Bat-God formula they created in JLA (1997) in favor of a run built around the much-reviled 1950s era Batman, introduced a fresh new element into the book in the form of Damian Wayne and giving fans stories such as "The Black Glove", "Batman R.I.P." and Batman, Incorporated (2010).
• Convergence was DC's attempt to win back fans who are upset at losing their favorite status quos due to the Flashpoint reboot. The wave of books after the events continued this, bringing back certain parts of the old continuity (Cassandra Cain, the original Teen Titans, a book featuring Superman and Lois together again, etc.) that fans had been clamoring for.
• DC Rebirth was another attempt by DC to win back fans as Convergence was a mixed bag that did win fans over some with its tie-ins, the storylines that followed afterwards, such as Superman: Truth and Batman: Superheavy, did nothing to help the company and sales dipped back down to where they were before The New 52 hit. Rebirth's main draw was refocusing on "legacy", trying to repair holes that were yanked out when the titles rebooted.
• The concept for the original Justice League International was a "Win Back The Crowd" moment after the disastrous Detroit era of the franchise. Similarly, in the post-JLI era when the League books seemed directionless, Grant Morrison was brought back and was allowed to do what many thought was impossible: bring back the Big Seven JLA line-up.
• The All-In era was a particularly triumphant example of this for DC as a whole. While the quality of the DCU as a whole had already been turning up after the departure of controversial publisher Dan DiDio and the Infinite Frontier and Dawn of DC sagas had been fairly well received, All-In kicked things into high gear with an exciting meta-plot focused on Darkseid, a bright, optimistic status quo for the universe as a whole, and, most significantly, the launch of the Absolute Universe which featured a variety of exciting modern new versions of iconic heroes that existed alongside the classic versions rather than replacing them. For the first time, the DCU felt like it was traveling in a unified, creator-driven direction that could satisfy the fans. This direction was so well-received that DC actually began to consistently overtake Marvel in monthly market share, something that hadn't happened since the early days of the New 52 era.

Other Comics

• After the lackluster reception to Tirek and the Sirens, Nightmare Moon's issue of My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic got a bit of a warmer reception, and then Chrysalis' issue ended the miniseries on a high note, most consider it as good as Sombra's if not better. Goes doubles for writer Katie Cook; after "Reflections" "The Good, The Bad and the Ponies", and "The Root of the Problem" in the main series received mixed to poor reception, her return with Chrysalis' issue proved she's not washed up.
• A possibly-accidental one for Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). By the mid-00s, the comic was knee-deep in its Audience-Alienating Era, bleeding readers as they got tired of the Romantic Plot Tumor that Karl Bollers tacked on and the Creator's Pet that was Ken Penders' Echidna society. After the two writers left due to them headbutting over directions, Ian Flynn, originally a simple starting backup writer, was asked to take over. He spent his first year or so cleaning up the messes the two made, fixing up all of the plot threads left behind, making bland characters more interesting (such as turning Evil Counterpart Evil Sonic into Scourge the Hedgehog), introducing characters who should have been in the series much sooner (like Bean and Bark) and generally making it a fun series again.

• Animagrad Animation Studio: Ukrainian audiences found that their previous film, The Stolen Princess, lacked of "Ukrainian flavor" (being partly based off a Russian poem, also), and the ongoing Russian invasion made things worse regarding their outlook on Russian culture. The subject, setting, culture and characters of their following film, Mavka: The Forest Song, absolutely don't lack of Ukrainian flavor, and that particular aspect was praised.
• Disney has managed to regain its relevance in the animation industry after fumbling in the 2000s. It notably started with a throwback in the form of The Princess and the Frog which came very close, butl fell somewhat short in the box office. After this, the company experimented on their classic formula in Tangled, and proved they could speak to the modern audience with Wreck-It Ralph which were both staggering successes not seen since The Lion King. And then, Frozen took the lessons gained from the prior two princess films and ran with them, becoming been nothing short of a spectacular critical and box office smash hit. Although it's been over a decade since that film's release, there's still little doubt amongst critics that Disney has reaffirmed its legacy and is back on its feet.
• DreamWorks Animation
  • Kung Fu Panda: The sequence of Master Oogway's death up till Po's despairing confession to Master Shifu about his deep self-loathing that the old red panda feels helpless to counter. In that sequence, DreamWorks showed that it had recovered from its post-Shrek 2 creative nadir that drove away its partner, Aardman Animations, and learned how to make stories with profound emotional depth with a skill rivaling Pixar. That, in turn, made the blistering Wuxia action to follow all the more powerful now that you have grown to care about these characters.
  • Two years later, and How to Train Your Dragon would help to more or less finish the rise that Kung Fu Panda started, proving that even if it couldn't quite beat out Pixar for the awards, it certainly had finally gotten a strong roll going. How to Train Your Dragon would become their best-reviewed film up to that point, being a massive critical success, and managed to pull one of the best Sleeper Hit runs in animation.
• After Miraculous Ladybug accumulated a massive Broken Base regarding its overall quality following season 2, a significant portion of the fanbase found themselves won back by Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie, which was seen as a return to form for the franchise and addressed a lot of the complaints fans had about the show (most notably the ultimate fate of the Big Bad).
• The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water was this for the series as a whole, with the return of creator Stephen Hillenburg as a creative force resulting in a movie that received great amounts of praise from a fanbase who had spent the past several years lamenting the show's Seasonal Rot. Following Hillenburg's unfortunate passing of ALS in November 2018, winning back the crowd again will probably be even tougher.
• Sony Pictures Animation: Movie fans had low expectations after the highly negative (or, at best, lukewarm) receptions of The Emoji Movie, The Star, and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. This changed after the smashing success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The positive reception of Wish Dragon, especially The Mitchells vs. the Machines and KPop Demon Hunters would also reaffirm fans that what they saw in Spider-Verse wasn't a one-time deal.
• Interest in South Park was waning by the time the third season arrived in 1999. Luckily, the feature film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was critically acclaimed for its risk-taking satire and wonderful score and songs (including the Oscar-nominated "Blame Canada") and it made a decent amount of money, thus giving the show more fans and helping it live on after that time.
• Turtles Forever, putting aside some controversy where some fans believed the '87 Turtles were badly flanderized, managed to be this for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) cartoon. After two seasons of what fans perceived to be some serious Seasonal Rot in Fast Forward and Back To The Sewers, many felt the 2003 Ninja Turtles show was on life support thanks to Executive Meddling leading to the series' deteriorating quality. However, what came next was that the writers pulled a massive Crisis Crossover out of their hats where the 2003 Turtles teamed up with their 80s and Mirage counterparts for the fate of the then-TMNT multiverse, leading to an iconic team-up between different Ninja Turtles incarnations against the Utron Shredder and the movie giving final resolution and closure to many plot points and character arcs that had been floating around since the first three seasons. While the film itself might not fully live down criticisms fans of the '87 Turtles have given it, it's still seen as a redemptive work by fans of the 2003 Ninja Turtles which redeemed the series as a whole after it looked like it would go out on a whimper and gave the show a truly fitting Grand Finale.

• Batman: After the dismal failure of Batman & Robin, The Dark Knight Trilogy by Christopher Nolan rebooted the film franchise in order to win back Batman fans. All three films have been resounding commercial successes and the second an unprecedented critical success, raising the prestige of comic book movies as gripping drama films. After The Dark Knight came out, it became the highest-grossing comic book movie ever. It also became the first comic book film to ever win an acting Academy Award with Heath Ledger posthumously winning Best Supporting Actor for his highly regarded performance as The Joker.
• Child's Play:
  • Child's Play 3 killed the franchise for seven years as many fans of Chucky saw it as too goofy and poorly written. Ironic, then, that leaning straight into the goofiness with the next film, the full-blown Horror Comedy Bride of Chucky, wound up reviving the series. While it is divisive among fans, those who liked it loved it and praised it as the best Chucky movie since the first, especially Jennifer Tilly’s performance as Chucky’s eponymous girlfriend Tiffany.
  • The series died again with the next film, Seed of Chucky, which even many fans of Bride thought leaned too close to the "comedy" end of the Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror. As such, the next film, Curse of Chucky, took the Darker and Edgier route with a tone more like the first two films, to rapturous response from fans. Since then, Chucky hasn't looked back, with another well-received sequel in Cult of Chucky and a TV series.
• The Count of Monte Cristo (2024): The first big ambitious project of adaptation of French Literature classics (starting with Alexandre Dumas novels) by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, 2023's Three Musketeers duology, did alright with critics and audiences but didn't exactly set France on fire, the second part especially, and Martin Bourboulon's direction was criticized. On The Count of Monte Cristo on the other hand, the direction by Delaporte and de La Patellière was praised, the movie got noticeably better audience and critics scores and, above all, stellar word of mouth, resulting in great box office legs and the film substantially outperforming the Three Musketeers duology combined.
• The Friday the 13th series is generally agreed to have steeply declined in quality following the release of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives in 1986, leading to a much-maligned Audience-Alienating Era that lasted a full 15 years. While Jason Lives is widely considered to be one of the best entries in the series (if not the best), the subsequent films struggled to keep its momentum going, partly due to issues with low budgets and censorship by the MPAA, which forced the filmmakers to tone down the series' characteristic violence to keep the films in theaters. Unable to rely as heavily on cheap gore effects, the Friday films released between 1988 and 2001 tried a variety of new gimmicks with severely mixed results at best, resulting in films where Jason faced off against a psychic, visited New York, and became a body-hopping demon, with the series ultimately devolving into blatant self-parody with Jason X (Friday the 13th IN SPACE!). Against all odds, though, the Intercontinuity Crossover Freddy vs. Jason, which was first teased at the end of Part IX, and which the filmmakers originally wanted to do for Part VII, was received by fans as the best entry in the franchise in well over a decade, winning back the series' lost goodwill and then some. While it wasn't a big hit with critics, moviegoers loved its unapologetic, deliberately schlocky tone and gleefully over-the-top Monster Mash premise, which carried it to a respectable box office haul of over $100 million – making it the highest grossing film in the series by an exceptionally wide margin.
• Godzilla: Gareth Edwards and the rest of the film crew have made a special point of emphasizing how Godzilla (2014) is faithful to the Godzilla spirit. Critical response was much the same, and Godzilla helped to bring giant monster movies back into the spotlight for Western audiences.
• Halloween: After many years worth of sequels and a remake that tried too hard to explain the evil behind the killer, thus demystifying the original origins of pure evil, Halloween (2018) won back many fans of Halloween (1978) by retroactively retconning all the past sequels and making it a much closer follow-up to the original. Having key players John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis back, along with Nick Castle returning as The Shape, helped too.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom divided a lot of fans and caused Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to take a lot of flak for ruining the Indiana Jones saga. The two of them hit back with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade which won over everyone, and among some fans is considered better than even Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• James Bond: Being a Long Runner, the films regularly have resurgences in fan appreciation:
  • For many, the Cold Open in Casino Royale (2006) made James Bond seem cool again, especially after the horrific reception of Die Another Day. The movie as a whole is regularly regarded as a strong contender for the best in the series.
    Dryden: How did he die?
    Bond: Your contact? Not well.
    Dryden: Made you feel it, did he? You needn't worry. The second is…
    Bond: (interrupts him by putting a single silenced round in Dryden's chest, killing him instantly)… Yes. Considerably.
  • The casting of Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye won back fans more than 10 years before Casino Royale.
  • Skyfall did this for the Craig-Bond after the rather mixed reception to Quantum of Solace.
  • The Spy Who Loved Me was considered a tremendous return to form after ten years of rather tepid installments, and even today, it's considered one of the finest films in the franchise.
• Jurassic World revived the Jurassic Park franchise 14 years after the poorly received Franchise Killer, Jurassic Park III, was released. It broke box office records, became the third highest-grossing movie of all time (behind Avatar and Titanic). It has since spawned two sequels.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Marvel had some critical bombs in theatres with movies like Ang Lee's Hulk, which was mostly reviled, and things got worse with Ghost Rider. Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 did well, with the latter long being considered one of the best superhero films of all time, but Spider-Man 3 was poorly received, and combined with the X-Men movies of the time^note The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine, it seems like the Marvel license was tainted with bad luck. Marvel eventually decided they could do better, and opened their own movie studio to try to cash in on the characters they still had. Iron Man was then released to stunning critical and commercial success, and while The Incredible Hulk didn't do quite as well, the relative success of both movies pushed Marvel into creating the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to consistent and growing critical acclaim from all corners, going from naught to by far the highest-grossing film franchise of all-time on $15 billion and counting, with second place, Star Wars, on $8 billion, in barely 10 years.
  • After the mixed reception of The Amazing Spider-Man Series, Sony decided to share the rights with Marvel Studios and reboot the character again. Many fans were unsure whether Spidey still had a future in movies even with the MCU getting involved. Then when Captain America: Civil War came out, he was cited as one of the film's highlights, with many calling Tom Holland's performance of the character the best so far, and his solo outing, Spider-Man: Homecoming, being rated as one of the best in the MCU and matching (if not topping) the classic Spider-Man 2.
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol became the best-reviewed film of the series, even going as far as to do a lot to redeem both the Mission: Impossible (Film Series) and Tom Cruise in the eyes of the public. Subsequent films in the series have consistently received glowing reception from both critics and audiences (though The Final Reckoning fell a bit below for some).
• The Muppets reached a nadir with Muppets From Space, which failed both critically and financially. After a few years of disliked TV specials, and modestly popular commercials and viral videos, 2011 brought a new big-screen movie, The Muppets, with a script and sense of humor recalling Jim Henson's Muppet movies. The script also counts as an in-universe example of this trope, as the Muppets try to win back an audience that has grown to favor cynicism in the years since they last performed together. This became one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of the year, and the Muppets' highest-grossing movie ever (not adjusting for inflation).
• Planet of the Apes: Rise of the Planet of the Apes brought hope back to the seemingly dead franchise. While not a masterpiece, it was still a surprisingly enjoyable film. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes cemented it, as it was considered a masterpiece, having almost everyone anticipating the next one in the series.
• The first four Rocky movies range from genuine classics to cult classics remembered for their absurdity, but in general they're well-liked. Rocky V alienated fans, disgusted critics, and catastrophically failed at the box office, putting the series into a coma. Sixteen years later, Rocky Balboa won the fans and critics back with its return to what made the early films work, and nine years after that, the spinoff Creed got an even better reception, earning Sylvester Stallone his first Oscar nomination since the original Rocky and landing on many "Best Movies of the Year" lists.
• To say that the Sonic The Hedgehog movie was hated when it was first unveiled would be one of the greatest understatements of the decade. When the first trailer hit, a combination of unfunny jokes, the hilariously bizarre choice of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" as its song, and a downright hideous rendition of the Blue Blur made the film one of the most despised things ever to come from the Sonic franchise (and considering the Sonic fandom is one of the most infamous examples of a Broken Base, that is quite an achievement). The film would be delayed after massive outcry convinced the studio to take Sonic's design back to the drawing board. When a new trailer unveiled Sonic's new design (by Tyson Hesse, no less!), it was received much more warmly, with praise being heaped upon the studio for not only listening to the criticism surrounding Sonic's appearance but creating a new design that was recognizably Sonic. As a result, the film had a strong box office in the weeks prior to movie theaters shuttering due to the global pandemic. The film would go on to spawn two sequels, as well as a spin off TV series and is viewed as how to properly do a video game movie adaption.
• If there's one thing the Star Trek franchise is known for, it's the ability to rise anew like a phoenix and win back movie-going audiences (multiple times over) after underperforming or dismal films:
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture left a lot of folks thinking Trek was only for the geek crowd and would never be a big Space Opera franchise (like Star Wars). Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan proved otherwise as it's almost universally deemed the absolute best of the Star Trek movies mainly from fans.
  • Star Trek III, while not "terrible" was generally seen as mediocre at best and was met with a collective "...meh". Star Trek IV, however, won over audiences being the funniest of the Trek movies and was the highest-grossing Star Trek film at the time (until 2009). Its success propelled the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • After the dismal showing of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (which was, at the time, the lowest box-office earning entry of the franchise and a critical disappointment), Paramount Pictures made a point to bring back fan-favorite director Nicholas Meyer (who had helmed The Wrath of Khan) to helm Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Star Trek VI was seen as a valid return to form and a good sendoff for the TOS crew.
  • Star Trek: Generations was hyped as it brought together Kirk and Picard for the first time, but left audiences sort of disappointed, but then Star Trek: First Contact amped up the action and showed audiences that the TNG crew could carry the torch for the film series.
  • After Star Trek: Insurrection was deemed more-or-less an "extended, boring TNG episode", many had high hopes for Star Trek: Nemesis. However, Nemesis turned out to be the worst-performing Trek film in more than 13 years as it was a critical and commercial bomb. It broke the Star Trek Movie Curse in the worst way possible by being an awful even-numbered Trek film.^note Unless one counts the Affectionate Parody Galaxy Quest as an honorary ''Trek'' film. The announcement that the franchise would be rebooted was met with much discontent from long-time fans ... until it was also announced that J. J. Abrams would be directing it (along with Michael Giacchino composing), and focused on an alternate-universe plot that would bring back the spirit of the original series. The resulting film is currently the most critically acclaimed Trek film of all time (even more so than Wrath of Khan) and was a massive hit with both hardcore fans (apart from a few holdouts) and general audiences.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness, while entertaining, didn't feel as "fresh" as its predecessor to many and the plot seemed somewhat muddled, but the series rebounded greatly with Star Trek Beyond who many consider being the best of the "Kelvin timeline" movies.
• Star Wars:
  • While the Sequel Trilogy was very polarizing, the critical and fan response success of The Force Awakens brought Star Wars back from the national time-out corner following the polarizing reactions to the prequels.
  • Following the extremely polarizing reception of The Last Jedi and its less divisive but far more detested follow-up The Rise of Skywalker, the surprise success of The Mandalorian is believed by many to have saved the image of the franchise from going completely down the shitter in the eyes of fans, and re-established a "cool factor" that hadn't been seen since before Disney. Indeed, its follow-ups, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Andor, have been generally well-received, or at least far less polarizing than the Sequel Trilogy.
• With the Transformers (Film Series) in serious danger after the financial and critical disaster of Transformers: The Last Knight, Bumblebee achieved renewed interest and nearly universal critical approval, breathing enough new life into the franchise that the producers planned for a sequel.
• X-Men (Film Series):
  • After the bashing that X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine received, X-Men: First Class was met with a much warmer reception.
  • The Wolverine discarded the previous Wolverine film and basically started from spin-off scratch, adapting one of the most famous comic arcs for the character and going for a smaller and more personal scale for the character. The result was far more well-received than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, enough for Fox to kick the tires on a follow-up with Hugh Jackman and director James Mangold returning. The resulting Logan was universally acclaimed not only as one of the best films in the X-Men series but as one of the finest superhero films made.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past. With the success of The Avengers (2012), fans began clamoring for the X-Men characters to return to Marvel Studios; aside from the obvious crossover potential, fans thought that Fox wouldn't be able to do the series as much justice as Marvel would. It was then up to Fox to prove that they could. Word of God from the creators was that the film was specifically conceived as an "apology" to everyone who was disappointed with X-Men: The Last Stand.
  • The Deadpool (2016) movie was essentially made as an apology for Fox's last attempt at bringing the character into a movie. It's also seen as an attempt to redeem Fox's Marvel movies in general that aren't X-Men, after the critical failure of Fantastic Four (2015). Given the glowing reception and commercial success for Deadpool, along with a well-received sequel, it worked!

• The GONE series dipped a little in the third book, which didn't seem to be going in any particular direction, made formerly beloved characters (like Astrid) unlikable and annoying and the Big Lipped Alligator Character that was Nerezza confused and infuriated fans. Many fans lost respect for heroic characters, and a lot of things weren't explained, to the point were a few scenes made little sense and more were monotonous and out of character. The lack of action and mystique that was all part of the appeal was lacking somewhat too. Thankfully, this was just a temporary low, and the next book PLAGUE heavily won over critics and fans alike, and was even claimed by many to be when the series Grew the beard. It kept the quality at a steady high with FEAR and the last book LIGHT has gripped universal acclaim, and is regarded by many to be the best Michael Grant book ever written.
• Many Warrior Cats fans grew tired of the series after The New Prophecy, due to the increased focus on the supernatural elements of the series, the disappearance of the Anyone Can Die factor of the series, the increasing number of continuity errors, the increased focus on characterization over plot, and a perceived Romantic Plot Tumor. Then came Dawn of the Clans, which is not only a perfect starting point for new readers, but also contained fresh themes, a faster pace, witty dialogue, plenty of death, a whole new crew of likable characters, tighter continuity, a protagonist vastly different from Firestar, an antagonist who wasn't a rehash of Tigerstar, Brokenstar, or Scourge, and a perfect combination of lighthearted scenes and darker scenes. The reception has been almost entirely positive.

• The sixth season of 24 was heavily panned, making many, even hardcore fans, think maybe the show ran its course. The seventh season, beginning with 24: Redemption has won back the old fans and even a fair share of new ones along with the highest ratings ever for the series.
• The Academy Awards ceremony had to do this after the 1989 show opened with a notoriously campy production number "highlighted" by Rob Lowe singing a rewritten duet of "Proud Mary" with Snow White. Things didn't much improve from there, aside from several witty presenters, and the show was pilloried both within and without Hollywood as a disgrace. The following year, one of those witty presenters — Billy Crystal — was tapped to host the whole show, and largely thanks to him the result was a much-acclaimed ceremony. Crystal has hosted eight more times since then, such as in 2012 to win back the crowd after the poorly-received 2011 ceremony that James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosted.
• In its first two seasons, Arrow was beloved by the fans and was seen as revolutionizing superhero television for its era. However, with the third season, many felt the series was beginning to dip in quality. Still, fans held on to hope but it wasn't long before the fourth season was seen as being an even bigger Audience-Alienating Era for the show, with Oliver and Felicity's relationship being seen as a Romantic Plot Tumor, Oliver's secret son William bringing in a lot of needless drama, and Laurel Lance being killed off in a controversial manner. By the end of that season, expectations for the show were quite low and many felt Arrow was on its last legs. The fifth season, however, managed to reverse this trend by scaling back on the amount of Felicity shilling, introduce some new blood in a new batch of young heroes Oliver would train, give Oliver some truly interesting flashbacks with his time in the Bratva, present a truly frightening and charismatic villain in Prometheus, and generally bring back many of the elements fans loved in the first two seasons. While the sixth season was hated nearly as much as the fourth and the seventh season got a middling reception, it was because the fifth season of Arrow breathed fresh air back into the show and gave it new legs to stand on that it managed to go on for a lot longer and even now, Season 5 of Arrow is seen as pretty much the blueprint for how one can redeem a once-beloved superhero show that had fallen into disrepute.
• Buffyverse:
  • Season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is generally seen as an improvement over season four thanks to the unpopular Riley being written out and Glory being a far more entertaining Big Bad than Adam.
  • As divisive as the seventh season was, it addressed the issues that plagued the previous year - the pacing was much better, it boasted an actually intimidating big bad, the much-hated magic addiction arc was retconned, Buffy and Spike's Destructive Romance was replaced with something much more amiable and respectful, the tone was much less depressing, Xander and Anya were back together, Dawn grew the hell up, and Angel made an appearance (the issues with two shows on different networks having been cleared up).
  • Season four of Angel is widely regarded as the low point in the franchise due to its convoluted story arc and character assassinations of both Cordelia and Connor. Season five effectively re-tooled the show into a supernatural legal drama, added Spike and Harmony to the cast, and fixed the damage done to Cordelia and Connor. The result was a resounding success which is regarded as one of, if not the, best seasons in either series.
• Community: Creator Dan Harmon left the show after season 3, and the next season was roundly criticized for being far weaker than the rest of the series. Harmon returned for season 5 and made a major course correction, going so far as having the characters themselves note how weird everything had become of late.
• When it was announced Daredevil (2015) would be adapted as a Netflix TV series, many people who only knew the character for the mediocre 2003 film were cautiously skeptical, to say the least. When it came out, it received almost universal acclaim for its clever and tight plotting, well-choreographed and brutal fight scenes, and in-depth character development and acting, and is regarded by many as the single best TV series entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This had the effect of almost completely redeeming the character in the mainstream public's eye.
• Dexter: Resurrection improved on a lot of the criticisms that were levelled at Dexter: New Blood, including its anti-climactic conclusion and the completely wasted opportunity of Angel Batista discovering that Dexter is the real Bay Harbor Butcher. Also, while Angela was certain in New Blood about Dexter being extradited to Florida after being arrested for Matt Caldwell's murder, the idea that Dexter's Iron Lake crimes would exonerate Doakes was undermined by the fact she had no evidence to build a case against him for any murders he committed in Florida, meaning Batista's role realistically has him struggling to prove Dexter is the true Bay Harbor Butcher. All of these factors combined ended up propelling Resurrection to one of the highest overall-rated TV shows of all time.
• Doctor Who:
  • The 2005 reboot was a resounding triumph for Britain's biggest sci-fi hero following the series' ignominious death back in 1989 and the failed pilot on Fox.
  • Following "Kill the Moon" proving to be incredibly polarising and poorly received with a large portion of the audience. "Mummy on the Orient Express" was received with near-universal admiration. To the point, multiple fans outright referenced this trope when talking about it.
  • For many actual Doctor Who fans, as opposed to media commentators, "Remembrance of the Daleks" was where 1980s Doctor Who started getting good again. Unfortunately the BBC didn't agree.
  • This has happened many times in the Chris Chibnall era: The acclaimed "Demons of the Punjab" followed the widely slated "The Tsuranga Conundrum", whereas Chibnall would do this to *himself* with "Resolution" being considered a huge improvement over the poorly received "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. In Series 12, "Orphan 55" created a MASSIVE broken base whilst the following "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" and the major Wham Episode of "Fugitive of the Judoon" quickly healed the base back for a while.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The original series rebounded from a highly divisive season 5 with season 6, which has been one of the most acclaimed seasons of the show to date. It probably helps the creators that fans no longer have source material to compare the show with, but it also helps that the creators seem to have learned from their mistakes by improving the characterization of the female characters (in particular, using them more as fully realized human beings rather than plot devices) and reducing focus on the parts of the plot that weren't working (Dorne in particular). Several of the most acclaimed episodes of the show to date have been from season 6. That its final two episodes were among those episodes only cemented its return to form.
  • The first season of House of the Dragon, a prequel series after the divisive final season of Game of Thrones, was widely praised for recapturing the feel of the original show's early days. Ratings likewise surged for HBO on levels comparable to the original series, despite a significant amount of the show's viewership coming in through streaming. It helps that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are not at all involved, and there's no chance of Overtook the Manga since it's based on one already-published book.
• After a weak third season that focused on personal drama, House of Cards (US) came back strong in Season 4 with a re-focus on Frank Underwood's administration, political scheming, and the follow-up of plots from the first two seasons.
• When the iCarly special iStart a Fan War was announced, Seddie shippers got excited that after Season 4's lackluster quality, it would give them some Seddie moments and reboot the show's glory. Unfortunately, when it turned out to be an Author Tract against the shipping concept, shippers were not pleased, and when they took it to Dan Schneider's blog, they claimed he crossed the Moral Event Horizon when their comments were being erased and that the show was dead. That is until his next blog explained his true intention, and that he only meant that to the obsessed shippers. He also promised them something that would make them quite pleased, which left most fans forgiving him. And that something came in the form of iOMG, which was seen as a Moment of Awesome by many fans.
• Quite a few fans were redrawn to Kamen Rider by Kamen Rider Double following the debacle of Kamen Rider Decade, though this likely applies more to the non-Japanese Periphery Demographic.
• Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger was an attempt for Super Sentai as a brand and as a franchise, since Toei decided to recruit big names outside of Tokusatsu and newcomers like Junpei Yamaoka (the man who wrote Majisuka Gakuen) and Kazuya Kamihoriuchi (the man behind the success of Ex-Aid and Build) in an attempt to bring Sentai back to its former glory after nine consecutive years of TV ratings decline. This also extends to the franchise's toy sales due to Lupinranger vs. Patranger doing horrible in toy sales and its earnings are just as bad as (or even worse than) the likes of Fiveman and Timeranger. Bringing back the dino theme was also an attempt at this. Dinosaurs are always a big seller, and as mentioned before, recent series, even the ones the internet likes, aren't sending toys flying off the shelves back home. Unfortunately, it didn't work out in the end: with an average rating of 2.6% in TV viewership, the series has the dubious honor of having the worst rantings of the entire franchise. It only earned 6.5 billion Yen in toy sales as well, which is way worse than its preceding Sentai season.
• Law & Order wins back its fans at regular intervals. But then, after nearly 20 years on the air, that should be expected.
• Orphan Black also seems to have rebounded from a controversial season with season 4, which has renewed its focus on the show's central mysteries and, unlike previous seasons which frequently seemed to introduce more new questions than they answered, has actually answered many of them (including one that has existed since the very first season of the show, namely why Beth committed suicide). The show seems to have returned to its roots while introducing a number of memorable new characters (particularly M.K., the Hidden Villain Evie Cho, and Ira, who finally gives Ari Millen a chance to portray a character who is radically different from any of the other Castor clones). Thus far, a common opinion seems to be that it's the best season since the first.
• Police, Camera, Action! had a lackluster Series 7, but Series 8 which aired in July 2000 and Season 9 in May 2001 were seen as far better, after a good Season 5 and Season 6 (although Seasons 5 and 6 did have two standalone episodes that were Filler) and fans enjoyed how it seemed to be Revisiting the Roots.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers in Space won back old fans of Power Rangers lost after Power Rangers Turbo, as well as new ones.
  • Many years later, Power Rangers RPM won back fans that had been dissatisfied with the previous succession of mediocre to bad seasons, as well as being Darker and Edgier, making it enjoyable for the intended, younger audience and older viewers.
  • The rights then reverted back to Saban, resulting in Power Rangers Samurai and Power Rangers Megaforce. Both of them were major disappointments for fans for various reasons, though Samurai has been given some minor leeway because it was eventually revealed to have been a very rushed series, and basically translating Sentai plots directly. Megaforce lost even more fans because it lacked interesting characters, relied heavily on action scenes, and was an incredibly disappointing 20th Anniversary series. ^note Including the fact that, due to Nickelodeon's rules, Super Megaforce, which covered the Anniversary Gokaiger Sentai didn't even air until the 21st Anniversary year Then came Power Rangers Dino Charge and took all the lacking parts from Megaforce, making those things great. It won the crowd back with its first episode (entirely lacking Sentai footage) and gave the characters personalities and depth.
• Saturday Night Live has had several periods where everyone hated it until new talent (most notably Eddie Murphy in the early '80s and Will Ferrell in the mid-'90s) brings it back into the public's good graces.
• Scrubs is widely agreed to have steadily declined in quality around its midpoint for a multitude of reasons: most of the main cast became caricatures of themselves, the show started to rely more heavily on cartoonish humor, and some of the major storylines (most notably Elliot and Keith's engagement, and the birth of J.D. and Kim's baby) were disliked by many. But when the show was unexpectedly picked up by ABC for an eighth season (despite the cast and crew initially assuming that the seventh season would be the last), the showrunners pulled out all the stops to ensure that Season 8 would end the show on a high note—resulting in a season that's considered a massive improvement by nearly everyone. Compared to the previous few seasons, it features more nuanced and complex characterizations of most of the main cast and a far more deft balance of drama and humor, it moves most of the main characters forward in interesting ways (particularly concerning J.D. stepping into a mentor role, and Dr. Cox becoming the new Chief of Medicine), and it ultimately builds up to a universally loved Tear Jerker of a Series Finale. While the ninth season, which features an entirely new main cast (and was originally intended to be Spin-Off called Scrubs: Med School) isn't nearly as well-regarded, most fans prefer to pretend that one just doesn't exist.
• The first post-SG-1 Stargate-verse movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth was considered by some to be blah at best. However, it seems everyone loved Stargate: Continuum.
• Star Trek: While Star Trek IV was winning the box office, Star Trek: The Next Generation almost permanently won back the Trekkie crowd, for good. Its success triggered an almost continuous 20-year run of Trek series being produced.
• While seasons two and three of Stranger Things were popular, season one proved to be a Tough Act to Follow for many fans, who criticized the increasingly Summer Blockbuster tone that the show was taking on. Season three especially came under fire for Hopper going from a troubled Jerk with a Heart of Gold to simply a Jerkass, its underuse of fan-favorite Max, its cartoonishly over-the-top Soviet villains, and its jarring overuse of Product Placement and nostalgic '80s references. Season four responded to these criticisms by introducing a terrifying new villain in Vecna, bringing the horror elements back to the forefront, returning Hopper to his original characterization, giving Max an important arc central to the plot (and one of the best scenes of the season), giving a more morally cloudy depiction of the Cold War, and boosting the length of the episodes to give everyone more Character Development. The result was acclaimed as an Even Better Sequel that rivaled season one as the show's best.
• While the seasons of Two and a Half Men without Charlie Sheen still get criticized, many fans of the show feel like Season 11 seems to have won them back with the introduction of Charlie's daughter Jenny (who has received a considerable amount of praise, due to her personality being almost exactly like Charlie's).

• Accept: A lot of people had a lot of doubts when the band replaced Udo Dirkschneider with Mark Tornillo. And then, they release Blood Of The Nations. It turns out to be one of the best Metal albums of 2010.
• One of the most famous examples in musical history is Aerosmith. They were among the defining hard rock bands of the 1970s and had a massive influence on the then-fledgling heavy metal scene. However, the early '80s were anything but kind to the band, as nasty drug addictions and a string of mediocre albums temporarily doomed them to "has-been" status. But, in 1986, the tides turned. They collaborated with Run–D.M.C. for a re-recording of "Walk This Way" (one of the first notable fusions of rock and hip hop), and 1987's Permanent Vacation further paved the way for a comeback. It finally happened with 1989's Pump, which is widely considered to be their big comeback album and one of the greatest hard rock albums of the late '80s.
• After spending most of 2013 and 2014 as a laughingstock, Justin Bieber managed to win back many of his former teenage fans in 2015 with two top-10 hits. The first hit was "Where Are U Now", an EDM track by Jack U that featured Bieber on lead vocals. The second and most career-reviving song was "What Do You Mean". It got surprisingly good reviews from Bieber's haters and debuted at #1 on the Hot 100, and his next two hits "Sorry" and "Love Yourself" also hit the top. His album Purpose was widely hailed as his greatest work ever, and debuted at #1 by selling a career-high 500,000 copies, stopping the very band whose meteoric rise was the catalyst to his fall from tying Metallica, Disturbed and Dave Matthews Band's streak of #1 albums.
• Celtic Frost had lost fans after the release of Cold Lake. Their next two albums tried for a differnt sound, but the fans weren't won back until Monotheist, their final album.
• New York DJ duo The Chainsmokers had been seen as a quintessential 2010s One-Hit Wonder for "#Selfie", which became a hit through sheer Memetic Mutation. Given that song was wildly reviled, and it was too much of a left-field novelty to be taken seriously, it was thought they would fade into complete obscurity afterwards. This was not the case. The next year they released "Roses" (featuring vocals from Rozes), a kind of dirty song that was still surprisingly well-received. It quickly climbed up the charts and reached the Top 40, ending their one-hit wonder status, and became a massive EDM crossover that far eclipsed "#Selfie" in the public's eye. The top 5 follow-up "Don't Let Me Down" and #1 smash "Closer" proved that the success of "Roses" wasn't a fluke and that the Chainsmokers were finally able to be taken seriously.
• Dismember had success with the album Indecent and Obscene, but a series of divisive albums had turned fans away. This turned around with their 2006 release, The God That Never Was, their most acclaimed album since Indecent and Obscene.
• Dr. Dre's Chronic 2001, which featured then-rising Aftermath artists like Eminem and Xzibit, also revived interest in his career after several years out of the limelight.
• Eminem has had two instances of taking a five-year hiatus from putting out studio albums, then putting out an album reviled for being behind the trends and having strange vocal affectations (Relapse (2009) and Revival (2017)), then following the album up less than a year later with a much more acclaimed one adapting his sound to the present (Recovery (2010) and Kamikaze (2018)).
• Florida Georgia Line, with their breakthrough smash "Cruise", became the Trope Makers and Trope Codifier of the "bro country" subgenre of Country Music in The New '10s. Defined by songs about hot girls, drinking beer, trucks, partying, and the like, the genre is widely derided for its sheer lack of substance. However, their second album showed signs of moving away from this with more substantial singles such as "Dirt" and "Confession", while the third album moved even further away in favor of impassioned ballads such as "H.O.L.Y." and "May We All".
• The music company Jamster started gaining a lot of flack with people in the mid-2000s due to the animated character Crazy Frog gaining too much attention from the public mainly due to his songs. As a result, Jamster ended up retiring the character in early 2007 and created a new character named Schnuffel (Snuggle Bunny) who debuted in the song "Snuggle Song" which became a big hit in Germany and Europe. Unlike Crazy Frog, Schnuffel actually gained a lot more positive feedback from the public which resulted in Jamster creating a few music albums starring the character and a few music videos featuring him. The popularity of Schnuffel resulted in Jamster gaining back more fans in Europe and English-speaking countries. Jamster later created a second rabbit character named Snuggelina in 2010 who is Snuggle's girlfriend and has also had songs of her own. This caused Jamster to create a few albums called "Schnuffel und Schnuffelienchen" which stars the duo going on various adventures and their daily lives.
• Elton John took a break from touring and recording in 1977, at the height of his fame as the biggest-selling solo performer of The '70s, and not long after his coming out as "bisexual" lost him fans in Middle America. A creative and financial slump followed. He bounced back as an MTV star on the strength of his 1983 album Too Low for Zero, a solid, critically and commercially successful effort that reunited Elton with the classic lineup of his "Elton John Band" (Davey Johnstone: guitar; Dee Murray: bass; Nigel Olsson: drums) and saw Bernie Taupin back as full-time lyricist. Two tracks from the album, "I'm Still Standing" and "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues", were Top 10 hits and had popular music videos.
• The band Judas Priest experienced three comebacks.
  • After the massively ridiculed Turbo and Ram It Down, the album Painkiller furiously roared into fans' ears in 1990 and instantly won everybody back on Priest's side.
  • Rob Halford left the band after the success of Painkiller. After the late '90s and early 2000s "Ripper" Owens era, Rob was brought back and the band recorded Angel of Retribution. The name is everything that you think they were implying with that whole controversy.
  • The band produced the nearly universally shat upon Nostradamus in 2008, after delays. They did warn that those who may not like power metal should, maybe skip the album, but people bought it anyway expecting something different and hated it! After that whole mishap and K.K. Downing leaving the band, the pressure was up against Priest like never before. But, with the once again appropriately titled 2014 album Redeemer of Souls they once again proclaimed that Priest was back and better than ever before! Their 2018 album Firepower continued the upward trend, to the delight of fans and critics alike. And the trend continued with their 2024 album, "Invincible Shield," which is considered equal to or greater than "Firepower."
• Korn, a Nu Metal band, has experienced two successful comebacks.
  • Take a Look in the Mirror began an Audience-Alienating Era during the mid-to-late '00s. However, 2010 saw the release of Korn III, a "true successor" to Korn's earlier '90s work such as their self-titled debut album and its follow-up Life Is Peachy. The album was very well received by fans for returning to the dark and gritty style that made the band famous in the first place.
  • Korn's next album, Path of Totality, went in a highly experimental route by trying to fuse nu-metal with dubstep (even getting Skrillex involved). Opinions were highly divided, to say the least. The next album, The Paradigm Shift, went back to the nu-metal sound again, downplayed the dubstep, and included the return of one of the band's founding guitarists, Head. Audience opinions, while not as favorable as Korn III, were still much higher than Path of Totality. Their 2016 album The Serenity of Suffering actually invoked this. They described it as the heaviest album they've put out since their self-titled, with the dubstep elements being completely removed, and more prominent influence from their '90s-era material was added while still sounding modern. It was a massive success, with fans both old and new being very happy with the result.
• Machine Head faced a nasty Audience-Alienating Era with their turn-of-the-millennium releases The Burning Red and Supercharger. Through the Ashes of Empires re-introduced elements of their classic thrash sound with a warm welcome, and The Blackening went even further, going in a Progressive Metal direction. The band/Rob Flynn still has a mountain to climb, though, as they/he still have both the shadow of Nu Metal and the high standards set by Burn My Eyes to live up to.
• Metallica's Death Magnetic helped bring back quite a few fans after St. Anger with a return to their '80s sound. They did it again with Hardwired... to Self-Destruct, which helped rehabilitate their image after the universally reviled Lulu.
• Brad Paisley's 2013 album Wheelhouse was a major Broken Base for his fans. First off, it was the first album that he produced by himself instead of using longtime producer Frank Rogers. Those who liked the album found it a wonderful change of pace for its more varied songs and heavier production; opponents found it a massively overproduced mess that tried way too hard to be "different" (although consensus was that the LL Cool J duet "Accidental Racist" was a huge misstep). The divisive nature of Wheelhouse was also evident on the charts, as the third and fourth singles ("I Can't Change the World" and "The Mona Lisa") were his lowest-charting since his debut album back in 1999. Moonshine in the Trunk and Love and War seem to have lessened the complaints of "trying too hard to be different" that Wheelhouse had, but they have also been met with diminishing returns on the airplay charts (in fact, Love and War's original lead single "Without a Fight", a duet with Demi Lovato, bombed so hard that it didn't even make the final cut).
• After Rascal Flatts' albums Me and My Gang, Still Feels Good, and Unstoppable were panned for their weak songs and Dann Huff's bombastic production, Rascal Flatts seemed to get the message, as most critics felt that Nothing Like This (their first album for Big Machine Records after their previous label, Lyric Street, closed) and Changed had better songs and production even though Huff was still on board. This culminated in the band finally ditching Huff on Rewind, which was equally lauded for its quality... However, its second single "Payback" became the band's lowest peaking single to date.
• Cliff Richard's career had been in apparently terminal decline for some years until his 1976 New Sound Album I'm Nearly Famous re-positioned him as more of a rock artist and broke him into the US market.

• Invoked at ECW Hardcore Heaven 95. There was a tag team match with Chad Austin and The Broadstreet Bully (Tony Stetson) vs. Donn E. Allen and Dino Sendoff that featured blown spots, with the crowd turning on it and Joey Styles even saying, "This match isn't very good," and, figuring that the match probably wouldn't make TV, using it to take a shot at WCW Slamboree, a PPV which, from 1993-1995, would feature Ring Oldies along with wrestlers from the regular roster. Then "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group hit, bringing out Paul E. Dangerously and 911. 911 chokeslammed all four guys to the cheers of the crowd.
• Total Nonstop Action Wrestling:
  • After the Hogan/Bischoff era, TNA's resurgence came with Bobby Lashley's return to the company in 2014, which was this for Lashley himself, as his earlier run had not been too well received. This time, however, the crowd really got into his matches as MVP talked them to the television sets, and even when MVP was putting over Lashley he had Kenny King to interact with.
  • Post-Spike TV, the TNA brand's absolute last grasp was yet another feud between Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy in 2016, for the same reason they almost always feud: Matt being envious of Jeff. Fans were not at all that excited about this, especially since it took a lot more effort to find TNA programming without Spike TV or even regular pay-per-view. Then Matt went crazy, he became "Broken", and everyone wanted to know exactly what they missed. Though it's not without its detractors, the "Broken Saga" was undeniably the most interesting thing to happen to the product in years.
  • Even after its acquisition by the Canadian-based Anthem, and a complete re-brand that retired the TNA name, the newly-christened Impact Wrestling, under a returning Jeff Jarrett, was unwatchable in 2017, culminating in a near-universally panned Bound for Glory PPV that October. Fast forward to 2018, with the return of Don Callis and Scott D'Amore serving as Executive Vice Presidents. In the years since, Impact has been collaborating with both small independent promotions and even major competitors (such as MLW and Ring of Honor), they've expanded their streaming reach with their Twitch partnership (which also kept their weekly show afloat after Pop TV dropped them in January 2019, ^note Allowing cord cutters a chance to watch the show without subscribing to an obscure cable network.), and even managed to mend fences with Ohio Valley Wrestling for the latter to become their developmental territory again. Reception to the product has greatly improved, with Slammiversary 2018 receiving critical acclaim, and the inter-gender feud between Sami Callihan and Tessa Blanchard in 2019 even gaining positive comparisons to WWE's Attitude Era.
• Jay Lethal's second run with the Ring of Honor Television Title won back the crowd who had been disinterested in the belt ever since Matt Taven, who was viewed as a Creator's Pet and a Replacement Scrappy in the House Of Truth to Roderick Strong, had won it off the ever-popular Adam Cole.
• WWE:
  • The WWF became the undisputed top promotion of the wrestling world in the 1980s, but by the time the '90s rolled around, their top name (Hulk Hogan) was gone, nobody else was grabbing the audience's interest, and the booking had become ridiculous, predictable, and lame. The WWF found themselves trailing behind WCW and staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. Then came the Attitude Era, a Darker and Edgier reinvention focused around "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and the rest is history.
  • Survivor Series 2008, namely during Vladimir Kozlov and Triple H's match for the WWE Championship. Originally the match was supposed to include Jeff Hardy as a third man, but he was reportedly found unconscious earlier that day and thus taken out of the match. HHH and Kozlov did not work particularly well together, becoming so maligned as to earn chants of "boring" and "TNA". Then Vickie Guerrero came out and announced that "He's here!", getting the crowd to finally show some life as they believed Hardy would be appearing. Then... "You think you know me." And the crowd was off their feet, as EDGE returned with his comeback beard and wrestling gear on and speed-walked his way into the ring. Then, before he could capitalize on the situation... Jeff Hardy indeed came rushing out with a steel chair, wildly swinging at Edge (presuming that Edge was physically responsible for his earlier condition). Some swings and Spears later, Kozlov, Hardy, and HHH all sprawled out on the ground, and Edge became WWE Champion to a hero's welcome. Still didn’t save the match from winning Worst Match of the Year from the Observer.
  • 2014 saw WWE pull this off on more than one level. First, in the Royal Rumble, the crowd waited anxiously during the entire Rumble for Daniel Bryan to make his appearance. When number 30 was revealed to be Rey Mysterio, once the crowd realized that Bryan wasn't in the Rumble at all, the boos could be heard loud and clear - Mysterio's elimination was actually cheered. The world title match at WrestleMania XXX was quickly made a triple threat match by including Bryan and having him win the title to the massive approval of the crowd... which earlier that night had been practically deflated when The Streak came to an end.

• Disney Theme Parks:
  • As covered in Defunctland's video, Disneyland Paris's opening was quite lacklustre to say the least. In fact, the park was practically rushed to completion (resulting in an entire zone essentially being empty). However, Space Mountain (one of Disney's most popular rides ever) was added, and given a unique Jules Verne-inspired twist. It more or less saved the park.
  • California Adventure was seen as an absolute failure at launch - owing mostly to the fact that it didn't really bring anything "new" to the table^note A few attractions, such as California Screamin', Soarin' over California, and to a lesser extent Mulholland Madness and Grizzly Falls were always seen as enjoyable but not worth the price of admission, most of it was covered in gift shops, and its mixture of "boardwalk amusement park" and "California history" was seen as ill-fitting for Disneyland. Even during the early parts of The New '10s, people saw the park as an Obvious Beta, as most of it was still under construction even a decade after opening. However, once World of Color (California Adventure's answer to Fantasmic) debuted, as well as the ever-popular Cars Land, the price of park-hopper tickets became seen as more "worth it" and attendance slowly but surely rose. This also allowed some of its rides, such as Soarin' Over the World (formerly Soarin' Over California), to truly pick up an audience—in fact, Soarin' remains one of the park's busiest attractions.
• Universal's Islands of Adventure was initially a borderline disaster upon opening in 1999, attracting less than half of its projected guest attendance. The failure of the park ended up putting the entire resort over a billion dollars in debt for more than a decade. It was the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in 2010 that caused the park to finally become profitable and more recognized among tourists, as well as finally dragging the resort out of debt.
• Intamin was an icon of the amusement park industry in the '90s and early '00s, acknowledged for both their ride innovations as well as their work on multiple record breakers and iconic rides during that era. It's usually held that they entered a slump at some point in the mid '00s, as the rollercoaster arms race they were a major player in became unsustainable and Intamin earned a reputation for unreliability and uneven attempts at experimentation. Thus, the next decade was largely spent with them focusing on building staple attractions for local clients. The ride that got them back on the international stage was 2016's Taron at Phantasialand, an LSM launch coaster that was perfectly designed to show off all the strengths of what Intamin had invented, featuring intense thrills and high speeds within an extremely compact layout. Combined with Phantasialand's impeccable theming, Taron was an instant hit that proved Intamin still had their '90s spark.

• Red vs. Blue:
  • Season 16, The Shisno Paradox was considered a low point of the show by those who didn't like the Denser and Wackier approach. Season 17, Singularity, managed to win those dissers back even by being a direct follow-up, with approval to the comedy, exploring unused characters and pairings, and story directions. Helps that after a whole season of build-up, Singularity started with its stakes and antagonists already set.
  • Season 18, Zero, was considered an even lower point with very weak writing. Hence, the announcement of a spin-off starring the cast of Zero, Family Shatters, received intense vitriol from the fans, but once it actually came out, viewers considered Family Shatters a step in the right direction, especially for returning to comedy after an Actionized Sequel season that lacked the laughs and characterization that drove people towards the show in the first place.

• The second season of the Rooster Teeth show The Gauntlet appears to have won over many fans who were not happy with the first season. With a shift away from all-community teams (which led to a huge case of Broken Base) to one community team, a Rooster Teeth team, a team composed of various internet celebrities, and a team from Achievement Hunter, people are on the whole much more positive.
• Sips came under fire for making content that appeared to be solely Garry's Mod-based, with fans starting to angrily spam comments on YouTube. Sips' starting a playthrough of Fallout 1 and Evolve has since won over many of his detractors, who like the shift away from Gmod and back to the older style content.
• The Yogscast Minecraft Series appears to have won many fans back with the new Cornerstone series. It's generally agreed by many that series, which introduces mass collaboration and everyone working together and tasks being delegated out, is a good series, partly due to it stirring up old memories of the Tekkit series, where collabs were frequent enough. The effects have been fairly positive for individual members, too- Strippin has gotten a fair amount of love for his good chemistry with Hat Films.

• Disney Television Animation regained prominence when, after years of So Okay, It's Average productions, Phineas and Ferb proved to be a signal that the studio was back to making magic. Gravity Falls further solidified the newfound success of the network, becoming one of the most popular cartoons of the 2010s.
• Family Guy, for a time, after the much-reviled Season 8: Peter's Jerkassery was toned down, Brian is no longer the Author Avatar everybody was sick of, Meg and Chris are getting more screentime, and the Meg bashing is much, much less blatant, Stewie starts to show glimpses of his old characterization, the newer chapters have better storylines and fewer flashbacks and pop culture references (which, by the way, are more recent and easier to get than the obscure '70-'80s references that nobody recognized), the Black Comedy is less prominent, etc. There are even a few dramatic and serious moments once in a while. Later seasons eventually managed to lose this goodwill, though, for a variety of reasons best listed on other pages.
• The Fairly OddParents! hit Seasonal Rot at a point in its run, and while opinions vary on exactly when, it's widely regarded that the last two seasons are the worst of the thanks to the introductions of annoying new characters while getting rid of the rest of the supporting cast. The Fairly OddParents!: Fairly Odder was an extremely unsuccessful attempt at a revival that didn't know who to appeal to and was removed from its streaming service after a year. It was a huge surprise when The Fairly OddParents!: A New Wish came out, bringing returning characters like Cosmo and Wanda back to their original characterizations, having a Setting Update that allowed for new characters and plots without feeling like pandering, and a developing Myth Arc that's interesting and emotional. Despite Nickelodeon treating the show terribly, it got a big fanbase through word of mouth.
• Glitch Techs: While Eric Robles' previous series, Fanboy and Chum Chum, was incredibly divisive due to its dimwitted characters and zany humour, Glitch Techs has been much more positively received as a fun (if a bit cheesy) action-adventure show about video games that actually did the research in regards to the subject matter.
• Johnny Test: While the original series never had much of a strong fanbase to begin with, the revival series is considered a massive step up from the original series as it received praise for its improved animation, (It helps that Stephen Silver, who is best known for his character design concepts from shows like Danny Phantom and Kim Possible provided design concept for this series.) More creative episode plots that help it flesh out more than the original's episode plots as they were given flack for lazily copying other shows such as Dexter's Laboratory, improved comedy such as the episode "Silence of the Johnny" which featured a Self-Deprecation towards the show's overuse of the whipcracking sound effect, and the characters are a lot better written namely Johnny as he Took a Level in Kindness and his failed attempts at being edgy are downplayed.
• The Legend of Korra's first two seasons were seen as weaker compared to the original series with a rushed Myth Arc that took a back seat to a widely disliked Love Triangle and an un-charismatic villain in the second season. The third and fourth seasons dialed back the romance, fixed the pacing, provided two very complex and human villains, and ended the series on a high note with fans. Several fans have even stated that the third and fourth books of Korra were also better than the original series.
• After several incredibly polarizing efforts to keep the Looney Tunes franchise alive, Looney Tunes Cartoons is considered a true return to form because the new show didn't try so hard to keep up with the times and just stayed true to what Looney Tunes was supposed to be in the first place, Looney.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The series won back the My Little Pony franchise, after it had been a joke for years. Moreover, it gave rise to the brony movement, appealing to adults as well as children.
  • In a smaller case, writer Merriwether Williams' four episodes in Season 2 were among the most disliked of the show (with the exception of Hearth's Warming Eve), most notably in how their stories relied on everyone acting like jerks. Her next episode in the following season, Wonderbolts Academy, was far better received.
  • The third season was considered a case of minor Seasonal Rot in quality due to a shorter lifespan, a lackluster Arc Villain, premise-altering story turns including Discord's Heel–Face Turn and Twilight Sparkle becoming an alicorn princess, and fan-favorite character Derpy Hooves being a no-show due to the "controversy" surrounding her first speaking appearance. The fourth season is considered the point where the show greyed the beard as the plot developments that were feared to be the show's downfall wound up refreshing it. Twilight and her friends' struggles with her new royal duties are presented in a surprisingly mature light while Discord takes on the role of Token Evil Trickster Mentor while going through some Character Development to make his reform easier to swallow. It returned to a 26-episode format while setting up a Half-Arc Season that gives a hearty taste of Equestria's history with the finale featuring long-lost G1 antagonist turned Breakout Villain Tirek. As a cherry on top, Derpy made a grand return in "Rainbow Falls" (S4E10).
  • While Season 5 was, for quite some time, considered one of, if not the best season, Season 6 went the opposite way. For starters, Season 6 saw the introduction of previous Arc Villain Starlight Glimmer as a main character, getting off relatively scot-free from her previous actions back in Season 5, and her focus episodes were lackluster. It also didn't help that several episodes from Season 6 were very hit-or-miss in terms of quality, and unlike previous seasons, there wasn't a continuing narrative, even just in the background like in S5. However, come Season 7, the narrative returns with the "Pillars of Equestria," Starlight's character-centric episodes turned out to be some of the best ones in the series and helped her become a fan favorite, and even some of the Mane 6-centric ones were incredibly well-received, such as "The Perfect Pear," which is widely considered to be the best episode thus far.
• The Simpsons:
  • The show experienced a massive boost in popularity in 2007, thanks to the acclaimed smash hit The Simpsons Movie.
  • Season 33 saw a noticeable uptick in both critical and fan interest in The Simpsons. This season saw the well-liked long-time writer Matt Selman take over most of the showrunning duties, who many fans credit with the shift in the show's direction. Points of praise include an uptick in the number of heartwarming character-driven episodes while still balancing the satire, a much greater willingness to experiment with episode formats and presentations, a better incorporation of the show's always-modern setting while still paying full homage to its past, and a more positive relationship with the show's fandom.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The eighth and ninth seasons. Plankton is more threatening than he was before the movie, using deadly weapons and slave labor, Mr. Krabs has a nice side, characters who plagued the past three seasons have been dropped, there's a bit more drama, the epic horrors of Whelk Attack and "A Pal For Gary" (though SpongeBob's characterization in that episode hasn't allowed it to resonate well with several fans), Sandy may be getting back in the spotlight soon, genuinely good specials, the Black Comedy being handled better, the best SpongeBob game since Battle For Bikini Bottom, the brief Story Arc, SpongeBob getting less stupid, Patrick becoming a lovable oaf again after a brief Jerkass stint, etc. Although they aren't without their stinkers (e.g. "Squid Baby" and "Are You Happy Now?").
  • Many fans became hyped up for the second movie, due to Stephen Hillenburg returning to the series after his departure since season four. What's more, the movie was more-or-less an apology letter to the fans, being on par with Seasons 1-3 in terms of quality and undoing all of the Character Derailment and Flanderization that plagued the post-Hillenburg era. The following Season 10 continued to appease these fans.
• Star Wars:
  • Star Wars: Clone Wars is this for fans who were disappointed by both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones because it goes directly into a key event in the Star Wars franchise and it shows a more drawn-out backstory for characters such as Anakin, Obi-Wan, and more importantly, General Grievous.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars ended up adding even greater scope to the Clone Wars, chronicling the whole titular conflict from near its very beginning to its very end. More crucially, however, it ended up adding far more nuance to the entire prequel trilogy: making Anakin far more likable and heroic and giving much more justification for his distrust for the Jedi and eventual fall, adding depth to the clones, showcasing in far greater detail Palpatine's machinations and how the war corrupted both the Jedi Order and the already decaying Republic, and of course, introducing (eventual) fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano. It's not uncommon to hear those who initially scorned anything having to do with the prequel trilogy now looking back much more fondly on its overall premise, if not the movies themselves, for finally being done justice by The Clone Wars. The Siege of Mandalore arc also served as this for the franchise as a whole after the incredibly divisive Rise of Skywalker, with some even going so far as to label the arc as one of the best pieces of Star Wars content ever made.
• The first half of the fifth season of Steven Universe, after the plot-heavy "Wanted" event, is largely complained about by fans due to immediately following a nearly seven-month hiatus, a few too many episodes being focused on the recurring human characters, and having no relevance to the more compelling overarching story. However, after "Lars of the Stars" and "Jungle Moon", the plot threads abandoned after "Wanted" were picked up again, culminating in the biggest reveal of the series, that Rose Quartz didn't shatter Pink Diamond, but rather was her. That episode was followed by a well-received "StevenBomb" (five new episodes in five nights) that included the return of Bismuth and Lapis and ended with the critically-acclaimed "Reunited". Though that episode was followed by another lengthy hiatus, the following string of episodes, entitled "Diamond Days", was a much more rewarding payoff for the wait, including Steven and the Crystal Gems visiting Homeworld, Blue and Yellow Diamond receiving more attention as antagonists, and the long-awaited debut of the mysterious White Diamond, who up until that point had never even been directly mentioned, only alluded to.
• Superjail! Season 3 went over much easier with fans than Season 2 had, perhaps due to the writers deciding that they'd try to combine the original "psychedelic bloodbath" formula from Season 1 with Season 2's character-centric stories and development. The wild scene transitions and camera angles were also reinstated, while Season 2 had mostly used traditional cuts and fades between scenes. Acclaim-wise, it managed to win over at least a bigger number of fans, but when it came to the ratings this trope was inverted (Season 2 aired in the summer and had managed to get consistently high ratings, while Season 3's ratings dipped much lower).
• Due to Andrew Brenner becoming head writer of Thomas & Friends in Season 17, there are references to older episodes and fan favourites like Bill, Ben, and Duck are brought back. The writing style is also more mature than the other CGI seasons and there has been a lot of Character Rerailment, undoing the Flanderization of the later seasons. Thomas, while still appearing frequently, is regulated to supporting roles and the same moderated number of lead roles as other engines instead of being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
• The first attempt to revive Tom and Jerry under Gene Deitch in 1961 was a bit of a disaster to say the least. A massive downgrade in animation quality being the least of the problems. The new shorts being far from popular, two years later MGM turned to famed Looney Tunes Chuck Jones to take over the series. He promptly restored the quality, improved the plots and 36 successful cartoons followed until 1967.
• Total Drama:
  • The series' popularity was revitalized by Revenge of the Island after the much reviled Action and polarizing World Tour by bringing in a new set of characters while having appearances by the original ones.
  • All-Stars seems to be even more hated than Action, but its follow-up, Pahkitew Island, managed to revive the franchise again with another new set of characters.
  • Its spinoff The Ridonculous Race proved to be extremely popular with fans, and has been compared favorably to Island and World Tour while also introducing a new competition with an almost entirely new cast.
• Transformers:
  • Transformers: Animated has proved to be an excellent show, especially after the years of spottily dubbed Japanese-produced for American consumption (or not) series, attracting many old and even new fans.
  • Transformers: Prime, following the success of Transformers: War for Cybertron (and being in that same universe), ended up winning over basically all fans of the franchise – including many geewunners – and is marked as being the best Transformers show since Beast Wars, if not even better. Part of this is the serious tone of the show, the return of the original voice actors for Optimus and Megatron, and the ubiquity of pieces of the Transformers mythos from every major installation of the franchise. The third season won a bigger crowd after the Sophomore Slump of the second.
• Warner Bros. Animation, having largely been seen in a slump outside most of its DC properties since the early 2000s, started gaining resurgence at the very end of the 2010s with cartoons such as the aforementioned Looney Tunes Cartoons, Green Eggs and Ham (2019), and the highly anticipated Animaniacs (2020), all of which have been praised for staying true to their source material, being well-written and enjoyable for audiences of all ages, and beautifully animated.

• Telltale Games almost singlehandedly revitalized the Adventure Game genre by shifting its focus from solving nonsensical puzzles to making decisions and watching their consequences unfold.
• The "Sword-and-Sandals" type of epic had been dead since at least The '60s. Gladiator won back the genre.
• Moulin Rouge and Chicago can both be credited with reviving interest in movie musicals after the genre died a slow death over the late 1960s-early 1980s.
• The Fantasy film genre had been big business during the 1980s, before largely disappearing into obscurity during the 90s. It seemed like fantasy would only be remembered in the modern age for god-awful films like Kull the Conqueror and Dungeons & Dragons (2000), and cheesy TV shows like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess... and then 2001 saw the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, both of which kick-started an explosion of fantasy films and TV shows that still continues to this day. It helped that filmmaking technology had advanced to a point where stories such as this could finally be presented in all their monsters-and-magic glory.
• Unforgiven won back Westerns… and cued a massive career resurgence for Clint Eastwood. Funny thing about the Western – that genre has been declared dead so many times that there are several movies, including Stagecoach (1939) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964), credited with reviving it.
• The successes of Blade and X-Men managed to breathe new life into the comic book and superhero genre after Batman & Robin temporarily killed it.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl helped to revive the long since dead high seas adventure (and pirates to boot) that was killed unceremoniously by Cutthroat Island. Notable in that it wasn't a perfect genre comeback, as although pirate elements have become far more common now, there still aren't too many other high seas pirate-y films outside of that series.
• After years of stagnating and dying out, the Magical Girl genre in the West ended up being revitalized with the success of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, along with the growing popularity of the Pretty Cure franchise and the reboot of the original Magical Girl Warrior. Later works like Steven Universe, Miraculous Ladybug, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, LoliRock and Little Witch Academia would show that Magical Girl series were far from dead in the west, and were incredibly popular, regardless of gender.
• Shoot Em Ups started to fall out of favor in the late '90s and early 2000s in favor of games with broader scopes (as shmups typically put the player on a fixed path and a single playthrough usually takes about 30-60 minutes at a time when games started to have tens of hours of content and really started to experiment with non-linear formats) and actual stories (the shmup genre isn't exactly known for deep lore, gripping plots, or characters worth caring about), but Touhou Project – the Windows games in particular, as the first five games are the comparatively obscure PC-98 computer that never left Japan – gave the genre a boost thanks to its pretty Bullet Hell patterns that each stand out on their own and characters best known for spawning endless memes and fan works.
• Much of Marvel Animation's output under Disney was perceived as lackluster outside of some exceptions. However, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023), while largely made by Disney Television Animation, won back many people over thanks to its great writing, likable characters, solid messages, and impressive animation.

• See also Career Resurrection.
• Mickey Rourke experienced this with Sin City and The Wrestler, after his career took a hit in The '90s.
• Although The Abyss didn't exactly tank at the box office, it wasn't the success it was expected to be nor a particularly pleasant experience for director James Cameron (due to suffering much Executive Meddling). Cameron's next movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, quickly saved him when it became a hit.
  • Cameron later helped Arnold Schwarzenegger to have success again with True Lies, after the massive misstep that was Last Action Hero.
• Tom Cruise was largely considered to have destroyed his career forever after becoming Hollywood's new frontman for Scientology, with his numerous bizarre and off-putting public appearances. Then came his tour de force Playing Against Type performance in Tropic Thunder. THEN his return to Mission Impossible with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, particularly with the advertising that he performed the "scale-a-skyscraper" stunt himself.
• After being one of the most respected actors of The '90s, thanks to his prominent lead roles in Se7en, American Beauty and The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey's career slowly declined through the 2000s, with many of his roles relegated to supporting parts in small TV miniseries and underwhelming films. Even 2006's Superman Returns – his highest-profile movie in years, where he scored the lead role of Lex Luthor – turned out to be a huge box-office disappointment, and it failed to spawn a new Superman franchise. That all changed in 2013, when his acclaimed performance as Frank Underwood in House of Cards (US) suddenly made him a household name again, leading to Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. However, this came to a halt after allegations came to light in 2017 accusing him of sexual behavior towards young boys.
• Ridley Scott has had this happen to his career twice. After his earlier successes with Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise, his career hit a nadir in the mid-90s as 1492: Conquest of Paradise, White Squall and G.I. Jane flopped before both critics and audiences until the success of Gladiator brought him back as a successful director, and was quickly followed by Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven (partially thanks to the Director's Cut) and American Gangster. However, his career entered another Audience-Alienating Era with the release of Robin Hood (2010) which resulted in the end of his longstanding collaboration with Russell Crowe. Then Prometheus, his highly anticipated return to the Alien franchise and the sci-fi genre endured a heavy case of Contested Sequel from fans who lauded the effects but was criticized for its writing. His two follow-ups, The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings also disappointed, with the latter film being considered a Creator Killer by many. However, his latest release, The Martian, based on the novel by Andy Weir, has so far received glowing praise from critics and sci-fi gurus, who hailed this as a much more welcome return to form.
• Dane Cook's "Isolated Incident" special on Comedy Central in 2009 was largely an attempt at redeeming his reputation as a stand-up comic after his popularity had steadily declined in the past few years, partly thanks to several poorly received high-profile film roles. Fittingly, it was essentially a Spiritual Antithesis of his previous "Vicious Circle" special in 2006, which was released right about the time that critics started to turn against him. Where Cook had previously reveled in his popularity by performing in packed stadiums and cultivating a hammy, over-the-top stage persona, "Isolated Incident" was performed for a limited audience at the Laugh Factory, and it saw Cook tackling much more personal, introspective topics (including his parents' recent deaths from cancer) and exposing his neuroses and insecurities with frequent self-deprecating jokes. While Cook will likely never be as popular as he was around 2005, "Isolated Incident" was received much more positively by critics, and it reminded audiences that there was a reason he made it big in comedy in the first place.
• Bruce Willis was in a bit of a slump in the mid-'90s with flops like North and Color of Night. Following his performance in Pulp Fiction, his career slowly went back up (with more hits such as 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense, etc.)
• Following the failures of Due Date, The Hangover sequels, and War Dogs, Todd Phillips regained some notices when Joker (2019) premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Golden Lion. It grossed over $1 billion dollars worldwide and got mostly positive reviews, with Phillips getting nominated for Best Director at the Oscars.
• Paul Reubens had retired his Pee-Wee Herman character for several years after his 1991 arrest and mostly did supporting credits ever since. He revived the character for The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway, winning back fans and seemingly all was forgiven. He later played Pee-Wee again for the Netflix film Pee-wee's Big Holiday, which earned mostly positive reviews in 2016 and restored his reputation before his death from cancer in 2023.
• Vince Vaughn, following several poorly received films like Couples Retreat, The Dilemma, and The Watch, had mostly lost his Hollywood standing. While he continued working in supporting parts, his leading dual role in the horror film Freaky got him some positive notices once more.
• Paul Schrader was mostly reduced to low-budget B-movies before making First Reformed. Its unanimously positive reception, with Schrader receiving his first Academy Award nomination in his decades-long career for it, renewed his ranking as one of the great American filmmakers.
• Hayden Christensen received a lot of criticism for his stiff performance as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels upon their initial release, although poor writing and direction was also cited as playing a part too. His acting career, regardless, was on life support for many years afterwards before returning as Anakin, now Darth Vader, in the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi. His performance was considered vastly improved from the prequels, bolstered by the writing and direction's quality correspondingly enhanced as well. His follow-up appearance as Anakin in Ahsoka has also brought back some goodwill.
• Judi Dench got a bit of flak for starring in the infamous Cats, a widely reviled Box-Office Bomb which got her a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actress. Artemis Fowl also being torn to shreds didn't help either. Thankfully, her Oscar-nominated performance in Belfast swiftly erased any damage that could've been done to her legacy as one of the finest actresses of the 20th century.
• Jessica Lange had slowed down and reduced her workload in the years following her Razzie-nominated role in the 1998 thriller Hush. Starting in The New '10s, she gained newfound recognition (and a couple of Emmy Awards) with multiple roles in the anthology series American Horror Story.
• While still big as a singer, Jennifer Lopez's screen career mostly dwindled in the 2010s down to a main role in the cop drama Shades of Blue. Her films were rarely financial hits and usually got negative reviews until 2019's Hustlers, with her performance in that one considered her best yet. It was a Sleeper Hit at the box office and got critical acclaim, with Lopez being widely deemed a contender for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars (although she ultimately didn't get nominated).
• Maddie Ziegler got severe criticism for her performance as a nonverbal autistic girl in Music (2021), with Ziegler (who is neurotypical) "winning" the Worst Supporting Actress Golden Raspberry Award for her part. Following a small part in the remake of West Side Story (2021) by Steven Spielberg, she won back critical esteem for her role as a school shooting survivor in The Fallout alongside Jenna Ortega.
• Sienna Miller didn't star in a major film for a few years after G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, with her performance as the Baroness winning her a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress. She mostly kept a low profile until appearing in two critically acclaimed films of 2014, Foxcatcher and American Sniper.
• Dakota Johnson received a lot of criticism for her acting in Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels. Despite their popularity and financial success, they were negatively received by critics (with Johnson winning a few Razzies for the first film). She slowly, over the next few years following the conclusion of the Fifty Shades series, regained favor with arthouse fare like Bad Times at the El Royale, Suspiria (2018), The Peanut Butter Falcon, The Lost Daughter, Cha Cha Real Smooth, etc.
• Helen Mirren experienced a temporary setback after the colossal failures of both Caligula and The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, among others between 1979 to 1980. The Long Good Friday becoming a big critical success put her career back on track.
• Sean Connery's post-James Bond career was very spotty, with as many decent hits (Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would be King, Time Bandits) as infamous flops (Zardoz, Meteor, Outland (1981), Wrong is Right, etc.). His Academy Award-winning performance in The Untouchables, followed two years later by the successful Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, put him back on the map in the latter '80s.
• David Lean was responsible for directing some of the greatest epics in cinematic history (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, etc.), but Ryan's Daughter in 1970 was widely criticized as one of his worst efforts despite some recognition in awards circles. Lean didn't direct another film for fourteen years before he was offered to make A Passage to India, with the massive acclaim it (the final film he made in his lifetime) received renewing his stature as a great filmmaker before his death in 1991.
• Tim Burton was widely considered to have fallen into an Audience-Alienating Era during The New '10s, with many criticizing his work during this period – particularly Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dark Shadows, Dumbo (2019), etc. – as creatively uninspired to such a point that some fans felt he became a parody of himself (and Burton himself admitted he felt frustrated on-set of some of these). The positive reception of Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which many felt were his most stylistically authentic projects in years, helped renew viewers' interest in The New '20s.
• Jeremy Irons is a widely hailed thespian whose work won him many accolades and made him one of the few to win the Triple Crown of Acting, but his career fell into a divisive point in the 2000s beginning with the near-unanimous ravaging of Dungeons & Dragons (2000). Although Irons turned in an Emmy-winning performance in the two-part 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I, his screen career only started picking up after the critically praised film Margin Call and the Showtime historical series The Borgias in 2011. He maintained a decent presence on the stage during that period, though.
• Alec Baldwin's screen career declined midway through The '90s and into the next decade with many flops (The Shadow (1994), Mercury Rising, The Cat in the Hat (2003), etc.). His Academy Award-nominated performance in The Cooler and his Emmy Award-winning one in 30 Rock made him famous once again for several years before his incident on the set of Rust in 2021.
• Sacha Baron Cohen struggled to top the success of his signature characters Ali G, Borat, and Brüno, with the underperformance of The Dictator and the failure of Grimsby taking him out of the spotlight for several years. It wasn't until 2020 that he began starring in successful projects again, with The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm being well-received while he got Oscar nominations for his work in them.
• Whoopi Goldberg had some difficulty trying to have a hit for a few years following The Color Purple (1985). Most of her films in the later half of the 80s, like Jumpin' Jack Flash, Burglar, and Fatal Beauty, bombed to varying degrees. The success of Star Trek: The Next Generation (where Goldberg played the recurring role of bartender Guinan) on television and Ghost (for which she won an Academy Award for her performance as psychic Oda Mae Brown) placed her back on the map. Though her film career was derailed by later failures, she remained a significant figure on stage and television.
• Jack Black experienced a short downturn between 2009 to 2010 with the negatively-reviewed Year One and Gulliver's Travels, right after he was coming off some of his biggest successes in 2008 with Kung Fu Panda and Tropic Thunder. He recovered fast in 2011 after the hit sequel Kung Fu Panda 2 and his critically praised performance as the title role in Bernie, in what many critics deemed his best to date.
• Taron Egerton suffered a rough 2018 with two humongous flops in Billionaire Boys Club and Robin Hood, which nearly extinguished the hype he gained with the Kingsman series. He followed it up the next year with a widely hailed performance as Elton John in the musical biopic Rocketman (2019), with the film becoming a box office hit while Egerton gained many plaudits like a Golden Globe.

• The success of shows like Adventure Time and Regular Show reignited Cartoon Network's popularity among older audiences after losing its classic cartoons to Boomerang and the utter failure that is CN Real, with others such as Steven Universe, The Amazing World of Gumball, etc. showing viewers that the network is dead serious about abandoning its live-action experiments and returning to its animation roots^note though many fans of Cartoon Network in its classic animation and Creator/Cartoon Cartoons era still don't like the network as all of the shows they remember watching back then have been relegated to Boomerang, which isn't available on most cable and satellite packages. And the less said about the angry anime fans who want Toonami to go back to being a daytime block, the better…. Parallel to this, [adult swim] followed suit after their resurrection of Toonami, while The Eric Andre Show has redeemed its live-action programming among some of its fanbase due to being one of the few unambiguously live-action shows produced by the network, and its strange, absurdist tone fitting the rest of the network's output. The eventual status of the controversial Teen Titans Go! as Adored by the Network has been seen as a damping force against the process of recovery (especially after it started taking almost half of the daily schedule for itself).
  • The 2020s may be marking another turnaround for Cartoon Network, by cutting down on Teen Titans Go! marathons ^note It's still Adored by the Network, but doesn't take up over half the schedule as it did in the late 2010s., and giving more airtime to beloved originals like We Bare Bears, Victor and Valentino, and Craig of the Creek, complete with lots of advertising, especially in the latter's case. While there are still some problems, most notably the cancellation of Infinity Train, most long-time fans consider the current state an improvement compared to the last several years.
• CBS, long regarded as "the Tiffany network" throughout The '90s, regained viewers it lost after Survivor debuted. Then it managed to secure a handful of critically acclaimed and popular scripted shows that pulled it into the big leagues like How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory (the latter which helped dethrone "Must See TV Thursdays" from NBC). Today it's the dominant TV network in the ratings. Similarly, it regained the younger crowd in the '90s after spending much of the '80s being "the network of the living dead".
• At the end of the 2003-2004 TV season, ABC had been floundering for a few years, even becoming the first of the original Big Three networks to fall to fourth place in overall network ratings (falling behind FOX, who was surging behind American Idol). Their programming schedule had glaring holes left from the flame-out of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and a lack of hit dramatic fare and reality shows. Under new management for the 04-05 season, ABC debuted two fall series that would instantly become smash hits: Lost and Desperate Housewives, followed by three more hits with mid-season addition Grey's Anatomy and reality series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Dancing with the Stars. ABC rode that wave of success back into second place while NBC tumbled all the way to fourth.
• NBC had been slowly stagnating over the last few years, having fallen back into fourth. However, with the help of Chicago Fire and the next few series, along with This Is Us being both a ratings and critics success (especially in the prized 18-49 demographic), along with The Voice and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (the latter a Long Runner) helping ratings keep trucking, NBC, while not the mega-successful channel it was in the past, has rebuilt its reputation and has settled into a comfortable second place behind CBS at the end of the 2016-17 season. ^note And into the prized first place regarding 18-49, given that most of CBS' audience skews older, all while ABC and FOX have continued to repeatedly slip and fall in both overall and 18-49 ratings.
• For over five years, the Sci-Fi Channel descended into a state of Network Decay that no one thought it would escape from, with the rebranding of the network's name to "Syfy", the phasing out of actual Sci-Fi shows in favor of Reality shows and Wrestling programming, and any Sci-Fi content they do air consisting of low budget Z-grade creature features. However, recent statements from the network president about the network's decay and the announcement of an upcoming Space Opera mini-series imply that the network is attempting this, though only time will tell whether or not this attempt will be successful enough to bring the channel back to its roots.
• Nickelodeon, after dealing with a long string of divisive-at-best shows since 2009 and reaching its nadir in 2014 ^note with Breadwinners, Nick Studio 10 and their projects with Lucas Cruikshank being seen as their lowest points, seemed to be doing all it can to win back its fans since 2015:
  • The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water managed to win back SpongeBob fans, thanks to having Stephen Hillenburg back on board (as well as the news that he's returning to the show itself), featuring humor on par with that of the first 3 seasons and de-flanderizing the characters. Being a box office hit also helps. Then, C.H. Greenblatt's Harvey Beaks was praised for being more down to earth, having more wholesome humor, and not rehashing the same "bromance" theme of other Nicktoons. And finally, the network announced they were working to reboot some of their old series. This includes recruiting Craig Bartlett to finally produce something classic Nick fans have been wanting for over a decade: Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie.
  • Things continued improving for Nick in 2016 with the near-unanimous praise of The Loud House, greenlighting a one-hour special for storytelling of Rocko's Modern Life and shelving Breadwinners to Nicktoons without renewing it for a third season. These improvements especially stick out against main rival Cartoon Network, which in 2015 fell into what some viewers consider to be a new Audience-Alienating Era and began making some of the same mistakes Nickelodeon was making during 2009 to 2014. Nickelodeon solidified it HARD in 2017 when they announced that Invader Zim was getting a TV movie.
• While Gravity Falls, Phineas and Ferb, and Tangled: The Series got Disney Channel's animation department back in shape, the network's live-action department had been struggling, as many of their shows since the debut of Hannah Montana in 2006 were seen as mediocre at best, mainly abiding to the Girl-Show Ghetto, with the few exceptions being Good Luck Charlie, Lab Rats, and Girl Meets World. Many of their least-liked series, like Crash & Bernstein and Best Friends Whenever (both of which starred Landry Bender), were cancelled very quickly. In 2017, the network released Andi Mack, a show with Darker and Edgier themes and no laugh track, which won over many fans. They also announced a new spinoff for That's So Raven, a Big Hero 6 series, a Bug Juice reboot, and a DuckTales reboot. These improvements, along with Nickelodeon's, stick out against Cartoon Network's, which some believe has entered another Audience-Alienating Era.
• For years beginning in the late 2000s, BET had been floundering with fans over their questionable business handling, canceling popular shows like 106 & Park, trying too hard to be like MTV and having an overall lagging appeal with Black audiences. That began to change in the mid-2010s with the creation of drama series Being Mary Jane (which was initially supposed to be a one-off TV movie, but gained so much viewership that it developed into a seven-season show) and eventually grew full circle with The New Edition Story that became a huge hit with both viewers and critics, spawned a successful spinoff TV movie, The Bobby Brown Story and breathed new life into the decades-old network.
• In late 2002, VH1 scored a big hit and a new generation of fans with their I Love the '80s anthology series that spawned a whole franchise of spinoffs reviewing such subjects as the '70s, '90s, and the 2000s, the weekly version called Best Week Ever and the long-running "Celebreality" programming.^note Which includes their most popular guilty pleasures like The Surreal Life, Flavor of Love and I Love New York This is in stark contrast to just a few months prior that same year when the controversial show Music Behind Bars gained the network a lot of backlash due to showcasing the musical tastes and talents of prison inmates, up to and including murderers serving life sentences. Understandably, the show's Wikipedia page has been taken down, and VH-1 has been reluctant to acknowledge its existence in the years since.