Serialized newspaper comics have to be written with the assumption that readers are likely to miss a day's installment once in a while.

TV shows are often written around commercial breaks, to the extent that the first thing after the commercials is often a brief reminder of what happened just before the commercials-so when you view them on DVD or on a channel that does not use commercials (such as the BBC) the repetition seems odd. Sometimes, book series will Call-Back to past events from the previous books when they were intended to be relatively standalone, or in case the viewer read the previous book, then went on to the next one a little while later. This may also be a justification depending on the format. Others have a character keep a diary which the player can read to remind themselves of the plot so far. Some games try to avert this by putting plot summaries or scenes that otherwise show what has happened up to that point in the Loading Screen. In this case, the flashbacks will only seem insulting to the player's intelligence during a non-stop play. Sometimes a necessity in video game plots, due to the possibility of the player saving the game, taking a break of, say, two or three months, and then coming back, having forgotten important plot points during that time. It's a bonus if shows like The A-Team explain their setup with a handy voice-over in the opening credits.

Arguably, this is the reason why network television has historically favored episodic storytelling over more serialized ones the idea is that the episodes can be shown out of order and that viewers can just watch episodes at random with no need for context outside of the forty-five minute block. With weekly television, there is a tendency to underestimate the audience. Because remembering what happens over the course of a whole thirty minutes or, god forbid, an hour, is too difficult for your general media consumer, there is a handy little device called a Flashback that can be used to rewind, oh, five minutes or so to say, 'Hey! This just happened, moron!' It may also come from an ancient survey that stated that Americans change the channel 20 times every minute on average. Sort of like how executives think Viewers Are Morons, they also think you have the memory of a goldfish, which, according to an incorrect urban legend, lasts about three seconds.

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