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The story
A new Yu-Gi-Oh! card that references cards banished face-down has become a hot topic on a 5ch live-commentary thread. “Banish” has long been known—going back to early cards like Gravedigger Ghoul and Soul Release—as an effect where “once a card is used, it never comes back.” This time, though, players confirmed cards being referenced and reused straight out of that banish zone, and posters coined a new term for it: “banishing the banished.” The thread split over whether this is genuinely a new concept or just an old mechanic from cards like Apostle of Annihilation resurfacing, with comparisons to the Lost Zone from the Pokémon Trading Card Game and general fatigue with the game’s ever-growing rule complexity also spreading through the replies.
What people said
First one was Soul Release, right?
Pretty sure it was Gravedigger Ghoul.
Yeah, this really does look like a game for people who can't hold a conversation.
I thought face-down banish meant total, permanent exile — did they cook up yet another new concept?
A deck came out that just spams reusing face-down banished cards.
Somebody's gonna have to draw me a De Morgan's Venn diagram before this makes any sense.
Summoning De Moivre.
Wait, seriously?
So now there's yet another new zone to keep cards in?
There isn't even a physical zone for banished cards to begin with.
Reminder that modern cards mostly go for advantage-generating disruption instead of straight negation these days, so stacking up negate effects isn't really that common anymore.
You tear up the token so it can't have effects applied to it, get banished, or be destroyed.
Wait, that already exists…?
Card games really are anything-goes at this point.
That "Lost Zone" actually comes in a face-up and a face-down version, and you can only recover cards from the more obscure face-down one.
The rulebook: "Nope. In that case the card wasn't 'discarded' from hand to graveyard — it was sent there as a cost, so the effect can't trigger."
Just stop this already.
"Discarding" and "sending" are technically two different things.
Feel that hard.
And that was pretty early on, too.
It's Gravedigger Ghoul's fault. Gravedigger Ghoul's.
That's the only Yu-Gi-Oh thing I still feel like playing.
I ground the PS version of Tag Force into the dirt back in the day.
Was gonna say "just make do with Tag Force Special," then remembered that came out over a decade ago lol.
I thought you couldn't even reference the name or type of a face-down banished card, but the newest archetype has an effect that pulls its own archetype's cards straight out of face-down banishment.
Oh, so that's what's going on, had no idea
So you're saying "banishing the banished" already existed with cards like Apostle of Annihilation?
There was a time I too believed "face-down" meant it could never be referenced again…
Is that seriously true?
Did good old Yata-Garasu screw things up again?
That card's busted no matter what era you're in.
Never understood why they'd ever let that thing off the banlist
There's no way it doesn't get abused.
That's when the normal players drift away and only the hardcore fans stick around.
Without a rotation, power creep only ever goes one direction.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, “banishing” was originally introduced through early cards like Gravedigger Ghoul and Soul Release as an effect where a card “never returns to the game.” For years, the shared understanding was that “a banished card might as well not exist.” However, cards that banish face-down — like Apostle of Annihilation — have actually been around for a while, and as replies 67 and 71 point out, new cards that reference what’s sitting in that face-down banish zone aren’t a totally new innovation so much as an old mechanic finally clicking into place. Where the thread split was over whether this counts as a natural extension of the existing rules or a sign the game’s design has hit its limits — negative takes leaned on inflation fatigue, while defenders made the practical point that “it’s not a problem since you can just negate it.” The comparison to the Lost Zone from the Pokémon Trading Card Game (replies 39 and 42) is a useful reference point for readers unfamiliar with the mechanic, though it’s worth noting the two games differ enough in the details that the comparison isn’t a perfect one-to-one.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyō G) thread “[Sad News] Yu-Gi-Oh Is Done For as the Concept of “Banishing the Banished” Emerges wwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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