"And oh yes, there's this murder mystery plot set up early on. Six different members of a military squad are introduced and established with names and slightly anemic personalities, but then it transpires that there's a traitor among them picking them off. You even have a boss fight with him, his face cunningly concealed by camera angles and bits of scenery. So, do you want to know who the traitor turned out to be? So the fuck would I, because the game kind of forgets about this whole subplot and hopes you do, too."
When a Story Arc disappears off the face of the storyline without warning, never to be heard from again.
For a long while viewers will likely be under the impression that the disappeared major Plot Point will pop up any minute now — an impression which will eventually give way to a dawning comprehension that the story has moved on, none of the factors that made this plot point important matter any more and it would be just ridiculous for someone to suddenly recall the whole thing now, after all this time.
Why did this happen? It's anyone's guess. Maybe the introduction of that plot point had fans complaining, so it was quietly discarded to appease them. Maybe a crucial cast member quit the show, and said plot can't be continued without their character. Maybe the powers that be didn't like it and demanded it be dropped. Maybe they did want to continue that arc, but were writing by the seat of their pants and didn't know where else to go, or they didn't have the budget to film or animate it. Or maybe the writers just realized it was a lousy idea that was cluttering up the plot, or just lost interest in it. This weighs rather heavily on the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, but sometimes the best way to execute an Author's Saving Throw and get rid of an element that isn't doing the story any favors is to just pretend it never happened. Then again, it's harder to pass the throw if the arc had significant buildup; such buildup retroactively becomes Fauxshadowing.
Mainly a series trope; writers will usually avoid this if they can, and you can always go back and edit a stand-alone work before publishing, unless the deadline is really pressing. At best, it's a gross violation of The Law of Conservation of Detail; at worst, this is done for no reason whatsoever and rends the plot asunder to create a fresh new Plot Hole.
Jokes tend to have this trope in spades, as the whole point is to build up to an unexpected pun or twist ending by any means necessary — then full stop, no closure. People who have No Sense of Humor (and people trolling) will then say "And then what happened?"
Cases where there is a resolution, no matter how trite, sudden or delayed for years, aren't this trope — though really bad cases of Four Lines, All Waiting, Out of Focus, or Sequel Gap usually end up emulating the effects for all intents and purposes; when the plot point does get brought out of cryogenic suspension, fans have long since lost all hope for it or interest in it.
If the arc does eventually come back, that's Plot Archaeology. Make Room for the New Plot is usually a conscious attempt by the writer to prevent this from happening in the first place.
Compare with: What Could Have Been, Kudzu Plot, The Chris Carter Effect, Creator Breakdown, Franchise Killer, What Happened to the Mouse?, and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. See also: Dummied Out, Left Hanging, Cut Short and Conclusion in Another Medium.
Has nothing to do with a story arc about abortion.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Professional Wrestling
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Comic Strips
- The Broons: In the 1970s strips, Maggie met and quickly got engaged to Dave Mc Kay. The wedding was rehearsed, a house was bought and the guest list was ready to go. The entire storyline was suddenly dropped at the end of 1979 and Dave was never seen or mentioned again. DC Thomson even went as far as to completely remove all mentions of their engagement from the compilation books. The 2012 release "Classic Books from the 70s" finally acknowledged this and Dave's fate was revealed in a brand new strip. Dave secretly wore a wig and was moonlighting as "Baldy Bob" at Daphne's singles club.
- According to Bill Watterson himself, an arc in Calvin and Hobbes involving strange things happening to Calvin as he tries to do his homework was planned to be considerably longer than it ended up being, but he ended up writing himself into a corner, along with finding the arc to just be "weird for weirdness sake" with no clear point to it. As a result, the arc concluded with an abrupt Gainax Ending (with one last comic to bring at least some kind of closure to the arc) and was never mentioned again.
- In as much as there is continuity, one Dilbert comic involved Dogbert raising an army of cloned vegetables. It was supposed to be longer, but Scott Adams found it wasn't as funny as he thought it would be, so he actually stated in comic he was ending the arc by "skipping ahead to the big finish." Another arc, featuring the death of Dilbert, was also resolved quicker than planned when Adams ran out of ideas (he also mentioned doing it to shake things up, but the strip was so early that nobody cared). Another early arc involved Dilbert building a robot that became gradually more intelligent before being dropped without comment a few weeks later; the plotline was revisited more than a decade later with a different robot, who went on to become a regular.
- Doctor Who Magazine comic strip:
- During Steve Parkhouse's period as writer in the early 1980s, the Fifth and Sixth Doctors had repeatedly clashed with the amphibian alien Corrupt Corporate Executive Josiah W. Dogbolter. After Parkhouse left as writer, this was abandoned, with Dogbolter being a Karma Houdini for his many crimes (including being responsible for the murder of the Fifth Doctor's comics-only companion Gus). Many years later, in the #500 issue, the Milestone Celebration strip "The Stockbridge Showdown" finally revived this and gave Dogbolter his comeuppance.
- A lengthy planned character arc for Dark Action Girl turned companion Destrii was dropped when the TV show was revived, and it was decided that the Ninth Doctor comic strips would be tied strictly into the TV continuity. As a result, the Eighth Doctor and Destrii got an And the Adventure Continues ending and the comic switched straight into the Ninth Doctor and Rose.
- Doonesbury decided to celebrate its 20th anniversary year (1990) with a big epic storyline in which all the strip's various plotlines and characters converged together, with practically the entire cast all ending up at Mike's apartment. Creator Garry Trudeau ended up writing himself into a corner with the arc, which had everyone together but didn't give them anything to do. The arc got weirder when Mike's house was mistaken for a crack den and raided by federal agents. Trudeau decided the whole thing had gotten out of hand, and undid the entire arc by revealing that the last several months worth of strips had been All Just a Dream.
- A two-week 1995 FoxTrot storyline had Paige getting the role of Cleopatra in the school's Antony and Cleopatra play (with Morton playing Antony). The story ended before the play started, with Roger noticing Paige's name in the play program. The play itself was never seen.
- Heart of the City story arcs often end suddenly with no further explanation. An example is an arc where Heart's mom agrees to go on a date, which Heart dreads until she learns that the man is a talent agent. After that, the arc ended.
- Luann:
- At one point creator Greg Evans had planned a storyline which revealed the reason Satellite Love Interest Aaron Hill was so uninterested in Luann's (or anyone else's) advances: he simply wasn't interested... in girls. Evans got cold feet, fearing he didn't have enough of a subscriber base to absorb the potential loss of paper slots, like Lynn Johnston did when she pulled a similar storyline. So he altered the story so that Aaron was hiding a relationship with the much older Dianne.
- After Aaron was put on a plane to Hawaii, the strip signaled his reunion with Luann in a storyline where she wins a contest flight to Hawaii. What happens when she reunites with Aaron there? She sees him once with another girl, doesn't even bother to confirm she's his girlfriend, and then doesn't speak to him again after that. Aaron's return was teased again with a strip where he sends Luann a Myspace friend request and a message suggesting he's single now, but nothing came of it after that.
- Stef's interest in getting Ox and Tiffany together stopped as soon as it started, with Tiffany giving the lame excuse of "not being interested in dating right now". This didn't stop her from trying to seduce Kip later on.
- The supposed break-in at Tiffany's mansion, once an important story arc, was forgotten, with any attempts to continue it being ignored in favor of Tiffany being obsessed with trying to seduce Kip.
- In summer 2025 Luann decided she would quit her Burger Fool job at Weenie World to become a camp counselor for the summer. Unfortunately Real Life Writes the Plot got involved as this happened immediately before the flooding that killed dozens of campers in Texas.
So the strip went into a couple weeks of reruns instead; when the new strips resumed Luann was still at Weenie World, saying that the camp had rejected her application.
- Peanuts:
- Lampshaded in a strip in which Snoopy is writing a novel. One part of the plot involves a king living in luxury while his people starved. In tying up the plot threads, Snoopy left him out.
- Frieda's cat Faron only appeared for a few strips before Schulz realized that since Snoopy didn't speak in words, the only way to have him interact with Faron would be to have them think at each other (as Snoopy would later do with his siblings). Also, by his own admission, Schulz looked at his drawings of Faron and realized uncomfortably that he couldn't draw cats very well. When he got rid of the cat, his only regret was naming it after Faron Young, his favorite country singer. In the late 1960s, Schulz would introduce the unseen, (originally) unnamed "The Cat Next Door", and was much more pleased with the results.
- What had been intended as a lengthy – possibly months-long – arc with Linus and Lucy's family moving away came to a very sudden end because fans objected.
- SubvertedTrope in Pearls Before Swine. One story arc involving beer can-shaped aliens coming to Earth and Rat making enemies with them gets abandoned without explanation, and then a second one where Pig and Guard Duck travel to space in a cardboard box spaceship has the same thing happen, with the two stranded in space without air. When Rat asks Stephan Pastis if he ever plans on finishing a storyline, he quickly writes a sloppy conclusion to both: the beer can aliens see Pig's spaceship and attack by throwing oxygen canisters, saving them.
Rat: Tell me they don't pay you for this.
Films — Animation
- BoBoiBoy Movie 2: The start of the film informs of BoBoiBoy's positive track record as a TAPOPS member but also a tendency to save those who hinder their missions. After Retak'ka enters the picture as an intergalactic threat, this issue is never touched on again.
- An early scene in Cat City, a film about a "race war" between the benevolent mice and evil cats, introduces the kitten Cathy, the daughter of the despicable Fritz Teufel's abused assistant Safranek. She seems to be the only cat on friendly terms with mice, something extremely unusual in the film's world. But this revelation, her relationship with her "pet mouse" and her indirect connection to the main villains lead nowhere and she ends up as a superfluous character. Her inclusion was due to Executive Meddling, as the financiers wanted a positive cat character in the film. The creators reluctantly put her in a few scenes but had no use for her otherwise.
- Cinderella and the Secret Prince: It's heavily implied the ball was meant to draw Ella out so the witch could prevent her from fulfilling a prophecy, but this topic is dropped after the first quarter of the film and never brought up again.
- The Haunted World of El Superbeasto: Superbeasto got involved with the plot because he hoped to bang Velvet von Black once he saved her. After a while, he seems to forget about that.
- The Legend of the Titanic:
- At one point, Don Juan tells the mice that the only people they can trust are his Roma friends, and that they should search the ship with them to try and uncover Maltravers' evil plot. The friends are never brought up again after this scene.
- Earlier in the film, Maltravers orders his henchman to follow Don Juan and find out everything that he can about him, out of concern that Juan and Elizabeth have fallen in love (by smiling at each other once before boarding the ship). This doesn't go anywhere.
- Mufasa: The Lion King: The lions needing to hunt and eat something is brought up a few times after Mufasa and Taka leave the Valley of Kings, with Mufasa noting they're starving and later saying they have to eat something to have the strength to descend from the mountain. However, we never see the main lion characters catching and eating anything and they make it to their destination just fine without food.
- The Princess and the Frog: After their meeting with Mama Odie, Louis’ wish to be human isn’t mentioned again.
- Sebastian Star Bear First Mission: When Draco and company steal the Indian performer's bear, he says that the bear will only dance for him. This never comes up again.
- Welcome Back Pinocchio: Early on in the film, a lady visits Geppetto's workshop to convince him to marry her cousin. She appears again later on to remind him about that, and then it's never mentioned again.
- Zootopia 2:
- When Nick and Judy are undercover as a couple, Snootley offhandedly comments on Nick and Judy's interspecies relationship in a questioning but relatively accepting manner. While it seems like this might set up a conflict regarding their developing relationship, it is simply only teased throughout the rest of the movie.
- Later at the gala, Nick appears to get jealous when he sees Judy and Pawbert hitting it off. This doesn't go anywhere either.note
Music
- During the 90s and the 2000s, several influential gothic metal bands tried to shift genre, with mixed responses from fans, and often reverting to their roots due to backlash both in terms of commercial reception and criticism from metal reviewers.
- Paradise Lost gradually started to show influences from darkwave and electronics through their albums, which alienated some old fans... until Host in 1999 surprised everyone. It was a giant leap into new territories, a complete detach from metal towards synth-pop in the vein of Depeche Mode. Fans were not amused. While it is often accepted by metalheads that a band could once release a non-metal work if it is, for example, an entirely acoustic album, particularly if acoustic additions were previously present in their songs, this is not the case for electronics. note The band returned to metal soon afterwards and in interviews they treated that period as if they were not truly in themselves, as if they were trying to disown their experimentations to retain fans... until in 2023 the lead vocalist and the keyboardist created a new band, named Host, which aimed to follow the sound of the eponymous album from over two decades before.
- Theatre of Tragedy did something similar after Musique in 2000, when they shifted towards a mix of electropop and industrial metal, even abandoning their trademark vocals (angelic female voice + male growl) and lyrics (gone from Early Modern English to contemporary slang). While keeping distorted guitars, the change was perceived as even more abrupt than with Paradise Lost, as the latter at least had shown some influences before departing from their sound. The band persisted with Assembly in 2002, even more synth-driven and with catchy pop vocals. However, internal friction led the lead vocalist Liv Kristine to leave the band and found Leaves' Eyes (a symphonic gothic metal band without any trace of the controversial sound developed by TOT), while the band tried to return to their standard gothic metal formula albeit with a more melodic approach and sometimes showing a bit of electronic effects.
- Moonspell, My Dying Bride and Tiamat were less drastic. After their first albums they experimented with several influences from darkwave, synthpop, electrogoth, industrial, psychedelia and alt-rock, parallel to what Paradise Lost was doing before Host. While they surely sounded totally different from their past origins, they never dared to release an album like that, and kept being at least within heavy rock if not metal. From the mid 2000s they returned to their roots, with a strong and brooding guitar-driven gothic metal.
- Moonspell are probably the ones that were closer to do the big jump, at some point really sounding a lot like Depeche Mode, Marilyn Manson, The Cure, but still keeping one foot in two shoes and guitars really distorted. Then they ditched all of that and returned to their original influences from death metal and black metal, which made their style of gothic metal particularly extreme. They lampshaded this dual nature of their career in their 2012 album Alpha Noir/Omega White, with "Alpha Noir" being in their usual style, and "Omega White" being essentially a second disc entirely made of mellow gothic rock pieces, but kept in the background.
- Subverted with Anathema and The Gathering: after abandoning gothic metal they experimented with alternative rock, progressive rock and other genres, without looking backwards despite many metalhead old fans abandoning them (Anathema after some point reintroduced some metal guitars, but without renouncing to the sound they developed meanwhile). They still kept playing old tracks mixed with new songs in concert, showing that both their phases of their career are part of what they are without a shame.
- The Beatles:
- The band had planned to record an theme album about their childhoods with "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" being the first two songs written for this endeavor. "When I'm Sixty-Four" was the next song recorded for the album, though it had been written years earlier, and eventually the concept shifted to a fictitious band putting on a performance, yet with every song being impossible to do live (for them at the time) and thus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was born. While the title song and its "reprise" relate to this theme, none of the other songs do.
- In 1969, the band decided to record some songs together in a studio, and later in an impromptu concert on the Apple rooftop, in what would become the album Get Back, all while filming a documentary about the experience. The Glory Days revival would even be illustrated with an album cover replicating the Please Please Me one. The whole ordeal wound up just raising tensions and ultimately leading to the Beatles' breakup, but not before they decided to make Abbey Road before calling it quits. Then the Get Back sessions were submitted to Phil Spector for an orchestral makeover, and the result was Let It Be. The cover was famously repurposed for the compilation 1966-1970, aka The Blue Album.
- David Bowie's 1995 concept album 1. Outside was supposed to be the first of a series leading up to the millennium. Bowie first planned to release one new album for each succeeding year from 1995 to 1999, then cut it down to a trilogy, then scrapped it altogether. Bowie devised characters for a second installment during production of Earthling, and 1. Outside's producer, Brian Eno, considered starting the project back up again during the 2010s, but in the end, further albums continuing the "non-linear gothic drama hyper cycle" never appeared. According to Bowie, the main obstacle was having to scour through hours of jam sessions to find material that he could stitch together into coherent albums.
- The release of the album "Fangs!" seemed to be something of a new beginning for the experimental rock band Falling Up. It was both a New Sound Album and a Concept Album that was the beginning of a story arc... then the band broke up. The band reunited in 2011, but their album doesn't really continue the story line of Fangs.
- Gorillaz had set up their most ambitious phase surrounding Plastic Beach, intended to be merely the first of a trilogy of albums surrounding the lore of the band, an extensive multimedia project following the virtual band's plights on the titular island. However, halfway through the album's rollout — marked by the extensive, lore-setting music video of "On Melancholy Hill" — the project was abruptly cancelled, seemingly because it was too expensive to ever keep going (the last word on it was a storyboard to a music video for "Rhinestone Eyes"). Following the band's hiatus for several years, the only definite resolution the plot received were heavily-compressed "books" serving as pretext to the band's reunion and new status quo, and it's unlikely that the Plastic Beach saga will ever be finished in its intended glory.
- John Linnell intended his 1999 album "State Songs" to be the first part of a trilogy... which has never been continued, and probably never will be. This album was recorded during They Might Be Giants' 1996-1999 downtime (their only studio album of this period — "Long Tall Weekend" — consisting largely of old, unreleased material), and since then, the group have been much, much busier. The idea of the "State Songs" project was to record fifty songs titled after each of the U.S. States, but he only got to sixteen of them note
- Lupe Fiasco's fourth studio album Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, released in September 2012, intended on being released as a double disc album. However, Lupe's label Atlantic Records refused to do the arrangement, so the album was divided into two separate projects (hence the addition of "Part 1" in the album title). The second part of the album was intended to be released in the Spring of the following year, but on January 17th, 2013, it was announced on his Twitter that Lupe was scrapping the second part altogether.
- Sufjan Stevens was initially advertising with the release of his 2005 album Illinois! — itself a quasi-follow-up to his 2003 album Michigan — that it was the second part of a "50 states project", an ambitious multi-Concept Album project of tackling the history, folklore, and cultural impact of all states of America. No album following this format has been released since (sans maybe Carrie & Lowell, with some elements believed to have been reworked from an Oregon-themed project). Stevens came clean in 2009 that he had no intentions of really doing that much work, and that the claim was just a "promotional gimmick".
Podcast
- In 2020, the crew of Hello From the Magic Tavern arrived at Strong Guy Island to recruit Strong Guy and some of his allies to help defeat the Dark Lord. This obviously had to be put on hold when the Shattering/Fragmenting/Breaksies happened. The Shattering itself took over as the main driving force of the plot, but then it was resolved entirely off-mike by Arnor while the heroes were on Earth in 1989.
- For a while on Mike & Tom Eat Snacks, when Nabisco was having financial troubles, Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanagh took credit for the Nabisco's problems, which they said were from they bad reviews they gave to their snacks. For a couple of episodes afterward Mike and Tom were on the run from Nabisco's goons, rating snacks from different classified locations. Eventually they started doing episodes at their studio again, and they never explained what happened with Nabisco.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street: Human characters Maria and David were hooked up until the mid-1980s. According to Louise Gikow, who wrote for various international co-productions, the reason why the David-Maria romance angle was dropped was due to health problems involving David's actor, Northern Calloway. Calloway had been battling mental illness since the 17th season began in 1985, and by the time the 20th season ended in 1989, he became so ill and ill-looking and his behavior had become so erratic that he had to leave the show, dying of excited delirium complications only a year later in 1990.
Radio
- The Navy Lark: In "Number One's Married Quarters" from Series 13, Commander Murray and Rita move next door to the Poveys, much to Commander Murray's horror. Despite this potential for bad neighbour-based comedy, Series 14 didn't feature this dynamic at all due to the worldwide goodwill mission Story Arc, and by Series 15's "Helen, The New Wren", the Murrays were back to living with Admiral Ffont-Bittocks with no explanation.
Roleplays
- Behind The Veil has several, mostly due to players leaving and never returning. Key mention would be the long-running feud between Kathleen Allan and May Lawrence which ended when the latter's player disappeared and never returned.
- Campus Life:
- The Scourge VS Sonic arc. Though the Anarchy Berly he brought to the world is still around, Scourge has long since disappeared and Sonic is now rampaging around as Dark Super Sonic.
- The original B-Plot to the RP where the characters had to deal with the Slenderman.
- Dino Attack RPG:
- This is the fate of any character's story when their player leaves the RPG. Probably the most infamous example of an Aborted Arc would be Databoard's quest to rescue Stealth, which was left unresolved after Chronicler of Ko-Koro left Dino Attack RPG.
- Players do not even need to leave Dino Attack RPG for their story arcs to be aborted. For example, TakunuvaC01 had some plans for the Dino Aliens that were ultimately aborted with the introduction of Dino Attack RPG's Story Arc formula.
- The alternate ending L.E.G.O. was aborted after only two chapters.
- In Greatest Hit a war with Algeria never materializes, nor does The Moon's Band Toon.
- Hazbin Hotel: Lucifer's Folly:
- Murmur's original plan to kill and overthrow the Morningstar family line and become the new ruler of Hell never goes anywhere past Season 4, with Murmur seemingly completely abandoning this plan in favor of just conquering more territories in Hell for himself. While Murmur still continues to appear and serves as Abaddon's right-hand man, this plot has never even been mentioned again. The reason for this plot being abandoned was because many members of the community (including the creator himself) felt this plot wasn't really going anywhere and seemed fruitless, so it was scrapped.
- The last time Edward St. John was ever seen was when he was gathering a bunch of past villains to all team up and take down Leon St. John and vowed to destroy Leon once and for all. However he completely vanishes after this and his fate is never even touched upon. This is especially glaring, as he was meant to become a major villain.
- Similarly, George's plot to try to kill his former apprentice Evan Smith by trying to (and failing) to gather as many Overlords as he could in hopes of eliminating Evan, however George soon disappears afterwards and is completely forgotten about.
- Around Season 4, Luthor Protz and Protzstadt were given an entire arc were they split from the Hell Nazis and were set to become their own faction where they would takeover and replace the Hell Nazis as the new bigger and badder fascist threat; even going to war against (and winning several times) against the Hell Nazis. However by Season 5, they then just disappeared and it's not even clear what became of them.
- Calc's plotline about finding out where her real father went to after discovering that the person who claimed to be her father was actually a fraud ends up going completely nowhere, with Calc seemingly forgetting to do and for she herself to end up disappearing as well.
- Happens so often in Super Smash Brothers Life Itself due to players leaving most of the time; the missions they made just often get sent to the Sites Archive.
- Given that the basis of Survival of the Fittest is for characters to be killed off, this tends to happen a good deal. Many a character has died before fulfilling every goal their handler wanted to achieve with them. Outside circumstances — such as other characters in the planned arc being unavailable, also contribute to this occurring. For example, Madelaine Shirohara (of the first game) was originally supposed to be killed by Psychopathic Manchild Cillian Crowe, then his handler abruptly disappeared. The arc that replaced this one, though, was arguably one of the best in SOTF history, so it isn't all bad.
- In Tamrielic Adventures, this occurs twice; both times, it's due to a change in DM:
- The first DM's plot, involving two secret organizations at war, was abandoned when the second DM took over; this point was hammered home when the characters' ship, en route from Morrowind to Hammerfell, wrecked on the coast of Skyrim.
- The second DM had planned an arc where the characters travel on the way to the Imperial City to bring the newly-captured fugitive to face justice, and there being conflict within the group as they learn more about his past and that he's actually half innocent. This was dropped when the third DM took over; the fugitive was just brought to the prison in Windhelm (from which he subsequently escaped), and the next arc, involving pirates attacking the city, began.
- Wanya Kingdom VS Awoofy Unity has had a few.
- The wiki was initially created to host a war, but said war was abandoned because the Waddle Unity's numbers were too great. This ended up canceling pretty much all war-related storylines.
- During Forgorian Legacies' run, the R.O.O.N.I. Gang subplot and the Pink Petals, Green Land arc were both left unfinished due to the roleplay dying.
- In We Are All Pokémon Trainers the Warriors sub-arc in Holon lacked a resolution due to the player responsible for managing it losing motivation.
- We Have All Become Pokémon has had its fair share of this too.
- Arguably the biggest example was the Slak Rock arc, a major arc that ended without resolution when the player managing said arc abruptly abandoned it. The arc ran on fumes for a while until the playerbase gave up and moved on to the next one. Some smaller-scale examples of this include:
- The epilogue of the Hoard arc was not meant to end at the point that it did, but did anyway due to much of the playerbase having grown tired of the arc by that point and wanting to move on from Hoard.
- The music competition during the Gleamscape arc ended early due to the player managing it having to take a hiatus from the RP.
- During the aforementioned Slak Rock arc, Marlon the Gallade was tasked with training a feisty Meinfoo named Sho. This plot was abruptly cancelled shortly afterwards when Sho's player decided to call it quits.
- An ongoing plot about Jani the Diglett needing to evolve into a Dugtrio alongside two other Diglett (Lilly and Tilly, the sisters of Milly, the Diglett Jani became through a "Freaky Friday" Flip) lest all three's respective mental states begin to deteriorate ended up being put on indefinite hold due to their player finding writing for Diglett/Dugtrio characters awkward (since Diglett are moles that never leave the ground; considerably limiting their mobility and interaction options) and the fact that Jani has become a Purrloin (which Jani did in an attempt to escape the dilemma) and is expected to remain as such for a while (which is partially due to her player admitting to preferring Jani as a Purrloin), rendering Tilly and Lilly superfluous and needing to be Put on a Bus until their plot comes back into relevance again.
- A sidequest involving the aforementioned Jani, Milo the Umbreon, and a host of native Pokémon exploring an ancient fallout shelter deep within a canyon that was intended to have a significant effect on the setting was quietly ended without resolution after its GM unexpectedly took a hard indefinite hiatus from the RP and the rest of the players involved could not think of a satisfying way to conclude the plot after multiple IRL months of no progress with it.
Tabletop Games
- The pre-revision Magic: The Gathering comics were leading up to the Planeswalker War, but the comic line was cancelled before it could be published. Some of the characters involved, like Freyalise, Taysir and Tevesh Szat have turned up later in modern storylines, but details on what actually went down are extraordinarily vague.
- Shadowrun:
- Many times the game does this on purpose, allowing game masters to run self-written adventures that "fill in the blanks" and tie-into the game's lore.
- The return of the Horrors was a long-term background thing that was repeatedly hinted at. But Topps eventually decided to sell the entire IP of Earthdawn to another company rather than holding onto the game and licensing it out, which necessitated that Catalyst Game Labs stop working on references to the Horrors or anything else related to Earthdawn.
- Tech Infantry was full of aborted arcs, thanks to its multiple-author nature and Creator Breakdown.
- A planned subplot with the Von Shrakenberg family getting involved with a Corrupt Corporate Executive was quietly dropped when Erich got too busy trying to fight a losing war.
- Icarus Hicks' planned Batman Gambit using mind control to fix EVERYTHING wrong with the universe died when his character was killed off due to Creator Breakdown.
- Andrea Treschi's capture by the crew of the EFS Schaumburg was originally supposed to lead to both groups being forced to become anti-Federation rebels and go on the run together. The plan was aborted when the authors involved couldn't agree on a coherent plan for how to go about it. The various Author Avatar characters among the crew quietly drifted off to other assignments and other plot threads.
- The mysterious Mr. Agli as supposed to tempt Erich Von Shrakenberg into rebelling against the Federation with warnings of an even worse plot to topple the Grand Council. The author involved couldn't make the plot work, so it was quietly dropped shortly thereafter in favor of trying to stop another character's planned overthrow of the government through different means. Which led to another Aborted Arc when Andrea Treschi's Batman Gambit involving bringing disgraced politician Samuel Wall back from retirement and exile was brought to an abrupt end when Erich Von Shrakenberg turned down Wall's tempting offer and beat Wall's skull in with his own fireplace poker.
- The entire Tech Infantry: Exodus spin-off project was aborted when the authors involved got too interested in world-building and map-creation and suddenly realized they'd forgotten to come up with a plot or characters to place in this 'verse.
- And many, many more.
- Traveller had the whole "Empress Wave" Meta Plot arc in The New Era 3rd edition. Some sort of psychic wave coming from the galactic core that drove psions mad was just about to reach the Regency...and then Game Designers Workshop went out of business. The next version of Traveller by a different company was set more than a thousand years earlier, and all the versions that have come after have been set in roughly the same time period as the original game, with no sign of a meta-plot, so we may never find out what was supposed to happen next.
- Vampire: The Masquerade:
- Masquerade had innumerable half-finished non-runners, especially when it came to details like the end of the world. Most notable was the pathetic Rasputin plotline, wherein Grigori Rasputin was actually a Tremere who had somehow found a way to essentially become Caine, so that God/Karma could kill him instead, thus averting complete obliteration of the vampire species.
- In truth, many Old World of Darkness splats laid claim to Rasputin, not just the vampires. The one that stuck? He's a wraithly Puppeteer who enjoys bodyhopping various supernaturals.
- Vampire: The Requiem has a lot of potential aborted arcs. The possibility that Anoushka (Vlad Dracula's childe) is The Unholy (superpowered urban legend force of nature) is toyed with again and again, and finally thrown away in the Immortal Sinners supplement. Thankfully, the in-character artifact clanbooks allowed the various freelance writers to wrap up their pet storylines, with the unfortunate side effect of so many of those favorite storylines being given pat Word of God bullshit tie-ups to shut the fans up.
- The "Glass Armonium" MacGuffin shut down many plot hooks.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The game is infamous for its plot never advancing. Almost all major events or story lines that might have an actual impact on the larger universe are almost never brought up or touched upon after the expansion in which they take place.
- The "Eye of Terror" summer event from 2003 was billed as having a huge impact on the 40k universe — if the Imperium and their allies won, the Eye of Terror would shrink, the Imperium could expand to entirely new sectors of space, and an upswing of faith could generate new crusades and a (relative) golden age for mankind. On the other hand, a victory for Chaos would hasten the Imperium's collapse, see increased Chaos incursions, and possibly even lead to the fall of the Cadian Gate and a huge resultant tide of Chaos Marines and daemons into realspace. It had the potential to introduce enormous changes to the setting and there were even rumours that significant characters from the losing side could be killed. However, none of this panned out - once the results were in and announced (a minor victory for Chaos - stated in-game to be Abaddon succeeding in gaining a foothold on Cadia, albeit with his fleet in tatters), Games Workshop did absolutely nothing with it before quietly sweeping the whole thing under the rug with a series of retcons a decade later.
- As of 8th edition in 2017 (said event occurred shortly before the release of 4th edition), the status quo was finally dumped and nearly everything promised back then has actually happened; the Cadian Gate has fallen and Chaos has spread across large parts of realspace, splitting the galaxy in half. Of course, this more than likely brings a couple of decades or so of the new status quo.
- Games Workshop had reportedly planned an arc that would see the Tau raised as the chosen race to defeat Chaos, with the Ultramarines discovering this fact and opting to ally with them, possibly against other elements of the Imperium. The Tau were even flagged as "Battle Brothers" for Space Marines in the 6th Edition rulebook (the highest tier of alliance, indicating deeply trusted allies). However, possibly in reaction to the negative reception this idea received, the idea was quietly shelved and the Tau-Space Marine alliance capability was reduced in future editions.
Theatre
- The American version of Kristina från Duvemåla cut out the significant plot point of the majority of the immigrants being killed in a Sioux attack after Kristina's miscarriage. (Presumably for the sake of political correctness, since the songs are left in their full length but with different lyrics, thus saving no time.) However, the event is still foreshadowed in "Queen of the Prairie"/"Wild Grass" through the fur trader's warnings, leaving it as an unresolved thread to audiences unfamiliar with the original story.
- Rosmersholm, written by Henrik Ibsen in 1886, has an interesting setup. It begins with a rather political premise, setting up the strife of the times, with the main character positioning himself in the middle. Then the play turns around and gets more and more introverted, putting politics firmly in the background, to focus mainly on the inner struggles of the main character. This can be seen from the beginning of the second act.
- The Taming of the Shrew begins with the premise that the play is a play within a play being presented to a drunkard named Christopher Sly, who is being fooled into thinking he is actually a rich and prestigious man as a prank. After the initial set-up, this is never brought up again. Some versions of the story have him appear at the end, planning to go home and deal with his own shrewish wife in a similar way to the story he just heard (though due to his drunkenness he just remembers it as a dream).
Theme Parks
- Sometimes, at Disney Theme Parks, Imagineers will add something to an attraction while it's being built for some purpose, only to eventually go in a different direction, leaving an element in the attraction that leads nowhere. These are also a form of Dummied Out. Some examples:
- The nods to dragons and unicorns in Disney's Animal Kingdom were hinting towards a land that they ended up never building, Beastly Kingdom, focusing on fantasy creatures. The only things left of that (so far) are a dragon-shaped rock formation near Pandora, a bridge that looks like the entrance to a castle, and the big dragon who appears on the park's logo to the confusion of many a guest. The concept of including mythological creatures in the park was eventually picked up by Expedition Everest's Yeti, but has yet to be paid off in full.
- The animatronic raven in The Haunted Mansion was originally going to be the "narrator" of the ride, which ended up being much better implemented with the "Ghost Host" being piped in through the Doom Buggy's individual speakers. The ravens, however, are still situated throughout the ride, flapping and moving their beaks as if they were saying something, possibly because the Imagineers saw it looked like a creepy effect.
- In the super-secret-invite-only Club 33 restaurant, several disused animatronic animal heads hang from the wall. Walt had planned to be able to speak through them to his guests. The idea was abandoned because it was deemed too silly for a high-class restaurant, and because of privacy concerns. The idea sort of came to fruition at the shut-down Adventurers' Club in Disney World's Pleasure Island.
- The original vision for Epcot was an aborted arc. Disney's plan was for an actual city (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) where people lived and worked. The Monorails and the People Movers were to be part of the infrastructure.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- The final chapter of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney makes a big deal about the introduction of jury trials, with the Big Bad ultimately being convicted via jury. Come the sequel, the courtroom is still running according to the rules set up in the old games and the matter of jurists is scarcely mentioned.
- The anime prologue of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice features Maya being attacked by a rebel in Khura'in in the middle of a phone conversation with Phoenix. Her mobile phone is broken, and Phoenix thinks something bad has happened to her. Not actually, as Nahyuta Sahdmadhi happened to drop by and immobilize the rebel before he could do any harm to her, but Phoenix decides to go immediately to Khura'in to check up on Maya. In the game proper, however, this assault is never talked about, as it seemingly never happens in-game. Instead, Phoenix travels to Khura'in because Maya was finishing her training to be the Master of Kurain Village. Oh, and the rebels are the good guys anyway, making it doubtful that the assault shown actually took place, leaving the anime prologue as either a possible Bait-and-Switch or a possible indicator of changes to the story mid-development.
Web Animation
- Battle for Dream Island: Due to the inherent nature of the show, it's common for some story beats and character arcs to fall to the wayside as the competition progresses:
- Battle for BFDI (Season 4)
- Team iance's original leader gets eliminated very early into the game due to their Alpha Bitch tendencies. Match, another teammate, attempts to step into the vacant position by... simply emulating the controlling, abusive tactics that led to the elimination of her predecessor. When she ends up risking her friendship with Bubble due to intense verbal abuse, her attempt to apologize is refuted and she finds herself on the receiving end of a "Reason You Suck" Speech. Once Match has a Heel Realization and starts gearing up for a redemption arc... she is eliminated, with the conflict unacknowledged by her next appearance.
- Lollipop is set up as Barf Bag's Arch-Nemesis, with Barf Bag's down-to-earth personality and desire to prove herself contrasting with Lollipop's Know-Nothing Know-It-All "intellectual" nature. This "rivalry" is executed by Lollipop consistently blaming every one of Barf Bag's faults, perceived or real, on "barf molecules" infecting her brain. This lasts all the way up to episode 8, with their final scene ending with a dramatic sting and Fade to Black, implying more to come... but they never interact ever again, with Lollipop mellowing into a mere Deadpan Snarker with a heart of gold, her prior characterization forgotten.
- When Two arrives at the middle of the season, the entire show splits and nearly all ongoing arcs are voided, like Book's arc to be a better leader for Taco and Team Ice Cube as a family unit. The only arc carried over to Battle for BFB is Leafy and Firey's arc, which continues on from Season 1.
- Eggy and Teardrop strike an Odd Friendship in the stinger of the fourth episode of the fourth season (which is hosted by Four). This doesn't amount to much in the following episodes, but in the second episode of Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two, the fifth season, Eggy assists Teardrop in the middle of a challenge despite being on opposing teams, with her doing everything possible to keep it a secret, including intimidating a witness and deflecting her team's questions on her whereabouts. Notably, this action causes Eggy's team to lose the challenge, meaning it's indirect sabotage. What is the result of this? Nothing. Her teammates never find out anything, Eggy is eliminated for unrelated reasons shortly after, and Eggy and Teardrop don't interact ever again outside of a minor flashback.
- Battle for BFDI (Season 4)
- In the first episode of Camp Camp, Max is trying to escape Camp Campbell and drags his new friends Nikki and Neil with him. After his plan inevitably fails, he swears to the councilor David that he and his new friends will escape, setting up the main plot of the series... which is dropped after being brought up again in only one episode. Justified, as in said episode, Max realizes that his problem isn't that he hates the camp... it's that he hates everyone.
- hololive:
- Hololive English's "Council" members initially planned to have a Council Civil War Arc (also called the Jokeronii Arc), where Kronii and Fauna would feud over workers' rights and Mumei, has been aborted. This is both due to losing momentum over time as the girls reduced their Minecraft consumption and Kronii (the most avid player of the bunch) went on a brief break, and because Mumei was evidently so happy with Kronii that Fauna didn't want to take that away from her.
- Later, in ENigmatic Recollection, multiple arcs would be built up over the course of Chapter 3, including Shiori’s church, Nerissa Juliet’s steady corruption of Lady Bloodflame, and the trial of Shakira Shakira’s murder. However, the main plot kicking in forced all of these plotlines to be quickly and hastily cut off, much to the disappointment and dissatisfaction of fans, as well as some of the talents themselves.
- Hololive English's "Council" members initially planned to have a Council Civil War Arc
- Explored in-universe in Murder Drones. Pilot ends with Uzi deciding to invade Earth and Kill All Humans as revenge for their siccing of the Disassembly Drones on Copper 9, suggesting she's going to become a Villain Protagonist. She initially intends on making due on this plan in the next episode, even excusing that if the Disassembly Drones' pod doesn't have functioning communications then the humans aren't interested in talking anyway. But, with N pointing out that if comms weren't working then someone must have been giving orders to J, Uzi slows down enough to actually think about her plan, and realize what's going on here of course isn't as simple and black-and-white as she has initially assumed, and ends up dropping her "Kill All Humans" plan in favor of the more focused, and much more reasonable "Kill J's Boss" plan instead. Albeit begrudgingly.
- SolarBalls:
- In "Mission to Titan - Part 2", The Moon has his Dark Side take over and the former says he should do this more. This hasn't been brought up again, since The Dark Side of The Moon disappeared from the show after the episode where The Moon almost crashed into the Earth.
- At the end of "How The Earth And Moon Formed", Astrodude says he'll tell the origins of how life evolved on Earth another day. As of now, this has seemingly been forgotten about.
Web Video
- Aitor Molina Vs. Pandemia said something about a clone in AMvs Seahorse Seashell Party and it was never brought back.
- Subverted in Hateful Comparisons: Vete A La Versh vs. Telegordo with "The Mandarin" Bator Medina.
- In Arby 'n' the Chief, Jon Graham started an arc in which both Todd and Travis mysteriously vanish. While Master Chief is initially blamed, he claims he's innocent. Shortly after this, the Halo map, "Cold Storage" is mysteriously deleted from their Xbox, deepening the mystery. Cortana also later vanishes. While initially the mystery was a focus, it was quickly dropped, and the series bergen to focus more on the Arbiter and Chief. It wasn't until the episode, "King", where the fate of Todd, Travis, and Cortana was finally revealed, when they are seen playing a match of Halo on an alien spaceship, having been abducted by a gay alien who intends to molest them and eat them (though he simply fires Cortana into the sun). Their fate is largely revealed by a paragraph explaining what becomes of them, followed by the word, "Happy?" Jon had expressed some Creator's Apathy towards the characters of Todd and Travis, seeing them as fairly hollow characters and didn't care to give them much closure, and while he felt the same with Cortana for a while, Cortana would actually return to the series later on, though her experiences with Todd and Travis were never even mentioned.
- On Atop the Fourth Wall Linkara reviewed the first issue of Malibu's Street Fighter comic. He mentioned that he'd review the other two issues at a later date. Unlike other comics he reviews however, the comics were not reviewed again on the show. As mentioned in his IDW My Little Pony comic review, some fans expressed disappointment in the review due to Linkara not being intimately familiar with the source material.
- An early scene in The Awkward Compilation has Lester remarking that Ernie's name rings a bell, which Kevin brushes off. This was originally supposed to lead to a confrontation between Lester and Ernie, complete with backstory, but had to be scrapped when Ernie's actor bailed on the project; Jermaine was brought in as a substitute jerkass for Lester to butt heads with and overcome.
- The Ben Heck Show has quite a number of multi-part episodes that were aborted throughout the show's run (usually when Ben realizes that the project is actually undoable or infeasible). For example, episodes centering around the designing of the America's Most Haunted machine prototype, pretty much only ran until the first half of the design stage of the machinenote , and the "GameBrain" modular console project has became this as of late 2015. The tendency of this happening was lampshaded in the 2015 Halloween episode, where the "Ghost of Unfinished Projects" appears and haunts the workshop in the prologue.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: The Garlic Jr. Arc has its own introduction as previous arcs had. However, at the end of the first episode Garlic Jr. and his henchmen run into Mr. Popo who promptly kills them off-camera. The next episode starts the Android Saga. This is, of course, Played for Laughs.
- Hints were made throughout the series as to an adaption of Bojack Unbound. However, due to burnout, threats of legal trouble down the road, and being unable to find anything good to do with the movie, Team Four Star cancelled their plans.
- Economy Watch: The homeless/lawsuit arc in Season 2, which was meant to conclude with a big trial episode for the season finale, but the idea was scrapped and replaced with a traditional Christmas special, taking place after David won the trial. The creator has jokingly said that the reason the trial episode was scrapped was because recording trials is illegal.
- The Game Grumps:
- They had planned a playthrough of Conker's Bad Fur Day, but because the game starts very slowly and there wasn't much discussion between the two during the playthrough, this idea was shelved. According to Egoraptor at a panel, it was also because Jon - who has previously included the game in several 'Best Of' lists - was slowly "realizing it wasn't all that great." Ego described the experience as "depressing", and also claimed Conker was the worst game they ever played for the show.
- Jon absolutely hated Demon's Crest and they actually got into a fight over it. Whether or not they air that episode remains to be seen. Jon decided that they'd give it another try, and have started playing it on the show. He addressed their previous playthrough, saying that when they played it the first time he didn't much care for it.
- Several games they've played have either gone unfinished or have gone months without updates, despite their last episodes ending normally in the middle of the action. See the "on hold" and "unfinished" lists on their trope page. The worst example of this is their playthrough of Sonic 06. The series is over 100 episodes and 20 hours long, and right before they finished Silver's Story and moved on to the final chapter, Jon decided to leave Game Grumps.
- They had planned a playthrough of Conker's Bad Fur Day, but because the game starts very slowly and there wasn't much discussion between the two during the playthrough, this idea was shelved. According to Egoraptor at a panel
- The Hobo Bros seem to have discontinued their series on Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location despite only being on the third level. It's unknown why they stopped (although it might simply be because they aren't horror fans), or whether or not they plan to get back to it eventually.
- The Irate Gamer:
- He started an arc involving robots and said the next episode will be a finale. However, the next episode was about He-Man, with no mention of the robots. It would eventually pick up the next episode, but considering his notorious schedule slips...
- The end of the Aladdin episode had the Genie take refuge in IG's Game Genie. Three years later, the Genie would return but now played by Chris himself and the whole revenge plot implication was never mentioned.
- The entire series is this after 2016 when Chris cancelled the show. He would relaunch it two years later under a different name and (slightly) different format but anything related to IG is now done.
- JesuOtaku had a very bad habit of doing this in his retrospectives. Starting off when doing one for Trigun only to stop when the story started to get into the Gun-Ho-Guns. Then he proclaimed he'll do a month focusing on Digimon, he made it past Adventure and 02. But come Tamers he stopped in the final leg of it during the focus on the other characters and never came back to it. He explained later that he didn't realize how large a task it would be to go in-depth in shows like these and there was no way he could do an entire month focusing on all of it (even though he proclaimed he was only going up to Savers). Like MarzGurl, he has since left Channel Awesome and given up reviewing entirely to focus on other projects.
- Let's Play Pokémon White (MageKnight404):
- Upon entering the Lostlorn Forest, the narration remarks that there is definitely not a Cave Behind the Falls to check on later. Due to requiring lategame HMs, it gets forgotten.
- Hilda side-tracks before the Victory Road to check on the bad weather, which triggers a Thundurus side-quest which Ray additionally notes as planning to go back to. Hilda quickly decides that Team Plasma takes priority and returns to Route 10, never to come back.
- In a panel discussion, the creators of Marble Hornets revealed that the skull masked figure seen in Entry 26 was meant to be Jay. They had even considered going back to this as late as Season 3. The character did later appear in the comic book series, where it was revealed that it is the amalgamation of the souls of the Operator's victims.
- The Music Video Show had the host being friends with a Pinkie Pie plushie and a crush on a Fluttershy plushie. It is revealed that Fluttershy is imaginary while Pinkie Pie was taken by the Devil in the last two episodes. When season three came two years later, that plot thread didn't resurface and outside of a couple of references, it didn't seem it was going to be resolved. This trope was eventually subverted near the end of season four when the host of the second season came back with the MLP plushies after chewing out the host of the third season for knocking on his tenure of the season.
- The Mysterious Mr. Enter:
- Mr. Enter was planning on reviewing every episode of My Little Pony Generation 3, as part of his Animated Atrocity series. But due to each episode/special having more or less the same problems, he was struggling to come up with things to say by the time he got to Positively Pink and soon stopped, after his review of Two For The Sky. Though he did later review both of the New Born Cuties shorts, the last MLP content between G3 and much more well received fourth generation of the franchise.
- He also had plans for a retrospective series on the history of animation starting with pre-1910 animations, that would have continued to cover animation history decade by decade. But only the first video was ever made. Though the series did get a continuation of sorts with his video on The Works of Winsor McCay, with Mr. Enter saying that he may make more videos like this in the future. Though as of this writing nothing more has come of it.
- Retsupurae has had a couple of these:
- In December of 2012 they started a Wrongpurae of King's Quest 7, but abandoned it later that same month. This has been lampshaded several times, such as the description for the last Noir video (which also seemed aborted before they finished it over a stream) saying "Now you can't say we never finish what we start! No I've never heard of King's Quest VII."
- Part 1 of their Wrongpurae for Amazon: Guardians of Eden was uploaded in March of 2014. Part 2 was never uploaded. According to slowbeef at the RTX 2016 panel (Around 53:30), the longplayer ended up doing things out of order and wasted a lot of time. slowbeef has considered playing through the game himself, but he never got around to doing it.
- A Wrongpurae of Ripper in a crossover with Lowtax got up to 7 episodes before slowbeef had to cancel it and restart it with Diabetus.
- Sandstriker originally had plans in his Unturned Let's Play to have a large scale war, though ultimately this was ended by by no dedicated server and lack of players.
- The Sharkasm Crew's Paranormal Activity series of tournaments was meant to last 14 entries in accordance to one of the Crew's Arc Numbers. However, things such as university pushed them to finish it at 10.
- Several games that Skawo starts, simply never get finished, although most unfinished games have a newer LP taking their place, and the new one does end up getting finished. However, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam will likely not be getting this treatment, since there are no plans for either, and Skawo has explicitly said that recording Dream Team is annoying.
- SMPLive:
- Schlatt & Co.'s coffee shop never comes up after it's first built, besides to get robbed by Poke on the same day.
- Cooper's attempt to create an illegal drug ring also only gets brought up once and never elaborated on.
- Due to undisclosed circumstances, Some Jerk with a Camera's review of The Little Mermaid (1989) Ride, promised after the Star Tours II video, was put on hold in favor of an EPCOT Retrospective. To bridge the two, Jerk starts out his retrospective about to talk about The Little Mermaid Ride, but has an encounter with Chris Hansen that forces him to go on the run and end up in Florida.
- Steam Train gave up on every single one of their various Five Nights at Freddy's mostly because they were having too much trouble getting through the later nights, and mentioned during their play of the sequel that even after numerous off-screen tries they simply couldn't get past. Of course, it probably also has to do with the group being legitimately terrified by the games as well.
- Most of the fights in DioYouMeme's "leaked" episodes of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that aren't skipped entirely, particulary in Golden Wind, are anticlimactically ended by either one move or even trash talk by one of the protagonists.
Melone: You can't defeat my stand, Babyface
Bruno: More like Gaybyface
Melone: You have defeated me [dies]
Web Original
- BIONICLE web-serial examples:
- The arc: Four of the Barraki reuniting and leading a humongous army against the city of Metru Nui. What became of it: They just turned back, kinda. Reason: Writer's Schedule Slip.
- The arc: The Shadowed One finding a cache of long-lost viruses, killing Ancient (his crime partner and a double agent for the good guys in secret), with the intention of using the viruses to take over the universe. What became of it: Nothing, just the needless killing-off of a potentially interesting character (and plot). Reason: Schedule Slip.
- The Onion ran an article about the Mysterious Congressman running for president. Some time later, this was followed up with the Mysterious Congressman challenging the other candidates to a debate at dawn. He was never mentioned again. Since both articles mentioned him carving things into Sam Brownback's backside, it seems that he was intended to be used more.