Aborted Arc: Difference between revisions

** When season 3 degenerated into a [[Random Events Plot]] this happened so much. Sylar is a killer because his Intuitive Aptitude gives him a hunger. {{spoiler|So, when Peter goes to the future and obtains the Intuitive Aptitude, he's pretty fucked because he now has the hunger to open up people's skulls, despite the fact he absorbs powers by proximity. Next episode, just Peter is starting to unleash his inner [[Big Bad]], Arthur takes away all his powers, including Intuitive Aptitude.}} Speaking of the hunger, Sylar was trying to override it {{spoiler|until Noah tells him Angela and Arthur were lying to him, and then he just drops all pretense of being good and instantly becomes evil again.}} There's also the ''entire'' arc about the twelve villains that were supposed to be the worst villains ever, but all the characters stopped caring after Arthur came back to life. Then the Eclipse mini-arc, which was dropped almost as quickly as it was picked up. Adam was dug up, because Angela said he was the key to everything; {{spoiler|turns out that was a lie as well, since nobody even bothered looking for him after Arthur killed him.}} Knox said that all he thought about during his time in level five was revenge on Noah, the man that put him there -- also dropped after his first appearance.

** There's also the issue of Peter's season 2 girlfriend Caitlin, who got lost in an alternate future that no longer exists. They kind of completely forgot about her after that, and Peter doesn't seem too concerned with getting her back. (In an interview, one of the writers jokingly said that no, Peter didn't really care, then backpedaled and said that she was originally meant to be rescued in the second half of season 2. "But sadly that will never happen...")

** Also, when it was decided that the show would continue following the central characters of season 1 (and not a new group each year, as Tim Kring had planned) numerous possible future arcs were hinted, but ultimately never came to be. Many of them can be seen in Isaac's paintings, such as one of Hiro facing down a ''T. rex'' (obviously, the show never had the budget to do that one). That one actually was wrapped up; right after stealing the sword, Hiro runs into a ''T. rex'' display in a museum.

* ''[[Lost]]''

** At the Season 4 ending, there is an implication that Debra is about to find out Brian Moser had a brother while at the same time suspecting that Dexter is hiding something. Come Season 5, that plot thread is weakly relegated to Quinn.

* In ''[[Dawson's Creek]]'', infamously annoying Eve Whitman was introduced in season 3 as a new [[Love Interest]] for Dawson who later finds out {{spoiler|she's Jennifer's half-sister}}. Dawson tells {{spoiler|Jenn's mother}} about his discovery and it's never heard of again. Of course, Eve disappears by the end of the season. [[Lampshaded]] in one of the series' final episodes, when a character who wasn't around for season three asks about her:

'''Jack:''' Long story. Ambiguous ending. }}

* ''[[Eureka]]''

* The first series of ''[[Primeval]]'' ends with Nick Cutter going through an anomaly into the Permian era, and coming back out to find that his actions have somehow altered the timeline so that his love interest Claudia Brown has become a different person named Jenny Lewis, as well as a few other changes. The second series makes many references to this mystery ([[In Spite of a Nail|as well as wondering why relatively little has changed]]) but never explains it. In Series 3, the still unexplained arc is apparently abandoned as {{spoiler|Cutter is killed off and Jenny leaves the show}}: apart from a few brief references, it has not been touched upon since.

* In season 3 of ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'', Liz Lemon decides to adopt a child after a pregnancy scare at the end of last season. This plan becomes nonexistent after being an integral part of a handful of season 3 episodes, though it was [[Lampshaded]] in the season 5 episode "Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning".

'''Liz:''' ''(uninterested)'' Yeah. }}

* Happened often on ''[[24|Twenty Four]]'':

* The love letter arc from ''[[Original Life]]''. Maybe. It has the tendency to pop up whenever people least expect it and then get dropped again right away.

* [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003558 This conversation] from ''[[Homestuck]]'' explains the abortion of ''[[Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff]]'''s nacho party arc.

* Duane from ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'', in the era when the authors still hoped to make it a print comic, uses the phrase "that's just gay," and Aggie, while she doesn't comment, is startled at his homophobia. Over the coming years, the relationship between the eponymous pair becomes a [[Slap Slap Kiss]] lesbian romance, and the [[Coming Out Story]] of Sara and, to a lesser degree, Stan, becomes a major subplot... and T (Gisèle having left) would rather write it off, despite his earlier assurance that it would be a plot point.

** The filler story "Min-Jung", which took place in South Korea and featured ''none'' of the regular cast, was initially explained to have great impact on the latter stages of the comic. When years passed and "Min-Jung" never got a reference again, T eventually admitted he hadn't found a place for it. The rather hostile reaction to the arc probably aided this. In the strip's epilog, Yun-Sung, the main character, finally puts in a small appearance {{spoiler|as Duane's girlfriend at a 5-year high school reunion.}} She was really just used as an exposition device for the a few dangling plot threads related to {{spoiler|Duane and Charlotte.}}