Aborted Arc: Difference between revisions

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.

 

 

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]].

 

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

**** There are hints that the Meteonite arc will be recycled (if not give it once was) in ''Best Wishes 2'', which will feature Team Rocket and Giovanni once again. The GS Ball - or at least, the plot involving Celebi travelling with Ash - is to be reimagined with Meloetta travelling with Ash and Co. (which certainly explains her reputed presence in the Pikachu Short for Movie 15). Talk about [[Arc Welding]]...

* The ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima (Manga)|Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' manga was going to have a brief sub-arc during Mahorafest featuring Zazie and the Nightmare Circus event, but it was cut because Mahorafest was getting really long as it was (at the time, roughly ''half the manga''). It's implied that Negi ''did'' go to the circus, but we never actually get to see it, thus making the series' most enigmatic character even more enigmatic.

* The penultimate chapter of ''[[School Rumble (Manga)|School Rumble]]'' throws both major shipping factions a bone by having Harima {{spoiler|suddenly get (pretend) engaged to}} Eri {{spoiler|but move in with}} Yakumo. The final chapter mentions ''none'' of this, instead going with a time skip and an infamous "pie end" that resets what little development Harima had managed to obtain.

* A famous example: Dagomon and the Dark Ocean from the second season of ''[[Digimon Adventure 02 (Anime)|Digimon Adventure 02]]''.

* In as much as there is continuity, one ''[[Dilbert (Comic Strip)|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.

* A two-week 1995 ''[[FoxTrot (Comic Strip)|FoxTrot]]'' storyline had Paige getting the role of Cleopatra in the school's Antony and Cleopatra play, (with Morton playing Antony, of course). The story ended before the play started, with Roger noticing Paige's name in the play program. After that strip, the story suddenly ended, with no actual strips of the play being performed, and the story was never mentioned again.

* ''[[Doonesbury (Comic Strip)|Doonesbury]]'' decided to celebrate its 20th anniversary year (1990) with a big epic storyline in which all the strips' various [[Plot|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]].

* ''[[Heart of the City (Comic Strip)|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.

* ''[[The X-Files (TV)|The X-Files]] -- I Want To Believe'' features a controversial paedophilic priest with "psychic" powers around which [[Never Trust a Trailer|most of the publicity hinged]]. However, about halfway through the film goes off at a tangent about a totally different character, the only reference to Father Joe being {{spoiler|his death announcement at the end.}}

* Julianne Moore notably has prominent billing in the film of ''[[The Fugitive (Film)|The Fugitive]]'', [[Billing Displacement|despite her lack of screentime]]. This is because the original plan was to have her be a romantic interest for [[Harrison Ford]]'s character after his wife's death, but the film ended up having a faster-than-expected pace, and such a relationship made his character seem callous.

* ''[[Halloween (Film)|Halloween]] 4: The Return of Michael Myers'' has Michael's young niece Jamie Lloyd seemingly inherit whatever evil drove him to kill, as at the end of the film she stabs her stepmother with a pair of scissors in a manner almost identical to how Michael killed his sister Judith in the original film. The prospect of Jamie replacing Michael as the main villain of the series was abandoned by producer Moustapha Akkad, much to the disappointment of [[Danielle Harris]] (Jamie) and Donald Pleasence (Doctor Loomis). In the fifth film Jamie is back to normal and is [[Retcon|retconned]] into merely wounding her stepmother in the previous film, instead of killing her.

* The ''[[Hellboy (Film)|Hellboy]]'' film builds up Sammael as a basically undefeatable enemy due to his [[My Death Is Just the Beginning|ability to duplicate himself every time he is killed]]. If you ''don't'' kill him then he lays eggs all over the place, which hatch into even ''more'' clones. By the end of the movie there are at least dozens of Sammael-clones and more hatching -- so, how do they deal with him? Well, a whole raft of other plot points had come up, including the [[Big Bad]] and his chum, so they pretty much just set all the ones they could find on fire and called it a day. Note that we already know from earlier in the film that [[Kill It With Fire]] doesn't stop him duplicating, and they only bother looking for clones in one room of a very large underground complex halfway around the world from his last hangout. Once they leave the room, Sammael is never so much as mentioned for the remainder of the film. {{spoiler|It does however appear in [[The Stinger]], so it wasn't totally forgotten.}}

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Wild Cards]]'' had some plots abandoned, presumably because some creators left, probably taking their copyrighted characters with them. Tachyon's infection with the Typhoid version of the virus is treated as something that can be cured by another character who disappears from the series. Tachyon is also jumped into a different woman than his girlfriend, a Chris Claremont creation.

* The ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]'' once encountered a new type of Controller called the Garatron, which was incredibly hard to defeat given that it could run ridiculously fast. After finally managing to defeat one after an entire book they comment there's a good chance they'll be fighting more of them soon. They never do.

* A major hazard of the multi-author format of the ''[[New Jedi Order]]'' series. Perhaps most notable were the arcs dealing with the Insiders, a conspiracy set up by the heroes that was to keep [[La Résistance]] going even if the Yuuzhan Vong destroyed the New Republic, and Tahiri's possible destiny as a half-human half-Yuuzhan Vong [[Dark Messiah]], but smaller arcs were dropped as well.

* ''[[Jurassic Park]]'' ends with the revelation that some dinosaurs have escaped to the Costa Rican mainland. Once Site B is introduced, no mention is made of them. This is briefly discussed in the second book, where on character mentions that they tried to look for them and found nothing, but the jungles of Costa Rica are dense enough that they could easily remain hidden there.

* In the [[Dale Brown]] novel ''Wings of Fire'', one plotline involves Sky Masters, Inc. being the victim of a takeover, with the heads of the purchasing company having a [[Child Prodigy]] daughter that really impresses Jon. All this is seemingly forgotten by the next book.

* The [[Star Trek Voyager Relaunch]] novels switched authors after book four, and there's at least one major Aborted Arc. By the end of the ''Spirit Walk'' books, arch-foe the rogue changeling had taken control of the government on the planet Kerovi. No-one knew he was there, and he was clearly up to something dangerous. It seemed as though the arc was being set up to be a big one, but it was swiftly dropped in ''Full Circle'', the first novel from the second author. He was discovered, and arrested by the Kerovi authorities. In fact, the changeling then dies off screen. We don't even visit Kerovi in ''Full Circle''.

** Possibly the most jarring example of this trope was in the "Andrea" arc. Station owner Jimmy James hires an "efficiency expert" named Andrea, who proceeds to fire Matthew, demote Dave from News Director to reporter and fill the vacant Director's office by promoting Lisa. It was also not-so-subtly implied that she was a [[Psycho Lesbian|lesbian with a fairly violent criminal history]] and a crush on Lisa. After four episodes, Andrea disappeared without so much as an off-camera farewell, Matthew was un-fired by Mr. James and given back his old job, [[Status Quo Is God|all other changes made by Andrea were undone]] (except for Dave and Lisa's job-swap, which took a few more episodes to resolve) and not a single explanation was ever given.

* ''[[Nip Tuck]]'' frequently abandoned whole subplots or characters, sometimes bringing them back many episodes (or even seasons) later in order to hastily close the loose ends.

** Though it's later implied that the Nebari aren't really interested in anyone who doesn't get in the way of their forced utopia and the ones we see are just out tiding up loose ends.

** It wasn't a "cargo ship" that took out the Command Carrier, it was according to them one of their "standard host vessels." Presumably since the Nebari place great emphasis on "peace" this is just an unusual euphemism for a warship.

** Quinn and Puck's entire relationship (including him confessing his love for her) was completely dropped once they gave their daughter, Beth, up for adoption. The relationship (or, really, Beth in general) would not be brought up again until Season 3, where the show treated their romance as a one-off fling.

* 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.

{{quote| '''Kenneth:''' I couldn't put the memo in your mailbox because it's full of unread adoption materials.<br />

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

** The Vashj'ir storyline, and the war between the naga and Neptulon's forces. Toward the end of the storyline, Neptulon is forced to retreat to the Throne of the Tides, and at the end of the Ozumat encounter, he is abducted by Ozumat again after players reduce Ozumat to around 10% HP. There was going to be a 5-man dungeon in the Abyssal Maw, in which players would go inside the third ancient of Vashj'ir, and among other enemies, fight the Battlemaiden they had been controlling in the past visions quests. Blizzard scrapped the Abyssal Maw zones, deciding that Throne of the Tides was the conclusion to the storyline.

* No less than two separate examples of this in ''[[Breath of Fire IV]]'':

** Game designers were intending to kill Yuna off in the original script. In fact (according to [[Word of God]]) they had not one but ''two'' proposed methods: Mauling By Fou-Lu's Foo Dogs, or General Rhun killing him -- neither of these got implemented, though, because the game ended up on a very tight schedule due to (at the time) a very real fear of [[Author Existence Failure|Game Publisher Existence Failure]] and they didn't have time to code that part of the script. Yuna's death ended up just not happening.

** The ''manga'' adaptation of ''IV'' gave some satisfaction on one end, and Much Cursing Ensued on the other. The manga adaptation of the scene between Fou-lu and Soniel {{spoiler|features Fou-lu literally backstabbed and run completely through--with Fou-lu manifesting an energy sword and decapitating him whilst ''still having the Dragonslayer sticking through him''; Fou-lu then shoves this out by hand. Truly a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome (Sugar Wiki)|Crowning Moment of Awesome]].}} Yuna, on the other hand, survives -- and this is especially maddening, seeing as other material in the artbook that didn't get the chance to be included in the game ''was'' included in the manga. This also pretty makes Yuna a complete [[Karma Houdini]].

* The [[All There in the Manual|bundled documentation]] of ''[[Escape Velocity]] Nova'' mentioned TCTLIDS, and its use to create a [[Fantastic Drug]] called FATE. The game's FAQ reveals that TCTLIDS was supposed to stand for "The Creature That Lives In Deep Space" before being removed from the Nova universe during its development.

* Capcom left the original ''[[Dino Crisis]]'' story hanging, in favor of [[Recycled in Space|Dinosaurs In SPACE In the Future]] for the third (and final) installment.

** The comic was going to have [[Opposite Sex Clone|Ellen]] become an alcoholic, but Dan felt that would be too dark. Considering the [[Cerebus Syndrome]] of recent arcs, this seems kind of hypocritical. The way Dan gets out of this is beautiful in its [[Lampshade Hanging]]. A [[Foreshadowing]] sequence has [[Opposite Sex Clone|Ellen]] out all night, Fairy-Doll-Nanase crying, and a six-pack of beer missing from the Dunkels' fridge. One [[How We Got Here]] sequence later, all this has been resolved without the beer even being opened, and Eliot puts it back behind the [[Red Herring]] in the fridge.

** Sensei Greg, [[Evil Counterpart|Lord Tedd]], and several other characters have disappeared or show up almost never. Sensei Greg has now returned, but whether or not [[Evil Counterpart|Lord Tedd's]] arc will actually be concluded is still up for grabs. [[Word of God|Dan]] has admitted that he introduced the [[Evil Counterpart|Lord Tedd]] thing a LOT sooner than he really should have, but he still intends to get back to it and wrap it up eventually. Just don't hold your breath on it.

* ''[[Megatokyo]]''

** As of this writing, the webcomic has abandoned the "conscience" arc, supposedly because Fred Gallagher took offense at some fans calling them "insects" (particularly because the arc's protagonist is based off his own wife). Seraphim, Asmodeus, and Boo only have the occasional appearance nowadays, while Seraphim's sister has more or less disappeared entirely. The last two chapters also did not have a CEA "check-in" at the end, as had been the norm; however, a new aspect was introduced in chapter 8 ("big mode"), so there's hope yet.

** And many, many more.

* An early scene in ''[[Awkward]]'' 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.

* [[MSF High Forum (Roleplay)|MSF High Forum]]: Any time a GM quits, or a character with significant plot lines leaves.

* The plotline about [[Lovable Traitor|Willie's]] other allegiances was dropped midway through in the [[Anti Cliche and Mary Sue Elimination Society]]. Now subverted, as it's being reposted, albeit very slowly.

* In an early ''[[Gargoyles (Animation)|Gargoyles]]'' episode, Demona is left thinking that Elisa is dead, which Goliath says is probably for the best for now. Nothing really came of it before she saw Elisa alive again in the season one finale, probably because the writers realized how hard it would be to keep Elisa's existence a secret from Demona while she was still living her normal life.

* ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' had a storyline about Boris counterfeiting cereal box tops to procure all the prizes from cereal promotions and ruin the world economy. This did not sit well with General Mills, the show's sponsor (and owner, who likely thought it was inappropriate case of [[Biting the Hand Humor]]), and "The Great Box Top Caper" was stopped after a few episodes.

* Two cases in ''[[Max Steel]]''; a flashback shows that Jefferson Smith's predecessor as CEO of N-Tek (and, by extension, the man in charge of the secret espionage division) was a man named Marco Nathanson, who bore an uncanny resemblance to {{spoiler|season one [[Big Bad]] John Dread.}} According to the original producer, this was actually meant as a [[Red Herring]], though later said by others to be exactly what it looked like, but neither interpretation is followed up on. Even more blatant, the episode ''Truth be Told'' features [[The Cameo|real-life athlete Jeremy McGrath]] discovering that the protagonist and his friends are ex-secret-agents-turned-vigilantes, and he suggests bringing in one or two friends he has on the sports circuit who could help the heroes save the day on occasion. This is the final scene of the episode, except the episode is also the [[Series Finale]]. Along with [[Canon Dis Continuity|half the premise of the show,]] this was never picked up on in the subsequent made-for-TV movies.

* ''[[As Told By Ginger (Animation)|As Told By Ginger]]'' has a particularly jarring one in the episode Wicked Game: a deeply involved plot about a {{spoiler|plan involving Ginger's best friends to break her and Darren up}}. In a series that normally follows things through, the sudden lack of consequence to this episode is especially jarring.

[[Category:Bleach the 3rd Phantom]]

[[Category:Aborted Arc]]