Cosmic Deadline: Difference between revisions

This is an '''[[Ending Tropes|Ending Trope]]''', so expect spoilers!

 

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Samurai Seven]]''. After the main battle (farmers & samurai vs. Nobuseri) is resolved, there are roughly seven episodes left in the series. These are used to introduce a new villain and then defeat him. The worst part is the last episode, which features the deaths of three major characters and a scant few minutes of epilogue. It seems as though the directors realized, "Holy crap, we've only got one more episode to end this in!"

* Benimaru Itoh was slated to draw an eleven-issue ''Super [[Metroid]]'' comic, which Americans may know from its appearance in Nintendo Power. For [[Executive Meddling|annoying reasons]], he was abruptly forced to write a conclusion in the fifth issue. The result? The titular Metroid is killed by two minor characters in a brief side scene, the bosses are killed in [[Montage|a two-page spread]], Ridley ''flees'' and is never seen again, and the battle against Mother Brain is resolved in about three pages.

* The ending of the original ''[[Gunnm]]'' due to the fact that Yukito Kishiro wrote it on what he thought would be his deathbed. When he recovered he revived the series as ''Last Order'', which mostly ignores the final volume of the original.

* The first two rounds of ''[[Flame of Recca]]'s'' [[Tournament Arc]] are at a glacial pace: each fight takes 2 or 3 episodes to resolve, a bunch of unimportant minor characters get long flashbacks to their backstories, etc. Suddenly, the heroes are winning matches by default when the minor characters withdraw from the tournament, Recca goes through a super-accelerated [[Training From Hell]] to gain the power he needs to fight the [[Big Bad]]--clearly the show was cancelled abruptly and the creative team only had a half-dozen episodes to wrap-up the plot.

** Exposition is heaped on the viewer. Massive numbers of characters are killed {{spoiler|and by massive, I mean the entire population of earth.}} Motivations for main villains are only just revealed here, and many are too vague to make out without looking things up in a wiki. Regardless of what you think of the film's quality, it's undeniable very messy.

* ''[[Senki Zesshou Symphogear]]''. The episode count was halved around the time it started airing. End result: The [[Drak Magical Girl]]'s [[Heel Face Turn]] proceeds ludicrously quickly, the [[Big Bad]]'s nature and plan comes out of nowhere, and there's little to no explanation for the nature of the magical stuff.

 

 

* The last bit of the ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]'' series was the only part in which any major characters got killed off. And ''a lot'' of them died then.

* [[Brandon Sanderson]] is known for what his fans and editors call "the Brandon Avalanche" - most of the book is spent with various characters [[Gambit Pileup|setting up the dominoes]] until ''someone'', by decision or accident, sets the entire thing off over the last five chapters.

** In [[Mistborn|The Final Empire]], Kelsier destroys the atium mine at the Pits of Hathsin.

** In [[Mistborn|The Well of Ascension]], Vin and Elend threaten Straff Venture by burning [[Limit Break|duralumin]] and [[Emotion Bomb|brass]] at him.

* The second season of ''[[Heroes (TV)|Heroes]]'' suffered from this. The writers' strike hit halfway through production of the season, and the writers were basically forced to end the season in about half an episode, instead of another 11 or so. This caused several plot lines, which eventually would have been woven into the main thread, to be left completely hanging, most notable being Peter stranding Caitlin in a horrifying alternate future, never to escape according to [[Word of God]].

* This is also incredibly apparent in the last few episodes of [[Dead Like Me]], which had been canceled.

* In season 5 of ''[[Lost]]'', the flaming arrow attack on the camp slaughters every [[Red Shirt|minor background character]] because [[Cosmic Deadline|the show was due to end in season 6]] and they needed to be gotten rid of before then

* In the fourth season of ''[[Star Trek Enterprise]]'', the kind of story arcs the fans have been waiting for the whole time (birth of the Federation, the Romulan War) finally started to get told. But it was too late to save the show from cancellation, and so the last episode was a [[Distant Finale]]. We learn that the [[Official Couple]] broke up in the meantime, and that the [[Ensemble Darkhorse|fans' favorite recurring guest star]] fathered a daughter, and went into hiding for reasons not fully explained. The Romulan War, although it also must have happened during this missing chunk of time, never even gets mentioned. The birth of the Federation on the other hand ''is'' a plot point in this episode. Archer is about to deliver a [[Patrick Stewart Speech|historic speech at the founding ceremony]], but we never get to hear it, [[Anticlimax Cut|because the episode ends before that]]. For this and some other reasons, this episode gets filed under [[Fanon Discontinuity]] by many.

* ''[[Dark Void]]'' is perhaps worse than Fahrenheit. The first third of the game preps you on [[Take Cover|cover-based shooting]] and eases you into the eccentricities - hovering, vertical cover, etc... before giving you the promised [[Jet Pack]]. The second third is your cannonball playground, though it feels sparse at times, as if there's story you're missing - There's a level that was obviously supposed to be a [[Hub Level]], but you just move from there to the next stages via [[Time Skip|Time Skips]]. The final third has two awesome stages - one where you blow the s#!+ out of a monster the size of Manhattan ''while inside its stomach'', and the final boss battle is an [[Old School Dogfighting|Old School Dogfight]] against a '''freaking three-headed dragon'''. Except... ''[[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|there's no buildup!]]'' Your [[Mad Scientist]] friend is killed without fanfare, an [[Oracular Urchin]] throws a prophecy at you, and your character gains undefined [[Magic and Powers]] ''solely to fight the final boss''. The [[Spotting the Thread|thread]] that proves it? The first "episode" had six levels. '''The other two have four.'''

{{quote| '''[[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]]''': ''The developers planned out a HUGE EPIC GAME, the various components of their studio started working on all the little bits of the HUGE EPIC GAME, and then they ran out of laundry powder or whatever it was and had to string together all the little unfinished bits into something vaguely sellable. They wrote a script for Lord of the Rings and ended up having to perform it with finger puppets.''}}

** Though ''[[Super Robot Wars K]]'' is probably worse: There are a few times where the team splits up to take two treaths at the same time. Near the end, they split to end THREE plots at once (''[[Godannar]]'', ''[[Gaiking]]'' and ''[[Soukyuu no Fafner]]''), with the ''Godannar'' one condensing the entire second season in three measly chapters.

* ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R. 3]]'' is a prime offender, especially when you consider that it was apparently meant to wrap up the entire plot of the series. The game has a clear beginning, middle, and finale, but jumps abruptly from the middle right to the finale without any sort of build-up or transition in between.