Filler: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|'''Sakura''': "So, did we even do anything this episode?"

'''Kakashi''': "Sakura, welcome to the wonderful world... of filler."

 

 

 

In most cases, the defining aspect of filler is the total ''lack'' of series momentum. Filler can be safely ignored without any loss of important information. However, there is also a style of filler called the "single upgrade filler". Basically, it uses a filler episode to introduce a new power, machine, costume, minor character, etc. without having to work it into the greater narrative. In these cases, the episode can be ignored outside of "something got an upgrade".

The term "filler" is also used by fandom to refer to anything not in the source material. This stems from the practice mentioned above of adaptations that are threatening to catch up to the source material using original story arcs, episodes, and general content to pad things out. [[I Thought It Meant|That is not this trope]], but such cases are often related to it.

 

 

Compare [[Fake Longevity]], the video game equivalent. For filler in [[Web Comics]], see [[Filler Strips]]. For filler in [[Music]] albums, see [[Album Filler]].

Compare [[Breather Episode]]. When the news media is forced to resort to this, it's [[Silly Season]]. Or [[Sweeps]]. You decide.

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' had a significant amount of filler. The relaunched series, ''[[Dragon Ball Kai]]'', eliminates much of the filler in the second series. Throughout the first two series events end up being contradicted by canon events in several places, such as:

** An early one where Master Roshi explains the Dragon Balls to Lunch, giving a completely bogus origin story in the process, though this may be more due to Roshi believing a myth and not knowing the truth.

** Another where they go visit Android 8's creator an in attempt to have the self-destruct mechanism within him removed, only for it to be revealed in ''Z'' that the previously unseen Dr. Gero was the one who built Android 8.

** It also had an entire arc of this, featuring Garlic Jr. (A villain from the first anime film). Opinions are, of course, mixed about it but it didn't contradict the main storyline. (Its afore-mentioned predecessor film was the one which contradicted the canon events). Then there was the Other World Tournament, where Goku fought deceased warriors from throughout the galaxy's history {{spoiler|after Cell blew up Goku}}.

* ''[[Naruto]]'''s filler famously went for ''over a year'' (80 weeks to be precise) after it [[Overtook the Manga]], and by the end it was being described by fans as a form of torture. The producers of sequel ''Shippuuden'' seem to be taking careful steps not to have that many at once again: even though the manga is three or four entire arcs ahead of the anime, they've cautiously gone back to filler after the second arc, and again after the third one, which precedes two arcs with no opportunities for filler.

** Also notable about the ''Shippuuden'' fillers is that they go against canon. Rather than a long series of [[Monster of the Week]] episodes evenly mixed with random variations of [[Defeat Means Friendship]], the Ninja Guardians arc actually details a full-on storyline with an interesting backstory.

*** Lampshaded in the episode preview:

{{quote|'''Ichigo''': Hey, what's going on here? What happened to Hueco Mundo and the Arrancar?}}

* To show where Filler can go dangerously wrong, ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' [[The Resolution Will Not Be Televised|was actually cancelled]] due to the extremely low quality of its [[Filler Arc]], and given a movie with a [[Gecko Ending]].

* Ditto ''[[Kinnikuman]]'' and ''[[Kinnikuman Nisei]]'', whose filler arcs got them canceled. Both of them got revived later, but ''Nisei'' got canned again and [[The Resolution Will Not Be Televised]].

* Any "Chii and [insert name here] Talk" episode in ''[[Chobits]]''. They were considered so pointless and unnecessary to the plot that they were completely excised from the first North American DVD release, and only released as a ''bonus disc'' after fans complained.

* Ditto ''[[Gintama]]''. However, the very first episode of the anime ''was'' completely filler.

* ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]'' anime in the first season has a lot of filler episodes. This, however, proves to be very important when it comes to [[Character Development]]. It also borrows several elements used in the manga too.

** And then on the second season there's everything involving [[Filler Villain|Nova]].

{{quote|'''Kaiba''': "Alright, that little detour was a complete waste of my time and effort, so let's move on and [[Canon Discontinuity|pretend all that nonsense never happened]]. It's time to continue the Battle City Finals."}}

* ''[[Soul Eater]]'' had a few hilarious fillers involving the character Excalibur, who's pretty much a filler-character, although he does come in on the last arc.

* Just like the ''[[Soul Eater]]'' example above, and unlike most other filler episodes trying to be funny, ''[[Fairy Tail]]'''s filler episodes actually ''are'' funny. Especially episodes [[Freaky Friday Flip|19]] and 50. It helps that much of the filler is based on ideas that manga creator Hiro Mashima had but was never able to use.

** Worse yet, while most of the filler episodes at least justify their existence by featuring villain activity (often providing some characterization for the villains in the process), there's a couple of stories that aren't related to the villains at all (first season episode featuring a psychic girl, second season episode with dinosaurs, etc.)

* ''[[Dennou Coil]]'' is mainly the story of Isako and her connection to the weird phenomena in the virtual world. This makes the episodes in which she doesn't even appear feel rather pointless.

** The filler episodes do feature Yasako, the other main character, and her friends exploring the nature of illegals, however, which gives them a point. It could be said that Yasako is the protagonist through whose eyes the action is seen, making her understanding of the milieu more important than Isako's arc.

** In fact some are fearing it might be headed into the ''[[Cosmic Deadline|opposite]]'' [[Compressed Adaptation|direction]], though this may simply apply to the episodes covering stories already adapted into the first anime.

** The first anime also averted filler for the most part (with the exception of two episodes at the beginning) due to the writers [[Pragmatic Adaptation|going in a completely different direction]] with the plot.

** Some time ago, One Piece has come to pretty much abandon filler completely, instead working on keeping a 1-Chapter-To-1-Episode-Ratio to prevent [[Overtook the Manga]] ([[Enforced Trope|a good thing too, as pretty much everything from the Sabaody Arc to the present day storyline have left pretty much no opportunities for filler arcs]]), getting by, as mentioned above, [[Adaptation Expansion|using ideas Oda came up with but couldn't implement due to pacing issues.]]

*** Case in point for [[Adaptation Expansion]], after the events of Sabaody, the fates of the remainder of the Straw Hat Crew was given a single chapter of the Manga. From that chapter, the writing staff created four episodes, covering the fates of two members in each. This was aired in-between Amazon Lily and Impel Down, due to fitting with travel time. In-between Impel Down and Marineford, the writers created another four episodes that touched upon the cover-stories that were put into the Manga during Marineford.

* ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' had more [[Villain of the Week|episodic villains]] than there were in the manga. This is particularly in the first season, due to [[Overtook the Manga|overtaking the series to a huge extent]], and wanting to put the first major fight (Kenshiro vs. Shin) at the end of the season. This involved inventing new henchmen for Shin every week and turning some independent enemies into his lackeys. The third season also overtook the manga, but stretched out the Souther fight and put [[Recap Episode|five recap episodes]] at the very end of the season.

* The ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'' 'Endless Eight' arc is filler taken [[Up to Eleven]]: the beginning and end have slight differences to begin and resolve the story, and the other six are [[Groundhog Day Loop|almost the exact same things happening over and over again]] albeit completely re-animated and re-voiced.

* [[Kimagure Orange Road]] is one of the few series to have fillers that the fan considered to be awesome.

* Being only 49-episode long, the fillers in ''[[Macross 7]]'' are incredibly hard to deal with since you can't totally avoid any episode without missing out some important events. In the first half of the show, you can count around 10 battles with nearly identical situation, the villains repeatedly announce their objectives (more Spiritia!) but ultimately retreat while accomplishing nothing, boring [[Stock Footage]] and the same songs being performed over and over. But mixed among those sequences are bits and bits of important information, making the show an obvious result from [[Executive Meddling]] to make the show longer than it should be.

* [[Ai Yori Aoshi]]: Enishi contains a tremendous amount of filler compared to the first series; which is unusual, since it's actually ''shorter''. Annoyingly, no single episode can be just skipped over, since the creators almost invariably throw in a scene or two of story or character development just to keep it from being ''entirely'' irrelevant. To the point that removing all the filler from episodes 2 through 9 would leave about one and a half episodes of relevant material.

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' didn't have very many of these (due to its being only 26 episodes long), but the most notable was Episode 7, "A Human Work". It contains no Angels, has no real bearing on the story, has little to no character development (other than Shinji's anger over Misato's slobbiness, leading to Shinji's being assured by Toji and Kensuke that knowing how slobby she is compared to her beautiful real-world persona makes them "a family"), and pretty much serves only to fill in the space between the battle with Ramiel and Asuka's introduction to the story. Though it is worth noting that despite the episodes afformentioned lack of content it does add a bit of world building and drops some large hints at NERV's more seedy involvements in the overall events of the series.

* ''[[Gurren Lagann]]'' is essentially devoid of filter- save for one questionable episode- Episode 16: Entire Polysynthesis. It's the equivalent of a clip show detailing the last 15 episodes to help make the transition of a 7-year [[Time Skip]]. However, it has virtually no new material, accompanied by live-action scenes of a writer's hands drawing title cards and commentary statements. The eyecatches themselves are made from those of the past episodes put back-to-back, 4x4, and in chronological order, with the anime title filling the last empty square. Oddly enough, its presence makes the show end on ''27'' episodes, cluing the viewer in that like a normal seasonal anime, 26 full episodes were produced- but this one was tossed in for good measure.

 

* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' comics has had several:

** Uncanny X-Men #228: a filler issue designed to wrap up loose ends from Dazzler's ongoing book via flashback tale, made worse by the fact that the issue beforehand was the last part of the "Fall of the Mutants" storyline, which set up a new status quo for the X-Men.

* The infamous Titans Hunt storyline in ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|New Titans]]'' was infamous for this. There are two filler issues tossed into the storyline (#80 and #81) which exist mainly to shill the newly introduced Team Titans and to serve as a "War of the Gods" crossover issue. The later is ironic: at the time, the Titans were largely off-limits for big storylines (the book was only sold at comic shops at the time), though in this case the plotline kind of had to be addressed as Donna Troy played a major role in War of the Gods and her involvement had to be addressed.

* Filler issues in comic books often exist because of plans changing at the last minute. ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' had a crossover with ''Outsiders'' with another crossover planned soon after. DC decided to just make the second crossover a separate miniseries, resulting in a two-issue filler arc in each book.

* ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]'' has Filler Bunny, a cute little bunny rabbit who was created and tortured by cruel scientists for the purpose of filling pages when Vasquez can't come up with enough material.

* Book 5 and 6 of [[Les Legendaires|Les Légendaires]] count as this: not only does it have few, if anything, to do with what was the main plot at this point, but most of the events of those Books are retconned in-story thanks to Jadina's time reset. The main villain of those book, Captain Ceyderom, is the least important of all the major villains and the only one to not appear again after this arc. On the other hand, Prince Halan, who is also introduced in this book, appears again later, and theme such as Jadina's [[Arranged Marriage]] are further explored later.

* Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley started off as a novella. When asked to write a novel length version of the story, the additional material is mostly a completely unrelated sub-plot.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

** Additionally, establishing shots – used to give context to the next scene or act – can sometimes be used as padding, especially if they come into play for more than a few seconds or if several are used in succession.

* Lampooned in ''[[Garth Marenghi's Darkplace]]'': Dean Learner states that so many slow-motion sequences were used because the episodes often ran several minutes short and they had to be bulked out somehow.

* Related example: ''[[Super Sentai]]'' and ''[[Power Rangers]]'' mostly follow the [[Half Arc Season|"half arc, half filler"]] formula, but each ''Sentai'' series has to run for a whole year's 48-52 episodes, whereas ''Power Rangers'' are usually much shorter. Some fans feel that the short seasons are sometimes an improvement, since 32-episode PR season is much more story intense and less filler-ridden than a 50-episode ''Sentai''.

** Not anymore. Now that ''[[Power Rangers]]'' has made the [[Channel Hop]] to Nickelodeon, news has come down that the new season is going to be 40 episodes.

* ''[[The Prisoner]]'' was originally intended to be a seven episode miniseries. The network wanted more, and so ten standalone episodes were created and intermixed with the main [[Story Arc]]. Less noticeable than in other series with a high filler percentage, as most of the filler episodes are still good.

* Unless it's ''[[60 Minutes]]'' (the sacred cow of the entire genre), American newsmagazines seem to only exist these days in order to fill spots in the [[ANSI Standard Broadcast TV Schedule]] where other programming has failed. Often filled out to two hours and consisting entirely of [[Missing White Woman Syndrome]] - heavy [[True Crime]] stories solved years ago with running time-lengthening twists even the most dimwitted viewer can see as [[Viewers are Morons|insulting their intelligence]]. ''[[Rock Center]]'' is trying to avert this, but notice that it's not replacing any of ''[[Dateline NBC]]'''s airtime.

* Used as a quick gag in the [[Musical Episode]] of [[Buffy]], where the cast sings "Walk Through The Fire," and Willow's only line in the song is "I think this line's mostly filler."

* It usually happens in ''[[Fringe]]'', where there's always a [[Monster of the Week]] focus and mostly all of the episodes advance very little on the plot. There was one episode in the second season, for example, that showed {{spoiler|Charlie Francis}} alive. Keep in mind, the character had already died in the show, but apart from that, it felt like a normal episode. Apparently, it had been filmed for the first season but they waited until then to air it.

** They ''generally'' have nothing to do with the main storyline. Sometimes they have a lot to do with the main storyline... just not with ''advancing'' it.

* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' has about 30 hours worth of story and 200 hours of sidequests that consist of plotless monster hunting.

** Made more egregious the fact that [[Broken Bridge|three easy ways to cross the distance in no time flat are unavailable to you]]: buying a ticket on an airship, using Balthier's airship, and having someone who has been to Arcadia before (e.g. Balthier) use a teleport stone. Just pointless. [[Scenery Porn|Pretty]], but pointless.

* ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' had the infamous and distracting [[Solve the Soup Cans|hunt for the Ymir Fruit]] in Ymir Forest, a fruit that was said to be able to cure every disease. The fruit was needed to heal an elf woman which was never seen in game, and which had no impact on the plot. The player had to solve the puzzle regardless, since the sick woman's child blocked the way to the protagonist's destination. Just so you understand why is this is irritating, the puzzle is really dumb, hard, frustrating and technically unnecessary, as the characters could circumvent having to do it [[Only Idiots May Pass|if they used their brains]]. Strangely, the protagonists ignored the fact that they were on a quest to cure a disease of one of their party members at that time and could just [[Fridge Logic|use the fruit to heal her]].

* ''[[Fate/hollow ataraxia]]'' is actually large made of filler. However the filler is often highly entertaining and some see it as the point of the story to begin with.

* ''[[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]]'' has Ellicor II. Being here pretty much eats up about half of the game and it has almost NO relevance to the plot, so much so that the filler is it's own plot and they have to actually bring the plot to the planet, {{spoiler|I.E. aliens invading during a filler plot important war because the protagonist is taking too long to leave and continue the plot.}} Most plot points actually go unsolved.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'' suffered from this when it was syndicated in Atlanta's newspapers; Since then, it's gone from a funny-but-plot-heavy comic to a primarily Gag-A-Day comic with the occasional story lasting more than one day.

* ''[[Misfile]]'' has started to have a bit of this. The thirteenth book is full of weak stories that ultimately go nowhere and just feel like filler from the beginning. The Halloween party is the worst, since it's been built up for a couple of books, and then ended with an identity crisis. It was pretty much filler since it was first mentioned.

** Hussie's self-insert segments can be seen as this, as they come out of nowhere and have no real influence on the plot. He at one point addresses these concerns, and admit that his reach of influence into the story will only amount to [[Unit Confusion|one yard]].

*** ''Exactly'' [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/scratch.php?s=6&p=005933 one yard]. After {{spoiler|John and Jade escape the Scratch by literally [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]}}, Hussie posits that {{spoiler|they will travel exactly one yard before entering the session they created.}} Oh, and {{spoiler|it takes them three years.}}

** Played straight at times; sometimes the story pace slows to a crawl and nothing in particular happens of import for a couple weeks at a time. One arc lasted almost 2 months before the pace picked back up.

* ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'' had at least one filler arc, with a couple more which could possibly be considered filler: Unarguably, nothing comes of an arc in which the Warriors of Light take over the town of Gaia. The frozen wasteland arc introduced the doomsday cultists, who did reappear, but did little to further the overall plot, and the Onrac arc was little more than a [[Shaggy Dog Story]] for the city in question, though it did set the Warriors of Light on the route to their next destination.

 

 

** Also, due to Season 1's [[Monster of the Week]] format, you could actually watch most of the episodes in ''any order'', with the exception of the season finale, as the last episode of that season starts off from where the previous one left off, making it a two-parter.

* ''[[Total Drama Island]]'' has a pretty blatant example in the form of "Camp Castaways", in which the Final Four end up trapped on a "deserted island" (actually Chris's secret production camp). Although the foursome seem to bond a bit over the course of the episode, this is completely disregarded at the end when they all agree to [[Status Quo Is God|pretend it never happened.]]

* [[Scooby Doo]]: In the 1970 episode "Jeepers, It's The Creeper," Scooby is disguised as a chicken in a chicken coop as he and Shaggy and trying to escape the Creeper. Scooby accidentally hatches an egg, and the subsequent baby chick tags along with our heroes, thinking Scooby is its mother. Its only tie-in with the episode is at the end, when Scooby passes another nest and several eggs hatch, the chicks thinking Scooby is their mother.

 

** '''Famous quotes''', fun facts or quick stories that are generally humorous in nature.

** '''Filler advertisements'''. Often, these will be "house ads," or advertisements created by an editor or advertising department selling the newspaper. Other times, stock ads – often, these are public service ads from the Ad Council – may be used.

* In radio, in the era where virtually every radio station had network news at the top of the hour – and was available only by live feed – many stations used instrumental songs to fill time remaining between the end of the last song and when the network news began. Stations often had a library of a few dozen generic-sounding records, each sounding somewhat like the genre they played, which were used to fill out the remaining hour, often if there wasn't a current song or recurrent that was short enough to fit the remaining time without cutting it off early. The jockey sometimes read announcements or previewed the next hour, but if he chose not to talk, the song would allow the jockey to avoid broadcasting "dead air" (silence).

** WPFM, an album-rock station in Panama City FL, broke for ABC news at the top of an hour in a 1977 broadcast. Afterwards, there was dead air for some three minutes before soft violin music started playing. Immediately, the DJ at the station finally returned to local and quipped "You learn something new everyday. Today it's 'don't go to the bathroom during ABC news'."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Short Story Long]]

[[Category:Pacing Problems]]

[[Category:Toei Animation]]

[[Category:Sturgeon's Tropes]]