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** The school festival mega-arc has Negi visiting nearly all of his students, entering a fighting tournament, and {{spoiler|dealing with the machinations of his time-travelling Martian descendant}}. This is actually a clever aversion of this trope though, as {{spoiler|Negi uses time travel to do everything in the three days of the festival, and you see it from Negi's chronological point of view instead of a bunch of scene-cuts.}}
** The Magic World arc comes close to this: the main plot is still moving at a good pace, but some of the subplots (especially Yue's [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] and {{spoiler|the fate of the real Asuna}}) are still awaiting resolution (although the latter case is almost certainly being saved for [[The Reveal]]). Whether this is a problem depends on the reader.
* ''[[Ghost in Thethe Shell: Stand Alone Complex]] Solid State Society'' was originally planned as a third season, and tried to juggle about four slightly connected storylines at the same time. Had it been a season and not a movie, there would definetly have been a fifth storyline.
* ''[[Legend of the Galactic Heroes]]'' is the undisputed <s>king</s> [[Gratuitous German|kaiser]] of this trope. It got to the point where there were so many different character arcs going on at once, they show subtitles with the characters' names every time they appear just so you could keep track of everybody.
 
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** e) Jimmy Olsen getting plagued with random superpowers and alternating between investigating the death of the [[New Gods]], trying to be a superhero, going on angst-breaks with Superman, getting kidnapped, and getting kidnapped from his kidnapper.
** f) Harley Quinn and Holly Robinson getting trained as warriors by Granny Goodness disguised as Athena, teaming up with Hippolyta, and winding up on Apokalips, and...
** g) Triplicate Girl and Karate Kid getting stranded in the past and running around looking for a cure to a lethal virus. All of this interspersed with scenes of Darkseid playing with his action figures, heroes who have nothing to do with the plot running into the main characters, Super-Manboy-Asshole-Prime destroying planets and fighting Monarch, and the Monitors endlessly spouting [[Atop the Fourth Wall (Web Video)|"We should do something!" "Should we do something?"]]
** The entirety of Countdown can be described as "Between Eight and Ten [[Kudzu Plot|Kudzu Plotlines]], All Waiting."
* ''[[Empowered (Comic Book)|Empowered]]'' started with several more or less unrelated one-shots, but with time, some plots started to emerge: So far we have Thugboy's plot (his past, and everything Willy Pete-related), Ninjette's plot (involving the other ninjas), the Fleshmaster/Capeys/Manny plot, and of course the romantical plot for our [[OTP]] / [[OT 3]]. And even now, there's time for some smaller stories.
* Part of the problem of the first year of Amazing Spider-Man's Brand New Day arc. Storylines such as the identity of Menace, the mystery of Harry's return, the election of a New Mayor of New York, and the Spider-Tracer murders were all milked for all they were worth for an entire year, and mostly resolved within a single storyline. Creators have gone on record saying they intended to touch base on the plot threads a lot more in the year prior, but ran out of time. This despite having at least three times the length as any other series to make such plans. And that didn't stop plotlines in the next two years from being milked for all they were worth and not resolved until the "big finale" of Brand New Day- Origin of the Species.
* Averted, and very well, in [[Sin City]]. While you can see some characters talk on the background, some of them are recognizable, or even main characters, their story WILL be expanded on next storylines and issues, and most of these storylines occur in a single frame of time, characters with their own story crossing each other. A particular example is in 'The Hard Goodbye', as Marv enters Kadie's bar, we see how Dwight appears in a bar, as Shellie, a dancer, picks him up, and is in his story, 'A Dame To Kill For'.
* [[Batman Beyond (Comic Bookcomics)|Batman Beyond Unlimited]] started out with two features per issue, and by the fourth issue has ''four'' separate storylines going on at once.
 
== [[Film]] ==
* There are at least four ongoing plots tied together in ''[[The Secret of NIMH]]''-—[[Action Mom|Ms.]] [[Cowardly Lion|Brisby]] trying to save her children from the farmer's plow, the Rats of NIMH trying to leave for Thorn Valley, Jenner trying to sabotage their moving plans by {{spoiler|murdering Nicodemus}}, and Jeremy the Crow trying to find a love interest.
* ''[[Blade|Blade III]]''. Is it about vigilante Blade versus [[Les Collaborateurs|human law enforcement]], the upcoming vampire apocalypse, Blade's attempt to create his ''own'' apocalypse via [[The Virus]], or Blade vs. [[Dracula]]? Concentrating on any [[Two Lines, No Waiting|two of these plotlines]] would have worked, but not four.
* Also a major criticism of the third ''[[Spider-Man (Filmfilm)|Spider-Man]]'' film. Having to deal with Sandman, Venom/The Black Suit, Harry Osborn, and the romance between Peter and Mary Jane left the movie feeling more than a little cramped.
* Averted brilliantly, and frequently by [[Robert Altman]]. Take ''[[Nashville]]'' for example, something like twenty characters, the film constantly shuffles between them, building a world of interplay rather than plot. Also this being an Altman, the dialogue is very low on the sound mix, sometimes several conversations at once, plus music, it's up to you which characters you want to listen to.
* Also averted quite nicely in ''[[Love Actually]]''. Several different intersecting stories, all about love in one form or another, and about an 80% [[Happy Ending]] ratio.
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* ''[[Wheel of Time]].'' It started out juggling the threads well enough, but as the series went on, the unbelievably large amount of characters bogged it down to a snail's pace. Add in the [[Seasonal Rot]] with Robert Jordan's growing focus on political maneuvering and [[Costume Porn]], and it's a wonder when things happen. Book 10 deserves a special mention for being largely the reactions of every cast group to a single event. Book 10 is over 700 pages long....and the event in question occured in ''the previous book'', where it was the main plot of that novel so already dealt with in some detail. There's a reason fans hate it.
** To give an example, people get upset when characters are removed from the glossary at the back of the book three books after they were introduced. The reason is that the characters were last seen 500 pages ago (or two books ago in the book you first read five years ago) and you can't remember which of the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] this person is. Is this one of The Forsaken, or the concubine of that [[Knight Templar]], or....
* [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Worldwar (Literature)]]'', ''Timeline-191'' and ''Darkness'' series. [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] mean we can go 100 pages between appearances of a given character. Sometimes, it works.
* Essentially anything Peter F. Hamilton writes, ''[[PandorasPandora's Star (Literature)|Pandoras Star]]'' in particular. It is over 900 pages of seemingly unimportant plotlines and occasionally entire chapters of flavour text. Thankfully it's to set up the second, and much more action packed book in the series.
* ''[[Otherland]]''. You have three groups within Otherland; the story arc involving Dread and Officer Skouros, and Mr. Sellar's story arc.
* The first ''[[Uplift]]'' novel almost veered into this trope. Thankfully, [[David Brin]] got his act together for the rest of the books by changing to a first-person narrative and labeling each chapter with the name of the character doing the narrating.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* A rare comedic version was ''[[Seinfeld (TV)|Seinfeld]]''. A typical episode saw three or four separate plots, each involving one of the four main characters. It being a comedy, these different plot-lines would typically come together at the end of every episode, in a [[Crowning Moment of Funny|single hilarious scene]] uniting all the disparate stories.
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''.
** The format is such that you have multiple characters with powers dealing with the day to day implications and difficulties thereof. Their troubles can grow to be so isolated and insular it's a wonder they interact ''at all.'' Occasionally, these characters do meet and then go on their way due to a strange kind of "fate interconnectedness" [[You ALL Share My Story|(a bit of a show theme). ]]
** The ''third'' season has everyone's complicated stories [[Luke, I Am Your Father|and bloodlines]] interconnected to the point where trying to comprehend it all is a leading cause of aneurysms.
** Basically, when Heroes is good, you get [[Two Lines, No Waiting]], occasionally dipping into [[Third Line, Some Waiting]]. When it gets bad, it jumps into "everything happens at once and nothing makes sense." Basically, [[Third Line, Some Waiting]] is a tightrope that easily lets you fall into [[Four Lines, All Waiting]].
* A common complaint of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager (TV)|Star Trek Voyager]]'' Season Two. You had the Maquis vs. Starfleet plot, Kazon/Seska plots, Paris pretending to be a jerk to get thrown off, is there another Caretaker out there, etc. A key factor of [[Better Onon DVD]].
* May possibly have killed ''[[Drive]]''. Unless it was the overall lack of planning.
* The final season of ''[[Series/Battlestar Galactica|Battlestar Galactica]]'' suffered from this, though perhaps not so much as others. The main problem is that it seemed so full of unresolved questions that it couldn't resolve them all even in the finale and decided not to even try with some of them.
* ''[[Law and& Order (TV)|Law and Order]]'' attempted this in Season Eight, with all six major characters getting a personal subplot:
** Adam Schiff's re-election fight.
** Jack McCoy's ethics charges stemming from [[Never Live It Down|his actions in "Under The Influence (s8ell)]]
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** Lennie Briscoe's turmoil with his daughter - an ex-junkie turned states witness.
** Rey Curtis' martial strife, stemming from the one-night stand he had in "Aftershock" (s6e23).<br /><br />Most L&O fans consider it the series's low point<ref>Prior to Season Twenty's parade of political anvils</ref>, as the episodes would come to a screeching halt every time the subplots came along. Season Nine wrapped up every single one within the first few episodes, with only Van Buren and McCoy's plots having any lingering effect past mid-Season Nine.
* The one or two episodes prior to a ''[[Lost (TV)|Lost]]'' season finale have multiple groups of characters setting out on the lines that will blow up in a '''BIG''' way during the thrill-a-minute final (2-hour-long) episode. Each group makes some progress, but the payoffs are deferred.
* Subverted in ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' in its third season by splitting John Crichton into two people, and then sending each copy on a different ship with part of the crew. For much of the season, episodes alternated between the two crews, allowing the show to more manageably juggle episodic and arc plots. {{spoiler|Ironically, the copy of John Crichton involved in the more arc-oriented episodes was the one who ''didn't'' survive.}}
* Played more straight in ''Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars'', since it was the fifth season distilled into a four-hour mini-series. It still worked, but at times the plot got very crowded.
* ''[[Passions]]'' left [[Soap Wheel]] for this. One plot would have supernatural goings on (usually involving Tabitha, Charity, Kay and Father Lonigan), another had potential incest or lesbianism somewhere along the line, a third plot had Theresa and Gwen (and their parents) plotting against each other for Ethan, Plot #4 would have been about Alistair Crane's machinations. The end result was that conversations that would have lasted minutes ended up lasting hours.
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* There are so many concurrent plotlines in every episode of ''[[True Blood]]'' that, combined with their [[Loads and Loads of Characters|fairly extensive cast]], it usually takes half a season to get anything done in any of the plotlines or any of the characters.
* ''[[Desperate Housewives]]''. Typically each of the four main characters will have their own storyline, plus the ongoing mystery arc of each season. The [[Fauxlosophic Narration]] always tries to connect them thematically, but this is usually very strained.
* On ''[[Sex and Thethe City]]'', each of the four female leads would typically have a separate story. Often the only place the stories intersected was when the girls would meet for lunch and talk about stuff.
* ''[[Oz (TV)|Oz]]'' had [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] who had to be served in every episode. Creator Tom Fontana has said that he wrote each storyline for a season separately, then wove them together to create the actual scripts. Sometimes in the process he would discover that he was using a character in one storyline several episodes after the character was [[Killed Off for Real|killed off]] in another.
* ''[[Degrassi]]'' has a lot of this, though the characters may cross over into each other's storylines.
* ''[[The West Wing (TV)|The West Wing]]'' does this constantly, to the point that it can be difficult to care when the fourth or fifth plot of an episode is introduced in the 20th minute.
* ''[[Game of Thrones]]'', based on ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' as mentioned in the literature section, naturally runs into this. It's not so bad in season one where there's only three major storylines to keep track of (King's Landing, the Wall, and the Dothraki), but season two attracted some heavy criticism for its pacing issues; suddenly many more characters have their own individual storylines, to the point that the show has to leave one or two out of every single episode, or just give them one scene that comes out of nowhere and leaves just as fast.
 
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' tie-in novel ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering (Tabletop Game)/Alara Unbroken|Alara Unbroken]]'' switches between a bunch of different threads, following Ajani Goldmane, Nicol Bolas, Rakka Mar, Gwafa Hazid, Sarkhan Vol, Elspeth Tirel, Mayael the Anima, Marisi, a group of Vithian refugees...
 
== [[Toys]] ==
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* The Subspace Emissary in [[Super Smash Bros|Super Smash Bros. Brawl]]. There are at least 8 threads (maybe 10, depending on how you interpret things), with some characters jumping between threads willy-nilly, and until the band starts coming comes together halfway through there's no way to know which events are happening alongside each other.
* [[Dragon Quest IV (Video Game)|Dragon Quest IV]] is split into five chapters. The first four chapters each take place at roughly the same time, each focusing on different character(s) that will accompany the hero in the final chapter. Many players believe that the game only truly begins with the final chapter.
* [[Halo]], moreso in ''3''. There's the mystery of the installations, the Covenant civil war, the Covenant war with humans, the flood, ''and'' Gravemind speaking with Cortana. What makes it worse is that pretty much every line except the first is finished off so quickly and quietly they all seem like D-plots.
* ''Yakuza'' adores this trope, from the very first game. Sub-plots are constantly clashing into each other and everything you knew as the player is constantly being turned upside down. The amazing part is that the games actually handle it well.
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* The most common complaint about ''[[Charby the Vampirate]]''. Largely a side-effect of having [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]. In fact, over a dozen characters live together in a single house, all of whom have their own plotlines. It's no surprise that a single party storyline took two years to tell.
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'', by virtue of being composed of many unrelated, ''very'' loosely related themes, each with a different cast.
* ''[[The Mansion of E (Webcomic)|The Mansion of E]]'' has currently, after 7 years of running, the main plotline of 2 of the 3 first characters, the line of the 3rd first character, the 6 or so lines of the various side cast, one line to rotate between new characters or events, and one that shows up every Sunday and is almost totally unrelated to the rest besides being set in the same universe. So yeah, it's pretty much all waiting, even when your favored characters show up again.
* ''[[Homestuck (Webcomic)|Homestuck]]'' focuses on one character - or, sometimes, one entire facet of the [[Geodesic Cast]] - at a time. Every character has a storyline, and all the storylines are [[Kudzu Plot|hopelessly tangled together]] in space as well as [[Timey-Wimey Ball|in]] [[Anachronic Order|time]]. The [[Loads and Loads of Characters|sheer number of characters]] and [[And Now for Someone Completely Different|tendency to switch the point of view]] [[Cliff Hanger|at inappropriate times]] doesn't help much either.
** As of the End of Act 5, this trope has been more or less turned around. The cast has been divided into three groups: {{spoiler|The Green Sun Team, consisting of Rose, Dave and the surviving trolls, The Scratched Universe Team, with John, Jade, and the refugees of the four planets and Skaia, and the Troll Incipisphere Team, with Jack Noir, PM, and WV. And Serenity.}}
*** And then played straight again with Act 6.
* ''[[Ménage à 3]]'' seems to be headed in this direction...
* ...as is ''[[Something Positive (Webcomic)|Something Positive]]''.
* ''[[Xkcd (Webcomic)|Xkcd]]'' is not an example of this trope, but does attempt to model it [http://xkcd.com/657/ here].
* In [[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|El Goonish Shive]], the Hold On Hope storyline was like this.
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'' finished an arc which was itself part of a bigger arc during which the Toughs were split into four commands; each command got it's own arc, and arcs after the first would occasionally have a caption stating where, temporally, these events were taking place relative to the event that ended the larger meta-arc. It took well over a year, and this is a ''daily comic''.
* ''[[Girl Genius (Webcomic)|Girl Genius]]'' gets like this from time to time, but only maintains B- and C-plots that will tie back into the broader [[Myth Arc]] eventually.
* ''[[The Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'', once the party splits up - we follow Elan, Durkon and Vaarsuvius on the ship with {{spoiler|refugees from Azure City}}, Haley and Belkar {{spoiler|leading the resistance}} in Azure City, Roy {{spoiler|being dead}} and O-Chul {{spoiler|being Redckloak's prisoner}}, not to mention few lesser subplots. The party has since been reunited.
* ''[[Goblins]]'' is following three teams simultaneously - Goblin Adventuring Party (Complains, Ears, Fumbles, Chief and Taco), Human Adventuring Party (Minmax, Forgath and Kin) and party send into the Well of Darkness (Dies Horribly, Saves A Fox, Grem and K'Seliss).
* ''[[Iji (Webcomicwebcomic)|Iji the MSPA Fan Adventure]]'' use this formula for the multiple simultaneous devastating demented sub-plots involving involving secondary characters and crossovers.
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
* The [[Whateley Universe]] is such a [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] 'verse that there are something like two dozen main characters and shedloads of side characters. Even with a new story (or chapter) coming out weekly right now, we can go months and months without seeing a new scene about our favorite character.
* Arguably the low point of the series, ''[[The Descendants]]'' spent two months on a story arc called War Machines, which meandered through various pieces of plot such as Juniper's [[Samaritan Syndrome]], Liedecker's past, the return of some old villains, and a some teasing of the relationship between two characters. It entered head-against wall territory when it turns out that the entire arc was just setting up future arcs. In a series that has taken months to revisit some arcs.
* [[The Nostalgia Chick (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Chick]]'s opinion of ''[[Spice World]]'': "Does it have a plot? No! But it does have at least four subplots, each one more painfully useless than the last." She noted a similar pattern in ''[[The BabysittersBaby Sitters Club]]'' movie.
* [[Equestria Chronicles]] has numerous "permenant" characters as well as quite a few fringe characters who update sporadically.
* [[The Irate Gamer (Web Video)|The Irate Gamer]] seems to be falling into an unfocused plot. In his ''[[Cool Spot (Video Game)|Cool Spot]]'' review, his [[Evil Twin]] manages to steal his Mangavox Odyssey and create robots based on the [[2001: A Space Odyssey (Film)|HAL]] AI in it. The ''[[RoboCop (Film)|Robocop]]'' review sees the return of R.O.B. from his Stack-Up and Gyromite review, this time as an ally who was sent out to destroy the invading HAL robots. His ''[[He-Man and Thethe Masters of Thethe Universe (Animation)|He-Man]]'' review was promoted as the "Robot War Aftermath", but the war was ignored, focusing instead on the Irate Gamer obtaining a "Sword of Inferno" from a monk. His ''[[Silver Surfer]]'' review actually dealt with the aftermath of the robot war, but also introduced an [[Eldritch Abomination]] called the Pixel Demon, which was released after the ''Silver Surfer'' game was beaten.
 
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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{{quote| '''Bender:''' Woo hoo! ''Closure!!!''}}
** "The Prisoner of Benda" follows a similar scheme, when a [[Freaky Friday Flip|mind switching machine]] causes various characters to end up in each other's bodies. The threads connect when characters need to switch bodies (for various reasons) but otherwise run separately until near the end.
* There's a reason ''[[Titanic: theThe Legend Goes On]]'' was such a flop. Some plotlines don't even converge until the [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue|epilogue]], and even then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
* The ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'' episode "Finances with Wolves" has Francine starting a muffin kiosk at the mall, Stan giving Klaus a human body, Hayley caught up in a group of hippies that want to tear down said mall, Steve and his friends seeing a scary werewolf movie, and Roger adopting a wolf that causes trouble for an unsuspecting Steve.
 
{{reflist}}
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