Halfway Plot Switch: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[Funny People]]'' was advertised as a funny yet touching story of a famous comedian coming to terms with the value of his own life when he's diagnosed with a deadly disease. About halfway through the film, however, he's cured, and he spends the rest of the film getting entangled in a romance with his married ex-girlfriend.

* ''[[From Dusk till Dawn]]'' starts off as a crime-thriller about a pair of brothers on the lam who kidnap a family. Halfway through, they stumble into a slapstick-gore film with vampires. The second sequel rehashing the plot switch structure with a [[The Western|western]] with a post carriage theft plot preceding the horror.

* ''The Cottage'', a British movie begins as a black comedy about a bungled kidnapping before turning into a dark horror comedy about a Leatherface-type slasher killer half way through. Presumably it was inspired by ''From Dusk Til Dawn''.

* The classic ''[[Predator]]'' starts with Arnie Schwarzenegger trying with his fellow soldiers to save an US politician from a band of South American terrorists. After he discovers that this was just an excuse to save some Black OPS agents, this plot is conveniently thrown out of the window when an alien with an explosive plasma [[Shoulder Cannon]] and a [[Visible Invisibility|cloaking device]] begins [[Hunting the Most Dangerous Game|hunting them]]. Unlike some other examples, this wasn't a surprise to original audiences, and the film begins with something falling to Earth from space.

* ''Miracle Mile'' {{spoiler|What looks like an indie romance-comedy suddenly takes a right turn when it looks like the world is going to end.}}

* ''When the Cat's Away''/''Chacun cherche son chat'' {{spoiler|like the Simpsons badger example above- the missing cat just wanders back into the movie and is found, but the plot keeps going.}}

* ''[[Mad Max]]'': Beyond Thunderdome starts off as a typical post-apocalyptic action flick until Max is brought to the Oasis. Suddenly, the whole situation in Barter Town is left behind, and the theme changes to something akin to the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. Only when Max and the kids reach the Barter Town Underground are the two plots combined.

 

** Most of [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s longer stories tend to have this structure to some extent, though not quite as tenuous.

* ''[[The Winter's Tale|The Winters Tale]]'', by [[William Shakespeare]], consists of a first half that is tragedy, and a second half that is comedy. Much scholarly ink has been spilled over the exact relationship of the two parts. (Either way, '[[Everything's Worse with Bears|Exit pursued by a bear]]' is around where the shift happens.)

* ''[[Realm of the Elderlings|The Tawny Man trilogy]]'' starts out with a book about prince Dutiful's abduction by the Piebalds, with his upcoming betrothal to an Outislander princess a background detail. The Outislands plotline becomes more prominent in the second book and completely makes up the third book, while the Piebald storyline becomes less prominent and is ultimately resolved off-page in the third book.

 

* This happens frequently in ''[[ER]],'' when a character-oriented episode will be interrupted by a large-scale medical emergency which will provide the drama for the rest of the episode.

* In episode 24 of ''[[Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger]]'' Umeko interrogated an alien about a bomb; then the rest of the episode was about the alien, and they only picked it up at the end.

* The plot of ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'', where Decade is the destroyer of worlds, is outlined in the first episode. The rest of the series is about Tsukasa visiting alternate Rider worlds and solving their problem of the week, all the while wondering why people think he's the "destroyer of worlds." We don't actually get back to that plot until the last episodes and the second movie. The first movie and some of the last episodes didn't exactly help as they introduced a new plot in the form of Dai-Shocker.

 

* [[Tom Lehrer]]'s song ''Poisoning Pigeons in the Park'' starts out as your typical ballad about the wonders of spring... and then in the first chorus suddenly moves on to being about, well, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|poisoning pigeons in the park]].

** Also ''I Hold Your Hand In Mine'' which starts out like a regular love song but then reveals that {{spoiler|the hand isn't attached to her body}}.

* The first half of Laserdance's 1995 album ''The Guardian of Forever'' is the same style as the previous two albums, but halfway through it undergoes a total [[Genre Shift]] to tech-trance.

 

* ''[[FoxTrot]]'' uses this sometimes.

** One 1995 story had Jason entering a chess contest with Roger and wins $50, thus turning the story into Jason using the money to taunt his siblings. Then, the plot shifts to Jason spending all his money on 5,000 gumballs, which he eats all in one weekend. THEN, the plot shifts to Jason getting his first cavity as a result of eating all the gumballs, before finally leading up to Jason's first dentist visit.

* A [[Heart of the City]] seven-week arc started with Dean mourning the end of [[Star Wars]], and ended with Heart dreaming she was in summer school. It starts [http://www.gocomics.com/heartofthecity/2006/04/10 here].

 

* "Buck Buck", one of [[Bill Cosby]]'s routines from his stand-up days. The first half is about Buck Buck, a game in which one group of kids gets jumped on by another and tries not to fall down (Bill's team is good on defense, but their real secret weapon is Fat Albert). It then segues into a story about young Cosby and Fat Albert getting scared by their friends with the help of a Frankenstein statue. Originated the line "I told you that story to tell you this one", which has become a stock phrase sometimes used as a [[Lampshade Hanging]].

 

* Fantasy Games Unlimited's ''Year of the Phoenix''. The players are told to create astronaut characters for a science fiction/space game. Partway through the first adventure the game suddenly changes to an [[After the End]] saga in Soviet controlled America 200 years later.

 

* The play ''[[Done to Death]]''. Act 1 is all about meeting the 5 lead characters and setting up their writing styles and the show's fantasy sequences. Then there is a sudden death at the end of Act 1. Act 2 is then all about solving the murders.

 

* The mother of them all, ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2''. The player spends roughly the first two hours playing as Solid Snake, the protagonist from the previous game. Then the plot moves forward two years, to a different location, with the player in control of an entirely new character (ambiguously implied to be Snake for the first few minutes) for the rest of the game. The game's creator, Hideo Kojima, went out of his way to minimise the risk of anyone seeing this twist coming.. [[Broken Base|Some thought the twist was brilliant. Some wanted Kojima's head on a stake]].

* ''[[Guild Wars]] Prophecies'' starts of as the story of a war between the human kingdom of Ascalon and the Charr that's not going well for Ascalon. You leave Ascalon after the fourth mission, and most of the rest of the story is about a religious war in rival kingdom Kryta. After the first few quests in Kryta, Ascalon and its refugees are only occasionally mentioned, and even then only in passing. (Ascalon's King Adelbern [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades this in the endgame area]]: ''"Maybe now that you are finished with this nonsense, you can come back to Ascalon and help deal with the filthy Charr infestation."'') To be fair, it does all tie together pretty well from a [[Myth Arc]] perspective.

* ''[[Dark Souls]]'' starts out implying that the player is trying to cure the Darksign, but halfway through the game after ringing the Twin Bells of Awakening, the story switches from focusing curing undeath and instead about an [[Ancient Conspiracy]] and the [[Forever War]] regarding the First Flame. This event even has its own [[Sacrificial Lion]].

 

* When it began, ''[[Ciem Webcomic Series|Ciem]]'' was about how Candi was different from other girls. Then, it was about her sister being murdered. Then, it was about her going to college. [[Random Events Plot|Then]], trying to find love. [[Overly Long Gag|Then]], it was about her sexual frustrations. Then it was about some guy in a shrew costume murdering everyone. Then, it was about her finding true love again. ''Ciem 2'' is about [[What Happened to the Mouse?|where Miriam's been hiding the whole time]]. The plot changes at least as many times as she changes hairstyles.

* In the popular ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', an entire story arc (part 2 in a 4-part mega-arc) is based on this storytelling format, to the extent that it is called "I Told You That Story So I Could Tell You This One". The stories concerned are the titular main character's dilemma when every person he ever killed returns as a zombie to plague him, which leads into an exploration of his family and his sidekick's family when he leaves his sidekick to stay with them instead of bothering him.

* ''[[YU+ME: dream]]''. Goes from a very typical [[Coming Out Story]] about a girl named Fiona who goes to a Catholic high school and falls in love with another girl called Lia, to {{spoiler|finding out that it was [[All Just a Dream|all a dream]], Lia is 900 years old, has been captured by the Queen of Dreams and now Fiona, a bear called Mrs Butterfield, a woman with a removable head, Fiona's conscience, a blue haired girl called Clandestine, and a bisexual male called Don must travel through Fiona's dreams to get her back.}} You... you have to read it to wrap your head around it.

 

* [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]]'s review of ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' starts with a normal review of the Wizard and SMB 3... until he starts pointing out satanic references in the game. After that... well... let's just say that all hell breaks loose. ''Literally''.

* ''[[Bonus Stage]]'' did this constantly.

 

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' is to this trope what ''[[Family Guy]]'' is to [[Cutaway Gag|Manatee Gags]], and listing all the examples would be pointless for the same reason. But here are some highlights:

** The [[Lampshade Hanging]] page quote comes from the episode "Simpson Safari", just as the family is about to go over Victoria Falls in southern Africa.

* ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]: School's Out [[Musical Episode|The Musical]]'' switches plots, like, four or five times. It starts out about Timmy on summer vacation...okay, then it's about his parents trying to send him to a boring camp, that's still related...but wait, now it's about kid's ruling the world? And ''now'' it's about the Pixies taking over Fairyworld? And half of it's about some business guy who's [[Non-Ironic Clown|actually a clown]]? ''[[Mind Screw|What?]]''

* ''[[Sonic Underground]]'' used and invoked this in "Wedding Bell Blues." Since Queen Aleena didn't show for her forced marriage to Robotnik, they'll instead crown Sonia queen in her stead—with Robotnik as the real power.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Plots]]