Halfway Plot Switch: Difference between revisions

* The [[Alfred Hitchcock]] classic [[The Birds]] starts out as a romance and then shifts gears about half way through the movie, turning into a horror movie about the titular animals.

** Probably not at all unexpected by the audience, since they had that "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock" credit to tip them off.

** AND it certainly applies to ''[[Vertigo]]'' too

* The Paul Giamatti film ''Win Win'' starts out as a comedy about high school wrestling with Giamatti coaching a young wrestling prodigy...then {{spoiler|the kid's mother shows up and the second half becomes a drama about a battle over an estate}}. It still works though due to Giamatti and Tom Mc Carthy's direction.

** ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' is arguably the same thing in reverse.

* ''Double Image'' by David Morrell - A photographer takes pics of something in Bosnia that really pisses off a Big Bad. As soon as that plot line is resolved, said photographer becomes obsessed over a mysterious woman in some pictures he finds.

* [[Sidney Sheldon]]'s ''If Tomorrow Comes'' is divided into three "books". Books One and Two, which take up a little over a third of the novel, tell the tale of Tracy Whitney's horrifying [[Break the Cutie]] experience when she's framed by the Mafia for a robbery and wounding, and how gets her revenge on the guilty parties. In Book Three, her struggle to make an honest living while paroled from prison leads to her becoming a [[Classy Cat Burglar]] who finds herself matching wits not only with European authorities but a fellow con artist. The main nemesis is an insurance investigator who briefly met up with her in Book One as part of his investigation of the false crimes; he becomes obsessed with tracking her down when his employer is besieged with claims for things she's stolen.

* Very much so in "Brainjack", where the beginning is about a [[The Cracker|Cracker]] who ends up being hired by a government White-Hat hacker group after hacking the White House and a major telecommunications provider for a neuro-headset. The plot then brutally murders its previous self and becomes about a group of the hackers trying to subvert the neuro-headsets' [[Hive Mind]] from destroying them. Can also be considered a [[Malignant Plot Tumor]].

*** In the end, the key to defeating the new threat is in how Rimmer dealt with imprisonment.

* ''Father Ted'' 's "A Christmassy Ted" starts off being about the characters getting prepared for Christmas, which involves getting lost in the largest lingerie section in Ireland. Halfway through the plot changes to being about Ted being eligible for a Golden Cleric award. Graham Linehan has admitted the plots would have worked better as separate episodes.

* The two-part finale of the second season of ''[[3rd Rock From the Sun]]'' is about the aliens experiencing dreams for the first time (with elaborate, [[Three Dimensional Episode|Three Dimensional]] [[Dream Sequence|Dream Sequences]]) and thinking they're going mad. This ends up as a season-ending [[Cliff Hanger]] in which Sally, Tommy, and Harry have left Earth without Dick. When they return at the start of the next season, they've brought another alien (Roseanne Barr) who has been assigned Dick's wife by the Big Giant Head. The rest of the two-part season premiere is about this storyline. So essentially, it's a four-part episode in which the first two parts are about something completely different than the concluding two parts.

* 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.

* Two animated shorts from ''[[House of Mouse]]'' starring [[Goofy]] are like this: One short, called "How to be a Waiter", is actually about Goofy becoming an actor as a result of him being tired of being a waiter (ironically, at the end of the short, it's revealed that the first character Goofy played in his entire film career is yes, a waiter), while another, called "How to Wash Dishes", is actually about Goofy using a credit card to go on vacation as a result of him being tired of washing dishes. However, at the end of the short, Goofy uses up his entire credit card money, and as a result he had to [[Work Off the Debt|make up the lost money by yes, washing dishes]].

* ''[[Tom and Jerry The Movie]]'' starts off as an hour-and-a-half long ''[[Tom and Jerry (Animation)|Tom and Jerry]]'' cartoon. But when Puggsy shows up, things start to go downhill...

** Most of the rest of the plot is about helping a [[Heartwarming Orphan]] escape her [[Rich Bitch]] aunt and find her long-lost [[Adventurer Archaeologist]] father.

* ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]: 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?]]''

[[Category:Plots]]

[[Category:Halfway Plot Switch]]