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{{trope}}
Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]s in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
== Subpages ==
{{subpages}}
== Other Examples ==
* ''[[The Honeymooners]]'': One of the most noteworthy sets of "Lost Episodes" belongs to the legendary Jackie Gleason series. Seventy-nine episodes were missing for several decades and thought to be lost ... until they were "recovered" in the mid-1980s (shortly before Gleason's death). Many, but not all of the "Lost 79" have now been recovered.
** Many of the "lost" episodes were produced by the [[DuMont]] Network, which was on the air for a few years in the late 40s and early 50s. Almost all of the [[DuMont]] programming is long lost - in fact, most of the then-surviving reels were dumped in the ocean in the mid- 1970s. Only a handful of shows remain today - a sizable run of ''Life Is Worth Living'' (an early show featuring talks by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the films coming from his private collection), spotty selections of ''Captain Video'' (the first sci-fi television series), ''Rocky King, Detective'', and a few others.
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* ''[[My Three Sons]]'': Although all episodes exist and have been aired, the CBS color episodes spanning the sixth through the first half of the 11th season (1965-early 1971) were for years the only episodes shown in syndication. The ABC black-and-white episodes from 1960-1965, along with the final 1-1/2 color seasons (spring 1971-1972) were included in a second syndication package that was not nearly as widely distributed.
* ''[[I Love Lucy]]'': The legendary CBS comedy starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a Christmas episode, aired in 1956 and never seen again on terrestrial TV ... until December 1989 when it was rebroadcast. Although the episode is in TVLand's library, it is rarely shown.
* ''[[You Can't Do That on Television]]''
** ''You Can't Do That on Television'' was originally a local programme on an Ottawa station. The very first season from 1979
** YTV
**
* A 1971 episode of ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'' was never aired (and probably never will be) because a guest, ''Prevention Magazine'' publisher J.I. Rodale, [[Fatal Method Acting|died of a heart attack during taping]]. The story about the guest's death was told by Cavett himself.
* Many, many, many early [[Soap Opera|Soap Operas]] have episodes that are presumed lost (i.e. ''[[As the World Turns]]'', ''[[Guiding Light]]'', and ''[[Search for Tomorrow]]'') by the producers of the programs (Procter & Gamble for the most part). Most soaps, according to [[The Other Wiki]], began preserving the episodes by 1976 to 1979. However, some soaps already began preserving early episodes prior to that time. For example, ''[[The Young and The Restless]]'' still has all the episodes since its
** Some soaps even have all of their episodes gone. For example, Procter & Gamble erased all the episodes of ''[[Search for Tomorrow]]'''s CBS run.
** Even when episodes survived, [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|good luck seeing any re-runs]]. With few exceptions (such as the odd re-runs of the first two episodes of ''[[Days of Our Lives]]''), soaps aren't re-run anywhere even when the tapes survived.
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** A notable aversion to this is ''[[Steptoe and Son]]'', which has no completely lost episodes. However, the only surviving copies of the seven episodes from the first colour series from 1970 are in black and white.
* British television featured two long-running police dramas in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s - ''[[Dixon of Dock Green]]'' (1955-76) and ''Z Cars'' (1962-78). The vast majority of episodes of both have been wiped (''Dixon'' was hit hardest - out of 430-odd episodes only ''30'' still survive - while around two-fifths of the 800-odd episodes of ''Z Cars'' still exist in some form), which, among other things, means the loss of early television appearances by the likes of Sean Connery and Michael Caine (both of whom appeared in guest roles in (different) episodes of ''Dixon of Dock Green'' in the 1950s before finding fame as film actors).
* Another prominent victim of the BBC's practice of tape-wiping was ''[[Top of the Pops]]''. Most early episodes of TOTP were wiped by the BBC; only four complete episodes exist from the 1960s (one and most of another with the presenter's links mute), and the show's archive only exists in full from 1977 onwards.
** Many of the [[Beatles]]' performances on the programme in the 1960s are lost; ironically, a 25-second clip of a 1965 performance of "Ticket to Ride" on an otherwise lost episode is preserved in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Executioners" (the first episode of the story collectively known as "The Chase"). The scene featuring the Beatles is noteworthy for companion Vicki's surprised reaction to hearing them play "classical music".
* Among the many other mostly lost pop music showcases on 1960s British television is ''Juke Box Jury'', which aired from 1959 to 1967 and featured a panel of guests, often from the pop world themselves, voting on which of a series of new singles would be a "Hit" or a "Miss". One 1963 episode featured all four Beatles on the panel; another from 1964 featured all five members of the Rolling Stones. These episodes were among those lost in the purges, and are high on the BBC's recovery wish list for the programme.
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** Another ''Next Generation'' episode, ''Conspiracy,'' was similarly delayed due to the (rather uncharacteristically) graphic depiction of a man pretty much literally ''exploding,'' guts and all.
** ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' "Masterpiece Society" was not rebroadcast for many years in the United States, just because it wasn't very good.
* While not an entire episode, a scene from one episode of ''[[Three's Company]]'' disappeared in 2001 when, after 17 years, someone noticed that John Ritter inadvertently exposed his scrotum while changing position.
* Since Best Brains failed to license the rights in perpetuity, many episodes of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' can not be rebroadcast now, and indeed may never see the (legal) light of day again (especially the ''[[Godzilla]]'' episodes, due to Toho denying them the rights). Also, the first three episodes and the unaired pilot of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'''s "season zero" (on local [[Twin Cities|Minneapolis]] television station KTMA, before it was picked up by [[Comedy Central|The Comedy Channel]]) do not exist in any private fan collections (though the master tapes do exist; see below).
** Jim Mallon, ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'''s producer, said in an interview that he still has the master tapes of the lost episodes, so they still exist, just not in a form anyone can actually watch (Mallon excepted). Proof of the tapes' existence can be found in the form of high quality videos of some of the host segments which were posted to the Best Brains website, and the unaired pilot has been shown in its entirety during ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' and/or ''[[Cinematic Titanic]]'' panels at the odd convention (at least one such screening was captured on camera by an audience member and posted to YouTube, although anyone seeking an uploaded copy should bear in mind the usual caveats about the dodgy quality (and legality) of bootleg recordings).
** It's widely stated that one of the main reasons why ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' ultimately got bounced from Comedy Central was due to Best Brains not wanting any of the first season episodes to ever re-air on the network, due to them largely disowning the episodes. Best Brains has also stated that they have no intention on releasing the KTMA episodes onto DVD, though this stance has largely softened since the DVD rights have switched to Shout Factory!, who has made a huge push towards increasing the extras on their ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' releases. In particular, they've announced that they will be culling the best "host" segments from the KTMA episodes for a new bonus series that will spotlight the rarely seen "Season 0".
** Many of the unreleased episodes can be viewed in their entirety on [[YouTube]]. However, due to [[YouTube]]'s 10 minute limit, the episodes are posted in parts. The admins over there have taken the odd tactic of pulling different parts of episodes claiming copyright infringement while leaving most of the rest of the episode posted.
*** This may be due to the attitudes of Best Brains ("[[Keep Circulating the Tapes]]", except for the legal releases) as opposed to the copyright holders of the movies mocked on the show.
** The season 9 episode with the film ''[[Gorgo]]'' is notable because it only aired once (technically twice, but the other was just a repeat broadcast later the same day) before rights issues forced Sci-Fi to take it out of rotation.
* Three episodes of ''[[Firefly]]'' were never broadcast and did not see the light of day until the DVD release of the series, and later on [[
* [[ABC Family]] aired a long-lost episode of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]'' from the first season (it got preempted by coverage of the [[Bill Clinton|Lewinsky scandal]]).
** FiveUS in the UK aired a handful of never-before-seen episodes mixed in with their usual reruns a couple years ago. (They're mostly notable because one of them is a Greg/Denny episode--one of the only American episodes ''without'' Wayne.) Since there was only one actual "missing" episode, it's assumed that FiveUS somehow got a hold of the original taping footage and used it to cobble together their own episodes (since a large chunk of episodes were made like that, it's not exactly noticeable). Nobody knows why.
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* The ''[[Married... with Children]]'' third season episode "I'll See You In Court" (which had the Bundys and the Rhoades suing a motel for videotaping couples having sex and using the videos as porno movies for other couples who check in) was banned due to pressure from Terry Rakolta (the mom from Michigan who protested against the show's crude and sexual humor after seeing the season three episode "Her Cups Runneth Over"), which wasn't aired until June 2002.
** This episode was advertised in the DVD release as "never before shown episode"; of course, the DVD was released in 2005, years after the fact. Especially hilarious since this marketing lie was copied verbatim for the Region 2 release -- where the episode was shown in regular syndication, ''over a decade'' before the DVD release.
* A conspiracy theory holds that abbreviated seasons of TV shows (i.e., early cancellations) are becoming more common because season-collection DVD sales are pretty brisk for sets that have multiple unaired episodes. ''[[Firefly]]'', ''[[Wonderfalls]]'', and ''[[Day Break]]'' are all cited as possible evidence, with the success of ''[[Firefly]]'' DVDs as the instigating factor. It seems plausible, at least until you realize that the people who cancel the shows and the people who profit from DVD sales are usually not one and the same.
* The third-season ''[[The Man from U.N.C.L.E.]]'' episode "The Pieces of Fate Affair", written by [[Harlan Ellison]], was hardly ever seen in syndication for many years, because of concerns about possible lawsuits over unflattering parodies of various literary figures in that episode.
* George Lucas has said that he will do his best to make sure the ''[[Star Wars Holiday Special]]'' is never seen again, anywhere, and that he would happily destroy every last copy if he could. But while the special will likely never have an "official" Lucasfilm re-release, it is very widely available from unofficial sources.
* An episode of ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'', in which female student Manny goes to have an abortion at the end of an episode after discussing it with her boyfriend and parents, was not shown on the 'N' Channel during its original broadcast run (on CTV in Canada). It was only due to fan pressure that the episode was added to the channel's rotation. In a similar vein, a sequence from the premiere of the original Degrassi High, in which student Erica goes to have an abortion, and pushes through angry protesters at an abortion clinic with her sister, was not shown after its original airing on television.
** Although the DTNG episode about Manny's abortion is now in rotation in the US, it's usually shown during the late night hours.
** The first season final, in which Ashley takes ecstasy and kisses Sean, was skipped over in Australia and the US. This caused confusion the following season.
* Two episodes of ''[[Seinfeld]]'' were lost from the show's syndication run until 2002. One, "The Invitations," was pulled due to the death of Susan by toxic envelope glue being too close to the anthrax scare shortly after September 11. The other, "The Puerto Rican Day," was pulled because of a scene where Kramer accidentally burns the Puerto Rican flag. The episode aired once on network and was not seen again on television for four years. But after a few years it was quietly removed from the syndication package again.
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* [[Max Headroom]] was cancelled with 3 completed episodes left unaired. 2 were shown 6 months later when a writers' strike left a shortage of new programming, while the last episode had to wait until the Sci-Fi Channel showed the series 8 years later.
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' had one of the most stunning examples of this: a lost ''season premiere.'' The last episode of season two was supposed to end with {{spoiler|the virus being released}}, but the Writer's Strike stopped that. But not until they filmed the first episode of the ''third'' season. They started over from scratch, but the episode is still out there somewhere.
* ''[[Friends]]'' had an episode that had to be scrapped and reshot after 9/11 -- about to leave on their honeymoon, Chandler and Monica get stopped in airport security when Chandler jokes that he has a bomb in his luggage. The two are dragged off to have their luggage searched, jokes about underwear ensue. The episode was reshot with Chander and Monica trying to sneak into the superior private lounge (or something like that) at the airport. The original storyline never aired.
** The scenes that were reshot were eventually made available on Youtube.
* Many of the early episodes of ''[[The Tonight Show]] Starring Johnny Carson'', including his first episode as host, were lost due to tape reuse.
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* ''[[The Prisoner]]'' episode "Living in Harmony" was not broadcast in its original American run on CBS due to its plot, which involved Six rejecting a call to arms. It was felt that, with an active draft for Vietnam, which many had protested and sought to escape, it probably wasn't a good idea to show it. An explanation offered at the time was the use of mind-altering drugs to a far greater degree than elsewhere in the series (the call to arms is presented through a "waking hallucination"). In all later runs, the episode has been shown in its correct place.
* The ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episodes "Miniatures", "Sounds and Silences", and "A Small Drink From a Certain Fountain" were caught up in litigation over possible plagiarism when the series was first put into syndication. The lawsuits were eventually settled, but the episodes vanished for decades.
** "The Encounter", which starred Neville Brand and George Takei, is one of the others, but not because of possible plagiarism. Takei played a Japanese-American man, whose father had been a traitor to the U.S., during [[World War II]]. It provoked an angry reaction from the Japanese-American community and was not rebroadcast or included in syndication.
* The ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Earshot", about Buffy trying to find out who's behind a plan to kill every Sunnydale High student and climaxing with Jonathan taking a rifle to the school clocktower, was quite understandably pulled when the Columbine Massacre happened four days before it was to air. Somewhat less justifiable is that season's finale was delayed for the same reason. Was a giant snake monster really hitting too close to home?
** It probably had more to do with the episode having high school students {{spoiler|rig their school with explosives and blow it up}}.
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** Oddly enough, [[Uncanceled|there will be another series]], so perhaps this was a way of campaigning the network for a full series order...
* ''[[Tru Calling]]'s'' final episode wasn't aired on the original broadcast, but it was shown when the series was being rebroadcast on The Sci-Fi Channel.
* ''[[JAG]]'' has a unique example of this in "Skeleton Crew", the last episode produced for the show's first season and a [[Cliff Hanger]]. While the episode was completed, NBC didn't air it and ultimately cancelled the series. CBS [[
** Of note, "Skeleton Crew" centered around an investigation into the death of an old flame of Harm's, Dianne Schonke, played in that episode by Catharine Bell. When she joined the cast as Major Sarah Mackenzie in season 2, the fact that she resembled Harm's old acquaintance was referenced, and later became a plot point in "Death Watch".
{{quote|
'''*flashback to [[Zipping Up the Bodybag|Dianne's bodybag being closed]]*'''<br />
'''Harm:''' Not anymore. }}
* The final episode of [[Dollhouse]]'s first season was not aired on TV during the initial run. The FOX network paid for 13 episodes and counted the unaired original pilot as one of them and did not wish to show a 14th episode. However, 20th Century Fox, the show's producers, had DVD contracts requiring 13 episodes, so Whedon created "Epitaph One". Oddly, it is considered one of the best episodes in the series and is quite possibly the reason the show got a second season. It was eventually aired as between seasons one and two. It was shown as the season one finale internationally.
** The original pilot episode has also never been aired.
* ''[[VR
* Thirteen episodes of ''[[Wonderfalls]]'' were produced, but the show was cancelled after four episodes. All thirteen are on the DVD release.
* A strange version of this is the [[Eurovision Song Contest]]. Depending on who you ask, the 1964 edition, which took place in Copenhagen, is lost due to an archive mishap at the Danish broadcaster's, or has never been shown again because of a Spanish anti-Franco protester showing up near the end. There are bits of it that are still shown, including the winner's reprise by Gigliola Cinquetti.
* Parodied in ''[[Mr. Show]] with Bob And David''; at the beginning of the episode, the hosts declare to the audience that the episode being filmed is intended to be the "lost episode" of the series, which will be trotted out years later to much fanfare. At the end of the episodeBob and David give the only tape of the episode to a uniformed security guard, who walks outside and tosses the tape into outer space in a ''2001'' parody.
* If the [[
* The first 20 stories of ''[[Ace Of Wands]]'' are missing.
* At least two episodes of ''[[Home and Away]]'' have never been seen in the UK. One involved the students of Summer Bay High being confronted by gunmen and ITV felt it was [[Too Soon]] after a similar incident in Ireland. Another banned episode involved Duncan making a bomb.
* Hardly anyone has seen the earliest examples of the wildly popular Mexican sitcom [[El Chavo
* When rerunning ''[[Cagney and Lacey]]'', Lifetime omitted the first season episodes featuring Meg Foster as Cagney. The first DVD release does likewise, labeling the second season (featuring Sharon Gless as Cagney) as the first season.
* A lot of early Japanese television shows from NHK are lost. To give an example, there was a popular children's puppet show that ran for 8 years (from 1956 to '64) called "Chirorin Mura to Kurumi no Ki" (Chirorin Village and the Chestnut Tree). There were over 800 episodes produced. Of those episodes, how many survive? No more than four, from the show's final year. Another puppet show, "Hyokkori Hyotanjima" (ran daily from 1964-1969), has a bulk of its series lost, too, with only eight (out of 1,224) episodes surviving. Years later, in the early 1990s they tried remaking the missing episodes using the original puppets and any actors still alive at the time.
* ''[[Sesame Street]]'' has a few of these. For example, the ''unaired'' episode unoffically known as "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce".
** The full story is [http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Snuffy%27s_Parents_Get_a_Divorce here].
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i51DU_rj4BE&feature=fvst The infamous clip] of a [[Stripperific|scantily-clad]] [[Katy Perry]] singing a [[Bowdlerised]] version of "Hot n Cold" with Elmo.
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* The 1983 "Conflict" episodes of ''[[Mister Rogers' Neighborhood]]'' were originally created to help children cope with the war-related themes of ''[[The Day After]]'' miniseries, but were deemed inappropriate to air after 1996 due to real-life wars happening. This week has not been released on Amazon.com, unlike most of the 1979-2001 episodes. Interestingly, it did re-air once--following 9/11, [[Too Soon|ironically enough]].
* The television version of ''[[Hancock's Half Hour]]'' ran for seven series from 1956 to 1961 for a total of 63 episodes, of which 26 are lost. The first four series were broadcast live and only occasionally captured on telerecordings if a technician or actor wanted a viewable copy; the first series is completely lost, while only one episode from the second series<ref> (the only surviving television episode to feature Kenneth Williams)</ref> and five each from the third and fourth were preserved. Off-air audio recordings exist of a further six episodes from the fourth series. The remaining three series were pre-recorded on videotape and survive in their entirety. See [[Missing Episode/Radio|Radio]] for the radio episodes lost.
* For some reason, ITV does not air these episodes of ''[[Police, Camera, Action!]]'' (year of episode airing in brackets):
** ''Police Stop!'' (also full unedited version of ''Danger Drivers Ahead!'' from 1994 pilot version of series)
** ''Helicops'' (1995, but the 2007 episode of the same title ''does'' get aired. Never happens to the episode ''Safety Last'' which was part of the 1995 series, and the original 1995 episode does get aired, as well as the unrelated 2007 series episode).
** ''Don't Look Back In Anger'' -- uncontroversial road-safety episode from November 1997, rarely if-ever aired.
** ''Learning the Hard Way'' -- series finale of 1998 series, last seen on ITV 17th January 1999, but not aired since then.
** ''Danger Ahead'' -- from the 2000 series, but bizarrely never aired in syndication. Last aired on ITV 7th August 2000
** ''Ford'' (alternate title ''The Fords'') -- last seen on ITV 7 January 2002 but never aired since then.
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* "Bored She Hung Herself", a 1970 ''[[Hawaii Five-O]]'' episode about a deadly yoga technique that bears more than a passing resemblance to [[Erotic Asphyxiation]], has been banned since its original broadcast, allegedly because a viewer accidentally died while imitating the technique. The episode was never syndicated, and it's not included on the second season DVD box set.
** 20 years later in Japan, popular anime show Sazae-san had to remove a skit involving the main character doing a dangerous stunt involving a bean that appeared at the end of each episode and replace it with another one after a child almost died imitating the stunt, in a similar fashion to this incident. More info on this can be seen in Anime and Manga.
* ''[[
** It's reaired in the US, but very rarely. Also very rarely airing is [[Green Aesop|iGo Nuclear]].
* ''[[Neighbours]]'' episode 4175 was accidentally skipped over when aired in Australia. It was later shown in New Zealand and the UK.
* A number of ''[[Iron Chef]]'' episodes are now considered missing, namely the Ishinabe and Nakamura era battles, due to Food Network not dubbing those episodes for some arbitrary reason. (The most likely explanation is they stopped because they got the go-ahead to do Iron Chef America.) Sadly, this includes the Beijing Special, where four chefs of different Chinese cuisines go head to head in the Forbidden City. There's a website dedicated to finding copies of these missing episodes from VCR copies.
* In the episode "Koi Pond" of ''[[The Office]]'', the cold open featured Michael pretending to hang himself in the office's haunted warehouse in front of several children. This scene was cut in subsequent re-airings and was surprisingly absent from the DVD release.
* ''[[Masters of Horror]]'' episode "Imprint" was never aired in the U.S., due to rampant [[Squick]]. It did get released on DVD.
* The last season of ''[[Get Smart]]'' was pulled from a majority of television circulations after a dispute over the copyrights (after the season was canceled by NBC and picked up by CBS)
* 12 live action segments for ''[[The Super Mario Bros Super Show]]'' went missing from DVD releases, apparently over legal reasons. Several of the missing segments (''9001: A Mario Odyssey'', ''Baby Mario Love'', and ''Texas Tea'') were later reinstated on the internet.
** After the show ended its circulation run in 1991, DIC ordered almost all of the ''Club Mario'' reprints (excepting "The Unzappables", which later was picked up by internet distributor Hulu and iTunes) destroyed. Most of the destroyed segments are available for viewing on [[YouTube]]. You can see one [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEwIyV-4uRI here].
* For almost forever, fans of the 1966 ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' TV series have been waiting for a proper DVD release. Much of the reason for the wait is a countless amount of disputes between Fox (the producers and copyright holders for the show), DC Comics (owners of the Batman comic book character), and probably co-producer Greenway Productions. Other issues may include clearances for the many celebrity cameos, music, or even the unique design of the show's Batmobile. The above issues mainly seem to affect "new media," as the show is still available for traditional syndication, and currently shown on cable's ''The Hub''.
* When Japan aired ''[[The Monkees]]'' TV show, they made two additional special episodes appropriately titled "The Monkees In Japan" (parts 1 and 2), which highlighted the Monkees' visit and concert in their country. The episodes aired only in Japan, and were shown only once, on October 11 and 18, 1968 respectively. The episodes have not been aired, in Japan or anywhere else, since. The video footage from both parts is thought to be lost, however a low-quality recorded audio track from portions of the episodes still survive, and is known among fans as the bootleg CD ''Made In Japan''.
* Much of ''[[Square One TV]]'', ''[[3-2-1 Contact]]'', and many other PBS shows from the 70's and 80's. Only a handful of episodes were released to VHS, and no full episodes have been posted on [[YouTube]] so far. [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|Good luck finding tapes]].
* When [[Nickelodeon]] in the UK screened ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'', they were happy not only to cut episodes in its 6pm Sunday slot but also to drop the odd episode, most notably "The Big One" (in which Paris loses her virginity, fails to get into Harvard, and has a meltdown live on C-SPAN as a result of the latter). Unsurprisingly the channel dropped the show itself after the first three seasons.
* Due to its 6pm Wednesday slot, [[Channel 4]] screened all but one episode of ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' ("Weekend," in which Rayanne handcuffs herself to the Chases' bed). The series was only repeated once (in an even ''earlier'' slot) and has never been shown on British television since.
* A majority of episodes from ''[[The Jack Benny Program]]'' are missing. Out of 257 episodes (by the [[IMDb]]'s count), about 30 have survived and slipped into the public domain (and thus released often from multiple home-video sources.) CBS owns the masters for about 25 additional episodes (also believed to have lapsed into the public domain), but thus far has refused to release them or to allow access to third parties.
* The ''[[Eerie, Indiana]]'' episode "Heart On A Chain" was never rerun when the show was syndicated on Fox Kids (it's unclear whether it was ever run when syndicated on The Disney Channel). It is, however, available on DVD.
* Much like the ''Buffy'' example above, an episode of ''[[Bones]]'' was pulled because the plot included a boy being killed on a college campus, and it was set to air right after a similar, high-profile event in real life. It was eventually aired later in the season, but some of the side plots, such as Hodgins {{spoiler|proposing to Angela and being rejected}}, were cut because they didn't fit the show's established timeline.
* Similarly, ''[[Leverage]]'' pulled ''The Mile High Job'', which was set on a plane and devoted much of its comedy to making fun or water landings after the Miracle on the Hudson. The episode was later aired in its original form after the media frenzy had died down.
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* The Dutch TV Series ''Pension Hommeles'' and ''Ja Zuster Nee Zuster'' from the late 50s launched (or reinforced) the career of many Dutch singer/actors. The songs were written by Annie M.G. Schmidt and several amongst them are considered to be classics. Unfortunately most of the original tapes of the series were lost in the intervening decades, and the first episodes of ''Pension Hommeles'' were broadcast live so there were never tapes of it in the first place.
* The [[Nickelodeon]] original movie ''[[Cry Baby Lane]]'' aired on the night of October 28th, 2000, was deemed so excessively scary that it was never re-aired or released on home video. The network officially denied the thing ever existed, leading many to wonder if the entire concept was a Creepy Pasta taken to the next level. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OwcQRYoV0U#at=35 A full version has been found] and uploaded to [[YouTube]], however.
** After years of denying its existence, [[Teen Nick]] finally re-aired the movie on October 31, 2011 as part of its late-night block [[The 90s Are All That]].
* The [[Miami Vice]] episode "Too Much Too Late" was not aired on NBC because of the controversial child-molestation storyline, though it was later aired on USA network,
* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' has a few episodes that have only aired once and were either never seen at all (or in full) after that point:
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* ''[[The A-Team]]'' gave us "Without Reservations", which was meant to be the second-to-last episode of the series, but was lost and never aired in syndication. It was found a few years later and aired as the last episode during reruns. It continues to be listed (on the DVD sets, Netflix, etc.) as the last episode, but it is canonically the second-to-last. Murdock's t-shirts (which read "Almost Fini" in this one and "Fini" in "The Grey Team"), as well as [[And the Adventure Continues...|their conversation]] at the end of "The Grey Team" both make it pretty clear that "The Grey Team" takes place some time after "Without Reservations."
* Unlike virtually every [[Disney Channel]] Original Movie, the 9/11-centric ''[[Tiger Cruise]]'' is hardly ever shown on the channel (while this is a given for older DCOMs, it applied to this one almost from the start) and it would seem has never been screened internationally (certainly not in Britain) - and although two of its stars have become better known since then, it hasn't gotten any kind of physical release (it wouldn't even be a case of [[Billing Displacement]] to prominently display [[Hayden Panettiere]] on the cover, since she does in fact star in the film. [[Jennette McCurdy]] as her sister, on the other hand...).
* The local versions of ''[[Romper Room]]'' have mostly disappeared, the master tapes having been erased and reused by station managers years ago.
* In a particularly sad example of [[Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things]], the series ''Winchell-Mahoney Time'' (1965–1968) featured what was regarded as some of the best work of the famed ventriloquist and comedian [[Paul Winchell]]. In 1988, Winchell was involved in a dispute with the studio about the rights to the syndication of the 288 surviving tapes. The studio responded by vindictively ''erasing all the tapes.'' Winchell proceeded to sue them for a whopping $17.8 million, but the damage was done forever.
* The "Klansmen" episode of ''[[The Professionals]]'' has never been screened on British terrestrial television - not in the show's original run due to its questionable content, and not in any subsequent runs (with the exception of a 1997 airing on the now-defunct Superchannel, it's also never been shown on UK cable television). However, this episode ''has'' aired overseas.
* [[NASA]] and the [[wikipedia:Apollo 11 missing tapes|Apollo 11 missing tapes]]. ("To the moon, Alice, [[The Honeymooners|to the moon!]]") The raw video from the Apollo moonwalk was in a reduced-quality, incompatible slow-scan TV format. Plenty of copies of the screenshots which went out to the world survive, but the SSTV originals?
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