Plot Tumor: Difference between revisions

 

Compare: [[Adaptation Decay]], [[Flanderization]], [[Romantic Plot Tumor]], [[Never Live It Down]], and [[Motive Decay]]. A [[Malignant Plot Tumor]] is the single-plot counterpart, where a minor plot at the beginning crowds out the other plots at the climax. Contrast [[Adaptation-Induced Plothole]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** The mystical aspects of the game has also become this; originally just a bunch of dark magic from Ancient Egypt that the game's creator was tricked into bringing back through the game, it eventually evolved into an entire ''series'' of [[Alternate Dimension]]s full of monsters, and eventually into a power that's [[Older Than They Think]] and is part of ''the Earth itself''.

* [[Ki Attacks]] and powering up in ''[[Dragonball Z]]''. At the beginning of the original Dragonball, there were no [[Ki Attacks]], and the first of them, the [[Kamehame Hadoken|Kamehameha]], didn't appear until the middle of the first arc. Even then it sort of the trump card, and wasn't played terribly often. As the series progressed though, the KameHameHa became a more standard attack, and Ki Attacks became more and more prominent. Then DBZ came along and it became the main premise behind practically everything the fighters did. They could fly, teleport, power up, etc., all based on Ki manipulation. [[Ki Attacks]] eventually led to [[Beam Spam]], and the ability to power up that was introduced early in DBZ became the method by which nearly every [[Big Bad]] but the last one was defeated, by digging just a little deeper and becoming just a bit more powerful.

* More or less the same thing has happened to ''[[Bleach]]'', with the early substitute shinigami stories fading into endless tournament-like fight arcs.

** Given the amount of panels and empty surrounding space they receive, the speech bubbles themselves have been ballooning into strangling whatever plot they were supposed to be driving, extending any event by months or even years. Plot carcinogen?

 

== Comic Books ==

*** [[Lampshaded]] in an issue of Superman/Batman where Superman is almost accidentally killed because it was cheaper for a film company to use real kryptonite rather than make a prop.

* ''[[X-Men]]'' has dined out for years on the idea of [[Fantastic Racism|prejudice against mutants]] - to the point where its the major thread of nearly every adaptation and any attempts to even ''tone down'' "Mutant Hysteria" (much less eliminate it) have been swiftly written out. When it was first conceived, anti-mutant prejudice was based on fears of mutant supremacy: that mutants like Magneto would eradicate/replace normal humans as the next stage in evolution, especially since anyone's child could be a mutant. As currently written, the [[Fantastic Racism]] is apparently so ingrained that it's become even stronger in the face of the mutant population being [[Brought Down to Normal]] in the Decimation arc.

** One might also look at [[Wolverine Publicity|the entire character of Wolverine as a Plot Tumor]]. Moving from a loner and a minor member of the team till gradually we find that he is the main character of the movie series (with the team leader gone for nearly two entire films), and his name in the title of a new series.

** Another Plot Tumor could be the whole idea of the mutant hunting robots, the Sentinels. The anti-mutant groups have no problem with gigantic robots, filled to the brim with all weapons of mass destruction, roaming the world in search of mutants and not stopping till they found even a mutant or mutants with the power of, oh say, glow in the dark, and destroying everything and everyone in the way until said mission is done?

** This happens to a lot of heroes with power sources that can be even remotely anthropomorphized, with the power source becoming used in more and more story elements instead of just being left in the background. For example, a lot of recent [[Shazam|Marvel Family]] stories are more about the Wizard and/or the gods who empower Captain Marvel and less about the Captain himself, [[Green Lantern]] comics are frequently dominated by the Guardians and Lantern politics rather than heroics, and [[Animal Man]] eventually started drowning in "the Red" (which eventually led to Animal Man ditching superheroics completely in favor of animal activism).

* In one issue of ''[[The Authority]]'' Swift has a one night stand with Grunge from ''[[Gen 13]]''. Later this become source of drama between Grunge and his girlfriend in ''[[Gen 13]]''.

 

== Film ==

* When Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet, then character on her sit-com, ''[[Ellen]]'', did the same. It had been stated that the show would continue normally and that her being gay would not take over the show. However, in the fifth and final season, half the episodes focus on it.

* The surreal comedy episodes of ''[[The X-Files]]'' became the series' plot tumour in the sixth season especially. Whereas previously there'd been two or three per season that were refreshing escapes from the show's usually dark and disturbing subject matter, it was a bit much to get a silly comedy episode every single week. (The other perspective was that this was a relief from the conspiracy arc that [[The Chris Carter Effect|didn't seem to know where it was going]], but that's a matter of fan opinion.)

 

 

== Machinima ==

 

 

*** Incidentally, [http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/BrainBugs.html "Brain Bugs"] is sometimes used as an interchangeable term for Plot Tumors; whether or not this is influenced by ''Wrath of Khan'' is up for question.

** The Jefferies Tubes started out as fairly realistic maintenance tunnels that the odd tool or piece of equipment were in. This is realistic because sometimes with complicated engineering not everything is within arm's reach. These mutated over generations to labyrinths of tubes where everything important was kept - Fair to say no engineer would design something [[Malevolent Architecture|this malevolent]].

*** Parodied and Lampshaded in ''[[Galaxy Quest]]''.

{{quote|"Whoever wrote this episode should '''''DIE!'''''"}}

** The Borg started out as technophiles who were only interested in stealing interesting technology and ignored life forms unless they became a danger, but they gradually mutated into ''Night of the Living Dead''-style zombies. The first trip aboard a Borg Cube showed that Borg reproduced naturally and put implants into their infants. Meanwhile Picard was chosen to become Locutus as a mouthpiece for the Borg to announce their intention to conquer and enslave humanity. By ''First Contact'', they were able to assimilate on the fly, injecting nanites directly into people to begin the assimilation process (though full assimilation was more involved). By the time ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' encountered them, they were primarily interested in assimilating life forms regardless of their technological level, and eventually the Borg were revealed to be unable to actually understand ''anything'' without assimilating it.

** The Vulcans have also gone through this. One of the complaints about the Vulcans on ''Enterprise'' was that they were portrayed as capable of deceit and underhanded behavior, the complaints arising because people took one character, Spock, who was in fact notably ''atypical'', and used him as the archetype for an entire species. However, when you look at how Vulcans were portrayed in the canon, you saw Vulcans acting in quite un-Spockish ways, even as far back as his "wife" in the original series who manipulated things to get out of her arranged marriage.

** Perhaps the biggest one was the way the Prime Directive grew in importance until ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]'' was doing an episode where the [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] was that the only moral thing to do was to stand by and let an entire species of advanced, peaceful aliens die out when you could easily save them. Worse, the Prime Directive didn't even exist at the time that series was set. That species was allowed to die out because the character had somehow got it into his head that [[You Fail Biology Forever|"evolution" is some kind of omniscient God who must not be disobeyed]].

** Klingons as [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Space Vikings]]. The movies and ''TNG'' portrayed them as possessing a much more nuanced culture that happened to have a warrior past. By the time Worf started as a regular on ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'', every Klingon went everywhere with his sword, and no woman ever held a position of power.

** See also how thanks to the video games' endless reliving of the Battle of Hoth, what was, in the movies, a one-time, fairly cool longshot that happened to pay off - the snowspeeder managing to trip the AT-AT with a tow cable - has now become the de rigeur, recommended means for killing AT-ATs.

*** This was nicely subverted in one of the [[X Wing Series|X-Wing novels]], where it is demonstrated that real starfighters find AT-ATs target practice, even without using single proton torpedoes to blow them to bits. Of course, this also causes the [[Fridge Logic]] to attack since Luke's X-Wing was sitting around doing nothing on Hoth...

*** In ''Jedi Starfighter'', Jedi can use lightning with no karma meter to speak of. Timed correctly, you can destroy five fightercraft at once with it!

** The planet Tatooine is a particularly malignant plot tumor in the ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]]. Initially introduced as a thoroughly unremarkable backwater world ("If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet it's farthest from"), it's since been featured with varying degrees of prominence in almost every [[Star Wars]] game and, in the end, appeared in five of the six films. Its appearances in the [[Expanded Universe]] may even outnumber those of Coruscant, ostensibly the ''capital planet'' of the galaxy.

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Few people realize that the comic strip [[Beetle Bailey]] was originally about the title character attending college. Him joining the army (in 1951) was originally going to be just a one shot story. He was in college for only ''six months'' before leaving forever.

 

 

* Dragons were mostly background lore in the ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series. Come ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'' and pretty much anything can be explained (retroactively) via dragons. Liches, zombies, the Blades, an important part of the Empire's history...etc. Even door keys in several dungeons have the shape of dragon claws.

* The Cerberus group in the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' series. Initially it was just a shady group with a couple of hidden bases. Come ''Mass Effect 2'' they're an almost all powerful organization that are central to the plot. While it may have been planned that they would have such a large role it still felt like a Plot Tumor for those that didn't take part in the optional quest of the first game.

 

 

* ''[[Concession]]'' started off as a comic strip about a bunch of anthropomorphic characters who worked at a concession stand at a movie theater (The author actually based it around the stupidity he experienced, working in customer service is a good way to get material for comic strips). But if you look at the most recent comics...you'll not really see that much about an actual concession stand. For awhile, the actual concession stand was more or less put to the side, and until it got wrapped up in the massive Plot Tumor, it didn't even play a role beyond the occasional appearance of a main character who was still employed there. Immelmann has actually ''admitted'' that it's only really about concession stands [[In Name Only]] and centers around the character Joel and his plot, it even says so right in the "About" section.

* In ''[[Sam and Fuzzy]]'' the original comic was mainly a slice of life style that was mainly a gag a day style. Then ninjas were added. And a demonic refrigerator. After that, things got weird. Now the whole story revolves around the weirdness and the weirdos and pretty much every arc has ninjas in it due to Sam becoming the Ninja Emperor.

** Possibly the first was the Devil's "crisis of faith", which spun so far out of control that the author didn't know how to end it. Big D was AWOL for several real-world months before it was revealed that he just went on vacation.

** The "Reality Zone" was introduced for a one-off Sunday strip, then became a recurring plot element.