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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'': All of the arcs after the Orange Islands have taken flak for running on longer than necessary, though Johto and Sinnoh take more flak than Hoenn due to [[Arc Fatigue]], whereas Hoenn was shorter in order to make room for Battle Frontier.
** [[Averted Trope|Averted]] so far with Unova, thanks to a much more concise pacing and good character development in-between (barring a big gap between the 3rd and 4th Gyms, which was intended from the start and has beefy material). Time will tell if it lasts however.
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*** There ''were'' some good arcs among all the drivel, but the fact remains that it was an undiluted block of waste which didn't contribute to anything (especially after the epic "Sasuke Retrieval Arc"). The lack of character consistency (especially with Sakura) didn't help, which is the most likely reason ''Shippuden'' spreads [[Filler]] out more across the storyline, rather than shoving it together the way the original series did.
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' comics were consistently popular and well-received for over 30thirty years until the Clone Saga of 1994-1996. The storyline initially featured decent sales figures, but by the end, not so much. The negativity was largely because the Clone Saga '''[[Ending Fatigue|JUST. WOULDN'T. END.]]''' After it was all over, the newer storylines were seen as an improvement, but the harm was done with sales still in deep trouble. [[Executive Meddling]] led to those storylines being cancelled, two of the four titles being outright cancelled, the remaining two being rebooted and a deeply unpopular era overseen by Howard Mackie and [[John Bryne]].
** And yet again With ''One More Day''/''Brand New Day'', which has the wider rot problem of the sales of the franchise pretty much going straight into the toilet, even with Marvel cancelling all satellite Spider-Man books and upping Amazing Spider-Man to three times a month publication.
*** Marvel's currently hyping Amazing Spider-Man #647 as "the end of Brand New Day," but in truth they are simply changing the release schedule to twice a month in order to try desperately to stop the bleeding as sales have pretty much hit new all-time lows due to the unpopular new direction.
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* This seems to be happening with the "second season" of ''[[Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane]]'', since the writer ''and'' the artist both left and [[The Other Darrin|they subsequently hired new people]]. The writing and art style shift is... jarring, to say the least.
* The "Reads" arc of ''[[Cerebus]]'', largely due to consisting mostly of an extended [[Author Filibuster]].
* The first half of 2009 issues of the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' Season 8 Comic-Bookcomic book is vastly considered to be the weakest point of the entire series so far. The second half of 2009 is also considered sub-par by many, though not to the same extent.
* When Claremont took over writing duties for ''[[Exiles]]'', it was with the editorial edict passed down upon him to get rid of the mainstay characters and replace them with variations of his pet characters (such as a spoiled brat version of Rogue, a gender-flip version of Mystique, a generic teenage version of Shadowcat, etc. Needless to say it didn't take well with fans.
* Robert Kirkman's run on ''[[Ultimate X-Men]]'' is generally thought of as a bit of a low point for the series.
 
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Star Wars]]:''
** The prequel trilogy considered a pretty big step down from the beloved original trilogy.
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** The sequel trilogy, consisting of ''[[The Force Awakens]]'', ''[[The Last Jedi]]'' and ''[[The Rise of Skywalker]]'' have [[Broken Base|widely varying opinions among fans]]. Some consider it to be an improvement from the prequel trilogy, some consider it to be just as problematic, and others even consider the prequels to be superior.
* While ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' is the weakest ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' film critically (although the strongest commercially), there is a heavy debate among fans as to whether it is better or worse than the series' previous worst film ''[[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom|Temple of Doom]]'' (which was the weakest commercially, for whatever that's worth). Fans of ''Doom'' claim that the fourth film was too campy and over-the-top, even by ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' standards, and that too much the series was altered in this film ({{spoiler|having aliens instead of mysticism powering the object, Jones marrying Marion at the end, him having a son}} etc.). However, the equally vocal ''Skull'' fans claim that ''Doom'' was too [[Darker and Edgier|dark and gritty]] compared to the other movies' lighter tone, it had copious amounts of [[Squick]] for no real reason other than to be edgy, and [[Replacement Scrappy|replaced the beloved characters Marion and Sallah with the more despised Willie and Short-Round.]]
* While boththe first two ''[[The Matrix|Matrix]]'' sequels are both hated by the fandom, ''[[The Matrix Revolutions]]'' is considered the weakest for its [[Gainax Ending|underwhelming ambiguous ending]] and forced metaphors taking control of the story.
* While every sequel to the original ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'' suffered from both [[Franchise Zombie|continuing when the previous installment was meant to be the last]] and a smaller budget than the previous one, the last one, ''[[Battle of the Planet of the Apes]]'', is widely considered the absolute nadir.
* While every ''[[Highlander]]'' sequel is viewed as a poor follow-up to the original (at best), ''[[Highlander II the Quickening]]'' currently holds the typical title of worst in the franchise and a shining example of how ''not'' to do a sequel.
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* [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] has a few contested titles, but the most unquestionable ones are ''[[The Man with the Golden Gun]]'' (whose sole saving grace is [[Christopher Lee]]), ''[[Moonraker]]'' (so outlandish that the follow-up. ''[[For Your Eyes Only (film)|For Your Eyes Only]]'', toned it down considerably), and ''[[A View to a Kill]]'' (where Roger Moore realized he was too old for the role). ''[[Die Another Day]]'' sometimes gets lumped there too for the same reason as ''Moonraker''.
 
== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Tom Clancy]] himself admitted that he had run out of good candidates for villain nations by the mid-1990s, which resulted in a pair of suicidally outmatched opponents for the United States in ''[[Jack Ryan|Debt of Honor]]'' (Japan fights Round Two...) and ''Executive Orders.''
* The tenth book in Robert Jordan's ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' series falls under this due to excessive use of [[Padding]] and [[Purple Prose]]. The average rating on Amazon.com is [http://www.amazon.com/Crossroads-Twilight-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/0812571339/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277283385&sr=8-1 1.5 stars]. Most fans see some manner of seasonal rot setting in anywhere between books 4 and 9 already, but it's disputed where it really went downhill. Either way, book 11 was a significant improvement, resolving several plots and paving the way for the final book with, by WoT standards, barely any padding at all. (Though it does focus inordinant attention on [[Author Appeal|bondage situations with the Aes Sedai]] and a lot of dumb moves by characters, even for them).
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* ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: This trope most certainly occurred after the book ''Free Fall''. The author herself said that she was only planning on writing 7 books for the series...at first. Then she decided to write more books. This resulted in 13 more books, and the storyline eventually just dragged on. That, and a number of flaws that had been present in the first 7 books became glaringly obvious, and the final book ''Home Free'' did have an ending that likely left readers feeling that the series ended not with a bang, but a whimper!
 
==Live [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' inspires a [[Broken Base|lot of arguments]] on this topic. It's widely agreed that there was Seasonal Rot but less clear which season it was. Season 6 in particular is a case of [[Love It or Hate It]]; Many revile it for levels of gloom bordering on [[Wangst]], The pathetic-ness of the Trio of as [[Big Bad]], plot elements such as the widely-detested "[[Anvilicious|magic]] [[Drugs Are Bad|addiction]]" arc and an inconsistently written romance between Spike and Buffy. On the other hand, some praise it for the attempts at emotional depth and character development, a change of pace from the relentless [[Sorting Algorithm of Evil]], and individually beloved episodes like "Tabula Rasa" and "Once More With Feeling".
** Perhaps lampshaded in this scene:
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*** Admittedly season six is the last for which the actors were contracted, but as a result of Joshua Safran's insistence on turning it into ''Everybody Loves Blair And So Will '''YOU''', Dammit'' (result? Some of the show's lowest ratings ''ever'') it's definitely the final season and a reduced season at that. [[Sarcasm Mode|Wow, that worked out well didn't it?]]
* ''[[Boy Meets World]]'': Season 7. It had a few good episode and some very memorable moments (i.e. "Playswithsquirrels"), but it was not very good overall. It had many [[Denser and Wackier|wacky and cartoonish]] plotlines that didn't fit with the series, tons of [[Mood Whiplash]] between the wacky plotlines and serious plotlines, [[Flanderization]] up the wazoo, especially with Eric who went from being ditzy to being mentally insane, and just not as many laughs to be had. Fortunately, this was the final season and the finale ended the series on a good note.
* ''[[Two and Aa Half Men]]'' Season 9, oh where to begin? Let's start with Ashton Kutcher's character Walden, he dosen't fit into the show well at all, he's too much like Alan (only rich and even more of a [[Man Child]]) so he's not very interesting and his interactions with other characters feel very akward, it's not so much Kutcher's fault, as he looks like he's really trying, it's the material he's given that's the problem-the writing has taken a sharp drop in quality from the last season, [[Flanderization]] has hit the characters hard: Alan is still a mooch and even more immature, Jake is even dumber and doesn't seem to do much of anything except smoke pot, Rose is more of a bitch (did the writers really have to her kill Charlie off? Couldn't they have just said that he dissapeared in Paris or something like that?) Lindsay is crazier, etc. The entire tone of the show has also changed and not for the better, there's now a much greater emphasis on [[Toilet Humor]] which is more gross then funny (like the episode "Not In My Mouth" which was overloaded with vomit gags) and the character interactions mostly feel unnatural, and with the entire premise of the show changed, it's really tough to care about any of the characters. At this point, unless Sheen somehow returns to the show, it's difficult to see it getting any better.
* After the second series of ''[[Primeval]]'', the reactions to the show have been very mixed. Critics appear to dislike the fourth series the most, with the fans mainly targeting their hate towards 3 and 4.
* Arguably, ''[[The Dukes of Hazzard]]'' began to rot when Bo & Luke exited and replaced with Coy & Vance. But even after Bo & Luke returned, the show had already shown its age. We already know that the Dukes clan was all goody-goody. It got to the point where you were no longer booing and hissing the star villains Boss Hogg & Sherrif Coltrane, but looking forward to their stark contrast to the Dukes' personalities, and relishing in their comic-relief antics. Especially since Roscoe ''[[Took a Level in Badass]]'' downgrade to become more of a 12-year-old who lives for "hot pursuit." ("Good news, good news! yuk yuk yuk!")
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* ''[[Community]]'' looks to be hitting this with season 3, with several episodes poorly handling the characterization and several times up and making previously entertaining characters like Jeff, Annie, Chang, and even Abed completely unlikable, and an increased emphasis on the gimmick episodes which was growing since late in the first season. With creator Dan Harmon leaving as showrunner, possibly because of his real-life feud with cast member Chevy Chase, it looks like the rot may be getting even worse for season four.
 
== [[Music]] ==
* [[The Beach Boys]] after ''Pet Sounds'', though their early '70s albums have been [[Vindicated by History]].
 
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' had this problem late in the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons days, though it was a different sort of rot than usual. Rather than a drop in quality, it was a drop in usability; too many products came out which were not marketable to a general audience, resulting in declining sales and the eventual death of TSR. When WotC took it over, the quality went up, as did the marketability, but 3rd and 3.5 edition suffered greatly from wanting to advance the game towards where it needed to go, while simultaneously trying to avoid annoying the old fans. This resulted in a system which lacked the charm of the older editions, while simultaneously greatly magnifying the issues of [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]]. It took 4th edition before WotC finally took the steps necessary to truly fix the game, resulting in a great deal of angst from certain players. Those players, however, will contend that it is 4th edition which falls to seasonal rot, as the newly instilled game balance came at a massive reduction in character building options.
* ''[[Paranoia]]'' started off as a darkly humorous award-winning game with a few awkward mechanics, which was refined into mindless fun in the highly-acclaimed Second Edition. Rot started when publisher West End Games started releasing game modules in interconnected [[Story Arc]]s, especially the Great Crash and subsequent Reboot of [[The Computer Is Your Friend|Friend Computer]]. [[It Gets Worse|Things got worse]] with the release of the "5th" Edition; [[Executive Meddling]] replaced the dark humor with cheap satires of pop culture, while poor artwork, poor production values, and the near-total departure of the original writers doomed the series. After West End Games went bankrupt, the series was resurrected as ''Paranoia XP'', whereupon [[Canon Discontinuity|the (original) writers promptly declared everything from the story arcs onward as CanonDiscontinuity.]]
* [[Warhammer Fantasy]] had this in 7th edition rules set. Initially everything was fine with the Orcs and Goblins and Empire releases and while people started to cry foul during the High Elves release, the crunch was essentially accepted. Problems started to creep in with the 7th edition Vampire Counts book, which had several absurdly broken abilities and rules, and became an easy go-to army for people who wanted to win tournaments. Then Daemons of Chaos came out and everything went straight to fucking hell. Daemons were, put simply, [[Game Breaker|unstoppable.]] Even the widely accepted 2nd place army (Dark Elves, released soon after) and 3rd place Vampire Counts couldn't begin to compete with them. Every new army book that was released [[This Is Spinal Tap|ramped up their abilities to 11]] to try and compete, but nothing was working and this began to leave older armies increasingly in the dust. Eventually Games Workshop decided 'Fuck it' and after an incredibly underpowered Beastmen release, grabbed the rules set and shook it so hard that 8th edition came out. 8th edition completely revamped a lot of rules, such as how breaking, charging and magic worked, and while far from perfect, at least managed to restore a lot of the balance. Of course a lot of players [[Unpleasable Fanbase|still hate 8th Edition.]]
 
== [[Toys]] ==
* The 2005 "Toa Hordika" story arc of ''[[Bionicle]]'' tends to come up as the worst year in discussions, at least it's more universally disliked than some other unpopular years, such as 2009 and 2010. Even the writer himself feels it felt tacked on—which it basically was. So much effort was put into designing the 2004 setting (Metru Nui) that the guys at [[LEGO]] wanted to do more with it, even though the story was arleady fully wrapped up in the previous year. Thus along came the second Metru Nui arc, during which the protagonists turned into hideous beasts (whose toys were also quite unspectacular and bland), the story got needlessly dark and confusing, and due to [[Executive Meddling]], the main hero had such a sudden [[Out of Character]]-moment that the writer detests his part of the story to this day. The only good things to have come out of the story were the character Roodaka ([[Fetish Fuel|who quickly became a fan-favorite]]) and the book ''Time Trap'', but only because its plot was completely unrelated to the bigger arc.
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[xkcd]]'' in recent years{{when}} has come to this according to many fans.
** The "One Two" (aka the "Primitive Cultures develop Sesame Street") and "Anatomy Text" strips are considered the major points of contention, as the first is considered the point where Randall's (somewhat hypocritical) contempt for non "hard science" majors became overbearing, and the Anatomy strip is just considered [[Squick|offensive in general]].
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' lost a lot of its readers during the massive plotline known as "Oceans Unmoving," mainly because the plot's only relevance to the series was showing what happened to BunBun after Holiday Wars. It took what should have been a a very short, sweet explanation and turned into into a one year plotline that constantly stopped the action because it had to cram in as much exposition as possible about the cosmology. For many people, the comic never recovered from it. Others like to just [[Fanon Discontinuity|pretend it never happened]].
** Still others found it a fairly interesting change of pace that had [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|a lot of wasted potential]]. Unfortunately, forcing it upon the readers with only a tangential relation to the rest of the canon was not a smart move on Pete's part.
** One more take: "Oceans Unmoving" would have been a great thing to release ''all at once'', say as a book. It drew more resentment because it came at the expense of the regular cast, and the cool concepts weren't well served by a one-day-at-a-time schedule. People forget that a ''lot'' of ''Sluggy'' stories felt overlong and tedious at the time, but read well in the archives.
* [http://www.cracked.com/article_18696_the-lifespan-every-tv-show-ever-5Bcomic5D.html Abnormality] mentions it, along with [[Franchise Zombie]] and [[Early Installment Weirdness]] tropes.
* ''[[Survivor Fan Characters]]'': Season 8 is widely considered by fans to be its worst season due to its suffering from an overabundance of [[Flat Character]]s and plain unlikable characters, the shafting of [[Character Development]] for bland strategy and repetitive jokes, and a finale that came across as "Isn't this [[Boring Invincible Hero|Boring Invincible Villain]] awesome, and aren't these two guys utter tools who exist just to make her look even more awesome?" to many readers. Most fans agree that the series recovered with Season 9, however.
* ''[[Sabrina Online]]'' had the "Sabrina creates a [[Mary Sue]] webcomicweb comic" arc. It was pretty self-referential and got old pretty fast, but as of juneJune 2012 seems to be over when Sabrina quit the comic after losing interest.
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
* Fans of ''[[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC]]'' have come to anticipate an engaging, dramatic story arc spanning the fall, winter, and spring of every year. However, fall and winter of 2011 and spring of 2012 only brought videos in which the heroes spout some one-liners. None of them exceed two minutes, either. Fans find this especially frustrating because the arc that began in December 2009, "Zero Hour", still doesn't have a proper conclusion.
 
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The fifth season of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]''. Largely after the writers were given [[Protection From Editors|free rein contentwise]], meaning we got a ton of overtly gross-out storylines with rotting corpses and severed penises, as well as Master Shake murdering a cat.
** Season 3 is the beginning of the show being less consistently good, and Season 4 is when the plots, on average, became much more visceral and dark.
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** Fans of ''[[Show Within a Show|All My Circuits]]'' are also split about Bender's run as Calculon's son. Younger viewers loved his [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|glamorizing views on smoking and burglary]] while parents despised him as an [[Moral Guardians|antisocial rolemodel]].
** ''Futurama'' itself is considered by many to be going through this in seasons five and six, ever since it resumed airing new episodes on [[Comedy Central]].
* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' fans generally consider Season 3 to be this, since they changed the [[Big Bad]] from the awesomely creepy Slade, who was Robin's archrival but still had personal beef with the rest of the Titans, to Brother Blood, who started off perfectly menacing but spiralledspiraled into [[Villain Decay]] quickly, and had limited interaction with any of the Titans besides Cyborg, and having a weak story that only got two episodes and a two-part finale worth of exposure.
** And, to a lesser extent, Season 5, probably due to it coming directly after the extremely well-received Season 4. It's still generally accepted, though, mainly due to its awesome [[Grand Finale]] (the two-part final battle, ''not'' the [[Broken Base|controversial]] actual last episode.)
*''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'' took a considerable drop in quality after Season 7, the last season of the classic era, due to the loss of Britt Allcroft and other original crew members and HIT Entertainment outbuying the series.
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