History Main / HalfwayPlotSwitch

*** How could it only have a thirteen episode contract? It's called ''24'', not ''13''.
*** Because it's ''Fox'', duh. They take up a massive chunk of the ScrewedByTheNetwork page.
**** Let's not bash Fox needlessly, especially when there's so much better reason to bash them. It's really because, in the U.S., all new shows typically get a 13 episode order for their first season. This is so the network can tell if the show will be a success before they sink too much money into it.

* The mother of them all, ''MetalGearSolid 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 for the rest of the game. The game's creator, Hideo Kojima, went out of his way to make sure no one saw this twist coming, either. [[BrokenBase Some thought the twist was brilliant. Some wanted Kojima's head on a stake]].

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* "Buck Buck", one of Bill Cosby's routines from his stand-up days. The first half is about Fat Albert as a secret weapon in Buck Buck, a game in which one group of kids gets jumped on by another and tries not to fall down. 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 LampshadeHanging.
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->''"This is stupid. Let's do a different plot."''
-->--'''Joel Dawson''' of ''Series/BonusStage'', when confronted with the Underpants Army.

* ''LifeIsBeautiful'': Starts off as a romantic comedy, where Guido [[UnfortunateNames Orefice]] eventually wins the affection of Dora and they have a son named Joshua. Switch time -- Let's send them all to a concentration camp! Guido tries to make the best of the situation for Joshua by telling him that if he doesn't complain/cry and hides from the guards he would gain "points". 1000 would win a tank. Just before the camp is liberated by the Americans, Guido gets caught by a guard and unceremoniously shot. The movie ends with [[BittersweetEnding an American tank at the gates to the camp, and Joshua exclaiming that he won]]. Damn you, Roberto Benigni.

* ''{{Xenogears}}''. Just ''Xenogears''.
** Some explanation is required. At first, the plot is about two nations that have waged war on each other for generations. Then, the plot changes to [[spoiler:overthrowing Solaris, a hidden country which ruthlessly manipulates world events behind the scenes]]. After ''that'', the plot switches to [[spoiler:killing god (not ''the'' God, but a sentient interstellar war machine that created humans on the planet to serve as its biological components)]].
*** But that ''is'' the God!

** Also, it's implied that the FBI are tracking him down because of his suspect status after [[spoiler: Max's betrayal]] and his first encounter with the Russians. Though this makes little sense as the FBI already questioned him...

* The mother of them all, ''MetalGearSolid 2''. One of the most anticipated games of all time. 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 for the rest of the game. The game's creator, Hideo Kojima, went out of his way to make sure no one saw this twist coming, either. [[BrokenBase Some thought the twist was brilliant. Some wanted Kojima's head on a stake]].

* ''MetalGearSolid 2'' has one about 2 hours in. Kojima went out of his way to make sure no one saw this twist coming, either. Then everyone hated him for it.

* Arguably, the original version of this occurred in ''{{Psycho}}'', at first, it appears to be a simple morality tale about a woman succumbing to temptation to commit theft; we don't find out the movie's not actually about her until she's hacked to death by a homicidal maniac a third of the way through. AlfredHitchcock threw his original audience off even further by [[DeadStarWalking hiring a well-known actress]] to play this particular victim; nobody was expecting him to cast ''Janet Leigh'' only to give her less than forty minutes of screen time.

* In ''FinalFantasyVI'', it starts off as a campaign against TheEmpire, then halfway through, Kefka becomes a god and destroys half the world, leaving to to recover your lost allies and destroy Kefka.

** Of course, all IndianaJones movies are like this: The golden statue in ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'', the diamond in ''Temple of Doom'' and the cross in ''Last Crusade'' all have no importance on the plot of the movie the appear in and are not mentioned after their scenes are done.

* 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 ShoulderCannon and a [[VisibleInvisibility cloaking device]] with a BadassBlink begins to hunt them down just because the alien [[TheMostDangerousGame thinks they might be good sport]].

* The first five or six episodes of "CougarTown" are about Jules entering the world of the cougar, and after that, the show shifts to a more ensemble-y show about Jules and her family and friends.

* ''Dune'', if the first trilogy is taken as a complete work, starts off with the plot about Paul fighting the Harkonnens, and then changes in the second and third books to a plot about... well, it is complicated. Of course, whether this is one work with a switching plot, or just an example of zig-zagging sequels.
** Of course, the plot against the Harkonnens wasn't dropped; it was ''resolved'' at the end of the first book with the BigBad and his [[TheDragon Dragon]] both defeated and Paul firmly cementing himself as the DarkMessiah of the known universe. The sequels would naturally have to branch out into different waters or risk recycling the plot of the first novel.

* Arguably used in [[SmillasSenseOfSnow Smilla's Sense of Snow]] where a routine murder mystery trope dives off the deep-end into X-Files-esque killer bug from space about halfway through the film.

* How has "Teeth" not been mentioned yet?
** [[PleaseElaborate Dunno, what is it about?]]

* SidneySheldon'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 BreakTheCutie 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 ClassyCatBurglar 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.

* SidneySheldon'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 BreakTheCutie experience when she's framed by the Mafia for a robbery and wounding, and how she emerges from that and gets her revenge on the guilty parties. In Book Three, her struggle to make an honest living paroled from prison leads to her becoming a ClassyCatBurglar who finds herself matching wits not only with the authorities but a fellow con artist. The only major character besides Tracy who appears in the third book 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.

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