History Main / IssueDrift

* The 1970s TV show ''Quincy'' started off as a straightforward forensic-pathology whodunit. By the end of its run, every single episode was a soapbox rant about some political or social issue, always from a liberal POV.

* The webcomic ''Twisted Kaiju Theater'' started out as a simple, goofy webcomic strip about lots of silly toliet humor. As the series progessed it not only got up a consistant cast and arcing plotlines, it also shifted into having more serious storylines and also providing social and political commentary. The comic began with jokes about poop and developed into a series that deals with mature themes like death, sacrifice, political ethics, family loss, and morality.
* Before Prime Minister Yitskhak Rabin was assassinated, avoiding political issues was a common stand people in Israel took. After the murder, politics became an issue once again; this was very, very apparent in ''TheChamberQuintet'', one of Israel’s best and most popular skit shows ever, which avoided politics explicitly before the murder (criticising Israel’s militarist attitude at most) and started very openly criticising contemporary politics afterwards.

* Before Prime Minister Yitskhak Rabin was assassinated, avoiding political issues was a common stand people in Israel took. After the murder, politics became an issue once again; this was very, very apparent in ''TheChamberQuintet'', one of Israel’s best and most popular skit shows ever, which avoided politics explicitly before the murder (criticising Israel’s militarist attitude at most) and started very openly criticising contemporary politics afterwards.
* While ''Webcomic/QuantumVibe'', a product of a libertarian author, has hints of political satire from the start, the Luna arc is dripping with criticism of {{Corrupt Cop}}s, {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s, and lots of other forms of corrupt society.

* While ''Webcomic/QuantumVibe'', a product of a libertarian author, had hints of political satire from the start, the Luna arc is dripping with criticism of {{Corrupt Cop}}s, {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s, and lots of other forms of corrupt society.

* Before [[MoralDespairHorizon Prime Minister Yitskhak Rabin was assassinated]], avoiding political issues was a common stand people in Israel took. After the murder, politics became an issue once again; this was very, very apparent in ''TheChamberQuintet'', one of Israel’s best and most popular skit shows ever, which avoided politics explicitly before the murder (criticising Israel’s militarist attitude at most) and started very openly criticising contemporary politics afterwards.

* ''Inverted'' to some degree in ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad''. At first nearly every episode was political, with [[JerkAss Stan]] serving only as a StrawmanPolitical. However, after the first season or so, political episodes has become rarer to the point that they're only a handful of episodes a season. Meanwhile Stan more often was shown in a sympathetic light (achieving, dare we say it, some degree of CharacterDevelopment), with his faults falling more under general ComedicSociopathy. All of this is generally considered [[GrowingTheBeard for the better]].

The trope name is designed for versatility. ____ Drift can be used for just about anything that's magnetically pulling pop culture off-topic. Key streams of Issue Drift in the recent past include but are not limited to: Commie Drift in the 1950s, Dick Drift in the Nixon/Watergate era, up to the Bush Drift of today.

Existing characters are shoe-horned into taking weird, vaguely or not-so-vaguely political stances; fantasy plotlines slowly or not-so-slowly mutate into analogues to or outright allegories about current events. ''Since when was this about Iraq?'' you ask yourself. Since the pivotal first concession to Issue Drift, that's when.

*** Oddly enough, this trope was inverted on the show itself. While the first season had most of its episodes dedicated to social issues, like the episode where a bank robbery is an allegory for the Iraq War or the episode where Martin Luther King Jr. comes out of a coma and chews out all the black people, the second season had more general stories, like Riley joining the basketball team or Robert going on a date with a crazy lady he met online. That isn't to say they didn't go after social issues, but they didn't do it as frequently or as overtly.

* ''[[{{MASH}} M*A*S*H]]'' became increasingly openly political as Alan Alda became more and more directly involved in writing and producing the show. By the end of it the show was hailed as an "anti-war drama", which greatly irked fans of the original novel and film, which the earlier seasons hewed more closely to. The original was written by Richard Hooker, a real Army doctor who based the story on his own experiences in Korea, and who was very much a patriotic American who leaned politically right and overall was positive about American foreign intervention. His original concept was simply one of people in hellish circumstances making the best of things, whereas the later seasons of M*A*S*H focused less and less on the "making the best of things" and more and more on the "hellish circumstances", with increasingly pointed barbs directed at the politicians the show blamed for creating those circumstances.

* Infamously, ''[=~Li'l Abner~=]'' in the late 1960s stooped to {{Take That}}s against student protesters, with the introduction of the SDS-like organization [[FunWithAcronyms SWINE]] (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything) and "Joanie Phoanie" (who was like Joan Baez, only ugly-looking). In the real sixties, Joan Baez was hotter than donut grease.

* Used, possibly subverted, in an episode of ''{{Scrubs}}'' where a wounded soldier serving in Iraq is brought into the hospital. Almost everybody gets involved in the political debate (except for JD who spends the entire episode reading "The Iraq War For Dummies" and the spineless Ted who takes a neutral stance). It ends with Dr. Kelso cutting off the employee discount at the hospital coffee shop to stop everybody's constant arguing about politics and get angry at him instead. The episode is very deliberate to not take any side and to treat the subject with some humour.

* In ''StarTrekEnterprise'', the 2003 kickoff of the Xindi arc in the third season drew more than a few parallels to the War on Terror and September 11 and delivered a rather {{Anvilicious}} message about how the Middle East isn't made of up terrorists, but a few radical individuals decided to take violent action. YourMileageMayVary on how much this was a success, since some praised it as GrowingTheBeard after two seasons of episodic wandering, and response to the third season made it possible for the "on the bubble" series to get a fourth season, while others viewed it as the show JumpingTheShark. Additionally, unlike others featured on this list, ''StarTrek'' in general has a history of political allegories, so the Xindi arc was more of a return to the form. Every series has featured stories tackling issues of the day - from the Cold War on the Original Series up to stem cell research on ''Enterprise''. Even the sixth movie was an obvious allegory to the end of the Soviet Union.

* ''Inverted'' to some degree in ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad''. At first nearly every episode was political, with [[JerkAss Stan]] serving only as a StrawmanPolitical. However, after the first season or so, political episodes has become rarer to the point that they're only a handful of episodes a season. Meanwhile Stan more often was shown in a sympathetic light (achieving, dare I say it, some degree of CharacterDevelopment), with his faults falling more under general ComedicSociopathy. All of this is generally considered [[GrowingTheBeard for the better]].

* ''Inverted'' to some degree in ''AmericanDad''. At first nearly every episode was political, with [[JerkAss Stan]] serving only as a StrawmanPolitical. However, after the first season or so, political episodes has become rarer to the point that they're only a handful of episodes a season. Meanwhile Stan more often was shown in a sympathetic light (achieving, dare I say it, some degree of CharacterDevelopment), with his faults falling more under general ComedicSociopathy. All of this is generally considered [[GrowingTheBeard for the better]].

* The King Steve interludes in ''EightBitTheatre'' could be considered a form of this, although they make up about .3% of the comic and he's more Caligula Drift than anything else.

* Compare ''TheSimpsons''' [[{{Flanderization}} Ned Flanders]] [[GoodSamaritan before]] and [[TheFundamentalist after]] President Bush got elected. Now do the same with [[SoapboxSadie Lisa]]. Or Homer, the once-Republican who got eaten by an evil voting machine while trying to vote for Obama--you know what, you get the picture.

* Comic-Strip Club was a website of several simultaneous webcomics, all of which were written by the same person. The main feature was Electronic Tigers, a full-page comedy series about college-age video-game fans; the secondary feature was Right-Left-Center, a 4-panel political strip about a talking Donkey & Elephant, representing the Democratic and Republican parties. When the 2008 American Presidential election began, RLC started taking on a bigger role, and as the election drew nearer and nearer, it's role grew to a point where it became the main focus of the site. Many fans of the site (most of whom came for Electronic Tigers, the other title) were disappointed by their title being put on hiatus, and many others were also turned off by the extremely biased right-wing politics of RLC, which frequently compared Obama to a Nazi, and briefly, pointed out that the theory of evolution is "absurd". This derailment was so thoroughly unsatisfactory to readers that the web-traffic and readership tanked and the entire website went down for MONTHS. After the website was brought back up, ET was put on indefinite hiatus, while more anti-Obama RLC strips were posted, as well as several pages of a new comic project- a comic biography of Christ, as written by the website's usual writer, a born-again Christian.

* In ''StarTrekEnterprise'', the 2003 kickoff of the Xindi arc in the third season drew more than a few parallels to the War on Terror and September 11 and delivered a rather {{Anvilicious}} message about how the Middle East isn't made of up terrorists, but a few radical individuals decided to take violent action. YourMileageMayVary on how much this was a success, since some praised it as GrowingTheBeard after two seasons of episodic wandering. Response to the third season made it possible for the "on the bubble" series to ''get'' a fourth season. And additionally, unlike others featured on this list, ''StarTrek'' in general has a history of political allegories, so the Xindi arc was more of a return to the form. Every series has featured stories tackling issues of the day - from the Cold War on the Original Series up to stem cell research on ''Enterprise''. Even the sixth movie was an obvious allegory to the end of the Soviet Union.

* In ''StarTrekEnterprise'', the 2003 kickoff of the Xindi arc in the third season drew more than a few parallels to the War on Terror and September 11 and delivered a rather {{Anvilicious}} message about how the Middle East isn't made of up terrorists, but a few radical individuals decided to take violent action. However, the heavy handedness of the message and a several plot {{Wall Banger}}s ticked off more than a few fans who weren't already ready to write off ''Enterprise'' as a failure.
** YourMileageMayVary, considering the season was widely praised by critics and fans after two seasons of episodic wandering. Response to the third season made it possible for the "on the bubble" series to ''get'' a fourth season.
** Additionally, unlike others featured on this list, ''StarTrek'' in general has a history of political allegories. Every series has featured stories tackling issues of the day - from the Cold War on the Original Series up to stem cell research on ''Enterprise''. Even the sixth movie was an obvious allegory to the end of the Soviet Union. YourMileageMayVary over which was successful and which was {{Anvilicious}} - or both.

* Compare ''TheSimpsons''' [[{{Flanderization}} Ned Flanders]] [[GoodSamaritan before]] and [[TheFundamentalist after]] President Bush got elected. Now do the same with [[SoapboxSadie Lisa]]. Or Homer, the once-Republican who got eaten by an evil voting machine while trying to vote for Obama--you know what, you get the picture.

* Martina [=McBride=] had a big hit in 1994 with "Independence Day" (a song about domestic abuse), she scored a big hit three years later with "A Broken Wing", another song about domestic abuse. After that, nearly half of her songs were anthemic "issue songs" like "Love's the Only House" (a catchall for various domestic troubles), "It's My Time", "Concrete Angel" (''yet another'' song about abuse!), "God's Will" and so forth, while the other half was {{Glurge}}-laden songs about love and/or family. She then sidetracked for a covers album and since then, has slowly begun to distance herself from so much more of the same; the only issue song she's released since 2005 was "For These Times", which failed miserably on the charts.

* ''KingOfTheHill'' became far less even handed toward the end of its run; what started as a nuanced comedy of manners about an unassuming small Texas town with multiple character arcs slowly wound down into repetitive {{Author Tract}}s on Household mold problems, Shoddy McMansion construction, {{Frivolous Lawsuit}}s and ''Trans-Facism''. {{Flanderization}} set in, CharacterDevelopment slowed considerably, and Hank, who had been more of a dogged HonorBeforeReason type gradually turned into the OnlySaneMan bordering on a conservative small town version of the SoapBoxSadie.

* Compare ''TheSimpsons''' [[{{Flanderization}} Ned Flanders]] [[GoodSamaritan before]] and [[TheFundamentalist after]] President Bush got elected. Now do the same with [[SoapboxSadie Lisa]]. Or Homer, the once-Republican who got eaten by an evil voting machine while trying to vote for Obam---you know what, you get the picture.

*** Oddly enough, this trope was inverted on the show itself. While the first season had most of it's episodes dedicated to social issues, like the episode where a bank robbery is an allegory for the Iraq War or the episode where Martin Luther King Jr. comes out of a coma and chews out all the black people, the second season had more general stories, like Riley joining the basketball team or Robert going on a date with a crazy lady he met online. That isn't to say they didn't go after social issues, but they didn't do it as frequently or as overtly.

* Done brilliantly, possibly subverted, in an episode of ''{{Scrubs}}'' where a wounded soldier serving in Iraq is brought into the hospital. Almost everybody gets involved in the political debate (except for JD who spends the entire episode reading "The Iraq War For Dummies" and the spineless Ted who takes a neutral stance). It ends with Dr. Kelso cutting off the employee discount at the hospital coffee shop to stop everybody's constant arguing about politics and get angry at him instead. The episode is very deliberate to not take any side and to treat the subject with some humour.

* ''MarvelCivilWar'' was centered on government invasions of privacy and extreme rendition policies, had [[ReedRichardsIsUseless Mr. Fantastic]] construct Super Gitmo, and turned IronMan [[StrawmanPolitical into Donald Rumsfeld]] (perhaps worse, considering that he hired Nazi scientists to assassinate and clone his former teammates). This culminated with an {{Anvilicious}} bullet through CaptainAmerica's skull. However, this is a special case of almost issue tug-of-war as it had [[WriterOnBoard about a dozen writers on board]] who were all trying to express different, conflicting views and making different characters evil/incompetent accordingly.

* Compare ''TheSimpsons''' [[{{Flanderization}} Ned Flanders]] [[GoodSamaritan before]] and [[TheFundamentalist after]] President Bush got elected. Now do the same with [[SoapboxSadie Lisa]].

* The 1970s TV show ''Quincy'' started off as a straightforward forensic-pathology whodunit. By the end of its run, every single episode was a soapbox rant about some political or social issue, always from a liberal POV

* The 1970s TV show ''Quincy'' started off as a straightforward forensic-pathology whodunit. By the end of its run, every single episode was a soapbox rant about some political or social issue, always from a liberal POV.