History Main / ProductionLeadTime

* A video game based on ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' was released for the DS and Wii on October 5, 2010. It used the clock-based format introduced in 2008... and retired ''three weeks before the game came out'', in favor of one where the categories and money amounts were randomly shuffled.

* ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' dealt with this when Yahtzee made his "Top 5 Games of 2015" which also had a category for the five [[SoOkayItsAverage blandest]] games, which was similar to the "Mediocre Awards"''WebVideo/{{Jimquisition}}'' had done around the same time.

* This ended up working in favor of Pixar's ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'', which featured a plot where a beloved celebrity (albeit a fictional one) is exposed for a terrible action...right as the #[=MeToo=] movement exposed famous actors, performers, and other celebrities for sexual misconduct.

** "Related To Items You've Viewed" features extensive satire of Creator/{{Amazon}}, which did remain relevant when the episode aired in 2023 as the company has been seen as a monopolistic megacorp. Less timely, however, was the specific satire around Amazon's voice-activated virtual home assistant device, Alexa. In ''Futurama'', "Invasa" makes so much money and amasses so much power that it assimilates the entire universe into it. In real life, Alexa was described by Amazon as "a colossal failure of imagination" as having led to a $10 ''billion'' loss in 2022, with the future of it and similar virtual assistant devices looking grim due to their inability to be profitable.

* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'': This is typically less of an issue between the console and handheld installments in the series, which are each handled by separate development teams, since there's a lot of communication and idea sharing between them; this allows a game to include monsters and hunting areas from another that was released a year or slightly less prior (for example, ''[[VideoGame/MonsterHunter3Tri Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate]]'' quickly adopted many monsters and features from ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterPortable3rd'' which was released just one year prior and developed by the handheld team).[[note]]In fact, there was even a game, ''[[VideoGame/MonsterHunterFreedom2 Monster Hunter Freedom Unite]]'', that included monsters and content from the SpinOff ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterFrontier'', which was handled by yet another development team and had only been released 8 months prior[[/note]] However, ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' (released in 2018) was very unlucky in this regard: Its development began in early 2014, but because of its secluded planning phase and the time required to incorporate the monsters' skeletons into the physics of the then-new graphical engine for the series, the game prescinded from all sorts of content featured in the fourth-generation and late third-generation games, with the exception of the Insect Glaive and Charge Blade weapon classes. For this reason, someone who hasn't played too many MH games would have thought at first that the game's predecessor was ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter3Tri'' (released in ''2009'') due to the presence of Barroth, Uragaan and Deviljho; rather than ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterGenerations Ultimate'' (released in 2017, only one year before ''World'' itself). The ''Iceborne'' expansion rectified this by adding newer veterans like Zinogre, Raging Brachydios and Glavenus.

* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episodes apparently took a while to make, considering that they were airing hand-drawn episodes until its eighth season in 2003, where they switched to digital ink and paint (for reference, many cartoons switched from traditional cels to digital ink and paint in the early 2000s). Then there's the episode "Lost in [=MySpace=]" which dealt with the Strickland Propane crew discovering [=MySpace=]. This episode was written in 2004, but didn't air until the end of 2008, when [=MySpace=] was declining in popularity. Fortunately, this is TruthInTelevision, as small rural communities like Arlen are often behind the times and don't embrace modern trends until after they've been established as commonplace elsewhere.

** They ''try'' to overcome it with overdubs and lampshade hanging, but they still fall victim to this trope big time. Combined with the occasional tendency of episodes to air a season or more after they were completed -- due to Fox's seasons and ''Simpsons'' production seasons not always lining up -- this trope has (for instance) caused parody episodes to be released ''years'' after the works they were mocking. Case in point, "Simpson Tide", a parody of the 1995 film ''Crimson Tide'', was first shown in 1998[[note]]The episode in question was actually produced as part of the 1995-96 season, but was held over for a very long time[[/note]].

** The episode "Ocean's 3½" managed to do a joke about Christian Bale's ClusterFBomb within two weeks after the audio was first released, by quickly animating a reel-to-reel tape player playing clips of said outburst interspliced with Peter Griffin's voice reacting to it. This was cut out in later airings of the episode and the DVD release, and was replaced with Quagmire's cutaway involving wanting to make an underwhelming thriller starring Jeff Bridges and Laura Linney.

** The episode "Chris Has Got A Date Date Date Date Date" mocks Music/TaylorSwift for only writing melodramatic breakup songs. That sort of joke was quite popular circa 2010-2013. However, the episode came out in ''2016'', by which point Taylor's ''Music/NineteenEightyNine'' album had subverted and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] her old forumlas to a sufficient point that most no longer saw them as relevant.

** "Stewie's First Word" has Peter asking a magic 8-ball if Fox is viable in an age of streaming; to which it responds by exploding. The episode was produced for season 18 but aired as part of in season 19, at which point, it aired after Fox Corporation acquired Creator/{{Tubi}}.

** Admitted on the commentary track for episode "300 Big Boys", which was about a big tax refund that, when it happened, was quite a big deal... but then came September 11th. By the time the episode aired in June 2003, viewers either didn't get or didn't care about the reference.

* {{Lampshaded}} in ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs 2020}}''. In the "Catch Up Song", Yakko sings about the Presidents of the United States that came after UsefulNotes/BillClinton, mentioning UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush, UsefulNotes/BarackObama, and UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton's loss to UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump. Yakko stops the song briefly to point out that [[BreakingTheFourthWall at the time the song was written in 2018, Trump was still in office]], thus they had no idea if Trump was still President in November 2020, when the series finally aired on Creator/{{Hulu}}. The Warners then decide to spend the next few verses making wild guesses about what else may have occurred in those intervening two years.
** Even the original series was guilty of this quite a few times. "Hooray for North Hollywood" (aired 1998) has a line about "Bronfman's play for the MCA", which was news (at least in the entertainment world) in ''1995''.

** "Stewie's First Word" has Peter asking a magic 8-ball if Fox is viable in an age of streaming; to which it responds by exploding. The episode was one of the last produced for season 18 but the first to air in season 19, at which point, Fox Corporation had bought Creator/{{Tubi}} months before.

* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episodes apparently took a while to make, considering that they were airing hand-drawn episodes until its eighth season in 2003, where they switched to digital ink and paint (for reference, most cartoons were digitally animated by 2000). Then there's the episode "Lost in [=MySpace=]" which dealt with the Strickland Propane crew discovering [=MySpace=]. This episode was written in 2004, but didn't air until the end of 2008, when [=MySpace=] was declining in popularity. Fortunately, this is TruthInTelevision, as small rural communities like Arlen are often behind the times and don't embrace modern trends until after they've been established as commonplace elsewhere.

* The British series ''WesternAnimation/TwoDTV'' was an animated satire on the week's events, which obviously needed to be animated as quickly and cheaply as possible -- and it showed. The basic idea was originally done with puppets as ''Series/SpittingImage''.

* The Finnish animated series ''The Autocrats'', which was a CGI-animated series about the largely fictional lives of the members of the Finnish parliament. Since each episode had to be done in a week for the sake of staying topical, in the end the show was neither particularly entertaining or particularly well animated, the latter being particularly obvious.

* In 2003, ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'' released an issue that featured one comic that took potshots at the sitcom ''Series/EightSimpleRules''. There is generally a few months for the magazine to go from concept to published issue. As a result, the issue in question ended up coming out a just few weeks after the sitcom's star, Creator/JohnRitter, died suddenly due to an aortic dissection. It was awkward.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' episode "Certified Super Sitter" has Timmy's parents making a reference to the Vine app, a short-form video hosting service. The reference is embarrassingly instantly dated, as the service was discontinued ''the day before the episode's original broadcast''.

** This is one of the reasons why the show underwent reverse IssueDrift and moved away from topical political satire and more towards over-the-top and relatively apolitical {{Farce}}. The showrunners stated that it could take upwards of two years from an episode being written to being broadcast, which forces episodes to be written in a more timeless manner. They [[https://tv.avclub.com/comedy-showrunners-week-american-dad-s-co-creators-on-1798233675 cited a joke made early on]] in the show's run about White House counsel Harriet Miers that was so outdated by the time it actually aired that the showrunners themselves forgot who she was and had to look it up online.

** ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'', released in January 2008, features no content from ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'', which was released in November 2007, due to the two games having mostly-concurrent development cycles. It's only briefly mentioned in the game's Chronicle, so the game instead treats ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'' as the latest console-based mainline ''Mario'' game and ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros1'' as the latest handheld one. For the same reason, content on ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' is nonexistent (only having a mention in the Chronicle), so the newest ''Metroid'' content in the game is as of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' (console, 2004) and ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeHunters'' (handheld and overall, 2006).

** ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'', released in January 2008, features basically no content from ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'', which was released in November 2007, due to the two games having mostly-concurrent development cycles. It's only briefly mentioned in the game's Chronicle, and the game instead treats ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'' as the latest console-based mainline ''Mario'' game. For the same reason, content on ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' is nonexistent (only having a mention in the Chronicle), so the newest ''Metroid'' content in the game is as of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' (console, 2004) and ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeHunters'' (handheld and overall, 2006).

*** Despite ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'' coming out a year and a half before ''Ultimate'', ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' content is almost entirely based on the first game, with ''2'''s inclusion being limited to a pair of Mii costumes and content taken directly from the original game (such as music and spirits). Notably, the Inkling character itself has zero reference to the second game, with their Final Smash being a move that was cut altogether from the sequels.

** In the early 1990s it was not rare for Disney to include rough pencil tests and storyboards in the trailers for their movies, simply because there wasn't enough finished footage to make a complete trailer. This practice seems to have stopped, probably because it looks sloppy. The response has been to make initial teaser trailers merely describing the premise of the film using little to no footage from the actual movie; creating a custom short. Both ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch'' and ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' did this.

** ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'', released in January 2008, features basically no content from ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'', which was released in November 2007, due to the two games having mostly-concurrent development cycles. It's only briefly mentioned in the game's Chronicle, and the game instead treats ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'' as the latest mainline ''Mario'' game. For the same reason, content on ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' is nonexistent (only having a mention in the Chronicle), so the newest ''Metroid'' content in the game is as of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' (console, 2004) and ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeHunters'' (handheld and overall, 2006).

** The WCW Nitro set had changed by the time the film released.

** Wrestling/DiamondDallasPage was one of the film's antagonists due to the fact that he was a heel during production. Page had turned face again right before the film's release.
** Some of the wrestlers and talent who appear were also gone by the time the film released, such as Wrestling/PerrySaturn and some of the Nitro Girls; The Nitro Girls as a concept was even ended literal days before the film's release.

** The episode "Stan Fixes a Shingle" has a B-plot that focuses on Hayley, Jeff and Roger going to see Creator/{{Gallagher}} perform. Gallagher died on November 11, 2022, while the episode aired on May 22, 2023, so he would have been alive during most of the show's production period and his death likely occurred too late in production to change the subplot. Gallagher's death didn't go entirely unacknowledged, since one of the characters asks "Isn't Gallagher dead?" and at the end of the episode, [[spoiler:Jeff runs Gallagher over with his van, killing him.]]

* Subverted with ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'': Each episode was completed in 2-3 weeks, resulting in the series being finished at the end of 2003, but it could take years for an episode to finally air. It's not too bad, but Season 3 occasionally featured a song similar to [[Music/OutKast "Hey Ya!"]] in montage scenes, and the episode "Lights! Camera! Danger!" doesn't reference any movie newer than ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'' and has a ShoutOut to ''Franchise/TheMatrix'' after ''Film/TheMatrixRevolutions'' killed its popularity.

* Subverted with the ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' episode "Soos and the Real Girl", which has a climax involving a bunch of robots at a [[SuckECheeses Chuck E Cheese's-esque restaurant]] being possessed and [[HostileAnimatronics attacking the heroes]]. At the time of the episode's airing, the use of establishments based on Chuck E Cheese's in Western Animation series (alongside the restaurant chain itself) was out of trend for younger viewers and fans to understand, but they took the robots as a ShoutOut to ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'', a horror video game series with a similar premise that had just sprung up in popularity by then. It was a pure coincidence.

* When it was announced in 2018 that ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' was being [[UnCancelled revived for a seventh season]], accusations were lodged at Disney that the company was only bringing back the series to distract from the recent BrokenBase receptions of ''Film/TheLastJedi'' and ''[[Film/SoloAStarWarsStory Solo]]''. However, when the ''Clone Wars'' announcement was made in the months following the latter release, the reveal trailer featured fully-animated footage from one of the episodes, indicating that the revival had been planned for some time and was already in development.

** In particular, this is the reason why ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosMelee'' has very little in the way of [=GameCube=]-era content -- only having a trophy referencing ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion'' and another referencing ''VideoGame/Pikmin2001'' -- and why Roy is a HotBlooded MovesetClone of Marth, in contrast to his portrayal in his [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade his own game]] (because it was still being made, and they only had concept art to work with).