Times when a story arc is aborted in fan works.
Crossovers
- Back to the Frollo started several plot arcs that ultimately were never concluded. Malus and his gypsy gang were mentioned as antagonists but never got full arcs, and Esmeralda is unceremoniously dragged away and her fate is never discussed again.
- The same is true for most of the rest of Crazed Writer's Frollo-centric stories, especially What REALLY Happened, which began as an explanation for why Frollo isn't actually the villain but quickly descended into Danisha and Frollo romance.
- In Fractured (SovereignGFC), a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover, the opening of Vaults is set up to produce different results depending on who activated it and under what circumstance they did so. In the sequel, this notion disappears entirely and they are given a different purpose.
- Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: The chapters "Fear" and "Malachor" introduced several potential plotlines that ended up going nowhere.
- The terentatek's remark about having not sensed a powerful Force-user like Jaune in "many centuries" implies that someone else from the Star Wars galaxy had previously visited Remnant. This plot point is immediately dropped and never gets brought up again.
- The mere presence of a terentatek on Remnant opens up the possibility of other Sithspawn like it being present on Remnant. Outside of a few minor Call Backs, the terentatek is all but forgotten about in future chapters. Word of God eventually confirms that, yes, more Dark Side creatures like the terentatek do exist on Remnant, but makes it clear that they don't play a role for the remainder of the plot.
- After Ozpin fails to glean any information about the terentatek from Jaune, he hints that he intends to keep a closer eye on Jaune as well as personally investigate the terentatek's origins at a later date. Nothing really comes out of this and Ozpin only starts paying attention to Jaune after the events of the Breach more than a month later.
- The Night Unfurls: Evetta's presence in the Waking World (or rather, her Stealth Hi/Bye tendencies in Celestine's personal quarters) is one of the driving points that escalates tensions between Kyril and Claudia. After the Rebel Scum Arc, Kyril makes a note to discuss with Claudia as to what she is doing having Evetta trailed, but this is dropped later on during the Hunt for Mandeville Arc.
- Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation deals with the hardships of the descendants of Superman and Supergirl in the far future. In the fourth chapter a character is fed up with the Family Law which dictates there can only be one Superman and the rest of relatives are supposed to hide their powers. So, he declares he won't pretend to be a normal human again, and a large number of relatives support him. However that subplot was quickly dropped.
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Pizza Problems, Greg and Rowley make a pizza that "outpizzas" the Hut and angers the manager of their local Pizza Hut. After that, the phrase "No one outpizza's the Hut" is muttered occasionally by several bystanders, much to Greg's confusion. This plot point is never brought up again, including in its sequel.
- The Museum has a few character and story arcs being cut short, usually due to the character being abruptly killed off or long gaps between turns causing characters to die of old age. Arcturus Cinderfang's multi-turn arc gets cut short after he dies of old age, leaving his feud with the elven kingdom and their undead Queen Lutecover unresolved.
- Geometry Dash Episodes: The project GDE - The Canon Ending
effectively replaces and aborts the original arc leading up to the finale of the series, which centered around a mysterious dark figure approaching the planet of Geometrica. After Terra invites everyone over to her house to show off a gun that can turn anything into a sponge, Totalpro64 jumps in the way and is turned into one. Somehow, everyone is fine with that and Geometry Dash Episodes ends with the group playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate while completely unbothered. None of the previous build-up is mentioned.
- Leaving Town begins with Riko "Erwin" Matsuoto and her mother moving to Canada to live with her stepfather after her father's death. Riko's rather bitter about the move, especially since she suspects that her mother was having an affair while Mr. Matsumoto was still alive (especially since she remarried a month after his death). One would think that this would become an important plotline in the story, but Riko mostly forgives her mother after a heart-to-heart talk in Chapter 2.
- Hazbin Hotel: Lucifer's Folly: Surprisingly doesn't happen all that often. A few instances have occurred however, such as Gavin's memory loss and Dr. Kaiju's Jiangshi army, both of which never come up again.
- In the fanfic "Incarceration", there is a conversation between Chase and Foreman where they decide not to tell House who's been running the hospital while he was in prison after Cuddy left. This is not resolved in the fic, which focuses mainly on House's relationship with Wilson and his efforts to get him paroled. The author later revealed it would have been Cameron who had taken over administration.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Friendship Is Magic: The Adventures of Spike: The "Spike Party Anthem" arc was cut unceremoniously short, and the arc that was meant to come between it and the "Canterlot Wedding" arc was cut out altogether. Both were a result of the author's computer crashing and losing all his notes for those arcs.
- In Living The Dream It's revealed in the chapter "Great Day" that bronies are causing untold destruction across the Griffin Kingdom. Tensions between Equestria and the griffins are rising to the point of war. Only for the author to state their will be no war in the authors notes.
- Scootertrix the Abridged:
- The series creator Jack Getschman originally planned to reveal at some point near the end of the series, that Pinkie Pie was Evil All Along, something that was even foreshadowed by the fact that the very few other Fourth Wall Breakers shown at that point, were antagonists of some kind, But as the show went on, Getschman realized Pinkie was acting too nice for a supposedly evil character. He specifically noted that her showing compassion for Rarity in episode 14 was the last straw. So he scrapped that particular plot twist and says he has a completely different arc planned for Pinkie.
- Early episodes have an odd gag where others would compliment Rarity on her generosity. Or Rarity would call someone else generous, then a Sting would play while the camera zoomed in on Rarity's face. Then the joke just stopped. Getschman apparently doesn't even remember what that running gag was supposed to be leading up to.
- The Golds: Mr. Gold was going to go out and get Rose himself, first going to Moe French and then to Gaston to test his memory-preserving spell. He was just about to leave when he is contacted by a newly awakened Belle telling him that she's coming home.
- Hours 'Verse: Instead of Morgana temporarily leaving the Phantom Thieves like he does in canon, he simply talks out his problems with Akira.
- Clouded Sky was originally intended to be the second in a series of four, but the author decided not to make the third and fourth, leading to certain plot elements being set up without ever receiving any payoff. The meaning of these elements and the author's original plans are all explained in a postscript after the epilogue.
- Boy Scouts ½: This series used to have a pretty strong (and The X-Files inspired) arc about a shadowy conspiracy by some of the older adult Scout leaders. This arc, other then the occasional reference, was dropped after Mike Quadrozzi, one of the authors who once worked on the series, stopped doing so.
- The Young Stag has Arya's Roaring Rampage of Revenge arc completely removed from the story.
- One of the main characters of Don't Keep Your Distance is Star, one of Dr. Eggman's robots who turns good and helps the other protagonists. Star cannot speak, communicating only in gestures and ambiguous robot noises, but it is implied early on that it actually cannot understand the animals' speech; this is quickly abandoned, likely for convenience.
- Early on in Dead Man Walking, we learn that neither Kenny or Satan could find Chef in Heaven or Hell, implying that he's still under the control of The Super Adventure Club and Kenny and company are still unaware that they revived Chef even years later. This was seemingly setting Chef to come into play at some point with Satan even promising to keep eye out for him. But this isn't followed up on.
- A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script:
- In this The Silmarillion fic the story abruptly stops shortly after Luthien makes her choice, and before she, Beren and Huan go to confront Carcharoth for last time.
- The author wrote several spin-offs narrating in greater detail some important bits. In her notes she says that her intention was writing more spin-offs and having all of them published at the same time as the corresponding parts of The Script.
- In Tales of the Emperasque, there was supposed to be an arc exploiting a /tg/ joke that claims Leman Russ was turned by Warp into Spice and Wolf's Holo. The canon!Leman and Holo!Leman would meet and hijinks would ensue. However, the author decided that the idea is stupid and the girl who was supposed to be Hulu!Leman was retconned into reborn Sister of Silence and then forgotten about.
