Aborted Arc / Video Games

• Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories completely drops its secondary plot about what happened to Matthew's father about two chapters from the end, with the intention of resolving that mystery in a spin-off title. Developer Cing went bankrupt before that could happen; however, over a decade later, the writer and director would supervise a remake of the entire duology (Another Code: Recollection) and wrapping up this plot thread was one of its many narrative changes.
• Assassin's Creed: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, along with its sequel, contains a hidden scene of Subject 16 desperately begging Desmond to find Eve, as in Eve the first woman, and implies that her bloodline will have some Messianic-level of importance in the future. This has never come up again. Not even when Subject 16 actually appeared in the next game for extended periods of time.
• Baldur's Gate III: If you spared Dame Aylin in Act 2 and help her defeat Lorroakan in Act 3, she mentions that killing him doesn't make her feel any better and that she feels like she "lost something". She dismisses it as fatigue and it's never brought up again; whether it's just remorse or something more exotic is never revealed.
• The Bard's Tale Trilogy: The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight ends mentioning The Castle of Candarr, but this does not show up in later games.
• In the second Black Mirror game, there is talk early in the game of a woman named Kerry who committed suicide in the small Maine town. You never hear of her again once you leave the town.
• No fewer than two separate examples of this in Breath of Fire IV:
  • Thanks to Capcom's Bowdlerisation of non-Japanese, non-PlayStation versions of the game, there is an Aborted Arc where Fou-lu is stabbed by Soniel...and then after Fou-lu looks astonished, the game fades to black. In the Japanese versions, this goes to Fou-lu dementedly laughing about foolish mortals, then the screen goes to black-on-red silhouette as Fou-lu goes Ax-Crazy and decapitates Soniel with the very sword he pulled out of his own back. This would normally fall under What Happened to the Mouse?, but as this is actually a major plot-point in the game, it's better treated here.
  • Game designers were intending to kill Yuna off in the original script. In fact (according to Word of God) they had not one but two proposed methods: Mauling By Fou-Lu's Foo Dogs, or General Rhun killing him — neither of these got implemented, though, because the game ended up on a very tight schedule due to (at the time) a very real fear of Game Publisher Existence Failure and they didn't have time to code that part of the script. Yuna's death ended up just not happening.
  • The manga adaptation of IV gave some satisfaction on one end, and Much Cursing Ensued on the other. The manga adaptation of the scene between Fou-lu and Soniel features Fou-lu backstabbed and run completely through—with Fou-lu manifesting an energy sword and decapitating him whilst still having the Dragonslayer sticking through him; Fou-lu then shoves this out by hand. Yuna, on the other hand, survives — and this is especially maddening, seeing as other material in the artbook that didn't get the chance to be included in the game was included in the manga. This also makes Yuna a complete Karma Houdini.
• It has been speculated that Chrono Cross was originally intended to contain a subplot going into greater detail about Serge's role as the Arbiter of the Frozen Flame. More generally, there are suspicions that Chrono Cross was intended to be significantly longer than it was, as many of its plot threads are concluded only in the form of a massive Info Dump right before the final battle that was added to the North American version of the game.
• Happens occasionally in City of Heroes.
  • A few epic archetypes, the Avilians and Blood of the Black Stream are referenced in the game but never seen while Incarnates were promised early on but never appeared until it was revealed that a certain few NPCs are of this type but the archetype is still not available to players. Also there is The Coming Storm, which has been coming for well over a year now and has not had any updates in just as long.
  • Each contact (Quest giver) has at least one group of missions that tells a story between them. Since you're not obligated to accept future missions from a contact if you don't want to, you can abandon arcs all on your own.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars indicated that the Scrin force you fight off in the GDI and Nod campaigns is only a mining colony, and there's a whole invasion fleet waiting in the wings. C&C4: Tiberian Twilight completely ignores this plot arc.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars and Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun imply Kane is an alien — as the Scrin recognize him during their invasion (and he's not human), and he shows awareness and affinity to Alien technology like the Tacitus. However the fourth game abandons most of it. Turns out Kane is the biblical Cain and he really was doomed to walk the earth - the alien tech is just a means to an end to resolving that.
• Dead Ahead Zombie Warfare: This happened to Marauders' plotline due to the final locations getting added much later after the game's release. We are yet to find out their goals, and the reason why they are trying to kill Bill's team.
• Capcom left the original Dino Crisis story hanging, in favor of Dinosaurs In SPACE In the Future for the third (and final) installment.
• When Dragalia Lost was nearing end of service, some side arcs were Left Hanging: the threat of Ex Machina, the matters involving the Syndicate, Akasha's attempts to revive the Ancient One, Lapis's struggles with Noir Magazin, and the Sequel Hook pertaining to the Doomsday Getaway event.
• The English prototype of Earthbound Beginnings that eventually was released in Japan in the Compilation Re-release MOTHER 1+2 ends with two Sequel Hooks: Giygas/Giegue promises to the hero Ninten that they will meet again and in The Stinger, Ninten's father calls him to inform that "Something new has come up". Neither EarthBound (1994) nor Mother 3 address this as they have different main characters and, in fact, aside from Giygas' origin, those two games are disjointed from the original.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In Morrowind, the plan to infiltrate Red Mountain that Vivec gives you has the line "If Nerevarine can equip an item [Sunder or Keening] while not wearing Wraithguard and receive no injury, it is counterfeit." If you look into the game files, Dagoth Ur, during the final battle, has a Dummied Out line mentioning a false copy of Sunder, and the game indeed has two different, unused items called "false_sunder" and "sunder_fake", likely meaning that the Nerevarine was at one point going to be tricked into finding a fake copy of the weapon, an idea which was ultimately scrapped.
  • Skyrim:
    • If you speak to the Thieves' Guild member Rune, he will tell you his backstory and the reason for his peculiar name and you can offer to keep your eyes open in order to help him discover his origins. And then... nothing. It's never brought up again in the Thieves' Guild questline and there is no quest having anything to do with Rune's backstory. The really weird thing is that in that same city, there's another NPC who asks you to help him discover his origins, but that one actually is a quest. Rune just wasn't so lucky it seems.
    • There's Mjoll, a former adventurer trying to clean up the corruption in Riften. You never get a chance to help her deal with either the Thieves' Guild or Black-Briar family. This option was originally planned but was cut for time during development.
    • It's mentioned when you talk to people in the College of Winterhold that the previous mage group before yours went missing. You can happen upon their bodies by chance, and pick up unique items of theirs, but you can't do anything for them, find out whether the deaths were connected, or bring anyone any closure. This is actually a glitch, as Phinis Gestor was supposed to offer you the quest, but never does.
    • One quest has you tracking a man's wife who was kidnapped by bandits, but it turns out she's taken over the band and enjoys her new life, so she asks you to lie about her fate to get rid of him. When you do, she says she owes you a debt and will see you again someday because she means to repay it. She doesn't; you two never meet again.
    • In Dawnguard, if you side with the vampires, it's a plot point that two of Harkon's top lieutenants are feuding, and both are plotting to overthrow Harkon. The end result of this is that each of them sends a guy to kill you during your first quest for Harkon. After this, the plot is never mentioned again, even after you kill Harkon and take over as lord/lady of the castle. Presumably you keep around two guys who are trying to kill one another, and really want your job.
    • One that was thankfully cut was that Mephala's quest would result in all of Jarl Balgruuf's children seeking him out and committing patricide. The scripts are completely finished and in game, but unused. It's probable that the testers felt this was an undignified end for the Jarl and would take away a major moral dilemma of the Civil War arc.
    • The player can invoke this in-universe. Guards around Solitude will mention a huge upcoming wedding, being held in public with everyone allowed to attend, between the Emperor's cousin Vittoria Vici and Asgeir Snow-Shod, a native Nord. It's supposed to be the precursor to peace in the Civil War, everyone important is showing up, guests from far away are riding in, it's all Vittoria herself talks about... The quest is supposed to culminate in the player joining the Dark Brotherhood and assassinating Vittoria in full view at the ceremony. But if you take the option of destroying the Dark Brotherhood (or never meeting Aventus Aretino and starting the whole thing), nothing ever comes of it. You can actually end the Civil War, one way or another, and people will still be riding into attend and Vittoria will still be going on about it.
• Depending on your choices, you can ultimately reduce the Bhadra subplot of Far Cry 4 to this. If you side with Amita as leader of the Golden Path, Bhadra is "sent away" in the ending and all the game's carefully constructed Foreshadowing about Bhadra becoming The Chosen One goes absolutely nowhere.
• The platinum chip subplot turns into this if you decide to follow the NCR route in Fallout: New Vegas, as this chip has no use for them. Unlike the other routes where you have to use the chip to upgrade or Destroy the army of upgraded Securitrons. In fact, you can even choose to forget about Benny entirely, even when getting back at him was your motivation for hitting the strip in the first place.
• In Fear Effect, Fear Effect: Sedna doesn’t try to follow, not even throw hints towards, the planned love triangle between Hana, Glas and Rain that would have happened in the cancelled Fear Effect: Inferno; Sedna has Glas as someone who had become estranged from the team, while Hana and Rain seem really close only towards each other, as they always were, with Glas completely out of the equation.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Freya in Final Fantasy IX appears this way as she and her relationship with Fratley was never explored. It's never revealed what happened to him during his time away, and their last scene together in the ending (long after you see him again) ends with little closure as to what will happen to them.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • At one point, Red XIII asks Tifa if his history of experimentation by Hojo means that he'll eventually go mad like the other subjects, suggesting that this might happen... and it's never brought up again. Red XIII was one of the first characters added to the game and had an extensive storyline worked out for him, focusing on the results of his time as a test subject. Virtually all of it was cut mid-development, meaning that he has the least to do out of all the party members with the exception of optional character Vincent.
    • The chronological last event to happen in The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (besides the "500 Years Later" coda featuring the older Red XIII) is Genesis Rhapsodos recovering Weiss's corpse with some vaguely defined plan in mind. This was intended to foreshadow Genesis's involvement in Crisis Core, which was to come out later and chronologically preceeded Dirge, but failed to resolve (or even touch upon) what Genesis had been up to. The ending of the Compilation line — which was not unexpected, but built in — means it will never be resolved, although Dirge of Cerberus's Fanon Discontinuity status means few care.
  • Averted in Final Fantasy XII. Balthier's nemesis, Ba'Gamnan, comes up a few times at the beginning of the game and eventually kidnaps Penelo to get to Balthier, but after escaping from him, he disappears and is never seen again for the main story. However, if you take some elite hunts, you will start hearing about a mysterious "hunter stalker". Take the Belito hunt and you will learn that the hunter stalker is Ba'Gamnan. Defeat him and he will fall to his presumed death (until Revenant Wings has him return).
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's story concludes with Nanamao planning on making some sweeping changes to the governance of Ul'dah, being poisoned. The Crystal Braves have gone rogue on Alphinaud. The Scions are all wanted criminals and were framed for Regicide, the rest have bought time in a Bolivian Army Ending, and the only place that is safe for them is the formerly hermit state of Ishgard. Unfortunately, very little of this holds any actual weight on the plot of Heavensward, with Eorzea's political turmoils largely wrapped up in various interludes.
  • In the Final Fantasy III 3D remake, Cid reveals that he and the main characters actually came from the surface world. After that however, aside from a couple NPCs alluding to Cid, this plot point is never brought up again. Dummied Out text would've downplayed it: While Ingus recognizes his home town and Luneth at least gets some sense of closure due to his memories, Arc and Refia would've been almost entirely uninvolved in the plotline.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The localization team of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, possibly assuming Ike/Elincia would happen in the sequel, ramped up the Ship Tease for the two. There was indeed some basis for it in the original script, but Ike says that he's going to go back to being a simple mercenary at the end, which would effectively kill his chance at a marriage with a ruling queen. Yet many players were surprised when the sequel not only sank the ship, but treated them as if there was no possibly romantic subtext between the two in the first place.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, due to the Story Branching nature of the game, many plot points can end up either being dropped or given a payoff depending on the chosen route. That being said, 2 paths have clear aborted arcs of their own:
    • At one point of Part I, Byleth suddenly faints out of nowhere, which is something Sothis comments upon by claiming to have experienced a similar feeling before; it's also heavily implied this event is connected somehow to the Crest of Flames, as on the Black Eagles route, it's implied Edelgard, another bearer of said crest, also went through it around the same timeframe. This event is never brought up again in any route and the mystery surrounding this particular episode is never resolved. A March 2020 interview with the Nintendo developers revealed this was indeed part of a scrapped plotline in an early draft of the story where Edelgard had the power to interfere with the Divine Pulse time resetting ability.
    • On the Crimson Flower route, it is said multiple times that the collaboration with “those who slither in the dark” is merely temporary and that they’ll be eventually dealt with once the war is finally over. Not only that, after the fall of the Leicester Alliance, Hubert mentions that Lord Arundel has started collecting the heroes’s relics found in the territory, which would indicate he’s up to something. Due to the storyline ending after defeating Rhea and conquering Faerghus, this plot thread ends up being cut short and resolved offscreen in the character epilogue text boxes.
    • On the Azure Moon route, while Dimitri seeks answers for the Tragedy of Duscur during Part 2, he learns that his stepmother Patricia not only may have had a hand in what happened, but that she went missing instead of being killed like everyone in the Kingdom had previously assumed, and could potentially be still alive somewhere, which is brought up again after the Death Knight's defeat. This plotline is eventually cut short and left unresolved as the storyline ends after the fall of the Adrestian Empire. The "Cindered Shadows" DLC gave this a little more attention mostly through the character of Hapi, whose support conversations with Dimitri have her tell him a little bit more about Patricia, and also reveals her true name of Anselma, and some of the epilogue text boxes for the new DLC characters indicate that the Kingdom of Faerghus did manage to attack the hidden underground stronghold of Shamballa. However, there are still plenty of questions left up in the air about the Tragedy of Duscur that remain unanswered.
• A secret message from the original God of War had Kratos revealing he discovered a secret chamber containing the soul of the god Ares he just defeated. Then he considers using it against Zeus. This is never addressed in the sequels and as of the third game, it will never be again since Zeus and most of the gods are dead.
• After the disastrous launch of the original version of "Arcarum: The World Beyond" game mode in Granblue Fantasy, it was revamped to make it a single-player experience about the crew exploring Sephira after the Inchoate World attacks them in Amalthea, leaving very little of the story from the original version of the event which was about the mysterious Apostles recruiting the crew to fight a proxy war in Sephira.
• Half-Life: Opposing Force leaves our beloved Shephard in a state that begs for his eventual return, but his narrative has yet to be picked back up, even as the franchise restarted with the Half-Life: Alyx title in 2020.
• In Heavy Rain, the recurring blackouts Ethan suffers after Jason's car accident that lead him to think he's the Origami Killer are no longer mentioned starting around the last quarter of the game. It was originally intended that the Killer's being present at Jason's accident formed a psychic link between him and Ethan that caused him to black out when the Killer committed his initial kidnapping, but this was dropped due to realism concerns.
• Jak and Daxter:
  • Jak 3 ends with Jak and Ashelin gaining a Relationship Upgrade. This is left completely unaddressed in Jak X: Combat Racing, with Jak with Kiera and Ashelin with Torn as if nothing happened.
  • Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier gave Daxter a Dark Eco-powered Evil Side just like his buddy Jak. It had interesting story potential since the Always Chaotic Evil Dark Makers were Precursors corrupted by Dark Eco, and Daxter was revealed to be a Precursor in Jak 3. This went nowhere.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising: After Pit defeats Phosphora in Chapter 14, he tells Viridi that he is coming for her next, but then in the next chapter, the Aurum invade. After the Aurum are defeated, the Chaos Kin arc begins and Viridi becomes an ally of Pit.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In the first game, it's explained that there's a rule that Sora, Donald, and Goofy cannot interfere with the affairs of worlds that aren't their own, with Sora's decision to occasionally break this rule being set up as a big deal. Later games, however, would drop this idea, with characters taking part in the worlds' affairs with seemingly little issue. Birth by Sleep would later establish that characters can interact with worlds that aren't their own, so long as they don't reveal the existence of other worlds to that world's inhabitants, but even this rule hasn't amounted to much.
  • The first game ends with Sora, Donald, and Goofy coming across Pluto, bearing a note from King Mickey. Chain of Memories opens with the same scene, but takes the story into a completely different direction: the trio's pursuit of Pluto just happens to lead them to Castle Oblivion, where the Myth Arc of the series begins to rear its head. The note is never recovered from Pluto, its contents never revealed, and hasn't been mentioned in any game since.
  • Kingdom Hearts II seems to set up Naminé as an Implied Love Interest for Roxas, in something of a mirror to Sora and Kairi's relationship. Starting from 358/2 Days, however, this relationship gets dropped and Roxas' love interest gets changed to Xion, while Kingdom Hearts III would put more emphasis on Naminé's relationship with Riku.
  • Several of the Sequel Hooks for Kingdom Hearts III are either resolved in the game almost immediately after they're brought up, or are outright abandoned completely:
    • Kingdom Hearts II leaves the Cloud and Sephiroth subplot on an ambiguous note, while the ending of Birth by Sleep implied that Zack would somehow get involved. On another note, the ending to II implied that Rinoa would appear alongside the Radiant Garden team. However, none of the Final Fantasy characters appear in III, leaving these subplots unresolved. Even when the Radiant Garden team did appear in the Re Mind DLC, none of the other Final Fantasy characters appear.
    • It's stated in Birth by Sleep that the reason Xehanort chose to possess Terra is so that he would have a young and strong body to carry out his plans. In this game, however, he's back to his original, old body, with him seeming to have no problem with it. III attempts to combine this plot with Xehanort needing vessels for reforging the χ-Blade when Mickey and Riku recognize how "Ansem" and Xemnas look younger than the older Xehanort when all three were seen in Dream Drop Distance, recognizing that it could have been Terra's body used to make them, and followed on when Terra-Xehanort does appear as one of the 13 Seekers.
    • Dream Drop Distance implied that the 13 Seekers would gradually become more like Xehanort the longer they had a piece of his heart in them. In III, they show no signs of change outside of now having yellow eyes, though this could just be because they weren't vessels for long enough that any major changes would take effect.
    • The ending of Dream Drop Distance states that Lea returned to Radiant Garden to deal with something. When he first appears in this game, however, he's in the Secret Forest with Kairi, with his reason for going to Radiant Garden being left unknown.
    • A Fragmentary Passage ends with Sora heading to Olympus to get advice from Hercules on how to regain his strength. Once they meet with Herc in this game, he admits he doesn't have any advice to give Sora outside of drawing for strength within the heart, and once the world's story ends, Sora returns to Yen Sid with no further ideas on what to do.
    • During the Caribbean chapter, the reason Tia Dalma leads Sora to the Leviathan is so that he'll agree to free her from her human form with the Keyblade. This plot goes completely nowhere, as Barbossa and the rest of the world's characters free Tia Dalma just like they do in the movie completely off-screen.
    • The Lingering Will appears in the climax to save Aqua and Ven from Terra-Xehanort, with the setup that it will play a part in Terra getting his body back, only for it to disappear immediately after it shows up. It wouldn't be until the Re Mind DLC that what happened to it would be resolved.
• Kings Quest (2015) suggests pretty strongly that the dragon will return. Especially in chapter 3, where it's revealed that Manny is trying to train it. Sadly, the dragon does not show up in the finale.
• The second game of the Lemmings series deals with the 12 Lemming tribes fleeing a disaster that destroys their home island. Four follow-up games were supposed to be made, dealing with three of the tribes each, which detailed the Lemmings discovering and settling a new island chain. Unfortunately, only one - Lemmings Chronicles was actually made and it did not do well critically or commercially, so the entire arc was shelved.
• In Like a Dragon, the prospect of Kazuma Kiryu ever forming a relationship with Kaoru Sayama since the second entry in the series was completely dropped, as bigger the series became with more and more sequels being produced, it became clear they didn't want Kazuma to ever be tied down to one woman, even less with someone who committed herself to Law Enforcement as they made Kazuma a man who wouldn't ever distance himself completely from his Yakuza roots (despite some early attempts of at least trying to). No matter how much Kazuma stayed clear from the most reprehensible aspects of that life, it culminated in Kaoru completely disappearing from the series and Kazuma pretty much spelling he is Yakuza for life by the fifth game, and has been so all the way through the creation of Kazuma's successor as the series' protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, taking the helm.
• The first Marvel Ultimate Alliance ended with a Sequel Hook where Galactus was revealed to be planning a strike against Earth. This was completely ignored in the sequel in favor of an adaptation of the Civil War storyline, with Galactus' planned attack only mentioned in passing.
• In Mass Effect 2, Tali's recruitment and loyalty missions feature a subplot about dark energy reducing the mass of a star's interior, causing it to age unnaturally quickly. Data on this phenomenon is considered important enough for the quarians to sacrifice whole teams of elite commandos in order to obtain it. Come the third game, this is never mentioned again. This was originally set up as a possible motive behind the Reaper cycle, with use of the Mass Relays having caused dark energy (which is what was prematurely aging the star) to spiral dangerously out of control, threatening the whole galaxy. The Reapers cull advanced civilizations to stop this from happening. However, the departure of several key dev members (along with the fact that it was just an idea that was never fully developed) caused this arc to not be picked back up in the third game, and the Reapers ended up with a completely different motive in the final product.
• The Mega Man X series:
  • All games up through Mega Man X5 shed some light into the backstory of Zero, hinting time and again that he's originally a robot created by Dr. Wily of the previous series, and that he (Zero) is the true cause of the Maverick uprisings. X5 was supposed to be the Grand Finale of the X series, so this was naturally a given that the plot be somehow resolved in that game. And then, Post-Script Season kicked in, and aside from a few nods here and there this plot twist was never adhered to again, and the X series moved on to a different story direction. Ironically, even if fans disregard the post-script series, Mega Man Zero just made everything more confusing — dark secrets were explored all right, but they were brand new ones, and Zero didn't even remember the old.
  • Similarly was Sigma's "partner" whom he mentions in Mega Man X5. He goes off on how it's an "old man" who used be X's partner but now hates him, knows enough about Zero to be his father, and created Sigma's toughest body yet (one which more attentive fans will recognize as a modern update of Gamma, the Final Boss of Mega Man 3). It seems like he's setting up an entire new arc involving perhaps a Big Bad Duumvirate if not a new Big Bad altogether (plus everything he says is reminiscent of Dr. Wily), but this partner is never so much as alluded to ever again. Again, this was the result of Post-Script Season swing-kicking the game's narrative across the face. Mega Man X6 did briefly touch on this again with the heavy implication that Gate's right-hand man Isoc really is Wily in a robot body, complete with an odd fondness for Zero and referring to him as a "robot" rather than Reploid, but it never gets a definite conclusion since Isoc mysteriously "dies" and none of the post-script games afterward picked it up.
  • In X4, X worries about turning Maverick, and in the event that he does, he wants Zero to kill him personally. X was originally going to be the Big Bad of the Zero series, but the idea did not come to fruition since both Executive Meddling and he was Saved by the Fans. So instead, his Evil Knockoff is the main villain of the first Zero game. Interestingly, the concept of X becoming a Fallen Hero is still alluded to in Mega Man X7 via a nightmare Zero has.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Fusion: Fusion ends with Samus destroying the BSL Station where Metroids were being cloned to stop both the Metroids and X Parasites from threatening the galaxy, going on the run from the Galactic Federation and worrying they will brand her as a criminal for not following orders. This plot is completely dropped in the distant sequel Metroid Dread, which has Samus following a distress signal with no mention of being on the run from the Federation. ^note This might be due to a case of Lost in Translation; the Japanese script indicates that the Federation is a complex network consisting of multiple branches rather than a singular monolithic entity - a distinction which was not carried over into the English localization. As such, it could be that the Federation branch behind the conspiracy were a rogue faction in no position to persecute Samus.
  • In Metroid: Other M, a subplot arises concerning a traitor among the Federation soldiers, killing the others to preserve the Bottle Ship's secrets. However, the subplot just sort of drops off, and by the end of the game all the likely suspects are dead with no confirmation as to who the traitor was. The potential clues the game drops our way make it fairly easy to deduce it was James Pierce. Still, this is never addressed at any point, and there is no indication that Samus herself ever makes the connection.
• The "runner assassins" in Mirror's Edge are dropped without a trace. They appear in one mission and are made a big deal of, show up in one more mission as enemies, and then just disappear. Word of God has it that great swathes of her storyline were hacked out of the final product due to time constraints.
• In Persona 4, Margaret gives a speech after her Optional Boss battle about Elizabeth leaving on a journey to free the Persona 3 protagonist from his fate at the end of that game. She mentions that "if she couldn't do it alone, she would combine her powers with those who bonded with that soul to enact a miracle", which seemed like a hint at a Persona 3 spinoff or sequel. While the game did get a spinoff since then, it was an interquel set during the events of P3. Elizabeth's story was however continued in Persona 4: Arena and its sequel Persona 4: Arena Ultimax but they depicted her as alone on her personal quest and despite Persona 3's cast making a rather substantial appearance in the plot, she showed no special interest in trying to interact with them.
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's plot revolved around Paradox Pokémon, which are supposedly past/future versions of contemporary mons brought to the current day by The Professor's Time Machine. At the end of the main story a Sequel Hook is set up with Arven pointing out that several aspects of their existence don't add up, such as the fact that there were sightings of them before the time machine was even built, with the only thing the player being told is that the legendary Terapagos may be somehow responsible. The mystery of Heath, the man who discovered them, is never elaborated on despite being the catalyst for a lot of character motivations including his descendant Briar, who was introduced as a researcher who wanted to vindicate him... but then proceeds to hyperfixate on Terapagos exclusively, while ignoring the other mons from Heath's book. Despite the expansion introducing even more Paradox mons, nothing more is said about them and Terapagos is reduced to a Living MacGuffin for the characters to chase with its massive influence on the story going by the wayside and the full scope of its abilities left unclear beyond a single throwaway line from The Professor suggesting Alternate Timelines.
• In Primal, Scree grills Jen about her Power Tattoo, saying the symbol is very important, and asking where the designer saw it. While the same symbol is seen all throughout the game, we're never told why it's so important, or what it means.
• In Prince of Persia 2, the ghost of the Prince's mother tells the story of the Armies of Darkness that razed their hometown. The ending has the Prince and Princess being watched through a crystal ball by a Wicked Witch, who is implied to be the mastermind behind the Armies as well as Jaffar's Black Magic powers. Sadly, the originally-planned third game was cancelled, and the actual follow-up, Prince of Persia 3D, completely ignored this arc.
• The Golden Ending of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within ends with the reveal that Babylon, the Prince's home, has been attacked by a very clearly evil man with the prince's voice and an all-black version of his outfit who claims that everything the Prince owns rightfully belongs to him. The obvious implication is that this person was a relative, possibly even brother who feels that he got stiffed. Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones has a completely different storyline and this mystery man is left unaccounted for, although it's implied is that he was meant to be the Dark Prince somehow operating as his own entity.
• As a result of the main writer of Princess Connect! Re:Dive departing during the final chapters of the first story arc, numerous subplots ended up retooled or dropped in the subsequent story arc, including but not limited to
  • Shadows, the glitchy copies of players containing fragments of their "souls", are a key part of several character's personal stories as well as a vital cog in the main villain's plans. After the first arc ends, they disappear in relevance from the story entirely, despite still appearing regularly in gameplay.
  • Kokkoro's task as an envoy to the real world. Despite being the only person able to travel freely between Astrum and reality, due to the android body constructed specifically for her, she never actually returns to the real world to use it.
  • The racial tensions between humans and beasts make up a major source of conflict in the first arc, and do not magically disappear even after the arc villain is defeated. However, after being given a cursory acknowledgement in the first chapter of the second story arc, they cease to be relevant to any plot thread ever again. This specifically includes tensions between Knightmare, the royal guards, and Caon, the largest Beast guild in Landosol, who were on the cusp of causing a civil war in the first story arc but act as if none of this ever happened when members of the factions meet again in the second arc.
• The Richman series has two of their characters' ending from its sixth installment's expansion pack^note which has different endings from the base game being unresolved in later titles:
  • In Baby King’s ending, four choices are shown to let the player guess what will she look like when she’s 16. The game implied that it will revealed in the next installment, in which she’s still a baby and nothing about that is mentioned.
  • Xiaomei’s ending also has a similar demonstration, with choices of her future grooms. As of 2022, Xiaomei is still not married, much to Miss Money (who somehow become her stepmom)’s dismay.
• The Shin Madou Monogatari timeline featured many, many names of unreleased games and novels. Shin Madou Monogatari itself was supposed to receive a second part, but by the time the first part completed in 2001, Compile was on death's door.
• Sabre Man: Mire Mare, Sabreman's third destination, required to defeat the third and final guardian, was mentioned in the preceding three games, and never shows up.
• The whole matter with Dex that started in Saints Row 2. You find out he was one of the few who had set you up to be killed at the end of the first game. But he runs off to escape retribution with the Boss vowing to hunt him down by the end of the game. However the third game never even continued said storyline and he only gets a (rather humorous) mention in passing in the 4th game. You do somewhat get to kill him in Gat out of Hell (several times over, in fact!) as part of an Author's Saving Throw, but even then it does feel somewhat moot since he was killed when the Earth was destroyed and already in Hell being tortured. The justification Volition gave was that the arc depended on people having played the first game and the DLC of the second, neither of which are available on PC, and they didn't want that portion of their player base to feel left out of the loop— which didn't stop them from packing Saints Row IV with all kinds of other Continuity Porn stretching all the way back to the original game.
• The Secret of Monkey Island has one point like this early in the game. where Fester Shinetop (LeChuck in disguise) lures you to a back alley and threatens you. In this alleyway, there is a door which Guybrush comments is locked. The original plan for the game was to use this scene to show you this alleyway, then later on have LeChuck bring Elaine through this door and into some underground tunnels, where you would rescue her, but space and time reasons meant they aborted this arc. They instead replaced it with the scene in the church. However they left the alley scene in for the sake of establishing Shinetop's character. The next time you see him, he is about to kidnap Elaine but doesn't because you are there. They would return to the idea of LeChuck hiding in underground tunnels for the second game, and the elevator in those tunnels even opened at that door and alleyway (using the same artwork, slightly modified with barricades preventing you from exiting). This doesn't stop it from qualifying though as LeChuck doesn't actually capture Elaine at all in the second game.
• In Shockwave: Operation Jumpgate, the Omaha discovers alien prison transports carrying non-human prisoners, establishing that the invaders are not the only aliens in existence. While Shockwave 2 explores other alien races further, the prisoners from Operation Jumpgate are forgotten. From the dynamic between the races in Shockwave 2, they are likely Sensci.
• Silent Hill 2, which arguably codified the series and every game in the franchise thereon, dropped certain important plot points from Silent Hill, such as the presence of an addictive drug that the cult was using to control key members of the town. Arguably justified, as James's issues are far different from Harry's issues, but while Silent Hill 3 does pick up on most of the first game's dangling plot threads, others (such as, again, the drugs) remain background elements.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The Japanese manuals for the second and third games in the classic trilogy featured recurring mentions of ancient civilizations that used the power of the Chaos Emeralds. While this plotline was largely wrapped up in Sonic Adventure, Sonic 3 would establish that the Floating Island's civilization had ties to the rings, with the second half recreating the manual storyline of Sonic & Knuckles in-game during a locked-on game. Knuckles Chaotix, would use this plot point as the basis for its entire story, revolving around Dr. Eggman reverse-engineering the rings in hopes of using the Special Ring to summon the Master Emerald. Come Sonic Adventure and this connection would be entirely dropped, with the games largely enforcing Gameplay Story Segregation for the rings ever since.
  • Sonic Heroes ended with Shadow and Omega carrying Metal Sonic, which implied something about their similar origins would be touched upon in a future story. Shadow the Hedgehog ignores this element, with Metal being absent and Omega having a downplayed role, which, according to the Final Story, is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
  • In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic can (optionally) ask Amy out on a date. Sonic and the Black Knight implies he was about to go on said date before the events of the latter game derailed it, further implying a possible Relationship Upgrade between Sonic and Amy. This plot point was dropped in subsequent games and never referenced again, with Sonic and Amy reverting to their usual one-sided dynamic.
• 2012's Soulcalibur V did a 17-year Time Skip meant to be a Soft Reboot of the series that would introduce a new generation of fighters to the mix, and continue the story in a new status quo. Because the game underperformed, was hit with backlash over said story, setting and characters, went on a long hiatus afterwards, the man responsible for the time skip left less than two years after release, and the general consensus was that the series needed to return to the roots to survive, whatever plots V set up were promptly abandoned. Soulcalibur VI, released in 2018, ended up as a Continuity Reboot that completely undoes everything V tried to do (even going as far as painting the events of V as a Bad Future that must be prevented at all costs), returning the series and status quo back to normal, leaving all lingering plots related to it currently unresolved.
• For the Western audience, Splatoon's first attempt at an online Splatfest event ended up as this. After technical issues were discovered during the Japanese Splatfest, Nintendo decided to delay an already scheduled Splatfest for North America by a month. There was no in-game acknowledgment of the delay, only social media posts, so from an in-game perspective, all the usual preparation that occurs in the hub world in the days leading up to a Splatfest (neon screens, trucks, stage scaffolding, etc.) suddenly disappeared only to restart from the beginning a few weeks later.
• Star Trek Online:
  • Your Federation player is asked by an admiral to invade a Romulan outpost in search of illegal weapons. Instead, you find out that the weapons were actually equipment to find the Undine and the admiral is an Undine, who replaces the Romulan commander you just murdered and escapes. However, this isn't followed up on afterwards, with Cryptic Studios mentioning that, yes, they were, but they never could and they hate that they couldn't.
  • The Klingon Fek'Ihri arc ends with a blatant Sequel Hook in the form of evidence the Fek'Ihri may have been bioengineered creatures, possibly using Hur'q (the Hur'q being an alien race that once enslaved the Klingons) technology. Nothing ever comes of this, though sometimes it's complicated by picking up the arc again but after enough time in-universe that there were changes and events during the skip never entirely explained, and in at least one case an arc was 'unaborted' by Word of God exposition not actually mentioned in-game. It was ultimately picked up during the Victory is Life expansion by revealing that The Fek'Ihri were the Sucksessor to the Hur'q, who were both superseded by... the Jem'Hadar The Hur'q were a once-peaceful race turned violent by the Founders and the Fek'Ihri were an attempt to create controllable soldiers when the Hur'q failed.
• SunDog: Frozen Legacy: The prologue plays up the mysterious circumstances of your uncle's death, but nothing about it comes up in gameplay. There were two planned sequels, Old Scores To Settle and Blows Against The Empire, that would have continued this story line, but they never materialized.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Sunshine:
    • During the reveal of Bowser Jr., it is also revealed that Jr.'s paintbrush was made and given to him by the same person who created Mario's FLUDD, Professor Gadd. Gadd himself never makes an appearance in the game, and nothing further is made of this plot point.
    • A stinger, occuring if the game is beaten without all Shine Sprites collected, shows Il Piantissimo discovering the paintbrush washed up on the beach. With this being Il Piantissimo's only appearance to date, this plot also remains unresolved.
• In Super Princess Peach, there are a series of cutscenes that talk about Perry (Peach's talking umbrella), and how he was once human. However, this is never expanded upon and we never learn who was responsible.
• Swordquest: Airworld, the fourth and final installment, would have the Real Life contest winner receiving the Philosopher's Stone, and facing off against the winners of the Talisman of Penultimate Truth, the Chalice of Light, and the Crown of Life, for the grand prize, the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Xillia has this occur to several subplots during the final stretch of the game, due to being rushed out to meet the 15th anniversary of the series. The Big Bad drops by, talks to the protagonists, flings the key to the final dungeon at them and leaves, leaving several subplots be dropped or left to voiced-over subevents the player needs to find.
  • The 20th anniversary game Tales of Zestiria wasn't rushed quite as blatantly, but also had problems with this. Some of the broader worldbuilding-related ones were revisited in the prequel, but most got either rushed resolutions in sub-events or were outright never resolved.
• The comic tie-in for Team Fortress 2 wraps up the game's story (teams of Palette Swapped mercenaries fighting it out on behalf of two construction companies) in the first entry with some liberal Bridge Dropping and Hand Waving, and then spends the rest of the time acting as though it (and the poor blue team) never existed.
• A rather odd example in the Tom Clancy-verse video game franchises: Rainbow Six Vegas and H.A.W.X. 2 gave hints that the conflicts in those games were being masterminded by some kind of ultra-powerful international organization hellbent on destroying the United States. Splinter Cell: Conviction then revealed the existence of an Ancient Conspiracy called "Megiddo" that was bigger than nations, corrupted that game's Big Bad, and convinced him to betray his country. But after Conviction's reveal, Ubisoft apparently decided to discard this plot device: Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (which took place in the same war as HAWX 2) showed that the instigators of that conflict were an arms trafficking group called "Raven's Rock", and Splinter Cell Blacklist never mentioned Megiddo at all (though it may have brought the idea back vaguely, as the Big Bad of that game mentions he is being backed by 12 nations in the ending). Rainbow Six Siege and Ghost Recon Wildlands are multiplayer shooters with not much plot, and The Division has a completely different story.
• Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the GameCube, Wii, and Playstation 2, has a mission where you are tasked with either killing Hamza for the JBA or sparing him for the NSA. If you spare him, you get a message which reads "Cancelled: Kill him or fake his death" which implies it's possible to make a middle-road decision to not lose trust with either faction. Ultimately faking his death in this version was never made possible as, unlike the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, the trust meter is a tug-of-war type affair where it's impossible to gain trust with one side without losing an equal amount from the other.
• Romancing SaGa 3 has the whole deal with Tatyana, a young girl that shows up loitering in different towns and who will force herself into the party if there's a spot to be filled. Everything indicates she's the missing heir of the Rzhyev family from Ryblov but due to her outright refusal to go to her hometown, there's no way to solve this subplot. Until the Updated Re Release anyway: In the Phantom Maze, Tatyana admits she ran away from home after discovering that two of her older siblings, Vera and Boris, planned to murder her on her birthday after discovering she'd inherit the family mansion. This ends with Tatyana's father finding about the plot and telling Vera and Boris to leave the city and never come back and assuring Tatyana that they'll always celebrate her birthday.
• In the early days of Toontown Online, there was a video played during the download that featured a giant robot who was brought to life by Scrooge McDuck that creates the first Cogs, who would then go on to endlessly manufacture more. This video was taken down on some countries' versions of the site, particularly the American one. Since then, the releases of the Cog HQ's have made it seem like the four types of Cogs are separately ruled by four different bosses. However, defeating the CEO results in hearing a bit of his dialogue about the "Chairman," who some fans thought would turn out to be the robot from the download video. It's moot, since the game was discontinued before anything could come of it.
• What happens when you take about 30 arcs that never get resolved and stitch them together with a storyline that goes nowhere? Treasure Hunter G on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Awesome music and a unique battle system thankfully keep you from realizing it.
• Two Worlds II seems to suffer heavily from this. The story goes on nicely until you finally make it out of the Goddamn Swamp, then you have to head out for the Big Bad's fortress only to end up being handed a Twist Ending the size of the castle you're infiltrating. It seems the game was originally planned to be significantly larger but the developers had to shorten it due to time and money constraints, so you get the feeling of having "skipped" a certain portion of the story when getting an ending which doesn't make much sense and feels extremely rushed.
• In Chapter 1 of Valkyrie Profile, Lenneth decides to commit a vampire's name to memory after hearing about it after performing soul transfer on Belenus. However, we don't actually meet this vampire.
• WarioWare
  • The Excuse Plot of D.I.Y. establishes that, due to his refusal to pay salaries, half of Wario's employees left him to work for a competitor named Diamond Software, which also drives a rift between 9-Volt (who left) and 18-Volt (who stayed). Game & Wario completely ignores this, as everyone is back to working with Wario, and 9-Volt and 18-Volt are friends again.
  • Within Get it Together!, while the story mode stages have introductory cutscenes setting up the premise of each stage, these premises don't actually get resolved with an end cutscene. Winning the boss game just results in the characters defeating the bug that plagued the level. Particularly jarring with Kat and Ana's stage, which outright had them fighting a villain.
• There are so many of these in World of Warcraft that they could form a folder all to themselves, although it's worth noting that Blizzard Entertainment has been revisiting some of them. A very concise summary:
  • The Chained Essence of Eranikus quest line from Sunken Temple ended with the Plot Coupon being handed to an NPC in Winterspring, with a promised followup that never occurred. Later, Eranikus was summoned and redeemed by players as part of the Ahn'Qiraj opening quest line, but the quests themselves are completely unconnected in gameplay terms.
  • In the vanilla game, Zul'jin was heavily implied to be a member of the Revantusk tribe, which there's hints throughout their Hinterlands village of the Revantusks awaiting the day that Zul'jin returns to lead them again. This ended up being retconned in the following Burning Crusade expansion where it was decided that Zul'jin was actually of the Amani tribe, because the developers wanted to use him as a raid boss for Zul'Aman.
  • The Discs of Norgannon quest line, available to players after defeating Uldaman, was left hanging after the discovery of Uldum in Tanaris. This lasted for close to three years before Brann Bronzebeard began investigating Ulduar in Storm Peaks, using a similar set of discs as the Plot Coupon. That, too, was left hanging until the opening of Ulduar as a raid dungeon in patch 3.1. Uldum itself was opened as part of the Cataclysm expansion, revealed to be a zone which was previously hidden. However, the disks found in Uldaman (and the second set of disks that you were told that you needed to enter Uldum), turned out to be unnecessary and were forgotten about.
  • The Missing Diplomat quest line started in Stormwind and took players up to the reveal of King Varian Wrynn's abduction by the Defias Brotherhood. It was never followed up in-game, but did receive extensive treatment in the tie-in comics and novels. Come Wrath of the Lich King, Varian suddenly reappeared in charge of Stormwind with a Darker and Edgier look and a microscopically thin in-game explanation. And then, if you started playing after Wrath of the Lich King came out (but before Cataclysm), then you find out the King has been kidnapped... and wonder what the heck they're talking about since the King is right there in Stormwind.
  • The human kingdom of Kul Tiras, a key player in Warcraft II and Warcraft III, was not even shown on the map, despite the fact that a large number of NPCs are stated to have come from there (including the major human character Jaina Proudmoore). The island nation was absent from the game until its addition in Battle for Azeroth, a fair eight installments into the game's history. Gilneas was in a similar situation until Cataclysm was announced.
  • The Shady Rest Inn quest line remained unfinished, until a patch during The Burning Crusade expansion.
  • The supposed alliance between the Blue Dragonflight and the Ethereum during the Nexus War in WotLK.
  • The "Purification of The Ashbringer" subplot. The Ashbringer is a powerful holy sword, owned by the paladin Alexandros Mograine and lost when he fell to darkness. The corrupted version could be acquired in old Naxxramas, kicking off a quest chain that ended with the promise of purifying the Ashbringer in a future expansion. Come Wrath of the Lich King, Darion Mograine, the son of the original bearer, gives it to uber-Paladin and general messianic badass Tirion Fordring in the midst of a Heel–Face Turn. Tirion's faith in turn purifies the Ashbringer. Players who owned the original sword were left disappointed. Come Legion, every Ret Paladin is given Ashbringer as their Artifact weapon, acquiring it from a dying Tiron. The original plans are referenced with a hidden Artifact Skin that turns it into a new version of the corrupted Ashbringer, requiring players to find Nat Pagle's book, Nefarin's head and taking them to the prince in Dire Maul, bringing the arc back around full circle.
  • Rumors were spread during the Burning Crusade expansion that the aforementioned purification of Ashbringer would involve Turalyon and possibly Alleria Windrunner, and a mysterious smith in Outland hinted to be another son of Mograine. Nothing ever came of this, and Turalyon and Alleria were not seen from until Legion, despite promises that all the members of the Sons of Lothar would be featured in The Burning Crusade. One loading screen tip highlights this plot thread by noting nobody has seen Turalyon or Alleria in years. Legion adds "...until now!" once the two return, having spent the twenty years since they disappeared fighting alongside the Army of the Light against the Burning Legion.
  • The Vashj'ir storyline, and the war between the naga and Neptulon's forces. Toward the end of the storyline, Neptulon is forced to retreat to the Throne of the Tides, and at the end of the Ozumat encounter, he is abducted by Ozumat again after players reduce Ozumat to around 10% HP. There was going to be a five-man dungeon in the Abyssal Maw, in which players would go inside the third ancient of Vashj'ir, and among other enemies, fight the Battlemaiden they had been controlling in the past visions quests. Blizzard scrapped the Abyssal Maw zones, deciding that Throne of the Tides was the conclusion to the storyline. It was even twice aborted, as the five-man was planned to be a raid.
  • Garrosh Hellscream's character arc was one that was changed so significantly it may as well have been aborted. After getting out of his Burning Crusade funk, Garrosh was intended to be a hot head in Wrath of the Lich King working his way up to become the new Warchief of the Horde. He then struggled with the reigns of leadership in Cataclysm, but it's here that Garrosh began to grow into an appreciable character who fit well with the dichotomy of the Horde. Unfortunately, the writers flubbed Garrosh's writing by Mists of Pandaria; making him unsympathetic with his positives being an Informed Ability. Once the developers realized their mistake, they gave up on making him a character the players were supposed to like or understand, turning him from "harsh but fair leader the people need" to "violent, xenophobic Tyrant Takes the Helm who needs to be deposed."
  • Many intriguing storylines in Warlords of Draenor were dropped or cut short due to a troubled development cycle. Examples of stories either cut short or outright removed include Yrel's character arc; the home islands of the Laughing Skull and Ogres; the titular Warlords and the Iron Horde being defeated quickly; and the sub-plot of Cho'gall and his connection to the Void.
• Zap Dramatic:
  • The preview for the final episode of the Ambition series states that you'll advise Rolf Klink as he negotiates with "pure evil". This is not what happens in the episode at all, which instead focuses on the trial for Angie's murder.
  • Sir Basil Pike Public School mentions subplots based around a Big Game and a school dance, which are never brought up again.
• Every central character in Xenogears besides Fei, Citan, Elly, and Bart is shunted to the side story-wise after the arc they make their first appearance in, leaving their respective subplots reduced to a footnote or outright forgotten. One of the most egregious examples is Rico, who has absolutely no significance after his moment of fame in Kislev; as Perfect Works notes, there was originally going to be a plot going into detail about Sigmund being his father; in the game itself, Hammer simply mentions this twist and it stops being important.
• Xenosaga Episode I foreshadowed the possibility of KOS-MOS being used as a weapon against U-DO, which needed to be stopped because the clash would destroy dozens of galaxies. This is never brought up again.

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