Aborted Arc / Web Original

Web Video

• Aitor Molina Vs. Pandemia said something about a clone in AMvs Seahorse Seashell Party and it was never brought back.
  • Subverted in Hateful Comparisons: Vete A La Versh vs. Telegordo with "The Mandarin" Bator Medina.
• In Arby 'n' the Chief, Jon Graham started an arc in which both Todd and Travis mysteriously vanish. While Master Chief is initially blamed, he claims he's innocent. Shortly after this, the Halo map, "Cold Storage" is mysteriously deleted from their Xbox, deepening the mystery. Cortana also later vanishes. While initially the mystery was a focus, it was quickly dropped, and the series bergen to focus more on the Arbiter and Chief. It wasn't until the episode, "King", where the fate of Todd, Travis, and Cortana was finally revealed, when they are seen playing a match of Halo on an alien spaceship, having been abducted by a gay alien who intends to molest them and eat them (though he simply fires Cortana into the sun). Their fate is largely revealed by a paragraph explaining what becomes of them, followed by the word, "Happy?" Jon had expressed some Creator's Apathy towards the characters of Todd and Travis, seeing them as fairly hollow characters and didn't care to give them much closure, and while he felt the same with Cortana for a while, Cortana would actually return to the series later on, though her experiences with Todd and Travis were never even mentioned.
• On Atop the Fourth Wall Linkara reviewed the first issue of Malibu's Street Fighter comic. He mentioned that he'd review the other to issues at a later date. Unlike other comics he reviews however, the comics were not reviewed again on the show. As mentioned in his IDW My Little Pony comic review, some fans expressed disappointment in the review due to Linkara not being intimately familiar with the source material.
• An early scene in The Awkward Compilation has Lester remarking that Ernie's name rings a bell, which Kevin brushes off. This was originally supposed to lead to a confrontation between Lester and Ernie, complete with backstory, but had to be scrapped when Ernie's actor bailed on the project; Jermaine was brought in as a substitute jerkass for Lester to butt heads with and overcome.
• The Ben Heck Show has quite a number of multi-part episodes that were aborted throughout the show's run (usually when Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs and Ben realizes that the project is actually undoable or infeasible). For example, episodes centering around the designing of the America's Most Haunted machine prototype, pretty much only ran until the first half of the design stage of the machine^note However, coverage continued on Ben's personal channel, albeit without going into the details of the design as he usually does on the show, and the "GameBrain" modular console project has became this as of late 2015. The tendency of this happening was lampshaded in the 2015 Halloween episode, where the "Ghost of Unfinished Projects" appears and haunts the workshop in the prologue.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged: The Garlic Jr. Arc has its own introduction as previous arcs had. However, at the end of the first episode Garlic Jr. and his henchmen run into Mr. Popo who promptly kills them off-camera. The next episode starts the Android Saga. This is, of course, Played for Laughs.
  • Hints were made throughout the series as to an adaption of Bojack Unbound. However, due to burnout, threats of legal trouble down the road, and being unable to find anything good to do with the movie, Team Four Star cancelled their plans.
• Economy Watch: The homeless/lawsuit arc in Season 2, which was meant to conclude with a big trial episode for the season finale, but the idea was scrapped and replaced with a traditional Christmas special, taking place after David won the trial. The creator has jokingly said that the reason the trial episode was scrapped was because recording trials is illegal.
• The Game Grumps:
  • They had planned a playthrough of Conker's Bad Fur Day, but because the game starts very slowly and there wasn't much discussion between the two during the playthrough, this idea was shelved. According to Egoraptor at a panel, it was also because Jon - who has previously included the game in several 'Best Of' lists - was slowly "realizing it wasn't all that great." Ego described the experience as "depressing", and also claimed Conker was the worst game they ever played for the show.
  • Jon absolutely hated Demon's Crest and they actually got into a fight over it. Whether or not they air that episode remains to be seen. Jon decided that they'd give it another try, and have started playing it on the show. He addressed their previous playthrough, saying that when they played it the first time he didn't much care for it.
  • Several games they've played have either gone unfinished or have gone months without updates, despite their last episodes ending normally in the middle of the action. See the "on hold" and "unfinished" lists on their trope page. The worst example of this is their playthrough of Sonic 06. The series is over 100 episodes and 20 hours long, and right before they finished Silver's Story and moved on to the final chapter, Jon decided to leave Game Grumps.
• The Hobo Bros seem to have discontinued their series on Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location despite only being on the third level. It's unknown why they stopped (although it might simply be because they aren't horror fans), or whether or not they plan to get back to it eventually.
• The Irate Gamer:
  • He started an arc involving robots and said the next episode will be a finale. However, the next episode was about He-Man, with no mention of the robots. It would eventually pick up the next episode, but considering his notorious schedule slips...
  • The end of the Aladdin episode had the Genie take refuge in IG's Game Genie. Three years later, the Genie would return but now played by Chris himself and the whole revenge plot implication was never mentioned.
  • The entire series is this after 2016 when Chris cancelled the show. He would relaunch it two years later under a different name and (slightly) different format but anything related to IG is now done.
• JesuOtaku had a very bad habit of doing this in his retrospectives. Starting off when doing one for Trigun only to stop when the story started to get into the Gun-Ho-Guns. Then he proclaimed he'll do a month focusing on Digimon, he made it past Adventure and 02. But come Tamers he stopped in the final leg of it during the focus on the other characters and never came back to it. He explained later that he didn't realize how large a task it would be to go in-depth in shows like these and there was no way he could do an entire month focusing on all of it (even though he proclaimed he was only going up to Savers). Like MarzGurl, he has since left Channel Awesome and given up reviewing entirely to focus on other projects.
• In a panel discussion, the creators of Marble Hornets revealed that the skull masked figure seen in Entry 26 was meant to be Jay. They had even considered going back to this as late as Season 3. The character did later appear in the comic book series, where it was revealed that it is the amalgamation of the souls of the Operator's victims.
• The Music Video Show had the host being friends with a Pinkie Pie plushie and a crush on a Fluttershy plushie. It is revealed that Fluttershy is imaginary while Pinkie Pie was taken by the Devil in the last two episodes. When season three came two years later, that plot thread didn't resurface and outside of a couple of references, it didn't seem it was going to be resolved. This trope was eventually subverted near the end of season four when the host of the second season came back with the MLP plushies after chewing out the host of the third season for knocking on his tenure of the season.
• The Mysterious Mr. Enter:
  • Mr. Enter was planning on reviewing every episode of My Little Pony Generation 3, as part of his Animated Atrocity series. But due to each episode/special having more or less the same problems, he was struggling to come up with things to say by the time he got to Positively Pink and soon stopped, after his review of Two For The Sky. Though he did later review both of the New Born Cuties shorts, the last MLP content between G3 and much more well received fourth generation of the franchise.
  • He also had plans for a retrospective series on the history of animation starting with pre-1910 animations, that would have continued to cover animation history decade by decade. But only the first video was ever made. Though the series did get a continuation of sorts with his video on The Works of Winsor McCay, with Mr. Enter saying that he may make more videos like this in the future. Though as of this writing nothing more has come of it.
• Retsupurae has had a couple of these:
  • In December of 2012 they started a Wrongpurae of King's Quest 7, but abandoned it later that same month. This has been lampshaded several times, such as the description for the last Noir video (which also seemed aborted before they finished it over a stream) saying "Now you can't say we never finish what we start! No I've never heard of King's Quest VII."
  • Part 1 of their Wrongpurae for Amazon: Guardians of Eden was uploaded in March of 2014. Part 2 was never uploaded. According to slowbeef at the RTX 2016 panel (Around 53:30), the longplayer ended up doing things out of order and wasted a lot of time. slowbeef has considered playing through the game himself, but he never got around to doing it.
  • A Wrongpurae of Ripper in a crossover with Lowtax got up to 7 episodes before slowbeef had to cancel it and restart it with Diabetus.
• Sandstriker originally had plans in his Unturned Let's Play to have a large scale war, though ultimately this was ended by by no dedicated server and lack of players.
• Several games that Skawo starts, simply never get finished, although most unfinished games have a newer LP taking their place, and the new one does end up getting finished. However Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, will likely not be getting this treatment, since there are no plans for either, and Skawo has explicitly said that recording Dream Team is annoying.
• SMPLive:
  • Schlatt & Co.'s coffee shop never comes up after it's first built, besides to get robbed by Poke on the same day.
  • Cooper's attempt to create an illegal drug ring also only gets brought up once and never elaborated on.
• Due to undisclosed circumstances, Some Jerk with a Camera's review of The Little Mermaid (1989) Ride, promised after the Star Tours II video, was put on hold in favor of an EPCOT Retrospective. To bridge the two, Jerk starts out his retrospective about to talk about The Little Mermaid Ride, but has an encounter with Chris Hansen that forces him to go on the run and end up in Florida.
• Steam Train gave up on every single one of their various Five Nights at Freddy's mostly because they were having too much trouble getting through the Nintendo Hard later nights, and mentioned during their play of the sequel that even after numerous off-screen tries they simply couldn't get past. Of course, it probably also has to do with the group being legitimately terrified by the games as well.
• Most of the fights in DioYouMeme's "leaked" episodes of Jojos Bizarre Adventure that aren't skipped entirely, particulary in Golden Wind, are anticlimactically ended by either one move or even trash talk by one of the protagonists.
  Melone: You can't defeat my stand, Babyface
  Bruno: More like Gaybyface
  Melone: You have defeated me [dies]

Other

• Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society: The plotline about Willie's other allegiances was dropped midway through. Now subverted, as it's being reposted, albeit very slowly.
• BIONICLE web-serial examples:
  • The arc: Four of the Barraki reuniting and leading a humongous army against the city of Metru Nui. What became of it: They just turned back, kinda. Reason: Writer's Schedule Slip.
  • The arc: The Shadowed One finding a cache of long-lost viruses, killing Ancient (his crime partner and a double agent for the good guys in secret), with the intention of using the viruses to take over the universe. What became of it: Nothing, just the needless killing-off of a potentially interesting character (and plot). Reason: Schedule Slip.
• The Onion ran an article about the Mysterious Congressman running for president. Some time later, this was followed up with the Mysterious Congressman challenging the other candidates to a debate at dawn. He was never mentioned again. Since both articles mentioned him carving things into Sam Brownback's backside, it seems that he was intended to be used more.
• Tech Infantry was full of aborted arcs, thanks to its multiple-author nature and Creator Breakdown.
  • A planned subplot with the Von Shrakenberg family getting involved with a Corrupt Corporate Executive was quietly dropped when Erich got too busy trying to fight a losing war.
  • Icarus Hicks' planned Batman Gambit using mind control to fix EVERYTHING wrong with the universe died when his character was killed off due to Creator Breakdown.
  • Andrea Treschi's capture by the crew of the EFS Schaumburg was originally supposed to lead to both groups being forced to become anti-Federation rebels and go on the run together. The plan was aborted when the authors involved couldn't agree on a coherent plan for how to go about it. The various Author Avatar characters among the crew quietly drifted off to other assignments and other plot threads.
  • The mysterious Mr. Agli as supposed to tempt Erich Von Shrakenberg into rebelling against the Federation with warnings of an even worse plot to topple the Grand Council. The author involved couldn't make the plot work, so it was quietly dropped shortly thereafter in favor of trying to stop another character's planned overthrow of the government through different means. Which led to another Aborted Arc when Andrea Treschi's Batman Gambit involving bringing disgraced politician Samuel Wall back from retirement and exile was brought to an abrupt end when Erich Von Shrakenberg turned down Wall's tempting offer and beat Wall's skull in with his own fireplace poker.
  • The entire Tech Infantry: Exodus spin-off project was aborted when the authors involved got too interested in world-building and map-creation and suddenly realized they'd forgotten to come up with a plot or characters to place in this 'verse.
  • And many, many more.
• An early plot in Valenth involved mysterious interdimensional entities known only as "the Presences" appearing and causing havoc, bringing hordes of imps with them. Things get worse very quickly, with the near-extinction of several major species and a prominent NPC turning into a giant nightmare monster and going on a rampage. After one of the Presences was captured by Mad Scientists the others summoned their "master", Xilas the Cold— and the entire plotline was abruptly dropped. Almost a whole year later, after much Wild Mass Guessing by the userbase that every subsequent plot event had something to do with the Presences, the creator announced that the entire arc had been retconned away. It was never intended to be more that a small silly story for Halloween, but it had gotten completely out of hand and didn't work in canon.
• The Sharkasm Crew's Paranormal Activity series of tournaments was meant to last 14 entries in accordance to one of the Crew's Arc Numbers. However, things such as university pushed them to finish it at 10.
• For a while on Mike & Tom Eat Snacks, when Nabisco was having financial troubles, Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanagh took credit for the Nabisco's problems, which they said were from they bad reviews they gave to their snacks. For a couple of episodes afterward Mike and Tom were on the run from Nabisco's goons, rating snacks from different classified locations. Eventually they started doing episodes at their studio again, and they never explained what happened with Nabisco.
• Whateley Universe: Bound to happen in a shared universe this big, but even then very common.
  • The biggest one is Feral: a story called Wild Times, which would have followed Feral as he became the avatar of Artemis/Diana, transformed into a girl, went to Whateley and joined up with the New Olympians, but never got released. There's a small teaser, but that's it- Feral's author dropped off the face of the earth and hasn't been heard from for years.
  • At August 6th 2014, there was a noticed phenomena where the authors introduced numerous characters (each with a highly detailed backstory), but when the characters finished their transformations, the authors stopped writing about them, because continuing would have led to times where the main story arc with Generation 1 hadn't reached yet.
  • The main story got far enough to continue those story arcs, meaning the beginning of the second semester, at sometime in 2016-2017. Presuming the above was about Ribbon, Roulette, Knockoff, and the others, then, their Arcs have resumed, as they got to Whateley at around A Little R%R or so, which was published on 20 February 2017.
• In 2020, the crew of Hello, from the Magic Tavern arrived at Strong Guy Island to recruit Strong Guy and some of his allies to help defeat the Dark Lord. This obviously had to be put on hold when the Shattering/Fragmenting/Breaksies happened. The Shattering itself took over as the main driving force of the plot, but then it was resolved entirely off-mike by Arnor while the heroes were on Earth in 1989.

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