Basic Trope: Early versions of a franchise include very surprising differences, or even the absences, of feature that later became predominant in that work.
- Straight: When the TV show "Alice and Bob" first launched, the animation was cruder, most of the major characters were missing, Bob was kind of a jerk, and Alice was more of a wimp. Later, they developed into a Nice Guy and an Action Girl, respectively.
- Exaggerated: Originally, the animation was terrible, Bob was rude, lazy, arrogant, and selfish, Alice wasn't even in the show, and Bob was a minor character in a show about his friend Charlie. Later the show started focusing more on Bob, who evolved into the epitome of Incorruptible Pure Pureness. Later Alice was introduced. She started out as an absolute wimp who would burst into tears when she was startled. Eventually she became an Action Girl who could kill forty mooks with one blow. Meanwhile, the artwork improved dramatically, the voice actor who played Bob was fired and replaced by someone who sounded totally different, every character from the early episodes was scrapped except for Bob, and dozens of new characters were added.
- Downplayed: Bob's personality was a little bit wooden, and Alice was more of a minor character. Eventually Bob developed a real personality, and Alice became Bob's sidekick.
- Justified: People's personalities change over time, so it would be jarring for the characters to remain static, especially if important events are happening around them.
- Inverted: The final season/episode of the show is noticeably different from the seasons/episodes that came before it.
- Subverted: The unaired pilot episode is pretty weird, but the episodes after it are pretty much the same...
- Double Subverted: ... For the first two seasons, everything after season two is way different.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob go back in time and meet themselves.
- Zig Zagged: Mood Whiplash.
- Averted: "Alice and Bob" hardly changed at all over the course of its run.
- Enforced:
- The creator knows that times change and a show can't stay the same forever.
- The show went through Executive Meddling (or the creator stepped in) to fix its initial problems.
- Season one had No Budget, but then the FCC changed the rules for children's advertising around 1983, allowing them to be funded by Tie-In Merchandise.
- Lampshaded: "Is it just me, or does the world feel way different?"
- Invoked: The creator was constantly improving his art style and story writing at the time of the show
- Exploited: Bob takes advantage of a newer part of the show, like Toon Physics, in order to perform an action which would've been impossible earlier on due to Early Instalment Weirdness.
- Defied: The creator never changes anything about the show.
- Discussed:Bob: "Wow, I used to be a huge jerk."
Alice: "And I was a wimp." - Conversed: "Wow, the show's really changed with time."
Back to Early-Installment Weirdness
