Discussion Main / FranchiseKiller

I was considering re-adding the Dead Space example to the Video Games section after seeing that somebody had removed it after the announcement of the reboot. Ten years, I believe, is enough time for a franchise to lay dormant after a poorly-received installment for that installment to count as having killed it, especially since it also seemed to kill the Expanded Universe.

Draft of a potential entry:

• 2013's Dead Space 3 was this for the Dead Space franchise. The first game in 2008 was one of a number of new IPs released by Electronic Arts in the late '00s that sought to turn around the company's checkered reputation, and was well-received enough to produce an Expanded Universe in gaming, comics, animation, and literature. However, while its full 2011 sequel was acclaimed by critics and sold better than the first game, it failed to make its money back due to its massive budget (estimated at around $120 million). As such, the third game saw Electronic Arts push Visceral Games to go in a more action-heavy direction in order to win over shooter fans, leading to many changes that series fans saw as Scrappy Mechanics and resulted in mixed reviews and worse sales than the last game despite a similarly bloated budget. Despite the Awakened story expansion ending on a cliffhanger, plans for a fourth game were abandoned, causing the game's grim ending to read as a case of Torch the Franchise and Run. It would be another ten years before the franchise saw any new material, in the form of a 2023 remake of the first game.

Is Trauma Team a Franchise Killer of the Trauma Center franchise? Unlike many other suspects, Trauma Team wasn't a bad game in the slightest, but was so niche overall and sold so little (due to releasing on the Wii in 2010, the year that was probably the apex in Wii games being relegated as "casual trash" due to the glut of Shovelware that was released then) that we haven't seen a game be released from it for over ten years now, as the devs either didn't think the series was worth the investment or the devs themselves lost passion for the overall project.

What do you think?

So, Digimon is registered in Franchise Killer under the following context: The decline of the virtual pet craze caused Digimon to take a few major knocks in the merch sales, and it wasn't helped by Digimon Tamers underperforming in its target demographic (though it did end up Vindicated by History when older audiences rediscovered it). Digimon Frontier attempted to reverse the decline by retooling itself as a Henshin Hero series, but this alienated a chunk of existing fans and failed to create enough new ones, putting the franchise on ice until Digimon Data Squad four years later. And then it went on hiatus until Digimon Fusion four years later again. And then another hiatus until Digimon Adventure tri. four years later yet again (five'' years later with Digimon Universe: App Monsters if only counting TV shows). Needless to say, the franchise has had it rough since its heyday.

I have to ask, is this valid? Considering the franchise still continues to this day, does it really belong on the Franchise Killer page?

I figured live action Mister Magoo from 1997 did this to the cartoons. My question is where to put it (currently under Film).

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Complaining, started by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Apr 11th 2018 at 12:27:59 AM

I think that the Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain example should be updated, considering that on November 20, 2020, the Hulu-exclusive Animaniacs reboot has premiered, and Pinky and the Brain are indeed included in the reboot. Also, on October 28, 2020, a Tiny Toon Adventures reboot called Tiny Toons Looniversity has been announced for HBO Max and Cartoon Network, and on November 1, 2020, Cree Summer has confirmed that Elmyra is being dropped from the reboot.

I have started a cleanup thread for this trope, Genre-Killer, and Creator Killer. Thread here if anyone wants to join

Too soon to tell but, i think that season 20 might be the beginning of the end for South Park. That and the combination of competing and more complex shows like Archer, Rick and Morty, and especially Boajck Horseman, pretty much make South park look not as revolutionary like they were in the late 90s and 2000s

I was thinking about including Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, mostly due to oversimplified controls compared to MvC2 and 3, the absence of various chracters, and the story mode which seems to be the only good thing it has. It also failed to make it to EVO, and for some reason, UMvC3 didn't make it either after years of this game being main event.

Should Hayate the Combat Butler be put on the list? Its third and fourth seasons (although they are purely original stories as opposed to being directly adapted from the manga), respectively Can't Take My Eyes Off of You and Cuties bombed badly (both sold at an average of 949 and 691 copies, respectively). This is in stark contrast compared to season 1, which sold 9525 copies at an average, and season 2, which sold 6,607 copies at an average.

Am I the only one who thinks there needs to be a "Literature" folder?

Should this be added to the "Video Games" folder, or should an "Advertising" folder be made for this to be added to?

• 7up once had a mascot of its own, Cool Spot, a tiny anthropomorphic red dot with black sunglasses and white shoes and gloves. There were a few video games featuring the character, such as Spot: The Video Game for the NES and Game Boy and Cool Spot for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, and both those games were pretty well-received. Cool Spot's isometric platformer, Spot Goes To Hollywood for the Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, and Playstation 1, however, wasn't as well-recieved as the first two games, and its failure ultimately led to Spot's demise.

Anyone think Enterprise belongs here? I know Nemesis already sorta covers the franchise, but it came out in 2002, while Enterprise didn't end until 2005, and the only way to get people interested in the franchise again was to reboot and completely change the production staff. At the very least Enterprise seems to have killed off Star Trek on TV for the foreseeable future.

I'm not entirely confident in adding this since the franchise was only technically dead for about 4 years, though that's a long time for Star Trek, seeing as how it ran continuously from 1987 to 2005. Of course, so few people watched Enterprise in its later seasons that one could argue for Nemesis effectively killing the franchise until 2009.

Was Brosnan dismissed, or did his contract simply play its course? Only four years passed between Day and Casino Royale and the two films share writers and producers, too.

What about Sailor Moon? The franchise hasn't seen anything new since 2004 after the live action series, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon ended.

Twisted metal III + 4 are a lot more YMMV than you might think. Me and my friends still continue to enjoy those two games to this day. But III and 4 are noticeably of lesser quality than 1 and 2.

Removed:

• Power Rangers has had a couple of close calls where execs went "This show bombed, but we're already contracted to adapt the next season of Super Sentai, so we've got no choice but to do another season. But it will fail too so it'll be the last season.....Oh! It's a hit! Guess we'll keep going then."
  • The first is Power Rangers Turbo, a serious adaptation of a joke Sentai and which featured a kid taking over as the Blue Ranger. Power Rangers In Space was going to be the end of the franchise until the show's quality and ratings turned it around.
  • In the Disney era there was a stretch with Bruce Kalish as executive producer, culminating in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive and Power Rangers Jungle Fury. Operation Overdrive has Kalish's flaws at their most extreme, relying far too much on spectacle over plot and characterization (even by Power Rangers standards). Jungle Fury wasn't quite so extreme in this regard, but production was generally cheap; This goes both for the show—they couldn't afford a Battlizer because they created extra Rangers—and for the toys, which suffered from declining quality and sales, contributing to the franchise losing the top boys' toys spot to Transformers (which had a massive resurgence of its own at the time, further deterring Power Rangers). Disney was talked into doing one more season and Power Rangers RPM is considered one of the series' best, but Disney (indifferent to the series at the best of times) no longer gave a crap and only Saban buying the rights back has kept it afloat.

Felt more like almost examples, but not quite. Maybe the RPM one counts, but probably not, since it was actually good and the franchise only went on hiatus cos, Disney stopped caring about it.

I'm removing the references to Eragon and The Golden Compass. Those were adaptations, not sequels, so they are really more like Stillborn Franchises. They are actually on that page already, so there's no reason for them to be here as well.

Is it bad that some of my favorite games (descent 3, quest for glory V) are on this page?

Personally, I think that Project Zero/Fatal Frame 3 should be taken off this list. It wasn't exactly panned, and the choice to not release 4 out of Japan was more due to executive meddling and stupid than anything else. (I know a few people who were going to buy a wii just for that game)

Rob Zombie's Halloween movies are far from a franchise killer; even Halloween II managed to make a decent profit, despite being a critical and commercial disappointment, and the Weinsteins announced their third film the weekend Halloween II was released.

Removed:

• The Game Breaking Bugs and ill-conceived RPG Elements in Angel of Darkness had officially driven the Tomb Raider series into the ground, so development duties were handed off to Crystal Dynamics, who brought the series back into favor with Tomb Raider Legend, but may very well have killed the franchise again with the average-scoring Tomb Raider: Underworld, a game almost as rushed and buggy as the ones that killed the series the first time.
  • Don't forget the examples that belong in the column above: the second movie pretty much killed off any hope for a third movie, at least with Angelina Jolie in it.
  • Actually, the game is getting a ninth game (Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light) now that Eidos has been purchased by Square Enix and is becoming Square Enix Europe.

It's pretty clear that the franchise is not dead and therefore none of these was a Franchise Killer.

Blood II is listed as an example. But, wasn't it a fairly popular game? I remember it as such - walkthrough, cheats and talk about it were quite common back in its day. It was buggy, yes, but patches eventually fixed it.

Taking off Subjective Tropes because this is easily categorised in terms of objective criteria. Mr. Studio Exec. doesn't make new franchise installments because the last one failed. What the creators do is in the realm of "The Universe" which comes under objective reality.

Stillborn Franchise was launched today. At the moment I've just slightly adjusted the description of this page, seeing Stillborn Franchise as more of a subtrope than outright split, which helps keep Franchise Killer covering some of the less easily classified cases. However to prevent later misplacement of articles it may be necessary to change the write-up more so that it much more stongly implies that this is the place for sequels and later items that kill the already alive franchise.

I'll get to moving over relevant examples.