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What are some interesting abandoned plot lines in TV shows? (SPOILERS)

DiipuSurotu

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
53,148
For example:

- In the Simpsons, Krusty was originally supposed to be Homer in disguise.

- In Scrubs, the janitor was originally supposed to be a figment of J.D.'s imagination. That's why he originally never interacted with any other character.
 
Leona Lewis

Leona Lewis

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,915
They basically dropped the entire dementia/brain damage plotline in Succession three episodes in.
 
King Kingo

King Kingo

Banned
Dec 3, 2019
7,656
Diamondback's potential subplot to return in Luke Cage Season 2 was discarded because everyone hated him.
 
Z-Beat

Z-Beat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
31,837
In Once Upon a Time Emma's childhood friend was Maleficent's kid and had all the potential evil in Emma funneled into her, and that gets "resolved" immediately.
 
chrisPjelly

chrisPjelly

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
10,491
The Patriot
Lakeman's brother being kidnapped at the end of the first season being retconned (?) into him just filming a movie scene was so dumb it was amazing rofl
 
Soda

Soda

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,856
Dunedin, New Zealand
DiipuSurotu said:
For example:

- In the Simpsons, Krusty was originally supposed to be Homer in disguise.

- In Scrubs, the janitor was originally supposed to be a figment of J.D.'s imagination. That's why he originally never interacted with any other character.
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The Janitor interacts with at least one other character no later than ~12 episodes into the first season. I always hear that Janitor thing but I don't know if I really believe it.
 
Septimus Prime

Septimus Prime

EA
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
8,500
Breaking Bad was initially going to kill off Jesse in season 1.

Supernatural never intended to feature Bobby Singer; they just brought him in to fill in for another actor who wasn't available.

Also for Supernatural, Castiel was supposed to just have one character arc for a few episodes before being written out.

Arrow didn't intend for Felicity to be a main character.

All except for one of these ended up improving the shows.
 
Squarehard

Squarehard

Member
Oct 27, 2017
25,830
DiipuSurotu said:
- In the Simpsons, Krusty was originally supposed to be Homer in disguise.
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TheSkullPrince

TheSkullPrince

Member
Oct 28, 2017
27,573
California
The Office Season 8.

The last scene in the episode with Robert California's wife. It hinted that there was romantic interest between her and Andy, but we never see her again.
 
Wrexis

Wrexis

Member
Nov 4, 2017
21,229
  • Arrow lost the rights to Suicide Squad characters for several years because of the movie and basically killed them all off.
  • Despite a five year plan to use him, the main character of Babylon 5 Jeffrey Sinclair was removed after the first season.
    For 20 years the reasons were unknown, but in 2012 it was revealed the actor suffered from delusions and paranoia and they had no choice but to remove him. He managed to keep it together for a guest cameo in a following season to neatly finish his storyline.
  • The Artifact storyline was dropped entirely from Eureka and one actor left over it.
  • Sliders replaced Professor Arturo with an evil twin but never followed up on it. Then they gave him a terminal illness, and they forgot about that a few episodes later. The actor ended up leaving the show anyway.
  • Warp Drive damages subspace in The Next Generation but they forgot about that plot like 5 episodes later.
  • The Year of Hell episode of Voyager (where the ship is heavily damaged from attacks) was supposed to be an entire reason, and would have resolved a lot of complaints that nothing of consequence happened on Voyager.
 
RedHoodedOwl

RedHoodedOwl

Member
Nov 3, 2017
14,244
The Ouroboros storyline from Tiger and Bunny

It's a shame that the series abandoned the whole evil society controlling the city from the shadows plot.
 
TheGreatDirector

TheGreatDirector

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,034
They dropped Harvey Dent and Montoya from Gotham fast as fuck. Harvey definitely would've been Two Face by the end of the series the way things went.
 
DarthWoo

DarthWoo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,658
I guess Exosquad and the disappearance of Chaos, although that was technically abandoned because the show ended abruptly. (also Nara Burns' unusual powers too)
 
WhiteRabbitEXE

WhiteRabbitEXE

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,584
Arizona
Ben was supposed to die after a few episodes in Lost, and was really a nobody. Bea Klugh was supposed to be the actual leader of the Others. But everyone, both working on the show and watching it, loved Ben and Locke's chemistry so much that they reversed it, killed off Bea, and revealed Ben to be the leader.

Also Nicki and Paulo were supposed to last much longer, and represent the perspective of all of the rando background survivors who weren't the main cast leaders.
 
Fj0823

Fj0823

Legendary Duelist
Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,641
Costa Rica
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. The entire Inca Magic plot the series was building up had to be dropped in favor of evil time travellers after a VA got in trouble for being part of a cult.

The whole Sun spirit being the original Firebender who taught humans in Avatar Book 1, which was later retconned into Dragons being the original firebenders.
 
OP
OP
DiipuSurotu

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
53,148
Wrexis said:
Sliders replaced Professor Arturo with an evil twin but never followed up on it. Then they gave him a terminal illness, and they forgot about that a few episodes later. The actor ended up leaving the show anyway.
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I always thought traveling with the Sliders made the evil Arturo less evil, to the point where he basically became a normal good guy like the original Arturo
 
BeeDog

BeeDog

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,549
Bosch: two plotlines, the first one was the guy on the bike that murder-robbed people in Koreatown, who was unceremoniously run over by a car. The second one is the serial killer plot they introduced at the end of season 5 with the body parts, which was resolved off-screen before season 6 started.
 
Typhon

Typhon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,105
Wrexis said:
  • Arrow lost the rights to Suicide Squad characters for several years because of the movie and basically killed them all off.
  • Despite a five year plan to use him, the main character of Babylon 5 Jeffrey Sinclair was removed after the first season.
    For 20 years the reasons were unknown, but in 2012 it was revealed the actor suffered from delusions and paranoia and they had no choice but to remove him. He managed to keep it together for a guest cameo in a following season to neatly finish his storyline.
  • The Artifact storyline was dropped entirely from Eureka and one actor left over it.
  • Sliders replaced Professor Arturo with an evil twin but never followed up on it. Then they gave him a terminal illness, and they forgot about that a few episodes later. The actor ended up leaving the show anyway.
  • Warp Drive damages subspace in The Next Generation but they forgot about that plot like 5 episodes later.
  • The Year of Hell episode of Voyager (where the ship is heavily damaged from attacks) was supposed to be an entire reason, and would have resolved a lot of complaints that nothing of consequence happened on Voyager.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They got rid of because it was stupid. Limiting warp drive goes against Star Trek's nature and would limit the stories they could tell.
 
Burly

Burly

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,070
IIRC on Insider The Actor's Studio, Tim Allen said at first he wanted Wilson to be a ghost/vision of his dad, but at some point Jill & the kids starting interacting with him and it didn't make sense anymore.
 
imbarkus

imbarkus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,645
Wrexis said:
Warp Drive damages subspace in The Next Generation but they forgot about that plot like 5 episodes later.
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They got *special permission* to break the warp limit for, like, a couple episodes.

If you think about it, it's a *perfectly* apt metaphor for our response to fossil fuel burning being revealed to cause a greenhouse effect and climate change.

Supposedly, Voyager's nacelle's did the fold-up move to prevent the effect. By Picard's day they obviously solved the whole problem by mothballing the entire fleet and replacing them all with hundreds of copies of the same ship, apparently.
 
FutureLarking

FutureLarking

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
787
Am I mis-remembering things, or in Heroes Season 2 did Peter just abandon his Irish girlfriend in the future or something after the writers strike happened and get on with his life?

Also, the GS ball as a kid in Pokémon really got to me. I distinctly remember wondering for an AGE what that thing was going to be, only for them to just write it out of the show after a season or two of zero consequence.
 

Bndadm

Member
Oct 29, 2017
269
While it was "resolved" in a video game, 24 season 2's finale I would have liked having more of an impact. Especially the Max villian.

The X-files completely dropped supersoldiers plot line each time it tried to come back with even worse results.
 
imbarkus

imbarkus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,645
I always wanted TNG to follow up on the body-snatching parasites from season one's The Conspiracy.
 
SatoAilDarko

SatoAilDarko

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,824
FutureLarking said:
Am I mis-remembering things, or in Heroes Season 2 did Peter just abandon his Irish girlfriend in the future or something after the writers strike happened and get on with his life?
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Oh shit, forgot about this. This may actually be the biggest one I know of in terms of how crazy it is this is never referenced again with how fucked that situation is for her. You would think they would at least offhand mention that Hiro (can travel through time) saved her offscreen, but nope.
 
Tavernade

Tavernade

Tavernade
Moderator
Sep 18, 2018
8,617
Does Community count if a lot of plotlines were continued poorly by new show runners to the point the latter seasons barely acknowledge they were ever resolved in the first place? (Britta/Troy, Jeff's Dad, Dean Spreck's evil plan, them graduating...)

FutureLarking said:
Am I mis-remembering things, or in Heroes Season 2 did Peter just abandon his Irish girlfriend in the future or something after the writers strike happened and get on with his life?
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Click to shrink...

Oh that happened. At one point they also spent an entire season leading up to a legion of doom thing then decided that was boring and killed them all off in an episode. Heroes did this a LOT in the last three seasons.
 
TheBaldwin

TheBaldwin

Member
Feb 25, 2018
8,280
it might not count because its a manga that dropped the plotlines, but JoJo has many moments that get introduced or hinted at early on but araki takes it in a different direction. My most favourite example is in part 5 when

Fugo was originally suppose to be a traitor working for the boss (diavolo). Can't remember the exact details but Giorno could surivive the purple haze effects and so it seems like Fugo would have basically been fighting giorno as opposed to cioccolata. Due to some personal stuff with Araki he didn't want to go ahead with the plotline, which basically resulted in Fugo having nothing to do
 
Birdie

Birdie

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
26,289
The G.S. Ball in Pokemon.

And later the build up to the Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma showdown which was canned due to the Tohoku Earthquake.
 
Naijaboy

Naijaboy

The Fallen
Mar 13, 2018
15,249
After being revived by PopTv, it seems like One Day at a Time had to drop a lot of plot points from Lydia visiting Cuba to Schneider receiving from his relapse.
 
adamsappel

adamsappel

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,503
Walton Goggins' role as Boyd Crowder was just supposed to be a one-off in the pilot and he was written to be killed at the end of the episode.
 
MadLaughter

MadLaughter

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
13,090
I had forgotten about the 'leave your girlfriend in the future and then erase that future' thing from Heroes that they never addressed AT ALL. Jesus.
 
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