History Main / CosmicDeadline

--> '''Blitz''': "Titonius Rex and his elf sweetie's dad make up, a bunch of elves fight the Jubuthons and get their asses kicked, and the whole 'Karabork the Demon Lord' subplot is dropped because the show's effects budget got cut. In the end, Titonius saves Lightninghold by rallying a peasant revolt. It comes out of nowhere, barely makes sense, and the whole thing ends in a vomit-inducing love scene. It's a goddamned train wreck."

** In ''The Pursuit of the Pankera'' (an early draft of ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast''), most of the 534 page book involves a lot of dialogue and character development while the protagonists flee the Pankera and meet people. In chapter 49, 21 pages before the end of the book, the plot suddenly shifts to planning a massive assault against the Pankera in 16 separate universes. The book ends without describing the actual combat, much like the endings of ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'' and ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters''.

** In many of his early novels (particularly the "juveniles"), would wrap up the plot in literally a page or two, often passing over major plot elements and/or leaving the story unresolved. This was probably due to word count/length limitations. Some blatant examples are ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', ''Literature/GloryRoad'', ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters'', ''Literature/TheRollingStones1952'' and ''Literature/SpaceCadetHeinlein''.
** In ''The Pursuit of the Pankera'' (an early draft of ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast''), most of the 534 page book involves a lot of dialogue and character development while the protagonists flee the Pankera and meet people. In chapter 49, 21 pages before the end of the book, the plot suddenly shifts to planning a massive assault against the Pankera in 16 separate universes. The book ends without even describing the actual combat, much like the endings of ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'' and ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters''.

* In many of his early novels (particularly the "juveniles"), Creator/RobertAHeinlein would wrap up the plot in a page or two, often passing over major plot elements and/or leaving the story unresolved. This was probably due to word count/length limitations. Some blatant examples are ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', ''Literature/GloryRoad'', ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters'', ''Literature/TheRollingStones1952'' and ''Literature/SpaceCadetHeinlein''.

** Appears to happen in ''Anime/DigimonXrosWarsTheYoungHuntersWhoLeaptThroughTime''. After the end of the first Xros Wars season, which focused primarily on the bonds between goggle-boy Taiki and comrades Nene and Kiriha, YHWLTT focuses on a new protagonist Tagiru. Even though Yuu and Taiki from the previous series are featured as additional protagonists, they consistently play second fiddle to the new kid. What makes this fit the trope: [[spoiler: after 21 episodes with a monster of the week setup, while also hinting that there's something going on behind the scenes, and a big hint toward future crossover with earlier seasons (at least Digimon Adventure and Digimon Savers), the rest of the season is resolved in 4 episodes, with one seemingly monster-of-the-week episode revealing the big bad, and hastily reintroducing past characters. The last three episodes go by so quickly with showing off how powerful the Big Bad Quartzmon is, a betrayal, a twist on that betrayal, many past Digimon and their partners conveniently showing up (it's not that they're not vital to the plot, it's how conveniently the appear, most without even having their names reintroduced) and final battles that it becomes obvious to anyone who's watched any anime series, particularly any Digimon series, that this is an extremely rushed ending. Unlike other shows which reintroduce past characters like this in homage (Kamen Rider Decade, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger) people who just started watching this season/arc would have NO idea who these characters are and would still be in the dark at the end.]]

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'': After getting a whole extra season to play with, the plot suddenly races off around the 20th episode of the {{Oddly Named Sequel|2ElectricBoogaloo}}. It probably didn't help that ExecutiveMeddling changed the staff's original plans and forced the first several episodes to basically recycle the plot for the new audience though.

* Parodied in ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'' - Jeane's backstory is literally fast-forwarded in game to get to the "final" boss. Not only a cosmic deadline, but a cosmic limitation. The characters seem to believe there's a limit to how much messed-up stuff they can say before the game gets cancelled/delayed. If the scene is replayed at a slowed rate, the story becomes understandable. It is notable as an example that combines terror and NoFourthWall as Jeane's backstory goes from TearJerker to unimaginablely screwed up quickly, making the reaction portrayed beliveable. And then comes the true ending, where Travis finds out that Henry, the assassin who killed Dr. Letz Shake earlier in the game, is his twin Irish brother and the husband of Jeanne, and at that point what little that remained of the fourth wall was done away with.

* ''Literature/TheShipWho Won'' has a long first section establishing [[BrainsAndBrawn Keff, Carialle]], and their relationship and circumstances. The rest of the book takes place on the planet Ozran and mostly consists of FirstContactFarmers, being captured by mages and [[NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine dining with them]], a wild escape with Plennafrey, and RescueSex followed by a resumption of the chase. Discovering the mages' source of power, talking them into reducing their influence, meeting the {{Precursors}}, and resolving the whole situation afterwards is altogether rather compressed.

* In many of his early novels (particularly the "juveniles"), Creator/RobertAHeinlein would wrap up the plot in a page or two, often passing over major plot elements and/or leaving the story unresolved. This was probably due to word count/length limitations. Some blatant examples are ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', ''Literature/GloryRoad'', ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters'', ''Literature/TheRollingStones1952'' and ''Literature/SpaceCadet''.

* It's a problem with most of Creator/MercedesLackey's books. She loves a ProlongedPrologue and to write hundreds of pages of {{worldbuilding}} and character-heavy prose, exploring the setting, the characters' place in it, their relationships, their emotions, and having them address and resolve minor problems. Most of a given book is, after its introduction which can be quite long, almost SliceOfLife with sometimes only rare suggestions of a greater plot or threat. Then in the last quarter (or less!) of the book, the main threat - and often the main villain, for the first time! rears its ugly head and things happen much faster and without anything like the loving detail of the rest of the book, resolving in a great rush with often only a page or two of denouement.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' suffered this during Stormblood, contributing to it being seen as the weakest of the expansion packs. Even though Stormblood is actually the ''longest'' aside from A Realm Reborn in terms of quests, it ''still'' feels compressed. The problem is that two rebellions (Doma and Ala Mhigo) occur during the expansion pack - and even though Doma takes up a ''huge'' portion of Stormblood's questlines (ie everything between levels 61-67) it ''still'' feels as if everything showing off the culture and country of Doma was rushed so that the player can go back and quickly resolve everything with Ala Mhigo, which didn't receive the same treatment in terms of lore. This even carried into Stormblood's post story arc, in which everything is resolved within one patch for Ala Mhigo and then double the content is devoted to resolving Doma's issues. This is also how some people feel with regards to ''Endwalker'''s first act, resulting with TheEmpire being reduced to just one zone.

** ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' was supposed to have another season at least to help tie up various character threads including Willow's feelings about magic and Dawn's feelings about being the key, but Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) wanted to quit the show to work on her movie career so Dawn's plot was all but dropped and Willow was shoe-horned into a new relationship and her uneasiness about magic [[JustForPun magically]] healed. The characters became wise to the fact that this happened every season too, with Buffy remarking that it "usually blew around May."

*** ''Brightly Burning'' spends

**

* It's a problem with most of Creator/MercedesLackey's books. She loves a ProlongedPrologue and to write hundreds of pages of {{worldbuilding}} and character-heavy prose, exploring the setting, the characters' place in it, their relationships, their emotions, and having them address and resolve minor problems. Most of a given book is, after its introduction which can be quite long, almost SliceOfLife with sometimes only rare suggestions of a greater plot or threat. Then in the last quarter of the book, the main threat - and often the main villain, for the first time! rears its ugly head and things happen much faster and without anything like the loving detail of the rest of the book, resolving in a great rush with often only a page or two of denoument.

*** Much of ''Storm Breaking'' is about living in the ruins of Urtho's tower, after having rushed to get there and put up a temporary countermeasure at the end of ''Storm Rising''. The tail end of

** ''[[Literature/ElementalMasters Jolene]]'' has its BigBad appear ''once'', and be talked about as a danger only that once, before the end.