History Main / Filler

** ''Anime/DigimoGhostGame'' decided to shift focus from a show focusing on plot, to a MonsterOfTheWeek show. As a result, the vast majority of its 68 episodes fall under filler. Fans grew more and more tired of the format as the series went on.

** ''Anime/DigimoGhostGame'' decided to shift focus from a show focusing on plot, to a MonsterOfTheWeek show. As a result, the vast majority of its 68 episodes fall under filler. Fans grew more and more tired of the format as the series went on, even more so as some of the episodes sprinkled in light plot elements which came to head with an unsatisfactory ending that enraged the fanbase and had them wonder why they had spent 68 weeks waiting for something to happen.

** The issue of fillers have come to a head in the Infinite Tsukuyomi filler arc, where a few pages in the manga illustrating [[spoiler: a LotusEaterMachine]] has expanded into almost multiple episodes' worth of filler, resulting in 2015 having only ''eight canonical episodes''. This, despite the original manga having ended and the anime technically having only a few chapters' worth of material to adapt, leading to dissatisfaction among fans.

* In ''VideoGame/StarcraftI', the ''Brood War'' expansion campaigns have two missions that could be left out, and nothing would feel out of place. First, the BW Protoss campaign has Mission 5 where the Protoss are randomly fighting a UED blockade above planet Braxis for one mission, which doesn't add anything since the UED doesn't chase after the Protoss afterwards. Second, the BW Zerg campaign has Mission 6 where Kerrigan's Zerg is basically just chilling out on planet Tarsonis until the UED decides to send a one-off attack at them.

** For ''Heart of the Swarm'', the three mission Kal'dir arc could be cut out without missing anything major since the campaign's main story is for Kerrigan to restrengthen her Zerg Swarm to take down Arcturus Mengsk of the Terran Dominion. However, the Kal'dir missions has Kerrigan off fighting a Protoss research colony during her search for more broods, and the only reason she continues to fight them is due to a vague threat that may result in the Kal'dir Protoss calling for reinforcements to hunt down Kerrigan. Even the CliffHanger where Kerrigan leaves her broodmother, Niadra, behind after killing the last of the Kal'dir Protoss does not have a resolution in the next game, ''Legacy of the Void''.

* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'', half the sidequests are plotless monster hunting -- the other half is world building.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' has the infamous and distracting [[SolveTheSoupCans hunt for the Ymir Fruit]] in Ymir Forest, a fruit that is said to be able to cure every disease. The fruit is needed to heal an elf woman which is never seen in game, and which has no impact on the plot. The player has to solve the puzzle regardless, since the sick woman's child blocks the way to the protagonist's destination. Just so you understand why is this is irritating, the puzzle is really dumb, hard, frustrating and technically unnecessary, as the characters could circumvent having to do it [[OnlyIdiotsMayPass if they used their brains]].

* With the development of the ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' world, particularly in the ''Factions'' and ''Nightfall'' campaign, almost the entire ''Prophecies'' campaign can be seen as this (particularly as, as is finally revealed in ''Nightfall'', [[spoiler:the major events the player witnesses and takes parts in in ''Prophecies'' were part of an elaborate plan by Abaddon, the former -- and deposed -- god of death, to worm his way back into the mortal realm from the Realm of Torment.]]
* ''[[VisualNovel/FateHollowAtaraxia Fate/hollow ataraxia]]'' is actually large made of filler. However the filler is often highly entertaining and some see it as the point of the story to begin with.

* Prevalent in ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'':
** Almost every Disney world ever in every game, but subverted in the second, when the BigBad's [[TheDragon Dragons]] or the ButtMonkey villain show up to summon the MonsterOfTheWeek, or in some the cases of {{the Dragon}}s, become [[ThatOneBoss Those Bosses]].
** In ''[[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII II]]'', however, [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Atlantica]], the second trips to [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} Olympus Coliseum]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} Agrabah]], [[WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas Halloween Town]] and [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994 Pridelands]], and the third trip to Hollow Bastion/second to [[Film/{{Tron}} Space Paranoids]] are this.
** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded'' in general is considered this for the series. The game is meant to explain what was on the letter that Mickey sent in TheStinger of ''II'', as well as set the stage for ''[[VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance Dream Drop Distance]]'', but the plot mostly consists of a data version of Sora fighting bugs in a digitized copy of [[WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}} Jimminy Cricket’s]] journal.
** In the first game, the Disney worlds, excluding Hundred Acre Wood, are all plot-relevant. You either attempt to save a Princess of Heart and/or take out a villain who is conspiring to use the Heartless. Individual boss battles, however, often consist of fighting a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere.
* ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'': Multiple:
** The game opens up the option for the player to travel to Lynchwood. You do not need to travel to this area ever to complete the story, and mostly acts as a large ShoutOut to playing in an old western against the girlfriend of this game's BigBad, Handsome Jack.
** There's also Caustic Caverns, a run-down mining operation facility that can be accessed after [[spoiler:the city of Sanctuary is forced to go airborne]]. Similar to Lynchwood, you don't have to go here except to witness some world-building.
* In ''VideoGame/Killer7'', the Alter Ego chapter has very little relation to anything else that happens in the plot. It offers some world-building, but it's in relation to topics that are never brought up again and is only notable for having a ShoutOut to Creator/Suda51's [[NoExportForYou Japan-only]] game, ''Moonlight Syndrome'', and Mask de Smith getting a new power-up.

* The campaigns of ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' are a huge offender of this.
** For ''Wings of Liberty'', the main artifact storyline spans from the Mar Sara arc with Raynor starting his search for the artifact fragments, to a couple artifact fragment search missions during the middle portions, and then finishes with the final Char arc where the combined Artifact is used to cleanse Kerrigan of her infestation. However, the middle portions of the campaign between Mar Sara and Char has three {{Padding}} arcs that can be cut out completely, and nothing would seem out-of-place. These three filler arcs include:
## Helping Hanson deal with a Zerg infestation amongst the Dominion colony worlds.
## Helping Tosh's rogue Ghost faction create Spectres.
## Supporting Matt's rebellion against the Dominion by starting a revolt on the Dominion capital world, Korhal, [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot which ended up not going anywhere in the long run]].

* During ''VideoGame/Uncharted3DrakesDeception'', Nate randomly gets captured by pirates. Four levels and a sunken cruise ship later, he's literally right back where he started; the game would lose nothing if the subplot was cut. To make matters worse, the pirate captain claims to have captured Sully, and after shooting up the pirate crew trying to rescue him, Nate discovers that the captain was lying because... because.
* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' has several examples.
** ''Gears of War 3'' spends a portion of its campaign on a long FetchQuest masquerading as the main quest-line where the player has to search for some Imulsion fuel in order to work a submarine that will get Delta Squad to their main destination. Said objective lasts 6 chapters searching for fuel within the cities of Mercy and Char. There's some neat world-building here, like Mercy being Dom's home, or how Char is a destroyed city that was victim to the Hammer of Dawn satellite strikes, but in the end, the main story throughout these chapters is just a search for fuel. The kicker that makes this true filler material is that by the end of the search, the naval shipyard where the submarine is stationed had some leftover fuel anyway. Thus, making the fuel search through the previous chapters completely pointless.
** ''Gears of War 5'' is the first of the series that plays around with the idea of open world exploration during its 2nd and 3rd Acts. The player can explore around the open landscapes of Act II's frozen mountain, and Act III's desert, using a sail-powered snowmobile known as the Skiff to search for any notable locations that {{Side Quest}}s can be completed at. The rewards from these optional quests are primarily for extra parts or abilities that can be used to further power-up the team's support robot, Jack.
* ''VideoGame/ShenmueIII'': The game has been criticized for being ''almost entirely'' filler. Nearly everything that happens until the end is meandering with minimal impact on the overall plot of the series, as it ends in a HopelessBossFight with the protagonists no better off than they were nearly two decades before, on another SequelHook.
* ''VideoGame/Road96'': When the player chooses a travel method, the game randomly selects one sequence from the available pool for that method. The majority of unique sequences are story-based and can only be experienced once per playthrough. Each method also has a few filler sequences with no story events which can be experienced repeatedly, which can become very noticeable in long games.
* ''VideoGame/Destiny2'': The ''Lightfall'' expansion is largely seen as this due to the expansion's narrative effectively having zero bearing on the plot at all, save for the opening and ending cutscenes, which many have pointed out could be pasted together without the in-between gameplay and still make as much sense. It's especially noticeable considering the quality of the prior ''Witch-Queen.''

* ''Manga/{{Kinnikuman}}'' and ''Anime/UltimateMuscle'' both had filler arcs that got them cancelled. Both of them got revived later, but ''Nisei'' was canned again and TheResolutionWillNotBeTelevised.
* Being only 49-episodes long, the fillers in ''Anime/Macross7'' are incredibly hard to deal with since you can't totally avoid any episode without missing out some important events. In the first half of the show, you can count around 10 battles with nearly identical situation, the villains repeatedly announce their objectives (more Spiritia!) but ultimately retreat while accomplishing nothing, boring StockFootage and the same songs being performed over and over. But mixed among those sequences are bits and bits of important information, making the show an obvious result from ExecutiveMeddling to make the show longer than it should be.

* In an example of how Filler can go dangerously wrong, ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'' [[TheResolutionWillNotBeTelevised was actually cancelled]] due to the extremely low quality of its {{filler arc}}s, and given a GeckoEnding or, more precisely, NoEnding. Filler after the Kyoto Arc started nice, but went downhill. The first one (the "Christian Arc"), while having some holdings of the IdiotBall and a disappointing amount of fighting, still had interesting characters, an unexplored element of Japan's history, and the animation was still as nice as ever. Then came the Daigoro Arc, which had too much padding, but still some interesting moments (it was based on an official RK novella). After that, the Black Knights arc: an interesting idea (European knights in Japan), but badly explored, as the story took too long to ever go anywhere and the battles were very, ''very'' static. And for the final blow there came the Feng Shui Arc, which had a ridiculously hard-to-follow plot, bland new characters, random unexplained events and practically zero action. Naturally, the show was cancelled after it.

* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}: Classics'' was a toyline specifically created to bridge the gap between the ''Anime/TransformersCybertron'' and ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie series, and consisted of radical modern updates of the original ''Franchise/TransformersGeneration1'' characters. Re-releasing old favorites with modern-day engineering proved to be a ''very'' popular idea with the fans, and the line has since seen several successors, often running alongside the cartoon or movie-backed toy-lines and revisiting series other than ''G1''.

* The second season of ''LightNovel/IsThisAZombie'' was mostly filler, due to the plot's magical chainsaw being broken. While it was rather entertaining, only about ''three episodes'' were actually important to the plot, with all the other episodes being retconned. What's interesting is that if it weren't retconned, the character development it would have provided from what happened during the arc would've arguably made things better.

* The ''{{Anime/Pokemon}}'' anime only starts a new game-based arc on the day the games in question are released, in Japan at least. This has led to lots of filler episodes. It should be noted that Pokemon does not have true filler, as there is no original story it is being adapted from. Thus, what the fanbase usually classifies as filler are one-off episodes that don't further any CharacterDevelopment or [[StoryArc ongoing storyline]]. Early on, many filler episodes were simply the result of a carnival being in the town ''juuuust'' as Ash and co. arrived, or it was due to them getting lost because no-one could read the map properly. Sometimes, the gang would come across a town that wasn't even present in the games, which is reasonable, as it expands the world far beyond the original games due to the hardware limits. However, episodes where the gang gets wrapped up in helping a [[OneShotCharacter Character/Pokémon-of-the-Day]] solve whatever problem they're currently dealing with is what usually gets called out as the defining example of a true Pokémon filler episode. Even more so when that problem is just the [[GoldfishPoopGang Team Rocket trio]] causing trouble again.
** Season 1 was supposed to be the only one, given it ends where [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue the game]] did so (though with some changes -- instead of battling an "Elite Four", the main character is put in an elimination tournament -- which he went far but lost, [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut starting a tradition]]). [[FranchiseZombie When it had to continue]] with the next game still a year away, a whole filler arc was made with the Orange Islands.

** The writers did something different with the ''Best Wishes'' saga. Most of the episodes were devoted to the "task at hand" (whether that task be Ash's Gym Badges, then the Meloetta plot, then the TournamentArc, then Team Plasma). There were few fillers in these arcs, with the majority of those being Upgrade Fillers and character episodes. Since the Team Plasma arc ended six months before the release of [[VideoGame/PokemonXAndY the next (game) series,]] the period in between was devoted to various stand-alone plots that could not fit into these arcs.\\

** By around Kalos, BaitAndSwitch filler episodes started to appear, where the [[NeverTrustATrailer previews promised a major change]] (whether a Pokémon evolves, a cast member catches a new Pokémon, or what have you), but then the episode aired, and nothing important happened in it, reveling the episode to have been a filler all along. A noticeable example is the ''XYZ'' episode that fans convinced themseves implied Ash would catch a Shiny Phantump.

* The anime adaptation of ''VideoGame/MegaManStarForce'' began with a series of episodes [[MonsterOfTheWeek introducing each of the invading [=FM-ians=]]], while also gradually developing the main characters and their relationships. After the introduction of the [[StoryBreakerPower Star Force]], the series' plot and character development mostly ground to a halt for the remainder of the series, taking a much more episodic focus on the [=FM-ians=]' comedic efforts to gather "Minus Energy", up until the finale. The ''Tribe'' sequel series, having a smaller episode count, averts this for the most part, with each episode directly tying into the overarching plot in some manner.

* The Anime of ''VideoGame/MegamanStarforce'' was even worse. It had a great plot for the first half, a lot of promise. Then the creators forgot there was a plot for almost the entire second half of the series, leading to a bunch of random episodes about the [=FMs=] goofing around on Earth until the last few episodes when the creators finally remembered that there was a plot. The series was hastily ended with a lot of loose threads and a bunch of stuff that made no sense unless you had played the ''Starforce'' video game, and even then the plots between the two media were so different by that point that is was more of a "fill in the blanks and hope you're right" thing.

* ''Anime/BakuganBattleBrawlers'' actually kept the story going until the Evolution arc, where everyone gets an upgrade, and the audience has to wait several episodes before the actual story resumes.

* Although not as much as ''Naruto'', ''Anime/YuGiOh'' has a LOT of filler (about 80 episodes out of 224). Specific arcs are Noah's, Doma/Waking the Dragons and the KC Grand Prix, plus a few stand-alone filler episodes. The debate on which of those are good and which are crap can reach FlameWar proportions.
** The Noah arc's status as filler was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] rather hilariously in the dub by Kaiba:

** Funnily enough, if they didn't skip over the first few arcs and chapters of the [[Manga/YuGiOh manga]] and adapted the DDD plot (Dungeon Dice Monsters) faithfully, there probably wouldn't have been any need for the filler arcs. The manga had more than enough material at that point for NAS to avoid going into filler hell. Unfortunately, [[MerchandiseDriven advertising for the card game comes first]]...
** ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'' has more of a universally agreed-upon list of filler, especially in the second season; The Crashtown arc, for instance, is to ''5D's'' as the Noah saga was to the original. ([[SubvertedTrope Except for those who wanted to see the fate of a former-Dark Signer]]: [[EnsembleDarkhorse Kiryu]])
** Team Taiyou is also considered this since no cards were released from their decks[[note]]at that point in time, nowadays some of their most notable cards were made available in real life (Zushin the Sleeping Giant, Hand-Holding Genie and Scrum Force)[[/note]]. Even more so when they are not involved in the ''World Championship 2011'' game. 4Kids actually skipped over dubbing this arc because of it being filler (it was twice as long as Crashtown and unlike that arc didn't have the excuse of character development to justify it's existence) and some argued that the dub was actually stronger as a result of 4Kids tightening up the pacing (with some fans feeling like the show should've ended after the conclusion of the World Racing Grand Prix and finding Z-ONE to be a far less interesting villain than Primo).
*** 4Kids also skipped over episode 130 due to it being a completely pointless ClipShow that did precisely nothing to advance the plot (unlike previous clip shows which at least did reveal new info and more character development)
** Season 2 of ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' had 52 episodes. A good quarter or more consisted of [[MonsterOfTheWeek Duelist of the Week]] episodes with no relevance to the overarching plot, instead relying on [[ExcusePlot Excuse Subplots]] (the Genex Tournament, Crowler and Bonaparte trying to groom a student into a celebrity duelist) to set up duels. A six episode mini-arc revolved around the students going on a field trip to Domino City, but aside from meeting Sartorius's sister and some backstory on him, it too was mostly filler, and could probably have been trimmed down into four or even three episodes.

* [[Manga/{{Saiyuki}} Gensomaden Saiyuki]] is very heavy on filler, with only really 38 episodes out of the 101 of the original three series being adapted from the manga, and some of those being a 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist style reinterpretation of a manga storyline. Oddly, the series are so filler heavy that the Saiyuki Reload anime starts by adapting the stuff left out from the original anime, and the Reload Gunlock anime starts by adapting stuff from the Reload manga the anime didn't get to. At least partially, this was because the manga was prone to long storylines that the various anime were too early to adapt properly.

** Many episodes (especially the first couple of arcs, where it was ''every'' episode) were adaptations of a single manga chapter. However, many individual chapters of the manga contained long stretches [[ActionFilmQuietDramaScene of not]] [[{{Exposition}} much happening.]] This didn't change in the anime, and led to episodes where characters did practically nothing, including an egregious one where Naruto, Yamato and Sakura stood around for 20 minutes talking about ''how they needed to get moving'' and catch up to Orochimaru.

* ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'''s AnimatedAdaptation of the ''Alicization'' arc, despite being heavily [[CompressedAdaptation compressed]], also adds a number of scenes to tie it in with the movie ''[[Anime/SwordArtOnlineTheMovieOrdinalScale Ordinal Scale]]''. Most notably, the battle against [[TheDragon PoH]] is extended by two episodes, both of which include multiple [[AssPull unprecedented events]] and [[ShaggyDogStory have their effects immediately undone afterwards]]. In the first episode he fights Asuna (who spontaneously develops the ability to [[WingPull grow angel wings]] and [[{{Necromancy}} summon Yuuki's ghost to fight alongside her]]). In the second he fights and kills Eiji from ''Ordinal Scale'' (who manages to overcome the brain condition that prevents him from controlling VR avatars through willpower) and his AI companion YUNA (whose appearance [[ContinuityLockout relies on context from two separate limited-edition short stories]] which [[NoExportForYou never released outside Japan]]). While [=PoH=] ''did'' fight Asuna in the books ([[AdaptationExpansion in a much shorter sequence]] where Asuna "feeling Yuuki's presence" was [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane played more ambiguously]]), this scene had already been used in a different context in ''Ordinal Scale'', necessitating a SerialEscalation rewrite.

*** The series has a few episodes per season, which includes both "The Runaway" (one of the more popular episodes of the series) and "The Great Divide" (generally the least liked episode of the series). [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in a [[RecapEpisode recap]] [[ShowWithinAShow parody]] towards the end of Season 3:

* ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'' : During the first three phases, the franchise develops a macro-story known as "The Infinity Saga" which sets up Thanos' quest for the Infinity Stones. Because of the nature of Marvel Studios' production schedule, screenwriters and directors have to make an effort to contribute to the main plot that all these movies shared, but without showing spoilers before time. It was expected that every movie contributes to the shared universe in a bigger or smaller scale at least with [[TheStinger a post-credit scene]]. Here are a few exceptions:
** ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008'' Despite the film having a meeting between General Ross and Tony Stark about the Avengers Initiative, and some references to the events of this film in later films, now it is almost ignored, including [[spoiler: The introduction of The Leader and Abomination as villains for future movies]] at least until Phase 4 [[ the former where [[spoiler:the former made a cameo appearance in ‘’Film/Sang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’’]] followed by a recurring role in ‘’Series/She Hulk’’]]. [[spoiler:The latter meanwhile will be brought back for the 4th Captain America come Phase 5]].
** ''Film/IronMan3'' : No Avengers, no S.H.I.E.L.D and almost any character development that Tony could have from the previous films is omitted (although it does show that the Battle Of New York is giving him PTSD flashbacks). That was one of the biggest complaints fans have with this entry in the franchise including [[spoiler: a Bruce Banner cameo that is only PlayedForLaughs ]]. That being said, revelations concerning The Mandarin’s identity are revisited in the short’’Short/Hail to the King’’ and especially in ‘’Film/Sang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings where his [[spoiler: true face was revealed]].
** ''Film/AntMan1'' : With the exception of a cameo(and, obviously, introducing Scott Lang), The plot is irrelevant for the MCU'S plot as a whole.
** ''Film/SpiderManHomecoming'' : The story of the movie is irrelevant and is almost forgotten in the following films.
** '' Film/BlackPanther2018'' : Again, nothing exceptional about the infinity stones, instead being a self-contained story in Wakanda. You could say that [[spoiler: The post-credit scene showing Bucky recovered from the disturbing experience he had with H.Y.D.R.A experiments is relevant, but audiences could infer this just from his [[CaptainAmericaCivilWar previous apperance]] ]]

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid Mobile'' is a mobile phone spinoff set between the events of ''MGS'' and ''[=MGS2=]'' that turns out to be a VR mission engineered by members of the Patriots.

** The second season, Railgun S, follows suit where the first 16 episodes adapt the manga's version of the [[LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex Sister arc]], but then closes out with an anime-original arc surrounding the Febri character to which many agree to have been Railgun's weakest overall episodes. As a result, this has left some people considering Railgun S to have [[FanonDiscontinuity ended at episode 16]]. Also within the adapted Sister arc, a majority of the 7th episode serves as a {{Filler}} break in the middle of Mikoto's storyline. This episode instead mostly focuses on Kuroko going through her daily student work routine, and her worrying about Mikoto knowing that the latter's doing something dangerous that Mikoto doesn't want Kuroko to know about.

* The ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' "Endless Eight" arc. The beginning and end have slight differences to begin and resolve the story, but the other six are [[GroundhogDayLoop almost the exact same things happening over and over again]] albeit completely re-animated and re-voiced. Other stories of similar length were handled in 1-2 episodes. There is an "ordinary" filler episode also. "Someday in the rain" is original to the anime, although it was written by Nagaru Tanigawa. The series seems to be a case of PragmaticAdaptation. The anime seasons cover everything (chronologically) that happens before ''Disappearance'', which was TheMovie.

* In something of [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools an inversion]], ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'' had at least three or four per season, but they are usually the funniest episodes.

* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'''s AnimatedAdaptation of the ''Alicization'' arc, despite being heavily [[CompressedAdaptation compressed]], also adds a number of scenes to tie it in with the movie ''[[Anime/SwordArtOnlineTheMovieOrdinalScale Ordinal Scale]]''. Most notably, the battle against [[TheDragon PoH]] is extended by two episodes, both of which include multiple [[AssPull unprecedented events]] and [[ShaggyDogStory have their effects immediately undone afterwards]]. In the first episode he fights Asuna (who spontaneously develops the ability to [[WingPull grow angel wings]] and [[{{Necromancy}} summon Yuuki's ghost to fight alongside her]]). In the second he fights and kills Eiji from ''Ordinal Scale'' (who manages to overcome the brain condition that prevents him from controlling VR avatars through willpower) and his AI companion YUNA (whose appearance [[ContinuityLockout relies on context from two separate limited-edition short stories]] which [[NoExportForYou never released outside Japan]]). While [=PoH=] ''did'' fight Asuna in the books ([[AdaptationExpansion in a much shorter sequence]] where Asuna "feeling Yuuki's presence" was [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane played more ambiguously]]), this scene had already been used in a different context in ''Ordinal Scale'', necessitating a SerialEscalation rewrite.

** ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008'' Despite the film having a meeting between General Ross and Tony Stark about the Avengers Initiative, and some references to the events of this film in later films, now it is almost ignored, including [[spoiler: The introduction of The Leader and Abomination as villains for future movies]]
** ''Film/IronMan3'' : No Avengers, no S.H.I.E.L.D and almost any character development that Tony could have from the previous films is omitted (although it does show that the Battle Of New York is giving him PTSD flashbacks). That was one of the biggest complaints fans have with this entry in the franchise including [[spoiler: a Bruce Banner cameo that is only PlayedForLaughs ]].

* Roger Zelazny's ''Damnation Alley'' started off as a novella. When asked to write a novel-length version of the story, the additional material is mostly a completely unrelated sub-plot.
* The Level 3 ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' reading books were specifically developed to tell unimportant side-stories, so as to spare the fans from having to read "kiddy stuff". They of course still bought them, some even preferring them to the author's main-story writing.