History Main / OutOfFocus

Sometimes OutOfFocus is a necessary evil for the medium, as in webcomics. Sometimes, however, it's creator favoritism -- they've got a brand new shiny character they want to flesh out, and everyone else is put on hold until they do so, or the comic has just changed writers and they prefer characters X, Y and Z to characters A, B and C. Occasionally though, it's just forgetfulness -- the writer gets wrapped up in a StoryArc, and forgets that just because ''they'' know when someone is due to reappear, their readers don't.

* Compared to her ''Series/{{CSI}}'' supervisor counterparts [[Series/CSIMiami Horatio Caine]] and [[{{CSINY}} Mac Taylor]], Catherine Willows from the mothership suffers from this, in favor of the Ray Langston Show.

* While normally part of the core cast, Kuroko, Saten, and Uiharu all had significantly reduced roles in the Sisters arc of ''ACertainScientificRailgun'', which focused almost exclusively on Mikoto.

* Master Shifu was a major character in ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', but was DemotedToExtra for the sequel. This is justified since his character arc from the first film had ended and ''someone'' had to guard the Jade Palace while the heroes were away.

* Master Shifu was a major character in ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', but was DemotedToExtra for the sequel. This is somewhat justified since his character arc from the first film had ended and ''someone'' had to guard the Jade Palace while the heroes were away.

** Similarly, on ''BoyMeetsWorld'', the youngest Matthews siblings went out of focus and then disappeared completely, but she showed up a few seasons later, played by [[TheOtherDarrin a different actress.]]

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' had only had plot time for Celes, Terra and Locke and to a lesser extent Shadow, Edgar and Setzer after their introductions but later on you could play character-specific sidequests later.

* Most ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games have this, except the characters other than the main three (hero, lancer and love interest) tend to drop in and out of focus. List of examples follows:

** The whole family to some extent in season 3. According to the writers, it's sometimes hard to write an episode because they have to find something to do for each of the four main characters while the main story is happening. Quite to the point where they just said "to hell with it".

* Anyone on WWERaw ''not'' named Wrestling/JohnCena, Wrestling/RandyOrton, or Wrestling/TripleH.
** And current WWE champion Wrestling/CMPunk is none too happy about this.

* The third ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'' film gives more screentime to Lovesix and his RomanticPlotTumor than to Asterix and Obelix, the protagonists of the series.

* Edilio from the GONE series often falls victim to this, in spite of a overwhelming ammount of support from the fanbase.

** Kid Flash is another notable one. He was a main character in season one, but only had speaking roles in a handful of season two episodes. [[SacrificialLion He essentially came out of retirement in the final episode just so the creators could kill him off]].

* Despite having a credit as a main character, Jake Sisko from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' fell victim to this quite often, particularly in the final season of the series. This is actually a case of AbsenteeActor rather than writers not spending time on Jake. Cirroc Lofton was simply unavailable for most of the final 2 seasons. A good deal of episodes were written to focus on Jake and had to be tweaked to not include him so heavily. (Ever wonder why "Far Beyond the Stars" has Sisko dreaming he's a writer? Jake was supposed to be the one it happened to.)

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has such a huge cast of characters, no-one has escaped this trope. Even the main character can go without focus for long periods of time while TiteKubo focuses on other characters. In particular, Tatsuki and most of the other posse associated with the high school setting were [[ShooOutTheClowns dropped like the first stage of a rocket]] once the story [[CerebusSyndrome shifted settings]]. The main characters get this pretty badly too, with Ichigo being largely ignored during 2008 and 2009, and his friends being totally absent during his final fight with Aizen.
* {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''Manga/{{Eyeshield 21}}'' when Ishimaru (who is himself the focus of a running gag relating to how he is constantly ignored by creator and characters alike: DemotedToExtra) shows up in a later arc for one panel after a year's worth of publication time absent only to lament "I finally show up after a year and my panel is so small..." before disappearing again.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has such a huge cast of characters, no-one has escaped this trope. Even the main character can go without focus for long periods of time while TiteKubo focuses on other characters.

* In ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', Hikari, [[ThoseTwoGuys Toji and Kensuke]] became gradually less important as the show progresses, until they finally [[PutOnABus left the city off-screen due to their homes being destroyed]]. In interviews, HideakiAnno even admitted that the school setting and its characters had become irrelevant to the plot far quicker than he'd initially expected.

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* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has such a huge cast of characters, no-one has escaped this trope. Even the main character can go without focus for long periods of time while TiteKubo focuses on other characters. In particular, Tatsuki and most of the other posse associated with the high school setting were [[ShooOutTheClowns dropped like the first stage of a rocket]] once the story [[CerebusSyndrome shifted settings]]. The main characters get this pretty badly too, with Ichigo being largely ignored during 2008 and 2009, and his friends being totally absent during his final fight with Aizen.

** ''Anime/DigimonTamers'' wasn't the most even in its handling of the screentime of the tamers. Of the ten, only five (Takato, Ruki, Jenrya, Ryo, Juri) were really in focus during the final arc. That said, there's justification for it this time: the former four are the only ones able to effectively fight the D-Reaper, while they're trying to rescue the latter from [[MindRape it]]. Three of the tamers are too young to participate much (Shuichon, Ai, Makoto), and two of them didn't even become actual tamers until the last episode anyway (Ai, Makoto). Above all else, it should be noted that only the five in focus were intended to be tamers from the start; everyone else wasn't planned at all and was simply a case of ThrowItIn, so expecting them to become proper main characters is fairly unreasonable.

** Founding Avenger Ant-Man appeared once in the second season to let the viewers see the beginning of his SanitySlippage, came back in a later episode as the mentally unstable Yellowjacket, and then mostly served as just extra assistance for battle scenes.
** Thor and [[spoiler: Captain America]] got this when the second season began. Thor had to help repair Asgard after the defeat of Loki, and spent 12 episodes away from the other Avengers as a result. (Although, two of those episodes did show some of his Asgardian exploits.) [[spoiler: Cap]] vanished for 10 episodes because Skrulls captured him.

** After Hulk got framed for attacking SHIELD, he spent several episodes imprisoned from crimefighting. He eventually became free, but decided to end his full-time membership with the Avengers to sort things out.
** The show underwent a retool near the end of its run to put the so-called "Big Three" of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor[[note]]who also happen to be the three heroes who've had their own MarvelCinematicUniverse films that lead into Film/TheAvengers[[/note]] into the spotlight more often. This reduced the other members to extra firepower at best, and victims of the antagonist at worst. This seems especially drastic for TheWasp, BlackPanther, {{Hawkeye}}, and MsMarvel, who all played major roles during the preceding story arc.
** It feels arguable whether or not this happened to Vision. He did play a major role in three of the final episodes preceding the retool, but that doesn't sound like much compared to the five Avengers listed above. He also played vital roles in some of the show's very last episodes.

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* ''[[WesternAnimation/AvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes]]''