History Main / Padding

* Season 3 of ''{{Game Of Thrones}}'' suffers from this, as some storylines have to wait for others to reach a certain point before they can move forward. So we get quite a few scenes that repeat information that's already been revealed, or just bizarre bits of fluff (Podrick the {{Memetic Sex God}}, anyone?).

* To some extent, most of Creator/AkiraKurosawa's films suffer from this.

* The 2008 ''[[Videogame/AloneInTheDark2008 Alone in the Dark]]'' game will not let you proceed to new areas until you've destroyed a set number of evil trees that are spread out all over Central Park.

* ''{{Fahrenheit}}'' settles into a steady rhythm of ChooseYourOwnAdventure-style dialogue sequences and QTE action setpieces to advance the story. But there are two clumsily added stealth sections in the middle of the game, one of which could've been handled by a cutscene or simple transition without impacting the story (going from a barrack to a warehouse to meet another character), that completely break the flow of the game, which otherwise continuously pushes you forward in the story even if you fail (usually). Worse, the game engine, controls, and mechanics were not meant for stealth in mind, so frustrating line-of-sight failures and CameraScrew aplenty. These sections feel like nothing more than tacked-on segments to either capitalize on the medium's fad of adding "stealth" missions to a non-stealth game as "gameplay variety", or to stymie players who were hurdling through the story too fast.

* It could be argued that ''TheRoom'' has more padding than it does scenes that are actually relevant.

* Unrelated to the programmes themselves, in the past it was sometimes necessary to use some form of padding fill in the time between TV programmes, or during commercial breaks when nothing was on. TheBBC used to do this back in the day with "interlude films" such as the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-wmbM6EpZU "Potter's Wheel"]] to cover intervals during televised plays and [[WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties breakdowns in transmission]], frequent during the days of live broadcasts. Breaks in programming, especially in the days before daytime TV, would be filled in by "trade test transmissions"- usually just the test card (sometimes with music), though during the days of early colour transmissions, [[http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/info/prog_tradefilms.html short test films]] would be used instead, and by TheEighties, pages from the broadcaster's teletext service. Channel 4 used "break fillers" like [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tqeRKLBMk this]] when they couldn't sell advertising space.

* Unrelated to the programmes themselves, in the past it was sometimes necessary to use some form of padding fill in the time between TV programmes, or during commercial breaks when nothing was on. TheBBC used to do this back in the day with "interlude films" such as the "Potter's Wheel" to cover intervals during televised plays and [[WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties breakdowns in transmission]], frequent during the days of live broadcasts. Breaks in programming, especially in the days before daytime TV, would be filled in by "trade test transmissions"- usually just the test card (sometimes with music), though during the days of early colour transmissions, [[http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/info/prog_tradefilms.html short test films]] would be used instead, and by TheEighties, pages from the broadcaster's teletext service. Channel 4 used "break fillers" like [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tqeRKLBMk this]] when they couldn't sell advertising space.

** This is also one reason why ''Sailing By'' is used before the late-night shipping forecast on BBC Radio 4, which starts at 00:48 hours (12:48am) precisely.

* In the era where virtually every radio station had network news at the top of the hour – and was available only by live feed – many stations used instrumental songs to fill time remaining between the end of the last song and when the network news began. Stations often had a library of a few dozen generic-sounding records (although some weren't generic but became hits in their own right), each sounding somewhat like the genre they played. These were used to fill out the remaining hour, often if there wasn't a current song or recurrent that was short enough to fit the remaining time without cutting it off early. The jockey sometimes read announcements or previewed the next hour, but if he chose not to talk, the song would allow the jockey to avoid broadcasting "dead air" (silence).

* The 2008 ''Videogame/AloneInTheDark2008'' game will not let you proceed to new areas until you've destroyed a set number of evil trees that are spread out all over Central Park.

* ''Literature/LesMiserables'' was abridged for a ''reason''. For example, Victor Hugo takes a break from telling us about his protagonists escaping a failed revolution into the sewers to give us the history of the Parisian sewage system.

** The episode "Wasted Talent" has Peter trip on the sidewalk and hurt his knee, causing him to hold it pain and tough it out for almost 30 seconds. This gets mirrored in another episode several seasons later where Lois goes through the same gag, but winds up injuring ''her boobs''.

* The Film/JamesBond movie ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'' was guilty of this in spades. Was there really any point to the martial arts school and its ensuing boat chase, the latter [[RecycledScript feeling like a retread of the boat chase in]] [[Film/LiveAndLetDie the previous film]], other than producers saying [[FollowTheLeader "See, we saw]] ''Film/EnterTheDragon'', [[FollowTheLeader too!"]]?

** Tom Bombadil is largely necessary to the book as it was written. For Merry to help Eowyn kill the Witch-king in Return of the King, he used a sword forged by the Númenorean exiles in Arnor specifically empowered to fight him and his servants (Gandalf even specifically points out the importance of this sword: Its magic crippled the Witch-king both physically and magically, enabling Eowyn to deliver the finishing blow). This sword was recovered from the barrow of one of the ancient northern kings after the Hobbits were trapped in the man's barrow by one of the Barrow-wights. Tom Bombadil rescued the Hobbits from the wights, and retrieved the swords for them from the barrow. The Hobbits ended up in the Barrow-downs in the first place because their route through the Old Forest led them to Tom's home, and the road from Tom's home to Bree passed through them. Tom could certainly be removed as was done in the films, but as done in the films it would have required significant changes either to the story, its surrounding mythology, or both (Merry uses a plain-old sword the Manual states was once Théodred's instead of the bad ass Númenorean blade of the book. Meanwhile, the Noldorin daggers given to Merry and Pippin by Galadriel in the films are completely neglected and could have easily stood in as a surrogate for his Barrow-blade). As for the ending, the climax of the book was ''not'' the Ring going into the fire, but actually the confrontation with Saruman in the Shire.

* ''Literature/TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNight'' has a ''lot'' of this, due to the narrator's autism. Two of the strangest examples include an irrelevant chapter about atheism and belief in the supernatural, and a chapter about an ad for a trip to Malaysia.