History Main / TheChrisCarterEffect

* ''LightNovel/TrinityBlood'' became this after Sunao Yoshida unexpectedly died in 2004. The novels were completed by his friend and like the anime, it only stops at [[spoiler:Ester's coronation as Queen of Albion]] while Abel and Ion traveled around the world to stop Cain. The manga is said to end at that part as well. So even if one would continue the series with the notes left by Yoshida, the resolution between Abel and the humans vs. Cain and the Rosenkreuz Orden remained unsolved because the last notes stopped at the final battle between the two brothers without the result.

** It wasn't until ''2020'', four years after launch, that a sequel that would have more focus on the plot was announced (later pushed to 2021, then 2022, ''then'' early 2023). By that time, however, interest in the lore and story had severely died down, and the fanbase was less enthusiastic.

It's said that no one ever went broke [[LowestCommonDenominator underestimating the taste of the viewing public]], but sometimes a show comes along that promises stories so complex and subtle that they'll make ''Literature/WarAndPeace'' look like "[[Literature/FrogAndToad Frog and Toad Are Friends]]". If it's [[TheProducerThinksOfEverything done right]], then this is catnip to [[TroperDemographics a certain sector of the viewing public]], who will often give such a show a surprisingly long time to set up its plot arcs before getting antsy for a resolution. The catch for the creator is that, the longer an arc runs and the more complicated it gets, the more awesome its payoff must be for it to feel satisfying to the fans. It's much easier for a writer to [[KudzuPlot keep kicking the can]] -- piling mysteries on top of mysteries -- rather than finish storylines.

* Despite being only three films long, the ''Film/StarWars'' sequel trilogy suffered from this rather heavily. Creator/JJAbrams (who may well be this trope's modern patron saint) left a massive number of plot points and mysteries in the first film, but lacked any clear answer for most of them, expecting the next person to make the answers instead. Creator/RianJohnson, seemingly out of irritation at this idea, cut this off at the knees by thoroughly resolving half of the ideas Abrams set up and ignoring the rest. After that point, it had become clear that Disney [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants had no overarching idea]], which caused many fans to simply give up on any coherent answer for most of these questions, not helped by ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'' still leaving many questions unresolved or [[VoodooShark opening far bigger questions in the process]].

* Episode 4 of ''LightNovel/HumanityHasDeclined'' was theoretically a satire/parody of modern manga business practices, but mostly ended up addressing this. When the characters find themselves needing to make a popular manga, the local mangaka explains that the way to make a bestselling manga is not to craft a consistent plot but to keep stringing viewers along with constant cliffhangers, since they won't realize the plot holes until the end. However, once the audience catches on, the popularity of their manga drops like a stone.

* ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' tends to establish a goal for each main character to work towards, but these are frequently so vague that it's hard to tell if they're actually making progress at all. Ash Ketchum himself sets out to become a "Pokémon Master", but in 20+ years of episodes the audience still has gotten little clue of what that actually ''means''. All that's said is that it's far beyond being the strongest trainer as when someone asked on Pokémon.com's mailbag, the writers said would not answer the question as they'd prefer to leave it up to fans to come up with their own interpretations. Some characters, like May and Dawn competing in Pokémon Contests, have more defined goals and make clear progress, but end up leaving the cast to continue at it offscreen, leaving their arcs unresolved. None of the characters have truly achieved any of their goals as of yet. Thus, many fans have given up on ever seeing any of the characters' stories really wrapped up at any point in the foreseeable future... of course, seeing as the target demographic is eight to twelve years old, it also doesn't seem to matter all that much, as [[FleetingDemographic some fans give up on it]] (and are replaced by younger fans) before this trope becomes much of an issue.

* ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' tends to establish a goal for each main character to work towards, but these are frequently so vague that it's hard to tell if they're actually making progress at all. Ash Ketchum himself sets out to become a "Pokémon Master", but in 20+ years of episodes the audience still has gotten little clue of what that actually ''means''. Some characters, like May and Dawn competing in Pokémon Contests, have more defined goals and make clear progress, but end up leaving the cast to continue at it offscreen, leaving their arcs unresolved. None of the characters have truly achieved any of their goals as of yet. Thus, many fans have given up on ever seeing any of the characters' stories really wrapped up at any point in the foreseeable future... of course, seeing as the target demographic is eight to twelve years old, it also doesn't seem to matter all that much, as [[FleetingDemographic some fans give up on it]] (and are replaced by younger fans) before this trope becomes much of an issue.
** Both the Contest Champion and the Pokémon League champion are characters only introduced for those events, leaving all the rivals hanging as well as the protagonists. Sinnoh and Kalos are the only major exceptions; [[spoiler:the contest champion in Sinnoh is Zoey, who had been a significant rival and supporting cast member since the region began. Likewise, the Pokémon League Champion in Kalos is Alain, who was a major character in the Mega Evolution mini-series]]. Alola also became an exception when [[spoiler:the Pokémon League champion was Ash himself]].
** This has almost become an enforced trope in regards to Ash and his Pokémon. After Hoenn he almost never even mentions any Pokémon from prior regions besides Pikachu, meaning if any of those Pokémon or even most trainers from those regions had outstanding plots, they will never be resolved.

->''"ABC announced this week that it has renewed Series/{{Lost}} for a fourth season. Said the show's writers, "Oh, crap.""''

[[TropeNamer Named for]] Creator/ChrisCarter, creator of ''Series/TheXFiles'',[[note]][[NamesTheSame (not the baseball player(s) or the electronic music pioneer)]][[/note]] which some believe to be the godfather of this trope.

* ''Manga/DragonBall'': Although the manga's creator, Akira Toriyama, has stated several times that he was just making stuff up as he wrote each chapter, he actually managed quite brilliantly to solve most of them as time went on instead of leaving them hanging. Heck, even the fact that Goku had a tail was explained, and Oolong even suggested the theory that Goku was a space alien a long time before Toriyama decided to make it so, giving the story unintentional foreshadowing.

** Any MacGuffin that Ash obtains that compels him to travel to a particular region, if it's not in a movie, will become a case of WhatHappenedToTheMouse as Ash and his companions get caught up in something else, and they'll eventually leave it with someone never to be seen again (such as the GS Ball) or it's completely wiped from existence or anyone's memory (Misty's bicycle). With the GS Ball, however, there was WordOfGod on it: The GS Ball originally was supposed to contain Celebi, but that plotline was reappropriated into one of the movies, so the producer decided to quietly remove the GS Ball from the story in hopes everyone would forget about it. And as for Misty's bike, right before Misty leaves the company of Ash and Brock in Johto, we ''finally'' get closure regarding it when the Nurse Joy from the Pokémon Center Ash went to in the second episode of the Kanto saga (where Misty cornered him and chewed him out for Pikachu frying her bike and it was actually pivotal to the episode as a ChekhovsGun) [[ThrowTheDogABone reveals she restored it to mint condition in the time Misty has been gone]] (because Misty abandoned it there in the Pokémon Center knowing it was no use to her anymore).

** To top it off, the often ''long'' periods between new releases compound the issue with a meta effect: when new information comes out, it will often clash with long-standing and cherished [[{{Fanon}} fan theories]] that have developed in the meantime[[labelnote:Just an example]]It was initially assumed that Mercy had something to do with [[HumanoidAbomination Reaper]]'s state, more often than theorized to be a failed attempt at saving his life, until a year and a half after launch, where it was revealed that [[RememberTheNewGuy newcomer Moira]] was actually responsible for it.[[/labelnote]], inevitably resulting in a backlash that drives some fans to either stop theorycrafting or stick to their guns and [[FanonDiscontinuity ignore what contradicts them.]] Either way, morale in the lore-minded sections of the community is often volatile.
** It wasn't until ''2020'', four years after launch, that a sequel that would have more focus on the plot was announced (later pushed to 2021, then 2022). By that time, however, interest in the lore and story had severely died down, and the fanbase was less enthusiastic.

*** In WWE in 2009, Edge and Wrestling/ChrisJericho had formed a tag team, won the Unified Tag Team Championships, and were just starting off an arrogant heel run with the belts...and then Wrestling/{{Edge}} tore his Achilles tendon, putting him on the shelf for the rest of the year. WWE Creative, backed into a pretty unpleasant corner, had Jericho cut a promo on Edge for having the gall to get injured during their title run; he then hyped up his new mystery partner (who was much better than Edge)...who he'd be debuting at the next PPV. This bought them enough time to actually get a new story together.

* ''Polymer City Chronicles'' started as a silly gaming comic, eventually slipped to longer storylines involving space aliens ({{Blue Skinned Space Babe}}s, TheGreys, {{Body Snatcher}}s, crystal life forms, IntelligentGerbil refugees of interstellar war and so on), PiratesWhoDontDoAnything, and other things reminiscent of Fred Perry's ''ComicBook/GoldDigger''. The author kept switching to new stories leaving previous plots hanging. He stopped updating the comic when finishing only the ongoing plots would've taken him 70 years (taking his usual ScheduleSlip into the account).

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', ever since about the end of Act 2, very early on in the comic's story, and continuing all the way to the very end. Around the time of Act 5, a common fandom joke was that the story will focus long enough to resolve one plot thread... and then make you realize that it introduced three others to do it.

* ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' seems to have no real set goals for the characters in mind despite having heavy references to Pokémon mastery and the like. None of the characters have truly achieved any of their goals as of yet. Thus, many fans have given up on ever seeing any of the characters' stories really wrapped up at any point in the foreseeable future... of course, seeing as the target demographic is eight to twelve years old, it also doesn't seem to matter all that much, as [[FleetingDemographic some fans give up on it]] (and are replaced by younger fans) before this trope becomes much of an issue.

* ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'' had a problem with this during the Penders/Bollers era. Everyone and their mother had some super-extraordinary destiny that they must fulfill (Knuckles and the mysterious dream his dad Locke had, Tails and the Great Harmony, Sally and whatever the Source wanted with her, etc.), but everyone seemed to forget that this was ''Sonic's'' comic and whenever he showed up, he was incredibly inefficient at being a hero -- half of the time, he was ''grounded'' for one reason or another. It got to the point where the two head writers were at each other's throats and were forced off the title, Ian Flynn being forced to take over.

** It wasn't until ''2020'', four years after launch, that a sequel that would have more focus on the plot was announced (later pushed to 2021, then 2022). By that time, however, interest in the lore and story had severly died down, and the fanbase was less enthusiastic.

* The ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise is a rare example of a film series running into this, which started once the original creators departed from writing with the production of ''Film/SawIV''. As new reveals and twists were constantly thrown into the overarching story, the series became less about a PoeticSerialKiller who forces people into {{Death Trap}}s in order to prove a moral point (which is more or less granted, since he previously died at the end of ''Film/SawIII''), and more about the [[KudzuPlot increasingly convoluted]] machinations of the people fighting over said killer's VillainousLegacy. Eventually, many viewers outside the fanbase gave up on following the plot, and [[JustHereForGodzilla were just there for the over-the-top gore effects]]. Once diminishing box office results started setting in with ''Film/SawVI'', the writers and ExecutiveMeddling eventually started to make an effort in tying off the many loose threads with the [[SeriesFauxnale original finale]], ''Film/Saw3D'', but the result proved [[BrokenBase fairly divisive]] among fans. It wasn't until ''[[Film/Spiral2021 Spiral]]'', an installment that -- while acknowledging the previous films -- has a pretty standalone plot within the timeline, that the franchise finally left the effect to an extent.[[note]]Its preceding installment, ''Film/{{Jigsaw}}'', also went with a time setting outside of the previous films, but crammed more storylines taking place during them.[[/note]]

* The ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise is a rare example of a film series running into this, which started once the original creators departed from writing with the production of ''Film/SawIV''. As new reveals and twists were constantly thrown into the overarching story, the series became less about a PoeticSerialKiller who forces people into {{Death Trap}}s in order to prove a moral point (which is more or less granted, since he previously died at the end of ''Film/SawIII''), and more about the [[KudzuPlot increasingly convoluted]] machinations of the people fighting over said killer's VillainousLegacy. Eventually, many viewers outside the fanbase gave up on following the plot, and [[JustHereForGodzilla were just there for the over-the-top gore effects]]. Once diminishing box office returns started setting in with ''Film/SawVI'', the writers and ExecutiveMeddling eventually started to make an effort in tying off the many loose threads with the [[SeriesFauxnale original finale]], ''Film/Saw3D'', but the result proved [[BrokenBase fairly divisive]] among fans. It wasn't until ''[[Film/Spiral2021 Spiral]]'', an installment that -- while acknowledging the previous films -- has a pretty standalone plot within the timeline, that the franchise finally left the effect to an extent.[[note]]Its preceding installment, ''Film/{{Jigsaw}}'', also went with a time setting outside of the previous films, but crammed more storylines taking place during them.[[/note]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]

!!Examples:

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/TheXFiles'' has the TropeNamer, Chris Carter, creator of the show, who is infamous for this:
** For the first half of [[TheNineties the 1990s]], the fans were convinced that Carter had plotted an elaborate and minutely thought-out web of deceit and lies for his FBI agents to unravel. Forests of EpilepticTrees sprouted around every new tantalizing hint revealed. No reference was too obscure for devoted X-Philes, who cheerfully threw themselves into history, folklore, myth, science, or any other branch of human knowledge that seemed like it might shed some light on the story. By mid-decade, though, the MythArc story had churned along for years without really answering any of the questions raised. In fact, even when the show would answer something it would raise at least two new questions in the same turn, and even the old answers were very prone to getting subjected to {{Retcon}}s. Eventually, the overarching story had effectively mutated into a dense KudzuPlot, and fans began to suspect that there ''was'' no intricately plotted story -- [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants Carter had just been making it all up as he went along]]. (Carter himself eventually confirmed this suspicion.) Fans were irritated by the resolutions to side plots that were long-running, such as the fate of Mulder's sister -- [[spoiler:turns out she was spirited away by the fairies]]! This eventually went on into the finale which made promises of resolving the MythArc which not only fails to do so but also in the last ten minutes presents a teaser for an alien invasion set to occur in 2012 (which to this day looks like it may never be resolved at all).
** When the series was given an [[UnCancelled unexpected revival]] in 2016, it didn't take this trope long to hit it again. Pretty much true to form, the first episode begins with a massive {{Retcon}} that makes a hash of a lot of the previous mythology, [[spoiler: aliens not having much interaction with humanity at all, and most of their supposed crimes being the work of humans using stolen alien technology -- despite the numerous aliens that had been on the show before]]. Most of the season was filler, and the season finale ends on ''yet another'' CliffHanger, despite another season not being greenlit at that point and the principal actors not signed on for more. Fans who were hoping to finally get some closure after years of waiting were left sorely disappointed; at best, they might finally get a resolution in another few years, at worst, the show gets cancelled again and they're right back to where they started.
** Two years later, the revival would get a second season, only for it to start with the extremely controversial twist that [[spoiler:Scully was essentially [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil raped by the Cigarette-Smoking Man]] to produce William]], and end with [[spoiler:the Cigarette-Smoking Man [[JokerImmunity yet again]] being killed for presumably the last time, and [[RunningGag yet again]] the X-Files are shut down as a CliffHanger]]. Once again, fans were less than satisfied, though general reception for the season was more positive than the first.
* Also by Chris Carter, ''Series/Millennium1996'' is a good example of this. The show got increasingly bizarre and difficult to follow as it went on, and the end of the third (and final) season provided no closure at all. Each season had a different showrunner(s), each with a ''very'' different idea of what the show should be (Are Frank Black's flashes simply a visualization of his deductive skills or psychic visions? What is the Millennium group's agenda?) and [[ProtectionFromEditors no one from above willing to set boundaries]]. After the cancellation, the whole thing was put into the laps of ''The X-Files'' team. This resulted in a FullyAbsorbedFinale for ''Series/Millennium1996'' within ''Series/TheXFiles'' that also failed to resolve anything.
* This trope is a suspected contributor to the failure of ''X-Files'' spinoff ''Series/TheLoneGunmen''.
* Carter's attempted Amazon series ''The After'' was ultimately called off because of this trope. Amazon wanted a "show bible" before the first season was made, Carter preferred to make it up as he went along. It was an especially tough sell since Carter wanted the show to last for 99 episodes[[note]](To match the number of cantos in ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'': the big twist was going to be that the show was actually set in Hell)[[/note]] at a whopping $40 million per 9 episode season.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}''. At any given time, exactly half of its fanbase believed that the show's creators were making the next ''Series/TwinPeaks'' and had no idea what endgame they desired, while the other half argued that the threads were finally coming together, and a satisfactory revelation was all but guaranteed. In the end, it's a matter of opinion on how it all turned out. The most diplomatic way to phrase it would be to say that there were two groups of fans: those who thought it was about the characters, and those who thought it was about [[MythArc the plot and mythology]]. The former seem to have generally been pleased by the ending, while the latter were generally very upset and firm believers that this trope was in effect. Generally, science fiction can have an open ending as long as the fates of the most interesting characters are resolved. Unfortunately, on ''Series/{{Lost}}'', a large chunk thought the island was the most interesting character.
* In general, the works of Creator/JJAbrams often have this problem. Website/{{Cracked}} put it best: "A creative visionary and genius... for approximately two seasons, after which point he cracks, panics and starts [[AWizardDidIt rambling on about magic]] instead of writing a coherent plotline." To a certain degree, even ''Series/{{Felicity}}'' fell prey to this, as did ''Series/{{Alias}}''.
* Luckily, ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' largely averted this trope with the "Parallel Universe"-arc, that was the series' main plot thread since the end of season 1, being given a very emotional bittersweet ending towards the end of Season 4, which also answered the mystery of the Observers, [[spoiler: they're the human race from the future]]. Season 5 introduced a new storyline [[spoiler: in the form of the Observer occupation of present-day Earth]] which moved at a pretty fast pace, answering questions as it drops more (but less than it answered) and ultimately ended in a conclusive manner while throwing in one last mindscrew for fans to twist their brains over.
** Walter Bishop did quote ClarkesThirdLaw word for word in response to a particularly bizarre case. There [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum aren't really any limits]] set for ''Fringe'' to break, though.
** WordOfGod is that they did have an ending and a way to get there, plotted over several seasons. However, said ending could be adjusted and deployed on short notice in case they didn't get as many seasons as they planned for; this is obvious given the sheer pacing of Season 5's storyline.
* ''Series/TheFugitive'' is the rare series where The Chris Carter Effect comes heavily into play, but is then definitively averted. For its first two seasons, ''The Fugitive'' was a top-rated show, with millions tuned in to see if the falsely-convicted Richard Kimble could clear his name. But by season 3, Kimble was no closer to resolving his situation than he had ever been, and storylines were becoming increasingly repetitive: Kimble would drift into a new town (again), get captured (again), and somehow escape (yet again). It was clear the series was unwilling or unable to progress, and viewer fatigue set in. Ratings plummeted, and ''The Fugitive'' fell out of the top 30 in season 3, and fell even further in season 4. So with the show unlikely to be renewed, and star Creator/DavidJanssen wanting to move on, the writers hastily concocted a two-part finale that actually wrapped up the main story... and were rewarded with the most-watched episode of TV ''ever'' up to that point. Proof positive that viewers want to see plotlines resolved -- even if producers would prefer to keep spinning out a story (and a profitable series) ''ad infinitum''.
* ''Series/TwinPeaks'':
** Writer and committed Lynch fan David Foster Wallace opined in an essay that Season 2 was some of the best television he'd ever watched, in that it was some of the worst television he'd ever watched. If one watches it all in a row, it's pretty clear that it's one long nervous breakdown on the part of Lynch as he never intended the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder to be solved, with the series intended to be more of an exploration of the characters. ExecutiveMeddling forced him to solve the mystery mid-Season 2, which left him with literally no idea where to go from there and hence he opted to work on other projects. As a result, Lynch was hardly involved with the rest of Season 2 -- he didn't write or direct any of the next 14 episodes and returned only to direct the finale. There's a consensus among ''Twin Peaks'' fans that the episodes directed by Lynch are the best of the series.
** Ironically, it seems to be an inversion of this trope: a show's downfall caused by the resolution of a plot thread that was never intended to be solved. The series had a KudzuPlot driven by a DrivingQuestion that was mistaken by Creator/{{ABC}} executives to be this, and the forced closing of plotlines led to SeasonalRot and cancellation.
** ''Film/TwinPeaksFireWalkWithMe'' was an attempt to avert this with Lynch planning two more movie sequels, presumably to wrap up the show after its cancellation, but the movie [[BoxOfficeBomb flopped]] and initially polarized many viewers, which subsequently led to the sequels being canned.
** In 2017, the show returned for an 18-episode MiniSeries -- called ''The Return'' -- that averted this, tying up loose plot threads LeftHanging from the second season. ''The Return'' also introduced new characters with their own stories but unlike the previous season, it was able to complete the new subplots by its ''penultimate'' episode. While the final episode [[spoiler:notoriously ended with [[GainaxEnding Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer trapped in an alternate universe]]]], most viewers regarded it as one of the third season's high notes and a proper conclusion to a series known for MindScrew.
* ''Series/PrettyLittleLiars'' used this to sustain itself. Every time someone looked like they might be the stalker of the girls -- known only as A -- they inevitably turned out not to be and old characters were brought back to deepen the web. By the fifth season, fans were growing tired that A was still running rings around the main characters, and progression was made in the sixth season.
* Perhaps the ultimate example is ''Series/{{The Prisoner|1967}}'', which posed lots of ongoing questions -- Who runs the Village? Why did Number Six resign? Who is Number One? -- but ended with an [[MindScrew utterly incomprehensible]] GrandFinale [[GainaxEnding that answered none of them]]. The series did a sequel via the "Shattered Visage" graphic novel that did at least attempt to bring closure to Number Six. It's apparently more or less official, as the famously cranky Patrick [=McGoohan=] "didn't hate" the plot.
* Strictly speaking, ''Series/ThePretender'' never resolved any of its over-arching plots. The show creators joked that a detailed master plan for the narrative was hidden "inside the pickle jar" and buried in their backyard, but in actuality, the writing sessions were becoming increasingly devoted to impromptu games of poker among the staff. This may explain why, though the exact circumstances and reason for series protagonist Jarod's abduction as a child remained unclear, nearly every character in the show was revealed to have [[LukeIMightBeYourFather uncertain parentage]] or [[LongLostSibling a long-lost relative]]. Following the [[CutShort unintentional finale]], two successive {{Made For TV Movie}}s, both of which ended with {{Cliff Hanger}}s, introduced more questions than answers.
* This was pretty much what got ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'' canceled. The long-awaited elaboration of the fabled 'Future People' was half-answered very late in the show, but then about twice as many new questions cropped up. The cancellation then abruptly cut off any hope of the rest of it being resolved. Damn shame, really.
* The first season of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' was hailed as great, tightly-plotted, and well-written storytelling, with a clear goal in mind. Its second and third seasons, though, were prime examples of the Chris Carter Effect in action — the writing team flailing around, directionless, at war with its own continuity — and it only started to re-establish its arc as of Volume 4. Unfortunately, the writers had envisioned each "volume" to be about a different set of heroes with a different set of problems to solve, but fans just wanted more cheerleader beheadings.
** The fans actually wanted a resolution, but it's said that the writers got [[PanderingToTheBase too focused on giving in to the demands of whatever the message board consensus was this week]] and lost track of, y'know, the plot. And it got them {{Cancelled}}.
** In their defense in regards to season two, they had planned a long, elaborate 2-volume (i.e. season-long) arc in which all the seemingly-loose plot threads would have come together. In the original ending of volume two, [[spoiler:Peter wouldn't have caught the virus vial, and it would have been let loose in Odessa, causing the pandemic seen in "Out of Time". Volume Three would have been about the pandemic. Claire's blood's healing properties were going to be used to heal virus victims, and resident [[TheScrappy Scrappy]] Maya would have [[MissedTheCall used her powers to absorb the virus and sacrifice herself to save the world]]]]. Unfortunately, the writer's strike cut the season in half, and instead of waiting an undetermined amount of time to resolve plots new viewers wouldn't be up to date on, they chose to wrap up the season and abandon all planned story arcs. This explains why the plot seems muddled and full of red herrings; they quite literally aborted entire character arcs, causing most of the established developments in season 2 to become redundant.
* ''Series/BurnNotice'' based itself on there being some sort of big GovernmentConspiracy that was behind Michael getting fired from the CIA. Each season does manage to shake up the MythArc, it goes from everything being a complete mystery to him having a love/hate relationship with the organization that burned and eventually gathering evidence to bring to the CIA that they actually exist and work with them to start dismantling it. The issue fans have with the status quo is built on four parts:
** The show's deliberately set and filmed in Miami (trying to avoid CaliforniaDoubling) and thus Michael can't do too much globetrotting,
** Each episode is consistently split in half between an episodic story and a MythArc story that makes for a rather detached A and B story,
** The episodic story often becomes more about the accent Michael has to use,
** ... And even the myth arc story is organized as Michael following a trail of bread crumbs that leads him to the big twist of the season.
** Still, Seasons 5-6 managed to really change up the WeHelpTheHelpless monotone of the episodic story and managed to merge both the myth arc and episodic plots as working together.
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'':
** The pilot left the audience wondering who the shadowy individual directing new bad guy race the Suliban was. At the end of the series, they're still wondering, and apparently no-one behind the scenes gave it much thought either. Instead of answering the questions the Temporal Cold War threw up or explaining characters' motivations, the show instead introduced more and more factions, their motives and goals just as nebulous as the ones that were already there. When a new showrunner took over for the beginning of Season 4, he introduced yet ''another'' new faction who were apparently the worst of the lot, blew them up and announced that the war was over and indeed had never happened (even though several events that were a direct result of the war clearly still had). Uh-huh?
** Even after the show's cancellation, the identity of "Future Guy" remained muddled. Rick Berman claimed that they had never established his identity, while Manny Coto and Brannon Braga said he was probably a Romulan, only for Braga to later go back on that, claiming he had always intended him to be Archer, which still leaves unresolved ''why'' Archer would be doing all these horrible things. Meanwhile, the EU novels took his character in a different direction than any of those stated possibilities, making him Jamran Harnoth, the leader of a eugenics movement who was also using time travel to ensure his own existence (being of Suliban, Tadaran, ''and'' Romulan descent).
* ''Series/{{Carnivale}}'' on Creator/{{HBO}} created this in one scene. Early in the show, one of the characters has a vision of Ben and Sofie kissing as a nuclear warhead detonates in the background. Since the show took some pains to ground itself in the real timeline, this would put the vision in 1945. But the show was set in 19'''3'''5, and the pace of the plot meant that some fans immediately concluded that it'd never pay off. They were right. Knauf had planned a five-year time skip between Seasons 2 and 3, which would have brought the show to 1940, with further seasons to bridge the rest of the gap between then and the Trinity test, but then the show got canned.
* ''Series/{{War of the Worlds|1988}}'' was based on the idea of humans discovering that the aliens from the original 1953 invasion had survived and were now resistant to radiation. Season 1, while obviously lacking in special effects, built up a number of story arcs that were intended to be long-term: the humans working to discover the identities of the aliens and out them to the world, allies which made guest appearances (and then promised to come back in the future), an alien "invasion force" that was set to arrive in just a couple of years, etc. With Season 2 (and an entirely new production team), all the carefully constructed work that went into Season 1 was tossed out the window. Half the characters were killed (including the villains of Season 1), several angles were [[RiddleForTheAges simply forgotten about]] and the theme of the show even changed. When fans tuned out (which caused the series to end its run prematurely), several arcs from Season 1 were left unresolved and there were more questions than answers.
* Franchise/StargateVerse:
** ''Series/StargateUniverse'' seemed to have this problem. Rather than simply go the episodic or mini-arc route, the producers introduced a half-dozen secret soap opera storylines at once, storylines that sometimes overshadowed the genuinely dramatic plotlines on the show. While this may not have been the only reason the series was cut short, it certainly didn't help.
** The series' predecessor, ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' eventually began to head in this direction, although ''Atlantis'' was still far more episodic than ''Universe'' ever was, which may be part of the reason ''Atlantis'' ran for 5 seasons to ''Universe'''s 1.5.
** [=SG1=] and SGA had arcs too, it's just that ''Universe'' was ''about'' the soap opera storylines, and the "run-down spaceship we can't actually steer" setting was just the reason why they were all crammed into the same place. Even the planets they visited to collect supplies were always uninhabited -- going through the Stargate doesn't mean "Soap opera over, enter the new Goa'uld/Ori/Wraith!" but instead "the same argument from before is continued in the desert." The sci-fi plots anyone who was watching because it was ''Stargate'' wanted to see were ''never'' intended to take center stage and the clearer that became, the fewer people watched.
** The Stargate franchise's biggest offender was The Ancients. Introduced in season 1 as 1 of 4 unnamed old and intelligent races, they gradually grew in scope, with each new addition making their backstory a bit more convoluted. Atlantis's addition that they had left the Milky Way after the plague, leaving it to repopulate itself, didn't break things too badly. But when Season 9[[note]]Seasons 9 & 10 were originally slated to be a spin-off series, but the network was afraid it wouldn't bring in as many viewers so they tacked it onto [=SG1=] as additional seasons[[/note]] retconned their origin right out of the Milky Way entirely and turned them into a splinter faction that had fled here from a distant galaxy to pursue science instead of religion 10s of millions of years prior, well, things just got nuts. Then came ''Universe''...
* ''Series/BreakingBad''[='s=] third season was admitted to have been written purely episode to episode [[WordOfGod by show creator]] Creator/VinceGilligan. While the honesty was appreciated, the pacing of the episodes in the season was painfully turbulent from week to week, and there was certainly a lot of purposeless building of characters who just ended up as {{Red Herring}}s. The series in general ran on WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants (with the exception of season 2, which ''was'' planned out in advance and ''still'' manages to end with a contrived, pointless CliffhangerCopout).
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': A common complaint levied by critics and casual fans around season 5 is that the series does not seem to have a clear vision on when and where it is going, with a bazillion of hanging plot threads waiting to be resolved. In fact, the situation in [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire the books]] that it adapts is far worse: there are a lot more seemingly pointless or unnecessary subplots that, as of, 2021, have not been resolved because the author is [[ScheduleSlip taking an extended break with the series since 2011]], with no new entry to advance the main story aside from a handful of preview chapters of the upcoming sixth book, ''The Winds of Winter''. By season 5, when the show was about to overtake the books, the showrunners realized that they could not wait for Creator/GeorgeRRMartin to whip up new content forever, and [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants had to come up with new ideas on the go]] to resolve the hanging plot threads. Thus explaining the much faster pace, [[CharactersDroppingLikeFlies higher death toll]] (even by its previous standards), and [[{{Retcon}} various inconsistencies]] in the last three seasons, because the showrunners were working under a tight deadline and number of episodes that HBO gave them, rather than just adapting existing material. By the final season, all of the plot threads have more or less been resolved, but this, unfortunately, ended up pissing off a lot of fans who were not happy with the fresh-from-the-oven explanation they got (but that's something to be discussed [[AudienceAlienatingEnding in another trope]]).
* ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'' has an infamous amount of this and it has gotten worse as the seasons have gone on. It is common for them to stretch a single question across an entire series. A running joke amongst fans is that Jax always says he will get to the bottom of something, but doesn't. Season 6 is particularly directionless both due to [[AdoredByTheNetwork FX letting every episode be 90 minutes or longer]] leading to [[{{Padding}} a surplus of pointless subplots in every episode]] and the planned season-long Big Bad having to be offed four episodes in [[RealLifeWritesThePlot due to the actor's schedule]]. Thanks to this there is no main driving conflict for much of the season but instead several plotlines piled on top of one another with none really taking primacy.
* ''Series/TheEvent'' was like a drinking game of both characters informing each other of things we already know and ineffectively teasing us. "You know what happened last time!" Um, we don't, so how about you tell us?
** As mentioned in a few other places, ''The Event'' was so bad about building itself up that some felt it hit tropes like this one '''before it ever premiered.''' Seriously, for months, viewers were subjected to the upcoming "event", often several times per commercial break. By the time it aired, many were so annoyed with the campaign they either lost interest, thinking it couldn't possibly live up to the hype it created for itself, or just didn't watch out of spite for taking up so much of their time.
** Ironically, the show's creator had planned the story arcs to unfold over five seasons and promised in his tweets after the first episode that the show would resolve most of its mysteries within an episode or two of introducing them—which it generally did. Due to declining ratings during the fall, [[ExecutiveMeddling NBC forced him]] to speed up his timetable after the hiatus so that plot developments he had planned for the second season instead took place during the second half of the first, with [[CutShort predictable results]].
* ''Series/TheKilling'' eventually answered the central question of "Who killed Rosie Larsen?" at the end of Season 2. Problem is, throughout Season 1, fans started to feel that the show kept throwing out RedHerring after RedHerring... and when the season finale finished with nary a hint as to who might actually be responsible, professional critics actually ''flipped their shit'', with [[http://www.aoltv.com/2011/06/19/the-killing-season-1-season-finale-recap/ at least one]] saying they had absolutely no reason to want to keep watching.
** Thankfully, they averted this in Season 3, and the killer was revealed (as promised) in the same season.
* Semi-enforced on ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'': although the creators intricately plot out certain subplots during each season in advance, they were never guaranteed more than one season at a time, so they were forced to keep their options open enough to be capable of making shit up for how Ted met his kids' mother in case they got cancelled. When they were guaranteed two more seasons near the end of Season 6, the show visibly hiked up the foreshadowing (mainly in the form of flashforwards and/or Future!Ted casually Jossing possibilities or stating facts about the future) of a far denser and more detailed plot in the later episodes of Season 6 and the earlier ones of Season 7. Still, Season 9 ''is'' the end.
** This was actually referenced as a common criticism of the series finale. The show ends with [[spoiler:the entire nine-season story being a thinly veiled excuse for Ted to justify to his kids that he's going to get back together with "Aunt Robin" after the mother/Tracy's death]]. The footage used for this reveal was actually shot during season two, as the kids look ''much'' younger than they are in the rest of the clips from said finale. The reveal was criticized by people for being a last-minute plot thread in a series that had seen all manner of extraneous storylines, Ted going through numerous relationships and eventually coming to the realization that he would never have Robin (and seeing her literally floating away in his mind after they both realized that love just wasn't enough) and a decade's worth of characterization in the interim. Fans complained that the only way the ending made sense is if you disregarded the last eight seasons of development, and the poor reception may have been a factor in why the SpinOff ''How I Met Your Father'' got stuck in DevelopmentHell (due to viewers shying away from another long-term MythArc that never pays off).
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' headed this way during Seasons 6-7. Since the showrunner changed at the end of Season 5, fans in general have become increasingly less happy with the course the show is taking, feeling that the new showrunner had abolished most of the important plot threads [[spoiler:and as of Season 7 secondary characters]] that were popular with the fandom and a large part of the show's success in previous seasons, and is now relying purely on a series of one-shot guest stars to maintain viewers. In addition to the showrunner's apparent insistence on writing out well-loved characters in favour of [[ReplacementScrappy poorly received]] [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute suspiciously similar substitutes]], this approach has not worked as intended.
** General consensus seems to that since Sara Gamble's departure and Jeremy Carver's debut, the show -- while still not as good as the earliest seasons -- has managed to get back on course, having completely abandoned the boring Leviathan mythology, and returning to the Angel and Demon mythology.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** In the original incarnation of the series, Seventh Doctor Sylvester [=McCoy=]'s tenure was marked by the Lungbarrow Plot (a.k.a. the Cartmel Masterplan), a multi-season story arc designed to reset the continuity of the series and re-establish the mystery of the title character. This really was written in advance, and the payoff for the audience really was there... until ExecutiveMeddling led to the show being cancelled early. The seeds which began to be sown in Season 25 continued to grow in the subsequent ''New Adventures'' novels (leading to a wonderful climax in, appropriately, ''Lungbarrow'')... but never addressed in the 2005 revival thus far.
** Series 7B had to contend with the aftermath of old companions leaving, the Doctor possibly leaving his travels, the Doctor possibly being on his very last incarnation, meaning a way had to be found for their life to be extended to allow a new incarnation to replace Matt Smith, ''and'' the retconning of the Last Great Time War. The resultant [[LivingMacGuffin "Impossible Girl"]] arc was criticized for robbing new companion Clara of some much-needed character development in favor of tying up some plot threads and was followed by establishing a ''new yet old'' incarnation of the Doctor to be responsible for the Last Great Time War ending in the 50th anniversary special. Finally, the Christmas special had to wrap up ''everything else'' in the Eleventh Doctor era (namely the Silence arc) rather abruptly. Much of this resulted in calls for showrunner Creator/StevenMoffat to leave.[[note]] In fairness, he himself admitted via an interview in ''Doctor Who Magazine'' that this was a mess, and that he had been trying to run two shows ''and'' work out the 50th anniversary all at the same time. [[/note]]
** Moffat however remained for Series 8-10, the Twelfth Doctor era, which didn't have '''as''' bad a case of this trope going -- Series 8 and 9 actually spent a lot of time patching up leftover plot threads from 7B, such as the identity of the woman in the shop who brought the Doctor and Clara together (and from there how and why she did so) and Clara's personality. Series 9 went on to use its SeasonFinale to [[spoiler: get the Doctor back to Gallifrey at last]] and its ChristmasEpisode to reveal [[spoiler: the circumstances of the Doctor and River's final night/proper wedded life]], partially because Moffat went into the season intending it as his last. But come Series 10 he never did resolve the ''new'' plot threads that the Series 9 finale left dangling regarding [[spoiler: Gallifrey and the Doctor's relationship to it]] in favor of giving this Doctor's MythArc, his complex relationship with ArchEnemy Missy, a proper conclusion.
* Lampshaded in the expanded universe of ''Series/{{Castle}}'', believe it or not. On the Richard Castle website, Castle wrote an article about what he called a Ponzi Plot. He explained that if you don't eventually resolve it, you lose your viewers.
** This was posted a week before the Season 4 finale, where [[spoiler:Castle and Beckett finally resolve their four-year will they/won't they arc by doing it]].
** Left still unresolved at that point was the mystery of the Case of Beckett's Mom, which many fans had also claimed was an example of this trope. Some fans speculate that [[WordOfGod Andrew Marlowe]] posted the article not to explain why [[spoiler:Castle and Beckett finally hooked up]] but instead to reassure fans that [[spoiler:the Beckett case really does have a solution, that it won't drag on forever, and the viewers really will like it]]. Sure enough, while this case still hasn't actually been ''closed'', the mystery was solved in the Season 5 premiere.
** It helps that ''Castle'' is primarily episodic, and so has never depended on its meta-plot to keep viewers interested. The show-runners were never worried that the fans would lose interest, and sure enough, reactions have been very positive.
** And now with the end of season 6, the storyline about Beckett's mother's murder has also been resolved.
* Happened with ''Series/{{Smallville}}''. The show kept dicking around with viewers wanting to see Clark's development into Superman by focusing more on his on-again-off-again relationship with Lana most of the time, and then by the time she was finally gone from the series in Season 8 they still managed to get renewed two more times and drag things. It didn't help that they also seemed to be finding increasingly complicated ways of making Clark do "Superman" things without actually coming out and making him Superman. The series finale wasn't exactly that satisfactory to certain sections of the fanbase either.
** Of course, since ''Smallville'' is a prequel to the Superman mythos, they actually knew ''exactly'' where all the key plotlines were going -- it's just, since it took ''ten whole seasons'' to get there, they ended up coming up with any number of sub-plots to fill up the space; in that regard, it's actually an inversion. From Season 4 onwards -- likely, longer than they expected the show to last -- they changed tack and began bringing in supporting characters and villains that Clark would normally only have met ''after'' he left Smallville, such as ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} and Lois Lane (ComicBook/LexLuthor, in some versions, really did live in Smallville and was friends with Clark, so he made sense). By the end of the show he's met most of his major allies and villains ''and'' started the Franchise/{{Justice League|of America}}, all before he even puts on the cape!
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'' also suffered this as it went on, as several plots and characters got discarded and forgotten about in favor of new ones with each passing season.
* Nearly every plot thread in ''Series/{{Primeval}}'' is left unresolved, be it the fate of Claudia Brown, the motivations of the villain in Series 2, the origin of the future city in Series 3, the significance of Patrick Quinn, etc. No matter how significant something is played up in one series, you can be sure it'll be forgotten about in the next one. Rather than try to resolve any of them, the latest series ended by introducing a completely out-of-the-blue twist merely for the sake of a cliffhanger, and given it's unlikely to be renewed for another series, it's unlikely even ''that'' will ever be expanded on.
* ''Series/TheMentalist''. The Red John MythArc has become far more elaborate and convoluted than originally intended. While it appears that Bruno Heller always knew who Red John was going to be (or picked his possible choices early on, at least), the character went from a particularly devious SerialKiller who knew how to cover his tracks, to a SerialKiller who knew a few other killers, to a SerialKiller with a shadow army of fanatically devoted, loyal-unto-death brainwashed followers. In season 6 they took his catchphrase ("Tiger, Tiger") and decided to turn what looked like a cult into a sophisticated criminal organization that nobody had heard of, and made Red John a possible member, to a possible ''senior'' member, and finally into the apparent mastermind of the whole thing. Oh, and he's repeatedly performing "psychic" feats that make Jane look like an amateur, that are never explained. Beyond a certain point, he's basically a supervillain and you have to start wondering why he ever resorted to anything as trivial as serial murder in the first place. TheReveal that he is [[spoiler:Sheriff [=McCallister=]]] only raised further issues, as many clues that were dropped about Red John turn out to be irrelevant (his height, for instance -- the actor in question is taller than Red John was stated to be). Practically all of the clues that pointed to him were only dropped in the sixth season, the one he was revealed in; most ones from previous seasons were never mentioned again.
* ''Series/TwentyFour'':
** This was an unfortunate side-effect of the 24-hour format. The producers often had to write storylines in advance, and would often resort to filler or sidestories to kill time until the next important revelation. Likewise, the villains almost always changed midway through the season, which often threw out the carefully-set-up goals and motivations for the enemies and often resulted in TheManBehindTheMan being revealed and fans getting tired of it, even if it made no sense in the long run.
** Done by necessity in Season 1. The production team had no idea if they would be renewed for the back half of the season, so they closed off the storyline by having Jack rescue his wife and daughter in the thirteenth episode and all plots being tied up. When Creator/KieferSutherland won a Best Actor Golden Globe and the show was suddenly renewed thanks to the hype, the producers suddenly had to throw in a number of ridiculous plotlines (including a heretofore-unrevealed second assassin showing up who is having a relationship with one of his target's staff members, Jack butting heads with a sniper who hates him for something he did in the past, the StuntCasting of Creator/DennisHopper, Teri's EasyAmnesia, Kim getting kidnapped ''again'' and the AssPull that [[spoiler:Nina was the mole in CTU]]).
** The eventual resolution of the three-season arc that began with the assassinations in Season 5, made of equal parts GambitPileup and AssPull. It is revealed that the businessman Alan Wilson- a character introduced near the end of season 7 and defeated within a handful of episodes- is the [[GreaterScopeVillain ultimate enemy]] overseeing a chain that passes down from himself, controlling a cabal that includes Jonas Hodges (who was working with Benjamin Juma to overthrow the White House), controlling another group led by Jack's brother Graem (being controlled by his father, who is working with the Chinese government), who is advising PresidentEvil Charles Logan (which was itself caused by one of the writers asking midway through the fifth season, "Hey, what if the President was [[ForTheEvulz evil]]?) and finally to the group of assassins that [[spoiler:murdered David Palmer and Michelle Dessler]]. The failure of season 6 (and the stalling plot arc that was created by this mess) is what forced the show to undergo a {{Retool}} and move to the other side of the country in order to get things moving and resolve it. Even then, most fans weren't happy with the outcome -- Wilson becomes a KarmaHoudini who basically gets away scot-free with his crimes. While the show generally implied that ''someone'' was the ultimate DiabolicalMastermind behind these various villains and events, the character of Wilson was a complete AssPull as he was an entirely new bad guy who had an at-best tenuous connection to a handful of characters, before being very quickly captured and the whole arc being declared wrapped up afterwards. He never appears again on the show.
* A major factor in ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' only lasting two seasons. Season one piled on the secrets and {{macguffin}}s (Who killed the power, how did they do it and why? What are the pendants? Why can they restore power just like that) while answering very few questions. Season two simply ignored many of S1's questions while adding all-new questions (Sentient nanomachines?) and not answering those questions either.
* ''Series/UnderTheDome'' is one of the most extreme examples since the turn of the millennium. While the first season was reasonably coherent in its storytelling, the next two quickly turned into an utterly incomprehensible mess of dangling plot threads, introduced new AssPull twists in every other episode, almost never resolved anything, and even in the rare case some question was answered, the solution was usually far-fetched to the extreme while creating a whole bunch of new mysteries that never went anywhere. It's little wonder the series rapidly lost market shares and was cancelled after three seasons, although -- credit where it's due -- the final episodes did their damnedest to resolve the story in a satisfying way. Viewers are split on how well it managed to do that, but points for trying anyway.
* Series/{{Arrowverse}} has this in spades, particularly ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' and ''Series/{{The Flash|2014}}''. What didn't help matters is the first seasons of both shows were focused on a very specific arc at the centre of the characters' motivation, the Undertaking conspiracy with Arrow, and who killed Nora Allen in Flash. Once those were resolved, the writers didn't really have any plans going forward, so they've largely just made shit up as they go along.
** In ''Arrow'''s case, this started in the third season, first by killing off Sara Lance, the Canary, in order to create a subplot where they have to solve her murder and inspire her sister to follow in her footsteps, thus abandoning Sara's own arc (though this itself had already been abandoned when after half a season of YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre moments, she rejoins the League of Assassins and her 'happy ending' is going back to the cult that made her hate herself). Alongside this, Oliver's life is imploded by the League of Assassins...except they didn't really know ''why'' the League of Assassins wanted to mess with him, going from 'it's his fault Sara died', 'he's protecting Malcolm', and 'they want Ollie to be Ra's heir'. In the end, they also reveal that the League of Assassins will wipe out the city, in order to erase Oliver's history, which ''completely flies against their beef with Malcolm'' since the ''whole entire reason'' they had for wanting him dead was he tried to destroy the City, and this was 'against their code'.
*** Season 4 was no better in this regard, and it's made worse since it deals with several building myth arcs concerning Hive, Damien Darhk, and Andy Diggle. Adding to matters, the viewer finds out one member of Team Arrow is going to die, but the identity of who is a mystery to the viewer, and also the writers because they later admitted they didn't have anyone actually planned. Several other subplots are set up and never resolved, while the grave plot is resolved by killing off Laurel Lance, with the writers citing the fact her story was 'done', despite her character having ''literally'' just been set up with a power boost, a potential new status quo of working for the mayor's office to infiltrate Darhk's operation, the fact she'd begun to realise she was still in love with Oliver, and being the team's most personal connection to Nyssa Al Ghul, meaning so much set up for her character goes nowhere. A lot of viewers gave up on the show after this point, and it continued to bleed viewership as time went on.
*** The Black Canary mantle ends up being something of a character-specific example of this. Initially the role of the Black Canary is Sara Lance, who as noted above was set up as someone who hated herself and wanted to escape an assassin cult. After most of a season of her learning to love herself and that she's more than just a killer, she's sent off back to the assassin cult. When she returns, she's killed off so her sister Laurel can take over. Laurel spends a season building up to becoming the Black Canary and improving, is set up with several building sub-plots, then killed off. Her death leaves a void and they decide to try and fill it with a ''new'' Black Canary, and introduce a metahuman police officer to fill that void, though then she later gets depowered in order to make way for an alternate universe Laurel who until that point had been a remorseless killer who now suddenly doesn't like being a killer. Ultimately the mantle is just a series of characters whose plots are cut off so they can be replaced, leading to a long, convoluted legacy.
** ''The Flash'' started this with Zoom. Zoom's exact motivation is never consistent between episodes, with him initially seemingly wanting to kill Barry simply to have no challenger to the Fastest Man Alive title, then revealing he ''actually'' wanted to make Barry ''faster'' so he could drain his speed. This turns out to be because Zoom destroyed his body with a speed-enhancing drug that he's dying from, and needs Barry's speed to fix himself, but when he gets that speed he ''then'' decides that his actual plan was to take over their earth 'like he did Earth 2' (despite what we see showing he was just a gang leader who terrorised ''one'' city, that was still in good enough condition that its police force were actively fighting back). Only ''then'' it turns out he was actually planning to destroy the multiverse and leave Earth 1 to torment, which he was somehow now smart enough to do. The repeated changes to his motivation and powers led to plots coming and going out of nowhere, while also having other subplots, like the introduction of Wally West and Jesse Quick, being dragged out so their characters' hero origin get delayed.
*** Savitar in the next season was even worse, as exactly ''who and what'' Savitar ''is'' gets dragged on for the entire season without explaining what it is Savitar even wants. Meanwhile Wally and Jesse get their powers, but the show does what it can to avoid letting them rise as heroes in order to keep Barry relevant, introduces new Rogues who are never developed or made real use of, and has Caitlin develop ice powers and make her begin to become Killer Frost, but it never explained ''why'' her developing powers is exactly a bad thing, with her changing her mind between being murderously desperate to remove her powers to being murderously desperate to ''remain'' empowered, with a split personality later developing in a poor attempt to explain that. This continues into future seasons with the exact origin of Killer Frost getting rebooted multiple times, while subsequent big-bads continue the trend of having mysterious plans that are never revealed, only to be suddenly changed out of nowhere when they do.
* This trope was invoked in the British TV serial ''Series/TheSingingDetective'', in which mystery novelist Philip Marlowe asserts that fiction, like life, should be "all clues and no solutions."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pro Wrestling]]

* The ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise is a rare example of a film series running into this, which started once the original creators departed from writing with the production of ''Film/SawIV''. As new reveals and twists were constantly thrown into the overarching story, the series became less about a PoeticSerialKiller who forces people into {{Death Trap}}s in order to prove a moral point (which is more or less granted, since he previously died at the end of ''Film/SawIII''), and more about the [[KudzuPlot increasingly convoluted]] machinations of the people fighting over said killer's VillainousLegacy. Eventually, many viewers outside the fanbase gave up on following the plot, and [[JustHereForGodzilla were just there for the over-the-top gore effects]]. Once diminishing box office returns started setting in with ''Film/SawVI'', the writers and ExecutiveMeddling eventually started to make an effort in tying off the many loose threads with the [[SeriesFauxnale original finale]] ''Film/Saw3D'', but the result proved [[BrokenBase fairly divisive]] among fans. It wasn't until ''[[Film/Spiral2021 Spiral]]'', an installment that, while acknowledging the previous films, has a pretty standalone plot within the timeline, that the franchise finally left the effect to an extent.[[note]]Its preceding installment, ''Film/{{Jigsaw}}'', also went with a time setting outside of the previous films, but crammed more storylines taking place during them.[[/note]]

* The ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' series is a rare example of a film franchise running into this, which started once it was [[FranchiseZombie taken out of the hands of its creators]] from [[Film/SawIV the fourth film]] onward. As new twists were thrown into the overarching story, it became less about a madman who forces people into {{Life or Limb Decision}}s in order to prove a moral point and more about the [[KudzuPlot increasingly convoluted]] machinations of the people fighting over that man's VillainousLegacy. Eventually, many fans had given up on following the plot and [[JustHereForGodzilla were just there for the over-the-top gore effects]]. Once diminishing box-office returns started setting in with the later films, the writers finally started to make an effort in tying off the many loose threads, but the ultimate resolution proved [[BrokenBase fairly divisive]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ComicBook/SpiderMan:
** Many of the plot elements related to the Spider-Totem introduced by Creator/JMichaelStraczynski during his run on ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' from 2001 to 2007 gave readers a lot of doubletalk and mystical mumbo-jumbo, but very little in the way of concrete resolution, like exactly why Peter had to "evolve", why one cosmic entity wanted to bring him back from the dead while another thought he should stay deceased, the mysterious entities that resurrected Mysterio and Miss Arrow and what they wanted with Peter, etc. None of this was ever really explained.
*** A degree of resolution was achieved in the ComicBook/SpiderVerse storyline, which explained the origins of the Inheritors and had Spider-Man and his allies defeat them.
** ComicBook/TheCloneSaga. Originally, the story was supposed to wrap up after a few months, after an already complicated narrative. However, due to the [[ExecutiveMeddling efforts]] of Marvel executives, the story was extended for another year, with plot twists being reversed constantly, and supposedly dead characters appearing, reappearing and then dying anticlimactically. The story finally limped to its conclusion with another plot twist that had almost nothing to do with most of the events that preceded it ([[spoiler:ComicBook/NormanOsborn was back]]). It should be noted that, when the saga started, it was Marvel's highest-selling group of books. The act of stretching it to the limit for so long caused sales to slump, and fans turned away in droves.

[[folder:Film]]

* Robert Jordan's {{Doorstopper}} series ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' spent 11 books (each greater than 500 pages) spinning out a KudzuPlot, and Jordan himself seemed adamantly opposed to resolving any plot threads before the 12th and final book. Despite this, he stated that he would conclude the series with book 12 "whether it's 15,000 pages, Tor has to invent a new binding system, or it comes with its own library cart," since it was very unlikely that he could write a coherent thirteenth book. This turned out to be true, but for other reasons than he expected: he DiedDuringProduction. Creator/BrandonSanderson, the writer tapped to finish the series in Jordan's stead, eventually decided that resolving every arc properly would take no less than ''[[http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/Splitting-AMOL three]]'' books. It did. Three, huge, ''massive'' books.[[note]]Sanderson did intend to publish the ending as a single book, but the publishers persuaded him to split it. Nobody wanted to experiment with binding, and retailers don't like boxed sets. Besides, [[MoneyDearBoy three separate books are more profitable than one]].[[/note]]
** As the series took 25 years to finish, many fans dropped off after reading the most recent book and waiting years for the next to come out. Due to said KudzuPlot, new books would be unintelligible after years away without rereading most of the series, and so this effect took hold.

** Writer and committed Lynch fan David Foster Wallace opined in an essay that Season 2 was some of the best television he'd ever watched, in that it was some of the worst television he'd ever watched. If one watches it all in a row, it's pretty clear that it's one long nervous breakdown on the part of Lynch as he never intended the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder to be solved, with the series intended to be more of an exploration of the characters. ExecutiveMeddling forced him to solve the mystery mid-Season 2, which left him with literally no idea where to go from there and hence he opted to work on other projects. As a result, Lynch was hardly involved with the rest of Season 2--he didn't write or direct any of the next 14 episodes and returned only to direct the finale. There's a consensus among Twin Peaks fans that the episodes directed by Lynch are the best of the series.

** In 2017, the show returned for an 18-episode MiniSeries--called ''The Return''--that averted this, tying up loose plot threads LeftHanging from the second season. ''The Return'' also introduced new characters with their own stories but unlike the previous season, it was able to complete the new subplots by its ''penultimate'' episode. While the final episode [[spoiler:notoriously ended with [[GainaxEnding Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer trapped in an alternate universe]]]], most viewers regarded it as one of the third season's high notes and a proper conclusion to a series known for MindScrew.

* Perhaps the ultimate example is ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'', which posed lots of ongoing questions — Who runs the Village? Why did Number Six resign? Who is Number One? — but ended with an [[MindScrew utterly incomprehensible]] GrandFinale [[GainaxEnding that answered none of them]].
** The series did a sequel via the "Shattered Visage" graphic novel that did at least attempt to bring closure to Number Six. It's apparently more or less official, as the famously cranky Patrick [=McGoohan=] "didn't hate" the plot.

** In their defense in regards to season two, they had planned a long, elaborate 2-volume (i.e. season-long) arc in which all the seemingly-loose plot threads would have come together. In the original ending of volume two, [[spoiler: Peter wouldn't have caught the virus vial, and it would have been let loose in Odessa, causing the pandemic seen in Out of Time. Volume Three would have been about the pandemic. Claire's blood's healing properties were going to be used to heal virus victims, and resident [[TheScrappy Scrappy]] Maya would have [[MissedTheCall used her powers to absorb the virus and sacrifice herself to save the world]]]]. Unfortunately, the writer's strike cut the season in half, and instead of waiting an undetermined amount of time to resolve plots new viewers wouldn't be up to date on, they chose to wrap up the season and abandon all planned story arcs. This explains why the plot seems muddled and full of red herrings; they quite literally aborted entire character arcs, causing most of the established developments in season 2 to become redundant.

* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''
** The pilot left the audience wondering who the shadowy individual directing new bad guy race the Suliban was. At the end of the series, they're still wondering, and apparently no one behind the scenes gave it much thought either. Instead of answering the questions the Temporal Cold War threw up or explaining characters' motivations, the show instead introduced more and more factions, their motives and goals just as nebulous as the ones that were already there. When a new showrunner took over for the beginning of Season 4, he introduced yet ''another'' new faction who were apparently the worst of the lot, blew them up and announced that the war was over and indeed had never happened (even though several events that were a direct result of the war clearly still had). Uh-huh?

* ''Series/WarOfTheWorlds1988'' was based on the idea of humans discovering that the aliens from the original 1953 invasion had survived and were now resistant to radiation. Season 1, while obviously lacking in special effects, built up a number of story arcs that were intended to be long-term: the humans working to discover the identities of the aliens and out them to the world, allies which made guest appearances (and then promised to come back in the future), an alien "invasion force" that was set to arrive in just a couple of years, etc. With Season 2 (and an entirely new production team), all the carefully constructed work that went into Season 1 was tossed out the window. Half the characters were killed (including the villains of Season 1), several angles were [[RiddleForTheAges simply forgotten about]] and the theme of the show even changed. When fans tuned out (which caused the series to end its run prematurely), several arcs from Season 1 were left unresolved and there were more questions than answers.

** The Stargate franchise's biggest offender was The Ancients. Introduced in season 1 as 1 of 4 unnamed old and intelligent races, they gradually grew in scope, with each new addition making their backstory a bit more convoluted. Atlantis's addition that they had left the Milky Way after the plague, leaving it to repopulate itself, didn't break things too badly. But when Season 9[[note]]Seasons 9 & 10 were originally slated to be a spin-off series, but the network was afraid it wouldn't bring in as many viewers so they tacked it onto [=SG1=] as additional seasons[[/note]] retconned their origin right out of the Milky Way entirely and turned them into a splinter faction that had fled here from a distant galaxy to pursue science instead of religion 10s of millions of years prior, well, things just got nuts. Then came Universe...

** In the original incarnation of the series, Seventh Doctor Sylvester [=McCoy=]'s tenure was marked by the Lungbarrow Plot (aka the Cartmel Masterplan), a multi-season story arc designed to reset the continuity of the series and re-establish the mystery of the title character. This really was written in advance, and the payoff for the audience really was there... until ExecutiveMeddling led to the show being cancelled early. The seeds which began to be sown in Season 25 continued to grow in the subsequent ''New Adventures'' novels (leading to a wonderful climax in, appropriately, ''Lungbarrow'')... but never addressed in the 2005 revival thus far.

* ''Series/TheMentalist''. The Red John MythArc has become far more elaborate and convoluted than originally intended. While it appears that Bruno Heller always knew who Red John was going to be (or picked his possible choices early on, at least), the character went from a particularly devious SerialKiller who knew how to cover his tracks, to a SerialKiller who knew a few other killers, to a SerialKiller with a shadow army of fanatically devoted, loyal-unto-death brainwashed followers. In season 6 they took his catchphrase ("Tiger, Tiger") and decided to turn what looked like a cult into a sophisticated criminal organization that nobody had heard of, and made Red John a possible member, to a possible ''senior'' member, and finally into the apparent mastermind of the whole thing. Oh, and he's repeatedly performing "psychic" feats that make Jane look like an amateur, that are never explained. Beyond a certain point, he's basically a supervillain and you have to start wondering why he ever resorted to anything as trivial as serial murder in the first place. TheReveal that he is [[spoiler: Sheriff [=McCallister=]]] only raised further issues, as many clues that were dropped about Red John turn out to be irrelevant (his height, for instance -- the actor in question is taller than Red John was stated to be). Practically all of the clues that pointed to him were only dropped in the sixth season, the one he was revealed in; most ones from previous seasons were never mentioned again.

* Series/{{Arrowverse}} has this in spades, particularly ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' and ''Series/TheFlash2014''. What didn't help matters is the first seasons of both shows were focused on a very specific arc at the centre of the characters' motivation, the Undertaking conspiracy with Arrow, and who killed Nora Allen in Flash. Once those were resolved, the writers didn't really have any plans going forward, so they've largely just made shit up as they go along.

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* Many of the plot elements from Season 1 of ''WebVideo/{{lonelygirl15}}'' seem to have been completely forgotten. Cassie, anyone?

* The Literature/WhateleyUniverse was supposed to run more-or-less in real time, and staying ahead of the actual date... but the series started in 2004 and has barely gotten into Winter Term of the ''first year'' of school, with some stories still stuck back in the Fall. Some fans are wondering if the authors will live long enough to finish the main story arc. It's been joked that the stories will wrap up any century now.
** And it has now hemorrhaged just about all of the original authors, except for Bek. With Diane Castle, the main person who moved things forward for three years, gone, it teetered on the edge of becoming DeadFic, until several new writers infused it with fresh blood (and a few earlier writers started talk of returning).
* WebVideo/MarbleHornets is a found-footage format series whose driving force was the events behind the titular student film. However, even after the initial fourteen entries that establish the initial mystery, things don't let up from there and Jay's own investigations end up adding mystery after mystery. Parts of the larger MythArc included the Masked Men, Jay's enigmatic stalker totheark, the whereabouts of the mysterious girl Jessica whom Jay meets in season two, and of course [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos the Operator]] itself. By the end of the series, many of these are left unexplained or open to interpretation. Much like ''Lost'', how effective this was depends on whether you prefer the show being left open to interpretation or having these answers explained.
** In an interesting case for this trope, the creators of the series were honest with themselves in that they had no initial idea for a long-term plan for the series, and most of the mysteries created in season one were done so more out of RuleOfScary rather than any necessity to the plot or MythArc (considering the show was made on a whim and they planned on wrapping it up at the end of the first season, it makes sense). However, once production on season two started, they decided they would up the ante and actually make sense of those non-nonsensical ideas they initially made.

* ''{{WesternAnimation/Archer}}'': Season 7 ends with Archer being mortally wounded and left comatose. The following three seasons are elaborate dream sequences within the coma where Archer imagines himself and the other main characters in different settings. [[WordOfGod Series creator Adam Reed]] has even gone on record saying he's not sure he wants Archer to ever wake up. This has caused quite a bit of frustration among fans, many of whom see the dream sequences as pointless filler, or feel that Reed is no longer invested in the actual story and world of Archer and is merely using the show to push other ideas with the established characters.
** As of the finale of season 10 [[spoiler:Archer woke up, ending the three season-long line of dream sequences]].
** Notably, season 11 -- the first season since 7 to fully take place in the real world -- received praise from both fans and critics as a return to form and resulted in a 32% increase in viewership compared to season 10. Which also saved the show from cancellation, as season 11 was originally planned to be the last.

** It wasn't until ''2020'', four years after launch, that a sequel that would have more focus on the plot was announced (later pushed to 2021, then 2022). By that time, however, interest in the lore and story had started to die down, and the fanbase was less enthusiastic.

That said, most audiences are savvy enough to recognize a framing device when they see one. Plots resting on a single DrivingQuestion (Where is [[Anime/SamuraiChamploo the Sunflower Samurai?]] Who is [[Series/HowIMetYourMother Mrs. Mosby?]]) are [[StatusQuoIsGod allowed some leeway]]; otherwise, the production team would be out of work and the story would end. The Chris Carter Effect happens when a work is wholly focused on twists or not building up to a satisfactory resolution, or the plot gets so bloated that there no longer ''can'' be a satisfactory resolution (see EndingAversion). Another contributing effect could be the unsatisfactory resolution of long-running side-plots. At this point, even the most ardent fans will start to feel jerked around, or perhaps even channel flip to something else.

* ''Literature/{{Everworld}}'', by the same author as ''Remnants'', is just as bad. Each successive book begins an entirely new plot and never goes back to answer any of the questions raised along with the plot. The series [[ScrewedByTheNetwork doesn't even have a concluding novel]]; the twelfth ends with the two primary antagonists ([[BigBad Ka Anor]] and [[BlackShirt the]] [[PsychoForHire Sennites]]) still alive and well after Senna herself gets [[spoiler: [[DroppedABridgeOnHim killed off suddenly]]]] and does nothing to explain the myriad questions raised over the course of the series, such as the identity of the watcher in the void.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' does it too. While the main plot is technically resolved, it's still got EndingAversion. Plus, the Ellimist/Crayak stuff is still on-going, some of the info in ''Megamorphs'' is never brought up again, some of the pre-finale stuff comes out of the blue. Oh, and the ending introduces a new arc. Plus, there's that group of 'friendly' Yeerks, Ax's desire to avenge his brother...

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': A common complaint levied by critics and casual fans around season 5 is that the series does not seem to have a clear vision on when and where it is going, with a bazillion of hanging plot threads waiting to be resolved. In fact, the situation in [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire the books]] that it adapts is far worse: there are a lot more seemingly pointless or unnecessary subplots that, as of, 2021, have not been resolved because the author is [[ScheduleSlip taking an extended break with the series since 2011]], with no new entry to advance the main story aside from a handful of preview chapters of the upcoming sixth book, ''The Winds of Winter''. By season 5, when the show was about to overtake the books, the showrunners realized that they could not wait for Creator/GeorgeRRMartin to whip up new content forever, and [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants had to come up with new ideas on the go]] to resolve the hanging plot threads. Thus explaining the much faster pace, [[CharactersDroppingLikeFlies higher death toll]] (even by its previous standards), and [[{{Retcon}} various inconsistencies]] in the last three seasons, because the showrunners were working under a tight deadline and number of episodes that HBO gave them, rather than just adapting existing material. By the final season, all of the plot threads have more or less been resolved, but this, unfortunately, ended up pissing off a lot of fans who were not happy with the fresh-from-the-oven explanation they got (but that's something to be discussed [[EndingAversion in another trope]]).

** ''[[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysSisterLocation Sister Location]]'' only confused things more by raising more questions and answering none, what with it taking some elements from ''[[Literature/FiveNightsAtFreddysTheSilverEyes The Silver Eyes]]'' (which is [[AlternateContinuity separate from]] the story of the games), putting into question just what [[RealAfterAll really happened]] [[BigBrotherIsWatching during]] ''4'', and the Custom Night's plot twists, amongst which is the implication that [[spoiler:Springtrap is {{retcon}}ned from being the GreaterScopeVillain, to his ''son'' instead, significantly affecting ''Videogame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3''[='=]s story]].