History SpecialEffectFailure / LiveActionTV

** Daenerys' first dragon ride looks embarrasingly fake. Like, the finale to ''Film/NeverendingStory''-level fake, except there they at least didn't forget to rustle Bastian's hair with wind.

** Alarms immediately went off with pre-broadcast previews of ''Series/AvataroSentaiDonbrothers'' once it was stated that two of the main cast, [=KijiBrother=] and [=InuBrother=], would be portrayed by [[SerkisFolk CGI motion capture]] rather than suit actors - this in a weekly series running for a whole year. Come the premiere and it looks like they wouldn't be out of place in a UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 game, and it's incredibly easy to discern them whenever they're up against a live-action background. The ways they contort and move also look awkward as they don't have the same weight as the live-action characters, and they have no shadows.

** For characters that could shapeshift into animals, the show would usually cast real animals to play them...except the werepanthers, whose cat forms were blatantly CG.

* ''Series/{{Goosebumps}}'' is a kids' TV series, which already means it'll have a low budget. But combine that with the fact it's a horror anthology and you get some of the most awful special effects this side of the live-action ''Series/{{Animorphs}}''. The kids watching it won't notice, but adults watching it for nostalgia reasons will.

*** Episode 45 those poor action figures.

** Basically, the FX fails any time there's an explosion of significant magnitude in the series. The original teaser trailer for the first season ends with a (deleted) shot of the doomed airliner that crashes into the Mojave Desert going downward at a slight angle, while fire effects are superimposed on top of the (clearly not damaged) aircraft.

** Hell, even Film/TheThreeStooges do this at least once (but it ''was'' rather cutting-edge then).

** Pretty much every Creator/DisneyChannel sitcom has a dummy used every once in a while.

** In Season 8 (the final season), there is a sequence where Harrison (a young boy) is attempting to use a treadmill, and winds up pushing the difficulty up so high that he slips falls down and rapidly flies backwards into a couch causing serious injury. It ''might'' have been effective... if the quick shot where he slams into the couch wasn't that of a ''fully grown man'' doing the same thing. Not to mention that the blood looks very fake.

** While the extreme body lift made landing after a RampJump easier, it also worsened the handling of the vehicle considerably. It basically lost the ability to take tight corners almost entirely. Thus, all scenes in which it goes around street corners even at what would be moderate speed had to be {{undercrank}}ed; it would have rolled over otherwise. The faster the truck is supposed to go, the more obvious this becomes.

** Not to mention the episode "Beware of Dog", where a creature brought on board Moya has two forms: the first a very convincing animatronic puppet, and the second a goofy looking costume that the cast and crew took to calling the "Tandoori Chicken".

** "Harpet's Locket" has video of a man riding a horse in a field. Cut to him coming on stage with a guy in a very bad horse costume literally falling apart.

* ''Series/{{Goosebumps}}'' is a kids' TV series, which already means it'll have a low budget. But combine that with the fact it's a horror anthology and you get some of the most awful special effects this side of the live-action ''Series/{{Animorphs}}''. Of course, kids watching it won't notice, but adults watching it for nostalgia reasons will.

*** The Zanvat Sword's sliding hilt isn't perfectly snug and visibly shakes when it is handled. Not to mention the thing is one of the most plastic looking weapons in the Heisei series, especially with the sparkle-imbued blade.

** ''Series/KamenRiderOOO'': The last episode. Full stop. Oh sure, there were some bad effects before in the series. Like [=ShaUTa=]'s debut. Or the zerg-like little fish Yummies in episode 5. But those were given contexts. The awkward "flying" in the last episode, and the pseudo-Yummy pile in the same episode, takes the cake for the entire series.

** Pretty much every episode of Knight Rider has a multitude of special effect failures. Besides the visible ramps and cheap car bodies used for jumping scenes, every time K.I.T.T. is supposed to be driving really, really fast is actually just a sped-up scene, which becomes obvious when the vehicle is making unrealistically sharp turns at full speed. There's also a stunt driver that looks nothing like David Hasselhoff (mainly due to his big head/hair), the console in the car and car windows disappearing and reappearing in outside shots, a clearly visible "ghost driver" wearing a weird flour-bag to conceal himself driving K.I.T.T. when the car is on autopilot, and many, many more. There was even a whole German website just listing every instance of this trope for Knight Rider.

* ''Series/LandOfTheLost1974'' is basically one long SpecialEffectFailure, except for the surprisingly well-done stop-motion dinosaurs.

* ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'' — pick a monster. Any monster. It's easier to pick out which effects ''don't'' fail (basically, the teleportation scene in the first episode). The worst offender by far, however, is [[spoiler:Nimueh's death scene, which looks very much like the same two CGI shots repeated a few times.]]

** That's not the only time. In the episode where Gibbs quits because the [=SEALs=] are ordered to take down the boat with the terror suspect on it despite his advice. The suspect promptly blows himself and the ship up. Cue another diabolically bad CGI explosion. What happened to physical special effects? Or is the entire point for these "whizzkids" to show us "Hey Ma, look what ''I'' can do on ''my'' computer!"
*** Worst of all, the team is watching the ship on satellite: if the CGI wasn't up to the task they could have simply shown the blast in low-res background shots.

** And of course, there's the [[OffTheShelfFX usage of the Bandai of America toys]] of the Ninja/Shogun Zords in ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' Season 3 with the toy of Titanus. It's made worse by the White Shogun Zord being ''pink'' in the US toyline (due to a pink Ranger in MMPR whereas ''Series/NinjaSentaiKakuranger'', the source of the footage, had a white one, and Bandai not wanting a FrivolousLawsuit). Also, the toy version has different logos on the Zords than the show version. This means there are some very noticeable changes in the Zords between the original footage and the Sentai footage. The Ninjazords don't escape entirely, either (the Crane's red markings were changed to pink, for the same reason). Also, Titanus has the otherwise-unseen Dragonzord's chestplate now, since it's mounted there in the original Ultrazord formation, and they were trying to make it as similar as possible. That, and repositioning Titanus' head for the Ultrazord configuration would otherwise have left a big, unsightly gap.

*** Also, in ''Series/PowerRangersJungleFury,'' the rather short Theo morphs into footage of the rather tall Retsu from ''Series/JukenSentaiGekiranger.'' His height gain is pretty much the same as Justin's, maybe even a whole foot.

** Alarms immediately went off with pre-broadcast previews of ''Series/AvataroSentaiDonbrothers'' once it was stated that two of the main cast, [=KijiBrother=] and [=InuBrother=], would be portrayed by [[SerkisFolk CGI motion capture]] rather than suit actors - this in a weekly series running for a whole year. Come the premiere and it looks like they wouldn't be out of place in a UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 game, and it's incredibly easy to discern them whenever they're up against a live-action background. The ways they contort and move also look awkward as they don't have the same weight as the live-action characters, not to mention their lack of shadows.

** In "The Reichenbach Fall", in a scene while Sherlock is in the foreground in the police station, the room around him goes dark to increase the contrast of the graphic effects playing out showing Sherlock's thought processes while dissecting a clue. When he's finished (twice!), the graphics go away and the room lights up again. But rather than having darkened the scene in post-production, they had literally turned the lights off in the room, so when they come on again, a dozen ceiling florescent bulbs flicker madly to life.

* ''Series/TheStarlost'' boasted a new video process that was to allow the most spectacular visual effects ever. This process, called "Magic Cam", was a simple greenscreen effect that allowed almost all of the show's sets to be created from miniatures or matte paintings. Promotional material hailed the way that Magic Cam prevented any sort of visible matte line or haloing. This turned out to be entirely false. Matte lines, halos, wires, boom shadow, basically, if there's something you can do to ruin a visual effect, ''The Starlost'' does it.

* This trope is pretty much the bread and butter of ''Series/TheTomorrowPeople1973''. [[http://www.aldenbates.com/archives/2005/06/07/the_tomorrow_people_and_dodgy_special_effects.html Here]] is a standout example.

* ''Werewolf'' is a '90s ''Series/TheFugitive'' clone featuring a young man on the run because he got bitten by a wolf, and every full moon after that... well, you get the idea. The actual werewolf costume looks pretty scary and menacing -- as long as it is seen in the dark, slightly out of focus, in hand-held shots and with rapid cutting. Unfortunately, in later episodes the werewolf suit is fully-lit, and appears totally lame.

** The season 1 finale ends with [[spoiler:a parked airplane exploding]]. It's painfully obvious it's either CG or a really sloppy matte job, though to be fair the show is a relatively low budget comedy-drama that normally uses basically no special effects.

* ''Wind and Cloud'', a 2002 Taiwanese series, received an unfortunate reputation in Finland because of this. It features an infamous magical-sonic-beam-attack of a sort... Which is basically created by having the user throw a bunch of hula-hoops at the opponent. Other special attacks are similar in quality.

* The original ''Series/LandOfTheLost'' is basically one long SpecialEffectFailure, except for the surprisingly well-done stop-motion dinosaurs.

* In ''Series/TheBlacklist'', Megan Boone wore a wig for the first season (her own hair was quite short) - unfortunately it was a very obvious wig and came in for a large degree of mockery, [[http://www.tv.com/shows/the-blacklist/community/post/the-blacklist-should-the-wig-be-credited-1399327365/ including one poll on whether it should have its own credit]].