History SpecialEffectFailure / LiveActionTV

* The entire ''{{Ultraman}}'' series was infamous for having quite cheesy special effects, especially ''Ultraman Taro.''

* The ''White Collar'' season 1 finale ends with [[spoiler: a parked airplane exploding]]. It's painfully obvious it was 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.
** Not only there. When Tiffani Thiessen was pregnant during season 2, they pretended her character was in California. Ridiculous green screening of the Golden Gate Bridge ensued.

** [[TearJerker The impact]] (no pun intended) of [[AlasPoorScrappy Adric's demise]] in "Earthshock" is unfortunately lessened when you see the actual freigher "crash" and realize that ''it isn't even moving.'' And the explosion itself seems to have been inspired by Atari games.

** In ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures,'' the entanglement shells from ''The Warriors of Kudlak'' looked so much like jellybeans.

** [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]] is mostly forgiven for being made in the 60's, although some examples even go beyond the acceptable limitations of the time. The episode "Assignment Earth" has a very good looking Earth... that is rotating ''backwards.''
* ''WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'' '''loves''' this trope. Nearly every episode succumbs to this syndrome, whether it's flying carpets, chandelier-swinging, giant seamonkeys, or random trips to China.
** Correction: The ''DisneyChannel'' loves this trope. Almost ''all'' scenes in the sky feature blatant blue/greenscreen, especially noticeable considering the characters' outlines, and how they move at a ''completely different framerate'' from the clouds/city, etc. Another ''Waverly Place'' example is when they go into Alex's journal. It looks like the editors were testing Adobe Premiere Elements when they go inside of it. One of the characters also falls behind a wall painted like water (there wasn't even a splash!).
** While the ''Wizards'' MadeForTVMovie still isn't immune to this trope (the sequence where Mr. Russo makes the steel drums play themselves is especially noticeable), as a whole it has a much higher budget than the series proper.
* ''HannahMontana'' doesn't use special effects often (except when driving cars), but when it does, you can expect it to fall under this trope. One blatant example is from an early episode, where Miley/Hannah blows the fakest-looking bubble gum bubble imaginable.
* The Disney Channel show ''ShakeItUp'' does not use special effects much either, but the streets are quite obviously crude sets, and green screen is used at times to show driving, which looks terrible.
* The Disney Channel [[RunningGag continues this tradition]] with ''PairOfKings''' crudely animated monsters.
* The fourth season ''Series/{{CSI}}'' episode "The Turn of the Screw" opened with a rollercoaster car flying off its tracks. Inevitably, they showed a [=POV=] shot from the back seat of the car as it flew through the air, and it was rather obviously superimposed footage of a normal rollercoaster ride - emphasised when one of the passengers in the front seat turned around and was clearly screaming in exhilaration rather than terror (for a start, she was ''smiling'', which seems an odd reaction to have to impending certain death).

** And ''SaturdayNightLive'' (whose show has been filled to the brim with Special Effects Failure since 1975. It's been toned down ever since the show switched to high-definition in season 31 [[hottip:*:The 2005-2006 season; the one featuring the debuts of Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, and Kristen Wiig -- who didn't appear on the show until the episode hosted by [[MyNameIsEarl Jason Lee]]]]), but it does crop up -- usually in the form of horrible chroma-keying or props that look cheap and breakable).

** Back to ''Super Sentai'', the final battle of ''DengekiSentaiChangeman''. It may have been TheEighties, but there is just no excuse for a fight against the insides of a PlanetEater being represented by ''the Megazord imposed over stock footage of cells dividing.''

*** A kind of inverse happened during ''Lost Galaxy.'' The male Yellow Ranger in ''Gingman'' was turned into the female Lost Galaxy Ranger, who was played by the rather buxom Cerina Vincent, who flattened every time she morphed. Apparently, ranger spandex is more effective than any sports bra.

** In the season 1 episode "Water", the water gushing out of the punctured containers reeks of bad CGI.
** In the season 3 episode "Rapture", when the sun goes nova, the characters see it framed between the natural pillars of the Temple of Five. Moment of symbolic significance... except the sunlight on the Temple comes from a source to the left and slightly behind the camera, not from the nova in the dead center of the screen. Though in the above 2 cases the RuleOfCool means it doesn't really detract from the effect.

** ''Series/RedDwarf'' is full of this kind of thing, but in earlier seasons nobody minded. Then came season eight, where Cat made a shuttle tap-dance. Poorly.

** To be fair, you'd ''expect'' CGI on any budget to look less realistic than an animatronic model that is ''actually real.''

** The season 4 finale, "Restless", contains an ''intentional'' example. The scene in Xander's dream where he's driving the ice cream truck has a very obvious greenscreen effect; the background is moving quickly, and there are artifacts around Anya when she's shown in front of the window. This was done to enhance the surreal, dreamlike quality, by creating an effect of "stillness in motion".

** Compared to other [[spoiler:underwater scenes, the Island underwater]] in the Season 6 premiere [[spoiler: looks like an old screen saver.]]

*** Possibly {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''KamenRiderTheFirst'' and ''KamenRiderTheNext'', in which all of the "monsters" essentially '''are''' guys in Halloween masks.

*** Also also, many {{Toku}} characters have different versions of the suit - one that looks good while [[AssKickingPose posing]] and [[InTheNameOfTheMoon letting us know that]] you're [[KamenRiderBlackRX the child of the sun]] or [[KamenRiderKabuto walking the path of heaven, the one who will rule over all]], and one that can actually stand up to rough stuff. However, Kamen Rider 1's suit versions are noticeably different between riding, fighting, and ''the ending sequence.'' It's jarring to watch Hongo ride off into the sunset and appear in a different suit when the credits are rolling.

** The nuclear explosion in season 2 (seen from Palmer's point-of-view, looking out the window of Air Force One) looks like shoddy CGI that clashes with the rest of the footage.

* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' has one particularly bad sequence in season 3 where the camera moves up over a graveyard, riddled with open graves. Not only do the graves look like CGI, the movement is also not synchronized with the camera movement, making the holes float above the ground.

** And the cat that attacks both Mulder AND Scully in "Tesos dos Bichos". It was a cat puppet, but because Gillian Anderson is allergic to cats, they had to use rabbit fur -- which Anderson reports often shed and got stuck to everything. (Presumably the crew even agreed it looked silly -- the blooper reel for that season features a clip of Mulder fighting the cat puppet set to the theme of ''GeorgeOfTheJungle.''

** 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."

* ''{{Friends}}'' had several episodes where the cameraman zoomed a bit too far out or angled the camera a bit too steep, causing the studio lights to be briefly seen in the shots.

* Pops up several times in ''PushingDaisies''.

** ''Space: 1999'' had some superb models, but some of the non-miniature effects were abysmal even for the time. The episode ''Space Brain'' for the brain effect they filled the main command center with soap suds and had the actors flail around in it. As one review wrote: "No matter what you do, soap suds aren't scary."

** In the ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Next Generation]]'' episode "Conspiracy", a truly [[NightmareFuel horrific]] sequence involving '''phasering a guy's face off''' is wrecked when a hideous monster bursts from the remains of his chest... and it is the weakest, saddest, muppet-looking thing ever. Plus, the way they blue-screened it into the scene couldn't possibly be more obvious.

* ''{{Starhunter}}'' had rather awful CGI for its spaceships and their weapons. The effects were on par with or worse than what was available nearly 10 years before production started.

** Hell, even the ThreeStooges did this at least once (but it ''was'' rather cutting-edge then).

*** ShesAManInJapan creates a frequent problem for Yellow Rangers, namely Trini, whose (male) Japanese suit actor was rather... gifted. [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lLsdaCVk3Kk/TPSD2arXszI/AAAAAAACACM/ODWVlMhsgjY/s400/3568_540.jpg Proof.]] (Additionally, most suit actors in Japan were male, even for female rangers. Those skirts on Pink Ranger costumes served a practical purpose of cover-up.)

* The ''{{Neverwhere}}'' miniseries was low-budget but looked fine until the dramatic appearance of the dreaded Beast of London, which was very clearly a Highland cow in silhouette.

* In the episode in season three of ''{{Sliders}}'', the one that ripped off the movie ''{{Species}}'', Quinn jumps into the vortex which is off screen... then he can clearly be seen standing up and walking away.
** Some monsters in ''{{Sliders}}'' are painfully obvious CG. The dinosaurs aren't the worse; there were also a huge spider, a giant beetle and "spider-wasps" that are looking really out of place in a live-action series.

** The second episode gives us glimpses of the puppeteer's jeans and shoes as the ''Andrewsarchus'' tries to kill an obvious rubber turtle. Meanwhile, the ''Moeritherium'' has an impressive collection of wires hanging from its neck. For some reason, they forgot to cover them up with a CG body. Also, the dead calf looks it's made of rubber.

** Then there was the case of the Type 7 shuttlecraft, whose [[http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x07/unnaturalselection141.jpg mockup]] did not match to it's [[http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x01/child006.jpg model]] counterpart.

* Oz turning into a werewolf on ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' wavered in quality. The first time ("Phases") there was a pretty good werewolf suit, but the second time ("Beauty and the Beasts") it looked like a scary tiki mask glued onto a gorilla costume.

* An absurdly high number of fairytale creatures in ''Series/OnceUponATime'' are made with lousy CG (big offenders being the Wraith, the Ogre, and Jiminy Cricket.) While the rest of the series has very ambitious production values and lavish visuals (think ''Film/AliceInWonderland'' but with more realistic buildings, environments, etc.), the bad creature effects (especially compared to [[DuelingShows this show's competitor,] ''Series/{{Grimm}}'', which is far more reliant on creature effects) stand out a hell of a lot more.

*** Aljin Abella was the shortest member of the ''Series/PowerRangersJungleFury'' cast, yet was cast as the Blue Ranger, who was the tallest in ''JukenSentaiGekiranger.'' Theo grew about a foot every time he morphed.

*** Possibly {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''KamenRiderTheFirst'' and ''KamenRiderTheNext'', in which all of the "monsters" essentially '''are''' guys in Halloween masks.