History TheArtifact / WesternAnimation

** For a very minor example, we have Frizz's eye color. In the first season, he wore glasses but come the second season these were fazed out completely. The lens color, however, was not, leaving him with blue eyes for the rest of the series.

*** The disproportionate in-universe hate towards her has shoved her through TheWoobie Wall for many members of the audience, giving her an actual purpose in the show. It also makes the scene in the the episode "Dial Meg for Murder" where she beats Peter after being in prison a few months a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome. Whether or not this was intended is a topic of debate.

** WesternAnimation/PorkyPig saying the iconic "That's all, folks!" is an artifact from when he was the the original SeriesMascot.

** Alice was something of an antagonistic force early in Season 1, both by accidentally making the Penguins operations harder while doing her job and being the one the Penguins have to hide from to be capable of continuing with their operations in the zoo. But once the Penguins gained their RoguesGallery and the show started playing more into the the science-fiction and spy-like aspects that in the zoo antics, she became rather irrelevant. Rare is the episode in Season 2 or 3 where she plays any role of importance.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AtomicBetty'', you might notice Maximus looks a lot like Betty's cat Purrsy and Admiral [=DeGill=] looks like her pet goldfish. This is leftover from the original concept of the series, where Betty's space missions were fantasy adventures at night involving her pets and toys (Sparky and X5 look very toylike, their designs stick out like a sore thumb compared to other aliens and robots seen in the show)

** Alice was something of an antagonistic force early in Season 1, both by accidentally making the Penguins operations harder while doing her job and being the one the Penguins have to hide to be capable of continuing with their operations in the zoo. But once the Penguins gained their RoguesGallery and the show started playing more into the the science-fiction and spy-like aspects that in the zoo antics, she became rather irrelevant. Rare is the episode in Season 2 or 3 where she plays any role of importance.

** Alice was something of an antagonistic force early in Season 1, both by accidentally making the Penguins operations harder while doing her job and being the one the Penguins have to hide to be capable of continuing with their operations in the zoo. But once the Penguins gained their RogueGallery and the show started playing more into the the science-fiction and spy-like aspects that in the zoo antics, she became rather irrelevant. Rare is the episode in Season 2 or 3 where she plays any role of importance.

** Phil and Mason. The show was created to focus on the secondary cast of the ''Franchise/{{Madagascar}}'' series but while The Penguins and the Lemurs were the stars, Phil and Mason never gained a place in the series, and [[ADayInTheLimelight had very few episodes focused on them]] during the show's run. They remained as recurring characters, but as the show continued, their role became interchangeable with other zoo animals. Even Phil's role as the only literate animal (despite [[TheVoiceless using sign language]] to communicate with them, and Mason being his interpreter) became less relevant as the Penguins DependingOnTheWriter seemed to be able to read just fine on their own or had gained other mediums to gain information.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'': Star's magic wand, the whole reason she was sent to Earth in the first place and the MacGuffin Ludo's forces are after, becomes less and less important as the show goes on. By the last season, Star doesn't even ''use'' it anymore, having since learned to tap into her own innate magical powers.

** Kenny is TheUnintelligible because his muffled voice was originally supposed to be a clever censor. In early episodes, he would often describe lewd things that were theoretically too vulgar to say outright, but viewers could listen closely and understand what he was saying. For example, in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_6i1grHQ3g a short "This program is brought to you by..." spot]] promoting ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', where Kyle plugs the card game, and Kenny says, "[[TakeThat That sounds fucking gay]]," in a way that sounds like the game's tagline, "It's not just a game." Another is his line in the show's opening theme song, "Someday I'll be old enough to stick my dick in Music/{{Britney|Spears}}'s butt!" muffled to the point you can only really understand that's what he's saying if someone tells you. As the show pushed the envelope and censors became more lax, however, this novelty became mostly pointless; other characters can use explicit language without any issue. Losing that novelty, combined with the reduction of [[TheyKilledKennyAgain Kenny's recurring deaths]], is why Kenny [[DemotedToExtra faded to]] [[OutOfFocus the background]] as the seasons progressed.

** Kenny is TheUnintelligible because his muffled voice was originally supposed to be a clever censor. In early episodes, he would often describe lewd things that were theoretically too vulgar to say outright, but viewers could listen closely and understand what he was saying. For example, in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_6i1grHQ3g a short "This program is brought to you by..." spot]] promoting ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', where Kyle plugs the card game, and Kenny says, "[[TakeThat That sounds fucking gay]]," in a way that sounds like the game's tagline, "It's not just a game." As the show pushed the envelope and censors became more lax, however, this novelty became mostly pointless; other characters can use explicit language without any issue. Losing that novelty, combined with the reduction of [[TheyKilledKennyAgain Kenny's recurring deaths]], is why Kenny [[DemotedToExtra faded to]] [[OutOfFocus the background]] as the seasons progressed.

** King Julien still uses his original crown, despite the fact that he gifted that one to Alex back in the original movie and he uses a notably different crown for the rest of the franchise. Probably because the other crown was much more colorful, detailed and therefore harder to animate.
** Phil and Mason. The show was created with the intention to focus on the whole secondary cast of the ''Franchise/{{Madagascar}}'' series but while The Penguins and the Lemurs were the stars, Phil and Mason never gained a place in the series and [[ADayInTheLimelight had very few episodes focused on them]] during the show's run. They remained as recurring characters but as the show keep going their role became interchangeable with any of the other zoo animals. Even Phil's role as the only literate animal became less relevant as the Penguins DependingOnTheWriter seemed to be able to read just fine on their own or had gained other mediums to gain information.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhantomInvestigators'': Early in production, Daemona's real name was Prunella Daemon, and "Daemona Prune" was to be her aliases while on the job as a Phantom Investigator. It was later decided that the latter name would be used as her real name and she wouldn't use an aliases as a Phantom Investigator, leaving her name as an artifact from an earlier point of production.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThisWorldCantTearMeDown'': Michele Rech voicing all the characters in both series is because Zero is the one telling the story but it also had a narrative reason back in ''WesternAnimation/TearAlongTheDottedLine''. In that series, Zero is suffering from a major GuiltComplex where he believes that many of the many bad things happening to people around him (including Alice's suicide) are to some degree his fault for not interfering, in the moment where all of his friends make him understand the world doesn't revolve around him is that his friends finally gain real voices and he is not truly the protagonist of their lives. In comparison, there's no really any narrative significance in the characters still being voiced by Rech and the characters gaining real voices when the FramingDevice is over doesn't have any impact beyond the characters suddenly gaining different voices.