Line #347 Main/FranchiseKiller


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4	[[quoteright:320:[[Franchise/{{Superman}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/franchisekiller_2015.png]]]]
5	[[caption-width-right:320:And then they had to reboot it ''[[Film/ManOfSteel again]]'', seven years later.]]
6
7	->''"I think we might have killed the franchise."''
8	-->-- '''Creator/GeorgeClooney''' on ''Film/BatmanAndRobin'' (and [[Film/BatmanBegins until 2005]], he was right)
9
10	Sometimes a sequel [[{{Sequelitis}} sucks]]. Sometimes it sucks, but leaves the possibility open that the [[SurprisinglyImprovedSequel followup will be better]] and that this is just [[SeasonalRot a blip in the quality]] of the franchise. Then sometimes it sucks ''so much'' that it kills the franchise stone dead, destroying the producers'/publishers' hopes for further sequels. In a variation, maybe the sequel was [[SoOkayItsAverage genuinely decent, but not enough]] to erase the sins of the previous entries and win back the favor of the crowd. In the most extreme cases, it can even [[CreatorKiller take the producer/publisher down with it]]. Or even the [[GenreKiller entire genre itself]].
11
12	Occasionally a few Franchise Killers over too short a period (or one ''really'' bad one) [[GenreKiller can put a whole genre out of favour for a while]]. Even the executives could tell when it's time to stop [[FollowTheLeader following the leader]].
13
14	Note that sometimes the franchise turns out to be NotQuiteDead, and can be salvaged with a ContinuityReboot. If the franchise experiences what ''should'' have been a Franchise Killer but carries on regardless, it's a FranchiseZombie. Occasionally it's a StillbornFranchise, an all-new product for which plans for sequels were made and then scrapped when it was discovered that the product was crap, or so hyped up that [[ThisIsGoingToBeHuge the creators had unrealistic expectations of its success]]. Or it just didn't profit enough, even though it was a CultClassic.
15
16	Sometimes, if the hope for any more follow-ups is ''extremely'' unlikely, if not outright [[DeaderThanDead impossible]], fans will resort to [[StartMyOwn doing a follow-up themselves]], through an outright FanSequel or a [[SpiritualSuccessor lawyer-friendly one]].
17
18	For many VideoGame companies, shipping a Franchise Killer is also a CreatorKiller, either through bankruptcy, no-one wanting to forward them the funding to continue making games, or in the modern world of mega-corporations owning every studio as a subsidiary of the larger corporation, the executives in charge of the conglomerate deciding to shut the studio having wrung the last vestiges of profit out of the intellectual property the studio was bought for, or using them as scapegoats for poor performance financially speaking. Or in some cases, actual poor performance as a studio.
19
20	Compare CreatorKiller, GenreKiller, TrendKiller, and StarDerailingRole. Also compare StillbornFranchise, where an attempted franchise ends due to the failure of its first installment, and TorchTheFranchiseAndRun, where a writer is deliberately trying to kill a franchise by making such a big mess of it that no one can continue it without using {{Prequel}}s, {{Retcon}}s or just [[ContinuityReboot rebooting]] the whole thing. See also ToughActToFollow, where one work in a series is seen as so good that subsequent installments are seen as not worth the time and money.
21
22	''([[Administrivia/NoRecentExamplesPlease As TV Tropes does not know time]], please wait either 5 years after the last installment's release or for official confirmation by the creators before adding an example.)''
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24	----
25	%%
26	%% Please try to add new entries in alphabetical order. For more information, see Administrivia/HowToAlphabetizeThings.
27	%%
28	!!Example subpages:
29
30	[[index]]
31	* FranchiseKiller/{{Film}}
32	* FranchiseKiller/LiveActionTV
33	* FranchiseKiller/VideoGames
34	* FranchiseKiller/WesternAnimation
35	[[/index]]
36
37	!!Other examples:
38
39	[[foldercontrol]]
40
41	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
42	* The ''Manga/AhMyGoddess'' anime's second season, ''Flights of Fancy'', was ill-received enough despite closely following the original manga that the franchise was never quite the same after that. The manga ended in 2014, but the second season of the TV series put the franchise in media format on its last legs. By the end of 2007, a two part special with Lind called ''Fighting Wings'' premiered. And after a few years hiatus, the franchise managed to limp forward just a few more steps and churn out three OVA episodes from 2011 to 2013 with much less fanfare and even those weren't enough to rekindle much interest in ''Ah My Goddess!'' Since then, there haven't been any reboots or attempts to rekindle the franchise in any anime or OVA format despite the fact that the manga has now finished up and there's presumably enough material now to create a new ''AMG!'' series that can have a more definitive end than during the TV series' run where the manga was going on forever.
43	* ''Anime no Chikara'', Creator/A1Pictures and TV Tokyo's joint original anime project in 2010 (inspired by Fuji TV's Creator/{{Noitamina}} timeslot), was scrapped after the mediocre ratings and BD/DVD sales of its three original anime (''Anime/SoundOfTheSky'', ''Anime/NightRaid1931'', and ''Anime/OccultAcademy''). Regardless of the project and the timeslot's failure, it did inspire creators to release more original anime in 2011 where some of them (''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', ''Anime/TigerAndBunny'', ''Anime/AnoHana'', ''Anime/{{Penguindrum}}'', ''Anime/HanasakuIroha'', etc.) became very successful. Aniplex president Koichiro Natsume mentioned in [[http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2012-12-19/aniplex-koichiro-natsume/ his ANN interview]] that a lot of lessons were learned from the project and they were able to make more successful original anime.
44	* Creator/Studio4C was planning on adapting more of the ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' story into movies, starting with a trilogy for the ''[[Anime/BerserkTheGoldenAgeArc Golden Age]]'' arc. Sadly all three films didn't receive much box-office success; the first film being the only one to do well enough according to some sources. As a result, despite general reception being mixed, the plans for the ''Berserk'' film adaptations ended with the third film of the ''Golden Age'' arc. This ironically lead to the production of the ''Anime/Berserk2016'' adaptation, [[VindicatedByHistory which has turned around people's perceptions of the original films]].
45	* The TroubledProduction of the fourth ''Franchise/{{Bleach}}'' movie, ''Anime/BleachHellVerse'', combined with the decline of the anime's overall success at the time the movie was made, killed any future plans for the series to have any more movies made. Creator/TiteKubo was [[CreatorBacklash very upset]] at how the movie turned out and basically only had his name credited because he was required to do so, and it's clear the final product had bigger ambitions but simply couldn't achieve them. It's uncertain if the movie ended up helping to push the anime to end, but regardless the series never produced another animated work besides finishing the anime. That said, the anime finally returned in October 2022, adapting the Thousand-Year Blood War arc.
46	* The original ''Anime/{{Dangaioh}}'' was already a TroubledProduction, with only 3 episodes out of a planned 6-12 being made. The follow-up series, ''Great Dangaioh'' bombed so badly that it likely killed the franchise regardless, but what sealed the deal was creator Toshihiro Hirano declaring the franchise "cursed" and vowing never to work on it again.
47	* The toyline for ''Anime/DiGiCharatNyo'' completely bombing with its intended demographic of children, ''Anime/DiGiCharatWinterGarden'' alienating series fans with its more serious tone, and Dejiko's controversial redesign in 2007 effectively killed the ''Anime/DiGiCharat'' franchise, although the series would finally make a comeback in TheNew20s.
48	* ''[[Anime/ElHazardTheMagnificentWorld El-Hazard: The Alternative World]]'' had such low ratings to the point that Creator/{{AIC}} pulled the plug with the show's [[KudzuPlot way too many plots]] being wrapped up (very poorly) in only a single episode. It also killed off the ''El Hazard'' franchise, with no further work of any kind being done in the decades since. [[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-08-12/aic-plans-crowdfunding-for-el-hazard-sequel-project/.135364 Another attempt to revive the franchise in a new series]] called ''The Dual World'' started up in 2018 but was ultimately unsuccessful, having only raised 16% of the intended goal.
49	* The mixed-to-negative reception and low BD/DVD sales of ''Anime/BloodC'' nearly killed the ''Blood'' franchise. The movie, ''Anime/BloodCTheLastDark'', attempted to fix the damage. While it performed modestly with home viewers, it flopped at the Japanese box office. Five years later, an {{Interquel}} entitled ''Blood-C: The Last Mind'' was released as a stage play written by Junichi Fujisaku, co-writer of the ''Blood-C'' and ''Anime/BloodPlus'' and a live-action prequel of the series was released on August 2017. The stage play was released well but the live-action movie completely bombed in Japan. Around the same year, a light novel called ''Blood#'' was released, serving as a sequel to ''Blood+''. To this day, Production IG doesn't have plans for any new anime adaptation of ''Blood''.
50	* ''Manga/ExArm'' ran in some form for ten years until the premiere of its anime adaptation, which instantly drew heavy criticism for its [[SpecialEffectsFailure notoriously bad CG]] and choreography, thanks in part to a production team that had never worked on an anime before. Its reception was so bad that the manga was cancelled while it was two years into its SequelSeries, before the anime had even finished airing its season.
51	* ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'' and the first two seasons of its anime adaptation are still well-regarded as classic {{Mecha}} works, but the final three novels will likely never be adapted into anime thanks to the commercial bomb that was the anime's third season, ''Invisible Victory''. This season, released in 2018, [[SequelGap 13 years after]] ''The Second Raid'' and 8 years after the novel series itself had ended, flopped because fans of the older series had mostly moved on since the end of the books and newer anime fans were generally not interested in watching a sequel to such older prior shows, especially those who had never had any exposure to the franchise before, along with the relative low quality of Creator/{{XEBEC}}'s animation as opposed to Creator/{{Kyoto Animation}}'s SugarWiki/AwesomeArt.
52	* The commercial failure of ''Anime/FZeroGPLegend'', in addition to killing off the ''VideoGame/FZero'' video game series, killed off any future anime adaptations of any Creator/{{Nintendo}} properties other than ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' as, other than the obscure and [[NoExportForYou never-exported]] ''Anime/AnimalCrossingTheMovie'', the only anime so far have been promotional shorts for both ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising'' and ''VideoGame/StarFoxZero''. And even then, they seemed more like {{Poorly Disguised Pilot}}s than anything else. However, the announcement and eventual release of a ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' movie with Creator/IlluminationEntertainment, combined with Nintendo willing to make more [[https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/09/nintendo_has_more_media_projects_in_the_works_beyond_the_mario_movie media projects beyond that]], has given hope to fans who want a new anime based on a Nintendo IP that doesn't involve Ash or Pikachu.
53	* In 2007, ''Anime/GRGiantRobo'' was released to commemorate the [[MilestoneCelebration 40th anniversary of the original manga]]. Unfortunately, the show was a massive flop mainly due to it [[InNameOnly straying too far from the source material]], [[DarkerAndEdgier the darker tone]], and failing to live up to the manga's previous adaptations. Not only did the 2007 anime's failure put a stop to any future adaptations of Giant Robo being made, it also effectively put a halt to any new adaptations of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's works since; the only one since was ''[[Anime/{{Gigantor}} Tetsujin 28 Gao!]]'' in 2013, which quickly faded into obscurity.
54	* ''VideoGame/GodEater'' as a franchise is still going strong, but the ''Anime/GodEater'' anime killed any chance of the series getting any more major anime series. This was because Creator/{{Ufotable}} was working it on it around the same time as ''Anime/FateStayNightUnlimitedBladeWorks'', causing them to go over-budget and have serious financial problems. This resulted in a rushed product with notable strange animation choices that made it difficult to sell to viewers, which was not helped by the production being so difficult the episodes could not be released weekly, but instead almost monthly instead. The result was that the anime, despite having a SequelHook, fell by the wayside and the team has abandoned any attempts at a second season.
55	* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'':
56	** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam Victory Gundam]]'', the last televised installment to take place in the Universal Century continuity, was under massive pressure from main sponsor Bandai, resulting in a reshuffling of early episodes to showcase the titular mecha of the show earlier, and the addition of several {{toyetic}} mechs later in the show's run. Yet the show did not prove to have satisfactory sales, and combined with Sunrise being bought out by Bandai, was replaced with the extremely different AlternateUniverse ''[[Anime/MobileFighterGGundam G Gundam]]'', which featured many, many Gundams, and has an extensive toyline. The ratings for the series did not improve, but the toy sales went up, setting a precedent for future TV shows to always be set in alternate universes. The Universal Century still lives on though, quite successfully at that, with [[OriginalVideoAnimation OVAs]] like ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamThe08thMSTeam The 08th MS Team]]'' and ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn Gundam Unicorn]]'' setting sales records.
57	** ''[[Anime/AfterWarGundamX Gundam X]]'''s ratings almost killed the franchise, presumably due to there having been ''Gundam'' on screen every week for 4 years at that point. The series disappeared off TV for 3 years until the similarly unsuccessful ''Anime/TurnAGundam'' (although the series continued on Video and Film with ''The 08th MS Team'' and ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamWingEndlessWaltz Endless Waltz]]''). It was not until the massively successful ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED Gundam SEED]]'' that the series was revitalized. ''Gundam X'' is one of only two ''Gundam'' TV series to be cut short of a full two-season run. The first? The original ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam''; it's easy to forget given what a massive franchise it has become when the original installment had poor ratings.
58	** In North America (and to an extent overseas), the ''Gundam SEED'' series rendered the franchise moribund for more than a decade. Desperate to replicate the success of ''Wing'' after a lukewarm performance of the 1979 series and ''Mobile Fighter G Gundam'', Bandai Entertainment tried to have the show air on a daytime slot on Toonami, just as with those previous three shows. What they failed to realize was that ''SEED'' was [[BloodierAndGorier far more violent than they thought]]. Rather than have it air unedited and uncut on Creator/AdultSwim, Bandai still stuck with having it air on Toonami, resulting in them making bizarre and drastic edits for Creator/CartoonNetwork such as the [[FamilyFriendlyFirearm Disco Guns]], drastically changing the battle scenes, and forcing the characters to NeverSayDie. The end result was that the edits turned the show into a complete mess, causing the fanbase to not take the show seriously when it should have been and it showed in the ratings. By episode 26, the series had been shafted to [[FridayNightDeathSlot Friday at midnight]], which ironically got less edits but by then the damage had been done. ''SEED''[='s=] performance was so disastrous that Cartoon Network would never air ''SEED Destiny'', and the network swore off anything ''Gundam'' for a while, resulting in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'' airing on the [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] and the revived Creator/{{Toonami}} not airing ''any'' new ''Gundam'' series until 2016, when they got ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans''.[[note]]While the network did air an episode of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'' as part of its April Fools broadcast in 2012, ''SEED'' was the last full TV series the network aired until ''IBO''.[[/note]] The impact of ''SEED''[='s=] abysmal performance on Cartoon Network is best showcased when Jason [=DeMarcho=] swore off the ''Gundam SEED'' series when asked about airing HD remasters of shows that the Cartoon Network-era Toonami aired for the Adult Swim-era Toonami due to this.
59	** ''SEED''[='s=] Japanese success once even started talks that the Cosmic Era timeline could become the new Universal Century in terms of production of sequels and side-stories. However, [[TroubledProduction production troubles]] involving ''Destiny'' and the subsequent release and success of non-CE series ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam00 Gundam 00]]'' have since dashed those hopes. A movie meant to tie up the Cosmic Era timeline was stuck in DevelopmentHell for years (due to the declining health and in 2016, [[DiedDuringProduction eventual death]] of head writer Chiaki Morosawa, [[CreatorCouple the wife of]] ''SEED'' and ''SEED Destiny'' director Mitsuo Fukuda), and would not officially enter production until [[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-05-31/gundam-seed-director-mitsuo-fukuda-confirms-film-is-sequel-to-destiny/.173440 2021]], a full fifteen years after [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDCE73Stargazer the last Cosmic Era anime production]]. The movie, ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDFreedom'', would finally be SavedFromDevelopmentHell, as it was released to much fanfare in January 2024.
60	%%Iron-Blooded Orphans does not count per https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=vlg1uzb341i088oyrs98t49g&page=957#comment-23917
61	* ''Literature/InfiniteStratos'' will probably never get a third anime season thanks to the second season's declining ratings and the light novel releases being repeatedly delayed because of author Izuru Yumizuru's health problems.
62	* The ([[VindicatedByHistory initially]]) poor reception and behind-the-scenes issues plaguing ''Anime/JewelpetMagicalChange'' forced it to become the final ''Toys/{{Jewelpet}}'' anime. It was also CutShort to only 39 episodes.
63	** The successor to ''Jewelpet'', ''Rilu Rilu Fairilu'', had even worse ratings as the show progressed, leading to the third season of the show being aired on cable TV in Japan only, which isn't as popular in Japan as it is in other parts of the world, which lead to the show only running for 26 episodes and being replaced by ''Anime/OkkosInn'' shortly afterward.
64	* The ''Franchise/LyricalNanoha'' franchise took a huge blow in the form of ''Manga/MagicalRecordLyricalNanohaForce'', which, in an attempt to deconstruct the franchise, backfired spectacularly with a hero who was panned as boring and idiotic, and more damningly, villains who were arrogant, overpowered hypocrites. It didn't help matters that there were frequent cases of ScheduleSlip, resulting in low readership numbers. In 2013, the manga was put into hiatus and is widely agreed to be QuietlyCancelled, and there's been nothing from the original continuity ever since. The series has produced movies in another continuity, however.
65	* ''Anime/MapleTown'''s change to Palm Town for its second season was extremely unpopular with the fanbase (particularly the Patty/Bobby shippers) and practically doomed the series and signed off the demise of the franchise.
66	* ''Anime/PokemonVolcanionAndTheMechanicalMarvel'' was not this for the ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' movies as a whole. However, it ''did'' end up killing the series of movies based directly on the anime that had been ongoing yearly since ''Anime/PokemonTheFirstMovie'' 18 years prior. Its poor performance -- the lowest of any ''Pokémon'' movie -- meant that all future movies would not be directly based on the main anime, and instead set in an AlternateContinuity beginning with the following year's ''Anime/PokemonIChooseYou''. Though, the creators ''were'' planning on making the "I Choose You" film a ''Sun & Moon'' one, either having Ash and his classmates on a new adventure or a ''Pokémon'' All-Stars film where Ash and his friends encountered the protagonists from the previous films. The decision to make the film an alternate continuity came about because the writers realized that with the anime being a LongRunner, people watching by now might not know how Ash and Pikachu first met.
67	* While the ''Anime/PrettyCure'' series has avoided this fate, there have been ''aspects'' that have been killed off during its 19 year run:
68	** ''Anime/FutariWaPrettyCureSplashStar'' had poor merchandise sales and ratings and thus ended the original ''Anime/DirtyPair'' duo format that the original made popular, leading to series starting with ''Anime/YesPrettyCure5'' to go with ''Franchise/SuperSentai''-style teams of ''no less'' than four main characters on the Precure teams. While some series such as ''Anime/HeartcatchPrecure'' and ''Anime/SuitePrecure'' played with the idea by ''starting'' with a duo that would finally expand halfway through the series into a trio and later into a quartet in the final story arc, they still hedged their bets by introducing the future teammates into the main cast early to assure the viewers that there would eventually be more than two Cures. Only ''Anime/MahoGirlsPrecure'' went all the way in RevisitingTheRoots by keeping the core pair a duo from start to finish.
69	** Although it had good toy sales, ''Anime/YesPrettyCure5 [=GoGo!=]'' couldn't compete with the ratings of fellow Toei show ''Manga/GeGeGeNoKitaro''.[[note]]which aired 30 minutes after ''Pretty Cure'' on the same day until April 2009, though Kitaro airs on a [[Creator/FujiTV different network]] .[[/note]] This resulted in there being no more sequel series in the franchise, something that would only happen with the ''Anime/PrettyCureAllStars'' series from then on. It would take fifteen years before a sequel series of any kind was announced, and they were adult-oriented miniseries spinoffs taking place after a TimeSkip rather than full year-long {{Immediate Sequel}}s in the main series like ''Max Heart'' and ''[=GoGo!=]''. Ironically enough, ''Yes!'' itself was one of the two series to get [[Anime/PowerOfHopePrecureFullBloom said adult sequel]] (with a surprise reveal of it also following up on ''Splash Star''), the other being ''Anime/MahoGirlsPrecure'' which fans had previously regarded as a flop.
70	** ''Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure'' forced a ''massive'' revamp of the series starting with ''Anime/GoPrincessPrettyCure'' as well as [[CreatorKiller shaking up the franchise management at Toei Animation]] because of it. This was due to the fact that both ''Anime/DokiDokiPrettyCure'' and ''[=HapiPre=]'' had each suffered from a very weak second half, which didn't go well with viewers.[[note]]Both entries had moments that turned viewers off, including ''[=DokiDoki=]''’s StrangerBehindTheMask moment and ''[=HapiPre=]'' getting caught in a RomanticPlotTumor.[[/note]]
71	* ''Anime/{{Robotech}}'' saw itself in freefall thanks to the failure of its toy line, which also resulted in its midquel ''Robotech II: The Sentinels'' getting only a feature-length pilot set between the events of ''The Macross Saga'' and ''The Robotech Masters'' (and happened to be a phenomenon that took down quite a few of its Western-made contemporaries, as the GenreKiller page can attest to), and a severe miscalculation of the audience for ''Robotech: The Untold Story'' at its test screenings in Texas. While it proved to be rather successful, being a fair match for ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' and beating the hell out of Cannon stablemate ''Film/{{Pirates}}'', it was discovered that more adults went to the screenings than did children, and so Cannon pulled the film until it could be further retooled. Unfortunately, it happened at a time when Cannon was [[CreatorKiller drowning in its excesses]], and so a proper North American release ultimately never materialized.
72	* Fans are probably never going to see an adaptation of the Jinchuu arc of ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'' thanks to the ''Reflections'' OVA, which got a lot of backlash from fans and even Creator/NobuhiroWatsuki [[CreatorBacklash declaring it]] to be [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canon]]. Of course, the TV series ended 3 years before ''Reflections'' and by then, the last episodes were purely filler which wasn't received well by fans, leading the show to be axed. Though years later, the success of the [[Film/RurouniKenshin live-action movies]] made fans hopeful that the Jinchuu arc will be adapted and movie producers are keen enough that they would probably show it in the future. Watsuki released a sequel manga set after the end of the original manga in 2017 just to keep the franchise alive. The future of the franchise was put in further jeopardy after Watsuki was charged with possession of child pornography, halting production of the manga for the time being, until the manga resumed serialization in Jump Square's July 2018 issue. Three years later, two new movies based on the Jinchuu arc will finally get released between April and June 2021, and a new anime series will premiere in 2023, this time set to adapt the entirety of the manga.
73	* ''Manga/ShugoChara'''s third season, ''Party!'', bombed so badly that it killed off any chances of adapting the remainder of the manga, and may have even had a hand in the abrupt demise of the manga itself.
74	* The fourth and fifth seasons of the ''Literature/{{Slayers}}'' anime (''Revolution'' and ''Evolution-R'') had such a poor reception upon release that they both would ultimately put the entire franchise on ice. As of 2021 (twelve years since the release of the fifth season), while another arc of the light novels has been announced, only time will tell whether another anime adaptation will ever be made.
75	* ''Anime/StarDriver'''s rising popularity was brought to a screeching halt by its CompilationMovie, which, although advertised as such, was heavily promoted to have new material that would expand on the original story. This turned out to be very false advertising; all the new material was just three minutes of new animation at the start, followed by just the compilation and nothing else.
76	* ''Anime/SuperDimensionCavalrySouthernCross'', from which ''The Robotech Masters'' was derived, proved to be the final season of the ''Super Dimension'' anthology series due in no small part to low ratings which resulted in an early cancellation and a hasty conclusion. Unsurprisingly, it's the only installment in the series, and also the only one from which ''Robotech'' was adapted, where the ''Robotech'' version ultimately beat it to Blu-ray.
77	* The ''Anime/TamaAndFriends'' franchise hit this with ''Tama and Friends: Search For It! The Magic Puni-Puni Stone'', taking the simple SliceOfLife animal series and turning it into a FunnyAnimals series set in a bizarre magical land. The change was ''not'' received well. The negative reception would help drive original producers Group TAC out of business, and the franchise would remain dormant for the next 10 years.
78	* ''Anime/TenchiInTokyo'' didn't kill off the ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'' franchise as a whole, because six years after ''Tenchi in Tokyo'' ended, the third set of the ''Anime/TenchiMuyoRyoOhki'' OVA episodes rolled out, showing the franchise still had life. But what ''Tokyo'' did notably do was end any further attempts at making new experimental AlternateUniverse Tenchi shows like ''Tokyo'' and its predecessor ''Anime/TenchiUniverse'' where writers could play around with Tenchi's life and add new CanonForeigner characters because of this show's bad reception. Ultimately, it took a lengthy ''seventeen'' years before they would finally give the whole "Tenchi embarks on a new life path, spends less time with his traditional harem, and interacts with more CanonForeigner characters" concept one more try in 2014's ''Ai Tenchi Muyo'' and even then, the new Tenchi ''AU'' had a notably shorter run and episodic running time than a more full length series, possibly because they weren't a hundred percent sure how another Tenchi ''AU'' would do after what transpired with ''Tenchi in Tokyo'' and the franchise over the many years has mostly just focused on the Anime/TenchiMuyoRyoOhki continuity instead of taking risks on more Tenchi ''AU'' spinoffs.
79	* ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'' spent most of the early 2010s being pushed by ''Magazine/ShonenJump'' as their next A-list series, even receiving multiple crossovers with ''Manga/OnePiece'' and ''Manga/DragonBall'' that put it on level pegging with them. The results of this were put to the test with the 2013 NonSerialMovie, ''Toriko the Movie: Bishokushin's Special Menu'', [[https://eiga.com/ranking/20130729/ which opened at 8th place in the Japanese box office]] (for comparison, that same weekend, ''Anime/GintamaTheMovieTheFinalChapterBeForeverYorozuya'' wound up in 7th place despite already being in theaters for 4 weeks by that point). This put the series in a spiral from which it never really recovered; the anime ended up being shuffled off to cancellation less than a year later for more ''Dragon Ball Kai'', while the manga trundled along for another two before quietly ending.
80	* The AnimatedAdaptation of Creator/{{CLAMP}}'s ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' by Creator/BeeTrain ended abruptly in November 2006 after a lackluster second season consisting of {{Filler}} episodes when there was so much more material left to adapt. Bee Train pulled the plug on the series and Creator/ProductionIG {{retcon}}ned it in the ''Tokyo Revelations'' OVA (the adaptation of the Acid Tokyo arc in the manga). Bee Train going inactive since 2012 and its founder and director Creator/KoichiMashimo retiring from the anime industry made any future adaptation of the series uncertain.
81	* The ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' anime received negative reception and low DVD sales, putting any further adaptations of ''Umineko'' or any 07th Expansion VisualNovel series on hold for almost a decade. While the ''When They Cry'' series received a new entry in 2019 in the form of ''VisualNovel/CiconiaWhenTheyCry'' and ''Higurashi'' got a StealthSequel anime adaptation in 2020, ''Umineko'' still remains dead, with no news about any new content in the series.
82	* ''Franchise/{{Zoids}}'':
83	** ''Zoids: Fuzors'' is often accused of being one of these by the ''Zoids'' fanbase in North America, but it was in fact the fan-favourite ''Anime/ZoidsChaoticCentury'' that killed the franchise, having gotten such low ratings during its run on Creator/CartoonNetwork that it was cancelled, with the final four episodes only being shown after complaints from the fanbase. ''Fuzors'' was more of a last-ditch effort to salvage what was already a doomed franchise.
84	** In Japan, ''Anime/ZoidsGenesis'' got a [[SoOkayItsAverage so-so reception]], but TheMerch failed to sell, effectively dooming the chances of another ''Zoids'' anime being made any time soon, and causing Tomy to change its marketing strategy by pandering exclusively to Otaku rather than general audiences as they did before. The announcement of a new series titled ''Zoids Wild'' 12 years later surprised many to say the least.
85	[[/folder]]
86
87	[[folder:Asian Animation]]
88	* While Chinese animated ''Franchise/LiloAndStitch'' SpinOff ''Animation/StitchAndAi'' did not kill off the franchise as a whole, as proven by ''Manga/StitchAndTheSamurai'' in 2020 and ''Agent Stitch'' in 2022, its lack of international success and brief thirteen-episode run with no second season in sight after five years since its airing has become a sure sign that the little blue alien Stitch will no longer receive any more animated TV shows for the foreseeable future.
89	[[/folder]]
90
91	[[folder:Comic Books]]
92	* ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'': An odd case concerning the character - the BoxOfficeBomb that was [[Film/Supergirl1984 her movie]] ended up souring Creator/{{DC\|Comics}} so badly that they allowed Marv Wolfman to kill her during ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths''. This also had the effect of DC declaring a "Superman is the sole survivor of Krypton" mandate that also exiled characters like ComicBook/KryptoTheSuperdog and popular villain General Zod. While ''a'' Supergirl would show up three years later, the concept of Supergirl being Kara Zor-El, Clark's Kryptonian cousin, would not happen for 18 years afterward in ''ComicBook/TheSupergirlFromKrypton2004''.
93	* ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogMegaManWorldsUnite'', the second crossover between ''ComicBook/{{Sonic\|TheHedgehogArchieComics}}'' and ''Franchise/MegaMan'', ended up pulling a hat trick and did this for ''four'' comic book series. The intention was that the crossover would use characters from other Creator/{{Sega}} and Creator/{{Capcom}} series, but this meant Creator/ArchieComics had to sink a lot of money into licensing fees and paying various artists to do so with the hope it would make back the money. It was also a last-ditch attempt to save the ''ComicBook/MegaManArchieComics'' comic, which was suffering in sales by that point. Sadly, however, the response was lukewarm at best and Archie was barely able to recoup their losses. As such, the ''Mega Man'' comic was put on indefinite hiatus. ''ComicBook/SonicBoom'' was canceled shortly after due to negative reception from the ''[[VideoGame/SonicBoom Rise of Lyric]]'' game. Ultimately, this even ended up affecting the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics main Sonic comic]] and its spin-off ''Sonic Universe'', since the crossover ended up stalling the main storylines of those series and contributed to poor sales, though the comic suffering from the Creator/KenPenders v. Archie Comics [[ScrewedByTheLawyers lawsuit]] didn't help. With all the cuts Archie was doing due to the relaunch of their own comics, July of 2017 saw them lose the publishing rights for the North American ''Sonic'' and ''Mega Man'' comics to Creator/IDWPublishing and Creator/BoomStudios respectively, who enacted a full ContinuityReboot and effectively put an end to both Archie franchises. It was also the EndOfAnAge for any concepts and elements from ''WesternAnimation/SonicTheHedgehogSatAM'' used in American ''Sonic'' media outside the comics up until the release of ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'' enforced the franchise worldwide to follow the Japanese continuity completely, given how ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'' does not feature any characters from the show and the old comic (even the ones Creator/IanFlynn created). As for ''Franchise/MegaMan'', the license went from Archie to UDON (the publishers behind the ''ComicBook/StreetFighter'' comic) who choose to reprint ''Manga/MegaManMegamix'' in color, but it wasn't until when Boom Studios picked up the license to the Mega Man franchise that a new comic book series began, and even then it was an [[ComicBook/MegaManFullyCharged adaptation]] of the short-lived ''WesternAnimation/MegaManFullyCharged'' cartoon. In a similar vein, the atrocious reception of the fifteenth ''Super Sonic Special'', featuring the infamous "Naugus Games" story where multiple pages had no artwork at all, killed the yearly series stone dead.
94	* ''ComicBook/StarTrekIDW'' had its comics put on ice after the failure of ''Film/StarTrekBeyond'' made the possibility of a fourth film very uncertain.
95	* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'': The 33rd album "[[Recap/AsterixAndTheFallingSky The Falling Sky]]" was lambasted by both fans and critics in 2005, essentially for being a rant against mangas by Creator/AlbertUderzo and for being too outlandish compared to the series' core concept. Uderzo then made ''Recap/AsterixAndObelixsBirthdayTheGoldenBook'' only because the series needed a MilestoneCelebration in 2009. It took until 2013 to see a new proper adventure and the series' relaunch, ''Recap/AsterixAndThePicts'', by a new team of creators (Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad).
96	* With ''ComicBook/AvengersTheInitiative'' and ''ComicBook/AvengersAcademy'' having moderate success it was looking like "Avengers run a School" was going to become a vital part of ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' line. Then ''ComicBook/AvengersArena'' pissed away all the fan goodwill, and with follow-up ''ComicBook/AvengersUndercover'' selling so bad that out of a planned 12 issues only 10 saw light of day, the concept was buried for good.
97	* Marvel attempted to resurrect its romance comics as an imprint. Sadly, the first series they launched for it was ''ComicBook/TroubleMarvelComics'', a book that became so hated and infamous it quickly also become the last book in that imprint.
98	* Despite selling well for a comic based on an animated series, ''ComicBook/AdventureTimeSeason11'' not only was cancelled due to sales not meeting expectations from Creator/CartoonNetwork, but it also killed the [[WesternAnimation/AdventureTime franchise]] in the comic book market. No other comic book series was announced after ''ComicBook/AdventureTimeMarcyAndSimon'' finished its run, excluding one final graphic novel featuring Fionna and Cake and trade paperback re-releases of old issues. Plus the annoucement of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTimeDistantLands'' miniseries on Creator/HBOMax made ''Season 11'' look redundant and unnecessary.
99	* ''ComicBook/{{Ultimatum}}'' dealt the ComicBook/UltimateMarvel line a blow it would never recover from. Aside from its general poor quality, a result of its writer Creator/JephLoeb suffering a massive CreatorBreakdown following the death of his son, it was such a massive bombshell to the setting's status quo (killing off dozens of characters and forcing the fallout of wide-scale devastation onto the world) that the series had lost its nature as a new-reader-friendly AdaptationDistillation. The Ultimate Marvel line did manage to keep going for some years, but it had gone from going toe-to-toe with and even outselling its main-universe counterpart at its height, to limping in the lower rungs of the sales charts, with only ComicBook/UltimateSpiderMan (the comic least affected by ''Ultimatum'') managing to maintain a significant following. One of the later books to come out outright called the universe "broken."
100	* Marvel's ''ComicBook/DisneyKingdoms'': The ''Enchanted Tiki Room'' series sold poorly and thus was the last one in this line of comics.
101	* In the mid-2000s, DC decided to create the ''ComicBook/AllStarDCComics'' line, comics that took place outside of standard continuity with the intent of getting to the core of what made their main characters interesting. Unfortunately, the first two books to be released were ''ComicBook/AllStarBatmanAndRobinTheBoyWonder'' and ''ComicBook/AllStarSuperman'', which killed the line from two different directions. ''Batman & Robin'', coming out in the midst of Creator/FrankMiller's CreatorBreakdown, was a widely derided mess that suffered from massive delays and became generally viewed as SoBadItsGood. On the other hand, ''Superman'' was a huge critical and sales success, won three Eisner awards, and became generally regarded as one of the best Superman stories of the decade. This left the line with a seriously tainted name on one end and a ToughActToFollow on the other, and consequently, the various ''All-Star'' projects languished in DevelopmentHell before being QuietlyCancelled. The name did reappear for the miniseries ''All-Star Batman'' about a decade later, but it was written in standard continuity, lacked the subline's original branding, and has no connection to either of the prior books (though Creator/ScottSnyder does claim he wrote it in the spirit of ''All-Star Superman'').
102	[[/folder]]
103
104	[[folder:Literature]]
105	* ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}} Series 2000'' suffered serious ExecutiveMeddling that [[https://goosebumps.fandom.com/wiki/R.L._Stine%27s_fallout_with_Scholastic deepened tensions]] between Creator/RLStine and Scholastic Press. Whereas the original ''Goosebumps'' book series ran for six years and 62 books, ''Series 2000'' ended after only two years and 25 books, as Stine was so fed up that he decided not to renew the contract. Stine would move on to the [[SpiritualSuccessor unrelated but similar]] children's horror series ''Literature/TheNightmareRoom'' and ''Literature/MostlyGhostly'', neither of which was published by Scholastic.[[note]]''The Nightmare Room'' was published by Avon Books (owned by [=HarperCollins=]), while ''Mostly Ghostly'' was published by Random House.[[/note]] It wouldn't be until 2008 when the series was UnCanceled with the ''Goosebumps [=HorrorLand=]'' books.
106	[[/folder]]
107
108	[[folder:Music]]
109	* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert violence at Altamont]] killed not only Meredith Hunter but the whole idea of the "peace, love and music" late-'60s outdoor rock festival that Monterey had pioneered and UsefulNotes/{{Woodstock}} made legendary.
110	* Music/TravisScott's Astroworld festival has apparently met its end in the wake of the crowd rush on the 2021 event's first day, which led to the deaths of ten people and the injuries of over 300 more. The planned second day was cancelled, and there was no Astroworld held in 2022.
111	* Australia's Big Day Out festival seems to have been killed by its disastrous 2014 shows. Two shows were planned for Sydney, but the second was cancelled after Music/{{Blur}} pulled out and many people accepted the offer of a refund. Most ticketholders treated the event as a very expensive Music/PearlJam and Music/ArcadeFire double bill. The festival's director AJ Maddah then stepped down and sold his share to the Texan company C3 Presents, which was already a part owner. C3 has not staged a Big Day Out since.
112	* Music/HelloProject had wanted to set up overseas groups around Asia and attempted to break into the Chinese market by setting up Hello! Project Taiwan in 2008. However, Hello! Project Taiwan's flagship group, Ice Creamusume, bombed so badly that their career only lasted for three months (plus a concert appearance in July). This caused Hello! Project to scale back on expanding overseas.
113	* The death blow to The Love Parade was delivered by the stampede at the 2010 event, where bad design of the location led to the deaths of 21 people.
114	* The Rockstar Mayhem Festival came to an end after a lackluster and [[TroubledProduction difficult]] tour in 2015. Many sponsors (such as Sumerian, Metal Blade, and various alcohol sponsors) backed out of sponsoring the event for that year, leading to Rockstar having NoBudget and having to scrape by with whatever band wasn't booked that summer. Even with {{Music/Slayer}} and Music/KingDiamond headlining, they just couldn't anchor a festival the size of Mayhem. The end result was Rockstar calling 2015 the last year for the Mayhem festival. The death of the Mayhem Festival also killed Rockstar's Uproar festival too. Mayhem was going to return in 2020, but the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic ended up cancelling the tour before any announcements were made.
115	* After the violent and criminal tragedies of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_1999 Woodstock '99]], the owners of the UsefulNotes/{{Woodstock}} name have gone on record to say it will never be used again, and indeed it would be a full decade before the name was used in connection with a reunion tour featuring many performers from the original Woodstock. There were talks of using the Woodstock name for a 50th anniversary event in 2019, but the event ended up getting cancelled.
116	[[/folder]]
117
118	[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
119	* There have been a few instances of Wrestling/{{WWE}} retiring pay-per-view names as a result of certain events:
120	** The "Over the Edge" name was retired as a result of the accident at the 1999 event that killed Wrestling/OwenHart, and the ensuing bad publicity the event got as a result.
121	** The "Battleground" name was retired following the 2017 event, which was widely panned as the worst of the year's events- best exemplified by its main event, which saw the return of the heavily panned Punjabi Prison match as part of the ill-advised title run of Wrestling/JinderMahal.
122	[[/folder]]
123
124	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
125	* Although ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' recovered and is even stronger than it was before in the 2010's, [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragonsFourthEdition the 2008 4th Edition]] was very nearly a franchise killer. The pantheon, magic system, and Forgotten Realms primary setting were completely overhauled. The rules had a distinct focus on "tactical" combat encounters and miniatures, with few provisions for playing in the "theater of the mind" style. Major changes made to balance out character types by giving all of the classes sets of powers that recharged by encounter or game day were seen as attempts to appeal to video game fans by making D&D more like an MMO. A lot of official rulebooks were published rather quickly, which meant players needed to spend a lot of money to keep up with the game. That was on top of how the 3.5 revision of the 3rd edition had come out only five years before, meaning many players had only just recently sunk their money into 3.5 were now being told to switch to the new 4.0 system. All of these changes offended many fans of the last edition. This was compounded by ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' continuing to use a version of the very popular 3.5 rules, but now as a direct competitor to the 4th edition. Many players simply switched to the more familiar ''Pathfinder'' rather than learn the new rules system, to the point ''Pathfinder'' outsold official D&D for a time. The end result was that 4th edition had the shortest lifespan (six years) of any edition of D&D and the [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragonsFifthEdition 5th Edition]] has been seen very much as an improvement.[[note]]The huge success of 5th Edition would even mean it would eventually surpass 4th Edition in the number of books created, but they were spread out over ten years from 2014 going up to the planned release of the next edition in 2024, spreading out the pain on the wallet a bit.[[/note]]
126	* The 7th Edition Daemons of Chaos army book of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', which was so thoroughly overpowered and broken that it required the game to undergo a massive shakeup in the form of an edition change. 8th Edition's attempt to fix the system failed, leading to ''Warhammer'' being discontinued and replaced with the sequel ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar''.
127	* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'' had a situation [[AlternateCompanyEquivalent very similiar]] to ''Dungeons & Dragons'' example above. 3rd Edition of the game was basically a completely different game from previous one, alienating fans who didn't want to switch to a drastically different ruleset, making many of them make a jump to retroclone, ''TabletopGame/{{Zweihander}}'' and the only thing saving Warhammer Fantasy RPG from death was an AuthorsSavingThrow in form of the 4th Edition.
128	[[/folder]]
129
130	[[folder:Toys]]
131	* ''Toys/Bionicle2015'' and concurrently released ''Franchise/StarWars'' Toys/{{Lego}} action figure sets were more akin to minor {{genre killer}}s as they had put the so-called "Constraction" LEGO sub-theme on ice. Starting in 1999 with ''Toys/{{Slizer}}'' and rising to tremendous success with the 2001 ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' franchise, this was a primarily LEGO Technic-based theme of buildable and customizable action figures that took a massive shift in 2011 with the introduction of the more modular CCBS (Character and Creature Building System) style championed by ''Toys/HeroFactory'' and other sub-series called Ultrabuilds. The 2015 ''BIONICLE'' reboot, aka Generation 2 was set up as the long-awaited return of the classic franchise, only for LEGO to [[ExecutiveMeddling pull the plug before release]] and reroute their budget to ''WesternAnimation/{{Ninjago}}'', leaving G2 to bleed out with [[UncertainAudience minimal, indecisive marketing]] and lackluster media that left both old fans and young kids cold. Though intended to last until at least 2017, the franchise was CutShort mid-2016. Following this failure, ''Star Wars'' CCBS Constraction sets still remained on shelves for another year, before their cancellation. Post-2018, LEGO abandoned their Constraction theme as a whole and any similar concepts would be based on their standard System building style, with fewer toys, blockier designs and less articulation. While LEGO ''Star Wars'' still goes on without Constraction sets, G2 had killed ''BIONICLE'' as a franchise. Though LEGO were eager to reinvent and bring it back when the original line got discontinued, they have been reluctant to acknowledge it since 2016, only giving it an odd nod or EasterEgg here and there. The 2022 ''90 Years of Play'' anniversary set and 2023 limited gift-with-purchase freebie sets at least paid tribute to ''BIONICLE'' alongside other historic LEGO themes.
132	[[/folder]]
133
134	[[folder:Visual Novels]]
135	* In 2004, Creator/ELFCorporation would attempt to blow new life into the ''VisualNovel/{{Doukyusei}}'' series after it had by and large been lying dormant since 1996, where they released the spin-off ''Kakyūsei'' (the only releases in the series since then had been a VideoGameRemake of the original game in 1999 and the TabletopGame/{{Mahjong}}-themed spin-off ''Jankyūsei'' for the UsefulNotes/GameboyColor in 2001). The project, ''Kakyūsei 2'', was meant as a come-back of sorts, both for Elf as a developer and for the ''Dōkyūsei'' series in general, and Elf certainly set all in on its promotion, commissioning two anime series based on it and putting [[DuelingGames it directly up against]] the popular ''Rance'' series by releasing it on the same day as ''Rance IV''. Elf, however, ended up stumbling in a way that might seem inconsequential in hindsight, but at the time, it was extremely drastic. The studio had prominently marketed ''Kakyūsei 2'' as a "Pure Love Story", but one of the potential love interests, Saimon Tamaki, was in revealed in her storyline to already be in a sexual relationship with a boyfriend. The inclusion of a love interest with sexual experience, even though her storyline was just one of several and the only one to defy the expections of the genre, made fans of both the series and the genre ''very'' angry. Several of them took to the Internet forums, which were still in their adolescent state at the time, to voice their complaints, causing one of the first major Internet-based controversies in Japan. The bad word of mouth quickly caused sales to plummet, and ''Kakyūsei 2'' ended up as a clear financial failure. Though Elf had plans about getting a proper ''Dōkyūsei 3'' off the ground, it would [[{{Vaporware}} never materialize]] and Elf would eventually shut down in 2015, with the damage to the company's image and finances caused by the controversy caused by ''Kakyūsei 2'' being suspected of [[CreatorKiller being the main reason why]].
136	* Despite [[AcclaimedFlop strong reviews]], ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney 2'' was the worst-selling game in the ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney'' series, which has caused the ''Ace Attorney'' franchise to go on an indefinite hiatus, with the planned seventh mainline entry falling into DevelopmentHell. Since the game's release, the only content that has come out of the franchise has been ports of previous games (including an official localization of both of ''The Great Ace Attorney'' games), with plans for a new entry in the series being uncertain.
137	[[/folder]]
138
139	[[folder:Web Original]]
140	* In 2009 and 2010, EQAL, the production company behind ''WebVideo/{{lonelygirl15}}'', ran a contest called The Show Is Yours for fans of the show to create an officially-sponsored, canonical {{spinoff}}. With the Great Recession causing them to struggle financially, EQAL had to put ''WebVideo/LG15TheResistance'' (the franchise's flagship show at the time) on hiatus, leading to this effort to crowdsource the show -- which was already struggling under the weight of a KudzuPlot and multiple spinoffs -- and use it as a springboard to launch a social network called Umbrella. The first spinoff produced through The Show Is Yours, ''[=LG15=]: The Last'', mostly came and went uneventfully, but the second one, ''[=LG15=]: Outbreak'', was a disaster that suffered from a heavily TroubledProduction. Creator/GregoryAustinMcconnell, the creator of ''Outbreak'', made [[https://youtu.be/cstiCjIk14w a video]] going into detail about what went wrong. After ''Outbreak'', ''[=LG15=]: the resistance''[='=] hiatus became permanent, and the only new material that has been so much as announced has been a one-off video in 2016.
141	* In the late 2000s and early '10s, [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos Slender Man]] was one of the biggest names in {{creepypasta}}, a style of ghost stories and UrbanLegends born from the internet and rooted in its culture. First created on the Website/SomethingAwful forums in 2009 as a paranormal hoax, it took on a life of its own afterwards as a modernized [[TheFairFolk fey]] figure and developed an elaborate lore, with fan art, cosplay, web shows like ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'', and games like ''VideoGame/{{Slender}}'' popularizing it. All of that came to a halt with an infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man_stabbing stabbing incident]] in Waukesha, Wisconsin on May 31, 2014, in which two adolescent girls who believed that Slender Man was real stabbed one of their friends as an attempted HumanSacrifice to demonstrate their loyalty to him and become his "proxies". The [[MediaScaremongering negative publicity]] from this and other incidents that were connected to Slender Man (including another stabbing in suburban Cincinnati, UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, an arson in Port Richey, UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}, and an epidemic of suicide attempts on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) left a black mark on the entire creepypasta community (also weakened because its fanbase increasingly either turned to more hardcore conspiracy theories or recanted from them), and Slender Man's popularity rapidly faded, irrevocably associated with people who CannotTellFictionFromReality. A [[Film/SlenderMan 2018 film adaptation]] even wound up attracting controversy in light of the tragedy, with people (including the father of one of the culprits in the stabbing) criticizing it as insensitive and [[https://fox6now.com/2018/08/08/marcus-theatres-we-have-decided-not-to-play-slender-man-movie-in-milwaukee-and-waukesha-counties/ some theaters]] in the UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}} area choosing not to show it. This was despite attempts by the studio to make cuts to the film following the incident to avoid backlash (which resulted in the final cut's PG-13 rating as opposed to an R rating). [[https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/30/17793760/slender-man-movie-creepypasta-fandom-community-stabbing This article]] by Carli Velocci for ''The Verge'' goes into more detail on Slender Man's decline, calling the 2018 film "a nail in the coffin of a dying fandom". The franchise only further collapsed after it was it was discovered that Adam Rosner, a creator heavily involved with the franchise and creator of the now cancelled ''WebVideo/TribeTwelve'', was a sexual predator who had attempted to groom many of his fans during the long development of his series.
142	* ''WebVideo/TheUncannyValley'' was the final nail for the Website/ChannelAwesome anniversary specials. After ''WebVideo/ToBoldlyFlee'', no one really wanted to do another big crossover (due to either moving away, thinking it was a ToughActToFollow, or just being burned out). By making ''The Uncanny Valley'' an anthology, it was hoped that this would make production easier for future specials and allow the other reviewers to showcase their talent. However, aside from ''WebVideo/DarksideOfTheInternet'' and ''WebVideo/TheReviewers'' (which only lasted a few episodes), none of them really made any major impact on fans. This resulted in the sixth-year anniversary passing by rather uneventfully, aside from a passing mention in [[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic The Nostalgia Critic's]] review of ''Blues Brothers 2000''. A 10th anniversary special, titled ''Script/TheDevilsJesters'', was in the works, but the mass exodus of contributors from the site following the #[=ChangeTheChannel=] movement put the kibosh on that.
143	[[/folder]]
144
145	[[folder:Fictional examples]]
146	[[AC:Films -- Live-Action]]
147	* This happens in-universe at the end of ''Film/FreeGuy''. [[spoiler:The buggy launch of ''Free City 2'', a cheap cash grab that doesn't have Millie and Keys' AI code, is strongly implied to have killed the potential franchise that Antwan was hoping for and [[CreatorKiller ruined Soonami Games financially]]. Millie recognized this when she happily took the deal that gave her what was left of the code for ''Free City'' to make her own game, the successful indie title ''Free Life'', in exchange for dropping her lawsuit against him for stealing her code, while Antwan arrogantly believed that the ''Free City'' brand was so golden that people would pay for any crap he released.]]
148	%%[[AC:Web Video]]
149	%%* Discussed in the ''WebVideo/ScottTheWoz'' episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtoarLb73tY "Death of a Franchise"]].
150	[[/folder]]

Context Main / FranchiseKiller