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  • The Genesis and SNES games based on The Addams Family have Abigail as a boss, but leave out Tully. The NES and Game Boy games leave out Abigail and have Tully as the main antagonist.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man 2 writes out both Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn.
  • B3313, a ROM hack of Super Mario 64, is based around development builds of the game, creepypasta such as Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED, and the "iceberg" rumors but oddly lacks the unused enemies found in beta builds of Super Mario 64 and the "Wario Apparition" made popular by creepypastas. The latter one is due to it having become an discredited meme in the community, and the hack's developer is known to get annoyed if asked for it.
  • Jeremiah Arkham, Victor Zehrhard, and Gregory Wolfe, the respective canonical heads of Arkham Asylum, Blackgate Penitentiary, and Iron Heights Penitentiary don't appear at any point in the Batman: Arkham Series, instead being replaced by Canon Foreigners Quincy Sharp, Martin Joseph, and Ranken, again respectively.
  • The 1997 Beast Wars video game omits Maximal Tigatron and Predacon Waspinator.
  • Berserk and the Band of the Hawk greatly streamlines the story of the series (it covers from the Golden Age Arc to the end of the Ganishka arc), so multiple side characters are left out. Also notable by its absence is the entire Lost Children Arc, cut because its content simply wouldn't fit even into an M-rated game without nonsensical amounts of censorship.
  • Video game adaptations of Casper keep Carrigan, but omit her assistant Dibs.
  • Chas Kramer is absent from the Constantine tie-in videogame.
  • In the NES adaptation of Darkman, the Big Bad Louis Strack Jr. is absent. Interestingly, the climactic battle at the construction site still happens, but it's between Durant and Darkman rather than Strack and Darkman.
  • Donkey Kong Land 2 leaves out Cranky Kong and Krem Quay's boss Kudgel. Due to the latter's omission, Kleever is now the boss of the merged Krem Cauldron. Link is absent from the "Video Game Heroes" segment after defeating Kaptain K. Rool.
  • The NES version of Double Dragon I leaves out the head-swapped boss characters, Jack (the bearded and mohawked version of Zack/Abobo) and Jeff (the Mirror Boss to the Lee brothers). The NES version of Double Dragon II does the same, but also leaves out Machine Gun Willy, who was the main antagonist in both of the arcade games and The Dragon to Jimmy in the first NES game.
  • Ghostbusters:
  • If you like Journey to the West, you probably know that you'll have a hard time finding any adaptations which don't cut down Yu Lung's role or just remove him entirely, but Enslaved: Odyssey to the West does that and removes Sha Wujing.
  • Finding Nemo
    • Coral and her death are not seen in the game.
    • Nigel is completely absent from the story and doesn't appear in any cutscenes.
    • Nemo's first escape attempt (that ends with him almost being killed by the tank filter) is cut and replaced with a training session with Gill.
  • In the Updated Re-release of Fire Emblem Gaiden, Seazas, a minor boss character, is removed and replaced by Berkut, a major antagonist who's original to the remake.
  • The video game Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Curse Of The Crimson Elixir, which loosely adapted the first few chapters of the manga before beginning its original storyline, almost completely removed Shou Tucker from the game, instead treating him as a Posthumous Character as Ed and Al investigate his house just minutes after Scar has killed him.
  • The 2010 remake of GoldenEye leaves out Boris Grishenko and Jack Wade entirely, Wade's role being reimagined for an original character named Sky Briggs. The DS version also cuts the Nightclub level, which means Valentin Zukovsky is gone as well in that version.
  • The various Hamtaro licensed games tend to give the show's human characters passing mentions at best, in order to focus solely on the hamsters. This gets especially odd when the player comes across locations like an elementary school or a playground where you'd expect to find many humans, but which are filled with only hamsters and other animals. (Maybe you wouldn't expect to find anyone in a garbage dump or a creepy abandoned house, but a supermarket with no humans at all is just weird.) In fact, in Ham-Hams Unite!, the Ham-Hams seem to live in the Clubhouse instead of with any actual owners.
  • Betty Ross, Bruce's eternal Morality Pet, is not brought up once in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, she is only mentioned offhand in her father's, Thunderbolt Ross, file being pointed out as a relative of his; at the time the game was released Betty was dead for a long time in the Comics, and she would only come back years after the game’s release, however the game followed its own continuity by taking several comic sagas into its own narrative inspiration, Betty's complete neglect is quite jarring.
  • Green Lantern (any iteration) and Martian Manhunter are the only core Justice League members who aren't playable in Justice League Task Force. Interestingly, Martian Manhunter was included in the initial preview Electronic Gaming Monthly did for the game back in 1994, indicating he at least was planned to be playable at one point.
  • Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures: Neither Willie Scott nor Short Round are present during the Temple of Doom part of the game.
  • Hyrule Warriors Legends Edition removes some modes and graphical effects, including the Summon Gate summons, due to downscaling, while the Wii U mode never had the Fairy Mode and additional story mode chapters. Meanwhile, Definitive Edition on the Switch has nothing adapted out. It has everything the Wii U and 3DS versions have to offer.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, Vima Sunrider, whose family had a prominent role in the Tales of the Jedi comics taking place a few decades prior (and Dark Empire), was initially intended to take the place of Bastila Shan but they couldn't use her surname due to copyright issues according to Word of God. As a result, Bastila became the deuteragonist while the Sunriders are never shown, only mentioned by in-game items and Jolee Bindo. The cancelled novel Mandorla was written with the intent of resolving the Continuity Snarl this left, but was unfortunately never published. However, Vima's mother and former Grandmaster of the Jedi Order Nomi Sunrider made a brief cameo in a holocron in Star Wars: The Old Republic (under her maiden name Da-Boda), and it's mentioned in supplementary materials that Vima herself trained The Exile from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
  • LEGO Marvel's Avengers:
  • LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2: As with Avengers, the X-Men are excluded entirely, as is anything related to them, including the term "mutant", save for Darkstar (a mutant, but only very briefly associated with them) and Captain Britain (not a mutant, but strongly associated with the X-Men due to being the brother of Psylocke), and they're joined by the Fantastic Four. This gets a little awkward since Galactus was the final boss of the first game, so the characters can only vaguely allude to what happened there. The Champions DLC pack also includes the entire team except for Cyclops, who is replaced with Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Kate Bishop, who aren't even members of the Champions in the comics.
  • The LEGO Movie Videogame keeps Finn, but leaves out everything regarding his father, The Man Upstairs, including taking out his foreshadowing in Emmet's opening vision. Additionally, not only are certain guest characters who appeared in the movie not playable in the game (such as Milhouse, for example), but their places in the cutscenes (taken from the movie itself) have been blurred out.
  • Little Red Hood: A strange case. The trailer for the game mentions the wolf as an enemy, but the closest looking thing in the game is the bear. It's possible the bear is supposed to be the wolf, but the trailer also mentions bears.
  • The Koopa Kids were present in The Final Battle of Mario Party 4, but when the minigame was remastered for The Top 100, they're nowhere to be found, with Bowser Jr. taking their place. Bowser Jr. also replaces the Koopa Kids in every Item minigame from Mario Party 2 and 3 that came back for Mario Party Superstars.
  • As an additional consequence of the Fox ban mentioned above, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was the first, and to date only installment in the Marvel vs. Capcom series to not include any X-Men or Fantastic Four characters whatsoever. No in-story explanation is given for the absence of these characters, and other than a sly allusion to Storm in one of Black Panther's voice lines (which doesn't even name her directly), they aren't even mentioned. It is mentioned several times that certain heroes were killed during the convergence between the Marvel and Capcom universes, but exactly who they were is never stated.
  • Metroid Prime Pinball: Of the five main bosses from Metroid Prime, Flaahgra is the only one to make no appearance.
  • One Piece: Pirate Warriors leaves out arcs from the One Piece anime and manga.
    • The Kuro, Skypiea, Thriller Bark and Amazon Lily arcs are all left out of the first game unfortunately.
      Brook: What about my story?
    • The second game brings some of those lost locations back, but still skips over a few, like Fishman Island.
    • The third game mostly averts this, as it goes out of its way to cover the entire manga, but still relegates some "minor" arcs to references in cutscenes, like Amazon Lily.
    • Aside from a DLC Mission in Pirate Warriors 3 using the title "Davy Back Fight", the Davy Back Fight arc is barely referenced at all in any of the three games. The only allusion it gets in one of the actual base games comes from 3, where the scene with Aokiji is used as an introduction to the Water 7 level.
    • The fourth game takes this to the next level. The only arcs adapted are Alabasta, Water 7, Enies Lobby, the Return to Water 7, Sabaody, Marineford, the return to Sabaody, Dressrosa, Whole Cake Island, and Wano (which was an original Alternate Continuity ending as it was still ongoing when the game came out). The missing arcs are merely explained through cutscenes (in some cases not even shown, like Skypiea)
    • Also in Pirate Warriors 4, the Worst Generation are featured prominently with many of them Promoted to Playable. However, two of the Eleven Supernovas (Bonney and Apoo) are not included in the game nor even alluded to.
  • The original version of Pac-Man Arrangement (2005) featured a two-player simultaneous play mode where the second player would take control of Ms. Pac-Man. The majority of the game's rereleases since have omitted the two-player mode, and by extension, Ms. Pac-Man.
  • When Pac 'n Roll was remade for the Nintendo Wii, all of the story sequences from the original game were omitted, meaning that all of the characters that appeared exclusively in cutscenes were removed from the game completely. These characters include Pac-Master, Pac-Master's wife, Pac-Dog, Pac-Girl, and Krystal the fairy.
  • Paper Chase: The librarian appears in the original BASIC version but not the later Inform version.
  • Rockman 7 EP
    • The original intro stage is nowhere to be found in this rom hack. The background music is used in Slash Man's stage, and Mad Grinder is used as Turbo Man's miniboss (with Sisi Truck being moved to Freeze Man's stage).
    • The Robot Museum isn't in the game either, but its tileset is used in Wily 5. Mash, the boss for the stage, is the miniboss for Cloud Man's level.
  • Due to 5th Cell leaving the development of the Scribblenauts series in general, none of the developers or the logo can be summoned in-game onwards from Mega Pack, as well as meme items/characters or Nintendo characters even in the Switch version.
    • Also, one of the levels from Scribblenauts Unlimited, Tilde Reef, was cut from the Mega Pack version.
  • The Alternate Universe video game adaptation of Serial Experiments Lain scraps most of the characters, such as Alice and Taro, and replaces them with a new cast.
  • The Shrek 2 game completely omits Pinocchio from the fairy tale creatures' prison breakout, with Lil' Red and Fairy taking his place in the group instead.
  • Spider-Man Unlimited
    • The Spider-Verse storyline omits three of the Inheritors (two of them girls) and a few Spideys, including the Japanese Spider-Man.
    • The CivilWar storyline only focuses on the "Spider-Man Unmasked" portion caused by the Super Registration Act and even that is caused not by Peter unmasking, but Miles Morales unmasking first. As well, because only S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury are involved here and no other hero, things take a much more civil angle.
    • The Superior Spider Man storyline doesn't mention if Doctor Octopus' body died after the mind swap (and is also shown to be during a battle, not during a point where Peter's Spider-Sense was off). As well, S.H.I.E.L.D. replaces the Avengers here, with only Jessica Drew being the only real connection left over.
  • Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith leaves out the character of Padmé entirely despite her being the catalyst for Anakin's Start of Darkness. Averted by Ubisoft's handheld versions, which leave her important scenes in.
  • Star Wars: Jar Jar's Journey Adventure Book skips over a scene from The Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon and Anakin are attacked by Darth Maul while returning to the Royal Starship, and Maul is absent from the game entirely as a result.
  • The NES adaptation of the Strider manga omitted a few characters most notably Yuri (who serves as The Dragon to the Big Bad) and the Director, who created the Mind-Control Device that's the focal point of the entire plot.
  • The Super Robot Wars franchise does this often, as a result of having to tell the plots of 10-20 different Humongous Mecha anime all at the same time, along with the Original Generation plotline. Oftentimes, characters from other anime will take up the abandoned roles, but this isn't always true. Commonly, main protagonists, a few side characters and some enemy units, usually Mooks may appear but otherwise the series may be "units only" where the characters appear but not their plot.
    • Super Robot Wars OE reduces Gundam Wing and Gundam 00 to just their respective main characters, Heero and Setsuna, running around in their Gundams intervening in battles. The rest of their supporting cast, including their fellow Gundam pilots, are nowhere to be found.
    • In Super Robot Wars Judgment, the entire "Devil Colony" arc, as its plot comes to a halt upon Master Asia's death. Similarly, Prime Minister Wong Yun-Fat (who was involved in the TV series' final arc that the final battle is based on) and Urube Ishikawa (whose role of manipulating Domon is partially done by Azrael) are given this. In the same game, the Muge Zorbados Empire does not exist in Judgment; instead, Shapiro defects to the Gradosians.
    • Previously in Super Robot Wars Advance, Urube Ishikawa is adapted out, but Prime Minister Wong Yun-Fat took over his roles, making him the overall Big Bad.
    • This is something of a recurring problem for G Gundam in SRW. It never has much plot-inclusion and is mostly there to give the player some more Gundams to use. This is probably because most of the series is one long Tournament Arc, which narratively would be tough to fit into the typical war story narrative of an SRW game, and gameplay-wise isn't the best fit for SRW's team-based Tactical RPG setup. Character-wise, the Rising Gundam commonly does not appear in games featuring G Gundam where Rain inherits the Shining Gundam instead.
    • In Shin Super Robot Wars, the other Shuffle Alliance members are not in the game entirely. Out of the Gundam Wing cast, Heero and Zechs were the only characters in the game.
    • The humans in SD Gundam Gaiden do not appear in Super Robot Wars BX
    • The Aurora in Super Robot Wars V, most likely because the game already has too many battleships.
    • Since Super Robot Wars BX has Macross 30 and Macross Frontier listed with no mention of the other Macross series, the other Macross series will not be making an appearance. Also, the plot of Macross 30 won't be in BX.
  • When Sora was added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, all references to mainline Disney (i.e. Mickey, Donald, Goofy, etc.) have been excised. All the Spirits are original characters from the series, the stage is Hollow Bastion (an original world from the first game with its own few Disney character appearances not reflected in Smash), and none of the 9 music tracks included are connected to any Disney world. This is very apparent on Sora's "Dive to the Heart" which replaces Donald and Goofy with the raft and Paopu fruit from the first game. The only acknowledgement of Disney iconography is the Mickey-shaped keychain on the Keyblade.
  • Teen Titans 2, the second Game Boy Advance tie-in game for Teen Titans (2003), is based loosely on the fifth season's arc of the Titans confronting the Brotherhood of Evil, yet Madame Rouge is the sole member of the Brotherhood of Evil to not get a boss fight. The Brain doesn't even acknowledge her when he vows that he, General Immortus and Monsieur Mallah will one day get even with the Titans at the end of the game.
  • Jane Foster is absent from the video game adaptation of Thor: The Dark World, along with the rest of Thor's supporting cast from Earth. Since this means that the plot thread with her getting possessed by the Aether was dropped, the Dark Elves now intend to use Uru-forged weapons to bring about the end of the universe.
  • Toy Story 3: The Potato Heads, Barbie and Ken are completely absent from the game's story and Toy Box mode, presumably to avoid licensing issues with Hasbro and Mattel.
  • Carl the friar is absent in the tie-in videogame adaption of Van Helsing.
  • Yoshiaki Ishida, of the first arc of the Wangan Midnight manga, doesn't appear in any of video games until Maximum Tune 3, though he had a card-based cameo in the PS3 game.
  • Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey: Several characters from the original myth simply do not appear, including:
    • The Cicones of Ismara, near Thrace, are left out. Instead, Wishbone merely finds the wineskin he got there on the shore near Troy.
    • The island of the Lotus-Eaters and its inhabitants, who gave his men a fruit that made them lose their memories.
    • The island of the cannibalistic Laestrygonian giants, who devoured all the Greeks save those on Odysseus's personal ship.
    • Hermes, who appeared to Odysseus on Aeaea to warn him about Circe in the original myth. Athena, who's been helping Wishbone throughout the game, takes his place here.
    • Odysseus's mother, who'd died while he was away, and whom he met in the Underworld. Agamemnon instead takes her role in informing Wishbone of the suitors harassing Penelope.
    • The sirens, whose song would have led the ship to crash had the men not stuffed their ears with wax.
    • The Phaeacians, whose island Odysseus washed ashore on while heading home from Ogygia.
    • Argos, Odysseus's elderly dog, who recognized him and died moments later.
    • The swineherd Eumaeus, who assisted Odysseus and Telemachus in dealing with the suitors.
    • The housekeeper Eurycleia, who discovered Odysseus's identity after he returned to Ithaca.
  • Yakuza 3 had one sidequest in the original 2009 PS3 release that ended up not making it to the PS4 remaster that arrived ten years later. It involved Kiryu rescuing an ugly crossdressing man named Michiru, who then proceeds to (unrequitedly) get the hots for our hero. What follows is a difficult chase sequence with... dire consequences for failure, shall we say. And if Kiryu manages to get away, in his Internal Monologue, he thinks "Looks like I outran it." Due to the bevy of Unfortunate Implications the character brought, Michiru completely disappeared from the remake, with producer Toshihiro Nagoshi acknowledging the changes in social attitudes behind Michiru being adapted out.

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