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  • Subverted with Saw in Battle for BFDI. In Questions Answered, Saw gets an illness where she randomly says "eight" after breathing in the fumes of 8-Ball, who had been crushed by the moon in his elimination. Saw then disappeared from the show with no explanation of what had happened to her after the episode. Eventually, in Return of the Rocket Ship, she returns right before the intro begins, and explains that she had been on a "scent cleanse" in order to treat the aforementioned illness.
  • The absence of Dick Masterson, co-host of the popular podcast The Biggest Problem in the Universe, was not mentioned at all in its abruptly released series finale, due to a falling out with his co-host Maddox over an ex-girlfriend that has since escalated into a public feud.
  • In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, main characters that lose their players usually fade into the background amongst the other NPC students. Though special mention goes to Travis Murray, who was never referenced again after he exploded into a ball of lightning. Presumably, he's still stuck in a lightning form.
  • Epic Meal Time: Muscles Glasses and Tyler both disappeared after falling out with Harley.
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, players coming and going means their characters are often left hanging if they don't resolve their plots or put them on the bus before disappearing. This can lead to characters fading into the background never to be mentioned again although an effort is usually made to at least acknowledge in-universe what happened to the now missing characters, particularly if they played a major role in the plot beforehand.
  • Most of the characters from G’s Paragate only appear in one episode and then never appear again. In the case of characters from continuous story arcs, they are usually phased out immediately after the last episode of the arc. Thomas (and presumably Do Good) are the only notable exceptions.
  • In We Are All Pirates' Revenge, a reboot of a previous RP simply called We Are All Pirates, there are almost no signs of the original characters outside of two, with the rest being new additions.
  • The Massive Multi-Fandom RPG: Many players left the roleplay in mid-game; sometimes it was handwaved by having them stay in the location or die or something, but often, they just... stop appearing and none of the other characters seem to notice.
  • Early stories in Metamor Keep often featured Magus, the most powerful wizard in the Keep. The problem was, Magus was based on a real person, who became increasingly uncomfortable with being used in an increasingly complex and dramatic story. A Canon Foreigner wizard named Wessex was introduced, but Magus continued to be used until the universe controller put a ban on using him. In-universe, however, he simply disappears with no explanation.
  • Several members of Team Snob have disappeared from Midnight Screenings over the years. The first to leave was Jerrid Foiles, who left during the show's first year due to a fallout with main host Brad Jones; however, they later reconciled and he started reappearing with increasing frequency around 2016. Next were Jillian Zurawski (Brad's ex-wife, who simply didn't want to do the show anymore), Jake Norvell (also a falling-out with Brad), Violet Rinorea (Brad's next girlfriend, who left when the two broke up), Allison Pregler (fallout from the "Not So Awesome" incident which splintered Channel Awesome), Brian Lewis (who left all of Brad's shows for unknown reasons), and finally the Creator Couple of Dave and Sarah Gobble (who were busy raising their newborn child when Brad moved from Springfield, Illinois to Chicago).
  • The earlier episodes of Queer Duck showed Queer Duck to have a straight brother named Lucky and a nephew named Little Lucky, both of whom were eventually phased out and never acknowledged again. A flashback of Queer Duck's hatching in the short "Quack Doc" indicated that Queer Duck was the Ducksteins' only son, plus the short "Homo for the Holidays" introduced Queer Duck's lesbian sister Melissa and had Queer Duck's boyfriend Openly Gator remark that he didn't know Queer Duck had a brother, indicating that Melissa was Queer Duck's only sibling.
  • Shiny Objects Videos: Erik, Wesley, and Guido all just disappear. Enforced, as their actors moved away for various reasons.
  • SMG4 had several real-life Youtubers, known as the YouTube Rangers, as recurring characters represented as Palette Swaps of Mario. However, since SMG4's falling out with them years ago, all of them have completely vanished from the series. A lot of these would be subverted into a Cerebus Retcon when it’s revealed Zero had been kidnapping them and reaping their souls for years. Although it is played straight with Starman3, who due to a Role-Ending Misdemeanor (pedophilia), was completely removed from the series and according to FM, removed from SMG4 canon
  • The "what aged worse" segment from Gilmore Ball Z is absent after a few episodes.
  • Zayn in The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction disappears from the plot after he helps Niall out of the garbage pit. Played for laughs in the sequel, where he turns out to have stayed in the garbage for the nine months between the original's release and the sequel's. He's not pleased the others forgot about him.
  • Best of the Worst: Jessi stopped appearing in panels after nine appearances in the early days of the show. It's widely suspected that she quit appearing due to cyberstalking from viewers, but RLM has staunchly refused to discuss the matter, and it's a forbidden topic on the (fan-run) RedLetterMedia subreddit.
  • Dream: "Speedrunner VS Full Diamond Juggernaut" with Sapnap and "Speedrunner VS Slayer" with BadBoyHalo are the only two Manhunt videosnote  without George (the usual hunter) in them.
  • The Dream SMP has a few players who disappeared during the server's run-time, including Alyssa, Vikkstar, and Lazarbeam. One reason for this is that due to a Content Leak of the SMP's server and Discord, Dream had to relocate the server and had to whitelist everyone who asks him, save for those three who were inactive. In-universe, the latter two's disappearance was explained by them receiving an offscreen Bus Crash during the tail end of Season 2, which wasn't revealed until about a year after their deaths.
  • SuperMarioLogan has had several of its characters disappear over the years.
    • Mr. Pig was pretty prominent early on, and was one of Mario's best friends. By The New '10s, his appearances dwindled and he stopped appearing at all after 2014's "The Big Thanksgiving." He was eventually referenced again in "Jeffy Breaks His Helmet!," where it's revealed that he died.
    • Woody, despite ostensibly still living with Mario, hasn't made any physical appearances since 2018's "The Asteroid!" (barring a brief appearance as a toy in "Broken Up!").
    • Luigi, despite being a major enough character to get his own series based on Luigi's Mansion, hasn't really interacted with any of the other main characters since 2010. He eventually came back in "Ghost Jeffy!," albeit with his personality changed, only to disappear again.
    • Chef Pee Pee once got a much dumber clone of himself named Chef Poo Poo. He made a couple of appearances before vanishing without explanation.
    • Tony the Tiger, barring a brief cameo in The Stinger of "Cody's 10th Birthday!," hasn't appeared since 2015's "Mario's Family Moves Out!" Word of God is that he is not coming back because Jeffy has more-or-less usurped his role.

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