History Main / FourLinesAllWaiting

* The finale of ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' cuts rapidly between four separate battles—the lightsaber duel between Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan and Darth Maul, Queen Amidala and her troops' hunt for Nute Gunray, the Gungans' blockade against the battle droid invasion, and the space battle against the droid command center above Naboo—which would not be an example of this trope if they didn't vary so wildly in tone. The rest of the movie also has the Anakin plot, the Sith mystery, the invasion story, and the political maneuvering plot. In behind the scenes footage, Creator/GeorgeLucas says he "may have gone too far in a few places" but that it's too late to cut anything out and still have it make sense. Each successive ''Star Wars'' film has additionally added a plot thread to their climax: ''A New Hope'' has the Death Star trench run (1 thread); ''The Empire Strikes Back'' has Luke's duel with Darth Vader, while Leia and co. escape from Cloud City (2 threads); ''The Return of the Jedi'' has Luke confronting Vader and the Emperor, the Rebel commandos on Endor attacking the shield generator, and the Rebel fleet attacking the Death Star (3 threads); and as mentioned above, ''The Phantom Menace'' has 4 threads. Later films cut back to two threads max[[note]]''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' had the ongoing battle of Geonosis while Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Yoda chased Dooku; ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' had Anakin versus Obi-Wan and Yoda versus Palpatine; ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' had Finn, Chewie, Han, and Rey on the surface with Poe and Black Squadron in the air; and ''Film/TheLastJedi'' had Luke confronting Kylo Ren while everyone else escaped Crait.[[/note]], with the exception of ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'', which had three[[note]]Rey and Kylo Ren versus Palpatine, Finn trying to take down the comm tower, and Poe battling the Final Order in the air[[/note]].

* Due its large EnsembleCast, many of whom with their own plotlines, this tends to happens during the larger story arcs in ''Manga/TokyoGhoul''. The Rushima Arc in particular stands out, with plotlines often being halted for several chapters at a time. This leads to [[spoiler: Kaneki and Arima's rematch]] lasting ten chapters despite not the fight not being terribly long in general.

** The Arrancar Arc was an exceptionally long story arc; Creator/TiteKubo introduced three brand new groups of characters (the Espadas, Fracciones and Visoreds), without removing any of the already huge cast. The Espadas and Fracciones became unexpected popular, forcing ExecutiveMeddling to insist that Kubo given each new character ADayInTheLimeLight. The arc was split across two dimensions (Hueco Mundo and the World of the Living), with at least four separated groups within Hueco Mundo, and multiple one-on-one fights in the human world. The arc took years to complete and the constant switching of scenery to catch up with each group in turn [[ArcFatigue became exhausting]] for the fandom to follow.

* The finale of ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' cuts rapidly between four separate battles—the lightsaber duel between Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan and Darth Maul, Queen Amidala and her troops' hunt for Nute Gunray, the Gungans' blockade against the battle droid invasion, and the space battle against the droid command center above Naboo—which would not be an example of this trope if they didn't vary so wildly in tone. The rest of the movie also has the Anakin plot, the Sith mystery, the invasion story, and the political maneuvering plot. In behind the scenes footage, Creator/GeorgeLucas says he "may have gone too far in a few places" but that it's too late to cut anything out and still have it make sense. Each successive ''Star Wars'' film has additionally added a plot thread to their climax: ''A New Hope'' has the Death Star trench run (1 thread); ''The Empire Strikes Back'' has Luke's duel with Darth Vader, while Leia and co. escape from Cloud City (2 threads); ''The Return of the Jedi'' has Luke confronting Vader and the Emperor, the Rebel commandos on Endor attacking the shield generator, and the Rebel fleet attacking the Death Star (3 threads); and as mentioned above, ''The Phantom Menace'' has 4 threads.

* ''Series/{{Degrassi|TheNextGeneration}}'' has a lot of this, though the characters may cross over into each other's storylines.

* ''[[ComicBook/BatmanGordonOfGotham Batman: GCPD]]'' follows four unrelated investigations focusing on a SerialKiller, a terrorist group, a band of increasingly AxCrazy thieves and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers the theft of office supplies from the squad room.]]

* ''Series/{{Cursed}}'' has several plotlines going on at once, some more interconnected and given more prevalence than others. By the end of Season 1, few have been resolved.

* ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer'' seems to be falling into an unfocused plot. In his ''VideoGame/CoolSpot'' review, his EvilTwin manages to steal his Mangavox Odyssey and create robots based on the [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey HAL]] AI in it. The ''Franchise/RoboCop'' review sees the return of R.O.B. from his Stack-Up and Gyromite review, this time as an ally who was sent out to destroy the invading HAL robots. His ''[[Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse He-Man]]'' review was promoted as the "Robot War Aftermath", but the war was ignored, focusing instead on the Irate Gamer obtaining a "Sword of Inferno" from a monk. His ''VideoGame/SilverSurfer'' review actually dealt with the aftermath of the robot war, but also introduced an EldritchAbomination called the Pixel Demon, which was released after the ''Silver Surfer'' game was beaten.

* ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'' has a lot of this, though the characters may cross over into each other's storylines.

* Part of the problem of the first year of ''Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan'''s ComicBook/BrandNewDay arc. Storylines such as the identity of Menace, the mystery of Harry's return, the election of a New Mayor of New York, and the Spider-Tracer murders were all milked for all they were worth for an entire year, and mostly resolved within a single storyline. Creators have gone on record saying they intended to touch base on the plot threads a lot more in the year prior, but ran out of time. This despite having at least three times the length as any other series to make such plans. And that didn't stop plotlines in the next two years from being milked for all they were worth and not resolved until the "big finale" of Brand New Day - Origin of the Species.

** And others, as needed. Thank the Intercessor for TheWikiRule!

** The Magic World arc. while the main plot is still moving at a good pace, some of the subplots (especially Yue's LaserGuidedAmnesia and [[spoiler:the fate of the real Asuna]]) and, the perspectivces of the ones who remained on Earth, are kept in the background until some resolution finally comes near the arc's end.

** The school festival mega-arc has Negi visiting nearly all of his students, entering a fighting tournament, and [[spoiler:dealing with the machinations of his time-travelling Martian descendant]]. This is actually a clever aversion of this trope though, as [[spoiler:Negi uses time travel to do everything in the three days of the festival, and you see it from Negi's chronological point of view instead of a bunch of scene-cuts.]]
** The Magic World arc comes close to this: the main plot is still moving at a good pace, but some of the subplots (especially Yue's LaserGuidedAmnesia and [[spoiler:the fate of the real Asuna]]) are still awaiting resolution (although the latter case is almost certainly being saved for TheReveal). Whether this is a problem depends on the reader.

* Good luck keeping track of all the plotlines in ''Literature/{{Next}}'' without a Character Sheet.

* The first ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie has this. Besides the Autobots vs Decepticons, there is the military plot, the Sam and Mikaela teenage romance plot, the Sector 7 conspiracy plot, and the mostly pointless HollywoodHacking plot with the [[MsFanservice hot]] NSA agent.

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'', a notable example being the World War III arc. This featured: Touma trying to defeat Fiamma of the Right and rescue Index, Accelerator trying to find a cure for Last Order, Shiage trying to find a cure for Rikou, and Mikoto trying to save Touma.

* ''[[Webcomic/{{Iji}} Iji the MSPA Fan Adventure]]'' use this formula for the multiple simultaneous devastating demented sub-plots involving involving secondary characters and crossovers.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' looked like it was doing this (or ThirdLineSomeWaiting) with Konoha, Taka, Pain, and the rest of the Akatsuki, but as of the Shinobi World War, the plot lines have converged (except one which just ended) and more or less all happen within the same issue or so.

** Peter and Gwen's rocky relationship, with their tension stemming from their mutual desire to be together while Peter is trying to uphold his promise to Gwen's father to keep her safe by avoiding her. Gwen, on the other hand, wants to prove to Peter that it's hers and Peter's choice to be together, not her father's, and that her path in life is her own to choose.
*** Compounding this is that Gwen is planning to move to England to attend Oxford University. Peter is torn between moving with her and sticking to his responsibilities in New York.

** The Oscorp conspiracy - Richard Parker discovered that Oscorp was planning to weaponize his genetic research. Richard destroyed his research and attempted to live as a fugitive but he and his wife were assassinated. Oscorp framed the Parkers for trying to sell the research to foreign powers, which Aunt May fell for and sees Richard as a BrokenPedestal. Oscorp has been continuing their genetic research using human test subjects held at Ravencroft Institute, and frame Harry after [[Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan the Lizard incident]] causes their stock value to plummet.

* ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'':

* This is how the show ''Series/TheWire'' works. Usually, storylines will be hinted at in an episode at the beginning of the season and won't start to bear fruit until near the end. Sometimes they're hinted at in one season and start to pick up in another season. This is done surprisingly well and never really feels disorienting because you need to pay very close attention anyway to enjoy the show. The trope also grew progressively more emphatic as the series went on. If you read episode summaries on Wiki/TheOtherWiki, the fourth-season summaries, for instance, are about five times longer than the first-season summaries.

* ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2'': [[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_amazing_spider_man_2/ from]] [[http://www.avclub.com/review/amazing-spider-man-2-suffers-excess-plot-villains--204029 many]] [[http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/05/the-amazing-spider-man-2/361552/ critics]] who felt that the film tried to cram in too many villains and subplots to its overall detriment.