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* Your average GameShow obviously does not have the budget to pay out a huge jackpot every episode. The programmes typically run on the assumption that they will have a certain per-episode winning, and budget their prize pool accordingly. This therefore means that, while they are covered by insurance, productions can actually find themselves in trouble if too many people win big. As a result, most game shows will have some kind of mechanic in them to reduce the likelihood of big jackpots being won.
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* Your average usual GameShow obviously does not have the budget to pay out a huge jackpot every episode. The programmes typically run on the assumption that they will have a certain an average per-episode winning, and budget their prize pool accordingly. This therefore means that, while they are covered by insurance, there is such a thing as insurance to cover overruns, productions can actually find themselves in trouble if too many people win big.big in quick succession. As a result, most game shows will have some kind of mechanic in them to reduce the likelihood of big jackpots being won.
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** The Banker in ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' is partially there to serve this purpose. Given a choice between a 50/50 chance of earning either £250,000 or 1p, or a guarantied £70,000, most people will likely choose to play it save and accept the still-substantial Banker's offer, saving the show a lot of money when it comes to keeping their prize pool average balanced. As a piece of trivia, the original UK run of ''Deal or No Deal'' has a per-episode prize budget of £16,500.
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** The Banker in ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' is partially there to serve this purpose. Given a choice between a 50/50 chance of earning either £250,000 or 1p, or a guarantied £70,000, most people will likely choose to play it save safe and accept the still-substantial Banker's offer, saving giving the show a lot of money headroom when it comes to keeping their prize pool a balanced average balanced.prize. As a piece of trivia, the original UK run of ''Deal or No Deal'' has a per-episode prize budget of £16,500.
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* In many [[GameShow Game Shows]], the ProgressiveJackpot and BonusRound exists due to budgetary limitations. Those programmes are budgeted with a certain per-episode average winning in mind, and obviously cannot pay a huge jackpot every episode. The progressive jackpot thus allows for the previous episode's unclaimed prizes to be rolled over to the next one, while the bonus round acts as a final challenge contestants must pass to win big, reducing the chance that the show needs to make a big payout.
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* In many [[GameShow Game Shows]], the ProgressiveJackpot and BonusRound exists due to budgetary limitations. Those programmes are budgeted with a certain per-episode Your average winning in mind, and GameShow obviously cannot does not have the budget to pay out a huge jackpot every episode. The progressive programmes typically run on the assumption that they will have a certain per-episode winning, and budget their prize pool accordingly. This therefore means that, while they are covered by insurance, productions can actually find themselves in trouble if too many people win big. As a result, most game shows will have some kind of mechanic in them to reduce the likelihood of big jackpots being won.
** The ProgressiveJackpot is likely the most obvious method. It allows a show to have a small per-episode prize pool that is safe to be won frequently, while also providing the possibility for the jackpotthus allows for the previous episode's unclaimed prizes to be rolled over build up into something substantial.
** The BonusRound is a bit more subtle when it comes tothe next one, while the bonus round acts as its true purpose. Requiring winning contestants to pass a difficult final challenge contestants must pass to win big, reducing earn the jackpot, often with all-or-nothing stakes, is a solid way of cutting down the odds of them winning.
** The Banker in ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' is partially there to serve this purpose. Given a choice between a 50/50 chancethat of earning either £250,000 or 1p, or a guarantied £70,000, most people will likely choose to play it save and accept the still-substantial Banker's offer, saving the show needs a lot of money when it comes to make keeping their prize pool average balanced. As a big payout.piece of trivia, the original UK run of ''Deal or No Deal'' has a per-episode prize budget of £16,500.
** The ProgressiveJackpot is likely the most obvious method. It allows a show to have a small per-episode prize pool that is safe to be won frequently, while also providing the possibility for the jackpot
** The BonusRound is a bit more subtle when it comes to
** The Banker in ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' is partially there to serve this purpose. Given a choice between a 50/50 chance
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!! General Tropes
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* In many [[GameShow Game Shows]], the ProgressiveJackpot and BonusRound exists due to budgetary limitations. Those programmes are budgeted with a certain per-episode average winning in mind, and obviously cannot pay a huge jackpot every episode. The progressive jackpot thus allows for the previous episode's unclaimed prizes to be rolled over to the next one, while the bonus round acts as a final challenge contestants must pass to win big, reducing the chance that the show needs to make a big payout.
!! Specific Examples
!! Specific Examples
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by the tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour that the show was facing. The largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed, the focus on UNIT gave the show a recurring crew of supporting characters that allowed production to be far more flexible with casting, and the lush countryside setting that the show adopted turned out to be a great showcase for the benefits of colour television.
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by the tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour that the show was facing. The largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed, the focus on UNIT gave the show a recurring crew of supporting characters that allowed production to be far more flexible with casting, and the lush countryside setting that the show adopted turned out to be a great showcase for the benefits of colour television. The shift to on-location filming also took advantage of the fact that the BBC's sports and news crews had more experience with colour than their counterparts in the scripted drama departments.
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by the tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour that the show was facing. The largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed, the focus on UNIT game the show a recurring crew of supporting characters that allowed production to be far more flexible with casting, and the lush outdoor countryside setting of the show turned out to be a great showcase for the benefits of colour television.
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by the tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour that the show was facing. The largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed, the focus on UNIT game gave the show a recurring crew of supporting characters that allowed production to be far more flexible with casting, and the lush outdoor countryside setting of that the show adopted turned out to be a great showcase for the benefits of colour television.
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by production limitations. With a tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour, the largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed while also highlighting the benefits of colour with its lush natural environments.
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by production limitations. With a the tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour, colour that the show was facing. The largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed while also highlighting needed, the focus on UNIT game the show a recurring crew of supporting characters that allowed production to be far more flexible with casting, and the lush outdoor countryside setting of the show turned out to be a great showcase for the benefits of colour with its lush natural environments.television.
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** The {{Retool}} that the show went through at the start of the Third Doctor era, in which the Doctor was exiled on Earth and spent much of his time working with UNIT to fight off more local threats, was heavily inspired by production limitations. With a tighter budget and a mandate to begin filming in colour, the largely outdoor location shooting of Jon Pertwee's run reduced the amount of set and costume design work that the show needed while also highlighting the benefits of colour with its lush natural environments.
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** Gould and Gilligan played tug-of-war over whether or not to introduce Lalo Salamanca for four whole seasons; while Gould wanted to add him from day one, Gilligan was nervous that, after they had used one of Saul's offhand lines from ''Series/BreakingBad'' to introduce the character of Nacho Varga, using ''the same line'' to justify Lalo's existence would feel too much like a copout (Gilligan also felt that "[[NoodleIncident we don't need to explain]] [[CrypticBackgroundReference every mystery]]". Eventually, they got Creator/TonyDalton to sign on and basically build the character himself, which managed to win Gilligan over. The result is Lalo entering the show after Hector's stroke and taking the BigBad spot for the rest of the series.
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** Gould and Gilligan played tug-of-war over whether or not to introduce Lalo Salamanca for four whole seasons; while Gould wanted to add him from day one, Gilligan was nervous that, after they had used one of Saul's offhand lines from ''Series/BreakingBad'' to introduce the character of Nacho Varga, using ''the same line'' to justify Lalo's existence would feel too much like a copout (Gilligan also felt that "[[NoodleIncident we don't need to explain]] [[CrypticBackgroundReference every mystery]]".mystery]]"). Eventually, they got Creator/TonyDalton to sign on and basically build the character himself, which managed to win Gilligan over. The result is Lalo entering the show after Hector's stroke and taking the BigBad spot for the rest of the series.
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** Gould and Gilligan played tug-of-war over whether or not to introduce Lalo Salamanca for four whole seasons; while Gould wanted to add him from day one, Gilligan was nervous that, after they had used one of Saul's offhand lines from ''Series/BreakingBad'' to introduce the character of Nacho Varga, using ''the same line'' to justify Lalo's existence would feel too much like a copout. Eventually, they got Creator/TonyDalton to sign on and basically build the character himself, which managed to win Gilligan over. The result is Lalo entering the show after Hector's stroke and taking the BigBad spot for the rest of the series.
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** Gould and Gilligan played tug-of-war over whether or not to introduce Lalo Salamanca for four whole seasons; while Gould wanted to add him from day one, Gilligan was nervous that, after they had used one of Saul's offhand lines from ''Series/BreakingBad'' to introduce the character of Nacho Varga, using ''the same line'' to justify Lalo's existence would feel too much like a copout.copout (Gilligan also felt that "[[NoodleIncident we don't need to explain]] [[CrypticBackgroundReference every mystery]]". Eventually, they got Creator/TonyDalton to sign on and basically build the character himself, which managed to win Gilligan over. The result is Lalo entering the show after Hector's stroke and taking the BigBad spot for the rest of the series.
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** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek Dalek]]", the titular Dalek spends much of the episode rampaging through the alien museum while being shot by dozens of security guards. The special effects team noted that this would require a lot of [[BulletSparks Bullet Spark]] effects to properly sell the Dalek's implacability, which wasn't practical on the time and budget they had. The solution: Give the Dalek a forcefield that melts bullets, established in a single CG shot, and never worry about showing bullet impacts ever again.
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removed subjective language
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** Krazy-8 was originally supposed to actually die in the pilot instead of being revealed to be NotQuiteDead, but the crew liked working with his actor Max Arciniega so much that they decided to keep him around a little longer. As a result, Walt killing him becomes a far more premeditated act, changing it from self-defense to admittedly justifiable but premeditated murder.
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** Krazy-8 was originally supposed to actually die in the pilot instead of being revealed to be NotQuiteDead, but the crew liked working with his actor Max Arciniega so much that they decided to keep him around a little longer. As a result, Walt killing him becomes a far more premeditated act, changing it from self-defense to admittedly justifiable but premeditated murder.
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** ''Series/RuPaulsDragRaceDownUnder'': The first season's first episode has Creator/{{Rupaul}} judging the runway fashion show while out of drag, wearing a shirt and jacket. A HoldingBothSidesOfTheConversation sequence follows, with a second [=RuPaul=] onstage, alone in full drag, talking to [=RuPaul=] in the jacket, who's sitting with the other judges. He explains that his drag makeup was lost in transit to Australia, so he's filming the week's episode entirely out of drag. Later, once the makeup was located or replaced, the onstage sequence was filmed and added to the scene.
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** ''Series/RuPaulsDragRaceDownUnder'': The first season's first episode has Creator/{{Rupaul}} judging the runway fashion show while out of drag, wearing a shirt and jacket. A HoldingBothSidesOfTheConversation sequence follows, with a second [=RuPaul=] onstage, alone in full drag, talking to [=RuPaul=] in the jacket, who's sitting with the other judges. He explains that his drag makeup was lost in transit to Australia, transit, so he's filming the week's episode entirely out of drag. Later, once the makeup was located or replaced, the onstage sequence was filmed and added to the scene.
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Added example(s), added franchise name
* ''Series/DragRace'':
** [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia). Post-pandemic, the show continues to be filmed in New Zealand with Kiwi queens competing alongside the Aussies.
** ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'': The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination, and the next episode was entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
** ''Series/RuPaulsDragRaceDownUnder'': The first season's first episode has Creator/{{Rupaul}} judging the runway fashion show while out of drag, wearing a shirt and jacket. A HoldingBothSidesOfTheConversation sequence follows, with a second [=RuPaul=] onstage, alone in full drag, talking to [=RuPaul=] in the jacket, who's sitting with the other judges. He explains that his drag makeup was lost in transit to Australia, so he's filming the week's episode entirely out of drag. Later, once the makeup was located or replaced, the onstage sequence was filmed and added to the scene.
** [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia). Post-pandemic, the show continues to be filmed in New Zealand with Kiwi queens competing alongside the Aussies.
** ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'': The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination, and the next episode was entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
** ''Series/RuPaulsDragRaceDownUnder'': The first season's first episode has Creator/{{Rupaul}} judging the runway fashion show while out of drag, wearing a shirt and jacket. A HoldingBothSidesOfTheConversation sequence follows, with a second [=RuPaul=] onstage, alone in full drag, talking to [=RuPaul=] in the jacket, who's sitting with the other judges. He explains that his drag makeup was lost in transit to Australia, so he's filming the week's episode entirely out of drag. Later, once the makeup was located or replaced, the onstage sequence was filmed and added to the scene.
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* ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'':
** [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia). Post-pandemic, the show continues to be filmed in New Zealand with Kiwi queens competing alongside the Aussies.
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination, and the next episode was entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
** [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia). Post-pandemic, the show continues to be filmed in New Zealand with Kiwi queens competing alongside the Aussies.
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination, and the next episode was entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
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* ''Series/{{Baywatch}}'''s many infamous slow-motion running shots of the lifeguards came about because the producers wanted to save some money by stretching out the run time.
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* ''Series/That70sShow'''s famous [[OncePerEpisode "circle" sequence]]--where the kids would have a conversation while siting around in a circle in Eric's basement, with the camera rotating to each of them in turn--was conceived as a way to get around network censorship. The kids were depicted as casually smoking marijuana on occasion, but the showrunners weren't actually allowed to ''show'' them smoking onscreen--so they used the rotating camera technique to subtly convey them passing around a joint in a circle, rotating to each of them just after they'd taken a hit.
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* ''Series/CriminalMinds'': Will [=LaMontagne=] Jr. was initially just meant to be one of the show's many one-off characters. However, when Creator/AJCook got pregnant during the third season, the writers decided to incorporate her pregnancy into the plot and have JJ also be pregnant instead of going the normal HideYourPregnancy route. Therefore, they had to give JJ a LoveInterest quick and, remembering the ShipTease she had with Will in his introduction episode, brought him back and revealed that JJ had been secretly dating him for the past year. He's since become a recurring character on the show, eventually marrying and having another child (another one of Cook's pregnancies; both of JJ's sons are played by Cook's actual children) with her.
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Adding to help anyone who wants to make the page.
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* [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in an episode of Israeli sitcom ''[=HaPijamot=]'', elaborating several WhatIf cases. At the end of the episode, they show ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget’, showing Asian work immigrants playing the eponymous band, and ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget at all’, showing the set with no actors.
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* [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in an episode of Israeli sitcom ''[=HaPijamot=]'', ''Series/{{HaPijamot}}'', elaborating several WhatIf cases. At the end of the episode, they show ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget’, showing Asian work immigrants playing the eponymous band, and ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget at all’, showing the set with no actors.
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** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
to:
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination elimination, and that the next episode would be was entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
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** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuza=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
to:
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuza=] [=LaLaPaRuZa=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
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** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-synching for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-synching until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Synch [=LaLaPaRuza=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 16 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
to:
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-synching lip-syncing for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-synching lip-syncing until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Synch "Lip-Sync [=LaLaPaRuza=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 16 15 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
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* ''Series/TheLastOfUs2023'' relocated the events of [[VideoGame/TheLastOfUs the original video game]]'s Pittsburgh levels to Kansas City, after the crew deemed the latter easier to recreate in Calgary.
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* ''Series/TheLastOfUs2023'' relocated the events of [[VideoGame/TheLastOfUs the original video game]]'s Pittsburgh levels to Kansas City, after the crew deemed the latter easier to recreate in Calgary.Calgary, as Pittsburgh has an extremely hilly terrain whereas the Midwestern US is every bit as flat as the Canadian Prairie.
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* ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'': [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia) and the first season featured three Kiwis alongside seven Aussies.
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* ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'': ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'':
** [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to justAustralia) and Australia). Post-pandemic, the first season featured three Kiwis show continues to be filmed in New Zealand with Kiwi queens competing alongside seven Aussies.the Aussies.
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-synching for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-synching until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Synch [=LaLaPaRuza=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 16 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
** [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just
** The show's famous OnceASeason "Snatch Game" challenge is a ''Series/MatchGame'' parody where the queens give their best celebrity impersonation and comedic improvisation. Some Snatch Games go better than others, but in Season 14, the ''entire cast'' bombed the challenge except Deja Skye, whose hilarious Music/LilJon impersonation netted her an easy win. Ru decided that all the other queens were up for elimination and that the next episode would be entirely dedicated to them lip-synching for their lives in a round-robin tournament where the losing queens would have to continue lip-synching until one was ultimately eliminated. The "Lip-Synch [=LaLaPaRuza=] Smackdown" became the highest-rated episode of the season. It was so popular, the challenge was brought back for Season 16 even without the context of every contestant being up for elimination.
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** Lalo's introduction took so long because Gilligan and Gould kept butting heads over whether or not to add him; Gould wanted to put him in as early as season one, while Gilligan didn't want him at ''all'' and just wanted him to remain a CrypticBackgroundReference. It wasn't until Creator/TonyDalton signed on that Vince was won over, so Lalo finally enters the show just after Hector's stroke and becomes the BigBad within three episodes.
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** Lalo's introduction took so long because Gould and Gilligan and Gould kept butting heads played tug-of-war over whether or not to add him; introduce Lalo Salamanca for four whole seasons; while Gould wanted to put add him in as early as season from day one, while Gilligan didn't want him at ''all'' and just wanted him was nervous that, after they had used one of Saul's offhand lines from ''Series/BreakingBad'' to remain introduce the character of Nacho Varga, using ''the same line'' to justify Lalo's existence would feel too much like a CrypticBackgroundReference. It wasn't until copout. Eventually, they got Creator/TonyDalton signed to sign on that Vince was won over, so and basically build the character himself, which managed to win Gilligan over. The result is Lalo finally enters entering the show just after Hector's stroke and becomes taking the BigBad within three episodes.spot for the rest of the series.
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** The revelation that Howard is a triathlete [[spoiler:from the pictures at his memorial]] came about purely because Creator/PatrickFabian posts a lot of pictures of himself doing various athletic activities on his Instagram account and the crew thought it'd be a fun detail to throw in.
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** The revelation that Howard is a triathlete [[spoiler:from the pictures at his memorial]] came about purely because Creator/PatrickFabian posts a lot of pictures of himself doing various athletic activities on his Instagram account and the crew thought it'd be a fun detail to throw in. One of the pictures even had to be edited because it had Tony Dalton (Lalo Salamanca, [[spoiler:Howard's murderer]]) in it.
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* The sitcom ''Series/TheRealONeils'', which centered around gay teenager Kevin coming out to his Catholic family, had most of the first season air OutOfOrder. In addition to the usual continuity errors, this made his mother Eileen's acceptance of his sexuality vary wildly between episodes instead of her slowly becoming more and more accepting of it. Critics noted this made the show oddly realistic, seeing as it mirrored the usual mixed feelings people get in those situations.
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* The sitcom ''Series/TheRealONeils'', ''Series/TheRealONeals'', which centered around gay teenager Kevin coming out to his Catholic family, had most of the first season air OutOfOrder. In addition to the usual continuity errors, this made his mother Eileen's acceptance of his sexuality vary wildly between episodes instead of her slowly becoming more and more accepting of it. Critics noted this made the show oddly realistic, seeing as it mirrored the usual mixed feelings people get in those situations.
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* The sitcom ''Series/TheRealONeils'', which centered around gay teenager Kevin coming out to his Catholic family, had most of the first season air OutOfOrder. In addition to the usual continuity errors, this made his mother Eileen's acceptance of his sexuality vary wildly between episodes instead of her slowly becoming more and more accepting of it. Critics noted this made the show oddly realistic, seeing as it mirrored the usual mixed feelings people get in those situations.
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* ''MorecambeandWise''. Morecambe and Wise's first television attempt 'Running Wild' was a disaster so when they returned to tv in 1961, they were paired with experienced writers Sid Green and Dick Hills. Green and Hills sketches initially had huge casts which Morecambe and Wise protested about as they felt they were losing attention but Green and Hills refused to change citing their greater experience. This changed when there was an Equity strike meaning it was impossible to cast anyone other than Morecambe and Wise themselves (who were members of a different union, Associated Entertainers, and therefore unaffected) leaving them to concentrate on the pair's interplay which became their trademark
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* ''MorecambeandWise''.''Creator/MorecambeAndWise''. Morecambe and Wise's first television attempt 'Running Wild' was a disaster so when they returned to tv in 1961, they were paired with experienced writers Sid Green and Dick Hills. Green and Hills sketches initially had huge casts which Morecambe and Wise protested about as they felt they were losing attention but Green and Hills refused to change citing their greater experience. This changed when there was an Equity strike meaning it was impossible to cast anyone other than Morecambe and Wise themselves (who were members of a different union, Associated Entertainers, and therefore unaffected) leaving them to concentrate on the pair's interplay which became their trademark
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* ''Series/ChillingAdventuresOfSabrina'' had to significantly reduce Salem's role as compared to other media in the franchise, due to Kiernan Shipka (who plays Sabrina) having a severe cat allergy.
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* ''MorecambeandWise''. Morecambe and Wise's first television attempt 'Running Wild' was a disaster so when they returned to tv in 1961, they were paired with experienced writers Sid Green and Dick Hills. Green and Hills sketches initially had huge casts which Morecambe and Wise protested about as they felt they were losing attention but Green and Hills refused to change citing their greater experience. This changed when there was an Equity strike meaning it was impossible to cast anyone other than Morecambe and Wise themselves (who were members of a different union, Associated Entertainers, and therefore unaffected) leaving them to concentrate on the pair's interplay which became their trademark
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'' had the commander of the space station, Jeffrey Sinclair, played by Michael O'Hare, permanently replaced by John Sheridan at the beginning of the second season. This made some important overall changes to the overarching plot of the show since Sheridan had a very different personality and background. Originally it was hinted that this had been planned all along, but after O'Hare's death, it was revealed that during the course of the season he had been suffering from increasingly severe mental illness, which finally made it impossible for him to continue working.
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* ''Series/BabylonFive'' had the commander of the space station, Jeffrey Sinclair, played by Michael O'Hare, Creator/MichaelOHare, permanently replaced by John Sheridan at the beginning of the second season. This made some important overall changes to the overarching plot of the show since Sheridan had a very different personality and background. Originally it was hinted that this had been planned all along, but after O'Hare's death, it was revealed that during the course of the season he had been suffering from increasingly severe mental illness, which finally made it impossible for him to continue working.
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Examples of SerendipityWritesThePlot in live-action TV shows.
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* Some TV shows do "{{Bottle Episode}}s" due to budget limitations. Some classic ones in ''Series/{{Friends}}'' include "The One With the Blackout" (which was part of a NBC Thursday Night Crossover where all the New York shows, save ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' had to deal with the effects of said blackout, something which director James Burrows admitted they used to make an episode on the cheap), and "The One Where No One Is Ready".
* In the same vein, some "{{Lower Deck Episode}}s" are done when the lead actors in a show's cast are occupied filming one episode, forcing the production staff to do another episode focusing on minor or original characters in order to stay on schedule. ''Series/DoctorWho'''s "Doctor-lite episodes", in which the Doctor and his Companion generally only have a few minutes of screen time, are a good example.
* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'':
** When the show was revived by Creator/{{Netflix}} in 2013, the showrunners had to work with a notably smaller budget, which meant that many of the signature comedic setpieces from the original three seasons (the banana stand, the model home, the stair car, etc.) had to be reimagined, scaled back, or left out entirely. Among other things: the banana stand is implied to have gone out of business, the Sudden Valley development is finally finished (only to wind up [[GhostTown abandoned]] after the housing market crash), and Michael sells the stair car and gets a job driving a Google Maps camera car instead. But since Season 4 is set [[SequelGap seven years]] after the first three seasons, this ends up feeling pretty appropriate, contributing the to general sense that [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore nothing in the Bluths' lives in the same anymore]].
** Season 4 also heavily changed the show's format into episodes [[ADayInTheLimelight heavily focusing on individual Bluths]] and heavily downplaying the usual interactions between the entire family. This was because, in the years between the original show and the revival, the vast majority of the cast's careers massively blew up (in most cases ''[[StarMakingRole because]]'' of the show), and thus it became next to impossible to get their schedules to align and have them all present on set at any given time.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' had the commander of the space station, Jeffrey Sinclair, played by Michael O'Hare, permanently replaced by John Sheridan at the beginning of the second season. This made some important overall changes to the overarching plot of the show since Sheridan had a very different personality and background. Originally it was hinted that this had been planned all along, but after O'Hare's death, it was revealed that during the course of the season he had been suffering from increasingly severe mental illness, which finally made it impossible for him to continue working.
* ''Series/BetterCallSaul'': Much like [[Series/BreakingBad its parent show]], the same [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants "write as you go along"]] approach was utilized.
** The very first episode was originally supposed to end with the reveal that the skateboarders Jimmy is working with accidentally targeted Howard instead of their target. However, the writers essentially asked themselves who the worst possible person they could've targeted would be, and thus they changed it from Howard to Tuco's grandma. This introduces the cartel into the storyline much earlier than originally planned, bringing in both the Salamancas and Nacho Varga immediately.
** The first few episodes of season 1 were filmed before the writers decided that Chuck had potential as a villain, so Creator/MichaelMcKean spent the first four episodes believing that Chuck genuinely believed in Jimmy's potential as a lawyer and acting accordingly. This makes the reveal that Chuck secretly despises Jimmy come out of absolute nowhere and add more shock value to the twist. The twist also completely changed Howard Hamlin's motivation retroactively, and thus he became more of a {{foil}} to Jimmy rather than an antagonist.
** The ColdOpen for the episode "Hero" was essentially tacked on at the last minute when the final script of the episode was still too short, but its addition worked perfectly for setting up Jimmy's past in Cicero and his relationship with his buddy Marco that would eventually be explored further in "Marco".
** Kim Wexler was originally going to be far more straight-laced and moral than Jimmy, to the point of potentially serving as his genuine MoralityPet, but Creator/RheaSeehorn [[CharacterisationClickMoment added in a smirk]] to some of Jimmy's antics early in season one. This small decision completely changed Kim's character for the rest of the show and turned the two of them into a genuine partnership, rather than her going along with him grudgingly.
** The flashback scene from "Inflatable" featuring a young Jimmy and his father in the convenience store was originally meant to be in season one, but it ultimately got shelved for time. This meant that when Chuck eventually told Kim the story of how Jimmy would steal from the till during season 2, they were able to put it there instead and prove that while Chuck might be jealous and petty, [[JerkassHasAPoint he's not necessarily wrong about Jimmy either]].
** The Season 1 finale was written before they had any idea whether or not they would be renewed, which is why Jimmy seems to fully descend into the Saul Goodman persona at the end of the season. When they did get renewed, they realized they had more time to play with Jimmy before he fell completely, so Season 2 features him dialing back and rationalizing his brief episode as due to his grief for Marco's death.
** Lalo's introduction took so long because Gilligan and Gould kept butting heads over whether or not to add him; Gould wanted to put him in as early as season one, while Gilligan didn't want him at ''all'' and just wanted him to remain a CrypticBackgroundReference. It wasn't until Creator/TonyDalton signed on that Vince was won over, so Lalo finally enters the show just after Hector's stroke and becomes the BigBad within three episodes.
** Gene's phone call to Ed the Vacuum Repair Guy was originally meant to be a one-sided phone call, with only Gene's side being shown. However, when Creator/RobertForster came back for ''Film/ElCamino'', the crew decided to get him back in the role while they had him around, so the other side of the call was added. This was incredibly fortuitous, as Forster tragically passed away in between filming and release, meaning this scene is his last performance ever.
** Despite Hank Schrader having many opportunities for a cameo appearance across the first four seasons, he never actually appeared because Creator/DeanNorris was completely uninterested in returning, feeling that Hank's story had already been completed; additionally, Peter Gould didn't feel comfortable writing a part for Hank after his creator, Vince Gilligan, had left the writer's room for the show. Both eventually came around to the idea of a return in time for the filming of season 5, and thus we get a multi-episode arc showing how Krazy-8 became his snitch.
** In Season 5, the fixer Saul uses to get some dirt on Kevin Wachtell is Mr. X, a fixer played by Creator/StevenOgg who had previously appeared in season 1 as a hired goon that Mike got into an altercation with. This was meant to be the re-introduction of Creator/BillBurr as Patrick Kuby, but Burr was unavailable for filming due to commitments, necessitating the re-use of Ogg.
** Season 6 was heavily affected by both COVID-19 restrictions as well as Bob Odenkirk's near-fatal heart attack. The restrictions brought filming to a halt, and even when they returned, Laura Fraser was unable to return as Lydia Rodarte-Quale despite a planned appearance from her, and Odenkirk's heart attack halted filming once more and necessitated splitting the season into two. The result is that [[spoiler:Howard's execution at the end of "Plan and Execution" while Jimmy and Kim watch]] became one of the show's most legendary cliffhangers across its entire run, as fans had to wait over a month to see what happened next.
** The revelation that Howard is a triathlete [[spoiler:from the pictures at his memorial]] came about purely because Creator/PatrickFabian posts a lot of pictures of himself doing various athletic activities on his Instagram account and the crew thought it'd be a fun detail to throw in.
** For [[spoiler:Walt and Jesse's cameo in the episode "[[Recap/BetterCallSaulS6E11BreakingBad Breaking Bad]]", the crew wanted the new scene to feature two things: they wanted to have Lalo mentioned somehow, and they needed a scene where they could cover up Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul's aging. The result is the cameo taking place just after the two kidnap Saul in the desert, as it's set at night, Walt and Jesse are wearing ski masks (which also covers up Cranston's unshaved head), and Jesse asks about Lalo because Saul had just mentioned him during the original scene]].
* The TearJerker ending to the final episode of ''[[Series/{{Blackadder}} Blackadder Goes Forth]]'', in which the main characters go into the attack but are then obscured by a huge explosion before the image fades to a field of poppies, had to be thrown together in post-production. There was limited filming time, and the director had no experience with action scenes, and there was no money for a stunt co-ordinator in the budget. The resulting footage of Blackadder, George, Baldrick and Darling charging through No Man's Land while shells blew up around them looked distinctly underwhelming (they just fell over and lay on the ground looking not very dead), but the explosion effects were also so terrifying for the actors that Creator/RowanAtkinson refused point-blank to do any retakes. The footage was deemed unusable, but while the film editor was cycling through it and trying to figure out what to do, he realized that slowing it down made it far more effective. As a result, they re-edited the footage, slowed it down, dropped the audio out and replaced it with the theme music played as a LonelyPianoPiece, and then at the moment, a large explosion obscured the actors from view, crossfaded to a still photograph of some poppies. The result was the most hard-earned DownerEnding to any situation comedy.
* ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'':
** Season 1 ends with the Commodore deciding to go against Nucky. The plan for Season 2 was to give him a large part as the year's BigBad; however, Dabney Coleman was diagnosed with throat cancer shortly before filming, and the treatment rendered him unable to speak for long periods of time. The season was then retooled with the Commodore being relegated after [[spoiler: suffering a paralyzing stroke]] and Jimmy stepping up as the new leader of the conspiracy, a position for which [[TheChainsOfCommanding he was not prepared]] [[EpicFail in the least]]. This, in turn, had other, long-reaching repercussions: [[spoiler:the writers found that they couldn't possibly have Nucky pardoning Jimmy if he was the one that tried to overthrow and then kill him, and so the season ended with Nucky killing Jimmy and the show sacrificing its second-billed star, Creator/MichaelPitt, after only two years]].
** In Season 3, [[spoiler:Owen Sleater]] is killed during an attempt to murder Joe Masseria in a public bath. However, the day before shooting was to begin, a piece of plaster from the ceiling fell and they had to delay the scene for security reasons. Meanwhile, a preliminary cut of the episode with every other scene included was completed, and showrunner Terence Winter realized that the lack of the fight scene made the episode ''better'', since [[spoiler: now the viewers would learn that the hit had failed at the same time as the other characters: when Masseria sends [[DeadMansChest Owen's body to them in a box]]]].
* ''Series/BreakingBad'': The series is legendary from a writing standpoint because, with the exception of Season 2, [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants it was all written as they went along]]:
** The series was envisioned as taking place in San Bernardino, California, with the crew simply choosing to shoot in Albuquerque because the city offered incredible incentives for filmmakers who worked there. After realizing how much of a pain it was to try to make New Mexico look like California, the crew decided to just have the show be set in Albuquerque, allowing them to make the now-iconic desert scenes.
** Krazy-8 was originally supposed to actually die in the pilot instead of being revealed to be NotQuiteDead, but the crew liked working with his actor Max Arciniega so much that they decided to keep him around a little longer. As a result, Walt killing him becomes a far more premeditated act, changing it from self-defense to admittedly justifiable but premeditated murder.
** The writer's strike cut the first season unexpectedly short with only eight episodes instead of the planned thirteen. Fans tend to rejoice for this, because if Season 1 had ended the way that Creator/VinceGilligan originally planned, [[{{Deuteragonist}} Jesse]] would've been killed at the end of it; the space between Seasons 1 and 2 made Vince decide that Creator/AaronPaul had too much potential, and Jesse was ultimately spared. Additionally, while he didn't go into too much detail, Vince revealed in 2018 that the writers strike ultimately spared [[HeroAntagonist Hank's]] life as well, [[spoiler:at least until season 5B]].
** Tuco was originally meant to last much longer as a BigBad, but ultimately Creator/RaymondCruz was too uncomfortable with the character to play him for too long. As a result, Hank kills him via BoomHeadshot early in Season 2, freeing up the story for Gus to come along as well as creating the storyline of Hank recovering from killing someone (the storyline that he would then carry for the rest of the show).
** Saul Goodman's few BeneathTheMask moments showing a lack of confidence in his actions and even some [[EvenEvilHasStandards hidden moral standards]] were largely added by Creator/BobOdenkirk, who was a big source of ideas for Saul's character across the show. These moments, though small and hidden across the series, added up quickly, and they eventually paved the way for him to headline the prequel show.
** Season 2 has a subplot where Jesse gets kicked out of his late aunt's house, which happened because the house got new owners who didn't give them permission to film there. As a result, the season premiere featured a set of the kitchen with the RV blocking the view out the window, before they could work up to this development. They would regain permission prior to the filming of season 3, so they wrote a subplot of Jesse using Saul to buy the house back from his parents.
** Gus Fring was originally meant to be a one-episode character, but Creator/GiancarloEsposito decided to play the character "as though he had a secret." It got the viewers' attention, so he was brought back for a second episode, which solidified him as an EnsembleDarkHorse -- and gave Esposito all the cards when he told executives that he would only come back if he were made a main character. And thus, one of the most iconic television antagonists of all time was born.
** In the Season 2 finale "[[Recap/BreakingBadS2E13ABQ ABQ]]", the original plans were for Saul Goodman to clean up the scene after Jesse's girlfriend Jane overdoses. Creator/BobOdenkirk was unavailable for filming because of a commitment to appear in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'', so they brought in Creator/JonathanBanks as Mike Ehrmantraut, because they admired his work in ''Series/{{Wiseguy}}''. Banks himself thought he would come on and do the role for just that episode, but had been impressed by working alongside Aaron Paul in that scene, and with the overall direction that Vince Gilligan had given for the episode once it aired, so Mike, like Gus, also became a more fleshed out character, and co-lead for ''Series/BetterCallSaul''. [[note]]The creators admitted that, in hindsight, this would have been incredibly OutOfCharacter for Saul anyway, and as such greatly approved of the change even before Banks signed on for more.[[/note]]
** The Season 4 finale "[[Recap/BreakingBadS4E13FaceOff Face Off]]" ends on a [[SeriesFauxnale very conclusive note]], with [[spoiler:Hector and Gus dead, the ambiguity of Walt staying in the meth trade, and TheReveal that Walt poisoned Brock]], because they ultimately weren't sure whether or not they were going to get renewed for another season. When they did get renewed, they preemptively declared it the last one to avoid this problem repeating itself, leading to the much beloved Season 5 and record-breaking finale.
** One of the saddest moments came about by pure coincidence. In "[[Recap/BreakingBadS5E14Ozymandias Ozymandias]]", [[spoiler:Walt kidnaps his daughter and is changing her in a gas station bathroom. When he tries to get her to say "dada", she instead says ''mama'', causing Walt to realize that even his infant daughter had turned against him and make him leave her at a fire station]]. The scene was originally meant to have Walt make this realization on his own, but Holly's actress saw her mother just off camera and called out for her; Creator/BryanCranston stayed in character and rolled with it, creating one of the harshest scenes in the entire show.
** During Saul's rant in "Granite State", he says that the best case scenario for him is managing a Cinnabon in Omaha - which, as ''Better Call Saul'' indicates, ends up being his fate. Originally, he was going to say Hot Topic instead (and thus would likely have been working there in ''BCS''), but when the crew discovered that Hot Topic actually sold ''Breaking Bad'' merch, they changed the store to avoid any appearance of self-promotion.
** In "[[Recap/BreakingBadS5E16Felina Felina]]", the writers struggled with [[spoiler:how Walt would ultimately get his money to his family]], which ended up being solved by, of all things, a fan letter. A fan wrote to Vince Gilligan asking [[spoiler:what would happen to Gretchen and Elliot Schwartz, characters who (by that point) hadn't appeared since Season 2, and that gave them the idea to have Walt blackmail them into giving his son the money]].
* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'':
** Prue's telekinetic powers evolved from being directed by her squinting her eyes to being directed through her hands. This was done in order to save money on film used to zoom in on Creator/ShannenDoherty's eyes when Prue uses her powers.
** The plot of Phoebe losing her active powers during season six was set up to save the money needed for the wire work used to make her levitate.
** In the second season, it was revealed that the sisters' mother, Patty, had a forbidden romance with her Whitelighter, setting up a parallel to Piper and Leo's relationship. While nothing else was meant to come of this development, it came in mighty handy when Creator/ShannenDoherty left. The writers needed to replace Prue with a new sister, and hey, ''that's'' [[ActorLeavesCharacterDies a convenient excuse]] for why Patty might have kept her a secret...
** Demons becoming less monstrous and more human-looking as the series progressed was done to save on CG and make up effects, and explained as Upper Level Demons (whom the Sisters faced more of as they grew as Witches) looking more human to better blend in.
* ''Series/{{Community}}'':
** Jeff and Annie's WillTheyOrWontThey dynamic wasn't initially planned as part of the show, but was written in after the showrunners realized that Creator/JoelMcHale had much better chemistry with Creator/AlisonBrie than he did with Creator/GillianJacobs (Britta), who was originally supposed to be his primary love interest. Conversely: the writers never planned on Britta and Troy becoming a couple, but wrote it in when they realized that Creator/DonaldGlover had better chemistry with Gillian Jacobs than he did with Alison Brie (who was originally supposed to be ''his'' primary love interest).
** It's fairly well-documented that [[spoiler:[[KilledOffForReal Pierce's death]]]] happened due to Creator/ChevyChase's {{creative differences}} with creator Creator/DanHarmon, which ultimately led to him leaving the show after Season 4. Similarly: [[spoiler:Star-Burns' [[FakingTheDead (apparent)]] death]] late in Season 3 happened because Creator/DinoStamatopoulos quit the show in protest after Harmon was fired by NBC, and refused to return unless he was reinstated; that's also why [[spoiler:Star-Burns is revealed to be alive after all]] in Season 5, which was the season where Harmon returned.
** The writers initially planned for Troy and Pierce to become best friends over the course of the show, establishing an [[OddFriendship odd]] IntergenerationalFriendship between the two. This idea was scrapped when it turned out that Creator/ChevyChase didn't get along with most of his castmates. But when Creator/DonaldGlover and Creator/DannyPudi unexpectedly hit it off and became very good friends off-set, the writers decided to make Troy and Abed best friends instead--leading to one of the most memorable and iconic relationships on the show.
** The Season 1 episode "Modern Warfare" (the first "paintball episode") was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed episodes in the show's history, but it was also a production nightmare--since it left the entire set spattered with paint, which had to be cleaned up before the rest of Season 1 could be filmed. To avoid running into the same problem with the next paintball episode, the showrunners decided to make it the ''finale'' of Season 2, allowing them to [[TrashTheSet drench the set with as much paint as they wanted]]. The result was "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More", an epic two-parter about a full-on paintball ''war'' between Greendale and City College, which is widely considered to be the show's best season finale.
* ''Series/TheCrystalMaze'' was intended to be a version of ''Series/FortBoyard'' for the UK. When the fort proved unavailable, Channel 4 asked their set designer if he could construct a similar setting. He replied he could, but it would be just as easy to have multiple zones with different themes. They liked the idea.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The TARDIS was originally going to be a big, magnificent vehicle. Except the show lacked the funding, so they said that it can disguise itself as anything it wants. Then ''that'' turned out to be too expensive, so it stayed as a police call box with a tongue-in-cheek {{handwave}} that the chameleon circuit feature [[TheAllegedCar was broken]]. "They said 'we've got a police box from ''Series/DixonOfDockGreen'' -- let's make a box that's bigger on the inside', and thus was born the single best idea in all of fiction," -- Creator/StevenMoffat.[[note]]Steven Moffat is mistaken -- the Police Box prop was built especially for ''Doctor Who'' and was not from ''Dixon of Dock Green''.[[/note]]
** In the original script of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius "The Brain of Morbius"]], Morbius's new body was cobbled together by his devoted robot servant. But it was the cheap story of the season, so they couldn't afford a robot costume as well as Morbius's body. So it was heavily rewritten to make the robot a human mad scientist (played by Creator/PhilipMadoc, resulting in a classic story).
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E4TheSontaranStratagem "The Sontaran Stratagem"]], after the scene where the Doctor uses a LogicBomb on the ATMOS device and jumps out of the car, the latter [[EveryCarIsAPinto was supposed to explode]]. Unfortunately, they didn't have the budget. So the writer decided to have [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome reality ensuing]] and have the device just fizzle out harmlessly while the Doctor looks disappointed.
** During filming of the 2009 Easter Special [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E15PlanetOfTheDead "Planet of the Dead"]], the double-decker bus used was damaged during shipping to Dubai, which was incorporated into the story (with the bus being damaged while traveling through the worm-hole to San Helios).
--->'''Creator/RussellTDavies:''' I wasn't at all worried when I saw the photographs, I just thought "Oh well, that's what happens when a bus goes through a wormhole."
** Originally, the First Doctor's regeneration into the Second was to be performed as a cliffhanger. Creator/WilliamHartnell would have his face covered by a cloak, and Episode Four of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]] would end. In the first episode of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]], the cloak would be removed to reveal Creator/PatrickTroughton's face. However, the vision mixer discovered that the mixing board was acting up the day of filming in a way that allowed for a controlled overexpose of the image almost to a full white screen. She and the episode's director took advantage of this, quickly called Troughton in, and made the iconic shot of William Hartnell essentially "morphing" into Patrick Troughton.
** Donna Noble's father Geoffrey Noble was originally supposed to be a supporting character in Series 4 of the new series, but he was said to have died offscreen between the events of [[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride "The Runaway Bride"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime "Partners in Crime"]] because his actor, Howard Attfield, became too ill to continue after filming his scenes for "Partners in Crime", and [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim died of cancer]] not long after. Forced to come up with a replacement character to fill the "father figure" role with almost no notice at all, the producers hired Creator/BernardCribbins, who had just appeared as a minor character in [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned "Voyage of the Damned"]], and was retconned into being Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott.
** In a related vein: If Wilfred's role had been filled by Geoffrey, it's unlikely that the Doctor would have taken him on as a companion at the climax of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], since Geoffrey would presumably have stayed behind to comfort his wife and daughter during the Master's battle with Rassilon (whereas the aloof Wilfred, who was clearly closer with his granddaughter Donna than with her mother, had earlier bonded enough with the Tenth Doctor to accompany him during his last adventure).
** Creator/MattSmith had to shave his hair off for his role in ''Film/LostRiver'', but didn't grow it back in time to sport the Doctor's signature hairstyle, meaning he had to wear a wig over a bald-cap in "[[Recap/DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor The Time of the Doctor]]". Instead of painstakingly hiding the wig, the Doctor actually ''takes it off'' in the episode, and even uses it to [[spoiler: smuggle a TARDIS-key into the containment field]]. Once he enters the truth field and starts spouting truths whether he wants to or not, he mentions that he's wearing a wig multiple times.
*** Even better: the InUniverse-explanation for why he shaved his hair off is because [[CloudCuckooLander he got bored one day]].
** The Third Doctor had a habit of [[HoldingHands holding Jo Grant's hand]] when they ran from the monsters together, because Creator/KatyManning normally wore glasses and was BlindWithoutEm, and the first time she tried running without being guided by him she went hurtling into a tree. This became an iconic enough image that there is a CallBack to it in the first episode of the revival series, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]", in which the Doctor asking Rose to take his hand is a big deal and serves to symbolize her becoming the companion.
** The show lost budget between Season 4 and Season 5, by which time the producers had decided to concentrate on {{Horror}} and no longer had the benefit of "historicals" as cheap episodes (which could take advantage of PropRecycling and a BBC crew skilled at CostumeDrama). The result of this was the development of the "Base Under Siege" story format, iconically associated with the Second Doctor -- tightly plotted, suspenseful horror where the Doctor enters an isolated place besieged by something malevolent and helps the people within fight back against it. This format meant they barely needed to show the monster, and sometimes didn't even need a monster at all -- one story uses DeadlyGas, and another uses torrents of white foam.
* Creator/JaneLeeves' second pregnancy on ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' came at the perfect time, plot-wise, for Niles and Daphne to have a baby in the final season, just ahead of schedule enough for Daphne to give birth [[spoiler: in the finale]].
* ''Series/{{Friends}}'': During the filming of the aforementioned "The One Where No One is Ready" (see the above entry about {{Bottle Episode}}s), Matt [=LeBlanc=] dislocated his shoulder during a take of the bit where Joey and Chandler race to claim the chair in Monica's living room, forcing him to wear a sling for several weeks. Rather than delay production, the writers wrote the injury in the show by featuring an opening scene in the next episode where Joey injures himself offscreen from jumping on his bed.
* [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in an episode of Israeli sitcom ''[=HaPijamot=]'', elaborating several WhatIf cases. At the end of the episode, they show ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget’, showing Asian work immigrants playing the eponymous band, and ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget at all’, showing the set with no actors.
* ''Series/TheJoeSchmoShow'' was a spoof of competition-based {{Reality Show}}s, with the concept being that the entire cast were actors who were in on the joke ''except'' for one guy: Matt Kennedy Gould, [[TheEveryman a genuine nobody]] who [[TrumanShowPlot participated in the show and assumed that all the interactions were real]]. The show was initially structured around putting him in silly and bizarre scenarios [[PointAndLaughShow to overall make him look ridiculous]], but over time, he genuinely started to form camaraderie with his fellow "contestants", becoming visibly upset when "Earl" (Franklin Dennis Jones) -- his closest friend -- was voted off, leading the producers to scramble a goofy sumo wrestling match rigged in his favor to cheer him up... which then accidentally resulted in "Dr. Pat" (a then-unknown Creator/KristenWiig) [[OnSetInjury getting injured and requiring real-life medical evacuation]], which left Matt so guilty that [[IFeelGuiltyYouTakeIt he gave the match's vacation package award to her]]. From there on out, the show ended up being further rigged in his favor and painting him in the best possible light as everyone else involved (producers, actors, and the audience at home) were too charmed by how ''likeable'' Matt was to keep up a potentially mean-spirited charade, though they still waited until the finale after he won to reveal the act (and fortunately, he ended up being a good sport about it).
* ''Franchise/KamenRider'':
** [[Series/KamenRider The original show]] famously switched main characters for nearly half its run, introducing a second Kamen Rider who took over the series as the original hero, Takeshi Hongou, went off to "fight evil overseas". As one can probably guess, this was caused by Creator/HiroshiFujioka badly breaking his leg during a stunt, forcing the emergency appearance of a second main character to keep the show going until his return. The existence of multiple Riders, however, would go on to massively shape both the rest of the show and the future of the franchise.
** ''Series/KamenRiderStronger'''s partner, Electro-Wave Human Tackle, was a FauxActionGirl who could barely handle anything more than two {{Mooks}} in most of her fights. The lack of intensity in her action scenes was due to her actress being asthmatic.[[note]]Sadly, her actress would die of a severe asthma attack years later.[[/note]]
** The titular character of ''Series/KamenRiderKiva'' is rather notorious for unlocking his SuperMode final form unusually early (episode 24, for something that normally happens in the mid-30s to early 40s) and almost entirely ignoring his previous forms from that point on. The reason was that the original Kiva suit and early upgrades, with their FashionableAsymmetry, focus on form over function, and [[ChainedByFashion chained-up]] look obtained by putting ''actual metal chains'' on the suit, were incredibly taxing on lead suit actor Seiji Takaiwa. Kiva Emperor was thus brought out earlier than usual to prevent crippling the franchise's best stuntman, with the original suit only brought back for shorter, less action-heavy scenes.
** ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'' was originally going to be set in a flooded city called Suito; but constraints of budget and technical ability made this change to Fuuto, an ecologically-friendly "Windy City" which runs on wind power. The wind turbines became an iconic image within the show, and both Double and the original ''Series/KamenRider'' have a long-standing use of the word 'Cyclone', so it's very apt, especially since ''Double'' was intended to be a partial throwback to the Shōwa era Riders.
* ''Series/TheLastOfUs2023'' relocated the events of [[VideoGame/TheLastOfUs the original video game]]'s Pittsburgh levels to Kansas City, after the crew deemed the latter easier to recreate in Calgary.
* The creators of ''Series/{{Lewis}}'' created a new pathologist character for the new series. However, then they decided they needed one more character from ''Series/InspectorMorse'' to tie the continuity together -- and it turned out that the only regular actor from ''Morse'' who wasn't dead, retired, or just plain unavailable was one Clare Holman, who had played pathologist Dr. Laura Hobson. The new pathologist character was summarily scrapped, her lines from the pilot were given to Hobson, and we got nine more years (and a delightful Lewis/Hobson romance) out of the delightfully snarky and levelheaded Laura. Nobody is sorry about this.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'':
** The original plan for the Pilot was for Jack to be a DecoyProtagonist and die at the end, alongside being played by a big-name actor (Creator/MichaelKeaton) to make it clear that AnyoneCanDie; Kate would then step up as the leader of the survivors. The producers convinced the writers not to go through with it, and Keaton didn't want to commit to a full series and dropped out; the result was Creator/MatthewFox signing on, Jack becoming the show's main character, the plane's pilot being killed in his place after giving his exposition on why rescue isn't coming, and Kate's intended story as a woman separated from her husband was given to new character Rose.
** As filming was concluding on Season 1, the crew realized that the rising tides of Oahu were eventually going to submerge the fuselage set completely, meaning that they needed a reason to get the survivors away from the fuselage permanently. They eventually settled for putting the real-world reason into the story, and thus the survivors had to move further up the beach and create a second camp to avoid a suddenly rising tide.
** In "Numbers", Hurley witnesses a man fall out of a window; several seasons later, it was revealed that Locke was paralyzed when he was pushed out of a window. The producers admitted that it would've been a fun idea to reveal that the man Hurley saw falling was actually Locke's paralyzing incident, but the timeline had already set the events three years apart from each other, so this potential connection was dropped.
** In season 2's "Two For The Road", Michael kills Ana Lucia when he moves to free "Henry Gale" from his captivity. Ana Lucia was always intended to die during the season (Creator/MichelleRodriguez had only signed on for one season from the start), which made this moment the right place to do it - however, fan reaction to her character had been pretty negative, so the producers didn't think that her death alone would have enough of a punch. Thus, Libby comes into the Hatch at the exact wrong time and startles Michael into shooting her too, with the next episode actually showing her death. This also had more consequences down the road; Creator/CynthiaWatros didn't appreciate her character getting killed off before her story could be told, and thus while the writers wanted to explore her past posthumously, most of her planned appearances fell through [[spoiler:until season six's flash-sideways timeline]].
---> '''Damon Lindeloff''': I have learned that if you kill someone off the show, they are less likely to cooperate with you.
** In the season two finale, Walt and Michael leave the Island after the latter betrays the survivors. Originally, Walt was meant to stay on the Island and have his mysterious powers actually analyzed and revealed, but Creator/MalcolmDavidKelly could only look ten years old for so long when only months were passing InUniverse, so they had to write him out earlier than anticipated. They still managed to have him come back in periods where it made sense for him to be older; in one case, it's in a vision (and the fact that he looks older is lampshaded), while the three-year TimeSkip mid-series put him at the perfect age to make sporadic appearances until the end of the show.
** In the first two seasons, the producers received complaints that the show didn't focus on any of the survivors outside of the main group, so the team introduced Nikki and Paulo, two new survivors who began chumming with the main cast basically out of nowhere. They had a multi-episode arc planned, but they were universally despised almost immediately, so the writers wrapped up their arc in "Exposé", killed them both, and moved the show on without them. The writers learned from this mistake and thus future main characters were introduced far slower rather than being shoved in right away, especially the freighter crew from season four; they kept the trend going for the future and only made Ilana and Frank main characters after they had already been on the show for quite some time.
** If it weren't for the Writer's Strike, Daniel, Charlotte, and Miles may not have been main characters in season four. They were originally meant to have their arcs concluded within a single season (though what their fates would've been if that had happened is unknown), but the writer's strike truncated season four and forced their arcs to be multi-season. Thus, they were promoted to main character status and kept it for the rest of their respective runs.
** Mr. Eko was originally meant to last far past his death in season 3, with him and Locke having a "yin and yang" style rivalry that would discuss the show's philosophical themes. However, for [[FlipFlopOfGod an unclear reason]], Creator/AdewaleAkinnuoyeAgbaje decided to quit the show early, so Eko's character arc gets wrapped up just before his death in "The Cost of Living". To keep up the philosophical conflict they wanted, Eko's role was added to Jack, creating the Jack vs. Locke philosophical battle that would then run the show for the next two seasons, [[spoiler:and would even carry over to the Man in Black after Locke died]].
** In the middle of season three, the writers began running out of ideas for flashbacks, so "Stranger in a Strange Land" focuses on the origins of Jack's shoulder tattoo; these were Matthew Fox's real tattoos, and they even have a different real-life translation from the one given in the show. An entire hour about Jack's tattoo was considered such a waste of an episode that it singlehandedly truncated the rest of the show; before this episode, ABC was willing to take the show to as much as ten seasons, but the fact that the writers straight up ran out of things to write about gave the producers the ammo they needed to negotiate it down to six.
** "Through the Looking Glass" has Jack learn that his ex-wife Sarah is pregnant. This was not originally planned, but Creator/JulieBowen was pregnant at the time and they decided to keep it in to further emphasize how much she's moved on without him.
** If season six had lasted as long as the previous seasons, Ilana would've been revealed to be [[spoiler:Jacob's daughter]], explaining why she became such a crucial member of his forces and why she seems to understand so much about the Island despite having never been there before. Unfortunately, the season's runtime got slashed to the point that it couldn't be worked in, so they solved the problem by [[spoiler:abruptly killing her off]].
** "The New Man In Charge" was largely written to finally solve some of the mysteries and plot points that fans were begging for. In particular, it finally answers the question of where the polar bears came from, and they took the opportunity to give Walt and Michael's final arcs some closure by revealing that [[spoiler:Hurley's bringing Walt to the Island to save his dad's soul, meaning that Michael won't be stuck on the Island for eternity as some had speculated]].
* The distinctive animated sequences in ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' were the result of Creator/TerryGilliam looking for a cheap and fast way to do them. As part of working under the government broadcast company BBC the production had free access to an image bank of paintings, old photographs and the like, which Gilliam then applied with a simple cut and paste method.
* The 13-episode live-action TV series about Literature/TheMoomins has the overarching plot of the king deciding that the Moomins' bohemian lifestyle doesn't fit in a modern welfare state and that they, as an "ethnic minority" need to be integrated into "normal" society. The most startling change is that he decides their noses are too big and orders them off -- which leads to one of the most memorable (and {{Nightmare Fuel}}ish) aspects of this series, namely that the actors in the Moomin suits take off the overdimensioned Moomin heads/masks they're wearing, revealing their normal human heads underneath. This is not only what the series is remembered for today but is also a pretty effective demonstration of how the Moomins' individuality is threatened by the integration process... but really, the reason behind is probably just as much that the Moomin heads were big, awkward and difficult to deal with on the set -- it's ''extremely'' clear that the actors can barely see when wearing them, leading to a lot of clumsiness and fumbling around. Removing the heads allowed the actors to move about much more freely.
* This trope is basically ''Franchise/PowerRangers''' MO. The show recycles footage from ''Franchise/SuperSentai'', so large parts of the plot are dictated by what appears in the ''Sentai'' footage (when it's not doing a straight-up adaptation, of course).
** ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' is a particularly noticeable example, since it came out when the producers were still getting used to adapting ''Super Sentai'' footage. The show turned out to be a bigger hit than anyone expected, so they had to figure out a way to keep it going after they ran out of stock footage from ''Series/KyoryuSentaiZyuranger'' for the battle sequences. Though they eventually commissioned more stock footage from Toei for Season 2, their shoestring budget still forced them to get creative with their limited footage; Season 3 featured the Rangers [[BroughtDownToNormal losing their powers]] and becoming ninjas (since they had to wear ''some'' sort of costumes for the fight scenes, and color-coded ninja robes were the only ones that the show could afford) and then getting turned into children and having a team of alien allies take over Ranger duties (so that they could replace ''Zyuranger'' stock footage with footage from ''Series/NinjaSentaiKakuranger'').
** Things also got complicated when the SixthRanger Tommy Oliver ended up becoming a BreakoutCharacter; they quickly ran out of stock footage of his Japanese counterpart Burai the Dragon Ranger, since he had rather limited screen time in ''Zyuranger'', but Tommy was far too popular to simply write out of the show. The solution? They wrote a story where Tommy's Green Ranger powers were drained by Rita Repulsa, forcing Zordon to grant him a new set of powers as the White Ranger, with footage of Kōshinsei the Fang Ranger from ''Series/GoseiSentaiDairanger'' cleverly spliced in to make it look like he and the Green Ranger were the same person. Luckily for the producers, this fit Tommy's HeelFaceTurn story arc perfectly: it became well-established that the Green Ranger was his SuperpoweredEvilSide created by Rita, with the White Ranger as his [[EvilCounterpart Good Counterpart]] created by Zordon.
** Things smoothed out considerably after the producers took a leap of faith after three years and rebranded the show as ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' and started using new costumes and stock footage from ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger''. The tradition of annually rebranding ''Power Rangers'' and giving the Rangers new costumes is well-established today, but it was considered a pretty big risk in 1996 since it meant abandoning the phenomenally successful formula that was the original ''Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers''.
** When ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' began its run, using stock footage from ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger'' for the battle sequences, the producers ran into a new problem. After putting so much effort into keeping the Rangers at six members so that they could keep the BreakoutCharacter Tommy as part of the team (see above), now they had to bring the team back down to five members since ''Ohranger'' began with just five Rangers. Combined with harassment that David Yost faced from the production crew when he came out as gay, culminating in him leaving the show, this led to Billy the Blue Ranger--the only remaining member of the original five Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers--voluntarily retiring from active Ranger duty to become the team's MissionControl and tech support, with the explanation that the mystical Zeo crystal only had enough energy to power five Rangers. It was an unavoidable difficulty, but it went a long way towards making ''Zeo'' feel like the EndOfAnEra. Tellingly, when ''Zeo'' eventually [[TheBusCameBack brought back]] Jason as the Gold Ranger (the second SixthRanger in the franchise's history), they actually bothered to write him out before the season finale so that they wouldn't run into the same problem in the next season.
** In ''Series/PowerRangersLostGalaxy'', Valerie Vernon was diagnosed with leukemia and had to leave the show. Since the premise gave limited opportunities to have her character Kendrix the Pink Ranger PutOnABus (it was set on a space colony), they decided to have her go out in a HeroicSacrifice, leading to one of the few instances in the history of the show where a Ranger or one of their allies is killed in action. In turn, casting her replacement had its own effects on the plot; when plans to bring back the previous season's Pink Ranger fell through, they instead had last season's redeemed BigBad return as the new Pink Ranger and go through a redemption arc.
** The reliance on Sentai footage affected ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce'' in a more negative way. It was originally planned to involve a lot more time travel, with the rangers jumping to different locations and time periods in different episodes. However they [[DidntThinkThisThrough then realised]] that every single Giant Monster vs. Megazord fight in the series was set within the same city and landscape, which severely limited the locations they could have the MonsterOfTheWeek appear in. This then led to the infamous intro with plenty of shots of different eras and dress styles being an outright lie, as most of this came from a single episode that was set in a movie studio, with that week's monster being a reality-warping director that sent each ranger to a different movie scene.
** In ''Series/PowerRangersSamurai'', Creator/EkaDarville had joined a union since his stint as Ranger Red in ''Series/PowerRangersRPM''. The producers circumvented this issue by having Ranger Red appear in morphed form, [[HandWave handwaving]] an excuse for why he prefers to not unmorph and had Eka Darville provide voice-over work under a pseudonym. This played perfectly into the plot of the Samurai team being distrusful of him.
** ''Series/PowerRangersMegaforce'' was set to be the franchise's 20th anniversary, and Super Sentai had just recently celebrated its own 35th anniversary with ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger''. However, the contract Saban had signed with Toei stipulated that they had to adapt every Sentai series in sequence[[note]]Seasons 2 and 3 of ''Mighty [=Morphin'=]'' used some costumes and elements from ''Series/GoseiSentaiDairanger'' and ''Series/NinjaSentaiKakuranger'', but the lion's share of their footage was skipped entirely[[/note]], so they had to go through ''Series/TensouSentaiGoseiger'' before they could touch ''Gokaiger''. On the other hand, their contract with Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} stipulated that each series had to be divided into two separate seasons of 20 episodes each. Saban used these two restrictions in concert by adapting '''both''' ''Goseiger'' and ''Gokaiger'' in the same series, using the split-season format to justify bringing in new costumes, villains, and a plotline designed to allow for veteran Rangers to cameo.
** ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' differed from its source material ''Series/EngineSentaiGoonger'' in a number of ways, most prominently by having its BigBad Venjix be a sentient computer virus[[note]]whereas ''Go-Onger''[='s=] villains were mechanical aliens who fed on pollution[[/note]]; the season also ended with the implication that Venjix survived the final battle by downloading himself into the Red Ranger's Morpher. Most fans assumed this SequelHook [[LeftHanging would never be resolved]] (in part due to the franchise changing ownership twice), but when ''Series/TokumeiSentaiGobusters'' likewise featured a villainous computer virus, the writers seized the opportunity and [[CompositeCharacter had "Evox" turn out to be Venjix in a new form]], which not only resolved the dangling plot thread but also helped tie the season more tightly to previous shows, even bringing ''RPM''[='s=] mentor Doctor K in the final arc and help the Beast Morphers team defeat their common enemy once and for all.
* ''Series/{{Riverdale}}'': Archie has a broken hand in the Season 1 finale and throughout Season 2. This is because KJ Apa actually broke his hand while filming the S1 finale scene where Archie punched through the icy lake, and InUniverse the hand broke in the same incident.
* ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'': [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia) and the first season featured three Kiwis alongside seven Aussies.
* ''Series/{{Snowpiercer}}'': The influenza epidemic that hits the train off-screen in the six-month time skip between Seasons 2 and 3 was written in to explain the absence of several actors who couldn't resume shooting due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting restrictions on travelling. As such, both Last Australians, Mama Grandé, and Dr. Headwood have died of influenza by the Season 3 premiere.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': TOS is absolutely made of this trope.
*** An extremely low budget resulted in the invention of many modern sci-fi tropes; things such as deflector shields (thought up because producers and creators couldn't afford to create new models of a damaged ''Enterprise'' every time they did a space battle), transporters (because they couldn't create and film shuttle landings constantly), RubberForeheadAliens (makeup technology was poor in the 1960s, and the show's creators had to scrounge), and even (according to CommonKnowledge[[note]]It was certainly the most famous one, which is why it took a fair bit of research to discover [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss it was the sixth of its kind]][[/note]]) the first interracial kiss shown on television (actors Creator/WilliamShatner and Creator/NichelleNichols were ordered to film an alternate version where they don't, but deliberately sabotaged every take to drain the budget). And that's not even mentioning things not affected by budgets, such as cloaking devices and hyposprays.
*** Inverted with the flat forehead Klingons. Because of low budget, Klingons only had a mostly ethnic makeup in the original series. In the movies and later series, which had better budgets and better makeup technology, they obviously had the ridged foreheads. In ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'', a {{Prequel}} to the Original Series, they actually introduced a storyline to explain the change.
*** Played straight with the model used to depict Romulan Warbirds in the original series. The designer apparently wrecked the model after filming its first appearance, and there wasn't time to fix it or come up with a new one, so they used the Klingon Warship's model instead. This led to the conclusion that Klingons and Romulans had formed an alliance, with warships sent over to the Romulans and cloaking devices sent to the Klingons. Consequences of this action influenced the storyline of the entire franchise forever.
*** The hypospray, a device for injecting medicine without breaking the skin, was put into the Original series since NBC regulations at the time forbade the showing of needles for drugs on-screen.
*** Many, many episodes were conceived simply because they they had access to sets and props from ''other'' television shows, allowing them to do stories set on alien worlds that coincidentally resembled periods of human history. Examples include: [[Recap/StarTrekS1E8Miri "Miri"]], [[Recap/StarTrekS2E21PatternsOfForce "Patterns of Force"]], [[Recap/StarTrekS2E17APieceOfTheAction "A Piece of the Action"]], and [[Recap/StarTrekS2E25BreadAndCircuses "Bread and Circuses"]].
*** The plot of "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E11TheMenageriePartI The Menagerie]]" was written so that the showrunners could repurpose footage from the original series pilot "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage The Cage]]" (which featured a substantially different ''Enterprise'' crew) by making a direct {{sequel}} to its plot and [[{{Retcon}} retroactively declaring]] that it took place prior to the events of the first season. But since the showrunners couldn't get actor Creator/JeffreyHunter to reprise his role as Captain Christopher Pike from "The Cage", the story included the revelation that Pike had been injured in a radiation leak since the events of "The Cage", leaving him horribly disfigured and unable to speak--allowing him to be [[FakeShemp played by a different actor]] wearing prosthetics, who didn't need to speak. After that, it became well-established that Pike was the captain of the ''Enterprise'' before Kirk.
** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'':
*** Jadzia Dax was a "joined species," an alien who was actually two entities sharing one body. Both entities (Jadzia, the "host," and Dax, the "symbiont") were intended to remain on the show for the entire run, but actress Creator/TerryFarrell decided to leave the show at the end of its penultimate season. So the writers killed off Jadzia, [[TheNthDoctor but kept Dax, transplanting the symbiont into a new host, Ezri]] (Nicole De Boer). The suddenness of Jadzia's death and Ezri's arrival worked greatly into the storyline, with Ezri's main conflict being her having to form new relationships with people who'd already been her (Dax's) friends--and, in Worf's case, husband.
*** During the planning for a revisitation of a classic ''TOS'' episode, the producers met in a pizza parlor to discuss which episode it would be. At this point, one of them noticed that Charlie Brill, who had played the villain in "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles The Trouble With Tribbles]]", was in the parlor with them, which settled the matter. Brill does reappear in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E06TrialsAndTribbleations Trials and Tribble-ations]]", as the same character as before, and triggers the revisitation by using TimeTravel to MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight.
---->'''Ira Steven Behr:''' "It shows that God is a ''Deep Space 9'' fan."
*** Creator/NanaVisitor got pregnant. The writers didn't like the idea of Kira having a baby with her lover Vedek Bareil, so Kira became an emergency surrogate mother for another character, Keiko O'Brien. Amusingly, this one overlaps with RealitySubtext: she had the baby with her then-husband Creator/AlexanderSiddig, who plays [[TheMedic station physician]] Dr. Julian Bashir; in-universe, Bashir is the one who performs the fetal transplant, and Kira openly grouses at him for putting her body through hell.
*** ''[=DS9=]'' pretty much ran on this trope, to the point that "make it a virtue" was a behind-the-scenes CatchPhrase.
---->'''Ira Steven Behr:''' Make it a virtue! Every time we got stuck and something wasn't working, we'd say, "let's make it a virtue!" We should have had T-shirts made up.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' didn't do so well its first three seasons, coming off as a re-hash of previous ''Star Trek'' incarnations. In a last-ditch effort to save the show from cancellation, the writers created [[MsFanservice Seven of Nine]], whose tight suit would hopefully keep ratings afloat. But a combination of juicy writing material and a superb acting performance from Creator/JeriRyan resulted in her becoming a BreakoutCharacter. She also brought along plotlines that gave the show a voice of its own to distinguish itself from the other ''Star Trek'' spinoffs (a focus on family and humanity) and brought in some much-needed villains that the audience could take seriously, the Borg. Her catsuit wound up being little more than an added bonus for male viewers, and a source of humor for less serious episodes.
*** During Season 5, the set of the bridge was damaged after a fire, so while it was repaired, they quickly assembled a script that allowed most of the action to take place away from the bridge, "Bride Of Chaotica!", a holodeck story that was a GenreThrowback to sci-fi films of the 1930s such as ''[[Film/FlashGordonSerial Flash Gordon]]'' and ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers''.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'':
** The third season's plotline of Dean being condemned to Hell was originally planned to be resolved by Sam learning how to use his demonic powers to rescue him. However, the 2007-08 WGA strike occurred during the third season's production, forcing the season to be cut short with no time to properly build up Sam's powers beforehand. The showrunners thus had to come up with an alternative way to get Dean out of Hell. Their solution? Have Dean be rescued by an angel named Castiel and start introducing angel mythology during the fourth season to plausibly explain why an angel would be interested in Dean's fate. That's right; the series' BreakoutCharacter, the resulting ''legendary'' HoYay between Dean and Castiel, and the entirety of the angel lore that eventually took over the plot exists solely because of a writers' strike.
** Dean's BigEater tendencies came about because Creator/JensenAckles improvised a moment where he swiped food during a funeral. The writers decided that this would mesh well with his backstory of constantly having to live and the move and thus valuing free food wherever he could find it, turning it from a single funny moment to an outright character trait - to the point that when Dean ''doesn't'' eat something, it's a sign that [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness something is seriously wrong]].
* ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'':
** The subplot in the first few episodes in which Cromartie, the main Terminator pursuing the Connors, gets blown up and has to rebuild himself with a different face (as seen in the page image for TheNthDoctor), was introduced because Creator/GarretDillahunt, who the showrunners wanted for the role, had a scheduling conflict for the pilot. Cromartie's original "face" was played for one episode by Owain Yeoman.
** The first season finale originally was going to have a massive fight scene between the FBI SWAT team and Cromartie. When the budget turned out to be too low for it, the writing team got creative. This resulted in a [[NightmareFuel chilling,]] [[NothingIsScarier minimalistic]] sequence where Cromartie slaughters the FBI agents off-screen and tosses their bodies into the hotel swimming pool, seen from a point of view at the bottom of the pool. All while Music/JohnnyCash's "[[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic When The Man Comes Around]]" plays.
* ''Series/WandaVision'':
** In the final episode, the townspeople confront Wanda after Agatha "wakes them up," forcing Wanda to see just how much mental pain she was inflicting on them by making them act out roles in her sitcom fantasies. Originally, they were going to swarm her like zombies and attack her, but this was dropped due to COVID-19 filming delays. Jac Schaeffer found this change to be more psychologically compelling as it gave the residents more of a voice.
** Darcy's incredibly brief role in the last episode is also a product of the COVID-19 delays. Creator/KatDennings couldn't attend the new filming dates, the one scene she had already filmed[[note]]a setpiece where Monica, Darcy, Billy, Tommy, and "Fietro"/Ralph Bohner try to steal the Darkhold from Agatha's house and have to fight off her pet rabbit, Senor Scratchy[[/note]] wasn't being used, and they needed Darcy to have some kind of role in the story's resolution rather than [[OffscreenInertia be left hanging]] since her last scene in Episode 7 was Vision abandoning her while she was stuck in an eternal traffic jam. So her brief appearance is limited to her ramming her vehicle into Hayward's car to stop him from escaping, then saying her one line (which Dennings filmed in front of a bluescreen), then skips out on the debriefing afterwards.
* Some of the production staff of ''Series/TheWestWing'' have claimed that the show's ending was rewritten due to the sudden death of Creator/JohnSpencer (Leo [=McGarry=]), although series creator Creator/AaronSorkin [[GodNeverSaidThat has disputed this]]. Supposedly, the final season's presidential election storyline was originally going to end with Arnold Vinick winning--but when Spencer's death forced the writers to [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim kill off Leo]] (who was Matthew Santos' running mate), they decided to have Santos win instead, since it would have been [[DownerEnding much too depressing]] for Santos to lose both Leo and the election.
* Originally, the puzzle board for ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' was intended to be entirely automatic, much like the board on the original ''Series/{{Concentration}}''. However, the set designers didn't have time to finish building it before they started taping the pilot, so the board was altered to have each letter be turned manually by a LovelyAssistant (originally Susan Stafford from 1975-82, then the far more iconic Vanna White from 1982 onward). The mechanical board was replaced with a computerized set of CRT monitors in 1997, but White stayed.
** The monitors (which had moved well on to flatscreens) also allowed for a special Disney-themed week in 2019 where Vanna White had to take on hosting duties, due to Pat Sajak having to go to the hospital for emergency surgery. Minnie Mouse (the mascot theme-park-character version) took Vanna's place at the puzzle board, and "Disney magic" (the producers behind the scenes with the electronic components) allowed her to reveal the letters without touching the board.
* ''Series/TheWire'':
** One brief scene in Season 2 featured a number of neighborhood kids playing cops and robbers, with one kid declaring "It's my turn to be Omar!" Fast forward a few years, and that same kid, now given the name Kenard, appears again in Season 4 and in Season 5 [[spoiler:assassinates Omar after seeing him hobbling on crutches and being disappointed at how the legend appears in person]]. Creator/DennisLehane revealed in an interview that this was actually a total coincidence and the producers had no idea the same actor had been cast for both roles until it was pointed out to them after the episode aired. In this case, it resulted from a lower budget than previous seasons that caused them to have to call up actors who'd worked for them previously instead of casting brand new ones but looked like an intentional case of {{Foreshadowing}}.
** Minor supporting actors Robert Colesberry (Detective Ray Cole) and Richard [=DeAngelis=] (Colonel Raymond Foerster) both unexpectedly died during production, leading the writers to [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim write in the deaths of their characters]]. [[note]] Colesberry died of complications from heart surgery, and [=DeAngelis=] succumbed to cancer while undergoing treatment[[/note]] They got in-universe funerals both times, with the police officers throwing a traditional [[IrishCop Irish wake]], and Landsman delivering a eulogy to the tune of "Body of an American". This ended up influencing the series finale: [[spoiler: when Jimmy [=McNulty=] is thrown off the force in the final episode, his co-workers jokingly throw him a wake to celebrate the death of his career, complete with Landsman delivering a "eulogy" while "Body of an American" plays]].
** [=McNulty=] (temporarily) leaves the Major Crimes Unit to become a beat cop at the end of Season 3 when he finds himself struggling to find a new purpose following [[spoiler:the death of Stringer Bell]], resulting in him being OutOfFocus for most of Season 4. In RealLife, Creator/DominicWest requested that the showrunners reduce his role in Season 4 so that he could spend more time with his family.
* The elaborate, layered MythArc on ''Series/TheXFiles,'' which would go on to influence the MythArc structure of dozens of other shows, only exists because Creator/ChrisCarter had to find some plot-relevant way to write Creator/GillianAnderson out of the show for maternity leave. WordOfGod says the MythArc was not planned and the BigBad of the series, the Cigarette Smoking Man, was, until then, just an "extra leaning on a shelf."
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* Some TV shows do "{{Bottle Episode}}s" due to budget limitations. Some classic ones in ''Series/{{Friends}}'' include "The One With the Blackout" (which was part of a NBC Thursday Night Crossover where all the New York shows, save ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' had to deal with the effects of said blackout, something which director James Burrows admitted they used to make an episode on the cheap), and "The One Where No One Is Ready".
* In the same vein, some "{{Lower Deck Episode}}s" are done when the lead actors in a show's cast are occupied filming one episode, forcing the production staff to do another episode focusing on minor or original characters in order to stay on schedule. ''Series/DoctorWho'''s "Doctor-lite episodes", in which the Doctor and his Companion generally only have a few minutes of screen time, are a good example.
* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'':
** When the show was revived by Creator/{{Netflix}} in 2013, the showrunners had to work with a notably smaller budget, which meant that many of the signature comedic setpieces from the original three seasons (the banana stand, the model home, the stair car, etc.) had to be reimagined, scaled back, or left out entirely. Among other things: the banana stand is implied to have gone out of business, the Sudden Valley development is finally finished (only to wind up [[GhostTown abandoned]] after the housing market crash), and Michael sells the stair car and gets a job driving a Google Maps camera car instead. But since Season 4 is set [[SequelGap seven years]] after the first three seasons, this ends up feeling pretty appropriate, contributing the to general sense that [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore nothing in the Bluths' lives in the same anymore]].
** Season 4 also heavily changed the show's format into episodes [[ADayInTheLimelight heavily focusing on individual Bluths]] and heavily downplaying the usual interactions between the entire family. This was because, in the years between the original show and the revival, the vast majority of the cast's careers massively blew up (in most cases ''[[StarMakingRole because]]'' of the show), and thus it became next to impossible to get their schedules to align and have them all present on set at any given time.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' had the commander of the space station, Jeffrey Sinclair, played by Michael O'Hare, permanently replaced by John Sheridan at the beginning of the second season. This made some important overall changes to the overarching plot of the show since Sheridan had a very different personality and background. Originally it was hinted that this had been planned all along, but after O'Hare's death, it was revealed that during the course of the season he had been suffering from increasingly severe mental illness, which finally made it impossible for him to continue working.
* ''Series/BetterCallSaul'': Much like [[Series/BreakingBad its parent show]], the same [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants "write as you go along"]] approach was utilized.
** The very first episode was originally supposed to end with the reveal that the skateboarders Jimmy is working with accidentally targeted Howard instead of their target. However, the writers essentially asked themselves who the worst possible person they could've targeted would be, and thus they changed it from Howard to Tuco's grandma. This introduces the cartel into the storyline much earlier than originally planned, bringing in both the Salamancas and Nacho Varga immediately.
** The first few episodes of season 1 were filmed before the writers decided that Chuck had potential as a villain, so Creator/MichaelMcKean spent the first four episodes believing that Chuck genuinely believed in Jimmy's potential as a lawyer and acting accordingly. This makes the reveal that Chuck secretly despises Jimmy come out of absolute nowhere and add more shock value to the twist. The twist also completely changed Howard Hamlin's motivation retroactively, and thus he became more of a {{foil}} to Jimmy rather than an antagonist.
** The ColdOpen for the episode "Hero" was essentially tacked on at the last minute when the final script of the episode was still too short, but its addition worked perfectly for setting up Jimmy's past in Cicero and his relationship with his buddy Marco that would eventually be explored further in "Marco".
** Kim Wexler was originally going to be far more straight-laced and moral than Jimmy, to the point of potentially serving as his genuine MoralityPet, but Creator/RheaSeehorn [[CharacterisationClickMoment added in a smirk]] to some of Jimmy's antics early in season one. This small decision completely changed Kim's character for the rest of the show and turned the two of them into a genuine partnership, rather than her going along with him grudgingly.
** The flashback scene from "Inflatable" featuring a young Jimmy and his father in the convenience store was originally meant to be in season one, but it ultimately got shelved for time. This meant that when Chuck eventually told Kim the story of how Jimmy would steal from the till during season 2, they were able to put it there instead and prove that while Chuck might be jealous and petty, [[JerkassHasAPoint he's not necessarily wrong about Jimmy either]].
** The Season 1 finale was written before they had any idea whether or not they would be renewed, which is why Jimmy seems to fully descend into the Saul Goodman persona at the end of the season. When they did get renewed, they realized they had more time to play with Jimmy before he fell completely, so Season 2 features him dialing back and rationalizing his brief episode as due to his grief for Marco's death.
** Lalo's introduction took so long because Gilligan and Gould kept butting heads over whether or not to add him; Gould wanted to put him in as early as season one, while Gilligan didn't want him at ''all'' and just wanted him to remain a CrypticBackgroundReference. It wasn't until Creator/TonyDalton signed on that Vince was won over, so Lalo finally enters the show just after Hector's stroke and becomes the BigBad within three episodes.
** Gene's phone call to Ed the Vacuum Repair Guy was originally meant to be a one-sided phone call, with only Gene's side being shown. However, when Creator/RobertForster came back for ''Film/ElCamino'', the crew decided to get him back in the role while they had him around, so the other side of the call was added. This was incredibly fortuitous, as Forster tragically passed away in between filming and release, meaning this scene is his last performance ever.
** Despite Hank Schrader having many opportunities for a cameo appearance across the first four seasons, he never actually appeared because Creator/DeanNorris was completely uninterested in returning, feeling that Hank's story had already been completed; additionally, Peter Gould didn't feel comfortable writing a part for Hank after his creator, Vince Gilligan, had left the writer's room for the show. Both eventually came around to the idea of a return in time for the filming of season 5, and thus we get a multi-episode arc showing how Krazy-8 became his snitch.
** In Season 5, the fixer Saul uses to get some dirt on Kevin Wachtell is Mr. X, a fixer played by Creator/StevenOgg who had previously appeared in season 1 as a hired goon that Mike got into an altercation with. This was meant to be the re-introduction of Creator/BillBurr as Patrick Kuby, but Burr was unavailable for filming due to commitments, necessitating the re-use of Ogg.
** Season 6 was heavily affected by both COVID-19 restrictions as well as Bob Odenkirk's near-fatal heart attack. The restrictions brought filming to a halt, and even when they returned, Laura Fraser was unable to return as Lydia Rodarte-Quale despite a planned appearance from her, and Odenkirk's heart attack halted filming once more and necessitated splitting the season into two. The result is that [[spoiler:Howard's execution at the end of "Plan and Execution" while Jimmy and Kim watch]] became one of the show's most legendary cliffhangers across its entire run, as fans had to wait over a month to see what happened next.
** The revelation that Howard is a triathlete [[spoiler:from the pictures at his memorial]] came about purely because Creator/PatrickFabian posts a lot of pictures of himself doing various athletic activities on his Instagram account and the crew thought it'd be a fun detail to throw in.
** For [[spoiler:Walt and Jesse's cameo in the episode "[[Recap/BetterCallSaulS6E11BreakingBad Breaking Bad]]", the crew wanted the new scene to feature two things: they wanted to have Lalo mentioned somehow, and they needed a scene where they could cover up Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul's aging. The result is the cameo taking place just after the two kidnap Saul in the desert, as it's set at night, Walt and Jesse are wearing ski masks (which also covers up Cranston's unshaved head), and Jesse asks about Lalo because Saul had just mentioned him during the original scene]].
* The TearJerker ending to the final episode of ''[[Series/{{Blackadder}} Blackadder Goes Forth]]'', in which the main characters go into the attack but are then obscured by a huge explosion before the image fades to a field of poppies, had to be thrown together in post-production. There was limited filming time, and the director had no experience with action scenes, and there was no money for a stunt co-ordinator in the budget. The resulting footage of Blackadder, George, Baldrick and Darling charging through No Man's Land while shells blew up around them looked distinctly underwhelming (they just fell over and lay on the ground looking not very dead), but the explosion effects were also so terrifying for the actors that Creator/RowanAtkinson refused point-blank to do any retakes. The footage was deemed unusable, but while the film editor was cycling through it and trying to figure out what to do, he realized that slowing it down made it far more effective. As a result, they re-edited the footage, slowed it down, dropped the audio out and replaced it with the theme music played as a LonelyPianoPiece, and then at the moment, a large explosion obscured the actors from view, crossfaded to a still photograph of some poppies. The result was the most hard-earned DownerEnding to any situation comedy.
* ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'':
** Season 1 ends with the Commodore deciding to go against Nucky. The plan for Season 2 was to give him a large part as the year's BigBad; however, Dabney Coleman was diagnosed with throat cancer shortly before filming, and the treatment rendered him unable to speak for long periods of time. The season was then retooled with the Commodore being relegated after [[spoiler: suffering a paralyzing stroke]] and Jimmy stepping up as the new leader of the conspiracy, a position for which [[TheChainsOfCommanding he was not prepared]] [[EpicFail in the least]]. This, in turn, had other, long-reaching repercussions: [[spoiler:the writers found that they couldn't possibly have Nucky pardoning Jimmy if he was the one that tried to overthrow and then kill him, and so the season ended with Nucky killing Jimmy and the show sacrificing its second-billed star, Creator/MichaelPitt, after only two years]].
** In Season 3, [[spoiler:Owen Sleater]] is killed during an attempt to murder Joe Masseria in a public bath. However, the day before shooting was to begin, a piece of plaster from the ceiling fell and they had to delay the scene for security reasons. Meanwhile, a preliminary cut of the episode with every other scene included was completed, and showrunner Terence Winter realized that the lack of the fight scene made the episode ''better'', since [[spoiler: now the viewers would learn that the hit had failed at the same time as the other characters: when Masseria sends [[DeadMansChest Owen's body to them in a box]]]].
* ''Series/BreakingBad'': The series is legendary from a writing standpoint because, with the exception of Season 2, [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants it was all written as they went along]]:
** The series was envisioned as taking place in San Bernardino, California, with the crew simply choosing to shoot in Albuquerque because the city offered incredible incentives for filmmakers who worked there. After realizing how much of a pain it was to try to make New Mexico look like California, the crew decided to just have the show be set in Albuquerque, allowing them to make the now-iconic desert scenes.
** Krazy-8 was originally supposed to actually die in the pilot instead of being revealed to be NotQuiteDead, but the crew liked working with his actor Max Arciniega so much that they decided to keep him around a little longer. As a result, Walt killing him becomes a far more premeditated act, changing it from self-defense to admittedly justifiable but premeditated murder.
** The writer's strike cut the first season unexpectedly short with only eight episodes instead of the planned thirteen. Fans tend to rejoice for this, because if Season 1 had ended the way that Creator/VinceGilligan originally planned, [[{{Deuteragonist}} Jesse]] would've been killed at the end of it; the space between Seasons 1 and 2 made Vince decide that Creator/AaronPaul had too much potential, and Jesse was ultimately spared. Additionally, while he didn't go into too much detail, Vince revealed in 2018 that the writers strike ultimately spared [[HeroAntagonist Hank's]] life as well, [[spoiler:at least until season 5B]].
** Tuco was originally meant to last much longer as a BigBad, but ultimately Creator/RaymondCruz was too uncomfortable with the character to play him for too long. As a result, Hank kills him via BoomHeadshot early in Season 2, freeing up the story for Gus to come along as well as creating the storyline of Hank recovering from killing someone (the storyline that he would then carry for the rest of the show).
** Saul Goodman's few BeneathTheMask moments showing a lack of confidence in his actions and even some [[EvenEvilHasStandards hidden moral standards]] were largely added by Creator/BobOdenkirk, who was a big source of ideas for Saul's character across the show. These moments, though small and hidden across the series, added up quickly, and they eventually paved the way for him to headline the prequel show.
** Season 2 has a subplot where Jesse gets kicked out of his late aunt's house, which happened because the house got new owners who didn't give them permission to film there. As a result, the season premiere featured a set of the kitchen with the RV blocking the view out the window, before they could work up to this development. They would regain permission prior to the filming of season 3, so they wrote a subplot of Jesse using Saul to buy the house back from his parents.
** Gus Fring was originally meant to be a one-episode character, but Creator/GiancarloEsposito decided to play the character "as though he had a secret." It got the viewers' attention, so he was brought back for a second episode, which solidified him as an EnsembleDarkHorse -- and gave Esposito all the cards when he told executives that he would only come back if he were made a main character. And thus, one of the most iconic television antagonists of all time was born.
** In the Season 2 finale "[[Recap/BreakingBadS2E13ABQ ABQ]]", the original plans were for Saul Goodman to clean up the scene after Jesse's girlfriend Jane overdoses. Creator/BobOdenkirk was unavailable for filming because of a commitment to appear in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'', so they brought in Creator/JonathanBanks as Mike Ehrmantraut, because they admired his work in ''Series/{{Wiseguy}}''. Banks himself thought he would come on and do the role for just that episode, but had been impressed by working alongside Aaron Paul in that scene, and with the overall direction that Vince Gilligan had given for the episode once it aired, so Mike, like Gus, also became a more fleshed out character, and co-lead for ''Series/BetterCallSaul''. [[note]]The creators admitted that, in hindsight, this would have been incredibly OutOfCharacter for Saul anyway, and as such greatly approved of the change even before Banks signed on for more.[[/note]]
** The Season 4 finale "[[Recap/BreakingBadS4E13FaceOff Face Off]]" ends on a [[SeriesFauxnale very conclusive note]], with [[spoiler:Hector and Gus dead, the ambiguity of Walt staying in the meth trade, and TheReveal that Walt poisoned Brock]], because they ultimately weren't sure whether or not they were going to get renewed for another season. When they did get renewed, they preemptively declared it the last one to avoid this problem repeating itself, leading to the much beloved Season 5 and record-breaking finale.
** One of the saddest moments came about by pure coincidence. In "[[Recap/BreakingBadS5E14Ozymandias Ozymandias]]", [[spoiler:Walt kidnaps his daughter and is changing her in a gas station bathroom. When he tries to get her to say "dada", she instead says ''mama'', causing Walt to realize that even his infant daughter had turned against him and make him leave her at a fire station]]. The scene was originally meant to have Walt make this realization on his own, but Holly's actress saw her mother just off camera and called out for her; Creator/BryanCranston stayed in character and rolled with it, creating one of the harshest scenes in the entire show.
** During Saul's rant in "Granite State", he says that the best case scenario for him is managing a Cinnabon in Omaha - which, as ''Better Call Saul'' indicates, ends up being his fate. Originally, he was going to say Hot Topic instead (and thus would likely have been working there in ''BCS''), but when the crew discovered that Hot Topic actually sold ''Breaking Bad'' merch, they changed the store to avoid any appearance of self-promotion.
** In "[[Recap/BreakingBadS5E16Felina Felina]]", the writers struggled with [[spoiler:how Walt would ultimately get his money to his family]], which ended up being solved by, of all things, a fan letter. A fan wrote to Vince Gilligan asking [[spoiler:what would happen to Gretchen and Elliot Schwartz, characters who (by that point) hadn't appeared since Season 2, and that gave them the idea to have Walt blackmail them into giving his son the money]].
* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'':
** Prue's telekinetic powers evolved from being directed by her squinting her eyes to being directed through her hands. This was done in order to save money on film used to zoom in on Creator/ShannenDoherty's eyes when Prue uses her powers.
** The plot of Phoebe losing her active powers during season six was set up to save the money needed for the wire work used to make her levitate.
** In the second season, it was revealed that the sisters' mother, Patty, had a forbidden romance with her Whitelighter, setting up a parallel to Piper and Leo's relationship. While nothing else was meant to come of this development, it came in mighty handy when Creator/ShannenDoherty left. The writers needed to replace Prue with a new sister, and hey, ''that's'' [[ActorLeavesCharacterDies a convenient excuse]] for why Patty might have kept her a secret...
** Demons becoming less monstrous and more human-looking as the series progressed was done to save on CG and make up effects, and explained as Upper Level Demons (whom the Sisters faced more of as they grew as Witches) looking more human to better blend in.
* ''Series/{{Community}}'':
** Jeff and Annie's WillTheyOrWontThey dynamic wasn't initially planned as part of the show, but was written in after the showrunners realized that Creator/JoelMcHale had much better chemistry with Creator/AlisonBrie than he did with Creator/GillianJacobs (Britta), who was originally supposed to be his primary love interest. Conversely: the writers never planned on Britta and Troy becoming a couple, but wrote it in when they realized that Creator/DonaldGlover had better chemistry with Gillian Jacobs than he did with Alison Brie (who was originally supposed to be ''his'' primary love interest).
** It's fairly well-documented that [[spoiler:[[KilledOffForReal Pierce's death]]]] happened due to Creator/ChevyChase's {{creative differences}} with creator Creator/DanHarmon, which ultimately led to him leaving the show after Season 4. Similarly: [[spoiler:Star-Burns' [[FakingTheDead (apparent)]] death]] late in Season 3 happened because Creator/DinoStamatopoulos quit the show in protest after Harmon was fired by NBC, and refused to return unless he was reinstated; that's also why [[spoiler:Star-Burns is revealed to be alive after all]] in Season 5, which was the season where Harmon returned.
** The writers initially planned for Troy and Pierce to become best friends over the course of the show, establishing an [[OddFriendship odd]] IntergenerationalFriendship between the two. This idea was scrapped when it turned out that Creator/ChevyChase didn't get along with most of his castmates. But when Creator/DonaldGlover and Creator/DannyPudi unexpectedly hit it off and became very good friends off-set, the writers decided to make Troy and Abed best friends instead--leading to one of the most memorable and iconic relationships on the show.
** The Season 1 episode "Modern Warfare" (the first "paintball episode") was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed episodes in the show's history, but it was also a production nightmare--since it left the entire set spattered with paint, which had to be cleaned up before the rest of Season 1 could be filmed. To avoid running into the same problem with the next paintball episode, the showrunners decided to make it the ''finale'' of Season 2, allowing them to [[TrashTheSet drench the set with as much paint as they wanted]]. The result was "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More", an epic two-parter about a full-on paintball ''war'' between Greendale and City College, which is widely considered to be the show's best season finale.
* ''Series/TheCrystalMaze'' was intended to be a version of ''Series/FortBoyard'' for the UK. When the fort proved unavailable, Channel 4 asked their set designer if he could construct a similar setting. He replied he could, but it would be just as easy to have multiple zones with different themes. They liked the idea.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The TARDIS was originally going to be a big, magnificent vehicle. Except the show lacked the funding, so they said that it can disguise itself as anything it wants. Then ''that'' turned out to be too expensive, so it stayed as a police call box with a tongue-in-cheek {{handwave}} that the chameleon circuit feature [[TheAllegedCar was broken]]. "They said 'we've got a police box from ''Series/DixonOfDockGreen'' -- let's make a box that's bigger on the inside', and thus was born the single best idea in all of fiction," -- Creator/StevenMoffat.[[note]]Steven Moffat is mistaken -- the Police Box prop was built especially for ''Doctor Who'' and was not from ''Dixon of Dock Green''.[[/note]]
** In the original script of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius "The Brain of Morbius"]], Morbius's new body was cobbled together by his devoted robot servant. But it was the cheap story of the season, so they couldn't afford a robot costume as well as Morbius's body. So it was heavily rewritten to make the robot a human mad scientist (played by Creator/PhilipMadoc, resulting in a classic story).
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E4TheSontaranStratagem "The Sontaran Stratagem"]], after the scene where the Doctor uses a LogicBomb on the ATMOS device and jumps out of the car, the latter [[EveryCarIsAPinto was supposed to explode]]. Unfortunately, they didn't have the budget. So the writer decided to have [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome reality ensuing]] and have the device just fizzle out harmlessly while the Doctor looks disappointed.
** During filming of the 2009 Easter Special [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E15PlanetOfTheDead "Planet of the Dead"]], the double-decker bus used was damaged during shipping to Dubai, which was incorporated into the story (with the bus being damaged while traveling through the worm-hole to San Helios).
--->'''Creator/RussellTDavies:''' I wasn't at all worried when I saw the photographs, I just thought "Oh well, that's what happens when a bus goes through a wormhole."
** Originally, the First Doctor's regeneration into the Second was to be performed as a cliffhanger. Creator/WilliamHartnell would have his face covered by a cloak, and Episode Four of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]] would end. In the first episode of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E3ThePowerOfTheDaleks "The Power of the Daleks"]], the cloak would be removed to reveal Creator/PatrickTroughton's face. However, the vision mixer discovered that the mixing board was acting up the day of filming in a way that allowed for a controlled overexpose of the image almost to a full white screen. She and the episode's director took advantage of this, quickly called Troughton in, and made the iconic shot of William Hartnell essentially "morphing" into Patrick Troughton.
** Donna Noble's father Geoffrey Noble was originally supposed to be a supporting character in Series 4 of the new series, but he was said to have died offscreen between the events of [[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride "The Runaway Bride"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E1PartnersInCrime "Partners in Crime"]] because his actor, Howard Attfield, became too ill to continue after filming his scenes for "Partners in Crime", and [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim died of cancer]] not long after. Forced to come up with a replacement character to fill the "father figure" role with almost no notice at all, the producers hired Creator/BernardCribbins, who had just appeared as a minor character in [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned "Voyage of the Damned"]], and was retconned into being Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott.
** In a related vein: If Wilfred's role had been filled by Geoffrey, it's unlikely that the Doctor would have taken him on as a companion at the climax of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], since Geoffrey would presumably have stayed behind to comfort his wife and daughter during the Master's battle with Rassilon (whereas the aloof Wilfred, who was clearly closer with his granddaughter Donna than with her mother, had earlier bonded enough with the Tenth Doctor to accompany him during his last adventure).
** Creator/MattSmith had to shave his hair off for his role in ''Film/LostRiver'', but didn't grow it back in time to sport the Doctor's signature hairstyle, meaning he had to wear a wig over a bald-cap in "[[Recap/DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor The Time of the Doctor]]". Instead of painstakingly hiding the wig, the Doctor actually ''takes it off'' in the episode, and even uses it to [[spoiler: smuggle a TARDIS-key into the containment field]]. Once he enters the truth field and starts spouting truths whether he wants to or not, he mentions that he's wearing a wig multiple times.
*** Even better: the InUniverse-explanation for why he shaved his hair off is because [[CloudCuckooLander he got bored one day]].
** The Third Doctor had a habit of [[HoldingHands holding Jo Grant's hand]] when they ran from the monsters together, because Creator/KatyManning normally wore glasses and was BlindWithoutEm, and the first time she tried running without being guided by him she went hurtling into a tree. This became an iconic enough image that there is a CallBack to it in the first episode of the revival series, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]", in which the Doctor asking Rose to take his hand is a big deal and serves to symbolize her becoming the companion.
** The show lost budget between Season 4 and Season 5, by which time the producers had decided to concentrate on {{Horror}} and no longer had the benefit of "historicals" as cheap episodes (which could take advantage of PropRecycling and a BBC crew skilled at CostumeDrama). The result of this was the development of the "Base Under Siege" story format, iconically associated with the Second Doctor -- tightly plotted, suspenseful horror where the Doctor enters an isolated place besieged by something malevolent and helps the people within fight back against it. This format meant they barely needed to show the monster, and sometimes didn't even need a monster at all -- one story uses DeadlyGas, and another uses torrents of white foam.
* Creator/JaneLeeves' second pregnancy on ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' came at the perfect time, plot-wise, for Niles and Daphne to have a baby in the final season, just ahead of schedule enough for Daphne to give birth [[spoiler: in the finale]].
* ''Series/{{Friends}}'': During the filming of the aforementioned "The One Where No One is Ready" (see the above entry about {{Bottle Episode}}s), Matt [=LeBlanc=] dislocated his shoulder during a take of the bit where Joey and Chandler race to claim the chair in Monica's living room, forcing him to wear a sling for several weeks. Rather than delay production, the writers wrote the injury in the show by featuring an opening scene in the next episode where Joey injures himself offscreen from jumping on his bed.
* [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in an episode of Israeli sitcom ''[=HaPijamot=]'', elaborating several WhatIf cases. At the end of the episode, they show ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget’, showing Asian work immigrants playing the eponymous band, and ‘the story that would have happened if we had NoBudget at all’, showing the set with no actors.
* ''Series/TheJoeSchmoShow'' was a spoof of competition-based {{Reality Show}}s, with the concept being that the entire cast were actors who were in on the joke ''except'' for one guy: Matt Kennedy Gould, [[TheEveryman a genuine nobody]] who [[TrumanShowPlot participated in the show and assumed that all the interactions were real]]. The show was initially structured around putting him in silly and bizarre scenarios [[PointAndLaughShow to overall make him look ridiculous]], but over time, he genuinely started to form camaraderie with his fellow "contestants", becoming visibly upset when "Earl" (Franklin Dennis Jones) -- his closest friend -- was voted off, leading the producers to scramble a goofy sumo wrestling match rigged in his favor to cheer him up... which then accidentally resulted in "Dr. Pat" (a then-unknown Creator/KristenWiig) [[OnSetInjury getting injured and requiring real-life medical evacuation]], which left Matt so guilty that [[IFeelGuiltyYouTakeIt he gave the match's vacation package award to her]]. From there on out, the show ended up being further rigged in his favor and painting him in the best possible light as everyone else involved (producers, actors, and the audience at home) were too charmed by how ''likeable'' Matt was to keep up a potentially mean-spirited charade, though they still waited until the finale after he won to reveal the act (and fortunately, he ended up being a good sport about it).
* ''Franchise/KamenRider'':
** [[Series/KamenRider The original show]] famously switched main characters for nearly half its run, introducing a second Kamen Rider who took over the series as the original hero, Takeshi Hongou, went off to "fight evil overseas". As one can probably guess, this was caused by Creator/HiroshiFujioka badly breaking his leg during a stunt, forcing the emergency appearance of a second main character to keep the show going until his return. The existence of multiple Riders, however, would go on to massively shape both the rest of the show and the future of the franchise.
** ''Series/KamenRiderStronger'''s partner, Electro-Wave Human Tackle, was a FauxActionGirl who could barely handle anything more than two {{Mooks}} in most of her fights. The lack of intensity in her action scenes was due to her actress being asthmatic.[[note]]Sadly, her actress would die of a severe asthma attack years later.[[/note]]
** The titular character of ''Series/KamenRiderKiva'' is rather notorious for unlocking his SuperMode final form unusually early (episode 24, for something that normally happens in the mid-30s to early 40s) and almost entirely ignoring his previous forms from that point on. The reason was that the original Kiva suit and early upgrades, with their FashionableAsymmetry, focus on form over function, and [[ChainedByFashion chained-up]] look obtained by putting ''actual metal chains'' on the suit, were incredibly taxing on lead suit actor Seiji Takaiwa. Kiva Emperor was thus brought out earlier than usual to prevent crippling the franchise's best stuntman, with the original suit only brought back for shorter, less action-heavy scenes.
** ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'' was originally going to be set in a flooded city called Suito; but constraints of budget and technical ability made this change to Fuuto, an ecologically-friendly "Windy City" which runs on wind power. The wind turbines became an iconic image within the show, and both Double and the original ''Series/KamenRider'' have a long-standing use of the word 'Cyclone', so it's very apt, especially since ''Double'' was intended to be a partial throwback to the Shōwa era Riders.
* ''Series/TheLastOfUs2023'' relocated the events of [[VideoGame/TheLastOfUs the original video game]]'s Pittsburgh levels to Kansas City, after the crew deemed the latter easier to recreate in Calgary.
* The creators of ''Series/{{Lewis}}'' created a new pathologist character for the new series. However, then they decided they needed one more character from ''Series/InspectorMorse'' to tie the continuity together -- and it turned out that the only regular actor from ''Morse'' who wasn't dead, retired, or just plain unavailable was one Clare Holman, who had played pathologist Dr. Laura Hobson. The new pathologist character was summarily scrapped, her lines from the pilot were given to Hobson, and we got nine more years (and a delightful Lewis/Hobson romance) out of the delightfully snarky and levelheaded Laura. Nobody is sorry about this.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'':
** The original plan for the Pilot was for Jack to be a DecoyProtagonist and die at the end, alongside being played by a big-name actor (Creator/MichaelKeaton) to make it clear that AnyoneCanDie; Kate would then step up as the leader of the survivors. The producers convinced the writers not to go through with it, and Keaton didn't want to commit to a full series and dropped out; the result was Creator/MatthewFox signing on, Jack becoming the show's main character, the plane's pilot being killed in his place after giving his exposition on why rescue isn't coming, and Kate's intended story as a woman separated from her husband was given to new character Rose.
** As filming was concluding on Season 1, the crew realized that the rising tides of Oahu were eventually going to submerge the fuselage set completely, meaning that they needed a reason to get the survivors away from the fuselage permanently. They eventually settled for putting the real-world reason into the story, and thus the survivors had to move further up the beach and create a second camp to avoid a suddenly rising tide.
** In "Numbers", Hurley witnesses a man fall out of a window; several seasons later, it was revealed that Locke was paralyzed when he was pushed out of a window. The producers admitted that it would've been a fun idea to reveal that the man Hurley saw falling was actually Locke's paralyzing incident, but the timeline had already set the events three years apart from each other, so this potential connection was dropped.
** In season 2's "Two For The Road", Michael kills Ana Lucia when he moves to free "Henry Gale" from his captivity. Ana Lucia was always intended to die during the season (Creator/MichelleRodriguez had only signed on for one season from the start), which made this moment the right place to do it - however, fan reaction to her character had been pretty negative, so the producers didn't think that her death alone would have enough of a punch. Thus, Libby comes into the Hatch at the exact wrong time and startles Michael into shooting her too, with the next episode actually showing her death. This also had more consequences down the road; Creator/CynthiaWatros didn't appreciate her character getting killed off before her story could be told, and thus while the writers wanted to explore her past posthumously, most of her planned appearances fell through [[spoiler:until season six's flash-sideways timeline]].
---> '''Damon Lindeloff''': I have learned that if you kill someone off the show, they are less likely to cooperate with you.
** In the season two finale, Walt and Michael leave the Island after the latter betrays the survivors. Originally, Walt was meant to stay on the Island and have his mysterious powers actually analyzed and revealed, but Creator/MalcolmDavidKelly could only look ten years old for so long when only months were passing InUniverse, so they had to write him out earlier than anticipated. They still managed to have him come back in periods where it made sense for him to be older; in one case, it's in a vision (and the fact that he looks older is lampshaded), while the three-year TimeSkip mid-series put him at the perfect age to make sporadic appearances until the end of the show.
** In the first two seasons, the producers received complaints that the show didn't focus on any of the survivors outside of the main group, so the team introduced Nikki and Paulo, two new survivors who began chumming with the main cast basically out of nowhere. They had a multi-episode arc planned, but they were universally despised almost immediately, so the writers wrapped up their arc in "Exposé", killed them both, and moved the show on without them. The writers learned from this mistake and thus future main characters were introduced far slower rather than being shoved in right away, especially the freighter crew from season four; they kept the trend going for the future and only made Ilana and Frank main characters after they had already been on the show for quite some time.
** If it weren't for the Writer's Strike, Daniel, Charlotte, and Miles may not have been main characters in season four. They were originally meant to have their arcs concluded within a single season (though what their fates would've been if that had happened is unknown), but the writer's strike truncated season four and forced their arcs to be multi-season. Thus, they were promoted to main character status and kept it for the rest of their respective runs.
** Mr. Eko was originally meant to last far past his death in season 3, with him and Locke having a "yin and yang" style rivalry that would discuss the show's philosophical themes. However, for [[FlipFlopOfGod an unclear reason]], Creator/AdewaleAkinnuoyeAgbaje decided to quit the show early, so Eko's character arc gets wrapped up just before his death in "The Cost of Living". To keep up the philosophical conflict they wanted, Eko's role was added to Jack, creating the Jack vs. Locke philosophical battle that would then run the show for the next two seasons, [[spoiler:and would even carry over to the Man in Black after Locke died]].
** In the middle of season three, the writers began running out of ideas for flashbacks, so "Stranger in a Strange Land" focuses on the origins of Jack's shoulder tattoo; these were Matthew Fox's real tattoos, and they even have a different real-life translation from the one given in the show. An entire hour about Jack's tattoo was considered such a waste of an episode that it singlehandedly truncated the rest of the show; before this episode, ABC was willing to take the show to as much as ten seasons, but the fact that the writers straight up ran out of things to write about gave the producers the ammo they needed to negotiate it down to six.
** "Through the Looking Glass" has Jack learn that his ex-wife Sarah is pregnant. This was not originally planned, but Creator/JulieBowen was pregnant at the time and they decided to keep it in to further emphasize how much she's moved on without him.
** If season six had lasted as long as the previous seasons, Ilana would've been revealed to be [[spoiler:Jacob's daughter]], explaining why she became such a crucial member of his forces and why she seems to understand so much about the Island despite having never been there before. Unfortunately, the season's runtime got slashed to the point that it couldn't be worked in, so they solved the problem by [[spoiler:abruptly killing her off]].
** "The New Man In Charge" was largely written to finally solve some of the mysteries and plot points that fans were begging for. In particular, it finally answers the question of where the polar bears came from, and they took the opportunity to give Walt and Michael's final arcs some closure by revealing that [[spoiler:Hurley's bringing Walt to the Island to save his dad's soul, meaning that Michael won't be stuck on the Island for eternity as some had speculated]].
* The distinctive animated sequences in ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' were the result of Creator/TerryGilliam looking for a cheap and fast way to do them. As part of working under the government broadcast company BBC the production had free access to an image bank of paintings, old photographs and the like, which Gilliam then applied with a simple cut and paste method.
* The 13-episode live-action TV series about Literature/TheMoomins has the overarching plot of the king deciding that the Moomins' bohemian lifestyle doesn't fit in a modern welfare state and that they, as an "ethnic minority" need to be integrated into "normal" society. The most startling change is that he decides their noses are too big and orders them off -- which leads to one of the most memorable (and {{Nightmare Fuel}}ish) aspects of this series, namely that the actors in the Moomin suits take off the overdimensioned Moomin heads/masks they're wearing, revealing their normal human heads underneath. This is not only what the series is remembered for today but is also a pretty effective demonstration of how the Moomins' individuality is threatened by the integration process... but really, the reason behind is probably just as much that the Moomin heads were big, awkward and difficult to deal with on the set -- it's ''extremely'' clear that the actors can barely see when wearing them, leading to a lot of clumsiness and fumbling around. Removing the heads allowed the actors to move about much more freely.
* This trope is basically ''Franchise/PowerRangers''' MO. The show recycles footage from ''Franchise/SuperSentai'', so large parts of the plot are dictated by what appears in the ''Sentai'' footage (when it's not doing a straight-up adaptation, of course).
** ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' is a particularly noticeable example, since it came out when the producers were still getting used to adapting ''Super Sentai'' footage. The show turned out to be a bigger hit than anyone expected, so they had to figure out a way to keep it going after they ran out of stock footage from ''Series/KyoryuSentaiZyuranger'' for the battle sequences. Though they eventually commissioned more stock footage from Toei for Season 2, their shoestring budget still forced them to get creative with their limited footage; Season 3 featured the Rangers [[BroughtDownToNormal losing their powers]] and becoming ninjas (since they had to wear ''some'' sort of costumes for the fight scenes, and color-coded ninja robes were the only ones that the show could afford) and then getting turned into children and having a team of alien allies take over Ranger duties (so that they could replace ''Zyuranger'' stock footage with footage from ''Series/NinjaSentaiKakuranger'').
** Things also got complicated when the SixthRanger Tommy Oliver ended up becoming a BreakoutCharacter; they quickly ran out of stock footage of his Japanese counterpart Burai the Dragon Ranger, since he had rather limited screen time in ''Zyuranger'', but Tommy was far too popular to simply write out of the show. The solution? They wrote a story where Tommy's Green Ranger powers were drained by Rita Repulsa, forcing Zordon to grant him a new set of powers as the White Ranger, with footage of Kōshinsei the Fang Ranger from ''Series/GoseiSentaiDairanger'' cleverly spliced in to make it look like he and the Green Ranger were the same person. Luckily for the producers, this fit Tommy's HeelFaceTurn story arc perfectly: it became well-established that the Green Ranger was his SuperpoweredEvilSide created by Rita, with the White Ranger as his [[EvilCounterpart Good Counterpart]] created by Zordon.
** Things smoothed out considerably after the producers took a leap of faith after three years and rebranded the show as ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' and started using new costumes and stock footage from ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger''. The tradition of annually rebranding ''Power Rangers'' and giving the Rangers new costumes is well-established today, but it was considered a pretty big risk in 1996 since it meant abandoning the phenomenally successful formula that was the original ''Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers''.
** When ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' began its run, using stock footage from ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger'' for the battle sequences, the producers ran into a new problem. After putting so much effort into keeping the Rangers at six members so that they could keep the BreakoutCharacter Tommy as part of the team (see above), now they had to bring the team back down to five members since ''Ohranger'' began with just five Rangers. Combined with harassment that David Yost faced from the production crew when he came out as gay, culminating in him leaving the show, this led to Billy the Blue Ranger--the only remaining member of the original five Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers--voluntarily retiring from active Ranger duty to become the team's MissionControl and tech support, with the explanation that the mystical Zeo crystal only had enough energy to power five Rangers. It was an unavoidable difficulty, but it went a long way towards making ''Zeo'' feel like the EndOfAnEra. Tellingly, when ''Zeo'' eventually [[TheBusCameBack brought back]] Jason as the Gold Ranger (the second SixthRanger in the franchise's history), they actually bothered to write him out before the season finale so that they wouldn't run into the same problem in the next season.
** In ''Series/PowerRangersLostGalaxy'', Valerie Vernon was diagnosed with leukemia and had to leave the show. Since the premise gave limited opportunities to have her character Kendrix the Pink Ranger PutOnABus (it was set on a space colony), they decided to have her go out in a HeroicSacrifice, leading to one of the few instances in the history of the show where a Ranger or one of their allies is killed in action. In turn, casting her replacement had its own effects on the plot; when plans to bring back the previous season's Pink Ranger fell through, they instead had last season's redeemed BigBad return as the new Pink Ranger and go through a redemption arc.
** The reliance on Sentai footage affected ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce'' in a more negative way. It was originally planned to involve a lot more time travel, with the rangers jumping to different locations and time periods in different episodes. However they [[DidntThinkThisThrough then realised]] that every single Giant Monster vs. Megazord fight in the series was set within the same city and landscape, which severely limited the locations they could have the MonsterOfTheWeek appear in. This then led to the infamous intro with plenty of shots of different eras and dress styles being an outright lie, as most of this came from a single episode that was set in a movie studio, with that week's monster being a reality-warping director that sent each ranger to a different movie scene.
** In ''Series/PowerRangersSamurai'', Creator/EkaDarville had joined a union since his stint as Ranger Red in ''Series/PowerRangersRPM''. The producers circumvented this issue by having Ranger Red appear in morphed form, [[HandWave handwaving]] an excuse for why he prefers to not unmorph and had Eka Darville provide voice-over work under a pseudonym. This played perfectly into the plot of the Samurai team being distrusful of him.
** ''Series/PowerRangersMegaforce'' was set to be the franchise's 20th anniversary, and Super Sentai had just recently celebrated its own 35th anniversary with ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger''. However, the contract Saban had signed with Toei stipulated that they had to adapt every Sentai series in sequence[[note]]Seasons 2 and 3 of ''Mighty [=Morphin'=]'' used some costumes and elements from ''Series/GoseiSentaiDairanger'' and ''Series/NinjaSentaiKakuranger'', but the lion's share of their footage was skipped entirely[[/note]], so they had to go through ''Series/TensouSentaiGoseiger'' before they could touch ''Gokaiger''. On the other hand, their contract with Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} stipulated that each series had to be divided into two separate seasons of 20 episodes each. Saban used these two restrictions in concert by adapting '''both''' ''Goseiger'' and ''Gokaiger'' in the same series, using the split-season format to justify bringing in new costumes, villains, and a plotline designed to allow for veteran Rangers to cameo.
** ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' differed from its source material ''Series/EngineSentaiGoonger'' in a number of ways, most prominently by having its BigBad Venjix be a sentient computer virus[[note]]whereas ''Go-Onger''[='s=] villains were mechanical aliens who fed on pollution[[/note]]; the season also ended with the implication that Venjix survived the final battle by downloading himself into the Red Ranger's Morpher. Most fans assumed this SequelHook [[LeftHanging would never be resolved]] (in part due to the franchise changing ownership twice), but when ''Series/TokumeiSentaiGobusters'' likewise featured a villainous computer virus, the writers seized the opportunity and [[CompositeCharacter had "Evox" turn out to be Venjix in a new form]], which not only resolved the dangling plot thread but also helped tie the season more tightly to previous shows, even bringing ''RPM''[='s=] mentor Doctor K in the final arc and help the Beast Morphers team defeat their common enemy once and for all.
* ''Series/{{Riverdale}}'': Archie has a broken hand in the Season 1 finale and throughout Season 2. This is because KJ Apa actually broke his hand while filming the S1 finale scene where Archie punched through the icy lake, and InUniverse the hand broke in the same incident.
* ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'': [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic The COVID-19 lockdowns]] complicated matters for the entire franchise: forcing the Season 12 reunion and finale to be filmed via Zoom, halting production of UK Season 2 for seven months, etc. The one positive change that resulted from this involved the show's long-awaited Australian spin-off. It had to be filmed in New Zealand due to the country having fewer Covid restrictions in place, and the show responded by inviting New Zealand queens to compete as well. As a result, the show was retitled ''[=RuPaul's=] Drag Race Down Under'' (as opposed to just Australia) and the first season featured three Kiwis alongside seven Aussies.
* ''Series/{{Snowpiercer}}'': The influenza epidemic that hits the train off-screen in the six-month time skip between Seasons 2 and 3 was written in to explain the absence of several actors who couldn't resume shooting due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting restrictions on travelling. As such, both Last Australians, Mama Grandé, and Dr. Headwood have died of influenza by the Season 3 premiere.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': TOS is absolutely made of this trope.
*** An extremely low budget resulted in the invention of many modern sci-fi tropes; things such as deflector shields (thought up because producers and creators couldn't afford to create new models of a damaged ''Enterprise'' every time they did a space battle), transporters (because they couldn't create and film shuttle landings constantly), RubberForeheadAliens (makeup technology was poor in the 1960s, and the show's creators had to scrounge), and even (according to CommonKnowledge[[note]]It was certainly the most famous one, which is why it took a fair bit of research to discover [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss it was the sixth of its kind]][[/note]]) the first interracial kiss shown on television (actors Creator/WilliamShatner and Creator/NichelleNichols were ordered to film an alternate version where they don't, but deliberately sabotaged every take to drain the budget). And that's not even mentioning things not affected by budgets, such as cloaking devices and hyposprays.
*** Inverted with the flat forehead Klingons. Because of low budget, Klingons only had a mostly ethnic makeup in the original series. In the movies and later series, which had better budgets and better makeup technology, they obviously had the ridged foreheads. In ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'', a {{Prequel}} to the Original Series, they actually introduced a storyline to explain the change.
*** Played straight with the model used to depict Romulan Warbirds in the original series. The designer apparently wrecked the model after filming its first appearance, and there wasn't time to fix it or come up with a new one, so they used the Klingon Warship's model instead. This led to the conclusion that Klingons and Romulans had formed an alliance, with warships sent over to the Romulans and cloaking devices sent to the Klingons. Consequences of this action influenced the storyline of the entire franchise forever.
*** The hypospray, a device for injecting medicine without breaking the skin, was put into the Original series since NBC regulations at the time forbade the showing of needles for drugs on-screen.
*** Many, many episodes were conceived simply because they they had access to sets and props from ''other'' television shows, allowing them to do stories set on alien worlds that coincidentally resembled periods of human history. Examples include: [[Recap/StarTrekS1E8Miri "Miri"]], [[Recap/StarTrekS2E21PatternsOfForce "Patterns of Force"]], [[Recap/StarTrekS2E17APieceOfTheAction "A Piece of the Action"]], and [[Recap/StarTrekS2E25BreadAndCircuses "Bread and Circuses"]].
*** The plot of "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E11TheMenageriePartI The Menagerie]]" was written so that the showrunners could repurpose footage from the original series pilot "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage The Cage]]" (which featured a substantially different ''Enterprise'' crew) by making a direct {{sequel}} to its plot and [[{{Retcon}} retroactively declaring]] that it took place prior to the events of the first season. But since the showrunners couldn't get actor Creator/JeffreyHunter to reprise his role as Captain Christopher Pike from "The Cage", the story included the revelation that Pike had been injured in a radiation leak since the events of "The Cage", leaving him horribly disfigured and unable to speak--allowing him to be [[FakeShemp played by a different actor]] wearing prosthetics, who didn't need to speak. After that, it became well-established that Pike was the captain of the ''Enterprise'' before Kirk.
** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'':
*** Jadzia Dax was a "joined species," an alien who was actually two entities sharing one body. Both entities (Jadzia, the "host," and Dax, the "symbiont") were intended to remain on the show for the entire run, but actress Creator/TerryFarrell decided to leave the show at the end of its penultimate season. So the writers killed off Jadzia, [[TheNthDoctor but kept Dax, transplanting the symbiont into a new host, Ezri]] (Nicole De Boer). The suddenness of Jadzia's death and Ezri's arrival worked greatly into the storyline, with Ezri's main conflict being her having to form new relationships with people who'd already been her (Dax's) friends--and, in Worf's case, husband.
*** During the planning for a revisitation of a classic ''TOS'' episode, the producers met in a pizza parlor to discuss which episode it would be. At this point, one of them noticed that Charlie Brill, who had played the villain in "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles The Trouble With Tribbles]]", was in the parlor with them, which settled the matter. Brill does reappear in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E06TrialsAndTribbleations Trials and Tribble-ations]]", as the same character as before, and triggers the revisitation by using TimeTravel to MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight.
---->'''Ira Steven Behr:''' "It shows that God is a ''Deep Space 9'' fan."
*** Creator/NanaVisitor got pregnant. The writers didn't like the idea of Kira having a baby with her lover Vedek Bareil, so Kira became an emergency surrogate mother for another character, Keiko O'Brien. Amusingly, this one overlaps with RealitySubtext: she had the baby with her then-husband Creator/AlexanderSiddig, who plays [[TheMedic station physician]] Dr. Julian Bashir; in-universe, Bashir is the one who performs the fetal transplant, and Kira openly grouses at him for putting her body through hell.
*** ''[=DS9=]'' pretty much ran on this trope, to the point that "make it a virtue" was a behind-the-scenes CatchPhrase.
---->'''Ira Steven Behr:''' Make it a virtue! Every time we got stuck and something wasn't working, we'd say, "let's make it a virtue!" We should have had T-shirts made up.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' didn't do so well its first three seasons, coming off as a re-hash of previous ''Star Trek'' incarnations. In a last-ditch effort to save the show from cancellation, the writers created [[MsFanservice Seven of Nine]], whose tight suit would hopefully keep ratings afloat. But a combination of juicy writing material and a superb acting performance from Creator/JeriRyan resulted in her becoming a BreakoutCharacter. She also brought along plotlines that gave the show a voice of its own to distinguish itself from the other ''Star Trek'' spinoffs (a focus on family and humanity) and brought in some much-needed villains that the audience could take seriously, the Borg. Her catsuit wound up being little more than an added bonus for male viewers, and a source of humor for less serious episodes.
*** During Season 5, the set of the bridge was damaged after a fire, so while it was repaired, they quickly assembled a script that allowed most of the action to take place away from the bridge, "Bride Of Chaotica!", a holodeck story that was a GenreThrowback to sci-fi films of the 1930s such as ''[[Film/FlashGordonSerial Flash Gordon]]'' and ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers''.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'':
** The third season's plotline of Dean being condemned to Hell was originally planned to be resolved by Sam learning how to use his demonic powers to rescue him. However, the 2007-08 WGA strike occurred during the third season's production, forcing the season to be cut short with no time to properly build up Sam's powers beforehand. The showrunners thus had to come up with an alternative way to get Dean out of Hell. Their solution? Have Dean be rescued by an angel named Castiel and start introducing angel mythology during the fourth season to plausibly explain why an angel would be interested in Dean's fate. That's right; the series' BreakoutCharacter, the resulting ''legendary'' HoYay between Dean and Castiel, and the entirety of the angel lore that eventually took over the plot exists solely because of a writers' strike.
** Dean's BigEater tendencies came about because Creator/JensenAckles improvised a moment where he swiped food during a funeral. The writers decided that this would mesh well with his backstory of constantly having to live and the move and thus valuing free food wherever he could find it, turning it from a single funny moment to an outright character trait - to the point that when Dean ''doesn't'' eat something, it's a sign that [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness something is seriously wrong]].
* ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'':
** The subplot in the first few episodes in which Cromartie, the main Terminator pursuing the Connors, gets blown up and has to rebuild himself with a different face (as seen in the page image for TheNthDoctor), was introduced because Creator/GarretDillahunt, who the showrunners wanted for the role, had a scheduling conflict for the pilot. Cromartie's original "face" was played for one episode by Owain Yeoman.
** The first season finale originally was going to have a massive fight scene between the FBI SWAT team and Cromartie. When the budget turned out to be too low for it, the writing team got creative. This resulted in a [[NightmareFuel chilling,]] [[NothingIsScarier minimalistic]] sequence where Cromartie slaughters the FBI agents off-screen and tosses their bodies into the hotel swimming pool, seen from a point of view at the bottom of the pool. All while Music/JohnnyCash's "[[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic When The Man Comes Around]]" plays.
* ''Series/WandaVision'':
** In the final episode, the townspeople confront Wanda after Agatha "wakes them up," forcing Wanda to see just how much mental pain she was inflicting on them by making them act out roles in her sitcom fantasies. Originally, they were going to swarm her like zombies and attack her, but this was dropped due to COVID-19 filming delays. Jac Schaeffer found this change to be more psychologically compelling as it gave the residents more of a voice.
** Darcy's incredibly brief role in the last episode is also a product of the COVID-19 delays. Creator/KatDennings couldn't attend the new filming dates, the one scene she had already filmed[[note]]a setpiece where Monica, Darcy, Billy, Tommy, and "Fietro"/Ralph Bohner try to steal the Darkhold from Agatha's house and have to fight off her pet rabbit, Senor Scratchy[[/note]] wasn't being used, and they needed Darcy to have some kind of role in the story's resolution rather than [[OffscreenInertia be left hanging]] since her last scene in Episode 7 was Vision abandoning her while she was stuck in an eternal traffic jam. So her brief appearance is limited to her ramming her vehicle into Hayward's car to stop him from escaping, then saying her one line (which Dennings filmed in front of a bluescreen), then skips out on the debriefing afterwards.
* Some of the production staff of ''Series/TheWestWing'' have claimed that the show's ending was rewritten due to the sudden death of Creator/JohnSpencer (Leo [=McGarry=]), although series creator Creator/AaronSorkin [[GodNeverSaidThat has disputed this]]. Supposedly, the final season's presidential election storyline was originally going to end with Arnold Vinick winning--but when Spencer's death forced the writers to [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim kill off Leo]] (who was Matthew Santos' running mate), they decided to have Santos win instead, since it would have been [[DownerEnding much too depressing]] for Santos to lose both Leo and the election.
* Originally, the puzzle board for ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' was intended to be entirely automatic, much like the board on the original ''Series/{{Concentration}}''. However, the set designers didn't have time to finish building it before they started taping the pilot, so the board was altered to have each letter be turned manually by a LovelyAssistant (originally Susan Stafford from 1975-82, then the far more iconic Vanna White from 1982 onward). The mechanical board was replaced with a computerized set of CRT monitors in 1997, but White stayed.
** The monitors (which had moved well on to flatscreens) also allowed for a special Disney-themed week in 2019 where Vanna White had to take on hosting duties, due to Pat Sajak having to go to the hospital for emergency surgery. Minnie Mouse (the mascot theme-park-character version) took Vanna's place at the puzzle board, and "Disney magic" (the producers behind the scenes with the electronic components) allowed her to reveal the letters without touching the board.
* ''Series/TheWire'':
** One brief scene in Season 2 featured a number of neighborhood kids playing cops and robbers, with one kid declaring "It's my turn to be Omar!" Fast forward a few years, and that same kid, now given the name Kenard, appears again in Season 4 and in Season 5 [[spoiler:assassinates Omar after seeing him hobbling on crutches and being disappointed at how the legend appears in person]]. Creator/DennisLehane revealed in an interview that this was actually a total coincidence and the producers had no idea the same actor had been cast for both roles until it was pointed out to them after the episode aired. In this case, it resulted from a lower budget than previous seasons that caused them to have to call up actors who'd worked for them previously instead of casting brand new ones but looked like an intentional case of {{Foreshadowing}}.
** Minor supporting actors Robert Colesberry (Detective Ray Cole) and Richard [=DeAngelis=] (Colonel Raymond Foerster) both unexpectedly died during production, leading the writers to [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim write in the deaths of their characters]]. [[note]] Colesberry died of complications from heart surgery, and [=DeAngelis=] succumbed to cancer while undergoing treatment[[/note]] They got in-universe funerals both times, with the police officers throwing a traditional [[IrishCop Irish wake]], and Landsman delivering a eulogy to the tune of "Body of an American". This ended up influencing the series finale: [[spoiler: when Jimmy [=McNulty=] is thrown off the force in the final episode, his co-workers jokingly throw him a wake to celebrate the death of his career, complete with Landsman delivering a "eulogy" while "Body of an American" plays]].
** [=McNulty=] (temporarily) leaves the Major Crimes Unit to become a beat cop at the end of Season 3 when he finds himself struggling to find a new purpose following [[spoiler:the death of Stringer Bell]], resulting in him being OutOfFocus for most of Season 4. In RealLife, Creator/DominicWest requested that the showrunners reduce his role in Season 4 so that he could spend more time with his family.
* The elaborate, layered MythArc on ''Series/TheXFiles,'' which would go on to influence the MythArc structure of dozens of other shows, only exists because Creator/ChrisCarter had to find some plot-relevant way to write Creator/GillianAnderson out of the show for maternity leave. WordOfGod says the MythArc was not planned and the BigBad of the series, the Cigarette Smoking Man, was, until then, just an "extra leaning on a shelf."
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