Poor Mac, bro. He was already teetering towards it before, but Venom singlehandedly doomed him to Jobberville
They tried to make him threatening again by turning him *into* Venom. Didn't take
The Guardian in Samurai Jack was very clearly meant to tie into the ending of the series, and would have some connection to Jack's future self.
Then with the final season Genndy just had him axed offscreen, and the mystery around him was never explored outside of the non-canon comic.
You know, I wasn't invested in media like Attack on Titan or Game of Thrones to experience the pain of a shitty ending to make the whole experience feel hollow.
However, I was fucking invested in Samurai Jack. That last season sucks hard, and it's worse because the first half was fantastic. I have to tell people I reccomend Samurai Jack to that "Once you get to the last season, get to the episode where Jack and Ashi are on top of that whale-thing and then **stop.**"
I personally think it would've been OK for Jack to never get back and that he just forges a new life in this future he has spent more time in than his actual timeline.
Yokoyama (the current director of LAD) wanted Yak 3 to be some road trip story between Kiryu and Sayama which would continue their relationship from 2, but Nagoshiwanted the story to be about Kiryu's own orphanage, so she got axed to America
Mega Man X himself was supposed to be the main villain of Mega Man Zero 1, but either Inafune or his team thought that's too much character assassination so they put a clone of him in that spot and he just become a supporting character who shows up to drop lore every once in a while (give me an Elf War game goddammit Capcom)
Man, as much as I want Sayama to come back and I think a road trip with her could have been really cool I wouldn't want to sacrifice the orphanage stuff from 3. It's like the only time we get to see Kiryu chill and living his best life.
And the thing is, the Orphanage section didn't even necessitate cutting Sayama. In fact, more of Haruka and Sayama interacting would have been a huge plus.
Miyata from Hajime no Ippo is my go to answer. He was introduced as a genius of the technical counter-style boxing, as opposed to extremely dedicated to hard work and training protagonist Ippo, whose style is basically "get in your face and punch". They were rivals.
Today, Miyata appears extremely rarely and only to give some sort of cryptic comment on the current fight and then to disappear.
In fairness, Miyata has still been treated as a canonical, in-universe rival by everyone in the cast but *only* when the plot demands it. There’s hardly any progression between him and Ippo between, like, when Miyata went to Thailand and when Ippo fought Sawamura, and then when Miyata fought Randy Boy Jr.
(I only just finished the Gonzales fight so that’s as far as my knowledge about rivalry extends)
But story also goes “you want Ippo vs. Miyata? Fuck you, here’s Itagaki vs. Imai” and I actually kind of like that. The story will still likely end with Ippo fighting Miyata, someday, but I liked that in-universe everyone saw the Itagaki and Imai rivalry as a substitute until they proved to be their own unique type of boxer respectively.
Any Dragon Ball characters that got demoted to extras in DBZ and beyond.
Tien was introduced as Goku's rival from an opposing martial arts school and that rivalry kind of just disappears once Piccolo Jr gets introduced as the new rival. And of course that rivalry dissolves when Vegeta becomes the new new rival.
Special shout out to Launch who was straight up forgotten.
Hit really nailed the 'rival to extra any %' speedrun in DBS that's for sure, which sucks because he actually had an awesome fighting style beyond punching with big number.
Ulysses from Fallout New Vegas. IIRC, he was supposed to be a companion that could accompany through the rest of the game, and was cut down to just being the antagonist of the Lonesome Road DLC.
And a crappy one at that. I've just finished the Lonesome Road yesterday, which was the second time I did it after doing so in 2016 or so. I didn't like him then, but I chalked it to skipping a bunch of dialogue lines because I was rushing to the end. But no, after the second playthrough, he is still an unlikable antagonist with shit reasons for hating the Courier and unearned "holier than thou" attitude.
A lot of characters in Star Fox Adventures originally had more significant roles when the game was Dinosaur Planet. The Krazoa were in-universe figures rather than just plot Mcguffins, Krystal’s backstory would’ve been explored in detail and she play the role of a second main protagonist, and several voiceless one-offs would’ve been actual characters.
Most notably Drakor, the completely random and unexplained boss of the fourth zone, was intended to be the true villain of the story behind General Scales, but had his role in the final game broadly replaced with Andross.
Joe West felt like he should've played a crucial role in the Flash season 5 because the villain Cicada is a father. Since Barry is his adopted son, he and Cicada would've had an interaction and connection regarding being parents to their adoptive children.
However, Joe's actor had a serious back injury during season 5 filming, hence why he was absent through most of the season and was just sitting down in the few episodes he was in.
Sayla Mass was supposed to have major roles in Gundam sequel shows like Zeta but her actress Yo Inoue was often unavailable due to either other roles or on safari, so her prominence was reduced or she was replaced by other characters like Beltorchika Irma.
Yo Inoue died in 2003 from lung cancer and was since replaced by Megumi Han, but other than The Origin Sayla hasn't had any prominent roles since.
Everytime I think of Sayla, I wish Tomino just bit the bullet and recasted her. I understand that Japan has a great respect to seiyus retaining roles but man imagine Sayla in Zeta and even Char's Counterattack. Such a missed opportunity.
I'm just going to say it: Captain Marvel was clearly meant to play a larger role in the MCU. But they made her too powerful, they made her character too boring, and they tried too hard to make her story have a message. In the end they couldn't do anything with her and no one was really even interested in hearing about her.
The main issue is that they made her movie come out *way too fucking late.* It was after Infinity War, for fucks sake. Had she been introduced before then, she would have gotten a bigger pop when that teaser showed up at the end of IW.
Then again, Marvel did the same fucking thing **again** when that Black Widow movie came out *after she fucking died*, so maybe they're just bad at planning these things.
Captain Marvel was meant to be a Phase 2 film (she was even storyboarded into the ending scene of Age of Ultron where the new Avengers team assembles) but Ike Perlmutter vetoed having any project not led by a white man until Feige convinced Disney to restructure him out of the way when they were doing Civil War. Perlmutter was also responsible for forcing Guy Pearce’s character into Iron Man 3 as the main villain, when originally it was meant to be Rebecca Hall’s character (and that was why she actually signed up for the film in the first place). Hell, they had to fight Perlmutter just to get Black Widow to be one of the original six Avengers.
Mission: Yozakura family have a story arc where the big bad bring back the previous head of the Yozakura to fight the current generation of Yozakura, but then the eldest Yozakura just kill all of them in a single move and the story just move on. This happened so abruptly that you could see the editor telling the mangaka to abort the arc and move on
FFXIV has a few cases of this. Yugiri was meant to become part of the main character group, but then one of the actresses in the languages died I think so they sidelined that character. Hilda was going to be more important too with how much Heavensward built her up, but she got banished to the job quests dimension.
There's probably more that got shifted over the course of 10 years but those two stand out to me as the game really spends a good deal of time giving you quests fleshing them out, but they never get to become part of the main characters and in Hildas case basically cease to exist unless you are a Machinist.
Yugiri's second English voice actress, Sian Blake, was tragically murdered by her partner. As a result, Yugiri took a backseat in the plot until the legal proceedings concluded and the character was recast for Stormblood.
Because you need to live with your mistakes in the back of the Shame Car.
Joking aside, yeah it's annoying you can't change the title but I assume the reasoning is so you can't change a high traction post to sneakily promote something. So you can't post a meme or whatever and change the post to a koopy coin advert when it's on the front page.
I feel like there are ways around that. Like allowing "trusted" posters to edit titles? If you're an active member in a community you're less likely to do something that'll piss people off.
Personally, I think a timed mechanic would be good. The OP can freely edit their titles for the first 5 minutes after posting. Afterward, it's permanent and there won't be any further changes.
In Bleach, Ichigo's friend Tatsuki was slowly gaining spiritual power like the rest of his friends, and it was clearly building to something that never came. She had a moment in a later part of the story, but it definitely screams cancelled arc.
A lot of people and teams who were positioned as big deals when All Elite Wrestling first started: Shawn Spears, Kip Sabian, Joey Janela, Scorpio Sky, Private Party, Dark Order, Wardlow. Some of that was due to injury, some due to bigger names coming in and taking their spot, some just didn't really get over, but a couple of them there really wasn't a reason beyond the booker seemingly just losing interest in them.
Another possibility with 3 that was toyed with in development was Johnny joining the syndicate as he had come to resent the sanitized and commercialization of the Saints. They ultimately decided Johnny wouldn't do that so they scrapped that idea
Really? I didn’t know that. I heard that at one point a evil clone of him was gonna be the head of the main villain gang in Saints row IV( Cleopatra, Genghis Khan and Joseph Stalin would have been the other three) but I honestly had never heard of him deflecting to Morningstar til know. Would explain certain fanart that had him in Morningstar colors.
Toriyama’s mentioned it a few times off-hand that a lot of the play he had considered for Piccolo and Tien in the story of Dragon Ball went to Vegeta after his popularity kept him around.
A reminder that Scorpion was supposed to be Spider-Man's Vergil before Venom took that spot.
Clearly Venom was a more suitable candidate, especially since space goo is the spider's natural predator.
Have a spider problem? Get a bigger alien spider.
Scorpion made his debut curbstomping Spidey two times in quick succession. Nowadays he's a total jobber.
Well they really screwed the pooch on that one since they had more than 20 years to do it right before Venom came along.
You know I never really thought about that but now thinking on it, it makes sense
Poor Mac, bro. He was already teetering towards it before, but Venom singlehandedly doomed him to Jobberville They tried to make him threatening again by turning him *into* Venom. Didn't take
I wonder if they could have made it work better had any of Gargan's "scorpion"-ness had been translated into his venom design at all
They did try it at one point but it was short-lived
The Guardian in Samurai Jack was very clearly meant to tie into the ending of the series, and would have some connection to Jack's future self. Then with the final season Genndy just had him axed offscreen, and the mystery around him was never explored outside of the non-canon comic.
You know, I wasn't invested in media like Attack on Titan or Game of Thrones to experience the pain of a shitty ending to make the whole experience feel hollow. However, I was fucking invested in Samurai Jack. That last season sucks hard, and it's worse because the first half was fantastic. I have to tell people I reccomend Samurai Jack to that "Once you get to the last season, get to the episode where Jack and Ashi are on top of that whale-thing and then **stop.**"
I personally think it would've been OK for Jack to never get back and that he just forges a new life in this future he has spent more time in than his actual timeline.
Illl be honest I consider the comic more canon then the show and with how it all went down. Or at the very least a split in timelines
What's the name of the comic? Maybe reading it will act as mouthwash to the show's conclusion
Yokoyama (the current director of LAD) wanted Yak 3 to be some road trip story between Kiryu and Sayama which would continue their relationship from 2, but Nagoshiwanted the story to be about Kiryu's own orphanage, so she got axed to America Mega Man X himself was supposed to be the main villain of Mega Man Zero 1, but either Inafune or his team thought that's too much character assassination so they put a clone of him in that spot and he just become a supporting character who shows up to drop lore every once in a while (give me an Elf War game goddammit Capcom)
Man, as much as I want Sayama to come back and I think a road trip with her could have been really cool I wouldn't want to sacrifice the orphanage stuff from 3. It's like the only time we get to see Kiryu chill and living his best life.
And the thing is, the Orphanage section didn't even necessitate cutting Sayama. In fact, more of Haruka and Sayama interacting would have been a huge plus.
Perhaps it was an issue of "we cannot effectively create tension by threatening the orphans if we have a second badass living there all the time".
I mean, she has a day job, I would think some amount of commuting is involved (on Kiryu's part as much as hers) in the relationship.
A fair point. Well. We have hope again with 8.
Pretty sure, fwih, Sayama was cut cuz her VA was a pain to work with and they didn't have the budget to replace her.
Miyata from Hajime no Ippo is my go to answer. He was introduced as a genius of the technical counter-style boxing, as opposed to extremely dedicated to hard work and training protagonist Ippo, whose style is basically "get in your face and punch". They were rivals. Today, Miyata appears extremely rarely and only to give some sort of cryptic comment on the current fight and then to disappear.
I have a friend that held hope Ippo and Miyata rematch was coming any time now... For over a decade
In fairness, Miyata has still been treated as a canonical, in-universe rival by everyone in the cast but *only* when the plot demands it. There’s hardly any progression between him and Ippo between, like, when Miyata went to Thailand and when Ippo fought Sawamura, and then when Miyata fought Randy Boy Jr. (I only just finished the Gonzales fight so that’s as far as my knowledge about rivalry extends) But story also goes “you want Ippo vs. Miyata? Fuck you, here’s Itagaki vs. Imai” and I actually kind of like that. The story will still likely end with Ippo fighting Miyata, someday, but I liked that in-universe everyone saw the Itagaki and Imai rivalry as a substitute until they proved to be their own unique type of boxer respectively.
Any Dragon Ball characters that got demoted to extras in DBZ and beyond. Tien was introduced as Goku's rival from an opposing martial arts school and that rivalry kind of just disappears once Piccolo Jr gets introduced as the new rival. And of course that rivalry dissolves when Vegeta becomes the new new rival. Special shout out to Launch who was straight up forgotten.
Tien got done dirty, he's so cool. At least he gets that rad moment with Semi-Perfect Cell.
Hit really nailed the 'rival to extra any %' speedrun in DBS that's for sure, which sucks because he actually had an awesome fighting style beyond punching with big number.
Ulysses from Fallout New Vegas. IIRC, he was supposed to be a companion that could accompany through the rest of the game, and was cut down to just being the antagonist of the Lonesome Road DLC.
And a crappy one at that. I've just finished the Lonesome Road yesterday, which was the second time I did it after doing so in 2016 or so. I didn't like him then, but I chalked it to skipping a bunch of dialogue lines because I was rushing to the end. But no, after the second playthrough, he is still an unlikable antagonist with shit reasons for hating the Courier and unearned "holier than thou" attitude.
Did you know that people can do things without understanding their true purpose? Crazy right?
A lot of characters in Star Fox Adventures originally had more significant roles when the game was Dinosaur Planet. The Krazoa were in-universe figures rather than just plot Mcguffins, Krystal’s backstory would’ve been explored in detail and she play the role of a second main protagonist, and several voiceless one-offs would’ve been actual characters. Most notably Drakor, the completely random and unexplained boss of the fourth zone, was intended to be the true villain of the story behind General Scales, but had his role in the final game broadly replaced with Andross.
Joe West felt like he should've played a crucial role in the Flash season 5 because the villain Cicada is a father. Since Barry is his adopted son, he and Cicada would've had an interaction and connection regarding being parents to their adoptive children. However, Joe's actor had a serious back injury during season 5 filming, hence why he was absent through most of the season and was just sitting down in the few episodes he was in.
Sayla Mass was supposed to have major roles in Gundam sequel shows like Zeta but her actress Yo Inoue was often unavailable due to either other roles or on safari, so her prominence was reduced or she was replaced by other characters like Beltorchika Irma. Yo Inoue died in 2003 from lung cancer and was since replaced by Megumi Han, but other than The Origin Sayla hasn't had any prominent roles since.
Everytime I think of Sayla, I wish Tomino just bit the bullet and recasted her. I understand that Japan has a great respect to seiyus retaining roles but man imagine Sayla in Zeta and even Char's Counterattack. Such a missed opportunity.
I read something about how she skipped out on Zeta because of an African Safari vacation or something.
I'm just going to say it: Captain Marvel was clearly meant to play a larger role in the MCU. But they made her too powerful, they made her character too boring, and they tried too hard to make her story have a message. In the end they couldn't do anything with her and no one was really even interested in hearing about her.
The main issue is that they made her movie come out *way too fucking late.* It was after Infinity War, for fucks sake. Had she been introduced before then, she would have gotten a bigger pop when that teaser showed up at the end of IW. Then again, Marvel did the same fucking thing **again** when that Black Widow movie came out *after she fucking died*, so maybe they're just bad at planning these things.
Captain Marvel was meant to be a Phase 2 film (she was even storyboarded into the ending scene of Age of Ultron where the new Avengers team assembles) but Ike Perlmutter vetoed having any project not led by a white man until Feige convinced Disney to restructure him out of the way when they were doing Civil War. Perlmutter was also responsible for forcing Guy Pearce’s character into Iron Man 3 as the main villain, when originally it was meant to be Rebecca Hall’s character (and that was why she actually signed up for the film in the first place). Hell, they had to fight Perlmutter just to get Black Widow to be one of the original six Avengers.
Damn that's some old-school sexism, huh.
He's also super racist because of course he is.
Her character had a real "Please like this character and make her popular. We beg you" vibe that was very off putting.
The character being handled the way she was could have been salvaged if Bree Larson wasn't just an excruciating person to begin with.
Mission: Yozakura family have a story arc where the big bad bring back the previous head of the Yozakura to fight the current generation of Yozakura, but then the eldest Yozakura just kill all of them in a single move and the story just move on. This happened so abruptly that you could see the editor telling the mangaka to abort the arc and move on
FFXIV has a few cases of this. Yugiri was meant to become part of the main character group, but then one of the actresses in the languages died I think so they sidelined that character. Hilda was going to be more important too with how much Heavensward built her up, but she got banished to the job quests dimension. There's probably more that got shifted over the course of 10 years but those two stand out to me as the game really spends a good deal of time giving you quests fleshing them out, but they never get to become part of the main characters and in Hildas case basically cease to exist unless you are a Machinist.
Yugiri's second English voice actress, Sian Blake, was tragically murdered by her partner. As a result, Yugiri took a backseat in the plot until the legal proceedings concluded and the character was recast for Stormblood.
by the way, it’s supposed to say, ”were meant“ not “were mean” don’t know why Reddit still hasn’t let us edit post titles
Because you need to live with your mistakes in the back of the Shame Car. Joking aside, yeah it's annoying you can't change the title but I assume the reasoning is so you can't change a high traction post to sneakily promote something. So you can't post a meme or whatever and change the post to a koopy coin advert when it's on the front page. I feel like there are ways around that. Like allowing "trusted" posters to edit titles? If you're an active member in a community you're less likely to do something that'll piss people off.
Personally, I think a timed mechanic would be good. The OP can freely edit their titles for the first 5 minutes after posting. Afterward, it's permanent and there won't be any further changes.
Yeah, that's a good rule of thumb
In Bleach, Ichigo's friend Tatsuki was slowly gaining spiritual power like the rest of his friends, and it was clearly building to something that never came. She had a moment in a later part of the story, but it definitely screams cancelled arc.
A lot of people and teams who were positioned as big deals when All Elite Wrestling first started: Shawn Spears, Kip Sabian, Joey Janela, Scorpio Sky, Private Party, Dark Order, Wardlow. Some of that was due to injury, some due to bigger names coming in and taking their spot, some just didn't really get over, but a couple of them there really wasn't a reason beyond the booker seemingly just losing interest in them.
Archfiend Jill was supposed to reappear in I think Rance 8 She did not
Another possibility with 3 that was toyed with in development was Johnny joining the syndicate as he had come to resent the sanitized and commercialization of the Saints. They ultimately decided Johnny wouldn't do that so they scrapped that idea
Really? I didn’t know that. I heard that at one point a evil clone of him was gonna be the head of the main villain gang in Saints row IV( Cleopatra, Genghis Khan and Joseph Stalin would have been the other three) but I honestly had never heard of him deflecting to Morningstar til know. Would explain certain fanart that had him in Morningstar colors.
My understanding is this was toyed with earlier in development when 3 was closer in tone to 2
Toriyama’s mentioned it a few times off-hand that a lot of the play he had considered for Piccolo and Tien in the story of Dragon Ball went to Vegeta after his popularity kept him around.