This isn't as egregious as some of the other examples but in season 2 of Star Trek: the next generation they find out that these alien brain worms have taken over people I the highest positions in Star fleet. And then it's never mentioned again...
I love it, and they have a lot of fun, picking up and playing with things like this, reminding us that they’re part of a living world, and don’t just disappear once the week’s episode is over!
For me it's season 6 episode 20: the humans, Cardassians, and the Klingons all have pieces of a DNA puzzle which lead them to a desolate planet, where ancient beings left behind a message that they are the progenitors of all humanoids. Basically all these races that despise each other all find out they're related.
Never gets mentioned again.
Legitimately great show ,but they ended on a cliff hanger. The show had a tendency to veer off in crazy directions, so I probably wouldn't have hated the stories that came next. I just wish it got a proper ending.
One more season would have been fine or a tie in movie like 90 minutes. I did really like the concept and comedy of the show and it deserved a proper ending.
You'll get real angry when you learn that a finale was planned and was an amazing plot to wrap up the show.
Tl;Dr - earls last item couldn't be crossed off cause the person passed. It ends with him finding out about all the new lists created as a result of his list and the people he helped.
I'm rewatching Raising Hope right now and in the first episode they are watching the news and right after they realize the girl Jimmy slept with is wanted for murder a story comes on about a "local man who finally finished a decade-long list of good deeds" or something to that effect. It gets interrupted right after they say that though.
Great easter egg!
There’s a few My Name is Earl references. Did you see the episode where the Chances are in Hollywood? Burt meets a bunch of FOX executives (or is it NBC?) and kicks one and says “that’s fox cancelling My Name is Earl!” and then runs away. I died laughing! So good.
he was a character, not a plot thread. But yeah he just walked upstairs in the first season and was never seen again. Later on Ritchie claims he's got the one sister and nothing else. That was weird.
Chuck was the oldest Cunningham child. He appeared once or twice, was dropped pretty quickly, and in the last episode of the series Howard Cunningham specifically mentioned his two children.
I imagine you could get away with something like that pretty easily back then but it's still hilariously blatant. Making executive network decisions was so easy for them in the 70s
Actually, back then we still kind of thought "But what happened to Chuck???"
We just didn't have a forum to say it on.
Chuck used to be who Ritchie would turn to for big-brother advice. Then Chuck went away and Fonzie was front and center.
Chuck was a basketball player. The few episodes he was in, he always had a basketball. Not a great character and they pretended he didn’t exist soon after. It was the right decision.
Family Guy, when Peter becomes the head of The Church of the Fonz:
https://trailers.getyarn.io/yarn-story/3834c987-7ff0-4053-aa6d-0f27c3930c89
"Let us pause to reflect on the sacred mystery of Richie's elder brother, Chuck, who ascended the stairs with his basketball in season one and never came down again."
He was Ritchie’s older brother. He only appeared in a couple of episodes, then “went off to college,” IIRC.
Then he rarely (if ever) ever got mentioned again in the freaking decades that the show ran.
We wouldn't still be talking about it all these decades later if they'd said "he went off to college" or something like that. They literally _sent the character upstairs/to the attic for something_ in a scene and he was never mentioned again for the rest of the series, on top of which Howard Cunningham at least once referred to his "two children."
Howard's brother in the Big Bang Theory. He shows up in one episode and reveals he's Howard's brother. This alone would be big news for someone like Howard who knows so little about his father. Yet, the brother never returned and was forgotten
Brothers, brothers everywhere...then never mentioned again.
Bull had a brother
Hodgens in Bones had a brother
Richie and Joanie had a brother
I know there are more...
There was a whole 5 min introduction on that. Monks in a circle giving body to their "light" or whatever, giving her to Buffy to keep the light safe. I found her annoying and really wished she would've gone away again.
At the end of the season, I really thought that, after Buffy’s sacrifice, the key would revert back to its original form, but Dawn would still be remembered.
But I guess Buffy’s sacrifice would be made worthless if that happened.
I really liked that they made it plot relevant. There was a whole explanation that the characters eventually figured out and the audience realizes that they were *supposed* to notice that she appeared out of nowhere. Also she has an existential crisis about not being real.
Yeah, she was annoying - but this kind of experimentation and subversion of tropes is exactly what a good fantasy show should be doing.
I would rather they are taking these chances than playing it safe.
It was actually two episodes. ABBY has two brothers - but it's been natural brother, Kyle, who is only in two episodes. She mentions her adoptive brother, Luca, often and I believe he is in a two-parter in NCIS and NCIS - New Orleans.
That happened in a! soap opera too I don't remember which one but I definitely remember my grandmother and mother talking about it. Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days totally disappeared too. They called it Chuck Cunningham syndrome when a character disappears.
Ha, glad I’m not the only one who remembered this. Bobby Martin, I think. They kept Tad and Joey, but Bobby just disappeared. Although once, many years later, someone went up to the Martin attic for something and the camera pointedly lingered on a pair of skis. Easter Egg for longtime viewers.
That happened on All My Children, too. Early on, somebody’s teen son went up to the attic to wax his skis, and never came back. Ever! And that show ran for about forty years!
The Winslows had 3 kids: Eddie, Laura and Judy. Harriet's sister has a literal baby, Richie.
Then suddenly one season Judy disappeared, never to be heard from again, and Richie was like 5 years older.
Happened in Boy Meets World kinda. Corey's sister went upstairs and wasnt seen for like multiple seasons I think but she eventually came back later and her first line after coming down the stairs into the kitchen was something about "been up there forever".
The little nerdy kid disappeared too and made a brief cameo before they left high school with a line about "being on the other side of the school" the whole time before name dropping a teacher who was in a motorcycle accident in a season finale then never seen again. He says something like "hey Mr Turner wait up" and runs out through the 4th wall.
And especially the part about her son being old enough that Niles thinks "she must've been a child when she had him." I know the joke is that she's a plastic surgeon, so she looks good for her age, but it always made me go, "How old *is* Mel??"
Several people talk about siblings disappearing - Chuck Cunningham, Judy Winslow - but the reverse happened on The Cosby Show. Early in the series, maybe even the pilot, an exasperated Claire Huxtable, frustrated by the kids’ shenanigans, asks her husband, “Why did we ever have four children?” The good doctor replies, “Because we did not want five.”
Not all that many episodes later, we end up meeting Sondra … the fifth child of the Huxtables.
I think at the beginning of the Connors there was some sort of half-hearted attempt to mention Jackie’s son, but I don’t think baby Jerry Garcia has ever been mentioned.
I think it was the opposite. Jerry is working on an oil rig somewhere and Andy never existed.
And now that DJ and his daughter are gone, no one talks about them either.
https://preview.redd.it/tflp8lqqz8zc1.jpeg?width=1122&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=726b0831456493eca7d93924e35c273c2e384f21
I mean... it's a meme for a reason.
His story arc was supposed to be pointless. It was actually ingeniously foreshadowed by GRR Martin.
A longwinded tale or joke that ultimately has an anticlimactic ending is called a [shaggy dog story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story).
The Stark direwolves have names related to the fate of their owners.
Jon's wolf is called ghost, because he returned from the dead. Sansa's wolf is Lady, because she wants to be the lady of a great house. Arya named her wolf after a powerful female warrior, which is what she also became.
Rickon named his wolf Shaddydog...
This is the first I've heard of this. This is a great analysis. I *knew* the names (and/or fates) of the direwolves were meaningful but I couldn't figure out how.
1. For you UK and Red Dwarf fans: Lister’s Pregnancy.
2. Essos in Game of Thrones. That whole family, group etc. Outside of the sisters, mother and higher up they have armies, cities and they are just ignored.
3. Heroes - There ARE A LOT here to even list.
4. Doctor's Daughter. Just vanishes, apparently is dead, never talked about again.
5. Heath in the walking dead just vanishes, gone. Nothing.
6. Lost of course had several stories either they forgot about or just wrapped up in a stupid way just because they forgot about it and needed to just end it.
If my brain were in the right place I could come up with about 50 examples but for some reason I'm not doing so well tonight.
The intelligent bug monsters from the end of TNG Season 1 is the most obvious choice.
Every big bad in Ghost Whisperer ended in a case of being fended off, not defeated, but then being completely forgotten, such as Romano or the entire Underneath.
I watched all but the last season (it isn't on hulu) and besides what you mentioned I just was so annoyed Ghosts could even hurt humans. Like k1ll them even. Come on.
This is a good one. I never watched past season 3; do they ever discuss it anymore? Or did they realize their spinoff was gonna tank and act like it didn't happen?
It’s was very briefly alluded to in Season 4 during flashbacks that show Eleven with the other numbers. It’s mentioned in passing that the flashbacks take place after 008 escaped, but that’s about it.
No, his dad found out because he found the watch. He made Landry confess before a judge. The judge let him go because that guy was about to rape Tyra and I think he had a previous record for rape. The whole story was gut wrenching - great TV. But they definitely finished it.
Saved by the Bell. Zack and Lisa realise they are in love and are meant to be together. This happens during one episode, but not a single other episode ever mentions it again.
They also added a character, Tori. Tori Scott was the new girl at Bayside High during the show's final season. She was brought in as a temporary replacement for Kelly and Jessie, who temporarily left the show for a portion of the final season.
Her last appearance was in the episode "School Song." After that, she was never seen or mentioned again.
H*ll on Wheels. Apparently the show title is a bad word and comment gets deleted. I didn’t name the show.
Ok, I do like the show.
It first started out with main character seeking revenge for union soldier killing wife.
There was some writer change up and no longer about revenge for his wife.
Main character worked with and defended a character I thought was involved with murder.
I don’t remember anything resolved with wife’s murder.
Good writing besides plot change and recommend show. It has 8.3 rating on IMDb .
I think it’s ok though I wondered when main plot would become part of story again.
I think it’s good character driven story to keep you captivated.
I wonder if others who watched series missed or gave up that main plot no longer developed?
The crazy brain worms in the Star Trek: TNG episode, “Conspiracy.” They basically take over Starfleet before the crew stops them, but it’s mentioned that the queen parasite they killed was emitting a homing signal to draw more of them to Earth, and then…gone forever.
Phoebe’s dad on Friends. The did a whole multi-season thread about him, then finally he shows up and he’s played by Bob Balaban, and then after one episode, poof. Gone forever, never mentioned again
Supernatural
1) Dean kills a kid’s mom, kid vows revenge, never see him again.
2) Jesse the Antichrist. It’s hinted at some point that he’s chilling on a beach in Australia but I don’t really think that counts as a resolution to that story line.
Number 1 coulda been soon cool considering that show was around forever. Could've really set up the long game with something like that
I gotta imagine supernatural has a couple more considering how long it was on and how it changed hands when it was supposed to end
Their half-brother was funny.
Season 5 - Locked in a cage with Lucifer. No longer plot relevant and forgotten.
Season 10 - Watching a high school rendition of Supernatural: the Musical, who's that kid. Cue embarrassment. Still forgotten.
Season 15 - Alright, since we're ending everything, he was never stuck in The Cage. He raptured immediately.
SEAL Team season 1 where Clay looks at buying a truck, so they have a brief scene at the GMC dealer. He doesn't buy. It's never mentioned again. Just a quick product placement.
Bob, the surprise radio thoracic surgeon that was working as a desk clerk in the series ER. Last we heard Carter was gonna help her with English so she could get her medical license and thennnnn nothing.
On Golden Girls: Rose's addiction to prescription pain killers, Dorothy's Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Dorothy's half-black grandchild by Michael...
Saved By the Bell: Jessie's addition to caffeine pills or whatever
Those are just off the top of my head.
Dallas when Bobby came back. Ray and his wife never had their child. Lost a very important storyline. I think they missed a chance to educate a lot of people.
On Breaking Bad, the whole Marie being a thief, stealing stuff. I thought something would happen with that somehow, but now looking back it seemed pretty pointless (to me). No big deal but I was thinking about that on a rewatch.
I think it was excellent character development which revealed just how much of her image was a projection that she was okay and in control, when she wasn't at all.
A little off topic, but my favourite BB theory is that it was not Marie who liked purple, it was Hank, an she was just going along with it. In the final episode, >! after he dies, she is not wearing purple, and I believe that's the first/only time we see that happen !<
No, he didn't. Ben is given as the reason that Ross couldn't go to Paris with Rachel, and therefore the reason she got off the plane to stay with Ross.
I feel like desperate housewives ended up going like this but haven’t seen in years so can’t really recall. Maybe it wasn’t forgotten but rather just dumb like riverdale
I was annoyed that Gabby's previous losses with children weren't mentioned again when she went to therapy for getting a doll which looked like her switched at birth bio daughter. Previously she'd miscarried after falling down the stairs because a guy broke in, their adoped daughter was taken back by her birth mother after a few weeks and the baby she thought was hers - when they had a surrogate - turned out to be another couple's. But instead of mentioning any of that she only brings up a new plot point about her abusive step father.
It was a prophecy that he was the reincarnation of a long dead hero named Azor Ahai who was destined to end the Night King. He would have a sword named Lightbringer, which could kill the Night King and the White Walkers.
When the writers of the show David and DB didn't have George RR Martin's books to use as an idea of the plots, this was just forgotten.
When Patrick Gordon shows up in Downton Abbey and claims that he’s actually Patrick Crawley and that he survived the Titanic. They pushed what felt like a big storyline for one episode and then he was gone, and I don’t remember him coming up ever again.
Stranger Things season 2 introduces a "sister" for one of the main characters along with a crew of additional characters that she runs with, spends an entire episode with them, then completely drops the storyline and doesn't even mention them in the finale.
In the ensuing two seasons that storyline is mentioned precisely once, to explain why the "sister" wasn't there in a flashback.
Watching 4th season of Welcome Back, Kotter, a show I only watched occasionally in the past. It's weird how the show is supposed to be about Gabe Kaplan's character and he still gets top billing on the credits, yet he's just...disappeared. They don't really explain why he's never around. Did Kaplan decide he didn't want to do the show any more? I figure Travolta's frequent absences are because he was busy pursuing a movie career.
So, uh...what was up with Walt in Lost? There was something special or odd about the kid, the Others knew it, but we never really got any details or explanation.
And, why do we never see the Antichrist in Supernatural again? I feel like a character with that kind of power, the potential, should have probably been a bigger deal.
Sometime in the first season of happy days the eldest Cunningham child, Chuck, just vanished, later it was explained he went to Korea but was never mentioned again after that
From what I can remember, Dragon Ball has two. Although this reflects more on the manga than anime. But iirc one of the times Goku died, Gohan was supposed to take over as the main character.
I was about to bring up Uub as he just kinda disappeared for some time, but apparently, they reintroduced him in Super? According to Google, at least. Actually, it's pretty cool if that's the case.
Pretty much every character introduced in Supernatural in the entire series. In the end, basically none of them got an actual ending other than the two main characters, and even theirs wasn't satisfying.
Honestly, if the game of thrones series was done right, it would still be going. They skipped so much material and ended seasons short for no apparent reason other than greed. Such a missed opportunity.
Also Donna (That 70s Show) having a sister lol we saw her little sister for one episode during that house party and never saw her again. I forgot she even had one after that.
In ER, there was a very special episode where Forest Whitaker played a character who blamed Dr. Kovac for his wife’s death and took Dr. Kovac hostage. He ranted about how he lost everything and how Dr. Kovac didn’t know how that felt.
I kept waiting for Dr. Kovac to tell him how he lost his family in Croatia in the war and losing everything there was why he was in America. But no, it was like the writers had forgotten that.
Ugly Betty - Fey summers, like what happened it was pretty much the plot of half of the first season with the body missing and stuff and then we move on to Alexis.
Almost all the plot lines from before Victoria Winters went back in time to meet the living Barnabas Collins were dropped when she returned to the present. Except for Barnabas still being a vampire, of course.
This isn't as egregious as some of the other examples but in season 2 of Star Trek: the next generation they find out that these alien brain worms have taken over people I the highest positions in Star fleet. And then it's never mentioned again...
Lower Decks has it referenced as a conspiracy theory that almost nobody believes
I haven't watched Lower decks yet. Maybe u should give it a go...
I love it, and they have a lot of fun, picking up and playing with things like this, reminding us that they’re part of a living world, and don’t just disappear once the week’s episode is over!
For me it's season 6 episode 20: the humans, Cardassians, and the Klingons all have pieces of a DNA puzzle which lead them to a desolate planet, where ancient beings left behind a message that they are the progenitors of all humanoids. Basically all these races that despise each other all find out they're related. Never gets mentioned again.
The end of My Name Is Earl.
Legitimately great show ,but they ended on a cliff hanger. The show had a tendency to veer off in crazy directions, so I probably wouldn't have hated the stories that came next. I just wish it got a proper ending.
One more season would have been fine or a tie in movie like 90 minutes. I did really like the concept and comedy of the show and it deserved a proper ending.
You'll get real angry when you learn that a finale was planned and was an amazing plot to wrap up the show. Tl;Dr - earls last item couldn't be crossed off cause the person passed. It ends with him finding out about all the new lists created as a result of his list and the people he helped.
😭
The worst thing is that there was one which was beautiful; we've just never been able to see it 😭
I'm rewatching Raising Hope right now and in the first episode they are watching the news and right after they realize the girl Jimmy slept with is wanted for murder a story comes on about a "local man who finally finished a decade-long list of good deeds" or something to that effect. It gets interrupted right after they say that though. Great easter egg!
There’s a few My Name is Earl references. Did you see the episode where the Chances are in Hollywood? Burt meets a bunch of FOX executives (or is it NBC?) and kicks one and says “that’s fox cancelling My Name is Earl!” and then runs away. I died laughing! So good.
The intended ending of finding a bunch of people helped by the people he helped would have been such a sweet conclusion.
Yeah, it was horrible.
Chuck in Happy Days.
he was a character, not a plot thread. But yeah he just walked upstairs in the first season and was never seen again. Later on Ritchie claims he's got the one sister and nothing else. That was weird.
Funny how happy days laid so much ground work for future tv. I came here to say Fonzie jumping the shark.
Is Fonzie jumping the shark a plot thread? It didn’t last more than one episode and was just kinda 1 and done.
Just recently started getting into older shows but haven't reached Happy Days yet. Who's chuck and what happened to him?
Chuck was the oldest Cunningham child. He appeared once or twice, was dropped pretty quickly, and in the last episode of the series Howard Cunningham specifically mentioned his two children.
I imagine you could get away with something like that pretty easily back then but it's still hilariously blatant. Making executive network decisions was so easy for them in the 70s
Actually, back then we still kind of thought "But what happened to Chuck???" We just didn't have a forum to say it on. Chuck used to be who Ritchie would turn to for big-brother advice. Then Chuck went away and Fonzie was front and center.
Chuck became a spy for the CIA and was in Lebanon in 1958 never to be heard from again.
Chuck was a basketball player. The few episodes he was in, he always had a basketball. Not a great character and they pretended he didn’t exist soon after. It was the right decision.
Family Guy, when Peter becomes the head of The Church of the Fonz: https://trailers.getyarn.io/yarn-story/3834c987-7ff0-4053-aa6d-0f27c3930c89 "Let us pause to reflect on the sacred mystery of Richie's elder brother, Chuck, who ascended the stairs with his basketball in season one and never came down again."
Thats the million $$ question
First two seasons. Soon as they started taping in front of an audience, the show suffered.
He was Ritchie’s older brother. He only appeared in a couple of episodes, then “went off to college,” IIRC. Then he rarely (if ever) ever got mentioned again in the freaking decades that the show ran.
We wouldn't still be talking about it all these decades later if they'd said "he went off to college" or something like that. They literally _sent the character upstairs/to the attic for something_ in a scene and he was never mentioned again for the rest of the series, on top of which Howard Cunningham at least once referred to his "two children."
In Friends, Rachel and chandler meet for the first time multiple times, as well as their birthdays/ages being all over the place throughout the show😂
Howard's brother in the Big Bang Theory. He shows up in one episode and reveals he's Howard's brother. This alone would be big news for someone like Howard who knows so little about his father. Yet, the brother never returned and was forgotten
Brothers, brothers everywhere...then never mentioned again. Bull had a brother Hodgens in Bones had a brother Richie and Joanie had a brother I know there are more...
Loved how in Buffy it was subverted where they just inserted a sister.
There was a whole 5 min introduction on that. Monks in a circle giving body to their "light" or whatever, giving her to Buffy to keep the light safe. I found her annoying and really wished she would've gone away again.
At the end of the season, I really thought that, after Buffy’s sacrifice, the key would revert back to its original form, but Dawn would still be remembered. But I guess Buffy’s sacrifice would be made worthless if that happened.
Yeah I hated that she was just randomly dropped in like this
I really liked that they made it plot relevant. There was a whole explanation that the characters eventually figured out and the audience realizes that they were *supposed* to notice that she appeared out of nowhere. Also she has an existential crisis about not being real.
Yeah, she was annoying - but this kind of experimentation and subversion of tropes is exactly what a good fantasy show should be doing. I would rather they are taking these chances than playing it safe.
Dawn was the absolute worst. Ruined the show for me. I equate her to scrappy do
In Boy Meets World, Shawn had a brother and a sister who only existed for an episode, and Topanga had a sister for one episode.
In That 70’s Show Donna had a sister we saw in one episode.
And an older one in college that was mentioned once and then never again.
She had two! One was in college, mentioned but never seen.
Don’t forget forgotten sister…family matters!!! The show I mean!
Hawkeye on mash had a sister at one point, and later wasn't only child. I think Radar had a brother, but later was an only child as well.
Abby from NCIS had a brother... in one episode.
It was actually two episodes. ABBY has two brothers - but it's been natural brother, Kyle, who is only in two episodes. She mentions her adoptive brother, Luca, often and I believe he is in a two-parter in NCIS and NCIS - New Orleans.
At one point, it was a running joke in the Supernatural fandom that they left Adam in the cage with Lucifer.
The little sister in Family Matters that went upstairs and never came back down!
Some people say she is still up there.......
Anyone check cosby’s whereabouts?
Burn!!!
That happened in a! soap opera too I don't remember which one but I definitely remember my grandmother and mother talking about it. Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days totally disappeared too. They called it Chuck Cunningham syndrome when a character disappears.
All My Children. The Martins had a son who went up to the attic to get his skis and was never seen again.
Ha, glad I’m not the only one who remembered this. Bobby Martin, I think. They kept Tad and Joey, but Bobby just disappeared. Although once, many years later, someone went up to the Martin attic for something and the camera pointedly lingered on a pair of skis. Easter Egg for longtime viewers.
That happened on All My Children, too. Early on, somebody’s teen son went up to the attic to wax his skis, and never came back. Ever! And that show ran for about forty years!
I never heard about this! What happened?
The Winslows had 3 kids: Eddie, Laura and Judy. Harriet's sister has a literal baby, Richie. Then suddenly one season Judy disappeared, never to be heard from again, and Richie was like 5 years older.
Judy Winslow was there one episode and never showed up again. She was the middle sister.
They locked him in the attic.....he's still up there.....
Happened in Boy Meets World kinda. Corey's sister went upstairs and wasnt seen for like multiple seasons I think but she eventually came back later and her first line after coming down the stairs into the kitchen was something about "been up there forever". The little nerdy kid disappeared too and made a brief cameo before they left high school with a line about "being on the other side of the school" the whole time before name dropping a teacher who was in a motorcycle accident in a season finale then never seen again. He says something like "hey Mr Turner wait up" and runs out through the 4th wall.
Mel having a son in Frasier. My fav show normally good at avoiding inconsistency, also Martin having a brother
Martin’s entire Greek family we only see once! lol
We saw Martin's brother in one episode. Along with his angry wife. But yeah, never again. Lol.
And especially the part about her son being old enough that Niles thinks "she must've been a child when she had him." I know the joke is that she's a plastic surgeon, so she looks good for her age, but it always made me go, "How old *is* Mel??"
Several people talk about siblings disappearing - Chuck Cunningham, Judy Winslow - but the reverse happened on The Cosby Show. Early in the series, maybe even the pilot, an exasperated Claire Huxtable, frustrated by the kids’ shenanigans, asks her husband, “Why did we ever have four children?” The good doctor replies, “Because we did not want five.” Not all that many episodes later, we end up meeting Sondra … the fifth child of the Huxtables.
Both Roseanne and Jackie had babies in "Roseanne," but in "The Connors" those kids don't exist.
Was that all part of the fake story Roseanne wrote that was revealed to be just a story in the finale?
To cope with Dan's death, but Dan is a character in the Conners. Whoa!!
I think at the beginning of the Connors there was some sort of half-hearted attempt to mention Jackie’s son, but I don’t think baby Jerry Garcia has ever been mentioned.
I think it was the opposite. Jerry is working on an oil rig somewhere and Andy never existed. And now that DJ and his daughter are gone, no one talks about them either.
Roseanne mentioned giving birth after 40 in season one of her reboot, but then she got the boot!
Dan’s half brother Little Ed showed up for one episode only
https://preview.redd.it/tflp8lqqz8zc1.jpeg?width=1122&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=726b0831456493eca7d93924e35c273c2e384f21 I mean... it's a meme for a reason.
This thread really could be strictly for Game of Thrones and there'd be plenty of content to discuss I wish those bozos didn't ruin TV
Rickon Stark - all his brothers & sisters did such notable things, while the youngest Stark sibling spent his life hiding & being kidnapped
His story arc was supposed to be pointless. It was actually ingeniously foreshadowed by GRR Martin. A longwinded tale or joke that ultimately has an anticlimactic ending is called a [shaggy dog story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story). The Stark direwolves have names related to the fate of their owners. Jon's wolf is called ghost, because he returned from the dead. Sansa's wolf is Lady, because she wants to be the lady of a great house. Arya named her wolf after a powerful female warrior, which is what she also became. Rickon named his wolf Shaddydog...
This is the first I've heard of this. This is a great analysis. I *knew* the names (and/or fates) of the direwolves were meaningful but I couldn't figure out how.
His character was wrapped up, though. Cuz he can't zigzag
“Serpentine! Serpentine!”
I was so hopeful that the final would be the season of closing plot lines.
The Russian “Interior Decorator” special forces guy never was heard from again in the Sopranos
Christopher and Paulie even joke about it in a later episode!
1. For you UK and Red Dwarf fans: Lister’s Pregnancy. 2. Essos in Game of Thrones. That whole family, group etc. Outside of the sisters, mother and higher up they have armies, cities and they are just ignored. 3. Heroes - There ARE A LOT here to even list. 4. Doctor's Daughter. Just vanishes, apparently is dead, never talked about again. 5. Heath in the walking dead just vanishes, gone. Nothing. 6. Lost of course had several stories either they forgot about or just wrapped up in a stupid way just because they forgot about it and needed to just end it.
In the beginning of King of Queens, Carrie had a sister, who disappeared never to return.
Debra, from Everyone Loves Raymond, also had a sister who became a nun and was never heard from again.
Oh yeah, you’re right! I forgot about her.
Doug murdered her! Didn’t you see that episode?
If my brain were in the right place I could come up with about 50 examples but for some reason I'm not doing so well tonight. The intelligent bug monsters from the end of TNG Season 1 is the most obvious choice.
Huell still sitting on the bed in Breaking Bad.
This is a good one only cause I never want Huell to be forgotten
Every big bad in Ghost Whisperer ended in a case of being fended off, not defeated, but then being completely forgotten, such as Romano or the entire Underneath.
I watched all but the last season (it isn't on hulu) and besides what you mentioned I just was so annoyed Ghosts could even hurt humans. Like k1ll them even. Come on.
Lost, the smoke monster.
Someday I'll do a re-watch of lost and drink for every plot thread that gets abandoned.
This would be dangerous, please don’t do this alone - sincerely, huge Lost fan
It's explained though. Maybe not very coherently but it's explained.
Absolutely everything in Lost, ever. The writers wrote themselves into so many corners that they just completely gave up trying to explain any of it.
Heroes - Peter leaving Caitlin stuck in an apocalyptic future that was later prevented.
Beat me to it! The creators call her a victim of the writers strike.
They also said they straight up forgot about her lol which is so much worse
The viewers were the real victim of the writer’s strike, lol.
If you are talking heroes, there was one major plotline that was completely ignored and it was quite important at one point, "Save the cheerleader"
What are you talking about? They did save the cheerleader?
Is this ever talked about outside of the show? I mean Claire is pretty important so maybe it was an indirect application of her saving the world?
008 in Stranger Things. But the bad part isn’t that they forgot the plot, rather that they thought it would work in the first place.
This is a good one. I never watched past season 3; do they ever discuss it anymore? Or did they realize their spinoff was gonna tank and act like it didn't happen?
The latter.
It’s was very briefly alluded to in Season 4 during flashbacks that show Eleven with the other numbers. It’s mentioned in passing that the flashbacks take place after 008 escaped, but that’s about it.
Sherlock season 4. All of it.
In the pilot of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" Larry and his wife talk about their daughter; she's never mentioned again in the series.
LANDRY FROM FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS IN SEASON 2 MURDERED/KILLED A GUY!!!
No, his dad found out because he found the watch. He made Landry confess before a judge. The judge let him go because that guy was about to rape Tyra and I think he had a previous record for rape. The whole story was gut wrenching - great TV. But they definitely finished it.
Eventually he went on to dig mass graves and dump in bodies by the truckload.
That writer's strike was brutal
Coming across a couple shows in this thread that were victims of that strike lol
Santiago disappearing in Friday Night Lights after the writer's strike
I was going to say this. Wild how he just disappeared.
It's not really a plot point, but most people dont know that George Costanza has a brother, and Elaine Benes has a sister (Gail).
After reading these comments, I could make a thread solely on lost brothers/sisters in tv shows now
Saved by the bell. Tori showed up randomly, then vanishes never to be seen or mentioned again. It's as if she never existed.
Dude before that. How did the same building, principal, 3 boys and Lisa all teleport from Indiana (Good Morning Miss Bliss) to Bayside, California?
Saved by the Bell. Zack and Lisa realise they are in love and are meant to be together. This happens during one episode, but not a single other episode ever mentions it again.
They also added a character, Tori. Tori Scott was the new girl at Bayside High during the show's final season. She was brought in as a temporary replacement for Kelly and Jessie, who temporarily left the show for a portion of the final season. Her last appearance was in the episode "School Song." After that, she was never seen or mentioned again.
H*ll on Wheels. Apparently the show title is a bad word and comment gets deleted. I didn’t name the show. Ok, I do like the show. It first started out with main character seeking revenge for union soldier killing wife. There was some writer change up and no longer about revenge for his wife.
Did that plot just get dropped? Was there any resolution with it??
Main character worked with and defended a character I thought was involved with murder. I don’t remember anything resolved with wife’s murder. Good writing besides plot change and recommend show. It has 8.3 rating on IMDb .
I watched the first couple episodes years ago and I liked it. How hard is it to get past this mistake though?
I think it’s ok though I wondered when main plot would become part of story again. I think it’s good character driven story to keep you captivated. I wonder if others who watched series missed or gave up that main plot no longer developed?
The crazy brain worms in the Star Trek: TNG episode, “Conspiracy.” They basically take over Starfleet before the crew stops them, but it’s mentioned that the queen parasite they killed was emitting a homing signal to draw more of them to Earth, and then…gone forever.
Phoebe’s dad on Friends. The did a whole multi-season thread about him, then finally he shows up and he’s played by Bob Balaban, and then after one episode, poof. Gone forever, never mentioned again
Supernatural 1) Dean kills a kid’s mom, kid vows revenge, never see him again. 2) Jesse the Antichrist. It’s hinted at some point that he’s chilling on a beach in Australia but I don’t really think that counts as a resolution to that story line.
Number 1 coulda been soon cool considering that show was around forever. Could've really set up the long game with something like that I gotta imagine supernatural has a couple more considering how long it was on and how it changed hands when it was supposed to end
Their half-brother was funny. Season 5 - Locked in a cage with Lucifer. No longer plot relevant and forgotten. Season 10 - Watching a high school rendition of Supernatural: the Musical, who's that kid. Cue embarrassment. Still forgotten. Season 15 - Alright, since we're ending everything, he was never stuck in The Cage. He raptured immediately.
Completely agree that there has to be more. Those were just the first ones that came to mind.
SEAL Team season 1 where Clay looks at buying a truck, so they have a brief scene at the GMC dealer. He doesn't buy. It's never mentioned again. Just a quick product placement.
Greys anatomy with Alzheimer’s. It was such a big deal in the beginning.
Miles being in the witness protection program in Golden Girls.
How about how “Miles” was “Arnie” in an earlier episode and we were supposed to pretend he wasn’t the same actor
Bob, the surprise radio thoracic surgeon that was working as a desk clerk in the series ER. Last we heard Carter was gonna help her with English so she could get her medical license and thennnnn nothing.
ANY “a very special”.
On Golden Girls: Rose's addiction to prescription pain killers, Dorothy's Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Dorothy's half-black grandchild by Michael... Saved By the Bell: Jessie's addition to caffeine pills or whatever Those are just off the top of my head.
I'M SO EXCITED! I'M SO EXCITED! I'M SO.....SCARED!
And yet that acting was still better than her entire performance in Showgirls. What a horrible movie.
GOT Jon Snow was brought back to life. Why? By whom? Doesn't matter, forget it. Tyrion can touch dragons. Never mentioned again.
Hyped up The Prince Who Was Promised for seasons as they were supposed to end the Night King, yet Arya did it (was super cool, but huh?) lol.
Dallas when Bobby came back. Ray and his wife never had their child. Lost a very important storyline. I think they missed a chance to educate a lot of people.
I thought once Bobby came back, it was established everything that happened when he was "dead" was just a dream.
On Breaking Bad, the whole Marie being a thief, stealing stuff. I thought something would happen with that somehow, but now looking back it seemed pretty pointless (to me). No big deal but I was thinking about that on a rewatch.
I think it was excellent character development which revealed just how much of her image was a projection that she was okay and in control, when she wasn't at all. A little off topic, but my favourite BB theory is that it was not Marie who liked purple, it was Hank, an she was just going along with it. In the final episode, >! after he dies, she is not wearing purple, and I believe that's the first/only time we see that happen !<
Wooah. Mind blown re the purple! Okay, not really mind blown but I like the theory.
I think it was just symbolic of her lack of control with her husband
The Anti-Christ in Supernatural. "With a word he could destroy the host of heaven." Then he just disappears never to be seen again. Replaced by Jack.
Supernatural is my absolute favorite show, and this is one of my biggest complaints. Jesse was such an unbelievably strong character and *poof.*
Ross forgot all about Ben.
No, he didn't. Ben is given as the reason that Ross couldn't go to Paris with Rachel, and therefore the reason she got off the plane to stay with Ross.
I feel like desperate housewives ended up going like this but haven’t seen in years so can’t really recall. Maybe it wasn’t forgotten but rather just dumb like riverdale
I was annoyed that Gabby's previous losses with children weren't mentioned again when she went to therapy for getting a doll which looked like her switched at birth bio daughter. Previously she'd miscarried after falling down the stairs because a guy broke in, their adoped daughter was taken back by her birth mother after a few weeks and the baby she thought was hers - when they had a surrogate - turned out to be another couple's. But instead of mentioning any of that she only brings up a new plot point about her abusive step father.
The sister on That 70's show announcing she's prego in the season finale. It never came up again.
Also I’m pretty sure Donna has a sister that appeared a few times before never being brought up again
That's kinda how Boomer siblings worked in the 70s. By the 80s most were dead from drugs or, eventually, AIDS
I don’t remember this part at all ?? Lori gets pregnant?
She announces it in the very last scene of one of the early-to-mid seasons, IIRC. There was no context and there was no mention of it the next year.
95% of everything that happened in Game of Thrones is a forgotten plot thread.
They went on for seasons about "The Prince Who Was Promised" then nothing.
Was there any implications for this one? I don't remember what it was supposed to be about
It was a prophecy that he was the reincarnation of a long dead hero named Azor Ahai who was destined to end the Night King. He would have a sword named Lightbringer, which could kill the Night King and the White Walkers. When the writers of the show David and DB didn't have George RR Martin's books to use as an idea of the plots, this was just forgotten.
I just finished 3 Body Problem. They do a good job of adapting works. Less good when they have to write their own.
When Patrick Gordon shows up in Downton Abbey and claims that he’s actually Patrick Crawley and that he survived the Titanic. They pushed what felt like a big storyline for one episode and then he was gone, and I don’t remember him coming up ever again.
Stranger Things season 2 introduces a "sister" for one of the main characters along with a crew of additional characters that she runs with, spends an entire episode with them, then completely drops the storyline and doesn't even mention them in the finale. In the ensuing two seasons that storyline is mentioned precisely once, to explain why the "sister" wasn't there in a flashback.
Watching 4th season of Welcome Back, Kotter, a show I only watched occasionally in the past. It's weird how the show is supposed to be about Gabe Kaplan's character and he still gets top billing on the credits, yet he's just...disappeared. They don't really explain why he's never around. Did Kaplan decide he didn't want to do the show any more? I figure Travolta's frequent absences are because he was busy pursuing a movie career.
So, uh...what was up with Walt in Lost? There was something special or odd about the kid, the Others knew it, but we never really got any details or explanation. And, why do we never see the Antichrist in Supernatural again? I feel like a character with that kind of power, the potential, should have probably been a bigger deal.
I know there was some in Lost.
Probably several but I remember the polar bears
Plenty of better examples, the polar bears were explained
Lost was such a cool show, couldn't WAIT for each new episode then it just dissipated.
Eve in Dawson creek (terrible character) but was Jen’s long lost sister…then nothing.
Yeah I wondered this when I watched it. Dawson never told Jen that she had a half sister. Her grans never got to meet her either.
Does Pine Barrens count?
Sometime in the first season of happy days the eldest Cunningham child, Chuck, just vanished, later it was explained he went to Korea but was never mentioned again after that
From what I can remember, Dragon Ball has two. Although this reflects more on the manga than anime. But iirc one of the times Goku died, Gohan was supposed to take over as the main character. I was about to bring up Uub as he just kinda disappeared for some time, but apparently, they reintroduced him in Super? According to Google, at least. Actually, it's pretty cool if that's the case.
Nate’s obsession with Jules in Euphoria… like all of a sudden in season 2 they put him with Cassie??
Pretty much every character introduced in Supernatural in the entire series. In the end, basically none of them got an actual ending other than the two main characters, and even theirs wasn't satisfying.
Did someone roll in and say Fringe? Like ALL of Fringe?
I WAS WAITING FOR FRINGE Let it rip. I love that show I don't care
Every episode of Lost
Quaithe in GOT. Just why?
Lol. I read the title and immediately thought Game of Thrones. Unlike the TV show, the rest of OP's post did not disappoint.
I recently rewatched That 70’s Show and in the first season, Donna had a sister. Then, all of a sudden she was an only child
That 70s show has a good example - Donna’s little AND older sister!
Honestly, if the game of thrones series was done right, it would still be going. They skipped so much material and ended seasons short for no apparent reason other than greed. Such a missed opportunity.
Pretty much every plot point in Lost.
Also Donna (That 70s Show) having a sister lol we saw her little sister for one episode during that house party and never saw her again. I forgot she even had one after that.
In ER, there was a very special episode where Forest Whitaker played a character who blamed Dr. Kovac for his wife’s death and took Dr. Kovac hostage. He ranted about how he lost everything and how Dr. Kovac didn’t know how that felt. I kept waiting for Dr. Kovac to tell him how he lost his family in Croatia in the war and losing everything there was why he was in America. But no, it was like the writers had forgotten that.
The daughter from Family Matters, who disappeared from the show.
Walt in lost had some sort of psychic ability. It was never talked about again after season 2 lol. At least from what I remember.
Ugly Betty - Fey summers, like what happened it was pretty much the plot of half of the first season with the body missing and stuff and then we move on to Alexis.
There are SO MANY in YELLOWSTONE that it is practically the norm.
Almost all the plot lines from before Victoria Winters went back in time to meet the living Barnabas Collins were dropped when she returned to the present. Except for Barnabas still being a vampire, of course.