Changed line(s) 18,19 (click to see context) from:
!!Examples:
to:
!!Examples:
Deleted line(s) 113,240 (click to see context) :
[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* Some films based on works that were originally in a fantasy setting have the characters transported to Earth in order to save money on elaborate fantasy sets. ''Film/MastersOfTheUniverse'', ''[[Film/TheBeastmaster Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time]]'' and ''Film/TheSmurfs'' are just a few examples.
* In ''Film/AmericanGraffiti'', Bob Falfa wears a cowboy hat because Creator/HarrisonFord refused to get a period-appropriate haircut and consequently be sidelined from working in other projects while waiting for it to grow back out.
* While the Broadway version of ''Theatre/{{Annie}}'' revolves around the Christmas season, the finale of [[Film/Annie1982 the 1982 film]] is set on July 4th, America's Independence Day. The adaptation was necessary because principal photography was scheduled during the summer months.
* ''Film/ApocalypseNow'':
** Creator/MarlonBrando infamously showed up on the set overweight despite the script listing his character Colonel Kurtz as having a "lean and hungry" physique. Coppola was then forced to shoot Kurtz wearing a black t-shirt, only standing in the shadow and never below the shoulders to hide his figure, thus giving Kurtz the appearance of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLFdJLSho8 a man who has almost become one with darkness.]] He also didn't bother to memorize most of his lines, resulting in most of Kurtz's final monologue being improvised on the spot; his disjointed ramblings ended up being ''much'' more unsettling than anything a screenwriter could have written.
** The sacrifice of the bull being intercut with the death of Kurtz at the film's conclusion was not part of the original script -- but after witnessing the ceremony, Coppola filmed a recreation of it, liking the symbolic resonance of it.
* In ''Film/AustinPowersInternationalManOfMystery'', Creator/MikeMyers and director Creator/JayRoach initially wanted to include a SharkPool containing [[WeaponizedAnimal sharks with lasers]], to go along with Dr. Evil being [[BondVillainStupidity a parody of]] ''Franchise/JamesBond'' villains and their love for the [[ComplexityAddiction elaborate]] DeathTrap. The problem? The movie didn't have the budget for that, but the special effects crew realized that they could use jets in the pool to create bubbles. When informed of this, Myers and Roach came up with the now-famous mutated, ill-tempered sea bass gag, and recognized that doing so would have made the Bond parody [[RuleOfFunny even more effective]] than their original, over-the-top idea of sharks with lasers. Myers and Roach also came up with the InUniverse reason that Dr. Evil's henchmen [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome were unable to acquire the sharks due to them being declared an endangered species, and that they could not circumvent the ensuing regulations to acquire the sharks]].
* The direct-to-video science fiction film ''Auton'' was intended to star Creator/NicholasCourtney, reprising his role as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart from ''Series/DoctorWho''. (The filmmakers were able to negotiate licenses to use Lethbridge-Stewart and the Autons, but not anything directly related to the Doctor himself.) During pre-production, Courtney had to withdraw from the production due to health issues. In his place, the film features an entirely new protagonist named Lockwood, who's arguably more interesting than a reheated Brigadier would have been and went on to feature in two sequels that develop him in directions that would not have been possible with Lethbridge-Stewart.
* ''Film/BabyDriver'':
** The original script had a comedic scene where the crew of bank robbers were instructed to wear [[{{Film/Halloween}} Michael Myers]] masks for a heist, but JD, confusing the slasher movie villain with actor Creator/MikeMyers, wears an Film/AustinPowers mask instead. The studio managed to get the rights for Austin Powers' likeness, but not that of Michael Myers, so the scene was slightly rewritten with the same basic PopCulturalOsmosisFailure gag in place - instead JD was the one who procured disguises for the whole crew, so ''everyone'' ended up with Austin Powers masks.
** One of the songs the producers licensed for the chase scenes was "Neat Neat Neat" by Music/TheDamned. Then they discovered the song was much shorter (two minutes and forty-four seconds) than the chase they paired it with. Their solution: have the crew get caught in a traffic jam during the chase, forcing them to change vehicles. After they get into the new vehicle, Baby restarts the song on his iPod and they pick up where they left off. It's during the transition that JD loses his shotgun [[spoiler:which gets him killed for leaving evidence behind]] and furthering Baby's decision to leave a life of crime.
* ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'':
** The scripted climax of ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' called for Marty to take the [=DeLorean=] to a Nevada nuclear test site and return to 1985 using the power of a nuclear blast. This was beyond the film's budget, so the now-iconic clock tower climax was created.
** ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartII'': Creator/CrispinGlover's refusal to do the sequels impacted the plot heavily. For example, George [=McFly=] being dead in 1985-A was originally conceived as just an excuse to not show him very much.
* This trope is touched on in the classic black and white movie, ''Film/TheBadAndTheBeautiful''.
** A horror movie producer couldn't afford decent special effects for the monster. He teams up with the director to use camera tricks to make the monster into TheUnseen.
** From the trivia in the movie's IMDB entry, "The scene showing the production of the fictional low budget horror film was based on how [[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507932/ Val Lewton]] produced ''Film/CatPeople'' (1942)."
* As originally scripted, the climax of ''Film/BasketCase'' would have featured Belial going on a lengthy rampage through the streets of Manhattan before arriving at Sharon's apartment. The production obviously lacked the budget for such a sequence, so the solution was to replace it with a surreal dream sequence of Duane running naked through the streets, which is then revealed to be [[spoiler: a psychic vision of what Belial is currently doing]].
* While filming a chase scene in Tangier for ''Film/TheBourneUltimatum'' the crew found that the foot traffic was too heavy to be controlled or redirected. As a result, the actors had to force their way through the dense crowd, lending the scene extra authenticity.
* ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'':
** In the unproduced stage play that the film was based on, the story ended with Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund running away together to America. The movie only got its [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy iconic]] BittersweetEnding because UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode forbade movies from showing characters getting away with adultery.
** Creator/IngridBergman, once finished with the role, got a much shorter hairstyle for her next film, an adaptation of Creator/ErnestHemingway's ''Literature/ForWhomTheBellTolls''. This saved the film's now-iconic song "As Time Goes By" from the cutting room floor. The film's composer Max Steiner felt that the song didn't work for the film, but replacing it would have required reshoots that Bergman's haircut rendered impossible to do.
* ''Film/{{Cats}}'':
** While never outright confirmed, this is widely believed to be a key reason for [[BigBad Macavity]]'s more prominent role in the film compared to the stage show. In the stage show, Macavity doesn't appear until the climax of the story, when he kidnaps Old Deuteronomy. In the film, he makes multiple appearances throughout the story, and he also kidnaps Jennyanydots, Bustopher Jones, Gus, and Skrimbleshanks after their songs (supposedly because he's determined to ascend to the Heaviside Layer at all costs, and wants to eliminate his competition). It's widely believed that the filmmakers did this (in part) so that Creator/RebelWilson, Creator/JamesCorden, and Creator/IanMcKellen--who were among the biggest and most expensive names in the cast--wouldn't have to spend the entire movie in the ensemble, and each of them would have a plausible excuse to disappear from the film after their big solo.
** Similarly: one of the biggest character changes from the stage show is Bombalurina's AdaptationalVillainy. In the stage show, it's vaguely implied that she had some sort of involvement with Macavity in the past, but she's still a loyal member of the Jellicles, and she spends most of the show as a prominent ensemble player alongside [[HeterosexualLifePartners her best friend Demeter]], who's [[ThoseTwoGuys always by her side]]. In the film, on the other hand, she's apparently an outright minion of Macavity, and she only shows up to sing "Macavity the Mystery Cat" (which is apparently [[VillainSong sung in praise of him]] rather than as [[TheVillainSucksSong a warning]]) before vanishing for the rest of the movie. This is widely believed to have been done to minimize the amount of time that Music/TaylorSwift would need to be on-set for the film, since she was one of the biggest stars in the cast. Similarly: Bombalurina's close friendship with Demeter was likely omitted so that the filmmakers could promise Swift a solo number, since "Macavity the Mystery Cat" was a duet in the stage show.
* In ''Film/{{Clerks}}'':
** The entire plot could be considered this--director Creator/KevinSmith happened to work at a convenience store at the time, the owners trusted him enough to film there in the off-hours, and said owners also happened to own the video store in the same strip mall. (One could also argue misfortune wrote the plot of ''Film/ClerksII'', as, despite Smith now being a decade older and a respected industry professional, the Quick Stop's owners refused to close the store for daytime filming, fearing the drop in customer retention closing for a month might cause.)
** Some local hooligans jammed gum into the locks of the convenience store's giant window shade, forcing Dante to make a huge sign that said: "I ASSURE YOU WE'RE OPEN!" This gag is one of the film's most iconic images. But the truth is that Smith could only shoot in the store at night when the store was closed. Having the shades permanently down was a way to disguise the fact that it was dark outside during the daytime interior scenes.
** This is also why the film is shot in black-and-white: there was basically no chance, given the budget, that exterior scenes (or scenes in the video store) would be shot at the point in the day when the scene was supposed to take place. In black-and-white, you can't really tell if it's 8 in the morning or 4 in the afternoon, so exterior scenes could be shot whenever. (That black-and-white filmstock was incredibly cheap in 1993 helped as well.)
** The original script included a sequence (included in animated form as a DVD extra) of what Dante and Randall did at the funeral of Dante's ex-girlfriend. However, Smith didn't have the budget to rent a set and a bunch of extras in nice clothes, so just shot Dante and Randall entering the funeral parlor and immediately cutting to them [[NoodleIncident being chased out]]. Smith felt that this was much funnier.
* The opening of ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' was originally scripted to take place in UsefulNotes/TheAmazonRainforest with Lacombe's team finding the airplanes in the center of CropCircles. This was too expensive and it got changed to a desert so that the sequence could be filmed near Los Angeles.
* ''Film/{{Cube}}'' came about due to something like this:
-->"We only have money for one set, one room."
-->"That one room could represent a bunch of rooms that look identical."
-->"Well, a bunch of identical rooms would be a maze."
-->"So, why does this maze exist? Why are our characters trapped in it?"
-->"I think that's the plot."
* ''Film/TheCuriousCaseOfBenjaminButton'': The reason why teenaged Benjamin is played by a child actor instead of a de-aged Creator/BradPitt is because the special effects budget had dried up at that point and no one wanted to inflate the already giant budget.
* The third act of ''Film/{{Deadpool|2016}}'' was planned to be more extravagant, but at the eleventh hour, Fox swooped in and slashed an additional $7 million off the budget. The filmmakers were forced to throw out a bulk of their planned action sequence, but devised a workaround in true ''Deadpool'' fashion: the now-signature joke of the hero accidentally leaving his bag of guns in the cab.
* ''Film/DieHard'' started life as a loose adaptation of a thriller novel by Roderick Thorp called ''Nothing Lasts Forever'', which was a {{sequel}} to a 1966 PoliceProcedural novel called ''The Detective''--which was made into a film starring Creator/FrankSinatra in 1968. Because of this, the studio was contractually obligated to offer the lead role to Sinatra. When he turned down the chance to reprise his old role, the filmmakers chose to drop any pretense of ''Die Hard'' being a sequel to ''The Detective'', instead opting to go in a radically different direction. Among other things, this resulted in the grizzled, aging NYPD detective Joe Leland being {{retool}}ed into the young, [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] NYPD detective John [=McClane=], and the female lead being retooled as the protagonist's ''wife'' instead of his adult daughter.
* The American adaptation of ''Film/FeverPitch'' (UK title ''Perfect Catch'') was supposed to end with Creator/JimmyFallon's character coming to terms with the Boston Red Sox's perpetual bad luck, with the idea of "there's always next year." In fact, the Boston Red Sox were chosen because they have a fanbase but hadn't won in many years (sometimes explained as the "Curse of [[Creator/BabeRuth the Bambino]]"). But in RealLife, the Red Sox went on to win the World Series for the first time in over 80 years. Therefore, the film ended on a much more happy conclusion. The crew wound up having to film an extra epilogue during the 2004 World Series with Fallon and co-star Creator/DrewBarrymore, and you can even see the two of them, in character, kissing each other during a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04syq0ishq8 live television broadcast]] of fans celebrating on the field after the end of the final game. It's explained in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4cITHhVexs this interview.]]
* The sequence in ''Film/TheFugitive'' where Kimble loses his pursuers in the confusion surrounding the St Patrick's Day Parade was added to the script after the filmmakers realized that their scheduled dates for location filming in Chicago included the day that the real-life parade would be held.
* ''Film/TheGodfather'':
** Michael Corleone's son is named "Anthony" because [[TheDanza that happened to be the name of the child actor who played him in the first movie]]. Due to the boy's young age and inexperience, he had a difficult time taking direction unless he was addressed by his real name.
** Creator/MarlonBrando was originally slated to make a [[TheCameo cameo]] in the final flashback sequence of ''Film/TheGodfatherPartII'', but backed out at the last minute. As a result, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola was forced to rewrite the scene with Michael sitting alone at a table while his brothers greet an [[TheGhost unseen]] Vito just offscreen--creating the impression that Michael will never truly be able to escape his father's presence in spite of his death. He realized that this made the scene much more powerful.
** The story of ''Film/TheGodfatherPartIII'' was heavily influenced by Creator/RobertDuvall's refusal to reprise his role as Tom Hagen (reportedly because he was offered a considerably smaller paycheck than Creator/AlPacino and Creator/DianeKeaton), which prevented the film from definitively wrapping up the story of the Corleone brothers. This necessitated the film's rather disproportionate focus on Michael's relationships with his daughter and his ex-wife, as well as the [[CanonForeigner introduction]] of his illegitimate nephew Vincent.
* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'':
** Godzilla may owe much of his iconic cultural status to [[ScrewedByTheLawyers legal wrangling]] over the movie rights to Franchise/KingKong. The ''Godzilla'' series very nearly ended at two movies after the first {{sequel}} (''Film/GodzillaRaidsAgain'') underperformed at the box office--but when American film producer John Beck went to Creator/{{Toho}} with a proposal for a movie about King Kong [[CoolVsAwesome fighting]] FrankensteinsMonster, they decided to replace Frankenstein's Monster with their own monster Godzilla (possibly due to Creator/UniversalPictures trying to claim exclusive movie right to Creator/MaryShelley's ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}''), resulting in Godzilla being unexpectedly revived for a third outing. [[Film/KingKongVsGodzilla The resulting film]] turned out to be a major box office smash hit, with its [[LighterAndSofter fun and light-hearted]] approach to the {{Kaiju}} genre being very well-received by audiences. Contrary to popular belief, however, King Kong was much more popular in Japan than Godzilla in 1962, and Toho had always imagined ''him'' as the hero of the movie--but they couldn't make any more ''King Kong'' movies due to Merian C. Cooper (the director of [[Film/KingKong1933 the original 1933 film]]) attempting to claim ownership of the character's movie rights.[[note]]They were able to get away with making ''Film/KingKongEscapes'' since it was a co-production with Creator/RankinBassProductions, and it was legally considered an adaptation of their animated series ''WesternAnimation/TheKingKongShow'' (not a sequel to ''Film/KingKongVsGodzilla'')[[/note]] As a result, they did the next best thing and made more movies featuring Godzilla, gradually turning him into their flagship character.
** Most of Creator/{{Toho}}'s [[{{Kaiju}} giant monster]] movies retroactively became part of [[TheVerse the Godzilla universe]] through CanonWelding so that the studio could save money by [[PropRecycling reusing their props and monster costumes]] in other films. Film/{{Rodan}}, Film/{{Mothra}}, [[Film/FrankensteinConquersTheWorld Baragon]], [[Film/VaranTheUnbelievable Varan]], [[Film/{{Atragon}} Manda]], and [[Film/KingKongEscapes Gorosaurus]] (and many, many more) were originally introduced in standalone movies that had nothing to do with Godzilla, but they were repurposed as supporting characters in Godzilla's world so that their costumes wouldn't go to waste. In essence: [[OlderThanTheyThink one of the first cinematic universes in the history of film]] was created as a ''cost-cutting'' measure.
** The story of ''Film/KingKongVsGodzilla'' was partially influenced by technological constraints. Since Godzilla and Kong were both portrayed by stuntmen in rubber costumes (due to stop-motion animation being beyond Toho's budget), both monsters had to be portrayed as roughly the same size--even though Kong is less than 50 feet tall in [[Film/KingKong1933 the original 1933 film]], while Godzilla is well over 100 feet tall in [[Film/Godzilla1954 the original 1954 film]] (meaning that Godzilla should be at least twice as big as Kong). To explain how Kong doubled in size, the film portrays him as being addicted to the juice of a berry that grows on his native island, which causes him to grow enormously.
* ''Film/TheGraduate'': The film ends with Elaine ditching her groom-to-be at the altar and running off with Benjamin, with the two breathlessly jumping on a bus with huge smiles on their faces. As they sit down, though, the smiles gradually fade as they realize just what they've done and the completely uncertain future ahead of them; the final shot is Benjamin and Elaine looking confused and frightened. Critics loved the SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome and praised the genius choice to end the movie that way--which was a total accident. Mike Nichols, the director of the movie, wasn't on the set the day the ending was filmed, and an assistant director filled in for him--but he didn't know that he was supposed to say "Cut!" when the shot was done. Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross, who played Benjamin and Elaine respectively, genuinely ''were'' confused because they didn't understand why the cameras were still rolling.
* In the 1970s, Creator/JohnCarpenter and Debra Hill worked on producing a suspense thriller from a script called ''The Babysitter Murders'', about a group of teenage girls who are stalked and murdered by a {{serial killer}} in a peaceful suburban neighborhood. Due to budget constraints, they had to cut down the timeframe of the story (which was originally supposed to take place over the course of multiple days) to a single day, allowing them to keep scenery and wardrobe changes to a minimum. But they knew that the story would be much more effective if it took place on a day with some special significance--so they choose Halloween night, "the scariest night of the year". [[Film/Halloween1978 The rest is history.]]
* ''Film/ImJuli'':
** When Daniel and Juli are traveling through Romania, only photos are shown instead of real film footage. The reason for that is the Romanian government didn't give permission to film in their country, so they had to take photos instead.
** Originally, Daniel and Juli were supposed to sing Music/{{The Cure|Band}}'s "Friday I'm In Love", but the rights were too expensive. When the music supervisor was able to secure the rights for "Blue Moon" instead, the script was changed at the last minute to include a conversation on oldies.
* Due to budget constraints, the giant octopus in ''Film/ItCameFromBeneathTheSea'' was only given six tentacles.
* Film/JamesBond:
** In the climax of ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'', villainess Rosa Klebb was fighting Film/JamesBond using a poisoned shoe knife. The script called for her to be accidentally killed by her own weapon, but the director couldn't figure out a way to film it that didn't look ridiculous. Then someone realized that a) there was a gun on the floor from when Bond had disarmed Klebb and b) the heroine Tatiana Romanova, who [[FauxActionGirl had been an enemy agent]] recruited by Klebb before falling in love with Bond, was [[NeutralFemale just standing there watching the fight]]. So the director changed the script to have Tatiana pick up the gun, and after some hesitation, shoot Klebb.
** ''Film/YouOnlyLiveTwice'':
*** The [[CoolCar Toyota 2000GT]] wasn't supposed to be a convertible, but it got converted into one due to Creator/SeanConnery's height.
*** Actress Mie Hama was having trouble learning English, while her fellow actress Akiko Wakabayashi made great progress. Since the former [[SeriousBusiness took this so seriously]] that she threatened to kill herself if fired, the producers just traded the roles between actresses: Hama went on to play Kissy, who appears much later in the story and has fewer lines, and Wakabayashi played Aki, who is in the story from the very start.
** The famous ski jump in ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'' wasn't supposed to be TheOner when it was filmed. They actually had around six cameras set up, but by the time conditions were right for the stunt only one was ready and working, so one uninterrupted shot of the stunt from start to finish is what they went with.
** During most of Creator/DanielCraig's tenure as Bond, [[ScrewedByTheLawyers legal disputes]] over the movie rights to the famous [[NebulousEvilOrganization SPECTRE]] organization forced the writers to introduce QUANTUM as a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute. But they ''finally'' managed to work out a deal in time for the aptly-named 24th film ''Film/{{Spectre}}'', resulting in the {{Retcon}} that [[HijackedByGanon QUANTUM was actually a front for SPECTRE all along]].
* ''Film/{{Jaws}}'':
** Creator/StevenSpielberg couldn't get the mechanical shark to work very well, so it became mostly TheUnseen, with the entire concept of the sailors using barrels to track it as a way to keep filming as though the shark was there. The film is widely credited as working ''far'' better because of the [[NothingIsScarier increased tension]] and the greater impact of scenes where the shark actually ''did'' appear.
** Hooper was originally intended to die in the screenplay (as he did in the Peter Benchley novel). However, some footage captured by Spielberg's secondary crew, of a ''real'' great white attacking a diving cage that was visibly empty (because the stunt diver had unsurprisingly [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere fled for his goddamned life]]), was so awesome that the plot was changed to let Hooper slip out of it safely, allowing them to use the shot with the empty cage. Production executive Bill Gilmore joked "The shark down in Australia rewrote the script and saved Dreyfuss's character."
** The mechanical shark "Bruce" (or as the cast and crew ended up calling it, "The Great White Turd") had a habit of breaking down. While the actors were waiting for Bruce to be repaired ''again'', Spielberg didn't want to waste precious shooting time, so he added a new scene. Specifically, [[ActionFilmQuietDramaScene the scene with Quint's famous monologue about the U.S.S. Indianapolis]]. Considering that that scene is considered to be one of the best dramatic scenes ''ever'', it's safe to say that this was a good thing.
* ''Film/JurassicPark'''s iconic T. rex chase scene was going to take place on a boat down a river, as in the book. However, it was beyond the film's budget, so it got changed to a Jeep chase through the jungle. The boat concept was reused for [[Ride/JurassicParkRiverAdventure the theme park ride]].
* According to most accounts, ''Film/JusticeLeague2017'' was originally envisioned as a two-part film, but was cut down to just one (along with being significantly re-shot and re-edited) at the behest of [[Creator/WarnerBros the studio]] after most critics and audiences reacted negatively to ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'', which was intended to set up its plot and establish its general tone and aesthetic. This is widely believed to be a key reason for many of the film's weirder storytelling decisions. To name a few:
** The obscure Creator/DCComics villain Steppenwolf ended up as [[BigBad the main antagonist]] of the film because the filmmakers were saving the A-lister [[Characters/NewGodsDarkseid Darkseid]] (Steppenwolf's nephew and commander) for Part 2, which ended up being scrapped.
** Characters/{{Superman|TheCharacter}} is abruptly [[spoiler:[[DeathIsCheap resurrected from the dead with Kryptonian technology]]]] around halfway through the film following a bizarre scene where [[spoiler:the heroes dig up his corpse]]. This apparently happened because the filmmakers had to cut the planned subplot involving him being [[spoiler:[[CameBackWrong resurrected by the Apokoliptians as Darkseid's brainwashed minion]]]], which was apparently going to serve as Part 1's {{cliffhanger}} ending.
** The film [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse never explains]] the scene in [[Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice the previous film]] where Batman sees a vision of [[BadFuture an evil Superman ruling over a post-apocalyptic Earth]] and gets warned about it by a time-travelling [[ComicBook/TheFlash Flash]]. When Part 2 was scrapped, the filmmakers apparently had to cut the subplot that would have explained that scene, leaving it all the more inexplicable.
* ''Film/TheKarateKidPartIII'' was originally going to feature John Kreese as the main villain. Because Martin Kove had filming schedule conflicts due to shooting ''Series/HardTimeOnPlanetEarth'', Kreese was relegated to a secondary villain role, while the character of Terry Silver was created to fill the main villain role. Silver would go on to become a very integral part of the Miyagiverse, with the third season of ''Series/CobraKai'' expanding on his and Kreese's backstory, while the fourth season brought him back as a main villain.
* In Creator/MickeySpillane's novel ''Film/KissMeDeadly'', the big MacGuffin is just a block of heroin, and the story ends with Mike Hammer [[spoiler:[[KillItWithFire burning]] the BigBad alive]]. When it was made into a film in 1955, the Hays Code would have prevented both plot points (it forbade both graphic violence and explicit reference to drugs), so the plot had to be reworked to get past the censors. This resulted in the famous PlotTwist in which the MacGuffin turns out to be [[spoiler:a mysterious box of ominous blinding light]], and the ending where [[spoiler:the BigBad is horribly incinerated offscreen by the contents of the mysterious box]]. Amusingly, this also indirectly influenced the plots of both ''Film/PulpFiction'' (which borrowed [[spoiler:the mysterious briefcase of golden light]]) and ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' (which borrowed the ending where [[spoiler:the bad guys are horribly incinerated after opening the MacGuffin box]]).
* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse:
** The plot of the franchise was heavily influenced by [[ScrewedByTheLawyers licensing issues]] involving Creator/MarvelComics characters. In the late [[TheNineties 1990s]] and early [[TurnOfTheMillennium 2000s]], Marvel sold the movie rights to most of their most popular superheroes (including ComicBook/SpiderMan, the ComicBook/XMen, and the ComicBook/FantasticFour) to various movie studios, partly to recover from their infamous [[UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996 bankruptcy]] in 1996. After seeing how successful those studios were with their characters, they eventually got the idea to produce their own movies through their in-house studio Creator/MarvelStudios, allowing them to keep a greater share of the profits and ensure greater creative control. While going through the list of characters who they still had the movie rights to, they realized that the list included ComicBook/IronMan, [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk The Hulk]], [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]], and ComicBook/CaptainAmerica, who were all core members of ComicBook/{{the Avengers}}. They instantly knew that an ''Avengers'' movie would be the ideal film to compete with [[Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios 20th Century Fox]]'s popular ''[[Film/XMenFilmSeries X-Men]]'' movies, but they also knew that it would alienate most casual moviegoers if they had to explain every character's origin story in the same movie -- so they decided to give each character their own solo movie before having them all team up in an epic {{crossover}}. Later, after ''[[Film/TheAvengers2012 The Avengers]]'' turned out to be a massive success, the Film/{{Guardians of the Galaxy|2014}} wound up as the franchise's second major superhero team (effectively a {{foil}} for the Avengers) because they were one of the few major teams whose movie rights Marvel still owned at the time.
** ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'':
*** The story was notably influenced by production difficulties that plagued ''Film/IronMan1'' and ''Film/AntMan1''. In the comics, Tony Stark had a loyal butler named Edwin Jarvis, but ''Iron Man'' came out around the same time as ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', which prominently featured Creator/MichaelCaine as Bruce Wayne's loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth; the producers knew that they would be accused of ripping off the ComicBook/{{Batman}} comics if they kept Edwin Jarvis in the movie, so they reimagined him as an ArtificialIntelligence called "[[FunWithAcronyms JARVIS]]". The comics also had [[ComicBook/AntMan Dr. Henry Pym]] as a founding member of ComicBook/{{the Avengers}} and the inventor of the rogue android [[Characters/MarvelComicsUltron Ultron]], but the planned ''Ant-Man'' movie ended up stuck in DevelopmentHell so long that it didn't come out until after the first two ''Avengers'' movies. [[note]]Director Creator/EdgarWright also came to see ''Ant-Man'' as his personal pet project, and personally requested that the studio leave Ant-Man out of ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'' so that he could introduce the character the way he wanted -- which is why the founding members Ant-Man and Characters/{{the Wasp}} were AdaptedOut and replaced with ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} and ComicBook/BlackWidow[[/note]] Since the producers had already decided to use Ultron as the villain of their ''Avengers'' sequel, they were forced to reimagine his origin story so that Tony Stark invented him instead. All of this culminated in a story with JARVIS as Ultron's [[EvilCounterpart Good Counterpart]], where he's ultimately [[spoiler:reborn in a robotic body as ComicBook/TheVision after Ultron tries to kill him]]. [[note]]Edwin Jarvis would later be introduced as a main character in ''Series/AgentCarter'', set in the 40s, as Howard Stark's butler, implying that Tony's computer program is an homage.[[/note]]
*** Characters/ScarletWitch and [[Characters/MarvelComicsQuicksilver Quicksilver]]'s introduction was partly the result of an [[ScrewedByTheLawyers odd legal situation]] resulting from 20th Century Fox buying the movie rights to ''ComicBook/XMen''. In the comics, they were Characters/{{Ma|rvelComicsMagneto}}gneto's children, and they initially fought with the evil Brotherhood of Mutants before doing a HeelFaceTurn and joining the Avengers. As a result, they're considered to be both ''X-Men'' and ''Avengers'' characters--meaning that Creator/{{Disney}} and Fox ''both'' own their movie rights, even though Fox exclusively owns the rights to Magneto and the concept of mutants. To get around this, ''Age of Ultron'' reimagines them as orphaned human test subjects who got their powers from HYDRA's experiments. They also [[spoiler:abruptly [[KilledOffForReal kill off]] Quicksilver in the climax]], possibly to avoid overlap with Fox's competing ''X-Men'' [[Film/XMenFilmSeries movies]] (which [[spoiler:introduced Quicksilver around the same time, but [[AdaptedOut left out]] Scarlet Witch]]).
** ''Film/IronMan3'' notably reimagines "The Mandarin" (one of Tony Stark's most iconic enemies in the comics) as [[spoiler:an English actor named Trevor Slattery]], who's [[spoiler:hired by Aldrich Killian to act as a figurehead for his crimes]]. The filmmakers apparently came up with that idea so that Creator/MarvelStudios could use the Mandarin without offending Asian viewers with the character's YellowPeril connotations--but when fans reacted negatively to the change, the studio was prompted to make the short film ''Film/AllHailTheKing'', which reveals that [[spoiler:the Mandarin is real, and Slattery merely posed as him]]. Later, they ran into difficulties during pre-production on ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'', since the name of Shang-Chi's original ArchnemesisDad Literature/FuManchu (whose early stories are in the public domain) [[ExiledFromContinuity is trademarked by author]] Sax Rohmer's estate[[note]]Licensing issues aside, there was also the fact that Fu had, since the original ''Shang-Chi'' comics, acquired a reputation as ''the'' YellowPeril villain, precluding him from being used in a 21st century context[[/note]]; they realized that this gave them the perfect excuse to properly introduce the Mandarin (who was inspired by Fu Manchu anyway) by [[RoguesGalleryTransplant reimagining him as Shang-Chi's archenemy]] and [[RelatedInTheAdaptation father]], believing that including a sympathetic Asian hero would balance out the presence of (and [[ReimaginingTheArtifact modernize and humanize]]) an Asian villain.
** [[Characters/SpiderManPeterParker Spider-Man]] didn't appear in the MCU until ''Film/CaptainAmericaCivilWar'' in 2016 (nearly a decade after the series began) due to Creator/MarvelComics selling the character's movie rights in the late 1990s; Creator/SonyPictures only agreed to a rights-sharing deal with Marvel and Creator/{{Disney}} after ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2'' underperformed at the box office. This ended up having a pretty profound effect on the MCU's portrayal of Spider-Man. Most notably, Creator/TomHolland's interpretation of Peter Parker is considerably younger than most previous versions, providing a cozy HandWave for why his existence never came up for eight years. [[note]]Peter is canonically 16 years old in his first appearance, meaning that he would have been a child during the events of ''Film/IronMan1''.[[/note]] By a meaningful coincidence, he was also introduced to the MCU around the time that Creator/ChrisEvans and Creator/RobertDowneyJr were considering leaving the series due to behind-the-scenes disputes, which heavily influenced the decision to portray [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony Stark]] as Peter's {{mentor|Archetype}} and [[ParentalSubstitute surrogate father]]--allowing Tony to [[PassingTheTorch pass the torch]] to Peter [[spoiler:before his death]], effectively naming him his successor.
* In 2001, the car tuning company Teckademics put out a video called ''Mischief'' which was a collection of segments depicting street racing and basic goofing around in cars. It was successful enough for Teckademics to greenlight a sequel, but there was a problem: the footage for ''Mischief'' had been shot over a period of ''three years'' and they wanted a follow-up as soon as possible. It was later discovered that the Gumball 3000 road rally would be taking part in the United States for the first time. Someone realized that if they entered and filmed the rally, the coverage would take up the bulk of the video and they wouldn't have to film as many segments to go with it. It worked well enough to enter and film road rallies for the next two follow-ups.
* ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'':
** One of its most iconic jokes came about because it was so low budget that the Pythons couldn't afford horses or the time for training, thus forcing them to pantomime horse-riding and [[TheCoconutEffect bang coconut shells together to simulate the sound of hooves]].
** The movie got its famously [[GainaxEnding offbeat]] [[ShootTheShaggyDog ending]] because the GrandFinale that the Pythons had scripted (where Arthur's army would have [[StormingTheCastle stormed the castle]] and been saved at the last minute by [[BrickJoke swallows dropping coconuts]]) was outside of the film's budget.
* ''Film/NationalLampoonsVacation'' was intended to take place at Disneyland, but Disney rejected the filming request and thus Wally World was created, represented by Six Flags Magic Mountain. It may explain why a reference to [[Film/SongOfTheSouth "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"]] [[OrphanedReference remained in the final cut]] during Clark Griswold's determined tirade after wrecking the car.
* Complications arose during the production of ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet4TheDreamMaster'' when the production ran out of money for the filming of Rick's death, which could not be removed as they had already filmed the character's funeral scene. They were forced to go for the much cheaper approach of Rick fighting an invisible Freddy in a hastily constructed dojo set before being killed.
* ''Film/{{Orphan}}'': The script originally dictated for the film to be set in fall, with a pivotal scene at a Halloween party. However, when the cast and crew arrived on set (Canada, in November), a snowstorm enveloped the whole area white, making it impossible for them to disguise the season. They ended up changing the setting to winter, keeping most of the key scenes but discarding the Halloween one for obvious reasons, then adding a couple of scenes (including the climax) at a frozen pond. Many reviewers have noted that the winter setting makes the film much creepier.
* Creator/OrsonWelles suffered from low budget productions later in life. His 1952 film version of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'' had a scene where two characters have to fight each other. Unfortunately one of the costumes wasn't ready yet, so Welles decided to have the whole scene take place in a bathhouse, where the characters could be naked. It turned out to be one of the most original and talked-about scenes in the film.
* ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' sets up Indiana Jones running into a sword-brandishing mook, which was supposed to lead into a proper sword vs. whip fight scene that would have taken three days to film. However, by the time of the shoot, Creator/HarrisonFord was dealing with a bout of dysentery (Indy's annoyed "I don't have time for this sh*t!" look evidently wasn't just Ford's acting), and after consulting with Creator/StevenSpielberg, the last-minute decision was made to have Indy [[CombatPragmatist simply shoot the sucker]].
* ''Film/RocknRolla'': On the day of filming the sex scene, Creator/GerardButler had a nasty throat infection and Creator/ThandieNewton refused to kiss him. Creator/GuyRitchie then improvised and revised the scene into the very funny montage.
* ''Film/{{Rocky}}'':
** Rocky and Adrian show up to the ice rink only to find that it is closed early for the holidays, and Rocky slips the custodian some cash to let them skate. The original script called for 300 extras, but Stallone had to hastily rewrite the scene when the film couldn't afford it.
** Later, when Rocky complains about his shorts being the wrong color in the fight posters, the promoter clearly doesn't care, which marks the point when Rocky realizes he's not going to win the fight. This was a genuine prop error, as is a later scene where Rocky complains that his robe doesn't fit.
* In ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}'', Ghostface's habit of cleaning his knife blade in-between kills was a suggestion from stunt performer Dane Farwell to prevent continuity errors from the amount of blood on the blade varying in each shot.
* A prolonged chase scene in a HallOfMirrors had to be cut from 1994's ''Film/TheShadow'' after an earthquake shattered most of the prop mirrors on set. A CGI scene of the hero [[spoiler:shattering mirrors with the power of his mind]] was used instead.
* ''Film/{{Sideways}}'': Many critics noted the little detail of Miles completing the New York Times crossword puzzle in pen as a subtle way of showing that he was an InsufferableGenius who thinks highly of his own intelligence[[note]]The New York Times crossword is notorious for its difficulty[[/note]]. This was completely accidental; the crew gave Creator/PaulGiamatti a pen because it was the only thing they had on hand.
* By the time the final script of ''Film/TheSocialNetwork'' was completed, higher-ups at the studio decided that it was still too long and it needed to be trimmed down. Director David Fincher, however, liked the final draft as it was and didn't want to cut anything, so instead of trimming it down by cutting scenes, he trimmed it down by having everyone talk as fast as they possibly could. This upped the pace of the movie immensely and became one of the best-known aspects of the film after it was released.
* The opening of ''Film/SpyKids2IslandOfLostDreams'' was originally meant to take place at [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Disneyland]]. However, Creator/RobertRodriguez discovered that Disney generally doesn't allow movies to shoot in their parks, not even Disney movies (note: The original ''Film/SpyKids'' films were distributed by Creator/MiramaxFilms, which is owned by Disney, and released under the Creator/DimensionFilms name). This led to the scene taking place instead at a fictional amusem*nt park with humorously impossible CGI rides. Rodriguez thinks this is mostly an improvement, although he still would have preferred it if Carmen and Juni had appeared undercover at the park wearing WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse hats, they had to settle for propeller hats.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'':
*** Much of the plot happened due to the budget being severely slashed after ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' underperformed. Khan uses a single stolen Starfleet ship because this meant they only needed to build one new model, and they could modify the set of the ''Enterprise'' bridge to turn it into the ''Reliant'''s bridge. This also resulted in the action [[BottleEpisode being relatively confined]], and the film having to play up the rivalry between Kirk and Khan to epic proportions to make up for the two of them never actually sharing the set (Montalban was busy with ''Series/FantasyIsland'' at the time).
*** [[UnwinnableTrainingSimulation The Kobayashi Maru]] was an attempt to smokescreen spoilers. Rumors were circulating that the film would feature [[spoiler:Spock dying]], and so a scene was created where Spock [[spoiler:feigns his death]] during the training scenario. (Said scenario also reuses the ''Enterprise''[='s=] bridge and the Klingon ship models and some footage from the first film, making it pretty cheap.) The idea was that anyone to hear about it would watch the first scene and assume that it was just a publicity stunt fakeout, making it a shock when [[spoiler:he dies for ''real'' in the climax]].
** In ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'', the ''Enterprise-D''[='s=] model and sets were built for TV and didn't translate well to the much larger and higher-resolution film screen. For that film, they attempted to work around it with lighting and camera tricks, but also [[TrashTheSet destroyed the ship]] at the end to justify building a new ''Enterprise'' that would look better on the big screen for [[Film/StarTrekFirstContact the next movie]]. A similar trick would be used for ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact,'' where the brief appearance of the [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine USS]] ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Defiant]]'' has it suffering a power outage on the bridge, allowing it to be shot in near darkness before its crew is evacuated to the ''Enterprise''.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker got a new green lightsaber in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' because his old blue one would have been too hard to see against the blue sky of Tatooine during the Sarlacc pit battle (perhaps this is why the blue lightsabers in the prequels were made a darker shade of blue). Conveniently, the climax of ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' already showed him dropping his old lightsaber into a bottomless pit on Bespin, giving the writers the perfect excuse to give him a new one. From the Prequel Trilogy onward, green and blue became the standard lightsaber colors for light side Force users, with red being exclusive to dark side Force users (the red color comes from a process called "bleeding", which is using the dark side to bend a kyber crystal to their will) and other colors -- such as Mace Windu's purple lightsaber, Ahsoka Tano's white lightsabers in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'', the black-bladed Mandalorian Darksaber, and Rey's yellow lightsaber seen at the end of ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'' -- being rare exceptions.
** While making the first film, ''Film/ANewHope'', Grand Moff Tarkin is mostly seen from the waist up because Creator/PeterCushing's boots were too small for him. So, he wore slippers while filming most of his scenes.
** The existence of the [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter porgs]] in ''Film/TheLastJedi'' is owed to an actual species of obtrusive avian; the island used as the setting of Luke's home in the film is also the home of a species of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin puffins]]. Since they were a protected species that could not legally be relocated, and editing them out completely would've taken too much time, it was decided that a new alien species of bird would just be [=CGI'd=] over them.
** On a related note, Han Solo being frozen in carbonite during the events of ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' was written into the plot because of the main actors' contracts. Creator/MarkHamill and Creator/CarrieFisher had already signed on for a third movie, but Creator/HarrisonFord had not, so one of the series' most iconic moments was created to leave the door open for a ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' sans Solo without completely excluding the possibility of Han returning if Ford chose to come back (which, as we all know, he did).
** The Prequel Trilogy (as well as a few early ExpandedUniverse works) introduced the idea that "Darth" is an honorific title used by the Sith Order (roughly akin to "Sir" or "Lord"), and that the Sith choose new names upon joining the Order to signify [[ThatManIsDead the loss of their old identity]]. That idea started out as a cozy HandWave for how Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader could be the same person, which was a plot point that Lucas didn't come up with until after he finished [[Film/ANewHope the original]] ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]''. If you watch the original film with this in mind, it's pretty clear that Vader and Anakin started out as two different people; when recalling Vader's downfall, Obi-Wan refers to him as "a young Jedi named Darth Vader" (implying that he was still called "Darth Vader" when he was still a Jedi), and he later addresses him as "Darth" to his face (implying that "Darth" is actually his first name).
** The prequels introduced the idea that [[EccentricMentor Yoda]] was the [[BigGood Grand Master of the Jedi Order]] before the rise of the Empire, and that he gave all new Jedi apprentices their first lessons in the Force. This likely started out as a justification for Obi-Wan being Qui-Gon Jinn's apprentice in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'', despite him referring to Yoda as "the Jedi Master who instructed me" in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''. Considering the many elaborate action sequences that Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon have in ''Menace'', the writers may have chosen to give Obi-Wan a human master so that he could join in on the lightsaber battles, which would have been impractical for a puppet character like Yoda. [[note]]Yoda wasn't portrayed through CGI until ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' three years later.[[/note]]
** The minor Jedi character Stass Allie was created because Gin Clarke, who played Adi Gallia in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'', wasn't available to reprise her role in ''Film/AttackOfTheClones''. The producers tried having a similar-looking actress wear Clarke's costume (intending her to be TheOtherDarrin), but they realized that she looked too different--so they decided that she was actually [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute Adi Gallia's cousin Stass Allie]]. Later, ''[[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars The Clone Wars]]'' wrote in a storyline where [[spoiler:Adi was [[KilledOffForReal killed in battle]] with Darth Maul and Savage Oppress]] to explain why she wasn't in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith''.
*** The same thing resulted in the creation of Agen Kolar. Hassani Shapi was unable to return for ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' and was replaced by Tux Akindoyeni, who looked different enough to be a separate character. In contrast with Allie and Gallia, there was extensive confusion between Kolar and Koth from 2002-2005 with many sources misidentifying Kolar as Koth.
** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', the scene where Luke was captured by the Wampa monster of Hoth suffered similar problems to ''Film/{{Jaws}}'', and so did the scene with a hand puppet followed by the creature being relatively unseen for the remainder of its screentime. [[note]]While Lucas admitted that NothingIsScarier works, his initial idea was for the creature to be seen and so in the 1997 Special Edition, he went back and showed the scene with the Wampa fully shown.[[/note]]
* ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'': The entire premise of the [[Film/TheTerminator first film]] was created because of this trope. The idea was sparked from a [[BasedOnADream nightmare]] Creator/JamesCameron had about a metallic skeleton walking out of a fire. Cameron felt a robot that advanced could only come from the future; but due to budget constraints, the film had to be set in the present and the Terminator had to be disguised as [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots a human]] for the majority of the film. The "only organic material can travel through time" rule was also made to save costs on expensive futuristic weaponry.
* The Sunday brothers in ''Film/ThereWillBeBlood'' were re-imagined as identical twins when actor Kel O'Neill, who was originally cast as [[TheFundamentalist Eli Sunday]], dropped out of the movie, thus forcing Paul Dano (who had been cast as Paul Sunday) to play both roles.
* In the first ''[[Film/LaraCroftTombRaider Tomb Raider]]'' film, the amphibious duck vehicles in Siberia were included in the movie because the director thought they looked cool. Similarly, the procession of monks was not written in the script, but the procession happened to take place as they were filming and the monks consented to appear in the movie. In the second film, most of Lara's outfits have long sleeves, because the concealing makeup used to hide Creator/AngelinaJolie's tattoos in the first movie was not as effective as the filmmakers would have liked.
* Film/TransformersFilmSeries:
** Creator/MichaelBay's ''Transformers'' films [[HumanFocusedAdaptation spend a surprising amount of their running time focusing on military personnel]] because of the high cost of the CGI needed to animate the titular robots, in heavy contrast to the military aspects -- the vehicles are actually loaned to the production by the actual U.S. military as long as there's military promotion in the movies and the military is presented well. The further one goes into the series, the more on-screen time the robots in question have, as the budget gets bigger and CGI gets cheaper.
** On a smaller scale, the Decepticon Bonecrusher's vehicle form is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_(mine_protected_vehicle) mine sweeper.]] The reference photo they used for it had the sweeping mechanism appear to be several feet wide. When they got a real one on set for practical effects, they found out it was only about a foot wide. They felt the mistake made it look more menacing and built a new mechanism for the shots.
* One of the biggest concerns while filming the original ''Film/Tremors1'' was how such a low-budget film could afford so many shots of the gigantic Graboid worms. Their solution was to alter the Graboids' design by adding tentacles to their mouths which they would use to reel in their prey, which were a lot cheaper to create and shoot. This would end up benefitting the film, as it allows for a bait-and-switch where the audience is led to believe that the snake-like tentacles are the creatures responsible for the murders before the big reveal of the Graboids.
* The original ''Film/{{Tron}}'' had its share of problems with the ''extremely'' primitive CGI of 1982. For one thing, the Solar Sailer's wings never quite looked solid. Secondly, there were all kinds of irregular shading and coloration on the backgrounds (which were actually hand-painted due to CGI being nowhere near ready to handle the task). Lisberger had a EurekaMoment and realized that ''of course'' the Sailer wouldn't look solid and ''of course'' there would be glitches and bugs -- the whole thing was set InsideAComputerSystem. So, he added a sound effect and the background became atmosphere while the Solar Sailer's translucent wings became an iconic image for the film.
* ''Film/TronLegacy'' features Creator/JeffBridges as Kevin Flynn, as both his actual age (60 at time of filming) and as a 30-something man in flashbacks thanks to de-aging CGI. Programs in the Tronverse look exactly the same as their creators and Kevin Flynn created [[BigBad CLU]] when he was 30-something, so CLU is ''also'' played by Jeff Bridges with de-aging CGI. Since de-aging CGI is hideously expensive ([[UnintentionalUncannyValley and it doesn't always work that well]]), flashback scenes are often partially obscured by being depicted on fuzzy [=TVs=], with blurs, or just by doing weird stuff with the screen. CLU also frequently wears a face-concealing helmet; fortunately, this makes him even more menacing. [[spoiler:The program Tron appears briefly (again, as a digitally de-aged version of his creator's actor Creator/BruceBoxleitner), but spends most of the movie BrainwashedAndCrazy as "[[TheDragon Rinzler]]" -- again, making him even creepier.]] Plus, the fact that the computer world is artificial, but not perfect [[spoiler:(which, in fact, it isn't, in terms of freedom...)]], lends credibility to the somewhat off-kilter and inhuman appearance of CLU, who uses Flynn's younger face as his own.
* ''Film/TheWitch'' is a period drama set in 1630s New England, but it was filmed on a shoestring budget of just $3.5 million, meaning that the filmmakers couldn't afford to replicate the period in lavish detail. To get around that, the plot starts with the central family being exiled from the Commonwealth of New England over a religious disagreement, and they spend the vast majority of the movie living in a remote farm at the edge of the forest. Though everything in their family dwelling is period-appropriate [[ShownTheirWork down to the last detail]], it's a very simple dwelling, consisting of little more than a tiny ramshackle house and some stables. Luckily, it's a horror film about witchcraft, so the isolated setting fits the mood ''perfectly''.
* In ''Film/WouldYouRather,'' when Peter is forced to [[spoiler:hold a firecracker as it explodes,]] Shepard Lambrick backs up against the opposite wall to avoid the blast. This was actually done to protect Jeffrey Combs' wardrobe from being splattered with gore, since the suit his character wears was on loan and the production team didn't have a spare.
[[/folder]]
Deleted line(s) 245,382 (click to see context) :
[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* 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."
[[/folder]]
Deleted line(s) 476,621 (click to see context) :
[[folder:Video Games]]
* As making traditionally animated cutscenes for ''VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere'' proved to be expensive and the game was a financial disappointment, the development team of ''VideoGame/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies'' was pressured to find a cheaper way to tell the game's story. The resulting FramingDevice (a man narrating over a slideshow of still drawings) proved to be one of the game's most praised and iconic aspects.
* ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'' and ''VideoGame/BanjoTooie'''s iconic [[SpeakingSimlish "blabber-talk"]] came about as a way to give characters personality without having to waste limited cartridge space on voice acting. Even when ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooieNutsAndBolts'' and SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/YookaLaylee'' came out on much more advanced hardware, this little element was retained.
* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries'':
** The entire storyline of the series is essentially built around inventing new reasons to put Batman in [[WideOpenSandbox fully explorable]] Gotham City locales that are ''big'', but not so big that they would take too long to render with appropriate levels of detail. From the beginning, the staff at Rocksteady apparently knew that it would be nearly impossible to bring a life-sized virtual recreation of Gotham City to the screen with the levels of detail that they wanted, so they opted for smaller, [[ClosedCircle closed-off]] environments that are nonetheless filled to the brim with secrets, puzzles, and {{Easter Egg}}s. ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum'' takes place in Arkham Asylum while it's locked down during a hostage situation, ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'' takes place in a section of Gotham that's been walled off and turned into a hellish prison camp, and ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'' takes place in a quarantined section of downtown Gotham during a chemical attack by the Scarecrow. Even in the latter two games, which take place in the city proper, the storylines are written so that the developers didn't have to put extra work into rendering pedestrians and city traffic -- ''Arkham Knight'' has the aforementioned quarantine and gas attack, while ''Arkham Origins'' has a winter storm warning in effect, meaning all civilians are staying inside for their own safety.
** In ''Arkham Asylum'', Batman's Detective Mode was so incredibly useful that there was pretty much [[GameBreaker no reason to turn it off]] -- you could see enemies through walls, the important aspects of the environment were highlighted, and it made locating Riddler Trophies much, much easier without their green lights blending into the background. Rocksteady was upset that players were opting to ignore the incredible environments they'd created by keeping Detective Vision on, so the sequels nerfed it considerably -- it darkens the screen so that it's hard to see anything, not nearly as many important details are highlighted orange like before, and, above all, enemies could now jam Detective Vision or (in the case of ''Arkham Knight'') outright weaponize it against Batman.
** Early in its development, ''Arkham Asylum'' was envisioned as (of all things) a ''{{rhythm game}}''. While Rocksteady jettisoned this idea fairly early, it had a profound effect on the gameplay. Most notably: the combat system makes heavy use of a "counter" mechanic with a time-sensitive visual cue, it emphasizes using specific attacks and countermeasures against specific enemy types, and it encourages building long chains of combos by alternating between strikes, counters, and dodges in a way that often feels surprisingly rhythmic. The combat system turned out to be one of the most acclaimed and iconic things about the series, going on to influence numerous other action games in [[TheNewTens the 2010s]] (most notably ''VideoGame/MiddleEarthShadowOfMordor'' and ''[[VideoGame/SpiderManPS4 Marvel's Spider-Man]]'').
* How the plot of ''VideoGame/{{Bioforge}}'' came to be: you're a cyborg (so you don't need fluid lifelike animations) and, due to a disaster, the base you're in is almost completely abandoned (no large amounts of on-screen characters needed).
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIV'': Yuna [[KarmaHoudini got off scot-free for all his atrocities]] because Capcom was in danger of going out of business. There were actually ''two'' planned ways he would have died, but rushed development meant no time to actually program either.
* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'':
** A "temporal physics" law justifies the three-person-team combat system: no more than three people can jump in time at once (although the universe apparently allows single-person jumps, like [[spoiler:the gurus]] and [[spoiler:Janus]]).
** In the Future/2300 AD, there is a hoverbike race minigame you play against badass [[TransformingMecha robot bike(r)]] Johnny aka "The Man". Since for this first part, spiky-haired [[HeroicMime Crono]] is the party leader, he is chosen to represent them, and is represented with a special sprite of him piloting said hoverbike. However, apparently the cartridge had space for only one "bike pilot" sprite. So, the authors developed a rivalry between them (or, at least, on Johnny's part), which helps when, later in the game, the leader position becomes a rotating role. When Crono is present in the party, he is the chosen pilot, regardless of if he's the front character or not. When he is absent, Johnny refuses to race, saying "Where's Pointy-hair? I'll only race against him!"
* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', you could not initially wear a cape. In real life, this is because the developers couldn't figure out how to implement [[NoFlowInCGI decent cape physics]]. In the game, new heroes could not wear capes out of respect for Hero 1, who [[HeroicSacrifice went on a suicide mission]] to stop the AlienInvasion that wiped out the beta. The city representative gave a mission where you could read the history of Hero 1 and visit his memorial. Upon completion, you get the option to wear a cape. By the time ''VideoGame/CityOfVillains'' arrived this was a bit of TheArtifact. But Lord Recluse will not let you wear a cape until you prove you're bad enough to go to Paragon City, smash lots of property, take out a chunk of [[RedShirtArmy Longbow]], beat up a hero and take his cape for yourself.
* The protagonist of horror game ''VideoGame/ClockTower'' is a weaponless, vulnerable girl who must flee or outwit enemies instead of fighting them. The developer wrote her as such because of the self-admitted sexist beliefs he held at the time. However, players reacted favorably to this new style of gameplay, as it heightened their fear and made for a deeper experience than other horror games of the era (which centered around shooting and/or hacking enemies to death). Today, ''Clock Tower'' is considered a forerunner of the ''survival horror'' genre-defining aspects of which are emphasis on flight-over-fight mechanics and the protagonists' helplessness.
* [[http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1// This series of blog posts]] by the creators of ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot'' describes how the limitations of the hardware of the original UsefulNotes/PlayStation dictated almost every design choice, from level design to character design to even [[CrateExpectations one of the mechanics the series is most known for]] (which in turn named the character). Basically, Crash turned out the way it is because technology sucked at the time.
* ''VideoGame/DeusEx'':
** The Unreal Engine would not have been able to handle a fully rendered city with 2000 technology, forcing the creators to HandWave the [[GatelessGhetto boxed-in sections]] in the New York levels with a justification that due to high crime rates, authorities have walled in ghettos and other undesirable areas. In Paris, the boxed-in city is justified with the nation being on lock-down due to terrorist attacks.
** A very eerie example was the lack of the World Trade Center in the New York skyline. Due to memory limitations, the sections of the skybox including the World Trade Center had to be removed in favor of mirroring the other half of the skyline, and the creators justified it saying that they had been destroyed in a terrorist attack before the game started. Keep in the mind that ''[[HarsherInHindsight the game came out in 2000]]''. [[note]]It's not ''that'' prescient, mind -- people forget this because 9/11 eclipsed it, but Al Qaeda operatives had already attempted to bring the World Trade Center down with a truck bomb in 1993.[[/note]]
** A GameMod of the game, ''VideoGame/TheNamelessMod'', boxes its cities in as well and justifies it with a mention that Forum City is on lockdown due to one of the moderators being kidnapped. The maps are bigger than Deus Ex's were since the mod was designed with the thought that it would be run on more powerful computers, but you can see why the boxed-in method was needed if you "noclip" yourself away from the map and try to view it all at once - it can lag or even crash the game.
** ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' features highly constrained cityscape levels in City 17 for more or less the same reason (the outdoor levels are more open, and featured less detailed textures and fewer props to compensate). The result was a claustrophobic, hemmed-in feeling that fit perfectly with the early levels spend under the thumb of [[BigBrotherIsWatching the Combine]].
* ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'': The final level at [[spoiler:Liberty Island]] was frozen over and much of it cut off due to the fact that the console version of the game would not be able to handle swimming and larger maps.
* In ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'' skills were originally intended to be represented with icons, but the game's concept artist quit before that could be finished, so that job fell to the art director, who is far better at drawing humans and thus made fantastical portraits instead. This eventually led to the skills exhibiting separate personalities and arguing with the PlayerCharacter and each other, turning them into a CastOfPersonifications in their own right, which has become the defining feature of the game.
* ''VideoGame/{{Dizzy}}'':
** The first game made use of an engine for rotating sprites in real time, allowing the hero to roll and tumble. However, the engine worked best on simple shapes, such as circles - and thus, Dizzy became an egg.
** ''Seymour Goes to Hollywood'' was envisioned as ''Movieland Dizzy'', but the creators felt the real-world setting was too far removed from the fantasy settings of the ''Dizzy'' games. So with 12 weeks to go until release, the character was given a more distinctive design, thus giving birth to Seymour.
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong'' owes its existence to this trope ''three-fold'':
** The original arcade game had a chubby, mustachioed Mario (then known as Jumpman) wearing a hat and overalls due to technical limitations. The technology at the time would not have been able to show Mario's hair sticking up when he fell, a mustache would be easier to show than a mouth at that resolution, overalls were the only piece of clothing that could also be seen with 1981 graphics, and only square hit boxes were possible. These same traits would later come to benefit Mario again in his UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 outings, which have aged considerably better than other early 3D games as a result.
** The game also owes its mere existence to serendipity. In 1980, Creator/{{Nintendo}} attempted to release their latest arcade hit, a game called ''Radar Scope'' in the United States; however, while [[AmericansHateTingle the game was popular in Japan, it flopped hard in the United States]]. Looking for a way to clear out their warehouse of returned and unsold ''Radar Scope'' machines, Nintendo looked to create a game that would run on the same hardware as ''Radar Scope'' so that the existing machines could be easily converted to run it, but would also be a surefire hit in America. The result was ''Donkey Kong''.
** Notably too, the original ''Donkey Kong'' was intended to be a ''WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}}'' game. Partway through development they lost the license, however, and Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto turned the concepts they had into original properties with Bluto becoming Donkey Kong, Popeye becoming Jumpman, and Olive Oyl becoming Pauline. Since Nintendo got not one successful and beloved franchise from this but ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros two]]'', it's safe to assume this worked out monumentally well for them.
* According to Tim Heydelaar, the reason ''VideoGame/Doom64'' is so dark visually is because he and the other level designers created their maps in offices with no windows and with the lights off, so the game looked great to them in such conditions. It wasn't until the game went into QA testing, where the game was played under florescent lighting, that the game's darkness issues came to light and testers complained they couldn't see anything, leading to a gamma slider option to brighten up the game being added at the last minute. The 2020 remaster would also go on to feature a higher default brightness level, and includes an overall and environmental brightness setting for extra measure.
* ''VideoGame/DoubleDragon'' was originally conceived as a sequel to ''[[VideoGame/KunioKun Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun]]'', but evolved into an original IP because the lead director (Yoshihisa Kishimoto) wanted to make a game that could be marketable in the west without having to spend time working on a second version for the foreign market as he did with ''Renegade''.
* ''Franchise/DragonAge'':
** None of the Qunari had horns in [[VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins the first game]], although their race is supposed to have them. This was because Creator/BioWare didn't have the time to create alternate designs for all the helmets just so your Qunari party member could wear them, so they opted to not give him horns at all and HandWave it by saying that Qunari born without horns are considered to be destined for greatness, while those who choose to leave the Qun cut off their horns as a way of showing their rejection (all the other Qunari in the game).
** Similarly, golems are supposed to be 10 feet tall and appear that way in cut scenes, but Shale, a golem you can recruit, is much smaller and explains that it used to be the same size as the others until a previous owner actually chiseled down its legs because it kept getting stuck in doors. This is something of a DevelopmentGag since the meta reason for this was just that -- the character model kept getting stuck in doorways, but in the story, it helps explain Shale's disdain for humans after being treated that way.
* According to [[https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/4/9/18300753/earth-defense-force-iron-rain-history an interview]] with the developers of ''VideoGame/EarthDefenseForce'', the reason oversized ants are [[TheGoomba the basic fodder enemy of the franchise]] is because the original game's extremely short development (four months to make the actual game, two for debugging) meant there was no time to create original characters.
-->'''Masatsugu Igarashi:''' Basically within four months there's no time to design original characters, so you take something that exists around you everywhere. We picked up reference images from books and used them to create the enemies.
* The designers of ''VideoGame/{{Facade}}'' admitted that they deliberately made Trip and Grace such self-centered, denial-prone people in order to [[JustifiedTrope justify]] and disguise some of the limitations of the A.I. If the player says and does something the dev team didn't anticipate, Trip and Grace will choose to focus on their own needs instead, or just ignore the player's actions entirely.
* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'''s four expansions feature considerably smaller casts than the main game, and there's an abnormal number of characters who don't speak verbally, including Doctor 8, Christine, and ED-E. This was because one of the stipulations of the game's creation was an upper limit on how many voice lines they could record, and this gave them a lot more breathing room.
* In ''VideoGame/FarCry3'', Hoyt Volker was supposed to be the sole main villain. Then Michael Mando auditioned for the minor character "Lupo". He didn't get the part but they were so impressed by the audition that they decided to scrap Lupo and create an entirely new character for Mando to play, one which took over all advertising and even the cover of the game, and is still agreed to be one of the best villains of the franchise: Vaas Montenegro.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', a careful viewer will probably notice that any time Kefka appears in the battle screen while using his overworld sprite, the party never has more than three characters in it. This is because the designers needed Kefka to be able to do certain expressive sequences in the battle screen (for instance, his confrontations with Leo and Gestahl, or him attacking the Espers at the gate), but the game's system for enemies was fairly static and simple, usually amounting to large sprites that didn't do much. To solve this, the designers instead made it so that Kefka would effectively ''join the party'' during those sequences. This had storyline implications, because [[ArbitraryHeadcountLimit you can only have four party members]], meaning that whenever Kefka is doing things, the party is at least one member shy.
** The miasma in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' is the driving force of the ''entire game'', but it was originally just designed to keep the whole team on screen at all times. Your party has to carry around a chalice that wards the miasma in its radius, and leaving the ward causes you to take damage, so nobody can wander off, so split-screen isn't necessary, so everyone gets to enjoy Sceneryp*rn.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' was released as an ObviousBeta so horrible, that it was a CreatorKiller for original producer Hiromichi Tanaka. After switching directors, the game made many improvements, but the engine was ultimately too taxed to handle anything more. Thus, it was decided to close the game and rebuild it from the ground up. In the days leading up to end of what would be known as version 1.0, a final storyline started involving TheEmpire planing a ColonyDrop of the lesser moon Dalamud, which turned out to be a prison for the Primal Bahamut, a plot point which would have been touched upon later in the game's life. As the game's closing time drew closer, the moon would get closer and closer despite all the in-story efforts to stop it. The end of the game coincides with a final cutscene of Bahamut breaking free and causing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, with the players only being saved from it by being [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture sent into the future to a time when the world has started to recovered from "The Calamity"]].
** When ''XIV'' was remade, the zones were a lot smaller than they were in 1.0. This was done to cut down on the maze-like/huge open fields where players could easily get lost and also due to the limitations of the Playstation 3. By the ''Stormblood'' expansion, development of the Playstation 3 version came to an end since the game was simply too much for the console to handle. Players who upgraded to a Playstation 4 were able to transfer their game over free of charge.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' had the game's entire ending be the result of its {{Permadeath}} mechanic. Over the course of the game, it is possible to recruit many rulers and heirs-apparent of the various kingdoms of Archanea, and it is also possible for every single one of those characters to die. At the time, the technology wasn't available to alter the game's ending depending on who was alive or dead, and so the game's ending was forced to work with the idea that any and all of them might be. Consequently, the story has a somewhat BittersweetEnding where Marth takes rulership of all of Archanea, due to, in their own endings, the other rulers and heirs stepping down for various reasons, be it guilt, trauma, or age. This had implications for quite a bit of future worldbuilding, and even stuck around in the remake, which ended up fleshing out some of the individual reasons involved.
* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'': The whole UncannyValley that is a characteristic of the series? Creator Creator/ScottCawthon was originally a D-list indie developer who had little budget to create convincing animated characters, and [[VideoGame/ChipperAndSonsLumberCo his previous attempt at creating a children's game]] was lambasted because the characters look too lifeless to entertain actual children. When Cawthon did a complete turnaround and made a horror game, he didn't change his visual style one bit. The rest is history.
* Most of ''VideoGame/FZero'''s science-fiction elements were a consequence of technical limitations. The use of hovering vehicles came as solution for sprite artists to not waste time drawing wheels (which would require several more individual sprites for each vehicle) and the concept of sky-high floating courses was to justify a perspective trick of the SNES's Mode 7, which turned a background layer (in this case, consisting of the racetrack and the environment "below" it) into the course itself. Because of this, Nintendo did not have to program in actual environmental elements around the racetrack, only needing the illusion of a city or whatever being viewed from top-down.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' was originally supposed to be a car racing game. But attempts at making the AI opponents more challenging resulted in the AI chasing after the player and crashing into them. Thinking that this was cool, the programmers retooled the game into a madcap crime simulator that spawned a mega-franchise.
* Many plot and design elements of ''VideoGame/HalfLifeAlyx'' were clearly the result of the limitations of VR. The Gravity Gloves, though serving as a CallForward to their later Gravity Gun counterpart, meant that a lot of the difficulty involved in picking things up in VR was solved. The change in protagonist to Alyx made the shift to slower-paced puzzle-solving gameplay and small numbers of enemies much more suitable for a character who lacks Gordon's power armor and massive arsenal. Additionally, Alyx can only carry three guns and they're all one-handed, since one-handed guns are much easier to aim and code than their two-handed counterparts. And to compensate for the loss of powerful weapons, the game introduced a weapon upgrade system, as well as scattering the currency throughout the maps, which encourages the player to poke around the environments as much as possible (which is something of a selling point in VR anyway).
* One level of ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' tasks you with infiltrating the Covenant starship ''Truth and Reconciliation'' to rescue human prisoners. Originally, this would have involved walking from the initial desert area of the level onto the ship by way of a ramp. But the team found that having both the desert area and the detailed ship rendered together in one continuous level would've been too much for the hardware. So they separated the two into two instanced areas, with the ship as seen from the desert being shown from a distance at night and its interior only being accessible by way of a "Gravity Lift" that pulls people up from the surface. The Gravity Lift would go on to be a common feature of Covenant structures in later ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' games, whether for other spacecraft or their turret towers.
* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'':
** After a bug involving an item that took [[GlobalCurrency meat]] away from players (coupled with the ridiculously high {{cap}} for meat) screwed up the game's economy, a number of "meat sinks" were introduced to deal with the "bug meat", including the Penguin Mafia and the various goods they offered. Much later in the game, a database error that wiped out several days' progress for many players led to the introduction of a "Time Arc", in which portals through time started opening up throughout the kingdom.
** And on the creative side, there's another example. ''KOL'' celebrates holidays both via the in-game calendar and the real-life one, which aren't synced. Occasionally, that means that two holidays are being celebrated on the same day. One year Arrbor Day (where pirates plant trees to get wood to repair their ships) happened on the same day as Halloween. This combination of pirates, trees, and spookiness resulted in a special zone: the [[IncrediblyLamePun Shivering Timbers]].
* ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFightersXIV'' was the first mainline installment in the ''[[Franchise/TheKingOfFighters King of Fighters]]'' the series to [[VideoGame3DLeap make the leap to 3D models]][[note]]''KOF: Maximum Impact'' predates ''XIV'' by over a decade but the ''MI'' games are an AlternateContinuity[[/note]], as well as a huge starting roster and the greatest proportion of new characters in the series so far. The developers said that in light of this, they saved some development time and expense by designing three characters who wouldn't need facial expressions: Kukri (a mysterious man in blacked-out hood), Mian (a masked fighter who styles herself on Chinese opera) and King of Dinosaurs (a heel wrestler in an enormous costume). To wit, the only part of Kukri's face that is ever visible are his eyes, Mian only briefly shows her face during her [[LimitBreak CLIMAX Super Special Move]], and what King of Dinosaurs looks like underneath the mask is never shown (though this is also true of his face persona, [[VideoGame/GarouMarkOfTheWolves Tizoc]]).
* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'': The original plan for "The Passing" would have featured one of the original Survivors having died, but with the dead Survivor randomizing each play-through. However, when Valve contacted the original voice actors for the DLC, they couldn't contact Jim French, Bill's voice actor. They solved the problem by having Bill consistently be the dead Survivor, and then using later materials, specifically "The Sacrifice" comic and in-game campaign, to explain how Bill died and how the Survivors got to Rayford in the first place[[note]]Remnants of the original plan exist in the game's code; although Louis is incapable of throwing supplies even if he's modded away from his mounted gun, Bill can throw supplies just like Francis and Zoey can if he's modded in[[/note]].
* The second game of the ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'' series, ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKainSoulReaver'', was much larger during development, which led to it being an ObviousBeta. Among other cut content, Raziel's final brother Turel would have been fought, the Human Citadel would have been non-optional and contained a hidden area where the vampire worshipping humans lurked, and the ending was entirely unambiguous, Raziel successfully killing Kain and then activating the Silenced Cathedral to destroy every Vampire in Nosgoth. Crystal Dynamics was running out of time and there was only so much room on the disk, so a lot of content was cut and left out to be included in future games. This would lead to a case of Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad though, because the series would go on to have an amazingly complex KudzuPlot centering on Kain and Raziel's trips through time.
* ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'' had the "Burning Tides" gameplay/lore event of 2015, with one of the biggest updates being the [[BalanceBuff mechanical]] and [[ArtEvolution visual]] overhaul of Gangplank, the BigBad of the whole event. How audiences saw the event is that they got accustomed to the pirate king and his shiny new captain look, but at the climax of the story where Miss Fortune's plan to assassinate him via bombardment goes off, he ended up being disabled from play, with the client simply listing that [[KilledOffForReal "Gangplank is dead."]] However, during the epilogue of the event, it was revealed that [[NotQuiteDead Gangplank had survived]] -- [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen without his ship, arm, and riches]], but alive and [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge really, really angry]] -- and he was subsequently reenabled with his ''actual'' new default look, with the previous "Captain Gangplank" look was retroactively made into an alternate skin. As it turns out, Riot Games didn't intend for him to become disabled, and only did so because of an unforeseen GameBreakingBug, [[IndyPloy taking the sudden need for repairs into an opportunity]] to [[SlidingScaleOfGameplayAndStoryIntegration merge gameplay with story.]]
* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'':
** Like the Mario example above, much of Link's now-iconic appearance -- his hat, tunic, and pointy ears -- was simply a result of what could be easily rendered with the NES's 8-bit graphics.
** Because of {{Ambidextrous Sprite}}s, Link in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' always keeps his shield pointed north, which the manual explained was due to a superstition about keeping one's shield towards [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Death Mountain]].
** The developers of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' were tasked with completing the game in just one year, a very short amount of time compared to the development cycle of other ''Zelda'' games. Their solution: Set the game in a BizarroUniverse of the previous game's setting, where most of the characters are counterparts of people from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', who look exactly the same (allowing the developers to reuse the models) but who often have radically different names and personalities. Furthermore, they were able to store a more complex world on a cartridge with barely more memory than ''Ocarina of Time'' by means of the GroundhogDayLoop; resetting everything in the game except the {{Plot Coupon}}s, the masks, the songs, and the non-ammo items meant that there were far fewer variables that the game needed to keep track of between play sessions compared to its predecessor (this is also the reason that non-Japanese versions of ''Majora's Mask'' that ''do'' let you save in the middle of the 3-day cycle at the Owl Statues have two save slots instead of three).
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' had a somewhat rushed production that required the team to cut two dungeons they planned to include. This influenced the whole Nayru's Pearl arc of the game; turns out that Greatfish Isle, where the Pearl and the dungeon containing it would have been located, has been torn apart by Ganondorf by the time you reach it, and locating the Pearl requires you to instead explore the previously-visited Windfall and Outset Islands.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' boasts a persistent world, but ran into the problem of having to remember which enemies Link has slain and resources he's collected, which ones he hasn't, and what items he's left around the world and where. To cover this, the devs came up with the "Blood Moon", a BadMoonRising that appears every few nights and explicitly respawns all monsters but in the background also affects all items laying around and overall reverts the world to its untouched state. If one picks up enough items or kills enough enemies, the game will actually do an instant Blood Moon regardless of the time of day.
* The ''VideoGame/{{LEGO Adaptation Game}}s'' often have to fudge their storylines to accommodate for the gameplay requiring a second player at all times.
** In ''VideoGame/LegoStarWars'', the final battle of [[Film/RevengeOfTheSith Episode III]] is a DuelToTheDeath between Obi-Wan and Anakin. The game gets around this by making the FinalBoss the second player in a meta-FightingYourFriend situation. Later on, in [[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi Episode VI]], Darth Vader's death is delayed slightly so he can participate in the final battle with the Emperor.
** In ''VideoGame/LegoHarryPotter'', Hermione is not held back by the potion puzzle, allowing her to fight in the final battle with Professor Quirrell in Year 1. Later, Year 2 has Ginny awaken from her coma so she can fight the Basilisk. Finally, Year 4 delays Cedric Diggory's death so he can fight Voldemort alongside Harry.
** Averted with ''VideoGame/LegoCityUndercover''. The original UsefulNotes/WiiU version was strictly a single-player only experience. In 2017, the game was ported to numerous other consoles, now boasting a two-player mode. Rather than altering the existing story to accomodate a second protagonist, Player 2 is completely absent from cutscenes and is represented by a second [=Chase McCain=] during gameplay.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' features the protagonist Shepard leaving the Systems Alliance Navy and joining the shadowy Cerberus organization, forcing the player to recruit a whole new party of allies (give or take a few familiar faces, like [[TheLancer Garrus Vakarian]] and [[WrenchWench Tali'Zorah nar Rayya]]). Most of the characters [[AnyoneCanDie who may or may not have survived the first game]] (like [[TheBigGuy Urdnot Wrex]], the Citadel Council, and [[spoiler: [[sad*sticChoice either Ashley Williams or Kaidan Alenko]]]]) have [[DemotedToExtra drastically reduced roles]], with some being relegated to brief [[TheCameo cameos]]. According to WordOfGod, this was because the sheer number of branching story-lines brought about by the first two games' MultipleEndings were already taxing the software for the planned ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. By keeping the number of returning characters to a minimum, the developers were able to keep the number of possible story-lines to a somewhat manageable level.
* For the ''[[Toys/{{Bionicle}} Mata Nui Online Game]]'', Franchise/{{LEGO}} hired Templar Studios to create a browser PointAndClickGame promoting their ''Bionicle'' toys, but only let them use side characters and random nobodies, while the main products, the Toa, were set to star in a PC game. Templar took the task immensely seriously, and the limitations allowed them to put heavy emphasis on atmosphere -- ''{{VideoGame/Myst}}'' was cited as an inspiration -- and world-building, and create likable characters out of the everyday villagers, who kept the outlandish world and lore grounded in familiarity. The Toa only made brief appearances, making them mysterious and memorable. The game helped catapult the toyline into success and is widely regarded by fans as the finest piece of ''Bionicle'' media -- meanwhile, the PC game, which had very little of what made ''MNOG'' so beloved, was scrapped due to quality issues. As a result, Templar was asked to wrap up the Toa's plot along with the villagers', which made for a fulfilling climax. Not only that, many characters fleshed out by Templar became major players in later stories when LEGO realized their popularity.
* In ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'', the developers wanted a rematch against the robot bosses of ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'', but there was not enough space for eight enemies' sprites. The solution? Make Mega Man fight eight times against a single enemy named Doc Robot/Dokurobo ("Skullbot") who mimicked their attacks and movement patterns!
* ''VideoGame/MetalGear'':
** The original ''VideoGame/MetalGear1'' on the UsefulNotes/{{MSX}}2 was originally envisioned as a top-down shooter. However, the hardware limitations of the platform meant that too many sprites on the screen would start to make the picture flicker. The game was thus re-tooled to focus on ''avoiding'' enemies and combat, and an iconic stealth franchise was born.
** When ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' was [[VideoGameRemake remade]] for the UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube as ''The Twin Snakes'', just about all of the dialogue was re-recorded, despite most of it being identical to the original UsefulNotes/PlayStation version (and it even uses [[RoleReprise all of the same actors]] to boot, thanks to Creator/DavidHayter's insistence). While it makes sense to account for [[HeKnowsAboutTimedHits different buttons and such]], Hayter mentioned in an interview that the original game's dialogue was recorded in an apartment hastily converted into a recording studio. If those recordings were used for the remake, the [=GameCube=]'s higher quality audio format would reveal other noises the microphones picked up, including ''traffic outside the apartment''.
* ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'':
** With ''VideoGame/Metroid1'', the iconic Morph Ball came into being because the programmers had trouble making an animation of Samus crawling through small passageways. Thus, they made do with a much simpler animation of a rolling ball.
** The similarly iconic {{shoulders|of Doom}} came about in ''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus'' because, it being a classic UsefulNotes/GameBoy game, they couldn't use alternate colors to differentiate between the starting Power Suit and the Varia upgrade as they did in the first game. This look has essentially become her defining outfit, to the point that ''VideoGame/MetroidFusion'' and ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission'' are the only games in the series that don't give the massive shoulders with the Varia upgrade or even give her that upgrade from the start. And said games even have reasons for doing so: the former because Samus's Fusion Suit is made up of remnants from her removed Power Suit and the latter because [[spoiler:Samus doesn't get the shoulders until she receives an ancient, but more advanced Power Suit towards the end of the game]].
** ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'', like ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'', hides loading times behind the doors. The doors simply won't open until the next room is loaded. During normal gameplay, you usually won't notice this unless you listen to your [=GameCube=] or Wii's disc drive suddenly spin up as you approach or shoot the door.
** More like "Serendipity Designed the Character", but in the original game, the space-dragon Ridley is fairly small and somewhat hunched over, even while flying, due to limitations on sprite sizes at the time. This would later get Ridley PromotedToPlayable in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate''; modern Ridley [[MemeticMutation is too big]], but a hunched-over Ridley is just big enough.
* In the ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland'' games, [[HonestJohnsDealership Stan]] has an UnmovingPlaid pattern due to technical reasons in the first game, but it has been kept, even after the series became full-3D (and it required extensive effort to replicate under the conditions) and becoming a plot point in ''VideoGame/TalesOfMonkeyIsland'', [[GrandfatherClause simply because it is so iconic of Stan]].
* ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'' GuestFighter [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy Krueger]] has a blurb in his story that explains why he's wearing a second claw-glove, even though he usually only wears one. This is to address the fact that ''[=MK9=]'' lets all the characters switch their stance on command, meaning Freddy's attacks must be consistent regardless if he's leading with his left or right hand (as Front and Back limbs will change each time a character's stance changes). This is also the reason why Jax was given two cybernetic arms instead of just one in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3''.
* [[WordOfGod According to Rand Miller]], the game ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' was originally intended to solely be an exploration game where the player mainly took in the story and copious Sceneryp*rn. However the team needed to find a way to slow down the player enough to load the areas, so they implemented puzzles you had to solve to get to the Ages and wrote the story about how paranoid Atrius was about someone finding the books, resulting in the ''Myst'' series becoming one of the defining point-and-click puzzle game series.
* The game ''VideoGame/NancyDrew: The Curse of Blackmoor Manor'' was rendered in still frames (and the occasional FMV), which made it difficult for [=NPCs=] to appear during actual gameplay. So they wrote it into the script that Ethel [[StealthHiBye appears out of nowhere]] after Nancy [[spoiler:leaves the East Hall]], spooking her. This scene was received favorably by players, who thought it heightened the game's scary atmosphere.
* ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' faced a problem in 2021 regarding their resident gunslinger hero Jesse [=McCree=], as he was [[{{Tuckerization}} directly named after a Blizzard developer]] who had been fired from the company amidst sexual harassment allegations. The ''Overwatch'' team made the decision [[RenamedToAvoidAssociation to change the character's name to Cole Cassidy]], but chose not to entirely {{retcon}} "[=McCree=]" out in favor of a storytelling opportunity in the ''New Blood'' comic, which was in production during the scandal. In the story, Cassidy was confirmed to be his birth name, but "Jesse [=McCree=]" was an alias he used while working under the criminal Deadlock Gang in his backstory, which continued being used during his time in Blackwatch. ''New Blood'' hinges around Cassidy being appointed to help rejoin and reunite [[HeroesRUs Overwatch]], and so he makes the decision to return to his birth name, [[MeaningfulRename representing his "rebirth" as a hero of the resurrected team]].
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** Kanto in ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' is rather empty compared to how it was in ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' (set three years prior in-universe), with dungeons and areas like Mt. Moon, the Safari Zone, and Cerulean Cave either scaled down or gone entirely. Even Cinnabar Island, an entire town, is destroyed. Of course, this is to be expected when putting two whole regions into a UsefulNotes/GameBoy cartridge, [[SugarWiki/GeniusProgramming which is a miracle in itself]]. ''[[VideoGameRemake Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver]]'', released for the more advanced UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, added some of the missing areas back in.
** In the similar vein, Sophocles' trial at Hokulani Observatory in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' is a sound quiz to help correct a power outage due to difficulties in development that cropped up. In ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'' a year later, ([[AlternateUniverse that game's version of]]) the trial is completely redesigned after the difficulties were resolved.
* The reason ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' takes place in a SharedUniverse with the ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' series is because the game had a small development team, so it originally [[NewWorkRecycledGraphics reused most of its assets]] from ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'', allowing a handwave of Black Mesa plagiarizing Apertures technology. The final game uses mostly original assets, but still has some from ''Half-Life 2'', such as the High Energy Pellets, which look and sound the same as the Combine's energy orbs.
* ''VideoGame/Portal2'':
** Cave Johnson's assistant was originally going to be male and named Greg. However, since the part was so small, Valve didn't want to pay another voice actor so they changed the name to Caroline and had Creator/EllenMcLain voice her. [[spoiler:Naturally, they had to come up with [[BrainUploading a reason as to why Caroline and GLaDOS have the same voice]].]] Amusingly enough, for the Perpetual Testing Initiative expansion, they had Creator/JKSimmons record new lines as "Cave Prime", in which he references his assistant Greg. Greg is still TheVoiceless.
** Originally, the reason why [=GLaDOS=] ([[spoiler:or [[ProductionNickname PotatOS]], rather]]) can't help you with tests after [[spoiler:Wheatley takes over the facility]] was going to be [[spoiler:the bird swooping in and eating parts of the potato, causing her to forget the test solutions and gradually making her dumber until her IQ is on par with Wheatley's]]. This ended up being too hard to program, so it was changed to Aperture's systems giving any AI who helps subjects solve the tests a painful shock as [[spoiler:Wheatley finds out the hard way a couple of times]].
* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Prince of Persia|1}}'', the game developers wanted to add another character; however, space on the game floppy was limited, and a new character could only be created if it was a PaletteSwap of an existing one. After tinkering a bit, the development team came up with a dark copy of the Prince: the Shadow Prince. This later became central to the game's plot: [[spoiler:the Shadow Prince is generated when the Prince passes through a magical mirror, and the Prince must rejoin his split self near the finale of the game]].
* The reason why Little Mac was made so little in the NES version of ''VideoGame/PunchOut'' was to make it easier to see your opponent, as the developers couldn't translate the wireframe graphics from the arcade version properly.
* ''VideoGame/QBert'' and his enemies were supposed to speak in full English. However, the Votrax speech synthesizer used made things sound almost unintelligible, so this was changed to a sort of alien language that gave Q*Bert his famous [[SymbolSwearing profanity]]. The only distinguishable sounds are "bye-bye" when you get a game over and "Hello, I'm turned on" when the machine is powered up.
* VideoGame/{{Rayman}} was given FloatingLimbs because this saved animation time and disc space for other content on the limited hardware of the time.
* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'':
** Due to technical limitations, the early games had a loading screen for each area. The designers took advantage of this by making the loading screen the animation of a door opening. The door, in fact, that the player was entering through. As with ''Silent Hill'''s fog, these became so linked with the series that, even when they were able to effectively eliminate loading times for the first game's [=GameCube=] remake, they kept the door scenes in anyway. At least once, [[JumpScare surprise attacks]] were hidden in these same loading screens (most notably the infamous "door of death" from ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2''). In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica X'' the developers tried to manufacture this tension, with deliberately delayed door openings accompanied by thudding heartbeat sounds and throbbing rumble controllers.
** The infamous live-action opening and equally bad voice acting from the original 1996 game was the result of having a budget so tight that the developers couldn't afford to hire professional actors.
* ''VideoGame/Shinobi2002'' for the [=PS2=] has the hero wearing an extremely long red scarf. This originally started with them goofing around with the parameters, and they set it to 200%. They realized this allowed the player to keep track of the character much better, so it was left like that.
* The existence of the Soul Calibur in the eponymous ''[[VideoGame/SoulSeries Soulcalibur]]'' series is down to the infamous trademark lawsuits that have been filed due to Tim Langdell of Edge Games, which argue that any use of the word "edge" with relation to video games infringed on his company's name. When Namco attempted to release ''Soul Edge'' in the U.S. under its original title, they were slapped with this, forcing them to sidestep with [[MarketBasedTitle renaming the game]] "''Soul Blade''" and then later "''Soulcalibur''" for the following installment, which it retained from then onwards (an attempt was made during the development of ''Soulcalibur V'' to return the series to its "''Soul Edge''" name but it was rejected). The Soul Calibur was thus introduced as the antithesis to the already established Soul Edge to anchor the newly renamed series to its title.
* One of the key traits of ''VideoGame/SpaceInvaders'' is how the aliens get faster as you destroy more and more of them. This was originally an unfortunate consequence of the low processing power being choked by a large number of enemies, but the creators liked it and decided to keep it in.
* After the smash success of ''[[VideoGame/SpyroTheDragon1998 Spyro the Dragon]]'', Insomniac Games was trying to come up with a plot for the foregone sequel. While looking at the Japanese box art for the first game, they noticed that the katakana for Spyro's name looked like it spelled out "Ripto". They now had the perfect name for the villain of their sequel, and thus ''VideoGame/Spyro2RiptosRage'' was born.
* ''VideoGame/StarCraftI'': One developer said that the original game was very much ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' in space, [[http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Starcraft-orcs-in-space.png down to the graphics.]] At a con, they saw a rival RTS called ''VideoGame/DominionStormOverGift3'' with much better graphics, gameplay, and all around better quality, the gameplay demo of which inspired them to start again and create the game we know today. Years later, the author learned that the game was in fact just as unprepared for the con as they were- [[http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/starcraft-orcs-in-space-go-down-in-flames they were watching a pre-made video with the demo guy pretending to play]].
* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'':
** When the very first ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'' was nearing completion, the playtesters deemed the Koopa Troopas, originally intended to be the basic enemy type, to be too tricky to beat for earlier portions of the game. However, very little space was left to program anything else into the code. So they came up with a simply-designed walking mushroom that only had two frames of animation, which were actually flipped versions of the same image. At the same time, this creature's resemblance to the Super Mushroom required them to change the item's look and behavior. Thus, a last-minute attempt to squeeze in something to make the game fairer led to the creation of the iconic [[TheGoomba Goomba]].
** The Fire Flower PowerUp launches bouncing fireballs because straight-flying fireballs were too impractical and hard to program otherwise.
** The {{recurring character}} Waluigi was created for ''VideoGame/MarioTennis'' so that VideoGame/{{Wario}} could have a tennis partner--allowing him to play doubles with Mario and Luigi, or Peach and Daisy. This is also why he doesn't generally appear in the ''Wario Land'' games, or any games that don't involve [[GoKartingWithBowser competitive team sports]]. Amusingly, though, this hasn't stopped him from becoming a very [[MemeticMutation memetic]] [[EnsembleDarkhorse fan favorite]].
** A planned two-player version of ''VideoGame/FZero'' for the Super Nintendo ended up becoming ''VideoGame/SuperMarioKart'' because of hardware limitations. The SNES couldn't handle two Mode-7 display of the F-Zero tracks, which were large due to needing long stretches of road to mimic the sensation of speed. What the SNES could handle was smaller compact maps with lots of turns, more suitable for slower-paced races like go-kart racing. So when it was decided to make a go-kart racing game instead, they needed a way to distinguish the different racers from the back since unlike ''F-Zero'' where they could show different vehicle designs, go-karts are pretty much the same, and fully expose the driver. ''Mario'' characters ended up being chosen because they can easily be told apart from the back. With the choice of using ''Mario'' characters, making the entire game ''Mario''-themed was natural at that point.
** Peach needing a doubles partner is also largely the reason Daisy became a prominent character at all; prior to that point, she was reserved to the original ''VideoGame/SuperMarioLand''. That said, the spin-offs have also made Daisy a fan favorite in her own right, even going as far as to be playable in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate''.
** Toadette exists for similar reasons as Waluigi, having made her debut as Toad's partner in the duo-centric ''VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash''. Toadette would go on to be a recurring Toad character in the series, eventually having a [[BreakoutCharacter breakout]] role in ''VideoGame/CaptainToadTreasureTracker''.
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars2'' was meant to have ''Anime/AuraBattlerDunbine'' in, but Banpresto couldn't secure the rights to it. Rather than simply give up on the idea entirely, the company decided to create an OriginalGeneration {{Expy}} in the form of Masaki Andoh and the Cybuster. Since then, the number of ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' games that are devoid of original protagonists can be counted on one hand and the [[VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsGaiden Masou Kishin]] plot, in particular, is the longest one of them all, and still ongoing as well.
* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'', this is how [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda Ganondorf]]'s controversial portrayal as a MovesetClone of Captain Falcon came about. Creator/MasahiroSakurai originally had no plans to include him as a playable character in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosMelee Melee]]'', but late in development, felt obligated to do so as he was the most popular ''Zelda'' character in a poll he conducted earlier. He eventually realized that Ganondorf's build would fit Captain Falcon's animations easily, and so his model from a [=GameCube=] tech demo was ported into the game with this in mind. He [[TheArtifact remains this way]] in all future installments in spite of being portrayed as a sword-wielding MagicKnight in future ''Zelda'' games, although he also had his animations redone in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'' to resemble certain hand-to-hand moves that he does in various games in his home series, while ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate Ultimate]]'' gives him a sword (from the aforementioned [=GameCube=] tech demo) for his smash attacks but otherwise leaves him largely the same.
* ''Franchise/StarFox''[='s=] iconic Arwing fighter design was conceived largely because it could be made out of relatively few polygons. In addition, the "fly into the screen" approach was used because of the SNES's strength at drawing 2D backgrounds, further conserving limited processing power. [[http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/starfox/0/1 Full details are provided in this Iwata Asks interview.]]
* The ''VideoGame/{{Tenchu}}'' games take place at night because it was easier on the [=PlayStation=]'s processor.
* ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'' originally came about due to issues with the game design. Looking Glass Studios originally wanted to make an in-depth swordfighting game, with a huge variety of different moves for the player to master. In the end, the swordfighting mechanic was simply too complex for the game's physics engine to handle, and no test players could reliably defeat even the basic enemies in a swordfight. One developer hit upon the idea of using the unnecessarily complex and difficult combat to emphasize to the player that they should ''avoid'' said combat if at all possible, and thus was born ''Thief''.
* One reason why ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' features a cast predominantly composed of [[ElegantGothicLolita girls in frilly outfits]] is because early on, ZUN wasn't that great of an artist, specifically in regards to drawing believable human forms, something which is nigh-manditory for drawing a male character. Female characters, on the other hand, could be largely hidden underneath poofy dresses, leaving only heads, hands and feet to have to be drawn. While ZUN's art has improved considerably over the years and art in official mangas and spinoff games is left to other artists, by now the series has become so synonymous with "girls shooting each other with lasers" that any serious attempt to shake up the status quo would likely be met with backlash, which was why ZUN ultimately swapped the male Myouren Hijiri with his sister Byakuren in ''Unidentified Fantastic Object''. So far, the only named male characters either appear in official manga, are mentioned but never seen, or in the case of Unzan, aren't even human.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'':
** [[spoiler:The Fallen Child looks near identical to [[PlayerCharacter Frisk]] because when Creator/TobyFox asked Temmie to storyboard the intro, she got the number of stripes on Frisk's shirt wrong]]. This ended up a key plot point, [[spoiler: as Asriel admits mistaking Frisk for the Fallen Child]] in the Pacifist ending.
** In ''Undertale'', player's choice is a ''huge'' aspect of the game, as just about everything you do affects the game world and the characters. However, ''Undertale'''s sequel of sorts, ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'', makes it clear from the very start that player choice does ''not'' matter, and that the story is completely out of your control. This is done partly for story reasons, but also because ''Deltarune'' is a way bigger and more complicated game than ''Undertale'' (one playthrough of the former will have significantly more content), so implementing that many branching storylines would be nigh impossible.
* The gameplay of the ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' series, and most of Wario's attributes, were because of the limitations of the original UsefulNotes/GameBoy. The Game Boy had a tiny, monochromatic screen where ScreenCrunch was a frequent issue, and an outdated CPU that paled against other handhelds and home consoles, both of which made translating the kinetic precision platforming of the Franchise/SuperMarioBros series to the handheld a challenge. In response, Wario became a Mighty Glacier who did not run fast or jump high to work with the Game Boy's screen resolution, and his games eschewed common {{Platformer}} tropes like [[DeathCourse Death Courses]] and BottomlessPits in favor of exploring every nook and cranny of levels for coins and treasures.
* The Yamate Tunnel course in the [[NoExportForYou Japanese version]] of ''VideoGame/WanganMidnightMaximumTune 5'' was reconfigured for ''5DX'' and beyond to reflect the closure of a road running along the course's real-life counterpart.
* ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' was originally planned to be another BeatEmUp like [[VideoGame/{{Yakuza}} the rest of the series]], but while in development an {{April Fool|sDay}}'s prank video was released showing a ''Yakuza'' game done with turn-based RPG mechanics. The video was so well-received that the team retooled ''Like A Dragon'' to have the same mechanics, with an in-universe justification of [[TheHero Ichiban]] being a big ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' fan and seeing their fights playing out in a similar manner.
* The makers of ''VideoGame/YokusIslandExpress'', Jens Andersson and Mattias Snygg, initially set out to make a game in one year without a dedicated animator. Hence, they decided to "make a game about a ball" because that would be easy to animate. While the scope and timeframe for the game's development expanded quite a bit from that initial idea, they continued to retain the focus on the ball, resulting in a {{Metroidvania}} controlled like a {{pinball}} game.
'''Hardware/Multiple games examples:'''
* The red and white colors of the UsefulNotes/{{Famicom}} were due to those colors of plastic being the cheapest at the time.
* Fog in video games is usually done because of the difficulty -- or even impossibility -- of rendering an entire area all at once. In order to make up for the limitation, the developers will usually HandWave it in some way. Some examples:
** A well-executed and well-received case: ''Franchise/SilentHill'''s fog helps the game's atmosphere so much that the fog (or sometimes snow) was retained [[TheArtifact long after technical improvements had obviated the need for it]]. Tellingly, an HD re-release of the original games drastically increased the draw distance... and was considered the vastly inferior version because of it, to the point where the fog was ''patched back in for the [=PS3=] version.''
** ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2000'' uses the fog as a major plot point. [[VideoGame/SpiderMan2EnterElectro The sequel]] got around it by having all the rooftop levels at night or dawn.
** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'' has heavy fog that just adds to the overall aesthetic of "crappy New York-esque city".
** The gas zombies in ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' are accompanied by green fog because it makes it easier to render the increased amounts of zombies.
** ''VideoGame/Superman64'' has green "kryptonite fog" which allegedly explains why Superman isn't so super-powered in Lex Luthor's virtual world.
** ''VideoGame/SanFranciscoRush''...well, it's UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco. It makes a little less sense in ''Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA'', which features various US cities, although the UsefulNotes/LosAngeles course changes the fog to ''smog'' instead, reflecting LA's notoriously poor air quality.
** ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' and its sequel make use of fog to emulate horror movies that had fog smoking the set. The fog in game would not only hide objects and level geometry being drawn in as the player approached them, but it also helped make the zombies in the distance stand out more. Using mods that remove fog gives the levels a much cleaner look, but some objects that took advantage of being covered in fog look less impressive without it along with said objects popping in.
** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' blurs the overall look of the game in some parts to compensate for the hardware's limitations, while also adding some feeling of dread and danger. Of course this is averted in the HD releases.
* As indicated above, multiple disc games often make certain areas inaccessible after certain points in the plot, to save on space on each disc. Each disc usually has some big event occur at the end of the disc that will remove access to certain side areas that are no longer useful to the plot in the next disc. It's annoying if you needed a certain item for a side quest, but allowing the developers to not have to try and fit the entire world and everything in it on the last disc, freeing them up some space for ending cutscenes, boss data, and the very definite final dungeon.
* The NintendoHard trope exists, in large part, because of the technical limitations that video games faced when the medium was still in its infancy (hence Creator/{{Nintendo}} being the {{Trope Namer|s}}). In a time when limited memory made it impossible to fit more than about an hour of material on a single game cartridge, the best way to prolong a game's running time was to make it as challenging as humanly possible, ensuring that it took at least several days (if not ''weeks or months'') for all but the most skilled players to beat it. There's a reason games from the 1980s have a reputation for being difficult: their difficulty level may have been frustrating, but it was often the only way to make gamers feel like they'd gotten their money's worth out of a game. By the same [[{{Pun}} token]], arcade games tend to be much more challenging than console games for the same reason: the only way to make them [[MoneyDearBoy economically feasible]] is to ensure that they're nigh-impossible to beat on the first try, requiring players to spend more money on replays. What's more, ensuring that a player can't keep playing a game for too long means that one person can't hog the machine unless they're willing to spend a lot of money.
** With the decline of arcades and technology allowing for longer, more elaborate games, the NintendoHard trope has even found a new home in the [[AllegedlyFreeGame Free-To-Play]] model of games that are particularly popular on smartphones. Many of these games are designed to be incredibly hard (or incredibly easy at the first few chapters while becoming harder later) so that players are encouraged to spend money to receive [[BribingYourWayToVictory a "cheat" or shortcut method to the next level]]. Like arcade games, many [=F2P=] games would be incredibly short, and thus unprofitable, otherwise.
** Likewise, indie video games have a greater tendency to rely on high difficulty for artificial length compared to their big-name developer counterparts. Partially because many of them want to recreate the difficulty of their favorite childhood video games, and partially because their lower budgets cause them to be short otherwise.
* Probably one of the reasons games that were set in space were probably so popular in the early days of video games was how easy they were on both the part of the developers and on the hardware they ran on. A black screen with occasional white dots generated with a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear-feedback_shift_register linear-feedback shift register]] is very easy to draw and requires basically no video memory.
* Indie {{Visual Novel}}s that take place in schools, especially {{Dating Sim}}s, often make the player character choose one among the several extracurricular activities (like thematic clubs or sports teams) even though it's clear that they could have taken part of almost all of them at the same time. While this makes sense from the standpoint of allowing the player to focus on the character they end up dating, it also eases the load on the programming for having to keep track of each of the activities the player is participating in. One example is ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'', where male lead Hisao rejects love interest candidate Shizune's invitations to join the [[AbsurdlyPowerfulStudentCouncil student council]] if his choices bring him closer to Rin or Emi, but the other options are not all that time-consuming: Emi's "morning running team" runs at the earliest hours of the day and Rin's art club meets two times a week.
** Also, in order to keep the game file at a reasonable size, character sprites usually limit the number of variations to different facial expressions and a limited number of outfits, which also saves work for the artists. School settings are great for this, because if everyone wears school uniforms, the artists don't have to waste time coming up with unique outfits for everyone. ''Katawa Shoujo'' provides another example, as the girlfriend candidates have four variants at most; school uniform, casual clothes, naked (or semi-naked), and a fourth outfit that varies according to the girl's activities (like a P.E. uniform for Emi and painting overalls for Rin). This explains the students walking around outside classes in their uniforms, even though boarding schools don't mandate them to be worn all the time (it could risk them being dirtied or damaged), and Emi sleeping in her P.E. uniform instead of any kind of pajamas.
* When the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} was first approved for development, creative director Horace Luke was asked to start sketching concepts for what the physical product could look like. In the moment, he quickly discovered that all of the color markers on his desk were empty, except one: Green. The final version of the Xbox naturally evolved a lot from those initial sketches, but the black and green color theming was something that stuck ever since the beginning.
* [[FirstPersonShooter First-person shooters]] initially became popular in the early 1990s--in large part--because their first-person perspective meant that the player character didn't have to be rendered onscreen or given a full range of animations, which saved developers a considerable amount of time and effort in the early days of 3-D gaming. It remains a popular genre to this day, even though technological advances have since made fully 3-D [[ThirdPersonShooter third-person shooters]] much more feasible.
[[/folder]]
