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"I think we might have killed the franchise."
George Clooney on Batman and Robin (and until 2005, he was right)
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Sometimes a sequel sucks. Sometimes it sucks, but leaves the possibility open that the followup will be better and that this is just a blip in the quality of the franchise. Then sometimes it sucks so much that it kills the franchise stone dead, destroying the producers'/publishers' hopes for further sequels.

Occasionally a few Franchise Killers over too short a period (or one really bad one) can put a whole genre out of favour for a while. Even the executives could tell when it's time to stop following the leader.

Note that sometimes the franchise turns out to be Not Quite Dead, and can be salvaged with a Continuity Reboot or simply ignoring the killer. Just as often, however, this revival turns out to be a flop and kills the franchise twice over. If the franchise experiences what should have been a Franchise Killer but carries on regardless with few to no improvements, it's a Franchise Zombie. Occasionally it's a Stillborn Franchise, an all-new product for which plans for sequels were made and then scrapped when it was discovered that the product was crap, or so hyped up that the creators have unrealistic expectations of its success. Or it just didn't profit enough, even though it was a Cult Classic. If the Franchise that was killed also happened right as the creators were setting up for a new installment to the series, it will overlap with Cut Short.

Examples of Franchise Killer include:


Anime & Manga[]

  • El Hazard: The Alternative World performed poorly to the point that it was Cut Short with the show's way too many plots being wrapped up (very poorly) in only a single episode. It also killed the El Hazard franchise, with no further work of any kind being done in the decade since. And we never saw the Stable Time Loop established in the original El Hazard: The Magnificent World through to its completion.
    • Tenchi Muyo!, another AIC franchise of the same era, barely escaped this fate one year earlier with Tenchi in Tokyo. Despite being in most regards worse than El Hazard: The Alternative World, Tenchi in Tokyo managed to last for a full 26 episodes, and only set back the franchise by 5 years instead of killing it altogether.
  • Post-Chars Counterattack, Mobile Suit Gundam's Universal Century continuity entered an agonizing death-spiral. This started off with Mobile Suit Gundam F91 being developed as a TV series, but crammed into a movie loaded with so many dangling plot threads that it took a manga-only sequel to resolve them all. The next series, Victory Gundam, was Yoshiyuki Tomino's gigantic middle-finger to the franchise before departing. However, the true death blow was when Gaia Gear and G-Saviour were produced; Sunrise does not list them with other UC productions, and OVAs about the Universal Century mostly stopped as a result of them, prior to the release of Unicorn. While the continuity continued to live on in OVAs covering events from the One Year War to the Gryps conflict, every subsequent TV production has been in an Alternate Continuity, and the UC timeline didn't really progress any further beyond V Gundam - even after Gundam Unicorn and the Animated Adaptation of the MSG manga, Gundam: The Origin [1], were very successful. The only attempts of additional UC works set after Victory were Reconigusta in G (which is set so far ahead in the UC that the calendar has been changed to the Reglid Century) released in 2014, 14 years after G-Saviour & the Shin Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam Dust manga, which wasn't released until 2021, 21 years after G-Saviour and is still set before it. [2] The newest UC projects (as of 2023) are the three Hathaway's Flash movies (the first one was released in 2021), which are adaptations of Gundam novels set post-Counterattack, as well as a 2022 OAV based on the infamous Cucuruz Doans Island episode of the original series, though a larger brand initiative to revive the Universal Century has been launched.
    • This probably has something to do with the fact that Tomino was planning on ending it with Counterattack (in fact, he'd never even wanted to do any sequels in the first place, as his original plan had been to kill off pretty much any future threat from Zeon), but his sponsors just kept trying to squeeze blood from the stone. It's very telling that when they finally wised up and let Tomino bow out of the franchise and hired directors who were actually enthusiastic about the material they produced some of the most highly regarded work not only in the Gundam franchise, but in all of '90s anime.
    • Gundam X almost killed the franchise, as due to consumer fatigue, the series entered an ice age for 3 years (if you don't count Endless Waltz). Gundam X is one of only two Gundam TV series to be cut short of a full two-season run. The first? The original Mobile Suit Gundam; it's easy to forget given what a massive franchise it's become that the original installment had poor ratings, and it was only redeemed by how well its toy line sold[3].
    • In America, Gundam SEED killed the franchise for quite a while. In this case, one can blame the heavy edits Toonami made. Desperate to air the show in a daytime slot, Cartoon Network's cuts turned the show into a complete mess, most notably by forcing the series to Never Say "Die", drastically changing battle scenes, and featuring the use of the notorious "Disco Guns". In spite of the show's serious nature, the bizarre and drastic edits caused the fanbase to not take the show seriously and it showed in the ratings. By episode 26, the series could only be seen at Friday at midnight. After its shaky run, Gundam would go back to being only seen on DVD until Sy Fy revived the franchise by airing Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
      • Its sequel Gundam SEED Destiny managed to kill Sunrise's official English-language Gundam message board (the centerpiece of the English language website), despite not even airing outside of Japan until years later (and even then, it only aired in Canada). Numerous American fans were watching fansubs of the SEED Destiny episodes within days of their air dates (or even sooner in the case of American fans who speak Japanese, which in the Gundam fandom, turns out to be a surprisingly large number) and thus it was the biggest topic of discussion the message board (without, of course, the fansub aspect being mentioned; it was the official message board after all). The extremely divided fan opinion about SEED Destiny is well known, but the disagreements were kept mostly civil. And then the final episode aired, and the opinions voice on the message board were almost universally (and often quite vehemently) negative, even among those who'd generally approved of the way the story had gone in the second half. Shortly afterward (and without advance notice), Sunrise pulled the plug on the message board entirely, leaving Gundam Official.com little more than an empty shell that to this day no longer gets updated (when Gundam 00 aired on Sy Fy, it was given its own separate English-language website). In fact, given that the SEED Destiny finale aired in Japan less than six months after the SEED finale aired in North America (many Gundam fans, especially those newly-introduced to the franchise, went straight from watching SEED in English to watching fansubs of SEED Destiny), this incident may have even played a role in Gundam's long disappearance from American TV broadcasts, with Sunrise having for years the mistaken conclusion that negative reaction to the SEED Destiny finale [4] meant that Americans just didn't like Gundam.
    • A movie meant to tie up the Cosmic Era timeline has been stuck in Development Hell for years (due to the declining health of the head writer, who finally passed away in 2016), and its fate was uncertain until Takanori "TM Revolution" Nishikawa (the singer for several of the show's openings, who also played a small role in SEED Destiny) confirmed that it restarted development on 2022. Previously, a combination of the failure of SEED Destiny and the combination of the success and lack of immediate follow up to 00 put the kibosh on the idea of creating a large-scale timeline as an alternative to the UC until the success of The Witch From Mercury.
    • SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors marks the final installment for the BB Senshi Sangokuden franchise, leaving the third part of the manga completely unadapted until 2019. Build Fighters overtook the series’s position as “kid friendly Gundam” for the most part. Meanwhile in the West, SD was killed in its cradle with the failure of Superior Defender Gundam Force, as a result there have been no efforts to bring over future SD works aside from the kits themselves, though there do exist official releases of later works with subtitles.
    • In Japan itself, Gundam AGE was so unpopular due to its Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and its contrast with the "kiddie"-like looks that it DID almost kill the franchise until the arrival of the more light-hearted Gundam Build Fighters. Regardless, it was the last non-Build Fighters, non-Universal Century work until Iron-Blooded Orphans, leaving about a 1-year gap. [5] Speaking of which, the poor reception to Gundam Build Divers led to Re-Rise becoming an original net animation rather than a television series, and while Re-Rise did well, subsequent follow-ups were poorly received, making just enough moolah to keep going while the more serious Gundam series took center stage once again, themselves not being quite as profitable as before, with both Reconigusta in G and Iron Blooded Orphans noted as having underperformed to an extent, and having quite a few gaps between them. And while Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury has done very well, it remains to see if it will fully revitalize the Gundam franchise or not.
  • The Animated Adaptation of CLAMP's Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle came to a screeching halt after a lackluster second season that had almost nothing but Filler episodes (when there was so much more material left to adapt). They tried to Retcon it in the Tokyo Revelations OVA (the adaptation of the Acid Tokyo arc in the manga), but the damage had already been done.
  • Zoids: Fuzors is often accused of being one of these by the English-speaking Zoids fanbase, but it was in fact the fan favourite Zoids: Chaotic Century that killed the franchise, having gotten such low ratings during its run on Cartoon Network that it was cancelled, with the final four episodes only being shown after complaints from the fanbase. Fuzors was more of a last-ditch effort to salvage what was already a doomed franchise.
    • Similarly, in Japan, Zoids Genesis was a franchise killer; the anime got a so-so reception, but The Merch failed to sell, effectively dooming the chances of another Zoids anime being made any time soon, and causing Tomy to change its marketing strategy by pandering exclusively to Otaku rather than general audiences as they did before.
    • A testament to that is that Zoids is one of the Hasbro franchises that WASN'T brought back from hibernation for the Hasbro Comic Universe, though this may have been due to rights issues, as a number of obscure Hasbro IP made cameo appearances.
  • In a similar vein to El Hazard: The Alternative World, Great Dangaioh's performance was bad enough to have the show get cancelled and leave things hanging in episode 12 (out of a planned 26). This effectively ensured that the Dangaioh franchise would never get a proper ending (let alone resolve the OVA's events).
  • Sailor Moon had not one, but two franchise killers happen. The first was Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, which suffered from rapidly-declining ratings and brought the original anime to an end after exactly 200 episodes. Six years later, a live-action version of the show ensured that no new Sailor Moon material would be produced until 2012, when Sailor Moon Crystal was announced.
  • Digimon was first taken out by Frontier, a Henshin Hero series that abandoned the partner Digimon concept and proved to be an unpopular move, and it was screwed over even further in international markets. The franchise didn't produce a new TV series until 2006, though manga (which ended in 2003 due to the failure of Frontier), cards (which ended in 2005), 2 new series of v-pets, video games and even a TV movie were still made. Savers wasn't big enough to avoid another three-year gap for the next series, and in 2012, an even worse Franchise Killer came up in the form of Young Hunters, a series with such awful reception and sales that the entire franchise had an audience shift afterwards. The next TV series have been a spin-off series [6] called Digimon Universe: Applimonsters and a remake of the original series (and a whopping eight years elapsed between Hunters and the remake, the longest gap (even if filled by many other products) in the series to date). We wouldn't get a proper new series until Ghost Game nearly a decade later.

Films — Animation[]

  • Originally, there was actually going to be a third film in The Rescuers series movies by Disney. However, due to Down Under's financial failure (it's the only animated Disney movie released during the 1990s to ever suffer this fate[7]) combined with the death of actress Eva Gabor (who voiced Miss Bianca), the idea for a third Rescuers movie was scrapped. Cameos from the characters of the films have become rare in the years since.
    • And actually it did more than that, as Disney vowed never to release theatrical sequels again (their previous sequel, The Three Caballeros, was over 40 years before Down Under) and from then on they were direct-to-video, which had a negative effect on their quality for the most part. They've started to get back to theatrical sequels in recent years, though only sporadically, as seen with a few Winnie the Pooh movies as well as Return To Neverland and The Jungle Book 2, before eventually starting to release them fully with Ralph Breaks the Internet and Frozen 2.
  • There was actually once a restaurant at Walt Disney World that opened in 1986 replacing the "Lancer's Inn" that was around since the park's opening in 1971 called "Gurgi's Munchies and Crunchies" that was supposed to promote The Black Cauldron. However, the movie failed and as a result the restaurant was immediately closed down (it was first replaced by a Beauty and the Beast-themed restaurant called "Lumiere's Kitchen", and now replaced with a Robin Hood-themed restaurant called "The Friar's Nook"). No further movies based on The Chronicles of Prydain have been made since, despite Disney retaining the film rights.
    • There was once a ride at Tokyo Disneyland called "Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour" that focused on all of the Disney villains up to the Horned King. Since Disney found out that the Horned King was actually one of the villains featured in that ride, it too was closed down as well. Disney eventually changed its mind about the Horned King, who is on the way to being an official Disney Villain, but not yet the Prydain series itself (circa September 2011).
  • Speaking of The Black Cauldron, that movie itself almost became the franchise killer of the entire Disney Animated Canon. It cost the studio so much money they could only barely manage to get back up. Understandably, it took Cauldron till 1998 to get released on home video, with the only films getting their first video release later being 1940s package features.
    • On a similar note, The Little Mermaid is an inversion. The film managed to be such a huge unexpected runaway hit that it outright saved the Disney Animated Canon and even create the Disney Renaissance.
    • To a lesser extent, Home on the Range temporarily killed Disney's traditional animation department and made them move into CGI... until they got back on their feet with The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh. Even there, however, the latter movie, largely thanks to Disney's ingenious decision to release it on the same day as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, (it was released earlier in England as Pooh comes from there) it failed to make much money, resulting in traditional animation for the various films being scrapped indefinitely (though thankfully, not permanently, unlike with Dreamworks). To date Winnie the Pooh stands as the last hand-drawn animated feature film from Disney (not counting the Phineas and Ferb film, Candace Against the Universe, released to Disney+). The movie also served as a sort of Franchise Killer to the Winnie the Pooh franchise, with the direct-to-video series being scrapped after it, and no major Pooh media released until 2018's Christopher Robin.
  • The failure of the DuckTales movie, Duck Tales the Movie Treasure of The Lost Lamp, prevented the making of movies based on Darkwing Duck and Chip 'n Dale Rescue RangersA Goofy Movie, a movie based on Goof Troop, was an enormous success, but the failure of An Extremely Goofy Movie closed the door on movies based on Disney Afternoon shows. Only two One Saturday Morning shows got theatrical movies, though a few others were direct to video. While the Recess movie was fairly sucessful, pretty much nobody remembers the Teacher's Pet movie, which was a bomb and nailed the coffin for One Saturday Morning as a whole. A few Disney Channel shows did get movies, but only the live-action ones had theatrical releases, with the others being either DCOMs or direct to video. Even these DCOMs fell out of favor eventually in favor of arc-based storytelling within the shows themselves, thanks to shows like Gravity Falls blazing the trail for that, though Disney+ has made a Phineas and Ferb film several years after the end of the show (it shares a universe with Milo Murphy's Law). Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers also had a spinoff film in 2022, sharing no real canon with the original series, which exists as meta-fiction instead.
  • The critical failure of Rugrats Go Wild (a crossover film between Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys) actually prevented the making of a fourth Rugrats film and a third Wild Thornberries film. It also was the last straw of the damaged relationship between Klasky-Csupo and Nickelodeon as the former's spate of NickToons were also being overshadowed by the then-new SpongeBob SquarePants.
    • Despite the success of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, the failure of Rugrats Go Wild and the The Hey Arnold Movie was enough to kill off Nicktoon movies until The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water 11 years later, which ended up being a critical and financial success. Since then, Hey Arnold and Invader Zim had TV movies that did decently well, while Netflix have been working with Paramount and Nickelodeon on the The Loud House Movie, which itself met a mixed reception and didn't get a theatrical release.
  • When Looney Tunes Back in Action failed in the box office, a new batch of Looney Tunes shorts being made for theaters were cancelled in mid-production. This, along with two failed television spinoffs, also caused the Looney Tunes to be dropped from syndication on Cartoon Network until 2011's The Looney Tunes Show. The Looney Tunes didn't appear in a another movie for nearly 20 years until Space Jam: A New Legacy was released in time for the 25th anniversary of the original cult classic. The film itself only grossed slightly over its budget, and was critically panned. Back in Action has since been Vindicated by History.
  • Similar to The Rescuers above, originally, there was actually going to be a third film based on The Jungle Book where Baloo and Shere Khan are both captured and sold off of a circus, and as a result Mowgli, Shanti, and Bagheera actually all had to save them both. And over the course of the film, Shere Khan (who went into Knight of Cerebus mode in the second, and according to this film's plot, is revealed to have survived falling into a volcano at the end of that film) would have actually regretted his hatred against humanity because of his capture and may have eventually reformed over the course of the film. However, due to the failure of The Jungle Book 2, this film was ultimately scrapped, and Khan's fate at the end of the sequel remained ambiguous. However, a live-action remake of the original film was released in 2016 to massive acclaim.
  • The critical (but not financial, as it was the second-biggest moneymaker in the series) failure of Shrek the Third resulted in DreamWorks abandoning their planned fifth film Shrek Pleads the Fifth, and instead made the fourth installment, Shrek Forever After, the final entry of the film franchise. While the Puss in Boots spinoff film was well-received, it wasn't enough to revive the Shrek series proper. Memes, however, have brought Shrek back into an ironic zeitgeist, and some at Dreamworks have been looking into a reboot of the IP. A more concrete plan to revive the series has been started by Chris Melandri, including a new Puss in Boots film, which was given significant Art Evolution to get with the times and a Darker and Edgier tone. It was a smash hit, and the planned reboot was scrapped in favor of a proper fifth entry.
  • The Land Before Time franchise had various sequels that were either hit or miss, but the thirteenth film, "The Wisdom of Friends" was so negatively received that it not only prevented any more Land Before Time movies from being released until Journey of the Brave almost a decade later, but also ended up cancelling the TV series tie-in as well. It even killed 2D animation at Universal for several years, as well.
  • The Ice Age franchise came to an end with the fifth film, Collision Course, which got the worst reviews for a series that notoriously had ever-increasing Sequelitis and failed at the box office. By that point, with the random musical numbers, out of place pop culture references, annoying villains, moronic slapstick and gross-out humor, and an ever-growing cast of characters, everyone could agree that the franchise overstayed its welcome. Blue Sky then responded and decided not to make anymore sequels of Ice Age or any of their other franchises, and have since stuck to making original films (though Scrat still appears on their logo). The only Ice Age projects that were in the works since was a spin-off feature staring Buck from the third and fifth movies, and a series of shorts about Scrat and his son, and both eventually appeared on Disney+, as Disney brought the rights to the series with their purchase of 20th Century Fox, before deciding to close Blue Sky due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This, along with the lawsuit over Scrat and the poor reception of Buck Wild, (which was farmed out to a cheaper outside studio called Bardel) was the event that officially sealed the fate of Ice Age.
  • The underperformance of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part at the box office, along with a slew of poorly-received knockoffs (most infamously The Emoji Movie), and a fatigue that started with the underwhelming Lego Ninjago Movie did this to the Warner Lego movies. As a result, the Lego movie license moved to Universal Studios [8] for all future Lego films that will be unrelated to the Lego Warner ones. Warner Bros have since been focusing more on making animated movies based on their existing Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, and DC Comics franchises, along with getting the Dr Seuss Film and TV rights (from Universal, ironically) and signing a deal to release movies from the English company Locksmith Animation. They also found a replacement to Lego by buying the Film and TV rights to Funko Pop. Time will tell if these will be able to capture the magic, however.
    • Speaking of which, it was the 2018 Grinch film that spelled the end of Universal's tenure with Dr. Seuss, with an oddly sexual ad campaign, retroactive backlash to The Lorax becoming too much to bear, and a mediocre reception all around. [9] Illumination also wanted to handle more of their own original franchises, and found an even more lucrative outside IP in Mario.
  • In-universe example with Toy Story 2 via the in-series show Woody's Roundup. While the show was already intended to end anyways, it ended up being cut short and not airing the intended finale Woody's Finest Hour thanks largely to the events of Sputnik's launch and the Mercury Project killing any interest in Westerns.

Films — Live-Action[]

  • The Fantastic Four films weren't bad, exactly, but the underperforming sequel ensured that the standalone Silver Surfer movie will never happen.
    • The films received a Continuity Reboot in 2015, with a new cast, a new origin story, and Darker and Edgier treatement in which the Fantastic Four's origin was played for Body Horror and all of Dr. Doom's noble traits were inexplicably removed. Even before the film was released, fans were not thrilled by the changes made from the original material, such as making Sue Storm Johnny's adopted sister so that they could cast a black actor as Johnny Storm, or making Dr. Doom a blogger. The rumors of the film being a very Troubled Production didn't help matters any. When the film was released in the summer of 2015, it was panned by critics and fans for cutting out much of the material seen in the trailers (including much of the action and comic relief) and trying too hard to do a grounded and realistic approach to fantastic super-hero material. The film ended up being one of the lowest performing superhero movies of the new millenium at the box office. Following Disney's purchase of Fox, an MCU reboot of the Fantastic Four was announced as part of Phase 5 alongside the Blade reboot.
  • Batman and Robin was so awful (lead actor George Clooney even said "I think we killed the franchise") that it convinced Warner to let the Batman fields lie fallow for a while, then let someone else take a crack at the series. Some Marvel Studios high-up is on record for saying that Batman and Robin was the most influential comic book movie, on account of it definitively showing to movie studios that they can't shovel out crap comic movies and expect the fans to like it.
  • Superman III was bad. Superman IV was in some ways an improvement; but where it did go wrong, including glaring Special Effect Failure, it broke Willing Suspension of Disbelief. The series went comatose for nearly twenty years and when it came back, Superman Returns was a sequel to Superman II and ignored the continuity of Superman III and Superman IV. Returns was decent (even taking into account the Broken Base), but didn't perform well enough to keep the franchise resurrected without another reboot.
  • Star Trek Nemesis' plot contained a Sequel Hook, but its financial and critical failure ended any chance the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew had of getting another film. Then again, this section of the franchise may have been killed shortly before the release of this film because Brent Spiner (who played the android Data) refused to participate further because he was visibly aging and straining suspension of disbelief. You can't do TNG without Data, and Paramount's marketing department knew it, hence the tagline:
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  "A Generation's Final Journey Begins".

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  • The major critical and box office disappointment for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier almost killed the franchise as a whole. The only reason there was a sixth movie was that Paramount wanted a movie to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek. Star Trek: The Motion Picture nearly did before it was cool. It was such a snooze fest that it took three years to produce a sequel, with a slashed budget, and resulted in Gene Roddenberry losing any creative control.
    • The box office disappointment of Star Trek Beyond, the third film in the 'Kelvin Timeline' series that began with 2009's Star Trek, resulted in severe budget cuts for the proposed fourth film where time travel would reunite Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) with his father (Chris Hemsworth). Eventually, both Pine and Hemsworth walked off the project, its director moved on to other projects (including the Game of Thrones prequels), and the fourth film was shelved. Combined with the cast of the films being reluctant to do any more films after the tragic death of Anton Yelchin (who portrayed Chekov), along with the Viacom/CBS merger in 2019 allowing for Prime Timeline films to be made once again, and the Kelvin timeline was "indefinitely cancelled". Though, Simon Pegg did reveal in late 2019 that another film was in development but he has no idea if it will be set in the Kelvin timeline, the Prime timeline or is yet another reboot. Whatever it was though, it was consigned to Development Hell in September 2022.
  • The Daredevil movie wasn't quite bad enough to kill Daredevil 2. Elektra, on the other hand, was. That film and Halle Berry's Catwoman squashed rumors of a new spate of super-heroine movies. Daredevil would not return to theaters outside of a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which mainly existed to reassure that his TV series was still part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • Alien: Resurrection differs so much from the tone of its predecessors and eliminates so much of the series' mythology (like the USCM and Weyland-Yutani) that it managed to kill a franchise that even Alien3 couldn't kill. More recently, of course, Alien vs. Predator spun off into film territory; Alien vs. Predator: Requiem killed that section of the franchise (meaning that only its comics, novels and video games are still alive and kicking).
  • Serenity, the feature-film continuation of the Firefly television series, drastically underperformed in the theaters, much like Firefly itself. Interestingly, Serenity was only green-lit due to the impressive sales of Firefly DVDs, and Serenity's failure killed the idea that DVD sales can be used to extrapolate a fanbase's ability to support a motion picture. It should not surprise anyone that DVD sales of Serenity are often used to justify the franchise's strength, despite the under-performance of the film itself. The death of cast member Ron Glass made a continuation more difficult.
  • The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise self-terminated with the combination of the fifth film, The Dream Child, in 1989 and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare in 1991. The former film was poorly received by fans and was the lowest-grossing film in the franchise up to that point, causing New Line to pull the trigger with Freddy's Dead, a film that, despite making a bit more money, is today regarded as the series' rock bottom.
    • Several attempts were made later to revive the series, none of which went anywhere. 1994 brought Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a stand-alone Spin-Off that New Line produced because they liked the script, and moreso because it could be produced cheaply. It was very well-received by critics and fans, and is now regarded as one of the best films in the series from a pure horror standpoint, but it did even worse than at the box office. In 2003 Freddy vs. Jason, the long-awaited Crossover with Friday the 13 th, won the approval of fans of both series and was the highest grossing film in either franchise, but plans for a sequel have largely been restricted to the realm of comic books. The 2010 remake of the original film, despite being a box-office hit, was utterly ravaged by series fans and viewers, and almost killed co-star Rooney Mara's career (before David Fincher swooped in and saved it). The rights to the franchise would later revert to Wes Craven's estate.
  • While the first two films in The Godfather franchises are regarded as classics, The Godfather: Part III is considered much less so. That, and director Francis Ford Coppola's declining health, effectively killed discussions about a fourth film. (Mario Puzo dying prevented the rumours from coming back.)
  • Sadly, the four-hour epic movie Gettysburg, based on a novel by Michael Shaara, had its franchise killed by the abominably executed sequel/prequel Gods and Generals, based on the novel written by Jeff Shaara (son of Michael) which had promised a third entry, The Last Full Measure, also based on the Jeff Shaara book. The shocking thing about Gods and Generals is that, having seen a variety of pre-release scenes, unreleased scenes, and different (superior) cuts of shown scenes in the film that there was quite a lot of good footage that simply was not used; in effect, the whole franchise was killed by bad editing.
  • Jurassic Park 3. A fourth film languished in Development Hell, but when Michael Crichton died, producer Kathleen Kennedy initially decided against making more, and then, in a subversion, Steven Spielberg revealed at 2011's Comic-Con that a fourth film should be released within the next two to three years. Four years later, Jurassic World was released, to mixed reviews but stellar box office returns. The sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, was highly profitable and opened up new possibilities for the franchise but reviews for it were likewise mixed, the same with the follow-up Dominion.
  • Spider-Man 4 managed to do this without even being released, being canceled in favor of a Continuity Reboot right before filming started, after a release date had been announced. It's hard to say if it was justified, but Felicia Hardy (a.k.a. Black Cat) becoming a female Vulture isn't something many will mourn the loss of. The true culprit for the death/rebooting of the franchise was Executive Meddling — director Sam Raimi walked only because he felt he couldn't deliver the level of quality he wanted in the deadline he was given. Meanwhile, the rebooting was done because Sony didn't want the Spider-Man film rights to fall into Marvel Studios' hands instead of, you know, acknowledging the murder of the golden egg-laying goose.
  • Despite being made for what many felt were the wrong reasons, The Amazing Spider-Man was considered a good enough movie to justify its existence. Its sequel, however, was poorly received due to its handling of the death of Gwen Stacy and the fact that multiple villains and storylines were competing for attention. A planned Sinister Six spinoff movie was cancelled, and Sony made a deal with Marvel Studios to allow another reboot with Spider-Man being featured in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That being said, Sony then continued to make Spider-Man movies without Disney's input.
  • Terminator Salvation not only apparently killed off the movie franchise (it was intended to be part one of a trilogy), but also the company that made it. The rights went on sale, but no one was that interested and they ended up in the possession of...a hedge fund that had invested in the company. In 2011, it was reported that Paramount Pictures and Skydance were working on two more films in the franchise, and the fifth expected to herald the return of... SARAH CONNOR!
    • And indeed Sarah Connor returned, this time being played by Emilia Clarke in Terminator: Genysis, a soft reboot that ignores everything past the original. [10] However, reception from the film has ranged from mixed to negative, but it was the most financially successful film in the series since 2.
    • The next, and last, Terminator film, Terminator: Dark Fate, released in 2019, didn't fare any better. Despite the film ignoring everything after Terminator 2, and having Linda Hamilton return as Sarah Connor, it received negative reviews, mainly due to the infamous scene at the beginning of the film where John Conner is killed off, and bombed at the box office, killing the franchise for good. James Cameron has stated that if any further films were to be made, the film would be a hard reboot of the series, ignoring even 1 and 2.
  • Halloween Resurrection (and Producer Existence Failure) killed the original series. Then Platinum Dunes buying the franchise from Dimension Films killed the Rob Zombie remake series, though whether or not that's a good thing due to the involvement of Platinum Dunes is up for debate. In 2018, however, a new Halloween movie was released as a sequel to the original movie, ignoring all the previous sequels and the Rob Zombie remake series.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III put the movie series on hold for 14 years. The 2007 animated film made a decent-but-not-spectacular showing at the box office, but poor reviews have led to the series being rebooted in live-action once again. Unfortunately, said reboot was produced by Michael Bay... The film franchise was zombified thereafter, before being given a silver bullet with the atrocious Out of the Shadows. There have been talks of a new animated film since, but likely as a Netflix exclusive. Nickelodeon later screwed over the show Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which means fans dreaded the possibility of not the brothers in green in any form of screen media again anytime soon, which were mildly soothed by the Netflix-exclusive Grand Finale movie to the aformentioned series. A new animated feature is soon to release as yet another hard reboot.
  • Conan the Destroyer was critically panned and didn't perform well at the box office, dropping many things of what made the original what it was plus its Lighter and Softer tone turning away fans of the first movie while failing to attract younger audiences. Its flop put a possible third Conan movie into Development Hell, and the Red Sonja movie, where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays an obvious Captain Ersatz of Conan, discredited the whole idea of adapting Howard's works for more than 20 years (the only attempt, Kull the Conqueror, was a flop).
    • A reboot film came out in 2011, and if the incredibly poor box office (barely half of its cost) and a lawsuit filed by SLM--a company in bankruptcy that's supposed to have been dormant for a decade, mind you--over the rights to the franchise are any indication, it may have killed the franchise all over again.
  • The failure of Grease 2 prevented further Sequelitis. There were studio plans of having at least three more sequels and a TV series, but they were instantly scrapped after Grease 2 bombed.
  • Planet of the Apes initially died with the terrible Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Tim Burton's movie in 2001 made some money, but the proposed sequel was scrapped. In all fairness, each Apes sequel was written to be the last in the series, and further movies were only created because 20th Century Fox demanded them. Battle merely put a end to needlessly prolonging the series, which had already wrapped up its loose ends in the previous films anyway.
  • The negative critical reception and underwhelming (but still relatively successful) box office intake for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (not to mention the deaths of Bosley #2 Bernie Mac and Charlie himself, John Forsythe) means that the prospects for a third movie in the foreseeable future are unlikely. And with the new TV series burned at the stake by critics and cancelled after four episodes were aired[11], it's not so much "Good morning, Angels" as "Goodbye, Angels." However, a new reboot movie was released in 2019, starring Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska, and Elizabeth Banks. It only grossed slighly over its budget, however.
  • Licence to Kill, the 16th official James Bond movie (and the second and last one to star Timothy Dalton) seemed to do this for a while. With inflation in account, it's the lowest grossing film in the franchise. The franchise was already entering uncertain territory as production had to be moved from England to Mexico in order to save money. Not only that, but the marketing for the movie was subpar at best (it's to date, the last Bond movie to be released during summer). Add that to LTK itself, being one of the most polarizing Bond movies of recent memory due to its decidedly Darker and Edgier, Miami Vice-influenced plot (especially considering the Lighter and Softer Roger Moore era was still fresh in the general public's mind). LTK felt like an end of an era (dating back to the Sean Connery era) as it was the last Bond movie to have any involvement from director John Glen, screenwriter Richard Maibaum, title designer Maurice Binder, cinematographer Alec Mills, and producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli (not to mention the last Bond movie to take place during the Cold War). There wouldn't be a Bond movie released for six years (the longest such delay in franchise history) due to legal wrangling over control of the series. In the meantime, Dalton's contract expired, Pierce Brosnan was hired, and the 17th movie started being Saved From Development Hell.
    • While Die Another Day by no means performed badly (it was the best performing of the series until Casino Royale) it was deemed ridiculous by many, and received at best mixed reviews. Soon after, Brosnan was dismissed and the franchise rebooted with a back-to-basics movie starring Daniel Craig as Bond.
  • The film of Eragon inexplicably altered so many plotlines and cut so much (even given it is based on a Doorstopper), including the entire Dwarf race that a sequel based on the plot of the second book would have been impossible, even if it wasn't an awful film.
  • The Cat in the Hat killed off the live-action Dr. Seuss movie franchise, not so much because of its box-office receipts (which were not as bad as the reviews) but because Theodore Geisel's widow was disgusted enough by it to deny any further live-action adaptations.
    • In addition to killing off the live-action Dr. Seuss movie franchise, The Cat in the Hat also prevented ANY Dr. Seuss films from being made until Horton Hears a Who (The Cat in the Hat was made in 2003, whereas Horton was made in 2008, a good five year freeze on the films), and even then, because of Geisel's widow's earlier forbidding of live action adaptations as a result of The Cat in the Hat, the movie adaptations of Horton Hears a Who, The Lorax, and Grinch were made purely with CGI. Although, Dr Seuss's estate counted to work with Universal for many years with the exception of Horton until the estate cut ties with Universal and moved to Warner Bros beginning with the Green Eggs and Ham Netflix show, due to the above mentioned Grinch film.
  • The Legend Of The Lone Ranger ended any chance of further Lone Ranger adaptations for the next two and a half decades with ITC's behavior, especially toward the classic Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore (such behavior would become ITC's undoing, as it only survived while Sir Lew Grade was still alive). There would a stillborn attempt by Disney to revive the series in 2013, but the casting as Johnny Deep as Tonto led to public backlash and poor reviews and box office profromance led the The Lone Ranger series going to Universal Studios as a result of buying DreamWorks Animation (which had brought Classic Media in 2012). Needless to say, The Lone Ranger won't be showing up again any time soon.
  • Scream and Scream 2 each made just over $100 million at the domestic box office, while Scream 3 clocked in at just under $90 million. Scream 4 didn't even reach the $40 million mark (although it's far from universally loathed, and is the only film in the series to have done better outside North America). Having a gap between the third and fourth films longer than the period in which all three previous films were released may not have helped.
  • The first two Crocodile Dundee films were tremendous hits, each grossing over $100 million at the North American box office alone. However, series star Paul Hogan and company took 13 long years before making a third Croc picture, which ultimately underperformed at the box office (opening at #4 and grossing roughly $25 million domestically). Besides the long gap in-between the previous film, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles seemed less serious than the previous two films (coming off as more of a broad family comedy) with a plot that felt left over from Beverly Hills Cop.
  • As a result of Transformers: The Last Knight‍'‍s poor box office and critical performance, Bumblebee was turned from a Prequel into a Continuity Reboot.
  • As noted in the Video Games section below, Uwe Boll's adaptation of Alone in the Dark was in part responsible for the video game franchise being killed off, as the 2008 game entered Development Hell for three years specifically to make sure they avoided any connection to the extremely poor movie, and despite all that, they ended up including elements from that film anyways.
  • Allegiant was split into two parts by Lionsgate to cash in on the then on going movie multipack trend. However, the public wasn't interested on seeing this due to the dying trend of YA novels of teens vs evil adults after The Hunger Games (also from Lionsgate) already ended and the release of Zootopia around the same time. After this, they tried turning the second half of the book into a TV show and then a TV movie, but the none of the cast was interested and Lionsgate's rights expired, leaving this series without an ending.
  • The failures of Muppets From Space and Elmo In Grouchland more or less sunk Muppet movies for quite some time, though The Muppets would do a number of made-for-TV and video films, which more or less kept the poor quality of From Space. After Disney purchased them, the next theatrical film (which ignored the events of From Space) was a smash hit... which was followed up by the Acclaimed Flop of Most Wanted, which wasn't helped by the failed 2015 television series and plenty of behind-the-scenes drama. Sesame Street hasn't bothered with theatrical movies since, though a few made-for-tv films were done along with direct-to-video releases. Elmo In Grouchland also helped steamroll a spate of preschool-oriented films of that era, and the last major fantasy film by Henson was MirrorMask. The Happytime Murders managed to make things even worse here, sadly.

Live-Action TV[]

  • Fantasy Leader, a Blogspot user, created a detailed essay on what was almost the Franchise Killer for Super Sentai here. To recap: the coincidental collision of a gradual Broken Base that built up starting with Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman five years ago (within the fandom) and a pair of Genre Killing real-life incidents (outside of the fandom[12]) led to show ratings falling to a new low in Chouriki Sentai Ohranger and Toei was prepared to pull the plug... until they noticed that Ohranger toy sales somehow reached a monstrous new high for Sentai overall.
    • Power Rangers has had a few run-ins with this trope; first, there was Power Rangers Turbo, which had a sudden shift towards overt and painful comedy in the second half, as well as a replacement of the whole team, notably with the incredibly annoying new Blue Ranger. It took the Darker and Edgier Power Rangers in Space, intended as a Grand Finale, to set things straight. Power Rangers Operation Overdrive got it even worse, with Disney deciding to abandon the franchise after the failure of the season thanks to poor writing, an awful theme song, and annoying characters. Power Rangers RPM was then chosen to be the final season, until Saban bought the rights back. From there, Power Rangers Ninja Steel was so bad, riddled with dry cardboard characters, unfunny comic relief, annoying cartoony sound effects, moronic writing, nonsensical Megazord design (including selling auxillary Zords only in packs with recolored Megazords), talking down to the audience, and fart jokes ahoy, that it not only nearly killed the franchise which was already suffering after the disappointment of Megaforce, it also forced Saban to sell their entertainment assets to Hasbro! This wasn't quite enough to save the franchise as we know it, as Cosmic Fury became the last season to use Super Sentai assets directly.
  • Stargate Universe was a Soap Opera IN SPACE! that couldn't be less like Stargate. Unlike many of these examples, it had a nice little fanbase, but not enough to keep it afloat, and with its failure came the official announcement of the indefinite hiatus of the awaited Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis projects - the kind of 'hiatus' that means you start dismantling sets.
  • Heroes Volumes 3 and 4 (both making up season 3) qualify as such. The second season was a major letdown, but people forgave it because there was the big writer's strike and The Powers That Be did the best they could. When season three came along, they expected a return to form, but got a Random Events Plot with characters acting wildly Out of Character as the writers seemed to be changing their minds on key plot points three times per episode. Best known is Sylar's being more evil, then less evil, then more, then less constantly, but really, it was like that with everything. By the end of that season, most of the fans had given up on it. Season four (Volume 5) got to happen, and was better than season three but it wasn't without its problems, and really, by then, nobody cared anymore. Because of this, not only is the TV series cancelled, but the graphic novels were also scrapped as well. However, in 2015 they got the greenlight for a new series called Heroes Reborn. This wasn't able to save the franchise; though, as it bombed and the property hasn't been touched since.
  • Unless you count its appearance on Game Show Marathon in 2006, no new episodes of Card Sharks have ever been seen on American TV since the 2001 version, which was a disaster and which may have also been the reason why Pearson left the TV business...not long after "Card Guppies" ended, Fremantle Media bought out all of Pearson's assets. While Fremantle has made many revivals of other Goodson/Todman game shows, some more successful than others, they barely even touched Card Sharks, and when they did, it was moderately unsucsessful and was killed off by the pandemic.
  • Metal Heroes died from the "Tack" (Kabutack and Robotack) sub-series, which were overly child-oriented and had a completely different formula from the previous installments. After the end of these, no further Metal Heroes TV shows were greenlit, and it wasn't until 2012 when the characters started appearing in other shows. The "Tack" series is rarely acknowledged by Toei, and hasn't received any home media releases other than the crossover special. This was to the point that Saban refused to even touch the "Tack" sub-series and instead produce their own original Toku in Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. This too was curtailed by the failure of Los Luchadores and the sale of Saban to Disney, which led to them working on only Power Rangers from then on, with even the anime dubs given to a different studio before the rights expired. The early Neo-Saban era attempted to do Kamen Rider adaptations (which were even more stillborn as the last attempt), but by the time the entertainment assets of Saban were sold to Hasbro, Metal Heroes characters had started to be adapted into Power Rangers as supporting characters.
  • To date, Satria Garuda BIMA-X marks as the last installment of the Satria Garuda franchise created by Reino Barack and Ishimori Productions, due to the former marrying (and currently prioritizing his life to) with the controversial Indonesian pop singer Syahrini in 2019.

Music[]

  • After the violence at Woodstock '99, the owners of the Woodstock name have gone on record to say it will never be used again. There have been a few unofficial attempts to revive Woodstock, but none have stuck or done well.

Video Games[]

Midway Games[]

  • Gauntlet (1985 video game) was a fairly decent hack-and-slash arcade-style adventure series, until Seven Sorrows came along. It was an Obvious Beta, with a lot of old standby techniques gone (like not being able to shoot potions), and none of the "new features" touted for the game anywhere. Any plans for the franchise after that were effectively shelved. 2014 saw "Slayer Edition" outsourced to a third party studio, which met decent reviews, but lukewarm sales. The original game is however recreated in Lego Dimensions, but it hasn't made appearances since then.
  • Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run was intended to be a tie-in to a cancelled movie. Needless to say, the game flopped belly up, sinking the franchise altogether.
  • LA Rush was billed as a Spiritual Successor to San Francisco Rush, but ended up as just another average street racer.
  • Blacksite: Area 51 is an interesting chicken-or-the-egg case. While the game was so atrociously bad that it ensured no future Area 51 games would be made, the game's Obvious Beta glitches and other over signs of poor quality were an indication that Midway Games was already on the brink of collapse. Sure enough, the entire company folded soon after the game's release. To paraphrase Word of God: "This project was so fucked up. I just wasn't excited about this Area 51 game." The IP has yet to be touched since.
  • Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe and its infamous censorship served as the nail in the coffin for 3D-based Mortal Kombat titles; every game since has been 2.5D, though leaning much more heavily into 3D than other (typically Eastern) 2.5D fighters. The series would have a regular series of guest fighters, but they'd never do a full crossover again.

Capcom[]

  • Thanks to dumbing-down the gameplay, making the beloved Frank West an annoying asshole, doing nothing to build upon the overarching story of the series, dropping the series' iconic and colorful Psychopaths in favor of weaker and more generic boss fights called "maniacs", and removing mixed drinks, Dead Rising 4 sold poorly and likely killed the series for the forseeable future. Capcom Vancouver were demoted to app duty before being shut down shortly after.
  • Dino Crisis 3 stretched Willing Suspension of Disbelief beyond all hope of recovery when it put dinosaurs on a spaceship in the future. That's not even getting into the gameplay, which stunk due to the inclusion of anti-gravity without the controls to make it bearable, or the plot, which discarded the running story of the previous games despite the fact that part 2 ended on a cliffhanger!
  • Although it wasn't exactly bad, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter was such an incredible deviation from the rest of the Breath of Fire games (a series that's usually very big on continuity, to boot) that the series came to a screeching halt. Several years and a new console generation later, the series has shown no signs of reawakening. Even when another company offered to buy the license to make a new Breath of Fire game, Capcom refused. Also, a truly bad sixth installment managed to do in the series further.
  • Due to poor sales and, more specifically, Executive Meddling, the Darkstalkers series has no foreseeable future. Fingers are typically pointed at Darkstalkers Ressurection, a Vanilla Edition re-release of 2 out of the 3 main games.
  • Ditto for Mega Man, once a staple in Capcom's line-up and one of the faces of the company. There's actually quite a few of these among its many series'.
    • Mega Man 8, due to various factors (including widely reviled English voice acting and some poorly devised weapons and items), resulted in the core part of the franchise being left fallow for twelve years. And while the eighth game is still in continuity (deliberate references to it were made in both Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10), the gameplay and design aesthetic have reverted back to that of the second installment, widely considered the Magnum Opus of the Classic series.
      • Unfortunately, Mega Man 10 did even more harm and re-killed the Classic series for a time, not in the sense that it was a bad game, but one that felt bland compared to others in the series and did little, if anything to innovate. 9 was a fun return to the nostalgic world of 8-bit Mega Man, but 10 not building upon 9's gameplay did more harm than good, especially once controversial games like 7 and 8 started getting Vindicated by History for trying new things with the formula and making a welcome graphical shift as opposed to being stuck in the past with 8 bit graphics. An 11th game was announced several years after, and came out to much success, alongside comic books, compilations, and crossovers preceding it. Only time will tell if this happens yet again.
    • The Mega Man Legends series died at its second official game, with the announcement of the Nintendo 3DS revival's cancellation sparking a very angry reaction from passionate Legends fans looking forward to the project. There have still been regular merchandise and crossover appearances.
    • The Mega Man X series more or less died from oversaturation and the two-hit combo of the rushed X6 and the completely misbegotten X7. X7 featured a misguided shift to 3D, an annoying new protagonist stealing X's thunder, awful English voice acting, overly-complicated Maverick designs, rehashing from X1 level design, useless weapons, rehashing from X4 storywise, and a collectathon sidequest that could take hours, the worst part being that those collectables can easily become Lost Forever. X8 and Command Mission, managed to heal some of these wounds, but it was too late. After Mega Man 11, two compilations were released, and did pretty well. It has also been a regular in crossovers since 2009, often serving as the face of the franchise in these crossovers. It did come back somewhat with the game Rockman X: DiVE (which is currently Japan-only, as the title implied) and is doing very well, though even there, later renditions have it crossover with earlier and later entries such as the Zero series, the ZX series, and the Legends series.
    • The Network Timeline managed to be more or less completely killed with Star Force 2 failing, followed with the excellent Star Force 3 not being able to save the series, along with the oversaturation of the series at the time, the declining toyline sales, a disappointing re-release of the original Battle Network (which had come to a decisive ending, much like Zero) and even the anime flopping (and not even adapting 3). The later games, from there, would focus mainly on the main timeline, and there wasn't another alternate universe until nearly a decade later, and even those ones did even worse; Mega Man Fully Charged, was completely Western-made and flopped on TV without a game being made for it, and its plot points will be tied up in a comic book miniseries, and Pachislot Rockman Ability was never seen outside of a Japanese pachinko machine. Star Force itself was the last major series to receive playable representation in X-Dive, with the game having received crossover armors from Monster Hunter before it. However, the recent Legacy Collection for Battle Network was the fastest and best-selling Mega Man game in years, and even got into EVO, so there's hope.
    • ZX Advent had lukewarm sales and ended both ZX and Inti Creates' style of Mega Man games. While they did make two more games, see Mega Man 10 above for the results. 11 would be the first game made internally by Capcom since Star Force 3. The fourth Super Smash Bros game refused to acknowledge Zero and ZX, but there would be minor representation in Ultimate.
  • Final Fight: Streetwise proved to be a critical dud and put an end to any further games in the Final Fight continuity. Most, if not all, of its characters now live on as part of Street Fighter canon. This is to the point where the official profile for Kyle Travers attempts to distance him from the game.
  • The Capcom vs. Whatever series was first killed with Street Fighter X Tekken, home to extreme pay-to-win mechanics, a swath of disc-locked content (some of which was NEVER made available on certain platforms), bizarre and unappealing guest characters, an inconsistent tone, and a few unwanted characters from both franchises sullying the roster. This caused Tekken X Street Fighter to enter a lengthy period of Development Hell. It seems to have been buried further by Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, with ugly graphics, characters whose film rights were owned by Fox being conspicuously absent, forgettable music, and a dull metagame.
  • While the Resident Evil 3: Nemesis remake fortunately didn't kill off Resident Evil as a whole, various factors, including the controversial rewriting of Jill's character to be a lot more abrasive compared to the original game,[13] cutting out a significant portion of aspects from the original game, including the clock tower, and coming across as more of a lazily-made cash grab nevertheless resulted in Capcom outright taking away MTwo's rights to develop the Resident Evil 4 remake and handing it over to the team that made the better-received Resident Evil 2 remake, as well as that remake being delayed until 2023 specifically to make sure it stayed true to the story. The fact that a large part of the cast never even played Resident Evil 3 and thus were completely unfamiliar with the characters they were portraying[14] only added fuel to the fire, as well as making controversial changes on the fly.[15]
    • On that note, Resident Evil 6 came very close to being this for the franchise as a whole due to the over-emphasis on action sequences over survival horror[16] as well as having a story mode that lacked little if any real connections between each group of characters, and also the characters themselves, namely Chris, Ada, and Leon, not being written particularly well. It got so bad that it resulted in a soft-reboot in the form of Resident Evil VII: Biohazard to get back to the roots of Resident Evil.

THQ[]

  • The Nicktoons Unite! series died after Nicktoons: Globs of Doom‍'‍s poor reception. THQ has since given up on Nicktoons Licensed Games, so the game that followed Globs of Doom was 2K Games' Nicktoons MLB, a crossover between Nicktoons characters and real MLB players, with no actual story, as would subsequent Nickelodeon crossover games (though take out the MLB players, obviously). It wouldn't be until the late 2010s that THQ's successor, THQ Nordic, would try to do more licensed games with Nickelodeon, with a successful remake of Battle for Bikini Bottom. Regardless, the Nicktoons Unite series proper has yet to return; it took until 2023 to get a Nickelodeon crossover game with an actual story.
  • THQ released two Destroy All Humans! games in 2008 - Big Willy Unleashed for the Wii, and then Path of the Furon for PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 - after original developer Pandemic Studios was snapped up by Electronic Arts. Neither game managed to successfully capture the spirit of the first two games, and sold terribly as a result.
  • With the underwhelming reception of Red Faction: Armageddon and the multiplayer-focused Battlegrounds, THQ has announced that it won't be doing any more RF games for a while. Of course, if they listened to the fans who made the second to last game Red Faction Guerrilla a hit, they'd have continued RFG's open world destruction gameplay style instead of making a generic underground corridor shooter.
  • The publisher also canned its MX vs. ATV franchise after the various changes in gameplay to MX vs. ATV: Alive left fans cold.

Square Enix / Eidos Interactive[]

  • Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness didn't sell well, so Eidos passed the franchise's development rights on from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics. Thankfully, the franchise today is still going strong under Crystal Dynamics.
  • Deus Ex: Invisible War was the much anticipated sequel to the seminal Deus Ex. It was so poorly received (by the community; it received decent marks from critics) that developer Ion Storm: Austin was driven to collapse, and the spin-off title Deus Ex: Clan Wars was changed to Project Snowblind to remove negative association with the ballyhooed franchise. Another title in the series wouldn't be made until 2011's Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
  • Act Raiser II was an In Name Only sequel that lacked the original game's popular Simulation Mode. The unGodly difficulty level couldn't have helped it out at all, either.
  • After Unlimited Saga was released in 2002, the only new SaGa games were just remakes of existing games in the series aside from a few browser and mobile games, up until Scarlet Grace made an earnest effort to revive the series. Despite positive reception, the game has yet to be followed up on.
  • Dawn of Mana effectively killed off the World of Mana series with frustrating and nonsensical gameplay and a level system that reset whenever you started a new chapter, which meant Loads And Loads Of Grinding.
  • Front Mission Evolved crashed and burned in Japan, but it has been generally better received in America. The poor ratings/sales have more or less ended the future of Front Mission video games (the franchise still lives on with its manga and novels, which remain very popular in Japan due to its high storytelling qualities). Ironically, among all things, Evolved was panned for its terrible storytelling.

Sega[]

  • Sega's Shinobi franchise was killed quite dead by the poor Shinobi Legions installment in 1995, not returning until a reboot in 2002. It died again in 2004 with Nightshade (2003 video game), which itself was a perfectly good game, but had little to no marketing and its link to the Shinobi franchise was not played up, so it sat in obscurity, and was released alongside a forgettable GBA game. Unfortunately, the Nintendo 3DS game also went unnoticed and even sank its developer. Lizardcube wanted to put Joe into Streets of Rage 4, but they were unable to, due to Sega's, erm, labyrinthine corporate structure.
  • On a similar note, Shenmue was a Franchise Killer after the first episode in the US owing both to the end of the Sega Dreamcast and slow gameplay, but the second episode (of a proposed four) was released to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the second episode managed to fail financially on both the Dreamcast and the Xbox, rendering its huge and startling cliffhanger the end. As the mastermind behind the series, Yu Suzuki, has left Sega, there is little hope of revival... Up until they announced Shemnue 3 anyway.
  • Virtual On MARZ arguably killed its series. The game was changed from a 3D Fighting Game to an arena-based Beat'Em Up (of sorts, Virtual On has guns), it became single-player, had a horrible, generic anime-like plot, and the English version was plagued by Blind Idiot Translation. Ironically enough, most of the cameos Virtual On has gotten elsewhere (outside of indie circles) are more heavily based on MARZ than any other part of the series, namely in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, in which the robots had human voices, and featured Hatter, who only appeared in MARZ.
  • Alex Kidd and the Enchanted Castle flopped so badly that Sega ditched the titular character as their mascot, and replaced him with Sonic the Hedgehog. While Alex probably didn't have much of a future as Sega's mascot anyway, since the company wanted a more "hip" audience for the Genesis, his series would probably have survived if Enchanted Castle had been better received. Instead, he only appeared in the Dolled-Up Installment Alex Kidd in Shinobi World before disappearing off the gaming map.
  • And speaking of Sonic, it seems his spin-off series have been dying one by one. The two-hit combo of Sonic Rush Adventure and Sonic Rivals 2 killed original handhelds in favor of handheld counterparts to the home games returning, Sonic and the Black Knight ended the Storybook series, Free Riders ended non-crossover racing games, the aforementioned handheld counterparts were curtailed by the disastrous Lost World, the Classic revival was killed by Sonic 4 Episode 2... And now with the total failure of Rise of Lyric, the entire franchise was hanging by a thread... Until the Phantom Ruby saga (moreso Mania than Forces) proved a huge success. However, Team Sonic Racing flopped and was quickly abandoned by the developers, only proving Sonic racing games were dead.

Electronic Arts[]

  • Though Ultima IX was already planned to be the last game in the third trilogy, the way it turned out ensured that there would be no fourth trilogy.
  • The Command and Conquer franchise got killed off after the release of its fourth game of the main series, and that was only a few years after solid hits by the third games of both the main series and the Red Alert spin-off series. With EA having so many other Cash Cow Franchises at the time Tiberian Twilight came and tanked, there's little possibility they would give the franchise another chance now.
    • EA has announced that it's developing a sequel to Generals, but it remains to be seen if it will be any good or not.
  • EA Sports' NBA Live series was renamed NBA Elite for the 2011 year. However, the game's demo was so awful that they yanked it and cancelled the game weeks from release (as well as the 2012 edition). It didn't help that their primary competitor, Take Two's NBA 2K11, is widely considered one of the best sports games of all time.
  • Need for Speed as a franchise kept going, but the poor reception of Need for Speed: Rivals, marked the end of the European helmed production with the 2015 reboot returning the franchise to tuner culture set-up that started in Need for Speed: Underground.

Activision[]

  • Tony Hawk: Ride was meant to revive a franchise that was long stagnated and decaying by making the player use a skateboard peripheral that didn't work as well as advertised. Combined with Hawk himself saying critics decided to hate it before it came out, gamers weren't likely to be interested in a sequel, as the poor sales of Shred eventually convinced series publisher Activision to shelf the series for a while before announcing a "back-to-basics" reboot with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD. Just a few years after that, Pro Skater 5 was rushed to market and infested with bad business practices, killing the series once again, an HD remake of the first two entries notwithstanding.
  • The Guitar Hero franchise came to a halt after Warriors of Rock lost out to Rock Band 3. It didn't help that fans had gone through exposure fatigue with the release of several different attempts at spinoffs in the previous two years (Band Hero, DJ Hero) within several months of each other. Activision, for their part, have recognized that DJ Hero was the Guitar Hero Franchise Killer - they spent so much time and creative energy on DJH that they forgot that GH might have needed some love too (four spinoffs != love).
    • On a similar note, Rock Band appears to be hanging up on its five-button traditional gameplay, possibly due to the rather disappointing 82,000 units Green Day: Rock Band sold, and has chosen to expand on the Pro Mode from Rock Band 3.
  • Soldier of Fortune: Payback doesn't fit with the canon of the first two games, and it doesn't help that it ends with a Cliff Hanger that will likely never be resolved. This isn't surprising, since it was made by a completely different developer and released as a budget game.
  • The Crash Bandicoot franchise went on an almost decade-long hiatus after the failure of Mind Over Mutant in 2008. It wasn't until June 2017 that the N. Sane Trilogy, a compilation game featuring remakes of the first three Crash games, would be released, earning great praise from critics and fans alike. This later resulted in Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, a remake of the original Crash Team Racing that is expanded into a Dream Match Game featuring characters from all over the series, and Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, which picks up where Warped left off. The reception to Crash Team Rumble, and the increasing de-emphasis of the brand, may have killed the series all over again.
  • Not counting his appearances in the Skylanders franchise (which itself died off after Imaginators due to the toys clogging up shelves and a lack of innovation), the Spyro the Dragon franchise lay dormant for a decade after the release of The Legend of Spyo: Dawn of the Dragon. However, when the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, which features updated versions of the first three Spyro games, was released in November 2018, it was met with near-universal praise, similar to N. Sane Trilogy, & he's been a regular guest in newer Crash games, but no brand-new entry has been announced since.

Nintendo[]

  • Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol sold very poorly in the US (largely due to initially being a Wal-Mart exclusive), which in turn caused the next sequel to be Japan-only. However, when that game turned out to be a massive success, Nintendo decided to bring the series back overseas on the 3DS with a downloadable title called Chibi Robo: Photo Finder, a game that put less focus on the housekeeping aspect of the original games and more focus on the use of the 3DS camera. The game received mostly average reviews, again seemingly putting the series in jeopardy. Nintendo would announce another Chibi-Robo title for the 3DS that did away with the housekeeping concept entirely in favor of side-scrolling platforming called Chibi Robo: Zip Lash, even coming with a Chibi Robo amiibo. The series' creator stated that Zip Lash would likely be the last game in the series if it sold poorly...and it did.
  • One could argue that F-Zero: GP Legend was this for the F-Zero series. In addition to performing poorly sales-wise, it didn't help either that poor word-of-mouth effectively sunk the accompanying Animated Adaptation before it even hit North American airwaves. While there was only one other sequel to GP Legend (2005's F-Zero Climax), it was never released outside of Japan due to GP Legend's overall poor reception in North America. This was all also combined with Shigeru Miyamoto admitting to having Writer's Block in terms of bringing new ideas to the series. Nothing happened outside of Smash and a few other crossovers until 2023 with the announcement of a new spin-off entry called F-ZERO 99, and even that game re-uses a lot of assets from the original SNES game.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • The Fire Emblem Tellius games seem to be this for home-console-based titles in the series, as the next games would be on portable systems, such as the Nintendo 3DS. The series returned to bigger consoles (in this case: Nintendo Switch) solely on 2017 (via Fire Emblem: Warriors) and then in 2019 (via Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
    • The game most fans blame for putting the series on the edge of cancellation in the first place is, ironically, the remake of the first game, Shadow Dragon. To make the game faithful to the original, Intelligent Systems deliberately eschewed many of the features that made the later games so successful, like the Support system and the Weapon Triangle, resulting in a game that appealed to long-time fans in Japan but came across as Seinfeld Is Unfunny to Western players who got started with Elibe, Magvel, or Tellius, as well as newcomers eager to finally see the game where Marth actually hails from. That, and some questionable design decisions about what Intelligent Systems did add, gave Shadow Dragon a cold reception in the West. Although it was still a financial success, Nintendo decided on going back to a Japan-only release for the remake of the sequel, Mystery of the Emblem (which, ironically, fixed many of the complaints people had about Shadow Dragon), leading to the series' tough financial straits by the time Awakening was made.
    • Fire Emblem Awakening is an inversion. Due to stagnating sales of previous Fire Emblem titles, as revealed in an interview with a Spanish website, it was decided that if the game sold fewer than a quarter million units, it would have been the last game in the series. The opposite happened, and Awakening not only became one of the best selling titles in the franchise, but it caused a significant Newbie Boom.
  • The poorly-received Metroid: Other M put the Metroid series on ice for a second time (the first was the long hiatus between Super Metroid in 1994 and Metroid Prime in 2002 while Metroid wrestled with the Video Game 3D Leap). Despite good initial sales, poor word-of-mouth took its toll and new copies were rapidly marked down to bargain price.[17] And Yoshio Sakamoto, the franchise co-creator who was heavily involved with Other M, said at the time that he didn't plan to return to Metroid or any of his other traditional video game creations any time soon. Only four years later, at E3 2014, Nintendo confirmed that new installments for both 2D and 3D-style Metroid games entered the planning stages, with Metroid Prime: Federation Force being unveiled in 2015 to even bigger skepticism, especially when Nintendo did a DYOA against the fan game AM2R (which, as the title implies, was a fanmade remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus). Thankfully, Samus Returns (aka, the official remake of Metroid II) as well as the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 revived the franchise, with hype being further increased with the announcement of the release of the previously Development Hell-sentenced game Metroid Dread.
  • Planet Puzzle League was a perfectly good game on its own, but received extremely negative consumer reception in Japan for almost completely ditching the Kawaisa aspect it had previously sold itself on. Other than a few Virtual Console rereleases of the original Panel de Pon, there hasn't been a new game in the series since.
  • The Broken Base that started with Star Fox Adventures managed to finally come back to bite the Star Fox franchise in the ass with Star Fox Command. It was the poorest selling game in the series to date, and barring the Nintendo 3DS remake of Star Fox 64, it took an entire decade for the series to receive a new title through Star Fox Zero for the Wii U. Alas, Star Fox Zero received polarizing reviews, and has reportedly sold even less than Command did, which paints a very bleak future of the series.
  • The Legendary Starfy seems to be this for the Starfy series, as the series hasn't had a new game in 8 years, and it was sadly the only game in the series to come out in America, and didn't even come out in Europe. While it did get good reviews in America, it sold poorly, and it wasn't received as well and didn't sell as well as the first four games in Japan, mainly due to being dumbed-down from the previous titles.
  • Wario World, Wario: Master of Disguise, and Wario Land: Shake It! all received decent reviews from critics, but they sold so poorly that the Wario Land series hasn't seen any new installments since 2008. In fact, no Land characters have been seen in any of Mario's party or sport games, nor in Wario Ware.
  • The poor critical reception of Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash seemed to have done this for Mario Tennis and other Mario sport games... until Aces gave the series a proper shot in the arm.
  • While both Mario and Zelda fortunately weren't negatively affected too much, their respective games Hotel Mario, Faces of Evil, Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure ended up being partially responsible for killing interest in the Nintendo Phillips CD-i system (alongside its infamously poor controls, having an extremely poorly chosen set of game libraries such as educational games, point-and-click games, and even pornographic games), which also had the consequence of cancelling two Mario games in development (one being an edutainment game involving America called Mario Takes America, and the other being Super Mario Wacky Worlds) and a Donkey Kong game, as well as there being no CD-based Nintendo games being made until the Nintendo Gamecube nearly a decade later. There would never be a non-Japanese-developed Zelda game ever again, and there wouldn't be a game with Zelda in a playable fashion until a decade or two later with Spirit Tracks and the Hyrule Warriors games, not counting Super Smash Bros.[18]

Other[]

  • Turok: Evolution managed to kill off the franchise, no thanks to silly elements such as Tobias Bruckner, the cyborg cowboy riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex, along with the game's numerous other problems. Probably no coincidence that publisher Acclaim went bankrupt shortly after the release of this and BMX XXX. The 2008 Turok relaunch wasn't a bad game, exactly — it just had the bad luck to be an average shooter during a time when great shooters were glutting the market. A sequel was planned, but was cancelled. Dreamworks, Turok's current owners, have done nothing since.
    • On that note, BMX XXX ended up being this for the BMX series. It was originally planned to be another BMX title with Dave Mirra sponsoring it, but as noted in Executive Meddling, the developers decided to try and edge it up with crude sexual humor, including nudity, and even falsely claimed that Dave Mirra was sponsoring the change despite Mirra making it very clear beforehand that he wanted no part in it, resulting in a huge lawsuit, as well as the game itself being banned from various stores due to its advertised content, especially after news reports reported on the graphic elements.
  • Betrayal at Krondor was supposed to be the first of a revolutionary series of games that combined adventure novel-style storytelling with interactive gameplay, in a setting based on The Riftwar Cycle by Raymond Feist. And while the game itself was very much successful, its sequel, Return to Krondor, was ruined by Executive Meddling and license problems and was released woefully unfinished and underpolished, making this a bad enough experience for Feist that he's been unwilling to risk a repeat experience.
  • Although Xenosaga was meant to be a six-part series, it ended after three games. None of the games individually was primarily responsible for the premature end, but altogether the games didn't perform as well as expected. Episode II performed so poorly that part of Episode III's selling point was that it (debatably) coherently summarized Episode II, removing the need to play it to understand the story. Players were thankful, but after the blow Episode II had dealt the franchise, almost every industry commentator observed that Episode III would have to be perfect in every way to keep the series afloat. A Spiritual Successor known as Xenoblade exists.
  • The ninth installment of the main Might and Magic series is generally regarded as the reason the developer stuck with the Heroes spinoff from then on; this was mainly due to the fact that the graphics of the engine had to be extensively upgraded in order to compete. However, all of the company's resources went into that and not into, say, a very good plot. There were a lot of miscellaneous spinoffs at the time, and was part of 3D0's doomsday, and killed the original continuity of the series for good. The series was bought by Ubisoft, and guess what? Only one more main-series game was ever made under Ubisoft.
    • Furthermore, the entire series died off after the 7th entry in the Heroes series, as not only did the prior game kill its developer, the game also had major expansion pack delays and a similar poor reception. The final nail in the coffin for the series, however, was the Showdown spinoff, which completely failed to attract players and was shut down after only 6 months.
  • Bloody Roar 4 is considered the worst entry in the franchise by its small but dedicated fanbase. No new entries in the series were made after this one[19], but Eighting Raizing has since gone on to develop other licensed fighting games since as the Naruto Clash of Ninja series, Fate Unlimited Codes and Tatsunokovs Capcom.
  • With the surprise success of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Lucas Arts decided to take a similar property in development and rework it into a sequel. Ghoul Patrol was a bomb, with tedious, confusing gameplay and none of the original's fun spirit. At least there's still the Wii Virtual Console release of the original game.
  • Bubsy did well enough to get a few 2D sequels and a short-lived cartoon show. Then came Bubsy 3D, seen as one of the worst games ever made, which smashed head-first into the Polygon Ceiling and destroyed any possible future for the series as a whole. The character's status as a Memetic Loser and icon of unadulterated 1990s pap led to an ironic relaunch, but he will never earnestly be loved again, with him being consigned to the disgraced field of mobile games since then. Even then, only one, Paws on Fire, was ever made prior to the death of series creator Michael Berlyn in 2023, paws-ibly sealing the franchise's fate.
  • The poor critical reception of the 2008 Alone in The Dark game killed off the series. It's even worse when you consider that even though the game developers delayed the release of the game for three years to try to stave off the bad publicity generated by Uwe Boll's failed film adaptation, some elements from the film still made it into the new game. From there, the 2015 Illumination spin-off finished off the series for good until the rights ended up at THQNordic, who plans to do a reboot of the series that returns to the roots.
  • The video game adaptation of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial deserves a dishonorable mention here for temporarily acting as a partial medium killer. The other half is the disastrously bad Atari 2600 port of the arcade classic Pac-Man. The makers were so confident in Pac-Man's success that they made more game cartridges than there were consoles to run them on. Smart, guys. Real smart. It has been theorized numerous times that Atari expected a significant rise in 2600 sales after the release of E.T., so the additional cartridges would have make sense had it worked out that way.
  • Fatal Frame III‍'‍s poor reviews and worse sales killed the franchise... except in Japan, where there has been another game released, and could conceivably be more.
    • III's performance had nothing to do with the reason IV did not get localized. IV was not localized because of game-breaking bugs that both Nintendo and Tecmo refused to take responsibility for (and Nintendo not wanting to bring over a very imperfect game). A remake of II is being made, however, which will test the franchise's viability anew.
  • Five years elapsed between Winback and its sequel, which in the end turned out completely awful and flopped.
  • Blood II: The Chosen is the reason Caleb won't live again anytime soon.
  • Myth III: The Wolf Age wasn't especially terrible, though it was significantly worse than the first two, and used the much-reviled Gamespy Arcade for multiplayer instead of Bungie.net, killing all hopes for a fourth installment.
  • Driv3r, which was not particularly good, ends on a Cliff Hanger with the protagonist flatlining after being shot by the Big Bad. Then Infogrames made an In Name Only sequel, Parallel Lines, and that didn't perform so well either. It took several years (and a new publisher) for the franchise to return to form with Driver: San Francisco, which has taken strides to distance itself from the Grand Theft Auto-cloned Driv3r and Parallel Lines by going back to the style of the original two games.
  • Jet Moto 3 was a decent game, but it sold poorly, resulting in the planned fourth game being cancelled. So far, there are no plans to revive the series.
  • The first two games in the Double Dragon series were pretty successful at the arcade and on consoles. The first NES game even sold out on the day of its release. But then came Double Dragon 3, which was farmed out to an external developer, featured a poorly-thought out plot involving Mineral MacGuffins, flat level designs, fewer moves than its predecessors, and an ill-conceived shopping gimmick obviously added as a transparent means of inserting more tokens into the machine. It also didn't include the innovations of Final Fight. There were a couple more Double Dragon sequels after the third game, but the series never quite recovered from there: the NES version of the third game (while considered to be an improvement from the arcade version) is ridiculously hard, the SNES-exclusive fourth game was an Obvious Beta, and the last two games made before Technos went out of business were standard competitive fighting games that did nothing to stand out from an already overcrowded market (though the SNES/Genesis/Jaguar game is considered far worse than its Neo Geo counterpart, which is generally seen as decent). The movie "adaptation" of the series wasn't helping matters either...
    • Wanderer of the Wastes helped kill the franchise a second time over after the success of Neon. Previously, there had been a few handheld and mobile games later on. The following game, IV, met a mixed reception. The series had made only a few crossover appearances between then and the announcement of Rise of the Dragons.
  • Rumble Roses suffered from a Broken Base before it was even released, with both Anime and Professional Wrestling fans interested in the game. During development it became obvious the game was designed to cater to anime fans, but it was a decent enough wrestling game that the pro wrestling camp wasn't fully alienated. Then came the sequel, Rumble Roses XX, with a labyrinthine and ludicrously time-consuming unlocking system, a completely pathetic create-a-wrestler feature, and a boring street fighting mode that no one liked. The killer, though, was the "Queens Match Mode", done in a style of Japanese erotica that, through Values Dissonance, came across as extremely creepy Fan Disservice elsewhere, evaporating most of its international fanbase. To make matters worse, RRXX was released on a different platform (Xbox 360) than the original game (Play Station 2), killing much of its built-in audience.
  • Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike suddenly introduced half-assed Third-Person Shooter levels to the series, among other negative aspects, resulting in much backlash. Then Lair put the final nail in Factor 5's coffin.
  • King's Quest: Mask of Eternity started with a very unwelcome Genre Shift, taking a franchise that prized itself on emphasizing a creative, non-violent option whenever possible and making a hack and slash third-person action game, with a Darker and Edgier tone that sharply veered from the gentle humor and fairy-tale style of the previous seven games. What really iced the cake was that none of the Daventry royal family got speaking parts — the Player Character might as well have been from a different franchise entirely. Some of the fan sites refuse to call it a King's Quest game at all. Even the Sierra "King's Quest Collection" quietly ignores it, and Roberta Williams herself was so dissatisfied with it that she refused to call the game King's Quest VIII, removing the numeral from the title altogether. Mask of Eternity's dubious status is reflected in the Fan Remake of King's Quest II, as you will receive full points whether or not you choose to knight Connor (acknowledging him as part of the story arc).
  • Empire Earth III was a commercial and critical failure and is widely thought to be responsible for the end of the Empire Earth series and Mad Doc studios. Mad Doc even removed any trace of the game from their website before getting bought by Rockstar Games.
  • Fade To Black, the 3D sequel to Flashback, slammed into the Polygon Ceiling head-on, crushing hopes of further sequels or a revival.
  • There was a fourth Descent game planned, but it was cancelled due to poor sales of Descent 3 and Interplay going bankrupt. Interplay has recently come out of bankruptcy and re-registered the trademark, and there are rumors that the fourth game may yet be made.
  • Master of Orion and Master Of Orion 2 were classics in the turn-based strategy genre. A toxic combination of Executive Meddling, Sequelphobic developers, and some other bad decisions resulted in a Master Of Orion 3 that bore a striking resemblance to doing one's taxes and was about as much fun. The game bombed hard on release, and since then there has been little hope that the series will be revived. Brad Wardell of Stardock expressed interest in making a fourth game in 2008, but his comments were mere speculation and there has been no follow-up.
  • No One Lives Forever was killed by the terrible Interquel / Gaiden Game Contract J.A.C.K, causing Monolith Productions to abandon the series entirely.
  • This nearly happened to the Ys series, with the fifth installement, Kefin, The Lost City of Sand. Kefin, perhaps, wasn't bad bad - but the game was only available on the Super Nintendo (with a franchise that had deep roots on the PC and Turbo Grafx 16), had very bland, generic graphics that looked like every other game of its era (which was even worse in context since the setting was supposed to be very exotic) and the music was all simple MIDI-synth (when Ys had become famous partly due to its powerful CD-supported Redbook-audio soundtracks). Fan backlash in Japan was intense, and it would be seven years before a new Ys game was made; the only thing that prevented the total death of the franchise was the good performance of remakes of the first two games, which were already in development when Kefin came out and were put out to recoup development costs.
  • While SNK had previously attempted to move the Samurai Shodown franchise into the third dimension with Samurai Shodown 64[20] with limited success (average review scores, but new characters Shiki and Asura have appeared in other SNK games, such as Neo Geo Battle Coliseum), they tried again with Samurai Shodown Sen (an Interquel to the SamSho 64 games) more than a decade later. The game was a critical flop, with reviewers pointing out the confusing controls, poor character balancing, and ugly graphics. It wouldn't be until 2019 that the franchise would experiment a revival. Nakoruru would, however, immigrate into KOF between Sen and the relaunch. None of the characters added in Sen [21] returned.
  • Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude stumbled into, but ultimately survived, its transition into 3D. Its follow-up game, Box Office Bust, added platforming, shooting and brawling elements, none which the game did well at all. Reviewers everywhere ripped the game apart, giving it some of the lowest composite scores of any game in the modern console era. It took nearly a decade for him to get out of the doldrums, and the revival game brought the original protagonist, Larry Laffer, back into the fold via time-travel, rather than continue the Lovage series.
  • The Western version of the first Kunio Kun game was a surprise hit in Britain, and Renegade became a Spin-Off series. The first two games were beloved by ZX Spectrum owners, but the third game — with its bizarre Time Travel plot, graphics that were monochrome even by Speccy standards, and gobs of Fake Difficulty resulting from poor controls, missing moves, and strict time limits — spelt an end to the series. Later Kunio Kun games, even those not developed in Japan, have refused to acknowledge these entries as well.
  • After Atari's buy-out on Humongous Entertainment, the company tried to continue Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam. Putt-Putt's last game wasn't all too bad, it had some poor voice acting and way too much recycled content as well as was boring, but it's at least playable compared to their attempt at Pajama Sam, which had a very cringe-worthy choice of voice actor, a lame plot, Loads and Loads of Loading, and several other things. They didn't sell or score well enough to continue onward, while the Backyard Sports series continued to get a worse treatment, until it too was killed by Sandlot Sluggers and Rookie Rush, ill-done attempts to return the series to its roots.
  • Lunar: Dragon Song seems to have done this for the Lunar series; stemming from poor sales, bad reviews, and absurd gameplay mechanics. There hasn't been a non-remake Lunar title since Dragon Song's release.
  • Baten Kaitos: Origins came out near the end of the Game Cube's lifespan, four months before the Wii launch. Despite improving massively on EWLO's flaws, it was overlooked by a gaming community clamoring for next-gen consoles and never sold particularly well. With the rumored Nintendo DS installment canceled, the future of the series looks bleak. That said, however, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate included characters from Origins as well as EWLO (the first game) as spirits, so it might still be viable in the future.
  • Majin Tensei was a decently-received Mega Ten spinoff in the Strategy RPG genre, which ended up doing well enough to recieve one more successful sequel. Then came Ronde for the Saturn. Development was farmed out to Access while Atlus worked on other games, resulting in a game so legendarily awful that the release of a preview demo caused literally thousands of canceled preorders — numbers that were virtually unprecedented in Japan at the time. Not only did it kill the Majin Tensei series (the only release in the series since was a cell phone game that came out 10 years later), but Atlus wouldn't release another Strategy RPG Mega Ten until Devil Survivor, twelve years later, which had entirely different gameplay from the earlier series to boot.
  • Codemaster's separate successor to the original Operation Flashpoint series went down the drain already after its second installment, Red River. Unlike the first one, Dragon Rising, Red River took what made the series unique, threw nearly all of it out and turned itself into a generic Modern Warfare clone, a move that appealed to fans of neither series, so guess how well that went... Worse yet, Red River doubled as a Creator Killer, since Codemasters promptly closed down its Guildford studio after the game's failure. Meanwhile, OFP's original creators are still going strong with their Arm A series, apparently being the winner in the Dueling Games affair they had with the Codemasters' Spiritual Successor.
  • Crystal Kingdom Dizzy ended up being this for the Dizzy series of Spectrum games. A full-priced title with a drop in quality from the previous budget titles, its relative failure would mean the planned next game Wonderland Dizzy would never be released. The creators have dug up several previously unreleased Dizzy games from the vault for direct-market releases, however, along with some ports to newer systems, but they eventually drifted away from Dizzy as they sought new work. There was an attempt to Kickstarter a new game called "Dizzy Returns", but the Kickstarter failed. In the end, no entirely new Dizzy game was released until Wonderful Dizzy in 2020, as a limited ZX Spectrum exclusive rather than being released for modern platforms.
  • Virtual Hydlide, the attempted reboot of Hydlide in 3D, killed off a series that had been moderately well appreciated in Japan during the 8-bit era.
  • Rygar: The Legendary Adventure was a good game, but didn't perform well enough to continue the series. It was less-than-spectacularly ported to the Wii several years hereafter, sealing the fate of the franchise. At one point, there was a Rygar 2 announced, but it ended up being Vaporware, and he hasn't even gotten any crossover appearances.
  • Sly Cooper seems to have died thanks to Thieves in Time, a game developed by a D-tier developer in Sanzaru. Shortcomings include repetitive gameplay, poor level design, Penelope's Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome, barely any Dimitri, and a huge missed opportunity with Clockwerk, not to mention a cliffhanger ending. Outside of a since cancelled TV series and feature film, nothing has been heard from Sly since.
  • Madou Monogatari, after an absence of over a decade due to SEGA buying the Puyo Puyo rights and Compile's closure, was revived by Compile Heart in 2013 with Sei Madou Monogatari (Localized as Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God). This proved to be a bad decision. Due to legal issues, none of the existing cast would be usable, and they were replaced with a cast of Captain Ersatzii with inferior designs, including some for the SEGA-created cast! (None of the characters who weren't in Puyo Puyo showed up either for whatever reason [22].) The gameplay was completely different, becoming a clone of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon rather than trying to be like the original series. The tone was also changed to more resemble the Puyo games, along with an Audience Shift, and none of the original writers worked on the game. Despite okay sales, nothing was heard from Madou again until 2023, where it was announced SEGA and Compile Heart would be working together to revive the series with the original cast.
  • Dead or Alive 6 may have acted as this for the original fighting game portion of the franchise, due to the huge microtransactions that cost a ludicrous amount of money, as well as internet controversy which included among other things Yohei Shimbori making it sound as though big breasted women were inherently inhuman when discussing the toning down of the fanservice, to say little of the gutting of the fanservice itself. Fortunately, Xtreme Venus Vacation ensures that the franchise itself remains alive.
    • On that note, Dead or Alive 4 came pretty close to killing off the franchise due to its infamous difficulty level for combos, with Xtreme 2 not helping matters due to a lack of gameplay. Ironically, however, the latter game's PSP port, Dead or Alive Paradise, alongside Dead or Alive Dimensions, released in 2010 and 2011, respectively, managed to restore enough interest in the franchise to allow for Dead or Alive 5 to be made, which further breathed life into the franchise until Dead or Alive 6 as noted above.
  • While Ratchet and Clank is still going strong to this day, its Naughty Dog counterpart Jak and Daxter wasn't able to survive after the failure of The Lost Frontier. Naughty Dog did try to remake the original in their new photorealistic style, but saw that as a bad idea and threw it out like the plague.
  • Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts acted as this to the entire Banjo Kazooie franchise, largely thanks to the abrupt gameplay change as well as the excessive Self-Deprecation humor of the game. In fact, the titular characters, outside of the Xbox version of Sonic and Sega Racing, didn't make any reappearances until Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, almost a decade later.[23] It also convinced Rare to make nothing but Kinect games for some time, and even when they did return to developing other games, they decided to make new IP and license out their old IP to other developers.
  • Senran Kagura is a variation. No game in particular caused the franchise to stop making new games in the series, but rather, the franchise got shut down largely thanks to its producer resigning from the development company thanks to Sony's excessive censorship policies. That said, Shinobi Masters New Link is still functional, which similar to Xtreme Venus Vacation for Dead or Alive is the only reason Senran Kagura technically still is viable.
  • Although Eternal Darkness did moderately well especially for a first person-developed (Nintendo made) M-rated game, its developer Silicon Knights attempted to create a sequel as well as a Spiritual Successor called Shadow of the Eternals, although it never gained traction, with any chance at the latter game being developed being destroyed when Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy largely thanks to its lawsuit with Epic Games due to plagiarizing the Unreal Engine from the latter. That said, Eternal Darkness, due to technically being a first-party game by Nintendo, is indicated to still be viable due to Alex Roivas appearing as a spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Western Animation[]

  • The failure of The Avengers: United They Stand was the final nail in the coffin of the (loosely defined, but still there) Marvel animated universe that aired on Fox Kids throughout the '90s. All subsequent Marvel cartoons have taken place in other continuities and aired on other networks. A second Marvel Animated Universe was later born in the late 2010s with its poor quality and consistent Seasonal Rot doing it in before the decade was out. In late 2021, a direct continuation of the beloved X-Men series was announced for Disney+; time will tell if it ignores the events of United They Stand.
  • After Beast Machines there was supposed to be a sequel series (complete with prototype toys made) called Transtech and it would have continued even further into the series timeline. While Beast Machines still had solid ratings, the reception was mediocre and the toys themselves were subpar and didn't sell. Recognizing they had taken the Beast Era franchise as far as it could go, the powers that were scrapped Transtech and imported Robots in Disguise while they worked on a complete Continuity Reboot with Transformers Armada. This did have the interesting effect of splitting Transformers into many Alternate Universes rather than just Alternate Continuities.
    • If you're still confused over why it's considered a Franchise Killer, let's just say this; up until Beast Machines, all the major Transformers shows were made in or spun off from ones made in the West; after Beast Machines, no Transformers series would be developed (primarily) in the West until almost a decade later.
    • Speaking of Transformers, the tepid reception to Robots in Disguise (2015), due to not addressing the fates of most of the Prime cast, the main villains taking too long to set up, and a low-quality toyline that abandoned the classic size class system and only featured about a third of the cast getting proper toys, along with confusing internal politics at Hasbro, (and Go[24] becoming No Export for You) killed the Aligned continuity and prompted a return to G1 styled franchises. Non-G1-based franchises were not created in a major capacity until 2022, those being BotBots, which is a comedic spinoff with few to no familiar Transformers elements, and Transformers: EarthSpark, which still features G1-like designs, just not as the main focus.
  • After the second season of Gargoyles, creator Greg Weisman jumped ship, and a third season called Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles sank the franchise on TV. Greg wrote a comic series to replace the third season, but unfortunately it didn't sell well enough to keep up once Disney hiked up the licensing fee, and Marvel have yet to take on a revival. Alongside the other Disney Afternoon shows, the series was given a homage in the 2017 reboot of DuckTales, but only near the end of the series.
  • Universal released an animated The Jetsons feature film in 1990, complete with Conspicuous CG, a Green Aesop played out with a Gang of Critters that was essentially a rewrite of an old episode of Star Trek, and reuniting nearly all of the surviving original cast members save for Elroy Jetson, whose voice actor Daws Butler had died in 1988 and was replaced with a young Patrick Zimmerman and Judy Jetson being voiced not by Janet Waldo but by '80s pop starlet Tiffany thanks to Executive Meddling. The film also marked the last performance ever of noted voice artist Mel Blanc (Mr. Spacely), who was still recording while in the hospital (as he had years before then) and died before the film was completed, as well as George O'Hanlon (George), who by that point had to have the lines read and acted to him before recording, who also passed away before he could quite finish the film. Both Blanc and O'Hanlon's remaining lines had to be completed by a sound-alike. Penny Singleton did not die during production like Blanc and O'Hanlon, but the movie remained her last acting role until her death thirteen years later in 2003. Coming on the heels of the 1980's Jetsons revival (the new syndicated episodes and two TV movies), this film's disappointing box office and harsh critical reviews were apparently enough to send the franchise back into hibernation. It has stayed there ever since, with two animated shorts by John Kricfalusi, a potential live-action film being stuck in Development Hell for over a decade, and a one-shot direct-to-video special crossing over with WWE as part of a series of Hanna-Barbera/WWE tie-ins notwithstanding.
  • In a rare example of a character being a one-person Franchise Killer, Elmyra managed to be the prime cause for the untimely demise of Pinky and The Brain, and hence the Steven Spielberg Looney Tunes revival universe. Afterwards, Kids WB would create a number of original series that had nothing to do with Spielberg and company, nor the Looney Tunes universe. In future works, none of the Spielberg characters would ever even be mentioned (with one exception in a negative light, with a comic having the mounted head of Buster Bunny), which didn't help when the franchise was killed overall with the three-hit-combo of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Loonatics Unleashed, and Baby Looney Tunes. For the rest of the 2000s, they persisted only within Six Flags and DVD collections, which is still better than what happened to most old cartoons of the Golden Age. Reruns became regular again with the advent of The Looney Tunes Show, but the Animaniacs didn't see hope of a return until 2020. There are also plans for a revival of Tiny Toon Adventures, and funnily enough, Elmyra will not be in it.
  • The negative reception and ratings failure of Planet Sheen has killed off all interest in the Jimmy Neutron franchise for the foreseeable future.
  • Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights helped to kill off the franchises of Yogi Bear (whose fate was set in motion by the failure of Yo Yogi! three years earlier) and Magilla Gorilla, as this was Magilla's last animated appearance, and the final cartoon by Hanna-Barbera to feature Yogi Bear and Scooby-Doo, although the latter was revived with great success in 1998 by Warner Bros. with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, making Scooby a Cash Cow Franchise for them in the years since. Yogi Bear has since had three new one-off cartoons by John Kricfalusi, but hardly anybody's seen them, as well as a financially successful, but critically ravaged, live-action film, which managed to have put a definitive stake through the franchise's heart for a decade (the death of its genre didn't help), with him not even being included in DC's Hanna-Barbera Beyond comic line. C.H. Greenblatt chose to revive several Hanna-Barbera IP, Yogi included, as Jellystone; which became fairly popular due to its better handling of modernization.
  • The ratings failure of Super Mario World, along with the cancellation of Captain N: The Game Master and the closure of NBC's Saturday morning cartoon block, killed off any further attempts to keep the Super Mario Bros. on television. The only subsequent Super Mario Bros.-related television series made since then was The Super Mario Challenge, a live-action game show from the United Kingdom that aired and ended around the same time as World, as well as the Donkey Kong Country CGI cartoon to a much lesser extent. However, Super Mario World may be one of the rarest examples of a cartoon being Vindicated by YouTube Poop. This failure, compounded with the disaster of the Super Mario Bros feature film killed Mario's career in other media outside of print for decades prior to the theme park land Super Nintendo World & the subsequent release of the 2023 animated feature to much success and acclaim.
  • The Rugrats: Tales From the Crib series was a direct-to-DVD series of Fractured Fairy Tale-esque movies, which attempted to make the original series popular again after it ended. However, there were only two entries in the series; "Snow White" and "Three Jacks and a Beanstalk", as the latter failed to impress. This also forced the "Pre-School Daze" spin-off (which had its episodes included as bonuses on the DVDs) to end at only four episodes, and sent All Grown Up to show its last episodes on Nicktoons Network. Rugrats would not come back outside of comic books and merchandising until the 2021 CGI reboot 15 years later, though a live-action movie was previously announced for 2018 and then scrapped. Even then, however, it largely bombed thanks to the the abrupt retcon to Phil and Lil's mom as being a lesbian and the more disturbing aesthetic of the CGI, with it also causing Nickelodeon's ratings to crash, as well as negatively affecting the Paramount+ Streaming Service largely because of this.[25]
  • The failure of Beware the Batman (not helped by being screwed over to a degree seldom seen before or since), along with Cartoon Network's obsession with Teen Titans Go!, led to the killing of DC Nation. Though putting the block on hiatus previously for more Johnny Test (which was the previous network favorite, and unlike Teen Titans Go! didn't even have the fan-base or ratings) didn't help either. Justice League:Action also failed in the ratings, which didn't help. Future attempts at serious DC animation have been adult-oriented, such as Birds of Prey and the DC animated direct to video movies.
  • Speaking of Cartoon Network, the poor critical reception and massive controversy surrounding the 2016 reboot of The Powerpuff Girls seems to have killed interest in the franchise off for good. Rumors of a live-action series are swirling around, however.
  • With The Boondocks, when series creator Aaron McGruder left after Season 3 due to a contract dispute with Sony Pictures and Adult Swim, Season 4 was developed without him. Due to heavy fan backlash against the fourth and final season, along with aborted plans for a live-action feature film based around supporting character Uncle Ruckus, it was unlikely that the franchise would continue until 2020 brought news of a reboot, which was later scrapped.
  • Sonic Underground ended DiC's run with Sonic and their entire spate of videogame-derived TV shows due to having even less in common with the games than usual, and coming at the unfortunate time where Sega were doing a paradigm shift concerning Sonic [26]. The next Sonic TV series was an anime, Sonic X, partially produced by members of Sonic Team themselves. But alas, as Sonic isn't popular in Japan, this wasn't to last. Next was Sonic Boom, which was part of a large brand initiative, and was co-produced by Sega in-house. Sadly, this was the most successful part of it, and after the series ended after 2 seasons of being neglected by the network and eventually by SEGA, it died a quiet death, with all later Sonic animation material being in short-form online releases largely done in-house. While the possibility of a new TV show has been brought up, SEGA seem to be focused on the live-action film for now. News of a new series titled Sonic Prime as a Netflix exclusive made the rounds in late 2020, but the fate of Sonic on broadcast TV seems sealed despite Prime being a success.
  • VeggieTales was killed by the disastrous Veggietales in the House and its sequel series Veggietales in the City, which introduced ugly redesigns for our favorite veggies, downplayed God, got rid of half the cast (including Mr. Nezzer, Qwerty, the Scallions, and Khalil), came up with many annoying new characters (including a meat character), and had no Silly Songs with Larry. The one proper video with these designs and elements sold poorly, and was the last Veggietales video. Well, it took four years after that for the series to return to its roots in 2019. Even then, this new series was broadcasted only on a Christian channel, and is also available on a partnered streaming service, rather than being available for home video. Sadly, in July 2021, the Vischers and Mike Narcowski were fired from Dreamworks, leaving the franchise with an unclear fate.
  • Total Drama seems to have met this due to the three-strike combo of Revenge of the Island, All-Stars, and Pahkitew Island. Both Revenge and Pahkitew Island were shorter seasons with new casts that lacked the development and charm of the original cast, especially Pahkitew, which suffered more by being part of the same season as All-Stars, which came with the derailment of many existing characters. Ridonculous Race was an experiment in a new format, but while it was popular, it wasn't enough to save the franchise, as not only was Cartoon Network moving on to rely on their own shows, the ultra-popular Danganronpa franchise (basically a darker, more lethal take on Total Drama with a more developed cast) stole its thunder, and reality shows themselves were growing an increasing hatedom as they shifted away from competition, making the premise of the show harder to connect to. Total Dramarama served as a sort of finishing blow, a needless Spinoff Babies version decades too late, with no plans for classic Total Drama to ever return. Even Dramarama has been more or less been abandoned by Cartoon Network, a far cry from when this franchise was their flagship. However, two more seasons were announced for HBO Max after the shutdown of popular fan project Reunion, the first of which has been fairly successful.
  • The Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs TV series seems to have killed off the franchise due to its poor reception and obscurity, along with Sony focusing on Hotel Transylvania as their flagship franchise.
  • The Terrytoons characters were effectively killed off by the unsuccessful Nicktoon pilot Curbside, an awkward attempt to update the roster by a crew who knew nothing about the characters, replacing Terrytoons enthusiast Jerry Beck. The project effectively killed any interest in the Terrytoons cast at Viacom, and their coffin was nailed further by the split between Viacom and CBS, the latter gaining the rights to the Terrytoons roster, which prevented Jerry Beck from reviving Silly Sidney, forcing him to create a Captain Ersatz in “Hornswiggle”, which never went anywhere itself. Some of the eldest Terrytoons characters have fallen into the public domain over time, thankfully. The closest thing to a revival has been a short mini-series of Mighty Mouse comics. Though with the re-merger of Viacom and CBS into Paramount, maybe there’s hope? It can also be argued that Curbside helped kill interest in the later-day Famous Studios roster (their older, more popular characters make up the Harvey Comics roster, whom are owned by Dreamworks, who have used them occasionally) by proxy, another set of lesser-known animated shorts characters owned by Paramount.
  1. it and Thunderbolt are considered an "alternate UC", whatever that's worth
  2. There also exists a very obscure manga called MAD WANG that is set in the distant future of the UC, but it was written before G-Saviour and is also not listed with other UC material.
  3. especially thanks to the movie re-edits
  4. As well as the failure of Superior Defender Gundam Force and the poor sales of the G Gundam toyline due to the number of strange Mobile Suit designs that didn’t sell well
  5. Even Reconiguista in G is technically connected to the Universal Century.
  6. though some official sources consider it a main series
  7. And even then, it was purely self-inflicted, as the film's marketing was abruptly halted at the order of Jeffrey Katzenberg largely due to it competing with Home Alone.
  8. Whom had previously released a handful of straight-to-dvd affairs for them
  9. Universal did keep the theme park rights to the series, and are allowed to also use Seuss characters in promotional material
  10. and even then, the original only happens in Broad Strokes
  11. possibly an instance of Screwed by the Network, as ABC had to know it wasn't going to get much of anything by dumping the show against The X Factor and The Big Bang Theory
  12. The sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway and the Great Hanshin Earthquake, both in March of that year, made the 1995 season's Darker and Edgier plot very untenable.
  13. Made worse in that this was the first time Jill had any major roles since Resident Evil: Revelations, after a noticeable absence not just in later games, but even in the canon CGI movies.
  14. Contrasted with the Resident Evil 2 remake, where the actors were enthusiastic fans of the original game, even cosplaying as their characters close to launch.
  15. The commentaries for the remake revealed that Carlos's voice actor didn't even know how Carlos was characterized in the original game, and Jill's voice actress admitted to ad-libbing the snarky line "I know what a radio is." in an attempt at calling Carlos out for "mansplaining."
  16. According to Capcom in various sources, this was done specifically to attract the Call of Duty gamers in a misguided attempt at expanding their market.
  17. In fact, word-of-mouth had gotten so bad that then-Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime even had to personally contact every single person who bought the game and ask why they didn't like it.
  18. Even there, Zelda was quasi-playable as an ally character while her ghost possessed a Guardian, while the Hyrule Warriors series, as implied by the name, is a Warriors-based spinoff series of games and thus has a larger playable cast than normal.
  19. rumors of a new entry in the series due out in 2012 were revealed to be a hoax
  20. as in the Hyper Neo-Geo 64 arcade board, not Nintendo 64
  21. Nor anyone introduced for Warrior's Rage, which in both cases could be justified due to those two games being the last entries in the series timeline
  22. It is implied by the 25th Anniversary Book that SEGA also owns the rights to them, but this wasn't known at the time
  23. And even there, they used enhanced versions of their classic designs and not the designs from Nuts and Bolts
  24. Which is, for that matter, the last Japanese-produced series to feature its own story and characters
  25. The Paramount+ Streaming service included shows from CBS and especially Nickelodeon, and the Rugrats reboot was considered to be among the flagship series.
  26. this resulted in a fourth DiC series known as "Super Sonic Sisters" being entirely scrapped
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