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Poorly Disguised Pilot - TV Tropes
"Rule of thumb: whenever a show does an episode focusing on a bunch of people you've never seen before and never do again, it's a pilot for a new show."
An ongoing narrative work will suddenly pull a switch on the focal characters, having the primary characters take a back seat or serve in supporting roles instead to either minor cast members or entirely new characters. This is a typically a sign of using an existing show to test the waters for a Spin-Off, Sequel Series or just an idea of a new show, basically taking a Pilot Episode of a separate show and doing the bare minimum to make it fit as a regular episode. Especially common for characters popular enough to break out on their own, but the level of grace used to make it work is rare as it ends up feeling jammed in there just for the sake of the new show. These pilots rarely get picked up by the network, however, as a franchise built around specific actors will often be a little bit pricier at the start so you really need to hit it out of the park. You will often see this ramp up during a Finale Season, hoping to find a spinoff potential.
Within the TV industry this is called a "backdoor pilot" when it features brand new characters taking center stage in a preexisting show. But this trope also applies to spin-offs already set to go and the character(s) involved are given a send-off within the parent show (making it more of a poorly-disguised advertisement).
Much like any pilot, the version of the series that makes it to air may have actors or settings changed or altered between the pilot and the second episode, especially if there's a significant amount of time between the two. For instance, the Golden Girls spinoff Empty Nest went from being about an older couple whose kids have all moved out (as featured in the Golden Girls episode "Empty Nests") to being about a widower whose daughters have moved back home. Also a proposed Aquaman series would have starred a different actor than the one who guest-starred on Smallville (Justin Hartley vs Alan Ritchson).
As a general rule, if you're watching a show and you find yourself asking questions like "Where did everybody go?", "What are we doing here?", "Who are these people?", or, above all, "What is going on here?", then you're watching a Poorly Disguised Pilot.
Other symptoms of a Poorly Disguised Pilot include:
Before the concept of the Season Finale took off, these were often aired as the last episode of a season.
Compare Pilot Movie, a Made-for-TV Movie that is explicitly pitching a new series if the ratings are good enough. The Opposite Trope is Fully Absorbed Finale, when what is functionally the show's final episode appears in another show set in that same universe. Might overlap with From the Ashes (a fictional work's ending is the starting point of a spin-off).
Do not confuse this trope with an aviation pilot wearing an ineffective disguise.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The very first anime TV series ever made, Astro Boy, has an example in "The Moon Monsters" (Episode 56 in Japan, 32 in the English dub), which was intended to be a pilot for a new anime starring a character named Number Seven, a member of a defense force on the moon. Much of the episode sets up him and his character dynamics. This episode is also notable for being the only episode of the 1963 Astro Boy series produced in full color (though the English dub uses the black-and-white version).
- This is apparently the reason for Ruri being Put on a Bus in Oreimo; so she could receive a spinoff.
- One episode of Outlaw Star has Gene and co encountering two characters from Angel Links, a spinoff series that debuted a year later.
- In Fushigi Yuugi: Byakko Ibun, the legend of the priestess from another world and her chosen warriors is mentioned briefly, but overall has no purpose in the chapter. The supposed protagonist Suzuno doesn't even actively appear, she only shows up as an image on the final page. The chapter barely feels like it has anything to do with Fushigi Yuugi to begin with, with the sole revelation being that one of the two main characters, the Ineffectual Loner Nirusha, is actually the Seiryuu warrior Miboshi! Fushigi Yuugi: Byakko Senki, the proper story of Suzuno, wouldn't begin until 2017, two years after Byakko Ibun was released.
- Chapter 116 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War features Karen and Erika from the Mass Media Club (who up until this point in the series had been nameless Recurring Extras) interviewing various major characters in the lead up to the culture festival. It mainly served as a tie in to the Spin-Off series We Want to Talk About Kaguya that premiered the same week, though it did feature some foreshadowing for Shirogane's Grand Romantic Gesture.
Audio Plays
- The Big Finish Doctor Who spin-off Jago & Litefoot (who appeared on the TV show in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang") started out by testing the waters with a story in the Companion Chronicles range, named The Mahogany Murderers, centering around the Victorian duo trying to get to the bottom of a strange mystery in London, featuring no interference or even appearance by the Doctor whatsoever. This format was well-received, and kicked off what is perhaps Big Finish Doctor Who's most successful spin-off.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
Films — Live-Action
Note
: Remember, films that are created with the idea of releasing an
Animated Adaptation
in mind are
Pilot Movies
and should be listed there.
- A large chunk of the plot in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, such as Harry Osborn's transformation into the Green Goblin and subsequent meeting with Gustav Fiers in The Stinger, was clearly meant to set up the eventually-cancelled Sinister Six movie. This was one of the film's biggest criticisms.
- Blade: Trinity was partially intended as one for Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler's Nightstalker characters, which caused the titular character to get sidelined, much to the displeasure of star Wesley Snipes. It didn't work out.
- X-Men Film Series:
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine was stated to be a testing bed for films based on Gambit and Deadpool/Wade Wilson. The fact that the two were the most common points of criticism (Gambit for being an Advertised Extra, Deadpool for They Changed It, Now It Sucks!) would tell you that it didn't work.
- However, Ryan Reynolds' performance as Wade Wilson from before his disfigurement was very well received, to the point where he really was the only choice to play the lead role in the actual Deadpool (2016) movie. But although The Stinger of Origins did leave its version of Deadpool salvageable (re-opening his mouth and apparently undoing his brainwashing), the Deadpool film opted for a Truer to the Text Continuity Reboot (restoring Deadpool's fourth-wall breaking powers and Comedic Sociopathy, while shedding the Eye Beams, Blades Below the Shoulders, and Teleportationnote though he's frequently had access to artificial teleporters in the comics, it's nothing like what's depicted in Origins). These differences were (naturally) lampshaded in the film itself, where a scene begins with a close-up of an action figure of Deadpool's original appearance and Wade saying "this is my most prized possession" before it's revealed he's talking about a Wham! album underneath the action figure.
- Years later, there were plans to have a new version of Gambit (played by Channing Tatum) appear in X-Men: Apocalypse to set him up for his own spin-off. The solo Gambit movie was greenlit, but the planned appearance in Apocalypse was nixed.
- Subverted with X-Force's appearance in Deadpool 2, because it's not "disguised" in the slightest. One of Deadpool's motives for forming the team is to gather a bunch of young people who can carry a franchise for a decade or so. Further subverted when every member of the team except for Deadpool and Domino end up dying minutes into their first mission. However, the plans for a X-Force spin-off were scrapped after Disney bought Fox.
- Marvel Studios seems to like this a lot, because the first five films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were meant to collectively lead into an Avengers film.
- Daredevil (2003) was basically hacked to pieces by Fox executives to serve as a pilot for the Elektra spin-off. When given the opportunity to put out the movie as it was originally conceived, the director cut Elektra's screentime substantially, restored a half dozen missing subplots, and turned it into a movie that was actually worthwhile. The Elektra spinoff was even more poorly-received than Daredevil was.
- Before the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies came out, producers announced that they were planning a spinoff movie series featuring Michelle Yeoh's character Wai Lin. That never happened, but similarly, there was much talk of a spinoff franchise featuring Halle Berry's Jinx character from Die Another Day. The extent to which they were truly serious about either notion is unclear. Some suspect the talk in each case was simply pre-release hype ("The heroine in our next picture is such a great character, we're giving her a movie series of her own!"), although they did seem to at least make effort for the Jinx movie, for which they hired Stephen Daldry as director, got two months into writing the screenplay and had the series' production and costume designers create some early concept art before the poor performances of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life and especially Catwoman led to it being canned.
- There was talk of a Catwoman movie as a follow-up to Batman Returns. Michelle Pfeiffer wasn't very excited about the project and it never came to fruition until long after the Batman movie franchise had died in 1997. Eventually, the project was revived as a vehicle for Halle Berry, resulting in the notorious 2004 flop Catwoman (2004).
- The Godzilla series has done this more than once:
- Indiana Jones:
- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is one for Silver Surfer. Many things in the movie don't happen (like the appearance of the Big Bad) in order to allow for the Silver Surfer spinoff, which never happened.
- Wonder Woman makes her cinematic debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in order to set up a solo Wonder Woman movie starring the same actress. The other members of the Justice League of America all appear in cameos to set up the Justice League movie, with some critics likening the cameo sequence to a trailer within the movie.
- The Mummy (2017) has Dr. Jekyll, a character typically not associated with mummies, show up to explain plot points and make references to a secret society of monster hunters to set up future "Dark Universe" films about classic Universal monsters like the Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, and Frankenstein's monster.
- The first short for Columbia Pictures featuring The Three Stooges, "Woman Haters", was originally a part of another Columbia short subject series, Musical Novelties. The resulting Early-Installment Weirdness stems largely from this, including all the dialogue being delivered in rhyme. (Later reissues added the classic "Three Stooges" title card, but kept the "Musical Novelty" title card as well.)
- The Suicide Squad becomes this in a roundabout way, being a DC property directed by James Gunn that was part of the DC Extended Universe. With that universe being canned and then rebooted with Gunn's Superman, and both the film and Peacemaker being declared canon to that universe (albeit in Broad Strokes), ''Squad" is effectively a backdoor pilot for the Gunnverse.
Literature
- Averted in Animorphs. A large cast of new characters, aptly named the Auxiliary Animorphs, are introduced into the series near the climax. One would think this would mean shoehorning them into getting a spinoff, right? Nope, they're all unceremoniously killed off.
- The Dresden Files: The short story "A Fistful of Warlocks" features a younger Anastasia Luccio at the start of her Warden career, fighting a group of warlocks led by Heinrich Kemmler in the Wild West. According to author Jim Butcher, this is meant to set up an entire prequel series he has in mind, but probably is never going to actually write.
- You wouldn't think this could happen in book form, but it has. Nancy Drew Files #39: The Suspect Next Door focuses heavily on Nancy's neighbor, a girl named Nikki Masters. Not too long after, Nikki got her own spin-off, a romance series called River Heights. It lasted about 16 issues before getting run off the face of the Earth and is largely forgotten now.
- It may not have been intentional, but the Past Doctor Adventures novel Corpse Marker by Chris Boucher ends up feeling like a poorly-disguised pilot for his Kaldor City audio dramas, with the Kaldorian characters (and Blake's 7 crossover characters) getting more page time than the Doctor and Leela.
- Rinkitink in Oz is a book in the Oz series of books that was originally written as a standalone fantasy novel in the land of Pingaree. It didn't get published in that form, but eventually, L. Frank Baum changed it into an Oz book just by putting in what amounts to a gratuitous Crossover with some Oz characters, who show up at the end to solve the plot with Deus ex Machina. Mind you, at this point in his career, Baum was finding that whether he liked it or not, his books could only be commercially successful if they were Oz books.
Music
- In 2002, Disney Channel commissioned the Canadian virtual pop duo Prozzak to write and perform the title song for their TV movie Get a Clue, albeit with some drastic changes: the band was rechristened Simon and Milo after the two animated characters who comprised the act (presumably because they're named after a drug) and had Milo redesigned to be much more conventionally attractive. The channel aired a music video for the song during commercials, which was only unusual because it looked nothing like anything else they were airing at the time and the act had nothing else to their name. As it turns out, Disney Channel was testing the waters for a Simon and Milo animated series, but before that could come about, the network and Prozzäk co-founder Jason Levine clashed over what they each considered "child-friendly" content, resulting only in the music video and a compilation album titled Ready Ready Set Go, released for the sole purpose of putting "Get A Clue" onto a CD.
- The Confession Executive Committee music video that formally introduces LIP×LIP is "Romeo", an in-universe music video showcasing their careers watched by the other Love Series characters. One of the members themselves, Yujiro, was previously given importance at the tail end of "Blooming Into the Color of Love" with a then newly introduced girl about his age, who turns up again in "Romeo" coupled with lyrics implying she'd be the group's love interest. Sure enough, "Romeo" would later serve as the starting point for the Idol Series, a set of videos centered around the universe's entertainment industry, and the girl, Hiyori, would feature as LIP×LIP's manager.
Podcasts
Pro Wrestling
- WCW took a swing at this in late 1997 when the New World Order "took over" Monday Nitro on Dec. 22, running it as "nWo Monday Nitro", complete with set changes and a modified Nitro logo with the nWo logo in place of WCW's. While on the surface this looked like just another typical nWo angle, it was actually meant to be a test to see if they could maintain a solid audience with an nWo-focused show, as WCW was planning to roll out Thunder as a secondary program the following year, and had originally hoped to run Thunder as the WCW program and turn Nitro into a standalone nWo show. However. there wasn't enough audience interest and the time they took to restructure the show around the nWo wasn't seen as worthwhile, so the idea didn't go any further than this one episode.
- In 2000 All Pro Wrestling held a tournament called King Of Indies, which eventually became its own separate event, though the letters KOI remain associated with APW. The same thing happened in 2004 with ChickFight, although ChickFight did "return" to work with APW.
- WWE did something like this shortly after acquiring WCW in 2001, trying to test the waters for a separate WWE-run WCW show during a Monday Night Raw episode emanating from Tacoma, WA. They covered the ring in WCW logos, replaced their own commentators with Arn Anderson and Scott Hudson, and had Buff Bagwell and Booker T wrestle a match on July 2. Unfortunately the crowd hated this, so the whole thing was thrown under the bus quickly (the infamous "Invasion" angle is what was spawned from the failure of using WCW as an entirely separate entity).
- The World Wrestling League was founded in 2012 with the stated purpose of getting wrestlers/luchadors from all over the Americans and Caribbean to work together. It was initially known mainly for its Dream Matches tours through Mexico and the Dominican Republic, an "invasion" series of New Xtreme Order and a couple other Bolivian enterprises or facilitating smaller cross promotional matches and shows such as between Pro Wrestling Revolution and CMLL, or the Florida based Coastal Championship Wrestling and Ecuadoran WAR. WWL promoted title belts even at this time and booked their holders to go over champions of participating promotions, particularly AAA's, but wrestlers from all over, including AAA, contended for and won WWL belts, and WWL arranged for its champions and other talents to appear on shows they normally would not, such as AAA's Triplemanía XXI, so it wasn't that different from other governing bodies like the NWA. Two years in however and the Puerto Rican World Wrestling Council pulled out on account of WWL running an Insurrection event in Puerto Rico that relied not on international or WWC talent but mainly wrestlers from Puerto Rico's independent circuit, particularly those that used to work for WWC's defunct competitor IWA PR. WWL also began running angles similar to IWA's, to the point fans began calling it a resurrection. WWL continued to officially bill itself as a coordination facilitator and governing body for awhile but by 2016 it had given up all pretenses of being anything but a promotion intent on running shows exclusive to its own brand and all WWL affiliates besides TNA and The Crash dropped out.
- The World Wrestling League's use of IWA Puerto Rico talent in turn led to this when Savio Vega launched a "hostile takeover" of WWL and started running IWA's old flagship show Impacto Total in place of WWL's High Voltage. While the IWA usurpers were defeated, Vega was able to successful revive IWA PR in 2018.
Video Games
- One of the major plots you spend time investigating in Another Code R is the mystery of Matt's father and what drove his business into the ground. While the bulk of the mysteries surrounding it are solved and tie in well to the main story, the final fate of his father is unresolved. It was supposed to lead into a separate game where Matt would resolve this plot, but Cing went under before such a game could be produced. When the game got an Updated Re-release for the Switch, the script got a rewrite to avert this trope resulting in Matt reuniting with his father.
- The inclusion of Team RWBY in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle was clearly meant to test the waters for a full-on RWBY fighting game. However nothing seemed to have come out of it, especially since the combination of Toshimichi Mori, a huge fan of the series, leaving Arc System Works in 2022, as well as Rooster Teeth selling off the IP to Viz Media, making the prospect of an actual RWBY fighting game unlikely. The closest since then was ASW publishing RWBY: Arrowfell, but that was a Metroidvania rather than a fighting game.
- Guild Wars:
- Eye of the North was this for the sequel, Guild Wars 2. The main storyline had three separate arcs which focused on the Asura, Charr, or Norn, each of which became a playable race in the sequel. The Sylvari was also present in the form of a sapling White Tree. While the primary antagonist was the Great Destroyer, the presence of the Elder Dragons was also foreshadowed, including Kralkatorrik appearing as part of the landscape.
- The Beyond storylines were introduced to renew interest in the franchise after it had laid dormant and increase awareness of the sequel. War in Kryta reintroduced the Krytan royal family and Shining Blade while also introducing the all new Seraph, the main human army in the sequel. Winds of Change similarly sets up the shift of Cantha into a monolithic, xenophobic human state. An additional storyline was planned to show how Elona would begin moving towards its defeat by Palawa Joko but was not completed.
- Kingdom Hearts III, as well as its DLC, was intended to be this for Verum Rex - an intended Spiritual Successor to the original Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Nomura decided to scrap it and incorporate these element(s) into Kingdom Hearts IV after fear that this would cause confusion and worry fans that Kingdom Hearts would once again enter Development Hell.
- The nightmare minigame in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a tech demo for an original game that was being developed by the Zone of the Enders team titled Guy Savage. However, Guy Savage was canceled and the minigame was removed in the HD Edition version of MGS3 along with the cutscene and codec conversation referencing it.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (Super Mario: Yoshi Island in Japanese) still has Mario present, but he's mostly just being escorted by Yoshi, and the game, while still considered a mainline game, ended up launching the Yoshi's Island franchise.
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, on the other hand, is a Mario Land game In Name Only that is only implicitly connected to its predecessors, which is likely why the name of the series it starts comes first with the series it spun off from comes second.
- Twilight Syndrome's bonus chapter, "Prank", served as a preview of sorts for Suda51's planned sequel Moonlight Syndrome, consisting of a series of surreal Non Sequitur scenes which Suda himself described as "vulgar" and experimental in a developer interview and shifting the main focus to Mika and a new Pinball Protagonist named Ryo Kazan. This chapter's tremendous contrast with the main game's storytelling style and tone carried over into the sequel, which was summarily declared Canon Discontinuity when the time came for additional sequels to be made.
- WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne's bonus campaign "The Founding of Durotar", with its shift from RTS to RPG gameplay, is this for World of Warcraft. The quest-driven nature was rare for MMORPGs at the time, but was planned as a major feature of World of Warcraft, and the campaign even features the Resurrection Stones that were originally going to be in World of Warcraft before the death system was revamped (the stones would ultimately become Meeting Stones).
Web Comics
- Not Invented Here was launched in Unshelved in fall 2009. Though it's not even poorly disguised, since they brought in the NIH artist as a guest artist.
- Prior to receiving her own series and eventually becoming the Platypus Comix mascot, Mulberry Sharona made some guest appearances in Marin Meadow, a series Peter Paltridge decided to discontinue around the time he came up with Mulberry.
- Although T Campbell has never said so outright, the Penny and Aggie arc "The New Reality" appears to have been in part a trial run for a spin-off set in Hollywood and focusing on Sara (like the arc itself). In late 2010, Campbell held an eBay auction for the privilege of having a character named after the highest bidder, in a new webcomic to be launched the following year. The listing stated that names which appeared in the Penny and Aggie cast page would be ineligible, as would the names "Lucy, Hilary or Martin," three of the characters from "The New Reality" arc. In the end, Campbell followed P&A with an entirely different spin-off, QUILTBAG, which stars Sara and Lisa as college roommates.
- Motherlover: An accidental version. The idea for the comic came from a How Baby strip about two moms, one a stay-at-home mom and one a mother working outside the home, both thinking the other is so impressive and a better mom than they themselves are. (from The Rant under the comic)
PS: I don’t know how it happened, but I kind of fell in love with these two characters? In my head, they definitely end up dating. They don’t even have names yet, but I think HB just picked up its first pair of background
NPCs
, haha.
Web Videos
- The 2021 April Fools' Day episode of Binging with Babish sees Alvin Zhou from Tasty inexplicably hosting the show in Andrew's kitchen with no explanation as he makes the Gotcha Pork Roast from Food Wars!: the jig is up when Andrew shows up and immediately questions Alvin's presence at the end of the episode, though he does not say no to trying the 'pork roast". As many speculated, the episode turned out to be a backdoor pilot for Anime with Alvin.
- "El de los Simpsons" is a short film about Grasse thinking he is El Burto. It inspired the three main characters from DaSuisa: Da Homa, La Morgan and Bort. The voices and costumes come from this video too.
- The third episode of the That Guy With the Glasses 2013 anniversary special The Uncanny Valley, titled "The Reviewers", is actually the pilot episode of a potential new series, which was picked up a year later.
- Ethan originally intended The Double Agent to be about reviewing other reviewers and also about random topics (as his first episode is about the worse types of Halloween candy) after he left his first show Worst Music Of The Year behind, but he slowly warmed up to talking about music again.
- Schaffrillas Productions' 2022 April Fools' Day video starts out as a review of Arcane until it turns into a sketch that he claims is the show's attempt at a backdoor pilot for a show where General Grievous and Sid the Sloth have misadventures working at Arby's. It also acts as one out-of-universe as he asks the audience if they want more episodes of Grievous and Sid at the end.
- The first thirteen episodes of Lincoln & Ronnie Anne's VLOG presumably serve as this to The Loud House & Casagrandes Hangin' at Home Special; both of them are crossovers between The Loud House and its spin-off series, The Casagrandesnote Interestingly also an example of this trope; read more here that involve the main characters of the two shows, Lincoln and Ronnie Anne, communicating via video chat, and the latter medium is a half-hour TV special following very much the same premise as the earlier web series that was created in light of the COVID-19 outbreak (the virus itself being known about by the time the web series had its first episode released), which premiered over two months after the web series began its hiatus.
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