Plots That Made You Say, "No, Just Stop!"

[sidewinder fang]

Sword Art Online comes to mind, I watched a few episodes and couldn't stomach anymore after I figured out the basic plot SPOILER, everybody except the main character dies in the most tragic way possible.

Deus ex human revolution as well, anybody who's played it know what I mean, the ending kind of went off a cliff, into psedo intellectual crappy film studies multiple choice bullshit cutscene land.

Also, speaking of crappy multiple choice endings, Mass Effect 3, someone had to mention it.

 

[lacktheknack]

no Indigo Prophecy mentioned

Indigo Prophecy managed to keep my attention for a stunningly long time, all the way up to the orphanage in fact. And then the Matrix battle happened and I promptly shifted into "Excellent Campy Fail" mode, complete with monologue snark.

Also, Tomb Raider VI broke me. It had me until the end of the Louvre, and then...

"You have now invaded a biodome of carnivorous shark-plants."

"WHAT?"

"You're now fighting against demonic forces and evil plants and can only continue if you push this box to up your leg strength."

"HUH?"

"Oh no! You've been locked in an elevator! You're now playing a completely different character you don't know, continuing along the exact same path as Lara was travelling."

"NO."

I'm going to actually have to finish that sucker one day.

 

[Hawkeye21]

Unpopular opinion warning: LOST, Walking Dead (TV series), Dexter (last season), Helix (TV series)
First 2, because somehow it became obvious to me that creators didn't have any fucking idea what the hell they were doing, what it was ultimately all about and how its going to end. For both shows occurred to me by season 2, and I stopped watching them. Turns out I was right about LOST, which doesn't bode well for WD...
Last season of Dexter I disliked because it completely disregarded some already established facts and character traits, and dat lumberjack ending was just too Monty Python for me.
Helix I hated from ep.1 because every single character on this show (and this show is about scientists / researchers) suffers from an acute form of being pants-on-head retarded. I still watched a couple of episodes for entertainment value (read: shits and giggles), but novelty wore off fast.

 

[Storm Dragon]

Helsing OVA: A crazy Nazi major with a single battalion of Nazi vampires attacks modern day London via zeppelin. I almost want to say it must be trying to be some crazy commentary on the decreasing funding and power projection ability of the British military, but it's just too stupid to even be that.

The entire British military is apparently absent with no explanation, so a bunch of Nazis with Kar98s and MP40s, supported by some zeppelins with V2 rockets, manage to level the city completely unopposed. Seriously, they don't even bother trying to explain it, so 1000ish Nazis apparently managed to simultaneously hit every military installation in the region at the same time. That is, until of course the Catholic Church arrives with knights dressed in full plate armor and KKK hats carrying swords, shields, and .50 caliber sniper rifles. Also, I think they might have had some old Huey gunships.

Oh, and why does the Nazi commander want to do it? No particular reason; he just likes seeing shit blow up (and takes a half episode making a tl;dr speech about it).

I'm pretty sure his ultimate objective is to gain power on par with Alucard, since it's revealed via flashback that he originally became a vampire in a similar manner.

 

[Dalisclock]

Helsing OVA: A crazy Nazi major with a single battalion of Nazi vampires attacks modern day London via zeppelin. I almost want to say it must be trying to be some crazy commentary on the decreasing funding and power projection ability of the British military, but it's just too stupid to even be that.

The entire British military is apparently absent with no explanation, so a bunch of Nazis with Kar98s and MP40s, supported by some zeppelins with V2 rockets, manage to level the city completely unopposed. Seriously, they don't even bother trying to explain it, so 1000ish Nazis apparently managed to simultaneously hit every military installation in the region at the same time. That is, until of course the Catholic Church arrives with knights dressed in full plate armor and KKK hats carrying swords, shields, and .50 caliber sniper rifles. Also, I think they might have had some old Huey gunships.

Oh, and why does the Nazi commander want to do it? No particular reason; he just likes seeing shit blow up (and takes a half episode making a tl;dr speech about it).

I think it was pretty much "rule of cool". Because why not Nazi Vampires with Zepplins firing V2's and the only thing that can stop it is a couple friendly vampires(including dracula) and some french mercenaries?

And sure, it's pretty wacky, but at least it's more interesting then the last act of the original anime(which felt pretty half assed).

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Dark Knight Rises had a couple of instances where the plot needed people to be stupid ie: The ENTIRE Gotham police force. There's also the whole, Batman Rises thing which happened twice (once when he put on the magical leg brace and the second time while in the cave-prison place which is conveniently close to Gotham).

The final episode of season 2 of Rosario + Vampire ends on the worst possible cop-out...it's...just...offensive. In any sane universe the main character (can't remember his name) would have been ripped apart by all of the teenage yokai/monsters/witch whose hearts he's essentially broken. Spoilers but no box since the anime in question is a few years old and thus no longer popular...Basically Rosario + Vampire is a harem comedy (Ha-Rom-Com) about a human in a high school inhabited by monsters. He's PAINFULLY OBVIOUSLY in love with the Vampire but of course is also the object of desire for a Yuki-Onna ((A snow-elemental, always female and based in Japanese folklore)and her mother), a Succubus (and her mother) and, a Witch who can't possibly be a teenager yet. He literally has an epic fight with the father of his Vampire love interest, nearly dying and when he's told to chose who he wants to be with his response is, "I'm sorry but I just can't decide. I love all of you and want us all to be good friends for as long as possible!" Fucking cop-outs...

 

[neoontime]

2nd part of Durarara 1st season.
Seriously that show had a original characters and a cool storyline that they just threw away for a wave of unoriginal, convenient plot points. I had high hopes that this would be an anime that distances itself from the other crap, but they just had to have those crappy plot points of:

Spoiler: UGH!!!

His joker best friend just happens to be the leader of the second toughest gang in the city and his love interest is the vessel of the demon sword

Dammit Durarara, I gave you such a chance to be one of my favorite animes and you killed it with not even a finished season.
Grrr!
[HEADING=2]*slice*[/HEADING]

 

[Jon Watson]

I've screamed "No, Stop!" a few times during Agents of Shield, usually because Joss Wheadon's doing horrible things to the characters I'm growing to love. Notably episode 6 and 17.

 

[Mechamorph]

For me its any movie whose plot could only happen through contrived stupidity that tries to take itself seriously. Some
movies revel in their ludicrousness and that's fine. At the door they promise to entertain but not to take everything seriously. Kill Bill? Pulp Fiction? Sure. Hellsing Ultimate? Really skirting the line but it is a show more about spectacle than sense. Its the one where they play the ludicrousness straight that bug me.

Cameron's avatar is a good example. Not only is Jake Scully a literal war criminal now but the Navi are likely doomed after killing so many humans. There is no way Earth will not retaliate and this time a combined arms expedition rather than a mining security crew will be bringing the hurt. Scully's ONLY job was to PREVENT all of this and get us the unobtanium with minimal, hopefully zero, loss of life. He has guaranteed this cannot happen leading to losses on both sides. We are supposed to root for this guy?

I'd mention Twilight but that's low hanging fruit; its basically a "love" triangle involving necrophilia and bestiality that was solved by adding pedophilia. Another is probably Harry Potter; while well-written, Rowling herself admitted that she had to leave logic and good sense at the door or there would be no story. Voldemort might be tough against another wizard, not so much a modern day infantry section carrying their firearms. If the Ministry of Magic had even a lick of sense about them, Old Noseless never could have gotten as far as he did. Basically everyone in a position of authority had to be incompetent or powerless (or dead), how else could children have been the pivotal actors in stopping a world-ending threat?

 

[Fsyco]

Helsing OVA: A crazy Nazi major with a single battalion of Nazi vampires attacks modern day London via zeppelin. I almost want to say it must be trying to be some crazy commentary on the decreasing funding and power projection ability of the British military, but it's just too stupid to even be that.

The entire British military is apparently absent with no explanation, so a bunch of Nazis with Kar98s and MP40s, supported by some zeppelins with V2 rockets, manage to level the city completely unopposed. Seriously, they don't even bother trying to explain it, so 1000ish Nazis apparently managed to simultaneously hit every military installation in the region at the same time. That is, until of course the Catholic Church arrives with knights dressed in full plate armor and KKK hats carrying swords, shields, and .50 caliber sniper rifles. Also, I think they might have had some old Huey gunships.

Oh, and why does the Nazi commander want to do it? No particular reason; he just likes seeing shit blow up (and takes a half episode making a tl;dr speech about it).

I'm pretty sure his ultimate objective is to gain power on par with Alucard, since it's revealed via flashback that he originally became a vampire in a similar manner.

Except that....(Spoilers for Hellsing)

Spoiler

The Major was a cyborg, not a vampire. He had that one big speech about how awesome war was and how he just wanted to wreck people's shit. I think his ultimate objective was to just go out in a blaze of glory and leave a lasting historical legacy, since he got sad when they said his attack on London would just be remembered as a minor terrorist attack.

 

[C.TYR]

Is noone else going to do it? Do I have to be the one to finally break through the wall that we all wish to forget about what's behind? Well, here I go, I suppose:

EVERY GAME THAT DAVID CAGE HAS WRITTEN.

All of their plots and game design have absolutely no connectivity or proper flow and, to make matters worse, they all attempt to bring in hard issues that David Cage simply does not have the talent as a writer to try and undertake. They all bounce around in tone and make almost no sense, even in their own worlds. Often times you'll see David Cage try and introduce a whole new subplot out of nowhere in his games that further derails everything else. His game plots are a mess, as well as the games themselves are a mess.

 

[deathbydeath]

The T-800 in Mass Effect 2 fits this so well.

A more recent example happened to me in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The actual plot/sequence was mostly alright, but the antagonists are just terrible. They're so freaking bad. Their motivation is never fully explained, their methods are (logically) questionable, and [MILD SPOILER] their leader, who spend decades planning and is willing to murder millions of people for a "better world" (that is never defined or explained, by the way) but not take a bullet to see it through yet he's never been a coward up until the plot needs him to be.

The sad part is a semi-amateur rookie serial author from Canada created an ethically ambiguous organization of supervillains that is leagues better than anything in TWS, and he did it in his first finished/public work [http://parahumans.wordpress.com/]. I don't know whether to be in awe that such talent exists, or to despair because he doesn't earn Hollywood levels of income.

 

[deathbydeath]

I'd mention Twilight but that's low hanging fruit; its basically a "love" triangle involving necrophilia and bestiality that was solved by adding pedophilia.

You're forgetting to mention the fact that you can interpret the works as pro-Mormon propaganda from Meyer.

 

[Fsyco]

Is noone else going to do it? Do I have to be the one to finally break through the wall that we all wish to forget about what's behind? Well, here I go, I suppose:

EVERY GAME THAT DAVID CAGE HAS WRITTEN.

All of their plots and game design have absolutely no connectivity or proper flow and, to make matters worse, they all attempt to bring in hard issues that David Cage simply does not have the talent as a writer to try and undertake. They all bounce around in tone and make almost no sense, even in their own worlds. Often times you'll see David Cage try and introduce a whole new subplot out of nowhere in his games that further derails everything else. His game plots are a mess, as well as the games themselves are a mess.

I like David Cage's games, though. Sure, his writing is abysmal, his stories have some issues, and his game's are basically HD re-releases of Dragon's Lair, but there's something I find weirdly compelling about it. I thought Farenheit's descent into bizarre lunacy was fascinating. Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls had some issues in the story as a whole, but (in my opinion anyway) they had some really compelling, interesting parts. BTS would have flowed better if he hadn't gone for the anachronistic order thing and worked better on making a more linear, cohesive plot, but I absolutely loved some of it. I'll totally admit that the order of things was either contrived (like the bit at the end where Willem Dafoe goes a bit nutty, but we the audience had seen no hints of said nuttiness) or detrimental (like when we went quickly from "THAT CIA MAN IS A DICKFACE" to "OMG I LOVES HIM OMG OMG OMG WE'RE HAVING DINNER" several years later).

Then again, I don't like Dark Souls, so maybe I just have crap taste in games.

 

[DrOswald]

The only specific instance I can think of at the moment is The Dark Knight Rises. "We've got this nuclear FUSION reactor beneath the city! Oh no! The villains came in and turned it into a nuclear FISSION bomb in a matter of minutes with no specialized equipment!" One of the many plot holes that riddled the film, but I think this is one of the worst, seeing as though the entire plot is practically driven by the threat of a nuclear explosion from a FISSION bomb that used to be a FUSION reactor. Seriously, have they even taken high school chemistry?

Do they teach that in high school chemistry classes? I don't remember that being in either high school or college level chem. Or at least, the college class that I took (which is just the first intro class, it could very well have been covered in the second). I'm a physics major, though, so we covered it in modern physics.
I agree that it's irritating when people do that kind of crap with nuclear reactors. Especially when they go on about the thing reaching 'critical', which in actuality is what it's SUPPOSED to do to generate power. And plots based around inaccurate physics in general. I don't mind single minor instances of it, but when something central to the movie is based around something working in a way that it doesn't, that pulls me right out.

What really bothers me is when a work of fiction breaks the rules that it establishes. You can break physical laws, but you need to be consistent about it. Like Star Trek - You can go teleport, but the teleporters have rules. When you break those rules it undermines the work.

Recently, a most horrible example of this occurs in Gravity. Major spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

I can buy many of the frankly stupid things that happen in the movie because they are necessary for it to work. The premise is fundamentally flawed, but I can deal with it. But then they broke their own rules in the single most important scene in the movie. Basically, whenever someone gets to the end of a rope they experience a whiplash effect that causes them to bounce back, lose control and basically fly all over the place. But during the most important scene in the entire movie, George Clooney's death scene, they break the rule. Instead the rope remains tight and he has to sacrifice himself. At the critical moment when they need the whiplash effect the writers turned it off because it was inconvenient. And then 5 minutes later it is turned back on and is happening again. It completely broke that scene for me, which basically ruined the movie.

 

[DrOswald]

I'd mention Twilight but that's low hanging fruit; its basically a "love" triangle involving necrophilia and bestiality that was solved by adding pedophilia.

You're forgetting to mention the fact that you can interpret the works as pro-Mormon propaganda from Meyer.

I have heard this before, and I am genuinely curious how this works. What I know about Twilight doesn't readily lend itself as propaganda to espouse what I know of Mormon beliefs. I know this is a bit off topic, but can you elaborate? I am genuinely curious.

 

[Fsyco]

The only specific instance I can think of at the moment is The Dark Knight Rises. "We've got this nuclear FUSION reactor beneath the city! Oh no! The villains came in and turned it into a nuclear FISSION bomb in a matter of minutes with no specialized equipment!" One of the many plot holes that riddled the film, but I think this is one of the worst, seeing as though the entire plot is practically driven by the threat of a nuclear explosion from a FISSION bomb that used to be a FUSION reactor. Seriously, have they even taken high school chemistry?

Do they teach that in high school chemistry classes? I don't remember that being in either high school or college level chem. Or at least, the college class that I took (which is just the first intro class, it could very well have been covered in the second). I'm a physics major, though, so we covered it in modern physics.
I agree that it's irritating when people do that kind of crap with nuclear reactors. Especially when they go on about the thing reaching 'critical', which in actuality is what it's SUPPOSED to do to generate power. And plots based around inaccurate physics in general. I don't mind single minor instances of it, but when something central to the movie is based around something working in a way that it doesn't, that pulls me right out.

What really bothers me is when a work of fiction breaks the rules that it establishes. You can break physical laws, but you need to be consistent about it. Like Star Trek - You can go teleport, but the teleporters have rules. When you break those rules it undermines the work.

Recently, a most horrible example of this occurs in Gravity. Major spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

I can buy many of the frankly stupid things that happen in the movie because they are necessary for it to work. The premise is fundamentally flawed, but I can deal with it. But then they broke their own rules in the single most important scene in the movie. Basically, whenever someone gets to the end of a rope they experience a whiplash effect that causes them to bounce back, lose control and basically fly all over the place. But during the most important scene in the entire movie, George Clooney's death scene, they break the rule. Instead the rope remains tight and he has to sacrifice himself. At the critical moment when they need the whiplash effect the writers turned it off because it was inconvenient. And then 5 minutes later it is turned back on and is happening again. It completely broke that scene for me, which basically ruined the movie.

Haven't seen the movie (and I already knew that spoiler) but speaking as a student of physics...

Spoiler

That 'whiplash' effect is caused by springiness and Newton's Third Law, which causes really weird shit to happen in space. So you'd only see bouncing if someone went to the end of the rope really fast and the other end of the rope was fixed. If the other end of the rope was moving, it would stay taut. Again, haven't seen it, so I have no idea what the circumstances are. But I did hear physicists and engineers complaining about the mechanics gaffes, and the rope thing wasn't mentioned.

 

[C.TYR]

Then again, I don't like Dark Souls, so maybe I just have crap taste in games.

You may just be having the sort of opinion where "it's so bad, it's good", which, if it is the case, is something opinionated and can't really be argued.

Frankly, I despise everything Mr. Cage has made entirely and I am made even more upset when people look to his work for examples of story-telling in gaming, when it is absolutely horrid. This hurts the gaming industry in my mind, for there are far better games where story-telling is 100x better and also more compelling than David Cage's work. Like in Dark Souls.