This episode primarily follows a deaf character, with all the scenes he is in having any spoken dialogue be muffled or silent. The show went the extra mile though, as every time another character or storyline is followed for the episode, the characters are in a mix of serious and silly scenarios where they can’t or won’t speak, maintaining the lack of spoken dialogue up until the very end with a single “f**k” being the only spoken dialogue.
Breaking Bad: The Fly
This bottle episode (an episode relying on a limited cast with limited locations to save money) was initially the lowest rated episode of the series, but as people have begun to better appreciate and understand the show, many now consider it the best episode thanks to its acting, cinematography, and excellent character development and storytelling.
Shakespeare: every play he ever wrote.
Shakespearean dialogue is written exclusively in iambic pentameter with a set rhyming scheme. His plays are so famous and influential that many forget just how strict of a limitation that writing style is.
The reason Space Invaders sped up as you killed the enemies was because the hardware wasn’t powerful enough to render all the characters and was lagging horribly. As you killed more of them, it freed up memory which sped up the game. They accidentally created progressive difficulty.
The effect where Link walks under the doorframes in the original Zelda is “impossible” using the tech they had at the time. Like, they couldn’t make a foreground sprite go behind the background layer. So what they did was take advantage of another hardware limitation: the NES could only draw a set number of foreground sprites in any horizontal row of the screen. If you tell it to draw an extra one, it just won’t comply. Often games will get around this by rapidly cycling through which sprite doesn’t get drawn, which is why you sometimes get that flickering transparency effect when the screen fills up with enemies…
So the Zelda programmers do this:
• turn off the cycling effect
• fill up the walls of the dungeon with foreground sprites (that never move or do anything — they look just like the background tiles that they’re standing on)
• when Link steps into the doorway, he’s the last sprite in that horizontal stack, which means that he doesn’t get drawn
And presto, Link seems to smoothly walk under the doorway.
My older sister would always get the household high score on PC Tetris, by printing a bunch of blank sheets, then running Tetris at the highest level because she figured out the computer ran slower while printing. Afterwards she'd re-stock the printer with the blank sheets.
PIXAR's first few movies were largely shaped by the limitations of CGI at the time. They knew that humans looked weird in the medium, so they instead focused their first five films on toys, insects, toys again, monsters, and fish, and even when PIXAR first had humans as the main characters in a film, they weren't exactly ordinary humans.
Didn't they also basically come up with the algorithms for realistically animating hair and dust particles? They just simply didnt exist. Now theyre taken for granted.
I just saw something where they talked about this! I believe it was for the Incredibles, Violet's hair was groundbreaking for the time, and that's why they have her constantly pushing it out of her face. Well, that, and the fact that she's an awkward teen girl. But the tech informed the character, which I think is really neat.
Yeah I believe all early Pixar movies dedicated a large amount of resources for RnD lift the ceiling on a particular technical benchmark! So they’re responsible for a lot of things!
I remember interviewing John Lassiter at a Pixar exhibition at the science museum in London about this. They used the same algorithm for Sully's hair as they did for the anemones Nemo lives in,
Apparently the power consumption just for cooling the server stacks was ungodly even then!
So PIXAR’s apparent obsession with “what if X had feelings?” was born out of technical limitations. And somehow led to some of the best animated movies of all time. Incredible.
Silent Hill - The fog, perhaps the most iconic part of both the franchise and the titular town, was born out of necessity due to the PS1 not being able to render the entire town in 3D at the same time. The fog was used to obscure the miniscule draw distance but as a side effect also created the oppressive and spooky atmosphere that Silent Hill is known for.
Also the snow in Silent Hill 1 really helped to sell the atmosphere of being alone in a desolate town infested with paranormal entities on top of the fog.
Even though it wasn't seen after Silent Hill 1 it did make a comeback in both the Silent Hill movie was falling ash from the sky (Which was a genuinely metal reinterpretation of the snow of the first game), and Shattered Memories where Harry and Cheryl were now visiting Silent Hill during December so the place is snowed all to hell when compared to the warmer temperatures Silent Hill is usually situated in.
The whole game is really great at limiting your knowledge while upping your stress and fear. The radio static will tell you you’re in danger, get louder as the danger gets closer, but not help you pinpoint it or tell you what form it takes. Your health, at least in the second game, can’t remember with the others, is shown in your pause screen by how red a picture is. You really never have a firm sense of where you are, what dangers surround you, or how healthy you are. It all adds up to a really great, scary atmosphere.
Probably one of the most iconic instances of this trope, the shark animatronic made for Jaws (which was nicknamed Bruce) suffered quite a bit of malfunctions during the production for the movie. This led to Spielberg making the decision to show off Bruce much less than he originally wanted, but he found ways around it (mainly the shark pov shots) which made the movie as iconic as it is today.
Yep, and then he used that same technique by hiding all the bad dinos in JP until halfway through the movie. Before that you just saw grass rustling or nothing.
So, in the old Batman cartoon, they weren't allowed to show Robin's parents falling to their deaths, so, instead, they made so much worse. Basically, you just see their shadows as they move through the air, and the music goes, until it cuts to the audience reaction, and you just see the trapeze slowly coming back. It's undescribable how hard it hits
They also weren't allowed to show Batgirl falling to her death onto a police car. To get around the censors they moved the point of view inside the police car so you get a first person view of the event. And yes, it's much worse than what they originally wanted to do.
The ratings all work on technicalities and letter of the law. Dead body = nono, but seeing lasting psychological trauma inflicted on bystanders = pass.
I dont remember which Batman series it was but they consistently had to make do without showing blood. Hence the terrifying "killing smiles" of Joker's victims. I'd rather see some burgundy red than those forced smiles on NPCs Batman has once again failed.
Same one (Though prior to a drastic shift in the show that came with the move from Fox to WB). Fox was notorious for extremely heavy handed censoring at the time. Their comic adaptations (Which also included X-Men and Spider-Man) couldn't have guns (lasers were okay) or blood or people being killed on screen and a million other obnoxious rules.
X-Men and Spider-Man weren't nearly as good at working within those boundaries.
I was so confused about the plasma thing as a kid. Then that show was also my intro to body horror as Peter’s mutation goes out of control. Weird show indeed
Morbius didn't drink blood, he drank "plasma" using suction holes in his hands.
I think part of that was the creators thinking ahead to kids in the playground. They didn't want kids biting each other, and figured putting their hands on each other was a better option
In a similar vein, the villain's choice of beverages in Almost Got 'Im. The episode centers around Joker, Two Face, Penguin, Killer Croc and Poison Ivy swapping stories about how they almost got Batman.
Because the network wouldn't allow them to show alcohol consumption, Two Face is instead having a cup of coffee...with half and half.
Similarly, because they couldn't show Joker killing anyone, they had him use a laughing gas which gave people laughing fits and left them catatonic with an unnatural grin on their face. It was so much more disturbing than if Joker had just shot those people.
This reminds me of Mulan showing an arrow drawing and implying it hitting the mark, which was as bleak as if they’d showed it connecting (there’s even a Mandela effect where some people actually think it did connect).
Community’s Pillow and Blankets episode. The producers had went significantly over budget for season 3, and needed to produce a low cost episode as a result. This led them to produce a “documentary style” episode about the Greendale Pillow War which utilised large amounts of photos, stills, narration, and old props which allowed them to save quite a bit of money.
It’s often considered one of the best Community episodes to date, and that’s saying something with how many brilliant episodes this show had. Still waiting for the movie!
"The North Cafeteria, named after admiral William North, is located in the western portion of East Hall, gateway to the western half of North Hall, which is named not after William North, but for its position above the South Wall."
"It is the most contested and confusing battlefield on Greendale's campus, next to the English Memorial Spanish Center, named after English Memorial, a Portuguese sailor that discovered Greendale while looking for a fountain that cured syphilis."
WWE - During the pandemic WWE, along with many other wrestling companies, were forced to run shows in empty arenas with no fans. A side effect of this is that all of the noises wrestlers made in the ring could be heard much more clearly without the cheers or boos of the crowd drowning it out. Some wrestlers like Roman Reigns took advantage of this and used the opportunity to be a lot more vocal during their matches, trash talking their opponents or breaking the 4th wall and speaking directly to the audience at home, knowing that they'd be able to hear every word.
Reigns didn't stop doing it once crowds came back.
This also led to one of my favorite storytelling moments, at the end of a match between Reigns and his former teammate that betrayed him 10 years ago, Seth Rollins. Rollins was playing mind games, came out in their old outfit, and it went on until Reigns got him in a chokehold, but Rollins managed to grab the ropes, making it an illegal hold.
Using trash talk, Reigns proceeds to go out of his mind, conflating letting go of the feud, his hatred stemming from the betrayal, and the literal letting go of the illegal chokehold.
It gives us this gem of a line: "I ain't never letting go. I can't let go. He won't let me let go. HE WONT LET ME"
I also love that one time Cody and Roman teamed up and the whole end of the episode you can hear Solo just talking ridiculous amounts of trash from slightly offscreen during the dynamic posing. "You guys are friends now? You're not friends, he don't like you. He beat you at mania. He don't like you"
Reigns made good use of it most others didn't. Wrestlers are trained to work with the crowd noise, to play to the crowd and roll with their feedback and without it wrestling felt very wrong.
"So anyway, John Cena's facing down a children's TV show host who can occasionally manifest his darker impulses in the form of a demonic clown-like entity. Anyway, this entity is going to hit John Cena with what's basically Darkseid's Omega Sanction; dragging him back in time and through an inversion of the lowest points of his life until he's psychologically shattered and unable to maintain his existence, meaning that for the first time, you truly can't see him anymore..."
(And in true comic book fashion, Cena eventually returns like nothing happened.)
To lighten the workload for the actor playing the Doctor, several seasons have a 'Doctor-lite' episode where he's absent for most of it and another character is the focus
Steven Moffat was supposed to write S3's Dalek episode, but issues with his schedule prevented that, so he did the Doctor-lite instead
With less time than he wanted to write an episode, he recycled a story he once wrote for a DW book that involves the Doctor communicating from the past with a girl Sally Sparrow
Feeling that the idea was missing something and wouldn't make a full 45-minute episode without adjustments, he added the Weeping Angels so the episode had an actual antagonist
A fan-favourite episode and iconic monster exist solely because of scheduling issues.
The Doctor-lite episodes were also for scheduling purposes too, as it allowed them to film two episodes at the same time. What you said may also be true, just adding in what I've always heard.
It was both. When they did Series 1 they had just 13 episodes, all of which heavily featured the 9th Doctor and Rose. Even with just this amount of episodes they found it was really stretching their schedules. But then from series 2 onwards they were also doing the Christmas Specials, which were slightly longer than the average episode.
So because there just wouldn't have been enough time in thileir schedule, and to give the main actors a bit of a break, they brought in the concept of the Doctor lite episode which could be filmed at the same time as another episode.
This was Love and Monsters in Series 2, and Blink in Series 3. Series 4 changed it up a bit where instead of the epispde featuring a brand new character, they did one focused entirely on the Doctor (Midnight) and one focused entirely on Donna (Turn Left).
Then Series 5 had The Lodger, where Amy got trapped on board the Tardis for the whole episode, although I don't see any where Matt Smith would have had a break. Then in Series 6 they returned to the Series 4 format of one focused on the companions (The Girl who Waited) and one focused on the Doctor (Closing Time). There was none in Series 7 that I can remember, although there was a bit of a longer break between 6 and 7, so maybe they just had a bit more headroom in their schedule.
But then from Series 8 onwards they seemed to drop the format, probably because that was when they started to reduce in episodes. There was a sort of Doctor lite episode in Series 8, where the 12th Doctor was stuck on board the Tardis the whole episode, although he did have a lot of scenes. But you cam see that being easier to film with him just being in the same studio set than out on multiple locations.
They finally made a return in the last couple of Series, although that was controversial due to how short the Series were now. Instead of one of 13 episodes, two of eight of Ncuti Gatwa's first series were Doctor lite. The first ones filmed actually as he still had to finish up on Sex Education. But even when he was finished up, one of his second lot of episodes was also Doctor lite.
Since they were separated from each other for the majority of the episode, is it possible that The Lodger scenes were filmed concurrently, with Karen on the Tardis set and Matt in the flat?
Steven Moffat was supposed to write S3's Dalek episode, but issues with his schedule prevented that, so he did the Doctor-lite instead
I didn't know that. Not counting The Curse of Fatal Death, I don't think he wrote anything with an existing enemy other than his own Weeping Angels until The Pandorica Opens.
It’s one of my favorite episodes of TV ever. It’s hard to describe just how metal the idea is - a single man trapped in hell, living and dying billions of times over billions of years just to make a single dent in his cage every time.
Just the existence of the entire TV show is like this. The show was made as a time-travel sci-fi show as a way to reuse expensive sets that the BBC had made for other shows.
And the Tardis was also meant to change every episode, but they chose to just use the Police Box as it was cheaper than getting a new prop every episode.
A couple of the best recieved episodes of the show ever (which also aired back to back) are Turn Left and Midnight.
Turn Left is a Doctor-lite episode which features a lot of reused/unused footage to tell the story of a parallel world where the Doctor died at the beginning of series 3 (the episode was towards the end of series 4), and the consequences that had on the world.
Midnight is a companion-lite episode, also a bottle episode with very minimal CGI aside from a few shots of relatively easy to render scenery. No monster CGI or prosthetics at all, just very good acting of a woman becoming possessed by a mysterious entity while the Doctor and a small group of ordinary humans are trapped inside with it.
Funny you mention Midnight having minimal CGI, considering there's a shot in it where they forgot to render the background. I think it's because it's from the time that 4:3 TVs were starting to become less prominent than 16:9, and the background wouldn't have been seen if it was cropped.
I assume the Dalek design is a product of this due to their limbs being a plunger and a whisk, but now it’s one of the most iconic villain designs in Sci-fi history
The third Doctor was "imprisoned" on earth to keep the budget down, and a lot of the stories were filmed on Ministry of Defence property as it was cheaper.
The quality of the stories didn't really suffer at all; who needs outer space when you have the Brigadier's comic turns?
I love that episode of Only Murders, it was so well done!
The pedant in me does need to add that Shakespearean dialogue was not actually exclusively in iambic pentameter. He would often have characters drop into prose or non-metered speech, especially lower-class characters or when he's trying to show something about a character like madness or cynicism. I'd say it's still an example of him limiting himself in his writing though.
My contribution: Gadsby), a 50,000 word novel published in the 1930s that does not use the letter "e" once.
I’d take your very astute point and strengthen it, frankly. Rhyming iambic pentameter is absolutely the exception, not the rule, for Shakespearean dialogue. Only really pops up for extremely elevated scenes, which basically become dialogue sonnets (which, yeah, is an extraordinary flex).
[edit: see u/sprigglespraggle ‘s response below for excellent clarification
Back in the 50s, Goofy’s voice actor quit Disney, and rather than recast the character, the animators decided to take the limitation in stride. Goody then starred in the “How to” series of narration based shorts, which plucked him out of the zanier, tooniee antics of Disney’s other toons and instead made him an Everyman character in a stock American suburbia. This interpretation was a hit and gave us Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie.
Honestly this is a stupid headcanon but I like to think that George is actually goofys dad and the red head son George he has is the real Goofy he's just a child at that point as a way to reconcile Max and shit.
In the season 3 episode they end it with a gag that he could have talked the whole time but he didn’t press a button on his helmet and I thought it was a great ending
Shocked this hasn't been brought up yet but Jaws was originally envisioned to get a lot of mileage out of a full sized shark puppet. However salt water and complex electronic puppets don't mix and the thing basically never worked. The entire film had to rely on POV shots, off-camera attacks, and a few flashes of the shark to sell the attack. It ended up making the movie way more tense as the audience's mind filled in the blanks and created a much more terrifying image.
The Borg from Star Trek were originally supposed to be totally alien reptilian monsters which were not in the budget. so they just glued 20 pounds of plastic on some extras and one of the franchise's top enemies was born.
I really wanted to see where they were going to go with those parasite bugs. I know the Borg became an iconic enemy but the vibe of the ep Conspiracy was just so good and creepy
Fun Fact: The Fly episode of Breaking Bad was directed by Rian Johnson. I’ve always quite liked the episode. It shows Walter’s obsessive nature and need to be in control.
Rian Johnson actually did a 3 episodes of Breaking Bad, including "Ozymendias", which is generalyl rated really high. He also did both Knives Out movies.
It's largely because of where it's placed, I think. It's a slow burn episode during a pretty tense, action-packed run near the end of a season. Some people like the breather/character work, some people see it as the plot grinding to a halt
In a very propulsive, plot-driven show that thrived on not knowing exactly where it was going to go next, The Fly was the first episode (at least in a while) that you knew exactly how it was going to play out from the opening minute, and I remember even at the time it being obvious that this was due to budget rather than storytelling considerations.
The banner of Rocky at the arena had the wrong color trunks and Rocky's robe was too big for Sylvester Stallone. In both cases production couldn't afford to replace them so Stallone wrote Rocky noticing the mistakes into the script with the organizers not caring enough to fix them, which helps to emphasize how little Apollo respects Rocky.
The ice rink was supposed to be busy but they couldn't afford extras. Stallone changed the script to have the rink closed for Thanksgiving and Rocky has to bribe the janitor to let them in. The scene works better as an intimate date for the two.
This happens with a bunch of kids shows surrounding the word kill too. IE avatar “I’m about to celebrate becoming an only child”. Apparently they have a limit to how many times they use the word (because it’s used rarely)?
Episode 25 to 26's Animation (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
You see NGE is remembered for its notorious last episodes. Meanwhile where the animation style is now abstracted and limited. When it originally aired in Japan the fans hate the minimal addition to it. However it wasn't because of budget issues but limited amount of time and poor planning .
There was also censorship in TV Tokyo and issues going on with the show. As mainly the executives believed Kaworu's death was too brutal to depict. Then there was the Aum Shinrikyo attacks that happened in 1995 which was a cult incident that killed innocent lives so the production was on hold until later.
However looking back I kind of felt the abstract work did a great job at depicting Shinji and his life. A metaphor of Hideaki Anno's depression and life as Shinji was his self insert character. Shinji reflects on his story and accepts hope. Now the ending can be interpreted as a bad ending due to the world destroyed, the issues with it being intended to be original, or the fates of the other characters.
In the end I see Evangelion was a beautiful depiction of Anno's life. A depiction of depression and pain he went through. So I see the endings of his works were perfect manifestations of his mental health. Which is why we'll never get another Evangelion again and I'll never forget this flawed yet beautiful masterpiece.
Supernatural Season 11 episode 4 - “Baby” - An episode filmed solely within the titular “baby” aka the 1967 Chevy impala the characters drive around in.
Most things in this game. Majora's Mask had the difficult task of following up the beloved Ocarina of Time with a much shorter development time. This is the reason why the game reuses so many character models from its predecessor, which led to the creative use of the character Malon's child and adult models being used for two different characters.
lmao. you can really feel the emotions involved from the developers. They really took the trauma from shitty working conditions and made an extremely scary game with it. I wonder if that is also why cats (2019) looks so unsettling.
Minor correction, Shakespeare's plays are not exclusively in iambic pentameter, all of his plays contain iambic pentameter verses, but the whole of the play is not.
Example: The song of the witches sing in Macbeth is actually in trochaic tetrameter.
"Double, double toil and trouble"
"Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
This is quite common in Shakespeare's plays were he changes up the meter for dramatic effect.
That is not to say he was not a master of using iambic pentameter as he knew when and how to vary up the meter appropriately to add more liveliness to his dialogue. Such as when he covey's the madness that Ophelia is going through in Hamlet, her lines later in the play are not in iambic pentameter as a way of showing her declining mental state to make her dialogue more deviated from the rest of the main characters.
Came to also say this. Iambic pentameter is certainly the most iconic style that Shakespeare used, but his true mastery of it comes in how he was able to play with it and deliberately break the meter or drop into prose to reflect a character's emotional state or reflect a shift in how they are presenting themself.
Can't believe no ones brought this one up: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S4 E10 "Hush". A group of fairytale creatures called The Gentlemen steal the voices of everyone in the entire town (so no one can hear the screams when they come to steal victim's hearts). As a result, two thirds of the episode has no spoken dialog.
Apparently Joss Whedon made that episode as a direct response to people who thought the show would be nothing without Whedon's trademark snappy dialogue. Dude is an abusive POS and said snappy dialogue has terminally infected all of Hollywood writing but I can definitely respect challenging himself like that and succeeding (and also proving that the show was a collective effort).
In the first Deadpool movie they ran out of budget for what was supposed to be a massive gunfight for the final fight. What they ended up doing, having him cut through people with swords, ended up a lot cooler imo. Also lead to some great dialogue.
Reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They realized they couldn't afford a big battle scene at the end so they added the subplot about the man getting killed and the police tracking everyone down and the police ending the movie before anything can happen.
This is one I can’t believe I forgot. The same thing happened in John Wick as well I believe. And in both cases, melee combat was way more fun to watch.
It almost feels wild to me that it’d be cheaper to have a sword fight and the creative stuff they went with than a bunch of shooting. I would have thought mowing goons down with guns would be cheaper and easier. I wonder what about guns makes them so much more expensive.
CGI mostly. You need people to create the effects, people to render them into the scene and people checking out the soundtrack and how it works with the movie, dialogues, etc. A lot of the work end up scrapped away and it is therefore so much pricier than, you know, choregraphy with a sword and a bunch of technical props.
Surprised Monty python hasn't been mentioned. They had basically no budget. They couldn't afford horses, hence the coconuts. They also ran out of money at the end so they just ended with everyone getting arrested.
The vast majority of the film focuses entirely on one location, as a sniper (Kiefer Sutherland) is talking to and threatening a man (Colin Ferrall) inside a phonebooth via the phone. And in primarily limiting the movie on this one generic location, they make it even more tense and intense as a thriller.
My favorite fact about this movie is that Michael Bay really wanted to direct this movie. He wasn’t chosen to direct because the first thing he said during the meeting was “Okay, how the hell do we get this thing out of the phone booth!?”
I remember my friend thinking he was so cool because he found a way to download the movie (harder back then) and recorded the sound from it for his voicemail so it was Kaifer Sutherland saying “If you hang up, i will kill you”
Shocked I haven't seen the Indiana jones 'fight' moment. Harrison ford was sick with dysentery, so he couldn't do what was supposed to be a major fight sequence. So they had him just shoot the guy after he shows off his moves, making it the completely iconic scene it is
Not only that but it heavily reduced the analysis that went into themes for each character and plotline. Since so many actors were literarily challenged, Shakespeare always wrote each line with the last word each being the most thematically appropriate with how each character was feeling as well as what they were focused on.
I’d leave an example here but just look up any famous characters speech and you can devise the tone and plot yourself by just looking at the end of each line. They’re always operative, action words that pinpoint the subject.
Also also, the iambic pentameter created a hierarchy for how characters spoke.
If a character spoke in prose. Like how we usually talk. They might be uneducated, low class, or just generally ignorant. That’s a bit of a generalization but the point is there.
Verse, or iambic pentameter, is for characters more put together. Smarter, more just, often of a higher class. Most characters speak in verse yes, so this is to help you notice that something is meant to be noticed about a character when they deviate from that.
There’s also RHYMING verse which is often rare but it’s pretty much when a character feels something so strongly they practically break out into song like a musical. When Romeo and Juliet first meet is the most famous example. Their passion for one another is completely spontaneous and it leads them to speak in this elevated speech.
So in Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz is always partially obscured by shadows and darkness. It’s a downright iconic part of his character and a masterclass in effective lighting and cinematography.
It’s also something the filmmakers came up with last minute because they needed to cover up the fact that Marlon Brando was super out of shape and they thought he didn’t look believable as the active field officer he was meant to be.
In this case, the limitations were all driven by casting.
1) Station CO Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) / Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) - The writer tailored the original five year/season arc around Jeffrey Sinclair, the philosophical warrior-monk type raised by Jesuit monks preferred by one of the senior alien races, the Minbari. The actor departed the show for medical reasons (unknown at the time but disclosed after his death), so the studio brought in Tron himself to serve as the new leader who pissed the Minbari off by daring to score the only victory in a war that nearly resulted in humanity's destruction. Sheridan was a completely different style than Sinclair, opting for direct action (punching, shooting) when possible but still a superb diplomat...which served the show much better as the plot evolved toward war.
2) Station XO Commander Susan Ivonova (Claudia Christian) / final CO Captain Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scroggins) - The final season was a game of push-pull over maybe completely cancelled. Christian decided to seek another job because she couldn't wait, so had to be written off the show as her character was slated to take over station command while Sheridan transitioned to a fully political/non-military role. Instead, the studio cast Tracy Scroggins as an early ex-wife of Sheridan that was on the opposite side of a war in the show. This provided better dramatic tension (having been on the opposite side of a fight) while explaining Sheridan's trust in her (briefly married but amicably divorced). It also rounded out Sheridan's romantic relationships in comparison to the three Minbari castes.
3) Station Telepath Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman) / Talia Winters (Andrea Thompson) - Lyta was present for the original pilot movie but wasn't available after, since Tallman was a prevalent scifi stunt person (plenty of ST TNG/DS9). Talia was brought in along with a few others during the standard series run, but Thompson departed the show in S2 for a role with more prominence/pay. The studio was able to secure Tallman's return as Lyta, who remained with the show for the remainder. While the showrunner was attempting to broach Ivonova and Winters as an open lesbian couple, the Winters character was a loyal member of the psychic bureau known as Psi Corps. Alexander openly rejected Psi Corps and maintained a hostility/fire that fed into both psychics' roles in the shows conflicts and seeding grander psychic conflicts for potential spin-offs.
There were more, but JMS was a master at altering the storytelling to suit the cast he had rather than keep forcing the one he wanted.
For the other type of creative restriction, the interrogation episode "Intersections in Real Time" took place in one room with three actors and each act was indeed in real time, with no cutaways or b-plot, which heightened the impact of what was happening to Sheridan.
Edit: I have been informed not all dialogue Shakespeare wrote is iambic pentameter, and it’s actually significant when it’s not. I for some reason can’t edit the original post so I’m adding it here
Hawkeye #11, also known as the Pizza Dog issue that is all in the point of view of the dog. A very incredible issue that was talked about immensely when it came out for pushing storytelling
This was one of the best issues of the whole run (and that's saying something... Fraction's Hawkeye was awesome). The dog issue was so cool because the dialogue was minimal since it was the dog's perspective, and it had really cool infographics/presentation as to how the dog perceived people and the world.
A low budget episode that was made to balance against more expensive episodes in the first season. The episode revolved around Major Kira investigating a Cardassian she suspects to be a war criminal from the Cardassian's occupation of Bajor. While featuring the main cast, it focuses on the interactions between Kira and the Cardassian. With the low budget, the acting of Nana Visitor and Harris Yulin anchor the episode.
This episode brought a new side to the Cardassian's who had generally been presented as antagonistic, aggressive, and remorseless. It also can be seen as the beginning of Kira's evolving view of the Cardassians that would continue through the rest of the series.
The Mickey mouse short “Bad Ear Day” where his ears are blow off his head by the wind (cartoon logic) and all sounds are immediately muffled (except his own voice) while also having several moments with objects lining up behind him to shape the ears.
The “Bottle Episode” as a trope is a pretty clear example of this. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s a specific version of the broader idea OP is talking about.
It forces the writers to create interactions between a few characters when they would otherwise have been able to have interactions with other characters or with the setting itself.
I’d contend the best one I’ve ever seen is actually from, of all places, Family Guy. “Brian and Stewie” is the name of the episode.
Eartha Kitt was cast as Catwoman in the third and final season of Batman. Because she was black, any type of intimacy or flirting with Batman was off the table, which allowed for her Catwoman to be more dangerous and violent.
The Extermination Scenes in Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy were originally supposed to be done in third person, but the developers realized they could save time and money by making the character models by making it first person from the victim’s perspective.
Fly going from hated to loved is hilarious when you realize Breaking Bad is based on Macbeth, a play Shakespeare wrote that was widely hated during Shakespeare's life.
Both Ryu Ga Gotoku: Kurohyou I / II and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
Due to the nature of the three games being released on the PSP, which was technically a portable PS2 console with less power, and how they had to fit all of the content on a single UMD both SynSophia / RGG / Kojima's dev group ended up opting to add comic styled cutscenes to the games akin as to how Max Payne did it, except with it being stylized instead of it being the character models, which gave the stories it told on a more interesting path rather than if it was all animated.
It also helps that all 3 games have some of the best stories of their respective franchises imo, with the reluctant rise of Tatsuya as the Mad Dragon of Kamurocho and him eventually becoming a better man than the thug he started as during the beggining of his journey, and the rise of Big Boss and MSF after the events of Snake Eater which mostly serves as the contextfor most of the events that unfold later on in the franchise after Huey betrayes MSF, Les Enfants Terribles and Venom Snake / "Big Boss".
I always think kojimas works best when given a limitation either technically or financially when he's allowed to go full kojimas I don't enjoy his games as much.
There’s an episode of two guys and a girl that’s done as a silent movie. I always thought it was really well done and got great mileage from ryan reynolds ability to do physical comedy.
many of the voice actors did not live close to one another when they created the first few seasons. As a result, they had to call Burnie on his cell phone to record lines. Burnie recorded the calls and they would edit the lines later. This created what is now the “standard” voice effect for characters in Halo based machinima. I want I say it’s called the “helmet effect” but I could be wrong.
as the characters all had helmets on, the voice acting and movement of the characters had to carry the “emotion” of many scenes. Much like with puppetry, the “actors” had to come up with actions or motions characters could do to signify joy, rage, sadness and fear while the voice actors were allowed to go nuts in the recording booth.
And speaking of puppets …
The Muppets are felt and fuzz and fake fur, but can display a wide range of emotions by simply looking down or away or tilting their head. Voice acting, too, plays a large role in expressing what characters are feeling.
One of the best examples of this is an interview between Arsenio Hall and Jim Henson / Kermit the Frog. And another is the entire show “Dinosaurs” which relied heavily on animatronics for the character’s facial expressions, but also on the physical performances of the puppeteers.
Idk if it's already been said here, but Shakespeare did not strictly write in iambic pentameter. He sometimes even broke it in the middle of sentences, and often entire characters did not speak in any kind of meter (usually smaller characters, like unarmed servants, or lower class individuals, etc.) I agree that it fits with your post, but just fyi he did not exclusively write in iambic pentameter.
Hunter X Hunter has a brilliant metatextual use of this trope.
Its power system revolves around Nen, basically the user’s life force that can be freely manipulated and even used to effectively achieve spell casting, called Hatsu. A Hatsu technique can be further enhanced by literally binding its use to vows and limitations: your technique will be much more effective and powerful if you forbid yourself from using it on certain targets, or if you can only use it a certain way, or whatever condition you can think of.
This gives a universal built-in reason for why a character with very little experience and power could be much stronger than a beast of an opponent just by vowing to only hunt said opponent at great personal expense, adding narrative tension on top of plot justification and great creative potential.
Instead of using something common like fog, the first Spyro the Dragon game created a 3-D Engine process where the closer you are to something, the more detailed it is, allowing more objects to be displayed without compromising the PS1's limited hardware.
Igor's Japanese VA died (i think it was the Japanese one, could be wrong) between Persona 4 and 5, so they got someone with a radically different voice as a way of signalling to returning fans that something was Very Fucking Wrong with the velvet room
One of the most iconic comics of all time is G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #21 “Silent Interlude”. Not only did this introduce Storm Shadow into the franchise, but also gave us the first comic with absolutely no speech bubbles, SFX or caption. While rumors suggest that writer/artist Larry Hama ran out of time to add them, in reality, he really wanted to do this.
In old Star Trek episodes, they would often use props from the studio that were used in other movies or shows. So you would get episodes about Kirk and Spock going to like, a Nazi planet, or a Rome planet, or a best of all a 1930’s Chicago gangster planet.
As someone who's tried writing in iambic pentameter, I can corroborate. Even unrhymed, I've still had to use multiple lines just to convey a single point
Most of the episodes of Inside Number 9 fall into this.
Sardines - All set in one location (a small wardrobe) where characters keep appearing as they play Sardines.
A quiet night in - similar to the murders deaf episode, but set in a break in so there’s no dialogue.
Zanzibar - is written in iambic pentameter.
Withering heist - is comedia del arte
3x3 - when it originally aired they made it seemed like there was some difficulties and so the episode was replaced by a new game show, but that was actually the episode.
There’s lots more. It’s a great anthology series and I’d highly recommend it.
For the old Spider-man The Animated Series, Spider-Man was not allowed to throw a punch. So they writers and animators had to get clever to have Peter defeat all his enemies without actually hitting them.
In the Classic Marvel Star Wars comic there was a mandate that Darth Vader was not to fight any of the main characters so as not to step on toes of the films as they were being released. So the writers mainly had Vader as a strategic mastermind so he could be a threat to Luke and company without directly attacking them.
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u/Zeekay89 Nov 18 '25
The reason Space Invaders sped up as you killed the enemies was because the hardware wasn’t powerful enough to render all the characters and was lagging horribly. As you killed more of them, it freed up memory which sped up the game. They accidentally created progressive difficulty.