Obscurity, much?

"Obscurity, much?" is what happens when a show you really like either doesn't show up at all, or *does*, but its viewership is relatively low.

Sometimes, the original owner might upload the whole series to YouTube. This can go either way- either they put it up for free, or they charge you a fee to watch an episode.

The obscurity levels are:

* Not obscure: The work averts this, or subverts this if The Colbert Effect is in play. See also Pop culture. Examples of these are best not documented (unless either said works are not in pop culture in certain areas or if they lose their popularity and fail to re-gain it) as if we did, we'd end up covering *every single piece* of media ever. There's too much media to do that.
* Semi-obscure: The show is unknown to some viewers, but is a cult hit among others. Alternatively, the work is popular outside of its native country but obscure *inside* its native country (this is how some anime get re-released in the US but remain out-of-print in their native Japan).
* Fairly obscure: When the cult following is smaller than a semi-obscure show's. Alternatively, there *is* a large cult following, but the work still hasn't re-entered print yet.
* Completely obscure: When *nobody* save the truest fans know what the show is. Alternatively, this occurs when, despite being a cult hit overseas, almost nobody in its home country knows what it is.
* Completely unknown: An even more extreme version of "Completely obscure". There are no "truest fans" for this version; the show is completely forgotten by everyone around the world. Because of the nature of this level, this level rarely qualifies for examples. Can be placed into "completely obscure" when someone talks about the show over the internet.

Should this happen to a consumable product, it would overlap with Point of discontinuation. If the work is obscure in a particular country because it wasn't released there, but popular in the rest of the world, that's "Why Don't We Have That" under Cartoon Network Isn't Teletoon. If the obscurity is due to bankruptcy, it would overlap with real-life Financial Failure examples (Bionix Bankruptcy, if it's an anime company). If this happens to a language, that's Unreadable Language (or, in more extreme cases, non-fictional Jewelrunes). If something else causes the work in question to break out of obscurity and into the mainstream, that's The Colbert Effect. Not to be confused with Dubless Series- a show can be popular even without a dub, so long as it has official subtitles in the primary language of the country it's distributed to. If it's obscure in a certain country because it's illegal to watch it over there, that's Offer Void Wherever Prohibited. If this happens if a show isn't released to physical media (or was, just not in the current home media formats), see No Home Release for You.

As far as film and animation goes, only full series (whether televised or released on the web) or full-length movies released after 1939 should qualify for this trope; an exception can be made if it's notable for being lost *and* obscure. There are too many short films, as well as films from the silent age and the 1930s to have them qualify for this trope. Additionally, for YouTube uploads, only officially-licensed media (or content from at least semi-popular creators) with less than 1 or 2 million views can be documented; otherwise, the sheer amount of content that fails to grab attention would mean we'd be here all day (and have more subpages than we'd know what to do with). As of 2023, TV show examples should only be listed if a work ends without much of an audience, isn't exported much (thus *regional* examples could still apply), or is confirmed to have been cancelled (by the networks or the creators). Examples documented before 2023 won't be removed, however, since it'd take a lot of work to remove them just to add them back when they do end.

As for literature, the requirement that everything documented must be published in 1939 or later still stands, likely because literature has been around for millennia, even before paper was even invented. Light novels are also best not documented; an exception can be made if they have either a manga or an anime, or even both. This is because almost every light novel ever is subject to this trope outside of Japan.

It's also important to note that a work can be obscure even if the general consensus from the people that *did* get exposed to it is terrible. Tropes Fanon is not biased at listing obscure works just because they're terrible.

Now has a page to play with the trope.

The following examples have their own page:

* Cartoon Network
* Teletoon
* Other Corus networks/Nelvana
* Anime and Manga
	+ TV Tokyo
	+ Weekly Shonen Jump
		- Akira Toriyama
	+ Toei Animation (including works produced under Toei Douga)
	+ Sanrio
		- Jewelpet
* The Walt Disney Company
* Music
* Videogames
	+ Nintendo
		- Pokémon (including print/anime examples)
	+ Namco (excluding games made post-merger)
	+ Sega
* ViacomCBS (and its predecessors)
* NBCUniversal
	+ G4 (got its own page in the wake of its revival as a brand)
* United States History
* The Internet
* Other animation
* Other television
* Businesses
* Physical media
* Literature
* The Lego Group
* Holidays and holiday specials
* World History and Science (grouped into one page since there are not too many examples in either category)
* Movies