Dream Tropes Wiki/Missing Episode

An episode of a regular series which, for some reason, is not included when the series is shown in syndication (or is sometimes pulled when the series is first run and then shown in syndication or is never shown in syndication at all — and, in some cases, not included when the show is put on home video, DVD, or online streaming websites). A missing episode is (almost always) an episode that plans to air, but something later comes up to prevent it. The circumstances are usually one, all, or any of the following:

* Offensive content: An episode may be too violent, profane, sexual, or controversial to be shown. Similarly, a tragedy makes the episode's story or jokes come off as being in bad taste.note This overlaps with Banned Episode, though the difference between a Missing Episode and a Banned Episode is that a banned episode is often an episode that used to have no censorial problems until complaints from Moral Guardians or a tragic real-world event drives it to being shelved.
* Legal issues (usually over copyright infringement, libel, defamation of character, or a class-action suit). Related to this, some episodes are pulled due to insurmountable licensing issues relating to music used in the episode, or perhaps imagery, that render the episode no longer viable if edited out.
* Old Shame or Creator Backlash: the people involved realize that the episode isn't as good as they thought it was (whether the audience agrees with them or not) and decide to pull it from reruns. The episode may come back on DVD, but either with no commentary or commentary about how audiences didn't like it or the creators didn't like it.
* A show is canceled (be it short-lived or long-running) and has some episodes that have never been aired (cf. Dinosaurs and King of the Hill) or, in the case of Mission Hill, the episodes were in pre-production and incomplete and had to be scrapped when news hit that the show has been canceled.
* It's literally missing. There are no surviving copies left. This applies to a lot of old films, radio shows and TV shows, as few people actually cared about preserving the works for future audiences at the time - often due to the high costs of magnetic tape and film at the time - which led to copies being either destroyed by the ravages of time, junked or taped over. This also tends to happen a lot with internet content, as most things in the Internet exist in only one copy and many internet users don't bother to archive content, hence why intiatives such as Archive Team and the Internet Archive exist.
* The executives have lost the rights to air the episode (or, in some cases, the entire show).
* If it's an episode of an anime or an overseas import, usually it's skipped over due to translation issues, the aforementioned content issues (often due to Values Dissonance as something benign in one country can be offensive in another), or the fact that it's filler and, therefore, considered a waste of time to show since it has nothing to do with the running story arc.

The terms "Missing Episode" and "Lost Episode" are not synonymous, but which term refers to which phenomenon varies. It can also be an abused term, such as the case of Entertainment Tonight finding "lost footage" for their shows which is already properly catalogued and digitized, but uses the "lost" term instead of "old footage" as the latter doesn't work to pull in viewers.

Can sometimes result from Old Shame. Often overlaps with Keep Circulating the Tapes, which is when a work cannot obtained easily and/or legally (and that's if it can be obtained at all). For an episode that never actually existed in the first place, see UnInstallment. See also Canon Discontinuity, for something that isn't recognized as part of the series, usually due to how out of place it is. See also Banned Episode, which is a Missing Episode that already aired at least once or twice, but was pulled due to complaints over content, legal issues, or a bad case of being "Too Soon." See also Unfinished Episode, which is a Missing Episode that was in the middle of production, but for various reasons was never completed.

There is even now an entire wiki devoted to lost media. Check it out for more details behind some of the listed examples here.

## Examples

### Live-Action TV

* For obvious reasons, CPN skipped an episode of *The Single Guy* titled "Neighbors" likely because Ross is from *Friends* which aired on Banushen Television. After CPN lost the rights of *The Single Guy* to Banushen Television, BTV is airing "Neighbors" from *The Single Guy* that was missing from CPN.

* Two episodes of *Cybnix* from early 2006 was skipped over by The WB, but it did air on The CW after the merger of The WB and UPN.

### Western Animation

* The second episode of *It's Jerry and Harry* did not air because of the 9/11 attacks. The episode was later included on the DVD box set of the first complete season.
* An episode of *The Magic School Bus* entitled "Out of This World" was skipped over in the original run by El TV Kadsre 1 because censors believed it would "make children paranoid". It was later included on the local complete series DVD release.
* The Japanese dub of ASOBTG skipped the pilot because the Japanese dub of the pilot was too blurry.
* ”Videos.... Yeah Videos“ from *Aria Adventures* was banned and skipped over for containing actual porn. It has been aired only 1 time, but not only did it cut halfway in the episode, there are at least 7 recordings of the actual air, the recordings are put normally on porn sites, but the full original episode is on Angelina’s twitter from 2013.
* The Aria Adventures pilot from 2000 (when it first started being called *Aria Adventures*) only ever aired once, and only the intro from it and a still was found. However, the intro recording is in low quality, and you can see outside the TV.