http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DummiedOut

The level still exists in the final... just without the graphics. Or collision data.

Killer Bow Description, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls "If you're reading this, you've either found a bug or are a 1337 haXX0r."

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When some feature, level, monster or something else was meant to be put in a game but ultimately ended up getting cut out for whatever reason. Except instead of deleting the data entirely, the programmers just remove all legitimate ways to access it, leaving pieces of it in the game code (textures, models, sprites, etc.). For instance, setting the game so a particular enemy never actually spawns, or removing all entrances to a level that was never finished.

The primary reason for this is because most video game consoles use static file structures, referring to particular data segments. Much of the debugging was getting the structure to cooperate with the console, so removing large batches of code was impractical at best and often opened up more problems than it solved. As such, unless the space was needed, dummied content would just be left in with all references in the other files cut. With modern version control systems available, this is considered bad coding style these days.

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There can be many reasons as to why some data was left over and dummied out to begin with. Developers always use debugging tools to test levels or game mechanics (some include the ability to gain items at will or warp to any level) and these kinds of things are usually something the player shouldn't have access to. Another example is content that the developers cut out at the last minute because the concept they wanted to use either didn't work out too well, they were pressed for time and were forced to cut out content to meet a strict schedule, or unforeseen copyright issues.

The remaining bits of data or map could sometimes result in false cases of Notice This, and players getting an Empty Room Psych out of it. If the fans get talking, a mythical access to it can become an Urban Legend of Zelda. In other media this takes the form of What Could Have Been. Dummied out content is sometimes accessible with skill, patience, or merciless exploiting of glitches, but usually requires modding or hacking of some sort.

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As with anything on the Internet, a wiki exists to document all of a given games' dummied out and unused content, with users data mining a games' files and uploading them to The Cutting Room Floor wiki for all the world to see.

If a dummied out concept or content gets reused for other works, it becomes a Development Gag.

See also Minus World. Game Mods will sometimes reopen access to it. Compare Orphaned Reference.

Examples:

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Infrastructure

"Ramps to nowhere" are bridges or highway ramps that dead-end in midair, intended for aborted freeway projects. For example, the ramps of the cancelled R.H. Thomson Expressway near Seattle's Washington Arboretum, which were finally demolished in 2015, and until 1990, the I-5 / I-90 interchange. SR-520 ended in a similar fashion for several years. The Alaskan Way viaduct also had dummy ramps that were meant to connect with I-90; that part of the viaduct was demolished in 2011. In Florham Park, NJ, there is a double overpass over the NJ Route 24 freeway , with rights of way cleared for a full cloverleaf interchange, that has never carried any vehicles over the freeway and never will. It is a relic of the abandoned Tri-Borough Parkway, meant to connect Main Street in Chatham and Madison (the former alignment of Route 24), with the south end of the Eisenhower Parkway in Livingston. note On the highway westbound, there is a sign gantry east of the exit that was meant to serve it; for years one blank sign had the scars of the wording that had been on it It got canceled during an era when a mile of the freeway west of the Passaic River had been graded and partially paved but a citizen tax revolt had stalled any further work. Just like the video game example that creates this trope, it would be extremely expensive to demolish it so it remains standing.

Another example of this is the Korean War Veterans Parkway in Staten Island, New York, where it was supposed to connect to the Staten Island Expressway on another part of the island. Due to protests from residents and environmentalists, the construction project was canceled and the parkway ends at a dead end with grass growing over the unfinished portions of the road, directing traffic to the side streets as drivers reach the highway's end. New York's I-990, the highest numbered interstate route in the US, just ends at a junction with a state highway about five or six miles north of its southern terminus at I-290 in Amherst. It was originally supposed to go a lot further, to Lockport, but the public had gotten sick of unrestricted freeway construction by that point.

Interstate 180 is a 13 mile offshoot of I-80 leading to the tiny town of Hennepin, Illinois, originally built so a steel plant there could have easy Interstate access. Unfortunately, the plant went out of business almost as soon as 180 was completed. 180 still stands, and is one of the least travelled pieces of Interstate in America... and in a fit of circular logic, this has been used as justification to scuttle a proposed extension to the more metropolitan Peoria, where an on-ramp and section of Interstate-grade highway meant to connect with it instead dead-end in the middle of a field. Also in Illinois is the Amstutz Expressway , a 2.9 mile four-lane highway which is known as the road-to-nowhere. The Amstutz was originally planned as a connecting route for the downtown area of Waukegan, but the critical link between the neighboring village of North Chicago was never built, and the factories the expressway was designed to serve have since closed. Fewer than 15,000 vehicles use this route as a result, because it's used so little, the Amstutz is often used for filming in movies such as Batman Begins, The Blues Brothers, Groundhog Day, Film/Contagion and The Ice Harvest. Ditto for Interstate 170 (US 40) in Maryland. The ghost ramps were scheduled for demolition in summer 2011. West of Baltimore, I-70 officially ends in a park-and-ride lot just to the east of its junction with I-83. The cleared right-of-way continues to the edge of Gwyn Falls Park. As originally planned, the interstate would have continued all the way to a junction with I-95 near the harbor note The segment linked above was part of that Then there's the ghost ramps of I-275 in Florida. The area near New York's Empire Plaza state office complex in Albany has two of these. At the Rensselaer end of the Dunn Memorial Bridge that carries US 20 across the Hudson River, two stub ends are visible. On the west side, a divided freeway suddenly ends in a loop at the west boundary of the complex once you pass the entrance to the underground parking. Both are relics of a canceled freeway project that would have extended to I-90 on the east and another north-south freeway (also never built) in the middle of Albany to its west.

is a 13 mile offshoot of I-80 leading to the tiny town of Hennepin, Illinois, originally built so a steel plant there could have easy Interstate access. Unfortunately, the plant went out of business almost as soon as 180 was completed. 180 still stands, and is one of the least travelled pieces of Interstate in America... and in a fit of circular logic, this has been used as justification to scuttle a proposed extension to the more metropolitan Peoria, where an on-ramp and section of Interstate-grade highway meant to connect with it instead dead-end in the middle of a field. Most of the original Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys, connecting Knight's Key to Little Duck Key. The original bridge was replaced by a new bridge in 1982, parallel to the old one, but the old one still exists with a couple of sections removed, thereby leaving it unconnected to land. Because it was no longer attached to land, it was ruled in 2006 that it was considered a "wet feet" location as per the "wet feet, dry feet" policy and that a group of Cuban refugees that had made it to the old bridge could still be sent back to Cuba; hearing that the U.S. had apparently disavowed ownership of the old Seven Mile Bridge, the Conch Republic attempted to annex it.

attempted to annex it. There's a double example in Clinton, Michigan (a small town southwest of Ann Arbor, not the Detroit suburb), resulting from two expressways that were planned but never built. One would have run along the path of M-52, which to this day still has an extra-wide right-of-way for what would have been the northbound lanes of an expressway. The other would've run closely to US-12 (which was US-112 at the time), but it was pretty much scuttled once I-94 was built only a few miles north. Despite the changes in plans, there is still visible grading for what would've been a cloverleaf exit between the M-52 and US-112 expressways.

for what would've been a cloverleaf exit between the M-52 and US-112 expressways. New York's Route 7 in northern Rensselaer County also has an extra wide right of way in the vicinity of Tunkhannock Reservoir. It was supposedly done in preparation for the extension of I-88 (which currently ends at I-90 just north of Schenectady) to Vermont.

A little north of that, US 4 becomes an expressway at the Vermont state line, and continues that way to Rutland, where it ends abruptly at a junction with US 7. That was all supposed to be part of I-92, connecting the Albany area with I-91 and I-89.

Some examples from the Netherlands: There's a 30+ km long 2-lane road between the Dutch cities of Haarlem and Leiden that was originally planned as a 4-lane road (40 years ago). The bodies of sand for the 4 lanes are present, and despite being only a 2-lane road, this stretch is raised, with bridges and onramps like a highway, unlike most Dutch 2-lane roads and many 4-lane roads which have traffic lights at intersections. At the north end, near Haarlem, there's a curious turn in the road, and you can see the body of sand continuing ahead for a little while (but not too far, because the north stretch of the road is blocked by other developments) Likewise, between Delft and Rotterdam there is a huge undocumented park that was originally planned to be a highway. It will finally be created after nearly 50 years of discussion... If you look at the outskirts of the national airport Schiphol on satellite pictures (Google Maps) you can spot the remnants of a never created road stretching along the southern edge westwards right through the city of Hoofddorp. The only true proof that you can see on the ground is a rail bridge crossing the non-existing road, some obvious gaps in dykes, and a ditch.

The exit for Gateway Boulevard off of California State Highway 24 between Orinda and the Caldecott Tunnel for years (until the construction of the Bruns Amphitheater) seemed to be an exit to nowhere. It was originally intended to be a major interchange for the never-constructed State Highway 93, which was to connect with the also never completed State Highway 77. Currently, the exit has been renamed Wilder Road and some (different) development is resuming in the area.

Manchester's Mancunian Way has an off-ramp near the A34 that got halfway through being built before somebody realised that it would send traffic the wrong way down a one-way street. Its access point is now blocked off by a sign advertising a (slightly more) correctly built junction, while it's hidden at the other end by a billboard.

Stephenson Avenue in Perth, Australia is a 4 lane, 1km stretch of road originally intended to be part of a much longer highway - the other part of Stephenson Avenue can be found considerably further south. The likelihood of this highway being completed now is slim - a wetland that the road would pass through has now been restored and houses abut the road reserve (which is still clear).

Another highway example: Freeways were often built in segments, and after a particular segment was completed, it would often be shunted onto a nearby side road to provide smoother traffic transitions. Such an arrangement would exist until the next leg of the freeway was open, at which point the "shunt" would generally be abandoned (or less commonly, incorporated into something else). Here is such an example north of Montague, Michigan, where US 31 was temporarily shunted onto its pre-freeway alignment before the freeway was extended to the north; the shunt is still clearly visible but unused. Similarly, Interstate 70 originally shunted off onto US 40 in the small town of Kirkersville, Ohio, until the rest of the freeway was built to the west in The '60s. The "shunt" was left partially intact, and the former eastbound lanes of the shunt now serve as the northernmost portion of SR 158.

is such an example north of Montague, Michigan, where US 31 was temporarily shunted onto its pre-freeway alignment before the freeway was extended to the north; the shunt is still clearly visible but unused. A good example exists in eastern Connecticut for a freeway that was never completed. Originally, I-84 was slated to run east from Hartford to Providence, but plans were scuttled over environmental concerns. The would-be routing has a great deal of evidence, most notable in I-384, a short stub bypassing Manchester to the south. Originally, I-384 actually was signed as I-84, but after the plans into Rhode Island were scuttled, the I-84 designation was shifted to the north, supplanting the short I-86 into Sturbridge, MA. Another piece of the never-built I-84 exists as a freeway bypass of Willimantic, CT, which bears the US-6 designation and has obvious tie-ins at either end for further expansion. Finally, the US-6/I-295 exit west of Providence has an obvious stub where I-84 would've fit in, and the ramp that would have gone from I-295 northbound to I-84 westbound is now just a redundant loop that allows northbound travelers to immediately flip back around to southbound I-295 instead.

If one looks at maps at Interstate 295 in Virginia, one can see that, where 295 merges into I-64 at the very end, there is a highway stub where the Interstate would have continued. There were indeed plans to continue past that area, but were scuttled when the decision was made to focus on the Virginia State Route 288/World War II Veterans Memorial Highway, which effectively did the same thing. While the southbound stub is still there, today the northbound stub and the cloverleaf on-ramp has been removed in favor of an overpass on-ramp to get on 295.

Interstate 189, a southern bypass of Burlington, Vermont, was to have continued to the north and curve into downtown Burlington. However, it was never built due to presence of toxic waste, so the highway ends in a "stub" that is blocked off by Jersey barriers.

that is blocked off by Jersey barriers. Like freeways, subways also contain many areas that were never finished or decommissioned early on, for example, the easternmost part of Aldwych Station. Charing Cross on the Jubilee Line in The London Underground served as the line's central London terminus until 1979, when it got closed off due to the Jubilee Line extension to Stratford. The station spur was retained to relay trains as well as serve as a film set. White City on the Central Line bears the distinction of being the only London Underground station where trains have right-side running instead of left-side running, a byproduct of earlier construction. The line originally ended at Shepherd's Bush, and then trains made a sharp turn north to a storage yard and service facility. Then Wood Lane station opened in 1908, and the track was extended back to Shepherd's Bush to create a balloon loop, with the return of the loop seeing trains cross over the terminating track. In 1947, White City and the West Ruislip extension opened, and Wood Lane was closed. The tracks were built branching out of the existing loop, and White City was close enough that the station had to be built with right-hand running. The tracks revert to their normal left-hand running just past White City on the other side. The western half of the Jubilee line from Baker Street to Stanmore used to be a second branch of the Bakerloo line prior to 1979 when they were split off and given their own line designation to clear up congestion. New platforms were built for the Jubilee line, while nonrevenue track connections were built between the two routes at Baker Street for moving work trains. Kymlinge station on the Stockholm Metro is another one. The area was supposed to be developed into a suburb, but such plans were eventually scrapped. By then, planning of the line the station was on was already well under way, and the station was built but left intentionally unfinished and unopened. There are also stories about the station being haunted. Moscow Metro has quite a few. Several stations were built without exits and any decorations, and when line extensions these were on opened, trains wouldn't stop there. One of them, Spartak on line 7, was completed and opened in 2014. Troitse-Lykovo on the northwestern part of line 3 is responsible for creating the longest (over 6 km/4 miles) ride between stations in the whole system. It's visible from the trains as a somewhat wider, more lit tunnel. Speaking of longest distances between stations, line 9 once had one between Tulskaya and Nagatinskaya. A station was planned there, but work done on it is limited to leaving a straight flat section of tunnel suitable for building platforms, higher ceiling, exits and rooms with equipment required for a standard metro station. There's a diagonal tunnel leading to surface near Paveletskaya on line 2. Its lower end connects to nothing more than line tunnels and it has stairs instead of normally required for depths like there escalators. Nobody knows the true purpose of this structure, most likely it was built either as an extra emergency exit or to facilitate evacuation of a then-large industrial area above in case of air raid. Delovoy Tsentr is a very recent example. Two new island platforms were built next to each other to serve trains branching there from lines 8A and 11 from different directions, creating an incomplete (since tracks of different directions don't connect near this station, just come close enough and then go parallel into it) triangle. These lines opened as a short 2-station single track, with the southern part of the station operational, then extensions to Petrovskiy Park (11) and Ramenki (8A) opened. After some time, northern platform was finished, and it was decided to run southbound trains from line 11 there instead of northbound from 8A by using the new part of the station - meaning the line 8A-side platforms were closed after mere months of service, somewhat similar to the Charing Cross example. The southern half of the station is now temporarily fenced off with corrugated metal sheets. Or maybe not so temporarily - see below. Lines 8 and 8A. The former, unlike many other radial lines, terminates close to the city centre. The western part was being planned for years and finally opened in the 10s as 8A - however, there's still no connection through the centre. Both share the same color and number, suggesting a future unification, that also explains why Delovoi Tsentr was initially served by 8A trains as it's where the central part of the line should start from. Instead, its platforms there were closed, it now continues with line 11 to Savelovskaya, with plans to connect it to what's now the under-construction line 15. Furthermore, some time later it was officially declared that the 8A and 8 linking plan is cancelled due to high complexity and costs. The New York City Subway has plenty of these as well. Perhaps the most infamous example is the Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan. This was intended to be a replacement for the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue Elevated line, but for a long time, nothing got built save for a few unused tunnels, one of which was rented out for a wine cellar. There are also tunnel headings, unused station shells, and in one case an entire stub line (now used for the Transit Museum) which had been intended for the never-built IND Second System . It was not until 2007 that the line finally got a proper construction, and the first three station segment from 72nd Street to 96th Street opened in late December 2016 as an extension of the Q train. Nostrand Avenue on the IND Fulton Street Line is a unique two-level express station, as the express tracks are on the upper level and local tracks are on the lower level, rather than the other way around. The station was originally planned to be a conventional local station with four tracks and two side platforms, with a mezzanine, as proven by the fact that the upper level platforms are wider than the lower level ones (which would have been consistent with the design of a mezzanine), and two unused trackways exist on the lower level between the local tracks (which would have been consistent with the typical design of a local station on a four-track line). A curtain wall separates the local tracks from the unused trackways on both sides. On either side of the station, the express tracks ascend from the local tracks to serve the upper level, then descend to rejoin them. In the Rio de Janeiro subway system there's an underground semi-made station between two active ones which is very visible as a gigantic cave for whoever goes through that route. It also had a planned elevated station that was never built, which results in an enormous way of about 1.2 miles between two stations. There was originally going to be one through Cincinnati. The project was scrapped, but several tunnels were constructed before hand. One is visible near the Norwood lateral on ramp. It's blocked by a three story tall slat fence. That wasn't always the case. There were no tracks, but the tunnel was finished and the atmosphere just screams get out. Even during the day. Lougheed Town Centre station of Vancouver's SkyTrain initially had a third platform and a series of switching tracks built for the planned Evergreen Line. The line was eventually completed and opened at the end of 2016 as the "Evergreen Extension", extending the existing Millennium Line to Port Moody and Coquitlam; Coquitlam Central station includes an extra track stub for a potential future expansion to Port Coquitlam. On the Chicago L, there is an extra wide right of way leading to 2 unused tunnel portals at the west portal of the Milwaukee Dearborn Subway on the Blue Line near UIC. These were once intended for a four track subway line; only two tracks were ever built, and the unused tunnels dead-end after a few yards. Also on the Blue Line, one will notice that when the tracks curve from Lake Street to Milwaukee Avenue, the tunnel bores continue west, albeit with no track of any kind on them, which were intended for a future subway under Lake Street that never saw the light of day. If commuting on Metra's Milwaukee District North Line, Milwaukee District West Line, North Central Service, or Union Pacific West Line, your train passes under a signal bridge east of Tower A2 that looks like a truss arch bridge. That bridge is a remnant from the Paulina Connector of the old Metropolitan Elevated. From 1895 to 1951, trains on the Met's Northwest Side branches to Humboldt Park and Logan Square used the bridge ◊ to travel south to the Met main line ◊ before entering the Loop at Van Buren and Wells. In 1951, the Milwaukee Dearborn Subway opened and all trains from Logan Square were rerouted into the subway. the north-south section of the old Northwest branch including this signal bridge became nonrevenue trackage known as the Paulina Connector. A connection between the Milwaukee Elevated and Paulina Connector remained at Evergreen for several years ◊ , as the connector was the only connection between the Milwaukee Line (as the newly-independent portion of the Northwest branch along Milwaukee Avenue became known) and the rest of the system and was used for nonrevenue equipment moves until 1964 when it was demolished. Only part of the Paulina Connector south of Lake Street remains in operation, used by the Pink Line. Toronto's subway system has its fair share of examples: 'Lower Bay' station is located underneath Bay station. Intended to be part of an experiment in interlining the subway system, the station was only open for six months in 1966 before being shut permanently. The subway platforms still exist as they did in 1966 and are frequently used as a filming location. 'Lower Queen' didn't even get that far. Roughed out for a proposed subway using streetcars (similar to the Queen's Quay LRT station, it was left incomplete after the city decided to build the Bloor-Danforth line (now Line 2) instead. Speaking of Bloor-Danforth/Line 2, Kipling station, as of 2017 the western terminus, has space for an elevated rapid transit track on the upper level opposite the bus bays. This proposal has not yet been acted on, but the track remains. The station's subway level is also open at the western end to make it easier to add a future westward expansion of the line. Lesser examples exist at the original terminal stations of the Bloor-Danforth line, Keele and Woodbine. When the line first opened, stub streetcar lines operated east and west of the subway on what remained of the original Bloor line. Special corridors connecting the streetcar loops to the subway platforms were bricked up and converted to staff space after the subway was expanded and the streetcars discontinued. A former/partial example is the transit level of the Prince Edward Viaduct, completed in 1918 over the Don River valley. The designer of the bridge and R. C. Harris, the head of public works at the time, insisted on having a lower level added for a future subway line. Controversial at the time for its cost, the decision was vindicated when the Bloor-Danforth subway (noticing a pattern?) opened in 1966. The partial example is the Rosedale Valley section of the viaduct; the turn between the two, having been designed for a subway line using streetcars, was deemed too sharp for the system eventually built, so the transit level on this part of the viaduct was bypassed by a new build. Back on Line 1/Yonge-University-Spadina, Queen's Park and St Patrick stations used to have three cross-passages between the northbound and southbound sides of their platforms. One in each station was bricked up after a 16 year-old woman was stabbed to death in one of them in 1975. The passages served as effective hiding places for attackers and served no other purpose (unlike the other two passages, which also provided access to the exits), so they could be closed off without affecting passenger movement. A non-TTC example in Toronto is the Toronto Zoo Domain Ride, a people mover (typically and erroneously called a monorail) that operated from 1976 until 1994, when an accident prompted its closure. The trains are long gone, but the stations and much of the concrete guideway are all still in place. May become an aversion with the proposed introduction of a Maglev system for the zoo. Philadelphia's SEPTA system had a "ghost station," built under a Sears, Roebuck and Co. building on Roosevelt Boulevard in 1967 in anticipation of an extension of the Broad Street Subway. Construction of the extension never came to pass, and the station was destroyed when the Sears building was imploded in 1994. The Docklands Light Railway, when built, had a 'ghost station' at Canary Wharf. The original station was dismantled almost as soon as the line opened for the area to be redeveloped, but the scheduling software was not updated, so trains would still stop on what was now an empty viaduct over a building site. When development had finished a new, much larger station was built. St James station in Sydney's suburban train network was originally intended by John Bradfield note designer and engineer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, who also proposed plans for the current City Circle station loop to be a major interchange station, serving a much more developed Eastern Suburbs line than what ended up being built. Four platforms were constructed in the station, but the inner two platforms never entered service and were eventually filled in and paved over with concrete, resulting in the station having an abnormally wide space between the outer platforms. The rail tunnels connected to said platforms were instead used as a mushroom farm during the Depression and air raid shelter during World War II, and have since fallen into disuse.

The Berlin U And S Bahn got subjected to this trope during the Cold War when the city was divided into east and west. Whilst most lines running east-west were simply closed or terminated at the Wall, a few lines connecting parts of West Berlin unavoidably passed through East Berlin. As a result and to prevent defections, public access to stations along these routes were blocked off and both stations and lines removed from East German maps, whilst from the Western POV trains simply did not stop at the now-disused stations. Their dim lighting and the sight of border guards peering out was what first gave rise to the nickname "ghost stations", a full list of which can be found on The Other Wiki here . The S-Bahn in West-Berlin got another problem. Due to Exact Words in a allied decree from the 1940s saying the Deutsche Reichsbahn would run the S-Bahn of all West-Berlin and said "Reichsbahn" being de facto the GDR railway, the East German government ran the West Berlin S-Bahn. Initially this was a great source of hard currency for the GDR, but after the wall was built in 1961 almost all West-Berliners refused to take the S-Bahn because they did not want to give any money to the GDR regime. Naturally the stations deteriorated and half empty trains ran through even emptier stations until in the mid eighties the GDR authorities had had enough and simply gifted the S-Bahn to West-Berlin - who only very reluctantly agreed to take it. You would not know it from the way the stations look today, but for quite some time the S-Bahn was actually better in the East than in the West.

. Due to various reasons bridges are often the first thing that gets built for new railroad construction. This has a bunch of benefits and can help reduce both the time and the cost projects take. However, during the construction phase there will be a bridge that connects to nothing on either side. Now if the construction gets delayed or canceled, the whole thing just looks ridiculous. For instance, drivers on US 6 west of Denver, Colorado pass under a truss bridge that carries a light rail line over the highway, a bridge that was moved into place in 2009, a full four years before the line opened. A more egregious example is the High Speed Rail connection from Leipzig to Nuremberg (part of a new axis cutting journey time on the roughly 600 km from Berlin to Munich to just four hours). While the initial plans were drawn up almost immediately upon reunification in the nineties, it spent years in Development Hell (the tentative opening of the final part is December of 2017) and two bridges were already constructed yet served no visible purpose for almost a decade. The term "Soda-Brücke" was quickly coined for a bridge that is "just there" (einfach so da) without any purpose.

bridges were already constructed yet served no visible purpose for almost a decade. The term "Soda-Brücke" was quickly coined for a bridge that is "just there" (einfach so da) without any purpose. The Michigan Central Railway Bridge , located upstream from the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge and visible from the Rainbow Bridge, was closed in the 1990s, the last train crossing it in 1993. Fences and barbed wire have been installed and the tracks on the bridge and the Canadian side have been removed, but the grading is still present on either side. It was planned to be demolished in 2012, but is still standing.

, located upstream from the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge and visible from the Rainbow Bridge, was closed in the 1990s, the last train crossing it in 1993. Fences and barbed wire have been installed and the tracks on the bridge and the Canadian side have been removed, but the grading is still present on either side. It was planned to be demolished in 2012, but is still standing. The 501-503 Construction Project in Russia. This was intended to be a railroad from North Urals to Igarka near Yenisei's mouth. A part of this railroad was built in Stalin's times using gulag inmate labor, but work stopped when Stalin died. For several decades the rails just sat there in the tundra, unused. Then part of the railroad was disassembled, and part reclaimed by Gazprom and repaired back into use. But most of the 501-503 still sits there, rusting.

MIT's Building 9 originally had a corridor that connected to Building 7, but when the Rotch Library was added on to Building 7, it took up that space and the connection had to be removed. This resulted in Building 9 having a corridor which has a short flight of stairs leading to nothing but a dead end. In 1998, some clever anonymous hackers put a mural there of a painted tunnel with Wile E. Coyote smashed into it, and it's been there ever since. Seattle's Ballard Bridge has a pair of fenced-off stairways to nowhere on its south end, near the Fisherman's Terminal. It is unknown whether they were actually used for anything.

of a painted tunnel with Wile E. Coyote smashed into it, and it's been there ever since. Seen frequently in shopping malls, which often cover up vacant storefronts with temporary walls. This is more obvious when a department store vacates a mall, often resulting in a hallway that abruptly dead-ends in a wall. In some cases, the vacant anchor is even torn down, creating a more glaring vacancy. Other times, a hallway is intended to end in an anchor store which is never built in the first place. For example, Kyova Mall in Ashland, Kentucky was supposed to have six anchor stores, but two were never built and to this day, the mall has two hallways which lead only to grassy fields. Some shopping malls had basement levels that, if anything, usually hosted only tenants such as a food court, theater, or arcade. In some cases, the space would simply be sealed off to the public, with elevators and escalators blocking it off. In extreme cases, an entire wing of vacant stores may be walled off so that the public cannot access it, or even torn down. Even in cases where the mall is "demalled" and turned into a conventional strip mall, a portion of the enclosed mall concourse may still remain. In most cases, this may be to provide access to still-operational stores that have not integrated into the newer layout (whether temporarily or permanently), but in a few cases, the remaining mall corridors may be left as service hallways or fire escapes and thus inaccessible to the general public.

Work had already started on a new shopping centre in Bradford, England when the recession hit. A large chunk of the city had already been demolished and the foundations had been dug when the money ran out and the work halted. The site has been fenced off to the public and has been known as Bradford's big hole ever since. Likewise with Bloomfield Park, a partially-built shopping mall in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (suburb of Detroit). It got stopped short due to some legal wrangling. Also, Kendall Town Center in Miami was supposed to be a mixed-use property consisting of a mall and apartments. It was put on indefinite hold after the financially-strapped developer merged with another company, but there are still occasional rumblings of the vacant site coming to life.

Thailand has a large number of unfinished "ghost buildings"; monuments to the late 1990's Asian financial crash.

Greece apparently has a property tax loophole where you don't need to pay it if your house is under construction. This means that there are whole neighborhoods of houses that are in an "incomplete" state (half-finished extension of the kitchen, a room with no roof, house with no west wall etc.) so their occupants don't pay the property taxes. Egypt has a similar loophole for buildings that haven't been finished, leading to many buildings with an unfinished top floor which appears in the original plans, but which the builders had no intention of ever finishing, and in many cases isn't even accessible from the floors below it.

In Florida, a fixture along I-4 is the unfinished Majesty Building in Altamonte. Described as "God's electric razor" for its shape, it's a skyscraper intended to be the headquarters of a not-for-profit religious organization and is funded entirely by public donations. The building hasn't progressed beyond a glass facade in 10 years, and continues to fail to live up to its promises to be finished within the "next year."

Tampa International Airport is supposed to have six airside terminals; however, Airside D was demolished in the mid-2000s and never rebuilt. Since the airside terminals connect to the main terminal via tram lines (a similar configuration is used at Orlando International Airport), this led to there being an elevated tram line that abruptly dead-ends into nothing .

. Many buildings have unused elevator shafts, where no elevator car is installed.

Occasionally, a business may occupy a building, but not use the entirety of it. In such cases, the unused portion may be walled off and used for storage, or just left untouched. For instance: This is very common with "secondary" businesses that almost exclusively repurpose other buildings instead of using their own. Examples include Big Lots, Hobby Lobby, Planet Fitness, Burlington note formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory , Save-a-Lot, and Tractor Supply Company. It's not unheard of to see one of these businesses taking over an abandoned grocery store or big box store, and then using only half of it while letting the other half sit untouched. It can also be subverted in cases where they take only half of the building and another chain uses the other half. If a department store with more than one level is underperforming, the owners will sometimes consolidate to just one or two floors to lessen maintenance. In such cases, the elevators/escalators will be blocked off from public use. This is commonly seen with Dillard's, which often downgrades lower-performing stores to smaller-format "clearance" stores before closing them, but it has also been increasingly common with Sears. In some cases, the unused portion of the store will get sold off to another retailer entirely. This was also seen frequently with Steve & Barry's, which almost exclusively repurposed existing buildings. If they took an anchor store in a declining mall, they would often take only the main floor, and not even touch the upper level at all; if they took over a vast single floor building such as an abandoned Kmart, then they would only use about half of it and cordon off the rest.

Countless hotels that eliminate their swimming pools for maintenance reasons will often leave behind the structures around it, such as the pool deck.

Disney Theme Parks contain many remnants of attractions that were never finished, such as the dragon-shaped rock and castle bridge at Disney's Animal Kingdom intended for Beastly Kingdom, and the ravens in The Haunted Mansion that were supposed to be the narrator. They also include remnants of attractions that have long been demolished (the Magic Kingdom Skyway's terminals weren't demolished until over a decade after the ride closed, the Tomorrowland station was razed during Space Mountain's 2009 refurbishment and the Fantasyland station was used for stroller parking until it was razed for an expansion of Fantasyland). In a case of future-proofing, balconies were built in 1971 on the buildings for Flight to the Moon and the Circlevision Theatre where they opened onto Tomorrowland's main entrance pathway. In 1975, they were turned into part of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority.

In 2010, due to economic difficulties, Woodland Park Zoo closed and barricaded the Night half of its Day & Night Exhibit, although the Day part retained its name. East of the Raptor Center is a hilly fenced-off area with vacant enclosures that once housed mountain goats, beavers and otters, this being one of the few areas that has not been renovated.

From 1973 until 2017 Hersheypark's monorail had a ghost station on its route. The second station was a stop at the Hershey chocolate factory for the Factory Tour attraction; this stop was only used for four years, when in 1973 Hershey Chocolate built the Chocolate World Attraction with an simulated tour dark ride and the monorail station at the Factory was closed. A rerouting of the monorail in 2017 bypassed the portion of the company headquarters parking lot that the stop was located in, and the station was removed.

The Aerotrain peoplemover at Washington Dulles International Airport was built with future renovations to the airport's terminals in mind. It is proposed that Concourses C and D will be replaced with new concourses, and thus the station for Concourse C on the Aerotrain is located where the future concourse is to be built. However, since the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority has not been able to get the new concourse building off the ground, an underground walkway was built between the Aerotrain station at Concourse C and the existing Concourse C. And there are escalators to nowhere in the station that was built.

The Hotel Alexandria in Los Angeles has a "phantom wing" that has been sealed off from the rest of the building since an ownership conflict in 1938, and since no elevators or stairs were built in the wing, all floors above ground level are inaccessible. A developer purchased the wing in 2012 and plans to convert it into luxury apartments.

Madrid, in Spain, is fond of this trope: It was planned to build close to the CTBA , a business park in the northern part of the city, the Centro Internacional de Convenciones de Madrid ◊ note Yes, it would look like a giant cheese . Recession arrived and those plans were scrapped forever, leaving this hole in the ground ◊ , until a new skyscraper began to be built in 2017. Years ago there were plans to construct a conmuter train that would connect Móstoles, a largue conmuter town close to Madrid, with Navalcarnero, a town at a few kilometers. Recession hit there, too, and construction was indefinitely stopped, leaving this ◊ , among other similar things, for some years, before work was started to close down what was built and leave everything as it was before work was started.

At some ski areas, when a chairlift gets replaced, the replacement sometimes doesn't follow the same alignment as the lift it replaced. As a result, you can see a visible scar on the mountain where the original lift operated. Sometimes bits of the old infrastructure are still intact: Several old lift alignments can be found at Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado are still easy to find. At the top of the Mercury SuperChair on Peak 9, there's a shed near where traffic from Lift E enters the clearing. The shed is formerly the vault from Lift B, the double chairlift the Mercury SuperChair replaced. Lift B's liftline is still mostly intact. Lift D was a double chairlift on lower Peak 9, and was replaced by the Beaver Run SuperChair in 1990. Its lift line is still visible, and a couple of its towers, plus a haul rope and a few chairs, are now repurposed as a lift evacuation training area (just uphill from where the Beaver Run SuperChair crosses under the Peak 8 SuperConnect). The lift line of the defunct Lift 2 on Peak 8 is signed as a ski trail, accessible via Springmeier. The Eagle Wind lift at Winter Park Resort used to operate as the Outrigger lift in the Winter Park section of the mountain. It opened in 1978, running from Snoasis Restaurant to just above Sunspot Lodge. It was made an auxiliary lift in 1999 when the Eskimo Express lift opened on the adjacent Retta's Run. In 2003, Outrigger was delisted from the Winter Park map and its chairs removed, except for three chairs at the top. The lift was like this until 2005, when the cable and all of the towers below Cranmer Cutoff were removed. Finally, in 2006, everything else was taken out and relocated to Vasquez Ridge to function as Eagle Wind. In 2007, Winter Park replaced their Timberline double chairlift with a longer high speed six pack known as the Panoramic Express. The new lift originates at the bottom of the Sunnyside lift, not at the start of the old Timberline lift. Timberline's bottom terminal stayed intact for a couple years even after the rest of the infrastructure was removed. That non-operating double chairlift at Loveland that runs between Loveland Basin and Loveland Valley, crossing over US Route 6, is Chair 5, which was decommissioned around 2003 but hasn't been removed.

Racing circuits often have sections dummied out when being upgraded or redesigned: Monza's banked oval course, which could be combined with the main Grand Prix course, was last used for racing in 1969 and has been left to decay since then, although the Monza Rally Show still uses it once a year. The Nürburgring Südschleife and Start und Ziel Schleife were abandoned in 1975 and mostly demolished to make way for the Grand Prix circuit shortly after, although parts of the Südschleife still exist as public roads. Silverstone's famous Bridge Corner section between Abbey and Brooklands was decommissioned in 2010 when the circuit was redesigned to better accommodate Moto GP races, being replaced by the current Arena turn complex leading onto the National (now Wellington) Straight before rejoining the original GP layout at Brooklands. The Bridge segment's tarmac was left in place as a spectating area. Hockenheimring's controversial 2002 redesign eliminated the forested Ostkurve section in favor of more tight corners. The Ostkurve's right of way is still visible, but no longer drivable due being demolished and replanted with trees. However, much of the original Dreieckskurs (Triangle) layout remains intact as public or service roads, though the southern tip was cut off from the rest of the course by the construction of Autobahn 6 in 1965. Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, similar to Hockenheim, was cut down to less than half its former length upon redesign; unlike that, the public roads making up the old portion are still drivable.

Despite being only built in the mid 1985 and only consisting of two lines, the Pittsburgh Light Rail/Subway system, "The T," has an abundance of leftover and abandoned lines, largely from the existing infrastructure used to build it. Entry to the subway tunnels underneath Downtown was built using an abandoned train tunnel that connected Penn Station in the Strip District and the mainline of the Pennsylvania Railroad above the Southside. When subway was built the point where the tunnel curved toward Penn Station was turned into Steel Plaza Station, with a new tunnel splitting off to continue underneath downtown. However, the old tunnel continuing to Penn Station was kept along with a shuttle line and platform serving it, ostensibly to connect the subway with the Martin Luther King East Busway. This line became obsolete, however, when the Busway buses had their routes rerouted to take them into Downtown itself, and the shuttle line was cut. The platforms for the shuttle, however, are still at Steel Plaza Station and are rarely ever used. From its opening in 1985 until 2009 all lines of the subway had their terminus downtown at Gateway Center Station, when in 2009 the station was closed in order to construct an underground extension across the Allegheny River. As the line now required a turn in order to enter the tunnel, Gateway Center Station was closed and largely demolished with its replacement, Gateway Station, opening in 2012. While Gateway Center Station was largely demolished, its southbound train platform was left standing, and can still be seen if one sits in a rear facing seat on a southbound train. Outside of downtown, the light rail system was built upon upgrades to existing trolley and streetcar tracks which in turn leads to other oddities. The most notable of which is the unused set of platforms at South Hills Junction and the train tracks running from it along Warrington and Arlington Avenues on Mount Washington. The old platforms were, at the time of conversion to light rail, used for the 52 Allentown, 47D Drake, 47S South Hills Village, and 47L Library streetcar lines. Rerouting of the 47 lines into the new Blue Line Light Rail made the platform only used by the 52 line, which was also converted into the "Brown Line." The Brown Line continued to use the Warrington/Arlington Tracks until 2011, when service cutbacks saw its light rail service replaced with an extended bus service. The tracks are still present, however, and are used by the subway whenever the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel needs to be closed. As noted the Blue line was built upon the former right of ways for the the 47L Library and 47D Drake (itself the last remnant of former intercity trolley line) lines of streetcars, however when the light rail system opened in 1985 a new spur, the 47S South Hills Village, was added along the 47D Drake Line to service South Hills Village Mall and the new trainyard just beyond there. The 47D Drake continued to be in service along this line, splitting at Dorchester Station, until it was cut in 1999, largely due to being superfluous thanks to the 47S. The track and overhead wires used for the Drake line are still present along nearly its entire length along Graesers Run, and can be easily seen along the line between South Hills Village and Dorchester Stations.

A rare example involving movie theaters: Star Theatres opened the Gratiot 10 cinema in Clinton Township, Michigan (yes, the Detroit suburb) on May 11, 1990, and throughout the course of 1990s, 11 additional screens were built, bringing the total number to 21 by 1998. In early 2018, AMC, which took over the theater in 2006, downsized the facility to 15 screens by closing off the 1998-built six-screen wing and filling in the emergency exit doors into the closed auditoriums with additional concrete blocks.

In-Universe

In Adventure: The Inside Job, video game characters love to spend their free time in dummied-out locations, since players would never bother them while they're here.

Wreck-It Ralph is set in video games, so naturally it has a few examples. One is the major character Vanellope Von Schweetz, a character from the racing game Sugar Rush. She glitches in and out when emotionally compromised and isn't allowed to race because she's not a legitimate racer from the game, despite racing being her dream. She lives in Diet Cola Mountain, a dummied-out bonus level. This was actually Invoked on her by King Candy, who's the real imposter, being Turbo, a character from a removed racing game who invaded Sugar Rush because he couldn't stand the spotlight being on someone other than him. Vanellope is indeed a real character fully intended to be in the game, but when Turbo took over, he messed with her code, making everyone forget her and taking her place as the ruler of Sugar Rush.

Since .hack takes place in a fictional MMO, it similarly makes sense that there are examples here as well. In .hack//IMOQ, Kite has the unique Bracelet item, which functionally allows him to hack The World (the game within the game) to affect enemies. One of the possible results when he does so is to get a free item, and some of these items have names that look like placeholders, and which cannot be obtained in any other fashion, and these are generally much more powerful than any other option. It's never outright said, but the suggestion is that these were dummied out of The World, and Kite's use of the Bracelet lets him access these anyway. Most obvious is SWORD, which can be obtained first late in .hack//Mutation in high-level lambda server dungeons.

Music

In the days when vinyl records were the predominant format, album sleeves had to be printed far in advance so that they would be ready when the vinyl was being pressed. As a result, there are a few albums which listed tracks that were cut from the album at the last minute: Lord Melody's Grine Am, which lists the still unreleased "Mass For Sail". The lyric sheets for the vinyl release of Pink Floyd's The Wall have the lyrics for "What Shall We Do Now?" after "Goodbye Blue Sky", where "Empty Spaces" is on the actual album. The lyrics for "Empty Spaces", in turn, are right before "Goodbye Cruel World" at the end of the side. "What Shall We Do Now?" was cut from the album before release due to space constraints on the record, before being whittled down to just the intro and modified to turn it into the much shorter "Empty Spaces". The full version of "What Shall We Do Now?" would be featured in live performances and in the album's 1982 film adaptation, both in its intended spot. Interestingly, the 2000 Live Album from the 1980-1981 tour for The Wall separates "What Shall We Do Now?" into two tracks: the intro and the main body, the former being listed as "Empty Spaces" and the latter as "What Shall We Do Now?" Japan's Gentlemen Take Polaroids, which lists "Some Kind Of Fool" which is still unreleased, save a much later David Sylvian rerecording. The album plays "Burning Bridges", and a sticker was included to highlight this. As a result of its omission, the planned inner sleeve with lyrics was omitted entirely as it was too costly to remake the ones with the Some Kind Of Fool lyrics. Sylvian has repeatedly vetoed the release of the original due to dissatisfaction with his lyrics, much to fans' annoyance. R.E.M.'s Fables Of The Reconstruction, which lists "When I Was Young" on the inner sleeve. It would be rewritten as "I Believe" on the following album Lifes Rich Pageant, although a Fables era demo of this was years later released on its deluxe edition, under the name "Throw Those Trolls Away". Another R.E.M. example happened not with an LP release, but a cassette one: early cassette releases of Murmur list a Cover Version of "There She Goes Again" by the Velvet Underground as the closing track, and indeed this was the initial plan for the album. However, the song was removed at the last minute both to make every song on the record original and to ensure that the band wouldn't have to take a royalty cut. "There She Goes Again" would ultimately surface as the B-Side to the Murmur version of "Radio Free Europe", before being included on the Dead Letter Office rarities compilation and as a bonus track on the 1992 The I.R.S. Years" CD reissue of Murmur'', indexed in its originally intended spot on the tracklist. An inversion of this situation happened with The Clash's London Calling. The closing track "Train in Vain" was added to the album at the last minute, long after the record sleeves were finalized, and as a result became an accidental Hidden Track of sorts, with its presence being indicated by an etching in the runout groove on side four. It was later added to the back cover and liner notes' tracklist on reissues.

In some cases, liner notes will refer to songs that were removed from the album, an example those of Outkast's compilation "Big Boi And Dre Present Outkast" which lists "ATLiens" which was not included on the album.

Pink Floyd's The Early Years 1965-1972 box set contains a 5.1 mix of Meddle buried in the data one of the discs. Word of Saint Paul says that it was intended for release but pulled at the very last minute due to a lack of approval from the band. This oversight was fixed by the time each discs was individually released the next year.

"How Could An Angel Break My Heart" by Toni Braxton originally featured producer Babyface adlibbing in the background, but he ultimately felt his vocals were distracting from Braxton's performance, so he replaced his parts with Kenny G on the saxophone. Nonetheless, the Babyface version is included on the single as the "remix" despite technically being the other way around.

Other Tech

Many MOD music files have unused or hidden patterns, sometimes accessible by skipping beyond the position where the song ends or loops.

Older model car kits, particularly by Tamiya and Fujimi, sometimes had battery-powered or friction-drive motors. These were removed in the rereleased versions, but the cars retain the battery and/or motor compartments. Likewise, many kits have unused parts, usually left over from other variations of the model.

An earlier iPod touch model had room for the yet-to-be-included camera.

Even though the popular games explorer in Windows 8 was removed, it can still be accessed with the run command "%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /E,::{ED228FDF-9EA8-4870-83b1-96b02CFE0D52}". Some programs for bringing back the start menu also use this. This still works in Windows 10 to a certain extent- the only issue is that the module to benchmark the performance of a machine has been removed from Windows 10 and thus the folder will permanently say that the performance of the machine has not yet been tested. Speaking of the start menu, the prerelease version of Windows 8 did have the start menu, just disabled by default. It can be turned back on with a registry edit . Windows Vista, 7, and 8 all have sounds in "C:/Windows/Media" that aren't linked to any event by default. Some examples are "Windows Minimize", "Windows Restore" (both of which were probably removed for being too annoying), "chimes", "chord", "notify, and "recycle". The latter three sound like they are leftovers from Windows 2000, except their filenames are lowercase (as they are capital in 2000). At least one of the preview builds for Windows 8 can be forced to load the Aero desktop interface from Windows 7 by modifying the Registry. However, this disables all the enhanced Desktop Mode functions that the Modern UI would implement. Windows 8 still has "Windows Ding" and "Windows Critical Stop" even though they were replaced by "Windows Background" and "Windows Foreground" respectively. Both of the sounds aren't linked to any sound scheme by default. Not only are there unused sounds, but there are also a variety of MIDI files lurking within each version of Windows. Windows 9x had "canyon" and "passport" (holdovers from their Windows 3.1 days), while later versions have "town" and "onestop" (holdover from earlier versions of DirectX which used the MIDIs in DXDIAG to test the sound card's MIDI synthesizer(s)). Windows 7 has the so-called "GodMode" folder . This folder contains every Control Panel item. Windows 95 has leftover shell elements from 3.1 inside the main directory. You can still call up Program Manager and File Manager, the core shell elements of 3.1.

The original PlayStation Dual Analog gamepad has circuitry and mounts for a vibration motor, which was only included in the Japanese version; hence why some non-Dual Shock games have vibration when using a Dual Shock gamepad.

The Sega Master System has all the hardware of the SG-1000 and can boot SG-1000 ROMs even though the system and games were never released outside of Japan or New Zealand and that the feature was only officially supported in the Sega Mark III. The only thing preventing you from playing SG-1000 games is that the cartridges don't fit in the cartridge slot. There's also the unused expansion slot on the bottom of the console, which wasn't used (though a floppy disk drive was planned) and the contacts blocked off.

The redesigned Super NES model SNS-101 and its Japanese counterpart, the SHVC-101 Super Famicom Jr., removed S-Video and RGB video support from its Multi Out port (relabeling it AV OUT). The video chip still supported these modes, but the respective pins went unused; enterprising console modders could restore this functionality with a little rewiring.

The Wii hardware is capable of playing DVDs (since the Nintendo optical disc format is based on DVDs), and unused code, text saying "Watch DVD," and a DVD banner suggest it was originally going to feature DVD playback but was scrapped, likely because Nintendo believed it wasn't worth the small licensing fee they would need to pay for each unit. It can still be enabled with homebrew, though not in later consoles due to the drive chip being changed. There are also graphics indicating there were plans to have the Wii Remote act as a TV remote, which was later implemented with the Japan-only TV guide channel TV no Tomo Channel G Guide for Wii and the Wii U GamePad.

The Nintendo 3DS has a 3D picture of a rhinoceros skull hidden in its operating system files, which was presumably used to test the 3D capabilities.

WebTV devices had a large "smart card" slot on the front, though they were never used for anything.

Going way back, Mattel's Intellivision had the hardware capability to connect to its planned "Computer Component", which would allow it to be used as a desktop personal computer. Mattel was never able to make that work, however, and that debacle played a huge role in the company's 1983 discontinuation of Intellivision.

The Wii U has a port on the bottom for accessories that were ultimately unreleased.

In the early days of portable tape cassette players after the release of the Sony Walkman, several companies tried cashing in by taking existing models of cassette players/recorders and simply removing features like recorder, speaker, stereo out, etc. in order to enable portable playback. One such model, as discovered by Techmoan, was the Technics M1 Co-Deck, which, as he discovered during his teardown video on the device , still contains a tape erase head and a button for the record function, the latter of which is covered up by a piece of plastic on the front, due to it using the same cassette deck as the Technics M205 and M24 home stereo casette decks.

Other Examples

In a particularly unusual example, the "Winner's Circle" Bonus Round on The $10,000 Pyramid was originally intended to have 10 categories instead of 6. After it was deemed too hard, a board was hastily nailed over the slots where the bottom 4 boxes on the triangular board would have gone. This remained until the set was redesigned.

When TOM first started hosting Toonami, his design included some sort of attachment resembling a scope on the right side of his head. Even during The Intruder, when he used weaponry said scope still wasn't used for anything. During said event he switched into a new body (TOM 2) and said body included the head-scope, now integrated into a divot on his head, but it still wasn't ever used and it disappeared completely when he upgraded into his third body (TOM 3). No design has included the scope since.

So-called "Junk DNA", more properly known as Noncoding DNA , was initially believed to be non-functional remnants of ancestral genes. It has been shown that many non-coding DNA segments actually help regulate other genes, but still the majority of DNA segments are not under any constraint and their mutations do not change body functions in any way. While we're on the topic of bodies, there are many parts of the human body that are still present today, but do not seem to be used for anything. The most notable examples are the Appendix (part of the digestive system that's used in digesting grass), Wisdom Teeth (extra molars from when human's jaws were larger) and the Coccyx (what remains of the tail bones). Many animals also display vestigial features which is helpful for determining their ancestry. The Golden Mole's eyes have been reduced to lens covered by skin (as sight is virtually useless to a burrowing animal) and all that remains of the whale's back legs are relatively tiny bones that are practically embedded within mounds of flesh and are unconnected to the rest of the skeleton. It is not unheard of, however, for the blocking code to vanish or weaken in some specimens, giving the whale noticeable growths with the unmistakable morphology of legs (if disfigured ones).

, was initially believed to be non-functional remnants of ancestral genes. It has been shown that many non-coding DNA segments actually help regulate other genes, but still the majority of DNA segments are not under any constraint and their mutations do not change body functions in any way. An interesting example would be in Star Trek: The Next Generation where an early model of the Ambassador Class is visible in the conference room as a mural of all the Starfleet ships named Enterprise. The final Ambassador design was very different, but the ship in the mural was never changed. Other examples may be present in the various models of ships found on desks of officers; leftovers of models that were going to be used but never were.

A rare tabletop RPG example: the Avalon sourcebook for 7th Sea has a Destiny Spread that grants the character a "1 Point Druidic Secrets Advantage." But Druidic Secrets didn't make it to the printed book. Another one: The first manual for TSR's espionage RPG Top Secret makes several references to an "Intercept Chart" that should be used to resolve certain situations. But it wasn't in the manual. A few months after its release, creator Merle Rasmussen explained in response to a reader letter in Dragon that it had been edited out of the manual in one of the last revisions and should be disregarded.

It's not uncommon for a manufacturer to use stickers to hide/correct erroneous information that has been discovered on a product's packaging after it's too late to change the packaging itself. Seeing what content is underneath is as easy as removing the sticker. For example, the PAL release of No Man's Sky special edition infamously had a sticker covering part of the box indicating the game had multiplayer functionality.

Fulton County, Georgia's abnormal shape is the result of having annexed the smaller Campbell and Milton Counties in 1932 as an austerity measure to save money during the Great Depression. The northern Genie lamp-shaped part of Fulton County that comprises Roswell, Alpharetta, St. John's and Sandy Springs is what used to be Milton County, while Campbell County was originally the part of Fulton County that borders Coweta County.

Toys

Occasionally, Transformers toys will have features taken out during production. One of the most famous is Hoist from Transformers Armada, which was intended to have a geared gimmick similar to that of Cyclonus. Armada Hot Shot's Powerlinx figure instruction sheet includes an illustration showing his visor being movable over his eyes like on the show, but on the actual figure his visor is molded to his head. This is due to using the same instructions as his original toy, which did have a flip-down visor. Voyager-class Starscream from Transformers Cybertron has space for batteries and a speaker, and even some of the circuitry for sound effects, but in all of its releases, the mold has never featured sound effects. On the topic of Voyager-class Starscreams, the Revenge of the Fallen Voyager Starscream was originally meant to have hinges in his hands that would allow them to fold over on themselves to hide them in vehicle mode, and joints that would allow his arm-mounted weaponry to fold further out. While neither of these exist on the final toy, both are visible in his instruction sheet. The Generation 1 toys that were derived from the Diaclone series had "pilot seats" meant for the mini-figures that were included with the original toys. Many of the missile launchers, especially on the reissues, were weakened or disabled. Megatron's original toy could actually load and fire small plastic bullets. Given how Megatron's toy very accurately resembles a small automatic handgun in his alternate mode, Hasbro saw the potential problems well in advance and disabled the feature before someone shot their eye out or, worse yet, was shot by mistake by someone thinking that the toy was a real gun. A large number of Transformers molds are designed such that you can 'backlight' their eyes by shining a light on a section of their head with translucent plastic called a "light pipe". A significant number of Transformers figures have this feature painted over so you can't use it, but the translucent eyes are still there. Canny toy modders use this to implement their own backlighting. Some, however, have the light pipe parts left unpainted but cast in opaque colors, preventing it from being easily changed back. Sometimes, even whole alternate modes are Dummied Out of the official instructions. Beast Machines Silverbolt has a very odd design with his robot-mode legs awkwardly arranged with no rhyme or reason in bird mode—fans discovered a much more feasible 'griffin' mode that was not mentioned in the instructions. Transformers: Robots in Disguise Megatron has four entire alternate modes omitted, given that he was somehow advertised with ten modes instead of six the next time they repainted and reissued his toy. explanation The original Car Robots Gigatron figure was actually designed with only six modes, although fiddling around with the figure generated four additional modes. It received a slight retooling to supposedly better accommodate these new modes and was released by Takara as Devil Gigatron. It was that version of the mold that was released by Hasbro as both RiD Megatron and Galvatron, with only the original six modes documented in Megatron's instructions. When the Transformers design team discovered that the locking point for the first Transformers: Prime Ultra Magnus' gun didn't have enough traction to hold it in hammer mode, the port was made shallower so that it couldn't be used and a new one was put above it in a more functional location. Jawbreaker, a Beast Wars character, originally had an extra jaw hinge to make a more convincing hand from his hyena head in robot mode, but extra tabs were added to prevent it doing so. There doesn't seem to be any particular reason why, either, since it's neither prone to breakage nor results in any more of a choking hazard than without the lock-out. Unlike a lot of other examples, this one can be "hacked" back in using a razor blade. The Combiner Wars Bombshell figure appears to have been originally intended to have a third mode as a gun for a larger figure, which was the case for several other toys of the same size in that line. While the toy still has some 5mm pegs that could be used as handles, it doesn't have anything in its instructions for transforming into a weapon mode. It's still possible to figure something out by being creative.

Hasbro's Nerf N-Strike Barricade REV-10 has an unused electrical switch set inside the grip that is not wired to the engine/trigger circuit. Canny modders have used this switch to create a secondary trigger switch, a feature that Hasbro would later incorporate into the N-Strike Elite blasters that had electrical components.

Modern Toku toys (most prominently Kamen Rider) are two-piece arrangements, consisting of the core toy (a Transformation Trinket, for instance) and a multitude of smaller collectables that combine for full functionality. More often than not the core toy has all the electronics while the collectables trigger the sounds by pressing hidden switches or something similar. As a result, fans have been able to access the sound boards, which not only reveals a character's powers before they appear in the show but sometimes reveals functions that never came up at all, either in the TV show or in the toy line. Complete Selection note A series of high-end, life-sized replicas of Kamen Rider gear aimed at adult consumers version of Kamen Rider Decade's Decadriver belt has transformation sounds for several post-Decade Riders, but the Rider Cards needed to access them weren't made until much later. Similarly, "hacking" Kamen Rider Ghost's Ghost Driver belt revealed a bunch of historical figures whose powers were never invoked in the TV series but appeared in the arcade game Ganbarizing, like Galileo Galilei, King Kamehameha, and Santa Claus. One "hero" whose powers never appeared in either the series or the game was Kamen Rider's creator, Shotaro Ishinomori. Both the Power Rangers Megaforce Legendary Morpher and Power Rangers Dino Charge Dino Charge Morpher have sounds that aren't triggered by any of the available Ranger Keys or Dino Chargers, including holiday greetings and in the case of the Dino Charge Morpher, a message reminding kids to brush their teeth, likely from a scrapped promotional item to be given out with toothpaste or at dentist offices.

A 2002 WWE figure series called Draft was supposed to feature everyone who'd been on the Raw & Smackdown drafts at the time, and provide complete checklists on the back of the packaging. However, due to costcutting, the decision was made to rerelease the most recent figure of everyone who already had one, make them all limited editions, and make humorous notes next to the wrestlers who couldn't be included in the series. Amongst these were Brock Lesnar, Mr Perfect, D'Lo Brown, Shawn Stasiak & Terri (for the Raw draft) as well as Mark Henry, Billy Kidman and Torrie Wilson (for the Smackdown draft).

Websites

If you poke around The Best Page in the Universe's pages' HTML source, you'll find a variety of commented-out bits.

Using the "view source" button on some pages here at TV Tropes will reveal commented-out lines in the wiki markup (lines which begin with %% are comments). At times, these may include examples that were Dummied Out because they didn't meet the Wiki standards (such as Zero Content Examples), but weren't completely removed in hopes that some troper, someday, would save them. On many news websites, some articles will show a different headline in the browser's title bar from the headline on the actual page, reflecting a copy editor's decision to change the display hed after putting the story online without going into the HTML for lack of time or skill.

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