[FairyKing]

To me it seems like a lot of recent Rider seasons have had a big "endgame-worthy" event somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way in. It might have started with Ghost (although it might have also been in Drive or Gaim and I'm just not remembering) and collecting all the Eyecons, but it's been a pretty steady pattern since then:

Ex-Aid had the defeat of Kuroto Dan, who while it's true was never shown as the only threat, neither the Bugsters nor Masamune took the "main villain" role until he was dealt with. It actually reminds me a lot of the situation in Saber: the evil Rider gets defeated first, then for a while the monster generals are the main villains until the new human villain is revealed.

Build had one "mini-endgame" with the defeat of Faust, then another with the representative battle between Touto and Hokuto, and then another with the representative battle between Touto and Seito. The reason I count those as mini-endgames instead of just plot points is that everything before each one had been building up to a showdown with that specific villain group, and once the heroes won, a new villain took the stage.

I haven't seen Zi-O, but I'll bet it has things like this too.

And Zero-One had Horobi's defeat and Jin's resulting all-out attack, leading to the debut of Shining Assault Hopper and Jin's first death.

I'll bet there are other examples of this in earlier Heisei shows, but I haven't seen enough of them to be sure. My point is, the early endgame thing might have been started by Fukuda but it's hardly unique to him.