I usually click on the last page link of each thread to see the latest posts. I would say that 50% of the time it's empty, sometimes there are even two empty pages which have links. It seems to get worse the longer the threads get.
That's caused by deleted posts, e.g. spam. For some reason, they still count toward the total postcount, resulting in empty pages at the end. I think TA staff (not sure about mods, but don't think so) can purge those posts permanently. Afaik they did that for the Street Fighter thread, which had like 10 empty pages. If it's too bad in a thread, post there and report your own post with a request to purge deleted posts. You can use me as reference, if you want
Long standing bug with the version of VBulletin we use, part of the site redesign process will be migrating to Xenforo which will be significantly less jank.