Missed Him by That Much: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"''And on top of that, every other second he walks ''right past'' his family as they just barely miss each other! Just turn your head to the left, dammit!''"|'''[[The Nostalgia Critic]]''' discussing ''[[An American Tail]]'' in [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/1600-nostalgia-critic-top-11-saddest-moments this video.]}}
Two characters are wandering around a busy and/or crowded location such as a large business office, and they continuously and unintentionally just manage to keep missing seeing each other, turning corners, ducking down into cubicles to peer at intriguing computer screens, and so forth.
Variables:
* The two may or may not be actively looking for each other
* The act of seeing would either be very good for both of the duo, or very bad for one of them.
* The sequence sometimes ends with them never meeting, but usually they finally (''finally'') collide at the absolute best/worst/funniest moment.
Usually played for laughs, but can be used in an attempt to build suspense. Also used to execute and maintain a [[Not-So-Imaginary Friend]]. In any event, as some of the examples below will indicate, it is a schtick that is very ''very'' easy for a plot-creator to painfully over-do. For works with contemporary, real-world settings, this trope may soon fall victim to the prevalence of [[Tech Marches On|cell phones]] and wind up [[Discredited Trope|discredited.]]
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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Afro Samurai]]'', after losing the headband to some thugs as a kid, the titular character finds out that the current Number Two is his swordmaster, whom he'd trained under for ''years''. In the manga, he even walks the earth for five years looking for it.
* ''[[One Piece]]''
**
** A far less amusing example occurs in Robin's backstory. When she was very young, her mother left on a quest to discover the true, unrecorded history of the world (a quest Robin herself now pursues). She managed to return to Ohara (after escaping a Marine ship) just when CP9 launched an assault, causing Robin to run to the Tree of Knowledge, ''just'' as her mother was running ''from'' it; the two rushed past each other without either noticing the other.
* The first [[All There in the Manual|sound stage]] of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]] A's'' had both the protagonists and the [[Hero Antagonist|Wolkenritter]] visiting [[Hot Springs Episode|a newly opened hot spring]] and missing a chance meeting with one another. This was mostly thanks to Nanoha and Fate spending [[Ship Tease|most of their time there washing each other's backs]] instead of wandering around the place with [[Those Two Guys|Alisa and Suzuka]].
* This happens in the ''[[Death Note]]'' anime; Light and Misa both wonder who the other Kira is while drinking in the same coffee house.
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** For something that doesn't involve Team Rocket for once, the recurring [[Cool Shades|sunglasses]]-wearing Krookorok, who faded from importance over 40 episodes ago,was revealed to have been stalking Ash and friends the whole time, only to miss them at every opportunity. (There was a quick flashback showing events of previous episodes and where Krookorok was around those times.)
* During the Soul Society arc of ''[[Bleach]]'', the separated group are looking for each other, while Chad accidentally saves Ichigo by blowing up a group of Shinigami mooks without seeing who they were chasing.
* When Marco arrives to Argentina in ''3000 Leagues in Search of Mother'' every time he went to a certain place, his mother had already
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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{{quote|[[The Nostalgia Chick]]: ''"So Thumbelina, who at any given time seems to be only about ten feet away from her house going the wrong way."''}}
** [[Don Bluth]] must love being such a bastard.
* ''[[Labyrinth]]'': "If she had gone that way, she would have walked straight into that castle."
* [[The Film of the Series]] of ''[[My Favorite Martian (film)|My Favorite Martian]]'', The Mars Rover Probe's batteries die within inches of a ridge, on the other side of which is the Martian civilization.
* In ''Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey'', the animals and their owners pass each other on the road without realizing it.
** However, Shadow the leader suddenly got a feeling he should go back, but thinks it was nothing.
* ''[[Pee-wee's Big Adventure]]'' is all about his attempt to get his bike back. While hitching a ride with an escaped convict, a truck carrying his bike pulls up beside them. Since Pee-Wee's laughing with him, he doesn't notice. Still laughing to the driver, he fails to notice the truck turn off at the next exit, while Pee-Wee rides on.
* ''Under The Same Moon'', Carlitos and his friend are looking for his mother, and they walk right behind the bench where she is sitting. To be fair, he hadn't seen her in more than a year, so he might have forgotten how she looked from behind.
* Happens on several occasions in ''The Edge Of Heaven'': The main character, Nejat, looks everywhere for a young woman, who happens to have been crashing unnoticed for weeks in the lecture hall where he teaches German literature. She, in turns, seeks her mother, and doesn't notice her when her car and the bus her mother is riding in are side by side in the street.
* The film ''[[Serendipity]]'' has the two main characters constantly miss bumping into each other by ''this'' much as they're actively trying to find the other. This goes on and on until the viewer is sorely tempted to shout at the screen, "Just meet up ''already!''"
* In spite of coming within spitting distance of one another at various points throughout the film, Bruce Willis's character never once meets or even sees Gary Oldman's in ''[[The Fifth Element]]''.
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* [[Buster Keaton]]'s silent comedy ''[[The Navigator]]'' shows two people repeatedly missing each other on a ship, in spite of the fact that they're also the only two passengers on the vessel.
* ''[[Minority Report]]'' features an awesome sequence with Anderton and Agatha avoiding the Future Crime cops, utilizing Agatha's future-seeing prediction to place themselves at the right place and right time for seemingly random events to hide them from the cops. (Example: Agatha tells Anderton to stop right in the middle of the mall, in plain view. Just as the cops stop at an overhead walkway to look down, a man with balloons blocks their view of Anderton.)
* In ''[[Beethoven (film)|Beethoven's 2nd]]'', when the puppies are still being hidden from the father, there are several close calls where he almost finds one.
* In the movie ''[[Milo and Otis]]'', Otis the dog, while searching for his friend Milo the cat, goes to several places Milo has been, but he always arrives a little too late.
* In the film ''[[Walkabout]]'' a teenaged girl, and her younger brother are lost in the Australian outback. At about the half way point in the movie we are shown that there is a farm house, just the other side of a hill from them. Of course, they never see it.
* In the relatively little known ''Three For The Show,'' a musical comedy starring Jack Lemmon, Gower Champion, Marge Champion, and Betty Grable, Betty Grable is legally married to Jack Lemmon, and legally married to Gower Champion. At one point in the film, each man is led to believe that Betty has chosen him over the other, which leads to Gower Champion showing up at their apartment to set up for an evening with his wife. Then Jack shows up to set up for an evening with his wife. Then Betty comes home. And all three spend at least five minutes running through the apartment in a fantastic example of this trope.
** Though, at one point in this, Jack is in the bathroom shaving, and Gower is in the adjacent bedroom changing, and each one believes that Betty is on the other side of the door.
* In ''[[The Terminator]]'', [[Agent Scully|Dr. Silberman]] scoffs at the idea of the Terminator, and he leaves ''just'' as the Terminator arrives at the station. He's looking at his pager when he first walks in.
* In ''[[Bajrangi Bhaijaan]]'', Bajrangi and Munni infiltrated in a Muslim festival to escape the Pakistani police, and at some moment they were mere meters away of Munni's mother, who was attending the same festival to pray for her daughter's return to home. They only realized it after the fact, when reviewing some footage Nawad filmed at the festival to have as background for his reporting.
== [[Literature]] ==
* The entire plot of the novel ''The Alchemist'' by Paulo Coelho.
* In ''[[Poison]]'', the titular character goes out looking for her baby sister, who was kidnapped by fairies. On her way to the realm the fairies inhabit, she {{spoiler|passes a girl somewhere around her own age, but doesn't stop to talk to her.}} If she had, she would have quickly learned that {{spoiler|the girl was her sister, aged up and returned by the fairies.}} This may in fact be a subversion, because the quest for her sister was only a very small part of what Poison was supposed to be doing, she just didn't know it yet.
* There is one case in a [[Forgotten Realms|Drizzt]] novel where Drizzt and Cattie-Brie are walking on one side of the street to meet Morik the rogue about Wulfgar (who went missing sometime last book), while, on the other side of the street, there is an elf going in the opposite direction to meet an informant to find out where Drizzt is, so [[Wholesome Crossdresser|she]] can kill him. Neither party ever realizes the other was so close by, and Drizzt isn't even aware the elf exists until the climactic showdown.
* In the fourth book of [[The Power of Five]], Scarlett is leaving her home to go to Hong Kong ''just'' as Matt and Jamie are around the corner, and miss her by maybe a dozen meters. [[Lampshaded]], of course.
* Arya in the second and third books of ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' always seems to come within hours, or occasionally minutes of her home or family members only for something to keep her from reaching her destination.
* Ellis Peters has two people, who had never seen each other but are primary-importance characters, do this in one of the Brother Cadfael mysteries, to the point where one holds the others stirrup ''not realizing who the other is''.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In what is probably the longest running example, ''[[Sesame Street]]'' spent over a decade (from 1971 to 1985) exhausting pretty much every conceivable variation of this trope with regards to [[Not-So-Imaginary Friend|popular character Snuffleupagus]]. He was perceived by the vast majority of the adult cast as a figment of Big Bird's imagination until extreme efforts were made to forcibly prevent him from once again fulfilling this trope and leaving just as the gathered adults were supposed to meet him. Behind the scenes, the evident reason for his final unveiling was due to fears about young viewers learning the wrong lesson about attempting to tell the truth.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': The beginning "Partners in Crime" as Donna and the Doctor both sneak into the same office building ''twice'', crash a product presentation, and creatively acquire a list of customers from two office workers with cubicles literally five feet
** Not only the beginning of the episode, but almost all the way to the climax of the episode. Other instances include Donna parking her car and walking away, and mere moments later the TARDIS appears right behind the car; running down intersecting streets and stopping just short of the actual intersection; and so forth. Donna even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] the trope by listing off a number of bizarre events that she investigated, believing the Doctor to have been involved, but dismisses the one where the Titanic almost crashed into Buckingham Palace... which was the only one that the Doctor was ''actually present for''.
** In "The Romans", Barbara is sold as a slave and ends up working in Nero's palace. At the same time, the Doctor and Vicki are guests at the palace. Through the middle two episodes of the serial, they repeatedly just miss seeing Barbara (though Vicki does unwittingly save her life).
** A rare dramatic example in "Girl In The Fireplace". The Doctor meets the Madame de Pompadour at various points of her life. Eventually, he tells her he will come back and take her traveling with him, and she eagerly awaits. However, when he does come back, she has just died and her body is being taken from her mansion. The Doctor's sadness and the letter she leaves him make this episode a real [[Tear Jerker]].
* The early episodes of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' where anyone with "special abilities" was within a few blocks of each other in New York City, and didn't even know it.
* In ''[[Ghostwriter (TV series)|Ghostwriter]]'': ''Lost in Brooklyn'', Safira is trying to find her long-lost brother Malenga. In Part Three, she leaves a message for him. He shows up and finds the message...while she's still walking away. If he had just walked a few steps forward (instead of stopping to read the message), he would have seen her.
* One episode of ''[[Scrubs]]'' had Turk and Carla chasing each other around the hospital, attempting to meet for a pre-arranged kiss.
** Another episode had Turk and JD chasing each other around the hospital, attempting to meet for a hug after Turk got back from his honeymoon. They each ended up in separate rooms, just next to each other. Then, somehow, JD ended up in the same room, [[Crowning Moment of Funny|one floor up]].
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* ''[[Frasier]]'''s third season finale, "You Can Go Home Again", is a flashback to events before the pilot episode. Frasier and Niles are in Cafe Nervosa. Niles leans over to the next table to grab some napkins - and as he does so, his future love interest (and as yet unknown) Daphne leans over to his table to ask Frasier if he has finished with the sugar.
** The number of times that Character A would leave the Cafe, and then seconds later Character B would walk in.
* Happens all of the time in [[Korean Drama
** Gung-ho prosecutor just misses mysterious vigilante in ''[[The City Hunter]]''.
** ''[[You Are Beautiful]]'' is particularly egregious for this across the story arc.
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== Web Comics ==
* [[Dominic Deegan]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130611085353/http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2005-10-08 walks by a ring that could have saved the entire town and a long story arc.] As Dominic is a Seer, this is a pretty big case of [[What an Idiot!]].
** Later on, he explains why he overlooked it, and his friends point out that the way he ended up doing things worked out for the better anyway.
* A [[Running Gag]] for a while in ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'' was Lancelot and Galehaut [http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/1338.htm keeping missing each other].
* In ''[[Freefall]]'' Edge [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1900/fc01866.htm knows this one].
== [[Web Original]] ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130807150204/http://bash.org/?287414 This] bash.org quote.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'': "Home Delivery", [[SpongeBob]] claims that town is in same direction as the moss growing on a rock. Squidward doesn't believe him and insists on going the other way. As it turns out, the town was just past that rock, on the mossy side.
** Another example is when Spongebob spends most of an episode looking for his ID badge, and it turns out that it was on his shirt all along, and he didn't notice because it was on backwards.
* ''[[Kim Possible]]'': "Adventures in Rufus-Sitting" Kim's pursuit of Rufus always brings her within a few feet of Ron and his family in Paris.
* [[Peter Pan]] and Captain Hook do this in the [[Disney]] cartoon around a rock, when Peter is pretending to be a water spirit.
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[[Category:Narrative Tropes]]
[[Category:This Index Is Not an Example]]
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