Noodle Incident/Literature: Difference between revisions

** ''The Whistling Room'': the Buzzing Case, the Grey Dog, the Yellow Finger Experiments, the Silent Garden, and the Nodding Door. The "Grunting Man" case was probably the story titled ''The Hog''.

* ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' has a few.

** After a missile is transformed into a bowl of petunias, which rapidly falls to the surface of Magrathea, we get this lovely line: "Curiously, the only thing the bowl of petunias was thinking as it fell was 'Oh no, not again.'"

*** This later stops being a [[Noodle Incident]], after we find out that the bowl of petunias is [[Cosmic Plaything|Agrajag]].

** Also a nice twist and version with Grindelwald. When in first book we hear that "Dumbledore... is famous for his victory over the dark wizard Grindelwald", we imagine it being a simple story -- that no one could beat Grindelwald, until young Dumbledore duelled the Dark wizard to the death and killed him. In the last book it is revealed that the story is [[Ho Yay|much]] [[Downer Ending|more]] [[Heroic BSOD|complicated]]...

** Aberforth Dumbledore's incident involving using illegal charms on a goat counts as this, seeing as what the charm was is never mentioned, and that Aberforth generally likes goats, enough for one to serve as his patronus, anyway.

** The reason for Hagrid's expulsion from the school is treated like this in the first book and part of the second. It's only brought up about once or twice, but apparently his reaction generally involves [paraphrasing] "clearing his throat loudly and suddenly becoming deaf until the subject is changed." Subverted when we find out the story later in ''[[The Chamber of Secrets]]''.

** Also, in ''[[The Chamber of Secrets]]'' Tom Riddle recalls Hagrid getting in trouble for "trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed." This might have been untrue, since werewolves in [[H Pworld]] have human babies, not cubs, but one wonders what Hagrid really ''did'' get up to.

** The first book mentions two, both related to Quidditch. One is a claim that referees are sometimes known to vanish and turn up in the Sahara Desert months later, which later turned out to be an exaggeration--it only happened once, and it was because his broom had been turned into a Portkey. The other one is the 1473 Quidditch World Cup, where all seven hundred fouls in the game were committed(and several were likely created). Among the things we know happen are that a Chaser was turned into a polecat, some players brought actual weapons onto the field, and that the Transylvanian team released a storm of vampire bats from under their cloaks. One has to wonder how many players survived the 1473 match, and what the hell kind of foul is worse than trying to kill someone with a broadsword.

** And then from [[Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows|The Deathly Hallows]], during Harry's infiltration into the Ministry of Magic. A young witch, among a group of employees present to witness the remains of decoys Harry set off, remarks: "I bet it sneaked up here from Experimental Charms, they're so careless, remember that poisonous duck?" The incident regarding the duck has not been mentioned, much less expanded upon, before or since.

*** On a similar note: on the way to Harry's hearing, a man at the Ministry mentions that they had found something that "We thought it was a bog-standard chicken until it started breathing fire..." This is never explained.

**** It also makes a split-second appearance in the film, which is hysterical to notice for readers who were curious about it.

* ''[[Ethan Brand]]'' by Nathaniel Hawthorne does this with the Unpardonable Sin, the one act [[God]] is incapable of forgiving. The title character, who committed the sin makes occasional references to the woman he apparently did it to, but the act itself is never described, presumably because it's best left to the imagination.

* In Hugh Cook's ''[[The Wishstone And The Wonderworkers]]'', the Originator's manuscript is bowdlerized by members of a sinister organisation, effectively obscuring a number of improbable and unwholesome incidents.

* In the [[Epistolary Novel|epistolary]] fantasy ''[[Sorcery and Cecelia (Literature)|Sorcery and Cecelia]]'', by [[Patricia C Wrede|Patricia C. Wrede]] and [[Caroline Stevermer]], there is repeated reference to a prank pulled by the protagonists that involved sneaking out at midnight to kidnap a goat belonging to Squire Bryant. No clarification is ever made beyond this fact.

* In ''Mishaps'', there is the 'school camp incident'. What exactly happened wasn't made clear, but Pen says that it involved her spending time in a decontamination chamber.

* The Marquis de Sade's work, ''Philosophy in the Bedroom'', shows this happening after all four of the characters involved have engaged in excessively disturbing acts with each other in various combinations throughout the book:

{{quote| MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE--Is there, do you think, any considerable infamy we are not worthy to hear of and execute?<br />

EUGENIE, with a look of revulsion--You are right, 'tis hideous.<br />

MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE--I suspected as much. }}

* In the first ''[[Kingdom Keepers]]'' book, it's mentioned that Maybeck's Aunt Jelly got her nickname in an incident involving a box of jelly donuts. She seems to embarassed to elaborate.

* In the ''[[Babylon 5 (TV)|Babylon 5]]'' novel ''To Dream in the City of Sorrows'', Ranger trainees are required to tell a funny story in one of their lessons. Catherine Sakai's story, from her time at the EarthForce Academy, involved [[Noodle Implements|"A hated drill instructor, a visiting senator, a keg of beer, an exotic dancer, the academy's goat mascot and several mistaken identities."]] Beyond that, all that is known is that her story was funnier than the teacher's.

{{quote| Frank was in one of his very rare tempers. He leaned forward, clenching his fists on the table. "Well, I'll tell you what. I'm going to make it your business. I met Diane at—"}}

** Of course, given that the trouble is mostly because Gwendolyn was once a camp follower, and Frank is a [[Vietnam War]] veteran, the obvious implication is that Diane used to bein a... similar line of work.