Noodle Incident/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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Noodle Incidents in Web Comics include:

  • Freefall
    • Sawtooth reminds Sam of the Calvin and Hobbes incident, saying "You know, the one you blamed on the spiky-haired boy with the stuffed tiger." Florence apparently gets to hear the details, but readers aren't privy to that particular piece of conversation. This is actually fitting, because on at least one occasion Calvin claims to have been framed by aliens for assorted mayhem.
    • Florence also found herself in such an incident in college: It involved herself, a forklift, and her go-to-sleep-instantly remote control.
    • There is even a Noodle incident with Noodle Implements, The royal family is not too happy with Sam due to an incident involving a zeppelin, a "Loop the loop" maneuver, and pudding. Lots and lots of pudding. This indirectly lead him to leave his home planet.
    • "Lost Truck Lake"
    • Not very enigmatic, but "they looked so cute..."
  • Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures had Jerk with a Heart of Gold Abel stuck with Dan at SAIA... with the former being unable to give him a tour of the library, as some incident had taken place there that was so bad he's permanently banned. Given the SAIA librarian's actual identity and appearance, one has to wonder just what happened....
    • Note the Abel feather in the inkwell on the SAIA Librarian's desk.
    • There was also a Running Gag in earlier strips where Aslan would allude to his chaotic wife's many incidents.

Aslan: ... and that was the last time I took Neni to the [X].

    • Another Running Gag involves Dan turning the lake pink.
    • And the time Dan took out about a dozen Death Knights with a spork.
    • Back in the "Warrior for Hire" arc, an old friend of Dans reminiscences:

Kannikah: Remember the time you took out that horde of ice-orcs while wearing only a loin-cloth?

Jim: I know we said we'd never mention it again, but I just wanted to mention it to show you I hadn't forgotten that we agreed not to mention it.

    • In the final confrontation between Obi-Wan and Anakin in Episode III, the comic manages to have a noddle accident actually happen within the story with Pete's cursed d20. However, since the comic always only shows whats happening in the game, we're only left to guess what's actually going on when they roll the die to see the outcome of Anakin trying to salto over Obi-Wan.
      • Also a Noodle Implement; by the description it's not really a die at all, and rolling it ended in fire.
  • Narbonic's Zeta briefly mentions a certain visit to the Mall of America.
    • Narbonic is full of these gags, but the most literal one would be when Helen first went mad in an Italian bistro and caused nine casualties -- somehow -- with a "killer pesto."
      • Actually, that one's explained. You need to take the last word of the file names of every comic from November 12, 2002 onward, and they give you the text-only description of events from her lawyer's point of view.
    • Artie the gerbil gets turned into a human, and then realizes he can go in person to accept his Macarthur 'genius' grant. He says: "It won't be like that time we sent Mell to lecture at Caltech for me!"
  • Girl Genius loves this gag.

Abner: ... I only had her rehearse her lines. There was no context.
Agatha: (stunned) ...and when I asked him if that was a wrench in his pocket...

    • Also, while the members of Master Payne's circus plan their next performance:

Payne:...and then Dame Aedith will do her knife throwing act.
Abner: And this time, do not ask if there are any vampires in the audience.
Dame Aedith: Hey! How was I to know that guy was joking? Who'd joke about vampires!?

"She ... tea cozy ...forty-three hours ... only one spoon ... how ... eek!"

    • Another one from the circus, discussing the former puppeteer for Moxana:

Abner: Originally, she was run by a dwarf named Kurtz. He was killed three years ago by some bad clams.
Krosp: Bad clams?
Abner: They had axes. Anyway...

"While the Nuremburg Pudding Incident has been largely hushed up and reduced to tantalizing snippets of rumor and hearsay after the fact, the two things most sources agree on are that the Professoressa Foglio was probably mostly responsible (whether this was intentional or not), and that it smelled DELICIOUS."

  • Dresden Codak "Remember when Reverse Moses parted the city to escape Aqua-Pharaoh?"
  • Megatokyo had Piro and Largo's roadtrip to Canada: "Hey come on... we got handcuffed by real Mounties! That was cool."
  • Questionable Content
    • Sven's friend Wil leaves a pornographic piece of poetry in the coffee shop. Wil has the "brilliant" idea of getting Sven to go apologize for him, and the following conversation takes place.

Sven: What am I supposed to say? "I'm sorry that my friend is a creepy motherfucker, but will you please go on a date with him anyway?"
Wil: Remember Elenore?
Sven: Aw man, don't call in that favor now. Please.
Wil: I'm calling it in.

    • Another one is used in a much earlier comic. Apparently, Pintsize has a large file in his hard drive of all the chaos he's caused. #472 is his favorite, because "Those preschoolers will remember that day for the rest of their lives." Knowing Pintsize, it's some kind of unholy wacky terror.
    • Not to mention the title of another one: "To Say Nothing of the Crisco Incident"
    • A guest strip also had another Pintsize Noodle Incident: "There's not [sic] time to explain but we're out of eggs and the cops are on the way."
    • And, of course, with the reappearance of Steve we have only vague hints into what secret agent-ish things he was doing while he was gone.
    • Or #1499.
    • June 14th, 1987 Never Happened.
    • Jimbo has an interesting example of one where not even the participants know what happened: "All's I know is we went to a literary convention, I started drinkin', and next thing I know my agent's drivin' like a bat outta hell with me hid in the trunk and I ain't allowed in Canada ever again."
    • The Chaos Loaf incident. In-Universe the only things known are that Samantha is not allowed to work in bakery ever after, and according to herself, "the world just was not ready for Chaos Loaf". Also, the name of the page happens to be "The World Will Never Be Ready", and there's comment "a hundred people died that day".
  • In the webcomic Earthsong, Zaebos threatens to tell of Felucca's role in a literal Noodle Incident.
  • xkcd uses this a few times:
    • Alluded to in strip #410. If you hover over the comic, the Alt Text says "This is nothing. I once lost my genetics, rocketry, and stripping licenses in a single incident." How genetics, rocketry, and stripping can be combined at all boggles the mind.
    • And again in the 2008 Christmas Special.
    • And yet again in TED Talk. Though that one is so specific as to not leave much to the imagination ("The IAU ban came after the 'redefinition of "planet" to include the IAU president's mom' incident"). Most of the others were never explained.
  • "There was that one about the baking soda, but I'm not supposed to remind you about that." [dead link]
  • Something happened to Beaver and Steve last Halloween.
  • Happens in Sluggy Freelance when Riff unveils his new robot, the Mark-5, even though only the Mark-1 and Mark-2 had been shown previously.

Torg: Why did you jump to "Mark-5"? I don't remember Mark-3 and 4!
Riff: I don't want to talk about it.
Torg: And why are lots 189 through 205 closed for repair?
Riff: I don't want to talk about it.
Torg: And lot 206 looks like it's been partially liquefied!
Riff: Drop it already!

Corlis: Well Moppy thinks it's a Kaar'Latch, a giant psychic five-eyed exoskeleton clad creature that is said to feast on the souls of young dragons.
Lemuel: Yeah, but Moppy thinks everything wants to feed on young dragon souls these days.
Corlis: Well, he was right about your sandwich wasn't he?

Roy: --so I'm like, "But you told me we didn't want to turn right!" and Durkon says, "No, I told ye we dinnae want ta turn wights!" Man, we had to make a lot of Fortitude saves the next day.

    • Two on the same page: the MitD isn't allowed in Tsukiko's room because of 'that thing with the peanut butter.' And the crypt thing incident with Tsukiko (though this one is rather transparent, especially given her...inclinations).
    • Tarquin stil hasn't figured out how Thog managed to flood his palace with lemon pudding.
    • The incident with the Rajah. Tarquin filled his mouth with creamed spinach and kept it that way for the duration of the coronation, as the punchline to some elaborate joke.
  • Every single Comments On A Postcard strip from Mezzacotta is based on this principle.
  • Irregular Webcomic made reference to the original Noodle Incident with their own, here
  • There's a reason Virus in Exterminatus Now is officially prohibited from handling any vehicle larger than a pair of shoes. Not that the readers will ever know what it is.
    • Then there's the horrible fate of Lothar's and Rogue's predecessors, Smitty and Jonesy. Even Eastwood and Virus feel bad about what happened to them.

Eastwood: Oh those poor sons of bitches...

    • And the 'bean' incident. Aaand Lothar's story, which he would be better off keeping as one of these.
  • Girls Next Door makes use of this trope, with a never-elaborated upon Prom Night Incident.
    • There is also the Sushi incident which barred Erik from the cast's favorite sushi bar.
  • Eight Bit Theater has a number of these:
    • A few involve Red Mage's book (in which he's writing, in D&D language, the things he's learning from the rest of the Light Warriors). The few pages we see begin with such things as "... my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college," and "that's when they made me their king."
    • These are references to other Noodle Incidents. "If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." is part of the Lewis Black's routine. "...and that's when they made me their king." is said by Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
    • Black Mage also alludes to quite a few less-than-family-friendly events in the past during the comic strip:

Black Mage: Thief, your career as our leader reminds me of watching a blind child stumble through an uneven room filled with knives and tiger pits. Only not as interesting to watch because you can always push the kid if it looks like he'd make it. Who's mom's favourite now?!
Red Mage: Wait. You murdered your own blind brother?
Black Mage: It would have been cruel to let him live after what I did to his eyes.

  • The Macaroni Incident in Legostar Galactica.
  • Sinfest suggests a slightly risque explanation of the original Incident, here.
    • Sinfest has a Running Gag series of strips called You Had to be There, devoted to this trope.
  • The Hyena adoption ceremony in Digger consists of several complicated steps, one of which is described by Boneclaw Mother as "that stupid thing with the cactus spines."
  • What, exactly, the lyrics of "that one about the lady and the sausagemaker" are in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic will likely remain forever a secret. All we know are the reasons it was written (to slander a woman the songwriter hit on and failed to score with) and that it takes about two years to clear the mental images out of one's head.
  • Sandusky has the railroad bridge incident.
  • Yeager in Nodwick invented an eighth deadly sin. All we know about it is that Yeager found it entertaining and called it "blasphotrociterra-o-rama".
  • In Misfile, Vashiel had one where he took the rules of be a smither in his own hands that spending time on earth gave him nightmares about it.
  • Mr. Egbert of Homestuck has a restraining order on record against him from Cirque Du Soleil, for an incident that's never fully explained.
    • Future Dave (now Davesprite) gave John the code for the epic FEAR NO ANVIL, claiming he got it through "shenanigans".
      • "Shenanigans" is a general Dave-speak term for "the story is long and complicated to the point of comprising a whole novel on its own" with a dash of "I'm almost certain you would disapprove of my methods on either moral grounds, or the grounds that making your friends worry is generally considered a Bad Thing".
    • Due to the Anachronic Order of the series, a lot of incidents that start out as examples of this end up explained later on. For example, the FLARP accident that crippled Tavros and blinded Terezi.
  • Broken Plot Device gives us The Bagel Incident.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has never used Dr. McNinja's first name. Originally just a case of No Name Given, this is later handwaved in a conversation between Dr. McNinja and his clone (who goes by Old).

Dr. McNinja: Hey! You uh... You never told anybody our name, did you?
Old: Oh, no way!
Dr. McNinja: 'Cause, you know... the wizard.
Old: Oh, I know.

    • Also, when a university-age Dr M. is talking to Benjamin Franklin about cloning:

Dr. McNinja: A clone of my dad tried to kill him and take his place once. But Dad tricked it into believing my mom was a helicopter rotor. That took care of that!

Lyger: I did not know metal could shred into pieces that small!

  • Cheer: Alex King denies all knowledge of how that moose got in the dance club's room...
  • In The Wotch, this rather hilarious exchange alludes to some past event that soured Kate to Jason. While the two discuss it in the actual comic, their words are covered up by the background events.
  • There's a couple of these in Schlock Mercenary
    • It's mentioned that Der Trihs used to be a tactical genius before part of his brain was eaten by a Borthwog torturer those whole story was actually a fabrication invented by the military to cover the fact they stuffed up a surgical operation they were performing on him, but it's never revealed what happened, or indeed who the Borthwog actually are.
    • "The evolutionary path that led the Oafa to become, essentially, explosive blimps, is a fascinating one involving a metal-rich water world, acidic tentacles, tasty jellyfish, and a happy accident allowing escape from the appetites of everything that cannot fly."
  • Unicorn Jelly: two characters need to create a distraction, so they do the most shocking thing they can think of. The act is described by an un-translatable glyph. We never find out what it was, but later one of the characters says "Such a forbidden act, and it wasn't even all that interesting."
  • Kevin and Kell: The ex-human Danielle is asked if the family's human counterparts are also seen as unique within their world. She says yes, but doesn't explain why, saying there's no point dwelling on such silly differences:

"What could be more frowned on than a rabbit and a wolf?"
"Humans are resourceful."

Tomato: ...so, I tried to explain that she DID give consent, but apparently that only applies when they're alive.

Miriam: You are so doing that with me tonight.
Chuck: I don't think we can. The supplies are usually on back order. [1]

    • Some or all of these "Noodle Incidents" could also be examples of Comic Sutra.
  • Platinum Grit. We'll never know what happened to Jeremy when he was carried away by Mexican strangers because it was "El Secreto del Corazon", a secret of the heart, and his silence was a matter of personal honour and great trust and faith. And because he'd been slamming mescal nonstop and didn't actually remember much of it.
  • Ichabod from Far Out There tells Kiki about a very strange incident, but we only hear a small part of it. The rest of us will probably never know where that epileptic pig came from.
    • Ichabod brings up another one later on. SHOULD he have known those Space Whales had "mommy issues"?
  • Monica of Wapsi Square once tried to use her dog to pick up guys in the park. It apparently resulted in her handbag catching fire.
  • Supernormal Step has the baby carriage bonfire debacle.
  • Enjuhneer found a way to subvert this trope.
  • PvP has a variant where Brent and Cole choose revenge randomly, producing a result that even Brent thinks is excessive.

Brent: No, not Happy Birthday. That's too far.
Cole: It landed on Happy Birthday!
...
Brent: I can't believe you were willing to go through with Happy Birthday.

Unity: I can do finesse!
Sweetheart: No you can't! Remember the panda incident?
Unity: Which one?
Sweatheart: You see? Most people don't even have a panda incident.

      • This is only a noodle incident if you have not read the earlier Skin Horse comics. The first panda incident starts here and the second here. If there were only those, anyway.
    • The Old War. "That's another story..."
    • Also Jonah was responsible for one at Nera's tenth birthday party.
  • Evil Diva threatens her mother with one. Vaguer than usual. All we know is that the threat to reveal it is enough to make the mother go up against The Big Guy. Later it's revealed what she read in her mother's diary, however.
  • In What the Fu, the potato juice incident of 2005, Kitti and Dries's "legendary" anniversary, and everything Zac did on the Fleischmann account.
  • In an early Apple Valley, Doctor Hubris mentions that he is not allowed to enter Indiana ever again following the "Evil Corn" incident.
  • There are a couple in Our Little Adventure. The first being something that happened to Rocky and Angelika in Limbon River, and the second having to do with Angelika's first familiar. These incidents are not talked about, though many people make references to the familiar one in Norveg's company, which frustrates him to no end.
  • The "Project Noodle incident" in Weapon Brown. Which is (naturally) part of the origin story for that comic's version of Calvin and Hobbes.
  • In Sandra and Woo, do we really want to know how playing "Truth or Dare" with Larisa can cause psychological trauma?
  • Prequel has recurring references to a "pretty interesting party trick involving a yoyo and a pineapple" that is never explained - we are merely informed that it's not appropriate for most parties. Which still doesn't keep the main protagonist from performing it in the middle of the town square, although in her defense, she was completely plastered at the time.
  • In Unintentionally Pretentious whatever got Sydney, Mia, and Luthor arrested is banned from conversation.
  • Name-dropped in Twice Blessed (read the last line on that page).
  • Erma: At the start of 2018, the family left on a trip, and got Erma's babysitter Felicia to look after their pet dog Siris. Nearly three years later in Real Life, but only one week later in story time, we see the aftermath of the walk - combining Brick Joke and Noodle Incident.
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