The Cat Came Back: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

[[I Owe You My Life|Bob saved Alice's life.]] Alice then voluntarily and happily worships and takes care of Bob ''constantly'' to pay him back. This drives Bob crazy. Crazy enough to try and get away from Alice, but he is doomed to fail. If he gets on a bus, or a plane, or a boat, as soon as he reaches the destination, Alice will be waiting for him, holding the sweater she knitted for him, as well as a tray of [[Your Favorite|his favorite food]]. Alternatively, Bob could [[Berserk Board Barricade|barricade]] himself in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, and just as he finishes hammering in the last nail, he realises Alice has been [[Offscreen Teleportation|standing next to him all along]], handing him the nails.

This uses a comic version of [[Offscreen Teleportation]].

 

 

 

If you're dealing with an object of similar tenacity see [[Clingy MacGuffin]]. Compare [[The Thing That Would Not Leave]]. Not to be confused with ''[[The Cat Returns]]''.

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Early in ''[[Love Hina]]'', Keitaro and Naru both go on a trip to the same place on the same train at the same time in an attempt to get away from each other.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* In the [[Tintin]] comics, Captain Haddock can never escape opera singer Bianca Castafiore. If she doesn't show up in person to plague his life, a Tibetan porter or a Middle Eastern trader will be listening to her singing the Jewel Song on the radio at ear-splitting volume. Cue cursing from Haddock.

* The squid in ''[[De Cape et de Crocs]]''.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In ''[[Up]]'', after Carl tries to get rid of Dug and Kevin, they each show up exactly where he and Russel were running to. Of course, they are an old man and a kid with a house tied to their backs versus a hyperactive dog and a very fast bird.

** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|WILL YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!]]

** {{spoiler|Of course, this is subverted in the third movie, when they end up saving all of Andy's toys from the incinerator, and Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head repeat this line to them.}}

* No teleportation, but in ''What About Bob?'' Richard Dreyfuss' character cannot escape Bill Murray's character.

* Played for laughs masquerading as horror with the doll in ''Doom House''.

* The film ''Malicious'' is an example of the "horror" variation of this trope. Bonus points for featuring [[Fan Service|Molly Ringwald naked in it]].

* Young Buddy does this for a little while to Mr. Incredible at the start of ''The Incredibles.'' A desperate attempt to be named sidekick and an interesting likeness to this trope. {{spoiler|He also sort of does it in appearing to him later as the older, improved supervillian.}}

* Played for horror in ''[[The Grudge]]''; in fact, most of the terror comes when you realize that the curse is inescapable. The final line of the film captures this quite nicely: {{spoiler|"We managed to save the house!"}}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** Let us not forget Romilda Vane, she of the love potion which, by sequence of events, very nearly {{spoiler|got Ron killed.}}

* Appears in Joseph Heller's classic novel ''[[Catch-22]]''. Yossarian spends much of the second half of the book trying to escape Nately's Whore, going to such lengths as to take her up in a plane, fly over Italy, strap a parachute to her back and kick her out (over German held territory), only to return to Pianosa and find she's already waiting for him.

** [[Don't Explain the Joke|Locking oneself into a small airtight box would tend to lead to immediate suffocation and death.]]

** Inverted with the Igors, who stay out of your way most of the time but appear behind you right when you need them.

* Wednesday at the beginning of ''[[American Gods]]''.

* No matter how much the [[No Name Given|nameless protagonist]] of ''[[Green Eggs and Ham]]'' protests and runs, Sam-I-Am will ''always'' be just around the corner to attempt to get him to try the eponymous dish...

* "The cat that kept coming back" was an important plot point in the [[Jeeves and Wooster (novel)|Jeeves and Wooster]] novel ''Aunts Aren't Gentlemen''.

* In [[O. Henry]]'s "The Ransom of Red Chief", one of the kidnappers, Bill, gets so fed up with the titular kidnapee he tries to send the boy home. As he's reporting this to his partner Sam, the kid has unbeknownst to him snuck up behind him, and Sam gently points this out to Bill, after checking to see if there's any history of heart disease in his family.

 

* In addition to the animated cartoon mentioned above, the trope-naming song was also memorably featured in a sketch on ''[[The Muppet Show]]''.

** Actually, the Muppet Show sketch was an almost entirely different song, though it had much the same theme.

* An episode of ''[[Hancock's Half Hour]]'' has Hancock trying to entertain a group of fellow passengers on a train, and predictably alienating them instead. To avoid meeting them on the return journey he takes the (slower) bus, only to find that they've all had the same idea.

* A ''[[Mr. Show]]'' sketch has two old friends/acquaintances say their heartfelt goodbyes after meeting each other for a goodbye drink... only to keep bumping into each other as they stop off to perform various errands on their way home, to their increasing irritation. {{spoiler|Things get really surreal when one of them expects the other to show up, is surprised when he doesn't, panics and begins to check the sites of their previous accidental encounters in increasing hysteria, only to learn the other one has died at some point during the night.}}

* Decidedly non-comedic example in ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "The Hitchhiker", in which a young woman is taking a road trip by herself across a couple state lines. Her first day out, she sees a hitchhiker standing by the side of the road, thumb out, and after she passes him ''she keeps seeing him'', state after state and night after night, until finally she panics, goes to a phone booth and calls her mother. Who thinks that she is {{spoiler|a prank caller, because her daughter died in a car crash two weeks ago}}. When the woman gets back in the car, {{spoiler|[[The Grim Reaper|the hitchhiker is in the back seat, staring at her in the rear-view mirror]] }}.

** A variant was done in the ''Twilight Zone'' revival. A woman continually sees a bus driven by a creepy guy no matter where she goes. {{spoiler|Eventually her dog jumps onto the bus, while she yells at the driver to "get out of [her] life!" The driver replies "It's not your life, it's the life you could have had," and we learn that the woman and the dog were both hit by a car at the beginning of the episode. The dog is brought back to life and, had the woman had the courage to board the bus as well, she could have been revived. Instead, she fades away.}}

* "You'll never get rid of the *boom-boom-boom* no matter what you do!"

** This song is ''The Thing'', by Phil Harris (the singer who voiced Baloo and Little John in Disney's ''[[The Jungle Book (Disney film)|The Jungle Book]]'' and ''[[Robin Hood (Disney film)|Robin Hood]]'')

* [[Alexander Rybak]]'s song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4sfh2u8cgU "OAH"] has Alexander stalking a girl everywhere, while singing "I love you o-aah". The fact that everyone else than the girl gleefully sings and dances along doesn't help her at all.

 

* One of the stories about [[The Trickster|Coyote]] in Navajo myth has him courting a woman who doesn't want him. As part of her [[Engagement Challenge]] she tells him that he must let her kill him four times (four being a major [[Arc Number]] in Navajo myth) and come back. By the fourth time she is so aggravated that she takes up a club, beats Coyote to pieces, crushes the pieces into dust, burns the dust, and scatters the ashes to the winds. He still comes back due to his [[Soul Jar]].

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In the ''[[Professor Layton]]'' games, Layton {{spoiler|adopts the orphaned Flora after the events of the first game. In all the subsequent games, he attempts to leave her at home rather than bring her along on dangerous investigations -- not that he doesn't want her around, but because he worries about her so much, as is made clear in his journal entries. She sneaks along anyway.}} It's somewhat [[Justified]] by an intense case of separation anxiety and [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|monophobia]].

* In one chapter of the shareware game ''Spandex Force'', there's this creepy bearded guy in a Robin-type getup who keeps following the PC around, claiming that he's called "Wonder Boy" and that he wants to be his/her sidekick.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

{{quote|'Most villains in RPGs possess some form of teleportation. They generally use it to materialize in front of the adventurers when they reach the Obligatory Legendary Relic Room and seize the goodies just before you can. The question "if the bad guy can teleport anywhere at any time, then why doesn't (s)he just zip in, grab the artifact, and leave before the adventurers have even finished the nerve-wracking puzzle on the third floor?" is never answered. '}}

* The short film [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwRI39BID4E ''Perv: The Cat''], featuring a cat that consistently gets in the way of a couple about to make love, is essentially this trope.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', the ever-creepy Cal follows Dave around.

* You can't get rid of [http://nedroid.com/2009/05/party-cat-full-series/ Party Cat], even when you get rid of Party Cat.

* Igor in ''[[Nodwick]]'' is able to confront the title character a number of times when he's fleeing from the Henchmen's Guild, only to be fast-talked into going back empty-handed.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In the [[Looney Tunes]] short ''Yankee Doodle Daffy'', Porky Pig is a talent agent trying to go on vacation, who first has to get away from Daffy Duck, who is trying to convince Porky that his young client "Sleepy LaGoon" has star quality, mainly by demonstrating his apparent talents himself.

** A similarly-themed cartoon (''Draftee Daffy'') has Daffy trying to evade "The Little Man from the Draft Board", who even follows him into Hell.

*** Oh, you mean [[Fluffy the Terrible|Gossamer!]]

** This also happened to Ralph Wolf, when he proved unable to evade Sam the Sheepdog. {{spoiler|Like the "Tortoise Beats Hare" example listed above, it turned out that there were multiple Sams.}}

** The short ''[[Northwest Hounded Police]]'' is pretty much nothing but this trope.

* The Warner siblings on ''[[Animaniacs]]'' are fond of doing this as well. Apparently, they can even bi-locate (stand in two positions at the same time in the same room).

** Mr. Burns gets another example when he uses the trapdoor in his office and the victims fall out of the ceiling in the same office, despite this being physically impossible. Burns simply responds exasperatedly "Oh, it's doing that ''thing'' again..."

** And in a Treehouse of Horror ep., with Homer threatened by a psychotic Krusty doll; Homer drops the doll into a [[Bottomless Pit]], but it comes back by [[Cape Fear|riding back home under the car]].

* A [[Running Gag]] in ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', where Garfield will often send the annoyingly-cute Nermal off to Abu Dhabi, but he will find his way back into Garfield's house just seconds later.

** Also in the newspaper comics as well.

* In an episode of ''[[Recess]]'', a kid follows the Recess gang around, causing them bad luck. They do everything they can to lose him, but he always seems to catch up somehow, invariably greeted with sheer disbelief by the troupe. In one of their more extreme plans to get rid of him, Vince boots a ball all the way to China and tells the kid to retrieve it. The gang are momentarily relieved that he's finally gone, until he inexplicably returns from China ''a few seconds later'', complete with a hat and a bowl of Chinese food.

* In the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "Perry Lays an Egg", Perry the Platypus discovers Dr. Doofensmirtz's latest scheme is simply to ridicule [[Interspecies Romance|the whale who stole one of his old girlfriends]], and promptly turns around with an annoyed look on his face. Dr. Doofensmirtz has to chase Perry down in this manner and demand Perry thwart his [[Poke the Poodle|"evil scheme"]]. "I just insulted the macaroni and cheese recipe of a whale! How is that not evil?"

* Lampshaded in an episode of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'', where Shake, Frylock and Meatwad attempt to rid themselves of a murderous ventriloquists' dummy, only for it to reappear every time they look away. Their final attempt to get rid of it involves Shake burning it with a flame thrower while Frylock and Meatwad watch several surveillance monitors looking in every direction. The dummy then appears from above in a parachute.

* Bing the chameleon from ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'' is very persistent once he decides you're his friend.

* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' had Heloise, who just wanted to read her book, being pestered by Jimmy and Beezy, who were having a contest to see who could make the most annoying sound.

* Happens to Rainbow Dash at the start of the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "Griffon the Brush-Off", where Rainbow tries to avoid Pinkie Pie, only for Pinkie to follow her all across Ponyville.

** In one case, Pinkie is happily bouncing along at a casual pace, as she usually does. In the other, she's wildly chasing Dash and matching her (considerable) speed. ''Both methods are equally effective.''

*** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] (like most everything Pinkie Pie does) when Rainbow Dash hides inside the bell of the town bell-tower. As she's clinging to the dark inside of the bell, [[By the Lights of Their Eyes|the bell's clapper opens its eyes.]] Turns out, Pinkie somehow replaced the bell clapper and then pretended to be it! (How she hangs there despite not having any fingers or hands is never explained.)

* [[The Three Caballeros|The Aracuan Bird]] in many of his appearances, especially if [[Donald Duck]] is trying to get away from him.

* ''[[WITCH (animation)|WITCH]]'' has this with Irma, who is constantly hounded by a boy, Marvin, who has a massive crush on her (which she pretends not to appreciate as time wears on).

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Alice and Bob]]

[[Category:Rule of Funny]]

[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cat Came Back, The}}