What Happened to the Mouse?/Film/Live-Action Films

Examples of What Happened to the Mouse? in Live-Action Films include:

The Trope Namer was one very brief scene in 1987's The Last Emperor, when a character flings his pet mouse out of shot while standing in a hallway. The mouse is never mentioned again, leading some audience members to invoke the trope by name.
- The Extended Cut released on DVD answers the question. The answer: About what you'd expect when a mouse is thrown against a wall, although the mouse used for the shot was not real and no mice were injured in making the film.
In Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, the children were simply left behind by Middle Eye and the rest of the hunters. None of them are seen again in the end, leaving many Unfortunate Implications and Fridge Horror behind.
The Jurassic Park films: In the first film we never know what happened to the stolen embryos: They are last seen being rapidly buried in the mud; the subplot involving InGen's rival company BioSyn and its attempt to seize the dinosaur embryos as well as its sleazy representative, Lewis Dogson, also disappear in the sequels (although they were the major antagonists in the sequel novel, they were left out of the movie adaptation). The upcoming series of games by Telltale Games are touted to answer some of those questions.
- We also never learn the fate of the sick triceratops from the first film. The book explained that it had gotten sick from eating poisonous plants when picking up gizzard stones. This was dropped from the film (possibly due to time constraints). Instead we hear that it was NOT the poisonous plants which leaves the poor triceratops fate unknown.
- I always thought that the triceratops was gaining the ability to reproduce.
- Lampshaded by Spielberg himself on the special features for the most recent DVD/Blu-ray release. Before reading The Lost World, he had assumed that Crichton's sequel would involve the stolen embryos.
- Dodson states that there's only enough coolant in the can for a few hours. It can be assumed that the embryos died after the coolant ran out.
The Wild Women of Wongo. For the first half of the movie it's established that a tribe of "Ape Men" are about to attack. A grand total of two show up, get killed, and the whole invasion is never mentioned again. So two men are a tribe, then?
The Kids Are All Right. The main character's bad friend drags him down the wrong path for the first half of the film, but around the halfway mark, after a scene where the friend literally kicks a dog, both the friend and the dog disappear from the story. Neither are ever mentioned nor seen again.
In Iron Man 2 , the kid who tries to fire his toy at the big robot? He stays there. And at the end, when the robots explode? Yeah. Kid go boom.
- His scene was before the police arrived to evacuate people, wasn't it?
- Never-mind the robots' self-destruct. There were DOZENS of the things, all of them programmed to find and destroy Iron Man. Tony only took care of that one. Did any other drone find the kid after Tony flew elsewhere?
- On a smaller note, what happened to the bird? We don't see it again after Ivan leaves Ha.mmer's facility, and we must assume he made provisions for it.
  - What happened to Ivan's first bird? Ivan cares about it too much to just leave it in his room when he goes to Monaco knowing he'll likely get killed or put in jail after attacking Tony, and he's clearly upset that Hammer tried to use another bird when he couldn't find the first one.
The Room. Most of the plotlines are left unresolved. Some are discarded the moment they are introduced. What happened with the drugs, or the breast cancer, or the new client at Johnny's bank, or Mark thinking about moving to a new place, or Peter the psychiatrist.
Spice World lampshades and subverts this when Melanie C asks the viewers: 'what happened with the bomb on the bus?'
In the TV movie adaptation of The Christmas Shoes, the main character's mother dies. As The Nostalgia Chick points out, no one ever brings it up again for the rest of the movie.
Manos: The Hands of Fate: Torgo got away. Word of God says that he was going to return in Manos 2, which was "sadly" never made.
In The Wizard of Oz
- The Wicked Witch of the West mentions as she sends out the flying monkeys that she is "sending a little bug to take the fight out of them." This was a reference to the Cut Song "The Jitterbug", which would have followed that scene.
- Miss Gulch is presumably still going to come back for Toto. Her dream counterpart was defeated, but she wasn't.
Happens twice in Troll 2. The first time, it's not too bad—Drew is knocked unconscious and wakes to the sound of a blender. If you can hear over the bad sound-mixing, Creedence has announced that she's going to feed him a milkshake full of that slime that turns you into a plant, and implicitly, full of Arnold as well. So we can assume that Drew gets eaten. However, Brent's disappearance from the film is nothing short of baffling: after the infamous popcorn sex-scene, we get a brief shot of him covered in popcorn muttering "no more, no more popcorn", and then he's gone from the rest of the movie. He's not even in the car when the Waits family and Elliot drive back from Nilbog.
In It Came from Outer Space 2 a blob engulfs various terrestrial life forms, starting with a coyote, and sends alien copies of each one out into the world. At the end, the blob turns back into a spaceship and flies off, leaving all the humans it engulfed behind... but what happened to the coyote?
Cult film The Doom Generation has a disproportionate number of these. Multiple characters vow revenge on the protagonists after mistaking one of them for a former lover, but only two of them ever show up again. The FBI is shown holding a briefing about the protagonists' involvement in a murder-suicide, but they never show up again. It's a weird movie.
In Mystery Men, Dr. Annabel Leek, the Big Bad's lover and henchwoman, simply vanishes without a trace halfway through the film and is never mentioned again.
Apocalypse Now: What happened to the dog? This is still the most asked question by all the actors from the film. There is also the matter of the surfboard. Apocalypse Now Redux includes a lot of deleted scenes which answer most of the questions (but still leaves a few hanging).
The Movie of Mystery Science Theater 3000 had an infamous one where Crow picks up a chainsaw in Tom's room and even says "Hey, a chainsaw!" Nothing else happens with this afterward, thanks to Executive Meddling forcing a completely different ending than the original one where Crow uses the chainsaw in yet another escape attempt. It still more or less works as a random throwaway joke.
In Taken, while looking for his kidnapped daughter, Bryan's investigation leads him to a woman that has been forced into drug addiction. He is in the process of cleaning out her system when she gives him a new lead. He promptly rushes off, leaving her barely coherent, with a saline drip in her arm, in a random hotel room. She is never mentioned again. He presumably left her in the care of the hotel owner, whom he knew.
In Cannibal! The Musical, Alferd Packer spends much of his time in prison building a dollhouse, which never amounts to anything. Trey Parker says this wasn't really supposed to be a plot point, and was just a reference to the real Alfred Packer's hobby of building dollhouses, but he admits there should have at least been a scene where he finishes the dollhouse.
Escape from New York: "You wanna know what they did to Fresno Bob?" You'll never know. It's actually revealed in the Novelization. He was skinned alive.
About 20 minutes before My Fair Lady ends Col. Pickering decides to search for poor little Eliza who went AWOL. He determinedly walks out of the library set and we never see him or hear of him again.
Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof: What happened to their actress friend Lee, whom they left alone with a creepy hillbilly Jasper? It seems unlikely that Jasper would try anything too criminal, given that he knows several people will be arriving to collect her in a few minutes. However, Word of God says that Jasper, who also appears in Kill Bill, does in fact rape her.
In the Three Stooges short "Cookoo Cavaliers", the Stooges run a beauty salon. When asked to bleach some women's hair, they inadvertently take out some bottles of hair remover. At one point, the hair remover gets sprayed all over a dog, and Curly is shown beginning to wipe off the dog with a towel. But the dog is never seen again, despite this being a very obvious setup for a joke where the dog's fur falls off.
What happens to the third Treadstone agent, Manheim, in The Bourne Identity? He shows up throughout the movie, does his job and vanishes. Then in the next movie, Bourne meets a guy named Jarda who says they are the last two agents. Did Manheim get replaced?
In Arachnophobia, Ross' friend Chris survives the spider infestation and manages to escape from the house with the family; he is last seen trying to pull Ross out of the house on a ladder but is knocked over. He is never seen again after that.
In the original version of The Blob, considerable emphasis is placed on the old man's puppy for much of the film. It precipitates several important scenes, and is shown to be okay after each Blob encounter. Until the supermarket scene (which it clearly survived). After that, it is never seen or mentioned. Even Jane's little brother, who was promised the puppy and was very excited about it, never brings it up.
- The old man's dog in the remake isn't accounted for either, but it's only in two scenes, so it isn't nearly as odd.
- When Steve and Jane go to the movie theater to enlist the help of Steve's friends to warn the town of the blob, the girlfriends of Steve's friends also go along to help. Once they get the attention of many of the townsfolk, Steve's friends stick around, but their girlfriends disappear for the rest of the movie.
In House of Flying Daggers, the eponymous society has been discovered and the police have been sent in. There's a shot of a few troops advancing cautiously through the bamboo forest. Then, the fate of the House and the police are dropped in favour of the main characters dying very slowly.
There's a particularly monstrous moment of this in the dire Duel knock-off Wheels of Terror: the heroine is driving a bus full of schoolchildren when she decides to chase the car that's just abducted her daughter. She lets the schoolchildren out at an abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere, and they are never mentioned again. There's an explosion, which may have been meant to indicate that they died, but it's not very clear.
In The Rats, the heroine's friend Jay is the first person to be bitten by the rats. She survives the attack but is then hospitalized with septicemia and halfway through the movie a scene establishes her as being in a very critical condition. We never find out whether she lives or dies and she is never seen or mentioned again after that scene.
In Poltergeist 3, teenage couple Donna and Scott are pulled through a Portal Pool and onto the Other Side. Then, at the end of the film, Donna is returned safe and sound to her family. As for Scott? The film crew reluctantly admitted that, when they did a last-minute reshoot of the ending, they simply forgot about him. The question of what happened to Scott took on new life as the internet brought fans together to offer their own theories: presumably, he's still Trapped in Another World.
In Metropolis, Freder agrees to stand in for an exhausted worker, telling him to go to his servant Josophat's house for the time being. The worker instead steals Freder's money and goes on a spree through the city's pleasure district. A subplot involving him originally followed, but due to missing footage (some of which was only recently discovered), nearly all cuts of the film currently available omit any further mention of him.
Pan's Labyrinth: When Ofelia escapes from the Pale Man, she breaks her chalk and leaves a piece behind, and this action is filmed in such a way as to make sure the viewer knows that there is a piece of chalk there that the Pale Man could use to escape. Straight into her bedroom, no less. And while that would have undermined the ambiguity of the film, that same ambiguity made it worryingly possible.
Several early scenes in Crocodile Dundee imply that Mick is a croc poacher, but this is never mentioned again once they get to New York. It might simply be intended to convey that Mick is an irreverant rural type who plays by his own rules rather than follow the laws of civilized society, which is basically how he stays.
Noxeema did deliver Clara's letter to Mr Robert Mitchum once they got to Hollywood in To Wong Fu Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar didn't she? Well, didn't she?
Sophie in Halloweentown High. When she and the other two Piper kids left for school, she completely vanished from the movie. You think she would've cared about the main plot where if Marnie fails to make the Halloweentown High student transfer a success, then her family's powers could be taken away. It's pretty blatant that the creators didn't care for Sophie anymore now that she aged. This is evident in Return To Halloweentown where she and Grandma Aggie got Put on a Bus. Even then, Grandma Aggie at least had two appearances; Sophie was only briefly mentioned.
- Luke never gets any appearances or references past the second film too. As does Kal, who is said to not have been destroyed yet never shows up again.
In Hallmark's 1999 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, Alice saves three playing cards who were about to be beheaded by the Queen of Hearts for planting white roses instead of red ones, by telling them to jump into her pocket. That's the last we ever hear from them.
The disappearance of Birdy midway through All About Eve.
The Coca-Cola Kid actually introduces us to a real mouse early on in the story, and shows the main character interacting with it briefly a couple of times, although it seems to be destined to be forgotten since it has no significance in the plot. But, in a wonderful case of last-minute trope aversion, the mouse plays a notable role in the final scene.
In Halls of Anger, some white teenagers are bused to a predominately black school. The blonde girl gets cornered in the locker room by some black girls who proceed to rip her clothes off. We cut to a race riot outside, the standard Teacher Who Wants to Make a Difference (is this a trope?) makes a rousing speech to calm everyone down, The End. What happened to the blonde?
In Big House, USA a man named Baker is arrested for kidnapping a boy named Danny and holding him for ransom. Danny was not in the fire tower where Baker left him. Even the narrator at the end of the movie admits no one knows what happened to Danny.
There are 10 "Basterds" in Inglourious Basterds, not counting Hicox, but counting Aldo Raine, Hugo Stiglitz, and the "eight. Jewish. American. soldiers." Two are onscreen, alive, in the final shot, two die in the theater, two more die in the tavern. That leaves four Basterds whose fates are unaccounted for.
- Word of God (through a script) says that any Bastards who didn't appear in or after the tavern scene were dead by that point.
In The Mummy Returns, Imhotep resurrects four palace guards. All four charge out of the museum and crush Rick's car. However, only three of them are accounted for in the ensuing fight scene.
- According to the original script, the fourth was supposed to attack Alex after the bus had come to a stop. However, director Stephen Sommers decided to cut the scene short in order to get on with the story.
Mr. Bigglesworth, Dr. Evil's bald cat in the Austin Powers films, is last briefly seen near the beginning of the second film, then disappears throughout the rest of the movie with no explanation. He's only seen in a flashback (with full hair) in the third movie.
- While the third movie does have some explaining to do, Mr Bigglesworth's disappearance in the second is explained: Dr Evil just didn't taking him back in time.
In the 2009 movie Obsessed, Lisa the stalker apparently gets flowers complete with handwritten card from the man she's after, Derek (who wants absolutely nothing to do with the woman), while she's in the hospital. The movie never explains how she got them or who wrote the card, and they are never mentioned again in the film.
In The Day After Tomorrow Jake Gyllenhaal's rival for Emmy Rossum's affections talks about trying to get to his younger brother early in the film. The last mention of this is just before Gyllenhaal's character almost drowns while calling his dad. It's implied that the brother dies in the tragedy.
Shaun of the Dead has several that are addressed in DVD extras, such as how Shaun lured the zombies away from the pub and survived, how Shaun got zombie Ed back to his house and what happened to Diane who just disappeared into a crowd of zombies at one point near the end and never seen again (she managed to climb into a tree where she passed out, woke up when all the zombies were gone and order was restored, but decided to stay up in the tree anyways just to be safe where she survived by eating her boyfriend's leg).
Ginger Snaps has one of these. While the core of the plot revolves around the two sisters, their mother, and the older sister's boyfriend, the girls' father is an important secondary character. He is last seen briefly just before the climax of the film begins, and is never seen or heard from again.
The Grim Reaper is apparently still running amok in the "real" world at the end of Last Action Hero.
- Since he declares that he's following a list, and doesn't touch people who aren't on it, he presumably doesn't make any real impact on the world - he only touches people who would have died anyway.
In Friday the 13 th Part 2 there is a major character who is last seen at a bar and apparently gets forgotten about entirely by the film. Fans all wanted to know what happened to him. The actor who played him said in an interview that he had always thought the man probably hooked up with a waitress and had a one-night stand.
- In The Final Chapter (Part 4), Gordon, the dog, is last seen jumping through a window to escape Jason. We never see him again following this. Likewise, Trish does not appear in the fifth or sixth films, even though she survives at the end.
In the first act of A Bronx Tale, the main character Calogero is 9, living with his mother and father. There's a Time Skip for the second half of the movie, which takes place about 7 or 8 years later, and his mother is never seen or mentioned. This is a shame because logically she might have been very useful in patching up the strained relationship between Calogero and his father Lorenzo.
In the movie of The Addams Family, Tully and Margaret Alford's son, who appears in one scene (and in the credits as "Tully Jr.") but despite the fact that his mother runs off with Cousin Itt and that his father is buried, possibly alive, in the Addams' graveyard, he's never spoken of again, not even in Addams Family Values.
- The most likely resolution is that he was taken in by relatives of his father.
John Carpenter's The Thing
- The fate of Nauls. During the final confrontation, he walks off down a corridor in the Arctic base and vanishes promptly from the film. The original script had him getting attacked by a jack-in-the-box like alien, only they cut the scene as the special effects didn't look real enough, and Carpenter liked leaving it ambiguous anyway.
  - It's almost certain that he just got killed off-screen, but it's never actually resolved.
- Also, we never find out who got to the blood.
  - We do. When returning to the storage room while Bennings is being assimilated, you clearly hear Windows drop the keys that were used to break into the room with the blood, an opportunity Thing uses to create panic. Check out Windows' reaction when Gary and Doc are arguing about who's to blame, and that's when he flips and hauls ass to the gun cabinet.
In The Stupids, the main antagonist, the colonel, is last seen when Harvey Atkin's character hits him with a door, knocking him out. We never know what becomes of him later.
In the Steve Martin movie, L.A. Story, several characters are very impressed with the reputation of agent Harry Zell. Many different conversations mention him, and Steve Martin himself complains about his current agent, saying he wouldn't get such bad gigs if he worked with Harry Zell. After such a build-up, Harry Zell never appears.
- Deleted scenes show that Harry Zell is played by an over-the-top John Lithgow, who flies around with a rocket pack, and encourages Steve Martin to skip from place-to-place. (It's the new walking.)
  - An over-the-top John Lithgow? Surely not!
In Splash, Freddie is last seen distracting the cops after helping his brother rescue his mermaid girlfriend. The head scientist orders him arrested, and that's the last we see of him. Kind of a dark character ending for such a frothy movie.
In the movie Daddy's Girl, near the middle Jody murders her mom's friend Rachel and her death goes unmentioned for the rest of the movie.
Puppet Master I had an oriental puppet in the beginning that was placed in the box by Andre Toulon along with the other puppets, hidden away safely. He was never seen again. This also goes to the maid of the Gallaghers. Despite being revived and guarding an exit, she suddenly just disappears out of shot and is never noted again.
The Harry Potter films are a bit tricky regarding this trope, since the movies could accurately be considered one hugely long film that's simply been chopped into manageable-length chunks. In many cases, what appears to be a What Happened to the Mouse? is resolved in a later movie. But sometimes, the Compressed Adaptation doesn't allow for it. Best example is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where we get the long interview scene with the infuriating Rita Skeeter but she disappears, never to be mentioned again and never gets the well-deserved comeuppance that scene makes us so look forward to.
- Don't forget Percy Weasley, Ron's older brother. He was in the first film, but disappears until the fifth where he has a non-speaking role. In the books, he and his father are having a fight for the duration, which explains his absence, but in the movies, nothing is mentioned about it. He's just gone (and his father never even mentions him again).
  - Well, he finished school. So as long as he doesn't become a teacher it is only natural to not see him through most of the movies. And as for the times when they are not in school, he could be working.
  - If you look carefully, you can see Percy in the background a few times in the final film standing with the rest of Hogwart's defenders, and sitting with the rest of the Weasley family after the battle.
- People who have not read the books may wonder as to why Barty Crouch Jr. from Goblet of Fire does not make a reappearance in later films after Azkaban sees a mass breakout, and other significant Death Eaters like Wormtail and Bellatrix are clearly identified. He'd be easy to notice, given his loyalty and insanity matched only by Bellatrix. Obviously, of course, it would create a plot hole for Fudge's denial of Voldemort's return in Order of the Phoenix if Barty did not receive the Dementor's Kiss as he did in the book.
- One of the worst examples of this trope comes in the last two movies. Just like in the books, the first Deathly Hallows movie plants unsettling clues about Dumbledore's backstory and family. The second movie never explains this in the slightest, despite a full history being given in the books.
- Crabbe. He disappears from the last film entirely. The filmmakers did this because his actor was arrested on drug charges, but no mention is given to him at all in the film, leaving question as to why Goyle is seen without him for the first time in the series.
In The Karate Kid remake (2010), when Dre and his mother move into their apartment in China, Dre meets a blond boy who befriends him. Not long thereafter, he is never seen again.
- You can actually see him cheering on Dre alongside Dre's mom and the Love Interest at the final tournament. However, he still makes no appearances between his initial introduction and appearing at the tournament, making many wonder where he was, as well as causing some mild surprised at seeing him appear again.
In Piranha 3D Derrick's assistant Andrew vanishes just before Derrick's boat hits a rock and begins to sink. Presumably he is eaten by the piranha but his disappearance is weird since every other named character with lines who dies does so graphically on screen.
- According to Word of God he was also supposed to get a graphic death (specifically his nose being bitten off) but the scene was cut due to budget limitations. The scene is in the Blu-Ray bonus features (unfortunately only half finished).
In Kick-Ass, we never find out what happens to Angie D'Amico at the end. Or to Mr. Bitey.
- 'FUCK YOU, MR. BITEY!'
Remember Anamaria, the female pirate from the first Pirates of the Caribbean? She just vanished and doesn't appear in the later movies even thought the rest of Sparrow's crew is seen again.
- It's possible that the PoTC franchise was originally going to have two female characters - the dainty noble and the female pirate. Due to The Smurfette Principle, they were eventually combined into a dainty noble who wants to be a female pirate, but accidentally left in Anamaria even though a lot of her scenes probably were rewritten to have Elizabeth in them instead.
- Again, the cages the cannibal tribe put the crew in weren't built until after they arrived...
Whatever happened to Pugsley the Iguana in The Terminator? Did Sarah ever miss him?
- Considering that she got herself a German Shepherd to warn her if any more Terminators came after her, I don't think the iguana would have been much use. There's also the possibility that it was killed when the Terminator wrecked the place anyway.
In Death Wish 3, Kersey's friend leaves in the middle of a town-wide gunfight to reload his zip gun. He doesn't appear again. He's probably deader than a doornail.
Quite a few important plot threads were left unresolved in Super Mario Bros which would have been Left Hanging had they not been put on the sidelines by numerous script rewrites and reshoots. Namely, the parallel world is still slowly dying from lack of clean, renewable resources, Toad and innumerable prisoners are still de-evolved, and rival plumbers Mike and Doug never get their comeuppance. The King remaining a citywide fungus would have been this had Lance Henriksen not cameoed in a reshoot where his character returns to human form after Koopa's defeat.
In Paranormal Activity 2, the family pooch is dragged off screen and knocked unconscious; she survives, and the family takes her to the vet to recover. We never see her again or hear about her death, even in the scene set three weeks after she's left there.
In Robin Hood (2010 film), in the theatrical cut at least, Prince John's first wife disappears after the scene which establishes she has been displaced by the French princess, which France can use as a pretext to go to war. John says he will ask the Pope for an annulment, but that's all the film gives on this matter.
- After King Richard dies, Robin and his group head back to England. The rest of the English army (hundreds or thousands of troops) are left behind in France to continue the war. They are never mentioned again. What makes this incredibly jarring is that near the end of the movie the French invade England with a sizable army. How is this possible if they are still at war at home? It's like the screen play completely forgot about them, and we are expected to as well.
In Mortal Kombat Annihilation Nightwolf tells Liu Kang he must pass three tests before he can defeat Shao Kahn. The first test is courage, which apparently involves having a hatchet thrown at your head to induce a "dream-state." We never learn what the other two tests were.
- Presumably the second had to do with Jade, given the convenient timing of her entrance. As for the third...?
In Ridley Scott's Legend we never hear from Blix and the other goblin again after the first half of the film, despite them being major villains. Also, and this might come under another trope (please edit to include if so), but what exactly was Blunder's "long story" explaining how he came to be one of the bad guys and entrusted by Darkness enough to be one of the trio sent after the unicorn? "Doesn't matter" my arse!
Vertigo's Midge vanishes about half-way through the film.
In the National Geographic's The Last Lions Ma-di-Tau leaves her prideland choosing to spare her cubs from the males of the marauding pride. When negotiating with the pride later, the infanticidal males are not mentioned, nor how her cubs are spared from them.
In Faster, Driver's tattoo is touted as some sort of "Warning: Do Not Screw With" sign. The first time we see it, the sight of it is enough to chase off a 300lb Samoan bouncer. After the film's thirty-minute mark, we neither hear about the tattoo nor see anyone else react to it. We don't even learn what language it's in (though presumably some sort of Samoan dialect), let alone what it actually says.
In House II: The Second Story near the middle we are introduced to Bill Towner an eccentric electrician, after discovering the crystal skull uncovers a portal to another dimension he accompanies Jessie and Charlie on their journey and takes his sword with implying he has done things like this in the past, near the end of their travels they arrive in an Aztec temple and save a woman from a sacrifice and Bill stays behind to fight off the remaining Aztecs, he tells them that he will come with them later because he has to attend his son's baseball game, he is never seen again after that.
In The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, there are four bad guys. The Big Bad gets set on fire, the guy that just won't die gets shot in the head, and one of the two punk gunslingers gets shot in the mouth. The other punk gunslinger is last seen fighting Jazz and Sam the Sleazebag, and no mention is given to him afterwards.
- He is clearly at a disadvantage, though, having been hit with a car and possibly having his fingers broken when Sam stepped on them. The fact that Sam and Jazz are next shown entering the building shows that they must have won the fight, and the fact that he doesn't return for revenge at the end as Smiley does suggests he may be dead.
  - An earlier draft of the script depicts him gaining the upper hand against Sam and subsequently being shot to death by Jazz.
In the classic giant ant movie, Them the opening scenes show the Ellinson girl walking in the desert, catatonic after seeing her family devoured. Later, the elder Dr. Medford waves a jar of formic acid under her nose to test his suspicions. She immediately breaks her catatonia, hysterically shrieking, "Them! Them!" The trooper, FBI agent, and two ant experts hastily deposit her in the physician's arms and flee. For all we know, she's still in a strait jacket in the Santa Fe loony bin.
- Never mind her, she's with her aunt and will be fine. What about the pilot who reported the flying ants and was put in an asylum. The doctors wanted to release him but the FBI agent told them to keep him there and "We'll call you when he's sane." Twenty years later "Hey, what ever happened to .. uh oh"
An early scene in What Lies Beneath shows Norman and Claire seeing off their daughter Caitlin at her college dormitory. Then Caitlin is never seen or heard from again, even though we can imagine she would be profoundly affected by her mother having a nervous breakdown and getting sent to a shrink, the revelation that her father had an affair with a student and murdered her, and finally DADDY TRYING TO KILL MOMMY and then drowning in a lake. Was Claire just planning to fill her in over Christmas break?
If Jamie follows the Mystery Team around, how'd she survive the climax unscathed?
The rabbit in Siege of the Dead, apparently they left it in the apartment but do these zombies eat animals and did they leave him out beforehand?
In X-Men: First Class, the Hellfire Club is never mentioned or seen again after the early sequence where CIA operative Moira McTaggart (who is investigating it with a colleague) sneaks in and witnesses Emma Frost and Azazel reveal their powers in front of an American general. A retroactive version occurs when you consider that several of the newly-introduced heroes and villains (including Havok, Azazel, and Banshee) never appear again in any of the subsequent films in the franchise, and no mention is made of their fate in any later installments.
Jackie Chan movies are pretty bad about this.
- Mr. Hero begins with a plucky reporter mixing Jackie up into a mob plot. She sticks around long after she stops being relevant, only to be grabbed by a mook during the climax. She is not seen again. Maybe she died, but one would think a mob boss being investigated by a reporter would know better. Then again, the mob is never very smart in chan movies.
- In The Medallion, Jackie and his two partners are enjoying some downtime at one of his partners' house. A cooking montage ensues, featuring the character who owns the house and his wife prominently. Shortly, a small strike force attacks the house. The wife tells Jackie and his partners to run while she holds them off, and reveals herself to be Crazy Prepared. The husband is as surprised as anyone at this, but we never see the wife again.
In Casino Royale 1967, the end title theme tells us that there are 'seven James Bonds.' Actually, there are eight in the film - David Niven (Bond himself), Peter Sellers (Tremble, codenamed James Bond), Terence Cooper (Cooper, codenamed James Bond), Woody Allen (Jimmy Bond), Daliah Lavi (Lady James Bond), Joanna Pettet (Mata Bond, codenamed James Bond), Barbara Bouchet (Moneypenny, codenamed James Bond), and Ursula Andress (Vesper, codenamed James Bond). However, the scene that accompanies this song, with the 'seven James Bonds' in Heaven, is lacking Terence Cooper, who apparently somehow DIDN'T die in the casino explosion...?
- More logical would have been the exclusion of Lady James Bond, aka The Detainer; she was last seen before her attempted escape from a second-story bathroom window. Given the extended period of time between her entering the bathroom and the explosion, we're left to assume that she either fell to her death (the first floor IS rather tall), or that she was still trying to descend the drain-pipe during the explosion.
One particularly bad example was the movie Fantastic Voyage. It features Dr. Michaels, the villian, being left behind while the other characters go back to their normal size, despite the fact that Dr. Michaels for some reason doesn't. Isaac Asimov wrote a novellization of the film that corrects this.
Mexican Masked Luchador films are not known for rigorous plot construction, but El Santo Y Blue Demon Contra Dracula Y El Hombre Lobo has a particularly bad example of this trope. At the end of the film, the luchador heroes and Santo's girlfriend discuss what to tell the little girl character about her horrifying ordeal when she wakes up in the morning. They decide to tell her it was just a bad dream. Which, yeah, that'll work... at least until she wonders where her mother is, and they have to tell her that she had been transformed into one of the living dead, and (the film implies but does not directly state) sent to her eternal rest after the destruction of the two titular monsters.
In Sleeping Dogs, as Smith is brought into the police station, he recognizes the man who earlier paid thugs to commit a False-Flag Operation which gave the government an excuse to institute a police state. He calls this man "Jesperson." At first it seems the other man does not know him, but then he comes into his cell and offers him a deal if gives a scripted confession broadcast live on TV. Smith takes it, which allows him to escape while en route and sets the rest of the plot in motion. However, where or how they knew each other before is never revealed.
Judge Dredd. Where did the Rico clones go after they were hatched during the final battle?
- Since Central said they were only 60% complete and they were caught in the midst of devastating explosions, it's most likely that they died.
Close to the climax of Jeepers Creepers 2, we last see Rhonda being tossed out of a car. Her final fate is left unresolved: she is never seen (or even implied to have been) killed, but is not with the survivors at the end.
- A group of unnamed students are last seen as The Creeper bears down on them. What happened next is up to the imagination.
What ever happened to the cute old couple from REC? They're last seen standing in the downstairs lobby area. When all hell breaks loose, we don't even see them in crazy zombie form.
Whatever happened to that nuclear scientist in Thunderball after Bond pushed him off the yacht?
In Our Gang Follies of 1936, we never find out what happened to the Flory Dory Girl Sixtet, the missing act of the show that Spanky and the gang had to fill in for.
Miracle Mile, a Romantic Comedy set during a nuclear war, is told entirely from the perspective of the protagonist, Harry, which means we never find out anything that happens outside his presence. Early on Harry is with a group of people trying to escape the city before it goes kablooie, but once he's separated from them we never find out what happened to them. The most extreme example involves a car thief who helps Harry early in the film then goes off to rescue his sister. The thief reappears later in the movie carrying his dead sister while suffering from a gunshot wound himself. He dies before revealing what happened to him.
At the beginning of Young Adult, Mavis and a man end up in her apartment after a first date. The next morning, she abruptly decides to leave town for a few days—before he even wakes up. The film ends before she returns. Was her TV still there? We never find out. It provides a Book Ends for a scene later in the movie, but then she's in the guy's house.
The Mask. Peggy Brandt, who seems to disappear from the main action towards the end. In a deleted scene, we saw her death: Dorian Tyrell caught her trying to sneak off with her money, at which point he threw her into a newspaper machine. This being "The Mask," her death was cartoonish: an "extra edition" came out of the machine, printed in red ink. Peggy's visibly pained face was on the front page, along with the accompanying headline.
The Shawshank Redemption: Elmo Blatch, the man who really killed Andy Dufresne's wife and her lover, is never spoken of again after Tommy's story. According to the story, Blatch was doing time for a lesser crime (robbery), so he's probably out again, and considering his amusement at how Andy took the fall, what's stopping him from doing the same sort of thing to others?
- This is changed from the way events happen in the book. In the book, instead of what happens to him in the film, Tommy is offered a place in a medium-security prison, in exchange for never mentioning Blatch again. When Andy confronts the warden about it, the warden says no one knows where Blatch is. When Andy tries to press the matter, the warden threatens him, which leads to their confrontation (much is made of this battle of wills in the last quarter of the film).
Hugo never got his notebook back and it's never mentioned after a while. Did George burn it after all or what?
Fans of Tyrone Power's last film, an unjustly obscure John Ford triptych called Rising Of The Moon, sometimes ask what happened to the jackass in the final scene—the animal, that is. It wanders out of shot during the police sergeant's final soliloquy. Given that everything else in that part of the movie is not what it appears to be, the donkey probably belongs to someone else and is simply headed home.
In Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes the very end features Moriarty stealing a wireless-control-mechanism (at least thirty years before its time). Holmes alludes to this as important, but it is not even given a passing mention in the sequel.
In the film of The Thirteenth Warrior, the King's son is set up to be a secondary antagonist. One of the thirteen warriors even kills one of his henchmen in a duel as a psychological ploy. However after angrily leaving the scene of the duel he's not seen or referenced again.
In Men in Black II, the two Dragons Scrad and Charlie disappear halfway through the film, and are never seen again.

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