What Happened to the Mouse?/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The eponymous slime of Unicorn Jelly simply disappeared after episode 581.
    • Before To Save Her the author claimed it was an intended symbolic plot point about childhood, magic or something or another.
  • In Questionable Content the character Sara just disappears and is never mentioned again. The Cast page lampshades this by saying she was eaten by an allosaurus. Author Jeph Jacques says he just dropped her for being boring.
  • You'd never know in Ciem that resident Depraved Bisexual Poison Dart Eddie even had a sidekick, as he is so quickly brushed aside and never mentioned again. Even Claire Rauscher has the decency to at least return in a later chapter, if only to fall to her death.
  • Sluggy Freelance had a minor one where a reader actually asked, "What happened to the demonic ferret?" The answer was, "She's still there with the other demons, I just forgot to draw her."
  • Get Medieval's Where Are They Now? Epilogue is infamously missing Oneder, Iroth's bodyguard-turned-Muslim holy warrior. In the annotated reruns, Ironychan stated that she left out Oneder (and Sir Gerard) because she felt there was nothing really left to say about them.
    • Also; Asher's kitten. It disappeared shortly after Asher received it and was unmentioned for months, until it reappeared after the "Trip To The Moon" arc. Ironychan has never said whether or not this was planned all along or whether the constant cries of "WHERE'S THE KITTY" caused her to bring it back.
  • Monette's baby, in Something*Positive. The full humor and drama of an unplanned pregnancy are played to maximum effect, but Monette's baby disappears from the plot with barely a ripple (subtle clues in the dialogue reveal it was either stillborn or died very shortly after birth). Millholland lampshaded the baby's absence much later in a filler strip in which the baby turned up in a Lost and Found box.
  • Jessica's pregnancy in Better Days, though it's possible that the sequel, Original Life (which follows the children of Better Days' main characters) will bring this up.
  • In Bob and George, on average once per Mega Man game parody, Mega Man would beat one of the Robot Masters without killing them, and for the most part they never showed up again, though they spawned numerous Epileptic Trees. However, on rare occasion they showed up again, especially Shadow Man, who became a running joke due to his stealthy nature and the Epileptic Trees about his disappearance.
    • Shadow Man in particular said, after his initial appearance, that he'd disappear into the background until he was needed once again, which seemed a natural set up for him to return. It was years before he really did, and at every new plot development he was tagged as possibly being behind it. One fancomic lampshaded this by having him come and say the reason he hadn't shown up again was because, as a Ninja he would return and strike when least expected... but the readers kept expecting him.
  • Emily from Mortifer. Last appeared on this page, and was promptly never seen again. This trope was barely averted however, when a fan drew a (spoileriffic) piece of Fan Art Lampshading it, which the author saw, stating that she had completely forgotten about the character and that she would try to find a way to bring her back into the story.
  • Narrowly averted in YU+ME: dream. The author realised she was going to do this with No Face, a minor but very scary enemy and so Dropped a Bridge on Him for completeness. Lia had just made a Face Heel Turn and he got in her way. Cue a Neck Snap in the background of a conversation.
  • Schlock Mercenary
    • Haban and Breya Andreyasn, though they had rare appearances for a while before that (after being important supporting characters for years). Made more glaring and worrisome by their last appearance ending on an ominous note, though the enemy AI claimed they were not killed. Of course, ex-admiral Breya is made of "political antimatter", as a figure of some status and renown (especially given how loudly Xinchub's attempt to frame her up in the aftermath of Gatekeepers war crashed)... so the next time she and her cyborg husband appear at an office where Breya's mom stuffed her on condition she will stop hanging around Toughs. Not that it worked.
    • Pranger's shuttle pilot last seen observing soil displacement from a crash-landed warship too closely was mentioned in the narrator's note one month and one day later.
    • Parodied in Book 18 with a pair of bullets that hit Corporal Peri Gugro (back in Book 17): "This book is not their story."
  • Sonichu in spades. The author's wild-running attention span has caused him to start and drop so many plots and characters, it isn't even funny.
  • Rumors of War: Who was that walking around as Couric? Where did Penelo disappear to? What about the rest of the characters on the ship in the first Story Arc? What about all those character Nenshe recruited to the Order of Orion? (Some of these turn into Brick Jokes later in the comic.)
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella explore the strange fate of Hydra's heads.
  • Looking for Group has "Non-Playable Characters" section with side stories such as what happened in the monastery after Cale left it, or the next adventure of Mehssa after they got that ship with slaves into the port. Though there are more prequels than sequels.
  • Girl Genius had it played up with a goldfish from Dr. Beetle's lab that was saved by Gil later. Mentioned again once — presumably, Gil adopted the fish and Zoing finds it scary for some reason. And this would be all about it. But then, so far three off-continuity stories feature goldfishes (one of whom is a "venerable hive fish"). Also, Bonus Material in Print Issue #6 includes a cutout of the goldfish in a fishbowl on tank treads, under the species name only. Girl Genius Complete List of Absolutely Everybody! lists "The Goldfish", yet assures us "It's just a goldfish. Really!"
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