What Happened to the Mouse?: Difference between revisions

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A phrase used to decry the abrupt removal of a minor element, be it a character, action, or plotline. The person or thing in question is suddenly dropped from the story for no apparent reason with no resolution, nor any explanation as to what happened to it.

There are several main reasons this happens: in movies, the most common is that scenes are excised in editing, but references to them still remain elsewhere in the film. Another common reason is that a Wrong Genre Savvy audience mistakenly attached too much importance to what always was intended to be a throwaway. A third is that The Law of Conservation of Detail was not properly applied: a Bit Character was a little too lively, so that he didn't appear a throw-away, as why was that much detail given for one?

If the element comes back just as you've forgotten about it, this is actually a Brick Joke or a Chekhov's Gun. If the element doesn't come back, but the show hangs a lampshade on it at the end, then it's Something We Forgot. If it escapes your notice until after the show is over and you've gotten up to go to the fridge to make a sandwich, it's Fridge Logic.

Alternately, it's a variation on the "What Now?" Ending; not only are we unclear what happens to the character, but this also can leave doubts as to whether they even survived once they broke away from the other characters.

Another character or the Narrator may remark that they were never heard from again.

The trope's name refers to a scene in The Last Emperor in which the title character violently throws his beloved pet mouse offscreen. There's no sound of the mouse hitting anything, but it's never seen again, leaving its fate ambiguous.

What Happened to the Mouse moments can be very rich soil for Epileptic Trees or Wild Mass Guessing.

Super-Trope to What Happened to the Pet?

Not to be confused with Aborted Arc, which is when a major story arc or plotline is dropped without resolution, or Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, where a major character just plain disappears.

A What Happened to the Mouse? that is deliberately created and where the creators have no intention of ever resolving the question is a Noodle Incident. A What Happened to the Mouse? that is returned to after an extended period of time and answered is a Brick Joke.

Often the result of a Wacky Wayside Tribe, a Forgotten Fallen Friend, or a Non Sequitur Scene.

Compare with Left Hanging, Kudzu Plot, Red Herring Twist, Out of Focus. Related tropes include Never Found the Body and "What Now?" Ending. May involve a Shrug of God.

Examples of What Happened to the Mouse? are listed on these subpages:

But we still don't know what happened to the mouse!

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-== Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends ==
-* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: [[Homer]] did this in ''[[The Iliad]]''. He went to the trouble of describing the battle between Aeneas (mortal son of Aphrodite) and Achilles. The Gods saw that Aeneas was about to be killed, and, since he was such a good servant, decided that he didn't deserve to be killed, and took him away from the battle, declaring that he would be the future king of all Trojans yet to come. Homer never mentions him again, and even the other authors of the [[The Trojan Cycle|lost epics]] only said that he either fled Troy after a bad omen or was captured and spared by the Achaeans. Later Greek authors said that he went to Italy. It took ''eight hundred years'' for [[The Aeneid|Virgil]] to turn this into a [[Brick Joke]]. An [[Stealth Pun|Epic]] [[Brick Joke]], at that!
-* Open up a mythology book. Chances are, if you're reading the Perseus story, you'll know that Acrisius, King of Argos, simply had bad luck when it came to having children (or at least males), and learned through the Oracle of Delphi that while he wouldn't have any luck any time soon, his daughter, Danae, would have a child that would eventually kill him. After that, everyone knows that Acrisius stuck Danae in a box and put her in the ocean, where Zeus impregnates Danae in the form of a [[Unfortunate Implications|Golden Shower]], thus leading to the creation of an important hero. You never hear about Acrisius again until a long time after, especially in your text. Depending on your version, he's more or less become something of a poor man, and happens to be visiting funeral games where Perseus also happens to be playing. As Acrisius sits in the stands, a stray discus launched by Perseus strikes an unsuspecting Acrisius in the head (this troper's mythology guide had Acrisius struck [[Crowning Moment of Funny|''In the foot.'']]), [[Prophecies Are Always Right|thus fulfilling]] [[Brick Joke|the prophecy that his son would kill him.]] The presence of Acrisius itself seems to combine this trope, [[Brick Joke]], and some sort of Chekhov's Prophecy.
-* In many versions of [[King Arthur|Arthurian legend]], Arthur's mother has three daughters with her first husband: Morgause, Morgan le Fay, and Elaine. The first two play pivotal roles in Arthur's life, but Elaine is typically mentioned once in passing and then never heard from again.
-* The wives of both Cain's and Abel's bloodlines for the first several generations come from seemingly nowhere.
-* Elihu spends a few chapters ranting at the eponymous character of the Book of Job, then disappears and isn't mentioned in the last portion.
-* In the New Testament, we never hear any word of Jesus' stepfather Joseph after the "Did you not know I would be in my Father's house" incident when He was twelve. Church tradition says he passed away some time before Jesus started his ministry.
-== Recorded and Stand-up Comedy ==
-* [[Eddie Izzard]]'s ''Dress to Kill'' tour featured the "Firework joke" which he repeatedly references throughout his performance then ends the show without telling it. It's lampshaded by several people in the audience who immediately begin asking for it. He doesn't.
-== Theatre ==
-* ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'': Where the hell does Benvolio go after Mercutio dies?!
-** It has been speculated by a commentary on the book that Benvolio's line "That is the truth or let Benvolio die" is significant, given that he lied and said Tybalt started the fight with Mercutio (when it was the other way around). It is unlikely, however, that he was actually killed, so his disappearance remains a mystery.
-*** At least one revision done long after Shakespeare died had one of the nobles at the end of the play announce that Benvolio was also dead. They still fail to mention how.
-** Another common interpretation is related to Benvolio's [[Meaningful Name]]. "Benvolio" means goodwill in Latin. He's around for all of the more comedy-like parts—perhaps Benvolio is only a metaphor after all.
-* In the epilogue to ''[[Angels in America]]'', we see Prior, Belize, Louis, and Joe's mother are all pretty chummy with each other five years after the events of the play, but Joe seems to be pretty much forgotten. Maybe he went to Washington?
-* ''[[Macbeth]]''. The witches disappear about halfway through the story and [[Karma Houdini|never get their comeuppance.]] Then there's the matter of what happened to Fleance, although audiences at the time would have understood he was to eventually become king.
-*** Witches, in Shakespeare's time, were agents of Hell. There was no need for any kind of comeuppance...they served their purpose. Fleance may or may not have become king (given Malcom's age and the importance placed on primogeniture, it was unlikely), but Shakespeare didn't consider that important; what mattered was that Banquo's bloodline survived and would eventually produce King James I.
-*** Exactly. The whole point of their intro scene is to say "This is what is going to happen, it's mysterious, you won't understand it until it's too late, and when you do, it will only increase your suffering to finally know what we meant." The witches are evil, to Shakespeare, and don't need a come-uppance.
-* ''[[Cyrano De Bergerac]]'': Did Viscount de Valvert survived his [[Sword Fight]] with Cyrano at Act I Scene IV or not? The last we see about him was that his friends carried him after his defeat, and after a little mention by Roxane at Act II Scene IV, we never heard of him again.
-* ''[[The Taming of the Shrew]]'' starts out as a play-within-a-play; a lord and his servants trick a drunken peasant named Christopher Sly into thinking that ''he's'' the lord by dressing him up and waiting on him, telling him that he's been mad for years. They all sit down to watch a play about Katerina and Petruchio...and then they don't show up again. One ending has Sly waking up, convinced that he dreamed the whole thing and eager to try the trick of "taming a shrew" out on his own wife; however, many scholars think that it was added later and that Shakespeare never wrote it.
-* In ''[[King Lear]]'', Shakespeare decides to [[Shoo Out the Clowns]] and have the Fool drop out of the plot after Act 3, even though he was a constant companion of Lear up to that point. Some stage productions interpret this as the Fool dying—perhaps influenced by the line "My poor fool is hanged" in the last scene, though most critics interpret that line as referring to Cordelia.
-* Similarly, Adam, beloved [[Old Retainer]] and sidekick of Orlando in ''[[As You Like It]]'', disappears after they arrive in Arden. Since Adam is elderly and nearly starves to death on the journey, some productions imply that he died; scholars speculate that the actor who played him may have needed to double as someone important during the second half of the show. (Whatever Shakespeare's intention was, Adam [[Death by Adaptation|doesn't die in the source material]].)
-* Watching the original play version of ''[[Peter Pan]]'', you might wonder, "What happened to that rich cake Hook was going to kill the Lost Boys with"? There are several answers to this question:
-** The probable technical answer, which is that Barrie went through many drafts of the play and certain details were lost or glossed over. Vital to the scheme's success is the fact that the boys have no mother to tell them not to eat such rich cake, so Barrie may have felt no need to explain its failure once Wendy had arrived.
-** A stage direction after Hook enters, discouraged that the boys have found a mother, suggests that he "has perhaps found the large rich damp cake untouched".
-** The novel expands this as one of the [[Noodle Incident]] adventures the children have in Neverland: "[The pirates] placed it in one cunning spot after another; but always Wendy snatched it from the hands of her children, so that in time it lost its succulence, and became as hard as a stone, and was used as a missile, and Hook fell over it in the dark."
-** In the musical, the boys find the cake at the end of the "Wendy House" scene. Wendy tells them not to eat it, and they go inside.
-== Toys ==
-* ''[[Bionicle]]'', due to its nature, has plenty of examples:
-** The ''Dark Hunters'' guidebook mentions that Shadow Stealer is currently coming back from a mission and is ready to face his "master", the Shadowed One. It was deemed an irrelevant [[Narrative Filigree]] and never touched upon again.
-** The same happened to Aphibax's secret mission to track the events on the island of Voya Nui.
-** Order of Mata Nui agents report in the book ''Bionicle World'' that Karzahni is training his Matoran slaves in order to conquer the outer world he just learned of. The plot had been [[Retcon]]ned out of the story, so he went to fight without them, taking his Manas crabs instead.
-** The book also mentioned that Roodaka had become the ruler of her island and will probably train her people to form an army. What became of it: Nothing, as her island was destroyed by [[Kaiju]], and her status was never touched upon.
-** What more, the book revealed the Mana-Ko, formerly believed to be beastial guardians of the [[Big Bad]], were actually secret double agents for the Order (good guys), and would be called into war. The war did happen, but they were never mentioned again.
-== Web Original ==
-* From "Swimming!", an early episode of ''[[Lonelygirl15]]'': "Whatever happened to that girl, Cassie?" Over 430 episodes later, we're still none the wiser.
-* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20111108140738/http://underthevangogh.blissful-madness.com/stories.html#spec1 The White Parade]'' has a variation of this. Part III sees Ean sending Allys on an errand to fetch a sandwich from the Subway across the street from the hospital where he's staying... only for it to never be mentioned again once it's retrieved.
-* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFNXJwrrR_E This] strange youtube video takes this trope quite literally. It features an animated mouse who just walks across the screen and then is never seen again.
-* The [[Literal Music Video]] for ''Anything For Love'' has [[Meat Loaf]] continue to complain about his dropped necklace long after it stops being relevant to the video's plot.
-* In [[The Cinema Snob|Kung Tai Ted's]] review for ''Tiger Love'', Ted becomes so disturbed at the scene where the titular tiger mauls a boy that he breaks character and asks if the child actor actually got killed.
-* The interstitial webisodes aired prior to ''[[The Walking Dead]]'''s second-season premiere revolved around a survivor named Hannah and her attempts to protect her family from walkers. At the end of the webisodes, Hannah (running to escape the city with her kids) manages to kill a zombie that bites her, and tells her children to run away as fast as they can before she turns. We see what happens to Hannah afterwards (she's eaten by a horde of walkers, and becomes the titular "bicycle girl" that Rick Grimes discovers in the pilot episode), but what happened to her kids?
-* [[The Nostalgia Critic]] invokes this trope with his "but what happened to Boomer?" rants in various movie reviews, everytime a character's fate, especially if it was a dog, is not resolved in a movie, at least for a while. If it is before the end credits roll, a short "Boomer will live!" scene is shown. Boomer was a pet dog in one of the reviewed movies.
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 [[The Stinger|But we still don't know what happened to the mouse!]]
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