History Main / ConvenientlyInterruptedDocument

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'': In "Enchanting Grom Fright", during the fight against Grom (a monster which can shapeshift into its opponent's worst fears), it turns into Amity's fear, which is a humanoid shape that rips up a note in her pocket. Luz reads the bottom half of the note, from which she sees that it was a proposal to be Amity's Grom date, and Amity's worst fear was being rejected. Luz doesn't see the top half, which reveals that [[spoiler:Amity [[EstabalishingQueerMoment wanted to ask]] ''[[EstablishingQueerMoment her]]'' [[EstablishingQueerMoment to Grom]].]]

** The intentional removal of information is used extensively in the Foundation's documents, including blacking out words and replacement by the phrases [REDACTED] and [DATA EXPUNGED]. Certain documents occasionally have non-standard replacements like [EXPLETIVE REMOVED], [ADDITIONAL CLEARANCE REQUIRED], and variations on the standard phrases involving embedded directions.

* ''Creator/LewisCarroll'' had a big falling out with Alice's family (she was a real girl) some years after he wrote the Alice books. He kept diaries which exist to this day, but the pages relating to the fall out have been cut out. It is presumed that they were removed after his death by members of his family because the events reflected poorly on him. His biographer Morton N. Cohen speculated that he had asked to marry the then 11-year-old Alice, although [[ValuesDissonance this would not have been considered quite as scandalous at the time]] as it would today.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'': In "Enchanting Grom Fright", during the fight against Grom (a monster which can shapeshift into its opponent's worst fears), it turns into Amity's fear, which is a humanoid shape that rips up a note in her pocket. Luz reads the bottom half of the note, from which she sees that it was a proposal to be Amity's Grom date, and Amity's worst fear was being rejected. Luz doesn't see the top half, which reveals that [[spoiler: Amity wanted to ask ''her'' to Grom.]]

* In an episode of ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'' an alien brings a message to the people of Earth. It gets killed and the message burned. Then someone reads the message, which is something like, "As a symbol of our friendship we offer the following, a cure for all forms of cancer." The rest is burned away.

* In ''[[Film/AttackOfTheClones Star Wars: Attack of the Clones]]'', Count Dooku and Senator Palpatine removed the Kamino system from the star charts in the Jedi library. Fortunately for Obi Wan, they forgot to adjust the rest of the map to compensate for gravity's pull.

* Very early in ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaDetonation'', Yuri gives the heroes a page of the Tome of the Night Sky that has a recording of her backstory on it, but Iris burns the page before she can hand it over. Even with Levi managing to recover most of the data, it still results in a major jump from Iris and Yuri being friends to Yuri having supposedly murdered everyone on the Planet Restoration Committee.
* ''Manga/SpyXFamily'': Twilight's WISE profile is blacked out in nearly every area aside from the subject titles and trivial information

* In ''Fanfic/SVWishes'' Shen Yuan decided to take a nap before finishing the last chapters of the novel he was reading. As he died and ended up transmigrating into the novel’s villain, he’s very aware that his limited knowledge of the plot grows increasingly useless over time.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', the Shepherd's Journal has a missing page, which means that nobody knows exactly what the Atlanteans' power-source ''is''. [[spoiler: Rourke had the missing page in his boot the whole time.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/DisneyFairies'' movie ''Secret of the Wings'', Tinker Bell tries to read through the books in the library for why her wings sparkled in the Winter Woods. She finds a book that has may have the answer... but those pages specifically were eaten by a bookworm. However, she at least now knows who may have the answer, and that would logically be the author.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* ''Film/{{Frankenstein}}: The True Story'': Just before Clerval and Frankenstein are prepared to animate their creation, Clerval discovers that an arm they had reanimated earlier is becoming horribly deformed. He has a heart attack and leaves a partially-completed note: "The process is re--". He intended to write "reversing", Frankenstein interpreted the note to mean "ready."
* In ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'', the mystic runes carved in a cave wall say "He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the castle aaaaaaargh". The characters debate whether the writer died while carving it[[note]]"Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'Aaargh', he'd just say it!" ... "Perhaps he was dictating it?"[[/note]], or whether "Aaaargh" really is the name of the castle.

* ''Film/SecretWindow'': Writer Mort, in order to defend himself against claims from Mr. Shooter that Mort plagiarized a story from him, has to get hold of a magazine from 1993 - the only source his story was published in. Once he gets the magazine, the pages containing his story are torn out. From then on, Mr. Shooter, who was creepy to begin with, start full-out threatening and stalking Mort. At TheReveal at the end of the movie, [[spoiler:Mr. Shooter turns out to be not an existing person but a suppressed aspect of Mort himself (as in a dissociative / "multiple personality" disorder or schiphrenic kind of condition), so Mort ''himself'' had torn the pages out without remembering. The missing pages seem to be the point that Mr. Shooter begins to take over Mort, and at the end of the movie, Mort('s personality) has gone and now ''is'' Mr. Shooter.]]

* ''The Janson Directive'', a Creator/RobertLudlum novel, makes use of this to avoid giving away the name of the villain in official letters concerning him.

* Near the beginning of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', Harry finds a letter from one of his parents which mentions Dumbledore, and hints at a surprising revelation about his past. However, the second page of the letter cannot be found by Harry. He finds out much later that the revelation would have been of some use to him at the time, and that it was removed for reasons completely unrelated to any desire to keep it from him.
* There's a Creator/PeterStraub thriller called ''The Throat'' where the protagonist, who is looking for a murderer, finds a scrap of paper with a name and a town written on it, only the town name is slightly damaged and looks like "Alle_town". [[spoiler: The protagonist misreads it as Alle''n''town, which leads him to entirely the wrong man; the real murderer was in Alle''r''town.]]
* ''God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater'', by Creator/KurtVonnegut, has a distant cousin of Mr. Rosewater reading his family history only to discover that the last pages were eaten by maggots.

* In ''Literature/TheLastContinent'', the Librarian has caught a magical disease, and in order to cure him, the other wizards need to know his true name. Thing is, no one in Unseen University remembers what the Librarian was like before becoming an orangutan, and the Librarian himself isn't telling, as he's afraid someone will turn him back. Ridcully suggests looking the name up in the yearbook for the year the Librarian graduated, but according to the Dean, all copies suffered the same mishap. That mishap, as the Archchancellor guesses, is that a certain page being torn out, leaving only a bananary aroma in its wake.
* In ''Literature/InSearchOfTheCastaways'' a MessageInABottle is discovered telling the tale of some castaways, but it is so degraded that only the latitude of the castaways position is legible.

* ''Literature/TheBelgariad'': The evil [[PhysicalGod god Torak]] dictated the Ashabine Oracles in a prophetic trance, then came to his senses and excised the parts that appeared to foretell his defeat. After [[spoiler:his death]], the heroes have a lengthy quest to hunt down an intact copy that holds vital information about the current DivineConflict; it also contains a note to TheChosenOne by Torak in a rare MomentOfLucidity, [[spoiler:begging him to prevent the [[GreaterScopeVillain Dark Prophecy's]] victory.]]
* In the gamebook ''Literature/{{Suspects}}'', in which you are a detective on a train, you receive a MysteriousNote, written in ink, in which a vital word is smudged: "I think I know who the murderer is. Please meet me in the ........... car."

* The government documents that Michael ''does'' manage to get his hands on are these. It fuels the MythArc to get rid of the ''Series/BurnNotice''. The trope is also treated differently due to redacted documents being the expected norm for all perusers; the missing parts are considered either irrelevant or obtainable by cross-checking a sufficient quantity of documents. The redactions are only meant to protect sources of intelligence (or faked intelligence) from briefees who don't have the motivation or time to do so.
* In ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'', Skye's search for her birth parents turned up a heavily redacted document that indicates that the person who turned her over to the child welfare system when she was an infant was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Skye joins S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to get access to the unredacted document.
* In ''Series/{{Lost}}'', the Swan Orientation film noticeably had a snippet removed the first time Desmond and Locke watched it. The missing snippet -- which clarified why the computer was not to be used for anything other than entering the Numbers every 108 minutes -- was later explained as an edit made by Razdinsky and stored in a hollowed-out Bible in another station across the island, which was later found by Eko. The reasons why the film was edited were never clarified, but Michael's use of the computer to communicate with Walt set off the entire series of tragic events in the second half of Season 2.
* In ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk1977'', the episode "[[Recap/TheIncredibleHulk1977S4E12And13TheFirst The First]]", David finds a multi-volume diary detailing the process by which a scientist actually turned someone else into a Hulk-like creature, and cured it... but the volume with the actual process is missing. [[spoiler:The scientist's groundskeeper -- who was the person who had been turned into the Creature -- had hidden it.]]
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': John Winchester's diary serves as the brothers' hunting guide in early seasons, but when they search for evidence of a half-brother they might have, Sam finds the relevant pages torn out of the journal.
* On ''Series/TwelveMonkeys'', when Xeroxing the Word of the Witness to bring to the future for study, Jennifer uses her hand to block a section that reveals the Witness to be [[spoiler:Cole and Cassie's son]] to keep Jones from finding out.
* On ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Twelfth Doctor gives an young Viking girl, Ashildr, an alien medical device that constantly heals any injury, effectively giving her an immortal life. Over 800 years later, he catches up to her, now going by the name "Me." Since Me has an immortal life, but a normal human memory, she long-ago started journaling her adventures before she forgot them. While looking through her journals, the Doctor finds a run of missing pages, with what appears to be tear-stains on the remaining pages. Me explains that she can't remember what was on the pages, but that they caused her untold grief due to her immortality and her loved ones dying of normal aging.

* ''VideoGame/XCom'':
** A common element in ''VideoGame/TheBureauXCOMDeclassified'' using blacking out information heavily in the viral marketing of the game and the boxart itself. In game however very little done in such a way as you're in the inner circle.
** In the expansion to ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'', ''Enemy Within'', when you first research Meld, the official research report mentions some previous research from classified documents in the 70's, which were missing information about the ''source'' of the information. Since XCOM has access to any and all information in regards to the alien invaders, the revelation that information has been and ''is being'' kept from them should raise a few eyebrows [[spoiler: and foreshadows the existence of EXALT]].

* Throughout the levels of ''VideoGame/TheTalosPrinciple'', there are various texts, most of which are random bits of history or philosophy, but some are communiques relevant to the backstory. However, in many cases extremely important bits of information are "bugged", appearing as numbers or nonsense characters. (Although, if the player is diligent enough, they can translate some of these back to text using ASCII protocols, creating a very roundabout BilingualBonus)
* One letter from the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil1'' is usually missing its top half by the time you find it. If you're quick enough in reaching the room its located in, you can read the full letter before it's ripped up and see the mention of a [[spoiler:"guy in sunglasses," a.k.a. Albert Wesker, who's obviously the person that tears off that part of the letter]].

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/{{Draugen}}''. The birth & death register at the church is missing pages. They've just been scattered over the floor, which renders this a short-lived mystery.
* ''VideoGame/CragneManor'': Parodied. Everything in the bathroom that Ed has handled is covered with inconvenient stains from condiments. The transcript for the scroll ends up looking like "Edward, this is VERY important! You must [ketchup stain] the [mustard] or else [mayo]! This is very important!! You must [more mayo]!!" Naomi expresses frustration when it happens: "Son of a bitch, was Ed eating a fucking hamburger over this ancient magic scroll?"
* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'':
** In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', when reading out [[spoiler:Sakura's real suicide note]], which mentions some details critical to TheReveal, Monokuma simply doesn't read out that part and the document in question is never seen again. Also, when the students view the video showing them [[spoiler:agreeing to stay at Hope's Peak forever]], Monokuma interrupts it at a seemingly arbitrary point. [[spoiler:Specifically, the section showing Junko Enoshima, which would have shown a different person to the Junko the students knew.]]
** In ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'', the document containing all the students' profiles has some pages removed. These pages would have shown [[spoiler:the students becoming Ultimate Despairs]].
* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'':
** The Burned Letter in ''[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations Trials and Tribulations]]'' conveniently has crucial parts burned by an incinerator. For example, the name of the person who [[spoiler:had to be channeled by Pearl Fey in the night of the murder, Dahlia Hawthorne]]. You can still figure this out from the other clues of the case.
** In ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'', Magnifi's diary ends with a page that implies he was killed shortly after writing it. However, you can notice the following page was ripped out. You were also given a ripped page before the trial where this comes up, and you claim that it comes from the diary. As it turns out, the missing page [[spoiler:was Magnifi's will, and the page you had was a complete fake to make you look like a forger (and indeed, Phoenix Wright was disbarred for presenting false evidence). On the real page, Magnifi gave the rights to his magic tricks to Zak Gramarye, his disciple]].

* Played for laughs like everything else in ''Anime/FullMetalPanicFumoffu'': after detonating his shoe locker due to signs of tampering, Sousuke recovers and reconstructs the burned shreds of a love letter. From the few bits of surviving text, he completely misinterprets it as a death threat.

* ''Franchise/{{Frankenstein}}: The True Story'': Just before Clerval and Frankenstein are prepared to animate their creation, Clerval discovers that an arm they had reanimated earlier is becoming horribly deformed. He has a heart attack and leaves a partially-completed note: "The process is re--". He intended to write "reversing", Frankenstein interpreted the note to mean "ready."

* In ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'', Count Dooku and Senator Palpatine removed the Kamino system from the star charts in the Jedi library. Fortunately for Obi Wan, they forgot to adjust the rest of the map to compensate for gravity's pull.

** Parodied in *The Regimental Standard* with [[https://regimental-standard.com/2020/09/09/your-stories/ YOUR Stories!]], where a Guardsman’s account of a battle is completely redacted except for “we” and then much later “won.” You can still make out some of the original text under the redactions, including [[CosmicHorror “We are all doomed to damnation.”]]

* A common element in ''VideoGame/TheBureauXCOMDeclassified'' using blacking out information heavily in the viral marketing of the game and the boxart itself. In game however very little done in such a way as you're in the inner circle.

* One letter from the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' is usually missing its top half by the time you find it. If you're quick enough in reaching the room its located in, you can read the full letter before it's ripped up and see the mention of a [[spoiler:"guy in sunglasses," a.k.a. Albert Wesker, who's obviously the person that tears off that part of the letter]].
* ''VideoGame/PhantomDoctrine:'' Part of the game is analysing captured documents, which mainly consist of blacked-out text and a few code names. If the same code names appear in different documents, then you can make connections via StringTheory.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]

** In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', when reading out [[spoiler:Sakura's real suicide note]], which mentions some details critical to TheReveal, Monokuma simply doesn't read out that part and the document in question is never seen again.
** Also in ''Trigger Happy Havoc'', when the students view the video showing them [[spoiler:agreeing to stay at Hope's Peak forever]], Monokuma interrupts it at a seemingly arbitrary point. [[spoiler:Specifically, the section showing Junko Enoshima, which would have shown a different person to the Junko the students knew.]]

** The Burned Letter in ''Trials and Tribulations'' conveniently has crucial parts burned by an incinerator. For example, the name of the person who [[spoiler:had to be channeled by Pearl Fey in the night of the murder, Dahlia Hawthorne]]. You can still figure this out from the other clues of the case.

* In the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', [[TomeOfEldritchLore Journal 3's]] "Property of" label is ripped in half. That half being where the name was written, thus making its Author's identity a mystery for most of the series. A season-and-a-half later, the characters would discover the Author's identity to be [[spoiler:Grunkle Stan's twin brother]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'', the Mystic Scroll of the Shen Gong Wu is missing a section covering the full extent of the Ying Yoyo's powers, which lets you enter the Ying-Yang World. The next episode, Dojo finds it in-between the comatose Master Fung's toes, because the paper had been used to fill in a hole in his sandal. [[spoiler: It details how unless you have the Yang Yoyo, people who enter the Ying-Yang World turn evil from losing their good chi.]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* The entire main plot of [[Literature/TheBooksOfEmber The City of Ember]] deals with Lina and Doon trying to figure out the instructions for egress from the city after Lina's baby sister Poppy chewed up some of the paper the instructions were printed on.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'': In "Enchanting Grom Fright", during the fight against Grom (a monster which can shapeshift into its opponent's worst fears), it turns into Amity's fear, which is a humanoid shape that rips up a note in her pocket. Luz reads the bottom half of the note, from which she sees that it was a proposal to be Amity's Grom date, and Amity worst fear was being rejected. Luz doesn't see the top half, which reveals that [[spoiler: Amity wanted to ask ''her'' to Grom.]]

-->-- ''Website/TheOnion'': "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years"

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation''