History Main / WackyWaySideTribe

* In [[Film/SpacehunterAdventuresInTheForbiddenZone]] the titular adventures are actually a series of conflicts with these before finally confronting the film's villain at his lair. This includes zombie-like [[PigMan Pig Men]], a tribe of amphibious [[AmazonBrigade Amazons]], and Molotov cocktail-wielding [[CreepyChild Creepy Children.]]

* In [[Film/SpacehunterAdventuresInTheForbiddenZone]] the titular adventures are actually a series of conflicts with these before finally confronting the film's villain at his lair. This includes zombie-like [[PigMan Pig Men]], a tribe of amphibious [[AmazonBrigade Amazons]], and Molotov cocktail-wielding [[CreepyChildren Creepy Children.]]

* In [[Film/SpacehunterAdventuresInTheForbiddenZone]] the titular adventures are actually a series of conflicts with these before finally confronting the film's villain at his lair.

* The tribes of Nanzhong and the mystic Zuo Ci usually play this role in ''[[VideoGame/DynastyWarriors]]''. The former comes up as an unruly mob for Shu to pacify and recruit in short order, and the latter comes right out of nowhere to be a nuisance to Wei.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'': The second party of the "Time is Money" serial, "The Duck Who Would Be King". On their way BackToTheFuture from OneMillionBC, Scrooge and company accidentally crash-land in the ancient oriental kingdom of Toupee and become involved in its internal politics. While "The Duck Who Would Be King" is considered an entertaining episode in its own right, it has next to no impact on the rest of the five-parter.

** ''Discworld/TheLastContinent'' is a bit of a stylistic throwback to the earlier books, and contains a lot of Rincewind stumbling into various parodies of [[LandDownUnder Australian]] culture before stumbling back out. Most of these (winning a sheep-shearing contest, inventing Vegemite, encountering spoofs of MadMax and Film/PriscillaQueenOfTheDesert) have no real bearing on the plot, but they collectively contribute to Rincewind becoming a sort of Ecksian folk hero.

** "Avatar Day" has the heroes visiting a ''really'' wacky village that hates the Avatar because Avatar Kyoshi killed their leader Chin the Great several hundred years ago. This is called out [[LampshadeHanging in universe]] as the worst town they have ever been too.

* The African boys in ''Film/DinosaurIsland''. Where did they come from? What role do they have in the overall plot? They seem to exist only to capture our heroes for a short while and laugh at their lack of knowledge of [[ManEatingPlant Man Eating Plants]].

* The entire middle section of ''RaggedyAnnAndAndyAMusicalAdventure'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2PV7pOnmuE&feature=related consists of these]].

* Every side mission of every game in the ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries.

** "The Cave of Two Lovers" has a Wacky Wayside Tribe of what can only be the ''Avatar'' universe's equivalent of {{New Age Retro Hippie}}s (including one named Chong after famous RealLife hippie [[Creator/CheechAndChong Tommy Chong]]). The heroes travel with them through a cave, get lost, and use ThePowerOfLove (in the case of Aang and Katara) and guidance from giant [[MixAndMatchCritters badgermoles]] (in the case of Sokka and the hippies) to find their way out.

* The Literature/DoctorDolittle books tend to have a lot of these. For instance, ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'' has the entire subplot with Luke the Hermit and Dr. Dolittle saving him from a false accusation. It takes several chapters, but has no bearing whatsoever on the later story (apart from Luke making a brief appearance later on.)

* The trolls and Beorn in ''Literature/TheHobbit''. The spiders and elves count too, on a lesser note. One might argue that ''most'' of the journey in ''The Hobbit'' consists of random encounters with exotic peoples and characters; of them, only Elrond and Gollum have a notable influence on the overarching plot of Middle-Earth.

** In ''Martin the Warrior'' some of the tribes do return as ChekhovsArmy (literally) by the end, but they are mostly used to make Martin's army bigger and the named characters from these tribes play no significant part other from just being there.

Basically, the non-VideoGame, non-TabletopRPG version of {{sidequest}}s and RandomEncounters.

When part of the cast is involved in something like this while everyone else is busy with important stuff, it's TrappedByMountainLions. In {{anime}}, this is often a way to provide {{padding}} when the plot OvertookTheManga. Even manga isn't immune to this if the story becomes too stretched out over time and, in order to keep releasing chapters while they take the time to choose the course of the series, they need to add a quick storyline that isn't completely relevant to the main plot. If the events are not merely irrelevant but ludicrous, it's a BigLippedAlligatorMoment. Can be considered a form of PlotDetour in many circumstances. If the plot consists of nothing but encounters with Wacky Wayside Tribes, you're probably looking at a RandomEventsPlot.

* The ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle'': Almost everything you ''think'' is plot-relevant turns out to be instead this, and the original plot is abandoned later when the ''real'' plot kicks in.

* ''TransformersTheMovie'' (the 1986 one, not the 2007 one) was positively ''full'' of these. [[TheScrappy Wheelie]] especially. The Quintessons also served no real purpose in the movie, though they were [[spoiler:revealed to be the creator of the Transformers and recurring villains]] in the TV series. The Junkions count too, but they're forgiven because Eric Idle made Wreck-Gar work (And they were generally awesome anyway).

%%* EnidBlyton built lots of her fairy stories on this.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'’: The various creature encounters in the movies are generally well-done uses of this trope. We didn't really ''need'' to see Luke pulled under garbage by a dianoga in ''Film/ANewHope'', or the Millennium Falcon almost get swallowed by a space slug in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', or the sea monster sequence in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'', and most of these encounters didn’t really advance the plot and were never mentioned again afterwards, but adventures like these helped establish that there’s a big galaxy out there beyond what happens in the main story.* The film ''Ator l'invincibile 2'' (1984) contained a sequence right in the middle involving a tribe of cannibals. Oddly enough, the USA DVD release (''FilM/CaveDwellers'') was titled after the Wacky Wayside Tribe.

* The ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' series is full of these. In ''Martin the Warrior'', the verse roadmap has nothing but {{Wacky Wayside Tribe}}s, likethe pygmy shrews.

* OlderThanFeudalism: The bulk of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' is Odysseus and his men encountering Wacky Wayside Tribes during their journey home.

* One of the most famous (and successful) uses of this trope are the various "creature encounters" in the ''StarWars'' movies. We didn't really ''need'' to see Luke pulled under garbage by a dianoga in the first movie, or the Millennium Falcon almost get swallowed by a space slug in the second, but adventures like these helped establish that it's a big galaxy out there.
* The film ''Ator l'invincibile 2'' (1984) contained a sequence right in the middle involving a tribe of cannibals. Oddly enough, the USA DVD release (''FilM/CaveDwellers'') was titled after the Wacky Wayside Tribe.

* The film ''Ator l'invincibile 2'' (1984) contained a sequence right in the middle involving a tribe of cannibals. Oddly enough, the USA DVD release (''FilM/CaveDwellers'') was titled after the Wacky Wayside Tribe. This film richly deserved the [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] treatment it received.