History Main / WackyWaySideTribe

* In ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII'', the events in Rhapala have no real relationship to the greater plot. You have to train Beyd to wreck an ArrangedMarriage in the Guild, fix a broken lighthouse, and solve the issues with the faeries who were keeping the lighthouse from being fixed, before you get access to Mt. Zublo to go to the Urkan Region where the plot picks back up. The Guild plays a minor role in the Adult arc, and the faeries are a major Adult sidequest, but ultimately it's a FillerArc that extends the game a bit.

* The ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' series is full of these. In ''Martin the Warrior'', the verse roadmap has nothing but {{Wacky Wayside Tribe}}s, like the pygmy shrews. One particular example, a band of cannibalistic tree-dwelling rats called the Painted Ones, actually shows up as a regular wayside tribe throughout the series, appearing all over the books' timeline to temporarily inconvenience the heroes as they go about their quest.
** 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 than from just being there.

* 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 plot.

* A rather unfortunate example in ''The Courts of Chaos'', the fifth novel in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber''. Corwin is on a quest to deliver a McGuffin while being hounded by his evil brother. However he can't use his magic deck to simply teleport, so he has to reach the place by horse. Despite the book being less than 150 pages, over a half of them involve Corwin being sidetracked by random and irrelevant adventures; including him meeting a talking raven, finding the tree Yggdrasil, having a picnic with a seductive lady and getting his horse stolen by Leprechauns. This also counts as a case of TrappedByMountainLions as the book ''does'' have a lengthy plot, only Corwin misses most of it.

* About halfway through Creator/JohnFord's Western ''Cheyenne Autumn'' (1964), there's a 15 minute comedy sequence set in Dodge City, featuring Creator/JimmyStewart as Wyatt Earp. This segment shows Earp gambling and shooting a violent cowboy, while townspeople panic about the approaching Cheyenne. Obviously meant as comic relief, it's long, self-contained, features none of the main characters and feels [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment jarringly out of place]] in such a downbeat, serious movie. Unsurprisingly, some theatrical screenings and television airings removed the entire scene.

When part of the cast is involved in something like this while everyone else is busy with important stuff, it's TrappedByMountainLions. If the events are not merely irrelevant but ludicrous, it's a BigLippedAlligatorMoment. If the plot consists of nothing but encounters with Wacky Wayside Tribes, you're probably looking at a RandomEventsPlot.

* "Lamia" of ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'', the only {{filler}} episode of the otherwise tightly-plotted series 4, in which the knights investigate a strange illness in an outlying village, get {{brainwashed}} by the titular Lamia, and are lured back to her keep where she plans to pick them off one by one. Merlin and Guinevere manage to keep them alive until Arthur shows up and defeats the EldritchHorror by stabbing it in the back. It adds nothing to the StoryArc or CharacterDevelopment and is generally considered the worst episode of the entire show.

** Since the comics couldn't cover story material from the movies, filler stories were published instead when the movies came out, featuring characters battling random monsters like the Rahkahi Kaita, the Tahtorak and even infected villagers.

** The first half of ''Discworld/WitchesAbroad''. Before the coven gets to the borders of Genua, we have half a book of amusing culture clashes, including some very good (but strictly speaking unnecessary) parodies of Film/HammerHorror, ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', and ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''. Collectively, they introduce the reader to the Discworld's [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Law of Narrative Causality]] and its manipulation by the book's antagonist, a major plot point.
** The very first book, ''Discworld/TheColourOfMagic'', had the section with the tree and the entire "The Lure of the Wyrms" chapter, but then there was no actual plot (as Pratchett freely admits).
** In book three, ''Discworld/EqualRites'', there's Esk's time with the incurably truthful Zoon tribe.
** ''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 Film/MadMax and Film/PriscillaQueenOfTheDesert) have no real bearing on the plot, but they collectively contribute to Rincewind becoming a sort of Ecksian folk hero.

[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
* In the big picture of ''Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG'', villains such as Anti-Kotua and Dino Aliens play little part in the overall story and just served as momentary threats.

** "The Great Divide" features a literal Wacky Wayside Tribe - or rather, two of them locked in a never-ending SpaceColdWar. Out of all the show's Wacky Wayside Tribe episodes, this one provides the least insight as to the characters and the world - the only characterization it establishes is Aang's ability to resolve conflicts. Unlike a great deal of the seemingly unrelated events in the first season, it never gets brought up again... except in "The Ember Island Players", during a ShowWithinAShow [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs recapping the series to that point]]. The actors point out the Great Divide... and then decide to [[DiscontinuityNod keep flying over it]].
** "The Fortuneteller" has a Wacky Wayside Village where everyone unquestioningly accepts the fortuneteller's verdicts on what's going to happen. This becomes problematic when the fortuneteller predicts that the nearby volcano isn't going to destroy the village. The heroes notice that the volcano is about to erupt, but the villagers refuse to accept it because they believe their fortuneteller can't ever be wrong. After a lot of convincing, the villagers work together with the heroes to save the village from the eruption... ironically making the fortuneteller's prediction ("The village will not be destroyed by the volcano this year") technically correct.
** "The Cave of Two Lovers" has a Wacky Wayside Tribe 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.

* [[ThoseTwoGuys Those Two Birds]] Dinky and Boomer and Squeeks the caterpillar in ''Disney/TheFoxAndTheHound''. Aside from helping to get Widow Tweed to save Tod, they contribute nothing to the main story line, and their antics, entertaining though they are, simply stop the film cold.

* In ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', almost every non-main quest is this, often featuring a bizarre situation or antagonist but having little lasting relevance to the surrounding.
** Within the main story, the simulation where[[spoiler:your father]] is trapped makes barely enough sense to not be a BigLippedAlligatorMoment, but its length and [[ShootTheShaggyDog lack of lasting impact]] definitely qualify as this trope.

* ''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.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': In the middle of two larger story arcs (about Glomgold's wager with Scrooge and [[spoiler: Della's escape from the moon]]), the episode "Treasure of the Found Lamp" is slapstick comic relief introducing the new badass version of Dijon from ''WesternAnimation/DuckTalesTheMovieTreasureOfTheLostLamp''. Dijon's only later appearance so far is a brief cameo, but the episode serves to reintroduce characters who'll be important later in the season or have changed significantly from their 1987 counterparts.

-->''"...and I know not what could have led [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis the author to have recourse to]] [[ShowWithinAShow novels]] and [[RomanticPlotTumor irrelevant stories]], [[ItsAllAboutMe when he had so much to write about in mine; no doubt he must have gone by]] [[{{Filler}} the proverb 'with straw or with hay, &c.,' for by merely setting forth my thoughts, my sighs, my tears, my lofty purposes, my enterprises]], [[DoorStopper he might have made a volume as large, or larger than all the works of El Tostado]] [[note]]Alfonso de Madrigal, philosopher whose works "have more than twenty volumes.".[[/note]] would make up"''.

* The ''[[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]]'' stories are entirely comprised of these sorts of adventures, with a good portion of the stories featuring traveling characters "discovering" new, slightly dangerous parts of Oz and having to navigate around the wild animals / monsters / cannibals / etc, and a lot of the rest having the same on the way to Oz as well.
** This goes back to the first book and the Dainty China Country. A city surrounded by a wall that only exists to lengthen the journey from Point A to Point B. The instant they leave the city it's never spoken of again.

%%* Much of ''[[Literature/AdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn Huckleberry Finn]]''.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': In the middle of two larger story arcs (about Glomgold's wager with Scrooge and [[spoiler: Della's escape from the moon]]), the episode "Treasure of the Found Lamp" is slapstick comic relief introducing the new {{Badass}} version of Dijon from ''WesternAnimation/DuckTalesTheMovieTreasureOfTheLostLamp''. Dijon's only later appearance so far is a brief cameo, but the episode serves to reintroduce characters who'll be important later in the season or have changed significantly from their 1987 counterparts.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'': The second party of the "Time is Money" serial, "The Duck Who Would Be King". On their way back to the future from One Million BC, 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.

* The Sathuli in the ''Literature/{{Drenai}}'' saga.

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

* "Lamia" of ''Series/{{Merlin}}'', the only {{filler}} episode of the otherwise tightly-plotted series 4, in which the knights investigate a strange illness in an outlying village, get {{brainwashed}} by the titular Lamia, and are lured back to her keep where she plans to pick them off one by one. Merlin and Guinevere manage to keep them alive until Arthur shows up and defeats the EldritchHorror by stabbing it in the back. It adds nothing to the StoryArc or CharacterDevelopment and is generally considered the worst episode of the entire show.

* Commonplace in the ''Franchise/{{Grandia}}'' series. Though most villages are benign, there are some seriously weird examples in [[VideoGame/Grandia1 the first game]], such as Laine where the horned giantesses do all the work while mature males turn into bovines, and Gumbo, where every year, the villagers sacrifice two lovers to the volcano and, because of this, nobody in the village becomes a couple in fear of being sacrificed. When Justin and Feena arrive in Gumbo the village chief mistakes them for a couple and [[FalseReassurance rolls out the red carpet for them]].

* Commonplace in the ''Franchise/{{Grandia}}'' series. Though most villages are benign, there are some seriously weird examples in [[VideoGame/{{Grandia}} the first game]], such as Laine where the horned giantesses do all the work while mature males turn into bovines, and Gumbo, where every year, the villagers sacrifice two lovers to the volcano and, because of this, nobody in the village becomes a couple in fear of being sacrificed. When Justin and Feena arrive in Gumbo the village chief mistakes them for a couple and [[FalseReassurance rolls out the red carpet for them]].

* ''Fanfic/ShinjiAndWarhammer40k'' manages to make this work well through ChekhovsGun and not be annoying. [[spoiler: Javaal is where Shinji gets an army of Grey Knights. A large group of Macedonians decides to follow him and kick some ass.]]

--> ''"...and I know not what could have led [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis the author to have recourse to]] [[ShowWithinAShow novels]] and [[RomanticPlotTumor irrelevant stories]], [[ItsAllAboutMe when he had so much to write about in mine; no doubt he must have gone by]] [[{{Filler}} the proverb 'with straw or with hay, &c.,' for by merely setting forth my thoughts, my sighs, my tears, my lofty purposes, my enterprises]], [[DoorStopper he might have made a volume as large, or larger than all the works of El Tostado]] [[note]]Alfonso de Madrigal, philosopher whose works "have more than twenty volumes.".[[/note]] would make up"''.

* The ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' novel ''[[Literature/MasqueradeCycle Mercadian Masques]]'' is an unfortunate example of this, as it takes up nearly the entire book. After [[Literature/RathAndStorm escaping Rath]], while trying to get to their homeworld Dominaria, the ''Weatherlight'' crashes on Mercadia, where the crew gets swept up in the battle between the Cho-Arrim rebels and the Mercadian overlords. [[spoiler: Toward the end of the book, connections between Mercadia and Rath/Phyrexia are revealed. Even that isn't as significant as it sounds, as Volrath taunts the heroes by revealing that the Phyrexian warfleet they just destroyed is just a tiny fraction of the invading army.]]

** Within the main story, the simulation where[[spoiler: your father]] is trapped makes barely enough sense to not be a BigLippedAlligatorMoment, but its length and [[ShootTheShaggyDog lack of lasting impact]] definitely qualify as this trope.

* "Stranger in a Strange Land", a.k.a. the Jack's Tattoos episode of ''Series/{{Lost}}''. Though most episodes are relevant to the overall plot of the series, this one can be skipped entirely without really missing anything. It's also almost universally considered to be the worst episode of the series. In fact, the only character introduced in this episode was later confirmed by WordOfGod to have died off screen... in an explosion that happened on screen... somehow.

** The serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E5TheKeysOfMarinus The Keys of Marinus]]" is entirely made of this - the characters have to collect PlotCoupons from various locations on the planet, each of which has a different culture and threat. There's a LotusEaterMachine world that only Barbara can see through, a murder investigation world where the Doctor is a lawyer and has to use ThePerryMasonMethod to save Ian [[BetterManhandleTheMurderWeapon after he picked up the knife]], an ice world where they have to fight ancient guardians and so on.
** Another Creator/TerryNation serial, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E8TheChase The Chase]]", is like this - the Doctor is being followed by Daleks who have constructed their own TARDIS, and occasionally make pit-stops. When the Daleks first catch up to them on a desert planet, the setting and plot fit, but part 3 in particular is just two comedy setpieces (tourists on top of the Empire State Building, and people on the Marie Celeste) stuck together, neither of which change anything about the Doctor's predicament - we just see the TARDIS crew first poke their heads out, chat to people and leave, followed by the Daleks showing up.
** The serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E2TheMindRobber The Mind Robber]]" starts with a BottleEpisode where the Tardis materializes in a white void containing aggressive robots. As soon as the characters escape, these robots have no bearing on the plot of the rest of the serial.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'': The second party of the "Time is Money" serial, "The Duck Who Would Be King". On their way back to the future from One Million BC, 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.
* In the ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}: Bender's Game'', the "stuck in a fantasy RPG" plot that ''[[NeverTrustATrailer all of the trailers, advertisements, and box art depict]]'' turns out to be a side-story to the main plot ([[spoiler:uniting the two crystals to render all dark matter inert as fuel]]) that [[MalignantPlotTumor suddenly sprung up from the B-plot]] right before the climax, and all of one event affects the last ten minutes of the movie (though it does admittedly continue the other B-plot about Leela). It takes up approximately 32 of the film's 88 minute length.

** "The Great Divide" features a literal Wacky Wayside Tribe - or rather, two of them locked in a never-ending SpaceColdWar. Out of all the show's Wacky Wayside Tribe episodes, this one provides the least insight as to the characters and the world - the only characterization it establishes is Aang's ability to resolve conflicts. Unlike a great deal of the seemingly unrelated events in the first season, it never gets brought up again...except in "The Ember Island Players," during a ShowWithinAShow [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs recapping the series to that point]]. The actors point out the Great Divide...and then decide to [[DiscontinuityNod keep flying over it.]]
** "The Fortuneteller" has a Wacky Wayside Village where everyone unquestioningly accepts the fortuneteller's verdicts on what's going to happen. This becomes problematic when the fortuneteller predicts that the nearby volcano isn't going to destroy the village. The heroes notice that the volcano is about to erupt, but the villagers refuse to accept it because they believe their fortuneteller can't ever be wrong. After a lot of convincing, the villagers work together with the heroes to save the village from the eruption...ironically making the fortuneteller's prediction ("The village will not be destroyed by the volcano this year") technically correct.

** "The Ember Island Players," the last episode before the GrandFinale, has the main characters visiting a Wacky Wayside Theater and seeing the aforementioned ShowWithinAShow [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs detailing their adventures]].

* The ''[[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]]'' stories are entirely comprised of these sorts of adventures, with most of the stories featuring traveling characters "discovering" new, slightly dangerous parts of Oz and having to navigate around the wild animals / monsters / cannibals / etc.