->''"The children are suddenly surrounded by a couple of wildcats who prepare to slaughter the children until a man shows up on another bus with a rifle and shoots it at the wildcats. If none of this makes any sense, that's okay, since it's never referred to ever again."''
-->-- [[http://www.bloggerbeware.com/2006/02/09-welcome-to-camp-nightmare_20.html Review]] of ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}} #09: Welcome to Camp Nightmare''

ItMakesSenseInContext of the book you're reading right now, right? '''[[BigLippedAlligatorMoment WRONG!]]'''
----
* The Danse Macabre in ''Literature/TheGraveyardBook''.
** It's never made overt, but the point of the scene is to show the isolation of Silas (who can't dance because he's [[OurVampiresAreDifferent neither living nor dead]]) is. By extension, it reveals to the audience how isolated ''Bod'' (in essentially the same situation, as he's [[RaisedByWolves a living boy spending all his time with the dead]]) will be if he doesn't start to live with his own kind.
* In ''Literature/{{Around the World in 80 Days}}'', Fogg, Passepartout, and Aouda land at America. This passage proceeds:
-->Passepartout, in his joy on reaching at last the American continent, thought he would manifest it by executing a perilous vault in fine style; but, tumbling upon some worm-eaten planks, he fell through them. Put out of countenance by the manner in which he thus "set foot" upon the New World, he uttered a loud cry, which so frightened the innumerable cormorants and pelicans that are always perched upon these movable quays, that they flew noisily away.
* In ''Literature/CaPheDen'', when the viewpoint character and his partner pick a bottle of wine, the author stops the story to deliver an AuthorFilibuster on the history and current state of alcohol regulation in Sweden. This does nothing to advance plot or characterization, never comes up again, and will most likely be of no interest to the reader.
* There's that uncomfortable and unnerving "Vodka" chapter that comes the eff out of nowhere late in ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials''. Will, a 12-13 year old boy, is traveling alone. He stops at the house of an old priest to ask for directions. The priest, a big dude named Semyon, pushes him into accepting a drink of vodka, chats in an overly friendly manner, is very touchy-feely, [[LeaveYourQuestTest tries to convince Will to stay a while]] and is just generally creepy, especially giving that he gives a speech about how witches will try to seduce Will to steal his semen. After few pages of this, understandably feeling uneasy, Will insists on leaving, and Semyon simply gives him a hug and lets him go, after which there is no mention of the incident or the old man ever again. The mainstream lecture is that this was a jab at the Catholic Church, referencing their rampant sexual abuse of children, but even then the scene feels weird.
* In addition to a number of WackyWaysideTribe incidents, one can find a number of Big Lipped Alligator Moments in Creator/LFrankBaum's [[Literature/LandOfOz Oz books]].
** The first book, ''Literature/{{The Wonderful Wizard of Oz}}'', has the China Country, where all the inhabitants are made out of china. Some of them, such as the singing china clown, have been broken and mended several times. They neither help nor hinder Dorothy and her friends, they are introduced out of nowhere and have nothing to do with the story, and they're never mentioned again in the book afterward (or in any of the later Oz books, for that matter). Things like this add to the unnerving dream-logic of the story. A surviving earlier draft doesn't include this adventure at all (and, tellingly, neither do ''Literature/TalesOfTheMagicLand''), and it may have been added just to pad out the book.
** In ''The Patchwork Girl of Oz,'' the protagonists come across a cabin on a deserted stretch of the Yellow Brick Road. A disembodied voice begrudgingly agrees to provide them with food and shelter for the night. The titular Patchwork Girl annoys the unseen host and winds up locked outside overnight, where she sees a large wolf come to the door several times. In the morning, the travelers who spent the night inside realize they still feel hungry and tired, as if they hadn't eaten or slept at all. None of this is elaborated on, they don't lose a day to actually rest or eat, and Ojo doesn't even complain about the experience (which makes it one of the few things he doesn't complain about). However, surviving correspondence between Baum and his editors indicate that one or two chapters Baum wrote for this novel were deleted and are now lost. It is also noteworthy that the phrase "the wolf is at the door" was early 20th-century slang for being in a desperate state of debt, which may or may not be relevant.
** Many of the [=BLAMs=] in the first editions of L. Frank Baum's and subsequently Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz books are not the author's fault, but that of illustrator John R. Neill. Neill's illustrations frequently do not sync up with descriptions of people, place, and things which the authors provided. A truly bizarre example comes in the early chapters of ''The Scarecrow of Oz'', in which on old man and a little girl go on a ''Gilligan's Island''-style boat trip gone wrong. Neill chose to pepper the adventure with gratuitous scenes of an attractive, well-built, not-quite-human lady in the water, with fins on her arms (a la Aquaman) and on the sides of her head (like Flash wings or Catwoman ears). She is wholly Neill's own creation, as the text mentions no character beyond the two boaters in this part of the story, and no mermaid/nereid/selkie/whatever in any other part. But while the mysterious swimming champ is weird enough in her own right, the crowning BLAM moment is the full-page illustration preceding chapter one, in which she is riding a whitewater wave which strategically covers her lower body, except for a "window" which gives us an unobstructed view of her bare buttocks, adding an inexplicable act of Mooning to the Oz books.
** In ''The Tin Woodman of Oz,'' the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and new character Woot the Wanderer are journeying to find the Munchkin girl from the Woodman's backstory, who they believe has been waiting around for him to come back and marry her. At the very start of their journey, they see a sign warning about the village of the Loons. It takes them out of their way and Woot ([[InformedAttribute supposedly]]) dislikes taking unnecessary risks, but they decide to go anyway. The Loons turn out to be balloon people. The protagonists accidentally pop one of them, are captured and put on trial, and escape when Woot gets hold of a thorn and runs around popping random citizens as they flee in terror. Woot suggests taking permanent action against them (he for some reason considers them some huge threat against Oz, despite the fact that they were minding their own business before outsiders came in and started popping them), but the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow rightly point out that they're secluded in their own little area and most people aren't likely to stumble upon them. It isn't unusual for a WackyWaysideTribe to get no further mention, but the characterization in the scene is just off. It's the only time Woot the Wander protests against "danger," and really, why would he ever become known by that title if he were so afraid? The team travels with more purpose from that point on- there's more hijinks, of course, but one scene flows logically to the next and the goal of finding Nimmie Amee is always the priority.
* An example in ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'' is the scene where Alice sees a giant (compared to her) dog, fears it will kill her, but manages to distract it and escape. The dog is the only animal in Wonderland that doesn't talk or exhibit other human characteristics, the tone of the scene clashes with the surrounding scenes, and it is never mentioned again. This isn't ridiculous or over-the-top like a typical BLAM example, but it reads almost like a page from a different fantasy book. Not surprisingly, the Disney movie and most (there is the Hallmark movie) other adaptations leave it out completely.
* There is a particularly {{narm}}ful scene in ''Literature/{{Of Mice and Men}}'' where [[GentleGiant Lennie]] hallucinates that he is being berated by a talking rabbit. And his Aunt Clara.
* ''Literature/TheLostSymbol'' has a chapter where the hero is unconscious... literally. Not mentioned again, not used, nothing, whole chapter = sleeping hero.
* The episode of the dinner of Trimalchio in Petronius' ''Literature/{{Satyricon}}''. It also happens to be the only passage that survives intact.
** Earlier in the work, there's a scene where the main characters get drunk, are (forcibly) involved in an orgy, pass out, and wake up with their faces covered in soot. [[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain They vow never to speak of the incident again.]] Several other scenes might also qualify - the fragmentary nature of the work makes it hard to tell what is and isn't relevant to the plot. Or even what the plot is.
* Mervyn Peake's ''Literature/{{Gormenghast}}'' series has many random scenes, where characters are introduced and conduct pointless dialogues, or new locations are visited and lovingly described, and are then never mentioned again. Considering that he only finished two of the five planned books and only one additional one was made (by his wife), this might be a case of foreshadowing destroyed by the author's death.
* A bizarre example from a ''nonfiction'' book can be seen in ''Black Like Me'', the journal of a white man who changes his skin colour and observes the way he is treated as a Negro man, as he calls it. On a bus to Mississippi he encounters a ''black'' man named Christophe who sings Jazz, smiles at the white folk and snarls at the black folk, speaks perfect Latin, was training to become a priest, claims to be meeting his wife in another town and is planning on shooting several men and running away with his family. Straight out of nowhere, inexplicable, never mentioned again.
* In the third chapter of ''Literature/MobyDick,'' Ishmael (the protagonist) is in a tavern, where there is a man named Bulkington, from Virginia. The way he's described makes him seem both magnetic and physically impulsive, and others in the bar are shouting his name. Then he's never mentioned again.
** A commonly accepted theory is that Bulkington was intended to be a central character in a mutiny plot Melville originally planned but later dropped.
** Also, Bulkington appears ''again'' in chapter 23, "The Lee Shore", steering the ''Pequod''. And then there he's ''again'' never mentioned in the book once.
* Oh course, this happens in Creator/ThomasPynchon novels all the time, in fact, [=BLAMs=] may get more page space than the novel's "plot" itself, leading one to wonder whether it is, in fact, the plot of any Pynchon novel that is a BLAM to be compared against the self-consistent cohesion of the otherwise unrelated, ubiquitous absurdities.
* As it goes on, Stephen King's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series starts to have more and more of these.
** One that springs to mind is in the scene where Roland and Eddie ''meet'' Stephen King, who is a character in his own book. Now, that may sound Blammy but it all makes sense in the series' metafictional context. The BLAM here comes when Eddie comments that if King-the-character keeps smoking, [[NoFourthWall he won't live long enough to complete their story]]. Roland then insists that smoking is good for you as long as you wait until you're an adult to start. Apparently it keeps away everything from insects to evil spirits that cause disease. It seems like it could maybe be a ChekhovsGun, but it's never mentioned again. Fans of ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' were worried that King would die before he completed the series because he kept taking too long between books and he was a heavy smoker. Eddie is serving as a stand-in voice for the fans who want their story to be completed and Roland is a stand-in voice for King, who politely but firmly rebukes Eddie.
** Mrs. Tassenbaum starts out as a Big-Lipped Alligator, coming out of nowhere with a long backstory. Then she finally meets Roland, and it becomes a BizarroEpisode when they eat fried chicken and have sex in a hotel room. There are more scenes like that, especially in the last three books.
* In the children's classic ''Literature/TheWindInTheWillows'' there's the infamous 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn' chapter, where the characters are transported into a mystical world where they meet the great god Pan. Many editions of the book omit this chapter, not because it's bad, just because it's so baffling in relation to the rest of the story. [[note]]It made a good [[Music/PinkFloyd debut album title]], though![[/note]]
** 'Wayfarers All', which involves Rat being hypnotised to run away to sea, but the Mole holds his friend down until he's recovered from the brainwashing.
* OlderThanPrint: Isidore's of Seville 'Historia de regibus Gothorum' at one point mentions council of Goths, at which they discovered that blades of their weapons temporally changed their collors into green, scarlet, yellow, or black. No consequences of this sudden event are mentioned whatsoever.
* OlderThanFeudalism: At the end of book 19 of Creator/{{Homer}}'s ''Literature/TheIliad'', as Achilles hitches up his horses to go into battle, he prays that they will bring him back safely like they didn't do for his fallen friend. In response, the horse Xanthus suddenly gains the power of speech, simply to tell him "yeah, alright, this time. But next battle, you're doomed, buddy." Aside from a moment of surprise, Achilles barely seems to notice his brand-new talking horse; Xanthus loses speech as suddenly as he gained it, and the incident is never, ever mentioned again.
** Actually in the myths those horses always could talk, so Achilles' lack of surprise is understandable. However, the text itself never establishes this so readers not privy to this fact beforehand will find it a MindScrew.
** ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' has a scene in Scheria where the poet Demodocus sings a comedic story about how Hephaestus trapped his wife Aphrodite and the latter's lover Ares in bed and then call the others gods to humiliate them. It has nothing to do with the story and never mentioned again. For many scholars this part may be a late interpolation.
* Thomas Hardy's ''Literature/TheReturnOfTheNative'' features a '''glaring''' example ''in the middle of the climax''. Basically, Eustacia, one of the book's heroines has just left home to meet someone and elope with him. The focus abruptly shifts to Susan Numsuch, who's just seen her through her window. Now, earlier in the book, Susan stabbed Eustacia in church with a hairpin because she suspected her of being a witch. That was already kind of a BLAM in and of itself, but it gets even worse. Seeing that her son has suddenly fallen ill, and Eustacia was the last person he was seen with, she concluded she must have cursed him. So she proceeds to ''[[HollywoodVoodoo construct an efigy of Eustacia out of honey and beeswax, dress it up to look like her, stab it repeatedly with pins and finally burn it in the fireplace while reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.]]'' Not only does this come completley out of left field, and is never mentioned again, but it totally clashes with the tone of the book, which up until now only had ''very'' subtle MagicRealism elements, all of them purely metaphorical. Not only that, but ''Susan herself'' [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse is never mentioned again after this]], also making her a KarmaHoudini.
* In ''Literature/WorldMadeByHand'' there is a scene where Robert visits the New Faith congregation. While there, he meets an obese woman that has multiple seizures followed by prophecies. The general reaction readers appear to have to this scene is "what the hell?"
* Deke [=McClelland's=] ''Macworld Photoshop 3 Bible'' (as the title implies, it's a how-to guide), which is full of humor much like the ''For Dummies'' books, pulls a BLAM off at the very end: in the middle of a step-by-step guide to making a graphical effect, step 29 is a snippet of a suspense story where a spy is sneaking through the dark. And halfway through, the Prime Minister pops up out of nowhere only to get shot. (So, a BLAM - both a figurative and a literal one, to boot - within a BLAM!) The author then goes back to Photoshop tips, but not before commenting that he dislikes Step 29, since it's troublesome and makes all others look dull in comparison.
* ''DOS For Dummies'' included, among its many how-tos on MS-DOS, step-by-step instructions on how to change a nappy.
* Near the beginning of ''[[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings The Fellowship of the Ring]]'' we get this bit with a fox. Not only it is never referenced again, but it doesn't really fit the tone of the book at all, feeling more like something out of ''Literature/TheHobbit''.
-->A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. ‘Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.
** Tom Bombadil is a Big-Lipped Alligator ''character''. He appears out of nowhere to save the Hobbits from an [[WhenTreesAttack evil willow tree]] (which in itself is a BLAM, considering that it has no apparent connection whatsoever to the Ents, and is never mentioned again) by singing it into sleep until it releases the Hobbits, takes them back to his house for lunch and introduces them to his [[UglyGuyHotWife impossibly hot wife Goldberry]]. Most crucially, the One Ring has absolutely ''zero'' effect on him, he can see Frodo just fine while he's invisible to everyone else, and briefly wears it himself with no ill effects before casually handing it back to Frodo with no further interest in it whatsoever. Despite (or perhaps [[StoryBreakerPower because of]]) how ridiculously overpowered he is compared to every single other character in the setting, he has no further narrative relevance beyond a few mentions here and there - at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf even rejects the idea of leaving the One Ring with Bombadil for safekeeping because he is so powerful that he might ''forget about it'' and accidentally misplace it somewhere. The lack of explanation is in this point partly deliberate, Tolkien included him to show that there were some things in Middle-Earth [[InexplicablyAwesome that could not be explained, but simply were.]]
* Zack State, the central character of ''Literature/TheMentalState'', has two musical numbers. His first is a karaoke version of "No More Mr. Nice Guy", and the second is a striptease to the tune of "Missionary Man". These events are apparently an attempt to show how relaxed the rules in prison have become since he started running things.
* The ''Literature/ConanTheBarbarian'' novel ''Literature/TheHourOfTheDragon'' features Conan seeking to reclaim the throne of Aquilonia, and being forced to travel across Hyborea to find the Heart of Ahriman as it passes through several hands. At one point, it ends up in the Temple of Set, and Conan ventures inside. He meets an ancient vampire named Akivasha, who attempts to seduce him, but flees further into the temple to find the Heart, and Akivasaha is never brought up again. So in the middle of a long adventure about a quest to reclaim a kingdom, there's just a random scene with Conan being seduced by a hot vampire lady and walking away.
* The Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse book ''[[Literature/TheCallistaTrilogy Darksaber]]'' features a particularly odd moment when Luke Skywalker and love interest Callista (an Old Republic Jedi preserved in stasis who has lost her connection to the Force) visit Hoth, where they are attacked by the wampa that had its arm cut off by Luke in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''. This wasn't explained at the time, but ''The Essential Guide to Alien Species'' eventually decided that wampas were semi-sapient.
* In the middle of the original Gaston Leroux novel ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' (well, at least in the original English translation,) a man on fire runs through an underground passage at one point, scaring the protagonists and then just as quickly runs right out of the scene and the novel and no one ever talks or thinks about it afterwards.
** There are actually several bizarre encounters in the cellars of the opera house. They are all [=BLAMs=] to some extent, but their main purpose is probably to give the feeling that the protagonists are leaving the real world and are on the Phantom's turf now. Note that Christine's description of her first journey into the cellars, features some fairly strange and hellish imagery too. Some critics have seen the journey into the opera house cellars to be evoking ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', and Dante's descent through the CirclesOfHell, so if this is the case, at least the [=BLAMs=] have some purpose to them.
* The Philosophy Club scene in the novel version of Gregory Maguire's Literature/{{Wicked}}. It seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but no one knows what.
* A lot of Creator/LouisDeBernieres' ''Birds Without Wings'' could be said to be a patchwork of [=BLAMs=]. There is one scene where you see the sack of Smyrna from the point of view of one of the minor characters as he drowns, and the chapters about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk contribute to a feeling that the whole book is merely filler with a few relevant chapters pasted in. Even the character through whose eyes we see much of the Ottoman experience in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI is not the character who then goes on to go mad and [[spoiler:kill his girlfriend]].
* After an assassination in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar novel ''War Dogs'', the group's leader is returning from his watching post and is suddenly attacked by a tiger. After an extended river tiger fight, he regroups with his team and almost no time is spent discussing his fresh wounds.
* The two-dimensional planet stop in ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime''. The heroes [[OurWormholesAreDifferent "tesser"]] to a weird place where the children feel squashed and can't see anything, one of the adults mentions something about the kids being unable to exist properly on a two-dimensional planet, and they warp away. It was probably supposed to be related to the four-dimensionalness of their teleporting method, but no actual explanation is given for why they went there, what the heck a "two-dimensional planet" even is in a three-dimensional universe and why the kids weren't crushed to death.
** As the chapter itself points out, they very nearly ''were'' crushed to death. In the two-dimensional world, Meg's lungs couldn't breathe, her heart couldn't beat (though it tried), her brain couldn't form thoughts - even the sound of someone's voice was described as "[[PaintingTheMedium words flattened out like printed words on paper]]". Had they not been traveling with [[spoiler:the angels]] Mrs. Which, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit, they would have been flattened out of existence altogether! Charles Wallace did say, "Really, Mrs. Which, you might have killed us!"
* Literature/HarryPotter's dreams and [[ImagineSpot mental images]] can be downright WEIRD. Take, for instance, the dream Harry had in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix book 5]] right before [[MoodWhiplash the attack on Arthur Weasley.]] In summary, Cho Chang tells Harry that Cedric had bought her tons of Chocolate Frogs, Hermione suggests giving her his Firebolt, he explains that it's currently locked in [[TyrantTakesTheHelm Umbridge's]] office, and he's trying to hang up Christmas ornaments shaped like Dobby's head. [[MindScrew Yeah.]] ([[ItMakesSenseInContext To be fair]], his dreams are [[RealDreamsAreWeirder precisely like how normal dreams work]], which helps establish the MoodWhiplash when he transitions from a normal (if odd) dream to [[DreamSpying a realistic, coherent vision of Nagini's attack]].)
* In ''Literature/TheHelp'' there is a scene in which a naked man attacks Minny and Celia at Celia's home in the country and tries to rape them. He [[spoiler: immobilizes Minny, leaving Celia to fight him off by herself]]. Then he wanders away, never to be seen again. Presumably this scene was included to show that [[spoiler: Celia]] is tougher than she looks and can fight for herself, but it's pretty jarring and really has no relevance to the rest of the story.
* An example of this is to be found in the ''illustrations'' of C.S. Lewis's ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe''. The illustrations were done by Pauline Baynes, who in every single drawing of Aslan, depicts him as a lion walking on all fours. However, in the aforementioned book, there is one picture of Aslan and the White Witch discussing the terms of his surrender - which has Aslan standing on his hind-legs, his front paws clasped behind his back in a strikingly human-like pose. He is never described as doing this in the text, it's completely at odds with Lewis's emphasis on his leonine nature, and it's the only illustration in the entire seven-book series which portrays him taking such a stance.
** Perhaps this human-like pose is an early hint as to Aslan's [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} secret identity]]?
** Literature/PrinceCaspian has a section where the narrative has to give the girls something to do while the boys are off meeting Caspian. The result is Aslan taking them to party with ''Bacchus'' of all beings. The cosmology crossover is never remotely explained, and the incident is never mentioned again.
* Literature/TheirEyesWereWatchingGod:
** This mostly realistic story of human drama is suddenly interrupted by a scene of talking Buzzards. Whatever meaning that scene holds to the themes of the story as a whole is a matter of scholars....
* Literature/TheBible:
** The Literature/BookOfExodus has the much-debated "Zipporah at the inn" episode which is no longer than three verses. En route to Egypt, Moses and his family stay at an inn. Then the Lord ''tries'' (?) to kill him for unexplained reasons (right after He gave him the mission to free Israel). Moses' wife Zipporah takes a sharp stone, which she uses to cut off the foreskin of their son, and afterwards has one very confusing (at least to the modern reader) line of dialogue, calling Moses "a bridegroom of blood to me," which only adds to the weirdness. The standard interpretation of the passage is that God (or at least an angel) wants to kill Moses for neglecting the rite of circumcision of his son, but it's not stated explicitly and the incident is never mentioned again.
** In chapter 14 of the Gospel of Mark, during the arrest of Jesus, it's briefly mentioned that there was a man who ran off naked after someone grabbed his robe. It has no relevance to the story and is never mentioned again or in the other Gospels. Some scholars have claimed that this man, whom they call the Naked Fugitive, was Mark himself, as in the author of the gospel. Others even believe he might have been a male prostitute, with all of its possible implications.
** The Gospel of Matthew has a few verses (27:53) that mention a miracle where a group of "saints" came BackFromTheDead and were seen by many in Jerusalem. Not only are there only 3 verses mentioning this event, none of the other Gospels (all of which tell more or less the same story) even bring it up.
* In ''Literature/{{Chosen}}'', [[spoiler:Zoey has two guys run down with a truck just because they posed a threat to Heath. It is never mentioned again]].
* Near the end of the first part of Literature/DonQuixote, the characters are at an inn and spend two and a half chapters reading a story they found in a chest, which has no bearing on the main story. Early in the second part, it's outright said that it was a pointless digression, that broke up the flow of the narrative for no purpose.
* In the ''Franchise/NancyDrew'' novel ''Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk'', Nancy is struck by lightning after getting caught in a freak-storm while on a picnic with her friends. It has no bearing on the rest of the story, it's over in less than a paragraph, and no one ever mentions it again afterwards.
* In ''Emperor Pickletine Rides The Bus'', the last book in [[Literature/OrigamiYoda the Origami Yoda series]], there's a chapter where a teacher is showing a group of kids a glyptodon [[note]] a prehistoric mammal resembling a turtle [[/note]] in a museum, and one of the kids shouts, "TURTLE!". The teacher tries to correct him, but soon, all of the kids are saying "TURTLE!". She gives up, and shows them a mammoth instead. One of the kids shouts, "ELEPHANT!". And Tommy's comment on the story? "TURTLE!". It's weird, to say the least.
* Some of the chapters in ''Literature/TheGrapesOfWrath'', like the one about a turtle nearly getting hit by a car and the car salesman chapter, could be cut without affecting the plot.
* In ''Literature/OurMothersHouse'' by Julian Gloag, Hubert experiences a hallucination connected with the onset of puberty. The matter never arises again.
* In ''Literature/JamesAndTheGiantPeach,'' while James and the bugs are flying across the Atlantic ocean on top of the giant peach, a giant bat suddenly swoops over them and startles them. Even though the characters' journey as a whole could be considered a RandomEventsPlot, this event in particular is never alluded to anywhere else.
* The scene in ''Literature/TheColourOfMagic'' where Rincewind and Twoflower's dragon disappears, and Rincewind somehow wills them to Roundworld, where they're on an aeroplane that's been hijacked and are named Dr Rjinswand and Jack Zweiblumen. When the Luggage appears to threaten the hijacker Rjinswand wishes he were somewhere else and they're back on the Disc, with the only evidence of this scene being that they're not in the same place they were in when the dragon disappeared (although still falling) and the Luggage now bears the "powerful travelling rune T.W.A." Even for a RandomEventsPlot, it's kind of disconnected from everything around it, even more so when it diverts into describing the effect that all this matter jumping universes is having on other worlds ''that bear no resemblance to either the Disc or our world, and are never mentioned again''. The TV and comicbook adaptations both skip it entirely.
* The ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' novel ''Far Country'' departs from the BlackAndGrayMorality WarIsHell, [[AbsentAliens human-only]] action the series is known for, and instead features a race of intelligent pre-industrial BirdPeople, the Tetatae, that were found by a wrecked jumpship after a BlindJump. WordOfGod states that the story remains canonical, but they have no intention of returning or even mentioning them (the jumpship was regarded as [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace lost in transit]]), feeling that aliens do not fit within the greater universe.
* The encounter with the Sphinx in the Labyrinth of ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians''. Funny? Yes. However, it is never referenced afterwards, and appears to come off as an AuthorFilibuster.
* ''Literature/DreamPark'': Played with in ''The Barsoom Project''. When the participants in the Fimbulwinter Game take an approach not anticipated by the Game Master, he activates a ''pre-designed'' Big-Lipped Alligator Moment to keep the players distracted while he thinks about how to deal with their unexpected course of action. In-Game, it's a BLAM, but out-of-Game it's entirely justified.
* Invoked and '''weaponized''' in ''Literature/HowToSurviveAHorrorMovie'', a guide to [[DefiedTrope defying]] HorrorTropes to avoid getting killed off. Engaging in a BLAM that [[GenreRoulette runs counter to it being a horror movie]], [[ProductPlacement hypes a product]] so blatantly it's embarrassing, violates the film-rating's content standards, offers up incongruously-good dialogue ([[ShoutOut cribbed from better movies]]), or would blow the production's budget out of the water can serve as an emergency "ejection seat" that will get your imminent death-scene postponed or written out of the script.
* Owing to ''Literature/AnnaKarenina'''s SwitchingPOV, we spend at least a little time in just about every character's head. Somewhat more surprising are the couple of sequences we get from the perspective of one of the human character's dog!
* ''The Wolves in the Walls'' by Creator/NeilGaiman is quite a short picture book, but it still manages to fit in a big-lipped alligator moment. When Lucy makes her bold suggestion for dealing with the wolves, she gets a shocked reaction from everybody: from her father, from her mother, from her brother, and from "the Queen of Melanesia, who had dropped by to help with the gardening". That's the only mention of the Queen of Melanesia in the entire book; there's no lead-up to her appearance, and she has no effect on the plot.
* ''Yeats is Dead'' by 15 different Irish authors each doing their own chapter has one entire chapter devoted to have the cast getting drunk then high, a main character trying to lose their virginity, a brand new character joining who them is never mentioned again and the death of a government politician which has nothing to do with the rest of the plot.
* At the end of Creator/CarlosRuizZafon's ''Literature/TheShadowOfTheWind'', the protagonist sees a strange old man with golden eyes and a grey coat, described as "a deserter angel", who is laughing outside and playing with the snow. The man, whom the protagonist feels can "read into his soul", just wishes him good luck and is never seen or mentioned again.
* ''Literature/TheSongOfAchilles'': Patroclus having sex with Deidameia. It occurs almost immediately after Patroclus and Achilles reconcile over Achilles being forced to impregnate Deidameia, it doesn't tell us anything about Patroclus that we don't already know (he's empathetic and rather self-sacrificing; even the fact that he isn't completely Achilles-sexual is handled much better with his interaction with Briseis), and it's such a miserable, joyless moment that even Patroclus attempts to pretend it didn't happen. Some readers opt to do the same, a few going on record as having torn out the page, because it really doesn't change much about the story.
* ''Literature/JurassicPark'': At one point when Grant, Lex, and Tim were trying to get through the park, a giant dragonfly with a several foot wingspan lands on Lex's arm. It has no relevance to the plot, is never mentioned again, and is the only reference to any non-dinosaur species being cloned in the park. Also, it's out of place due to Earth's atmosphere no longer having enough oxygen in it to support insects that size (at the time when BigCreepyCrawlies existed, Earth had about 35% O2 in the atmosphere, as opposed to the 21% in the modern era).
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