Cryptic Background Reference / Live-Action TV

• Andor:
  • Saw lists a host of Rebel groups and condemns them all as being "lost". These begin with names and causes that Star Wars fans would recognize such as Separatists (who had attempted to break away from the Republic in the Clone Wars before Palpatine turned the Republic into The Empire), neo-Republicans (who want to restore the Republic), and the Ghorman Front (Ghorman being a planet that is colonized by the Empire, and where Imperial troops would massacre protestors several years after the first season of Andor), and continues on to the Partisan Alliance, sectorists, human cultists, and galaxy partitionists — all names and causes of unknown significance, other than that they're organizations or ideologies that have reason to oppose the Empire.
  • When Skeen chastises Nemik for falling asleep on watch duty, he lists several rebel cells which he says would have tortured or killed Nemik for such a lapse. The only one that is recognizable to Star Wars fans is Saw Gerrera, the rest are all a mystery and have never come up in any Star Wars lore before Skeen mentioned them.
• Babylon 5 subverted this trope quite often, given that it was all plotted out in advance. For instance, the fates of all the previous Babylon stations seemed to be a case of simple world-building, to stress how dangerous the universe was. But then we learned what happened to them: Three destroyed, one vanished. Then the vanished one shows up again, having been Unstuck in Time. Then it gets even deeper, when it's revealed that Sinclair, The Captain in the first season, was in fact that Minbari prophet Valen, after he'd traveled back in time to provide the Minbari with the space station they desperately needed to win a war, which also helps to explain the random weirdness of Delenn becoming half-human. Other factors, like the unstable politics of Mars, also come up again in later seasons to be fleshed out. Other things, however, were left to the imagination. Such as what it was about Vree eating habits that disgusted G'Kar so much that he considered sitting next to them to be an insult to his entire government.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer did this sometimes. For example in "The Prom", Wesley mentioned the "Machash Wars".
• Burn Notice does this a lot by mentioning various ops the main characters have done before the start of the series.
• In Doctor Who, all bets are off. The Doctor will routinely spout off about unexplained spatial phenomena, utterly bizarre alien cultures and references to the Last Great Time War and too many other things to even think about listing. These are often expanded on in books or audio dramas, and occasionally later in the show itself.
  • Stories with the Third Doctor (and occasionally others) often make mention of an unnamed "monk" or "hermit" the Doctor knew long ago. The audience finally met the monk in the Third Doctor's final story. Whether the "hermit" was the same person has been the subject of much debate among fans.
  • It's virtually guaranteed that whenever the Doctor meets the Master, they will talk about their childhood and various parts of their own backstories and identities, which of course will never be explained because of how important the mystery behind them (as well as the Time Lords and Gallifrey as a whole) is to both characters.
  • Characters other than the Doctor are known to do this, too. For example, Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood fame. This mostly has to do with various sexual exploits, but he does mention actual bizarre past experiences. Random side-characters can do this too, usually to the Doctor or one of his companions, with the assumption that they're from the same period/place, and know what they mean.
  • We know about Torchwood 1 (from the Doctor Who episodes "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday") and Torchwood 3 (from Torchwood). But the mysterious disappearance of Torchwood 4, and why Torchwood 2 is one guy, called Archie, above a bank in Glasgow, ("A very strange man") will probably never be revealed.
  • The audience's desensitization to this is exploited in "The Time of the Angels". While walking around the old mausoleum of Alfava Metraxis, the Doctor rambles on about the natives, and particularily how they had two heads and outlawed self-marriage at some points. Then he realizes that the statues around the mausoleum only have one head. Because they are all Weeping Angels.
• Unintentionally done in the TV series adaptation of The Dresden Files, where things that are explained in the books are referenced, but are never explained in the series. It is possible they would have been, had the show not been canceled after a season.
• Fargo: In season 1, characters like Lou Solverson and Ben Schmidt make references to the Sioux Falls massacre of 1979, which we later see for ourselves in season 2.
• Game of Thrones: Events surrounding Lyanna's abduction and her eventual death remained a mystery until late in the series. Some of the events transformed into foreshadowing after the 6th season finale revealed she died giving birth to Rhaegar's son, whom her brother adopted and renamed Jon Snow. In-universe, the abduction remains a cryptic reference even after the audience (and Bran and Sam) get a complete explanation in season 7.
• How I Met Your Mother: There was much speculation as to the origins of the goat in Ted's apartment, which is mentioned in season three but abruptly dismissed with "oh wait, that was on my thirty-FIRST birthday". Fans had a whole season to wonder, but the actual explanation was, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a letdown.
  • The title itself refers to How Ted Met the Mother of His Children. It took until the end of season 8 before we saw her face.
• LazyTown: The first episode has the Mayor lamenting how awful the town is, and notes that when the town was previously in trouble, they would call for help from a guy with a big number 9 on his shirt. With Sportacus being number 10, the implication is that Number Nine was the town's previous savior who left or disappeared for unknown reasons. This is even more cryptic with the fact that Robbie knows who Number Nine was while the Mayor only read about it.
• Leverage has several of these, such as the named cons that we never see the team run, like the "London Spank," the "Genevan Paso Doble" and the "Apple Pie," which is a "Cherry Pie" but with lifeguards. Also, there's what Nate did at the Russian border. Word of God says that he may have technically hijacked a train, but that hasn't been mentioned on the show and likely never will be.
  • We've also seen the team coming back from jobs - one in Mexico where Parker picked up a lot of pinatas, and one in the Caribbean that went wrong in several different ways - without hearing much about what those jobs actually were.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, there are many events and characters from Silmarillion that can only be alluded because of the treat between the Tolkien Estate and Amazon, in which only the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings can be fully adapted. The War of Wrath and fall of Beleriand are never named in the prologue, but key scenes are shown from them. Luthien and her hound Huan have statues carved in wood in a shrine build for the fallen Elves in Lindon, yet they are never named. The Harfoots settles temporary somewhere around Rhovanion, in a place full of ruins and destroyed statues, hitting that there existed once a mysterious advanced civilization, and there is no clue of who they were.
• In addition to the character backstories seen in flashbacks, Lost has included a number of throwaway references that have captured fan imaginations, including Sawyer's "Tampa job" and Sayid's Basra incident.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Daredevil: People in New York City only ever refer to the alien invasion of 2012 as "the Incident". Lampshaded when the realtor guiding Matt and Foggy around their future office space for Nelson & Murdock brings up that their office escaped damage during the invasion:
    Matt Murdock: The, uh, "Incident"? Is that we're calling it now?
    Susan Harris: Well it sounds so much nicer than "death and destruction raining from the sky, nearly wiping Hell's Kitchen off the map."
    Matt Murdock: Shorter, too.
  • Each of the other Netflix shows uses "the Incident" too when talking about the invasion, showing that it's become pretty much a citywide thing (and possibly so they can differentiate it from 9/11). Word of God states this was done to keep the tone consistent, as continuously referring to an "alien invasion" as such in a gritty urban setting would break the immersion.
• Merlin occasionally references the Ancient Kings and the High Priestesses, who were apparently embroiled in some sort of war for supremacy before Uther came to power.
• In Stargate SG-1, one of the four great races is the Furlings, who are never shown in 10 years of episodes (though a parody in episode 200 shows them as small furry creatures, looking somewhat like Ewoks). The non-appearance of the Furlings has become something of a Running Gag, since the parody starts with surprise to even meet them, and ends with the Furling homeworld being destroyed.
• The constantly expanding Star Trek universe is replete with this one and usually two or three are generated per episode.
  • A common theme in Star Trek: The Original Series and early Star Trek: The Next Generation is having a character list one or two examples from real-world history and adding a fictional example from the setting that is implied to be similar by association but is never elaborated upon or referenced again.
  • The other most common thing are events that occurred in the fictional gaps of time between the various eras (Approximately 100 years elapsed between Enterprise and The Original Series, 15ish years for TOS and The Wrath of Khan (The Motion Picture being close-ish to TOS' present), and 80ish for The Original Series and The Next Generation. Significant things happened during those periods that are frequently referred to, but almost never shown on screen ("What happened to the Enterprise-B?" and the Earth-Romulan War being some of the big ones.) The Expanded Universe naturally latches onto these things like crazy.
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Omega Directive" it's mentioned that the titular directive was established after an accident with the Omega Particles happened to Federation scientists in 2269. The fact that 2269 is in the middle of Kirk's five year mission, and this neither references an episode of the original series, nor mentions any involvement from the Enterprise (but doesn't discount it) makes it all the more cryptic.
  • They Double Subverted this trope in regards to a specific alien race. Since TNG, there has been mention of an alien race called the Breen, though all that was known about them is that their homeworld is very cold. They finally show up in DS9, but in full body environmental suits that completely disguises their appearance, and nothing at all about their society is revealed. A throwaway line in DS9 suggests that they are extremely secretive by nature, so that not even the people in the shows know much about them.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine referred in a couple of episodes ("The Adversary" and "Home Front") to a race called the Tzenkethi. All we learned was that their leader was called the Autarch, and that they'd previously fought a war with the Federation during which Ben Sisko served as first officer of the USS Okinawa under then-Captain Leyton. The EU used this as a jumping-off point for several novels, including making them a major player in the Typhon Pact following the Dominion War, while Star Trek Online based an arc on them that segued into another arc based on a CBR from Deep Space Nine, the reemergence of the Klingons' ancient enemies the Hur'q.
• The Wire shows the city of Baltimore had its own mythology in its criminal underworld. For example, when D'Angelo Barksdale mentions his grandfather was Butch Stamford, the detectives present do a double take and the prosecutor with them looks pale and incredulous, but we never get any more explanation. There's only one more (possible) offhand reference during the show, when an old time crook declares that Avon Barksdale's father was pure evil (Avon is D'Angelo's uncle, so presumably his father is the aforementioned Butch) and Avon is almost as bad. Similarly, at the wake of Ray Cole, Jay Landsman alludes to major cases Cole cracked in the past, that are references to movies Robert F Colesbury, the actor playing Cole, had written and produced in real life.