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Hey, remember when Bakura used to be in this show? Neither do I!
Usually if the writers want to remove a character from the show, they will either kill that character or put him or her on a bus to explain their absence.
A Brother Chuck simply disappears and is never mentioned again. The name comes from Chuck, Richie Cunningham's older brother on Happy Days.
Also known as Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
Usually a secondary character, but even more jarring when it happens to a regular.
Sibling in spirit to The Other Darrin. Also see Trivial Pursuit, where the disappeared character is important, or at least relatively important; Uncle Ned; and The Poochie, who gets an excuse in the show for disappearing.
Examples:
- In a rare videogame example, the Koopalings from the Mario series exemplify the trope by disappearing, never to be seen again after Super Mario World, only to be replaced by Bowser Jr.
- Selby, Paul's friend in the first season of Mad About You. (Lampshade hung in one episode when Paul, complaining about their lack of friends, yelled, "Like Selby, what the hell happened to him?")
- About 70% of the girls who were in the first season of The Facts Of Life, including Molly Ringwald ("Molly Parker") and Felice Schachter ("Nancy Butler").
- Judy Winslow, the youngest daughter on Family Matters, simply vanished after the fourth season. (Apparently being Brother Chucked off the show was so traumatic that Jaimee Foxworth, the actress who played her, ended up going into porn under the name "Crave".)
- She was the first of many to fall off the face of reality as The Urkel continued to take over more and more screentime. Seeing how he's a Mad Scientist, that's slightly suspicious...
- Carl Dixon (played by Moses Gunn) married Florida Evans in Good Times to give Esther Rolle's character a reason to leave the show when the actress quit in 1977. However, when she came back to the show in 1978, Dixon was conveniently forgotten and never mentioned again.
- Actually, this was justified (or at least handwaved) by establishing early on that Carl had terminal cancer, and he and Florida moved to Arizona so he could live out his final days in comfort. It's assumed, but never explicitly stated, that Florida moved back when Carl died.
- Comic strip example: In Garfield, Lyman
 was a black-haired guy with a bushy moustache who, originally, owned Odie. After a few years, he quietly disappeared, while Odie remained a regular, and is obstensibly owned by Jon.
- Rumor has it that you really don't want to look in Jon's basement.
- Constantly used in Step By Step.
- Manga example: Doctor Tofu from Ranma 1/2, who was written out midway through the series because his role as Mr Exposition for weird martial arts was adequately filled by Cologne, one of the Trickster Mentors in the series. Fanfic writers tend to keep using him to provide a second opinion, or comedy relief, though it was a joke in the fan community that he had actually fallen into an open sewer and died. This was only in the manga where he last appeared about a third of the way through, but he made minor appearances in the anime throughout the series.
- This was repeated almost exactly in Rumiko Takahashi's later work Inu Yasha. Hojo seemingly disappeared as the manga focused more on the feudal era arcs. And again, the anime differed by including him in later filler episodes.
- Kendra on Degrassi The Next Generation was a recurring character in many second and third season episodes, and vanished without a trace in the fourth season. This was particularly strange because her brother and boyfriend were still on the show. (One wonders why she wasn't there to react when her brother got expelled and re-admitted, found religion and abandoned it...)
- Mandy on The West Wing was a publicity relations manager for the first season, who disappeared after it. According to Rob Lowe, the writers referred to any character who had disappeared and not been used when they seemed they'd be more important as having 'gone to Mandyville.'
- Walt Finnerty on Grounded For Life was gone after season 3 without explanation.
- And younger brother Henry was gone after season 4. Nothing happened to him...he was just always in the other room or something.
- Henry did show up in the series finale, possibly with a lampshade of some kind.
- Walt never completely vanished from the show; he just became more sporadic in his appearances. (This troper would put money on the Channel Hop leading to a budget cut, so veteran actor Riehle got his role reduced.)
- Maggie Doyle on ER.
- Also Bob. Some people now call this trope "being Bobbed".
- Anime example: In Beyblade, the Saint Shields, Team Kane, and a good chunk of the PPB All Starz are all absent in season 3.
- Bob from Becker was said to be "on vacation" in the first episode of Season 6, and never returned.
- Spin City was well known for this -- of all the characters who left, only Mike (Michael J Fox) actually had an exit storyline. This meant that, over the course of the series, Stacy, James, Nikki, Janelle and Angie all disappeared without trace.
- Shermy from Peanuts was the first character to get a speaking line in a strip, and Charlie Brown's best friend early on, but then vanished without a trace. It was probably because he was too normal; he didn't have a quirk like Linus's philosophical tendencies, Pigpen's messiness, or Lucy's bossy personality, he was just an ordinary kid with nothing to hang gags on.
- Actually, several Peanuts characters disappeared for the same reason, as creator Charles Schulz has admitted - they just weren't that interesting. The roster of the eventually-missing also includes Violet and Patty, as well as one-note types like Frieda and Pig-Pen. (Shermy was replaced by Franklin, the strip's first black kid.)
- Seven, a Cousin Oliver introduced in Season 7 of Married... With Children, was written out without explanation when the he proved unpoular with the fans. Lampshaded in one episode when his face was seen on a milk carton.
- Cat Grant on Lois And Clark disappears without a trace after the first season. Thank God.
- Video game example: Dynamo in Mega Man X5 and X6. The only antagonist in the series to remain alive and intact (that is, not coming Back From The Dead), he worked for Sigma in X5, returned in an arbitrary cameo in X6, and vanished off the face of the earth.
- Too many students to be named in Saved By The Bell: The New Class (it happenened in the original Saved By The Bell too, but to a lesser extent).
- Dr. Grace Miller, on Scrubs, was introduced with much fanfare in series 3, then promptly vanished off the face of the earth. Series creator Bill Lawrence later explained that this was because Miller had been a failed attempt to create a female Dr. Cox character. This didn't work because A) it was redundant, as Jordan more than adequately fulfils that role, and B) Dr. Miller was an unfunny, unlikeable shrew.
- JD is also never seen actually breaking up with his love interest Jamie (Tasty Coma Wife, played by Amy Smart). Considering that their relationship was based on drama, however, it's likely that they simply broke up off-screen, as she was gone as the third season began.
- In an early Boy Meets World episode we see Topanga's older sister, Nebula. She is never referred to again and indeed Topanga is later stated to be an only child.
- More notably, Minkus, the nerd from the early seasons, completely and inexplicably disappeared when they moved on to high school. During the very last episode in high school, he finally
made a cameo ran into Cory, and lampshaded his absence by pointing out that he was in classes at the other end of the hall (behind the cameras).
- An interesting reversion is Cory's little sister Morgan, who vanished during the second season, then suddenly appeared again in the third with a new actress, saying "That was the longest timeout I ever had!"
- During the transition between Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers in Space, Lt. Jerome Stone, as well as the Angel Grove Youth Center and Juice Bar, disappeared and was replaced with Adelle and the Surf Spot, while Bulk and Skull attached themselves to an alien-obsessed scientist. Worth noting due to the fact that, despite traveling to at least one other planet and back, it is strongly implied that no more than a week has passed.
- Thomas The Tank Engine does this a lot - in recent series familiar characters such as Duck, Oliver, Boco and Daisy are nowhere to be seen. Donald, Douglas and Sir Handel were also Brother Chucked, but later made reappearances (Sir Handel had an 11 year gap between appearances!).
- Sara from Questionable Content was a barrista at the Coffee of Doom who had a crush on Marten for the first few strips. She seemingly disappeared early on, when the focus shifted to Faye and Marten. This has been subject to a Lampshade Hanging on more than one occasion. The offical explanation for her disappearance is that she was eaten by an allosaurus, but really she was just a boring character.
- In Film: Transformers (2007) featured a Decepticon named Barricade who featured heavily in the middle of the movie, and was seen briefly near the end, but did not participate in the climax, and unlike other characters who survived (Starscream flew out into space during the credits - all other Decepticons were destroyed and dumped in the ocean), was not shown afterwards. He seems to have simply disappeared.
- He was supposedly killed during the highway scene after Optimus Prime took out Bonecrusher, but the scene was removed as they decided to save him for the sequel. The scene is even in the comic adaptation.
- In the original animated Transformers movie, one of the five Dinobots, Snarl, vanishes during the attack on Autobot City. He is not seen or referred to for the rest of the movie.
- In Harry Potter, the character of Colin Creevey all but vanished during the last two books, partially replaced in Half Blood Prince by Stalker With A Crush Romilda Vane. In the films, he was replaced by a movie - only character named "Nigel". Colin did, however, make an appearance during the final epic battle, where he was killed by a Death Eater after sneaking back into the school to fight.
- What ever happened to Spearchucker Jones or Ugly John in MASH?
- Spearchucker was removed for historical reasons, (That Other Wiki: "there is no record of African-American doctors serving in Korea")
- In Xenogears, Billy's dad Jessiah disappears (much like most of the game) when Disk 2 starts. At least, from the storyline, technically he is still around as he is is the gun/bullet in one of Billy's gear's special moves. Oh, and Kaiser Sigmund too - despite the fact that an early Disk 2 plot point would probably have him heavily involved.
- Odin's brothers, Vili and Ve. Whatever happened to those guys?
- There is a theory that one of them changed his name to Lodir, and then to Heimdall. It's not a very popular theory, though. The other one probably went to live with the Vanir on the hostage exchange programme.
- Lampshaded in Banjo-Tooie, where the face of Tooty, Distressed Damsel of the first game, appears on a milk carton at one point.
- In a 1970 episode of the soap All My Children, a teen named Bobby Martin goes up in his family's attic to wax his skis. The actor was then abruptly fired and so Bobby was never seen again. Years later, the show (sort of) lampshaded this by having a character go into the same attic and find a skeleton with a pair of skis.
- In El Goonish Shive, Lord Tedd disappears for arcs at a time. Some of the side characters have fallen into this as well.
- To be fair, he's a villain from another dimension and has never been a regular character. If anything, his few brief appearances so far have been foreshadowing.
- The second season of The Red Green Show greatly expanded the number of characters who appeared in person, as opposed to mentioned by Red in his monologues. Many of these characters were never seen again from the third season onwards, although some of them were occasionally mentioned in passing.
- Fox comedy The Loop is a particularly bad example of this. Between the first and second season, both female leads simply disappeared without a trace. The reason this is so unnerving is one of the female leads was the main character's love interest, and their relationship was left completely unresolved.
- This troper likens it to the idea of writing off Pam from The Office between seasons 1 and 2 with no explanation or fanfare, which is simply ridiculous.
- In Mystery Men Dr. Annabel Leek, the Big Bad's lover and henchwomen suddenly vanishes without a trace half way through the film.
- In The Batman, Detective Yin pretty much vanishes after Batman no longer needed her as link to the police at the end of season two. She's only referred to once in an episode set in the future which implied she and Bennet had both become high-ranking police officers.
- Anko diapears after the Chuunin Exam Arc on Naruto.
- Duane from Penny And Aggie seems to have been Brother Chuck'd right out of the strip. As soon as his relationship with Penny ended, he completely vanished, even though he ostensibly was Aggie's best friend. Now they just play up the Snoopies bunch she hangs out with, to the point where a vaguely-Duane like background character was hoped for by the fans to have been the long-lost only not-insane teenager in the entire strip.
- He finally returns in Chapter Five of "The Popsicle Wars," still bitter over his breakup.
- Wally, Maya's roommate in the first season of Just Shoot Me.
- Many characters in this troper's main RPG home, Stargate Aftermath. If a player disappears and the character wasn't particularly involved in anything, they quietly disappear from existence. Two members of her SG team, most recently. Headed back to base after one hit her head and will very likely never be heard from again.
- Kate Lockley in Angel, ostensibly because she was fired from her job as a police detective and could no longer function as Angel's police contact. In reality, actress Elisabeth Rohm took a regular role on Law&Order.
- She does return in the canon comic continuation though.
- King Muskar XII of the fictional Balkan kingdom Syldavia was a major character in the Tintin story King Ottokar's Sceptre (written in 1938), and ends up a close ally of Tintin. Yet he is completely absent for the post war stories dealing with Syldavia - in fact it is even unclear whether Slydavia is still a monarchy. Possibly a case of Reality Subtext: Muskar was based mostly on King Zog of Albania, and after World War Two all the Balkan kingdoms became communist dictatorships.
- For King Zog, it didn't even take that long; Albania was invaded by Italy in 1938.
- Nastasha Romanenko in Metal Gear Solid, while a minor secondary character in the first game, she's revealed in backstory to have played a very important background role in-between Metal Gear Solid 1 and Metal Gear Solid 2. Despite this, and the fact pretty much every other character in the entire series shows up in Metal Gear Solid 4, she's strangely absent.
- N'grath, the insectiod crime boss from Babylon 5. He completely disappeared after the first season with no explanation.
- It was a running joke among fans that he left the station of a broken heart after Delenn's chrysalis didn't turn her into a insect, but rather a human-Minbari hybrid.
- In the fifth episode of That70s Show Donna's sister Tina is introduced.. only to never be seen again. Later in the series Donna is referred to as being an only child.
- Crewman Elizabeth Cutler seemed poised to to become a recurring character on Enterprise, but when the actress died unexpectedly, the character just vanished. Much later a reference was made to her character having died in battle.
- Jigglypuff in the Pokemon anime.
- Star Trek The Next Generation had an android, Data, who had an Evil Twin, Lore. In Star Trek: Nemesis, B-4, another android identical to Data is found(in pieces), and all of the characters act as if Lore never existed.
- Lt. Carey from Star Trek Voyager who vanished after season one, barring flashback episodes/scenes. He finally showed up again in real time in season seven, only to get shot.
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