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alt title(s): Chuck Cunningham Syndrome Hey, remember when Bakura used to be in this show? Neither do I!
Let us contemplate the mystery of Richie's older brother Chuck, who ascended the stairs with his basketball at the end of the first season and never came down again.
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 — often because the writers simply gradually lose interest in the character, without ever making a conscious decision to remove them from the storyline, and then eventually forget about them entirely. 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; Out Of Focus; and The Poochie, who gets an excuse in the show for disappearing.
Contrast with Remember The New Guy. For characters who are written out of the story but don't quite cease to exist, see Demoted To Extra.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In Beyblade, the Saint Shields, Team Kane, and a good chunk of the PPB All Starz are all absent in season 3.
- Jigglypuff in the Pokemon anime.
- 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.
- Due to some sort of quirk in Viz's credits, Doctor Tofu's voice actor is credited at the end of every episode of the English dub; despite the fact that after the first season of the anime he becomes a bit player who shows up maybe once every dozen episodes.
- 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.
- El Hazard: The Alternative World introduced a (seemingly nameless) farmer as a love interest for princess Rune Venus. One episode ended, for him, on a literal cliffhanger - he was left clinging to the edge of a cliff, about to fall to his doom. However, the cliffhanger was never resolved and the character was never seen (or even mentioned) again.
- The Steel Saints from Saint Seiya, characters original to the anime's first season, completely disappeared before the 12 Zodiac Temples Arc.
- Lunch was pretty much the second (or third, depends on your view) female lead in Dragon Ball. In Dragon Ball Z, she disappeared completely, with no explanation; even Tenshinhan and Yamcha, who were also mere humans compared to the overwhelming saiyans, just like her, appear a bit more than the girl. To be fair, Toriyama said just forgot completely of the poor thing's existence.
- Longchamp in Katekyo Hitman Reborn, much to the relief of many fans.
- While many other fans wants him in the anime and is hoping for the mangaka to reveal that Final Boss Byakuran is actually Longchamp after Art Evolution.
Comic Books and Newspaper Comics
- Comic strip example: In Garfield, Lyman
 was a black-haired guy with a bushy moustache who, originally, owned Odie. Media accusations that roommates Jon and Lyman were gay prompted his quiet disappearance after a few years. His dog Odie remained a regular, and is ostensibly owned by Jon. Rumor has it that you really don't want to look in Jon's basement.
- Shermy from Peanuts was the first character to get a speaking line in the 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.
- 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 (the two girls in the early strips), as well as one-note types like Frieda and Pig-Pen. (Shermy was replaced by Franklin, the strip's first black kid.)
- After appearing in about two strips, Charlotte vanished due to all the criticism she got for going too far in her cruelty. Unlike Shermy, Patty and Violet, who at least were Demoted To Extra, Charlotte never appeared again at all. Charlotte had a lot of potential, too; her full name was "Charlotte Braun," and, as that might suggest, she was created as a female counterpoint to Charlie Brown. She was basically the anti-Chuck: abrasive instead of timid, over-confident instead of self-loathing, convinced the world owed her instead of convinced the world hated her. Schultz quickly learned that people liked Charlie Brown for the same reasons they hated Charlotte. He replied to one letter writer who asked him to take her out of the comic, "I will remove her, but how do you feel about causing the death of an innocent child?" (the letter included a picture of Charlotte with an axe in her head).
- Mad Magazine pointed out Shermy's disappearance with a feature they ran several years later in which he comes back to the strip and finds everyone in it has let stardom go to their heads.
- 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.
- What's especially unfortunate is that Muskar's disappearance turns King Ottokar's Sceptre (itself one of the best Tintin stories) into a Shaggy Dog Story - the entire plot in that story was about Tintin trying to foil a plot to force Muskar into abdicating.
- In the comic strip Zits, Jeremy and Hector's garage band included their first drummer, Y.A. In one strip he just quit the band and never showed up again.
- Just about every other character in the Prickly City strip besides Carmen and Winslow was a victim of this. Early in the run there was a character named Dio, a chameleon. He appeared in the strip on and off and then just disappeared. He eventually reappeared one more time several months later for a storyline, but he hasn't appeared since.
- This was the case with the MAIN CHARACTERS in Out of the Gene Pool. The strip was originally about Rufus and his friends and families. Later in the run the cartoonist switched focus to Rufus's brother-in-law and changed the title to Single and Looking. Rufus was never heard again until a year later when he appeared in the very last strip, snarking about how he never had a proper closure.
- Famously done to Rikki in the Belgian comic epic Suske En Wiske (Spike And Suzy). Rikki was Wiske's brother, and a main character for the singular issue the comic was still called "Rikki En Wiske". He was never heard from again until after the author passed away, and the new writers decided to bring him back briefly after 254 (!) issues. The explanation? Rikki had gone out to buy shoes and somehow got stuck in Ruritania.
- In the comic strip Robotman, the titular character got abducted by aliens, and was never mentioned again. Eventually, the comic strip got renamed to Monty, one of the other characters who became the new main character.
- Also, the strip was first about him staying with a traditional family, and much of the comedy was based on "weird urban alien hijinks" similar to E.T. or Alf. They vanished with no explanation. This was later lampshaded.
- Pearls Before Swine had the character Leonard, who moved into the apartment with Rat and Pig after they leased it for rent. Originally the creator of the strip got rid of him in this method, but eventually he wrote him out by saying that he got his head stuck in the toilet and drowned.
- Calvin of Calvin And Hobbes was introduced to an Uncle Max, his father's brother, fairly early on in the comic strip's run. Max's single visit to Calvin's home was also his last, and as Watterson put it, "Max is gone."
- Watterson said this was because he was finding it hard to have Max talk to Calvin's dad without saying his name, and Watterson was always very strict about Calvin's parents never being referred to as anything but "mom" and "dad." To the point that he would rather retire the Max character forever than give them names.
- Chip Dunham's Overboard had several pirate characters early on that just sort of disappeared over time. To replace them, he's increasingly relied on Talking Animal characters (dogs, mice, and rabbits) to serve as foils to lead character Captain Crow and remaining shipmates Charley and Nate.
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.
- Scorponok also disappears as well. After the battle with the military in the desert, he burrows down into the sand, injured but clearly still alive, and does not reappear for the rest of the film. Clips from the trailers for the sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, suggest he may be returning.
- 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.
- Nightcrawler was a major character in Film/X-Men 2, but he didn't even appear in the third movie. Actor Alan Cumming found the make-up and prosthetics process grueling and refused to return for the sequel. Cumming can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage for X-Men 2 already stating that he never wants to go through the ordeal again. Thus, his character was Put On A Bus. The video game based on the film explains that Nightcrawler left the X-Men in reaction to their violent lifestyle.
- Honey, I Shrunk The Kids: Ron and Russ Thompson were major central characters of the film along with Nick and Amy Szalinski. In fact, Amy and Russ share a romantic moment together, and Ron and Nick had a bit of a rivalry with each other (which ended up becoming a friendly one). The Thompsons are nowhere to be found in any of the sequels or the TV series. As a consequence, Amy was Put On A Bus to college in the beginning of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, and the Thompsons are only mentioned in passing once as "the guys next door".
- Dr. Dolittle: Rodney the guinea pig is nowhere to be found come the sequel, probably because his voice actor, Chris Rock, declined to return. While Rodney may likely have died of age by Dr. Dolittle 2, this is never addressed at any point.
- In the early Olsen-Banden movies, Kjeld and Yvonne had two children: A son Børge and a smaller daughter (unnamed, I believe). As the series went on Børge became an important regular while his sister vanished into thin air.
- In the animated version of Charlottes's Web Jeffrey the gosling, Wilbur's best friend besides Charlotte, is never seen again after he attempts to join Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton in the crate and is taken out.
Literature
- In The Baby Sitters Club, this was the eventual fate of most of the girls' non-club friends, fuelling speculation that the girls were disturbingly cult-like...
- The "Bummer Twins" (Jackie and Alison) in the Confessions Of Georgia Nicolson series, who feature prominently in early books but disappear completely after Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants (with Georgia briefly noting in a later book that they had been expelled from school.)
Live Action TV
- Happy Days, in addition to being the Trope Namer, also lampshaded this trope in an outtake from the finale:
- 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").
- On The 4400, Dennis Ryland was a prominent character for the first three seasons of the show (though he did experience a brief absence), first as the head of NTAC, then as a notably more antagonistic character in a higher level of government. However, he disappeared entirely, and without explanation, for the show's fourth and final season, with only a single, fleeting reference being made to him as one of the people who exploited Isabelle Tyler. This despite the fact that the project he was working on (the development of promicin-enhanced soldiers) was at its height at the end of the third season.
- Similarly, Nina Jarvis, the head of NTAC for the second and third seasons, disappeared with no further mention in the fourth season, her role being filled by new character Meghan Doyle. It can be presumed she quit, though no explanation is given.
- And an example with a secondary character is Diana's boyfriend, Ben, introduced near the end of the third season and disappearing mid-way through the fourth with no further mention. The implication is that they broke up, though this is quite surprising considering how well they'd been doing as a couple.
- 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.
- 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.
- Dr. Ben Samuels was a major character in the first season of St. Elsewhere who simply stopped appearing. His plot arc was never resolved, and none of the other characters mention him again.
- Constantly used in Step By Step.
- 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.' Not only did she disappear between season one and two (despite the opener of season two following directly on from the end of the first) but she does not appear in any flashbacks to Bartlett's initial campaign, despite having been established as both working on it and being involved with Josh at the time.
- Several characters 'went to Mandyville' over the course of the series, often with no more than a few appearances. Ainsley Hayes had several episodes of her own when she was first introduced in the second series but later vanished. Her disappearance was only ever explained when they were interviewing her successor.
- Ainsley, and a few other characters who had 'gone to Mandyville' did make cameo appearances in the last few episodes.
- 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".
- 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.
- Mike's girlfriend Ashley was awkwardly Put On A Bus in the middle of season one, then never again mentioned.
- Seven, a Cousin Oliver introduced in Season 7 of Married... With Children, was written out without explanation when he proved unpopular 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, ostensibly because the network thought she was too risque.
- Too many students to be named in Saved By The Bell: The New Class (it happened 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 fulfills 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.
- JD screwed up with TCW somehow. Turk says her name when listing JD's failed relationships in a later episode.
- Additionally, she appeared in the finale amongst every notable guest star from the shows run, lamenting that JD "never called."
- 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.
- 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 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 lampshaded this by having a character go into the same attic and find a skeleton with a pair of skis, wearing a ski hat with "Bobby" on it- a comedic example of a Bus Crash.
- 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.
- Wally, Maya's roommate in the first season of Just Shoot Me.
- 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 And Order.
- Although Word of God says that they were pretty much done with the character anyway, as it was decided that involving Angel with the police was just overcomplicating things; later seasons ignore the existence of the LAPD entirely, thus making the WHOLE DEPARTMENT a "Brother Chuck" of sorts.
- Somewhat justified in that Angel doesn't deal with the type of crimes that normal cops could handle anyway. And the show begins to turn from "supernatural crimes" to plain old "supernatural" around this time anyway.
- She does return in the canon comic continuation though.
- Babylon 5 has three:
- N'grath, the insectoid crime boss. The animatronics that "played" him became irreparably damaged sometime between seasons 1 and 2, and so he completely disappeared after the first season with no on-screen 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. One episode of the Postscript Season casually mentioned his death.
- Also between seasons two and three, G'Kar's assistant N'toth vanishes without a trace. This plot hole was referred to in a third season episode before being patched in season 5 when she showed up as a P.O.W. and an episode was spent sneaking her onto a transport home. Interestingly, G'Kar's first assistant also disappeared in an airlock accident off-screen (though this was explicitly mentioned on screen). Is it any wonder why G'Kar becomes something of a loner for most of the series?
- Sinclair was engaged. We met his wife-to-be. Once he left, of course, she was never heard from again.
- 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.
- She was mentioned again once though, she was sent to a boarding school or something.
- Subverted with Eric's sister Laurie. After the actress switch after graduation resulted in a negative reaction from fans, she was often referenced as never being around, and giving a toast to her friends and family in the last episode Kitty says, "And Laurie... well, nobody ever knows where she is."
- 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.
- Lt. Carey is an odd case from Star Trek Voyager. He vanished from the actual crew season one, but he would reappear whenever characters had a flashback to season one, or whenever Time Travel threw people to season one's time, so the actor was still on staff. He finally showed up again in real time in season seven, only to get shot.
- Also Samantha Wildman, which is pretty weird since her daughter Naomi remained on the show with Seven of Nine basically taking over the mother role for her. Word Of God is that the writers somehow got the idea that they'd killed Samantha in an episode where she almost dies but pulls through.
- In the original series, Yeoman Rand was set up in the first dozen or so episodes as a regular love interest for Kirk and then disappeared without explanation. No one seems to be quite sure of the reason, but it's usually claimed either that the writers decided Kirk should have a parade of Green Skinned Space Babes instead of a steady girlfriend or that Grace Lee Whitney (who had drug and alcohol issues at the time) committed a Role Ending Misdemeanor. She did, however, return in the films, ending up as Sulu's first officer on the Excelsior.
- This might become a problem for the Australian medical drama All Saints now that the actor playing one of the main characters has died unexpectedly right in the middle of an important story arc.
- In Stargate SG 1 Dr. Lam, who appears as the SGC's resident doctor in season 9 vanishes by season 10 and the two following movies. Similarly, Teal'c love interest,
T-Pol Ishta vanishes after season 8 and is never mentioned again.
- Dr. Lam is in two episodes late in Season 10, one of which features an arc where, (seeing Vala reject her father, General Landry enlists her help to reconcile with his ex-wife.) But yeah, after that she's gone.
- Her long absence was due to Lexa Doig getting pregnant - which resulted in a couple of aborted arcs with her and Landry, and her and Mitchel.
- After Thomas Haden Church left Wings, Brian Haley was brought in to play Budd Bronski, the replacement character for Church's Lowell. However, Budd's personality was neither as memorable nor as well-defined as Lowell's had been, so after a few appearances, he disappeared from the series without explanation, and the writers decided to build up the show's other supporting characters (chiefly Antonio and Casey) instead.
- Similar to the Wings example above would be Jack Burns' character of Warren Ferguson on The Andy Griffith Show, who was brought in to replace Barney Fife as Mayberry's overzealous deputy. He lasted one season before being quietly dropped from the show and never mentioned again. (Even the '80s Reunion Movie forgot about him.)
- Another TAGS example would be Ellie Walker, the town pharmacist and Andy's first-season girlfriend.
- On Til Death, Jeff and Steph Woodcock (Eddie Kaye Thomas and Kat Thomas) were lead characters, on equal footing with Eddie and Joy Stark (Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher), and the whole basis of the show seemed to be about contrasting a newly-wed couple and a long-time married couple. After the first 2 seasons, however, they vanished without a trace, and Jeff's sidekick role was taken by Kenny, played by J.B. Smoove. This was further confused when unaired episodes from Season 2 aired in the middle of Season 3.
- The snakeman, the conjoined twins and number of the other regular freaks from the carnival in Carnivale disappear between Seasons One and Two, never to be heard of again.
- Santiago on Friday Night Lights just seems to have disappeared from existence between season 2 and 3. Ditto Waverly from season 1.
- Peter's girlfriend Caitlin, from the second season of Heroes: abandoned in an apocalyptic future that will no longer exist and never mentioned again (you'd think that at least Peter would get all angsty about).
- For the record, Peter does mention her at least twice more during that season, claiming that he needs to save the future so he can save Caitlin, but the whole thing is dropped by the next season.
- No one's seen, heard of or even mentioned Monica since the season 2 finale. Doesn't look like anyone's missing her either.
- What she did during season 3 is being revealed in some graphic novels following Micah.
- Quite a few characters and plot points from Season 2 were swept under the rug and forgotten, including Caitlin, Monica and her whole family, and Molly Walker. Understandable, considering its dubious quality. Too bad Maya stuck around though.
- This was how every cast change on Mission Impossible was done.
- Juliet Darling in Dirty Sexy Money. Word Of God has it that the character will make future appearances as a non regular, but no on-screen reason for her disappearance (or even mention of her existence) has been given. Especially jarring as the final episode of the first season took the time to set up a storyline for her.
- The most recent episode ("The Family Lawyer") has Karen Darling say that Juliet is off on some island on the other side of the world, which does match up (somewhat) with the storyline set-up in the first season's final episode.
- Bizarrely, recurring character Dusty Farlow suffered this fate by accident on Dallas: He appeared in a few episodes at the end of the 7th Season, then left town a few episodes into the 8th. Unfortunately the 8th Season was also the infamous Dream Season and the producers apparently forgot about Dusty (despite his father being a main character), so that per canon he simply vanishes without explanation.
- In Professional Wrestling, this happens regularly. Wrestlers leave the company, which is very rarely acknowledged on the air. Or they will be taken off the air prior to leaving to lower their drawing value. Usually this happens to guys who work the lower matches and flies under the radar, but occasionally a big name will simply vanish. For example, Sable, who was extremely popular in the late 90s, abruptly vanished from programming. This of course was because she sued the company. Similarly, Eric Bischoff was taken off the air in WCW for his inept management, and his on-air departure was never acknowledged.
- When Lisa Bonet left A Different World, several characters disappeared with her: most notably Marissa Tomei's Maggie and Whitley's Girl Friday, Millie.
- The second season of The Red Green Show introduced a number of new lodge members, including security guard Noel, sleazy salesman Murray and his assistant Dwayne, Lodge treasurer Douglas, Lodge maintenance man Helmut, Lodge doctor Doc, and Lodge cook Eddie. None of them were ever seen again from the third season onward, although they were occasionally referred to, becoming The Ghost alongside such characters as Buster Hadfield and Old Man Sedgwick.
- Several other characters were Brother Chucked over time, ranging from the two lazy marina owners to the funeral parlor director, from the first animal control officer to the bait shop owner…
- Little Owen of Party Of Five appeared less and less as he apparently underwent SORAS and changed actors, prompting Television Without Pity to deduce that he was locked in the basement. Along with the dog.
- Kyle, Sam's younger brother on Reaper, disappeared after the second episode to attend college. He hasn't been mentioned since then.
- Tiger, the family dog, on The Brady Bunch. Lampshaded in The Brady Bunch Movie.
- For that matter, the girls' cat, Fluffy, didn't make it past the pilot episode.
- The character Isabel in Lost is introduced as "the sheriff" of The Others in a season 3 episode. She investigates Juliet after Danny's death, and seems to be a high-ranking member of The Others' hierarchy. She is never seen or mentioned again, and producer Damon Lindelof said without explanation that she was dead.
- Near the end of Season 4, this seems to have happened to Claire, as a few episodes after disappearing everyone seems to have forgotten and moved on. Potentially applies to Rose and Bernard in Season 5, as well.
- Claire is returning as a regular in season six.
- The Season 5 finale reveals what happened to Rose and Bernard.
- Quite a few characters on Law And Order: Paul Robinette, Donald Cragen (though he later resurfaced in a TV movie and then Special Victims Unit), Nina Cassady. Joe Fontana and Arthur Branch are borderline examples, it's stated by other characters that they retired, but they never got an exit scene.
- Paul Robinette appeared in a couple of later episodes after his departure from the main cast. He apparently left the DA's office to become a civil rights attorney in private practice.
- Andrea "Andie" Mc Phee in Dawson's Creek.
- Probably more a case of being Put On A Bus as it was explained in the episode that Andie had received a scholarship to go abroad and study.
- Warren King, the head honcho at Eureka Section 5 in Eureka. Appeared in the pilot, then vanished without a single trace and had his space filled by Nathan Stark. No one, not even his own personal toady, seems to remember him. Well, this is Eureka, so who knows...
- In the second episode Allison mentioned he was transferred to Alaska.
- My Three Sons did this twice. The three sons of the title were originally Mike, Robbie, and Chip. Mike eventually married and moved away when Tim Considine, who played him, left the series. Ernie was then adopted as the third son and Mike forgotten. Similarly, the cantankerous male relation who played mom to the boys was originally their grandfather Bub, played by William Frawley. When Frawley became too much of an insurance risk due to poor health and was dropped, Bub was written out, replaced with his brother Charley, and never mentioned again.
- Sara Spooner, the younger sister of Carrie, from The King Of Queens only appeared in about five episodes of season one and disappeared from the show without an explanation. It was later revealed in an interview with show star Kevin James that the writers had no idea how to develop her character so they just decided to write her out.
- Taxi, in which John Burns disappears after the first season without explanation (though he may have been fired for crashing the beloved Cab 804 beyond repair.)
- Delores Mitchell and Norman Briggs on Diagnosis Murder.
- A weird and infamous example is the handyman Benny in the 1970's ITV soap opera Crossroads. He climbed up a ladder to fix the lights on a Christmas tree, and was never seen again.
- Kids Incorporated references missing characters from previous seasons through season 5 — Mickey moves away after season 1, Gloria goes to music school after season 3, Renee and The Kid become exchange students after season 4. Even the characters dropped after the original pilot episode are said to have moved away in a scene added at the end of the VHS release. On top of that, each new character is introduced and has to audition for the band. However, when season 6 begins, Ryan and Connie have been replaced by Robin and no one mentions their absence or where Robin came from, then Stacy, Richie, and Devyn are replaced by Eric, Ana, and Haylie for season 7. At this point, more than half the cast is new this season, and only one of them has been on the show for more than a season. And yet we have not a word about this (They do mention, several episodes later, that Ana had only recently moved in with Robin's family after her parents' divorce). As Stacy was the last of the original cast, that her departure doesn't even get a mention is a little grating — the departure of Mario Lopez got more notice, and he didn't even have a speaking part. Strangely, Riley, a secondary character, also leaves in season 6, and his departure is a plot point.
- The first season of The Bob Newhart Show had Margaret Hoover, a neighbor in the Hartleys' apartment building and friend of Emily's. She appeared in a handful of episodes before being quietly dropped.
- Laura's best friend Penny and Eddie's best friend Rodney on Family Matters. (Rachel also disappeared, and her son Richie was just treated as if he were the Winslow's youngest kid.)
- The first season of The Drew Carey Show had Drew's Wacky Neighbors, who vanished when it became more of a workplace sitcom and focused on Drew's Wacky Friends.
Video Games
- The Koopalings from the Mario series exemplify the trope by disappearing, never to be seen again after Yoshi's Safari (or Hotel Mario, if you're willing to count it), only to be replaced by Bowser Jr.
- To be fair, they did make a cameo in Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga.
- Full sets of brand new sprites for all of them have been discovered in the data for Super Princess Peach, suggesting that they were at one point intended to appear in that game, presumably as bosses. By the time the game was finished, however, they'd vanished again.
- And notably, in Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser Jr's debut game, they have FLUDD show various scenes from previous Mario games as he scans for Mario's history, including a boss fight with Iggy Koopa in Super Mario World. This scene does two things... Put Bowser Jr firmly in the same world as Iggy Koopa and thusly the other Koopalings, and foreshadow the eventual appearance of Bowser Jr by showing that this has happened before.
- A screenshot shown at E3 proves the Koopalings are returning in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, so who knows what the future holds?
- A mid-story issue of the Super Mario Adventures comic strip, which ran in Nintendo Power during 1992, featured this. Toad uses a Cape Feather to fly up to a pipe sticking out of a cloud (allegedly the one Mario and Luigi entered at the beginning of the story to unknowingly wind up in Dinosaur Land), and gets "help" - which is actually Bowser's Koopa Troop in disguise (the cloud was actually an airship of sorts in disguise). After the Princess gets kidnapped, Toad is shown being held hostage by two Koopas, delivers one line about the Koopas "taking control of the Mushroom Kingdom", and is then never seen or mentioned again for the remainder of the comic. (So they just left Toad in the Koopa Castle dungeons.)
- Speaking of Mario, what happened to the poison mushrooms and the leaf and the frog suit and the hammer suit and the cape feather?
- In the Mario series, Poochy had an entire level designed around him in Yoshi's Island, but has been absent since Yoshi's Story. (He remained in the remake of Yoshi's Island, but was absent from the new levels.)
- While Mario and Donkey Kong have both ascended to stardom since their debut game, Pauline, the girl they fought each other for the first place faded into obscurity as Princess Peach took over her role as Distressed Damsel in the Super Mario games. She did resurfaced in the Game Boy remake of Donkey Kong, only to disappear for another decade. She has made a comeback of sort in the recent Mario vs. Donkey Kong games.
- Dynamo in Mega Man X 5 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.
- And what the Hell happened to Dr. Cain, the guy who found X and created the reploids and started the whole mess?
- Well, Maverick Hunter X had him retconned as having been apparently killed in the first attack, but otherwise yeah.... maybe he died in one of the attacks or old age.
- While we're on the subject of Megaman, several episodes of the Ruby-Spears cartoon had Megaman interacting with characters who would never be seen or mentioned again (be they good or bad). It's worth noting that only one of the good ones, Brain Bot, managed to piss him off.
- In the Star Force series, Pat Sprigs and Bob Copper are major characters in the first game, cameos in the second, and vanish in the third. What's frustrating about the former is that the game itself acknowledges that it still has plot points to wrap up regarding him. Pat also disappears from the anime as well, only to make a very minor cameo at the end of the final episode.
- 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.
- Lampshaded in Banjo-Tooie, where the face of Tooty, Distressed Damsel of the first game, appears on a milk carton at one point.
- 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 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.
- Also every character from Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 that didn't make the transition to the Metal Gear Solid series got brother chucked by default: Ellen Madnar, Diane, Jennifer, Holly White,
Yozef Norden Johan Jacobsen, George Kesler Kasler Kessler. Even Dr. Madnar suffered from a form of retroactive Chuck Cunningham Syndrome by making Sokolov the creator of the first Metal Gear prototype in Portable Ops. Eventually MGS4 suddenly decides to remember Dr. Madnar's existence by mentioning him as the scientist who turned Raiden into a cyborg, ignoring the fact that Dr. Madnar was actually killed in MG 2. Either, they intentionally retconned his death in MGS4 or They Just Didnt Care.
- Has anyone seen Ray the Flying Squirrel, Mighty the Armadillo, Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear in any Sonic the Hedgehog games lately? Nack the Weasel / Fang the Sniper, too?
- Gooey and Kirby's animal friends from the Kirby series, who were major characters in Kirby's Dreamland 2 and 3, but have since apparently fallen off the face of Popstar. It's been four games since their last major appearance.
- It's worth noting that all the games they appeared in have a different director than the ones they haven't appeared in.
- Lampshaded in Kirby 64 when the Stone/Cutter ability causes him to transform into the stone replica of one of his animal buddies.
- A similar appearance occurs in the Super Star remake, where they show up as additional Stone forms.
- The animal friends from Kirby's Dreamland 2 did make semi-regular appearances on the anime, though.
- Most of the PC-98 characters from the Touhou series. There are at least ten of them who are still insanely popular with fans, but only two (aside from the two major heroines) survived the transition to Windows. Among the casualties was a nuclear robot maid.
- And of those two, Yuka only makes a borderline cameo as a minor playable character in one game, and Alice was introduced in the last of the PC-98 games.
- Genjii, Reimu's turtleservant eventually got a Word Of God explanation that he just stays in the pond of the Hakurei shrine while Reimu's off adventuring since she gained the ability to fly under her own power.
- Tawna, Crash's girlfriend from the first Crash Bandicoot game, was phased out of the series after the designers lost interest in her character. She has only ever reappeared in Crash, Boom, Bang! (which happens to be the lowest rated game of the series) and on pictures in several others.
- In The Elder Scrolls, General Warhaft. Leader of the Imperial Legion, wrote two of the in-game books on armour and fighting, imprisoned along with the Emperor by Jagar Tharn...but he never is mentioned after Arena, except for in the aforementioned books. He goes unheard of in Daggerfall, Battlespire and Morrowind, and when the player visits the Legion headquarters in Oblivion, he's replaced by Commander Adamus Phillida, with no word on what happened to him or where he is now.
- In a large-scale Chucking, the cities of Sutch, Artemon, and Mir Corrup were mentioned as being in Cyrodiil in several prior games. When Oblivion comes around, and we actually get to visit Cyrodiil, the entire cities are gone. The developers admitted they never had time to add them into the game.
- Especially notable because the city of Sutch is still mentioned a couple of times ingame, and was the setting for early preview footage.
- So I guess you could say that there are no Sutch places?
- The island of Mira in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean was home to the hero and the Man Behind The Man, was home to some of the most bizarre and diverse Scenery Porn in the game, and had a larger plot role than Sadal Suud, Diadem, or Anuenue. However, in the prequel Baten Kaitos Origins, Mira is mentioned twice in the main quest (very late in the game and within a minute of each other), and its spot on the world map is now occupied by a very small, unimportant, and late-in-the-game dungeon.
- Jak And Daxter's first antagonists, Gol and Maia Acheron, were implied to have been alive after their final fight, though mostly by Samos' mentioning that "That blast... probably destroyed them. Probably." They never appear in the later games or are so much as mentioned.
- Kappei Hiiragi from Clannad does not appear at all in the anime, not even mentioned.
- This troper is hoping that Kyo Ani at least gives him a cameo in Kyou's OVA. When that comes out, and he's there, I'll be screaming I Knew It.
Webcomics
- 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.
- Steve also disappeared, although apparently more people cared. Enough to make the author justify it and post a little note asking people to stop e-mailing him about Steve already.
- 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.
- And of course, let's not forget Sensei Greg, who vanished from the strip after suggesting that Grace get martial arts training.
- Not to mention Nioi, but she's also in another dimension, and Ellen's already stated that she'll probably encounter Nioi's alternate dimension counterpart, Kaoli.
- Duane from Penny And Aggie seemed 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. 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.
- Duane finally returns in Chapter Five of "The Popsicle Wars," still bitter over his breakup.
- Queen Jane from Eight Bit Theater. An Only Sane Man to contrast with her husband King Steve (a combination of Cloud Cuckoo Lander, The Caligula and The Ralph Wiggum), Steve proved so popular that Jane was just never mentioned again after the very first story arc.
Western Animation
- 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!).
- In The Batman, Detective Yin pretty much vanishes after Batman no longer needs 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.
- Bennet similarly vanishes after his Heel Face Turn.
- Same goes for Chief Rojas.
- Cleveland and Joe's sons on Family Guy.
- Though Cleveland Jr. will be back in the Cleveland spinoff.
- And it's been revealed Kevin had been fighting the war in Iraq and was killed in action.
- Dr. Mephisto from South Park. He played a major role in the first season, but since that was so long ago, he's pretty much forgotten.
- Many other South Park characters have been Brother Chucked; anyone remember Pip?
- Lampshaded in the second season of Freakazoid. Lord Bravery and the Huntsman are upset about their sequences being trimmed down to nothing in the second season and want something to do. Freakazoid makes them wash his car and that's the last we ever see of them.
- Remy Buxaplenty, rich bastard and Juandissimo's godchild on The Fairly Oddparents, is an odd example of this in that he is written out of the show at the end of his first appearance. Three seasons later, apparently due to viewer demand (and because he was one of the creator's personal favorite characters), he returns as a recurring antagonist to Timmy for three more episodes. After the third one, though, he's not mentioned again, not even in Juandissimo's subsequent appearances.
- On Space Ghost Coast To Coast, much of the Council of Doom disappeared without a trace. The most obvious examples are Metallus and Black Widow. Lokar disappeared after "Waiting for Edward", and after "King Dead", Tansut was never seen again.
- The Simpsons had Uter, the German exchange student. It was lampshaded twice: fist when Lisa asks about him during an assembly, and Principal Skinner denies his existence ("Silly name, Uter...") and again when his parents are seen asking where he is ("We just want closure!").
- A recent episode has shown him to be trapped in a giant spiderweb somewhere in the school's network of ventilation shafts. Not sure if this means he may be coming back, or he definitely isn't...
- Several recurring characters in King of the Hill just disappeared over time like Cotton's second wife Didi and their infant son Good Hank were nowhere to be seen in the episode where he passed away, Eustace and his geeky son Randy were rivals to Hank, his friends, and Bobby and his friends in the earlier episodes but they vanished over time too.
- In one episode Bill owned a pet iguana he named Lenore after his ex-wife that got loose in the Hill's house, later on Hank returns it to him and it's never seen again.
- In some of the earlier episodes of Spongebob Squarepants, Spongebob had a pet scallop in a bird cage above his bed. He was never seen interacting with it, though, and during the middle of the second season it vanished. This was referred to in one of the video games when in Spongebob's room when you click on the cage, he says something along the lines of "That's where I kept my pet scallop, I think he ran away".
- Several characters in Animals of Farthing Wood who weren't killed off simply disappeared in season 3 this includes Fox and Vixen's son Friendly, Kestrel, and the surviving blue foxes aside from Ranger.
Mythology
- 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.
- There are also theories that they were killed during the war with the Vanir. The Norse gods are mortal in difference to the Greek ones.
Theatre
- William Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet: What happened to Benvolio?
- He didn't die is what happened to him. Seriously, though, his fate is likely explained by being an early Freddy.
- Also, some versions have him appear along with Balthasar in all of his scenes, and have him be with the rest of the Montagues in the end.
- Another less serious theory is that he decided to go on vacation after people started getting dead.
- The practical answer is that in original practices, the actor playing Benvolio was doubled with another character later in the play (possibly the Apothecary or Friar John). This Troper's snark answer is that Shakespeare realized if Benvolio was still around, he'd have talked sense into Romeo and changed the ending of the play.
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