Helena: She lost her teeth yesterday. I said "If Mum were here, she'd find them. She's amazing at finding things." She said "If your Mum could find them, she must be a miracle worker."
Joanne: They'll be staring her in the face. They always are.
Helena: They were in the fridge.
Joanne: They'll be staring her in the face. They always are.
Helena: They were in the fridge.
If someone loses an object, it will always be found in the last place they look. Fridge Logic maintains that this is because once they find it, they aren't looking for it any more, thus it's always in the last place they look. What they really mean is that it's the last place they would look.
The main example of this is when a character loses their glasses. They will always, inevitably, have them on their head. Works with keys, books, and pretty much anything you can hold in your hand.
May frequently involve being Hidden in Plain Sight. The character may also have Failed a Spot Check. As many folks can attest, this is Truth in Television.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In the Police Procedural parody chibi episode of The Prince of Tennis, Inui misplaces his glasses and just about everybody gets hauled into the "office" as a potential thief... until he remembers that he'd simply forgotten to put them back on when he took them off to wash his face.
- In one chapter of Sgt. Frog, Momoka falls out of a tree and lands on Chiruyo while both are trying to take pictures of Fuyuki. Chiruyo loses her glasses, and fruitlessly looks for them, apparently unaware that she's still wearing them and they've just been pushed up onto her forehead.
Fan Works
- In the PONY.MOV series, the Elements of Harmony were up Spike's nose the entire time.
Film — Live-Action
- The quote comes from MirrorMask, where Helena's mother is a good finder of things hidden. Helena eventually remembers what her mother told her to find the MirrorMask which is inside a mirror.
Literature
- The Polish poem for children Pan Hilary is about an absent-minded man who's looking all over the house for his glasses - and turns out to be wearing them.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: The Most Boringest Gnome in the World mentions The Marvelous Land of Oz and that Dorothy is found "In the last place anyone would think to look."
Live Action TV
- Spaced used the glasses variation in the second episode with Daisy.
- Subverted, though: She was putting off doing some work, in various ways.
- From Emmit Otter's Jugband Christmas:
Ma Otter: Now, where'd I put that tea pot? [searches around whilst carrying said tea pot in her hand]
- Fawlty Towers. The problem is further exacerbated because the woman is hard of hearing, and doesn't have her hearing aid turned on "because it runs the batteries down." Basil tries to convince her to turn it on, but she can't hear him, so he tries to write down the words "turn it on," but then remembers that she can't read without her reading glasses, which, as per the trope, are on her head.
- On Just Shoot Me!, Dennis and Elliot make bets on how long it takes Jack to discover that his glasses are on his head.
- Brought up in 30 Rock, when Kenneth loses a pair of Jack's pants and is looking for them.
Kenneth: And I tried looking in the last place you'd ever expect. And NO, Mr. Donaghy's pants are NOT in the ladies' room of that laser tag place on Twelfth Avenue.
- Bernard in Black Books is about to go on holiday, naturally he doesn't remember where he put his passport other than "It's in the house!". He put it somewhere safe so he spends 5 hours putting everything off the walls before walking over to his desk and saying I remember i put it over here but no, I can't find it. Cue "Did you check your desk Bernard?, Yes of cour-oh here it is."
- This line is said in an episode of Two and a Half Men when the son Jake loses his Nintendo DS. He spends the entire episode looking for it and finally finds it on his front lawn when he is about to take a whiz.
- In one episode of The Muppet Show, Hilda the wardrobe lady asks Fozzie where her glasses are. (They're on her head) Fozzie is too busy practicing his 'Jokes on any subject' to be any help, and Hilda finds her glasses by herself.
- The Mentalist: Patrick Jane calls attention to this trope on several occasions.
Patrick: You know the chance of finding something in the last possible place? It's not very high.
- The West Wing: in the first season episode, "A Proportional Response", one of the things that has been irritating President Bartlett is he can't find his glasses, and his secretaries have looked all over. Right before he addresses the nation about the fact he directed an attack against Libya, C.J. asks him if he's been briefed about an aspect of that attack, and he snaps he read the briefing the night before in his private study. Charlie Young, who's being hired to be his personal aide, immediately realizes that's where the president left his glasses, and Mrs. Landingham, his head secretary, directs someone to get them.
Newspaper Comics
- In comic strip Zits, Jeremy's mom has done this with her car keys on occasion.
Stand Up Comedy
- Jeff Foxworthy once addressed the Fridge Logic side of this:
"Did you find your wallet?""Yeah, but I'm still looking."
Theatre
- Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 has the cruel and crazy old Prince Bolkonsky panic, mid-song, when he realizes he cannot find his glasses, both very upset and afraid, and he bellows for them.
''insolent girl! Insolent girl! Where...where are my glasses? Where are they? Where are my glasses? Oh, God...I'm frightened...Oh, God, I've aged...I've aged so very much...where are they? Where are my glasses? Where are my glasses, where are they? WHERE ARE MY GLASSES?!?"
Video Games
- In the Interactive Fiction game Shade, there are several possible places your tickets can be (in your coat, in your luggage, among the papers on your desk). The game creates a Schrödinger's Gun scenario by making sure that whichever order you search in, this trope is always true.
- Parodied in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: 8-Bit is Enough, when Homestar says that he continues looking even after he's found what he's looking for, "just to make sure".
Web Animation
- In the early Homestar Runner story "Where My Hat Is At?", Homestar finds he somehow left his hat in the refrigerator, "between the milk and the cold ones".
Western Animation
- On 2 Stupid Dogs, Little Dog lost a bone by putting it on his head (and spent an entire episode searching the entire world and space for it).
- Grandpa from The Boondocks does this immediately after delivering a "I've been around a long time, so don't think you can ever pull one over on me kid. I'm too smart for you" talk.
- In one episode of Dora the Explorer, Dora and group must travel to the Big Red Chicken's party to help him find his cake... which was balanced on his head. At least the camera angles concealed this fact.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In one episode Cosmo and Wanda's wands get lost somewhere in Timmy's school and they come to the conclusion that they must be in the last place they would look, Crocker's room. While searching Crocker's room, Timmy accidentally finds a wand after sipping from a coffee cup and saying that it tastes like magic, which causes him to realize the wand was being used as a stirring stick for the coffee.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Lesson Zero," Rarity has lost her purple ribbon and is acting like a complete drama queen while searching for it. When she finds it, she says the trope name.
- In one episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, a nasalmancer, a wizard who practices nose magic (Grim admits it "isn't a very popular school of wizardry") steals Billy's nose, claiming he lost his own. Before chasing after him, Mandy deduces that when someone loses something, chances are it's in the pocket of his other pants - and sure enough, that's where the guy's nose it.
- Played with in the Looney Tunes short "I Gopher You", in which the Goofy Gophers go to a canning factory and one gets trapped in a can. The other gopher opens every can until he finds his cohort, who then corrects him; he was actually in the first can, and his friend simply started at the wrong end.
- Xiaolin Showdown: In "Saving Omi", Raimundo suggests finding the Yang Yo-Yo in the last place they would think of, but Clay suggests second to last place and says that not even Dojo would hide it in the last place. It turns out it was in Dojo's ear all along. In another episode the Shen Gong Wu were secretly shrunken and hidden in Dojo's nose and replaced with fakes without his knowledge. In another episode, Omi's future self takes the Sands of Time to the future to hide it where no one will find it. When someone else speculates on where he is going to hide it, present Omi says "I know where I would. I am most impressed with myself. I never would have thought to look there."
Real Life
- Very much Truth in Television, too.
- Pretty much always, since finding means you stop looking, so where you've found it is the last place you'd look. Yes, the phrase really means "the last place you'd think of", but most people looking for things think where they're going to look on-the-fly, rather than making an exhaustive list of All The Places and going though them systematically.
- Glasses are a particularly nefarious thing to lose, particularly for very nearsighted people, who often only remove them to sleep or bathe; the very thing they need to see is the thing they cannot find. Still, better than dropping a contact lens.
