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Trapped By Mountain Lions
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A subplot (usually in a drama) that is so disjointed from the main plot that you can't figure out why anyone would care about it, when the fate of the world is being decided elsewhere.
There are several reasons why this might happen. Maybe the author has introduced Loads And Loads Of Characters and doesn't want people asking What Happened To The Mouse. Maybe he doesn't want a new character to come out of nowhere. Maybe a comic relief character keeps getting scenes during a dramatic or serious portion of the plot, causing Mood Whiplash. Maybe the principle character is just The Wesley, and you can't get anyone to care about it, meaningful or not. Or maybe the writers just needed to fill up time somehow.
This trope is named for Kim Bauer and her escapades in season 2 of 24 where she is chased by her employer's homicidal husband, briefly detained after said employer's corpse is found in the trunk of her stolen car, caught in a bear trap and surrounded by mountain lions (thus the trope name), held prisoner by a lonely redneck, and becomes a hostage in a liquor store holdup, while her father was off trying to find and defuse a nuclear bomb.
Compare Wacky Wayside Tribe, where the entire cast is involved and there is no A-story. See also Deus Exit Machina, Filler, Padding, and Big Lipped Alligator Moment. Romantic Plot Tumor is a subtrope of this, as is Wangst. Compare The Greatest Story Never Told. May cause Wall Bangers, so watch for flying objects.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Any scene with Bulma during the Freeza Arc of Dragonball Z. Amusingly enough, there's one segment in the show where Krillin and Gohan hear her screaming in the distance and wonder if she really was literally Trapped By Mountain Lions (to which Krillin responds "I'd feel sorry for the lion." None of these scenes were in the manga.)
- Likewise for scenes with Orihime and Ishida during the Soul Society arc of Bleach, though these were at least tangentially connected to the main plot (and led to arguably the most awesome battle of the arc). The Post Episode Trailer for one Uryu-focused episode lampshaded it, as Yoruichi broke the news to Ichigo that he wouldn't be in the next episode either.
- The problem with that part of the arc is that nothing that Uryu and Orihime did had any impact on Ichigo's saving Rukia. They don't even find him until after he stops the execution and defeats Byakuya. Chad has a similar problem (although he once unknowingly helped Ichigo escape from some Mooks), but doesn't get as many scenes.
- Or... not really? Ishida's fight with Mayuri, aside from being personal, pulled Mayuri out of action for the rest of the arc, and it was Orihime who told the 11ths what was going on, turning them into their allies.
- For most of Gundam 00's first season, civilian teens Saji Crossroad and Louise Halevy seemed to serve no purpose at all. In the second season, though, Saji becomes the main character's co-pilot of sorts, and Louise is an artifically enhanced enemy soldier.
- The second season had shades of this trope as well, with side characters such as Graham Aker (under the guise of one "Mr. Bushido"), Marina Ismail, Wang Liu Mei, Nena Trinity and Ali al-Saachez carrying on with their own stories without much relevance to the larger outcome of the story.
Film
- Everything dealing with former reporter Steve Martin (played by Raymond Burr) and the American army in Godzilla 1985. These scenes were inserted into the original Japanese production, mimicking the original importation of Godzilla, King of Monsters... but none of the American characters actually do anything, so we're left watching other people effectively watching this same durn movie. (At least Burr got marginally smushed by Goji in the first movie).
- The lengthy "Broadway Ballet" sequence in Singin' In The Rain seems to divide fans on the question of whether it is entertaining enough to justify leaving the plot on hold for over ten minutes.
- The second half of A Day at the Races has an extended musical interlude which starts with Allan Jones singing "Tomorrow Is Another Day," which is followed by Harpo using his flute to summon a black chorus which sings "Blow That Horn, Gabriel" and "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm." (The chorus has nothing else to do in the movie except reappear to sing the finale.) Most Marx Brothers consider this sequence as objectionable on an Ethnic Scrappy level, but it's not really that bad by itself — it just stops the plot dead and its earnestness clashes painfully with the Marxes' usual slapstick and wisecracks.
- The Transformers Film Series has a lot of this. The first movie has a subplot involving hackers that, in retrospect, does absolutely nothing to move the plot forward (it didn't help that the scenes were a little boring and featured some spectacularly bad Hollywood Hacking). The Romantic Plot Tumor in both movies tends to fit the "Why should we care?" aspect due to how jarring it is next to the action that everyone came to see.
- The original The Last House On The Left would occasionally cut away from the main plot to show the antics of a pair incompetent cops trying to get back to the Collingwood house.
- In the third Matrix movie, the machines are plotting to destroy Zion. They have done this six times before, and there is nothing special about this Zion. The only hope is that Neo can stop the machines at the source. This does not change that about 60%-70% of the movie is about the battle at Zion, with Neo's adventure as almost an afterthought.
- To be fair, even though Zion itself has been destroyed several times, this time it is filled with people we know and (at least that was the intention) care about. While they couldn't win, they could survive long enough for Neo to complete his mission, so this is not just some disconnected subplot, it's arguably plotline B.
- Doesn't justify spending a lot of time on it, particularly when it's just plain boring to watch dirty people fight mechanical flying squids. Mind you, this sequel did the in-Matrix fights amazingly badly compared to the earlier movies as well. Kind of a lose-lose.
- The climactic battle of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace ends up splitting four different ways. Of the four, the Gungan battle has no real bearing on the plot, quickly reaches the point where the outcome's a forgone conclusion unless the space battle succeeds, and the only significant character involved is Jar Jar Binks.
- Not to mention the pod race. Some may indeed find it pretty cool. It still seems to last forever. It was longer in the original cut, but even Lucas had to admit this was far too much of a movie-within-a-movie without enough relevance to the plot, and axed a portion of it. Well, at least the racing game it inevitably spawned was a good racing game.
- The subplot with the teenage couple in the car in Manos The Hands Of Fate is completely irrelevant to what's going on with the rest of the cast.
- Parodied briefly in The Emperors New Groove. "Wwwwhat's with the chimp and the bug? Can we get back to me?"
- In Stealth, after Jessica Biel's character gets shot down, she manages to safely land in North Korea, meaning the audience has to be repeatedly subjected to scenes of her attempting to flee the North Korean army. The main plot of the film (about an AI fighter jet which goes rogue and attempts to instigate nuclear war) is pointlessly and awkwardly dropped off so that the climax of the film can be about saving her from North Korea.
- According to Roger Ebert, Pearl Harbor is "about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle."
Literature
- The Funderling subplot in Tad Williams's Shadowmarch. Williams is content to hint that the events in this segment are Of The Gravest Importance, but he doesn't actually resolve anything or reveal anything of note. Since we've got political intrigue and supernatural warfare going on elsewhere, this editor resorted to skimming.
- During his Malloreon series, David Eddings would frequently insert a chapter which revealed what minor characters from all over the world were doing. These were semi-interesting but ultimately had little bearing on the real plot (other than the ones with the ride off the island at the end).
- It did help to alleviate the "Dragonlance syndrome" where the hero party seems to be walking through an RPG world where nothing happens if they are not directly involved. Eddings used it far more succesfully in the Belgariad, though, where the war in the south was far more interesting than the walkabout of Garion, Belgarath, and Silk.
- The Star Wars: Legacy of the Force books are plagued by this, from Jaina's unending token Love Triangle to the Mandalorian subplots in Karen Traviss books, which are notably being ignored by the other two writers. Guess the main plot, with Jacen Solo and his quest to become a Sith Lord, is just that irrelevant.
- Arguably, the entire plot about Daenerys in George Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire. While all other characters in the book have interrelating plots, hers takes place on a different continent and doesn't affect anybody else for the first four, five books.
- There are numerous related aspects, just not as much as the other characters. And as she is the last living descendant of the previous dynasty and seeking to win the throne back, it certainly is important to the question as to who will win the throne.
- What's true is that what Daenerys is up to is currently an unimportant, irrelevant plotline. Most fans believe that she'll invade Westeros at one point or another, and many believe she'll become an integral part of the 'fire' section of the titular prophecy.
- There's also the rather pointless Brienne subplot in A Feast For Crows, which features her looking for Sansa and Arya Stark, who by this point the readers know are finally relatively safe and near impossible for her to find, following numerous leads that the readers know are false and finally getting herself hanged.
- A Feast For Crows has a lot of this. Raise your hand if you cared even a tiny little bit about political maneuverings on freakin' Pyke. At least Dorne had some steamy sex scenes to leaven the total lack of anything we care about.
- The entire plot in The Empire in Mercedes Lackey's Mage Storms trilogy of Heralds Of Valdemar books is completely irrelevant to the heroes and the kingdom in which the rest of the series plays. It ends with a big anticlimax, as just before the emperor launches his huge magical attack on the aforementioned kingdom, which would have made the plot relevant, he gets assassinated and nothing happens instead.
- However, it does establish the character of the new Emperor. Whether that plotline is relevant or not will have to wait for the next Valdemar book.
- Which just came out, and is set several hundred years prior to the Mage Storms trilogy. Verdict? Irrelevant.
- Was it really necessary to read about how a man having sex with a god-woman got absorbed by her vagina in Neil Gaiman's American Gods? In fact, every bit that goes on for pages and pages and pages about things that have no connection to anything, much less the main plot, counts.
- You might as well complain about Tales of the Black Freighter in Watchmen while you're at it. They serve similar purposes.
- Any chapter containing the character Fletcher Kale in Dean Koontz's Phantoms. It's made even worse by the fact that with the exception of the first chapter he appears in and the final epilogue chapter, he never interacts with any of the other main characters at all and had his character been cut entirely from the story, it would not have effected anything else. It's hard to find the escape of a sociopathic murderer the least bit compelling, or find the character the least bit menacing, given what everyone else is dealing with several dozen miles away.
- A large amount of Iain M. Banks's Look to Windward is concerned with a subplot in which a character discovers what is happening in the main plot and tries to warn or help. However, because of the timing and the huge distances involved between the locations of the two plots, it is obvious from the beginning that nothing he does will be able to have any effect on the main plot, and though the subplot runs through the entire novel, it never makes contact with the main plot.
- Dear Lord, the 'Perrin rescues his kidnapped wife' subplot in The Wheel Of Time. It wasn't remotely interesting in the first place, and the sheer number of books through which it managed to drag on — keeping Perrin perpetually mopey and unable to do anything cool — was simply infuriating.
- Everyone agrees, Mat Cauthon is the best of the Two Rivers characters. Robert Jordan remedied this by having him spend an entire book unconscious, and when he finally wakes up spend another book, nearly one thousand pages, as sex-slave to a deranged queen through blackmail and threat of force, while the supporting characters actively encouraged it. And he's ''sad'' to leave. A man with the power to attract evil like a beacon and Badass Normal fighting skills, the memories of a thousand conquerors trapped in his brain... and his entire role in that book was to have chapter after chapter dedicated to describing the pink frills he was forced to wear.
- The original novel of The Godfather contains two sub-plots which were cut from the movie for their total irrelevance to the main plot. One of the sub-plots involves
Frank Sinatra Johnny Fontane and his buddy in Hollywood; the other follows the adventures of Sonny's mistress in Las Vegas and contains, among other things, no less than twenty pages on the subject of women's reproductive health. Presumably the author felt that this was an anvil that badly needed to be dropped on 1950s America, but still...
- The Waterloo sequence in Les Miserables. Several other chapters qualify, but Waterloo gets the mention because it's 60 pages long and only the last 2 are at all relevant to the rest of the plot. That said, it is brilliantly written.
- Theo Willoughby's whole plotline in Kate Furnivall's The Russian Concubine. Why do we care that the heroine's high school teacher is being blackmailed by his girlfriend's father into participating in the drug trade? Much less his sexual exploits with said girlfriend?
Live Action TV
- The trope-naming incident involving Kimberly in 24. Kim Bauer and her father interact so little throughout the entire series that it's clear her role exists only due to contract requirements and her ability to fill a wet T-shirt.
- The show's first season was originally going to have Teri Bauer falling asleep for a few episodes (thanks to the show's Real Time format), since her storyline ended once she escaped from the terrorists that had captured her. However, the producers demanded that she stay in the show and so she ended up contracting amnesia and walking around doing not much for a few hours instead.
- The sixth season's story arc regarding Morris's alcoholism has similarly been identified as pointless by some fans.
- Most scenes with Lana Lang in Smallville.
- Maya y Alejandro Herrera on Heroes didn't even manage to be plot-relevant by hanging out with Sylar.
- Though that was due to the writer's strike, which caused a lot of planned storylines to be truncated and several plot threads to be cut and forgotten (e.g. Caitlin). Maya was apparently supposed to be instrumental to dealing with the virus, among other things.
- Lost has this sometimes, from little-importance flashbacks to stupid subplots just to give some characters screentime. (Sawyer crossing a jungle to kill a tree frog comes to mind.)
- Nobody cared how Jack got his tattoos. Not when there are bigger questions involving Smoke Monsters. Nobody except the writers, apparently, who weren't as willing as the audience to accept that they belong to the actor, not the character. So we got an entire episode of an origin story for Jack's tats.
- Though largely avoided in seasons 4 and 5, there is one instance where this is used subversively. In any episode featuring flashforwards to Sun giving birth, there are concurrent flashes to Jin rushing to buy a toy and get to the hospital while avoiding comical setbacks. It's edited to make it seem, at first glance, like the two stories are concurrent; only at the end is it revealed that Jin's story was an irrelevant and inconsequential anecdote from many years earlier. His flashback was included specifically to mislead the viewer and disguise that, at the time of Sun giving birth, he had been left behind and is presumed dead.
- Debatably magnificently subverted and parodied on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in an episode where Xander finds himself in a comical series of completely unrelated misadventures while his friends are off literally preventing the apocalypse and fighting the greatest battle of their lives. The twist is that XANDER'S storyline is the a-plot, and everyone else's save-the-world adventure is only glimpsed at in a few context-free scenes which mostly serve to parody the show. The joke is clear: since Xander is the type of character who would routinely get trapped by mountain lions on any other show, we're going to do the exact opposite.
- Lampshaded by the episode's title (The Zeppo) which refers to the Marx Brother with no particular talent for comedy.
- In the final season of The Shield, there's a subplot about Sgt. Danny Sofer gradually losing her gung-ho desire to be a street cop, and wanting to settle down with a desk job and her new baby. This would ordinarily be a fine end to her character, but meanwhile Vic, Shane, Ronnie, and Aceveda are all busy scheming and manipulating international drug cartels, federal law enforcement, and each other to escape their fates. It comes off as incredibly small-time by comparison.
Theatre
- "The Small House of Uncle Thomas" from The King And I is a Show Within A Show that runs on for 15 minutes, with only An Aesop near the end linking it to the plot. The ballet music is unmelodic and represents more the work of an arranger than of Richard Rodgers.
Webcomics
- Vaarsuvius preemptively takes steps to avoid being Trapped By Mountain Lions in this
 Order Of The Stick strip.
Kubota: My trial will last a few weeks, at most, and when it is over Hinjo will look like an out-of touch buffoon for even bringing up charges against me — a beloved pillar of the community — while his people waste away at sea. Now, come along. Bring me before your master so that we may begin the Trial of the Century. Elan: Yeah, well, we'll see what they believe. The Katos and I will testify against you and then— Vaarsuvius: Disintegrate. Gust of Wind. Now can we PLEASE resume saving the world?
Video Games
- In Katamari Damacy there are cutscenes in between every few levels and after you create a new constellation when some Lego-looking kids comment on the stars being gone/coming slowly back. It has no bearing on what little plot there is, especially since nobody listens to them anyway.
- They do, however, contribute to the overall weirditude of the game. Since this is Katamari Damacy we're talking about, that may actually count.
- Invoked in The Adventures Of Doctor Mc Ninja a few times, such as the incident where dinosaur Yoshi steals ape receptionist Judy's hotdogs, while the Doctor is getting killed as part of a plot to conquer the US.
- Rose, the Stop Helping Me girlfriend from Metal Gear Solid 2, won't stop calling and insisting on talking about her relationship with Raiden. Even though he's, you know, in the middle of a highly-dangerous mission all by himself.
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