What Happened To The Mouse / Webcomics

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• In the final arc of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Doc's ally Martin was last seen Bound and Gagged in King Radical's lair after Doc's family was tricked into betraying him. He makes no further appearances after that and there's no indication that anyone went to rescue him.
• Jessica's pregnancy in Better Days, though it's possible that the sequel, Original Life (which follows the children of Better Days' main characters) will bring this up.
  • In Original Life, it is shown that Jessica has many children, enough that Elizabeth feels uncomfortable asking her to take time babysitting her own kids.
  • Elizabeth's father all but vanishes as the series goes on. This is notable since he was written as being a reasonable parent to Elizabeth as opposed to her strict mother, and backed his daughter on things like having Fisk over. One has to wonder why he had no input in his wife all but forcing their daughter to marry someone she didn't care about.
• In Bob and George, on average once per Mega Man (Classic) game parody, Mega Man would beat one of the Robot Masters without killing them, and for the most part they never showed up again, though they spawned numerous Epileptic Trees. However, on rare occasions they showed up again, especially Shadow Man, who became a running joke due to his stealthy nature and the Epileptic Trees about his disappearance.
  • Shadow Man in particular said, after his initial appearance, that he'd disappear into the background until he was needed once again, which seemed a natural set up for him to return. It was years before he really did, and at every new plot development he was tagged as possibly being behind it. One fancomic lampshaded this by having him come and say the reason he hadn't shown up again was because, as a Ninja he would return and strike when least expected... but the readers kept expecting him.
• You'd never know in Ciem that resident Depraved Bisexual Poison Dart Eddie even had a sidekick, as he is so quickly brushed aside and never mentioned again. Even Claire Rauscher has the decency to at least return in a later chapter, if only to fall to her death.
• Averted in Daughter of the Lilies; in a magical university setting, a frog is used as sacrifice to summon a demonic entity that, as intended part of the experiment, possesses the frog. Readers commented that they wanted to know what happened to the frog, and the author did indeed reveal the ultimate fate of the frog.
• Freaking Romance: Misty's story never is solved. Presumably she's lost in another dimension somewhere.
• Get Medieval's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue is infamously missing Oneder, Iroth's bodyguard-turned-Muslim holy warrior. In the annotated reruns, Ironychan stated that she left out Oneder (and Sir Gerard) because she felt there was nothing really left to say about them.
  • Also; Asher's kitten. It disappeared shortly after Asher received it and was unmentioned for months, until it reappeared after the "Trip To The Moon" arc. Ironychan has never said whether or not this was planned all along or whether the constant cries of "WHERE'S THE KITTY" caused her to bring it back.
• Homestuck:
  • There is Minihoof, Dirk's pet miniature pony, who has not been seen since he entered the Medium, roughly six months ago in-comic. This is kind of concerning, given that Minihoof is tiny enough to be easily crushed and it's not certain Dirk has been home to feed her...
  • The A2 versions of the Draconian Dignitary and the Courtyard Droll completely disappear after Act 6 Act 5.
  • Nothing is ever mentioned about the Ancestors of the Beforus trolls, except for Meenah's ancestor contributing to the world being less war-like and more "coddling" than Alternia, and that Meenah apparently hates her. They are the only "older generation" to the players that the comic gives almost no exposition about at all, and none of the sequel or spinoff material as of May 2022 has given Beforus any focus.
• Kevin & Kell has left a long trail of minor characters by the wayside in its 25-plus-year history. This is most literal with Lindesfarne's lab mice, which were most recently plot-relevant in 2004, and only seen twice since then.
  • Two of Lindesfarne's friends when she was at Caliban Academy, armadillo Colina and turtle Cara, were briefly seen when Lindesfarne decided to look for them online in 2012. Colina was also seen in a flashback in 2017.
• Little Nuns Two nuns from when Artist was in convent (and also when current adult nuns started joining), have apparently disappeared from the convent with no explanation. On boorus, one of them is nicknamed Brunette Bangs Nun, while the other is nicknamed Parted Grey Nun. The former has not appeared in any present images (as in, images that acknowledge the existence of any of the youngest nun generation) and can only be seen in flashback pictures or background photographs. The latter made some appearances in present time early on, but has not been seen (flashbacks to way deep past excluded) since these two strips, and it seems like her presence in convent from those days was retconned, as no later strip acknowledges, that she used to be there alongside Clumsy and co.
  • Eventually they make a guest reappearance in 2022 Christmas arc, with one strip revealing that they had previously departed for a monastery in the city.
• Emily from Mortifer. Last appeared on this page, and was promptly never seen again. This trope was barely averted however, when a fan drew a (spoileriffic) piece of Fan Art lampshading it, which the author saw, stating that she had completely forgotten about the character and that she would try to find a way to bring her back into the story.
• In the My Little Pony arc of Murry Purry Fresh and Furry, it is ominously mentioned near the beginning that Molly is no longer a friend to pony land, possibly setting her up as the Big Bad of the arc. However near the end the author simply lost interest in continuing, abruptly ended it with Princess Celestia being arrested and called it quits without never once mentioning Molly again.
• This is actually a power of henchmen in Nodwick. They have a Become Irrelevant power that allows them to vanish any time no one is directly paying attention to them.
• The titular character in Oglaf barely appeared at all in the first place, and hasn't shown in the comics in years, to the point that one may forget there was a character sharing a name with the comic in the first place.
• Averted in 1/0. By the end of the strip's run, every character that has ever appeared, even those you thought were one-off throwaway characters, has been accounted for.
• Defied in The Order of the Stick. A mini arc featured the group of heroes tangling with a Bandit Clan, and the father & daughter team that led the bandits were spared at the end of the arc and given just enough characterization that fans frequently speculated on when/how the two would return to the story. The fan speculation and questioning irked author Rich Burlew enough that he wrote in a single comic where the two encountered a much more plot critical enemy, engaged in some Mugging the Monster, and were summarily killed for it.
• On the occasion that Penny Arcade indulges in continuity (for example, Anne's new table-top game crew in 2014), the multi-part comic will suddenly end as soon as Jerry and Mike run out of jokes or come up with a joke that would only work individually, abandoning anything that was potentially brewing in the multi-part.
• The Petri Dish: One story arc has Gordon, and later Thaddeus, drinking gene-altering formulae, mistaking them for soda. They're seen turning into monsters, and later go back to normal, but it's never revealed how they went back to normal.
• In Questionable Content the character Sara just disappears and is never mentioned again. The Cast page lampshades this by saying she was eaten by an allosaurus. Author Jeph Jacques says he just dropped her for being boring.
  • In 2012, three new characters were introduced as library interns: Claire, Emily and Gabrielle. Claire became a major character and started dating Marten. Emily is a popular recurring character. Gabrielle largely vanished after the introductory story. She appears in 21 strips; Claire and/or Emily are in 19 of those, and in the other two Gabby does not speak.
• Rumors of War: Who was that walking around as Couric? Where did Penelo disappear to? What about the rest of the characters on the ship in the first Story Arc? What about all those character Nenshe recruited to the Order of Orion? (Some of these turn into Brick Jokes later in the comic.)
• Sam & Fuzzy has this happen often, as the story over the years has created a huge cast of characters, and many have unresolved plot points, from simple ones like "Did Mr. Ackerman get repaid?" to complete story arcs like Detective Morris's investigation.
• For a long time it looked like Haban and Breya Andreyasn in Schlock Mercenary were heading this way, made more glaring and worrisome by their last appearance ending on an ominous note, though the enemy AI claimed they were not killed. But then six and a half years after disappearing, they got better.
• Sluggy Freelance had a minor one where a reader actually asked, "What happened to the demonic ferret?" The answer was, "She's still there with the other demons, I just forgot to draw her."
• Monette's baby, in Something*Positive. The full humor and drama of an unplanned pregnancy are played to maximum effect, but Monette's baby disappears from the plot with barely a ripple (subtle clues in the dialogue reveal it was either stillborn or died very shortly after birth). Millholland lampshaded the baby's absence much later in a filler strip in which the baby turned up in a Lost and Found box. Word of God says it was stillborn.
• Sonichu in spades. The author's wild-running attention span has caused him to start and drop so many plots and characters, it isn't even funny.
• The Story of Anima has Jade's briefly seen caretaker, who vanishes from the story after only one page. When mercenaries attack the airship, not only is her fate left uncertain, the cast themselves seem to forget she even existed.
• The eponymous slime of Unicorn Jelly simply disappeared after episode 581. Before To Save Her, the author claimed it was an intended symbolic plot point about childhood, magic or something or another.
• In Weak Hero, the main group frequently visit a pool hall with a receptionist that many of them are quickly smitten with. She is then the one responsible for Ben finding out that his friend Alex was beaten up by Jimmy, which is part of what encourages him to fight back against the Union. In Season 2 they're too busy fighting the Union to visit the hall, but even when they return, at the very end of the season, the receptionist is nowhere to be seen.
• Narrowly averted in YU+ME: dream . The author realised she was going to do this with No Face, a minor but very scary enemy and so Dropped a Bridge on Him for completeness. Lia had just made a Face–Heel Turn and he got in her way. Cue a Neck Snap in the background of a conversation.

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