Trope Talk: Noodle Incidents
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- Опубліковано 21 бер 2024
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First rule of The Noodle Incident is you do NOT explain The Noodle Incident.
What's your favorite Noodle Incident, and was there a time you got a Noodle Incident explanation that actually really worked for you? Drop it in the comments!
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“The line between comedy and horror is thinner than either genre would like it to be.”
My eyes have been opened.
In a funny way or in a horrific way?
They are literally the exact same genre with the one exception being down to the framing.
This is part of why jokes can fail so horribly.
This is why horror comedy is so much fun, Shawn of The Dead and The Cabin In The Woods being two of my favorites.
@@osirisatot19i really dislike those movies
A lot of fans think they want the Noodle Incident explained when what they really want is to feel smug that their headcanon is correct.
This
U right.
And that’s the central paradox she was highlighting; whether a revelation makes sense within the story and whether that revelation pleases the fans are two completely different things. For writers, it can be something of a no-win situation if it doesn’t land just right.
Yeah, which means that its a type of satisfaction that comes at the expense of others. Like it’s only something to be smug about if you also happen to disprove a bunch of other headcanons, which means all those fans will be disappointed because what they thought should happen, didn’t.
_Solo_ in a nutshell
Milo Murphy’s Law performed an incredible noodle incident, the so called Llama Incident.
It’s referenced repeatedly yet almost nonsensically in the episodes leading up to the episode dedicated to it, the actual incident is a legitimately insane sequence of events that checks every reference made to it, and the episode ends with the creation of The Woodpecker Incident, which is then never spoken of again.
I sort of wish the Woodpecker incident was spoken about around characters who weren’t there so they could get just as frustrated as Zack did about the llama incident
Yeah leave it to that animation and writing team to actually pull off explaining a noodle incident 😂
I wish that it was mentioned here
And then they actually use time traveling to the llama incident to help them win a fight
It’s so well done, it gave me a new perspective on llamas
The noodle incident is so especially compelling in Calvin and Hobbes because it feels like the only thing he feels real shame about; usually he’s proud of his schemes, especially when he gets away with it like it’s implied he did in this case, but his extreme defensiveness even to Hobbes really piques your curiosity.
He did say he was framed…
@@isaactrockman4417 He's also claimed that noone can prove he was responsible.
It’s also where the name of the trope comes from, so yeah.
@@gogogo123454321 You misunderstand, I’m not referring to it as a noodle incident, I’m talking directly about the noodle incident as a recurring story element in Calvin and Hobbes and part of why it’s so memorable within that story on its own. I’m not comparing it to anything.
*fear of punishment. It's not guilt, it's a lawyer-like self defense mechanism
Solo did basically all the Noodle incidents back to back, which means that, instead of Han having a long and storied career filled with many different adventures, he’s a guy that peaked early who keeps bringing up the one cool week he had 10 full years ago
Tbf, that's the kind of attitude I'd expect from a guy so bad at smuggling half the system knows he's a smuggler, and the other half can guess by looking at him.
@@funnyvalentinedidnothingwrong thats a hilarious way of describing han and also i think this sentence is making me evaluat wheter star wars was ever well written
@@sylvy16 The original Star Wars? Maybe to some extent. The movie Solo specifically? It was an awful piece of crap that a group of great actors tried to carry and really earn their paycheck on, even though the writing was a dumpster fire.
@@sylvy16I think Star Wars can be well written and Han can still be a guy who peaked when he was 20 and never stopped bringing it up 😂
Han once ran for 4 touchdowns in a single game
My favorite was an indirect reference in an entirely unrelated comic. Two aliens on a spaceship talking about a planned heist.
"Don't worry, we'll just blame someone else!"
"Oh, like that incident with the noodles?"
"Right! They still think that kid did it all!"
The Comic was Freefall
lmao
So he was framed
Iconic
@@Jonnyg325 I had thought so, but wasn't sure enough to day
Making ALL of Han's noodles a part of a single story basically takes away the "ive done a lot" vibe and replaces it with "i did one thing"
The density also pulls the audience out of the story, ruining the immersion. We no longer see it as a new story of Han, but rather as the writers trying to tie thing after thing to the OG trilogy.
God, what happened with the "last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye" made me SO MAD. As much as I love Goose, he should NOT have been the one to take out Fury's eye.
I made a comment about this that I'll paste here:
"I love the Goose twist because of how it reframes those previous references as total horse-shit he was just manipulating people with. Nick Fury understands tropes. He understands his own reputation as a shadowy authority figure and veteran badass of decades past, and it's useful to him. "A cat scratched out my eye" doesn't help him to convince Captain America to play ball, so he changes the story. That's characterization, and it's consistent with the trick he pulled after Coulson's death putting blood on the trading cards (and covering up his resurrection). He knows how to tell someone something that's emotionally convincing, fits the details that person is aware of, and compels them to do what he needs them to do. It's extremely informative on his character."
@@forrestibI really like that take.
I don't feel like I can give the mcu stuff benefit of the doubt anymore to take that as intentional (as a whole anyway, I can believe that some writers maybe?), but it does totally work as a head-canon for me.
Mcu to me has an even more condensed version of the problem comics have. Different authors, directors, editors, producers etc. Having different understandings of and visions for the characters. With the mcu stuff it's not even a while run or several of comics in one style, it's just one movie before changes may happen.
A cynical take I admit, so I don't relish it, but I hope it explains why I and others might think badly of the decision to do it how they did. Again though, thank you for sharing your version because I infinitely prefer that framing
@@forrestibokay you made me like it, props to you
My favorite subversion of this trope is when an on screen event becomes a noodle incident for other characters that weren’t there.
“What about Jong-Jong?”
“Oh, like we’ll ever run into him again”
“Who’s Jong-Jong? Nevermind, if it’s important I’ll find out”
@@Enray11and they did run into him again
“One day you’re going to tell me why you stop being Batman.”
“Seriously! What the ****** IS NAMEK?”
Abother version is when the incident happens in a prequel movie so we, the audience, know it and so does the characters but because it's not in the movie itself it becomes a noodle incident for both the characters and us.
E.g. Frozen 2 mentioning Hans
Well if it’s anything like that Jockstrap Incident, the bodies are probably buried somewhere around here.
Funny thing is,just rewatched that episode
God dammit you beat me to it
Now son, if this is anything like that jockstrap incident we don’t want to get boxed in
God this is just like that Jockstrap Incident, only this time I don't have Ginyu around to dig the holes
"Seriously, this is just the jockstrap incident all over again! Right down to the big red ball!"
"I thought we let that go..."
"I'll let it go when you die! Again!"
I love that in her rush to clarify "the fact that Noodle Incidents only work when you don't explain them DOES NOT recuse you from needing to have answers for actual important plot questions" Red (accidentally?) said "bye" AND THEN said "So, yeah"
I love her commitment to The Bit.
Me, six years from now: We all remember that time Red said "bye" before "so yeah."
You: *nods sagely*
Audience: [spellbound and intrigued]
Burn notice actually did this in a fascinating way- the characters will often reference things they did in the past and adapt those situations to the present. It lets you see the general outline of each noodle incident while giving you a decent amount to go off of
My favorite one is where main character says they need to do "the same thing they did to that colonel with the drinking problem", to which another character complains that that took months to set up and they have barely an hour.
It ends up with them gaslighting a gangster and his brother until they think the gangster is having a complete psychological breakdown. Burn notice is a hell of a show.
It deserves more love, I agree. I watched it in its entirety when it came to streaming based purely on the curiosity its TvTropes entries created.
Yes! Thought of this, too. I love Burn Notice (yes, even the last season, alone at my Unpopular Opinion table 🫥), one of my most rewatched shows.
"The line between comedy and horror is thinner than either genre would like it to be."
As someone who writes both, I will have you know that comedy has no problem with how close it is to horror. Horror, on the other hand, has never stopped whining about it.
Horror sometimes feel the need to show how "serious" it is.
Otherwise the audience doesn't doesn't take it seriously... And if You take it too seriously, the audience stops taking it seriously funny enough
Comedy loves horror, horror likes to pretend it’s too dark and gritty for comedy, truly a match made in some back room of heaven by an intern who accidentally bumped into a console.
Combining the two, however, is akin to juggling on a unicycle. It's doable, definitely a learned skill honed from two other learned skill and whether you succeed or fail it's going to be a spectacle.
Comedy thrives on annoying people (usually people in the story), so this tracks perfectly
and now I have a sitcom playing in my head with the main characters "Comedy" and "Horror", thanks
"Trust me, you don't wanna know. Audrey, don't tell him. You shouldn't have told me, but you did, and now I'm telling you you don't wanna know."
I was scouring for the Atlantis' reference from Dr. Dulce
ATLANTIS!!!
HELL YEAH ATLANTIS
I can *hear* that sentence.
My favourite Disney movie
A possible ancestor to this trope might be found in the original Sherlock Holmes stories. At one point Dr. Watson refers to "the story of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, for which the world is not yet prepared." That story is never published, but the idea that Holmes has faced and defeated some (literally) unspeakable horror is planted and remains in our minds. Clearly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle understood the power and purpose of the Noodle Incident.
"...and we can't use the Enterprise-E." _(everyone looks at Worf)_
"That was _not_ my fault."
Props to Red for managing to discuss a trope that's entirely dialogue in a format where she can't play audio clips.
Copyright?
@@BrunoMaricFromZagrebi think so, yes
Calvin and Hobbs is a comic, so there is no audio.
@@bjwessels is a lot easier to demonstrate a dialogue based trope with audio though, especially when such a large part of the trope is the emotional response to the incident, which is best shown with audio
subtitles baby, saving the day once again
Oh sure when Calvin has a noodle incident it’s an iconic narrative but when I have a noodle incident it’s “depressing” and “yet another attempt at cooking dinner”
You shouldnt of done that to those noodles
Six sheriff deputies! Six!
Five people had to be hospitalized
Four broken windows
I can still hear the screams of the last one.
A fun, but less common, inversion of this trope is when the audience *has* seen the incident(s) in earlier installments, but the minor characters whom the main cast meet have not and react accordingly.
It's a great way to contextualize the adventures of the main cast in relation to the rest of the world. Depending on the reaction, they could be impressive, insane, clever, lucky, or cursed according to the rest of the world. Sometimes if even leads to the main cast getting a chance to break from what they've had to be to go on their adventures.
I actually think this happened a few times with various companion characters in Doctor Who. The go on a crazy adventure, come back home, tell their family and friends, and those characters react accordingly. Usually, they get worried and fuss over the lead or turn it on its head with a " 'bout time you went and did something." And then the lead reacts to their reaction. It can vary a lot. Defiance, self-assurance, persuasion, coaxing, anger, or something else entirely. Then, with Doctor Who at least, the Doctor, who has seen these sorts of things happen every time they pick up a new companion, gets to weigh in. This usually reveals something about that particular Doctor and almost always tells something of their relationship with that companion.
I've seen it happen with many other stories too, but I genuinely can't conjure any further examples. But it's a very useful writing tool to give context to the characters, I think.
"Like water leaking through a dam", she suggested.
"Yeah." Percy smiled. "We've got a dam hole."
"What?" Piper asked.
"Nothing."
My favorite Noodle Incident is actually from L4D2 where Ellis tells you the hundredth story about his super cool friend Keith where they escaped a burning hospital only to realize that he was actually doing that adventure with you.
Not only does this mean he was telling the truth about all the other incidents, but he actually sees you as one of his closest friends now. ❤
Star Wars also had a much more prominent Noodle Incident that later got very, very explained:
“You fought in the Clone Wars?”
Was looking for this comment
That's true, but I'd say obi-wan talking at Anakin about all their adventures together at the start of episode 3 is even more fitting.
Basically the prequels is the explanation of the noodle incident of the original trilogy
How about “That business on Cato Neimoidia doesn’t, doesn’t count.”
@@Shift_Salt ok, so this one is funny.
The Cato-Neimoidia business was a noodle incident in the movie. And then, they eventually released a novel all about the Cato-Neimoidia business. Called Brotherhood.
In Legend of Korra, Bumi brings up a lot of noodle incidents in his past, but everyone, including the audience, thinks he's making them up to make himself seem as awesome and capable as his bender siblings... Until we see one of those incidents on screen and then he starts telling it but goes "Ah, whatever, you won't believe me anyway", which implies that all of his noodle incidents really happened. It was cool and hilarious in equal measure.
Oh! I'm glad you helped me remember that! I love that biy of implication and characterization too. However, I think that might be a different trope i e. "telling tall tales" or "big fish stories". But with the clever subversion of them actually being true, but lacking vital context.
YES that's my favorite aspect about him! One of the best lines in the show is when someone says something about getting kidnapped in a sack and Bumi says out of the blue "that's what got me into the United Forces."
He is truly sokka nephew, sokka would be proud uncle
There's also when he got into the fog of lost souls and revealed much of his light-hearted side is meant to cover up how haunted he is by much of those noodle incidents.
And we get the opposite in Toph, where the audience knows the stories in question, but Toph dismisses them as minor boring incidents.
I love the Jock-strap incident that is mentioned in DBZA. It's not just mentioned once, several characters talk or think about it and everyone adds a new detail.
really feeling the bit at the end abt mysteries that are SUPPOSED to be explained, i was kind of expecting Red to directly mention Sherlock as an example - they kind of did a reverse noodle incident where they implied that it WOULD be explained, and then realised that nothing they could come up with would be as clever as the theories that fans came up with in the interim, so they were like surprise!! we're not gonna tell you!! it's a noodle incident now!! which was. not popular lmao.
Even worse is that Moffat was like, "I've seen a lot of the fan theories on this, and one of them got it right." Which sent the fandom even further into a tizzy.
I now imagine red must have a huge document full of indecipherable video ideas like
"The noodle incident", "Conservation of Ninjutsu", "Those dang phones"
Are you sure it isn't a giant wall covered in scrawled notes, character pics and string?
@@4namolly I'm sure "String Theory" is somewhere on her Conspiracy Wall in the Room Full of Crazy!
Yes, but most of them make sense if you just google the phrase.
I remember when I invoked "Conservation of Ninjutsu" in a game I ran where one player had a maxed-out Minion resource.
I gave him the option of one perfect super-Alfred, or an infinite supply of inept ninjas.
He chose correctly.
I think there's a website called TVTropes or something that have a lot of these things compiled
‘Just like Budapest all over again’
‘You and I remember Budapest very differently’ Is one of my favorite examples of this troupe.
I have no doubt they will eventually do a Disney + mini series "Budapest" showing the events.
@@appa609wasn’t that the Black Widow movie? I thought that was meant to be that backstory? Never actually watched it.
@@appa609The Black Widow movie shows what happened in Budapest
@@estebanalvarado1650I have no idea what you're talking about, there was never a blank widow movie.
@@appa609 Nat blew up a little girl to prove to SHIELD she had changed sides, is what Budapest is (see: Black Widow, the film, as everyone else said). How the event of Avengers remind either of them of Budapest is not at all clear to me.
There was a running gag in the penguins of Madagascar tv show where skipper would refer to a mission in “denmark” while doing a cool voice. Probably my favourite noodle incident put to screen
“Just like old times skipper”
“Yeah, just like *Denmark*”
“The line between horror and comedy is finer that we’d like to admit” also explains why horror movie spoofs work so well
"God, Zarbon's dead, Dodoria's dead, the Ginyus are dead, this is just one giant mess. It's just like that Jockstrap Incident except now I don't have Ginyu around to dig the holes"
"Now, son; if this is anything like the Jockstrap Incident, we don't want to get boxed in!"
I'M SORRY?
@@rubberduckydjTFS DBZAbridged
@@rubberduckydj the jockstrap incident, you'd have to be there to believe it
"The only reason he took those jokers out was because I loosened them up for him. Like a jar of space pickles. Ugly stupid space pickles. I've just gotta get those dragonballs. And if its anything like that Jockstrap Incident, Ginyu probably buried them somewhere around here."
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate..."
I've seen my only real friend die, I've seen a giant penny roll over a guy dressed like a rainbow…
Please remind me what that is from? It’s killing me (was it Dr. Who? Watchmen? Actually, it was Bladerunner, wasn’t it?).
@@thrawncaedusl717Yup, it's bladerunner.
@@thrawncaedusl717Blade Runner, yeah.
"All those.. memories.. will be lost in time like.. tears in rain
Time to die.."
I like that in Red vs Blue the characters bring up noodle incidents in the exact same way they bring up onscreen incidents which I think helps the jokes flow nicely and provides enough explanation to understand on a surface level why some characters interact in certain ways with each other
That's exactly what I was thinking of too! Like why does Grif telling the story of how he helped fight the Meta sound like complete bs when we literally saw it happen?😂
Sometimes a story element can start off as a noodle incident in order to build audience curiosity, but then be explained later to satisfy that curiosity while simultaneously seting up some foreshadowing. An example of this would be the references to "going Turbo" in Wreck-It Ralph.
Another example is the noodle incident(as called in canon) from The Daily Maintenance of Shinozaki! They explain what the incident was, but it added onto the existing mystery of Human Repositories!
Shinozaki is an absolute joy to read
One of my favourite 'Noodle Incidents' is Mole's backstory in Atlantis, I think it does the joke perfectly and is a good way to close out a relatively emotional segment and really is the best way they could've handled said character's history.
"You don't wanna know. Audrey, don't tell him. You shouldn't have told me, but you did. Now *I'm* telling you; you don't wannna know."
To tell Milo would have...disturbed the dirt!
No one will ever know Mole’s backstory. My guess is that he was a dirt enthusiast, who is shown by humanity so badly he was forced to go live with nature where he found acceptance through moles. That’s why he’s called “the mole” because the only thing that ever accepted him were the animal.
But that’s just my guess.
That noodle incident was actually so well done that I don't even know everyone else's backstory
@@awesomemantroll1088”well, as far me goes, I just like to blow things up”
@@GurrenPrime "Come on Vinnie...tell the kid the truth..."🤣🤣
It also works great as the final punchline as the hero rides off into the sunset with the crew.
"So, what did happen during [noodle incident]?"
*sigh* "Alright, kid, I guess you deserve to know. It all started when..." and fade to black
This is practically a trope in its own right
and i eat that up tbh
Like the secret recipe of the krabby Patty. The main ingredient of the Krabby patty is...
"...what is this tattoo I've heard so much about?"
"Well... it's a long story. It was right after the Murmansk brushing incident. You're familiar with that, I believe . . ."
- _Down Periscope_ (closing lines)
To be fair, this one actually got explained very early in the film (and by the main antagonist, no less) but is never actually shown (for multiple reasons including a big obvious one), only referenced.
Zuko to Ozai…
People will be like "all fear is rooted in the unknown" and then get panic attacks on the way to a dentist appointment for their third root canal.
Touché dread is definitely a close second
Some people have trouble grasping the future, even if it is laid out. "But what if THIS time, something bad happens???" Even though nothing has changed. Not all fears are rational.
5:52 "In horror movies, the scariness of the story often takes a rapid downturn after the monster is fully revealed for the first time."
Unless, of course, you are The Thing.
...Hold up.
"You/My Father fought in the Clone Wars?" was *also* a Noodle Incident. It was a historical footnote to make clear the military camaraderie of the past generation. And we got the *prequel trilogy* out of it.
To be fair, Georges Lucas knew he was gonna make the prequel trilogy. At first, he even thought he would make three trilogies, but finally cut the sequel one.
Taht's why so much extended universe focused on the future of Star Wars but not the past, Lucas said to all the writers beforehand "You can explain what follows and play with the present, but I'll do the past, eventually". So the Clone Wars bit was more a prequel bait XD
I’d more say we got The Clone Wars out of it. But I believe “that business on Cato Neimoidia doesn’t count” is still a small noodle incident because it wasn’t covered in the show.
imo, the key difference between the Clone Wars and, say, how Han got the Millennium Falcon, is that one of them is history that everyone knows about, and one of them is something only a couple characters know about. finding out about the Clone Wars gives us a look at historically important events that shaped the present and left an indelible mark on the world; finding out about the Falcon tells us about a few days in a couple characters' lives.
@@thetwilightgamerThe very first thing I was thinking upon recognizing what this Trope Talk was gonna be about, was Obiwan and Anakin's references to their off-screen adventures together from Episodes II and III (and Cinemasins whinging about the films not actually showing those, 'cause ofcourse).
Probably the best noodle incident explanation
"... Which I like to call 'Fans don't actually know what they want from their stories.'"
PREACH, RED!
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainity!" -- The Audience (channeling Douglas Adams)
Somewhere deep down in the comments, I've posted that it's not that fans don't know what we want from a story. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But the real problem is that corporate management _absolutely_ doesn't know what fans want, *but they're absolutely certain that they do.*
@@VinemapleFans only ever want more of the same. They say they want new, but every time they get that, they complain. But when you do give them the same, they complain about that too.
The fans aren't the creator. Stories don't happen by commission; they get created, and then find their audience. This is also why mandated prequels or sequels seldom ever work; they're too half-baked and reactionary to be truly compelling.
This applies to games as well. You get situations where gamers will complain about some aspect of the game and propose some surface level change to fix it, but the devs will need to go deeper, to understand what makes this an actual issue, to be able to properly address the problem.
@@nicholassmith7984 I just commented about this phenomenon with the new Fallout series. So many are assuming it's gonna suck because....reasons. And the show isn't even out yet at the time of this comment.
The biggest example I can think as proof that 'fans know better' is rubbish is how many 'true Star Wars fans' want a Darth Vader slasher movie despite the fact that the Vader comics are already filling the gaps about his life inbetween the Prequel and Original Trilogy.
A lot of 'true fans' don't want stories with thematic relevance or characterization. They want comprehensive wiki pages.
"I owe you from the thing with the guy in the place, and I'll never forget it" - Ocean's Eleven
"That was our pleasure."
"I'd never been to Belize."
Thank you for bringing up the whole, "fans don't know what they want" angle of story telling. To many times I will see fans say the most idiotic ideas for a story and I just scream into my desk. Semi related, I am a drafter (a step bellow engineer) and we have a phrase of, "the customer actually has no idea what they want and we have to predict what they want." There is a reason why fans are not writers for the same reason customers are not engineers. Except when you have a customer that IS an engineer and then they either are the most entitled jerk because they think they could do it better, but just don't feel like it OR they are the nicest customer because they understand the reason you are making the choices you did.
One of my favorite sub tropes of this is when someone STARTS to explain it, only to be repeatedly drowned out or interrupted by noise and associated visuals.
There is one episode of Phineas and Ferb where Vanessa asks Ferb about his name while he's busy looking for something. Offhandedly, he starts to answer "Well, actually it's short for - oh, here it is."
This one works really well to me because it adds an absurd level of noodle-ness to something otherwise fairly mundane, packing an incredible amount of "wait, WHAT?" into a single throwaway gag which is literally never addressed ever again.
The villain in monsters vs aliens. Every other line is interrupted by the machine. Is like a mad lib floor villain backstories.
The names of Timmy Turner's parents
@ikebirchum6591 Favorite part of this is that Timmy's dad's name was "Mom Turner" until he legally changed it to something no one ever hears.
Especially when they finally get round to explaining it, it cuts to black and the credits roll.
Funnily enough, a lot of Han Solo's noodle incidents were explored in expanded universe novels. A big reason why they worked was because they were usually a chapter or two as part of a larger adventure. Solo, meanwhile, gave the impression that Han had one really exciting weekend and the rest of his life was fairly mundane.
Yeah the Solo novels worked at giving you a sense of time. His life actually unfolded and there was a LOT that happened other than the noodle incidents referenced.
i think red mentioned this in the plot time vs downtime bit of the sequels episode. plot time has a lot of things happen in quick succession because movies kind of have to make it that way to keep pacing and tension, whereas downtime is far more sustainable in the long run of a person’s life. by making a prequel you’re expected to explain some bit of a backstory, because if you leave something out people will be like “but what about this” and then you also have to add a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t mentioned in the original movie, which also makes a “but what about this”
@@Hazel-xl8inThere's a big difference between explaining _a_ noodle incident and explaining _all_ noodle incidents. _Solo_ does the latter, as if they'll go stale if the writer doesn't package them all at once.
Yeah, I loved the A.C. Crispin Han Solo trilogy that slowly filled out Han's backstory and prejudices. Especially since a lot of those "A-hah, there it is!" explanations weren't just the average of people's expectations.
*Spoilers Ahead*
It wasn't just a smuggling run to and from Kessel, it was a rescue mission and his odometer was broken. He didn't just win the Falcon from Lando in a card game, he won a ship from Lando's lot, then took Lando's personal ship instead of one that was for sale. Lots of other fun little shenanigans that build on the character.
Han scored four touchdowns in a single game and coasted for the rest of his life?
I liked it in Milo Murphy's Law the first season they keep mentioning the llama incident and eventually they do explain it and it's absolutely hilarious
Thanks for this video. I just realized that this is not just a story trope, it's a life lesson. Instead of spewing TMI, we can portray ourselves through our own Noodle Incidents. Or do people already do this? Maybe that's what jewelry and tattoos are for, and why people get mad and call them posers when there's no deeper meaning and story behind an iconic piece of personal branding.
I love how "so yeah" started off as "I didn't know how to end the video" and ended up becoming the standard Trope Talk signoff, to the extent that Red felt the need to do a perfunctory "so yeah" here.
We don't talk about the "so yeah" incident
I like the general rule that an authors job isn’t to build a world COMPLETELY. But to make a world that FEELS complete.
A sort of “make the the reader think you did more than you did”
....but I am still glad JRR Tolkien did not realise that! : )
Red's primary worldbuilding philosophy.
@@mcv2178 Oh, Tolkien realized it. He tried his best, actually. It was his hobbies and field of study that took over, and prevented him from being more efficient.
@@mcv2178There's still a lot about Middle-Earth that we don't know about ^^
Like, the Istari, we have Gandalf and Saruman, important characters in the story, pretty fleshed out. Radagast, a random background character with one paragraph of lore in the Silmarillon. And the Blue Mages. Two beings with the same power-level of Gandalf of which we only know that their mission was in the East.
Like in videogames where only the area your supposed to be in is rendered.
I'm going to introduce this as something you have to write about your character when playing my next ttrpg.
Roll on the "random verb and noun" table to get your noodle incident, and use it to demonstrate how your character reacts to things.
One really good example of a noodle incident that actually got revealed in a really nice way is, ironically, a show who's whole plot just _is_ explaining how that noodle incident occurred. The entire incident is explained and elaborated on across multiple seasons of writing.
"And that's How I Met Your Mother."
I think Milo Murphy did a pretty good job at revealing it’s Noodle Incident joke
The entire show almost every episode at some point the characters compare their current wacky situation to the Llama Incident. The joke eventually became now utterly impossible it is that so so many things happened in the llama incident. But then, near the end of the series, they had an entire episode showing it with every single reference ever weaved together into a series of hyper creative crazy gags. I loved that cause of just how impressive it is.
I also love how the episode also start unknown adventure that end up the gang stuck on the tree branch at the edge of the cliff. Talk about begin the episode with also a Noodle Accident...
I thought of the Llama Incident a lot during this video and it is a really interesting example. On the one hand, the fact that they keep referencing that one event specifically implies that it was one of the craziest adventures they’ve ever had. Actually showing it runs the risk of being a letdown; “THIS is what everyone has been so excited about?” And I’ll admit, I don’t remember much from the actual episode. Considering everything we see in the show, it is a bit odd for the characters to keep referencing events that are literally less rememberable (to me) than other adventures we know they’ve had.
However, I was familiar with jokes like the Noodle Incident and ‘knew’ that we would never actually see the Llama Incident, and I feel like the creators knew that many of the audience were in a similar boat. I was never invested in the Llama Incident, so I didn’t put any effort into figuring out what it might be and I ended up being pretty surprised when they actually put all the pieces together into one adventure. It’s similar to when they made “Meepless in Seattle” in Phineas and Ferb, taking a bunch of unconnected clips and weaving them together into a complete story. I can appreciate that they turned the Llama Incident from a running gag into a challenge. (I’m going to need to do a rewatch to see how well they pulled it off)
“I used to have two, but you know, the llama incident”. The fact that he uses EVERY item he mentioned prior is what makes this show an absolute masterpiece.
My only complaint is that I agree with red, knowing what the llama incident was, takes away all the mystery.
Notably, the characters stop referring to the llama incident after that episode I believe. If they do, it’s used more as dramatic irony than a noodle incident. It’s been a while since I watched it.
I love Calvin and Hobbes references in other media.
I'm such a Calvin and Hobbes fan! It's lovely to see the noodle incident granted such iconic archetype status by possibly my favorite UA-camr of all time. It's such a positive note in my life
@@BradyPostmaThe noodle incident has had iconic archetype status long before Red has had a channel.
@JohnZ117 , I like that she's explaining it for all the younglings that were too little to here about Calvin and Hobbes
@@BradyPostma to be fair Red isn't the first to name the trope this, it's been established as the trope name for a long time. But Calvin & Hobbes does absolutely deserve to be the trope namer
@@macaronsncheese9835 - Apparently I don't spend enough time on TV Tropes or wherever to have heard the trope referred to as "noodle incidents" before. Until this video, I'd only heard "the noodle incident" used to refer to its specific use in Calvin and Hobbes.
A solved Noodle Incident that actually worked really well was Jack Sparrow's "Sea turtles, mate". It's built up to mythologize Jack and make the world wonder how he ever could have escaped the deserted island alone, only for Elizabeth Swan and the audience to learn it wasn't a spectacular escape at all, merely dumb luck and poor planning on Barbosa's part. HOWEVER, we _then_ get a callback that works tremendously well when Will answers Jack's question of how he escaped with, "Sea turtles", to which Jack knowingly responds in kind. Not only do we know that Jack wasn't any less awesome for not escaping on sea turtles, we can appreciate him and how he carries himself and his image within the series, as well as how he extends that to Will in turn.
I'm so glad you mentioned Leverage, because it's the first show I thought of when you explained what a Noodle Incident was. Such a good show
A Tragic comedic noodle incident happens in Adventure Time.
The characters describe a great Mushroom War, and when you look at the character designs you think they were just lobbing mushrooms at each other, maybe the mushroom can talk, and went “ouchies” as they did.
No, that’s just these kiddie looking characters understanding of what a nuclear bomb fallout looks like. A great big mushroom.
It's foreshadowed fairly early on what the great mushroom war was, considering a chunk of the earth is missing. And we even get to kind of see it in the Fin the Human episode where alt universe Fin takes the ice crown from Simons corpse and the bomb goes off.
I like the mushroom war because it is intentionally both a noodle incident and a very important part of the shows world. They show stuff from the past often and with the Finn The Human ep. It's something that gets talked about and then brought to life in a way that doesn't harm It's mystique, and then feels complete by the end of the show
Giant mushy friend!!
To me Advetnure time + mushroom war would add up to walking mushrooms swinging swords and spears at each other...
adventure time has nukes?? (i never got past season one it starts too slow for me but i know its amazing)
The best Noodle Incidents come from dnd. If you've ever added a new player mid campaign, or a player that can only make it a few sessions, suddenly you have a treasure trove of noodle incidents.
truer words have never been spoken fellow ttrpg enjoyer
Hilariously, this has happened so much at our table that last night a player brought up a tragedy from his past, and the guy who first invited me into the group said, “Oh, I don’t think I was here for that. Was it before I joined?”
The response: “Kinda. I mean. It’s backstory.”
(Cue all of us opening his backstory document to confirm, yep, there it is at the bottom of the page.)
Just a mention of how not Steve died at our table...
my one group when we talk in depth abt the paladin maiming the fighter after she was corrupted and then an hr later vaguely reference that one time she convinced an enemy she was god .
Especially good if it transcends years and groups.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?” got me, thanks Red
07:00
One of my favorite things about the Weapons Factory of Villengard Noodle Incident is how much we learn about and see of it as the series continues on. We learn that after he destroyed the factory, the Doctor planted a banana grove there and used it to convince Dorium Maldovar (a character who becomes important in the Eleventh Doctor’s story) to open a bar, the Maldovarium. And later, in his final episode, the Twelfth Doctor returns to Villengard and encounters an old friend (of sorts) from near the beginning of his run: Rusty the “Good Dalek”. Doctor Who plots and villains can be hit-or-miss, but they way they do callbacks and lore is absolutely spectacular. I could go on (Mummy on the Orient Express, the Twelfth Doctor’s face being a subconsciously-selected reference to Lobus Cæcilius, where River was before she went to the Library, etc…)
This trope is a flawless example of the thought that sometimes, as a writer, you really have to trust your audience, and sometimes, as a writer, you SHOULD NOT trust your audience like even a little bit. A lot of becoming a good writer is just developing an instinct for which moment is which.
It can indeed be very hard, especially since different audiences can react very differently. For example, every time I see a story's theme be delivered very unsubtly and think it would've been better if the story had delivered its theme more subtly, I always inevitably then see a large subset of the audience completely miss the theme and I think, "Well, never mind."
One tip I heard is that you can always trust an audience to know what they *don't* want, but you can never, ever trust them to know what they actually want instead.
Favorite use of Noodle Incidents is the character Morn from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Were the whole joke is everyone in the cast goes on and on about what a crazy and fun guy Morn is, and will frequently allude to his past adventures and how he never shuts up. Yet all you ever see of Morn is him sitting silently at the bar. Literally an entire episode is built around Morn reeking havoc and you don't get to see any of it, just the characters after the fact trying to put their testimony together to work out what happened.
And characters who are never once in the same scene as Morn describe their detailed ongoing relationship with him
Like Worf and his weekly sparring sessions,
and Jadzia and her crush on Morn
The whole episode starts off with a Morn hologram that "can't pass for Morn because it doesn't talk"
Idk i like the Captian Boday joke more myself
The Captain Boday joke is pretty good, but Morn's so great because so many different characters have WILDLY different dynamics with him! I also love the way Quark gets a few noodle incidents to explain his skills. Why's he that good with a phaser? He doesn't want a repeat of The Incident with the picky eaters from when he was a cook. Why's Riker calling in a favour? Because he hangs out with Quark and that crazy night left a favour open (also yeah hi Quark's in the middle of being questioned by a security guard while he's on his video call don't worry about it). Quark has a BUNCH of noodle incidents, and it really makes it feel like he's a clever dude with a lot of weird skills and like 50 side hussles of varying legality going on, in a way that just showing him doing that in episodes about him only wouldn't do.
The DS9 example I thought of was, "We do not discuss it with outsiders."
I never want to learn why bunnies frighten Anya.
Let's not forget one of the most important noodle incident: The throw-away line in breaking bad, in which saul goodman mention some guy called 'lao' , what led to one awesome series.
I just came across a D&D webcomic where a pair of characters end up in a adventure where it's just the two of them separated from the party. The GM offers to skip that adventure and revisit it later, to which one of the characters responds "Sweet! It'll be a Noodle Incident!", which raises an interesting point - Noodle Incidents are very convenient in TTRPGs, as they let you characterize your player character without having to build out tons of lore and having to make sure that lore fits with all the other worldbuilding.
What made Solo so cumbersome was the fact that they tried cram the explanation to all his noodle incidents into one movie. You could have told a great story around how Chewie and Han met. You could have told a great story about the Kessel Run. You could have told a great story about Han getting the Falcon. But they weren't concerned with telling any of those stories well...they were concerned with fitting them all in so the story of the movie had all the narrative satisfaction of grocery shopping.
Yeah, there are cases where a noodle incident can finally be shown well and be satisfying, but it needs to serve the storytelling. Solo was just filling in the blanks like noodle madlib. And there wasn't enough connective tissue to string the story together very strongly.
I always thought the same. They wanted to have an iconic Han Solo movie and his origin story. But those two doesn't work that well together.
Well put. The purpose of a Noodle incident is to make the story feel bigger than just what you're seeing. A good story is like a giant web, with everyone and everything interconnected. Noodle incidents are the far ends of the web, connected to elements that we can't see. Solo basically took all the loose ends of Han's story and showed exactly where they end, and then didn't create any new loose ends. So instead of making Han's story web bigger, it made it smaller.
Oh, thank goodness, someone in the top dozen comments made my point about Solo. Contrast this to Rogue One, where they made an entire heroic tragedy around a _single line_ from ANH: "Many Bothans died to give us this information."
@@VinemapleThe "Many Bothans died" line was in The Last Jedi and was about the second Death Star. Rogue One was getting the plans Leia sent to Tatooine with R2D2 in A New Hope regarding the first Death Star.
17 minutes about the trope where you never see what happened? I love this channel so much.
"If it's a mystery, we want to see it solved."
Side eye at Sherlock falling off a roof.
"I don't care how you survived, Sherlock. I want to know why."
Actual quote from Sherlock.
A fun exercise is taking plots that we know the details of and turning them into noodle plot descriptions, "This is just like the time with the giant marshmallow monster." Or "I still owe you for Asgard."
The whole irony about trying to find an explanation about how the Millenium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs" is the fact that according to the original script, Han was trying to sell Ben and Luke a load of bullshit, and Ben wasn't buying it.
Yeah that was the impression, he was trying to sound awesome and amazing and the best, but as Greedo points out, first sight of an Imperial patrol he dumped cargo and ran like hell
Alec Guinness knew the assignment, too. You can look at his face on the delivery of that line and he is doing the "really? you expect me to believe that?" face so hard.
Also, he was making a point about the speed of the ship in that line, so twisting it in Solo to restore the original meaning of parsecs makes it even more incoherent. I mean, I've seen someone say "hey guys, you know what ? What if in Star Wars, they measured time with a unit called "Paar' seks" ?". Much simpler solution, sticks it in a nice way to the people who complained about it, and it's not even like deforming real words to make Star Wars names is unprecedented. The ice planet is called Hoth.
But this explanation doesn't actually demonstrate anything.
Yes the script called for Han making a boast and Obi-Wan rolling his eyes at it.
But that would play out if Han was speaking nonsense and Obi-Wan knew it was nonsense, or if Han was just making a sensible, but bold claim. "I can jump 10kg into the air" vs "I can jump 10 feet into the air."
I don't know what explanation Solo went with, but a passible explanation has existed for decades in one of the books focused on Han, involving how close you can get to black holes.
Which is a silly proxy measurment, but its not like those don't exist in real life.
Computer Mouse chips express their accuracy in "DPI" or "dots per inch". Ie "this chip does 16k dpi" or "this new chip does 25k dpi" but that's literally just a sensitivity multiplier on the mouse output. And nobody runs a mouse above 7k or so anyway. It's just vaguely linked to accuracy in that - supposedly - the max dpi is the highest multiplier you can stick on the mouse without your cursor jittering around on the screen. Which implies some vague underlying accuracy, but it's a really stupid way to measure it.
@@Xylos144 You only reinforced the point a bit. It was BS; and all the attempts to reconcile it have to bend over backwards and twist rules, only to raise more questions than they answer. The effort was put in, but it wasn't worth the pay off.
If I was gonna to try and make good on this joke/boast about the Parsecs; I would played it straight, including a whole action sequence, and made the twist the fact Han has been describing it wrong all these years. This succeeds in both proving his boast was well earned, but also subverting things in that the incoherence of the boast are his own fault. So not only are people justified in assuming hes BSing, you also get the fun twist that Han is robbing himself of credit by using terminology wrong. It also fits into his character being successful more by being resourceful than competent/trained.
One of the first "Noodle Incidents" I can remember is from the beginning of the first Ghostbuster--
Peter: "This reminds me of that time you tried to drill a hole in your head. Do you remember that?"
Egon: "That would've worked if you hadn't stopped me."
That has multiple layers because Peter likely stopped Egon from performing trepanning, which was something ancient people did to release evil spirits..
@@HistoryVideoGamesMiscStuffand knowing about trepanning gives you enough info to make some guesses, but still leaves what he wanted to accomplish in the dark.
Not to mention, in the same scene: "Raaaayyy... the sponges migrated about a foot n' a half!"
I feel like that was improvised.
Every time you talk about Leverage, it makes me want to rewatch it for the umpteenth time. One of my favorite shows when I was a kid and still remains to this day one of the best network shows ever.
I hadn’t heard of this term before now, but I do know it’s something that I’ve already acknowledged I liked internally, and have used a bit in some of my story drafts.
The prime example of it would be noodle incident that is mentioned extremely early on in a story idea I have. The ‘cat incident’ helps characterize the main trio given their reactions without any explanation for what actually happened.
It’s brought up by one of the three in response to what the trio are going to do. It is mentioned that it feels familiar to a previous incident, and that the 2nd should be careful.
The second character casually dismisses it and says it won’t happen again.
The third, grows anxious in response, and tries to move past the conversation.
It is meant to help characterize the 1st as responsible and dependable, the 2nd reckless and carefree, while the 3rd as shy and nervous.
It helps provide some clear indication towards each character’s personalities and shared experiences through bringing up a single shared event.
As soon as you started explaining, I was like "Oh, like Budapest!", and then you immediately used it as the example lol
Same!
That is the one that came to my head first, and Star Wars "Ninth time; that business on Cato Neimoidia doesn't count."
@osirisatot19 That one is actually explained in a novel called Labyrinth of Evil thst came out right around the same time as the movie.
That was my immediate thought too.
@@Clyde-S-Wilcox Still doesn't count for the movie and Star Wars media that isn't the movies gets retconned out of canon all the time.
“The line between comedy and horror is thinner than either genre would like it to be.”
Fear is of the unknown. Comedy is of the unexpected. There’s a frightening/hilarious amount of overlap. Arguably the primary difference is just the threat level.
Someone once wrote that comedy is "The noise coming from the brush not being a lion".
Which illustrates the similarity quite well.
Fear is the unknown, comedy is the unexpected, sorrow is the unwanted.
Jordan Peele said it best, it's literally just what music is in the background.
also the proximity, hence "comedy is tragedy plus time."
and framing. theres a lot of comedic fighting(arguably a dangerous situation) in slapstick comedies.
Absolutely one of my favorite gripes of all time. One of my dnd campaigns veered into a completely different direction with the single throw away noodle incident line from one of the player that then influenced the next *four years of sessions*
I don't know how you do it, but you usually manage to put out a trope talk about a trope I'm struggling with in something I'm writing at the same time I'm struggling with it. (I know it's coincidence, but I just wanted to let you know.)
Thank you for sharing!
Fun thing I noticed reading through Calvin and Hobbes strips: the noodle incident ONLY starts coming up after a strip where Calvin is walking around with Hobbes after school, and mentions he had a bad day and doesn't want to talk about it. Hobbes asks if it had to do with some sirens he heard about noon that day, to which Calvin replies "I SAID I didn't want to talk about it" so there's a chance the noodle incident involved police and/or EMTs
Of course if it did it's weird that Calvin's parents were never informed about it
Calvin's parents don't want to talk about it, either.
@@JohnZ117 no they canonically don't know, there's a series of strips where Calvin's mom goes to a scheduled parent-teacher conference (it goes about as well as expected), and when she comes back Calvin immediately goes into Plea Bargain Mode and among other things is freaking out because he's certain Miss Wormwood told his mom about the noodle incident (he insists he was framed), at which point his mom replies with "what noodles?" and Calvin quickly tries to pivot. His parents actually have no idea the incident ever happened (or at least, they had no idea before that point)
Depending on who the EMTs were for, maybe nobody actually connected Calvin to the incident (or not to the degree that they could call his parents in), so they remained oblivious?
Honestly the noodle incident could involve macaroni art which is something I remember doing in school.
My guess is Calvin decorated an entire wall in macaroni and shenanigans ensued.
@@katiebirdie7868 I always thought that they were never able to connect Calvin with what happened of that he had a good enough alibi that he got away with it after initially coming under suspicion
- "Oh, last year we had an Indian kid."
- "Oh yeah?"
- "Yeah, but they got him."
That joke was so good, the whole show ended up being a lot funnier and more emotional than I was expecting.
This trope is basically all the Family Guy cutaway gags except we don't get to see the gag.
What does that mean?
@@wisperton Scooby Doo
@@wisperton It's a joke from the new Ted show.
SO HAPPY you brought up Leverage! Such a great show!
This is a really good explanation and helps me put words to something I sort of had a amorphous understanding of. Being engaging is to invite the audience into participating in writing your story and the only way to do that is to not fully explain everything.
That "Wouldn't you like to know weather boy" smacked me in the face like a fish, thank you.
Ah, a fellow Monty Python afishionado! *ba dum tss*
I think that a bid part of the problem with Solo is that they tried to answer All the Noodle Incidents in One. The EU had many stories explaining Han's noodle incidents, but they were generally focused on One Incident per Story - handily implying that such incidents stretched out across his entire backstory, which in turn implies that there are Other Noodle Incidents we know even Less about.
The fact that some of the incidents got multiple explanations in different stories also helped.
Also the fan theory that Han was lying or misrepresenting his history when talking to Luke
Possibly in order to gauge how much he could extort from them
Ditto Star Trek and explaining how Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru test...
@@JeiJozefu That's not even a fan theory, it's based on the official creator commentary from the laserdisc and DVD versions of Episode IV. It was canon that Han was just bullshitting when he mentioned the Kessel run, but got retconned.
@@nathangamble125
The entire Star Wars franchise functions as a cautionary tale on intellectual property
An example of a Noodle Incident that I remembered watching this video was in Agents of Shield, where Agent May iirc was nicknamed the Cavalry, but we're never given an explanation as to why that is, because the characters either don't know what it means or they just don't want to talk about it.
Now, this does get an explanation in a later season, but I think the show does a good job of setting it up as a bit, before actually delving into the incident itself.
- Yeah, but they got him.
- What does that mean?
- I liked him, too.
- What do you mean "they got him"?
- He used to share his Dunkaroos. Good guy.
I think for Solo it would have been better if they instead gave us *more* noodle incidents, more adventures, show us things we never knew he did.
I still enjoyed it, because the banter and dialogue was exactly what made Han fun, and I extremely enjoyed that it shows Han doing EXACTLY what he was introduced doing in ANH - in trouble with someone who can make him suffer a LOT, and just trying to argue, bargain, or scam his way out of it.
No, seriously - go back and watch: He NEVER delivers on ANYTHING that he promises ANYONE in that movie. He just keeps getting into deeper and deeper trouble and running further away and getting into trouble with someone bigger and meaner than the FIRST guy he got in trouble with.
Also - y’know, it doesn’t NEED to be outstanding or new or groundbreaking. Sometimes, it’s okay to just be fun.
Yeah, my biggest problem is that they felt the need to explain absolutely everything about him away in one movie. All the way down to a little charm no one even noticed in the Millennium Falcon
@@cameronwilsey9334eh.
I did enjoy that it added a little bit of new perspective on some aspects - like, yeah that iconic blaster was obviously just for fan service, but from a different point of view, the fact that Han KEPT it, even though there’s definitely better blasters and it was given to him by someone who ultimately double crossed him… Han’s sentimental.
Little things.
At this point, _Solo_ is practically the Star Wars fandom's own noodle incident. Remember that movie which gave Han Solo's last name a tragic backstory?
I watched that movie and forgot that was even a thing.
Thus making the name an example of "too on the nose" instead of an actual name that merely seems to have symbolic meaning to us.
I like the way Yu Yu Hakusho kind of does this with Yusuke's Genkai training. It was super brutal, he's scarred for life, he both hates and loves her, he's *much, much stronger*, and that's all you really need to know.
And I kind of like the reversal where characters in the sequel flippantly describe the events of a previous movie as though they weren't as crazy as we know they are. That sort of dramatic irony, you know.
2:39 speaking of Sherlock Holmes, he had his own Noodle Incident that Watson decided the world wasn't ready to hear about: the Giant Rat of Sumatra...
This reminded me a lot of a teacher of mine experiment explaining the importance of abstraction. He said "A 100% accurate map of a city would be 100% useless, because it would be the size of the whole city " . I think telling a good story is the same thing, you need to choose what details are explained and what will remain in the shadows
Well, it'd be useless as a map. It'd be a great playground for a training simulation, though.
@@Duiker36 that would take A LOT of paper 🤣
Digital maps kicked your former teacher's butt, lol.
@@lpfan4491 not at all, a 100% accurate digital map would as useless as a printed one. No one needs all the details of the real street.
A variant of this trope I’m a sucker for is the worldbuilding noodle incident, when a character mentions an important historical event, or a famous figure without going into why they’re famous because in universe, everyone knows them.
It just gives such depth to stories when used correctly, it tickles my writing brain.
_Star Trek_ pretty famously has a habit of naming three figures from the past. Two are people everyone has heard of, and one they made up, whether from our future/their past or an alien. The third one's accomplishments are only explained from context.
And these kind of scenes don't even loose their magic if they are eventually explained, as you can experience the story again, now being on the same level of knowledge as the characters.
@@boobah5643oh, I love whenever Star Trek does that, lol. It's especially fun if you've got a corner or two of the worldbuilding you like to dive into (personally, I'm such a sucker for Romulans, Vulcans, and pre-Surakian Vulcans in particular), so you can dive into beta canon and extended universe stuff, and when they pull the worldbuilding noodle incident (like "...great fools of history; you know, like how Hegelochus flubbed his line, Muhammad II killed Genghis Khan's envoy, and Nirak saw the approaching army and thought it was a sandstorm") you get to point at the screen and go "OH WAIT I KNOW ABOUT THAT" while (because it's a whole world!) still feeling like there's plenty of cool stuff and you're barely scratching the surface.
I think of Harry potter because there is one throw away line where Harry laments how his teacher is so dull that even talking about a war between wizards and giants he couldn't pay attention. Its a solid enough joke for anyone who has had a terribly dry teacher but I kept thinking "man a story about wizards fighting giants sounds way more interesting then the story i'm actually reading".
Ah the Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon. It's really perfect.
Loved seeing the Leverage team and other favs here. Great work!
I can see the way this trope connects to previous videos, particularly the Detail Diatribes about Zelda games, but also Trope videos like Fridging and Planet of the Hats. It isn’t just the Noodle Incidents themselves, but the whole concept of worldbuilding and character building by including enough hints of the past to make a world or life feel truly long and storied.
I love that this trope is named for something from Calvin & Hobbes!
Yeah ik right?
As well it should be.
The best part of Doctor Who is that the Noodle Incident could be a regular NI or actually a cheeky reference to an actual episode from the 70's or 80's or some kind of comic or audio drama. That or a juicy bit for a later writer to pick up on.
The problem is when they mix them up (looking at you, time war).
Indeed, even the (I think?) 4th Doctor had an episode where his past regenerations were shown alongside faces we'd never seen before. It adds intrigue and mystery... as opposed to the revelation that the Doctor has had lots of previous regens, all of whom seem to hold men in contempt. :(
One of the most textbook examples of “establishing a noodle incident, choosing to reveal the context, and it being underwhelming” imo is the Tenth Doctor’s thing with Queen Elizabeth I.
"The Terrible Zodin..."
This is why I wasn't upset about the time skips in Young Justice. The show provided enough information for the viewer to follow the story arc for every season. Most of the mentioned incidents are noodle incidents that establish relationships and make this version of DC feel massive and alive in way that most versions aren't.
OMG THANK YOU... THANK YOU SO MUCH.
The rage and fury has been put into words about Solo. I do believe you are a saint and spreading the good word my dearest of youtubers.
We don't speak of the Bucket Event.
It involved a bucket? Dear god...
There's more?
Never forget 😢
Modena was never the same
Of course not. How could we? We need to respect John’s wishes
@@bio9leader60 *NO.*
When you first started explaining this trope my immediate first thought was "oh this is why Solo flopped" and then hearing you use it as one of the the prime examples gave me so much satisfaction. The original series never needed an explanation for any of Han Solo's previous antics because his actions on screen tell you literally everything you need to know. He's arrogant, quick to adapt, and flies a ship that looks like a misshapen frisbee that is also one of the fastest ships in the galaxy, and yet somehow is still alive to give a ride to Luke and co. That's it.
And Lucas had to screw it up by nixing his character development arc of "dangerous scoundrel to hero" by having him not fire first.
Han seemed like the guy stupid enough to get himself into constantly dangerous stuff, but smart enough to always get out alive on and off for however long before he met Luke
Instead all that stuff happened in one wacky adventure he once had
@@degeneratemale5386 that's another problem I had. The time scale was all sorts of wacky. Aside from that couple year skip with him joining the imperial army, everything else feels like it happens in the span of a week.
Every crazy adventure that Han and Lando choose to reference all comes from the same 1 week span of time. And that's.. kinda underwhelming.
The original trilogy makes it at least appear that Han and Lando had years of history before Han won the Falcon "fair and square", putting a wrench in the friendship.
@@degeneratemale5386 In the original movie Han is a dangerous scoundrel who sells the idea that he'd leave the Rebellion in order to save his own skin; his sudden return is eucatastrophic and something we'd wanted without expecting it. Making Han a sympathetic character from the start completely misses the point.
Mind blowing! I immediately thought of leverage, even though I haven't watched it in probably ten years and then you mentioned it! Great moment, I feel validated
One of my favorite noodle incidents was in Keeper of the Lost Cities where the prankster character constantly holds it over the unknowing character's head. A lot of 3 second conversations and I'll tell you laters are thrown around. And the prankster often offers to tell the story of how they did it whenever they're dodging the seriousness of a moment which is something that our pov character gradually figured out.
My favorite version of this is from the Penguins of Madagascar tv show where they reference Manfredi and Johnson, 2 other penguins we’ve never met and presumably had some horrible demise
My favorite was Skipper's apparent business in Denmark, between him and the 'dames.'
Except we do eventually see them, and they are very much alive, though very injured, in Seaville
What makes it even funnier is Manfredi and Johnson do show up briefly in the show, and they try to get Skipper's attention but fail. Gives us small breadcrumbs as to where they are but doesn't reveal how they got there. Pretty much having your cake and eating it too.
We actually see them briefly in an episode of the TV show; they're currently stuck at either the San Diego Zoo or some Seaworld analogue, I forget which. That the Penguins go there to rescue Kowalski and leave without ever seeing them even though they get to watch their former comrades speed off into the sunset triumphantly is played for a bit of dark humor.
@@mr.cobalt1668 Same braincell. XD
The "Llama Incident" being an inconsequential-yet-oh-so-iconic adventure alluded to but never explained for a good twenty-one 11-minute episodes of MILO MURPHEY'S LAW still cracks me up. Simply paying off the bit was so real of them.
Then we get woodpecker incident
And then it becomes a relevant plot point in Missing Milo, where they time travel back to the Llama Incident to coax the stampede into running over the bad guys.
And the explanatory episode was wacky enough for the bit!
This is the only time explanation was still funny to me.
The Llama incident was the first thing I thought of when she started explaining the trope
I absolutely love your content and it makes me feel smart watching and gives me something to talk about with my friends. Like I'm fs gonna talk about this later as if I'm the soul arbiter of knowledge on the topic
Thank you for that asterisk at the end. A friend of mine read a mystery that didn’t resolve in the end and we were both so angry!