These movie characters did some very calculated vanishing acts.
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00:00Now, what are movies, if not grand illusions, intended to trick the viewer for better or
00:04worse? Films are all about casting a spell on the audience, about manipulating them into
00:09getting emotionally drawn into a story. Now, this can occur one of many ways, but one especially
00:14interesting feat of narrative chicanery involves removing a character from the fold for a certain
00:19amount of time, only to return them later for dramatic or comedic effect. It can be
00:24a tough trick to pull off in films with small casts and limited locations, requiring directors
00:29to get creative about how they choose to distract their audiences from a character's
00:33absence. But when it works, it really works, ensuring viewers are jolted by a surprise
00:38return or, depending on the type of movie it is, perhaps extremely amused. So let's
00:43take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Movie Characters
00:47They Wanted You To Forget.
00:4910. Sergeant Dignam – The Departed
00:52Now Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam certainly makes quite the impression in the first two acts
00:56of Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a stern yet quick-witted, wise-cracking cop who doesn't
01:02suffer fools lightly. And though Mark Wahlberg's terrific performance netted him a Best Supporting
01:07Actor Oscar nomination, his character disappears quite abruptly ahead of the film's climax.
01:12Following the murder of his superior, an enraged Dignam lashes out at Sergeant Sullivan and
01:17is placed on suspension for two weeks. The rest of the movie plays out with undercover
01:21cop Billy facing off against mob rat Sullivan, while it's assumed that Dignam won't be
01:25coming back. But in the film's very final scene some 30 minutes after we last saw him,
01:30Dignam makes a surprise reappearance, hiding out in Sullivan's apartment in order to
01:34shoot him dead in revenge for killing the captain. It's all the more unexpected given
01:38that this never happens in the Hong Kong film upon which The Departed is based on, which
01:42is known as Internal Affairs. Between this and keeping Dignam out of the audience's
01:46mind for so long, it ensured his last-minute return was a genuine crowd-pleasing shock.
01:529. Alec Goldeneye
01:55To be fair, the trailers for Goldeneye ruined what would have been a bloody awesome twist,
01:59but if you didn't pay much attention to the movie's marketing, you were in for quite
02:02the surprise when the film's primary villain finally showed up. Goldeneye's pre-title
02:07sequence involves a botched mission in which James Bond and 006 assault a Russian colonel's
02:12compound. 006 appears to be killed when the Russian colonel shoots him in the head, and
02:16for a whole hour that indeed seems to be the case. The movie spent most of its first half
02:21establishing several villains, before then circling back to reveal that 006 faked his
02:26own death and is in fact the movie's big bad, being the leader of the focal crime syndicate.
02:32It's a great rug pull if you don't know what's coming, and the film gamely tries
02:35to put him to the back of your mind by focusing your attention elsewhere, even if the marketing
02:40unfortunately worked actively against that.
02:428. Danny McGrath – Billy Madison
02:45Not all movies that want you to forget about a character necessarily do so for the big
02:49dramatic gotcha, sometimes it's just for a bit of a good laugh. Case in point, we have
02:53the classic Adam Sandler comedy Billy Madison, where upon being bullied after re-entering
02:58high school, Billy decides to make amends with those that he himself bullied as a kid.
03:03He starts by calling and apologising to Danny McGrath, an old classmate that he tormented
03:07at school. Danny accepts Billy's apology, and the scene ends with Danny hilariously
03:11crossing Billy's name off of a people to kill list that is stuck to his wall. That
03:16seems to be the end of the gag, except Danny unexpectedly reappears at the very end of
03:20the film some 20 minutes later, showing up just in time to shoot the villain, Eric Gordon,
03:25in the ass with a sniper rifle before he can shoot Billy's love interest Veronica. To
03:29cap it all off, Billy then quips, man I'm glad I called that guy. Comedy is all about
03:34timing and upending expectations, and this utterly nailed both.
03:387. Catwoman – The Dark Knight Rises
03:41Catwoman is obviously one of the most iconic superheroines ever, and plays a major supporting
03:46role in The Dark Knight Rises. All the same, Christopher Nolan makes a sly attempt to nudge
03:51her to the periphery during the film's third act, as a returning Batman heads into the
03:55heart of Gotham City to take on Bane. We see Catwoman using the Batpod to blow a hole in
04:00one of Gotham's blocked entrances, after which we don't actually see her again for
04:03an entire 10 minutes. During this time, the focus is on Batman getting outnumbered by
04:08Bane and his secret accomplice Talia al Ghul, as well as the general chaos that is happening
04:12around the city. Talia then leaves to continue massacring those civilians that are fighting
04:17back, while Bane proceeds to execute Batman. But just at that moment, Bane is blasted with
04:22a high caliber round, revealing that Catwoman arrived just in time to blow Bane away with
04:26the Batpod. Keeping her off screen for an entire 10 minutes in the climax of the film
04:30was clearly a concerted effort to divert the audience's attention elsewhere, enough so
04:35that they didn't see her sudden return coming. As divisive as Bane's death is, the element
04:40of surprise is certainly effective.
04:426. The Other Bastards – Inglourious Bastards
04:46Depending on who you count, there are about a dozen members of the Bastards featured throughout
04:50Quentin Tarantino's revisionist war epic, the majority of whom are accounted for by
04:54the film's end. But there are a few whose fates are left unknown – soldiers Hirschberg,
04:59Kagan, Zimmerman, and Sackowitz. Though we will have visual confirmation that the rest
05:03of the Bastards either die or survive, this lesser-known quartet basically dips out of
05:07the movie before the climax and is never seen or heard from again. One suspects that this
05:12was an act of narrative streamlining on Tarantino's part – he presumably wanted a punchy ending
05:16without having to take time to address the fates of the minor Bastards, even though to
05:20this day many wonder precisely what actually happened to them. To the same token, though,
05:24how many of them can you actually name without having to look them up?
05:275. Little Tully – The Addams Family
05:30In the 1991 Addams Family film, the secondary villain is Tully Alford, Gomez's crooked
05:35lawyer who plots to rip the Addams Family clan off. His blissfully ignorant wife is
05:39Margaret, and together they have a son referred to only as Little Tully. Little Tully appears
05:44in the film for just a single scene at a school play, after which he's oh so conveniently
05:48never heard from again. Given that his father ends up dead and possibly buried alive while
05:52his mother runs away and marries cousin It, it's fair to say that Little Tully has had
05:56quite the traumatic week. Yet despite Margaret showing up again in Addams Family Values
06:01and having given birth to a son with cousin It no less, her firstborn isn't given even
06:05a fleeting mention. Evidently given the utterly cruel hand that Little Tully was dealt by
06:09the circumstances of the plot, the filmmakers basically just wanted you to forget that he
06:13ever existed, rather than fixate on what horrors became of him after losing both of his parents.
06:184. Mustafa – Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me
06:22Dr. Evil's fez-wearing henchman Mustafa played a small but hilariously memorable
06:27role in the first Austin Powers. He was horribly burned for failing to unthaw Dr. Evil's
06:32cat Mr. Bigglesworth correctly, and because that didn't kill him, a guard enters the
06:36room and shoots him dead off screen. But Mustafa returned in the sequel, when Austin and Felicity
06:41Shagwell travel back to 1976, where Mustafa would of course still be alive. When Austin
06:46and Felicity are interrogating him, Mustafa is shot with a dart by Mini-Me, which causes
06:51him to fall off a cliff to his apparent demise. Yet of course, Mustafa survived, and cries
06:56out in pain off screen as he attempts to get back onto his feet and summon medical help.
07:00That's the last we see or hear of him in the film proper, but an hour later, the post-credits
07:05scene returns us to Mustafa, who asks if the movie is over, and if anyone in the audience
07:10can summon help, before again, he tries to stand up on his feet, and it doesn't go
07:14so well.
07:15The gag wouldn't work nearly as well if we had totally forgotten about Mustafa during
07:18that interceding hour, ensuring that his inexplicable return sends audiences home on a riotous final
07:24gut laugh.
07:253. Angela Ashford – Resident Evil Apocalypse
07:29Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil movies may not be particularly good, but that doesn't
07:34make this act of character erasure any less weird. The second film, Resident Evil Apocalypse,
07:39introduced Angela Ashford, the daughter of Dr. Charles Ashford, who created the T-Virus
07:43in order to treat a genetic disease that she suffers from. As such, Angela is immediately
07:48established as one of the series' most pivotal characters, and Apocalypse ends with
07:52her riding away with Alice and the other heroes.
07:54But Angela was bafflingly absent from the next film, Resident Evil Extinction, which
07:59offered not even a passing mention of her fate. We never saw Angela in the three subsequent
08:02sequels either, leaving fans to speculate on precisely what happened to her. Yet the
08:07answer becomes a little clearer when you consider that, in the novelization of Resident Evil
08:11Extinction, Angela is actually shot dead by Alice while under the mind control of Umbrella
08:16head scientist Dr. Alexander Isaacs.
08:18Basically, it seems that the filmmakers realized that they were in a bind. They didn't want
08:22to saddle the franchise with a major child character, but also didn't want to commit
08:26to killing her off, as was shown in the novelization. And so it's a bit of a Schrödinger's cat
08:30situation, where you can either deduce that she is still alive somewhere, or die between
08:34the second and third films somehow. Either way, Anderson and company clearly hope that
08:39you just forget that she was ever a thing to begin with.
08:412. Mr. Orange, Reservoir Dogs
08:44Mr. Orange, played by Tim Roth, spends the vast majority of Reservoir Dogs laying mortally
08:49wounded on the floor at the criminal gang's warehouse, having been shot in the aftermath
08:53of a diamond heist. Though Orange is always present throughout the film, and flashbacks
08:57nicely fill in his backstory as an undercover cop, it's actually easy to forget that he's
09:01just hanging around in the periphery. Now this pays off quite spectacularly halfway
09:05through the movie, when Tarantino focuses on Mr. White torturing and preparing to kill
09:09a kidnapped cop, Marvin Nash. The theatrical horror of Mr. Blonde cutting Nash's ear
09:14off makes it easy to forget that Mr. Orange is just a few feet away, albeit badly injured,
09:19such that when Orange interrupts the torture and shoots Blonde dead, it comes as a genuine
09:24surprise.
09:251. Manny, Go!
09:27And finally we have Doug Liman's cult classic black comedy, Go!, which focuses on a young
09:31supermarket cashier attempting to pull off a daring drug scam in order to pay her rent.
09:36One of her pals is Manny, who misguidedly takes two ecstasy pills at once and gets very,
09:41very high as a result. And when her scam gets found out, she stashes Manny in a nearby alley
09:46and promises to return for him. But moments later, she's hit by a car and incapacitated,
09:51marking the end of the movie's first act. The rest of Go! branches out to explore numerous
09:55different perspectives of the drug deal, before finally circling back to her at the very end
10:00as she wakes up in the hospital. She then goes to work where her other friend Claire
10:03asks where Manny is, causing her to finally remember where she stashed him the night prior.
10:08And so, well over an hour after we last saw Manny, she finally returns to the alleyway
10:12and retrieves him, pale and shaking uncontrollably, but thankfully still alive. The gag wouldn't
10:17have worked nearly as well if we ever cut back to Manny throughout the film. And given
10:21that the following hour plus is jam-packed with insanity, there's plenty to make viewers
10:25forget about his very existence. Poor old Manny.
10:28And there we go my friends, those were 10 movie characters they wanted you to forget.
10:31I hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in
10:34the comments section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram
10:38where it's at RetroJ but the O is a zero. Hope to see you over there and you can come
10:42check out all of the Warhammer models that I've been painting and I'll speak to you soon.
10:46Bye.