These movie characters did some very calculated vanishing acts.
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00:00 Now, what are movies, if not grand illusions, intended to trick the viewer for better or
00:04 worse? Films are all about casting a spell on the audience, about manipulating them into
00:09 getting emotionally drawn into a story. Now, this can occur one of many ways, but one especially
00:14 interesting feat of narrative chicanery involves removing a character from the fold for a certain
00:19 amount of time, only to return them later for dramatic or comedic effect. It can be
00:24 a tough trick to pull off in films with small casts and limited locations, requiring directors
00:29 to get creative about how they choose to distract their audiences from a character's absence.
00:33 But when it works, it really works, ensuring viewers are jolted by a surprise return, or,
00:39 depending on the type of movie it is, perhaps extremely amused. So let's take a look at
00:43 them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Movie Characters They Wanted
00:47 You To Forget.
00:49 10. Sergeant Dignam – The Departed
00:52 Now Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam certainly makes quite the impression in the first two acts
00:56 of Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a stern yet quick-witted, wise-cracking cop who doesn't
01:02 suffer fools lightly. And though Mark Wahlberg's terrific performance netted him a Best Supporting
01:07 Actor Oscar nomination, his character disappears quite abruptly ahead of the film's climax.
01:12 Following the murder of his superior, an enraged Dignam lashes out at Sergeant Sullivan and
01:17 is placed on suspension for two weeks. The rest of the movie plays out with undercover
01:21 cop Billy facing off against mob rat Sullivan, while it's assumed that Dignam won't be
01:25 coming back. But in the film's very final scene some 30 minutes after we last saw him,
01:30 Dignam makes a surprise reappearance, hiding out in Sullivan's apartment in order to
01:34 shoot him dead in revenge for killing the captain. It's all the more unexpected given
01:38 that this never happens in the Hong Kong film upon which The Departed is based on, which
01:42 is known as Internal Affairs. Between this and keeping Dignam out of the audience's
01:46 mind for so long, it ensured his last-minute return was a genuine crowd-pleasing shock.
01:52 9. Alec Goldeneye
01:55 To be fair, the trailers for Goldeneye ruined what would have been a bloody awesome twist,
01:59 but if you didn't pay much attention to the movie's marketing, you were in for
02:02 quite the surprise when the film's primary villain finally showed up. Goldeneye's
02:06 pre-title sequence involves a botched mission in which James Bond and 006 assault a Russian
02:11 colonel's compound. 006 appears to be killed when the Russian colonel shoots him in the
02:16 head, and for a whole hour that indeed seems to be the case. The movie spent most of its
02:21 first half establishing several villains, before then circling back to reveal that 006
02:26 faked his own death and is in fact the movie's big bad, being the leader of the focal crime
02:31 syndicate. It's a great rug pull if you don't know what's coming, and the film
02:34 gamely tries to put him to the back of your mind by focusing your attention elsewhere,
02:39 even if the marketing unfortunately worked actively against that.
02:42 8. Danny McGrath - Billy Madison
02:45 Not all movies that want you to forget about a character necessarily do so for the big
02:49 dramatic gotcha, sometimes it's just for a bit of a good laugh. Case in point, we have
02:53 the classic Adam Sandler comedy 'Billy Madison', where upon being bullied after
02:57 re-entering high school, Billy decides to make amends with those that he himself bullied
03:02 as a kid. He starts by calling and apologising to Danny McGrath, an old classmate that he
03:07 tormented at school. Danny accepts Billy's apology, and the scene ends with Danny hilariously
03:12 crossing Billy's name off of a 'people to kill' list that is stuck to his wall.
03:16 That seems to be the end of the gag, except Danny unexpectedly reappears at the very end
03:20 of the film some 20 minutes later, showing up just in time to shoot the villain, Eric
03:24 Gordon, in the ass with a sniper rifle before he can shoot Billy's love interest Veronica.
03:29 To cap it all off, Billy then quips "Man, I'm glad I called that guy." Comedy is
03:33 all about timing and upending expectations, and this utterly nailed both.
03:38 7. Catwoman - The Dark Knight Rises
03:41 Catwoman is obviously one of the most iconic superheroines ever, and plays a major supporting
03:46 role in The Dark Knight Rises. All the same, Christopher Nolan makes a sly attempt to nudge
03:51 her to the periphery during the film's third act, as a returning Batman heads into the
03:55 heart of Gotham City to take on Bane. We see Catwoman using the Batpod to blow a hole in
04:00 one of Gotham's blocked entrances, after which we don't actually see her again for
04:03 an entire 10 minutes. During this time, the focus is on Batman getting outnumbered by
04:08 Bane and his secret accomplice, Talia al Ghul, as well as the general chaos that is
04:12 happening around the city. Talia then leaves to continue massacring those civilians that
04:16 are fighting back, while Bane proceeds to execute Batman. But just at that moment, Bane
04:21 is blasted with a high-caliber round, revealing that Catwoman arrived just in time to blow
04:25 Bane away with the Batpod. Keeping her off screen for an entire 10 minutes in the climax
04:30 of the film was clearly a concerted effort to divert the audience's attention elsewhere,
04:34 enough so that they didn't see her sudden return coming. As divisive as Bane's death
04:39 is, the element of surprise is certainly effective.
04:42 6. The Other Bastards – Inglourious Bastards
04:46 Depending on who you count, there are about a dozen members of the Bastards featured throughout
04:50 Quentin Tarantino's revisionist war epic, the majority of whom are accounted for by
04:54 the film's end. But there are a few whose fates are left unknown – soldiers Hirschberg,
04:59 Kagan, Zimmerman, and Sackowitz. Though we will have visual confirmation that the rest
05:03 of the Bastards either die or survive, this lesser-known quartet basically dips out of
05:07 the movie before the climax and is never seen or heard from again. One suspects that this
05:12 was an act of narrative streamlining on Tarantino's part – he presumably wanted a punchy ending
05:16 without having to take time to address the fates of the minor Bastards, even though to
05:20 this day many wonder precisely what actually happened to them. To the same token, though,
05:24 how many of them can you actually name without having to look them up?
05:27 5. Little Tully – The Addams Family
05:30 In the 1991 Addams Family film, the secondary villain is Tully Alford, Gomez's crooked
05:35 lawyer who plots to rip the Addams Family clan off. His blissfully ignorant wife is
05:39 Margaret, and together they have a son referred to only as 'Little Tully'. Little Tully
05:44 appears in the film for just a single scene at a school play, after which he's oh-so-conveniently
05:48 never heard from again. Given that his father ends up dead and possibly buried alive while
05:52 his mother runs away and marries cousin It, it's fair to say that Little Tully has had
05:56 quite the traumatic week. Yet despite Margaret showing up again in Addams Family Values and
06:01 having given birth to a son with cousin It no less, her firstborn isn't given even
06:05 a fleeting mention. Evidently given the utterly cruel hand that Little Tully was dealt by
06:09 the circumstances of the plot, the filmmakers basically just wanted you to forget that he
06:13 ever existed, rather than fixate on what horrors became of him after losing both of his parents.
06:18 4. Mustafa – Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me
06:22 Dr. Evil's fez-wearing henchman Mustafa played a small but hilariously memorable role
06:27 in the first Austin Powers. He was horribly burned for failing to unthaw Dr. Evil's
06:32 cat Mr. Bigglesworth correctly, and because that didn't kill him, a guard enters the
06:36 room and shoots him dead off-screen. But Mustafa returned in the sequel, when Austin and Felicity
06:41 Shagwell travel back to 1976, where Mustafa would of course still be alive. When Austin
06:46 and Felicity are interrogating him, Mustafa is shot with a dart by Mini-Me, which causes
06:51 him to fall off a cliff to his apparent demise. Yet of course, Mustafa survived, and cries
06:56 out in pain off-screen as he attempts to get back onto his feet and summon medical help.
07:00 That's the last that we see or hear of him in the film proper, but an hour later, the
07:04 post-credits scene returns us to Mustafa, who asks if the movie is over, and if anyone
07:09 in the audience can summon help, before again, he tries to stand up on his feet, and it doesn't
07:14 go so well.
07:15 The gag wouldn't work nearly as well if we're totally forgotten about Mustafa during that
07:19 interceding hour, ensuring that his inexplicable return sends audiences home on a riotous final
07:24 gut laugh.
07:25 3. Angela Ashford - Resident Evil Apocalypse
07:29 Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil movies may not be particularly good, but that doesn't
07:34 make this act of character erasure any less weird. The second film, Resident Evil Apocalypse,
07:39 introduced Angela Ashford, the daughter of Dr. Charles Ashford, who created the T-Virus
07:43 in order to treat a genetic disease that she suffers from. As such, Angela is immediately
07:48 established as one of the series' most pivotal characters, and Apocalypse ends with her riding
07:52 away with Alice and the other heroes.
07:54 But Angela was bafflingly absent from the next film, Resident Evil Extinction, which
07:59 offered not even a passing mention of her fate. We never saw Angela in the three subsequent
08:02 sequels either, leaving fans to speculate on precisely what happened to her. Yet, the
08:07 answer becomes a little clearer when you consider that, in the novelization of Resident Evil
08:11 Extinction, Angela is actually shot dead by Alice while under the mind control of Umbrella
08:16 head scientist Dr. Alexander Isaacs. Basically, it seems that the filmmakers realized that
08:21 they were in a bind. They didn't want to saddle the franchise with a major child character,
08:25 but also didn't want to commit to killing her off, as was shown in the novelization.
08:28 And so it's a bit of a Schrödinger's cat situation, where you can either deduce
08:32 that she is still alive somewhere, or die between the second and third films somehow.
08:36 Either way, Anderson and company clearly hope that you just forget that she was ever a thing
08:40 to begin with.
08:41 Number 2. Mr. Orange, Reservoir Dogs
08:45 Mr. Orange, played by Tim Roth, spends the vast majority of Reservoir Dogs laying mortally
08:49 wounded on the floor at the criminal gang's warehouse, having been shot in the aftermath
08:53 of a diamond heist. Though Orange is always present throughout the film, and flashbacks
08:57 nicely fill in his backstory as an undercover cop, it's actually easy to forget that he's
09:01 just hanging around in the periphery. This pays off quite spectacularly halfway through
09:05 the movie, when Tarantino focuses on Mr. White torturing and preparing to kill a kidnapped
09:10 cop, Marvin Nash. The theatrical horror of Mr. Blonde cutting Nash's ear off makes
09:14 it easy to forget that Mr. Orange is just a few feet away, albeit badly injured, such
09:19 that when Orange interrupts the torture and shoots Blonde dead, it comes as a genuine
09:24 surprise.
09:25 Number 1. Manny, Go!
09:27 And finally we have Doug Liman's cult classic black comedy, Go!, which focuses on a young
09:31 supermarket cashier attempting to pull off a daring drug scam in order to pay her rent.
09:36 One of her pals is Manny, who misguidedly takes two ecstasy pills at once and gets very,
09:41 very high as a result. And when her scam gets found out, she stashes Manny in a nearby alley
09:46 and promises to return for him. But moments later, she's hit by a car and incapacitated,
09:51 marking the end of the movie's first act. The rest of Go! branches out to explore numerous
09:55 different perspectives of the drug deal, before finally circling back to her at the very end
10:00 as she wakes up in the hospital. She then goes to work where her other friend Claire
10:03 asks where Manny is, causing her to finally remember where she stashed him the night prior.
10:08 And so, well over an hour after we last saw Manny, she finally returns to the alleyway
10:12 and retrieves him, pale and shaking uncontrollably, but thankfully still alive. The gag wouldn't
10:17 have worked nearly as well if we ever cut back to Manny throughout the film. And given
10:21 that the following hour plus is jam-packed with insanity, there's plenty to make viewers
10:25 forget about his very existence. Poor old Manny.
10:28 And there we go my friends, those were 10 movie characters they wanted you to forget.
10:31 I hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in
10:34 the comments section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram
10:38 where it's @retroj but the O is a zero. Hope to see you over there and you can come
10:42 check out all of the Warhammer models that I've been painting. And I'll speak to you
10:45 soon. Bye.