Trope Talk: Noodle Incidents
Trope Talk: Noodle Incidents
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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…
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I actually liked the cat scratch reveal. It adds a different dimension to Fury and makes the use of the scar to act tough later exactly the kind of humor Marvel excels in. In a more serious series it wouldn't work… But that's part of why Marvel's doing better than DC.
Did not expect OSP to talk at length about one of my favourite slightly badly aged heist shows, but here we are!
So would OSP’s Noodle Incident be the Most Dangerous Noodle?
I feel like Kakashi’s mask from Naruto is a version of this. His mouth looks normal, but even if it does or doesn’t the mask adds a lot to how you see his character (even literally! It changes how his facial expressions work)
"What About Discord" is an episode of MLP about Twilight's response to having missed out on a noodle incident her friends had.
Funny, because I want to use noodle incident in my story, BUT with a twist: Each mention will depict different details about it so after enough mentions the readers will be able to actually piece together what really happened.
This reminded me of John Wick and a pencil. A great scary set up before we see John Wick do anything. Then after we have seen him fight him eventually fighting with a pencil is meh compared to everything else.
Explaining noodle incidents is also kinda part of a thing that bugs me, wikifying instead of storytelling. The big megafranchises do it a lot, its a big and complicated problem involving how people interact with film and social media
It's like the jock strap incident… except we dont have Ginyu around to dig the holes
Commenting to hard agree on the fans don't actually know what they want idea. Almost every time I see an author cave to audience pressure about something, I just don't like whatever comes out next.
"I don't do dogs… I had a real bad experience.
What happened?
I had. A bad. Experience."
I just realized that whatever happened to Schlatt in ‘99 was a noodle incident.
That business on Cato Neimoidia doesn't count.
The more I watch these, I realize the problem with modern storytelling isn't that we've run out of ideas. We did that a long time ago. We just forgot how to use the ideas better.
Cubari Facaccimo
A great example of a backstory “Noodle Incident” is Kurt Russell’s character Snake Plisskin in “Escape from NY.” The guy is clearly Elvis/Beatles level of famous, but it’s never explained what for or why everyone thinks he died years ago.
The entire premise of Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy's Big Picture Show revolves around the Noodle Incident trope, namely a mystery scam that went horribly wrong, and it results with the Eds' lives in serious danger.
my favorite ever noodle incident is the llama incident in milo murphys law. it became such a massive running gag that one of the characters who wasnt there for it finally asked what the fuck the llama incident is and they spend the whole episode struggling to explain it while dangling off a cliff
My favorite noodle incident is "Do you wanna know where I got these scars?" Because they bring it up so often and offer several false explanations
i have this really cool trick with a pineapple
Noodle incidents are especially fun in D&D when you start it and let another PC finish it. Then neither of you know what actually happened, lol.
by gods. I thought this video was old. no. its just a new moon. even my prophecies need prophecy
by this hand I call the judgement stiketh down now
13 years of OSP. 13 years of preachy moralizing. Up yours, for talking down to your audience!
"WHAT HAPPENED TO GEORGIA???"
Hi! I'm 4 months late but I really like how The Umbrella Academy does its own "Noodle Incident." We don't know much about it, just that the Jennifer Incident, as it's called in the show, involved the violent death of Ben Hargreeves. It's left entirely unexplained aside from that fact, but season 4 seems to revolve around the fact that none of the characters actually know what happened. When trying to remember exactly how Ben died, several people respond in sync with each other saying "Ben died because we failed as a team," but when pressed for specifics no one knows a damn thing.
"Big Al says that dogs can't look up."
it's just like that jockstrap incident all over again
My favorite Noodle Incidents are when they imply something tragic! In Finding Nemo, we don't learn what exactly gave Gill those scars, but we know it's a sign of how desperate he is to escape. (We've already seen a barracuda eat an entire nest of eggs, the audience is primed to imagine)
Another awesome one is the Doctor. They're just…so old!! Any noodle incident can imply something comedic, or something they regret, or evidence that their time with their companion is longer than we see on screen. It's what draws us to fanfiction in the first place!
Well that is a trope I did see
ok funny show episode idea:
A character who has one of these is gonna FINALLY tell what their noodle incident is to a second character and near the start it looks like the get interrupted to begin the story and they go on something that could fit its name only for the characters to go back and the second character is like "Ok can you go back to your story again?" and the first guy just says "no"
So, to summarize, you can show but not tell, you can tell but not show, but there's no point in telling and showing.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a nice subversion of a noodle incident. In the leadup to the heist which kicks off the plot, Jackie mentions a conference in Zurich, which he just made up on the fly to seem more like the businessman he's disguised as. In a true noodle incident, V might "yes, and" the ad lib since they have a storied history. Instead, T-Bug insists Jackie shut up.
Great video! I think the Nick Fury one is actually a really good move, though. This is the same man who told the Avengers that he found those cards in Coulson's pocket. What really happens is of little bearing on how he presents that event to have occurred. He told Steve what he needed him to hear when he talked about the loss of his eye, just like he always tells people what he needs them to hear. Seeing the really absurd way it actually happened, and hearing the stories told just in Captain Marvel, makes that aspect of the character clear in an amusing way.
I like to believe that whenever shows bring up noodle incidents they're stories someone in the writers' room brought up but never fleshed out enough to be an episode so they reference it as a homage to a good but not good enough idea.
Thanks! There's also the "That's an interesting story. What happened was…." {Gets interrupted at this point every time.}
I love how many people in the comments are just talking about the llama incident.
It warms my heart people still think of milo
The Llama incident!
sees calvin and hobbes, clicks
“Skipper, why can’t we have a Noodle Incident?”
“Manfredi and Johnson had a Noodle Incident… they wound up spread across 8 freeway lanes and a bike path!”
One of my favorites is from Brooklyn 99 where Amy is trying to win the Snoog in a contest but they don't let pregnant women compete because of what happened last year, and they can't say what it is because of the gag order
One that I thought was quite well done that was neither horror nor comedic was the chair in Banks's "Use Of Weapons"
Ah, reminds me of the llama incident
maybe I don't know quite what I want, but I like these noodle incidents getting opened up, maybe it's because i'm not analyzing things too hard as a casual watcher but I like learning these things
I'm still wondering what happened between Brock and professor Ivy
That's exactly why I wil always say that Solo didn'g have a reason to be made.
"What cat?"
Years ago I wrote a story with a noodle story deliberately written in. The two male protagonists had been friends for ages and had been in the military together. They mentioned a battle in a canyon multiple times but I never detailed that battle, even to myself. The two men saved each other during that battle and became best friends for life because of it. Both men had been wounded during the battle as well. Beyond that the canyon battle remains forever the Battle of The Noodle Trope Canyon.