History Main / MocksteryTale

* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' has shades of this. Much of the show's mythology is eventually explained, but some mysteries are intentionally left unsolved, such as Hurley's cursed numbers. In-universe, characters and organisations who devote themselves to unravelling the Island's mysteries '''always''' meet a bad end, and WordOfGod says their focus throughout the whole series was the characters and their relationships, which is {{Lampshaded}} by the series' finale.

*** The film was originally a TV pilot, and the mysteries were going to be explored more in the future episodes; however, Lynch also stated that "it would be a series of mysteries that spun out of each other and would never have a conclusion, unlike 'Twin Peaks'. He was very upset that Laura's killer had to be named and said he would not let that happen again", and "promised that when Rita's identity was finally revealed it would only open up other mysteries".

** ''Film/ThePassenger'' imitates the stylistics of a thriller road movie (a stolen identity, political intrigues, car chases, a young mysterious girl, etc.), but is actually a story of a depressed journalist trying to start a new life.

* The central murder mystery in ''ComicBook/HeroesInCrisis'' is [[spoiler:completely unsolvable. All of the clues are red herrings, all of the suspects are innocent, all of the detectives are completely fooled. The mystery is only solved because the killer confessed publicly, and was just trying to delay investigators until their confession was aired.]] The real point of the story, as with much of the work of Creator/TomKing, is to show superheroes trying and failing to deal with their trauma.

* MocksteryTale: In ''Literature/DeathInHerHands'' the narrator finds a note at the beginning reading, "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body." While narrator Vesta conducts an investigation of a sort, it’s never revealed what happened to Magda, if there even was a Magda. Vesta herself may have written the note.

** ''[[Film/{{LAvventura}} L'Avventura]]'' centers around the disappearance of a young woman. The disappearance is never resolved, and the real focus of the plot is the relationship between two other characters.

[[folder: Literature]]

* Subverted with ''Film/KnivesOut'': The film was billed as a big whodunnit of who killed Harlan Thrombey, the very wealthy head of a family of rather self centered people on the evening of his birthday. This remains a mystery [[spoiler:for about 30 minutes before we get a flashback that reveals that Harlan's kindly caretaker did it by accident, she accidentally injected him with the wrong drug, and he comes up with an alibi for her to escape, at which point he kills himself to make sure she isn't blamed. The rest of the movie is about her attempts to escape suspicion for his death, which is complicated by the fact that in his will, he left her everything (leaving nothing to his actual family), which puts her right in their cross eyes.)]] The subversion comes from the fact that [[spoiler:it turns out there really WAS a murder attempt on Harlan's life, and the caretaker unknowingly thwarted it. His grandson swapped the labels on two medicine vials, but the caretaker instinctively knew which vial had the right medicine from weight and only saw what the label said after injecting Harlan. And for the entire movie, there was an eccentric detective who was investigating the whole thing. He seems like he might just be an idiot, but at the end he puts everything together and reveals the true murderer.]]

Such stories typically feature TheUnreveal, TheUnsolvedMystery, TheWalrusWasPaul, RedHerringTwist, {{Mockspiracy}}, and RiddleForTheAges, and are set in a WorldOfMysteries. Often overlaps with {{Deconstruction}}, and may be considered the mystery version of the ShaggyDogStory.

* ''Film/TheBigLebowski'' is an interesting variant, as the mystery ''is'' the focus and gets solved... but [[spoiler: [[ShaggyDogStory it turns out to be totally pointless]]. The conspiracy the Dude and Walter are pursuing doesn't really exist; the Big Lebowski was just looking for an excuse to bilk some money from his charity and the Nihilists are a bunch of losers who only pretended to kidnap someone. Nobody was really hurt or in serious danger, so [[CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot there really wasn't any point in investigating it all]]. The Dude is not amused by this.]]