Something We Forgot

Don't you just hate when your friends make plans and leave you hanging?

Kate McCallister: Did I turn off the coffee?
Peter McCallister: No... I did.
Kate: Did you lock up?
Peter: Yeah.
Kate: Did we set the timers on the lights?
Peter: Yeah.
Kate: Did you close the garage?
Peter: That's it. I forgot to close the garage, that's it.
Kate: ...No, that's not it.
Peter: Well, what else could we be forgetting?
[Kate sits back, pausing, before suddenly jumping upright]
Kate: KEVIN!

— Home Alone

So the adventure's over, the team beat the enemy or found the treasure and got out alive, and it's finally time to relax, say their goodbyes, and head home. And someone says, "I've got this nagging feeling that there's Something We Forgot."

Cut to a major MacGuffin that got left in the dungeon. Or an ally who got trapped and is still waiting for them to get back. Etc. An Oh, Crap! is likely to occur by the character having this realization. Another stock version of this is a parent or guardian—inattentive or overworked at best or neglectful at worst—having forgotten to pick their child up from school, a sports game, a club activity, or similar.

Related to Brick Joke and Locked Up and Left Behind. Often deployed as The Stinger. Contrast What Happened to the Mouse?, in which a dropped plot element does not get another mention, and Offscreen Inertia, when the audience is left to assume that whatever was forgotten will stay in that state permanently.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Ah! My Goddess Keiichi comes home and finds Peorth splayed out on his bed wearing lingerie with a bottle of wine in an attempt to seduce him, but he manages to slip away before she notices his presence. After the rest of the plot happens we cut back to Peorth, having finished off all the wine while waiting, drunkenly wondering when he's going to go to sleep.
• During the final battle of Bleach: Fade to Black, Kon gets knocked into some spiritual goo which hardens over him. After the threat has passed and Ichigo and Rukia are set to head back to the living world. Ichigo feels they forgot something. Cut to Kon still stuck in the goo, crying (though he manages to get out on his own).
• This is a Running Gag in Boarding School Juliet, and it can happen to anyone, even the main characters. Notable examples:
  • Romio spends time with the Wang twins during the Harvest Festival so they can get off his back and he could go on his date with Juliet. Unfortunately, he completely loses track of the time, and the festival's fireworks show comes and goes...and Juliet spent the whole event inside the barrel where Romio told her to hide.
  • When Char goes on a Date Peepers mission, she ties Scott to a tree so he wouldn't interrupt Romio and Juliet. He was well-hidden, and Char's the only one who knows he was even there. According to The Stinger, Scott was only found a week later after he has gone feral...
• Cromartie High School:
  • After a hijacked plane trip, the students of Cromartie wonder what they could have forgotten. They deduce that their money from the trip hasn't come back yet, but completely forget about Takenouchi; an impostor fills his place in the school while he is gone. When the impostor is asked if he has any idea of what's missing, he claims that everything's fine.
  • When some students from Bass High kidnap Maeda, Takenouchi and the others head off to rescue him in a taxi, but the driver ends up getting hopelessly lost. After hours of this, it cuts back to Bass High, where all of the kidnappers have already gone home and left Maeda tied up.
• Digimon Adventure 02:
  • The Digidestined opt to stay in the Digital World for an indetermined amount of time until they beat the Digimon Emperor. They make the excuse of going on a camping trip so their parents wouldn't get suspicious. Davis' older sister Jun decides to join the trip since she learned that Matt is going to be there. Matt ditches her the first chance he gets, however, Jun eventually reaches the campground in the end, to everyone's astonishment.
  • In one episode, Davis is the only member of the Five-Man Band whose partner Vmon doesn't have an Armor Digivolution that can chase after the Digimon Emperor's flying fortress (Yolei, TK and Kari's partners can fly, Cody can keep up in the sea with Submarimon). Davis and Vmon only manage to catch up at the end of that same episode.
• Dragon Ball Z: Broly – Second Coming has Krillin get smacked into a mountain by Broly. Right before the credits roll, they show him still embedded in the rock.
• Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn ends with an annoyed Shenlong asking if anyone was going to make a wish. He was summoned near the beginning of the film, but when it wasn't within his power to fix things, he was forgotten about.
• In GeGeGe no Kitaro (2018), after Kitaro defeats a Yokai that turns people into stone, everyone relaxes as everybody is back to normal, until Daddy Eyeball questions where Rat Man is, who is still stuck as a statue.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: In his fight against Ken Oyanagi, Rohan utilizes Shizuka's invisibility powers to beat him. But after settling things with Ken, Rohan realizes that he left the baby unattended and has now wandered off, then starts frantically searching for her.
  • JoJolion: After the battle with Tamaki Damo, Josuke and Hato managed to help everyone in the household who was affected by Damo's Harmless Liquefaction... except Joshu, who was previously flushed down the toilet and had to climb out elsewhere from a sewer hole.
• An episode of The Kindaichi Casefiles had Kindaichi framed for murder (again), although this time he really did land in the slammer. After Akechi solves the case, he takes off for the night, while Inspector Kenmochi goes with a couple of other officers to celebrate the solving of another crime. Kenmochi has a brief recollection about forgetting something, but ultimately just shrugs it off. Miyuki, meanwhile, was Out of Focus, thinking that Kindaichi stood her up on their date, and goes out on her own, not knowing what actually happened. The last scene of the episode has Kindaichi apparently alone in jail shouting for his innocence, even solving the crime himself (having come to the same conclusion as Akechi did).
• In Komi Can't Communicate, Komi and Najimi rescue Tadano from Yamai Ren after finding him Bound and Gagged in the closet. She catches them in the act, but it's three against one and her Yandere attitude towards Komi means she can't stop them from leaving. They accidentally leave behind Najimi, who's panicking at being trapped in a room with a crazy stalker. In class the next day, Tadano muses that he feels like they forgot something.
• Koro-Sensei Quest!: When a "Freaky Friday" Flip happens in Episode 8, Karasuma and Irina end up in each other's bodies. Karasuma ties up Irina when it becomes apparent that she wants to do something lewd with his body. At the end of the episode when everyone is switched back, Karasuma finds himself hanging from the ceiling after everyone has left the dungeon.
• Mysterious Joker:
  • At the very beginning of one chapter, Joker drugs a Hong Kong movie star named Jackie Lee so that he can impersonate the actor as part of a jewel heist. At the very end, there's a brief cutaway showing that Jackie is still tied up in the ambulance Kaitou left him in.
  • In another, it's revealed that Joker has been posing as Inspector Oniyama for the entire chapter. The rest of the cops are shown going home, apparently not realizing the real Inspector is still Bound and Gagged in a bathroom stall.
• Nagasarete Airantou:
  • Suzu was secretly tailing her pet pig Tonkatsu (who wanted to do an errand for her by himself) when she comes across Shinobu, lost again and weak from hunger and dehydration. Since she doesn't want to lose Tonkatsu's trail, Suzu promises to help Shinobu once she gets back, but Suzu never did return for Shinobu.
  • Another chapter had Ayane tied up by her sister Machi as a quick gag. By the time Machi finally gets back to her, Ayane had already untied herself, although she was also cleaning up some sort of mess (implied to be a Potty Failure).
• Twice in the Beach Episode of Non Non Biyori:
  • Natsumi buries Suguru's head in sand, and forgets about him when it's time to leave. He's fine, even arriving on the train before them.
  • At the train station, Kazuho falls asleep on the bench, and the girls don't realize she's still there until the train's already leaving.
• One Piece:
  • Kizaru teams up with a Pacifista to fight Urouge, X Drake and Hawkins. After the Pacifista hurts Urouge, X Drake attacks it. It is a gripping fight between these two, a T-Rex and a Robot. After they both let out their brutal attacks, neither side seems to be winning. Oh yeah, did you forget that KIZARU is still here? Urouge lets out an 'Oh Crap' face before getting sent flying into three buildings.
  • A rather dark example happens at the end of the Impel Down arc. With so many freed prisoners on their stolen ship, and they're all too busy trying to fend off several Marine battleships, Luffy doesn't realize that a key member of the group is missing, until it was too late: Mr. 2 chose to stay behind on Impel Down to open the Gates of Justice. Jimbei was the only one aware of 2's plan, and 2 asked him to keep it secret from Luffy until they are past the Gates, or else they would never escape.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Team Rocket join in the effort in bringing power back to LaRousse City in Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys. Since they kept themselves hidden, the rest of the main cast didn't even know of the Rockets' assistance. At the end of the film, Team Rocket is still at it, not knowing that the crisis is over, let alone that the city's power is back on.
  • A karmic one (he was asking for it) in Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai during the group's first trip up the Time-Space Tower. Ash (and Pikachu) challenges his friends to a race and he gets the lead because of a running start, only to realize too late that his friends used a balloon for their ascent instead. It's easy to tell who makes it to the top first, and after a few minutes of exposition Ash and Pikachu finally catches up with them, all out of breath from the climb.
  • When Pachirisu comes down with an illness Ash and Dawn send Gliscor out to fetch Brock who was in town. Of course, with Gliscor being unable to fly without the aid of wind pushing it in the right direction, Brock leaves Gliscor behind in order to get back on time and everyone forgets about it until the end of the episode where Ash freaks out.
  • There was an incident which scattered Ash, Brock and Dawn and their Pokémon throughout Canalave City. The teams eventually reunite at the end of the episode, and the humans ponder if they're forgetting someone. Brock dismisses the idea because he sees a pretty girl, and just as he tries to flirt with her did the missing party member, Brock's Croagunk, show up to halt his advances.
  • The same thing happens in an XY episode, where the gang has to "trade" Clemont to a spoiled princess in exchange for the PokéFlute, promising to go back for him. After thwarting Team Rocket and waking up Snorlax (the reason why they were looking for the flute), the festival begins, but then they immediately remember poor Clemont...just as he arrives, in his undies (he used his clothes to disguise a decoy to get away from the princess).
  • During a race in the Sun and Moon series, the normally athletic Kiawe falls behind the rest of the pack because part of the race involves pulling a wagon (with their Pokémon as passengers) uphill, and his partner is the very large turtle-dragon Turtonator. When the heroes celebrate the end of the race Ash scans the crowd of racers and finally caught on that Kiawe was missing: he never got past that leg of the race.
• Right at the end of episode 3 of Saber Marionette J. After the episode's ordeal, Otaru asks Lime and Cherry "Haven't we forgotten something?" but they finally decide it doesn't matter and leave. Cut to Hanagata tied to a water mill, being tortured by Baiko and Tamasaburo.
• The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length: After the group heads back to the villa, Tsukishima is left in a Beach Bury, as he lampshades how cliche an ending it is for Beach Episodes.
• In the climax of the fight against Iroha in Sumomomo Momomo, Momoko and Iroha have a moment of understanding and vow to work together rather than counter to each other. The two celebrate their friendship and go home...promptly forgetting that, as bait, Iroha had tied up Koushi, the man the two were fighting over, and had him dangling over a pool with multiple highly venomous sea snakes. They manage to get him as the two run off.
• In the Tenchi Universe episode, "No Need for Runaways!", after the gang got back Kiyone's stolen spaceship and successfully escaped from the Galaxy Police, Tenchi realized that they forgot to pick up Ayeka and Sasami, who were left at the diner, washing dishes to pay for their dinner.
• In the first volume of Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl, Jigoro mugs a member of the high school Judo club so that Yawara will be forced to take the boy's place in an upcoming match. When Yawara later asks how he managed to trick her into participating in the match, he suddenly remembers that the poor boy is still Bound and Gagged inside the P.E. storeroom.

Comic Books

• In an issue of Cable & Deadpool where Deadpool and Weasel break into HYDRA headquarters to rescue Agent X, Deadpool forgets about Weasel until he's already being flown out. He has a brief "oops" reaction, then decides not to worry about it.
• In the Cherry Comics story "Cherry Meets Rambone", Rambone and Captain Guts wander off and leave Cherry staked out naked on the ground. She even calls after them to no avail.
• Contest of Champions (2015) reveals that at the end of Secret Wars (2015), everyone was returned to their home reality (or at least a reality) when Battleworld fell apart...except the Maestro, who was just left floating in the rubble until the Elders of the Universe showed up to investigate.
• In Demon Knights #16, Exoristos, the Horsewoman and Sir Ystin are thrown in a dungeon. Exoristos and Sir Ystin are chained together on either side of a wall to prevent them trying to escape. A guard comes and fetches Exoristos and the Horsewoman, leaving Sir Ystin on the other side of the wall wondering where everyone has gone.
• An issue of Groo the Wanderer focuses on a very large spider that he and Chakaal have to defeat. At some point, he sees something that's unrevealed to the audience that he means to tell Chakkal about later. At the very end, he remembers that there was something he had to tell her but can't recall what. "Oh well," he thinks, "I'm sure it was nothing important." In the same panel, an underground lair filled with giant baby spiders is shown.
• Marvel Comics #1000: The origin of Blind Justice. Back when Adam Warlock was created, he blew up the lab he was born in, apparently killing all four of the scientists who'd created him. One survived, but was blinded, and figured at least some of his allies had lived. Grabbing the similarly forgotten Eternity Mask, he began a shadow war against his former comrades, and anyone he thought was working with then.
• Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU: The miniseries concerns Harley Quinn having to go back in time and prevent herself from screwing up history by erasing the superheroes from existence. By the end of the miniseries, things are nearly back to normal, but the Council of Quinn fail to realize that they forgot to restore Aquaman to the timeline.
• After all the events of Original Sin is dealt with, the heroes take a shuttle back to Earth...leaving behind Thor, who's still trying to lift his hammer with no success.
• In Sonic Universe, after a hectic (and hilarious) arc, Amy, Cream, and Vanilla are talking over tea...when Amy suddenly remembers she dropped Nicole two issues ago.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye and The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: The dead universe faction gets split up. Galvatron seems to be dead, Cyclonus stays with the Autobots in the former, and Jhiaxus goes against Orion Pax in the latter. Scourge, however, is unaccounted for, and his absence is brought up, with Cyclonus trying to find him to say good-bye and Sky-Byte seeing a Sweep and commenting on it looking like a friend he knew (implicitly Scourge because the Sweeps are clones of him, and his name is a Mythology Gag for Sky-Byte).
  • Eventually, Scourge was confirmed as having died somewhere during the Chaos mini-event. In an author's note. For a completely separate out-of-continuity series.
  • Played for both laughs and drama with Tailgate, who at the beginning of MTMTE has fallen down a tunnel, his legs and chronometer are broken, and he's concerned with missing "the launch" (which the audience will presume is the launch of the Lost Light, which kicks off the series). He decides to detonate his fuel reserves to blow a hole in the ceiling and call for help, but due to the broken chronometer he keeps passing out and has no idea how much time is passing. Eventually he succeeds, only for him and the reader to learn that he was down there for six million years, the launch he was late for was the original Ark, and nobody ever noticed he was missing all this time.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • At the end of The Ultimates Vol. 2, not all of the Liberators were killed or defeated. Perun, having sat out the big fight, just shows up asking for his comrades.
  • In Ultimatum Van Damme had Namor trapped inside a test tube for study. Then the Thing shows up and kills Doom, and ignored Namor. He didn't show up again for several years, in Ultimate FF, where we find out how he was released, days after that.

Fan Works

• All You Need Is Love: Due to the constant stress and distraction of having to deal with Light, L, and her son, it takes Naomi a week to realize that Raye has been kidnapped.
• A Dragon in Shining Armour leaves Sinduramon tied up in a tavern basement, to be rescued at some point before the sequel.
• Ffreire's NaruFox AU: During the written exam section of the Chuunin Exams, most of the Rookie Nine coordinate to ensure that everybody gets the answers they need. However, in the last comic, poor Kiba is shown sitting silently, staring blankly forward with a petrified expression while thinking "Help......" Officially, he was helped off-screen by either Ino or Shino.
• Finding Your Wings: After Gecko Moria is defeated, it takes a minute for anyone to remember that Thriller Bark is currently sinking.
• Magia Revolution: After Oriko and Kirika have been defeated, it seems as though all the heroines have survived... and then Faust abruptly remembers that Kyouko had gone off to fight another witch by herself.
• One Small Change: During the final chapter, a grieving Anne notes that she feels as though she's forgotten something important. Polly reassures her that if it was really important, it wouldn't have slipped her mind. Turns out that she forgot that she and Marcy had promised to contact Luz as soon as they got home.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom: It takes Danny three chapters to recall that the last time he saw Barken, they'd been knocked out and locked inside a classroom.
• Sharing the Night: In mid-chapter 19, Luna casually mentions that they stranded Discord on Rainbow's cloud house because they forgot that he no longer has his magic.
  "Discord... is currently lurking around Rainbow Dash’s cloud house on account of being left there by a full half dozen ponies who do not realize that he is incapable of getting down from it on his own—and me, who just doesn't like him."
• Steven Universe: Alternate Future: "A Fusion Too Far" has Steven focus on helping Lapis make amends with Jasper. Afterwards, he wonders how Teal Zircon and Zuli are doing, with an Answer Cut to their fusion, Diopside, wondering how they're supposed to unfuse.
• Ultra Fast Pony:
  • In "The Penny and Clyde Show", Reality Warper Discord appears and wreaks havoc across Equestria, but Princess Celestia only cares about the fact that Discord stole her teacups, and she specifically orders Twilight Sparkle to get those teacups back. By the end of the next episode, Twilight has cleaned up the chaos and imprisoned Discord...then realizes too late that she never found those teacups.
  • In "Derp and Destruction", the cast flees from Derpy. Just when they think they've escaped, they notice that Rainbow Dash isn't with them. The scene cuts to Dash, imprisoned by Derpy, and forced to reenact scenes from The Silence of the Lambs.
• Played for Drama in YuyaVision: Yusei completely forgot about his friendship with Crow. As a result, when Crow is finally resurrected as Uru's Dark Signer, they're quite upset at Yusei for this.
• A Second Chance: After Luna tries to give Renee the slip while being chained to Leni as punishment, in order to meet Sam at a SMOOCH concert, the two Loud sisters are locked in solitary confinement by Renee (the family’s bunker) with no lighting. They were meant to just stay there for the night, but once Kathleen pays a visit in the morning, and a series of mishaps result in Renee getting hospitalized and everyone else getting recruited into Kathleen’s “Teens of Tomorrow” volunteer group, Luna and Leni get forgotten and stay in the bunker all day, with Leni’s nonstop talking driving Luna crazy.

Films — Animation

• Abis Mal in The Stinger of Aladdin: The Return of Jafar.
  Abis Mal: [still dangling from a tree branch] Does this mean I don't get my third wish?
• In Big Hero 6, Hiro has a major falling-out with his teammates and flies off on Baymax, forgetting that Baymax is their only ride home. Fortunately, Fred's family is rich enough to afford a private helicopter and a butler with a pilot's license.
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Played for Drama in Rex Dangervest's backstory: Emmet's friends forgetting all about him while they partied in the Systar System, coupled with the reminders that he's "not tough" enough, is one of the factors that led to him creating his Rex persona to get revenge.
• In The Stinger of Megamind, the original, dehydrated-into-a-small-cube-early-on-and-then-forgotten-about Bernard only returns to normal because Minion didn't empty Megamind's pockets before doing the laundry.
• Strange Magic: Marianne is so focused on lecturing her sister Dawn after she was attacked by a lizard that Marianne forgets that Sunny was knocked into the forbidden Dark Forest by said lizard. Thankfully, she remembers just in time to save him from being attacked by goblins.
• At the end of The Rescuers Down Under, Bernard, Bianca, Cody, Jake, and Marahute fly triumphantly into the sunset. The movie then cuts to Wilbur the albatross, who was left to guard Marahute's eggs, realizing that he was left behind and starts wondering what's taking everyone so long. And then the eggs start to hatch.
  Wilbur: HELP! Anybody! Bernard! Bianca! WHERE ARE YOU?!? Okay, that's it! I'm outta here, this is ridiculous! You can't leave me here alone! (laughs) I'm gone! I am GONE! (the eggs start hatching) Aww, no! Stay in those eggs! That's a direct order! Awww.....hey...you're kinda a cute little feller, coochy coochy...YOW! WHOA! (groans)
  [cue credits]
• Double subverted in Toy Story 3. When Woody, Buzz and the gang are taken to the dump in the garbage truck, Barbie gets left behind. The characters are then tossed into the trash compactor and nearly roasted alive in the furnace before being rescued by the Martians (in what amounts to a Brick Joke 15 years in the making, believe it or not). After surviving, Woody and the rest of the toys return home and are donated by Andy to a neighbor's young daughter as he is leaving for college. Throughout all this time, none of the toys notice that Barbie is no longer with them. But then, as the end credits are rolling, the toys receive a postcard from Barbie telling them what is happening at the day-care center, where she decided to stay.

Films — Live-Action

• Airplane!: In The Stinger, remember that guy Ted left waiting in his taxi? With the meter running? "Well, I'm gonna give him twenty more minutes...but that's it!"
• In Bill, Philip forgets that he has Sir Richard Hawkins in his dungeons till Elizabeth reminds him. The credits show that he is still there at the end of the movie.
• The Cherry Orchard ends with all the family leaving the estate and locking up their house; forgetting that their extremely elderly manservant Firs is still inside.
• In Doctor at Large, when Dr. Sparrow is about to see to the Maharajah of Branda, he is interrupted by Kitty, who is in a tizzy looking for Dr. Potter-Shine. Dr. Sparrow ends up taking her on a date and forgets about the Maharajah until she says the word "oriental".
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has a scene of the main characters using a "Speak With Dead" spell to interrogate various corpses of a graveyard for information. How the spell works is that it reanimates a corpse, allowing them to answer exactly five questions, and after the fifth one, they return to rest for good. However, by the time the party gets all the information they need, the last corpse they were talking to was only on his fourth question, and when his attempt to catch their attention before they leave fails, he's left hanging and stuck half-submerged in his coffin. The Stinger shows the poor dude bored out of his mind, waiting for someone to ask him his question.
• This also happens in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives of all films. Final Girl Megan springs Tommy out of jail and locks up the Jerkass deputy in his place. This makes him the only survivor of the sheriff's office by the film's end...if only he manages to get out.
• The Gamers: Dorkness Rising ends with one of these. After the new party finds their first party's treasure carrying minion. He is left to wait for them again, only to be forgotten about. The Stinger shows him still waiting in the dungeon he was left in.
• Subverted in Go: While being chased through a rave by the drug dealer they ripped off, the heroine's stoned friend is stashed behind a pile of trash while she gets the car. Through a series of wacky circumstances, he gets left behind while the heroine winds up in the hospital. It's not until the next day - at end of the movie - that she remembers he's still there and goes back for him.
• In Hellboy, Hellboy and Liz scout ahead while Trevor Manning remains in a safe spot in the underground labyrinth. Then Hellboy and Liz get knocked unconscious and dragged to a completely different location, where the final fight with Rasputin goes down. Hellboy saves the world, the credits roll...then partway through, there's a scene of Manning, still in the maze, trying to contact the others on radio. "Uh, guys, I'm still in here..."
• When the Butlers set off for Pontins in Holiday on the Buses, they initially leave Little Arthur behind at the house.
• Home Alone. The rest of the family forgot Kevin, thus setting him up to be the most famous security system ever unintended.
• Jack Frost (1997): In the sequel, Sam and Anne forget about Joe and Marla and accidentally leave them in the freezer.
• In Krampus, Howard and Linda are in the Engels' house for several minutes before Tommy points out that they appear to a child short, and they realise they have left their baby daughter in the truck.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • After successfully repelling an Alien Invasion in The Avengers, Tony Stark proposes that he and his teammates celebrate with shawarma. Then Thor says that it's not over yet, because there's still one member of the invaders still alive: Loki, who's back at Stark Tower after a thrashing from the Hulk earlier.
  Tony: And then shawarma after?
  • In Thor: The Dark World, a portal accidentally sends a gigantic beast from Jotunheim to London, and the end credits reveal that it's still there.
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming had Peter's interrogation of Aaron Davis where the latter is webbed to his car. Peter doesn't know when the web will wear off, to Davis' chagrin. During the Creative Closing Credits, Davis is still trying to free himself.
  • Early in Thor: Ragnarok Doctor Strange makes his presence known by teleporting Loki to some other dimension and leaving a calling card for Thor. After a lengthy skit during which Strange helps Thor find Odin. Thor is ready to go on his way, but he casually asks Strange about Loki. Strange teleports Loki back to them, describing his predicament that he's been falling this whole time.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp further shows the effects of the Snap from Avengers: Infinity War which shows an empty San Francisco, including Scott's house...except the giant ant used as decoy for Scott is still there.
• Although none of the characters actually realize they've missed something, this gets played for horror in the conclusion of The Pit and the Pendulum: Towards the end of the film, Francis hears what he presumes to be Catherine screaming and runs down to the dungeon to save her from Nicholas. Before he can find her, a now-insane Nicholas knocks him out and straps him to the titular device. Nicholas is disposed of, Francis is rescued at the last second, and he and his rescuers leave the dungeon and promise to have it sealed off and never speak of it again...Cut to the villainous Elizabeth, locked in an iron maiden, presumably about to be sealed in the dungeon forever; and since she faked her death earlier in the film no one's going to come looking for her...
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), after defeating Robotnik, Tom and Maddie talk to each other for a bit. Eventually Tom mentions Rachel, resulting in the two of them realizing that she's still tied to a chair back at her house in San Francisco.
• In Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo a plane takes off from an aircraft carrier and almost drops into the sea. When they are back up the pilot give the order to raise flaps. The co-pilot looks and tells him they were never down. The pilot says "Great. What else did we forget?"
• In The Witch Files, the coven are at Brooke's house making their first attempts at casting spell. They have just levitated Claire when Brooke's mom walks in. They try and act naturally and she soon leaves. Only then do they remember about Claire, who suddenly drops from the ceiling to the floor.
• Minor example in Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie. Max turns a woman into a dog to discourage Jerry from hitting on her. They chat for a while and then walk away with Max feeling like he forgot something. He forgot to turn the dog back into a human.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: There are many occasions when an important item is forgotten, but one dramatic moment is in Cappuccino Years. During a massive row about Rosie having a termination, Adrian realises that the only person not making a noise is his son William; and they have forgotten to collect him from his nursery school. Adrian hurries there, to find William asleep in his teacher's arms, having cried himself to sleep, thinking that Adrian had gone away, like his mum.
• Subverted in the Dale Brown novel Act of War. When making their escape from Brazil, the team notices that Manuel Pereira has disappeared, but ultimately his fate is not resolved.
• Happens in the Discworld novel Wyrd Sisters, to a trio of actors in witch costumes who were mistaken for Granny, Nanny, and Magrat and thrown in the dungeons.
• Harry Potter:
  • A subplot example in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where Harry and Hermoine, having finally smuggled Hagrid's pet dragon Norbert out of Hogwarts, triumphantly race back to the Gryffindor common room only to realize they'd forgotten Harry's Invisibility Cloak at the top of the Astronomy Tower. And they lose 150 points for Gryffindor when they're caught.
  • Again in Philosopher's Stone, Harry and Ron triumphantly lock the mountain troll in the girls' bathroom. After about thirty seconds of self-congratulations, they remember Hermione is in said girls' bathroom.
• Hollow Kingdom (2019): While waiting for animals with information about The One Who Opens Doors to arrive, S.T. watches a flock of starlings entertain a baby elephant and muses on the topic of elephants for a while. Once his train of thought arrives at elephants supposedly never forgetting anything, he remembers that he left Dennis at CenturyLink Field.
• At the beginning of the Robert A. Heinlein novel The Number of the Beast, the main characters discover that their abstract mathematical research actually holds the key to traveling between different universes - and there are some strange creatures masquerading as humans (which the characters decide to call Beasts) that are out to kill them because of it. So, to protect themselves, they use that research and start traveling to parallel universes, at which point the Beasts that seemed to have been driving the plot are never mentioned again. Until the epilogue, in which all the main characters from lots of different Heinlein novels have all met up for a party and a Beast appears for no apparent reason, and someone remarks, "Quick - get his Number!"
• Stuck by Oliver Jeffers is a picture book about a boy who gets his kite stuck in a tree. In order to get it loose, he throws various other things after it. At the end of the book, the kite falls down and he plays happily with it. As he goes to sleep that night, he ponders that there's something he's forgotten...The final picture shows that everything else is still up in the tree.
• At the end of the Thursday Next novel The Well of Lost Plots, after Thursday was finally cleared of everything, the question is suddenly raised as to something that is mostly unconnected to the main plot: Who killed Godot, who it was earlier revealed had been murdered?

Live-Action TV

• Subverted in The Addams Family episode "The Addams Family and the Spaceman." Morticia and Gomez walk the professor upstairs, seemingly forgetting the investigators locked in the "playroom." However, Gomez remembers and comes back.
• Used in the first season finale of Babylon 5. Early on, Delenn tells Sinclair that she has something very important to tell him, but he's too busy to deal with it; she agrees to see him later, but warns him that it will have to be soon. Much later, Kosh notes that Sinclair has forgotten something, and he realizes that he never got back to Delenn and runs out of the room. Unfortunately, by the time he arrives at her quarters, it's too late: she has become encased in a chrysalis. Since this is Babylon 5's first Wham Episode, it's not a signal that the good ending isn't as good as it seems, it's a signal that the bad ending is about to get worse.
• On The Big Bang Theory, when Howard is showing Bernadette his old magic items, he come across one he "hasn't seen in years." When he tries to produce a "live dove"...
  Howard: (gagging slightly) Don't look in there.
• During an episode of Big Love, the family goes on a road trip. About halfway through the episode, Bill comes out of a bathroom to find all three cars (essentially, one for each wife and their respective kids) gone and himself stranded. It turns out that everyone simply assumed he was in someone else's car and therefore drove off without him. (Although given the amount of bickering that had been going on, one can't help but wonder if subconsciously, they did it on purpose).
• Breaking Bad: Season 5 starts off with Walt driving back home and disposing of all the evidence that would link him to Gus' murder and Brock's poisoning. His family comes back home, he sits down with a glass of whiskey after a hard-fought victory, and then jumps up with an "oh shit" as he realizes he still has to get rid of the security camera footage from the superlab that documents countless hours of him cooking meth for Gus.
• The Brittas Empire: One sub-plot in "Underwater Wedding" dealt with Brittas trying to save a best man who was stuck at the bottom of the pool, which gets forgotten about during the episode. At the end, as he prepares to go home, he thinks he's forgotten something but decides to leave it until tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, that something is the best man, and the episode ends on a shot of him about to drown...
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: a mild inversion in "The 9-8". Jake, Charles, and Jake's old partner Stevie start up a Beastie Boys style rap before hard cutting to the rap continuing in the car. There's just one thing missing.
  Jake: We're d-d-driving in a...
  Stevie: Car! Destination, drug dealer's...
  Jake: Bar! Pass the mic right over to...
  Both: Charles!
  (The canera reveals the back seat of the car is empty)
  Jake: We forgot Charles.
• Clarissa Explains It All: In the episode "Involunteering", the Darling family hosts a group of kids from the children's museum into their home for "Family Volunteer Day". The kids act out of control and start to tear the house apart which causes a general commotion. Clarissa is eventually able to control the kids by showing them a squashed bug (the bug case is the kids favorite exhibit). Later in the evening and after the kids have left, Clarissa sits in the living room with her mom and dad, and her mom remarks that "things got a litte out of hand, but it was still fun, the bad news is that Family Volunteer Day is over." This prompts Clarissa to inquire if there is bad news, what the good news is... and then she asks if anybody has seen her brother, Ferguson. The episode ends with a desperate Ferguson bound and gagged to a chair struggling and providing muffled screams.
• Happens all the time on Chopped, when a contestant finishes assembling their dish as the clock runs through its final seconds, sighs in satisfaction that they've completed their task on time...only to notice that one of their four basket ingredients is still sitting there at their work station, overlooked and untouched.
• In an episode of the new Doctor Who, the Doctor is celebrating how everybody lived that episode, until Rose reminds him that Jack was still trapped on a spaceship that was about to explode. They saved him, though.
• One episode of Dog with a Blog has a Running Gag where the family keeps forgetting Chloe.
• Used as a Sequel Hook at the end of the Endeavour episode "Trove". Morse is sure he's forgotten something. We're then shown a shot of what it was: A notebook was stolen from the crime scene after the police arrived, implying that the criminals can pull strings within the police force.
• The finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has everyone say their goodbye before they go their separate ways from the former Banks household. Will takes one last look at the living room, shuts off the lights and prepares to leave when Carlton comes running down the stairs with his pants down. Turns out he had headed to the bathroom and everyone forget he was up there.
• During filming of an episode of Get Smart Don Adams got the rest of the crew to "accidentally" leave guest-star Don Rickles chained up while everyone went for lunch.
• One episode of Hannah Montana guest-stars the Cory in the House characters President Martinez and his daughter Sophie. Miley had told her bodyguard Roxie to work for the President after being fed up with her, but then started to miss her and came to the President's hotel as Hannah to get her back. After learning that Hannah has been scheduled to give singing lessons to Sophie, Miley and Lily switch clothes and disguise themselves as each other's alter-egoes so that Miley can sneak out to find Roxie. After Roxie agrees to come back and they reconcile, Miley and Roxie go back to the former's house and Robby Ray asks Miley why she is dressed as Lola, leading to Miley to realize she had forgotten Lily in the hotel.
• In an episode of iCarly, Sam is left inside a luggage bag and ends up in Malaysia.
  • In "iStill Psycho", while the gang are trapped by Nora and her family, Gibby attempts to escape through the chimney, but he gets stuck. After Mrs. Benson and T-Bo rescue them and they're safe at home, Carly realizes they forgot Gibby, who is still stuck.
• In an episode of The IT Crowd Moss gets inside a claw machine in an attempt to get an iPhone. Jen helps him to try and get it out. At the end of the episode, we see her in bed when out of nowhere she wakes up and exclaims "MOSS!" It's revealed that he's still stuck inside the claw machine.
• A plot point in an episode of Jericho (2006): After Eric and Jake escape the hospital in Rouge's River and get back to Jericho, Eric realizes that he left his wallet there with his I.D., which leads the Blackwater mercenaries to Jericho.
• Jonas: In "Band's Best Friend", the brothers tell Frankie they are playing hide-and-seek but as soon as Frankie goes to hide they completely ignore him when their childhood friend comes to visit. Frankie spends the entire episode living in a kitcher drawer not even realizing that the boys aren't actually looking for him. In the ending of the episode, the boys start watching their favourite show before Joe finally remembers that they were supposed to be playing hide-and-seek with Frankie. They panic and run around the house trying to find him and the scene cuts to Frankie still in the kitcher drawer.
• One contestant on Legends of the Hidden Temple reached the episode's Artifact forgot he didn't have to complete each room's challenge to move on. While he was smashing pots to open a door that was already open, he dropped the artifact and made it all the way to the temple gates, empty-handed.
• In one episode of Leonardo, the gang infiltrate a nunnery by claiming to be exterminators, and saying that for safety reasons, the nuns have to stay in the belltower until they've finished. At the end of the episode, Leo asks Mac how the nuns reacted when he told them they could come down, and Mac suddenly realises he didn't.
• Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: At the end of "Blizzard", the girls are cured of their snow rash and avoided going to a human hospital. As they wind down in the Moon Pool, Lyla belatedly remembers that they never stopped the snowfall they started. Cue Rita walking into her grotto and being forced into mermaid form by the snow.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: Near the ending of episode 16, the main characters split up after spending a day in Taman Mini, one of them (Alan) choosing to wait at where they split up. The rest regroup not too long after and go home, only realizing on the way home that Alan is still waiting in Taman Mini.
• On an episode of NewsRadio Bill tells a story of a prank from his college days, in which he and his frat brothers locked a pledge in the trunk of a car in a junkyard. When Only Sane Man Dave asks how he got out, Bill suddenly looks alarmed and says, "I've gotta make a phone call!"
• In the finale of Phil of the Future, the Diffys finally fix their time machine and return to the 22nd century, but the last few seconds reveal that they left behind Curtis, their friend/pet caveman who was also displaced from his own time period.
• Psych:
  • In the climax of "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast", while infiltrating an abandoned asylum to rescue Juliet, Shawn and Lassiter had to leave Gus behind because his foot got caught in a loose floorboard. When the Ax-Crazy killer gets caught, they lead her off the premises...and Shawn suddenly remembers Gus and he had to double back.
  • "Office Space" is about Shawn and Gus trying to cover up their excess tampering with the crime scene. Woody the coroner eventually figures things out and they tie him up in the Psych office (at his behest, since he's a self-admitted bad liar). Everyone then forgets about Woody until the crime is solved and our heroes return to the office.
• On Raven's Home, Chelsea tricks Levi and Booker into hiding underneath the table by saying she'll bake them cookies to prevent them from being seen by Raven's boss, whom Raven had told that Booker and Nina are dogs and had to get real dogs to cover the ruse when her boss came to visit. The episode ends in the middle of the night where Booker and Levi are still hiding under the table wondering how long Chelsea will come back with the cookies.
• A Saturday Night Live sketch where a white, ghetto-speaking pizzeria waiter named Mark Payne (played by feature player Bobby Moynihan) has a part where just as a couple leave their table, Mark realizes that he left his kid on a bus and runs out (but not before yelling at the couple who just left about not leaving a tip). It doesn't help that the next time Mark appears, the kid was never mentioned.
• Super Sentai:
  • An episode of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger explains their Early-Bird Cameo in the crossover the previous year is actually a time travel jaunt when one of the Timerangers sent them to that time period for one of the Greater Powers. The Gokaigers deal with two threats (the battle they debuted in in the aforementioned crossover, as well as an independent villain who seeks to destroy the temple they were sent to guard) before returning to their original time. But then when their Mission Control Team Pet (who was left out of the episode's adventure) asks about the Greater Power, the Gokaigers were furious, thinking that they travelled back in time for naught.
  • An episode of Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger sees the heroes defeating the Monster of the Week early, but instead of being killed he fell off his spaceship, stuck to the ground in a faceplant. The Zyuohgers try to find him but completely get sidetracked on a different matter. The monster only got back to action in the next episode, when his team leader/superior found him, still stuck to the ground.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • In "People Who Love Peepholes", Alan moves out of the house and leaves Jake behind.
  • In a more famous example, Jake is stranded again during the Season 2 episode "Can You Eat Human Flesh with Wooden Teeth?".
    Alan: It's just— I keep having this nagging feeling I've forgotten something.
    Charlie: Hey, if you forgot, it was probably not that important.
    Alan: Yeah, you're right. (Continues drinking with Charlie)
    (Cut to Jake, alone and drenched in rain outside the soccer field.)
    • This happens two more times in the episode. The second time, Charlie forgets about Jake after the latter's school play. And at the very end...
    Alan: Look, Jake, I know it's been rough and I'm sorry. We're human, we make mistakes. But I promise you, neither of us will ever, ever forget to pick you up again.
    Jake: Yeah, I still wanna go back to Mom's. When is she coming home from Hawaiʻi, anyway?
    Alan: Oh, crap!
    (Cut to Judith, alone and wet in rain outside the airport.)
• A sketch on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering involving Tom, Lucy and Adam interrogating Charlie because they were bored ends with the three of them wandering off to get dinner, leaving Charlie still tied to a chair and calling plaintively after them.
• Young Sheldon:
  • In "Potential Energy and Hooch on a Park Bench", Georgie asks Sturgis what happened to Linkletter. Answer Cut to Linkletter asleep on the bench, being woken up by a cop who tells him he can't sleep there.
  • In "A Launch Party and a Whole Human Being", in all the commotion of Mandy giving birth, the Coopers and Brenda forget to pick up Missy and Billy from school. Mary doesn't realize this until the very end of the episode.

Toys

• The Action Figure File Card for Sneak Peek, recon specialist of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, provides an example.
  Sneak Peek is a legend in the Ranger recon battalions. They tell of one mission where his control unit got overrun. In the ensuing confusion, Sneak Peek was never recalled. He stayed put, observing enemy activity, taking notes and sketching maps for two weeks until somebody remembered he was out there and sent him the signal to return.

Video Games

• Banjo-Kazooie: Banjo, Kazooie, Mumbo, and Bottles are enjoying a BBQ having escaped from Gruntilda's lair and rescued Tooty. Then Tooty turns up and points out that they didn't actually defeat Gruntilda, who is still at large, and Banjo has to sprint back to the top of the lair for the Final Boss fight.
• At the end of BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, Anon and Catie get back home and feel like they've missed something, but quickly decide not to worry about it...We then cut to the Pale Wraith, who reveals his true identity as Boxxyfan, the prequel's Big Bad, who has tricked the heroes into giving him control of the STORM. Oops. That bombshell sets the stage for the post-game bonus chapter, if you've met the criteria to unlock it.
• Cave Story gives the optional task of bringing Mr. Little, a miniscule man, from the Mimiga graveyard back to his home in the outer wall. Once you've picked him up, he appears as an inventory item and it's possible to forget about him. But if you do and beat the game without bringing him home, he will appear before the credits roll to ask "aren't you forgetting something?" He will do this even if your actions have caused the island to plummet to earth, presumably killing his family and everything else within.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale: Lampshaded in the postgame, where after getting 100% completion and wandering to another screen, Prunus the bug reminds Pizza that he's still on Pizza's head and asks permission to head back to Feast to raise a newfound family.
• In the ending of Conker's Bad Fur Day, Conker realizes he forgot to bring Berri back to life, but he can't do it now that the programmers aren't there to give him a second Deus ex Machina.
• Control: in the chaos of a massive Eldritch Abomination incursion, everybody forgot about the guy watching the cursed fridge that kills people if nobody's looking at it. He's been stuck there over twenty-four hours without relief by the time you finally get to him.
• The main story of Curse Crackers: For Whom The Belle Toils is about Belle going to rescue Clyde from Bonnie, but her adventure soon leads to her needing to rescue Bonnie from Tedra and Leer, and then having to save the world when the pair attempts to destroy the moon. After that's taken care of, Bonnie says she's never kidnapping anyone again, and the credits roll shortly after. Then...
  Belle: Wait, kidnapping?!
  Bonnie: Yeah, Cl- We forgot about Clyde!
  (Cut to Clyde still waiting in a prison cell)
• The Christmas Episode of The Darkside Detective ends with McQueen and Dooley remarking that they feel like they've forgotten something, and a cut to Dooley's nephew, who they tied to a chair when he was under the villain's mind control and is still tied up because they got sidetracked before they got around to untying him.
• Dragalia Lost's Raid Event, "Stranded Scions" has four of the Alberian siblings stranded on a deserted island and plagued by two giant fiends known as Kanaloa. The ending has Euden, Leonidas and Chelle glad to be off the island until they realize... they forgot Emile, the Dyrenell Emperor.
• In Fallout 2, there is an optional quest where you go treasure hunting in Broken Hills. When you finally find where it is, and enlist the aid of a midget to get it out of there, you learn that it's really a bag of bottle caps - which would have been a fortune in the first game, but in the second, it's worthless. When the player character goes on a monologue about how frustrated they feel, they totally forget about the midget who's still stuck down where the treasure was and eventually wander off without getting him out.
• During the You Are Not Alone scene in Final Fantasy IX, Zidane's friends try to talk him out of his Heroic BSoD, but in separate groups. First Vivi and Eiko, then Freya and Amarant, but Zidane just dismisses them and put up several gates between them and himself. After two more battles (first when Zidane reluctantly joins Quina and Steiner, and the second one has Dagger coming to his rescue on her own) with the latter as the one who finally snaps him back to his senses. But before they can proceed onward Dagger asks the whereabouts of the rest of their friends, and they have to go back.
• FTL: Faster Than Light curbs this with regards to having your crew aboard the enemy ship. If you attempt to jump away while you have crew on the enemy ship, the game prompts you if you really want to leave before getting your crew back together on your own ship. It's still possible to forget to beam your crew off the enemy ship before blowing it up, though.
• In Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indy will say that his victory rings hollow if you let his female sidekick die. It should be noted that freeing her is very difficult, since she's located in an easy-to-miss part of the map, stuck in a cell that requires a very obtuse puzzle to get her out of, and will be Mind Controlled by an evil artifact that you must destroy to free her.
• In LittleBigPlanet 2, at the end of the Toy Story DLC, the Toy Story gang and Sackboy capture the Evil Dr. Porkchop in a cage. They then walk off, congratulating Sackboy and talking about the epic battle, and the screen fades to black...and then cuts back on, centered on Hamm still in the cage.
  Hamm: Alright, I think it's time to let your old pal Hamm out of the cage...
  Hamm: Guys?
  Hamm: ...Guys?!
  (level ends)
• Pikmin 2: Olimar collects enough money, starts his ship, heads for Hocotate...and realizes that he left behind Louie on the Pikmin Planet. Cue second part of the game having the secondary goal to find and rescue him.
• Rayman Raving Rabbids: After escaping the Rabbids, Rayman returns to the picnic site where he and the baby Globoxes were kidnapped. Upon realizing he forgot to rescue them, Rayman decides to return by traveling through the Rabbid hole but ends up stuck in the process, ending on a rather silly note.
• At the start of Sam & Max Hit the Road, the duo catch the Mad Scientist, but forget to untie his hostage and disarm the bomb.
• Guybrush's crew gets left behind on Monkey Island in one of the endings to The Secret of Monkey Island. This is the ending they went with in the fourth game, where they show up again and complain to Guybrush that it was really difficult to Escape from Monkey Island.
• In the VGA remake of Space Quest I, if you forget to set the Self-Destruct Mechanism on the superweapon before escaping ("You can't ignore, however, a nagging feeling that you've forgotten something important. Now what could that be?"), the bad guys use it to blow up your home planet. And then terrorize the rest of the universe. Likewise, in the same game you can leave the Star Generator data cartridge in a reader on planet Kerona. The ending victory ceremony will then tell you that while it's good that the bad guys didn't get it, it sucks that the planet is now spinning around a rapidly cooling star...Oh well, you're just a Janitor.
• Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic has a bomb that you can arm by pressing the "Press to Disarm Bomb" button. It won't go off while you're on board, so you can forget to disarm it while you finish the game. Of course by the time you are reminded of it later, it's too late and if you haven't disarmed it, the ship explodes.
• In Wing Commander II's Special Operations Expansion Pack, at the very end of the closing cinematics, after Blair has defeated Jazz and returns for praise from everyone, there's a scene of Maniac's fighter, stranded by a broken jump drive that kept him from assisting in the final fight, drifting in the void while calling for help.
• "Have you forgotten something" was a phrase used in the ending of Wizardry IV, to indicate that the ending you got really wasn't the best ending. If you got the real ending, it followed that question with "You laugh, for you know that you have not."

Web Animation

• The trope is lampooned in an episode of Bonus Stage. It was along the lines of:
  Joel: Oh no! We forgot Jessica!
  (Jessica appears behind him)
  Joel: Oh. Man, we missed out on a hilarious cut away sequence.
  (back on the planet)
  Mr. Malice: Guys?
• Mega Man Dies at the End: In the last episode of Season one, Mega Man is relived all their troubles are over, until Wily reminded him they are still wanted fugitives and nearly recalls something they've forgotten. Namely, Fake Man, who's on the active hunt for them and bursts into Wily's castle.
• In Sonic Zombie, at the end of the Space video, Blaze furiously kicks the group out of her ship and speaks aloud that she'll be glad to never deal with them again. Suddenly, Shadow remembers that he forgot something back on his bed, which turns out to be an active bomb that immediately destroys the entire ship.

Web Comics

• In Bob and George, speaking of April 15th (one of the dates the actual intended comic was supposed to launch) makes Megaman think this.
• Catena Manor has a beach-visit storyline. It ends with one character harmlessly but solidly trapped under exercise equipment...and completely forgotten by the others.
• At the end of Darths & Droids's Star Wars: Return of the Jedi adaption, the GM points that all of the Player Characters' quests (except Luke's path to the Light Side) are completed. Corey then points out that Luke still hasn't melted down C-3PO and R2-D2 (which Owen Lars asked him to do during the A New Hope campaign), but he accepts that, having decided he doesn't need to complete every quest he is given.
• From DM of the Rings: "Uh. Guys?"
• Entropy Max: This strip◊ in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha R'r Fan Webcomic by Entropy Max, which lampshades the tendency of Zafira getting ignored by both the writers and the fandom.
• A comedic rather than dramatic example, in the end of the early arc of Flaky Pastry the girls triumphantly leave the dungeon they beat, while the neighbour finally returns with the scrolls of town portal. Well, at least he isn't stuck there since he has those scrolls.
• Annie silencing Reynardine in Gunnerkrigg Court. While it had some disastrous consequences, it was played for laughs a few chapters later.
• Narbonic:
  • Another example of someone being forgotten: Seth, a gamer who gets sucked into hell during one storyline and at the end of the arc is trying and failing to find someone who'll get him out. Much later, he shows up again in asskicking fashion, having put his gaming skills to good use and fought his way out.
  • There is also the part when Dave was brought back to life as a zombie. Helen and Mell left his head on a city bus, and forgot all about it. It wound up in the Lost and Found, and got claimed by Madblood (who needed a spare brain for an experiment).
• One arc of Nodwick has the title character captured by an evil priest hoping to use him as a sacrifice. After thwarting the villain, the party forgets to release Nodwick, who mentions that he'll probably need to find a way to break the top off the altar he's shackled to and roll the coin-shaped top back home.
• In this strip of The Order of the Stick, Elan mutters this as they all leave Durkon behind paralyzed on the ground.
• In Rhapsodies this happens to Kevin once or twice.
• In Rusty and Co., Mimic forgot all about Stabs, leaving her to face an army of monsters. Cut to Stabs Atop a Mountain of Corpses.
• The last panel of this edition of The Wotch, with the owner of a local magical bookstore who was wounded in a previous strip and left behind.

Western Animation

• In the Action League NOW! episode, "Stink or Swim", the league is sent to rescue a pair of drowning victims. Stinky attempts to rescue them, but chickens out, thus leaving the rest of the league to do so for him. On their way back to their headquarters, The Flesh wonders if they forgot something, and sure enough, they forgot to rescue the drowning victims.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: The special "Attack of the Twonkies" ends on a Cliffhanger where Jimmy realizes once all is taken care of that they never sent Sheen's unmutated Twonkie back, which reproduces and its offspring hop into Retroville.
• Amphibia: In "Sprig's Birthday", after losing control of the balloon and crashing it on a crane in the city, Anne decides that they have no loose ends to clean up. Cut to Mr. Boonchuy, who is still waiting for Anne to come back to the van.
• Used in Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps episode, "Angelina's Lost Ice Skates" where Angelina and her best friend, Alice, are excited of going to the ice skating show that they become absent-minded of their things. First, when they left the former's house, they almost forgot their lunches and ice skates if it wasn't for Polly and Mrs. Mouseling retrieving it at the time they left. Next, they left the park without their lunches, resulting in the birds gobbling it with their mouths full. They almost forgot their skates again if it wasn't for the two getting it. When they left Mrs. Thimble's shop for smoothies, Angelina ended up forgetting her ice skates there. Luckily, she gets it, but when she comes back in the rink, she missed her opening solo. Nevertheless, she could still perform with Alice.
• The Kid In The Lid episode of Animaniacs: Yakko traps a pet woodchuck in a toilet, who, at the end of the episode, can be heard saying "Hello? Hello? Anyone? Anybody? Can anyone hear me? I'm still in the potty!"
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "The Clowning", Frylock freezes Carl (who contracted a bacteria that turned him into a clown) while assuring the others he'll find a cure. Sixty-seven years later their new "coat rack" breaks into pieces.
• In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Deserter", Aang and friends are introduced to a gang of Fire Nation deserters by a man named Chey, who doesn't seem very popular amongst the gang. At the end of the episode, after the gang abandon their hideout to escape from Zhao, Chey returns from the forest wondering where everybody's gone.
• In an episode of Back at the Barnyard, Duke is left in the cage of a dog catcher.
• In an episode of Ben 10: Alien Force, after the resolution of the events of the episode, Gwen forgot that Kevin was in the old factory yet previously beaten by a possessed Cash, despite that she promised to come back for him.
• The Bump in the Night episode "Loss of Face" has Squishington lose his face after accidentally wiping it off with a rag. When Mr. Bumpy tries to get his friend's face back, he gets held prisoner by the bugs who found the rag. Squishington gets his face back by himself and ends up agreeing to help the bugs find "The Place" (a trash can they intend to topple over to eat the garbage inside) in exchange for Mr. Bumpy's freedom. At the end of the episode, Squishington hears Mr. Bumpy screaming, still being tortured by the bugs holding him prisoner.
  Squishington: I knew there was something I forgot.
• One episode of Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot looks like it's going to play this trope straight, with Oopsy, tied to a bunch of pillows (to prevent him from getting hurt), left behind while the others go off to have fun. He even starts calling out for someone ("Hello?"), but Funshine comes back and sets him free.
• At the end of the Challenge of the GoBots episode "The Seer", it is revealed that the Guardians have left Van Guard behind, who is still trapped in the pit of cement Blockhead put him in.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: In "Operation It", after the KND frantically tries to avoid being "it", and having to stop Father, the credits show Numbuh 4 is still hiding out under a cardboard box, days after the game was over since nobody bothered to tell him.
• In Danny Phantom episode "Control Freaks", Mr. Lancer is locked in the janitor's room by Sam at the show's midway point. At the end of the episode, Mr. Lancer is still in there, with the implications that he's going to be trapped for the entire weekend after the janitor opens up to get supplies before shutting the door on him again.
• Daria: Jake is in the bathroom, doing...that thing. There's a problem: there's no more toilet paper in the house, so he send Daria to get something. Just go to the store, buy and return, thing of minutes, right? No! When she leaves the store, there is a parade in the street, Tom is looking for Jane, Jane is waiting for Tom, a kid gets lost and ask her for help, a Lion mascot harasses Daria, and so on, and so on...and, at the end of the episode, Jake is still in the bathroom, still waiting for the toilet paper. Does he have to read the Cristina Aguilera article for the 12º time? It was just as well. Daria lost the toilet paper trying to get through the parade.
• The Day My Butt Went Psycho!: In "Basic In Stink", Deuce gets stuck at the top of the detector. As Zack and Elanor are carried away on the shoulders of the jubilant crowd, he keeps waiting for them to come back for him. They don't.
• DC Super Hero Girls (2019):
  • The two-part episode "AllyCat" ends with the revelation that the male superheroes of Metropolis are still imprisoned in chambers at Luthor's lair due to the Super Hero Girls neglecting to set them free in their efforts to thwart Luthor's plan.
  • "#Retreat" ends with Jessica Cruz realizing as she drives away with Pamela Isley, Garth Bernstein and Karen Beecher that they forgot to let Hal Jordan out of the closet after defeating Poison Ivy's army of plant monsters (having stuffed Hal in the closet earlier when he was transformed into a plant zombie).
  • "#TheGreenRoom" ends with Garth left behind at the Oan court room after Hal Jordan summoned him as a witness for Jessica Cruz's trial.
• The Disney Afternoon:
  • In the Darkwing Duck episode "In Like Blunt", while Darkwing and Blunt are making up at the end, Darkwing suddenly realizes they forgot to let Launchpad out of the steamer that was his part of the death trap. They immediately run back to the room and discover that he's fine, although the steam shrunk him to about a foot high.
  • In TaleSpin, Rebecca and Baloo both forget about Wildcat (who went off to look for a bathroom) at the end of "The Balooest of the Bluebloods", an episode in which Baloo is revealed to be the inheritor of a huge estate. After dealing with a murderous butler and handmaid, the heroes go back home, leaving Wildcat wandering around the huge mansion, still looking for the bathroom.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "The Eds are Coming", the kids forget about Nazz who's still tied to the mailbox and lamppost at the end of the episode.
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: In the alternate ending of "The Good, The Bad, and El Tigre", after having helped Sartana take over the world, Manny double-crosses her and Django by sending them to the moon. Afterwards, he frees Frida and "promises" to release his dad and grandpappy after they've had some more time with their world conquest. It takes them sixty years remember, but they do free them in the end.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • "Homewrecker" has Timmy leave Tootie locked in the closet (boarded up, no less).
  • The time they leave Vicky in the stocks in "Dream Goat" after Timmy had her take the fall for setting Chompy the Goat loose.
  • Chester is left behind at the end of "Odd, Odd West" as the Squirrely Scuts drive home, though he uses the opportunity to fight back against a coyote that attacked him earlier.
  • In the episode "Shelf Life", Wanda forgot to return Sherlock Holmes back to his book.
  • "Country Clubbed" ends with Timmy commenting that he can't help but feel he forgot something. What he forgot is solving the problem of Wanda and Sparky switching brains.
  • Near the climax of "Man's Worst Friend", Crocker helps Timmy get all the evil pets back to Anti-Fairy World. However, the former is accused of pet napping, resulting in his arrest. Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda realize they need to help Crocker, but first they need to defeat Anti-Sparky (who didn't return to Fairy World). After Timmy defeats him and reunites with the real Sparky, Timmy feels like he's forgetting something. The scene then cuts to Crocker escaping from prison.
• Family Guy:
  • In an episode, Stewie beats up his babysitter's boyfriend and locks him in the trunk of a car so he can make a move on her himself. After failing to win her over, we see him sitting on the couch with Meg during the credits:
    Stewie: I suppose neither of us is really cut out for love, and we sh-OHMYGOD Jeremy's still in the trunk! Oh god, how long has it been?! Uh, let's see, two... two weeks. Yeah, yeah, he's dead. Definitely dead.
  • And again when the family head for an outing but Lois realizes they forgot Meg.
  • Another Meg related one happens when she calls to be picked up from the skating rink. Peter and his friends head to do so. But decides to stay awhile and skate. Eventually they head off..but forget to bring Meg with them.
  • And yet another Meg one done in a parody of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the family escape by a bi-plane but somehow Meg get left behind. When Brian points this out, we see her fall over into the water with poison needles in her back.
  • Zig-zagged when they were chased out of their house by angry poltergeists. After initially forgetting Meg as they bundled everyone else into the car, Meg gets in at the last second and chews them out over it.
• A Garfield and Friends episode had Garfield trap the mailman by using a snare trap. Just when Jon and Garfield are going somewhere, Garfield lampshades it by stating that he forgot something. Cue the mailman still hanging in the snare. At the end of the episode, Garfield is then openly upset that the mail has not come yet and demands to know why it's taking forever, having completely forgotten about the mailman still in the snare trap.
• The G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 episode "Race" ends with the Joes forgetting that they've left behind Tunnel Rat.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "Little Dipper", Dipper and Mabel smash the size-changing crystal after getting returned to normal size. Then they realize they forgot that Soos had been shrunk as well.
    Mabel: Glue.
    Dipper: Lots of glue!
  • In "Roadside Attraction", Soos accidentally gets left behind at the corn maze. He's still there in The Stinger.
  • When Dipper and Mabel fight off an army of living wax statues, the statue of Larry King gets beheaded; his body is destroyed with the rest of his kin, but his head remains intact, having escaped to the vents. Wax Larry King would appear in the clips during the credits, and becoming a slightly recurring element in later episodes.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
  • "Beasts and Barbarians", Grim sends Billy and Irwin to a Dungeon Crawling game world, and then he and Mandy have to go in to retrieve them. After much adventuring, Billy, Mandy and Grim finally return home safe and sound, but Grim can't shake the feeling that they're forgetting something. Cue a final shot of Irwin, still hanging precariously onto a branch where Billy had left him several scenes before and complaining that he's starting to get hungry.
  • "Toys will be Toys" has Billy trapped in a box in the back of the closet, whimpering "Hellooooo? Hellooooo?"
    Grim: ...and we never saw Billy again. But then, we didn't look very hard.
• Twice on Jimmy Two-Shoes in the same episode: Lucius gets Buried Alive, who then calls Molotov to arrest the ones responsible. He does so and leaves...without digging his boss up.
• Kaeloo: At the end of Episode 61, Kaeloo, Stumpy, Quack Quack and Eugly are looking at pictures. When they find a picture of Pretty chasing Mr. Cat, Stumpy starts to wonder where they are, and the scene cuts to Pretty and Mr. Cat still stranded on the island.
  • At the end of Episode 67, after a ballet performance where Stumpy is suspended from the air using ropes, everyone goes home but forgets to untie him.
• An early episode of Kim Possible had Ron locked up in a locker while a dance is going on.
• In a season one episode of The Koala Brothers, Mitzy's refusal to open the gate results in Buster getting out of the plane to open it, and allow Frank to take off for a postal delivery. There's just one problem...
  Mitzy: Buster, weren't you suppose to be in the plane, too?
  Buster: Yes...YES!! (chases after the plane) Wait Frank, wait! FRANK!
• In Megas XLR episode "Universal Remote", after Skalgar is beaten at the behest of New Jersey's destruction once again, Coop and the gang return home to watch movies, having forgotten Goat was hiding in the trunk and can't get out.
• In the Molly of Denali episode "Forget-You-Not," Molly and Trini leave to deliver the care package they made for Trini's mom, but they forgot the fireweed honey.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The episode "The Last Roundup" ends with Applejack finally coming back to Ponyville with her friends, with everyone celebrating her return. We then cut to Rarity and Pinkie Pie trying to make their way back to Ponyville via handcar, having been forgotten about by everyone else after they had fallen off the cart they were using during an earlier Chase Scene.
    Rarity: (seething) When I get back, you're gonna get it, Rainbow Dash...!
  • In "Magic Duel", one of the first things Trixie does with her boosted magic is delete Pinkie Pie's entire snout. Eventually, Twilight defeats Trixie, helps fix the results of Trixie's reign of terror (except for Pinkie’s mouth), and helps Princess Celestia entertain some foreign ambassadors. As it looks like the episode is ending, Pinkie interrupts the Iris Out to remind everyone that her snout is still missing. Twilight fixes that, just before the credits roll.
  • In "Rarity Takes Manehattan", Rarity realizes she lost track of time and is going to be late for her dress rehearsal for a fashion show. The group manage to get her a taxi, but then realize they forgot to send her dresses along with her.
  • Princess Celestia becomes a victim of this in "No Second Prances", waiting for Twilight to get back to the dinner.
  • In ""School Raze Part 2", the CMC try to distract Cozy Glow for the Student Six so they can free Chancellor Neighsay and stop Cozy's plan of draining all magic from Equestria. Unfortunately, Cozy sees through their ruse and tricks the three into going into a closet before locking them inside. The three are forgotten about for most of the remainder of the episode, until after everything has been resolved and they finally burst out of the closet in a panic, asking what happened.
• The Owl House: In "Understanding Willow", Eda gets so caught up in trying to impress Gus, she momentarily forgot she put Luz and Amity inside Willow's head.
• An episode of Ozzy & Drix involves a female villain and her crew mugging and replacing a group of sailors in order to lead the heroes into a trap. After the villains are arrested, Drix wonders if he might be forgetting something, but quickly moves on. The episode then ends by cutting to a locked room where the real sailors are still Bound and Gagged in their underwear.
• This is a Running Gag in The Replacements: Dick Daring will say this, and the scene cuts to the Daring family's pet mule Prince Cinnamon Boots, fruitlessly waiting somewhere for help/praise/support. Eventually, in one of the last episodes, he gets sick of it and locks the Darings out of their house till they realize how much they've neglected him.
• SheZow: At the end of "Coldfinger", Kelly shows up dripping wet and extremely angry because Guy and Maz had forgotten about her and left her frozen in a block of ice at the convention centre.
• The Simpsons:
  • Subverted in the "Treehouse of Horror V" short "The Shinning".
    (screen shows "Tuesday")
    Homer: Well, it's been a long trip, but we're almost there.
    Marge: Homer, Did you remember to lock the front door of the house?
    Homer: D'oh!
    (screen shows "Wednesday")
    Homer: Well, it's been two long trips, but we're finally almost there again.
    Marge: When you locked the front door, did you remember to lock the back door?
    Homer: D'oh! D'oh!
    (screen shows "Thursday")
    (the family sits in complete apathetic silence)
    Lisa: Oh no, we left Grandpa back at the gas station!
    (more silence, Homer keeps driving)
    Lisa: ...what about Grandpa?
    • Later, when Homer recreates the "Here's Johnny!" scene, he discovers Grandpa somehow made it to the hotel.
  • This is something of a Running Gag for Milhouse — the first time was in "The Otto Show" when Homer and Bart left him buried under a pile of chairs after a Spinal Tap concert.
  • And again in "Waverly Hills 9-0-2-1-D'oh", when Bart and Lisa attend the school in Waverly Hills for a short period of time. Bart suddenly remembers at the end that he has to go back because he was playing hide and seek with Milhouse. Cut to a view of the garbage can next to the Kwik-E-Mart with Milhouse's voice saying, "Two weeks! This has gotta be a record!'
  • It happened again with Grandpa in "Fear of Flying": when the family returns home after Marge's panic attack on the plane, Bart mentions "You know, I have this feeling that we forgot something...". Cut to Grandpa still on the plane screaming Home Alone style. We cut back to Homer who says "Eh, I'm sure it's nothing."
  • Another Grandpa example was in "Cape Feare", when the Simpsons go into Witness Protection, leaving him locked out of the house. "Hello? Hellooo? ...I'm cold, and there are wolves after me!" [wolf howls]
  • Also shows up in "The PTA Disbands", where the teachers go on strike. Everyone rushes out of the school so fast a little girl is left stranded on the rings in the gymnasium. "Hello? Mrs. Pommelhorst? I'd like to get down now..."
  • As well as "Whacking Day", where Principal Skinner locks Bart, Jimbo, Kearney, Dolph and Nelson in the school's basement. Bart manages to escape, which sets the rest of the plot into motion. At the end of the episode, Skinner finally remembers that the others are still locked in the basement.
  • In the episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", Homer is inspired by a Zorro movie to go around getting whatever he wants from people by slapping people with a glove and challenging them to duels. Much to his surprise, a Southern colonel accepts and he and his wife move into to the Simpsons' doorstep with his RV. He and the rest of the family flee the city and move into Grandpa's old farm, setting the plot into motion. After the climax of the episode, they move back to their house, with Homer saying "I don't even remember why we left." Of course, the colonel is still there waiting for him. The duel takes place, the colonel shoots Homer in the arm (which doesn't cause any significant damage), and the episode ends.
  • "Mommy Beerest" ends with Homer having followed Marge and Moe to Aruba. It's only when they get settled in for the night that Marge remembers the kids, who have somehow joined a hot air balloon race in Paris in the meantime.
• South Park: "Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo" has Cartman, Stan, and Kyle at the end of the episode commenting that they can't help but feel there was something they forgot. The "something" happens to be the fact that Kenny is still alive by the end of the episode.
  • Played with example: In the episode "Cow Days", Officer Barbrady forgets to release the falsely imprisoned couple, who starves to death and rots in jail. The Mayor encourages him to forget the whole thing ever happened.
  • In "Spontaneous Combustion" after doing a performance of the Stations of the Cross with Cartman playing the role of Jesus, Stan and Kyle then take him up to the hill and crucify him for real. They do this with the intention of having him die and have a resurrection, which Kyle intends to give to his father.^note Obviously, not understanding that there's a huge difference a resurrection and an erection. It's only near the episode's end when they remember that they haven't taken him down and three weeks have gone by. To their amazement, Cartman is still alive, having lived on all the fat stored up in his body, he's now down to skin and bones, and he's really pissed off at them.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Played for Laughs in "School Spirit": At the end, while the school is cheering Star and Marco, Star gets the weird feeling that she's forgetting something. Then a flying monster that wasn't defeated swoops down and snatches Marco away.
    Star: That was it...
  • Played for Drama in the episode "Storm the Castle". At the end of the episode, Glossaryck remarks that he hopes they found all the pieces of Star's old wand. Cue a final, ominous shot of the missing half of the star-shaped gem. Said item naturally becomes a key part of the show's Myth Arc in the following season.
  • Played for Drama again in "Mama Star." When creating portals to Mewni isn't working, Star, Marco, Tom, and Janna find a way to get there through the Realm of Magic, which comes with the side effect of losing their memories. They ride in a car, and forget how to take off their seatbelts. Star, Marco, and Janna manage to, but Tom doesn't, and the others leave him behind and forget him. At the end of the episode, the Firstborn sends Star, Marco, and Janna to different parts of Mewni, and it's likely that they assumed she sent him away as well, so it's a surprise when Star and Marco return in "Cleaved" to find that he's still there, and has not only become completely mindless but is also being controlled by the evil unicorn. Thankfully Marco manages to restore his mind with pudding.
• Steven Universe: In "Tiger Millionaire", Steven gets stuck in place when goo covering him hardens before he can wash it off. Amethyst and Pearl have an argument, which Garnet more or less takes Pearl's side on, then they all storm off, leaving Steven there until late in the night.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • At the end of "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny?", after saving Bugs from a revenge-driven Sappy Stanley, Buster and Babs wonder if they forgot something on their way back to Acme Acres. It turns out that they forgot to release Daffy, Plucky, and Hamton from jail (the former for Bugs's kidnapping, which he did not commit, and the latter two for trying to break the former out).
  • Averted in "Buster's Directorial Debut" where Sandy Witch feeds Babs a spiked carrot, turning her into a normal rabbit. Buster managed to fight off Sandy and escape with transformed Babs in tow. He decides that restoring Babs' original form can wait until he finishes his film project, leading to an unrelated plot where he deals with Plucky, who was being a prima donna over Buster's film. The episode ends with the typical closing camera iris, then transformed Babs hops in. Buster also comes in and uses Sandy's magic powder to revert her back to normal.
• Total Drama: Happens a few times, all related to challenges.
  • In what could've been a Deadly Prank, Gwen is challenged with being buried alive for five minutes in "Phobia Factor". There is enough air for an hour and Trent appoints himself as her watcher. Knowing full well that Trent is the only one keeping an eye on Gwen, Chris unleashes Trent's biggest fear on him. Then Chris himself forgets, leaving Trent with a sense of unease until he recalls Gwen's predicament well after the five minutes.
  • In "If You Can't Take the Heat...", the Screaming Gophers trick Heather into the freezer and lock her up in there because she's bossing them around, and not in a way that'll make them win the cooking challenge. It's only after the challenge is over that Lindsay remembers to free Heather, who at this point is showing early signs of hypothermia.
  • In "Ocean's Eight - Or Nine", a member of each team is kidnapped and locked up in a vault with tools to rob a bank. The first challenge is to get the teammate and tools out for the next two challenges. The Screaming Gaffers soon realize the first challenge takes them too long, they're still mad at Leshawna, and Duncan has ideas of his own on how to rob a bank. So they leave Leshawna right where she is. By the end of the day, the Screaming Gaffers, Chris, and Chef have yet to remember to free a stressed-out Leshawna.
  • After getting the clue from the rack challenge in "I See London...", Noah and Owen are in such good spirits that they run off and forget that Tyler is still bound on the torture device. They realize their error before leaving the Tower of London, but upon their return the Ripper has already taken Tyler with him.
  • Following the finale in "Lies, Cries and One Big Prize", Chris, Shawn, Jasmine, and Sky leave Pahkitew Island by helicopter without a care, though Chris does think they're forgetting something. That something is Dave, who is left alone on the island and is about to be mauled by a robotic bear.
• Used in an episode of The Venture Brothers - they forgot to free a bunch of supporting characters from a dungeon.
  • Happens in "Escape to the House of Mummies Part 2" as well. Dr. Venture is the only one small enough to escape and get help, but he gets caught up in a contest with Orpheus and completely forgets about his family who escape on their own and have an offscreen adventure of which were only given glimpses into.
• The "What If...Zombies" episode of What If…? (2021) started the same way Avengers: Infinity War did, with Bruce Banner crash-landing on the Sanctum Sanctorum of Doctor Strange. What diverges from the film is that, before he could warn his fellow heroes of Thanos' impending arrival, Bruce finds the Earth ravaged by zombies. Bruce completely forgets about the cosmic threat and never got to tell his fellow survivors before seemingly sacrificing himself. At the end of the episode, the remaining survivors fly to Wakanda, unaware that Thanos (also now a zombie) awaits them there...
• Work It Out Wombats!: A recurring theme in "Campout Confusion" is that the characters keep forgetting things they need for the campout, such as marshmallows, a flashlight, etc.
• During the "Humanity" episode of Young Justice (2010), the team (plus tagalong Zatanna) go behind their supervisors' backs (Zatarra, Black Canary and Captain Marvel) to rescue Red Tornado. Zatarra and Canary are in the middle of a discussion while Captain Marvel is distracted by having to walk the Team Pet Wolf, thinking that the team will join him shortly. At the end of the episode Captain Marvel makes it back to headquarters completely exhausted from babysitting a genetically-enhanced animal, still Locked Out of the Loop and still waiting for the team.

Real Life

• In her autobiography, Yvonne Craig mentions the time she was left bound and gagged in a chair while filming the Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode The Brain Killer Affair.
• POWs that continue to be held long after a conflict ends — for example, Americans who continued to be held in Vietnam, or even North Korea — are a grim real-life example. One could also say the same of the children of local women impregnated by soldiers of occupying armies during wartime.
• When Julius Caesar marched on Rome on his return from the Gallic wars, Pompey's government fled into exile — leaving the entire contents of the national treasury behind them. D'oh!
• David Bowie once gave a live stage performance, at the end of which, during his final number, he was picked up, in his chair, by a "cherry Picker" and swung out over the audience; at the end of the number, the lights went out, with Bowie still in mid-air, as the audience got up and went home; the theatre crew locked up and went out to a bar; it was only after several drinks that they realised that Bowie was still in the theatre, in his chair, at the end of the cherry picker arm, fifty-plus feet above the floor of the auditorium; "Were you going to leave me up here all night, you bastards?" was his first question as they frantically returned to the theatre.
• Similarily to the above example, one scene in the Doctor Who-episode "Mark of the Rani" required Colin Baker (who played the Doctor) to be tied to a large pole for a Tribal Carry in the middle of a forest. However, because Baker wore a support harness, untying him every time they reset the stage proved too time-consuming, so the crew just laid him down on the forest floor between takes. When it started to rain, the crew packed up and left to film a different scene in another location...only to realize after half an hour that they'd left Baker behind in the forest, still tied to the pole!
• Apparently, My Chemical Romance has occasionally left their guitarist Ray Toro at truck stops while on tour.
  Ray: And the band's kinda driven a couple miles down the road, and I'd have to call them on my cellphone and it's like, "hey...what's up?" And they're like, "hey, how's it going man?" I'm like, "...you notice something's missing from the van?" And they kinda look around and go, "ahh, shit."
• In Empire of Dreams: The Making of the Star Wars Saga, Kenny Baker recounted that, while filming, the cast and crew would on rare occasions forget he was inside the R2-D2 outfit (which could not be taken apart from the inside) and leave to take their lunch breaks. But, he said, someone would usually remember he was in there and come back to let him out.
• Every summer, babies and pets get rescued from the backseats of hot cars because their caregivers forgot they were there. Such rescues aren't always on time.

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