History Main / ChuckCunninghamSyndrome

* In the 2010 remake of ''TheKarateKid'', a blonde American kid with a forgettable name comes in soon after Dre moves to China. His sole purpose is to invite Dre to a game of basket ball, after which he disappears completely. Could be justified in that he was discouraged from making friends with Dre by the school bullies, but this is never explicitly stated.

'''When adding examples, please note: this trope is specifically about characters who disappear ''entirely'' without explanation. If they reappear even briefly, or if their absence is explained in-show even flimsily, it's probably one of the alternate tropes listed.'''

* During the first season of ''{{Bones}}'', Jonathan Adams plays Dr. Goodman, the head of the Jeffersonian Institute, who is Bones's direct superior and takes an active role in many of the cases. In the first episode of season two, Cam is head of forensics, Goodman is on "sabbatical", and he's never seen or mentioned again. ({{WordOfGod}} is that he may eventually pop up in guest appearances, but so far has not.)

* Pretty much every character from the early days of ''BloomCounty''. Milo was the only character to last the entire run. Notable vanishings were Milo's grandfather and Cutter John's girlfriend [[{{Hot librarian}} Bobbi Harlow]].

** Mighty the Armadillo is an understandable case, as shown by his similar gameplay and appearance to Sonic the Hedgehog. He was a last-minute insertion into Chaotix while the game was made, to replace Sonic, who was originally in but was cut to keep the focus on the new faces and Knuckles. (Tails was almost in the game as well, as shown from the progamming in an earlier build of Chaotix.)
** Except Mighty was in SegaSonic the Hedgehog (the trackball-utilizing arcade game) right alongside Sonic, so he could easily have been altered a little design-wise to stand more on his own.

* Kendra on ''DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' was a recurring character in many second and third season episodes but vanished without a trace in the fourth season (Toby merely mentions that the two had broken up over the summer). This was particularly strange because her brother and (ex-)boyfriend were still on the show. One wonders why she wasn't there to react when her brother got expelled and re-admitted, found religion and abandoned it, got married, etc.

* In ''{{Pocahontas}}: Journey to a New World'' John Smith's friend Thomas and Ratcliffe's valet Wiggums are nowhere to be seen.

* Kendra on ''DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' was a recurring character in many second and third season episodes, and vanished without a trace in the fourth season. This was particularly strange because her brother and boyfriend were still on the show. (One wonders why she wasn't there to react when her brother got expelled and re-admitted, found religion and abandoned it...)

* Towards the end of ''DigimonFrontier'', the kids seem to stop using their beast spirits, generally favouring the human spirits, even though the beast are more powerful. JagerLowemon in particular, only show up two or three times.

* ''[[ElHazard El Hazard: The Alternative World]]'' introduced a (seemingly nameless) farmer as a love interest for princess Rune Venus. One episode ended, for him, on a literal cliffhanger - he was left clinging to the edge of a cliff, about to fall to his doom. However, the cliffhanger was never resolved and the character was never seen (or even mentioned) again.

*** In the anime at least, she appears with several other characters who hadn't appeared since Dragonball to offer power to the Spirit Bomb.

** This is a setting with Chaos permeating literally everything and trying to undo the orderly universe. SoYeah it happens.

* ''TheSimpsons'': Rainier Wolfcastle (a parody of ArnoldSchwarzenegger) has been MIA for a long while. Oddly enough, when Schwarzenegger was the president in the movie he was played by Wolfcastle's voice actor and looked exactly the same as Wolfcastle, if a little older. His more recent episodes mirrored Ahnold's later movie career. SoYeah. On top of that, I think he had only one or two lines in the episode parodying the 2003 California recall election.

* On ''{{Bleach}}'' Ichigo's cute retainer, Kon, and the rest of his retainer friends are never seen again after season 6 with no explanation at all.

* In the animated version of ''CharlottessWeb'' Jeffrey the gosling, Wilbur's best friend besides Charlotte, is never seen again after he attempts to join Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton in the crate and is taken out.

* About 70% of the girls from the first season of ''TheFactsOfLife'', including Molly Ringwald ("[[TheDanza Molly]] Parker") and Felice Schachter ("Nancy Butler").
** Nope, doesn't fit the trope. The characters didn't just vanish, the setting of the show shifted from a dorm house to the cafeteria (where the remaining girls had to live as punishment for sneaking out to a bar with newly introduced Jo) and several of the first season girls did have cameos early on in this era of the show. You could make a case for the Headmaster being Chucked, though.

* Judy Winslow, the youngest daughter on ''FamilyMatters'', simply vanished after the fourth season. She was followed into oblivion by Aunt Rachel, whose son Richie was treated as if he were the Winslows' youngest kid. Laura's best friend Penny and Eddie's sleazy best friend Rodney also vanished.
** She was the first of many to fall off the face of reality as TheUrkel continued to [[SpotlightStealingSquad take over more and more screentime.]] Seeing how he's a MadScientist, that's slightly suspicious...
** By the show's [[PostScriptSeason last season]], the only characters remaining for the series finale were [[TheOtherDarrin Harriette]], Carl, Eddie, Laura, [[TheUrkel Urkel]], and [[CousinOliver 3-J]]. In other words, no more Judy, Rachel, Richie, Mama Winslow, Fletcher, Waldo, Penny, Rodney, or Murtaugh, among many others.
** This is not entirely true. Although they did not appear in the finale, these characters were given explantions for their absences: Mama Winslow and Fletcher married and moved away, Rachel's book became a best seller and she went on an extended book tour, and Waldo moved to France to go to cooking school. These were mentioned or seen on the show.

* In the {{Yu-Gi-OH}} Manga, a character named Hanasaki appears. The characters become friends with him, he's around for some chapters, but after the Death-T arc, he disappears and is never mentioned again.

* Kimi Toudou, GenkiGirl and shameless GoldDigger from FruitsBasket. The last scene we see with her is her [[FalseStart interrupting a love confession]] between Yuki Sohma and Machi Kuragi while looking for her missing hair brush. She never appears again. This is somewhat surprising as virtually every other minor character in the series makes some sort of appearance for a CleaningUpRomanticLooseEnds chapter at the end. (Even Naohito Sakuragi, equal to Kimi in terms of importance, gets paired off with Motoko Minagawa [the Yuki Sohma Fan Club President] at the end.)
* This has happened several times in BakuganBattleBrawlers. It started with Naga's Gatekeepers (Two of which canonically survived after a HeelFaceTurn), extremely powerful minions of the first season's BigBad who for some reason don't come up ever again despite the BigBad of season two wanting powerful Bakugan (at first).

* After the first episode of {{Weiss Kreuz}}, Michiru is never mentioned or seen again...despite being explicitly mentioned as a regular customer and apparently being friends of a sort with the boys. [[spoiler: Then again, given what happens to most of the girls associated with them...]]
* On {{Bleach}} Ichigo's cute retainer, Kon, and the rest of his retainer friends are never seen again after season 6 with no explanation at all.

* ''Dr. Dolittle'': Rodney the guinea pig is nowhere to be found come the sequel, probably because his voice actor, Chris Rock, declined to return. While Rodney may likely have died of age by ''Dr. Dolittle 2'', this is never addressed at any point.

* In the animated version of ''Charlottes's Web'' Jeffrey the gosling, Wilbur's best friend besides Charlotte, is never seen again after he attempts to join Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton in the crate and is taken out.

* In Jackie Chan's ''Mr. Nice Guy'', whatever happened to Tara and Diana? The latter was last seen getting punched in the face by one of the bad guys, but we can't tell whether she was killed.

** Ditto Greg Germann's character from the pilot of ''Eureka'', who suddenly vanishes in the second episode and remains forgotten, even though his obnoxious assistant, Fargo, remains.

* A weird and infamous example is the handyman Benny in the 1970's ITV soap opera ''Crossroads''. He climbed up a ladder to fix the lights on a Christmas tree, and was never seen again.

** 'LifeWithDerek'', where Noel only had three appearances that were rather influential [[spoiler: (i.e. he was partially the reason why Casey broke up with Max in the episode ''Allergy Season'')]]. It was even set up in the episode ''Just Friends'' where Casey and Noel would become a couple... except not, apparently.

* In the first episode of THE PAPER CHASE, the study group included a woman who never appeared again. In the second episode, she was replaced without explanation by a different woman, Logan, a major character throughout Season One. When, after cancellation on its original network, the series returned for Season Two on a cable network, Logan had inexplicably vanished, never to be mentioned again.

* The Andorians can be seen as an entire Chuck Cunningham ''species'' in the StarTrek Universe - Enterprise and TOS set them up as the third most important race in the Federation... by TheNextGeneration, they're all gone. The WordOfGod explanation was that they were just too silly-looking (blue skin and antennae...).
*In ''Reaper'', Sam's brother appears in the first two episodes and then is never seen or mentioned again for the rest of the show's two-year run.

* Chip Dunham's ''Overboard'' had several pirate characters early on that just sort of disappeared over time. To replace them, he's increasingly relied on TalkingAnimal characters (dogs, mice, and rabbits) to serve as foils to lead character Captain Crow and remaining shipmates Charley and Nate.

* From CtrlAltDel, Scott the Linux guy and his penguin Ted have disapeared without a trace, despite an upcoming plot point about him being anounced once. Now his name is a bannable offense on the CAD forums. Bannable for life.

* An example from a ''cook book'', of all places; Specifically, the StarTrek cookbook. There's a recipe for coconut cream pie ('Tuwaly Pie'), where they ask you to make twice the amount of batter you need, and do a lot of work on both halves. After you've really worked hard on half, it just vanishes from the recipe. You don't do anything with it, and it's never referenced again in the book.

** This is not entirely true. Mama Winslow and Fletcher married in season 7 and moved away. They make sporadic appearances in [[PostScriptSeason the last 2 seasons of the show]].