This video was sponsored by Campfire! No relation to The S'mores Incident. Okay, I can explain. This is one of the tropes with a weirder name,
but as soon as I start describing it, you're gonna get the picture. You know that thing, where in order to show
that two characters have a storied history together packed with Hijinks and Shenanigans,
they'll start talking about some thing that happened offscreen. And they'll be vague about it, because they
were both there and know what happened so they aren't just going to drop any convenient
"as you know"s for the audience's benefit, so it's basically like an in-joke they aren't
sharing with us. You've 100% seen this before. This is the "you and I remember Budapest very
differently" thing. A Noodle Incident is a wacky hijink that the
characters reference but do not explain, and often if pressed for explanation they get
defensive or change the subject so the mystery is preserved. A Noodle Incident might even become a running
gag if enough characters bring it up - but it'll always be through hints and tidbits,
usually focused on the characters' emotional reactions and not the specific events they're
reacting to. In general, all we know about the noodle incident
is how the characters feel about it and one or two pertinent details about the most relevant
nouns in the key event. This trope is very widespread, and it's an
interesting little nugget, because it's storytelling by way of implication. And on paper it feels a little bit wrong,
or empty, to have a character hint at some exciting past adventure and then not show
it. It's a joke that implies a punchline rather
than having a punchline. And I've previously complained about stories
that imply they're doing something exciting or clever and then fail to live up to it,
like implying they've plotted out some grand and complicated mystery that ends up not having
a grand resolution. And when laid out in the broadest strokes,
this feels like another case of that. But it isn't, because in this case the fact
that the Noodle Incident is never explained is the entire point of the bit. The trope is called The Noodle Incident because
of a running joke in Calvin and Hobbes, where it is repeatedly implied that Calvin did something
horrible involving noodles that had the potential to get him put on Santa's naughty list. Bill Watterson decided against ever explaining
what "The Noodle Incident" was, because nothing he came up with would be funnier than what
the audience imagined. This principle of comedy is basically the
funny ha-ha version of the horror movie principle of not showing the monster. The terror the audience imagines from the
tiny hints of danger and the overwhelming power of the unknown is always scarier than
whatever the special effects department could rustle up, and the Noodle Incident is the
comedy invocation of this same idea. The line between comedy and horror is… thinner
than either genre would like it to be, and this means that if a writer plants the right
set of hints, they can cue the audience into entertaining themselves by contemplating the
implications of what the story is hiding from them. In the case of horror, the hints are danger
and fear - unexplained noises, movement in dark corners, threats in places you thought
were safe. In comedy, the hints are absurdities. The phrase "the noodle incident" tells you
nothing except that it was an incident that involved noodles. We can put on our Sherlock Holmes deerstalkers
for a minute and infer that whatever role noodles played in the incident was more prominent
than any other participating element in order to get the incident named after noodles, but
really all that tells us is the incident was probably food being used in a manner inappropriate
for food. "Calvin made a mess" is nowhere near as funny
as contemplating the implied horror of what he could've possibly done that could only
be described as "The Noodle Incident." Noodle Incidents are very efficient at communicating
information, but it's pointedly not the information about what the noodle incident was. Noodle Incidents are not about what happened,
it's the way they are talked about and described that's basically a characterization speedrun. For one thing, they flesh out a character's
backstory and make it clear to the audience that they have adventures and a life offscreen
and aren't just chained to the camera 24/7, which does a lot to make them feel more alive. But the bulk of the information the audience
gets from a noodle incident comes from how the characters act when they're talking about
it. The way they react to the sparse, vague hints
we get gives us a ton of information about the character. They describe or briefly flash back to an
unknown incident in their past, and how they choose to describe it or not describe it tells
us something about them. Maybe they're speaking really casually about
something that's implied to have been a very dangerous scenario, implying that they are
ridiculously badass and blasé about the dangers in their life; or maybe they're bragging about
something they pulled off in a very self-aggrandizing way that sounds suspiciously exaggerated,
implying that they're kind of a glory hound; or maybe they're acting very mildly annoyed
about some vaguely-defined grievance that sounds absolutely bizarre, which tells us
that they're way too acclimated to some really weird shit. Or maybe they keep starting a story they're
clearly passionate about and getting shut down, making it clear that the people around
them aren't being particularly considerate of them right now. And on that note, the way their fellow characters
react to them referencing the noodle incident gives us even more information. A character who reacts to a noodle incident
reference with extreme defensiveness was probably the butt of the joke, whatever the joke was. A character might shut down the conversation
because they've heard about the noodle incident too many times, making it clear that somebody
in the group really likes talking about it. This kind of thing can play out in so many
different ways, and because it's basically just freeform dialogue that the writer can
drop in anywhere there's a quiet moment, it's really narratively efficient for getting across
characterization in a very short span of time. One show that does this a lot is Leverage,
which seems to have gone out of its way to deliberately leave a lot of the characters'
adventures offscreen to make them feel like complex people who've lived exciting lives. In the very first episode it's mentioned that
former-insurance-investigator Nate has personally chased down every other main character at
least once, and those adventures are never ever shown in anything more than a few seconds
of out-of-context flashbacks. You'd think the first time the characters
met back when they were still on opposite sides would be a kind of important story beat,
but it… isn't. None of the characters care to bring it up
when they could be focusing on new adventures instead. Showing a flashback to a first meeting wouldn't
really add anything to the story. And the formula for later episodes follows
a similar principle of only hinting at events between episodes or backstory bits by showing
or telling us out-of-context goofs. We'll get little bite-sized flashbacks of
Parker throwing Hardison off a building or Eliot getting waterboarded or something, and
when it flashes back to the present, the way the characters react makes it pretty clear
that all of these things are very normal for them and not really worth dwelling on - although
their friends might disagree. And it might sound like these are stories
an audience might be curious about seeing in the actual show, but what makes the balance
of Leverage work is that these noodle incidents are pretty much par for how the actual episodes
go. We never really feel like we're being cheated
out of the "Parker steals the Stanley Cup" episode because we've got like seven seasons
of stuff exactly like that. The noodle incidents just make it feel like
there's more show happening in the background of the show. In horror movies, the scariness of the story
often takes a rapid downturn after the monster is fully revealed for the first time. Sometimes this has to do with special effects
not holding up, but mostly it's just from the simple fact that almost all fear is grounded
in the unknown, and once the audience gets a clear, good look at the danger, it's not
unknown anymore. It can still be scary, but it won't be as
scary as it was when the audience was imagining it as their own personal worst nightmare. Alien is straight up terrifying until the
very last scene, which is also the first time we get a clear, bright shot of the alien in
question and it becomes very apparent that it's a guy in a well-made suit. Thankfully the reveal is saved til the very
end, and on rewatches the movie still holds up if you know what the alien looks like,
but it takes away some of the highly specific horror of how well it blends into the environment
and how the characters have no idea what to look for when it gets big. And noodle incidents face the comedy equivalent
of the same thing, because despite the fact that Noodle Incidents are entirely built on
not explaining the joke, some stories do anyway, and this explanation usually happens because
not all noodle incidents are actually funny. For instance, sometimes characters reference
serious Noodle Incidents to highlight how badass they are, either by bragging about
some vaguely-defined accomplishment or referencing some vaguely horrifying element of their formative
tragic backstory. A character with a storied and exciting past
full of too many adventures to ever show can pretty much always allude to some exciting
and cool thing they did one time, and as long as it lines up with the competence the audience
has actually seen from them in the episodes that did get made, it feels like a plausible
noodle incident without needing clarification. Of course you also get cases where a character
brags about stuff they did offscreen that doesn't really line up with their actual onscreen
characterization, which might indicate that this character is lying or exaggerating, or
that the writers are hiding all the exciting adventures in the offscreen zone for some
reason. But tragic backstory noodle incidents are
in kind of a weird zone. Comedic noodle incidents, as discussed, are
basically a funny invocation of a horror trope, storytelling by implication to let the audience
fill in the gaps with their own imagination without bogging down the story with too many
lengthy explanations. In fact, since a lot of comedy is built on
characters being distressed, a comedic noodle incident might be played for laughs but actually
be describing an event that sounds unpleasant at best and horrific at worst. And if a writer takes those implications and
plays them straight they get tragic noodle incidents which invert that horror-to-comedy
inversion and loop back around to just being horror tropes. If a character briefly and vaguely alludes
to something they went through that sounds tragic or nightmarish, it serves the same
purpose as a typical noodle incident - providing a highly dense chunk of characterization just
through the way the character refers to the event without ever having to specify what
went down. And it signals to the audience how this character
feels about their backstory and how much they want to share - for instance, in typical Noodle
Incident fashion, if they never clarify or they shut down follow-up questions it might
indicate that this slice of backstory is, rather reasonably, a sore spot they don't
wanna talk about too much. But unlike a typical comedic noodle incident,
these more serious teases of emotionally nuanced backstory elements might actually invite a
clear explanation. A dark or upsetting element of somebody's
backstory could potentially be important and require that the character actually tell the
audience what specifically happened. Sometimes these reveals even reframe a noodle
incident that previously seemed light-hearted and comedic by revealing that the vagueness
of the references to it were concealing the real emotional weight of what went down. If a noodle incident is hiding an actual plot-relevant
event, it kind of has to eventually get cracked open and explained. But this is pretty rare; most noodle incidents
are jokes that don't need to be explained, and like all jokes, would be less funny if
they were explained. This actually segues into an interesting tangential
principle that applies to a lot of stories, which I like to call "fans don't actually
know what they want from their stories." The entire core principle of a noodle incident
is that it gives the audience just enough information for them to speculate and extrapolate
what might've happened. Whether that extrapolation is in the dimension
of comedy or horror depends on the planting and how the characters frame it. By its very nature, a noodle incident piques
the audience's interest and makes them wonder what happened. But foundational in the trope is the simple
fact that the audience's loose speculation is more entertaining for them than a clear
explanation would be. Essentially, this trope entertains an audience
by making them wonder what happened, but if the audience then asks the storyteller what
really happened and the story decides to tell them, the wave function collapses into certainty
and all that fun speculation and comedic vagueness goes away. The noodle incident just becomes a little
flashback within the story. And this has confused storytellers. The fans spent so much time clamoring to know
what happened, and then we showed them, and they seemed disappointed! This is kind of what screwed over Solo: A
Star Wars Story, a completely passable movie whose entire purpose was explaining every
single noodle incident Han Solo referenced in the original trilogy. It lays down in canon exactly what he was
talking about when he said they did the Kessel run, or that Chewie hangs out with him cuz
he owes him a life debt, or that he won the Falcon from Lando in a game. And you can almost hear the writers room clapping
themselves on the back because they've figured out how to give the audience the fanservice
they demand, because fans have been speculating about the kessel run for decades! Won't it be so good for them to finally see
it? And we can finally stick it to those people
who keep pointing out that a parsec is a unit of distance by explaining how that actually
made sense all along! People are gonna love this movie! After all, it's what they've been asking for
for years! Solo kinda heralded the current era of Star
Wars content where everything feels pretty intensely focus-grouped to give fans what
they think fans want from playing to the averages, and that means every time they explain a noodle
incident, it ends up being basically the average explanation. Solo is a movie with no surprises except for
how good that one explosion looked. And I probably liked that movie more than
most people. I mean, for one thing I actually watched it,
which is already kind of a big step. And for ages, the best thing I've had to say
in its defense is that it's exactly what I expected it to be. It hits every beat you'd expect from a Han
Solo origin story. He checks off every box from his backstory,
has a gunfight where he shoots first, gets all his equipment in order and flies off into
the sunset with all the stars going whoosh. We even get to see Chewie rip a guy's arms
off. On paper this is a nice and tidy way to give
fans the answers to every question they've been asking since Han first rocked up on the
silver screen in 1977. There's only one problem. A gold-hearted street-smart scoundrel like
Han Solo should not be a character with all his questions answered. He's had a long and complicated life causing
problems and getting into scrapes. The reason he has so many noodle incidents
in the first trilogy is because he's had the most convoluted life out of our trio of protagonists
when contrasted with "princess on a mission" and "farmboy who's never left his zipcode",
and this is signaled by him constantly referencing things he and Chewie have done in a way that
implies he's been doing a lot of stuff. The fact that we don't know his whole story
and he's been up to a lot of sketchy shenanigans is kinda foundational to his vibes, and it
makes the twist of his character work where he shockingly does not abandon the good guys
and instead gets himself in a lot of trouble doing the right thing for once. Han is a pretty simple character and he's
written pretty efficiently in the original trilogy, and the fact that there's a lot of
vagueness in his backstory is a feature of his archetype, not a bug to be corrected. Now when Han mentions the kessel run, the
audience doesn't go "ooh, the Kessel Run, that sounds interesting and space-related,
he must've gotten up to a lot of fun high-speed adventures", they go "oh yea, I remember that
part of the movie with the thing that lives near black holes but isn't immune to black
holes." The Noodle Incident trope illustrates one
of the more counterintuitive parts of storytelling, and one of the parts that I personally have
had the most trouble internalizing: sometimes it's better to not explain something. The bones of the story need to be pretty solid
- setup, payoff, key backstory elements, explanations to hyped-up mysteries - but outside of that
core space there's a lot of room for vagueness and flexibility and implication. Noodle Incidents are characterization tropes. What happens in them almost never matters,
it's how the characters feel and talk about them that's the real meat of this trope. To drop in a quick MCU example, one of Nick
Fury's most interesting lines back in the earlier phases was "Last time I trusted someone,
I lost an eye." Nick Fury's eyepatch is an iconic part of
his character design, but up to this point it's never really been focused on or addressed
directly in the movies, and Nick Fury is not the kind of person to volunteer information
that isn't need-to-know. So when he drops that little tidbit, the takeaway
isn't "oh man, I wonder what specifically happened to make him lose that eye," it's
"oh man, so Nick Fury has been profoundly betrayed by somebody he trusted in a way that
literally scarred him for life, which is probably part of why he is so ridiculously cautious
and overprepared, he sure has been through a lot of stuff that tempered him into the
ludicrous badass he is today - somebody who would never make that mistake again." It's a characterization cue. No explanation for his missing eye was going
to have the same impact on the audience as just hearing him talk about it. And especially… especially not the explanation they actually
gave us. And that is actually pretty illustrative of
this point! When they finally showed us How Nick Fury
Lost That Eye, it was a joke, and it tacitly disproved all those juicy characterization
implications we'd inferred from that first reference. Profound betrayal shaping the young Nick Fury,
a reminder of his own past weakness staring him in the face every time he looked in the
mirror - now all we get from it is that he probably doesn't like cats very much. A noodle incident is basically narrative sleight
of hand. It looks like it's showing the audience a
fun hint of a hidden adventure, but through the execution of that hint it's actually teaching
the audience what kind of person the character is. And then, if the writer decides they wanna
show how the trick was done, the trick stops working. There's a lot of merit to leaving things loose
and unresolved when it comes to character backstories. If it's not foundational to the comprehension
of the story, it doesn't need to be set in stone. We don't need to see exactly what Han Solo
did to piss off Jabba the Hutt, the only part that matters for the story is that he did
piss off Jabba the Hutt and now our heroes need to deal with the consequences. And when we examine this uncertainty principle
- a term that definitely has no other, more confusing meanings - we can loop this back
to horror again. At the end of the horror movie The Thing,
when the arctic base has burned down and the creature has theoretically been destroyed,
there are only two survivors left - protagonist MacReady and engineer Childs, who had previously
disappeared and was presumed dead but claims to have just gotten lost in the storm. Given the whole conceit of The Thing, it is
entirely possible that that is not Childs. Hell, if you squint, it's technically also
possible that that's not MacReady. The ending is brutally ambiguous - maybe our
two human survivors have a chance of making it, or maybe the only human survivor is about
to die in some horrible way and the Thing in question is just gonna freeze itself into
hibernation again. There's tons of theories and speculation about
it - but fundamentally it doesn't have an answer. That's what makes it work. No explanation would be as effective as the
impact of not having an explanation. I do feel the need to go off-script and clarify
just a little bit that it takes work to create a story wherein no explanation would be as
satisfying as the impact of not having an explanation. Because this is like the root of that mystery-box
form of storytelling that I think is absolute bullshit, because it's like - if you're telling
a mystery, the entire point of the story is the resolution of the mystery. That is pointedly not a case where a lack
of explanation is more impactful than an explanation. If it's a mystery, we wanna see it solved. Okay, that's it, I'm done, we're good, bye. So yeah! And thanks again to Campfire for sponsoring
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