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Mockstery Tale
- 132 statements
- 25 feature instances
- 19 referencing feature instances
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A mock mystery: a work of fiction that intrigues the reader with the trappings of a detective or a supernatural mystery, and then suddenly subverts his expectations; the mystery is revealed to be nonexistent, unsolvable, or unimportant to the plot, and the storyline takes on an entirely different direction, often launching into complicated philosophy, surrealism, or psychological drama. This trope is actually one of postmodernist authors' inventions: one of postmodernism's pillars is to mix the "high" and the "low" genres, basically creating philosophical tractates with pulp fiction covers. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })Such stories typically feature The Unreveal, The Unsolved Mystery, The Walrus Was Paul, Red Herring Twist, Mockspiracy, and Riddle for the Ages, and are set in a World of Mysteries. Often overlaps with Deconstruction, and may be considered the mystery version of the "Shaggy Dog" Story. Less-philosophical mock mysteries in Lighter and Softer works (especially sitcoms and children’s shows) often tend to be cases of Friendly Scheming and/or Mistaken for Murderer/Terrorist/Spy. Compare and contrast Fake Mystery, where the mystery framing is kept through the end, except that the entire drama is staged by the perpetrators to fool the detectives. A Sister Trope related to action/adventure/superheroics plots is Faux Adventure Story; they may also overlap. |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_10ec17a3 | type |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_10ec17a3 | comment |
The Passenger imitates the stylistics of a thriller road movie (a stolen identity, political intrigues, car chases, a young mysterious girl, etc.), but is actually a story of a depressed journalist trying to start a new life. | |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_298a47a9 | type |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_298a47a9 | comment |
The Big Lebowski is an interesting variant, as the mystery is the focus and gets solved... but it turns out to be totally pointless. The conspiracy the Dude and Walter are pursuing doesn't really exist; the Big Lebowski was just looking for an excuse to bilk some money from his charity and the Nihilists are a bunch of losers who only pretended to kidnap someone. Nobody was really hurt or in serious danger, so there really wasn't any point in investigating it all. The Dude is not amused by this, particularly since his friend Donny winds up as collateral damage. | |
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Broken Flowers does not reveal who sent Don the plot-instigating letter about his son, or if he really does have a son in the first place. However, the film is more like a study in the nature of human relationships and estrangement than anything else. | |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_46009ec4 | type |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_46009ec4 | comment |
Mulholland Dr. starts as a quintessential mystery movie involving an amnesiac Femme Fatale Rita in Los Angeles, a young enthusiastic actress Betty trying to help her, a mafia syndicate, a hitman after a mysterious black book, etc. However, Betty and Rita's investigation doesn't really clarify anything, and the story gets a really surreal turn from a certain point... According to a popular interpretation, the whole complicated mystery plot was a dream of failed actress Diane Selwyn who reimagines the events of her life in a more favorable light (Betty is her alter ego). The film was originally a TV pilot, and the mysteries were going to be explored more in the future episodes; however, Lynch also stated that "it would be a series of mysteries that spun out of each other and would never have a conclusion, unlike 'Twin Peaks'. He was very upset that Laura's killer had to be named and said he would not let that happen again", and "promised that when Rita's identity was finally revealed it would only open up other mysteries". |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_47ef91f5 | type |
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Cities of The Red Night by William S. Burroughs features a story of a private eye called Clem Snide on the trail of a missing teenage boy who gets involved in a story featuring dark cults, government conspiracies and ancient civilizations, obviously mirroring and parodying the pulp fiction cliches of the time. However, the storyline becomes increasingly surreal and incoherent, and the detective's story remains unresolved (one of the sequences even suggests that it could have been a fever-induced dream of yet another teenage boy). | |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_4de38b67 | type |
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Nocturnal Animals has a detective subplot (the plot of the detective novel written by Edward), and a few surreal scenes blurring the edges between the two storylines (one of the hoodlums from the novel actually pops out at Susan in a cell phone video, causing her to drop the phone), but it's all just a framing device for the story of Susan's relationship with Edward. | |
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In The Man Who Was Thursday, the anarchist conspiracy the protagonist attempts to inflitrate does not really exist, the conspiracy's leader was also the one who recruited them to spy on it, and the thriller plot is just pretext for a religious story. | |
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Filth is formally a story of a detective investigating a murder mystery, but in fact it's a surreal, darkly humorous psychological/existential drama. Not to mention the protagonist is the murderer himself. | |
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Thimbleweed Park opens with a murder and the first two playable main protagonists are FBI agents sent to solve it. However, both of them are quickly revealed to have ulterior motives for being in town and that they are using the murder as cover for their presence. The game later introduces other protagonists whose goals are unrelated to solving the murder. The murder is never definitively solved and several other mysteries crop up that also go unresolved because the real climax deals with the true nature of the world that the characters inhabit. | |
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L'Avventura centers around the disappearance of a young woman. The disappearance is never resolved, and the real focus of the plot is the relationship between two other characters. | |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_7bcde432 | type |
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This is the whole point of Mike Tyson Mysteries, which are parodies of Hanna-Barbera mystery cartoons. In each episode, the mystery is just a framing device; they are often unsolved or revealed to be nonexistent at all, and many cliffhangers are unresolved. | |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_7c31f1c7 | type |
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| Mockstery Tale / int_7c31f1c7 | comment |
In Blowup, a young photographer accidentally uncovers a murder. He attempts to investigate it, but he doesn't seem very enthusiastic in spite of actually finding the victim's body, his investigation ends in vain and the ending implies that he doesn't or shouldn't really care. | |
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In The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, the conspirological plot about a secret organization called Trystero is never resolved, and it is heavily implied to be a metaphor for the philosophical questions faced by mankind. What's more, in the end the protagonist is explicitly reluctant to pursue her investigation too far. |
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Firewatch starts as a man working as a fire-watcher at a national park investigating what seems to be a series of deaths and mysterious government activities with the help of an untrustworthy Voice with an Internet Connection. As it goes along, it becomes more a meditation on curiosity, loneliness, and escape from responsibility. Plus, it turns out to be a smokescreen with no deaths at all. | |
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Lost has shades of this. Much of the show's mythology is eventually explained, but some mysteries are intentionally left unsolved, such as Hurley's cursed numbers. In-universe, characters and organisations who devote themselves to unravelling the Island's mysteries always meet a bad end, and Word of God says their focus throughout the whole series was the characters and their relationships, which is Lampshaded by the series' finale. | |
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Basically the gist of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. The protagonists are attempting to uncover a number of mysteries related to their parents' death and a mysterious organization V. F. D. which they were members of; the reader is expecting that the ending books will provide the answers. However, the final book called The End has an entirely different focus; eventually, the whole series turn out to be more of a coming-of-age story than mystery fiction, and one of the author's points is that the world is full of unanswered questions. | |
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Inland Empire is quite incoherent from the very beginning, and yet it has mystery elements (like an old, allegedly cursed movie whose leads were murdered). Since it's a David Lynch movie, things get only weirder from there. | |
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The novel Special Topics In Calamity Physics is about a young woman describing the events that led up to her finding her teacher dead in an apparent suicide. Throughout the story, several hints that the death was in fact murder and that a conspiracy may be involved are dropped, and the narrator forms a theory, but she can't prove anything and the novel turns out to be more of a psychological drama and a coming-of-age story. The novel ends with a quiz asking the reader what you think happened. | |
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Mockstery Tale | |
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Under the Silver Lake has the form of a detective story about an amateur sleuth investigating a mystery by finding hidden codes in pop music, video game magazines, and cereal box images; however, it is more of a social commentary on Hollywood, consumerist culture, and humanity's existential need for mysteries and "hidden meanings". | |
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The Frankenstein Chronicles starts out as a Whodunnit? about a Hardboiled Detective following searching for a murderer who's stitching corpses together for some sinister purpose. However, partway through the first season the nominal mystery is solved and it takes a very different turn. | |
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From a Buick 8 by Stephen King is about a police investigation regarding a mysterious car which was left at a gas station and seems to have mystical properties. However, their investigation leads to nowhere, and the whole story is basically about coming to terms with the fact that some mysteries don't have answers. | |
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The central murder mystery in Heroes in Crisis is completely unsolvable. All of the clues are red herrings, all of the suspects are innocent, all of the detectives are completely fooled. The mystery is only solved because the killer confessed publicly, and was just trying to delay investigators until their confession was aired. The real point of the story, as with much of the work of Tom King, is to show superheroes trying and failing to deal with their trauma. | |
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Mockstery Tale | |
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The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: The mysteries were always more of a framing device for the usual "cat-versus-bird-versus-dog" antics of the original Looney Tunes shorts, and many of them turned out to be non-existent or unimportant to the plot. | |
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The Love Witch is an homage to pulps and the technicolor thrillers of the 1960s, and the protagonist Elaine whose charms cause the death of her lovers is largely inspired by the noir femme fatale characters. However, the thriller plot is merely a framing device for a feminist drama. | |
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The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime starts with the protagonist's discovery of a dog speared with a garden fork. The novel appears to take the direction of an amateur sleuth trying to unravel the mystery, but soon devolves into said sleuth talking about his own life, eventually leading to a revelation that spurs him to leave the city in search of his mother. We get the solution of the mystery subplot though. | |
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