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That Mysterious Thing

97 statements
17 feature instances
9 referencing feature instances

That Mysterious Thing	type	FeatureClass
That Mysterious Thing	label	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing	page	ThatMysteriousThing
That Mysterious Thing	comment	Sometimes characters will refer to an object, person, event or plan in an extremely ambiguous way, mostly just to screw with the audience. Maybe it's a Running Gag, which will never be revealed, because to do so would ruin a perfectly good joke. Maybe you're seeing events from a particular character's perspective, and because it is integral to the plot that this character doesn't know what this 'thing' is, other people will refer to it in vague terms so as to heighten the suspense and not give away the ending. Maybe it's the cake for a surprise birthday party. Maybe it's a priceless artifact another character is planning to steal. Either way, you won't know what that mysterious 'thing' really is until the most dramatic moment possible. See Noodle Incident ("Remember 'that time' when..."), Noodle Implements ("'That thing' I plan on doing with all this weird stuff..."). May turn out to be a Chekhov's Gun, involving Foreshadowing. See also Undercover When Alone. Occasionally related to Buffy Speak, when a character refers to something as a 'thing' due to lack of full knowledge of what said 'thing' actually is. Compare Hurricane of Euphemisms and related tropes, in which the mysterious 'thing' isn't referred to vague terms but in bizarre ones. Examples
That Mysterious Thing	fetched	2023-04-15T05:43:17Z
That Mysterious Thing	parsed	2023-04-15T05:43:17Z
That Mysterious Thing	processingComment	Dropped link to HotSpringsEpisode: Not an Item - FEATURE
That Mysterious Thing	processingComment	Dropped link to MacGuffin: Not an Item - FEATURE
That Mysterious Thing	processingComment	Dropped link to MeatLoaf: Not an Item - IGNORE
That Mysterious Thing	processingComment	Dropped link to RealLife: Not an Item - FEATURE
That Mysterious Thing	processingComment	Dropped link to TomLehrer: Not an Item - IGNORE
That Mysterious Thing	isPartOf	DBTropes
That Mysterious Thing / int_1484a16e	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_1484a16e	comment	In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid tells the bank goblin, "I'm here to pick up the you-know-what in vault 713." It turns out to be the Philosopher's Stone.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_22f708ef	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_22f708ef	comment	Quark. In "All the Emperor's Quasi Norms", Zorgon threatens to kill Quark unless he reveals where "it" is. Having no idea what he's talking about, Quark plays for time by saying it is on a particular asteroid. Turns out "It" really is there, causing Quark to believe this is a case of Because Destiny Says So when he's told by the locals of a legend about a stranger who will use "It" to defeat their enemy. But it turns out that "It" is just a worthless rock and the whole thing is a coincidence.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_3736eb2	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_3736eb2	comment	The Secret Show had the "Secret Thing" — some sort of small object housed in an orange, candlestick-esque holder. We never found out what it was, all we knew was that it rattled around inside the holder, and that it was very important that T.H.E.M. not get their hands on it. It would frequently show up in random locations as a Freeze-Frame Bonus.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_439a65b3	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_439a65b3	comment	In the movie and play Doubt, characters go out of their way, understandably, to not say the words 'gay' or 'molestation'. They don't even say 'homosexual', which would be the most likely word for that time and place. The closest they really get to saying it out loud is 'the boy's nature' and 'inappropriate relations'. It's actually pretty interesting how they get everyone in the audience to know what they are talking about immediately, without actually putting a name to it.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_533a0e8f	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_533a0e8f	comment	Baman Piderman occasionally draws attention to "that thing ober there" only for Baman to say he doesn't know what it is.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_5e91c7a	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_5e91c7a	comment	One of the files in the Resident Evil remake has John Toleman promising the Groundskeeper "a certain item he had always wanted to get hold on" in exchange for hiding the imitation of a key. The file hints how to find said key, but you never find out what this item is or if the Groundskeeper ever got to enjoy it before turning into a zombie.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_7ab10627	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_7ab10627	comment	Lampshaded in Star Trek: The Motion Picture
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That Mysterious Thing / int_9e1591e2	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_9e1591e2	comment	Played for laughs in EvAbridged 3.0 Rei is (not) Pleased
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That Mysterious Thing / int_a57cf54d	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_a57cf54d	comment	In Darths & Droids, Pete has a die that is this. We don't know what its made out of, but its apparently unsafe to roll indoors, must land on a metal tray, and is possibly deadly.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_b6b24d18	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_b6b24d18	comment	Also played with in The IT Crowd when Denholm inexplicably starts wearing ear-plugs:
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That Mysterious Thing / int_bd886ad	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_bd886ad	comment	From Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, 'That thing' that Potamus always sends people. See the quote above. Though, in once case it turned out that thing he sends is a motion for discovery, the failure of an opposing lawyer to respond leading to a mistrial.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_c4282b71	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_c4282b71	comment	My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Party of One", Pinkie Pie gets suspicious of all her closest friends making excuses to avoid coming to her party and starts spying on them. They seem to be planning something they want to hide from her, and at one point, Rarity states that "This is obviously going to be so much better" than the party Pinkie was planning. It turns out it's a surprise birthday party for Pinkie — she was so keen to make up an excuse to party that day that she forgot it was her own birthday.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_ca5d97f1	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_ca5d97f1	comment	Monty Python's Flying Circus did this a few times. Nudge, Nudge, Wink Wink sketch is mostly about this. Another sketch has the British government debating taxing "thingy". In the Pirhana Brothers sketch, with a mobster being interviewed by a reporter, and trying to keep a transaction secret:
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That Mysterious Thing / int_d6c9c0a4	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_d6c9c0a4	comment	The "new recruits" mentioned in the first episode of the second season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. At the end of the episode it turns out that they're the reassembled Tachikomas.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_d7765410	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_d7765410	comment	The Infocom text adventure based on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy features an item in the player's inventory called "thing your aunt gave you that you don't know what it is". When examined, it turns out to carry the informative label "Made in Ibiza". Any attempt to be rid of it fails; it immediately reappears in the player's inventory.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_e25322af	type	That Mysterious Thing
That Mysterious Thing / int_e25322af	comment	Deliberately exploited in one Homestar Runner cartoon, where Strong Bad, Strong Mad, and the Cheat all stand around "Looking at a thing in a bag," and talk about how fascinating it is. There isn't actually anything in the bag—they're just pretending so they can manipulate Homestar into buying stuff for them.
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That Mysterious Thing / int_f8c5624f	comment	The Eldan of WildStar frequently refer to a mysterious "Project" that created most of the oddities on Nexus, like giant terraformers in the Northern Wilds and Galeras, Metal Maw, a giant killer robot-fish-thing with a laser on its back, and Loftite, a mineral that allows objects to defy gravity.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

That Mysterious Thing	processingCategory2	Dialogue
That Mysterious Thing	processingCategory2	Mystery Tropes
That Mysterious Thing	processingCategory2	This Might Be an Index
Kiss Me Deadly / int_3aa71924	type	That Mysterious Thing
Glennkill	seeAlso	That Mysterious Thing
Titanic (1996) / int_3aa71924	type	That Mysterious Thing
Baman Piderman (Web Animation) / int_3aa71924	type	That Mysterious Thing
Scootertrix the Abridged (Web Video) / int_3aa71924	type	That Mysterious Thing
Darths & Droids (Webcomic) / int_3aa71924	type	That Mysterious Thing

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