# Name some stories where the protagonist and antagonist never meet **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 13, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112 "2017-03-13T19:49:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/1 "2017-03-13T19:49:06Z")
Over the weekend, we were discussing the movie _The Fifth Element_, and realized that the protagonist and antagonist in that movie not only #1. Never meet But also #2. Don’t know the other exists And yet #3. The protagonist still defeats the antagonist Which we thought was cool, but couldn’t think of any other examples of this pattern. Star Wars IV meets #1 and #3 (gray area: Luke sees Vader, but doesn’t interact with him) , but not #2. I’m sure there are other examples that meet all three items. Can anyone name any? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/2 "2017-03-13T19:55:01Z")
There are several where the encounters are fleeting. In Frederick Forsyth’s **Day of the Jackal** , for instance, Commissaire Claude Lebel and The Jackal fence with each other throughout, but only meet at the very end. In **Dracula** , the Count appears in surprisingly few scenes. He interacts with Harker quite a bit, but arguably Van Helsing is his major nemesis, and they meet only briefly, once. Van Helsing isn’t even in at the kill, IIRC. In war films, like **Sink the Bismark** (based on C.S. Forester’s _the Last Nine Days of the Bismarck_), the people directing operations on each side never meet. Certainly the people in the offices in London and Germany never meet, but neither do the captains of the ships involved. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/3 "2017-03-13T20:07:01Z")
Well Patton read Rommel’s book at least. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/4 "2017-03-13T20:11:26Z")
Spoilers inevitable, right? IIRC, this is what happens in _The Pledge_: Jack Nicholson uses a kid as bait to trap the preys-on-kids criminal that he doesn’t actually know exists. See, someone else confessed to the original crime and then died, but this one oddball obsessively suspects they got the wrong guy and a pattern-loving serial predator is still out there. Anyhow, like I said he uses a kid as bait – which, when the truth comes out, wreaks seven kinds of hell on his personal life – and, unbeknownst to him, the criminal dies in a car crash while rushing to what he didn’t realize was a trap. And so the antagonist arguably gets defeated without ever realizing he was up against a protagonist, and the protagonist apparently spends the rest of his life thinking he had it all wrong and there never was an antagonist out there getting lured in. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/5 "2017-03-13T20:14:00Z")
Frodo never meets Sauron, but defeats him (to all intents and purposes, despite faltering at the end). Frodo knows Sauron exists, but Sauron doesn’t really know anything about Frodo. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/6 "2017-03-13T20:16:06Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > In war films, like **Sink the Bismark** (based on C.S. Forester’s _the Last Nine Days of the Bismarck_), the people directing operations on each side never meet. Certainly the people in the offices in London and Germany never meet, but neither do the captains of the ships involved. Yes, I was thinking there would be Naval examples but couldn’t come up with any myself. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/7 "2017-03-13T20:17:43Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Frodo never meets Sauron, but defeats him (to all intents and purposes, despite faltering at the end). Frodo knows Sauron exists, but Sauron doesn’t really know anything about Frodo. That qualifies for a 2.5 out of 3 score, which is a winner in my thread. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/8 "2017-03-13T20:18:46Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > IIRC, this is what happens in _The Pledge_: Jack Nicholson uses a kid as bait to trap the preys-on-kids criminal that he doesn’t actually know exists. See, someone else confessed to the original crime and then died, but this one oddball obsessively suspects they got the wrong guy and a pattern-loving serial predator is still out there. I’m not familiar with that movie, but sounds like a match to me. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/9 "2017-03-13T20:21:07Z")
A general tip: when trying to find media with a similar concept, I often check the TV Tropes entry for that piece of media for an entry for the concept. Digging through the _The Firth Element_ page, I found “[Unknown Rival](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnknownRival).” (Trying to think of my own example, I want to count _Star Wars_, for Luke Skywalker and Grand Moff Tarkin. They never met, LS defeated GMT, and while it is possible that GMT’s name was dropped at The Big Briefing, LS would have probably known nothing more about him.) ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/10 "2017-03-13T20:34:20Z")
In _The Avengers,_ they never meet Thanatos, don’t learn anything about him, and defeat his invasion anyway. Which I guess counts as one of the “naval victories” mentioned above, except it’s a space navy. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/11 "2017-03-13T20:40:05Z")
No Country For Old Men ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/12 "2017-03-13T21:00:45Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > No Country For Old Men Spoilers of course: #1. Ok. Bell and Chigurh never actually meet. #2. Sort of. Bell knows that someone like Chigurh exists, and Chigurh becomes aware of Bell when he comes to the motel where Moss has been killed. But they don’t really know each other’s identities. #3. No. Chigurh escapes, probably with the money. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/13 "2017-03-13T21:09:40Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > (Trying to think of my own example, I want to count _Star Wars_, for Luke Skywalker and Grand Moff Tarkin. They never met, LS defeated GMT, and while it is possible that GMT’s name was dropped at The Big Briefing, LS would have probably known nothing more about him.) Does Tarkin know about Luke? Also, does Tarkin know that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father? Uh, does he know who Darth Vader really is at all? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/14 "2017-03-13T21:36:17Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Does Tarkin know about Luke? Specifically, almost undoubtedly not. He knows that his men have captured a ship which “blasted its way out of Mos Eisley,” and suspects that the occupants of that ship were trying to bring the stolen plans to Alderaan. He knows that Obi-Wan is then on the Death Star, thanks to Vader sensing his former master, and I would imagine that they ran a background check on the Falcon after capturing it (and thus likely learned Han’s name), but Luke is, from Tarkin’s POV, just some random person. > [@Mahaloth](#): > > Also, does Tarkin know that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father? Uh, does he know who Darth Vader really is at all? Given that the recently-armored Vader is shown on the bridge of a Star Destroyer with Tarkin at the end of Episode III (overseeing initial construction of the Death Star, IIRC), I think it’s possible that Tarkin knows that Vader is Skywalker (since Vader had gone by that name until very recently before), but it’s not clear one way or the other. And, certainly, Darth Vader looks very different from Anakin Skywalker, so I think the only reason that Tarkin would know is if Palpatine had told him. Even if Tarkin knows that Vader is Anakin, I see no reason why he’d know that Vader had children (since Vader himself may not have known, at that point, that he had one or more living children). ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/15 "2017-03-13T21:37:47Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Does Tarkin know about Luke? Also, does Tarkin know that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father? Uh, does he know who Darth Vader really is at all? Tarkin knew that there were rebels on the Falcon that escaped, but he (and Vader) didn’t know them by name, and of the two Vader is the only one who got a glimpse of him. And I think Vader’s identity is a secret in the canon. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/16 "2017-03-13T21:43:06Z")
Memento, kinda? I’ve only seen it once and I went “HUH?” , but possibly, depending on your definition of “Protagonist” and “Antagonist” and “Meet”. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/17 "2017-03-13T21:57:46Z")
In issue #4 of _The Heckler_ comics, Bushwack’r sets a series of fiendish and elaborate deathtraps for the Heckler. The Heckler doesn’t even notice them, as they constantly backfire in wierd ways, with the Bushwack’r (obviously based on the Coyote and an hommage to Chuck Jones) bearing the brunt of the destruction. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/18 "2017-03-13T22:08:59Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > In issue #4 of _The Heckler_ comics, Bushwack’r sets a series of fiendish and elaborate deathtraps for the Heckler. The Heckler doesn’t even notice them, as they constantly backfire in wierd ways, with the Bushwack’r (obviously based on the Coyote and an hommage to Chuck Jones) bearing the brunt of the destruction. In that vein, _Robin Hood Daffy_ from 1958 features Daffy Duck as Robin Hood trying to impress an unnamed Friar (Porky Pig) by robbing a wealthy nobleman. The nobleman remains utterly oblivious to all of Robin/Daffy’s attempts to intercept him. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/19 "2017-03-13T22:51:25Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Tarkin knew that there were rebels on the Falcon that escaped, but he (and Vader) didn’t know them by name, and of the two Vader is the only one who got a glimpse of him. Heh. Tarkin knew _Leia_ was on that ship, though – and she’s the one who sent word to Tatooine, to get the old wizard to show up with an apprentice in tow; and she’s the one who got the blueprints to folks who could tell that apprentice what to do; and she’s the one who then gave him that medal for doing it. Luke doesn’t really act on his own initiative in that one, but Leia apparently does. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112/20 "2017-03-13T23:12:06Z")
In Murphy’s War the only survivor of a merchant ship(Peter O’Toole) obsessively goes after a German Uboat and its commander in South America. 1. I’m pretty sure they never meet 2. He knows the Uboat has a commander of course but doesn’t specifically know him. 3. Uboat is sunk. Of course O’Toole winds up dying too but he accomplished what he wanted. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-some-stories-where-the-protagonist-and-antagonist-never-meet/782112.md?page=2)