20 Movie Characters Who Never Got The Comeuppance They Deserved

20. Pinocchio - Honest John

Disney animations have always soared high on their fairy-tale appeal; these are stories where good triumphs over evil, and the villains of the story get their just deserts by the end. At least, that's normally how it goes. Disney's sophomore feature, Pinocchio, subverted expectations here, as its most noteworthy villain doesn't get any sort of punishment. 

Well, Monstro the Whale is defeated by Pinocchio (Dickie Jones) at the end, but Monstro only appears in the final stretch. Throughout the rest of the story, the main villain is the fox Honest John (Walter Catlett), who leads Pinocchio astray not once but twice. He is perhaps the greatest test of Pinocchio's conscience throughout much of the film, and one could reasonably expect there to be some sort of final confrontation where Pinocchio finally learns to resist temptation. 

But no, not at all. After tricking Pinocchio into boarding a coach that takes him to that strange island where boys are turned into donkeys, Honest John disappears from the movie altogether and is never referred to again. Apparently, there were going to be scenes depicting John and his accomplice, Gideon, being captured by the police, but these were ultimately cut, which was arguably to the film's detriment. 

For all of the movie's considerable strengths, it doesn't have the sturdiest of plots, and adding more of a pay-off to Honest John's story would've gone some way in remedying this.