Board Thread:Show-Related Questions and Answers/@comment-6302228-20130204065446/@comment-7302713-20130320235328

Important to the general populace doesn't exactly translate. A royal who was very important to a lot of people isn't necessarily in the same high position in a cursed Storybrooke. King George becomes DA, sure, but really, how often does he actually do anything? Would people notice if he wasn't there? And he could just as easily have become a random fisherman during the curse.

We're following several characters on the show. Multiple stories are unfolding simulateously. And we can't see everything that's going on. We're shown only what we need to follow the story. Important events and changes can be dispersed to us with an offhanded line of dialogue.

So really, all we know is that we don't know yet. Maybe whoever it is was important in FTL, important in Storybrook and important to the main characters but they don't know yet. Or they know and we just didn't see that part.

The sherriff's office could be conducting multiple missing persons investigations, though I don't think that's really likely. When the curse broke people went back to old allegiances or started forming new ones. If King George was missing, who would report it? And, more importantly, who would they report it to? We have fisherman turned into fish, men turned into mice, someone killed and the kill disguised and that's just what we've seen.

Par of what's going on here is the recent curse break affecting everyone. We have massive numbers of people changing jobs, changing habits, changing everything. But it's also because SB isn't operating like SB or any town for that matter. It's kinda operating like kingdoms at war.

There's also a lot going on that we don't see by virtue of how the story is told to us. And there's a lot going on that each side isn't privvy too. If you add up the key people on all sides and everything that they know about the current and the past of SB inhabitants--it's a lot, more than any one alliance knows, more than us as viewers are a aware of, but I'd guess that it's still woefully incomplete. So something could have happened or be happening to someone important (defined as importance of any kind, in FTL, in SB, to the major characters) and we the audience could simply not be aware, in large part because there is no guarantee that the people who's lives we're following are in the know.

Also, if you think about it, in FTL it isn't that uncommon to imprison people, change them into an animal or kill outright. Maybe someone finds out eventually, but certainly not right away. Think about how much of fairy tales is looking for someone even when there's no foul play. The prince looking for the girl who fits the glass slipper. Let's put a twist on it and say she's killed or transfigured. The prince doesn't find her, but he doesn't assume that she's met with a bad end. Her step-sisters know that she's not around, but they don't know that she hasn't run away. It seems that it's awfuly easy to have a terrible fate befale you and no one know in FTL. Secrets aren't just commonplace, they're adundant. Think of all the main characters who've been imprisoned or the victim of a spell. Generally someone knows what happened to them. Their jailor knows they're in jail, the castor knows who they cursed. But that doesn't tranlate to this knowledge being commonplace or even known amoung the other people this affects. Did David ever find out that Snow was cursed and that his mother died to lift it? How many years passed before Red knew that she was a wolf? How many people have made deals and kept their mouths shut? Think of the big secrets that manage not to get out.

That death could be a big deal to the main characters and the story we're following and we and/or they just don't know yet. That death could be a big deal to the characters we're following but not the stories we're following so the show never follows up. That death could be a major figure in FTL and/or SB but not be a big deal to the main characters or the story. The death could be of someone inconsequential. Basically, we don't know, and we won't until it's brought up again in the show. Us not knowing so far, or even us never knowing, doesn't mean that the person wasn't important. They might be and they might not be. But there's so much that each character doesn't know, that we don't know that there's simply no way to tell. This is not a case where the absense of information tells us something concrete. The absense of information tells us nothing.