The aim of this talk is to show that missing object constructions (“null objects”, “object gaps”) in a single language, as well as across languages, is better understood as deriving via the application of different operations in different languages and do not constitute a homogeneous phenomenon (pro, or “variable”, or “ellipsis”). In other words, there is not one analysis that can account uniformly for the syntactic status of missing objects across languages: a range of phenomena is possible, according to other properties the language has. I then examine a specific case, missing objects in Brazilian Portuguese, a phenomenon that has a set of unique properties that correlate to other facts of the language and leads to a particular analysis, that may not necessarily be extended to other languages.