Fun tidbits from the docs on MonoBehaviour:
"This class doesn't support the null-conditional operator (?.) and the null-coalescing operator (??)."
There is a cryptic note that "There is a checkbox for enabling or disabling MonoBehaviour in the Unity Editor. It disables functions when unticked. If none of these functions are present in the script, the Unity Editor does not display the checkbox. The functions are:
Start()
Update()
FixedUpdate()
LateUpdate()
OnGUI()
OnDisable()
OnEnable()"
It does not say where this checkbox is, nor why you would want to do this.
@andykorth Oh, THAT checkbox!
I always thought of that as "pretend this component isn't here" rather than "don't call these specific methods", but I guess it amounts to the same thing.