Oliver Steele

The other procedural languages you mention may not have a direct implementation of "null contagion", but languages that are reasonably reflective would allow attempted attribute access and catching a failure thereof. For example, in Python:

try: name = product.offering.merchant.name
except AttributeError: name = None

displayMerchantName(name)

"Narrative mismatch" - nice phrase !
A reasonably common smell, which will be easier to find now that I have a concept for it.