Here's a rather complicated example from Android: http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/avoiding-memory-leaks.html http://developer.android.com/resour

Here's a rather complicated example from Android: http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/avoiding-memory-leaks.html http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/avoiding-mem... It's pretty Android specific, but the general idea probably can happen in other contexts (pun intended), when some framework or other retains a reference to something you expect to be garbage collected.