Avoid misuse of underscore argument

Per convention, underscore-only argument names should be used for unused parameters.
Merge pull request #15535 from coreyward/patch-1

Avoid misuse of underscore argument
Remove optimization that was required with whiny nils

Whiny nils is no longer a thing, so we no longer need this optimization
Merge pull request #15536 from sgrif/sg-remove-whiny-nil-thing

Remove optimization that was required with whiny nils