View source for Shaggy Dog Story

{{trope}}
{{quote|''"''What?!'' That is it, I've had enough! This whole Goddamn adventure has been nothing but pointless build ups towards pay offs that ''never happen''."'' 
|'''Black Mage''', ''[[8-Bit Theater]]''}}

A [[Shaggy Dog Story]] is a plot with a high level of build-up and complicating action, only to be resolved with an anti-climax or ironic reversal, usually one that makes the entire story meaningless. The term comes from a type of joke (called "gildersome" in ''[[The Meaning of Liff]]'') that worked the same way—a basic premise, a long amount of buildup, and a deliberately underwhelming punchline.<ref>A form of [[Anti-Humor|anti-humor]]</ref>

The classic example is a man who bankrupts himself trying to return a shaggy dog to a rich family in England for reward money—when he finally makes it there, he's told that the dog "wasn't ''that'' shaggy" before the door's slammed in his face. The End.

For television, these stories tend to be found in two varieties: serious and comedic.

Serious shaggy dog stories generally put the protagonist on a quest or goal, only to undermine the purpose at the last minute. For instance, a cop spends all episode trying to convict a criminal, only to watch the perp be [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|hit by a car and die]] before he's brought to trial; or a doctor searches all episode for the cure to a mysterious illness, which seems to miraculously cure itself. This plot highlights the futility of characters' jobs, or the cruel ironies of life. An even crueler variant is [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]].

Comedic shaggy dog stories are often parodies, undercutting typical plot structures by offering a [[Contrived Coincidence|ridiculous coincidence]] or [[Deus Ex Machina|unforeseen twist]], or even just making the entire episode irrelevant. ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' enjoys these. Comedic shaggy dog stories can be frustrating in their randomness, but often succeed in execution.

This could be [[Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism|cynically viewed]] as [[Truth in Television]], since a lot of life's events don't seem to have much of a point to them either.

See also [[Gainax Ending]]. Can compare to [[All Just a Dream]] and [[Overly Long Gag]], and overlap with [[Happy Ending Override]] or [[Tall Tale]]. A reveal that [[It Was with You All Along]] may feel like this to the protagonist. For short stories which build up to an [[Incredibly Lame Pun|unbelievably wretched pun]], see [[Feghoot]]. Contrast with [[Shaggy Frog Story]], where a familiar story is mangled for comedic purposes.

Not to be confused with ''[[Scooby-Doo (animation)|Scooby Doo]]'', which is a cartoon featuring [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Shaggy's dog]]. Also not to be confused with the Disney's movie ''[[The Shaggy Dog (1959 film)|The Shaggy Dog]]''.

{{endingtrope}}
{{examples}}
==  Anime and Manga  ==
* The Komuvitan-D miniarc of ''[[D.Gray-man|D Gray Man]]'': Vengeful spirit releases an instantly-transmittable rage virus (originally designed as a supplement to help people work longer hours), Zombie Apocalypse tropes abound, race against time to find the alpha infected and synthesize a cure from his blood... long story short, the alpha is cured at the darkest hour-only to be promptly re-infected three panels later. The situation is fixed (in postscript text) by a side character who had reported to HQ and missed the whole thing, and the next arc begins as if nothing happened. The only thing anyone gets out of this arc is knowledge of just how much Chief Komui cares about his subordinates, even those who passed away years before...
* In the "Valentine's Day Competition" arc of ''[[Mariasama ga Miteru]]'', a whole episode is dedicated to Mifuyu, a minor character who cheats to win a date with popular [[Onee-Sama|Sachiko]]. We get an in-deep explanation of her motivations, which reach back to her childhood when she already wanted to gain Sachiko's friendship, but failed. She is jealous of Sachiko's "petite soeur" Yumi, but then finds her rival is "more special" than herself after all and she decides to give up on the date. In the end she is shown to have [[Important Haircut|cut her hair]], cheerfully accepting that she is of minor importance to Sachiko—and is never mentioned again. The sheer pointlessness of this episode, together with the [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] about "accepting your lower position in life", makes it come dangerously close to being [[Filler]].
* In ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]]'', the characters spend {{spoiler|almost the entire series}} working on a plot point that is ultimately resolved in Shaggy Dog fashion: {{spoiler|the wish-granting Dream Collet is finally completed, only to be promptly stolen by [[The Dragon]] and given to the [[Big Bad]], who uses it up by wishing to be beautiful, of all things.}}
* The first series of ''[[Ojamajo Doremi]]'' has the three main characters working for the entire series to become witches- and succeed- only to give up their powers {{spoiler|to save Onpu}}. This is then turned into a ''double'' Shaggy Dog Story when the first episode of the second series has them regain their powers anyway. Then in the finale of the last series, {{spoiler|they decide not to become witches after all}}.
* Here's an analogy for ''[[MD Geist]]''. Once upon a time, a man decided to climb a mountain. He fell down and saw a very shaggy dog. Turns out a rich couple lost a very shaggy dog and would give a reward for its return. A woman decided to tag along for the ride after hearing the man's story. When he got on the plane, he found that he couldn't take the dog without preparations, so he took it to the vet. He went to the couple's house, walked directly up to the door with the dog and the woman, and rang the bell. The owners of the dog were happy that they got their dog back, when all of a sudden the man pulled out a shotgun, killed the owners, and shot the dog in the head. The man then walked off into the sunset telling the very confused woman that the battle has only begun.
* Early in ''[[Midori no Hibi]]'', Seiji thinks that Midori has returned to her own body for sure (somehow, she ended up popping out of his right sleeve; replacing his real hand. It's less Nightmare-riffic when you actually read it); it's even a two-parter and he talks about how he misses her. As it turns out, {{spoiler|Midori was just taking a nap.}} ...
* The ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' manga dedicated a whole chapter to such stories.
** One of these stories turns out to be a [[Brick Joke]].  {{spoiler|Klaus's story about Lucky the dog comes up again when Hayate saves Izumi from Lucky (six/ten?) years prior.}}
* ''[[Naruto]]'''s Three-Tails filler arc revolved around Konoha and Orochimaru's efforts to capture the three-tailed beast. In the end, {{spoiler|the Leaf Ninja win, but then depart and leave the defense of Three-Tails to a bunch of [[Red Shirt]]s, who are then killed when the Akatsuki show up to take Three-Tails for themselves.}} While this is a filler arc and it cannot go against what happened in the manga, knowing what happens in the manga makes the heroes' efforts seem futile.
** A possible subversion, though, in that three-tails isn't really important to the arc. The real driving force behind the story is the filler character Yukimaru, who Orochimaru is trying to use to control Three-tails. Essentially, the writers shift the focus of the narrative from the Three-Tails, whose fate they have no control over, to Yukimaru. As a filler character, they can control Yukimaru entirely.
** This also applies to the activities of the Konoha nin during the Hunt for Uchiha arc: they spend the whole time searching for Itachi, and while all kinds of plot happens behind their backs (including unwittingly running into Sasuke's group) they fail to make any leads in battling Akatsuki and by the end of the arc {{spoiler|Itachi dies without them ever meeting him}}. The only purpose their involvement ultimately served was to demonstrate [[Made of Air|Tobi's abilities]] (which he uses to render all of their attacks useless and escape easily).
** Arguably, the whole  {{spoiler|Danzo's rise to power}} ordeal during the Kage's Summit Arc: Right after Pain's Invasion Arc, Tsunade ends up in a coma from exhaustion  {{spoiler|Danzo then takes this opportunity to be appointed Hokage, this is portrayed as a [[Tyrant Takes the Helm]] move; Danzo then assists to the Kage Summit and for a moment secures his power and the leadership of the Shinobi Alliance for the coming war... only to be caught red-handed mind controlling the moderator into appointing him in that position, exposed and disgraced, Danzo then flees only to be ambushed by Uchiha Madara who dispatches Sasuke to fight and eliminate Danzo (Sasuke succeeds in doing it); by then the Shinobi world has put aside their differences and organized itself against Madara, and by then end of the arc Tsunade recovers, reassumes her position of Hokage and the Leaf Village takes it's place in the Shinobi Alliance the latter which receives it with open arms.}}
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's|Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds]]'' the entire Crashtown arc is one of these. In this Yusei comes to Crashtown in order to save {{spoiler|Kiryu}}. After a series of events in which include turning {{spoiler|Kiryu}} away from his path of self destruction, the arc ends with Yusei, Jack and Crow leaving Crashtown with {{spoiler|Kiryu}} staying behind. What makes it even worse is that this took up a total of 6 episodes, cutting in on the actual plot of the season.
* The episode "Speak Like A Child" in ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]''. After receiving a mysterious tape by airmail, Jet and Spike set out to find a way to play the darn thing so they can find out what's on it. In the end they end up going back to Earth and raiding an antique museum in the basement of a condemned building just for a video player and an old TV, {{spoiler|only to discover they brought back a VHS player -- and the tape is Betamax. To compound it, a Betamax player arrives from the same sender, by airmail, shortly afterward.}}
** Jet even lampshades it in the preview, stating that the story goes nowhere at all, makes no sense, and all the action is small-scale.
* In ''[[Baccano!]]'', the words whispered of the Rail Tracer (a train-riding murderer of urban legend) to Rachel come across as one of these, particularly when her listeners crack up upon hearing them  {{spoiler|"Tickets please."}}
** Until they realize what that [[Red Herring Shirt|means]].
* ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' can be seen as a subversion - Tenma's final decision {{spoiler|to save Johan's life}} renders the entirety of his off-to-kill-the-monster plan moot and pointless in retrospect, but he could not have reached the same conclusion without undergoing the apparently wasted journey.
* The first two arcs of ''[[20th Century Boys]]'' turn out to be Shaggy Dog Stories, coupled with them being arc long [[Hope Spot]]s as well. However, instead of making those arcs seem pointless and frustrating they help raise the stakes and the tension in the series.
** Kenji and his friend's plan to stop [[Big Bad|Friend's]] cult taking over the world and destroying Tokyo {{spoiler|with a giant robot}}?  {{spoiler|Turns out the robot is a fake, and Friend's plan all along is to frame Kenji and his friends as the ones behind all the chaos whilst making himself appear to be the hero. It works, and results in ''the main character'' being killed, along with a few of his friends (they get better)}}.
** Kanna and co's plan to stop Friend from killing {{spoiler|the Pope}}?  {{spoiler|The whole thing was another [[Xanatos Gambit]] so Friend could 'save' the Pope and increase his grip over the world, propelling him to Godhood. Oh, and he covertly releases a virus at the same time, killing a ridiculous percentage of the world's population}}. Even if the first goal failed, he still had the second.
* In ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'', Yusuke realizes he can't win the fight with [[Big Bad|Sensui]] so he decides to [[Heroic Sacrifice|allow himself to be killed]] so his teammates will be inspired and reach their full potential. However, his friends [[Curb Stomp Battle|can't defeat Sensui]] and Yusuke is [[Death Is Cheap|resurrected]] for round two.
* In ''[[Katanagatari]]'', the entire series is more or less this—ultimately, nobody really gets what they wanted, and nothing really changes because of their actions. Still, the journey was fun, and  {{spoiler|Shichika, one of the sole surviving named characters,}} got some [[Character Development]] out of the whole deal.
* ''[[Bakemonogatari]]'''s ''Tsubasa Cat'' chapter is kinda like this. Koyomi asked most of his nakama to run around the city to find Shinobu so he can treat his classmate's cat spirit possession (manifestation of Tsubasa's stress over the fact that Koyomi is getting into a relationship with Hitagi). In a true ''Bakemonogatari'' spirit, this is all played for [[Seinfeldian Conversation]] (and perhaps some [[World Building]]). In the end:
** Koyomi is already part of an [[Official Couple]] in the series, Tsubasa's feelings can't be returned.
** Tsubasa's cat-possession is part psychological, it won't go away for good.
** [[He Was Right There All Along|Shinobu was always with Koyomi from the start]] {{spoiler|hiding in his shadow}}.
* The [[Netorare Genre]] doujinshi series ''Another World'' (which had a couple of [[Spin-Off|spinoffs]]), where the heroine was under the impression that her [[Nice Guy]] boyfriend ''really'' wanted her to take it regularly in the "back door". As a form of training, [[Idiot Ball|she sought the "help" of a particular pervert who relishes said practice due to]] [[Freudian Excuse]]. The resulting turns of events were harrowing to read as she was slowly consumed by lust while being tortured of infidelity. At the end we saw her boyfriend basically brushing off the whole thing as an insignificant curiosity.
* Much of ''[[Planetes]]''. Sure, in the end Hachi is happier and more mature (ditto Yuri, Ai, and arguably Claire,) but most everything is about the same as in the beginning.  {{spoiler|The Debris Section is still chronically underfunded in its decrepit basement office, most of the cast are ditzy as ever (especially Lucy,) Edel's sleazy husband is back to abusing women, the SDF remains trouble judging by Hakim, and the SDF-Union treaty hasn't had significant impact on third world suffering}}. The final arc's climax serves as a double dip of this, since not only do  {{spoiler|all attempts to thwart the SDF threat come moments too late, saved only by the Union caving into their terms; Ai and Claire collapse from asphyxiation in the final tenth of Ai's miles long run for rescue, saved by a lucky passerby; and Hakim's [[If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him]] threats get ignored by Hachi, whose innocence is saved purely by a jam or empty magazine}}. No, on top of that,  {{spoiler|while the SDF ultimately get what they want, their boarding action on the Von Braun is repelled well enough to prevent them from accomplishing either of their goals (control of the bridge in case the engine came back online, or capturing Locksmith) in assaulting the Von Braun, while the Von Braun crew wasn't able to restore engine control, meaning that pretty much the only violent part of the operation and all the hundreds of deaths during it were utterly meaningless}}.
* The ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex|Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex]]'' 2nd Gig episode NIGHT CRUISE has no relation to the overall storyline, follows a one-shot character for 90% of the episode, and features the Major and Batou in what could easily be cameo appearances.
* There are several of these in ''[[A Certain Magical Index]]'', most notably the Book of the Law arc and the Daihaseisai arc.
* The entirety of ''[[Shaman King]]'' pretty much  {{spoiler|Yoh and his friends fight and struggle through the tournament to stop Hoh from getting the prize, [[A God Am I|becoming a god]] and wiping out humanity. But half-way through the tourney they realize [[Can't Catch Up|theres no way they'll be powerful enough to beat him]] since he has centuries worth of experience and killing him will just allow him to resurrect some years later and start the process anew. Ultimately they let him take the prize but manage to convince him that humanity worth keeping alive just so he can see his initial thoughts about them were wrong. None of the heroes accomplish what they wanted to do had they won the tourney but they're alive to keep seeking other solutions.}}
* In the [[Hentai]] anime ''Onmyouji - Ayakashi no Megami'' there's a big fight between the good and bad guys, with many sacrifices for the good guys. Finally the main heroine succeeds with her plan to unite with the antagonist to stop her. Then the antagonist wins. No explanation given.
* ''{{spoiler|[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]}}'': One of the big, subjective questions both in the fandom and in ''the story itself'' is whether the plot is one of these.
* ''[[Daily Lives of High School Boys]]'' might as well be ''Shaggy Dog Story: The Series''.
** ''High School Boys and After School'': The boys spent most of the skit practicing a campus "[[Meet Cute]]" scenario for Tadakuni... only ending with the latter on a [[Pose of Supplication]], saying it is completely useless in the boys' school they're studying.
** ''High School Boys and Scary Stories (1 and 2)'': Tadakuni told extremely horrifying stories invoking extreme actions to Hidenori, Yoshitake and (the eavesdropping) Mei. They were also ''made up''.
** ''High School Boys and the Accompanying Girl'': After seeing Tadakuni walking with a random girl, his Class 2-A classmates decided to put a halt to his "date"... only to find out that she was just asking for directions.
** ''High School Boys and [[The Power of Friendship]]'': Mei asked the trio to find out [[Panty Thieves|who had been stealing her panties]] (it turned out to be Tadakuni and Hidenori). Yoshitake [[Taking the Heat|took the heat]], but when she started beating him, he ratted out the two.
** ''High School Boys and Traditional Events'': the three guys and Karasawa go to the principal and discuss the school's "70-hour fast" tradition. The latter, having only been on his position for three years but unwilling to leave them in the open, makes up a story about how, back in 1984, the principal saved the school from complete shutdown due to low attendance by pleading with prefectural authorities for 70 straight hours. [[Moment Killer|Then Karasawa reveals that Sanada North High was only founded in 1989.]]
** ''High School Boys and the Literature Girl (2)'': Motoharu went on making wind-related quotes to the Literature Girl. It turned out he spoke to the wrong person—he intended to speak to his sister Mino.
** ''High School Boys and the Train to School'': Hidenori spent the whole skit engaging in an [[Internal Monologue]] about whether or not he should tell a schoolgirl he sees daily on the trains that she has a hair on a mole on her neck, trying to figure out the consequences, and, eventually, why that was never noticed. After he decided to do so (and still feared a backlash), her response was a bright smile and a "Thank you!"
** The first and last skits of Episode 4 were about Tadakuni trying to get close to Yoshitake and Hidenori, spending most of the skit eavesdropping (''High School Boys and Eavesdropping'') or asking Nago for advice (''High School Boys and Complaining to Each Other''), only to find that the two guys he thought were Yoshitake and Hidenori just happened to be lookalikes.
** ''High School Boys and the [[School Festival|Cultural Festival]] (2)'': Sanada North's [[Student Council President]] dared Ringo and her companions to pass through their haunted house without yelling. Ringo coasted through without making so much as a noise... only to finally let out a scream of horror at the sight of a ''naked [[Student Council President]]'' at the exit.
** ''High School Boys and the Cultural Festival (4)'': After Ringo defeated Sanada North's [[Student Council President]], Karasawa (as an announcer) treated the fighting as but part of a ''scheduled program''.
** ''High School Boys and the Biography of a Hero'': Hidenori has long idolized "Rubber (Band) Shooter", a masked [[Bully Hunter]] who saved him eight years ago. So when he returns to the shrine where he first met him upon hearing the same "[[Pachelbel's Canon|Pachelbels Canon]]" he played back then, Hidenori ran up the steps only to see... {{spoiler|Yoshitake}} shooting rubber bands. Hidenori dashed off the stairs.
{{quote|''"Who do you admire the most?"''
'''Hidenori''', before: [[Bully Hunter|Rubber (Band) Shooter]]
'''Hidenori''', after: [[wikipedia:Hideyo Noguchi|Hideyo Noguchi]]. }}
** ''High School Boys and Holy Night'': Hidenori tried his best to avoid being beaten up by Yoshitake's older sister, after he inadvertently pointed out [[Berserk Button|she's always alone]] during [[Christmas in Japan|Christmas]]. Hidenori, being the series' [[Chick Magnet]], went as far as trying to ''date her''. She still beat him up.
** ''High School Boys and the New Semester'': The boys spent the whole skit discussing the winter break while waiting for the first class of the spring term. Their class teacher came in... and announced that due to a typographical error, school should have started ''the day after''.
** ''High School Boy and Ringo's Troubles'': Ringo came into North's Student Council to ask whether she is actually too short. After deciding the other members were too [[Nice Guy]] to be honest, she decided to ask the [[Student Council President]] in the next room instead. The Student Council, fearing that the President was going to say something stupid again, tried to prevent her from leaving the Council room. While their tactics didn't work, the President's answer wasn't stupid either... and Ringo still beat him up.
** ''High School Boys and Older Brother'': Mei and Yoshitake's older sister asked Yusuke to give the boys a lesson so that they could be "less childish"... only to find he was [[Not So Different]] from the main trio.
** ''High School Boys and Convenience Stores'': Hidenori was given the wrong charge by a trainee employee. After another round of [[Inner Monologue]], he decided to try to get the older employee to straighten up the error... That older employee turned out to be ''a trainee as well''.
** ''High School Boys and 100'': Motoharu spent the whole skit killing centipedes. Then Mino opened the windows facing the forest and let the centipedes in.
** ''High School Boys and Older Brothers and Sisters'': Yoshitake's older sister was clearly having a [[Sanity Slippage]] for her lack of a boyfriend. Yoshitake and Hidenori at last got Yuusuke to call one of the latter's college buddies (despite [[All Men Are Perverts|all of them being perverts]]) to date her. While that guy was interested in dating a [[Joshikousei]]... what does she look like? [[The Faceless|Not even Yoshitake knows!]]
** ''High School Boys and the End of Summer'': Emi, a girl who lives in Hidenori's maternal hometown, has a crush on Hidenori, who came to visit, and planned to confess to him on the night before he left. The entire episode was about her trying to confess... and right before she's going to say ''that'', Hidenori made a most surprising [[Reveal]]: [[Surprise Incest|they are cousins]].
{{quote|'''Emi''': And so, my summer ended without me able to do anything.}}
* Various cults and evil mages have spent great amounts of time and effort in schemes to resurrect the dark wizard Zeref in ''[[Fairy Tail]]''. Then it turns out that Zeref was alive the whole time, and not pleased when he finds out that a bunch of cults have committed many evil acts in his name...
*''[[Children Who Chase Lost Voices]]'' falls somewhere between this and full [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] for Morisaki. After all the sacrifices he had made along the way, not only does he {{spoiler|only very briefly get to see Lisa again, as opposed to permanently bringing her back to life like he had hoped, but he loses an eye for it with no further gain}}.

==  Comic Books  ==
* ''[[Hellblazer]]'' had a mammoth 12-issue story spanning two arcs ("Empathy is the Enemy" and "The Red Right Hand") that ended in a manner that wasn't very well received: {{spoiler|with the fate of the world being decided by the result of a World Cup football game - something that was entirely out of the hands of the main character}}.
** Then again, that entire arc suffered from a [[Did Not Do the Research|bigger issue]].
* One issue of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage|Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' was ostensibly about the [[Backstory]] of the turtles' vigilante friend Casey Jones. After rescuing the victim of a gay bashing, Casey takes him to a bar and, when the guy wants to know why he does this, spends most of the issue talking about his family and how he became a vigilante after muggers killed his older brother. Only one problem, as the bartender explains after Casey has left...Casey never ''had'' a brother. Thus, everything between the initial rescue and that reveal is plot-irrelevant.
** So... that either makes Casey a victim of a mugging turned brutal beat-down himself. Or a gay man who was once brutally beaten if you want to read between the lines. If not none of this holds true, it was a pretty pointless affair overall, yes.
** Or, it means that Casey is a schizophrenic prone to confabulation, which actually fits very well with the rest of his character
* The Crusader subplot in ''Avengers: The Initiative'' was quite compelling - Crusader was a Skrull advance agent who [[Becoming the Mask|went native]], and joined together with the heroes of Earth (in human form) to repel other Skrull invaders. At the end of the story, he has saved the day, gets congratulated by Nick Fury himself... and is shot through the head by 3D-Man, who can see disguised Skrulls. 3D-Man simply shrugs his arms and says "[[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|Skrull]]."
* The ex-mercenary Darca Nyl's arc in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. In the series where he was introduced, a Dark Jedi killed his son, a dying Jedi handed over his lightsaber and told him to stop Lycan, and all during the pursuit people assumed that he was a Jedi, and they needed his help. And he gave it, even at the cost of pursuit time, and [[Good Feels Good|it felt good]]. Even after tracking down and killing Lycan, Darca Nyl [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|decides to keep helping people]], because it's right and because he thinks that's what his family would have wanted him to do. ...And ''then'' a more recent comic came out, with an older, bitter, isolationist Darca Nyl who [[Deadly Change-of-Heart|failed utterly]] at helping people and retreated to a cabin where he did nothing but carve statues of his wife and son. The "[[Designated Hero|heroes]]" of the comic only got him to help by threatening to shoot all the statues.
** Recent Star Wars comics ''love'' this. [[Old Soldier]] Able was a clone trooper who survived alone on a forsaken planet for years before the Rebellion found him and recruited him and put him into a commando squad. He was by far the most practical and cynical man there, which sometimes irritated the other Rebels, but he tried to adapt and look out for the last Jedi, Luke. ...And then a comic came out where the whole squad got [[The Virus|transformed into rakghouls]] by a Sith talisman.
* ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]] #28'': Peter Parker sees the Rhino tearing up Manhattan on the news, and rushes to go fight him. Over the course of the issue, he's [[Title Drop|sidetracked]] by various other problems, including a parent-teacher conference, Flash Thompson being a dick, and Gwen Stacy crying in a dumpster. By the time Spider-Man gets to the scene, Iron Man has already easily subdued the Rhino.
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' #7: After finding a map leading to Uncle Chuck's greatest treasure, the Freedom Fighters set out to find it, thinking it might be a great weapon he created. Robotnik, hearing this, tries to beat them to it. After an issue worth of struggles, Robotnik secures the treasure, which turns out to be [[All That Glitters|a bronzed pair of Sonic's baby shoes]].
* ''[[Transmetropolitan]]'' features a three-issue subplot (issues #10-12, year 2) involving Officer Stomponato, a corrupt sentient police dog, gradually tracking down Spider Jerusalem in order to exact revenge, {{spoiler|only to have the dog accidentally jump to his death, failing to even attract Spider's attention.}}
* The French author Gotlib has done a lot of these in his ''Rubriques Ã Brac''.
* ''[[Asterix|Asterix and the Black Gold]]'' revolves around a quest to find petroleum for the Gaulish village, since it's an essential ingredient of their magic potion. Asterix and Obelix fail to bring back even the ''single drop'' necessary, ''and'' so the Romans attack the village at their full vulnerability - but fortunately  {{spoiler|Getafix had experimented with the formula while the leads were away and had found that beetroot juice was an ample substitute.}}
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when {{spoiler|Asterix tells Getafix to do his experiments before sending them halfway across the world.}}
* ''[[One More Day]]'' and ''[[One Moment in Time]]'' play this frustratingly straight. In ''One More Day'', [[Spider-Man]] [[Deal with the Devil|is given the option of getting a redo from Mephisto]], to prevent his Aunt from getting shot. In exchange, Peter has to trade his marriage. Simple enough right? But then, ''One Moment in Time'' revealed that Mephisto changed absolutely nothing by taking Peter and Mary Jane's marriage. History still plays out exactly the same. The only reason that his Aunt comes back to life is that in this new reality, Peter spirited May back to life instead of wasting time making the deal with Mephisto. In other words, May could have come back to life in the original reality if he had just spent more time with her.
* ''Seven Psychopaths'' is the story of a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] assembled to assassinate Hitler in the fall of 1941. Little do they know Hitler has [[wikipedia:Georg Elser#The assassination attempt|already been assassinated]]. "Hitler" these days is just a role played by a series of body doubles acting as puppets for the Nazi party. The team actually does manage to wipe out the body doubles, thanks largely to the [[Master of Disguise]] among them getting himself invited to join them. But the [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] idea ultimately backfires, as the [[Master of Disguise]], who also happens to be a narcissistic [[Glory Hound]], decides he can't pass up the chance to become the "most beloved man in Germany", so he kills the only other team member who knew about the body double program and lives out the rest of his days as Hitler. The course of the war remains unaffected.
* Almost every tale by Edward Gorey has elements of this, notably, ''The Headless Bust'' and ''The Unstrung Harp''.

== Fan Works ==
* In ''[https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-33185/CaptainBoulanger+Casey.htm Casey]'' (described by the author as a ''[[The Teraverse|Teraverse]]'' [[Prequel]]), a baseball player with a comedically bad romantic history is challenged to ask a girl out. After dinner at a nice restaurant and a movie, the [[Incredibly Lame Pun]] is invoked: Casey strikes out.

==  Film  ==
* ''[[The Aristocrats]]'' is a film which features many stand-up comedians, comedy writers, and other entertainers and celebrities all performing variations on the same shaggy-dog joke, "The Aristocrats". The joke has long been a sort of "secret handshake" between fellow comedians, or an impromptu contest of improvisational skill. The structure of the joke is thus: a man goes into a talent agent's office, and describes (or performs) his "family act" for the talent agent. The content of the act is improvised by the teller of the joke, usually (but not always) involving as many varied, violent, obscene, or offensive acts as possible. The punchline, when the talent agent asks what the man's act is called, is "The Aristocrats!"
** There is a short story by [[Robert Bloch]] (title sadly forgotten) where a writer refers to a manuscript that's a grotesque parody of gritty, Mickey Spillane-esque mysteries (at one point the protagonist mentions his tragic past, which includes being raped by his grandmother). [[Shout-Out|The working title of the manuscript is "The Aristocrats."]]
* A classic example of this trope is found in the [[Marx Brothers]] film ''[[A Night at the Opera]]''. Groucho and Chico spend several minutes haggling over a contract. Chico keeps objecting to the terms, and Groucho keeps tearing off the sections that Chico won't agree to. Finally, nothing remains but the space where Chico has to put his signature, and Groucho hands him a pen. "I can't write," Chico admits sheepishly. "That's all right," replies Groucho, "There's no ink in the pen, anyway."
* ''[[Time Bandits]]''. In the end, it's revealed that {{spoiler|everything that happened was part of The Supreme Being's plan. The villain defeats himself and the Supreme Being appears to put everything back the way it was.}}
** But Kevin {{spoiler|has the map in a photo so is able to return to Agamemnon, and he never liked his parents anyway}}, so the story wasn't entirely pointless for him in a way...
* In the Disney [[Roger Rabbit Effect|live action-animation mix]] ''[[Bedknobs and Broomsticks]]'', most of the movie is spent searching for a powerful spell which could help the English in [[World War II]], {{spoiler|only to find out near the end that it was all in the children's book, making their excursion into cartoon land pointless.}}
** Not only that, {{spoiler|but upon obtaining the needed object containing the spell's magic words and returning home, they discover that they can't take objects from one world into another}}, making it a double shaggy dog story.
*** But they ''are'' able to use the magic to  {{spoiler|bring the local museum's uniforms of past wars to life, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|essentially enlisting ghosts of all of England's past wars in order to fight back a secret German invasion force]].}}
* The French movie ''Chacun Cherche Son Chat'' (Released in English as ''While the Cat's Away'') plays with this - most of the cast of the movie is looking for the protagonist's missing cat. The cat turns up on its own, midway through the movie, but it hardly ends the movie.
* [[Roger Ebert]] described ''[[M. Night Shyamalan]]'s [[The Village]]'' as a Shaggy Dog Story, saying "Critics were enjoined after the screening to avoid revealing the plot secrets. That is not because we would spoil the movie for you. It's because if you knew them, you wouldn't want to go."
** The "secrets" are that  {{spoiler|it's the modern day and the village is just some random village of nutters who fled the "horrors" of modern society (medicine and so forth) to raise their kids in the good old days of ''the dark age of Europe'', even pretending to be surrounded by demons to scare their kids into not leaving the nature reserve that they own. Even when one of the kids is dying because of it, the ''only'' person that they will send for help (because all of the adults who actually have any awareness of the outside world refuse to go) is a blind woman who has no idea what a road is, let alone being able to safely cross it or find a hospital.}}
* ''[[Run Lola Run]]'' ends with {{spoiler|Lola arriving up just in time with the money Manni needed for his crime boss, only to discover that Manni managed to settle things himself without much fuss. The last scene is of them both walking off while Manni asks what's in the bag.}}
** In the second ending (before the second rewind) {{spoiler|Lola arrives with the money just to see Manni [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|ran over by an ambulance]]}}.
*** Of course, both of those outcomes, just like just about everything else that happens in all three storylines, are caused by {{spoiler|Lola's very own interference, which in turn is caused by what happens in the stairwell}}, albeit one has to watch the movie several times to notice every single causality. It's basically 'Chaos Theory: The Movie'.
* ''[[Cabaret]]'' is a very long, drawn-out version of this trope with singing and dancing. Not only is the entire story totally pointless by the end, but none of the characters have developed in any way whatsoever.
* The Finnish [[Affectionate Parody]] film ''[[Star Wreck|Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning]]'' ends with  {{spoiler|Pirk, Dwarf, and Info trapped in Hawaii during Earth's Ice Age. Info says that if he goes into low power mode he can survive until modern day, at which point he will prevent everything in the film from ever happening... pan out... credits.}}
** To make the story even shaggier, it's implied that since  {{spoiler|during the panout, you can see space debris that resembles the space station seen earlier in the movie, they're actually in the ''next'' Ice Age with no chance of preventing the events and Info was lying just to give them some vague sense of hope and/or prevent Pirk from somehow making things even worse.}}
* ''[[Murder By Death]]'' is an excellent example of this.  {{spoiler|After all of the chaotic happenings in the movie, it appears that ''no'' murder took place. One of the characters, when asked if one happened, says "Yes. Killed good weekend."}} The beauty of it is that the movie is hilarious in large part ''because'' of this.
* The ''[[Final Destination]]'' series movies are about a group of people who somehow escaped death and then find themselves dying from improbable accidents one after another. They spend the movie trying to figure out death's plan and finding a way to defy it and live. They invariably fail and succumb to the inevitable.
* [[Monster a Go-Go!|"But there was no monster!"]]
* The climax of ''[[Medium Cool]]'' is set in motion by a search for the female protagonist's son. Later, he turns up safe at home.  {{spoiler|His mother and her boyfriend die in a car crash.}}
* The film of ''[[The Bonfire of the Vanities]]'' attempts this by changing the book's ending.
* ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'' follows a bizarre and convoluted [[Random Events Plot]] where ultimately the protagonist fails at everything he tries to do. Not only that, most of it turns out to have been completely pointless to begin with:  {{spoiler|the kidnap victim was just on an unannounced vacation, the ransom notes were sent by opportunistic thugs pulling a con, the [[Briefcase Full of Money]] had been empty from the start, and the guy he was working for was just setting him up as the fall guy to cover for a bit of embezzlement. His car has been destroyed, his apartment trashed repeatedly, he's been drugged once and beaten several times, his best friend has caused much of the above by [[The Millstone|Millstoning]] him at every turn, his other best friend is dead from a heart attack, and he never got his freakin' rug back.}} All he has to show for the entire movie is  {{spoiler|a night of sex with the admittedly pretty hot Maud Lebowski and potentially an illegitimate child he'll never see}}. But hey, [[And the Adventure Continues...|The Dude abides.]]
* ''[[A Serious Man]]'' has one scene where a rabbi tell the main character about one of his friends, a dentist, who found Hebrew script inscribed on the teeth of a gentile customer of his. After making many attempts to discern their significance, he gave up without knowing how or why they were there. The protagonist in noticeably irritated by the anti-climax.
**  {{spoiler|This may be [[Foreshadowing]], given that the movie itself has [[No Ending]].}}
* The 2005 ''[[The War of the Worlds (2005 film)|The War of the Worlds]]''. Aliens land and proceed to [[Curb Stomp Battle|royally kick the shit out of America]] with superior technology. [[Weaksauce Weakness|In the end, the aliens are defeated because they weren't immune to Earth-born diseases]].
** This is how the original book ended, as well.
*** Though in the book it was Britain who faced the aliens.
* The late-60s Israeli comedy Sallah Shabbati uses one of these as a side plot: the poor immigrant's latest scheme to get cash (so he can get his family out of the refugee camp and into an apartment) is to answer a newspaper ad asking for a dog. When he shows up at the posh Tel Aviv house with a stray he found in the camp, the woman there reacts in horror: "That's not my Pookie!"
* For the 1958 film ''[[Big Deal on Madonna Street]]'', the last shot about sums it up: {{spoiler|a closeup of a newspaper article about an unknown person or persons who climbed in the window of an apartment, broke down a wall and ate some pasta.}}
* Lots of Middle Eastern movies seem to be about this, and they're depressing. Case in point: ''Kandahar'', which is about a woman who needs to get to Kandahar before her sister, who had both of her legs blown off by a mine, commits suicide. The movie is about her travelling around trying to meet her sister before the date when she said she'd kill herself - but sadly the woman is arrested while trying to cross a border checkpoint. [[Downer Ending|and that's the end]]
** Also ''A Time For Drunken Horses'', which if I remember rightly has two little boys on their own without a family, who begin smuggling goods over a snowy mountain pass with horses. To help the horses survive the bitter cold, they are given alcohol (making this movie a case of [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]). One day they are smuggling a haul and they give the horses too much alcohol and the horses collapse. The end.
* ''[[My Own Private Idaho]]'' - [[Woobie]] male prostitute with narcolepsy is looking for his long lost mother with the help of a friend of his. Wherever he goes his mother has just moved on. Eventually he and the friend end up in Italy, where it turns out his mother has just left. The friend then decides to abandon him, [[Downer Ending|and the movie ends with him dumped on a road, alone and asleep, having never found his mother]]
* ''[[The Maltese Falcon]]'' is a superb example of this trope.
** Well, for the ''villains'', sure. They spend the entire movie manipulating and killing each other (as well as anyone who gets in the way) over the eponymous statue of a falcon which is covered in black enamel but secretly covered in jewels. At the end, they form an alliance and attain it... only to find it is a fake. For [[Humphrey Bogart|Sam]] [[Private Detective|Spade]], though, it's a grandslam: the falcon lured all these villains out of the woodwork, allowing him to work with them, getting him out from under the police's thumb, make money, and even {{spoiler|reveal his heroic colors by setting every last one of them up to go to jail, including the [[Femme Fatale]] who killed his partner.}}
* In ''[[Eyes Wide Shut]]'', Bill suspects that his wife is having an affair and gets himself embroiled in some dark sexual circles while trying to sow his own wild oats. It turns out that his situation was not nearly as dark as he thought it was, he decides against having sex with anyone after all, and his wife was never disloyal to him in the first place.
* Many examples in ''[[Indiana Jones]]'', where villains often discover that whatever [[Artifact of Doom]] they're trying to find doesn't work quite the way that thought it did:
** ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]''. Indy and the Nazis spend the whole movie fighting over the eponymous [[MacGuffin]]. Then at the end, the Nazis get the Ark and open it only to be swept away by The [[Deus Ex Machina|Wrath Of God]]. As is often pointed out, Indy could have ''done nothing'' and the movie would have still ended the same way.
** In ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]]'', the [[Big Bad]] is an [[Immortality Seeker]] attempting to find the Holy Grail. The villain doesn't live long enough that the the immortality it bestows lasts only as long as the recipient remains in the vault where it is kept, and the Grail cannot safely be taken out of the vault.
** The villain in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny]]'' {{spoiler|seeks the Antikythera Mechanism in order to to time-travel back to 1939, assassinate Adolf Hitler, and lead Germany to victory in World War II. He finds out too late that the fissure created by the device is "set" so that it can lead only to one year, 212 BC as Archimedes invented it in order to summon aid from the future during the Seige of Syracuse.}}
* In ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'', Dorothy had no reason to go on her whole adventure to find the Wizard and kill the Wicked Witch of the West. The only thing she needed to get home was right on her feet the entire time. As comedian Dennis Miller noted: "So Glinda appears at the end and says, 'You had the power to go home all along!' I always wanted Dorothy to look at her and say, 'Yeah, bitch? And you had the power to tell me that two hours ago!"<ref>This was caused by the scriptwriters combining two characters from the original book -- the Witch of the North and the Witch of the South -- into a single character without regard to plot logic.</ref>
* ''[[Burn After Reading]]'' ends with the CIA director and Palmer sitting in an office contemplating what the heck happened. The only thing they learned, they muse, is to not do it again, if only they knew what, if anything, they did to cause the whole thing in the first place.
* The 2002 [[Britney Spears]] roadtrip movie ''[[Crossroads (2002 film)|Crossroads]]'' has this times three, with three childhood wishes: Britney wants to reunite with her [[Missing Mom]], [[Pirates of the Caribbean|"Anna-Marie"]] wants to get married, and "Boomkat" wants to be a singer. Near the end of their journey Britney learns her mom wants nothing to do with her ([[Sex and the City|"Samantha"]] doesn't want any reminders of her slutty past(!)); Anna-Marie discovers her boyfriend is a cheater, and Boomkat is just not as good at singing as Britney.
* ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'': Not that the plot matters much but it is ostensibly about King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail which Arthur takes seriously regardless of whether anybody else does or not. When he gets to the final climatic battle charge,  {{spoiler|he's arrested by modern day police officers because one of his knights earlier in the film accidentally killed the historian narrating the tale.}}
* ''[[Two Lane Blacktop]]'': The film centers on a cross-country race between a mysterious man and a pair of street racers. Along the way, a girl gets mixed up between the two parties, but she eventually just leaves. We never find out the mysterious man's backstory, and both parties forget about the race before anyone wins.
* A very unusual example is ''[[The Usual Suspects]]''; the ending reveals that the entire movie was {{spoiler|one great big pack of [[Blatant Lies|unbelievably audacious lies]] having almost nothing to do with reality}}, but this revelation actually sheds a fascinating new light on what has been happening.
* ''[[U Turn]]''. Sean Penn finds himself in a lot of trouble by accident due to a misunderstanding and is just trying to make his way out of a nasty town when he gets the mob onto him. His only exit out is his car, but then it breaks down and he needs to get it fixed. Meanwhile people are trying to kill him, and the girl he falls for turns against him and is out to kill him too. When the car is finally repaired he finds she stole his keys. Out of desperation to get out of this town he strangles her to death and retrieves the keys. As he lay dying, he finally makes it back to his car to drive off only to find the mechanic who repaired his car duped him and it breaks down again. He resigns himself to his fate.

== Jokes ==
* Jokes such as the 'Banana And A Piece Of String' joke do this. In this tale a landlord is plagued by a leprechaun who, each evening prevails upon him to lend the leprechaun a half (then a quarter, then an eighth and so on, this joke can and has gone on for over an hour) of a banana and a piece of string. Each night, an explosion occurs in the room given to the leprechaun, increasing in violence as the quantity of banana decreases, beginning with a mere ruffling of the bedclothes and ending in the complete destruction of the inn. Finally, with his inn utterly destroyed the Landlord begs to know what the leprechaun has done and the leprechaun at last agrees to tell him but only on the condition that the landlord never tells anyone the secret.
**  {{spoiler|And to this day he never has}}
* 'Jimmy and the Little Purple Grapes'. Jimmy convinces his mother to let him pack his own lunchbox, and he chooses to take little purple grapes with him. Throughout the rest of the joke, which takes about five minutes(or until the person telling the joke gets bored), every person who hears the phrase "little purple grapes" from Jimmy becomes enraged and gives him an increasingly harsh punishment. At the end of the joke, Jimmy has been beaten up, expelled, disowned, and put in jail because of that one phrase. His cellmate offers to tell him the reason people become so angry if Jimmy will sneak out of jail and get him some cigarettes. This joke is also known by "purple flowers," but the only real difference is the beginning of the story (where Jimmy sneaks out to be with his girlfriend, and he randomly gives his teacher this excuse. The joke follows from there).
**  {{spoiler|Jimmy sneaks out and gets hit by a bus. The moral of the story: Look both ways before crossing the street.}}
* A traveler was headed down a lonely road when it began to rain. Luckily he happened upon a monastery just off the side of the road. He knocked on the door and was greeted by one of the monks. He asked if he could stay the night, to which the monk replied that their order would gladly shelter him, as long as he stayed out of the tower with no doors. As he settled down for the night he suddenly heard an ungodly noise coming from the tower the monk mentioned, a cross between screaming and the wind on aluminum foil. Then suddenly it stopped and he soon fell asleep. He awoke refreshed and asked one of the monks about the sound, but the monk replied that only monks of their monastery may know what is in the tower. He thanked the monks for their hospitality and went on his way. About a year later he returned to the monastery and asked about becoming a monk. The head monk replied that if he would aid the monastery in small ways they would consider him. So for the next five years he helped tend the gardens, clean the windows, and learn of the monks' religion. He even once helped them recover a holy relic to be housed in the monastery. Eventually the head monk told the traveler he was ready to become a monk and initiated him. The monks recited a prayer for such an occasion and provided him with a robe of their brotherhood, and the head monk said it was time to see what was in the tower. The head monk led the new initiate down into the catacombs, deeper and deeper until the head monk found and pressed a loose brick. This opened a secret passage leading to a spiral stair. Up, up they went. Their legs grew tired until the head monk opened a trap door leading to a room surrounded with ivy covered trellises. They were inside the tower now. The head monk opened a door leading to another spiral staircase leading to the room at the very top of the tower. The head monk pulled out a key and unlocked the wooden door, pulling it aside to reveal a rusty iron door. The door clattered as the head monk pulled it open, and behind it was a titanium door. The head monk pressed a six digit PIN on a panel on the door and it slid open. The room was at first too dark to see anything. The head monk flipped a switch and a dim light bulb flickered on. Finally the traveler saw with his own eyes the source of that mysterious sound which he had spent all those years laboring to discover.
**  {{spoiler|But I can't tell you what it was because you're not a monk.}}
* There's this: A guy goes to the doctor because of a stomach ache, and the doctor gives him some pills, and warns him of the side effect, headaches, so he gives him tablets for headaches, but these would give him a sore throat, so he gives him a syrup for a sore throat, and lastly warns him of the syrup's side effect:
**  {{spoiler|Stomach ache}}
* There once was a knight dressed in black and white garb, riding a black and white horse. He decided to get married to a princess and therefore approached the king to ask him for his daughter's hand. But before arriving at the castle, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, encountered a guardian. The guardian said: "I am the first guardian! Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The guardian asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the king's daughter!" The guardian said: "You may proceed!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, rode on. Soon, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, encountered another guardian. The guardian said: "I am the second guardian! Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The guardian asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the king's daughter!" The guardian said: "You may proceed!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, rode on. Then, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, encountered yet another guardian. The guardian said: "I am the third guardian! Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The guardian asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the king's daughter!" The guardian said: "You may proceed!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, rode on. Finally, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, reached the castle. The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, was let to the king. The king asked: "Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The king asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the your daughter!" The king asked: "Do you have a castle of your own?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "No." The king said: "You cannot marry my daughter without a castle of your own!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, left the castle and spent some years amassing the wealth needed for building a castle. Then, he re-approached the king's castle. Again, before arriving at the castle, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, encountered a guardian. The guardian said: "I am the first guardian! Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The guardian asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the king's daughter!" The guardian said: "You may proceed!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, rode on. Soon, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, encountered another guardian. The guardian said: "I am the second guardian! Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The guardian asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the king's daughter!" The guardian said: "You may proceed!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, rode on. Then, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, encountered yet another guardian. The guardian said: "I am the third guardian! Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The guardian asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the king's daughter!" The guardian said: "You may proceed!" So the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, rode on. Finally, the black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, reached the castle. The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, was let to the king. The king asked: "Who are you?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I am the black and white knight, riding on my black and white horse!" The king asked: "What do you want?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "I want to marry the your daughter!" The king asked: "Do you have a castle of your own?" The black and white knight, riding on his black and white horse, said: "Yes!" the king then said:  {{spoiler|"Get lost, all my daughters are married already."}}
* A man is on vacation in France, and is enjoying his dinner at a restaurant. Suddenly, a man rushes in, leaves a note on the table, and then runs away. The man picks it up to see what it is and what it says, but the note is in French, which he doesn't understand. When the waiter gives him the bill, the man asks him "excuse me, but what does this note say?" and gives him the note. Upon seeing what it says, the waiter instantly goes into a rage and tells the man to leave the restaurant at once. He does, and brings the note with him, wondering what he got so angry about. Throughout the joke, the man continues showing this note to various people, but gets a worse punishment every time: he gets beaten up, put in jail, and forced to leave the country. When finally at home, he puts the note away in a drawer, seeing how it has brought him nothing but bad luck. Still, he's more curious than ever to what the note says. Later, he befriends a guy that's fluent in French, and after being friends with him for several years, he decides to show this man the note. He puts it in front of him, asking him to translate it for him, but makes him promise that whatever it says, he must not get mad or stop being his friend, just tell him what the note says.  {{spoiler|...As his friend goes to pick the note up, a strong gust of wind blows by and takes the note with it.}}
* A world famous conductor, a marvelous conductor, has decided that he's finally had enough, and he's going to retire. He announced his final performance, and as always, the theatre is completely packed. The performance is amazing, and he decides it's a fitting farewell. He leaves after the performance, but is approached by a group of large, intimidating men. They tell him that he can't quit now, he's just too good, and if he retires, they're going to break his legs. Frightened by the threat, he tries to figure a way out of it. He announces another performance. Again, the theatre is packed, and the performance is marvelous...but at the end, he whips out a pistol and shoots a violinist in the head, killing him instantly. He's arrested and brought before a judge, who asks "How do you plead?". He says "I'm guilty, everyone saw me do it." The judge replies, "Then I have no choice but to sentence you to death by electric chair." Before he's brought to the chair, he's asked for his last meal, and he requests a dozen bananas on a silver platter. He's led to the chair, strapped in, and the machine turned on. It looks like he's dead, but as they're unstrapping him, he twitches a bit, before appearing to come back to life. The executioner says "It is a sign from God to set you free! You may go." This process is repeated several times, each time he commits a bigger crime (bringing out a flamethrower and torching his entire orchestra, throwing a grenade into the audience), going into more detail about his prison stay (his cellmate, the condition of the cell), increasing the amount of power given to the chair (much longer than usual, then enough to short out the entire prison building), and the appearance of the man's death lasting longer (he comes back to life when being taken out of the prison, then scratches are heard from inside his coffin). The last time, the minister giving his eulogy opens his coffin after hearing the scratches and out pops the man, good as new. "How do you keep doing this?" the minister asks. "This is incredible!" To which the man replies:  {{spoiler|"Didn't you hear? I'm a bad conductor."}}
* Three men were driving down a lonely country road one night. Suddenly, the car broke down. One man was a mechanic, but try as he might, he couldn't get the car to start. They checked, but there was no cell phone reception for at least a hundred yards in every direction. Looking around, they saw a dim light far in the distance, and with no other option, they headed towards it. About halfway there, the wind was becoming fierce. A storm was brewing. They had a brief debate on whether or not to go back to the car, but decided if they were to go back, the wind would be against them, and so continued on. As the rain started to come down, they found the light was from a bed and breakfast. The proprietor was a skinny old woman, so deaf the men needed to shout to get her attention, but polite enough, and was not at all unhappy about them checking in so late. They decided it was late, so they would call a tow truck in the morning, and went to bed. They woke up the next morning and went downstairs for breakfast. The first man ordered Corn Flakes, the second man ordered Corn Flakes, and the third man ordered Fruit Loops. What's the moral of the story? {{spoiler|Two out of three people choose Corn Flakes.}}
* The lion and the elephant are arguing over who's really King of the Jungle; the lion says he's traditionally King, therefore he should be King, but the elephant argues he's stronger, so he should be King. Eventually, they decide to have a football game to settle the matter, and they pick other animals to be on their team. The elephant picks, among others, the rhinoceros because he's big and strong and tough to tackle, while the lion picks, among others, the donkey, because he can kick the ball far with his hind legs. The elephant's team wins the toss and elects to receive. The lion tells the donkey, "Just kick it as high and as far as you can. Oh, and don't kick it to the rhinoceros; he's good." The donkey promises not to kick it to the rhinoceros. The donkey then kicks a beautiful kick...right to the rhinoceros, who runs it back for a touchdown. The lion's team is able to drive back and tie the score, since he has a good team. The lion tells the donkey, "Listen, that was a mistake, and I'll let it go, but don't kick it to the rhinoceros." The donkey says he won't. Once again, he kicks a beautiful kick...right to the rhinoceros, who runs it back for a touchdown again. Once again, the lion's team is able to drive back and tie the score. Dissolve to the 4th quarter. The score is tied. It's being going like this the whole game. The lion is so angry right now steam is coming out of his ears, and says to the donkey, "Listen, if you kick it to the rhinoceros one more time, I'm going to have you for dinner tonight." The donkey says he won't. Once again, he kicks a beautiful kick...right to the rhinoceros. The rhinoceros has it at the 40, the 30, the 20, and he's got no one to stop him, when all of a sudden, he trips and fumbles. The lion's team recovers, and has a chance to win the game. The lion looks around to see what caused the rhinoceros to trip, and that's when he notices the centipede. "Centipede, is that you?" "Yes." "Nice tackle." "Thanks." "Where have you been?" "In the locker room." "The locker room?!? What the hell have you been doing all this time in the locker room?"  {{spoiler|"Tying my shoes."}}
* Billy lived in a boring little town, the only attraction being a run-down old zoo with nothing but run-of-the-mill farm animals. One day, when passing by the zoo, he spots a huge, shiny, brand new enclosure. Running towards it he discovers it houses a bright purple gorilla. The zookeeper sees him admiring it, and he tells him, "Ah, this is the Pan-Pan Fandango Gorilla. Imported him for Nicaragua only this weekend. He's a great animal, and very intelligent: cleans his own enclosure, builds his own shelters, sometimes I think I see him reading the signs! He's really friendly too, you can wave at him and he'll wave back, he plays ball with visitors. Amazing creature. Just one thing - don't touch him." And the zookeeper walks off. Naturally intrigued, Billy sneaks towards the enclosure, and the bright purple gorilla walks up to him. Billy reaches out to touch, and the gorilla reaches back... But the zookeeper arrives and shouts, "What did I tell you! No touching!" and chases him out of the zoo. Billy comes back late that night while the zookeeper's asleep, and finds the purple gorilla just sitting there in the cage, waiting for him. They reach out, and finally touch, and the gorilla lets out a huge roar, suddenly ferocious. Billy runs in terror, but the gorilla leaps out of the enclosure and gives chase. Now, here's where the really long part comes - essentially, the joker describes a round-the-world trip, the gorilla chasing Billy. Maybe he gets on a plane, only to see the purple gorilla piloting a biplane after him. Perhaps he hides in a cave and speaks to friendly animals, but the purple gorilla brings his own animal friends and the boy only just escapes. Maybe they go to China and battle ninjas on the Great Wall. Whatever really - my primary school teacher went for the whole year, telling us ten minute snippets of this at the end of each lesson. Anyway, eventually they reach some suitably climactic dead end - Billy's stuck on a rock jutting over Niagara Falls as the immense and angry purple gorilla closes in, maybe they make it back to Billy's hometown where he falls into the enclosure, maybe they make it to the very edge of the universe and the final confrontation happens on a space station. The purple gorilla finally closes in, and this time Billy cannot see any way out. The purple gorilla closes in, eyes ablaze,  {{spoiler|taps him lightly on the arm and shouts, "Tag! You're it!"}}
* Bob worked at a soda bottling plant. One day, Bob decided that there should be new markets for soda. So he packed up what he thought we would be the best selling product—Fresca—and set sail for Africa to try and sell it. Just before he left, he said to his trusted friend Steve, “If I do not return from Africa in six months, I want you to come search for me.” So Bob sailed off to Africa with lots and lots of Fresca. Six months came and went, and Steve did not hear from Bob. The six months turned to seven, then eight, and finally a whole year went by without a single message from Bob. So Steve packed his own boat and sailed off to Africa. The trip was a long one. Just as Steve arrived to shore, he spotted a fisherman along the coast with a rod and reel in one hand, and a can of Fresca in the other! So Steve asked the fisherman if he had seen Bob. The fisherman replied “Yes I did. And boy, is he a good salesman. Fish tastes good with Fresca.” Steve then proceeded along a trail that led into the woods. About a day later Steve encountered some large bird hunters. They would alternately shoot their rifles into the air, and take a swig of Fresca. Steve asked if they had seen Bob. The hunters answered that they had, and that “birds taste good with Fresca”. Steve continued on, alternating between woods and plains, and finally a savanna. At that point, he encountered a steel trap on the ground but got away just in time. But the trap was sprung anyway, alarming a group of gazelle trappers hiding behind a nearby hedge. When they saw that it was just a person they were mildly disappointed it wasn’t their usual prey, but they chatted for a while. Steve asked them, how in the world does one eat gazelle meat. They answered, “why, with Fresca of course.” Steve was puzzled for a moment before they continued with “Gazelle tastes good with Fresca.” Relieved to know that he was on the right path, Steve continued on his way. After another couple days, Steve was well into the jungle when he spotted a group of bushmen, complete with tribal bones in their faces, ceremonial body paint, spears in hand, along with, quite out of character, bright green cans of Fresca carried on wooden platforms between pairs of men. Steve carefully approached, but the bushmen were friendly and said “berries taste good with Fresca”. So Steve continued on through the jungle. (Steve keeps encountering different groups of native tribes, missionaries, explorers, etc. all of whom met Bob and all of whom think stuff tastes good with Fresca) After three days, and about to give up hope, Steve came to a primitive tribal village, complete with mud huts like you see on TV. But unlike the Tarzan movies, these huts had stacks of cases of Fresca all around. Upon hearing a horn-like sound, Steve was suddenly approached by the tribe’s leader, with nearly all of the village behind him.
{{quote|'''Steve''': Have you seen Bob?
'''Tribal Leader''': Yes. He a good man.
'''Steve''': Oh, you mean a good salesman? He sold you all this Fresca?
'''Leader''': He a good man.
'''Steve''': How was he a good man?
'''Leader''': He taste great!
'''Steve''': (with a mixture of surprise and horror, as he noticed the huge metal cauldron perched on wooden sticks) You mean you ate Bob?
'''Leader''': Yes. Bob taste good with Fresca. (as the rest of the villagers nod and make approving sounds)
'''Steve''': You mean you ate his... nose?
'''Leader''': Yes. Nose taste good with Fresca.
'''Steve''': You... you ate his... eyes?
'''Leader''': Yes. Eyes taste good with Fresca.
'''Steve''': You...you ate his... ears?
'''Leader''': Yes. Ears taste good with Fresca.
'''Steve''': You ate his... arms?
'''Leader''': Yes. Arms taste good with Fresca.
'''Steve''': You ate his... legs?
'''Leader''': Yes. Legs taste good with Fresca.
'''Steve''': You ate his... lungs?
'''Leader''': Yes. Lungs taste good with Fresca.
'''Steve''': You ate his... heart?
'''Leader''': Yes. Heart taste good with Fresca.
(etc. etc. etc.)
'''Steve''': Uh... wait a minute. Wait one minute. You don’t mean to tell me you, you ate his...., you know, his, uh, THING?
'''Leader''': Yes.
'''Steve''': (pauses a few seconds) You ate his, THING with Fresca?
'''Leader''': No.
'''Steve''': Huh? But I thought...
'''Leader''': No eat THING with Fresca.  {{spoiler|“Things” go better with Coke. (Note: for younger readers, that was an advertising jingle for Coca-cola in the 1960s.)}} }}
* Ladies and gentlemen, the Depressed Guy Joke. So there's this guy. He's really, really depressed. He's too depressed to even commit suicide. That's how depressed this guy is. Because he's just so very depressed, he lives in his mom's basement and just sits there being depressed. Well, one day, his mother noticed that the circus was in town. She figured she would buy him a ticket to try to cheer him up, because he's just so depressed, it's depressing. She gives him a ticket for seat 53B, and sends him on his way. Because he's so depressed and has nothing better to do, he goes ahead and arrives a couple of hours early, while the circus is still setting up. Everyone else is really busy, so he wanders over to a nearby giraffe and starts talking to it for a few minutes before wandering off elsewhere. When he came back, the giraffe had fallen over dead. Its long neck was flopped over the side of the enclosure, its tongue was hanging out of its mouth, and flies had already gathered around the body. [Note: This part of the joke should ideally continue for as long as the patience of the teller and listener will allow, along with the creativity of the teller.] The circus finally opens, so the guy goes in, finds seat 53B, and sits down. The show soon starts, and there are acrobats, and jugglers, and magicians, and lion tamers, and everything else that makes a circus worth seeing. At the very end, after the other acts have cleared off the stage, this tiny little car drives out. The door opens, and this massive, morbidly obese, practically spherical clown steps out. The clown asks, "Would the person in seat 53B stand up, please?" The depressed guy goes ahead and stands up, because he has nothing better to do. The clown then says, "Well, there's one end of the horse, but where's the other?" This just makes the guy even more depressed. He goes home and doesn't come out of the basement for thirteen years. All that time, he is planning his revenge on this fat clown. Well, thirteen years after he first went, his mother notices that the same circus is back in town. She goes ahead and buys him another ticket for seat 53B, because she figures that the third time's the charm, and there is no third time without a second time. So the depressed guy returns to the circus, just like the last time. The skeleton of the giraffe is still there, as a modern art piece for some reason. There are a bunch of art critics gathered around it, debating its meaning. The depressed guy listens for a while, before going to take his seat. Well, the show goes just like it did thirteen years ago. The list of performers is exactly the same. The depressed guy gets a little less depressed at the anticipation of getting his revenge on that clown. The show goes on, until finally, the same tiny car comes out onto the empty stage. The same gargantuan clown comes out of the car, and asks, "Would the person in seat 53B stand up, please?" The depressed guy stands up, ready to really give it to the clown. Once again, the clown says, "Well, there's one end of the horse, but where's the other?" The depressed guy takes a deep breath, and shouts,  {{spoiler|"Screw you, clown!"}}
* Latvian jokes seem to be this. Their humor stems from the fact that they are written in broken English, but are also quite depressing and horrifying. An example:
** "Three Latvian are brag about sons. “My son is soldier. He have rape as many women as he want,” say first Latvian. “So?” second say, “My son is farmer. He have all potato he want!” Third Latvian wait long time, then say, “My son is die at birth. For him, struggle is over.” “Wow! You are win us,” say others. But all are feel sad."
* Or the infamous "Passion fruit Story": A boy has to do an assignment on tropical fruits for a geography assignment, as he hands it in, the teacher asks: "What did you do your assignment on?" the boy replied "Passion fruits". The man is then overcome with rage and sends him out of the class. As the principal walks by, he asks why the boy is out of class. The boy replies, "I did a report on passion fruits". The principal expels him on the spot. The boy goes home, tells his mother about the passion fruits and she throws him out. The boy is homeless, and lying on a park bench when a police officer arrives, asking him why he is homeless. Cue the boy getting a (25 year) life sentence. As he gets his case appealed, he explains the passion fruit story. He gets another 25 year life sentence. Near the end of this sentence, the 65 year old man gets approached by someone saying he can explain the whole passion fruit incident, and to just say you murdered someone to avoid another life sentence. The man goes to his hearing and says "I killed a man, won't do it again" and he is freed. As he crosses the road, about to find out what the hell is going on he crossness the road without looking and ''gets hit by a car''.
** A variation is "Beaver". The joke opens with a teacher in a class of third-graders going around the classroom asking students what their favorite animal is. While you get the usual puppies and kittens, a kid known for being a troublemaker says his favorite animal is the beaver. Offended, the teacher leads the student up the chain of command demanding he repeat what he said and each person being offended, from vice-principal to principal to superintendent and on and on until he ends up in front of the president of the United States, who decides the best way for the kid to atone for his behavior is to apologize on the floor of the UN. At the UN, the boy says what he said in class, and a member of the general assembly considers what he said so offensive he runs out into the street and gets hit by a car. Final line: "And the moral of the story is: Look Both Ways Before You Cross the Street!".

==  Literature  ==
* An exemplary use of this trope is in Thomas Bangs Thorpe's ''The Big Bear of Arkansas.'' The eponymous character seems to follow the archetype of the romanticized American frontiersman, engaged in an epic struggle against nature. The narrator of the story sits in rapt attention while "Big Bear" regales him with the tale of his pursuit of a legendary giant bear; the story meanders pointlessly for a while, and ultimately Big Bear fails to kill the bear before it dies of shock. Why did it die of shock? Because it entered Big Bear's property while Big Bear was taking a shit, and died at the sight of it. That's right, the whole point of the story was to get the reader to listen to a twenty minute story about the narrator voiding his bowels. It gets better - the entire story of his "chasing the big brown bear" may have been nothing more than an extended metaphor for Big Bear's attempting to move a particularly bulky "load." Big Bear of Arkansas is effectively nothing more than a prank against the credulity of New Englanders who over-romanticized life on the frontier.
* Lawrence Sterne's ''The Life And Opinions Of [[Tristram Shandy]]'' is probably literature's most famous example of this - the gist is that the book contains precious little of his life (it starts years before the narrator's birth and only ever gets to the stage that Shandy is around 6 months old before heading off back into the period before his birth again) and none of his opinions (his family get plenty of room to air theirs though). It's also very funny.
* In the final book of [[His Dark Materials]] trilogy it is revealed that  {{spoiler|The Authority (AKA God) is so old and fragile it takes only a light breeze to destroy him.}}
** Also, a number of plot points and much buildup from the first two books is casually tossed aside in favor of [[Downer Ending|a tear-jerker ending]] [[Deus Ex Machina|enforced by destiny,]] despite all that talk about it being Lyra's job to overthrow destiny in the first book. The third Shaggy Dog of the books is then tied to the second, since after all the character buildup and romantic subtext, the two main characters are each put on a separate bus, never to see each other again, and with no sufficient reason why they feel the need to go along with this, so the third book of the series is a shaggy dog to the third power.
* [[Guy de Maupassant]]'s 1884 short story "[[The Necklace]]". A young, lower middle class couple borrows some nice clothes and jewelry from an upper class friend to wear to a party. During the course of the party, the lady loses a nice necklace. Hiding the truth, the two buy a duplicate of the necklace, are forced to sell their house and all their possessions and basically work as slaves for the next twenty years to pay back all the loans, only to be told at the end {{spoiler|it was only costume jewelry, and worth only a couple of dollars at the most}}, resulting in a horrifyingly despicable Know Your Place Aesop that almost borders on [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]].
** Readers today can also see the Aesop as "Honesty is the Best Policy". If the borrower had simply told the truth at the beginning, they would have avoided all their problems.
** An alternate Aesop overlaps with [[Character Development]] - the woman in question was bitchy, and used money that her husband would have used to go on a holiday to buy a dress for herself for the party (she didn't borrow it, just the necklace), and borrowed the necklace because she couldn't stand the thought of people seeing her in anything less than stunning attire—all her self-worth came from her appearance and what people thought of her. After having to move down a couple social classes to pay back their debts, she learns to sympathise with others, to value herself for who she is, not what she looks like, and becomes a much nicer person as a result. An alternate Aesop could easily be that hard work builds character and looks aren't everything.
* A particularly [[Downer Ending]] version is found in the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]: [[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' book ''Necropolis''. The Ghosts, Vervunhive Primaries, Bluebloods, North Cols, and scratch companies all endure horrendous losses in the ultimately (if just, just barely) successful defense of Vervunhive... and at the end, Vervunhive is abandoned, as the city has been damaged virtually beyond repair and no survivor wants to return. Still, at least the Ghosts got some new blood in the end, as many of the Vervun defenders were impressed by the Ghost's heroism and elected to join them after the battle ended.
** Also, the Chaos troops would probably have moved on to attack other hive cities had they succeeded in destroying Vervunhive.
* In the ''[[Dragon Age]]'' [[Prequel]] novel, Rowan is in love with Maric, who she's been politically arranged to marry.  {{spoiler|Turns out that Maric doesn't love her that way and falls in love with an elven woman, Katriel. Rowan is understandably upset by this turn of events but it gets worse. She gets over Maric and falls in love with his best friend, Loghain instead. However, near the end of the book, Maric kills Katriel for being an [[Capulet Counterpart|enemy spy]] and Rowan finds herself going along with the original betrothal agreement and ultimately marries Maric out of duty and not out of love.}} What was the entire point of that?
** Probably to introduce King Cailen, the son of Maric and Rowan, who is apparently ruling Fereldan by the time the Game starts. (and not doing a very good job, from the looks of it.) Loghain doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of the new king.
*** Yeah, but Cailen would have been born ''anyway'' had circumstances been different. Only this time Rowan wouldn't have been in a position she hated. So I ask again: What was the point of that?
*** To emphasize just how far Maric and Loghain value duty over their personal feelings and desires, and giving each of them reasons to become bitter at old age. In case you missed it, it's not a love story, and it isn't supposed to be.
* The short story [https://web.archive.org/web/20090304095258/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/waldrop5/waldrop51.html "God's Hooks"] by [[Howard Waldrop]], in the spirit of all stories about catching [[Legendary Catfish|improbably large fish]], ends with the fish not being caught, making the whole story pointless. (Assuming you think that whether the fish gets caught is the point.)
* ''[[American Psycho]]'' by [[Bret Easton Ellis]] (and the film adaptation) - Patrick Bateman becomes increasingly insane and homicidal and a lot of people die at his hands, culminating in him confessing to his lawyer... but in the end, no one believes him, and the book and film end as they begin, with him making boring small talk with boring, self-absorbed people. Patrick himself says at one point: "There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant ''nothing''..."
* ''[[The Andromeda Strain]]''; the entire book is spent trying to find a cure for said strain, only to reveal at the end that {{spoiler|it had already mutated into a non-infectious form. Because of breathing quickly (but that's another matter entirely)}} Granted, it's still dangerous, but...
* ''[[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (novel)|Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince]]'', particularly the climax. {{spoiler|Harry and Dumbledore go to an extremely dangerous seaside cave in a cliff, fight off [[Our Zombies Are Different|inferi (like zombies but not)]] that are trying to drown them, and Dumbledore has to drink a potion that physically tortures him, all so they can get one of Voldemort's horcruxes, a locket. Dumbledore is then murdered by Snape, and Harry opens the locket to discover... It's not the real horcrux. Somebody else got there first and planted the fake one to mess with Voldemort.}}
** Also , take note that this actually does something in the plot.  {{spoiler|Dumbledore not being on the castle at that time makes it possible for the Death Eaters to enter; and gives Harry (and the readers) even more reasons to hate Voldemort. I doubt anyone couldn't feel bad for Dumbledore's dying wish to be unfulfilled, and that everyone hated the villains more}}.
** Further, it may have been according to plan and it allowed things to happen for the "good guys":  {{spoiler|it gave Harry a lead on tracking down the other horcruxes (R.A.B) and allowed Snape to finish off Dumbledore allowing Voldemort to be tricked into thinking Dumbledore's wand was bound to Snape when it was actually bound to Malfoy}}.
* ''[[My Sister's Keeper]]'' by [[Jodi Picoult]]: Anna was conceived to be a donor match for her sister Kate, who has had aggressive [[Littlest Cancer Patient|leukemia]] since she was 2. When her parents ask Anna to donate a kidney when Kate's kidneys fail, she  {{spoiler|sues them for medical emancipation. It is successful and she gains medical emancipation, only to be in a car accident on the way back from court one day with her lawyer. Anna is brain dead, so they pull the plug and give Kate her kidney anyway, thus rendering Anna's court case useless.}}
** Made even worse in that  {{spoiler|Kate asked Anna to take her parents to court so they would let her die}}. [[Jodi Picoult]] writes this a lot.
* ''[[The Old Man and the Sea]]'' by [[Ernest Hemingway]]: Santiago spends the better part of the book fighting one fish as a classic stoic Hemingway Hero. In the end, he  {{spoiler|does manage to catch the fish}}, but it is simply  {{spoiler|eaten by sharks.}} To add insult to injury, a white resort guest simply mistakes the greatest fish he ever caught for a dolphin washed up on shore.
* In the ''[[Geronimo Stilton]]'' book, ''Geronimo Stilton, Secret Agent'', Geronimo has to chase after the deed to The Rodent's Gazette, which was carried off by a very strong wind. Over the course of his search, he ends up going through the wharf, the dump, the sewers, and even his [[Sitcom Arch Nemesis|archrival]]'s office, and only succeeds in nabbing the deed with help from his [[Overt Operative|Secret Agent]] [[Old Friend|Childhood Friend]]. He gets the deed back to his grandfather's office by the exact deadline, only to find out the whole thing was just a test set up by his grandfather, who had the real deed in his office the whole time.
* One of the (many) criticisms against the ''[[Magic: The Gathering|Magic the Gathering]]'' novel ''The Quest for Karn'' is that it comes off as an unintentional example of this. "Karn is the only hope of saving our world from the invading Phyrexians! We have to find him! Yay, we spent a whole book finding Karn and we saved him! Only the Phyrexians won anyway. Huh."
** A previous ''[[Magic: The Gathering|Magic the Gathering]]'' novel, ''The Darksteel Eye'' (Which takes place on the world Karn created, incidentally) revolved around the search for three artifacts which will summon the Kaldra Champion who is expected to win the day for the good guys...  {{spoiler|Aside from never ever explaining what the Kaldra Champion is or where he came from, the Champion is turned evil very soon after being summoned by the bad guy Memnarch and very shortly after that is destroyed by the ascent of the green sun.}}
* In [[Michael Crichton|Michael Crichton's]] ''[[Sphere]]'' the main characters are investigating a most-likely alien ship, that landed on the bottom of the ocean. Inside they find  {{spoiler|a perfect sphere with strange markings on them, and after they've entered the Sphere, they can do stuff with the power of their minds! Which results in the underwater research facility being attacked by among other things, a giant squid. All but three of them die and at the end they figure out what's happening. When they are finally rescued, they decide that the power to do anything with just your thoughts is too dangerous, so they decide to forget everything that's happened, explain the deaths of everyone by a leak or something and just by thinking this, it becomes reality. So basically, everything that happened in the entire book has become irrelevant in the last paragraph or so.}}
** Not really. It ends on a subtle hint that implies that at least one of the characters  {{spoiler|didn't actually give up the power after all.}}
* The ''[[War of the Spider Queen]]'' is a series of six novels set in the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' world. The plot revolves around a small group of elite warriors, priests, and wizards who are send to investigate the sudden and total disappearance of the chief dark elf goddess Lolth. After traveling the world for months and visiting no less then three hellish dimensions, they have finally located her whereabouts. But as they approach the demonic temple in Hell, where her physical form is located {{spoiler|it turns out that she was just undergoing a metamorphosis, from which she awakens all by herself only minutes before the protagonists reach her. Without anything that happened on the last two thousand pages having anything to do with it.}} After they've returned home, even the leader of the group is completely frustrated about the fact, that all she did was for nothing.
* ''[[Splinter of the Minds Eye]]''. The [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kaiburr_crystal Kaiburr Crystal], which amplifies a Force-Sensitive's power many times over, was sought by Luke, Leia, and Vader. And it worked all right. But it also lost power the farther it was from a specific site on the planet, and was completely useless offworld. All that fuss and [[Brother-Sister Incest]] vibes for nothing.
* The tragedy of ''[[Daisy Miller]]'' ultimately (intentionally) comes from this trope. Winterbourne realizes he misjudged Daisy and should have trusted his own opinion of her rather than everyone else's {{spoiler|after she dies. There is nothing left for him to do but return to Geneva and continue to live just as he was at the beginning of the story.}}
* [[Neil Gaiman]]'s novella collaboration with [[Yoshitaka Amano]], ''The Sandman: The Dream Hunters'', concerns a tale where a monk is cursed by a onmyoji to die from an entrapping dream, so that the onmyoji can find peace with himself. A fox, who had earlier fallen in love with the monk after trying to trick him, attempts to save the monk. In the end,  {{spoiler|the fox, with the help of Dream of the Endless (or as he is referred to in the novella, the King of Dreams), usurps the monk's dream so that he may live. However, the monk travels to the realm of dreams so that he may claim his own dream and save the fox. By sacrificing himself, the monk rendered the fox's quest in vain, much to the chagrin of the fox.}}
* [[Lewis Carroll]]'s poem ''[[The Hunting of the Snark]]''. A dysfunctional party's search for the mythical Snark ends with  {{spoiler|the one who found it disappearing because the Snark was really a Boojum}}.
** With the exception of one chapter entirely about how two natural enemies in the party become best friends. The ending, in which the crew was apparently transformed by witnessing the Baker's heroic efforts, might have gone somewhere if it hadn't ended at that exact point... which is very clearly why it ''did'.
* [[Older Than Dirt]]: ''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]'' is not only one of the oldest written stories still in existence, but also an ancient Shaggy Dog Story, in which we learn about this epic (if [[Moral Dissonance|often cruel by modern standards]]) hero, who slays monsters, challenges gods, dares seek immortality... then fails in his quest due to sloppy packing, and dies of old age.
* [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[American Gods]]'' concludes, after countless chapters of the protagonist not really doing anything proactive towards the main plot, with a minor side character being literally told, in person, by ''the three fates'', how to stop [[The Chessmaster]]. Then, she does it. Unsurprisingly, it works. Our hero, thus freed from the cumbersome narrative demands of the [[Big Bad]], goes on to face a trivial side villain who apparently wants to die anyway, watches as no fewer than four potential love interest characters head off their separate ways, and... that's it. The book ends on neither a bang nor a whimper, but a note so soft, you could swear it was waiting for a moment to unleash all the epicness inherent in its premise to this day... but it's not.
** There has been at least one short story published since then, which features Shadow taking a much more proactive role in his life in general, so there's that.
* [[Isaac Asimov]] wrote a short story about an idealized future floating city, ruled by an emperor-like leader, that in the end is brought down under the weight of a bunch of military spaceships - all in service of setting up the last line of the story, which is a [[Feghoot|fairly bad pun]]. The title of the story? "Shah Guido G." As Asimov himself admitted in commentary, it's all there in the title. (If you don't see it, split the title between the "i" and the "d." Now read.)
** Oddly enough, despite the lampshade it isn't actually all that good an example - sure, the point of the story was to set up a bad pun, but as the other character in the framing story points out, the narrator ''did'' bring down the floating city (it just happened to be by manipulation), and that led to a better, more vibrant society being established. In other words, the struggle of the story is not unexpectedly rendered moot when it ends.
* In the ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon]]'' series by [[Spider Robinson]] shaggy dog stories and puns are the common thread through the entire series. Most shaggy dog stories in the series are elaborate build-up to a mindnumbingly horrendous pun to the delight of the crowd (once the BSOD wears off).
* While ''[[Catch-22]]'' itself is not a Shaggy Dog Story, it's made of them. For example, the protagonist Yossarian is a bombardier in WWII. He asks his friend Doc Daneeka to ground him. Yossarian has flown dozens of combat missions and is due to be replaced, but his [[Pointy-Haired Boss]] of a commander insists on sending his men into greater danger and more missions than any other bomb group. Yossarian asks on the [[Stealth Pun|grounds]] that he's crazy. Doc Daneeka points out that anyone who is crazy must be grounded. Of course, they have to ask to be grounded in order to be grounded. Asking to be grounded in the face of danger is a sign of sanity. [[Failure Is the Only Option|Anyone asking to be grounded must therefore be sane, which means they ''cannot'' be grounded.]] Doc Daneeka informs Yossarian of all this and sends him back up to fly. This is where we get the colloquial expression Catch 22 for a situation where the rules of an organization result in damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. The book is full of similar scenes. It works as a rich source of [[Black Humor]] and as a means of delivering the book's Aesop.
* ''[[Otherland]]'', by [[Tad Williams]], has a layered use of this trope. One of the main protagonists, [[The Unpronounceable|!Xabbu]], is an African Bushman (San for the overly pedantic) who is close to, if not the [[Last of His Kind]], and relates many of his tribe's stories to the other characters throughout the novels. These stories lack the narrative structure one would expect of Western literature and frequently have endings that are only tangentially related to their beginnings. Loop back to the main plot: the Other, the [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|quasi-sentient operating system]] of the eponymous network, which the protagonists are [[Inside a Computer System|trapped inside of]], also appears to have developed a warped sense of narrative causality and keeps trying to steer them into its vision of how its "story" should play out, which is disturbingly random at times. The final blow comes when, after the protagonists have solved the [[Win to Exit]] plot, it's discovered that the Other's deepest secret is completely unrelated to any part of the plot which has been revealed to this point, and the resolution of ''that'' secret threatens to render everything else that's happened in the story irrelevant. This is [[Discussed Trope|discussed extensively]] by the characters.
* In ''[[True Grit]]'' and the 2010 movie based on it, Mattie goes to great effort to see Rooster Cogburn for the first time 25 years after he saved her life and vanished into the night. Would have been a touching reunion if he hadn't died three days before.
* Kevin J. Anderson's ''[[Jedi Academy Trilogy|Darksaber]]''. At least, the part about the eponymous superweapon. To make a long story short: the [[Big Bad]] built it using shoddy labor and substandard material, and the first time he tried to use it, [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] (literally, in this case). All the good guys had to do was show up, and their contribution to the finale was complete.
* Niel Hancock's ''Circle of Light'' series. Much of the plot revolves around the heroes' efforts to keep the Arkenchest out of the hands of the Big Bad. At the end,  {{spoiler|when she finally gets it and all hope seems lost, the Arkenchest's sheer goodness transforms her into an angel of light. They could have ended the conflict faster by just giving it to her}}.
* In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/The Restaurant At The End of The Universe|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'', Ford Prefect, three Pan-Galactic [[Gargle Blaster|Gargleblasters]] into drinking himself senseless, tries to explain how the universe was made in the first place (which is essential to understanding how it ends). He gets Arthur to picture a film of a black ebony conical bathtub draining of sugar (or fine sand) threaded through a projector backwards so it looks as though the sand is spiraling into the bathtub from the bottom.
{{quote|"And that's how the Universe began, is it?" said Arthur.
"No," said Ford, "but it's a marvelous way to relax." }}
* In [[The Wise Man's Fear]], Kvothe introduces the mercenaries he's traveling with to this trope, with a story of a child born with a golden screw for a belly button, who goes in search of why he was born that way. It takes an entire page to tell, and the end of the story is that he finds the screwdriver that fits the screw, and when it's unscrewed, {{spoiler|his rear end falls off}}. As none of his companions have ever heard a shaggy dog story before, their reactions are... amusing.
* ''[[Land of Oz|The Patchwork Girl Of Oz]]'' is all about Ojo's quest to gather the ingredients needed to cure his uncle of a curse. {{spoiler|He fails, because one of the ingredients is under the protection of the Tin Woodsman, who won't give it up since it requires a living thing to be harmed. But Glinda the Good can do magic, so she can totally just cure Unc Nunkie anyway, and a lot of trouble could have been saved by going straight to Quadling Country for a visit}}.
** To make it even worse, the quest for the ingredients was endorsed by both Dorothy and Ozma, who the characters met about halfway through the story. The two characters know both the Tin Woodsman and Glinda well, yet the fact that Glinda can do magic and the Tin Man is a [[Actual Pacifist]] apparently do not occur to them, or at least are not worth mentioning.
* In ''[[Animorphs]]'' Book #28, "The Experiment", the group spends most of the time investigating the Yeerks' efforts to make a drug that will eliminate free will.  {{spoiler|As it turns out, the drug doesn't work, and the results were falsified in order to delay the wrath of [[Bad Boss|Visser Three]]. However, it is subverted at the end, when [[The Messiah|Cassie]] points out that they still saved people and animals from being subjected to Yeerk experiments}}
* David Foster Wallace's [[Infinite Jest]] is one of these in its entirety. The narrative is famously long, and doesn't appear to be going much of anywhere until the last third, when the action finally picks up. Then the last hundred pages or so are occupied with a description of one of the protagonists having a fever dream. The closest thing to resolution occurs in a throwaway flashback in the book's first chapter. [[Broken Base|Some readers think this is brilliant, others hate it.]]
* Tolkien's ''[[The Children of Húrin|The Children of Hurin]]'' has shades of this. Turin spends the whole book trying to fight against his curse and even kills the dragon Glaurung who has been destroying his life, only to find out that his wife is actually his sister and both kill themselves. The shagginess is only compounded in ''[[The History of Middle Earth]]'' material ''The Wanderings of Hurin'' where Turin's father, having been forced to watch the curse destroy his children's lives, tries to avenge them and his wife's deaths... only for him to ultimately make things worse and is basically told that he isn't helping anyone. Then he kills himself.
* In the [[Spellsinger]] novel ''The Day Of The Dissonance'', Jon-Tom travels hundreds of dangerous miles to fetch medicine for the ailing wizard Clothahump. Not only does it turn out that the "life-saving" medication is just ordinary aspirin, but Jon-Tom ''already had'' several identical tablets in the pocket of the jeans he was wearing when he arrived in Clothahump's world.
* R. J. Rummel's ''Reset -- Never Again''  {{spoiler|is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]}}. The entire book could have been excised from the series and it would not have affected the overreaching plot at all.
* The first chapter of ''[[Wayside School|Wayside School is Falling Down]]'' has Louis carry a heavy and fragile package from the first floor of Wayside School, to Mrs. Jewls' classroom, located on floor 30. After he climbs 30 flights of stairs and reaches her door, he has to hold it up for several ''more'' minutes, while the kids decide who should open the door. After Louis finally brings the package inside the room, Mrs. Jewls unpacks a computer from inside it, and proclaims that the computer will help her students learn new things more quickly.  {{spoiler|She then demonstrates the concept of gravity by dropping the computer out the window and letting the kids see how quickly it can fall to the ground and smash.}}

==  Live Action TV  ==
* ''[[The Sinner]]'' - Builds up a huge premise of why a woman killed a man on a beach, and brings up more and more questions about the motive for the crime, with the woman unable to remember the reasons for killing the man. After a peak is reached with the number of mysteries raised, it resolves them in a concluding chapter which provides an explanation which massively pales in comparison to the amount of build-up, and concludes with a run-of-the-mill "accidental murder" caper. 
* ''[[Law and Order]]'' frequently uses serious shaggy dog stories, where the suspect avoids being convicted only to be caught for another crime, dying unexpectedly (and sometimes spectacularly), or otherwise being punished by the forces of Fate. Also, frequently the controversial issue of the day which the defense attorney's scheme is hinged around [[Debate and Switch|ends up being irrelevant]] when a simple, personal motive appears in the last five minutes.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]''. Fans who did dislike RTD's stint as Head Writer usually complain about these. One noted example built up the return of a Dangerous species, and then dismissed them with hardly any time on air.
* In an episode of ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'', Richard and Emily are drawn closer as they try to find the owner of a stray dog that had happened upon them, leading the audience to expect that the experience will lead them to end their separation. In the end, though, the dog's owner claims it and it's back to status quo. The only real revelation to come from the affair is the gender of the dog, which was not what they had thought—it was a ''very'' shaggy dog.
* [[Professional Wrestling]] example: In a bizarre invocation of the [[Fleeting Demographic Rule]], [[WCW]]'s Halloween Havoc 2000 pay-per-view featured a [[Sting (wrestling)|Sting]] vs. [[Jeff Jarrett]] match, with Jarrett dressed up in Sting face paint. Throughout the match, several fake versions of Sting interfered in the match (reminiscent of 1990's Halloween Havoc, when Sid Vicious fought Sting and was later attacked by a fake), and the real Sting easily handled all of them. One would expect there to be a big payoff from all the fake Sting madness, but the match ended with Jarrett whacking the real Sting with his guitar to win the match.
** [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] one - [[John Cena]] made a shocking comeback to win the 2008 Royal Rumble just two or three months after an injury that was said to put him down for at least six. He invoked his title match against [[Randy Orton]] (who was awarded the WWE Championship upon Cena's injury)... and then won by DQ so he didn't take the title. Then he got another two title shots, and lost both of them before moving into another feud without ever getting any revenge on Orton.
* New characters Nikki and Paolo from season three of ''[[Lost]]'' turned out to be one big Shaggy Dog Story; after an entire episode spent setting up their circumstances and motivations, they are killed off (horribly) before they can affect the plot in any way. This is mostly the viewers' fault, though- they'd been planned to be more important but nobody liked them so they were quickly written out.
** Depending on who you talk to, the show has quite a few examples, up to and including the entire thing.
* In an episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', Lister tells Rimmer a story that at first seems to be a serious example of why it is cruel to give machines personalities. He discusses a pair of artificially intelligent shoes that are discontented with their existence and try to escape it by stealing a car. They then accidentally drive it into a canal and "die". A priest, however, comforted the shoes owner by telling him that the shoes had gone to heaven. Turns out the entire lecture was just an excuse for Lister to deliver the [[Incredibly Lame Pun]] "Shoes have soles". Rimmer, however, doesn't get it.
{{quote|'''Rimmer:''' What a sad story... wait a minute. How did they open the car door?}}
* On ''[[Babylon 5]]'', the character of Talia Winters was set up for a big arc from the first season. Kosh copied her personality, she was granted telekinetic powers, and she was growing increasingly disillusioned with the [[Psi Corps]]. When the actress wanted to leave, they wrapped up the "implanted personality" arc in one episode where her only significant role was in the last 10 minute "big reveal". She was then [[Put on a Bus]] and was never heard from again, except for the implication she was killed off screen.
** This one's a big case of [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: Talia's actor, Andrea Thompson, had recently divorced Jerry Doyle (who played another major character, Michael Garibaldi), and was being offered a much juicier gig on ''[[JAG]]''. She dropped out, and Talia's arc (except for the {{spoiler|[[Ho Yay|relationship with Ivanova]]}}) was picked up by Lyta Alexander (who had been established in the [[Pilot Movie]] but hadn't joined up for the first season over some contract dispute).
* ''[[CSI]]'': Ending Happy features a dead guy who five other people attempt to murder in a single night, but it eventually turns out that he died accidentally due to a lawn chair collapsing.
* An example with a twist from ''[[The Torkelsons]]'': One character is in a contest to spend time in Paris with a family. [[Status Quo Game Show|As would be expected]], she loses. But it's ''how'' she loses that makes it a Shaggy Dog Story: She had the highest scores... but the French family wanted to have a boy spend time with them, and there was only one boy in the finals. Meaning the finals had been meaningless before they had even started (Which counts as a [[Crack Defeat]] as well).
* ''[[The Wonder Years]]'', the entire damn show. An important part of the plot, if not the most important part, was Kevin being in love with Winnie Cooper. How does the show end?  {{spoiler|The epilogue voice over said he married someone else}}.
* ''[[The Two Ronnies]]''' famous monologues by Ronnie Corbett in his chair. Ostensibly all about telling a single, usually only moderately funny joke, the real joy was in the meandering way he eventually got to the punchline over five minutes, wandering off on a variety of bizarre tangents in the process.
* ''[[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia|Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'': "America's Next Top Paddy's Billboard Model" is this from the perspective of the modeling contestants (especially the ones who had a threeway with Mac in order to win). The winning model's prize was supposed to be a place on the bar's new billboard, but it turns out that before the contest even began, Frank had already put the billboard up with himself on it.
* A two-episode arc of ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' focuses on [[The Dragon|Tenaya 7]] trying to steal a [[Mineral MacGuffin|rare diamond]] to power up her [[Monster of the Week]], which she claims will ensure easy victory for [[Big Bad|Venjix]]. Even though she does steal the diamond, the Rangers destroy the monster in their Megazords within 10 seconds without breaking a sweat.
* In an episode of ''[[Charmed]]'', a summoner spends the entire episode working on a spell that would bring back a very powerful [[Big Bad]] from earlier seasons, the Source. It succeeds, but then Piper hits the summoner with her power three times and both the summoner and the summoned Source are vanquished. In less than two minutes.
** ''Charmed'' was ''made'' off this trope. In the 1st season, there was an episode in which they meet their male counterparts, supposedly as powerful as they are, only evil. They died in the last 30 seconds of the episode.
* An episode of ''[[Seinfeld]]'' details Kramer's quest to return a pair of pants. However he falls on the way, ruining the pants (which he had worn). Elaine later asks what Kramer was planning to wear back after he returned the pants, but as a [[Cloudcuckoolander]], he doesn't understand the question.
* ''[[NCIS]]'''s episode ''SWAK'' has  {{spoiler|1=DiNozzo contract a variation of Y. Pestis (pneumonic plague)}}. They spend the entire episode running around trying to find who did it and why, so they can get a cure, only to find out that  {{spoiler|it had a suicide gene, and killed itself off anyway}}.
** {{spoiler|Even more of an example; the whole affair happened because a mother wanted NCIS to reopen her daughter's rape case, only for the daughter to admit at the end that she [[Chained to a Bed|made up the whole story]].}}
* The Joey-Rachel relationship in ''[[Friends]]''. There's a few episodes centering around Rachel secretly having feelings for Joey. The cliffhanger of Season 9 has Joey and Rachel kissing. In the first two episodes of Season 10, there's some serious drama about how Ross will feel about the whole thing. And the episode after that...they decide they're better off as friends. The fact that they even went out at all is only mentioned once in the rest of the season.
* Charlie's little sub plot in Season One of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''. Hiro witnesses her die brutally, so he goes back in time six months to prevent the whole thing. Several months take place as the two of them fall in love. When Hiro tries to tell her that she will die, she tells him that she has a blood clot in her brain and will die shortly anyway. Oops. Waste of six good months.
** Not really, if only from the perspective that what he went through with Charlie forced Hiro to grow up a little bit and fully realize the ramifications of his powers. Would that he had remembered this AFTER the first season...
** It's also not that much of a Shaggy Dog story if you read the novel ''Saving Charlie'', where the relationship is developed further. Also, Hiro's "accidental" teleports keep carrying him back to the task of saving Claire Bennett and Charlie eventually calls him on the fact that Hiro is neglecting his destiny just to spend time with her. That doesn't stop the two of them from losing their virginity to one another on the night before Charlie is supposed to die though.
*** Of course that wonderful story was tossed in the garbage and this really DID become a Shaggy Dog story as of Volume 5 when Hiro went back to save Charlie and was successful. He somehow managed to get his past self to go to back in time to fall in love with Charlie, get Past Ando to hang around until Past Hiro gets back AND talked Past Sylar into using his powers to cure Charlie's blood clot ([[Don't Ask]])... only to have Charlie get "lost in time" by this Volume's [[Big Bad]]!
**** To cap off in a way that probably reaches [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] levels, in the season ([[Left Hanging|and series]]) finale Hiro meets Charlie again. She's old, and asks Hiro not to go back in time, because she's built a family during 65 years and doesn't want to lose that. Doubleyoo. Tee. Eff.
* The search for a virus that occupies much of the first third of Season 3 of ''[[24|Twenty Four]]''.  {{spoiler|The virus was a decoy. Also, Jack's jailbreak was all part of a sting operation against the Salazars}}.
* On one episode of ''[[Taxi]]'', [[Ascended Extra]] Jeff gets fired when he gets blamed for Louie's theft. Alex eventually guilts Louie into confessing to the boss ... except the boss doesn't believe his confession, and yet is so impressed by Louie's "sacrifice" that he re-hires Jeff.
* The ''[[Scrubs]]'' episode "My Princess". Dr. Cox tells his son a story about a patient from that day, but as a fairy tale. The patient is referred to as a maiden who is being attacked by a monster who can not be killed, and the entire episode is about JD and Elliot's search for a cure for her. At the end, Cox tells his son when asked that the "maiden" lived happily ever after - only to walk out and strongly hint to his wife that in reality the girl died.
* The ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "Move Along Home" has several main cast members struggling to escape from an incredibly lifelike game—only to eventually fail, and end up back in reality with no consequence except that Quark [[Status Quo Is God|doesn't get to keep a bunch of gems he would have won]] from the aliens of the week. Said aliens are rather surprised at their relief to still be alive; after all, "It was only a game!"
* ''[[iCarly]]'': Both plots in "iSpaceOut". Carly gets [[Space Madness]] and the trio lose the chance to go into space, whilst the mute freaky little girl that spooked Spencer just leaves without talking or any explanation about who she is or where she came from, except that Carly could see her ruling out the previous ideas of a hallucination or vision from Spencer.
* A throwaway joke in an episode of ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|M*A*S*H]]'' details Hawkeye telling a story about his tent mate B.J. Hunnicut (in a smoking jacket with a zipper down the back) and Lana Turner (in a pink angora sweater with a zipper down the back).
{{quote|'''Hawkeye:''' She throws her arms around you, but you push her away!
'''BJ:''' I-what? I push her away? Why?
'''Hawkeye:''' Your smoking jacket is covered in angora lint.
''(BJ groans)''
'''Hawkeye:''' In a fit of pique, she leaves.
'''BJ:''' But what about the zippers down the back?
'''Hawkeye:''' They didn't catch on. }}
* ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?|Whose Line Is It Anyway]]'' did this in one of their Improbable Missions. Ryan and Colin had to wash the Emir of Groovefunkistan's burnoose. They had to go through all sorts of things—climbing the outside of the hotel using Ryan's hair, dealing with a bomb on the faucet of the bathtub, the cat being wet, and so on.  {{spoiler|Colin had a spare burnoose the whole time}}.
* In general, a [[Game Show]] contestant hitting a [[Whammy]] in a [[Golden Snitch]] or [[All or Nothing]] situation tends to result in this trope. However, a couple shows deserve special mention because they're set up to make this happen so often, it has to be an intentional budget-saver:
** The British show ''Golden Balls'' consists of nearly an hour of bluffing and random money distribution to determine the size of the pot and to eliminate 2 of the 4 contestants. At the end, the two contestants left each have to decide whether to share or steal the prize fund. The rules <ref>If both share, they split the pot 50/50. If one steals and one shares, the one who steals gets the entire pot. If both steal, the pot is lost and both leave empty-handed.</ref> give zero incentive whatsoever to share, and if both players opt to steal (the only Nash equilibrium in the decision table), then nobody wins a single quid, and the entire hour was moot.
** Another British show, ''The Million Pound Drop'', and its American spin-off ''Million Dollar Money Drop'', after taking most of an hour with plenty of [[Padding]] to go through about 7-10 questions, require players to answer a final question (which they cannot opt out of) to win anything at all. The final question is multiple choice with two answers to choose from; if the players pick the correct one, they keep their winnings, and if they pick the incorrect one, they lose all their winnings at the very last second and they leave with zilch. The final question is always an [[Unexpectedly Obscure Answer]] which may as well be a coin flip, leading to many teams taking a considerable sum of money into the final question only to lose it.
* ''[[Dollhouse]]'': It's amazing just how unimportant Alpha ends up being.
* In an episode of ''[[Father Ted]]'', Dougal asks Ted if he's ever seen a ghost. Ted starts telling a story of how he was staying at his great-aunt's spooky old house in the middle of nowhere, and was staying in a bedroom where a heartbroken girl had allegedly hung herself many years before. He describes how the room was icy cold, lit by a single candle, and then suddenly he heard a creak.
{{quote|'''Dougal:''' Was it a ghost?
'''Ted:''' No. So no, I've never seen a ghost.  }}
* The season one ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' finale "Come On," ended with Ted coming back to his apartment and finding Marshall, engagement ring in hand, as Lily had broken up with him to go to an "art fellowship" in San Diego. Since it was a [[Foregone Conclusion]] that the two would end up together, Lily's art fellowship thing petered out for [[Futurama|no particular raisin]]. Why needlessly make Marshall angst for six episodes?
** The Barney/Robin romance also falls prey to this. After an entire season of Barney [[Unrequited Love Tropes|pining silently]] over Robin after a [[Love Epiphany]], involving a lot of [[Character Development]] for both of them, they finally get together...and break up seven episodes later over almost nothing, to allow Barney to revert back to his whorish ways and Robin to revert back to her commitment-fearing, career-driven lifestyle. This one is still going back and forth.
** Pretty much every girl that Ted falls in love with and hooks up with. Particularly Robin. We know right from the first episode that Robin is not the mother but a large part of Season 1 and 2 and in a few other seasons is dedicated to Ted pining over Robin, Robin pining over Ted, getting together and breaking up, thinking of restarting their relationship, having a non-strings attached relationship and then deciding they are [[Better as Friends]].
** In-Universe, there's an episode where Marshall, Lily and Barney spend the entire time trying to guess which Canadian celebrity invited Robin over to look at which collectible and propositioned her to engage in which sex act. At the end, she finally tells them. They probably would have been more impressed if they had known who The Frozen Snowshoe was, what Harvey's trays were or how one performs an [[Noodle Incident|Old King Clancy.]] And then, the audience is shown that Robin was being an [[Unreliable Narrator]] anyway.

==  Music  ==
* [["Weird Al" Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovic]]'s song ''Albuquerque'' is a long, rambling story about the singer's escape from his mother "who tied [him] up and force-fed [him] nothing but sauerkraut until [he] was twenty-six-and-a-half years old" (because "IT'S GOOD FOR YOOOOOOOOOOOU!") and his subsequent escape, journey to Albuquerque, plane crash, battle with a hermaphrodite with only one nostril, encounter with flesh-eating weasels, donuts, marriage, kids, divorce, job at Sizzler, and so forth. Near the end, he loses his train of thought after telling a few vaguely related anecdotes and then remarks that the only thing he was trying to say with the story was that [[Does Not Like Spam|he just really hates sauerkraut]].
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmGVYki-oyQ ''Trapped in the Drive-Thru''] deserves a mention as well. A husband and wife argue over what to have for dinner, and finally decide to go to a fast-food place. At the drive-thru, another argument ensues over what to order, followed by the husband realizing he doesn't have his wallet. Wife offers her credit card but they don't take credit, and she only has $3 in cash on her. Husband scrounges through the car looking for loose change to cover the difference, doesn't have enough and is ultimately forced to cancel the wife's chicken sandwich ("I wasn't even really hungry in the first place"). A 10-minute-long buildup that ultimately culminates in the husband biting into the burger at a red light only to realize {{spoiler|they forgot the onions.}}.
* Arlo Guthrie's classic folk/parody "[[Alice's Restaurant (music)|Alices Restaurant]]" clocked in at about nineteen minutes on the original record; about five of them are strictly necessary to tell the story (and the title of the song isn't actually related to the point of the whole thing). Later versions, updated to reflect how times have changed since, are longer still; one performed shortly after Richard Nixon's death is about twenty-six and a half minutes long, though not all of the added material is completely extraneous. This is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] by Guthrie in most recordings and performances.
{{quote|'''Arlo:''' ''(after finishing the initial story)'' "That's not what I come to talk to you about, though. I just thought I'd mention it."}}
* [[King Crimson|Robert Fripp]] once penned a [[Roald Dahl]]-styled children's story called "The Saga Of Rodney Toady", about a man who is constantly picked on for being fat and ugly. Neighbors would make fun of him behind his back, girls would ask him out to dates just so they can stand him up and his parents would tell him to find a fat and ugly girl to marry. The end of the story just has Rodney buying "rude books with rude pictures in them". It can be found on the 1968 album ''The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp'', which includes, [[Madness Mantra|among other]] [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|things]], other Shaggy Dog Stories in the form of songs like "Call Tomorrow", "Digging My Lawn" and "The Elephant Song".
* Rap group Atmosphere has a song called "Hair", in which rapper Slug details the story of a fan trying to seduce him at a bar. The song progresses through the night as Slug and the girl go back and forth, with the fan's advances eventually winning over Slug. They get into her car, and as they're driving to her place, the song ends "''Her drunk ass turns to look at me and she says/You're so beautiful from the hair to the soul/I can't believe that I never met you before/It feels like I've been waiting for you me whole life/She missed the red light, we hit a pick-up truck and [[Rock Falls Everyone Dies|we both died]]''.
** This is followed up on a later album by a song called, appropriately enough, "Scalp". The narrator is asked by a shady friend to pick up a mysterious package at a warehouse and drop it off at another location. He gets into his car but has an internal struggle as to whether or not he should do such an obviously morally dubious thing. Deciding against his better judgement, he starts driving to the warehouse... "''Pulled out on Lindale/Killed by a couple of drunks,broadside of [[Brick Joke|my pick up truck]]''"
*** Interestingly, both songs are explicitly from [[Acting for Two|Slug's point of view]].
* "Billy The Mountain" by [[Frank Zappa]], which details a destructive roadtrip of the titular mountain and his wife Ethel (a tree). One Studebacher Hoch tries to stops Billy, but when he threatens Ethel, Billy laughs, causing Hoch to fall to his doom, which ends with the moral of the story being "a mountain is something you don't want to fuck with".
* The Fiery Furnaces. Pick a song. Any song.
** Special mention goes to "My Dog Was Lost But Now He's Found" for being a ''literal'' shaggy dog story.
* In the song ''There's a Hole in The Bucket'' Henry tells Liza that there's a hole in the bucket. Liza tells Henry to fix it. A [[Chain of Deals]]-esque to-do list begins to form, and towards the end Henry needs to transport water. Liza tells Henry to use the bucket to transport the water. Henry points out [[Book Ends|there's a hole in the bucket]]!

==  Newspaper Comics  ==
* [http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-07-09/ This] ''[[Dilbert]]'' comic.
** Scott Adams in general is fairly fond of this trope, often times inspired by [[Ripped from the Headlines|real life stories from readers]] about [[Pointy-Haired Boss|Pointy Haired Bosses]].
* When the extended flashback in the strip [[9 Chickweed Lane|Nine Chickweed Lane]] began, it was promoted as being the story of how Gran fell in love with her husband; it finished as being how marrying O'Malley was a consolation prize because her true love and Juliette's birth father had to return to Austria.
* ''[[Peanuts]]'': 
** There was a very long series of strips involving Peppermint Patty training for an ice skating tournament that ran over a whole winter. First, she hired Snoopy as a coach. Then she convinced Marcie to make her a skating dress; Marcie tried her best, but she couldn't sew, and made an awful dress. It almost ruined their friendship, until Marcie's mother made Patty a beautiful dress. Then Patty needed to get a new hairdo to go with it; Marcie was no good at that, so Patty went to Charlie Brown's dad - who's a barber. Unfortunately, he mistook her for a boy, and gave her a boy's haircut. Patty averted another disaster by buying a wig... {{spoiler|but in the end, it all turned out to be pointless, because the tournament was actually a roller skating competition.}}
** In another long arc, Linus' teacher Ms. Othmar asked him to bring eggshells to school so that his class could make model igloos, but again and again, Linus either kept forgetting or something would happen to foil his plans. (One time he remembered to bring them - on Saturday.) {{spoiler|Finally, he remembered, and brought them to school, only to find that Ms. Othmar had quit her job and was getting married. (As Linus said, "I knew the eggshells were only a manifestation of a deeper problem!") The story did end on a high note: Linus sent her a box of eggshells as a wedding present.}}

==  Radio  ==
* Every "Bebop-a-reebop Rhubarb Pie" sketch on ''[[A Prairie Home Companion]]'' is one of these.
** Garrison Keillor in general is a master of this trope.

== Recorded and Stand Up Comedy  ==
* [[Norm MacDonald]] every time he's interviewed ''so the guy says to me he says to me the guy says..''
* The spoken-word piece "Moose Turd Pie", one of the more famous versions being done by Bruce "Utah" Phillips.

== Tabletop Games ==
The flavor text of the ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' card Catacomb Crocodile probably counts
{{quote|''"I am sewer-king!" said Rat. "I am quick and cunning and I know every tunnel."
''"No, I am king!" said Zombie. "I am cold and deadly and no rot can harm me."
Then Croc came and ate them both.}}
* There are cards in ''[[Munchkin (game)|Munchkin]]'' that can make a battle this: say you've encountered a Plutonium Dragon and its Evil Twin, facing painful death should you fail to beat them or run away. After numerous bonuses and anti-bonuses have been played on the monsters, the dragon's Baby Clone, and its Mommy, have been introduced to the fight, multiple one-shot items have been used to help or hinder you, several different methods of backstabbing have been employed, lengthy negotiations of teaming up have been had, and you're ready to reap your whopping eight levels and twenty-five treasures... Some asshat plays a few cards, making the dragon and its twin, clone, and the clone's mommy already dead (and dead broke), or something to the effect, leaving you without any levels or treasure, and everyone many cards poorer. Which is, of course, very munchkinly indeed, and highly recommendable in the spirit of the game.

==  Theater  ==
* Arthur Miller's ''[[Death of a Salesman]]''.
* The entire play ''[[Waiting for Godot]]'' consists of two guys [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|waiting for a guy named Godot]], {{spoiler|who never shows up.}}
** [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Which is the point of the play...]]
** Any Beckett play with a plot fits this trope.
* Gyorgy Ligeti's opera ''[[wikipedia:Le Grand Macabre|Le Grand Macabre]]'': Death (called Necrotzar) announces the end of the world. People prepare for the final moment. At the end: nothing happens, except Death dies. Cue [[Epileptic Tree]] justifications.

==  Video Games  ==
* ''[[Arc Rise Fantasia]]'' has one happen to Paula and Luna, the ''We Challenge You!'' sidequest involved running around all over the world searching for hidden clues, at the end of the search, the whole thing was revealed to be {{spoiler|a prank left behind by Zamuel meant for anyone who happens upon his clues.}}
* The endings of both ''[[Earthworm Jim (video game)|Earthworm Jim]]'' games, of the comedic kind. In the first game, the cow launched by the hero in the first level suddenly plummets into the ending and crushes the newly rescued [[Damsel in Distress]]. In the second, it turns out the [[Love Interest]], the [[Big Bad]] and the eponymous earthworm -- [[Tomato Surprise|were all cows in disguise]].
* The plot of the [[Tower Defense]] game ''[[Immortal Defense]]'' is a Shaggy Dog Story of truly ''epic'' proportions. At the end of the game, after nearly a hundred missions of defending your beleaguered home world against increasingly impossible odds, you finally learn that {{spoiler|the enemy really ''did'' wipe out all life on your planet at the end of the second campaign, your character has gone insane, all the "transmissions" you've been receiving from the planet were in fact hallucinations, and you've spent the past ''million years'' defending a lifeless ball of rock}}. Of course, it's arguably worse for your enemies, as this revelation also means that {{spoiler|they've spent countless lives and lost thousands of vessels trying to ''invade'' that lifeless ball of rock}}. And to top it all off, unless you've gotten [[100% Completion]], it's implied that {{spoiler|your character has given in to his madness, and will spend the rest of eternity defending the lifeless ball of rock from the enemy, who will continue to waste ships and men in an attempt to reach the lifeless ball of rock and find out what's so important about it}}. ''Damn.''
** The game's creator has said that {{spoiler|some or all of the last campaign is a hallucination, so the enemy isn't really wasting ships or lives at that point (it also explains how so many of the unique boss enemies reappear)}}.
* Original ''[[The Longest Journey]]'' was this so much, it hurts: April goes on an epic quest, discovers that she is supposed to  {{spoiler|become the [[Physical God]] to [[Save Both Worlds]],}} sees all her friends and acquaintances  {{spoiler|killed or maimed in process, screws up all her previous life...}} only to discover that she was {{spoiler|, after all, only mistaken for [[The Chosen One]] and is, after all, not really needed anywhere.}} Of course, one could argue that she did save the Twin Worlds but...
** The sequel ''Dreamfall'' gives us a rare glimpse of how the protagonist of a shaggy dog story acts after their meaningless quest. April is understandably depressed and cynical. The series then doubles-down on the shaggy dog aspect by  {{spoiler|having another character be told throughout the entire game to ''save April Ryan'', only to show up just in time to see April stabbed to death.}}
* In ''[[Hellgate:London]]'', the humans are trying to kill Sydonai and expel all the demons from Earth. {{spoiler|After you kill Sydonai, Murmur appears to tell you that he use you to kill Sydonai so he can get his position, and there's no indication that the demons are leaving just because Sydonai was killed.}}
* ''[[Prince of Persia]]'': The 2008 game.
** To wit: Elika, [[Foreshadowing|much to no one's surprise]], is forced to [[Heroic Sacrifice|use her own life force]] to restore [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Ahriman's can]]...{{spoiler|But the Prince, in a true example of [[Love Makes You Crazy]], proceeds to ''destroy'' said can to revive Elika, releasing Ahriman in the process...And given Elika's [[What the Hell, Hero?|dialogue upon waking up]], she probably hates him now. [[Sarcastic Clapping|*cue audience going "Bra-vo"*]]}}
*** To be fair, the game IS a trilogy, so not having a definitive ending is kind of to be expected. Plus, it doesn't seem like sealing Ahriman was actually the point, but rather what mattered was the Prince's transformation.
*** I thought that was the [[Multiple Endings|bad end]], i.e. you have the option to walk away from the can to get the good end. Or is [[Stupidity Is the Only Option|Stupidity your only option]]? Or, worse yet, is it [[Cutscene Incompetence]]?
**** To elaborate a bit, here's how the ending plays out - when you {{spoiler|pick up Elika's body and slowly walk outside while carrying it,}} the credits start rolling. When you {{spoiler|put Elika's body back down outside the temple,}} the credits stop. The official strategy guide for the game even states outright that this is a good place to stop if you don't want a bad ending. The player still controls the Prince, but there's nothing left to do aside from  {{spoiler|destroying the tree of life and freeing Ahriman}} - which the player must do themself, without any coaching from the game. Doing so leads to the downer ending where  {{spoiler|The Prince frees Ahriman and revives Elika, who responds to this by asking "Why?"}}
***** The epilogue expansion turns this around.  {{spoiler|The prince does not believe that Ahriman can be properly sealed anymore so the choice ultimately came down to fight Ahriman now with Elika and Ormazd's help, or fight him later without them. Elika still thinks he's an idiot for making that choice.}}
* ''[[Diablo (series)|Diablo]]'' 1 did this. The protagonist finally defeated the [[Big Bad]], only to become corrupted by it's Soulstone and become the new Diablo himself.
** And this is because the protagonist believes that they are strong enough to fight the spirit of Diablo.
* The plot of the Neo-Geo shooter ''Cyber-Lip'' has the protagonists being send to a space colony in order to destroy an [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|insane supercomputer]] who controlled an army of androids supposed to protect humanity from marauding aliens. After destroying the eponymous computer, {{spoiler|the ending shows that your [[Mission Control]] is actually an alien spy who sent you there to clear the way for an alien invasion.}}
* Both of the first two ''[[Monkey Island (series)|Monkey Island]]'' games deploy this trope comedically. The first involves the protagonist attempting to rescue a [[Damsel in Distress]], only for her to escape the villain's clutches on her own, and you bungle her attempt to destroy the villain. The second is about the protagonist searching for a legendary treasure, {{spoiler|except it was [[All Just a Dream|All Just The Overactive Imagination Of Two Children Playing Together.]]}}
** In the first game, Guybrush spends a lot of time searching the potion which can destroy ghosts: but {{spoiler|the potion is actually root beer, which can be found in the vending machine on the very island where the game begun!}}
* There are only two things that are clear from the ending of ''[[Contact (video game)|Contact]]'': The bad guys weren't really evil, and- despite deceiving both Terry and the player- the Professor isn't either. So... why all the drama?
* Every entry in the ''[[Geneforge]]'' series, except possibly the last. Each game concludes its plotline with the player victorious- and usually on a hopeful note for the world at large, [[Multiple Endings|if you play right]]. But then the next game rolls around, and the world has gotten more [[Crapsack World|Crapsack]], the bad guys more threatening, the good guys less sympathetic, and your achievements in the previous games are barely mentioned. An air of hopelessness and futility hangs over the proceedings by the end of ''Geneforge 3'', and never goes away.
* The ending of the obscure, bizarre PC-Engine game ''Legendary Axe II''. You finally claim the throne from your ne'er-do-well brother, but shortly afterwards a [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|topless assassin chick]] with purple hair and a scimitar the size of Shaq jumps out of literally ''nowhere'' and...[[Left Hanging|it cuts to the credits!]] [[Flat What|''What''.]]
* At the end of ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man (video game)|Ultimate Spider Man]]'', you as Peter Parker/Spider-Man have to fight Eddie Brock/Venom to the finish to keep him from killing Bolivar Trask, the man who apparently had something to do with both of your parents' deaths and get your hands on the file which tells you the truth about the incident. During the cutscenes after beating Venom you don't actually get to find out what was in the file and {{spoiler|Eddie tracks down and murders Trask in prison anyway}}. And then the game got retconned.
** It's only a Shaggy Dog Story for Eddie, ''not'' Peter and the player as we ''do'' get to see what was in the file during the final cutscenes.  {{spoiler|Eddie's father took a sample of his and Richard Parker's (Peter's dad) research, then tried it on the plane, which transformed him into a Venom-like creature and caused the plane to crash. Also, Eddie cites his captivity by Trask and Trask only getting three years as his reasons for killing Trask.}}
* In the brilliantly-written ''[[Time Hollow]]'', the intrepid hero finds himself in a completely altered reality, with no memories whatsoever of how it happened and no idea how to set things right. All he has is a mystical pen with the ability to alter something that happened in the past, each time changing his present reality in drastic and unpredictable ways. Sometimes solving a problem creates an entirely different problem, which he must then seek out and fix. After countless twists, turns, harrowing confrontations, and narrow escapes, the pieces ever-so-gradually fall into place (with several pieces falling out in the meantime). It turns out that if the hero goes to a certain location to save a certain person's life, this will avert the long chain of events which caused time to go out of whack, and everything will return to normal. Of course, by then it should be readily apparent that had he just known that beforehand, he could've just done that right away and saved several weeks of trouble. {{spoiler|Even better, once you finish the game, you can start a new one and do just that! Meet your enemy on the street, let him know that you're onto his scheme, and offer to set things right. He'll grudgingly give you one night to make good on your offer, which is more than enough. Go to the school, get the pen from your dad, save the girl, done. You even get a special ending for your trouble.}}
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 video game)|Sonic the Hedgehog 2006]]''. Most of the levels (especially Sonic's) have absolutely no story relevance.
** That feels like a "Did not do the Research" comment, considering that in game, the story is fine until the very end. {{spoiler|After you complete the first 3 stories using Sonic, Shadow, and Silver, Mephilis the Dark appears behind Sonic and kills him, Elise cries at Sonic's Death, Iblis is released, Mephilis merges with Iblis, and Solaris is born anew and pissed, which does, in theory, make everyone's efforts at keeping all of this from happening kinda moot. But then Everyone works together, revives Sonic, he goes Super with Shadow and Silver, they beat the Final Boss, and then Sonic has Elise blow out the Flames of Disaster once and for all, eliminating Solaris from the time line, and then making the story itself a moot point,}} which then means that the game is a Shaggy Dog Story for the player.
*** More referring to Sonic's part of the main game, not the last story. Silver and Shadow actually have the meat of the plot (Iblis, Mephiles, etc), but Sonic just runs around saving Elise like 7 or 8 times, and fighting Eggman, who also doesn't do very much. Sonic has more relevance in last than his own story despite {{spoiler|being dead for most of it}}.
* The main campaign of ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'' feels like this. The player goes through a long meandering plot involving at least three different fake big bads before defeating the actual [[Big Bad]], and then {{spoiler|[[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]]}}.
** Although actually, {{spoiler|most of the characters, including the player, survive}}, allowing for the sequel ''Mask of the Betrayer''. However, one of the endings of that is also a Shaggy Dog Story, as you {{spoiler|send the curse back into the world, after you were given it in the first place for the sole purpose of getting rid of it}}. Fortunately, the other three endings do have varying degrees of meaning to them.
** A better example is {{spoiler|your trial for the Ember massacre. Whether you're found innocent or guilty, the losing side appeals to trial by combat.}} The developers themselves have admitted you shouldn't have to {{spoiler|fight Lorne if you were found innocent}}.
* The recent updates to ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' have turned it into a Shaggy Dog Story.
** Arguably the original too, since it's revealed during the credits that  {{spoiler|it was all part of the experiment}}.
* Every ending of ''[[Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume|Covenant of the Plume]]'' is some variant of this. For summary purposes, the hero Wylfred has made a deal with the dark goddess Hel that will help him slay the other goddess Lenneth, who he blames for the death of his father. {{spoiler|He's still just an ordinary guy--in no ending can he actually kill her.}} The degree to which the trope applies varies, however: {{spoiler|ending B is straight-up shaggy dog, with absolutely nothing achieved. In ending A, Wylfred decides on his own to give up on vengeance, and kills a powerful servant of Hel. Hel herself remains untouchable, despite the revelation that she was responsible for ''all'' the suffering and death that occurred after the first fifth of the game. C fits into [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|another trope . . .]]}}
* In the ''A Crystalline Prophecy'' add-on scenario for ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' was a cross between a Shaggy Dog Story and [[All Just a Dream]]. You can [[And Your Reward Is Clothes|get some actual decent gear rewards]] from the missions, but the story itself would have resolved in the same manner had you not been involved, not to mention that none of the NPCs involved remember anything that happened or mention it ever again.
* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'', the overarching plot of the game concerns rising tensions between two opposing Empires just waiting to be sparked into a war by a third party's intervention. Ashe, princess of a subjugated country under the Archadian Empire and the focus of the playable party's story, wants to acquire the power to challenge the Empire herself, or to weaken their power. But other characters are constantly warning her that revenge is a pointless goal and her efforts are only increasing the air of paranoia around the larger nations, and ultimately Ashe accepts that yes, revenge ''is'' meaningless. However this revelation has only come at the end of the game, and up until then the party ventures into dungeons looking for ancient relics of power, only to find them useless for various reasons and go looking for another one.
* In ''The Lost Crown'', you can have Nigel collect photos and recordings of various hauntings, as well as find the legendary Saxon crown. In the end,  {{spoiler|he not only has to return the crown, but all his hard-sought ghost evidence is sabotaged.}}
* At the end of ''[[Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent]]'' {{spoiler|the foreman you were trying to save is taken away screaming by the Hidden Ones. Tether's superior doesn't care about this in the least since the eraser factory is open again...despite the fact that the President (the factory was the main eraser supplier for the White House) ''didn't even notice'' the eraser shortage.}}
** This is averted in the sequel where you go back  {{spoiler|and finally solve the mystery of the Little People and the astronaut}}
* Episode 3 of ''[[Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'' starts with Strong Bad's game console breaking. He then sets out to form a "Battle of the Bands" to raise the repair money.  {{spoiler|After getting all the local bands, having to enter himself with two characters he hates, and barely managing to etch out a win, he spends all his prize money on the machine, only to find there was a piece of cheese wedged inside, and all he had to do was pull it out.}}
** Episode 1 also qualifies: while Strong Bad literally achieves his goal of beating the snot out of Homestar, his briefly successful efforts to ruin Homestar's life - specifically, turning him into a publicly disgraced criminal fugitive without a girlfriend - are undone by Strong Bad himself when he has to kick Homestar out of his house.
* At the end of the second episode of ''[[Hector: Badge of Carnage]]'' you find out that  {{spoiler|you had all the needed evidence from the beginning and all you needed to do was to wait a few hours for the forensic examination to finish.}} This annoys Hector since it means that he did not have to  {{spoiler|drug a restaurant full of people and burn down a church}}
* ''[[Touhou|Touhou Project]]'' has this in several storylines. Several times, the incidents Reimu and Marisa set out to stop are just some people they don't know temporarily doing something fairly harmless for personal reasons, and didn't bother to tell others, and the plot would have been resolved if nobody had ever tried to resolve the incident. Of course, since there's a climactic (if pointless) battle, and [[Defeat Means Friendship]], the only real result of the story is "Reimu meets new friends".
** ''Immaterial and Missing Power'' features a plot based around finding out who was causing mysterious parties to take place. When they find out it was just a [[Bottle Fairy]] oni looking for an excuse to get drunk, they just go ahead and have the parties anyway.
** ''Imperishable Night'' involves exiled lunarians trying to hide the Earth in a bucket, but failing at making it work properly, so they were going to just abort the plan, anyway.
** ''Phantasmagoria of Flower View'' revolves around a very large cast of playable characters, many of whom don't even care about the event or want to stop it, anyway, finding out that the incident is a natural occurrence and harmless to begin with.
** ''Mountain of Faith'''s plot is a new shrine appearing on top of the youkai mountain and telling the Hakurei Shrine that they'd be absorbed. Not a major incident, but certainly cause for some concern. Except that when you get to the god of the shrine they turn out to be perfectly reasonable and the whole 'you will be assimilated' thing was her [[Miko]] being over-eager.
** ''Undefined Fantastic Object'' has [[Youkai]] subordinates of a [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealed priestess]] rescuing her... but she turns out to actually be fairly nice, and was sealed for wanting humans and youkai to get along. Since the modern era is one of peace to begin with and the totality of her plan is establishing a temple, the characters don't really mind letting her go free.
** ''Ten Desires'' sees hordes of divine spirits appearing. It turns out that this is a side effect of someone powerful reviving... and she finishes doing so before the PC gets there.
** ''Silent Sinner in Blue'' is probably the most [[Egregious]] example, as the entire thing is a giant [[Gambit Pileup]] where one of the plotters decides at the last moment that she'd rather just get drunk than actually achieve her objective, and steals the lunarian's booze instead of their legendary treasures.
*** ''Silent Sinner in Blue'' is a Shaggy Dog Story. The overall story, ''Bougetsushou'', is not. The full ending is in ''Cage in Lunatic Runagate'', where it turns out that this was all a plot to {{spoiler|put the fear of youkai (mostly Yukari, really) into Eirin}}, and the sake was a perfect choice for doing that.
* Happens at the end of every chapter of ''[[Wacky Races]]'' NES game.
* The first ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]'' game. You fight through hordes of monsters, including literally going to Hell and back... only to find on your return to Earth that [[Sequel Hook|the aliens have already invaded]]. {{spoiler|And their first victim was Daisy, your pet rabbit.}}
* Played for laughs in ''[[Rex Nebular And The Cosmic Gender Bender]]''. The titular protagonist is sent to a [[Gendercide]]-ridden planet to retrieve a valuable vase. Over the course of the game, he loses his ship, destroys a large city, causes the deaths of several people, kills a small dog, suffers through repeated bouts of gender-bending, and gets kicked in the nuts, not to mention averting several deaths by a hair along the way. In the end, he accidentally breaks the vase in front of his customer while arguing about payment. Which they had already agreed on, note.
* By [[Word of God]] (there would have been a sequel-TC, but it seems to be [[Vaporware]]), the Voinian story in ''[[Escape Velocity]] Override'' is this: ''all'' storylines happened, but where all the others had a big impact in ''some'' way, the Voinian storyline is effectively rendered moot by the UE storyline—you kill one of the UE's Admirals, but Vice Admiral D'Erlon is talented enough to pick up the slack, you bomb the Emalgha's mining planet into dust, but they still maintain enough production capacity to help the UE offensive, you devastate one of the UE's colonies, but it isn't important enough to cripple the UE... all culminating in the Voinian officer you report to making references to a superweapon project sure to bring the UE to its knees, but it is too important to let humans in on the project -- [[Word of God]] is said project is the Voinian Dreadnaught, which you destroy in the course of the UE story before it even reaches UE space.
* ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'': There are cases where the resolutions to various sub-plots either get overwritten by the impact of the ill-explained ending or are completely ignored from having any real resolution explained.
** The three most visible cases are: the The Geth War-{{spoiler|There is only one ending that even allows them to exist as [[A Is]] rendering all the work to force peace with the Quarians meaningless}}; Krogan Genophage-{{spoiler|With the bulk of the Krogans off their homeworld the loss of the Relays means that regardless of being cured or not they won't make it home to continue their race and may just die out}} and the Salvation of Earth-{{spoiler|With Humanity's entire military and civil government gone and no way to get assistance then Earth will likely degenerate rather then be saved (barring if it was just incinerated)}}.
{{quote|''As a side note: There is a DLC being made to remedy the lack of resolutions (which forced the inferences as to the conclusion listed above). As to whether this will retroactively "Un-Shaggy Dog Story" the game as released is [[Broken Base|highly debatable]].''}}
* In ''[[Kid Kool]]'', the goal is to save the king, who is dying by finding the "seven wonder herbs." If the player doesn't finish the game quick enough, the king dies before you even GET to the end. Bonus points since the game's controls are so bad, that it's virtually unplayable.
* A rare example that's clear from the start occurs in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles III]]''. The new antagonists of the game are Calamity Raven, a group of Darcsen mercenaries pushing themselves through hell fighting against Gallia in hopes of gaining the resources needed to create a Darcsen free state away from the [[Fantastic Racism]] that plagues their people on the rest of the continent. Anyone who has the finished the first game (set at the same time as the third) or played the second (which is set after the first, third, and fourth) will know that in the ending of the first game Gallia's princess reveals the entire royal line are Darcsens, and the supposed calamity they caused was a falsehood created by the [[Written by the Winners|really villainous]] Valklyria, turning Gallia into a land where Darcsen are able to live more or less freely. Thus it's clear to the player not only are Calamity Raven's extreme efforts fruitless, if they ''were'' to succeed it would actually be counter-intuitive to their goals.

==  [[Web Comics]] ==
* The ending of the seven year long web comic ''[[Bob and George]]'' shows that  {{spoiler|pretty much the whole comic was a plot by the title characters' mother to make George willing to kill Bob (his super villain brother) if necessary and for Bob to be aware of it. In a subversion or at least avoidance of [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]], however, a comment during the finale prevented the deaths of just about everyone in the Cataclysm}}.
* In ''[[Gastrophobia]]'', almost all the chapters end with the plot getting humorously undermined.
* Almost every single arc in ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'' is one of these.
** Not quite. There are indeed a number of Shaggy Dog Stories in 8-Bit Theater, such as the Chocobo Breeding arc and the random town arc from right before the Orb of Air quest, but most of the story arcs don't fit the definition. They tend to end in anticlimaxes, but the anticlimaxes themselves do further the plot.
** Turns out the entire plot is one of these; {{spoiler|while the Light Warriors are arguing with each other yet again, the [[Big Bad]] is killed by a minor character using a strategy Black Mage had scoffed at in one of the series' first comics. After nine years and 1200 comics, the main characters end up basically where they started off without really accomplishing anything outside of causing problems wherever they went}}. According to the author, this was his plan from the very beginning.
* The first season of ''[[Ansem Retort]]'' ended like this. After a demon invasion, fighting through FOX headquarters, one character fighting [[The Dragon|Ansem]], another getting god-like powers, and using said powers to summon a dragon with ''a nuke on its back'', the president of FOX was defeated  {{spoiler|by a stab in the back.}} Of course, this is lampshaded:
{{quote|'''Marluxia:''' {{spoiler|That's it? Axel stabs the guy and we all go home?}}
'''Zexion:''' {{spoiler|Screw you. They're dead, we're alive. We win, they lose, end of story. Who's up for Chinese food?}} }}
* One story arc in ''[[Blip]]''. K is speaking with Bang over the cell phone, and she hears as he gets attacked by someone with a knife. Fearing the worst, K enlists a friend and drives from San Francisco to Los Angeles to make sure Bang doesn't bleed to death in a parking garage. They can't find him at the parking garage, nor at any hospitals. {{spoiler|When they finally check Bang's apartment, they discover that he's completely okay, and they needn't have worried about him at all.}}
* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'':
** Susan's uniform crusade was cut short when  {{spoiler|The principal revoked the dress code after parents complained about having to wash them daily}}.
** The race through Swedekia in the Temple of Swedish Furniture arc also qualifies. The last TV stand that Elliot and Noah were racing for had already been purchased the previous day, and the store's online inventory didn't register that piece of information.
* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'': The  {{spoiler|Judy gets a kitten}} story arc ends with the {{spoiler|cute kitten}} apparently being devoured by Yoshi. It [[Unexplained Recovery|gets better]].
* The ''[[Dark Legacy Comics]]'' spinoff, ''The Stonemaker Argument'', consists mostly of these. In particular, "[http://www.stonemakerargument.com/2.html The Dr. Noodle Improbability.]"
* Some ''[[PvP (webcomic)|Pv P]]'''s storylines in the last couple of years have been massive buildups leading to either tremendous jokes or epic storylines, only to fizzle out on a short, mediocre anticlimax.
* Much of the humor in ''[[Pictures for Sad Children]]'' revolves around awkward, drawn out, just uncomfortable (and usually [[Magic Realism|surreal]]) conversation with no conventional punchline at the end.
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]:'' In the Fantasy arc, [http://irregularwebcomic.net/516.html in strip 516], the heroes receive their epic quest to find the Ruby of Dwarven Might. [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3106.html About 2500 strips later], they finally locate the Ruby: {{spoiler|one of them had been wearing it around his neck since the beginning of the quest, completely unaware of its true origin}}.
* The ''[[Electric Wonderland]]'' comic "Day of Fools" has Trawn race to warn Aerynn of a scan for hackers and magicians.  {{spoiler|She fails to warn Aerynn in time, but it turns out the scans never detect Aerynn's brand of magic.}}
* ''[[Brawl in the Family]] has comic number [https://web.archive.org/web/20130817204556/http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2010/08/05/260-the-captive-princess/ 260]. This has Princess Peach actually do something instead of just sitting around in a game but... see it for yourself.
* Frequently used in ''[[Mountain Time]],'' but most notable in [http://mountaincomics.com/2010/08/16/the-unstartled-giraffe/ one instance] that took 12 episodes to reach its shaggy conclusion -- notable because Mountain Time stories hardly ever last more than ''one'' episode.
* ''[[DM of the Rings]]'', a webcomic running the plot of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'', is resolved in exactly the same way as the book... Except Frodo and Sam aren't [[Player Character]]s at that point. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are, and are essentially [[Railroading|railroaded]] into distracting the [[Big Bad]] and doing nothing of value while an NPC wins the campaign by succeeding at a Will Save. The players are underwhelmed.
* [http://somethingofthatilk.com/index.php?id=387 This] strip of ''[[Something of that Ilk]]'' even references the trope in its title.

== Web Original ==
* The Story Guy videos from ''[[Loading Ready Run]]'' are based almost entirely around this trope. Installments such as [http://loadingreadyrun.com/videos/view/14/grilled_cheese Gilled Cheese] and [http://loadingreadyrun.com/videos/view/36/rare_book Rare Book] have the Story Guy go on at great length for what is eventually revealed to be no point at all.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090918215316/http://edge.i-hacked.com/so-theres-a-man-crawling-through-the-desert This story] is the best and most perfect incarnation of this trope. Be warned, it's a very long read.
** Dear God!
* In ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'', this occurs more often than not, due to the [[Anyone Can Die|brutal nature]] of the game. Entire arcs can be left either unresolved or rendered entirely meaningless when someone integral simply dies.
** This is more or less Simon Wood's entire arc is one of these. Poor guy couldn't even pull a {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice]]}} off right.
** Alex Rasputin; killed two people in v4, and was on the path to redemption. Suddenly,  {{spoiler|Liz Polanski destroys a camera, and [[Your Head Asplode|Danya blows his collar.]]}}
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkXPbEb4NyI This] video about World of Warcraft.
* [[Charlie the Unicorn]] always ends up on quests like this.
* In his review of [[Taylor Swift]]'s ''Fifteen'', [[Todd in the Shadows]] tells the story of a heart wrenching break up from his past. He then destroys the mood of the story by revealing that it never happened to him but was instead the plot of an episode of ''[[Saved by the Bell]].''
**Though, to be fair, he was making a point about the weakness in the song.
* [http://travalicious.tumblr.com/post/3007256993/why-are-you-gay "Why are you gay?" "Well, a long time ago, I was sitting at home on the computer..."]
* [[The Nostalgia Chick]]'s Dark Nella Saga didn't change the show's [[Black and Gray Morality]] at all. The Chick's still a [[Jerkass]], Nella's still the abused friend, and Dr. Tease is still evil. [[Tropes Are Not Bad]] however; the [[Dysfunction Junction]] they have going is just too fun to die.
* The last sentence of "[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=635193 How David Weber Orders A Pizza]", after several thousand words exhaustively describing the ordering and delivery of a pizza, is:
{{quote|Then a nuclear weapon detonated in midair above them, vaporizing the city.}}
* The ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU Saga of Biorn]'' ends with the noble, aging [[Death Seeker]] Viking, seeking entry to [[Warrior Heaven|Valhall]], succeeding at dying in battle by saving a convent of nuns from a giant... Except the nuns end up [[Not Quite the Right Thing|burying his corpse in consecrated ground]] and sending him to Christian heaven at the last moment instead.

==  Western Animation ==
* One ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' example is in "The Day The Violence Died", in which the original creator of Itchy and Scratchy sues the animation studio that stole it from him. Bart discovers the key piece of evidence that wins the trial and bankrupts the studio, which - the kids realize too late - means the end of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. Bart and Lisa desperately try to solve this new problem, and after nearly giving up (and starting on trying to get Apu out of jail), Lisa finally discovers something in a legal textbook, and the kids rush to the studio only to find everyone celebrating the return of Itchy and Scratchy, the release of Apu, ''and'' Krusty's reunion with his estranged wife, all thanks to Lester and Eliza, two kids who strongly resemble Tracy Ullman-era Bart and Lisa.
{{quote|'''Marge:''' You kids must be so happy, your cute little cartoon friends are back on the air!
'''Lisa:''' Yes, well, technically everything worked out alright, but...
'''Marge:''' But?
'''Bart:''' Well, I wasn't the one who solved the problem, and neither was Lisa. There's something unsettling about that. }}
** Another episode parodied the phrase: Moe comments on how tired he is of hearing the barflies' shaggy dog stories, which prompts an offended Barney to leave the bar - a literal shaggy dog in tow.
** Another episode, "Missionary: Impossible", started with Homer attempting to make a bogus $10,000 pledge to [[PBS]] anonymously, being found out, being chased by an angry mob when he can't pay, begging Reverend Lovejoy for salvation, and getting sent to a remote island mission for his trouble. The rest of the episode focuses on his hambrained attempts to bring religion, and later gambling, to the natives (with a minor subplot involving Bart taking over as man of the house). It ends with Homer accidentally triggering a natural disaster, and just as he's about to plunge into lava...the episode cuts to a donation request, ending with Bart (out of character) pledging $10,000 and saving the network. In short, the whole zany misadventure was nothing more than an elaborate [[Take That]] at (take your pick) PBS/Fox's programming/RupertMurdoch/snpp.com, yes, ''friggin' again''/anyone who takes this show too seriously.
** This is the current mode of practice of the strike-busters from "Last Exit to Springfield":
{{quote|'''Grampa:''' We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones... }}
* The ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' episode "The Viper is Coming" featured the Joes discovering several COBRA bases and plots around the world based on cryptic phone calls from someone calling himself "The Viper". Characters on both sides try to discover who the Viper is as he seems to predict COBRA's every move. Finally, the Viper's latest call warns them that: "This is the Viper. I be there at noon today. Be ready." The Joes call in reinforcements and barricade the house where the calls were being received. Right at 12 PM, an old immigrant in overalls shows up. In a heavily accented voice, he declares: "I'm the Viper. I've come to vipe your vindows."
** An episode of ''[[Animaniacs]]'' which spoofed the Three Musketeers used the same Vindow Viper gag.
* ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]'', "Odd, Odd West": Timmy steals a deed to a ghost town "Dimmesdale Flats" from "Vicky the Kid" in order to save the town (a childhood memory of Dad's) from bulldozing, and gives it to his dad. The town still gets torn down anyway after Dad then sells it to the bulldozing people for $8, and Dad tells Timmy that he's realized that his childhood sucked (after spending a day in the local jail).
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'', after 10 minutes' screen time of "Procrastination", frantically writes a 800-word report for Mrs. Puff's driving school on what not to do at a red light and runs off to school to send it in. He encounters Mrs. Puff who tells him two things: There's a field trip to a red light today, and the assignment has been canceled. Probably a good thing, since the resulting report (filled with things like "karate chopping the TV" and "shooting the breeze with the mailman") would probably get him an F if it actually mattered.
** Not that Spongebob [[Failure Is the Only Option|can ever get a passing grade anyway]].
** In another, Spongebob and Patrick start their own business selling chocolate door-to-door, and one customer in particular goes crazy on them, yelling "CHOCOLATE!" over and over, and chases them throughout the episode. The two otherwise have no luck getting rid of the chocolate. By the end, the customer finally has them where they can't escape, and then politely says, "I'd like to buy all your chocolate."
*** Actually, Spongebob and Patrick ''did'' succeed in selling most of their chocolate by "stretching the truth". Unfortunately, a [[Con Man]] who previously tricked them into buying too many bags for their bars, deceived them into buying even more while taking all the money they had made. Fortunately, that guy was the only person they hadn't sold any chocolate too.
** "Good Ol' Whatshisname": Mr. Krabs tells SpongeBob and Squidward that he'll give a prize to whoever finds out the name of every customer at the Krusty Krab. Squidward, thinking the prize is a tropical cruise, goes out of his way to win the contest, even winding up in jail in the process—only to find out that the prize was just a ''brochure'' for a tropical cruise.
*** Even better is that the titular character shouts his name at Squidward right from the start.  {{spoiler|however, his name turns out to be Whatsittooya, which is exactly what it sounds like. Didn't help matters that he literally shouted this in Squidward's face, so the latter never realized this until he stole Whatsittooya's wallet.}}
** 'I'm With Stupid', there, Spongebob pretends to be dumb so Patrick will look good in front of his parents. However, Patrick takes it too far and believes Spongebob really is dumb. He, and his parents, then start to openly mock Spongebob, leading to him turning insane and leaving Patrick's house in frustration. Then, it is eventually revealed that those two weren't even Patrick's real parents, the real ones are in Squidward's house, asking him where Patrick is.
* The ''[[Sealab 2021]]'' episode "7211" is pretty much an old ''Sealab 2020'' episode redubbed exactly like before, with the crew helping repair the nuclear submarine ''Aquarius'', captained by a man who held a grudge against Murphy. Sounds odd for an [[Adult Swim]] comedy, huh? Well, until the end, where the only joke of the episode has ''Aquarius'' ram into Sealab, [[Running Gag|blowing it up,]] and making all the work the crew did pointless... as well as stranding them at the bottom of the sea.
* The ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Stanley's Cup" involved Stan coaching a pee-wee hockey team. One of the kids has cancer, and requires a victory for the team to recover. At the end, after grueling training, during which they believe they will be put against another pee-wee team, the team is instead pitted against the Detroit Red Wings and beaten horribly, the kid with cancer dies, and the episode ends with their opponents celebrating as if the episode had been about them, with one of them (for example) [["Well Done, Son" Guy|being congratulated by his hard-ass father]].
** This is made even more frustrating when compared to the earlier episode "The Losing Edge", which not only was already a subversion of these movies (wrapped in an inversion), but it was much more clever and satirical about it.
** It's important to note that the episode "The Losing Edge" was also a commentary on [[Amazingly Embarrassing Parents|some truly atrocious]] [[Amazingly Embarrassing Parents|parental behavior]] during the 2004-05 Little League season and the lengths [[Meddling Parents|some]] [[Knight Templar Parent|parents]] will go to ensure their child's success, even to the point of [[Parental Obliviousness|disregard for their]] [[Adults Are Useless|child's well being]].
** In another ''[[South Park]]'' episode, Stan doesn't believe his vote between a Turd Sandwich and a Giant Douche for school mascot is important, and in the course of being shown the importance of voting he is exiled from the town, hunted down by P. Diddy and his posse (Vote or Die and all that), and tries to live with PETA until Diddy and his boys shoot them all. When he goes back and finally casts his vote, it turns out the result would've been the same if he had voted or not. He proclaims his vote didn't matter, and gets a speech about how it still was important. The news of PETA's death then reaches town and the old mascot is brought back instead, with the punchline "Ok, ''now'' your vote doesn't matter."
*** Made brilliant by the fact that it was actually Stan's ''refusal to vote'' that really mattered. Might count as a [[Broken Aesop]].
*** Even more metaphorical, as in the end it's the actions of a single person (Stan or P. Diddy, depending on how you look at it) that renders the votes of everyone else null and void.
* A ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' short featuring [[Porky Pig]] had him being "hounded" by a stray dog throughout the picture. When he finally gets home, he sees a news report asking for the return of the dog and offering a big reward. Porky gets the dog (who reversed himself from jumping over a bridge) and head over to the mansion where the owner lives. The dog replaces himself with a toy dog while Porky isn't watching, and Porky is told that the dog is not the owner's, additionally saying that the missing dog was a talking dog. As Porky ponders over this revelation, the lost dog, who up to this moment didn't talk, lifts up Porky with his arms and says, "Well buddy, you've got yourself a dog!"
* The third ''[[Futurama]]'' movie had this when  {{spoiler|the entire place shifts into a fantasy world. The villains win and it's back to normal with ''nothing'' coming out of it.}}
** Of course, one might argue that the Professor gained the important knowledge of  {{spoiler|who his son actually was, something he learned in the fantasy world rather than the real world}}, although this was never really made perfectly explicit.
** Also, Bender's plotline in "[[Freaky Friday Flip|The Prisoner of Benda]]". He attempts to steal Robo-Hungarian Emperor Nikolai's jewels while in possession of his body, and once everything is resolved...
{{quote|'''Nikolai:''' So long, filthy commoners.
'''Bender:''' [[Gratuitous Spanish|¡Adios!]] And I'm left with the real jewels safely inside... ''(Looks inside his chest cabinet.)'' '''his''' compartment! All right, [[Call Back|I'll need accomplices]]. }}
* ''[[The Weekenders]]'', "Tickets": Tino spends the entire story agonizing on who (out of the other three) to take to a concert after winning two tickets for it. After he makes his choice, the two find out that the two slips they're holding... can be redeemed for 4 tickets, and thus all four get to enjoy it. Moral of the day: Always read the fine print! (BTW, Carver got picked.)
** In "Party Planning": The gang prepares for a party by taking dance lessons. "Lateral gravity" takes effect at the actual party, meaning that the boys and girls stay on opposite sides of the room the whole night and those lessons were a waste of time. At the end Tino notes how they walked away from this party with no humiliation.
* ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'': "Operation ROBBERS" sees Numbuh 5 rounding up a bunch of kids who are robbing them of their homework, but then Numbuh 4 (fighting another robber) crashes into the bus they're on making her heroics meaningless as the robbers escape.
** Although, at the end of the episode,  {{spoiler|the villains turn in everyone else's homework in an attempt to get on the teacher's good side. (Since everyone else didn't even turn any in, but they turned in 20 something copies.) The teacher reads one paper, NUMBUH 4 ONE'S and the worst in the class, and goes ballistic, telling them she'd rather they turned in nothing at all. So in the end, the villains lose, even though the heroes' actions had nothing to do with it. At least directly.}}
* ''[[Ben 10]]'' gets one in an episode where Ben breaks Gwen's computer and enters a wrestling competition to get the money to replace it. At the end of the episode, he discovers that the computer was ''never'' broken. Gwen had put a security system on the computer so it only ''looked'' like the computer was completely dead. Result? An utterly wasted episode.
** Also, the episode where Grandpa sets out to find the Sword of Ekchuah, in the Mayan temple. They fight off Enoch and his forces constantly through the episode and even a Mayan guardian alien type thing. At the end, however the sword turns to dust as soon as Enoch touches it. What a waste of time
*** That part is lampshaded by Max who jokes that "that's what happens when your weapon is 5,000 years old".
* An episode of ''[[My Gym Partner's a Monkey]]'' had Adam and Jake joining the hall monitors. It turns out that the force is ''totally'' corrupt, useless and tries to get rid of Adam when he tries to stop the corruption. So Adam goes and tries to get rid of their ''Dirt''nuts by bribing the truck driver not to get rid of them to stop them from being corrupt. However, the force has Dirtarts and then ''Adam'' is blamed for the corruption, since the bribe was caught on video so the force gets away scot free.
* Used beautifully in the "Winter" part of the ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' episode "Four Seasons of Death". A tribe of yeti-like humanoids harvest a giant crystal from a cave and forge it into an [[Infinity+1 Sword]]. They do battle with each other for the right to wield it, the most powerful of their tribe coming out on top. He stands on a mountain pass, bearing the mighty sword, and awaits Jack's arrival. Jack arrives... and defeats the yeti-man with one hit, shattering the sword. He walks on, oblivious to the effort the tribe had expended in trying to stop him.
** Done ''again'' in an episode focusing on a group of Bounty Hunters that gather and discuss their plans and reasons for going after Jack. When the moment of truth arrives, Jack defeats them all in the time it takes for a drop of melting ice to fall.
** Done ''yet again'' in "The Tale of X-9", where the entire episode is seen through the eyes of X-9, a [[Retired Badass|retired]] [[Killer Robot|robot assassin]] with an [[Personality Chip|emotion chip]] that led it to [[Hitman with a Heart|question the morality of its actions]] on [[Evil Overlord|Aku's]] behalf. One day after a job X-9 found a stray dog, [[Morality Pet|adopted it]], and stopped working for Aku. That is, until the day when X-9's creator told Aku about the dog and the chip. Aku promptly kidnapped the dog, saying that X-9 would get it back if he managed to kill Jack. [[Boring Invincible Hero|Jack wins]]. X-9's last words are asking Jack to take care of Lulu (the dog). The episode ends there.
*** [[Tear Jerker|Lulu, sweet thing...]]
* One episode of ''[[Kim Possible]]'' features Kim, Monique, and Ron on a mission to recover some top secret clothing designs. When they finally return the designs, at the end of the episode, the designer says he changed his mind.
** Another episode features Ron going on a global trek to find an overdue library book he borrowed from Kim. In the process, he trounces the plans (and hideouts) of several of Kim's major enemies...only to eventually discover ''the book was in his backpack the whole damn time''.
** Yet another episode involves Drakken attempting to take over the world with the stolen [[MacGuffin|"Energy Ray X"]]. Unfortunately, Kim has a severe cold, so she can't stop Drakken. So Ron sets out to stop Drakken. But then Drakken comes down with a cold. So he sends Shego...who also catches a cold. So ''she'' sends out Duff Killigan...and I think you know where this is going. Eventually, Kim decides to take some cold medicine and [[Working Through the Cold|drag herself out of bed]] to try and bring back the stolen Ray X. In the resulting fight with Shego (who tried to shoot Kim with Ray X out of desperation), Ray X is destroyed. Kim and Ron return to the scientists who had originally built Ray X, asking it actually did, and why it was so important to get it back. The scientists immediately reply, "The ray was a cure for the common cold." Ron then lampshades pretty much the entire episode.
{{quote|'''Ron:''' I hate irony.}}
* The ''[[Tale Spin]]'' episode "A Spy in the Ointment" invokes this trope ''twice'' in the same story. Baloo and Becky meet Jack Case, a fellow who claims to be a spy, and who has to get to Thembria (a fictional Soviet Union analogue country) as soon as possible. Baloo isn't convinced Case is telling the truth, but Becky insists he's a spy because "look at his trench coat! That's a SPY'S trench coat!" After risking their lives to get him to Thembria, our heroes discover Case is not a spy, but a mailman, assigned to deliver a package to the Chairman. But it turns out said package had been switched by mistake; instead of a gift of rare expensive fishing worms, the Chairman is going to get a frilly jewelry box. Fearing an international incident, Baloo and Becky reluctantly risk their lives ''again'' to try and switch the boxes, only to fail in the end. But it turns out the Chairman mistook the jewelry box for an antique tackle box, so no harm was done in the end; and as Baloo points out, even ''less'' harm would have been done if they had never gotten involved in the first place.
* One example is the ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "The Juice is Loose", where Peter meets OJ Simpson, and, at first, attempts to prove that he murdered his wife and Ron Brown. But then, when he finds out, he despairs that he is innocent and can never get away from the accusations. So Peter lets him stay at his house, but the family is suspicious of him. The entire episode is set up as a twist on the normal narrative about OJ, with him actually being innocent. At the end, the town comes in an angry mob to kick him out, but then O.J. makes an emotional speech about how nobody is perfect, and we shouldn't judge people for making a few mistakes. It works, and the whole town is on his side. But then, he stabs and kills three people for absolutely no reason, and runs off. After which, Peter just nonchalantly says "Oh, I guess he did do it.", and the episode just ends.
** The "Stewie Kills Lois"/"Lois Kills Stewie" two-parter, which turns out to just be a simulation Stewie was operating to find out what would happen if he killed Lois and took over the world, [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] it.
{{quote|'''Brian:''' So what you're saying is that what you experienced in the simulation didn't really happen, or even matter?
'''Stewie:''' Yes, that's correct.
'''Brian:''' So it was sorta like [[All Just a Dream|a dream]]?
'''Stewie:''' No, it was a simulation.
'''Brian:''' Yes, but theoretically, [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish, only to find out that none of it really happened]]... I mean, you don't think that would be just like a giant middle finger to them?
'''Stewie:''' Well, hopefully, they would've enjoyed the ride.
'''Brian:''' I don't know, man. I think you'd piss a lot of people off that way. ''<nowiki>*leaves*</nowiki>''
'''Stewie:''' Oh, at least it didn't end like ''[[The Sopranos]]'', [[Tempting Fate|where it just cut to black in]] [[Smash to Black|mid-sen-]] }}
** "Partial Terms of Endearment" was about Lois becoming a surrogate mother for her college girlfriend and her husband, but after becoming pregnant, said girlfriend and husband end up dying, leaving her and Peter with the conflict over having an abortion. The final scene of the episode is made as though it's about to introduce a "new member of the Griffin family", only for Peter to [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|break the fourth wall]] and say, "[[Status Quo Is God|"We had]] [[Crosses the Line Twice|the abortion]]," and the episode ends on that abrupt note.
* ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' episode "Decepticon Air" focuses on the Elite Guard returning to Cybertron with the Decepticon Prisoners. Sentinel Prime orders Jazz to fly at full speed through an ion storm in order to get there faster. What results is Swindle, who was previously [[Shapeshifter Mode Lock|Mode Locked]], becoming free, who frees the other Decepticons, who take over the ship. This leads to Optimus Prime, answering Sentinel's distress signal, transwarping onto the ship as the Autobots and Decepticons fight which leads Lugnut being knocked away and Swindle escaping with parts to the Elite Guard's ship. The episode ends with Optimus being dropped off back on Earth (Implying that it took them ''even longer'' to get back), and Sentinel's coronation as Magnus on Cybertron. What makes this a Shaggy Dog Story is that not only did taking the shortcut to get back to Cyberton become meaningless, but they're now missing two Decepticons.
* ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]'', "Crown Fools": Skipper accidentally bumps King Julien's crown into a sewer and has to go in after it. After having to fight a giant rat for it, Skipper finally returns the crown to Julien, who discards it for being smudged and then asks for his ''spare'' crown.
** Marlene, who had spent all that time trying to find a replacement crown, was not amused and ended up chasing Julien with a crowbar she borrowed from Rico.
* Most ''[[Squidbillies]]'' episodes end up like this.
** As do a lot of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'' episodes.
* On one episode of ''[[Goof Troop]]'', Pete is given money to pay a contractor to renovate a lakeside house his wife Peg was selling. Pete spends it on a harpoon gun for his boat instead, kicks out the contractor and tries to fix the house himself with help from Goofy. Naturally, the house gets destroyed, and Pete has to buy an identical house from across the lake - which belongs to the contractor, who asks for Pete's boat in return. After going to all the trouble of replacing the house before Peg arrives with the buyers, the sale is made, only for the new owners to demolish it immediately afterwards because they were only interested in the land. Cue Pete having a nervous breakdown.
** Yet ''another'' episode involves Pete stealing Goofy's mortgage money. When Peg lets Goofy stay at ''their'' house as a result, Pete tries to give back the money only to find it lost. He spends the rest of the episode trying to pay Goofy back with his money with Goofy refusing out of decency. When he ''finally'' gets Goofy to take the money, PJ and Pistol earn that exact same amount in their work program Pete established. Pete pays them the money, and they give it to Goofy. Then Goofy finds his actual mortgage money in a device that's been around the whole time. Cue Pete having ''another'' nervous breakdown.
* In an episode of ''[[I Am Weasel]]'', Weasel and I.R. are astronauts terraforming a planet to prepare it for colonization. Their robot [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|goes on strike]], so they spend the next four years terraforming the place and building a huge futuristic colony. When the colonists arrive...they are revealed to be a ''[[Incredibly Lame Pun|termite colony]]'' who immediately proceed to trash the place. Weasel then ''breaks down crying.''
* One episode of ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'' has Arnold accidentally dropping his grandpa's favorite pocket watch down the sewer where it is stolen by a crazy man called "The Sewer King". After a battle of chess and a long chase sequence through the sewer, Arnold finally returns home, exhausted and filthy, with his Grandpa's pocket watch. Grandpa then accidentally drops the watch into the garbage disposal and it falls down the drain ([[Suspension of Disbelief|how? God knows]]). He then just grabs another pocket watch... ''from a drawer full of identical pocket watches.'' Cue Arnold taking a long depressing walk outside, as well as [[Here We Go Again|fetching a quart of milk for Grandpa]].
* The ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' episode ''Cerbee in Love'' has Jimmy trying to set [[Call a Smeerp a Rabbit|Cerbee]] up with Jez's dog. At the very end, he finally gets them together. They each lick each other once before losing interest.
* ''[[Wakfu]]'''s first season revolves around a certain troubled time mage trying to turn time back to prevent the whole arc from happening.  {{spoiler|He succeeds, though only managing to turn time back 20 minutes out of the about 200 years.}}
* This happens a few times in ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]''. One in particular is where a pair of nomads put a curse on the hero's town where it would get hotter and hotter all because the eponymous hero asked an innocent question about their merchandise. Dave was then forced by his older sister to go a journey to find the artifact that could break the curse. After a perilous quest where the heroes are captured by a gang of dragons and their own pet temporarily turns against them, they return with the artifact only to find that the sister who made them go on the quest in the first place had managed to convince the nomads to remove the curse.
** To make matters worse, Dave, upset that he went through all that hell for nothing, accidentally smashed the nomads again with a door and they angrily cast another curse which caused the episode to end.
* One that happens to be both serious and comedic is ''[[Total Drama Island|Total Drama World Tour]]''. This third season ends with  {{spoiler|Heather}} (more or less the good guy in this scenario) defeating  {{spoiler|Alejandro}} and winning the prize of $1 Million. Good so far, but then the volcano where the final challenge ended begins to erupt,  {{spoiler|Ezekiel}} (now a feral shell of his old self) tackles  {{spoiler|Heather}} and grabs the briefcase with the prize money as he and it both fall and sink into the volcano. The ultimate outcome? Everyone has to swim out of Hawaii,  {{spoiler|Heather}} loses the million, {{spoiler|Ezekiel}} shoots down like a comet from the volcano (sinking Chris and Chef's boat in the process), and  {{spoiler|Alejandro}}, who got caught in the ensuing lava flow, has to be put in a protective suit in an homage to [[Star Wars|Darth Vader]]. [[Mood Whiplash|Well, see you again next season!]]
* ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' has a lot of these, usually disguised as actual plots. For example, in one first-season episode, Rusty and Brock are kidnapped, and Hank and Dean seek out their dead grandfather's [[Retired Badass]] team to rescue them. In the end, despite all the cool things they do, they get beaten up by Brock as he's breaking himself out. In this case, it's simply to highlight the [[Crapsack World]].
* ''[[Two Stupid Dogs]]'' loves this. One episode has them cross the Grand Canyon to find someone who called them jerks (actually it was just their echo). The episode ends with them finally reaching the other side, only to hear the echo coming from their previous location, prompting them to go back. Another episode has Little Dog travel around the world, looking for his lucky bone, even though it's painfully obvious it's on his head. When he finally finds it by accident, he puts it somewhere he'll be sure to remember: back on his head (something he would allegedly never do, because it's so stupid). Then there was an episode where he wants change for a public phone, just because the voice in the phone says so. After a long chain of deals, that even involves Big Dog getting arrested for attempted bank robbery, he finally acquires a quarter, inserts it in the phone, and uses it to call his partner, who is now in the prison. Also possibly worth noting is that Big Dog is, in fact, quite shaggy.
* The ''[[Invader Zim]]'' episode "Zim Eats Waffles" is all about Dib trying to catch Zim working on his [[Evil Plan]] using a hidden spy camera... But he has no recording capability and whenever anyone else looks at the camera image, Zim is busy eating waffles and doesn't do anything that would expose him. In the end, Dib fixes the recording drives only in time for the camera to get ruined and his computer lab wrecked by an army of Cyborg Zombies [[Brick Joke|Zim unwittingly released earlier in the episode]] (during a time nobody else was watching, of course).
** In "Germs", Zim asks the "burgerlord" why [[Brand X|McMeatie's]] food is completely germ-free. The clerk gives a lengthy explanation about the government engineering "Space Meat" to feed astronauts on long voyages. {{spoiler|Not having access to that technology, Mc}}{{spoiler|Meaty's food is made of napkins}}.
* One episode of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' features the heroines trying to solve riddles quickly, lest the one known as [[Speak of the Devil|HIM]] make the Professor pay! At the end of the episode, they finally reach the location of the last answer, a [[Greasy Spoon]] style restaurant. Oh no! They're in the wrong restaurant, they want the one across the street! By the time they get there they are seconds too late, and the Professor MUST PAY... full price on the breakfast cooked by HIM because they bet the Professor could eat for free if the girls solved the riddles on time. The Professor agrees to pay, but says he'll never come back because the food was lousy anyway, and HIM chases after him, trying to win back his patronage. At the end, the girls are left blinking in confusion and the narrator [[So Once Again the Day Is Saved|cannot even say his catchphrase]], and ends with a "so, um...yeah."
* A recurring motif in the children's series ''[[Towser]]'', with each episode building up to a blunt final line voiced by Roy Kinnear, delivered totally deadpan and highlighting a strange pointlessness about everything that had just happened. Most obvious is when Towser attempts to give his friend Sadie the moon for her birthday, but resorts to fooling with a white balloon. Thinking himself terribly clever, he leaves, the episode ends with Sadie explaining to a friend, 'It's a balloon. Towser seems to think it's the moon...'.
* Happens in several episodes of ''[[Regular Show]]'':
** In "Slam Dunk", Mordecai and Rigby wage an escalating basketball war with Muscle Man and High-five Ghost for the rights to use the computer so that Mordecai can make a website for Margaret. After a climactic duel for control of the basketball in space leading to a from-orbit slam dunk for the final point, Mordecai approaches Margaret... and finds out Margaret already had it made, since she asked two months ago
{{quote|'''Basketball coach:''' Time goes faster in space.}}
** In "A Bunch of Baby Ducks", Mordecai and Rigby have to find someone to whom they can give a bunch of baby ducks that have been following them around so that they can clean the park fountain. In the end, they fight a climactic battle with a duck poacher to help reclaim the ducklings with the help of their rightful mother. As they reported to Benson, the good news was they got rid of the baby ducks, but the bad news was that the fountain was destroyed
** In at least 2 episodes something expensive belonging to Mr. Maellard is broken by a character who then has to replace it before he notices. In these episodes Mr. Maellard breaks the replacement and then doesn't care he broke it.
* The ''[[Storm Hawks]]'' episode "Thunder Run" has the gang rush to save their friend after he pissed off a mob boss. The mob boss asks for "Rosen Yoga" and gives the team until sundown to retrieve it. They do, and "Rosen Yoga" turned out to be Frozen Yogurt (the Mob Boss has an incredibly bad lisp that makes him mispronounce things).  {{spoiler|What really makes this a shaggy story is that the mob boss later got impressed with Junko's eating habits, and filled up on food after an eating contest before the Storm Hawks got back, not to mention giving his respects to his new-found friend. Piper was understandably pissed after learning all of this.}}
* In one episode of ''[[Doug]]'', Patti invites Doug to a dinner party she'll be hosting that weekend, with [[Stock Yuck|liver and onions]] on the menu. Doug is horrified, but doesn't dare back out for fear of offending her, so he spends the entire week trying and failing to make himself eat liver and onions so he'll at least know what he's in for. When he finally forces himself to try it at a restaurant on the night before the party, he realizes that it isn't anywhere near as bad as he thought it'd be. The next evening, he arrives at Patti's house, ready to chow down, only for her to tell him that she was ''joking'' about the liver and onions; everyone's eating hot dogs instead.
* Lots of the protagonist's zany schemes in ''[[Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales]]'' turn out to be this. In one episode, he and Chumley find a map that supposedly leads to a treasure hidden by a pirate named Jack the Joker, but they can't understand the numerical coordinates. After Stanley yells at them for inadvertently getting everyone in the zoo to start digging up the place, they consult their friend Mr. Whoopie, construct a homemade compass, and use the map to find the buried chest, only to be caught by Stanley again (seeing as they were digging up his own front lawn this time) who decides to punish them by having them locked up for a week. Still they manage to keep the chest, but when they open it, a jack-in-the-box pops out with a note that says, "Ha-ha! - [[Meaningful Name| Jack the Joker]]".
** Even worse was one story that almost becomes a [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] story. After the two of them unknowingly pay a paperboy with Stanley's priceless rare coin, he threatens to punish them by making them work on the rock pile unless they got it back. So they run after him only to find he has paid the ice cream man with it, then follow the ice cream man to a bakery. After questioning the baker, he claims he had dropped the coin in some cookie dough, which he had used to make cookies that Chumley had eaten while they were talking to him. After a lot of unsuccessful attempts to extract it, they consult Mr. Whoopie again, who x-rays Chumley, only to find no coin. Which means they are screwed. Later, after several hours of backbreaking labor on the rock pile after Stanley makes good his threat, Chumley discovers a cookie under his hat that he had been saving - with the coin inside it. Cue [[Unstoppable Rage]] from Tennessee as he chases Chumley, ''throwing rocks at him''.

== Other ==
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOawFvFMnuA A rare wordless example.] It even has dogs.
* The Great White Sheet Game: Typically played at co-ed college parties with some amount of alcohol, often on road trips where the participants have multiple hotel rooms. One person who has never played before is chosen as the Player, while all those who have played before take on the roles of "Master" (for the leader of the game) and "Others". The Player sits on a bed, and has a sheet tented over him. The Master then explains that this is a test, and that the Player must follow the instructions that the Master or the Others give, to the letter. The game then proceeds, first with the Master describing a scene: "You are walking through the desert. It is hot, and you are thirsty. You realize you don't need to be wearing as much as you are. Take something off, and pass it to me." Usually, the Player removes something inconsequential—jewelry or shoes. The Others then continue in the same vein—embellishing and otherwise confounding the statement, but always with the admonition to remove something the Player is wearing needlessly. As time goes on, articles of clothing start coming off and getting passed out. {{spoiler|The game ends when the Player figures out he's supposed to take off the damn sheet. If he's already naked underneath, well, then the Master and Others won the game.}}
** [[Scout Out|Boy Scouts of America]] has a version where a number of newer scouts stands before a crowd and all place blindfolds on themselves. They are ordered not to make a sound for the duration of the game and are told to take an article of clothing off. The ones who take the blindfold off are quietly told to remain silent and the game is ended when the boys all have their blindfolds off or there are any boys reduced to their undergarments.

== [[Real Life]] ==
''Use [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment]] when adding examples here. Please avoid adding examples related to religion, politics, or any other topic that could rile people up.''
* The [[wikipedia:Balloon boy hoax|balloon boy hoax]]: a balloon built for science experiments flew off, and the police were tracking it over several hours because they thought a six-year old boy was trapped in there. It turned out the boy was hiding in a box in his home the whole time. Not only that, but the family staged the entire thing just to get on TV.
* [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Hot-Room.aspx The Hot Room] Yes, this really happened.
* Dreams are often this. You know the kind—you dream up an entire parallel universe with a Lord of the Rings-style epic plot with several crucial subplots, [[Loads and Loads of Characters|tons of characters]], and that takes place over what feels like a lifetime...only to build up to a cheap [[Jump Scare]] at the very end, and/or to vanish into [[Non Sequitur Scene|total oblivion]] within a few seconds of waking up.
** Incidentally you will try to invoke this whenever something particularly bad happens.
* The infamous tale of the [[Indy Car|Indy Racing League]].

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Tropey the Wonder Dog]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:Shaggy Dog Story]]
[[Category:Depressing Tropes]]
[[Category:Ending Tropes]]