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{{trope}}
Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]] in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
* From The Bible, 1 Peter 4:15 says, “by no means let any of you suffer as a murderer or thief or evildoer or a troublesome meddler.” So in other words, "Don't kill, don't steal, don't be evil and don't gossip," M'kay?▼
== ''[[Discworld]]'' ==
* In ''[[
== ''[[Harry Potter]]'' ==
*
** And he thinks that last one is his greatest achievement ( {{spoiler|it actually is}}), which of course makes Harry's detention in that book all the funnier. "Thought you'd make an entrance, didn't you? Well, it's not quite the Most Charming Smile Award, but it's a start, Harry, it's a start!"▼
== ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' ==
* The back-cover blurbs for books in ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' list five or more events, props, or characters, a few of which (usually but not always the last) are often something harmless-sounding, such as "a doll named Pretty Penny" or "a bad casserole". Some of the later books subvert this by making the last item on the list something more dramatic-- such as "a surprising survivor of a terrible fire".▼
** This is re-subverted when some of the harmless-''sounding'' items are actually very important and dangerous, like "[[MacGuffin|a sugar bowl]]", while some of the dangerous-sounding items, like [[Deathbringer the Adorable|"Chabo the Wolf Baby"]] are harmless.▼
** There's an arrest warrant out for [[Big Bad|Count Olaf]] for Arson, Fraud, Murder, and [[Poke the Poodle|stealing a tray of cupcakes]]▼
** And don't forget the carnival freaks from book 9: a hunchback, a contortionist, and an ambidextrous guy.▼
** Speaking of examples from the ninth book, while discussing which part of a ferocious beast is to be the most feared, Snicket writes, "Some say the teeth of the beast, because teeth are used for eating children, and often their parents, and gnawing their bones. Some say the claws of the beast, because claws are used for ripping things to shreds. And some say the hair of the beast, because hair can make allergic people sneeze."▼
** From Book the 13th: "Sooner or later everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two, a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set."▼
* Let's face it, Snicket loves this trope, and uses every opportunity to parody and lampshade it. The real life Snicket (Handler) does this too, often referring to his own books with the trope.▼
== Other works ==
▲* From [[The Bible]], 1 Peter 4:15 says, “by no means let any of you suffer as a murderer or thief or evildoer or a troublesome meddler.” So in other words, "Don't kill, don't steal, don't be evil and don't gossip," M'kay?
**In an honor society getting a bad rep can be a [[Fate Worse Than Death]] and is often metted out by rather erratic standards. Gossip can be [[Serious Business]].
* Juvenal (second century A.D.) uses this now and then in his satires. Most of the time his examples actually escalate (adultery, murder, murder of close relations) but now and then he throws in this trope, as in listing the dangers of living in Rome as "conflagrations, collapsing buildings, poets reciting in the month of August". Which makes this one [[Older Than Feudalism]].
* Appears also in ''[[Candide]]: or, Opptimism''. It fits particularly well due to the dry and dispassionate tone of the narrative. After the titular character slays the Jew, who was a joint owner of Cunegonde (Candide's love interest), the Inquisitor, the other joint owner, sees this upon entering:
{{quote|Entering, he discovered the whipped Candide, with his drawn sword in his hand, a dead body stretched on the floor, Cunegonde frightened out of her wits, and the old woman giving advice.}}
** The unfortunate people sentenced to [[Public Execution]] in Lisbon after the earthquake: "a Biscayan for marrying his godmother"; "two Portuguese for taking out the bacon of a larded pullet they were eating"; and "Dr. Pangloss, and his pupil Candide, the one for speaking his mind, and the other for seeming to approve what he had said."
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* In [[Neil Gaiman]] and [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Good Omens]]'', begins a section with a list of phenomena commonly thought to be caused by demonic influence: such as "wars, plagues, [and] sudden audits".
** There's also a mention of how people are attracted to costumes and new activities, such as dressing up in sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people.
* In ''[[The Wind in the Willows]]'', Toad gets the biggest part of a twenty-year jail sentence for [[
▲* The back-cover blurbs for books in ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' list five or more events, props, or characters, a few of which (usually but not always the last) are often something harmless-sounding, such as "a doll named Pretty Penny" or "a bad casserole". Some of the later books subvert this by making the last item on the list something more dramatic-- such as "a surprising survivor of a terrible fire".
▲** This is re-subverted when some of the harmless-''sounding'' items are actually very important and dangerous, like "[[MacGuffin|a sugar bowl]]", while some of the dangerous-sounding items, like [[Deathbringer the Adorable|"Chabo the Wolf Baby"]] are harmless.
▲** There's an arrest warrant out for [[Big Bad|Count Olaf]] for Arson, Fraud, Murder, and [[Poke the Poodle|stealing a tray of cupcakes]]
▲** And don't forget the carnival freaks from book 9: a hunchback, a contortionist, and an ambidextrous guy.
▲** Speaking of examples from the ninth book, while discussing which part of a ferocious beast is to be the most feared, Snicket writes, "Some say the teeth of the beast, because teeth are used for eating children, and often their parents, and gnawing their bones. Some say the claws of the beast, because claws are used for ripping things to shreds. And some say the hair of the beast, because hair can make allergic people sneeze."
▲** From Book the 13th: "Sooner or later everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two, a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set."
▲* Let's face it, Snicket loves this trope, and uses every opportunity to parody and lampshade it. The real life Snicket (Handler) does this too, often referring to his own books with the trope.
▲* In ''[[The Wind in the Willows]]'', Toad gets the biggest part of a twenty-year jail sentence for [[Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life|insulting a policeman]].
▲* In ''[[Discworld/Making Money|Making Money]]'' Cosmo Lavish says Moist Von Lipwig is "a cheat and a liar, an embezzler, and [has] no dress sense whatsoever". Moist replies "[[I Take Offense to That Last One|I happen to think I dress rather snappily!]]"
▲** In ''[[Discworld/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', Moist is tested by the Order of the Post to see if he's worthy of becoming the new Postmaster. Moist rhetorically wonders "What's the worst that could happen?", Mr. Groat explains, "The worst that could happen is you lose all your fingers on one hand, are crippled for life, and break half the bones in your body. Oh, and then they don't let you join."
▲** ''[[Discworld/Unseen Academicals|Unseen Academicals]]'' has Glenda realizing that the romance novels she voraciously reads are actually rather dull and formulaic: "It's absolutely guaranteed that, for example, an exciting civil war or an invasion by trolls or even a scene with any cooking in it is not going to happen."
▲** In ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'', "Teach" Saveloy introduces Cohen the Barbarian thusly: "Doer of mighty deeds. Slayer of dragons. Ravager of cities. He once bought an apple." Though actually ''buying'' an apple instead of stealing it is quite an accomplishment for a member of the Silver Horde.
▲** ''[[Discworld/Soul Music|Soul Music]]'' describes the influence of [[The Power of Rock|Music With Rocks In It]] thusly: "It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the Universe to see what happened next. It made you want to [[Emo Teen|paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters]]."
* A piece of background text in the first ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' book states that Fowl Manor has survived "war, civil unrest and several tax audits".
* Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952). “No man, however highly civilized, can listen for very long to African drumming, or Indian chanting, or Welsh hymn-singing, and retain intact his critical and self-conscious personality. It would be interesting to take a group of the most eminent philosophers from the universities, shut them up in a hot room with Moroccan dervishes or Haitian voodooists, and measure, with a stop watch, the strength of their psychological resistance to the effects of rhythmic sound. Would the Logical Positivists be able to hold out longer than the Subjective Idealists? Would the Marxists prove tougher than the Thomists or the Vedantists? What a fascinating, what a fruitful field for experiment! Meanwhile, all we can safely predict is that, if exposed long enough to the tom-toms and the singing, every one of our philosophers would end up by capering and howling with the savages.” (p. 321) of the Penguin 1975 reprint
* ''[[Dave Barry]] Slept Here'' describes the years between 1963 and 1968 as "A Long String of Bummers," starting with President [[John F. Kennedy]]'s assassination, followed by the election of goofy-looking President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], the Vietnam War and its associated controversies, more assassinations and riots, and ''[[Gilligan's Island]]'' being canceled. The same book describes [[The Great Depression]] as "an era of unemployment, poverty, social turmoil, despair, and--worst of all--Shirley Temple movies."
▲* ''[[Harry Potter]]'''s Gilderoy Lockhart: "Order of Merlin Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League and Five-Time Winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award."
▲** And he thinks that last one is his greatest achievement ( {{spoiler|it actually is}}), which of course makes Harry's detention in that book all the funnier. "Thought you'd make an entrance, didn't you? Well, it's not quite the Most Charming Smile Award, but it's a start, Harry, it's a start!"
▲** A variation from the same series: during the Ministry's smear campaign against Dumbledore in ''Order of the Phoenix'', he joked that he didn't care that they strip him of all his awards and honors, unless they ''take away his Chocolate Frog Card''.
▲*** And, of course, there's Dumbledore's full name: Albus Percival Wulfric ''Brian'' Dumbledore. Michael Gambon places a slight emphasis on the "Brian" when reciting the character's name in [[Harry Potter (film)|the film]] by way of [[Lampshade Hanging]].
▲** [[Cloudcuckoolander|Luna Lovegood]] believes that Aurors are part of the "Rotfang Conspiracy" and try to bring down the Ministry of Magic by using "[[Noodle Implements|a combination of Dark Magic and gum disease]]".
▲** At the beginning of ''Prisoner of Azkaban'', there's a nice example of an inversion: "Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of the year. For another, he really wanted to do his homework, but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard."
▲** Another example comes from ''Order of the Phoenix'' on a sign at St. Mungo's Hospital. The Plant and Potion Poisoning department deals with "Rashes, Regurgitation, Uncontrollable Giggling, Etc."
* In ''Zen and the Art of Faking It'' San is trying to figure out where mysterious yin-yang posters all around school came from: "Maybe his English teacher had put them up to go along with their reading on Daoism. Maybe somebody in another class had put them up as part of a project. Maybe a race of alien beings had sent them as a message of brother hood to all earthlings."
* As Dionysus says in ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'': "The world will fall, the gods will die, and I will never get a perfect score on this stupid machine."
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* In ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia|A Horse and His Boy]]'', a royal friend of Aravis ensures her privacy by decreeing that any servant of hers who tells of her presence will be beaten to death, then burned alive, and finally kept on bread and water for a week.
* In ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Han Solo at Stars' End]]'' when infiltrating a base the droid he is working with hacks a computer and fakes an alarm. Upon being told that, because the computers of the base are all interconnected, he can do it anywhere on base, Solo tells him to sound every alarm he can "fires in the power plants, riots in the barracks, indecent exposure in the cafeteria".
* In ''[[Gentleman Bastard Sequence|The Lies Of Locke Lamora]]'', Locke describes his treatment of {{spoiler|the bondsmage}}: "I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized." Cue everyone staring at him. "I called him an asshole, too. He didn't like that."
* At the beginning of ''[[American Psycho]]'', where a character reads a newspaper: "In one issue... in ''one'' issue... let's see here... strangled models, babies thrown from tenement rooftops, kids killed in the subway, a Communist rally, Mafia boss wiped out, Nazis, baseball players with AIDS, more Mafia shit, gridlock, the homeless, various maniacs, faggots dropping like flies in the streets, surrogate mothers, the cancellation of a soap opera..."
* In George and Harold's ''[[Captain Underpants]]'' comics, when the [[Monster of the Week]] begins its rampage, a kid will cry for help and name two things the monster just did. An adult will voice concern over the less dramatic one.
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* In Expect Resistance, [[Crimeth Inc]].'s field manual, on the topic of War or Revolution:
{{quote|"Even if we could kill every last rapist, C.E.O., head of state, police officer, and ''' every housemate who won't do the dishes''', that violence would remain in the world..."}}
* In [[Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations]]: ''Watching the Clock'', Agent George Faunt suffers a breakdown, attacks his colleagues, takes a researcher hostage and turns the DTI branch office into a seige zone. He also makes a lame time-related pun. Dulmur notes this last in a manner suggesting it's almost as serious as the other offenses.
* From ''The Immortals,'' the final [[Doorstopper|novel]] in [[The Edge Chronicles]]:
{{quote|"Arrest?" said [[Jerkass|Felftis Brack]] cooly, backing away. "On what charges?"
"Charges of fraud, embezzlement, blackmail, smuggling, false imprisonment, conspiracy to commit murder..."
''*Brack tries to flee, but runs into some sports players he hired and never paid, who throw him into a lake*''
"...And non-payment of the New Lake thousandsticks team," finished the constable. }}
* Quoth King Elend, in [[Mistborn|The Well Of Ascension]], on why his kingdom is in dire straits: "The Assembly is a mess, a half-dozen warlords with superior armies are breathing down my neck, barely a month passes without someone sending assassins to kill me, and the woman I love is slowly driving me insane."
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{{quote|''"He's killed himself," she cried. "It's unfort'nate stiggs done over again - there goes another counterpane - god pity his poor mother! - it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where's that girl? - there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with - "no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;" - might as well kill both birds at once."''}}
* In the [[Frederick Forsyth]] novel ''Icon'', a man is considered unsuitable to be in line for the Russian throne because he's too old, he has no children (which means no one can come after him), he screws around too much, including with his servants, and *gasp* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|he cheats at Backgammon]].
* [http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Drugs-Cocoa-Puffs-Manifesto/dp/0743236017 Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs] by Chuck Klosterman.{{context}}
* [[Harlan Ellison]]'s autobiographical essay [http://harlanellison.com/iwrite/mostimp.htm The 3 Most Important Things in Life] lists them as Sex, Violence and Labor Relations, the third being the most famous story of the three.
* In [[Michael Flynn]]'s ''[[Spiral Arm|In the Lion's Mouth]]'', Oschous recounts how, after a governor's house was burned, the boots leveled a town, and the man responsible wasn't even in it, because the over-governor could imagine arson and rebellion, but not leaving your licensed township.
{{tropesubpagefooter}}
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