Shaggy Dog Story: Difference between revisions
→Literature: Replaced redirects
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (→Fan Works: identified fandom for example) |
(→Literature: Replaced redirects) |
||
| (9 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
Line 15:
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]]''.
Line 110:
* 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
* 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.
Line 118:
** 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
** 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
* ''[[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!"]]
Line 135:
*** 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
* 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.
Line 142:
** 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 ''[[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 Glenda 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!"▼
** 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
* ''[[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
* ''[[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
* ''[[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
* ''[[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 ==
Line 216 ⟶ 219:
*** 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 [[
* ''[[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...
* ''[[
** 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.
Line 266 ⟶ 269:
* 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.
Line 334 ⟶ 337:
** 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 ==
Line 415 ⟶ 421:
** 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]] ==
Line 546 ⟶ 553:
* 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 ==
| |||