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Shame If Something Happened: Difference between revisions
→Literature
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== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** Subverted in the [[Backstory]] to the
{{quote|"I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children are, how old are they now, my doesn't time fly, I know where they play. So you won't forget about what we agreed, will you?" And he smiled.
** Also from ''[[Discworld]]'', the kind of behavior that led to the disbanding of the Ankh-Morpork ''Guild of Fire Fighters'', who were paid per fire extinguished. "The penny really dropped after 'Charcoal Wednesday'". The guild also had people take out fire protection insurance policies, with encouragement along the lines of "that thatch roof there, would go up like a torch with one carelessly thrown match, ''know what I mean''."
*** The error, in hindsight, was paying them on commission.
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{{quote|'''Rhys''': {{spoiler|I do look forward to meeting Lady Sybil again. And your son, of course.}}
'''Vimes''': {{spoiler|Good. They're staying in a house not ten miles away.}} }}
*** Especially embarrassing for Rhys, because once he and Vimes had had a second to think, both of them realized that Rhys couldn't possibly have known where Sybil and Young Sam were unless he,
** Nanny Ogg walks right into it in ''[[Wyrd Sisters]]''. When the witches find themselves on the balcony of the castle with the evil ruler they're trying to overthrow, Nanny looks into the crowd and, spotting some of her huge family starts waving and calling out to them. The Duke says "I shall remember their faces", but Nanny doesn't get the implication.
** In ''[[The Truth]]'', the Patrician comments that it would be a shame if something were to happen to William de Worde. It takes Drumknott a second to realise that he ''really does'' think it would be a shame if something were to happen to William de Worde.
* People like that often wander into Aziraphale's book shop in ''[[Good Omens]]''. However, once they've been bade a polite farewell, they never ever come back. Crowley also successfully subverts this trope to persuade Aziraphale to help him stop the Apocalypse, not by threatening but by pointing out how many nifty Earthly things will be lost if the world ends.
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Nation]]'', one of the [[The Men in Black|Gentlemen of Last Resort]] casually mentions another character's birthplace, mother, and several other minor details. That character mentions that it felt like the start of a threat, and the fact that no actual threat followed was not comforting.
*
* One book in the ''[[Myth Adventures]]'' series turns this sort of sideways when the local Mob wants to get a foothold in the Deveel Bazaar, and has Skeeve & Co. extort "protection money" in roughly this fashion. And then, when it becomes clear that such an exclusive contract would not be mutually beneficial, Skeeve & Co start setting up the sort of "accidents" that the protection money was supposed to prevent. Naturally, the Deveels are Not Happy about these incidents (after all, they ''paid'') and start demanding refunds from the Mob for substandard protection.
* In Kim Newman's "Soho Golem", a local gangland boss attempts to secure psychic detective Richard Jeperson's cooperation in the investigation of the rather horrific supernatural execution of one of his colleagues by intimidating him with a threat of this nature. Jeperson's response is to cheerfully laugh in his face and to inform the gangster that his threats are meaningless; not only has Jeperson come across too many nastier things in his time to be intimidated by some thug, but the supernatural nature of the threat mean the rules the gangster lives by no longer apply here, and he's dependent on Jeperson's goodwill to remain in the land of the living, not the other way around.
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