The Dog Bites Back/Comic Books

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Examples of The Dog Bites Back in Comic Books include:

  • When Spider-Man faces Morlun, an enemy who has been sustaining his near-immortality for centuries by feeding on the life energy of people who have totemistic relationships with animals, and when he finally has him on the ropes, it's unclear whether he's about to cross the killing line, but the issue is quickly resolved when Dex, Morlun's Renfield-style cowardly, put-upon assistant, puts a bullet in him and singing "ding dong, the witch is dead."
  • In the climax of the original twelve-issue maxi-series Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, the series' Big Bad Dark Opal is literally stabbed in the back by his adopted son Carnelian, whom he had abused in the previous chapters.
  • Although he survived the attacks, half of Baron Zemo's career was summed up by this trope. You'd think he would've learned after the first few times. He was even attacked by the same abused henchman TWICE.
  • X-23 does this to the Facility which cloned her from Wolverine to be an assassin. Somewhat subverted that it's actually her biological mother who tells her to rebel and destroy the Facility.
  • In the original V for Vendetta (not The Movie), Mr. Almond's wife, Rose, originally securely within the party, but royally screwed over by them after Almond's death, actually kills the fascist despot Big Bad.
    • V implies that he had somehow planned this since the beginning, stating in the third act that he already had "a special rose" picked out for the head of state.
    • The film version also had a The Dog Bites Back moment as well. Namely, Creedy, after Adam Sutler made the big mistake of chewing him out, agreed to deliver Sutler to V. In the ending, Sutler is pretty much soiling his pants, so to speak, upon being delivered to V, and Creedy shoots Sutler, only remarking disgust at his fear. Creedy and his men soon join him courtesy of V, who broke his end of the deal.
  • In the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti-Monitor destroyed Earth-Prime, homeworld of Superboy-Prime. In the Sinestro Corps War, Superboy-Prime joined Sinestro's Five-Bad Band alongside the Anti-Monitor, but only as a means of getting revenge by acting out this trope when the opportunity arose.
  • Subverted near the end of Preacher (Comic Book); Herr Starr's two henchmen try this trope on him after they realize how far gone he is, but he gets the drop on them first.
  • In G.I. Joe comics, Destro remarks that the Inuit mercenary Kwinn once told him something along these lines: "A man who whips his dogs will one day pull his own sled."
    • One issue covered a dogfight between Cobra and GI Joe pilots, starting from how they treated their respective ground crews before take-off. Unsurprisingly, the GI Joe pilot (Slipstream) treats his enlisted subordinates with professionalism and respect, while the Cobra pilot (Star-Viper) acts like a complete asshole. When both men end up being shot down in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico during the same aerial battle and both relying on their support teams for search-and-rescue, three guesses who the only survivor is. It turns out that you really don't want to alienate the guy whose job it is to make sure your very complicated war-plane is in perfect working order, or the enlisted rescue specialists whose job it is to come fetch you if you're shot down. You might end up drowning in a plane you can't get out of because your mechanic "forgot" to replace the emergency wrench you're intended to bash open the canopy with if it gets stuck, and you might end up sinking to the bottom of the ocean before help arrives because the search-and-rescue helicopter coming to pick you up isn't flying quite as fast as it could be.
  • The players in Knights of the Dinner Table constantly abuse and exploit the NPC's with whom their characters deal. The inevitable backstab never seems to teach them a lesson.
  • When Deaths Head was hired by a group of rebels to assassinate an oppressive king, he discovers he was actually set up by the King and expected to die in an ambush. Instead, Death's Head proceeds to kill the palace guards and the King—completing the original contract.
  • The very second Greyshirt story in Tomorrow Stories concerns Sonny, the put-upon caretaker of infamous mob boss "Spats" Katz' apartment building. Forced to turn a blind eye to Spats' actions and weather his constant browbeating and abuse for sixty years, ever since he was a boy in 1939, Sonny finally ended it by pushing the wheelchair-bound Spats out of the top floor window, in the process, saving Greyshirt's life - and fulfilling a promise he'd made to himself when he first met Spats.
  • "Nature," an issue of Gotham Central, opens with Officers Munroe and Decarlo beating up Trigger, a corner drug dealer, when he is late with their regular cut. At the end of the issue, Trigger confirms who they are to Poison Ivy right before she kills them.
  • Sam Lesser attempts this with Dodge in Locke and Key. Key word: attempts.
  • In Grant Morrison's final issue of X-Men, this trope is used tragically. Jean Grey has triumphantly returned and purged the Big Bad of the sentient bacteria that was making him evil. Just as the former Big Bad appears to be coming to his senses... his abused Igor decapitates him.
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