The Dog Bites Back/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of The Dog Bites Back in Film include:

  • In The Rescuers, Brutus and Nero, Medusa's pet crocodiles, end up turning on her near the end of the film, and are snapping at her as she's clinging for dear life on the sinking steamship.
  • In The Lion King Scar is ripped apart by his starving hyena henchmen at the end. Apparently they weren't amused by Scar trying to blame Mufasa's murder and Scar's subsequent coup on them.[1]
    • Something similar happens to Scar in the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. He, after being revived by Hades, tricks the Hyenas into believing that he is invulnerable. When he's exposed to not be the case by the guests, the Hyenas decide to abandon him.
  • At the end of Disney's |Hercules, after Hades was punched into the River Styx by Hercules, the spirits that he had trapped in the river (a few of which he had blasted earlier in the movie) dragged him down into the dark abyss of it forever.
    • Even Pain and Panic managed to get a last laugh over their boss:

Panic: He's not gonna be happy when he gets out of there.
Pain: You mean if he gets out of there.
Panic: If. "If" is good.

  • South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut has an interesting variation with Satan and Saddam Hussein. Guess which one is the Dog?
  • The Secret of NIMH: Jenner's co-conspirator, after being mortally wounded by him, redeems himself by throwing his dagger straight into Jenner's back.
  • Space Jam: After the 'Toons finally win the big game, Swackhammer starts berating and humiliating the Monstars all the way back to the ship. Michael Jordan asks why they're putting up with him like that. They answer that it's because he's bigger... "bigger than we used to be." Righteous payback ensues.
  • At the end of Rock-a-Doodle after the Grand Duke of Owls is defeated and stripped of his powers, he shrinks down to the size of a squab, even smaller than his abused nephew Hunch who takes the opportunity to get revenge and chases his diminutive uncle with a flyswatter over the horizon and away from the farm forever.
  • Very literal example in The Simpsons Movie. Homer continuously whips his sled dogs, for the most banal reasons, until they get fed up with it and maul him.

Homer: Why does everything I whip leave me?

Killian: [laughs] Sven, do you wanna talk to Mr. Richards?
Sven: I've got to score some steroids.

  • Happens to the Big Bad at the hands of his Mooks in Banlieue 13.
  • Roger Corman incorporated the aforementioned "Hop-Frog" as a subplot in The Masque of the Red Death.
  • Happens at the end of Four Brothers.
  • At the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Wormtongue kills Saruman during the confrontation with Gandalf and the Fellowship. In the book version, this occurs near the very end during the Scouring of the Shire.
  • In the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Davy Jones is forced to work for Complete Monster Lord Beckett. He isn't happy about this. During the confusion of a sea battle he finally retakes the Flying Dutchman and dispatches the acting captain assigned to the ship in a rather horrifying manner.
  • At the end of Return Of The Jedi, Darth Vader turns on his master in a Heel Face Turn after Palpatine lays on the Force Lightning against his son, and the redeemed/reborn Anakin proceeds to hurl the Evil Sorcerer down the shaft into the reactor core.
  • In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the reason why Kylo Ren had a hand in killing his master is because he was getting tired of Snoke lecturing him on needlessly clinging to the past and how ridiculous his mask looked.
  • In Hannibal, Verger's unappreciated physician Cordell is spurred to Bite Back against his employer, dumping Verger out of his wheelchair and into a sty of man-eating swine, when Lecter points out that Cordell can tell the cops that Lecter's the one who did it.
  • At the end of New Jack City, crime lord Nino Brown - fresh from cutting a ludicrously sweet plea deal, gets gunned down by a old man he'd dissed and abused early in the movie as almost an afterthought.
  • Biff Tannen in Back to The Future has something like this happen to him with regards to George McFly. Although George isn't exactly his underling, Biff takes a great deal of pleasure in bullying him and making him act as his dogsbody. Then Biff gets it in his head to sexually assault Lorraine, the girl George is in love with, inspiring George to show Biff how much he appreciates this and all the other poor treatment he's been subject to with a surprisingly strong right hook. Thirty years later, the roles have reversed somewhat.
  • In Scrooged, Elliot Loudermilk is fired on Christmas Eve for questioning his boss, his wife leaves him and The Ghost Of Christmas Past swipes the booze he sold blood for. He comes back with a shotgun. Frank gets saved by The Ghost of Christmas Future and a near-trip into an oven.
  • At the end of Training Day, Manipulative Bastard Alonzo has been thwarted, beaten, and humiliated in front of the neighborhood he terrorized and kept under his thumb. Desperate to stop Jake from taking the money he needs to pay off The Mafiya, (who are a bit upset with Alonzo) Alonzo offers to pay anyone who has been watching the fight to kill Jake. They refuse, and one of the local gangsters even pulls a gun on Alonzo and covers Jake's back while Jake walks away. As a result Alonzo doesn't make his payoff and gets killed Sonny Corleone style.
  • In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Megatron, thanks to his injuries in the previous film, is now but a shadow of his former self. When Sentinel Prime turns against the Autobots, he practically makes Megatron his bitch. When Carly points this out to Megs, he decides to prove he's not by shooting Sentinel in the back, just as the latter is about to finish off Optimus. This proves to be both his and Sentinel's undoing, when Optimus kills both of them in the space of 30 seconds, while missing an arm.
  • This trope is more or less the driving force of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and it happens no fewer than four times. Todd's motivation is getting back at Judge Turpin, who imprisoned him for life on a trumped-up charge and raped his wife. Todd returns to London specifically to kill Turpin and his Dragon, Beadle Bamford. And by the end of the movie, he is successful. Meanwhile, abusive asylum-keeper Jonas Fogg is done in by Johanna (in the stage show) or his inmates (in the film). Finally, Tobias, driven insane after witnessing Todd's brutality firsthand, does this to Todd.
  • In Singin' in the Rain, Lina forcing the studio to drop Kathy's name from the credits of the new musical winds up becoming her undoing; the producer she forced to do it then serves as an accomplice to exposing her "lip-synching" scheme.
  • Gladiator:

Commodus: A sword! Give me a sword!
Praetorian Commander: Sheathe your swords! Sheathe! Your! Swords!

  • Jurassic Park: While trying to escape the titular park with his ill-gotten embryos, Dennis Nedry encounters a Dilophasaurus. Initially, she does not wish to hurt him (at least, it’s implied she doesn’t wish to hurt him), and is instead curious. But when Nedry decides to mistreat her, she decides he is his enemy, and that he would make for a good snack. And unfortunately for Nedry, she outwits him, right before eating him alive,
  1. ↑ Although the hyenas being responsible for Mufasa's murder was technically true, as the movie implies that Scar didn't consider murdering Mufasa until after Banzai asked sardonically whether Scar should kill Mufasa to become king, and initially only targeted Simba for death.
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