The Millstone: Difference between revisions

The trope name comes from the phrase "millstone around my neck". For those not versed in agriculture, a millstone is a large (often 2-3 feet in diameter) stone disc used by mills to render things well pulverized, such as grinding grain into flour. A typical millstone is several hundred pounds of solid rock: understandably, being necklaced with one would make your life considerably more difficult (especially because the necklacing tends to happen on top of a bridge, shortly before a splashy noise is heard).

 

 

[[No Real Life Examples Please]].

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** Zack Galifianakis also plays a nearly identical character in ''[[Due Date]]''.

* ''[[The Big Lebowski (Film)|The Big Lebowski]]'': Walter Sobchak is a cross between this and a total [[Jerkass|asshole]]. Everything goes completely wrong for the Dude the moment he opens his mouth or comes up with a plan of his own. The kicker? {{spoiler|Walter's was right all along.}}

* Peregrin Took in ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Film)|The Fellowship of the Ring]]'', where he's responsible for, among other things: drunkenly revealing Frodo's identity to everybody within earshot, starting a fire at Weathertop that attracts the Ringwraiths, waking up The Watcher which forces the Fellowship to flee into Moria, and finally waking up everything ''in'' Moria when they're knee-deep in it. It's a wonder Gandalf doesn't make good on his threat to [[Just Eat Gilligan|throw him down the well too]]. He [[Took a Level In Badass|gets much better]], obviously. He also nicks the Palantir, though that actually works out pretty well.

** This is mostly just in the movies however; in the book, Frodo himself reveals his identity by keeping his hand in his pocket with the ring while singing, the fire on Weathertop was actually Aragorn's idea (and implied not to have been the reason the wraiths found the party), Boromir woke up The Watcher instead, and while Pippin does throw a stone into a well in Moria, it's not made obvious if it is what alerts the Orcs and the Balrog to the Fellowship's presence.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** Gilligan is the epitome of this trope. If the other castaways had [[Just Eat Gilligan|resorted to cannibalism and eaten him]], they could have gotten off the island the next day. He's so much an embodiment of this trope that it was almost titled "The Gilligan". To be fair, the other castaways were at least able to punish him with things like forcing him to be a cuckoo clock sounder, dive dozens of times for a telephone cable, jail him and otherwise humiliate him to their hearts' content.

** Also, the episodes that ''didn't'' center around their latest attempt to get off the island (and these made up about half the series) instead focused around the latest danger on the island, and Gilligan was always the one who saved them in those cases. So no Gilligan and maybe they'd have gotten off the island -- or maybe they'd have been fried by the volcano or blown up by the mine that washed ashore.

* Patrick in ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants (Animation)|SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' fits more than the usual. Whenever SpongeBob or anyone has a plan, Patrick is sure to screw it up, or do something stupid to make it worse.

* Dog in ''[[Cat Dog]]''.

* ''[[Ed, Edd n Eddy]]''

** Ed. One time the Eds built a roller-coaster that worked perfectly, and Ed destroyed it with his teeth, for absolutely no reason.