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The Thing That Would Not Leave: Difference between revisions
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The most common way of getting caught in this trap is to take in a friend who's down on their luck. Supposedly the situation will be temporary until they get back on their feet. Invariably the friend will either be a complete eccentric or have absolutely no regard for the people whose home they're squatting in. After having their lives turned completely upside down by someone who appears to have no clue as to the harm they're doing the inevitable confrontation occurs.
Expect a tearful farewell from the guest as he disappears out into the cold, and a mountain of regret from the homeowners as they wonder whether there was a better way to handle the situation. Or, alternatively, an attempt for the guest to provoke a tearful farewell by acting wounded and [[Minor Insult Meltdown|bemoaning their hosts' ungraciousness]] - only for the hard-hearted host, who has gone way past any limits of tolerance they may have had with this annoying and inconsiderate leech, to push them out the door (perhaps while screaming, "[[Get Out!]]!"), slam it shut and lock it behind them.
Named for the ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch that presented this premise as a horror movie trailer. Compare with [[The Cat Came Back]] and [[Pretty Freeloaders]]
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
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* Arguably the [[Harry Potter]] fanfic [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5688056/1/On_a_Clear_Day On a Clear Day]. Draco works for a charity organisation. When the organisation plans a gala to raise money for the children who lost their parents in the war against Voldemort, Draco's boss demands that he makes sure that the Great Harry Potter is in attendance. The problem is that since the war, Harry has turned agoraphobic and refuses to leave Grimmauld Place, which prompts Draco to intentionally invoke this trope. It's not that he never leaves, but he goes there every day, sits around for hours and tries to annoy Harry into agreeing to come to the gala. {{spoiler|He succeeds.}}
* In the fancomic ''[[Girls Next Door (Webcomic)|Girls Next Door]]'', the [[Pans Labyrinth|Pale Man]] apparently followed Ofelia to the apartment building. He installed himself in Jareth's and Eric's kitchen, and to date has not left. They managed to get rid of him once "with the help" of the ''friendly'' Girl Scouts, but it came back and has a brownie slash since.
* In the ''[[Death Note (Manga)|Death Note]]'' [[Crack Fic]] ''[[All You Need Is Love (Fanfic)|All You Need Is Love]]'' [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5949144/1/All_You_Need_is_Love\] Naomi Misora [[Sympathy for The Devil|feels so sorry]] for her [[Stalking Is Love|stalker]], [[Big Bad|Light Yagami/Kira,]] [[I Have You Now, My Pretty|because he's being sexually harassed in the workplace]] that [[What Were You Thinking?|she invites him to stay at her place for a couple days...]] In the end Naomi ends up kidnapping Raye (her clueless fiancé) and fleeing the country to get away from Light. Meanwhile Light, who has to date not yet left her apartment, sends her a note informing her that the fridge is empty and now L and Matsuda (the stalker's stalkers) had followed him there and are in the process of "redecorating." The story then has a [[Time Skip]]-it's five years later and Light still hasn't left.
== Film ==
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* ''[[The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (Literature)|The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency]]'': Mma Ramotswe's first case was a woman whose father (whom she hadn't seen since she was little) returned and was living off her. She wouldn't object to feeding and housing her father for the rest of his life, since that's what you do for family, but she'd started to suspect that this moocher wasn't actually her father. Mma Ramotswe came up with a way of getting rid of the impostor.
* [[Diana Wynne Jones]]'s chapter books ''Chair Person'', ''The Four Grannies'' and ''Who Got Rid Of Angus Flint?'' has been collected as a volume called ''Stopping For A Spell'' whose back cover describes all three stories in terms of this trope.
* As in the page quote - E. Gorey's short story ''The Doubtful Guest'' involves a ''highly'' annoying [[
* [[Ogden Nash]] wrote a poem about [[The Thing That Would Not Leave]] called ''[http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/polterguest.html Polterguest, My Polterguest]''.
* A children's book called ''[[The Trolls (Literature)|The Trolls]]'' has a woman tell her nieces and nephews about growing up in Vancouver with her eccentric family. One of these family members was their great-uncle Louis, who came for two weeks and stayed for six years. {{spoiler|He only left after he insisted he saved the narrator's younger brother from a pack of trolls and the narrator's mother ordered him out in disgust.}}
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* Most of the subplot with Daphne's irritating mother in the later seasons of ''[[Frasier (TV)|Frasier]]'' involved her greatly over-staying her welcome when staying with Niles and Daphne. Daphne's brothers also fell into this trope, but mostly because they really were ungrateful and obnoxious spongers who barged into Frasier's apartments and took unreasonable liberties whilst they were there.
* Spike does this to several different people in season 4 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. This becomes particularly apparent when Weetabix gets involved. According to Spike, it adds texture to blood.
* An episode of ''[[Father Ted]]'' had the priests dealing with Father Stone, the dullest man alive, who absolutely loves staying with Ted. According to the writer's commentary on the DVD he was [[Based
* The [[Trope Namer]] is an ''[[SNL]]'' horror film trailer parody. John Belushi was the thing in question.
* This is the premise for ''[[Two and A Half Men]]''--Alan moves in with his bachelor brother Charlie for "a couple of days" when his wife divorces him, and then stays for about a decade.
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* ''[[Yes Dear]]'' has Jimmy Hughes, his wife Christine and their two sons living in the guesthouse of Christine's sister, Kim Warner, her husband Greg and their son {{spoiler|and later their daughter}}. While Kim has no problem with the Hugheses living with them, Greg certainly does and is always complaining about them, mostly/especially Jimmy, constantly mooching off of him. Eventually, the Hugheses do get their own place, but in the final scene of the [[Grand Finale]], {{spoiler|their house is destroyed by an earthquake, [[Here We Go Again|forcing them to move back into the Warners' guesthouse]]}}.
* One of the earliest examples is from ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' with guest-star Tennessee Ernie Ford as Lucy's "Cousin Ernie" who stays over for one episode and wears out his welcome by the next one.
* One episode of ''[[
* ''[[The Golden Girls]]'' had an episode named "The Stan Who Came to Dinner," in which Dorothy's ex-husband stays with the girls to recuperate from heart surgery, but overstays his welcome.
* Partial subversion in an episode of ''[[Being Human (TV)|Being Human]]'': Tully is invited to stay over one housemate's objections, but by the end of the episode the positions regarding him have reversed, with the original naysayer defending Tully's continued presence against the others' complaints.
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