History Main / MovingTheGoalPosts

* Early in ''Manga/DragonBall'', Master Roshi declares that Goku and Krillin have completed their physical training and are ready to train ''real'' martial arts, once they're able to push a boulder forward with nothing but their raw strength. When Goku is unexpectedly capable of just such feat, he declares that he was mistaken and points at a much larger boulder for them to strive for. [[spoiler:He doesn't even have any real martial arts to teach them, only preparing them physically. [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower It's all they ever need and more]]]].

* In ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'', a village hosts a race: whoever arrives first wins an all-expenses-paid trip to a spring resort of their choosing (including the Cursed Springs that gave the main character his curse and also has the cure). However, the village doesn't actually ''have'' the money to pay for the trip, so they place increasingly dangerous obstacles on the course to dissuade everyone from finishing, finally resorting, when everything else fails, to two villagers lifting the goal and carry it away from the approaching racers.

* ''Manga/The100GirlfriendsWhoReallyReallyReallyReallyReallyLoveYou'': A ramen shop owner in Chapter 83 creates a challenge dish that she intends to be unbeatable, to the point where she changes the dish every time someone manages to beat it. Unfortunately, every time she changes the win conditions for the challenge dish, she changes it to something that can be beaten by one or two of Rentarou's girlfriends using their unique quirks.
* More than one AssholeVictim in ''Manga/CaseClosed'' was killed by the person they were subjecting to this. The most infamous case is [[spoiler:the mystery writer Daisuke Torakura]].

* Was revealed to be the motive [[Recap/MonkS2E9MrMonkAndTheTwelfthMan in an episode of]] ''Series/{{Monk}}''. After being blackmailed with evidence that he'd killed his wife, the murderer decided to kill the blackmailer when their demands grew too high. Knowing that it was one of the people who served on the jury of a case he was involved in, but not who specifically, he started killing them one by one, resulting in a string of seemingly random murders.

* Was revealed to be the motive in an episode of ''Series/{{Monk}}''. After being blackmailed with evidence that he'd killed his wife, the victim decided to kill the blackmailer when their demands grew too high. Knowing that it was one of several people, but not who, he started killing them one by one, resulting in a string of seemingly random murders.

* ''Fanfic/ADipInTheInkwell'': During ''Staring Contest'', Todd wagers three of his Snickers bars on winning. Once he does, he then demands Olive give him three Snickers bars, despite how ''she'' hadn't anted anything. While she calls him out on this, he refuses to bend.

* In one ''Manga/{{Naruto}}''/''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' story, Neji seems to be doing this, claiming that he'll admit the Gentle Fist is flawed if [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower Ranma]] can beat him. Then if Ranma can beat a given trainer, then another trainer, all the way up to the Clan Head. Tenten, however, notes that after the first trainer lost, [[InUniverseCatharsis Neji just kept doing it so he could watch Ranma beat up Main Branch members.]]

* ''Fanfic/BuiltDifferentSignlessAcolyte'': After the Crew completely a mission for Faraday ''precisely'' the way that they were instructed to, he refuses to pay them the bonus he'd promised, as Maxim switched drivers between jobs, making the intel a little less useful. An Interlude chapter later reveals that Faraday does this on a regular basis, promising a bonus payout only to latch onto any excuse he can find to avoid actually having to shell out the extra cash.
* ''Fanfic/TheChaoticThree'': When Poe is forced to make a bet with Jabba the Hutt for Aayla Secura's freedom and the return of BB-8, after Poe wins the initial bet, Jabba offers to return BB-8 while playing another game for Aayla's freedom, but Poe refuses to take this further and has to be rescued by Finn.
* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12202396/1/Clash-of-the-Ketchums Clash of the Ketchums]]'': Ash's father claims that Pokémon training is a waste of time and that one can't learn any valuable skills from it. When Ash shows that he knows how to balance a budget (due to paying his own bills on the road), use a computer (the Pokédex), and speak three languages, his father states it's a huge money sink that gives no returns. Ash retorts that he actually makes a significant payday (over a hundred million yen per league), causing his father to claim he's nothing but a glorified golfer. His father doesn't take it well when Ash [[CallingTheOldManOut calls him out]] on the fact he's only making such claims because he's a failure of a trainer who never made it to League level.
* ''Fanfic/ConsequencesMiraculousLadybug'': In ''MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE'', Lila threatens to get Marinette expelled again unless Adrien becomes her boyfriend. When he angrily reminds her that he only agreed to be her 'friend', she replies "Terms can change, Adrien. Deals can be altered, especially when one party isn't benefitting as much as they were promised."
* ''Fanfic/{{Dekugate}}'': The titular community of {{Conspiracy Theorist}}s are convinced that All Might and David Shield are StarCrossedLovers, kept apart by the Hero Commission because they believe it wouldn't be profitable for their Number One Hero to be out and proud, and that All Might was forced into a sham marriage with a fake wife and child. Even though All Might and David are both openly bisexual -- apparently, it [[NoBisexuals only counts]] if they're ''currently'' in a relationship with another man!
* ''Webcomic/DestinyIntertwined'': During Hayze's KangarooCourt "trial", the Frostspears repeatedly do this as more and more holes are poked in their case. At first they claim Hayze was trying to leave the city and kidnap Malefor. When it turns out that Malefor snuck out on his and ran into Hayze by happenstance, they accuse him of trying to give the shadow dragons information about the city. When it's brought up that Hayze knows literally nothing of strategic value, they try and damn him for getting his element stronger.

* In ''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/dont-be-an-impel-down-er-one-piece-si.386260/page-40#post-21946100 Don't Be An Impel Down-er]]'', the SelfInsert was born to a prisoner of Level Six in [[Manga/OnePiece Impel Down]] and was sentenced to fifty years for the crime of "being born". Each time he proves capable of surviving (or even thriving) on a given level of Impel Down, he's transferred to the next level down. Some time after he's sentenced to level five, the most hellish and second lowest level[[note]]Level Six merely has the prisoners locked in cells for the rest of their lives[[/note]], [[YouAreNumberSix Prisoner 10013's]] sentence is changed to a life sentence, just to ensure he'll never get out.
* ''Webcomic/DragonBallReboot'': [[https://www.deviantart.com/ginereboot/art/02-DBReboot-Spin-Off-ENGLISH-876529811 As a little girl]], Gine dreamed of becoming a strong fighter and asked a local GangOfBullies whether she could train with them. Their leader, Aikon, told her that she could join them if she managed to hit him in a fight. When she does just that, an embarrassed Aikon gives several flimsy excuses for why it didn't count before changing the conditions so that she has to fight his entire gang at once.
* ''Fanfic/ForTheGloryOfIrk'': At one point, [[TheDragon Xia]] does this regarding the rules of the strategy game she's playing with [[MookLieutenant Ven]], blatantly changing them or making them up on the spot to benefit her. He doesn't call her on it because he's too busy sucking up to her.
* ''Fanfic/{{Gutters}}'': After [[spoiler:Netherlands]] betrays Sealand by giving him up to the man who's [[spoiler:holding Belgium hostage]], the man tells him to shoot Denmark. When his victim protests that "That wasn't part of the deal," the man simply replies that "It is now."
* PlayedForLaughs in ''Fanfic/HopeOfTheShieldHero'' when Daitan challenges Itsuki to an arm-wrestling match. After Itsuki beats him, he claims that was only a practice round. Then it's "Best out of three." The more Daitan loses, the more he insists they have to keep going for... until Itsuki gets fed up and quits, at which point Daitan proclaims that he wins by default.
* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14011983/1/I-am-Bitch-the-Shield-Hero-s-Slut I am Bitch, the Shield Hero's Slut]]'', Malty levels up high enough to earn her class upgrade shortly before the Wave but when she and Naofumi go to the church, the nun there demands an exorbitant price (triple the canon price). Once Naofumi proves he has the money needed, another nun brings up that actually there's been a royal decree that no one in the Shield Hero's party is allowed to get a class upgrade.

** Mr. Pepper provides a more {{Downplayed}} example during his cooking class in the first chapter. All of his students are making curry, and he chides Chloe for simply following the recipe, declaring that she needed to "make it her own". While Chloe protests that following the rules ''precisely'' has its own merits, he dismisses her argument entirely. Much later on, the incident is brought up again, and it's made clear that Mr. Pepper hadn't specifically ''told'' his students that he wanted them customizing their curry recipes; he just arbitrarily decided that Chloe's efforts weren't good enough.

* ''Fanfic/MeanRabbit'': [[SadistTeacher Aizawa]] repeatedly does this to Izuku, as part of his desire to "teach him" that LifeIsntFair to the Quirkless:
** Despite Izuku passing the entrance exam and performing well during the Quirk Assessment test, Aizawa declares that he automatically places last because he's Quirkless and attempts to expel him. When Izuku points out that he performed better than half the class in said assessment, Aizawa makes him face the five worst-performing students in a series of rematches. Once he outperforms them all, he gives those five an expulsion scare, seemingly kicking them out for not being able to beat a Quirkless kid and making most of the class [[MisplacedRetribution blame]] ''[[MisplacedRetribution Izuku]]'' for it.
** When a DoubleKnockout means that Izuku gets a pass to the next round of the Sports Festival's tournament, as neither of his would-be opponents made it to the next round, Aizawa tries to make one of the already disqualified students come back and fight him instead. He's ''extremely'' frustrated when nobody is willing to cooperate.

* ''Fanfic/TheOneToMakeItStay'': Alya dismissed Marinette's attempts to warn her about [[ConsummateLiar Lila's true nature]] by telling her that "A good journalist always checks her sources." By which she apparently meant [[{{Hypocrite}} refusing to investigate at all]] and expecting her friend to handle it. When Rose and Juleka present her and the other girls with proof that Lila lied about knowing Prince Ali, Alya promptly dismisses this as not ''enough'' proof; at best, it just shows she wasn't truthful about this one thing, and unless they can prove that ''everything'' was false, well, she's just going to brush this off.
* In ''Fanfic/PathOfTheKing'', Shirou uses this to control his underground contact, putting him in increasingly dangerous situations with his demands. After this nearly leads to his contact's untimely demise, Shirou is horrified with himself, cutting ties with him out of guilt.
* ''Fanfic/PersonaTheSougawaFiles'': Shadow Ryouichi promises the heroes that he'll grant them access to his office if they get VIP clearance. He then decides that they "didn't do it right", using ExactWords to justify breaking their deal.

* In ''Fanfic/ProjectDelta'', once Jortan returns to his masters after the battle of Mindoir, he expects to be punished for failure. However, with them having other plans, all it takes is a tiny bit of indoctrination to make him "remember" the objective wasn't killing Jane, but merely removing the weaklings from their own organization.

** [[ForWantOfANail In this universe]], Katsuki successfully convinced Izuku to give up on becoming a Pro Hero. However, this isn't good enough for the BarbaricBully: when he learns that Izuku entered U.A.'s General Education track, he's absolutely ''furious'', planning to give him a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown for the 'crime' of attending the same school as him.

* Fuels the story of ''Series/ForAllMankind'': In an AlternateUniverse where the Soviet Union manages to land a man on the moon before the United States, NASA tries to save face by changing the end-goal of the Space Race, such as declaring they'll land the first ''woman'' on the moon or that they'll build a full-blown [[SpaceBase moon base]]. This causes problems at NASA which has to keep developing then scrapping lengthy and expensive programs as the political winds change. [[ForWantOfANail As a result]], the Space Race gets dragged out way further than it was in RealLife, with corresponding knock-on effects.

Compare TakingAdvantageOfGenerosity. Can overlap with SocialDarwinism. Contrast SharpshooterFallacy, when the goalposts are moved to favour an argument instead of debunking it. LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics may be used as a tool to move the goalposts.

* In Ohio in 2023, polls showed a referendum to amend the state constitution to guarantee abortion rights would handily pass with support in the high-fifties, which would overturn a Republican-passed six-week "heartbeat bill" on the books that had been blocked in court. Republican legislators then tried to pass a [[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-special-election-in-ohio-shows-voters-still-care-about-abortion/ ballot proposition]] that would require 60% voter approval to change the state constitution. Ohio voters rejected the proposal.

* This trope came up in the Salem Witch Trials, as part of their larger tendency towards finding accused people guilty pretty much no matter what. In the early days, those conducting the trials asserted that a person under the control of the Devil would be incapable of reciting the Lord's Prayer, as this suited their purpose at the time (they used this assertion as proof to convict people of witchcraft for what was most likely a case of them just being scared and flustered to the point of forgetting the words). When accused people began trying to use this to ''their'' advantage, reciting the prayer in hopes that it would demonstrate they were not in fact witches, those same authorities immediately began virtually tripping over themselves to add caveats to their previous statements to explain why this ''shouldn't'' be taken as proof of innocence even though a finding of innocence would logically follow from their previous assertions.

* This trope came up in the Salem Witch Trials, as part of their larger tendency towards finding accused people guilty pretty much no matter what. In the early days, those conducting the trials asserted that a person under the control of the Devil would be incapable of reciting the Lord's Prayer, as this suited their purpose at the time (they used this assertion as proof to convict people of witchcraft for what was most likely a case of them just being scared and flustered to the point of forgetting the words). When accused people began trying to use this to ''their'' advantage, reciting the prayer in hopes that it would demonstrate they were not in fact witches, those same authorities immediately began twisting their own previous statements, all in service of explaining why this shouldn't count as proof of innocence despite this running directly contrary to their previous statements.