Accomplices by Inaction in Literature.
- Animal Farm's Benjamin the donkey is this in a sense. He knows what the Pigs are up to and how downhill things'll go but we don't see him warn the other animals or do anything about it, allowing the revolution to go full circle. However, given that Napoleon responded to one of the few organised attempts to push back against his increasingly authoritarian leadership by ordering the mass execution of the animals concerned, choosing to keep his head down and his mouth shut is not an unreasonable reaction if the alternative is becoming a Doomed Moral Victor.
- In A Brother's Price, the princesses' late father is mentioned to have been an Extreme Doormat, who stood by and watched while his son-in-law emotionally abused the younger princesses, and one time even tortured and raped one of them in the room next door. Though it is not clear whether the latter is just an exaggerated accusation- he might not have been there at the time. There is also Eldest, the eldest princess, who could have divorced their husband. She was told about his crime afterwards, but did nothing, because the (very beautiful) husband had her wrapped around his little finger.
- In Samuel Richarson's Clarissa (1747-48), the longest book ever written in the English language, the heroine's mother and her aunt look like this from a modern reader's perspective because they never oppose the father when he does his best to force the heroine into an arranged marriage. Richardson seemed to partially agree, at least for the good aunt Hervey, whom he describes in the preface as "lacking the courage to go against so strong a steam, [and] sailing with it".
- Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Fedka the convict" bugs Nikolai Stavrogin for some money, and Stavrogin eventually complies. Afterwards, Stavrogin realizes why Fedka was asking for the money—in a very indirect way, Fedka was offering to kill Stavrogin's wife and brother-in-law in exchange for cash. Realizing this Stavrogin leaps into action and... does nothing, until his wife and brother-in-law die at Fedka's hand. He outright says, the morning after, that even if he isn't legally guilty of the murders, he considers himself morally guilty.
- The Divine Comedy The vestibule of Hell contains people who weren't actively evil, but were too cowardly or apathetic to do anything to stop it. Dante specifically points out Pontius Pilate as being here, as he could have saved Jesus but chickened out instead.
- In Dragon Bones, Ward and his younger brother Tosten are bitter about their mother, Muellen never doing something against their abusive father. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that she was a rather weak woman, while her husband was unusually tall and stronger than most other men. For some reason, they never accuse their uncle Duraugh or their aunt Stala, both of whom would have been much more capable of stopping the abuse, of the same. Oreg points out that Muellen wasn't even able to protect herself, but for Ward and Tosten, the trauma is too deeply ingrained; they probably think their mother should have protected them because, well, she's their parent.
- In The Fountainhead, Gail Wynand was once nearly beaten to death as a youth by a drunken longshoreman. Wynand dragged himself to a saloon and asked for help for the first and last time in his life when the saloonkeeper found him. The saloonkeeper simply went back inside without a word. Years later, the now wealthy and powerful Wynand still remembered the longshoreman and the saloonkeeper. Wynand never did anything to the longshoreman. He utterly ruined the saloonkeeper's life, driving him to suicide.
- In The Irregular at Magic High School, the narration makes a point of telling us that, had Tatsuya known about the plot to bomb a stadium full of innocent people, he would have done nothing to stop it although he was fully capable of doing so.
- Found in Jane Austen's works and played differently:
- Love and Freindship, this is used for comedic effect, when Laura and Sophia are furious with the latter's cousin, Mac Donald, because he didn't sigh nor weep when he heard that they had been abandoned by their grandfather. He just saved them, providing them with shelter, food and stability.
- Played for Drama in Sense and Sensibility, since the eldest brother refuses to give anything to his sisters despite his father's unofficial will and his promise at his father's deathbed. They despise him for his neglect and for being a condescending, pitiless, Innocently Insensitive weakling.
- Mary Crawford of Mansfield Park doesn't seem like a malicious and unworthy woman for Edmund; she is lively and engaging and even saves Fanny from Mrs. Norris at one point. But she refuses to do or oppose anything if it would interfere with her own comfort, and barely protests her brother's plan to woo and then dump Fanny just to satisfy his ego.
- In The Watsons (unfinished novel), the heroine despises the brother who gained financial independence and could have helped her sister while she, despite being in a higher situation, couldn't do anything, but he chose not to do anything except invite his favorite sister occasionally.
- Céline Raphael's La Démesure: This biopic is a testimony of her life as a child and young teenager with an unbelievably physically and emotionally abusive Stage Dad.
- Céline's mother never confronted the father about the abuse in the first years, and the reader may assume that they didn't know. Then, halfway through the book, she writes about how unsettling it must have been for her mother and sister to hear all the abuse from behind the closed door of the room her father locked her in for practice. She never had a grudge against her mother.
- Céline's little sister, Marie, had a limp. When she was invited to walk with Céline and their father, she would be hit with a stick if she didn't follow quickly enough. Céline wasn't abused if Marie came on the walk, but was abused if she didn't, so she (and their mother) would yell at her if she refused to go on a walk.
- Céline had a P.E. teacher who taunted her for failing to attend his classes (because her father forbade her to, for practice) out of pure anger towards her and her family enjoying superior social standing and being allegedly able to break rules. It is one of the rare persons she seems to still resent and look down upon.
- In Glorious Appearing from the Left Behind series, during Jesus' judgment of the "sheep and goats", Jesus judges the "goats" (most likely Global Community and Nicolae Carpathia loyalists) for doing nothing good for "the least of My brethren" (contextually talking about the people of Israel), saying that what they didn't do for them, they also didn't do for Him. In other words, they're just as guilty as if they were actively coming against the Jews and Christians themselves, and doing that to the Jews means you're also doing that to Christ.
- In the Discworld Night Watch, Vimes accuses the old, bad Watch when his squad says that they shouldn't be targeted by the mobs because they didn't do anything. Vimes agrees—they didn't do anything to try to protect innocent people from the State Sec or criminals alike, and that's why they're in trouble now.
- In Renegades, this is the protagonist, Nova's, motivation, as she blames the Renegades for her family's death as they promised to protect them but weren't there when a gunman came and shot them all.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire book A Clash of Kings, Robb Stark catches seven enemy soldiers massacring his men, so he has them all hanged. One of them protests that he did not actually participate in the stabbing, he merely watched. Robb concludes that because he merely watched and did not intervene, he still counted as a guilty accomplice, so the man was hanged along with the others.
- The Novelization of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock has David committing this. Whereas the movie has David using the highly unstable protomatter in the Genesis device, the book instead has the rest of the development team using it instead. While David did have misgivings and even verbally objected over the protomatter, Saavik berates him as he ultimately did nothing to stop his colleagues.
- The ninth poem of La Vita Nuova accuses those who see the poet struck to death by beauty of sinning if they do not comfort the poet in his weakness.
- This is Mapleshade's reasoning in Warrior Cats for attacking Frecklewish, who saw Mapleshade's kits in the river but did not try to help them. Granted, Frecklewish could not swim and assumed the kits would be saved by RiverClan warriors, but Mapleshade is too filled with hatred by this point to listen.
- In Worm Taylor says in a "Reason You Suck" Speech that Charlotte is almost as guilty as the rest of the school for watching as Taylor was constantly bullied by Emma and Sophia.
