Characters giving up too soon in Animated and Live-Action Films.
Film — Animation
- In An American Tail, Fievel's parents assume Fievel died while falling overboard on a ship, and they spend most of the movie having near-misses while Fievel is out looking for his family because Papa Mousekewitz refuses to entertain the notion that Fievel is alive. The same thing almost happened to Fievel towards the movie's conclusion, where Fievel is convinced by street orphans that his family isn't coming to look for him, and he should just accept it. Moments after he stops looking, Fievel and his family find each other.
- This is what ends up turning The Brave Little Toaster into a "Shaggy Dog" Story. When Toaster and the other appliances see a "For Sale" sign put up outside their cottage, they become convinced that their hopes that Rob, their Master, would come back were truly gone forever, which leads Toaster to rally them into setting off to the city to find him themselves. A few days later, just as they had reached their destination, Rob, who had just graduated and was packing for college, went off to the cottage, intending to retrieve them to take with him.
- In Epic (2013), just when Professor Bomba's recording equipment would have been useful (tiny MK needed him and his iPhone), he starts disconnecting them. Fortunately, he finds the needle MK moved on his map to indicate the Leafmen lair.
- In Finding Dory, to reunite with Dory, Marlin and Nemo need the help of a loon named Becky to take them to the Quarantine Center of the Ocean Institute. However, on the way, Becky leaves their bucket on a branch while she eats some popcorn that had fallen on the ground. Marlin grows impatient and ends up accidentally catapulting himself and Nemo into a gift shop aquarium. A few moments later, Becky finishes eating and takes the empty bucket that held Marlin and Nemo to the roof of the Quarantine Center. Nemo can't help but snark about that.
- In Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders, the villains of the story tell Fred, Daphne, and Velma about how they found a gold mine some old miners in the past were digging in, but who gave up and left only a few more feet from a gold deposit. Naturally the villains are happy to gain from their loss.
Film — Live-Action
- 10: George Webber's neighbor gives him permission to spy on him with a telescope while he is having sex. At the end of the movie, the neighbor spies with a telescope on George talking with his girlfriend Samantha whom he had been having marital problems with. The neighbor angrily says he's tired of always giving George a show and getting nothing in return and goes to bed. Almost as soon as he does, George and Samantha reconcile and start having sex.
- In Batman: The Movie, after their plan to lure Batman into a trap fails when their hostage Bruce Wayne escapes, the United Underworld comes to the conclusion that Batman will never come to their lair and abandon it, leaving behind an explosive surprise for the police, unaware that Batman, having learned their hideout's location firsthand, was indeed coming after them and showed up just after they had left.
- In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, while Superman is fighting Doomsday, with it looking like he's losing, the military jumps the gun and fires a nuke at Doomsday. Unfortunately, it was at this point that Superman was winning and nearly suffocated Doomsday by dragging it into space. When the nuke collided, it caused Doomsday to fall back to earth and undergo a transformation while Superman was seemingly dead in space. In short, all the military's interference did was prolong the battle, nearly kill Supermannote , and make Doomsday more powerful than ever.
- Citizen Kane: Thompson, the Intrepid Reporter who has spent all the movie looking for the answer to the Driving Question (What is Rosebud?) gives up precisely in the very room the answer lies.
- Done tragically in Dragonworld, where Johnny gives Yowler the dragon a scathing Shoo the Dog in order to protect him from MacIntyre. Several moments later, MacIntyre is arrested for housing a dragon without a license, meaning that Johnny drove away his friend for nothing. Fortunately, Yowler comes back in the final scene.
- In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Kevin's mother is looking all over New York for him. After searching for him in her brother-in-law's house, she doesn't find anybody so she hails a taxi and leaves, moments before Kevin arrives on the scene luring Marv and Harry there.
- In Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, the animals are found by people who send them to an animal shelter. Thinking it's a pound, the animals escape, unaware that the animal shelter had contacted their owners who were on their way at that moment to get them. Shadow even has a moment where he has a feeling they should go back, but he shrugs it off and the animals continue their own quest for home.
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids:
- Wayne Sylinzki, the creator of the Shrink Ray, gets fed up with the failure of his device not working and smashes it up in a rage, not realizing that it worked and shrunk his and the neighbors' kids. Upon finding out it worked, part of the plot revolved around him finding the kids and putting the machine back together to return them to normal size.
- This also happens at least once while the kids are tiny where he and his wife are searching for the kids, and the kids are close by, screaming their heads off... but they stop looking just a few inches away.Ron: We were right under their noses and they didn't even see us!
- An especially close call happens right at the end. The kids have finally managed to make their way back into the house, but Nick ends up falling into Wayne's cereal. Wayne, lost in thought over having still not found the kids, isn't paying attention to the bowl and only avoids eating Nick when his dog bites his ankle.
- Part of what makes Inside Llewyn Davis a "Shaggy Dog" Story:
- A friend pulls a few strings to get Llewyn a gig singing a cheesy novelty song. Being cash-strapped and learning that getting money the usual way would take weeks, Llewyn instead asks to just get $200 upfront, despite being warned twice that he'd be giving up on his royalties if he does so. The song ends up becoming a massive hit.
- After various attempts to launch his music career fails, Llewyn decides to rejoin the Merchant Marines and uses the last of his money to pay the union dues he owes them. He needs a seaman's license to actually ship out, but learns that his old license was in a box of his things that he told his sister to throw out and can no longer pay the fee needed to get a new one.
- Lawyer Man: Gilmurry, facing a lawsuit from Anton and his client and fearing a $50,000 judgment, settles the case with Anton for $30K. Gilmurry gets upset when a juror filing out of the courtroom tells him that they would have voted for his acquittal.
- A ridiculously tragic version: in The Mist the main character Mercy Kills his son and all his friends (he had just enough bullets for everyone but himself) moments before the ominous pounding sound drawing ever closer is revealed to be the military coming through killing all the monsters and burning up the mist.
- The main characters in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist spend a good chunk of the movie looking for their inebriated friend Caroline. They just lost the cell phone connection with her and decide she's not at the bus terminal, so they leave to look somewhere else. Three seconds later, Caroline emerges from the terminal bathroom.
- Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Neal and Del's flight from New York to Chicago gets redirected to Wichita due to severe weather, so they agree to spend the night at a nearby motel instead of staying at the airport. Meanwhile in Chicago, after Neal's wife falls asleep while watching TV, we hear a news report that the air traffic at the airport Neal was flying out of has cleared up, meaning he could have gotten home a few hours late instead of two days had he just been patient.
- In The Rookie (2002), Jim, who was once drafted to pitch in the major leagues but got sidelined by a Career-Ending Injury, stops by a roadside radar gun to see how well his pitching has held up all these years later. He throws a fastball
past it, and ends up disappointed when the radar gun shows 76 MPH, even worse than where it was in his prime in the high 80's. He dejectedly walks past the sign to retrieve the baseball, just missing a couple of lights in the sign flickering on and showing that his fastballs were actually a major-league worthy 96 MPH. - Taken to absurd degrees in Son of the Mask, where Odin, fed up with Loki's failure to find the Mask or the baby possessing its powers, possesses the man before Loki to confront him and strip him of his powers, not only unaware that his host was Tim, the one who found the mask, but also failed to realize Tim was holding Alvey, the baby in question. Loki tried to point this out to Odin while he was ranting at him, but Odin wouldn't listen.
- In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, we see Bones' most painful memory - he helped his father end his life in order to relieve the suffering caused by a disease that turned out to have a cure which was discovered not long after the assisted suicide.
- Tusk (2014): Stranded on a island after a shipwreck, Howard Howe is rescued by a friendly walrus which he names "Mr. Tusk". However, after days on the island and on the brink of starvation, he kills and eats his new friend, only to be rescued minutes later.
- In the modern adaptation William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Juliet starts waking up from her coma as Romeo is drinking his poison, and he realizes his mistake right before dropping dead. This raises the drama from the original, where she merely woke up to find his corpse.
