No seriously. Don't.
Thor: How do you like that, you deicidal maniac? Huh? HUH? Now who's so big and tough?
Loki: Dude, don't taunt the god-killing abomination.
The heroes are facing the villain, and is in some sort of power over it. Perhaps they've locked it up, or it's not as terrifying as they thought, or maybe it's lost all its powers. At any rate, one of the heroes starts to taunt it, and is warned by another character "Don't taunt the X!".
The character does not have to be warned, the taunting alone is enough to invoke this trope.
Also see
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu for the title's inspiration. To not be confused with
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu which is more about distraction, or
Bullying A Dragon; which differs in that the entity is choosing not to splatter you. For now. And, please remember: Cthulhu is NOT
Happy Fun Ball.
Examples:
Literature
- Hysterically done to Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. Bilbo makes this mistake when talking to Smaug. While Smaug can't see him since he's invisible, he can smell Bilbo, as well as hear him breathing, so he's got a good rough idea of where the little hobbit is. Smaug also has fire breath. Bilbo gets somewhat burned for taunting the dragon, and in a rare example of this trope where the person who did the taunting figures out its a bad idea, is prompted into saying "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!"
- In "The Odyssey," Odysseus taunts Polyphemus the Cyclops after having blinded him and escaped back to the ship. An unwise decision on Odysseus' part, since this incenses Polyphemus' father - who just happens to be Poseidon, god of the sea, and who ensures that Odysseus doesn't make it back home for another ten years.
Live Action TV
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer example from "Fear Itself", where the Demon that is manipulating reality in a Haunted House turns out to be no bigger than a Barbie doll. What's funny is the reason.
Xander: Who's a little fear demon? Come on! Who's a little fear demon?
Giles: Don't taunt the fear demon.
Xander: Why, can he hurt me?
Giles: No, it's just tacky.
- In season one of Heroes, Mohinder has Sylar tied up and begins to taunt him. The trope name didn't need to be said for the audience to start saying it.
- In his defense, he had already injected Sylar with a power-nullifying drug before tying him up. Perhaps he took too long in ranting about his revenge, but he had every reason to think he had plenty of time.
- In Star Trek Voyager, Q takes his son, Q2, to task for meddling with the Borg.
Q: If the continuum has told you once, they've told you 1000 times, DON'T PROVOKE THE BORG!
- Given the status of the Q, of course, this would seem more like Yog-Sothoth telling Cthulhu to stop taunting the Puny Humans. But for some reason, Q does seem genuinely worried...
- Because Q fears that one day the Borg will adapt to Q's power if it is used on them repeatedly.
- Only because thanks to Voyager being, Voyager reduece the Q form Physical God to just another alien race the crew gets to talk down to.
Video Games
- In the first Spongebob Square Pants game, you are warned," It's not a good idea to antagonize the Dutchman right now."
- In Starcraft on a certain installation mission, a pair of marines are shooting at some zerglings in a pen. One complacently states "Hehe, they're not so tough, they bleed too."
- Subsequently the base is overrun by zerg.
- In a similar type of mission in the Brood War Expansion. When the base gets overrun by Zerg, your squad will eventually come across a group of Ultralisks trapped in a pen. One of the marines will say, "Well wouldya look at that! They're trapped!" And they really are.
- In {{Clive Barker's Jericho}} Poor Cole decides to inform the team that the firstborn is going to unleash some crazy awesome reality bending magical shit, and in exchange for this he implodes her mortal form.
Web Comics
Western Animation
Other
- T-shirt: "Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Dragons, For You Are Crunchy And Taste Good With Ketchup."
- This troper always heard that version with "sysadmins"...
- This troper heard that somewhere else which wasn't a T-shirt... but he can't remember where.
- Possibly a bumper sticker? This troper saw the phrase on one of those long before he saw it on a t-shirt.
- I think JRR Tolkien had the line "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle, and quick to anger."
And the above quote seems to be a playful twist.
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