Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
Shame If Something Happened
|
redirected from Main.SuchALovelyNoun
The Good Guy and the Bad Guy have a meeting. The Bad Guy makes an offer. The Good Guy rejects it outright because he's the Good Guy.
Then the Bad Guy rattles off a few offhand remarks about how beautiful the Good Guy's wife, child, house, dog, mother, whole family, etc. are. He shows recent photos of the lovely person or thing in question, and perhaps a copy of personal information the Good Guy thought was secret.
The implication: "It'd be a shame if something bad were to happen."
This generally gets the Good Guy back to the bargaining table, and shows just how bad the Bad Guy is. It also calls attention to the resource level of the Bad Guy and his criminal conspiracy.
This may lead to an And Your Little Dog Too situation, making the Good Guy much more likely to take the Bad Guy down than if they hadn't threatened the Good Guy's friends and family. And the Bad Guy needs to make sure that the Good Guy they're trying this on with isn't someone who could instantly and unexpectedly turn them into a smear on the wall if they were in any way displeased, since threatening innocent loved ones is a good way to trigger an Unstoppable Rage from the seemingly meek and mild.
This is also a common stock phrase used by thugs (usually The Mafia) in protection rackets. "You've got a nice (noun) here. It'd be a shame if anything were to ... happen to it."
Often parodied: the Big Bad will threaten the hero with some minor inconvenience, and it will be treated with the same seriousness as a death threat, if not more seriously.
See also Terms Of Endangerment and Interrogation By Vandalism.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- After Kaname is kidnapped in an episode of Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, Sousuke walks into the female gang leader's hideout. An Extended Disarming later, Sousuke plays the trope for all it's worth, dangling the gang leader's little brother from the hideout's rafters and rattling off a list of the Lovely Nouns of all the other gang members (sickly mothers, little sisters, exotic fish, etc.), causing them to disperse in tears.
- Then, when Kaname is released, Sousuke reveals that he'd bribed the little brother to play along.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, a great manga scene shows Ed trying to quit his job, but then the Fuhrer King casually remarks about Ed's "nice childhood friend Winry", who of course Ed has fairly intense feelings for. Averted when Kimblee makes a similar comment to Ed, but is honestly saying that he just thinks Winry is nice.
- In Death Note, The Mafia kidnap Sayu, Light's little sister, and tell it to her father with a speech to this effect.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- Subverted in the backstory to the Discworld novels, where the basically-good Bad Guy (the Patrician) uses it on really Bad Guys (the heads of various criminal gangs) after persuading them to form a Thieves' Guild that regulates crime (more or less turning it into an official, legal profession), for the purpose of reminding them what can happen if they don't honor the deal:
"I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children, how old are they now, my doesn't time fly, I know where they play. So you won't forget about what we agreed, will you? And he smiled.
"So did they, after a fashion."
- Also from Discworld, the kind of behavior that led to the disbanding of the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Fire Fighters, who were paid per fire extinguished. "The penny really dropped after 'Charcoal Wednesday'". The guild also had people take out fire protection insurance policies, with encouragement along the lines of "that thatch roof there, would go up like a torch with one carelessly thrown match, know what I mean."
- In Jingo: the statue of General Tacticus that Vimes finds in a ruined city in the middle of the Klatchian desert. The words at the bottom read: "I can see your house from here." This was both a boast and a threat.
- Carcer in Night Watch and his line "I can see your house from up here". Considering Sam Vimes' reaction, this definitely counts as And Your Little Dog Too.
- In Thud!: After two troll thugs working for the troll crime boss Crysophrase tell Commander Vimes that their boss wants to see him, Vimes tells them "Well, he knows where I live," to which one of them remarks meaningfully "Yeah, he does." Not a good idea. Later, Chrysophrase insists to Vimes that he never gave orders to make any threats, and had the infractors... dealt with.
- In the same book, the Low King of the Dwarfs unthinkingly snaps at Vimes "You stand here defying me with a handful of men and your wife and child not ten miles away—" and to his credit quickly realises this was a mistake, especially once he learns dwarf extremists have already targeted said wife and child once.
Rhys: I do look forward to meeting Lady Sybil again. And your son, of course.
Vimes: Good. They're staying in a house not ten miles away.
- Nanny Ogg walks right into it in Wyrd Sisters. When the witches find themselves on the balcony of the castle with the evil ruler they're trying to overthrow, Nanny looks into the crowd and, spotting some of her huge family starts waving and calling out to them. The Duke says "I shall remember their faces", but Nanny doesn't get the implication.
- People like that often wander into Aziraphale's book shop in Good Omens. They generally don't leave/come back. Crowley also successfully subverts this trope to persuade Aziraphale to help him stop the Apocalypse, not by threatening but by pointing out how many nifty Earthly things will be lost if the world ends.
- In Terry Pratchett's Nation, one of the Gentlemen of Last Resort casually mentions another character's birthplace, mother, and several other minor details. That character mentions that it felt like the start of a threat, and the fact that no actual threat followed was not comforting.
- In a non-Pratchett involved example, Payne Harrison's Storming Intrepid ends with A meeting between the US President, the Vice-President(President-Elect), and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, formerly the head of the KGB and The Chessmaster behind the events of the plot. Said plot has revolved around an anti-nuke Kill Sat that the Americans have. The GS says that if the US insists on rebuilding the destroyed weapon, Russia will simply have to find alternate delivery methods. Then he shows a KGB colonel next to a red, white, and blue barrel in Red Square. And another photo with the same man, in normal clothes, next to the barrel in Washington, DC. He notes how small it's possible to make nuclear bombs nowadays, small enough to fit in a barrel...
Live Action TV
- Scorpius from Far Scape pulls a rather aggressive version of this trope by forcibly showing John a hologram of Earth and threatening to send a fleet to destroy it if he doesn't start co-operating. Despite this, even after John foils his plans, Scorpius gets a rather sympathetic scene where he points out that petty revenge against John is pointless if the revenge he really wanted was out of his grasp.
- The protection version is sent up in Monty Pythons Flying Circus, when Dino and Luigi Vercotti try this with an Army base.
Luigi: How many men you got here, colonel?
Colonel: Oh, er ... seven thousand infantry, six hundred artillery, and er, two divisions of paratroops.
Luigi: Paratroops, Dino.
Dino: Be a shame if someone was to set fire to them.
- Parodied in Malcolm In The Middle, where an officer delivers his files to Lois in response to her objecting a traffic ticket, and tries to make innocuous small-talk:
Police Officer: Nice house you have here.
Lois: Are you threatening me!?
- The episode "Damned If You Don't" of American Gothic inverts this trope: when Buck comes to collect on a debt, and mentions him having "a lovely daughter...how old is she now, fifteen?" Carter believes (helped along by the sheriff's smarmy turn from Affably Evil to downright pedophilic) that this is a blatant threat to his daughter's life if he turns Buck down—but all the sheriff is doing is innocently offering her a job at the precinct. Of course, when Carter does turn him down and opts for a different means of paying the debt, the daughter, his wife, and his entire livelihood are indeed threatened...with tragic consequences.
- Parodied in a Swedish cop comedy show called S.W.I.P Snutarna. One Story Arc parodies The Godfather with one family being an apple mafia and their neighbours wanting to keep their apple trees (includes a hilarious scene that parodies the horse head, where a man wakes up to find his bed filled with apples). Anyhow, one member of the apple mafia family threatens the neighbours. "Lovely apple trees you've got. It would be a shame if someone was to... scrump."
- "Scrump" may be inherently funny, but it's also a British pastime, generally involving small children pinching apples from people's trees, hence its relevance.
- Lana Lang in S6 of Smallville does this with one of Lex Luthor's scientists with regards to his family, home and livelihood. Of course, Lana being Lana, the scientist shows up later in the series to help her get superpowers...on purpose.
- Inverted in Power Rangers Ninja Storm, when it's actually the good guys doing the persuading, complete with the "Nice place you got here" shtick. The duo pulls the parody version, which is met with worry from the object of their persuasion.
- On Leverage, Nathan et al learn a hard lesson on why it's not a good idea to piss off the wrong people while passing through a town to help someone.
"Too bad you won't be here next week when the [victim]'s house burns down."
- Police Squad! had an episode with a mob protection racket; this trope was one of the few that the episode played straight.
- One Mystery Science Theater 3000 short involved a bread salesman; Mike and the bots decided to add some subtext to one scene with a grocer.
Salesman: Marnos Marco.
Mike: Mr. Marco, you want my coffee ring today? Sure be a shame if something bad happened to your store here.
Salesman: (Notices shopping cart) Hey! Something new!
Mike: Be a shame if this ran over your kid.
- "Nice packet of Crunchy Nut you've got here, pretty expensive as I recall..."
- On The League Of Gentlemen, Papa Lazarou's exceptionally creepy "makeup speech" eventually turns out to be one of these about a woman he's kidnapped.
"You know, the thing a lot of people don't realize about makeup is that you can tend to overdo it. It's much better to have too little, and then add on. I learned my skills from my wives. Each one of them has something different to offer. Your wife, for example, knows a great deal about curling eyelashes. You didn't know that, did you? Perhaps you should have paid more attention to her. I know I did.
- Foyles War contains two examples in the same episode... both of which are rather awesomely thrown back in the faces of the people trying to intimidate our heroes:
- Number one has an arrested black marketeer casually mention to Milner that many of the people he works with won't be pleased that Milner has arrested him, and that Milner should 'be careful' and 'watch his back'. Unfortunately for the black marketeer, he made this comment in front of the desk sergeant as well, giving Milner a reason to calmly add two more charges to his sheet — obstruction and threatening a police officer. Even more unfortunately for the black marketeer, someone else later does try to kill Milner, thus putting the black marketeer in the position of Chief Suspect. The marketeer ends up having to frantically backtrack and plead that he didn't have anything to do with it, honestly.
- Number two has Sam overhear a conversation that perhaps she shouldn't have between a suspect and a third party at her new job in a map-making facility. Later that night, the suspect surprises her as she's leaving to go home, suggesting that it really would be better for her if she forgot all about that conversation, and that he really wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her as a result of it. Sam calmly replies that she'd actually forgotten all about the incident already, "but since you're so worried about it you've come out here to try and bully me, I'm going to mention it to everyone I can." She then rides off without a backwards glance, leaving the suspect with an Oh Crap expression and the feeling that this possibly wasn't one of his better ideas.
- Curiously, the men making 'hints' turn out to be uncle and nephew. Having your threats casually dismissed must be genetic.
- Subverted on Dollhouse: when speaking to a possible new Active, Adelle brings up the candidate's mother's financial situation. The candidate thinks she is going to threaten his mother, but Adelle actually offers to solve his mother's financial troubles if he agrees to become an Active.
- Various antagonists in Burn Notice do this to Michael Weston all the time. In one episode, this is played straight and then later subverted: Well, subverted in the sense that after playing it straight, the good guy responds with the exact same trope: Michael's brother is threatened by an arms dealer named Brennen. In response, after discovering that Brennen has a daughter, Michael threatens her.
Video Games
- In the 3DO game Zhadnost, a common thug named Zygi managed to steal a nuclear bomb, and as the announcer is describing him to the game show host, it shows surveillance footage of Zygi "playing" with his new bomb in his house, pretending to be the President of the United States. "You have such a lovely country here. It would be a real... shame... if something happened to it." He pats the bomb while he says this, too.
- In Silent Hill 4, you get an ominous note under your note reading: "Better check on your neighbor" shortly before Elaine gets brutally attacked and almost killed.
- In Neverwinter Nights 2 if you're playing evil you can try and pull this on a merchant. Of course he won't understand you and once you switch to simple threats, will chastise you for not getting right to the point.
Web Comics
- Millie from Ozy And Millie can't quite pull this off.
- Dead Winter has this happen. A shady Chess Master coerces hitman Monday Blues into his service with a few off-hand comments about a hunting trip in somewhere in Pennsylvania. Blues decides to play along, then begins viciously hunting down the keystones in his would-be employer's organization, intending to ultimately kill the man at the top.
- In Kevin And Kell, a beaver makes this threat against Kevin's tree house. Kevin responds by threatening the beaver's dam in a similar manner, forcing him to back off.
Western Animation
- Parodied in The Simpsons, when Homer threatens Mr. Burns: "Nice office you have here. It would be a shame if somebody... DIDN'T USE A COASTER!" Mr. Burns appears to be truly shaken.
- In another episode, Homer threatens the manager of a beauty salon by hurling a hairnet to the ground and unscrewing the lid off of a jar. The manager is perplexed, especially as it is only after these things have happened that Homer explains his intent: he wants the salon to honor Marge's coupon for two free hair streaks, "or a lot more jars are going to be unscrewed."
|
|
