History Main / KickedUpstairs

The name of the trope comes from British politics, where the "Upstairs" in question is the House of Lords. Being given a title like "Lord" or "Baron" sounds like a great reward for a career in politics -- until you realize that it disqualifies you permanently from sitting in the House of Commons, where all the real decisions are made (UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill was offered a Earldom or a Dukedom after WWII, but he turned them down so he would retain his prospects for becoming Prime Minister again, and also so his eldest son could pursue a career in politics).

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', [[Characters/TheSimpsonsHomerSimpson Homer Simpson]] gets his job as a safety inspector in the Nuclear Plant this way: after initially being fired for incompetence, he goes on a safety campaign that leads him to challenge his old bosses. But rather than fight him, Mr. Burns [[EstablishingCharacterMoment manipulates the situation]] by offering him a new line of work where he won’t be in a position to dissent.

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'': This happened to [[TheMentor David Anderson]] early on in the main story and was partially a result of events that occurred in his backstory. When Anderson was being considered to become the first human Spectre, he was sent on a mission to prove if he was a worthy candidate and was paired up with a Turian Spectre named Saren Arterius. During the mission, Saren [[MoralEventHorizon sabotaged the target facility and blew it up, resulting in massive collateral damage and several hundred innocent deaths]]. Somehow, Saren was able to place all of the blame on Anderson, and the [[FictionalUnitedNations Citadel Council]] believed him, immediately revoking Anderon's Spectre candidacy, thereby costing the Alliance its first chance of getting a human Spectre.[[note]] This is important because humans have been trying to gain equal ground with the Citadel Council since first contact, and getting a human Spectre would have been a massive first step towards that recognition.[[/note]] Several decades later, Saren invades the human colony of Eden Prime with the [[AbusivePrecursors Reaper]] [[EldritchAbomination Sov]][[OrganicTechnology ere]][[TheManBehindTheMan ign]] and an army of [[AIIsACrapshoot Geth]]. The only ship that was able to respond to the colony's distress call was the ''[[CoolStarship SSV Normandy]]'', a frigate under [[TheCaptain Anderson's]] command. In a hearing with the Citadel Council after the invasion, Anderson, his protege, [[TheProtagonist Commander]] [[TheHero Shepard]], and [[AssinAmbassador Ambassador Udina]] try to convince the Council that Saren was behind the attack. Saren denies the Alliance's accusation, and the Council believes him due to a lack of sufficient evidence and their willingness to trust their best agent over the Alliance. When Shepard finally manages to get evidence of Saren's involvement and presents it to the Council, they immediately agree with the Alliance on Saren's treachery and promote Shepard to Spectre with the task of finding Saren and stopping him. Immediately afterwards, Anderson is promoted to a desk job to remove him from his command of the ''Normandy'', with Shepard taking his place as CO. Anderson begrudgingly accepted the "promotion" in lieu of retirement, but only because Shepard needed the ship to hunt down Saren. There is also a political dimension to what happened. Anderson was considered too emotionally invested in bringing down Saren because of what happened between them, something he himself admits, and while he's saddened about losing his command so quickly, he knows that it's the best possible option to help Shepard on the mission to hunt Saren and stop the Reapers.

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'': This happened to Anderson during both the main story and in his backstory. When Anderson was being considered to become the first human Spectre, he was sent on a mission to prove if he was a worthy candidate and was paired up with a Turian Spectre named Saren Arterius. During the mission, Saren [[MoralEventHorizon sabotaged the target facility and blew it up, resulting in massive collateral damage and several hundred innocent deaths]]. Somehow, Saren was able to place all of the blame on Anderson, and the [[FictionalUnitedNations Citadel Council]] believed him, immediately revoking Anderon's Spectre candidacy, thereby costing the Alliance its first chance of getting a human Spectre.[[note]] This is important because humans have been trying to gain equal ground with the Citadel Council since first contact, and getting a human Spectre would have been a massive first step towards that recognition.[[/note]] Years later, Saren invades the human colony of Eden Prime with the [[AbusivePrecursors Reaper]] [[EldritchAbomination Sov]][[OrganicTechnology ere]][[TheManBehindTheMan ign]] and an army of [[AIIsACrapshoot Geth]]. The only ship that was able to respond to the colony's distress call was the ''[[CoolStarship SSV Normandy]]'', a frigate under [[TheCaptain Anderson's]] command. In a hearing with the Citadel Council after the invasion, Anderson, his protege Shepard, and Ambassador Udina try to convince the Council that Saren was behind the attack. Saren denies the Alliance's accusations of his presence, and the Council believes him due to a lack of sufficient evidence and their willingness to trust their best agent over the Alliance. When Shepard finally manages to get evidence of Saren's involvement and presents it to the Council, they immediately agree with the Alliance on Saren's treachery and promote Shepard to Spectre with the task of finding Saren and stopping him. Anderson is quietly promoted into a desk job to remove him from his command of the ''Normandy'', with Shepard taking his place as CO. Anderson begrudgingly accepted the "promotion" in lieu of retirement, but only because Shepard needed the ship to hunt down Saren. There is also a political dimension to what happened. Anderson was considered too emotionally invested in bringing down Saren because of what happened between them, something he himself admits, and while he's saddened about losing his command so quickly, he knows that it's the best possible option to help Shepard on the mission to hunt Saren and stop the Reapers.

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'': This happened to Anderson during both the main story and in his backstory. When Anderson was being considered to become the first human Spectre, he was sent on a mission to prove if he was a worthy candidate and was paired up with a Turian Spectre named Saren Arterius. During the mission, Saren [[MoralEventHorizon sabotaged the target facility and blew it up, resulting in massive collateral damage and several hundred innocent deaths]]. Somehow, Saren was able to place all of the blame on Anderson, and the [[FictionalUnitedNations Citadel Council]] believed him, immediately revoking Anderon's Spectre candidacy, thereby costing the Alliance its first chance of getting a human Spectre.[[note]] This is important because humans have been trying to gain equal ground with the Citadel Council since first contact, and getting a human Spectre would have been a massive first step towards that recognition.[[/note]] Years later, Saren invades the human colony of Eden Prime with the Reaper [[EldritchAbomination Sov]][[OrganicTechnology ere]][[TheManBehindTheMan ign]] and an army of [[AIIsACrapshoot Geth]]. The only ship that was able to respond to the colony's distress call was the ''[[CoolStarship SSV Normandy]]'', a frigate under [[TheCaptain Anderson's]] command. In a hearing with the Citadel Council after the invasion, Anderson, his protege Shepard, and Ambassador Udina try to convince the Council that Saren was behind the attack. Saren denies the Alliance's accusations of his presence, and the Council believes him due to a lack of sufficient evidence and their willingness to trust their best agent over the Alliance. When Shepard finally manages to get evidence of Saren's involvement and presents it to the Council, they immediately agree with the Alliance on Saren's treachery and promote Shepard to Spectre with the task of finding Saren and stopping him. Anderson is quietly promoted into a desk job to remove him from his command of the ''Normandy'', with Shepard taking his place as CO. Anderson begrudgingly accepted the "promotion" in lieu of retirement, but only because Shepard needed the ship to hunt down Saren. There is also a political dimension to what happened. Anderson was considered too emotionally invested in bringing down Saren, something he himself admits, and while he's saddened about losing his command so quickly, he knows that it's the best possible option to help Shepard on the mission to hunt Saren.

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'': This happened to Anderson during both the main story and in his backstory. When Anderson was being considered to be the first human Spectre, Saren [[MoralEventHorizon sabotaged the target facility and blew it up, resulting in massive collateral damage and several hundred innocent deaths]]. Somehow, Saren was able to place all of the blame on Anderson and the Council believed him, immediately revoking Anderon's Spectre candidacy. As a result, the Alliance lost its first chance of getting a human Spectre, which is important because humans have been trying to gain equal ground with the Citadel Council since first contact, and getting a human Spectre would have been a massive first step towards that recognition. Years later, Saren pops up in Eden Prime with [[EldritchAbomination Sov]][[OrganicTechnology ere]][[TheManBehindTheMan ign]] and annihilates the colony, with the ''[[CoolStarship Normandy]]'' -- a frigate under [[TheCaptain Anderson's]] command -- arriving late to the party. In a hearing afterwards, Saren denies the Alliance accusations of his presence and the Council believes him due to lack of evidence and their willingness to trust their best agent over the Alliance. When Shepard finally manages to get evidence of Saren's involvement and presents it the Council, they immediately agree with the Alliance on Saren's treachery and promote Shepard to Spectre with the task of finding Saren and stopping him. Anderson is quietly promoted into a desk job to remove him from his command of the ''Normandy'', with Shepard taking his place as CO. Anderson begrudgingly accepted the "promotion" in lieu of retirement, but only because Shepard needed the ship to hunt down Saren. There is also a political dimension to it, Anderson was considered too emotionally invested in bringing down Saren, something he himself admits, and while he's saddened about losing his command so quickly, he knows that it's the best possible option to help Shepard on the mission to hunt Saren.

** Something similar to this trope happened in the backstory: When Anderson was being considered to be the first human Spectre, Saren [[MoralEventHorizon sabotaged the target facility and blew it up, placing the blame of massive collateral damage and several hundred innocent deaths on him]]. As a result, humanity lost their chance of getting their first Spectre. Years later, Saren pops up in Eden Prime with [[EldritchAbomination Sov]][[OrganicTechnology ere]][[TheManBehindTheMan ign]] and annihilates the colony, with the ''[[CoolStarship Normandy]]'' -- a frigate under [[TheCaptain Anderson's]] command -- arriving late to the party. The bastard denies accusations of his presence and the Council believes him due to lack of evidence. When Shepard gets said evidence and presents it, she/he is given Spectre status and Anderson is quietly promoted into a desk job to keep him away. There is some justification here: Anderson was in command of the ''Normandy'', and it was determined that Shepard, as the new human Spectre, needed a ship. Anderson accepted a promotion to a desk job in lieu of retirement, so that Shepard would be able to take command of the ship. There is also a political dimension (Anderson was considered too emotionally invested in bringing down Saren, among other things), but he admits that, while he's saddened about losing his command so quickly, he knows that it's the best possible option to help Shepard since it insures that there will be someone working on Shepard's behalf instead of leaving [[AssInAmbassador Ambassador Udina]] as the sole voice of humanity on the Citadel.

* Similar to ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'', the eponymous character of ''Webcomic/{{Vexxarr}}'' is send to conquer earth by the [[GalacticConqueror Bleen emperor]], to make sure he either dies or becomes the lord of the most remote outpost of the empire. In a variation of the ReassignmentBackfire, he is captured, and released after giving up all his technology, allowing earth to curbstomp the next Bleen invasion by a (slightly) more competent warlord.
* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' after some loud mishaps --''most'' of which he's not guilty of-- Mr. Verres was promoted to "Head of Paranormal Diplomacy". Such position didn't even exist before. They really ''don't'' want to get rid of him, though, just keeping him away from the current events for a while (and they still have him doing half of his former job -- the new position isn't ''meaningless'', it's just that he effectively headed diplomacy with the paranormal before as well).

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Fire Lord Ozai rewards [[Characters/AvatarTheLastAirbenderPrincessAzula Azula]] for her loyal service by naming her the new Fire Lord... moments before he makes the position irrelevant by crowning himself Phoenix King. Azula knows exactly what's happening to her and doesn't take it well ("You can't treat me like [[TheUnFavourite Zuko]]!") and it's one of the contributing factors to her VillainousBreakdown.

* ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'': In [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1700/fc01633.htm one strip]], a security guard notes how screwed up the system is, with examples like Varroa Jacobsini and Mr. Kornada working for Ecosystems Unlimited in high-level positions in spite of their obvious incompetence. Considering that Kornada's official job title is Vice President of ''Paper Clip Allocation'' -- in a paperless office -- it's pretty obvious that this is what happened with him.

* Happens to Brea Andreyasen in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' due to her knowledge of the Laz-R-Us project. Emm initially plans to just kill the Toughs for their involvement, though Petey ultimately convinces her to wipe their memories. Breya, who helped to command efforts against both the Gatekeepers and the Pa'anuri, however, is too well-connected to disappear, so instead she's "promoted" to a bureaucratic job on Earth to get her out of the way. Ironically, it ends up putting her into an ideal position to help thwart a coup by the nannie-hacked police some time later. This in turn leads to her ascention to de facto leader of the Terran power block and the subsequent dissolution of Emm's entire department.

* In one of ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'''s endings, the HotBlooded warrior Undyne becomes the queen of tge Underground. In order to prevent the [[HarmlessVillain lovably goofy]] Papyrus from getting in her way, she promotes him to "The Most Important Royal Position", whose job is to "stand around and look cute". Papyrus, being [[ThePollyanna Papyrus]], accepts his new role with pride.

* In one of ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'''s endings, the HotBlooded warrior Undyne becomes the queen of tge Underground. In order to prevent the [[HarmlessVillain lovably goofy]] Papyrus from getting in her way, she promotes him to "The Most Important Royal Position", whose job is to "stand around and look cute". Papyrus, being [[ThePolyanna Papyrus]], accepts his new role with pride.

** In the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragonsThirdEdition'' supplement ''Fiendish Codex II'' reveals that Devils are at risk of having this happen to them. Devils start out as mindless creatures called Lemures, but their superiors can promote them into higher forms, which are theoretically in a linear progression, but often do have downsides compared to earlier forms (i.e. an imp is lower in the heirarchy than a Steel Devil and is a lot weaker, but also smarter). Since devils are embodiments of Lawful Evil, they tend to plot against and backstab their superiors a lot. If a devil's superior wants to be rid of him, but can't come up with a good reason for punishment, he may instead promote him to a stronger but less intelligent (and thus less troublesome) form. Devils call this "lateral demotion". Although devils are happy to gain power however they can they value intelligence and subterfuge over brute force, and as such see lateral demotion as highly undesirable.
** In ''TabletopGame/AdvancedDungeonsAndDragons1stEdition'', druids who advanced to the "hierophant" levels ceased to play any part in the official druidic hierarchy, becoming freelance troubleshooters for Nature and/or philosophical recluses.

* In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'':

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'':
** In ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'', this is a common explanation for how the eponymous Trader received his Warrant of Trade, which empowers its holder to go beyond the reaches of Imperial space and basically do whatever the heck they like there. Frequently, a Lord Militant, Inquisitor, or Administratum Adept will begin amassing too much power for the comfort of his superiors and rivals, but be too powerful to be safely assassinated. Solution: grant him a Warrant of Trade. It's way too big an honor to be turned down, and will keep the Trader well away from the corridors of power for the foreseeable future. (Of course, since a competent Rogue Trader can rapidly acquire both a personal empire and [[{{Fiction 500}} more money than seems reasonably possible]], this tactic also has a tendency to backfire on those who try it.)

* In roleplay groups in general, it's not uncommon to have the least competent/interesting/useful member of the party be promoted GM (or equivalent term). An incompetent DM just makes monsters somewhat easier to kill, an incompetent party member can be a lot more dangerous. Note that this only works for combat-focused groups; in roleplay-focused games it's an invitation to disaster.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'', this was one of the Scarlet Empress' favorite ways of dealing with rabble-rousers: give them a seat on the Deliberative. At first, this may seem quite attractive ("I'm part of the legislative body. Finally, I can make some ''real'' change!"), but then one comes to realize the Deliberative is just a puppet government of the Empress, and any potential law she doesn't like will be lucky if it makes it to the Scarlet Throne to be vetoed.
** This is also extremely popular among gods of the CelestialBureaucracy: they love highly-paid do-nothing positions with no responsibility where they can [[CorruptBureaucrat collect a paycheck for doing as little work as possible.]]

Japanese firms call people assigned to this ''madogiwazoku'' (literally "by-the-window tribe"), assigned to what seems to be a position of prestige and respect for a venerable company elder that has no real power or subordinates, except to [[ContemplativeBoss look out the window]] and wait to retire or die. These positions are usually looked upon with disdain by both other people within the company and the people assigned to them. In Japan's workaholic society, this position is essentially forced pre-retirement (when retirement is basically viewed as one step short of death) and generally leads to boredom and low self-esteem from not being a valuable part of the company (and, by extension, society). However, to the modern Japanese society, kicking people upstairs with the intent of forcing a resignation out of the victim is considered a sign of a ''black company''[[note]]a company that regularly violates human rights laws by running on the same principles as those of a ''sweatshop''[[/note]] and in one case, has been ruled ''illegal''. Sadly, it does not prevent other companies in Japan from continuing the trend.

Japanese firms call people assigned to this ''madogiwazoku'' (literally "by-the-window tribe"), assigned to what seems to be a position of prestige and respect for a venerable company elder that has no real power or subordinates, except to [[ContemplativeBoss look out the window]] and wait to retire or die. These positions are usually looked upon with disdain by both other people within the company and the people assigned to them. In Japan's workaholic society, this position is essentially forced pre-retirement (when retirement is basically viewed as one step short of death) and generally leads to boredom and low self-esteem from not being a valuable part of the company (and, by extension, society). However, to the modern Japanese society, kicking people upstairs with the intent of forcing a resignation out of the victim is considered a sign of a ''black company''[[note]]a company that regularly violates human rights laws by running on the same principles as those of a ''sweatshop''[[/note]] and in one extent, has been ruled ''illegal''. Sadly, it does not prevent other companies in Japan from continuing the trend.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Fire Lord Ozai rewards Azula for her loyal service by naming her the new Fire Lord... moments before he makes the position irrelevant by crowning himself Phoenix King. Azula knows exactly what's happening to her and doesn't take it well ("You can't treat me like [[TheUnFavourite Zuko]]!") and it's one of the contributing factors to her VillainousBreakdown.

** Peter Griffin was promoted to president of the entire cigarette/toy company when he questioned why they tried to get kids to smoke. This backfired when part of his job, playing lobbyist, ultimately ended in him condemning the company for getting kids to smoke.
** Lois also tried this on Peter when he kept interfering with her play by promoting him to producer so she could direct. It backfired though. Peter, being an idiot who shouts loud enough to be heard (and most people aren't smart enough to not listen to him), had no idea what a producer was, and still ended up taking the director's role anyway.
** When Peter went to work for a beer company, he initially got a position on the factory floor. As free beer was part of the deal, Peter was hammered in record time, returning home the same night and mistaking ''his own house'' for a drive-thru. He was then moved to administration, which doesn't have that benefit.
* In ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'', Zim believes that he's been given the highly important task of taking over the Earth. In reality, his superiors didn't even know Earth ''existed'' when they sent him out -- they just picked a random location in deep space and sent him there to make him stop interfering with the actual mission, fervently hoping he would die en route to his "assignment".

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Homer gets his job as a safety inspector in the Nuclear Plant this way: after initially being fired for incompetence, he goes on a safety campaign that leads him to challenge his old bosses. But rather than fight him, Mr. Burns [[EstablishingCharacterMoment manipulates the situation]] by offering him a new line of work where he won’t be in a position to dissent.

Sometimes someone working for an organization cannot be eliminated, but isn't actually wanted in his role. Perhaps he's far too eager but incompetent, or is [[BunnyEarsLawyer good but has some crazy ideas]], or [[TheFriendNobodyLikes just annoys everyone]]. Maybe the only reason he has this role is that he's [[{{Nepotism}} the boss' nephew]], and he's terrible at the actual job. Maybe he can't be fired because of some complicated union situation, or because employment law heavily favors the employee rather than the employer in this setting. Rather than being eliminated normally, he or she can get "promoted" beyond the point where the person gets to do anything damaging or given a role that serves no useful functions (except, perhaps, [[TokenMinority giving the appearance of workplace diversity]]). Or the employee can be given a "vitally important task" that really isn't worth the effort (and may even be a SnipeHunt). Alternatively, the role assigned might be significant, but the main advantage of putting the character there is that it would be a long way from anyone else you care about.

!!Examples:

[[folder:Film]]
* In ''Film/{{Bean}}: The Ultimate Disaster Movie'', Mr. Bean is selected (with much relieved cheering by board members) to represent Britain as an expert on art sent to America, just to get temporarily rid of him from his position as a security guard at the museum (firing him is out of the question seeing as the chairman has an inexplicable fondness for Bean.)
* At the end of the 2001 film ''Film/BehindEnemyLines'', Admiral Leslie Reigart is "rewarded" for his rescue of downed pilot Chris Burnett by being promoted to a desk job (since he had disobeyed orders to do so), where he would no longer be in command of his US Navy battlegroup. Reigart chooses to retire instead.
* In ''Film/{{Breach}}'', FBI analyst Robert Hanssen complains about being moved to a "do-nothing position" of no importance. As we already know, he has actually been moved there because he is under heavy suspicion of being a Russian spy.
* Used to [[{{Pun}} kick]] off ''Film/HotFuzz'', in which Nicholas Angel is promoted to sergeant because he's so damn good at his job, he's showing everyone else up. Unable to kick him out due to his extreme competence, they promote him to the sleepy little village of Sandford, Gloucestershire -- except as it turns out, [[ReassignmentBackfire it's not actually all that quiet]].
* In the Creator/MichaelDouglas film ''Film/{{Disclosure}}'', Tom Sanders is under investigation for sexual harassment, brought about by the conniving FemmeFatale. Considering that the evidence is mostly her word against his, one of the solutions suggested is that Sanders accept a lateral transfer, with the same pay and benefits, from the company's Seattle location to an office in Texas. He immediately refuses, as he knows that the Texas location is due to be shut down and most of its employees laid off, making the whole exercise a roundabout firing in disguise.
* ''Film/CurseOfTheGoldenFlower'': Since the imperial doctor [[HeKnowsTooMuch knows too much]] about the [[spoiler: secret ingredient of the Empress' [[PerfectPoison medicine]],]] he pretends to promote him to governor of the province of Suzhou [[spoiler: when actually he's sending him away from his wife's influence to have him and his family killed.]]
* In ''Film/JoeSomebody'', the eponymous protagonist is given a high-level non-existing position at the company after he is assaulted by a coworker, so that he doesn't sue the company. After things die down, the CorruptCorporateExecutive plans to quietly fire him.
* In ''WesternAnimation/LeroyAndStitch'', Pleakley is promoted to the chair of Earth studies at G.A.C.C., the Galactic Alliance Community College, but he is disappointed to find that he doesn't give lectures or teach classes; his job title is supervising professor.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek:''
** ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'' features an [[InvertedTrope inversion]]. Kirk publicly violated orders in [[Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock the previous film]], but now he's managed to save the world. Starfleet "[[{{Unishment}} punishes]]" him by taking away his cushy desk job and demoting him to a "mere" starship captain. So Starfleet gets what it wants (a public punishment to demonstrate they don't tolerate such behavior, not to mention their best captain back in the field) and Kirk gets what he wants (the ''Enterprise'').
** Seemingly played straight in ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', though. Unlike the [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan following film]], Kirk certainly doesn't like the fact that he's been promoted to a desk job, and uses the crisis to take back the ''Enterprise''.
*** The (unseen) events preceding the film are actually a lot more like the RealLife military, where it's generally "Up or Out" (if you're passed over for promotion twice, then congratulations, you're retired, whether you wanted to do so or not). There has been some criticism of this, but it's mainly focused on lower-ranking officers whose jobs are primarily technical (and there just aren't any positions available at a higher rank) as opposed to command officers.
*** That doesn't seem to be the case, as Kirk was in his 40s in TMP (50s in the other TOS films) and plenty of other Starfleet captains continued captaining well into that age. Picard was Captain till near 70 and only accepted promotion to Admiral and stepped out of command in order to take up a special humanitarian taskforce. It was implied Kirk simply accepted promotion to Admiral as as soon as it was offered because he was following the "correct" promotion path and figured that was just the way to do things. It was only afterwards that he started regretting it and realized he was truly happiest captaining a ship and exploring.
* ''Film/BeastsOfNoNation'': The Commandant returns to his rebel faction's headquarters after numerous victories expecting to be welcomed with a promised promotion to general. Instead, the Supreme Leader forces him to sit in a waiting room for almost a full day before announcing that he'll be removed from command and "promoted" to "Vice Deputy of Security," an obviously toothless post. The Commandant chooses to splinter off instead.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'', the able soldier Shang is promoted to commander and given a group of raw recruits to train, while his father the General rides off with the main army. We are never told (and Shang proves able to whip his RagtagBunchOfMisfits into shape), but it seems less like a useful position and more like an excuse for the General to keep his son out of the fighting.
* After the events of ''Film/ThePentagonWars'', Partridge and his cronies (who had spent the whole film trying to gain promotions by endorsing a military vehicle that is a potential deathtrap, using a lot of dirty tricks to fool the testers) seemed to have gotten this; they earn their promotions and lucrative private sector jobs, while Colonel Burton (who had opposed them, concerned about soldiers' lives) was forced to retire. (Burton, however, got the modifications to the vehicle he had wanted.)
* Zig-zagged in ''Film/SpaceCop'': For being a CowboyCop who keeps destroying everything, Space Cop is told he's being "promoted" to Space Traffic Cop. Space Cop enthusiastically treats it as if he's being kicked upstairs ("More money, less work!") but it's not clear if he's just being fooled into accepting a demotion.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Storks}}'': Hunter claims that this is what's happening to him after the upcoming Stork Con, which is why he's offering to promote Junior. Junior ends up doing this to Tulip when he promotes her to the letter department (which has been out of commission since she was born) as his first order of business when he can't bring himself to fire her.
* ''Film/AmericanPsycho'': Patrick Bateman has some sort of vaguely defined but lofty position in Mergers and Acquisitions that gives him a secretary and a nice office but requires him only to watch television and plan lunches.
* In ''Film/CitizenKane'', that was apparently the fate of Mr. Bernstein, Kane's YesMan.
--> Bernstein: "''Who's a busy man, me? I'm chairman of the board. I've got nothing but time.''"

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'':
** After his brother Robert's rebellion, Stannis Baratheon was appointed Lord of Dragonstone, a position high in symbolism but low on power and wealth, instead of his family's ancestral and wealthy home of Storm's End. Stannis treats it as a deliberate punishment for allowing the Mad King's remaining children escape. However, there are compelling reasons to give Stannis this role, as it gives him oversight of one of the main blocs of Targaryen loyalists, it's just that his brother's lack of familial love and Stannis's personality that that leads Stannis to believe he's suffered this trope.
** Jaime Lannister was kicked upstairs into the Kingsguard by King Aerys to prevent him becoming Lord of Casterly Rock. Jaime was immensely pleased, but his father Tywin immediately saw it for what it was, namely an attempt to remove his favored heir.
* Used as a constant threat against the Unorthodox in ''Literature/BraveNewWorld''. Surprisingly, it's actually for their own good. Individuals in the setting are graded by talents and bioengineered to fit their current role. The world is a sort of playground of juvenile pleasures; it's all sex, drugs, sports, and entertainment with no thought, complex passions, or intimate relations spoiling it. Some of those at the top of the society simply can't be happy being happy all the time, so they are exiled to remote colonies where they can do as they please without any chance of affecting the rest of the world. There is also another option for the Unorthodox, one that [[spoiler: Mustapha Mond]] took: running the society completely. This means sacrificing one's own personal happiness to keep the rest of the world happy, a tradeoff [[spoiler: Mustapha]] finds acceptable compared to an unhappy, possibly war torn society.
* Almost every person of authority on [[TelevisionGeography Pianosa ]] in ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo'' is there because the higher ups couldn't deal with their incompetence and wanted them somewhere out of the way. Often they are insufferably ambitious so the higher ups placate them with an important position on a tiny Italian island where they won't bother anyone but the soldiers living there. HilarityEnsues, but also SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome occurs as many people die because of this.
* The President of the Galaxy in ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. Zaphod made plans to get the job for exactly this reason -- it looks and sounds impressive, and you go to a lot of high-toned events and important places, but it wields no real power. It did, however, put him in the perfect position to steal the starship ''Heart of Gold''.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** JustForFun/{{Egregious}} Professor of Cruel And Unusual Geography, Chair of Experimental Serendipity and assorted other meaningless titles given to Rincewind
** The Cruel and Unusual Geography position is occasionally justified in-text on the grounds that Rincewind has run away from stuff all over the Discworld, so he probably has a better sense of its overall shape than anyone. The fact that he still doesn't actually ''do'' much, though, makes this job the best he could dream of, as he actively ''seeks'' boredom. Boredom is ''safe'', while excitement has tried to kill him every time. Which actually makes most Discworld wizards examples of this trope.
** In ''Literature/{{Eric}}'', Astfgl the King of Hell disrupts the general system (turning it from a FireAndBrimstoneHell to a CoolAndUnusualPunishment comparable to a crappy, boring vacation that goes on ''forever''), so the other lords of hell promote him to the ultimately meaningless position of Supreme Life President. He does seem much happier in the new position, though.
** Thomas Silverfish from ''Literature/MovingPictures'' is essentially locked out of his own film studio's chain-of-command this way when Dibbler elbows his way into the company and starts running everything, leaving the alchemist with nothing to say about the business.
--->"It’ll be a step up for you, Tom! I mean, how many people in Holy Wood can call themselves Vice-President in Charge of Executive Affairs?"\\
"Yes, but it's my company!"
* Literature/JamesBond gets this treatment in ''Literature/YouOnlyLiveTwice'', so that he'll be sent to a challenging diplomatic mission to Japan, and get over his HeroicBSOD in the process.
* In Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/FallingFree'', engineer Leo Graf recognises his new boss on the Cay Project, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Bruce Van Atta]], as some annoying twit he recommended for promotion to a desk job for the express purpose of getting the annoying git out of his way. Bruce thought it was a favor and Leo regrets it almost right away; then ''really'' regrets it when Brucie-baby [[spoiler:turns from petty bureaucratic obstruction to attempted mass murder aka "[[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman post-fetal tissue culture disposal]]".]]
* Lampshaded through literal use in Creator/RayBradbury's ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles''. One character, an example of TheGoodCaptain, starts to have qualms about colonizing Mars and leaving no traces of the native culture. In a later story in the collection, it's revealed he was stationed on a farther away planet in the solar system and thus literally "kicked up stairs."
* In the ''Literature/WildCards'' series, male Rhindarians carry impressive titles and are allowed to think they're in charge, when it's actually the females who make all real decisions.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
** Some of the [[AllThereInTheManual background information]] provides details about the Ministry of Magic, including its Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, which has a "Centaur Liaison Office." The fact that Centaurs in the ''Potter'' universe are staunch isolationists means that the Liaison Office doesn't actually ''do'' anything, and being "sent to the Centaur Office" is a Ministry euphemism for being sacked.
** Plus, there seems to be little interaction between different Wizard nations, which makes the Department for International Magical Cooperation seem fairly useless. Barty Crouch was put in charge of this Department (ostensibly a demotion from his previous position as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, though going from the Head of one department to the Head of another saves face) after the debacle of his son being allegedly involved in Death Eater activities, in order to save the Ministry embarrassment. Similarly, when Cornelius Fudge is thrown out of office after his suppression of information suggesting the return of Lord Voldemort, he is given a meaningless "consultation" position, which seems mostly intended to keep him out of the way. Fudge may or may not actually fit this bill; he seems to be universally despised, so there likely isn't much pressure to keep him around. It's possible Scrimgeour actually wants his help transitioning into office.
* ''Literature/PhulesCompany'': The first we see of Willard Phule is his "promotion" to captain of Omega Company, the dumping ground for Space Legion's misfits. This backfires as Phule uses his [[{{Fiction500}} near-limitless funds]] (and a serendipitous FirstContact) to turn the unit's reputation around, to the point where new Legionnaires are requesting posts in his unit. To be fair, it's not ''only'' wealth and luck. Phule also takes advantage of his troops' unique abilities rather than berating them for not fitting into the standard military structure, treating them more like a special ops unit than a misfit unit.
* In the ''Literature/BastardOperatorFromHell'' series, the job of network supervisor is pretty much futile (the title character will never listen), unneeded and ultimately dangerous.
* In the Creator/TomClancy novel ''[[Literature/JackRyan Debt of Honor]]'', after serving as the National Security Adviser during [[spoiler:the brief war with Japan]], the President asks Jack Ryan to serve as Vice President after the previous VP resigned in disgrace, and is confirmed by the Senate. The intent was to give Jack, who constantly complained about government service while simultaneously enjoying it, a permanent way out of government service: after serving as interim Vice President until the election in eleven months, he would retire and never be asked to return. It did not work out that way at all, thanks to [[spoiler:a loaded Japanese Airlines 747 being deliberately crashed into the Capitol Building just after Ryan was confirmed, by a disgruntled Japanese pilot who lost family in the war.]]
* In Creator/HBeamPiper's story "Ministry of Disturbance", the concept has been all but formally institutionalized:
-->"Bench of Counselors; that was the answer! Elevate Harv Dorflay to the Bench. That was what the Bench was for, a gold-plated dustbin for the disposal of superannuated dignitaries. He'd do no harm there, and a touch of outright lunacy might enliven and even improve the Bench."
* The children's book ''Reynard the Fox'' eventually has the eponymous character being given the position of [[spoiler: ambassador to the human world]]; this is basically done so that Reynard can't cause any more trouble in the animal kingdom.
* At the end of ''Literature/APassageToIndia'', the mediocre British bureaucrat Ronnie Heaslop is removed from his Indian post in consequence of some of his poor judgments creating public unrest and gets a promotion and is sent to Palestine. Essentially, he's given another colony to screw up.
* In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', after being arrested and brainwashed by the Thought Police, Party members are often allowed to hang around for several years before being executed, during which time they are given sinecures of no importance whatsoever. This fate befalls three of the founding Party members, Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford, [[spoiler: along with the protagonist]].
* In Creator/HarryTurtledove's Literature/Timeline191 series, UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler {{expy}} Jake Featherston gives the job of Vice President to the leader of a smaller group in the Freedom Party in order to unite their White Power-based voter base while shoving the former rival off to the side (and giving his own right-hand man the position of Attorney General, which holds actual power). When the Vice President figures this out, he attempts a coup to seize power but ultimately fails.
* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', Visser Three is so ruthless and [[YouHaveFailedMe quick to kill his underlings]] that no one ''wants'' to be promoted to a higher Sub-Visser (like a lieutenant) or Visser (like a general) position. Other Yeerks will sometimes get promoted just because the position above theirs was recently vacated by a "[[YouFool fool]]".
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' novels:
** ''Literature/DiplomaticImplausibility'': Captain Klag gets rid of First Officer Drex this way.
-->"I can say with absolute certainty that you did not receive this commission due to your skills. Like our friend the ambassador, you have the chancellor to thank for your position. But unlike the ambassador, I have no reason to believe that you might rise above the nepotism. I cannot justify removing you from this post. I can, however, give you a promotion".
** This might be taken as the reason for the promotion to admiral of Jellico, the abrasive captain who filled in for Picard at one time. He's competent in some ways, but absolutely horrible at managing people, as detailed in Riker's TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.
** ''Literature/StarTrekExMachina'' explains that this is why Kirk was an admiral in ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture''. After a particularly controversial violation of the Prime Directive (for the purposes of saving a civilization from destruction), Kirk became a household name. His career was dissected in the media to the point where his reputation -- as both a [[HeroWithBadPublicity hero and a troublemaker]] - was blown out of all proportion. Half of Starfleet Command wanted him dismissed from the service, the other half idolized him. Admiral Nogura eventually solved the problem by promoting Kirk, acknowledging the good of his actions while keeping him behind a desk, and so out of trouble. It seemed the safest compromise. Interestingly, Nogura doesn't really see it as this trope; he honestly believes that Kirk would be a great admiral.
** The same author indicates in ''[[Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations Forgotten History]]'' that the situation was engineered by a Starfleet Admiral who wanted the ''Enterprise'''s original engines for time-travel experiments. He assigned a [[ObstructiveBureaucrat by-the-book auditor]] to that mission because he knew Kirk couldn't resist being a hero and the auditor would file an outraged report that would get Kirk out of the captain's chair.
** In ''Literature/StarTrekVanguard'', made the subject of a joke at Nogura's own expense. What happened to Nogura after Project Vanguard concluded? Answer: just what you'd expect to happen to an officer who had [[spoiler: a starbase shot out from under him]] -- he was promoted.
** In the ''Literature/StarTrekVulcansSoul'' novel ''Exodus'' an increasingly older Pavel Chekov finally accepted promotion to Admiral from Captain after Starfleet would only assign him routine patrols well within Federation space.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' prequel novel the Valiant, a young Lieutenant Commander Jean-Luc Picard learns from USS ''Stargazer'' Captain Daithan Ruhalter that Ruhaltar intends to do this with his first officer Stephen Leach and promote Picard to take his place. When the ''Stargazer'' was attacked and crippled by the Nuyyad, Ruhaltar was killed and Leach was seriously injured, forcing Picard to take temporary command. After the immediate crisis is solved the ''Stargazer'' returns to Earth where Admiral Mehdi kicks Leach upstairs while also promoting Picard to be the permanent Captain of the ''Stargazer''.
* In the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' unauthorized parody novel ''Literature/StarWreckTheGenerationGap'' by Leah Rewolinski, Capt. Jean-Lucy Ricardo introduces Dr. Pragmatski thusly:
-->"This is Dr. Cape Pragmatski...She's been our chief Medical Officer since Westerly's mother, Dr. Beverage Flusher, was kicked upstairs by the High Command."
* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', it's outright stated that Karrin Murphy was given a promotion to Lieutenant in charge of Special Investigations as a way of tacitly getting her to quit (Special Investigations is where cops go to watch their careers die). That she was actually ''good'' at her job, despite being in the worst possible position, results in various people looking for other ways of bringing her down. By book nine, she's been demoted [[spoiler: to Sergeant for dereliction of duty,]] and in the aftermath of ''Changes'', [[spoiler: she's been fired for alleged incompetence.]] Admittedly the [[spoiler: incompetence]] charge isn't her fault, but a trumped-up farce dreamed up by the ex-SI cop Rudolph, who enjoys using his powers in Internal Affairs to make SI's life hell.
* In Tse-Mallory's flashback from ''[[Literature/HumanxCommonwealth The Tar-Aiym Krang]]'', the officer in charge of a stingship squadron is promoted to commander and re-assigned to a desk job on a backwater planet after he opts not to intervene and prevent a massacre of innocents, rather than risk being blamed for any resulting diplomatic upset. In contrast, Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex are demoted for defying orders and engaging the would-be invaders anyway, then awarded medals for their heroism.
* The VideoGame/GuildWars2 novel ''Edge Of Destiny'' reveals that most Asura view the Arcane Council as this, as dealing with bureaucracy takes time away from their own research. Klab in particular shows reluctance when he's chosen to be director of pest control.
* British statesman Lord Chesterfield tells of an incident in ''Literature/LettersToHisSon'': "This necessary consequence of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fox,_1st_Baron_Holland his]] view defeated it; and the Duke of Newcastle and the Chancellor chose to kick him upstairs into the Secretaryship of State, rather than trust him with either the election or the management of the new parliament." (Letter 199)
* One of the ''Series/RedDwarf'' features an inadvertent example; two admirals in the Space Corps, one extremely capable and the other a complete incompetent, share the same last name, which is then mixed up by a hungover clerk -- with the result that the incompetent keeps getting promoted for the capable man's successes and the capable man keeps getting assigned crappy jobs due to the incompetent's failures. It ends reasonably happily, however, since when the capable man finally gets sick of the situation and resigns, the mix-up means that the incompetent's pay gets slashed as he goes on the capable man's retirement pension, while the capable man keeps receiving full pay; since the incompetent has been utterly bewildered by his rise in status he assumes that he's just been found out and justly punished, so doesn't question it.
* ''Literature/TheReynardCycle'': The often drunk, hot-headed Count Terrien is named Lord High Admiral after leading an entire army into disaster. His ''fleet'', it turns out, is only thirty ships strong and doesn't participate in the war.
* Referenced in the book ''Blast From the Past'' by Creator/BenElton. Jack's contemporary Schulz has a long, distinguished record of military service, but lacks any social or interpersonal skills; making him completely unsuitable for leadership. As such, he's spent his career being promoted to positions that are commensurate to his status and experience, but where he doesn't have any real influence. [[spoiler:Ultimately subverted when Jack commits suicide just as he was about to be appointed the National Security Advisor. The job then goes to Schulz, who's the only other suitable candidate, as he is so dull that no scandals were ever attached to him.]]
* In the first ''Literature/MonsterHunterInternational Memoirs'' book, a sheriff who doesn't understand the need for having a UF (Unearthly Forces) liason gets rid of his by promoting the man to head of traffic. Unusually for this trope, the man is ''thrilled'' -- traffic cops almost never have to work overtime and then get woken up at 3AM to come back in so they can respond to a crisis, events that happened several times a week in Unearthly Forces. Since the promotion came with a real rank increase, he got a raise out of the deal. And since he's only a few years away from qualifying for a pension, the fact that the traffic department is a career dead-end doesn't matter that much to him. When his boss realizes that they really do need a UF specialist, he categorically refuses to take the job back, and insists that they pick someone else.
* In Literature/TheLostFleet series, Geary wants to promote the second-in-command of one of the fleet's critical repair and resupply ships to captain and remove the utterly useless man currently in that position, but can't simply sack him due to Geary's delicate political position with the other fleet officers at the time. So he "promotes" the captain to a staff position so he can focus on a study to examine the fleet's logistical requirements and what they need to get home, leaving the tedious and dreary work of ship (and, as seniormost surviving commander of the auxiliaries, squadron) command to his subordinate. Said former-captain is ''still'' working on his report on how to get the fleet home after the fleet gets home.
* Played hilariously as the fate of the Head of [[BoardingSchoolOfHorrors Experiment House]] in ''Literature/TheSilverChair'':
--> "After that, the Head's friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found she wasn't much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she lived happily ever after."
* In the ''Literature/LockwoodAndCo'' books, after working with Lockwood and Co. on the Chelsea outbreak case in ''The Hollow Boy'', Quill Kipps is promoted to a division head within the Fittes Agency in ''The Creeping Shadow''. Lockwood and Co. assume this is the first step in his moving on to greater things, but it turns out that afterwards he's being given a lot of bad assignments and generally on the outs. It turns out that they thought he showed a bit too much independence for their liking during the Chelsea affair, so they kicked him upstairs. He finally has enough and ends up quitting.
* In ''Literature/{{Provenance}}'', the Radchaai ambassador to the Geck describes her posting in this way. It's essentially a punishment posting to keep her out of the way, albeit one that brought with it a promotion, and for bonus points, the cultural differences mean it's basically fine-tuned to be an IronicHell to the Radchaai. Radchaai culture is somewhat prissy, particularly about their gloves; the Geck eat with their fingers, or [[StarfishAliens near equivalents at least]]. Radchaai have a lot of rituals related to tea; the Geck have objections to water being boiled, and mostly drink lukewarm salt water. She doesn't have anything important to do while there, either; the Geck are the most insular species in the galaxy, view most of the universe as a sort of howling abyss of perpetual misery and chaos, and as such they tend not to be involved in diplomatic crises. Finally, the Radchaai diplomatic machinery won't let her resign.
* A variant happens in ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest''. Sun Wukong/The Monkey King is offered a position in the [[CelestialBureaucracy Bureaucracy of Heaven]] so the Jade Emperor could keep a better eye on him. Sun Wukong is made Head of the Imperial Stables, which he's fine with... ''until'' he finds out the position is ''the lowest'' in the Heavenly Hierarchy, at which point he goes back to his home and names himself "The Great Sage Equal To Heaven" to make himself feel better. After a lot of fights that resolves in Sun Wukong [[CurbStompBattle kicking the asses]] of all of Heaven's champions, the Jade Emperor resigns to Sun Wukong's demands and agrees to officially name him "The Great Sage Equal To Heaven" since it's pretty much an empty title that holds no real power or authority.
* Eventually done to Admiral Allen Higgins in the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series, but in this case out of pure kindness: Higgins had, just a few years earlier, been forced to destroy the crucial naval shipyard of Grendelsbane in order to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, and shortly thereafter, while commanding Home Fleet, was forced to watch helplessly as almost all of Manticore's orbital infrastructure was destroyed within minutes. At that point the Grand Alliance leadership, who didn't blame him in the slightest for either disaster, concluded -- accurately -- that the severely traumatized Higgins was in no shape to command ''anything'' for the foreseeable future, and made him Vice Chief of Staff for the Grand Alliance command instead -- a position in which he fortunately proved highly effective.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** Commander Wedge Antilles turned down a number of promotions up until just after ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'', preferring to remain as a Commander so he could remain in the cockpit of an X-wing blasting TIE fighters away. Shortly after Thrawn's death, Antilles finally accepts a promotion to General when Admiral Ackbar tells him that the other members of Rogue Squadron were also refusing promotions and were remaining at lower ranks while they should have much higher ranks due to their experience and time in service. In the long run, while Antilles still prefers being in the field, he begrudgingly admits that being a general gives him many more opportunities to do good.

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{Arrow}}'':
** Felicity Smoak is "promoted" to Oliver Queen's executive assistant, so Oliver doesn't have to run down to the Queen Consolidated IT department whenever he uses Felicity for her ''real'' job of VoiceWithAnInternetConnection for Team Arrow. Felicity is still not happy because a) everyone now assumes she's sleeping with the boss, and b) she's a hacker not a secretary.
--->'''Felicity:''' Did you know I went to MIT? Guess what I majored in? Hint -- not the secretarial arts!
** After becoming estranged from Oliver, Tommy Merlyn approaches his father about giving up his playboy lifestyle and entering the family business. Malcolm Merlyn accepts him gladly, yet when Oliver comes to visit Tommy he's sitting in an expensive corner office doing nothing at all.
--->'''Oliver:''' What exactly do you do here?
--->'''Tommy:''' ''(curtly)'' I work closely with my father.
* In ''Series/BrooklynNineNine'', Jake takes on a hopeless case that Captain Holt is convinced Madeline Wuntch wants them to fail at on purpose. When they are successful, Wuntch reveals her true motives: she wanted an excuse to "promote" Holt to head of NYPD Public Relations. Not only does this force Holt to give up his long-desired captain position, but Wuntch also attempts to foil Holt's sincere attempts to improve his new department.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Ser Barristan Selmy's dismissal is presented in this light by the new regime; a comfortable, well-earned retirement. Ser Barristan sees it as a blatant attempt to oust him for political reasons and [[ResignInProtest furiously quits on the spot]] while telling the entire court off.
* Elaine from ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', after having repeated problems with her mail, is finally fed up and decides to fire the mailroom clerk. But once she sees him, she's intimidated by his demeanor and appearance and, needing a reason to explain her summons, promotes him to copywriter. Unsurprisingly, he's terrible at it, so she's forced to promote him again -- to Director of Corporate Development, a sinecure if ever there was one. But when Elaine informs the other copywriters of this, they're outraged that their hard work went unrewarded while he gets a cushy office upstairs, so they all quit in disgust.
* ''Series/YesMinister'':
** In one episode, a worried Hacker contemplates his future during a reshuffle being kicked into a "useless non-job" (like Lord Privy Seal or Minister for Sport). He's also threatened with a specially-created role of "Minister for Industrial Harmony" in one episode, the position's primary responsibility being to take the blame every time there's a strike, but that probably crosses into ReassignedToAntarctica territory.
** A running joke throughout the series is that almost every politician is terrified of being sent up to the House of Lords, it being the ultimate kiss-of-death for a political career.
*** In one episode, Hacker asks a friend what it's like to have moved from the Commons to the Lords, to which the friend sardonically replies "[It's] like moving from the animals to the vegetables."
*** Another one had a reference to a politician being kicked upstairs due to falling asleep in Cabinet. When Humphrey asks whether this is normal he is told this happened [[EpicFail while he was talking.]]
*** Another example is when Hacker is set up by a rival to take the responsibility for axing his own department in its entirety. Said rival gloats: "I expect he'll be sent to the Lords. Lord James Hacker of Kamikaze..."
*** The [[ChristmasEpisode Christmas Special]] "Party Games" had the Home Secretary kicked upstairs for drunkenly ramming into both a truck carrying nuclear waste and the car of a reporter, [[HypocriticalHumor right after having been behind a "don't drink and drive at Christmas" campaign]].
---->'''Humphrey''': Well, I gather he was as drunk as a Lord, so after a discreet interval, they'll probably make him one.
** Another episode has Hacker promote a troublesome young Minster for Health pushing for smoking law reform to a position in the Treasury (where he'll simply fall into the status quo), while the Minister for Sport (who is an avid smoker and has close ties to the tobacco industry) is made Minster for Health.
** In the episode, "The Bishop's Gambit", Sir Humphrey is offered the position of Master of Baillie College upon the current Master's retirement, which is about the same time as Sir Humphrey's planned retirement from the civil service. The only stumbling block? The Dean hates him and would block it from happening. So Sir Humphrey manipulates circumstances so that the Dean gets offered a bishopric. With the Dean out of the way, Sir Humphrey's future is now brighter and he even scored points for being "selfless" by recommending someone with whom he shares a mutual dislike.
** One episode had Hacker punish a Foreign Office official who had been withholding vital information about recent international events from the Prime Minister and twisting Hacker's instructions to maintain a neutral Middle East policy into a pro-Arab Middle East policy by promoting him to an embassy posting... in Tel Aviv.
** Downplayed with regards to the position of EU Commissioner. While the position is one where domestic political careers go to die (Hacker outright states that to come back to domestic politics from that you have to start your own party), the pay and perks are more than enough to make the job enticing to a sufficiently unambitious or compromised politician.
* ''Series/TheOfficeUK'' (Original):
** Gareth Keenan's position as 'Team Leader' is viewed and described by everyone else as a pointless, meaningless job title that someone's given him in order to get him to do something that they don't want to do for no extra pay whatsoever. However, as Gareth is a humourless jobsworth who craves any hint of authority, no matter how inconsequential, he absolutely revels in it.
** It's also likely that this is the reason the partners of Wernham-Hogg wanted to promote David Brent to the position of UK manager, while his more competent Swindon counterpart would take over running the newly merged branches. David only doesn't get the promotion because he fails the medical exam.
* ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'':
** Dwight Schrute, who, technically holds the title of Assistant to the Regional Manager. This job title was a meaningless honorific which seemingly involved no real duties except those delegated by Michael because he didn't want to do them himself (such as scheduling the weekend workers or picking a health care plan for the office). He retained absolutely zero extra authority and was paid the same as any other salesman, but he routinely left out the "to the" in his title and behaved as if he was second in command.
** Gabe is initially only there to oversee the merging of regional offices, but afterwards is asked by Jo to stick around and supervise for her. His only real job is letting her know what's going on at that branch, but he has no authority whatsoever. He cannot hire people, fire people, or even perform disciplinary action. He's literally a snitch without anything resembling power.
* ''Series/{{Arnie}}'': Basically the whole premise: Arnie Nuvo, a longtime blue-collar employee at the fictitious Continental Flange Company, is promoted to an executive position overnight, and the series follows his fish-out-of-water situation and his sometimes-problematic relationship with his well-meaning but wealthy and eccentric boss.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** In "Rightful Heir", Kahless the Unforgettable, founder of the Klingon Empire, [[CloneDegeneration "returns"]] and is seen as a political threat by Chancellor Gowron. After Gowron proves clone-Kahless is not [[AsskickingLeadsToLeadership the strongest warrior of them all]], the spiritual rebirth sparked by his return is still seen as a political threat. Instead of killing clone-Kahless and making him a martyr to his followers, Worf suggests installing him in the currently empty ceremonial but politically powerless seat of Emperor, as the "true heir" to Kahless.
** Being kicked upstairs is basically how Dr. Beverly Crusher was PutOnABus for the second season, as head of Starfleet Medical. Fortunately the bus ride only lasted one season.
** In "Hollow Pursuits", Commander Riker suspects that Lt. Barclay's glowing performance reviews from his previous ship were issued as a way to foist him on the ''Enterprise''. It turns out he really is a good engineer under the right conditions, i.e. when he isn't paralyzed by his social anxiety.
** Trying to avoid this is how Riker ended up being Picard's XO for over fifteen years. He was repeatedly offered commands of his own, but kept turning them down because he felt being the XO of the flagship was more prestigious than captain of a small cruiser. Many people take issue with this, because he is effectively stalling the careers of those under him in doing so, with particular regard to Data. The Novelverse has him undergo a minor HeelRealization on this matter, which is how he ends up taking the post of the USS Titan.
* In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Sisko's assignment to the station is implied to be because of this mixed with ReassignedToAntarctica. After losing his wife when his ship was destroyed in battle against the Borg at [[ContinuityNod Wolf 359]], Sisko was burnt out and ''wanted'' a quiet, out-of-the-way command where he could finish up his tenure and retire from Starfleet. However, the Prophets decided that he was their new [[MessianicArchetype messiah]] (a long story that's actually far more complicated than that) and the whole thing turned into a ReassignmentBackfire against ''himself''.
** After disobeying orders to stay at [=DS9=], an admiral threatened to either court-martial Sisko or promote him, both of which he seemingly considered horrible punishments. Sisko was eventually promoted (from Commander to Captain), but continued as the station CO.
** ''Most'' of [=DS9=]'s crew seemed to be roped into this somehow. Kira was given the post as liaison officer because she was an outspoken critic of the provisional government. Quark was blackmailed into a "community leader" role. Bashir volunteered for the role,[[note]]In hindsight, it's likely part of the reason was to try and keep his status as an Augment hidden as long as possible.[[/note]] and O'Brien gladly accepted the position because the Enterprise was so well maintained that he never had anything to do. Later, [[TheNthDoctor Ezri Dax]] came there because she was so overwhelmed by being newly-joined that she needed the grounding of familiar faces.[[note]]That and the possibility that the Trill government would do to her what they did to ''another'' Dax Host [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident that got Joined under murky circumstances]].[[/note]]
** This would also seem to be how Worf's son Alexander got himself posted on Martok's ship, upon which Worf happened to be serving. Certainly, he did not get there on his own merits, and neither Martok or Worf had a hand in it.
** In the three-part Season 2 opener, Kira Nerys risks war with Cardassia to rescue legendary Bajoran freedom fighter Li Nalas. Minister Jaro informs her she is being removed from her position as Bajoran liaison officer to Deep Space Nine, reassigned to the capital and replaced with the man she rescued. When Commander Sisko protests, Jaro informs him that she's not being punished; this is in fact a promotion in recognition for her heroic act, even if no-one else sees it that way. Turns out it's actually Li Nalas who's being KickedUpstairs, as Jaro is planning TheCoup and wants to make sure this potential rival leader is well away from the capital.
* In ''Series/BabylonFive'':
** Londo is given a post as adviser to planetary security. He recognizes that the promotion is actually "a leash" intended to force him to return to Centauri Prime where he can be watched and kept under control.
** Londo only got the job of Centauri Ambassador on Babylon 5 in the first place because nobody else wanted the job. It got him out of the way of the hub of Centauri political power, and nobody expected him to survive the job very long given the fate of the previous Babylon stations.
** Vir got the job of Londo's attache because his family wanted to get rid of him, presumably because of his unpopular progressive political views. He says at one point that his uncle told him that he and Londo were "made for each other." When Londo's star was on the rise the government actually tried to replace Vir to cover their ass over the insult of assigning him in the first place; Londo had to threaten to resign to prevent it.
** Sinclair gets reassigned as ambassador to Minbar after his [[RulesLawyer manipulation of [=EarthGov=] rules and regulations]] made him too many political enemies on Earth. [[spoiler: This leads to the ultimate ReassignmentBackfire when he goes back in time 1000 years to become the Minbari religious figure Valen and sets up ''their entire culture''--leading to the Earth-Minbari War [[StableTimeLoop which started the whole business.]] ]] [[note]]Sinclair was written out of the series as actor Michael O'Hare was suffering from severe mental illness. Series creator J. Michael Straczynski offered to suspend production to allow O'Hare time to be treated but O'Hare didn't want to risk the jobs of everyone else on the show. Straczynski promised to keep quiet about the real reason O'Hare left until after O'Hare died, finally revealing the secret eight months after O'Hare's death. [[/note]]
* In ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'', even though he was technically kicked sideways, William Adama was given command of the ''Galactica'' specifically because the ship was about to be retired, along with Adama's career. However, the Cylon attack changed all of that...
* In the first episode of ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire'', incompetent new leisure centre manager Gordon Brittas explains to the assistant manager that the way to get rid of a problem employee is to write a glowing reference and recommend him for a managerial position at a different leisure centre. She deadpans "Is ''that'' how it happens?"
* Richard's promotion in ''Series/GilmoreGirls'' was of this kind, stoking his fears of becoming obsolete. Instead of going through the motions, he decided to retire from this position. [[TenMinuteRetirement It didn't take]] and after a stint as an independent consultant, he was back with his original company. According to Richard, it was an established procedure at that company. Rather than keeping him in that position, it was part of a track that would end with him being forcibly retired, i.e. it was a slow, ignoble way of firing him.
* In ''Series/TheThickOfIt'', MP Julius Nicholson tries to get involved in the government's public relations activities, treading on the toes of the press officers whose job it is and who actually know what they're doing. He antagonises everyone with his mad policy ideas, to the point where they start to believe he is actually unhinged and dangerous. He is promoted to the position of "Blue-Sky Thinker" to the Prime Minister... a meaningless job title given to him to make him think he has some actual power and to keep him quiet.
--> ''"I'm spending half of my time now dealing with that rubbish that Nicholson's putting out there... If he does stick his baldy head 'round your door and comes up with some stupid idea about "Policemen's helmets should be yellow" or "Let's set up a department to count the Moon," just treat him like someone with Alzheimer's disease, you know? Just say "yes, that's lovely, that's good, we must talk about that later," okay?"'' -- '''Malcolm Tucker'''
** Though this was somewhat ironically subverted when Nicholson inherited a peerage, thus entering the House of Lords, which is typically treated as this trope -- except it turns out that as a member of the party with a permanent seat in the British Parliament, this actually does come with a lot more power than everyone had previously assumed, meaning that Nicholson actually ''was'' able to exert genuine influence where he hadn't been able to before.
* In ''Series/FromTheEarthToTheMoon'', Joe Shea, director of the Apollo Space Program, is "promoted" to Washington to assist in making policy in the wake of the Apollo 1 fire, but it's really a move to keep him out of the way of the congressional investigation into the accident. Once he's in his new job, he realizes he has no responsibilities and eventually moves on to the private sector. It's dramatized but pretty much historically accurate.
* In ''Series/TheShield'' [[spoiler: this is Vic's final fate. In exchange for his confession, he stays out of prison -- provided he puts in three full years writing reports at a {{desk|jockey}}.]]
-->'''Olivia''' (unmoved): It's suit and tie here. Lunch hour, go home and change.
* For the first season of ''Series/DueSouth'', Fraser reports to the incredibly incompetent Superintendent Moffat. In S2:E2 ''Vault'', he finds out there's been a change.
-->'''Fraser:''' Superintendent Moffat. Did he...Uh, did he retire?\\
'''Ovitz:''' Promoted. The man spends seven years in that office, doesn't make one valuable contribution. One day he slaps a Mountie hat on a Mickey Mouse doll and...
* The "winner" of the US version of ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' can be viewed as this: [[RunningGag the points don't matter]], so it's ultimately a decision to veto someone for the final game.
* On ''Series/StargateSG1'', there was a Jaffa named Her'ak who first showed up as First Prime of the minor Goa'uld Khonsu [[spoiler:who turned out to be a Tok'ra operative and was killed for it]]. Her'ak later reappeared as First Prime of [[BigBad Anubis]], and Jack O'Neill accused him of "failing upwards".
* In ''Series/{{Rome}}'', Caesar attempted to do this to Brutus by assigning him as the [[ReassignedToAntarctica Governor of Macedonia]]. However, it backfired as Brutus saw through what Caesar was trying to do and [[EtTuBrute felt betrayed]] as he rejected it.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': When last seen in the series, Commandant Mele-on Grayza--who up to that point had proven to be utterly incompetent trying to recapture Moya and her crew, consistently ignored and overruled her ReasonableAuthorityFigure first officer Braca, and was wholly inept handling the Scarrans politically--was about to commit [[SuicideByCop suicide by Scarran]] and let her ''[[HonorBeforeReason entire Command Carrier]]'' go down with her, before Braca stepped in and forcibly removed her from command (needless to say, ''none'' of the soldiers whom she ordered to gun [[AFatherToHisMen Braca]] down made a move to obey). When next she appears in the ''Peacekeeper Wars'' miniseries, she's been elevated to a council position and is apparently the lover of Grand Chancellor Maryk, commander of all Peacekeeper forces, but clearly has no power aboard the ship and isn't even taken particularly seriously as an adviser (though given her track record...). And then she murders Maryk when she believes he's faltering and seizes control anyway, leading the Peacekeeper fleet into the apocalyptic final battle. She seems to have learned her lesson, though: although initially intent on continuing the engagement when Crichton fires the wormhole weapon, she's the first commander to order her ships to stand down when she realizes that continuing to fight is hopeless.
* ''Series/TheFlipsideOfDominickHide'' after his rule-breaking time travelling in the first instalment, Dominick is kicked upstairs for the sequel to curb his impetuosity. Sadly all it does is make one of his students want to emulate him.
* In ''Series/TheGoodWife'', once Peter Florrick is elected Governor of Illinois, Marilyn Garbanza is brought in as part of his ethics committee. Eli Gold, his campaign manager and image consultant, recommends that he get rid of her, not because of any ethics problems but because of his past sex scandals involving women on his staff. Obviously, firing her would look bad, so Peter tells Eli to invoke this trope. Eli informs Marilyn that she has been promoted to the head of the Transit Authority ... Board (yes, he keeps making that pause, as he's just invented the position). Marilyn, however, is not an idiot and immediately realizes what's being done to her. She tells Eli that they will regret this decision. Later, though, Peter decides to bring her back, but she makes sure that the ethics committee stays with him in order to be on top of things.
* In ''Series/{{MASH}}'', this is the ultimate fate of Major Frank Burns, resident incompetent surgeon and [[TheNeidermeyer wannabe commander]] after his adulterous affair with Major Margaret Houlihan is ended by her getting married to someone else. After having a mental breakdown that leads him to accost a general's wife mistaking her for Margaret, he is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, cleared of all criminal charges, and given a job stateside -- in his home state -- in a Veteran's Hospital to keep him out of anyone's hair.
** Burns himself threatened Corporal Klinger, who was bucking for a Section 8 discharge by cross-dressing to try and convince everyone he was crazy, with a promotion to Sergeant if he kept up with his antics. It worked (for as long as Burns was in command at the time anyway). [[note]]When Klinger later gave up trying to get a Section 8 and stopped dressing in drag, he did get a deserved promotion to Sergeant.[[/note]]
** Several seasons earlier, this is the fate of [[InsaneAdmiral crazy two-star General]] Steele played by Harry Morgan (who, ironically, became a series-regular as Colonel Potter). After he charges Captain Pierce with insubordination,[[note]]Hawkeye refused to let him use a helicopter needed to evac a dying soldier to instead scout out a new place to move the unit to.[[/note]] he disrupts the court martial hearings by accosting the African-American pilot with demands for a musical number, since it's "in his blood", and then promptly launches into a song himself and dances on out of the hearing when the pilot is too stunned to reply. The next we hear, he's been sent back stateside, bumped up in rank to a three-star general, and given a cushy desk job.
* At the end of ''Series/TheUnit'', Colonel Ryan receives an unwanted promotion to General after enacting a successful but reckless plan to stop a domestic terrorist group.
* In ''Series/{{Borgen}}'', Birgitte arranges for Jacob Kruse to get an EU Commissioner post when she discovers that he's disloyal to her, which is superficially an honour but actually puts a stop to his political career. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, it doesn't work.]]
* ''Series/{{Cosmos}}'' 2014 shows Humphry Davy doing this to Michael Faraday out of professional jealously when Faraday creates an electric motor and becomes the toast of the scientific community. Davy assigns him to work on glass optics to keep Faraday from showing him up again, since Faraday is no good at it. (Decades later, a souvenir from this failed effort allows Faraday to make one of his greatest discoveries.)
* The final episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'' ends with the possibility of this happening to DS Ronnie Brooks. Having been accused of making an error during a murder investigation, his superior officer suggests calming the furor by transferring him to a position that is technically more senior, but would involve nothing but desk work. He recognizes the move for what it truly is and is genuinely hurt that this is the thanks he gets for years of dedicated service. The episode ends with Ronnie having not yet decided whether to take the new job or retire--and the series with Brooks' portrayer deciding to leave the show, so Ronnie's fate is completely up in the air.
* In ''Series/HillStreetBlues'' it happens twice, once when Capt. Furillo complains in public about a police enforcement program ordered by the mayor which he considered to be useless, and is moved to a liaison office fer the chief of police. Later, Ray Calletano is relieved of command and given an assignment of Hispanic Liaison to the Chief because his precinct is becoming a powder keg of racial turmoil.
* [[spoiler:Mike Milligan]]'s promotion to a desk in ''Series/{{Fargo}}'' was not intended this way, but that's how he perceives it, as he didn't ask for it and it involves none of the things he enjoys and is good at.
* On ''Series/SiliconValley'', Hooli CEO Gavin Belson believes in this philosophy, having picked it up from studying Japanese management techniques. He implements it with the company's worst performers, technically promoting them but removing all their responsibilities, believing they will become ashamed of how little they are contributing to the company. The problem, though, is that he does not employ Japanese [[{{Salaryman}} salarymen]], but rather Silicon Valley programmers who are all too happy to get paid to come to work and do absolutely nothing while waiting for their stock options to vest. Big Head has this happen to him; he finds a whole group of people like him just playing hackeysack on the building's roof. [[spoiler:And eventually, after too many conflicts with the Hooli board, Gavin winds up joining them.]]
* ''Series/TheWire'':
** While serving on Mayor Royce's detail, Herc catches Royce in the act of receiving a blowjob from his secretary. Valchek gives tips to Herc on how to turn the situation into an opportunity. The opportunity is that Royce bribes Herc with a promotion to Sergeant and a transfer off the security detail as a reward for his silence.
** In season 4, a string of promotions are going on. Carcetti orders the promotion of Cedric Daniels to Colonel, seeking to groom him to replace Burrell as Commissioner. He also has to reward Valchek a promotion, so he makes sure it's one that strips Valchek of any real influence: Deputy Commissioner of Administration. (Valchek gets the last laugh, though--Daniels ultimately leaves the Police Department because he refuses to play games with crime statistics for Carcetti's successor, and Valchek ends up Commissioner himself.
* ''Series/{{Patriot}}'': The peaceful and wealthy city of Luxembourg's police department is extremely chauvinistic, so it assigns all of its female police detectives to a division that never has anything to do: Homicide. It's derisively called the Department of Skirts and Stockings by hot-shot detectives in the Financial Crimes division, where all the action is.
* In ''Series/PoliticalAnimals'', after learning that Secretary Elaine Barrish Hammond is planning to run a primary campaign against him, President Garcetti tries to head her off by nominating her to the Supreme Court to replace an outgoing Justice. Since it would be a lifetime appointment, she would have been prevented from running against him. She declines.
* In ''Series/{{Elementary}}'', a cop-turned-professor and old enemy of Sherlock becomes an obstacle for Detective Bell, so Sherlock coerces him into taking a job that pays significantly more than a professor's salary, but with none of the prestige.
* Played with in ''Series/{{Lucifer}}''. Lt. Pierce turns down Chloe for union rep because, as he later reveals, he considers it "a job for has-beens". He gives the job to Dan, who has no idea what a backhanded gesture it is.
* ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': In the season 28 (2002-03) episode hosted by Creator/RayLiotta, there's a sketch about a ''Series/BarneyAndFriends''-esque TV show where one of the show's child castmembers (Creator/RachelDratch) [[SheIsAllGrownUp has grown boobs during her hiatus]] and the director (Creator/JimmyFallon) and the actor in the Barney-esque costume (Liotta) trying to do the show despite the actress's breasts bouncing and the ensuing AccidentalInnuendo. In the end, the director resolves the situation by "promoting" her to "the show captain".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
* Ole Anderson pushed for Wrestling/RicFlair to get a shot at the Wrestling/{{N|ationalWrestlingAlliance}}WA World Heavyweight Title, because he knew that if Flair got the belt, the demanding travel schedule that came with being champion would keep Flair out of his territory.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]
* In the Finnish run of ''Radio/TheMenFromTheMinistry'' this is what happens to Sir Gregory [[RealLifeWritesThePlot after his actor Yrjö Järvinen retired from acting in 2001]]. He ends up spending too much government money, and as a result, gets sent to the House of Lords.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Religion And Mythology]]
* This happened to Jacques Gaillot, the Red Cleric, former bishop of Évreux in France. When his left-wing activism pissed off the wrong people in the Church, he was made Titular Bishop of Partenia, which is a ruined city in Algeria, meaning although it is technically not a demotion, he now has no duties and no congregation.[[note]]In the Catholic Church, a Titular Bishop is one who holds the rank of Bishop but is not placed in charge of an actual diocese. In the past Titular sees were often in areas that fell out of control of the Roman Church, but in recent times their use has expanded to include those sees where the headquarters was relocated. Most Titular Bishops are either assistant Bishops in larger dioceses or hold important church offices, most often at the Vatican.[[/note]]
* In Roman mythology, Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus, was "honored" with the position of Vestal Virgin by her usurping uncle in order to prevent her bearing sons who would have a better claim to the throne than him. (Key word, obviously, being attempt.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
!!!Business
The business world is probably the TropeMaker, but there are many reasons for kicking someone upstairs:
* Certain strands of Middle management exists mainly for this reason (the most common one being those responsible for monitoring the trending of company and industry statistics rather than people). Anyone who works at a company for a certain amount of time expects to be rewarded in some way, but many of these people haven't actually ''done'' anything to earn that reward. But the company still needs to keep them happy, so they "promote" them to a position that basically exists for this purpose. One old British management book explicitly recommends this as a way of keeping them out of positions of real power.
* In many places, it's difficult to actually fire someone for being incompetent -- you can do it, but it requires a lot of paperwork and likely severance pay as well. Companies who don't want to deal with that will shuttle off incompetent workers to a position where they have no responsibility. To get fired, you would actually have to do something ''wrong'', like downloading porn on a work computer or something.
* The tech industry sees this a lot, as products change so quickly that the innovator who kicked off the trend is not always the guy whom everyone wants to man the helms today. But since this innovator was once incredibly valuable to the company, it's hard to get rid of him:
** Creator/SteveJobs was technically [[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt given this treatment]] shortly before he left Apple to form [=NeXT=]. Despite still remaining chairman of Apple, he was stripped off all decision-making powers and his office was moved to an almost empty building. Ironically, he managed to [[DefiedTrope defy this]], as a little over a decade later, Apple, desperate for a replacement for their aging classic Mac OS, purchased [=NeXT=] in order to use their operating system as a basis for a new Mac OS, bringing Jobs back into the company, of which he became CEO in short order.
** Jonathan "Jony" Ive is an industrial designer who first joined Apple in 1992, and would rise to prominence after he created the distinctive design of the original [=iMac=] in 1998. He would continue to have an influential role in numerous subsequent Apple products, including the [=iPod=], [=iPhone=], and [=iPad=]. As a result of this, his influence in the company steadily grew until he was promoted to "chief design officer" in 2015; however, it soon became apparent that Ive now had too much influence, as Apple's products began to exhibit many questionable design decisions that decidedly put form over function. These were best exemplified by the 2016 [=MacBook=] which offered no ports besides USB-C, requiring awkward adapters and dongles to connect anything with a different port, and featured the infamous butterfly keyboard, which was supposed to help make the laptops as thin as possible, but proved to be unpopular due to being both unreliable and uncomfortable to type on. Other Apple executives seemed to realize that Ive's new position simply wasn't working out, and he parted with the company in 2019 to form his own independent design consulting firm, which would include Apple as a client. Since he left, Apple has, in a rare move for them, reversed some of Ive's most controversial contributions, such as the butterfly keyboard, [=TouchBar=] and all USB-C [=MacBook=]. In 2022, reports emerged the the contract between Apple and Ive's design firm had expired and would not be renewed, formally ending his involvement with Apple products.
* In VideoGames:
** Ken Kutaragi is the co-founder of Sony Interactive Entertainment, as well as the father of the highly successful UsefulNotes/PlayStation and its iterations. But when the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 failed to meet expectations (especially after overspending on R&D leading to up to a $300 loss per unit), Sony "promoted" him to a software position. This led to his resignation a few months later.
** Creator/GunpeiYokoi, creator of the UsefulNotes/GameBoy, was often believed to have been kicked upstairs at Creator/{{Nintendo}} after the mismanagement of the UsefulNotes/VirtualBoy. However, he actually more or less did this to ''himself''; he had planned to retire from Nintendo after the Virtual Boy was released, but he believed that doing so after the system's failure would provide a symbol of its failure, so he stayed on to make the Game Boy Pocket.
** Hideo Baba, producer of ''VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria'', saw such a backlash for it (which [[SmallNameBigEgo he totally refused to address in public]]) that he was promoted to a new role that did essentially nothing. He quit Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment six months later and joined Creator/SquareEnix.
** Creator/YuSuzuki, after the failure of ''VideoGame/ShenmueII'', was given this treatment. He was "transferred" into a new R&D department and told to make a new arcade game. He made something called ''Sci-Fi'', which failed location tests. Sega, feeling more frustrated and pressured than ever, then restructured the entire R&D department and explicitly ordered him to make a racing game (which to be fair, was what got him into the spotlight in the first place). That became the ridiculously campy ''Sega Race TV'', which passed location tests but sold poorly compared to Sega's CashCowFranchise racer series at the time, ''VideoGame/InitialDArcadeStage''. In the end, Suzuki resigned and [[StartMyOwn started a little known company called Ys Net]]. He stayed low for a decade before coming out to crowd-fund for the next installment of the ''Shenmue'' series.
** Creator/YujiNaka, creator of ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'', was given this treatment at Creator/{{Sega}}, having been promoted to a managerial position that he absolutely hated. This, combined with burnout from the ''Sonic'' series, is what led to his departure from Sega in 2006, the formation of his own development house Prope, and his job at Creator/SquareEnix, which ended up crashing and burning after the failure of ''VideoGame/BalanWonderworld'', leading him to leave that company as well. Naka also claims that the failure of ''Balan'' has made him take a step back to reevaluate himself and pick up programming again, and he has since released a game, ''Shot 2048'', as an indie developer. However, his arrest for insider trading in late 2022 might put a damper on said indie dev plans.
** ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' creator Toshihiro Nagoshi became the latest casualty of Sega's habit of kicking people it deems past their prime upstairs. Nagoshi was "promoted" to the position of "Creative Director" after the completion of ''VideoGame/LostJudgment'' in April 2021, and has chosen to leave Sega for Chinese firm [=NetEase=] due to the fact.
* Creator/GaryGygax was the victim of this thanks to a vicious power struggle between him and Brian Blume. He was sent to Los Angeles and set up in a Beverly Hills mansion to negotiate TV and movie deals (the sole fruit of which was the ''WesternAnimation/DungeonsAndDragons1983'' Saturday morning cartoon), while Blume consolidated his power in Lake Geneva. After a few years, Gygax reemerged from Los Angeles, [[ReassignmentBackfire kicked Blume out]], and brought on Lorraine Williams to help salvage TSR from Blume's mismanagement -- which didn't go as hoped.
* Performing this move on one of their staff actually earned Benesse Corp, an educational services company in Japan, a ''Black Companies Award'' in 2013[[note]]The Black Companies Awards are given out to companies who regularly violate human rights in Japan. It's the TransatlanticEquivalent of the ''Worst Company in America Award''[[/note]]. According to the ''Black Companies Awards'' blog site, in 2009, an employee of the company was kicked upstairs for undisclosed reasons- she was transferred to a "new department" of which she's the sole employee, not given business cards, instructed to not answer the phone, and barred from accessing the company intranet. She was then given menial chores and asked to search around for a department that would accept her. This spectacularly backfired as she took them to court, who, after a lengthy trial that ended in 2012, deemed the company's move ''illegal'' as it was designed to pressure her to resign. [[http://blackcorpaward.blogspot.com/2013/ original blog post (Japanese)]], [[https://blackcorpaward-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2013/?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB&_x_tr_pto=wapp Google translated]].

!!!Politics
* Within the UsefulNotes/AmericanPoliticalSystem:
** The office of [[VicePresidentWho Vice President of the United States]], for the longest time, was viewed as being an utterly pointless position, since it only serves two roles: casting any tie breaking votes in the Senate, and giving America a quick replacement in the event the actual President dies in office -- Vice President John Nance Garner once famously called the office "not worth a bucket of warm piss". Vice Presidents were traditionally chosen as a way of covering the perceived weaknesses of the presidential candidate, thus bolstering the ticket and giving everyone someone they could agree with, but it was also convenient to "promote" someone to Vice President to keep them from causing problems in a position of actual power. The problems start [[ReassignmentBackfire when the president dies or resigns]]:
*** UsefulNotes/JohnTyler was chosen as the running mate of Whig Party candidate UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison in 1840, despite having once been a Democrat and having left the party but retained its ideology. Harrison died thirty days after his inauguration in 1841. The Whig-controlled Congress was [[OhCrap most dismayed]].
*** UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore became President in near-identical circumstances to Tyler; he was nominally a Whig but chosen to balance UsefulNotes/ZacharyTaylor. In this case, the Whigs in Congress ''preferred'' the more level-headed Fillmore to Taylor, whom it was feared could drive states into secession with his aggressive anti-slavery policies. History wound up siding with Taylor on this one, though, with Fillmore's approach (culminating in the Compromise of 1850) seen as well-meaning but misguided.
*** UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson was a leader among pro-Union Southern politicians during the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Civil War]], and UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln picked him as his running mate in 1864 to reward his loyalty. In 1865, [[GunmanWithThreeNames John Wilkes Booth]] killed Lincoln in the last days of the war, leaving Johnson responsible for the impending Reconstruction. Johnson was seen as too lenient to the former secessionists, who were still fighting tooth and nail against the empowerment of the newly freed black slaves.
*** UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt was chosen as UsefulNotes/WilliamMcKinley's running mate in 1900 mostly to get rid of him. His incessant Progressive grandstanding as Governor of UsefulNotes/{{New York|State}} was incredibly embarrassing to the plutocrats who ran the Republican Party, and they hoped that he could be stripped of power as Vice President. [[DownplayedTrope Republican National Committee Chairman Mark Hanna was against the nomination, though, warning that there would be "only one life between that madman and the presidency"]], and when [=McKinley=] was assassinated, Hanna [[IWarnedYou proved prescient]]:
---->'''Hanna:''' Now look! That damned cowboy is President of the United States!
*** UsefulNotes/HarryTruman is a downplayed case, and his Presidency in fact led to the amendment of the Constitution to codify the presidential succession -- and also to popular awareness of the dangers of kicking someone "upstairs" to be Vice President. Truman was UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's running mate in 1944, but he accepted the nomination reluctantly, and the Democratic National Convention was well aware of Roosevelt's failing health and ''expecting'' that Truman would be President at some point. However, by early 1945, FDR decided he was feeling well enough to see UsefulNotes/WorldWarII to its conclusion, and by the time he died later that year, nobody had gotten around to telling Truman about the American [[NukeEm nuclear weapons program]].
*** UsefulNotes/SarahPalin never got to be Vice President, and [[DefiedTrope what by now became a popular awareness of this trope]] was a big reason why. John [=McCain=] had nominated her as a way to broaden his base with more right-wing Republicans, but Palin's stunning lack of competence -- with the extent of her foreign policy experience being [[MemeticMutation memetically]] expressed on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' as "I can see Russia from my house!" -- turned many people off from voting for [=McCain=] even though they preferred his policy, realizing that if anything happened to [=McCain=] (who was not in the best of health[[note]]For what it's worth, he survived UsefulNotes/BarackObama's two-term presidency, but given the stress of the office, it's not certain that the same would have happened had he actually been President[[/note]]), she would be President. A [[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379410000442 2010 Stanford paper]] estimates that Palin cost [=McCain=] about 2 million votes.[[note]]This is a ''staggering'' number for a vice presidential candidate -- even in spite of this trope, political scientists aren't big on the idea that the VP pick can affect the ticket ''that'' much. The only other VP candidate who affected that many votes in ''either'' direction was Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, the first woman to run as VP, which got Walter Mondale a lot of credibility among female voters (but still wasn't enough to beat the hugely popular UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan).[[/note]]
*** Mike Pence was picked as the VP in 2016 partly to assuage Evangelical Republicans' fears that UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump would ignore them, and partly because he had overseen a series of catastrophes as Governor of Indiana of his own making (including an HIV outbreak and a "religious liberty" bill that cost the state a ton of money) and the party was worried he would lose what should have been a slam-dunk race in a red state for the GOP if he ran for re-election that year since governorships elections aren’t as partisan as most others.
** But other positions relating to the Presidency, including the President himself, have been subject to this line of thought:
*** UsefulNotes/JamesBuchanan is widely thought of as one of the worst Presidents in American history, and the first to be called a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy kakistocrat]] (and rightly so). He was only elected because he was an unknown who had no position on the then-hot debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act[[note]]''i.e.'' whether those new states would be allowed to have slaves[[/note]]. But the reason for his lack of position stemmed from the fact that he was ambassador to Britain at the time -- and he'd only been sent ''there'' because he was so incompetent that he had to be pushed out of the way. UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson made him a minister in Russia because "[i]t was as far as I could send him out of my sight, and where he could do the least harm. [[ReassignedToAntarctica I would have sent him to the North Pole]] if we had kept a minister there."[[note]]At the time, no human being had ever been to the North Pole.[[/note]] Unfortunately, this provided Buchanan with perceived "experience" which led to his election. Historians believe that [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar secession of the Southern states]] might have been crushed in 1860 but for Buchanan's [[TheDitherer dithering]] -- by the time Lincoln was elected, it was too late.
*** In 1996, UsefulNotes/BillClinton's staff was uncomfortable with all the time Clinton was spending with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton had already been dogged by a few sex scandals, and not wanting the appearance of another one, they shipped Lewinsky to a useless "assistant" position at UsefulNotes/ThePentagon. It [[ReassignmentBackfire backfired spectacularly]], as that's how everyone found out about Clinton's affair with her, and Clinton lying about it led directly to his impeachment.
*** Some theorize that this is what was done to Jon Huntsman when UsefulNotes/BarackObama selected him to be ambassador to China in 2009, fearing that he would be the strongest challenger to the Presidency in the 2012 election. Huntsman ended up running anyway and finished a distant fifth in the Republican primary. Incidentally, he also did a pretty decent job as Ambassador to China.
** In July 2016, a Wikileaks disclosure of emails from the Democratic National Committee revealed that chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz was incredibly frustrated with the incompetence of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. This led to a perception that she was trying to actively undermine Sanders, and subsequently to her stepping down from the DNC to become "honorary co-chair" of Clinton's campaign.
* Within the UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem:
** The position of Lord President (or, in full, Lord President of the Privy Council) is often seen as such a position. Its powers are entirely dependent on what the Prime Minister feels like, and these days, the position is often filled by a senior party member whom the PM wants to keep but doesn't trust with real power for whatever reason, either because he can't handle it or because no one else likes him.[[note]]Ironically, the position was originally hugely important -- even more so than the Prime Minister. The role was created by UsefulNotes/HenryVIII for his friend Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the idea being that if the King was too unwell to govern (or couldn't be bothered), Brandon would have virtually the same power and authority as the King. Meanwhile, the position of PM didn't formally exist until UsefulNotes/HenryCampbellBannerman -- though it had been a ''de facto'' office since UsefulNotes/RobertWalpole -- and most of the position's modern-day importance only comes from its merger with the office of First Lord of the Treasury. British politics is ''weird''.[[/note]] A few notable examples:
*** UsefulNotes/NevilleChamberlain was handed the position by his successor UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill upon the start of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. The nomination is often seen this way, given that Chamberlain was mostly famous for attempting to appease Hitler, but Churchill did also establish the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Presidents_Committee Lord President's Committee]], which was headed by the Lord President and basically ran the British economy for the duration of the war. Chamberlain, for his part, was ill with terminal cancer and lasted only six months; oddly, political wrangling meant that UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee held the position for most of the war.
*** UsefulNotes/NickClegg served as Lord President from 2010 to 2015, at the same time he was Deputy Prime Minister and his party was instrumental to the coalition government of UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, so he was pretty important and powerful. However, the position of "Deputy Prime Minister" technically doesn't exist ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom it's complicated]]), so (in a case of classically British constitutional engineering) he had to be kicked upstairs to give him a position commensurate with the power he ''actually'' had (and also to ensure a place in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_precedence_in_England_and_Wales order of precedence]]). This turned into a problem when [[TeethClenchedTeamwork the coalition started to fall apart]] (leading to suspicion that Cameron was just trying to avoid falling victim to a KlingonPromotion), and when it finally disbanded in 2015 and Clegg resigned from both offices, the position of Deputy Prime Minister was reduced to such a sinecure that it was eventually retired.
** The "office of profit under the Crown" is a sinecure created for the purpose of allowing an MP to resign, because it is [[ResignationsNotAccepted technically impossible]] for an MP to do so. Such positions usually have a LargeHamTitle along the lines of "[[TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham]]" and no real responsibilities. But they do come with a nominal income, because the whole point of getting an "office of profit under the Crown" is that this creates a conflict of interest that automatically disqualifies the officeholder from being an MP. The position is held until some other MP wants to resign (which could be mere minutes later). This legal fiction is so entrenched that Gerry Adams, a Sinn Fein politician who [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles didn't want to be an officer of the British Crown]], tried to resign without applying for such a job, only for one to be given to him anyway (along with an apology and a pittance check).
** The House of Lords has been seen for the last few decades as clearly subordinate to the House of Commons and no place for an aspiring politician. However, some such aspiring politicians were the children of members of the House of Lords, and since a seat in the Lords came with a hereditary peerage, when a member died, his seat would be inherited by his children along with his title -- effectively barring said children from seeking a ''real'' political career in the Commons and kicking them upstairs regardless of their competence. The most famous such case was Tony Benn, whose father was a government minister who was created Viscount of Stansgate in recognition of his service during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII; when his father died, Benn was stripped of his position as an MP because he inherited his father's peerage. Benn's political advocacy led to the Peerage Act of 1963, allowing Benn and similarly situated people to disclaim their positions as lords and stand for the Commons instead (and the whole automatic process of inheritance was ended by the Lords Reform of 1999).
** [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfWindsor King Edward VIII]], after his abdication, was styled Duke of Windsor but still mistrusted and suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer -- in particular, he was accused of leaking Allied war plans and had German guards appointed to his home in France during the occupation. UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill, seeking to get Edward out of Europe to a place where he couldn't help the Nazis, made him Governor of the Bahamas (which, considering that he was already a duke, could more accurately be considered "kicked sideways"). Churchill could only get Edward to go to the Bahamas under threat of court-martial, as the Duke was a gazetted major-general.
* UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion's myriad semi-governmental structures are seen throughout Europe as a way of doing this to old, annoying, or incompetent politicans, often with the added benefit of removing them from the country entirely. There's a German saying, ''"[[GratuitousGerman Hast du einen Opa]], [[MemeticMutation schick ihn nach Europa!]]"'' ("Have a grandpa? Send him to Europe!"), and several media outlets have cited the ''Series/{{Borgen}}'' example, and particularly that episode's title: "In Brussels, No One Can Hear You Scream".
* UsefulNotes/JosefStalin worked his way into power this way; Lenin didn't like him but couldn't get rid of him, so he made him General Secretary of the Communist Party and banished many of Stalin's supporters to diplomatic posts elsewhere. However, this [[ReassignmentBackfire backfired]] on Lenin in a big way; what the post lacked in nominal power, it made up for in ''practical'' power. Stalin quickly realized that he had the power to reward supporters by giving them key government positions, and he also maintained the Party's membership records -- ''i.e.'' kept tabs on everyone. By the time everyone realized what was happening, Lenin had died and it was [[TheManBehindTheMan too late to stop Stalin]]. Thanks to Stalin, even after his death it was the General Secretary who was the ''real'' leader of the USSR, not [[PuppetKing the Premier]] (who may have been, but usually wasn't, the same person). Stalin would ironically end up doing this to people ''he'' wanted to get rid of (when he wasn't [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness liquidating them outright]]) -- NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov, when seen as a threat to Stalin's power, was punted off to run river transportation, while his first deputy, Frinovsky, was put in charge of the Navy.
* Examples from UsefulNotes/NaziGermany:
** UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, once he became leader of the German Workers' Party, "promoted" the party's founder and longtime leader Anton Drexler to "Honorary President". It was obvious who held the real power.
** Hitler had this happen to himself after the 1932 election. He lost, but he and the Nazi party put up such a fight (and everyone was so scared of the Communists) that President Hindenburg named Hitler his Chancellor, hoping that he could pacify the far-right but not giving Hitler any responsibility.[[note]]He also tried to manage Hitler by appointing moderate centrist Franz von Papen to be Vice-Chancellor. This wasn't good for anybody, as not only was von Papen largely ineffective at corralling Hitler, he wound up being [[GuiltByAssociation among those tried at Nuremberg]] after the war (although he was acquitted). Hitler even toyed with assassinating him in a FalseFlagOperation to provide justification for the annexation of Austria.[[/note]] But Hitler was a shrewd manipulator who found that he had enough power as Chancellor to still put the screws on the Communists like everyone wanted, and the Reichstag fire gave him the green light to do that (although he may have [[FalseFlagOperation set that up himself]]). The Enabling Act of 1933 began the first steps of turning Germany into a police state, though Hindenburg still had a check against Hitler as the President was commander-in-chief of the military. Then Hindenburg died, and Hitler merged the offices of President and Chancellor, which would give all the real power to him. That's how he became the dictator.
** Hermann Göring was effectively kicked upstairs and sideways. For years, he had been Hitler's second-in-command, accumulating such titles as President of the Reichstag, Minister President of Prussia, Commander-in-Chief of the ''Luftwaffe'', and [[TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard Minister for Economics, Aviation, and Forestries]]. He also founded the ''Gestapo'', which was transferred to the SS. In 1940, after the fall of France, he was promoted to ''Reichsmarschall'', firmly establishing him as the second-in-command, and a secret decree a year later formally named him as Hitler's successor. However, after failing to establish air supremacy over Britain, he started to fall out of favor with Hitler. After failing to resupply the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, Göring was effectively removed from command positions and spent the remainder of the war living like a Roman emperor in his many palaces. During the final days of the war, he tried to invoke the decree to become leader of Nazi Germany, but Hitler responded by stripping him of all his offices.
* In most republics that use the parliamentary system, the president is the head of state but has no real power (as with a ceremonial monarchy). It is therefore a useful place for kicking people upstairs:
** Eamon de Valera, the principal author of the Irish Constitution, used to claim he had specifically designed the Presidency to be "a nice easy job for my old age". Sure enough, after serving as the President of the Executive Council and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland for most of the years from 1932 to 1959, he became the President of Ireland at the age of 77.
** ''Magazine/TheEconomist'' described the election of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as the ceremonial president of India as being [[http://www.economist.com/node/21559360 a thinly veiled ploy to get rid of him]].
** The office of President of UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} has often provided a place for men kicked upstairs; from Chaim Weizmann (whom David Ben-Gurion loathed but was too respected not to honor somehow) all the way up to most recently Reuben Rivlin (UsefulNotes/BenjaminNetanyahu wanted him out of the way; he was becoming too powerful in the Likud party).
* UsefulNotes/IdiAmin was promoted to the rank of Army Commander of UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}} by then-president Milton Obote, who believed this would make [[AxCrazy Amin]] easier to control. It [[ReassignmentBackfire backfired]] very, very [[ImAHumanitarian badly]].
* UsefulNotes/FranciscoFranco promoted Juan Yagüe, one of his best army commanders, to the position of Air Force Minister so he wouldn't threaten him in the future.
* Francisco Vazquez, the former mayor of the Spanish city of La Coruña, was a prominent socialist. The government, realizing that he was a harder-core Catholic than a socialist, promoted him to be Ambassador to the Holy See, so that he could embarrass the socialist Prime Minister with incessant calls to criminalize abortion.
* UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire was a nepotist bureaucratic nightmare, which inspired the Latin maxim for this sort of manoeuvre, ''Promoveatur et amoveatur'' -- "Let him be promoted to get him out of the way." It apparently happened quite often.
* In [[UsefulNotes/ModernEgypt post-1952 Egypt]], the position of Vice President was used to reward military officers who were loyal to the regime but seen as harmless schmucks not really in contention for power. This backfired twice: once when UsefulNotes/GamalAbdelNasser's VP Anwar Sadat proved to be a devious MagnificentBastard who quickly eliminated his competition after Nasser's death, and then when Sadat's VP Hosni Mubarak turned out to be a boring, heavy-handed, and not particularly intelligent leader. President Muhammad Morsi did this to the military more directly in 2012 by stripping several top generals of their power but also giving them a bunch of medals and big fat pensions -- they promptly folded under pressure, but after large anti-Morsi protests in 2013, [[TheCoup their replacements didn't]].
* In UsefulNotes/{{Myanmar}}, Aung San Suu Kyi was prevented by law from ever becoming President and instead made the "State Counselor", a position that is theoretically akin to Prime Minister and makes her ''de facto'' head of the government, but which has no real power.
* This was a key part of UsefulNotes/LouisXIV's methods for gaining power. He'd invite nobles over to his home (and they can't turn down an invitation from the king), and then after they knew the lay of the land, he'd assign them a job working in the palace. Because they were now far away from home, they couldn't really run their lands, so Louis could do whatever he wanted there, while the nobles enjoyed their palatial lifestyle and cushy job.

!!!Military
The military has a particularly easy way of doing this, as it can "promote" incompetent people away from the front lines and into a cushy desk job somewhere with only administrative responsibilities.
* In naval jargon, this is known as "yellowing". The term derives from the practice of the Royal Navy, where until 1864, captains were promoted to flag rank by strict seniority. This meant that if they had a competent captain whom they wanted to promote to rear-admiral, they couldn't do it until they had promoted everyone else ahead of him on the list. They solved this problem by promoting those other captains but not giving them any command (known as leaving them "on the beach"). If you ''did'' have a command, it was organised (again by seniority) into "red", "white", and "blue" squadrons, so rear-admirals without a command were said to have a "yellow squadron" (like the yellow sand on the beach).
* Colonel Leonard Wood [[ConversationalTroping name-dropped the trope]] in 1898, during preparations for the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. Wood was the leader of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry regiment (''a.k.a.'' the Rough Riders), only to realize that his second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, was a lot more popular than he was. He wrote, "I realized that if this campaign lasted for any considerable length of time, I would be kicked upstairs to make room for Roosevelt." He turned out to be wrong -- he was instead promoted to commander of the Fifth Army Corps' 2nd Brigade Cavalry Division, whose previous commander had fallen ill, and he got to lead the Brigade for the rest of the war, including during their famous victory at Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights (and got a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Leonard_Wood rather large fort]] named after him to boot!).
* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Allied commanders who lost battles were often promoted to a different front to get them out of the way:
** Archibald Wavell had this happen ''twice'', first in North Africa and then in Southeast Asia; he actually was competent, but Churchill disliked him and had a knack for putting him into hopeless situations. He ended his career as Viceroy of India just as [[UsefulNotes/ThePartitionOfIndia it was about to split]].
** Gordon Bennett of the Australian 8th Division was given command of Australia proper in response to his escaping from Japanese-occupied UsefulNotes/{{Singapore}} and leaving the rest of his command to the tender mercies of the Japanese.
** Herbert Sobel, as immortalized in ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', exemplified the trope; he was an [[DrillSergeantNasty absolutely ruthless training officer]], and everyone he commanded hated him but respected him and credited his tactics with making them better. But he was such a failure at actually ''leading'' the unit that shortly before the Normandy invasion, he was promoted to Captain and shunted off to train new recruits. He never got the chance to serve on the front lines and attain [[WarIsGlorious glory on the battlefield]] like he so desperately wanted -- he ended the war as a supply office, and he was kept stateside during UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar despite being recalled to active duty.
** Lloyd Fredendall was commander of the II Corps at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943 but after the American defeat, he was reassigned to stateside training assignments.
* William Westmoreland commanded American troops in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar between 1964 and 1968, earning widespread criticism for treating the war as a conventional conflict while downplaying its guerrilla aspect. After being relieved of his command, he became the U.S. Army Chief of Staff.
* During World War I, General Joseph Joffre was Commander-in-Chief of the French army for the first three years of the war, but after appalling casualties in offensive campaigns like Verdun, which failed to reverse the stalemate, he was "promoted" in December 1916 to the rank of Marshal of France, a title first created by Napoleon and which had not been in use since 1870, allowing him to be replaced as Commander-in-Chief by his subordinate Robert Nivelle. Joffre was enticed to take this promotion with a promised advisory position to the French Minister of War, but this never materialized.

!!!Media
Sometimes, you have to keep someone on board the production of a creative work, even if they've run out of ideas or are otherwise endangering the production.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' had this happen ''twice'' with series creator Creator/GeneRoddenberry. The first time, in response to the poor reception of ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' (of which he was producer and co-writer), he was promoted to "Executive Consultant"; the studio wanted nothing to do with Roddenberry, but they couldn't fire him because his contract prevented it (and because the {{Fanboy}}s would scream bloody murder). Roddenberry was allowed to make as many notes and suggestions as he liked; his replacement Harve Bennett could ignore them as much as ''he'' liked. The exact same thing happened on the production of ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation]]'', with Roddenberry being responsible for many of the shaky creative decisions of the first and second seasons; his level of influence over the show was tactfully but firmly reduced over time, and this was a big factor in the show GrowingTheBeard during the third season.
* During the production of ''Literature/APassageToIndia'', Creator/DavidLean became so unhappy with cinematographer Ernest Day's work that he "promoted" Day to being the film's second unit director and sent him off to film shots of the Indian landscape (most of which didn't even make it into the finished film), while another cinematographer was called in to finish the film.
* Comics artist and writer Creator/EvanDorkin drew a strip about his experience in Hollywood: he kept getting attached to projects that never got off the drawing board, but this gave him such a big "track record" that he became "too expensive to hire" and had to return to comics work. (It's probably humorous exaggeration on his part.)
* Following the controversial decision by Creator/{{NBC}} to remove Ann Curry as co-host of ''Series/{{Today}}'', the network invoked the trope by naming her "National and International Correspondent" for NBC News, only for the Peacock to bar her from doing live appearances, meaning she could only appear in pre-recorded segments.
* This is reported to have happened to Creator/ToeiAnimation producer Hiroaki Shibata. Having produced [[Anime/DokiDokiPrecure two]] [[Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure seasons]] of the company's [[CashCowFranchise very lucrative]] ''Anime/PrettyCure'' franchise, he was apparently moved to Toei's {{Tokusatsu}} division during the airing of ''Anime/GoPrincessPrettyCure''. This was rumored to be because of poor reception of the seasons he did produce, in particular throwing {{Ass Pull}}s at the audience when Toei was hoping to take it easy and pull the franchise out of its AudienceAlienatingEra -- they couldn't fire him, but they weren't going to be patient with him.
* Former Creator/MarvelComics VP Bill Jemas was sent off to spearhead the failed revival of Marvel's Epic line after managing to alienate much of the company's creative staff with his erratic behavior and micromanaging tendencies.
* Scott Gimple, who took the reigns of showrunner on ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' for its fourth season, had this happen to him after Season 8. His tenure started out well, picking up particular acclaim for his {{Bottle Episode}}s because they provided interesting CharacterDevelopment. But he fell victim to TooBleakStoppedCaring and ArcFatigue (especially given that with all the {{Bottle Episode}}s, it was hard to actually advance the plot). He also took a lot of heat for a poorly received {{Cliffhanger}} at the end of Season 6, when the ratings started dropping and never recovered, and for killing off a major character in Season 8 [[DeathByAdaptation who survived in the source material]] (which came as a shock to the actor who played him). AMC kicked Gimple upstairs to a position overseeing the ''entire'' franchise, which removed his power to make plot decisions on the TV series. It was briefly {{subverted|Trope}} when that put him in charge of the SpinOff ''Series/FearTheWalkingDead'', but SeasonalRot in ''that'' series led to the same result.
* ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' is generally considered to have suffered continuous SeasonalRot ever since Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle took over as showrunners at the start of Season 3 (barring a brief return to form in Season 5). However, due to Guggenheim's friendship with Creator/GregBerlanti, the two managed to keep their jobs despite growing discontent from the fans and falling ratings. What finally got them kicked off the show was Season 6, which was regarded as the worst season of the show since Season 4 (a season so terrible that even lead Creator/StephenAmell professed to hating it) and saw the ratings dip below one million for the first time since ''Season 1''. While Mericle left the franchise entirely, Guggenheim was promoted to the role of "executive consultant", and they were replaced by the much more liked Beth Schwartz for the last two seasons.

!!!Sports
This commonly happens in sports. Sometimes, a coach or manager is popular with the fans (often for being long-serving, and sometimes for being a successful player in his own right with the same team back in the day), so he can't be easily removed. Other times, management has found someone better but doesn't want to unceremoniously fire him. And still other times, his contract ''prevents'' him from being fired, but not from being given a different position; this is particularly common in UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball.
* Former UsefulNotes/{{basketball}} player Isiah Thomas was so incompetent in charge of the New York Knicks -- but so impervious to removal -- that he had to be given a "managerial" job which explicitly prevented him from even contacting the players.
* In UsefulNotes/IceHockey, the Chicago Blackhawks did this to general manager Dale Tallon during the 2009 offseason. After some poor salary cap management and a paperwork snafu, he was made "senior advisor" and replaced as general manager by Stan Bowman. That season, Tallon left to become general manager of the Florida Panthers. (The fact that Chicago won UsefulNotes/TheStanleyCup in 2010 leads to debates as to which GM deserves credit for building that team.)\\
\\
Tallon would later go through a subversion with the Panthers, being promoted out of the GM position in 2016 due to a combination of factors, including an ownership group that wanted to put greater emphasis on speed and analytics over the more physically imposing team structure that he had built, as well as a playoff appearance that fell short of internal expectations[[note]]they failed to advance past the first round in a controversial series that included multiple missed obstruction penalties with the team possessing the puck in the New York Islanders' zone late in regulation of game six, while the opposing goalie was sitting on the bench and the Panthers were leading the game 1-0 but trailing the series 3-2; the Islanders eventually scored to tie the game, then won the series in double overtime[[/note]] despite the fact that just making it there has been a rare feat for the team in its history.[[note]]after three appearances between 1996 and 2000, the Panthers wouldn't qualify again until 2012, and after that wouldn't make it again until the 2016 squad with Tallon's fingerprints all over it[[/note]] He was then "demoted" back to the GM position after his replacement, former Assistant GM/Analytics Tom Rowe, made such a mess of the roster that they immediately nosedived back to the bottom of the league. (Rowe himself was moved laterally into an advisory post under Tallon.) Tallon would continue to hold the GM position until 2020, when he was simply fired outright from the Panthers organization.
* Gerard Houllier, manager of the French national [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball football team]], had this happen to him in 1993 after a disastrous attempt at qualifying for the 1994 [[UsefulNotes/TheWorldCup World Cup]]. He was put in charge of "football development", supposedly out of sympathy, with the French Football Federation feeling that he was so catastrophically unpopular that no club would ever employ him again. Ironically, he did well in his new role and was widely credited for playing an important role in France winning the World Cup in 1998; he went on to be a successful manager again for Liverpool and Lyon.
* The [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]] provides an inter-coaching example; the Washington Redskins wanted to oust head coach Jim Zorn, but not wanting to fire him, they kept him as head coach but convinced former coach Sherm Lewis to come out of retirement (he was literally calling bingo for senior citizens) and gave him all play-calling duties. This didn't help; the Redskins were still not a good football team, and Zorn, Lewis, and the rest of the coaching staff [[YouHaveFailedMe were all eventually fired]]. Oddly, the term "Zorning" for this phenomenon is now used in the UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC intelligence community.
* Also in the [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL]], Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman had this happen to him in early 2015; he was given the title "Executive Vice President of Football Operations", because head coach [[TheNeidermeyer Chip Kelly]] demanded the power to assemble his own roster and convinced team owner Jeffrey Lurie to oblige him. The team failed to perform anywhere close to expectations that season, and the players grew increasingly frustrated with Kelly and his methods. In late December, Kelly was fired, and Roseman was given his old job back but kept his "football operations" title. Roseman, for his part, views his year without power as a blessing in disguise, as he used what he learned to help the Eagles to greater success in subsequent seasons, culminating in their first UsefulNotes/SuperBowl in 2018.
* ProfessionalWrestling:
** Ole Anderson promoted the idea of Wrestling/RicFlair winning the [[Wrestling/NationalWrestlingAlliance NWA World Heavyweight Title]] as a way to get rid of him -- he hoped that the travel demands of a world champion would keep Flair out of the Carolinas.
** Former Wrestling/{{WWE}} and Wrestling/{{ECW}} commentator Joey Styles was promoted to head of WWE.com com because CEO Wrestling/VinceMcMahon felt that his commentary didn't match WWE's style of wrestling, but knew that he was way too popular with the fans to fire. For his part, Joey seems to be fine with the move, and even mentioned on his blog that he is far more comfortable with his new position and wishes that his commentary career died with the original Wrestling/{{ECW}}.
** Jesse Sorenson from Wrestling/{{TNA}} Wrestling was given a job as a production assistant after a major injury prevented him from wrestling. When he was ready to return to wrestling, he got himself fired.

!!!Other
* Roman Catholic Church
** After the fallout of the Catholic Church's [[PedophilePriest sex abuse scandal]], Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston, was "promoted" from his prior office to the Roman Curia in Vatican City, where he served on several committees and held a few offices with no real authority.
** After the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope]] Francis, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke was removed from his posting as the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (aka the [[UsefulNotes/VaticanCity Vatican]] [[ThereIsNoHigherCourt Supreme Court]]) along with the group that recommended priests for promotion to Bishop to the Pope. Burke was reassigned to be the head of Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta - a largely ceremonial post. While he eventually was appointed back to the Apostolic Signatura, it was as a member of the court and not its leader.
** Within the Catholic Church the office of Coadjutor Bishop or Archbishop is appointed to serve alongside the current Bishop or Archbishop of the Diocese and receive [[TaughtByExperience on the job training]] before the current office holder leaves, at which point the Coadjutor automatically suceeds to the office. At times in the past the Church has used the process to ease a Bishop accused of misconduct out of office by appointing a coadjutor and giving the Coadjutor all the actual authority in the Diocese.
*** In the 1940s this was used to ease the Archbishop of Dubuque Francis Beckman out of office as Beckman had caused a financial crisis through involving the Diocese in what turned out to be a scam. Henry Rohlman was promoted to Coadjutor Archbishop of Dubuque and it was made quite clear to Beckman that while he still had the title of Arcbhishop that Rohlman was actually in charge. Beckman stepped down in November, 1946 and left the area.
** Also, within the Church Dioceses that are no longer active are giving the status of Titular Sees as a way of honoring the memory of these defunct Dioceses.[[note]]Traditionally this was done to honor Dioceses that had fallen out of control of the Church. These Dioceses were titled ''In partibus infidelium'' to signfy the area was no longer controlled by Christians. In modern practice Dioceses that move headquarters or are merged into another Diocese are granted the status Titular Sees, and are no longer titled as behing in the hands of unbelievers.[[/note]] Assistant Bishops or those Bishops who don't acutally oversee a Diocese are named the leaders of the Titular Sees. From time to time, controversial clergy were kicked upstairs from overseeing active Dioceses to heading Titular Sees as a way of sidlining them. This has fallen by the wayside as those Bishops who committed serious misconduct are now simply deposed and stripped of their clerical office.
*** For example, when Bishop Jacques Gaillot began speaking out in favor of things like married priests, birth control, and supporting LGBTQ the Vatican responded by "promoting" him to be the Bishop of Parthenia - a defunct Diocese in northern Africa. In a bit of a ReassignmentBackfire Gaillot established a virtual Diocese of Parthenia to reach out to people, though he has not published on the Diocese website in several years now.
* In his book ''From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor'' Jerry Della Femina describes an ad agency that had "the Floor of Forgotten Men". It consisted of workers with long-term contracts whom the agency didn't want anymore. They were moved to their own floor and given a single secretary and no work to do.
[[/folder]]

Also, while this move has a demoralizing effect towards Japanese people, it has the [[ReassignmentBackfire opposite intended effect]] towards western-educated hipsters and snake people, as noted by the series ''Silicon Valley''.

** Creator/SteveJobs was technically [[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt given this treatment]] shortly before he left Apple to form [=NeXT=]. Despite still remaining chairman of Apple, he was stripped off all decision-making powers and his office was moved to an almost empty building.

** Hermann Göring was effectively kicked upstairs and sideways. For years, he had been Hitler's second-in-command, accumulating such titles as President of the Reichstag, Minister President of Prussia, Commander-in-Chief of the ''Luftwaffe'', founder of the Gestapo, and [[TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard Minister for Economics, Aviation, and Forestries]]. In 1940, after the fall of France, he was promoted to ''Reichsmarschall'', firmly establishing him as the second-in-command. However, after failing to establish air supremacy over Britain, he started to fall out of favor with Hitler. After failing to resupply the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, Göring was effectively removed from command positions and spent the remainder of the war living like a Roman emperor in his many palaces.

* In the Chengar Qordath fiction ''Tales from the Phoenix Empire'', this is the Empress' way of removing Cadence from the Nightmare Moon equation, when she knows Cadence is part of a hidden organization designed to find and protect the Elements of Harmony, so that they can purify Nightmare Moon without killing her. The Empress knows this, and knows that Cadence is the most powerful member of the lot, and promotes her to [[ReassignedToAntarctica Administrator of the Frozen North]], which is little more than watching for the reemerging Crystal Empire and attempting to quell growing tension with the caribou, leaving the Empress free to pursue the Elements for her own plans to deal with Luna. [[spoiler:Cadence subverts this by bringing in Twilight to speak with a dragoness that starts to make Twilight question her image of the Empress.]]