History ShootTheShaggyDog / Literature

** ''Literature/HandleWithCare'' - Charlotte, mother of another IllGirl, Willow, attempts a BatmanGambit to pay for said IllGirl's medical bills: Sue her ob/gyn, who is also incidentally her best friend, for not informing her that she was going to give birth to a severely disabled child (in other words, getting up in court and saying in front of Willow that if she'd known she was going to be born that way she'd have aborted her). [[spoiler:She wins. But then Willow dies in a freak accident and they put the cheque in her coffin.]]

* Creator/BruceCoville had a short story called "Friendly Persuasion", found in the anthology ''[[Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters]]''. In it, a [[OurFairiesAreDifferent wood sprite]] is accosted by a monster called the Ba-Grumpus, which has already eaten many of her people, and decided that she will not stand for it any longer. So when the monster comes to eat her, she tries talking to it and convincing it not to eat her, pointing out that if a larger monster came to eat ''it'', it certainly wouldn't like that. The monster agrees and considers the sprite's words, and then it eats her anyway. [[SarcasmMode Now wasn't that a nice and meaningful way to spend 5 minutes?]]

* There is a Spanish novel called ''Dime Quien Soy'' about a woman named Amelia Garayoa who abandons her family for a French communist in the Spanish Civil War, which takes this trope UpToEleven almost every good character die except the protagonist and a few others, and, of course, all of them are totally ineffectual, because the bad guys are very powerful (this novel takes place in the XX century, when totalitarianism were in full force). Oh, and this book is also [[KarmaHoudini Karma Houdini Heaven]] when some of the most horrible villains ever created (and a immense number of [[JerkAss jerkasses]]) make atrocious things without repercussion. This book, by the other hand, is a very well written shaggy dog shooting story, but is also too depressing to read. Julia Navarro, the author, even tells that this is a novel about losers, not heroes or heroines.

** The Red Wedding is seen as this by some fans, who felt a central conflict was ended and their favourite characters killed for little reason other than to provide a huge emotional shock. Others praised the shocking turn of events and effect it had on the story, feeling that the Red Wedding was not the dead-end that it might seem and that the conflict actually does continue amongst the remaining characters.

* ''Literature/BrokebackMountain'': Ennis and Jack meet and fall in love. But Ennis doesn't see any future in his relationship with Jack, because he personally witnessed the brutal murder of a queer man when he was a child and doesn't want to die the same way. Their relationship is therefore limited to meeting up in secret a couple of times a year. Understandably this causes a lot of bitterness, pain and resentment on Jack's part, and places a permanent strain on his closeness to Ennis. Their love for each other means that neither can ever really be happy with anyone else, which makes both their wives miserable and ruins Ennis's marriage. Finally, after decades of this, [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Ennis finds out that Jack has been murdered for being queer after all]], rendering all this unhappiness pointless.

* Chris Adrian's ''The Childrens Hospital'' is a 600+ page long post-apocalyptic magical realism novel about prophecies, medicine, emotional growth, and love. That's why it makes perfect sense that after hundreds of pages of build-up and plot twists and character development, the last 50 or so pages are just the book's LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters going insane and dying from a disease that kills every living adult by turning them into ash from the inside out. The book ends with the main character having her baby taken away, screaming and losing her mind as she turns into ash and watches the hospital's children inherit their new Earth. [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible One assumes the author thought ending the book with any kind of resolution to its numerous plot threads would have been too plebeian.]]

* The Jonathan Kellerman novel ''The Butcher's Theater'' is about a serial killer in Jerusalem. One of the subplots involves Elias Daoud, an Arab-Israeli police officer trying to earn the respect of his Jewish colleagues. At the end of the novel, he has helped solve the case, and one of the other detectives, the one who had been most prejudiced against him, calls him up to ask him to assist on another investigation. In a later Kellerman novel, it is revealed that Hamas judged Daoud to be a collaborator, killed him and his wife, and took their kids and raised them to hate Israel.

* ''The Tortilla Curtain'' by T. C. Boyle is basically made of this trope (and White Guilt). The Mexican main characters get robbed, run over by a car, raped, beat up, lose their unborn baby and nearly die of starvation, only to be washed away by a friggin landslide in the end after the white protagonist tries to kill them in a homicidal racist rage.

*** And the main character [[spoiler: died of dehydration three chapters before the end, because of never calling a plumber after a minor sink malfunction early in the book. (I honestly don't know why I spoilered this)]], thus not only shooting the dog, but also mentioning that it's not that shaggy ''in several thousand words''. Though a book within a book, it is certainly a magnificent reference of this trope.

** ''Literature/{{Rage}}'' ends with [[spoiler: Decker shot and committed to a mental institution, likely for life, and Ted Jones in a state of profound trauma-induced catatonia.]]

** ''No Escape'' has a group of children visiting a puritan reenactment village, a site said to be haunted by the ghosts of four evil witch children who were burned at the stake. The main girl feels sympathy for them, as they may very well have just been normal kids put to death for being different.

* For a Junior Fiction example, ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' ''loved'' this trope. Almost every single book had a twist ending, and more often than not, Stine shot the shaggy dog, albeit offscreen. [[Literature/ChickenChicken Killed a monster and are escaping into the swamp? Uh-oh, looks like his extended family is still out there!]] [[Literature/TheBeastFromTheEast Won the Most Dangerous Game (of tag) by convincing the monsters who forced you to play that you're in an advanced team? Uh-oh, now the advanced team wants to play!]] [[Literature/ChickenChicken You've managed to convince an evil witch who turned you into a chicken to turn you back into a human? Uh-oh, now she's going to turn you into a pig!]] Seriously, if there was a way out for these protagonists, it's never revealed to the reader. Depressing as hell to a seven-year-old.

* Sirius' role in the story boils down to this in ''Literature/HarryPotter''. After breaking out of prison in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'', Sirius is instead placed under virtual house arrest in his horrible childhood home with most of his colleagues on field duty, and Harry in Hogwarts with only a bitter old house-elf that despises him for running away from his family's abuse as a teenager for regular company. He dies in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'' before his name cleared and in the battle out of a mix of lack of field experience and SuicidalOverconfidence and does not play a major role to help Harry achieve his destiny. His mistakes with Kreacher are cited by Hermione as a cautionary tale instead.

* For a Junior Fiction example, ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' ''loved'' this trope. Every single book had a twist ending, and more often than not, Stine shot the shaggy dog, albeit offscreen. Killed a monster and are escaping into the swamp? Uh-oh, looks like his extended family is still out there! Won the Most Dangerous Game (of tag) by convincing the monsters who forced you to play that you're in an advanced team? Uh-oh, now the advanced team wants to play! You've managed to convince an evil witch who turned you into a chicken to turn you back into a human? Uh-oh, now she's turned you into a pig! Seriously, if there was a way out for these protagonists, it’s never revealed to the reader. Depressing as hell to a seven-year-old.
** And for a double example, there's ''Legend of the Lost Legend''. The kids go through a series of hellish trials to win a priceless artifact their father has been searching for, only to discover it's the ''wrong'' priceless artifact in the last ten pages. Shaggy Dog. They then are directed to the ''right'' priceless artifact...which has a curse on it that dooms its holders to wander lost for eternity. Shaggy ''Dead'' Dog.

* ''Literature/KeystotheKingdom'' seems like a light-hearted series, doesn't it? For 6 books, no one has died, except for the bad guys, who are clearly defined, and they are done in off-screen, so as not to stain the protagonist's hands. There has been little permanent damage to the human world, and anything in the other world can be easily repaired with magic. But a contrived sequence of events reveals in Book 7 that Sunday was actually a pretty nice guy, and all the protagonist managed to do was accidently get his own mother killed returning everything to the status quo. He resists any of the "villains" attempts to improve the world not because they're obviously evil, but out of sheer fear that any change would be bad. This has been fed into by the alleged "Big Good," who just wanted her own demise. The only hope is that he'll make things better several years down the road now that he's stuck with her position, which he didn't even want.

* ''Literature/BrokebackMountain'': Ennis and Jack meet and fall in love. But Ennis doesn't see any future in his relationship with Jack, because he personally witnessed the brutal murder of a queer man when he was a child and doesn't want to die the same way. Their relationship is therefore limited to meeting up in secret a couple of times a year. Understandably this causes a lot of bitterness, pain and resentment on Jack's part, and places a permanent strain on his closeness to Ennis. Their love for each other means that neither can ever really be happy with anyone else, which makes both their wives miserable too. Finally, after decades of this, [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Ennis finds out that Jack has been murdered for being queer after all]], rendering all this unhappiness pointless.

* The ending of ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'' is pretty much the ultimate Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending, as Arthur never finds his soul mate, who was cruelly taken from him in a freak accident, and at the end every Earth in every universe is destroyed, with virtually every character being killed in the process. Douglas Adams admitted that the ending was "rather bleak," and was [[CreatorBreakdown a result of his depression]]. He would have probably fixed it... if he hadn't gone and ''[[AuthorExistenceFailure died]]''.

** The Dance of the Dragons from the point of view of the Greens, specifically, their leader, Queen Alicent Hightower. She started the conflict because she wanted her son Aegon II to inherit the Iron Throne over her stepdaughter, Rhaenyra. A year of nightmarish violence later, she had lost her father, brother, younger sons, daughter, and grandsons. Aegon did inherit the throne... for less than a year before he was poisoned, so the throne passed to Rhaenyra's son Aegon III, who married Alicent's last surviving grandchild, Jaehaera, who died childless, leaving the Targaryen-Hightower line extinct. Under the regin of Aegon III, Alicent was confined at Maegor's Holdfast a broken woman, before dying of a fever two years later.

** Quentyn Martell's arc is a straight example, though. Entire chapters are spent on his journey to meet Daenerys and marry her. [[spoiler: He meets Daenerys once without leaving any real impression on her and then gets roasted by a dragon. Neither his journey nor his death accomplished anything.]]
** It's actually much worse than that. [[spoiler:His death ''did'' accomplish something: he accidentally lets loose two of Daenerys' dragons into the city she sacrificed so much to protect and reform, causing mass death and pushing it closer to war, both with the enemies outside the gates and with the many factions within it. Many, many innocents die, and because Dany herself is missing, no one can calm the dragons. Then the Yunkai start executing hostages...]]

** The deaths of the Star Squad, including Finnick, are a straighter example, because they are pointless and change nothing. Whether the mission happens or not, the rebels still end up winning and Katniss is given the chance to execute Snow after the war anyway. This illustrates RealityEnsues perfectly; Katniss disobeys orders by attempting to lead the team to assassinate Snow, but her plans fall apart because, Mockingjay or not, she is still a teenager who has little experience in strategy.

* At the end of ''[[Literature/TheRing Ring]]'', Asakawa realises that [[spoiler:he was spared because he copied the tape and showed it to Ryuji, and he goes to get Shizu to do the same for herself and Yoko.]] Then, in the sequel, ''Spiral'', we learn that [[spoiler: while he got them to copy the tape again, their time had run out and they both died anyway; while trying to save them, he ends up crashing his car and ending up catatonic with grief.]] Then we find out that Mai's own attempt at halting the spread of the virus [[spoiler:was utterly pointless, as Ando contracted it by reading Asakawa's notes on the video]].

* ''Literature/TheRing'': The PlotTwist in the second book basically turns the entire events of the first book into this, because it kills Kazuyuki Asakawa and his family, despite his having tried so hard to prevent their fate. In fact, it is actually worse; [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom Kazuyuki's actions indirectly enabled the virus to find a way to claim more victims]], and it is obliquely implied that Sadako Yamamura had spared him precisely for this purpose.

** Quite a few stories in ''The Simarillion'' are this, ''The Children of Hurin'' is just the most depressing one. At the least the characters were warned it would turn out this way.

* Chris Adrian's ''The Childrens ruinsHospital'' is a 600+ page long post-apocalyptic magical realism novel about prophecies, medicine, emotional growth, and love. That's why it makes perfect sense that after hundreds of pages of build-up and plot twists and character development, the last 50 or so pages are just the book's LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters going insane and dying from a disease that kills every living adult by turning them into ash from the inside out. The book ends with the main character having her baby taken away, screaming and losing her mind as she turns into ash and watches the hospital's children inherit their new Earth. [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible One assumes the author thought ending the book with any kind of resolution to its numerous plot threads would have been too plebeian.]]

** This also happens in the last book of the first ''DawnOfWar'' series from ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''. During the second book, a Blood Ravens Librarian performs a HeroicSacrifice to save a new recruit. In the third book, [[spoiler: he is found to be alive on a deserted Eldar world, suffering from LaserGuidedAmnesia. He wanders around trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, being led around by Chaos Marines who are subtly trying to sway him to join them, while an Eldar pushes him to think for himself about what they're really doing. Just when his actual chapter arrives, and he begins to realize just what is happening, the Eldar who had talked to him kills him for no visible reason, and is in turn killed by the Chaos Marines before he could explain himself, if he was even going to bother...]]

** Near the beginning of the series, a ([[InformedAbility supposedly]]) brilliant scientist gets introduced via a very elaborate SobStory, and it's obvious that the author had a lot in stock for him, given how fleshed out he was. Next episode? Killed by falling tree on Venus. (ScienceMarchesOn. It's ''old'' Sci-Fi.)

** Even entire ''species'' aren't exempt from this. The BodySnatchers, for example, are made up to be a gigantic threat even to TheEmpire... and are subsequently defeated by humanity, with 1960s technology, and ''never mentioned again''.
** Worst offender, though? ''John freaking Ellert'', a time traveller with the ability of leaving his body and not being confined by time and space (as much). He is shot ''twice''. First time, he loses his temporal focus point on ''his second mission'', and appears doomed to float through time and space forever, unable to find back. However, at least two other authors liked the character enough to bring him back several hundred in-universe years later, with (again) a lot of SobStory and even more InformedAbility and InformedBadassery. He is then mind-killed by an AI. Painfully.

* ''In the Woods'' by Creator/TanaFrench, at a glance your standard crime thriller in which a troubled detective tries to solve the murder of a young girl. Over the course of the book we come across 3 unrepentant [[TheSociopath psychopaths]], one of which is only mentioned during a monologue, all of which manage to do ruin the lives of people around them and get away scot free.

* ''The Ruins'' by Scott Smith mostly plays this straight. Four american college students along with a couple of similar foreigners wander through the jungles of Mexico and end up trapped on a hill with some ruins of a mine and carnivorous vines that hunger for their flesh. Played straight in that none of the characters accomplish anything but dying. Only slightly averted in that there's never really any positive spin or serious hope for escape to begin with. The characters just get set up in this bad situation, things actually get worse, and they all die one by one. It's like the equivalent of having a story that opens up with a skydiver whose chutes fail and then the story ends by him going kersplat on the ground.

* Chris Adrian's ''Literature/TheChildrensHospital'' is a 600+ page long post-apocalyptic magical realism novel about prophecies, medicine, emotional growth, and love. That's why it makes perfect sense that after hundreds of pages of build-up and plot twists and character development, the last 50 or so pages are just the book's LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters going insane and dying from a disease that kills every living adult by turning them into ash from the inside out. The book ends with the main character having her baby taken away, screaming and losing her mind as she turns into ash and watches the hospital's children inherit their new Earth. [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible One assumes the author thought ending the book with any kind of resolution to its numerous plot threads would have been too plebeian.]]

* The original stories of ''Literature/JasonAndTheArgonauts'' are an extreme example of this. The titular Jason attempts to reclaim his throne after years of mentoring by the noble Nestor, and is told by the despot who's taken the kingdom in his absence to go on a pointless FetchQuest. Along the way, the nominal "heroes" do horrible deeds including but not limited to ''chopping up the younger brother of one of them and throwing his remains into the sea'' purely to delay their father, the king's, pursuit. Then it turns out it was AllForNothing because the whole point of the quest was a XanatosGambit with a touch of TheUriahGambit: either Jason dies on the quest or he's out of Greece long enough for the Despot to clean up some loose ends (i.e. kill Jason's family, [[WouldHurtAChild including his mom's newborn kid and his brother]]. Jason's mom ends up killing herself out of grief.) So Jason and Medea (the sister of the aforementioned kid, who was the one who decided to chop him up.) decide to kill the despot by tricking his daughters to [[FamilyUnfriendlyDeath chopping him up and boiling him in a soup]]. When it's revealed that they're the plotters, Jason gets driven out of his homeland, but gets to rule another kingdom, Corinth. HappilyEverAfter? [[YankTheDogsChain Nope]]! When he gets ''too'' attached to one of local noblewomen, Medea, now his wife, sets in motion a plan to burn her alive, which in turn burns down the entire palace, with all its occupants including ''[[PaterFamilicide their two sons]]''.[[note]]The sons' fate depends on the narrator. In Corinthian version she murders them to spite Jason, in non-Corinthian versions she tries to take them with her, but they get killed by locals, in some Georgian and Persian versions she rides the dragon chariot with one or both sons.[[/note]] Thanks to [[DeusExMachina godly intervention]], Jason barely survives the events but ends up an old and broken old man, who eventually dies when reminiscing under the prow of his old ship...[[DiabolusExMachina which falls off and strikes his head, instantly killing him]].

* For a Junior Fiction example, ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' ''loved'' this trope. Every single book had a twist ending, and more often than not, Stine shot the shaggy dog, albeit offscreen. Killed a monster and are escaping into the swamp? Uh-oh, looks like his extended family is still out there! Won the Most Dangerous Game (of tag) by convincing the monsters who forced you to play that you're in an advanced team? Uh-oh, now the advanced team wants to play! You've managed to convince an evil witch who turned you into a chicken to turn you back into a human? Uh-oh, now she's turned you into a pig! Seriously, there was no way out for these kids. Depressing as hell to a seven-year-old.

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' novel ''Eldar Prophecy'' features a civil war on an Eldar craftworld that is slowly drifting towards a warp rift and certain destruction. As all the sympathetic characters are killed off one by one, the DesignatedHero finally kills the villain, presumably saving the craftworld. Then, in the last two pages, we learn that all of this was an XanatosGambit by the ''real'' villains, whose EvilPlan involved feeding the souls of all the war's dead to a daemon and send the survivors straight into warp rift. No matter which way the war fell, people would die, the daemon would be feed, and the villains would win. Even for 40k, this is a DownerEnding.
** This also happens in the last book of the first Dawn of War series from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. During the second book, a Literature/BloodRavens Librarian performs a HeroicSacrifice to save a new recruit. In the third book, [[spoiler: he is found to be alive on a deserted Eldar world, suffering from LaserGuidedAmnesia. He wanders around trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, being led around by Chaos Marines who are subtly trying to sway him to join them, while an Eldar pushes him to think for himself about what they're really doing. Just when his actual chapter arrives, and he begins to realize just what is happening, the Eldar who had talked to him kills him for no visible reason, and is in turn killed by the Chaos Marines before he could explain himself, if he was even going to bother...]]

* Suzanne Collins' ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' trilogy fits this to a tee. In the first book, Katniss volunteers for the Games to save her younger sister, Prim, who is chosen in the Reaping, which sets all of the events of the series into motion. In the third book, [[spoiler: Prim dies anyway as a casualty in the war between the rebels and the Capitol.]]
** While on the surface this appears to be an example, it is strongly debatable. [[spoiler: Prim's death]], through motivating other characters (especially Katniss), changes the course of history. Without it, Coin becomes president, The Hunger Games continue, and status quo is restored. [[spoiler: With Prim's death, Coin is assassinated, a democracy is installed, there are no more Hunger Games, and everyone tries to pick up the pieces of their lives with a much more hopeful look towards the future.]]
** [[spoiler: Finnick's death]] is a better example, since it is pointless and changes nothing.