So Much for Stealth in Literature.
- In The Amity Incident this happens a few times to Shanice — she accidentally speaks while trying to sketch T'reka, and at one point forgets to tuck her bright red hair into the otherwise ridiculously effective gilly suit.
- In the Dresden Files book Changes, Dresden's strike force was attempting to make a stealthy approach to Chichen Itza by way of the jungle. There's enough going on out there on a normal night that guards wouldn't automatically go ballistic at a twig, but then an escaped prisoner and a pursuing Red Court vampire run right into them. Things go downhill from there.
- The Famous Five: In Five On A Treasure Island, the Five plot to trap the villainous men in a cave with a big wooden door, by bolting them in. Dick creeps up behind them, waiting for them to go in; and when they do, he slams the door, making a crash which echoes round the dungeon; and the men burst the door open.
- In Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy, the northener Dogman is renowned for his gift at stealth and infiltration. Despite this, there's an almost-Running Gag made of his habit of tripping or stumbling over things when he needs quiet the most.
- Subverted in Magicians of Gor: Tarl throws a stone and the guy he's trying to draw away from his position turns towards him.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry, Ron and Hermione infiltrate both the Ministry of Magic and Gringotts Bank to steal Voldemort's horcruxes that lay within. In both cases, they manage to infiltrate it with disguises ranging from polyjuice potions, illusionary charms and Harry's cloak of invisibility. However, in both cases the plan goes off the rails and they're forced to make their escape with the Ministry and Gringotts security on high alert and chasing them down. In the case of the Gringotts break-in, they made their escape by freeing the Gringotts' security dragon and crashing through the main hallway before flying off, resulting in the event being made public knowledge and their objective to recover and destroy Voldemort's horcruxes being revealed to him. On the plus side, this means Harry can use his psychic link with Voldy to find out where the last horcrux is.
- Happens in every other Honor Harrington battle. The usual line of dialogue is "That's torn it."
- Fenimore Cooper was uncommonly fond of having characters step on dry twigs in his books in his The Leatherstocking Tales, as pointed out by Mark Twain.
- The Lord of the Rings: Wandering around the Mines of Moria, Pippin drops a stone down a well, alerting the enemy that someone is there.Gandalf: "Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity!"
- In The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the hero sneaks into the villain's hotel room at night to steal some important papers. All goes without a hitch until he trips over a shoe on the way out, rousing the villain.
- Moongobble and Me: In book 1, Moongobble attempts to sneak up to the Dragon of Doom's cave... and promptly wakes it up via stepping on and breaking a twig.
- In volume one of the Outlander Leander series, Flute of the Wind Queen, the first chapter has the main character sneaking into a theater only to have a piece of wood break under him. He subsequently falls and makes a bunch of noise on the way down.
- In Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, John Carter is slipping stealthily through a room full of sleeping Tharks when his weapons harness makes a small noise. For a moment it seems like nothing will happen, until a green warrior jumps to his feet and mayhem ensues.
- In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero in Hell, Miranda realizes she is not alone when someone steps on a twig.
- In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Ultramarines novel Dead Sky, Black Sun, discussions of what to do in the Iron Warriors' fortress are rendered moot when the Nameless arrive and opt for immediate and noisy damage.
- Despite weeks of practice, The Wise Man's Fear has one of Kvothe's companions bumble about and nearly reveal them to their target.
- X-Wing Series: Wraith Squadron tend to go through this pretty often, but one of the more memorable occasions was when "Face" Loran is confronted by a suspicious Imperial officer while Dressing as the Enemy and has to desperately improvise his way out of the conversation. It nearly worked, but in the end the officer in question was a bit too clever for even him. And so:Face's inner monologue: "When no other options present themselves, shoot everything in sight."
