Bullying A Dragon / Literature

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• Battle Tech novels:
  • A bunch of common street punks attempt to provoke a Clan Elemental into a fight during the course of a Halloween celebration. An Elemental is a Powered Armor-wearing Super-Soldier bred from birth to take on 'Mechs and win, standing somewhere between 7 and 8 feet tall and weighing over three hundred pounds. While the Elemental was not wearing his armor, he still easily flattens all but one of the punks, who wisely flees the situation.
  • Close Quarters has the main character, Cassie Suthorn, use a rifle on a Battlemech to provoke it into chasing her. The metallic ping against the cockpit window is a direct insult to the Mechwarrior's arrogance, which causes them to give chase. She runs through a few buildings before surprising the 'Mech with an electrical attack to the knee joint. The electricity spot-welds the joint, and sends the 'Mech crashing on the ground. She repeats the same action later in the novel by baiting a 'Mech into swampy terrain where it gets bogged down and sinks, making it easy for her to take out its leg and the pilot. She literally bullies a Dragon in Hearts of Chaos, luring and destroying a Grand Dragon Battlemech by tricking it into a log trap that pushed it off a mountain.
• Bazil Broketail: An odd example where a bullying not only occurs to a literal dragon, but the one doing it is a dragon as well. Gryff acts like a jerk towards others at first, and finds particular interest in provoking Purple-Green, which is a foolish idea as the latter is stronger and bigger by far.
• The Belgariad: In the backstory, Gorim bullies UL, hinted at being that universe's equivalent of God, into accepting him and his people.
  "How do you bully a God?"
  "Very, very carefully."
• The Beginning After the End:
  • This happens to Arthur quite a lot.
    • After Arthur has made a name for himself as the masked adventurer Note, a group of adventurers are in an inn talking about his reputation and feats when Arthur himself walks into the establishment to pick up some rations. One of the adventurers, Turman, is jealous of Arthur's reputation and decides to pick on him as Jasmine is not around. Arthur dodges all of his attacks, cuts off all but the thumb on his sword hand, and then cowers him into submission with his Killing Intent.
    • In a original scene in the Webcomic version, Arthur, Sylvie, Elijah, and Vincent are making their way to the announcement in the plaza when they stumble across a group of racist students beating up a dwarf. After Elijah gets beaten up when he tries to intervene, Arthur decides to step in. In spite of Vincent trying to resolve the situation peacefully without anyone getting hurt (given how he knows just how powerful Arthur is at this age), the students mock him as well, which causes him to allow Arthur to do what he pleases with them. Naturally, Arthur proceeds to beat up all of them. To add insult to injury, Prince Curtis and Princess Kathyln show up as well to reprimand them for their actions, followed by Arthur getting Director Goodsky on a communication scroll to get them expelled from Xyrus Academy.
    • After the orientation at Xyrus Academy, Arthur and Elijah come across a racist human student defeating a dwarf in a duel. Before the human student can Kick Them While They Are Down, Arthur tries to stop the fight, followed by Tessia, Clive, and Lilia showing up. After the human student is let off with a warning, Tessia calls out Arthur for trying to break up the fight on his own to which Arthur replies that if he hadn’t, the dwarf would have been severely injured. Clive attempts to reprimand Arthur for the manner he talked back to Tessia, to which she pleads with Clive to stop. What follows is Arthur tossing Clive straight into the air as he and Elijah return to their dorm.
    • In another original scene in the Webcomic, Arthur is confronted by Lucas and his cronies. One of said cronies, Marcois, ends up attacking Arthur in a fit of blind rage. Even though he is more than capable of subduing him at full power, Arthur notes that Marcois is abnormally stronger than expected and he experiences difficulty in subduing him without breaking his Power Limiter (which he has to prevent Lucas from recognizing him as Note). It takes Sylvie turning into her dragon form to take him down. Once Marcois is incapacitated, Arthur and his superior Claire uncover that he has a set of bloody Power Tattoos engraved along his spine which are the reason for his abnormal condition, which are connected to the Radical faction on campus.
    • At the climax of the attack on Xyrus Academy, Lucas gloats to Arthur about how much fun he will have desecrating the incapacitated body of Arthur's Love Interest Tessia. What follows is Arthur's Killing Intent overpowering Lucas (who at this point has been empowered by a stronger version of one of the elixirs the Radicals have been using) before he in a state of Tranquil Fury subjects him to a very graphic Cruel and Unusual Death.
    • A non-fatal example occurs once Arthur returns from his training in Epheotus and reunites with Tessia and the Twin Horns. Darvus, one of Tessia's teammates, is jealous of Arthur and despite being repeatedly warned by the rest of their team not to do so challenges Arthur to a duel out of sheer arrogance and pride. He is promptly subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle as Arthur not only dodges all of his blows but promptly incapacitates him through mana flow rupturing.
    • During the Victoriad, Nico interrupts the competition to challenge Arthur so that he can exact his revenge on him for killing his fiancée Cecilia in their past lives. After a brief exchange, Arthur (who at this point has Came Back Strong since their last confrontation during the war, in which Nico struggled to beat him until fellow Scythe Cadell intervened) nonchalantly knocks him out in a Single-Stroke Battle that sends Nico flying across the arena. To add insult to injury, it turns out that said blow destroyed Nico's mana core, which is karmic considering Arthur's own mana core had been damaged beyond recovery in the aftermath of their last confrontation.
    • In Volume 10, during the Siege of Vildorial, Arthur uses the tempus warp the Wraiths had brought with them to prevent the Destruction godrune from overtaking him and thus killing everyone around him, which takes him to an Alacryan military facility in Vechor. He is immediately surrounded by a force of Alacryan soldiers led by Janus Graeme, a professor at Central Academy who had tried to frame Arthur during his time in Alacrya. Graeme tells his troops that they have nothing to fear as Arthur appears to barely be clinging to life, only to be proven horribly wrong as Arthur proceeds to let the power of Destruction loose, obliterating the camp and everyone within it before he returns back to Vildorial.
  • This also happens to a few other characters not named Arthur.
    • In the Webcomic, the aforementioned Lucas is ironically subjected to this trope moments before doing it himself. In an additional scene outlining what he was doing before the start of the attack, Lucas took one of the Radicals' elixirs. After doing so, Lucas collapsed to the ground from the strain which caused his fellow Radicals including his former lackey Charles to mock him both as a weakling and a half-blood. Unfortunately for them, Lucas was not done for just yet, and as a demonstration of his newfound power he proceeded to kill all of them on the spot for their insults.
    • When the asuran general Aldir is sent to purge the Council of corruption by killing the Greysunders, Agrona's puppets on the Council, they summon their Lances to defend them. Both the Greysunders and their Lances are overconfident about fending off this mysterious intruder and throw insults and threats at him the whole time. Unfortunately for them, as an asura Aldir is miles above the Lances in terms of power level. He effortlessly knocks out both of the dwarf Lances with a Finger Poke of Doom before ordering the helpless Greysunders to release their Lances from their service and then killing them where they stood. To add insult to injury, Aldir was holding back the whole time as he needed the dwarf Lances alive for the coming war.
    • After being imprisoned beneath Taegrin Caelum as punishment for his mishandling of the Victoriad and allowing Arthur to humiliate the Vritra, the former Sovereign Kiros is brought face to face with the Legacy, Agrona's pet Person of Mass Destruction and a known asura-killer. Despite knowing her reputation and power, Kiros is a craven and delusional individual. He has the arrogance to boast about his superiority to the Legacy and threaten her, leading to her draining the mana (which is essentially the lifeblood of asuras like him) from his body.
    • After the Wraiths capture the rogue Sovereign Oludari, they come across a Dicathian refugee caravan and attack it in order to seize it as a Human Shield. Upon spotting them, the caravan's guards under the command of Diane Whitehall attack the Wraiths. The Wraiths, being leagues above these Dicathian soldiers in terms of power, effortlessly kill all of them with Diane getting her entire face melted off for her troubles.
    • An Invoked example occurs courtesy of Tessia. When the Legacy (who is possessing Tessia's body) and her entourage of Wraiths have Chul dead to rights, Mordain intervenes to save him and in doing so effortlessly incinerates one of the Wraiths to get them to back off. While the Legacy gets his point and calls for a retreat, Tessia briefly retakes control of her body and attempts to attack Mordain. She does this in order to convey to the Legacy just how far she is willing to go to stop her and Agrona. Even though she is afraid of dying herself, if it meant striking Agrona a severe blow and ensuring the safety of Arthur and her loved ones, then she was willing to get them both killed by Mordain at that very moment.
    • When Agrona initiates the final stages of his plan, he subjects Seris and her entire rebellion to Demonic Possession by way of his blood in their veins and threatens them to rejoin his forces on the pain of death. One of Seris's adjutants, Sulla, has the audacity to defy Agrona's command and remind those around him that they have sacrificed so much to free themselves of his tyranny. Agrona promptly uses his control over their blood to ignite the runes on Sulla and all those who joined him in defiance, in the process subjecting all of them to excruciatingly painful deaths to Make an Example of Them. This display is enough to force Seris to reluctantly give up and order her people to rejoin him.
• In the book Benvenuto by Seymour Reit, the titular dragon, belonging to a boy named Paolo, is bullied by an older boy named Roy Selby. When Paolo tells Roy to lay off Bevenuto, Roy is all too eager to beat up Paolo. And the dragon, despite his small size, starts dishing out fiery retribution to Roy for picking on his friend!
• Bruce Coville's Book of... Magic: In Horsing Around, Jason makes the mistake of insulting a witch he met at the 7-Eleven. She tries to turn him into a horse in retaliation.
• Chicagolands Vampires by Chloe Neill: racist humans don't seem to think anything of harassing vampires.
• Constance Verity Saves the World:
  • While Connie is getting ready for a date, she finds an old-timey gangster rummaging through her cubbards, looking for a bag of diamonds that was stashed in her home. Even when she gives him the bag without issue, he still insists on whacking her because she knows too much, somehow never having heard of Constance Verity.
  • A group of masked men perform a home invasion on Connie and Byron's housewarming party and threaten everyone with assault rifles. Connie didn't even need to do anything, considering the people attending the party includes a retired supervillain/mad scientist and his robot wife, various aliens and robots, a vampire, a Vampire Hunter, a vigilante, a rogue archeologist and various other fantastical neighbors.
• In the Council Wars books, the elves were created by bio-engineering to be a race of Super Soldiers for an ancient war that never came about. It's said quite often that a single elven warrior is worth an entire platoon of human soldiers, by design, and if they ever stopped being neutral in the big war, the war would be over very quickly for whichever side they turned on. So naturally, it's a great idea to kidnap a few of them and forcibly transform them into trolls. That won't piss them off, no siree.
• Cradle Series: Played with. When Lindon first meets Akura Pride, they're at roughly the same power level, though Pride is stronger and the son of the most powerful woman in the world. Pride constantly heaps scorn on Lindon, takes every opportunity to fight him, and tells him he should just give up and go home. As Lindon advances at a faster pace, he soon becomes far stronger than Pride... but Pride doesn't change his behavior at all. In Dreadgod, Pride appears in Lindon's heavily-defended home with no allies to basically yell at him "what did you do, stupid?"
  Lindon could literally kill Pride with a word. Strangely, he was less irritated now that he knew Pride would keep the same attitude no matter how advanced Lindon was.
• The Culture: There are a surprising number of factions who think it's a good idea to fuck with the Culture. Never ends well. These factions are either themselves among the most powerful civilizations of the galaxy, or are kept in the dark about the Culture's firepower... by the Culture itself.
• The Dagger and the Coin: Immediately after the dragon Inys is reawakened, he flies over and lands on a farmer's field, confused over changes in the landscape during the intervening centuries. The farmer runs out and starts angrily yelling at Inys to get off his field- and gets immediately killed and eaten.
• The Dark Elf Trilogy:
  • People try to bully Drizzt a lot, on the assumption that he's a normal evil drow. Amusingly, the fact that he isn't is the only reason they don't end up holding their intestines with their hands.
  • Perhaps a better example would be House Do'Urden's attempts in the Dark Elf trilogy to kill Drizzt. He repeatedly repels their efforts, and then attempt to send his resurrected mentor against him, only for his mentor to sacrifice himself to prevent himself from killing Drizzt. Later in the canonical series, Lolth The Spider Queen, who would have already seen everything Drizzt has done, seems to think mortal efforts can put him down. It does NOT end well.
• More or less played straight in Darkest Powers with Derek, who, being a sixteen-year-old werewolf, is incredibly strong and capable of catching a thrown bowling ball with no trouble whatsoever. The day after he accidentally broke the back of his brother's bully, he gets surrounded by a bunch of kids — including the hospitalized bully's younger brother — who are looking to pick a fight and get revenge. Not the smartest idea considering what he had just shown to be capable of, though it’s probably worth noting that none of them knew he was a werewolf or about the full extent of his strength. But still, going after a guy who broke someone’s back just by throwing him? Not a good idea, guys.
• Averted in The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King. A mook approaches badass Roland Deschain while his back is turned, intent on harm as evidenced by his hand on his knife. Roland, without bothering to turn around or even look up, advises him to "Do yourself a favor, cully, and go sit down." The mook wisely does so, almost certainly avoiding harm or even death. Roland is later shown to be a Hardcore badass when he is Zergrushed by the townsfolk, and kills every man, woman and child in town.
• In the Deepgate Codex books, we have Carnival, who is the scapegoat of the eponymous city. To be fair, they have reason to hate her—she kills one of their citizens every month to sustain herself—but they tend to take things a little too far by blaming her for every little thing. In one of the books, she's just looking for a safe place to hide when a little girl wanders up to her; the girl's mother grabs her away, starts screaming "Don't you touch her, bitch!" at Carnival, and calls the guards down. The mother then reports that Carnival had attacked them to the Church (which tries to hunt her down), when all she did was run away.
• Discworld
  • In Unseen Academicals, Andy Shank continues to antagonize Mr. Nutt after finding out he's an orc, and later the Shove taunts Nutt for this same fact. Of course, Andy is Ax-Crazy, and it's frequently said in the Discworld books that the IQ of an angry mob is that of its stupidest member, divided by the number of members.
    • In the Big Match Andy and his cohorts commit many acts of Unnecessary Roughness against the UU team, seemingly forgetting that the UU players are the most powerful wizards on the Discworld. Whoever poisoned the Librarian's banana must have been outright suicidal.
  • In Soul Music, someone gets short with Ridcully, citing the rule that wizards aren't allowed to use magic on citizens. Ridcully turns him into a frog, and remarks that he always saw that rule as more of a guideline.
  • Snuff has a warning from Sam Vimes' butler to someone who was tempted to start bullying (or at the very least, be annoying). Messing with Vimes is probably the only way to piss off the Dwarfs, the Trolls, Ankh-Morpork, AND Überwald at the same time, so it would be... unwise. To say nothing of the more immediate effects of pissing off Sam Vimes.
  • In "The Sea And Little Fishes", and to a lesser extent in A Hat Full of Sky, Mrs. Letice Earwig seems to think patronising the Good Is Not Nice Determinator Granny Weatherwax is a sensible thing to do.
  • This is one of the many actions that are considered "suicide" in Ankh-Morpork. If you call a dwarf a lawn ornament, insult a troll, or call the Librarian a monkey, you're stupid enough to deserve whatever response you get.
  • In Pyramids, while most criminals in Ankh-Morpork would see Assassins' Guild black as a warning, there's always someone stupid enough to see it as a challenge.
  • The Assassins' Guild Diary states that the Guild school has no rules against bullying, but to be very aware that the student you are bullying is also a trainee assassin. In particular, anyone from a "traditional" assassin background who wants to pick on a Scholarship Boy over his low birth will be quickly reminded that the Scholarship Boys are there because they're already good at it.
    • Lord Downey would have been wise to heed this advice instead of spending his youth picking on Havelock Vetinari, the future Magnificent Bastard irreplaceable Patrician. Forget just being assassinated, the man has a scorpion pit in his basement.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In the short story Day Off alone:
    • A small-time (very small time!) hedge practitioner and his female assistants/cultists challenge Harry Dresden, full Wizard and Warden of the White Council, to a magical duel, to make a point. Harry proceeds to truthfully point out several different ways that they are utterly outmatched and out of their league, both in terms of personal magical ability and combat experience (i.e. when Harry responds to their challenge by pulling out a revolver, they almost panic on the spot).
    • To further illustrate the difference: "Darth Wannabe" and his posse barely have enough magic to make pathetic curses or give someone a nosebleed. Harry tends to cause massive property damage whenever he cuts loose, once tossed a car onto another practitioner, and killed (in self-defense) a fully-fledged dark wizard when he was seventeen. They were so magically weak that when they cursed someone, Harry didn't even notice it. He just performed the cleansing ritual to set his client's mind at ease, more or less dispelling the "curse" by accident.
• The Elminster Series: In Making of a Mage, the head magelord calls up the Magister, Mystra's chosen and the most powerful archmage around. He tries to control him as proof of his power. This does not end well for him.
• In The Expanse novel Tiamat's Wrath, Winston Duarte does this when he detonates a ship-load of antimatter inside Goth space, believing it will prove to be a show of force that causes the other side to back down from their open hostility. He apparently never considers the possibility that the Goths disappearing human ships was them not being openly hostile, and the antimatter bomb gets their attention to the degree that they scour the Slow Zone free of life and attack Laconia with their brain-killing attack, reducing Duarte to a near-mindless vegetable in the process.
• The Fall of the House of Cabal: At one point in a post-apocalyptic alternate London, amateur sleuth Leonie Barrowman is chased by a gang of cannibals. She loses them, but they discover her unconscious friend, Zarenyia. The cannibals intend to eat the unconscious woman but not before they try to get a rape or two in. Unfortunately for the cannibals, Zarenyia is actually a succubine spider-devil which results in the gang getting their souls devoured once she woke up.
• Fire & Blood: So many examples...
  • Argilac the Arrogant and Harren the Black both told Aegon the Conqueror to get lost. Argilac went as far as to mutilate Aegon's envoy, which was what gave Aegon causus belli to get started taking all of Westeros.
  • Happened the other way around when Aegon and his sisters got to Dorne. Rather than offering a political alliance, Rhaenys insisted they Join or Die. Dorne's ruler made it clear they wouldn't be cowed, and if they tried to force the matter, it wouldn't go well for them. A very unpleasant war followed as Aegon's forces tried to cow the Dornish into submission, and the Dornish showed they fought insanely dirty.
  • Franklyn Farman thought it was a good idea to try and kick the incredibly anti-social Rhaena Targaryen off his land the minute he got his lordship. Rhaena also had a full-grown dragon with her. Years later, when her daughter went running off, Rhaena came looking for her, and Franklyn dismissively said if she'd come near him, he'd have tried to drive her off. Rhaena's daughter had taken Balerion, the Black Dread, one of the largest dragons alive. Rhaena pointed out if he had tried, his home would've been a smouldering pile of rubble.
  • Discussions between King Jaehaerys I and the Sealord of Braavos about Braavos possibly having some stolen dragon eggs get tense when both sides issue veiled threats.
  • During the Dance of the Dragons, Alicent Hightower continues insulting Queen Rhaenyra's children to her face, even though she's Rhaenyra's captive and has already been told the only reason she's not dead is because Rhae's father loved her.
  • After killing his sister and claiming the crown, Aegon II commands her loyalists, who actually outnumber his, must stand down and face punishment. They decide to march on King's Landing and get rid of him.
• In The Fifth Season, people with the power of orogeny are universally despised, enslaved by The Empire, and generally killed whenever people think they can get away with it, despite the fact that an orogene can raise a volcano at a moment's notice. Special credit goes to the villager who repeatedly tries to shoot Essun while Essun is leaving the village and teetering at the brink of the Despair Event Horizon, which gets the entire village killed.
• Throughout The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, Bayaz, First of the Magi and Logen "The Bloody Nine" Ninefingers are underestimated, dismissed, or even insulted, threatened, or ignored as irrelevant, always to the sorrow of those who did so. Somewhat understandable in the case of Bayaz, since he's a thousand-year-old wizard who looks middle-aged in a setting where the average lifespan is in the thirties and most nations don't really believe that his kind of magic is a real thing, but runs into Too Dumb to Live territory in Logen's case since he's a tall, muscular man covered in battle scars from an ethnicity renowned the world over for engaging in ultraviolence at the drop of a hat. Similarly, Black Dow bullies and bellitles Shivers in public once he becomes Protector of the North. It ends as well as you can imagine.
• In the early days of Julian May's Galactic Milieu world, people with Psychic Powers were actively discriminated against, and frequently attacked, often on religious grounds. One prominent (female) psychic was gunned down by a priest, loudly quoting "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" This led directly to psychics discovering that they could set fire to people just by being angry enough.
• A few Too Dumb to Live human racists in the Garrett, P.I. novels have attempted to bully non-humans that could wipe the floor with them. While trying it on half-darkelf Morley Dotes may be justified by ignorance (because he doesn't look like TunFaire's deadliest hitman), throwing rocks or insults at Doris and Marsha, who are twenty-foot tall giant/troll hybrids, is just plain imbecilic.
• In The Girl from the Well, some kids at school bully Tark because of his mixed-race heritage and involvement in the occult. Since their occult involvement includes being haunted by not one but two very powerful, very violent ghosts, this becomes extremely hazardous to their health.
• Halo: The Cole Protocol: A bunch of drunk locals try to pick a fight with Adriana-111 in a bar at the Rubble. While they didn't know she was a Spartan-II, she still was well over six feet tall and was clearly strong enough to snap a man in half with her bare hands, so they have little excuse for such idiocy.
• Hank the Cowdog: The Case Of The Raging Rottweiler has Hank being enemies with a Rottweiler with anger issues. When Hank and Drover see the Rottweiler in a pickup truck he can't get out of, Hank starts taunting him since the bigger dog can't break out. He even tauntingly waves his butt at him, to Drover's dismay and the Rottweiler's outrage. Hank and Drover even sing a song about it, which can be this trope as a song: "It's Not Smart To Show Your Heiny To A Bear"
• Harry Potter:
  • The Latin motto of the Hogwarts school, Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus, means "Never tickle a sleeping dragon."
  • Wizards often bully house elves, who are able to, at least, send them flying backwards with their magic if angered. On top of that, there appears to be no way to ward against house-elf apparition, or if there is it probably isn't generally known. However, house elves generally can't use their magic without permission from their masters. Besides that, their extremely servile personalities are considered a guarantee they won't retaliate no matter how badly they are mistreated. Kreacher is able to use loophole abuse to betray Sirius whom he has hated since Sirius ran away from the abuse in the Black family home as a child by constantly and loudly spouting pure-blood ideology and viciously verbally attacking Sirius's friends in order to get him to order Kreacher out of the room, which he chooses to interpret as out of the house.
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:
    • The Dursleys. In what little fairness that could be mustered in their intelligence's defense, it is illegal for Harry and other wizards to retaliate via magic, but that doesn't stop Hagrid and Harry on occasion. And at any rate, they were abusing him before they knew it was illegal for him to retaliate magically. They actually seemed to think that they could "stamp the magic out" of him by treating him badly.
    • When Hagrid comes to collect Harry, Vernon demands that he leave, threatens Harry in front of him, insults magic and continues making Hagrid angry until he pushes Hagrid's Berserk Button. Hagrid is a half-giant with Super-Strength who'd just bent a shotgun. Vernon seems to learn from this incident, as whenever he meets a wizard in the future, he keeps his temper in check even if he isn't exactly polite. Also possibly explained with a bit of Fridge Logic when we see what being near a Horcrux, like Harry does to you. They mellow out as they spend less and less time around Harry.
    • Quirrell is often picked on by his own students (Fred and George charming snowballs to hit him in the head as only one example of many) and it is revealed by Word of God that he was also bullied while at school, only this turns out to be unwise when he turns out literally to be under Voldemort's power. However it only goes halfway through as he doesn't live long enough to make them regret it.
  • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, much of the student body believes that Harry is the Heir of Slytherin and is siccing the Monster of Slytherin on anyone who annoys him. Suffice to say, this does not prompt them to be extra nice to him.
  • In the third book, Malfoy openly insults a hippogriff even though it is very large, very dangerous, understands everything you say and will turn hostile if you don't treat it with proper respect. Yes, let's ignore the words of the teacher who has spent his entire life working on magical beasts, there's obviously no situation that cannot be improved with a dash of spiteful arrogance. Insulting always works. In his defense, it did.
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
    • The attempt of Umbridge and her Aurors to arrest Hagrid doesn't go according to plan, due to his great size and strength, and the fact that his giant blood makes him immune to their Stunning Spells. When one of them stuns Fang, Hagrid picks up the individual responsible and throws him ten feet. He knocks out two more of his attackers before fleeing the castle grounds with Fang on his back.
    • Fudge, Umbridge, Percy Weasley, and about two other Aurors try to take Dumbledore. As he amiably says, "I am afraid that I will not, as they say, be coming quietly." Then he flattens them all with a single spell.
    • Dolores Umbridge gets terrorised by a herd of centaurs after she keeps insulting them. They give her the signs that they're getting pissed and she still keeps calling them "filthy half-breeds", which was unwise (not to mention wildly inaccurate).
    • Even before that, messing with the Boy Who Lived all year wasn't the wisest of plans. Very few people stay permanently vilified to the extent that they can't make accusations of child abuse.
  • The goblins trained the dragon guarding a Gringotts vault by pressing hot metal against its face while ringing the Clankers, so the dragon would learn to retreat when he heard the noise. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the dragon ends up destroying part of the bank while helping the trio escape.
• In The Hearts We Sold, Cora tries to shoot the Daemon at one point, despite the fact that she knows he's capable of incredible magical feats and is willing to kill if he deems it necessary. Dee can't decide if this was phenomenally brave or phenomenally stupid of her.
• In two The Heir Chronicles books (The Wizard Heir and The Dragon Heir) there is a girl named Madison who is a witch. People frequently blame her for the many fires that happen around town. This is disproved when the fires are revealed to have been started by the son of a prominent businessman that wants the mountain Madison lives on because the mountain has a very large deposit of coal that he wants to mine. The boy, even though he's a wizard, takes this to extremes by eventually trying to burn down Madison's house, with her and her younger siblings inside, claiming that the town knew something was wrong with her and all he had to do was point the finger at her and they'd all believe him because of his position.
• Honor Harrington:
  • People keep antagonizing Honor. They know her record. They know what she can do. They know her in-universe Fan Nickname is "The Salamander" because she survives — and wins — battles that can and have killed equally skilled officers. They know she has a living buzzsaw as a pet/partner, the ear of the Queen, the loyalty of virtually the entire Manticoran Navy and scores of scary people for whom this is a Berserk Button. But they keep doing it. Exceedingly unpleasant consequences (usually involving bleeding and/or death) follow. Especially for Pavel Young.
  • Subverted when one of Luiz Roszak's subordinates suggests having Thandi killed to tie up the last loose end, and another one points out that not only was she the deadliest assassin in their gang, but doing so would also homicidally piss off all her new friends - including the galaxy's most notorious terrorist and the top secret agents of both Haven and Manticore.
• The Hurog duology has several examples. Ward's cousin frightens Ward's younger sister Ciarra, and someone else lampshades this by pointing out that, maybe, he should leave a girl whose brother is built like an ox alone. There is also Oreg, who, like the house elves in the Harry Potter example above, is a very powerful mage, but can't retribute against his owner because he's magically enslaved. Several of his previous owners mistreated him. Hilariously, he is actually part dragon and can turn into a dragon once he's freed from his slavery. Like Ward, Oreg is very protective of Ciarra, and there is an aunt mentioned who "didn't visit again" after slapping Ciarra once. We are never told what Oreg did to her, but apparently it was enough to make her stay away.
• In the backstory to The Imperial Radch trilogy, this happened to Anaander Mianai. Having recently encountered the Presger, Anaander was considering starting a war with them when the Presger responded by lending twenty-five Presger handguns to a planet Aanaander Mianai was conquering. Each handgun turned out to have sufficient firepower to One-Hit Kill a starship. Needless to say this made the power dynamic between them crystal clear and put a dampener on any ideas of warfare. It also forced her to accede to a treaty that recognised humans as Significant and put a stop on further expansion of the Radch.
• In the Jack Reacher series, various and sundry punks, thugs and scum go out of their way to threaten, harass and otherwise annoy Jack Reacher. Even if they don't know he is basically the dictionary definition of Combat Pragmatist who has killed guys by accident, they can see he's 6'5" and built like a Mack truck. Just, why?
• Japan Summons: Japan is fine coexisting with its neighbors and didn't have any plans for conquest but other aggressive countries who mistake their pacifism for weakness gets cocky enough to piss them off. The lucky ones got off only with destroyed military forces meanwhile as for Parpaldia and Gra Valkas, their bases and military installations are totally obliterated and destroyed systematically with superior military firepower that even if they managed to survive the war, they are military and economically crippled with hard time recovering (like what happened to Parpaldia) for a long time.
• Journey to Chaos: When Eric sasses Tasio, the local trickster who orchestrated much of the first book's plot, Siron exclaims, "it is the behavior of mad men to speak with such disrespect to the god of tricksters!" Tasio lets it slide because Eric is his bestest friend and good friends always sass each other.
• Subverted in Kitty Goes to Washington, by Carrie Vaughn, wherein Kitty is kidnapped and forced to shape shift on TV, and the only real consequences incurred by the senator who set it all up is an off-screen lawsuit and criminal charges. The senator anticipated a slavering monster, and even tried to get Kitty to attack by shoving a guy's arm through the bars. What he got was a seemingly normal wolf who just wanted to be left alone and curled up in a corner, whimpering.
• The Last Days of Krypton: Shor-Em is described as brave but pompous when he denounces Zod as an usurper and a tyrant and doesn't fully grasp just how vicious and well-armed of an enemy he's made until it's too late.
  Shor-Em: Surely you are overreacting. That is not how we respond to political disagreements on Krypton.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • In the second book, Deadhouse Gates, Iskaral Pust baits Icarium Lifestealer with supposed knowledge he possesses that Icarium is desperately looking for and calls Icarium — an ages old being capable of blasting entire cities away with his Unstoppable Rage — a fool. He gets choked pretty thoroughly for his trouble before Icarium can catch himself again just in time.
  • Happens quite literally, too, in the seventh volume, Reaper's Gale, when Clip attaches himself to the heels of Silchas Ruin, reputably the most short-tempered of Mother Dark's sons and an ancient dragon shapeshifter, and goes on yapping without pause to see how far he can provoke the latter. Subverted in that Silchas Ruin takes one shot at cutting Clip's head off, then decides it's not worth the trouble and henceforth flat-out ignores Clip.
• Happens in the Mass Effect novel Ascension where one of the kids in the Ascension Project decides to pick on Gillian Grayson.
  • Also happens in another novel, when a human merc threatens a krogan Battle Master with a pistol. The krogan actually gives the guy every chance to back down. When the guy doesn't, the krogan sends him flying with a biotic blast, and the guy breaks his neck. Interestingly, the krogan wasn't wearing any armor, but krogans come from a Death World, so their bodies are naturally tough. A pistol in the hands of a merc wouldn't do much damage to him.
• In the Mercy Thompson books, Jesse Hauptmann is beat up because her father, Adam, is a werewolf (in fact, he's the local Alpha). Luckily for her attackers, she won't tell her father who they are, as she doesn't want them to be killed.
• Millennium Series: In The Girl Who Played with Fire, Bjurman Can't help but try to screw with a woman he raped sadistically... the same woman who was able to prove that he was a sadistic rapist... and the one who also raped him.
• In My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, a variation of this happens with Maria Campbell, who was the protagonist of Fortune Lover. Since she got into the Magic Academy despite being a commoner, is one of the best students in her grade and possesses the rare ability to use light magic, some of her noble schoolmates are jealous, while some commoners in her hometown spread rumors about her being the illegitimate child of a nobleman. In the original game, Maria also attracted the ire of Catarina, the villainess of the game (and the protagonist of the main series), by virtue of winning the heart of Prince Geordo or Keith, respectively Catarina's fiance and adoptive brother. While Maria is not the type to retaliate against her bullies, someone with her magical talent is likely to become powerful and respected, especially when the universe is effectively a magocracy, and especially if she marries into the royal family, so the bullies should know better than to get on her bad side.^note In fact, in the series proper, the cast realizes that those who falsely accused Catarina of bullying Maria had been controlled through dark magic, because the accusers would know better than to antagonize Duke Claes' daughter. Of course, in the game, Catarina doesn't know any better, which gets her exiled in Geordo and Keith's good endings and killed in their bad endings.
• Night Huntress series: Tate intentionally and repeatedly provokes Bones, due to his jealousy that Cat is with the latter. Even when Tate becomes a vampire himself, Bones is much older and way the hell stronger, and Tate could in no way stop him from ripping his head off.
• Of Mice and Men has Curly, a light-weight boxer, picking a fight with Lennie; it ended with Lennie crushing Curly's hand to a near-pulp.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy Jackson never hesitates to tell the gods if he's not happy with what they're doing. And not just any gods, but the Greek gods, the Trope Codifier for Jerkass Gods who are legendary for their acts of Disproportionate Retribution over the tiniest of slights.
• In The Princess Bride children would often bully Fezzik the GIANT because they knew he wouldn't fight back. Ironically, in the movie he was played by Andre Roussimoff.
• The Pianist from Syria - A Memoir: Aeham recalls that one day at school, he was pushed by a boy, so he pushed him back. The boy ended up falling down the stairs and busted his lip. Aeham's mother berates him for it (even though he points out the other boy started it first) and hits him with a cane three times in front of everyone.
• The third book of Queens Thief, the King of Attolia, has the titular King's attendants playing incessant, childish pranks on him because of the circumstances in which he took his throne and a personal grudge by their ringleader Sejanus. Apart from the fact that the pranks — sand in his food, a nonvenomous snake in his bed — imply that his Guard wouldn't care about a poisoning or a deadly snake, he's still the king, with the power to exile, torture, and execute as he sees fit. (The King, being a master of Obfuscating Stupidity, lets them do it for his own reasons until the time is ripe to deal with Sejanus.)
• Record of Wortenia War has this happen as national policy! All the countries in that world think that the best way to garner the loyalty of people they summon from Earth, precisely because they harvest "prana", a magical energy that makes them stronger the more they kill, far more efficiently than themselves is to slap them with a magic ritual that prevents them from even thinking about refusing orders or betraying them... fair enough... but then they go and abuse them, treating them worse than slaves, and if their lovers got brought with them? Rape said lovers until they're broken beyond repair right before their eyes and either kill said lovers, or "give them back" to the newly minted Super Soldiers as broken dolls... Yeah...
• In the Redwall book "Outcast of Redwall" The ferret Swartt Sixclaw keeps a young male badger prisoner and constantly tortures and berates him. Ferrets are average size, with badgers being among the biggest of all the races, as the badger Sunflash is at least two heads taller and twice as wide. Not only does the Badger escape and permanently wound him, but Swartt spends the entire rest of the book hunting him down for revenge.
• Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future: ManMountain Bates, a violent killer in his own right, starts antagonizing a man who turns out to be the Angel, the most successful, infamous, and feared Bounty Hunter in the galaxy. Bates balks for a second once he realizes who he's dealing with, but his anger overrides his common sense when the Angel insults him, and he decides to attack. He doesn't live long enough to regret that mistake.
• The Silmarillion: Ar-Pharazon is well aware of just how powerful the Valar are, he has personal experience with a few of their kind. But he apparently thinks the Númenorean military can take them on: forgetting that Sauron voluntarily surrendered. While admittedly Ar-Pharazon is not your average human, and he has Sauron by his side, a direct engagement with the Valar would have ended poorly for his forces. As it is, the Valar decide to teach him a lesson about thinking through ''all'' the possible consequences of your wishes.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In Galaxy of Fear, a bit of local mythology is told to our protagonists. A Necromancer witch boasted of her powers, the people decided to kill her son and challenge her to raise him from the dead, she put a curse on them and their descendants before dying of despair. That was hundreds of years ago and isn't taken seriously anymore... until zombies start appearing.
  • Brought up in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. Luke allows some stormtroopers to take him captive so they will Take Me to Your Leader, but they get offended by his questions and generally how he doesn't act the cowed prisoner, so one of them tries clubbing him with a blaster rifle. Luke just says "Please don't hit me"; when the stormtrooper keeps at it, Luke casually shatters the weapon. Then one tries shooting him at point-blank range. The book takes place a year after Return of the Jedi, and it's a plot point that these stormtroopers know about Luke's skills, but they still tried this.
    "Please don't shoot me, either." He turned the palm upward in a friendly shrug and let the astonished troopers stare at the only effect of the Force-blunted blasterfire: a faint curl of steam that trailed upward from his unmarked palm. "Let's try to end the day with nobody else dying, shall we?"
• A Song of Ice and Fire has a few.
  • Annoying the hard ass that is Tywin Lannister even slightly is... not recommended, and everybody knows it. But, several people in the series try doing exactly that both explicitly and surreptitiously. Usually with very predictable results.
  • Most knights know better than to try taking on Memetic Badasses like Jaime Lannister, the Cleganes or Barristen Selmy in a straight fight. But a few try anyway. Oops.
  • You'd be surprised at the number of people who try annoying three dragons, let alone the Targaryen with them... Yup: annoy the flying nukes, young though they are, along with their sitter with the name you should note as being a dangerous one. Go ahead.
  • The Iron Bank of Braavos has the reputation of making or breaking whole kingdoms. So, when idiot kings like Aegon the Unworthy or Aerys the Mad try to 1) default on loans and 2) directly insult Bank employees while doing so, their Hands generally quietly collaborate with their Masters of Coin to judiciously ignore those orders, manage to rustle the money up somehow and also find means to suitably apologize on behalf of their particular idiot-in-charge behind his/her back. Incredibly well-funded Bad Things tend to happen to rulers who are allowed to go ahead with their proposals for kingdom-wide fiscal suicide.
• In one of Space Marine Battles novels, a mortal Ecclesiarch who illegally raised his own army thinks it's a good idea to tell a captain of immortal super-soldiers with every right to be there to kiss his boots.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation giant novel Vendetta, one of Picard's academy rivals, now also a starship captain, attempts this on the captain of an advanced version of the "planet killer" from the original series during a diplomatic negotiation. The planet killer ship had just reduced a borg cube to scrap metal with little difficulty. When his actions derail Picard's attempt to forge a full alliance with the planet killer's captain Picard wastes no time on calling him out on it.
  Picard: ...trying to bully someone is a distasteful tactic under any circumstance. To bully someone when you're not dealing from strength is sheer lunacy!
• Pointing this trope out is how Zedd drives off a lynch mob after him in the first book of the Sword of Truth series. The mob is going after him because they believe he has terrible magic powers, so Zedd asks them to list what some of these powers might be, and once they do, Zedd points out how brave these men must be to come after a Person of Mass Destruction with nothing but torches and pitchforks. This is enough to make them back down, though Zedd throws in an additional mind game to make them really sorry.
• Happens to Mackenzie Blaise, the half-demon protagonist at Tales of MU. She's super-strong, invulnerable to non-magical attacks, and can conjure fire at will, but she's had it impressed on her that she doesn't dare fight back.
• Temeraire features actual dragons, and a list of things you shouldn't do with them. A big one is "trying to harm their captains":
  • A group of mutineers grab Captain Demane and don't notice when his friends all stop trying to rescue him and dive for cover. The Captain's furious dragon reduces the mutineers to giblets.
  • The punishment in China for cheating dragons out of their money is "the dragon is now free to kill you". That law is actually just a pragmatic solution: Defrauded dragons would hunt the offender down anyway, so the Chinese decided to just make it legal.
  • When Captain Laurence is injured in a duel, they deliberately hide his still-wounded assailant from Temeraire, knowing full well what Temeraire would do if he knew the man was still alive. The fact that Laurence survives his injuries wouldn't have been able to stop Temeraire from brutally cutting the man down for daring to hurt Laurence.
  • In Victory of Eagles, an uppity admiral threatens to have Captain Laurence hanged for treason if Temeraire refuses to cooperate with him. Temeraire coldly explains how he would personally destroy the British Empire if the threat were carried out.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: Multiple people have no idea who they're dealing with when they try to make Magdelene do something or harm another person she cares about. She then shows her status as the most powerful wizard in the world by doing things such as turning them into an animal, trapping them inside of a mirror or if they really angered her, simply killing them with a word.
• In Patricia C. Wrede's Thirteenth Child, Eff is the titular thirteenth child, doomed to bring bad luck, and turn out evil. What does Eff's uncle do? What do you think...? Eff even asks her Uncle why he would do so, when he knows what she's supposedly capable of. Ultimately, she does snap and (accidentally) proves what she can really do, leading even him to realize that, hold up, maybe I shouldn't be bullying the dragon after all. The twist is that she may not really be an evil thirteenth child, as under a different magic system thirteen is a lucky number!
• Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga:
  • In The Vor Game, an old-school, "Captain Bligh" style officer named General Metzov running a subarctic training camp chooses to order raw recruits outside his chain of command to hold his men naked in the snow at gunpoint in front of the eyes of one Ensign Miles Vorkosigan — the son of Prime Minister Aral Vorkosigan^note who makes a point to give a personal lecture on the duty to defy criminal orders to the graduating class of the Imperial Service Academy every year, foster brother to The Emperor, family friend to the head of Imperial Security. When the new Weather Officer objects Metzov insists he joins them.
  • The trope is lampshaded in A Civil Campaign, when a drunken Vor lord accuses Miles of committing murder and getting away with it due to his family connections. Miles (who didn't do it, but can't discuss the matter for security reasons) coldly asks, "If you truly believe that, why are you standing in my way?" The other man backs down in a hurry.
• Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: When exploring an abandoned castle, Sébastien and Agathe notice a noisy flock of sparrows flying over the rooftops as chirping and singing as mad. A blackbird scoffs that flock loves taunting a group of owls who live in the castle's garret, but neither of them will be anywhere near by the nightfall when the owls get out and begin their night-hunting.
• In Lynette Noni's We Three Heroes, the duke's son Maxton thought it would be amusing to bully the crown princess of his nation. Because she is very young, he succeeds for maybe a few months. Then she realizes she has guards ready and willing to drive him off. (The guards very kindly help her realize that part- they don't like Maxton, either.)
• Occurs in Whateley Universe a lot, as one would expect when you have a lot of teens where some students are a lot more powerful than some others — though as we've seen in some stories set outside of Whateley Academy, this isn't restricted to children.
  • At the school itself, students who have problems with Unstoppable Rage, extremely dangerous or poorly-controlled powers, or a history of excessive violence all get various kinds of 'Ultraviolent' armbands as a warning to other students not to poke at them. Still, the fact that bullying happens at all in the Academy qualifies as Mugging the Monster, at the very least, considering that nine times out of ten the bully doesn't even know the victim's abilities beforehand; but since they know that their victims have power of some sort, Bullying the Dragon is pretty much inevitable - just assuming that any given student you haven't seen before is less dangerous than you are is taking a pretty stupid risk.
  • As bad as it can be at Whateley, that's nothing compared to what sometimes happens elsewhere. In Australia, where some kids bullying a teen mutant who was a known rager led to the massacre known as "Rager's Night", laws were later put into place which meant that anyone deliberately triggering a rager would get the same legal consequences the rager would.
  • Tennyo had been the target of this sort of thing on occasion, at least until the Halloween Invasion impressed on most of the students just how dangerous this was. The fact that it still kept happening led the Whateley administrators to invoke Section 33 of the school charter for her, meaning that any deliberate provocation — taunting her, bullying her, starting a fight with her outside of training exercises, etc. — can now result in immediate expulsion. There has only been one case where this is not so. Let us just say that it involved the simulators, the reincarnation of the Greek god of the underworld and two hackers. Greek God has issues and wasn't expelled. Those who set it up, however...
  • Most of the "Class X Entity" students fall under this — Fey, for example, is a Wiz-7 — a mutant/mage so powerful that her special order says that the corrupt Mutant Control Office has pre-approval to use lethal force on her if she gets out of line.
  • A large part of why Generator and Shroud (both of whom are Jade Sinclair) is Cute and Psycho comes from a series of Break the Cutie moments from bullies who expected her to be an easy target. The result of this made her in some ways more dangerous than many who punch at much higher weight class, simply because she ended up getting creative with her powers.
  • Pointed out to Carl, after he provoked the former top Ultraviolent: "First it's you getting mixed up with demon-girl, then you aggravate Merry, and now you can't leave the giant clawed, spined mutant kid who tears the demons apart like a wolf in a chicken hatchery alone? When will you learn?" Minutes after this admonition, Carl taunts said "spined mutant kid" ^note  that being Razorback, who had been the top-ranked Ultraviolent in his first year at Whateley due in combination to being Class-3 Rager and unable to talk to people, and so had no easy way to warn off someone who was doing something which might set him off again, resulting in a beatdown ending with the loss of a femur.
  • How about Gotterdammerung? He's a skinny, cute kid who gets picked on a lot. His power is mass disintegration. The toughs know he isn't going to kill them, so he's easy to bully, but would you really want to be the one he finally turns his power on if he snaps?
    • This applies to Folder as well; too many bullies thought that since he was an Actual Pacifist, it gave them the green light to torment him with total disregard to how they were courting a very nasty sort of Forced Transformation if he went off the deep end.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • In Lord of Chaos, the Aes Sedai attempt to "tame" Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn by kidnapping him and transporting him inside a wooden chest, freeing him from imprisonment only for daily abuse. This, despite the knowledge that the Dragon Reborn is the Reincarnation of the most powerful male channeller known to history, and the legends stating that only he can prevent The End of the World as We Know It (albeit by breaking it). The reason they do this, however is that one of them is a Black Ajah, working for the other side, who manipulates the others into following a course of action that could drive Rand insane.
  • Cadsuane Melaidhrin passive-aggressively bullies Rand and pretty much everyone else in the series. Finally gets called out for it by Rand's father.
• In White Fang the dog packs that dare to bully White Fang, who is more wolf than dog, end up mauled and killed.
• Worm:
  • When Skitter turns herself in to the authorities and the officials interrogating her push her into retaliating. The results aren't pretty. Two people die. One of the PRT directors, and Alexandria, who finds out that being invulnerable/invincible doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to breathe.
  • And again later, when meeting some of the Wards and Protectorate, Weaver gets mocked by Jouster, the captain of the New York Wards. Clockblocker finds this amusing.
    Jouster: A lot of hassle for a little girl.
    [Clockblocker starts chuckling]
    Jouster: What?
    Hoyden: She beat Alexandria. He's laughing because you're putting down the girl who killed Alexandria.

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