In the Amtrak Wars series, Steve Brickman demonstrates his Mute disguise by washing the bodypaint off his finger and raising it to be examined by the Shogun's herald, Toshiro Hase-Gawa. Given the Iron Masters taste for Cold-Blooded Torture, it's fortunate that Toshiro doesn't understand the meaning of the gesture.
Mentioned in one Dave Barry column, about the hazards of driving with a small child who expects you to perform children's songs while driving with all the associated gestures:
But the worst song, from a driving standpoint, is Where is Thumbkin? This is the one where you sing about, and display one at a time, the various fingers on your hand: Thumbkin, Ring Man, Pointer, etc. As you can imagine, this can create misunderstandings in traffic when your fellow motorists see you holding up Tall Man. I live in Miami, a heavily armed area, and I'm concerned that one of these days, some stressed-out driver is going to see me displaying Tall Man, and he's going to respond with: Trigger Man.
In The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar, David, in the middle of helping a group of friends pull a prank on an elderly woman reputed to be a witch, flips her the bird. This results in the woman pronouncing a "curse" on David.
In Changes, Harry Dresden is jumped at by a monster, so he activates his shield — while flipping the monster off at the same time.
This might be what is meant by "vulgar gesture" in A Court of Thorns and Roses. The problem is the "vulgar gesture" is never once described, it just comes up as though the reader is just supposed to know what "vulgar gesture" means.
The novelization of Crimson Tide features a scene that probably should have made it into the movie. As USS Alabama leaves Puget Sound, Washington on the surface, Captain Ramsay observes that "Now is as good a time as any to wave goodbye to Ivan." Ramsay and the rest of the bridge watch immediately look straight up and flip the bird at the Russian surveillance satellite that they expect to be watching them. Ramsay then gives the order to clear the bridge and dive the boat.
In Interesting Times, it is mentioned obliquely that the upturned middle finger is the gesture used in demon banishing spells, which Rincewind uses to test his control of an army of clay soldiers: "Seven thousand terracotta middle fingers stabbed toward the ceiling."
In Thief of Time the Fifth of the Four hints at his identity by showing Lu-Tze a hand with one finger raised and asking "Do you know what this is?" Lu-Tze replies "It's not a friendly gesture" which the Fifth calls "a superficial interpretation".
In the illustrated book The Last Hero, one of Paul Kidby's paintings is a Sistine Steal with Blind Io, the Disc's Top God, reaching to Cohen the Barbarian, and Cohen ... indicating his opinion of gods.
Well, the equivalent in The Divine Comedy's medieval setting: One damned soul curses God and gives Him "the figs"note a clenched fist with the thumb sticking out between the index and middle fingers, simulating female genitalia with both hands.
In Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless, in which Dogbert offers his own unique take on manners in modern society, he claims that if someone cuts you off in traffic you have the right to run them off the road to their deaths. Illustrated by a little old lady slamming a guy off the road as he tries to cut her off. The little old lady then flips the bird, which is censored by Dogbert who says that it's still considered rude to make the "I'm Number One" gesture afterwards.
Dream Park: Performed by a cleaning robot in The California Voodoo Game, in which the machine has been disguised as a cyborg octopus (long story) and sent to hinder S.J. Waters' crawl through a ventilation duct. The machine has no voice synthesizer, so the Game Master uses this robot's hologram-illusion tentacles to express its defiance after S.J. cripples it in hand-to-pincer combat.
A few of Simon R. Green's novels feature supernaturally inclined characters who, after others make the sign of the cross at them, respond non-verbally with "the sign of the extremely cross".
In Halo: Ghosts of Onyx Kelly flips off a Sentinel drone to distract it while her team sets up an attack.
In Harmonic Feedback, Naomi flips off Justin for telling her to stop blowing off band practice.
The V-sign is obliquely referred to in Harry Potter, where it is always referred to as an "obscene hand gesture" so as not to give the children any ideas. Of course, as pointed out at the top of the page, the gesture can differ depending on your country; so this gets the point across without being overly specific (and potentially confusing to those who don't know the sign differs).
The most direct reference to it being the V-sign is in Half-Blood Prince, in which Mrs. Weasley threatens to jinx Ron's fingers together if she sees him doing it again.
This is almost certainly true in Britain; of course, given the worldwide release nature of the book and the Darker and Edgier tone of the later books, it's possible that Rowling (or at least the translators) purposely left the gesture up to interpretation so each country's readers could insert their own analogous gesture.
Indexing: Sloan does it to Henry in the first chapter of each book, as part of their banter.
During the sequel this gesture is used by Second Skeleton to show his distaste to others because he lacks both vocal cords and expressive facial muscles.
When an ordercrafter was threatening Annala, Tasio appeared and waved to her. Then he retracted four of his fingers and waved to the ordercrafter. The ordercrafter backed down.
In May the Best Man Win, Sol flips of Lukas for making a campaign video that features footage of Jeremy before he transitioned to male.
In Myth-inc Link, Skeeve and his friends receive a Finger in the Mail from the Queen of Possiltum. Tananda deduces that it was sent as a message, along the lines of this trope.
In Newsflesh, Shaun is rather prone to directing this gesture, single-handed or in stereo, at security cameras, while Becks tends to use it as a conversational response to Shaun. Maggie comments in her blog "I make the following statement, which comes from my heart, my soul, and my middle fingers", aimed at their adversaries.
In A Night in the Lonesome October, Snuff the dog is the familiar of a wizard who keeps a shapeshifting Thing imprisoned in a magic circle. The Thing in the Circle tries to get free using a Shapeshifting Seducer attempt, but Snuff doesn't go for it.
The Thing in the Circle gave me the paw as I left, and it's hard to turn your leg that way.
In The Nowhere Girls, a girl tells her friend "Don't get too close to the freak table" as they walk past Rosina, Erin, and Grace's table. Rosina flips them off and says, "Fuck off, pod people."
In Plum Spooky, Stephanie comments "getting and giving the finger is a way of life in Jersey". She does, however, find it a bit odd to be getting this gesture from a pet monkey she's babysitting.
When Prudence is planning to cut school in 17 Marigold Lane, she flips a group of gossiping students the double bird and says, "Suck it, Flintlock High!"
In 19 Marigold Lane, Cassius gets in a fight with some reporters who were harassing him. As the reporters drive away, one of them leans out of his van and flips off Cassius and Prudence. They both flip him off. They all keep their middle fingers out until the van is out of sight.
Return of the Runebound Professor: Noah is highly unimpressed by the immense stack of paperwork he has to fill out before being permitted to leave the city while under investigation.
Noah: How are these even slightly relevant? They're asking me the length of my forearm. Why would I know that? I'll show them the length of my middle finger instead.
In The Reynard Cycle, Arcasian characters (especially the rougher sort) are described "flashing their fingers" when perturbed. It's highly implied that they are making the V-sign.
The Roosevelt: In Carry the Ocean, Emmet and David get in a fight, during which Emmet punches David. After they make up, David feels like he deserved it and tells Emmet to punch him again when he's being an asshole. Emmet doesn't want to and suggests that they come up with a gesture instead. David points out that there's already a perfectly good gesture to tell people they're being assholes. Emmet agrees to flip him off when necessary.
In Rubbernecker, the anatomy students play around with the tendons in the cadaver's wrist to make different gestures. Scott makes the cadaver flip Meg off.
The original novella for The Running Man by Richard Bachman ends with the hero presenting the double-deuce to his enemy while performing a suicide attack via jumbo jet, aimed at his enemy's skyscraper headquarters. He had earlier flipped off the camera in an image used to present him to the viewing audience.
In Shadow of the Conqueror, after Daylen warns Sain that he'll know if Sain sets a foot out of line, Sain flips him off when his back is turned. Daylen, of course, immediately forgives him.
"I can read your mind," he said darkly. "You only have three ideas, and all of them are wrong." "Huh?" Mace nipped up a thumb. "You think being armed and ruthless means you can do whatever you want." He folded his thumb and flipped up his forefinger. "You think nobody will stand up to you when they're naked." He folded that one again and flipped up the next. "And you think you're going to look inside my bag."
And if one needs reminding, the character saying/doing this is played by Samuel L. Jackson.
Kaz in Six of Crows responds to Jesper with "a time-saving gesture that relied heavily on his middle finger".
In Ken Kesey's Sometimes A Great Notion, the protagonist displays his late father's amputated arm from a pole atop his house, with all the fingers save the middle one tied down, as a gesture of defiance against the union loggers with whom he's feuding.
Near the end of Somewhither Ilya does it to the High Astrologer. In front of his boss, who is visibly amused.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya lists a number of things she's learned in Braavos, including obscene gestures such as "the fig."
Stim: During Robert's hypomanic episode, he carelessly drives his moped and almost gets hit by a car. The driver honks. Robert flips him off and drives away.
Surfacing (1972): Anna does this in response to being made to do a nude scene for their film reel.
In Underdogs, bratty teen assassin Oliver Roth is fond of doing this. In Tooth and Nail, he gives Marshall the double finger while Marshall is walking away from him. Later, he flips off Ewan after locking him in a burning chamber.
Underground: Robyn's response to Andrew telling her she should eat more is to give him the finger.
In The Wise Man's Fear, Kvothe has been trying to connect with Tempi, a mercenary teammate from the Adem culture, whose language incorporates a lot of very specific and little-known hand gestures. The two stop at a tavern and accidentally start a bar fight, and one of the patrons makes a gesture "that you didn't need to be Adem to understand", and then jumps them. Tempi makes short work of both the patron and their crew.
In A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, it's Ellen DeMarco's response to one of the Bearpaw Lake workers faking a drowning so he could get her to do mouth-to-mouth on him.
: Noah is highly unimpressed by the immense stack of paperwork he has to fill out before being permitted to leave the city while under investigation.Noah: How are these even slightly relevant? They're asking me the length of my forearm. Why would I know that? I'll show them the length of my middle finger instead.