"Shaggy Dog" Stories in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Legacy of the Red Sun: Small one. In a bit of dialogue, Han tells how he let a Wookie named Chewbacca free when he was told to skin him, but didn't go on the run with him. He later found out that Chewbacca had been killed in the street.
- The ending of The Story to End All Stories is somewhat anticlimactic as it turns out that the Nothing isn't as much of a threat as it's made out to be.
- The Trajectory Of Laughter: Future Miyuki wanted to play for Sawamura, so he elected for a surgery that ultimately proved to be fatal.
- Alternate Worlds: Najenda observes that even if Tatsumi bent over backwards desperately trying to please Esdeath, she's sadistic enough that she'd eventually destroy his village anyway, purely for the hell of it.
- Sasha and the Frogs: Chapter 5 revolves around Sasha and the Plantars' efforts to make pizza. which culminate in all the ingredients they gathered falling into the tomato plant monster's stomach acid. Sasha is understandably less than thrilled with this outcome.
- In the fancomic The New Twelve Labors of Heracles
, Jason buys a Holy Grail from fBay and charges it by having Heracles recreate his twelve labors, which will give Heracles enough strength to battle Zeus in the Lostbelts. At the end of the labors, the grail only had enough power to create a single Saint Quartz... which Jason pockets despite the frustration.
- An Eagle Among Lions: After everything Seteth and Flayn go through in order to go into hiding, they get attacked by the Hurricane King's henchmen, forcing them to struggle their way back to Garreg Mach as they try to fend off their pursuers as best they can, knowing that the Hurricane King and Thales are waiting for them there.
- Alexandra Quick: During Deathly Regiment, Alex learns that she might be able to use a Time-Turner to go back and save Max's life, as, her sister Valeria is a Historicist who owns one, and both she and Alex go to Roanoke during the holidays. So Alex steals the Time-Turner, returns to Charmbridge and goes down into the basement... and is knocked out by somebody wielding a wand, resulting in the Time-Turner getting confiscated, Valeria getting into serious trouble, and Alex missing her chance. That said, it's pointed out that successfully traveling back in time would've meant having to find some way of living undetected for six months.
- After several convoluted plans involving multiple fidelius charms, polyjuice, and learning the lost art of scrying to steal the Philosopher's Stone in Dodging Prison & Stealing Witches, Harry learns it's a fake from a prerecorded message triggered by the stone moving too far from the Mirror of Erised.
- Chapter 18 of Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. Hans Belsen, basically an Expy of Josef Mengele, shows up to the school because he wants to torture children. When Neville and Jack Sloper insult him later that chapter, he immediately leaves the school instead of, you know, torturing them."BAM! Other side of his face goes, and Alecto was so furious, she kicked him out of the class. Said he had lost the privilege of learning from Belsen. So that's when I raised my hand and asked if I could lose the privilege too, and Belsen just gave the whole class this long look, looked back at Alecto, and told her that he had been under the impression the teachers controlled Hogwarts, not the students, and he left." — Jack Sloper describing the surprisingly quick defeat of Nazi torturers.
- Princess of the Blacks: Narcissa refuses to divorce Lucius because she wants to remain Draco's legal guardian. After Lucius dies under suspicious circumstances, Draco dissolves the marriage himself, rendering her efforts effectively useless.
- Wish Carefully: The possibility of one is teased, as Lucius notes that Harry Potter hasn't appeared in public for years and might have died of natural causes. If this is in fact the case, that further reduces the chances of their desperate plans to overthrow Voldemort ever succeeding.
- A Thing of Vikings: Played With through Kerr's story. A thrall from the town Mildew controls, Kerr spends several chapters fleeing for his life, finally making it to a village that's regularly visited by dragons... only for Dagur to catch and murder him, slaughtering and enslaving the whole place to Leave No Witnesses. However, this results in a boy from that village becoming part of Mac Bethad's court, while Berk sends an assassin after Dagur. Eventually, Chekhov's Gun goes off when Mac Bethad, convinced that Berk already knows that he sponsored Mildew, schemes to kidnap Hiccup, Astrid and Wulfhild while they're visiting and hold them hostage. The boy from the village warns them, and they learn that Dagur and his forces are currently in Mac Bethad's castle.
- In The New Adventures of Invader Zim, Dib spends all of Episode 5 trying to retrieve the journal of Abraham Van Helsing, hoping that it'll contain information he can use against Norlock. After fighting his way through various death traps, he ultimately finds out that the journal is useless, just containing random ramblings.
- Finding A Loud: While the existence of the show makes it a Foregone Conclusion that Lincoln will get adopted by the Louds, it's also clear that his deep-rooted insecurities will return despite all his efforts to conquer them... and he'll have even more sisters to compare himself to.
- Hop to It plays with this during the Beacon Arc. After Rabbit recovers the Beacon, she ignores the order to destroy it, attempting instead to use it to find other kwamis without alerting Hawk Moth. This reveals that any kwami bound to a Miraculous cannot leave it or their holder... which confirms to her that all of the remaining kwami do have holders, and that the Mantis, Firefly and Dragonfly holders have arrived in Paris. Then it turns out that this is exactly what Omega wanted her to do.
- The Lament Series (ChaoticNeutral): Chloé's Lament sees her teaming up with Hawkmoth as Miracle Queen, then successfully backstabbing him to take control of the whole operation with her Mind Control wasps. But she finds her victory over Ladybug unsatisfying, since the ensorcelled Marinette can't even react to her Evil Gloating, and Adrien rejects her offer to rule by her side, revealing just how much her peers hate her and declaring that he regrets all the time he spent defending her, having realized too late just how self-absorbed she was all along. She angrily makes a Wish on the stolen Miraculi to have Marinette's life, expecting the world to be rewritten so that she becomes Paris' beloved protector while Marinette winds up a despised Alpha Bitch. Unfortunately for her, both girls retain their usual personalities, so Chloé's Wish not only negates her victory, it leaves her worse off than before; her father's no longer the Mayor, meaning she's no longer protected from the consequences of her actions by his wealth and connections.
- Juxtapose:
- Class 1-A spends the entire Sports Festival trying to guess what Izuku's Quirk was. At the very end, he straight up tells everyone.
- After spending years trying to groom Mirio into the perfect successor for One For All, Sir Nighteye ultimately agrees with Toshinori's decision to name Izuku his successor after seeing him restore the value All Might placed in "Toshinori Yagi" and opening a path for All Might to peacefully retire.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Beneath The Sun's Surface: All of Twilight's efforts investigating the accident Princess Celestia's flight suffered are ultimately rendered unnecessary after Cloud Drop pulls a Heel–Face Turn. She even complains about this.
- The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: In the sequel, Picking Up the Pieces, the group's trip to the Griffish Isles to find Wind Breaker's mother... which ends in them not only not finding her, but after five days of travel to get to the griffon they think might be her, they find she has the wrong color eyes and has just received a letter that will reunite her with her real son. To top it off, once they get back to Canterlot, Rex does some of his own work... and discovers Wind had blood family there all along, in the form of his grandmother Hush Tone, a relationship which neither of them knew about until Rex's DNA tracker revealed it.
- Not the Same tells the story of Spike and Rarity's relationship, and the way everypony tries to separate them because a dragon can't date a pony. Throughout the fic, hints are dropped that Rarity's behavior has been unusual, which culminate when, after Spike manages to get everypony to accept the love he and Rarity had, it turns out she was a changeling, and the real Rarity had been away for a while. Spike then is tempted into continuing his relationship with changeling!Rarity, but he chooses to free the real Rarity instead, but since the whole thing had been part of the changeling's spell, he's not in with Rarity anymore. The fic ends with Twilight trying to comfort Spike as he wonders what was the point of all the suffering he went through, unable to answer his question.
- Team 7's Ascension has Kakashi attempt to get back to Konoha as quickly as possible after hearing about Suna's betrayal. His efforts culminate in him losing his Sharingan before he's captured.
- In the Junior Officers chapter "Kitsune Fox in Hat Trouble", Kitsune searches the Octopod looking for a missing hat. Turns out the hat wasn't missing; Tunip had taken it without Kitsune seeing and given it to Shellington.
- In Don't Be An Impel Down-er, the Self-Insert is born to a prisoner in Level Six of Impel Down. For the crime of "Being Born", he's sentenced to fifty years in prison, less with good behavior. After seventeen years of being a model prisoner, even getting a decade taken off his sentence, Prisoner 10013 is informed that the higher ups changed their minds and his is now a life sentence. Warden Magellan, the one to inform him, allows Prisoner 10013 to step outside and see the sky for the first time before he has to go back to his cell. Subverted when a Cipher Pol agent comes to offer him a job in exchange for release from Impel Down.
- In This Bites!, for all the crew's efforts, Merry's keel still snapped, meaning she's still doomed.
- But... in the end, Cross found a way to save her, though she'll no longer be the ship of the Straw-Hats.
- A Game of Vengeance and Justice: Daenerys' whole character arc is filled with these. Her anti-slavery campaign? Fails after losing two of her dragons to Euron, both of whom are killed off. Her invasion of Westeros? Crippled by a lack of support from any of Westeros' lords, as she's repeatedly outplayed and outmaneuvered by other factions. Ultimately, she and her entourage get butchered in a fashion much like the Red Wedding, with her body unceremoniously tossed into a nearby river.
- Queen Cersei still found a way to kill King Robert in No One's Pawn, despite Lancel Lannister refusing to be the triggerman.
- A Dash of Logic: In "Atlantis Squarepantis", none of the cast can carry a tune well enough to fuel the magical Atlantean bus — in fact, their efforts cause it to start falling apart. Squidward kicks the trunk in a fit of rage, which gets it running — only for it to fly off towards Atlantis without any passengers. The others then chase after him, wielding Torches and Pitchforks.
- In Old Man Henderson, the eponymous character starts a crusade of revenge against the local cult of Hastur that results in the destruction of both that cult and the local cult of Cthulhu, as well as the deaths of countless members of both cults, all but two of Henderson's allies, a good half-dozen or so other player characters (the majority of which owned by the same player), Hastur, and Old Man Henderson himself, all because he thought the cult stole his lawn gnomes. At the end, however, as Hastur and Old Man Henderson lay dying, Hastur informs him that the cult never stole his gnomes, Henderson had donated them to charity, then got high and forgot about it. Henderson apologizes for "overreacting".
- In Being Dead Ain't Easy, after spending two and a half hours moving Kaiba's chair across the room and spinning it to where he can sit down, Joey realizes that not only could he have sat on the bed and not wasted so much energy, he'll have to move the chair back before Kaiba wakes up in three hours.
Other/Miscellaneous
- Amazing Man, a short story by Eneasz Brodski, is about a Superman Substitute who finally got fed up with all those puny earthlings, especially the reporters who insisted on slandering him, and decided that the only way to make the world a better place was to rule it himself. "It's about ethics in superhero journalism!"
