The yanking of proverbial dogs' chains in Literature.
- Happens in Animorphs to Tobias, mode-locked as a hawk but able to become human if he gives up morphing forever. His distant cousin has flown in from Africa and wants to take care of him. He can finally have a real family, stop eating roadkill and have a proper relationship with Rachel. He can have a normal life! This is awesome! No, it's not. That cousin is Visser Three. In morph. He's trying to kill him.
- Everything will be going well by the end of an Aubrey-Maturin book only for everything to be mediocre at best by the start of the next.
- Happens hard to Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones. His wife dies unexpectedly, taking their unborn baby with her, leaving him alone and broken, unable even to work. Eventually, he discovers that returning to their summer home in western Maine holds the key to turning his life around, one way or another. Immediately, he meets the young, beautiful Mattie Devore and her daughter, Kyra. Thanks to them, he finally finds purpose in his life. He starts writing again. Mattie even reciprocates his unspoken feelings for her. Romance and redemption are all but certain. Then, Mattie is murdered right in front of him, the ghosts in his house come to life and try to kill Kyra, Mike gives up on writing forever, and the book ends with him still alone and engaged in a bitter battle to obtain custody of Kyra.
- The discovery of a later will at the end of Bleak House leads us to believe that Richard and Ada will live Happily Ever After. Unfortunately, it turns out that the entire inheritance has gone into paying for the long-running court case. Although Richard is at last free of his obsession with winning the case, it is only so that he can die as himself. Overworked and ill, he is killed by the shock of losing the estate.
- In the Book of Jonah, God grows a plant to provide His prophet shade. Then during that night He kills the plant and summons a hot wind to daze Jonah with heat. It turns out to be a Secret Test of Character; Jonah weeps that the plant is dead, but is fine with letting the Ninevites all be killed, which God finds terrible of him.
- Discworld
- Rincewind has had this happen to him enough times that now he expects it. It has now gotten to the point that if anything good happens to him he will more or less panic until the other shoe drops. This is wonderfully lampshaded in "Run Rincewind Run!"
- In continuing to play with it, Sam Vimes believes he doesn't deserve his good fortune and lives in fear of this trope happening to him.
- The Dresden Files:
- The series has several of these as a running theme: Harry will always be behind on the rent, even if his secret half-brother comes from a rich family; the masquerade will always go on; things will always get in the way of his relationship with Murphy; etc.
- A really blatant example comes in the fourth book. Harry's One True Love Susan has been (almost) turned into a vampire, and throughout the book he is deeply depressed and completely obsessed with looking for a cure for vampirism, never mind the fact that all reputable sources tell him it's impossible. While investigating something unrelated, one of the nigh-godlike Faerie Queenes herself gives Harry a Deus ex Machina that can supposedly undo any enchantment at all. It's intended for use in the main plot, but Harry hopes to solve his current assignment by some more simpler means and save the Deus ex Machina for Susan. It gets taken from him after five minutes.
- Happens again in Changes. Harry, having long since given up on finding a way to cure Susan, is taken aback when the Leanansidhe hits her with a spell that temporarily pacifies her Vampiric nature. Since the spell as-used was designed to render her unconscious briefly, it's no good in it's current form, but Harry thinks with enough time and effort he might could tweak it into a permanent solution, and for the first time in years he has hope that Susan may one day get to live a normal life again. Although the events of the plot demand his immediate attention, he resolves to look into it further once things calm down. He never gets the chance, because Susan dies during the book's climax.
- Another vicious example came in Turn Coat for not just Harry. Since the events of Death Masks, Harry hasn't had a girlfriend or any romantic involvement for nearly five years. Then, at the end of Small Favor, he starts dating Luccio in her younger body. They're both happy together, especially Luccio, because she's spent nearly a century without experiencing romantic interest or a sex drive. Darned wizardly extended lives. Then in Turn Coat it turns out Luccio was being mind-controlled into being attracted to Harry by the traitor in the Council. ....well, shit.
- In Changes, after spending the entire book having one bad thing happen after another, it finally looks like Harry and Murphy might get together. Then 20 minutes before Murphy is supposed to show, Harry gets shot dead.
- Interestingly, though, the trope is downplayed in that it is fairly clearly indicated that this whole, huge chain of disasters was derived in large part from various bad choices made by Harry, Susan, etc, it could have been prevented...and better choices in the future could produce better results. The Archangel Uriel seems to be trying very hard, as much as he can with the rules that bind him, to teach Harry to grasp this.
- The short story "Day Off". Harry finally gets a day off, and is promptly challenged to a magical duel at 1 AM on that day. It goes downhill from there. The whole thing is Played for Laughs.
- Mack Bolan, The Executioner, eventually had things going pretty well for him. He's working for the government, so the cops aren't after him all the time, he's got a whole group of soldiers sharing his new mission, and he's got a girl he dearly loves. Then the KGB shoots up his headquarters and blows her to hell.
- Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life. The entire book consists of nothing but this and is the most relentlessly depressing book ever. Even at the end of the book, where something finally goes right, not seconds later he and his love interest both drown at sea.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Pettigrew's been outed as guilty and is being turned in! They're going to prove Sirius' innocence! And then Harry can leave the horrible, abusive Dursleys and live with his godfather! Everything's going to be fantastic, everything's going fine, and, say, is that the full moon?... and didn't they just learn Lupin was a werewolf?... aw, shit.
- I Am Not a Serial Killer crosses this with Character Development and Hope Spot to truly heartbreaking effect. After years of miserable loneliness, the universe seems to give John a break-he falls unexpectedly for the local Good Bad Girl and she gives him a rare taste of ease and connection. She becomes a casualty of the Serial Killer he brought to town, and he spends the next book trying to escape the pull of a sanity-shattering Despair Event Horizon as a result.
- The whole point of a story by Jerome K. Jerome "In Remembrance of John Ingerfield and of Anne, his Wife".
- The title character in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre finally gets to the altar with her employer/true love Rochester when it is revealed that Rochester is already married to a mad woman he's got locked in the attic, and the wedding is canceled.
- The whole point of the short story La torture par l'esperance
(The Torture of Hope) by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam is that yanking the dog's chain is the most sadistic form of torture. - It happens repeatedly to the protagonist of Master of the Five Magics: each time he risks it all to learn of a new kind of magic, a rival swoops in and gloms all the profits, leaving him with nothing but a clue to the next style of magic-use.
- A Murder Is Announced: Charlotte Blacklock suffers from a goitre, which her overbearing father refuses to let her have surgically repaired. When he passes away, it looks like things will finally get better: her sister Letitia takes her to Switzerland to have the procedure, and Letitia's former employer has left a large fortune in trust for her to share with Charlotte, just as soon as his frail and sickly wife dies (and the sisters are quite willing to wait as long as it takes for nature to take its course there). Life is sweet, right? Wrong. Letitia unexpectedly dies while Belle Goedler is still alive, so Charlotte will get nothing. You can hardly blame her for deciding Charlotte should be the one who's died, and she'll live the rest of her life as Letitia.
- Swedish writer Simona Ahrnstedt does this in her debut novel Överenskommelser. Beatrice and Seth, the two protagonists, have what can only be described as a really hot date. Surely they will sort things out now, after eight months of misunderstandings? Surely now Beatrice won't have to marry Rosenschiöld (who's like forty years older than her and treats women like dirt), to whom she was forced to get engaged? But alas, not only does she have a tyrannical uncle, but she also has a sadistic sociopath for a cousin, who now makes sure that she's separated from Seth. Cue a whole year of more misery for Beatrice...
- Red Dwarf: In Better Than Life, as Rimmer's learning that he's been stuck in a Lotus-Eater Machine, he decides to stick it out because, hey, it is better than his actual life. His fantasy wife, who until now has been a volatile, self-absorbed rage machine, shows up and says she loves him, always has and always will, and has now had personality surgery to make herself a better person. At which point Rimmer is arrested, and it turns out the surgery was the last of his wife's money. Turns out Rimmer's subconscious despises him, and this was the gearing up before the metaphorical crotch kick with an iron boot.
- This trope becomes common with the Baudelaires in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events series. There are times in the series where it appears Violet, Klaus and Sunny are going to catch a break, but then Lemony Snicket crushes all your hopes.
- The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Hemingway is such an example.
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Arya Stark manages to make several daring escapes from different captors, but is always kidnapped by someone new shortly thereafter. And she is finally brought back to her family... just in time for the Red Wedding.
- Her sister Sansa, after being held captive and abused for a year, is finally going to be taken away by some friendly people to marry a great guy... Then her captors, the Lannisters, find out and force her to marry one of them instead, a terribly ugly dwarf. Tyrion's actually a decent person, but Sansa hates his whole family because of what happened to her father. And now it's apparently in the process of happening again. Stupid Stockholm Syndrome Genre Blindness.
- Ramsay Snow is ever so fond of invoking this trope with his human playthings (when he's not yanking them around on a chain like a dog, that is). It's a way of teaching them helplessness and inducing Stockholm Syndrome. He lets them think a servant or fellow prisoner has taken pity on them and decided to help them escape... then he hunts them down with a pack of dogs, kills the confidante, and removes a couple of minor body parts as punishment. After one or two of these, they start panicking at the very idea of trying to escape.
- In Space Marine Battles, things seem to be going well for the slave rebellion as they manage to win a bit and gain some long-lost freedom. But alas, they have the misfortune of living in a Crapsack World and the Iron Warriors are quick to crush the insurrection, which gets worse when an Ork WAAAGH! attacks the planet in full force (at least the leading rebel gets his revenge on the Iron Warrior that tormented him the most).
- The evening before Helen realizes her husband is having an affair in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, she hears two of his friends complaining how "that woman" is civilizing and moralizing him — and she gets an unexpectedly affectionate welcome when she surprises him outside. Then she learns that he thought she was someone else, and "that woman" is the Other Woman.
- Trapped on Draconica: Kalak is introduced as the last Leondian and mid-book he discovers that 300 of his fellows, including his sister, survived their kingdom's fall. Shortly afterward They're all killed and he's the last again.
- The B-plot of every Travis McGee novel, with the exception of the books where it's the A-plot.
- Vanas Heritage: After all her struggle beforehand, Nirvy is finally happy and with her friends. Then shit hits the fan.
- In Charlotte Bronte's claustrophobic Villette, the perpetually unhappy heroine Lucy has fallen in love with and become engaged to fellow-teacher M. Paul, only it is revealed ambiguously in the last few pages that Paul probably died in a shipwreck before they could be married. And Charlotte considered this a happy ending — for M. Paul that is. Which you may be inclined to agree if you've read the book: life with a passive-aggressive depressive like Lucy Snow is a fate no man should suffer.
