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Moving the Goalposts
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Alice and Bob make a deal. However, Alice has much more power than Bob, because Bob is really desperate for whatever Alice is offering, and will do whatever it takes to get it. Alice ends up abusing this power badly, reneging on the initial agreement and making a seemingly endless series of demands on Bob without ever keeping her end of the bargain. Each time Bob fulfills her requirements, she simply adds another one. If he protests, she threatens to withdraw her offer entirely. For example, Bob wants a promotion. Alice, his boss, says that he'll be promoted if he succeeds in closing a particularly important deal. Bob lands the deal... but Alice tells him that, though it was impressive, the deal didn't bring in as much money as she predicted, so Bob needs to bring in a couple of big clients. Bob does... and then Alice tells him that he hasn't attended an important course, and he needs to complete the course before he's eligible for promotion. And on and on it goes, with Alice continually changing the requirements needed for the promotion so that Bob will never be able to obtain it. Alice is Moving the Goalposts. The trope name comes from a British idiom in which a hypothetical football/soccer player is told he has to score a goal from a certain spot on the pitch. But after he scores, the goalposts are moved further away, the player is told that the first goal didn't count, and now he has to score again. Essentially, it's changing the previously-set standards for something after those standards have already been met. This set up can end in a number of ways in fiction. Sometimes, just to add insult to injury, Alice will manipulate Bob until she gets bored or has everything she needs, then tells Bob "sorry, but it'll never happen" (e.g. someone else has already been given the promotion that Bob's been chasing all this time). Sometimes this will result in a Freak Out and some well-deserved retribution. Alternatively, Alice will develop a conscience (or a third party will hammer one in) and she'll finally live up to her promise. A third option is that Bob will realize what Alice is up to and call the whole thing a wash, choosing to walk away (usually with a few choice words for Alice in the process — ironically, that may lead to Alice finally letting Bob have the now-worthless bargaining chip). In Fairy Tales, the king setting Impossible Tasks may eventually decide it's not worth it. But usually, one of the tasks backfires on him badly. There's also a Blackmail version of this trope, where the powerful party keeps his word — more or less — but makes it clear that he could change his mind at any time. Murder mysteries that involve the death of a blackmailer usually cite this as a motive: the blackmailer made an initial demand that was met, but soon realized that they had their victim trapped, and kept making additional demands until the victim decided the only way to get free was to kill their tormentor. Military/political agreements where one force is stronger than the other often have this connotation to them: a one-off favor might be used to bully the weaker country or politician into supporting the stronger, whether they like it or not. Indeed, it can be a problem with any Leonine Contract. The effect on the viewer depends on whose side they're on. If they like the weaker partner of the deal, it can be hugely frustrating to see them strung along like this. If their sympathies lie with the more powerful half, though, it can be used as slapstick humor. If the roles are usually reversed (Bob is Alice's boss, for example), it can be used to give a bossy or overbearing character their comeuppance. On the odd occasion, Alice might have genuinely good intentions. Maybe Bob wants Alice to introduce him to Alice's pretty coworker, who Alice knows is a Manipulative Bitch and a Gold Digger, so she tries to deter Bob from the girl without saying outright that she's bad news because she knows Bob wouldn't believe her. There also exists a situation that looks like this, but isn't: the proposed item fulfills the stated requirements, but not the unstated ones. For example, offering a reward for the head of a Gunslinger, but forgetting to add "unattached to his body". Or asking for a polite courtier, and getting one who delights in stealth insults and backhanded compliments. "Moving the goal posts" can also be used to describe a debate fallacy. In this scenario, essentially Alice will make a point and/or demand evidence to counter Bob's argument. Bob provides evidence or a counter argument to Alice's original argument. Alice then dismisses the evidence and/or demands further evidence on grounds which were not mentioned in the original point and which may only be tangentially linked to Alice's original point. For example, Alice claims that there's no product that easily kills fleas on cats. Bob directs her to a product which does so, only for Alice to then dismiss Bob's point by claiming that the product in question doesn't kill fleas on cats and on dogs. Although it should be added that non-fallacious "goalpost moving" exists, when the original standard is realized to be incomplete in some way; to expand on the above example, Alice would be a lot more justified in her objection if she dismissed Bob's claim because the product in question killed both the fleas and the cat. Compare Taking Advantage of Generosity. Can overlap with Social Darwinism. Contrast Sharpshooter Fallacy, when the goalposts are moved to favour an argument instead of debunking it. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics may be used as a tool to move the goalposts. A possible reason the victim keeps coming back and trying again is the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Compare and contrast There Will Be Cake. I Lied is the even more shameless version. Certain character types, like the Bad Boss who always has one last task for their employees to do before they get a "favor" that they had earned anyway, are particularly prone to this trope. See also Win Your Freedom, Obvious Rule Patch, No True Scotsman. In video games, this may take the form of a Disc-One Final Boss or Disc-One Final Dungeon: what is presented like the final challenge of the game isn't. Sadly, not only Truth in Television, but a common tactic employed by those running a 419 Scam. Examples |
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Happy Days featured a later episode where Joanie and Jenny Piccolo were trying to join a sorority-type club called the Rydells. The group wanted Joanie as a member, but not Jenny, so Joanie was given a simple task (get a phone book), while Jenny was given an Impossible Task (memorize every number in the book). When Jenny actually managed to complete her task, they came up with another Impossible Task for her: stealing a statue from the park. | |
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In Samurai Jack, Scaramouche is reduced to a bouncing head and is told by a ship guard "No shirt, no shoes, no body, NO SERVICE". So he comes back pretending to have a dog's body, only for the sign to suddenly say "No shirt, no shoes, no body, no dogs, NO SERVICE". | |
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An episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with shades of Very Special Episode had Will and Carlton pledging for a fraternity. The leader takes an instant dislike to Carlton (as he's from a well off family which the leader considers as a sell out) and begins singling him out by making the tasks specifically difficult for him. Will tries to tell Carlton that he shouldn't let them treat him like this but Carlton pushes through them all because he's so desperate for membership. In the end, Carlton completes all the tasks but the leader still refuses his membership, leading to Will giving up his membership in disgust, Carlton calling the man out on his bigotry and a more reasonable senior member telling the current one that he plans to get the university committee to have him removed. | |
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Return to Oz: Prior to the events of the film, the Nome King had transformed Scarecrow into an ornament and added him to his collection of thousands. He offers to release Scarecrow if Dorothy or any of her friends can guess which ornament he is, at the cost of turning into an ornament themselves if they fail to do so within three guesses. Dorothy goes last and is down to her final guess, when she assumes that a green ornament might be important. She touches it and restores Scarecrow, which validates her theory. Dorothy and Scarecrow use this knowledge to restore the others, but the Nome King intervenes simply because doesn't want them to win. | |
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Crash Bandicoot: Subverted in Crash Team Racing. Oxide keeps his word and says he'll leave the planet alone, but challenges the player again after getting all the relics. Played straight in Crash Nitro Kart. After winning the first race against Velo, he lets teams Bandicoot and Cortex go to the home he moved to his planet from Earth, planet he planned on destroying unless they get all the relics and win another race against him. |
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In Ranma ½, a village hosts a race: whoever arrives first wins an all-expenses-paid trip to a spring resort of their choosing (including the Cursed Springs that gave the main character his curse and also has the cure). However, the village doesn't actually have the money to pay for the trip, so they place increasingly dangerous obstacles on the course to dissuade everyone from finishing, finally resorting, when everything else fails, to two villagers lifting the goal and carry it away from the approaching racers. | |
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Done again in Catching Fire, where for the Quarter Quell Games they draw their tributes from the pool of victors for previous games. It's normally the case that only people below 18 are eligible, and that if you do win and are under 18, your name is removed from the draw in future. This is viewed as very unfair by many, even within the Capitol. The film adaptation gives one of the tributes the opportunity to explain her perspective on the situation. | |
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In Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey the boys are killed and have to win a contest against Death to be resurrected. The tests end up being mostly tabletop games and Twister with the boys winning every time; however, Death keeps upping the win requirement (2 out of 3, 3 out of 5...) Death eventually relents. | |
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Gaia Online's "Save Our Shops" gold-sink event revolved around giving the NPC shopkeepers enough gold to pay off back tax debts. Rumors circulated that characters who failed the event would be removed from the site. So when the mods started changing the amounts Liam and Ruby owed, fans furiously tried to meet the new goals, which changed again and again to mounting outrage, until the event ended... and Liam and Ruby opened new shops, like the admin had been planning the whole time. The 2009 Christmas event had the depowered demigods attempting to build an airship so they could run Christmas while Santa was missing-in-action. Again, users quickly donated all the gold and items they needed... so Cresento ran them down with his own airship and then sued them for damages, necessitating further donations. |
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In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader makes a "deal" with Lando that, if Lando turns Han over to The Empire, then the Empire will leave Cloud City alone. Vader then turns Han over to Boba Fett and tells Lando that Leia and Chewie will have to remain prisoners on Cloud City. When Lando complains, Vader asks if he thinks he's being treated unfairly...because it would be unfortunate if he had to leave a garrison there. It's also suggested that Vader is going to leave a garrison anyway. Then Vader decides that he's taking Leia and Chewie with him. When Lando calls him on it, Vader threatens him: "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further!" Lando finally catches on and decides that if Vader won't keep his end of the deal, he won't either. | |
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A Dip in the Inkwell: During Staring Contest, Todd wagers three of his Snickers bars on winning. Once he does, he then demands Olive give him three Snickers bars, despite how she hadn't wagered anything. While she calls him out on this, he refuses to bend. | |
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Subverted in Crash Team Racing. Oxide keeps his word and says he'll leave the planet alone, but challenges the player again after getting all the relics. | |
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: A very minor version occurs in the opening of the game. the Old Man offers to give you his paraglider after you get a treasure out of a nearby shrine for him. After you do so, he decides that actually you need to go to the other three shrines on the plateau as well. The way the player chooses to respond to his statement changes whether he plays this trope or Exact Words: an indignant "That wasn't the deal!" has the Old Man simply state that he's changed his mind, whilst a more humble "So I need more now?" has him point out that he simply said 'treasure', which may be singular or plural given his context. The Old Man wanted Link to go through the four shrines all along in order to prepare for the journey ahead, and he apologizes for the deception when he reveals his true intentions. | |
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In a spoof of Great Expectations, Pip insists that his love interest does have a heart, handing her a baby bunny and saying that no one with a heart could break a baby bunny's neck. Cue obvious Neck Snap, and Pip keeps insisting that "No one with a heart could break the neck of 2/3/4/5 (etc.) baby bunnies!". He brings out 26 baby bunnies before she simply gets bored, and claims that as proof that she has a heart. | |
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In Honor Harrington: Echoes of Honor, an admiral who didn't care for a new technical development managed to get himself put in charge of the evaluation board, and started putting more and more restrictions on how the weapons could be used in an effort to get a test battle in which the new LACs would be decisively defeated, and use this to justify scrapping the project. The captain in charge of the final stage of the project retaliated by sending memos to the admiral's superiors mentioning her concerns about the test parameters, which would presumably lead to the higher-ups looking at the results of all the tests, rather than just the one where the LACs failed, and realizing that they lost because the admiral stacked the deck. This counter was never actually needed, as an attack on the base where the tests were conducted forced the LACs into actual combat early, in a battle where they decisively defeated the invading fleet. | |
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In Spider-Man: Finding Home, after going to considerable lengths to acquire the strength to face Spider-Man, Kraven declares that he has no interest in facing his previously intended prey if the wall-crawler can't survive the challenge of holding up a collapsing building, even though this feat of strength should have nothing to do with his skills as an opponent. | |
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Played for laughs in The Simpsons episode "The Front", in its segment "The Adventures of Ned Flanders". | |
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In Miraculous Ladybug, every time Marinette tries to call out Lila's Blatant Lies, she manages to re-rail them with even more blatant lies (she says she "got tinnitus" from saving Jagged Stone's pet cat, Marinette says that the man is allergic to pet fur, hence why he has a pet alligator, Lila just says that this meeting was before Stone found out that he was allergic) or Exact Words (she says that she will meet "her esteemed close friend" Prince Ali soon, Marinette points out that Ali is in New York at the moment, Lila just says that she got the invitation to meet Ali, they will meet when he travels to France soon). | |
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Looney Tunes In the short "Fool Coverage", Daffy Duck is an insurance salesman, and he sells Porky Pig an accident policy which pays him $1,000,000 for a black eye. The catch is that Porky must get a black eye in a ridiculously specific accident, occurring as a result of a stampede of wild elephants in his own living room on the Fourth of July — of any year — between the hours of 3:55 and 4 P.M. during a hailstorm. Sure enough, as soon as Porky agrees to the policy, he gets into an accident that meets these requirements and gets a black eye from it. As Porky tells Daffy to pay up, Daffy quickly adds that the policy actually specifies a stampede of wild elephants and one baby zebra, making the Aside Comment, "I just added that one." Then a baby zebra runs in. In "Boobs in the Woods", after Porky catches a large fish, Daffy asks, "Do you have fishing license?" prompting Porky to show his license. "A dog license?" Porky produces a dog-tag. "A license to sell hair tonic to bald eagles in Omaha Nebraska?" Porky pulls a card out of his hat that Daffy reads, "Hair tonic...bald eagles...Omaha Nebraska." |
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In one Naruto/Ranma ½ story, Neji seems to be doing this, claiming that he'll admit the Gentle Fist is flawed if Ranma can beat him. Then if Ranma can beat a given trainer, then another trainer, all the way up to the Clan Head. Tenten, however, notes that after the first trainer lost, Neji just kept doing it so he could watch Ranma beat up Main Branch members. | |
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In a Sweet Valley Twins book, Jessica bullies a girl who wants to be a member of the Unicorns by giving her impossible tasks to complete, to the point where even the ringleaders of the group tell her she's taking things too far. Sure enough, the girl finally grows a spine and tells her off. | |
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Samurai Warriors Katana: Tachibana Ginchiyo in Savior Story's last stage. First, she tells you to get to the top of an inclined plane without taking any damage. You will fail this part repeatedly because the game doesn't adequately explain how to strafe, the specific control scheme is ONLY used in that area, and you can't attack. When you reach the top, she sends 30-ish enemies at you and expects you to defeat them without any attacks landing successfully on you (you can block attacks and deflect arrows as usual). Fail here, and you have to do the first part again. Only thing saving it from being That One Level is that once you deal with the enemies, Tachibane concedes that you're actually strong and doesn't make you fight her. | |
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Most of the New Super Mario Bros. titles work this way. In the old days, you were simply in the wrong castle, but this time around every single tower and castle is the one containing the princess, but you'll watch her get swept away to the next one seventeen times in a row, Mario. ...Unless you use a cannon, that is, in which case the bad guys graciously move the princess ahead for you. | |
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The US TV game show Truth or Consequences used this. The show was based on asking each contestant a 'skill testing question' which had to be answered correctly both to win a prize and to avoid facing the 'consequence' of appearing in some mildly embarrassing stunt for the audience. The questions tended to be trivial, but obscure. In the rare event that a contestant answered correctly, the MC Bob Barker would reach into his pocket and reveal that it was really a two part question. In at least one case a third part had to be revealed. | |
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The Hunger Games: The Gamemasters announce that two people can live if they're from the same district, then revoke it at the end when two people actually manage to fill that condition. Katniss showed them up by threatening suicide with Peeta, forcing them to make good on the original promise so they'd have someone to crown a victor instead of a martyr. The head Gamemaster Seneca Crane ends up being punished for it by President Snow. | |
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Built Different (Signless Acolyte): After the Crew completely a mission for Faraday precisely the way that they were instructed to, he refuses to pay them the bonus he'd promised, as Maxim switched drivers between jobs, making the intel a little less useful. An Interlude chapter later reveals that Faraday does this on a regular basis, promising a bonus payout only to latch onto any excuse he can find to avoid actually having to shell out the extra cash. | |
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Mythos Effect: The trope in namedropped in regard to Sparatus, who is constantly moving the goalposts in regards to what can be considered a "win" for the Hierarchy. First he says that the humans won't launch a serious attack, which is exactly what they do. Then he says they won't attack a major colony, and they attack one of their biggest and most significant. Finally he says they won't take said colony, and the colony surrenders. | |
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Sellar and Yeatman's 1066 and All That (The Abridged History of Britain) has this humorous perspective on The Irish Question: | |
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In their first conversation in Double Homework, Dennis offers the protagonist a deal that each shall pursue only two girls in their class (Johanna being off-limits). However, as time goes on, Dennis keeps adding new conditions to the deal, and when the protagonist pushes back, Dennis calls off the deal entirely, and tries to bed all five girls in the class, plus Tamara. | |
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Subverted in Office Space: Joanna's annoying boss attempts this, guilting her about wearing the "bare minimum" number of pieces of flair. She never takes the bait, and eventually after a particularly long and insistent chat about this, walks out. | |
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The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: A ramen shop owner in Chapter 83 creates a challenge dish that she intends to be unbeatable, to the point where she changes the dish every time someone manages to beat it. Unfortunately, every time she changes the win conditions for the challenge dish, she changes it to something that can be beaten by one or two of Rentarou's girlfriends using their unique quirks. | |
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In X-Men (2019), Xavier and Magneto constantly dangle the promise of reviving the mutant Destiny to Mystique to get her to do various jobs. However, since resurrecting precogs in Krakoa is forbidden, the two keep suggesting that the various jobs she does isn't enough and keep her to do more. She gets fed up and goes and resurrect her herself in Inferno (2021). | |
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Dilbert: This comic provides the trope image, with the Pointy-Haired Boss continually adding new requirements for one man to hold his job. In another strip, Wally complains to the Pointy-Haired Boss about constantly deferring project objectives every time he's about to meet one, saying, "What does this prove about my performance?" The boss tells Wally: "It proves I'm better at setting objectives than you are at achieving them." |
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An episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends revolves around this. In the episode, Wilt was about to watch his favourite basketball game until Bloo tricks him into leaving the room and getting him chips. Every time Wilt tries to go back upstairs to watch the game, he is bombarded by other imaginary friends asking for favors and eating the chips, due to Wilt's inability to say no. It gets even worse when Wilt ends up traveling all over the world doing favors for strangers (such as walking an old lady across the street, substituing an astronaut he accidentally injured, working as a pizza delivery guy, etc.) When he finally comes back, he realizes that he missed the entire game and finally lets out a Big "NO!" only to once again be sent by Bloo to get him chips. | |
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Don Quixote: Played for Laughs: Sancho is offered dinner with a lot of delicious dishes. Every dish they present him, a doctor signals that he cannot have it because it's not in a governor's diet. This is done until an angry Sancho asks what he can eat: only some cookies and fruit. Sancho asks an innkeeper what food he has to offer. The innkeeper answers that every meat, fish or bird he could ask. Everything Sancho asks, the innkeeper doesn't have. When Sancho asks what the innkeeper really has, he answers only a couple of cow-heels. Played for Drama: An inversion: When Dorothea recounts how she agreed to sleep with Don Fernando, son of the Duke, under a promise of marriage, she was constantly Moving The Goalposts. In retrospect, Dorothea realizes that Don Fernando answering "yes" to all her demands was the proof that he will fulfill none of them. |
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In Sword of Vermilion a greedy king makes you go through three progressively larger and harder dungeons in order to get a ring you need. In the end, the hero gets fed up and forces the king at swordpoint to hand the ring over. And it turns out the ring is a fake. | |
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Papers, Please: The rules of Grestin border checkpoint change in the matter of days, as the gameplay becomes a lot more difficult toward the player. Aside from making your life harder, this significantly affects some entrants who do not adapt to sudden changes, rendering their passports invalid. | |
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A major part of the colony world of Harmony And Reason in the Rats, Bats and Vats novels. All 'Vats', or cloned citizens, are charged for the cost of being cloned, raised, and trained by the government. This charge is put to absurdly high compound interest, plus additional charges for mandatory 'luxuries' like training camps owned by Shareholders. If a Vat lives very frugally and has a very successful career, he might theoretically buy himself out of debt and purchase a single share in the colony before dying of old age (a Vat who owes money to the Colony cannot purchase shares). Why? Because only Shareholders can vote, and they don't want the Vats getting enfranchised. | |
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In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a Loan Shark dupes you into being the prey in a Hunting the Most Dangerous Game attraction that he runs, promising that if you fight your way out he will release a debtor. When you do, he kills the debtor, declaring "This is my game, and I'm changing the rules!" Last mistake he ever makes. | |
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Garfield: One strip has Garfield approach a "Keep off the grass" sign. So he climbs up onto the sign... only for another sign to pop up, saying "Keep off the 'Keep off the grass' sign". Garfield's "Oh, come on!" is golden. | |
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Super Paper Mario: The first time you reach the final room of the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials, the boss (who does not physically reveal himself) will commend you for your effort, but is unsure if you are ready to fight him. Instead, he instructs you to leave the pit without any reward and to work your way through the pit a second time before finally agreeing to fight you. Aside from the boss fight at the end, the second run through the pit is no different than the first. Fake Longevity at its finest. | |
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The Fifth Act: This is why Cloud refuses to help Lazard; he knows that the Manipulative Bastard would never deliver on his end of any bargain they might strike, coming up with various excuses and arbitrary reasons to avoid doing so. | |
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Persona: The Sougawa Files: Shadow Ryouichi promises the heroes that he'll grant them access to his office if they get VIP clearance. He then decides that they "didn't do it right", using Exact Words to justify breaking their deal. | |
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MADtv (1995): In "Apollo 13: Jason Takes Nasa", the NASA flight director partakes in this. | |
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World of Warcraft: The game does this with its eigth expansion, Shadowlands. Many world quests on the map will have steps you need to complete it. Fair, but a significant amount of them do not end just there. Instead, it will list additional steps you need to do to complete the world quest. Several egregious ones will do this multiple times and turn what looked like a 2 mins long world quest into one that drags for 10 mins or longer. To the frustration of many players. Tellingly, the poor reception of this world quests lead to the post-launch zones in 9.1 and 9.2 shadowland patches to completely drop this, instead listing all steps from the get-go on both quests and world quests. | |
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The Mandalorian sees its eponymous lead on the receiving end of this trope in true Star Wars fashion thanks to, of all characters, Bo-Katan, who requisitions his help in taking an Imperial transport's cargo. He's only going along with the plan because she has information on the whereabouts of a Jedi, and he needs to find one so he can return the Child to his species, in spite of the fact that his creed of "The Way" is staunchly different from her more lax interpretation of tradition. When they take the cargo, she then tells him that they need to take the hold ship. He tries to back out, but she reminds him of their bargain by mocking his very words. He does live up to his end of the deal, however, and she lives up to hers by telling of the one he seeks: Ahsoka Tano. | |
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Ennea Series: The Commission keeps Hawks locked in Indentured Servitude by constantly changing the terms of his contracts, adding in new debts and clauses in order to maintain their control. He doesn't bother trying to fight against this, as he's aware they both can and will do worse if they deem him to have stepped too far out of line. | |
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You're working to bring ale to The Snake in one mission in Stronghold. The quota is low first, but it's likely that as soon your industry begins to run, he makes an excuse to demand more. He mercifully stops after a while, allowing you to complete the mission. If you know this is coming (one of the level hints points out that the Snake isn't trustworthy, but that's it), you can stockpile a large amount of hops before you start brewing ale. If you subsequently make enough brewers, you can complete his task before he moves the goalposts, but it's tough. | |
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The Knights Who Say "Ni!" tried to do this to King Arthur and his knights. After getting a shrubbery (which was the initial requirement to pass), the Knights then demand another shrubbery, and for King Arthur to cut down a tree with a herring. Lucky for Arthur, he accidentally hits their Weaksauce Weakness. | |
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Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: After Chloe boards the Train, Goh angrily accuses Ash of not helping out enough with the search efforts. Ash reveals that he's been calling his friends and colleagues around the world to help spread the word, only for Goh to insist that's not good enough — and anyway, she can't have gotten that far. (His thoughts, meanwhile, hint that he's jealous that Ash has such a wide social network he can call upon for help.) Mr. Pepper provides a more Downplayed example during his cooking class in the first chapter. All of his students are making curry, and he chides Chloe for simply following the recipe, declaring that she needed to "make it her own". While Chloe protests that following the rules precisely has its own merits, he dismisses her argument entirely. Much later on, the incident is brought up again, and it's made clear that Mr. Pepper hadn't specifically told his students that he wanted them customizing their curry recipes; he just arbitrarily decided that Chloe's efforts weren't good enough. |
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In an FMV promoting Crash of the Titans, Nina goes to a salon that has a sign in the window saying that it's giving manicures for $10. The owner clearly does not want to work on her Cyborg hands, so they throw her out and change the sign to say that it's $20 for cyborgs. When she gets the money from Dr. Cortex, the short ends with them throwing her out again and making another addendum to the sign saying that it's now $20 per hand. | |
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Destiny Intertwined: During Hayze's Kangaroo Court "trial", the Frostspears repeatedly do this as more and more holes are poked in their case. At first they claim Hayze was trying to leave the city and kidnap Malefor. When it turns out that Malefor snuck out on his and ran into Hayze by happenstance, they accuse him of trying to give the shadow dragons information about the city. When it's brought up that Hayze knows literally nothing of strategic value, they try and damn him for getting his element stronger. | |
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Bombad Jedi" Senator Farr discovers to his horror that Gunray's promises of food shipments are primarily contingent on having Padmé in his custody, and afterwards, the request will be placed under consideration. | |
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In the third case of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix uses witness testimony to prove that his client couldn't have dropped a particular piece of evidence. Inquisitor Barnham is taken aback, but then he declares that witchcraft alters people's memories and tells the witnesses to "rethink" their testimony and try again. In other words, any time the testimony contradicts the Inquisition's case, it doesn't count. (Phoenix responds by parrot testimony, which isn't subject to said witchcraft.) | |
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In The Order of the Stick Belkar strongly suggests that they immediately kill the vampirized Durkon, which is a pretty good idea considering the whole "evil bloodsucking abomination" thing. Roy rejects the proposal because they can't transport the body easily. When that's taken care of, Belkar again raises the suggestion and gets shot down again because there's no cleric to revive him. Everyone else seems just a little too happy to have Durkon back, even if it's not the man they knew to accept that the situation has changed and something needs to be done about it. When the vampire reveals his true colors, Roy admits that Belkar was right all along. | |
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The Masks We Wear: When his son was born, John Grayson struck a deal with the Grandmaster of the Court of Owls to serve as that era's Talon instead of Dick. The Grandmaster eventually grows bored and decides to take advantage of John catching Batman's attention to renege on their deal, recruiting Dick anyway. This spurs John to betray the Court and take up the mantle of Slade. | |
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Dark Waters: DuPont first drags their feet in court, then agrees to pay a large settlement to their victims if an independent science panel can prove its effects. They then throw all the mud and obstacles they can to delay that study, and when it finally is released, flat out renege and ignore the agreement they made, forcing Robert to take them to court yet again. Very much Truth in Television. | |
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Pink Panther and Pals: In "Pinxellated," Big Nose runs an arcade where the prizes are all the same plushie. There is a sign saying, in pictures, "one ticket = one plushie." A boy comes up to the prize booth with a ticket, but Big Nose decides he doesn't want to give away the plushies, so he changes the sign to make it say "two tickets = one plushie." The boy walks away, disheartened. Pink Panther starts winning arcade games to give the boy his tickets, and Big Nose keeps driving up the price of the plushies so that Pink Panther will have to get more tickets. By the end, the sign reads "1000 tickets = one plushie," but by that point, Pink Panther has a truck full of tickets, and Big Nose is trapped inside an arcade machine, so he can't change the sign again, and Pink Panther and the boy each get a plushie. | |
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Crisis City as Classic Sonic in Sonic Generations has a literal example of the trope. When you reach the goal sign, the flaming tornado in the background uproots it and carries it away. You'll have to play through the level a bit more to reach the goal sign that was moved. | |
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Resident Evil 6: Simmons forces Helena to help him with his plan to assassinate the President by holding her little sister hostage, and soon after decides to simply use said little sister as a C-Virus test subject regardless. | |
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Labyrinth: After abducting her baby brother Toby, Jareth the Goblin King gives Sarah 13 hours to make it through the labyrinth to his palace where he's holding him prisoner. At one point, Jareth decides to check in on Sarah's progress. When she says the labyrinth is a "piece of cake", he decides to take an hour away from her remaining time. | |
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In The Pentagon Wars, featuring a fictionalized version of events about the development of the Bradley fighting vehicle, the tests are blatantly set up to favor the Bradley and cover up its woefully deficient armor (shooting it with poor-quality ammunition that will bounce off as duds instead of exploding, draining the fuel tanks so they can't catch fire even if punctured, etc). An especially notable example comes when a rival officer claims that you cannot know what will happen until you actually put live soldiers inside the vehicle for testing. Which would obviously kill them. |
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This is a major part of Joe vs. Elan School, and it's Played for Drama. As the narrator describes it, the titular "school" is a cover for institutionalized abuse, and only serves as a cash cow for its millionaire owner. The school offers "graduation" to its inmates, but only at the school's discretion, and they can (and will) cancel it if they decide an inmate needs to stay longer. The narrator explains that this is done so the school can milk tens of thousands of dollars of tuition from parents and from the state; an extended stay means much more additional profit. | |
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Abathur from StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. His job is to try to make the Zerg Swarm perfect. However, "perfect" is different from moment to moment. He is well aware that he'll never achieve perfection, and takes it in stride, settling for chasing it. | |
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Blast Corps. Save the world from the missile carrier! Now save this random shuttle! Now go the moon! Now get all the gold medals! Now go to more planets! Now do it faster! Now go for Platinum! You Can Stop Now. | |
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A Brother's Price has a non-villainous example. Ren wants to get her mother to withdraw her Parental Marriage Veto, and accuses her of doing this after she convinced all her adult sisters to marry Jerin, and her mother still denies consent on the grounds that the absent Halley — who may or may not be still alive — hasn't been asked. | |
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Plus Five to Charisma: When the rest of the Madrigals want to throw a belated Quinceañera for Mirabel, Alma attempts to do this, claiming that other events naturally take precedence over a late birthday party. The other adults call her out on this, as she's using this as a delaying tactic to keep Bruno and Mirabel from leaving... though they also accuse her of simply not wanting to celebrate Mirabel's existence. | |
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This seemed to be what was going on in Kung Fu (1972). Whenever Caine would complete a task, it seemed his master would come up with something else he had to do (snatch the pebble from my hand, walk on rice paper without tearing it, etc.). | |
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Yakuza 0: As Majima's story begins, he is forced to work at The Grand cabaret under the thumb of sleazy Omi yakuza named Sagawa, in order to work off a debt to Sagawa's blood brother Shimano, Majima's former boss in the Tojo Clan. Initially his debt is around ¥100 million, but just when Majima makes a payment towards that goal, Sagawa arbitrarily ups it to ¥500 million, then twists the knife further by having The Grand's most popular hostess transferred to one of his other clubs, just to make it harder for Majima to earn his keep. Even when Majima, making the best of the situation, negotiates a deal with a rival club for their best girl to come work for him instead, Sagawa smugly suggests that he could easily call up the other club and cancel the whole deal to pressure Majima into taking a hit job for him, which kicks off the bulk of Majima's plotline. | |
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Unchained (Umei no Mai): Tajima repeatedly delays informing the Daimyo about Izuna's marriage. First, he demands that they wait to see how the Senju react. Then they need to delay until she's pregnant, and then to ensure that she's still pregnant after two months. | |
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When you beat Clair in Pokémon Gold and Silver, she will ask you to follow her into the Dragon's Den and answer a few questions by some men there. Once you finish that, they will then warn her to give you the badge you earned, lest they report such actions to the league. | |
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Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance: Logan says even if his gang finishes the job the Brotherhood tasked them with, they'll still ask for more. | |
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In Stargate SG-1, the computer does this to Teal'c during a virtual reality battle scenario, and the characters even refer to it by name. Every time he completes the scenario, it adds an additional element to keep him from winning. It does eventually hit a wall, but it took a while. On top of that, Teal'c was moving the goalposts himself. The scenario was designed to program itself around an individual's own beliefs and experiences; at this point in the story, Teal'c was convinced of the righteousness of fighting the Guoa'uld, but still firmly believed that it was a fight that was impossible to win, hence every "victory" quickly becoming a surprising defeat. | |
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Dragalia Lost seems to run on this every 5th story chapter just when it looks like Euden may finally be getting closer to rescuing his sister Zethia, each one a Wham Episode. Chapter 5. Euden and his party catch up to his father, Emperor Aurelius, who had been possessed by The Other into restarting the Dyrenell Empire. It turns out it's too late because now the Other...has switched bodies to his sister and is now Empress Zethia. Chapter 10. The party learns the origins of the Second War of Sealing between King Alberius and Morsayati, the true name of the Other, and that he had sealed the demon's power within himself and the dragon Cthonius. All Euden can do is to Mercy Kill his ancestor, but it works for the Other as now he regains his full power, and Euden's own siblings join him whether for power, scientific curiosity, loyalty or just to spite him. Chapter 15. Even after his hidden older brother Beren had saved Euden from being possessed by Morsayati by absorbing his soul, Volk, the Agito of Wind, kidnaps Zethia to where a dark figure who looks exactly like Euden, awaits the party. The party make their way to the border to North Alberia and are greeted by the man calling himself Nedrick who drops a bombshell: He is the true Euden who had died of wyrmscale as a baby while the one that players have played with is an impostor. To prove it, he brings out a royal book that will only glow with the touch of those with royal blood. Zethia touches it and it glows. When Euden does so... it doesn't. Even after the party fights through a crazed Valyx and his dragon Thor, Zethia teleports the party back to the Halidom and he's lost her again. |
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In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Pale Moonlight", the character Tolar protests that he has fulfilled his obligations to Sisko and Garak: "We had an agreement." Sisko responds with the words, "I'm making a new agreement", thus implying that their previous arrangements are invalid. | |
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Another literal example occurs in the It's The Wolf! episode "Any Sport In A Storm." Lambsy is running with a football heading for the goalposts when Mildew Wolf, hiding in a bush, secretly moves the goalposts as far away from Bristle Hound as possible. It doesn't work. | |
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In an episode of Arthur, Buster wants to be friends with a couple of skateboarding older kids. The skateboarders promise to let him hang out with them if he performs a humiliating dare. He does, but then they tell him he must perform another dare if he wants to be "initiated." After a series of ever-more humiliating dares, Arthur manages to convince Buster that they're just stringing him along for entertainment value. | |
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The Legend of Zelda: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: When you first encounter the younger Beaver brother, he will offer you an empty bottle if you can complete his swim-through-the-rings minigame. When you do that, the older Beaver brother will show up, stating that you must now also complete his slightly harder version of the minigame before giving you their bottle. The same thing is repeated for a Heart Piece (and once again you'll only receive it when racing with the beavers separately), so it's necessary to clear the challenge a total of four times for 100% Completion. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: A very minor version occurs in the opening of the game. the Old Man offers to give you his paraglider after you get a treasure out of a nearby shrine for him. After you do so, he decides that actually you need to go to the other three shrines on the plateau as well. The way the player chooses to respond to his statement changes whether he plays this trope or Exact Words: an indignant "That wasn't the deal!" has the Old Man simply state that he's changed his mind, whilst a more humble "So I need more now?" has him point out that he simply said 'treasure', which may be singular or plural given his context. The Old Man wanted Link to go through the four shrines all along in order to prepare for the journey ahead, and he apologizes for the deception when he reveals his true intentions. |
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Done in the What If? entry "Train Loop" in order to allow for an interesting answer (as in, other than "no"). "Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable?" becomes (changes bolded) "Could a modified and reinforced high-speed train with a jet engine on top run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers surviving?" | |
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In BioShock, Atlas is ticked off at how every time you come close to your goal Ryan does something to slow you down. Claiming that every time you make a touchdown, Ryan just pushes the goalposts further down the field. Once Ryan is taken care of, you now have to deal with Atlas or, as he's really known, Fontaine who tries to kill you. You start to go after him after you've broken free from the brainwashing he put on you. He has a backup plan in the form of a Trigger Phrase which messes with your biology and you have to scour for items to get that cured. When you manage, Fontaine blows up a passage to keep you from getting to him and now you have to find a way around that before finally confronting him. | |
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Zootopia: Chief Bogo attempts this on Judy. When Bogo allows Judy to take on a missing person case, Bogo adds the condition that Judy solve it in 48 hours; if she can't, she has to resign. Later, Bogo responds to an emergency call from Judy and Nick about a savage jaguar that is not present when Bogo arrives. Bogo then orders Judy to turn in her badge immediately, even though her 48 hours aren't up yet and resigning after one mistake wasn't part of their deal. Thankfully, Nick calls Bogo out on his behavior, saying that Judy has done more in half a day to solve the missing person case than Bogo has in months. Bogo concedes the point, and the case is allowed to move forward. | |
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In Rebuild World, during a rescue mission, the protagonist Akira sells expensive nanomachine medicine to the rescued Levin and his men to enable them to escape alive, but since they can't afford it, this puts them into his debt. The unscrupulous Arms Dealer Katsuragi just gives Akira replacement medicine in exchange for taking on their debts in his place. The contract he signs with the rescued men has the requirement that they search the ruins that Katsuragi picks, buy all their equipment in his shop, and sell all the Lost Technology relics they find there too. Since Katsuragi makes sure to pick ruins Levin is not equipped for, he ends up in an endless spiral of debt and Indentured Servitude. | |
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Fuels the story of For All Mankind: In an Alternate Universe where the Soviet Union manages to land a man on the moon before the United States, NASA tries to save face by changing the end-goal of the Space Race, such as declaring they'll land the first woman on the moon or that they'll build a full-blown moon base. This causes problems at NASA which has to keep developing then scrapping lengthy and expensive programs as the political winds change. As a result, the Space Race gets dragged out way further than it was in Real Life, with corresponding knock-on effects. | |
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The mothers in The School for Good Mothers are allowed ten minutes a week for a computer phone call with their children. Except... Frida loses her phone privileges when she fails a unit and she is told that she needs to improve her standing in the class. Then she is told they'll remain suspended until she scores again in the top two, so they know is not dumb luck. She ends up going months without having contact with her daughter to the detriment of their bond. | |
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Oni Ga Shiku Series: Akatani tells Izuku that he has two days to solve the riddle that will supposedly reveal the location of his kidnapped mother. Izuku solves it in time; however, Akatani then declares that the deal is off due to Tsukauchi accompanying him, even though he'd never specified that Izuku wasn't allowed to contact the police. | |
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Wizard agrees to grant the requests of Dorothy and her friends only after they defeat the Wicked Witch of the West. They return after doing so, but have trouble simply earning an audience with the Wizard. Eventually, the Wizard relents, only to tell the group to come back the following day, frustrating them. Once Toto exposes the Wizard's true identity as a normal man, he admits that he can't truly give Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion the brain, heart and courage that they seek; rather he claims that they had these qualities all along. However, he does make an attempt to take Dorothy home to Kansas via balloon, but that plan ultimately goes awry. | |
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Star Trek: In various series and films, the Prime Directive is the ultimate in moveable goalposts. When, where and how it is applied is completely variable, and Starfleet and the Federation government, which are the ones imposing it, are highly-prone to treating it as anything from an inviolable law with a specific set of conditions to an abstract moral ideal that is more of a guideline than a rule. In general, its applicability is driven by Rule of Drama on an episode-by-episode basis. This is actually discussed in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "As Astra Ad Aspera", where Neera, who is defending Una Chin-Riley from getting drummed out of Starfleet over lying about being a genetically modified being, points out how Starfleet will happily look away over the Prime Directive if need be, but will happily double down on something like this. This was especially prevalent in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, where both Picard and Janeway were not above countermanding their own orders if they had a change of heart on a particular matter, often to the bewilderment of their crews, who then had to respond to changes in what had previously been seen as fixed plans. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Pale Moonlight", the character Tolar protests that he has fulfilled his obligations to Sisko and Garak: "We had an agreement." Sisko responds with the words, "I'm making a new agreement", thus implying that their previous arrangements are invalid. Played for Laughs in an earlier episode of Deep Space Nine, where Rom temporarily defects from Quark's to work for a competitor who promises him a one-fourth share of the profits. When said competitor ends up needing all the money for an investment, he tells Rom that the one-fourth was "after expenses", and the investment counted as an expense. Rom quits indignantly, declaring that if he's going to be cheated regardless, he might as well be working for his sibling and not a stranger. Another DS9 episode, "Civil Defense", had the crew deal with a forgotten Cardassian counter-insurgency program that O'Brien accidentally trips. Every time the heroes think they've solved things, the program responds by upping the threat level. In the TNG episode "Allegiance", Picard finds himself trapped in an alien prison along with three additional captives: Starfleet cadet Mitena Haro, philosopher Tholl, and Blood Knight Esoqq. Every time the captives make headway in their attempt to escape the cell, another obstacle is thrown right at them, sending them back to square one. It's one of the things that helps Picard deduce that they are not simply prisoners, but test subjects in an experiment. |
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The "blackmail" variant was used on The Office (US), when Phyllis made increasing demands of Angela to keep her silence about the latter's affair. | |
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Super Mario Bros.: Most of the New Super Mario Bros. titles work this way. In the old days, you were simply in the wrong castle, but this time around every single tower and castle is the one containing the princess, but you'll watch her get swept away to the next one seventeen times in a row, Mario. ...Unless you use a cannon, that is, in which case the bad guys graciously move the princess ahead for you. Hotel Mario did the same thing years beforehand. Dare me to find her, indeed... Super Mario 3D World: World Star-4, "The Great Goal Pole", features a literal moving goalpost. What appears to be a simple 8 second Breather Level turns into a frantic chase as the winged goalpost moves ever further away from you and you have to chase it down to finish the level. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: During Chapter 4, Doopliss will steal Mario's name and body (just roll with it), but will agree to give them back if you can guess his name note you can't because the letter "p" is missing from the input menu, and you need to find it. Once you're able to properly guess Doopliss' name, he runs off in astonishment; you now need to chase Doopliss back to Creepy Steeple and defeat him there to actually recover Mario's name and body. In Doopliss' "defense," there's no way for Mario to know his name when asked to guess - this is to prevent players who already know who Doopliss is from messing with the story. One of the missions at the Trouble Center is from a Bub-ulb who wants you to bring him a certain food. When you meet up with him in Petalburg, he will ask for you to bring him a Hot Dog, which can only be purchased in Glitzville. Bring him a Hot Dog, and he will now tell you to get him a second Hot Dog. Do that, and he will then ask for you to bring him a Mousse Cake. To get a Mousse Cake, you need to buy a Cake Mix at the Pianta Parlor and have Zess T. cook it. Bring the Bub-ulb the Mousse Cake and you'll finally get rewarded with... a Dried Bouquet note An item that heals 1 HP and is useful for one mediocre recipe and not much else. Granted, you can bring the Bub-ulb everything in one trip if you know what you're doing, but anyone playing this game for the first time would never have this knowledge. Super Paper Mario: The first time you reach the final room of the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials, the boss (who does not physically reveal himself) will commend you for your effort, but is unsure if you are ready to fight him. Instead, he instructs you to leave the pit without any reward and to work your way through the pit a second time before finally agreeing to fight you. Aside from the boss fight at the end, the second run through the pit is no different than the first. Fake Longevity at its finest. Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam has several cases of goalpost moving; the bros. try to reach Bowser's Castle to rescue both the regular and paper princesses, only to get constantly deterred throughout the game. Make it to the castle bridge? Bowser's minions smash it. Escape from a prison to find another route? The princesses have been moved to a villa on the nearby mountain. Reach them there? They promptly get taken right back to Bowser's Castle again. Even when you finally rescue the princesses, Bowser and his paper counterpart are still at large, and moves his castle to a new location, forcing the bros. on another scramble to reach it to put a stop to their plans for good. |
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In A Man of Iron, after Bronn defeats Ser Vardis to win Tyrion's Trial by Combat, Lysa suddenly declares Tyrion must immediately endure a second trial by combat for a separate charge, and Bronn cannot champion him anymore. Clynt takes up the challenge and simply shoots Lysa's second champion with an arrow, finally winning Tyrion's freedom. | |
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The One to Make It Stay: Alya dismissed Marinette's attempts to warn her about Lila's true nature by telling her that "A good journalist always checks her sources." By which she apparently meant refusing to investigate at all, taking Lila's claims at face value. When Rose and Juleka present her and the other girls with proof that Lila lied about knowing Prince Ali, Alya promptly dismisses this as not enough proof; at best, it just shows she wasn't truthful about this one thing, and unless they can prove that everything was false, well, she's just going to brush this off. | |
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In the Quinton Reviews episode "That Time the World Ended", Quinton talks about what doomsday prophets do when they predictions turn out to be wrong. One method is to claim you got the year wrong and make a new prediction. Just keep moving the year (goalposts) forward for as long as the world refuses to end. | |
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In the Transformers: Prime episode "Crisscross", Airachnid kidnaps Jack's mother and says she'll let her go if Jack finds her within a time limit. Jack does so, but at the last second Airachnid changes the challenge from "find her" to "rescue her"; since Jack didn't save her from where he found her, Airachnid takes that as her excuse to kill them both. | |
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Yes, Minister: The British civil service are experts at using this to dodge their way out of being made to do anything. For just one example, when asked to allow women to be in prominent positions (it was the 80s), the heads of every department meet and discuss the new government policy, with each department head coming up with a blatantly sexist reason as to why they can't comply. | |
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Absolute Virtue in Final Fantasy XI was supposed to be impossible to kill, but players had found a way to do it. The developers then made a patch to stomp out the strategy used so it would no longer work. Players would find another way to beat the boss while the developers patch the game to make Absolute Virtue immune to the previous strategy while also banning players for supposedly cheating. This went on for years. | |
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The Subcon Forest level from A Hat in Time features this trope prominently. At the start of the first Act, the only way forward is into an unavoidable trap. To escape the trap, you must give your soul to the Snatcher and do some work for him. Supposedly, once you complete the tasks on the contract, you'll get your soul back, but the Snatcher just forces you to sign more contracts since you're such a great worker. Once he's out of contracts to give you, he just decides that You Have Outlived Your Usefulness and tries to kill you. | |
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A more benign version happened in A New Hope. Luke Skywalker has been promised that he can enroll in the Imperial Academy "next year" by his Uncle Owen for the past few years or so. Luke is understandably frustrated, since many friends have long gone on to the Academy and he feels that his uncle is stringing him along. note In hindsight, it's even more sympathetic, as it's likely that Owen was trying to prevent the Empire from becoming aware of Luke in order to protect him. Unlike most people, he also knows exactly what his father has become and is terrified that the same will happen to him. | |
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Dekugate: The titular community of Conspiracy Theorists are convinced that All Might and David Shield are Star-Crossed Lovers, kept apart by the Hero Commission because they believe it wouldn't be profitable for their Number One Hero to be out and proud, and that All Might was forced into a sham marriage with a fake wife and child. Even though All Might and David are both openly bisexual — apparently, it only counts if they're currently in a relationship with another man! | |
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One episode of M*A*S*H has Hawkeye throwing a fit when he learns that the number of points (awarded through commendations or time in theater) necessary before a soldier is eligible to be discharged or rotated home has just been arbitrarily raised, meaning that it will be at least another year before he can finally leave Korea. | |
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Was revealed to be the motive in an episode of Monk. After being blackmailed with evidence that he'd killed his wife, the victim decided to kill the blackmailer when their demands grew too high. Knowing that it was one of several people, but not who, he started killing them one by one, resulting in a string of seemingly random murders. | |
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Rome. Octavian is made consul by the Roman Senate who believe his youth will make him an easily-controlled puppet. They quickly discover otherwise. | |
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In Project Delta, once Jortan returns to his masters after the battle of Mindoir, he expects to be punished for failure. However, with them having other plans, all it takes is a tiny bit of indoctrination to make him "remember" the objective wasn't killing Jane, but merely removing the weaklings from their own organization. | |
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This is the method used by the N.I.C.E. in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength to recruit Mark Studdock and others. Mark desperately wants to be in "the inner circle" and the various evil members of the N.I.C.E. use the promise of a sure position or moving up in the N.I.C.E. to manipulate Mark into more and more compromising acts. | |
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Mercenary players are warned of this as a possible screw-job tactic by unscrupulous employers in BattleTech. In an effort to save money, some employers may claim that mercenaries 'failed to do their utmost' even if the mercenary unit successfully completed their mission (for instance, claiming that mercenaries failed a defensive mission by not killing or destroying every enemy on the field even when they drove off the opponent and kept their objective safe). Frustration over this led to the formation of the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission, which oversaw contracts and offered neutral arbitration in the event of disputes. Unfortunately for mercenaries, the Word of Blake Jihad resulted in the MRCB's destruction. The Successor States are also known to put mercenary units out of business with the "Company Store" gambit (as detailed in the Real Life section) by nickel and diming them for parts and transport and charging premiums, forcing them to become more and more dependent on their employer for supplies until they're so in debt to them they can't afford to leave. In lore, the end of the Refusal War between Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon involved this: as Clan Wolf had committed their military force to the war, the Falcons claimed that their loss constituted a Trial of Absorption and laid claim to Clan Wolf's resources. Luckily for the Wolves, a witness to the end of the war turned out to be Not Quite Dead. | |
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Midst, Phineas learns that saving a hostage is, somehow, not Valorous enough to eliminate his debt. In fact, he actually arrives at his breaking even ceremony before anyone bothers to tell him. It's heavily implied that this is how the Trust usually operates. Breaking even by merit is something that takes a lifetime, when it's possible at all. | |
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In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Suletta, Mioriene and the rest of Earth House work to get their emerging new company, GUND-ARM Inc., off the ground. However, Mioriene discovers that Shaddiq used his authority to change the rules of student-started companies so that they have to prove that what they're producing is safe, which GUND-ARM can’t prove until they launch. Shaddiq, to his credit, knows that Mioriene won't let this stand and will challenge them to a duel. | |
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Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam has several cases of goalpost moving; the bros. try to reach Bowser's Castle to rescue both the regular and paper princesses, only to get constantly deterred throughout the game. Make it to the castle bridge? Bowser's minions smash it. Escape from a prison to find another route? The princesses have been moved to a villa on the nearby mountain. Reach them there? They promptly get taken right back to Bowser's Castle again. Even when you finally rescue the princesses, Bowser and his paper counterpart are still at large, and moves his castle to a new location, forcing the bros. on another scramble to reach it to put a stop to their plans for good. | |
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Truth and Consequences: After Chat Noir discovers that Ladybug may be secretly working with Hawkmoth, he repeatedly tries to expose her to the public, only to find that it's his word against hers, and the Parisians trust her more than they do him. Even when he uncovers evidence of their agreement, it's dismissed as 'potentially fake'. | |
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The Bureau of Magical Things: The protagonists compete in a magical sports tournament against another school. When they win, the judges promptly overturn their victory by singling out Kyra, who is a Tri-ling with elf and fairy magic, claiming she has an unfair advantage. The fact that everybody knew this going into the tournament and Kyra was still allowed to compete until she actually won gets brushed off by the judges, and the other school smugly accepts the trophy. | |
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Professor Chronos/Crowler did this a lot in the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX in his attempts to humiliate, discredit, and expel Judai/Jaden whom he took an instant dislike to. Each time, it came back to bite him: As early as the first episode, Chronos compromised the rules by handling Judai's entrance exam himself with his personal deck (rather than the test decks the other instructors used). Judai won, humiliating him publicly, and it only led to Chronos becoming obsessed in his goal. The second major time was during an exam where he first cut in line and bought every one of the new shipment of cards. (Or so he thought.) He then gave those cards to Manjyome/Chazz, told him to build a stronger deck, and then manipulated the exam placement so Manjyome would duel Judai. It didn't work (Judai had gained an upgraded version of Winged Kuriboh after stopping to help Tome-san) and this time, not only was he humiliated, so was Manjyome. It is hinted Samejima got wise to Chronos in this episode, and offered Judai a promotion. (Which he turned down.) Naturally, he would blame this entirely on Manjyome later. Chronos would later foil Judai's attempt to file a request to Kaiser (stating in the dub that such requests had to be done in triplicate with a number 2 pencil; even Judai was suspicious of that excuse). Ironically, Judai managed to duel Kaiser by asking personally, and while the duel likely had the result Chronos would desire (Kaiser won), Judai won Kaiser's respect, potentially robbing Chronos of the support of the most influential student. (If this was a violation of the rules, Chronos was likely bending them again by keeping quiet about it, as he felt Judai losing wasn't to Judai's benefit.) |
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Meet the Parents opens with Greg Focker trying to win over his potential future father-in-law Jack Byrnes as he plans to propose to his girlfriend Pam, only for the CIA-trained Jack to jump on various reasons to believe Greg isn't good enough for his daughter, such as Greg (who works as a male nurse) claiming to have taken the LSAT tests when Jack can find no record of a Greg Focker taking the tests or an incident where Greg lost the Byrnes' pet cat. By the end of the film, most of Greg's mistakes have been explained, and even the LSAT question has been answered; Greg's legal name is "Gaylord Focker", which he chooses not to use for obvious reasons. When Jack still tries to claim that Greg isn't good enough for Pam, his wife Dina joins Pam in calling him out on his attitude, as it's obvious by this point that Jack is just searching for any reason not to accept Greg. | |
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On Malcolm in the Middle, Francis comes up with a pair of Monster Truck rally tickets, and keeps making deals with his brothers for them only to renege. When he eventually ditches all of them to take a girl, they respond by framing him for kidnapping. | |
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One Piece: Arlong forced Nami to amass a large sum of money to buy back her village's freedom. When she finally does (a process that takes her several years), Arlong gets a corrupt Marine captain to confiscate it before she can officially pay him back, and tells her to start from scratch. Fortunately for Nami, Luffy and his crew beat the tar out of Arlong and his men, forcing Arlong to free Nami from her debt to him without paying. It's this act of kindness that convinces Nami to formally join the Straw Hat Pirates. | |
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In the 2015 reboot series of BattleBots the #1 seed Tombstone, a devastatingly powerful bar spinner tipped to win the contest, was defeated via judges' decision in the Grand Final by #3 seed Bite Force, a control robot equipped with clamping/lifting arms and a thick frontal armour wedge they added to deal with spinners. For the 2016 series the producers changed the rules so robots that used "defensive additions" like the one Bite Force had used would actually lose points for aggression and would not score any damage points for damage opponents did to themselves with the recoil of their own weapons against these, rendering control bots competitively inviable, in a painfully transparent attempt to prevent a control-bot from winning over a pure damage bot like Tombstone again. They got their way when, with almost nothing left in the tournament tough enough to stand up to Tombstone's weaponnote beta came closest with their thick frontal armour below their hammer weapon, but still lost the judges' decision due to the damage Tombstone did to their hammer when they rode up the front wedge, Tombstone won the 2016 series fairly easily. | |
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In Cooking With Wild Game, the businessman protagonist does this to himself. His goal is to make the racist townsfolk accept that Forest Edge's cuisine is good (It Makes Sense in Context), and he won't be satisfied by anything else (even though he makes boatloads of money off of egalitarian foreigners who do like his creations). When he opens a food stall in the town, he dramatically declares that the "battle" to humble them starts now. Then a day passes with no townsfolk buying anything, and he goes home and rationalizes that actually everybody knows that new stalls barely get any customers anyway, so the real battle starts... now. His love interest, watching him get all fired up again, questions whether he will be satisfied by anything. | |
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In one Rugrats episode, Angelica and Suzie are competing to see who is the best between the two. Everytime Suzie wins, Angelica keeps declaring higher victory requirements until Angelica nearly gets hurt during a race. | |
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In the Futurama episode "A Clockwork Origin", Dr. Banjo insists that Prof. Farnsworth provide a "missing link" between humans and prehistoric apes. With each link the professor provides, Dr. Banjo demands a link between that link and the prehistoric ape. This continues for a long time until the professor can no longer provide a link. Farnsworth then declares that he's going to go find "Missing Missing Link"... and does! However, when The Prof. triumphantly dumps it in front of the scientific committee, Banjo uses it to support his own theory, leading to this rather meme-tastic quote from Farnsworth: | |
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Played straight in Crash Nitro Kart. After winning the first race against Velo, he lets teams Bandicoot and Cortex go to the home he moved to his planet from Earth, planet he planned on destroying unless they get all the relics and win another race against him. | |
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Hotel Mario did the same thing years beforehand. Dare me to find her, indeed... | |
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The West Wing: President Bartlet is doing this to himself, according to his psychiatrist regarding his long dead, abusive father's love. Also portrayed in the Season Five budget negotiations. President Bartlet and newly-elected Speaker of the House Jeff Haffley are battling over the budget, with Bartlet believing that they have come to an agreement on a 1% capital gains tax cut. However, at their next meeting, Haffley unexpectedly says that his caucus will only accept a 3% cut, or no budget. Bartlet doesn't agree to this, and the government subsequently goes into shutdown. When the two finally come together to renew the negotiations, Bartlet outright calls Haffley on this, saying he knows full well that if he'd folded and met Haffley halfway then Haffley would have found another spurious reason to change the goalposts until Bartlet would end up trading away the farm for nothing. Gleefully invoked by the main characters in a Season 6 episode involving Bartlet's controversial plan to send US peacekeepers into Palestine as part of a peace accord. In order to try and sway American opinion, they try and get a joint resolution of support from the UN Security Council, only to find themselves butting up again various hurdles relating to both internal and external politics. Then, towards the end of the episode, they realise that while they were running around trying to herd the various members of the Security Council, throughout the day they've been receiving individual resolutions of support from what turn out to be all the member nations of the NATO alliance without realising. They then cheerfully change track and publicly announce that NATO is on board with Bartlet's plan. |
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The Bible: This is how Jacob ended up with two wives. Laban had two daughters, and Jacob fell in love with the younger one, Rachel. The father agreed to let Jacob marry her if he worked on Laban's land for seven years. Jacob obliged. At the end of his agreement, Laban snuck the elder daughter, Leah, into bed with Jacob in the dark of night, and in the morning claimed that he couldn't possibly let the younger daughter marry before the elder. He gave Rachel to Jacob shortly after in exchange for another seven years' labor (bet the daughters were really grateful to dear old dad for this set-up), so Jacob continued working. He ended up walking off with almost half of Laban's possessions at the end of twenty years.note It's worth noting that Laban was Jacob's uncle. Yes, the man was enough of a greedy Jerkass to swindle his own nephew out of seven years of labor. As for the twenty years bit, after Jacob had worked for 14 years for his wives, he stayed with Laban as a contractor for six years, wherein Jacob would not be paid any cash, but they would divide the flock between them according to certain features on the sheep (whatever sheep had a certain feature would go to Jacob). Again, Laban tried to swindle Jacob by interfering with his ability to breed sheep that would bear the features that would go to him as his payment. This ends up backfiring. Subverted—or even inverted—in the tale of Doubting Thomas, who claimed he would need to touch the wounds of Christ before he believed in the resurrection. One common interpretation of the story says he believed as soon as he merely saw them. |
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In The Crown (2016), the royal handlers don't approve of Margaret's intention to marry Peter (who's both a commoner and divorced), but they don't want a direct confrontation either. They point out that, if she waits until she's 25, she can get married without the queen's consent, avoiding any troublesome legal issues. When she reaches the proper age and still wants to marry, they inform her that turning 25 only allows her to apply for the right to get married, but she still needs parliamentary approval. | |
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SOS Pretty Cure: Despite the fact that she became a Magical Girl even before forming the SOS Brigade, Haruhi laments how she hasn't been able to discover any "supernatural phenomena". When Kyon points the apparent discrepency to her, she declares that as far as she's concerned, "magic" doesn't fall under the paranormal umbrella. | |
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My "Dear" Boss: Reach the boss's home at 100000 m? Now reach the hospital at 500000 m in the next launch. Did that? Get him to the cemetery at 1000000 m. The game pushes new goals like this two times and replaces the previous ones on the progress bar. | |
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In The Grateful Beasts, at the instigation of his brothers, Ferko has to, in turn, cut all the corn in a single night, gather it all into barns the next night, and summon all the wolves in the land. It stops with the wolves because, well, they're wolves. | |
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In Rocky and Bullwinkle, a literal example occurs. In a football game, the opposing team actually moves the goal posts. | |
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The Chaotic Three: When Poe is forced to make a bet with Jabba the Hutt for Aayla Secura's freedom and the return of BB-8, after Poe wins the initial bet, Jabba offers to return BB-8 while playing another game for Aayla's freedom, but Poe refuses to take this further and has to be rescued by Finn. | |
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The trilogy The Q Continuum gives us 0, an entity as powerful as Q but infinitely more evil. When 0 suggests that they test younger races, Q is eager. However, while Q is willing to accept failure, 0 is not. When the Calamarain refuse to allow 0 to take control of them, he turns them into a block of ice. When Q asks why he did that, 0 simply says that the Calamarain cheated and must be punished. The next "test" is to put the powerful Tkon Empire (which is trying to replace their dying sun with a new one) into a state of civil war. When the leader of the Empire manages to convince both sides to stop fighting and complete the project, the enraged 0 causes the dying star to become a supernova and destroy the race. Once again, the shocked Q confronts 0 about this. 0 says that any younger race that overcomes a challenge set to it by a powerful entity like 0 must have either cheated, or the challenge wasn't sufficient. Q privately disagreed, and while he did test "younger" races in the future (especially the Enterprise-D), he always left in at least one achievable victory condition, and was a relatively Graceful Loser when they "won" (at the very least, no Diabolus ex Machina). | |
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Cool Runnings: The Olympic Committee members do this to try to keep Jamaica from qualifying. First, they keep shortening the time requirements. When Jamaica makes the cut anyway, they try to claim that it doesn't count. It's implied that it wasn't the Jamaicans who were the problem, but Irv himself, whose bobsledding career ended after he was caught cheating. Irv calls them on it big time — specifically telling them to stop taking their issues with him out on his athletes — and they relent. (For the record this never happened in Real Life. The Jamaican Bobsledding team was freely welcomed by the committee and the bobsled teams of other countries.) | |
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Gutters: After Netherlands betrays Sealand by giving him up to the man who's holding Belgium hostage, the man tells him to shoot Denmark. When his victim protests that "That wasn't part of the deal," the man simply replies that "It is now." | |
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For the Glory of Irk: At one point, Xia does this regarding the rules of the strategy game she's playing with Ven, blatantly changing them or making them up on the spot to benefit her. He doesn't call her on it because he's too busy sucking up to her. | |
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The Battle School in Ender's Game uses this principle. Ender is virtually unbeatable in his war exercises, so the administration of the school start stacking the odds against him. Ender's opponents are given such benefits as head-starts to strategically place their troops, partial immunity to Ender's weapons, and eventually are allowed to attack him with vastly superior numbers. Ender starts using technically-legal but unconventional strategies to win, which the administration always makes illegal after every victory. Ender eventually gets so pissed off at the blatant cheating that he starts outright breaking the rules of combat himself, which it turns out was exactly what the administration wanted. Most army commanders start resenting Ender for his unending string of victories (which isolates Ender and pushes him toward the mixture of empathy and sociopathy that he needs to win the war). Bonzo in particular keeps claiming that the teachers are rigging the game in Ender's favor. Only an idiot would believe thatnote Bonzo isn't an idiot, no one in Battle School is, but he is blinded by pride and hatred of Ender, given all the advantages the other armies get. | |
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A fairly literal example happens at the beginning of the Muppet Babies episode "Kermit Goes to Washington". The babies are racing toy boats across the bathtub. When Gonzo wins, Piggy announces that she's changing the rules, and states that it now takes two laps to win, instead of just one. Piggy then creates a distraction and finishes the race. Naturally, the other babies complain that Piggy shouldn't be able to change the rules mid-game, and Nanny ultimately tells Piggy that she had been unfair. | |
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This is one of the main plot points of Catch-22. There are a certain number of missions each pilot has to fly before they can go home, but Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions before anybody gets to go home. | |
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Peanuts: Lucy repeatedly fools Charlie Brown by snatching away the football he is about to kick. This captures the feeling of this trope in a single instant, distilled down to its essence. | |
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Inverted in one episode of Touched by an Angel, when a woman, joined by Monica, has difficulty completing an obstacle course designed for men, specifically that rope n' wall thing. She trains hard to overcome the difference, then the chauvinist Drill Sarge tells her that she doesn't have to complete the same course as the men, being allowed to skip said wall. Monica finishes, and the woman falls behind. Just before she crosses the line, she stops and asks the Sarge whether command actually sent that order, instead of it just being the Sarge's requirement. Then she goes back, climbs the wall, and makes it across the line just in time. | |
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In the Game of Thrones Season 6 episode "No One", a group of Sparrows come to take Cersei for a meeting with the High Septon. She refuses, and The Mountain, set to be Cersei's champion in her upcoming trial by combat, kills a Sparrow. The next day, her son, King Tommen, announces that "after much prayer and reflection", he has decided to abolish trial by combat as a barbaric custom imposed by a previous dynasty that does not reflect the will of the gods and return to having cases heard by a panel of seven septons, forcing Cersei to resort to more drastic measures to avert the trial in the season finale. | |
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Robot Chicken had a sketch playing with the famous moment from The Empire Strikes Back. In the sketch, Vader keeps adding ridiculous elements to the deal ("Furthermore I wish you to wear this dress and bonnet!" "Here is a unicycle, you are to ride it wherever you go" "Also you are to wear these clown shoes and refer to yourself as 'Mary'") whenever Lando says "This deal's getting worse all the time!". It only stops when Lando figures out what's happening and says, "This deal... is very fair and I'm happy to be a part of it." | |
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Going Home to Teach: In recounting how he and his wife Cathy got married in Jamaica, author Anthony Winkler says that they had to deal with a marriage officer who kept stonewalling them because the official thought they should get marriage counselling first despite their declarations that they didn't want or need it. On their first visit, the official said he couldn't wed them that day because he had to officiate at another function; then they had to get all their previous marriage documents on hand; then they had to bring witnesses; and then when they brought the witnesses, Winkler's two sisters, they were told that there had to be at least one male and one female witness. The rigmarole finally ended when the official's wife browbeat him for imposing his university-based beliefs about marriage counselling on these innocent people. | |
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On Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the Romans do this constantly, in addition to their Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Indeed, virtually any agreement anyone makes usually gets altered by whichever side currently holds the advantage. Glaber, Batiatus and Crassus are the most notable offenders, but all the Romans also do it too. | |
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Selma features this in its first scene, where Anna Lee Cooper, a black woman living in Alabama, tries to register to vote. The registrar asks her to recite the Constitution's Preamble, and she does so. He then asks her to name the number of county judges in Alabama. "Sixty-seven". He then demands that she name them, at which she gives up. This is more or less Truth in Television — voting registrars had power over what sort of test to give a person, and would give hard or outright impossible ones to black voters. A lot of the tests also featured ambiguous wording, meaning the registrar could fail it for equally ambiguous reasons — for instance, one question asked to draw a line around a letter, which meant a registrar could fail it on the basis of "You drew a circle, not a line." | |
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SpongeBob SquarePants: "Neptune's Spatula" had SpongeBob trying to be declared the greatest chef ever. Neptune at one point added more and more conditions a person must meet to be the greatest chef (such as "must be left-handed"), often contradicting previous conditions ("Must wear red underwear, no, BLUE!"). SpongeBob kept meeting ALL of them. In the episode "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic" SpongeBob is trying to get into the Jellyspotters, but their leader Kevin keeps stringing him along with increasingly difficult tasks, at which SpongeBob succeeds with ease. When they finally come up with something sufficiently impossible, it winds up in Kevin being Hoist by His Own Petard as the fake "queen jellyfish" he creates attracts a real king jellyfish, and SpongeBob saves the day, revealing Kevin as a complete loser. When Kevin still tries to deny SpongeBob entry, the other Jellyspotters get fed up and take Kevin's crown (which was actually part of his head) and give it to SpongeBob. |
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In the Animal Crossing series of video games, your character moves into a new town full of animals. The local shopkeeper, Tom Nook, sets you up with a place to live... and then gives you a bill that you cannot possibly afford. Even after your stint as his personal assistant, it will still take you some time to pay off the debt. Once you do, he offers to renovate your house, and ends up doing so whether you agree or not. And sticks you with that bill as well. It takes many iterations of this pattern before he is content to let you not be in his debt. Averted started with New Leaf, where you get to decide when and how your house is upgraded, if at all. | |
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A mutual version happened in Warhammer 40,000 with a Tau world under attack from Hive Fleet Gorgon, noted for being small (relatively speaking, Tyranids can unleash billions of organisms in a single wave) but highly adaptive. The Tau guns kept it at bay for a while, before the Tyranids came up with refractive chitin that cancelled out the guns. Then the Tau holed up behind thick undergrowth which entangled the Tyranids, allowing the Kroot to engage them in melee. The next wave was smaller and more agile, the one after made specifically to kill Kroot, but in both cases made more vulnerable to mass plasma fire. When the Tyranids became nearly immune to plasma weapons, the Tau went back to solid munitions used by Kroot. And so on and so forth. In the end, the fleet was pushed back from the planet as the need to adapt made it deploy less synapse creatures (making it vulnerable to suicidal decapitation strikes), and destroyed by combined Tau and Imperial fleets, whose wildly different weapons it couldn't adapt to fast enough. Some Inquisitors in the lore have been known to do this. A particularly memorable example was one who accused a man for heresy, but discovered the man was innocent of the crime. The Inquisitor executed the man anyway, declaring that "wasting an Inquisitor's time" was heretical. |
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In Hazbin Hotel, during the court case to determine whether Sinners can be redeemed in the "Welcome to Heaven" episode, Charlie asks Adam what it takes for a soul to get into Heaven, and he hastily comes up with three qualifications on the spot. Sera seems to agree that the qualifications he came up with are sufficient proof, since Adam was the first man to get into Heaven. When Angel Dust fulfills all three of Adam's criteria without even knowing he's being watched, Sera is unwilling to reevaluate cases after Divine Judgement has already been passed, and still says it's insufficient evidence to prove Sinners can be redeemed. This is part of the reveal that Heaven doesn't know what gets people into Heaven either. The upper brass of Heaven seems to think that eliminating evil by purging sinners from Hell once a year will ensure Heaven's safety. But they're just assuming that everyone who goes to Heaven or Hell must deserve it and they're justified in carrying out the Exterminations, even though this could be entirely wrong. Either way, those in the upper brass of Heaven have no interest in finding out, and are content to just let things remain the way they are while pretending that they're fixing the problem. "The Show Must Go On" has Sir Pentious become an Ascended Demon by rising from Hell to Heaven, which shows that redemption for Sinners is possible, as a way of reaffirming that Heaven has no idea if what it's doing is even working. | |
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In Down Periscope, the main characters take part in a military exercise using an old World War II era diesel submarine, the USS Stingray, against the modern US Navy, but keep getting tighter restrictions placed on them by a vindictive admiral when they succeed in spite of the odds. In the end, the admiral is called on his behavior by the senior admiral who had arranged for the exercise in the first place. Subverted in that they had higher orders and so completely ignored the new rules. | |
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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: When you first encounter the younger Beaver brother, he will offer you an empty bottle if you can complete his swim-through-the-rings minigame. When you do that, the older Beaver brother will show up, stating that you must now also complete his slightly harder version of the minigame before giving you their bottle. The same thing is repeated for a Heart Piece (and once again you'll only receive it when racing with the beavers separately), so it's necessary to clear the challenge a total of four times for 100% Completion. | |
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The members of the The Babysitters Club put Mallory through numerous pointless trials so that she can join. Fed up with their unfair treatment, she quits, making them realize that they've been acting like jerks. | |
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Whispered Tribulation: After convincing himself that Izuku must be working for the League, Aizawa repeatedly rejects all the mounting evidence of his innocence, demanding more and more proof while latching onto anything he can try and twist into evidence against him. In this universe, Katsuki successfully convinced Izuku to give up on becoming a Pro Hero. However, this isn't good enough for the Barbaric Bully: when he learns that Izuku entered U.A.'s General Education track, he's absolutely furious, planning to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for the 'crime' of attending the same school as him. |
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Super Mario 3D World: World Star-4, "The Great Goal Pole", features a literal moving goalpost. What appears to be a simple 8 second Breather Level turns into a frantic chase as the winged goalpost moves ever further away from you and you have to chase it down to finish the level. | |
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Inazuma Eleven: So Aidoru/Sam Idol's Goal Slide technique consists in pushing a specifically-made papier-maché goal out of the ball's trajectory, therefore preventing the goal by literally moving the goalposts. | |
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CONSEQUENCES: In MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE, Lila threatens to get Marinette expelled again unless Adrien becomes her boyfriend. When he angrily reminds her that he only agreed to be her 'friend', she replies "Terms can change, Adrien. Deals can be altered, especially when one party isn't benefitting as much as they were promised." | |
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Doctor Who: Used to political effect in "The Sun Makers". Earth was dying, when a mysterious "Company" swoops in and provides a(n) (olive/company) branch to help humanity, led by the greedy "Collector". They provided a viable living environment for humanity first on Mars, and when the Doctor and his current companion, Leela, happen to arrive on the scene, now on Pluto. The Collector and his foppish, snooty, and boot-kissing right-hand flunky, Gatherer Hade, tax and police the population, ranging from ever-increasing exorbitant fees on payments, to declaring being out in the sunlight illegal, to controlling the population with a fear-inducing chemical. (claimed to be an air-purification chemical by The Company.) How badly does the Collector and the Company move the goalposts? When we, the viewers, arrive in-media-res, a worker in his city has saved up enough of his money (80 telmars) to help give his ailing father a painless assisted suicide. Upon presentation of the money to Gatherer Hade, the worker is instead told, nonchalantly, that the Collector has recently increased the fees on payments, meaning that what would normally be paid in 80 telmars is now 117 telmars. Add to this that he is now expected to increase his workload, which only pays 3 telmars per shift, to pay off the debt, despite the fact that he already works 21 hours a day, and is now expected to be awake and working all the time until the debt is paid off! Needed in Series 7 of its modern era. This is exactly what Steven Moffat did with the Doctor's twelve-regeneration limit in 2013 when he had to deal with the fact that the Doctor had used up the entire set. The limit was introduced in "The Deadly Assassin" as a major plot point, but it effectively backed future writers into a corner because it meant the Doctor was subject to this regeneration cap, and thanks to a slew of actors who didn't hold tenures as the Doctor for very long on TV due to either personal reasons that urged them to pass the torch or having their runs Cut Short, and a couple of major plot twists that accelerated the time table two whole regenerations, it fast-forwarded the Doctor to the end of his limit. He stated verbatim in an interview that it was easier to "move the goalposts" rather than have the Doctor outright die (an idea which was played with all throughout the tenure of Matt Smith, whose Doctor did not have enough regeneration energy left in the tank to make it to his next incarnation). Fittingly, the Doctor got blessed with a new regeneration cycle as a reward from the Time Lords and went past the limit with another set of (at least) twelve regenerations to burn through. |
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The Star Trek Expanded Universe: The trilogy The Q Continuum gives us 0, an entity as powerful as Q but infinitely more evil. When 0 suggests that they test younger races, Q is eager. However, while Q is willing to accept failure, 0 is not. When the Calamarain refuse to allow 0 to take control of them, he turns them into a block of ice. When Q asks why he did that, 0 simply says that the Calamarain cheated and must be punished. The next "test" is to put the powerful Tkon Empire (which is trying to replace their dying sun with a new one) into a state of civil war. When the leader of the Empire manages to convince both sides to stop fighting and complete the project, the enraged 0 causes the dying star to become a supernova and destroy the race. Once again, the shocked Q confronts 0 about this. 0 says that any younger race that overcomes a challenge set to it by a powerful entity like 0 must have either cheated, or the challenge wasn't sufficient. Q privately disagreed, and while he did test "younger" races in the future (especially the Enterprise-D), he always left in at least one achievable victory condition, and was a relatively Graceful Loser when they "won" (at the very least, no Diabolus ex Machina). The novel Kobayashi Maru goes into enough detail of the progression of the eponymous test (especially in Chekov's and Scott's experience with it) to reveal that it's one long series of goalpost-movement on the part of the administering AI. No matter what the cadet taking it does, the AI will add something more that they have to beat. Defeat one Klingon cruiser? Two more show up. Beat them? Four more. Somehow beat them? Well, hi there, Klingon Dreadnought, fancy meeting you here... Mainly it does this because the KM scenario is supposed to show cadets that you can't always fight your way out and sometimes retreat is the best option, even if it means abandoning people to die. |
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The Silver Raven: Initially, Emperor Belos orders Lilith to have Nero join a coven before the Day of Unity arrives, or else he'll be branded a wild witch. Then in Chapter 17, he issues a new ultimatum: if Lilith doesn't bring in Eda by the end of that day, both Nero and Lilith will be branded wild witches. | |
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Early in Dragon Ball, Master Roshi declares that Goku and Krillin have completed their physical training and are ready to train real martial arts, once they're able to push a boulder forward with nothing but their raw strength. When Goku is unexpectedly capable of just such feat, he declares that he was mistaken and points at a much larger boulder for them to strive for. He doesn't even have any real martial arts to teach them, only preparing them physically. It's all they ever need and more. | |
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The Great Gaias: Captain Baffa knows the location of the Archipelago, but refuses to take the party there because he doesn't think they're ready. Every time the party asks, Baffa gives them a seemingly Herculean task, only to come up with another one until the party completes every other sidequest in the game. This is intended to be a humorous way to help the player find undiscovered sidequests. | |
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The Hunger Games: Zig-zagged in the original book, with the mid-game rule change that two tributes can share victory, provided that they are from the same district, which is then revoked at the last possible moment. This backfires, though, as Katniss and Peeta will have no part in this chain-jerking and threaten to kill themselves, leaving the Games with no victor. This forces the gamemakers to go back on going back. Done again in Catching Fire, where for the Quarter Quell Games they draw their tributes from the pool of victors for previous games. It's normally the case that only people below 18 are eligible, and that if you do win and are under 18, your name is removed from the draw in future. This is viewed as very unfair by many, even within the Capitol. The film adaptation gives one of the tributes the opportunity to explain her perspective on the situation. |
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My Driver Academia: During his Quirk Assessment test, Aizawa privately admits to himself that Izuku is performing well enough that his numbers would put him in second place... if Aizawa was willing to assess him fairly. Since he's biased against Blades, however, he spitefully ranks Izuku the lowest, using the excuse that he doesn't HAVE a Quirk to assess. | |
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In Battlestar Galactica (1978): | |
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Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Your Ed Here", Kevin finds out Eddy's Embarrassing Middle Name, and uses it as blackmail material to make Eddy do all sorts of publicly humiliating stunts before telling everyone Eddy's middle name anyway. In "Stiff Upper Ed," Eddy (with the other 2 Eds) make several failed attempts of joining Sarah and Jimmy's rich club. When the other kids are admitted into the rich club, the Eds make one last attempt, only for Jimmy to ask for their invitations. To add further insult, Kevin is allowed in the club despite him not being dressed rich. Sarah makes no attempt to hide the fact she thinks the trio are freeloaders and should get lost. |
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Doom³: Whenever you reach whichever location you were previously ordered to go, your squadmates have already gone ahead and your commander will radio you to go someplace else, making it feel as if you were accomplishing nothing in the game. Or rather, nothing beyond killing a lot of zombies and stuff, which is the real point anyway. During the second half of the game, the commander falls victim of Demonic Possession and your only option is to kill him in a boss battle, thus making the feeling of lacking a real accomplishment even stronger, and by that point the only goalpost is to survive until the end. | |
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The villains in Kaiji like doing this. Congratulations, you just won a ticket worth several million yen! Now you just need to go cash it in at the adjacent building (which means walking a long, narrow steel beam, suspended hundreds of meters above ground and rigged with traps). | |
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South Park: In a spoof of Great Expectations, Pip insists that his love interest does have a heart, handing her a baby bunny and saying that no one with a heart could break a baby bunny's neck. Cue obvious Neck Snap, and Pip keeps insisting that "No one with a heart could break the neck of 2/3/4/5 (etc.) baby bunnies!". He brings out 26 baby bunnies before she simply gets bored, and claims that as proof that she has a heart. The parental version of this trope is seen two episodes later in "The Wacky Molestation Adventure", with Kyle's parents saying he can attend a Raging Pussies concert only if Kyle cleans out the garage, shovels the driveway, and brings democracy to Cuba. He does all three, accomplishing the final task by writing a letter so moving that it touches the heart of Fidel Castro. However, Kyle's parents still refuse to let him go to the concert on the grounds that they don't want him to go. This ultimately kicks off the main Teenage Wasteland plot. In "More Crap", Randy takes the world's biggest crap. There's actually a committee in Europe dedicated to measuring as well as an award for doing so, and the previous winner, Bono, becomes jealous. He interrupts the award ceremony and announces that he'd taken an even bigger crap that morning, and measured it himself with no proof, and is given back the award. When he finds out Randy has set out to take back the record he insists he goes to Europe and takes it right in front of the committee because it's the only way to make sure he won't cheat. |
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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: During Chapter 4, Doopliss will steal Mario's name and body (just roll with it), but will agree to give them back if you can guess his name note you can't because the letter "p" is missing from the input menu, and you need to find it. Once you're able to properly guess Doopliss' name, he runs off in astonishment; you now need to chase Doopliss back to Creepy Steeple and defeat him there to actually recover Mario's name and body. In Doopliss' "defense," there's no way for Mario to know his name when asked to guess - this is to prevent players who already know who Doopliss is from messing with the story. One of the missions at the Trouble Center is from a Bub-ulb who wants you to bring him a certain food. When you meet up with him in Petalburg, he will ask for you to bring him a Hot Dog, which can only be purchased in Glitzville. Bring him a Hot Dog, and he will now tell you to get him a second Hot Dog. Do that, and he will then ask for you to bring him a Mousse Cake. To get a Mousse Cake, you need to buy a Cake Mix at the Pianta Parlor and have Zess T. cook it. Bring the Bub-ulb the Mousse Cake and you'll finally get rewarded with... a Dried Bouquet note An item that heals 1 HP and is useful for one mediocre recipe and not much else. Granted, you can bring the Bub-ulb everything in one trip if you know what you're doing, but anyone playing this game for the first time would never have this knowledge. |
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In Always Sometimes Monsters, you can try negotiating with your Cranky Landlord by offering to pay him whatever money you've scrounged together so that you can stay in your apartment that night, even if you can't afford the full $500. He'll consider this, and potentially agree... but if you pissed him off by refusing to hand over your key, he'll add that you also have to pay a $5000 security deposit upfront to cover the cost of replacing the locks. | |
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In "Fright of Passage" on Dragons: Riders of Berk, Tuffnut and Ruffnut do this to Snotlout, repeatedly adding to a list of ridiculous demands that he has to meet in order to get into their shelter. Each time he brings back what they want, they just add something else, until finally the Frightmare threat is driven away and then Snotlout is able to get in, only to find that everyone is gone and the party he was hoping to attend is over. | |
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Our Little Adventure: It's mentioned that the Hell equivalent for Lawful Evil people is an endless cycle of being punished for every inadequacy, then having the goalposts moved if you ever stop being inadequate. | |
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Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "theme park", Pom Pom plays a ring-toss game at Strong Bad's hypothetical theme park. He manages to win, but then Bubs (who's manning the booth) tells him "You gotta get those rings inside the bottle!" | |
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Moving the Goalposts | |
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In The World is Still Beautiful, Nike's grandmother offers Livius a deal: find a key she tossed into a swamp to release Nike from her prison and she will let them be together. However, the swamp can be truly dangerous if the weather is really bad with lots of rain. Livius takes all but five seconds to look at the woman who trained Nike to control the weather and use a profane word against her. So, it's not the goal that is moved, but the terrain to the goalposts. | |
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Mean Rabbit: Aizawa repeatedly does this to Izuku, as part of his desire to "teach him" that Life Isn't Fair to the Quirkless: Despite Izuku passing the entrance exam and performing well during the Quirk Assessment test, Aizawa declares that he automatically places last because he's Quirkless and attempts to expel him. When Izuku points out that he performed better than half the class in said assessment, Aizawa makes him face the five worst-performing students in a series of rematches. Once he outperforms them all, he gives those five an expulsion scare, seemingly kicking them out for not being able to beat a Quirkless kid and making most of the class blame Izuku for it. When a Double Knockout means that Izuku gets a pass to the next round of the Sports Festival's tournament, as neither of his would-be opponents made it to the next round, Aizawa tries to make one of the already disqualified students come back and fight him instead. He's extremely frustrated when nobody is willing to cooperate. |
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Dragon Ball Reboot: As a little girl, Gine dreamed of becoming a strong fighter and asked a local Gang of Bullies whether she could train with them. Their leader, Aikon, told her that she could join them if she managed to hit him in a fight. When she does just that, an embarrassed Aikon gives several flimsy excuses for why it didn't count before changing the conditions so that she has to fight his entire gang at once. | |
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In Path of the King, Shirou uses this to control his underground contact, putting him in increasingly dangerous situations with his demands. After this nearly leads to his contact's untimely demise, Shirou is horrified with himself, cutting ties with him out of guilt. | |
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Palpatine does this to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, stringing him along with promises of teaching him Plagueis' ability to save people from death. When he's being threatened by Mace Windu, he claims to have the power himself, but after Anakin saves him he immediately backtracks and states that only Plagueis ever knew it but they can discover the secret together if Anakin keeps doing his bidding. Ultimately he drops the pretense after Padme's death, and it's left ambiguous whether he actually knew the ability - and, at least in the films, whether or not it ever existed at all. Anakin, for his part, did realize Palpatine was manipulating him, but went along with it out of inertia and desperation. | |
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Breaking Bad: This is basically what keeps Walter cooking meth for so long. Every time it seems like he's finally cooked his last batch and made enough money from drug trading that he's secured his family's financial future, he finds some new reason to keep him making more. It quickly becomes clear that it's not the money that drives him to keep cooking, but to fuel his selfish ego and need to feel important. He even turns down a six-figure job offer and his cancer treatment being paid in full by his billionaire neighbours simply because he wants to be the one to save his family from debt. | |
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In Not a Villain, Danni has been struggling with this. Due to her paralysis, her City considers her a "costly liability", and they've been changing their rules to impose more and more difficult requirements on her to justify the resources she consumes. They want her to fail so that they can take her off life-support and import a replacement citizen capable of working on the Farms. | |
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Hiveswap: In Act 2, Zebruh offers his train ticket to Joey and Xefros if they're able to get him Marvus's autograph, then if they get Marvus to listen to his mix tape. They're finally able to get the ticket from him once they convince him to go to Slam or Get Culled tryouts instead of Jeevik Week. | |
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Burn Notice: A very small-scale one: Sam is trying to get a list of companies from the head of a local Better Business Bureau type group. The contact keeps saying he will have it soon — at every (expensive) lunch meeting they have. Probably by the next meeting. Eventually Sam claims to be DEA, and frightens the contact into turning over the list. In a more serious example, Michael points out how common this trope is for blackmailers, and isn't above using it against various henchmen when working against bad guys. |
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Frasier: Mel and Niles' sham marriage. At first, he agrees to spare her reputation by attending a couple of weeks of public engagements before she files for divorce. The first amendment is that he's also not allowed to be seen in public with Daphne. Then, the "couple of weeks" gets dragged out to unreasonable extremes. Then, he's informed that in order to make the breakup look authentic without reflecting badly on Mel, he has to start acting like a dick in public so it will look like she had to dump him. | |
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In the Friends episode "The One With All the Rugby", Chandler attempts to get away from his ex-girlfriend Janice by claiming that he has been transferred to Yemen. Unfortunately, Janice is so determined to spend every last minute with him before he leaves that Chandler ultimately has to buy a ticket to Yemen and actually get on the flight while she's watching him from the gate. | |
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The Arithmancer has Umbridge repeatedly employing this throughout Lady Archimedes. Both she and Hermione are Rules Lawyers; however, Umbridge has the backing of the Ministry and no problem whatsoever with exploiting that. | |
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Played with during Therion's route in Octopath Traveler. Therion is a thief who needs to get into a heavily guarded mansion, so he goes to a former friend of the mansion's owner. He's told that he'll be given a means of getting into the mansion if he procures a rare material, but as soon as he returns with it he's told to go fetch something else. This happens three times before the man reveals that all of the materials Therion got for him were components he needed to make a key that will get Therion into the mansion's vault. | |
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In The Misadventures of Tron Bonne you start out with a debt of a million zenny that you have to pay off. When you raise that money, Lex Loath, the loan shark, takes it and insists that you now owe interest that comes to another two million. When you finally pay that off, he says that you owe interest on your interest. When Tron refuses to comply, he kidnaps her and forces you to invade and destroy everything. The ending shows Teisel claiming that it was all part of his plan to get the stash of the Big Bad. On one hand, tricking someone you know will try this trope is believable. On the other hand... the Bonnes coming up with that? | |
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YuYu Hakusho: In an early episode, Sadist Teacher Mr. Akashi will do anything to expel students he doesn't like, and make life miserable for others. This is best demonstrated by his treatment of Kuwabara; Kuwabara's friend Okubo is holding down a job after school, and it's normally forbidden for students to do so without a special permit. So Akashi threatens to contact Okubo's boss and have him fired, unless Kuwabara refrains from violence for a certain amount of time, then hires a gang of bullies to try and goad him into a fight. When that doesn't work (Kuwabara just lets them beat him up), Akashi pulls the trope by adding a new condition — the pair and their two friends have to score high enough on an upcoming test as well. And then he tries it again by, when Kuwabara actually gets just high enough a score, erasing one of the correct answers and lowering his grade. Fortunately, the boys' homeroom teacher Mr. Takenaka catches on and intervenes, restoring Kuwabara's correct grade and permitting Okubo to keep his job. | |
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YU+ME: dream : Sadiko offers to let the protagonist leave with the love interest if she can find the only sword in the castle in five minutes. Turns out that according to Sadiko's watch, five minutes is about four minutes, thirty seconds. And the stakes were also raised from "steal my girlfriend and leave forever" to "kill me and take over the planet". | |
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In Ultima VII Part II, you need to free a captain so that you can sail to the next town. The guards want you to pay his fine: 100 Monetari. If you try to pay the fine, they up the fine to some amount slightly larger than the amount of Monetari you have on hand, and will continue to do this if you come back with more. The only way to free the man is to track down a cache of gold bars. This can make the game Unwinnable or cause a Game-Breaker depending on what you do with the gold bars. If you convert the bullion into Monetari, the guards will just up the fine again. If you offer to pay in bullion, the guards will take all of your bullion and free the captain. If you drop all but one of the bars, you can free the captain, reclaim the rest of the bullion, and have more than enough money for the rest of the game. This was mercilessly lampshaded in Nakar's Let's Play of the game. | |
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This was especially prevalent in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, where both Picard and Janeway were not above countermanding their own orders if they had a change of heart on a particular matter, often to the bewilderment of their crews, who then had to respond to changes in what had previously been seen as fixed plans. | |
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