The An Offer You Can't Refuse trope as used in popular culture. Sometimes a bad guy wants something done, something he can't do himself; none of his own.
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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I watched Michael's interview about a week ago on YouTube and I liked the stories he shared. I got this book in hope to learn something new in regards to negotiation but there wasn't really much. This is more of a basic business tips book for beginners who got no idea how to deal with business.
I thought that I would learn some new strategies in dealing with people when it comes to negotiation but nothing much here. I like the quotes and personal stories Michael shares and I will buy his autobiography but I wouldn't recommend this book if you are looking into negotiation. There many other great books on negotiation and getting people to agree with you. Very nice book on surviving the Corporate Jungle. If I knew some of the stuff "way back then" I'd have gone a lot further than I have so far. The chapter on "Sit Downs" is wonderful. More detail than that but I have covered the essential points.
Lots and lots of 'em. I realize now how I've messed up in the past. I will be using this advice the day after tomorrow at work. Thank you for the good advice Mr. I'll make it work. One person found this helpful. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. It's important to understand mob thinking and also honesty is important when a former mob boss says it.
The book is filled with interesting anecdotes, but it's mostly broad strokes. I was looking for a nice easy read and this was definitely that. This really isn't a business book as much as it is a book regarding philosophy. I was surprised at the comparison between Machiavelli and Solomon and even more surprised that he chose Solomon in such strong terms but he's right given his background.
Th advice isn't anything new, but is worthwhile. All in all a good read. Has a great business approach. In One Piece , invitations to Big Mom's tea parties are such offers. Should one dare refuse, the head of someone they've been involved with friend, family member, etc will be mailed to them a few days later, until they accept.
phrases, sayings, proverbs and idioms at
This is why Sanji had no choice but to accept going to his Arranged Marriage with one of Big Mom's daughters. Einhart and Nove offer Fuka a job at the Nakajima gym and perks as free food and lodging as part of their recruitment after her initial refusal to join. They use the fact that Fuka needs the money to help support the orphanage and Fuka's recent loss of job as leverage in order for her to accept. This is a non-malicious example as Einhart sees potential in Fuka and genuinely wants to take her in as an apprentice.
Another benevolent example again courtesy of Einhart. Upon learning that Rinne intends to quit being a martial artist, Einhart offers her a shot at her U championship title, on the condition that she win against Fuka. This is so that not only would she uphold the promise of fighting Fuka, but to make a talented fighter such as her continue, and possibly find joy, in practicing martial arts.
After Akane discovers that the Psycho-Pass System has puppeteers controlling the AI, they declare that if she assassinated them, the key members of the entire juridical and effectively ruling system in Japan, it would result in the total collapse of society. As an alternative, they offer her and her squad full pardons for some, not all if she'll just leave.
Knowing that she can't open fire without becoming a mass-murderer of citizens, she takes it. Thragg and the other Viltrumites will settle down on Earth and breed with humans to produce more human-Viltrumite hybrids like Mark to repopulate the Viltrumite empire over thousands of years. In return, the Viltrumites will hold off on the whole "kill everyone on Earth" thing.
Thragg makes it clear to Mark that there is no way he could stop Thragg from destroying the Earth if he refuses this deal. Lucy makes a non-lethal - but very unsubtle version of this towards Linus in a Peanuts comic strip while both are watching television: Why don't you be a good little brother and go make me a jelly bread sandwich?
If you don't I'm going to leap on you and pound you right through the floor! So why don't you make me that jelly bread sandwich? Linus gets up to get it Linus: When someone asks you that nicely, how can you refuse? Several times in Vampirella: In "Death's Dark Angel" a corrupt sheriff threatens the Van Helsings with trumped-up charges in order to get them to follow him to Wade's place. And be a Bride of Chaos" Conrad presses a stake against the gut of a local guide about to chicken out. Dungeon Twilight has the Greater-Scope Villain ending up with a billion plus army with a simple offer: Only a few people possesses the Awesome, but Impractical alternative air source wearing a special hat fueled by being drunk to refuse the offer, but that means fighting the gigantic army wasted.
A downplayed example in Revival: Ibrahim is forced to relay information to the CIA to protect his imprisoned brother, but this never affects the overall plot much. In the Firefly fic Forward , Womack forces Mal and his crew into one of these; either they sabotage a former business partner's organ smuggling operation, or Womack will frame and then have them arrested for smuggling instead. And later, "Darth Valer" threatens demands that Ebony "kill him or I shall kill him anyway. And then, just to prove she's serious, she killed Granny Smith. In the penultimate chapter of Mass Effect Interregnum , Sidonis is given an offer he can't refuse by the Eclipse mercenary leader Jaroth: In the final chapter he accepts of course , the team is wiped out except for Garrus , and Jaroth actually holds up his end of the bargain , giving Sidonis a bag of cash and a trip to the Citadel.
Although the text points out that Sidonis dies just as surely ; it just takes a lot longer. In A Taste of the Good Life , Ebony Glimmer secured her divorce from her abusive husband by threatening to slit his throat if he didn't sign the papers. Not difficult considering how Ax-Crazy Kimblee is. In the Worm fic Security! Fortunately, he knows the magic words that will get him out of trouble.
Principal Abacus Cinch not so subtly blackmails her star student Twilight into participating in the Friendship Games by offering to use her contacts in the Everton program to ensure Twilight's application is approved; if Twilight refuses, Cinch will use those same contacts to ensure she's denied. As part of it's parody of The Godfather, Duke Weaselton claims he was made an offer he couldn't refuse. During his Engineered Public Confession , Carson reveals that he intends to destroy any country that refuses to buy the fuel he's harvesting from the moon.
An Offer You Can't Refuse - TV Tropes
When Skinner finds out Remy a rat does all the cooking Linguini takes credit for, he captures Remy and offers a deal: Remy develops a new line of frozen foods for Skinner and Skinner doesn't kill him. When Woltz fails to accept such an offer, his prize horse's head is severed and is placed in bed with him.
Don Vito's preferred approach had three stages: First, make a fair or even generous offer. Second, if the first offer is refused, lower your initial offer, or even offer nothing. Third, if the person still doesn't take the hint, threaten the person with violence, possibly harming something that matters to him to make the point. The initial offer is often just "You'll have my friendship, and I'll owe you a favor. The novel implies that Vito uses a different approach for someone with "real balls", someone who would be willing to lose everything over a matter of honor.
Judging from the way Vito and Michael interact with other important mafiosi, the approach seems to be to simply make an offer; if the offer is refused, decide whether to accept the refusal, or go to war. But don't bargain which would be seen as weakness or threaten which would be an intolerable insult. The trope is subverted in this film when Michael assures Fredo that he'll make Moe Greene "an offer he can't refuse". In fact, Michael makes the offer in a confrontational and condescending way, almost forcing Greene to refuse it—which he does. Apparently, Michael wanted Greene to turn him down, giving him an excuse to arrange a Moe Greene Special for the movie's climax.
This trope is subverted by Commando , in which the villains attempt to coerce John Matrix into assassinating someone by holding his daughter ransom And Schwarzenegger's character just ignores the mission and kills them all to rescue her. Indiana Jones has been forced by Communists and Nazis to find a number of artifacts and circumvent the dangerous traps before them , typically with the life of someone else on the line.
Impossible III , Ethan Hunt is forced to recover the "Rabbit's Foot", a biological weapon which he just seized from a black market deal and return it to its owner, Owen Davian. If he refuses to recover it, or doesn't get it to Davian in time, then his wife, Julia, will be killed. Unfortunately, the offer was given by Darth Vader , so naturally Lando gets double-crossed—Vader alters the deal , and warns "pray I don't alter it further".
The gang gets back together in Ocean's Thirteen to avenge Reuben, after Al Pacino screws him out of his half of his casino by offering one of these. The first thing the gang does is offer him a chance to pay Reuben back what he owes him or else, making it also an example. He refuses and further infuriates them by insulting Reuben. They make him regret refusing their offer. In Sin City , Marv and John Hartigan are both made to plead guilty for the villains' crimes, using threats against loved ones.
Saving his younger brother from Calitri is the only reason Memphis Raines comes out of carjacking retirement in Gone in 60 Seconds Either participate in a plot to sexually entrap James Bond, or get shot. The film 30 Minutes or Less is about two idiots who want to rob a bank getting a very unlucky pizza delivery boy to do it for them, by strapping a bomb to his chest effectively giving him a time limit as well. In Bad Boys II , big bad Tapia convinces his business associate to sign over his business to him by having his bodyguard brought back to him chopped up in pieces in a drumcan, with the implied threat that he can either sign the paper or be next.
In Escape from New York , the government injects something into Snake Pliskin's neck and tell him he can either go in and rescue the President in a set amount of time, or else have his carotid arteries exploded. They do this to Snake again in Escape from L. They inject him with a virus that will supposedly kill him in 12 hours unless he brings the President's Rebellious Spirit teenage daughter back.
Ultimately subverted as the virus is just a fast acting version of the common flu. In Jupiter Ascending , Balem subjects Jupiter to this: Subverted when she realizes that even if he does kill her and her family, he can't harvest Earth if she doesn't abdicate, whereas if she does, then they're all animals for the slaughter. She thus decides that, if the choice is between her and her family being murdered or being harvested with the rest of the Earth, she'll pick the option that hurts Balem. A local kingpin sends his goons to politely invite the two main characters to a meeting at his home.
When one of the men starts to make an excuse, the lead goon repeats the polite invitation in a tone conveying that it's not a request. Eddy is given the choice of helping the operatives or being shot on the spot. He immediately agrees to help. When David tells him that he doesn't want to get caught and put into a Mexican prison, he's straight up told that he has no choice in the matter. James Cole, a habitual criminal in the future, is ' volunteered ' by the scientists to go back to the past to investigate the virus that now forces what's left of humanity to live underground.
For a man in your position, an opportunity not to volunteer would be a mistake In The Princess Bride they demand the key to the main gate from a man who says he has no such key. Wesley turns to Andre the Giant and tells him to tear his arms off.
an offer one can't refuse
The gatekeeper pulls out the key. Thane and Dagen get Peregus to sell Marek so they can free her. By putting a dagger to his throat and making him sign the contract. Dormammu , I've come to bargain. He made an offer you couldn't defuse. He takes the job, but at the end of the book makes a point of listing off all of the unsavory alternatives at his disposal which he could have made use of if he were less moral, and informing her that if she ever tries something like this again, he will chuck his principles out the window and use every last one of those alternatives to come after her.
Mavra has not appeared since. In addition, it wasn't an empty threat: In the Dale Brown novel Warrior Class , Big Bad Pavel Kazakov plans to ask Balkan nations to let him build an oil pipeline through their territory or get bombed by his stealth aircraft. He pulls this on a Russian Army Captain later, advising the man's silence lest his girlfriend and child come to harm. Early in the Belisarius Series , we see the wife of the titular general fleeing assassins through the streets of Constantinople and ducking into a small eatery. She confronts the owners and slams a heavy purse on the table her husband is quite wealthy offering it insistently as rent for the shop, then pulls out a dagger she grew up on the streets of Alexandria and tells them "or take the knife, in your fucking guts!
They'll take a vulnerable loved one hostage or hire another human to kill them if they refuse. A favoured tactic of the Daemon in recruiting its human agents. As just one example, it springs a prisoner from jail by cleaning his record, then, as he starts getting cold feet, reminds him that if it can jigger the records to clear him, it can also jigger them to put him back — as a child molester.
The most notable being in the first book when Violet has to marry Olaf or Sunny dies. She finds a third option. In the Simon Scarrow novel The Eagle's Prophecy one book in a series the Imperial Secretary, Narcissus, gives the centurions Macro and Cato a job retrieving three ancient prophecy scrolls from pirates, not even bothering to phrase it as an offer, saying, "I won't insult your intelligence by offering you the job.
You will do it, or you will die. In one Callahans Cross Time Saloon story, narrator Jake Stonebender recalls the time a well-dressed fellow he refuses to say more, 'lest certain ethnicities be offended tried to make Callahan an 'offer he can't refuse'' And apparently the gentleman's arms recovered in time. Get the Old Man what he wants, or else.
In the An Ember in the Ashes , there are several. The Resistance offers to free Laia's brother if she spies for them at the military academy. Cain offers Elias " freedom of body and soul " if he participates in the Trials. The augurs offer to save Elias' life if Helene pledges herself to anyone who becomes the next Emperor. Carla pulls this with Michael, he also manipulates some of the villains into doing this to his cover ID at the time.
This happens pretty much all the time in the series. Michael is often given this when he is to help the bad guy, or does this himself when he gets the bad guy to do what he wants. Cley Cerwyn swore fealty to House Bolton when Ramsay flayed his entire family and threatened to do the same to him. Ben gets Jack to do his spinal surgery by also kidnapping Kate and Sawyer Kate to control Jack, and Sawyer to control Kate, apparently. The plot of the entire third season has the villainous Company kidnapping Michael Scofield's girlfriend and Lincoln Burrows' son, and threatening to kill them unless the brothers break an inmate out of a Panamanian prison.
Inverted in the Doctor Who episode "Journey's End", where two groups of heroes attempt to keep the Daleks from carrying out their plan by threatening the destruction of Earth and the Crucible respectively. In the ninth season of Spooks , Lucas North is blackmailed by a man who threatens to reveal that he isn't really Lucas North — he stole another man's identity to escape justice after being involved in an embassy bombing. Astronema actually, Karone interrupts by making a Whammy Bid , which she immediately raises to "all of you get to live".
Crisis centers around these. The villains kidnap a bus full of children, then force their wealthy and powerful parents to perform dangerous and illegal missions in order to get their kids back. Montrose to guess the word "fuse". He successfully says the word as part of this phrase If you forcibly join two things together, that's called Red looks confused Well, it's kinda like an offer you can re fuse!
In X Company a factory in Nazi occupied France has been converted to make weapons for the German army. Tom gives the factory owner an ultimatum: Referenced in My Name Is Earl. Joy steals a wrestling costume from her half-sister's neighbor, in order to infiltrate the match and defeat Liberty.
She steals the costume by shoving the owner of said costume into the trunk of her car. Played straight later, with Billie. She gets mad at Earl for focusing on the List instead of sex with her, so she steals the List and starts to undo the items Earl has already completed. Then she calls him, threatening to keep hurting people on the List if Earl doesn't choose her.
Earl has no choice but to meet up with Billie. In exchange for giving Wednesday a large amount of worshipers in North Korea , Wednesday will stop his plan to gain power in America. When Wednesday refuses the deal, the New Gods agree to leave peacefully, with the unspoken implication that they will then begin to prepare for war in earnest. Technical Boy demands to know why they don't just kill Wednesday now, while he's in their power. Mister World insists that Wednesday is old enough and has enough knowledge and wisdom that he deserves the respect of an honest deal instead of a Leonine contract.
However, instead of being a mafioso, he was a pimp, and his "offer you can't refuse" was to either step in the ring with him for their match, or the opponent could take their pick of any of the fine hos he always brought to the ring with him. Needless to say, it was very rare that the offer was refused. One criticism of Christianity, as voiced by Christopher Hitchens [1] , says that the offer of redemption through accepting Christ's sacrifice on your behalf amounts to this, since if refused, the person goes to hell.
They still have the moral high ground, however, since every other major faction leaves off the "join us" part. This trope happens every time an Inquisitor makes a "request". Unless you are very highly placed or connected death is the best thing that's going to happen if you refuse.