When this happens to me I take the time to refactor all sorts of "dependencies" in the process. It ends up being a net positive. Yeah, I added some complexity where it wasn't needed in one area but I've removed some legacy code or redesigned an ugly hack.
They don't know this code is generally unrelated or don't complain to me about it. Only problem with this is I can now be opening up new bugs because these revisions aren't always fully QA'd.