This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: The Untwist: From YKTTW
Lord TNK: Like the reason for no examples. Made Of Win.
Vree: There is actually a sub-trope of this where the main character falls for this as much as the viewers and ends up mistreating Carol and/or aiding Bob's escape. Can make for a particularly shocking downer ending: the "good cop" has failed his job, let down the people who has trusted him because of his successes with the OTHER type of cases, shoke sweet Carol's trust in the police and let the villain off. A lighter take on this sub-type is the "Columbo Cries Wolf" episode from "Columbo", where the murderer makes him think that he has commited a murder via carefully planted false evidence, so that when he actually commits the same murder no-one believes the detecive anymore.
lala: I think it's pretty silly that we can't have examples. Because it's subjective? Like every other thing on this website?
Crowley: The problem isn't that this trope is subjective; the problem is that literally ANYTHING can be the Untwist to at least one person (as the article says, "any plot twist can become the Untwist to a sufficiently paranoid reader.) If we did keep examples, we'll have a list with millions of entries.
VVK: I'd like to add a meta-example, but I'm reluctant to do so when examples have explicitly been forbidden. There's nothing subjecive about the fact that The Nine Wrong Answers by John Dickson Carr invokes this trope. The reader is repeatedly addressed by saying, I bet you thought what you just read is leading up to such and such? Well, it's not, ha!
