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Also known as "dramirony".
Some tropes, such as the infamous Unreliable Narrator, ensure that the audience is never quite as well informed of the truth as the characters — or, at least, one particular character— is. Dramatic Irony, however, turns that on its head, letting the audience see the whole picture when the protagonist, or even the entire cast, is kept largely in the dark.
Fat lot of good it does us though. When dramatic irony crops up, it's usually not to let us feel smugly superior. It's to toy with our fragile little emotions. If we're lucky, the emotion being manipulated will be amusement. If we're not, dramatic irony will be present to make us cringe or bite our fingernails down to the knuckles.
To really fit the definition though, one of the characters must make a statement, or perform an action, to fully illustrate that they are unaware of the situation. To the character, what they're saying or doing is perfectly sensible based on the knowledge they have. To the audience though, the statement or action is ludicrous or dangerously uninformed.
There are three main uses of Dramatic Irony:
- To create tension: Alice is engaged to Bob. Bob has made plans to elope with Carole. Alice is unaware of this. The real Dramatic Irony moment comes when Alice goes shopping with her best friend and is sighing over the wedding rings in the jeweller's shop, while the audience knows Bob is on his way to the airport to meet Carole.
- To make the audience cringe on the character's behalf: Alice did really well in the audition for the school play, clearly outclassing her rival, The Libby. But unknown to her, the Libby's mother is in charge of casting. Alice runs up to her nemesis to gloat... meanwhile, the viewers are cringing uncomfortably, because they know that the Libby's about to laugh in Alice's face and get the part that Alice deserved.
- For comedy: Popular in farces, especially those involving twins where no-one can remember who's who or in comedies where someone's cross-dressing. For example, Bob's girlfriend has just dumped him. He complains about the fickleness of women to his new best friend Adrian, remarking that they, as men, are much more sensible, and that he can rely more on Adrian than he can any woman. Bob is unaware that Adrian is really Alice in disguise. The audience, on the other hand, know Adrian's real identity, and so Bob's comment seems absurd.
This trope is a staple of theatre, thanks largely in part to the mechanics of that particular medium. Characters move on and off stage, but the audience stays in place. They're the only ones who stick around long enough to hear the "whole story." In the theatre, however, there's usually one other party who knows what's going on, especially if it's a Tragedy — the villain.
Classic theatre usually favours tense or comedic use of dramtic irony. Modern media is more likely to employ the "cringe factor" variation, which walks the line between tragedy and comedy.
A character's Hidden Depths are often a source of Dramatic Irony. A favorite trick of time-travel or historical works; see It Will Never Catch On. Foregone Conclusion often cranks it Up To Eleven.
A type of Irony.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Sora of Kaleido Star tends to bumble into situations, setting her up for the cringe-inducing variation. Having just been accepted into the Kaleido Stage, she runs up to her new colleagues, energetic, happy and ready to introduce herself. The viewers, however, have just seen that the other troupe members are suspicious of Sora for the very untypical way she came into the picture and mistakenly think that she actually cheated her way into the circus. The audience isn't surprised when they shun Sora and lumber her with all the cleaning duties as "punishment" — but Sora is.
- Pet Shop Of Horrors loves this trope. Chief among various uses of dramatic irony are Leon's many assertions that the supernatural-thing-of-the-chapter can't be real, because magic doesn't exist...right before he stops by for tea at Count D's pet shop, where the supernatural-thing-of-the-chapter is probably in one of the rooms in the back.
- In Fruits Basket, after Momiji's mother voluntarily submited to Laser Guided Amnesia because she could not take her son's curse, she sees him out late and expresses concern that his mother will worry about him. His sister, who was never told of her older brother, sees him and asks him if he will pretend to be her big brother.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena runs on this, especially rewatching the series. It's terribly heartbreaking at times. Also the shows of "sibling love" between Akio and Anthy to Nanami. It's hilarious as well as very, very disturbing.
- In Deadman Wonderland, Ganta's relationship of Shiro is more of a combination of creating tension and making the audience cringe on his behalf. The situation being that the Red Man killed all of Ganta's friends and framed him making him have to go to prison, making Ganta want to kill the Red Man for revenge. In prison, Ganta becomes really lonely, and comes to rely on and bond with Shiro. The one time he doubts her, he is proven very wrong, and makes a promise to himself that he'll believe in her from now on. Only thing is, Shiro turns out to be the Red Man. The audience can only imagine what his reaction will be when he finds out...
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Chisame tells Negi about how she doesn't believe a word of the "urban legends"
 around the school. Naturally, all of them are completely true, and Negi was directly involved in most of them (she does, however, note that he's a bad liar). There's an additional layer of irony in that Chisame herself eventually ends up dealing directly with just about everything she mentions.
- Episode 17 of Neon Genesis Evangelion ("Fourth Children") is a textbook example of dramatic irony. At Shinji's expense, of course. Everybody except Shinji knows that Touji is the fourth child, and the plot of the episode is centered on the fact that everybody conceals that fact from Shinji until it's too late.
- Played up for all its worth on Code Geass, which came to its head in episode 16 (the one before all The Masquerade started to unravel). That episode featured a conversation between Princesses Cornelia and Euphemia about how much Prince Clovis cared about his Dead Little Sister and brother and how capturing Zero would avenge the deaths of all three of their siblings Clovis, Lelouch, and Nunnally. Not only are the latter two still alive, but Lelouchi IS Zero. It also saw Kallen make discouraging comments and saying she has no interest whatsoever in him. But the highest amount of irony had to do with the interaction between Lelouch and Suzaku which saw the two of them teaming up to defeat Mao and save Nunnally, they said they trusted each other completely and agreed to help protect each other completely unaware of the others Secret Identity
Film
- Back To The Future used this brilliantly for comedic effect. Marty and George concoct plan wherein Marty will intentionally start harassing Lorraine, so that George will have his opportunity to come in and act as if he's intimidating Marty into leaving her alone, thus wowing Lorraine with his awesomeness. Unforeseen hitch though; Biff Tannen actually kidnaps Marty and proceeds to very seriously harass Lorraine. However, rather than torpedoing the whole plan, this actually leads to George demonstrating REAL awesomeness.
- The real ironic part is that come the time Marty is incapable of doing this to Lorraine (she's his mother after all). But she has no problem pressing Marty of attention and flirting with him rather aggressively.
- "Biff Tannen, I wouldn't marry you even if - even if you had a million dollars!" Which, in the alternate timeline, he had.
- A bit of tragic irony Star Treks II and III, for all the hope that the Genesis project would bring life from lifelessness, it actually caused the deaths of a great many people; and it didn't even work.
- In In Bruges, Ray's boss, Harry, orders Ray's death because he killed a child, albeit accidentally. At the end (and this is a major spoiler!) Harry believes he's killed a child, and shows himself to be a man of principle by committing suicide. In fact, he's killed a midget, but he's dead before Ray can inform him of this.
- The first Spider-Man movie has a scene near the end where Harry Osborn tells his best friend, Peter Parker, about how much he wants to kill Spider-Man to avenge the murder of his father, Norman Osborn. Does this one need any more explanation?
- Of Deep Blue Sea, it is often joked that the super Sharks know what this is, because one of them kills Samuel L Jackson in mid speech about what they're going to do to get through it.
- The song "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan is ironic in light of Mulan being a woman disguised as a man. The character singing the song does not know this, but we do.
Literature
- Tamora Pierce uses a very gentle, but rather sad, type of dramatic irony in Protector of the Small. The heroine, Keladry, develops a crush on her best friend Neal, that he remains totally oblivious to. He develops a crush on a noble lady...and anxiously asks Kel if she approves of the lady in question, since he values her opinion as a friend.
- At the end of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, Pham Nuwen decides to head for the center of the galaxy, to discover the origin of the alien technology found on Arachna. If you've read the first book, you know what the problem is — he's going the wrong way and ends up in the Unthinking Depths. The unawareness of the Zones of Thought on the part of all the characters leads to multiple examples of this.
- Indeed, it can be thought of as one extended episode of dramatic irony; while no hint of this appears in the book itself, the whole story revolves around ways to sidestep the limitations of the Slow Zone (Focus is an attempt to get around the lack of AI; the Qeng Ho are an attempt to circumvent the inevitable rise and fall of isolated, planetbound cultures), and everyone just assumes that those limits are universal. John Clute wrote a good essay on this.
- In Dan Abnett's Ravenor novel Ravenor Returns, Belknap takes Inquisitor Ravenor and his retinue for criminals and desperately tries to free Zael from their clutches and a life of crime.
- Warrior Cats: Jayfeather is unable to understand why Leafpool and Crowfeather act so weird around each other, but any reader who has read the second series would know that what he is detecting is pure Unresolved Sexual Tension.
- In Mike Lee's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Fallen Angels, Lion and his Dark Angels fight and take substantial casualties to keep siege engines from traitor forces. At the very end, he is talking with Perturabo and handing over the engines. As this is the Back Story to the Warhammer 40000 universe, we know that Perturabo will take them directly to Horus.
- Sue Townsend uses this a lot in her Adrian Mole books, to great (mostly) comedic effect. Particularly remarkable in that the books are diaries...
Live Action Television
- 24 loves this. A good example is the first season when Senator Palmer's aides and CTU both tell him that they believe Jack Bauer is a threat to him and his family and he's convinced Bauer holds him responsible for the deaths of his men in a mission some years ago; when in fact, Jack Bauer and his family are going through holy hell because Bauer is trying to keep him safe.
- Supernatural loves this. For example, it's tough to sympathise with Whiny/Season 1 Sam when he calls Dean the perfect Golden Boy of the family when we see the last few episodes of Season One and see that John showed more outward concern for Sam than he ever did for Dean.
- Home is pretty much this as well. Missouri takes any chance she can to verbally beat Dean down while Sam is sniggering like a bratty little brother yet the tearful phone call beforehand (want to answer your phone once in a while, John?) shows just how much this whole thing is upsetting him. Poor lamb.
- Used for tragic effect in In The Beginning. It's heartbreaking seeing a teenage John Winchester who "still believes in happy endings" when you know how he ends up.
- Used and lampshaded in Park Bench, episode 14.
- Another example of dramirony done for dramatic tension. In Star Trek Enterprise the Xindi are on a genocidal mission to wipe out humanity, due to them being told that in a few hundred years, humans will completely kill off all the Xindi. Thing is, it's a lie; the Xindi and the humans are actually going to join forces in the next few centuries and defeat their common foe, known as the Sphere Builders.
- While Superman has the legendary Superman/Lois Lane/Clark Kent love triangle in pretty much every incarnation, there is a very specific bit of Dramatic Irony in Lois And Clark, the 1990s Superman TV series. Basically, Clark confesses to Lois that he's in love with her, but she turns him down. Later that episode, Lois confesses to Superman that she's in love with him, actually telling him that "I would love you if you didn't have superpowers and were just a regular guy."
- During the Minbari civil war arch of Babylon Five, Delenn is chastising the Warrior Caste for one of their own committing an attack on a high level Warrior Caste representative, while complimenting her own Caste. This is before a bunch of guys from her caste who not too long ago had poisoned the entire ship, and only Lennier acting quickly prevented it from killing them all.
- A better example from Babylon Five: G'Kar, the Narn Ambassador, has just received a message from the leader of his people's enemy, the Centauri Emperor, which is to the effect that the Emperor wants to publically apologise and make reparations for his people's actions. G'Kar runs into his frequent opponent, Londo, the Centauri Ambassador, and buys him a drink, toasting Londo's health and that of the Emperor. Unbeknownst to G'Kar, Londo has just ordered an attack on a Narn colony, plunging their two races into war.
- [ This is doubly ironic in that Londo had no idea what the Emperor's plan was, and would probably not have ordered the attack had he known.
- In Kamen Rider Kiva, Keisuke Nago hates Kiva and wishes to destroy him, while believing that the innocent and kind-hearted Wataru Kurenai is the best kind of person. No points for guessing Kiva's true identity.
- Then they go and subvert the irony halfway through: when Nago learns that Wataru is Kiva, rather than feeling angry and betrayed as one might expect, he's instead reassured by the fact that Kiva is in good hands, and offers to mentor Wataru.
- In the Firefly episode "Out of Gas", we flashback to when Mal hired Wash. Zoe's first impression? "I don't like him." The irony? They eventually marry. (Though some men might not call that irony...)
- In the "Body Language" episode of Imagination Movers, a foreign guest appears at the warehouse and repeatedly asks for "Nee Nohtz." The character is clearly looking for Knit Knots, a regular character on the program, but the Imagination Movers can't understand and resort to body language to solve the problem.
- In Eastenders, when Ronnie Mitchell found out that her young employee Danielle Jones was single, broke and pregnant, she persuaded her to get an abortion. Ronnie had been haunted for twenty years by grief over giving her own daughter up for adpotion - in order to assuage Danielle's guilt, Ronnie tells her that she wished she'd aborted her own child all those years ago. Naturally, Danielle was the daughter that Ronnie had given up.
- The irony is further layered by the fact that after the abortion Ronnie acts very coldly towards Danielle. She only does this because she feels guilty about betraying the memory of her daughter (who she thinks is dead) by pretending that she'd wanted an abortion - so she ends up pushing away and really hurting Danielle, who is her daughter.
- A comedic example appears in a flashback episode of Angel set in 1942. 1942-Spike declares "I'm not going to be experimented on by the government!" and 1942-Angel replies "And I'm not going to get trapped at the bottom of the ocean!". Both of which make perfect sense in context (they're on a submarine), but are hilarious, because the viewer knows that fifty years later, Spike will be experimented on by the US government and Angel spends several months trapped underwater.
- The opening sequence of the first episode of Coupling is a rare subversion of such an elemental trope: we think we know more than the characters, but in fact we're being misled. Steve is heading to a meeting with his girlfriend and says he's planning to break up with her, and that she's probably expecting it. Susan is preparing for a meeting with her boyfriend, and says she has no idea what he wants (her friend guesses he's going to propose). We think Susan and Steve are meeting with each other, but they ain't.
Theater
- It should go without saying that Shakespeare was rather fond of dramatic irony:
- In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo kills himself on the assumption that Juliet's already dead. Wrong. Thanks to a series of unlikely disasters, Romeo has been left uninformed of Juliet's plan to escape marriage to Paris. Just to be really cruel to the audience, he makes a long speech before drinking the poison, long enough for the audience of the day to frantically (but silently) urge Juliet to wake up from her drug-induced sleep and prevent the tragedy. To modern audiences, Romeo and Juliet is a serious case of It Was His Sled — and to be fair, Shakespeare makes it pretty clear from the beginning that this story isn't going to end well — but this scene is probably the biggest punch in the gut in a story rife with dramatic irony.
- In some adaptations, notably Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet, Romeo actually sees Juliet wake up just before he dies.
- That's borrowed from the opera, where Juliet wakes up right after Romeo has taken the poison, and they have just enough time to sing a beautiful aria before Romeo cops it.
- Duncan's praise of Macbeth when he comes to stay at his castle seems just a little bit misplaced to the audience, who have recently heard Macbeth and his lady scheming to murder him.
- Likewise, Othello's statements of trust and belief in Iago couldn't be more incorrect.
- On a lighter note, Twelfth Night is perfect for the comedic use of dramatic irony, featuring both twins and cross-dressing.
- There's the scene in Hamlet where the prince considers killing the King while he's kneeling in prayer, only to decide not to, on the theory that killing him after he'd just prayed would send him to heaven rather than hell. Claudius however had just given a soliloquy about not being able to pray, so the audience knows Hamlet missed his best chance for revenge.
- Even older examples than the Shakespeare ones above can be found in Greek plays, since most of these plays were based on stories that were already common knowledge to the audience. For example, in Oedipus Rex, Oedipus vows to track down Laius' killer... but the audience knows perfectly well that he is the killer, even though Oedipus himself does not.
- Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia is a heartwrenching example of this, even though the play is pretty comedic. Due to it's narrative structure, the audience sees the events that happen in the 1800s that the modern-day researchers get wrong, and are also told by the modern-day characters what will ultimately happen to the characters in the 1800s. In the last scene of the play, the audience is already aware that Thomasina will burn to death the night before her seventeenth birthday and that her tutor Septimus will go insane and die a hermit, writing "reams of cabbalistic proofs that the world is coming to an end." Thomasina invites Septimus, who is in love with her, to come upstairs with her, but he declines, not wanting to ruin her reputation (he has just spent the play ruining lots of reputations and getting out of trouble on charm alone). Then, just to twist the knife a little bit deeper, Stoppard has Septimus hand Thomasina her essay on thermodynamics, light Thomasina's candle and tell her to be careful with the flame. Not a dry eye in the house.
- Rather tragically used in the musical version of Sunset Boulevard's I Want Songs and the characters' uplifting wishes, since we already know that Norma will fail to get back her career, and Joe will die.
- In the musical Jekyll And Hyde, the powerful and uplifting number "This is the Moment" is made very ironic because we know that Dr. Jekyll is preparing to test out the serum that will transform him into the murderous Edward Hyde.
- Wicked is just full of dramatic irony, since, even if the audience didn't already know the story of The Wizard of Oz and what happens to the green witch, the very first number of the musical fills us in. In particular, One Short Day always brings a tear to This Troper's eye because it's so full of hope and happiness in sharp contrast to everything after it.
Video Games
- The fourth Ace Attorney game was able to pull this off surprisingly (and painfully) well: When the MASON system is used in the final case to see the case that lost Phoenix his badge, it's obvious at one point the one piece you need to present, but the player knows the evidence is forged and will lose Phoenix his title and job. However, submitting anything else will fail, and you can't Mercy Kill yourself, either. You end up having to submit the forged piece, or just shut off your game. The result is cringing and painful to see play out.
- World Of Warcraft plays with this trope in the cinematic introduction to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which features a retrospective voiceover by Arthas Menethil's father encouraging his young son to use his powers for good. The irony is that the voiceover plays over Arthas as the Lich King, commanding the vast undead armies of Northrend after betraying his people and killing his father.
- Super Paper Mario did this quite subtly: after the first chapter, Peach is cornered in Count Bleck's castle by Dragon Natasia, but is transported off the scene before she can be brainwashed. Earlier, we had seen Dimentio use the exact same technique to transport himself. After encountering Dimentio in the third chapter, Peach comments on him seeming familiar.
Web Comics
Western Animation
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