There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO. NOT. KNOW ABOUT IT!
So, the hero has found the giant factory belonging to the
Big Bad. He enters with his
True Companions and finds weapons that could kill thousands or maybe even millions, all built by and being built by the locals. While the hero believes that the locals all knew about the Big Bad's plan and were helping him willingly, a few questions from
The Heart clears up the matter- the locals simply think the weapons are harmless machinery that will be used for building houses and/or farming.
This trope describes situations where somebody uses someone to make or do something by lying about what exactly it is that they're doing, or assuring them that it's for the greater good. It could be something as simple as stealing plans or moving an item to another location, or something major, like building a
Doomsday Device or breaching a boundary- if the
Big Bad plays on their ignorance to make them do something; it's this. This can often result in a
Heel Face Turn or
My God, What Have I Done?. See also
Evil Plan,
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero,
Awful Truth,
Redemption Equals Death and
Ambiguous Innocence.
Examples:
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Anime And Manga
- In Black Butler, Ciel tells Snake that his missing friends' whereabouts were unknown and that staying with Ciel is the fastest way to see them again. The reader knows that they were all killed by Ciel's staff when they attempted to ambush the mansion.
Film
- Forrest Gump is the Trope Codifier.
- Diamonds Are Forever: Blofeld kidnaps Willard Whyte and uses his industrial empire to build and launch a Kill Sat. Only one other person in Whyte's organization knows what's going on: the rest are kept ignorant.
- Also in Diamonds Are Forever, we have a rocket scientist who helped Blofeld to build the Kill Sat because he thought Blofeld would use it to help achieve world peace. Of course, this wasn't the case.
- At the start of Van Helsing, Dracula tells Dr. Frankenstein that he did this to him.
- Cypher uses this line in The Matrix to justify his betrayal.
Literature
- In American Gods Wednesday uses Shadow to start a war between the gods so they can conquer the new gods, when in reality, Wednesday and Loki just want the power they'll gain from a field of dead gods.
- The Belgariad: Errand is brought up to be totally innocent so he can sneak into the Rivan throne room to steal the Orb, without knowing what will happen afterwards.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe the person responsible for designing the Death Star and Sun Crusher has no idea that they'd be used to destroy habitated planets and suns around which habitated star sytems were being habitated in, intending for them to be mining vehicles.
- Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat. Jim diGriz discovers that the government of the planet Cittanuvo is building a Warlord class battleship under the pretense that it's just a transport ship. After investigating, he finds out that two elite criminals tricked the government into building the ship with the intent of stealing it and using it for interstellar piracy.
- The Howlers in Animorphs routinely wipe out entire species at their master's command so the protagonists assume they must be consumed with rage and enjoy causing destruction. It turns out they think it's all a game.
- In George Orwell's classic dystopia Nineteen Eighty Four, the last of three core slogans that the Party propagates to the citizens of Oceania is "Ignorance Is Strength". (The other two being "War Is Peace" and "Freedom Is Slavery")
- Ender's Game, because when he goes to the simulator he's actually commanding real troops.
Live Action Television
- In Glee, Sue gets Brittany to give her the set list for New Directions, but Brittany has no clue about what she's going to do with it.
- NCIS: In 6.21, "Toxic", Abby builds a biological weapon without knowing what it is.
- In Dollhouse, it turns out the Evil Corporation is building a Doomsday Device by making each of their research departments around the world build a little part of it, and nobody knowing about the larger picture.
- House had an episode called "Ignorance Is Bliss" where it turned out that the Patient of the Week (who was a genius) was regularly taking cough medicine so he would be around the same intelligence level as his girlfriend.
Roleplaying Games
- RuneScape has this in the quests "Priest in Peril" and "Devious Minds".
- In World of Warcraft Horde-players visiting Dragonblight are offered a questline to help the Forsaken gather ingredients for a plague that will inevitably wipe out the scourge, which Puttress later uses to kill, not only scourge-soldiers, but also the combined army of humans and orcs battling them.
Video Games
Webcomics
