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alt title(s): Non Spoiler
"It was his sled. It was his sled from when he was a kid. There, I saved you two long, boobless hours."
...and Rosebud was just a sled. Oh no, I didn't spoil it for you, did I?
This trope is for a Twist Ending that used to be guarded carefully as a Spoiler, but thanks to Popcultural Osmosis, everyone within the target demographic knows the ending already, even those who haven't even seen the show. It's probably never going to surprise anyone again. In many cases, the twist becomes the central fact known even to those only noddingly familiar with the work, and other adaptations take it as read from the beginning.
Naturally, any movie or series that is based on a historical event gets this by default. For example: "The Spartans all die" in 300, or "The ship sinks" for Titanic. It's a Foregone Conclusion.
Named after the best-known example, from Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane.
Spoilers ahead, of course. Or not. After all, that is the point of this trope... but there's a good chance that some Troper added a twist which really doesn't belong here, or you may be in the dark about it anyway, so read at your own risk. If a work is not too well known, but is only really recognized for its spoiled ending, then it's All There Is To Know About The Crying Game.
Also, before adding a new example to this page, take a jaunt on over to the discussion page and see if it's been removed before. If it seems glaringly obvious to you and it's not here already, it's likely that someone else has already added it before and we reached consensus that it doesn't belong. Many borderline examples have been added in the past and eventually found wanting, so make sure you're not treading familiar ground. Just because it's known to all the fans of a particular work or series doesn't mean it belongs here; the standards are somewhat higher than that. New works and works with relatively narrow audiences, in particular, need to withstand fairly intense scrutiny to avoid getting nuked here (no matter how well-known it seems to you).
Sometimes the work will be remade/adapted, and the ones responsible will know better. That's when they twist the twist itself, making it Not His Sled.
Compare Late Arrival Spoiler.
Examples:
Anime
- Vash and Knives are brothers. And they are immortal too.
- Fullmetal Alchemist. Envy kills Hughes.
- Bleach: Aizen is the Big Bad. Tropers even insist on this being untagged on it's page.
- Sailor Moon (first season): Usagi is the moon princess everyone's been looking for. This, along with other plot points, is ruined in the English dub, as well as a few other dubs by being revealed to the viewers in the first episode in a scene that didn't appear until much later originally.
- Also, Tuxedo Mask is Mamoru in disguise.
- Additionally, Chibi-Usa from the second season is their daughter from the future, which isn't outright said until around 3/4's of the way through R.
- Plus, all the Senshi's true identities are not typically spoiler marked, which are all spoilers (with the possible exception of Pluto), but it is most egregious in the case of Hotaru/Sailor Saturn, which is a fairly monumental reveal. The fact that alot of promotional mateiral shows them in Senshi form, and they then look identical, kind of ruins it even for the average joe.
- Sailor Pluto doesn't get the same treatment in this regard due to the fact that she's shown as a Senshi First, then appears as a civilian in the next arc. We're already familiar with her appearance by this time it's obvious who she is.
- Yu-Gi-Oh: The card game Duel Monsters is based on ancient Egyptian "shadow games". This isn't revealed until the beginning of Battle City in the original version, but the American adaptation gives you this fact in the second episode. (It's mysteriously still treated as a surprise when it happens then.)
- Actually the intros to the earlier episodes in Japanese did somewhat spoiled it already, or did it just mention sorcerers in ancient times?
- Alternatively: The Other Yugi's real name is Atem/Atemu. He was a pharaoh in ancient Egypt. And he dies at the end.
- Speed Racer: Unknown to Speed, Racer X is Speed's older brother Rex who ran away from home. The constant mentioning of the fact that Racer X is Speed's older brother Rex by the narrator wouldn't be so bad, if he didn't seem to treat the fact that Racer X is actually Rex, the older brother of Speed as such a frickin' revelation every single time. The fact that "Racer X" (in fact the older brother of Speed, Rex) is also pronounced identically to "Racer Rex" just makes the revelation that Racer X is in fact a disguise worn by Speed's older brother Rex even worse. The 2008 Live Action Adaptation movie handles this- the surprise twist that Racer X, unknown to Speed, is in fact his missing older brother Rex Racer- in a much better manner, but saying more would be a Spoiler.
- Naruto: Sasuke pulls a Face Heel Turn.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion is a weird example. Everyone remembers what everything looked like, but no one could understand what was happening. Most people after seeing it for the first time would conclude that everyone dies.
- Mostly everyone knows that the last two episodes are some sort of therapy/recap that's supposed to mean something. Just... something.
- Spike dies.
- Dio Brando stops time.
- Sumomomo Momomo Koushi isn't a wimp and actually is the strongest martial artist in the world.
- Bokurano: Piloting the giant robot costs the pilot their life. Many that get into the series don't even know this was ever a spoiler.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Fate, Hayate and the Wolkenwritter all do a Heel Face Turn and join the core cast.
- Slayers: Xellos is a Monster / Mazoku.
- Death Note: L dies
- Monster: The little boy that Tenma saves in the first few episodes, Johan, is the titular monster. Maybe.
- Fate Stay Night: Archer is Shirou from the future, most likely the Fate route.
Comic Books
Film
- Citizen Kane: Rosebud was his sled. Although he provided the trope name in the formerly above quote, Peter Griffin was not the first to spoil it — that ship sailed for good when Charles Schulz, with uncharacteristic thoughtlessness, gave it away in a 70s Peanuts strip
 .
- It was spoiled by Don Rosa in the final chapter of The Life & Times of Scrooge Mc Duck (or rather, the author's introduction to it), although I didn't realise it until later (I was too young to get the reference at the time).
- Many of us who grew up in the 1980s had this ruined for us by an episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, where the ghost was that of Charles Foster Kane and he was convinced to stop haunting at the end when he was given the sled back! Seriously.
- And those who spent the early nineties watching afternoon television got it spoilt by an episode of Columbo. 'Rosebud' is the control word for the dogs used to commit the murder.
- Tiny Toon Adventures spoiled it pretty good too back then.
- Olsen & Johnson spoiled this the same year Citizen Kane came out in 1941 in Hellzapoppin, when Chic Johnson bumps into the sled and says "Thought they burned that..." (seen at 8:33 here)
- Julie Brown ended her song "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" with her friend Debi gunned down during her shooting spree - as she lays dying she croaks "I did it...for Johnny!". Julie is puzzled; she doesn't know any Johnnys, and exclaims "Omigod, this is just like that movie Citizen Kane where you later find out Rosebud was a sled? But we'll never know who Johnny is, 'cause, like...she's dead!"
- More Information Than You Require did not spoil it. Because the book consists entirely of lies, we are told that "Rosebud" was William Randolph Heart's nickname for Theodore Roosevelt.
- Also spoiled in an Animaniacs intro
- The Empire Strikes Back: Luke is the son of Darth Vader. This is arguably more famous than Rosebud, because some of the younger generations haven't heard of Citizen Kane. Although really, "vader" is Dutch for "father", so it shouldn't have come as that much of a shock.
- The Crying Game: Dil isn't the usual sort of woman.
- Psycho: Norman Bates's murderous mother is actually Norman's other personality. The murder itself, killing off the hitherto most important character halfway through the movie, was originally meant to be a surprise, too.
- Soylent Green is made out of people.
- Although in the book it's soybeans and lentils. (Soylent Red adds coloring to make it look more like meat.)
- But soybeans are genetically modified and may in fact have human genes in them.
- Sadly enough, the big twist can be ruined by the goddamn trailer if you happened to put two and two together. (At 2:20 or so into the trailer, you can see Chucky Heston sneaking into a factory where there are inconspicuous white body bags on a conveyor belt. Wonder what those could be?)
- The Planet Of The Apes is really a post-apocalyptic Earth.
- The final reveal of this one is frequently blown in the advertisement or dvd-cover...
- I guess in this way humans really aren't smarter than apes.
- It was well-known enough for Mel Brooks to parody the ending in Spaceballs.
- And for The Simpsons to parody the ending as a musical Show within a show starring Troy Mc Clure as Colonel Taylor, complete with a Statue of Liberty prop rising in the background as he sang, "It was Earth all along."
- In Old Yeller, the kid has to Shoot The Dog after it gets infected with rabies. Literally.
- The Third Man: Orson Welles' character isn't dead.
- The Sixth Sense: Bruce Willis, however, was dead the whole time.
- Also, "I see dead people" was supposed to be a twist, explaining what the heck was going on for the first half of the movie, but it was featured in the trailers.
- The Wizard Of Oz is, in both the film and the book, just an American con man. Also, in the movie (and only the movie), it was All Just A Dream, "a wonderful dream."
- Casablanca: Rick lets Ilsa go to be with her husband, who needs her to inspire his fight against the Nazis, and then he and Louis go to Brazzaville, fight more Nazis, and have a beautiful friendship.
- This might have been less of a twist to contemporary audiences, as there would be no way to get a wife abandoning her husband past the censors of the time.
- The husband could've died. That would've freed up Rick and Ilsa to live happily ever after, and the husband was obviously in a lot of danger.
- It was a twist to the both cast and crew as well, since the writing team couldn't decide which man Ilsa would end up with until more than halfway through filming.
- The Disney Animated Canon has plenty, in part because it frequently draws from older sources. A few of the more famous include:
- King Kong: He climbs to the top of the Empire State Building and gets machine-gunned by aeroplanes until he falls down. But it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.
- This comprehensive list of Twist Endings from The New York Times.
- Titanic: Besides the obvious, it's become well known that Rose had the jewel the whole time (to the point that the final scene was parodied in an insurance ad).
- Also mentioned in the music video for "Ooops, I Did It Again," by Britney Spears. Or so I heard...
- Even first-time viewers of Alien these days are not surprised by the chestbursting scene.
- Terminator 2: Arnold's the good guy in this one. Most people don't even know that was supposed to be a surprise, as the marketing totally ruined it.
- Terminator itself. For the first forty minutes, you're not supposed to trust Reese. Of course, by now you probably know that Reese is there to save Sarah.
- Most viewers probably knew to trust him anyway, given that he wasn't the one killing people and ripping their hearts out.
- In Fight Club Tyler Durden is the Narrator's split personality. Thank you, Rosie O'Donnell.
- The Usual Suspects: Verbal Kint is really Keyser Soze.
- The Fly. In the original version the fact that the teleporter combined the Mad Scientist with a fly is supposed to be a huge surprise. Even though it's in the title.
- The Wicker Man. They burn the policeman. In a big wicker man.
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Spock dies (until the sequel).
- The makers try to mess with us here: The news that Spock's death was planned leaked fairly early on in development, so the first scene (the famous Kobiyashi Maru scene) was edited so that most of the characters (including Spock) 'died'. After the sim ends, Kirk even asks Spock: "Aren't you dead?" This was to preserve the twist; first-time moviegoers would assume the spoilers referred to this scene, and would then be surprised when Spock died For Real This Time. Today no one notices any of this.
- KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!
- The Brood. The Enfante Terrible killers are the physical manifestations of Nola's misdirected anger. This information is right there on the DVD case, and it comes as a bit of a surprise that it was even intended as a Twist Ending at all.
- An odd one here is Scanners. The fact that one dude's head explodes has become an cultural meme, but a lot of people don't know that it's from this film. Once the scene starts, however, everyone recognizes the guy (he looks a little like Dr. Phil), says "Oh, it's from this movie!", and knows how the scene will end.
- Videodrome gives you brain tumours. Maybe.
- The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari: Francis is insane and the whole thing is his babbling. The real cabinet is in his head, and vice versa.
- Nosferatu: Orlok is killed by sunlight.
- Although Dr Strangelove regains the ability to walk, the mission to prevent The End Of The World As We Know It is a failure, and the film ends with footage of nuclear explosions while "We'll Meet Again" plays.
- Network has Howard Beale murdered live on TV.
- When A Stranger Calls: The calls are coming from inside the house.
- Sidney Poitier gets a coffee mug with To Sir, With Love written on it from one of his students.
- Mi-Do is Oh Dae-Su's daughter. Yeah, eeyew.
- And while we're on the subject, Noah Cross had a daughter with his daughter. Meanwhile, The Bad Guy Wins.
- Bill is killed.
- Batman Begins: Rachel gets much less annoying in the next movie. Then she gets blown up. Mother. Fucker.
- The Stepford Wives are actually highly sophisticated animatronics.
- Princess Fiona in Shrek has a curse that turns her into an ogre at night. In the end, she marries Shrek and becomes an ogre full-time. Less of a memetic spoiler than most, but it's pretty obvious now that the sequels are out.
Folktales
Literature
- The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde: The two title characters are the same man. This was a Twist Ending in the original novel, but it's so well known today, all of the adaptations make it part of the plot from the beginning. Because of this, some people are unaware that it ever was a twist.
- The Scarlet Pimpernel is Sir Percy Blakeney. Once again, in the original book, the reader doesn't discover this fact until Percy's wife does, but this has become another case where the twist is so well-known that most TV and film adaptations reveal it at the very beginning.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: "Snape kills Dumbledore" quickly became an internet meme within days of the book's release.
- In its 18th season, The Simpsons pretty much validated this spoiler during an episode in which Homer read the latest Angelica Button book to daughter Lisa. Later he skipped ahead, then announced, "They killed [headmaster] Greystache!"
- Now the only spoiler is what really happened: "Snape euthanizes Dumbledore"!
- Alice In Wonderland: It was All Just A Dream.
- Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There: Again, it was All Just A Dream. But just to mess with our heads, we're left with the question "Was it Alice's dream, or the Red King's dream?"
- Anna Karenina: Anna commits suicide by jumping under a train. When Vladimir Nabokov taught this novel, he was particularly fond of the trope; he intentionally gave away the ending to his students before they started reading the book, so they would not focus solely on the plot.
- Treasure Island: The ship's cook, Long John Silver, turns out to be a pirate. Of course, these days the name Long John Silver is as strongly associated with piracy as Black Beard.
- In Len Deighton's Bernard Samson sequence, the twist at the end of the first novel, Berlin Game, is essentially given away the back cover of every subsequent novel in the sequence "Bernard Samson is a bit distraught that his wife is a traitor'.
- Parodied and subverted in More Information Than You Require, when Hodgman discusses W.R. Hearst, and reveals that "Rosebud" was Hearst's nickname for Theodore Roosevelt.
- War Of The Worlds: The aliens are ultimately brought down by the common cold.
- The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy: The answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" is 42.
- ''Less of a spoile, more of a than a meme now.
- Nineteen Eighty Four: The Brotherhood is a trap, O'Brien works for the party, Winston tells them to do it to Julia, and in the end, he loves Big Brother.
- The Bible: Jesus dies for our sins and comes back to life.
- John has a prophecy about the world ending.
- You mean even the Bible contains spoilers? Thanks for that, God!
- Gone With The Wind: Rhett leaves Scarlett. That's the entire point of "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"
- The Maltese Falcon is a fake. General Kemidov still has the real one. Also, Bridget shot Archer.
- The Dark Tower: Roland leaves Jake to die. He gets better. The top of the tower sends him back to the beginning of the first book.
- The Great Gatsby: Gatsby dies.
- Lord Of The Rings: Saruman is The Dragon. Boromir succumbs to the ring and dies. Gandalf turns out to be alive. Gollum seizes the ring at the cracks of doom, and while dancing with joy, accidentally falls into the lava taking the ring with him.
- HP Lovecraft gives us a few:
- The Call of Cthulhu: Cthulhu rises, and then goes to sleep again.
- The Dunwich Horror is the giant, invisible brother of Wilbur. Both of them are the sons of Yog-Sothoth.
- Pickman's Model is a giant ghoul.
- The Rats in the Walls are actually in his head, and he has inherited cannibalism from his ancestors.
- The Haunter of the Dark is an avatar of Nyarlathotep. It drives the protagonist mad and probably eats him.
- Actually, it attacks him but is banished by a lightning striking nearby, but not before causing the protagonist to get a heart attack.
- At the Mountains of Madness, there are dead aliens, and a few live ones.
- The Shadow Over Innsmouth is the fact that its townsfolk are descended from demonic fish-creatures. The protagonist is, too.
- The Canterbury Tales don't really end.
- Beowulf dies after he and Wiglaf kill a dragon.
- The Crying Of Lot 49: We never find out what was going on. And the book ends before the actual crying starts.
- The Giver: "Release" = euthanasia.
- Hate to break this to y'all, but Count Dracula is a vampire. Shocking, I know. He also turns Lucy into one.
- Around The World In Eighty Days, Fogg and company arrive in London apparently too late to get to the Reform Club in time in the third to the last chapter, but in the next chapter, Fogg arrives just in time win the bet. Most adaptations don't bother with this twist and just show the events that alerts Fogg that he still had time to complete the trip after all, ending with a suspenseful scene of Fogg and company's final sprint to the Reform Club.
- The Adventure of the Final Problem: Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarity both die.
- The Adventure of the Empty House: You won't believe this, but Sherlock Holmes didn't die, he was hiding from Moriarity's henchmen.
- In the very first Hercule Poirot novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the murderer is the narrator. In the very last Hercule Poirot novel, Curtain, the final murder is committed by the master detective, Hercule Poirot himself. Both of these break the fundamental rules of fair play in detective fiction, but in ways that still play fair.
- Twilight: Edward is a vampire! (It doesn't help that this twist is spoiled on the book's jacket.)
Live Action TV
- Due to Pop Cultural Osmosis, many of the twists of Lost's first season are well-known enough to be parodied or spoofed without regard for whether someone has seen the show. As the years go by, certain elements of the later seasons naturally become this trope as well:
- The monster in the jungle is an amorphous cloud of black smoke. Revealed in the second season, the monster's appearance (Dinosaur? Giant sloth? Robot?) was a source of almost all speculation about the show during the first season.
- John Locke was in a wheelchair before the crash and regained his ability to walk on the island. The show's first twist ending, and is now so well known that most fans forget this was ever a plot twist to begin with.
- Walt is kidnapped off the raft by the Others, who apparently resemble untamed savages. Often an example of Shallow Parody, as the Others are perfectly clean and civilized individuals, but pop culture hasn't caught up to that season yet.
- The hatch is actually a research station containing a computer with a button that must be pushed every 108 minutes. Because the DHARMA Initiative is such a massive part of the show, many people forget the hatch's contents were ever a mystery.
- The very fact that there is a hatch in the ground to begin with is an example of this trope.
- "Henry Gale from Minnesota" is in fact Benjamin Linus, certified lying bastard and leader of the Others. Like the hatch example, Ben is such a major character that many people can't remember the show without him.
- The twist endings to several episodes of The Twilight Zone have fallen victim to this. The most famous are probably the ending of "To Serve Man" ("It's a cookbook!") and "I Shot An Arrow Into The Air".
- It's not fair! There was time now!
- I'm a pretty girl in a world of ugly pigpeople who consider themselves the standard bearers of beauty!
- Dallas: Kristin shot J.R.
- The final Newhart has probably reached this point by now: It's all a dream of the main character of The Bob Newhart Show.
- As well as the final St Elsewhere: It's all a fantasy of an autistic boy.
- Roseanne: Everything after a previously unremarkable episode had been Roseanne's idealized semi-autobiographical novel.
- Obligatory Buffy The Vampire Slayer example: In the first season, Angel being a vampire was a big plot twist revealed mid-way through the season. Yeah.
- Oh, and Tara dies. Certainly makes some moments with her from previous seasons make you wanna kill somebody.
- By the way, Buffy dies at the end of Season 1. And at the end of Season 5.
- Certainly the sudden blackout ending of The Sopranos counts, considering how much the media talked about it.
- Susan Boyle on Britains Got Talent looks like she's going to be one of those Hopeless Auditionees. She isn't.
- Prof. Yana is The Master.There are several of these in Classic Doctor Who, which is pretty much unavoidable since it has been running since the 60's and has over a thousand episodes, so no one is going to be watching it from beginning to end. A few dramatic moments that will have been spoiled if you go back to watch the old episodes include that The Doctor regenerates if he dies, that Romana regenerates, that Adric dies, that the Daleks will become extremely powerful, that the Time Lords will get wiped out, and many, many more.
- The Shield's twist in the pilot, where the paint-by-numbers corrupt cop with a heart of gold Vic Mackey murders in cold blood good guy cop Terry Crowley, helped elevate Michael Chiklis's character to a new level of magnificent bastardom and make the Shield not just another cop show, by sending Vic over the Moral Event Horizon and asking fans to follow him on his way down to even further villainy.
- The Z-Wave which brought to a end, the six-season story arc.
- M*A*S*H: Col. Blake's plane goes down as he's on his way home. Also a twist for the actors, who were handed the last page of the script only after filming the rest of the episode.
- Dae Jang Geum is a very interesting example, since it is usually only spoiled for those who understand the native Korean, but it is spoiled right there in the title. Those watching it with subtitles don't know what Dae means, and probably don't know enough Korean history to know who the historical figure is. If they can just avoid reading any descripion of the show, they will enjoy an incredible surprise ending.
Poetry
Theatre
- A Streetcar Named Desire: Stanley rapes Blanche, she is institutionalized by her sister who doesn't believe her, and announces that she has always depended upon the kindness of strangers.
- The endings to many of Shakespeare's plays are well known. Most don't have an actual Twist Ending, but Macbeth comes pretty close.
- The Ending, by the way, is that Mac Duff is a C-section baby, and can therefore kill Mac Beth
- The ending of Titus Andronicus fits the "twist" ending well: Titus bakes the guys who raped his daughter into a pie, and feeds it to their mother and stepfather. This was the inspiration for the South Park episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die".
- King Lear had a twist ending, at least at the time it was released. Theatre-goers of that time would have been extremely familiar with the story of King Lear, which, until Shakespeare, always ended with Lear being restored to his throne and ruling well until dying of old age.
- Romeo drinks some poison and Juliet stabs herself because, in an odd twist of fate, they both think the other one is dead.
- Not really a twist if they tell you that in a monologue before the first act begins.
- Pretty much the same thing occurs in Antony and Cleopatra.
- And West Side Story.
- Exception: The ending of the long-running play The Mousetrap is the most infamous open secret in theater history - the audience is sworn to secrecy at the conclusion of each performance, and the terms of the original contract prevent the story from being published or filmed until after the show has closed. Everyone who has seen the play has done a fairly good job over the years of keeping mum, and the text of the play has never been published in the UK. (There is, however, an urban legend regarding a cab driver who dropped a number of playgoers off at the theater in question, was stiffed on the tip, and shouted as he drove away, "—— did it, you cheap gits!"). Indeed, when the play The Real Inspector Hound openly plagiarized The Mousetrap, its producers refused to sue on the basis that doing so would publicly reveal the ending.
- However, the partwork The Agatha Christie Collection did publish the text of The Mousetrap. Regarding the cab-driver anecdote, in some versions of the story he's said to have shouted "The butler did it!", which is said to be the origin of this phrase. (There is no butler in The Mousetrap.)
- I don't understand why it is such a big surprise at who the murderer is. Not even here.
- Waiting For Godot: Godot never shows up.
- Happy Days. You think being buried up to your waist in sand is bad? How about being buried up to your neck?
- Waiting For Lefty: Lefty never shows up either, mostly because he's been shot. The cabbies strike.
- Oedipus Rex. Oedipus married his mother. Not much of a twist considering the myth was well known before it was made into a play.
- Not being a twist is intentional. Many Classical Greek plays were written with the knowledge that their audience already knew how the events were going to unfold. Dramatic Irony is the name of the game.
- In Oedipus at Colonus, the titular character reveals that his children were the product of incest. For modern audiences this is how the myth is assumed to go, but it is presumed that an earlier version of the myth would have some or none of the children born of incest, instead the product of a polygamous marriage.
- Similarly, Euripides' version of Medea. In all versions of the Medea myth, her children die but most versions have it happen by accident or bring the children back alive at the end of the story (usually because of mistaken identity). Ancient Greek audiences would have been shocked at Euripides' ending, where Medea is the willful murderess of her own sons we know today.
- On top of that, Medea was also a shocker for Ancient Greek audiences because Euripides was one of the first Greek playwrights to show death onstage! Previously, a death would only be reported by a messenger. Medea killing her children mid-monologue would have been unheard of.
- To a lesser extent, Aeschylus' Agamemnon - in the conventional myth, the titular character is murdered by Aegisthus, with Clytemnestra as his accomplice. Clytemnestra being the sole murderer would have been a surprise to a Greek audience (though it's obvious fairly early on).
- JM Synge's Riders to the Sea: Bartley drowns. Everyone knows this from Maurya's famous monologue:
They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.... I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening.
- Hedda Gabler shoots herself.
- Nora leaves her husband in The Doll's House.
- The Three Sisters never get to Moscow. Also, Baron Tuzenbach dies.
- The Ghost Sonata: Nothing gets better.
- Woyzeck stabs Marie to death, and then ambiguously drowns himself while trying to dispose of the knife.
- Long Day's Journey into Night: Edmund has tuberculosis, and wishes he were a seal or a fish.
- Death Of A Salesman. Come on.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy I: Garland is actually Chaos, the Big Bad. This one was spoiled by Dissidia: Final Fantasy and is even a plot point.
- Final Fantasy II: The Emperor isn't quite as dead as you'd think...
- Final Fantasy IV: Cecil becomes a paladin, and Golbez is his brother who's being mind controlled by the real Big Bad, Zemus. Cecil and Golbez are both moon people. Practically everyone in the game becomes royalty, except for Kain, who got the shaft as usual.
- Final Fantasy V: Exdeath is actually a giant tree. Not even Dissidia avoids making fun of this one.
- Final Fantasy VI: Kefka is the real Big Bad, and the Floating Continent is not the final dungeon.
- Final Fantasy VII: Aerith dies in the ending of the first disc. Permanently, despite rumors to the contrary.
- Of course, there is a way to keep her alive... with a Game Shark.
- Final Fantasy X: Yuna does NOT die; I'm not sure it's soon enough to reveal the rest.
- Tidus is a dream construct of the Fayth and Auron died ten years ago trying to defy Yu Yevon. Game's been out for eight years, bro.
- Would you kindly not spoil the twist to Bio Shock?
- Knights Of The Old Republic : The player character is Revan.
- The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time: Sheik is Zelda in disguise. This is so out that Super Smash Bros series has the Zelda-Sheik transformation as a special move.
- Midway through the game you travel seven years into the future.
- Oh, and the tomboy-pirate from The Wind Waker, wearing the same bandages around her wrist as Sheik and having the same tan? Yeah, she's a Princess Zelda too. Even though the mentioned hints weren't really obvious to recognize on first glance, a visit on this page, Deviant Art or You Tube will certainly make you recognize them. After spoiling the whole twist to you. And if that's not enough, her Trophy in Super Smash Bros and the intro of Phantom Hourglass completly ruin it.
- And yet the same into of the latter game tries to keep the identity of Wind Waker's Big Bad a secret, despite it being revealed about 20 minutes into the game. Any the games that are Hijacked By Ganon are ripe for this trope, though.
- Solid Snake's commanding officer, Big Boss, is secretly the enemy commander in the first Metal Gear.
- Ah ha! But it turns out, that was all just a ploy to make America look good and to found the foundation of the Patriots!
- In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake and Liquid Snake (don't forget Solidus) are actually clones of Big Boss.
- You have to beat Psycho Mantis by switching the controller to port 2. (In The Twin Snakes, it's port 4).
- You can't beat Mantis in MGS 4 by switching to controller port 2.
- And he didn't die.
- Raiden is the main character in Metal Gear Solid 2.
- Resident Evil: Wesker is the big bad in the first game and gets killed by a tyrant. He Gets Better.
- Metroid: Samus Is A Girl.
- Not for the game being notable, but for the twist being so retarded, Bionic Commando and its "Your arm is your wife" has achieved major notoriety.
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Soma Cruz is the reincarnation of Dracula. (The direct sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, states this pretty early on.) Also, the mysterious "J" is actually Julius Belmont, making him a descendant of the clan known for going against Dracula over the years. (Dawn of Sorrow states this as well.) Oddly, the Aria reveal that wasn't explicitly stated until Dawn was the first one players figured out, thanks to a particularly unsubtle hint from Yoko. Genya Arikado is Alucard.
- Arikado ... Alucard ... is this really supposed to be a secret from the player, or is it meant to be obvious to the player but not to the characters?
- Probably obvious to Japanese players. American players might not guess that it's a corruption of the romanization of the way a certain Sdrawckab Name is pronounced in a different language.
- There are bigger threats than the Covenant in Halo, as the demos and publicity carefully did not tell you.
- Baldurs Gate: You're one of the children of the dead god of Murder, as are most of the antagonists. When the creators declare 'It Was His Sled' (by marketing the series as "The Bhaalspawn Saga") you know the twist is dead.
- Kingdom Hearts II: Roxas is Sora's nobody. C'mon, with that name and appearance, who else could he be?
- Regardless of whenever or not you've heard it before, it's most likely you'll just guess it quite early in the game's story. It's that obvious.
- In Pokemon Red and Blue, your rival is the Champion and you have to defeat him in order to beat the game. As if you didn't see it coming anyway.
- And the hidden Pokemon Mew is mentioned in the storyline.
- In Gold and Silver, you have to fight Red. Also, by the time Nintendo "revealed" Arceus' existence, everyone already knew about it.
- Mega Man series: It's always Dr. Wily.
- Mega Man 3: Breakman is Protoman. Even Mega Man Anniversary Collection doesn't pretend this is a surprise. He's your Navi for cryin' out loud!
- In the english version of Persona 4, Naoto's gender is fairly obvious before her shadow reveals it
Western Animation
Real Life
- You die.
- And pay taxes.
- Usually not in that order, but not always.
- Elvis is dead. Maybe.
- Santa Claus is a lie your parents tell you so you will brush your teeth.
- Same with the Easter Bunny.
- And the Tooth Fairy. Though not really, since you get money if your teeth fall out.
- Germany lost both of the World Wars.
- And here's who won the election.
- When reading about evolution, know that every species you haven't at some point seen at the zoo or eaten will eventually become extinct. Also, mankind pretty much takes over.
- Despite in-story hints to the contrary, nobody actually knows what happens to you after you die.
- Michael Jackson is dead.
Religion
- Jesus dies.
- John (the Revelator) "dies" at the end.
- As in, he is no longer on this earth, but rather in the Heavenly plane.
Meta
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