Just Between You and Me

"Gentlemen! Since you are about to die anyway, I may as well tell you the entire plot."

— Benedict, Last Action Hero

Villains have an urge to gloat. There's something irresistible about twisting the knife that last little bit before finishing things. After all, what is even the point of a carefully laid scheme, if you haven't yet told anyone just how ingenious and intricate it actually is? Rather than activate the needlessly complicated Death Trap right away, they will pause to outline their Evil Plan to the hero and often including information on how to stop it. This can give the hero the time they need to escape, but just as often the hero will simply sit there and wait. It's rude to interrupt someone when they chat before trying to kill you. Of course, on the other hand, trying to pull this kind of speech on a Pragmatic Hero or an Anti-Hero can quite easily and even literally blow up in the villain's face.

Even those who plan to simply shoot their enemy may stop by to share details of their plans first. It seems that heroes get more information out of being interrogated than their interrogators do. Thanks to the Unspoken Plan Guarantee, this removes any chance the villain had at success... unless it already happened. Or if explaining the plan is a distraction; a hero who's stopping to listen to the villain gloat about his plan is a hero who's not stopping the villain's minions for carrying out the final step of said plan.

Sometimes, it's all part of The Plan. What good is revenge if they think it all was plain bad luck and don't know you're out to get them for killing your stepmother's brother's favourite cat? A character who thinks The Hero holds him in contempt may lay out the plan in hopes of getting his respect.

Heroes are only slightly less prone to such fits of Genre Blindness. They are just as ready to explain the whole game plan to a partner when the opponent stands just out of arms reach and even more eager to "make a point" about the reasons exactly why the other side has to go down. It's like proclaiming the verdict of a makeshift jury.

Many anime use this as a technique to drag out the fights.

Dates at least as far back as the movie serials of the 1940s (especially those made by Republic). This is, in general, an Undead Horse Trope that's very often parodied or subverted, but just as often played straight. Jabootu's glossary refers to this trope as the "James Bond Exposition Rule".

When the villain falsely thinks it's Just Between You And Me, you have an Engineered Public Confession.

Don't confuse with Have You Told Anyone Else?, which is when a protagonist unwittingly confides in a villain.

When the villain takes advantage of their solitude to tempt The Hero, it's What You Are in the Dark. Contrast Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.

Truth in Television: As any prankster knows. Though not quite so much in the case of criminal or truly despicable behaviour, as guilt and/or fear of consequence usually overshadows the sadistic joy of mischief, and certainly any urge to reveal it.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A GEICO ad parodying James Bond has a villain preparing to kill a spy with a laser. However, he first decides to get into an entire presentation of his plan, complete with slides. The GEICO narrator then explains that, as long as evil villains reveal their plans, GEICO will offer affordable insurance.

Anime and Manga

• Parodied twice in Black Lagoon, when two separate villains get the drop on our AntiHeroes, only to spend so much time talking about how they've won that they don't get an actual shot off before Revy guns them down wordlessly while saying "Shut the fuck up!" as she pulls the trigger. Of course, one of them had the foresight to wear a bulletproof vest...
• Done all of the time in Bleach.
  • Among others, Barragan, Shinji, and Shunsui have all completely described their powers to their respective opponents. Not quite "completely" in Shinji's case, it turns out. But Aizen's so broken it didn't matter.
  • Shunsui doesn't suffer too badly from doing this.
  • Barragan is killed because of this
  • Shinji is beaten by Aizen Sosuke.
  • Aizen loves this trope. He has routinely spent as many pages as he possibly could when given the opportunity to monologue about his plans, intentions, and knowledge. If you consider Aizen is a Magnificent Bastard whose plans have been going on for, at least, a century, he must have been holding his gloating for one HECK of a long time. Since he has endured Gotei 13 for so much time, it's only fair to assume he wants payback and talk their ears out on how weak, immature or otherwise flawed they are. Not to mention his gloatings are supposed to make people enraged and throw them out of focus so they can be defeated, cue to Hiyori getting cut in half by Gin. Case in point: during the original reveal at the end of the Soul Society arc, Aizen spends nearly two episodes explaining his plan, and even getting interrupted by a giant punch from Komamura can't stop him.
  • One should also keep in mind that Aizen might not be entirely honest the first time he gloats at you about something. Ichigo notices that one of his recent reveals and what he'd said in a previous arc didn't match up and accuses him of lying. Aizen admits to being a chronic liar, and points out that Ichigo really shouldn't assume he was telling the truth the first time around. In fact, the only folks he's generally honest with are those he considers close to equal; everything he told Kisuke Urahara, whom he admitted was actually smarter, has thus far turned out to be true.
• Similar to the above example with Cornello, the eunuchs from Code Geass announced their plans to Zero when they have the Black Knights cornered. Zero meanwhile has Diethard record, edit and broadcast the feed over to China, where the people immediately riot.
• Used intelligently in Death Note: Light likes to gloat in front of his victims, but he does it discreetly and only when they are in their absolutely final moments. Ray Penbar sees a train's sliding doors close on Light, who mouths him a farewell just before Ray's heart attack kills him, Naomi Misora has Light's identity revealed to her one second before the Death Note takes over her mind, and the last thing Ryuzaki sees in this world is Light, standing over him and wearing a Slasher Smile no-one else can see. However, this pattern, though not the trope, is itself subverted when Light's final plan goes horribly wrong; the evidence against him may have been explainable if he hadn't shouted that this was his win.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • In the eighth movie, Paragus ends up exposing to the Z-fighters that he lured the heroes onto New Planet Vegeta for an elaborate trap that involved Comet Camorie colliding with the planet, so he could conquer Earth, as well as most of the universe, completely uncontested. However, this backfires when his son Broly ends up becoming enraged enough by Goku's presence to completely break free of Paragus' control and go berserk, and eventually taking revenge on Paragus for attempting to brainwash him.
  • During the series, Piccolo invokes this trope after Cell drains his arm, asking to be told of his origin and goals before being fully absorbed. Cell obliges, and his narration lasts long enough for Piccolo to finish preparations to regenerate his arm, returning to full strength.
• Fist of the North Star: Obviously, Jagi did not read the Evil Overlord List, otherwise he would not have told Kenshiro that he was responsible for turning his best friend evil and screwing up his life.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed lures Cornello into his broadcast room and tricks him into gloating about manipulating the townspeople with the microphone on.
  • There's also an example where Ed shows some savvy. After Father reveals several of his plans, Ed comments something "since you've told us your plans, I assume you intended to kill us".
  • A similar incident, where Lust shows that her core is actually a Philosopher's Stone, and Mustang points out that the only reason she's telling them this is that she has no intention of letting them live.
• Happens so many times in Fushigi Yuugi until they get to one monologue in which Nakago actually reveals that he had anticipated every single thing the heroes did in response to his plan, and then thanks them for it.
• Ghost in the Shell:
  • In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, an assassin just has to tell Motoko that she will now kill her, once she had shut down all the controls for her cybernetic body. Too bad someone sneaks in to reconnect the controls while the assassin is taking her time to Make It Look Like an Accident.
  • In Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Motoko gets a ready confession from a corrupt politician, but only because his cyborg mooks are waiting outside his vehicle. Unfortunately for him, Motoko is talking remotely via a fem-bomb under her optical camouflage, so he gets a nasty surprise.
• Invoked in Mezzo DSA Episode 3 by Mikura, who says to a client who betrayed the DSA, "Since you're a villain, act like one and give an explanation."
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, Trowa recalls how just before he became a Gundam pilot, he was a nameless mechanic working on Heavyarms for the Barton Foundation, and the heir to the Barton Foundation approached him, and showed him a photo of a little girl and her mother, while explaining that the little girl was his niece and that she was going to become the new ruler of Earth after Operation Meteor. Doktor S and some other engineers are then seen trying to talk the heir out of doing Operation Meteor as originally planned ^note  To put it simply, the stabilizing mechanisms on the space colony X18999 were going to be disrupted, causing a Colony Drop, and the Gundams were to be used in a coup in the ensuing chaos. , but he would have none of it. One of the engineers then shoots him dead, because he doesn't want his family to be killed in Operation Meteor. The nameless mechanic witnesses this, and assumes the Barton heir's identity, Trowa Barton.
• Tobi from Naruto does this at least once: such as when he explains his plan to the Kage because he needs them to know it to be able to make his move.
  • Though it should be noted that he tends not to talk about some important details his plans or very vague therein. For example even though he told at Five Kage summit about what he needs Eight and Nine-Tails to complete his plan but he did not mention that he needed only a small part of the Tailed Beasts to finish his plan. Also though he mentioned that he was going to use Mass Hypnosis on the whole world with the help of the moon but he did not say how exactly he was going to do it. So when he became Ten-Tails Jinchuuriki and releases World Tree, he had a large number of shinobi who tried to stop him for feeding this tree to activate Infinite Tsukuyomi.
  • Also, in the current arc, the resurrected characters have the control of their mind and mouth but not their body (most of them anyway). This leads to weird situations where these characters try to kill their opponents while explaining them how they can be defeated and telling them to dodge their attacks.
  • In Chapter 578 of the manga, Itachi explains his plan on how to beat Kabuto right to his face. The latter is only amused.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi screws around with this idea. Chao was smart enough not to gloat about the completion of her plan until a week after she already did it, sending the protagonists forward in time to when she already won. Unfortunately for her, Negi has his own Time Machine, so he and his squad decide to Set Right What Once Went Wrong...
• One Piece often goes a bit crazy with this trope, considering the number of Card Carrying Villains around.
  • Particularly notable is that nearly every villain helpfully explains their powers for the heroes' benefit — this is eventually given a Lampshade Hanging and Double Subversion when Kalifa refuses to disclose her Devil Fruit's name and properties...and Nami guesses them perfectly.
  • Crocodile reveals the bomb that is set to go off in Alubarna when facing Vivi in the palace, as a way of mocking her desire to save everyone. While he does try to finish her off, Luffy and Pell manage to save her, and she uses the knowledge about the bomb to find the cannon, but he left out a little detail about the bomb being on a timer though.
  • Strangely enough, it's subverted by chatty villain Blackbeard, who blows off Crocodile's question of why he's in Impel Down after just becoming a Warlord of the Sea. Maybe a factor on why it succeeds. Later on he explains his plan to the Marines...but only after it's already succeeded and it's too late for them to do anything.
  • Lampshade Hung for laughs with broadaxe wielder Sentoumaru, who refuses to tell anything about himself saying he's the most tight-lipped person, then promptly revealing the exact information he just said he wouldn't reveal... And excusing himself that he wanted to reveal that when called out on his slip.
• In the most recent arc of Reborn! (2004) Daemon Spade invokes and promptly subverts this trope when confessing to his status as The Man Behind the Man to a kidnapped and seriously freaked out Chrome Dokuro. The confession is coupled with several requests to pull a Face–Heel Turn, and when she refuses to switch allegiances he simply decides to hypnotize her and order that she not leave his side, pretty much guaranteeing that his plans won't be derailed by telling her.
• Done in the prelude of the Kyoto Arc in Rurouni Kenshin, when Kenshin was fighting the assassin Akamatsu Arundo. Said assassin said that he would tell Kenshin who sent him — if he died. The two proceed to fight, with Kenshin appearing to be defeated. Keeping his promise, Akamatsu tells Kenshin's corpse that he and Saito Hajime were sent by Udo Jin-e's superiors in order to clean up after Kenshin's previous run-in with Jin-e. Oh, Kenshin's not dead.
• In Samurai 7, Ukyo tells Kanbei, right before his planned execution, that he's planning to destroy Kanna Village and take over the world.
• S Cryed: The big bad delivers a monologue to the heroes via a remote video feed that serves to keep them in place long enough for his Kill Sat to get in firing position.
• Befitting its nature, Serial Experiments Lain has a truly bizarre example when Lain meets The God of the Wired/Masami Eiri face to face. What results is typical banter where the villain reveals his evil plan and the hero is horrified — except that since the two are able to read each other's minds, they are each saying what they know the other will say next. Thus, Lain is talking about merging everyone's consciousness over the Wired and becoming God, while Eiri is protesting.
• Subverted in Tiger & Bunny, as Albert Maverick has a rather good reason to go into detail about his schemes when confronted by Barnaby: he's buying time for the drugs he slipped into Barnaby's drink to kick in so he can safely edit his memory. Again.
• Used in Trigun by Legato Bluesummers. Not only does he explain his plan, he forces it to come to fruition as well. His plan? Force Vash to kill him because it would drive him to a Heroic BSoD.
• Zigzagged in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds after Placido and the Diablo army are defeated during the Grand Prix Arc. When Jose and Lucciano finally confront the heroes and the latter group demands to know what the hell is going on, Lucciano's attitude is more-or-less "why should we tell you?" However, Jose (who is usually recognized as the leader of the Three Nobles) shoots that down with one angry glare, and reacts to the question with a "no harm in letting you know" attitude and gives them a brief summary, mostly to intimidate them. (What makes this rather surreal is that both, along with Placido, are all different aspects of the same being, which is not revealed until later; the disagreements they have are very much internal conflicts.)

Audio Plays

• Invoked in the Big Finish Doctor Who story "The Light at the End", which sees the Master trying to remove all the incarnations of the Doctors from the timeline simultaneously. The Fourth and Eighth Doctors end up being captured by the Master, but because they both have extensive experience in dealing with him, they decide to massage his ego, asking if he cannot indulge them some of the details of his brilliant plan. The Master being, well, the Master, simply cannot help himself when hearing their praise of his intellect, and gleefully grabs on to the Villain Ball with both hands as he gloats at great detail about his plan, forgetting that the Doctor is capable of contacting his other incarnations telepathically and therefore can share the information with them.

Comic Books

• All Fall Down: AIQ Squared delivers this in the final chapter, explaining how and why Siphon was manipulated into a position where she would be helpless to prevent her powers being stripped from her, killing her in the process.
• Atomic Robo: Exploited in The Billion Dollar Plot; having reached the limit of what they can deduce about the villains' plans, the heroes allow themselves to be captured on the accurate assumption that one of the villains will fail his roll against gloating and explain exactly what they're up to.
• Magog: During his second meeting with Miasma, Magog is captured and comments on how much he hates this trope. He tunes out the villain and the text is replaced with scribbles and gibberish until he starts listening again.
• Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: In The Mail Pilot, Pete shows us how it's done:
  Pete: Tell 'im de rest, Shyster! He'll never live t'tell nobody! Haw! Haw! Haw!"
• In Mighty Avengers #11, Doctor Doom monologues in thought bubbles while calmly insulting the heroes, and finishes the thought with "...but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here and explain myself to you!!!"
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): Lampshaded. As Chrysalis begins to describe what will happen should the Mane 6 miss the deadline, a fillynapped Scootaloo blurts out that she's about to reveal her evil plan to the heroines. Annoyed at the interruption, Chrysalis cuts off communication.
• Sin City: Senator Roark gives one to John Hartigan because he is getting away with it and they both know it.
• Superman:
  • In Superman: Earth One, Tyrell tells his origin and plan to Superman. Superman asks why he's telling him this, then Tyrell reveals he was distracting him until his Doomsday Devices could be set up and activated.
  • In Action Comics #319, Donna Storm frames Linda Danvers for stealing. When they are left alone, Linda prods Donna into confessing to framing her, which Donna does because she can't help to gloat over it.
  • Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: When Mr. Mxyzptlk finally appears, he reveals he manipulated Superman's entire Rogues Gallery into attacking him at once because... he has gotten bored of being a prankster and now he wants to be evil for a while. And he wants to start his new career with Superman's death.
  • Superman: Brainiac: After capturing Superman, Brainiac lays out his entire scheme: going to Earth, stealing one city and then blowing the planet up.
  • Who is Superwoman?: After being unmasked by Supergirl, Superwoman starts monologuing about her plan to kill Kara and frame her for her crimes.
    Superwoman: Now that you're here on Earth someone else can play the role of Agent Liberty's Kryptonian murderer.
    Supergirl: But the hard drive image—
    Superwoman: Was easily dealt with, along with records of its existence. And with the good Inspector counting feathers on his wings in Heaven no one will be able to point the finger at me. I'll make sure that you are the one who's blamed. Unfortunately for you, you won't be able to tell them otherwise as you'll have suffered a "mysterious disappearance".
  • Two for the Death of One: As soon as Lord Satanis gets Superman magically bound and brought to his presence, he divulges his plan to absorb the power of the Runestone of Merlin by using Superman's body as a superconductor.
  • For the Man Who Has Everything: Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman walk into the Fortress of Solitude and run into a comatose Superman and Mongul. Immediately, Mongul goes on about his master plan to destroy Superman and conquering Earth after disposing of his friends.
  • Crucible: Korstus gets Supergirl disabled and dragged into his lab so he can boast properly about his plan to take over the Academy and create a Kryptonian clone army.
  • Krypton No More: After imprisoning Superman in an energy bubble, Radion starts monologuing about causing a worldwide nuclear disaster and lording over the mutated survivors of the fallout.
  • Red Daughter of Krypton: During his final battle with Supergirl, Worldkiller-1 delivers several speeches about his scheme to strengthen every alien species by culling their weakest, most unfit members, and how he plans to use Supergirl to achieve his goals.
  • Death & the Family: After encasing Supergirl in a cocoon for the second time, Insect Queen tells Kara how she managed to take over Lana Lang, and reveals her master plan: harvesting Kara's Kryptonian to breed even more powerful insect mooks.
  • Day of the Dollmaker: After abducting Catherine Grant, the titular child-kidnapper reveals his grand plan is... to force her to be his new mother.
  • The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: When Amalak and Supergirl are left alone in the former's starship, the villain stars gloating about his real scheme to destroy Superman.
  • The Life Story of Superman: After capturing Superman, Luthor cannot stop himself from bragging about his brilliant plan to kill him and replace him with an obedient clone.
  • "Supergirl's Big Brother": When Supergirl confronts the man claiming to be her adoptive parents' son, after finding out that he is a fraud, the conman reveals his real name and tells her everything about who he is and how he pretended to be Jan Danvers to con her parents out of money.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers (Marvel): During Megatron's return, Ratchet sarcastically asks if he's going to do this. Megatron chides him for being flippant, then says that's exactly what he's going to do.
    Ratchet: Right, so it's the "My Insane Scheme" story first, huh.
  • In The Transformers: Maximum Dinobots, Scorponok keeps Hot Rod alive for the sole purpose of giving one of these to stroke his ego. In fact, when Hot Rod tries to goad Scorponok into giving more information, Scorponok recognizes the attempt and then declares that he's going to tell Hot Rod his entire plan in great detail anyway.
  • Double subverted in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, again with Scorponok. He decides it would be smart to keep his evil plan to himself this time, only for the heroes to just consult the Magnificence, a mysterious relic with access to incredible knowledge, about what he was planning...at which point Scorpy decides there's no way he's going to be upstaged by a glorified Magic 8-Ball and blabs his plan anyway.
• Watchmen: Subverted and Lampshaded in chapter 11.
  Ozymandias: "Do it"? Daniel, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I would explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.
  • Also, the people he's talking to aren't really his enemies but former comrades, and he believes that he can convince them that he's right and Utopia Justifies the Means. He partially succeeds.
• Wonder Woman (1987): When Morgan La Fey captures Cassie and Artemis and thinks her plan is at a stage where she can't be thwarted she goes into great deal about her plan and how she achieved it, only for Cassie to reveal herself to be a Play-Along Prisoner and snap the bonds holding her.
• Y: The Last Man: Lampshaded. Radical misandrist Victoria, leader of the Daughters of the Amazon, has tracked down Yorick, the last man alive, and is starting a speech about how he's going to pay for the crimes of all his gender when Yorick interrupts her with: "Geez, you Amazons don't know when to just shut up and kill a guy!"

Comic Strips

• Hsu and Chan: Played with in Brand Loyalty where the Tanakas hide in a tent plotting how to escape an army of killer bears while two of said bears stand just outside listening in. After a minute, one of the brothers admits that the whole thing was a ruse to buy more time since they could see the bears' shadows through the tent.

Fan Works

• In the BattleTech story Along Came a Spider, Myndo Waterly explains the False Flag Operation that she ordered on the Federated Commonwealth to Sharilar Mori, shortly before she orders Mori's execution.
• Breaking the Deal: After kidnapping Mary Jane, Mephisto gleefully informs her that she's one of the reasons why he's become so powerful, thanks to the deal Peter struck with him.
• Cain: After revealing that he overheard All Might offering to train him, Katsuki makes a point of cornering Izuku every chance he gets and gloating about how he's going to become their idol's successor instead by forcing his way into their training sessions and impressing All Might. He also makes clear that he's going to ensure Izuku never achieves any of his dreams and spends the rest of his life as a "miserable, worthless deku".
• In the Twilight fic Divine Comedy, Aro tells Jane that he had Didyme — Marcus's mate and Aro's own sister — killed because he wanted to ensure Marcus would remain in the Volturi, as he's certain Jane will be executed in the next couple of days.
• For His Own Sake: Granny Hina repeatedly inverts this — she basically never tells anyone the full, unvarnished truth, preferring to twist the narrative to suit her own ends. The closest she ever comes to being completely honest with someone is when she confides her Freudian Excuse to Marumi, telling the tale of how much she regrets not helping her eldest daughter Yoko in her time in need because she was irritated over how Yoko resisted her efforts to dictate her life. But when Marumi points out that this doesn't give her the right to manipulate others and that her efforts to make amends by supporting the Hinata Girls has just wound up enabling their worst traits, she storms out in a huff.
• A Force of Four: When Wonder Woman and her daughter are captured and brought to the enemy's headquarters, Badra goes into their cell to brag about destroying Earth in revenge for being defeated and humiliated decades ago.
• Hellsister Trilogy: After capturing his son Orion, Darkseid launches a tirade against the evils of Free Will, and then he brags about fixing the universe by enslaving everyone after torturing the Anti-Life Equation out of Orion.
• Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: Dib notes that both Zim and Aldrich have a psychological habit of needing to explain their plans in detail to their enemies, to the point that in Chapter 18, his idea for figuring out Aldrich's master plan is to just ask him. Gaz and Fizzmitz are both dumbfounded that this actually ends up working.
• Subverted in Kyon: Big Damn Hero when Haruhi got kidnapped. Even when she tried to get information from her captor, he answered he was only doing his job kidnapping her so he wasn't trusted with any important info.
• In the 11th chapter of Loved and Lost, King Jewelius brags to the disgraced and imprisoned heroes — whom he has denigrated by tricking everypony in Canterlot into blaming them for the Changeling invasion — about his secret role in said invasion (including being the cause of it by helping Chrysalis infiltrate Canterlot on Cadance and Shining Armor's wedding day, double-crossing the Changelings after deciding there was more to gain through Twilight, using the exiles' earlier treatment of her to manipulate her into losing all trust in her brother, mentor and friends as well as accept his marriage proposal, and sending false rumors into the exiles' ears about escaped Changelings who desire revenge on Twilight in order to lure them back to Canterlot and personally see to it that Celestia and Cadance will die — all done out of his petty jealousy and hatred of the beloved princesses). His confidence in doing this without repercussions is because his grip over Twilight and Canterlot's citizens is firm enough that nopony will just drop their support of him and believe these revelations, and it also doesn't help that, as Twilight points out when they try to warn her and the rest of Canterlot about his true nature, the heroes' own prior failure to uphold their trustworthiness leaves them unable to convince the citizens to believe them.
  • Another instance of this happens a few chapters later, when Twilight calls Jewelius out on his questionable methods of ruling. In the ensuing private argument, Jewelius reveals that Twilight's friends were right about him being a sadistic tyrant, that he intends to father a line of powerful heirs through her, and has also held Twilight's parents as a Betrayal Insurance. Unlike last time, this immediately backfires on him as Twilight has a massive Jerkass Realization, cuts off all ties with him, and escapes to Ponyville to reconcile with the other heroes and help them set things right.
• The One to Make It Stay: The prequel Thinking of Ways reveals that most of the members of Kitty Section overheard Lila during one of these exchanges with Marinette. While they were already starting to figure out her true nature due to Rose asking Prince Ali about her, this firmly cemented their knowledge of what they were dealing with.
• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Dr Zarkendorf insists on rescuing our heroes from the zeppelin crash his Hypercompetent Sidekick Annika-709 has arranged for them, just so he can fulfill this trope. As Zarkendorf is monologuing away, Annika quickly loses patience and gives everyone the condensed version of his Evil Plan.
• Plasma's Folly: When Ben begins to suspect that Kelvin is being dishonest, Kelvin decides to give away the full details of his plan. Though it would normally be decidedly foolish to reveal this to someone who can turn into a Legendary Pokémon (as lampshaded by Ben), he easily proceeds to convince him not to do anything.
• Harry deliberately encourages this in The Rigel Black Chronicles, to stall when she's been kidnapped into the Chamber of Secrets. Possibly justified by the fact that the Diary preserved a snapshot of Riddle's teenage mind, and moreover they were in quite a secure location.
• In Suzumiya Haruhi No Index, when Terra of the Left kidnaps Kyon, Kyon asks him to explain how his powers work and his goals while they wait for his plan to go into motion. Terra egotistically agrees, saying that since Kyon doesn't have any powers nor fighting skills, there is no way he can possibly use this information to his advantage. He's right, but Kyon was counting on Kaori Kanzaki coming to rescue him. She eavesdropped on his exposition and used that knowledge to defeat him. Plus, Acqua of the Back was also eavesdropping and heard about how Terra was planning to betray God's Right Seat, so he punishes him after the battle.
• Tobi in Wind Monk Banishment explains to Sasuke how he was going to frame Hinata for the death of Naruto, faking his death so he could get the tailed beast secretly, and make things worse between the Hyuga clan and Konoha by arranging a murder-suicide. He makes it pretty clear he's going to kill Sasuke, who is low on chakra and wounded from defending Naruto while he was comatose, thus unable to fight back properly. Then Itachi shows up.
• Subverted in With Strings Attached. After capturing and/or disabling the four, Brox responds to some anguished "Why?"s with "The joke is funnier if you don't know why now."
• With This Ring: On several occasions Paul's success is highly dependant on his enemies' penchant for monologuing. He eventually can't resist doing the same himself when he's captured Klarion the Witch Boy, but he has encountered so much of it by then that he's learned the essential lesson of making sure no-one can interfere and the target cannot possibly escape.

Film — Animated

• In The Boss Baby, after capturing Tim and the Boss Baby, Francis E. Francis asks them if they know what he does to little kids who ask lots of questions about him. He then tells them that reads them his story and proceeds to pull out a giant pop-up book called My Story and details both his past and his plot to monopolize people's love with his "Forever Puppy" and thus take away all the love from babies.
• In Frozen (2013), Hans tells Anna of his plan to leave her to freeze to death and accuse Elsa of treason so she can be executed, so he can rule Arendelle with both sisters out of commission. What makes this even more dastardly is the fact that he did this to speed up the curse and kill Anna faster by psychologically breaking her.
• In Hoodwinked!, Boingo does this to Red Puckett by having her Bound and Gagged and then Storyboarding the Apocalypse for her with a slideshow of his criminal scheme.
• The Incredibles:
  • Lampshaded in The Incredibles, where villains' penchant to elaborately explain their nefarious plans is dubbed "monologuing" by the heroes. Syndrome falls for it anyway — which is entirely plausible; he wants Mr. Incredible to know how great he is — but he quickly catches himself.
  Syndrome: You sly dog, you got me monologuing! I can't believe it!
  • In Incredibles 2, the Big Bad temporarily releases a captive Elastigirl from Mind Control (while taking other precautions against an escape) in order to gloat.
• The Lion King (1994): When the movie's villain, Scar, has the protagonist Simba trapped on the ledge of a gorge... instead of simply throwing him to his death, he gloats at the moment and, thinking he's finished him off and about to celebrate victory, whispers to him that he really masterminded his (Simba's) father's death. Huge mistake and huge aversion, as Simba gains a huge Heroic Second Wind and eventually defeats Scar in a fight.
• Happens between Lewis and the Bowler Hat Guy in Meet the Robinsons in the orphanage: Lewis demands "What did I ever do to you?", at which point BHG tells him the story of his long and ridiculously pathetic life, and also that Lewis is Cornelius Robinson and Bowler Hat Guy is Lewis' old roommate, Mike Yagoobian.
• Parodied in Monsters vs. Aliens. The main villain Gallaxhar does decide to exposit to Susan why he essentially committed genocide against his own people and at the same time wanted to repopulate the Earth with clones of him. However, he was telling her while he was hooked up to a cloning machine, which had Gallaxhar sporadically muted when the machine lowers down, constantly interrupting his monologue and leaving his full story unknown. When the machine stops and he says that he'll kill Susan since he's already said too much, she gives a confused stare.

Film — Live-Action

• Alita: Battle Angel: Grewishka takes time to gloat about having Nova's backing during his second fight with Alita. However, this does serve a purpose since he's able to pinpoint her exact location when she responds.
• In Back to the Future Part II, the "rich version" of Biff tells Marty the details of how he acquired Gray's Sports Almanac — a surprising piece of candor until he pulls out his gun.
• In Batman & Robin Robin arrives at Poison Ivy's lair, and after flirting, Ivy agrees to tell him what she and Mr. Freeze are planning in exchange for a kiss for (bad) luck. Subverted because Robin wore a rubber lip and managed to survive Ivy's signature kiss and escaped with the information, albeit after also surviving Ivy trying to drown him.
• Lampshaded in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. The eponymous cat outlines her evil plan to the captive heroes, pointing out that she needs to do something to kill the time until her satellite moves into position.
• At the end of The Crow, crime lord Top Dollar gives the avenging Eric Draven the speech after he impales him through the back. He admits that he's ultimately responsible for the death of Eric and his girlfriend Shelley, and expresses admiration for what he considered a Worthy Opponent. As he gets ready to slit Eric's throat, Eric gives back what Top Dollar's owed — the combined memories of 30 hours of pain as Shelley lay dying from the wounds inflicted by Top Dollar's gang.
• Damnatus: G'guor does kill Nira half way through his Evil Gloating. Not to be put off, he continues monologuing to the spirit stone she was carrying.
• Spoofed in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, where the Private Detective argues over his right to give The Summation versus the Big Bad's right to his Just Between You And Me speech. They start alternating their speech, eventually revealing the whole scheme in unison.
• In Dogma, the villain taunts the heroes in this way, but then defies it.
  "I've seen enough Bond movies to know that you never give away all your secret plans, no matter how close you are to success."
• In Five Graves to Cairo, the captive British officers egg Rommel into explaining his Cunning Plan as involuntary double agent Bramble eavesdrops. He finally catches on and snaps "I offered you twenty questions, that was twenty-one!"
• Possible first subversion was in the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Tuco is surprised while in the tub by an old rival, who starts talking about how his revenge is at hand. Tuco, unimpressed, shoots the rival, then notes "When you have to shoot: shoot, don't talk," before finishing him off Gangsta Style.
• Lampshaded and partially subverted in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. While Duke is being taken in for Viper conversion, he tries to grill McCullen on his master plan. McCullen sees through the attempt and indulges him anyway, but leaves the critical detail out to avoid spoiling the surprise. Though Duke does indeed foil the part of the plan McCullen told him about, Zartan disguised as the President would go on to kill off most of the Joes in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, including Duke.
• Horatio Hornblower: In Loyalty, Hornblower and his men taken prisoner after a traitor on their ship hands them over to the French. Hornblower is invited to dinner, where the traitor reveals that he is neither the only traitor nor even the biggest traitor in Admiral Pellew's squadron. Hornblower notes that it would be cruel to send him to his death without even telling him who the traitor is. Of course, The Mole simply agrees that it would be cruel, before sending Hornblower back to his cell.
• Clove is about to kill Katniss in The Hunger Games but gloats about how her pack killed Rue for too long. She gets killed by Thresh.
• Occasionally used in the James Bond franchise, though Bond often has the gist of the plan figured out already.
  • Subverted in the very first Bond film, Dr. No, though not with the Big Bad or even The Dragon, but a mere Evil Minion, Dr. Dent. He says, "You might as well know, as you won't live to use the information. I'm working for—" and in a swift motion, Dent grabs his gun and aims it at Bond, who replies with one of his most famous Pre-Mortem One-Liners: "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six."
  • Justified in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where just for once Blofeld actually has a sensible reason for keeping the captured Bond alive and explaining the plot to him: Bond's credibility will lend weight to Blofeld's threat to the United Nations. Blofeld is also careful to withhold how he intends to deliver the Omega virus, and Bond only discovers this part when he overhears it after his escape.
  • Subversion in Goldfinger: Auric blabs about his master plan to a bunch of goons, not Bond. Bond just so happens to be peeking in. Then Goldfinger kills the goons; however, he made sure they told their people to cooperate before he eliminated them. Then inverted, when Bond himself explains the plan to Goldfinger, and why it is doomed to fail. Initially Bond thought the plan was a heist, but when Goldfinger says it isn't, Bond realises what the true plan is, and tells Goldfinger that it's actually quite brilliant.
  • Both Subverted and played straight in Diamonds Are Forever.
    • You think Blofeld is going to explain his plan, but...
      James Bond: What do you intend to do with those diamonds?
      Blofeld: An excellent question. And one which will be hanging on the lips of the world quite soon. If I were to break the news to anyone, it would be to you first. You know that. But it's late, I'm tired, and there's so much left to do. Good night, Mr. Bond.
    • Later on, when Bond arrives at the oil rig base, Blofeld gives him the grand tour and explains his plans fully. Justified since the plan is to hold the world hostage with a Kill Sat for money—and he's already made his demands and threat known, so is only telling Bond what targets he might choose. Bond has already figured out how to stop it as well.
  • Mild inversion in Tomorrow Never Dies — the Evil Plan turns out to be less heinous (though still heinous) than what the heroes thought it was. They thought Carver was trying to start World War III For the Evulz and for ratings; he's actually in a Big Bad Duumvirate (of sorts) aimed at installing a new Chinese government via nuking the old one and blaming it on the British, with his ally emerging as a Villain with Good Publicity when he takes over the country and negotiates a truce (Carver is still after ratings). Also a perfect example of how Bond movies subvert this trope — they were already trying to foil his plan before he even explained it.
  • Inverted towards the end of Licence to Kill, with Bond revealing his reasons to the villain, Sanchez, before killing him.
  • The trope is Lampshaded in Moonraker when Hugo Drax says he's not going to follow it before putting Bond and the Bond Girl in the usual Death Trap. But when our heroes follow Drax up to his space station and see most of what's happening anyway, Drax helpfully provides the remaining details before ordering them Thrown Out the Airlock. Unfortunately for him, he explains his plan right in front of Jaws, who turns on him when he realizes that he and his girlfriend would have no place in Drax's world of physically perfect specimens.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun. After Bond and Scaramanga finally meet, Scarmanaga shows him around his island and explains his operation, concentrating on the solar energy collection setup. This is not because he thinks Bond won't be alive to tell anyone, but because he regards Bond as a Worthy Opponent and is therefore treating him as an equal.
• In Jupiter Ascending, Titus tells Caine his plan before throwing him out the airlock. Like most Evil Gloating, it backfires.
• Kim Possible: Just like in the original cartoons, Drakken is unable to resist gloating when he springs his trap. He explains that the array of energy beams surrounding Team Possible is inescapable because the off switch is mounted high up on the wall. Shego chides him for telling them where the switch is, but the cat (or naked mole rat in this case) is already out of the bag....
• Subverted in Kingsman: The Secret Service. Valentine realizes the danger of the trope, and decides to just execute Harry instead. However, since their conversation was recorded, Arthur notes to Eggsy that there was enough to help the authorities deal with Valentine properly. Unfortunately, Arthur has been turned, too.
• Last Action Hero: "Gentlemen! Since you are about to die anyway, I may as well tell you the entire plot.". It's a nod to the trope, which has been Lampshaded in the film twice by then as a 'Classic Movie Mistake'; the second in an Ironic Echo.
• Last Night in Soho: Once Ellie has sipped from the sedated Calming Tea, Ms. Collins opens up about her identity and the murders, believing that Ellie will take that knowledge to her grave.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: the heroes find a phonograph that the villain had planted on the Nautilus revealing all of his plan up to that point, but as a twist, there is a high-pitched noise also on the record that only Mr. Hyde can hear, which is the trigger mechanism for several bombs that were also planted aboard the Nautilus by The Mole (Dorian Gray). He reveals this at the end of the recording right before they start going off. Of course they still live.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man, Obadiah Stane gets to do this with Tony Stark. He paralyzes Tony with a sonic device which has effects lasting 15 minutes, and proceeds to remove the arc generator from his chest, gloating all the way. The flaw in this plan is that Stane doesn't know there is an old generator Tony can use, but due to the temporary paralysis, it comes much closer to working than similar gloating plans. This is also an interesting variation in that the gloating didn't actually harm the villain's plans... He had to tip his hand to get the generator, which was after all attached to our hero, anyway.
  • Exploited with Black Widow's interrogation style in The Avengers. She fakes being a helpless and/or emotional damsel until the villain lets his guard down and spills the beans. Then she shows him his error.
  • Played with in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The villain uses this to distract Cap and Black Widow from the bunker-busting missile heading straight for their heads.
  • Subverted in Avengers: Age of Ultron in the shipyard scene.
    Tony Stark: What's the vibranium for?
    Ultron: I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan.
    [blasts Stark]
    • Although Ultron's not above capturing Black Widow and keeping her alive for a spot of Evil Gloating, alluding to his plan to rip Sokovia out of the ground and use it for a Colony Drop. Justified — he wants someone to know how brilliant he's being, since his AI's at least partially based on an infamous narcissist.
• Memento: People are quite fond of telling Lenny exactly what they're going to do, and exactly how they've manipulated him — but since Lenny has anterograde-amnesia, they're secure in the knowledge that he invariably forgets everything five minutes later. If the film were put in chronological order, what we'd see is a guy getting repeatedly and blatantly screwed over by everyone he meets, including himself. It does backfire rather spectacularly on one person, though, when Teddy pisses Lenny off so badly that he steers himself and his murderous vengeance right towards Teddy.
• Inverted in Minority Report when Anderton explains Burgess' plot to him (and the audience) at the end of the film after Burgess has fully enacted his plot. Anderton's actions cause Burgess to commit suicide.
• RoboCop (1987): OCP executive Dick Jones tells RoboCop, "I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake. Now, it's time to erase that mistake.", before summoning the ED-209 and a SWAT team to destroy him. What makes this particularly stupid on his part is he knows that RoboCop is capable of recording everything he says (he even bitches out Boddicker for telling RoboCop about his involvement in the first place). This bites him back hard in the end, when Robocop reports to the OCP board of executives to replay the statement.
• Scream and Scream Again: When Dr. Browning catches Dr. Sorel snooping around the facility, he immediately offers to explain everything to him, admitting that he cannot resist the opportunity to explain his scheme to someone who will actually understand. He then adds that afterwards that Dr. Sorel's life will have to take a very different turn.
• The Operative does this in Serenity, but he makes sure to paralyse his victims first so that he can kill them immediately after his speech.
• Played with in Shooter. When Swagger confronts Sandor, the villain's plan has already happened. Instead, Sandor explains what they did, why they did it, and the role Swagger played in it. Also justified, in that a heavily armed kill team was coming and Sandor had to delay him until they got there. Swagger would've known if he was lying, so he had to tell the truth.
• Parodied in Sky High (2005). Gwen, after outlining her Evil Plan to turn all of the superheroes into infants and then raise them again as villains, then tells the Commander (who has been turned into an infant, and who she is cradling in her arms) that this is the best villainous speech she's ever given, and it's too bad that he can't understand a word she's saying.
• Star Trek:
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan has badly damaged the Enterprise using the commandeered USS Reliant, but rather than finish off the Enterprise, he hails them to tell Kirk and company that he was the attacker. However, he tries to make Kirk surrender information about Project Genesis, which gives Kirk the opportunity to lower Reliant's shields and strike back.
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: One of the villains' allies has cornered Kirk and McCoy and is about to kill them. Kirk tries asking him who the mastermind behind The Conspiracy actually is. The conspirator simply cannot help himself and starts to reveal it, but Kirk and McCoy are beamed to safety by Spock before they get to hear a word of it.
    Jailer: Since you're all going to die anyway, why not tell you? His Name Is...—
    (Kirk and McCoy beam away)
    Kirk: No! No! Of all the— son of a— Couldn't you have waited two seconds?
    Spock: Captain?
    Kirk: He was just about to explain the whole thing!
    Chekov: You want to go back?
    McCoy: Absolutely not!
  • Played with in Star Trek Into Darkness. Khan waits until Kirk has been all but fully beamed off the Vengeance before revealing he is going to destroy the Enterprise.
• Star Wars:
  • In Return of the Jedi, Palpatine gleefully explains his trap to Luke... But there isn't anything Luke can do and the Rebels fall into it. And not only that, Palpatine's gloating is not just for fun, he needs to get Luke angry, upset, and hating him to drag him to the Dark Side.
  • In Attack of the Clones, Dooku has Obi-Wan imprisoned and tells him the truth: Darth Sidious is in control of the Republic. Not only does this not backfire, it actually helps the Sith. By telling the Jedi this, they start investigating Republic senators and Sidious latches on to this to create tension between the Jedi and Republic, ultimately allowing him to declare them traitors. If they did nothing, Sidious continues his plan unbothered so he wins either way.
• Inverted in the 1994 Street Fighter film where it's the heroes who scupper their plans by revealing it to the villains. Chun Li, Honda and Balrog have M Bison and Sagat in a tent together which they plan to blow up with a lorry loaded with dynamite. However, they leave a video behind to gloat to the villains which of course gives Bison and Sagat time to escape.
• In True Lies Harry does this while bound to a chair, and under the effect of truth serum, just as Samir prepares to inject him with him poison. So they don't take him seriously until he demonstrates his ability to do what he promised.
• A slightly over-wordy homage to this moment appears in Van Helsing:
  Aleera: Anna, my love. It is your blood that shall keep me beautiful. What do you think of that?
  Anna Valerious: [drives a stake through her chest] I think if you're going to kill somebody, kill them! Don't stand around talking about it!
• Subverted and lampshaded near the end of Watchmen, just like in the original comic.
  Ozymandias: "Do it"? Daniel, I'm not a comic book villain. Do you seriously think I would explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Literature

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Subverted because Nemo never shares the evil part of his Evil Plan with Aronnax, just because he is ashamed of it. However, Nemo is constantly sharing all the information about the Nautilus and his scientific investigations about the Sea with The Professor Aronnax, not because he will kill him, but because Nemo pretends that Aronnax will never abandon the Nautilus.
  Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?"
  "Sir," the captain answered me, "there can be no secrets between men who will never leave each other."
  I ignored this innuendo and waited for Captain Nemo's explanation.
• After the Golden Age, the supervillain Destructor would always do this to his captives. The main villain of the story says he's not going to make the same mistake... and then goes and does it anyway.
• The villains in the Alex Rider series have a habit of doing this, although the story does usually try to find some kind of justification. (Alex notes that one of the downsides of being a criminal is that you can't tell people about your crimes, which becomes the series' go-to excuse in later books.)
• A multi-layered one in Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. During the Darkest Hour, with Foaly trapped in his inoperable command center, Briar Cudgeon video-calls him to gloat and reveal the whole plan. He streams the whole thing to Opal Koboi for her amusement, but at one point he pauses the stream to confide that he intends to betray Opal as soon as their plan is complete. Foaly manages to record the whole thing on Artemis's laptop, saving the day.
• Subverted in James P. Hogan's story The Assassin. The title character is sent to liquidate a scientist who had defected from his side, succeeds, but is then captured. His interrogators then introduce him to his "deceased" target, who has developed technology to duplicate people. Since they can duplicate the prisoner as many times as necessary from their original scan, thereby starting over from square one, they can simply try every interrogation strategy... including honest explanation and persuasion.
• The Berlin Memorandum by Adam Hall. The neo-Nazi Big Bad not only explains his master plan to British spy Quiller, he is so confident in its success that he lets Quiller go. Subverted however in that a) the master plan is bogus anyway, and b) it's actually a Nice Job Guiding Us, Hero gambit — the Nazis hope Quiller will contact his base in an attempt to avert the plan, thereby exposing its location to them.
• Lampshaded in Best Served Cold where Cosca asks Victus why men with a crossbow tend to gloat instead of simply firing.
• Black Iris: The climax. Laney keeps her victim at gunpoint to explain her evil plan, so he'll know who destroyed him, and why. A rare case that doesn't suffer from Bond Villain Stupidity, as she's already completed the scheme. All she has to do is stand back and watch him fall apart.
• Lampshaded near the end of Emma Bull's Finder:
  Orient: This is-this is the part of the movie where the villain tells the hero everything, because he's going to kill him anyway. Except that I can't think of any more questions.
• Challengers of the Unknown: Downplayed. The villain tells the captive Challengers about his origins and immortality serum, but cannily refuses to tell them about his endgame, even if he does plan to kill his prisoners soon anyway. It makes no difference, as he dies of the side effects of the serum just a page later.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: Joslyn is aware that arrogant men can rarely resist expounding on their villainy, and so gets Brother Rennus talking when he's got Tasia hostage, distracting him so she can then save her.
• Played straight and Lampshaded in the Ciaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM novel Duty Calls, where Cain meets with the Inquistor that's been trying to kill him through the whole book. The Inquisitor waits until he thinks Cain is on his side before revealing the whole plan. The Lampshade Hanging comes from the villain's name, Ernst Savros Killian, which bears a striking resemblance to a certain James Bond villain.
• Used slightly oddly in the novel The City of Dreaming Books. The villain just seems to enjoy giving this speech, even when it's completely unwarranted. In fact, many of his victims point out that they never would have known he even had an Evil Plan, had he not told them about it in great detail before disposing of them.
• Subverted in R. A.'s The Dark Elf Trilogy novel Homeland. Alton DeVir asks the Faceless Master why he is about to kill him. The Faceless Master refuses, because "You broke my mirror!"...even though Alton only broke it while running from the Faceless Master after the Faceless Master first attempts the assassination. Alton reflects that that doesn't make any sense before the Faceless Master's apprentice shoots him from behind.
• Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader: Vader is agreeable to answering his Worthy Opponent's questions, but at least waits until Shryne is already dying before he reveals his and Sidious's true identities, as well as the truth of the war and Order 66.
• In Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest, the villain has the heroine in his power and planning to burn her as a witch. He takes to visiting her in her cell to gloat. As he is convinced she really cannot talk, he lets slip some things he might otherwise not have divulged. Of course, when she does regain her voice, she tells his nephew (and his enemy) all about it.
• Discworld:
  • In Men at Arms, Commander Vimes muses about how it's better to be at the mercy of an evil man: "The evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. ... A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
  • First Lampshaded, then inverted in The Fifth Elephant:
    Wolfgang: What is it you want me to say, Your Grace? Something like "you are going to die anyway so I might as well tell you", perhaps?
    Vimes: Well, it'd be a help.
    Wolfgang: You are going to die anyway. Why don't you tell me?
  • In the Discworld Companion it explains that Evil Harry Dread, a old-school Dark Lord does this, often to the point of including slides and maps. He laments to Cohen The Barbarian that "heroes" these days just take advantage of the moment, and Cohen agrees that no-one does heroics or villainy with style and decency any more.
• Subverted in Dragon Bones: Ward reveals that once, on a hunting trip where he was alone with his father, his father got drunk and bragged about having killed Ward's grandfather (his father) with an arrow to the back, which was disguised as a hunting accident. Ward was savvy enough to pretend to not have understood it, but still suspects that this incident might have something to do with his father's excessive physical violence towards him.
• During the fifth The Dresden Files book, Harry tries to bait Nicodemus into doing this, to no avail. Later, he remarks to Susan that he must've read the Evil Overlord List.
  • Subverted in the third book, when the Big Bad Bianca only says, "Is that what you think happened? Oh, my, Mr. Dresden, do you have a surprise waiting for you."
• The Sphinx does this in the final book in Fablehaven, after having Seth in his clutches, he actually tells him that his victory is so assured, he'd like to have one honest conversation with one of his respected nemeses. He then goes on to explain in detail his origins, his source of power (and weaknesses thereof) and all the other things that usually pertain to this trope. He then has Seth sent to his dungeon, and, for the most part, doesn't really suffer any consequences from this particular discussion.
• Completely inverted in Forgotten Realms novel Silverfall, when one Affably Evil foe inadvertently convinced Storm Silverhand to spare his life after his surrender was answered only by one raised eyebrow. By asking one right question. Well, by asking and then clarifying it:
  There's just one thing I'd like to know before I die. How did you know?
  Know about what?
  That I write the Heartsteel books.
• In Aaron Allston's Galatea in 2-D, Kevin — after numerous attempts to kill Roger and his friends — demands that Roger explain something he did in his counterattack, becase Roger owes him after all the damage he did to him.
• Subverted in Galaxy of Fear: Planet of the Dead. The villain boasts that he's found a way to bring the dead back to life, arranged for one way to be used on himself after he got killed, and can use the other ways to make tireless undead minions. He plans to kill and reanimate the heroes, who will retain some vestige of their minds. But he refuses to tell them how the zombies would be defeated, or to name the one who commissioned his efforts in the first place.
  "Don't insult my intelligence, Doctor Hoole! I may like to gloat over my victims, but do you think I would reveal a secret that important, even to the doomed? My employer wouldn't look kindly on that. And I don't intend to be killed a second time."
• During the climaxes to the first 6 books, Harry Potter's main strategy was to make the villains talk, as a way to buy some time and think of a way to get the hell out. In the final book, his plan is to keep talking himself, to both try and get the big bad to step down after realising he is well and truly screwed either way, and to tell everyone why the big bad is screwed, and if he is killed they can just mass kill him.
  • Dumbledore gets Malfoy to explain how he got Death Eaters into the school at the end of book six. He then points out how this just proves Malfoy isn't actually going to go through with it — if he wanted Dumbledore dead, he wouldn't stop to chat.
• Judge Dee: In The Haunted Monastery, the killer has no trouble bragging of his crimes to Dee because his connections in the imperial court make him untouchable. Unfortunately for him Dee has no trouble inflicting some karmic justice of a different kind.
• Hadanelith in Heralds of Valdemar novel The White Gryphon does this after having Amberdrake and Skandranon captive. Skan Lampshades this in the beginning by asking, "Good gods, does every half-baked villain have to boast about what he’s going to do before he does it? Can’t you just kill us so we don’t have to endure your boring speech?” Hadanelith retorts that he wants them to know everything so that they can suffer in not being able to thwart his plan. Skan and Amberdrake then proceed to feign boredom instead of interest to keep Hadanelith talking.
• Heretical Edge: Charmeine has the brilliant idea to stop and tell Flick her entire plan after capturing her, and then make Flick watch her carry out the rest on a magical TV equivalent, despite knowing full well that some unknown force or actor has been thwarting everything else she's tried to do to Flick. As might be expected, Flick breaks free right after Charmeine heads off to carry out the rest of the plot.
• Deliberately Lampshaded (along with much else) in John M. Ford's How Much for Just the Planet?. The (phony) villain's Card Carrying Villainy prompts a running commentary from Aperokei ("A man of your taste would never kill anyone before the last reel"), receiving the pleased response "There's the fellow! I knew a man of your experience had to have seen a few Republic serials."
• James Bond
  • Averted in Death Is Forever. The Big Bad feels obliged to "fill in the blanks" of the events prior to their meeting for Bond before moving out and leaving him to be killed, but refuses to reveal the machinations of his main operation when questioned about it. Luckily, an offhand comment that Bond remembers hearing from a henchman sets him on the trail of the grand Evil Plan.
  • Also averted in Zero Minus Ten. Much like in the previous example, the Big Bad is willing to explain the details behind him faking his death and motivation to destroy Hong Kong, but refuses to tell where he is going to detonate the nuclear bomb for that purpose.
• Spoofed in The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross, in which the Big Bad (who's deliberately following supervillain tropes) explains his evil plan to the hero via PowerPoint! The Horror!
• Explored in Kushiel's Legacy, with regard to Melisande Shahrizai. For her, it's really all about the scheming, manipulation, and Magnificent Bastardry — and she is very good at it. Delaunay is a similarly-skilled schemer, though significantly more heroic, and Phèdre — the heroine of the series — is his protégée. The two of them are the only people Melisande believes might fully appreciate the cleverness of her plots. To her, the game is more important than the outcome, and playing well is more important than winning. She wants someone to admire her skill. And so for this reason, she sometimes divulges small portions of information regarding to her schemes to Delaunay, and later, to Phèdre.
  Phèdre: [to Delaunay about her recent encounter with Melisande] Every artist craves an audience, my lord, and she has chosen you. Whatever is to occur, it is her desire that you know she is its architect.
• The Letter, the Witch and the Ring: Gert Bigger goes on an extended rant to Rose Rita, who she has locked in a paralysis/death spell. Rose Rita is freed from the spell by the unexpected side-effects of a Summoning Ritual which Gert then performs. By the time Rose Rita recovers, Gert is gone, having (probably) fallen victim to the Ritual's Literal Genie target.
• Subverted in Lolita. Humbert tries to get Quilty to sit down and listen to why he's being "executed", but Quilty is too high on drugs to really comprehend what's happening. He ends up staggering about the house complaining mildly each time Humbert shoots him.
• Becomes a plot point in the third book of Mistborn, when the Big Bad, a certified Eldritch Abomination, manifests to the heroine for no other reason than to gloat, but she can't figure out what he's getting out of it. She then realizes that it's just to satisfy his ego — leading her to the correct conclusion that he's on some level human and fallible.
• In the Modesty Blaise novel The Night of Morningstar, when the Big Bad has Modesty and Willie captured and apparently helpless, he comes for a little chat, intending to find out what they know, but instead they goad him into telling them his whole plot, after which they escape.
• Mr. Standfast: When the evil mastermind captures Hannay, he can't resist an extended gloat about how he's outmaneuvered British Intelligence and been one step ahead of them the whole way. He does it again when he thinks he has the spymaster Blenkiron in his clutches, only for Blenkiron to calmly cut him off and explain how thoroughly he's been beaten at his own game.
• An interesting variant happens in Neverwhere. The Marquis de Carabas knows Croup and Vandemar will never spill any information on their employer or plans unless they know he's about to die, or is already dead. So he lets them kill him. Knowing that he secretly put a piece of his life in safe hands, just in case.
• In Pact, this is endemic amongst mystic practitioners, who, in addition to all being afflicted with Cannot Tell a Lie, gain power by making and fulfilling promises. A good villainous monologue is essentially just a promise to the audience that something is going to happen, which means that many practitioners will take the time to inform an opponent that, by the way, they're going to attack them soon, and then go ahead with the attack and gain power when they succeed. Generally speaking, these sorts of opponents, who often have large reservoirs of power thanks to these tactics, are at least as dangerous as the ones that decide to go with Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?.
• In the Paladin of Shadows book Choosers of the Slain a rapist and murderer does this to a would-be victim, not knowing that she's wired.
• This doesn't happen to Philip Marlowe very often, if at all, but he's familiar with the trope and lampshades it in The Lady in the Lake when the murderer gets the drop on him:
  Marlowe: I've never liked this scene. Detective confronts murderer. Murderer produces gun, points same at detective. Murderer tells detective the whole sad story, with the idea of shooting him at the end of it. Thus wasting a lot of valuable time, even if in the end murderer did shoot detective. Only murderer never does. Something always happens to prevent it. The gods don't like this scene either. They always manage to spoil it.

The murderer then decides to just shoot him without bothering to tell him anything first — but sure enough, there's an interruption that saves Marlowe's life.

• Most of the villains in Relativity avoid this, but one villain, Rasmas, plays it straight and to the hilt. When he captures the heroes, they try to keep him talking to buy themselves time to escape, but they don't need to because he's so desperate to brag about how brilliant his plan is.
• Lampshaded in the 1903 book Riddle Of The Sands when the hero eavesdrops on the villains, only to discover that as it's a plot with which they are all familiar, they talk in low voices and use clipped cryptic references. He complains that in stories the villains always openly declaim their evil plans.
• In Soon I Will Be Invincible, Doctor Impossible repeatedly struggles against this urge, remembering his last defeat:
  Last time I told them everything, giving it away like a fool, how I was going to do it, how escape was impossible. And they just listened, smirking.
• Played with in the Thousand Sons novel Ahriman: Unchanged. Ahriman telepathically contacts the chief sensor operator of a soon-to-be-destroyed Imperial warship to gloat that the sons of Prospero are coming home. Later, agents of the Inquisition discover and revive the operator’s corpse, learn what Ahriman told him, and head to Prospero to try and stop whatever Ahriman is doing… which is exactly what Ahriman wants them to do.
• Partially subverted in L. Neil Smith's The Venus Belt. "I'd already had the cliche' interview with the head villain, and I still didn't know what the hell was going on."
• Double Subverted in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game. The Big Bad decides to reveal her plan to Miles before sending him away to attend to some business for her. Some time later, Miles decides that she couldn't possibly have told him her actual plan for the moment and uses this (and the two other plans she's thought of, told to people, and discarded) to deduce her current plan. Then he decided that plan is too obvious and goes with the second option. Yes, it dissolves in a Gambit Pileup. How did you guess?
• Warrior Cats: Hawkfrost does this at the end of Sunset. His plan wasn't particularly complicated, but before trying the strike the killing blow, he felt the need to tell Brambleclaw that he was just testing him. And of course, after Brambleclaw impales him, he remembers something else important and says a little extra as he bleeds to death.

Live-Action TV

• The Avengers (1960s). In "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station" the villain handcuffs Steed to a pipe so he can explain his Evil Plan with the help of a model train set.
  Villain: I have you brought here to witness the final phase.
  Steed: That's very decent of you.
  Villain: It's for me really, verging on megalomania you might say. But a coup is not a coup without someone to see.
  Steed: (indicating cuffs) Excuse me if I don't applaud.
• Averted in the final episode of Battlestar Galactica ("Daybreak"):
  Cylon: You should know... your ship's been destroyed. You can't go back that way.
  Athena: Yeah, well, that's not the plan.
  Starbuck: Could we please not tell her the plan?
• Chuck: In "Chuck Versus the Ring Part II":
  Chuck: (the good guy to the main villain) I'm sorry, are you asking me to make the classic villain mistake of explaining my dastardly plot to you? You know what, I'd love to.
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency subverts this. Captured by the villains, Dirk and Todd try to piece together what the hell is going on. When the Big Bad arrives, Dirk predicts that at least now they'll finally get some answers. Instead, the baffled Big Bad fires a barrage of frantic questions at the pair, having no better idea of what's going on then they do.
• Doctor Who: This happens in a great deal of stories, classic and new series alike.
  • This gets brought up in "The Robots of Death":
    The Doctor: I see. You're one of those boring maniacs who's going to gloat. Are you going to tell me your plan for running the universe?
    Taren Capel: Oh, no, Doctor. I'm going to burn out your brain. Very very slowly.
    • Of course he spills the beans about his plan a few minutes later, but it's still a good line.
  • A notable subversion in "City of Death":
    [upon finding six Mona Lisas hidden behind a wall]
    The Doctor: May I ask where you got these?
    Count Scarlioni: No.
    The Doctor: Or how you knew they were here?
    Count Scarlioni: No.
    The Doctor: They've been walled up a long time?
    Count Scarlioni: Yes.
    The Doctor: I like concise answers!
    Count Scarlioni: Good.
  • "The Runaway Bride": This is the one stereotypical villainy trope the Racnoss Empress doesn't fall prey to. The Doctor tries to mask his attempts to deduce her plan as simple curiosity, but the Empress' human accomplice alerts her to what he's doing, prompting her to order him killed.
  • "Smith and Jones": The plasmavore spills her plan to the Doctor because she thinks he's just a hapless, stupid human who can't do anything about it.
  • Nicely Lampshaded in "Utopia", where the newly regenerated Master says to the Doctor: "Why don't we stop and have a nice little chat while I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me, I don't think!"
    • He goes and does exactly that with the Time Lords in "The End of Time". He definitely knew by that point that it's a bad idea to tell your nemesis your plan, and yet he tells it to the Lord President of the Time Lords, a man with near godlike technology at his disposal.
  • "The Poison Sky": Sontaran General Staal averts this, noting that it's unwise to reveal strategy to the opposing party.
  • The Doctor tries to deliberately — not to mention directly — invoke this in "The Vampires of Venice" when surrounded by said vampires:
    The Doctor: Tell me the whole plan!
    [the vampires simply hiss at him]
    The Doctor: One day that'll work...
  • Parodied in "The Lodger" when Craig, the ordinary guy the Doctor is lodging with, begins to tell the Doctor all his fairly modest ideas for how the call centre he works at can streamline effectively and what he wants to do with his life out of the blue, before realizing out loud that he's telling all of this to a complete stranger. Obviously referring to the countless maniacs who like to monologue at him, the Doctor assures him that he's not the first.
    The Doctor: I've got one of those faces. People never stop blurting out their plans when I'm around.
• Lampshaded in a Dollhouse episode.
  Daniel: Why are you telling me this?
  Cindy: Because it's funny. And because you won't remember it.
• The murderer in the fourth episode of Elementary wasn't planning on doing this to Sherlock after he gloated to her that he'd caught her out — she was going to just shoot him — but Sherlock goaded her into it, to give himself time to pick his handcuffs. "I'm about to die, so, now's your chance to share! It's good to share!"
• Frontier (2016): After spending several days torturing Declan Harp to death for his rebellion, Lord Benton decides to gloat about having his wife and son murdered to "teach him a lesson", including a salient detail that Harp didn't know yet: his wife was pregnant.
• In Heroes, Sylar tells Alejandro that he plans on using Maya as a toy after he gets her to harness her plague power. It's justified in this case, as he is perfectly aware that Alejandro won't understand a thing he says anyways, as Alejandro does not speak nor understand English.
• Like everything that Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger makes fun of, this trope is one of the "flags of defeat", i.e. a sign the Monster of the Week gives when he's ready to be destroyed. Nobuo and Hiroyo are the only ones who can recognize them, so when he has a Heroic BSoD in Episode 2 and Mizuki and Yumeria have to fight alone, they are nearly "killed" due to their inability to recognize this particular flag.
• Luke Cage (2016): Diamondback and his thugs take Councilman Damon Boone and a couple of innocents hostage inside a club. When Diamondback relates to Boone his entire backstory and his true past regarding Luke Cage, Boone asks why he is telling him all of this. Diamondback proceeds to immediately kill Boone with his powered glove because he told him just about enough to not let him live beyond that point, and to use his death to incriminate Luke.
• M*A*S*H: "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler" had Col. Flagg trying to get Dr. Freedman to go with his side on the case of the pilot who claims he's Christ. Else, Flagg will have Freedman turned in for not signing his loyalty oath.
  Freedman: Well, just between the two of us and any microphone I might be talking into, do you really think that if I were a communist I'd hesitate for a second to sign a loyalty oath?
• The Middleman:
  • Weaponised by the heroes.
    The Middleman: I confront him, get him off on the monologue, you go around...
    Wendy Watson: ...switch off the machine while he's distracted?
    The Middleman: Dang skippy.
  • Subverted when the villain doesn't monologue. He's not intentionally defying the trope, he just doesn't do it. The heroes are completely flummoxed by this revelation, and Wendy accidentally gets thrown into an alternate dimension because they had no backup plan.
• A regular occurrence on Murder, She Wrote with Jessica seemingly alone with the killer who brags about how he did it and that Jessica is next...at which point, Jessica will call out "did you get all that, Detective?"
• In both the miniseries and novel Neverwhere the villain Islington explains his plan to the heroes. This partly justified, as he believes his plan cannot be stopped, and he genuinely wants to convince the heroes to join him. The page quote is from the DVD commentary.
• Our Miss Brooks:
  • In "Two-way Stretch Snodgrass", Mr. Conklin explains to Miss Brooks his plan to get All-American football player and high school coach Biff Mooney to work for Madison High School. Rather than first going about his plan and bragging later.
  • In the theatrical series finale, Mr. Stone threatens to fire Mr. Conklin once Stone's elected to the new post of "Coordinator of Education". This sets up the subplot where Mr. Conklin runs against Mr. Stone to head the school board.
• Subverted in the Pushing Daisies episode "Dummy". The murderer makes a full confession while the heroes are wrapped in body bags and locked inside a car, so they can't actually hear a word of what he's saying.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Stoke Me a Clipper", some random Nazi villains try to do this to Ace Rimmer^note (what a guy!); one orders the other one to "Take him into the hold, take ten minutes to explain all our plans to him, and then throw him out of the plane."
• Lampshade Hanging in Sledge Hammer!: when an assassin has Sledge tied to a Death Trap, he tells him how he intends to kill the captain. Sledge responds by saying, "I'll never understand why you guys explain your whole plan before you kill somebody."
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "I Mudd", Spock notes that the androids that have taken over the ship are almost ready to leave and strand them on the planet. When McCoy asks how he knows, he replies, "I asked them." Kirk ruefully remarks that the androids are so confident that the crew can't do anything to stop them that they see no need to keep secrets.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men", Nog of all people unleashes a classic — albeit entirely invented — rant of this form in order to distract his Korean War-era military interrogators, complete with several instances of "I might as well tell you this because it won't matter anyway."
  • In the Season 7 opener "Image in the Sand", Sisko is attacked by a Bajoran religious fanatic, who says "You will never find the Orb of the Emissary!" Immediately after, Jake knocks the assassin out and calls for medical attention.
• Supernatural:
  • Demons have a bad habit of doing this. Meg, Tammi, even Azazel have given up easy victories this way. Other monsters' modus operandi tend to be exposited in other ways, from arcane research. Lampshaded by Dean in "Devil's Trap" with, "Listen, you mind just getting this over with, huh? Cause I really can't stand the monologuing." This turns out to be a slight mistake when his organs start to, y'know, liquefy.
  • Surprisingly averted when Arc Villain Lilith has both heroes helpless. Sam tries to bargain with her; she points out he has nothing she wants, and Dean tries to prompt a bit of monologuing. "So, is this your big plan, huh? Drag me to hell. Kill Sam. And then what? Become queen bitch?" Lilith simply replies "I don't have to answer to puppy chow," and sets the hellhounds on him, killing him before immediately attempting to kill Sam. It didn't work, but not for want of trying at least, and it wasn't until the next season we actually found out what her plan is
  • The angels, especially Zachariah, enjoy monologuing as well, which is how Dean discovers what the final seal is before Sam is tricked into breaking it.

Radio

• And in Bleak Expectations
  Mr Gently Benevolent: I'm not falling for that old "You ask me, I tell you, you foil my plan" trick again.
  Pip Bin: Just give me a hint?
  Mr Gently Benevolent: Oh, all right.
• Parodied in Nebulous, when the eponymous professor is captured by the evil Klench.
  Nebulous: Surely you're going to outline your brilliant plan?
  Dr. Klench: Why should I? The information's no use to you.
  Nebulous: To... satisfy my curiosity?
  Dr. Klench: It's irrelevant. Any minute now you're going to be a dead body.

Tabletop Games

• Cards Against Humanity has the black card "But before I kill you, Mr. Bond, I must show you _____.", invoking this trope.
• Car Wars. Autoduel Quarterly magazine Volume 7 #2, adventure "Mutant Zone". If the PCs are captured they're taken to Blob, the mutants' leader, who explains his plans to use braintape technology to put the mutants' minds into the brains of human beings.
• Champions adventure The Coriolis Effect. After the Black Enchantress captures the heroes and takes away their powers, she explains her plans to them.
• Danger International. The Investigation Script has "Enemy Tells You His Plan" as a standard practice for the scenario's villain if the PCs are captured.
• In Exalted, an Infernal Exalt who has offended his or her demonic masters can atone by behaving like a Card-Carrying Villain. One method is called "Infernal Genius Declaration," and involves showing off to a captured and helpless enemy by delivering a monologue describing his or her evil plan in great detail. The Infernal will receive this atonement, incidentally, whether this monologue leads to their plans being thwarted or not.
• Feng Shui's Spy archetype has the unique schtick of spending a Fortune point to get a reluctant or hostile NPC to tell them something they shouldn't, and it's best used when captured to get a villain to engage in a Just Between You And Me speech. Also, Seed of the New Flesh, the Architects sourcebook, has a Criminal Mastermind archetype that has "Slave to the Cheese" as their unique weakness — which not only requires you to make this kind of speech to enemies you capture or nonlethally defeat, but also precludes just shooting your foes (as well as forcing you to prevent others from doing the same) in favor of elaborate deathtraps and other Bond villain-style ways of toying with your prey.
• Genius: The Transgression: Of course a game about mad scientists was going to have plenty of these (called Diatribes in-game). This time, however, it's justified: When your inventions run on madness, indulging a little gives you a bit more to work with.
• In Before I Kill You, Mister Spy... (previously renamed James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game after MGM's lawyers objected to the original name Before I Kill You, Mister Bond...), players get points for capturing and eliminating enemy agents — each round of taunting before the kill doubles the point value, but also increases the risk that the agent will escape and destroy your lair.
• In the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, the section on villains actually outlines this in game terms: villains get a Karma bonus for telling the heroes their plans.
• Space 1889 the adventure Ausonian Stalker: in Tales of the Ether has the player characters captured by the sadistic German doctor who then proceeds to explain his plans ending, predictably, with an Evil Laugh.
• Time Lord, the 1990s Doctor Who role-playing game, gave villains a negative skill called "Gloating", which would compel them to waste time monologuing if they had captured the Doctor and/or a companion.

Theatre

• Pokémon Live! defies this. Delia wants to avoid this trope, so she tells Ash about her past before Giovanni can.

Video Games

• A very similar moment occurs in Advance Wars: Dual Strike (which was made by Intelligent Systems, the same people who made Thousand Year Door). When questioned about Black Hole's recovery, Teen Genius Lash responds: "Duh! Like I'd tell you that!"
• Baldur's Gate II: Defied by Jon Irenicus. The only answer an inquisitive player gets is "No. You warrant no villain's exposition from me." The only way to figure out his plans and methods are to puzzle together scraps of notes and journals, and even then there are significant pieces missing.
• Parodied in one of the bonus scenes from Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, where the Big Bad, after reviewing his plans aloud with no one else in the room, comments "It's not much fun making speeches about my plans without an audience..." After a pause he followed this up with maniacal laughter (which he happens to end almost every sentence with).
• Darkest Dungeon: Your ancestor actually weaponizes this one against the Gibbering Prophet (back when he wasn't gibbering). Since every assassination attempt had failed, and he still kept rousing the townsfolk against him for reasons even he didn't fully understand (all the Prophet knew was there was something horrible under the Manor), he decided he might as well show him exactly what horrible things he had in store, and let him have a direct look at the dug-up portal. It got him dealt with, alright.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind:
  • Dagoth Ur, at the end of the main quest, gives you an opportunity to question his plans and motives before the final one-on-one duel. He'll even ask you questions about your motives, and one option is to tell him that you don't think you're The Chosen One, but you plan to defeat him anyway because it's the right thing to do. This is the only response which he'll actually praise with no qualifications.
  • At the end of the Tribunal expansion, the Physical God Almalexia explains to the Player Character how she convinced him/her that another god, Sotha Sil had gone insane and tried to attack the capital city of Mournhold, while it was all in fact orchestrated by her so that she could kill the other two gods of the Tribunal, turn the player into an unwilling martyr, and rule as the sole remaining god herself. Her reasons for doing so seems to be twofold: one, she used to be the possibly loyal, possibly not wife of Nerevar, and is convinced you are his reincarnation, and two, her grip on reality is not the best anymore. her defence, there's really no damage done by it — Almalexia had to tip her hand anyway, since the next step of the plan is killing you. Since you'd presumably defend yourself either way, the monologuing doesn't give you any hint about how to stop the evil plan that self-preservation wouldn't already point to.
• Can happen in Fallout: New Vegas near the end of the Omerta quest line, with one of the mob bosses. On the other hand, it takes a pretty high Speech skill to get him to talk, so it might be a subversion.
• The Final Fantasy series
  • Subverted in Final Fantasy VI, where the heroes, while sneaking through the Magitek Factory, overhear Kefka rambling about his desire to awaken the Warring Triad statues, but Kefka still seems to succeed in that plan, even though the heroes overheard him.
    • The fact that the heroes, at the time, had no idea what he was talking about may be a factor in that. They don't learn what the Warring Triad is until it's already too late.
  • Don Corneo from Final Fantasy VII comes to mind. Is it because he's ready to die? Sure of victory? Or just clueless? Guess.
    • However short-lived it was, Corneo's "victory" was that he got Cloud to stop walking away to answer the stupid question. Had he (Cloud, that is) just kept on walking, he could have gotten to Sector 7 in much better shape than he did, not to mention much sooner.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, after being rescued from Kuja by the player's party, Cid's wife Hilda reveals that Kuja told her his entire master plan, that she didn't even have to ask.
  Hilda: It was tiresome.
  • Barthandelus in Final Fantasy XIII does this just before sending you to a training ground.
    • However, Barthandelus is a pathological liar, and thus it's debatable just how much of what he says is just a way of manipulating the party and how much of what he says concerns his actual plans.
• Grim Fandango Lampshades this trope near the end, when Manny finally confronts the Big Bad Hector... only to subvert it in a rather horrifying way.
  Manny: Is this where you tell me all about your secret plan, Hector? How you stole Double N tickets from innocent souls, pretended to sell them but secretly hoarded them all to yourself in a desperate attempt to get out of the Land of the Dead?
  Hector: No. (turns around and shoots Manny with a sproutella dart) This is where you writhe around in excruciating pain for about an hour because that idiot Bowlsley ran off with all the fast-acting Sproutella!
• In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, new villain Ghirahim is very chatty every time you meet him. He hangs a Lampshade on it by saying he has an urge to vent, and even goes as far as giving you pointers on sword fighting in your first battle with him.
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: Done by Liquid Ocelot to Old Snake before their final duel, though one could say that it's perfectly legitimate for him to do so because (1) he's Ocelot and (2) his true plan had already succeeded.
  • Done all the time in the Metal Gear series. Liquid and Solidus in particular seem to love doing this. It was toned down a few notches in part 3 and most of part 4, but it still takes up lots of time, especially considering Snake's tendency to ask for clarification.
    • The book In the Darkness of Shadow Moses implies that the above part about Liquid was actually a subversion, as they were actually fully aware that they were being listened in on, but deliberately continued talking about their "plans" in order to keep the mission control fooled.
  • In Portable Ops, Lt. Cunningham, after Snake boarded the elevator, explained that he was actually working for the Department of Defense and not for either Gene or for the CIA, and explained that the DOD planned on having Gene launch a nuke at the Soviet Union in order to tarnish the CIA's reputation as an efficient intelligence group, and later nuke the San Hieronymo Peninsula to eliminate any involvement from America, even using a Soviet-made Davy Crockett just for good measure, and exposits the fact that Snake was also being used by the DOD. Justified in that he did actually think Snake would side with Cunningham (hence why he told him), which Snake proved him wrong by attacking him.
  • Double subverted in Metal Gear Solid with Ocelot (albeit retroactively): After the second torture session with Snake, he exposits that his "true" plan was to restore Mother Russia to former glory. However, in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, he makes it clear that he actually has no interest in resurrecting Russia to its former glory, and in fact, for all he cares, it could rot, even demonstrating it by betraying and gunning down Gurlukovich. However, the third torture session has him admitting that he actually plans on reigniting conflict, feeling that the lack of it is causing people's true feelings to be surpressed, was played completely straight, especially when you take into account his actions as Liquid Ocelot in Guns of the Patriots.
    • Ocelot's loyalty was actually subverted in the first game's post-credits dialogue, when it's revealed he was reporting to the President of the United States.
• Parodied several times in the Monkey Island series. In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the titular villain explains his Rube Goldberg Device Deathtrap in minute detail, and then takes some time to allow Guybrush to ask questions in case he needs clarifications. In The Curse of Monkey Island, after capturing the hero, LeChuck insists on explaining the plot. Eventually Guybrush has to hold his hands to his ears and tell LeChuck he's deliberately ignoring him in order to get him to stop.
• Defied in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door when you confront Lord Crump. Instead of telling you his plans, he replies "Oh no, that's a novice villain mistake!"
• Resident Evil 4 had a particularly bad example. Saddler's plan revolves around kidnapping The President's Daughter, infecting her with the Virus, having her rescued, and then have her take control of the United States from within. And he goes and tells her rescuer the entire plan as she's being rescued. Smart move, villain.
• Subverted in Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall. As Amsel is about to be gunned down by Audran he starts a recording and tries to get an explanation out of him, only to be shot dead by Audran mid sentence.
• Taken to its natural conclusion in SPY Fox 2: Some Assembly Required, in which the Big Bad is so confident in his plan and so eager to share it with someone who will understand his genius that he explains every detail of it—including exactly how to stop it—to Spy Fox the moment they meet.
• An interesting one in Starcraft II: The Dark Voice will eventually conquer the Universe and destroy the Zerg, Protoss and Terrans. Only when the Last Stand of the Protoss has played its last trump card (Artanis) will the Dark Voice reveal that the only one that could have stopped it was Kerrigan, who was long dead by that point. The twist? The Overmind saw all this in a vision, and shared it with Tassadar, who passed it to Zeratul, who showed it to James Raynor, allowing a different future to occur and possibly foiling the Dark Voice. While the Dark Voice did wait until he was utterly sure of victory to reveal his one weakness, even that isn't enough in a Universe with creatures that can see the future.
• Used in several games of the Tales Series, though often it's because the villains tend to be Well Intentioned Extremists or Knight Templar who feel the need to claim the moral high ground; some even hope to to recruit the heroes using such a speech. Ironically enough, it's averted in Tales of Phantasia where the villain never reveals his plan until he's dying — and if he'd taken five minutes to explain his motivation it probably would have helped convince the party that the villain isn't the monster he was made out to be.
• This happens in zOMG twice, although both times it was just a distraction while the villain in question was preparing his method of attack. During the Big Bad's monologue, one of your crew members will hang a Lampshade.

Web Animation

• At the end of Broken Saints, Big Bad Lear Dunham spells out, in detail, his motives and the origins of his big plan to the heroes. The whole point of him telling them (and of their involvement in the plot at all) was so they would be inspired by his vision and join him as his chief apostles.
• Dreamscape: In the flashback in "Over and Under", the Overlord of Evil explains his Evil Plan in clear earshot of all the heroes. Dylan even notes this.
  Dylan: This guy is planning to warp ALL OF EXISTINCE?! And why the hell is he boasting about all of this right in front of us?!
  Kai: Because he knows there isn't a damn thing we can do to stop him.
• Averted in Red vs. Blue, with Tucker backed up on the edge of a temple with nowhere to go and C.T. pointing a gun at him. Tucker asks who sent him here. C.T. says he'll never know.
  • Felix of the Chorus Trilogy, on the other hand, isn't so smart. A total dick, he loves to indulge in Evil Gloating if he thinks he can get away with it. The first time, when he's captured the Reds and Blues and feels the need to express his true plans for Chorus and feelings for the Reds and Blues as a form of therapy after having been stuck with them for a while, although his partner Locus thinks he should just get on with it and shoot them. Not only does this confirm to the Reds and Blues something they'd previously only suspected, it gives Carolina time to move into position to save them all. The Blood Gulchers later take advantage of it to pull an Engineered Public Confession, counting on Felix not being able to resist gloating when he had Tucker on the ropes. Tucker's helmet cam was recording the whole time, and caught the entire monologue. The shock gives Felix his first case of Sarcasm Failure.
• Almost a description of the trope itself in the World of Warcraft machinima movie Tales of the Past 3, when Arthas and Blazer speak on top of dragon sculptures :
  Arthas: Let me tell you a little secret, Blazer. The sword you're wielding is a key — using it, you would be able to not only undo the summoning but you might also be able to release the soul of your dear friend, Yimo.
  Blazer: (pauses) Why should I believe you?
  Arthas: I never lie. I'm simply telling you because there is no way you can defeat me... And I would love watching you die in agony, realizing that you failed them all... again.

Webcomics

• In this strip of Adventurers! Khrima's Genre Blind stumbling right into this trope is Lampshaded by Karn.
• Archipelago:
  • Han, after shedding his disguise gloats a bit, but this turns out to be a mistake. Not because of who he's gloating to, but because of their friend who hears the entire thing and enters to give him his just desserts.
  • Averted, however, by The Heavy. He crushes her Amplifier Artifact and drops her (seemingly) to her death as her friends watch.:
  Snow: Now, Credenza, I'll explain how this is going to work. I'm going to let you live, bound of course, as I discuss my plan in glorious detail, then I'll set up some kind of hilarious Death Trap, while dangling your all powerful magical weapon nearby, with plenty of chances for you to escape... Oh, wait! Ha! Sorry, my mistake. That's exactly what we're not going to do.
• Once more, Basic Instructions gives us simple step by step guidelines to this practice, including how to deal with the rude assassin when he's already escaped your trap and has a gun pointed at Kitty.
• Used and Lampshaded in this Darths & Droids strip.
• In Dangerously Chloe when Teddy is confronting the currently antagonistic Sgt. Slash-Stab on Chloe's whereabouts in the school Teddy plays up his failure and asks how far he was from victory. Slash-Stab tells Teddy gleefully the person is one corridor over, unaware due to circumstances, Teddy has a second body and is mentally linked to the one talking to Slash-stab. What one knows the other knows.
  Teddy: Oh ... Oh darn ... You sure did out fox me! And what's worse is knowing how close I came on finding Chloe... Which was ... how far, exactly?
  Sgt. Slash-Stab: The next corridor over. Knowing that is torture, isn't it?
• In El Goonish Shive, during the climax of Abraham's arc, he gives a long winded remorseful speech to Ellen once he believes he is alone with her about why he has to kill her.
• General Gray in the Jump Leads issue Who Wants to Rule the World? averts this, despite being an otherwise textbook case of Contractual Genre Blindness. After all, "before I kill you, let me tell you my plan" only works if you have any actual intention of killing the person you're talking to.
• Parodied in Narbonic, when Mad Scientist Helen gets another scientist's henchman to explain her own plan to her as a stalling tactic.
  Helen: There is no one on the side of Evil this tactic doesn't work on.
• In The Non-Adventures of Wonderella Daisy Couture is surprised that Wonderella expects her to just tell her her plans for the death ray. She asks if Wonderella's other villains just tell her their plans, to which Wonderella replies that they don't shut up about those plans.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Nale parodies this trope by explaining his Evil Plan to himself.
    Nale: Whew, OK. Hopefully that got my natural urge to digress into a complete explanation of my evil plan out of my system. I don't want to go all "Bond villain" and forget to finish the job.
  • Roy tells Belkar how they plan to cheat the system by negotiating the latter's crime down from murder to manslaughter, then accepting a deal which would knock 5 years off the four year minimum sentence... right next to Hinjo (who's a nice guy, but also Lawful Good) who promptly hands down a stiffer sentence so Belkar can't weasel out of his punishment.
    Hinjo: Belkar Bitterleaf, for the crime of voluntary manslaughter , I sentence you to to spend a term in prison equal to... 6 years.
    Belkar: What!?
    Hinjo: Yeah, well you probably shouldn't have discussed how you plan to beat the system in front of the guy charged with upholding the system.
  • The black dragon mother explains her plan for revenge upon Vaarsuvius. Explaining the plan is, in fact, part of the plan.
  • Xykon gives Vaarsuvius a Breaking Speech by outlining the wizard's core mistake in how s/he approached their earlier battle. Naturally, Vaarsuvius learns from what Xykon has to say and takes corrective action.
  • Elan's father later gives one to Elan. He explains every detail of how his plan is going to go, including his own death (that is, the father's death, not Elan's). Explaining The Plan gives him the better result because of a Go Mad from the Revelation effect.
  • Redcloak gives it a shot when Tsukiko figures out part of his plan. Then he takes control of her undead servants and has them kill and eat her, then each other. And that's why you don't mess with Redcloak.
    Tsuriko: That... that doesn't help Xykon at all.
    Redcloak: Yes, I know. That's why I've kept it from him for more than 30 years.
  • Malack explains his plan to Durkon out of respect. Too bad Talking Is a Free Action was not in play.
  • Due to mortal Belief defining him as untrustworthy and incapable of honesty, Loki literally cannot explain to his daughter why he is working against her. But he can be honest with Thor, because that technically counts as Evil Gloating.
• Hilariously subverted in Schlock Mercenary, where gate-cloned captain Tagon and Brad are captured by the Gatekeepers, interrogated, and are about to be executed. Tagon tries to stall the Gatekeeper by asking him if he's going to reveal his nefarious plans, but the Gatekeeper points out how silly a mistake that would be, and then kills both of them. He even refuses to tell the narrator any details, saying he's under standing orders not to reveal any secrets to the narrator.
• Skin Horse: Tip activates this reflex by deliberately not asking what the plan is.
• In Sluggy Freelance Torg plays on Dr. Steve's Contractual Genre Blindness to invoke this trope.
  Dr. Steve: I've decided to just shoot you and get this over with.
  Torg: But wait, don't you want to reveal your master plan to me?
  Dr. Steve: No.
  Torg: If you were a real villain, you'd tell me your master plan before killing me.
  Dr. Steve: Hmmmm...
  Torg: After you tell me your master plan, you can strap me to a table and cut me in half with a laser.
  Dr. Steve: How about I tie you to a chair and blind you with a pen light?
  Torg: Deal!
  Dr. Steve: Let's do it!

Web Original

• Doctor Horrible taunts a frozen Captain Hammer, as well as his captive audience... in song!
  • Not to mention that Captain Hammer gloated to Horrible an act earlier that he was going to sleep with Penny just to piss Horrible off.
• Item #7 on the Evil Overlord List advises to act as a No-Nonsense Nemesis and simply shoot one's adversary when in position to do so, rather than take unnecessary risks.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, Nergal the God of War confronts the heroes in the Ruined Kingdom and reveals how he was responsible for bringing them together by guiding the events along and explains how he'll be using their actions to spark a conflict which will lead to an all-out war. That too is all part of the plan to make the heroes so angry at the revelation that they'll go on to oppose him and thus help fuel the war.
• This review of Genetos ends with a subversion, or rather, reveals that the entire review was a subversion. One review actually reviews the game while the other spouts nonsense the entire time, at the end it's discovered that his nonsense dialogue was being scrambled, and that actually he was revealing a master plan.
  • And no, he won't be repeating it now that the scrambler's off.
• The villain in Greek Ninja does this with Sasha (he also hits on her, but that's unrelated).
• In The Nostalgia Critic's review of Devil, Shya-Amon has Critic helpless on the floor, but decides to talk at him instead of doing his usual talent-bending Mind Rape.
• Averted in the Australian Fan Film Star Wars Downunder. The evil Darth Drongo has stolen all the beer on the planet Oradongia and is hoarding it in his fortified brewery. As beer drinking is Serious Business on Oradongia, Jedi Knight Merve Bushwacker is well and truly pissed at his inability to get pissed.
  Drongo: I suppose you wonder why I went and pawned all this amber fluid, eh?
  Merve: Nope! I don't give a stuff, mate!
  Drongo: Oh well! Then in that case, mate... (pulls out twin lightsabers) it's time for you to go to buggery!
• Whateley Universe. In "Razzle Dazzle", someone asks the Emma Peel-expy why the Mad Scientist revealed everything to her, and she points out that he's a lonely middle-aged man who's been stuck on an Island Base for ages—of course he's going to talk to a pretty girl who shows an interest in his work! Mostly though it's because Mephisto the Mystic needs to spin things out until The Cavalry arrives, because his scams work best if the hero thinks he's won (usually this supervillain stuff is just a distraction while a more mundane and profitable crime happens elsewhere).
• In Worm, having outmaneuvered Coil, Tattletale is more than willing to explain to him precisely how she had outmaneuvered him before Skitter shoots him in the head. Amusingly, she only got the opportunity to do this because Skitter got him to monologue about his own plans and how he had outmaneuvered them.

Western Animation

• All Hail King Julien has Julien's self-proclaimed arch nemesis Karl, who wants to defeat Julien to show to the world how brilliant he is, and thus has an addiction to complicated plans that he needs to go over in great detail to make sure everyone understands how smart he is.
  Karl: I bet you're wondering how I came up with such an ingenious, uber-complicated plan such as this.
  Julien: No, not really.
  Karl: Good, because I'm going to tell you.
• Animaniacs featured a villain in one episode who was contractually obligated to do this sort of thing.
• Barbie & The Diamond Castle: Lydia, after capturing Liana, takes the time to explain exactly how she tricked her because she knows that Liana took off the necklace that warded off her mind-control spell.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King", Fugate left a The Tape Knew You Would Say That speech where he outlines his Evil Plan (the Death Trap) to Batman including information on how to stop it exactly when Batman needs to hear it.
  • In her debut episode "Pretty Poison" Poison Ivy feels comfortable divulging why she targeted Harvey Dent for assassination to a flytrap entangled Batman, savoring the audience he provides for her unhinged speech, aware that what they're moments from sharing will ensure her secret dies with him.
• Beast Wars also played with this in the episode "Dark Designs", where an attempt to brainwash Gentle Giant Rhinox into a Predacon goes off without a hitch... then goes straight to the Pit. When the evil Rhinox has Megatron backed into a corner, he starts up with this, to which Megatron responds: "Sometimes Predacons gloat too much!"
• Birdman (1967) episode "The Wild Weird West". After Birdman is captured by Dr. Kordo and Jesse Johns (a descendant of Jesse James), Johns tells Birdman that their next job will be kidnapping the state governor and holding him as a hostage. Dr. Kordo Lampshades it by telling Jesse that he talks too much.
• Played with in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Zurg tries gloating without giving Buzz any specific information he could use to foil his Evil Plan.
  Zurg: There's this place, and I'm going to destroy it, in a way they would never expect.
  Buzz: Sweet mother of Venus! You're going to destroy Capital Planet with a secret attack fleet launched through a trans-spacial warp!
  Zurg: No! How did you do that?
• In Darkwing Duck, Negaduck explains in minute detail just how each Death Trap will kill its Justice Duck victim when he throws... the Switch!.
  • Lampshaded and subverted in another episode, where DW tries to goad Icy Vanderchill into telling him her scheme, to which she responds, "What? Reveal my plan? What do you think this is, a cheap cartoon?"
• Subverted in the Dog City episode "Disobedience School", when Bugsy Vile has Ace Hart captured, and Ace demands to know what Bugsy's scheme is. Bugsy responds, "Traditionally, this is when the bad guy reveals his master plan to the doomed hero...but not this time!" However, later in the episode, when he has Ace Chained to a Railway, he reveals what place he's going to rob.
• From an episode of Duckman: "They never just kill ya. There's always a lecture."
• Family Guy had one of these in the episode And Then There Were Fewer, where Lois discovers that Diane Simmons was the killer of James Woods, Stephanie, Muriel Goldman, Derek Wilcox, and Priscilla while blaming Tom Tucker for the crimes. Diane decides to explain to her that it was all part of her plan to take revenge on James and Tom for breaking up with her and costing her her job respectively.
• Parodied in the Invader Zim episode "Tak: The Hideous New Girl," where Tak explains part one of her plan to cause The End of the World as We Know It to Zim and then immediately enacts it. When she tries to explain the rest of the plan however, Zim, being Zim, repeatedly interrupts her with screaming until a frustrated Tak simply leaves.
  • And in a later episode:
    Zim: I'm infecting this city with genetically enhanced vermin. But you'll never know!
    Dib: But... you just told me.
    Zim: YOU'RE LYING!
  • In "Room With a Moose" Zim admits that he's telling Dib his evil plan because he's the only human smart enough to appreciate it. Plus it involved a flight through space, so they had time to kill anyway. It was still enough for Dib to thwart it, though.
• Dr. Zin to Dr. Quest in Jonny Quest TOS episodes "The Robot Spy" and "The Fraudulent Volcano". Justified in the former when Dr. Zin notes that he thinks showing off his robot does no harm considering that his enemies will not be able to stop it leaving. When the Robot makes a break for it, Quest, Race Bannon and staff of the military base learn that their enemy wasn't bluffing as they are stymied for a way to bring the machine down.
• Exploited in the Justice League crossover episode of Static Shock, where Brainiac explains his plans to Static and Gear to distract them until his robot can attack them from behind.
• Kim Possible: In the movie A Sitch In Time, Future Shego has victory in the palm of her hand... until Dr. Drakken (now her sidekick) talks her into gloating. Listing all the times Drakken himself has lost because of his own monologuing would cause this page to collapse under its own weight.
  • In one particular episode, this happened to Drakken three times in a montage sequence that lasted maybe a minute, tops. The last time, Kim and Ron manage to escape before Drakken could get as far as "And so, Kim Possible, you must watch as I— GAH!!!"
  • In the first episode, Shego had convinced Drakken not to gloat while carrying out the mission. Good girl.
  • At one point, Drakken even delivers a visual presentation to Kim on how he intends to dispose of her.
  • Senor Senior, Sr., having taken up supervillainy as a hobby fit for an Eccentric Millionaire, adheres to Contractual Genre Blindness and considers this to be good form.
  • Kim's high school rival Bonnie is attached to her in "Bonding" and interrupts Professor Dementor's ranting to ask why he doesn't just get on with his plan. Annoyed, both Dementor and Kim tell her that that's the way these things are done.
• In "A Wild Hare", Elmer Fudd comes to realize the figure he's chatting with is the rabbit he's after (Bugs Bunny, who was unnamed here):
  Elmer: Pardon me, but you know, you wook just wike a wabbit.
  Rabbit: Eh, c'mere. (softly) Now don't go spreadin' this around, but, uh, confidentially...(full volume) I AM A WABBIT!!!
• The New Adventures of Superman episode "The Saboteurs". The villain "The Chief" tells Lois Lane and Clark Kent his plan after he captures them.
• This is likely Sneekly's greatest flaw in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. It seems he has an obsession with explaining every little detail of every Death Trap to her, which either gives her information she needs to escape from it or gives her — or the Ant Hill Mob — time to do so. (And he never learned.)
• Constantly parodied Subverted, Inverted and Lampshaded Once an Episode in Phineas and Ferb when Perry the Platypus is captured by Dr. Doofenshmirtz in his lair. Sometimes Perry and Dr. Doofenshmirtz act as good friends, though Perry never fails to thwart the villain anyway. The Evil Gloating thing seems to be part of the Secret Agent/Evil Scientist contract. Doofensmirtz even says that since Perry's his nemesis, he has to tell him everything. Sometimes with visual presentations, pop-up books or musical numbers complete with backing dancers.
• Spoofed in an episode of The Simpsons, where thanks to Homer, Bond loses his card game bet against Ernst Stavro Blofeld. As he's being carried off by the henchmen Bond exclaims, "That's impossible. I don't lose. I never lose! Well, at least tell me the details of your plot for world domination!" Blofeld replies, "Oh-ho-ho, I'm not going to fall for that one again."
• In the South Park episode "La Petite Tourette", Cartman explains his master plan to Kyle while dressed in a purple bathrobe and serving him Scotch...well, actually apple juice. Basically, he behaves like a Bond villain.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Jihad". After Charr is revealed as The Mole, he reveals his plan to start a holy war between his people, the Skorr, and the rest of the galaxy.
• Subverted in the first episode of Star vs. the Forces of Evil when Ludo and his minions surround Star and Marco.
  Star: Ludo! How did you know I was here?
  Ludo: [chuckling] Wouldn't you like to know?
  Star: Yes. That's why I asked.
  Ludo: Well, Buff Frog— Hey! I don't have to tell you anything! Get her!
• Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious does this in Star Wars: The Clone Wars when he goads Fives into attacking him by telling him about Order 66 offscreen, then brands him as a traitorous lunatic which leads to his death.
• Inverted in Star Wars Rebels when Obi-Wan Kenobi finally kills Darth Maul. Obi-Wan informs Maul that he is guarding The Chosen One on Tatooine, and Maul dies content with the knowledge that Luke will eventually avenge them both.
• In one episode of Storm Hawks, a mook comes up with a plan to become an Ascended Extra. When he captures the heroes by sheer luck, he decides to get back to his master plan. Upon seeing the Storm Hawks' eager faces, he adds, "Which I won't discuss in front of you!"
• Used repeatedly — and Lampshaded at least once — in The Tick:
  Chairface Chippendale: (with the Tick, Arthur and American Maid at his mercy) Ah, this must be the part where I reveal my sinister plot!
• Expositional villains are part of the Totally Spies! routine. Once having made their full appearance in an episode, they explain their motives and their, typically revenge-driven, plans, then put the Spies into convoluted Bond villain's traps to give them time to escape and kick their asses for the last time. In episode 8 of Season 3, titled "Morphing Is Sooo 1987", however, Tim Scam, a recurring villain just subverts the genre out of the blue by saying, "Save your breath, I'm not going to explain it."
• Transformers: Animated has this happening between two villains. Starscream has Megatron cornered and helpless, but being something of a Large Ham, he of course takes time to gloat. Bumblebee then bursts in, scoring a direct hit on Starscream with his stingers... which does nothing. He then goes berserk, mostly concerned that, as he put it:
  Starscream: You interrupted my SPEECH!
• Young Samson and Goliath episode "The Terrible Doctor Desto". After the title villain captures Samson he gives him a demonstration of his Time Shield in action.

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