Just Between You And Me - Television Tropes & Idioms

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

Benedict, Last Action Hero

"Somehow, I manage to find cover and what does Baron von Ruthless do? He starts monologuing! He starts like, this prepared speech about how feeble I am compared to him, how inevitable my defeat is, how the world will soon be his, yada, yada, yada, I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up!"

Frozone, The Incredibles

Villains have an urge to gloat. Rather than simply start the needlessly complicated death trap, they will pause to outline their plan to the hero, often including information on how to stop it.

It sometimes seems that heroes get more information out of being interrogated than their interrogators do.

Villains will do this even if they are going to just shoot them. There's something irresistible about twisting the knife that last little bit before finishing things. 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 even when they're trying to kill you.

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), making it one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.

Item #7 on the Evil Overlord List advises the prospective overlord to simply shoot the hero when in this position. (Rather than risk that he will talk his way out.)

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

Examples:

Film

Every single James Bond film ever, often more than once per movie.
- 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 is trusted by the authorities and familiar with Blofeld's record, so his report will help convince the UN that the threat is serious.
- Subverted in Live And Let Die, where Mr. Big's immediate decision on meeting Bond is simply "Take this honky out and waste him!"
  - Further Subverted with Goldfinger where Bond wakes up and finds himself strapped to a table with a Giant Laser cutting up toward his crouch. "Do You expect me to talk?" "No Mister Bond, I expect you to die." It takes Bond more than some effort to convince Goldfinger he knows enough to be useful for his own interests.
- Lampshaded in the card game Before I Kill You, Mister Bond (which became James Ernest’s Totally Renamed Spy Game after legal threats).
Lampshade Hanging in the film The Incredibles, where the villain's penchant to elaborately explain their nefarious plans is dubbed "monologuing" by the heroes; see page quote.
In Dogma, the villain taunts the heroes in this way, but hangs a lampshade on 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."
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.
- 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 in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country -- one of the villains' allies decides to tell Kirk and McCoy the master plan, but they are beamed to safety by Spock before they get to hear a word of it.
Kirk: No! No! Of all the - son of a - Couldn't you have waited two seconds? They were just about to tell us the whole thing!
Chekov: You want to go back?
McCoy: Absolutely not!
Kirk: (whispering) It's cold.
In The Lion King, Scar has Simba hanging over a raging inferno, ready to toss him in. But Scar can't resist taunting him. "Here's MY little secret: I killed Mufasa!" Of course, this revelation finally frees Simba from his lifelong guilt over his father's death, which gives him the Heroic Resolve necessary to turn the tables on Scar...
In Iron Man, Obidiah 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. If anything, gloating longer would probably have kept his eye on Tony long enough for his heart to finish failing!
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.

Western Animation

In Darkwing Duck, Negaduck explains in minute detail just how each Death Trap will kill its Justice Duck victim when he throws... the Switch!.
Spoofed in an episode of The Simpsons, where thanks to Homer, Bond loses his card game bet. 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 your plans for world domination!" The villain replies, "Oh no, I'm not falling for that one again."
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.
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 shockers... which does nothing. He then goes berserk, mostly concerned that, as he put it:
Starscream: YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!
From an episode of Duckman: "They never just kill ya. There's always a lecture."
Animaniacs featured a villain in one episode who was contractually obligated to do this sort of thing.

Comic Books

Simultaneously subverted, echoed, and lampshaded in chapter 11 of the graphic novel Watchmen: After Ozymandias tells the heroes about his plan, they ask him when he plans to carry it out, to which he famously responds, "Dan, 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."
In Mighty Avengers #11, Doctor Doom monologues in thought bubbles while calmly threatening the heroes, and finishes the thought with "...but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here and explain myself to you!!!"

Literature

In the Terry Pratchett novel 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. ...A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
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.
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.
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, they can simply try every interrogation strategy... including honest explanation and persuasion.
Played straight and lampshaded in the Ciaphas Cain 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 resemblence to a certain James Bond villain.

Live Action TV

Nicely Lampshaded in the Doctor Who episode "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!"
The demons in Supernatural have a bad habit of doing this. Meg, Tammi, even Azazel (previously The Yellow-Eyed Demon) have given up easy victories this way. Curiously, most of the other kinds of monsters seem to have no trouble resisting the temptation.
- 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, liquify.
- Surprisingly averted when new Big Bad 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.
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."
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.

Radio

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.

Anime

In Full Metal Alchemist, Edward is chained up in a cell as the villain comes in to kill him. Ed baits the villain into spilling the beans on his Corrupt Church. Then Edward reveals that he was sitting in front of a live public address microphone, and that he had broken the chains.
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 is subverted when Light's final plan goes horribly wrong; the evidence against him may have been excusable if he hadn't shouted that this was his win.
In Samurai Seven, Ukyo tells Kanbei, right before his planned execution, that he's planning to destroy Kanna Village and take over the world.
Subverted 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. Of course, one of them had the foresight to wear a bulletproof vest...

Video Games

Lampshaded 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!"
Subverted and lampshaded in Baldurs Gate 2: You have the option of asking the Big Bad what he's planning, and he flatly responds, "no, you warrant no villain's exposition from me." You have to go extra mile of asking one of his treacherous lieutenants.
Parodied several times in the Monkey Island series. In LeChuck's Revenge, the titular villain explains his Deathtrap in minute detail, and then takes some time to allow Guybrush to ask questions in case he needed clarifications. In Curse of Monkey Island, after capturing the hero, LeChuck insisted on explaining the plot. Eventually Guybrush had to hold his hands to his ears and start screaming in order to get him to stop.
Don Corneo from Final Fantasy VII comes to mind. Is it because he's ready to die? Sure of victory? Or just clueless? Guess.

Web Comics

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.
In Narbonic, 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.
Nale from Order Of The Stick subverts this trope by explaining his evil plot to himself.
In this strip of Adventurers! Khrima's Genre Blind stumbling right into this trope is lampshaded by the Genre Savvy Karn.

Web Animation

Almost a desciption 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, realising that you failed them all... Again.