Knew It All Along - Television Tropes & Idioms

A lot of times in life, lots of people jump to conclusions about certain kinds of things. After a little bit of misunderstanding, once a character finds out what's really going on, he will then proclaim rather blatantly that he knew it all along.

A Comedy trope that you can expect to see in media, and I knew it all the time.

See also I Meant to Do That and Glad I Thought of It. For when people actually knew it all along, see The Not Secret.

Not to be confused with I Knew It, an Audience Reaction.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Naruto, after the First Exam of the Chuunin exams, Proctor Ibiki explained that there were two members of the test takers who served as cheating fodder for the others, which several shinobi noticed, but Naruto was not among them. However, once Ibiki explains this, Naruto acts as if he figured it out halfway through.

Film

In The Little Mermaid, this was Scuttle's response after Sebastian tells him that Ariel had gotten legs (Scuttle knew that something was different about Ariel, but kept guessing right off the bat that it was something else).
The Fugitive (1993): The U.S. Marshals are listening to the tape of Kimble's phone call to his lawyer. Several of them say they think that a sound on the tape is made by an elevated train, but Gerard disagrees and sarcastically abuses them. As they continue to analyze the tape they realize that Kimble was calling from Chicago near an elevated train line.
Gerard: I knew it was an elevated train.
The Land Before Time: After Cera was cornered by a pack of Pachycephalosauruses that were scared off by a seemingly monstrous tar blob monster, she becomes afraid that the monster will get her too. However, the monster turns out to be Littlefoot and the others all covered with tar. Once Cera realizes this, she then proclaims that she knew all along that it was them.
Lynch, Bud Fox's boss in Wall Street, tells him "The minute I laid eyes on you I knew you had what it took," when Bud's star is rising. When Bud is arrested, Lynch has his own personal retcon, saying, "The minute I laid eyes on you I knew you were no good."
In the Harry Potter movie Chamber Of Secrets, professor Lockheart claimed, after professor Snape hit him with a spell during a demonstration, to have known what Snape was going to do, and that if he wanted to block it he could have.
- When Harry and Ron are hiding in the teacher's room and someone suggests a remedy for the student's paralysis, Lockheart is heard to mumble something along the lines of "Of course, it's what I've been saying all along."

Newspaper Comics

Rat in this recent Pearls Before Swine comic.
Garfield did this lots of times, especially in this strip.

Literature

Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson both like to claim to be better at detective work than they actually are:
- In The Curse of the Pharaohs, most of the "deductions" Emerson claims to have made were actually things he had no idea about until the killer confessed.
- In The Deeds of the Disturber, Amelia gives The Summation to their assembled friends, explaining why one person and one person only could be the mastermind behind the murders. When she and Emerson are in bed together later, however, they both confess that they had both suspected the wrong person right up until The Reveal.

Live-Action TV

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow, on learning of Xander and Cordy's makeouts.
Willow: I knew it! Well, not in the sense that I actually knew anything, but you two were arguing way too much!

Fan Works

Played for Laughs in this video where someone plays Kirby Super Star and is terrified of Waddle Dee. A bystanding Straight Man makes some rational observations on him, all dismissed by the player as "Lies!" The friend eventually tells the player how to get Kirby to properly attack (to which the player expresses amazement), and once Waddle Dee finally dies, the player exclaims, "It worked! I'm a genius!"

Webcomics