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Azula: So, I hear you've been to visit your Uncle Fatso in the prison tower. Zuko: That guard told you! Azula: No. You did. Just now.
Ben is undercover. Stan, typically a rival or enemy, knows or at least suspects as much; and tests his suspicion by blurting out Ben's real name. Inevitably, Ben will, quite unprofessionally, respond to the use of his name, confirming Stan's suspicions. Note that Ben's reaction is, in and of itself, sufficient to convict him, even if the two are alone and Stan could not possibly be addressing anyone else.
The trope operates independently of the good-bad alignment of either party.
Despite the implications of the trope name, the ploy used to force The Reveal need not be a name; it can be a specific word/phrase, or something spoken in the other character's native language. It can even be a non-verbal prompt, such as a familiar face, location, scent, etc. The point of the trope is that "Ben" is hiding something about himself, and "Stan" tricks "Ben" into revealing it by causing an automatic, unthinking reaction.
Trope name refers to the classic fairy tale trickster whose prankish ways were thwarted by the speaking of his name. Despite the reference, the Rumplestilskin tale itself is not a case of this trope, since the title character loudly announces that he's hiding his real name; rather, it's the more mystic Words Can Break My Bones.
See also Pull The Thread, Something They Would Never Say, Bluffing The Murderer. If Stan wasn't suspicious until Ben responded as Ben, it's an As You Wish. If Stan says something that only an impostor wouldn't be suspicious of, it's Cry Wolfie.
Examples:
- Gene Simmons attempts this tactic against John Stamos in the movie Never Too Young To Die
 . In a subversion, Stamos manages to bluff his way out of the situation, though not convincingly:
Ragnar: Stargrove!
Lance: Is that name supposed to mean something?
Ragnar: My mistake.
- In Die Another Day, Bond uses this method to reveal the identity of Gustav Graves/Colonel Moon. The trope as played out here is somewhat less than effective, since the audience has already been alerted to this plot point.
- Similarly, in Revenge of the Sith, Yoda confronts Emperor Palpatine with his Sith name. Again, the effect is muted by the fact that the Sith Lord is no longer really trying to hide his true nature, at least not from the Jedi.
- In I, Jedi, Corran Horn goes undercover as Keiran to avoid this. Interestingly, later on "Keiran" is questioned about Luke Skywalker. He goes on to displays an appalling lack of knowledge about one of the single most important people in the galaxy, seemingly in order to keep up the ruse.
- In Heir to the Empire, when Mara Jade, a former assassin for Emperor Palpatine, meets with Grand Admiral Thrawn, he says "Come closer, Mara Jade." (The two had met several years before.) She begins instinctively walking forward, catches herself and comments that Thrawn shouldn't have to rely on such cheap tricks to verify who she was. He agrees, and then asks her questions that only she would know the answer to.
- In the Bond-wannabe film Agent for H.A.R.M., the lead character exposes the ersatz Bond girl as a villainous double agent by using her real name. The "even though they are alone in the room" clause, as stated above, applies here.
- The series Knight Rider did this numerous times. On one occasion, a woman impersonated her recently murdered mother to flush out the killer; on another, a blind woman pretended to drive, suggesting to the criminals that she might have witnessed their deeds.
- In Superman II, Lois tries this to reveal Clark's secret identity, first by calling him "Superman" and then by jumping into Niagara Falls. Naturally, Clark manages to rescue her without being obvious.
- In the restored cut, she tries jumping out a window, with the same result. Then she tries something a bit more effective.
- In Disney's Aladdin, Jasmine, suspecting "Prince Ali" to be Aladdin, idly mentions Aladdin's friend/pet Abu (whom "Ali" would not know about); Aladdin responds without thinking.
- Straightforward example in the film Who Is Cletis Tout? Sloppy work on Finch's part to respond to his name, considering he was a fugitive in the middle of a room of cops.
- A creative application of the trope occurred in the webcomic Rip And Teri. Agent XI knows Rip has infiltrated a TV studio in disguise. A few days earlier, Rip had encountered XI in a janitor uniform, so XI stations himself inside the studio in the same uniform. Rip's startled reaction to seeing the same "janitor" he fought earlier gives him away.
- Angel, "Blind Date": Angel throws an object at a woman claiming to be perfectly blind; she catches it out of the air perfectly. Oops.
- In an episode of The Agency, an undercover agent has replaced a person who's known to be allergic to dogs, so he reacts accordingly whenever there's a dog in the room. He's discovered when his suspicious contact places a dog nearby but out of sight and he fails to develop a stuffy nose.
- In one episode of Monk, the identity of a mail bomber is confirmed when he panics at the sight of someone opening one of his custom-made packages. He shouldn't have known about the bombings because he had been in a coma when they took place. (If you're curious about how he managed to set off the bombings while in a coma, watch the episode in full.) In another episode, he cleared Willie Nelson's name by proving that the other suspect wasn't blind--he had a streaker run past her, and she reacted.
- Done subtly in The Fifth Elephant. The Patrician assigns Commander Vimes a manservant, Inigo Skimmer, for his trip to Uberwald. Vimes tosses an orange at him, and it bounces off. He doesn't say anything at that point, but later, when he reveals that he knew about Skimmer being a spy, he points out that a normal person would have either caught the orange or dodged it; Skimmer looked at it, recognized that it wasn't a threat, and let it go on its way, inadvertently showing that he has had assassin training.
- In an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! series 0, a cop announces that a criminal has been tracked to the joint where Yugi and Jyonouchi have gone for a burger, and their friends are working. The police sergeant says it might help that the crook is allergic to eggs; Anzu says (falsely) that he will be easy to catch, because the burger buns have lots of egg in them. At that, the crook freaks out and tries to bolt, despite having suffered no ill effects when he ate there the day before. In a subversion, this crook turned out to be a small-time shoplifter; the real perp did not fall for it.
- In the 1993 film adaptation of The Fugitive, U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) tricks fugitive surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) into revealing himself when Gerard calls down a stairwell to a retreating figure, "RICHARD!" Kimble involuntarily looks up, giving himself away.
- In The Great Escape, one of the fleeing British POWs gives himself away when a suspicious Nazi officer offhandedly wishes him "Good luck!" -- in English -- causing the Brit to politely respond "Thank you". Made particularly egregious by the fact that the prisoners had previously run DRILLS on just this situation, before escaping the POW camp, and that this particular gentleman had admonished another prisoner for falling for that one.
- Justified as Truth In Television. The character who makes this mistake is the companion of the Escape's leader. In real life, this was percisely how the leader and companion were caught (including the fact that it was all the companion's fault).
- Parodied by That Mitchell And Webb Look, in the German-speaking version of Numberwang: the host does this to one of the contestants.
- In Sonic Adventure 2, Dr. Eggman uses this ploy to discern which of the two identical-looking Emeralds is the real one.
Eggman: You thought you could trick me with that fake Emerald, didn't you?
Tails: So... how did you know it wasn't the real one?
Sonic: (cutting him off) Tails!!
Eggman: Heh, because you just told me, fox-boy.
- In Isaac Asimov's mystery novel A Whiff Of Death, the killer gives himself away by reacting to the detective grasping and starting to turn a valve that had been rigged to cause an explosion (the trap had previously been detected and neutralized).
- In one of Asimov's short mystery stories, the culprit is a Québécois person using a false identity of an American. The detective tricks him into revealing his true identity by asking him to write the word "Montréal", and he writes it with an accent aigu on the e, whereas someone who only spoke English wouldn't spell it that way.
- In the third case of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Phoenix uses a variation on this to trap a murderer: he claims that a vial of medicine that had the suspect's fingerprints on it contained the poison that was used to kill the victim. Having no idea of its true contents, the suspect angrily refutes Phoenix's claim by giving the description of the real poison bottle - something he could only have known if he was the murderer.
- Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Austin Powers: Your boss, Number 2. I understand that cat's involved in big underground drills.
Alotta Fagina: How did you know?
Austin Powers: I didn't, baby. You just told me.
- Is this case Austin was aware of the fact ahead of time and was invoking this trope purely to look classy.
- In Death Note, Light Yagami of all people is once tripped up by this ploy, when Namikawa tells him that he already knows that Higuchi is the Yotsuba Kira - it's only a very strong hypothesis at this point, but Light's surprised reaction is all the confirmation he needs.
- In Legally Blonde, a lawyer outs a witness as gay (to prove he couldn't have been the female defendant's lover), by asking him several rapid-fire innocuous questions (like "How long have you worked for her?" etc.), ending with "And your boyfriend's name is?" which the witness answers without thinking.
- This is used a few times in the first book of Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth series.
- Even Lelouch, The Chessmaster of Code Geass is not immune to these.
Rivalz: [Lelouch]'s even holding a household account book...
Lelouch: How do you know about that?
Rivalz: Huh, you really do?
- From Dexter:
Doakes: That's all you care about, is your job. Even if it meant doin' Pascal's man to get it back.
LaGuerta: How did you know about Bertrand?
Doakes: I didn't for sure until just now.
- The Iron Giant: Annie Hughes is talking to junkyard owner Dean McCoppin. She mentions Hogarth (her son) sneaking out to the junkyard, and he asks if she knew about it, and she says "I do now".
- Stargate SG-1: This trope is used and parodied in the episode "1969". The team is stranded in a top-secret Air Force facility in 1969, and are suspected of being spies. An Air Force interrogator comes in and, in Russian, asks if they're Soviet spies. Daniel, who speaks twenty-three languages, replies in Russian, that no, they're not. Naturally, he's not believed.
- From Narbonic, during the D-Con Story Arc:
Helen: You know I'm not "Dave Pretorius." There's no such man. You know I'm really your own daughter in disguise. You know I infiltrated D-Con to crack the Dave Conspiracy, having no idea you'd already done it!
Helen: And you didn't actually know any of this until I voluntarily told you, did you?
Dr. Narbon: I'm such a great mother.
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