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alt title(s): Reveal The pivot in any plotline is often The Reveal. A character is revealed as another character's mother, a god, or secret suitor or arch nemesis in disguise. More broadly, the audience is given new information which had been withheld to create suspense. The Reveal changes the nature of the plot, often pushing it from suspense towards action. A good reveal will also create a new set of questions and further suspense.
A key moment in most Xanatos Gambit plots, when the heroes or the audience discover how the villains have been manipulating everyone. Can also be used to make a Cliffhanger more dramatic. Myth Arc and Mind Screw series love springing these; Jigsaw Puzzle Plots pretty much require them.
If The Reveal is withheld for too long, the audience typically gets frustrated, as was the case with Twin Peaks fans and Laura Palmer's murderer.
If you're set up for this but it's then subverted by not revealing it, it's The Unreveal. When made too obvious ahead of time, it's The Untwist. If it comes out of nowhere and serves no purpose other than to be a twist, it's a Shocking Swerve. If a Driving Question is involved, this is where it's finally put to rest.
Aristotle referred to it as anagnorisis (generally translated as "discovery" or "recognition") in his Poetics, making this one Older Than Feudalism. He considered it one of the hallmarks of a superior play.
Warning: Expect every example to be a spoiler for something.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Twentieth Century Boys: Friend iiiiiiiiissssssss *drum roll* Fukubei!
- Episodes 14 and 21 of Code Geass R2 are pretty much Infodumps on the nature of Geass and everything involved.
- Suzumiya Haruhi combines this with The Rashomon, with Yuki, Mikuru, and Itsuki each explaining Haruhi's true nature and their own.
- Naruto has been rather reveal-happy in the past few weeks: the true identity of both Akatsuki's leader and Naruto's parents have been revealed (and no, none of them are the same people), as well as the true identity of the Man Behind The Man.
- Ergo Proxy: Vincent is the near invincible monster that was constantly tailing him and slaughtering everything in its way, the titular Ergo Proxy.
- Hagino's obsession with Mari in Blue Drop gets explained by revealing that Hagino saved Mari from drowning during the catastrophe caused by her space ship.
- Hellsing - Dok was actually using the remains of Mina Harker as a template for all of Millenium's vampire soldiers. Turns out that since Alucard wasn't destroyed when he lost to Abraham Van Helsing, Mina wasn't completely purified of Alucard's curse. Thus all of Millenium's soldiers are poor copies of Alucard's power.
- Yu Me Dream - when the reader finds out that everything in Part 1 has been a dream.
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle lives for this.
- First we find out that Syaoran is a clone created by the Big Bad, and meet the real one
- Then we find out Fai/Fay has a depressing backstory, he's faking his personality, is working for the villain, and he killed his brother
- Then we find out that his memories were false, he didn't kill his brother, and he switches sides
- Then we find out that the whole goal up till that point, collecting the princess' feathers, was a Xanatos Gambit by the Big Bad to have her develop "physical memories"
- Then we find out that the princess is a clone
- Then we find out that the original Syaoran is actually the son of the protagonist and love interest of Card Captor Sakura, and is using his father's name as a psuedonym
- Then we learn that the protagonist of XXX Holic is a time-travel duplicate of "Syaoran"
- And that the creation of said duplicate f***d up the entire space-time continuum
- Then that "the country of Clow" is really Acid Tokyo in the far future
- Then that Yuko was Dead All Along, and her revival was the whole purpose of the Big Bad's Xanatos Gambit
- Then that she was preserved from going to the other side by an inadvertent reality warp from Clow, giving a Reveal as to why he was so desperate to get rid of his powers and set off the plot of Card Captor Sakura
- And then we find out that Syaoran is the clone of his biological son, who is the "real Syaoran" mentioned above!
- Then, finally, we learn that the feathers were actually soul fragments of the clones!
- Not to mention that both the Syaoran and Sakura's real names are Tsubasa!
- Baccano! — The Rail Tracer is Claire Stanfield/Vino, AKA the young conductor supposedly killed in the second episode.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion is loaded with these.
- One Piece has a number of them, many relating to the legendary Gold Roger. However, one of the most incredible was during the Jaya arc. Luffy gets into an eating contest with a random Boisterous Bruiser type guy at a bar, who later gives Luffy a pep speech in which he toasts to their shared ideals. Turns out that guy is Blackbeard, the evil pirate that Luffy's brother has been searching for.
- Chapter 550 made another reveal. A reveal that's doesn't make the plot take a new direction, but explained pretty much everything that has happened since chapter 1.
- In Ojamajo Doremi, the Witch Queen is The Faceless until the penultimate episode of the series (and only one or two hints are given to her true identity in the final season). She was watching the girls the entire time as Yuki-sensei, the school nurse.
- Monster has a number of them, the biggest one probably being the reveal that the woman in Prague is really Johan.
- Bleach- Aizen isn't dead yet.Not by a long shot.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni has Miyo being the Big Bad, and the reason why we have so many arcs. There are other reveals though, but most are in the sound novels.
- Don't forget The reason everyone goes crazy
- Pokemon does this with Pokemon's genders. For example, Pikachu, after ten years of debating, is proven to be male..Or, is it?
- In Pokemon Special, Yellow is revealed to be a girl at the end of the Yellow Chapter (though Red doesn't find out until the Gold/Silver Chapter).
- In Umi Monogatari it is revealed that Sedna is formed from the combined sorrow that the inhabitants of the island committed to the sea.
- In Shaman King (at least the anime) the main antagonist is revealed to be the main protagonists Evil Twin . Not that we knew that from the begining, cause they look the same...
- In Tona Gura, Kazuki remembered that, even as a little boy, Yuuji was playful, and his 'perverted nature' is mainly him still acting like a little boy around his best friend. When he realizes that she *seriously* does not like it, and she stops romanticizing their childhood, things finally begin to move for them.
- Negima has Setsuna's wing pull, but that's long since passed into You Should Know This Already territory.
- Once the Magic World Arc starts, reveals are dropped left and right, especially once Kurt Godel shows up. The most important one is probably that Negi's mother is Queen Arika of Vesperina, making Negi a Warrior Prince.
Comics
- Although old news now, the identity of the Green Goblin in the original Spider-Man comics was a well-kept secret for years before it was finally revealed to both Spidey and the readers.
- Stormin' Norman did double time on this trope when he was revealed to be the true mastermind of the Clone Saga all along.
- His successor, the Hobgoblin, is arguably the king of this. His true identity was the single biggest plot point of the Spider-Man books in the eighties, and thanks to editorial interference, a really lame reveal, several more fake-out reveals, and judicious retconning, his real, this-is-it, honest-to-God-this-time identity (as, no joke, someone who had never appeared before) wasn't revealed until fourteen years after he first took up the pumpkin bombs.
- Roderick Kingsley, the 'true Hobgoblin all along, in fact first appeared in 1980, many years before the retcon, which actually brought his ID back to what his creating writer had intended. It was still one of the most convoluted rides in Marvel history, possibly only exceeded by the FF's Hyperstorm.
- The Hush storyline in the Batman comics does this a few times, eventually becoming somewhat incomprenhesible as to who was doing what. It first appears that Jason Todd was responsible, then Tommy Elliot, and then apparently the Riddler was responsible all along.
- Hush is Tommy Elliott and has been Elliott in all appearances after this storyline. He simply enlisted Jason Todd and the Riddler to help him with an Unreveal and an unmasking respectively. The only real Wall Banger was having the real Jason Todd unmask as Hush then immediately switching him with Clayface when Batman wasn't looking so that Batman would think it was Clayface posing as Jason Todd all along (the original story has it as Clayface all along, it was a later writer who added the detail about the real Jason Todd having been there as well.)
- Similarly, the Batman: The Long Halloween storyline suffers from this, with about three or four people claiming responsibility for the murders which could only have been committed by two at most. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, they were written by the same person.
- This actually makes sense in the story. The original culprit created an identity to throw suspicion off and the others took advantage of the situation using the identity and established details of the MO to kill people they wanted dead. One of the copycats wants everyone to think it was all him out of spite for his father who's organization is targeted by the killer.
- This actually seems to be a good way to throw the "World's Greatest Detective" a curveball, by having a masked villain turn out to be multiple people. It was used again in the animated Mystery of the Batwoman where Batwoman turned out to be a wealthy socialite, a cop and an engineer working together. Batman seems to have less difficulty with the idea here than he did in the other two stories.
- Joss Whedon pulled off one of the better reveals in recent years during his first arc on Astonishing X Men, when he brought back Colossus, in such a way as to leave no doubt that he was the real deal.
- Perhaps the best executed twist in comics is the end of Thunderbolts #1, in which the titular team is revealed to actually be The Masters of Evil. What's really impressive is how far they went to keep secret the fact that there even was a secret. Peter David, as a favor to Kurt Busiek, even had the solicitations changed for the Hulk issue in which the Thunderbolts first appeared in order to keep the secret under the rug.
Film
- Citizen Kane. It Was His Sled.
- The all-time most famous is, of course, "Luke I Am Your Father", as well as the revelation that Leia is his sister in the next movie.
- It was actually a reveal to near everyone, considering only a very select few knew about it up until near the film's release (helped by the fact that Vader's voice is not done while filming scenes).
- Not to mention the actor who did Vader's voice thought it was fake, and that Vader was attempting to Mind Screw with Luke.
- The big reveal that Captain Barbossa has returned to life at the end of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
- All About Eve: "I'm not crying..."
- One of the creepiest reveals ever is when Morpheus explains the true nature of The Matrix.
- Unbreakable, like any M Night Shyamalan film has one that's too good to spoil, in this case kicked off by a handshake and some juicy postcognition at the very end.
- In the film The Illusionist, it's where it turns out that Sophie was alive all along, that Eisenheim successfully fooled the Police Inspector,, causing the Prince to kill himself, and that he got away with all of this scot-free. And Eisenheim's the protagonist.
- In Tootsie, the big reveal for both the fictional soap and the actual movie is when the main character - who had been masquerading as a woman to land a part on a soap opera - takes off his wig and many of his feminine touches and reveals himself to be a man during a live taping.
- In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Gandalf the Grey is believed to be dead, having died in the previous film, and his death being recapped at the beginning of this film. Director Peter Jackson utilized various film techniques (distorted voice, blinding light covering his face) to hide that the mysterious White Wizard was actually Gandalf brought back, alive and well, as Gandalf the White. Although Jackson presents this in the film as a surprise, even tricking the audience to believe it may be the evil wizard Saruman, the reveal is completely ruined by all of the trailers and TV spots for the film, which included this pivotal moment to advertise the film.
- Note the scene is directly derived from the one in the book, in which at first the others cannot tell Gandalf from Saruman, as Gandalf has been sent back "as Saruman, as the way he should have been".
- Similar to the previous entry, the advertising killed this trope for Terminator 2. If one watches it back-to-back with the original you notice that, cleverly, it is left completely ambiguous why the T-800 has returned until the point where he rescues John Connor in the spillway.
- Chinatown. She's her sister. ''And'' her daughter.
- One of the funniest ones ever comes from Down With Love, when Renee Zellweger's character explains her Thirty Xanatos Pileup in a breathless three-minute single-take monologue which, when it's all finished, leaves Ewan McGregor with a truly priceless expression of bemused confusion on his face.
Literature
- The penultimate chapter of Isaac Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy had three characters giving three different solutions to the mysterious location of the Second Foundation. In the last chapter, yet another character reveals the true location, and the narration tells us his secret identity in the very last sentence.
- Harry Potter books very often have these, including in Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone where It's Quirrel, Chamber of Secrets where It's Ginny, etc.
- This is another way the books mature: as the main turning point/climax, the first four books have reveals, and the last four books eschew these for main character deaths. (That's not a typo, GOF has both, as the series turning point). For the record, in Prisoner of Azkaban it's Ron's pet rat and in Goblet of Fire it's Mad-Eye Moody.
- The later books still have a Reveal in the climax, e.g.the Prophecy in OOTP, Snape in HBP, the last Horcrux and Snape again in DH
- Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, when the killer is revealed to be Nope, nice try.
- Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner where Amir discovers that Hasaan is his half-brother.
- In Ben Counter's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Galaxy in Flames, when Tarvitz realizes that Horus intends to virusbomb the Space Marines on the planet.
- In James Swallow's The Flight of the Eisenstein, when Garro insists on hailing a Thunderbird he has been ordered to shoot down, and learns that it's Tarvitz, trying to warn the Space Marines on the planet of Horus's treacherous attack. Sendek, who prided himself on being The Stoic, has a Not So Stoic moment of pure surprise.
"Saul Tarvitz," whispered Sendek. "First Captain of the Emperor's Children. Impossible! He's a man of honour! If he's turned traitor, then the galaxy has gone insane!"
Decius found he couldn't look away from Garro's shocked expression. "Perhaps it has." It was a long moment before Decius realized that the words has been his.
- In An Abundance of Katherines, Colin has dated nineteen different girls named Katherine, all of whom have dumped him, and communicates these relationships to the reader through flashbacks. Katherine Carter, aka Katherine XIX, was with him for almost a year and totally broke his heart. When he was eight, a little girl named Katherine asked him to be her boyfriend; he said yes, fell in love, and got dumped two and a half minutes later. Then Colin is asked out by the most popular girl in school, who is named Marie, not Katherine, and is finally going to break his streak... but then he sees Katherine I, Katherine the Great, and ends up ditching the date. "And so it was Colin and Katherine Carter snuck out of the house to have a cup of coffee at Cafe Sel Marie."
- Then the book does it again — Colin is determined to figure out why Katherines keep dumping him, and he works out a theorem of relationship graphs, and it works for eighteen of the Katherines. But the graph says that he dumped Katherine III. So finally he calls her back and tries to figure out what happened... guess who did the dumping after all.
- In GK Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Gregory, annoyed with Syme, extracts from him a promise to keep quiet and proves he is a real anarchist by bringing him to an anarchist den. Whereupon Syme extracts from him a promise to keep quiet and reveals that he is a policeman.
- In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Chessman Of Mars, when Turan reveals that A-Kor is a prisoner, U-Thor demands to know the meaning of it, and reveals that after O-Tar gave him the slave woman who was A-Kor's mother, he had freed and married her, and so he regards A-Kor as his son.
Live Action TV
- In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, when Angel is discovered to be a vampire.
- In Angel Season 4, when Cordelia is revealed to be behind the rise of the Beast.
- And again in Season 5, with the return of Lindsey.
- In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, when Gul Dukat is revealed to be working with the Dominion.
- Famous early example in Lost is the nature of Locke's "miracle," revealed at the end of the fourth episode. There are, of course, plenty more from the series.
- Heroes is not only fond of this trope but loves to do it multiple times on the same subject. A specific case would be the bomb that will/might/did destroy New York City, which is "revealed" to be caused by one person, then re-revealed to be actually caused by someone else, then...
- The episode Five Years Gone contains perhaps the best reveal of the series: President Nathan Petrelli is actually Sylar, using the illusion power he obtained from Candice Wilmer. We discover this as Sylar is cutting open Claire's skull.
- The fact that this actually comes partly true, Sylar replaces Nathan, is more than slightly disturbing
- The end of the second season X Files episode Sleepless in which it's revealed that Krycek is working for the CSM. (Not spoiler cut because I'm fairly sure it's old news.)
- In the Season Two (and series) finale of Carnivale, we learn that Sofie is an avatar of darkness, just like Brother Justin.
- Well, technically she isn't an avatar of darkness, but the Omega, but still, we didn't know what that meant up to that point (and it's still not really clear)
- Alias does this a LOT. Including the very first episode in which Sydney learns that she's actually working for The Alliance, an evil organization that she thought they were fighting, and not the real CIA. Some of the major ones:
- Season One: Laura Bristow was not a lit professor, but actually a KGB spy by the name of Irina Derevo, and is actually alive and is The Man.
- Season Two: Sloane assisted in taking down the Alliance for his own means (arranging for the information that Sydney & co. at Oops Central to be available)
- Season Three: Sydney actually erased her own memories of the two years she spent "working" for the Covenant.
- Season Four: Jack Bristow actually killed a double of Irina Derevko. The real Irina was being held by her sister Elena in captivity. Elena turned out to be Sofia, the woman running the orphanage that Nadia grew up in.
- Season Four/Five: Six words: "My name is not Michael Vaughn." Sloane's flip-flopping between being good and evil does not count because, honestly, who didn't see it coming?
- BattlestarGalactica (the new series) Has an on-going mystery about the identity of the twelve Cylon models. The first of many reveals is in the Miniseries, where it is revealed that Sharon must be one of them in the final scene. There are also a few other puzzles:
- Season 2: Another Battlestar survived the Cylon Holocaust.
- Season 3: Tyrol, Tigh, Tory and Anders are four of the missing five Cylon models.
- Season 4.5: The Thirteenth Tribe that colonized Earth were all human Cylon models.
- Season 4.5: Ellen Tigh was a Cylon.
- Season 4.5: The 'original programmers' were Tyrol, Tigh, Tory, Anders, Ellen and Cavil.
- By Season 4, Supernatural seems too be doing an average of one an episode. From off the top of my head, we;ve had the Reveals that: Dean was resuced from Hell by an angel! Big Bad Lilith plans to raise Lucifer! Dean tortured souls in Hell! By torturing souls, Dean allowed the first seal to be broken, making Lilith's plan possible! Sam can now kill demons with his mind! There are some angels working to help release Lucifer! . There are plenty more. To give you some idea, the last 3 reveals were in just one episode.
- The Doctor Who episode "Utopia", where in the last 15 minutes it is revealed that Professor Yana is the Master, chameleon arched, and the Face of Boe's message was a secret acronym hinting at this (You Are Not Alone). Then the Master regenerates into the British Prime Minister.
- "It's us!", if you hadn't guessed it an episode earlier.
Professional Wrestling
The shocking revelation of the identity of the Outsiders' Third Man in WCW Bash in the Beach.
- Or the true horrific reveal about Pro-Wrestling itself? It's fake. Dun Dun Dun.
Close Professional Wrestling Video Games
- Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic You know that Darth Revan everyone's been talking about? The one who disappeared mysteriously and is presumed dead? The one who would have every reason to hate the Jedi AND the Sith for what they did if he/she were still alive? That's you.
- The sequel pretty much makes a point of having no reveal, even though just about everything that happens in the game is one surprise after another in a kind of "I've always known" sort of way. The one true revelation is that the whole game was a test. Except anyone who paid attention already knew that. This is just speculation, but it might be in response to the Revan issue, considering how obvious it was to - again - to anyone paying attention, like the writers of the sequel would be.
- Grandia II has a killer - Granas, the god of good you've supposedly been serving, was actually the loser of the ancient struggle between good and evil and has been dead all along. The supposed 'Seals' that were binding the parts of the sealed dark god Valmar were actually devices created to prepare a human's body for possession by a part of Valmar's damaged body, and the Pope of the Church of Granas has actually been manipulating you into reassembling Valmar's body from the very beginning. Basically, EVERY SINGLE THING you've done so far in the game so far has been a lie.
- Final Fantasy VII takes until late in the second disc to reveal what really happened in Nibelheim five years ago, especially Cloud's involvement.
- The game actually turns this situation into two reveals for the price of one. The first being where he's told that he is just a clone of Sephiroth, and all his memories of Nibelheim were taken from Tifa. The second being him discovering that he is in fact, not a clone, at least not in a traditional sense. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase Un-Reveal.
- System Shock 2: "I am SHODAN."
- At the very end of Episode Aegis / The Answer in Persona 3: FES, Metis reveals to the party that she and Aigis are one and the same. Metis was the "human" side of Aigis, cast out due to Aigis' wishes to be a mere machine again. If Aegis remains that way, she won't have to mourn/grieve over the loss of the protagonist, nor will she have to bear the penalties of being human. But after seeing what became of the protagonist and learning of the true nature of Shadows and Persona, she wishes for Metis to return to her. Aigis absorbs Metis and decides to stay with the SEES team, as a complete being.
- The moment where it becomes aparent just what Mass Effects Reapers really are.
- Your initial impression of the Reapers is basically correct though. The Reveal is when you discover that Sovereign is a Reaper.
- And the second reveal - That all the precursor technology was actually left behind by the Reapers. They did this on purpose to steer galactic civilisation down a path that makes it easier to be harvest.
- Bio Shock: "A man chooses, a slave obeys."
- Ahem... "Would you kindly..."
- Final Fantasy X - Auron's confession that he's an unsent (solid ghost). It was his devotion to his previous summoner and Tidus' father that allowed him to retain his human form (and not become a fiend), so he could Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- At the End of Red's Story in Sa Ga Frontier Red's Mentor from when he was aboard the Cygnus is the one who gave him the superpowers he used throughout the story.
- Planescape Torment, built as it is upon a well-crafted Laser Guided Amnesia plot, is made of these, and doesn't stop until the very end - expect reveals about enemies, allies, old flames, rivals... even the main character. In fact, every attainable companion in the game has one of these, if you talk to them and dig deep enough.
- Subverted in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, in which the Black Knight's true identity is spoiled to you by Ranulf rather casually a few chapters before your final showdown with him.
- The Ace Attorney series, being all about very dramatic trials, has some major reveals. Perhaps the most epic is in the second game's final case, where your client, Matt Engarde, turns out to be not the killer, but the man who ordered the killing. The reveal is so awesome because he smooths back his hair to reveal some nasty scars on his eye, changing his appearance and expression extensively, and then he pulls a glass of brandy out of Hammerspace. In a holding cell.
- The Legacy Of Kain series loves this trope:
- The ending of Soul Reaver 2, which, after the game spends a lot of time foreshadowing it, reveals that Raziel is the Reaver.
- And... Future Raziel killed past Raziel.
- In Defiance, when it is revealed that not only did Mortanius use the powers of the Heart of Darkness, previously belonging to Janos Audron, to make Kain into a vampire, but the Heart is also inside Kain.
- This is also a brilliant subversion of Gameplay And Story Segregation; in the first game, made by different developers, no less, where you play as Kain, the Heart of Darkness is a collectible item that does exactly what Mortanius is revealed to have used it for, but strictly in game mechanics. As long as Kain has at least one in his inventory, it's impossible to die.
- In Shadow Of The Colossus, you'll have to wait until the 16th statue crumbles to find that Yes, Dormin will resurrect your girlfriend/sister/who-knows-who-she-is. He just wants to make you into an unstoppable force of darkness in return.
- Although, you were warned, by Dormin themselves, no less, that the consequences would be dire, and that you're basically signing a waiver.
- The biggest reveal for the Mega Man X series is that its resident Ensemble Darkhorse hero is built by Dr. Wily for the sole purpose of destroying the world, and his best friend.
- And the Mega Man Zero series also has a big reveal: that The Hero is using a clone body, since the Big Bad stole his original body to create The Dragon.
- Another loosely-guarded reveal that occured at the climax of Zero 4: Dr. Weil is immortal, meaning that no matter what happens to him, he will keep coming back to menace the world.
- Braid slowly foreshadows this, then hits you in the gut with it. The final level has Tim and the Princess, each helping the other as the Princess runs away from a knight. Then, at the end, the Princess reaches her home. Tim is suddenly locked out. All that you can do is rewind... where it turns out that the Princess is running away from Tim, each trying to stop and hinder the other as she escapes into the knight's arms. Unexpected... but logical if you think about it.
- Too many to count in Jakand Daxter, especially the third one. The biggest one is probably the mystery of the Precursors being solved. They're ottsels, so Daxter's been one all along.
- Couple of them in the Wing Commander games, revolving around revelations of The Mole.
- In Professor Layton and the Curious Village, near the end... Luke: "What do you MEAN 'the villagers are all robots'?!"
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