T. Rex: I'd love to have a secret I could take to my grave!
Dromiceiomimus: Technically, there's all sorts of things you've never told people that will be lost when you die: what you had for breakfast this morning, for instance.
T. Rex: Yeah, but those are CRAPPY secrets! I'm talking about the GOOD stuff: buried treasure, world-changing revelations, that sort of thing!
Dromiceiomimus: Technically, there's all sorts of things you've never told people that will be lost when you die: what you had for breakfast this morning, for instance.
T. Rex: Yeah, but those are CRAPPY secrets! I'm talking about the GOOD stuff: buried treasure, world-changing revelations, that sort of thing!
Did Espionage Tropes send you? Shhh... Don't tell anyone you found this place. This index is a secret to everybody. It's here that we index all the darkest secrets stored on TV Tropes. If you're looking for secret personalities look over at More than Meets the Eye. If it's there, don't look for it here. For more mysteries, see Mystery Tropes, don't bother with the Infauxmation Desk. And remember, be careful. The Index Is Watching You.
—TOP SECRET—
CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
All individuals handling this information are required to protect it from unauthorized disclosure in the interest of the international security of TV Tropes.
See also:
- Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: An In-Universe secret from the original work is less of a secret in the adaptation.
- Ambiguous Criminal History: I'm secretly a criminal. No, I won't tell you about it.
- Apocalyptic Gag Order: The government keeps an existential threat to a specific location or the whole world a secret, in order to avert mass panic and chaos.
- Batman in My Basement: When someone highly conspicuous hides in a "normal" location.
- Big Secret: Hiding a secret causes a person to be suspected of a crime.
- Black Site: A top-secret government facility, military base, or prison that the authorities really don't want anyone not in the know to access or visit.
- Secret Government Warehouse: A covert government facility that secretly contains various objects they don't want anyone else to know about.
- Bookcase Passage: A bookcase hides a secret passage.
- Booked Full of Mooks: A character in a public space discovers that all the bystanders around them are actually another character's employees or co-conspirators.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: Someone who really can't keep their mouth shut, even if their life depended on it.
- Classified Information: This info is an official secret, and we're not allowed to share it with anyone who isn't authorized to know it.
- Closet Gay: An LGBT character is hiding their true orientation by pretending to be completely straight.
- Confidentiality Betrayal: A character tells another character's secret to third parties, making it no longer a secret.
- The Conspiracy: A grand, secretive (and most likely sinister) plot that is planned and executed by a mysterious group.
- Ancient Conspiracy: A very old secret society that has manipulated various historical and current events for their own gain.
- Benevolent Conspiracy: A secret society that isn't really evil, but is in fact planning something for the (greater) good of the world.
- Corporate Conspiracy: A secret project run by a big business institution.
- Government Conspiracy: A secret project run by a government organization, such as the military or an intelligence agency.
- Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: Interconnected secret schemes that are committed by various organized crime syndicates.
- Covert Group: A secret group or organization of any kind.
- Currency Conspiracy: All the proof you need that "they" exist is in an everyday dollar bill.
- Cut Himself Shaving: Making up a lame excuse for an injury you received from your double life.
- Dark Secret: A horrible secret that a character is terrified to reveal.
- Deceptive Legacy: A child learns a well-kept secret about their parentage.
- Deducing the Secret Identity: Someone logically deduces a Secret Identity, using clues, process of elimination, etc.
- Did Not Die That Way: When someone finds out that they were lied to about a loved one's death.
- Domino Revelation: One revealed secret reveals another secret, which reveals another, which...
- Easter Egg: The programmers hid some sort of secret in a video game.
- Empire with a Dark Secret: A whole civilization is built on a horrible secret.
- Everybody Knew Already: Everyone actually knows your deep dark secret, but they're too polite to tell you.
- Eye-Obscuring Hat: The hat that still conceals who you are and adds an air of mystery.
- Eye of Providence: An eye in a triangle is shorthand for Secret Societies and other ominous conspiracy stuff.
- Eyes Out of Sight: You'll never see what this person's eyes look like.
- Gas Leak Cover-Up: Whatever it was, it wasn't a gas leak.
- Shared Mass Hallucination: Another semi-plausible explanation designed to cover-up a strange event.
- The Hidden Hour: A secret time that only a few people know exists.
- Hidden Mechanic: A mechanic in a video game that is not explained to the player.
- Hidden Track: A secret song on a CD or record.
- Hide Your Otherness: Keeping up the lies that protect the secret world.
- Hiding the Handicap: Hiding the fact that you're disabled or afflicted.
- I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: Someone has a secret that's so great, that if he told anyone, he'd have to kill them.
- I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!: Blurting out a secret while simultaneously claiming you won't do just that.
- If Only You Knew: A character says something that connects to a fact or event of which they're unaware of, usually to someone who is in the know.
- Information Wants to Be Free: A secret must be made public. The bad guys want to prevent that.
- Infraction Distraction: By feigning a minor offense, the big one can be kept secret.
- Internal Reveal: The audience already knows the secret but one of the characters is just finding out.
- Invisible Writing: Writing is made invisible to keep it a secret.
- Is That What He Told You?: A character reveals to a person what someone else has been keeping from them.
- Keeping Secrets Sucks: Sometimes you need to lie or kill to keep a secret.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Everyone is conspiring to keep the main character oblivious.
- Loose Lips: Someone gives away sensitive information unintentionally.
- Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot: Hiding something secret under a loose floorboard.
- Love Confessor: Confiding your love for someone to a third party.
- Loves Secrecy: Delighting in keeping secrets from others and mocking them about it.
- The Man Behind the Man: The Big Bad is secretly controlled by an even Bigger Bad.
- Masquerade: There's a secret world of strangeness that has been carefully hidden beneath everyone else's noses.
- Broken Masquerade: You have discovered the big secret that was hidden from you all along.
- Expositing the Masquerade: Turns out these folks knew about the weird stuff all along.
- Extra-Strength Masquerade: The big secret should've been revealed by now, but yet it hasn't.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Find out the big secret, and die for your efforts.
- Masquerade Enforcer: Reality conspires to punish those that try to reveal the secret.
- Masquerade Paradox: Turns out the big secret isn't worth keeping secret.
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Tying to uphold the masquerade (or living a double life) makes dating difficult.
- The Men in Black: Mysterious government agents responsible for keeping something secret from the general public.
- Mutual Masquerade: Two people part of the same (or different) conspiracies both think the other one is normal.
- To Unmasque the World: Someone wants to expose the big secret and reveal it to everyone else.
- The Unmasqued World: Now everyone in the whole wide world knows about something that was formerly secret.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: A character is introduced into a secret society or hidden world.
- The World Is Not Ready: The secret masquerade exists out of a well-intentioned belief that the truth is so shocking, most people wouldn't be able to handle it, and would all descend into mass panic and chaos.
- Missing Secret: When one mistakenly believes there is a "secret" feature in a video game that doesn't actually exist.
- Multilayer Façade: Keeping secrets under secrets.
- My Secret Pregnancy: A woman hides her pregnancy.
- Mysterious Past: A character has a secret past.
- Mysterious Purple: The color purple used to characterize or code things as mysterious, ambiguous, or enigmatic, often with a yet unrevealed hidden backstory or secret motivations.
- Mystical City Planning: A whole location is secretly in the shape of a giant spell.
- Never Bareheaded: A character never reveals what's under their hat.
- Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: One villain is obvious, and one is a secret
- Open Secret: Something is declared to be a "secret", but everyone actually knows about it anyway.
- Ostentatious Secret: Someone openly advertises that they have a secret.
- Over-the-Top Secret: Super-duper-extremely-top-secret information that has its own special security class.
- Playing Nice for Now: Don't let anyone know we are at each other's throats.
- Plot-Driving Secret: If they knew the truth, we wouldn't have a plot.
- Pop Culture Symbology: Secret meanings found in pop culture.
- Public Secret Message: Announcing secret info by concealing it in plain sight.
- Publicly Discussing the Secret: Characters who know a secret disregard all semblance of actual secrecy.
- Queer Flowers: Gay men and women using certain flowers to convey homosexual romance, originally meant to be hidden messages to other homosexuals.
- Restricted Rescue Operation: Especially the type where you need to keep it a secret.
- Safely Secluded Science Center: A laboratory is isolated for the sake of secrecy - and safety.
- Secret Art: A skill or technique known only to a few people.
- Secret Character: A playable character in a video game who is a secret until they're unlocked.
- Secret Chaser: A character insistent on finding out another character's secret.
- Secret Circle of Secrets: A secret society of ominous hooded figures up to who knows what?
- Secret Compartment: A storage compartment Hidden in Plain Sight for storing items that only people in the know are supposed to be aware of.
- Secret Diary: A diary or journal that is kept in secret.
- Secret Handshake: The secret means of identifying people who are keeping a secret together.
- Secret History: A work claims its events took place in Real Life, but were kept secret by In-Universe actors.
- Suppressed History: Historical records have been lost, or perhaps deliberately censored by those who don't want the truth to get out.
- Secret Identity: An alternate identity that is used to hide a secret double life.
- Second Super-Identity: When there is more than one secret identity.
- Secret Ingredient: The mysterious something added to food to make it special.
- Secret-Keeper: The person whom you trust with your secrets.
- The Confidant: Someone who keeps their best friend's secrets.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: The person who is keeping your secrets that you don't even know about.
- Secret Level: A bonus level of a video game that is hidden and not needed to beat the game.
- Secretly Gay Activity: Disguising flirtation (or sex) with the same sex with a perfectly "innocent" activity.
- Secret Message Wink: Winking to secretly get a message across.
- Secret Other Family: A character has more than one family and hides them from one another.
- Secret Path: A hidden path that bypasses obstacles by taking a route not many know.
- Secret Pet Plot: A character adopts a pet and tries to hide it.
- Secret Police: A covert law enforcement agency serving an oppressive government, with the aim of violently suppressing any opposition.
- Secret Relationship: Two characters keep their relationships a secret from everyone else.
- Secret Room: A hidden room within a building.
- Secret Sex Worker: A character is Living a Double Life, hiding that they are a sex worker from those closest to them, typically out of fear of social rejection, condemnation, and/or being arrested for engaging in a criminalized profession.
- Secret Shop: A business that is hidden away from customers who aren't actively seeking it out.
- Black Market: A secretive, illegitimate business network in which criminals sell illegal products or services.
- Secret Society Group Picture: The members of a (not so) secret society all posed for a group photo that provides damning evidence of their existence.
- Secret Squatter: A character lives concealed in an already-occupied house.
- Secret Stab Wound: A character hides a serious injury.
- Clothing-Concealed Injury: When clothing has to be used to hide said injury.
- Secretly Dying: A character hides the fact that they have a terminal illness or lethal wound.
- Secret Test of Character: The actual test is a secret to prove what's in their heart.
- Secret War: A covert conflict that's being fought behind a masquerade between the belligerents.
- Secretly Wealthy: A character hides the fact that they're fabulously wealthy.
- Secret Weapon: A hidden weapon typically revealed during or near the climax of the story.
- Secret Word: It's not going to be "swordfish".
- Sent Into Hiding: A person is kept hidden, and thus secret, from the rest of society.
- Shadow Government: A secret government faction that actually runs things.
- Spoilers: Surprising plot details from a work of fiction, which may or may not be kept hidden so that anyone who hasn't seen that story yet won't be prematurely spoiled by these shocking revelations.
- Subtle Superpowering: Keeping your powers secret by using them in a downplayed manner.
- They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: Secrets that, when discovered, only reveal embarrassing and unimportant information.
- This Page Will Self-Destruct: A self-destruct mechanism is built into a device which relays secret information.
- Thought They Knew Already: A secret is revealed because someone didn't know it was secret.
- Town with a Dark Secret: A town or village hides a terrible secret from outsiders.
- Undercover When Alone: Keeping a secret even when no one is around to find out about it.
- Unmanly Secret: A man hides his love of something stereotypically not masculine.
- Villain Reveals the Secret: A character's or a group's secret is revealed by the villain.
- Wainscot Society: A whole second social system exists in close parallel to the "normal" world.
- Water Source Tampering: They don't want you to know what you're really drinking.
- We Would Have Told You, But...: A character has to be kept in the dark about something in order for the plan to work out.
- "What's Inside?" Plot: Characters try to figure out what is hidden inside a locked box or closet.
- World of Mysteries: A whole setting consisting of secrets and mysteries.
