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A Tongue Tied character has some extremely important knowledge, and just Can Not Spit It Out... quite literally.
Sometimes a victim has to be kept quiet about what exactly has happened to him, or he may have learned a secret that someone doesn't want him to share. He can be threatened or encouraged to lie, but this is unreliable. Some villains attempt elaborate brainwashing or Laser Guided Amnesia, but these options are all startlingly reversible. In light of this, the occasional magically-inclined villain will place a curse on his victim that also leaves the victim Tongue Tied.
He isn't silenced completely; the curse doesn't ordinarily prevent him from speaking or casting magic. The cursed individual just becomes unable to communicate a certain piece of information, like "I'm not really a frog, I'm a transformed prince!" or "I know where the villain's hideout is!" If he tries to talk about this particular subject, he may be unable to speak at all, it may all come out as gibberish, or he may be magically forced to give a cover story in place of the truth he desperately wants to tell. In fact, this is often a secondary effect of a Baleful Polymorph curse, preventing the transformed character from getting help for his condition.
This "curse" is usually magical in nature, since the character will find himself unable to share the secret regardless of how badly he wants or needs to, but mental conditioning can sometimes be used to similar effect.
A Tongue Tied character may occasionally function as The Speechless, and his problem is very similar to the character who Can Not Spit It Out.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- In Howls Moving Castle, Sophie is unable to tell anyone that the Witch of the Wastes has turned her into an old woman.
- This is an exact example in the movie, but not in the book. In the book it is a subversion, because almost everyone knows about it, and has tried to lift the spell from her.
- This is the effect of the Talking Heads stand from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Part 5, however the person affected by it is entirely incapable of telling the truth.
Comic Books
- Baron Mordo does this to Stephen Strange in order to prevent the stranger from telling the Ancient One of Mordo's treachery. It doesn't prevent Dr. Strange from asking to learn magic himself, however, and once he does so the Ancient One admits he knew about the spell effect.
- Poison Ivy did this to the Wayne Foundation board members in one Batman story arc. She used mind control to get them to sign over the Foundation's assets to her and gave them a post-hypnotic suggestion that prevented them from telling anyone what had happened.
- In the classic Batman story "Hush," The Riddler reveals that he deduced that he figured out Batman's Secret Identity while taking a dip in a magic Lazarus Pit. However, Batman convinces to keep it secret for two reasons: having such a secret is no fun for an obsessive puzzler like him if every one knows it and if he decides to reveal, it would give the owner of the Lazarus Pits, the Big Bad Ra's Al Ghul, a vital clue that the Riddler used a pit without permission and will have his League of Assassins kill him no matter where he is.
Film
- Perhaps the reverse of this trope, in the movie Liar Liar, not only does a birthday wish prevent Jim Carrey from telling lies, he also cannot withhold the truth (lying by omission) or even ask a question that he knows will be answered with a lie.
Literature
- In Emperor Mage, Daine is prevented from telling anyone that there's a goddess running around causing havoc.
- In Ella Enchanted, Ella (who has been given the "gift" of obedience), is ordered to tell no one about this "gift," so of course, she is forced to obey.
- In the third book of the Tamir Trilogy, the evil wizard puts one of these spells on the girl he forces the prince to marry, so she can't tell the prince of the wizard's machinations, including the fact that she's only a virgin because the wizard magically recreated her hymen.
- The Summer Lady had this once in the Dresden Files; she'd been forbidden to talk about something by the Summer Queen.
- In Harry Potter the Fidelius Charm
 might cause this. The charm makes it so that once a secret is entrusted to the Secret Keeper the only way to discover the secret is for the Secret Keeper to tell you. One of the effects of this is that if you're told the secret by the Secret Keeper then you can't tell it to anyone else, but canon doesn't establish how this is done. In might do it via Tongue Tied (which is always how it happens in fanfic), it could cause a Contrived Coincidence to prevent a confession whenever you open your mouth to speak it, or or it could be something else entirely.
- There actually is a literal and Canon example of a tongue-tying charm in Harry Potter. When a Secret Keeper dies, everyone who knows the secret becomes a Secret Keeper. This included Snape, though he probably wouldn't have told anyway. To prevent him from blabbing, Moody places a literal tongue twister curse on the house, preventing him from revealing its location. Another example, also in book 7, occurs when Voldemort places a taboo on his name, causing Death Eaters to appear whenever anyone speaks it, in a delberate attempt to catch Harry & Co.
- Germain from Eric Nylund's A Game Of Universe claims to have a Tongue Tied spell placed on him, so that he can infiltrate a castle without anyone asking too many questions.
- In Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, whenever Lady Pole or Stephen Black tries to tell anyone about the gentleman with the thistledown hair, they end up saying something completely unrelated and frequently nonsensical.
- Apparently its actually stories that almost match up with ancient faerie activities, being The Fair Folk it sounds total nonsense.
- The Aes Sedai in The Wheel Of Time are unable to lie due to a magical promise on the Oath Rod; consequently, when asked a direct question about a secret, the best they can do is give a misleading but true answer. With the result that many people don't believe them at all, since they know about this oath. There's also reason to believe that the Black Ajah have a magical compulsion against betraying their fellow darkfriends, which is why they couldn't reveal names even under the most torturous of interrogations.
- One of the big bads (there were three) of Callahan's Lady, written by Spider Robinson, can make anyone do whatever she asks of them, including failing to convey information. Fortunately thinking outside the box/in terms of puns, tends to work very well. "Please do not go down the stairs." is solved by leaping into the dumpster from an upstairs window.
- In James Thurber's The 13 Clocks, the wicked duke had a curse put on the Princess Saralinda so that she can only say "I wish him well" in the duke's presence.
- Sherri S. Tepper's The True Game series has an unusual variant: a character is prevented from speaking a certain piece of information, but is perfectly capable of writing it down. However, this bit of Tongue Tied is contagious: any person who reads the information will be unable to speak it out loud, even if they've never met the beings who laid the Tongue Tied magic on it.
- In Shadow of the Hegemon, Sister Carlotta finds out the particulars of Bean's condition from a scientist who first proposed the theory. The scientist has to be very clever about telling her, because he has been conditioned to have a panic attack whenever he speaks about or even thinks about his old work.
Live Action TV
- In a Muppet version of The Frog Prince, a princess is cursed to speak in scrambled sentences so that she couldn't tell that the witch who cast the spell is masquerading as the king's sister. The frog prince is the only one able to understand her, perhaps because he was transformed by the same witch.
- Or that Robin had more then two brain cells to rub together, the Princess's father wasn't exactly Einstein, you know.
- In one episode of Angel Lorne returns from a mission to gather information saying "I can't talk about it. No literally, they did a spell." He then subverts it by giving it to Angel in writing instead.
Tabletop Games
- D&D's Book of Vile Darkness includes a spell called "Forbidden Speech" which pretty much lets the caster specify one topic that the subject/victim will be unable to talk, write, or even telepathically communicate about.
- In a recent campaign, a friend's wizard put this spell on a particularly ego-centric and irritating character of mine, with the taboo being... Herself. Cue the laughter.
- Exalted has a a similar spell, but in this case, the victim of the spell is subjected to wracking pain and uncontrollable vomiting whenever they try to talk about the forbidden subject. In addition to being much more sadistic, this version is probably less useful, since anyone who's heard of the spell will know that something's up.
- The ritual Plague of Hiccups in Unknown Armies afflicts the victim with a fit of hiccups whenever he speaks a particular phrase. The snag here is that the hiccups don't trigger until after the victim speaks the phrase so it can't completely prevent discussion of the subject, just make it rather inconvenient.
Video Games
- The plot of Kingdom Hearts 2 begins when a mysterious thief steals photos from everyone in town. It would be almost mundane, if not for everyone's sudden inability to say the word photo afterward.
- The Ancient Conspiracy of the Metal Gear Solid games inject their agents with nanomachines that cause them to say nonsensical "La-li-lu-le-lo" when attempting to discuss them. See The Last Days Of Foxhound example below.
Webcomics
- In Sluggy Freelance, Gwynn curses Torg to make donkey noises when he tries to tell people about the fact that she's using magic again. Unfortunately, her wording was a bit too broad. Not only does he start hee-hawing when he tries to say any important information (like "Zoe, help! Oasis has kidnapped me and taken me to a Poconos Resort to force me to marry her!"), he starts actually turning into a donkey!
- In The Last Days Of Foxhound, Revolver Ocelot secretly brainwashes his teammates into being incapable of saying "The Patriots", the secret organization he works for. Instead, it comes out at "LA-LI-LU-LE-LO"
Psycho Mantis: That conniving backstabbing son of a bitch SANTA CLAUS!"
Web Originals
- Miriam of Making the Cut is forced to not tell any of her friends that's she's been turned into a vampire, and the vampires are forcing her to be their spy.
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