Trailers Always Spoil - Television Tropes & Idioms

Watch The Mysterious Murderer. If you already saw it, don't spoil the ending. If you haven't seen it you will never guess until the last moment that the mysterious murderer is Jack the Stranger

—The trailer of The Mysterious Murderer routine by Les Luthiers

Movie trailers are known to mislead, but sometimes they go in the opposite direction, giving away key plot points and twists (and sometimes what would have been a Twist Ending).

Of course some of this depends on your definition of "Spoiler". Given that a trailer consists mostly of clips from the movie itself, a fair bit of spoilerage, in this case footage from a later part in the movie, is often inevitable. There is also the matter of context. An action movie, for example, may show a fight scene between two characters, then you actually see the movie itself and realize that the other dude the hero was fighting happens to be his best friend in the beginning, thus the trailer has clued you in to a betrayal of some sort occurring before you even knew it. So if you read the examples below from a movie you haven't seen (either you have no intention of seeing it, or maybe you should reconsider continuing past this part), and find yourself thinking "I didn't even know that was a spoiler", don't worry about it.

A related phenomenon often occurs with DVD menu intro screens. DVDs will often introduce their menu screens with montages from the movie/episodes, or clips of scenes that are particularly flashy or dramatic. Often these will give away major plot points before the viewer has a chance to even start the film. These can be even more effective at spoiling the film's plot than trailers, since a viewer might plausibly be expected to go days between seeing a trailer and finally seeing the related movie, which might give them a chance to forget things from the trailer. With menu intro screens, on the other hand, the viewer is being shown clips from something that they are moments away from watching.

Can lead to Trailer Joke Decay. See also Spoiler Opening and You Should Know This Already.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Naruto's English-language release of Vol. 30 gave away a major plot point (who gets the final antidote) in its choice of picture for the "In the next volume" page at the back. With a little thought,it's easy to deduce what happens.
- It's something of a moot point, since it's suggested that Sakura could have made it back to the Sand Village to make another antidote if not for Chiyos's Heroic Sacrifice, which the preview for the corresponding anime episode spoils.
- Viz Media is incredibly bad with this. They spoiled the outcome for one fight, and if I recall correctly, they spoiled a character's death. In their translation of One Piece, they also showed the exact page where Luffy defeats Captain Kuro.
- Naruto's Volume 42 preview shows Sasuke saying that the Mangekyo Sharingan 1)enables the user to control tailed beasts, 2)causes blindness.
- The preview for the fourth uncut DVD collection reveals nearly all of the matchups in the preliminaries and, most egregiously, features a shot of the winners gathered together.
In a strange case, the Post Episode Trailers on the first three episodes of Yes! Precure 5 (as well as the promo trailers, which focused a lot on the first episode) each showed part of the Transformation Sequence of the girl who would transform for the first time in that episode. So in the trailer previewing episode 5, the conspicuous absence of a scene spoiling Karen's transformation was a spoiler in itself. (Or at least, in hindsight, it should have been.)
The trailer for the English release of SHUFFLE! does a good job of keeping the secret of who the Unlucky Everydude ends up with, until you realize that it's playing Asa's theme music. This is a bigger hint than it would usually be, since Asa is usually pushed aside until the viewer is hit in the head with her surprise victory, even left out of most plot summaries! Someone is going to put two and two together.
Like the Phantom Menace example below, Gundam Seed spoiled the death of a certain character by having one of the tracks on the official soundtrack being titled "(Character)'s Death".
The tendency for trailers to spoil is parodied in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. The plot summary on the back of the first volume of the manga appears to be spoiler laden, until you learn it has nothing to do with Zetsubou's actual plot. Likewise, the end of the Magical Girl parody features a "spoiler" filled "Coming Next Episode" sequence, revealing (among other things) that Nozomu's mask was made of cardboard, and that he hasn't actually been defeated. Naturally, the real next episode is a return to the show's usual format.
D.Gray-Man. All the volumes end with a panel from the next volume. This panel is often a spoiler- let's see... volume 8 shows Allen's destroyed Innocence reforming and volume 11 shows that it takes more than an iron maiden to kill Krory.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni's second seasons trailers, the trailers that came out before the second season, spoiled a lot of the stuff in the beginning of the season. Then again, none of this would be news to anyone who'd read the original sound novels.
Fullmetal Alchemist's Volume 2 preview spoils Nina and Alexander's unfortunate fate.
The manga preview for Volume 27 of Bleach spoils Orihime being abducted, while at the end of Volume 26, she had only just encountered Ulquiorra.
- The summary of Volume 15 of the Bleach DV Ds spoils Aizen being the Big Bad, by referring to him as a captain who was thought to be dead, screenshots showing him clearly alive and the cover being of him after The Reveal.
- The trailer for Episode 224 of Bleach clearly shows Momo helping Rangiku.
- The preview for Volume 24, while questioning what the outcome of the battle against the Arrancars will be, shows Renji, Hitsugaya and Rangiku winning their fights.
Shonen Jump sometimes spoils plot points in its previews for the chapters in the next month's issue.
- In the December 2007 issue, the Bleach preview mentioned "reinforcements from the Soul Society" coming to help Ichigo against the Arrancar, and it was still several chapters before Hitsugaya's team arrived.
- The June 2009 issue suggests that the next issue's Naruto chapters would feature "the confession you never thought you'd hear", and it isn't hard to figure out that they're referring to Hinata.
- The July 2009 issue features a preview frame in Bleach showing Dordonii's defeat.
Every "Next Episode" trailer in Zeta Gundam does this. Watch the trailers and you need never be surprised by a plot twist again.
The trailer for Episode 405 of One Piece spoils almost the entire episode by showing shots of Kuma lunging after each of Luffy's crewmates, and his saying that he can't save a single friend. And there's the title: "Disappearing Crewmates! The Final Day of the Straw Hat Crew!"
One of the next episode trailers for Samurai Seven showed Katsushiro and Kirara kissing. They didn't actually Relationship Upgrade, though.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS has another example of a spoiling soundtrack. The name of Subaru's Leitmotif? "Steel Sprinter", a fact that isn't revealed until halfway into the season. Note that the OST with the spoilery track was packed with the first Japanese DVD volume, which only had the first three episodes.
- Not that much spoiling. It maybe just refers to her Power Fist.
The Next episode trailer for episode 8 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has Kamina monologuing. Nothing to out of the ordinary for the show thus far except they gave the title of the episode, which was "Farewell Comrades" ("Later, Buddy" in the dub) which were Kamina's last words! They put the title card at the end of the episode for a reason!
The trailer for Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid at the end of "Episode 00" spoils that Gauron survived the explosion at the end of the first season.
Completely averted by the back cover of the final volume of Death Note, which, instead of giving a brief plot summary, simply says "The battle ends here!"
- Mostly the same with the preview for it in Volume 11, although if you think about it, showing Light's watch could be considered a minor spoiler.
One news post about Naruto chapters 430-434 (mislabeled as 425-429 mentioned that "when one of Naruto's comrades intervenes, more tragedy may be in store." While they did warn about spoilers, the event in question (Hinata's confessing her love to Naruto and trying to defend him against Pain) doesn't happen until Chapter 437.
Yu Yu Hakusho's season four boxset mentions Yusuke dying and coming back with the help of his demonic genes.
You can always tell in Inu Yasha when a character will be making a "surprise" return or Inu Yasha will be going through his monthly transformation into a human by the pictures on the chapter covers (and sometimes the volume cover).
The preview trailers and posters for the 2007 movie Fist of the North Star: The Legend of Raoh - Fierce Fighting Arc spoils the fact that Raoh dies. Considering the movie is an adaptation of a key story arc in a 24-year-old manga, this is a combination of You Should Know This Already and It Was His Sled.
Trailers for various iterations of Neon Genesis Evangelion contain ruthless spoilerage. An ADV trailer briefly showed Misato and Ritsuko's death scenes from Episode 25, and a "next episode" trailer spoils Rei II's death; virtually every frame of the Manga Entertainment trailer for The End of Evangelion showcases massive spoilers, among them the invasion of NERV HQ, the Misato-Shinji kiss scene, Asuka's death scene, and the appearance of GNR; even an early Japanese trailer for Death & Eo E features a voiceover spoiling Rei's betrayal of Gendo. Admittedly, Eo E is such a spoilerific movie that it would be extremely difficult to have a trailer that spoils nothing whatsoever, but a series of Japanese TV spots seems to have figured it out (and encapsulated the general spirit of the movie into 15 seconds, to boot:)
The preview for episode 23 of Bokurano spoils the fact that Machi is the next selected pilot.
The DVD menus for the newest US release (Remix, I believe) of Cowboy Bebop do this terribly. The opening menu sequence on the first disk features the scene right before Spike dies..
The English trailer for Kiki's Delivery Service shows the climax of the movie: Kiki saving Tombo after regaining her powers.
The back of the third DVD volume for Code Geass R2 shows Charles with a code mark on his hand, as well as a dying V.V..
Lantis' 5-minute trailer for The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi spoiled THE ENTIRE MOVIE, so they had to redo it without spoilers.

Fan Fiction

Film

One of the District 9 trailers shows a Prawn folding a piece of scrap into a flower. Once you've seen the movie, you know that that Prawn is Wikus a year or so after the events of the movie. It's a subtle spoiler, but it gives the image that much more weight when you have context.
Watch the trailer for Gray Matter. Congratulation, you have just seen the entire movie. Sure, there was a lot of drama in the middle, but that was the whole movie right there.
Watch ANY of the commercials for The Powerpuff Girls movie and you've watched the whole thing (and this could've been why the movie didn't do so well).
Home Alone was really bad about this. The trailer showed every booby trap and pratfall. And let's face it, anyone who watched that movie watched it for the "Straw Dogs for kids"-style pratfalls, not the chance to see Macaulay Culkin act out every young boy's fantasies of living without parental supervision while bonding with the creepy neighbor who turns out to be a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold.
This is common with Robert Zemeckis's films; for instance, the trailer for Cast Away reveals that Tom Hanks makes it off the island in the end, and What Lies Beneath's trailer revealed that the dead girl is the girl that the main character's husband had an affair with, not only ruining the first three quarters of the movie, but making the dead end that she chases for first half (she thought it was her neighbor's dead wife, who wasn't dead at all) laughably obvious. Zemeckis argues that the audience most of his films are targeted toward want to know about the plot twists ahead of time rather than having an Genre Shift sprung on them.
- The trailers for Zemeckis' Beowulf are a notable exception, as they don't give away much of the plot. Ironic in a sense, since the story is over 1500 years old and anyone who paid attention in middle school knows the ending anyway.
Most comedy films today seem to put all the best jokes in the trailer. Some wags claim that the marketing department does this to disguise the fact that all the jokes not in the trailer just aren't funny.
- Look at the number of jokes per trailer. If a film has three trailers, and they all use the same jokes, they were the only funny ones in the movie. If they use different jokes (or emphasize different parts of the movie), the odds are better.
Sky High's trailer makes it seem like the main conflict of the movie is the main character's lack of super powers. Then, approximately 10 seconds later, it shows him with super strength and flight — at which point the viewer realizes there's probably more to this movie that they're not telling him, and there goes the element of surprise.
The Spider-Man films haven't been very discreet:
- The trailer for Spider-Man 2 shows the strain Peter is under as Spider-Man, him quitting the superhero biz, Doc Ock's origin, his deal with Harry Osborn, him kidnapping Mary Jane, Peter becoming Spider-Man again only to be delivered to Harry by Ock and unmasked; essentially, the first four-fifths of the movie.
- The Spider-Man 3 trailer shows Spider-Man's new popularity, Peter's decision to marry Mary Jane, Harry attacking Peter as the New Goblin, Harry being hospitalised, Sandman's origin, Peter discovering that Sandman killed his uncle, being taken over by the symbiote and turning evil, fighting Sandman, Sandman being dissolved in water, Peter fighting Eddie Brock, throwing a bomb at Harry, hurting Mary Jane, realising he's gone too far and tearing the black suit off.
- By this standard, the original Spider-Man trailer seems restrained in only revealing about two thirds of the plot.
  - Are you kidding? I don't see how including half of the movie's closing scene monologue in the trailer is 'restrained'.
  - That in and of itself isn't much of a spoiler, as it doesn't mention why Peter's in the graveyard at the end (although it's quite obvious he survived his last battle with the Green Goblin, as well as all the ones before it). The parts the trailer does spoil are mostly You Should Know This Already.
In certain circles (that is, the obsessive ones), the trailer for The Two Towers is rather notorious for giving away what is clearly set up in the film (and even more so in the book) as a point of mystery and contention — the identity of the mysterious White Wizard who is following Aragorn's Terrific Trio around.
- In the book, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas were totally surprised to find out that Gandalf had returned from the dead, and when they heard about a "White Wizard", and even at first when they finally came across him, they thought it was Saruman, not Gandalf. In the movie, to maintain this, Peter Jackson actually went so far as to have Gandalf the White speak in Christopher Lee's voice until they actually reveal Gandalf's face. However, the trailers totally blew the whole thing.
  - Actually, it was really Ian Mc Kellen doing a brilliant Christopher Lee impression, as is emphasized in the DVD appendices.
The trailer for GoldenEye revealed the plot twist that Bond's old partner 006 (Trevelyan) was the film's main villain.
- The box art for You Only Live Twice prominently shows the full likeness of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, which is shown in that movie for the first time. It isn't exactly a major plot twist, but it doesn't seem appropriate for a villain who famously spent at least two a half movies with his face just off-camera.
Manages to change the genre of Danny Boyle's Sunshine, making it a hybrid with Never Trust A Trailer. Pretty much all the trailers and TV spots reveal that not only is their ship's predecessor intact, it's got a rather deranged survivor on board. If you don't know that's coming, you get a philosophical space-drama with a smattering of tense, but brief, action scenes and somewhat ill-advised twist at the end. If you do know, you find yourself watching a slasher film and waiting through a solid hour of scene-setting for the killer to turn up. One can only imagine that this was done to attract a wider audience, who would write off the film's actual genre as nerd-fodder.
- Also, when Sunshine quickly appeared on DVD, online ads for it played a movie that basically said watch how all 8 crewmembers of the Icarus II die and played a montage displaying just that.
Trailers for The Negotiator revealed that Spacey's character would eventually side with Jackson's.
- David Letterman parodied the trope using an expanded version of this particular trailer. His version included an announcer who summed up the entire movie plotline beginning to end ("Oh, and this guy dies too.")
The trailer for Charlies Angels: Full Throttle revealed the identity of the Big Bad despite its being set up as a big surprise in the film itself. As if that's not bad enough, in pre-release promotional interviews and press pieces, everyone involved was frank and forthcoming with the Big Bad's identity.
In the John Woo film Heroes Shed No Tears, the film's trailer spoils Every. Single. Named Protagonist death with the exception of two, both of which would be too gruesome for the trailer.
The trailer for Star Trek III ended with the shot of the Enterprise spectacularly exploding while the narrator says "Join us on this, the final voyage of the Starship Enterprise!" Although this is not really the "ending" - it occurs about midway through the film - the producers had wanted the ship's destruction to come as a complete surprise to the audience. Obviously, that didn't happen.
The trailer of The Sixth Sense spoiled a major revelation, which made a large chunk of the film rather lame since everyone knew what was going on. Luckily, that's not all there is to it.
- It did, however, manage to make it trivial to discern the central twist of the film from the beginning; something that would have been avoided slightly had the trailer not given away a key piece of information.
In Shrek 2, the nature of Puss N Boots (a cute little kitty who just happens to be a mercenary) is clearly meant to be a comedic twist, but the trailers practically made it the main selling point. Not to mention the merchandise, which spoiled Shrek turning into a handsome human temporarily, while Shrek 3 's merchandise spoiled the birth of the Shreklings (Shrek and Fiona's children), as well as the Distressed Damsel princesses going Action Girl.
In Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku's effectiveness as a mysterious villain (as parodied in a Thumbnail Theatre) would undoubtedly have been more effective if his action figure packaging hadn't given away the fact that he was a Sith Lord months before the movie was released.
- Episode 1's soundtrack had a couple of track names that gave away the fact that a major character died. In the "Humorous Version" script parody, the soon-to-be-dead character refers to this spoiler, and the ensuing altercation is joined by George Lucas and John Williams:
  JW: What was I supposed to do? Label Track 15 as "Some Nifty Jazzy-Type Music Followed by Heartwrenching Violin Music" and Track 16 as "The High Council Meeting and A Bunch of Basses That Sound Like They're Singing a Catholic Monk Death Chant"?
  GL: (thinking) You know, that could've worked.
  JW: Really? I thought about it, but then I decided that it would be a lot cheaper to go with the labels already on there.
  - The soundtrack of X2: X-Men United also has a track named after a character death (and it's punny: "Death Strikes Deathstryke").
The opening scene of Cars is very clearly set up as a surprising reveal of the fact that this is a world of talking cars... of course, any promos that featured even one picture of a character gives that away.
The Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End trailer clearly shows Will Turner on the helm of the Flying Dutchman as he becomes Captain. You can even see the scar on his chest.
- Every single trailer showed Jack Sparrow, clearly back from the dead. Sure, it was pretty obvious that would be happening in the last movie, but it still might have been more tense had they avoided showing him at all in the trailers.
  - But then, this would turn into a You Should Know This Already if they hadn't, and considering the sequel came out only a year after the previous one...
- And the poster/DVD cover for At World's End spoils the twist ending from the second movie (Barbossa is Back From The Dead).
  - Doesn't count, actual progression from movie to movie isn't a spoiler, it's your own fault for going to see a sequel without seeing the previous movie first.
The Planet Of The Apes movie features the melted Statue of Liberty on the DVD case.
- But, if you're buying the DVD, you should know this already.
The Icelandic national TV station (RÚV) makes a habit of giving a brief description of each film they show before the airing. These descriptions are usually summaries of about 2/3rds of the movie's plot.
Meet The Parents would have been lot funnier if the trailer hadn't given away that the girl's father isn't really a retired florist but actually an ex-interrogator for the CIA.
A cross between this and Never Trust A Trailer, everything from the trailers to the box art of Jason X market Jason's futuristic upgrades which he only gets within the last 15 minutes of the movie.
- The trailers for the original Friday the 13th and its first sequel showed enough of every death scene in the movie to know who was going to die before ever seeing the film. Also a case of Never Trust A Trailer as both trailers implied that there were thirteen deaths in each movie, when in fact there were only ten.
A late trailer (released after the film had been out for a few months) to Terminator 2: Judgement Day gave away the fact that Schwarzenegger's Terminator character was now the hero, and Robert Patrick was a shapeshifting villain rather than another Kyle Reese resistance fighter, a fact the film goes to great lengths to conceal until the big reveal. That said, the early trailers were quite good about keeping it ambiguous.
- The long trailer of Terminator 3, while not revealing much of the plot, has scenes from the entire movie (from the final part, mostly "the T-X has corrupted my systems" and the fight at the bunker's entrance).
- Likewise, the trailers for Terminator: Salvation give away the fact that Marcus is a Terminator, something that's set up as a big reveal in the film.
A trailer for The Incredible Hulk shows Robert Downey Jr. appearing as Tony Stark. This is the last scene in the movie.
- And you can tell too, the last shot of Norton doing the green eye thing is clearly meant to be the the last thing you see before the credits roll. Then they roll the Stinger and it breaks the whole mood.
  - They pushed the Tony Stark appearance for fan-boy appeal. They knew they had hit something big with Samuel L Jackson showing up in Iron Man, and also knew the last attempt at Hulk was dismal. Showing a connection to a proven blockbuster powerhouse was pushing from above to try and harness the salvating geekdom.
- On the other hand, the post-credits scene from Iron Man is just about the only really cool thing in the movie that wasn't shown in the trailer.
- Besides that, the theatrical trailer shows you everything else in the movie: that the Hulk is being pursued around the world by an elite military force, that one member has a pretty bad grudge against him, that they capture the Hulk and derive a Hulk-making serum from him, which they use on said soldier, which turns him into another Hulk, and the two have a big showdown fight.
- The Blu-ray packaging for Iron Man clearly shows Obadiah Stane in the Iron Monger suit on the back.
  - Does it really count if you're buying the movie and it's not a straight-to-DVD? Cause I see a huge difference between doing that on the theater poster, and doing it 6 months later on the DVD cover.
  - It counts, believe it or not, some people don't have time to watch EVERY movie in theatres and therefore rent them on DVD and it sorta sucks when the DVD menu or box ruins the "twist" ending for you. It's much worse when renting a Television series to watch for the first time though, as they often have pictures accompanying each episode and 90% of these pictures ruin the major plot twist in said episode.
  - Considering that Stane was a big-time villain in the comics(early-ish 80s, true, but still) that was the only guy to hit Stark hard enough that he fell off the wagon and ended up in the gutter, destitute and despairing - that twist wasn't much of a twist in the first place for some of us.
The General's daughter is a thriller full of plot twists. The trailer spoiled every single one of them. (It even almost spoiled the actual murderer. While it didn't show the murderer, it showed a short clip from the final scene, where the murderer is revealed.)
The trailer for First Daughter spoils the true identity of the boyfriend, a surprise twist revealed very late in the movie.
The trailers for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer reveal the plot point that the team exchanges powers, and shows the climax where they combine all their powers into Human Torch.
- The teaser spoils the movie's first five minutes (okay, it basically is the movie's first five minutes) but it doesn't give away anything else at all. That's pretty impressive, in our day and age.
The original theatrical trailer for The Godfather features stills from the movie, including almost every single murder.
The Dark Knight's trailers featured a few scenes involving Gordon (the Joker interrogation, smashing the Batsignal) that took place after his apparent death, tipping viewers off that he wasn't really dead.
- There was also, however, a clever double-subversion. In the trailers, the last thing we see of Rachel Dawes involves the Joker pushing her out a window. They had even gone so far as to take Rachel's lines out of context so that we only saw footage of her at the restaurant and the charity benefit party, you to conclude that she dies at the party. In the movie, though, she gets saved. The double-subversion, of course, is that she does in fact die...later.
Though Pro-Mole has not seen The Grudge, his cousin assures that all the "scary moments" of the movie are presented in the trailer. We may as well induce that it also happens for The Grudge 2.
Death Race´s trailer appears to cover the entire plot. If anyone was watching for that rather than Jason Stathem based violence, they'd be disappointed.
Soylent Green had this, in that in one part of the trailer, it shows the main character seeing a conveyor belt with body bags on it, and in the next cut, you can see soylent green on the same conveyor belt. Then the trailer voice asks, "What is the secret of Soylent Green?"
The trailer for Hancock averted revealing that Charlize Theron also has super powers. The DVD preview ruins it, the cover kinda alludes it.
You know the part of the trailer for Quarantine where the lady gets dragged screaming into the darkness? That was the ending to the movie. This is also featured on the DVD cover, TV spots, and every piece of marketing for the film.
- It's also a pretty powerful shot. Without knowing the context, it doesn't spoil a lot...until you actually sit down to watch it. Then you're just waiting until it happens.
- It's the lead character being dragged away screaming. It spoils everything... unless you are a complete idiot, that is. The fact that the shot was everywhere (even as a loading animation on the movie's web site) made it a case of Executives Are Morons.
- This only applies if the viewer is aware that the main character was the one in that shot. Ambiguous.
This trailer for the 1999 Animal Farm film may be more respectful to the film than the rest of the promotion, but it also spoiled the corruption of the pigs by the end of the movie.
- Considering the stature of the source book (including being frequently taught in schools, at least in the US), isn't this a case of You Should Know This Already?
  - Really, considering the Cultural Osmosis behind the themes of the book.
The trailer (not to mention the VHS cover art) for Meet The Feebles shows the surprise ending in action.
Balls Of Fury tries really hard to make Feng's identity a secret, despite that Christopher Walken is 99% of the star power (the other 1% being, of course, James Hong).
Mercifully averted in Tropic Thunder - the movie stars Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black. It also features cameos by Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey, but doesn't pretend they're the stars.
Collateral treats Tom Cruise/Vincent's occupation as a secret, but you already knew it if you saw any promotion at all. Even critics were unsure how to treat this bit of information, most saying something to the effect of "I guess this is a spoiler, but it's already spoiled." In a hilarious bit of probably accidental hypocrisy, Roger Ebert's review kindly tells you not to finish reading it if you don't already know, but the picture and caption at the top of the webpage give it away anyway.
Double Jeopardy was infamous for its trailer revealing that: Ashley Judd goes to jail for the murder of her husband, she finds out her husband is alive, a fellow inmate informs her that she cannot be convicted for the same crime twice, and that she menacingly points a gun on her husband while Tommy Lee Jones (who was investigating Judd) sits back and watches.
The trailers for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button pretty much detail every event in the entire movie, showing just about everything important that happens in Benjamin's life.
Averted by the trailer for the fake documentary This Is Spinal Tap. The trailer I saw showed director Reiner at an editing bench, apologizing for not having any scenes ready to show, and instead showing a fake documentary short about a "Cheese festival."
The trailer (or at least one of them) for Twilight gave away absolutely everything. Although, to be fair, I suppose the vast majority of people who watched it already read the book (the rest undoubtedly didn't care either way, having been dragged in kicking and screaming by their girlfriends).
- The sequel, New Moon, is even worse! The first trailer for it was fine, it stopped at the first major plot revelation. But the second trailer? Well that just takes one scene from pretty much every plot point in the movie, save the VERY last one, and mashes it all together in a sequential montage! You could nearly write the Wikipedia plot summary with just that trailer alone!
The case of the VHS I first watched of George Romero's original Dawn Of The Dead has a picture on the spine of one of the main characters dead and zombified, an event that occurs about ten minutes from the end.
In the trailer for Critters IV they give away every turning point, everyone who dies, and how all of the critters are killed.
National Treasure 2 was pretty bad about trailer spoilers. Ben kidnaps the president, Ben was just kidding when it looks like he loses his hand to the eagle, the treasure is hidden under Mt. Rushmore. It's pretty bad when a movie's trailers subject it to You Should Have Forgotten This By Now spoiler tagging.
The trailer for Judd Apatow's latest, Funny People, shows that Adam Sandler's character has a life-threatening disease. That's part of the premise that's been widely-known. Then it goes and says outright that he may have beaten the damn thing. According to many online script reviews, this happens two-thirds into the film. Yep.
The TV-movie When A Stranger Calls suffered from this in that the promos spoiled just about every single plot point. The kicker? When it was recently remade into a theatrical film, the theatrical film had the exact same issue.
- The movie is based on an old campfire ghost story, so this really should be an issue of You Should Know This Already.
The trailer for Carrie shows pretty much all the climax of the film, including the deaths of every significant character, which begs the question of why anyone, having seen it, would actually go and see the film.
- I watch it for the shower scenes.
- Not a trailer, but "The 101" (a Direct TV exclusive channel) advertised it as "A teenage psychic wreaks havoc at her high school prom". Way to not only skewer the plot, but also portray Carrie White as the villain!
The trailer for Snake Eyes reveals that Gary Sinise is the villain even though this is supposed to be a twist revelation over half an hour into the film.
The Fall starts out as a cute story about a couple of patients in a hospital narrating and imagining a fantastical epic. It slowly sinks into a darker tone when you realize that one of the main characters is suicidal, eventually becoming very dark indeed. The trailer showed the main character attempting suicide, explained outright that he had made up the story to get his friend to steal morphine for him, and showed the death of nearly every main character.
The trailers for What Lies Beneath, they reveal the identity of the ghost, which makes watching the wife sneak around suspecting the neighbor of killing his wife painful and awkward to watch.
Coraline. Sigh. I realize it was already a book, but come on, give me a reason to watch!
- This must not apply unless you've read the book, then, because I had no idea what the hell was going on in the trailer.
- Seriously, they really should not have shown the scene where the Other Mother gives Coraline the buttons and sewing needles] in the trailer, because that gives basically the whole plot away! If they DIDN'T show that, the story would've been a bit more kind of creepy and it'd be more of a mystery as to what's with all the buttons, and what The Other Mother wants with her, but there it is, in the trailer, so you KNOW that's coming.
This trailer for Dead Or Alive is notable for including the very last scene in the movie. Now, it's a short gag scene, but it does reveal that Kasumi and Ayane end up on the same side despite Ayane spending most of the movie trying to kill Kasumi.
The trailer for Hot Fuzz focuses almost entirely on the two main characters fighting against the entire population of a surprisingly well armed rural community, despite the fact that not only does this not happen until two thirds through the movie, but it reveals that Danny does a Heel Face Turn, before he is ever revealed to be on the same side as the townsfolk.
The trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine inavertedly revealed Weapon XI, whom Wolverine fights at the end of the film. And the toy packaging spoiled that he is Deadpool.
In The Sum of All Fears, the trailer reveals that the bomb goes off.
The latest Trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Go out of it's way to reveal Megatron's return.
- To be fair, anyone who thought Megatron wouldn't back for the sequel really should've known otherwise.
- Also, Devastator would have been a kickass awesome surprise. Now, he's just going to be kickass awesome.
  - Then again, now that I think about it, the appearance of the Constructicons would have given that away from the moment we see them.
- My God this page is getting too long. A new commercial spoiled Sideway's death! Now granted this happens extremely early on in the movie, still.
In A Nightmare On Elm Street only 4 characters are killed, the trailer shows all of the deaths and the order they happen.
The trailer for Woody Allen's Whatever Works shows Boris's second suicide attempt, which occurs near the end of the movie.
Commando's plot is already razor-thin anyways, and it's transparently obvious that the bad guys will lose since it's a 1980s-style action movie. So just to really rub salt in the wound, the trailer ruins the movie... by ruining almost all of the best catch phrases, including the immortal, "Let Off Some Steam, Bennett!"
- Not the only Arnie movie to be spoilt either. Total Recall's main trailer is pretty much the majority of the movie, especially the best parts ("Consider that a divorce!"). The trailers for Eraser give away that James Caan is the villain.
It was bad enough that Jurassic Park had trailers that showed off the impressive special effects in the film, spoiling key moments in the film. There were also special programs that gave away the rest of the special effects, so by the time you made it to the theater, the only part you hadn't seen was the character development.
- Jurassic Park had character development?
The trailer for Multiplicity gave away that the movie has four Michael Keatons, a development that does not happen until about 80 minutes into the 120 minute movie.
The people editing the trailer for The Machinist thought it would be a brilliant idea to hint at the plot twist at the end too heavily, including the answer to hangman game, "KILLER".
At least one trailer for From Dusk Till Dawn makes explicitly clear that the inhabitants of the bar are vampires, which is a twist halfway through the movie.
A home video trailer for [Titan A.E. showed the entire movie, start to finish, in order, including the final scenes of a new Earth being formed and the lead characters on it. Why bother to see the movie?
The longer trailers for Titanic condense the storyline, bar the ending, into 4-minute form.
Older trailers are far more notorious. For instance, do NOT, under any circumstances, watch the trailer for Chinatown before the movie. Nearly every major plot twist is shown and even the final scene and line ("Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown"). All in order.
Either played straight or subverted by the badass posters for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince showing the good guys (Harry, Dumbledore, Hermione, Ron) lining up against the bad guys (Draco, Greyback, Bellatrix and Snape). Played straight in that this is the book where Snape finally shows his allegiances at the end by killing Dumbledore, but subverted in that in the next one it's revealed he was working on Dumbledore's orders the whole time.
- Soooo... he really did show his allegiance?
The trailer for the movie The Million Dollar Hotel shows a scene of Jeremy Davies' character TomTom confessing that he "went ahead and pushed him off".
Since the Eiffel Tower's collapse is the Money Shot of GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra, its inclusion on the trailer kinda ruins some of the tension of the Paris scenes. A scene from the final part of the movie involving an airplane being devoured by Nanomachines is also in the previews.
In the first few seconds of the 500 Days Of Summer teaser trailer, you'll see that Summer is clearly wearing a wedding ring, not necessarily a spoiler but with the narration claiming "This is not a Love Story", it gives you a pretty big hint that the two will not end up together.
- The film's opening shows Tom and Summer holding hands, so showing her hand with a ring on it doesn't show any more than the first couple of minutes, and the audience doesn't know that Tom's not her fiance.
The TV commercials for 9 try their best to hide things by cutting rapidly from scene to scene, but they still manage to spoil 2's funeral, the destruction of the Fabrication Machine, the Cat Beast's death, and several of the dolls having their souls sucked out by the talisman. Geeze!
Most of the footage for the theatrical trailer of The Last Starfighter comes from the last half hour of the movie.
The trailer for the live-action adaptation of Bratz pretty much tells the entire movie's story.
Somehow, not a single person noticed the poster for 300 was one of Leonidas with arrows sticking out of his chest.
- Actually, this is a case of You Should Know This Already, since the Battle of Thermopylae actually occurred, and all the Greeks, Spartans, etc. died.
- Not to mention the Graphic Novel the movie was based on
Several trailers for The Boat That Rocked (Pirate Radio in the US) showed the D Js choosing to ignore the new laws passed to ban pirate radio, and the boat flooding.
The Island built up suspense in the beginning that was impacted by revealing in the trailer that the people shown were clones and showing the escape into the real world which all was part of the midway twist along with figuring out what the island was.
If you watched the trailer for Law Abiding Citizen, you see every single murder that is committed in the movie. Plus a clip of the last scene, just for good measure.
The DVD trailer for The Hangover spoils almost every significant plot event, including that Ed Helms marries a hooker, that the group is attacked by an Asian gang, the poker scene, and the fact that there are two Dougs in the film.
The trailer for Up spoiled that Charles Muntz is the villain.
The trailer for Affliction is a very serious example: it shows the ending of the movie, where Nick Nolte's character kills his father and then burns the body.
The green-band trailer for the upcoming Repo Men appears to show the death of Liev Schreiber's character, in addition to most of the plot.
The entire campaign for Surrogates was a spoiler: James Cromwell's character (who invented the surrogates) describes them as "an addiction", which makes him easy to guess as the killer, and every trailer and TV spot showed the surrogates shutting down and collapsing in the street, which is the ending to the movie.
This editor has seen the trailer for Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist. He now finds it unnecessary to see the actual movie.
- A ~~good~~ bad call; it saved you from having to watch the ~~worst~~ best kick-in-the-balls Twist Ending in recent history, depending on which troper you talk to.
Both the trailer and the description on the back of Happy Accidents give away that Sam may or may not be from the future and he is trying to save Ruby from dying. The movie is great either way, but it's more effective if you don't know this information beforehand.
New trailers for Paranormal Activity show a shot of Micah's body flying toward the camera from the final scene (and the only interesting part of the movie).
Admittedly, the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty has been around for fifty years, and the story is far older than that... but did the ads for the DVD really have to show both of the climactic moments (Maleficient's spectacular defeat and the "awakening" itself) front and center?

Literature

By far the worst (and oldest) variety of this is the back cover of a novel. While the actual cover of most books has little or nothing to do with the story, the back is generally taken nearly verbatim from the author's pitch by some uncaring copy editor and often consists of nothing but concentrated spoilers for all the book's most important plot points, this is especially dangerous for novels due to the fact that a book that takes a week or more to read casually can be completely spoiled by a stray glance at the back of its dust jacket.
- The blurbs on the omnibus editions of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books are particularly bad, although the task is made harder by the blurb needing to be for at least two books at once.
- Many editions of Twilight mention in the blurb that Edward's a vampire, thereby robbing the first two hundred pages of any sense of mystery.
  - This is arguably a case of All There Is To Know About The Crying Game as I doubt anyone has read the book without this foreknowledge.
- This, however, was subverted by the cover text for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It says, though not in so many words, "Hey, this is the seventh book in the Harry Potter series. Either you're reading this while waiting in the checkout line to buy it, or you aren't interested in Harry Potter and thus aren't ever going to read this. So there's no point in having an advertisement here."
  - The text on the inside front of the hardback edition's dust jacket is somewhat longer, but still amounts to that.
- A cheap supermarket paperback thriller called Rabid, about the rabies virus getting into the animal population in Great Britain, one of the few completely rabies-free places in the world (and thus a place where pets are not rabies-vaccinated). In a twist at the very end — literally on the last page of the book — the virus mutates into an airborne strain. The back-cover copy ended with, "And when the virus mutated, became airborne, the whole world would learn what it was to become ... RABID!"
- For some editions of The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, the back cover clearly spoils that Noys was sent back from the distant future to stop Harlan and the Eternity. Thanks a lot!
- Asimov's Foundation series books are even worse, at least the European versions. The back cover blurb for each book describes, in a fair amount of detail, events that only happen near or at the very end of that book, which leaves the reader very confused for a while ("This isn't about what the back cover said it would be about!") and then very annoyed as soon as it becomes obvious that the climax of the story has been spoiled.
  - By the way: Second Foundation is now published in Italy as Seconda Fondazione, but the old editions were titled L'altra faccia della spirale (The other side of the spiral), an hint for the twisted ending (Characters in the book know that the Second Foundation is "at the other end of the galaxy" respect to planet Terminus (which is located at the edge of the galaxy): they think that, since "a circle has no end", the Second Foundation is hidden on Terminus itself. They don't realize that the galaxy is not a circle, but a spiral: at the end of the book it's revealed that the Second Foundation is actually at the center of the galaxy!)
- Some versions of the Wheel Of Time books are odd about this, as they give away plot points that only become relevant for the next book.
- Through the webmaster of his official website—he claimed to not have an Internet connection himself—Terry Goodkind, author of the Sword Of Truth novels, actually warned his fans that the cover blurb of book six was disgustingly spoilerish and not to read it before they read the book.
- I have yet to see a cover for Tuck Everlasting that doesn't ruin the surprise.
- In an edition of Strugatsky's "The Powerless Ones of this World", published by a certain big Polish publisher, the plot summary on the back cover consists of nothing more than... a direct spoiler of the surprise ending.
- The Harper Collins paperback 2000 version of the Aubrey-Maturin series every book has a summary of between 2 and 4 of the next in the series (each book after the first 4 of so is pretty much a continuous series) in the back. As the books also have anecdotes and essays after the true end of the book (which is disguised to surprise the reader), you can read an essay on the book you just read, then accidentally spoil yourself for the next book.
I sort of remember reading a book where somewhere in the beginning, it mentioned something about looking at the last page to find out the ending. When you did exactly that, it said something along the lines of 'Hey! Read this in order, you loser!' I don't remember the book's title or the plot at all. Of course, my memory could be playing tricks on me...
- You're thinking "The Kid who Ran for President."
- In "How to Become a Perfect Person in Just Three Days", a boy finds a book that tells him how to become perfect in one week. The first page of the book stated that the secret to perfection was at the end. So he flipped to the last page... which called him a dope for falling for it and told him to do it properly.
Tolkien, it seems, hated the name that his editor gave the third volume of The Lord Of The Rings, The Return of the King because it gave away one of the major plot points: the fact that Aragorn, finally, decides to accept becoming the King. Of course, it has a double meaning, it could easily hint to a Downer Ending of Sauron getting the ring and rising to power.
- Nearly all Italian editions of The Lord Of The Rings have an Introduction by Elémire Zolla (Italian literary critic, essayist and philosopher). Initially it looks just like it is, i.e., a preface, comparing Tolkien's masterpiece to other famous works of the past... but at a certain point it starts talking about the plot, and before you can realize, in about 10 (TEN!) pages it has summarized the whole book, revealing the main plot twists (e.g. Gandalf's death and rebirth) and the twisted ending - you know, the one it's NOT in Peter Jackson's film (Saruman attacking the Shire)).
One particular edition of Gone with the Wind summarised the events right up to the very last chapter, ending by saying: "When their daughter dies, Rhett leaves his Scarlett forever."
Books of "literary merit" often have a preface that discusses the meaning of life, the universe, and the book, casually throwing major plot points out there.
Averted, apparently by accident, on the back covers of some of the Harper Torch-published Discworld paperbacks, where it's obvious that whoever wrote the blurb had never read the books.
- Except for Guards, Guards, which gives away the fact that the dragon is crowned king, which doesn't happen until about halfway through the book and is apparently intended to be a surprise twist.
Turn of the Screw. Peter Quint's dead, and so is that governess he was dallying with. This is made out to be a surprise in the book. Thanks, blurb.
The back of Bridge To Terabithia spoils that Leslie dies.
- So does the Newbery Medal on the cover.
- So does the summary in the copyright page. Is it just me, or is this overkill?
The blurb of Came Back To Show You I Could Fly states that Angie is on drugs, a fact which is presented as a surprise reveal for the strange way that she has been acting a little more than three-quarters of the way through.
If you're about to read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, don't look at the back of the book. The trailer for the film does this as well. Seriously. AVOID.
Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth novel Cachalot is set on a world almost entirely covered by ocean, a planet to which all terrestrial cetaceans have been transplanted after they've been administered a serum which makes them as intelligent as, or more intelligent, than humans. The plot opens with the mysterious destruction of several human habitats and the arrival of a team of specialist investigators who attempt to discover what has happened. Possible candidates are the highly intelligent but aloof toothed whales, the dumb but inoffensive baleen whales, or some indigenous but unknown form of life. Except... the cover of the first UK paperback edition clearly showed a bunch of baleen whales smashing up a town. Cheers, cover artist.
If you skim the back of any Warriors from the end of the first series on before reading the rest, you know there's a cat named Firestar. After learning the naming conventions, it's pretty obvious who's going to become leader and in which book as well...
Jeffery Deaver's novel The Blue Nowhere: the book cover for at least one Italian edition reveals facts which happen halfway through the book, e.g. chief Anderson is easily murdered by the serial killer and Wyatt was an old friend of the serial killer.
Ed McBain's novel Mischief (87th Precinct series): the book cover for at least one Italian edition reveals the secret plan of The Deaf Man - what he wants to steal, from who and when. The only problem is... the plan is actually discovered only at the very end of the book!
Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: in an Italian edition (late 80s), the book cover reveals that Charlie will find a Golden Ticket. Well, that's pretty obvious. But it goes on further, revealing that the children, (cite) "one by one, will meet a dreadful fate, according to their flaws. The last one (who?) will become the new owner of the factory". The whole plot and ending spoiled!
As per usual for Tamora Pierce's books, The Will of the Empress has a nice map at the front showing the geography of the fictional country where the action takes place. One location is clearly labeled as the place where Shan ambushes and kidnaps Sandry. This is both a twist and the catalyst for the climactic conflict of the book. Many fans were displeased.
Here There Be Dragons states on the back cover that the three main characters are, in fact, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carrol and Charles Williams, when this is not revealed until the very end of the book.
The dust jacket of Warbreaker ruins a major plot twist if you think hard enough, by telling you flat out that Vasher is the titular Warbreaker, which is a major hint that Vasher is also the similarly named Peacegiver.
One recent printing of Podkayne of Mars by Robert A Heinlein features a contest on the back cover where readers wrote in on whether the main character, Podkayne, should live or die. Apparently, Heinlein wrote the latter but his editor forced him to change it to a happier ending, completely undermining the entire point of the book. This edition featured both endings, as well as choice letters.
The Club of Queer Trades is a series of off-beat detective stories by G K Chesterton. The blurb at the beginning gives away the solution to every single story.
If you're going to read a novel published by the Penguin Classics line, just don't read the back cover blurb. The worst is the Penguin (and almost any other edition of) Little Women, which states plainly that readers will "cry over Beth's untimely death", which doesn't happen well into the second half of the novel. This might be a case of It Was His Sled, but still.

Live Action TV

Happened in the Season 3 finale of Lost. The commercials for it showed Jin, Bernard, and Sayid tied up. In, the show, Ben ordered their deaths, and you hear 3 gunshots through the radio. However, the scene with them tied up did not appear yet in the episode, telling people preemptively that they were alive.
- In the penultimate episode of the 5th season, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet are seen leaving the island. However, the commercials for the finale show them back on the island. So much for that.
- Creator/producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have ordered ABC not to show any footage of season 6 in trailers for the next—and final—season. This is both because they want a large amount of suspense going into the show's conclusion, and because showing any footage at all would explain the results of season 5's massive cliffhanger.
It happens with TV trailers, too, as this entry shows.
Lampshade hung along with pretty much everything else on the Stargate SG 1 episode 200. According to Wikipedia the twist they're talking about (Jack O'Neill's sudden appearance) actually made it to the commercials for the episode.
Vala: Wow. Nobody's gonna see that coming.
Daniel: No. There'll be spoilers.
Carter: Are you kidding? It's gonna be in the commercial.
- And more recently, a commercial for Stargate Atlantis promised you "won't believe what happens in the last five minutes..." before showing you exactly what happens. Of course, may also be a subversion as the commercial's description for the rest of the episode's plot is completely off.
  - The announcer notably said in that episode's trailer: "They fall into a surprise attack of the replicators!" as the trailer shows...a Wraith ship attacking.
  - Nothing beats a sneak peek into "The Lost Tribe" giving away who the new enemies are.
  - Another possibly attempted subversion was the commercials for the episode where Teyla poses as a Wraith queen, with scenes taken out of context to imply she would end up turning against the team. The possibility isn't even mentioned in the episode itself.
- EVERY SINGLE promo for Stargate: Continuum shows Ba'al being betrayed and killed by Vala/Qatesh, which is really supposed to be a surprise.
A well-known TV example would be the trailers for the Firefly pilot (if you can call it that, considering it was the last episode aired). The major act break at the half-way point of the two-hour episode was supposed to have been revealing what was in the box Simon was so anxious to keep secret. This was ruined by the fact that the FOX promos spoiled it from the get go, as well as showing the moment the box was opened in the opening credits.
- Considering it was the last episode aired, an astute viewer probably would've had it figured out.
  - But if you're showing the series to someone new you can get a great reaction by not letting them see the opening credits so they don't know which people are regular cast members until the end of the first episode.
Happens pretty often in trailers for the 2000s Battlestar Galactica. The promo for Resurrection Ship, Part 2, apparently attempted to be discreet in its final frame, which showed a hand holding a gun, aimed at Admiral Cain's head. However, the shot of the hand was detailed enough that many astute viewers, this editor included, were able to determine that it was "Gina", the Number Six Cylon imprisoned on the Pegasus, well before the resolution aired.
- Worse still, the opening Title Sequence (sometimes) contains cuts from the upcoming episode, frequently turning the opening into an automatic, hard-to-avoid spoiler.
- In the trailer for Revelations, every scene but one has already occurred by the episode's apparent ending, and that one scene can literally be missed if the viewer blinked. Even when you see it, it's ambiguous.
- The trailer for The Ties That Bind pretty much gives away the fact that Cally doesn't survive the episode, though how and why are still a mystery.
- The Hub had an interesting case. The trailers showed the newly-ressurrected D'Anna telling Roslin that she is a Cylon. Many viewers wondered if it was real or creative editing. As it was revealed, D'Anna did say that to Roslin. However, she said to to mess with Roslin's head. In the commentaries of the episode, Ronald D. Moore expressed great anger that they ruined the joke by putting it in the trailer.
  - Not to mention showing D'Anna was a spoiler in itself.
Law And Order sometimes gives away the twist in the commercial for it, or even in the preview right before they play the ep.
The new Doctor Who does this for literally every episode in a breathtakingly revealing "sneak peek" at the end of each installment. Sometimes, if you're lucky, the sneak peek will be after the credits so you can skip it. (This happens when an episode ends on a cliff-hanger; the first such episode aired with the preview in the usual place, and even people who generally didn't mind the previews were moved to complain.) Oh, and let's not forget the sneak peek at the end of each Christmas episode about the next season.
- The trailer for "Bad Wolf" gives away the twist that the Daleks are behind the deadly game shows the Doctor and Co find themselves in.
- The sneak peek for "Army of Ghosts" at the end of "Fear Her" all but gives away that the "army of ghosts" is made up of Cybermen. This was not actually much of a surprise when you consider that the fact had already been reported in various media. However, the Daleks also appear at the last minute of the episode, a fact that the show's creators went to great lengths to keep secret... only to be spoiled by a rather obvious shot of a Dalek Death Ray firing in the same trailer.
- The American recut trailers on Sci-Fi are even worse about this. The trailer for Utopia gives away the last minute twist of the Master's return. Perhaps they thought Americans wouldn't be up enough on Doctor Who history to understand it when it came, so they spelled it out for us.
  - This however doesn't excuse what they did for the fourth season finale: the very first thing they show is David Tennant's face, spoiling that he doesn't really regenerate, and it goes downhill from there. It's like they want Americans to pirate the show from the UK...
- Subverted oh so very much in the BBC trailer for "Forest of the Dead."
  - Sci-Fi's version (as usual) pretty much ruins it, what with Donna being alive and River biting it.
- The worst example in the history of the new Who is the episode Daleks in Manhattan. The twist ending of this is the revelation of the dalek-human hybrid- whose picture was on the front of the Radio Times. I am eternally indebted to my mother, who put an envelope over it and wouldn't let anyone look until after, saving the dramatic impact of the epiode...
Subverted by Eastenders in the late 90s, when fake spoilers were inserted into trailers. One gave the impression that club owner Steve was going to be killed by his girlfriend, whereas the actual episode had it happen the other way around. Steve then framed his colleague, who subsequently escaped from prison and returned for revenge. The trailers for that episode implied that he had booby trapped several lightbulbs with explosives as revenge, but the episode had no exploding lightbulbs in it at all.
House previews occasionally seem to subvert this, by taking one of House's sarcastic lines from the next episode and implying that it is literal.
- This subversion itself may have been lampshaded by a Season 4 episode where a documentary crew, failing to get House to utter anything serious, edits their documentary to make comments like "I became a doctor because of Patch Adams" look serious.
- Polish DVD Box for 4th Season of the series is one of the greatest offenders of this trope. The whole point of the 4th season is "Who will be in House's new team". Some brillant editor thought that it would be great if he placed the three new doctors (chosen in the middle of the season!) on the DVD cover.
NBC was notorious for doing this during most if not of all of their miniseries "events", but a particularly egregious example occurred twice for The Tenth Kingdom: just after the suspenseful scenes in which Virginia and Tony were trying to buy the Traveling mirror at auction, the trailer revealed that it gets broken, and right as we're wondering if the heroes will get to the ball and stop the Evil Queen's plot in time, the trailer revealed all of Wendell's guests collapsing from poison. Next commercial break then shows us both the same guests awakening, revealing they weren't really dead and Prince and Wendell switching back—though granted, this was something of an Untwist by that late in the game. About the only major plot point not revealed by the trailers, thankfully, was that the Evil Queen was Virginia's mother.
- Not to mention Wolf stopping the Huntsman from killing Virginia at the end.
Certain seasons of Super Sentai (such as Boukenger and Gekiranger) have a nasty habit of showing story spoilers in the "next episode preview" at the end of each episode.
- In the Boukenger episode called "The Golden Sword," the Monster Of The Week is Nigh Invulnerable and utterly tearing the Rangers a new one. The trailer reveals that in the following episode, a new character could turn out to be friend or foe and might even fall under the bad guy's control. Then it goes onto show the Rangers handily beating up the monster that was killing them in the current episode, then said new character joining in and later posing with the Rangers' Humongous Mecha. Not much is saved for the actual episode at all.
During the last season of Gilmore Girls, the teaser at the end of each episode showed the very last scene of the following episode. Technically, this may have been more misdirection than spoiler, though, as the final scene of each episode was usually unrelated to the main action of the story, and was itself a lead-in for the following episode. Which is to say, that after the final scene foreshadowed the next episode, the On The Next teaser that followed showed you what amounted to a teaser for the episode two weeks down the line.
FOX has a tendency to completely ruin the element of surprise on their gameshows, including Moment of Truth and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, by having openings and "coming up after this commercial" previews which show how far along the contestant is going to get, which completely defeats the point of going to commercial after the contestant answers the question but before it is revealed if they are correct or not.
- Likewise the "later tonight" promos in their Sunday night cartoon block tend to show the best punch lines from the forthcoming shows, which would've been funnier if you had seen them in context for the first time.
Crossing over with New Media: watching NBC's online streaming of Heroes episodes, instead of the broadcast, is only for spoilerphiles and people who click 'Play' faster than they read. Their single-sentence summary for "Angels and Monsters" manages to completely give away the ending of Claire's plotline: the guy kills himself.
- Season 3 of Heroes is bad with this. Not only is the arc titled "Villains", but the trailer reveals that there are 12 new "Sylars" and that the original will get his powers back. Didn't stop them from making the break out in the second episode look like a Big Reveal...
  - Erm. Sylar got his powers back at the end of season 1. And complaining that the title gives away the general direction is like complaining that the title "Spider-Man" spoils that there's a guy getting the powers of a spider.
German TV stations are particularly notorious for this. A trailer for Evolution with David Duchovny featured one of the movie's final scenes, a trailer for season 2 of Lost featured the confrontation between Mr. Eko and the smoke monster, a trailer for season 4 reveals who the Oceanic Six (one of the "main" mysteries in the first half of the season) are and on top of that features scenes from the season finale (the Oceanic Six arriving at home, the island disappearing), and so on.
One immensely frustrating one occurred to Star Trek Voyager. At the very end (literally in the last five seconds) of the otherwise unrelated episode "Blood Fever," the crew discover a Borg corpse, setting up the next episode, "Unity," and the primary threat of the remainder of the series. It was pretty effective — it came completely out of left field and chillingly evoked one of the most terrifying enemies in the Trek mythos (regardless of how unforgivably Villain Decayed they would subsequently become). So what do the producers do? Why, they put that scene right in the trailer, of course.
- Voyager's "The Chute" is a classic example. Paris and Kim are thrown in an alien prison, and about halfway through comes the revelation that they can't break out because the prison is in space. It's a very dramatic shot that would no doubt have been more effective if it hadn't been in the commercial.
Reality shows on Bravo typically show the judges' harsher comments and contestant reaction shots/defenses. Although this is sometimes subverted, like one time where a comment was said in the trailer and the contestant shot showed him tilting his head back and going down, as if in frustration/agony. In the episode, he was in the top 3.
MadTV regularly did this with fake trailers (notably the one for the Rocket Revengers in Excito-Color movie). The narrator asks the audience various things like "Who will die?", followed by footage of that person dying, going so far as to even show the ending of the film. ("You'll have to pay big money to find out Tooka's secret; that she's carrying Tiny's baby!")
Even Showtime manages to do this. A trailer for season three of The Tudors aired before the season began showed Henry being introduced to his fourth wife, with a voice-over of how marriage to her would add military might to England, thus spoiling the mid-season plot point of Queen Jane dying.
- But that actually happened in real life. It's history. So whether it's a spoiler at all is subjective.
24 is somewhat notorious for this among fans; there's a fairly large portion of the fanbase that refuses to watch the "On The Next" previews at the end of each episode. Since the show takes place in real time and is largely fixated on the suspense of "what happens next", it's easy for a preview to take the suspense out of quite a few minutes of the upcoming episode. Examples are really too numerous to list, but here's a fairly recent one:
- At the end of an episode in season 7, the ambassador from Sangala had locked himself and his wife in a panic room. The bad guys are outside, wondering how they can get to him. Cue the preview for next week, which shows the room being flooded with gas. Naturally, it's no surprise next week when Jack Bauer (working undercover) suggests that he can create a gas out of household items and pump it through the ventilation system.
- Season 3 had a very notorious example. At this point in the season, there was a powdered form of a virus being transported in a plastic bag by a mule (just a kid who agreed to carry something over the Mexican border). CTU spent the entire episode trying to track down the package and the kid. Then, after the episode was over the preview literally had Jack Bauer yelling "THE VIRUS IS OUT!" in absolute panic. Granted, it turned out to be a false alarm but 24 fandom was so pissed off at potentially being spoiled that complaints were flown at FOX's direction and addressed. This resulted in the previews being treated as spoilers in 24 fandom discussion.
The On The Next trailers of the original Star Trek were terrible about this. Particularly egregious is the preview of "The City on the Edge of Forever", which so effectively summarizes the whole episode that it plays more like a Previously On than anything else.
A trivia game show on the TV Guide channel would always stop right before the final question. Then they showed a 10 minute (this was a half hour show mind you) preview for the next episode where it finished off that round and started a new one.
The Maury talk show does this religiously. In every commercial break before DNA test results, they try to build suspense by showing quick clips of the guests before and after the results. 99% of the time, they show the guests' reactions to the results, defeating the purpose of sticking around for the results. Sometimes, if the DNA test is for a more serious tone, like an adult daughter finding her long lost father, the clips fade into a commercial break without showing the reaction.
- Considering that the crazies they get, their reactions would have come no matter what the result would have been.
If you have a box set/are watching episodes of a tv series on You Tube of a show you've never seen, never, EVER read the episode summary, unless you want the whole episode spoiled for you. In one sentence, the summary will ruin your whole viewing experience.
- More or less than TV Tropes?
The CW did this to themselves with a Season 7 episode of One Tree Hill. The On The Next preview that aired after 7x08 had Brooke's voiceover stating that she thought she could be pregnant. Later, the CW released the clip where she confesses this to Haley before a concert Haley will be playing that night at the town's nightclub. Then the CW releases a promo photo of Brooke drinking at Haley's concert, clearly revealing she wasn't pregnant.
Ads have started running for a TBS stand-up comedy show which says "If these are the punchlines, imagine what the set-ups are like!" and proceed to show just the punchlines of jokes. Which tends to ruin the joke, but apparently nobody at TBS knows that, or how jokes work. Though these are the same people who keep renewing Tyler Perry's House of Payne, so maybe it's to be expected.
The promo for the Numb3rs episode "Spree" made a big deal about Megan being kidnappped, as if the entire episode was about that. Almost none of the scenes in the promo are in that episode (they're in the next one, "Two Daughters"), and Megan isn't kidnapped until the last thirty seconds of the episode, as a cliffhanger. So... the trailer made the entire episode pointless, really.

Video Games

The trailer for the .hack//G.U. games revealed exactly who the eight Epitaph Users are and which Avatars they have.
Time Splitters: Future Perfect deserves a special mention; if you can't do a puzzle in an early level, go to the main menu, wait for the game to go into Attract Mode and watch a character do it for you. It is a very easy puzzle, admittedly, but still.
One of the commercials for Final Fantasy VII showed Aerith's death scene, which probably helped cement its It Was His Sled status. In fact, for the European version of the game, a screenshot from the FMV immediately following her death (which shows Cloud laying her body in a pool) is on the back of the game case. It's not obvious enough to be a direct spoiler, but it does give a big hint.
- The voice-over for at least one of these commercials also said "A love that can never be." HINT HINT!
The trailer for Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden shows Fiona Guredan alive, and with her final Humongous Mecha. This ruins the suspense of if she survived the malfunctioning Time Flow engine when her mecha was badly damaged..
- Some would argue that being a spoiler, considering the existence of the Excellence Eternal, the Mid Season Upgrade that only she uses, in Super Robot Wars R.
- In actuality, the whole bonus segment in Original Generations were like an interactive trailer for Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden, thus the main story of the bonus sections got carried over to the Gaiden. Including the death of Lamia Loveless. Her rebirth in different circumstances was still well hidden in the commercial videos. As well as the inclusion of the Cry Wolves of the MX series and the return and redemption of both Axel Almer and Alfimi.
The trailers for Devil May Cry 4 gave away things like the true intentions of the Order of the Sword, the failure of an attempted Shoot The Dog and the continued importance of the demonic katana Yamato. They didn't succeed in spoiling everything, but there was something of an Internet Backdraft regarding the final trailer.
Several previews also spoiled the big twist in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on who the player character is.
Multiple previews for Ratchet And Clank: Going Commando had the amazing distinction of spoiling half the game's plot, including the thief's real name and the purpose of the "experiment".
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn is notable for having a press release that basically outlined the entire game's plot. This included the revealing of the true identity of the Black Knight, which was never revealed in the previous game Path of Radiance, but also only revealed near the end of Radiant Dawn.
Although it may not be recognizable until after you play it, the in-game trailer to Zone Of The Enders: The 2nd Runner pretty much shows the entire game, every stage and every boss fight, with the exception of the very last one. It also shows pretty much the entire story, including clips from the Ending.
Tthe trailer for Starcraft's Expansion Pack, which features several clips of a military funeral interspliced between the imagery of awesome carnage. The fact that the coffin had the banner of the United Earth Directorate on it meant that a major UED character was going to die, though it didn't become clear until the second-to-the-last Terran mission.
The manual for Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer advises you to read certain pages only after you've seen the twist at the end of act one. This would have been useful advice if the Spirit Eater curse hadn't featured so prominently in the game's prerelease hype.
The DS remake of Final Fantasy IV runs into this trope headlong with its opening cinematic, its instruction manual, and even the back of the box. Square Enix must feel that all the info for a game approaching its twentieth birthday must qualify as It Was His Sled.
- Then again, the instruction manual originally packaged with the North American SNES version included a walkthrough that spoiled the plot for about half of the game; just flipping through it randomly could spoil at least three Plotline Deaths for you.
In Time Hollow for the DS, you get a fleeting 'flashback' of someone falling past the top of a window, and from your perspective all you can tell is that the person's probably female and a student at the high school. Unless you watched the opening trailer, in which case you know who it is right off the bat, making it a Wall Banger whenever Ethan recalls it and thinks "GEE I WONDER WHO THAT WAS."
The blurb on the back of the case for Rondo of Swords spoils that you're actually playing the prince's body double, not the prince himself. This isn't as huge a spoiler as it sounds — it's revealed after the very first stage — but the game was very obviously written with the intention of keeping it a secret until this (early) reveal.
The trailer for Grim Fandango spoiled the sproutings of Don Copal and Lola.
The trailer for Crash of the Titans reveals that Doctor Neo Cortex is replaced by his niece.
Referenced in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, Godot mentions he doesn't like spoiling himself with trailers, and "we'll just wait and see how the movie turns out tomorrow, won't we?" when he refuses to reveal something until the trial starts.
Done in the instruction manual for Totally Rad, revealing master magician Zebediah's secret at least three times until they actually lampshade this trope.
One of the few plot twists in Jak And Daxter that couldn't be seen coming three miles away, namely Jak II/Renegade being set in the future, well...the trope name should give you something of a clue.
When The Twin Snakes, the Metal Gear Solid remake for the GameCube, was wrapping up production, several trailers were released spoiling the gene storyline (ingame, no mention of it is made until near the end) and dropping an extremely obvious hint as to who the Ninja was by playing a later clip over his introductory scene.
Ninja: Do you remember me now?
Snake: It can't be... you were killed in Zanzibar Land...
- Not to mention Snake being tricked into activating Metal Gear by accident.
Terminal: PAL code number three confirmed. PAL code entry complete. Detonation code activated.
Snake:It's moving... But how do I stop it!?
- Considering The Twin Snakes was a remake of a 4-years-old (at the time) PlayStation game, this is more of a case of You Should Know This Already.
- Similar to the above Phantom Menace and Gundam SEED examples above, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake features a track labeled "Natasha's Death." (That's Gustava for those of you playing the version included in Subsistence.)
One of the trailers for Sonic and the Black Knight reveals Excalibur Sonic.
- Think that's bad? Before Sonic Unleashed was released, there was at least one trailer for EACH ZONE except the last, on BOTH versions of the game. That's bad. What's worse is this: The trailers were each around a minute long, and usually showed both day and night stages. Each zone in the PS 2 version (save one) has ONE primary day stage, that can be easily beaten in somewhere around three minutes (a requirement for all medals, actually). Therefore, at least a sixth of each stage was spoiled. In at least two cases, this included the GOAL RING.
- Anyone who, at this point, is surprised by Sonic turning glowy and yellow at the end of the game clearly hasn't been paying attention to any 3D Sonic game made in the past decade or so.
The recent trailer for Metroid Prime Trilogy shows the final bosses of all three Metroid Prime games. This could also be an example of You Should Know This Already.
Done brilliantly in the opening sequence of The World Ends With You. It spoils the whole plot, alright, but the player won't realize it until they've beaten the game.
Maximo plays with it. It goes out of its way to spoil the plot twist that Sophia's Achille's Decoy Damsel for Genre Savvy players, even mentioning it in her manual bio... and naturally she's none of the above.
The final encounter with the Hive Mind in Dead Space is revealed in the pre-release trailer, thus ruining a potentially awesome spectacle.
The Japanese trailer for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, which was also dubbed as an American ad, shows Grovyle, who is smiling at the main characters who are clearly worried about him dragging Dusknoir through the time portal. Well, there goes half the plot.
Practically everything gets spoiled in the trailers for The Legend Of Zelda series, such as this trailer from The Legend Of Zelda The Wind Waker. Take the standard trailer here. Pretty much half the late game gets given away, and the Gamespot trailer actually goes further by showing even more. For that matter, one of the pre order sleeves for the game actually had a picture of the final battle on the front...
Early promotion material for Half Life 2: Episode 2 revealed that Alyx dies, or at the very least gets incapacitated, although it's also avoided in that Alyx gets better and her "death" (falling off a bridge in the promo) is totally different in-game. The trailer also reveals that the G-Man is back in a speaking role after being sidelined for the last game.
Quake 4 has a twist where your character is captured midway through the game and turned into one of the bad guys. This would have beeen surprising if the press releases, trailers and the back of the box didn't give it away.
This troper saw a trailer for Backyard Baseball '09 on the web. It spoiled, among others, the last character to be unlocked.