- Ai no Kusabi has the fact that Iason Mink, the highest official of Tanagura, is sleeping with his slum mongrel Pet Riki is supposed to be a secret. Iason even admits everyone knows because of his brazen special treatment of Riki.
- In Gerald Morris in The Ballad of Sir Dinadan. Tristram and Isolde have the world's least secret love affair — literally everyone but Isolde's husband knows, and he at least suspects. This is mostly because Tristram has been riding about the country telling everyone in great detail about the vow of silence he has taken and how he can never even say his true love Isolde's name. The trope also applies to Lancelot and Guinevere's affair in the first couple of books, though in this case it's treated more seriously due to the effect it has on Arthur and the court.
- Harry Card in Below is the real father of Ed Finch's son, and his affair with Finch's wife Maddie has been going on for years since. Because Harry and Finch are still lifelong best friends, and everyone is intimidated by Finch, everyone assumes Finch himself is the only one in the dark and no one wants to be the person to tell him.
- A Running Gag in Death and Diplomacy. The Saloi are a Planet of Hats of people with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Therefore everyone knows that the truth is whatever a Saloi isn't saying, and it's almost impossible for them to keep a secret. (The one secret they do seem to keep is who their true ruler is, and they do it by treating him as the ruler, while having a minor functionary always at hand for him to "consult" with. Everyone [including the ruler] assumes it's the functionary who's really in charge… probably.)
- Discworld:
- Everybody knows Carrot is the true king of Ankh-Morpork, but nobody speaks openly about it. (While Carrot would probably make a good king, everyone, including himself, agrees that Ankh-Morpork does not need a king.) The last guy who tried got skewered by Carrot himself. And the heirloom blade went through him and into the stone behind him…
- The short story "The Sea and Little Fishes" has the townspeople of Lancre going through ridiculous contortions to find Nanny Ogg. They know where she is; she's at her secret still in the woods. But actually acknowledging this would be unthinkable, so they wander around near where they all know the still is, calling her name. When she finally comes to see what all the fuss is about, they say they thought she might be in the woods picking herbs.
- It's mentioned that even King Verence knows about the still and maintains the secret, having long ago learned that the way to avoid the embarrassment of witches refusing to pay taxes (or in this case, excise) is never to ask them.
- Officially, the father of Shaun Ogg, Nanny's youngest son, is her last husband Sobriety Ogg...who died about ten years before Shaun was born. Even most of the population of backwoods Lancre is bright enough to have spotted the mathematical incongruity there, though they would never mention it. Shaun himself, not the brightest bulb, may be the only person who isn't in on it.
- There's a gap in the stone wall around Unseen University that allows students to leave after curfew to go drinking. The hole has been there for centuries, and the faculty were all students once and sometimes still make use of it themselves. This occasionally leads to awkward encounters that consist mostly of pretending not to see each other. In Night Watch Sam Vimes goes looking for it; turns out there's a sign.
- Night Watch: Everyone in Ankh-Morpork knows the Unmentionables torture people. It's just no-one does anything because the Unmentionables torture people. Most of the Night Watch, whose job it is technically to arrest people and hand them over to the Unmentionables, try very hard not to think about this fact ("just do the job in front of you"). When a young Sam Vimes is forced to see the results... he has something of a severe breakdown.
- In Dragon Bones, Erdrick is extremely nervous about his twin brother's affair with the queen. However, everyone else knows the affair to be an open secret, and Beckram tells Erdrick that he was ordered to sleep with the queen by the king himself. (It is not clear whether the king's affairs with men are even an open secret, or no secret at all, as everyone in the country knows it. Everyone. Well, maybe except innocent Erdrick.) There's also the bastard offspring of the lords of Hurog—everyone knows what it means when someone is introduced as "distant cousin" of house Hurog.
- The not-terribly-secret love between magic mentor Sephrenia and Pandion Knight leader Vanion is an Open Secret throughout The Elenium trilogy by David Eddings. It's discussed a few times quietly by other characters, but no one overtly brings it up until near the very end of the trilogy, when they're reunited following a dangerous separation and "their secret, which wasn't much of a secret anyway, went right out the window." As of the sequel trilogy, they're married.
- In S. M. Stirling's Emberverse, the Portland Protective Association is in practice (and originally, in law) a Roman Catholic kingdom, practicing a fairly conservative version of that faith. The Baroness (later Grand Constable later Marshall) Tiphaine d'Ath is gay and in a monogamous relationship with Delia de Stafford, wife of the equally-gay Rigobert. Everybody except their confessors is quite aware of the true nature of Tiphaine and Delia's, and Delia and Rigobert's, relationships, but the attitudes of the kingdom prohibit any public acknowledgment.
- Fire & Blood: It was pretty obvious to all that Princess Rhaenyra's first three children were not the offspring of the not-quite-openly gay Laenor Velaryon, but might well have been Harwin Strong's children. Nobody said anything at first because doing so would mean accusing King Visery I's chosen heir of treason. Things reached a breaking point when Visery's son Aemond started a fight with his nephews over this, resulting in him losing an eye. When asked where he'd heard about this, Aemond told his father "everyone knows. Just look at them." After this, Viserys made it official writ that if anyone called them bastards again, they'd lose their tongues. This was not an idle threat from the normally genial king.
- At the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Dumbledore knows that this trope is in full force when he says "What happened in the dungeons between Harry and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret—so, naturally, the whole school knows."
- In Stephen King's IT, pretty much everyone who's lived in Derry long enough knows about the 27-year cycle of violence, even if they don't fully understand what causes it. Most of them have seen the Monster Clown which is IT's preferred form as well.
- Mitch Tobin: Everyone in the fourth book knows how Jamie the murder victim cheated on his partner except for said partner and one other friend.
- Similarly to other instances involving the same people, the fact that Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenevere are having an affair is fairly widely known in TH White's The Once and Future King. Nobody wants to come right out and say it, because Lancelot is "the best knight that is on life" and would challenge anyone who dared bring it up to trial by combat, in which he would slaughter them. That no one dares do more than hinting about it obliquely allows King Arthur to officially pretend he doesn't know about it for quite some time. In the fourth book Candle in the Wind, Mordred's scheming finally makes it impossible for Arthur to keep up the charade and he has to officially charge Lancelot and Guenevere with High Treason in the new courts, ironically set up by Arthur himself because he didn't like how trial by combat meant the person who could afford to hire the biggest, strongest fighter as a champion got to basically do whatever he wanted.
- The Pillars of the Earth makes occasional mention of priests who are officially celibate, yet have a "live-in housekeeper," a polite fiction maintained for the benefit of all concerned. The protagonist for the first half of the book is married to one such housekeeper's mysteriously fatherless daughter. Literally everyone knows what's actually going on, with senior Church officials pretending to be taken in because actually enforcing the celibacy rule would be more trouble than it's worth. This is probably Truth in Television.note
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Cersei gets so used to everyone knowing the truth about her affair with her twin brother that she almost forgets that it's supposed to be a secret, and hardly bothers to keep it.
- A darker example from the same series would be what Craster does to his sons (sacrifices them to the Others, the ice demons who live in the woods near his keep). All of the Rangers of the Night's Watch know about it, but because they need the help Craster gives them, they never talk about it or try to stop it.
- Loras and Renly's gayness isn't known by everyone, but certainly more people know about it than don't.
- In The Story of Valentine and His Brother, the fact that Dick is slightly older than Val becomes one, as Val was raised to eventually become a lord, while Dick grew up poor and is satisfied with his current job as a supervisor at a boatyard.
- In Sweet Diamond Dust, Don Ubaldino's and Doña Laura's daughters are snubbed by the other families in town. Doña Laura can't figure out why, until Gloria, her companion, spills the beans: Don Julio Font, Don Ubaldino's father, was a black man and not the fair-skinned Spanish immigrant she had been told about. That's why he didn't appear in any family pictures.
- In The Traitor Son Cycle, the Church tries to hide the fact that the Lissen Carak abbey is composed solely of sorceresses. After they help rescue the city from the Wild invaders, however, pretty much everybody knows that, and it becomes less of a secret and more of something that's impolite to mention in public.
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