Open Secret / Live-Action TV

Open Secrets in Live-Action TV series.

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• Black Lightning: Tobias Whale is a corrupt councilman, turned feared gang leader, who hasn't been seen for decades and now has only now officially returned — at least "officially". In truth, everybody knows that Tobias was still hiding in Freeland and running the local gang — the One Hundred.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Some people believe that The Masquerade was broken early on, if not before the show started. This is made much more clear in the Third Season episode "The Prom", during which Buffy is given the "Class Protector" award. Jonathan mentions while he's presenting that everyone present knows that Sunnydale isn't like other schools, but it's an unwritten rule that no-one ever talks about it. She won the award because the class mortality rate was the lowest in school history!
  • In the very first episode:
    Buffy: Was there a school bulletin? Was it in the newspaper? Is there anyone in this town who doesn't know I'm the Slayer?
  • And when Wesley first came to Sunnydale and finds out Cordelia knows:
    Wesley: Does everyone know you're the Slayer?
  • In the seventh season, after the band, led by noted singer/songwriter Aimee Mann, finishes performing their set at The Bronze (only momentarily interrupted by a vampire being dusted in the middle of the club) Mann can be seen walking off complaining about how she hates performing in "Vampire Towns".
  • The school newspaper has a regular obituaries section. We know it's a regular item because Oz mentioned always reading it first.
• On Castle Castle and Beckett try to keep their relationship a secret from at least Captain Gates thinking she would disapprove and not allow them to work together. Everyone knows though, including Gates who simply ignores it.
• On Criminal Minds, this happens pretty frequently, since the whole team is so good at reading body language and word choice that it's nearly impossible for them to keep secrets from their coworkers for long. They seem to have worked out some kind of deal (referenced a few times but never seen onscreen) that they'll try not to profile one another, but they're not very good at keeping it, and mostly just compromise by politely pretending not to know things they're not supposed to know. One particularly notable example is Reid's drug problem in Season 2. He meets a friend outside the group who figures out what's going on in about fifteen seconds. When Reid says that he hasn't told anyone about it, the friend's response is along the lines of "Okay, I'm a jazz musician who hasn't seen you in ten years. They're elite FBI profilers who see you every day. Good luck with that."
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Planet of the Ood", PR rep Solana claims this is the case with the abusive treatment of the enslaved Ood.
    "[The public] don't ask. Same thing."
  • UNIT falls into this if you take seriously the Brigadier's line in "Mawdryn Undead" that to know of UNIT's existence requires having signed the Official Secrets Act, since a number of episodes in The '70s show things like UNIT troops wearing UNIT badges and driving UNIT jeeps, the Brig speaking to reporters as the head of UNIT, and big honking signs outside their HQ reading "MINISTRY OF DEFENCE - U.N.I.T. HEADQUARTERS - KEEP OUT". For most of the new series they favour hidden bases (mostly under landmarks), although they still have the UNIT insignia on uniforms and vehicles. And then in "The Star Beast", they've acquired a brand new London skyscraper with "U.N.I.T." prominently emblazoned on it.
• Game of Thrones universe:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Lord Renly and Ser Loras' relationship is theoretically a secret given that the setting is based on the middle ages where homosexuality wasn't exactly approved of, but not only does nearly the whole court, (including Renly's wife Margaery Tyrell) know about it, even a couple of random Lannister soldiers halfway across Westeros from them were joking about Loras "stabbing Renly Baratheon for years, and Renly ain't dead!" in one episode. Considering that Renly's marriage to Margaery was never officially consumated and Loras is often seen entering his tent at nighttime, they really shouldn't have been surprised. This continues even after Renly's death. It's revealed in Season 3 that Jaime, Cersei, Joffrey, Tywin, and Tyrion are also aware of Renly's sexual orientation. The Tyrells are a very powerful family that can easily shift the balance of power in the kingdom, so anyone with any political savvy avoids discussing Loras Tyrell's sexual preferences. Joffrey makes a massive political faux pas when he publicly brings up Renly's homosexuality. Everyone knows about it, but only someone as thoughtless as Joffrey would bring it up in the presence of the Tyrells.
      Jaime: It's all true about Renly. His proclivities were the worst kept secret at court. It's a shame the throne isn't made out of cocks... They'd have never got him off it.
    • On the same token, much of the nobility of Westeros seems to be aware, or at the very least suspicious, that Queen Cersei is having an affair with her twin brother Jaime, and that her children are illegitimate bastards born from the incest. Except for King Robert and the twins' father Lord Tywin, all of the smarter members of the court — Varys, Littlefinger, and Pycelle — have for a long time known for sure but kept it to themselves for their own plots and benefit. However, few people are actually willing to directly challenge Cersei on the matter because of her political allies. Ned Stark learns this the hard way. Stannis Baratheon "outs" their secret when he receives Ned's missive, and it quickly catches Word Of Mouth with the commonfolk at King's Landing and different parts of the kingdom, though whether people believed it is another matter. Olenna Tyrell, who's marrying her granddaughter to the Crown, points out to Tywin Lannister that the evidence is very convincing. As of "A Man Without Honour" in the second season, even Jaime and Cersei have given up denying it. As Season 4 rolls, it is the worst kept secret of Westeros and is only tolerated for political necessity and convenience, with everyone making snarky comments about it and the rumor having spread all the way across the Narrow Sea to Essos. Only Tywin refuses to acknowledge the truth even to himself, and his denial is suggested to be because he point blank does not want to believe it since it would mean that his whole legacy and the Lannister blood claim to the throne is built on a lie. Even when Cersei herself tells Tywin outright that it's true, he refuses to believe it.
    • Lampshaded in season 8 when the truth about Jon's parentage gets around. When Varys is told and learns that he's the eighth person to know, he remarks that at that point it's not really a keepable secret anymore and will soon be common knowledge.
  • House of the Dragon:
    • The first three children of Rhaenyra Targaryen were fathered by Ser Harwin Strong and not by her husband Laenor Velaryon (Laenor is black and has the Valyrian Mystical White Hair, the children are white and have brown hair like their true father). Everyone sees and knows it (or at least knows they're not Laenor's children), but mentioning that they are bastards in the presence of Rhaenyra's father King Viserys is the latter's Berserk Button, so much so that he threatens to cut the tongue of anyone foolish enough to voice it out.
    • After a while, nobody really ignores that Laenor is homosexual.
• Gentleman Jack: The fact that Anne is a lesbian is well-known to most of the characters, and she herself makes no real effort to hide it — she maintains just enough plausible deniability to avoid social ruin, but that's about it. The handful of characters who don't know are all portrayed as being naïve, oblivious, or in denial.
• Get Smart
  • Many times when Max would ask the operator to patch him through to a 'number which she must immediately forget', she responds with, "Oh, you mean CONTROL!"
  • A man turns up at Max's apartment wanting to speak to him. When Max asks how he got his address given that he's a secret CONTROL agent, he says he just rang up KAOS and they told him.
• Downplayed in the finale of Gotham. While it certainly isn't true that everyone in the city knows that Bruce is Batman, more people than usual seem to have guessed his secret, but have just chosen not to say anything. Justified, since the entire series except the finale is a Batman prequel show, and some of the plot revolves around different comic characters befriending Bruce over a decade before he ever puts on the mask, so they might know him better than they do in the comics. It becomes apparent by the end of the finale that Jim Gordon has guessed the new vigilante's identity, and that Harvey Bullock might be close to finding out. Remarkably, two villains also correctly guess Batman's identity, but neither seem inclined to say anything, most likely because they both actually like Bruce, and used to be his friends. Selina Kyle/Catwoman doesn't even need to see Bruce's face to realize who the mysterious vigilante stalking her is, and it takes the Joker all of a second to recognize Bruce under the mask when he encounters Batman for the first time, even though part of Bruce's face is covered, he hasn't seen him for ten years, and he's standing about fifty feet away from him.
• Himitsu no Hanazono (2007): The Awful Truth regarding Ryo Kataoka (he's only a commercially successful painter because he passed off his dead friend's works as his own and took all the credit) is known amongst a few of the his acquiantances, and Misuzu eventually leaks it to a magazine, causing the entire world to know.
• Subverted in House of Anubis, as the secret is a pretty poorly kept secret (only one person in the entire house at the end of season 3 never got involved) but it still manages to remain a secret. Which is odd, considering the students talk about it in the middle of the school like it's homework and not a life-threatening mystery.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
  • Arondir and Bronwyn do a good job at hiding they are fancying each other as good as Anakin and Padme.
  • Despite making a huge out of hiding the discovery of mythril for all of season 1, the Dwarves don't do a very good job. Both The High King Gil-galad and lord Celebrimbor know they discovered something very important in the depths of Moria, that is linked to the Sillmarils, they don't just know exactly what.
• The "Secret" Relationship of Majors Burns and Houlihan in the early seasons of M*A*S*H.
• On NCIS, Jimmy Palmer and Michelle Lee's Secret Relationship turns out to be this, as Team Gibbs already knew about it when Palmer confessed.
• On The Office (US), Dwight's affair with Angela becomes this. Phyllis catches her and Dwight together in the office (right after Andy proposed to Angela and she said yes) and blackmails Angela into letting her head the party committee. Phyllis eventually tells anyway and everyone at the office knows but Andy. This leads to an awkward moment when Andy serenades Angela on a sitar and declares that he will love her for the rest of his life, and everyone in the office stares at them.
• RuPaul's Drag Race:
  • Parodied in an acting challenged based on Sex and the City. The Carrie and Samantha analogs despised each other, based on the not-so-secret Hostility on the Set between Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall.
  • Meta-example: While the cast for each season is officially kept secret until the network releases the promos, diehard fans have been able to piece together which queens have been selected to compete based on who has gone missing on social media during the months that the show is filming. Mind you, it's not perfect—it only works with well-known queens, and some who haven't been selected will go dark during that time anyway just to drum up hype that they might be on the show—but the track record has more hits than misses.
• While his alien origins are still a secret, in later seasons of Smallville, the implication seems to be that everyone knows that Clark has super-powers, it's just impolite to mention it. Given that Smallville has a rather high population of metahumans, this isn't hard to pass off.
• Lampshaded in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Our Man Bashir". Garak is mystified by the lavish lifestyle afforded to the James Bond expy in Bashir's holonovel. Bashir states that he simply plays the role of the rich playboy Garak assumed he was. Garak laments that he joined the wrong intelligence service. Of course, Garak is something of an Overt Operative himself — the fact that he's more than a "simple tailor" is an open secret that becomes less and less of a secret until he finally dispenses with the pretense and uses his Obsidian Order training to actively help DS9.
  • Throughout the franchise, it's stated that Romulan ale is illegal in the Federation. It's no secret, however, that every other officer has a bottle stashed away. This gets appropriately Lampshaded by Admiral Ross who nearly chokes on his first glass of the ale while commenting that he's one of the few officers who hasn't indulged in it, despite the embargo.
• Taboo: James and Zilpha's lingering affection for each other is widely rumored around London and is apparent to all who see them together, including her enraged husband. The Americans even go so far as to offer her as part of their bargain with James for Nootka Sound.
• A Running Gag on Top Gear was for the presenters to go to a location that was deemed "Top Secret", usually an official product testing track owned by a car manufacturer. We'd get an establishing shot of the facility and a voiceover from Jeremy Clarkson reminding us that the place was Top Secret… before revealing its exact location as well as detailed directions on how to reach said location by car.
• Torchwood:
  • In the premiere, Gwen is cleverly (she thinks) infiltrating the Hub as a pizza delivery person, only to have the group unable to keep up the charade that she's fooling them and break out laughing.
  • The eponymous organization is supposed to be a top-secret organization beyond the reach of the British government (though answerable to the Queen). Pretty much everyone in Cardiff seems to know who they are and what they do and they liaise with Whitehall on occasion. Heck, they print the name of their "secret" organization on their vans.
    Rupesh: You're Torchwood?
    Jack Harkness: [while climbing into the Conspicuous Black SUV with "TORCHWOOD" written all over it] Never heard of 'em.
  • This is only made worse by the fact that the team regularly orders pizza under the name Torchwood and has it delivered to the front door of their headquarters. Also, Torchwood's allegedly clandestine dealings with the supernatural are the worst-kept secret in the UK. The show makes hay out of how loudly everything about them screams The Men in Black, especially with some very loud alien encounters in the Whoniverse.
    Gwen: Excuse me. Have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car? [old woman points the way] Thank you.
    Old Woman: Bloody Torchwood.
• The Wheel of Time: Averted so far. In the books the identity of the Dragon Reborn is obvious from the beginning due to them being the viewpoint-character for the first half of the book. In the show it's one of the main mysteries throughout the first season, with the only certainty being that it's one of the five characters from the Two Rivers. In both versions of the story, it's Rand.
• From Yes, Minister:
  Sir Humphrey: Ladysmith House is top secret.
  Hacker: How can a seven-story building in Walthamstow be top secret?

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