Basic Trope: A payment extorted by intimidation, as by threats of injurious revelations or accusations.
- Straight: Alice tells Bob that she has evidence of an embarrassing secret, and demands money and/or favors in exchange for her silence.
- Exaggerated: Alice blackmails Bob into committing a crime, and then uses evidence of that crime to continue to blackmail him.
- Downplayed: Alice agrees to keep a secret for Bob, but tells him she will need something in return.
- Justified:
- Bob's secrets would incriminate him or at least ruin his reputation, so he decides giving in to Alice's demands is a lesser evil.
- Alice hates Bob, so she wants to destroy his life or gain something from.
- Bob is in such a position that something that would be merely embarrassing for the average person would be life-ruining for him. He also has the means to give Alice money or favors in exchange to keep the information secret.
- Inverted:
- Alice offers Bob a bribe.
- Alice forces Bob to admit to his wrongdoing in public.
- Subverted:
- Alice decides to blackmail Bob to get him to do what she wants, but after a while she drops her threat when she sees he's actually a really nice guy.
- Alice blackmails Bob but Bob refuses to do what she wants. Alice then releases a document full of accusations against Bob, but it contained zero evidence so her claims were dismissed and Bob's reputation is unaffected.
- Alice mentions blackmail in her threat, but she immediately throws out the evidence on Bob to prove a point.
- Double Subverted: Alice herself is being blackmailed, and the blackmailer forces her to go through on her threats to Bob.
- Parodied:
- Everyone up and down the block is continually and habitually blackmailing Bob, and he doesn't realize how many people know his secrets so he just goes along with whatever they say to do.
- Bob receives blackmail threats through black-colored letters/envelopes.
- Alice tries to blackmail Bob with information that is clearly known to the public.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice and Bob dig up each other's secrets to blackmail and counter-blackmail each other.
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't care about what he's being threatened with.
- Alice wants to expose things that are public knowledge.
- Upon finding Bob's secrets, Alice immediately exposes them to the public.
- Alice keeps Bob's secret.
- Enforced: The fans want Bob to do bad stuff, despite his Incorruptible Pure Pureness, so the creators make Alice blackmail him.
- Lampshaded: "Way does she have to resort to blackmail? I mean, why doesn't Alice just ask for what she wants?"
- Invoked: Alice needs money and wants Bob to be embarrassed, so she decides to kill two birds with one stone.
- Exploited:
- Charlie notices Bob giving Alice money or favors and concludes that he is not doing it willingly. He then threatens to expose Alice unless he gets a cut of the action.
- Charlie is a blackmail broker. He has an extensive dossier with dirt on everyone, and will lend out the information for a fee.
- Defied:
- Alice was thinking of a way to ask Bob for a favor, but she has standards, so she straight-up asks him.
- Bob does not care what Alice has on him, or at least not enough to give in to her demands.
- Alice considers what she can get from Bob in exchange for her silence, then decides not to and goes straight to the authorities and/or press to expose his deeds.
- Bob decides to ensure Alice's silence by eliminating her.
- Implied: Alice regularly has information to give to the police and/or press, but often brings it in long after it happened and is evasive about her sources.
- Discussed: "I mean, "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word. But yes, that's what this is."
- Conversed: "What's with Bob being so easily blackmailed? Why does he have so many awful secrets that can be exploited?"
- Deconstructed: Bob calls the police on Alice.
- Reconstructed: He turns out to be up to far more heinous misdeeds. As a result of his calling the police, they investigate him, learn of them, and bring him to justice.
- Played for Laughs: Bob is actually a teen or younger. He has a weird dance he does or something embarrassing from his past. His sister and/or best friend, Alice took a snapshot of it, and is threatening to show it to a Love Interest or their mother in exchange for his help.
- Played for Drama:
- Bob is an otherwise respectable man. He has a good life, maybe even a family. However, he has something Alice wants. His past is quite shady, and if she reveals it to either his family or the police, his life will shatter beyond repair.
- Charlie discovers proof that Bob, a public figure, is corrupt and hands it over Alice, hoping for her to deal with him appropriately. Instead, however, Alice holds on to the information for her own personal gain, and later reports Charlie to Bob to patch up things between them.
Come back to the Blackmail page or I tell everyone that you browse TV Tropes all day.
