Basic Trope: An LGBTQ character is forcibly outed to others by someone else or circumstances out of their control.
- Straight: Bob finds out Alice is a lesbian, and tells her very traditional family.
- Exaggerated: Bob tells everyone in town, plus making a post on social media about it. In less than an hour everyone in the whole world knows Alice is a lesbian.
- Downplayed: Bob's friend Charles tells him about his plans to ask Alice out on a date, and Bob tells him not to bother because she already has a girlfriend.
- Justified:
- Alice gave Bob her permission to tell people, or even asked him to do it.
- Bob is a Jerkass.
- Bob is a well-meaning idiot.
- Bob seriously thought that he was helping her.
- Bob is trying to harm Alice, or to Blackmail her.
- Bob is drunk, and not thinking about what he says, how he says it, or to whom he says it.
- Bob assumes she means she's Greek, and specifically from the island of Lesbos, not realizing what she actually meant.
- Inverted:
- Alice tells everyone Bob is straight.
- Alice comes out of the closet herself, on her own terms.
- Bob tries to prevent Alice from coming out.
- Subverted:
- Although Bob threatens to do this to Alice if she doesn't tell him where the MacGuffin is, he isn't actually going to do it.
- Bob says he has a really juicy secret about Alice, and an embarrassing picture to prove it.
- Everyone already knows that Alice is a lesbian.
- Bob tells everyone that Alice is a lesbian, but it's not true.
- Double Subverted:
- Just the threat of Bob telling her very traditional family about her sexuality is enough to cause Alice to panic.
- The picture is of Alice making out with Betty at the office Christmas party, and the secret is that Alice is going to ask Betty to marry her, but not to tell Betty.
- Everyone except her estranged preacher father, that is...
- Like many other Open Secrets, everybody was fine with Alice's lesbianism until someone (Bob) actually forces the issue and their standing in it.
- The rumor ends up doing harm to Alice.
- Parodied:
- Bob shouts the news over the intercom. Everyone just goes back to what they were doing.
- Bob looks up A. Aaronson and Z. Zzyzwicz in the phone book... and only those two people, although it's made to look like he called everyone in the phone book. He then mentions to Charles that A. Aaronson and Z. Zzyzwicz are the two biggest gossips in town, and in an hour, everyone will know.
- In a setting where everyone is LGBTQ+ except Bob, Alice tells Bob's two moms behind his back that he's straight.
- The person that Bob tells doesn't know what "lesbian" means.
- Bob assumes that it means Alice is from the island of Lesbos.
- Not only does Bob tell Alice's very traditional family that Alice is part of the LGBTQ+ community,but she is forced out of a literal closet.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes this trope is parodied, sometimes exaggerated, and sometimes both.
- Averted:
- Bob does not out Alice in the series.
- Alice is already out of the closet.
- Alice comes out on her own terms.
- Enforced: "Let's give Alice a legitimate reason for Gayngst, or expound upon it more."
- Lampshaded: "Did you know Alice is a lesbian?"
- Invoked: Bob sees Alice making out with Betty at a party.
- Exploited:
- Bob wants Alice to tell him where the MacGuffin is, so he threatens to expose her deepest secret, one that has potential to bring her great harm if the wrong people were to hear it.
- Bob is running against Alice, and makes this sort of announcement (explicitly or implicitly) in an Attack of the Political Ad, in an attempt to discredit her, or make her lose constituents.
- Defied: Bob tells no one.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is mad that Bob told others without her permission. Those who already know her are either mad that she didn't trust them enough to tell, or bothered by her sexuality. Either way, she ends up getting distanced from most of her friends because of Bob's actions.
- Alice ends up getting disowned by her traditional family, or even killed because of what Bob told them.
Back to Forced Out of the Closet.
