Basic Trope: Someone is silenced because they know too much. It may be by blackmail, a punishment or murder.
- Straight: Alice kills Bob because he knows she murdered Charlie.
- Exaggerated: Alice destroys her planet because they know that she breaks tables
- Downplayed:
- Alice threatens to kill Bob if he tells about her murders.
- Alice incapacitates Bob and holds him captive to keep him from talking.
- Alice erases Bob's memory of her killing Charlie.
- Bob works for Alice and she has him Reassigned to Antarctica to keep him from talking.
- Justified: Alice doesn't want to be imprisoned.
- Inverted: Alice kills Bob because he doesn't know about her murders.
- Subverted: Alice gives Bob money to keep his mouth shut and manipulate him.
- Double Subverted: She kills Bob after he has Outlived His Usefulness.
- Parodied: Every time Alice kills someone for knowing too much, someone else finds out about that murder. She eventually turns herself in out of sheer frustration.
- Zig Zagged: Alice kills Bob because he knows she murdered Charlie. However, that was Bob's twin Buck. She finds out Bob is still alive and murders him as well, but that was resurrected Buck. Bob is still alive, but he eventually dies too.
- Invoked: Alice purposefully tells Bob about her murders, so she has enough reason to silence him.
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't know too much.
- Alternatively, he does, but gets away with it.
- Enforced: "Bob may end our story too quickly, we should kill him."
- Lampshaded: "You know too much and you won't get away with it." *Slasher Smile and shot*
- Defied:
- Bob witnesses the murder, but is very careful, so as not to let Alice see him. He also asks to remain anonymous when he reports the body.
- Bob witnesses Alice commit murder, so she tries to kill him too — but he's a better fighter and kills her instead.
- Deconstructed: Killing someone is a serious matter - even if it doesn't become a Revealing Cover Up it results in Bob being known as a Bad Boss and he either cannot find minions or they betray him first and get praised for it as Bob has become an Asshole Victim in the criminal underworld.
- The police investigate, and immediately suspect Alice, since she had a grudge against Charlie for whatever reason. They also manage to piece together why the timespan between the two victims' death was so short.
- Reconstructed: Bob was a bad person...but further investigation reveals that his killer was far worse.
- Alice moves Bob's body somewhere else entirely to make the suspiciously close times of death seem like a coincidence, and stuffs Charlie in a freezer to throw off the time of death, giving her a (fake) alibi. Finally, she puts Charlie's deceased body back where it was, completely baffling the police and allowing her to get away with the two murders.
Back to He Knows Too Much.
