Trailers Always Spoil / Live-Action TV

As this trope concerns spoilers, unmarked spoilers follow. You Have Been Warned!

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• The 10th Kingdom: NBC was notorious for doing this during most if not of all of their miniseries "events", but a particularly egregious example occurred twice for Tenth Kingdom: just after the suspenseful scenes in which Virginia and Tony were trying to buy the Traveling mirror at auction, the trailer revealed that it gets broken, and right as we're wondering if the heroes will get to the ball and stop the Evil Queen's plot in time, the trailer revealed all of Wendell's guests collapsing from poison. Next commercial break then shows us both the same guests awakening, revealing they weren't really dead and Prince and Wendell switching back—though granted, this was something of an Untwist by that late in the game. About the only major plot point not revealed by the trailers, thankfully, was that the Evil Queen was Virginia's mother.
  • Not to mention Wolf stopping the Huntsman from killing Virginia at the end.
• 24 is somewhat notorious for this among fans; there's a fairly large portion of the fanbase that refuses to watch the "On the Next" previews at the end of each episode. Since the show takes place in real time and is largely fixated on the suspense of "what happens next", it's easy for a preview to take the suspense out of quite a few minutes of the upcoming episode. Examples are really too numerous to list, but here's a fairly recent one:
  • At the end of an episode in season 7, the ambassador from Sangala had locked himself and his wife in a panic room. The bad guys are outside, wondering how they can get to him. Cue the preview for next week, which shows the room being flooded with gas. Naturally, it's no surprise next week when Jack Bauer (working undercover) suggests that he can create a gas out of household items and pump it through the ventilation system.
  • Done again a few episodes later when Tony warns Jack that a major attack is going to happen in Washington D.C., but he doesn't know exactly where. Previews for the next two episodes come up and we immediately see the White House being taken under siege.
  • Season 3 had a very notorious example. At this point in the season, there was a powdered form of a virus being transported in a plastic bag by a mule (just a kid who agreed to carry something over the Mexican border). CTU spent the entire episode trying to track down the package and the kid. Then, after the episode was over the preview literally had Jack Bauer yelling "THE VIRUS IS OUT!" in absolute panic. Granted, it turned out to be a false alarm but 24 fandom was so pissed off at potentially being spoiled that complaints were flown at FOX's direction and addressed. This resulted in the previews being treated as spoilers in 24 fandom discussion.
  • A trailer for an episode late in season 4 spoiled the return of David Palmer in the episode even though he was uncredited to keep his return in it a surprise.
  • However, a few episodes that have pulled the Our Hero Is Dead cliffhanger notably avert this by having the following trailers show no signs of Jack in them to keep his survival somewhat more suspenseful (for all the good they do, anyway). However, at the same time they do spoil some other key twists happening to some other characters within the episode.

A

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • The first trailers blatantly revealed that Agent Coulson, who died in The Avengers, is somehow back from the dead. This is more of a Walking Spoiler; the real mystery of the first season is how he managed to come back. This is then Lampshaded ten minutes into the premiere episode.
  • The clip show in season 2's DVD menu shows Bobbi Morse fighting a bunch of guards while Simmons watches just next to them — the scene that reveals Morse to be The Mole within HYDRA.
  • In Season 3, a Wham Episode ended with Andrew supposedly being stabbed to death and then blown up by HYDRA agents. A TV spot for a later episode spoiled that he survived by including a line where May admonishes Hunter for almost getting Andrew killed.
• The game show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? did a Georgia Special where the contestants were that year's Miss Georgia and the current superintendent of Georgia's schools. At the very beginning of the episode, the voice-over announced "One of them will win the million! Maybe they both will!" Up first was Miss Georgia, who wiped out after the first few questions. Gee, I sure do wonder how the superintendent did....
• Arrested Development subverts with its 'Next time on 'Arrested Development...' sections at the end of each episode, which depict events which are then never shown to occur in the next episode.
  • Making it even more surprising the one time it did happen: Tobias sneaking into the blind attorney's home.
• Arrow:
  • An Australian promo that aired a few weeks before the show began screening there intentionally gave away the twist at the end of the pilot.
  • The previews for 'Who Are You?' revealed that the Laurel seen at the end of "What We Leave Behind" isn't really a resurrected Laurel, but really [[Series/TheFlash2014 Earth-2 Laurel/Black Siren pulling a Dead Person Impersonation.]]

B

• Bar Rescue: Up until the O-Face Bar, Taffer had never walked out on a rescue. The fact that he does walk was advertised beforehand, and the show had the hashtag #TafferWalks. The walkout would have had more of an impact without the advertising, as it seemed like any other episode up to that point.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): This trope happens pretty often in the show's trailers. The promo for "Resurrection Ship, Part 2", apparently attempted to be discreet in its final frame, which showed a hand holding a gun, aimed at Admiral Cain's head. However, the shot of the hand was detailed enough that many astute viewers were able to determine that it was "Gina", the Number Six Cylon imprisoned on the Pegasus, well before the resolution aired.
  • Worse still, the opening Title Sequence (sometimes) contains cuts from the upcoming episode, frequently turning the opening into an automatic, hard-to-avoid spoiler.
  • In the trailer for "Revelations", every scene but one has already occurred by the episode's apparent ending, and that one scene can literally be missed if the viewer blinked. Even when you see it, it's ambiguous.
  • The trailer for "The Ties That Bind" pretty much gives away the fact that Cally doesn't survive the episode, though how and why are still a mystery.
    • There's another trailer that makes the how and why very clear.
  • "The Hub" had an interesting case. The trailers showed the newly-ressurrected D'Anna telling Roslin that she is a Cylon. Many viewers wondered if it was real or creative editing. As it was revealed, D'Anna did say that to Roslin. However, she said to to mess with Roslin's head. In the commentaries of the episode, Ronald D. Moore expressed great anger that they ruined the joke by putting it in the trailer.
    • Not to mention showing D'Anna was a spoiler in itself.
• The first full trailer for Batwoman gives away that one of the agents of Crows Security is working with Alice, the main villain.
• The Big Bang Theory
  • The episode "The Hesitation Ramification" showed Penny proposing to Leonard. Immediately the next day the show's Facebook page showed a picture of the scene, ruining it for everyone who planned to watch the episode on rerun/DVR, and also to everyone from countries where the episode hadn't been transmitted yet.
  • The show's UK broadcaster E4 is particularly bad at this with the trailer for the Season 8 episode "The Expedition Approximation" (Sheldon and Raj try to spend twelve hours in the university steam tunnels as preparation for an expedition to a salt mine) by showing all of the key plot points like the presence of rats in the tunnel, Sheldon bailing on the experiment and leaving Raj in the tunnels alone, and Raj's climactic cry of "You ran away leaving me to fend off a family of rats!" which comes less than thirty seconds before the end of the episode.
• If their trailers for Big Time Rush are of any indication, Nickelodeon is just plain terrible at making trailers. The hour-long special Big Time Concert showed various clips of the boys back in Minnesota, which implied that they had failed in some way and returned home. Worse than that were the clips of the guys reuniting happily, followed by a detailed sequence of them getting kidnapped by Hawk moments before their show, escaping via Carlos's... bravery, and performing at their concert. Let's hope the channel never picks up a mystery series, since every trailer would reveal the culprit-of-the-day.^note  Yeah... about that...
  • Another notable example of this is the Christmas special. The first promo showed the weather forecast stating that the airports at Minnesota have been shut down due to a snowstorm, which happens less than four minutes from the end of the episode, then shows the boys and Kendall's family greeting Mr. Bitters on Christmas morning, which happens in the next scene after that.
• When Blake's 7 was released on DVD, the third season box set included a trailer for the fourth and final season... which focused pretty much entirely on the very ending of the very last episode in which all the Seven are gunned down by Federation troopers. Whilst that one's pretty much It Was His Sled, there must be some people out there who were coming to the show for the first time.
• In an aversion, the descriptions of some of the last few episodes of Breaking Bad are extremely vague, such as one that says "Things shake up for Walter in unexpected ways". That's as specific as they could get without spoiling something.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer had On the Next trailers that were notorious for this. The one for "Phases" revealed who the werewolf was, and the one for "Innocence" revealed that Angel had lost his soul.
  • The DVD booklet for the first season contains a quote that spoils the outcome of the season finale.
  • You know that guy who dies at the end of Buffy's seventh season? Well he shows up in the fifth season of Angel, in a shocking surprise at the end of the first episode. Oh, he's also featured prominently in the opening credits.
  • TeenNick, when they were about to run Buffy repeats, came out with an ad that shows Buffy and Spike kissing. OK, maybe that's It Was His Sled by now, but the commercial is aimed at people who are not familiar with the series, who will now probably be quite confused when they start watching season 2.
  • When Fox ran trailers for the season 5 finale it prominently featured Buffy's gravestone, giving away the ending. Worse yet, it was practically played on a loop, making it near-impossible for viewers not to get spoiled if they simply tuned into the channel.
  • As for Angel, the promo for the series finale fairly clearly shows Lorne shooting Lindsay.

C

• Chuck:
  • During the third season, one episode ended with the implied death of Devon Woodcomb, aka, Captain Awesome. However, almost immediately afterwards, we see him in the next time trailer, still alive.
  • Even worse, one episode ends with Chuck about to meet his father (who ran off years ago) in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. The episode ends with the door opening, and Chuck's father hidden. Immediately afterwards the next-episode trailer proclaimed "Next week on Chuck, Scott Bakula returns to NBC!"
  • Done again in the fifth season, with "Chuck Versus the Curse" ending with a jail cell about to open, and the scene abruptly cutting after that. Lo and behold NBC's next-episode trailer revealing that Daniel Shaw is the person who's about to exit the jail cell.
• Ion TV's airings of Cold Case are particularly bad. They do a "Next on..." clip before each episode, and there's a decent chance it will be a major spoiler. One episode, about an aspiring singer killed in the 50's, featured Lilly confronting a suspect (granted, we don't see them) with song lyrics. Since their significance isn't apparent until the last few minutes, it becomes obvious that the first witness to bring them up (casually, and for no good reason) is the killer. The lyrics were written the night he died, so only three people knew them: the victim, his aunt who help him write them, and the killer.
• Control Z:
  • The first season trailer foreshadows the secrets of Isabela, Natalia, Gerry and Pablo, Luis's fate at the hands of Gerry, Pablo cheating on Isabela with another girl and denying that he knew about her secret and the students fighting each other after the hacker succeeds in leaking all of their secrets.
  • The second season trailer also reveals that Gerry is wanted by the police for Luis's murder, Raúl's unfair return to the school through blackmailing means, Luis' drawings being the source of torture the avenger takes advantage of to hurt the students whom they believe are at fault for his death and the money stolen from Raúl inside Luis' locker, which would later unwittingly seal Susana's doom.

D

• Deal or No Deal, like many modern game shows, has a "Coming up..." bumper right before the ad break that shows what will happen after the break. If the Banker calls immediately after the break, but the bumper showed the contestant still playing and picking out cases, it's obvious that the contestant isn't taking the Banker's offer and walking.
• Excellently subverted with Deception. None of the show's ads or trailer gave any hint to the twist in the first act of the pilot that main character Cameron has a twin brother named Jonathan, whose arrest in a murder frame-up kicks off the series.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation does this often, especially from season 10 onward. The commercials also weirdly combine this with Trailers Always Lie in that they take dialogue out of context.
• Doctor Who:
  • The DVD release of "The Enemy of the World" shows the very final scene of the story, including the shot of Salamander being sucked out into the Time Vortex, which is literally the last thing before the credits roll.
  • The Radio Times would occasionally spoil surprise reveals during the show's run. The preview for "The Invasion" included a photo of a Cyberman, who don't show up until the end of Episode 4. The production team titled the first episode of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" as simply "Invasion" to avoid giving away the reason for London being deserted too early, only for Radio Times to not only announce the full title months in advance but include a cartoon of the Doctor and Sarah being attacked by a Pterodactyl with the first episode listing.
  • Since it was Un-Cancelled in the 2000s, the show has a strange relationship with this; for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, even though sneak peeks are run at the end of most episodes, they make sure that any trailers for the second part of a two-parter are given as much warning as possible, moving them to the end of the credits and giving plenty of room for a continuity announcer to explain. Russell T Davies is a very vocal critic of spoiling trailers, and often directed editors to screw around with press copies.
  • Played straight with the first cliffhanger of the revived series; "Aliens of London" ends with the Doctor being electrocuted to death by the Slitheen, which then immediately cuts to a On the Next trailer not only showing the Doctor very much alive but also telling the army about the Slitheen's plans!
  • The Daleks being the Big Bad was treated as a shocking twist in "Bad Wolf". However, not only was it spoiled by the trailer for that episode, but the Radio Times revealed this three months earlier when the series began.
  • The Doctor regenerating at the end of "The Parting of the Ways" was intended to be a complete surprise, but was spoiled by the BBC's publicity department shortly after "Rose" aired, when it was announced that Christopher Eccleston would be leaving at the end of the season.
  • The sneak peek for "Army of Ghosts" at the end of "Fear Her" all but gives away that the "army of ghosts" is made up of Cybermen. This was not actually much of a surprise when you consider that the fact had already been reported in various media. However, the Daleks also appear at the last minute of the episode, a fact that the show's creators went to great lengths to keep secret... only to be spoiled by a glaring shot of the distinctive X-Ray Sparks effect of a Dalek Death Ray in the same trailer.
    • The best part of it is that the Dalek attack scene isn't even in "Army of Ghosts"; it's from the episode after that, "Doomsday".
  • The worst example in the history of the new Who is "Daleks in Manhattan". The twist ending of this is the revelation of the Dalek-human hybrid whose picture was on the front of the Radio Times.
  • The American recut trailers on Sci-Fi were even worse about this. The trailer for "Utopia" gives away the last minute twist of the Master's return. Perhaps they thought Americans wouldn't be up enough on Doctor Who history to understand it when it came, so they spelled it out for us.
    • Oddly enough, they spoiled the same episode with the same line in the Australian trailers, a country that's been regularly airing Doctor Who since 1966.
    • This, however, doesn't excuse what they did for the fourth season finale: the very first thing they show is David Tennant's face, spoiling that he doesn't really regenerate, and it goes downhill from there. It's like they want Americans to pirate the show from the UK...
  • Discussed in the DVD commentary on the Next Time trailer at the end of "Utopia", where the producers point out that they deliberately avoided using any shots of the Doctor, Martha or Jack, implying that they were still trapped like they were in the cliffhanger. This might also count as Never Trust a Trailer, as it implied that the episode would focus on the Master rather than the Doctor and his companions. In the actual episode, the Doctor's successful arrival in modern London is literally the first shot.
  • Subverted oh so very much in the BBC trailer for "Forest of the Dead", complete with some extremely taunting Quotes Fit for a Trailer.
    • Sci-Fi's version (as usual) pretty much ruins it, what with Donna being alive and River biting it.
  • Alternatively, for "The Stolen Earth". The protagonists finally learn what has caused the Earth's movement, and that there is reason to be very very afraid, and the audience should also be very very afraid and surprised... except that the Daleks had been on the trailer for the entire series, broadcast a least once a night for the past three months, and hadn't yet appeared in a single episode.
    • Though as "The Stolen Earth" used Daleks on a public location shoot for the first time since 1988, keeping their return under wraps would have been all but impossible.
  • "The End of Time"'s DVD menu is basically a montage of the first episode's cliffhanger, giving all the plot twists away. It's almost entirely made up of clips of the Master zapping around or taking control of the Immortality Gate or turning everyone into himself. Nice one, BBC.
    • The BBC website spoiled the return of the Master in the 2009 Christmas Special. In September.
  • However, it was played with quite well in "Victory of the Daleks" getting a Radio Times cover. It got three, each showing a different Paradigm Dalek, but since these Daleks had three with the colours of the major British political parties they played it off as for the election, one for each. Still spoiling, but covertly.
  • The cliffhanger at the end of the opening two-parter of Series 6 centers around Amy shooting a little girl in a spacesuit. The trailer for Part Two not only shows the girl alive and well, but also where the bullet harmlessly penetrated the spacesuit.
  • One of the trailers for "The Angels Take Manhattan" shows Amy and Rory falling. So the minute they get to the roof, you know what's coming...
  • The preview image for the Webisode "The Night of the Doctor" showed Paul McGann, whose appearance within the episode is treated as a surprise.
  • Brilliantly subverted with Part One of the Series 8 finale, "Dark Water", the trailer for which utilised misdirection and Never Trust a Trailer to the nth degree. The Cybermen had already been seen on location outside St Paul's Cathedral, so the trailers featured them heavily with clips from both "Dark Water" and "Death in Heaven" being used to hide the plot points that Danny dies at the start of the episode and Missy is actually the Master. It also took a number of clips entirely out of context to give the impression that Clara becomes a villain and that she was using some kind of false identity all along.
  • By comparison, the BBC did a lot of this for the final three episodes of Series 9. The press releases and official trailer for "Face the Raven" revealed that the antagonist was Ashildr/Me and strongly suggested that Clara Oswald would be Killed Off for Real; there were fans who believed the second part had to be more misdirection and that somehow the Doctor would bite the dust in the Tonight Someone Dies plot, but no. The press release for "Heaven Sent" revealed the Doctor returning to Gallifrey at last, which in the episode is part of both The Reveal and the Cliffhanger. And press releases, trailers, and photos for "Hell Bent" (plus the synopsis for the followup Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song") revealed that Ashildr/Me and Clara turn up, the Doctor temporarily becomes a Villain Protagonist, and he doesn't get Clara back as a companion in that Season Finale. This is especially odd given that up to that point they'd done a good job of avoiding this trope, such as hiding that Davros - both as his usual self and as a boy - was featured in the season opener and the aforementioned Ashildr/Me was central to the Story Arc, and having no Next Time teaser at the end of "The Zygon Invasion", only featuring the villains in the official trailer for "The Zygon Inversion" to preserve suspense over the Our Hero Is Dead Cliffhanger.
  • Series 10 was even worse regarding its two-part Season Finale "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls". First, one of the very first plot points the BBC revealed was that the original Mondasian Cybermen would appear, when the former episode is mostly spent building up to The Reveal of their presence. Then the second trailer for the season aired at the end of the season premiere "The Pilot" had a shot of John Simm as the Master, the second big twist of "World Enough and Time", which to judge by Steven Moffat's comments^note Including asking an audience at a screening prior to the episode's initial airing on April 15, 2017, to close their eyes before they could see it. he would rather hadn't been in the trailer at all, considering how unexpected this appearance was. It wouldn't have mattered if they did, though (once "The Eaters of Light" aired, that twist was spoiled everywhere) the Next Time preview of "World Enough and Time", the poster for the episode... all for something only revealed in the last few minutes of the episode. The same Next Time trailer heavily implied that Bill Potts, the primary companion in this season would be the mysterious character the Doctor had "pledged to protect" yet would witness the death of that Moffat teased in his pre-air synopsis, when up to that point it was just as likely to be Missy, of all people given how the Story Arc was shaping up. Then other trailers for the episode strongly hinted at Bill getting Cyber-converted, the third twist of the episode and the ultimate Cliffhanger! About the ONLY major development not spoiled, partially because the relevant scene was left off of the earliest preview copies, was that the story led up to the Twelfth Doctor being fatally wounded and facing regeneration, though he managed to put it off through to the end of Christmas Episode that followed. Moffat, John Simm himself, and many, many reviewers and fans were vocal about how badly this storyline was spoiled.
  • Subverted with the trailers for the 2017 Christmas Episode "Twice Upon a Time". They gave away that Bill Potts and the Doctor are reunited, which doubled as a Late-Arrival Spoiler for a major twist in the previous episode, (Bill's restoration to human(oid) form). The subversion? She's actually a Glass Person avatar of Bill, who is elsewhere living her own life. For all intents and purposes they're the same person, but it's hard for the Doctor to accept this idea.
  • All the pre-publicity for Jodie Whittaker's first season spoils the end of the first episode, "The Woman Who Fell to Earth". The publicity made much of the Doctor's three companions, Graham, Ryan and Yasmin. So when the episode features a fourth member of the group, Grace, Graham's wife and Ryan's gran, who is the most enthusiastic about entering the Doctor's world, it's fairly obvious she's not going to make it to the end credits.
  • The Christmas Day teaser for "Resolution" revealed that the New Year's special's mysterious villain was a Dalek. This is treated as a major reveal in the episode proper, and was kept a secret until then.
• The social media account for Donkey Hodie occasionally spoiled plot points from future episodes:
  • To announce the week of new episodes beginning August 9, 2021, they posted an image of Purple Panda with a megaphone. This seems to be okay at first, but then you realize that in the first episode of that week's premieres, "The Cow and Potato Bug Opera", Donkey has to become an actor in the play and let someone else direct, and this spoils who gets to become the director.
  • The "Get To Know" profile for Duck Duck, which was posted in May 2021, mentions her book swap box from "Bye Bye Book", which would premiere in August 12, 2021.
  • When the social media posted their "Get To Know" post about Bob Dog in May of 2021, it mentioned that he loves to tap dance, which isn't revealed until a brief scene in "The Cow And Potato Bug Opera", which aired on August 9, 2021.
  • In the "Get To Know" profile for Stanley the Dragon in July of 2021, the post mentioned that he becomes a substitute walking stick for Grampy in "Walking Stick Blues". It also spoiled an episode in which he puts on a one-dragon show, which didn't air until June 7, 2022.
  • Exaggerated when a PBS Kids parents article about how to help kids resolve disagreements was posted on May 17, 2022. Not only did said article use a screencap from "Super Duper Magic Fun Box", which aired on June 8, 2022, but the quotes it used from the episode spoiled the episode's conflict and how it was resolved.
  • In the press release that announced the show's premiere date, which was published in January 2021, Purple Panda is mentioned to be empathetic towards others, a trait which he doesn't learn until the events of "Tater Buddies", which aired in August 2021.
  • All of the plot summaries that exist for "Cheesy Con" spoiled the fact that Donkey sprains her hoof.
  • Sometimes, this happens with the preview clips posted on social media for the show on the day episodes premiere:
    • The clip chosen for "Groovy Guitar" spoiled that Donkey eventually gets her guitar back in time for the talent show.
    • The clip for "Piano Problem" was the song from the very end of the episode, spoiling that Donkey and Panda successfully get the piano to Grampy's in time for the sing-along.
    • The clip for "Cheesy Con" not only spoils Donkey's injury, but also spoiled how the episode's conflict is solved (Panda decides to do the Cheesy Con activities inside Donkey's house).
    • The clip for "The Breakfast Bowl" was of the final event of the titular competition. Said clip also showed that Panda was declared the winner.
• Drake & Josh got hit with this hard during promotion for the multi-parter, "Really Big Shrimp". One of them showed the entire resolution of the episode, which is everyone at Helen's wedding, Josh wearing the gold vest AND dancing with Mindy (another ad showed them kissing!!!), and Drake performing his hit song, interwoven with clips from the episode.

E

• EastEnders subverted this in the late 90s, when fake spoilers were inserted into trailers. One gave the impression that club owner Steve was going to be killed by his girlfriend, whereas the actual episode had it happen the other way around. Steve then framed his colleague, who subsequently escaped from prison and returned for revenge. The trailers for that episode implied that he had booby trapped several lightbulbs with explosives as revenge, but the episode had no exploding lightbulbs in it at all.
• ER: One episode did this badly enough for TV Guide to call them out. The promos for one episode touted the return of Dr. Carter, even showing a brief scene. How long was Carter's actual appearance? Exactly as long as in the promos, using the exact same scene.
• When The Event came back following its Christmas break, the ads made a huge deal out of revealing the origin of the aliens on the show. The show itself does not reveal this until the very last 5 minutes of the last episode, about six episodes after the ads started mentioning it.

F

• Falling Skies: For the season 1 episode "Grace", the promo immediately before it showed the boy putting the harness back on his back. The boy doesn't actually put it on until 45 minutes through the hour-long episode.
• The TV version of Fame began each and every episode (barring the concert specials) with a 30-second mini-trailer for the episode which zig-zagged with this.
  • Take the season 3 episode "A Friend in Need": While the opening reel showed the substitute's backing out of the production being revealed to everyone, it didn't show exactly why he did so.
  • Played straight with "Who Am I, Really", in which a photographer comes to the school, Nicole finds out that the photographer is her Missing Mom who gave her up for adoption, and is persuaded to stop seeing her by her birth parents. This was all played up in the preview.
• Farscape: Season four episode "John Quixote" includes a reappearance by Zhaan who had been Killed Off for Real the previous season. Her appearance was supposed to be a surprise but the Sci-Fi Channel decided to include the reveal in the trailers, something fans and reviewers immediately mocked them for.
• Firefly: A well-known TV example would be the trailers for the pilot (if you can call it that, considering it was the last episode aired). The major act break at the halfway point of the two-hour episode was supposed to have been revealing what was in the box Simon was so anxious to keep secret. This was ruined by the fact that the FOX promos spoiled it from the get go, as well as showing the moment the box was opened in the opening credits.
  • The suspense of "Which passenger is actually a spy?" is ruined by the fact that the answer is pretty obviously "the one guy who isn't in the opening credits".
• Frasier: The producers had to pull a fast one on NBC in order to avert this. In the "Adventures in Paradise" two-part episode, Frasier finds himself at a Hawaiian resort in a room next to his ex-wife, Lilith. The second part ended with a dream sequence where Frasier was back at the resort, this time next to Shelly Long as Diane Chambers. The producers were worried that NBC would heavily promote the surprise cameo, so they shot the scene in secret and turned in a copy of the episode without the scene, only giving the real episode to the executives at the very last minute.

G

• Gilmore Girls: During the last season, the teaser at the end of each episode showed the very last scene of the following episode. Technically, this may have been more misdirection than spoiler, though, as the final scene of each episode was usually unrelated to the main action of the story, and was itself a lead-in for the following episode. Which is to say, that after the final scene foreshadowed the next episode, the On the Next teaser that followed showed you what amounted to a teaser for the episode two weeks down the line.
• Glee did this in a season 2 episode, showing Kurt, who has been at a rival school for ten episodes, standing at the top of a staircase yelling "Kurt Hummel's back at McKinley!"
• Good Luck Charlie: Before the credits for a new episode started, a trailer for a Saturday block clearly said that Gabe won his class election, and showed scenes from the credits we had then yet to see.
  • Some trailers for the Christmas Special spoil Amy's pregnancy.
• Great Expectations: PBS' trailer for the newest adaptation gives away how Miss Havisham dies, even though the official website goes out of its way to stick "Spoiler Warning" on the production designer's discussion of that event.
• Grimm is somewhat notorious for this to a point at which some fans stopped watching the trailers. One of the worst examples was showing that Cinderella/Lucinda was a Wesen even though the episode itself did its very best to draw the attention of the audience to another character.

H

• H₂O: Just Add Water got a major Season 2 plot point spoiled by Nickelodeon before the series aired in the UK. Previews showed Charlotte underwater with a mermaid tail - which does not happen until well into the second half of the season. Also not as bad, as the first episode hinted at it, but the previews implied that Charlotte would also be an antagonist, which again doesn't happen until the season is nearly over.
• Hannah Montana: The promos for the final season episode "Hannah's Gonna Get This", spoiled the fact that Hannah ended up recording the song as a duet with Iyaz, something which doesn't happen until the last minute of the episode.
• Henry Danger does this twice.
  • The Toddler was shown a lot in the promos for "Danger and Thunder" but the scene where he makes is appearance in the episode was shown to make it a surprise.
  • In the preview for "Sister Twister part 1", it was explained that Piper found out her brother and his boss are Kid Danger and Captain Man despite this being the surprise ending.
• Heroes on NBC's online streaming is only for spoilerphiles and people who click "Play" faster than they read. Their single-sentence summary for "Angels and Monsters" manages to completely give away the ending of Claire's plotline: the guy kills himself.
• Hollywood Showdown: When TV Guide Channel re-aired episodes (which was 30 minutes), they would pad out the show with commercials to make it an hour long. Towards the end of the hour, they would run the first five minutes or so of the next episode.
• The previews for House occasionally seem to make this a Subverted Trope, by taking one of House's sarcastic lines from the next episode and implying that it is literal.
  • Local previews for the Australian broadcasting of House were often deliberately misleading, taking quotes out of context and hinting that the focus of the story was something totally different.
  • This subversion itself may have been lampshaded by a Season 4 episode where a documentary crew, failing to get House to utter anything serious, edits their documentary to make comments like "I became a doctor because of Patch Adams" look serious.
  • The preview for the finale of Season 6 on British TV spoils the surprise ending: Cuddy leaving Lucas and telling House that she loves him.
  • Each episode on the British Season 4 DVD boxset is accompanied by a still from that episode. The still for 'Wilson's Heart' shows a distraught Wilson lying with Amber on her deathbed.
• How I Met Your Father: A Season 2 promotional trailer spoils one episode's cameo of Barney Stinson in the very first clip. The trailer came out after the episode had aired, but said character's appearance is meant to be a surprise (though it was popularized quickly online).
• How I Met Your Mother: In the promo for the Season 4 finale, they showed a scene of Barney and Robin kissing, despite the fact that a major reoccuring plotline spanning the entire season involved Barney struggling with his feelings for Robin.
  • Done on a more minor level with most, if not all, promos for this show. Due to Wolverine Publicity, CBS seems to have gotten it into their heads that every single one of their promos should mainly consist of Barney doing something sleazy or eccentric, regardless of how prominently Barney actually figures into the episode's plot. Therefore, most of Barney's crazy stunts get spoiled in promos before the episode ever airs. On one hand, this makes Barney seem incredibly annoying in the promos and sucks the humor out of his scenes. On the other, it means the other characters' (usually more substantial) plotlines are ignored by the promos and therefore remain complete mysteries until the episode airs, sparing them from this trope.
• How to Rock: A particularly infamous example was The Reveal at the end of "How To Rock A Love Song" was spoiled in a promo for the episode: Zander Robbins didn't write his love song about Kacey Simon or Stevie Baskara, but about his dog.
• In the Harry Potter themed quiz show The Hogwarts Tournament of Houses, in the last commercial break before the final round of the episode 3 "wild card" match, a commercial for the next week finale proudly announces the three-way competition between Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, five minutes before they beat Gryffindor to qualify for the finale!!

I

• iCarly: Commercials for the hour-long special "iPsycho", in which a crazy girl locks the trio in her basement, featured about no clips from the first half-hour of the episode. Instead, every commercial emphasized their friend Gibby coming to save them, which literally happens within the last 5 minutes.
  • Seriously, just about every episode does this now. Recently examples include spoiling the funniest and 'climactic' scene in "iSpace Out".
  • "iGot A Hot Room" spoiled in the trailers that it was Carly's birthday, that Spencer burns down the room trying to do something nice for her, that Carly is upset at it, that Carly has a job as part of the episode, that Spencer rushes to re-do the room as a surprise with Freddie and Sam, the fact that Carly loves the new room, and what the new room itself looked like.
  • "iCan't Take It" aired nine minutes of sneak peeks for a 22 minute show, including spoiling the big secret about Sam's misdeed to Freddie, and the ending where Freddie saves their relationship and Freddie kisses Sam again.
  • Worst of all, they revealed Sam's mother, resident Chuck Norris of bad parenting, who they spent seasons hyping up, IN THE ADVERTISEMENT.
  • In multi-parters they often have spoilers in the "Next time" segment. For example, the Next Time On for iStill Psycho part 1 spoils Nora's seemingly normal dad being in on the scheme and Mrs. Benson and T-Bo coming the gang's rescue.
• Impractical Jokers: TruTV has gotten so egregious in this show's case that often a commercial airing during the show will spoil who the loser for the episode is.

K

• Kamen Rider Drive: The preview for Episode 45 doesn't mince words in the slightest, outright saying "Chase dies".

L

• Law & Order sometimes gives away the twist in the commercial for it, or even in the preview right before they play the ep.
• Law & Order: Los Angeles began running previews nearly a month in advance of its return from its winter hiatus stating that "Law & Order loses one of its own" followed by a montage of all the main characters, indicating that their first episode back would be a Tonight, Someone Dies story with one of the main characters being the one killed while leaving viewers speculating about which character it would be. However, subsequent previews shown closer to the episode's airdate blatantly spoiled which character would be killed, even showing nearly the entire death scene.
• Leverage: In the Season 2 episode that introduced Tara Cole, she was posing as their client's uptight lawyer to "audition" as a stand-in grifter for Sophie - a fact she didn't reveal to the team (or the audience) until the end. Unfortunately, that was given away in one of the promos that aired just prior to the actual reveal in the last segment.
• Life on Mars: Mere minutes after the last episode had finished on BBC One, fellow BBC channel BBC Three's 60 Seconds (presumably attempting to encourage viewers to watch the episode) announced that the final episode had been shown and, in under ten seconds, spoiled that Sam had been revived in the present and jumped to an apparent death to return to the '70s. It was followed by an (unscripted, one imagines) apology for those that had recorded the episode to watch later.
• Trailers for the Lost Season 3 finale showed Jin, Bernard, and Sayid tied up. In, the show, Ben ordered their deaths, and you hear 3 gunshots through the radio. However, the scene with them tied up did not appear yet in the episode, telling people preemptively that they were alive.
  • In the penultimate episode of the 5th season, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet are seen leaving the island. However, the commercials for the finale show them back on the island. So much for that.
  • Creator/producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse ordered ABC not to show any footage of season 6 in trailers for the next - and final - season. This is both because they wanted a large amount of suspense going into the show's conclusion, and because showing any footage at all would explain the results of season 5's massive cliffhanger.
    • ABC, however, did not listen to them and began showing new footage just a couple of days before the season's premiere. Due to how season 5 ended, almost any footage would have spoiled the basic premise of the season. They also spoiled specific things like the fate of Claire.
  • The previews for the last few episodes did exactly this, and showed absolutely nothing from the upcoming episode. It was nice.
  • "Everybody Loves Hugo"'s final scenes include Desmond being tossed down to a well, possibly to his death. Cue the next time trailer for "The Last Recruit", which shows Desmond alive and well.
    • To be fair, no one who watches Lost religiously would have had any doubt about his fate anyway. If we didn't see it, it didn't happen.

M

• MADtv (1995) regularly spoofed this with fake trailers (notably the one for the Rocket Revengers in Excito-Color movie). The narrator asks the audience various things like "Who will die?", followed by footage of that person dying, going so far as to even show the ending of the film. ("You'll have to pay big money to find out Tooka's secret; that she's carrying Tiny's baby!")
  • However, a year before MADtv (1995) debuted, local Seattle show Almost Live! did their own fake trailer, which you can see here.
• Maury does this religiously. In every commercial break before DNA test results, they try to build suspense by showing quick clips of the guests before and after the results. 99% of the time, they show the guests' reactions to the results, defeating the purpose of sticking around for the results. Sometimes, if the DNA test is for a more serious tone, like an adult daughter finding her long lost father, the clips fade into a commercial break without showing the reaction.
  • Considering the crazies they get, their reactions would have come no matter what the result would have been.
• Merlin series 4 had a trailer for the first episode which showed Arthur carrying a lifeless Merlin. This is the cliffhanger at the end of the episode.
  • Interestingly, the series is also infamous for the unreliability of its trailers, particularly where interactions between Arthur and Merlin are concerned. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground.
  • On a similar note, the US previews for season 4 opened with "The king is dead", successfully spoiling the third episode before even making headway on the season premiere. Not to be deterred, it went on to display Merlin and the Dorocha that (successfully) attacked him and the aforementioned carrying scene. And also Uther's body for good measure. Just to let us know they were serious.
• In-Universe, this Mr. Show sketch involving a guy being duped into selling drugs to an undercover cop ends with a "Next Week" teaser as the accused goes on trial:
  Announcer: Will Kevin Ferguson be found guilty? Tune in next week! And now, here's a scene from next week's show.
  Jury Foreman: Your Honor, we the jury find the defendant, Kevin Ferguson, not guilty.
  Announcer: Next week, on America's Dumbest Juries.
• The promos for the My Babysitter's a Vampire season finale when it aired on Disney Channel pretty much spoil what was probably intended to be a Wham Ending, showing clips that make it blatantly obvious that Jesse bites Ethan and Sarah sucks the vampire venom out of Ethan, becoming a full vampire in the process.
• The Mysteries of Laura: The trailers for the pilot (to repeat, the pilot) give away that the killer in the case Laura is investigating is her own boss. Not that that was the only problem critics and viewers had with the show...
• The trailer for the television series based on The Mysterious Benedict Society gives away that Mr. Benedict and Mr. Curtain are twins, even though in the TV series, this is intended as a major shock and surprise, just like in the books.

N

• NCIS: Los Angeles did this at the beginning of season three. After shooting Hetty at the end of the premiere, they went on to reveal that she survived the shooting in the promo for the next week's episode.
  • Although they do subvert this in the promo for the fifth episode of season four in which all of the footage is from the continuation of the episode airing two weeks later. Seriously, nothing that that promo happened in the episode. Not a damn thing.
• The promo for the NUMB3RS episode "Spree" made a big deal about Megan being kidnapped, as if the entire episode was about that. Almost none of the scenes in the promo are in that episode (they're in the next one, "Two Daughters"), and Megan isn't kidnapped until the last thirty seconds of the episode, as a cliffhanger. So... the trailer made the entire episode pointless, really.

O

• The O.C.: Network Ten purposely ruined the shocking twist in the finale of the third season for Australian viewers. Instead of letting us think she was getting Put on a Bus, the channel decided to start showing ads three weeks before the finale saying " MARISSA... WILL... DIE".
• Once Upon a Time is terrible at this. Between the trailers and the lengthy promos ABC releases before every episode, you barely need to watch the episode at all. Most recently the trailers for season two episode 'The Doctor' gave away the big twist the writers had been keeping secret from fans since season one, that Doctor Whale's Fairytale Identity is Doctor Frankenstein.
  • Several episodes' flashback stories feature a new character and build to a final reveal of what famous fairy tale character they are, only for the trailer to give it away upfront.
  • Especially bad with the Wicked Witch of the West, with months of having Rebecca Mader's green face shoved everywhere they could get it making it rather silly to watch her introductory episode try to play it as a surprise in the last scene.
• One Tree Hill:
  • The CW did this to themselves with a Season 7 episode. The On the Next preview that aired after 7x08 had Brooke's voiceover stating that she thought she could be pregnant. Later, the CW released the clip where she confesses this to Haley before a concert Haley will be playing that night at the town's nightclub. Then the CW releases a promo photo of Brooke drinking at Haley's concert, clearly revealing she wasn't pregnant.
  • Then there were the trailers for the season five finale which showed the cliffhanger-end in the preview.

P

• Parenthood: The preview for an episode in Season 2 showed one of the main characters being involved in a potentially fatal car accident and implied that the episode's entire plot would be centered around the buildup to the accident scene. The episode itself had the character shown in the accident scene being involved in a completely unrelated storyline with the buildup to the accident only happening within the final 5 minutes and the accident itself being the very last shot before the credits rolled.
• The promo for Person of Interest's "If-Then-Else" played with this with shots of four of the five main characters taking apparently fatal wounds. Savvy viewers figured out that things weren't what they seemed because there's no way the show would kill off that much of the cast. It turned out that most of the episode was indeed not really happening, but there were some real shots (in particular, Shaw's last stand and apparent death) mixed in.
• The trailer for series 3 of Primeval shows the scene where Helen shoots Nick.
• A Previously on… in Prison Break's first season gave away Abruzzi's return with a clip of the character that had no other reason to be there. Abruzzi was last seen being loaded into a helicopter after having his throat cut; as there was no body shown nor any mention of his fate, it was a matter of when rather than if he'd return, but the clip still managed to give away the when.
• For Project Runway, Lifetime managed to kill the suspense surrounding the identities of the eighth season finalists by airing a promo for the next week's episode during the commercial break directly preceding that episode's elimination.
  • Oxygen Network is bad with this as well, in particular with their reality show Hair Battle. Gee, thanks for giving me a comprehensive list of everyone who is not going to be eliminated halfway through the episode, guys.

Q

• The existence of Alia the Evil Leaper on Quantum Leap is a mid-episode Plot Twist during her first episode. NBC's promos at the time, however, ignored the twist and played up the Evil Counterpart factor for all that it was worth.

R

• The promo for "Family Day" from Resident Alien spoils the big twist by showing Liza saying "Hi, Dad" to Harry, revealing that the real Harry Vanderspeigle was Liza's father.
• Revolution:
  • The preview for episode 3 gave away the fact that Miles and Bass co-founded the Monroe Republic and her Militia.
  • Far worse is the episode 4 promo, which reveals someone dies in the episode, and it was very easy to deduce that it would be Maggie.
  • Oh, and the trailer for the pilot episode was essentially a short recap, spoiling the entire events of the episode up to the cliffhanger.
• Robot Wars: The trailers in the later seasons often showed footage from non-preliminary battles.
• RuPaul's Drag Race: This trope is the reason why the series eventually stopped showing preview footage of the season and the queens' runway looks. Because if a queen is up for elimination in the current episode but there was an outfit in the previews that she hasn't worn yet, then obviously she'll be sticking around long enough to wear it. Or if she's eliminated, she'll be brought back into the competition somehow. Nowadays, trailers for the season are a production of their own, without footage of the actual show.

S

• The Sarah Jane Adventures always has trailers between the cliffhanger and closing credits, with only a few seconds of warning.
  • "Revenge of the Slitheen", for example, goes strait from the children being cornered by the Slitheen child to them all running out of the room they were trapped in with no consequences. At this point, SJA's parent show Doctor Who was regularly moving "part 2" trailers to after the credits to make them more avoidable.
  • CBBC's trailer for "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" was essentially Part One's cliffhanger and a caption with the start time. Given that the two parts aired only a day apart, spoilers were unavoidable if CBBC wanted more than 24 hours to promote David Tennant's guest role.
• Sesame Street:
  • The 1987 direct-to-VHS Compilation Movie Learning to Add and Subtract provides another "Video Descriptions Always Spoil" example. The plot involves Big Bird needing to learn how to add and subtract "just in time", with Maria constantly asking "just in time for what" but Big Bird not revealing why until the very end. But those who read the description on the video box would already know why Big Bird wanted to learn addition and subtraction so quickly - because he promised to give Elmo the same lesson.
  • In a similar scenario, the 2001 CD/audio play Elmo And The Orchestra revolved around Elmo, upon coming across a bird orchestra tuning up, trying to remember a symphony he'd heard once. The track listing might clue you in to what that song turns out to be: Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
  • On the show itself, the recurring segment Cookie's Crumby Pictures spoofs this: Each sketch plays like a trailer for a movie parody starring Cookie Monster. In order to teach children the same lesson Cookie's character learns, the trailers go through seemingly every major plot point of the spoofed film, including the resolution.
• As the U.S. Dragon's Den approached $100 million in deals, they began displaying a countdown to this and the episode in which it actually happened was promoted directly as having it happen in it. Actually somewhat justified on the part of the network because they wanted to promote the fact that the Sharks were going to be on 20/20 following the show to celebrate it. However, since it happened on the last deal of the episode, it made it obvious that that business was going to walk away with a deal.
• Single Father: Let's say that Doctor Who isn't the only David Tennant dramas subject to this trope. The Next Time trailers repeatedly revealed major plot points. You'd think that for a show where a major, tension-creating plot element would be about who fathered whose children, you wouldn't give the answer away in the trailers. But no....
• One episode of Sliders had the title group land in a version of San Francisco where those in charge force everyone to use some kind of buddy system. If one guy does something illegal, the other one is killed. The area is also more prone to earthquakes than the normal San Francisco and everyone knows that a big one is imminent. Quinn asks one authority figure why nobody tries to leave because of this. The man tells him something the audience learned from the promos: this version of San Francisco is a maximum security prison.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand: In the trailer for the final season War of the Damned, there is a brief clip of what is clearly the final battle that spoils who does and doesn't make it to that point.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • "200" lampshaded this, along with pretty much everything else. According to Wikipedia, the twist they're talking about (Jack O'Neill's sudden appearance) actually made it to the commercials for the episode.
      Vala: Wow. Nobody's gonna see that coming.
      Daniel: No. There'll be spoilers.
      Carter: Are you kidding? It's gonna be in the commercial.
    • Also occurred in "Fragile Balance". A boy of approximately 15 years attempts to gain access into the SGC. After a little info checking, the boy convinces everyone that he is Jack O'Neill. A genetic test reveals that he's a clone which, for some reason, didn't age properly. Rather than let us find out about this little twist during the episode, the trailer showed adult Jack O'Neill stating it in no uncertain terms.
  • And more recently, a commercial for Stargate Atlantis promised you "won't believe what happens in the last five minutes..." before showing you exactly what happens. Of course, may also be a subversion as the commercial's description for the rest of the episode's plot is completely off.
    • The announcer notably said in that episode's trailer: "They fall into a surprise attack of the replicators!" as the trailer shows... a Wraith ship attacking.
    • Nothing beats a sneak peek into "The Lost Tribe" giving away who the new enemies are.
    • Another possibly attempted subversion was the commercials for the episode where Teyla poses as a Wraith queen, with scenes taken out of context to imply she would end up turning against the team. The possibility isn't even mentioned in the episode itself.
  • EVERY SINGLE promo for Stargate: Continuum shows Ba'al being betrayed and killed by Vala/Qatesh, which is really supposed to be a surprise.
• The On the Next trailers for Star Trek: The Original Series were terrible about this. Particularly egregious is the preview of "The City on the Edge of Forever", which so effectively summarizes the whole episode that it plays more like a Previously on… than anything else.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation could be pretty awful about this too. Perhaps the most egregious was the trailer for the episode, "The Most Toys" which showed Data being captured by aliens, a woman alien offering to help Data escape, and a man incinearting the woman with a phaser. When the episode aired, the man was the villain of the episode while the woman was his loyal assistant...and was a major character throughout the entire episode, not doing her Heel–Face Turn and getting zapped by her boss until within the last 5 minutes of the episode.
  • Though it wasn't a secret that the search for Spock (pun intended) was on in "Unification Part 1", the fact that they found him was spoiled...because the last five seconds of the episode (with the big reveal, which would be followed almost immediately by "To Be Continued") was shown in the trailer.
• Star Trek: Voyager had one immensely frustrating one. At the very end (literally in the last five seconds) of the otherwise unrelated episode "Blood Fever", the crew discover a Borg corpse, setting up the next episode, "Unity", and the primary threat of the remainder of the series. It was pretty effective -- it came completely out of left field and chillingly evoked one of the most terrifying enemies in the Trek mythos (regardless of how unforgivably {{Villain Decay}}ed they would subsequently become). So what do the producers do? Why, they put that scene right in the trailer, of course.
  • Voyager's "The Chute" is a classic example. Paris and Kim are thrown in an alien prison, and about halfway through comes the revelation that they can't break out because the prison is in space. It's a very dramatic shot that would no doubt have been more effective if it hadn't been in the commercial.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: The promo for the season three episode "My Oh Maya" completely gave away the main plot that Zack would develop real feelings for a girl, and would resolve to change his womanizing ways.
• Supernatural's trailers are infamous for this. For example, the season 3's big cliffhanger ending of Dean being sent to hell was kind of ruined since the original episode promo showed Sam crying over Dean's dead body. More recently, the episode promo for season 7's "Repo Man" completely ruined the episode's big twist of the apparent victim actually being a villain and trying to let a demon that once possessed him once again inhabit his body by actually making it the focus of the trailer.
• Certain seasons of Super Sentai, such as Boukenger and Gekiranger, have a nasty habit of showing story spoilers in the "next episode preview" at the end of each episode.
  • In the Boukenger episode called "The Golden Sword," the Monster of the Week is Nigh-Invulnerable and utterly tearing the Rangers a new one. The trailer reveals that in the following episode, a new character could turn out to be friend or foe and might even fall under the bad guy's control. Then it goes onto show the Rangers handily beating up the monster that was killing them in the current episode, then said new character joining in and later posing with the Rangers' Humongous Mecha. Not much is saved for the actual episode at all.
  • In general, a good rule of thumb is to outright stop watching the previews once you get near the last 10 or so episodes, since most of the plot twists will do so. Or in the case of Gosei Sentai Dairanger, not watch the openings either, since they spoil things.
  • New mechas are often spoiled in preview. Especially frustrating in two-parts episodes, with current mecha defeated in part one and new mecha saving the day in part two. Power Rangers Turbo does a very good job of correcting this while adapting.

T

• Every episode of Thunderbirds began with a trailer showing what was coming up in the episode. It would generally show the perilous situation of the week, the series of events that led to said perilous situation, what cool machine Thunderbird 2 would unload and how the situation would be resolved. Which is essentially the whole plot. And it would be shown at the beginning of each episode.
• Top Chef is really bad with this.
  • In "Top Chef Season 7", on the second-to-last episode, Bravo stretched the episode. Instead of going from 10-11 pm, they had it run from 10-11:30 pm to increase the suspense of the final elimination. The viewer watches until 11 pm, and that is about where Judge's Table starts. Here's the slip-up: Bravo still has the ads going like the episode was 10-11. So on the commercial break where they are choosing between three contestants to be eliminated, there are the two winning contestants walking through a door on the preview for the finale. Guess who gets eliminated now.
  • "Top Chef Masters Season 2" was to select eight people to compete in the final round. This was the last selection round, and before the elimination they play a quick clip of the eight people in the final round. No point watching the ending anymore.
  • In almost all the seasons, Season 1 has ended with a "This season on Top Chef!" preview, where you might see Bob saying "I'm cooking at a baseball park!" So until that clip pops up, Bob is completely safe. And if Alice is saying "We have to cook at NASA." Then again, Alice has immunity til the NASA challenge, and the shock of this new challenge will be softened because you knew what it was anyway.
• Subverted with Top Shot trailers, where more than a few times the previews for the next episode - usually aired the commercial break before finding out who goes home - showed competitors that were eliminated.
• For True Blood, it wasn't a trailer but the news that spoiled a Season 7 plot element. It was reported that actor Luke Grimes—who played Jessica's boyfriend James introduced in Season 6—was replaced because Grimes didn't want to act out a gay love affair with Lafayette. But the story broke shortly after the Season 7 premier, where the two were still platonic and only had a single conversation onscreen (about Tara's True Death and how James was brutally murdered before being made into a vampire) that didn't indicate any sexual attraction between the two.
• True Jackson, VP did this for one special. The trailers posed the question of whether True and Jimmy will become a couple or not while almost simultaneously showing the two kissing, which happens mere seconds before the episode ends.
• For The Tudors, a trailer for season three aired before the season began showing Henry being introduced to his fourth wife, with a voice-over of how marriage to her would add military might to England, thus spoiling the mid-season plot point of Queen Jane dying. Granted, the series is based on real events, so this must happen eventually, it does put a rather rigid timeline on what should be a sudden and jarring event.

U

• The Ultimate Fighter:
  • The last few seasons had several fight ending finishes shown during the commercial about the show just before it happens.
  • Also, they often tease a "special guest" showing up in the next episode and vainly attempt to edit around the actual person to keep it a surprise. This often fails (IE, Matt Hughes being clearly seen sitting on a bench in the background in one teaser).
  • Has occurred, sometimes inadvertently spoiling fights during the in-episode previews.

V

• Victorious:
  • The promo for "Cat's New Boyfriend" gave away that Cat was dating Tori's ex, Daniel, that Tori sprayed cheese on Cat and Daniel, that Tori kissed Daniel, and that Cat punched Tori in the face.
  • While not as bad a letout, the first promo for the episode "Robarazzi" shows Robbie being worried about his blog, then humiliating Tori after the video of her playing with her pimple is let out. Then, in another ad promoting the block it was going to be aired in (with iCarly and Big Time Rush), it shows Tori and Jade filming Robbie in his gym towel against his plea, implying that they set up a revenge plot, which happens about three minutes from the end of the episode.
  • The episode "Ice Cream for Ke$ha" has the gang trying to win a contest to get Ke$ha to perform live in Tori's house. The promo literally says that it has a live performance of Ke$ha on it, while showing her performing in Tori's house.

W

• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • The Season 2 Comic-Con trailer shows a quick clip of Guillermo, the leader (and caretaker) of the retirement home in the first-season episode "Vatos" lying dead on the ground, while Rick and the others fend off a contingent of walkers massing around the area near his body.
  • Previews for the episode "Clear" averted anything that would spoil The Reveal, which harked back to an episode from some time ago, and which formed the basis of the entire episode. Too bad the Previously on… blew that because whoever is in charge of it thought it was worth protecting new viewers from Continuity Lockout with a brief, out of context flashback at the cost of ruining the surprise for anyone else.
  • After the Season 5 Comic-Con trailer was released, fans were able to piece together the fact that everyone would get out of Terminus alive by looking at the scenes that obviously took place elsewhere and making sure all the characters were accounted for.
  • The showrunners also played with the audience's expectations. In a Season 5 promo, the shots made it seem as though Gareth (the leader of the Hunters) would join forces with Rick and his group and help them as they head towards Washington. However, this was not the case, as Gareth and the Terminites are established to be irredeemably evil from the get-go. The material in the promo was taken from two separate scenes (Rick talking to the rest of the group in a church, and Gareth talking to the rest of the Hunters by a campfire), and led to people complaining that they had been supposedly spoiled.
  • After season 6 ended with one of the heroes being brutally executed by Negan, AMC faced the challenge of how to market season 7 without spoiling the victim's identity, knowing anything they put out would be dissected by fans. For the Comic-Con trailer, they merely opted to not show any of the potential victims (which also made for a pretty bland trailer, since that included most of the main cast). A sneak peak was later shown that revealed Rick survived, but given he's the main character, that wasn't a huge shock. The real spoiler came along when a foreign TV spot clearly showed Daryl and Michonne, spoiling the fact that they weren't the victim. AMC quickly had the footage pulled, but by that point, the damage had been done.
  • In the promo for Fear the Walking Dead's Season Two promo, a quick shot revealed that one of the characters from the Flight 462 webseries (Charlie) was still alive, despite airing two weeks before the webseries in question actually ended. As a result, there was no tension over whether the character in question would survive or not.
• Warehouse 13 averts this by not showing Artie in ads for season 2, since he is supposedly dead. They did the same for Myka in season 3 and Jinks in season 4.
• Wheel of Fortune: In recent years, this of all shows is guilty of trailer-spoiling. The show uploads a preview of next week's shows on Sony's website every weekend. Nearly every preview shows contestants landing on or picking up prizes, the $10,000 side of the Mystery Wedge, or the Million Dollar Wedge. Occasionally, similar previews air on TV.
  • On October 13, 2010, one preview that aired near the end of the show was devoted entirely to a woman picking up the Million Dollar Wedge, complete with suspenseful music and an announcer hinting viewers that she would win the grand prize. When the episode in particular aired, she lost the wedge to a Bankrupt.
  • During May 27-30, 2013, the show's on-air promos and online trailers both were pretty heavy with spoilers towards a contestant winning $1,000,000.
• White Collar: USA Network's promos for the season 3 finale spoiled the sudden "What Now?" Ending about Neal cutting his anklet.
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?: Some years ago, a promo for the ABC nightly news promised an interview with the show's first-ever million dollar winner. Said promo aired before WWTBAM started.
• Wizards of Waverly Place:
  • The promo for the "Wizards vs. Werewolves" special showed Alex's new boyfriend, Mason, (who was introduced in the previous episode) screaming in front of a full moon as if he was about to undergo some kind of a transformation into a werewolf. Guess what?
  • The promo for the episode "Moving On" showed that Justin would miss Juliet, Alex would come up with some plan, and even had "Juliet" saying "I'm not Juliet." What happened here?
  • Also the episode "Everything's Rosie For Justin". Not only was it advertised as the first episode in the "Wizards vs. Angels" trilogy, but the promos featured her with angel wings and Justin saying "She's an angel". Them finding out about Rosie being an angel actually happens near the very end of the episode, and is probably supposed to be a surprising twist.
  • The title "Future Harper" - three guesses as to who H.J. Darling is, and the first two don't count.
• On The World Series Of Pop Culture, VH1 spoiled a match this way: One of the semifinal matches spilled over into the final episode...and the preview trailer for the finale spoiled who wins that semifinal match. Oops...
• WWE are generally fairly good at averting this, since RAW airs live & SmackDown is on a three day tape delay. However, there have been times when WWE.com has spoilt what was going to happen on SmackDown days in advance, but this is namely when a shock title world change has occurred on the show.
  • They did, however, spoil the "Mr McMahon's Bastard Offspring" plot by airing a promo teasing The Reveal that ended on a shot which rapidly flipped through various members of the WWE roster, only to end on Hornswoggle & keep the image on screen for a few seconds. When RAW aired, guess who was the bastard.

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