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  • The 39 Clues:
    • The fifth Cahill branch, the Madrigals, and the fact that their founder was Madeleine Cahill, make it practically impossible to discuss the first series or the ancestral Cahill family without spoiling some of the most surprising revelations in the series. Madeleine's existence isn't even revealed until near the first series' end.
    • A lot of the enemies as well, due to their Heel-Face Turns at the end of the first series. Sinead Starling in particular becomes a big one due to her turning out to be Vesper 3, The Mole, in the second series.
  • Accel World:
    • Takumu "Taku" Mayuzumi. You can't say much about him apart from his status as Haru and Chiyu's Childhood Friend without spoiling that 1)He, not Chiyu, is Cyan Pile, and thus the main antagonist of the first story arc. 2)The less pleasant aspects of his personality (e.g. secretly hating Haru and giving his girlfriend a backdoor program to spy on her). 3)The fact that after the arc, he remains on Brain Burst and changes for the better.
    • Saffron Blossom and Chrome Falcon are difficult to talk about without revealing the former's death and the latter's becoming the first Chrome Disaster.
    • White Cosmos, the White King. She turns out to be Kuroyukihime's parent and older sister, who manipulated Kuroyukihime into killing Red Rider.
  • The Agent Pendergast series has Tristram and Alban, the twin sons of the title character. Since they do not appear until Two Graves, one of the later books in the series, and the twist related to them isn't brought up until roughly a quarter through it, it's impossible to bring them up without also referring to their role in the series.
  • Julius Grief in Alex Rider. Originally an unnamed clone of Dr. Grief who looks just like Alex from Point Blanc, he's thought to have died in the chapter he was introduced in. Nope, he was just arrested and comes Back for the Finale as a member of Scorpia.
  • Animorphs has Marco's mom Eva. We know very little about her past, other than that she was killed in a tragic boating accident, and her husband couldn't stop mourning her. She's also the host of Yeerk commander Visser One, who faked her death, and soon grows into one of the series' most dangerous antagonists.
  • Baccano!:
  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy has the Greater-Scope Villain, Quentin Makepeace, who seems an eccentric playwright until Book 3. There's also the fact that he's quickly offed within a few chapters of The Reveal by Nouda.
  • In the Warrior trilogy of BattleTech novels, Justin Xiang Allard's entire role is to be the Fake Defector who becomes the enemy spymaster to help sabotage the Capellan Confederation's efforts in the upcoming Fourth Succession War while pretending to do his best to use his knowledge as the son of the Federated Suns' resident spymaster to their advantage. This bit of information is easily found in most histories of the BT universe as well as referred back to in later fiction since these books were among the earliest written for it and the timeline has long since moved on, but acts as a major spoiler for the novels themselves, which don't so much as hint at this (even throwing in a convenient red herring or two) until The Reveal near the end of the last one.
  • The Beginning After the End:
    • Nico and Cecilia. It is impossible to discuss either of them without spoilers as their introduction into the story marks a major shift in the plot, being the crux of one of its major plot twists. Not only did they play a pivotal role in how Arthur's past life as King Grey turned out, but they both return to play a role in his reincarnated life as servants of Agrona. The former turns out to be the true identity of Arthur's childhood friend Elijah Knight and has been working with Agrona to in order to exact revenge on Grey/Arthur for killing Cecilia. The latter turns out to the Legacy, a Person of Mass Destruction whom Agrona intends to use as his ace in the hole for his war against Epheotus. Compared to Nico, she is even harder to talk about as not only were Arthur and Nico reincarnated by Agrona to serve as anchor points for her, but that she herself is ultimately summoned using an unwilling Tessia Eralith as her vessel.
    • Kezess is introduced as the ruler of the Asuras and the father of Sylvia, the dragon who saved Arthur as a boy, being posited as the Good Counterpart to Agrona. However, it is almost impossible to discuss him without revealing that he is in fact a tyrannical ruler responsible for committing several atrocities that make him no better than Agrona. Namely, he is responsible for orchestrating the genocide of the Djinn race in the distant past and exiling Agrona when he tried to expose the truth, causing the latter's Start of Darkness (and thus being indirectly responsible for the main conflict), the destruction of Elenoir after the Alacryan conquest by forcing his subordinate Aldir to use the World Eater technique, and the purging of the Dicathian resistance when they refused to comply with his plans (the last of which is only stopped by Arthur returning from Alacrya).
    • Seris Vritra at first appears to be an enigmatic minion of Agrona's, given how she takes a interest in Arthur during the war. The fact that not only is she Caera's mentor and Arthur's Anonymous Benefactor during his time in Alacrya, but she has been secretly planning to overthrow Agrona and the Vritra is a major surprise. From her first appearance during the war, one would hardly suspect that not only is she a Bastard Understudy among the Scythes but ends up becoming one of the Big Goods of the story and the first sign that the Alacryans aren't completely evil, only their Vritra masters.
    • For a spoiler culture, the Djinn themselves. Knowing their existence completely turns everything Arthur and by extension the audience knows about the Asuras and their Divine Conflict on its head. Not only were they the victims of a genocide committed by Kezess and the Indrath, but said genocide led to the main conflict as Agrona and the Vritra were exiled from Epheotus when they discovered the truth. There is also the fact that some Djinn survived the genocide, as not only are Arthur and his family descended from them, but some took refuge in the Hearth, the hidden enclave of the Lost Prince Mordain.
    • Sylvie. For starters, at the end of Volume 6 she is able to assume her human form and gets briefly hijacked by Agrona so he can talk to Arthur in private. Then at the end of Volume 7 she is forced to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save Arthur from the Vritra, followed by the revelation at the start of Volume 8 that her father is Agrona himself. However, the biggest developments surrounding her occur at the end of Volume 10. Not only is she finally brought back (through the Heroic Sacrifice of a repentant Aldir), but it is revealed she is the reason Grey/Arthur's reincarnation did not go according to Agrona's plan as when she sacrificed herself her soul was sent back in time, wherein she managed to wrest Grey's soul away from Agrona so that he would instead be reincarnated as Arthur free from his control.
  • The Black Witch Chronicles: It turns out that the character everyone assumes to be the Icaral of Prophecy, who is according to said prophecies fated to fight the heroine (the second Black Witch) in a battle that will determine the fate of the world... isn't. The real Icaral of Prophecy is a completely different character. His secret identity can be discussed pre-reveal without many spoilers, but afterwards is a different matter.
  • A Certain Magical Index:
    • Accelerator is the main antagonist of the third volume. In the fifth, he undergoes a Heel–Face Turn, receives brain damage that severely limits his power, and becomes one of the series' protagonists.
    • Othinus. Being a major antagonist who actually wins and destroys the world would be a major spoiler on its own. But after that, she undergoes a Heel–Face Turn and loses almost all of her power, and ends up moving in with Touma as a second freeloader.
    • Coronzon is a demon who possesses Lola Stuart for the entire series and is the one responsible for all of her actions. Any discussion of it will also spoil the fact that Lola is actually Lola Zaza Crowley, the daughter of Aleister Crowley.
  • Chrysalis (RinoZ): "Travelling Tolly" is essentially a spoiler even when the story is being read for the first time. She appears in the form of snippets at the top of various chapters, purporting to contain excerpts from her books, documenting her tour through the ants' territory approximately ten years after Anthony's reincarnation — thus making it clear that the Colony survives all the existential threats that surround them throughout the story, and even thrives in the end.
  • Codex Alera:
    • Araris Valerian is supposed to be dead. Fade, the slave working for Bernard and Isana, is supposed to be brain-damaged. So when he pulls a Big Damn Heroes at the end of the first book and gets his real identity revealed to a few people in the process, it's a shock. He does keep the act up for a couple more books, but once he stops pretending the cat is officially out of the bag and it gets hard not to spoil everything.
    • Tavi is one as well. His identity as Septimus' son isn't revealed until book three, although a number of clues that he's actually Gaius Octavian are fairly obvious (including his name) and the fact is fairly heavily implied even before characters are openly discussing it. The fact that Araris Valerian stayed behind in the middle of nowhere and spends his time watching over a random young shepard boy is enough to clue in several characters who learn about Araris' identity.
  • Commonwealth Saga: The early parts of Pandora's Star set the backstory of the Commonwealth, including the "terrorist", cultlike Guardians of Selfhood who use propaganda about an evil mind-controlling alien which nobody has ever seen evidence of, to recruit young soldiers and justify their actions. Naturally, the Starflyer alien turns out to be Real After All, and it's impossible to talk about a good half of the conflict in Judas Unchained without revealing this.
  • Jynn Ur'Gored in The Dark Profit Saga. The big reveal about him in book 1 is that he's the son of the Evil Sorcerer/liche Detarr Ur'Mayan. In book 2, he's forced to reveal that he's not a noctomancer (lunar mage) but an omnimancer (can use both lunar and solar magic), even though he hasn't used solamancy (solar magic) since he was little, as omnimancers are treated like lepers in this world. Both times this causes his burgeoning relationship with solamancer Laruna Trullon to hit a major setback.
  • Milo from Demon Road is a demon and is also the fabled Ghost of the Highway. All you can say without spoiling this is that he likes guns and is from Texas.
  • There are two examples in Robin Jarvis' Deptford Histories trilogy:
    • Wendel Maculatum, from The Oaken Throne, is introduced as a kindly, if dim-witted, jester who becomes a traveling companion of the main characters. However, it turns out later that he is the diabolical High Priest of Hobb, which changes the way the character is perceived so much that most any details about him would have to include spoilers.
    • In Thomas, an idiotic but seemingly well-meaning mouse named Dimlon befriends Woodget and Thomas. Little do they know, he is really Dahrem Ruhar, a murderous and sadistic adept of the Scale who has gained their trust merely to steal the ninth fragment of an egg in which the serpent god Sarpedon will be reborn. When discussing Dimlon and his part in the story, his true identity would almost have to be mentioned at some point.
  • Raguel and Uriel in The Dinosaur Lords, due to them being named only in the epilogue and carrying a massive Wham Episode on their shoulders - not to mention that as Grey Angels, they set up a massive Sequel Hook.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • You want to avoid spoiling the fact that Thomas is Harry's half-brother? This is going to significantly limit your ability to explain either of their motivations for most of their interactions after Blood Rites, starting with "Why does Harry immediately go to a vampire for help?"
    • Molly Carpenter, Michael's oldest daughter, who has magical talent and becomes Harry's apprentice. And then even that information became obsolete.
    • Margaret Angelica "Maggie" Dresden's very existence, as the daughter of Harry and Susan Rodriguez, is a massive spoiler, as the reveal that she exists at all kicks off the Wham Episode known as Changes.
  • In Ender's Game, the very fact that Mazer Rackham appears in the story at all is a rather massive spoiler, since he's introduced in an early chapter as a legendary war hero from the first Formic War — who should be long dead, as the war takes place over a century before the main story. It's not until the third act of the book that we find out that he's still alive, as the International Fleet used the relativistic nature of space travel to ensure that he would be alive to advise the commander of the human counterattack.
  • Full Dive: Kiwame Quest NPCs Martin and his sister Alicia are very hard to describe after the first episode due to the former being a Developing Doomed Character killed by main character Hiro by complete accident and the latter, also one of the main characters, who becomes an Ax-Crazy Yandere due to the tramua over her brother's demise and is hell-bent on killing Hiro.
  • Giants Series: The very name given to the series, even. The Giants are the Ganymeans, and knowing that there's another alien race involved makes the mystery of the first book a lot less mysterious.
  • Goblin Slayer: It's hard to talk about the Goblin Paladin without revealing a horrific revelation in Volume 5.
  • In The Gone-Away World, the hero doesn't actually exist until about halfway through the book—before that, he's a figment of his best friend's imagination.
  • The plot of Gone Girl sounds a bit boringly familiar without knowing the reveal that Amy Dunne has set the whole thing up.
  • Pretty much any non-inconsequential character introduced in or that plays a significant role in The Forerunner Saga of Halo, since it takes place one hundred thousand years prior to the primary time period of the franchise, and sets the stage for every other current piece of media for it.
  • From the New World: the Fiend ("Akki") who is actually Mamoru and Maria's child who has been raised by the monster rats; this is only shown in the last few episodes, though much foreshadowed.
  • Goosebumps: Almost every installment has this type of character, but for the sake of convinence, we will list some of the more notable ones:
    • Both main characters in The Ghost Next Door are this for different reasons; Hannah is revealed to be Dead All Along, and the shadow spirit is an alternate version of Danny himself.
    • Andrew Toggle of Piano Lessons Can Be Murder is this to the point that ALL of his tropes were once spoiler marked.
    • Will Blake is revealed to be the werewolf in The Werewolf of Fever Swamp.
  • Harry Potter: Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew (or Scabbers for that matter). There is no way to give an accurate description, however brief, of either character without spoiling The Reveal at the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In subsequent books, both appear on a recurring basis with their true natures taken for granted. The same could be said for Tom Riddle after the events of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
  • Heretical Edge has plenty, though some have moved out of that status as the story progresses. Tabbris is the most extreme - literally any information beyond the existence of a character by that name spoils the biggest twist so far, and even that can spoil an attentive reader.
  • Alma Coin from The Hunger Games series is the president of District 13. Up until the end of the second book it's believed that District 13 was wiped out 75 years prior. It's not even hinted that it still exists until fairly early in the second book. And then it's revealed that she's the true Big Bad, attempting to usurp President Snow and instill her own rule upon Panem, including setting up a new Hunger Games involving Capitol children.
  • Is This A Zombie?: Describing tropes that apply to Kyoko is very difficult if you really want to avoid spoiling the fact that she's the serial killer who murdered Ayumu. Entire entries on most of the trope pages relevant to her are almost completely spoiler tagged.
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes: It's really hard to discuss the series without giving away the fact that Siegfried Kircheis, one of Reinhard von Lohengramm's most loyal and competent subordinates and the closest person he has to a true friend, dies about a quarter of the way through the series while shielding Reinhard from an assassination attempt. Even long after the fact, Kircheis's Present Absence makes itself felt throughout the rest of the series.
  • The Lunar Chronicles: Ze'ev Kesley, aka Wolf. It is hard to say very much about him without spoiling the fact that he is a Lunar soldier who is still actively working for them (albeit increasingly conflicted) through most of Scarlet. The character page has separate sections for Wolf and Ze'ev, the latter of which is almost all spoilers.
  • For readers of the Malazan Book of the Fallen it's difficult to talk about Errastas in a non-spoiler context, since he mainly operates in the latter half of the series and then turns out to be one of the more active players in The End of the World as We Know It. Come the last books he hardly has any scenes that are not Wham Episodes.
  • The Maltese Falcon: Brigid O'Shaughnessy seemed suspicious from the start, we knew something was off about her, but she at least seemed more sympathetic than the other people involved in the Falcon chase. Then it's revealed she was the one who had murdered Sam's partner, Miles Archer and we get a glimpse of just how dangerous she can truly be.
  • Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: Saying anything about Marsh after about the early sections of the first book is a massive spoiler. Talking about Kelsier is a pretty big spoiler in the same book, of course. You can't really mention Ruin without massively spoiling the twist ending of the second book, and discussing TenSoon and OreSeur during the hunt for the enemy Kaandra in Hero of Ages becomes a spoiler very fast.
    • There's also Mistborn: Secret History, a book that the author has said the mere knowledge of its existence is a spoiler of sorts for the original series. The first few pages spoiler a major part of the first book, and the rest of the book literally spoils the entire trilogy for anyone who hasn't read it.
  • The Mortal Instruments: Anything about Sebastian/Jonathan Morgenstern from the later part of City of Glass spoils several plot points like: Jace and Clary aren't really siblings, the real Sebastian Verlac has been Dead All Along, and Valentine fed Jocelyn demon blood while she was pregnant.
  • Meta-level: In The Nine Wrong Answers by John Dickson Carr, there's a character in a scene who is not who he's thought to be. Once this is revealed later on, the narrator explicitly points out that he didn't use the character's name at any point in that scene.
  • My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Sirius Dieke is the friendly, kind-hearted Student Council President of the Magic Academy... or at least that's what he wants you to think. It's extremely hard to talk about him without talking about his real identity and the conflict he instigates in the last three episodes of the anime that take up a good chunk of volume 2 in the light novel series.
  • Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series: Orannis the Destroyer. We don't even know anything other than Its status as a Greater-Scope Villain (including Its name, we know It only as "The Enemy") until the final chapter of the second book. That's when we learn that It's an Omnicidal Maniac and an Eldritch Abomination, who's been sealed in a split metal ball since before the creation of the Charter.
  • It's pretty much impossible to discuss Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" without revealing that the titular Utopia is literally (not figuratively) Powered by a Forsaken Child.
  • Qualia the Purple has multiple characters that you can't really talk about without giving something away:
    • Talking about Yukari, the purple-eyed deuteragonist, is practically impossible unless you mention that she dies after the first few chapters, and her death ends up creating the big plot and reason for the multiverse story to unfold, all in an effort to prevent her death.
    • Talking about Hatou Manabe, the protagonist, is even worse, if possible. Try to describe Hatou to someone without mentioning that she ends up getting kidnapped by a serial killer, her arm being chopped off and reassembled by Yukari with the help of her cellphone. That said cellphone arm functioning as a proper cellphone and giving her the ability to talk to infinite parallel universe versions of herself that warn her of Yukari's death. That she can communicate with them and gain the knowledge and memories of her parallel universe-selves, can practically create a universe where magic exists that gives her magic abilities. And she recently obtained the realiziation that she could take over and "become" almost every person she wants to be. There's more, but... yeah.
    • Tenjou Nanami has it a bit easier. The only thing that is a spoiler to talk about with her is that she was Yukari's first "operation patient" and she had injuries that were "fixed" by Yukari with pieces of a jungle gym.
  • Noah from The Raven Cycle is a bit hard to talk about without giving away the end of the first book. There's not really much to say about him that wouldn't spoil anything outside of "He's the quiet one." Heck, you can't even use his last name without giving something away.
  • Red Lotus: Siu-Sing, the heroine of Part Two. By virtue of being the daughter of Li-Xia, the heroine of Part One, her existence spoils the big romantic plot of the previous part.
  • In the Rivers of London series, PC Lesley May is introduced as The World's Most Beautiful Woman and the series' muggle voice of restraint. At the end of book one she has her face ripped off by the villain (who'd pulled a Grand Theft Me on her) in a way magic can't fix, and spends the rest of the series teaching herself magic, then pulling a Face–Heel Turn to join the bad guys who've promised her a new face. As you can imagine, everything she does after the midway point of book one has to be spoilered out. This also leads to every book blurb and review containing a Late-Arrival Spoiler on her status.
  • Donna from A Scanner Darkly when it's revealed she is Arctor's superior "Hank".
  • Septimus Heap: It's impossible to talk about Septimus without revealing he did not die at birth. Heck, the series as a whole is even called Septimus Heap. It's pretty obvious once you get maybe halfway through the first book that this "Boy 412" character isn't who he thinks he is.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire is such an extreme example of this, it is nigh-impossible to give an overview of the series without giving one and a half spoilers. Especially in the later books. For example:
    • The fact that Daenerys' Not Quite Dead nephew Aegon even exists is a massive spoiler even without getting into his actions.
    • The Three-Eyed-Crow who has been reaching out to Bran used to be Brynden Rivers, otherwise known as Bloodraven.
    • And now, there is Leaf, the first Child of the Forest to make his appearance.
  • Everybody knows what Jekyll and Hyde means. But when The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was first published, their relationship was supposed to be the twist ending!
  • The protagonists of A Study in Emerald, as from the start, it's obvious that they're this alternative world's Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes... except that the ending reveals they're really their Evil Counterparts, Sebastian Moran and Professor Moriarty. The fact that you can't refer to them as Watson and Holmes after knowing this is revealing.
  • The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign:
    • The White Queen, initially presented as the Top God of the setting, is actually an Eldritch Abomination who is Yandere for the main protagonist Kyousuke. It's impossible to discuss the series without spoiling this, given that she's the main driving force behind the plot and Kyousuke's personality.
    • The Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal, whose mere name is a major spoiler. All Unexplored-Class are female entities with a color in their name, so just being called "Colorless" singles her out as being different from the rest. The latter part of her name hints at the fact that she was made specifically to defeat the White Queen.
  • Vampire Academy:
  • You can't really talk about the second half of Warbreaker without revealing that God King Susebron is a perfectly harmless figurehead rather than an Evil Overlord and Bluefingers and Denth are not allies of the protagonists but the Big Bad and his Dragon with an Agenda respectively.
  • Warrior Cats:
    • Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Hollyleaf: it's hard to mention them in examples without mentioning the fact that they're actually the result of Leafpool and Crowfeather's forbidden relationship, not Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight's kits. Hollyleaf also later attempts to kill Ashfur and vanishes from the Clan for several books, believed to be dead.
    • Ashfur is a minor character, right up until his attempted murder of the protagonists (which forms the climax of Long Shadows). Because what characterization he got was so bound up in that one action, it's really hard to say anything about his morality or character arc without spoiling it.
    • Most examples relating to Rock have to do with his being an immortal watcher who knows all of the prophecies that ever existed.
    • Any mention of SkyClan, the lost "fifth Clan" that was once disbanded and reformed, whose very existence is a massive spoiler for Firestar's Quest and the sixth series.
  • Whyborne and Griffin: It's pretty much impossible to mention Persephone at all without massive spoilers for the first half of the series. The audience isn't even made aware of her species for several books, much less anything about her personally, but she becomes integral to the plot and a part of the core characters.
  • The Wizard of Oz: Everyone knows by now that the Wizard of Oz is a Street Magician rather than an actual wizard, but back in the 20th century it was still a huge plot twist that hardly anyone saw coming.
  • Pretty much everything about Scion is a massive spoiler in Worm. It's at least possible to discuss Scion's actions prior to his rampage without spoiling things. Eden, Abbadon/The Third Entity, Khonsu, Tohu and Bohu can't even be referred to by name or description without giving away the biggest twists.
  • Good luck talking about the later books in Zodiac 2014 without revealing the true identity of Crompton.

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