This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ununnilium: Greeble grabble freeble frabble
52 is not a Crisis Crossover, people. Dangit. It is not, in fact, a crossover at all. It, in fact, takes place in an area of continuity that no other book covers! It is the opposite of a crossover!
*whew* Sorry. It's just that everyone tosses it in there when complaining about "too many big crossovers", and it annoys me. DC hasn't done any big crossovers since Infinite Crisis.
Burai: But not the opposite of a Crisis. ;)
Seriously, mea culpa. I didn't reread the entry before I linked to it, and had it stuck in my head that the word "crossover" wasn't to be taken literally (cf. a Wizarding School doesn't have to actually involve magic) and that the term was roughly synonymous with "brand marketing event".
Ununnilium: Hee. Yeah, I gotcha.
Puffy Treat: As far as the ending of Grant Morrison's X-Men run goes, I found the truest shocking swerve to be the real of identity of Sublime, not Xorn. So, all prejudice against mutations during the entire history of life on Earth was caused, controlled, and manipulated by an evil sentient RNA strand. Rrrrright. Odder still, this is one of the few twists NOT retconned away!
Lale: Sounds redundant to me (Wall Banger).
Ununnilium: It's a subset - a Wall Banger can be anything in the episode, whereas a Shocking Swerve is a type of Wall Banger-ish Twist Ending.
Knight Random: Watchmen emphatically doesn't count. Moore definitely intended it as literature and all the twists were supposed to mean something. There is a context, you just have to work really, really hard to get it. (I admit a lot of it went over my head too.)
The movie's going to suck, isn't it?
Does the Big Lebowski count here? I don't think there was anything ham-fisted about the presentation of donnie's death and it fits onto the philosophy of the movie.
The Naruto entry borders on being factually inaccurate- there are only 4 characters in Konoha who knew about Itachi being ordered to kill his clan; the rest of the village fully believed that he had simply gone nuts. Every single one of them, including Itachi, was fully ready to take the secret to their grave. Furthermore, none of the four who knew were ever with Itachi during any point in the series, or talked about him, or had his name mentioned in their presence. As there is no other justification for it being there, it should probably be deleted.
There were also several things that actually made a good bit of sense, including Itachi's refusal to fight Jiraiya (despite his rather casual defeating or Orochimaru, a character who has been generally shown to be Jiraiya's superior, twice), his abandonment of his plan to capture Naruto, the scene where he wanted to talk to Naruto about something important, and Danzo's attempt to kill Sasuke.
Ericho: No, no, and NO. I think you'll find that everyone here disagrees with you. The fact remains that Itachi had still committed the most despicable acts imaginable (killing his best friend, parents, family) and there is no other character that can claim to have done such a horrible atrocity for whatever reason. Itachi had Mind Raped Kakashi for seventy-two hours straight and if that is not someone who enjoys fighting and evil, then no one, I repeat no one is. Ignore the fact that he allowed the Akatsuki to become more powerful and reach their goal of killing massive amounts of innocent people. Face facts. It is a Shocking Swerve.
Charred Knight: At no time is it ever foreshadowed, and Itachi does things like inflict Mind Rape on both Sasuke, and Kakashi.
Silver2195: It makes sense as long as you don't try to claim that Itachi's orders make him a "good guy". Okay, parts of the revelation were kind of questionable (Mandara unlocking Sasuke's repressed memories?) but that's not mentioned in the entry. Removing.
Fly: The quote does not add to this page whatsoever, since all it does is show the phrase in conversation with no qualifiers - which, for this trope, isn't really necessary. Cutting it.
Perfect Stranger did set up the identity of the killer - Rowena's arguement with her boyfriend after Grace's death is a dead give away she at least knows something more than she is letting on, and her dark side is seen in the very first scene from the way she gloats over the senator's downfall. The real problem with the film is that the twist leaves us without anyone to remotely connect to. Making Miles into an actual good guy rather than vile, blackmailing creep he turns out to be would have solved a *lot* of problems.
No mention of Dominic Deegan...?
HeartBurn Kid: Pulled this:
- Here's another example of the kind of twist that was common to WCW shows in its dying days: on one show, Rick Steiner was attacked by a masked man. On the next show, the mystery man pulled off his mask to reveal... Rick Steiner.
For the record, the mystery man ended up being Road Warrior Animal.
Pulled: Western Animation
- Winx Club: Tecna's sacrifice to save Tides/Andros. Yours truly can point out several ways in which this is wrong. (Not the least being that she ends up with her Enchantix despite not saving anyone from her own realm.)
Danel: Several ways in which this is wrong? Excellent. Would you mind terribly, if it's not too much hassle, explaining to the rest of us what they are?
What is more, what does this actually mean:
- The truth behind Liquid Snake's possession of Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 4 is, to say the least, the only plot point in the series that succeeded in pissing off some fans of the series.
Do you really mean that that twist is the only plot point that succeeds in annoying any fans? Because I'm fairly sure that's not the case (The other reading of it is that there all other fans of the series were pissed off by various other plot points, except for these easy-going folk... and this annoyed them!)
Falcon Arrow: On the Blood Knights example for World Of Warcraft, it was probably a retcon so as to 'morally' justify playing such a character, seeing as Blood Knights are the only race able to play paladins on the Horde side, which at least gameplay wise is important. (Damn the bubbles...)
Danel: Is the Torchwood example really a case of a Shocking Swerve? I don't even think it counts as any kind of Twist Ending.
Marikina: Removed Hulk Hogan example. While certainly shocking, it was by no means an Ass Pull or a Wall Banger. There was some Foreshadowing of this kind of Face–Heel Turn during his "Dark Hogan" phase in 1995, and his infamous speeches in the Bash and the following night's Nitro layed out well-reasoned motivations for his betrayal.
Butterscotch: Removed a huge-ass wall of text, and about a screen's worth of accompanying natter, from the Grant Morrison/Xorn thing. Reproduced below; if you find anything in there that's worth putting on the page, feel free.
- This Troper remembers it being undone like, two months later into it was Xorn, thinking he was Magneto, pretending to be Xorn. Oh and then Xorn's identical twin brother shows up and calls himself Xorn as well. Wait, what!?
- Then Xorn turns out to have been an undead gestalt Energy Being that possessed some random guy from Alaska. Who masqueraded as Magneto masquerading as Xorn. And yes, there's a Chinese identical twin brother in there somewhere.
- Really, the attempts to undo the twist fit this trope far better than the actual twist itself. Xorn being Magneto actually makes a lot of sense if you go back and look for clues (so long as you accept Morrison's basic interpretation of Magneto as evil, not misunderstood.)
- Except it does not make sense, and it's not handled well by (the otherwise brilliant) Grant Morrison. At the start of his run and for most part of it, Xorn behaves just like Xorn and gives us no reason whatsoever to believe he's not what he says he is (even when it would have been more useful and logical for his real persona to behave differently). Oh, and we're given a whole comic book in which we can READ HIS FREAKIN' THOUGHTS, which are clearly the sincere thoughts of the pacifist Xorn, and not at all those of the extremist Magneto. This part could have still been (weakly) explained by saying he used an auto-hypnosis of some sort, but Morrison decided to skip this part and just went for "Oh, shoot! Let's just pretend that story I wrote never happened, ok?" instead. Also, 90% of the "superhero stuff" he manages to do as Xorn can not (and will not) be explained with Magneto's powers (and the 10% that are actually explained, are explained in a very weak way: "Nanomachines can do anything"). Then, VERY CLOSE TO THE END, we're given this spooky scene of Xorn behaving eerily and aggressively, suggesting just that there's something wrong about him (nothing else, seriously). Cues the final revelation. It's clear to any lucid reader that the idea of having Xorn "having always been Magneto" has occured to the author AT THE END of his run, and then he just tried to convince us that he had it in mind since the beginning, which it would have maybe worked, if he hadn't left a whole lot of plot canyons! Oh, by the way, he completed his masterpiece by completely screwing up the character of Magneto by having him basically behave like the OPPOSITE of how Magneto would (a Nazi drug addict with an inferiority complex... to keep it short).
- Also, Marvel eventually printed an unredacted version of the proposal and plot summary Morrison submitted, which had previously been shown with redacted portions before the Xorneto reveal was printed. Unsurprisingly, Magneto's name was what was redacted in the Xorn segments of the proposal. It was indeed planned all along, and Marvel has presented documentary evidence thereof. Or maybe it's all a conspiracy...
- Which really just proves that Morrison doesn't have a clue how to write Magneto as his actions after the reveal are completely contrary to his established character for the previous thirty-odd years. Holocaust-survivor Magneto marching humans into gas chambers?!?!
- That comic where we were privy to Xorn's "thoughts" was actually supposed to be a letter to Xavier, as I recall. Hence, the events it describes may or may not be based on things that actually happened. Also, at one point Xorn uses a burst of power from his hands to stop a car from hitting him, when the star-brain inside his mask was supposed to be the focus of his mutant abilities. In addition, Xorn remarks at one point that he can hear the "electromagnetic death wails" of a Shi'Ar spacecraft. Little hints, to be sure, but hints nonetheless (note: this does not mean that This Troper actually liked Morrison's run. In fact I hated it with every scrap of rational thought in my body... but that doesn't mean I won't defend it against perceived inaccuracies).
- Was the ret-con (by other authors) of Grant Morrison's storyline handled badly? Yes, it was. Was it necessary? HELL, YEAH!
- There are plenty of downright terrible stories in Marvel history, far worse than anything Morrison has ever done, which nonetheless remain canon. In light of that, singling out this one to erase just seems vindictive and petty.
- None of the others single-handedly destroyed the characterisation of the single most important villain on the franchise.
- This Troper remembers it being undone like, two months later into it was Xorn, thinking he was Magneto, pretending to be Xorn. Oh and then Xorn's identical twin brother shows up and calls himself Xorn as well. Wait, what!?
