Now You Tell Me

Madeline Ashton: Bottoms up! [drinks potion]
Lisle von Rhoman: Now, a warning...
Madeline Ashton: NOW a warning?!

— Death Becomes Her

A comedy gag where a character gets a warning to not perform a certain act or a heads-up about something nasty coming his way, but just too late for it to be useful. Either disaster has already occurred or it's too late to take the action back, and the disaster is moments away. Sometimes, for extra silliness, the nature of the warning is obscured until the discouraged action is taken, such as a message on the screen that warns you not to read the screen. Alternatively, the warned character might refuse to listen to the message until they're done with what they're doing... which is exactly what the warning was to be about.

Can also be Played for Drama, often creating a very stinging sense of irony. It can also overlap with Remembered Too Late.

Compare Can't You Read the Sign?, Cue Card Pause and You Didn't Ask, Poor Communication Kills.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Happens a lot in Blessing of the Campanella. Salsa will do something, and Ritos will tell her about a certain hazard too late for her to avoid it. Salsa shouts the trope name, which then brings Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress into things.
• Ryuk of Death Note does this repeatedly with Light when he uses the Death Note.
  Light: He waits until now to mention that detail? Damn Shinigami!
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Used when Goku asks Old Kai how long Potara fusion lasts for, the latter says it's permanent. After Supreme Kai and Kibito have already demonstrated it.^note Luckily, Dragon Ball Super reveals that the Dragon Balls can reverse it (and that it's only permanent if one of the people involved is a Kai).
    Kibito Kai: You mean I'm stuck this way!?
  • Later, Goku himself pulls this when he only tells Vegeta that it's permanent right before they fuse to battle Super Buu.
    Vegeta: Imbecile, you tell me now? Don't you think that's important information!?
• In Durarara!!, a man named Shuuji Niekawa approached Shizuo Heiwajima and makes the mistake of mentioning Shizuo's younger brother, Kasuka/Yuuhei Hanejima, which results in him being tossed into the sky. Shuuji later visits Izaya Orihara, asking for info about the toughest person in Ikebukuro, namely Shizuo. Being that Shizuo's not one of Izaya's favorite people, he gives the man information about a friend of his, Celty Sturluson, instead. Before Mr. Niekawa leaves, Izaya gives him a rather late warning.
  Izaya: Oh, and here's one little bit of advice for ya. Whatever you do, don't talk to Shizu-chan about his younger brother.
  Shuuji: [thinking] Wish you'd told me that six months ago.
• The English version of episode 31 in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! has Tiff say this word-for-word after Meta Knight mentions how destructive Mike Kirby's singing is....after Kirby's destructive singing levelled Dedede's own castle.
• One Piece:
  • Happens from time to time with Vivi in the Alabasta arc, as she forgets to tell the party certain things at critical moments, like not mentioning what Mr. 2 looks like until after he leaves the ship.
  • Also Eyelashes the Camel has just delivered goods to the new enemy base ... and didn't tell the Straw Hats this until they had reached the old one.
  • Then there is hilarious end to the Skypeia saga when Conis kindly warns the crew they're about to fall...mere moments before the crew looks down and discovers nothing but 7,000 meters of sky between them and the sea below.
• In A Place Further than the Universe, Kimari, Shirase and Hinata head to Shinjuku, where some members of the civilian expedition to Antarctica will be meeting up, and plan on seducing one of the male members to get a spot on the trip. After Kimari fails miserably, Shirase vehemently refuses to try, but Hinata and Kimari shove her out of their hiding place, in front of the expedition members. Too late, they realize why Shirase refused- since she was the daughter of an expedition member who went missing (which is why she's so determined to go to Antarctica), and had tried to get into the expedition before, the expedition members recognize her.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In the episode "Dues and Don'ts", Ash checks Delibird in the Pokédex. It says Delibird has an attack called Present. Delibird gives Ash and friends glowing ball "presents", which a couple seconds later go off as bombs. Dexter adds that some of Delibird's Presents explode. Ash says "now you tell me".
  • In "Whiscash and Ash", One-Shot Character Sullivan attempts to catch a Whishcash named Nero with aid of his Flaaffy. Unfortunately, its electrical attack fails, prompting Max to tell Sullivan that Whiscash are part Ground types and are immune to electrical attacks, to which Sullivan yells "So now you tell me?!".
• A rather non-comedic use of this trope (or perhaps a Black Comedy use) shows up in Ranma ½. Genma Saotome doesn't read the next page of the training manual detailing the Neko-ken, which says that the technique is impressive sounding, but non-functional, until after he's already trained his six-year-old son Ranma in it. Oh, and it isn't just useless, it causes permanent mental damage to the trainee, afflicting them with a permanent and deeply rooted phobia of cats.
• Happens in Restaurant to Another World when Guildheim brings Garde over to the eponymous Nekoya one Saturday to have Fried Seafood Platters, Guildheim casually mentions that the seafood tastes much better when dipped in Tartar Sauce: immediately after Garde had just finished his own Platter.
• Slayers uses this when the gang is hunting through a dungeon of some sort. Lina is reading warnings out of a book, and Gourry keeps picking up on the first half of the warning instead of the whole. The first warning is something like "Pressing the button... is something you should not do." For the second, Gourry doesn't press the button, but the warning is something like "Don't walk past without pressing the button."
• Happens in Kaiba's and Joey's first Duel in Yu-Gi-Oh! when Joey attacks with his monster which has a higher attack power than Kaiba's.
  Yugi: Wait! The Battle Ox is resistant to all Fire Type attacks!
  [Flame Swordsman is defeated]
  Joey: Now he tells me...

Comic Books

• The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: Fry gives some anti-gravity gum to Homer so his car can fly and they can go to the Nuclear Power Plant. However, after a while, Homer spits the gum out of his mouth after its flavor's gone out:
  Leela: [frowning] That gum was all that was keeping us in the air!
  Homer: [frowning] You could have told me.
  Leela: We did. Seven times!
• A variant appears in the Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen story "The Fastest Gun in the West". After Jimmy has spent the entire story dealing with a fake gunslinger, Superman shows up. Supes tells Jimmy that Perry White sent him, because he realized after sending the young reporter to cover a rodeo that he had given him the wrong town name. Jimmy facepalms and groans, "Now he thinks of it!"

Comic Strips

In a Cathy comic, a male friend brings his baby over to Cathy's place, confident that she would not try to ram her ideas about child rearing down his (and the kid's) throat, as everyone else had been doing. He does have one request — not to let the baby have any sweets, since they're raising her in a 100% sugar-free environment. He said this after Cathy had set the baby down next to a bowl of leftover Halloween candy.

Fan Works

• This Bites!: Due to Luffy disliking spoilers to his adventures, a lot of Cross's canon knowledge is held off unless it's really important. This means that for most of the minor hiccups that happen in canon, Cross just lets them play out and then tells the crew after the fact.
  • He does use his knowledge to defuse Vivi's tendency to use this trope, though.
• In My Loveless Haze Ginny is forced to marry Draco due to an ancient rite. Pansy, who's in unrequited love with Draco, offers Harry a Dark potion which transfers the love of the drinker to a specified recipient.
  [Harry and Pansy drink the potion.]
  Pansy: Just one thing. There might be side-effects.
  Harry: NOW you tell me?

Films — Animation

• In Aladdin and the King of Thieves, a halfhearted question from Iago results in the discovery of an Oracle. Unfortunately, when Iago tries to ask where the ultimate treasure was, the Oracle replied she was bound by the 'Rule of One' and Iago had already asked his one question, much to his frustration.
• DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: Said by Scrooge to Launchpad at the beginning, in regards to his flying skills.
  Scrooge: You mean you never took flying lessons?!
  Launchpad: Well, I took a crash course
  Scrooge: (facepalms) Now he tells me.
• Pinocchio: After discovering what happens to boys who go to Pleasure Island, Jiminy rushes to the pool hall to warn Pinocchio, arriving right after he'd witnessed his friend Lampwick turn into a donkey and is now starting to become one himself.
  Jiminy: Quick, Pinoke! The kids! The boys! They're all donkeys—OH! YOU, TOO!
  (Pinocchio nods in a frightened yet confirming way)
  Jiminy: Come on, quick! Before you get any worse!
• In Toy Story 3, when Lotso is first giving Woody and his friends a tour of Sunnyside Daycare, the tour passes through the little kids' bathroom and Lotso cautions them to "Watch out for puddles." His warning comes a split-second after Mr. Potato Head has already slipped and splashed.
• Treasure Planet: Shortly after Jim finds and restores B.E.N.'s memory, the latter remembers that Captain Flint rigged Treasure Planet to explode if anyone found his treasure. Of course, given that the trap was sprung the second the characters entered the treasure chamber in the planet's core, where Flint held on to B.E.N.'s memory unit long after his own death to prevent him from warning anyone in the first place, this trope was the only possible outcome.
• In Turning Red, Mei isn't told about the fact that women in her family gain a giant red panda form when they come of age until after she transforms very publicly. She also isn't informed that repeated transformations will make the ritual to seal it away harder until after she does so several times.

Films — Live-Action

• Avatar: The Way of Water: Spider goads Quaritch into taming an Ikran without cheating by tranquilizing them first. When Quaritch takes the bait and starts wrestling the beast, Spider shouts out that you're supposed to muzzle them first, leading Quaritch to reply with the trope as he's trying to pin it down.
• In A View to a Kill, James Bond uses Stacey's shotgun to dispatch some mooks, who then get up right after. When Bond asks Stacey what the shotgun was loaded with, she responds with "Rock Salt". Cue Bond saying the trope word for word.
• Back to the Future: Marty is blown across the room when he tries to hook up to the giant amplifier in Doc's garage. Then the Doc calls and warns Marty not to do that because there's a slight chance it'll overload.
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Butch confesses to Sundance that he's never shot anybody before...right as they're facing a shootout with armed Bolivian bandits.
  Sundance: One hell of a time to tell me.
• Death Becomes Her:
  Madeline Ashton: Bottoms up! [drinks potion]
  Lisle von Rhoman: Now, a warning...
  Madeline Ashton: NOW a warning?!
• The film version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The owl that delivered Sirius's letter bites Harry on the hand. Then Harry reads the letter's postscript, which says "the bird bites".
• I, Robot: Spooner is warned about an attacking robot, when said robot already has him by the throat.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Iron Man tries to warn Captain America that there are some drones attacking his position... after he's already been blasted into the side of a car.
    Iron Man: Cap, you've got Incoming!
    Captain America: Incoming already came in!
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Rocket only tells Thor that the Electronic Eye he gave him to replace the one he lost to Hela needs to be washed after Thor already inserted it.
  • In Doctor Strange after getting the villains hoisted by their own petard Strange repeats a line he said earlier when caught trying a spell from a restricted tome.
    Stephen Strange: They really should put the warnings before the spell.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Drax shouts "Mantis, look out!" almost ten seconds after Mantis gets bashed into unconsciousness by a piece of flaming debris.
• In Paranormal Activity, Micah uses this against Katie in their final fight that she hasn't told him that she has been followed by a demon for most of her life.
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Dr McCoy is warned that the Dangerous Forbidden Technique to put Spock's mind back into his body from McCoy's head is equally dangerous to him. McCoy boldly replies that he chooses this danger, then quietly mutters that it's a hell of a time to ask him.
• We Were Soldiers: Moore puts out a call to his helicopter crews that the LZ is hot. Crandall, the lead pilot, receives the message at roughly the same time that bullets start pinging off his Huey's airframe.

Literature

• Chrysalis (RinoZ): Eating a new type of biomass for the first time allows Anthony to view the "basic profile" of that species, summarising their attributes and abilities. Which would have been very helpful to know before fighting one to the death.
• The Dresden Files has Harry go to a Red Court party, where Harry meets Thomas, a White Court vamp. After drinks are served, Thomas quickly goes to Harry to tell him to not drink anything, as it's been spiked with Red Court venom. Thomas then looks at Harry's empty glass. "Oh." Harry, showing more sense than most, finds a potted plant and throws up into it. He still doesn't feel well, but the lower dose allows him to get better.
• During the Hank the Cowdog story The Secret Laundry Monster Files, Eddy the Rac rescues Hank from an attempted drowning at the hands of his cousin Bubba. He then tells Hank that Bubba hates dogs and he should never tangle with him in the water.
  Hank: [with a stern glare] That's great advice, Eddy. Too bad you weren't around ten minutes ago when it might have done some good.
• The story "The Cold Equations" has a tragic example, when the stowaway learns that the penalty is being Thrown Out the Airlock because the ship has no safety margin to accommodate her extra mass.
• In a Nancy Drew Files book, Nancy and the Guy Of The Book have been tied up and left to die on a boat rigged to explode. When they free themselves, Nancy explains that they have to jump and swim for it, at which point he tells her, "I can't swim". She responds by name-dropping this trope.
• A Song of Ice and Fire does this to the audience twice. There is a murder and an attempted murder which the readers have just assumed were done by Cersei and Jamie. However we later learn that they were committed by other people. The attempted murder of Bran in his sickbed was actually ordered by Joffery, who intended it as a mercy-killing, in an attempt to impress the man he thought was his father. The other one, the murder of Jon Arryn—which Eddard Stark believed was to silence him when he discovered the incestuous relationship of Cersei and Jamie—was actually committed by his wife so she could marry Littlefinger. So in fact the civil war that ripped apart the Seven Kingdoms was started by misunderstandings (which were reinforced by Littlefinger).
• In Book 2 of One Piece: Ace's Story, Portgaz D. Ace goes to visit Shanks. After a stumbling, botch attempt at greeting the Emperor properly, they talk a bit, and soon Ace reveals that he's Luffy's older brother.
  Everyone gave [Ace] a look that said, Why didn't you tell us that first?!

Live-Action TV

• Lost Love in Times: Qing Chen gets Yuan Ling to drink medicine that tastes disgusting... and after he drinks it she tells him there was something to make it taste better.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • In "Fear Itself", while the gang is attempting to stop the demon possessing a Halloween haunted house, Giles reads that "there are two ways of stopping the demon from being fully summoned. Destroying the mark of Gachnar—". Buffy promptly tears up the floorboards that the symbol is painted on. Giles continues "—is not one of them and will in fact bring forth the fear demon itself." Oops. Of course, the demon in question is only six inches tall.
  • In "Pangs", Angel rings Giles to warn that the Villain of the Week is going to attack. As Giles is already crouched behind the sofa dodging arrows, he says he already knows.
• Angel:
  • Variation in "Epiphany". Cordelia is snooping around an empty house when she has a vision of being attacked by a big ugly demon. As she recovers from the headache, she turns around and finds herself face to face with the very same. "Real helpful!" * Concussion*
  • In "Over the Rainbow", when the gang travels through a portal to another dimension, Wesley is glad that they made it without merging into a freakish four-man Siamese Twin. Gunn says in horror, "That was a risk!?"
• On Happy Days there was a note saying "Don't close the garage door, it's broken" posted on the garage door.
• This happens four or five times throughout the run of Stargate Atlantis, thanks to the crew often having to implement plans of Rodney's without the time needed to hear the potential drawbacks. The most obvious was when the crew needs to use a Zero Point Module to divert the particle stream from a Coronal Mass Ejection to keep it from boiling the city, but Rodney didn't have time to tell them that it could go on for hours first.
• In M*A*S*H, while defusing a bomb:
  Col. Blake: Carefully cut the wires leading to the clockwork fuse at the head.
  Trapper: [clips the two wires]
  Col. Blake: But first, remove the fuse... [Trapper and Hawkeye stare at him in terror, Blake realizes what he just said]
• From Red Dwarf
  Holly: Hey up, I've forgotten what I was going to say now.
  Rimmer: Well, it can't be that important, then, can it? (ship shakes, everyone is thrown across the room)
  Holly: That's it, yeah. "Look out, a meteor is about to hit the ship." I knew it would come back to me.
• In the classic Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", the seemingly uncontrollably reproducing Tribbles have just eaten the entire stock of a space station's supply of genetically engineered grain, and Kirk has ended up buried in a pile of them when he goes to check on the grain. Moments later, McCoy enters and shouts "I've got it! All we have to do is quit feeding them! We quit feeding them, they stop breeding!" A Tribble-covered Kirk replies "Now he tells me."
• Drake & Josh:
  • In one episode, Helen lets Josh pet her hamster, but tells him too late that it bites.
  • In another one, Josh is baking smores and tells Drake not to take any, Drake says he won't while putting one to his mouth, while Josh adds that he just took them out of the oven at 250 degrees.
• In a Sliders episode where the main characters end up in a world where magic is real. During the final fight, the Big Bad turns into a dragon and starts breathing fire, pinning the sliders and his reluctant assistant behind a table. She point to a sword on the wall and says that this is the only weapon that can kill the sorcerer. Cue Rembrandt running for the sword, only to utterly fail at moving it. He runs back, and she continues that only a Mallory can wield it. Rembrandt is visibly annoyed at the late warning.
• An episode of Full House has Stephanie taking a pretend drive in Joey's car. Thinking the "R" on the gearshift turns on the radio (it actually reverses the car), she backs the car through the kitchen window. Joey later admits the radio doesn't work.
• A Muppet Family Christmas has a Running Gag about people entering Mrs. Bear's house being warned to be "Careful of the icy patch" after they've already fallen.
• When Brent of Corner Gas becomes a food critic for the Ruby's daily specials, he gives a scathing review of a plate of macaroni and cheese while his mother is sitting behind him, becoming visibly incensed. Lacy then points out it was his mother's food, not the Ruby's.
  Brent: That would have been useful information eleven seconds ago.
• The ending of season one of Blackadder where Percy and Baldrick don't realize they poisoned the wine supply of the entire castle (in their plan to assassinate the Big Bad) until after nearly every other cast member has drunken it and died.
• This line was said by Vicki of Small Wonder all the time. Understandable, since she was a robot girl and not always familiar with American idioms - she used to take things literally.
• Paul Merton: The Series
  For 3 days and 3 nights we marched over open country, marching over mountains, marching under streams, from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara desert. We marched and marched and marched, until at last it was time to open our Sealed Orders.
  [reads] "Don't march anywhere."
• In the NCIS episode "Twenty Klicks," Ducky and Palmer find a microcard in the body of IT Kevin's uncle. Abby plugs it into a protected laptop, but still unleashes a computer virus on steroids. A few minutes later, Gibbs calls and tells HQ not to open anything on the card.
• In the episode "El cortocircuito" of El Chavo del ocho, Don Ramón invites el Chavo to watch a football match at his home, and then when they try to turn the TV it doesn't work. Don Ramón spends the next minutes trying to turn the thing on, until he ends up angrily throwing it to the ground and stomping on it. Then la Chilindrina comes up to tell him there's a power outage in the neighborhood.
• Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye: In "A Snitch in Time", Myles is trying to open the filing cabinet using the trick of hitting the top and yanking as instructed. The drawer springs open and slams into his shin...which is when Bobby tells him not to hit and yank too hard or it'll hit his leg.

Radio

• The Goon Show episode "Dishonoured Again":
  Eccles: Land ahead!
  FX: CRASH
  Eccles: I shoulda said dat sooner, shouldn't I?

Video Games

• Carto: Invoked and lampshaded with the sign beside the whirlpool, which isn't working yet when you first arrive, but which you would have had to walk through to get to the sign.
  Beware of whirlpool!
  (Apologies if you've seen this sign too late.)
  (We should probably move this sign.)
• In Dragon Age: Origins, a random encounter has you attacked by a pack of wolves the moment said encounter begins. There are also a plethora of traps you have to avoid while fighting said wolves. After dealing with both you get to the end of the path and reach two signs. One says "Caution: wolves frequent the area", the other says "Caution: traps set for wolves".
• The Joy of Creation: Reborn has a gaming equivalent; you need to flash Ignited Freddy with your flashlight 11 times to complete the Office level... which isn't directly told until after you lose by way of Freddy entering your room in complete darkness.
• In The Last of Us, after fighting through an infected infested sewer, you get outside, turn around, and see a warning "INFECTED INSIDE! DO NOT ENTER!" Ellie says the trope upon pointing this out.
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, the Devilish Girl running the Treacherous Tower forgets to tell Link that nobody has survived the Advanced level until he's already paid and entered.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect, there's a side quest where you scan the Keepers, mysterious insectoid creatures that maintain the space station. As it turns out, The Keepers were created by the Abusive Precursors and will let them come into Citadel space to destroy all organic life. If you complete the side quest, you get an email in the second game that gives you this info two years after it would have been useful. But it does demonstrate that the Council is Too Dumb to Live and It's Up to You.
  • In Legion's loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2 you are given the option to break into the heretic geth mainframe and release a high-energy signal pulse to rewrite them into accepting the beliefs of the true geth.
    Legion: Alert: The energy pulse will be hazardous to unshielded organics. Addendum: The interior of this station is not shielded.
    Shepard: I really wish you'd told me that before.
  • Legion seems to enjoy this. In Mass Effect 3, he doesn't tell Shepard his plans to upload all of the runtimes in the fighter base server to a platoon of Geth Primes til after he's done it. The Geth Primes are loyal to Shepard, but Shepard is still peeved Legion didn't tell them his intent.
• Done quite subtly in Modern Warfare 2.
  Price: (over radio) "Ghost! Come in, this is Price! We're under attack by Shepherd's men at the boneyard! Soap, hold the left flank! Do not trust Shepherd! I say again, do not trust Shepherd! Soap, get down..!"
  • Of course, you learn this after Shepherd and his men have shot Roach/you and Ghost, and are busy dousing you in gasoline and setting you on fire.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies: In Turnabout Reclaimed, Sasha Buckler goes to Phoenix for the case... and only tells him after he accepts that he's going to be representing an orca. She's heard about the parrot incident and reasoned that he'd be the only lawyer barmy enough to defend an animal in court.
• Portal 2:
  • Cave Johnson's prerecorded advice on what to do if you get covered in Repulsion Gel is to not get covered in Repulsion Gel.
    Cave Johnson: We haven't quite nailed down what element it is yet, but it's a lively one, and it does not like the human skeleton.
  • In a different message, Cave tells the subjects to be alert for a chemical reaction that might vitrify their frontal lobes after passing through an Emancipation Grill — and also to not think about that reaction, because thinking about it induces it as well.
• Subverted in Saints Row: The Third. During the mission "Trojan Whores", Oleg calls to warn The Boss about a raid about to occur. However, the raid has already occurred and the call comes after the last wave has been defeated. After The Boss tells Oleg about this, he replies "I should have known you could handle a few helicopters." The helicopters haven't attacked yet.
• Tsuki Adventure: In the Moonlit Cave, Tsuki can drink the cave water dripping from the ceiling, only to find it disgusting. Chi warns him not to, but her warning comes seconds too late.
  Tsuki: So.. this water gives calcium?
  Chi: In theory, yes but I don't think you should..drink it..

Web Animation

• AstroLOLogy: The visual equivalent shows up in "The Line": when Scorpio sees Libra using his phone to listen to music, he tries to use it to call for help, only for the battery to run dry and Scorpio crushes the phone to pieces. Then Libra shows Scorpio that he had a portable charger all that time.
• Red vs. Blue: Church, having traveled back in time, leaves a recorded message of what not to do and the consequences if the others do it in an alien base. All of it happens right as he's speaking it, prompting Caboose to beg "Stop saying these things! Or at least... say them sooner." To the recording.

Webcomics

• In Commander Kitty, Fortiscue warns Ace and company to avoid a particular room right after they enter it and come face-to-face with the three-headed chimera inside.
• Homestuck has John nearly being flattened by a bathtub flying through his wall. When he recovers his PDA:
  TT: John, I'm about to throw a bathtub through your wall.
  TT: Watch out.
• In The Order of the Stick, Roy's Outer Planar girlfriend Celia gives him a talisman that would let him summon her by breaking it. When Roy was falling to his doom, he tried to break it so Celia would save him, but was unable to do so, resulting in him splatting on the ground. Later on, the talisman accidentally breaks when it ends up getting zapped by lightning, with Celia explaining that the talisman was designed to be broken by magical energy, which she assumed all humans were capable of generating. Needless to say, both Hayley and Roy's spirit are a bit annoyed.

Web Videos

• Noob: La Quête Légendaire: In the middle of a questline, the main group's Blood Knight start losing it because there has been virtually nothing to fight so far and she's getting bored. She pretty much breaks down when the next quest turns out to be playing the guide to a Non-Player Character, so the group's leader gives her leave to go the frontlines of an ongoing war against the antagonist faction. Right after she leaves, the rest of the group accepts the quest and finds out it's actually an Escort Mission.
• "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series" Turns the mystic fortunetelling of Shadi into a parody of Borat:
  Shadi: Jak się masz? My name is Shadi. I am here to warn you gypsies that if you disobey your crazy papa and reject your duty as tomb-keepers, something really bad will happen.
  Ishizu: But we already did that! What good is warning us going to do now?
  Shadi: ...I am a ghost.
  Ishizu: Yes, but that still doesn't explain-
  Shadi: High five!

Western Animation

• Batman Beyond, when Terry McGinnis is fighting Mad Stan:
  Bruce: Be careful, McGinnis. Once he's on a rant he's unstoppable.
  Terry: Thanks for telling me now.
• In Futurama, Philip J. Fry is sent to deliver a package to the Emperor of a desert planet. He drinks from the first bottle he sees when he arrives in the throne room, which turns out to be their emperor (the aliens are liquids). Thus, according to the culture's laws, he is appointed the new Emperor for having killed the previous one. The package he originally came to deliver is now for him so he opens it and finds a sign reading "don't drink the emperor", which he hangs next to dozens of the same sign in various alien languages.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: During the Season 4 finale, the J-Team discovers that a part of the tablet they found at the beginning of the season that detailed about the Oni Generals and their masks was flipped over. It turns out to be a warning to not reunite the masks in one place, as doing so would break the masks and free all the Oni Generals. Naturally, they only learn about this after they did just that.
• In The New Batman Adventures episode "Joker's Millions", Harley Quinn delivers this great line:
  Joker: I thought I told you to get gas!
  Harley: WE'RE BROKE, remember? What was I supposed to do? Fill the tank, shoot the guy, and drive off?!
  Joker: [nodding] Mm-hmm.
  Harley: [beat] NOW ya tell me!
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • In the episode, "Citizen Max", which is a Whole-Plot Reference to Citizen Kane, except instead of "Rosebud", Hamton spends the whole show trying to find out why Montana Max said "Acme". At the very end, Monty himself calls out to them from his mansion and informs them that they misheard him. He was actually saying "acne" because he had developed a really bad breakout.
    Hamton: [facepalm] Now, he tells me!
  • In the episode "No Toon Is an Island", the gang's boat collides with the shore and Plucky falls out onto the beach. Then Babs calls out, "Land ho!" leading Plucky to grumble, "Now she tells me."
• Looney Tunes:
  • The cartoon "Tick Tock Tuckered" has Porky and Daffy efforting to not be late for work with the threat of termination looming over their heads. They arrive to their workplace on time, only to find a sign that says that it's closed because it's Saturday. (Daffy: "Mmmm... now he tells me!") Similarly done in the short's original edition, "Porky's Badtime Story" (with Porky and Gabby Goat, where they just shrug).
  • Daffy gets another in the Merrie Melodies short "Don't Axe Me". He's about to get cooked for dinner by Elmer and his wife, only for their guest to announce he's a vegetarian. Daffy, who at this point got all his feathers ripped off, says this and leaves in disgust.
  • In "Tortoise Wins by a Hare", a bunch of gangster rabbits stop Bugs from crossing the finish line because of his turtle disguise and get Cecil to win because of his rabbit disguise. When Bugs takes off his disguise in front of them, the rabbits say "Mmmm...now he tells us" and proceed to shoot themselves.
  • Also, in a Speedy Gonzales short, two cats decide to capture Speedy's cousin Slowpoke Rodriquez. One cat tries to warn him of something, but the other cat ignores it and tries to eat Slowpoke, only for the mouse to shoot him in the face. When the cat says he meant to tell him that Slowpoke's a fast shooter, the other cat says this to the camera.
  • The Wile E Coyote And The Roadrunner cartoon "Hopalong Casualty" sees Wile E. Coyote feeding the Road Runner a bunch of Acme Earthquake Pills. When this doesn't do anything to the Road Runner, Coyote swallows the rest of the pills in disgust. Only then does he notice the small print on the bottle: "Caution: Not Effective On Road Runners". At which point the Earthquake Pills start to take effect on Coyote with (of course) hilariously disastrous consequences.
  • In "Satan's Waitin'", when Sylvester finally wises up on his last life, and decides to go in hiding in a bank vault with food supplies so he may live quietly there for years. However, by way of Diabolus ex Machina, that bank gets robbed by two Too Dumb to Live robbers who mishandle explosives, to disastrous effect. On the Journey to the Underworld, this gem of an exchange happens:
    Robber: You used too much, Mugsy.
    Sylvester: Now he tells him.
• In the House of Mouse short "How to Haunt a House", Goofy puts a bedsheet over his head to scare Donald, only to mess up from not being able to see through the sheet. The narrator then tells Goofy to put eyeholes in the sheet, prompting him to say this.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In one episode, Dr. Doofenshmirtz yells this when he uses the ejector seat on a robotic dragon vehicle and its computer tells him that it doesn't come with a parachute.
  • In another episode, Candace Flynn has the boys build one of their inventions to find out where it disappears to whenever she tries to bust them. At the end of the episode, she says this after Ferb tells her even doing nothing can have an effect.
• Danger Mouse:
  • "The Great Bone Idol" has Count Duckula in the Himalayas looking for the great Gnuru. When he shouts "IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?!", he has an avalanche of snow topple on top of him.
    Gnuru: You in area of avalanche.
    Duckula: [to us] Now he tells me!
  • "Duckula Meets Frankenstoat" has DM and Penfold observing Dr. Frankenstoat in his laboratory. When the doctor leaves, DM hops down from the balcony ledge. Penfold does likewise:
    DM: And don't forget to bend your knees... [off-screen thud; cut to Penfold, who has landed on his back]
    Penfold: Now he tells me!
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: In "Zilly's a Dilly" (in which the coward Zilly is hypnotized into being brave), Klunk explains his lightning bolt shooting invention on the planes. Dastardly touches the antenna and gets shocked by it, in spite of Klunk's warning which was naturally a lot of weird sounds.
  Zilly: He also said not to touch it! When you want to shoot a lightning bolt, push the button on the dash!
  Dastardly: Now he tells me!
• Sonic Boom: In "Blackout", Team Sonic set out to get a new Meroke Crystal to provide power for their village. They trek far into a frigid area of Seaside Island and a heavy blizzard slows them down.
  Sonic: Maybe it would be easier if we used Blue Force One in snowmobile mode.
  Amy Rose: Blue Force One has a snowmobile mode AND YOU ONLY MENTION IT NOW?!
• South Park: In the first Halloween Episode, the town is plagued by zombies created as a result of Worcester sauce accidentally being used as embalming fluid at the morgue. "Stan" Marsh calls the company's help line and the man on the other end says "The first thing, and this is very important, is not to go killing zombies left and right". Stan looks up and sees Kyle and Cartman doing exactly that, and simply says "...Okay..."
• In one episode of Freakazoid!, stupid alien Mo-Ron would bumble around between shorts, trying to remember an important message he's supposed to deliver, but forgot. At the very end of the episode, he finally remembers what the message was; A comet's about to crash onto that very spot! As everyone around flees for their lives, all Freakazoid can grumble is, "Now he tells us!"
• In Over the Garden Wall, the first few episodes have Wirt, Greg and Beatrice trying to find a witch named Adelaide who can seemingly get the former two back home and restore the latter to her human self. It ultimately turned out to be a trap, as Beatrice was just using the boys as bargaining chips to resolve her own problem, with the witch wanting to enslave the boys. The boys manage to beat Adelaide and end up meeting an old woman and her niece in the following episode. After solving that episode's dilemma, as the two prepare to continue their journey, the old woman reveals that Adelaide is her evil sister and to avoid her at all costs. Wirt's expression, understandably, has this trope all over it.
• Said verbatim in The Octonauts episode "The Humuhumunukunukuapua'a" after Captain Barnacles gets water sprayed in his face:
  Dr. Shellington: Humuhumus can blow strong jets of water out of their mouths.
  Captain Barnacles: Huh... now you tell me.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the episode "Tea At The Treedome", Patrick didn't notice there wasn't any water in Sandy's treedome until he went into it himself.
  • In "Rock Bottom", before going off to get a bus schedule, SpongeBob tells Patrick to wait for a bus and call him if one comes. Patrick does...after he's already on it.
• At the end of Invincible (2021)'s season one finale, Allen returns to Earth with an urgent message for Invincible: there's a Viltrumite on the planet that could begin their plans to conquer it any second. Unlike most examples, however, the absolute best case scenario of the characters learning this ahead of time probably would have been things going exactly as bad as they already did.
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: During one segment of the "Jet Fuel Formula" arc, when Boris and Natasha are instructed by their superiors over the radio to harvest the mooseberries from their dying mooseberry bush, the pair toss a puny berry out the window, resulting in a small explosion. It's then that Central Control informs them that picked mooseberries have a Hair-Trigger Explosive and the slightest rattle could set them off.
  Boris: Now you tell us!
• Hero: 108: In the episode "Pandaffe Castle", Commander ApeTrully went to the concert of the giraffes and pandas to understand why people consider them a torture. After the concert is over, everybody starts clapping except ApeTrully, which makes the pandas and giraffes punish him for "lack of respect". A woman warns him about this shortly after.
• The Loud House: In "Dream a Lily Dream", Lincoln Loud says this almost word for word when Lisa tells him and the other Loud siblings at the last second that they could get trapped in Lily's dream forever if Lily wakes up too soon. And again when Lisa explains, while they are already in the dream, that if anyone gets taken out in the nightmare, they're taken out in real life.
• The Legend of Vox Machina plays this for drama as Vex tells Percy they should wait and stop exploring just after he activates the trap that kills her, requiring her brother to swear himself to the Matron of Ravens to revive her.

Real Life

• Shrink wrap contracts, contracts that can only be read after opening the packaging of their product. Of course, if you decide not to agree to the contract, you can't return the product, because you just opened its packaging.
  • These contracts are generally held to be unenforceable in the EU; in the US the issue is still debated. Either way, most places will still let you return the product if you disagree with the contract.
  • Some CD envelopes are sealed with a sticker that claims 'breaking this seal constitutes acceptance of the EULA,' which of course you can't read because it's on the disc that's sealed in. Some people do not take this sitting down.
• Truth in Television or Urban Legend? A zoo allegedly had a sign on its monkey enclosure reading, "Warning: These monkeys steal glasses." Of course, this mostly happened whenever anyone wearing glasses leaned forward to read the sign...
• Some poorly-placed braille signs: "CAUTION HOT GLASS" attached to hot glass, and a door reading "Caution: This door opens outwards please do not stand directly in front of the doors".
• Intelligence sent warning of the impending Imperial Japanese surprise-attack upon the United States' Pacific Fleet through civilian channels. By the time they got it, a day late, half the fleet was underwater and the Nipponese were long-gone.
  • The Japanese Ambassador was supposed to deliver a declaration that they considered the negotiations - it's complicated - to be over right before the attack was to take place. However, the final declaration was 5000 characters long; consequently the Embassy failed to meet the unrealistic deadline they had been given. It did not help that the Embassy used native Japanese typists, rather than the usual locals out of fears of espionage, which dragged out the time needed to type and transmit the message even longer. Moreover, just when they had finally gotten it all written down and printed out on nice paper and everything, the ambassador got stuck in traffic...
    • Amusingly, the fact that the U.S. had thoroughly broken the Japanese Diplomatic Cypher (codenamed Purple) meant Signals Intelligence had the declaration before the Japanese ambassador.
  • This was shown in the film Pearl Harbor — this being one of the few accurate and worthwhile bits to it. In the film, the Naval Intelligence officer reaches the conclusion that the Japanese attack is imminent, and the warning reaches the President a few hours after it already occurred.
  • An American destroyer, USS Ward, engaged and sank a Japanese midget submarine trying to follow another ship into Pearl Harbor, and radioed a report of the encounter. A request for confirmation was sent back, and due to delays in encryption, transmission, and decryption, the confirmation report wasn't read until after the air attack had begun (assuming, of course, that a confirmed report of an attempted submarine infiltration would necessarily have put them on guard for an air attack.)
• Japan got their own one of these, entirely self-inflicted, after the Battle of Midway. This battle was such a complete curb-stomp of the Imperial Japanese Navy by the U.S. Navy that the IJN tied themselves in knots keeping it a secret, even from their own army and government. The Imperial Japanese Army completely believed the Navy's claims that they had won a great victory and planned for further invasions based on the idea that all the carriers had survived the battle and could provide air support. It was only after months of delay and the Army asking the Navy why the operations weren't proceeding as planned that they found out the truth. Then they joined with the Navy in keeping it a secret from the government for even longer. Prime Minister Tojo, who had thought the war was proceeding according to plan and that the Americans were being decimated, didn't find out the truth until months after the Army did. Witnesses say that he basically suffered a BSoD when he realized how completely screwed Japan was at that point.
• After the Canadian Football League pulled the plug on their expansion into the United States in 1995, the players on those teams were placed into a dispersal draft. Unknown to the league at the time, one player (Derrell Robertson) had been killed in an auto accident a couple months earlier. The Ottawa Rough Riders drafted him, then set about trying to reach him. When they couldn't for obvious reasons, they reported it to the league. Said Ottawa's head coach, "the league didn't know he was dead until we told them, and we didn't know until we couldn't find him."
• A common anecdote. Your mom serves you food and you take a bite, and your whole mouth burns. Then your mother warns you that it's hot.
• During the shooting of The Empire Strikes Back, this was practically director Irv Kirschner's catchphrase whenever one of the special effects failed spectacularly. R2-D2 is skidding all over the place? We didn't test to see if it could run on the artificial snow of the Echo Base set. One of the X-Wing's wings snapping off while Yoda is lifting it from the swamp, in full view of a horrified George Lucas? We forgot to test if the model could withstand being underwater. "Now you tell me!" Irv would snap.

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