Saying Too Much

"I had the right to remain silent...but what I lacked was the ability."

— Ron White

Someone lets something slip that reveals plot-sensitive information to another character. Sometimes this is a pure accident, to move the plot along. Sometimes this is the result of the protagonist pulling an Exasperated Perp.

In a non-crime-related plots, it's used to create dramatic or amusing conflict.

Subtropes:

• Counter-Productive Warning
• Confidentiality Betrayal
• Endangering News Broadcast
• I Can Explain
• I Never Said It Was Poison
• I Never Told You My Name
• Idiotic Partner Confession
• I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!
• Loose Lips
• Suspiciously Specific Denial
• Thought They Knew Already

Related to Spotting the Thread. May lead to a Conviction by Contradiction. Contrast Too Much Information, which is saying too much about other things, and That Came Out Wrong, when you meant to say something but it ended up sounding like something else. The person who's told too much might end up victim of He Knows Too Much.

See also Did I Just Say That Out Loud?, "The Villain Knows" Moment, and Open Mouth, Insert Foot.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Bakuman。, Nanamine, who is working with a group of online consultants changed the first chapter even though his editor was fine by it. When Kosugi, his editor, asks about it, he says "You might have been satisfied with it, but everyone else wasn't." Kosugi then realizes what's going on and Nanamine shows him his plan.
• Happens many, MANY times in Case Closed, whenever the culprit is confronted.
• Played with in Death Note. L tries to get Light to mention something that only Kira would know, only for Light to know this from the start and carefully avoid saying anything. However his skill at doing this just makes L more certain that Light is Kira.
• A humorous example in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Goku is talking about how awesome it was for Vegeta to stand up for Bulma after she was slapped by Beerus, getting that massive power-up from it. In his talking, he haphazardly mentions that they should get Bulma slapped again to get that boost again, leading to Bulma slapping Goku... before Piccolo realizes something: How did Goku know about the incident? As it turns out, Goku had been watching from a distance the whole time.
• Dr. STONE: Upon hearing about Tsukasa's plan to smash the petrified forms of any adults he comes across, Senku immediately realizes that he needs to make sure Tsukasa never learns about the formula that can be used to break people out of the petrification. Cue Taiju arriving on the scene, shouting about how they finally have enough of the revival formula to revive the girl he has a crush on.
• Fushigi Yuugi: The main reason why the Nyan Nyan girls get punched into the stratosphere is because none of them can keep their mouths shut and always end up saying the wrong thing in the worst moment possible.
• In the Girls und Panzer "Little Army" manga, after Chihiro sprains her ankle, the group of herself, Miho and Hitomi needs a driver to get home. At this point, they see Emi, who is on her way home, and who starts to leave, offering to call for help. Miho then points out that, based on some of Emi's earlier statements indicating that she knows German tanks are strong and her identifying the tank type moments before, she knows much about driving a tank, and can drive. Emi sheepishly says that she "said something stupid like that without realizing it".
• In the Haiyore! Nyaruani short "Cooking", Nyarko says that the dish of the day is Cooked Whole *BLEEP*, and holds up something that's red, writhing, tentacled, and pixelated. Mahiro freaks out, and Nyarko says this is a really hard ingredient to obtain, thanks to the Space Washington Treaty... and immediately thinks to herself "Crap, I shouldn't have said that."
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Yoshikage Kira falls victim to this after his fight with Jotaro and Koichi. Once Josuke and Okuyasu show up, Kira starts acting like a panicked bystander, and ends his spiel asking Josuke to "hurry and heal me." Josuke then points out the obvious issue.
    Josuke: No matter how you slice it, I look like an average high schooler... so why are you asking me to heal you?
  • Stone Ocean: As Jolyne is hit with a Perception Filter that makes her unable to see Miu Miu, Emporio shows up to give Jolyne a paper with binary numbers to print out a sketch of Miu's face. When Jolyne confronts Miu with the question if she's the enemy user, Miu, thinking Jolyne is trying bluff her, taunts her saying she can't see her and prepares to gun her down. It just ended up giving Jolyne confirmation on who to beat down.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple gives us Rimi, also known as the Yomi-member Atlantis. She tends to blab otherwise confidential things when she first appears, including what she's doing.
• Muhyo and Roji: Yoichi pays a visit to Bico's cottage while she's visiting the prison with Muhyo, Roji and Rio, and finds Bico's apprentices refuse to let him see her. One of the apprentices says that Bico told them to keep the matter with Muhyo secret, thereby letting Yoichi know the one thing Bico didn't want him to find out.
• Ōkami-san: After her bout with Easy Amnesia, Ryoko is walking home with Ringo. Ryoko informs Ringo that she doesn't remember anything from the time where she had regressed to her younger self. When Ringo asks Ryoko if she's hungry, Ryoko tells her she's still full from the parfait she ate. Except she ate that parfait during the time she claims she can't remember. Ringo quickly realizes that Ryoko does indeed remember, and uses that information to blackmail her into wearing a cute little ribbon in her hair.
• One Piece:
  • In the Arlong Arc, when Colonel Nezumi and his Marines come to confiscate Nami's treasure stash and they're having trouble finding it, he yells that they're specifically looking for 100 million Berries, the amount that Nami was supposed to give to Arlong (although she is a few million short as of their arrival). Nami immediately realizes that he was acting on Arlong's orders.
  • In the Alabasta Arc, Chaka says aloud that the royal guard currently fighting Sir Crocodile have used a Deadly Upgrade and will die shortly. Crocodile overhears this, and retreats to a rooftop to watch them die uselessly.
  • CP9 agent Fukuro. His Gossipy Hens nature overrides every ounce of discipline that he has as an assassin, in spite of having a giant zipper over his mouth. He frequently blabs intel about assassination missions to bystanders, increasing the amount of collateral damage to their missions, and informs the Straw Hats of exactly how and where they can save Robin.
• In the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2007) manga, "Turnabout Showtime" features an example in which it is not revealed that the person has made a mistake until very late in the trial. Raymond Spume yells at Julie Henson for "biting her nails during the show just like (she is) now!" when pulling the murdered Flip out of his costume. It turns out that Sparklestar's (the mascot Raymond plays) back was turned to Julie while she was biting her nails, meaning that Raymond could not have seen her doing it unless he was wearing his costume backwards, which would enable him to unzip it and stab Flip, who was also wearing it the same way so that he could perform a backflip the same way he did a front flip.
• In the anime adaption of the Infinity Arc for Sailor Moon, Mistress 9 attempts to trick Sailor Moon into giving her the Holy Grail by taking on Hotaru Tomoe's form. When Sailor Moon seemingly finds "Hotaru" in the depths of Mugen Academy, she almost falls for the ruse. Mistress 9 ends up blowing it when she refers to Sailor Moon by her secret identity.
  Sailor Moon: How do you know I'm Usagi Tsukino?
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: After Joey defeats Bandit Keith, the latter screams that the duel shouldn't count, because the tournament card Joey presented wasn't his own. Joey admits that yes, Mai gave him her card, but then asks Keith how he knows that. Keith is unable to answer, before Pegasus reveals to everyone that he'd stolen Joey's card.

Audio Plays

• Tardust has this problem on We're Alive when he demonstrates a little too much knowledge about Lizzy. This leads Riley to deduce that he was the one who tried to rape Lizzy at the furniture store. This doesn't end well for Tardust.

Comic Books

• In Gotham Central, as a result of having been working long hours and being generally tired and depressed, Renee Montoya accidentally lets slip to Maggie Sawyer, captain of the Major Crimes Unit, that Romy Chandler had her weapon taken by Batman after she tried to shoot him.
  Marcus Driver: What, you figure I should just shoot over to this Tailor's place, get myself a Batman costume? Dress up and try to make Dunning wet himself?
  Josie Mac: Yeah, on second thought it's probably not such a good idea, Romy might try to bust a cap in your ass.
  Renee Montoya: Yeah, well, he'd have to give her weapon back, first.
  Maggie Sawyer: What was that?
  Renee Montoya: Oh, Hell.
• Spider-Man:
  • During Go Down Swinging, J. Jonah Jameson is being held captive by Green Goblin, who's long forgotten Spidey's true identity after regaining his sanity and purging his split personality. Jameson gets pushed into one of his usual rants, telling Goblin what a pathetic loser he is and how no matter what he does he can never beat Spider-Man. During it he absentmindedly mentions Gwen Stacy's death and how it didn't stop Spidey... which causes Goblin to put two and two together and remember why Spider-Man was so hurt by that event. Jameson is horrified when he realizes just how badly he messed up.
  • Played for Laughs; during the Spectacular Spider-Man prologue for Avengers Disassembled, Spider-Man was defeated by The Queen and forcibly kissed by her. Unknown to the two of them though, their fight and kiss was captured on live television, and news of the kiss spread throughout the city with many mistakenly believing it was Spider-Man who initiated the kiss and that he and The Queen were now a couple. Aunt May hears this news and after running into Mary Jane tries to comfort her, assuring her Peter would never cheat on her and that the kiss is being blown out of proportion. It is only then that Aunt May realizes that this is the first time Mary Jane is hearing about the kiss and awkwardly excuses herself.
• Superman:
  • In The Krypton Chronicles, a gang of crooks attempt to sabotage the building of a new city. When caught, the saboteurs claim they had nothing to do with it, but Pym-El — a Superman ancestor — states he knows who their rich backer is, and his bluff causes them to blurt his boss's name out.
    Saboteur: We do not admit a thing! Why would we want to destroy your city?
    Security Enforcer: We can always go to Kandor and ask your well-to-do [leader].
    Saboteur: Eh? How could you know about Kly-Anth?
    Security Enforcer: I did not — until now! But it stood to reason that you had been hired by someone rich — with much to lose from this project! And Kandor is the largest city in this area — and stands to suffer losses — the deduction was simple!
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, Supergirl cannot figure out how Karmang's machines work, but she notices two large buttons sticking out like a sore thumb, and deciding to use a bit of basic psychology, she leans over them while shouting she at last knows how to shut off the machine. Karmang turns around right away and shouts at her to not push the black button:
    Supergirl: (thinking) And it'll all be in vain unless I figure out these controls... But it's hopeless! I don't even understand the principles involved — still, these two buttons are the largest and most centrally-located! Maybe some psychology will tell me which to choose! (loudly) "Okay, Karmang! I've found the button to shut off your space-time engine! It's over, friend — you've lost!"
    Karmang: Not the black button! That one will send us all into Limbo!
  • In Supergirl story "Supergirl's Big Brother", Linda meets a man who claims to be her adoptive parents' son, who was reported dead in action some years ago. Linda is suspicious about his story involving mixed-up records and amnesia, but her parents believe him so she decides to give him the benefit of the doubt for their sake. Her suspicions are raised again when Fred Danvers wants to talk "Jan" about his grandfather's inheritance, and Jan quickly blurts out "Oh, yes, fifty grand, wasn't it?". Linda pointedly notes that he looks very interested and he knows the exact amount.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • Susie narrowly avoids getting hit by a snowball, and promptly goes to confront Calvin, who denies doing it, and that she could never prove that he did. He then adds, "Besides, I missed, didn't I?!" The last panel just shows Calvin having been pummeled in the ground as he groans, "The defendant petitions the court for a new trial on the grounds that his lawyer is incompetent."
  • Several of Calvin's interactions with The Bully, Moe, have him insulting Moe, and then be immediately clobbered. For example, Calvin tells Moe he better get his kicks in while he can, because he won't be able to randomly beat people up as an adult. Moe agrees, turns around, and beats Calvin up (in most cases however, Moe was going to beat up Calvin either way, so Calvin decided he might as well make the best of it).
  • In one strip, Calvin tells his dad how amazing it is an ordinary screwdriver can be used to take apart so many things. Calvin's dad immediately gets suspicious and presses Calvin for specifics. Calvin realizes his mistake, pretends he forgets, and hastily excuses himself.

Fan Works

Crossovers

• In the Back to the Future/ X-Men Film Series crossover BTTX, when Beast recognises the flux capacitor in Doc Brown's train, Doc and Marty try to deflect the idea that it's a time machine, but accidentally give away that they're from the past when Doc sarcastically says that he's an award-winning scientist, as his future self genuinely is an award-winning scientist by this time (the X-Men are from a couple of decades in Doc and Marty's future from their perspective).
• Children of an Elder God: In chapter 5 Gendo reprimands Asuka, warning that she can be replaced. Asuka retorts that according to her foster mother, training a replacement is hard. Gendo asks what other classified information she has been given, and Asuka wonders if she has not accidentally gotten her foster mother in trouble.
• In The Confectionary Chronicles, even Hermione apparently doesn’t realise she’s done this when Snape observes that the bracelet she’s wearing, with a devil’s trap engraved on it, is the sign of a hunter; a regular student would have asked what Snape meant, but Hermione immediately replied that she wasn’t a hunter rather than seek clarification.
• Cost of Freedom: Aoko learns that Heiji was involved in the breakout this way.
• Fog in My Windshield: While speaking with Zero, Morgan not only reveals that she knows his Secret Identity, but that she's aware of his motivations, revealing them in front of Kallen. Zero responds by drawing his gun on her.
• Great Grand-Uncle Schimmelhorn's Toolbox: When Piggot reams out Sophia for being so stupid that she forgot to plant the drugs she wanted to use to frame Taylor, Sophia shrieks that she didn't forget, invalidating her previous protestations of innocence.
• Hell Is a Martial Artist: At first, Ranma sympathizes with Ukyo when he learns what kind of situation he unwittingly left her in when reality was rewritten to make Ranma Hild's biological child. Said sympathy evaporates when Ukyo demands "What about my feelings?!", indicating that was all she cared about — not his feelings or reasons for what he did.
• Monstrous Compendium Online:
  • Kirito believes the quest-giving NPC Lady Stheno is an advanced AI until she says "we are trapped," and he realizes that she is a real person wearing NerveGear and acting as an admin in Kayaba's game. It takes significantly longer for him to realize that she's a real youkai from a magical world, not a human from Earth.
  • Tai Mistfeather is a player who was adopted by a youkai clan, and gets a reputation for roleplaying hard to the point of referring to the clan as her family. However, when she spends too much time gushing about some in-game Living Legends she lets slip that she grew up on stories of these people, revealing that she is in fact a real youkai who ended up as a player. And the clan she was "adopted" by is actually her birth clan.
• In Thousand Shinji, when Kaworu talked to Shinji for first time, he referred to humans as "Lilim", cluing Shinji in on his true nature.

Danganronpa

• Blackened Skies: The first culprit is caught when they accidentally let slip that they lied about not recalling their crime in their original game. Kaede proceeds to bait them into revealing that they lied about never being in Kirumi's room, as she claims that the room's floors are scratch-proof, prompting the culprit to correct her.
• Danganronpa Class Swap: In Hope's Peak Academy, Mahiru is told about the existence of the Ultimate Imposter after the fourth trial. The rest of their class doesn't learn about them until the fifth investigation. When Monokuma confirms that the Imposter was never a participant of the Killing Game, Mahiru remarks that they were "wondering about that for a while," making the others immediately suspicious.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Denial: When Komaeda remarks in passing that he has trouble eating sometimes, Hanamura starts to suspect he might have some kind of illness, since his mother suffers from similar issues due to her own condition.

Danny Phantom

• The Crack: While trying to pass Madison off as a test-tube baby, Vlad accidentally says that a woman was never involved. Madison also slips up later when she calls Vlad "Mommy" at a crucial moment.

Dragon Ball

• What If Krillin Became a Saiyan?:
  • When Raditz reveals to Goku and the others gathered at Kame House that 'Kakarot' is an alien like him, Krillin realizes the implications this has about the wish he'd made to "be more like Goku". In his shock, he blurts out "I'm a Saiyan?!", accidentally exposing what he'd done to everyone else.
  • Krillin later explains to Raditz just how he became a Saiyan in the first place, revealing the existence of the Dragon Balls both to him and, unwittingly, an eavesdropping Nappa and Vegeta.
  • When Krillin scolds Gohan for putting himself in harms' way by leaping into his fight with Vegeta, Gohan insists that "I'm tired of being cooped up in that base!" Vegeta immediately realizes this means there are more of them on Namek.

Disney Animated Canon

• In Chapter 9 of Intercom, Riley is casually talking to her friend Ann about the latter's choice of hair dye, until she accidentally lets it slip, "Disgust likes it too, it matches her scarf." Interestingly, many of Riley's problems in later chapters could have been avoided if she had just kept her mouth shut.

Invader Zim

• Witching Hour: When Gaz (who is a princess in this Medieval AU) is really stressed out about the rumors that she's a witch, she snaps at her handmaiden Gretchen for almost dropping her bathing oils. The girl apologizes and begs Gaz to not give her boils or turn her into a frog, unintentionally implying that she also believes Gaz is a witch and making her even more angry. Fortunately for Gretchen, she just gets told to leave rather than being punished.

Jak and Daxter

• In Torque (Jak and Daxter), during the talk that Keira and Daxter have with Onin to find answers to what is going on, the elderly seer mentions Jak. The thing is that neither Keira nor Daxter even asked anything about him. Keira picks up on this right away and starts to ask how Onin knows about Jak. Onin refuses to say anything more on the subject and sends them on their way with some parting advice.

The Loud House

• In A Loud To Stay, Aunt Shirley comments on how Rita and Lynn brought Lincoln home without any warning. This strikes Lincoln as odd, since she should have known Rita was pregnant. Though she hastily backtracks when asked about it, this leads to his discovery that he's adopted.
• Missing Linc:
  • During Lynn's football game, Hank and Hawk taunt her by declaring "Football isn't your strong suit now that your brother's gone." This leads her and Lucy to realize both were involved in Lincoln's kidnapping, since 'Strong Suit' is Lynn's hero counterpart, something they wouldn't know unless they liked Ace Savvy and were aware of what was going on.
  • While ranting about how the Loud girls can't stop him, Dirk mentions several things that Lincoln told his kidnapper about his sisters.

Lyrical Nanoha

• Game Theory: In Power Games, Chrono becomes suspicious after Graham notes that the master of the Book of Darkness might have a backer, rather than suggesting that there could be multiple backers.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Back To Us:
  • During Emerald Shell's debut as the Turtle Miraculous holder, he almost immediately blows his identity to Ladybug by identifying Alya as his girlfriend. Marinette repays him by visiting Nino the next day and giving him an album cover design with a turtle motif, claiming to have been inspired by Emerald Shell, a name which he hadn't gone public with yet.
  • When Adrien and Marinette's Valentine's Day date is interrupted by an akuma attack, both Ladybug and Chat Noir give each other a few too many clues, leading each to suspect the other by the end of the night. Specifically, Chat mentions the earrings he gave Marinette which he thinks she doesn't like, and Ladybug apologises for kissing him on the cheek after the fight, saying that she knows he's seeing someone - information that Chat had only told Marinette. She also tells him to wipe the lipstick off before he sees his girlfriend again, echoing advice Marinette gave Adrien that day.
• In Cat Out of the Bag, Plagg attempts to guilt-trip Marinette about calling on temporary heroes and making Chat Noir jealous. Unfortunately for him, he accidentally reveals that Adrien was deliberately skipping akuma fights when he blurts out how he had to encourage him to show up and try and prove himself.
• CONSEQUENCES: In CAT BLANC, Chat Noir notes the irony of Lila being brought down by the power of the very Miraculous she'd lied about having... much to Ladybug's confusion, as she hadn't told him about that. Chat covers for himself by claiming Adrien told him.
• Dad Villain AU: Part of Gabriel's reality-warping Wish included the request that he would be the only person who remembered the original timeline. This meant that anyone he didn't see as "people", like kwamis, sentimonsters and animals, also retained their memories — something Viceroy turns to his advantage during a charity ball, anonymously commissioning a selection of Miraculous-themed treats. When Gabriel angrily demands to know who ordered food based off of Ladybug and Chat Noir, Viceroy immediately knows he's the man he's been searching for: Hawkmoth.
• Feralnette AU:
  • During the Enough Rope arc, Alya unintentionally hangs herself when she tries to defend Lila from Ladybug and Chat Noir's anger over her Blatant Lies, parroting Lila's claims of having a "lying disease". Ladybug immediately points out that she just admitted that she's aware that Lila supposedly has trouble with compulsively lying, but still treats her as a "trusted source" for the Ladyblog, posting her claims without doing any fact-checking of her own.
  • When Verity Queen declares that Hawkmoth has no idea how strong a parent's love can be, he snaps back "I DO!", causing her to realize he has a child of his own.
• In Fermeture, Marinette tries to arrange a reunion with her former partner Chat Noir, who she hasn't seen since they both lost their powers five years ago, as they never learned each other's secret identities. She uses the Ladyblog to ask him to meet her at their "favourite spot", assuming he'll recognize it as the Eiffel Tower on Christmas Eve before midnight, and ends up waiting there with her former crush Adrien, who's also waiting for someone — Marinette assumes this to be Chloé, who she overheard talking with Adrien on his cell phone a couple of weeks earlier. Midnight passes, and Marinette believes she's been stood up (or that Chat didn't see the invitation to begin with) and prepares to leave, but when she mentions Chloé and the phone call, Adrien explains that the call was just Chloé telling him about the blog post in which Ladybug asked Chat Noir to meet there tonight.
  Marinette: Wait. You said she told you they were meeting here tonight. How did you know that? The note never said where they were meeting!
  Adrien: I, uh... Did I say that? I mean, it was just a guess, really. They, uh, used to spend a lot of time here, so...
  Marinette: (believes his answer, and starts to tear up at another seemingly crushed hope) Was it really? Was it really just a guess?
  Adrien: Wait. You asked how I knew. How I knew, not why I thought so. Is this really where they were going to meet? Why are you so sure? How are you so sure?
  Marinette: Because I'm the one who wrote the damn thing in the first place!
• The High Road: While ranting about how Lila has seemingly tricked Marinette into trusting her, Adrien accidentally reveals to his classmates that he knew about the liar's true nature all along. In trying to defend himself, he ends up realizing that he convinced Marinette to give her another chance, leading to their current predicament.
• The Karma of Lies: When Adrien goes to the police to report how Lila stole from him, he freely admits during the interview that he knew she was a Con Artist the whole time, but never came forward to expose her until now. He assumes that this honesty will prove that he's telling the truth, failing to consider that he just admitted to standing by and letting her con his classmates for months.
• A Lady's Scout (and the Salt within her Soul): Marinette deliberately invokes this after her classmates learn that she's Multimouse. While explaining to them that her exposure means she can't be a hero anymore, she adds "Especially when Ladybug's stalker—shit." This sets up for Ladybug to reveal to the whole class that Lila has been lying to them about being her "best friend".
• Leave for Mendeleiev:
  • Once the whole debacle with Lady Wifi falsely exposing Chloé as Ladybug is cleared up, Chat Noir asks his partner why she's so insistent that Chloé could never be a hero. After she finishes ranting about what a Spoiled Brat the mayor's daughter is, he then comments that she seems to know her well, taunting her with the notion that she's just let slip something that might help him learn her Secret Identity.
  • When Adrien whines about Ladybug gaining new powers while he hasn't, Plagg accidentally blurts out that he doesn't have permission to grant him anything else, hinting that there's somebody else in charge of such things.
  • In his anger and jealousy over Nino becoming a temporary hero, Adrien not only outs them to his father, but accidentally reveals that he's got experience with miraculi himself, leading to his father learning that he used to be Chat Noir.
• In Luckier Without, Chat Noir's bitter comment of "That seemed to work out really well for Alya, didn't it?" causes Ladybug to realize that he'd figured out Rena Rouge's Secret Identity and never bothered to tell her.
• Miraculous! Rewrite: During "Chameleon", Lila sneers at the heroes about "your silly little temps", causing them to realize that she's still holding a grudge over how Lady Temp had exposed her lies before.
• Of Patience and Pettiness:
  • After Marinette reveals Lila's deceptive nature to the whole class, Adrien drops by her place as Chat Noir to try and guilt-trip her about not 'taking the high road'. His questions about whether Lila was actually hurting anyone with her lies and if it was really Worth It to expose her sound awfully familiar to Marinette, who questions how he knows that she exposed her. He covers the slip by claiming Adrien told him about what happened.
  • Sometime later, when Marinette upbraids Adrien for not really supporting her like he claimed he would, he protests that he did try and talk to her about it — something he only did after the fact, as Chat Noir, in the aforementioned guilt-trip. He then slips up further and calls her 'princess', enabling her to realize that he was Chat Noir, much to her disgust.
  • In "Hero Scout", Felix and Kagami both notice that Marinette seems to know a little too much about the new heroine Reptilitany, as she's so absorbed in supporting the new heroine (and boosting Juleka's self-confidence) that she refers to things that only those close to the heroes would know.
  • This is Played for Dramatic Irony with Eden; Adrien believes that she's saying too much, dropping hints that she's none other than Ladybug herself, but in reality, she's just a perfectly ordinary girl who just happens to see Ladybug as an inspiration.
• The One to Make It Stay: While trying to pressure Marinette into making up with Alya, Adrien tells her that "The two of you can't keep feuding just because of me." This accidentally reveals that he overheard them arguing about Marinette's former crush on him, but kept pretending not to know about it because he didn't want to deal with that himself. The fact that he blames Marinette for this rather than his own eavesdropping irritates everyone who learns about it.
• Tales of Karmic Lies Aftermath: When Majestia learns about the Lila incident, Nino tries to convince her that he and Alya both apologized to Marinette for how they'd turned their back upon her. However, he also winds up gushing about how excited they'd been to learn that Marinette was Ladybug all along, and how they'd expected to benefit from being her friends. This naturally makes her question their sincerity.
• Weight Off Your Shoulder:
  • When Future!Alix/Bunnyx detects that Marinette is seriously contemplating giving up her Guardianship and passing the Ladybug Earrings onto a successor, she pops back in time to convince her that things will get better. However, her Lack of Empathy for the suffering of Marinette and others does her no favors... and then she accidentally name-drops Monarch, revealing that her adversary will eventually get his hands on the Miracle Box. Learning this, coupled with Bunnyx refusing to tell her who Shadow Moth is — Marinette decides to take matters into her own hands, stripping Bunnyx of the Rabbit Miraculous and going through with her plan.
  • Later, she does this again: while attempting to convince her past self and the rest of the girl squad that the original timeline is worth restoring, she reveals that Ms. Bustier became the Mayor, declaring that they prove to be a major asset in the ongoing fight against the new Hawk Moth. Understandably, the girls are less than thrilled to hear that Hawk Moth had a successor, with Alix declaring that she definitely doesn't want to become as self-serving as her.
  • She pulls this off yet again in her final confrontation with Marinette and her allies. While trying to justify her actions, she reveals that her actions inadvertently caused Chat Noir/Adrien to pull a Face–Heel Turn in several Bad Futures created by her meddling. On top of this, she claims that Chloé deserved her horrific fate in the timeline she created of being stuck with her abusive, neglective mother.
• What Goes Around Comes Around:
  • Alya tends to shoot herself in the foot by doing this. After Ladybug's secret identity is exposed, she alienates herself from her "bestie" by telling Marinette that she needs to give her exclusive interviews and content for her blog, along with blithely dismissing Luka as "nothing special" in front of both Marinette and Juleka, Luka's sister.
  • Adrien runs headlong into this when he tries to convince Marinette that she needs to take his side, claiming that they "need to be in this together like we were with Lila." Not only is he completely ignoring his Betrayal by Inaction, he makes the mistake of declaring this right in front of the rest of their class. Even worse, Officer Roger also overhears this, leading to him being taken in for questioning, since Lila was revealed to be working with Hawkmoth.
• The Wolves in the Woods: This proves to be one of Adrien's Fatal Flaws - ironically so, given how he refused to do anything about Lila:
  • When taking the stand during Bustier's trial, Adrien is distracted by how Alya had angrily outed Marinette's former crush on him. His musings about how Marinette 'changed for the worse' coupled with how he still refuses to expose Lila means that he gets into serious legal trouble when she outs herself, along with how he knew all along.
  • While trying to defend himself to Kagami, Adrien continues to blame Marinette, thoughtlessly claiming that they could have avoided all this if he'd known about her crush sooner... ignoring how he was dating Kagami at the time. When Kagami calls him out this, he blurts out that "I only liked you because you looked like Ladybug!", earning himself a slap from the heartbroken girl.
  • Alya also falls into this when she complains that Marinette "was getting too pompous" and rants about how her bestie was becoming too successful for her liking. She's so caught up in her Motive Rant that she accidentally blurts out "I thought teaming up with Lila would have done the trick, but—" before her mother stops her, forcing her to admit that she'd known that Lila wasn't telling the truth from the get-go, but convinced her classmates otherwise in order to 'knock Marinette down a few pegs'.

My Hero Academia

• Breathe In, Breathe Out: When Shigaraki manages to escape from the USJ, Lady Nagant accidentally lets slip that she was trying to kill him, not just incapacitate him, much to the horror of several of her students.
• Disciplinary Action: While attacking Izuku during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise, Katsuki declares that "I'll mess you up just enough not to be disqualified!" This catches Principal Nedzu's attention while he's reviewing the footage, as said declaration reveals that Katsuki is not just caught up in the heat of the moment — this is somebody who not only knows how much damage he could do, but is actively calculating how much he can hurt his opponent and get away with it. This clear malicious intent sparks an investigation that results in Katsuki's expulsion from U.A.
• Failure to Explode:
  • Katsuki stumbles headlong into this after his Karma Houdini Warranty at Aldera runs out. Since he didn't make it into U.A., the staff is no longer willing to give his misbehavior a free pass, intervening when he tries attacking Izuku. He protests to his mother that it never mattered before, unintentionally revealing that this wasn't the first time he'd assaulted his former friend.
  • Played with; after his classmate Monoma isn't able to copy his Quirk, Izuku lets slip that he's a "late bloomer" and that it only came in recently. This works out in his favor, as Aizawa overhears this and accepts it as a reasonable explanation for his lacking control.
• From Muddy Waters: After the Midoriyas first escaped All For One, they took refuge in a homeless shelter. However, when Izuku accidentally let slip that his father was a villain, they were kicked back out onto the street, fueling his fears of how they'll be treated if his father's identity is ever revealed.
• Haigha:
  • Played With when Nedzu calls Katsuki and his parents in to discuss his impulsive assault of Shinsou after losing their match. Initially, Katsuki sullenly asserts that he 'wasn't thinking' at the time; however, with Nedzu's gentle prodding, he comes to a realization and blurts out "Why didn't they care?", questioning why his old teachers at Aldera never stopped him before. This comes as a shock to his parents, who weren't aware of how Aldera enabled his Barbaric Bullying; however, this was just what Nedzu was looking for, convincing the Principal to transfer him to Gen Ed rather than expelling him outright.
  • Sir Nighteye wrecks his relationship with Mirio when he learns that his student turned down All Might's offer of One For All. During the argument that follows, Nighteye unintentionally reveals that the only reason he took Mirio on in the first place was to mold him into All Might's successor, much to Mirio's dismay.
• know what i've made by the marks on my hands: Under the influence of Shin Nemoto's truth-telling Quirk, Izuku is forced to reveal that he was the one who stopped All For One by fusing with All Might's spirit, and that he gained similar abilities to All For One in the aftermath.
• Mastermind: Rise of Anarchy features a deliberate example: While boasting about his many accomplishments, All For One reveals to Shigaraki that he's Nana Shimura's grandson. While he anticipates that Shigaraki will not take this news well, he believes that this will let him tap into his hatred, encouraging him to "Use that anger to fuel you." It goes horribly wrong.
• Think Before You Speak:
  • When asked about an incident where his brother was injured during a training accident at U.A., Tensei complains that it was caused by a 'careless student with a Super-Strength Quirk'. Not only does he reveal far too much information, he's also misinformed: Izuku was not truly responsible for Tenya's injury; he just dodged Katsuki's attempt to hurt HIM. His thoughtless remarks end up making problems for all involved.
  • In the same interview, Tensei also reveals that his family are capable of regenerating their engines, something he acknowledges isn't widely known... without considering why they might not want that information spread around.
  • The sum total of Katsuki's defense for his actions is that "I only did that because it was Deku!" Midnight informs him that he has just effectively confirmed everyone's suspicions that he's more than capable of repeating this offense, especially as he isn't showing a lick of remorse.
  • Aizawa scornfully insists that Midoriya doesn't deserve to be at U.A. because he "clearly never bothered" learning how to control his Quirk despite having years to have done so. This unintentionally reveals to all present that he hadn't bothered reading Midoriya's student file, which clearly stated that he was a 'late bloomer' whose Quirk had only come in very recently.
• We're Not Friends Kacchan: While defending Izuku from Katsuki's harassment, Ochako accidentally reveals that she learned about his Suicide Dare by snapping at him that anyone who tells someone to kill themselves without batting an eye is a fucking monster. She's immediately horrified at herself, since Izuku had told her that in confidence, and she just blurted it out in front of the whole class.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Rainbooms and Royalty: In Wedding Bells Bug Hunt, Chrysalis gets so enraged by Rainbow Dash's telling her to Shut Up, Hannibal! that she accidentally reveals that Princess Celestia is still alive.
• In What's Done in the Dark..., when Brother Veritas is attempting to console his student Princess Cadance after the latter sees her husband Shining Armor and aunt Princess Luna kissing, he namedrops Luna as Shining Armor's mistress even though Cadance hadn't named her, causing Cadance to realize that he had known about the affair and ruining his attempt to calm her, in fact triggering her Superpowered Evil Side.

Naruto

• Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison: During an argument with his teammates, Sasuke complains that he can't believe his parents actually want to meet them. He'd had no intention of letting them know this, much less the fact that his family had invited them to dinner; his plan had been to let the date pass and pretend they'd rejected the invitation. His slip of the tongue causes Sakura and Naruto to find out, and they successfully attend the dinner, much to his frustration.
• In The Fidget Rock, Kakashi gets frustrated over Naruto's inability to fix a decent pot of rice and snaps "You're worse at cooking than your father! And HE cooked your mother's wedding ring into a cake SIXTEEN TIMES!" Naruto, naturally, is distracted by the realization that Kakashi knew his parents.
• In Hakumei, Naruto accidentally lets Shino know that Sora is not the true vessel of the Kyuubi, naturally making him suspicious as to how Naruto knows that.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles: In Chapter 130, Tenten goes to Naruto and Hinata's house, where she meets Kushina. Upon being told what the latter's name is, Tenten finds it odd that she has the same name as Naruto's mother. This is followed by Kushina nervously saying it's just an odd coincidence, adding "I mean, how could I be Naruto's dead mother, that's just... crazy." However, Tenten points out she never said such a thing, leading to Hinata and Kushina having to admit what's going on to her.
• True Potential: While confronting Kabuto, Tobi accidentally hints that Pain isn't the true leader of Akatsuki.
• What You Knead: One of the reasons why Kakashi hesitates to approach Naruto after the Sandaime's four-year gag order expires is that he'll accidentally blurt out something he shouldn't, such as noting his Strong Family Resemblance to his father.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Doing It Right This Time: After getting an impressive score in his first synch test Misato asks Shinji if he is sure he has never done this before. Of course he denies it, but later he wonders what she would have done if he said "yes"... not knowing Ritsuko was listening.
• Once More with Feeling: When Shinji was interrogated by SEELE, he accidentally slipped how much Misato means to him, and he realized belatedly that he gave SEELE a leverage to manipulate him. Worse still, his body language gave away that he knew who Khiel -someone who he supposedly had never met before, was, and Khiel noticed.
• Chapter 5 of The Second Try gives an interesting version. After the battle with the 14th Angel, Misato finds (a little too late) an "anonymous" note from Shinji, meant to warn her about EVA-03 being possessed by the 13th angel... That he had written out by hand. She, of course, recognizes his handwriting, and a quick peek at his schoolwork confirms that he wrote it. She then remembers his and Asuka's odd behavior, and realizes that Asuka may know something about the letter. When she confronts Asuka, who is extremely distraught at the time (for very good reasons), Asuka breaks down and lets the facade drop.

The Owl House

• Daughter Nature: Since Luz is the daughter of Gaia here, she knows a lot of things about humans that humans themselves either don't or shouldn't know. This causes a lot of her alienation from others.
• In Little Light, Kikimora becomes angry when she believes Emperor Belos is displaying favoritism towards Luz, a lowly human. When she states that she'll handle the insult if he won't, Belos becomes a Papa Wolf and, in his anger, reveals why the interest in Luz: she's his daughter. Unfortunately, he does this while in a room full of guards, leading to a cabal of Belos' enemies finding out and planning to kill Luz.

Real-Person Fic

• While the four are usually pretty good about not revealing information to outsiders in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, the disguised George and Ringo get so comfortable with the Six Step Combo that Ringo accidentally reveals that they're much older than they look, and George accidentally reveals that his guitar is not the one-of-a-kind prototype that he claimed it was. Luckily, the Six Steppers already knew they were frauds and didn't care.

RWBY

• In Your Wildest Dreams: After Pyrrha has a nightmare about the time she accidentally ended her friend Ashely's career on the tournament scene, Jaune tries to comfort her, only for his attempt at a heartwarming speech to end with her staring blankly at him. Thinking he accidently made things worse, he tries to apologize for being too saccharine, only for her to ask how he knew Ashley's name, since she never actually told him. After trying his hardest to explain it away, Jaune is forced to admit that he has a Dream Walker semblance and was present within said nightmare.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• In Robb Returns, the first Green Man Brynden and Brienne meet accidentally reveals the two will marry in the future.

Stargate-verse

• Works in SG-1's favour in Remnant; Zipacna was trying to pose as Daniel Jackson and convince SG-1 that 'he' was willing to be Zipacna's host to get more information about Anubis, which Jack, Sam and Teal'c might have believed... but then, while trying to convince them, he refers to the destruction of Abydos and "the family of my Amaunet", which instantly ruins the illusion.
  • Granted, Daniel may have exerted just enough control at that moment to make Zipacna slip up, but the Goa'uld still might have won SG-1 over if he'd just stopped talking a moment earlier.

Steven Universe

• Steven Universe: Gone Wrong: While Pearl is regenerating, Peridot takes offense at Lapis' lack of knowledge about Era One Pearls, despite how Lapis is an Era One gem herself. She begins ranting about said Pearls were so customizable that they could even base their appearance off of their owner's form. Lapis echoes this, and Pearl mistakes it for an order.

Supergirl

• Supergirl fanfic my youth is yours: Kara and Lena briefly try to hide their history from James and Winn. This goes out the window almost immediately when Kara mentions a hot dog eating contest she won years ago, and Lena talks about it in a way that makes it clear she was there.

Superman

• New Beginnings (Smallville): When Chloe mentions her cousin has fallen into a coma, time-traveller Clark blurts Lois' name out, forgetting he is not supposed to know her.
  Clark Kent: Okay, now why don't you tell me what's bothering you?
  Chloe Sullivan: I just found out my cousin is in a coma and they don't know when or if she'll ever wake up from it.
  Clark Kent: Lois?
  Chloe Sullivan: Yeah, how did you know my cousin's name?
  Clark Kent: (bluffing) You've mentioned her before, a real hot head right, army brat to a tee.

Sword Art Online

• Sword Art Online Abridged: Kirito figures out that Heathcliff is actually Kayaba when he gets suspiciously defensive after the players start bitching over theinvoked ridiculously glitchy state of the game, with Kirito himself referencing TRON. Heathcliff angrily shouts "Oh, so NOW you've seen TRON!" ... leading to Kirito realizing that he was referring to Kayaba asking who had seen TRON when making the Death Game announcement, and getting no answer.
  Kirito: Of course I've seen TRO— wait, "now"?

Teen Titans

• Played for Laughs in Teen Titans: Together for Tomorrow: Lois discovers Conner is Superboy after seeing him fly in civvies, and works out Clark is Superman. When she goes to confront Superman, Conner refers to him as "Dad" while hastily explaining why the secret identity leak isn't his fault. This shocks Lois, who still thought Clark and Conner were brothers as they said earlier. Conner keeps his mouth covered for the rest of Lois and Supes' conversation.

Undertale

• If We Fall Down: Played with in How to Save a Soul. While Frisk repeatedly slips up in this fashion, Chara quickly picking up on these moments keeps working against them; whenever they confront Frisk, Frisk immediately Reloads and redoes the conversation. This changes in Hotland, where it takes time for Chara to notice and think about Frisk's slip-up; by the time they confront them, Frisk isn't able to Load to a point before that mistake.

Worm

• Quicken: When Danny talks about how happy his daughter Taylor used to be, Emma gets worried, because he's unintentionally revealing that her best friend hasn't been happy for a long, long time.
  He reminisced some more as I listened, but I wasn’t paying attention to what he said so much so as what he didn’t say. He kept talking about how happy Taylor had been before with the two of us, back in the past, not how she was now. Unease wound itself inside me, as I thought about the implications of what he wasn’t saying, what he had left unstated.

Films — Animation

• In The Book of Life, after La Muerte discovers that Xibalba cheated to win their wager, he puts himself in even deeper hot water when he accidentally reveals that he gave the Medal of Everlasting Life to Joaquin. Whoops.
• In Coraline, when Coraline finds herself unable to return home during her third trip to the Other Mother's house, she has an encounter with Other Father. He starts rambling, and nearly gives away the Other Mother's true intentions, forcing his self-playing piano to shut him up.
• The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: When Victor has the Were-Rabbit cornered and Lady Tottington begs him not to shoot it, with the former accidentally revealing that It's Personal.
  Lady Tottington: No, no, Victor! Y-You don't understand! The hunt is off! We made a terrible mistake!
  Victor Quartermaine: Oh, no. You commissioned me to rid you of [Anti-]Pesto, and that's just what I intend to do... Oop!
  Lady Tottington: Pesto? Why, you... You knew it was Wallace all along!
  Victor Quartermaine: Argh... Oh, alright! So what if it is that blithering idiot? No one will ever believe you!
• In The Lion King, Scar "accidentally" lets slip to Simba that the forbidden area beyond the Pride Lands has an Elephant Graveyard (which, of course, piques Simba's interest) and laments the fact that he said too much...but not really, as it's part of his Batman Gambit to get Simba killed.
• The Little Mermaid:
  • Flounder tries explaining to King Triton why Ariel missed the concert and mentions their meeting with Scuttle, letting slip that she had been to the surface.
  • Later, King Triton subjects Sebastian to a friendly interrogation about Ariel being in love. Sebastian is inwardly panicking about how much Triton actually knows, and when Sebastian begins groveling over the fact that he tried steering her away from humans, King Triton is suddenly furious. And Sebastian realizes too late that Triton didn't know that part.
  • When Triton confronts Ariel in her grotto and argues with her, Ariel accidentally blurts out her love for Eric. This revelation is the final straw for Triton to the point where he completely obliterates her collection of artifacts, reducing Ariel to tears. He instantly regrets it as he leaves.
• In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, when Psycho for Hire Dennis corners SpongeBob and Patrick, he tells them that Plankton ordered him to step on them so they would never find out that he was the one that stole Neptune's crown. Then Dennis realizes he probably said too much.
• In Turning Red, when Mei's father discovers her in her giant red panda form for the first time he exclaims "It's happened already?" revealing that her parents knew she would gain the ability to transform into a giant red panda.

Films — Live-Action

• In Annie (1999), while Miss Hannigan and Rooster are posing as Annie’s parents to collect the $50,000 reward, the orphans are left in the care of Lily St. Regis. She plays poker with them and ends up owing them $479.39.
  Lily: What?! Where am I gonna get that kind of loot?! ...Hey, why am I worryin'? I'll be rollin' in it once Rooster and Hannigan get back from Warbucks.
  Molly: That's where Annie is!
  Lily: Oops.
• In Annie (2014), Grace absolutely has friends and under no circumstances is in love with Mr. Stacks.
• In Cannonball, one driver in the race across the country cheats by flying himself and his Blazer to New York and spending the duration of the race in a hotel with his mistress. He then drives across the finish line, but can't find the bottle of champagne he brought to celebrate. His mistress then says "I think we left it on the plane." By the time the next finisher arrives, he's been disqualified.
• Parodied in Casino Royale. Mata Bond is looking for information on Le Chiffre:
  Frau Hoffner: Come along, child. The auction is about to begin.
  Mata Bond: Auction?
  Frau Hoffner: Tonight we are selling one of the finest art collections in Europe.
  Mata Bond: Le Chiffre's collection?
  Frau Hoffner: Who?
  Mata Bond: Le Chiffre.
  Frau Hoffner: Who is Le Chiffre?
  Mata Bond: The man who owns the collection.
  Frau Hoffner: What collection?
  Mata Bond: The collection that's about to be auctioned.
  Frau Hoffner: Who said anything about an auction?
  Mata Bond: You did.
  Frau Hoffner: Who am I?
  Mata Bond: Frau Hoffner.
  Frau Hoffner: Never heard of her. You are insane, my child, quite insane.
  Mata Bond: I think she's right!
• At about the halfway point of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Percival Graves (who's actually Big Bad Grindelwald in disguise) slips up when he's interrogating Newt after arresting him for having an obscurius parasite. Once he realizes Newt has become suspicious, Graves sentences both him and Tina to death to cover his tracks.
  Graves: So it's useless without the host?
  Newt: Useless? Useless? That is a parasitical, magical force that killed a child. What on earth would you use it for?
• In The Godfather Part II Fredo inadvertently gives away that he's the one that betrayed Michael after he excitedly tells someone that Johnny Ola was the one who showed him the sex club they were in...after claiming he never met Johnny Ola before much earlier.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: In the film version only, the impostor gives himself away like this. In the book, he does it on purpose; his plan has already succeeded, and he's just tying up a loose end.
• India Sweets And Spices: Mr. Singh defends having gone to prostitutes by saying his wife hasn't been interested in sex ever since his testicle retracted, slowing down as he's doing so and realizing what he's said.
• In Kiss the Girls, this is intentionally done on part of the Serial Killer. Kate first starts to suspect that she's Alone with the Psycho when he knows where her colander is without being told. He then proceeds to discuss in detail what kind of information a bad guy could get by going through her trash, before finally dropping pretense altogether to tell her exactly what he discovered when he went through her trash.
• It ends up being a crucial plot point in L.A. Confidential - Capt. Dudley Smith reveals that he's the one who killed Jack Vincennes by asking Ed Exley to investigate a name Vincennes dropped as his last words - "Rollo Tomasi". Except that "Rollo Tomasi" happens to be a name made up by Exley for his father's unknown murderer; he'd told the story to Vincennes on the previous day. Vincennes does the same thing in his death scene when he tells Smith that he hasn’t yet told Exley what he's found out, whereupon Smith deems it safe to kill Vincennes.
• Moulin Rouge! first has a heavily sarcastic version:
  Nini: [to the Duke] I don't like this ending. Why on earth would she go with the penniless writer? Oops! I mean sitar player.
  • The second one comes as a response to this:
    The Duke: Why shouldn't the courtesan marry the maharajah?
    Christian: Because she doesn't love you! ...him. She—she doesn't love him.
  • The first example is a deliberate leak, while the second is accidental.
• Several instances in Mystery Team:
  "I wish they'd all disappear like The Lost Colony of Roanoke. But they'd probably go, 'What's Roanoke?' And I'd go, 'Shut up, Caleb.'"
  "Following your dreams is never stupid, unless you dream about water and then you pee the bed last Thursday."
  "Forensic pathologists study the dead. Goths dress like the dead and date closeted gay guys named Ember."
  "We won't tell the police." "Oh man, now you sound like Dad."
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Ego the Living Planet has been looking for Peter for decades, takes Peter to the planet, gains his trust by playing the part of long-lost dad perfectly. He's got Peter eating out of his hand, and almost ready to join up with the cosmos-spanning big plan. But then Ego blows it by admitting he gave Peter's mom cancer to dispose of her. Cue Peter going from entranced and willing to Guns Akimbo and unloading them on Ego.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: The Alternate Universe Mr. Fantastic ends up getting the entire Illuminati killed when he impulsively mentions how Black Bolt's powers work to Scarlet Witch in a misguided attempt to talk her down, giving Wanda the idea to seal poor Black Bolt's mouth shut so the sonic scream he was just about to unleash on his previously-unsuspecting enemy recoils and blows up his own head. Everything just goes downhill from there.
• Panic Room: While discussing splitting the money, Junior casually notes that he'll be walking away with $800,000-900,000 from the inheritance anyway if he simply gives up and goes home. The others realize that, with almost a dozen other grandchildren also standing to inherit and Junior's likely being a black sheep of the family, there's way more in the panic room safe than he initially let on (about 3 million).
• In Reindeer Games, after the wild robbery, Rudy is about to be killed by Ashley and Gabriel. Rudy fires off on Ashley on how Nick (who he'd been impersonating) had truly loved her before dying in prison. Ashley snaps on how dumb Rudy is for doing this as "a guy takes a shiv and you just step up?" Rudy instantly asks how she knew that as Gabriel also realizes Rudy never said how Nick died. After a pause, Ashley pulls a gun to shoot Gabriel. Out comes a very much alive Nick to reveal he'd faked his death and he and Ashley were together on this the whole time.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Chekov unintentionally informs Khan that the Reliant wasn't looking for him, and they had in fact assumed they were on a different planet. It takes several minutes for Khan to realize this, but when he does, things rapidly go downhill for Chekov and his captain.
• Star Wars:
  • Return of the Jedi: Palpatine, Magnificent Bastard, mastermind of two sides of a galactic war, commander of The Empire… and can't resist gloating like a third-rate comic book villain when Luke is about to finish off Vader, which causes Luke to realize just how close to The Dark Side he's going and stop himself.
  • Palpatine does this again in The Rise of Skywalker. He explains to Rey that if she kills him, he'll possess her and rule as Emperor again in her body. Rey was there to kill him anyway, so had he just said nothing his plan would've succeeded. Instead, Rey ends up reflecting his Force Lightning back at him, which means he technically killed himself and his plan fails.
• In 2 Days in the Valley, Teri Hatcher has hired killers to murder her husband. One of the police detectives notices that she says, "They killed my husband," implying that there were multiple murderers when the police hadn't established this fact yet. His partner brushes it off as a figure of speech.
• The Djinn in the first Wishmaster film disguises himself as a friend of Alexandra, and comments that Alex's boss would really like her apartment. Alex notes that she never mentioned who she worked for. The Djinn manages to talk his way out of it.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Donnie discovers that if the purple ooze could turn humans into animals (as demonstrated with Bebop and Rocksteady), it could also turn the Turtles into humans. Leo doesn't like this idea and tells Donnie not to say anything to Raph or Mikey. Unbeknownst to them, Mikey was listening...
  Mikey: I didn't believe it, but then Donnie showed him it could really work! It was the coolest thing I've ever seen. It gave me hope. That we wouldn't be stuck down here forever, you know?
  Raph: So Leo told Donnie to keep it a secret...from us?
  Mikey: *realises what he's just done* Uh...no.
  Raph: Who does he think he is?
  

Literature

• America (The Book) has a footnote listing countries where the U.S. has carried out secret/illegal military operations, ending with "Cana-... we've said too much."
• In Douglas Hulick's first novel, Among Thieves, the main character Drothe has been tracking down a powerful book that there are rumors about, but which nobody has much information on, for his boss, Kells. Eventually he finds it, but when Kells asks what he's found, he tells his boss that he's not going to give him any information about "that damned journal" until Kells tells him what's going on. Kells realizes he's found the book, as everyone else has just been calling it "the book": nobody else knew it was a journal specifically.
• In The Brothers' War, Ashnod invites Tawnos to her quarters for a midnight rendezvous during the second peace conference between Yotia and the Fallaji. As the two of them get drunk and discuss their respective masters, Ashnod nearly gives away the fact that Mishra now has more than one dragon engine by referring to Mishra's engines, plural, though she covers by claiming that she's referring to both the dragon engine and the huge wagon it's been dragging around. Soon afterward, her careless words make Tawnos realize that Mishra is enacting a scheme to steal Urza's Mightstone at that very moment—and that Urza's wife Kayla is in on it.
• In the Commonwealth Saga short story "The Demon Trap", Paula Myo is investigating a terrorist who has not only had his memories wiped, but a completely different set of memories implanted, but still proves his involvement because of a DNA match at the scene, and a mismatch where the person whose memories he has was sick. The head of the political party with the same aims as the terrorist group denies any involvement, but decries punishing a man for a crime his current personality didn't commit. In the process he describes the stewardess in sufficient detail to convince Myo that he provided the fake memories. It eventually transpires the entire movement consists of genetically-altered clones with a Hive Mind.
• In The Diamond Age, Inspector Chang returns Hackworth's top hat, saying that he got it from a suspect. Hackworth thanks Chang for having "arrested him" despite Chang not having mentioned anyone being arrested, inadvertently admitting that the hat was stolen from him. He had wanted to keep the theft a secret, because the thieves had also stolen from him an illegal copy of the Primer that he had made.
• Discworld: Moist von Lipwig fell into this trope in Making Money when he was attempting to talk his way around Captain Carrot's Exasperated Perp tactic by telling Carrot that he knows what he's trying to do to him. Carrot then promptly thanked him... for informing him that he's quite familiar with that tactic and thus implying his rather shady criminal past. Whoops!
• In almost every Encyclopedia Brown story involving Bugs Meanie, this sort of thing gave Bugs away; he usually had to defend a lie with another lie that made what he said earlier contradictory.
• Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic: Phoenica establishes her Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense credentials bright and early when she's being mugged in the prologue, and lets slip that she's got $5000 in cash on her.
• Error of Judgement: Dr/ Prince, while talking to his mistress about his wife, and how she supported him during the last malpractice scandal, he lets slip that's why he'll never leave her. This utterly disillusions his mistress, who suddenly has some damaging evidence to use against him.
• "Galley Slave": Professor Ninheimer sues US Robotics, accusing EZ-27 of altering his work. When he is interrogated at the trial, EZ-27 begins to speak up, and Ninheimer blurts out "Damn you, you were instructed to keep your mouth shut about..." Oops. He had made the changes himself, then brought the case to make a point against automation. The real twist is that EZ-27 wasn't going to tell the truth anyway, since the First Law (manifested as a desire to protect Ninheimer's reputation) trumps the fact that it would be scrapped if it didn't speak out (Third Law), as well as the order to be quiet (Second Law). The only reason for US Robotics' lawyer to bring EZ-27 to the trial is in order to trick Ninheimer, who distrusts robots and is deliberately ignorant of how they worked, into making that slip, by providing the robot with a higher-level First Law trigger that trumped the initial one.
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi:
  • Xue Yang unintentionally gives himself away to Wei Wuxian by being too knowledgeable in demonic cultivation when disguised as Xiao Xingchen. He also slips when he corrects A-Qing on the difference between hunting and night-hunting, letting her know he is a cultivator.
  • In one of their first exchanges, A-Qing almost reveals to Xue Yang that she isn't actually blind when she got carried away in complimenting Xiao Xingchen and describing how fast his attacks are, when Xue Yang points out that a blind person wouldn't know if someone is fast or slow with a sword. She manages to bluff her way out by claiming she was talking about the feel of the wind/air from the sword swings.
• Harry Potter:
  • Poor Hagrid is prone to this, especially when he's distraught or talking to the Power Trio. In the first book alone, he lets slip the means to calm Fluffy the Terrible and the name of a warlock who helps immensely with a search he doesn't want them to succeed in. He often lampshades it in the film version: 'I shouldn't have said that.'
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, Daylen frequently says and does things that don't make sense for someone so young or with his limited life experiences, which he constantly has to make up explanations to cover. These mistakes eventually lead to Ahrek figuring out that he's actually Dayless.
• Tortall Universe: In the Trickster's Duet, Aly is keenly aware of this trope and tries very hard not to fall into it, which is difficult when Dove and Sarai are specifically asking for stories about legendary Tortallan figures who are part of Aly's family, like her mom and Daine the Wildmage. She also has to work hard to avoid sounding as well-educated and astute as she really is, but Dove still notices every time Aly slips up.
• Done twice in quick succession, but in entirely separate story strands, in the Shannara novel The Last Druid. First, Weka Dart's insistence that searching for the Darkwand in the Iron Creche is a fool's errand initially appears to be due to his reluctance for his mistress to find it and abandon him, but his repeated assertations that it's definitely not there eventually clues her in that he knows where it actually is. Secondly, when Battenhyle confronts Belladrin Rish about evidence she's an enemy spy, he claims that she was seen with the body of the last man to suspect this. She's so taken aback by this that she blurts out that nobody was there, before hastily, but too late, amending this to that there was nothing to see.
• In the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel Serpent Among the Ruins, the Klingon diplomat (and Azetbur loyalist) Kage suspects his aide Ditagh is working for one of the warhawks on the High Council, and confronts him about this, repeatedly referring to the man's true master as "the general" as if he knows exactly who he's talking about. Eventually he goads Ditagh enough to counter that General Gorak is a great man, who will return honour to the Empire. Except Ditagh says this deliberately. His actual sponsor is the supposed moderate General Kaarg, and the obviously antagonistic Gorak is their fall guy.
• The Witchlands: This is what happens when The Quiet One is also terrible at lying.
  • In Truthwitch, a pain-addled Aeduan admits to Iseult that he can't sense or control her with his magic. He regrets saying that as soon as he regains control of his wits, but the damage has already been done. In a twist, the knowledge that he can't harm her with his magic is one of the reasons Iseult is willing to work with Aeduan to track down Safi in Windwitch.
  • Early in Windwitch, Corlant ropes Aeduan into tracking down a Threadwitch named Iseult det Midenzi for him. Aeduan asks him what he wants with "this girl" even though Corlant hasn't specified Iseult's age. Thankfully, Corlant doesn't notice that Aeduan seems to already be acquainted with Iseult.
• The Naked Sun: The culprit accidentally blabs the means and motive to Elijah during a rant about robotics, although Elijah doesn't put two and two together until later when his robot companion inadvertently gave him a hint. The culprit mentioned two innovations he'd been working on: positronic brains in non-humanoid machines like spaceships, and robots with detachable specialized limbs. Said positronic-brained spaceships were part of his scheme for galactic domination (they'd bypass the First Law because they would naturally assume that other spaceships were also unmanned and so would have no problem engaging them in combat), and the detachable limb robot was the murder weapon- something Elijah only cottoned on to when he told Olivaw to "give [him] a hand" and Olivaw interpreted it as "literally remove your hand and give it to me" and got confused since his hand wasn't easily detachable, allowing Elijah to realize that if a robot that did have detachable limbs was told "give me your arm," it would, thus giving the murderer a club to use on the victim.

Live-Action TV

• On 9-1-1, two women are in a "rage room" where a wife is encouraged to smash things up as therapy. Her friend pushes her into it by reminding the woman of all the things her husband does that drives her crazy from his behavior to one of his weird quirks after sex. At which point, the baseball-wielding wife realizes she never talked about that and there's only one way her "friend" can know about her husband's sexual habits...
• 30 Rock:
  Jack: Lemon, we have a problem.
  Liz: I have this whole Tracy-Josh thing under control!
  Jack: What are you talking about?
• On All American, Olivia is having it out with her parents on how she's been sober for a year but they still massively judge her. She does a rant on how her brother Jordan smoked weed and got into trouble and the parents just acted like it was fine and never punished him. At which point, their reactions make Olivia realize the reason Jordan wasn't punished was because their mother never knew about this in the first place.
• Angel:
  • "Shells": In this context, "it" refers to the goddess Illyria, about to be reborn via the sacrifice of our beloved Fred. Fred is the "her". In this case, Knox believes that only Fred was worthy to be Illyria's host.
    Knox: I don't just care about Fred — I practically worship it.
    Gunn: You said "it".
    Knox: What?
    Gunn: Not "her". You said "I worship it".
    Knox: [smirking] Oops.
  • And from "Not Fade Away", Hamilton lets a little too much slip during his Badass Boast while beating up Angel. Angel vamps out and drinks Hamilton's blood, granting himself the same power Hamilton was boasting about.
    Hamilton: Let me say this as clearly as I can: you cannot beat me. I am a part of them — the Wolf, Ram, and Hart. Their strength flows through my veins. My blood is filled with their ancient power.
    Angel: Can you pick out the one word there you probably shouldn't have said?
• The Boys (2019): Homelander learns his child is still alive when Stillwell commiserates with him over his loss while giving a version of how the baby died which is different from the one Dr. Vogelbaum told him.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the final episodes of season 4, Spike, using "the Yoko Factor," has successfully turned Buffy and the Scoobies against one another by exploiting the existing tensions within the group. In the next episode, Spike, having realized that he gave the information necessary for the success of Adam's plan to Willow, and now Willow won't be speaking to Buffy, meets up with Buffy and tells her that just because they had a falling out doesn't mean they can't focus on decoding the info. As Spike wasn't around to see their falling out, Buffy puts two and two together and realizes that Spike set them up and is working with Adam.
• In Castle's pilot, the brother of one of the victims, when asked about an alibi, provides alibis for the three murders. Castle feels downhearted, but Beckett points out that, while it is possible he'd know his alibi for his sister's death, the fact that he was prepared for all three murders (without even asking when the other victims were killed) is quite suspicious. He did it.
• Charmed (1998): Whenever Piper and Leo's son Wyatt travels back in time he has a habit of telling his family too much about what will happen to them in the future. Sometimes it's minor things like mentioning that his younger brother will swallow a marble at some point, but in the Series Finale he accidentally gives away that Phoebe will marry her current love interest when he automatically calls the man "uncle" in front of everyone.
• On the second episode of Charmed (2018), the girls believe they have gotten the spirit of their mother to help them. Whitelighter Harry warns them this is an Imposter Demon using knowledge of the girls for its own gain. At first, Mel refuses to believe that, insisting this has to be their mother. The demon claims Mel can trust her as they were always closer than with Maggie. Mel stabs her, noting that "our mother never played favorites."
• Cheers: At one point, Frasier tries giving Sam some advice on sexual frustration, suggesting he take up piano playing, then nonchalantly adds that a piano will "never stomp out of the room and refuse to let you play it for three days." He then cheerfully announces he's going home to his wife, Lilith.
• The Colbert Report:
  • Whenever Stephen Colbert gets carried away in a rant and forgets he's not supposed to be talking about himself. On how High School Musical could be made more realistic:
    Stephen: If [the main character] went anywhere near the theater department, the football team wouldn't join him in a peppy dance number! They'd string him up on a goalpost by the tights of his home-made Romeo costume, and chuck stale Tater Tots at his head until I wet my pants! — his pants, his pants!
  • Another example, after "Papa Bear" Bill O'Reilly appeared on his show, Colbert showed a clip of The O Reilly Factor the next day where Bill says "Colbert blew me right away." Cue rant from Colbert how this was supposed to remain secret, how heartless O'Reilly was and it wasn't right away, they had dinner first. He goes onto his next segment where he uses the same phrase and realizes what Bill meant.
    Stephen: Oh, my. I have misjudged him. And perhaps said too much.
  • This was common when he was on The Daily Show, too. Several installments of "Even Stevphen" ended with him and Steve Carell having turned the topical "debate" of the day into a thinly-veiled or not-at-all-veiled discussion of their personal lives.
    Steve: [on why Elian Gonzalez shouldn't go back to Cuba] Well, isn't it obvious, Stephen? A delicate boy like that shouldn't be with his father. I mean, think about it. If he goes there and lives with his father, you know what he's gonna hear. "No, Elian, Daddy can't go camping this summer, things are just too crazy at work," or, "No son of mine is going to take pottery class," or, "Why aren't you tougher? You get beat up in school, you fight back! You don't go crying to the principal like a wussy little girl! Suck it up! Suck it up! Suck it up, Steve!"
• On Community, Troy has a tendency to do this, adding "Whoops" without changing the tone.
  Troy: How do you know it was our design? We submitted in anonymously. Whoops.
• Dark Matter (2015): One of the things which tips off Six to the fact that he's in a simulation is Three knowing his wife's name, which he never told him.
• Death in Paradise: In "Murder on the Day of the Dead", Finn Anderson apparently receives a voicemail from his wife in which she is being attacked by someone with a knife. He runs to find DI Mooney to inform him that he believes his wife has just been murdered, but Mooney finds it curious that he would say she was murdered, rather than attacked, without knowing for sure that she was dead and correctly guesses that Anderson already knew his wife was dead, and was involved in her murder.
• Doctor Who:
  • In The Time Meddler, the Doctor has disappeared in 1066, and in order to find him Steven interrogates a suspicious monk who swears up and down he hasn't seen him. Steven asks the Monk kindly to keep an eye out for him and asks "Do you remember the description I gave you?" to which the Monk responds by listing off the Doctor's physical traits — long white hair, a walking stick, and strange-looking clothes. Steven leaves to tell Vicki that he's confirmed the Monk has seen him, as he never gave him a physical description.
  • In "Global Conspiracy", a Mockumentary put together as a special feature for "The Green Death" in 2004, the Minister for Environmental Protection laughs off any talk of conspiracy or giant flies. The interviewer points out that nobody mentioned giant flies.
  • In incomplete serial Shada, Professor Chronotis blurts out his real identity (the extremely powerful and dangerous Time Lord outlaw Salyavin, who is being sought by the villain as a vital component to his plan) in a sudden slip of the tongue at the exact point when the villain thinks Salyavin is gone forever, is patching things up with the Doctor and is just about to give up on his plan and go home — basically, the worst possible time. Since this is a case of the character having his brains splattered across the wall by the Idiot Ball (as he'd kept his identity a secret for over 700 years until then), the novelisation alters this to have the companion figure it out and announce it to the Doctor (and the villain, whom he is comforting after a Villainous Breakdown), thinking Salyavin is a danger to the Doctor and not realising that Salyavin being alive is crucial to the villain's plan, and plays it for excruciating Dramatic Irony.
  • "The Unicorn and the Wasp": The Doctor and Agatha Christie are trying to solve a murder mystery, and accusing everyone in the room about certain facts that could point towards them being the killer. Christie points to one man who is wheelchair bound, who in turn cracks under the pressure and admits that he can walk and was only faking being paralyzed, afraid that that was the only thing holding his marriage together. Christie then admits she wasn't actually going to confront him about anything.
  • "Midnight": The entity, after managing to possess Sky's body, steal the Doctor's voice and paralyze him, and convince the rest of those onboard that the entity is in the Doctor now, ends up being so smug about this that it flaunts the fact too much. Even if almost everyone else was too paranoid and thick to notice "Sky's" sudden smugness, the hostess figures it out when the entity uses some of the Doctor's catchphrases, which she'd noticed him saying before the trouble started...
  • At the end of "The Crimson Horror", the kids Clara babysits confront her with pictures they found of her from time periods that she couldn't have possibly been alive in (or at least not in her twenties). They also stumble upon a picture of one of Clara's echoes, which she hasn't yet found out that she has.
    Clara: [looking at the picture of Victorian Clara from "The Snowmen"] That's not right.
    Angie: You were in Victorian London.
    Clara: No, I was in Victorian Yorkshire- [cue Oh, Crap!]
  • During “The Timeless Children” Ashad, a fanatical incompletely absorbed Cyberman, and The Master are tentatively agreeing to do a villain team up. The Master keeps trying to get Ashad to show him the Cyberium, a vessel with all the knowledge and capabilities of the Cyber Empire encoded within it. A wary Ashad responds that the Cyberium won’t leave him for as long as he is alive. The Master, a mass murdering psychopath through and through, immediately kills Ashad and collects the Cyberium from his body.
• On Elsbeth' the title character states, "As a lawyer, the surest sign to me a client was guilty was how much they talked." So when someone in a murder case brings up way too much information on the crime or a suspect, Elsbeth realizes they may be the killer.
• The Flash (2014): In "Tricksters," Barry has a bomb on his wrist that will explode once he slows down. Dr. Wells decides to help out by training Barry to phase through solid objects...but gets far too explicit and impassioned in his instructions. Barry realizes that he is speaking from experience, and this is the clue that finally convinces him that he is the Reverse-Flash. Justified by the fact that his plan revolves around Barry being A) alive and B) really fast, so he must be protected at all costs.
• For Life: Cyrus Hunt does this (in the form of Evil Gloating) which reveals to Aaron that Cyrus has been listening in on Aaron's legal strategy discussions with Henry and Marie.
• Frasier:
  • On occasion, Niles lets loose hints his marriage is anything but happy, and he'd much rather be with Daphne. Some are more blatant than others.
    Niles [on getting into a relationship too quickly] What happens if you find some who's really right for you? Someone who excites you, and makes you feel alive, but you can't do anything because your trapped in a stale, albeit comfortable Maris! ... marriage. ... I have to go now.
  • During the season 3 episode, "The Last Time I Saw Maris", Frasier tries telling Niles he needs to stand up to Maris, who has been completely controlling towards Niles their entire marriage, and that if he doesn't break out of that, he's going to be pushed around for the rest of his life. But then...
    Frasier: You need to say "I will not let you treat me like this, Lilith!" ... Maris!
    [Niles glowers at Frasier while Martin rolls his eyes]
    Frasier: Well, dad, I've lost all credibility here...
• Game of Thrones:
  • Loras Tyrell does this in "Kissed by Fire" when he tells his hookup Olyvar about his secret betrothal to Sansa Stark. Olyvar is a spy for Littlefinger, who tells the Lannisters, and they pre-empt the Tyrells' plans of claiming Winterfell by forcing Sansa to marry Tyrion Lannister immediately.
  • In "Two Swords", after Brienne of Tarth calls Renly Baratheon "our king" while speaking to Margaery Tyrell (who was married to Renly and is now married to his nephew Joffrey Baratheon, while Brienne served in Renly's personal guard), the other lady gently but sternly reminds Brienne that Joffrey is king now. Brienne would get her head chopped off if Joffrey ever found out that she is still faithful to the memory of his usurping uncle.
• Gilmore Girls: At Emily and Richard's vow renewal ceremony, Christopher, who by that time was drunk and angry, let it slip that Emily is the reason why he came to try and get back together with Lorelai.
• Homicide: Life on the Street mostly averted this during its interrogation scenes, but played it for laughs in one episode where Munch attends a class to get his bartender license, and is kicked out when he lets it slip he intends to let his patrons get drunk without doing anything to prevent it.
• Cuddy intentionally says "too much" to Wilson in an episode of House. She and House kiss, after which Wilson tries to trick her into confessing by asking her if everything's alright in a sort of leading tone of voice. She sees through the ruse and has no intention of denying the incident.
  Cuddy: Everything's fine with my kissing House, oh God, you dragged it out of me, you're a genius.
• On In Plain Sight, Mary is handling a teenager discovering her mom has been in Witness Protection for her entire life. Mary meets the woman's husband, who also knows, and they share the story of their first meeting with loads of details on the weather, what each wore, etc. Something seems off to Mary so she asks Marshall how he met his girlfriend and he gives a short, simple answer. They both realize the entire story seemed way too rehearsed and soon find the husband was actually the woman's criminal partner who's been on the run for years. Mary notes the irony that the duo trying to go overboard on details just gave away their secret.
• On Iron Fist (2017), Harold Meachum faked his death 13 years ago as part of his deal with the Hand. He's been in hiding keeping an eye on his children and plotting his return. In the first season finale, Harold has conned daughter Joy into thinking he was held prisoner all that time. Her brother Ward warns her that their father is lying as he's been secretly helping his dad out and the man is a murderous psychopath. Joy refuses to believe it...until during a talk, Harold suggests they go out to dinner "at the place at 6th you like." A heart-broken Joy immediately asks how, if Harold was truly a tortured prisoner for the last decade, he can possibly know such a detail about her life and realizes Ward is right about their father.
• Law & Order: UK: During the prosecution of an accused rapist/murderer, the key witness is a young woman who saw the man lurking around the building where the crime took place (she may very well have been the intended victim had she not evaded him). The man denies it, angrily accusing the girl of lying and referring to her tattoos before covering his mouth in horror as he realizes his mistake. Although the girl's arms were indeed covered with tattoos, she was wearing a jacket while in court. The only way he could have known about her tattoos was if he had seen her previously.
• At the very end of the first episode of Mighty Med, Wallace and Clyde of The Domain overhear Kaz and Oliver talking about how important it is to keep Mighty Med a secret, showing that they are two halves of the supervillain Catastrophie who wants to destroy all superheroes forever.
• Million Yen Women: This is used to reveal who the invitation sender is. In an early episode, one of the characters asks for a certain piece of information. Later on, it turns out that the asker should have known that piece of information at the time, which makes the fact that they asked very suspicious.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: When telling Mami Bibir about how Bambang bought her a brand new bag against her wish, Melani lets it slip that Bambang bought and gave it last night, realizing too late that Mami Bibir disapproves a boy sneaking to the girl's room late at night. Fortunately, Mami Bibir is more concerned about ending the conflict between Bambang and Melani that happened afterwards.
• Nirvana in Fire: Mei Changsu attempts to avert this when he keeps reminding Commander Meng and Nihuang not to act like they're his close friends when talking to other people. His efforts don't stop Jingyan becoming suspicious about his real identity anyway.
• Our Miss Brooks:
  • In "The Model Teacher", Miss Brooks is desperate to avoid having glamorous but Immoral Journalist Stephanie Forester learn about Mr. Boynton. When Mrs. Davis mentions Mr. Boynton, Miss Brooks goes so far as to claim that Boynton is the school mascot, a schnauser. Unfortunately, Walter Denton arrives to drive Miss Brooks to school and ends up describing Boynton for Miss Forester. Miss Forester almost immediately decides to romantically pursue Boynton.
  • In "Stretch Is In Love Again", Judy Brille, the daughter of Clay City High School principal Jason Brille, was assigned by her father to keep Stretch Snodgrass busy on dates long into the evening. As a result, he's so tired he's useless playing football; once he even ran the wrong way. Madison High looks to have an embarrassing defeat to its principal rival. And nobody at Madison knows what's going on. Stretch is sworn to secrecy by his double-agent girlfriend. So, Miss Brooks, assigned to discover what's going on, interrogates Stretch. First, she finds out Stretch is dating "Judy". Second, she finds out that he's dating Jason Brille's daughter.
    Miss Brooks: Who is this new girlfriend, Stretch?
    Stretch: Oh, no you don't!
    Miss Brooks: No I don't what?
    Stretch: You don't get Judy's name out of me! (audience laughs) I promised to keep it a secret.
    Miss Brooks: Well, that's your privilege. If you don't want me to know Judy's name, I'm not going to know Judy's name. That's all there is to that. Judy what?
    Stretch: Gosh, I didn't even want that part of her name to get out. It just slipped. Look, Miss Brooks. You wouldn't want me to break a promise, would you?
    Miss Brooks: Fervently. Listen, Stretch. Even if you enjoy all this "rumbering", don't your girl's parents object to these late hours every night?
    Stretch: Oh, I'm sure they don't.
    Miss Brooks: How can you be so sure?
    Stretch: Her old man gives me the money to take her out.
    Miss Brooks: What!
    Stretch: Sure! He's not like our principal. Mr. Brille's a good sport.
    Miss Brooks: Stretch, you're telling me you're taking out Judy Brille?
    Stretch: How did you know?
    Miss Brooks: A little birdbrain told me.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Corner Of The Eye" Father Jonascu realizes something is up when one of the aliens claims his friend Father Royce died of an embolism-just like Carlito, a homeless man who'd tried to warn Jonascu about them.
• Preacher (2016): Lara slips up, mentioning Tulip robbed banks in Dallas, which wasn't part of their conversation. Tulip first agrees she must have just forgotten, but then when she's still suspicious, Lara gets F. J. to come over acting like her supposed abusive ex-boyfriend when her very identity is questioned. This works to make Tulip believe it.
• In Red Dwarf, Lister is reading Rimmer's diary to the Cat. Rimmer is outraged by this betrayal of privacy, and Lister tries to mollify him by saying he can read Lister's diary if he wants.
  Rimmer: Why would I want to read your diary? It's full of puerile nonsense about Kochanski.
  Lister: Ah, so you have read my diary.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • Anytime Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump show up nowadays, Don Jr. will be attempting to downplay whatever the Trump scandal of the week is, when Eric will say something that just makes them look worse. Don Jr. then hands something, like a fidget spinner, over to distract Eric.
  • A less sinister example once occurred on Weekend Update when Colin Jost announces a contest to see who can guess where in the world a personality is currently broadcasting from. They cut to this personality in the location the viewers are supposed to guess.
  Hello, or as they say here in Hawaii...oh, motherfudge!
• In the Supergirl (2015) episode "The Darkest Place", Winn's protests to Alex that National City's newest superhero, the Guardian is innocent of the crimes he's been framed for makes her realize Winn knows Guardian's Secret Identity, and it doesn't take much for him to reveal it to her.
• Supernatural: Castiel eavesdrops on Dean, Sam and Bobby arguing about their suspicions that he's working with Crowley. Bobby suggests that if there's any chance they're dealing with "a Superman who's gone dark side", it's a good time to stock up on Kryptonite. Later, after Castiel convinces them they were wrong about him, he makes one fatal mistake.
  Castiel: It is a little absurd, though. Superman going to the dark side...
• In the Victorious episode "Opposite Date", Tori and Beck decide to do things not done on a date, but insists Cat not tell anyone where they are. Once she gets to Jade, she accidentally lets it slip out.
  Jade: Let's hang out tomorrow night.
  Cat: Okay, but we can't invite Tori to come with us, because she's — [gasps at what she said]
  Jade: What's Tori doing tomorrow night?!
  Cat: Nothing! I don't know! She told me not to tell you!
  Jade: Five!
  Cat: Oh, God!
  Jade: Four!
  Cat: Don't count!
  Jade: Three!
  Cat: Oh, I love three!
  Jade: Two!
  Cat: Have you heard about the new Pear Pads with a slightly better screen?
  Jade: ONE!
  Cat: Okay, okay!! Tori and Beck are going out together.
  Jade: What?!
  Cat: But it's not a date! They're just hanging out as friends.
• In Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey has a tendency to manipulate Prime Minister Hacker for his own self-serving ends, but on one occasion tries to prevent him from appointing a reformer to the position of Chairman of the Bank of England in order to prevent a massive scandal that would destroy Hacker's government. For once, Humphrey is genuinely looking out for Hacker's best interests, but when Hacker finds himself in yet another awkward situation thanks to Humphrey, he furiously confronts Humphrey, leading to this exchange:
  Hacker: I don't understand it, Humphrey. What's your game? Why should you be adamant that I allow another cover-up? What's in it for you?
  Humphrey: [Urgent] Nothing, Prime Minister! I assure you, I have no private ulterior motive. I'm trying to protect you from yourself. I'm entirely on your side.
  Dorothy: How can we believe that?
  Humphrey: Because this time it's true! [Hacker raises an eyebrow; Humphrey realises what he's said] I mean... this time I'm particularly on your side.

Roleplay

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Sebastian calls out David for attempting to shift blame of his attempted murder to a supposed voice in his head. In the process, however, Sebastian accidentally lets slip about the voice in his own head, belonging to the symbiotically possessive Fesxis.
• In Nan Quest, Henry winds up accidentally outing themselves as the Pilgrim by reassuring Nan that if she gets attacked by the Pilgrim again, she can just escape out the window like she did the last time he attacked. Problem: the other person wasn't there at the time, only Nan and the Pilgrim were, and Nan had never explained how she had escaped to anyone. /tg/ was quick to call them on this:
  "...Oops."

Video Games

• Ace Attorney:
  • Every once in a while, witnesses may make a slip of the tongue and mention information none of the parties at court know. For example, the final witness in the third case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice makes an off-hand comment about the instruments that can be heard in the song the victim heard at the moment of his death. Except, the song in question is played with different instruments than those described by the witness. This ends up proving the defendant's innocence and places guilt on another person, a person the witness tried to cover for...
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, this is a major Fatal Flaw of the Big Bad Kristoph Gavin, which gets him into trouble several times where he has a tendency to talk in a poetic sense which reveals far more information than he's supposed to know, such as referring to the victim of Case 1's bald head when he never took his hat off until he got smashed in the head with a wine bottle and knocked it off, meaning that only Phoenix and the murderer knew that the victim was bald. Later during Phoenix's murder trial for the incident, Kristoph refers to the playing cards at the crime scene having blue backs when the last round actually used a red set (Two different card decks were used to prevent cheating) since he stole an incriminating bloodstained card and replaced it with a card from the wrong deck, then finally claims said bloodstained card that somehow made it into the evidence is forged (it was) only for Phoenix to point out that only the murderer would claim this knowing what happened to the real card that went missing.
• Amnesia: Memories: In Heart World, the heroine is injured from an accident and has several wounds covered by bandages, most noticeably on her neck, arms, and legs. She and Shin head to the café and meet Toma, who asks if her head hurts. Shin points out this exact comment when confronting Toma about being the one that caused her injuries. Most people would be staring at her bandaged neck and ask her about that and not her head, which was specifically mentioned to have not been injured during the accident. This means that Toma must have been the one to find the heroine first after the accident, caused her harm in a way that included hitting her head, and then running away. Depending on the ending the player is obtaining, Toma will either admit everything or deny anything.
• At the start of Azure Striker Gunvolt, Gunvolt is receiving a mix of Electric Torture and A Taste of the Lash. The torturer, convinced Gunvolt has no chance of escape, tells him the Muse, whom Gunvolt was looking for, is aboard a freight train. Turns out Gunvolt has electricity powers and the torture actually helped him recharge his energy. He then escapes with extra knowledge of where to look for the girl.
• In Catherine, Thomas Mutton assumes that Vincent has figured him out and accidentally confesses his involvement with the nightmares when he was never under suspicion in the first place, and Vincent just wanted to know he wasn't the only person who saw Catherine.
• Deltarune: Spamton G Spamton is repeatedly implied to know far more than he's letting on. On top of his sentences frequently being censored by [[HYPERLINK BLOCKED]], there are a few instances where he almost says something before stopping himself. In his NEO battle, he asks Kris if they want to be 'A [Heart] ON A [Chain]' their entire life. The next turn, he seems to ask much more quietly, 'Or do you want to be...' but is cut off by his own attack backfiring on him and wasting his turn, as if punishing him for opening his mouth.
• In Demonbane, Ennea at first appears to be an ordinary girl, but accidentally outs herself as a sorceress with this exchange:
  Ennea: Hahaha! It's so rare to see such a relationship between a mage and his grimoire!
  [long silence]
  Ennea: Oh... oops.
• In an interestingly meta example from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, even deities can apparently make this mistake. At one point, on a quest to destroy a powerful artifact of the Daedric Prince Vaermina, your NPC companion is in the middle of the ritual to banish it when a woman's otherworldly voice whispers in your head that he's tricking you and that you should kill him before he uses the artifact against you. Since there are at least two female Daedra who can be classified as good or at least non-evil and you might not have heard them yet, an unaware player might be fooled into following these orders (and thus losing a potential ally for the rest of the game)...had she not then added, "Vaermina commands you!"
• In the 1st Degree: If you play the game right, Tobin will end up blurting out information that makes him guilty right there in the courtroom.
• In L.A. Noire we get Jean Archer who can't seem to help but give information by mistake in the case appropriately titled "A Slip of the Tongue", such as when the main character asks how she knows a certain person, whom the main character refers to only by his last name. Jean's response is to ask who said person is... while also mentioning his full name.
• Happens in LEGO City Undercover when Chase arrests Bucky Butler to take his place in Chan's gang.
  Bucky: Why do you keep arresting me?
  Chase: You were trying to join Chan Chuang's gang.
  Bucky: But that's not against the law. Look, I shouldn't have to tell you how to do your job, but you should be arresting me for the painting I stole.
  Chase: Huh?
  Bucky: Oh sausages.
• Persona 4:
  • Tohru Adachi does this a lot. No matter how many times Dojima barks at him, he never knows when to keep his mouth shut. Of course, that's a good thing for the Investigation Team (the protagonists), as it helps them gain a little more ground for the latest would-be victim.
  • Late in the game, after guessing out the identity of the killer, the Investigation Team goes to the hospital to interrogate him. While he initially tries to give off some basic and non-specific answers, the continued grilling from the team (and Detective Dojima), finally topping off with a blatant accusation, gets him to blurt out:
  Adachi: We already know Namatame was the one who put 'em all in!
  • The funniest part about this: As mentioned above, he spent most of the game doing this on purpose, Obfuscating Stupidity in order to manipulate the Investigation Team, only to be exposed when he does it for real.
  • The real kicker is that he subverts it earlier on. When Naoto finds Namatame's journal, she remarks on the names of all the victims being in it. Adachi agrees and says that it proves Nametame is the culprit... except that among the victims, Naoto explicitly mentions all of her fellow Persona users that were kidnapped and rescued. The three of them were never linked to the murders, so for their names to be present would be surprising or confusing to anyone... except the true culprit. But it isn't until the much more blatant slip-up above that Naoto fully understands this one.
• In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, the Prince, obsessed with finding and killing the Vizier, hears a woman scream, and heeds the advice of his dark half to keep going. Farah asks him if he heard it and he says that they should continue, because he is "sure she will be all right." Naturally, Farah realized he heard and is outraged, resulting in him going to save the women in the brothel.
• Used a few times in Professor Layton, usually in the I Never Said It Was Poison variety.
  • In Diabolical Box, Flora lets slip that the titular box has a goat on it, even though in its current state it looks nothing like a goat. This causes Layton to point her out as the villain in disguise.
  • In Last Specter, when confronting a child about the coin of the raven, they tell Layton they don't know anything about " a coin with a raven's tail on it". Layton says that he never said about a tail.
  • A variation of this is used in Azran Legacy, when Layton is confronting Detective Bloom, having accused him of being the mole and replaced the artefacts with fakes. Bloom responds casually that such an accusation is absurd, and that anyone could have replaced them with fakes. Layton then points out how odd his reaction is: The fact the artefacts were fake was only discovered recently and is something only a select few, such as Layton, know. Surely the lead detective on the case should have responded to such a sudden revelation and accusation with at least some surprise, rather than a casual denial.
• Occurs in Suikoden V after the battle between Barows' army, Godwin's army, and the Armes army. Salum Barows feigns ignorance about Armes being there even though he arranged for them to be there. Then, Euram Barows runs in and practically confesses that they were working with them. Then, he goes a bit further by suggesting using the Dawn Rune which up until then had been thought to be in the hands of the village of Lordlake.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: a hallucinatory version of Blitzo behaves perfectly in-character by using their mutual musical number to trick Moxxie into talking about his sex life.
  Blitzo (hallucination): ♫ Why, Moxxie, why, ♫
  ♫ Have you held your true feelings inside? ♫
  Moxxie: ♫ I am scared of rejection ♫
  Blitzo (hallucination): ♫ Why, Moxxie, why, ♫
  ♫ Do you have Millie put it in your butt? ♫
  Moxxie: ♫ It gives me an erectio- ♫ Hey!
• Refreshing Stories: In "My wife was cheating on me... AGAIN," when Hiroshi successfully got the information out of Ranko's boyfriend, he asked her to be honest about her cheating. This exchange occurs:
  Ranko: Ah... I'm so sorry! I've been seeing him for 2 months now... Almost every day...
  Hiroshi: Stop lying! He said you two have been together for a year! I told you not to lie!
  Ranko: What? That's not true. I mean, the first time we slept together was 6 months ago so... Oh wait...
• In RWBY, Blake and Weiss spend an entire episode arguing about the White Fang; when Weiss openly declares them to be nothing but a group of liars, thieves, and murderers, Blake snaps and shouts, "Well, maybe we were just tired of being pushed around!", inadvertently revealing to the rest of the group that she's both a Faunus and connected to the White Fang. Cue Oh, Crap! when she realizes that she let it slip and subsequently flees the room.

Web Comics

• In Between Failures, to get Nina off her badgering about starting a relationship with Thomas, Carol tries to change the subject to Nina's Harry Potter Fan Fic. However, Carol forgot that Nina had only sent it to Thomas - Nina quickly figures out that this means that the two already started going out. In a way, this works out, as Nina moves on from trying to get Carol to start dating Thomas to begging for info about their relationship.
• Played for laughs in a Bruno the Bandit flashback story, when King Orenthal of Rothland murders his wife due to his growing lust for Eunyce, Warrior Hottie.
  Unnamed court official: Your majesty, th-the queen! She—
  King Orenthal: —Was poisoned by three drops of skull-spider venom placed in her wine?? NOOOOO!!
  Unnamed court official: I was going to say she had a heart attack...
  King Orenthal: I'll find the scapeg— real killers if it's the last thing I do!!
• Sisko in D And DS 9 informs the DM that he (the DM) didn't realize he rolled a Critical Hit, unaware that the DM plans to railroad him into a Dark backstory.
• In General Protection Fault, after being shown the diary detailing her plans, Trudy launches into a rant about how Ki shouldn't have been able to find it, before stopping herself and asking if she had been "saying something incriminating." The damage has been done, though, and Nick no longer trusts her.
• Girl Genius: Both Zeetha and Oggie have a tendency to blurt out information at inappropriate times.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Mr. Verres once revealed to Tedd, with absolutely no prompting that Grace cannot get pregnant in her hybrid form. Seeing as Tedd and Grace had shown quite a bit of interest in each other already, this new information didn't exactly slow them down.
  • When Susan starts Pulling the Thread of Tom's web of lies, she eventually gets him to the point where he yells out "I am a FANTASTIC liar!"
  • Catalina is absolutely terrible at keeping her mouth shut. Her relationship with Rhoda is supposed to be a secret, but she continually spills more and more information to Susan until she gives up and covers her mouth. Only the fact that Susan has no clue who Rhoda is saves the secret from getting out.
• In Joe vs. Elan School, Joe — who at this point has No Social Skills after spending three years in the hellish Elan School — goes to a freshman mixer after going off to college. He's approached by a nice-looking girl who initiates small talk; without thinking Joe eventually spirals into a conversation about his time at Elan, including the forced fights in "the Ring." The girl is horrified by Joe, backs away carefully, and very pointedly rushes away from him whenever she sees him on campus afterward.
• In Kid Radd, Captain QB, after meeting with Crystal in a room they think is soundproof to discuss killing Radd, sees Sheena on the way out and asks if she heard any of it. Sheena responds that "like your friend said," the room is soundproof. Thankfully, since QB isn't too bright, he never suspects anything, enabling Sheena to leave without incident and help save Radd.
• Ménage à 3:
  • When Zii breaks one of Gary's most prized Transformers and learns that it was a highly rare Overlord, she tries to pin it on a cleaning woman she made up: "Tragic, I know. Poor Overlord... never knew what hit him!" Gary than asks how did she know it was an Overlord.
  • Later, Kiley's attempts to reassure Gary about his sexual performance soon have her telling herself to shut up. She does tend to turn into a Motor Mouth when under stress.
  • Gary inadvertently ends up spying on Peggy's date with her ex. Later, he asks if Peggy "won't be seeing her again". Peggy starts to confirm that she won't, then realizes:
    Peggy: How'd you know my ex was a she?
• Narbonic:
  • The second variation was seen when Helen was preparing to tell Dave that he's a latent mad genius.
    Helen: There's something I have to discuss with you... Artie made me promise.
    Dave: Uh-oh... is this about the sentient meme that took over the net in Blue Sector and keeps threatening to vaporize us via spy satellite?
    Helen: No, this isn't about the sentient meme! I didn't even know there was a sentient meme!
    Dave: Oh. Good.
    Helen: On second thought, let's make this about the sentient meme.
  • When Artie was first given his human form as part of an attempt to rescue Dr Narbon from Mell, Helen warned him not to tell Mell who he was, so claimed to be "Nick Cecida". He'd almost decided the deception was pointless and he should just come clean, when he reacted with incredulity to her claim to have a boyfriend, then blurted out "You're dating Caliban?" based on her description. Not for the last time, he was left wondering why being superintelligent didn't stop him being stupid.
• The Order of the Stick: In "ETA", Serini Toormuck refuses to give an estimate as to how long until Xykon gets through the current obstacle between him and the Gate, on the grounds that this would reveal more about the obstacle's nature than the heroes need to know. However, this fact is enough for Vaarsuvius to deduce the exact information the speaker is worried about, because there are only three scenarios in which said information would be useful: One, that there is no estimated time because Xykon is looking in the wrong place (already ruled out), two, that the obstacle is such that it's impossible for a serious amount of time to be wasted searching (Xykon would've found his goal and they'd all be dead by then if that was true), and three, that all parties would know how much time would be wasted searching despite the Order not knowing Xykon's current point or starting point because all the dungeons must be searched before the Gate can be found, and the Order knows how many dungeons there are.
• Sticky Dilly Buns: Ruby doesn't want to admit that she has a libido (and the stress of the denial is pretty clearly getting to her), but Dillon manages to draw her into discussion of the book of yaoi manga which she recently gave him. She soon lets slip enough to show that she has been reading it.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Yin, mostly talking to herself, speculates out loud on inconsistencies relating to Yokoka's name, Yokoka's mother, Betelgeuse, and Betel's Village. The trope is mostly subverted, as while Yfa picks up on bits of it ^note (such as Betel probably not being Yokoka's mother), Yokoka seems oblivious to what was said or any of its implications.

Web Original

• In Asrika Films' video "The Darn Knight 2" (one of their Gag Dubs of The Dark Knight), Udin blabs out that he thought Batman is trying to apprehend him for stealing Darmi's chickens, when Batman only wants to borrow some money, making Bat realize who stole the chickens.
• The Nostalgia Critic realizes that "Ma-Ti" isn't who he says he is because he says he feels Indians like him are given the shaft in Captain Planet and the Planeteers. The original Ma-Ti is Brazilian, not Indian.
• Mira of Trials & Trebuchets tends to become a Motor Mouth when she's nervous. This frequently leads to her making situations worse for herself by letting slip information that would have better been kept to herself.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In "BMO Noire", Beemo is playing at being a hard-boiled private investigator while trying to find Finn's missing sock. At one point he asks Lorraine the chicken about the missing sock, and Lorraine "blabs" that she knows that it was Finn's sock that was stolen before BMO mentioned it.
• The Eighties version of Alvin and the Chipmunks had Alvin do this twice in one episode. He has a basketball game coming up, but he won't be allowed to play if he doesn't turn in his book report. He falls asleep and never gets it done, so he plagiarizes one of Simon's and turns that in. Saying Too Much one occurs when the teacher is praising Alvin for his report and asks if he had an interest in the sport. Alvin confirms his love for basketball, but the book report was about a tennis player. She sends him to school court for judgment, but he's overjoyed to find out that Simon is the judge...until Saying Too Much two occurs when he lets it slip that he copied Simon's old book report. Now that Simon knows he's guilty, he has to step down and let them find a new judge.
• American Dad!: In the episode "Escape from Pearl Bailey", Steve's girlfriend Debbie is running for class president against Lisa Silver, but her chances of election are ruined when someone posts a slam page against her. Determining that Lisa and her posse posted the page, Steve sets up an elaborate revenge scheme against them (by having buffalo feces dropped on one, injecting another with fat, and giving Lisa herself an STD); when he admits it to Debbie, however, she tells them point-blank that he's no better than they are and dumps him on the spot. When he's mourning the loss of his relationship with his friends, his friends try to comfort him by stating that Debbie wasn't good enough for her. Then Barry quips that Debbie isn't "fit enough to wear people clothes," the same lame insult from the slam page, which makes Steve suspicious; in response, Snot confesses that they were the ones who posted the slam page in an effort to free up Steve's time, since he had been spending so much time helping Debbie's campaign that he had been neglecting them (of course, they never anticipated Steve would go so far).
• In the Batman Beyond episode “The Ghost of Hill High”, this is how Terry McGinnis almost immediately proves that Willie Watt is responsible for the strange occurrences at their high school.
• Beavis and Butt-Head had this happen a couple of times.
  • On one occasion, they get a Hot Librarian to write a school report for them, and end up getting detention from David Van Driessen when they let slip that the librarian wrote the paper.
  • Another instance had our heroes being tried in juvenile court for egging Tom Anderson's house. Butt-Head tries to discredit Anderson's testimony by claiming that his vision wasn't strong enough to see exactly who threw the rotten eggs, pointing out that it could as easily have been Stewart Stevenson. The prosecutor then asks how Butt-Head could have known the eggs were rotten, unless he was the one that threw them. Oops.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: In "Big Problem", Hiro is getting jealous because Liv Amara, a famous scientist, is more interested in Karmi's inventions than his. Honey Lemon tries to comfort him, but he cuts her off and goes on a little rant:
  Hiro: If you're gonna say "jealous", no. I'm... definitely not jealous! There's nothing to be jealous of! (Hiro walks away with a forced-looking smile)
  Honey Lemon: I was going to say "insecure", but now it's sounding like you ARE jealous.
• Central Park:
  • In Season 1 "Skater's Circle", at the beginning of the episode, Birdie nearly reveals some important upcoming details about the episode before stopping himself.
  • In Season 1 "Dog Spray Afternoon", Birdie admits he could tell Owen and Paige that Bitsy is behind ruining the park, but he's forbidden due to being the narrator. After he gets impatient when Paige still hasn't figured out Bitsy is behind laundering money to the mayor, he reveals it to Paige and tries to play it off as him as a busker overhearing business talk in the park.
• In one episode of The Emperor's New School, Kronk tried to scare Kuzco away from a field trip by pretending to be a ghost, telling him to leave so that he couldn't pass class and Yzma would become empress. Yzma tells him he's saying too much so he tries to fix it by telling Kuzco to pay no attention to the people behind the curtain, with Yzma asking "What curtain?"
• The Fairly OddParents!: In the TV movie Channel Chasers, Vicky comes to check on Timmy, who has been grounded from watching TV. Because he's now inside the world of television, Cosmo disguises himself as Timmy and, being himself, gets him in even deeper trouble.
  Vicky: What's going on in here?
  Cosmo as Timmy: Leave me alone! Can't you see I'm watching television in blatant disregard of my parents' direct orders! (beat) I mean... Don't come in, I'm naked! (throws his clothes at her)
  Vicky: HA! You are so dead! (snaps a photo of him and leaves, laughing evilly)
  Wanda: (poofs in) Nice.
  Cosmo: Well, she's gone, isn't she?
• Fanboy and Chum Chum: In the "Lord of the Rings" episode, Kyle wants to learn a magic ring trick from Fanboy which he refuses to tell him because of the solemn rule that good magicians never reveal their secrets. When dangling dangerously from them on the roof over a lava pit the boys never used, Kyle says he would rather plummet to his demise rather than learn the trick, which confuses Fanboy to the point he accidentally reveals the secret to him.
  Fanboy: That's crazy! You'd fall into lava just because you don't know how to rotate your wrist a quarter turn, then gently pull?! (gasps and covers his mouth) Oh, no!
• Futurama: In "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Bender uses a pair of See-Thru Specs to cheat at poker. He gives himself away when, after one of the other players wonder how he's going to tell his wife about losing so much money, Bender casually remarks, "If I were you, I'd be more worried about that tapeworm going to town on your intestine". Bender doesn't seem to realise what he just said, but the man does. It doesn't end well for Bender.
• Garfield's Babes and Bullets: This is how the killer gets caught. Professor O'Felix mentions that Professor O'Tabby probably fell asleep at the wheel, but Kitty reveals O'Tabby was an insomniac and needed sleeping pills to deal with his caffeine addiction. He only would have been asleep if the sleeping pills had been put into his coffee, and O'Felix was making it after Kitty resigned.
• The Looney Tunes cartoon "Plane Daffy" (1944) has a messenger pigeon in the lair of Nazi spy Hatta Mari, and he's already three sheets to the wind. He maintains his vow of silence with military secrets until Hatta Mari slips him a "Mickey." He then begins blabbering out secrets rapidly that Hitler hears via a two-way video transmission. Once he realizes he's said too much, the pigeon goes out to put himself out of his misery.
• The Loud House: In "Brawl in the Family", Lori and Leni are at each other's throats when they both get the same dress from the mall and cannot agree on how to handle it. When Lincoln tries to resolve the feud himself, he accidently ends up revealing a Dark Secret each sister thinks of the opposite; this causes the girls to reignite their feud, and the younger sisters chew him out for it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Just for Sidekicks", Spike and the Cutie Mark Crusaders greet the Mane Six at Ponyville's train station. Sweetie Belle accidentally reveals they had stowed away on the train from the Crystal Empire with them, prompting Spike, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo to motion for her to be quiet. It's obvious that Rarity doesn't buy her excuse, yet she goes with it anyway.
  • "Daring Doubt" has this happen a few times due to the presence of an amulet that compels its wearer to tell the truth. Dr. Caballeron has to admit he stole a diamond and that he was just taking artifacts for money. Rainbow Dash says she wants a deluxe spa visit after the adventure is over, which she says that doesn't leave the temple. One of Caballeron's henchponies reveals that he wants to be an opera singer. One example not due to the amulet is Daring Do saying that she will write about not stealing artifacts anymore in her next book, which leads to Dr. Caballeron realizing she is actually A. K. Yearling.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: The first episode opens with Randy writing an essay on what he did the preceding summer, as a way of telling the audience how he came to be the eponymous ninja. Of course Randy soon realizes he's blabbing about his Secret Identity on a paper his teacher will read, so when it comes time to turn it in, Randy rips it up with the excuse that it's a metaphor for the fleeting nature of summer.
• Rugrats: In "The Trial", the babies hold a trial to figure out who broke Tommy's clown lamp. When Tommy notices something wrong with Angelica's alibi, she admits that she did indeed break the lamp and boasts that there's nothing the babies can do about because they can't talk. However, Angelica forgets that Didi and Betty were in the kitchen and heard the whole thing.
  Angelica: That's right: I did it! And I'd break it again if I had the chance! But you know what? There's nothing you babies can do about it 'cause you can't talk! Hahaha! I did it! I did it! I DID IT!
  Didi: ANGELICA PICKLES!
  Angelica: Oops. I didn't do it! I didn't do it!
  Betty: We heard the whole thing, Angelica.
  Didi: So, you broke the lamp, young lady! Well, you can just sit in the kitchen with us until your father gets back! (carries Angelica to the kitchen)
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart The Fink":
    Cayman Islands Banker: I'm sorry, I can't divulge information about that customer's secret, illegal account. (hangs up phone) Oh, Crap! I shouldn't have said he was a customer. Oh, crap! I shouldn't have said it was a secret. Oh, crap! I certainly shouldn't have said it was illegal! Ahh, it's too hot today."
  • From the episode "Wedding for Disaster":
    Parson: I remember when she [Helen Lovejoy] used to be Helen Schartzbaum. Heck, I even remember when she was Harold Schartzbaum!
    Rev. Lovejoy: What?
    Parson: Perhaps I've said too much.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", the representative of Mixtus II slips up and says that "both of us" will have to relocate if the moon is destroyed. Freeman immediately catches his slip and asks what the total population is, which gets him to admit that he and his wife own and solely occupy the planet. She orders the moon imploded on the spot.
• Teen Titans Go!: In "Staring at the Future", Cyborg casually informs Nightwing (Robin's future self) that he is building a time machine in order to get him and Beast Boy back from their "Bad Future". Nightwing, who likes how things are, disagrees and calls his fellow ex-teammates in order to stop them.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Baxter Stockman, due to his tendency for Evil Gloating, constantly does this.
  • When he attacks the turtles with a Humongous Mecha, they try to defeat him by cutting off his main power pack. Stockman gloats that each limb of his mech has an individual power source. Don then deduces (and demonstrates) that this means the Arm Cannon they chopped off earlier still works.
  • He lies to Leatherhead that the Turtles were enemies of the Utroms. When the turtles discover Leatherhead and Stockman building a transmit to go to the Utrom home world they are attacked by Stockman. While Stockman is beating them up, he lets slip that he used to work for the Shredder, thus revealing his lies to Leatherhead.
    Leatherhead: The Shredder? You worked for the Shredder!? He was the Utroms' most hated enemy! You weren't intending to help me with the transmat! YOU USED ME!
• Yin Yang Yo!: In one episode, Yin and Yang capture one of Herman's soldier ants when they invade and steal an Artifact of Doom. He invokes Name, Rank, And Serial Number, except that his rank contains a lot of information about Herman's plan.

Real Life

• O. J. Simpson made this mistake while discussing his polygraph test with a reporter. When asked whether he had ever taken a polygraph test, Simpson replies with an emphatic "No." He then goes on to explain how he did go to the police station, did get hooked up to the machine, and watched the needles jump whenever his victims were mentioned.
  Reporter: It sounds like you took a polygraph.
  Simpson: YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT POLYGRAPHS!

Simpson then goes on to discuss in great detail how he took a polygraph, and why he doesn't believe it "counts" as a "real" polygraph.

• A classic riddle has you as a detective trying to determine which of three people pistol-whipped a man to death. They all know the gun used is in custody. Inevitably, the one who did it is the one who says, "You don't think I beat him, did you?"
  • That trope happened in reality when a man in Florida vanished shortly after winning millions in the state lottery. The prime suspect was a woman whom he hired to manage his funds but was apparently embezzling them. After the man's body was found, she was again questioned by the police. Afterwards, she called a press conference and tearfully proclaimed her innocence, declaring that she "had been falsely accused of shooting another human being." However, the police had not revealed to anyone exactly how the man was killed.
• The Japanese organization PRIDE FC used to sell DVDs of their fights months after they'd happened with English commentary dubbed in. The commentators would pretend to be watching the fights live. This came apart during an infamous incident in which the play-by-play man forgot what was going on and began telling his partner an amusing anecdote... about the fight they were calling. Written about here by Seanbaby (#4 in the list).
• A similar incident happened on American Idol. While commenting on one of the performances, Paula Abdul accidentally gave her critique of a song which hasn't been performed yet, revealing that the judges sometimes write their critiques beforehand, based on the contestants' dress rehearsals.
• A British farmer and his son were murdered early in the reign of Queen Victoria. His daughter and a servant girl, who were wounded but survived, recognized the masked attacker as another neighbor and farmer who owed a mortgage to the victims, James Blomfield Rush, because of his portly constitution and characteristic gait. At the trial Rush declined a court-appointed lawyer and opted to defend himself, calling five "witnesses" that claimed they saw the attacker the night of the murder but did not identify him as Rush. When one said that she passed "within a few feet" of the masked attacker, Rush absent-mindedly asked "Did you pass me quickly?" The jury returned a guilty verdict in ten minutes.
• The 1962 US case Nance v. United States involved a defendant accused of robbery, who chose to ask his own questions at the preliminary hearing. On cross-examination of the key witness, he asked "How do you know it was me when I had a handkerchief over my face?"
• In September 2015, Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy announced his intentions to become Speaker of the House. But in one interview, while explaining why he'd be qualified, he inadvertently explained that the numerous hearings on the 2012 attack at the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya were primarily a preemptive attack against Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, causing much outrage on both sides of the aisle: Democrats^*and to give credit where it's due, some Republicans, who already had suspicions in that direction, were outraged that the Republicans actually were using the deaths of four Americans as a cheap political stunt, and Republicans were outraged because nobody from their side was supposed to admit what they were doing. McCarthy dropped his bid in October.
• During his presidency, Donald Trump had an unfortunate habit of bragging about information that should be top secret (e.g. the "Super Duper Missile", which may very well be an existing prototype), much to the consternation of his aides and Generals.
• The original suspect in the 2011 murder of Topeka, Kansas resident Sheila Hachmeister was a mysterious internet boyfriend she had who had been pressuring her to send nudes and partake in BDSM, but could not be found, and likely used a fake profile to chat with her. However, Sheila's son, Jason, made himself the new suspect when he bizarrely insisted that he had never touched the rope used to kill his mother, even though 1) he found the body, told emergency services that Sheila had a rope around her neck, and the dispatcher told him to remove the rope; and 2), his DNA was found on the rope. When pressed about the evidence, he said he was "not a cruel murderer". Then it surfaced that the night after the murder, he had gone to a strip club, asked for a private dance, and asked the stripper how it felt to dance for "a cruel murderer".
• An amusing (for a given value of amusing) incident happened when Stauber/Rampton wrote their book about spin doctors, "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You!". They were pondering about a tacky title and came up with this one. About ten seconds later (spin doctors know more than the NSA) the PR guys from the Toxic Sludge Dept. stormed their office to convince them that toxic sludge is indeed good for you, alerting them there was even more of a stink going on than they already knew.
• When the Hodges family were murdered in Vinton, Virginia, in 1994, police suspected that the killer had set it up to look like a murder-suicide before setting the house on fire. When their neighbour Earl Bramblett was questioned, he aroused suspicion by asking "Are you going to charge me with murder?" before he was informed that foul play was involved (police had only told him they had died in a fire), showing he had prior knowledge.
• The 19th-century poisoner William Palmer first came under suspicion for poisoning John Cook immediately after Cook fell ill and Palmer's first response was to deny he had tampered with his drink.
• Mafioso Angelo Ruggiero was called "Quack Quack" for his impulsive habit of blurting out mob matters openly and endless gossip even when he's told to cut it out by other mobsters.

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