Basic Trope: Everyone knows a deep, dark secret about a character... Except the character themselves.
- Straight: Alice has a dark past - ten years ago, she unknowingly slaughtered a bunch of innocents, then later forgot due to Laser-Guided Amnesia. Bob and the rest of the Five-Man Band keep this from her.
- Exaggerated: Everyone in the Five-Man Band has some deep, dark secret - and each member is the only one who doesn't know their own secret.
- Downplayed: It is mentioned that Alice was involved in a Noodle Incident a number of years ago, but no details are given.
- Justified:
- Bob is afraid that if Alice found out about her past, she'd recreate the massacre.
- Alice Cannot Keep a Secret and telling her would very quickly have her upgrade from The Friend Nobody Likes to Hated by All because of both how far it spreads and everybody getting upset that her life literally depends on keeping quiet and she still won't shut up.
- Adrian is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who's been using his image in order to get away with some deeply heinous behavior, and was thoroughly convinced that he'd hidden his past behavior so well that no one except him would ever know...until they found out by accident. Now those people (many of whom are former friends and fans) have to keep their knowledge a secret from him, both until they can build a strong enough case against him with the increasing mountain of evidence they're finding to make sure he can't weasel his way out of things, or worse become vindictive and vengeful in retaliation. Adrian is blissfully unaware of his former friends' turn against him.
- Inverted:
- Alice keeps the knowledge of the massacre to herself for fear that the others won't trust her.
- Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge
- Subverted: It seems like Bob is keeping the knowledge of the past from Alice, but that turns out to be incorrect - she knows what she did as well.
- Double Subverted: ...To an extent. She knows she did something, but Bob didn't fill her in on all the details.
- Parodied: The "secret" is something incredibly mundane, like Alice's real hair color. However, everyone keeps it from her with the strictest confidence.
- Zig Zagged: Due to the magic of Laser-Guided Amnesia, what she knows and how much she knows all vary from time to time.
- Averted:
- Alice knows everything from the outset.
- There is no secret.
- Enforced: "We need some tension among this team, and I think there's no better way to have that than there to be some secret they're keeping from someone."
- Lampshaded: "Why is it that when I bring up the Great Troperia Massacre of '96, everyone looks uncomfortable and changes the subject?"
- Invoked: "Look, she caused that massacre, and if she ever learns she did it, we know she'll freak out again. She can't know."
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz ambushes Alice on one of her solo missions and uses the reveal to crush her morale.
- Defied: Bob decides to sit down and tell Alice the truth.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "You'd think that team would trust each other enough to where there wouldn't need to be secrets."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice finds out about the massacre, and proves Bob's fears right... She does recreate it, and he's the first victim.
- Alternatively, she finds out about the secret anyway... Then leaves the Five-Man Band because she feels she can't trust them anymore.
- Due to being locked out of the loop, Alice makes increasingly bad decisions based on what little information she does have, resulting in her "friend" refusing to communicate with her even further and leading to a Vicious Cycle.
- Reconstructed: She eventually learns about the secret. But she realizes that it was kept from her for good reason, so no harm done.
- Played For Laughs:
- Everyone knows about this secret but Alice - including people who're completely irrelevant.
- Alice's secret is so comical or minuscule that the fact everyone's keeping her Locked Out of the Loop is treated as a Running Gag.
- Played For Drama: The secret was kept from Alice because if she were to find out, she would be emotionally devastated. The third act of the movie starts with exactly that occurring.
Back to Locked Out of the Loop - just don't tell your buddy over there about that trope.
