Tomato Surprise / Radio

• This trope is almost perfect for audio dramas: you can hide obvious physical features of primary, present characters by simply not mentioning them. A minor example is at the beginning of Paradise Lost in Space where an exchange between two characters speculating about life on other planets ends abruptly when one of the characters off-handedly mentions their antennae - the entire scene occurs on another planet.
  • It's something of an It Was His Sled now, but the casual (but sudden) reference in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) to Zaphod having two heads was originally intended to work this way. Trillian was the same idea in reverse; she initially seems to be another alien with her "space name", until it turns out it's a nickname for Tricia McMillan.
• In 1976, Bob Vernon read one of his "Stranger than True" stories thus: "5 years ago today, working girl Lois Goldman of Orange, New Jersey was arrested for taking a large record player out of the WNBC studios. That large record player was BIGGIE WILSON!" (This referred to another WNBC DJ of the time, who was celebrating his fifth wedding anniversary.) Here's the air check with that story.
• Big Finish Doctor Who:
  • The audio play The Natural History of Fear. Though the main cast is all present, apparently with their memories repeatedly altered, the end of the play reveals that all the characters are of a species with eight limbs who get through a hundred generations in a year, and therefore, though once visited by the Doctor, not the Doctor and his companions.
  • The audio "The Holy Terror". The child abomination killing everyone while searching for its father has the same face as the scribe.
  • "The Rocket Men" is told in Anachronic Order, cutting between the events leading up to Ian ending up on a hijacked ship, and the actions he takes afterwards. As a result, the Cliffhanger is Ian throwing himself out of the airlock into a gas giant to save Barbara - before the story shifts back to a scene before that in which Ian knocks out a Rocket Man and steals his uniform - the fact that Ian was wearing a jetpack and helmet when he threw himself out of the airlock was not previously mentioned. We cut forward to the falling Ian turning his jetpack on and flying down to Barbara.
  • "The Wormery": An old woman tells of her encounter with the Sixth Doctor, to someone she calls 'Mr. Ashcroft', who remains silent until the very end, when she asks him to look after the recordings she made of the incident in question, and he tells her he will. That's when we find out he hasn't spoken before because he's the Seventh Doctor, probably the only one of the bunch capable of both such subterfuge and such prolonged silence.
• The Torchwood: The Lost Files radio play "The House of the Dead" begins with Ianto in a haunted pub, waiting for Jack and Gwen to arrive, so they can interrupt a seance which will bring an evil creature through the Rift. Thus, the audience assumes that this takes place before the TV serial Children of Earth, in which Ianto dies - but it doesn't. Ianto is a ghost himself, Gwen's voice in his headset is actually the creature, and Jack came to the pub alone both to stop the creature and to see Ianto one last time.
• Paul Harvey's radio feature The Rest of the Story was based on this trope. He would relate an anecdote leaving some element unnamed, then at the end say something along the lines of "...and that young boy's name was Neil Armstrong. And now you know...the rest of the story."
• One radio show's prank call ended in one of these twists. The prank caller acted like she was calling about the Marines, but at the end of the call, she mentioned a decorated ex-Marine who needed the recipient's support...AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA! (The call recipient was married to a Professional Wrestling fan, so she got the joke.) This prank call spawned a Fountain of Memes in which John Cena is used to derail a scenario.
• The Ricky Gervais Show: During "Monkey News", Karl's stories would frequently include a mysterious person who turns out to be a monkey. Frequently lampshaded by Ricky and Steve.
  Karl: So these people are in a restaurant, having a lovely meal...
  Ricky: Is one of them short and hairy, totally covered from top to bottom in a spacesuit, so they didn't know it was a monkey?
  Steve: It's not one of the customers? One of the waiters?

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