This is the thread to report all violations of the site's spoiler policy in, as well as a place to coordinate cleanup of those articles.
- Decisions about spoilers on particular pages (e.g. whether a page should be Spoilers Off) have their own thread
.
Edited by Mrph1 on Oct 18th 2025 at 11:06:42 AM
Retroactive Idiot Ball is where actions in one work made sense when the work was released, but a later instalment establishes facts that makes said action questionable in hindsight.
So should the examples for this trope go in the work with the original action, or in the later instalment.
I've seen it used in the former, such as the examples below, but doesn't that just end up spoiling the later works?:
From Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:
- Retroactive Idiot Ball: This book explains that Harry's parents were killed because the spell they used to hide their location needed a Secret-Keeper and that the man they entrusted to the role happened to be The Mole for Voldemort. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reveals that there is technically nothing preventing you from being your own Secret-Keeper, which is why the good guys' headquarters's location remained a secret for so long. It really makes one wonders why the Potters didn't chose that option, since they knew they were hunted.
From The Empire Strikes Back:
- Retroactive Idiot Ball:
- Leia kisses Luke. Then Return of the Jedi has her reveal that she's always known they were siblings.
- Obi-Wan’s ghost tells Luke that he cannot interfere if Luke decides to confront Darth Vader. The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker show Force ghosts interfering with the physical world, so Obi-Wan could have done a lot to help out Luke during his fight with Vader.
From The Force Awakens:
- Retroactive Idiot Ball: Han and Leia choosing to pass on the Solo name rather than the Organa name never made a ton of sense considering that Alderaan was a matriarchal society and Organa is the name of a royal house and of one of the few remaining Alderaanian bloodlines, but it makes even less sense after Solo revealed that Solo wasn't even Han's original last name and was given to him as a placeholder by an Imperial officer.
From The Phantom Menace:
- Retroactive Idiot Ball: The reason that the Trade Federation is blockading Naboo is to get the Galactic Republic to lower/remove the taxes on trade routes. Attack of the Clones established that the Republic doesn't have an army. With the knowledge presented in the sequel, the Trade Federation would have just been better off blockading or invading Coruscant instead to protest the taxes.
From Return of the Jedi:
- Retroactive Idiot Ball:
- Luke is completely defenseless against Palpatine's Force lightning. The prequel trilogy established that lightsabers can block Force lightning, and Yoda was aware of Force lightning as one of Palpatine's abilities due to their duel. If Yoda had told Luke this vital information, he probably wouldn't have thrown his lightsaber on the floor, which left him defenseless against Palpatine's lightning, and if Yoda did tell Luke, then Luke is an idiot for tossing away the only defense he had against Palpatine's lightning.
- Revenge of the Sith established that Palpatine is perfectly aware of how far Anakin would go to protect or avenge his family. He knows what happened to the Tusken Raiders responsible for Shmi's death, and he himself manipulated Anakin into betraying the Jedi with the empty promise that the Dark Side could save Padmé's life. So what made Palpatine think it was a good idea to torture Luke to death in front of his father's eyes?
From Revenge of the Sith:
- Retroactive Idiot Ball: Anakin turning to the Dark Side in order to gain power over life and death makes a lot less sense after Star Wars: The Clone Wars revealed that he was directly involved in reversing Ahsoka's death not more than two years before, without the use of Sith powers. The Rise of Skywalker takes this even farther by introducing an ability to transfer some of your life to another person through the force, which seems to be common knowledge among force users and not take extensive training to pull off.
When discussing a particular work (either on its page or in a trope entry regarding it), it seems most prudent to avoid mentioning information from later works where possible.
So on the later work.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this; I was doing a slight re-write on WhatCouldHaveBeen.Young Justice and I was wondering if this bit I added counts as a Self-Fulfilling Spoiler?
- The finale episode "Endgame" had some dialogue that was cut for time - including Lex Luthor being called out for the Reach invasion, Wally and Artemis discussing an intended return to the hero life and balancing it with their normal lives (which was also cut because it would have made Wally's death too obvious), and just in general some additional wrap-up that wasn't necessary but would have helped tie up loose ends a little better.
There could feasibly be more than one thing behind that spoiler, but if you want to be sure, you could change it to "which was also cut because it would have made Wally's death too obvious".
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Recap pages are Spoilers Off and categorically cannot mention info from future installments...
If one episode foreshadows something that isn't confirmed til a later episode, it seems like there's no reasonable way to acknowledge that without either implicitly spoiling the thing or sounding like speculation...
Should it just be a rule that such things can't be troped on Recap pages?
(Thinking here specifically of "Simon Says" heavily foreshadowing that two certain characters are the same character, which wouldn't be confirmed til the next season, but it seems like there's a general rule to be had here...)
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Worshipped for Great Deeds has an example that is completely spoiled. Could we get someone more familiar with the work rewrite the example so minimal spoiler tags can be applied?
Undertale - Flowey has spoiler tags above the example line to conceal his relationship to a character who's on Undertale - Spoiler Characters and has their name in the problem spoiler tag. The issue is they're distinct enough from one another to have separate character sheets despite Flowey being the reincarnation of the other character. I really don't know what to do with this one, since the spoilered information combined with the other character's name is major enough to recontextualize the entire game.
Cave Johnson, we're done here.Ending a description with a spoiled-out "For a spoilery alternate version of this character, see other relevant character sheet" phrase is common enough that we're half-tempted to consider it an exception to the "no spoilers above the example line" rule.
We at least moved the note so that this is the very last thing in the description.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.So over on the character page for Moriarty the Patriot, one of the characters known by two names has had the second name added spoiled out (the first name he's known by clear). Which is a violation of Spoiler Policy.
I think the name got added spoilered because this character being the second identity is a Walking Spoiler. The character is trans, so it's not as if he's known by both names at the same time. I think given the content of the folder, it could probably be renamed to the second name.
Which name should be on the folder/what should be done with it?
Wasn't able to clear out all of the spoiler tags on Funny.Nico B. There were too many of them.
x3 Just because it's common doesn't mean it's right. Slap a huge spoiler warning on the top of the page and strip all the tags. Done.
Also, I don't think having a page literally named Spoiler Characters is very kosher with our policy. If we can't have character folders named "spoiler character" I seriously doubt we can do the same for pages.
Edited by Karxrida on Aug 5th 2021 at 12:36:49 PM
The work page description for Kingdom Come has spoilers above the line:
- The comic's incarnation of Superman appears in the Arrowverse's 6th Crisis Crossover, an adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths, portrayed by Brandon Routh (who played him in Superman Returns as The Other Darrin for Christopher Reeve), who also plays Ray Palmer in Legends of Tomorrow, with a bit of Canon Welding to move the events of Kingdom Come to the timeline of Returns and by proxy, the original Superman film series; specifically, the Joker gassing the Daily Planet and killing Lois Lane.
- The same crossover event also features a version of Batman, played by Kevin Conroy (who has been voicing the character regularly in various media since Batman: The Animated Series), wearing the exoskeleton used by the comic's incarnation. However, this Batman is not a straight adaptation but a Composite Character with elements of the incarnations from The Dark Knight Returns and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, both of which it heavily deconstructs by turning him into an Evil Counterpart who went after Superman with the same justification the Dark Knight Returns incarnation did, and with the same intent as and for the same xenophobic reasons the DCEU Batman did, sans the Heel Realization that stopped the DCEU Batman from going through with it.

Characters.Lugaru has spoiler tags dominating the page, making the unmarked spoilers note on top look like Blatant Lies.