Misused: First Episode Spoiler

There seem to be a lot of Zero Context Examples on this page, or at least examples without sufficient context to determine whether they really fit the trope.

The Laconic description is: "Plot twist revealed very early in the story. It later becomes crucial to the series's overall plot."

A lot of the examples are just "The first episode of Series X contains Twist Y", no more info on how the twist is crucial to the plot, or how the plot would make it a spoiler for a new viewer of the pilot. (Worse, some don't even mention whether the twist is in the first episode!)

I started commenting them out as ZC Es, but the problem was pervasive enough that I thought I should bring it here for a consensus, especially since I don't know a lot of the shows in question. Is the trope being misused, or am I just misunderstanding it?

Needs a proper wick check to quantify the problem. "A lot" of ZCE could be anything from 5 to 50%.

ZCE isn't quite the same as misuse, though, and doesn't necessarily need a wick check. In this case, it might help, but looking over the page should be enough to get an idea of how the examples are being written.

I don't think the trope is being outright misused, but there are quite a few examples that don't make much sense out of context. There are some examples I'm having trouble understanding even assuming they take place in the first episode. For example:

• Tasakeru: Hanami is a mage with the power to grow anything, anywhere.

That doesn't seem to have anything to do with the trope. I can guess that it's a big shocking reveal in the first episode that Hanami suddenly starts making things grow, but it's just a guess. It definitely needs more context.

^ That example sounds like Powers in the First Episode.

This whole trope is chairs!

How is that tropeworthy? Every plot twist is a surprise, that's why they call it a plot twist.

I'm inclined to agree with Jamespolk on this one. It just doesn't seem like a tropeworthy concept.

I agree as well.

Well, not every surprise is a plot twist, but, well, let's take the hypothetical show Lily and James' Adventures as Hikers.

Example:

This is how the trope should be used, because A) It takes place in the beginning of the series, and B) It drives the plot forward.

I'd like to see a first episode that doesn't drive the plot forward, providing that it is a work with a continuous plot at all.

I just don't see how this twist taking place at the beginning of the series means anything, and like Jamespolk said, the first episode of a continuous series should have an impact on the story and a plot twist definitely would.

Also... how is any of this a spoiler?

That too.

I agree with jamespolk and WarJay.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 22nd 2019 at 12:41:56 PM

>>I'd like to see a first episode that doesn't drive the plot forward

Perhaps that's the more general trope First-Episode Spoiler wants to be. Non-Indicative First Episode mentions this practice in its first sentence.

I think the idea behind First-Episode Spoiler is that the work sets up a major expectation for the basic premise of the story, which is then subverted early on. "Bob is The Chosen One" shouldn't count- that's just a plot development. It needs to be something like a Tomato Surprise or a Genre Shift that radically changes your perception of the story.

The hypothetical Lily and James' Adventures as Hikers I think could be an example, if there's a strong establishment early on/in the marketing that it is a romance or lighthearted slice of life novel that takes place in the real world.

A real example that I think is a good one is School-Live!, which for most of the first episode insists that it is a lighthearted Slice of Life Bishojo Series about some girls having fun at their club until at the end of Ep 1 (or may be Ep 2?) it is revealed that the main character is delusional and the characters are dealing with a zombie apocalypse

Edited by naturalironist on Jan 23rd 2019 at 1:35:44 PM

That. For example, back when Dark Matter first aired, the big twist in the first episode was that the amnesiac heroes were actually amnesiac villains, and were hired to kill the people they were now trying to protect.

And people kept trying to put that under spoiler tags for the first couple weeks even though it made the pages basically unreadable.

EDIT: I almost feel like this should be an administrivia page. That's normally how I use it. "Guys, don't spoiler-tag a First-Episode Spoiler."

Edited by Discar on Jan 23rd 2019 at 9:35:15 AM

Correct example at random:

• The first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series: the fact that the Greek gods are still around isn't revealed for several chapters, and which god is Percy's father is a mystery for even longer, but even the vaguest familiarity with the series assures you know that much.

A reveal in volume one that's spoiled by becoming a main premise for the overall series plot: check. (To describe "Percy Jackson" is to say "The Greek gods are still around," thereby spoiling book 1.)

Bad example at random:

• Prolecto has the transformation of the college girls into Succubi. And Sonya turning Card-Carrying Villain.

And, so? Is this important to the series plot? Does the premise itself give away the twist? Can we watch the pilot without having had it spoiled? Does it even happen in the first episode? At very best this is a ZCE.

In the "Anime and Manga" section alone I counted at least 25 that I'd put into the latter category.

Regarding Percy Jackson...

"Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is on the most dangerous quest of his life. With the help of a satyr and a daughter of Athena, Percy must journey across the United States to catch a thief who has stolen the original weapon of mass destruction — Zeus’ master bolt. Along the way, he must face a host of mythological enemies determined to stop him. Most of all, he must come to terms with a father he has never known, and an Oracle that has warned him of betrayal by a friend."

I'm pretty sure this is from the inside cover. How is the Greek God thing meant to be a surprise twist if the cover itself spells it out? It's also called Percy Jackson and the Olympians...

Not seeing how any of this is a spoiler. Stories unfold. Premises are established. That's what stories do. There's Fake-Out Opening and Fake Action Prologue for instances of expectations established at the beginning of a work and then soon subverted.

Cover spoilers are kinda like Trailers Always Spoil. Sometimes they give major spoilers, not just premise spoilers (and sometimes they're just straight up wrong, but that's another issue).

In the case of premise, arguably, that's the point of First-Episode Spoiler. The sort of thing that the cover might take for granted, but is written to be a legitimate surprise early on if you went in without that information (especially since the author doesn't usually write the cover summary).

Edited by Jokubas on Jan 23rd 2019 at 8:17:54 AM

Yes. Another good example is the first volume of Twilight: you can tell it is meant to be a huge shocking reveal, midway through the book, that Edward turns out to be (gasp!) a vampire. Now, try to describe the Twilight series without saying "a girl falls in love with a vampire." The series itself spoils the twist of its own first episode.

At issue I think is not so much whether First-Episode Spoiler is something tropable, but whether half the examples on the page are actually illustrating the trope as it's described.

So I guess I can see the idea behind this trope being a first-episode reveal that, if known, spoils the plot of the first-episode itself while also heavily affecting the rest of the story. I get the idea, but is it necessarily a trope? I can see it being an audience reaction maybe (much like the related tropes It Was His Sled and All There Is To Know About The Crying Game) or maybe even Just For Fun, as a page where people could put these "spoilers" in spoil tags or something.

Like I said, I'm leaning away from it being a trope. Maybe an administrivia page without any examples, just something to link when people go crazy with spoiler-tagging the earliest twists.

Fair point that this is probably an audience reaction, even as I'm defining it. (I mean there could exist someone who reads A Study in Scarlet and is surprised by the revelation of what Sherlock Holmes's mysterious profession might turn out to be.)

I still think this is a valid trope similar to other spoiler tropes like Late-Arrival Spoiler.

Yes, good analogous tropes here are Spoiler Cover, Spoiler Title, Trailers Always Spoil, Late-Arrival Spoiler. Maybe it isn't an audience reaction after all.