Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Jisu: Removed "In The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya, Haruhi has godlike powers." I honestly don't know why people keep calling it a spoiler when it's revealed very early on. Ryouko being a yandere alien Knife Nut is a spoiler. Kimidori Emiri being more than a one-off character is a spoiler, although that was kind of ruined by the character albums. Second-season and future novel events are spoilers. Haruhi being a Reality Warper, on the other hand, is integral to the show's premise.

Pavlov: Maybe it's considered a spoiler because it isn't revealed until 1/3rd of the way through the book, the American DVD, or the original airing order, which would have been a full five weeks. What's your definition of a spoiler, 3rd season?

Jisu: Above, in the paragraph you didn't read too carefully, is my definition of a spoiler for Haruhi: anything chronologically after the episode "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu IV", save for airing-order episodes 00 and 04, due to their appearance even before the reveal of the thing you call a spoiler.

Your Obedient Serpent had the good fortune to see Predator without knowing anything at all about the movie. From the title and the few ads I'd seen, I thought it was just another Arnold-Military-Shoot-Em-Up, like Commando. Through a marvelous bit of synchronicity, I missed the opening with the Predator ship approaching Earth... and thus was every bit as in the dark as the protagonists.

It's a much better movie that way — which suggests that the core premise of the film falls close to this trope (but not close enough to put this example in the main entry).

Morgan Wick:

If you find a film where characters watch The Sixth Sense without alluding to the fact that Bruce Willis was dead all along, feel free to delete this example.
- Um, I think there's at least one other thing people know about The Sixth Sense. I first learned about the Willis twist on VH 1's "I Love the 90s".
  - I will forever be grateful to the Self-Made Critic for an a deliberately misleading review which meant that I heard people saying Sixth Sense had a big twist, read the SMC's review and watched it convinced I already knew the twist, then got blindsided by the twist!
  - And yet, despite watching The Village totally unspoiled, I figured it out within minutes. How? Believe it or not, because there wasn't enough sexism.

I envy the guy who saw The Crying Game in the theater . . . that would've been funny . . . Guesss Who

Kilyle: I hope I can avoid this trope with the story I want to write. I have this idea that people get a general feel for a character early on and easily overlook or misread evidence that contradicts this, so there's a vast difference between "a nice guy Hero who turns out to have a dark secret in his past" and "a Rapist who now seems to be passing himself off as a nice guy." And I think that distinction will absolutely make or break a book in which the plot twist is "the Heroine discovers that the Hero she's deeply in love with is the man who raped her 14 years ago." People who go into the story with the revelation in their heads are, I think, going to believe the guy is rotten to the core no matter how nice he seems, which will completely overturn my attempt to end the book with forgiveness and the understanding that, given motivation and time, people can change and move on.

Sean Tucker: I'm going to nuke the Gratituous Japanese in the NGE entry and replace it with English. Does anyone object to this?

Elihu: I may be wrong about some of these, but I feel like challenging examples never hurt anybody.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has been used by serious universities to teach about meme theory, simply for its utterly bizarre last few hours of play.

(All there is? This is a pretty big Mind Screw. There is so much to this game that even knowing about The Twist before hand can't possibly ruin it for you, as the twist is tailored to be a personal message to the gamer. I don't know... I just feel that this example is just stretching the definition.)

Similarly, you know that Metal Gear Solid 3 is a prequel telling you of Big Boss's Start of Darkness. Armed with this knowledge, it makes the heartbreaking ending no less tragic.

(I think this just confessed that the twist does work. What?)

You all have heard of the infamous "Nice Boat" ending even before watching Episode 1 of School Days, right? That makes the journey to that bloodbath all the less frightening (and for this troper, heartbreaking), right? Yeah Right.

(Confessed again. Am I just reading this wrong?)

Wild Things would have easily been lost in the torrent of erotic thrillers riding the coattails of Basic Instinct, except for the fact that the plot moves halfway through to "excuse for sex" convolution, but after the last graphic sex scene, takes a turn for the batshit insane.

(Clearly spoilers do not even make sense. Much less spoil the film if there is still plenty of Fanservice that makes it worthwhile)

Suzumiya Haruhi. Would anyone be drawn to it without knowing the twist that makes it interesting? A lot of people don't even consider it a spoiler.

(It's spoilerhood is debatable, but it's content is not. Lot of people hear about it because people describe the SOS Brigade and say it's a funny anime)

Subversion: this editor knew the twist to Fight Club, but that didn't make it any less awesome or mind screwy.

(There are no subversions to this trope. Those are just... normal twists.)

Even if the director is now known for twist endings, The Sixth Sense is still considered a must see film for it.

(Knowing the twist ruins the film? I feel many others would debate that. And there is much more to the film as an art piece, as well.)

As befits a complete Deconstruction of the superhero comics genre, Watchmen ends with the heroes not stopping the villain's plan, because he had already initiated the final phase when he was sure they were still too far away to interrupt it.

(Besides being spoilerific, this entry does not fit)

Star Wars has been completely ruined for anyone born after 1980.

(What are you, kidding me? Ruined? There is so much more to the films than just the minor spoilers that knowing them doesn't diminish its quality a single bit. I'm not being a Justifying Fanboy here, I'm merely stating that this is a pretty bad oversimplification.)

I could be wrong on all of these accounts, and I could be reading the trope all wrong, but I'm pretty sure it that trope implies that the spoiler is kind of the point of the movie or that knowing the spoiler lowers the entertainment of the movie some how or something of the sort. I don't know. Again, maybe I'm wrong.

Shockz: You are indeed misreading this trope somewhat. It's completely unrelated to whether or not knowing the spoiler affects the entertainment value. This trope is for when the spoiler is one of the most—if not the most—famous aspects of the show, to the point where there's a decent chance that a new viewer will decide to watch the show because of the spoiler. (e.g. deciding to watch Haruhi Suzumiya because you're intrigued about the God-is-a-teenaged-girl premise, like I did.) That said, a lot of your removals are still justified as not really fitting the trope.

Jay Leno? It was David Spade who said "The secret of The Crying Game? It's overrated. Shhhh... don't tell anyone," on his 'Hollywood Minute' segment on SNL. So if Jay Leno also said it, either he was stealing from David Spade, David Spade was stealing from him, or TV Comedy Minds Think Alike.

Falcon Pain: I don't know if this is deserving of a rewrite or a Made Of Win.

The fact that everybody these days knows Haruhi is female spoils the twist at the end of the first episode...

Let's just say, there's a certain other anime that comes to mind when I see the Blue Link without reading the Pot Hole. That would have been an interesting first episode twist.

32_Footsteps: I removed the following:

Although it's not an ending spoiler exactly: Bridget of the Guilty Gear game series is a boy.

Because A) it's not what the series is best-known for B) it wasn't in the ending (well, except for Johnny in one ending) C) it's explicitly mentioned in the instruction manual. Call me old-fashioned, but I think anything mentioned in the instruction manual does not count for this trope.

Thinks Too Much: Removed the Wicked Witch of the West example because, one, it's not really a twist per se - she dies, it's not like we were expecting her to live, now if Dorothy died that would be a twist - and because it's wrong. In the movie she dies at the end, but in the book she dies halfway through, and the entry was under Literature. Get it right.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: The difference between this and It Was His Sled: With It Was His Sled, everyone knows the intended twist or spoiler. With All There Is To Know About The Crying Game, not only does everyone know it, but most people don't know anything else. Thus, for works that are known of, this is a Sub-Trope of It Was His Sled — there is gonna be overlap no matter what. If we keep this, then we just need to remove examples where the general public is aware of something else of importance....

Madrugada: Bad Examples mean that the examples need to be cleaned up, not that the page needs to be cut. It Was His Sled and this one have some overlap, because for some well-known works, the twist is really all they're remembered for, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing. or that all examples of one are also examples of the other.

Wascally Wabbt: There's no way to know if a work is only known for its twist or not, only vague generalisations from the tropers opinions. If the articles are indistinct enough for this kind of confusion they should absolutely be merged.

Archived Discussion Main / AllThereIsToKnowAboutTheCryingGame