History LockedOutOfTheLoop / LiveActionTV

* In the ''Series/{{Rosewood}}'' episode "Ballistics & [=BFFs=]", the police department tries to lock Rosewood out of the loop regarding their plan to expose and arrest Detective Hame, a murderous DirtyCop, because Rosewood is a civilian and prone to recklessness. Unfortunately for them, Rosewood independently figures out that Hame is a murderer, and everyone's efforts to keep Rosewood locked out of the loop while he's trying to warn them about Hame convince Rosewood that they're all being [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter Horrible Judges of Character]] and that he needs to rescue them. Rosewood lampshades how not letting him in nearly caused the entire thing to blow up in a tragic mess.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", Alan and Eileen Ransome are the only people onboard the ''Lady Anne'' who do not know that [[spoiler:she is headed towards the afterlife]].

** ''Buffy'' Season 5: Buffy only tells Giles that her little sister Dawn is the Key. She's then forced to tell this to the other Scoobies, who unfortunately tip off Dawn with their changed behavior to her.

* ''Series/{{Andor}}'': Windi, the woman Cassian started a relationship with during the brief period when he thought he'd escaped the Empire and found a way to live unmolested by them, didn't even know his real name let alone his real background and he kept a box of things related to his past hidden from her.

** In another episode, the team are interrogated over an assignment leading to the death of an agent at the hands of mercenaries hired by the Chinese to abduct her. Seeing the team is about to get hammered for it, Kilbride reveals to the interrogator that the mercenaries were ''extracting'' the woman as she had always been a deep-cover Chinese spy. He personally killed her in self-defense in the fight. The interrogator is astounded Kilbride wants to keep the rest of the team in the dark as he replies that the team liked the woman and he didn't want her daughter to know her mother was a traitor. To Klibrdie, the team being down and guilty for a few days before moving to a new assignment is better than shattering their trust they were as fooled as Kilbride at thinking the woman was a loyal agent and friend.

* In the ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'' episode "Identity", one of a pair of twins is unaware that she was born a boy, then given a sex-change operation after a botched circumcision damaged her penis. Her parents, physicians, and psychiatrist had kept this a secret ever since, in accordance with the latter's agenda of "proving" that gender identity is environmental, not innate.
** At the end of "Loss", it's reported that Alex Cabot is murdered, but Benson and Stabler learn that she is actually still alive and will be going into witness protection, a fact which they're strictly ordered to keep to themselves lest they put Alex's life at risk. This becomes a bit of a problem in the following season, when a cartel hitman's case is linked to Cabot's supposed murder; when the earlier case falls apart in court, Casey Novak immediately charges him with the murder of ADA Alexandra Cabot and orders Benson and Stabler to arrest her, and they're compelled to go along because there's no way they can refuse without revealing the truth in front of the suspect. This earns Cragen a visit from DEA agent Jack Hammond, who bursts into Cragen's office and lectures him on what a stupid move this is and how, if he's ordered to testify on Cabot's "murder", he won't perjure himself, apparently completely unaware that Cragen doesn't know the truth ([[FridgeLogic even though he's the one who ordered the detectives to keep the secret]]); it's only when he sees Cragen's reaction that Hammond realizes Cragen himself was in the dark. Cragen is naturally livid at Benson and Stabler not only for keeping Cabot's secret but how they just signed the arrest report for a murder they knew never even happened (to which they protest that Casey blindsided them in front of the suspect and they had no choice but to go along with it or they'd be risking Alex's life by telling the suspect she wasn't dead). This ends up blowing the lid off the secret, since Casey is forced to downgrade the charge to attempted murder with Cabot as the complainant, and she provides critical testimony in the subsequent trial. Understandably, neither Cragen nor Casey is particularly happy with Benson and Stabler over this.

* ''Series/KenanAndKel'': In the episode "Happy Birthday to Marc", Marc gets convinced by Sharla that Kenan is having ears reduced, which he proceeds to tell ''everyone'' about. Nobody tells Kenan about this because they think it might make him self-conscious, and when he demands answers from Kel (who is also convinced), the latter convinces him that Marc didn't send him an invitation because he doesn't like him. Kenan plans to get revenge on Marc for this, only to realize the truth for himself when he arrives at the party.

** For the first half of the show, the entire crew is LockedOutOfTheLoop of what's going on in the Alpha Quadrant because they're cut off from communication with Starfleet due to being so far away. When they finally make contact midway through the fourth season, the entire Alpha Quadrant is two years into an all-out interstellar war and most of the Maquis have been wiped out in the process.

* At the start of Season 3 of ''{{Series/House}}'', House is depressed because he thinks he was wrong about a patient; by two-thirds of the way through the episode, four out of the other five main characters know he was right, but don't tell him in an attempt to teach him humility. Eventually they have to tell him as it's affecting his work to the point that he's ready to simply give up the current case.

* On ''Series/NCISLosAngeles'', the team is tracking the massacre of ATF agents and find a link to retired colonel Collins who was an old friend of boss Kilbride's. The team figure Kilbride is trying to cover up Collins' involvement so go on their own investigation. They show up at the site where the deal is going down only to find ATF and NCIS agents already there as Kilbride personally drags a handcuffed Collins out. He relates he knew the team wasn't trusting him so had to do his own investigation. To his credit, Sam admits he was wrong on his mistrust of Kilbride to accept him as a boss.

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

** ''Buffy'' season 2: Jenny Calendar (aka Janna Kalderash) was ''only'' told to keep Buffy and Angel apart. She was not informed that Angel's happiness with Buffy would be his CurseEscapeClause until after the damage was done.
** ''Buffy'' season 3: In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E7Revelations Revelations]]", the Scooby gang neglects to include Faith in the intervention when they find out about Buffy hiding Angel. This winds up making her less trustful of them, and allows Gwendolyn Post to manipulate her into fighting Buffy.
** ''Buffy'' season 4: "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E12ANewMan A New Man]]" reveals that the Scoobies actually neglected to inform Giles of Riley and the Initiative.
** ''Buffy'' season 5: Buffy only tells Giles that her little sister Dawn is the Key. She's then forced to tell this to the other Scoobies, who unfortunately tip off Dawn with their changed behavior to her.
** ''Buffy'' season 6: In the final three episodes, Buffy elects not to let Dawn know that Spike [[AttemptedRape tried to rape her]] previously. She finds out when Xander lets it slip while they're fleeing from Dark Willow, and is ''not'' happy.
** ''Buffy'' season 7/''Angel'' season 4: The Scoobies elected not to warn Faith of the danger that the First Evil and its minions posed to the Slayer line because they thought that she would be safe from them in prison. Faith ended up finding out the hard way when one of the First's minions infiltrated the prison she was kept in and attacked her.
** ''Angel'' season 4: In "[[Recap/AngelS04E01DeepDown Deep Down]]", Gunn and Fred are trying to find Angel alongside Connor, unaware that Connor himself is responsible for Angel's disappearance, having attacked him, sealed him in a metal coffin, and sunk him to the bottom of the ocean. They eventually do find out from Wesley, who had been searching for Angel this whole time, and give him a WhatTheHellHero over the fact that he didn't tell them or warn them of Connor's actions; Wesley justifies himself by stating Connor [[NobleBigot wouldn't hurt humans]], and he felt they were safer not knowing.

** Subverted in season 5. When Ralph meets a time traveler from the future, he is annoyed that no one ever told him about time travel, alternate worlds, and all the implications of the multiverse. Everyone else points out that they ''did'' tell him, and he has met multiple people from other worlds, including one man on the team who interacts with alternate universe versions of himself on a regular basis.

** In season 7, Tyrion presses Daenerys to launch an attack on Casterly Rock as it's home to the Lannister gold mines and by seizing them, they can deal a blow to Cersei. However, Tyrion is unaware of a key fact Tywin secretly revealed to Cersei two seasons earlier: The mines ran dry years ago and the Lannisters having been living off their reputation of power. Thus, Cersei has no problem letting the Rock be taken as it doesn't mean anything anymore.

* At the start of season 3 of ''{{Series/House}}'', House is depressed because he thinks he was wrong about a patient; by two-thirds of the way through the episode, four out of the other five main characters know he was right, but don't tell him in an attempt to teach him humility. Eventually they have to tell him as it's affecting his work to the point that he's ready to simply give up the current case.

* The ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'' episode "No Heads and a Duffel Bag", show's that Earl's parents were completely kept out of the loop of the events centered around season 3. In this case, [[PrisonEpisode Earl's months in prison,]] intervention and [[AdventuresInComaLand current coma.]]

* Played for laughs in the penultimate episode of season three of ''Series/StrangerThings''. When the entire group finally gets together, they have a talk where it becomes clear each part of the group has been totally unaware of events of the others: [[spoiler: the main Party are thrown to discover there's a secret Russian base under the mall; The Scoops Troop have no idea the Mind-Flayer has returned; Robin is thrown to discover El and her secret powers; and Erica still can't believe her brother has been part of this whole thing. Then Hopper, Joyce and Murray show up to detail how they know ''all'' of this already.]]
* This happens to Sam in ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' quite a few times. When he dies at the end of season 2, after Dean sells his soul to bring him back to life, Dean has Bobby pretend Sam was badly hurt but recovered, as Dean doesn't want Sam to know about his deal. Mid-way through Season 6, after Sam has spent the first half of the season existing in a soulless state, Dean makes a deal with Death to restore Sam's soul and they claim to him that he only just got out of Hell so that he doesn't have to remember what he did while soulless. Again in Season 9, Dean hides the fact that an angel is possessing Sam from him (the angel is in a weakened state and was basically 'hiding' in Sam's subconscious to heal them both from recent injuries).

* ''Series/TheWire'' sees this happen with the docks plot in season 2. When the MCU makes their arrests, a lack of communication with the Homicide Unit means they don't learn about Ziggy's murder of the Greek's fence Glekas until they read about it in the newspaper two days after it happens. Cedric Daniels rightfully chews out Jay Landsman for failing to get this information to them:

** In ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'', after Sento finds out and confirms that [[spoiler:his father figure, Soichi Isurugi,]] is the villainous Blood Stalk, Sento tells Ryuga and Sawa about it, but they all agree to not tell Misora so [[spoiler:she won't get stressed over the knowledge that his father is evil all along]]. Misora finds out by overhearing a conversation about it two episodes later.

* In ''Series/KamenRiderDenO'', Ryotaro is locked out from learning that [[spoiler:the entire conflict was started by the birth of his [[RippleEffectProofMemory Singularity Point]] niece]], primarily because those involved ([[spoiler:his sister and her "lost" fiancé]]) actually changed history in order to protect the important thing in question from the Imagin. He only learns the truth by going back in time to before the alteration and [[spoiler:posing as his past self to get the information from his sister.]]

** In the third season, after Barry accidentally travels to the future and sees [[spoiler: Iris being killed by the season's BigBad]], he eventually tells Iris and they decide to tell the others but keep it a secret from Joe, [[spoiler: fearing that he would not react well to hearing that his daughter may be dying soon]].

** At the end of "Loss", it's reported that Alex Cabot is murdered, but Benson and Stabler learn that she is actually still alive and will be going into witness protection, a fact which they're strictly ordered to keep to themselves lest they put Alex's life at risk. This becomes a bit of a problem in the following season, when a cartel hitman's case is linked to Cabot's supposed murder; when the earlier case falls apart in court, Casey Novak immediately charges him with the murder of ADA Alexandra Cabot and orders Benson and Stabler to arrest her, and they're compelled to go along because there's no way they can refuse without revealing the truth in front of the suspect. This earns Cragen a visit from DEA agent Jack Hammond, who bursts into Cragen's office and lectures him on what a stupid move this is and how, if he's ordered to testify on Cabot's "murder", he won't perjure himself, apparently completely unaware that Cragen doesn't know the truth ([[FridgeLogic even though he's the one who ordered the detectives to keep the secret]]); it's only when he sees Cragen's reaction that Hammond realizes Cragen himself was in the dark. Cragen is naturally livid at Benson and Stabler not only for keeping Cabot's secret but how they just signed the arrest report for a murder they knew never even happened (to which they protest that Casey put them on the spot in front of the suspect and they couldn't very well tell the truth just then). This ends up blowing the lid off the secret, since Casey is forced to downgrade the charge to attempted murder with Cabot as the complainant, and she provides critical testimony in the subsequent trial. Understandably, neither Cragen nor Casey is particularly happy with Benson and Stabler over this.

** At the end of "Loss", it's reported that Alex Cabot is murdered, but Benson and Stabler learn that she is actually still alive and will be going into witness protection, a fact which they're strictly ordered to keep to themselves lest they put Alex's life at risk. This becomes a bit of a problem in the following season, when a cartel hitman's case is linked to Cabot's supposed murder; when the earlier case falls apart in court, Casey Novak immediately charges him with the murder of ADA Alexandra Cabot and orders Benson and Stabler to arrest her, and they're compelled to go along because there's no way they can refuse without revealing the truth in front of the suspect. This earns Cragen a visit from DEA agent Jack Hammond, who bursts into Cragen's office and lectures him on what a stupid move this is and how, if he's ordered to testify on Cabot's "murder", he won't perjure himself, apparently completely unaware that Cragen doesn't know the truth ([[FridgeLogic even though he's the one who ordered the detectives to keep the secret]]); it's only when he sees Cragen's reaction that Hammond realizes Cragen himself was in the dark. Cragen is naturally livid at Benson and Stabler not only for keeping Cabot's secret but how they just signed the arrest report for a murder they knew never even happened. This ends up blowing the lid off the secret, since Casey is forced to downgrade the charge to attempted murder with Cabot as the complainant, and she provides critical testimony in the subsequent trial. Understandably, neither Cragen nor Casey is particularly happy with Benson and Stabler over this.