History Main / DarkSecret

* ''Manga/DontMeddleWithMyDaughter''

* The dark secret held by Hime in ''Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure'' is the main drive of the entire series: [[spoiler:she opened the [[SealedEvilInACan Axia Box]], releasing the Phantom Empire]].
* In ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'', this is the source for many a murder case in this franchise, and [[YouKilledMyFather the culprit(s) would likely be linked to the one(s) being harmed/killed in said secret in some way, which serves as a/the motive for their murders]], with few exceptions.

* Soubi in ''{{Manga/Loveless}}'' never tells Ritsuka anything about his past, especially the parts of it that involve Seimei. There's a reason for that. A twelve year old kid doesn't need to know that his beloved older brother was a [[spoiler:sociopath who physically and emotionally abused his best friend/mentor/partner.]]

* Very early into ''Manga/ThePromisedNeverland'', you find that [[spoiler: Isabella, the caretaker,]] is harboring one of these. More specifically, [[spoiler: the orphanage where she raises the children is actually a farm where they're being prepared for consumption by demons.]]

* How Tsume got his scar in ''Anime/WolfsRain''. When his old pack was [[spoiler:attacked by humans, he ran away, leaving his friends to die because he was afraid. He was exiled]], and in the process he got his scar.

* In ''ComicBook/DeathOfTheFamily'', [[spoiler: Joker claims that Batman has a secret that he has hidden from the entire Batfamily. It remains to be seen if Batman does have one or if it's just a bluff]].
* In ''ComicBook/ElseworldsFinestSupergirlAndBatgirl'', ComicBook/LexLuthor pretends he is a good guy and a philanthropist, backing the Justice Society and treating ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} like a daughter. However, ComicBook/{{Batgirl}} knew that he [[spoiler:murdered baby Kal-El several years before the beginning of the story and got many people murdered, including her own parents]]. And she saw that everyone found out about it.
* In the second story-arc of ''ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW'' Nightmare Moon II claims that [[spoiler:Rarity]] has one, which is part of why she [[spoiler:choose her to be her new vessel]].
* In ''ComicBook/{{Justice League Of America 2013}}'', Amanda Waller knows who Stargirl's biological father is and will have him answer for his actions if Stargirl does not comply.
* The small-town America of ''ComicBook/{{Revival}}'' seems quiet because most of the citizens are silently carrying one of these. At least a dozen citizens are in a love triangle of one kind or another. Thang Vang stole an item of enormous emotional importance from her employer. The sheriff [[spoiler:crashed his bike while drunk, killing his wife]]. The Check brothers [[spoiler:murdered their transgender father]]. These are all from before the Revival sets off the action of the series...
* Promotion within the Mueller organization of ''ComicBook/CleanRoom'' requires confessing these. They are recorded with one's personnel file in a red envelope. In the event of DemonicPossession the secret will be triggered to cause massive psychological trauma that ejects the demon.
* ''ComicBook/TheRedTen'' has the Alliance which is an expy of the ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica''. Each member of the Alliance has a dark secret and it all falls apart with the death of Red the World's Greatest Detective and here it is:
** [[spoiler: While interrogating her archfoe Oxymoron, he asks Red some ArmorPiercingQuestion such as "Where does Master Mage get all the blood for his blood magic". This leads her to investigate and discover the secrets of her comrades and she plans on taking them down. She gets shot in the head for her trouble and Oxymoron is framed as the killer]]
** [[spoiler: Justice America the Ultimate Human actually killed Red. He's the brother of an expy of Lex Luthor and was uplifted by alien technology to be little more than a corporate enforcer. Besides Red, he's also murdered his reporter girlfriend and other girls before he was introduced to the world. He gets comeuppance when he's exposed to an engineered virus that removes his invulnerability and he's beaten to death]]
** [[spoiler: Mold is debuted as a friendly alien shapeshifter. He's actually a pedophile in prison, who's also a brilliant inventor. The corporation behind the Alliance free him for one of his invention and he's given the identity of Mold. Was puppeted to be a weapon by the hero killer and was killed by Justice America in self-defense]]
** [[spoiler: Mazu had her aquatic minions drown a love rival in a bathtub. The rival's lover gets the blame for the crime despite being innocent. Mazu gets lured to a dry room and disembowelled by Mold in the form of that rival]]
** [[spoiler: Master Mage fuels magic by murdering prostitutes. He's killed when his magic staff is tampered to open a portal to Hell]]
** [[spoiler: Bellona is the queen of the Amazons and had been trying for centuries to have a daughter. She lures sailors to their island and kills them after sex, if she finds out that she's having a boy she has it killed. Dies in a fight with Justice America when her jaw is blasted through]]
** [[spoiler: Magnitude is a brilliant scientist and SerialKiller. He keeps going out with women to shrink them down and crush them into microscope slides. When Bellona finds out, she fights him and he swallows her alive, where she guts him from within]]
** [[spoiler: Androika killed her inventors when she's first brought online, she self-destructs when her killer uploads virus in her]]
** [[spoiler: Orion is not supposed to inherit the power belt from the alien cop, it was his identical twin brother. The brother used the belt to save Orion from thugs, later a drunk Orion snatched the belt from his brother and accidentally pushes him off a cliff. In a panic from all the people dying, he flees to outer space where he's caught by space police who punish him by taking his belt while he's still in Earth's gravitational field and he burns on reentry.]]
** [[spoiler: Throttle was a junkie who gained his speed powers when he got doused by chemicals during his attempt to rob a chemical plant. He's still on drugs and accidentally ran into a car while high, killing the family. He's murdered when his drugs have been poisoned.]]
** [[spoiler: Oxymoron is actually in love with his nemesis, Red and is the one to set her on the trail of her comrades. He's been on the prison island the whole time and he helped design the plans to take down the Alliance. He gets his neck snapped as he's too psycho to leave alive and to fulfill a promise]]
** [[spoiler: Red's ex-sidekick Crimson Kid is the killer. He received a post-death message from Red telling him about her investigation. She wants him to take the Alliance down but leave them alive. But he's opted to kill them instead and he's also executed Oxymoron as he's promised his replacement who got murdered by Oxymoron on her first outing]]
* The ''Tiger Division'' miniseries from Creator/MarvelComics, has team founder Taegugki having a major secret. He's much older than he looks as he was born during the Korean War. Unfortunately during the reconstruction period, he and a friend became thieves at an early age before eventually forming a fairly violent gang of young thugs. Their crime spree lasted for over a decade until Taegugki's {{Magitek}} mishap that gave him his powers.
* ''ComicBook/YoungJustice2019'':
** Somewhere between the end of the New 52 Teen Titans run and the first issue, [[Characters/WonderGirlCassieSandsmark Cassie Sandsmark]] is going through something that makes her not want to use her powers. Before she joins the battle, she's obviously crying because of it. [[spoiler:Issue 2 reveals that [[TheChooserOfTheOne Zeus tried to recruit her to be a guardian of the realm]], [[RefusalOfTheCall she refused because she was tired of people telling her what she should be]] and TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive.]]
** Issue 4 seems to suggest that [[spoiler:Dark Opal has been running Gemworld in secret]].
* ''ComicBook/OriginalSin'' is an entire event centered around the uncovering of numerous dark secrets in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse and dealing with the consequences thereof. We learn that [[spoiler:the Hulk's creation could have been prevented if Bruce Banner had simply bothered to read the emails Tony Stark sent after discovering Banner's method of radiation control meant the resultant explosion would've been far bigger than it was, Thor and Loki have a sister, Angela, who was presumed dead after the forces of Heavn, the lost tenth realm, took her, and that another person, Cindy Moon, was bitten by the same radioactive spider that created Spider-Man and was placed into a secret bunker by old Spider-Man foe Ezekiel.]]

* An episode of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' had the Nazi pretending to be a Jew. [[spoiler: Unfortunately for him he married a Jewish woman and raised his own son as a devout Jew to keep his cover story up]].
* An episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'' has an episode in which a schoolboy with neo-Nazi beliefs is murdered. [[spoiler:He was growing out of racism after making friends with the school's black janitor. The suspects were other neo-Nazis who not only found out, but for some reason concluded he was also in a homosexual relationship with the janitor.]] The boy was murdered because he discovered an even darker secret: [[spoiler:his new friend was actually [[RetiredMonster a leader in the Rwandan genocide]]]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'': [[spoiler:[[Characters/AmphibiaMarcyWu Marcy]] knew all along what the Calamity Box would do and stranded herself, Anne, and Sasha in Amphibia on purpose. She did it because she'd learned that she was going to move due to her father getting a new job out of state, and she wanted to run away to a place where she could have fun with her friends forever]]. The secret is outed by King Andrias in the season 2 finale, causing Anne to tear up and Sasha to pull away in disgust.

* In ''Franchise/{{Berserk}}'', Griffiths's dirty little secret was that he initially financed the Band of the Hawk by prostitution himself.
* In ''Anime/CyberpunkEdgerunners'', Lucy harbors one of these. [[spoiler:Specifically, the deep-dive neural port she has on her brain stem. Not only is it a dead giveaway of her DarkAndTroubledPast being conscripted and exploited by Arasaka, it also would make her a target for both the corporation and dodgy fixers such as Faraday.]] She goes out of her way to prevent this secret from getting out, and only shows it to her boyfriend David when she has to hack into an Arasaka executive alone with him.
* In ''Anime/DigimonAdventureTri'', it's eventually revealed that Meicoomon [[spoiler:is actually the {{Reincarnation}} of '''Apocalymon''', the GreaterScopeVillain of the original ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'' anime.]]

** True to the lore, the leaders of the Dark Angels chapter is [[TheParanoid paranoid]] about anyone learning about the Fallen, but [[NervousWreck Azrael]] takes it to [[BadBoss ridiculous extremes]] by siccing [[AxCrazy Asmodai]] on two Dark Angels who innocently ask about the Fallen when Azrael mentions them in their presence (and they were recently inducted into the inner circle, too, which means they were ''cleared'' to learn about the Fallen in the first place).

* In ''WebAnimation/IfTheEmperorHadATextToSpeechDevice'', Calgar is hiding the secret to Ultramarines' invincibility, and the mere possibility that someone may figure it out makes him panic.

* In ''Franchise/{{Berzerk}}'', Griffiths's dirty little secret was that he initially financed the Band of the Hawk by prostitution himself.

* ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'': In TheMovie, we find out that [[spoiler:Rigby, having been completely and utterly rejected from College University, forged a acceptance for himself and a rejection letter for Mordecai and replaced Mordecai's acceptance letter with the rejection forgery so that he can reject his acceptance letter and stick with a dejected Mordecai so they can be friends forever.]]

** Somewhere between the end of the New 52 Teen Titans run and the first issue, [[ComicBook/WonderGirl Cassie]] is going through something that makes her not want to use her powers. Before she joins the battle, she's obviously crying because of it. [[spoiler:Issue 2 reveals that [[TheChooserOfTheOne Zeus tried to recruit her to be a guardian of the realm]], [[RefusalOfTheCall she refused because she was tired of people telling her what she should be]] and TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive.]]