Discussion Main / SpoilerOpening

Two Anime examples I'm unsure of (I know there's a subpage but thought this is more likely to be seen) as it's possible that seeing the events in the show proper could count as a version of Once More, with Clarity.

Attack On Titan: the first opening shows things like a group standing in a box firing rifles out in all directions but doesn't show what they're firing at or where they actually are.

Jormungand: pretty much the same deal, you see Rhem firing his rifle from a rooftop and a cargo plane being shot at but not the context.

Removed:

• The opening of Predator shows the titular alien arriving on Earth - spoiling what would otherwise have been a cool twist halfway through the film.
• Likewise, opening with a flying saucer shows that The Thing (1982) will have a sci-fi motif.

Since these aren't really spoilers. They're the premise of the film. You're supposed to be waiting for the alien to show up, which it does in the first 15 minutes.

Not sure how to add this to the main article, but I think there should be special mention that many programs with spoiler openings are adaptations.

Anime is particularly prone to this as a large percentage are based on previously-released manga or visual novels. In this case, many of the fans are quite aware of the plot and so the spoiler openings are more of a tease that your favorite moment is coming up in this arc/episode.

Of course, with visual novel adaptations, many possible spoilers in the opening might not happen based on what route they follow for the animation, or if they decide to mix the routes.

Saved because it's kind of a judgement call, but (aside from being way too bitter and ad hominem) this doesn't strike me as an example of this trope:

• The absolutely dreadful film adaptation of The Golden Compass/The Northern Lights starts out by kindly explaining to us the elaborate, subtle metaphor for childhood and identity that Pullman spent three books putting together. It's a lot more complicated than "daemons are souls", idiots.

Explaining something that isn't intended to be a surprise doesn't constitute a spoiler (even if it is supposed to be a surprise in the books, it's not in the movie). And the fact that the movie explanation is different from the books' is immaterial to the trope.