Can't Stop the Signal: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"So I called that guy I know at NBC. And then I got to thinking -- [[Catch Phrase|You know what I hate?]] I hate those [[Genre Savvy|lame action movies]] where the good guy calls [[Have You Told Anyone Else?|just one person]] who ends up [[Big Bad Friend|betraying him]]. So I called ABC, CBS, The Post, The Times, the local news channel, and the FBI."'' |'''Smith''', '''''[[Shoot'Em Up (film)|Shoot Em Up]]''''' }}

A character [[Broken Masquerade|breaks]] [[The Masquerade]] by sending the details they have uncovered to the press -- oftenpress—often to multiple publications at once. Usually happens at the end of a work.

Occasionally this is the posthumous revenge of a [[Dead Man Writing]]. This can be used to subvert a [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] ending -- theending—the protagonists achieved nothing and [[Heroic Sacrifice|died in the attempt]], but if it's subsequently revealed that they managed to get the word out, it might all be worth it. Can also be played [[Bolivian Army Ending|ambiguously]], with the audience unsure of whether the information gets delivered or not (or whether or not it [[Extra-Strength Masquerade|has any effect]] if it does).

* Episode 22 of ''[[Kiddy Grade]]'' has Chevalier, who hijacked the ''[[Cool Starship|Deucalion]]'' in the previous episode, broadcast all the illicit background dealings and incriminating evidence of corruption by the [[Blue Blood|Nouvlesse]] to every single news channel in the galaxy as well as the ship's true purpose: to disable the [[Portal Network|warp gates]] with a [[Everything Is Online|quantum virus]] then warp out of the galaxy, leaving the commoners to their fate of dying off as trade and planetary economies collapse while planets under [[Terraform|terraformingterraform]]ing will [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|revert back to inhospitable, killing their entire population]] who can't relocate since the warp gates are kaput. Needless to say, the commoners [[0% Approval Rating|didn't take it well]].

* ''[[Serenity]]'', the [[Trope Namer]] -- the—the heroes use the late [[Knowledge Broker|Mr Universe's]] equipment to broadcast the truth about Miranda and "Pax" to the four corners of the 'verse.

** And ''[[Green Zone]]'' -- Paul—Paul Greengrass likes this one.

* Smith from ''[[Shoot'Em Up (film)|Shoot Em Up]]'' does this out of [[Genre Savvy]] -- see—see the page quote.

* Averted, barely, in ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' only because Duncan uses the quickening to fry Paris' power grid -- andgrid—and the computer holding the disk which holds information about Immortals and Watchers.

* This is what drives one of ''[[StarcraftStarCraft II]]'''s branches, the Revolution/Matt Horner missions. {{spoiler|They manage to bring the truth to the Dominion's civilians, thus starting a revolution}}.