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{{trope}}
{{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
Occasionally this is the posthumous revenge of a [[Dead Man Writing]]. This can be used to subvert a [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]
Naturally, this is the ''modus operandi'' of the [[Intrepid Reporter]], especially when they're [[Going for
Compare and contrast the villainous counterpart, [[Do Not Adjust Your Set]]. See also [[Information Wants to Be Free]] and [[Irrevocable Order]].
{{deathtrope}}
{{endingtrope}}
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* 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 [[
* [[
* One could say that Gold Roger's final words before his execution started the signal, starting the First Age of Piracy and giving a headache to [[The Empire|the Wold Government]] for years to come. The signal would only be strengthened years later with {{spoiler|Whitebeard's final words before his death at Marineford, erasing any doubt of One Piece's existence and starting a Second Age of Pirates.}}
== Comic Books ==
* The original ''[[Watchmen (
* A subversion in [[Milestone Comics]]' ''[[Hardware (
* The [[Spider
== Film ==
* In [[The Movie]] of ''[[Watchmen (
* ''[[
{{quote|
* ''[[The Core]]'': [[The Rat]] sends the details of the {{spoiler|government earthquake-weapon research}} to all the world's news outlets.
* ''[[The Bourne Ultimatum]]''.
** And ''[[Green Zone]]''
* In ''[[The Constant Gardener]]'', when Justin sends a letter to his friend containing details of [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|a pharmacy company]]'s unscrupulous testing methods for their medicines, knowing he's about to be murdered for knowing too much. His friend reads it out as his eulogy.
* [[The Movie]] of ''[[Harrison Bergeron]]''.
* ''[[They Live!]]'' [[Inverted Trope|inverts the trope]]; the villains are the ones ''sending'' the signal (which maintains their [[Masquerade]] as humans like us), and the heroes wind up ''stopping'' it in the end.
* Smith from ''[[Shoot
* This is how the ''[[
* In ''[[Chain Reaction (
* A very different version of this particular trope: two people in the [[
* The climax of ''[[The Net]]''.
* ''[[Edge of Darkness (
* The entire plot of ''[[The Book of Eli]]'' is his attempt to deliver the {{spoiler|Bible}} to someone capable of disseminating it.
* ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]]'' has a small-town variation on this. As he escapes and takes all of the secret kickback money out of false bank accounts, Andy drops a package of hard proof of the warden's crimes into the outgoing mail. That gets sent to the local newspaper; in the next scene, the front page article indicting the prison warden is shown.
* The second half of ''[[Blue Thunder]]'' involves getting a video tape to a TV broadcasting station, despite various attempts by the conspirators to intercept it.
* Subverted at the end of ''[[Three Days of the Condor]]''. Turner reveals to CIA chief Higgins that he's had told everything to the ''New York Times''. But as Turner walks away...
{{quote|
== Literature ==
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story "[
** Of course, the reason he had so much trouble is because the ''government'' had been using it as an unstoppable spying device - releasing the information simply turned the tables on them.
* Frank Herbert's short story "Committee Of The Whole". A man uses the broadcast of a U.S. Senate hearing to describe a cheap, easily-built laser that could cut the Earth in half like a ripe tomato. He then spends several pages trying to justify distributing information that could allow any madman to destroy the planet. He later admits he had distributed the information far and wide earlier.
* [[Sherlock Holmes]] does this before he ends Moriarty once and for all.
* The old [[Interactive Fiction]] adaptation of/sequel to ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'' ended with Montag publicly broadcasting the contents of a lot of the banned books.
* [[Robert Harris]]' ''[[Fatherland (
* In Greg Iles' ''The Footprints of God'', the main character exposed the AI project he's working on after he recovered from a coma.
* At the end of ''[[Firestarter]]'', Charlie gives her story to the one major publication she can trust not to be controlled by the government... ''Rolling Stone Magazine''.
* [[Serpico]] makes futile attempts to get his various police superiors and the Mayor's office to do something about police corruption, but it's only when he and his colleagues go to the ''New York Times'' that a proper enquiry is held not only into corruption but how it's allowed to flourish. This only makes Serpico a greater target however.
* ''[[The Yiddish
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Push Nevada]]'' ([[Ben Affleck]]'s gimmick show where a viewer could win the money stolen from an [[In
* Averted, barely, in ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' only because Duncan uses the quickening to fry Paris' power
* Attempted in the season finale of ''[[
* Played with rather cruelly in the second season of ''[[Sherlock]]''. Whoever said the unstoppable signal had to speak the truth?
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* This is the [[Phantom Thief|Yatagarasu's]] entire schtick in ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations]]''. The Yatagarasu steals evidence of corruption from businesses and political offices, then sends it to the media to expose the truth. {{spoiler|They do this because they've lost faith in the legal system, and it's the only way they can bring some measure of justice to people above the law.}}
* Some of the endings in ''[[Alpha Protocol]]'' involve Michael Thorton carrying this out against Halbech and {{spoiler|Alpha Protocol}}.
* This is what drives one of ''[[
== Webcomics ==
* In ''[[
{{quote|
** When Kevyn is later arrested by the UNS for treason (having submitted his schematics to, amongst others, known enemies of humanity), he asks if there's any chance he can plea-bargain down to the charge of "Grand Spamming". [[Lemony Narrator|The narrator]] helpfully informs us that's not a very large step, and that if you have to plea-bargain ''down'' to Grand Spamming you were ''really'' deep in it to begin with.
== Real Life ==
* [[Grey and Grey Morality|Debatably]] WikiLeaks, more specifically the attempt by the U.S. government to shut them down and the campaign by pro-internet freedom collective "Anonymous" to defend WikiLeaks and its founder and to keep the information online. See [
* Arguably, this is how a lot of [[Conspiracy Theories]] start.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Ending Tropes]]
[[Category:Cant Stop The Signal]]
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