Have You Told Anyone Else?: Difference between revisions

* In the 1987 thriller ''[[No Way Out]]'', a technician that the protagonist took into his confidence in an attempt to delay the [[Big Bad]]'s plan has an attack of conscience and tells... the [[Big Bad]], after which this trope is played out verbatim.

* In ''[[The Island]]'', Gandu Three Echo tells Dr. Merrick he suspects there's something wrong with the place and heard some rumours. Dr. Merrick asks "Have you told anyone else about this?". After the predictable answer, Dr. Merrick wraps up the conversation and kills Gandu.

 

== Literature ==

* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Warhammer 40,000]] [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''Legion'', when Bronzi discovers a Chaos-tainted soldiers, he reports it, is asked who knows, and is warned that they need to keep it close to the chest. {{spoiler|In this case, telling them that others know ensures that they get massacred, too.}}

* In Frederick Forsyth's novel ''[[The Day of the Jackal]]'', the forger providing the Jackal's false papers tries to blackmail him, fatally assuming the assassin is merely an upper class dilettante dabbling in the drug trade. The Jackal skillfully asks a number of questions (disguised as an attempt to wriggle out of the situation, or ensure that he won't have to pay another bribe to an associate) which establish that the forger hasn't given his photographs to anyone else and that no-one will come to this location and find his body for some time.

* Comically subverted in the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[Jingo]]''; upon being informed of Vimes's departure to Klatch before Ankh-Morpork's invasion fleet has fully assembled, Rust asks the informer if anyone else knew of it (presumably, hoping to keep the news under wraps so Klatch doesn't attack before Ankh-Morpork launches their fleet), the beggar tells him that nobody else saw it... just several other beggars, who also constitute the city's information network.

* In [[James Swallow]]'s [[Warhammer 40,000]] novel ''[[Blood Angels|Deus Encarmine]]'', Inquistor Stele asks an astropath whether he has told anyone else about a message. When it countermands his orders, he tells the astropath that he had not come to give a message but to kill him, and murders him.

** In ''How Firm a Foundation'', Urvyn Mahndrayn takes a detour from a business trip to inform {{spoiler|his cousin Trai Sahlavahn, who runs the powder-mill}} about some discrepancies in the shipping manifests for kegs of gunpowder delivered for the mill. Unfortunately {{spoiler|Sahlavan}} is the traitor who was diverting the gunpowder shipments. He asks Mahndrayn who else he's told, and Mahndrayn says that he wanted to check with {{spoiler|Sahlavan}} before alerting anyone else. It doesn't end well.

* A slight variation in ''[[Anansi Boys]]''. Spider, filling in at work for his brother Fat Charlie, pokes around and discovers some odd accounts in offshore banks. He innocently mentions it to Fat Charlie's boss and suggests that it might be rather inefficient (his life up until this point has done little to prepare him for the idea that other people might be in any way deceitful). Said boss does not ask who else knows; he merely thanks Spider, who he thinks is actually Fat Charlie, and quietly rearranges things to make it appear that it was Fat Charlie who was running the money-laundering scheme. Unfortunately, his policy of not keeping on employees for much longer than a year (the better to hide his crime) bites him in the ass; Fat Charlie has been employed there longer than anyone, but a client attempting to collect on an account knows full well that the boss has been doing this for far longer than Fat Charlie's two years. This isn't even the worst of the trouble Spider causes Fat Charlie.

* In [[Dean Koontz]]'s ''Brother Odd'', Odd Thomas questions a number of suspects in a [[Closed Circle]] murder case. One of them asks if Odd has told anyone else about a certain piece of evidence, then offers him something to eat. Odd [[lampshade]]s this trope in his narration, then politely declines the food.

* [[The Chessmaster]] in the last ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' book pulls this off; it helps that the victim is a complete ''idiot'' about it. "I need to ''urgently'' tell the governor about the mole I placed in the terrorist organization, even though nothing's happening right now. This is on a strictly need-to-know basis, so don't tell anyone. Why no, no I ''haven't'' told anyone else. Leave a message? Sure! Here's the datachip with all the information, as well as the codes to decrypt it." (To be fair about this, the bad guy in question is {{spoiler|the governor's immediate deputy}}, and in fact the victim reports directly to him. Lack of suspicion is unsurprising.)