His Name Is--: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

{{quote|'''Witness''': "The killer is...''ggarrghh!''"

'''Miss Marple''': "Is that with two G's or three?" }}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' did this to an absurd extent in order to keep Shinji from learning {{spoiler|that his friend Touji is the pilot of the possessed Eva Unit-03 until after he'd nearly been killed.}}

* {{spoiler|South Burning}} in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory]]'', about halfway through the series, manages to get his hands on a briefcase detailing the enemy's forces and plans, taking some apparently minor hits to his [[Humongous Mecha|mobile suit]] in the process. As the heroes fly back to their ship, he opens the briefcase and starts reading through it, discovering the enemy plans are much more far-reaching than anyone imagined. Just as he starts to tell {{spoiler|his protege, Kou Uraki}} what he's discovered, {{spoiler|Burning}}'s mecha explodes. Which would've been far more shocking if we hadn't been shown constant cuts to that seemingly minor damage throughout the second half of the episode.

** Said character got loads upon loads of [[Retirony]] in the first half of the episode, making the death even easier to see coming.

== Comic Books ==

* Lampshaded in, of all things, an issue of the classic Stan Lee-Steve Ditko ''Amazing [[Spider-Man]]''. The Crime Master is mortally wounded in a gunfight, and then declares that if he's going down, the Green Goblin will go down with him. He attempts to reveal the Goblin's secret identity (which was not known at the time). "The Goblin is..." and then he dies. The lampshading comes when one of the police officers at the scene comments "If I saw that happen in a mystery movie, I'd laugh at how corny it was."

* One day, [[Batman]] discovers that his parent's killer, Joe Chill is still alive and kicking and a rising gang leader, and after tormenting him for a while, reveals his [[Secret Identity]] to Chill. Chill freaks out and goes and tells his mob (without revealing the name). His irate mob, realising that Chill essentially ''created'' Batman, shoot him to the point of near-death. [[What an Idiot!|It's only then that they realize that they didn't know who exactly Batman was]]. Chill nearly is able to croak it out, but Batman barges in at that moment.

* Done in [[Tintin]] to great effect. The first one is played pretty much straight (before the victim is shot with something to make him go insane) in ''Cigars of the Pharaoh'' and the second one is played straight in ''The Secret of the Unicorn'' {{spoiler|but is ultimately subverted as the victim recovers}}.

* Subverted in the terrible, terrible [[Troll Fic]] ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]''. Someone is about to reveal to L that Light Yagami is Kira. He manages to say "Kira is Light Yaga..." before he dies, but the world's greatest detective has no idea what he means to say.

* The very poorly-formatted but otherwise bearable Batman fan-fiction screenplay [http://www.slideshare.net/artintelligence/batman-masked-soulsdocdoc ''Batman: Masked Souls'']{{Dead link}} ends with Bane trying to tell a coast guard officer that Bruce Wayne really is Batman, before Bane falls dead (or unconscious?)

== Film ==

* An assassin working with Boba Fett's father, Jango Fett, fails to reveal Fett's name thanks to some kind of poison dart he shoots at her in ''[[Star Wars]]'' Episode II.

** The dart was ordered by Palpatine; [[The Plan|he wanted the Jedi to go to Kamino]].

== Literature ==

* Happens in [[Agatha Christie]]'s ''[[Death on the Nile]]'': a nosy female witness is shot in the head mere seconds before she names the culprit. One of the detectives races to the door and finds a smoking gun lying on the floor outside, and nobody who could have fired the shot is to be seen anywhere.

** In an another Christie novel, ''After the Funeral'', a character is talking on the phone; just before she could reveal a clue, she's struck on the head (but doesn't die).

* In ''[[Warrior Cats]]'', it's zigzagged. Runningwind is dead and Fireheart sees Whitethroat, who he assumes to be the killer. Whitethroat is hit by a car after Fireheart realizes it wasn't him. Fireheart asks who killed Runningwind, and Whitethroat says who it was but Fireheart can't hear him over the noise of a passing car. Fireheart asks again, but Whitethroat dies just as he's about to say it, however he has a look of horror in his eyes. Then Fireheart turns around and sees the killer right there.

* The title comes from the pilot episode of ''[[Get Smart]]''. The informant blurts out the villain's name right away, and gloats that he escaped the death that always happens to the guy about to say the name. However, Smart forgets the name and asks the informant to repeat it. The informant isn't so lucky the second time.

** This scene definitely was in the episode 4.2 "Ironhand".

== Machinima ==

* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' mocked this. After Captain Flowers was revived from death (eight hundred years in the future. [[Bellisario's Maxim|Don't think about it too hard]]), he's about to tell Tucker the secret to beating the Red Team, but keeps delaying it until he's shot in the head.

{{quote|'''Tucker:''' Hey, I could use some help.

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'''s "Meet The Spy", the Blu Spy is explaining that anybody in the room could be the Red Spy. His long, dramatic speech ends with "It could be you! It could be me! It could even be-" He is then [[Your Head Asplode|shot in the face by the Soldier's shotgun]], who thought the Blu Spy was obviously the Red Spy in disguise. He wasn't.

* {{spoiler|Aldaris}} is killed just before he can reveal a critical piece of information in ''[[StarCraft]]: Brood War''.

*** Subverted in the Super NES version, in which they reveal Mr. Karate to be {{spoiler|[[Luke, I Am Your Father|Takuma Sakazaki]]}}. He would go on to explain how he ended up in the situation he was in.

* Parodied in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', during the X-Files story arc. The ''waitress'' is shot while reciting the daily specials. One of the FBI agents dramatically demands to know what she was going to say, but she dies right before she can finish.

** Another time, it momentarily appears that this happens to Bun-bun's informant, but then it's revealed to have been a cut to where the bad guys who were supposed to kill that informant are killing the wrong guy who was just about to reveal someone the location of a rave.

== Web Original ==

* Played for laughs in ''[[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC|Rorschach and Deadpool]]''. The pair finds four different informants,<ref>As well as a pizza boy and a random passerby, hell, even Rorschach</ref> and Deadpool shoots every one of them as they finish saying the name of the trope. Purely because he finds their voices irritating.

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' parody of ''[[24]]''. Bart has to tell Lisa the name of the traitor to the Counter Truancy Unit (CTU). "Now I don't have much time so I'm just gonna come out and say his name. So get ready to know his name. His name is the following. M-" ... and Martin knocks Bart unconscious.

* An episode of ''[[Doug]]'' featuring one of the Quail-Man adventures had Quail-Man asking Silver Skeeter, who had been half-frozen in a block of something like carbonite, who froze him. He replies saying he doesn't have the strength to say the name and is too worried he'll get halfway through telling him before he's completely frozen. When Quailman demands that he try, this is exactly what happens.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death Tropes]]

[[Category:Last Words]]