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How Did You Know? I Didn't.: Difference between revisions

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How Did You Know? I Didn't. (view source)

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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Bart:''' Dad, you killed zombie Flanders!<br />
'''Homer:''' He was a zombie?|'''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]''', ''Dial Z For Zombie''}}
 
[[Stock Phrase]] uttered in which our hero attacks a seemingly [[Innocent Bystander]] but discovers that the bystander was not what he appeared.
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** A more serious example occurs in the first volume: after a vampire ( {{spoiler|Topher}}) had taken out nearly the whole team, Karolina offered to let him bite her in exchange for letting Molly live, claiming she wanted to die. He bit her--and spontaneously combusted, since she's a solar-powered alien. When Alex asked her how she knew that would happen, she admitted that she had actually been trying to commit suicide by proxy.
* ''[[The Umbrella Academy]]'': Dallas #1 features the Lincoln memorial statue come to life and terrorize the District of Columbia. To stop it Rumor says "Mr. President. I heard a rumor you were assassinated." This conjures up a statue of John Wilkes Booth who shoots the rampaging Lincoln. Hargreeves arrives on the scene and ask how she knew that would work. She replied "I didn't."
* From ''[[Fallen Angel (Comic Bookcomics)|Fallen Angel]]'': This exchange after Lee drops Shadow Boxer off a roof and he lands in a hay truck.
{{quote| '''Slate''': Pretty impressive, by the way. Timing Boxer's falling into that truck so he wouldn't be hurt.<br />
'''Lee''': ''[[Beat Panel]]''. What truck? }}
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Men in Black (Filmfilm)|Men in Black]] II'': [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|Amnesiac]] Agent K shoots alien pawn-shop clerk Jeebs in the head. [[Running Gag|Again.]]
{{quote| '''J:''' "You're back." <br />
'''K:''' "No."<br />
'''J:''' "How'd you know his head grows back?"<br />
'''K:''' "It grows back?" }}
* ''[[The Naked Gun (Film)|The Naked Gun]] 2 1/2'': Frank Drebin is being "honored for his 1000th drug-dealer killed." He responds: "Thank you. But, in all honesty, the last two I backed over with my car. Luckily, they turned out to be drug-dealers."
* ''[[Get Smart (Filmfilm)|Get Smart]]'': Max is asked {{spoiler|where the bomb is at the concert. He says that it is under the piano. Naturally, that's where it was.}} The chief asks how Max knew. The answer: Lucky guess.
* ''[[Papillon]]'' (1973) takes shelter in a leper colony after his escape, and is invited to share a cigar by their leader. Despite his fear of catching the disease, Papillon does so. There's a moment of silence from the leader (who clearly expected him to refuse) before he asks how Papillon knew he had dry leprosy, which isn't contagious. When Papillon replies that he didn't know, it breaks the ice between the two men.
* In the movie version (but not book) of ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'', Jack Ryan and Captain Mancuso invoke this trope, in regards to which way Captain Ramius would turn for the next "Crazy Ivan" maneuver.
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'''Gloria''': What other bodies?<br />
'''Rosemary''': *relieved* Oh, you didn't know about the other bodies. }}
* ''[[Diamonds Are Forever (Film)|Diamonds Are Forever]]'' has an example of one of the mooks doing this. The mook throws Plenty O'Toole, one of the Bond girls, off of a high floor, and she lands unharmed in a swimming pool below. When Bond compliments him on his aim, the mook replies, "I didn't know there was a pool down there."
* Zigzagged in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: [[On Stranger Tides]]''. Blackbeard forces Jack to play a variant of [[Russian Roulette]] with four unloaded pistols and two loaded ones, and Angelica (his daughter, Jack's love interest) as the target. When Jack takes the option to jump instead, Angelica asks her father if he knew which guns were loaded. He says he did, but considering his later actions there's no reason to believe he would care about putting his daughter in danger.
* Used on the [[RifftraxRiff Trax]] for the opening of ''[[The Dark Knight]]''.
{{quote| '''Mike:''' (imitating the bank manager with a rifle) ''What ?! He was robbing my bank! I thought he was just a clown!''}}
* ''[[The Conspirator]]'': Aiken mistakingly asks a question at trail without knowing the answer. It was dumb luck that it worked in his favor, and he confesses this to his friends.
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* In the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' tie-in comic "Ring of Fire", Kendra attacks a man who turns out to be a demon. Xander asks how she knew. She didn't.
** A [[Bad Boss]] example is in "Band Candy". Mr Trick accuses a worker of sampling the cursed product and [[Neck Snap|Neck Snaps]] him. Ethan Rayne asks Trick how he knew the worker was stealing. Trick replies that he didn't "[[Make an Example of Them|And now no-one else will either]]."
* In an episode of ''[[Angel (TV)|Angel]]'', Wesley shoots somebody who turns out to be a robot double, to dramatic rather than comedic effect. The point in that case was not that Wesley makes a habit of casually killing people, but that in this one instance he was pushed over a line he wouldn't normally cross. {{spoiler|It was a robot duplicate of his ''father'', by the way...}}
** Knowing how he treated him as a child, the shooting is 100% justified. However, Wesley does shoot one other person in S5, in the leg, in anger. It seems that getting Wes angry when he has a gun nearby is a VERY bad idea.
* There was a variation in ''[[Spooks]]'' once (season 2 episode "I Spy Apocalypse"), where the guy the hero shot was real (and human), but the gun turns out to have been rigged.
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* A variant in ''[[Bugs]]'' happens when the team's weapons expert is wired with a bomb to force him to act as a sniper to remove someone for the [[Big Bad]]. While the tech specialist is trying to disarm it the [[Big Bad]] realises he's not going to make the shot and moves to kill the target himself. The weapons expert pulls away from the tech and kills the [[Big Bad]], then the tech removes a chip from the bomb and it deactivates. Cue the tech being lambasted for taking so long and replying that she just removed anything, choosing probably being blown to bits over certainly being.
* In one episode of season nine of ''[[Smallville]]'', Oliver Queen is standing on a podium which has been rigged to blow when he steps off. Clark arrives towards the end of the episode, having learned that the bomb was {{spoiler|fake}} only to find that {{spoiler|Oliver has already stepped off the podium}}. How did he know? [[Wham! Line|He didn't]], and instead waited until the room was clear so that he could {{spoiler|attempt suicide}}.
* Partially subverted in ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'', where in an [[Enemy Mine]] situation where they're all hostages, Rygel arranges for Scorpius to be shot by one of the criminals. Then, just as he's about to be dragged off to the getaway vehicle, Rygel declares he wants a souvenir, and approaches the "corpse." Once he's sure nobody's listening, he apologises... and Scorpius asks him how he knew he was wearing body armor; Rygel answers that he only suspected it, but didn't actually care ''that'' much if he was right or wrong.
* ''[[Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (TV)|Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger]]", "The Amazing Silver Man" The crew accidentally stumbles upon an Action Commander planting a bomb to blow up the city and demands to know how they knew his plans. They didn't, [[You Just Told Me|he just told them.]]
 
 
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* The player gets an opportunity to have his own How Did You Know? moment in the (chronological) beginning of ''[[Max Payne 2]]''. No game mechanic prevents you from killing an innocent bystander at a crime site, a cleaner. In fact, you will be rewarded for doing so by him not leading you into an ambush.
** Max himself gets one when he {{spoiler|shoots his partner when she confronts him and his fugitive love interest.}} Only later does he actually find any evidence that {{spoiler|she was going to kill them both by order of the big bad.}} Max, ever the melodramatic sort, states that thinking for even a moment that the future revelation justified his prior actions damns him just that much more.
* A similar example in ''[[Deus Ex (Video Game)|Deus Ex]]''. If you kill a {{spoiler|doorkeeper at the gates of the cemetery housing Dowd's crypt}} on sight, the guy will later turn out to be a spy, and {{spoiler|Dowd}} will even praise you for being just the right type of trigger-happy paranoiac they need.
* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' had Al Mualim and Altair using almost these exact words during one of their discussions. Al Mualim asking and Altair answering.
* The popular gamemode for the ''[[Half Life]] 2'' mod ''[[GarrysGarry's Mod]]'' titled "[[Trouble in Terrorist Town]]" revolves around trust/mistrust in a town full of terrorists, 1 in 5 of which are united traitors, seeking to kill the innocent terrorists, similar to the Mafia game people play on forums/IRC/at social gatherings. Occasionally someone gets shot for no real reason, or are accidentally pushed off a high ledge or get just plain unlucky and die suddenly when they're a traitor. The result is an upset traitor, and a confused, but happy group of innocent terrorists who have one less threat to deal with. Especially funny when playing with friends who you actually know, rather than random players.
 
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-06-27 Set up here] in ''[[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|El Goonish Shive]]'' (the full exchange doesn't come until the next strip):
{{quote| '''Mom:''' You've brought ''boys'' over, Susan?<br />
'''Susan:''' No, Mother, just this one. The other two are girls; they're checking out our TV.<br />
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'''Susan''' (thinking): Hehe... she bought it...<br />
'''Justin''': So... how'd ''you'' know that I'm gay? }}
* (Dis)honorable mention to Vaarsuvius from ''[[The Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'', who killed [[Smug Snake|Daimyo Kubota]] without an afterthought due to some [[Genre Savvy]] assumptions without actually knowing petty details like Kubota's crimes or even his ''name''.
** A comical version done [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0259.html here].
* ''[http://zudacomics.com/the_night_owls Night Owls]'' #134, Ernie asks Bill how he knew Louie's magical gaspipe was inert. Bill doesn't know what he's talking about.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In a ''[[Xiaolin Showdown (Animation)|Xiaolin Showdown]]'' episode where Kimiko is fighting an [[Robot Me|evil robot duplicate]], Omi jumps high in the air and takes one of the Kimikos out in one swipe. The defeated robot explodes, but, when asked about how he knew which one was which, Omi admits to having guessed. Not quite as extreme as the page description otherwise implies, since if he'd kicked the real Kimiko, she'd have probably just rubbed her kicked spot and been annoyed... not actually exploded.
** This really surprised Clay and Rai though because up until that point, Omi knew ahead of time every trick thrown at him throughout the episode, including Rai [[Running Gag|constant attempts through Shen-Gong-Wu battles and card dealings]]. When he said that he "guessed" that time, they were aghast he didn't/couldn't use his Tiger Instinct.
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' Halloween episode "Dial 'Z' for Zombie", Homer shoots the zombie Flanders.
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{{quote| Commander: ''"How did they know exactly where to hit us?!"''}}
* ''[[Robot Chicken]]'': In the ''[[Yellow Submarine]]'' [[X Meets Y|meets]] ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'' [http://video.adultswim.com/robot-chicken/ping-them-back.html sketch], Ringo didn't know the hole would stop the missile from hitting the Blue October; he was still on acid and said whatever came to him.
* The ''[[Wing Commander Academy (Animation)|Wing Commander Academy]]'' cartoon had an example where, faced with a Kilrathi carrier, the commander decides to play chicken with it. This works, and the carrier retreats.
{{quote| Recruit: "How did you know that they would retreat before we rammed them?"<br />
Commander: "I didn't." }}
* In ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]''
{{quote| '''Roger:''' How did you know I was fireproof? Even I didn't know that! Wait, did you know? I'm going to assume "yes" to preserve the friendship.}}
** Again in "When a Stan Loves a Woman." At the shooting range, he and a mysterious woman simultaneously shoot each other. Cut to a restaurant:
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'''Woman:''' I didn't, but I have a rowboat, so it's easy for me to dump stuff. Did you know about mine?<br />
'''Stan:''' No, I was composing your suicide note when you stood back up! }}
* In Part Two of the pilot for ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', the main characters are attacked by a manticore. They fight back until [[Friend to All Living Things|Fluttershy]] calls for them to stop, much to their surprise. She approaches the monster, nuzzles it, and the manticore reveals the source of its fury: a thorn in its paw. After she removes the thorn, the manticore lets them pass. Twilight Sparkle asks how Fluttershy knew about the thorn, and the pegasus replies that she didn't, but assumed the manticore just needed to be shown kindness.
* This exchange from ''[[Family Guy]]'' after [[Lovable Sex Maniac|Glenn Quagmire]] saves a woman who is having a heart attack while changing at the mall:
{{quote| '''Woman 1:''' That was amazing!<br />
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'''Quagmire (confused look):''' What the hell is CPR? }}
** Also the basic frame of this trope is present in a joke in the (same) episode where Peter is blind. After Peter saves Horace from a burning building he is asked how he found the courage to risk his life inside said burning building, to which Peter responds "That freaking place was on fire?!"
* ''[[Scooby -Doo! Mystery Incorporated]]'' "The Dragon's Heart"
{{quote| '''Mr. Blake:''' ''But how did you know she would step in the middle of the boat?''<br />
'''Fred:''' ''I didn't. That's why I set up traps all over this place!'' }}
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