Schrödinger's Gun: Difference between revisions

A helpful way to look at this is how sometimes [[Mystery Fiction]] authors will constantly feed the audience [[Red Herring|"clues"]] supposedly narrowing down the possible suspects, only to select the "right" clue as a [[Chekhov's Gunman]] by the denouement and fit the facts around it. Similarly, in movies it is common practice to write most of the story - and only then pick the ending that [[Focus Group Ending|resonates the best with the test audience.]]

The larger principle behind Schrodinger's guns is [[Chandler's Law]].

{{examples}}

* A ''[[Batman]]'' [[Choose Your Own Adventure]] involves the Joker deciding to kill half of Gotham's population. Batman decides that involves piping poison from a utility. The Joker is always at [[One True Sequence|the first utility one chooses to investigate]].

* The villain of [[The DCU]] [[Crisis Crossover]] ''Armageddon 2001'', the mysterious Monarch, was originally intended to be the superhero [[Captain Atom]]. After fans figured it out too soon, DC changed the story, and the Monarch wound up being a different superhero entirely. (However, the ''[[Legacy Character|latest]]'' Monarch, villain of ''[[Countdown to Final Crisis]]'', actually ''was'' Captain Atom ([[Heel Face Turn|he got better]]). You couldn't make this stuff up.)

* Masterfully applied in [[Clue (film)|the movie]] about the [[Board Games|board game]] ''[[Clue (game)|Clue]]''. It has [[Multiple Endings|endings]] for several characters where they are the killer, and of course they [[Flash Back]] [[Retcon|retroactively]] showing how ''only they'' could ever ''possibly'' be the killer. Each theatre showed it with a different ending. The Home Video showed all three straight through, and the DVD lets you do it either way, with a random ending or with all three. In the ''end'' end, {{spoiler|Mr. Green reveals himself as working for the government and that "They all did it!" Take them away boys}}!

{{quote|''{{spoiler|But if you want to know who killed Mr. Boddy, it was me, in the Hall, with the Revolver. [[Mistaken for Gay|Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife]].}}''}}

* The 1995 movie ''[[Mr. Payback]]'' had the audience vote at several points to determine how the movie proceeded.

* Just about every ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' book does this heavily, in order to keep it interesting through multiple re-reads.

** Rampant in the ''[[Goosebumps]]'' [[Choose Your Own Adventure]] books. There'll at the very least be a major choice near the beginning that divides the book in half (say, try to give the magic book back or try to hide it), and the entire setup, the very nature of the situation you're in, will be completely different depending on which you choose. Then other decisions will cause the same thing to happen on a smaller scale. Worst, often there'll be a situation in which you have a single decision where both lead to a quick death and an unhappy end, but the nature of what was putting you in danger is not the same depending on which you pick.

* [[Matthew Reilly]] said that, in ''Contest'', the way to kill the [[Nigh Invulnerable|Karanadon]] - {{spoiler|with Swain's explosive wristband}} - came to him completely out of the blue.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' (2004):

** Likewise the four Cylons revealed in the Season 3 finale are practically Schrodinger's Hit-squad. All were perfectly plausibly human until the revelation, one even went through an "Am I a Cylon?" existential crisis and was told by an existing Cylon that he wasn't! But after the revelation, things still fit with them being Cylons. Though there are a few niggling plot details on how one managed to infiltrate colonial society for so long, the series kept its word that "anyone can be a Cylon". At this point, with one last Cylon left to reveal, the only people we ''know'' aren't Cylons are Helo {{spoiler|and Cally}} (have a [[Half-Human Hybrid]] child with a Cylon), Roslin (flat out told by the only one who knows she's not), and Apollo (can at most be a half Cylon).

** And now with the final Cylon revealed as {{spoiler|Ellen Tigh}}, the niggling details are explained. {{spoiler|Cavil, the first humanoid Cylon they built, killed them, blocked their memories and placed them on the Colonies to witness the coming genocide.}} The "oldest" among them has been explained in official statements as {{spoiler|not having served in the first Cylon war, Saul just ''thinks'' he did, a service record was probably forged by Cavil.}}

** This was done frequently in earlier seasons, too, and tied into Toby's general paranoia about counting unhatched electoral chickens. During the blowout midterm election he reveals that he has prepared a concession speech just in case. And there's a dark echo in the beginning of season 5, after {{spoiler|Zoey Bartlett is kidnapped}}. Toby is seen preparing two sets of remarks - one for use if {{spoiler|Zoey}} comes back alive and well, one for ... otherwise.

* A campaign example for the [[Tabletop Games|Tabletop Game]] ''[[Pokémon|Poké]][[Cosmic Horror|thulhu]]'' involves the players "choosing between four houses for shelter". The book explicitly says that no matter which house the party chooses, it will be the one which contains the plot devices.

* Included as an explicit character creation option in the [[Tabletop RPG]] ''FATE''. When using this option, players start play with an essentially "blank" character sheet, and fill in skills as the play progresses. For example, if a character is stuck behind a locked door, the player can declare that his character has the lockpicking skill and fill it in in one of his skill slots.

** PDQ2 rules game ''Vox'' has a starting scenario to run character creation similar to a FATE game, where you choose what you can do as you need to do it until all your abilities are set.

* A musical based on ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' stops the action at the point where [[Charles Dickens]]' death left the novel unfinished and then uses audience votes to determine the villain, lovers and true identity of Dick Datchery.

* Some computer games (especially [[Interactive Fiction]], given that it is just one step away from a table-top RPG) can do this. For example, in the ''[[Homestar Runner|Peasant's Quest]]'' game, at one point, there are four bushes with a trinket hidden in one of them. No matter what order you go to the bushes, the trinket is ''always'' in the fourth bush you look in.

* Plenty of [[Interactive Fiction]] games use this to let the player configure his character.

* In ''[[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire|Pokemon Emerald]]'', in the post-game content, a TV reports on a flying Pokemon. Your character is asked what color the Pokemon is. The response you make your character give determines whether it's Latios (blue) or Latias (red).

* The idea is brought up in [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1944.html this] ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' strip. Fittingly enough, the characters are players in a [[Deep-Immersion Gaming]] RPG, and they actually mention Schrödinger.

** Not only does the trope appear in that particular strip, but also in the writing process behind the strip. In the earlier draft of the comic, David Morgan-Mar kept flip-flopping on whether the punchline should reference Heisenberg or Schrödinger. He decided on Heisenberg and wrote [[The Rant|a long note below the comic]], explaining Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle, before realizing that Schrödinger worked better as a punchline and changing it. He left the note below mostly unchanged, presumably as a record of the uncertainty in the writing process.

* Used in [https://web.archive.org/web/20140317080118/http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp10182011.shtml this] ''[[Something*Positive]]''.

* In [[The Spoony Experiment]]'s [[Let's Play]] of the FMV game ''Phantasmagoria2'', Spoony mocks how the game tries to get around this—that the protagonist Curtis could experience the various supernatural death threats in a different order—by having him seem newly surprised in each clip, as though every one was the first (which it could be, depending on what the player does). In the finale of the [[Let's Play]], {{spoiler|Spoony is trapped in a similar setting and actually gets '''more''' exaggeratedly shocked every time something supernatural happens}}.

* The Season Two premiere of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' is a veritable Schrodinger's ''machine gun''. The writers deliberately took all the fan speculation about how the cliffhanger at the end of the Season One finale would be resolved, and ''made it all true''. A partial list follows.

** {{spoiler|With Hank and Dean dead, the title would now refer to brothers Rusty and Jonas Junior -- as seen in the episode's opening credits.}}

* [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]] is a veritable font of minor Schrödinger's Guns (Schrodinger's Derringers if you will), with all manner of nods towards it's [[Periphery Demographic|unexpected older fanbase]]. The most obvious is Derpy Hooves, who was an animator's joke in the first episode, but started getting inserted into episodes after the creators noticed the internet had latched onto her, and has even had a (rather controversial) voiced appearance.

* Many of a stage magician's illusions rely on some form of this. [[The Other Wiki]] [[wikipedia:Equivocation (magic)|has more details]].

* Politicians facing elections usually have their victory ''and'' concession speeches prepared well in advance. Similarly, newspapers pre-write articles and obituaries. [[Hilarity Ensues]] if they jump the gun and [[Dewey Defeats Truman|publish a wrong article]].

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Creator Speak]]

[[Category:Tabletop Game Tropes]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/Schrodinger's Cat]]