Secret Weapon: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
Because life just isn't as fun when you can see everything coming, there are several instances in fiction where the writers have chosen, for one reason or another, to give [[The Hero]] or the [[Big Bad]] an incredibly powerful, life-altering, plot-resolving super weapon (or super power), but not reveal what it is to the audience. They may only casually allude to it as "my secret weapon", they may pretend to "show" it but have it largely obscured by shadows or other objects in the way, or they may not even mention it at all [[Deus Ex Machina|until the pivotal moment]]. Regardless, this trope serves to create dramatic tension and keep the audience glued to their seats until [[The Reveal]].
Something of a [[Discredited Trope]], simply because it was overused to the point of nausea in the past, so it is more often [[Parodied Trope|Parodied]] or [[Played for Laughs]] in modern fiction. Also, while
This can occasionally overlap with [[Chekhov's Gun]]. For example, if it turns out that ballpoint pen the [[Big Bad]] is constantly twirling in his fingers is actually a world-ending nuclear device, both tropes would apply. If constructed poorly, this trope can also lead to [[Deus Ex Machina]].
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Command & Conquer]]'': Kane and the NOD ''love'' their secret weapons. Each game usually contains several, including invisible tanks, mole-machine APCs, cyborgs, and Tiberium-based WMDs. GDI usually isn't '''that''' big on the
** The [[Command & Conquer: Red Alert|Allies and Soviets]] try their hand at it, especially in the first Red Alert and expansions, though of course, just as with the Tiberian branch, the "not reveal what it is to the audience" aspect tends to be spoiled by it being literally [[All There in the Manual]] (just as the Ion Cannon and Nod's nuke were listed in the manual for Tiberian Dawn, so was the Chronosphere and the Iron Curtain device). Hilariously, if one ignores the manual, the clearest example in Red Alert is {{spoiler|the [[Trope Maker]] cited on the page image. The Soviet have developed ''nuclear weapons'', which is treated with more pre-reveal foreshadowing in the Allied campaign than both the Iron Curtain in the same campaign and the Chronosphere in the Soviet.}}
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