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That doesn't stop less-than-great writers from trying, however.
 
The [['''Shocking Swerve]]''' is a kind of twist made just to have a twist. There's little-to-no rhyme or reason involved, no [[Foreshadowing]], and no way that the viewer could have ever seen it coming. They just [[Ass Pull|pulled it out of nowhere]] due to a possibly misguided desire to "shock" the viewer. [[Character Derailment|Characters may be derailed]], [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|subplots may be ruined]], and generally everything that's occurred so far may be [[Retcon|thrown out the window]], just to pull off this twist.
 
Contrast [[The Untwist]], where the plot twist is ruined by making it so obvious that the audience confuses it for a [[Red Herring]]. See also [[Gambit Roulette]], [[Cruel Twist Ending]], [[Mandatory Twist Ending]] and [[Ass Pull]].
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** Similarly in Legacy, the reveal that {{spoiler|Darth Krayt is actually A'Sharad Hett}} came out of absolutely nowhere and was sure to confuse readers who are unfamiliar with the Clone Wars comics.
* [[Grant Morrison]]'s run on ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' finishes with the reveal that {{spoiler|the wise Eastern mentor character was actually Magneto, who then proceeds to go berserk and level Manhattan}}. This isn't this trope; it's a hell of a surprise, but when you go back and re-read Morrison's run, it becomes obvious that it was planned right from the start and makes sense, thus making that a good old fashioned plot twist. No, the Swerves came when Morrison left and Marvel went into "Oh my God, did we seriously just let him {{spoiler|kill off Magneto}}?!?!?" panic mode. {{spoiler|That wasn't Magneto, that was a guy pretending to be Magneto, and also he has a twin brother who's a good guy and has the exact same powers that Xorn never really actually had!}} No, wait, {{spoiler|neither Xorn existed, and neither did that Magneto, they were all just the Scarlet Witch fucking with reality!}} No, wait, {{spoiler|Xorn is somehow the conciousness of a bunch of disembodied mutant powers!}} [[Brian Michael Bendis]], who wrote that last swerve, actually apologized to the fans afterward, and nobody's touched the character since. For obvious reasons.
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic (Comic Book)|Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic]]'' actually manages to have a revelation that's simultaneously a [[Shocking Swerve]] ''and'' [[The Un-Reveal]]. While many readers had guessed that {{spoiler|[[Mad Scientist]] Demagol had switched places with [[Warrior Poet]] Rohlan Dyre (using the fact that as Mandalorians, both wear full body armor, to conceal the switch)}} as much as ''three years'' before it was explicitly revealed to have happened, ''no one'' predicted that {{spoiler|Demagol's true identity was Antos Wyrick, Jarael's childhood mentor and the father of her nemesis Chantique}}.
* There were more than a few Shocking Swerves in Spider-Man's ''[[The Clone Saga|Clone Saga]]''. One issue in particular ended with the discovery of what seemed to be the corpse of the original clone, indicating that it was neither Ben nor Peter and raising the mystery of what the double's origin really was. It turned out that the writers didn't have a clue, they just thought it was a cool twist.
** A similar situation was with the "death" of Peter and MJ's baby. The issue where that happened ended with an associate of Norman Osborn- the perpetrator of the entire Clone Saga and whose resurrection was a shocking swerve in and of itself- taking a mysterious "parcel" and heading off on a boat to parts unknown. Savy readers would have suspected that this would be the Parker's child, whose death was faked. Turns out this wasn't the case. Although later revealed to be just a cat, the creators revealed that there was never intention to have the Parker's child survive and they just planned on endlessly teasing the fans with this with no plans of resolving the issue.
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* The killer in ''[[High Tension]]'' turns out to be [[Psycho Lesbian|Marie's]] evil split personality, manifested as [[The Pig Pen|a filthy]] trucker. Watch the film with this information in mind and realize how little sense it really makes.
* Parodied in ''[[The Man With Two Brains]]''. The oft-mentioned Elevator Killer turns out to be none other than {{spoiler|Merv Griffin. The only foreshadowing leading to this is a scene where a character watches his talk show on TV.}}
* [[M. Night Shyamalan]]'s original use of a genuine, excellent twist ending in ''[[The Sixth Sense]]'' eventually spiraled into a total overreliance on the [[Shocking Swerve]] instead. ''[[Unbreakable]]'' isn't bad, but then it just went to hell. {{spoiler|[[Signs|The aliens are real, but they're vulnerable to water and the main character's wife had psychic visions or something before she died!]]}} {{spoiler|[[The Village|It's not really in the past, they just pretend that it is!]]}} {{spoiler|[[The Happening|Plants have gone homicidal for no reason! Also, plants have the ability to kill people now! With, ummm... spores! Shut up!]]}}
** The sharp nose-dive in Shyamalan's skill as a writer is most likely because he nicked ''[[The Sixth Sense]]'''s big twist from an old episode of ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]''
** In addition, ''The Village'' is just a rip-off of "Running Out of Time" by Margaret Peterson Haddix and yet Shyamalan managed to ruin Haddix's legitimate twist by turning it into a Shocking Swerve.
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* David Weber's ''[[Out of the Dark]]'' ends a fairly typical alien invasion story, {{spoiler|''that humanity was already winning'', with ''VAMPIRES'' coming out of the woodwork to save humanity in a totally unnecessary [[Deus Ex Machina]]}}.
* ''[[Illuminatus]]'', being a [[Mind Screw]] of the first degree, throws out any number of shocking swerves, among the most shocking the revelations that {{spoiler|the three main female characters are all the same Tantrically-enhanced individual}} and that {{spoiler|Hagbard Celine is one of the Illuminati Primi, and the entire story was a [[Scheme]] on his part to eliminate the most negatively aligned [[Ancient Conspiracy]] groups claiming the name "Illuminati", in which he had joined to either alter or destroy it from the inside. And he's actually a member of an even more esoteric group that used to be called Illuminati, but switched its name due to the copy-cats into A∴A∴, which is ''not'' Argentum Astrum despite using Thelemic passwords.}}
* A lot of [[Jodi Picoult]] novels have sudden plot twists, many of which count as [[Shocking Swerve|Shocking Swerves]], but particularly notable is ''My Sister's Keeper''; Anna spends most of the book fighting for the right to not give her kidney to her terminally ill sister after spending her life thus far as a walking donation bank. Near the end, after winning the court case, {{spoiler|she's suddenly rendered brain-dead in a car accident. After some mourning, her parents turn off the life support and her sister gets the kidney anyway, thus rendering the entire lawsuit pointless.}} It ruined the entire BOOK for more than a few readers.
** Another example is the ending of ''[[Handle with Care]]'': Picoult spends the whole novel setting up for {{spoiler|Charlotte's losing her lawsuit}}. This makes the final verdict shocking, but not in the way Picoult intended. {{spoiler|Then, in the very last chapter, Charlotte's daughter Willow (the whole reason for the lawsuit) drowns, again rendering the entire lawsuit (and arguably the ''entire plot'') pointless.}} Picoult seems to have a thing for that ending.
* The ending of John Grisham's ''The Partner'' comes right out of the blue. After the main character's conspirator goes through all the effort to find and rescue him, {{spoiler|she steals the money and disappears.}} She could have done that any time.
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** This was the second time that happened to the character, as the two-parter 'In Purgatory's Shadow'/'By Inferno's Light' revealed that {{spoiler|Bashir}} had been replaced by a changeling several episodes before. The actor didn't learn until he got the script for the two-parter.
* In the ''[[Skins]]'' series four finale, {{spoiler|Effy's therapist, who had been introduced in the same episode, beat Freddie to death with a baseball bat.}}
* Depending on the viewer, many twists, including several Cylon identity revelations in the later episodes of the re-imagined [[Battlestar Galactica]] series may fall under this trope. Naturally, one viewer's [[Shocking Swerve]] may be another one's [[Wham! Episode]].
{{quote|From [[Robot Chicken]]
Seth Green: "Wow! Ron Moore! Creator of Battlestar Galactica. How about letting us come aboard and help you with your whip-smart plots?"
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== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* The [[Trope Namer]] is former [[WCW]], [[WWE|WWF]] and [[TNA]] writer [[Vince Russo]], who loved to put these into his shows. He also loved to use wrestling insider lingo (in this case, "swerve" meaning "plot twist") in his shows. When this combined with WCW play-by-play commentator Tony Schiavone's irrational exuberance, it resulted in Tony often declaring, "[[Its the Best Trope Ever|This is the most shocking swerve ever]]!", thus resulting in a whole mess of "most shocking swerves". Russo's most notorious "shocking swerve" was making actor David Arquette (yes, the deputy from the ''[[Scream (film)|Scream]]'' movies) the [[WCW]] World Heavyweight Champion after pinning Eric Bischoff in a match where the previous champion was Arquette's ''team-mate''.<ref>The match was DDP (Champion) & Arquette versus Jeff Jarrett & Bischoff, with a stipulation that whoever scored the pinfall would win the championship. Without making any kind of [[Face Heel Turn]], Arquette innocently pinned Bischoff and won the title ''from his own team-mate''</ref>. The Internet Wrestling Community have near-collectively decided that the [[Shocking Swerve]] is in fact more shocking when it doesn't happen. There are a number of recappers out there who can [[Cliché Storm|predict down to individual promos as to when the shockers happen]].
* Probably the most infamous [[Shocking Swerve]] in the [[WWE]] was the "Higher Power" twist. To make a ''very'' long story short: it was 1999, and [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] [[Vince McMahon]] had made a [[Heel Face Turn]]. His [[Evil Prince|son Shane]] had seized control of Vince's stable - "[[The Corporation]]" - and merged it with [[The Undertaker]]'s pseudo-satanic stable "The [[Ministry of Darkness]]" to form the super-stable "The Corporate Ministry", which was slowly taking over Vince's company. This forced Vince to [[Enemy Mine|make peace with all the people he had pissed off over the last year]], most notably his arch-nemesis [[Stone Cold Steve Austin]]. A couple of months into the feud, [[The Undertaker]] began to hint at a "[[The Man Behind the Man|Higher Power]]" which he secretly served. Rumors and [[Wild Mass Guessing]] flew all over the place. Eventually, [[The Undertaker]] brought the [[Black Cloak|black-cloaked]] Higher Power to the ring, who revealed himself to be... [[Hijacked by Ganon|Vince McMahon]]! His stated reason for going through with this impossibly-contrived [[Gambit Roulette]]? To ''[[For the Evulz|piss off Stone Cold Steve Austin]]''. In fairness to the bookers: this was actually [[Time for Plan B|Plan B]]. The Higher Power was supposed to be [[Mick Foley]], which would have made total sense and given us a good feud, but Foley didn't want to make a [[Face Heel Turn|heel turn]] without any buildup to it, and also felt that he was too physically broken down at this point to do a feud with Austin justice.
* According to ''[[The Death of WCW]]'', the "ultimate swerve" was received by WCW itself: just when things were looking bright again, with former executive Eric Bischoff in line to buy the company and ratings starting to creep back upward, suddenly all its programming was canceled (by order of Jamie Kellner, an AOL Time Warner exec who had never been involved in the wrestling business in any way shape or form) and it was forced out of business. [[Robot Chicken|What a twist!]]
* Most TNA [[Face Heel Turn|Face Heel Turns]]s have absolutely no foreshadowing, and while they're shocking, they don't make any sense, and just piss people off most of the time.
** The [[Jeff Hardy]] heel turn is already the most notorious of these swerves.
** The [[Samoa Joe]] heel turn was godawful, he layed down in the 2009 King of the Mountain match at the last second for no reason. Despite the fact that he had been going after the Main Event Mafia for months, had fought like crazy up to that point, and was probably seconds away from becoming '''World Heavyweight Champion''', it was all supposed to be a ruse. [[Sarcasm Mode|That sure makes sense.]]
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''Braid''. It's the story of {{spoiler|growing up, love found, love lost and... detonating the atomic bomb}}? Really now.
* ''[[Star Ocean 3]]'' has a particularly infamous example. It turns out that the entire 'verse is {{spoiler|''a video game'' being played by extra-dimensional beings. Your characters discover this by jumping through a portal into "4D Space" and coming out of a high-tech television screen.}} Not only was this a [[Shocking Swerve]] for the game, it was a ''retroactive'' [[Shocking Swerve]] for [[Star Ocean 1]] and ''[[Star Ocean the Second Story]]'' as well, and the fans did ''not'' like it. This was partially retconned by [[Star Ocean 4]]'s invoking of [[Alternate Universe|Alternate Universes]]s, leaving an out for fans who hated the twist without completely retconning it for those who didn't.
* The truth behind Liquid Snake's possession of Revolver Ocelot in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' is, to say the least, the only plot point in the series that succeeded in pissing off some fans of the series. Basically, it turns out at the end that {{spoiler|you were never fighting Liquid and that Ocelot was using a combination of drugs, nanomachines, and hypnotherapy to make himself think he was Liquid for his most complex [[Gambit Roulette]] to date. However, this not only cheapens Liquid's character, but effectively and retroactively turns the ''final boss fight'' into a big pile of... [[Buffy-Speak|meaninglessness]]... by destroying all the previous epicness it portrayed, turning it into something completely impersonal and rendering the victory hollow.}} Knowing [[Trolling Creator|Kojima,]] this was probably [[They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste|completely intentional]], but still, annoying.
** It's also a [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|waste]] of what could have been pure [[Fridge Brilliance]], in that actual possession would've made much more sense. Why? Ocelot is ''' {{spoiler|the Sorrow's son, a famous (and genuine) telepath!}}''' It stretches suspension of disbelief much less to think that Ocelot inherited some of his {{spoiler|father's}} ability and that it unintentionally left Liquid take control.
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* ''[[Xenogears]]'' has this in paced orders-of-magnitude; two nations are at war and level Fei's hometown, but {{spoiler|those are being manipulated by humans living on a floating city Solaris in order to}} dig up and test technology {{spoiler|from an ancient, destroyed civilization.}} Then it leaps up again with {{spoiler|Fei and Elly continually reincarnating}} in an attempt to {{spoiler|free [[God]] from a physical prison and destroy the wicked [[Gnosticism|Demiurge]] who created humankind as organic components to repair his physical form.}} Whew!
** And there's more than that, those are just the main ones.
* It's a staple for the ''Mega Man'' series to have a [[Big Bad]] that would have to be behind ''everything'' in the game they appeared in. So, ''[[Mega Man X]]'' delivered a [[Shocking Swerve]] the fans ''weren't'' expecting: {{spoiler|Sigma is ''not'' the [[Big Bad]] of ''X8'', and instead he's just an [[Unwitting Pawn]].}}
* [[Bubble Bobble]]: According to [[The Law of Conservation of Detail|what little information we are told]], two bubble dragons have to rescue their human girlfriends. Turns out that those two bubble dragons are humans themselves and yet, {{spoiler|in the True Ending, out of the [[Final Boss]] come the two protagonists' parents.}}
* {{spoiler|Akane's}} ending in [[Suika]] is just ''disturbing'' and comes out of nowhere. {{spoiler|She apparently stabs Yoshikazu to death and hypnotizes his girlfriend into thinking that she (Akane) is him.}}
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{{quote|'''Travis:''' What the hell? That's the craziest shit I've ever heard! Why would you bring up something like that {{spoiler|at the very last minute of the game}}?
'''Henry:''' [[Lampshade Hanging|I would have thought you and the player would have at least expected a twist of fate of some kind.]] }}
* ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' has an example that quickly became infamous: {{spoiler|The Citadel houses an incomprehensibly ancient AI that created the Reapers to save organic civilization from the synthetic war they would 'inevitably' bring upon themselves. Shepard either controls, destroys, or pacifies the Reapers with the Crucible, which results in the destruction of the mass relays and a ''lot'' of [[Inferred Holocaust|Inferred Holocausts]]s.}}.
 
 
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** And in a later arc, a mage uses a {{spoiler|[[A Wizard Did It|magical truth spell that]] [[Hypno Fool|people can't help but reply to]] to try and ruin their relationship}}, wherein {{spoiler|Maytag admits to infidelity and Bernadette admits to being relieved to hear it}}.
* In ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'', the "Me" character announced he was going to permanently kill off a popular major character. {{spoiler|The death was him. [[Prophecy Twist|It may also have possibly been Gwen Stacey from Spider Man]].}}
* [http://mortifer.smackjeeves.com Mortifer], has [[Wham! Episode]] as its staple trope, and it usually does a good job of having [[The Reveal]] make perfect sense in retrospect (through copious use of [[Chekhov's Gun]] and [[Foreshadowing]]). However, there is one twist that's notable for coming right out of nowhere -- Namelynowhere—Namely, [[The Reveal]] in chapter 29 that {{spoiler|Zebidiah is a demon, forced to serve Vlad against his will}}.
* [[Platypus Comix]]'s ''[[Keiki]]'' comic "Beefer Madness" started out with Beefer getting placed in an afterschool support group and meeting strange kids, such as a girl named Darcy who had a strong obsession with [[DC Comics]]. As the cartoonist continued the story, he realized [[All Hallow's Eve|Halloween]] was approaching, but he didn't have time to start a new, supernatural story. As a result, he decided to throw in some dramatic revelations about Darcy being a {{spoiler|vampire}} and the support leader being a {{spoiler|vampire hunter}}.
 
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* [[Mega 64]] has what may be one of the biggest example. The episode "What the Hell Happened to Mega64?" starts with one of Dr. Poque's college friends coming to see him. In the first five minutes they're taken hostage by a mafia and the friend is killed, complete with blood splattering. The rest of the episode has Rocko, Derek and Shawn trying to rescue him. The episode ends with {{spoiler|them learning the friend was the head of the Mafia. It's never really explained why he wants to kill Dr. Poque, why the Mafia were selling plush parrots, or how the friend is even alive. It gets even weirder when the friend is shot in the back by a guy wearing a sombrero, who then warps out.}} The creators said that it was a twist for the sake of a twist, and even the characters question it.
** Not to mention the ''[[Super Mario Brothers]]'' episode in which {{spoiler|'''Shigeru Miyamoto himself'''}} shows up in the video out of nowhere.
*** That's not a [[Shocking Swerve]] if you remember that the episode premiered during the 2007 Game Developers' Conference {{spoiler|where Miyamoto was the keynote speaker.}}
** They pulled off a similar, but bigger one in their ''[[The Beatles Rock Band]]'' episode, where they run into {{spoiler|Gabe Newell. Who admits he has nothing to do with The Beatles}}.
* [[How to Write Badly Well]]: [http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/2010/01/end-with-twist-no-reader-could.html End with a twist no reader could have reasonably foreseen]
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Home Page/YMMV]]
[[Category:Professional Wrestling]]
[[Category:Bad Writing Index]]
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