Have You Told Anyone Else?: Difference between revisions

* A slight variation in ''[[Anansi Boys]]''. Spider, filling in at work for his brother Fat Charlie, pokes around and discovers some odd accounts in offshore banks. He innocently mentions it to Fat Charlie's boss and suggests that it might be rather inefficient (his life up until this point has done little to prepare him for the idea that other people might be in any way deceitful). Said boss does not ask who else knows; he merely thanks Spider, who he thinks is actually Fat Charlie, and quietly rearranges things to make it appear that it was Fat Charlie who was running the money-laundering scheme. Unfortunately, his policy of not keeping on employees for much longer than a year (the better to hide his crime) bites him in the ass; Fat Charlie has been employed there longer than anyone, but a client attempting to collect on an account knows full well that the boss has been doing this for far longer than Fat Charlie's two years. This isn't even the worst of the trouble Spider causes Fat Charlie.

* Subverted in ''[[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire|Harry Potter]]'', when an old Muggle caretaker named Frank inadvertently stumbles upon a strange person who was previously discussing various murders. Frank, when confronted, pretends that he has a wife at home who knows where he went and who will call the police if he does not come home. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, double subverted in that the strange murderer is Voldemort, who has no problem telling that it is a lie.}}

* [[The Chessmaster]] in the last ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' book pulls this off; it helps that the victim is a complete ''idiot'' about it. "I need to ''urgently'' tell the governor about the mole I placed in the terrorist organization, even though nothing's happening right now. This is on a strictly need-to-know basis, so don't tell anyone. Why no, no I ''haven't'' told anyone else. Leave a message? Sure! Here's the datachip with all the information, as well as the codes to decrypt it." (To be fair about this, the bad guy in question is {{spoiler|the governor's immediate deputy}}, and in fact the victim reports directly to him. Lack of suspicion is unsurprising.)

* Deeba falls for this in [[Un Lun Dun]].