Have You Told Anyone Else?: Difference between revisions

* Ursula pulls a textbook example in ''Nexus'', as shown [https://web.archive.org/web/20100625154330/http://www.majorspoilers.com/archives/42155.htm/ here].

* From [[Ex Machina]] [[Grand Finale|#50]]: {{spoiler|[[Parental Substitute|Kremlin]], drunk and holding a gun to his own head, threatens to expose the fact that Hundred [[Utopia Justifies the Means|used his powers to get elected as Mayor of New York]], thus killing his Presidential campaign. At first, Hundred tries to get him to put the gun down, then asks if he's shown the evidence to anyone. When Kremlin reveals he hasn't, Mitchell [[Moral Event Horizon|tells the gun to fire.]] }}

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[The Bourne Series (film)|The Bourne Supremacy]]'' when {{spoiler|Danny Zorn (Abbott's assistant) reveals to Abbott that he realizes the crime scene is a sham, and gets a dagger in the ribs for it.}}

* Very well justified to shocking effect in ''[[L.A. Confidential]]'' when Detective Jack Vincennes, while investigating a suspicious murder in co-operation with Detective Ed Exley, finds evidence of corruption within the police department. He can't tell other cops because of the corruption and so he goes to someone he has know for a while and can trust to be out of it {{spoiler|it is the Chief after all}}. Then they ask the question in a way that assumes that he has already told someone so both he and the audience isn't alarmed when casually asked "What does Exley make of all this?"

* In the 1987 thriller ''[[No Way Out]]'', a technician that the protagonist took into his confidence in an attempt to delay the [[Big Bad]]'s plan has an attack of conscience and tells... the [[Big Bad]], after which this trope is played out verbatim.

* In ''[[The Island]]'', Gandu Three Echo tells Dr. Merrick he suspects there's something wrong with the place and heard some rumours. Dr. Merrick asks "Have you told anyone else about this?". After the predictable answer, Dr. Merrick wraps up the conversation and kills Gandu.

 

== Literature ==

* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Warhammer 40,000]] [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''Legion'', when Bronzi discovers a Chaos-tainted soldiers, he reports it, is asked who knows, and is warned that they need to keep it close to the chest. {{spoiler|In this case, telling them that others know ensures that they get massacred, too.}}

* In Frederick Forsyth's novel ''[[The Day of the Jackal]]'', the forger providing the Jackal's false papers tries to blackmail him, fatally assuming the assassin is merely an upper class dilettante dabbling in the drug trade. The Jackal skillfully asks a number of questions (disguised as an attempt to wriggle out of the situation, or ensure that he won't have to pay another bribe to an associate) which establish that the forger hasn't given his photographs to anyone else and that no-one will come to this location and find his body for some time.

* [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]'s ''[[Narnia|The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe]]'': When Edmund, under the influence of [[Evil Tastes Good|evil Turkish Delight]], tells the White Witch his sister has also been to Narnia and met a faun, she quickly asks him who else knows about this, but he's in no condition, and for that matter has no ''reason'', at this point to be suspicious.

* In [[James Swallow]]'s [[Warhammer 40,000]] novel ''[[Blood Angels|Deus Encarmine]]'', Inquistor Stele asks an astropath whether he has told anyone else about a message. When it countermands his orders, he tells the astropath that he had not come to give a message but to kill him, and murders him.

* In [[Vernor Vinge]]'s ''[[Zones of Thought|A Fire Upon the Deep]]'', Scriber, a somewhat flaky inventor and self-proclaimed spy, comes up with a method of locating enemy spies in Woodcarver's city. He tells it to spymaster Vendacious, not realizing he's a double-agent and that Scriber's method would expose him. Vendacious congratulates Scriber and asks who else knows about this because "we'll need to swear them to secrecy also". Needless to say, after Scriber's earnest assurance that no-one else knows, death follows rapidly.

* Subverted in ''[[Low Fantasy|Joris of the Rock]]'' by Leslie Barringer: when young page Juhel overhears several nobles plotting treason, he tells Count Raoul of Ger. The count asks Juhel, "Have you spoken of this to anyone else?" ... and then swears him to secrecy. Raoul is basically the [[Big Good]] of this story, and uses his new knowledge of the scheme to defeat it. He only made Juhel keep silent so no one would think to eliminate the boy.

 

* Averted in ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]''. Gaeta notices there's something wrong with the presidential votes and tells Saul, ''the man running the scheme''. (Not the man who thought of the idea, but still.) Fortunately, that man is not a villain, so when Gaeta suspects something's off, he freely tells Admiral Adama and the whole thing is solved.

* On ''[[Charmed]]'', Cole, in his role as a [[Big Bad]], asks this of one of his [[Mooks]] who reported some information to Cole that was incriminating to Cole's reputation. When the mook answers no, Cole [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|vanquishes him to keep him from telling anyone else.]]

* A [[Monster of the Week|Villian of The Week]] attempts to invoke this with Sam on ''[[Burn Notice]]''. Sam, [[Genre Savvy]] as he is, and posing as an undercover dirty cop, immediately says that his "supervisior" knows that Sam is interviewing him. Should something happen to Sam, then the supervisor knows who to come looking for. Nice save, Sam.

* Played with in the ''[[Due South]]'' episode, "A Hawk and a Handsaw". Fraser is undercover as a patient in a mental hospital and comes across evidence that the staff are illegally testing an anti-depressant that causes some of the subjects to commit suicide. When his partner, Ray, visits him, they're led to an empty room where they then begin to exchange all the information they've discovered before Fraser clicks in and asks Ray who he told regarding his whereabouts leading to this response, "Nobody, why? [he is grabbed by a thug with a gun] I misunderstood the question, I told everybody I know! I told the State's Attorney, I told the Sheriff, I even told my mother!" Different in that it's not the villain who asks this but one of the good guys realizing they're being spied on.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Subverted in ''[[Sovisa]]''. Aleksei reports to his captain about a strange signal that was sent from their ship. When the captain asks if he's told the rest of the crew yet, [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|Aleksei simply shoots him point blank in the chest]] and [[Thrown Out the Airlock|ejects his body out an airlock]].

 

* Daniel Tosh has this act on his CD "True Stories I Made Up":

{{quote|"My biggest fear is that my neighbor will knock on my door: 'Daniel, get out here! I just won the lottery! I'm out of here for good!' '...Have you told anybody yet?' 'No, you're the first one!' ...I don't know if you can cremate someone in a gas fireplace, but I'll find out. Feet first, I reckon."}}

 

== Video Games ==

* In the first [[Rainbow Six]] game, this happened to a medical expert you already rescued once. When she realizes the origins of the virus a [[Animal Wrongs Group|terrorist group]] plans to release, she calls one of your other advisors, who asked her this. After she says no, several terrorists come knocking on her doorstep.

* At the end of chapter 6 in [[Super Paper Mario]], Dimentio appears before Mr. L (a [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] Luigi) and asks him how his fight against the heroes went (knowing full well he lost). When Luigi tells him, he basically says "So the Count doesn't know what happened to you?" and blows him up.

 

== Web Original ==

* Played straight [http://qntm.org/socks this] [[Things of Interest]] fiction, where the person being told the info is mind-controlled by the evil aliens.

 

* In ''[[Kaspall]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20110305022858/http://kaspall.xepher.net/archive/pg284.html the only person they told was a trustworthy police sergeant]—in fact, trustworthy enough [[Genre Savvy|to call them idiots for not reporting it earlier]].

* In [[The Order of the Stick]] [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0830.html #830], {{spoiler|Tsukiko tells Redcloak that she's figured out that he's been deceiving Xykon; the ritual to 'control' the [[Eldritch Abomination|Snarl]] won't have the effect Xykon expects. Redcloak promptly order Tsukiko's undead thralls to sieze her (he'd used a 'command undead' ability on them when he'd entered the room) and orders them to devour her lifeforce, then eat her corpse. Then eat each other. Then commit suicide.}}

 

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[[Category:Stock Phrases]]

[[Category:Contrived Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:This Index Asked You a Question]]