Spoil At Your Own Risk: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

Contrast [[Late Arrival Spoiler]].

{{examples}}

 

* Tyler Nelson was an extra and trained dancer who was intended to appear in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]''. When he blabbed spoilers about the movie, not only did he violate his nondisclosure agreement (and was thus sued), but the scenes he was a dancer in were cut from the movie.

* ''[[Psycho]]'' implored the viewer not to release the shocking secret to friends after seeing the movie. Given that [[It Was His Sled]], it didn't work, though it was really [[Popcultural Osmosis|inevitable]]. Unless that was his plan all along. In fact, Alfred Hitchcock ''actually ordered movie theaters not to let anyone into the theater once the movie started.''

* When ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]'' was being filmed, George Lucas went so far as to ''change the line in the script'', dubbing it over in post-production, so that no one but he, James Earl Jones, Mark Hamill (who needed to [[Enforced Method Acting|react properly]]) and a ''very'' select group of the production crew would know [[Luke, I Am Your Father|Vader's relation to Luke]] before the premiere. Of course, that was then, [[It Was His Sled|and this is now]].

{{quote|"No, Obi-Wan killed your father."}}

*** It's clear that David Prowse was horrible at keeping secrets, as he discussed a spoiler about Vader's relationship to Luke when he was interviewed by a small California news paper.

** Something similar happened when ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'' was in pre-production. [[What Could Have Been|Lucas offered the role of teenage Anakin to Leonardo DiCaprio]], who gave it away in an interview. As a result he was kicked out and Hayden Christensen got the role instead.

* After the mass leaks of character design sheets, script drafts, and more from the first live-action ''[[Transformers]]'' [[Transformers Film Series|movie]], some die-hard fans went as far as to hack Michael Bay's computer during filming of ''Revenge of the Fallen''. Bay then went out of his way to announce that those working on the movie would be intentionally releasing misinformation as "leaks" to throw out red herrings for the fanbase. Of course, some speculated that the misinformation campaign itself was an attempt to cast doubt upon said leaks.

 

 

* Most notably, the [[Harry Potter]] franchise, particularly for the last two books of the series, ''Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'', and ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows''. The company distributing the books has gone so far as to make every owner of bookstores that receive the books to sign non-disclosure agreements subjecting them to heavy fines and lawsuits if they dare speak a single word about the content of the books. Scholastic had once gone so far as to demand that readers who are accidentally sold a copy of the book not read it until the release date, though J.K. Rowling herself soon stepped in to say that those who purchased the books could read them, as long as they not spoil the contents of the book until the official release date. (Although how the prohibition would have been enforced anyway is a mystery.) Even as the editor typed these words, the authorities behind the DMCA were stalking their way through the internet, threatening site owners with legal action if their members post Harry Potter spoilers before the release date. [[Revealing Coverup|This may end up backfiring]], as the rush to clamp down after the posting of a few leaks of questionable authenticity raises suspicions about their authenticity not being so questionable after all. But then, even if they heard it first, who would have believed that The Deathly Hallows was Voldemort's sled from when he was a boy? {{spoiler|Not true, by the way, but it would have been funny.}}

* When an early, incomplete draft of the ''[[Twilight]]'' series novel ''Midnight Sun'' was leaked in 2008, the author was so frustrated by the experience that she discontinued work on it and put it on indefinite hold, famously saying that if she completed the book in her current state of mind, she'd have let the villains win.

 

 

* A good deal of reality shows do this, swearing all the participants to secrecy and - when it comes to dating reality shows - prevent the winning couple to show up together in public until the last episode airs.

* Comedy Central's ''[[Battlebots]]'' was filmed in front of a live studio audience, several months before the fights actually aired on television. Rumors abound of event staff actually going so far as to make each and every audience member sign non-disclosure agreements before attending the event, and administrators of ''Battlebots'' fan forums frequently deleted such spoilers if they were posted, with or without warnings. This is likely because all of the major fan forums were run by/heavily populated by Battlebots contestants, who thus had more of a vested interest in keeping the results of the competition close to their chest.

 

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

** Notably, when [[CM Punk]] delivered his incendiary post-show monologue in the summer of 2011 (in which he insulted the company and leveled several disparaging remarks at Vince Mcmahon and John Laurinitis), the taping which it occurred was one of two shows being shot that night (a week before Independence Day; WWE doesn't film on that date). Naturally, fans attending the event saw the entirety of two weeks worth of shows being filmed at once. As such, they also learned that, at the end of the second taping, Punk was rehired by the company. This led to a massive subversion of the trope when said fans leaked the information, and slammed WWE for attempting to play up the illusion that Punk had been fired (with the company "deleting" his official profile on their website and removing his social media presence).

 

 

 

* Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap, or Three Blind Mice, has a twist ending that they implore you to keep secret. Most productions of the play even bill themselves as "the longest-running secret in the history of theatre!", or variations to that effect. Most people actually obey.

** A joke among theatreland insiders tells of an American couple going to see The Mousetrap, tipping their cabbie poorly, and having "[[The Butler Did It]]!" yelled at their departing backs. Fear not if you are spoiler-averse: there is no butler character in the Mousetrap.

* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'':

** At [[Word of God|Jick]]'s request, a certain [[Easter Egg]] in a level 10 quest will never, ever appear on [[The Wiki Rule|the KoLwiki]]. Ever. There's a filter in the in-game chat to prevent it being spoiled there, and spoiling it in the forums will get the mods all up on your ass.

* This hit [[BioWare]] in full force in the months leading up to the release of ''[[Mass Effect 3]]''. An internal demo build of the game (comprising part of the intro mission, and a quest involving the rescue of a Krogan female) was inadvertently posted on [[Xbox]] Live then taken down a day later, and was promptly played, filmed, and uploaded to [[YouTube]] by hardcore fans. Then, even more incredibly, a group of users on the Russian Bioware Social Network cracked the internal code of the demo and found design documents that contained most (if not the entirety) of the game's plot, including morality decisions, surprise character appearances, benefits of having [[Old Save Bonus|saved games]] from the previous installments and a complete rundown of every squadmate, weapon, power and location visited. Bioware employees immediately went on the defensive (saying that the documents were from a pre-alpha version of the game), going so far as to send famed internet gaming board NeoGAF a cease-and-desist letter (courtesy of Microsoft) asking not to reveal the spoilers, and permabanning anyone who made any more than a passing mention of the leaked documents. Then, a few weeks later, the official demo release was once again cracked by fans, who discovered 20 minutes worth of Codex dialogue, the game's loading screens, and dialogue for the {{spoiler|Prothean}} secret character.

* Konami understandably didn't want reviewers of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'' revealing crucial plot spoilers in reviews before the game was released. They subsequently went as far as to prevent reviewers from "spoiling" the game's excessive mandatory install requirements and the length of its excessive cutscenes.