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So you've got this mystery, such as the identity of the villain. There are a bunch of theories. Then The Reveal. Wait, who's that? You have just met the Stranger Behind The Mask, where The Reveal proves to be something or someone we've never heard of before, and had no way of expecting. This can often result in an Anticlimax, and is almost always a Shocking Swerve. Both Ronald Knox and S.S. Van Dine attempted to create rules for Detective Fiction, one of which was created in order to either prevent or avert this trope from occurring. Knox, indeed, made it his first commandment: "The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story..."

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  • Stranger Behind the Mask
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  • So you've got this mystery, such as the identity of the villain. There are a bunch of theories. Then The Reveal. Wait, who's that? You have just met the Stranger Behind The Mask, where The Reveal proves to be something or someone we've never heard of before, and had no way of expecting. This can often result in an Anticlimax, and is almost always a Shocking Swerve. Both Ronald Knox and S.S. Van Dine attempted to create rules for Detective Fiction, one of which was created in order to either prevent or avert this trope from occurring. Knox, indeed, made it his first commandment: "The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story..."
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abstract
  • So you've got this mystery, such as the identity of the villain. There are a bunch of theories. Then The Reveal. Wait, who's that? You have just met the Stranger Behind The Mask, where The Reveal proves to be something or someone we've never heard of before, and had no way of expecting. This can often result in an Anticlimax, and is almost always a Shocking Swerve. Both Ronald Knox and S.S. Van Dine attempted to create rules for Detective Fiction, one of which was created in order to either prevent or avert this trope from occurring. Knox, indeed, made it his first commandment: "The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story..." Typically a Writer Cop Out. If what is revealed also isn't particularly consistent with the story, it's an Ass Pull. Compare with Deus Ex Machina, where the unpredictable event is a solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem, and with The Dog Was the Mastermind, where it is revealed that it was a minor character that nobody would have suspected, but had been previously introduced. Often relies on Contrived Coincidence to keep the audience interested. Though often seen as unsatisfying, this is often a case of Truth in Television. When Played With, this can turn from Bad Writing into a very skillful twisting of the story. By the nature of this trope, all examples will inherently be mild spoilers. Examples:
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