Ostentatious Secret

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    "The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything."
    —Alfred Borden, The Prestige

    So you want to have a secret. You may not even be sure what the secret is. You are pretty sure, though, that you want everyone to know that there is a secret. That you have. That everyone else doesn't have. Because it is yours. And you have it.

    Sometimes ostentatious secrets are eventually revealed, and sometimes they stay that way forever. This can be just a Running Gag, or it can be source of dramatic tension as a MacGuffin. In fact, their primary use is as a MacGuffin, reserved for use in a B-Story, or possibly even a "C"-story, a narrative thread that is around just to build continuity.

    One problem is that secrets tend to build up to a Secret Critical Mass. After this point, the obsession of others to discover the secret far outweighs any potential dramatic payoff from The Reveal, and it requires some extremely deft Playing with a Trope to avoid an Anticlimax.

    The Ancient Tradition and the Ancient Conspiracy are often ostentatious secrets: their existence can be widely known, and membership may also be, though it's less common.

    Contrast the Open Secret and The Not-Secret, both where not only is the existence of the secret well-known, but everybody knows the secret itself.

    Examples of Ostentatious Secret include:

    Anime and Manga

    • In one Kindaichi Case Files story, a woman carries around a small box that she coos over and talks to, treating it like a child. Subverted when she reveals she's an undercover cop, and the box holds her gun. Doubly subverted when she reveals that the box only held the gun that one time, and that she still has her REAL box.

    Film

    • Borden's cryptic comment in the page quote alludes to his own secret: He is an identical twin. Not very impressive on its own. The trick he uses it for? The Transported Man, wherein he appears to be teleported instantly across the stage. The trick works so well because no one knows the secret. Not even one twin's wife or the other's lover.
    • The mysterious blue box in the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive, which has a matching blue key. It is shown to open once or twice, though the Mind Screw makes it hard to tell what if anything is going on.
    • Marsellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the contents of which are described as beautiful, are never known to the audience. Wild Mass Guessing ensues.
      • According to this article, it was originally just diamonds, but they decided that a Ostentatious Secret would be more interesting.

    Literature

    • A running question in Emma Lathen's novels about banker/amateur detective John Putnam Thatcher is what's in that tin box in his secretary's desk? Thatcher is too much the gentleman to peek when Miss Corsa is elsewhere, but that doesn't interfere with his attempts to deduce the solution.

    Video Games

    Live Action TV

    • The series Felicity used this with Felicity's witchy roommate Meghan, who made a big issue of no one having permission to look in her locked box. In this case the box was used as a running gag and its contents were never revealed, although there was a Something Completely Different episode styled after the Twilight Zone in which it was intimated that all the series regulars were actually trapped in a magical universe within the box.
    • Formed the focus of an episode of Dharma and Greg. Greg has a locked mystery box and Dharma is torn between her curiosity at wanting to know what's inside and her love for Greg, whose trust she doesn't want to betray. Greg realizes that the box is driving Dharma nuts, so he first gives Dharma the key, so she can decide for herself whether to invade his privacy. This drives Dharma even crazier, so Greg empties it and puts the stuff away in their apartment without telling Dharma what was in there. At the end of the episode, Dharma is sitting on the couch in their apartment and concludes that she is in the box! Very Zen. Or something.
    • Passions did it a bunch of times, but really milked it with TC's shed.

    Mythology

    • This is apparently one of Odin's powers. As Neil Gaiman put it in American Gods: "And I know an 18th charm & that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that nobody knows but you is the most powerful thing of all."
      • Also, whatever Odin whispered in his son Baldur's ear as he, Baldur, lay on his funeral pyre. Odin would use that secret to best Vafthrudnir in a Riddle Contest.

    Web Comics

    • In Order of the Stick, the unnamed and unidentified "monster in the darkness" is a living Ostentatious Secret. The main villain of the series keeps him shrouded in darkness, despite its constant objections. He is kept shrouded in order to keep him a secret before his final climactic confrontation with the heroes.
      • V's gender would qualify for this as well.

    Western Animation

    • SpongeBob SquarePants, "The Secret Box": SpongeBob tests his friendship with Patrick to the limits when he tries to learn the contents of Patrick's "secret box", and eventually resorts to sneaking into Pat's house in the dead of night. It turns out to be... a string. After SpongeBob leaves, it turns out that pulling the string opens a secret compartment, with an embarrassing photo of SpongeBob in it, specifically from the Christmas party (which is actually one of the guesses Spongebob made at the contents of the box)..
    • Robin's incredibly important stolen briefcase in Teen Titans is revealed to contain _____________.
    • A meta-example for Gargoyles is whatever Titania whispers to Fox at the end of "The Gathering." Creator Greg Weisman has said that he wants to keep it secret in case he ever gets to make the series again and use it, but admits that it's not as great as people are probably hoping.

    Web Original

    • Survival of the Fittest character Alice Jones has her backpack as an Ostentatious Secret. What's inside? The severed head of Guy Rapide, her almost-boyfriend. Not so much her wanting everybody to know about it than it being extremely obvious that she's keeping something in her pack.

    'Boxer' Carvalho (uneasily): What's in there?
    Alice Jones: *smiles* ...It's a secret.

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