: What's the term used to describe a twist which is badly written because the twist is based on information not yet available to audience? Context: In my question How did Olaf know?, I asked

@Reiling826

Posted in: #DeusExMachina #Fiction #Plot #Terminology #Tropes

Context: In my question How did Olaf know?, I asked about a twist in the TV series A Series of Unfortunate Events, adapted from a book series of the same name.
My understanding: Twists, whether good (for protagonist/s) ones like deus ex machina or bad (for protagonist/s) ones, are bad (in writing) if they could not have been seen as plausible with prior information (In case relevant, do not assume the converse is true). Examples would be twists that involve violation's of Knox's 10 Commandments or twists that are 'insulting to the reader' from the Family Guy episode 'Three Kings', based on Stephen King's works.*

(*) Here, Stewie presents examples of twists that are bad (in writing) and good (for protagonist/s).

Stewie: No, no, no! This won't do, Paul. You can't just have Snuggly Jeff magically brought back to life by a child's wish. It's insulting to the reader!
Paul: What do you mean?
Stewie: Well, it's just bad story telling. Let's see ... How can I explain this to you? Did you ever see the movie Contact?
Paul: Yeah.
Stewie: So, like, they spent a trillion dollars building this mile high space machine and Jake Busey blows it up. So, now they're all like: "Oh, no. We can't use the space machine,” but then this other guy's like: "Hey, it just so happens, I built another identical trillion dollar space machine at my own expense, on the other side of the world." And we're supposed to believe no one noticed that? Well, I stood up in the theatre and I said: "No! You can't go into space because the machine already got blown up by Jake Cock-a-Doody Busey!" [throws papers in trash] Start over

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@Moriarity138

@Moriarity138

I call this a "reverse Chekov's Gun violation".

The playwright Anton Chekov is often quoted as saying:


If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.


The maxim is called "Checkov's gun". When a story has an element introduced early on that never becomes important later, I call that a "Chekov's Gun violation".

If a story has an element that is very important at the end and that element was not introduced earlier, I call it a "reverse Chekov's Gun violation".

As far as I know, I'm the only person who uses those phrases in that way, so perhaps this answer doesn't help you. But I strongly think these are good phrases to use for the situations in which I use them, so maybe this answer will be useful to others.

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