Recurring Tropes

This page is currently being edited. Please consider helping the users to complete the page and fill in the missing pieces if you are able.

All authors, including Gosho, have certain styles and tropes they recycle in their writing.

Mystery Related Tropes

Foreknowledge of Gosho's preferred tropes and method of building mysteries gives a reader a significant advantage is solving them.

General

Lack of recurring character death

No recurring character, that is one who has appeared in person alive for more than one case, has been killed as of chapter 925. Any recurring characters who have died did so in their first case and reappeared in flashblacks, were stated to be dead from the outset, or faked their death.

Lack of information sharing

There have been many situations where allied characters know information that would be extremely helpful to the others and would prevent unfortunate situations, but the characters keep it to themselves. This often catches many readers unfamiliar with Gosho's style off guard because they assume that the intelligent characters would exercise common sense and try to work together effectively. One of Gosho's favorite ways of creating conflict and crisis is by having characters withhold crucial information from the one who needs it which then leads to a negative consequence. Pragmatically, it means that the reader cannot assume one character has told his teammates about a major event or obvious threat unless explicitly told they shared information. Similarly, the reader cannot expect characters to become more open to sharing even after experiencing a negative consequence. This applies mostly to arc mysteries, but occasionally appears when there are two or more detectives working on a single case.

• Conan and Shuichi Akai are especially reticent about Black Organization-related events. It is extremely common for them not to share suspicions or sightings with each other or anyone else.

• Conan failed to mention suspicions about Vermouth to Haibara and Agasa which left them exposed to her and the FBI's machinations. He also failed to notify Haibara about Okiya or Bourbon.
• Akai didn't tell Conan he witnessed someone impersonating him at Teito bank and that he was tailing the FBI agents out of concern until Conan discovered it for himself. Similarly, Akai didn't notify Conan that Masumi Sera is his sister after he found out she had become involved in various events. He also didn't notify Conan about his suspicions that Bourbon was a member of the Secret Police.

• The Black Organization often fails to share information among its ranks. Sometimes the information sharing that takes place seems especially arbitrary.

• For a long time, Bourbon wasn't allowed access to the recording of Akai's death even though the boss had approved of a mission where he was to investigate whether Akai was truly dead.

Regular Mystery

Most regular cases (with the first cases being much more variable) are 3-6 chapters long, with the last chapter dedicated to the solution.

Murder motives are usually personal

The vast majority of murder motives are usually personal (e.g. a grudge) or to silence a witness. That said, there have been isolated incidences of accidents, would-be-spree murderers, and attempted professional assassination.

Arc Mystery

An arc mystery usually takes the form of identifying the true allegiances of various mysterious characters that appear over the course of 100-300 chapters. So far they have all started with the introduction of a codenamed Black Organization agent and ended with a clash related to that agent where various allegiances and backstories are revealed. The main arc mysteries so far are the Vermouth arc, the Kir arc, the Bourbon arc, and the Rum arc. There are several tropes that apply especially to this long mystery subtype.

Arc suspects include protagonists and antagonists

Arc mysteries usually involve at least one Black Organization member and several other characters who are suspicious but who oppose the Black Organization in some form.

Overly suspicious often equals red herring

Overly suspicious characters are often red herrings on the side of good (Jodie, Akai, James Black, Eisuke, Camel, Okiya), while seemingly innocuous characters are more likely to be the opponent. (Araide, Amuro)

Lots of spies

Most of the arc mystery suspects who turn out to be protagonists are spies. The Vermouth arc introduced the FBI, the Kir arc imported the CIA, and the Bourbon arc unveiled the Japanese secret police. Furthermore in every arc, at least one spy in the Black Organization was revealed. In the Vermouth arc it was Akai, in the Kir arc it was Kir and her father, and in the Bourbon arc it was Bourbon and Scotch.

Enemies rarely uncover secret identities

Characters who appear to be approaching Conan's true identity or interacting directly with Haibara are unlikely to be enemies in the end. The one major exception, Vermouth, has ulterior motives that put her at odds with the rest of the Black Organization.

Haibara is a sentinel for Black Organization members

Haibara has stated outright that any Black Organization member that recognizes her as a child would surely make it first priority to find out where she lives and attack. Conan has also used similar reasoning to deduce that someone who interacted with Haibara probably isn't a Black Organization member. The two canon enemy Black Organization members who recognized Shiho as a child, Vermouth and Pisco, both made prompt moves. Pisco captured her immediately, but was terminated before he could explain. Vermouth was driven by personal motives that required her to work behind the backs of the rest of the Organization. While she moved quickly, she could not safely remove Shiho from Agasa's house without first executing a plan to fool the FBI and Shinichi.

This information strongly implies that any character who has closely interacted with Ai Haibara cannot be a Black Organization member who both recognizes Shiho as a child and is loyal and without ulterior motive. This rule of thumb has proven useful when ruling out arc mystery suspects who approached Haibara closely at some point, like Jodie, Okiya, and Akai.

Misleading dialogue

Gosho frequently manipulates the reader's sense of suspicion with dialogue that sounds mysterious and threatening, or is misleading without the appropriate context. The technique works well because dialogue is pliable; it is easier to create deceptive dialogue than it is to create deceptive action. Gosho also uses especially shocking or quotable lines towards the end of cases to distract from other more useful clues that might have appeared.

Examples:

• Gin talking to Vodka about searching for someone that initially sounds like it fits the description of Shinichi, but actually refers to Shiho's escape.
• Jodie uses the expression "A secret makes a woman, woman" after Vermouth is shown saying it. She and James Black both use "Cool Guy" which Vermouth wrote on one of her pictures. Both usages make sense in proper context: Jodie uses Vermouth's line because she heard Vermouth say it when she killed her father. The FBI raided Vermouth's office and saw Conan's picture labelled cool guy.
• James asks if Akai brought him to Japan to "make (Akai's) lover come back to (Akai)" Akai affirms this and says that he wants "his lover (koibito) to regret they ever left me with tears of blood.". Akai's "lover" is a reference to the ironic codename he gave Gin: "koibito" meaning lover. He later makes Gin cry the foretold tears of blood when Akai's bullet grazes Gin's cheek in the events of "Black Impact". That quote also alludes to Akemi, Akai's actual lover whom Gin killed.
• Camel communicating with Akai and Conan during Clash of Red and Black was made to sound like he was a spy sent by the Black Organization to infiltrate the FBI.
• Okiya's dialogue with Conan: "I've known his face for a very long time... There's no way I could be mistaken." It sounded threatening, but in context referred to Bourbon impersonating Akai.
• Sera, while deleting Haibara's picture from her computer: "Deletion. For data at least ... is an easy task to accomplish". It sounds threatening, but Masumi has no ill intention towards Haibara at all.

Quotes intended to mislead are relatively easy to identify.

• They often sound poetic.
• They are vague, forcing you to make assumptions about the speaker, the subject, or what they are referring to.

• Sometimes no one is specifically named in the quote, but someone is alluded to via terms like "that person". The trap is that you are expected to fill in the blanks using the immediate context. (e.g. Assuming Sera is referring to deleting to Haibara because that is the picture she is deleting at the moment.)
• When only one half of a two-sided conversation is shown there may be an attempt to trick the reader into assuming the other half is someone else. (e.g. Gin's and Camel's phone conversations in Clash of Red and Black)

• They often take the form of a monologue or character thought.
• They sound mysterious or threatening.

These sorts of trap quotes are perhaps best countered by simply ignoring them and focusing on other evidence. With a few exceptions, mysterious lines are rarely helpful in figuring out people's allegiances, especially since the actual context of the quote may not be revealed for some time. A character's actions always speak louder than their words.