Surprise Reveal

A ‘Surprise Reveal’ occurs when a person’s disability (or in some cases, their lack thereof) is revealed as a surprise or a plot twist. When we first defined ‘Surprise Reveal’ we described a ‘gotcha moment’ where the viewer is shocked to discover that it was actually a disabled person who accomplished a certain feat.

What surprised us though, was the emergence of an entirely different form of Surprise Reveal, which has nothing to do with a disabled person’s accomplishments. In this other form, the Surprise Reveal is premised on the viewer’s assumption that a disabled person couldn’t possibly be a key factor in moving the plot forward. Not all surprises are good.