![butlerdidit[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Gv3Kmya.jpg "butlerdidit[1].jpg")
So, where did the whole "the butler did it" thing originate from?
It's the biggest dead unicorn trope (meaning, it's a trope that never existed in the first place) there is, but if it never actually happened in any mystery novel, then where did it come from?
>>8045696Brothers Karamazov
>>8045696
Brother's Karamazov used it, such a contrived hack move.
I thought the meme was that the gardener did it and I always suspected the origin to be some sort of Miss Marple detective fiction
>>8045696
Mary Roberts Rinehart, in her 1930 novel "The Door".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Roberts_Rinehart
>>8045704
It's a bit more complex than that in Brothers Karamazov, as the "butler" is a major character and has a legitimate reason to do it.
"The butler did it" is when an extremely minor character turns out to be the culprit, which is something that has never happened in any serious mystery story, and only happens in parodies.
>>8045696
I always took it to be a class thing. None of the aristocrats could ever do such a thing, but you always had to be careful about the help. So many of them are secretly riff raff.
>>8045696
I thought it was from The Mousetrap...
>>8045741
It can turn out that the minor character had motives that tie into earlier plot points or information that isn't revealed to have been important until the end (ie. the butler might be the oft-referenced estranged brother of so-and-so after his inheritance or the son of a worker killed by the victim's criminal negligence out for revenge). This usually involves a long, rambling explanation/justification that feels rushed and forced a la Colombo. It's definitely hacky and one of the lazier twist/cop-out endings you can have, but it's actually fairly common in cheap whodunnits. The reason it's hard to come up with specific examples is because the novels that resort to this kind of thing are instantly forgettable and without any sort of acclaim.
>>8045696
>dead unicorn trope
>>>/tvtropes/
If I learned anything from Remains of the Day its that butler's have no human emotions.
>>8046282
TVTropes didn't invent the term.
A dead unicorn is like the term "beating a dead horse", except the horse being beaten never existed.
>>8046385
>TVTropes didn't invent the term.
Can you show me somewhere it was used before TVTropes, then?
