515: No One Must Know

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No One Must Know
Or perhaps they knew he was there, and were just trying to torment him first.
Title text: Or perhaps they knew he was there, and were just trying to torment him first.

Explanation[edit]

Black Hat and Danish are more known for sociopathy than affection. In the first panel, they are affectionate towards each other, holding hands and using terms of endearment, i.e. danish pastry and pie. This behavior is common with couples but unexpected coming from these normally cynical characters. (However, 433: Journal 5 confirms that they are dating—so the surprise here is their unusually affectionate language rather than their relationship.) The entrance of Cueball and his subsequent discovery of them in this state prompts Black Hat and Danish to kill him. Their return to their more typical behavior contrasts with the first panel, presumably motivated by a desire to either dissimulate the warmer aspects of their personalities or their relationship altogether.

The title text provides the alternative hypothesis that they were planning on killing him the whole time and were intentionally acting affectionate for the mental effect it would have on their victim.

542: Cover-Up provides a possible continuation of this story.

Transcript[edit]

[Black Hat and Danish are talking and holding hands.]
Black Hat: You're my dearest darling danish.
Danish: And you're my lovely cutie pie.
Black Hat: Well, you're-
[Cueball enters.]
[Black Hat and Danish look at each other and let go of each others hands.]
[Black Hat holds a bloody sack, while Danish pushes down on a shovel to make a hole for what is presumably Cueball's body.]

Trivia[edit]

  • This comic inspired the use of "Danish" to refer to Black Hat's girlfriend on this wiki.
    • It is obviously not her real name, as it was just a cake-related term of endearment. But at least one person thinks it is better than the name used before this comic.


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Discussion

The "Trivia" about her name is silly. By that logic black hat should be called pie. 184.66.160.91 19:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

How can you say the truth is silly?? It just *is*. 108.162.219.223 08:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
And in this case the truth is trivial!  :¬D ExternalMonolog (talk) 15:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)ExternalMonolog
That, and the internet already HAS a psychopath with "pie" in their name. Has anyone here even read Cupcakes? ...I just realized that this alludes to the pastry terms in the comic. 108.162.218.101 21:05, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Cupcakes? The best known 'Pie'-named character is fiction is the assassin (sic! Though not a psycho) in Imajica. 141.101.104.4 19:14, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

He calls her a cake (Danish pastry) and she calls him a pie. It is part of the joke. It is thus obviously not her name. But as she looks too much like Megan to not have another name than evil girl with long hair - it is as good a name as any on these wiki pages. This is not Randall's thruth - just explain XKCD's name. Kynde (talk) 16:04, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

It's probably not meant to be cueball, IMO. Mr FJ (talk) 06:47, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

For the same reason as explained in my comment above Cueball is just a name used in this wiki. So any bald character is per definition Cueball. Randall uses this charachter in many different settings and there are often more than one of "him" in a given cartoon.--Kynde (talk) 16:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible that the victim is actually Cueball, and the girl is Megan, so they (Megan and Black Hat) would want to kill Cueball because he found out about them? Special:Contributions/10.25.42.185 11:06, 9 April 2018

I think the title text pretty firmly rules this possibility out. Megan wouldn't want to torment Cueball first if the only reason she wanted to kill Cueball was because he found about her affair. Jrfarah (talk) 03:30, 27 February 2022 (UTC)