Surprise Release

Advertising is important to make sure word is spread about your work. Typically, most major works have a multimillion advertising campaign behind them, with the network trying to make sure as many people as possible are convinced to buy it. On the other end of the spectrum, there's Invisible Advertising, when the network puts little to no effort into promoting an upcoming work, usually because they're either more focused on one project over others, don't want a certain work to succeed, or believe they have a flop on their hands.

A surprise release (sometimes known as a shadow drop) falls somewhere in between; the network is confident that a work has mass appeal, but instead of building up to its release with a marketing campaign, they reveal the project and subsequently announce that it's already available to buy. As in, you can watch/play/listen to this right now.

These kinds of works typically have been worked on in complete secrecy, often to the point that some of the involved parties don't even know of its existence until mere days, or even hours before they come out, and when they're released, most of the "marketing" is done through word of mouth, with many being surprised by its sudden release.

While an extremely rare practice beforehand, sudden releases started to take off as a marketing strategy during The New '10s, an age where digital distribution had become the norm, making it easier than ever for consumers to access new content, mainly in the fields of music and especially gaming, where announcing a game's immediate release during a news direct isn't uncommon.

Examples:

Films — Live Action

• The Cloverfield Paradox: The film's first trailer was revealed on February 4, 2018 during Super Bowl LII, with the announcement that it would be released on Netflix right after the end of the game. This was done after Netflix had acquired the distribution rights from Paramount, who, after the film's extremely Troubled Production, didn't want to risk releasing an inevitable Box Office Bomb. The surprise release ended up paying off for Netflix, as despite negative critical reception, the film was seen 5 million times during its first week.
• Fyre Fraud was released with no prior fanfare by Hulu, presumably to complete with Netflix’s highly anticipated Fyre.

Literature

• A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo was revealed and released "in a complete coincidence" during the March 18, 2018 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, having already been published, and just one day before the release of the book it was parodying, Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of The Vice President, as a massive Take That! towards then-VP Mike Pence and his homophobic views, as the climax of a segment on him.

Live Action TV

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds combined this with an Early-Bird Release for the Season 2 episode "Those Old Scientists", a crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks— the episode was previewed at San Diego Comic Con 2023, and released on Paramount+ five days ahead of schedule.

Music

• Beyoncé: Her 2013 Self-Titled Album is the Trope Codifier for the modern surprise release. After 4 was subject to a Content Leak, Beyoncé was recorded in secrecy, with only her innermost social circle being aware of its existence, and with a constantly shifting deadline. Thus, its release at the end of 2013 occurred with no prior announcement, and the result is widely credited with popularizing surprise albums. According to Beyoncé, she followed this model to reinvigorate public interest in album releases after their decline in prominence during the 2000s.
• David Bowie: The Next Day was recorded over the course of two years in complete secrecy, with everyone involved being required to sign non-disclosure agreements. Even the executives at Bowie's label, Columbia Records, didn't know about the album's existence until the last minute. Thus, when the lead single "Where Are We Now" suddenly dropped on Bowie's 66th birthday, it caught the general public off guard, as everyone assumed that he retired following an on-stage heart attack nine years prior.
• Eminem: Kamikaze was released in 2018 with no prior announcements or advertisements as a deliberate contrast to the lengthy pre-release campaign for its predecessor, Revival, owed to this album's nature as a response to the critical and fan backlash towards that one. Eminem repeated the technique with his next album, Music to Be Murdered By, releasing both it and the music video for "Darkness" on the same day with no advance notice.
• Radiohead's 2007 album In Rainbows is often credited as the Trope Maker where music albums are concerned, being not only announced a mere ten days before release, but also being released with a very unexpected new "pay-what-you-want" system (fans could download the album on their website at whatever price they deemed it be worth, including for free). The band did this as an experiment for a variety of reasons, including dissatisfaction with traditional release and promotion formats, and curiosity with the ever-increasing popularity of the internet and its potential as a tool for discovering music. The smash success and publicity surrounding this move ended up inspiring much bigger acts like Beyoncé and U2 to pull off similar stunts.
• Red Vox: Kerosene was announced immediately after its release of Bandcamp, with the band making no prior indication that they were recording a follow-up to Another Light.
• Taylor Swift: Both folklore and evermore were released with no prior announcement, owed to the isolated environments enforced by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Swift's label, Republic Records, wasn't informed about folklore until a few hours before it dropped.
• U2: The band released their 2014 album Songs of Innocence on the same day it was announced at an Apple event, with the gimmick of it being released on iTunes for free, and downloaded automatically to over 500 million iTunes accounts. Unfortunately for them, the majority of users didn't appreciate an album they didn't have much interest in taking up storage on their devices without their consent, and Apple was forced to create a specifically created link to get the album out of their libraries.

Video Games

• Apex Legends was released on the same day it was formally announced, which was very unusual for an Electronic Arts game. Developer Respawn Entertainment were behind that decision, stating that they took inspiration from Beyoncé's surprise album strategy.
• Blaster Master Zero II was revealed during the Nintendo Direct on March 20, 2019 and released on the same day for the Nintendo Switch.
• Deltarune: Unlike its predecessor Undertale, which had a two-year pre-release period marked by a demo and a Kickstarter campaign, Chapter 1 of Deltarune was abruptly released on Halloween 2018 under the guise of a survey program. While the project was obliquely hinted at over the course of several years, Toby Fox never gave any explicit announcements about it during that period, resulting in the release of Chapter 1 catching fans and media off-guard.
• Hearthstone: Unlike previous and future expansions, every single new card from the League of Explorers set was revealed at Blizzcon 2015 with no preview season, and it was released at the end of the Hearthstone panel about a month ahead of the normal schedule.
• Hi-Fi RUSH was first revealed during Xbox and Bethseda's Developer_Direct presentation on January 25, 2023, and its segment was capped off by director John Johanes announcing that viewers could play the game "tonight". And sure enough, it released digitally on Xbox Series X|S and PC a couple of hours after the show for only $30 and was even added to Xbox Game Pass.
• Three spin-off titles in the Kirby series were all announced and subsequently released the same day: Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, Super Kirby Clash and Kirby Fighters 2. Of the three, only the last one had any information leak the day before the game's eventual release.
• Nintendo announced Metroid Prime Remastered for the Switch during the February 8, 2023 Nintendo Direct, as well as its immediate release on the eShop, with a physical release coming two weeks later.
• The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog was announced and released on Steam for free on March 31, 2023 (April 1 in other territories including Japan), with the Sonic Twitter teasing "a new direction" for Sonic a couple hours prior, which turned out to be... "he's dead."
• The first NES Remix was announced during the Nintendo Direct on December 18, 2013 and released that same day for the Wii U.
• Persona 4 Golden's Updated Re Release on Steam was revealed the same day it launched— June 13th, 2020.
• Similar to Metroid Prime Remastered above, the digital versions of Switch remasters of Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 were announced and released shortly after the June 21, 2023 Nintendo Direct.
• Sega infamously shadow-launched the Sega Saturn in the U.S. at select retailers during the first E3 conference on May 11, 1995 (as opposed to the original plan to release it on "Saturnday", September 2), hoping they would beat Sony's new PlayStation to the punch by a few months. This backfired horribly for several reasons; only six games were available at launch, all of them first-party, they were rushed out the door to make the last-second deadline, resulting in some games shipping with bugs and glitches that could have been easily fixed with more time, third-party developers weren't even notified of the decision until it was announced live, leaving them unable to finish their games and resulting in only two games being released for the system between launch and September, consumers balked at the $399 price tag, and retailers that were locked out of the loop (including Walmart and KB Toys) refused to carry Sega products for years afterward. And as a final insult to injury, Steve Race's speech at Sony's E3 conference consisted of a single number: "299". If the above-mentioned issues didn't already convince gamers, this legendary moment made them decide that the PlayStation would be worth the wait. The whole fiasco is often seen as the beginning of the end for Sega as a console manufacturer, as the PlayStation ended up outselling the Saturn nearly 10:1, and the mere announcement of the PlayStation 2 was enough to seal the fate of Sega's final console, the Dreamcast.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:
  • The September 3rd, 2019 Nintendo Direct announced that Challenger Pack #3, Banjo and Kazooie, would be released that same day, have a gameplay reveal in the form of a Mr. Sakurai Presents immediately after the Direct.
  • Sephiroth got a Mr. Sakurai Presents showcase on December 17th, 2020, and was set to release on the 22nd... however, if you owned the second Fighter's Pass, you could fight Sephiroth in a special limited-time game mode. Beating him in this mode would unlock Sephiroth for use in the game, as well as as the Northern Crater stage and associated music up to five days early.
• Tetris 99 was announced during the February 13, 2019 Nintendo Direct, and released for Nintendo Switch Online members later that day.
• Unravel Two was first revealed at EA's E3 2018 conference, and was immediately released after the show.

Web Animation

• hololive: The sixth generation holoX (pronounced Horokksu as a pun on the Japanese word for six "roku" and "ekksu" for x) was suddenly announced mere hours before their first member debuted. In comparison, other generations like HoloMyth (i.e. Hololive English Generation One) or the fourth generation (most well-known for Kiryuu Coco) were announced well in advance, allowing hype to build. holoX nevertheless quickly racked up subscribers and views, despite the comparative suddenness of their unveiling.

Western Animation

• Ratchet & Clank: Life of Pie was released on the Canada-only streaming service Crave on February 14, 2021 without any prior announcement from Mainframe Studios or the IP holder Sony Interactive.