drop the bomb

drop the bomb (third-person singular simple present drops the bomb, present participle dropping the bomb, simple past and past participle dropped the bomb)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drop,‎ bomb.
2. (idiomatic) to reveal dramatic and unexpected news that changes a situation completely
   • 2011, Chris Myers Asch, The Senator and the Sharecropper, →ISBN:

     A mere two months after the New Orleans hearings, the Supreme Court dropped the bomb that Eastland and other white southerners feared: Brown. Much as the Chinese Communists' victory and the Russian's building of the atomic bomb in 1949 had ignited the Cold War and anti-Communism, the Brown decision took the struggle for and against black freedom to a new level of intensity.

   • 2011, Cege Smith, Edge of Shadows, →ISBN:

     Melanie dropped the bomb. "His buddy was a Mr. Henry Decatur."

   • 2014, Mary Kay Andrews, Save the Date, →ISBN:

     Sylvia finally returned my calls yesterday, and while I was in the middle of chewing her out about the airconditioning, she dropped the bomb. Said it didn't matter because she'd sold the building.

   • 2014, Gail Sattler, The Best Man's Holiday Romance, →ISBN:

     Natasha gulped and tried to look cheerful when she dropped the bomb on him. “Four down, forty-six to go.” Jeff froze. “Excuse me? Did I hear you right? That means you have to buy fifty Christmas presents?”

   • 2014, Rexanne Becnel, The Christmas Train, →ISBN:

     Then she'd dropped the bomb: she was pregnant.