History Main / ConvictionByContradiction

** Spoofed in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS12E15HungryHungryHomer Hungry, Hungry Homer]]" where Homer finds evidence that the Duff corporation, owners of the Springfield Isotopes, are planning on selling the team to New Mexico but nobody believes him because the owners hid said evidence. Homer goes on a hunger strike to get Henry Duff VIII to tell the truth, which he exploits as a publicity stunt. When it looks like Homer's about to give up, Duff offers him a hot dog; however, he notices the toppings (mesquite-grilled onions, jalapeño relish, mango-lime salsa) and observes "That's the kind of bold flavor they enjoy in...Albuquerque!" '''This''' is treated as the smoking gun that proves Homer right, despite the fact that there's absolutely no reason a stadium couldn't just choose to serve a Southwestern-style hot dog. Also, the hot dog wrappers say "Albuquerque Isotopes", but apparently [[FailedASpotCheck nobody noticed that until Homer brought it up]].

* ''Series/Accused2023'': Flaco's testimony is exposed as lies by the fact he couldn't even name what ''color'' of car Morgan drives, despite supposedly buying drugs from her every week for a long time. It proves he's committed perjury, since they neglected that small detail.

* Subverted on ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' when a caravan of gypsies are accused of burglary by the sons of several upper-class families who've been robbed. Inspector Brackenreid initially arrests the gypsies, but he later smells a rat when he notices the holes in the boys' story. Instead of arresting them based on that, he sets up a sting that confirms the boys' own guilt.

** In "Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees", sports agent Rob Sherman has made it look like he shot and killed a burglar who apparently broke into his house and killed his wife (the trick is that he shot the "burglar" with a semi-automatic and the wife with a revolver, then planted the revolver on the "burglar", making great use of a DeceasedFallGuyGambit). Monk suspects Sherman is lying because he gave the alleged invader one single shot, instead of unloading his gun on him in a fit of rage and fear like someone would do in a situation like that. Further evidence is that the "burglar" owned a .22 caliber (which he left at home), the revolver found on the body was a .38 caliber, and there is no .38 caliber ammunition in his apartment. Nevermind it's a good deal safer to steal a gun for a crime or buy it on the black market than use one you're known to legally own, than toss the stolen one afterwards.

In fiction, this is usually enough to prove Bob's guilt, or at least cast serious suspicion on Bob. In the real world, of course, this does not in any way mean that Bob committed murder. Maybe Bob still attended the party, but it was with his friend ''Allison,'' not Alice. Maybe the party was on a different night, or there was a second party that Alice ''did'' attend with Bob, and Bob just misremembered. Maybe [[BigSecret Bob was lying because he was doing something embarrassing that still wasn't, you know, murder]].

So, for example, let's say the police are invednd his friend Alice was there with him. But wait! It turns out that Alice was on vacation in a foreign country at the time, so she couldn't have attended the party with Bob.

So, for example, let's say the police are investigating a murder, and Bob is their lead suspect. Bob says that at the time of the murder he was attending a party and his friend Alice was there with him. But wait! It turns out that Alice was on vacation in a foreign country at the time, so she couldn't have attended the party with Bob.

* Although a civil trial and not a criminal trial, Creator/JohnnyDepp’s 2020 UK defamation case against against a tabloid for calling him a “wife beater” was largely lost on he and his inner circle not being able to keep their stories straight. One instance of Depp’s alleged abuse of ex-wife Creator/AmberHeard was on a chartered flight in 2014 in which he was blacked out drunk and kicked her. His assistant had to admit on the stand that texts between him and Heard that he’d long tried to pass off as fake in which he apologized on Depp’s behalf for the kick and telling her Depp had cried when told once he sobered up were genuine. Depp himself also said he’d remembered the flight in his witness statement but admitted on the stand that he hadn’t written it and didn’t remember the flight. Another instance revolved another of Depp’s employees saying an incident in 2016 was instigated by Heard by presenting pictures of Depp with a bruised face but the phone data proved they’d been taken a year earlier and only a few days after a time where Heard had admitted she’d hit him in defense of her sister. The employee couldn’t answer the discrepancy and the judge therefore reduced the weight of his statements.

** In another episode, Natalie's parents talk about a couple of friends of theirs who died in a car accident. When Monk hears that the car involved was a British Morgan, he becomes suspicious because the British drive on the left, and this doesn't square with the positions of the bodies at the scene. Apparently, Monk doesn't know that most British car manufacturers, including Morgan, make left-hand-drive versions of their cars for countries that drive on the right.

** In "[[Recap/MonkS2E1MrMonkGoesBackToSchool Mr. Monk Goes Back to School]]," Monk zeroes on science teacher Derek Philby for no other reason than he found evidence he hid his wedding ring in his wallet—which meant he was having an affair and lying about it, making him suspect number one in the death of another teacher whom the police assumed (and Monk couldn't prove otherwise) committed suicide. Never mind that a science teacher would be ''obligated'' to remove any and all jewelry for safety before carrying out chemistry demonstrations for their classes...

* In ''VideoGame/{{Contradiction}}'' this, along with PullTheThread, makes up the main interaction with the game. Notably, the player cannot use the testimonies of two separate people to contradict one, the other, or both. All lines of questioning are kept separate, and thus those questioned can only ever be called out as a liar for giving self-contradicting testimony. As such, the game does rather well at avoiding any one contradiction resolving the case, [[spoiler:with the closest the player character gets to jumping ahead of their evidence being threatening a full-scale investigation against a properly suspicious organization. Even the final contradiction doesn't completely nail the culprit down, with the reveal and arrest coming from an almost off-hand confession]].

* Discussed and then averted in the novel ''The Franchise Affair'' by Josephine Tey. The novel is about two women accused of kidnapping and enslaving a schoolgirl and the attempts of their solicitor, Robert Blair, to defend them. Midway through the novel, the women's solicitor discovers a discrepancy that can be used to cast doubt on the girl's story (she could not have seen the view out of the attic window that she describes). However, Blair realises that a clever prosecution lawyer can argue around this, and even if the women are let off on this evidence, the taint of the accusations will still hang over them.

* ''Film/{{Denial}}'': Irving tries to disprove the Holocaust in this exact way, as Anthony notes: he looks for some tiny inconsistency in the testimonies, then makes the whole case seem to stand or fall on it. For instance, historian Robert Jan van Pelt (Creator/MarkGatiss) shows blueprints of the Auschwitz gas chambers as described by the man who designed them, including holes in the roof used to drop in cyanide gas. Irving points out that no holes were found in the ruins of the chamber roof, and loudly declares: "No holes, no Holocaust!"[[note]]This is because the SS dynamited it to cover up the mass murders, leaving it mostly collapsed.[[/note]]

** In ''Literature/AfterTheFuneral'', Poirot deduces that[[spoiler:the "murder victim"]] who showed up at the titular funeral was actually the murderer ''disguised'' as her. The two clues he notices? One: when the murderer later comes to the house where the repast was held supposedly for the first time, she comments on a vase of flowers that she could have only seen if she'd been there before. Two: the murder victim had a habit of twisting her head to one side when she asked probing questions, [[spoiler:but the imposter had practiced her mimicry in a mirror and thus [[ImposterForgotOneDetail turned her head in the opposite direction]]]]. That's enough to start him on a path toward the real motive behind the murder.

** In one, Inspector Winters asks for bicarbonate of soda for an upset stomach while in a bakery. The baker says she doesn't have any; this leads the detective to deduce that the bakery must be a front for smuggling since bicarbonate of soda is baking soda and no real bakery would be without it. Except there's the possibility that the baker was unfamiliar with an antiquated term for baking soda (even more egregious today than when it was originally written: many modern ''chemists'' might find the term unfamiliar, since the proper scientific terminology has been "sodium hydrogen carbonate" for ''decades'', and was "sodium bicarbonate" rather than "bicarbonate of soda" for some time before that). And then there's the possibility they ran out of baking soda using it to, you know, bake; or that they bake pies and pastries which don't require it. Finally, how does he know it's a front for ''smuggling''? A lot of "Fronts" are actually run fairly competently.

** In one, Inspector Winters asks for bicarbonate of soda for an upset stomach while in a bakery. The baker says she doesn't have any; this leads the detective to deduce that the bakery must be a front for smuggling since bicarbonate of soda is baking soda and no real bakery would be without it. Except there's the possibility that the baker was unfamiliar with an antiquated term for baking soda (even more egregious today than when it was originally written: many modern ''chemists'' might find the term unfamiliar, since the proper scientific terminology has been "sodium hydrogen carbonate" for ''decades'', and was "sodium bicarbonate" rather than "bicarbonate of soda" for some time before that). And then there's the possibility they ran out of baking soda using it to, you know, bake; or that they bake pies and pastries which don't require it. Finally, how does he know it's a front for ''smuggling''?

** In one, Inspector Winters asks for bicarbonate of soda for an upset stomach while in a bakery. The baker says she doesn't have any; this leads the detective to deduce that the bakery must be a front for smuggling since bicarbonate of soda is baking soda and no real bakery would be without it. Except there's the possibility that the baker was unfamiliar with an antiquated term for baking soda (even more egregious today than when it was originally written: many modern ''chemists'' might find the term unfamiliar, since the proper scientific terminology has been "sodium hydrogen carbonate" for ''decades'', and was "sodium bicarbonate" rather than "bicarbonate of soda" for some time before that). And then there's the possibility they ran out of baking soda using it to, you know, bake; or that they bake pies and pastries which don't require it.

** Zig-zagged with one case: A woman is assaulted at the beach. There are three suspects: A snorkeler, skin diver, and a dog-walker. Two of them attacked the woman, the last one called the police on the payphone (It was [[TechnologyMarchesOn the 1970s]]). The "Answer" is that the dog-walker was the one who called the police - since he is more likely to have pocket change. While that makes sense since apparently the caller [[FacePalm did not think to describe what the aggressors look like]], there were presumably only four people at the beach that day, [[TooDumbToLive the perps didn't flee the scene of the crime]], it's still possible that either of the swimmers may have had pocket change - perhaps on the beach.
** Lampshaded in one story where the detective is listening to someone's testimony on a crime and mentions it won't stand up in court because he was telling the story as he saw it, through the mirror of a car.

%% ** [[RunningGag And again]] involving another race runner, where "[[CoveredUp The Theme from]] ''Radio/TheLoneRanger''" is identified as "The William Tell Overture". Apparently Sobol liked this one.

* Book 12, Chapter 1 ("The Case of the Dead Eagles"): The perp claims to have seen something by moonlight on a night when there was no moon. It's entirely possible that the perp saw the incident by another ambient source of light and simply assumed it was moonlight. Interestingly, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln got an acquittal in a case in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Armstrong exactly this manner]], though in his case it was used to show that, without moonlight, it would have been impossible to see something 150 ft away at night in 1858.

* Book 1, chapter 5 ("The Case of the Bank Robber"): A blind man is the only witness to a crime; a perp fleeing the scene with a bag of cash crashed into him, and it is thought that the man might have felt his face well enough to identify him if he felt it again. Turns out the blind man is not blind and was in on it the whole time: he swapped bags with the thief when they collided. How does Encyclopedia prove this? When he visited the man in his hotel room, the lights were on and there was a newspaper on the table despite the man claiming he hadn't had visitors in "a long time". Because no hotel in the world offers complimentary newspapers that they put in your room. And they ''never'' have the lights on when you arrive. And a blind man would totally notice if they were on, and turn them off. This is a lesser example, however. Once Brown figures out what happened getting a doctor to confirm that the guy can see shouldn't be too hard. Overlaps with ConvictionByCounterfactualClue since most blind people aren't completely blind and it is entirely possible for one to leave the lights on and read a newspaper.
* Book 1, chapter 9 ("The Case of the Missing Roller Skates"): Combining with "INeverSaidItWasPoison", Encyclopedia is at the dentist's and has his roller skates stolen. The perp [[INeverSaidItWasPoison manages to identify himself]] because he never even heard of him (Dr. Vivian) until Brown mentioned him, and he wasn't at the dentist's because "I had a sprained wrist, not a toothache". Because he couldn't have found out that Vivian was a dentist through other means (such as being close enough to notice that this is a dentist's office), or simply assumed "Vivian" was male since Vivian is a gender-neutral name. (In fact, it's only been seen as a feminine name [[NewerThanTheyThink since around the 40s or 50s]].)
* Book 2, chapter 7 ("The Case of the Wounded Toe"): A boy gets injured in the foot by an unknown suspect. Another boy is asked to bring a spare shoe for the injured party. Brown deduces the other boy is the perp because he brought the right shoe for the injured foot without asking beforehand which shoe to bring. While common sense might suggest to the boy to think about which foot would need the shoe, he still had a 1 in 2 chance of getting the right shoe if it didn't occur to him right at that moment to ask and, although the wrong shoe might not fit comfortably, it could still fit his foot if the size allows for enough space. Encyclopedia does point out, however, that if the boy didn't know which shoe to bring, he would likely have brought back ''both'' shoes. The boy brought back ''only'' the one, however, which made Encyclopedia suspicious.
* Book 2, chapter 8 ("The Case of Excalibur"): A "witness" trying to frame a boy for the theft of a pocket knife claims the boy took the knife with his right hand and put it in his pocket while running away. He is found innocent because he has a cast on his left hand and the knife was found in his left pants pocket (planted there by the "witness") and (according to the answers section at least) it's impossible to put a pocket knife in your left pants pocket with your right hand while running. Leaving aside that Encyclopedia was assuming an impossibility out of a difficult and highly improbable physical stunt, the mere likelihood of him putting the knife in his left pocket after he'd stopped running never occurred to him.
* Book 3, chapter 3 ("The Case of Bugs's Kidnapping"): At least one time the series used this trope absolutely correctly. Bugs claims to have been kidnapped at Encyclopedia's behest (how a 5th-grader was able to hire and control adult {{Mooks}} is never discussed). He describes being imprisoned in a small room and attempts to escape by removing the pins from the door hinges, but they are on the other side of the door. Then he tries to wait to the side of the door and jump his kidnappers when they come in, but the door opens into his face, foiling the attack. Standard house doors ''cannot'' open away from their hinges, only toward them.
* Encyclopedia Brown liked solutions where the answer hinged on an American city having the same name as a foreign place that was generally more famous, for example Paris, Texas. This isn't usually conviction by contradiction, but became a case of it in the answer to book 6, chapter 5 ("The Case of the Wanted Man"), which involved an American city called Palestine, where Encyclopedia declared that it ''had'' to be the American city because "nobody calls the real one Palestine anymore." Apparently in Encyclopedia Brown's world, Palestinians don't exist. [[note]]Current political controversies notwithstanding, prior to the 1967 War the non-existence of Palestine was indeed generally considered a non-controversial matter.[[/note]]
* Book 6, chapter 6 ("The Case of the Angry Cook"): A man accused of committing a robbery is being interrogated in the crime scene and claims he has never been there before. Shortly afterward, he says, "When you brought me ''back'' here, did I resist?" to the police officer. Since he couldn't be brought ''back'' if he had never been there before, the man is guilty. First of all, the term "back" doesn't have to mean "return." It can simply indicate distance or location, shown in common phrases such as, "He's from back east." You can also say you're taking someone "back" somewhere if ''you've'' already been there. The all-too-common example would be asking a stranger, "Want to go back to my place?"
* Book 7, chapter 10 ("The Case of the Foot Warmer"): A young inventor named Melvin is accused of smuggling two BB rifles out of a toy shop, but the kid claims he was just wearing his new invention at the time. Encyclopedia realizes the inventor is lying when the toy shop owner remembers Melvin bent down to pick up a baby: Melvin's invention prevented him from bending down, so he couldn't be wearing the foot warmer at the time.
* Book 8, chapter 9 ("The Case of the Two-Dollar Bill"): The perp tells someone he's hidden a $2 bill between an odd and even page of a book that are normally on opposite sides of a leaf if the book is read left to right. It might be possible that the book had a typo, breaks the tradition, had its pages printed out of order, or the perp simply misremembered the book pages.
* Book 9, chapter 4 ("The Case of the Headless Runner"): The perp claimed to have been awoken by a thunderclap, then saw the crime during a lightning flash. E Brown knew that the perp was lying since in real life, thunder follows lightning, not the other way around. Of course, it's inconceivable that there would be more than one lightning flash during the course of a thunderstorm.
* Book 9, chapter 6 ("The Case of the Tooth Puller"): A carnival tent gets upended, and the take is stolen in the confusion. When Encyclopedia studies the injuries of the performers, he suspects the magician; the reason? He's wearing a short-sleeved outfit, and "all magicians wear long sleeves to hide things in." This example is also listed under ConvictionByCounterfactualClue.
* Book 10, chapter 3 ("The Case of the Two-Timers"): A perp who's trying to frame Encyclopedia for claiming ownership of the town clock and charging people to use it to set their watches is "proved" as a liar because he used his left hand to set his own watch, because of the "fact" that when you set your watch with your left hand, you're holding it upside down. (Because it's impossible that a person could simply be more comfortable using their left hand, and compensate for it when setting their watch, or that one could buy left-handed watches specifically to avoid this problem, and ignoring that watch faces are quite easy to read upside down.)
* Book 12, chapter 1 ("The Case of the Dead Eagles"): The perp claims to have seen something by moonlight on a night when there was no moon. It's entirely possible that the perp saw the incident by another ambient source of light and simply assumed it was moonlight. Interestingly, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln got an acquittal in a case in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Armstrong exactly this manner]], though in his case it was used to show that, without moonlight, it would have been impossible to see something 150 ft away at night in 1858.
* Book 12, chapter 6 ("The Case of the Old Calendars"): A note about who was supposed to receive their share of thirteen calendars couldn't have been written by a math teacher because it says "divide the calendars by 1/2", which would actually be multiplying by 2 or an impossible division. Math teachers apparently never make mistakes in grammar or use common English-language phrasing fallacies outside of the context of the classroom, and never write a note when tired.
* Book 13, chapter 2 ("The Case of the Hidden Penny"): A stolen rare coin is found inside Bugs Meany's hot dog. How did Encyclopedia know where to find it? Because he saw Bugs spread mustard ''on top'' of the sauerkraut, and "[[SeriousBusiness no one]] who [[NoTrueScotsman likes hot dogs]] does that." Admittedly, it is a pretty messy way to go about things (similar to trying to spread peanut butter on top of jelly), but c'mon. Interestingly, the story effectively admits Bugs ''would'' have walked if he'd been willing to finish his hot dog, and presumably swallow the coin in the process. Also a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, as a modern reader would expect the mustard to come out of a squeeze bottle and be easier to have on top than the sauerkraut. Plus, who's to say Bugs hadn't just ''overlooked'' the mustard jar, or that someone else was hogging it when he first started applying his hot dog toppings? For that matter, how hard would it have been for him to just put the bite of hot dog in his mouth and stick the penny under his tongue or the bottom of his cheek?
* Book 14, chapter 1 ("The Case of the Giant Mousetrap"): A perp claims to have been on the bottom floor of a building when the crime was committed, yet when he went to the elevator, he pressed the "up button." Encyclopedia deduces that the perp was probably not on the very bottom floor, because the perp wouldn't have had to distinguish the button as the "up button" because there wouldn't have been a "down button." Of course, an "up button" is always an "up button" whether or not there's a "down button" along with it. The actual name for them is "call button", but it's rarely used outside of technical and legal documentation. Besides, plenty of call buttons still have the appropriate arrow on them even when they're on the top and bottom floors.
* Book 14, chapter 7 ("The Case of the Marvelous Egg"): A local con man claims to have bred chickens that can lay square eggs. He comes up with a lame {{handwave}} as to why he simply can't show them, and claims instead that he'll stage a publicity stunt by having the skydiver standing with him jump holding one in a box only to have it still intact afterwards but needs money for promotion. Encyclopedia calls him out because the skydiver is wearing only one parachute, and all jump with two in case one fails...because there's no chance that someone might wear something different to a publicity event than during actual skydiving. Granted the con man does describe his accomplice as dressed "ready to jump", but considering the whole absurdity of the situation (the convenient excuse as to why he can't just show the eggs, the fact that a square probably would be crushed if held by a skydiver anyway, why such a stunt would even be necessary to promote square eggs, and of course, what the hell besides novelty value is the benefit of square eggs anyway?) it seems kind of silly that Encyclopedia quibbles over such a minor technicality. The "Solution" page at the end of the book even admits that had Wiggins not embellished his con by bringing his friend along, Encyclopedia would have had nothing to use against him and [[TheBadGuyWins he could've successfully screwed the kids out of their money]].
* Book 14, chapter 10 ("The Case of the Thermos Bottle"): Bugs Meany holds a raffle drawing at a fair for a baseball glove and has one of his friends [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything reach around for another associate's balls]] in the big container of ping-pong balls. Encyclopedia discovers he was cheating by noticing that Bugs drank a canned soda when he was carrying around a thermos, thus meaning he put the ball in the freezer, then took it to the fairgrounds in the thermos so the associate would just have to feel around for a frozen ball. It's entirely possible that Bugs simply didn't want whatever was in his thermos at that particular moment or was ''saving'' it for later. Or that he'd already emptied his thermos, and found himself wanting another drink.
* Book 15, chapter 1 ("The Case of the Supermarket Shopper"): The perp buys time to rob his victim's house by asking the victim to add four tubes of toothpaste to his supermarket order of seven items. This required the victim to check out in a regular shopping lane instead of the 10-items-or-less express lane, which otherwise would have allowed him to return in time to see his house being robbed. Brown figures it out because the perp was the last of the victim's friends to ask for items, and his order was too plainly designed to surpass the ExpressLaneLimit. Of course, the fact that the perp counted on both the victim and grocery staff to obey the letter of the express lane rules and for the express lane line to be open and available at the same time he was at the store pretty much means he deserved to get caught. Even Donald Sobol (the author) [[EveryoneHasStandards seemed to realize that this one was flimsy]]; Mrs. Brown specifically mentions that the store is notorious for demanding ''exactly'' ten items for the express lane. That doesn't quite fix the problems (again, the lane might not have been open in the first place), but points for trying.
* Book 15, chapter 10 ("The Case of the Marathon Runner"): A case had a kid that finished last in a race correctly identify a song being played at a theater along the race route as "The Eyes of Texas" (The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_Texas University of Texas one]]) rather than the original tune it was adapted from, "I've Been Working on the Railroad," "proving" she stopped to ensure that she would finish last. Even assuming it was a lyricless version (which would be a dead giveaway), given it's the University's ''school song'' anyone who knows "The Eyes of Texas" is likely a graduate or a fan of their sports team in the first place, and the song is only ''a minute long'' anyway.
* Book 16, chapter 2 ("The Case of the Battle Cries"): A boy blows his fake alibi by tracing a shirt pocket on the wrong side of his chest. This is perfectly understandable since everyone is accustomed to seeing images of themselves in the mirror, where left and right are flipped.
* Book 16, chapter 7 ("The Case of the Hard-luck Boy"): A contest is held in which contestants complete a quiz for 3 secret prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The first-place winner receives the best prize: a watch, which he discovers has been broken. The theory of the crime is one of the contestants secretly examined the prizes and played with the watch and broke it. The culprit turns out to be the 2nd place girl that purposely missed a question she should have gotten right: "Name a word that has three double-letters." The girl referred to herself as a "bookkeeper". This doesn't account for the possibility that the word simply slipped her mind at that exact moment. Or perhaps she can't spell it -- thinks it only has one k, for example, or thinks it's two words. Or perhaps she hyphenates the word, as "book-keeper" (a valid, if rather old, spelling), splitting one of the double letters.
* Book 16, chapter 10 ("The Case of the Mysterious Handprints"): Two precious ivory bookends belonging to a former circus owner are stolen when two of the man's friends are visiting. Encyclopedia and his father find strange handprints on the beach near the circus owner's house, and so suspicion falls on one of the visitors, a crippled acrobat, because the only way he could have walked was on his hands. Encyclopedia, however, insists that the thief is in fact the other visitor, a former bareback rider, because she said her leather gloves were missing, and "no visitor brings leather gloves to Idaville in the summer." (Again, an assumption of concrete fact out of a generalization, but even so she could have brought the gloves for a legitimate reason like playing golf, as driving gloves, or even riding a horse. Or maybe she packed them by accident.) The missing bookends being found wrapped in the woman's blouse is much more of a clue, but still not definitive in itself.
* Book 17, chapter 1 ("The Case of the Masked Robber"): Encyclopedia's dad described a case to him after the fact that involved a professional tennis instructor who reported that a set of ivory screens had been stolen that morning. He saw the thief's face; it could be either of two identical twins -- one who worked as a cashier and one who played tennis. Encyclopedia figures out that the victim was just lying so he could get insurance money for the screens, because the crook was wearing a T-shirt, and if the tennis player had been the culprit, one arm would be more developed, while equal arms would incriminate the cashier. This assumes that the instructor had the presence of mind to make such an astute observation, and also assumes the [[ConvictionByCounterfactualClue untrue "fact"]] that all tennis players have asymmetrical arms.
* Book 17, chapter 6 ("The Case of the Painting Contest"): A sailor wins a painting contest open only to amateurs. He is called out as a professional painter pretending to be a sailor because he failed to do the research on nautical terminology: he used terms like "left" or "right" when describing a boat he was painting rather than the nautical terms like "port" or "starboard", as well as the redundant phrase "knots per hour"[[note]] A knot is a unit of speed referring to approx. 1 nautical mile per hour. Technically, this would be acceleration[[/note]], mistakes that no one remotely familiar with sailing would have made regardless of their expertise level. However, while "he's a professional painter trying to pass as an amateur" is the most likely explanation for the masquerade and was probably sufficient grounds on its face to get him disqualified, he might have had other reasons for the pretense and it's not ironclad evidence he's an actual professional.
* Book 18, chapter 2 ("The Case of the Teacup"): Bugs steals an antique teacup. When Encyclopedia confronts him about it, Bugs claims that it was a prized cup from the owner of a Chinese restaurant that has since gone out of business. Encyclopedia deduces that he's lying by noticing that the cup has a handle, which Chinese teacups do not have. (Because it's impossible for a Chinese guy to like American mugs, and of course, with globalisation Chinese teacups with handles do exist now.)
* Book 18, chapter 9 ("The Case of the Disgusting Sneakers"): One story had a girl having one of her sneakers stolen from her before a sneaker contest was held. The thief was identified because she said to another person that the girl had the sneaker stolen from her "while clipping her toenails", even though all the girl said was that she was "clipping her nails". And [[INeverSaidItWasPoison only the thief would know that she had been clipping her toenails and not her fingernails]] (even though if someone said she had her sneaker stolen while clipping her nails before a contest involving feet, most would immediately assume the nails WERE toenails, not fingernails.) There's no reason to take your shoes off to clip your fingernails, and it's a safe bet a person would notice someone stealing shoes that ''they were wearing at the time'', making it even less of a stretch to assume that toenails were meant.
* Book 20, chapter 6 ("The Case of Pablo's Nose"): A perp is accused of stealing something that belonged to Encyclopedia's client and riding away on her bicycle. She claims that she hasn't ridden her bike all summer, before she takes it out of storage and starts showing off on it. Encyclopedia declares that she's lying because if she hadn't ridden the bicycle like she claimed, the tires would have gone flat. (Because it's impossible that the girl or her parents could have kept the tires inflated in case she ever decided she wanted to go for a bike ride.)
* Book 22, chapter 4 ("The Case of the Roman-Numeral Robber"): The perp claims to have been out of town during the crime, but knows details about some contemporaneous local event (because, clearly, he never talks to anyone about local events or reads newspapers).

* In the 1960s, Film/CharlieChan played with this trope to sell Volkswagens. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbBfDOPeZ2g In a TV ad]], Charlie and company are gathered around the hospital bed of the perp he just fingered, and he explains how the seemingly obvious alibi—the man has his left leg and right arm in casts, therefore he could not have driven the stolen car—is no good after all. ''This'' Volkswagen has a [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece new-fangled]] "automatic stick-shift transmission", so there was no need to work the clutch and shifter.

* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''Manga/CaseClosed'' - the detectives will sometimes find an inconsistency and then ask the culprit to explain. Not using this as specific evidence that they are guilty, but to force them to come clean. A notable example of forcing the culprit to come clean after being caught in a misstep is in one case in which a person is murdered in a cabin during a blizzard. The culprit's alibi is that they were buying snacks, but did not buy ice cream because they were "sold out". And why would anyone be sold out of ice cream in a blizzard? The culprit could have just as easily lied and said she didn't get ice cream because it would melt due to it being a blizzard (Thus requiring the car to have the heat on, and the trip up being slowed.)

* The first storyline in which Franchise/{{Superman}} and Franchise/{{Batman}} learned each other's secret identities (via ContrivedCoincidence) featured Batman concluding that someone was lying about being an electrical engineer because he wasn't wearing rubber-soled shoes[[labelnote:*]]Which has an element of ConvictionByCounterfactualClue as well: an ''electrician'' is someone who works hands-on in electrical systems installation, maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair, while an ''electrical engineer'' is usually someone who designs such systems but does not physically work on them.[[/labelnote]]. ''On a holiday cruise.'' While a) Superman had X-ray-spotted a gun in the suspect's pocket and b) the guy did claim to have a job to do in a few minutes on the ship's generators, it's still rather jarring that "[[InformedAbility The World's Greatest Detective]]" apparently concluded that no-one can own more than one set of shoes.

* In ''Film/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' (''not'' in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban the book]] where it took a ''lot'' of explanations from all parties involved and pursuing every doubt before Harry believed the truth) the person who betrayed Potters was proven "guilty" because [[spoiler: he pretended to be a rat for the last 12 years]]. Curiously enough, the book offers a plausible explanation why he would do this if he's innocent:[[spoiler: he claimed he was scared for his life since a person thought to be a Death Eater tried to kill him, and others might try this as well]]. While this ''was'' why he was considered a suspect in the first place, it was other evidence that convinced Harry of his guilt.

* One short story in the anthology ''Creator/AlfredHitchcock's Sinister Spies'' is called "[=QL696.C9=]", by Creator/AnthonyBoucher. It's about a librarian who was killed, leaving the titular mysterious sequence of letters and numbers nearby. At the end of the story, the detective gathers the suspects in the, um, library in the traditional fashion,[[spoiler: declares that the code was probably a library subject reference number, and starts to look it up]]. He's interrupted by the need to keep the murderer (a spy), from killing herself with the pistol she hid in her blouse. Turns out he knew it was her as soon as he figured out what the code was for, as the killer had the only name that was a noun, and the whole library scene was just to flush her out. FridgeBrilliance kicks in when you realize that the detective needed something from the suspect to avert this trope since there's all sorts of perfectly good reasons a librarian would have to write down a Library of Congress reference code [[spoiler:for swifts]]. Ironically, the anthology in question comes up when you search the [=LoC=] for the code.

** In ''Literature/AfterTheFuneral'', Poirot deduces that[[spoiler: the "murder victim"]] who showed up at the titular funeral was actually the murderer ''disguised'' as her. The two clues he notices? One: when the murderer later comes to the house where the repast was held supposedly for the first time, she comments on a vase of flowers that she could have only seen if she'd been there before. Two: the murder victim had a habit of twisting her head to one side when she asked probing questions, [[spoiler:but the imposter had practiced her mimicry in a mirror and thus [[ImposterForgotOneDetail turned her head in the opposite direction]]]]. That's enough to start him on a path toward the real motive behind the murder.
** In ''Literature/SadCypress,'' the murderer tells a particularly silly lie -- [[spoiler:namely, that she pricked her wrist on a rose in the garden; when Poirot investigates, he finds that that particular genus of rose doesn't ''have'' thorns.]] It's even discussed in-universe: Poirot remarks that he wouldn't have even considered that person a suspect had they not told such a stupid, pointless lie in the first place. [[spoiler: It turns out the pinprick mark actually came from the murderer injecting herself with an emetic after poisoning a teapot and drinking from it with the victim, thus preventing herself from dying as well.]]

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': Shows up in the first regular episode "[[Recap/ColumboS01E01 Murder By the Book]]", where Ken Franklin, half of a mystery writing team, sneers that Columbo doesn't have anything concrete linking him to the murder if his partner Jim Ferris—just a motive, the fact that he took out a life insurance policy on the victim, the fact that someone else was murdered shortly afterward who he claimed not to know but in whose house was found a book with a personal autograph in it, and such odd behavior as opening his mail shortly after finding the body on his lawn, and withdrawing a large sum of money out of his bank account and re-depositing it the next day. And Franklin's right, these things are all circumstantial evidence. Then Columbo points out that he found a vague story outline in the victim's office; apparently Columbo's (accurate) reconstruction of the murder matches one of the thousands of rough story ideas that Ferris had been scribbling down over the past couple of decades[[note]] Which ''did'' admittedly come from Franklin years prior, but that is still a pretty weak connection[[/note]]. Franklin immediately gives in, despite this being easily the ''weakest'' piece of evidence presented thus far.

** One episode involved a serial rapist [=UnSub=] who played a particular genre of music during his crimes. The team ended up dismissing one suspect on the grounds that he had been too young to be influenced by that music when it was popular. Apparently it's an iron-clad law that your favorite music ''must'' be the music that was popular while you were a teenager, and that no one ever prefers music from a previous era. The episode's main sub-plot (a woman goes full-blown vigilante and kidnaps and tortures a suspect because she believes he's the rapist) revolves around her (apparently paranoid) belief that because she heard him play "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on the piano he's the guy -- as the tortured man points out, the fact he knows how to play "Total Eclipse of the Heart" ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_-_VwrXwss a piano melody]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOxhH8N3Bo that is very simple to learn]], and which he insists he learned for his wife, and he even plays a couple of songs that sound similar) is not conclusive evidence at all. [[spoiler:[[ProperlyParanoid It was him]].]]

* An episode of ''Series/{{House}}'' ("The Tyrant") has House confront Wilson's neighbor, an amputee who claims to have lost his arm in Vietnam. House deduces from various clues that the man is a veteran of the ''Canadian'' Army, and calls him out as a fraud—only to be told that although Canada didn't take part in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, they did send troops to Vietnam to enforce the Paris Peace Accords, which is how he lost his arm in a landmine incident. It's also a straight example as Canadian troops ''did'' fight in Vietnam: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Canadians_in_the_U.S._military 30,000 soldiers in all]].

* In the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus Monty Python]] "[[http://www.montypython.net/scripts/railway.php Railway Sketch]]" the son of a murdered man presents a British Rail restaurant car ticket as proof of an alibi when he is fingered for the crime. However, it was immediately pointed out that the specified train didn't ''have'' a restaurant car, instead being standing buffet only. The suspect attempts to further clarify his alibi, but every attempt to do so is immediately picked apart by the others present as they all seem to possess omniscient knowledge of railway timetables. Stimied at every turn, the son eventually just gives up and confesses to the murder.

* One case from Mathnet on ''Series/SquareOneTV'' involved a number of contradictions which made detectives Kate Monday and George Frankly suspicious of a kidnapping victim's involvement in the crime. In "The Problem of the Trojan Hamburger", amateur gem cutter Hans Ballpeen is kidnapped and the [[MineralMacGuffin Despair Diamond]] is stolen afterwards. Ballpeen manages to escape and explains that he was forced to cut the diamond. [[spoiler: Monday and Frankly are more than suspicious because of not one, but a number of contradictions in his account. First, Ballpeen was kidnapped first and then the diamond was stolen—it's reasoned that there's no point in kidnapping a gem cutter unless you have one to cut in the first place. Second, Ballpeen claimed he hadn't cut a diamond in years, which made the detectives wonder why someone that rusty would be kidnapped instead of someone more skilled. Third, Ballpeen doesn't identify the diamond as the Despair Diamond. That was considered odd since it was a world-famous diamond. Fourth, he claimed that he was released somewhere in the woods, hiked to a highway, and hitchhiked home. Kate Monday pointed out his boots were pristine and George Frankly reasons that anyone getting away from kidnappers would find first find a phone and call the police.]]

* Deconstructed in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' where hearings were being held of Starfleet officers out of fear that there was a Romulan spy on board the Enterprise. One officer questioned was revealed to have falsified some personal information claiming he had a Vulcan grandfather when the grandfather was actually Romulan. The witch-hunter who started the hearings took that alone as just-about-proof that he was the spy they were searching for, but Picard and a few other ''Enterprise'' officers recognized that while the lie is cause for disciplinary action in and of itself [[note]]not for the ''content'' of the lie, but just for the act of lying on his official record[[/note]], it didn't prove that he was involved with any kind of deeper conspiracy.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' has gotten into this trope as of 2016 with players taking the role of police detectives solving the day's latest in the series of "egg murders" taking place at mansions everywhere. Being unable to search for clues or evidence (although some of the ''suspects'' are doing so), or indeed take any action other than to wander the scene and interrogate suspects, this follows naturally. [[spoiler: However, it's an ''inversion'': most suspects are such pathological liars that if one both fingers a culprit and also correctly tells you even one verifiable fact about the scene or others you can make an arrest. Conviction By Non-Contradiction.]]

* Averted in Episode 3 of VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney, where this is straight-up said to be an impossible act. Apollo has a very good idea of who the real killer is, but even though he's presented a pretty convincing case with quite a bit of evidence to back it up, and pointed out a load of contradictions in the witness's testimony, he's still unable to get them for the murder due to not having any evidence that actually links them directly to the crime. Apollo does eventually get them by [[spoiler:forcing a confession out of him.]]
* ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'': The second case lampshades this tendency, with the accused killer complaining that he's being condemned over a minor inconsistency. The one doing the accusing actually admits the flimsiness of the reasoning, but [[spoiler: their real goal is to rattle the killer badly enough that he [[INeverSaidItWasPoison mentions a piece of information that only the killer could know.]] ]]

* Parodied in an article from Website/TheOnion about [[https://www.theonion.com/idaville-detective-encyclopedia-brown-found-dead-in-lib-1819567098 the boy detective's murder]]. Bugs claims that "at the time the crime was committed, I was at [[PolarBearsAndPenguins the North Pole watching the penguins]]".

* Usually averted by way of careful wording in the Italian puzzle magazine ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Settimana_Enigmistica La Settimana Enigmistica]]''. The magazine often hosts logic puzzles where a detective needs to find a hole in a suspect's story, but the final question in these is usually worded as "What in the story didn't pan out and convinced the inspector that further interrogation was needed?", rather than "What factual error proved the suspect was guilty?"

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'', in which Orel starts a detective agency. There are two suspects when the contents of Reverend Putty's collection basket is stolen: Joe the DevilInPlainSight, and a clearly-innocent Marionetta. Orel ignores the expensive ice cream Joe has bought, and the fact Marionetta wasn't even in church at the time, and bases his conclusions on which Commandments they broke (or didn't break): Joe honored the Commandment about keeping the Sabbath Holy by refusing to cut his grandfather's lawn, while Marionetta broke the Commandment of honoring her parents by volunteering at a retirement center instead of going to church like she was told. If she broke one Commandment, then [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope surely she would be the sort of person to break "Thou shalt not steal".]]
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheRaccoons'' titled "Simon Says" involves an aardvark claiming to be Cyril Sneer's long lost brother, Simon, who wants his share of the Sneer fortune. Simon claims to have been trapped on a desert island for a long time and eventually built a boat to get himself off the island. Bert however is suspicious and spends the episode trying to expose Simon as a fraud. [[spoiler: Bert succeeds and when asked what made him wary, it's explained that during their initial handshake, Bert noticed Simon's hands were very smooth. If he had worked on building his own boat, his hands should have been rough and callused.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' had an episode like this titled "The Trial." After Tommy's favorite clown lamp is broken, Angelica suggests that he [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin hold a trial]] to determine the culprit. Angelica plays the role of "persecutor" and attempts to finger Phil, Lil, and Chuckie as the "poopatrator", pointing out their various actions that endangered the lamp, but they're able to defend themselves. It isn't until Tommy realizes that [[spoiler: Angelica's supposed "alibi" -- she was taking a nap -- doesn't hold up because she supposedly took one earlier at her own house (the episode opens with her coming into the room after "waking up," but she's clearly lying)]] that the babies realize that it would have been impossible for her to know what exactly they were doing and thinking unless ''she was there'', which she was.

* Book 16, chapter 10 ("The Case of the Mysterious Handprints"): Two precious ivory bookends belonging to a former circus owner are stolen when two of the man's friends are visiting. Encyclopedia and his father find strange handprints on the beach near the circus owner's house, and so suspicion falls on one of the visitors, a crippled acrobat, because the only way he could have walked was on his hands. Encyclopedia, however, insists that the thief is in fact the other visitor, a former bareback rider, because she said her leather gloves were missing, and "no one brings leather gloves to a seaside town in the summer." (Again, an assumption of concrete fact out of a generalization, but even so she could have brought the gloves for a legitimate reason like playing golf, as driving gloves, or even riding a horse. Or maybe she packed them by accident.) The missing bookends being found wrapped in the woman's blouse is much more of a clue, but still not definitive in itself.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': Shows up in the first regular episode "Murder By the Book", where Ken Franklin, half of a mystery writing team, sneers that Columbo doesn't have anything concrete linking him to the murder if his partner Jim Ferris—just a motive, the fact that he took out a life insurance policy on the victim, the fact that someone else was murdered shortly afterward who he claimed not to know but in whose house was found a book with a personal autograph in it, and such odd behavior as opening his mail shortly after finding the body on his lawn, and withdrawing a large sum of money out of his bank account and re-depositing it the next day. And Franklin's right, these things are all circumstantial evidence. Then Columbo points out that he found a vague story outline in the victim's office; apparently Columbo's (accurate) reconstruction of the murder matches one of the thousands of rough story ideas that Ferris had been scribbling down over the past couple of decades. Franklin immediately gives in, despite this being easily the ''weakest'' piece of evidence presented thus far.

In fiction, this is usually enough to prove Bob's guilt, or at least cast serious suspicion on Bob. In the real world, of course, this does not in any way mean that Bob committed murder. Maybe Bob still attended the party, but it was with his friend ''Allison,'' not Alice. Maybe the party was on a different night, or there was a second party that Alice ''did'' attend with Bob, and Bob just mis-remembered. Maybe [[BigSecret Bob was lying because he was doing something embarrassing that still wasn't, you know, murder]].

* Book 1, chapter 5 ("The Case of the Bank Robber"): A blind man is the only witness to a crime; a perp fleeing the scene with a bag of cash crashed into him, and it is thought that the man might have felt his face well enough to identify him if he felt it again. Turns out the blind man is not blind, and was in on it the whole time: he swapped bags with the thief when they collided. How does Encyclopedia prove this? When he visited the man in his hotel room, the lights were on and there was a newspaper on the table despite the man claiming he hadn't had visitors in "a long time". Because no hotel in the world offers complimentary newspapers that they put in your room. And they ''never'' have the lights on when you arrive. And a blind man would totally notice if they were on, and turn them off. This is a lesser example, however. Once Brown figures out what happened getting a doctor to confirm that the guy can see shouldn't be too hard. Overlaps with ConvictionByCounterfactualClue since most blind people aren't completely blind and it is entirely possible for one to leave the lights on and read a newspaper.

* Book 2, chapter 8 ("The Case of Excalibur"): A "witness" trying to frame a boy for the theft of a pocket knife claims the boy took the knife with his right hand, and put it in his pocket while running away. He is found innocent because he has a cast on his left hand and the knife was found in his left pants pocket (planted there by the "witness") and (according to the answers section at least) it's impossible to put a pocket knife in your left pants pocket with your right hand while running. Leaving aside that Encyclopedia was assuming an impossibility out of a difficult and highly improbable physical stunt, the mere likelihood of him putting the knife in his left pocket after he'd stopped running never occurred to him.
* Book 3, chapter 3 ("The Case of Bugs's Kidnapping"): At least one time the series used this trope absolutely correctly. Bugs claims to have been kidnapped at Encyclopedia's behest (how a 5th-grader was able to hire and control adult {{Mooks}} is never discussed). He describes being imprisoned in a small room, and attempts to escape by removing the pins from the door hinges, but they are on the other side of the door. Then he tries to wait to the side of the door and jump his kidnappers when they come in, but the door opens into his face, foiling the attack. Standard house doors ''cannot'' open away from their hinges, only toward them.

* Book 9, chapter 4 ("The Case of the Headless Runner"): The perp claimed to have been awoken by a thunderclap, then saw the crime during a lightning flash. E Brown knew that the perp was lying, since in real life, thunder follows lightning, not the other way around. Of course, it's inconceivable that there would be more than one lightning flash during the course of a thunderstorm.

* Book 13, chapter 2 ("The Case of the Hidden Penny"): A stolen rare coin is found inside Bugs Meany's hot dog. How did Encyclopedia know where to find it? Because he saw Bugs spread mustard ''on top'' of the sauerkraut, and "[[SeriousBusiness no one]] who [[NoTrueScotsman likes hot dogs]] does that." Admittedly, it is a pretty messy way to go about things (similar to trying to spread peanut butter on top of jelly), but c'mon. Interestingly, the story effectively admits Bugs ''would'' have walked if he'd been willing to finish his hot dog, and presumably swallow the coin in the process. Also a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, as a modern reader would expect the mustard to come out of a squeeze bottle and be easier to have on top than the sauerkraut. Plus, who's to say Bugs hadn't just ''overlooked'' the mustard jar, or that someone else was hogging it, when he first started applying his hot dog toppings? For that matter, how hard would it have been for him to just put the bite of hot dog in his mouth and stick the penny under his tongue or the bottom of his cheek?

* Book 16, chapter 2 ("The Case of the Battle Cries"): A boy blows his fake alibi by tracing a shirt pocket on the wrong side of his chest. This is perfectly understandable, since everyone is accustomed to seeing images of themselves in the mirror, where left and right are flipped.
* Book 16, chapter 7 ("The Case of the Hard-luck Boy"): A contest is held in which contestants complete a quiz for 3 secret prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The first place winner receives the best prize: a watch, which he discovers has been broken. The theory of the crime is one of the contestants secretly examined the prizes and played with the watch and broke it. The culprit turns out to be the 2nd place girl that purposely missed a question she should have gotten right: "Name a word that has three double-letters." The girl referred to herself as a "bookkeeper". This doesn't account for the possibility that the word simply slipped her mind at that exact moment. Or perhaps she can't spell it -- thinks it only has one k, for example, or thinks it's two words. Or perhaps she hyphenates the word, as "book-keeper" (a valid, if rather old, spelling), splitting one of the double letters.
* Book 16, chapter 10 ("The Case of the Mysterious Handprints"): Two precious ivory bookends belonging to a former circus owner are stolen when two of the man's friends are visiting. Encyclopedia and his father find strange handprints in the beach near the circus owner's house, and so suspicion falls on one of the visitors, a crippled acrobat, because the only way he could have walked was on his hands. Encyclopedia, however, insists that the thief is in fact the other visitor, a former bareback rider, because she said her leather gloves were missing, and "no one brings leather gloves to a seaside town in the summer." (Again, an assumption of concrete fact out of a generalization, but even so she could have brought the gloves for a legitimate reason like playing golf, as driving gloves, or even riding a horse. Or maybe she packed them by accident.) The missing bookends being found wrapped in the woman's blouse is much more of a clue, but still not definitive in itself.
* Book 17, chapter 1 ("The Case of the Masked Robber"): Encyclopedia's dad described a case to him after the fact that involved a professional tennis instructor who reported that a set of ivory screens had been stolen that morning. He saw the thief's face; it could be either of two identical twins -- one who worked as a cashier and one who played tennis. Encyclopedia figures out that the victim was just lying so he could get insurance money for the screens, because the crook was wearing a T-shirt, and if the tennis player had been the culprit, one arm would be more developed, while equal arms would incriminate the cashier. This assumes that the isntructor had the presence of mind to make such an astute observation, and also assumes the [[ConvictionByCounterfactualClue untrue "fact"]] that all tennis players have asymmetrical arms.

* Book 18, chapter 2 ("The Case of the Teacup"): Bugs steals an antique teacup. When Encyclopedia confronts him about it, Bugs claims that that it was a prized cup from the owner of a Chinese restaurant that has since gone out of business. Encyclopedia deduces that he's lying by noticing that the cup has a handle, which Chinese teacups do not have. (Because it's impossible for a Chinese guy to like American mugs, and of course, with globalisation Chinese teacups with handles do exist now.)

* Book 20, chapter 6 ("The Case of Pablo's Nose"): A perp is accused of stealing something that belonged to Encyclopedia's client, and riding away on her bicycle. She claims that she hasn't ridden her bike all summer, before she takes it out of storage and starts showing off on it. Encyclopedia declares that she's lying, because if she hadn't ridden the bicycle like she claimed, the tires would have gone flat. (Because it's impossible that the girl or her parents could have kept the tires inflated in case she ever decided she wanted to go for a bike ride.)

* The first storyline in which Franchise/{{Superman}} and Franchise/{{Batman}} learned each other's secret identities (via ContrivedCoincidence) featured Batman concluding that someone was lying about being an electrical engineer because he wasn't wearing rubber-soled shoes[[labelnote:*]]Which has an element of ConvictionByCounterfactualClue as well: an ''electrician'' is someone who works hands-on in electrical systems installation, maintenance, troubleshooting and repair, while an ''electrical engineer'' is usually someone who designs such systems but does not physically work on them.[[/labelnote]]. ''On a holiday cruise.'' While a) Superman had X-ray-spotted a gun in the suspect's pocket and b) the guy did claim to have a job to do in a few minutes on the ship's generators, it's still rather jarring that "[[InformedAbility The World's Greatest Detective]]" apparently concluded that no-one can own more than one set of shoes.

** Inverted ''again'' in another story where Archie accidentally spills paint remover on an 1870 Frederick Church painting that Mr. Lodge buys from an art dealer. Mr. Lodge is predictably upset, but then Archie wipes away more paint and finds the signature "Picasso". Mr. Lodge is suddenly thrilled, thinking that he's actually discovered a long-lost painting by Creator/PabloPicasso, but then his butler Smithers reminds him that Picasso was born after 1870, the date when Church supposedly painted his picture. When it dawns on Mr. Lodge that Church couldn't have painted over Picasso's original painting if Picasso wasn't even ''born'' yet, he realizes that he's being conned. Mr. Lodge then takes back his check from the crooked art dealer, and gets Smithers to help him literally throw the dealer out of the house.
** Yet another story had Archie and Jughead housesitting for Mr. Lodge and Veronica while they went on a family trip. A crooked art dealer and one of Mr. Lodge's security guards use the opportunity to steal Mr. Lodge's collection of priceless paintings and replace them with forgeries, while trashing the Lodge house to make it look like Archie and Jughead threw a WildTeenParty and distract Mr. Lodge. When he comes home, Mr. Lodge falls for it and is furious with Archie and Jughead, but then Archie realizes that the paintings weren't at all damaged by the "party". He convinces Mr. Lodge that they were hung after the wrecking was done, and proves that they're fakes. Archie and Jughead then direct the police to the art gallery, where they find Mr. Lodge's real paintings. Archie explains that the crooked art dealer couldn't bear to damage his expert forgeries and ended up tipping Archie off to the fact that they were fakes, which makes this a case of HoistByHisOwnPetard.

** When Hugh Scully "wrote" the strip, the thief claimed she had been cleaning an Edwardian bureau at the time of the theft, when the style of carving on the bureau clearly showed it be be from another period.

* Trixie Belden had several comic book stories. One involved a female suspect hiding out as a guy. The crook forgot that female shirts tend to button on the opposite side. Because a woman just can't prefer to wear mens' shirts, even back in the 1940s when the print series began.

* In ''Film/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' (''not'' in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban the book]] where it took a ''lot'' of explanations from all parties involved and pursuing every doubt before Harry believed the truth) the person who betrayed Potters was proven "guilty" because [[spoiler: he pretended to be a rat for the last 12 years]]. Curiously enough, the book offers a plausible explanation why he would do this if he's innocent:[[spoiler: he claimed he was scared for his life, since a person thought to be a Death Eater tried to kill him, and others might try this as well]]. While this ''was'' why he was considered a suspect in the first place it was other evidence that convinced Harry of his guilt.

* In ''Film/TheFinalCut'', Creator/RobinWilliams' character concludes that a man he sees in a recording is someone he met years earlier when they were boys, because he cleans his glasses on his shirt. Most people who wear glasses will clean them on their shirt if a more suitable cloth is not available.
* Played with in ''Film/AFewGoodMen'' – a murder victim in Guantanamo Bay's military base in Cuba had supposedly received long-awaited transfer orders for a flight early the next morning, but had not packed by the time of his murder later that night nor called any friends or family back home to make preparations. When his commander is asked about this at trial, he quickly points out that there could be any number of explanations for those facts (maybe he liked to pack in the morning), and he can't be expected to explain them. However, the contradiction is enough to irritate the witness and put him on the defensive—[[XanatosGambit just]] [[ZigzaggingTrope as planned.]]

** Haledjian knows that Nick the Nose, the informant, is lying (as he always is), because he claims that a dying Brazilian's last words were in Spanish, and the national language of Brazil is actually Portuguese. (Because the Brazilian couldn't be one of the many immigrants to Brazil from nearby Spanish-speaking countries. And because it would be impossible for a native Brazilian to speak his last words in a foreign language. And because it would be impossible for an Anglophone informant to simply ''mistake'' Portuguese for the extremely-similar-sounding and more commonly heard Spanish language.) In fact, depending on what he said, it could sound exactly the same in Spanish or Portuguese, especially from the mouth of a dying man (who presumably isn't speaking particularly clearly).

** The alleged murderer claims to have not visited his friend for days, but is caught because he leapt over the freshly-painted stairs and knocked on the window set into the door rather than the freshly-painted door itself. (Because it's not like fresh paint ''looks'' and ''smells'' like fresh paint, especially fresh ''white'' paint. And because it's not like some people leap over stairs as a matter of course, or like knocking on a window is often simply ''louder'' than knocking on a heavy door.) This is one of the many cases that were recycled for Encyclopedia Brown to solve.

** "Flawless"[=/=]"floorless" The police have confiscated a car whose floorboard was used to smuggle drugs. Haledjian is trying to catch the crooks by posing as car salesman "Flawless Phil". He mentions to one prospective buyer that "the interior is floorless"; when the buyer walks away, Haledjian orders him arrested on the grounds that had he been innocent, he would have heard "floorless" as "flawless", the slogan of the lot. While there are accents that make 'flawless' and 'floorless' sound similar or even the same, there are many more where they are quite distinct. And in either case, isn't it possible that the guy ''just didn't like the car'' or perhaps he had to take a dump? (In this case the guy didn't help his case by acting really nervous.)

** In one, Inspector Winters asks for bicarbonate of soda for an upset stomach while in a bakery. The baker says she doesn't have any; this leads the detective to deduce that the bakery must be a front for smuggling, since bicarbonate of soda is baking soda and no real bakery would be without it. Except there's the possibility that the baker was unfamiliar with an antiquated term for baking soda (even more egregious today than when it was originally written: many modern ''chemists'' might find the term unfamiliar, since the proper scientific terminology has been "sodium hydrogen carbonate" for ''decades'', and was "sodium bicarbonate" rather than "bicarbonate of soda" for some time before that). And then there's the possibility they ran out of baking soda using it to, you know, bake; or that they bake pies and pastries which don't require it.

** The suspect claims to be a stranger in the house, but knows that the brandy is kept in the kitchen, never mind that that's where most people keep their liquor.

** Lampshaded in one story where the detective is listening to someone's testimony on a crime, and mentions it won't stand up in court because he was telling the story as he saw it, through the mirror of a car.

** In one short story, two similar-looking girls work in a library. One of them murders the other, but claims she has an alibi—she was accepting a book return from a student at a certain point before the murder. The detective deduces that it was the other librarian who had accepted the book, because the student shared a name with the author of THE chemical reference, period. A professional chemistry librarian could no more forget the name "Beilstein" any more than a conductor could forget an applicant named "Ludwig van Beethoven". The student recalled that the librarian had smiled at hearing his name, but the surviving librarian didn't recall anything unusual about the student. Not much evidence, but since she confesses later, that's what would matter in court.

* A series of short plays for kids published in the UK featured a detective with the {{catchphrase}} "And I can prove it, because you made four silly mistakes". The mistakes rarely proved anything. (In fact, one of them was the [[TropeNamers fallacy namer]] for NoTrueScotsman; a character during the Jacobite Rebellion is exposed as an English spy because, amongst other things, he puts sugar on his porridge...)
* One short story in the anthology ''Creator/AlfredHitchcock's Sinister Spies'' is called "[=QL696.C9=]", by Creator/AnthonyBoucher. It's about a librarian who was killed, leaving the titular mysterious sequence of letters and numbers nearby. At the end of the story, the detective gathers the suspects in the, um, library in the traditional fashion,[[spoiler: declares that the code was probably a library subject reference number, and starts to look it up]]. He's interrupted by the need to keep the murderer (a spy), from killing herself with the pistol she hid in her blouse. Turns out he knew it was her as soon as he figured out what the code was for, as the killer had the only name that was a noun, and the whole library scene was just to flush her out. FridgeBrilliance kicks in when you realize that the detective needed something from the suspect to avert this trope, since there's all sorts of perfectly good reasons a librarian would have to write down a Library of Congress reference code [[spoiler:for swifts]]. Ironically, the anthology in question comes up when you search the [=LoC=] for the code.

* ''Uncle John's Bathroom Reader'' had a series of simple mysteries featuring Leslie Boies and her companion, Steve. In one story, Steve tells Leslie about a man whose life was saved because the night watchman at the factory he owned told him he dreamt the train he usually took was going to crash. So the man waited for a later train, and sure enough, his usual train crashed. Leslie comments that the watchman should be fired, because if he dreamt about the train, he must have been sleeping on the job. Because he couldn't have had the dream when he was back at home, clearly. This is a variant on the tale that actually ''introduces'' the element that makes this qualify; in other versions, the dreamer specifically states that he had the dream at a time when he was at work.

* Discussed and then averted in the novel ''The Franchise Affair'' by Josephine Tey. The novel is about two women accused of kidnapping and enslaving a school girl and the attempts of their solicitor, Robert Blair, to defend them. Midway through the novel, the womens' solicitor discovers a discrepancy that can be used to cast doubt on the girl's story (she could not have seen the view out of the attic window that she describes). However, Blair realises that a clever prosecution lawyer can argue around this and even if the women are let off on this evidence, the taint of the accusations will still hang over them.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': Shows up in the first regular episode "Murder By the Book", where Ken Franklin, half of a mystery writing team, sneers that Columbo doesn't have anything concrete linking him to the murder if his partner Jim Ferris—just a motive, the fact that he took out a life insurance policy on the victim, the fact that someone else was murdered shortly afterward who he claimed not to know but in whose house was found a book with a personal autograph in it, and such odd behavior as opening his mail shortly after finding the body on his lawn, and withdrawing a large sum of money out of his bank account and redepositing it the next day. And Franklin's right, these things are all circumstantial evidence. Then Columbo points out that he found a vague story outline in the victim's office; apparently Columbo's (accurate) reconstruction of the murder matches one of the thousands of rough story ideas that Ferris had been scribbling down over the past couple of decades. Franklin immediately gives in, despite this being easily the ''weakest'' piece of evidence presented thus far.

** One episode involved a serial rapist [=UnSub=] who played a particular genre of music during his crimes. The team ended up dismissing one suspect on the grounds that he had been too young to be influenced by that music when it was popular. Apparently it's an iron-clad law that your favorite music ''must'' be the music that was popular while you were a teenager, and that no one ever prefers music from a previous era. The episode's main sub-plot (a woman goes full-blown vigilante and kidnaps and tortures a suspect becuase she believes he's the rapist) revolves around her (apparently paranoid) belief that because she heard him play "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on the piano he's the guy -- as the tortured man points out, the fact he knows how to play "Total Eclipse of the Heart" ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_-_VwrXwss a piano melody]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOxhH8N3Bo that is very simple to learn]], and which he insists he learned for his wife, and he even plays a couple of songs that sound similar) is not conclusive evidence at all. [[spoiler:[[ProperlyParanoid It was him]].]]

** In one episode, Jane quickly convinces the cops that a notoriously stingy millionaire is the culprit because he offered a reward for info on his employee's killer. After 48-hours, with no actual evidence or success at interrogation, they are legally required to release him. But as the guy is leaving the building, Jane tricks him into correcting a mis-quoted line from Shakespeare, contradicting his earlier claim that he neither liked nor knew the material (relevant because the victim had been killed by someone she met in a chatroom on the subject). This single slip is treated as a decisive victory and the cops immediately take him back into custody as if they now have enough evidence to make an actual case against him.

* In the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus Monty Python]] "[[http://www.montypython.net/scripts/railway.php Railway Sketch]]" the son of a murdered man presents a British Rail restaurant car ticket as proof of an alibi when he is fingered for the crime. However is was immediately pointed out that the specified train didn't ''have'' a restaurant car, instead being standing buffet only. The suspect attempts to further clarify his alibi, but every attempt to do so is immediately picked apart by the others present as they all seem to posses omniscient knowledge of railway timetables. Stimied at every turn, the son eventually just gives up and confesses to the murder.

* Deconstructed in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' where hearings were being held of Starfleet officers out of fear that there was a Romulan spy on board the Enterprise. One officer questioned was revealed to have falsified some personal information claiming he had a Vulcan grandfather, when the grandfather was actually Romulan. The witch-hunter who started the hearings took that alone as just-about-proof that he was the spy they were searching for, but Picard and a few other ''Enterprise'' officers recognized that while the lie is cause for disciplinary action in and of itself [[note]]not for the ''content'' of the lie, but just for the act of lying on his official record[[/note]], it didn't prove that he was involved with any kind of deeper conspiracy.
* Deconstructed in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': a copy of the Doctor finds himself in a museum seven hundred years into the future, a museum dedicated to the "Voyager incident," which claims the ship caused an entire civilization to be conquered by another race. The Doctor tries to explain what actually happened: Voyager was just making a trade deal for fuel that was misinterpreted to be a weapons deal. The Doctor could prove it wasn't Janeway who shot the first civilization's national hero, but an ambassador from the second race. However, it was pointed out proving who fired a single weapon in what circumstances doesn't really change the broad strokes of the history the "oppressed" civilization [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory wants to maintain]]. He does succeed in revealing the deception to the general population in the end, though.

* One episode of ''Radio/TheWhistler'' featured a man who killed his wife and made it look like a suicide. The police investigation and interrogation, conducted in the wife's apartment, has some close calls, but it looks like he's gotten away with it. The detective rises and heads for the door, ready to close the book on the case...and the wife's alarm clock goes off. Why would someone who's planning to commit suicide set their alarm clock to wake them up? The detective comes back, and says it's time to restart the interrogation from the top, as the husband breaks down.

* Another riddle involves the murder of a wealthy man who is killed on a Sunday. Upon being questioned, all of the servants give various alibis: "I was polishing the silver," "I was mowing the grass," etc. The "killer" is the one who claims to have been checking the mail, because mail isn't delivered on Sundays—because apparently, it's impossible to forget that and just check every day out of habit. Or to have forgotten to check on Saturday, and instead get the mail the next day. Or to receive a newspaper that is delivered on Sunday. Or to get mail delivered by others than the Postal Service (how uncommon this is may vary between countries, but that's especially erroneous in the US, since the USPS will deliver letters on Sunday for an extra charge).

* One riddle involves having to figure out why a suspect was let go. It turns out he was deaf, and thus couldn't understand his {{Miranda rights}} when read to him. Aside from the fact that many deaf individuals know how to lip read,[[note]]Lip reading is only good for at most 30% of the information the speaker is trying to convey, but it would be enough with the context for the deaf person to understand what was going on and request an interperter.[[/note]] the whole idea hinges on {{Hollywood law}}, as no mention of him confessing is made. Obviously if he confessed the police would quickly have learned of his deafness and made sure his rights were understood, giving them in writing or through a sign language translator if necessary. A deaf person will most likely tell the police immediately they're deaf to facilitate this, if they didn't notice already.

* Subverted in the Safe ending of ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors''. Junpei performs an epic set-up to reveal that [[spoiler:Ace/Hongou]] has [[spoiler:prosopagnosia and can't tell the difference between faces]], and thus killed [[spoiler:“Snake” (or rather, a man dressed up as Snake to take advantage of Ace’s prosopagnosia and get him to murder the guy)]]. The accused points out that [[spoiler:his having prosopagnosia is true, but it in no way indicates that he was a murderer, and that he just kept it a secret because he was upset by it]]. Junpei agrees with this, and then says that the [[spoiler:prosopagnosia reveal]] was just a springboard to lead to evidence that ''did'' implicate them.

* ''Series/BluePeter'' annuals used to feature a regular story in which a detective called [=McCann=] and his nephew Bob would catch a thief after the thief made six (always six) factual errors. This was a fairly good example of the trope because the mistakes were things the suspect would have known if they were who they claimed to be, and merely exposed them as suspicious imposters. The actual proof was that they had the stolen artifact on them.

* Zigzagged in "False Alarm," an episode of ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold''. [[ButtMonkey Eugene]] is accused of pulling a fire alarm, and a jury of students--consisting of Arnold, Gerald, Phoebe, Helga, Harold, and Curly--is called to find him guilty. Arnold is the lone holdout (much of the episode parodies ''Film/TwelveAngryMen''), and eventually uses this trope to prove his point: one of the pieces of evidence is a pencil from Wankyland, an amusement park, found near the broom closet where Eugene was discovered hiding. Arnold argues that Eugene ''couldn't'' own a Wankyland pencil, as he was banned from the park for [[NoodleIncident somehow ruining a Thanksgiving Day parade]] the previous year. It's never suggested that Eugene might have had the pencil from ''before'' being banned (Arnold himself simply says that it's "not ''likely'' that he'd have one"), but it turns out to be a moot point, as the real culprit--Curly--reveals himself once Arnold makes this argument.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' had an episode like this titled "The Trial." After Tommy's favorite clown lamp is broken, Angelica suggests that he [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin hold a trial]] to determine the culprit. Angelica plays the role of "persecutor" and attempts to finger Phil, Lil and Chuckie as the "poopatrator", pointing out their various actions that endangered the lamp, but they're able to defend themselves. It isn't until Tommy realizes that [[spoiler: Angelica's supposed "alibi"--she was taking a nap---doesn't hold up because she supposedly took one earlier at her own house (the episode opens with her coming into the room after "waking up," but she's clearly lying)]] that the babies realize that it would have been impossible for her to know what exactly they were doing and thinking unless ''she was there'', which she was.

** Spoofed in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS12E15HungryHungryHomer Hungry, Hungry Homer]]" where Homer finds evidence that the Duff corporation, owners of the Springfield Isotopes, are planning on selling the team to New Mexico but nobody believes him because the owners hid said evidence. Homer goes on a hunger strike to get Henry Duff VIII to tell the truth, which he exploits as a publicity stunt. When it looks like Homer's about to give up, Duff offer him a hot dog; however, he notices the toppings (mesquite-grilled onions, jalapeño relish, mango-lime salsa) and observes "That's the kind of bold flavor they enjoy in...Albuquerque!" '''This''' is treated as the smoking gun that proves Homer right, despite the fact that there's absolutely no reason a stadium couldn't just choose to serve a Southwestern-style hot dog. Also, the hot dog wrappers say "Albuquerque Isotopes", but apparently [[FailedASpotCheck nobody noticed that until Homer brought it up]].