History Main / DeceasedFallGuyGambit

* In the Creator/LouisLAmourshort story "Keep Travelin' Rider", Tack Gentry kills two henchmen who killed his uncle as part of a land grabbing scheme. Their boss promptly blames everything on them and claims that he's an innocent bystander, with the Texas Rangers who've just arrived frustratedly admitting there's no way to disprove this. Tack accepts this, but says that they ''can'' arrest the BigBad [[JusticeByOtherLegalMeans for horse theft, as he's quickly able to prove that the horse the villain is riding is one the villain took from Tack when he thought Tack was dead.]] The villain angrily goes for his gun and follows his goons to the grave.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bamber Jeremy Bamber]], who was the sole survivor, tried to pin the White House farm murder on his adoptive sister Sheila, who was known for being schizophrenic, and was nearly successful until further investigations showed it was him who killed [[SelfMadeOrphan his adoptive parents]], [[CainAndAbel his sister]] and [[WouldHurtAChild her sons]].

* During the Cold War era, German military leaders such as Erich von Manstein and Heinz Guderian wrote memoirs about World War II in which they claimed that they could have beaten the Soviet Union and won the war if Hitler had listened to them and not made his own stupid decisions. For example, if they had been allowed to focus everything on taking Moscow instead of shifting attention to the South in the 1942 summer offensive, Case Blue. The fact that Hitler was no longer around to disagree with them was very convenient. Many of their claims have been debunked by modern historians, who point out that until 1944 Hitler usually ''did'' do what his generals advised, even when he disagreed with them. For example, he approved summer 1943's Operation Citadel at the urging of his generals despite having a really bad feeling about it, and indeed it turned out to be a major defeat. Also, on the flip side, there were some times when he overruled his generals where he ended up being right. Returning to the first example, his generals had little evidence for their view that Russia would give up and stop fighting if Moscow fell (it didn't work for Napoleon), and in light of Germany's desperate shortages of food and oil, attempting to capture the resource-rich Caucasus region was what made sense after the failure of Operation Barbarossa.

* Chris Watts murdered her wife and girls, then claimed his wife killed the girls and he killed her in a fit of rage. He later recanted the statement, going back to his original confession.

* In ''Series/13ReasonsWhy'', [[spoiler:Alex's friends decide to pin Bryce's death on Montgomery at around the time he is murdered in prison. Alex's father is aware his son really did it, but lets the frame-up walk to protect him.]]

Uh-oh, you did something bad! Looks like someone will have to take the blame. But who?

* Inverted in the Battle of Little Bighorn. Two of Custer's surviving officers, Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen, were criticized by Custer's supporters, especially his widow, as being responsible for Custer's death by failing to properly execute Custer's orders during the battle. Modern critics of Custer have pointed to Custer's own tactical mistakes as being the real reasons he lost the battle and he and most of his men were killed.

* ''Series/{{Ultraviolet}}''. In the episode "Mea Culpa", a 12-year old boy kills a priest and the team is sent to investigate if the killing is vampire-related. The priest in charge of the team, Pearse Harman, gets annoyed when ex-cop Michael Colefield thinks it's child abuse-related, {{Lampshading}} the PedophilePriest cliché. However when it turns out the priest was innocent and vampires ''were'' involved, [[GoodIsNotNice Harman]] cynically allows the public to believe the priest was a pedophile to maintain the {{Masquerade}}.

* As a GreatDetective series, ''Manga/CaseClosed'' had more than one case of this. For example, [[spoiler: Yusuke Sakata was planning to do this to the people who killed his dad in a DeadlyPrank, killing them all and setting up the last one as the apparent culprit. Which would be easy since the last guy ''was'' a SerialKiller that he had been chasing after ''before'' he ever came up with his plan.]]
* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandaloneComplex''. A hacker is willing to pose as the Laughing Man and even go to jail, as long as he becomes a celebrity. He finds out too late that his co-conspirators think this plan will work better if he's dead. "Don't worry, you'll be more famous this way."

[[folder:Comics]]
* While not ''dead'', a ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strip had Wally ask the PointyHairedBoss if anyone had been fired lately, then [[http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-03-31 conveniently blame that co-worker for his project being late]].
* ''Comicbook/SuicideSquad'', ''The Comicbook/{{New 52}}'': Deadshot and the [[BoxedCrook Suicide Squad]] kill an entire stadium of [[ZombieInfectee virus-infected]] zombie cyborgs. After Voltaic's [[ShockAndAwe electrical powers]] make short work of the monsters, [[TeamKiller Deadshot blasts him]]. Since Voltaic's unique energy is on the bodies, the government can cover up the whole op as a mass murder by an escaped convict.

* After the events of [[VideoGame/SuperAdventureRockman Ra Moon's attack]] in ''ComicBook/MegaMan'', Dr. Wily uses the fact that he had been manipulated by him to get Ra Moon blamed for all his previous evil-doing by making it seem like he had been controlled from the beginning. He succeeds and is restricted to house-arrest with Dr. Light, setting up the ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' adaptation.

* As a GreatDetective series, ''Manga/DetectiveConan'' had more than one case of this. For example, [[spoiler: Yusuke Sakata was planning to do this to the people who killed his dad in a DeadlyPrank, killing them all and setting up the last one as the apparent culprit. Which would be easy since the last guy ''was'' a SerialKiller that he had been chasing after ''before'' he ever came up with his plan.]]

* On ''Series/BurnNotice'', a rival spy posing as Michael Westen steals a lot of money from a drug lord, then has to kill an assassin looking for him. Westen's plan to get the drug lord off his back is to make the dead assassin look like the real thief.

* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'', Lannister soldiers are looking for Gendry, so his friend Arya claims that a Night's Watch recruit they had killed moments before was Gendry. Her gambit is aided by the fact that the recruit had stolen Gendry's distinctive helmet before he died.

* Used in ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy''. [[spoiler:ATF agent Stahl finds herself wrongfully shooting an escaping prisoner in the back. Scared that it might torch her career (or worse), she initially frames Gemma Teller for the crime. However, through a series of deals going sour and rash moves, the frame job becomes impractical...so Stahl seizes an opportunity to shoot her own partner during a firefight, then frames her for the whole mess, including framing Gemma. She confessed all of it just before she died, too]].

* ''Unexpected Developments'', by the authors of the ''Literature/JohnPutnamThatcher'' series, involves a member of a military board of inquiry taking a bribe to blame a pilot for a plane crash and protect the manufacturers of the defective vehicle from losing their investment. When an investigation threatens to expose the corruption, the bribe-taker kills another member of the board who voted against the pilot, staging a suicide to cast suspicion on him. He stages the scene to look like a suicide by putting a glass of bourbon, a picture of a pretty woman the killer assumed to be his sweetheart, and part of the bribe money next to the body. His plan works for the first half of the novel, then the dead man's sister (the owner of the house he was killed in) reveals that the bourbon was hers and her brother only drank vodka. Additionally, the picture of the beautiful woman who the killer assumed was his victim's sweetheart was really a picture of his niece's drama teacher, who he'd never met, meaning he had no reason to look at the picture before killing himself. Once the suicide is disproven, people stop buying the dead man as a fall guy and the killer's plan unravels.