History Main / DeceasedFallGuyGambit

* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'': Dexter had doubts about the success of framing [[spoiler:Doakes]] as the Bay Harbor Butcher...[[spoiler:until he got blown up and wouldn't be around to make a fuss]].

* ''Literature/NurseryCrime'': {{Defied}} in ''The Fourth Bear''. Jack realizes that [[spoiler: MS4, who were involved in Goldilocks' death, are trying to frame Bartholemew for the same and will probably kill him soon after.]] Jack pretends to take the bait by ordering his arrest, but [[spoiler: secretly tips Bartholemew off, allowing him to go into hiding and escape death.]]

* ''Film/TheUsualSuspects'': At least [[spoiler:enough for the real Keyser Soze to get away]].

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': In "Party Down," a semi truck with 20 people locked in the trailer hurtles headlong into the Hudson River. Four victims drown and the killer tries to frame one of them for the crime.

** During the Fairy Dance arc, upon his defeat and arrest, [[spoiler:Sugou Nobuyuki]] insists to the police that [[spoiler:Kayaba]] was the one who was ''really'' behind his mind control experiments on the SAO survivors. [[SubvertedTrope No one buys it]], and [[spoiler:Sugou]] eventually gives in and confesses when one of his own employees is brought in for questioning.

* In Film/RuthlessPeople, the Kessler family and Barbara Stone are attacked by the Bedroom Killer, who dies after falling down a set of stairs. It is eventually revealed that the trio opted to use the body in their plan to get ransom money from Barbara's cheating husband, Sam Stone, despite massive police attention due to the Kesslers having originally kidnapped Barbara. Ken Kessler shows up to the pick-up disguised as a clown, and warns police that he will give an order via radio to kill Barbara if they interfere, and not to follow his vehicle. They naturally follow anyway, and Ken loudly proclaims over the radio that he "isn't going to jail" before driving off a pier into the ocean. When the "body" is recovered, they find the Bedroom Killer in Ken's disguise, while Ken escaped in scuba gear with the money. Barbara then shows up and claims the killer was her kidnapper, and there were no partners as he had schizophrenia, which the police believe.

* ''Series/TheSopranos'' episode "[[Recap/TheSopranosS6E15RememberWhen Remember When]]" saw the FBI investigate the killing of bookie Willie Overall, Tony Soprano's first murder way back in 1982. After Overall's body is found and excavated, the investigation is eventually called off when, thanks to misinformation provided by Di Meo capo "Larry Boy" Barese, the decades-old murder is pinned on former Don Jackie Aprile, Sr., who has been dead himself for several years.

* WesternAnimation/{{Archer}} manages to use this on KGB mole Kremenski to hide his inappropriate expenses. After Kremenski outs himself as TheMole, he steals $50,000 from Archer's account while taking him prisoner. When Archer kills him, Cyril notices the theft and suggests Kremenski had been doing it all along, which Archer goes along with.

** A similar case in Virginia involved a man who murdered his wife and one of her colleagues in the US Navy. He claimed that the colleague broke into their apartment and murdered his wife before he shot him in self-defense, but his plan fell apart when police realized that the crime scene didn't match his story.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':

* ''Film/TheParallaxView'': a patsy is set up to take the fall for a political assassination, then quickly killed. Yes, it's inspired by WhoShotJFK.

* This is the core of the controversial argument by British historian AJP Taylor on the beginning of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. He argued that while Hitler may have been evil, the actual war was sparked off by incompetent and muddled diplomacy by Britain and France that created an opportunity for Hitler (or, potentially, any other German nationalist leader) to take advantage. After Hitler was defeated and the full extent of his evil was revealed, the argument went, the Allied leaders simply buried their own incompetent diplomacy while placing all the blame on the now-dead Hitler and his incontrovertible evil.
* 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, he saw the importance of capturing the resource-rich Caucasus region. The operation didn't succeed in the end, but of the two options it was the one that made more sense.
* Similarly, various figures in the military and government of Nazi Germany claimed to be uninvolved in the genocides and war crimes that Germany carried out, pinning the blame on a small number of leaders and especially the deceased Hitler. While Hitler was undoubtably the person most to blame for the war and its atrocities, he couldn't have done it without a lot of help, and his subordinates knew full well what they were doing.

!!Examples

* In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'', after the A-Laws are defeated, it is suggested by TheMovie that the organization and their actions were blamed on Alejandro Corner, a season 1 villain who died five years prior. Why the actions and existence of [[BigBad Ribbons Almarck]] would need to be kept secret is a bit of a mystery, though it may have something to do with keeping the existence of Innovators/Innovades a secret.
* 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."

* After the events of [[VideoGame/SuperAdventureRockman Ra Moon's attack]] in ''ComicBook/MegaManArchieComics'', 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.

* In ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', ComicBook/LexLuthor uses his alternate universe counterpart Alexander Luthor, whom he and the Joker killed in ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'', to pin the blame on various incidents Luthor himself was involved in. Steel smells a rat, but he can't really pin anything on him.

[[folder:Film]]
* In ''Film/SchindlersList'', a Nazi officer is looking for a thief and shoots a man in cold blood to let the Jewish inmates know he isn't playing. The dead man promptly gets blamed for the theft.

* ''Film/ClearAndPresentDanger'': The President threatens to do this to the recently deceased former boss and mentor of Jack Ryan in TheMovie and blame him for the illegal actions the President ordered. [[ThreatBackfire It backfires.]]
* In ''Film/SawVI'', Detective Mark Hoffman names recently-deceased [[spoiler:Agent Strahm]] as the latest Jigsaw killer. [[spoiler:It doesn't work]].
* A possible example in ''Film/TheDeparted''; one of Costello's mooks Delahunt is killed in a shootout, and is later identified as an undercover cop on the news. Costello dismisses it as disinformation planted to throw him off the scent of the real mole; it's [[AmbiguousSituation never confirmed]] if he's right.
* Heavily [[ZigZaggingTrope zigzagged]] in the mid-90s Dolph Lundgren film ''The Shooter''. (''Hidden Assassin'' in the US.) Lundgren is an intelligence agent working for America. He and his partner start the film by being assigned to secretly capture an infamous female assassin who is suspected of being hired to attack an international treaty convention in Prague. Eventually, she convinces him that she's innocent--a conspiracy was going to use her as the fall guy for their plan. They work together to bring down the conspiracy, but she gets killed along the way, and it turns out that Dolph's partner is involved in the conspiracy and is the one who is ''really'' going to attack the convention. After Dolph saves the day, the good guys in his department decide to save his partner's reputation (and the partner's pension for his wife and children) by pinning the blame on the dead female assassin and pretending the partner died a hero. [[GambitPileup It's]] ''[[ShootTheShaggyDog that]]'' [[BittersweetEnding kind of movie]]. Little wonder that Dolph's last action is to say, "ScrewThisImOuttaHere".
* In ''Film/SwimmingWithSharks'', young studio assistant Guy snaps when he realizes that his boss has been lying about passing word about Guy's good work up the chain of command, so he breaks into his boss' house to torment him and get revenge. Towards the end, Guy's LoveInterest (who the boss had also had a relationship with) shows up and begs for him to leave the Hollywood studio scene behind and come with her. Instead, Guy and the boss kill her, blame her for the boss' injury and torture, and Guy's advancement up the ranks is now secure.
* In the thriller ''Film/UnlawfulEntry'', Officer Pete is told by his partner to stop harassing a married couple or he'll report him to the higher ups. Officer Pete responds by making an excuse to chase after and arrest Leon, a petty drug dealer later that night. [[spoiler: When Pete, his partner, and Leon are alone, he murders his partner and makes Leon take the murder weapon. After a terrified Leon does so, Pete shoots and murders him too. Afterwards he frames Leon as the killer of his partner and fakes mourning him when the other police officers show up. "You killed my partner, Leon."]]
* ''Film/TheUsualSuspects'': At least [[spoiler:enough for the real Keyser Soze to get away]].
* Subverted in ''Film/TowerOfTerror''. Emeline Partridge, nanny to child star [[Creator/ShirleyTemple Sally Shine]], ended up as such, but as it turns out, [[spoiler:she wasn't as malevolent as she seems when she and the other ghosts proved her innocence, and it was Sally's sister Abigail who put the child star to her demise.]]

* Inverted in ''Film/TheDarkKnight''. Harvey Dent had become a symbol to Gotham, so Batman decided that he would take the blame for the murders committed in Dent's final hours. In [[Film/TheDarkKnightRises the third movie]], Gotham's new stellar law enforcement record was somehow enabled by a bill inspired by Dent's example, at least until Bane exposes the truth by reading Gordon's speech to the media.
* ''Film/TheBourneSupremacy'': Ward Abbott tries to pin the Berlin assassination and the money theft on Conklin, [[spoiler:who died in ''The Bourne Identity'']], and Bourne, who was to be killed before the CIA could find him.
* ''Film/ArlingtonRoad'': The reason this film needs to be counted as horror. Nobody wants Faraday's fate.
** Same with ''Film/TheParallaxView'' -- a patsy is set up to take the fall for a political assassination, then quickly killed. Yes, it's inspired by WhoShotJFK.
** Along with ''Film/TheChinaSyndrome'' -- this is briefly tried but fails because someone elects to tell the truth instead.
* Combined with SureLetsGoWithThat in ''Film/TheEigerSanction''. When Hemlock is the SoleSurvivor from the climbing expedition up the Eiger, his superior assumes that Hemlock, not knowing which climber was the enemy agent, decided to kill all of them. He congratulates Hemlock on his ruthless but efficient solution and Hemlock is not inclined to argue, having discovered that his friend (who just saved his life) was the real enemy agent.

** And again in [[Film/Scream2022 the fifth film]]. [[spoiler:To exonerate themselves, Richie and Amber want to slander Sam for the murders. Nobody in Woodsboro care much for Sam because she has the reputation of a bad girl, not to mention being the daughter of the aforementioned Billy Loomis, so she's practically DefiledForever]].
* In ''Film/TwoDaysInTheValley'', [[ProfessionalKiller up and coming hitman Lee Woods]] recruits the [[JadedWashout washed up]] hitman Dosmo for his latest job specifically so Woods can do this. After killing the target, Woods then shoots Dosmo in his car afterwards, with the plan being to blow up the car and then plant some of Dosmo's cigarettes and cigarette pack at the scene of the murder, so DNA evidence will connect Dosmo to the killing, and with their only lead dead, the police won't be inclined to investigate further. Dosmo lives thanks to a BulletproofVest, however, and manages to escapes the car before Woods detonates it remotely. It turns out that despite not being the most competent cops around the police might not have gone for Woods' FrameUp even if he had succeeded in killing Dosmo; towards the end of the film the detectives investigating the crime scene comment that it seems pretty obvious that the cigarette pack was left there intentionally to mislead them, given [[AbsenceOfEvidence how clean and traceless the rest of the scene is]].
* This is strongly implied to be part of the MO of [[ProfessionalKiller the assassin]] Vincent in ''Film/{{Collateral}}''. He hires a local taxi to act as TheDriver for him while he goes after a target or targets. At the end of the night after he has finished with all his targets, he kills the driver and makes sure all the physical evidence points to them as a random spree killer. A detective recalls a similar case happening years ago, and the implication is that Vincent was going to set Max up to take the fall at the end of the night.
* ''Film/AMillionWaysToDieInTheWest'': Clinch threatens to kill a dog unless Anna reveals the identity of the man who kissed her. Anna tells him it was the dead Mayor, but Clinch doesn't buy it.
* In the TV movie ''In The Shadow of Evil'', an amnesiac cop recovers enough memories to know that [[TomatoInTheMirror he is the serial killer he's supposed to be trying to catch]]. He plants evidence that implicates the precinct's mortician, then kidnaps him and his own therapist and stages an apparent rescue of the latter, shooting the former, but it's not enough to permanently throw off suspicion.

* In Creator/TonyHillerman's ''Hunting Badger'', robbers [[spoiler:murder a talk show host and fake a suicide note with a confession]].

* In the first ''Literature/WarriorCats'' book, the [=ThunderClan=] deputy Redtail is dead after a battle with [=RiverClan=]. Tigerclaw claims that the [=RiverClan=] cat Oakheart, who also died in the battle, was responsible for Redtail's death, but it's only an excuse to hide the fact that Tigerclaw himself had murdered Redtail.

* ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire''

* In ''Series/ThirteenReasonsWhy'', [[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.]]

** [[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]].

* In ''Theatre/AccidentalDeathOfAnAnarchist'', the police claim that the anarchist either fell out of the window while trying to escape or threw himself out to commit suicide. Either way, it was most definitely not their fault.

* In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', the Legion version of the quest "I Put a Spell on You" has [[PlayerCharacter the Courier]] doing this to [[ThePrankster Private Davey Crenshaw]].
* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'': If Nelson Latimer dies during the quest "Diamond City Blues", his father Malcolm will confront the Sole Survivor next time they visit Diamond City. They can tell Malcolm that Marowski or Paul Pembroke killed Nelson even if they're both dead at that point.
* Loghain mac Tir in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' attempts to pin the death of King Cailan on the Grey Wardens, who he assumes all died at the catastrophic Battle of Ostagar (where Cailan also fell), making himself out to be a hero who saved his troops from the jaws of death, when in actuality he abandoned the king and the Wardens long before defeat at the hands of the Darkspawn was assured (he didn't even respond to the signal lit by the Wardens to summon his men to charge), then returned with his entire army intact and claimed the regency for himself. His motivation for doing this was a combination of wanting the throne for himself and his intense hatred of Orlais--Cailan was planning on having large numbers of Orlesian troops come to Ferelden to help defend against the Blight. Unfortunately for him, two Grey Wardens (the player character and Alistair) weren't quite as dead as he thought.
* In ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2'', one of the playable characters in Act 1 is [[TheInfiltration Private First Class Joseph Allen]], who is a United States Army Ranger-turned-undercover CIA agent hand-picked by General Shepherd to infiltrate terrorist and main antagonist [[BigBad Vladimir Makarov]]'s Ultranationalist terrorist cell, later being selected to participate in Makarov's mass shooting on a Russian airport. At the end, Makarov shoots Allen fatally before escaping from the scene with his men, having found out Allen's true identity (most likely from Shepherd himself). This was a part of Shepherd's plan all along - 5 years prior to this, he'd lost 30,000 of his soldiers to a nuke launched by Makarov, an event seen from the eyes of one of said soldiers in the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty4ModernWarfare'' missions "Shock and Awe" and "Aftermath". The world's apathetic response to such a loss is what leads him to set up Allen to die, as he knew this would all lead to a war that would give him the opportunity to take revenge on Makarov and the Russians. As planned, a dead, heavily armed CIA agent in an airport full of dead Russian civilians doesn't exactly improve Russian-American relations and instead kicks off [[WorldWarIII World War III]].
* ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'': In the JustifiedTutorial, the Smuggler is delivering a shipment of blasters for crime boss Rogun the Butcher when their ship is stolen by StarterVillain Skavak, cargo and all. By the time they steal their ship back on Coruscant, Skavak has already fenced the cargo. They subsequently kill Skavak at the end of Chapter 1, and when Rogun comes calling at the start of Chapter 2, they can try to convince him, truthfully, that it was all Skavak's fault. Rogun doesn't buy it and still blames them for losing the cargo.

** In the second case of the second game, this trope is applied in a way that could only happen in this series. 14 patients at the Grey Surgical Clinic died, and Dr. Turner Grey blamed the deaths on a nurse, Mimi Miney, mixing up their medications. Miney ''confirms this''. Two weeks later, Mimi Miney dies and her younger sister Ini is badly injured in a car accident. People blame Grey for this accident (perhaps thinking that Mimi's confession was coerced and that she was killed so that she wouldn't be able to recant it). Grey then uses the fact that spirit channeling is an accepted phenomenon in the ''Ace Attorney'' world to try to shift the blame to Mimi ''for her own death''. [[spoiler:It fails, of course, because ''Ini'' was actually the one who died, and Mimi tried to hide from her past by [[DeadPersonImpersonation taking on her sister's identity]]. Grey's attempt to channel her to extract a confession would naturally fail since she ''wasn't dead'', and so ''Grey'' ended up being killed]].

* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'': In the episode "A Fire Fighting We Will Go," Hank and friends become volunteer firefighters, but get in trouble when the firehouse burns down on their watch. Hank realizes that it happened because Dale plugged in a neon sign with faulty wiring, but the group ends up pawning the blame off on the sign's original owner, a recently deceased firefighter named Chet Elderson (Dale turned the sign on in his memory). The fire chief accepts this explanation since he kept warning Elderson about the sign and its bad wiring, but to preserve his reputation they decide to rule it an accident, so in the end nobody is punished.

* WesternAnimation/{{Archer}} manages to use this on KGB mole Kremenski to hide his inappropriate expenses. After Kremenski outs himself as TheMole, he steals $50,000 from Archer's account while taking him prisoner. When Archer kills him, Cyril notices the theft and suggests Kremenski had been doing it all along, which Archer goes along with.

* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'':
** [[spoiler:Akihiko Kayaba]] is given all the blame for all of the deaths that occurred because of his death game, while the Player Killers, who knew or didn't believe that killing other players would kill them in real life, get off with counseling at worst (well, those that survived the game did-- many [=PKers=] were [=PKed=] in turn). [[spoiler:Kayaba]], of course, died with the game. One man actually commissioned his wife's assassination while in the game, expecting that this would eventually happen. What happened to [[spoiler:Grimlock]], either in or out of game, once this was exposed, was not specified.

* ''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."

* ''Film/ClearAndPresentDanger'': The President threatens to do this to the recently deceased former boss and mentor of Jack Ryan in TheMovie and blame him for the illegal actions the President ordered.

* In ''Series/BabylonFive'', the board of Edgad Industries tries to pin the blame for an assassination attempt on the security chief, who just happens to have committed suicide and confessed to the plot with his suicide note. An admirable attempt... were the person they tried to convince not Garibaldi, who not only knows they're full of crap from the start, but came to the meeting ready to ruin their lives.

If the dead guy actually did do it, then that's the [[CaptainObvious well-named]] TheDeadGuyDidIt.

* Combined with SureLetsGoWithThat in ''Film/TheEigerSanction''. When Hemlock is the SoleSurvivor from the climbing expedition up the Eiger, his superior assumes that Hemlock, not knowing which climber was the enemy agent, decided to just KillEmAll. He congratulates Hemlock on his ruthless but efficient solution and Hemlock is not inclined to argue, having discovered that his friend (who just saved his life) was the real enemy agent.

* This is strongly implied to be part of the MO of [[ProfessionalKiller the assassin]] Vincent in ''Film/{{Collateral}}''. He hires a local taxi to act as TheDriver for him while he goes after a target or targets. At the end of the night after he has finished with all his targets, he kills the driver and makes sure all the physical evidence points to them. A detective recalls a similar case happening years ago, and the implication is that Vincent was going to set Max up to take the fall at the end of the night.

->''"Yes, the villainous traitor Fawlg-I was obviously responsible for sabotaging our mission at every turn. How unfortunate that he did not survive so that we might force from him the complete story of his heinous betrayals."''

How well this ploy works depends on a number of factors, like the interest the investigators have in the truth, the energy they're prepared to expend and what proof of guilt the local legal system requires. Good detectives may find a deceased fall guy to be a wee bit too convenient for serious crimes, but if they can't find evidence to the contrary quickly enough, they may still be pressured to call it a day by DaChief or Da Chief's superiors -- either because [[TheMole they're in on it]] or because [[ImpossiblyMundaneExplanation there are other cases that need solving too]].

** [[spoiler:Akihiko Kayaba]] is given all the blame for all of the deaths that occurred because of his death game, while the Player Killers, who knew or didn't believe that killing other players would kill them in real life, get off with counseling at worst (well, those that survived the game did--many [=PKers=] were [=PKed=] in turn). [[spoiler:Kayaba]], of course, died with the game. One man actually commissioned his wife's assassination while in the game, expecting that this would eventually happen. What happened to [[spoiler:Grimlock]], either in or out of game, once this was exposed, was not specified.

* The main crew of ''WesternAnimation/{{Metalocalypse}}'' uses this when they find out that they've been [[WhatAnIdiot embezzling from themselves]].