History Main / DetectivePatsy

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]

* In the ''Series/{{Elementary}}'' episode "The Visions of Norman P. Horowitz", Sherlock is contacted by Horowitz's brother, not to investigate his death by accidental overdose, but because before he died he predicted a series of deaths that is coming true, and Sherlock is on the list. Sherlock naturally feels he has to prove Horowitz could not predict the future, and someone killed these people to make it look as if he could. [[It was the brother, and the whole point of the exercise was to draw the attention of former Holmes client (and vague associate of Horrowitz} Henry Baskerville, so he'd pay silly money for the rest of Horowitz's "predictions".]]

* Parodied in the ''Sam Spayed: Babes and Bullets'' section of ''Comicbook/GarfieldHisNineLives'', in which Spayed ''immediately'' assumes his client killed her husband and is planning to doublecross him, he's just not sure why and how. (She didn't.)

* In the ''Series/DogCity'' episode "The Great Dane Curse", Candice Dane hired Ace to find out who's trying to kill her, and then disappeared, leaving Ace as the prime suspect in her murder. It eventually transpires that she faked her death to escape her controlling father.

* ''Series/{{Monk}}'': In "Mr. Monk and the Leper," Monk is hired by a man who introduces himself as Derek Bronson, who has been missing for seven years and will soon be declared legally dead at a probate hearing. He has Monk and Natalie break into his house to retrieve some letters, and while they're doing so, they are caught by Mandy Bronson, Derek's wife. Monk then attends a probate hearing where he testifies and validates Mandy's story that Derek is alive. All is well....until Monk sees Julie trying to open a bottle of ketchup and she comments, "Who would need ketchup in 1840?" causing Monk to realize that he's been duped, because the security panel in Derek's house had the words "Founded 2003" on it, so he wonders how Derek could know his own house security code for a system installed after he had vanished. He concludes that seven years ago, Mandy murdered her husband, then got rid of the body and lived off his money, aware that when he was officially declared dead, she'd lose his house, so she hired an acquaintance - a professional pianist - and seduced him to impersonate Derek, and they brought Monk in as a "witness" because they knew that if he thought Derek was a leper, he'd never want to take a good look at the man (further helped by making the meetings happen in dimly lit locations). Monk and Natalie then discover that Mandy has shot and killed the accomplice and is planning to get rid of his body in the same way she got rid of her husband's.

* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' featured this something like every second episode, and so did the movie.

* In the ''SherlockHolmes'' radio play "The Case of the Determined Client," the client tampers with a crime scene to make it look as though her father had been murdered outright, rather than starting the fight with the man who killed him. When the police don't even notice her hints, she calls in Sherlock Holmes, who naturally sees not only the evidence she'd left but that she was the one who left it. She ruefully admits that she should have known better.

** InvokedTrope in "A Stufy in Pink": When evidence is mounting that Murdoch's childhood friend, the private detective Freddie Pink might be a murderer, she protests that she's the one who called the police. He suggests she might be attempting this, and she says she'd surely know his methods well enough to anticipate him seeing through it, unless [[IKnowYouKnowIKnow he thinks she was anticipating him concluding that she wouldn't do it because he'd see through it]]... [[spoiler: It turns out there was [[EverybodyLives no murder]], although Freddie was protecting a client who had killed her husband in self-defence, and had been framed by his family so she'd be forced to explain things in court.]]

* In the third chapter of ''LimboOfTheLost'', after being wrongfully accused of stealing souls, Briggs is accounted for by collector O'Negus, freed, and appointed detective by the mayor to determine who is actually stealing the souls. [[spoiler:It turns out that the soul taker is posing as the mayor, and O'Negus is one of his accomplices.]]

* A convoluted one in the ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' episode "Murdoch Appreciation Society". The killer wants to frame the professor who expelled him from medical school for the murder of a man who's donated his brain to science. But he knows that if the death doesn't ''look'' suspicious, the corpse will go straight to the professor and there won't be a proper post mortem. On the other hand, if it ''does'' look like an obvious murder, Murdoch will realise the professor is being framed. So he joins the eponymous Appreciation Society and convinces them to stage a fake murder so they can watch Murdoch work, using a body he can steal from the medical school. So not only does Murdoch get involved but there's an extra layer of false explanation (the fake murder) for him to disprove, and it looks like the professor would have committed a perfect crime except for the Society's interference.

* Happens so frequently in ''Series/JonathanCreek'' that merely soliciting his services should be ample proof of guilt.

* In the ''Series/JonathanCreek'' episode "Daemons' Roost" [[spoiler: there's a FlashBack to the Striped Unicorn case, in which a man carefully stages his wife's murder so that it initially appears as if only he could have done it, but there's a brilliant explanation otherwise for Jonathan to find. Jonathan only realises the truth after the man's second wife calls him in on another case, six years later]].

* The backstory to the ''Series/JonathanCreek'' episode "Daemons' Roost" has the Striped Unicorn case, in which a man carefully stages his wife's murder so that it initially appears as if only he could have done it, but there's a brilliant explanation otherwise for Jonathan to find. Jonathan doesn't figure out the truth until six years later.

* ''WhoCensoredRogerRabbit'': [[spoiler: Roger hired Eddie Valiant to investigate his boss - so that Roger would have someone to frame when he killed his boss. In the final chapter Eddie admits that the plan ''would have worked'' were it not for two complications that Roger had no way of seeing coming.]]

* A weird one in ''MurderSheWrote'': The murderer is a DA, who killed one of the defendants in a major fraud case. Earlier, he tried to phone her and accidentally called Jessica's number. To cover this up, the DA subpeonas Jessica and refuses to believe she has no idea what it's about. So Jessica has to solve the murder to avoid being found in contempt of court.

* An episode of SimonAndSimon deals with the detectives being hired by a magician into a case, and they discover that the ex wife of the magician did it. Later, they discover it was all the magician ruse. Then he explains:

* Usually not applicable to police, but ''Series/{{Columbo}}'' caught one once, when the murderer was the commissioner. He specifically requested Columbo for the case, having somehow failed to notice that the bumbling detective had only failed to close one case in his entire career.

* Taken to the extreme in ''SinCity'' where Eva Lord hires private eye Dwight [=McCarthy=] to get evidence on her supposedly abusive husband who may be plotting to kill her. [[spoiler: It ends up being a setup; she manipulates Dwight into killing her husband himself.]]

** A VillainBall situation even by this trope's standards, since most people would have the brains to pin the crime on one of the many, many detectives who are ''not'' invulnerable.

* ''TheRockfordFiles'' seemed to do this a lot, but all shows about private detectives will do one eventually.

* Randall Banticoff does this to [[LukeCageHeroForHire Luke Cage]] in ''Luke Cage Noir'', hiring Cage to investigate his wife's murder while arranging for him to take the rap for the crime - and die before a trial could potentially expose it as a frame job.

* In the first ''Literature/SisterFidelma'' story, "The High King's Sword", the abbot is encouraged to request Fidelma by the murderers, who realise that unless a clever and scrupulous ''dalaigh'' is involved, one of them will be condemned as the most likely suspect without anyone really investigating enough to find their carefully planted frame-up.

-->'''Adrian Monk:''' ''[distracted by Natalie drinking a bottle of mouthwash]'' Will you please? And that’s why they chose me. Adrian Monk, the perfect patsy! They knew about my problems. They knew I’d never take a good look at the guy. So, there never really was a leper except for the guy you were making out with all night.
-->--''Series/{{Monk}}'', "Mr. Monk and the Leper"

* Another police example is the ''{{CSI}}'' fourth season episode ''Suckers'' where a casino owner attempts to fake a huge robbery for the insurance money.