History Main / ItWasHereISwear

* Discussed in ''WesternAnimation/DuckTalesTheMovieTreasureOfTheLostLamp''. Webby's first wish on the genie's lamp is for a baby elephant. However, SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome occurs when the elephant makes a gigantic mess after Webby can't control it, scaring Mrs. Beakley in the process. She goes to get Scrooge [=McDuck=] to show him, but by that time, Louie uses up one of his wishes to undo Webby's, making the elephant vanish and cleaning up the mess. Beakley even lampshades how crazy she must look after Scrooge finds nothing, saying "you think I'm crazy, don't you?" However, Scrooge sees his nephews sneaking out, replying "maybe not."

* In ''Literature/SouthBySouthEast'', Nick and Tim encounter a dead MI5 agent in a telephone booth. By the time the police have arrived and Nick & Tim return to the scene, both the body and the phone box have vanished.

* ''Film/{{Anazapta}}'': Lady Matilda is hoping to ransom Jacques de Saint Amant in exchange for her captured husband and enough money to settle her debts. Halfway through the movie, a letter arrives from Jacques' father [[DeadPersonImpersonation revealing his son was killed in battle.]] The priest who received the letter dies soon after in suspicious circumstances. When a manservant who overheard the conversation tries to warn Matilda, she only finds a letter agreeing to her ransom on the condition that Jacques is well treated, and has her manservant flogged and thrown into a cell for his supposed bungle.

'''Mr. Potato Head:''' Was?\\

** Happens to Sarah Jane Smith in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E1TerrorOfTheZygons Terror of the Zygons]]".

* ''Series/{{Hunter}}'': Hunter goes home after his shift ends to find a [[DropDeadGorgeous very beautiful and very dead woman]] there. Thinking he's being framed for murder, he leaves and gets his partner Dee Dee to come home with him so he can 'discover' the body with a witness. Only the body has disappeared by the time they arrive.

* ''WesternAnimation/SuperWhy'''s take on ''The Boy Who Cried Wolf'' turns the original CryingWolf scenario on it's head and reimagines it as this, having it so that there was always a wolf (who has undergone AdaptationalHeroism), but was barely in sight when the boy tries to tell the others about him, only coming out at the end.

** He also showed up once in ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'' with a slightly creepier variant. He's dead (or so it seems) and scheduled for dissection by Hamton, who is the only one he'll sing for. Whenever somebody else looks, he immediately [[IncrediblyLamePun croaks]].

** "[[Recap/DiagnosisMurderS2E4TheBusyBody The Busy Body]]" centers on Mark finding a dead man's body in the hospital's pharmacy, only for it to be gone when he calls Steve. The corpse then keeps reappearing and disappearing all over the place. [[spoiler:The killer was doing to so the body would be discovered during an inspection, hoping the new security firm Norman hired would be blamed and allow his father to get his security job back. It wasn't for [[TrappedByGamblingDebts the most noble reasons]], though.]]

* In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "Passing Through Gethsemane", Brother Edward encounters the message "DEATH WALKS AMONG YOU" scrawled in blood on a bulkhead; it's gone when he tries to show it to Garibaldi. In fact, the message was [[spoiler: a chemical that sprayed on the walls that '''looked''' like blood, then reacted with air and disappeared. Traces of it were found later in the episode.]]
* On ''Series/{{Bitten}}'' Philip meets with an amateur film maker who made a video of two wolves (actually Elena and another werewolf) killing a coyote in a park in Toronto. The film maker gives off a weird vibe but Philip just wants the video for use in a commercial so he does not inquire further. Some time later Philip wants to get more information about the video and goes to see the film maker. However, when he goes to the apartment where they previously met, it is completely empty. When he asks the landlord about the previous occupant, the landlord insists that the last tenant was an old lady who died months ago and the apartment has been completely empty ever since. The landlord further insists that no one could have been squatting in the apartment since the landlord was trying to renovate the apartment for new tenants and would have seen anyone living in it. This establishes that the conspiracy against the werewolf Pack is much more sophisticated and organized than just a few mutts acting out.

* ''Series/{{CSI}}'' episode "Anonymous" focuses on the hunt for a serial killer. Grissom concludes that the killer is Paul Millander, who owns a Halloween supplies company. When Grissom leads a raid on Millander's warehouse, it is bare apart from a stool with an envelope addressed to him. It has a blank piece of paper inside, a sign that Grissom interprets as meaning, "We have nothing."

* Averted in [[Creator/{{Netflix}} Netflix's]] ''Series/{{Diablero}}''. Keta, a santera, is [[spoiler: kidnapped by a mysterious man]]. When she brings her brother Elvis (the titular demon-hunter) to the house where it happened, there's nothing there, and Keta, upset, says she's not crazy. Elvis says he doesn't think she's crazy and completely believes her--in fact, he's ''more'' worried by the total lack of evidence, because it means whoever they're up against has the resources to make everything vanish overnight, which is not good for them.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''

* ''Series/TheEqualizer''. A client of [=McCall=] tries to convince her daughter that she's dating a criminal after discovering a gun in his apartment. When she goes to show her daughter the gun, it's been replaced by an innocuous flashlight.
* ''Series/{{ER}}''. Carter treats a doctor who runs an inner-city clinic, visiting him there to check up on him and give him his medication. When the man returns to the hospital a few weeks later, Carter gives him a generous donation, but is stunned to find the clinic completely deserted when he visits again. The cop with him informs him that contrary to what the man told him, the clinic had been there only a few ''weeks'', not the twenty-something years the guy claimed.

* ''Series/{{Heroes}}''

* ''Series/{{Hunter}}''. Hunter goes home after his shift ends to find a [[DropDeadGorgeous very beautiful and very dead woman]] there. Thinking he's being framed for murder, he leaves and gets his partner Dee Dee to come home with him so he can 'discover' the body with a witness. Only the body has disappeared by the time they arrive.

* ''Series/TheInvaders1967''. About OncePerEpisode, any evidence that David Vincent could have gathered on the Invaders disappears before he can show it to someone else.
* Invoked in an episode of ''Series/{{Leverage}}'', "Three Days of the Hunter Job". Nate and the episode's bad guy walk into what she thinks is the apartment belonging to someone who is unraveling a government conspiracy, to find the material gone and Eliot coming out, cleaning up.
* Inverted in Season 1 of ''Series/{{Life|2007}}'': the hero, Det. Charlie Crews has a locked closet in his home where he assembles evidence against the conspiracy that framed him. The DA's office obtains a search warrant for a related murder, and Charlie gets home too late to stop the search, but when the cops break into the closet, all the evidence is gone, having been removed by Charlie's roommate, Ted.
* In one episode of ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}'', Tyler tries to prove he's not crazy by showing off many parts of his life that suddenly disappear, including Windy's apartment, where he informs her he wants her to talk with the people, and then when he brings them by to do so, the entire apartment is empty and Windy is nowhere to be found, nowhere near enough time passing by and making Tyler further doubt his sanity.

* ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'':

** In "Mr. Monk Is Up All Night," Monk is walking in the middle of the night, and hears an argument behind a diner window. He peers into the kitchen and sees an apparent drug deal that's turning sour as two of the men are arguing about whether the third guy, an Asian is a cop. When the Asian suddenly flashes a badge and pulls a gun to arrest the others, a fight breaks out, and the Asian is shot dead by the drug dealer, who hustles a bald man to a car outside and drives away. Monk runs to a payphone to call the police, but the scene is spotless. [[spoiler:That's because what Monk saw was an elaborate con game -- the bald man was being tricked into thinking he had seen a cop's murder, so that three con men could trick him into giving them some of his antique coins under the pretense that it was hush money.]]

** In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert," when Monk, Natalie and Kendra Frank are searching Stork's trailer, [[spoiler:Kris Kedder]] snatches an incriminating envelope while they are distracted by Natalie noticing a photo of a little girl. Monk notices the envelope's absence after Kedder leaves and asks Natalie and Kendra if they touched anything, but neither woman has. Once Natalie finds a registered mail receipt, and Monk deduces that Kedder did not write a song they heard him performing earlier, Kendra [[OhCrap belatedly realizes that Kedder has stolen the envelope]] and they need to get it back.

* ''Series/{{Psych}}''

* In the second episode of ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'', John discovers a wall painted with graffiti that is vitally important evidence. By the time he finds Sherlock and brings him back, however, the evidence has been wiped clean. [[spoiler: It's subverted, since that trick is a lot more difficult to completely pull off when people have camera phones that allow them to take instant photos of such things...]]
** Sherlock also believed John instantly, and was only concerned about how much of the graffiti John would be able to remember, since the human mind is on average only capable of remembering "62%" of what's it's seen. But the above spoiler solved that problem, too.

** Notably in "Je Souhaite", when Scully finally has solid proof of the supernatural in the form of the corpse of an invisible man. Of course, when she brings in the experts to look at it, it's completely gone. Just a few hours later, Scully herself starts to wonder if it was real, much to Mulder's annoyance.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* A Misaka clone's corpse in episode 11 of ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' disappears by the time the police arrive. The police then berate Touma for "prank calling" them. Touma later finds that the other Misaka clones cleaned up the crime scene while he was busy calling the police.

* ''Film/{{Anazapta}}''. Lady Matilda is hoping to ransom Jacques de Saint Amant in exchange for her captured husband and enough money to settle her debts. Halfway through the movie, a letter arrives from Jacques' father [[DeadPersonImpersonation revealing his son was killed in battle.]] The priest who received the letter dies soon after in suspicious circumstances. When a manservant who overheard the conversation tries to warn Matilda, she only finds a letter agreeing to her ransom on the condition that Jacques is well treated, and has her manservant flogged and thrown into a cell for his supposed bungle.

* Happens to Davey Osborne when the body of the government agent disappears in ''Film/CloakAndDagger''.