History Main / MakeItLookLikeAnAccident

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E24Conspiracy Conspiracy]]", the deaths of a number of officers who are victims of the neural parasites infesting Starfleet Command are put down as "accidents".

* ''Literature/AbleTeam'': In "Texas Showdown", Carl Lyons is forced to kill a guard who catches him snooping around the BigBad's headquarters. Because he's TheMole in their operation, Carl has to make it look like the man died in a house fire, so uses the wires from a video recorder (activated by its timer) to start a short circuit. However this unreliable method goes off too late, after the body has been discovered.

* ''Literature/AgathaHAndTheVoiceOfTheCastle'' (a ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' novel): When Tarvek witnesses Higgs casually [[spoiler:destroy the Muse of Protection before it can say too much]], he realizes that there are about a dozen ways Higgs can kill him and make it look like just a random accident. The rock that could have cracked his skull, the live wire that could have electrocuted him, the clank itself... he agrees with Higgs' BlatantLies very quickly.
* Occurs in some of the ''Literature/AlexRider'' books, including the death of a business man made to look like he missed his footing stepping into an elevator, and the mass-murder plans of some of the villains.
** The seventh book, ''Snakehead'', revolves around this as the BigBad's plan, albeit on a larger scale than normal. The NebulousEvilOrganisation Scorpia have been tasked with wiping out all the attendees at a conference aiming to eliminate world poverty, but to avoid making them look like martyrs, their deaths have to seem accidental. Their solution is to detonate a specially adapted bomb underwater to create a tsunami which will destroy the island completely - as well as a large section of the Australian coast, killing several thousand more people, ensuring that the destruction of the island not only looks accidental, but is completely forgotten.
* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', Visser One needs to disappear so she can continue her duties elsewhere in the galaxy. So she stages her own death by leaving on a fishing boat during a storm and never returning. The boat is found, damaged, with a frayed safety rope, and the Coast Guard assumes her body is in the ocean somewhere.

* An arguably heroic example: ''Literature/DungeonCrawlerCarl'' successfully kills [[spoiler: one of the admins of the dungeon]] by booby-trapping a robot toy that he was supposed to be carrying around as a marketing ploy. The toy included a self-destruct device if damaged, so that the party couldn't break it open for parts, and a string of earlier models had been destroyed by rough handling; ''such'' a shame that this one mysteriously followed suit at such a bad time [[spoiler: when only Loita was in the room with it, and couldn't be evacuated and healed because the force field that blocked all teleportation was also the only thing stopping the whole building from being crushed by water pressure]]. Since this comes immediately after [[spoiler: Loita declares that the whole human species was a cancer on the galaxy and that she wishes they could have exterminated everyone ''without'' running the World Dungeon first, ''and she's supposed to be their marketing manager'' in charge of managing sponsorships that may determine their survival]], it's probably justified.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
** "Literature/TheMayors": In the BackStory, King Lepold's father died in a HuntingAccident. It's implied several times that said accident was arranged by the Prince Regent, Wienis.
** "{{Literature/Trends}}": Shelton [[VehicularSabotage sabotages Harman's rocket]], and the subsequent explosion is assumed to be evidence that Harman either did it deliberately or was receiving divine punishment for trying to leave Earth's gravity.

* In the Creator/DaleBrown novel ''Shadows of Steel'', this is done with ''airplanes'' and military equipment. ItMakesSenseInContext, but is justified in that the guy ordering it had to dance around the political sensitivities of traditional, highly visible overt action while still wanting to hurt the other side. It works.

* In the Robin Cook medical thriller ''Literature/{{Coma}}'', a hitman is given orders to kill medical student Susan Wheeler who [[HeKnowsTooMuch has been snooping into suspicious deaths at the hospital]]. He is instructed to "make it look like a rape", as though Susan were the victim of a random street crime rather than a carefully orchestrated murder.
** Lampshaded in the film where the hitman throws a bucket of water over the janitor he's been told to kill.
--->'''Kelly:''' What'd you do that for?!\\
'''Hitman:''' They told me to make it look like an accident. ''([[ShockAndAwe shoves him into a power board]])''

* In ''Literature/TheDestroyer'' series of adventure novels by Warren Murphy and Richard Ben Sapir, removing problems that cannot be removed legally by "making it look like an accident" is the entire reason for Remo Williams' existence.

* In Creator/StephenKing's novel ''Literature/DoloresClaiborne'', this is the way Vera advises Dolores to get rid of Joe. [[spoiler:She does.]]

* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': An Entropy Curse tends to cause deaths like this. Harry notes that the victim effectively dies of what looks like seriously bad luck. And then in ''Literature/BloodRites'', [[spoiler:a group of rather unstable women]] finds a way to work a particularly strong one, and while the deaths caused certainly don't look like ''intentional'' murders, they are a LONG way from looking like mundane accidents. A few examples:
** Death by allergic reaction to bee stings — specifically, ''twenty thousand'' bees that had somehow swarmed into a car in a couple of minutes.
** Death by gunshot — but the gun had been aimed at someone other than the curse's victim, in the opposite direction and another room from the curse's victim, and the bullet ricocheted more than once before hitting the curse's victim.
** Death by being hit by a car — ''while waterskiing''.[[labelnote:*]]The car in question drove off a bridge and fell on the victim.[[/labelnote]]

--->'''Harry:''' For my next trick, anvils.

* In ''Literature/HeartsBlood'', pretty much every major death at Whistling Tor is made to look like an accident by [[spoiler: Muirne]].She would have gotten away with it if she hadn't tried the fire trick twice.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'': Inverted in ''Literature/AndAnotherThing'' where the dragons of Asgard are instructed to kill [[spoiler:Zaphod Beeblebrox]] by accident, and to make it look intentional.

** A favored tactic of the People's Republic of Haven is to kill people in "accidental" aircar collisions — that is, when the people in question aren't simply "disappeared".
*** This comes back to bite the new government of the Republic in the ass later on when a suspected traitor and his accomplice die in aircar accidents. One of them was arranged by the traitor's foreign paymasters to cover their tracks, and the other was a ''completely genuine accident'', but they both inevitably got blamed on the government.

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': President Snow uses the threat of killing the victors' families and loved ones like this to keep them in line and to make them do as he says. This is what happened to [[spoiler: Haymitch's]] family and girlfriend after his Games, and it's implied to have happened to everyone [[spoiler: Johanna]] loved. But even Snow admits that if he did this to Katniss herself because of her "stunt with the berries", no one would buy it.
* In ''Literature/IHeardThatSongBefore'', it's speculated – and [[BigBrotherInstinct Phillip Meredith]] firmly believes – that Grace Meredith didn't accidentally drown, but that her husband Peter deliberately drowned her because she was drinking while pregnant (and possibly because he found out she was having an affair). It would've been easy enough; Grace was extremely drunk, so Peter could've theoretically picked her up and just dropped her into the pool while everyone else was sleeping, or that he could've seen her fall into the pool and simply [[MurderByInaction didn't bother to save her]]. Grace was known for having a [[TheAlcoholic drinking problem]], so no one would question it; [[PrivateDetective Greco]] even speculates that someone could've deliberately spiked her drink on Peter's orders. It's revealed [[spoiler:this was indeed what happened, but Peter wasn't the culprit; Richard set up Grace's drowning because he realized she could expose him as an art thief]].
* ''Literature/{{Inferno|2013}}''. The Provost suggests they wrap matters up by making it look like Langdon was killed in a mugging. [[spoiler:Later Langdon has a front-row seat on the Provost arranging a similar scenario with Agent Bouchard's body.]]
* ''Literature/AJarOfGoodwill'', by Creator/TobiasBuckell. The female protagonist is recruited for the crew of a spaceship but is worried that they might want a SexSlave. She's told that the contract has a high payout for rape, but a good deal less for an accidental death, so she might want to lower the former so if she is sexually abused, at least the crew won't find it expedient to murder her afterwards to avoid paying up.
* The protagonist of Barry Eisler's ''Literature/JohnRain'' series specializes in making assassinations look like accidental and (especially) natural deaths. The first kill he performs involves using a Palm Pilot to turn off a guy's pacemaker.

* Creator/IraLevin's ''Literature/TheBoysFromBrazil'' (and TheFilmOfTheBook) has ''Nazis'' doing this, because the [[spoiler:clone Hitlers need to lose their father under similar circumstances to the real one]].
* In ''Literature/LockwoodAndCo'', Anthony Lockwood's parents Donald and Celia were killed in a car accident, or so the story goes. Actually, [[spoiler:they were murdered by the Orpheus Society because they knew too much about the origins of the Problem of ghosts and gave a presentation about what they knew to them, not realizing that they already knew most if not all of it and didn't actually want the knowledge to spread.]]
* Played with in ''Literature/TheManWhoNeverWas'': the Germans have to be convinced that a dead guy washed up on the Spanish coast with a suitcase full of Allied battle plans ''is'' a courier, and the battle plans are the Real Stuff. The book (and subsequent film) were based on the real-life [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat]], which went to extraordinary lengths to MakeItLookLikeAnAccident. It isn't this trope straight because the body that was used was that of a man who had died of pneumonia – there was no murder at all.
* Zigzagged In ''Literature/MistakenTwin'' at first Jenna believes her sister Amy died in a car crash. She later has it revealed that no this was actually an intentional murder. Then once again she learns no the whole thing was a set up to put her in witness protection. So they staged a set up to look like a murder then restaged it to look like an accident.
* In the ''Literature/ModestyBlaise'' novel ''A Taste for Death'', the villains dispose this way of several people who know too much; one drowns in a "boating accident" and another has his neck broken "falling down the stairs". At the end of the novel, Modesty sees to it that the big bad meets with a similar "accident".
* In ''Literature/{{Moonraker}}'', Franchise/JamesBond and Gala Brand survive a landslide while visiting the Dover cliffs that Bond later suspects of being this trope. He spots the signature white puff of smoke from an explosive, and when he returns to his host's property that night, he notices that Drax "forgot" to set a place for him at the dinner table.

* This is the preferred method of the killer in Creator/AgathaChristie's ''Literature/MurderIsEasy'', which is where the title comes from. Four people have died at the beginning of the novel, and there has been little investigation into the matter since all the deaths seemed to be accidents, like a boy "falling" out of a window and a woman [[MedicationTampering drinking paint that she "mistook" for medicine]]. The plot begins when a woman suspects that something fishy is going on, but is then "accidentally" hit by a car on her way to the police. [[spoiler: The killer turns out to be an insane WomanScorned who kills anyone who is unfriendly to her former lover, hoping that the police will eventually catch up and arrest him for the murders.]]
* In ''Murderer's Row'', Matt Helm, undercover as a Mafia hitman, pretends to take a contract to kill a man's wife. The husband says nervously "It will look like an accident, won't it?" Helm says "One day I'm going to have somebody ask me to do a murder that looks like a murder–"
* In an early ''Literature/NeroWolfe'' novel, ''The League of Frightened Men'', the suspected murderer has sworn vengeance against a group of men who inadvertently crippled him. The first two deaths look like accidents. [[spoiler: Subverted, in that they actually ''are'' accidents, which the "murderer" has simply implied he's responsible for.]]
* ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'' has a lot of this. Given there's an ongoing zombie problem and ''everyone'' is infected with Kellis-Amberlee, the zombie virus, it's very easy to set up an outbreak. People are generally more likely to believe there was a security breach or a spontaneous amplification (when someone's KA levels rise and zombify them for no reason, as opposed to the traditional fluid transmission) than that someone deliberately weaponized KA.
** In the first book, ''Feed'', [[spoiler: The Ryman Ranch]] and the [[spoiler: convoy group]] were made to look like accidents.
** In the second book, ''Deadline'', [[spoiler: most recent deaths of people with reservoir conditions]] were made to look like accidents.

* ''Literature/NumberTheStars''. [[spoiler: Annemarie's older sister, Lise, was hit by a car and died. In the end, it is revealed that she was intentionally hit by the Nazis, being part of LaResistance.]]
* In ''Literature/OutOfTheDark'':

* Discussed in the ''Literature/PaladinOfShadows'' series. Though the Keldara never do it onscreen, they have a habit of making Kildars that are unworthy die mysterious deaths.

* In Creator/MattRuff's ''Literature/BadMonkeys'', the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons (aka "Bad Monkeys") which kills people who are determined to be truly evil, use "NC guns". The NC guns cause the person that is aimed at to die of natural causes such as heart attack or stroke, hence the name.
* ''Literature/SelenaMead'' has a variant: When spy Simon Mead is murdered, his teammates disguise the death as a car accident.

* In the Creator/SidneySheldon novel ''Master of the Game'', matriarch Kate notes that her granddaughter Alexandra is very accident-prone. When she discovers what an evil bitch her granddaughter Eve (Alexandra's twin) is, she suddenly realizes what the reader has known for pages – that all of Alexandra's "accidents" were Eve's attempts at ''killing her'', starting when the girls were only '''''5'''''.

* ''Literature/StarTrekEnterpriseRelaunch:'' Apparently a standard tactic of the Obsidian Order's for getting rid of people who upset them is saying they died in a domestic argument gone ''very'' wrong. What exactly they do to the supposed murderer afterward is not specified.

** General Grievous' backstory is given in ''Literature/LabyrinthOfEvil'': To put him in debt to the Confederacy and make him even more dangerous, Count Dooku staged a non-lethal shuttle crash, then offered to rebuild him as a {{cyborg}} in exchange for his service.

* David Gerrold's ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr''. The Uncle Ira Group attempts to kill two birds with one stone via this method. The rest of the world refuses to take the AlienInvasion seriously, arguing that the Chtorrans aren't particularly dangerous, while protagonist Jim [=McCarthy=] has unwittingly drawn attention to their secret organisation by publicly arguing otherwise. So they order [=McCarthy=] to stand guard at a public showing of a captured Chtorran worm, which 'accidentally' escapes from its cage and starts eating the delegates. Fortunately [=McCarthy=] took the trouble to [[ReadTheFreakingManual practise with his newly-issued flechette rifle]] and succeeds in bringing down the creature on live television. Because [=McCarthy=] is now a hero, the Uncle Ira group makes the best of a bad situation and makes him a permanent member of their organisation instead.

* The Smith brothers try to do this to James Bond in the ''Literature/YoungBond'' novel ''Literature/DoubleOrDie''; he is force-fed a bottle of gin and they attempt to throw him into the Thames so that he'll drown.
* ''Literature/TheGhost2007'': Mike [=McAra=] fell off the Woods Hole ferry and drowned. It looked like an accident, but it turned out later that it wasn't.
* ''Literature/Area51'': General Gullick orders Dr. Cruise to kill Von Seeckt with an insulin overdose to make it look like he died of a heart attack after the latter's strenuous objections to their upcoming test make him think he might blow the whistle on it. Luckily, Turcotte finds out and stops Cruise.
* ''The Commissar'' by Creator/SvenHassel. 2 Section and the titular [[RenegadeRussian Commissar]] are disguised in Soviet uniform when they realise they're being tracked through the mountains by an NKVD ski unit. Porta suggests they simply drive up innocuously in their tanks and open up at close range, but the Commissar points out that the NKVD will send off a radio message the moment they catch sight of them. The Commissar suggests they [[HairTriggerAvalanche arrange a natural disaster instead]].
-->"You don't call it a disaster being sent to eternity by machine gun fire?"
-->"Yes, but that's not the kind of disaster I'm talking about!"

* In ''Literature/TheSpeedOfSound'', this is how the assassin Michael Barnes kills [[spoiler:Jacob Hendrix]]. He disguises himself as a homeless man and releases a canister of tear gas in a subway station, causing everyone to think there's a chemical attack. In the commotion, he pushes his target in front of an oncoming train, which instantly cuts him in half. Everyone thinks he blindly fled in front of the train to avoid the gas.

* Variation in ''Film/TheBourneIdentity:''
-->'''Conklin:''' You were ''supposed'' to kill him in such a way that the ''only possible explanation'' was that it was done by a member of his own faction!
* ''Film/TheBourneLegacy''. The government arranges the deaths of everyone in Outcome through a variety of methods. The enhanced agents are given pills which cause aneurysms, Shearing's lab looks like a workplace shooting by a colleague who just snapped, and Bourne's handler from the previous film died of a suspicious heart attack. Cross and the other agent in Alaska just get a drone strike, because they're in such a remote location that witnesses are a non-issue. There's also a NightmareFuel scene where the female protagonist has her own gun forced to her head; fortunately our [[BigDamnHeroes hero turns up just in time]] to stop her from becoming an apparent suicide.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* In UsefulNotes/NorthKorea, political opponents are officially reported to have died in car crashes, even though there are almost no cars on the road due to the constant [[PostPeakOil gas shortage]].
* After the escape from Stalag Luft III (which was dramatized in ''Film/TheGreatEscape''), fifty prisoners were shot after recapture as revenge but to cover their tracks, the Germans attempted (but {{Epic Fail}}ed) to use this trick in the reports of the shooting. Claiming that around fifty men had all tried to overpower their guards and escape after stopping to relieve themselves at the roadside in multiple incidents across the German countryside (with none wounded) was too unbelievable to take anyone in, and the perpetrators were hunted down after the war.
* In 1994, a [=FedEx=] cargo plane was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705 hijacked by disgruntled employee Auburn Calloway]], who intended to use the plane in a suicide attack on [=FedEx=] headquarters while somehow making it look accidental, as his death in an accident would enable a payoff from the $2.5 million life insurance policy he had taken out on himself. Riding along in the jumpseat, he used hammers to attack the flight crew, hitting each in the head, injuries which would be virtually indistinguishable from those incurred in a crash. Despite severe injuries, Captain David Sanders and Flight Engineer Andrew Peterson retaliated, and a struggle began with the two attempting to pin their attacker while co-pilot James Tucker stayed at the controls. Tucker being a former Navy pilot, he began turning the plane in a wild, unpredictable manner intended to keep Calloway off balance, nearly rolling it on its back and taking it near uncontrollable speed. Eventually Calloway was pinned, and the captain, also former Navy, took control and began an immediate landing. Due to trauma and blood loss, all three were losing strength, and they needed to get on the ground or risk Calloway breaking loose again, so there was no time to dump fuel. They had to land overweight, at a dangerously steep angle, at a recklessly fast speed, but the captain pulled it off. Calloway was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, but the flight crew were forced to retire from flying due to complications from the injuries they sustained.
* TruthInTelevision for the Indian Police, who would often cut the heavy red tape that would ensue by catching a criminal by shooting them instead, and they always play it off as an "encounter", i.e. shooting in self-defense.
** The same reputation preceded the Philippine National Police, deputised to hunt down drug users and pushers in the ongoing war on drugs under former Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte. Several times the Filipino word "''nanlaban''" ("fought back" in English) is used in police encounters, meaning that the suspect allegedly made a grab for an officer's gun.
* In 1974, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Clark_O%27Bryan Ronald Clark O'Bryan]] poisoned several large plastic Pixie sticks. He gave them to his son Timothy, daughter Elizabeth, and some friends who were trick-or-treating with them. The idea was to kill his two children and the others, making it look like the Urban Legend of [[RazorApples Halloween poisonings]]; then, [[FinancialAbuse he'd collect on the large life insurance policies he had on both of his children]]. [[OffingTheOffspring Poor Timothy was killed]], but Elizabeth and the other kids didn't eat the poisoned candy, so they were safe; soon the story and plot fell apart and O'Bryan became the focus of the investigation, was detained/jailed, and ultimately got executed by lethal injection in 1984. In the greater Houston area he's sometimes called "the man who killed Halloween" or "The Candy Man". [[note]]"The Candy Man" can also refer to the Houston serial killer [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll Dean Corll]], whose family owned a candy factory.[[/note]]
* Omnipresent in the brutal dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina in the UsefulNotes/DominicanRepublic. The most famous case, perhaps, is that of the [[http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/groups/2000/sites/mirabal/English/assassination_fs.html Mirabal Sisters]], who were brutally murdered by Trujillo’s own right-hand men, and then placed in a car that was then pushed off a cliff to make it look like they lost control of the car and drove over the cliff. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain This particular crime may have played a vital part in the fall of his dictatorship]], as the crimes '''massively''' pissed the Dominicans off due to how loved the Mirabal sisters were by the populace AND the USA government wasn't exactly happy either... and in less than a year, [[TheDogBitesBack Trujillo was murdered]]. A novel and later movie was written about it, called ''Literature/InTheTimeOfTheButterflies''.
* With modern RealLife cars [[DeconstructedTrope it would be a rather poor tactic]] [[TheOldestTricksInTheBook to sever a brake line or pour oil on the brake discs]]. First, brake failure would become apparent to the driver while still at very slow speed in the parking lot, second, modern [=ABS=] braking systems have ''totally'' separated circuits in the [=ABS=] unit, unlike an older, mechanical, dual-circuit braking system (where the fluid may still leak from all the system even if only one circuit has been tampered with), so the modern car can brake just fine, albeit slower.
* [[PoliceBrutality Deaths in police custody]] have been commonly attributed to the suspect "falling down the stairs".
* Practically any HuntingAccident with the nobility or royalty for any country anytime in history. One particularly famous case is the death of King William II of England, son of William the Conqueror, who was shot in the New Forest. Whether or not it was truly accidental will likely never be known.
* Union activist [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood Karen Silkwood]] died in a car accident as she was on her way to meet a reporter from ''The New York Times'' where she intended to expose the unsafe conditions at the nuclear fuel plant where she worked. It assumed by many that she was intentionally run off the road. Evidence does indicate this, but with no witnesses, the official cause of death is "accident". The theory that Silkwood's death was due to foul play was the inspiration for a similar scene in the film ''Film/TheChinaSyndrome''.
* In 1943, American codebreakers decrypted a detailed itinerary for a inspection/morale tour of front areas by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. The problem was that the US was heavily relying on Japanese confidence in their "unbreakable" code, which had been in use since before Pearl Harbor — but had been broken very early on. To conceal the fact that their information came from breaking the code and preserve that source of intelligence, the mission was set up to make it appear that a flight of P-38's just happened to "accidentally" stumble on Yamamoto's flight, and the success of the mission was hidden even by the US. It wasn't until after the Japanese acknowledged his death a month later that Americans learned this themselves, and that it was a deliberate strike was hidden until well after the war. Astonishingly, it did pass as an accident, even though the P-38s were right at the limit of their operational range when they encountered Yamamoto's aircraft, meaning they had to have taken off at exactly the right time for interception.
* There have been rumors that Jessica Savitch, the first host of ''Frontline'', was bumped off in this manner months after the broadcast of "NFL and Game Fixing: An Unauthorized History of the NFL". Long story short, a documentary that connects a powerful organization to organized crime can make you a whole lot of powerful enemies.
* In October 2007, [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Peterson Drew Peterson]]'s 4th wife Stacy mysteriously vanished. Despite rampant — and likely correct — suspicion that he murdered her, there was no evidence to support this. However, this made cops become suspicious regarding the death of his ''3rd'' wife Kathleen, who was found dead in her bathtub 3 years prior. Despite his history of DomesticAbuse and their acrimonious divorce, it was deemed that she'd drowned after slipping and hitting her head. A second autopsy found that she had in fact been struck on the head and then forcibly held underwater.
* Pretty much ''every'' RealLife or fictional cop show will feature criminals who try to invoke varying versions of this. Accident, suicide, self-defense, "someone else did it", etc.
* In some places where [[HonorRelatedAbuse honor killings]] are common, the family members of the victim will say that she died in a "kitchen fire".
* In the army, this is known as "Fragging." The idea is that squaddies become fed up with being ordered to their deaths and shoot one of their superiors in the back (or face) or throw a live grenade at him, then blame it on the enemy. One soldier even wrote a nasty letter to the munitions plant who manufactured his grenades because they failed to blow up his seargeant.
* Some people who attempt suicide will try to make it look accidental due to the stigma associated with suicide.
* During the height of the {{UsefulNotes/COVID 19 Pandemic}}, 3 doctors critical of {{UsefulNotes/The New Russia}}'s handling of the pandemic [[https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/04/europe/russia-medical-workers-windows-intl/index.html "fell" from hospital windows, 2 of them dying]].
** Similarly, several executives of Russian oil and gas companies have had various accidents following criticism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including one who "fell" from a hospital window, and another who "fell" into the ocean.
* A discredited conspiracy theory regarding Creator/GunpeiYokoi[='s=] death is that somebody at Creator/{{Nintendo}} hired a {{yakuza}} thug to [[SurpriseCarCrash intentionally crash their car into his]]. (It was apparently started by somebody with no idea how many external factors would have to magically come together to get it to work.)
* After the body of [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Grace_Brown Grace Brown]] was found in Big Moose Lake, her fiancé Chester Gillette tried to invoke this, alternately claiming that she'd accidentally fallen in or jumped in to commit suicide. His already dubious story quickly fell apart with the revelation that he'd registered at their hotel under a false name and had returned from the lake trip without reporting the so-called accident. Not to mention the several head injuries Grace was sporting. It turned out that he'd taken her on what she thought was to be an elopement, only to bludgeon her death to avoid the responsibility of marriage and [[ImperiledInPregnancy fatherhood]].
[[/folder]]

* ''Series/{{Clarice}}'': [[spoiler:Joe Hudlin]] is incapacitated with an injection of a drug, then shot (made to look like he did it himself).

* ''A Jar of Goodwill'', by Creator/TobiasBuckell. The female protagonist is recruited for the crew of a spaceship but is worried that they might want a SexSlave. She's told that the contract has a high payout for rape, but a good deal less for an accidental death, so she might want to lower the former so if she is sexually abused, at least the crew won't find it expedient to murder her afterwards to avoid paying up.

* An arguably heroic example: ''Dungeon Crawler Carl'' successfully kills [[spoiler: one of the admins of the dungeon]] by booby-trapping a robot toy that he was supposed to be carrying around as a marketing ploy. The toy included a self-destruct device if damaged, so that the party couldn't break it open for parts, and a string of earlier models had been destroyed by rough handling; ''such'' a shame that this one mysteriously followed suit at such a bad time [[spoiler: when only Loita was in the room with it, and couldn't be evacuated and healed because the force field that blocked all teleportation was also the only thing stopping the whole building from being crushed by water pressure]]. Since this comes immediately after [[spoiler: Loita declares that the whole human species was a cancer on the galaxy and that she wishes they could have exterminated everyone ''without'' running the World Dungeon first, ''and she's supposed to be their marketing manager'' in charge of managing sponsorships that may determine their survival]], it's probably justified.

** In the film:
--->'''Kelly:''' What'd you do that for?\\
'''Hitman:''' They told me to make it look like an accident. ''[kills him]''

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'': There's a Dark Brotherhood assassination that gives you the option to push a statue onto a target. However, the ClairvoyantSecurityForce suggests that the game's AI does not view it as an accident at all. The player CAN pull this off and sneak away, but the odds are harsh. What makes this ridiculous is that another option to perform the assassination is to snipe the bride from an even lower, easier-to-see perch, with a unique bow and some arrows, both planted in there by your assassin pals. Not only this doesn't make the deed look like an accident at all, it's also harder for the player to get caught in that way.

** Also ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', in Tranquility Lane.
** And ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'', with the mission to kill Westin.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'': The series involves various methods to poison, sabotage, or nudge your victims to death without directly implicating yourself. While the majority of missions allow you to kill almost anyone at any time with any implementation, killing indirectly means less evidence to clean up for your handlers and therefore nets you a larger score.

* This is the preferred method of the killer in Creator/AgathaChristie's ''Murder is Easy'', which is where the title comes from. Four people have died at the beginning of the novel, and there has been little investigation into the matter since all the deaths seemed to be accidents, like a boy "falling" out of a window and a woman drinking paint that she "mistook" for medicine. The plot begins when a woman suspects that something fishy is going on, but is then "accidentally" hit by a car on her way to the police. [[spoiler: The killer turns out to be an insane WomanScorned who kills anyone who is unfriendly to her former lover, hoping that the police will eventually catch up and arrest him for the murders.]]

* ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'': Bad guys often try to dispose of Tintin in ways that could possibly be construed as an accident squints hard enough (which [[BondVillainStupidity saved his life more than once]]). The page image is one of the more believable examples.

* ''Series/GothamKnights'': The Court of Owls has murdered many people across the years that they made appear to be suicides or accidents.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E24Conspiracy Conspiracy]]", the deaths of a number of officers who are victims of the neural parasites infesting Starfleet Command are put down as "accidents".

* A discredited [[UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories conspiracy theory]] regarding Creator/GunpeiYokoi[='s=] death is that somebody at Creator/{{Nintendo}} hired a {{yakuza}} thug to [[SurpriseCarCrash intentionally crash their car into his]]. (It was apparently started by somebody with no idea how many external factors would have to magically come together to get it to work.)

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'':
*** Another Dark Brotherhood assassination gives you the option to push a statue onto a target. However, the ClairvoyantSecurityForce suggests that the game's AI does not view it as an accident at all.
*** '''If''' you're seen. Which, for the guards, translates as "a string of your hair in the general area". The player CAN pull this off and sneak away, but the odds are harsh. What makes this ridiculous is that another option to perform the assassination is to snipe the bride from an even lower, easier-to-see perch, with a unique bow and some arrows, both planted in there by your assassin pals. Not only this doesn't make the deed look like an accident at all, it's also harder for the player to get caught in that way!

* This is the Modus Operandi of [[BlackWidow Debbie Jellinsky]] from ''Film/AddamsFamilyValues'', having off'd her previous Husbands in various ways and making off with all of their money several times. She finally meets her match when she tries to perform another hit on [[TooKinkyToTorture Fester]] [[NighInvulnerable Addams]], having tried to electrocute him in the bathtub on their Honeymoon, and later blowing him up in a purchased home; only for Fester to just happily walk it off like it's nothing.

* ManEatingPlant: Appear in both ''Lightsabers'' (a seaweed-like species on Hapes) and ''Darkest Knight'' (the carnivorous Syren plant from Kashyyk).

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': General Grievous' backstory is given in ''Literature/LabyrinthOfEvil'': To put him in debt to the Confederacy and make him even more dangerous, Count Dooku staged a non-lethal shuttle crash, then offered to rebuild him as a {{cyborg}} in exchange for his service.