History Main / RevealingCoverup

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "Harvest of Souls", Nelson realises something is off about the break-in at the veterinary surgery. The surgery was [[RansackedRoom ransacked]] as if the thieves had searched the entire place, but the only things missing were the controlled drugs, indicating they knew exactly what they were after and were it was kept. Nelson concludes the theft was an InsideJob and the ransacking was a smokescreen.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12951561/1/Fox-Rain Fox Rain]]'', it turns out that Lila and some other people have started suspecting [[spoiler:Gabriel Agreste]] of being [[BigBad Papillon]] ''because'' of his attempts to further cover up his secret identity in addition to the magic already doing it, as him publicly insulting Papillon and immediately getting targeted by four Akuma villains seemed suspicious, even with the villain's known temper. It gets to the point that, knowing that [[spoiler:Ladybug has just got the Miraculous book]], she flat-out tells Ladybug that if she's right "he'll akumatize ''himself'' to throw off suspicions before the end of the day", ''mere minutes before he does just that''. The only reason his identity is saved is that the various Miraculous users know they're immune to their own powers and have no idea he figured a way around that.

[[folder: Radio]]

* ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' [[note]]HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!

** In the short story ''The Smallest Detail'', while Cain's aide Jurgen is making a snack run to a PDF depot, the quartermaster suspects that Jurgen has cottoned on to the theft ring he's running. The conspirators' attempts to silence him before he can bring the commissar's wrath down on them lead to several of the thieves dead and the rest of them charged with attempted murder of an Officio Prefectus agent. In truth, Jurgen really had figured out what was going on, but hadn't planned to bother reporting it, because neither he nor Cain himself [[ArmyOfThievesAndWhores expected any better of PDF trolls]].

* In Creator/SandyMitchell's ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' [[note]]HERO OF THE IMPERIUM![[/note]] novel ''Duty Calls'', Cain's FakeUltimateHero status bites him in the ass again when [[spoiler:a rogue Inquisitor]] tries to have him killed -- repeatedly -- because of what he would surely have found out otherwise. Needless to say, he had no idea anything was going on until people suddenly started trying to kill him, and his investigation into ''why'' people are trying to kill him blows the plot wide open.

* The entire plot of ''VideoGame/{{Judgment}}'' (and arguably the franchise itself) is ultimately the result of a cover-up ''of'' a cover-up: [[spoiler:medical researcher [[BigBad Yoji Shono]] illegally tests his experimental anti-Alzheimer's disease drug AD-9 on an elderly patient, which kills him, prompting Shono to hastily frame hospital orderly Shinpei Okubo for the murder. By sheer luck, Okubo's panicked actions make him look guilty as sin but protagonist Takayuki Yagami is appointed as Okubo's attorney and manages to acquit him. Said acquittal was only based on reasonable doubt on Okubo having committed the crime, not actual hard evidence, meaning as far as the general public and the legal system was concerned, Okubo was still a murderer who GotOffOnATechnicality. If Shono had simply left it at that, he could have gotten away scot-free. Instead, Shono's paranoia over the case being potentially reinvestigated led to him framing Okubo ''again'' by murdering the latter's girlfriend Emi. The shame of having seemingly contributed to Emi's death by defending Okubo caused Yagami to quit being a lawyer and become a private detective, which would eventually lead him to get entangled in TheConspiracy behind AD-9 and eventually expose Shono's crimes.]]

* Used, and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]], continually in ''Series/{{Castle}}''. A very small selection below:

* ''Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy'': In ''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'', Blomqvist assumes he investigating a hopeless cold case until the villain tries to kill him.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/40192773 Disciplinary Action]]'' has Principal Nedzu reflect upon this while investigating [[SuckySchool Aldera High]], musing that he doesn't understand how anybody in the modern would could fail to understand that attempting to cover up a crime always makes it ''worse''. While Katsuki's school records were seemingly squeaky clean, ''Izuku's'' were filled with detentions for things like "[[BlamingTheVictim disrupting class]]" (when Katsuki was attacking him). In addition, some of their classmates had recorded these assaults and [[SocialMediaBeforeReason posted them on social media]], unaware they were making a record of their own cruelty.

-->'''The Great Rinaldi:''' You had every reason to hate him. What did you do with him, Gallico? How did you get rid of it? ''[indicating the retort in the center of the room]'' Was this thing already built and hidden away, waiting for a job like that?\\

* ''Film/MinorityReport'': John Anderton, a detective who uses advanced psychic technology to prevent murders before they ever happen, is accused of a future attempt at murder. The thing is, from the get-go this makes no sense, so the killer provides lots and lots of evidence for Danny Witwer, the detective chasing Anderton, to ensure that it all goes off to plan. Witwer, however, is instantly suspicious of the "OrgyOfEvidence". The killer framed Anderton because he feared that he might discover the truth about a previous cover-up. So the revealing cover-up with Anderton was staged to prevent another cover-up from becoming revealing. [[spoiler: Naturally enough, it all comes down around their ears in a very public fashion.]]
* ''Film/MissionImpossibleFilmSeries''

* Played with in ''Film/RaceToWitchMountain''. The lead characters are quick to publish a book on what happened to them during the movie, specifically they know TheGovernment can't touch them without validating their claims.

* In the ''Literature/JamesBond'' novel ''Literature/YouOnlyLiveTwice'', evil mastermind Blofeld decides the best way to lie low is to operate a castle with a poison garden for people wanting to commit suicide. If they change their mind, the "gardeners" assist them. No one is going to pay any attention to that, right?
* Being a Literature/GentlemanBastard [[MagnificentBastard Locke Lamora]] loves this trope. Case in point: running a con on a wealthy nobleman, then disguising himself as one of the secret police and informing the mark that he's being robbed.

* How many Literature/DocSavage pulps started out with the villain trying to pull a preemptive strike on the Man of Bronze, getting his minions slam-dunked, and Doc then becoming curious about what was going on?
* In Creator/SandyMitchell's Literature/CiaphasCain [[note]]HERO OF THE IMPERIUM![[/note]] novel ''Duty Calls'', Cain's FakeUltimateHero status bites him in the ass again when [[spoiler:a rogue Inquisitor]] tries to have him killed -- repeatedly -- because of what he would surely have found out otherwise. Needless to say, he had no idea anything was going on until people suddenly started trying to kill him, and his investigation into ''why'' people are trying to kill him blows the plot wide open.
* In Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs's ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'' novel "Thuvia, Maid of Mars", Carthoris is framed for Thuvia's kidnapping. Not that his love would have let him leave the matter alone, but it always helps, to implicate his honor.
* ''The Zero Game'', a mysterious game is set up and then all but one of the participants are killed off in suspicious ways. The worst part is that the game is really just an elaborate ruse to get an abandoned mine reopened. Which they could have gotten much more cheaply and easily just by simply asking. And not only was the mine completely unnecessary to their plans, it actually made it more difficult.
* Literature/TheIlluminatusTrilogy, being a ConspiracyKitchenSink, naturally has one of these. When a leftwing magazine's office is bombed, the police investigating find a stash of strange notes about TheIlluminati in the wreckage. Subverted in that [[spoiler:the bomb was set by the magazine's editor, as part of a BatmanGambit to get one of the police detectives investigating the Illuminati.]]
* This is a recurring theme in (and, in fact, often the basic plot of) many of Creator/ChristopherBrookmyre's books, like ''Literature/CountryOfTheBlind'' and ''Literature/BoilingAFrog''. And ''Literature/BeMyEnemy''. And ''Literature/QuiteUglyOneMorning''. Essentially, the crimes that catch the protagonist's attention are almost always attempts to cover up a previous and otherwise unnoticed crime.
* In ''Literature/MasterOfTheWorld'', our hero investigates a mountain that's producing odd rumblings, but is unable to climb to the top. After giving up and filing it under "unexplained," he gets a note saying, "Stay away from that mountain, or it'll go badly for you!" If Robur had just left him alone, the hero would have dropped the case.
* In ''Literature/ThePelicanBrief'', the protagonist writes up a theory--more idle speculation than anything else--about why two US Supreme Court justices were killed. [[ExternalCombustion Then her car gets bombed]]. She isn't killed, and she realizes that her speculation must have hit a little close to home, and she begins investigating in earnest.
* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'':
** ''The Adventure of the Norwood Builder'' has the villain fake their own death and frame the son of a woman who turned him down for his murder, and the evidence against the son is so thorough that even Holmes is stumped by how to prove his innocence. However, the day after the initial investigation the villain decides to further incriminate the son by using a wax imprint of the son's thumb to leave a bloody thumbprint on the wall of his house; since Holmes is convinced the thumbprint appeared on the wall after the crime, this only strengthens his resolve to expose the true culprit.
** In ''Literature/TheHoundOfTheBaskervilles'', the villain steals one of an intended victim's new boots, then returns to swipe one of an older pair, while ''returning the first one'', presumably so the owner would assume he'd just misplaced it. Granted, Holmes was bound to solve the case anyway, but the fact that the boot ''not'' bearing its owner's smell was brought back again clinched his suspicion that there was a real, trained dog involved. Had the culprit stolen all four boots and returned nothing, Holmes couldn't have ruled out the possibility that one of the hotel staff had a profitable sideline stealing guests' possessions.
* A recurring plot device in the Fargo Adventures by Creator/CliveCussler. The Fargos find some obscure item which is at least four steps away from in one case an artifact the villain wanted to find, and in another a secret the villain wants to conceal. So the villain sends assassins after them, letting the Fargos know that their totally innocuous discovery was important somehow. Had they just purchased the item at a fair price, or simply ignored them entirely, the villain would have succeeded.

* A humorous version in the Carol Higgins Clark novel ''Jinxed''. A con artist passing himself off as a well-to-do man is about to marry an heiress but concerned that her sister will recognize him from the acting class they both attended. He thus gets his brother to kidnap her until the wedding is done but things get wildly complicated and in the end, he's arrested for the kidnapping and several crimes. The kicker: The sister never paid any attention to him in that class, has no idea who he is and thus he would have married into money if he hadn't done all this.
* OlderThanSteam -- ''Literature/DonQuixote'' presents a parody: In his first sally, DaydreamBeliever Alonso Quijano [[MadDreamer pretends he is]] KnightErrant Don Quixote. He tries to live the MedievalEuropeanFantasy in RealLife Spain. He doesn't find any [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons]], [[RobeAndWizardHat enchanters]] nor any DamselInDistress. He is very disappointed when he comes back to his house, where his family and two {{Moral Guardian}}s have [[BookBurning burned]] his ChivalricRomance books. To avoid Don Quixote's ire, the Moral Guardians advise the family to tell him, literally, that AWizardDidIt. That excuse was the Don Quixote's first contact with the MedievalEuropeanFantasy he so desperately wanted to live! If the MoralGuardians had told him the truth, he would never have persevered in his madness.
* Subverted in the Creator/AndrewVachss Burke book ''Another Life''; Burke and crew have a scene blown up rather than burned down in order to erase evidence, and he rationalizes it to another character by saying that in that bad neighbourhood, druggies' "experiments" going boom is normal, but arson is not.
* In ''[[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'', Blomqvist assumes he investigating a hopeless cold case until the villain tries to kill him.
* Noticeably averted in ''Literature/SevenDaysInMay'', about a plot to take over the US via MilitaryCoup. Several people who appear to have been murdered turn out later to have been merely detained on justifiable pretexts. There's only one suspicious death (of a White House aide carrying direct evidence of the conspiracy who ''had'' to be stopped) and only luck enables the signed confession he was carrying to survive the plane crash and be found in time to avert the coup. The closest you get to this trope is when an orderly is [[ReassignedToAntarctica reassigned to Hawaii]] after discussing an apparently innocuous signal with the protagonist, which is what first arouses his suspicions.
* Creator/VladimirVasilyev's ''Literature/WolfishNature'' duology starts with someone stumbling on a wolf (dog-humans able to kill) enclave in Siberia. The wolves quickly eliminate him and anyone in his address book whom he may have contacted, finishing with a guy whom he only called because of dialing a wrong number. Since murder is incredibly rare in this world (genetic engineering having "excised" the so-called "wolf gene" from all dog-humans, making them incapable of killing), this sudden string of murders (including murder-suicides) catches the attention of the governments, who quickly deduce the existence of the wolves. Just a few weeks after the first murder, the Siberian town of Alzamay where the enclave is located is full of spies from all major powers.
* In the ''Literature/NightHuntress'' books, there is a minor example: Bones realizes that Cat is being moved when the Men in Black clear an entire floor of the hospital and otherwise make a big to-do of it. After which, they were easy to follow.
* ''Literature/TheStainlessSteelRat'' has Jim noting that secrecy is an obviousity, leading him to disguise his investigation by posing as a flamboyant, wealthy visitor to the planet he's sniffing around on. Ultimately, the criminals get spooked and step up their plan, though it's never revealed just what tipped them off.
* The ''Literature/AlexBenedict'' novel ''Polaris'' features a bombing intended to destroy evidence (which later turns out to never have been there in the first place) camouflaged as an assassination attempt on a visiting dictator which just happens to be tipped off in time to evacuate the people but not most of the goods. Had it stopped there, no-one would have been the wiser... but unfortunately for the conspirators they try to be more thorough in removing the possible evidence, and the ensuing mysterious visits and thefts were not so well camouflaged, tipping the protagonists off to the fact that there's something strange going on with ''Polaris'' despite the many decades since its crew disappeared.
* Invoked in the ''Literature/{{Temps}}'' story "Leaks" by Creator/DavidLangford. The DPR send a low-level paranorm to investigate evidence of an "entropy ray" affecting government vehicles. He quickly realises that all that's actually affecting the vehicles is someone running a scam selling engine parts and replacing them with old ones, but he can't work out what purpose was served by the letter mentioning the entropy ray, which just attracted everyone's attention. [[spoiler: It turns out the letter was sent by someone who'd spotted the scam but wasn't involved, purely so the DPR would send a low-level paranorm.]]
* In John Bude's ''The Lake District Murder'', the victim is found in circumstances that suggest suicide. Once the police establish it was murder, they quickly determine that he was killed in case he might reveal information about a criminal gang he was involved with, whose existence they had not previously suspected.

* ''Literature/OliverTwist'' is one of the few times that the usual FridgeLogic associated with this trope is avoided; while Fagin, Sikes, and Co. were reasonably safe, in that Oliver wasn't inclined to talk about them, they did not know that for certain, and their already committed crimes would be enough to hang them anyway.
* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'': After illegal use of the Arch of Kresnik, Ponix fudges the records of such use, and then he fudges his previous fudge. This is because defying this trope was part of his training as an intelligence officer.

* Professor Horace Slughorn from ''Literature/HarryPotter'' [[FakeMemories alters one of his memories]] to conceal the fact that [[spoiler: he taught Tom Riddle AKA Voldemort how to create a Horcrux,]] something he is deeply ashamed of. However the cover-up is so incompetently handled (In [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince the book]], the offending scenes are covered by thick mist; in [[Film/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince the movie]], the key words are distorted and barely audible. Both versions end with Slughorn launching into an angry yet obviously staged tirade and throwing [[spoiler: Tom]] out of his office.) that Dumbledore starts asking questions about what Slughorn was trying to hide.
* ''Literature/HolmesOnTheRange'': In ''World's Greatest Sleuth,'' [[spoiler:Boothby Greene and Blackheath-Murray discard their European shoes and buy replacements from a local shoemaker after realizing the brothers know that Curtis's killer wore European shoes.]] Almost all of the suspects own [[spoiler:European shoes]] and [[spoiler:Old Red becomes suspicious of how they just happen to have locally sold shoes]], so that cover-up backfires.
* In Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/{{Noninterference}}'', Standard Operating Procedure for [[TheFederation Federacy]] Survey Service field teams observing worlds inhabited by [[RubberForeheadAliens sufficiently human]] [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe looking sorts]] with transportation[=/=]communication advancement below a certain level is to [[AlienNonInterferenceClause hide any excess tech]] and pass themselves off as [[ConvenientlyUnverifiableCoverStory travelers from somewhere a bit off the local maps]]. The fellow that took pity on TheHighQueen of an early Bronze Age city-state (and got cashiered for his trouble) claimed to be from somewhere far to the west when he gave her something for her end-stage cancer. When the follow-up team swung by 1500 years later they dropped off a couple in a town on the western end of a near renaissance-level continent-spanning quasi-theocracy who called themselves jewel traders from the far northwest, were quietly pumped for information by one of the local priests within a day, and the next morning were seized and put onto a well-guarded carriage to the Holy City as per standing orders from the Eternal Goddess.
* An amusing version in a Literature/{{Spenser}} novel. Spenser leaves his office, and almost immediately notices a tail, who "was paying absolutely no attention to me. And being blatant about it."
* In the Literature/TravisMcGee novel ''The Green Ripper'', [=McGee=]'s girlfriend is murdered by a domestic terrorist group for having seen something she shouldn't have, unnecessarily because she hadn't realized she'd seen anything important. Once he discovers she was poisoned, [=McGee=]'s investigation uncovers the previously unknown group and their plot, [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge and they get his full, and undivided, attention]].

* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': The island of Aimia is ShroudedInMyth due to the extreme methods its inhabitants use to prevent people reaching their shores, including killing anyone who actually lands there. When Rysn successfully makes it to the island in ''Literature/{{Dawnshard}}'' she tells the inhabitants that all they've done is make people ''more'' curious about what's hidden on the island and what happened to the people who disappeared. She convinces them that if they let her reveal a few select pieces of information about what she found it will make the place less interesting and draw attention away from the bigger secrets they're protecting.
* ''Literature/ChocoholicMysteries'':
** During "Kidnapping Clue", the supposed kidnap victim carelessly leaves some of her trash on a nearby beach. When it's been picked up by a local woman (along with all the other trash she finds on the beach), the "kidnapper" tries to HideTheEvidence by running her over in a stolen car and then stealing the trash back from her yard while she's in the hospital. Lee, who was with the woman when she was nearly hit, finds this behavior suspicious and ends up snooping around, leading to her overhearing the "kidnapper" and his "victim" talking about what they're really up to.
** Clementine Ripley's murder in ''Cat Caper'' ends up exposing the [[spoiler: finance-based]] crimes her killers were up to.

* In the ''Literature/StarTrekTheNextGenerationRelaunch'' novel ''Collateral Damage'', Starfleet Intelligence don't seem to have grasped the basic principles of a deniable agent. When Okona gets caught by the ''Enterprise'' doing illegal stuff, rather than cut him loose, SI has the ''Enterprise'' ordered to let him go and forget he was ever there. Since this happens at the same time as Picard is on trial for his unwitting involvement in a Section 31 operation, the command crew are naturally suspicious of such orders.

-->'''Major Samuel Yeager''': "Listen. This isn't how you keep a secret. The way you do that is to pretend you don't have one, not make a big hairy thing out of yourself and go around yelling 'I've got a secret and I won't tell you what it is, so you'd better not ask--or else!' Come on, Lieutenant Colonel. You're a big boy. Am I right or am I wrong?"

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* ''FanFic/BlackenedSkies'': When rumors reach them that another killing game has begun, the mysterious investigator of "Initium" is keen to dismiss them as just that: baseless rumors. At least until they run a cursory search and receive an 'Access Denied' message - revealing that there IS information out there, and that ''somebody'' has deemed it important enough to lock away.

*** One of the major pieces of evidence that [[spoiler: Mondo killed Chihiro]] is that the killer went out of their way to destroy the victim's e-handbook [[spoiler: by leaving it in the sauna]]. The problem is that only one person was ever in a position to learn that a handbook could be destroyed in that way.
*** [[spoiler:Had anime {{otaku}} Hifumi not insisted on incorporating ''Franchise/{{Transformers}} cosplay'' into his murder plans, his frameup job on Yasuhiro would probably have worked.]]

* ''Videogame/DiscoElysium'': A mercenary sent to break a strike is seen being lynched by a group of neighborhood militiamen, and the perpetrators aren't shy about declaring that they killed him for being a violent creep to the local women. It might seem lke an open-and-shut case, but obviously it goes much deeper than that. [[spoiler:Said mercenary was killed by a sniper while hooking up with [[FemmeFatale Klaasje Amandou]], who had made some VERY powerful enemies and didn't want to risk being noticed by them if she was taken in for questioning, so she arranged the lynching post-mortem and tried making it look like it was orchestrated by a jealous lover. It's downplayed if the player doesn't put everything together, or does and still lets her slip away, but it's possible for you to realize her involvement and detain her, which is exactly what she was trying to avoid and more than likely results in her being killed. As the cherry on top, ''she'' is the one who made the anonymous call about the corpse in the first place, [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished because she didn't think he deserved to be left rotting in the tree]].]]

See the ConspicuousTrenchcoat for this same principle applied to costumes. Contrast this with CrimeAfterCrime. For the comedic version, see LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub. Not to be confused with a CassandraGambit, in which secrets are covered up by "revealing" them in a way that invites disbelief.