History Main / WeShouldGetAnotherTape

** Yet another ''Simpsons'' example: In ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Simpson Mother Simpson]]'', Mr. Burns plays an audio cassette recording of ''Ride of the Valkyries'' as he storms the Simpsons' household... and the tape quickly cuts to Music/{{Abba}}'s ''Waterloo'', which Smithers admits he recorded over the original music.

** Richard has a tape marked "Monica" on which he's taped a baseball game over a sex tape with a woman who isn't Monica. Whether he taped ''that'' over Monica isn't clear.

->''"[[TropeNamer We really should get another tape]]. I mean, they're not expensive."''

* Strangely, some rewritable UsefulNotes/{{DVD}}s can suffer from this. If a DVD+RW (not tested with -RW) is quick-erased (marked for overwriting) and new content incorrectly recorded, the video recorded over the old content will play to the end, then the player playing the disc will freeze as it tries to make head or tail of the abrupt transition between the end of the new content and the middle of the old content. Then any parts of the old content that haven't been overwritten will play (if the new video takes up less space on the disc than the old one), usually with glitchy video or sound.
* A real problem for storage devices, being overwritten doesn't always mean being erased. Hard drives leave faint traces of the original data that special equipment can read. Flash drives are designed to avoid overwriting existing data whenever possible (too many writes to the same address eventually wears it out), thus leaving the original data completely intact.

-->-- '''[[Series/ArrestedDevelopment George Michael]]''' lampshades this trope.

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** Yet another ''Simpsons'' example: In ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Simpson Mother Simpson]]'', Mr. Burns plays an audio cassette recording of ''Ride of the Valkyries'' as he storms the Simpsons' household...and the tape quickly cuts to Music/{{Abba}}'s ''Waterloo'', which Smithers admits he recorded over the original music.

It doesn't work quite so well with [=CDs=] due to their differing format... but since there's still a lot of VHS players and tapes going around, it'll be used for quite a while yet.

* In ''Film/{{Australiens}}'', one character has a lump on his scrotum, which he is afraid might be prostate cancer. He borrows his sister's friends camera to take a look at it, but she takes it back as aliens descend on Brisbane. At the end of the film, it's shown that his experiment prefaces the documentary of the invasion. ''It's shown on national TV''.

* Lawrence Block's Literature/MatthewScudder private eye novel ''A Dance at the Slaughterhouse'' begins with an innocent third-party getting hold of a video tape of ''The Dirty Dozen'' that also includes scenes of a pair of serial killers torturing and killing a victim. The killers also killed the guy who made the tape, but didn't expect him to have a copy hidden in a commercial cassette (which was subsequently sold to a video rental place).

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* On ''Series/LawAndOrder'', the cops come across a videotape of a apparent murder. The crime lab guy helps narrow down the source of the tape by finding footage of a bar mitzvah elsewhere on the tape

* In one episode of ''Col'n Carpenter'', Col'n's flatmate recieves some home movies that have been transferred to betamax. Col'n then accidentally uses the tape to record ''A Very Brady Easter''. At the end of the episode, it turns out the company had sent her the wrong tape and these were actually someone else's home movies.

* A real problem for storage devices, being overwritten doesn't always mean being erased. Harddrives leave faint traces of the original data that special equipment can read. Flash drives are designed to avoid overwriting existing data whenever possible (too many writes to the same address eventually wears it out), thus leaving the original data completely intact.

* ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' does this, as it is ostensibly recorded on a hand-held camera belonging to one of the characters.
** The parody on ''WesternAnimation/{{MAD}}'' (the Cartoon Network sketch show based on [[Magazine/{{MAD}} the magazine of the same name]]) had the attack taped on [[Franchise/TheMuppets Kermit the Frog's]] ''Series/AmericanIdol'' audition video.
** Oddly enough, some text briefly flashed on the screen at the beginning says that the video was retrieved from a memory card. Since memory cards don't store things sequentially like a tape, this shouldn't have happened. It would have just recorded the incident into a new file and there wouldn't be any of the old video showing up in the new one. If it were on digital tape, which is still in wide enough use, it would've made much more sense.
** And ''really'' there shouldn't be such long sections of Coney Island throughout the film even if it was a tape, given that all Hud was doing was stopping and starting the recording. The only part that belonged was the part at the very end, when the tape ran out.

* TropeNamer is George Michael Bluth's eventual comment on a RunningGag on ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' where, every time something is taped, it runs on to present footage George Michael shot of himself imitating scenes from ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' in his garage (in the vein of [[MemeticMutation Star Wars Kid]]).

* Used as a ContinuityNod to "Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire" in the ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' episode "Paddy's Pub: Home Of The Original Kitten Mittens".
** Later episodes even include split second cuts of Charlie and Mac's Fight Milk Ad, Mac's Project Badass stunts, Dee's Irish Leprechaun impression, and Dennis's Election ad.