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| 4 | %% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks! |
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| 8 | [[quoteright:201:[[ComicBook/{{Superman}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/absence_of_evidence_0.png]]]] |
| 9 | [[caption-width-right:201:You know, Clark, you can buy those things in stores.]] |
| 10 | %% |
| 11 | ->'''Inspector Gregory:''' Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?\ |
| 12 | '''Sherlock Holmes:''' To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.\ |
| 13 | '''Inspector Gregory:''' The dog did nothing in the night-time.\ |
| 14 | '''Sherlock Holmes:''' That was the curious incident. |
| 15 | -->-- ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'', ''The Adventure of Silver Blaze'' |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Sometimes the absence of a thing is a vital clue. For example, the absence of fingerprints on an often-used item makes it clear that the item was cleaned. A tool missing from a set could well be the murder weapon. And, as indicated in the page quote, a dog failing to bark at an apparently unknown intruder suggests that the dog was probably familiar with whoever it was. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | This is, in fact, one of the harder aspects of real police investigations. The lack of something is easy to miss. However, you have to be careful. The lack of gunshot residue on a person's clothes, for example, '''does not''' mean that there was not a gun fired, it means that there is no gunpowder residue to find. Lack of such residue on the glove that an eyewitness saw the shooter use and then dump that is immediately picked up by the police might show that the event was staged, however (as the gloves would have residue and there is no way it might have been removed). Also, in RealLife, people firing a modern semiautomatic pistol often ''don't'' acquire any gunpowder residue on their hands; so while the ''presence'' of gunpowder residue may be evidence of guilt (weak in itself — the residue could as easily have been picked up at a shooting range), its ''absence'' does not exclude a suspect. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Can lead to a ConvictionByContradiction situation if poorly handled. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Compare INeverSaidItWasPoison, where someone incriminates themselves by mentioning details which were withheld from the public, and ItsQuietTooQuiet for the audio-exclusive version of this. Contrast NotProven, where the police or the prosecution don't have enough evidence to convict a criminal, and OrgyOfEvidence, where suspicions are raised due to the presence of too much evidence. See also AppealToObscurity, where something being unheard of is used to make a point. SuspiciouslyCleanCriminalRecord is a sub-trope. |
| 24 | ---- |
| 25 | !!Examples: |
| 26 | |
| 27 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 28 | |
| 29 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 30 | * In the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' manga case "Turnabout Power vs. Supernatural Power," the final evidence Phoenix uses to prove that [[spoiler:Princess Tengu]] murdered Casper Sly is the lack of an over-capacity alarm when Power Tengu stepped into the elevator, proving [[spoiler:Sly was already dead and being suspended from the elevator shaft to make it look like he was standing]]. |
| 31 | * ''Anime/BNABrandNewAnimal'': When examining the explosion at the Sylvasta lab Ogami notices a period where there was no scent in it. As everybody has their own unique scent it was simply a matter of finding the person with no scent to find the bomber. |
| 32 | * Often used in ''Manga/CaseClosed'': |
| 33 | ** The daughter of a wealthy businessman has been kidnapped and Conan figures out who the kidnapper is when he remembers that no one reported hearing the sounds of dogs barking the previous night. (For clarification, the [[TheButlerDidIt butler]] who claimed to have witnessed the kidnapping said that the kidnapper climbed down a tree, but the businessman's dogs routinely barked at anyone who got near the tree.) |
| 34 | ** A man suspected to be the one who had been randomly attacking women with a mallet is found strangled in his own apartment...except Conan can't find any underwear, shoes, or toiletry there. He quickly realizes that [[spoiler:the apartment belongs to someone else, who removed those items to hide the fact that ''she'', a woman, lived there and was the true culprit]]. |
| 35 | * ''Manga/GreatTeacherOnizuka'': When [[spoiler:Fuyutsuki]] goes missing, [[KidDetective Makoto]] notices her apartment is too clean for someone who's been gone for a week, determining that she's been kidnapped and the kidnapper has been coming back and cleaning the place. Her stalker [[spoiler:Teshigawara]] is a NeatFreak, and he quickly gives himself away through his [[RevealingCoverUp suspicious behavior]]. |
| 36 | * In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'', GN particles jam sensors in much the same way Minovsky particles did in [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam the original show]]. Unlike in that show, however, Celestial Being has the only machines that emit GN particles, so their enemies quickly learn to track them by deploying a large sensor net and looking for the spots where the sensors are randomly going blind. |
| 37 | * In ''{{Manga/Monster}}'', Johan's crime scenes are "devoid of feeling" -- the kills are executed as coldly and methodically as household chores. In one arc, this enables Runge to determine that a certain murder was [[CopycatCrime committed by a copy-cat]] and not Johan -- [[spoiler:blood spatter clearly shows a man had been [[http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Monster/Monster-40?id=7370#10 slouched in front of a mirror]], but his body is found several feet away because the killer hesitated upon [[http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Monster/Monster-41?id=7374#11 seeing himself in said mirror]]. Johan would have killed the man without a second thought, but the real killer -- the man's nephew -- was shocked to see himself in the process of killing]]. It's also what makes Runge [[SkepticNoLonger finally accept that Johan is not some kind of fiction by Tenma]]; he goes to a hotel room where Johan supposedly stayed and becomes unnerved at just how perfectly, meticulously ''sterile'' the thing feels to his SherlockScan abilities. Hotel rooms are not supposed to have ''that'' much of a lack of a feel of having been lived in. Johan removed the evidence he was ever there [[{{Irony}} too well]]. |
| 38 | [[/folder]] |
| 39 | |
| 40 | [[folder:Audio Plays]] |
| 41 | * ''AudioPlay/{{Gallifrey}}'': A major factor in the inquiry into Romana's actions on Gryben, as Narvin claims that the alleged 'timeonic fusion device' with which she was threatened could not possibly exist. [[spoiler:It turns out that he's just been covering up the fact that he himself built one and allowed it to be stolen centuries earlier.]] |
| 42 | [[/folder]] |
| 43 | |
| 44 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 45 | * Creator/ECComics: In "Fall Guy for Murder" from ''Crime [=SuspenStories=]'' #18, a man hires a detective to find his wife who he claims took everything she had and ran out on him. The gumshoe immediately becomes suspicious when he sees that ''literally'' '''''every''''' ''last thing'' she had ever owned was missing; every piece of clothing, every single pair of shoes, every last hat, ''all'' of her luggage, etc. As he notes, a lady running away from her husband on the quick would leave behind ''something'' she wouldn't bother taking. [[spoiler:It turns out to be a set-up.]] |
| 46 | * In the first ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' comic in Hondo-City, the Hondo-City Judge works out that the assassin he is chasing is a robot because there is no rollmat, no food, no toothpaste, etc., in his apartment. |
| 47 | * ''ComicBook/SpirouAndFantasio'': In one comic, MadScientist Zorglub hides the location of his jungle base by using mind control to keep survey planes from taking pictures of the immediate area. Champignac quickly deduces that the area of the map that is completely blank must contain the base. |
| 48 | * ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'': |
| 49 | ** This was, oddly enough, used to discover Superman's {{secret identity}} back in the Silver Age of comics. Superman has since started filling his bathroom with all the things needed for daily life, and putting medicines in his locker. |
| 50 | ** It's used in ''ComicBook/SupermanEarthOne'', when Lois is doing some digging into Clark Kent's life. Because he spent his childhood trying not to stand out in any way at all, not making any friends and just performing averagely at school, it tips Lois off that he's hiding something. |
| 51 | * In the DC one-off "World Without Grownups" (a prelude to ''ComicBook/YoungJustice''), it appears as though all the children in the world have disappeared. However, ComicBook/{{Batman}} deduces that the ''adults'' were the ones who were transplanted to a parallel earth when he notices that none of his bat-gear has any dust on it (and then proceeds to carbon date everything he can find to back up his hypothesis). |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 55 | * The premise of ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723022 Anthony J. Crowley, Retired Demon and Airbnb Superhost]]'' is that [[Literature/GoodOmens Crowley]] rents out his flat on Airbnb, and the fic is the review table. Some guests notice how weird it is that while the flat is full of expensive art, they can't find certain essentials, such as plates, forks, lights, or mugs. |
| 56 | -->''The one complaint I have is there’s a weird lack of certain things here, despite the general “luxury” vibe. Went to see if there were any tissues in the linen closet, and there was nothing except one towel with the Gucci snake on it and a giant bottle of hand sanitizer.'' |
| 57 | * ''Fanfic/AvengersOfTheRing'' |
| 58 | ** In ''Return of the Avengers'', while Barton correctly observes that orcs aren't the type to formally declare war, the fact that they were able to gather their forces without being observed makes it clear that some unknown party is coordinating their efforts. |
| 59 | ** In ''Methteilien'', [[spoiler:the dwarves deduce that Morgoth is likely attacking a moon with a supply of uru as Thanos's use of the Reality Stone means that he doesn't need to claim resources in the same manner]]. |
| 60 | * ''Fanfic/AvengersInfiniteWars'': |
| 61 | ** Discussed when the Avengers reflect that they can be fairly sure they're not in their own galaxy anymore as they would have probably seen the various ships flying around at some point if that was the case. |
| 62 | ** Later, one of the Sith Acolytes observes that the Avengers can be detected by searching for the void they create in the Force even if they cannot be sensed through the Force directly. |
| 63 | * ''Fanfic/ChildrenOfRemnant'': When Pyrrha and Emerald have a fight that demonstrates just how powerful they both truly are, the Vale and Atlas forces meet to discuss it. The entire time, Summer and Qrow are terrified of how Winter will react, as she is easily the most hostile towards the Claimed children. After the meeting ends, they note that she had the worst reaction - she had ''no reaction'' at all, which can only mean that she already knew everything before the briefing and is already planning something. |
| 64 | * ''Fanfic/DanganronpaInHarmonysWake'': This proves to be the final nail in the coffin for the blackened of the first trial. [[spoiler:Timber Spruce claims that after he got sick from the tainted cider, he spent a little time cleaning up the bathroom, and refers to this when suspicion falls on him. But, Sunset points out that according to Rainbow Dash, the bathroom was spotless when she checked it out herself. Given that Timber was supposedly sick from both ipecac and laxatives this should be impossible, proving that he was only faking being sick with the others.]] |
| 65 | * In the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' fic "[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/44950582/ Disrespecting Authority]]", after Sirius and Remus find the locket Horcrux in Grimmauld Place and learn about the diary, Remus observes that the fact that Voldemort hasn't gone looking for the locket when he has to know about the destruction of the diary is a clear sign that there are more than two horcruxes because someone like Voldemort would be more actively concerned if he lost one of his only two. |
| 66 | * In ''Fanfic/TheFaithChronicles'', the Watchers' Council fake [[spoiler:Faith's death]] with a mystically-created clone. Janet Frasier realizes that the clone is a fake because the clone's stomach is empty; prior to [[spoiler:her abduction, Faith had eaten a full steak dinner, which should have still been in her stomach if she'd been killed for real]]. |
| 67 | * ''Fanfic/OfGoldAndIron'': When the Starks and Lannisters try to investigate the police files on Ned and Arya's deaths to determine if there's any connection, both files turn out to be missing. This proves more about the existence of a conspiracy than anything on the file would have - one file for such a high-profile murder case being missing is already suspicious enough, but both being missing can only mean that someone needs to hide something ''and'' that they have access to the police department, meaning the two families can only trust [[TeethClenchedTeamwork each other]]. |
| 68 | * ''Fanfic/GuardiansWizardsAndKungFuFighters'': Captain Black and Agent Tag realize that [[spoiler:[[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld Harold Hale]]]]'s established backstory is fake, because no one recalls having known him during the time he claims he was at school, nor does anyone who should have known his parents remember ever meeting them either. |
| 69 | * ''Fanfic/IncompatibleSystem'': |
| 70 | ** Part of what freaks out the Citadel races so much about the missing Relays is that not only are the relays gone, but there's ''no'' traces or evidence of who, or ''what'', removed them, or ''how'', and if it wasn't for their records, there'd be no way to tell that the Relays were there in the ''first'' place. |
| 71 | ** When Batarian "pirates" start disappearing with little to no trace, the Citadel Council takes notice. |
| 72 | * ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9049136/1/Lay-Down-Your-Burdens Lay Down Your Burdens]]'': Kushina Uzumaki's file has her marital status and offspring redacted, something Naruto notes basically announces that she was married and had a child. |
| 73 | * ''Fanfic/TheLightningStrike''; |
| 74 | ** Harry reflects that he can be sure there is no equivalent to the wizarding world in the MCU for the simple reason that nobody's stepped in to stop him sharing their secrets with SHIELD. |
| 75 | ** When Harry [[spoiler:goes off the grid trying to find Loki's staff, Baron Strucker muses that he should have realised he should be concerned once Harry dropped off the grid (thanks to Skye's efforts)]]. |
| 76 | * ''Fanfic/MissingMiraculousLadybug'': While discussing the obvious tension between Marinette and Lila, Nathaniel points out that with enough digging, it's possible to turn up dirt on pretty much everyone. However, Alix realizes that they've never seen any solid proof of all the ''good'' Lila has supposedly been doing. And as active as she's claimed to have been, it's odd that they've never actually seen any articles, pictures or other coverage of the events in question. |
| 77 | * ''Fanfic/ThePetricultureCycle'': ''Petriculture'': The fact that there are no records of [[spoiler:Pinkie's family]]. There's also this: |
| 78 | -->'''Twilight''': I... I don't ''want'' to be right about this, Pinkie Pie, but it seems like the only solution that fits, which is why I’m hoping you can give me that one piece of evidence that I’m missing—something that wraps everything up in a neat, logical package.\ |
| 79 | '''Pinkie''': I’m sorry, Twilight, but I can't.\ |
| 80 | '''Twilight''': You don’t want to talk about it?\ |
| 81 | '''Pinkie''': No, I mean that I can’t give you the missing information you want... [[WhamLine because there isn’t any.]] |
| 82 | * When [[TheHandler Reggie Diceman]] meets her newest spy Nevermore (real name [[Literature/GoodOmens Anthony J. Crowley]]) in ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/38096386/chapters/96497004#workskin Spirits of the Blitz]]'', Nevermore takes his cigarette out of his mouth and tucks it behind his ear. Halfway through the conversation, Diceman realizes what was strange about that. |
| 83 | -->''Before you tucked that cigarette behind your ear, Nevermore, did I actually see you put it out?'' |
| 84 | * ''Fanfic/ThereWasOnceAnAvengerFromKrypton'': |
| 85 | ** One of the major plot points of the Labyrinth arc of ''The Girl Who Could Knock Out The Hulk'' is Kara being puzzled by how not only does S.W.O.R.D. apparently have no knowledge of Krypton or the Kryptonian Empire, but that while there ''is'' an asteroid belt in Krypton's former orbit around Rao/Gliese 3707 and all the other planets Kara remembers are there, the actual mass of the asteroids is nowhere even ''close'' to the mass of even one of Krypton's moons, let alone the other moons, Krypton itself, or its sister planet Daxam, not to mention that Kara's best estimates of how long she spent in the Phantom Zone don't give the belt itself enough time to form. Lena's best guess is that maybe time went wonky and Kara was in the Zone longer than she thought, and the explosion was so violent that the remaining mass fell further out of orbit than Kara thought it would, but Kara's still not convinced. [[spoiler: Doctor Doom eventually reveals that this is because Kara's actually from a different universe than the one she's currently in.]] |
| 86 | ** When Nico hears of Dark Dan's BadFuture, and how widespread the devastation apparently was, he wonders why there was apparently ''no'' actions taken against him by the Olympians or one of the other major players around Earth. Danny speculates that either there was some other cataclysm that took out the others, or that he's potentially more powerful than even he realizes. |
| 87 | ** In ''Eternity in Promise'', Adora muses that, logically, there should have been ''some'' First Ones that didn't manage to get off of Etheria before Mara sent it to Despondos, from Mara's own rebel forces to the soldiers and guards loyal to the First One leaders to the technicians keeping everything running. Yet there's been ''no'' sign of them anywhere on the planet. Not to mention how that, despite the fact that her existence would indicate that there's at least two other First Ones (her parents) out there, she, Entrapta, and Catra are unable to find any sign of them, or even any of their remains at the remains of the sites Horde Prime attacked, despite the sites having plenty of deactivated Horde robots and the remains of clones. |
| 88 | * The ''Series/Lucifer2016'' fic "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13132580/1/Tragic-Life-Changes Tragic Life Changes]]" opens with Chloe and Dan being apparently killed in a plane crash, but Chloe is rescued by God as he realises that the event is a deliberate attempt to kill Chloe. While trying to determine the likely suspects, God notes that a key reason for his concern is that he doesn't know who tried to kill Chloe even though he should know the whole plan by his nature, and asks Chloe to provide him with a list of people new to her life in the last year or so to help narrow down the suspects. This allows God to identify Marcus Pierce as an anomaly as he doesn't recognise Pierce's name when he should know the name of every soul on Earth, leading to Pierce being identified as Cain (even if he is clearly working with someone as he doesn't have the power to hide his activities from God on his own). |
| 89 | * ''Fanfic/WithThisRing'': The villains eventually adapt to Paul's ability to find anyone and anything on the planet via power ring, and start using magical scry wards to block his ring scans. However, he's sometimes able to find them anyway (such as [[spoiler:Dark Druid and his associate, Deacon Blackfire]]) by having his ring compare what it can detect to the official blueprints of a structure, looking for a gap. |
| 90 | --> '''Paul''': Ring, match the plans with what we can scan. Let's hope our target hasn't been as clever as they think they have.\ |
| 91 | '''Ring''': Discrepancy found.\ |
| 92 | '''Paul''': HAH! 'Oh, he'll never find me if I put up a scry ward'! Sucker! |
| 93 | * In ''Fanfic/WrongRoadToTheRightPlace'', after Laurel deduces that the List is a list of people in Starling City who can be blackmailed over past misdemeanors, this allows Team Arrow to determine that the man behind the Dark Archer must be one of the city’s elite from five years ago who isn’t on the List. |
| 94 | [[/folder]] |
| 95 | |
| 96 | [[folder:Film — Live-Action]] |
| 97 | * In ''Film/TwoDaysInTheValley'', assassin Lee Woods plans to get away with his latest job by killing his partner and [[DeceasedFallGuyGambit making sure the only evidence points to the partner]] by planting the partner's cigarettes at the scene of the crime. A detective investigating the scene says that it's pretty obvious that the cigarettes were left there intentionally to mislead the cops because it's literally the only evidence there while everything else is entirely spotless. The detective doesn't buy the idea that a killer could leave a scene with no trace evidence at all (no hairs, no fibers from their clothes, no fingerprints, etc.) but also "accidentally" leave an entire pack of cigarettes with their DNA. |
| 98 | * ''Film/BodyDouble'': One of the reasons Scully doesn't become a formal suspect in the murder (besides the fact he's lucky enough to pick up another couple of witnesses on his way to try to help) [[spoiler:is that Gloria has an aggressive guard dog, that stops Scully from even getting upstairs. Detective [=McLean=], not unreasonably, thinks this means that Scully wouldn't be able to kill Gloria without drugging or badly hurting the dog, which demonstrates on Scully and the other witnesses that it's prime health just a few minutes later. Which means that Gloria must have been killed by ''someone the dog knew''. The only person mentioned that qualifies is Gloria's husband.]] |
| 99 | * In ''Film/TheBourneUltimatum'' when the UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} is looking for whoever leaked Blackbriar to the media, their initial response is to check for whoever's cell phone was in the same location as the meeting place. Pamela Landy notes that what they should be doing is checking who has their cell phones turned off, as no employee of the CIA would be stupid enough to meet a journalist with their phone on but that it would be odd for a ranking officer to be out of contact for that long. |
| 100 | * In ''Film/{{Memento}}'', Leonard shows Natalie a binder of documents he has pertaining to the attack on and murder of his wife; she comments that it seems awfully incomplete for how long his investigation is going. [[spoiler:Then you find out that Leonard destroyed several pages before the beginning of the film's events, intentionally creating holes that he could exploit to continue seeking his aimless revenge.]] |
| 101 | * ''Film/{{Peppermint}}'': The police and FBI are clued in to the heroine's whereabouts by looking at crime maps, and finding an area in a run-down section of town that is suspiciously free of crime. |
| 102 | * One of the final reveals in ''Film/{{Rashomon}}'' is that the woodcutter, who at that point was the only person the viewer would be inclined to believe entirely, [[spoiler:stole a valuable dagger mentioned by all the other witnesses]], but the object was never mentioned by him. |
| 103 | * In ''Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows'', during the climax both Watson and Simza have to find Simza's brother before he can go through with an assassination plot, while Sherlock is out of the room. They've already deduced that the assassin is going to be disguised as one of the guests, and even Simza has little chance of spotting any recognizable markings. However, Watson figures out that rather than futilely looking for physical evidence, they should be looking for something that someone in the assassin's position wouldn't have or be unable to produce: spontaneous reaction. Watson then causes a loud commotion that draws the attention of everyone nearby, but the assassin sticks out by not reacting at all, since he's too caught up in his performance as a calm diplomat to react like a normal person. |
| 104 | * In ''Film/ThereWillBeBlood'', Henry doesn't laugh with Daniel Plainview over an amusing story involving them getting girls drunk at the peach-tree dance. This makes Daniel suspicious that Henry wasn't even there [[spoiler:and that he is impersonating his long lost brother]]. |
| 105 | * In ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'', Henry Gupta sees through James Bond's cover story of being a banker and deduces he's a government agent, based on the lack of any blemishes on Bond's falsified records. |
| 106 | -->'''Gupta''': I call it "Gupta's Law of Convenient Anomalies" - if it looks TooGoodToBeTrue, it probably is. |
| 107 | * In ''Film/TheUsualSuspects'', the absence of [[spoiler:any cocaine in the cargo ship]] is the first sign that the attack isn't what it first seems. |
| 108 | * ''Film/TheWolfsCall'', in the climactic pursuit, rather than try to listen to their enemy to track its position, which would be almost impossible because the thing they're pursuing is a [[SilentRunningMode a stealth submarine]], the heroes instead listen to where the ''least'' noise is coming from to find it. |
| 109 | [[/folder]] |
| 110 | |
| 111 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 112 | !!!'''By Author:''' |
| 113 | * Creator/IsaacAsimov: |
| 114 | ** ''Literature/UnionClubMysteries'': |
| 115 | *** Griswold points out that the female suspect they are looking for (who has been shown to be fanatical about stockpiling supplies she will need) must be post-menopausal as there were no products for dealing with menstruation in her apartment. |
| 116 | *** Griswold shows that a suspect is only pretending to be a writer because [[WriteWhatYouKnow there is no]] ''wastepaper basket'' in his apartment, which would have been fairly standard for a writer at the time. |
| 117 | ** "Literature/{{Evidence}}": Someone arrives at U.S. Robotics claiming that mayoral candidate [[AmbiguousRobots Stephen Byerley is a robot]] because he ''never'' eats or sleeps. {{Subverted|Trope}} when Byerley points out that even if said someone spied on him, all they know is that he wasn't eating or sleeping ''then'' and it proves nothing about what he does in the rest of his personal time. |
| 118 | ** In ''Literature/TheNakedSun'', Earthman Elijah Baley is sent to the Spacer world Solaria to investigate a murder, since the Solarians have no police force and are completely unexperienced with crime of any nature. |
| 119 | *** The entire mystery revolves around the lack of a murder weapon found at the scene. Everybody agrees that only Gladia Delmarre, the wife of the victim, could possibly have gotten close enough to kill him, but there was no murder weapon discovered with her and she had no time to remove it from the area or destroy it. This conundrum is what spurs Solaria to ask for outside help. [[spoiler:The murder weapon was the arm of the robot that was found at the scene, which was detachable and could be used as a club. Since detachable limbs simply weren't considered as a factor (indeed, Elijah only realizes that the robot had them when the true culprit accidentally mentions the topic) and everyone takes it for granted that the First Law means a robot can't be involved in a murder, nobody bothered to investigate the robot other than noting that it repeated the victim's last words, and it's destroyed before Elijah can see it; he initially doesn't know one is present because he asks if any''one'' else is present, and a robot is any''thing'', not any''one''.]] |
| 120 | *** Baley finds it frustrating that the nature of the robotic society on Solaria prevents the retention of any evidence. The robots are constantly performing routine cleaning, maintenance, and upkeep of the environment so all evidence is destroyed in the course of their normal duties. Despite the numerous attempted murders after Baley begins his investigation, he only manages to retain any evidence of the one where he personally was the target and could tell the robot to give him the evidence personally. [[spoiler:It turns out, the reason the murder weapon wasn't found at the scene is because after initial investigators overlooked it, robots cleaned it up; had the crime scene been preserved for Elijah, he almost certainly would have noticed that the robot's arm was smeared with blood and hair, and thus had to be the weapon even if it was attached to the robot.]] |
| 121 | ** ''Literature/FoundationsEdge'': |
| 122 | *** Trevize deducts that the Second Foundation still exists because, after the utter clusterfuck that was the Mule, somehow the Seldon Plan is back on track. |
| 123 | *** Stor Gendibal realizes there is something seriously wonky going on when he checks the Galactic Library for information on Earth and discovers that any reference to Earth has been completely scrubbed from the database. |
| 124 | !!!'''By Work:''' |
| 125 | |
| 126 | * ''Literature/TwelveMilesBelow'': Keith begins learning the occult, and quickly comes up with a way to produce a [[PerpetualMotionMachine heater that requires no fuel and will run indefinitely]]. Atius immediately points out that if it's ''that'' easy, why hasn't someone done it already? He theorizes [[RobotWar the machines]] attack anyone who produces too much occult technology, and puts a hold on Keith's experiments until they can determine if it's safe. |
| 127 | * ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': Happens in just about every murder, given how most of the bodies are left in garbage dumps and that witnesses never come forward. What little evidence ''is'' found is frequently lost or forgotten. |
| 128 | * In ''Literature/{{Aquarium}}'', a superior asks Suvorov whether he knows what a certain section of the intelligence department is dealing with. Turns out he does -- since he never received any data from them, the obvious conclusion is that these are units which only operate during the war. Combined with the available data about the section's officers, who are all very tall, that means these are recon and sabotage units. Well, the proper name for them is Spetsnaz, but of course that cannot be obtained by deduction. |
| 129 | * In ''Literature/ArtemisFowl: The Opal Deception'', [[BigBad Opal Koboi]] has a specially constructed shuttle made entirely of "stealth ore" that is supposed to be almost impossible to detect with most conventional technology, in order to evade the authorities. Artemis gets around this by modifying the scanners on his own shuttle to detect unnatural absences of common elements... and very quickly finds what appears to be a shuttle-sized vacuum at the place where Opal is hiding. |
| 130 | * ''Literature/BernardSamsonSeries'': While Bernard is in custody of an East German intelligence officer, they discuss the story of "[[Literature/SherlockHolmes Silver Blaze]]". Bernard then points out the equally curious omission of any attempt at a proper interrogation. The reason for it is [[spoiler:that Bernard's wife is TheMole so has already told them anything important]]. |
| 131 | * ''Literature/CrookedHouse'': The deceased was killed by switching his insulin with a topical cataract medicine. When the police dusted the insulin bottle, it was totally clean, despite the fact that a medicine bottle that is used daily should be covered in fingerprints of various clarity. This causes the police to conclude that it wasn't an accident, but a premeditated murder. |
| 132 | * In the ''Manga/DeathNote'' novel ''Literature/AnotherNote'', this was the basis for all of Beyond Birthday's clues: "Something that should be there, but isn't." |
| 133 | * Lampshaded in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' City Watch books, where Vimes notes how hard it is to find something missing because said thing is, by definition, not there. |
| 134 | ** A specific example in ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'' comes when Carrot notices that several pages have been torn out of a notepad, leading him to conclude that someone didn't want them to read the note, and was smart enough to know they could [[WritingIndentationClue get an impression from the next few pages]]. Vimes takes it a step further, and reasons that the person ''wants'' them to conclude this, or they'd just have taken the whole pad. Absence of absence of evidence... |
| 135 | * ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'': In ''Dragondrums'', Piemur is sent to the Drum towers to learn drumming while his voice is changing from puberty. During his time there, he proves skilled and adept at learning the drumming codes enough to piss off the boys who have been there much longer. So, they start bullying him in progressively harsh ways. The final attack on Piemur is when [[spoiler:they place grease on some steps they know he would be rushing on to deliver the message. After he slips hard and cracks his head on the stone floor, the culprits clean off the grease. While one of Piemur's seniors doesn't believe him about the greased steps, noting that they were perfectly clean, the responsible one realizes that the steps in question were ''too'' clean. The other steps in that staircase were dirty compared to these few ones. They also didn't clean the grease off of Piemur's shoes.]] |
| 136 | * ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': |
| 137 | ** In ''Literature/FoolMoon'', Johnny Marcone knows that Harry has snuck onto his estate even though (or because) he didn't see him do it: one of his security cameras [[WalkingTechbane went on the fritz]] and he says, "Such malfunctions and Mr. Dresden tend to go together." |
| 138 | ** In ''Literature/SmallFavor'', Michael suspects that Harry is [[spoiler:under some form of magical influence]] because throughout the whole novel up to that point Harry has [[spoiler:not once used the fire magic that is normally his go-to spell, and the blasting rod he uses to focus his fire magic is nowhere to be found]]. When Harry confronts Michael about his suspicions, Michael is able to prove to Harry that something is wrong by quietly [[ArmorPiercingQuestion asking]] [[spoiler:where his blasting rod is — in fact, Harry is under a spell by the Queen of the Unseelie Court to prevent him from using fire magic, and only when Michael brings it to his attention does he realize (along with most readers) that his blasting rod is missing and that he hasn't so much as thought about it or fire magic throughout the novel up to that point.]] |
| 139 | * ''Literature/FatherBrown'': In ''The Eye of Apollo'', Father Brown pinpoints the culprit before he even knew what the crime was because of this. The culprit, a neo-pagan priest, is praying on a balcony when there is a crash and a scream from inside the building, while the priest keeps on praying. Father Brown immediately realizes that whatever happened inside (the priest tricked his lover into falling down an elevator shaft after writing a will leaving everything to him), the priest must have been expecting it because he didn't startle at the sound. |
| 140 | * In ''Literature/GodEmperorOfDune'', Leto II knows his opponents have perfected a device which can hide them from his nigh-omniscient prescience when somebody he knows disappears without a trace and reappears later, and even calls one of the users of the device out for having been stupid enough to think he wouldn't notice. Of course, even his enemies inventing this device was just [[AllAccordingToPlan all according to plan]] for Leto. |
| 141 | * ''Literature/HerculePoirot'': In ''Literature/{{Curtain}}'', Poirot uses this to point out the flaw in Hastings' aborted plan to murder Major Allerton (whom Hastings suspects has dark intentions towards Hastings' daughter) by poisoning him, as wiping his fingerprints off the bottle containing the poison he planned to use would have wiped away all the fingerprints on that bottle, making it obvious that someone had killed Allerton and with Hastings the prime suspect. |
| 142 | * ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': In ''Echoes of Honor'', a State Sec general figures out that the prisoners have taken over the prison because the warden failed to send his next chess-by-mail move in the mail delivered by a courier ship. |
| 143 | * In the Literature/JohnPutnamThatcher mystery ''Something in the Air'', an audit turns up the fact that the murder victim had an established track record for paying cash for everything, but never cashed a check to ''get'' that cash (the novel was written before [=ATMs=] were common). The police investigation [[spoiler:finds the murder victim was a blackmailer, collecting his payouts in cash]]. |
| 144 | * ''Literature/TheLadyGraceMysteries'': In ''Assassin'', Grace notices something odd about [[spoiler:Sir Gerald]]'s body; he was supposedly stabbed to death but there's no blood around the wound or anywhere else even though realistically there should be quite a lot. Grace recalls her uncle once telling her that blood flows through a body like a tide (that's how the Elizabethans understood blood flow) and only stops after death. This leads Grace to realize [[spoiler:Sir Gerald]] was already dead when he was stabbed. |
| 145 | * The Literature/LordPeterWimsey mystery ''The Five Red Herrings'' turns on the absence of [[spoiler:a tube of white paint]] from the crime scene. |
| 146 | * ''Literature/TheMerchantPrincesSeries'': In ''Invisible Sun'', the US Department of Homeland Security know a Person of Interest escaped a safehouse they raided in Berlin. They also know she has a cloned burner cellphone, but there were ''lots'' of cellphones in the area, and the German authorities won't let them do more than passive surveilance. So their plan is to keep monitoring cellphone pings on the same tower and, given that she's not an idiot, assume that everybody that returns to the area ''isn't'' her, until they've ruled out all but one. |
| 147 | * ''Literature/MissMarple'': The maid in ''Literature/TheMovingFinger'' looks vainly through the window all afternoon for her boyfriend, but sees ''nobody'', not even a postman — meaning that the poison pen letter occasioning her employer's wife's "suicide" that day did not come through the mailbox. |
| 148 | * This trope was crucial to solving the murder at the heart of the Creator/JamesHerbert novel ''Nobody True'', which initially appeared to be the work of a SerialKiller. It turns out that the police had deliberately left out certain key details about what said killer did to the bodies of its victims when talking to the media in order to make a copycat killer easy to spot. This managed to even fool [[WhoDunnitToMe the ghost of this particular victim]]. |
| 149 | * ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' has supplied us with several examples: |
| 150 | ** In the story "Silver Blaze" that gives us the page quote, Holmes points out the vital non-clue of a dog failing to react to a mysterious visitor... when a guard dog ''doesn't'' bark at an intruder it generally means it's [[InsideJob someone he doesn't think is an intruder at all]]. |
| 151 | ** The absence of certain valuable deeds is a vital clue in "The Norwood Builder" that [[spoiler:the titular builder isn't dead but in hiding, planning to sell them off and start a new life to swindle his creditors and get revenge on the woman who spurned him decades ago by getting her son executed for his murder]]. |
| 152 | * In ''Literature/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'', when Lecter gives his fake profile for 'Billy Rubin', the alleged real identity of serial killer "Buffalo Bill", and can only remember that he had elephant ivory anthrax, Clarice knows that this information is fake because Lecter would never come away with so little information about someone he'd met directly. With this insight, Clarice correctly deduces that Lecter only knew of the real "Buffalo Bill" through second-hand information, allowing her to prompt him to give her another few vital clues. |
| 153 | * ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': ''Literature/NewJediOrder'': The Yuuzhan Vong exist outside the Force and cannot be sensed or affected through it in any way. However, sufficiently sensitive Jedi can sometimes detect the Vong as a hole in the flow of the Force. |
| 154 | ** This proves especially handy when dealing with Vong infiltrators who have disguised themselves as members of the galactic races. Their biotech is advanced enough to allow them to fool most detection methods, but if you focus on someone through the Force and feel nothing, that's pretty definitive. |
| 155 | * In the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' novel ''Chainfire'', after the eponymous spell has made everyone forget that Kahlan [[RetGone ever existed]], Richard tries to use this to convince everyone else that she has. He points to where he says he, Kahlan, and Cara had been walking, and notes that there were no footprints between his and Cara's, which were several feet apart. He tells his companions that this means someone erased Kahlan's footprints. Nobody believes him since, as mentioned, everyone is sure that she never existed in the first place. |
| 156 | * ''Literature/TerraIgnota'': Inverted. There is some vague, contradictory evidence that the Utopians were behind the theft of the [[SeriousBusiness Seven-Ten List]] in an attempt to discredit the Humanists and their car system in favor of the Utopians' own car system. When the world leaders ask Mycroft what he thinks, he points out that if the Utopians ''were'' involved, [[ThePerfectionist they would have done it so perfectly that no one would have suspected them for a second]]. |
| 157 | * In ''Literature/TheVazulaChronicles'', the protagonists discover Vazula, a long-abandoned tropical island kingdom that was once inhabited by both humans and dragons. The dragon Rekavidur finds the whole island covered in dragon magic, except for one rock in a particularly magical area that seems to have no magic at all. [[spoiler:It contains the stored memories of one of the ancient Vazulan dragons, who hid the memories using concealment magic. The rock is one of the most magical things on the island.]] |
| 158 | * ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': How [[spoiler:Tansy manages to]] find [[spoiler:Kayda under an invisibility charm]] in as said in [[http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/content_page/9/794 The Bear, the Bitch, and Everything (Part 3)]]: |
| 159 | --> Since she was [[spoiler:using her invisibility charm]] to hide [[spoiler:from everyone]], I attuned myself to the emotional flow of the school and went looking for a void." |
| 160 | * In ''Literature/WhereTheCrawdadsSing'', Chase Andrews is killed falling from a water tower. The first thing Sheriff Jackson notices is that his footprints aren't visible in the muck, leading him to think that Chase was murdered, and the killer destroyed the footprints. |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 164 | * In one episode of ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'', one resident of Mayberry reported that his cow was stolen. An expert criminal forensic scientist comes out and wows everyone but Andy with his scientific knowledge. As they analyze the crime scene they identify three different sets of boot prints which the expert says belong to three different suspects. Andy is the only one to notice something important which is missing, the cow's footprints. |
| 165 | * ''Series/BreakingBad'': In season four, Hank starts to suspect that local businessman Gus Fring may actually be a drug kingpin of massive proportions. He has Walt attach a tracker to Gus' car, but Walt warns Gus of the tracker, so he doesn't go anywhere suspicious with it in the week that it's attached. However, Hank remains suspicious because Gus ''only'' used the car to drive between his house and one of the restaurants he owns in the whole week, not even to the thirteen other restaurants he manages. |
| 166 | -->'''Hank:''' What the hell? Look at this. That's work, that's home. That's work, that's home. What, this guy, he goes two places every day, all week? It's unbelievable. |
| 167 | * In an episode of ''Series/CityHomicide'', the body of Matt's mother is found on a construction site, fourteen years after she disappeared while buying balsamic vinegar from a local shop. When the team realize she was found without said balsamic vinegar, they conclude that the shopkeepers lied about her leaving the shop. |
| 168 | * ''Series/{{Columbo}}'': The episode called "The Most Crucial Game" has the culprit caught when [[spoiler:Columbo found that the phone call the killer claimed to have made at 2:29 pm in his stadium box (and recorded by a bug on the line) '''lacked''' the sound of the half-hour chime of the anniversary clock in the box]]. |
| 169 | * On ''Series/{{CSI}}'', when a serial killer strikes Las Vegas, killing women with towels, causing white cotton fibers to get all over the crime scene, the [=CSIs=] spot a [[JackTheRipoff copycat]] due to the lack of said cotton fibers. |
| 170 | * ''Series/Daredevil2015'': In the season 1 finale, Matt, Karen and Foggy determine where Leland Owlsley has hidden a corrupt detective who could expose Wilson Fisk, by pouring through records dug up by Foggy's ex-girlfriend Marci and noting a specific property that Owlsley has delisted without any record of the property being sold. |
| 171 | * ''Series/DeathInParadise''; |
| 172 | ** In the Season Six episode "Erupting In Murder", automated door records, witness testimony, video footage, and the coroner's report all indicate that an out of shape scientist climbed alone up the side of a volcano at night to monitor some anomalous seismic readings, had a heart attack and died. Humphrey looks at the scene for a minute and asks why he didn't have a flashlight... |
| 173 | ** In the Season Seven premiere "[[Recap/DeathInParadiseS7E1MurderFromAbove Murder From Above]]", a woman supposedly killed herself by jumping from her hotel room's balcony. DI Mooney looks at the body and asks why only one of her fingernails is only half-covered with polish. |
| 174 | ** In the 2021 Christmas special, DI Neville Parker has his EurekaMoment when he realises that the murder victim's apparent suicide recording has no sounds of the sea when he allegedly killed himself on the beach. |
| 175 | ** In the Season Ten episode "Steamy Confessions", Parker realizes how the poison was administered to the victim when he remembers that the CrazyPrepared victim kept two of everything in his backpack, but they only found one of a particular item. |
| 176 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 177 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E4TheSontaranStratagem "The Sontaran Stratagem"]]: UNIT and the Doctor are investigating ATMOS, a factory they believe is a front for alien activity. While Martha examines the workers and the Doctor sonics an ATMOS device, Donna finds something suspicious in their filings. |
| 178 | --->'''Donna Noble:''' Oi, you lot. All your storm troopers and your sonics. You’re rubbish! Should’ve come with me.\ |
| 179 | '''The Doctor:''' Why, where have you been?\ |
| 180 | '''Donna Noble:''' Personnel. That’s where the weird stuff’s happening, in the paperwork. Because I spent years working as a temp. I can find my way round an office blindfolded, and the first thing I noticed ''[holds up an empty binder]'' is an empty file.\ |
| 181 | '''The Doctor:''' Why, what’s inside it? Or...what’s ''not'' inside it?\ |
| 182 | '''Donna Noble:''' Sick days. There aren’t any. Hundreds of people working here and no one’s sick! Not one hangover, man flu, sneaky little shopping trip, ''nothing''. Not ever. They don’t get ill.\ |
| 183 | '''Colonel Mace:''' ''[grabs the empty binder]'' That can’t be right.\ |
| 184 | '''Donna Noble:''' You’ve been checking out the building. Should’ve been checking out the workforce. |
| 185 | *** As Martha manages to determine while doing medical checkups on the ATMOS factory workers, this is because all of them have been hypnotized by the Sontarans (as evidenced by one who says in a never-changing pitch that he works 24 hours a day, and has an abnormally high pulse rate). |
| 186 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E12NightmareInSilver "Nightmare in Silver"]]: Mr. Clever points out that the Doctor erasing all evidence of himself from the universe created this as a side effect: there is now a huge "hole" where he was that is obvious to anyone that's looking. |
| 187 | ** In ''Day of the Doctor'', when some [=UNIT=] members and their zygon duplicates are mind-wiped into forgetting which one was which, one pair manages to figure it out on their own by realizing while that the duplication was good enough that both have the human's asthma, the duplicate doesn't have an inhaler. [[spoiler:They decide to keep quiet to not sabotage the Doctor's plans.]] |
| 188 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]]: When [[spoiler:Clara gets erased from the Doctor's memories]], he is able to reconstruct most of what happened by the shape of the absence left behind. |
| 189 | * Played for laughs in ''Series/{{Friends}}''. Joey gives Chandler his show reel in order to be considered for an advert being produced by Chandler's company. When Chandler claims to have watched it, Joey says that he obviously hasn't, because part of the audition tape was a {{Japandering}} advert Joey did for "Ichiban Lipstick for Men", which Chandler would have definitely made fun of. |
| 190 | * ''Series/{{Harrow}}'': In "Ab Initio" ("From the Beginning"), Harrow is struggling to prove that Simon's death was murder and not an accident; especially as the data from Simon's Fitbit shows the exact time his heart stopped. Only after a hallucinatory encounter with Simon's ghost does Harrow realise that what the Fitbit isn't showing is also significant. There was no spike in Simon's heart rate before he died, which you would expect if he had fallen off the ferry accidentally, and Harrow realises that Simon had been sedated before he entered the water. |
| 191 | * ''Series/InspectorZenigata'': |
| 192 | ** In the first episode, when Zenigata tries to replicate the art thief's timeline, he and the officers with him are completely incapable of getting the painting out of the building in the time that the thief did, leaving the officers with no evidence of his escape plan. The lack of an escape plan ends up telling Zenigata what the thief's actual escape plan was - [[spoiler:he left the painting behind so that he could escape and come back for it once the heat had died down]]. |
| 193 | ** When Zenigata and Sakuraba follow a lead on the Docro Magnons 5 and it comes up empty, Sakuraba originally says the investigation was wasted. Zenigata corrects her that "''no'' investigation is wasted" because they ''did'' learn something: the gang doesn't operate in that area, so they can rule it out of future searches. |
| 194 | * ''Series/JakeAndTheFatman'': In "I'd Do Anything", a psychiatrist who manipulated one of her patients into murdering her husband then shoots the patient and [[WoundedGazelleGambit bruises and scratches herself]] so she can claim the patient attempted to rape her and that she killed him in self-defence. Jake is able to prove she is lying when the coroner doesn't find any of the psychiatrist's skin under the patient's fingernails. |
| 195 | * ''Series/JAKQDengekitai'': One episode involved a LockedRoomMystery wherein a budding fashion designer seemingly killed himself. But said designer's girlfriend notes that a mannequin was missing from the apartment where he died, and J.A.K.Q. realizes that their enemy CRIME used this mannequin to kill the victim by remote controlling the individual parts[[note]]this doesn't count as InsaneTrollLogic since CRIME has been shown to be capable of highly advanced technology of this caliber before and since[[/note]]. |
| 196 | * ''Series/LawAndOrder'' had a case where they realized the killer was following the instructions in a book about how to kill someone and get away with it ("for educational and entertainment purposes only," of course). When they caught the killer and confronted him with all the things he did to (successfully) avoid leaving any clues as to his identity, he responded, "So I'm guilty because you don't have any evidence?" |
| 197 | * ''Series/{{Monk}}'' |
| 198 | ** The titular detective's very first case as a detective was an example of this, as detailed by his old partner in "[[Recap/MonkS1E4MrMonkGoesToTheCarnival Mr. Monk Goes to the Carnival]]"; |
| 199 | --->'''Stottlemeyer''': We're the primaries on a body at a hotel in the Castro. A hooker had swallowed a bunch of promazine - you know, the big sleeping pills?\ |
| 200 | '''Disher''': Horse tranquilizers, sir.\ |
| 201 | '''Stottlemeyer''': I said suicide. Every cop on the scene said suicide. ''Medical examiner'' said suicide. Monk walks into the room, says murder. "Where's the water?" The room had no water! Simple. Eight people in the room, but nobody saw that. |
| 202 | ** In "[[Recap/MonkS1E8MrMonkAndTheMarathonMan Mr. Monk and the Marathon Man]]", after a woman has fallen from her apartment's balcony, Monk walks up to her body and immediately calls it murder; she was interrupted in the midst of painting her toenails, as only seven and a half are finished. The medical examiner later confirms that she was strangled before her body fell. |
| 203 | ** "[[Recap/MonkS4E10MrMonkGoesToAFashionShow Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show]]": Monk proves that a fashion model's apparent suicide by sleeping pills was staged because the victim was wearing lipstick and there are no lipstick traces on the glass she supposedly drank from, meaning that the killer wiped the glass down then put it back in her hand. |
| 204 | ** In "[[Recap/MonkS5E8MrMonkGoesToARockConcert Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert]]", the clue that suggests to Monk and Natalie that a roadie did ''not'' die of an overdose in a port-a-potty is a lack of mud on his boots that would have been present if he'd walked through the muddy patch around the bathrooms. |
| 205 | ** In two episodes, "[[Recap/MonkS4E14MrMonkAndTheAstronaut Mr. Monk and the Astronaut]]" and "[[Recap/MonkS8E9HappyBirthdayMrMonk Happy Birthday, Mr. Monk]]", Stottlemeyer concludes that someone else has been to a victim's place of residence from the fact that a computer is missing. |
| 206 | ** In the SerialKiller case documented in the ShowWithinAShow in "[[Recap/MonkS7E7MrMonksHundredthCase Mr. Monk's 100th Case]]", this is shown when Monk is at one crime scene, and later turns out to be a clue that allows them to tie the victim to a serial killer: |
| 207 | --->'''Adrian Monk:''' Her lipstick?\ |
| 208 | '''Captain Leland Stottlemeyer:''' Yeah, what about it?\ |
| 209 | '''Adrian Monk:''' It's on the cup. There's some on her lips. But it's not here; it's not in her purse. What happened to the lipstick?\ |
| 210 | '''Natalie Teeger:''' He took her lipstick? |
| 211 | ** Two examples in the TieInNovel ''Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop'' |
| 212 | *** A senile old man supposedly walked across his wet lawn, stood on a chair, scaled a fence, and jumped into his pool to kill himself. Monk proves that it was murder because the man's socks would have been stained crossing the grass, and the socks were bleached white when the body was found. Also, the chair would have sunk into the ground under the weight of the victim, but it was simply standing on top of the grass. |
| 213 | *** Monk identifies a murdered judge's killer as his own wife. The judge was killed while out walking his dog, but the dog didn't bark at the shooter, indicating it was someone the dog knew. |
| 214 | * ''Series/{{Motive}}'': In "Creeping Tom", when the police arrive at the scene of the crime, they find the BodyOfTheWeek is guarded by an angry guard dog that barks at anyone who tries to approach the body. Later, Angie realises that while the dog barked at all the police, it did not bark when the intruder was in the house, meaning it was someone the dog knew and trusted. |
| 215 | * ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' has used this a couple of times: |
| 216 | ** In one episode, the killer is a retired forensic expert, meaning the team is left with no evidence whatsoever on the crime scene and are completely in the dark as to finding anything that could lead to a suspect, until Gibbs realize that only a professional would have been able to make the crime scene so clean, which severely narrows down the list of suspects. Then, [[YouWereTryingTooHard the expert's attempt at deflecting suspicion away from him leads Gibbs to definitely pin him down as the culprit because]] [[RevealingCoverup of the sudden evidence that popped up and this expert claimed to have found]]. |
| 217 | ** In "Dog Tags", the team proves that a Navy K-9 handler has replaced her drug-sniffing dog with an attack-trained dog by the fact that the dog does not alert to the small bag of cocaine that [=McGee=] has in his coat pocket. |
| 218 | ** "Bury Your Dead" has a charred corpse who the team believe is [[spoiler:Tony [=DiNozzo=]]], up until Ducky rattles off the victim's details for the autopsy report and realises that the victim is someone else since his lungs have minimal scarring, whereas [[spoiler:[=DiNozzo's=] lungs would've had severe scarring after his nasty Y. Pestis incident, giving them an early clue he's still alive.]] |
| 219 | ** Played for laughs in "Capitol Offense" during the sub-plot where Abby [[SeriousBusiness launches a murder-level investigation into who stole her cupcake]]. She eventually nails the culprit since they made sure not to leave fingerprints on her refrigerator, so Abby found their print on a fresh box of gloves which only had hers and the culprit's fingerprints. |
| 220 | * In ''Series/ThePeopleVOJSimpson'', Robert Kardashian's belief in his friend O.J.'s innocence is eventually broken not by the evidence for his guilt, but the fact that even with all the publicity of the trial, no plausible alternate suspect or theory is ever offered. |
| 221 | * In the ''Series/PokerFace'' episode "The Stall", Charlie sniffs the victim's beer bottle trying to see if it was dosed with anything, but smells nothing (and realizes that she wouldn't be able to recognize the smell of poison anyway). But then she realizes that she smelled ''nothing'', when she should at least be able to smell beer, meaning that the bottle was washed out. She further realizes that during the portion of the killer's radio show they were using as an alibi, there were no background sounds of a train that passes through every quarter hour, and thus should have been audible on the broadcast. |
| 222 | * ''Series/{{Psych}}'': GentlemanThief Pierre Despereaux was never caught, and couldn't have been convicted even if he had been, because he never left any evidence behind. It turns out the reason he was able to do this was because he never actually stole anything; he just made deals with museum owners so they could collect the insurance money. |
| 223 | * ''Series/{{Raines}}'' uses this in the episode "Reconstructing Alice", with a dog that didn't bark, as in the Sherlock Holmes story. Raines even quotes Sherlock Holmes when realizing this. |
| 224 | * ''Series/RemingtonSteele'': In one episode, a group of mystery buffs enter a game where they dress up as their favorite fictional detectives and run around Los Angeles trying to solve a make-believe mystery. After a while, it turns out the mystery is real, the bodies are piling up, and the game headquarters where the players call in to "report their progress" is nothing but an empty office with an answering machine. After listening to all the leads and clues that were recorded on the answering machine by the players, Laura realizes that one of the players never ''left'' a message, and deduces that they must be the one ''collecting'' the messages. |
| 225 | * ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': In the episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E11TheNagus}} The Nagus]]", one of the things that tips Odo off that Zek is not dead is the absence of his bodyguard Mairhar'du (from a species known for their absolute devotion to their masters) at his funeral. |
| 226 | * ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': The series premiere opens with a scene of Picard playing poker with Data and declaring that he's found the "tell" that gives away when Data is bluffing. Sometimes, Data dilates his left eye a bit... but that's a fake tell intended to fool others: his ''real'' tell is keeping an absolutely steady expression. |
| 227 | * ''Series/{{Vera}}'': In "Tuesday's Child", Vera realizes that a story that the VictimOfTheWeek had left of his own accord is false when she searches the victim's hold-all and discovers that he hadn't packed his insulin. As she puts it, why would he leave behind the one thing he depended on for survival? |
| 228 | * ''Series/WhodunnitUK'': In [[spoiler:"Final Trumpet"]], the clinching piece of evidence for the sergeant investigating is the lack of muddy footprints on the pristine white carpet inside the caravan. Only one suspect could have entered without using the door, and thus avoid tracking mud in from outside. |
| 229 | [[/folder]] |
| 230 | |
| 231 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 232 | * ''TabletopGame/InNomine'': Most of Lucifer's known limits are only known because they're things he would've done if he could. For example, inflicting dissonance on Angels at will (i.e. forcing them to Fall) and turning humans into demons would've immediately tipped the War in his favor and he wouldn't stand to gain much by hiding it, but he's never done either (Lilith was an anomaly, and the book notes that she's still a human even with her Word) so these are things he probably cannot do. |
| 233 | [[/folder]] |
| 234 | |
| 235 | [[folder:Theater]] |
| 236 | * ''Theatre/BlackCoffee'': The lack of dust on the box of poisons, when everything else on the bookshelf was covered in dust, leads Literature/HerculePoirot to conclude that someone had accessed the poison well in advance. Thus the murder must have been pre-planned and not spur of the moment like everyone assumed. |
| 237 | [[/folder]] |
| 238 | |
| 239 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 240 | * ''VideoGame/Persona4'': One of the most important pieces of evidence is that no one suspicious was seen at or near various crime scenes, such as the murders, the various kidnappings, and threatening letters being dropped off at the protagonist's house -- and since Inaba is such a small town, a stranger would be immediately noticed. Therefore, the killer has to be a ''not'' suspicious visitor; i.e., someone who would have a valid reason to hang around all of these places, and witnesses would recognize as such and ignore. [[spoiler:The one behind the ''kidnappings'' was a delivery man who of course wasn't questioned driving up to people's houses, but he isn't the killer. With him out of the running, the list is narrowed down to the one person who had unquestioned access to the police station and often visited the Dojima household- [[BumblingSidekick Adachi]], of all people.]] |
| 241 | * ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'': Invoked as part of the hunt for the "Identity Thief"; the killer's third discovered victim has had all trace evidence left by the killer destroyed with bleach, but Batman is able to track the traces of bleach used to find a vital witness. |
| 242 | * This is actually a big part of game sense in MultiplayerOnlineBattleArena titles (''VideoGame/Dota2'', ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'', etc.). These games typically come with a mini-map that displays the entire level, with icons showing the location of every enemy you can see, but some of the map -- and possibly, some of the characters -- obscured by FogOfWar. If those enemies aren't visible on the mini-map, what does that mean? Who knows... but the wise player expects trouble. (This is then {{exaggerated|Trope}} by various characters that have {{Invisibility Cloak}}s and can disappear from the minimap no matter ''what'' they're doing.) |
| 243 | * ''VideoGame/SpiderAndWeb'': [[spoiler:When your equipment is brought to the interrogation room, examining it will list what's there. Some items are missing, which is a clue as to how to proceed.]] |
| 244 | * ''VideoGame/StarControlIITheUrQuanMasters'': Spoofed by the Spathi and their insistence that some kind of ULTIMATE EVIL exists. Their "proof" that the ULTIMATE EVIL exists is that they've never detected any hint of its existence, [[InsaneTrollLogic which must mean it's hiding just beyond the range of their best sensors, which is proof that it is evil]]. |
| 245 | [[/folder]] |
| 246 | |
| 247 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 248 | * ''Franchise/AceAttorney'': |
| 249 | ** ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'': |
| 250 | *** Ih the game's fourth case (and last in the original Game Boy Advance release), [[spoiler:Lotta Hart's camera is set to take pictures if there's a loud enough noise, and went off when it heard a gunshot after midnight on Christmas Eve. This is how she caught Miles Edgeworth and (seemingly) the victim in the middle of Gourd Lake. Before that, the camera took another photo ''before'' midnight which just showed an empty lake, which even Lotta believes to be pointless. However, it becomes crucial evidence when Larry Butz reveals that he heard a gunshot while listening to the radio, which said "it's almost Christmas" right beforehand. This testimony lines up perfectly with the timestamp on the empty photo, allowing Phoenix to deduce that the victim was shot before midnight instead of after as everyone had previously thought]]. |
| 251 | *** In "Rise from the Ashes", the extra case from the [[UpdatedRerelease Nintendo DS remake]], [[spoiler:Damon Gant has just "proven" Ema Skye pushed Neil Marshall onto a spear using a fingerprint-laden piece of cloth he personally cut from Marshall's vest. However, Phoenix notes that while Marshall was impaled and was coughing up blood on himself for a while before death, the piece of cloth has NO blood on it, meaning Gant had to have cut the cloth after Ema pushed Marshall but BEFORE the latter was impaled. Gant becomes [[OhCrap a bit unnerved]] at this]]. |
| 252 | ** ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations'': In the second case, the emergency buzzer at the crime scene, which was pressed at the time of the murder, had no traces of prints on it. This is used by Phoenix to prove the victim didn't press it, but the real killer did, resulting in the trope name almost being mentioned. Later on, the absence of prints is used by Luke Atmey to show that it was Ron who pressed the buzzer, seeing as how Ron was in his Mask☆[=DeMasque=] outfit, which meant he was wearing gloves. [[spoiler:This statement by Luke would come back to royally bite him in the butt, as there's no way Luke should have known Ron was wearing the outfit; that bit of information had only been revealed in the earlier part of that day's trial (and not mentioned since), and Luke had been in a completely different courtroom at the time.]] |
| 253 | ** ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'': |
| 254 | *** In the flashback trial, Klavier says that, because there weren't any fingerprints found on the gun, the defendant had to be the killer, because he's known for wearing gloves. Anyone with common sense, however, would know that this is faulty logic, because it could be anyone with gloves (and, in fact, Valant also wore them in the night of the crime), not to mention the fact that the crime took place ''in a hospital'', where gloves are commonplace. |
| 255 | *** The victim's insulin syringe in the flashback case is completely empty, adding weight to Phoenix's claim that the killer cleaned it and put something else in it. |
| 256 | ** ''VisualNovel/AceAttorneyInvestigationsMilesEdgeworth'': |
| 257 | *** In the first case, the killer claimed to have lost his keys and asked a security guard to open the door to "his" office for him. The absence of the security guard's prints on his door suggests that [[spoiler:he tricked her into opening a different door that she thought was his]]. |
| 258 | *** In case 5, the absence of blood on the hilt of a knife that was found inside a victim suggests that [[spoiler:the hilt was switched, as there were several knives with hilts and blades that fit each other]]. |
| 259 | ** ''[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies Dual Destinies]]'': |
| 260 | *** Comes up occasionally while using the Mood Matrix, as it can easily notice that you're not feeling a certain emotion you ''claim'' to be feeling. The best example would be when [[spoiler:Athena and Blackquill team up to trick Fulbright into an "emotional" confession that was anything but]]. |
| 261 | *** ''Turnabout Academy'' has a subtle example in the Japanese version (but not the American one, due to a glitch). When the teacher Aristotle Means first appears, his hands are empty, but his right hand is positioned as if he's holding a staff. In all appearances afterward, he ''is'' holding a staff with a globe on top. [[spoiler:Because when he first met the main characters, said staff was still stuck in Constance Courte's body, and he was only able to retrieve it later.]] |
| 262 | ** ''[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneySpiritOfJustice Spirit of Justice]]'': |
| 263 | *** Played with in "The Magical Turnabout". Trucy's fingerprints were found on an X-shaped tape marking understage with the tape's purpose being guiding the victim to the right place to stand. [[spoiler:He ended up in the wrong coffin because the tape had been moved, so the prosecution claims she touched it during the murder to have the victim on the stage, not backstage... but she was wearing gloves at the time, meaning she left the prints sometime before the murder. In a nutshell -- something that shouldn't be there, was, which proves nothing in this case.]] |
| 264 | *** Double subverted in "Turnabout Time Traveler". At one point, you have to prove that [[spoiler:Sorin didn't enter the hold in the night of the crime, and you do that by presenting the hold keycard entry. Because his name is not in the list, he didn't go in. Then Sorin says that he came in using Nichody's keycard. And ''then'', Nichody himself claims that Sorin didn't go to the hold after all, which is the truth]]. |
| 265 | ** ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney'': |
| 266 | *** [[spoiler:Jezaille Brett]] ''literally'' [[spoiler:disposes of the evidence already shown in court in the ''same spot'' by feigning clumsiness on her part.]] Which in turn provides another instance of this trope that foreshadows a plot twist: [[spoiler: Jigoku, the trial's judge, was in on the assassination scheme that Brett was carrying out in Japan; he'd been a ReasonableAuthorityFigure up to then, so why did he let Jezaille's antics pass without comment?]] |
| 267 | *** In case 2 of the first game, the blank pages in the report book suggest Strogenov was absent from his post, because when he was present he always wrote "Nothing to report" every thirty minutes. |
| 268 | *** In case 4 of the second game, Ryunosuke [[spoiler:figures out that Gregson's time of death wasn't what was previously thought to be, due to his time of death being omitted from the autopsy report]]. |
| 269 | *** [[spoiler:Genshin Asogi's ring]] was found in [[spoiler:Klint van Zieks]]'s stomach during his autopsy, suggesting that he swallowed it moments before dying. However, [[spoiler:the ring]] has spiky claws that would definitely have torn his digestive tract if he had swallowed it... yet no damage was done. [[spoiler:That's because the ring is fake evidence "discovered" by the coroner when he took it out of his own pocket while no one was watching.]] |
| 270 | * ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'': |
| 271 | ** In the first trial of ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', this is how Makoto convinces everyone he's not the one who murdered [[spoiler:Sayaka]]. The murder took place in his room, and the corpse is in his bathroom, which causes everyone to suspect him. However, Kyoko noticed that his floor was cleaned, meaning there's no hair on the floor that can be used as evidence to identify the real killer. Makoto points out that even if he was the killer, there would be no point in cleaning his room of hair, because it's ''his'' room, so finding strands of his hair on the floor would be expected. The lack of hair proves someone who didn't live there killed [[spoiler:Sayaka]] and cleaned the floor to get rid of evidence that might implicate them. While this alone isn't enough to expose the real killer, it does get the rest of the cast to stop pointing fingers at Makoto. |
| 272 | ** This is how the first murderer is exposed in ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair''. After [[spoiler:the blackout, which was when Byakuya]] was murdered, Mikan fell over and landed in a... [[ReluctantFanserviceGirl compromising]] position. [[spoiler:Teruteru]], [[LovableSexManiac of all people]], failed to comment on this... [[spoiler:which proved he wasn't in the dining hall as he had pretended but under it, from where he stabbed Byakuya]]. |
| 273 | ** You can figure out case 1 of v3 early if you pay attention to [[spoiler:Kaede's narration and lines]] and pay attention to what they specifically ''don't'' say. [[spoiler:Kaede mentions picking up a shot-put ball and then gets distracted worrying about a potential mastermind and leaves... never mentioning that she ''put the shot-put ball back''. Turns out she didn't; she used it for a death trap.]] They also state in trial that they're trying to find the ''mastermind'', not the ''blackened'', because [[spoiler: Kaede thinks she's the blackened but knows she isn't the mastermind- though we later find out that the mastermind ''was'' the blackened.]] |
| 274 | ** This crops up multiple times across the franchise in regard to the Monokuma Files. All info within the Monokuma Files is truthful, but Monokuma likes complicating trials for dramatic effect, so he occasionally leaves out details in order to help the Blackened without actually lying. The students quickly realize that if Monokuma doesn't include something he usually does, such as the time or cause of death, they should probably take notice because he's playing along with a plan to mislead them. Specific cases include: |
| 275 | *** In the third case of ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'', the Monokuma Files don't state the time of death for ''either'' victim, because the Blackened's plot relied on misleading the students about when both victims died; they wanted people to think Hifumi was killed before Kiyotaka when it was in fact the other way around, [[spoiler:and that Hifumi was dead when they found him in the infirmary, when in fact he was just playing dead and the body discovery announcement was for Kiyotaka]], to create the narrative of a student snapping and going on a rampage. Luckily, Kiyotaka's punctuality provided evidence for his true time of death as his watch was broken in the struggle when he was killed, thus giving the approximate time of his death. |
| 276 | *** The final case of THH The time of death isn't mentioned, [[spoiler: because the murder is fake and the body has actually been dead for a while]], and while the various injuries to the body are described, none are actually listed as the cause of death, [[spoiler: because if the students had realized that Mukuro Ikusaba had died in the same way they'd seen Junko die, they might have realized that a) Mukuro was killed right at the start, and b) Mukuro was posing as Junko at the time]]. |
| 277 | *** The fifth case of ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'': The cause of death is absent, despite a number of visible injuries [[spoiler: because the death was unrelated to any of them; the victim was actually poisoned and the other wounds are a RedHerring]]. Chiaki actually calls Monokuma out on this, stating that the cause of death couldn't have been the obvious one, because he wouldn't have bothered to leave it out if that was the case. |
| 278 | *** The second case of ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'': The students almost immediately note that the time of death isn't included, [[spoiler: which tips them off that the victim died long before it looks like he did.]] |
| 279 | ** In a non-murder example, this is how Shuichi of V3 realizes there's a secret passage in the library; all the bookshelves had books stacked atop them except for one, which turned out to be hiding the passage. |
| 280 | * This becomes a contradiction in the fan case ''VisualNovel/TheEmptyTurnabout'' during Marston's testimony when he claims that [[spoiler:he and Ian Arts struggled over Marston's handgun, because the gun only has Marston's fingerprints]]. |
| 281 | * In ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', Rena noticed that the bottle of soy sauce in Rika and Satoko's house was missing, and deduced the possibility that they had visited the Sonozaki estate that night with the empty bottle and been kidnapped. |
| 282 | * In ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'', [[spoiler:the Ninth Man's missing bracelet. It leads Junpei to believe that it was used in Snake's murder, and that killer [[LoopholeAbuse could open the door with Snake alone, as the bracelet would replace the third person]].]] |
| 283 | * ''VisualNovel/QueenOfThieves'': In Jett's first season, this is how he and the heroine find the safe behind a ConcealingCanvas in Hugo's house. The heroine had noticed that the wall painting was the only thing not covered in dust -- because it was regularly moved. |
| 284 | * In ''VisualNovel/VirtuesLastReward'', Sigma and Phi use a variation of this involving Dio's behaviour, or lack thereof, to show that the likelihood that he [[spoiler:killed Luna]] is pretty low. With it being in Dio's nature to make a point to draw blame away from himself, the fact that he didn't ask [[spoiler:where Luna would be unusual if he killed her. On the other hand, when they were going to go through the chromatic doors, only for Sigma and Phi to refuse, Dio got agitated, saying they were gonna get them all killed. In that situation, if he didn't know anything about Luna's killing, the natural thing for him to have said was Luna isn't present and so they can't go through even if they wanted to [since Luna was in Sigma and Phi's trio for that round].]] These two lack of behaviours lead Sigma and Phi to conclude that Dio [[spoiler:was a witness but didn't do the killing.]] |
| 285 | [[/folder]] |
| 286 | |
| 287 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 288 | * ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': People with silver eyes are powerful warriors with supernatural abilities, but this is a very rare trait. Maria Calavera's father found this suspicious; the trait is inheritable and Silver-Eyed Warriors have an insane natural advantage over the Creatures of Grimm, so they should be quite common due to natural selection, but instead he found barely any information about them. He concluded that the discrepancy was because [[BigBad someone]] was hunting down Silver-Eyed Warriors and killing them, and because of this he made his silver-eyed daughter Maria hide her identity and eyes at all times while she worked as a Huntress. His [[ProperlyParanoid paranoia was proven proper]] when a squad of thugs tracked down Maria anyway for her silver eyes. She managed to kill them but was blinded in the process. |
| 289 | [[/folder]] |
| 290 | |
| 291 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 292 | * ''Webcomic/{{Brainchild}}'': [[https://brainchild.suzannegeary.com/comic/chapter-4-page-40/ Sometimes, the most suspicious thing is something that's too normal. Normal people don't make everything they do consciously and perfectly average to some ludicrously fine detail - but a paranoid conspiracy would.]] |
| 293 | * In ''Webcomic/GrrlPower'', this is [[http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/428 lampshaded]] with Sydney's orbs occasionally, as they cannot be scanned by most if any means. Dabbler's scanning spells can't even detect the light they give off. At one point an [[http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2886 alien killer robot]] apparently makes her a priority target because it just sees a black void where an orb would be. |
| 294 | * ''Webcomic/ToPreventWorldPeace'': How Rhea and Chronos know about the other's presence since their powers can't be used to see anything related to the past/future of the other. |
| 295 | ** [[http://worldpeace.emilymarthasorensen.com/worldpeace037.html Page 37]]: Rhea finds out Chronos's involvement in Kendra's defection, by her inability to see Kendra's defection. |
| 296 | ** [[http://worldpeace.emilymarthasorensen.com/worldpeace110.html Page 110]]: Chronos discovers Rhea is at her front door, by her inability to see the future of that location. |
| 297 | * It's mentioned in ''Webcomic/{{Vexxarr}}'' that being completely ''hidden'' is all but useless, because if people can't find you, they're going to keep looking. Rather, the solution to his endless conundrum of [[LovableCoward how to hide away from the universe]] is to either make yourself not worth looking for, or to make it so that people don't ''want'' to find you. |
| 298 | [[/folder]] |
| 299 | |
| 300 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 301 | * ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'': This is a major factor in ''The Clone Saga'' storyline. After a duplicate of Linkara shows up at his house with no memories, one of the most confusing things Doctor Linksano notes about it is how it seems to be a ''perfect'' clone of Linkara. He explains that normally there are suppose to be telltale genetic signs of something being a clone due to being artificially aged up, and similar telltale signs if they are a being from another universe, yet the clone has none of them. When Linksano later reveals that he cloned Linkara during his days as a villain several years ago, he states that he wasn't lying about the telltale genetic signs of cloning, and the clone he made of Linkara ''had'' those signs, and they can't just be removed either, suggesting the clone he examined is not the same clone he created. This is cleared up once it is revealed [[spoiler:the "clone" isn't a clone at all, but is actually Mechakara who was revived by the energy of the Plot Hole after the events of ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWallTheMovie'', except that [[CameBackWrong it accidentally turned him human]]]]. |
| 302 | [[/folder]] |
| 303 | |
| 304 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 305 | * ''WesternAnimation/CarmenSandiego'': Chase maps out all the information A.C.M.E. and Interpol have on V.I.L.E. and realizes that only one location has no import or export records, which for a supposed import/export company, is pretty damning. [[spoiler:He arrives just after the faculty has decided to torch the place and move on, so he winds up convinced he didn't find anything at all.]] |
| 306 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheDeputyDawgShow'': "Diamonds In The Rough" has Deputy Dawg tasked with bringing in a diamond smuggler and his contraband. A golfer seems to be way off course as his ball ricochets in DD's office ("I slice badly"). Thanks to Vincent Van Gopher, Deputy Dawg reasons that the golfer is the smuggler and the diamonds are in the ball. When the golfer is subdued and brought in, the sheriff rails at DD because he said they had to have evidence. Deputy Dawg does: he swallowed the ball from an errant shot and it showed in an x-ray at the doctor's office. |
| 307 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "[[https://dcau.fandom.com/wiki/Hereafter Hereafter]]", Superman is apparently killed by Toyman's latest machine, but Bruce refuses to believe it, and presents his theory to Alfred by saying the lack of evidence is what tipped him off--Toyman's weapon left no trace evidence. It left no debris, so it didn't blow him up. It left no scorch marks, so it didn't incinerate him. It didn't even leave ''radiation'', hence it didn't disintegrate him. Bats decides that since Toyman is merely an obnoxious MadScientist, not a god, the [[NoConservationOfEnergy Law of Conservation]] is still in effect, and therefore Superman couldn't have just been destroyed. His conclusion; it teleported him somewhere. [[spoiler:He's right - Supes was shunted forward in time]], but the show doesn't make it clear whether or not Batman is [[NotSoStoic simply in denial]]. |
| 308 | * In ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', Blue Zircon notices something wrong with the story of Pink Diamond's assassination - the assassin (Rose Quartz) supposedly approached her at her palanquin, took her by surprise, and killed her. So why wasn't Pink's retinue doing anything to stop her? Rose Quartz was immediately recognizable; she was the only active one of her kind. And ''nobody'' noticed she was there? Pink's PraetorianGuard didn't try to fight Rose? Her [[{{Seers}} Sapphires]] didn't see it coming? Her Pearl (who would have been expected to always be by her side) never warned her of the danger? Blue Zircon then concludes that what ''actually'' happened was a conspiracy by the only Gems with the authority to order all others away, and who Pink Diamond would trust if they asked her to step out of the palanquin... the Diamonds themselves. This gets her poofed. [[spoiler: But she was right. A Diamond was involved - ''Pink'' Diamond, conspiring with her Pearl to fake her own death. Rose was never spotted because "Rose" was actually her Pearl shapeshifted, the Sapphires saw nothing because they weren't looking for their leader plotting against herself, and her Pearl said nothing because she was in on it.]] |
| 309 | * One ''ComicStrip/USAcres'' cartoon (from ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'') has Roy steal the cow Orson was supposed to milk, but was too busy reading mystery novels. Orson and Bo launch an investigation. Their only lead is three sets of footprints. Closer to the end, Orson points out the three sets of footprints which to him indicate three suspects. Bo points out that if Orson's theory is correct, someone's footprints are missing: the cow's. |
| 310 | [[/folder]] |
| 311 | |
| 312 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 313 | * The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_conspiracy Bielefeld conspiracy]] {{meme}} parodies conspiracy theories which run on this. Basically, it posits three questions to the person: Do they know anyone from Bielefeld, have they ever been to Bielefeld, and do they know anyone who has been to Bielefeld. Since most people are expected to answer no[[note]]Bielefeld is a mid-size town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with no particular thing to attract attention to it and no particular dialect that's really distinguishable from Standard German[[/note]] it is concluded that Bielefeld doesn't exist. People who answer "Yes" to the questions [[WithUsOrAgainstUs are said to be working for the conspiracy]], or to have been deceived by it. |
| 314 | * A standard intelligence technique when contacting an agent suspected to be compromised is making an innocuous statement or question and expecting a specific response, also innocuous. If the agent is under duress or has been replaced, the absence of the right response is an indication something may be wrong. |
| 315 | * The redaction of confidential words and phrases from documents can potentially backfire, if the non-obscured context of the redaction makes it clear what ''sort'' of information it must contain. [[RevealingCoverup It may even foster speculation that's more damning than whatever the actual redacted statement might have been]]. |
| 316 | * Political scandals often work this way: Some document or thing is questioned. If the person does not address its contents, speculation runs rampant, because after all, if it were innocuous, the easiest thing would be to release it to the press and get it over with. May lead to an underwhelmed reaction when the real thing finally gets out and does not live up to the speculation. |
| 317 | * ForensicAccounting can sometimes function like this. On one occasion in the UK the police got a crucial break in a money-laundering case when it was noticed that the owner of a fast food restaurant wasn't buying enough ''paper napkins'' to meet their supposed demand. |
| 318 | * To evade police after killing President Kennedy and Officer Tippit, [[GunmanWithThreeNames Lee Harvey Oswald]] feigned window shopping - while genuine shoppers paused to observe a passing patrol car with a screaming siren. This prompted the suspicion of the store manager and ultimately led to arrest of Oswald at the neighbouring Texas Theatre. |
| 319 | ** Similar has been said about the Boston Marathon bomber, after the fact, that in one video clip when everyone in the crowd is responding to the sudden surprise explosion, he is instead seen looking the other way. |
| 320 | * In the mid-2000s, the Oakland Raiders were concerned that quarterback [=JaMarcus=] Russell wasn't studying game film and plays as he was instructed to. One day, the coaches sent him home with some tapes and told him to report back to them the next day. When the coaches asked Russell what he studied on the tapes, he told them he studied the blitz packages. The coaches then revealed the tapes they gave him were blank. |
| 321 | * During the [[UsefulNotes/PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower Manhattan Project]], Soviet nuclear scientists noticed the lack of American papers on nuclear fission in academic journals, which indicated to them that the Americans were censoring them to secretly develop a nuclear bomb, and the USSR started their own nuclear project soon after.[[note]]Nuclear fission bombs had existed in the realm of science fiction before then, but America was the first to actually try making one.[[/note]] |
| 322 | ** Though this was RightForTheWrongReasons, as the dearth of nuclear fission papers was the result of American scientists agreeing to not publish any papers that might give UsefulNotes/NaziGermany the bomb. |
| 323 | [[/folder]] |
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