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8->'''Anastasia Spencer:''' ...Busting into the welfare office, stealing the car, and framing me.\
9'''Percy Spencer:''' Welfare office? Car? Shitting on a desk? Why, I don't know what you're talking about!\
10'''Anastasia:''' Then how'd you know about taking a dump on the desk?
11-->-- ''WesternAnimation/KevinSpencer'', "A Day in School"
12
13The usual response to a perp SayingTooMuch. The perp, while maintaining their innocence, reveals information they could not have possibly known if they were innocent, usually the specific details of a murder. It can take the form of a SuspiciouslySpecificDenial. Also happens for full dramatic effect, when the interrogator does not immediately point out this discrepancy, but continues the interview, often saving the kicker to the very end, as a sort of AndAnotherThing epilogue. Even more dramatically, the interrogator may insist it ''wasn't'' poison and then probe the perp's reaction to this lie.
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15This trope must be handled carefully. When sloppily done, it's likely to turn what should be a dramatic moment into a case of FridgeLogic, if the information is something an innocent person could have found out anyway, or was a reasonable assumption from what they'd been told.
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17One of TheOldestTricksInTheBook, and [[TruthInTelevision something the police do, in fact, do in real questioning]]. Real police detectives usually hold back specific details of a crime and/or crime scene when making public statements. This has the dual benefits of possibly identifying a suspect and helping separate valid witnesses from useless leads. Knowing these details may not automatically make someone the guilty party, but it's a big clue that they were at least present for the crime. This is one of the reasons civil rights advocates warn that you should never talk to the police without an attorney present. Even an innocent person can make assumptions about a case, and you'll look guilty if they turn out to be right. For example, you might say, "I don't even own a gun" when you were told the victim was murdered but were never told the victim had been shot. It's even possible for the police to [[BadCopIncompetentCop forget]] (or [[DirtyCop "forget"]]) while testifying that they actually ''did'' tell you the victim was shot before the interview/interrogation began. Then you're screwed.
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19This trope can be invoked in works during a character's confession. Innocent characters attempting to [[TakingTheHeat take the fall for a crime they did not commit]] will probably guess facts about the crime that may not be true. If the facts are incorrect, they will be most likely be called out on it immediately or in an AndAnotherThing manner. If the character is guilty, they could willingly give information only the perpetrator would know. This could be played to induce {{Squick}}.
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21In science fiction and supernatural stories, if the slipped information reveals the true nature of the story's setting, or helps the good character(s) discover something wrong or suspicious about it, it can lead to AGlitchInTheMatrix.
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23See also: ConvictionByContradiction, BluffingTheMurderer, and INeverToldYouMyName. PhotoIdentificationDenial is a variant of this.
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25!!Examples:
26[[index]]
27* INeverSaidItWasPoison/LiveActionTV
28[[/index]]
29
30[[foldercontrol]]
31
32[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
33* Armin in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' makes good use of this. When trying to bluff [[spoiler:the Female Titan]], he uses the phrase "[[InSeriesNickname that suicidal bastard]]". Based on the subsequent results, he correctly deduced that [[spoiler:the Female Titan is actually one of his classmates]], since that name was [[spoiler:the 104th trainee class]]'s nickname for Eren, and only [[spoiler:people who know Eren and Armin personally]] would recognize it.
34** Late in the series, the protagonists discover that [[spoiler:some wine has been tainted with Zeke's spinal fluid, meaning that whoever drinks it will turn into a titan]]. Upon hearing of this, Floch remarks that the military police look like idiots. Since he was never told about the military police [[spoiler:drinking the wine]], it proves he's involved with this plot.
35* Happens all the time in ''Manga/CaseClosed''. Things like, "I have an alibi for 8 to 9 pm!" "How did you know when the victim died?"
36* L tries this strategy on Light several times in ''Manga/DeathNote''. Unfortunately for him, Light is too smart to fall for it, always carefully keeping his comments to common knowledge and believable deductions. However, it backfires for Light [[IKnowYouKnowIKnow since the fact that his answers are so perfect only strengthens L's conclusions]]. Furthermore, L even states clearly, in a loud voice, that he thinks Light's answers are absolutely flawless, and that he would not expect less from Kira. He mostly seems to do that just to push Light's irritation to the point he would make some mistake.
37* ''Manga/FushigiYuugi'' has this during the Kodoku arc. [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Tamahome]] meets Miaka in the place they were supposed to before Nakago placed him under his control. He tells her, quite convincingly, that he only played along with Nakago's plans... at which point he asks her where Tasuki and Chichiri were, in spite of the fact that Miaka never told him Tasuki, whom he didn't even know at that point, would be coming along.
38* {{Inverted}} in Episode 4 of ''Literature/{{Haganai}} Next''; Yoroza accuses Sena of [[BringMyBrownPants wetting her pants a bit out of fear on a roller coaster]]. Sena replies "[[VerbalBackspace How did you kno]]--?", in which Yoroza then says, "Wait, you really ''[[MyGodYouAreSerious did]]''?" Sena becomes very defiant.
39* Sei Arisaka does this in ''Manga/HimechansRibbon'' by saying that he knew who Pokota was even though Hime-chan had never told him, which is how she realised there was something more to him than originally thought.
40* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'':
41** ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders Stardust Crusaders]]'': Jotaro {{invoke|dTrope}}s this by deliberately writing his name wrong in a hotel's guest list, suspecting that something is amiss. When the woman who brought them in uses his actual name, she inadvertently confirms that she knew who they were even before they came in, and that the hotel was a trap.
42** ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable Diamond is Unbreakable]]'': After a vicious scuffle with Jotaro and Koichi, an injured [[SerialKiller Yoshikage Kira]] quickly pulls a FalseInnocenceTrick when Josuke and Okuyasu arrive at the scene, putting up the act of an [[{{Muggle}} ordinary]], frightened {{Salaryman}} who got caught in an explosion inside a clothing store (that Kira himself caused with his [[FightingSpirit Stand]] in an attempt to erase evidence pointing towards his identity). When Josuke appears to buy the act and offers to fix him up with his own Stand's HealingHands, Kira yells at him to hurry up and do it... which only manages to confirm Josuke's initial suspicions before the latter proceeds to call Kira out on his bullshit:
43--->'''Kira:''' P-Please hurry up and heal me!\
44'''Josuke:''' Hurry? Oh? No matter how you slice it, I look like an [[JapaneseDelinquent average high schooler]]... so why are you asking me to heal you? It's hard enough for me to get into pachinko parlors... [[SpottingTheThread yet you think I look old enough to be a doctor that graduated into medical school?]] Huh?\
45[''Kira gasps quietly in surprise'']\
46'''Josuke''': You're a complete sucker. You've [[InvisibleToNormals seen my Crazy Diamond]], haven't you?
47* ''Manga/{{Kaiji}}'': At the very beginning, Yuuji Endou says that something was wrong with his car. Kaiji says it's a shame that someone would steal its hood ornament, immediately revealing he was the culprit.
48* Played with in ''Manga/KomiCantCommunicate''. Recognising Sasaki as the yoyo-wielding hero [[ItMakesSenseInContext who rescued Komi from a group of ninjas]], Katou brings up the topic once they're back at their hotel. When Sasaki (who supposedly wasn't present) mentions their Hannya mask, Katou points out that she never said the hero wore a Hannya mask. Sasaki points out that [[ButHeSoundsHandsome she had already mentioned seeing a mask-wearing figure at the time]], but Katou isn't fooled and keeps pushing her.
49* ''Manga/TheKurosagiCorpseDeliveryService'' uses this one when they find a corpse of a girl that turns out to be parts of seven different girls professionally embalmed and sewed together. Sasaki and Makino decide to go consult a guy who also studied embalming in America. They find he is running a beauty parlor, and he says he doesn't know anything about the body in the photo the girls show him. He offers them a free session when they get tired of chasing serial killers. Sasaki thanks him for his time and leaves. Makino protests that they didn't find anything out about the killer, and Sasaki answers it was the guy they just talked to, as they never said anything about serial killers, and there was only one body in the photo. Later, Karatsu and Numata figure out that the local civil servant is the one who killed Numata's dowsing teacher when he automatically assumes he fell off a cliff when they show up with his corpse in tow.
50* ''Manga/LiarGame'' used this too. [[spoiler:The fact that Yuji knew that the stolen money was in the form of a check rather than cash told Akiyama that [[VillainousCrossdresser "she"]] was Mr. X.]]
51* In ''Anime/LoupsGarous'', Ayumi figures out [[spoiler:Kunugi]] is an enemy when [[spoiler:she asks him what time it is and his response is to pull out his monitor, indicating that he knows she doesn't have her monitor with her]].
52* ''Anime/LupinIIIPart6'': [[spoiler:Holmes figures out that Lestrade was the man Lily saw kill her father that night when Lestrade offhandedly mentions the color of the muffler Lily was wearing the night of the murder. Holmes had taken the muffler off of Lily when Lestrade, who was supposed to have been elsewhere, arrived on the scene later. The only way Lestrade could have known that detail is if he had seen Lily earlier that night, something Holmes had initially been led to believe was not the case]].
53* ''Manga/{{Monster}}'' has this happen once too. In Episode Six, a couple of detectives are apparently transporting Tenma and Anna Liebert to their police station. (They actually work for Johan Liebert.) Tenma eventually figures this out when one of them calls him "Dr. Tenma", even though he only told them his name and not that he was a doctor.
54* ''Literature/Overlord2012'': When beginning an infiltration mission, CZ accidentally says that they're going to the city in part to get information from the demihumans about the local surroundings, but Neia knows that they didn't talk about that in front of her. Still, with her blind loyalty to Ainz, she ignores it.
55* Near the end of the ''Manga/MobilePolicePatlabor'', three detectives are interrogating the CEO of a company they're almost certain is the maker of the Griffon (which is still known to the general public as "the Black Labor").
56-->'''Detective #1:''' So, you say you have ''nothing'' to do with the Black Labor?\
57'''[[ExasperatedPerp CEO]]:''' How many times do I have to tell you? I don't have anything to do with the Griffon! Or do you want me to just admit my "guilt"?\
58'''Detective #1:''' If you did that in the first place, it would have saved us a lot of time. ''[turns around]'' Did you hear that?\
59'''Detective #2:''' Yup.\
60'''Detective #3:''' Sure did.\
61'''CEO:''' What...?\
62'''Detective #1:''' Sir... How did you know the Black Labor is called "Griffon"?
63* ''Literature/PsychicDetectiveYakumo'': This happens in the Locked Room case, although differently depending on the adaptation. In the novels and both manga, an accident is claimed to be suicide without any proof. In the anime, Takaoka asks who murdered someone who is missing. In both cases, it is a big tip off.
64* In the third season of ''Anime/SailorMoon'', Mistress 9 is posing as Hotaru to talk to Sailor Moon. Eventually, she refers to Sailor Moon by her real name, which tips her off: "Hotaru... how did you know I'm Usagi Tsukino?"
65* ''Manga/SketDance'': In the Switch On arc, Switch accidentally tips himself off as the administrator of an anonymous imageboard site by saying the complete name of one of the victims of its feature Death Fight in a conversation with Bossun, who had talked to him to help him solve the case, but never mentioned the victim's full name. That's how Bossun figures him out.
66* ''Manga/SPYxFAMILY'': In Mission 82, the SSS arranged for Winston Wheeler to wear a necktie pin with a gemstone as a signal, but deliberately gave different colours of the gemstone to several branches in the comms department in case a WISE agent in disguise followed any leaked information to the letter, which catches Twilight as Wheeler in a lie when he refers to the gemstone as yellow rather than anything non-specific.
67* ''Manga/SquidGirl'': In Chapter 385, Nagisa Saito knows what the rude message scribbled on her sister's face says, despite never bring told. Squid Girl figures it out, but since she's doing detective cliches, she pretends to get murdered and writes the culprit's initials on the floor with her ink.
68* In ''Anime/YuGiOh'', "Bandit" Keith Howard accuses Joey of using someone else's entry card to qualify for the semi-finals of Pegasus' tournament, in a bid to get Joey disqualified after losing to him. Joey freely admits that he was given his current entry card by Mai Valentine after losing his original one... but Keith had no reason to know that unless he had stolen Joey's entry card. Pegasus, who already knows that Keith was cheating during his duel against Joey, has Keith ejected from the tournament instead.
69[[/folder]]
70
71[[folder:Asian Animation]]
72* In Episode 30 of ''Healthy Growth of Huoxingwa'', after waking up from a stomachache, Little Monkey pleads to the doctor that he didn't steal any peaches, prompting Huoxingwa to say that there was no mention of any peaches being stolen.
73[[/folder]]
74
75[[folder:Audio Plays]]
76* ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'': In ''Cortex Fire'', the [[Characters/DoctorWhoSixthDoctor Sixth Doctor]] realises that the Cortex — a vast local computer network on the planet Fessin — is [[spoiler:aware that a nearby star has gone supernova two days ago when a linked robotic investigator asks him how he knows that rather than why he believes it will happen, allowing the Doctor to realise that the Cortex has advance knowledge but has concealed that fact from the general populace for some reason]].
77[[/folder]]
78
79[[folder:Comic Books]]
80* In ''ComicBook/AllGhoulsSchool'', Elle gets a perfect score on the history test by answering a bonus question that wasn't covered in class. Their teacher explains she only put the question on the test as a lark and doesn't normally expect anyone to answer it. This causes the girls to ask how Elle knew the answer to a question that was never covered in class or alluded to beforehand, making them realize she cheated.
81* A humorous example from ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'': Archie, Betty, Veronica and Reggie are outside of Riverdale High during lunch when a paper blows out of a classroom window and lands nearby. Upon looking at the paper, they realize that it is an answer key to a pop quiz that Ms. Grundy announced earlier in the day. Archie and Betty refuse to look, but Veronica and Reggie justify peeking at the answers by saying that they couldn't know the importance of the paper if they ''didn't'' look, and that it wasn't '''their''' fault if they just happened to remember what they saw. When they return to class, Ms. Grundy is obligated to tell the class that the answer key has vanished, so she'll have to try to recall the quiz format as best she can. As she muses aloud that she thinks the original quiz had "13 true/false questions and three essays", Reggie and Veronica promptly forget themselves and blurt out that it was "11 multiple choice questions and two essays." They're rewarded for their helpfulness by being forced to take the quiz while the rest of their classmates get a bye.
82* In a backup strip in ''ComicBook/DetectiveComics'' #447, some valuable documents are stolen from the campus library, and ComicBook/{{Robin}}'s prime suspect has an alibi; [[ItMakesSenseInContext he was under a pile of bricks at the time]]. Robin accuses him of faking being trapped under the bricks, and the guy retorts that he didn't have anything to do with the robbery. Robin: "Who said anything about a robbery?"
83* In ''ComicBook/TheFurtherAdventuresOfIndianaJones'' #2, Indy tells Edith Dunne that she made two mistakes that gave her away as TheMole. One of them was when she mentioned that her brother had been murdered in Indy's office. Indy had never told her where her brother was killed.
84* In ''ComicBook/{{Hellboy}}: Conqueror Worm'', local guide Laura Karnstein is leading Hellboy and Roger to an abandoned castle. While making conversation, Laura casually mentions that she read Hellboy's file and was impressed by his past exploits. As they reach the castle, Laura goes on ahead, but Hellboy stops Roger to warn him that Laura couldn't have read his file. Sure enough, Laura is not who she claims to be.
85* ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis2004'': Used when [[spoiler:Jean Loring]] mentions the note at Jack Drake's crime scene to [[spoiler:Ray Palmer]], despite Batman removing the note from the scene before the press found out. Oops.
86* ''ComicBook/{{Marvels}}'': In issue four, Phil Sheldon interviews Doctor Octopus in prison with the motive of retrieving information that might clear Spider-Man of suspicion of George Stacy's murder. When Sheldon relates eyewitness testimony asserting that Octavius somehow lost control of his robotic appendages, Doc Ock is quick to refute that notion, stating that "Spider-Man doesn't have the brains to interfere with the workings of my amazing arms!" Sheldon quickly points out that he never even mentioned Spider-Man at that point, strongly suggesting that that is indeed what happened, to Octavius' extreme consternation.
87* ''Mike Mist Minute Mist-eries'', with their heavily abbreviated format and all, typically have the perpetrator accidentally slip information that only the guilty party could have known while claiming innocence, or at least contradicting their own alibi. E.g., a man wanted for an out-of-state burglary is picked up in the vicinity immediately after the murder of Mike's lawyer friend Sol. The burglar denies any knowledge of Sol, saying he just got into town this morning and has his own lawyer anyway, before anyone had mentioned the victim's occupation. Some of these can be a little flimsy, as in the case of a mechanic interviewed about a threatening letter sent to his boss; he thinks it's a good thing somebody's putting a scare to that slave-driver, even though Mike hadn't mentioned that the mysterious letter was a threat. If the boss hired a detective about it, it's reasonable to assume the letter wasn't friendly.
88* ''ComicBook/SupermansPalJimmyOlsen'': In one early story, Jimmy is being held captive and forced to give crooks trying to win a million-dollar game show answers about Superman. While explaining a headline about him saving the Man of Steel, Jimmy includes a detail about the rescue not included in the news story and hence something only he and Superman knew. Superman can see that the contestant isn't Jimmy and has in fact recognized him as a criminal. All this tells him his friend is in trouble, and he flies to the rescue.
89* ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'':
90** A journalist accuses the presidential candidate of killing his aide, to which the response is along the lines of "Of course we wouldn't kill her, she was a friend and a vital part of the campaign". See there how they admit that [[MoralMyopia murdering some people would be okay in their book]]?
91** Later, The Smiler's campaign manager refers to the assassin as "he". Spider asks how he can be sure the killer was a man if he or she was disintegrated immediately after taking the shot.
92[[/folder]]
93
94[[folder:Comic Strips]]
95* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': In one of the Rosalyn storylines, the story starts with Calvin hiding his mom's shoes so his parents can't leave. When Calvin tries to send Rosalyn away, his dad asks what he's doing, causing Calvin to ask how his parents are going anywhere when Mom can't find her shoes. The only problem: Calvin's parents hadn't mentioned to him that her shoes were missing.
96* In ''ComicStrip/GetFuzzy'', Rob asks who took his package. Bucky says he never saw that sweater, leading Rob to ask "How did you know it was a sweater?" Grounding ensues.
97* ''ComicStrip/ShermansLagoon'': When Sherman gets a job as a telemarketer, he accidentally gives himself away as the one pestering his wife on the phone when he inadvertently mentions the product the telemarketer was trying to sell, which Megan hadn't told him.
98-->'''Megan:''' This is the fourth time he called today!\
99'''Sherman:''' Why won't you buy his ginsu knives, Megan?\
100'''Megan:''' How did ''you'' know he was selling Ginsu Knives? Was that '''you''' on the phone?!\
101'''Sherman:''' I need to make my quota!
102* ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'': Such a situation happens when Jeremy gets suspicious because a note in his room has changed positions while he was gone. When he asks his mother Connie about it, she denies any involvement, asking why she would be interested in "some silly note from a girl." Cue Jeremy asking, "How did you know it was from a girl?"
103[[/folder]]
104
105[[folder:Fan Works]]
106* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12458632/41/Ben-10-and-Star-vs-the-forces-of-evil Ben 10 and Star Vs the Forces of Evil]]'', the guidance counselor casually mentions that Star is going to be the future queen of Mewni. This makes Star and Ben suspicious as only a very select group of humans know about Star's true origins. They later find out the counselor was sent by Tom.
107* ''Fanfic/EscapeTheRonpa'' uses this in its first two trials:
108** In the first trial, the culprit references the color of the [[spoiler:duct tape]] that was used on the victim.
109** The second culprit mentions having worked on a video with [[spoiler:Ryota Mitarai]], as well as revealing where [[spoiler:the book on the Tragedy]] was hidden.
110* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13740448/4/The-Ghost-Boy-and-the-Werewolf The Ghost Boy and the Werewolf]]'', B.B. Hood comes looking for Jon Talbain. When she narrows down his location to Fenton Works, Danny tries to turn her away while acting ignorant. Unfortunately, he slips up and accidentally mentions Jon's name, something B.B. Hood didn't, confirming that he's there.
111* In ''Fanfic/HellsBoilingPoint'' (a crossover between ''Hellboy'' and ''The Owl House''), the BPRD gets pulled into finding Luz after she's reported missing. Hellboy makes his way to the Boiling Isles and manages to find Eda, showing her a picture of Luz. Eda insists she's never seen her, and humans don't normally come to the Boiling Isles... except Hellboy points out he never ''said'' she was a human, just that he was looking for her. Eda tries to bluff her way out, but ends up having to trick the guards of the Emperor's Coven into thinking Hellboy's an accomplice and escaping in the ensuing chaos.
112* A variant happens in ''Fanfic/OfGemstonesAndWatches'' when the [[BodySnatcher Limax posing as Grandpa Max]] gives himself away by telling Ben to use the Omnitrix, unaware of the fact that neither Ben nor Ruby knew the name of Ben's watch until the alien told them.
113* In ''Fanfic/RemnantsGeneralRage'', [[Franchise/MassEffect Shepard]] has become suspicious of a colonist named Caleb and decides to confront him on some discrepancies in his whereabouts during a firefight. At one point, the conversation drifts to Shepard's actions during The Skyllian Blitz, but it falls apart when Shepard points out that Caleb, a native of [[Franchise/{{Halo}} a different universe]] shouldn't have heard of that battle. [[spoiler: Caleb then pulls a Mass Effect weapon on Shepard which is marked with a Cerberus logo, because he himself is a Cerberus spy]].
114* Relevant in a roundabout manner in ''Fanfic/SpiderX'', which sees Spider-Man joining the X-Men; although Spider-Man tries to give the impression that he has no connection to the Xavier Institute when he is first confronted by Magneto, the fact that he specifically takes Magneto’s helmet off in the subsequent fight is enough to prove to Magneto that the wall-crawler knows his old friend as only Xavier’s students would know why his helmet is so important.
115* In chapter 4 of ''Fanfic/TalesOfKittyWhiskersAndLadybug'', Trucy as Kitty-Whiskers visits her uncle Valant Gramarye to see if he was the one who gave her and Apollo their Miraculouses. When asked about the Miraculouses, Valant says that his magic involves illusions and not with the kwami... despite the kwamis never being mentioned to the public before. Of course, Kitty-Whiskers knowing that the Gramarye family is connected with the Miraculouses clues Valant in that the hero before him is his niece, [[SecretKeeper though promises to not tell anyone else]] and offers to lend the Bee and Fox Miraculouses if she needs them in the future.
116* ''Fanfic/TaylorVarga'' has a case where a character brings this about not through their words, but their actions. After hearing what [[TerribleTrio Emma, Sophia, and Madison]] had subjected Taylor to following the locker, Danny Hebert called Principal Blackwell and tore into her about the whole period of bullying, demanding a meeting to settle the matter. When the time for the meeting came, Danny found that the trio's parents had been called in by Principal Blackwell.
117-->'''Danny Hebert:''' I have to ask, why are all these people here? I didn't ask for them.\
118'''Principal Blackwell:''' Since we are here about your daughter's alleged bullying, I thought it prudent to make it fair by ensuring that all parties were represented.\
119'''Danny Hebert:''' Did you now? That ''is'' interesting. When we talked, I didn't mention that the three girls who were the ringleaders of the campaign against Taylor were Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements. The fact that you knew that already and called them would appear to back up my side of the issue.
120* In ''[[Fanfic/TheTickVsMyHeroAcademia The Tick vs... MY HERO ACADEMIA!]]'', Inko decides to talk to the Tick about his relationship to Izuku, which the Tick tries to deny by acting ignorant. Unfortunately for him, while trying to do so, he calls Inko by her name, something he couldn't possibly know if he didn't know Izuku.
121-->'''The Tick:''' I don't think I know what you're talking about, Mrs. Midoriya!\
122'''Inko:''' I never introduced myself, either.
123* ''WebAnimation/TurnaboutStorm'':
124** The victim's identity is kept secret, no one who's not involved in the investigation or wasn't present in the courtroom should know anything about who he is. Cue characters that know too much info: Cruise Control, who knows the victim's identity; and Gilda, who knows he was a pegasus despite having no chance of directly seeing him according to her testimony.
125** Then there's Sonata, who refers to the broken and burnt Pinkie Iron Mk. V as a golf club, when it had only been referred to as a stick since her arrival.
126* ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorneyCase5TurnaboutSubstitution'': [[spoiler:Rhea makes this mistake twice during the final trial. She is able to handwave it with a hypothetical the first time around, but the second mistake ends up being her downfall. Apollo himself notes that Rhea would have gotten away with everything if she had just paid a tad more attention to what she was saying.]]
127* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10827447/1/Blood-of-the-Dragon Blood of the Dragon]]'', a recovered Azula's firebending has weakened severely. Zuko takes her to see the Sun Warriors in hopes of getting it back, and this happens when he's trying to explain why he brought her to their island; Zuko hadn't known for sure that there was anything wrong with Azula's bending, as such, but her angry denial that there was anything the matter with it confirmed that something serious was going on.
128-->'''Zuko:''' I thought it would be a good idea for you and I to come here and train together.\
129'''Azula:''' And why exactly do you think that this is in any way a good idea, Zuzu?\
130'''Zuko:''' ''[hesitantly]'' Because it will help you improve your firebending.\
131'''Azula:''' ''[realizes what he means and grabs him by the shirt]'' There's nothing wrong with my firebending! Did you bring me out to the middle of nowhere just to insult me?! Why would you think my bending is weakening?!\
132'''Zuko:''' I never said your bending was weakening. I had my suspicions before, and you just confirmed them. If there really was nothing wrong, you would never have reacted so strongly. You'd have laughed it off, probably teased me a bit. But you didn't do that, so now I know.
133* In ''Fanfic/TheStalkingZukoSeries'' has a non-mystery related example. Katara eavesdrops on a conversation between Zuko and Aang about love. Zuko then asks her if Aang is also asking her personal questions, prompting Katara to say no, but also muse that Zuko must be the only one Aang's asking about love. Zuko then realizes that he didn't specify what he and Aang talked about. She manages to deflect suspicion before Zuko fully catches on that she eavesdropped on him, though.
134* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12506080/1/A-Day-at-the-Golf-Course A Day at the Golf Course]]'' is a short fanfic where the culprit's first words are "Who shot my wife?" Naturally, Columbo already knows that the gardener who warned him by phone only said his wife was dead, not shot, but he lets him simmer a bit with lots of other minor details first.
135* ''Fanfic/DanganronpaRejuvenation'': During Chapter 3, Tsukiko realizes that [[spoiler:Misao is an imposter]] when they claim to have watched a film that was never released, something that they shouldn't have even known about [[spoiler:unless her second personality was told directly about it]].
136* ''Fanfic/FracturedFates'': This is how the killer is first implicated during the second trial. When asked to testify about [[spoiler:his missing hunting knife (which was also the murder weapon)]], [[spoiler:Itachi]] mentions how they and Shiro had searched everywhere possible for it, including [[spoiler:the greenhouse, where the killer eventually hid it]]. The issue comes in that, [[spoiler:at that point, nobody had brought up where the murder weapon had been hidden, and besides the killer, only the ones who had found it during the investigation (Hana, Akira, and Hinata) should have known about that fact]].
137* ''Fanfic/NewIslandLife'': In ''New School Semester'', Himiko finds a handwritten note wondering whether Jiraiya's kimono is green or blue, hinting that the author is colorblind. During the fourth trial, [[spoiler:Tenko subsequently]] calls Jiraiya a 'green kimono-wearing son of a bitch'... despite said kimono clearly being blue.
138* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11258153/24/What-They-Wouldn-t-Do What They Wouldn't Do]]'' uses this to answer the question of how Matt Murdock would find out that Karen Page had killed Wilson Fisk's henchman James Wesley. Matt is romantically involved with Sarah Corrigan, a young woman working at one of Fisk's former shell companies after being blackmailed by Wesley into taking over her father's debts to Fisk. While on an errand, Sarah runs into Karen at the post office, unaware of who she is. By chance, Sarah's purse strap breaks and the contents fall out, including a police photograph of Wesley's body. [[OhCrap Karen's face turns pale]] upon seeing the photo, which leads Sarah to realize Karen has bad memories of encountering Wesley. Karen later invites Sarah to dinner at a Thai noodle place. Their conversation eventually comes around to Wesley and the photograph in Sarah's purse. Karen suggests [[ThereAreNoCoincidences it's not a coincidence]] that she ran into someone who worked at one of Fisk's companies and who happened to possess a photo of Wesley's body, with Sarah noting her odd wording. Recalling how Wesley threatened her family to get her cooperation, Sarah remarks that he liked playing mind games with subordinates under his thumb, to which Karen says, "Yeah, well, [[Recap/Daredevil2015S1E11ThePathOfTheRighteous that kind of shit's how you end up getting shot with your own gun]]." Sarah knows from gossip that Wesley was shot seven times in an abandoned office building, and Fisk beat up one of his bodyguards for not going with Wesley, but she'd never heard anything about Wesley getting shot with his own weapon. The fact that Karen then mentions she's been keeping tabs on the investigation into Wesley's death[[note]]The cop assigned to Wesley's murder is a crooked cop who just got killed by Sarah's boss, who then forced her to dispose of the body[[/note]] further cements Sarah's suspicions.
139* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' fanfic ''[[https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/timelord/the-ice-throne-part-1-t2462.html The Ice Throne]]''- which has been written featuring both Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor and a fan-created Tenth Doctor played by Billy Connelly- features the Doctor investigating assassination attempts against his old ally, Ice Lord Ixlyr, eventually exposing the culprit when they confront the suspects and one of them mentions that poison was the first method used to try and assassinate Ixylr before any of the Doctor's allies brought it up.
140* In ''Fanfic/GoldPoisons'', [[spoiler: Jin Guangshan]] explodes at Nie Mingjue when he asks him to be reasonable, telling Mingjue that he was the intended target of the murder plot. Which he had no reason to know about.
141* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14055569/5/Effects-of-Basilisk Effects of Basilisk]]'' Mrs. Weasley has Ginny give out homemade chocolates. Harry's happen to be laced with love and loyalty potions.
142-->'''Arthur:''' One of Harry's elves appeared at the ministry insisting I come to Grimmauld Place...and bring Bill. When we arrived, Sirius Black showed me a bag with a few chocolates left in it.\
143'''Molly:''' So? Anyone could have put those chocolates into Harry's bag.\
144'''George:''' Dad didn't say anything about it being the bag of chocolates that Harry got.
145* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11367853/3/Friendship-and-Honour Friendship and Honour]]'':
146-->'''Regan:''' Is it legal to purposefully steal money from a child's legacy? Is it legal for you to willfully disregard a legal document regarding the placement of an orphan? Is it legal for you to imprison people without a trial? Is it legal for you to employ a former Death Eater at a school full of vulnerable children?\
147'''Dumbledore:''' Professor Snape has my full confidence -- he was my spy during the war. And I did what I thought was best for Harry Potter.\
148'''Regan:''' Snape might have been a spy, but he was not a spy legally on the books of the DMLE, Department of Mysteries or any other Ministry agency. And I never mentioned Harry Potter... something you want to tell us?
149* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12557197/10/Harry-Potter-and-the-Unexpected-Friend Harry Potter and the Unexpected Friend]]'':
150-->'''Lucius:''' What are you doing?\
151'''Harry:''' That's the wrong question. The question is 'what did you do'? You gave a dangerous dark artifact to a schoolgirl. You put the students of Hogwarts in danger for political gain.\
152'''Lucius:''' You don't know what you are talking about. You have to prove I gave it to the Weasley girl, giving it to me now proves nothing!\
153'''Harry:''' I never said who you were supposed to have given it to. I just said a schoolgirl.
154* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13821895/28/Harry-Potter-Gains-His-Freedom Harry Potter Gains His Freedom]]'', Dumbledore uses a school owl to send the locket [[SoulJar Horcrux]] to Susan in an attempt at having her possessed by Voldemort.
155-->'''Dumbledore:''' Madam Bones, even if a Hogwarts school owl was utilized, and I highly doubt we can claim a nondescript, brown barn owl was Hogwarts' own, isn't it true anyone who was on the Hogwarts' grounds could have sent the owl?\
156'''Madame Bones:''' I didn't state the owl was a 'nondescript brown, barn owl' during my testimony. However, you have accurately described the owl as Susan described it to me.
157* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10888928/14/Harry-Potter-Half-born Harry Potter: Half-born]]'':
158-->'''Vivienne:''' Those are documents stating that if Lily was ever under any type of potions or enchantment, I was to take Harry to a safe place, immediately.\
159'''James:''' [[BigWhat WHAT!]] How dare you. Lily has never been under the effects of any mind-altering potions or enchantments.\
160'''Vivienne:''' I never said that the potions or enchantments were mind-altering, Mr. Potter.
161* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10303864/6/My-Name-Is-Yasha-Romanov My Name Is Yasha Romanov]]'' has Sirius doing it to ''himself'' when Dumbledore tries to make him confess Harry's guardian's identity by claiming the boy went to Hogwarts under the name "Romanov" and Sirius answers he never said ''Yakov'' Romanov was Harry Potter. Sirius's reaction when he realizes he accidentally confirmed Harry's new identity is classical OhCrap.
162* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7438403/6/Not-a-child Not a child]]'':
163-->'''Madam Bones:''' Delores Umbridge, you are hereby arrested on the charge of using a Blood Quill on a minor. What do you have to say for your actions, Delores?\
164'''Umbridge:''' The boy is lying Amelia! Obviously he is telling more vicious lies in order to gain your sympathy. Do not give in to his lies!\
165'''Madam Bones:''' Funny how you seem to know exactly what I am talking about. Tell me Shaklebolt, did you hear me mention a boy? Not the least of which one who seems to have a problem with telling the truth.\
166'''Shacklebolt:''' No ma'am. I did not hear anything about a boy. Perhaps Madam Umbridge is suffering from a guilty conscience?
167* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10032849/22/We-are-the-four-Elementalists We Are the Four Elementalists]]'':
168-->'''Minister Shacklebolt:''' You have been arrested on countless charges. One: For the kidnap of Miss Luna Lovegood. Two: For the use of two of the Unforgivables on a student, and possibly other people. Three: For the attempted use of the killing curse. Four: For the forced bonding of a phoenix, that would have caused the bird to experience indescribable pain. Five: Forced legilimency. And six: Accessory to the murders of Lily and James Potter. There may be more, but we have Aurors on the case, working out just exactly went on.\
169'''Dumbledore:''' Hang on just one minute! It's all a load of codswallop! I didn't do any of those things! Especially setting Lily and James up to be killed! That's preposterous. They were my friends!\
170'''Minister Shacklebolt:''' I never said you "set them up" Mr. Dumbledore.
171* ''Fanfic/AThingOfVikings'': Stoick notices that [[spoiler:Vigdis]] knew that a necklace was stolen and was used to try and frame Heather (and she knew when it happened), something she would have had no knowledge of unless she was the culprit.
172* In ''Fanfic/TheShatteringOfOz'', a variation of this is used when Glinda is confronted in her dream by Elphaba and the Nome King ''posing'' as Elphaba, with Elphaba explaining the truth of the situation, including her own survival, and the Nome King claiming to be Elphaba's 'ghost' while telling Glinda that 'Elphaba' is just a parasite trying to invade her mind. After asking both Elphabas a series of questions about their shared pasts that could be answered by the real Elphaba, a mind-reader, or someone who's been spying on them for years, Glinda ''then'' asks "What was my nickname at the Across-Oz Summit last month?", which only the Nome King answers, allowing Glinda to identify 'her' as the fake Elphaba.
173* ''Webcomic/BakeryEnemies'': When Marinette confronts Adrien, she [[spoiler:demands his Miraculous - the brooch that is not the Butterfly]]. When he incredulously asks "You think I have [[spoiler:the Peacock]]?", she crows that she didn't mention its name. That detail was only known by Ladybug, Chat Noir, and the villains. She doesn't notice that Adrien is [[spoiler:breaking down as he realizes the same thing in reverse - namely, that ''she'' is Ladybug]].
174* ''[[Fanfic/ConsequencesMiraculousLadybug CONSEQUENCES]]'': ''ELLIE-MENT OF SURPRISE'': Lila breaks into Nathaniel and Eloise's house in order to destroy the new song the latter just wrote. She then accidentally outs herself as the culprit when she brings up the lyrics before Nathaniel does.
175* ''Fanfic/LeaveForMendeleiev'': [[spoiler:Gabriel Agreste]] makes the heroes suspicious when they refer to an akuma by their name before said akuma arrives, without any of the heroes mentioning it in front of them.
176* In [[https://www.wattpad.com/462499652-mpgis-oneshots-requests-open-mackenzie-x-brittany this]] one-shot, Brittnay receives a note in her locker, telling her to meet her at the Oak Park Mall. She finds Mackenzie there, who hints her about the note. Brittnay then asks Mackenzie how she knew about the note. Blushing and confessions ensue.
177* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/31152989/ Class 1-A's IzuOcha Hell Week]]'': When Ashido confronts Mineta about him being a PantyThief, Mineta says he stole Ashido's panties for Kirishima, not himself. Kirishima attempts to deny it, but he lets slip their pink color while doing so.
178* In ''Fanfic/TheElementsOfFriendship'', this is how [[spoiler:Madam Oleander]] outs herself as a mole for [[BigBad NightMare Moon]] — she knows far more about the Mane Six's quest than they've shared with the deer villagers sheltering them.
179* ''Fanfic/BlackkatsReverse'': Kakashi only shares the names of his ninken with his friends. When Kurama refers to them by name, that alerts Kakashi that this stranger knows far more about him than he should, which leads into Kurama [[PeggySue explaining the truth]] to him.
180* ''Fanfic/TheSomewhatCrackedMindOfUchihaItachi'': The Sound genin Mora congratulates Team Itachi on completing an A-Rank mission. However, the fact that said mission was an A-Rank was actually classified.
181* ''Fanfic/DearDiary'': Alder contacts the police, who declare that they'll bring some helicopters in as transport. He then catches some Plasma grunts who were disguised as police when they refer to bringing a ''truck'' in instead.
182* ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'': PlayedForDrama during the Hala & Hau Interlude. After Professor Kukui proposes that Alola should have their own Pokémon League, Hala fears that the younger generations have lost interest in their traditional Island Trials. He asks Hau if he thinks the trials are old-fashioned; Hau says no, despite how appealing having their own League could be. Hala remarks that he never brought up a League, and takes out his frustration and fears upon his grandson, angrily declaring that if he's so 'dissatisfied', then he should just leave, just like how [[ParentalAbandonment Hau's father had before him]].
183* ''Fanfic/{{Pokeumans}}'': [[spoiler:Mindy]] gives herself away by accusing Brandon of stealing the Gemstone Files documents that no one in the base except the headmistress know even existed.
184* ''Fanfic/StressRelief'': Agent Carolina gets Agent South Dakota to implicate herself [[spoiler:in molesting Agent Connecticut]] using this trope by [[BatmanGambit using South's impulsive nature against her]]. [[spoiler:When she tells the Director about the molestation she witnessed, she left out the fact that it was in the showers. She waited for South to mention the showers first while she was denying the allegations (which she did). Thankfully for Carolina, the Counselor picked up on the fact that Carolina never mentioned the showers before South brought them up, and that one slip-up gained a lot of credibility for Carolina.]] The smirk that she gives South after she realizes the mistake proves that it was her plan all along.
185* In ''Fanfic/{{Wilted}}'', Ruby, [[spoiler:suspecting that Team CMSN are the infiltrators, and Cinder in particular as the Fall Maiden]] interrogates Roman when he's in Atlas custody. She offers him protection in exchange for his boss' identity, [[spoiler:and promises that they can protect him and Neo from Cinder]]. Roman is so shocked that [[spoiler:Ruby knows about the existence of the Maidens]], that he forgets to deny that [[spoiler:Cinder is his boss' name]].
186* ''Fanfic/BackForGood'': Later in Chapter 7, Professor Professor is being interrogated for [[GroinAttack shooting an U.Z.Z. agent in the crotch]] when the latter thought that Doctor Doctor had kidnapped him. Professor Professor grows increasingly frustrated over the line of questioning and tries to explain that he and Doctor Doctor were actually just going out on a date. When Tushika expresses skepticism over this, Professor Professor tries to explain himself again and [[SayingTooMuch accidentally reveals]] that he and Doctor Doctor have rekindled their relationship in the process.
187-->'''Tushika:''' So why would you go on a date with this woman, willingly I might add? You really expect me to believe that Doctor Doctor wasn't holding you hostage?\
188'''Professor Professor:''' I know it can be hard to believe. It's one thing to regard what I'm telling you with skepticism. It's another to make wild accusations or insinuate that we've rekindled our relationship.\
189'''Tushika:''' What? I never said anything like that. What are you talking about?\
190'''Professor Professor:''' Oh. [[OhCrap Oh...]]
191* Parodied in ''Fanfic/NeverBeTheSameAgain'' when Victor and Anita are interrogating Urtica and his son Tarax on Doctor Doctor's whereabouts.
192-->'''Anita:''' Anyway, judging by how you reacted, that would mean you've seen her, right?\
193'''Urtica:''' That's right. However, I can assure you that we didn't give her our peashooters nor did she bless me with child.\
194'''Victor:''' Uh, we didn't say you gave her your peashooters, [a]nd we ''definitely'' didn't say that she got you pregnant...\
195'''Urtica:''' You didn't say we didn't give her our peashooters, either.\
196'''Victor:''' Well, you got me there.
197* In ''Fanfic/TheWebOfTheSpiderMan'', Tony Stark flatly denies being a superhero when asked about the mysterious [[ComicBook/IronMan "Iron Man"]] he claims to be his bodyguard. The reporter asking the question points out that he never said anything of the sort. Tony outs himself about five seconds later.
198-->'''Reporter:''' I’m sorry Mr. Stark, but do you honestly expect us to believe that was a bodyguard in a suit? That conveniently appeared despite the fact that-\
199'''Tony:''' I know it’s confusing. It is one thing to question the official story and another to make wild accusations or insinuate that I'm, uh, a superhero.\
200'''Reporter:''' I never said you were a superhero.\
201'''Tony:''' [[OhCrap You didn't...]]
202* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2531627/1/Reflections Reflections]]'', Ensign Andrews realises that the Merchants are trying to trick the crew of ''Deep Space 9'' when they mention a recently-destroyed runabout by name before anyone on the station brought up the name, allowing her to realise that the runabout survived its trip through the breach that the Merchants used to reach the station in turn.
203* ''[[Fanfic/WorstCaseScenarioClcman Worst Case Scenario]]'': While disguised as one of the heroes, [[spoiler:Tigress]] refers to their mother being dead when [[spoiler:Artemis's mother is alive and well]]. Robin then tests the waters by making an intentionally faulty CallBack; when they agree, he deduces that they aren't who they claim to be.
204* In ''A New Dawn'', this is how Judy finds out about [[spoiler:Dawn having feelings for Gideon]] when she angrily denies them being anything more than JustFriends when Judy wasn't implying anything more than that.
205-->'''Judy:''' I think you really like him.\
206'''Dawn:''' What? That's ridiculous! He's just a friend!\
207'''Judy:''' ...That's all I was implying.\
208'''Dawn:''' ...Oh.
209* ''Fanfic/PackStreet'': In "Field Day", Remmy and Wolt travel to Bunnyburrow to visit Anneke's ex Rasher and retrieve a prized locket that he kept after their breakup. When Rasher stubbornly insists that he doesn't have the pewter locket, Remmy asks him how he knew it was pewter. Rasher admits that he had the locket appraised, but he still doesn't realize he's given himself away until Remmy spells it out for him.
210* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/33100432 Compartmentalization]]'': This fanfic reimagines the events of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' with Ada and Claire being a couple, but the latter is unaware of the former's true occupation. During the climax, Leon accuses Ada of being a spy which she denies. However, she ends up proving Leon's accusations true when she reveals she knows Sherry's name, which Claire did not tell her.
211* In [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/20689988/chapters/52569625 the Ms. Bustier chapter]] of [=ChaoticNeutral's=] ''[[AccusationFic Salt Series]]'', as she's ranting about how horrible Ms. Bustier, Vivienne notes how she's catering to yet another obvious liar. This, of course, prompts Lila to turn on the waterworks only for Vivienne to point out how she never said who the liar was.
212* ''Fanfic/CorAutemAurora'': An imperial officer at a checkpoint tries to stop Noctis and his friends by telling them that the Steyfill Grove Ruins are close. Prompto points out that they never said they were going to visit the ruins.
213[[/folder]]
214
215[[folder:Films — Animation]]
216* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', Princess Jasmine uses this to ferret out Prince Ali's true identity as Aladdin. While watching a fireworks display in China, Jasmine says that "it's a shame Abu had to miss this," referencing Aladdin's NonHumanSidekick. Instead of asking who Abu is, Ali/Aladdin says "Nah, he hates fireworks," which instantly blows Aladdin's cover and reveals him to be the same boy whom Jasmine had met at the marketplace earlier. Jasmine then asks Aladdin who he really is, but instead of being honest, Aladdin [[FawltyTowersPlot compounds his initial lie with another lie]] by saying that [[KingIncognito he's a prince who dresses as a commoner to escape the palace life]].
217* ''WesternAnimation/BibiUndTina 2'' begins with a burglary that steals [[TheVonTropeFamily Falko von Falkenstein]]'s prized monocle collection, among other things. Later, when Tarik is complaining about how stuck up he is, he says "Seriously, who has a castle and a [[HighClassGlass monocle collection]]?". The only problem is that this was never reported in the newspapers.
218* ''WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994'' features an odd example of this, when Scar tells Simba to "work on that little roar of yours." This is referring to an incident earlier in the film where Simba attempted to scare off a group of attacking hyenas by roaring with no success--an incident Scar shouldn't have been present for. However, Simba fails to catch on to the clue. From the context, it's pretty clear that Scar is deliberately dropping incriminating information into the conversation because he knows Simba trusts him completely and is too naive to catch on.
219* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansTroubleInTokyo''. A girl who works for the villain approaches Beast Boy and calls him "otaku". Beast Boy takes it to mean that she thinks he's cute when it actually means "comic book geek", which is something only someone who had been watching him could have known about.
220* ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}'': This is what reveals the villain. After discovering why predators are going savage, Nick and Judy rush to the police to pass off the evidence, shake off the mooks who are pursuing them and cut through the Natural History Museum. As they're passing through, [[spoiler:the now Acting Mayor [[BitchInSheepsClothing Dawn Bellwether]]]] is waiting and praises them for their work... just as Judy is about to hand over the evidence, she suddenly wonders how they knew where to find them.
221[[/folder]]
222
223[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
224* ''Film/FourteenOhEight'': Used lightly when Mike Enslin calls a hotel for a reservation in the eponymous room, which the staff says is unavailable, despite not knowing ''when'' he'll be visiting, since they don't want anybody staying in the room ever. Actually could be a rare example of InvertedTrope, since it is not ruled out that they were consciously performing a ReversePsychology trick to get Mike in.
225* In ''Film/AloneWithHer'', the tip-off that the protagonist has planted surveillance cameras in the house of the girl he's courting is when she rejects him and he starts ranting: "...I did everything for you, but you want to go back? To what? Huh? To being alone? To this empty room? '''To that brush'''?" Earlier in the movie, he'd caught a live feed of her masturbating with the hairbrush.
226* A deleted scene in ''Film/AustinPowers'' involves Austin asking about "Mr" Evil (as well as Mr Pepper). Naturally, the FemmeFatale he's questioning replies with "Dr Evil" and "Dr Pepper" respectively.
227* ''Film/BadGenius'': When Pat describes Bank, he lets slip that [[spoiler:Bank was beaten up and found in a landfill. The problem? Bank never told anyone he was found in a landfill -- only someone involved with beating him up would. He quickly deduces that Pat was responsible for it]].
228* In ''Film/{{Basic}}'', this is subverted when Hardy is chatting with Styles about the death of [[spoiler:Kendal]]. Styles says something about [[spoiler:Kendal]] being poisoned, and Hardy immediately starts asking him how Styles would know that. Styles points out that one minute [[spoiler:Kendal]] was fine and the next he was coughing up blood before dying for no apparent reason, so poison is a reasonable guess under the circumstances. [[spoiler:DoubleSubverted mere moments later, when Hardy keeps acting suspicious of Styles and trying to poke holes in his story. Styles continues trying to bluff his way out for a minute or two before he gives up and tries to bribe Hardy (who had a reputation for being a DirtyCop), into silence.]]
229* ''Film/BasicInstinct'': The cops try to invoke this when they go to question Catherine Tramell and her girlfriend Roxy about her boyfriend's murder, asking "How did you know he was murdered?", but it fails miserably, as both women point out that the men have identified themselves as ''homicide'' detectives and that it's the most natural conclusion to come to.
230* In ''Film/{{Becky}}'', Dominick is interrogating Becky about his missing property over the walkie-talkie:
231-->'''Becky:''' I don't have your stupid key!\
232'''Dominick:''' I never said it was a ''key''.
233* In ''Film/BeyondAReasonableDoubt'', Tom and Susan are giddy with relief after Tom has been cleared of the murder of Patty Gray, hours before he was scheduled to be executed. Tom then offhandedly wonders who killed "Emma". The fact that Patty Gray's real name was Emma Blucher is still a secret. Susan, who knows that secret, realizes that Tom is guilty after all.
234* In ''Film/TheBigClock'', George Stroud was already suspicious of Steve Hagen, but he becomes convinced that Hagen is involved with the coverup of Pauline's murder when he mentions that Pauline was killed at 12:30 a.m. while providing an alibi for Earl Janoth. Not only should Hagen not have known the time of the murder at all, but Stroud knows that Pauline was still alive at 1:00 a.m., and only someone involved in [[ClockTampering changing the clocks]] in Pauline's apartment would claim she was murdered at 12:30.
235* ''Film/{{Cheetah}}'': A brother and sister visiting their parents in Kenya adopt an orphaned cheetah cub whom they call Duma. When they have to return to the U.S., they plan to train her to hunt and release her back into the wild, but she disappears the night before they were going to leave. As their parents are driving them to the airport the next morning, they stop at the local general store where the owner says that it must be a sad day for the kids: leaving Kenya, losing their pet... the brother immediately jumps on this, asking why he thinks Duma is "lost". The store owner insists that by "lose", all he means is "releasing back into the wild where you will probably never see her again", but the brother is convinced that the owner wouldn't have used the word "lose" unless he knew about Duma's disappearance, and the only way he could know about the disappearance is if he was involved. [[spoiler:He's right.]]
236* In ''Film/TheCountOfMonteCristo2002'', Mercedes realizes that the mysterious Count really is Edmond when he tells her that "Edmond Dantes is dead." She had told him that her lover Edmond was dead, but not his last name.
237* ''Film/{{Dave}}'': Ellen Mitchell finds out Dave is impersonating her husband after mentioning something Bill Mitchell did in the state legislature (which he wasn't part of) and Dave confirms.
238* ''Film/TheDaVinciCode'': Played with in the film adaptation. In an early scene, when Fache still suspects Langdon of murdering Jacques Sauniere (but hasn't yet told Langdon that he's a suspect), Langdon's extensive knowledge of art gets him into trouble when he says that Sauniere was murdered in the Louvre's Grand Gallery before Fache actually tells him where the body was found. Langdon ''actually'' knew because he recognized the Grand Gallery's distinctive parquet floor in a crime scene photo, but Fache has a hard time buying that excuse.
239* In ''Film/TheDeparted'', [[TheMole Billy Costigan]] narrowly escapes being ambushed by the rest of the gang during a meeting with his handler and pretends to have arrived late after they have killed Queenan. After a shootout with police staking out the building, Delahunt, mortally wounded in the gunfight, [[spoiler:and who may be an undercover cop himself]], privately tells Costigan that even though he accidentally gave the wrong address for where the informant was going to be, Costigan was at the right one.
240* ''Film/DoctorStrangeInTheMultiverseOfMadness'': [[spoiler:When America Chavez is attacked by a creature they determine to be born of witchcraft, Doctor Strange visits Wanda for help and at first they seem to be on board with working together. However, Wanda asks him [[WhamLine "What if you brought America here?"]] and Strange immediately pauses because he never said her name was America, [[OhCrap which she also realizes and mentally kicks herself for.]] It all goes downhill from there.]]
241-->[[spoiler:'''Wanda:''' ''(realizes her mistake)'' You never told me her name, did you?\
242'''Strange:''' [[TranquilFury No. I didn't.]]]]
243* ''Film/TheFabelmans'': When Sammy Fabelman reveals to Claudia Denning that her boyfriend Logan Hall--his bully--cheated on her with Renee--though Sammy doesn't know her name and that it wasn't the first time, Logan threatens Sammy to force him into retracting it and saying he lied. Sammy ends up doing just that to Claudia with both her and her best friend Monica Sherwood--Sammy's future {{Love Interest|s}}--grilling him about it. Claudia then however reveals she actually is sure Sammy was telling the truth before by following it up with the inquiry as [[ArmorPiercingQuestion to how Sammy knew Renee had red hair to begin with]].
244* In ''Film/TheFugitive,'' a hospital worker Dr. Kimble spoke to slips up with SuspiciouslySpecificDenial, claiming he hadn't seen Kimble before the Marshal even asks.
245* In ''Film/TheGodfatherPartII'', Michael realizes that Fredo betrayed him when they were in a sleazy Cuban nightclub, and Fredo says "Watch this part of the act, it's really something", even though earlier Fredo had told Michael that he had never been to Cuba before. Fredo also mentions how "old man Roth" would "never come here", but that Johnny Ola showed him the place, despite an earlier claim of never having met either Roth or Ola before, and both Fredo and Ola acting as if they were being introduced for the first time to one another just previously. Actually kind of a double Inversion since Michael never tries to trip him up, but not being very bright, Fredo just blurts it out. The look of betrayal on Michael's face is classic and a definite example of {{Foreshadowing}}.
246* ''Film/HarryPotter'':
247** In the ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'' movie, Dobby the house-elf repeatedly does this, accidentally admitting to having [[spoiler:intercepted letters from Harry's friends, sealing the entrance to Platform 9¾, and bewitching a Bludger to attack Harry]], although the last two may have been intentional.
248** In the ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'' movie, a disguised Death Eater blows his cover by mentioning the graveyard Harry was sent to before Harry does. The Death Eater in question may not have cared at that point, though.
249** In ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem '', one of the first hints that [[spoiler:Graves]] isn’t who he says he is is when Newt gets arrested for having an Obscurius parasite, he says that the parasite is [[spoiler: useless without its host]], prompting Newt to respond [[spoiler: that it killed an innocent little girl and what would it be ''used'' for?]]
250* In ''Film/AHauntingInVenice'', [[spoiler:Vitale]] gives away that they have been in the palazzo before--despite claiming they haven't--when they need to make a phone call and go immediately to a concealed telephone despite no one telling them where it was.
251* ''Film/{{Highlander}}'': Subverted. Lieutenant Moran, the lead detective investigating the beheading of Iman Fasil, tries to get Connor [=MacLeod=] to implicate himself using this sort of technique ''twice'' in the same conversation, but it doesn't work either time.
252-->'''Moran:''' Okay. What's that? ''[indicates the plastic-wrapped Toledo Salamanca on his desk]''\
253'''Connor [=MacLeod=]:''' ''[who knows exactly what it is]'' A sword?\
254'''Moran:''' It's a Toledo-Salamanca broadsword worth about a million bucks.\
255'''[=MacLeod=]:''' So?\
256'''Moran:''' So you want to hear a theory? You went down that garage to buy this sword from that guy -- what's his name?\
257'''[=MacLeod=]:''' ''[who also knows who Iman Fasil was]'' I don't know. You tell me.
258* In ''Film/HighSchoolHellcats'', a girl dies in a (seemingly accidental) fall down a staircase at an illicit party, and the teenage partygoers try to cover up the fact that they were involved. When the girl, Connie, has been missing for several days, a detective comes in to question her classmates individually. Everyone claims they haven't seen her and don't know where she is. The detective happens to ask one of them if the missing girl had any enemies, and receives the response that "No, everyone liked Connie. She was a regular guy." The detective immediately seizes on [[SuspiciouslySpecificTense the use of the past tense]]. (It doesn't help that the girl being interviewed explodes into a sudden screaming fit when confronted by this. She later [[StupidCrooks gloats about pushing Connie down the stairs to a third girl]] she's trying to kill to cover it up, even though as far as anyone knew, she was only guilty of the same comparatively minor crimes as the other kids.)
259* ''Film/ISpitOnYourGrave'': In the third film, Ron at first denies ever having raped his stepdaughter Cassie after Jennifer kidnaps him. She notes he'd yet to hear Cassie's name from her, revealing his guilt.
260* At the end of ''Film/IronMan1'', Tony Stark is giving a press conference to [[TheAlibi explain where he was]] when the events of the third act took place and maintain his SecretIdentity, claiming that the man in the PoweredArmor was actually his bodyguard. The reporter Christine Everhart interrupts to tell him that she doesn't believe his story for a second, causing the two of them to get into an argument where Tony denies being a {{superhero}}. Christine points out that she didn't say anything about Tony being a superhero. At this point, Tony realizes that his cover is blown, and after a failed attempt to get back on script, he sheepishly admits that [[TheUnmasquedWorld he is, in fact, Iron Man]].
261* ''Film/JackReacher'': Inverted when a former sniper is accused of going on a killing spree. He's badly beaten in prison and experiences amnesia about the last several days, not remembering the incident. The titular character has already determined that the sniper was set up, since no professional sniper would pick that parking garage and would, instead, shoot from a van on the nearby bridge. When the accused finally regains consciousness and freaks out because he believes himself guilty (he previously did go on a killing spree while in Afghanistan but got off because the men he killed turned out to be rapists). The DA shows him pictures of the area and asks him how he would have done it. He gives the same reply as Reacher, confirming to the DA that he didn't do it.
262* ''Film/JaggedMind'': As a result of hearing Alex say Rose slit her wrists, which Billie didn't tell her, Billie's made aware that she'd somehow been involved with Rose's death. It turns out that Alex murdered her, making it [[NeverSuicide look like a suicide]].
263* ''Film/TheJinx'': When Robert Durst is asked what divers would be looking for in the lake behind his former house, Durst blithely replies "body parts", rather than "a body". The specific detail of the former statement seems to foreshadow later events or could have been how he would have said it anyway.
264* ''Film/KnightMoves'': Subverted. The protagonist knows the latest word in the serial killer's message without being told directly because the killer namedropped a chess master and the word is that master's watchword.
265* ''Film/LAConfidential'': Ed Exley likes doing a variant of this in his [[PerpSweating interrogations]]. In particular, he tends to say something about the person he's interviewing being guilty as if it were a fact, and note that the person doesn't react the way an innocent person would. For example, in his first interrogation, he tells the perp "It's a shame you didn't pull this a few years ago when you were a minor, you being an adult makes it a gas chamber offense." Later, after he's done and is leaving the room, he stops to say, "You know Ray, I'm here talking about you getting the gas chamber, and you never asked me what this is about. You've got a big guilty sign around your neck." The kicker in particular case is that [[spoiler:the guys he's interrogating are guilty of something heinous but not of the crime he's investigating.]] A different interview gives us this exchange.
266-->'''Exley:''' [[{{Blackmail}} What do they have on you]], Loew? Pictures of you and Matt Reynolds with your pants down?\
267'''D.A. Ellis Loew:''' ''[hesitates]'' Do you have any proof?\
268'''Exley:''' [[LeaveNoWitnesses The proof had his throat slit]]. And so far, you're not denying it.
269* ''Film/LethalWeapon3'': A delinquent leaks the name of the person Riggs was going to ask about before Riggs himself makes mention of said name:
270-->'''{{Mook}}:''' Like I told you before, asshole, I don't know no [[DirtyCop Jack Travis]]!\
271'''Riggs:''' Hey, I didn't say his name was "Jack" -- you'd better start telling me more than Jack Shit.
272* The 1971 giallo film ''Film/ALizardInAWomansSkin'' has an example. A free and libertine woman named Julia is brutally murdered in her apartment; the suspicion falls on her neighbor, Carol, a wife of Frank, a promising lawyer whose father is a prominent politician and a lawyer himself. The evidence points to Carol, who is promptly arrested, yet the police inspector, unable to find any clear motive, suspects a more complex possibility. Carol had some personal troubles and was seeing a psychoanalyst, who asked her to keep a diary of her vivid dreams; some dreams included a passionate love affair with Julia and one recent dream described Carol brutally slaying her. The inspector thinks that someone read the diary and modelled the crime on her dreams while planting the evidence. In the climax, the inspector meets Carol, telling her the evidence suggests her father killed Julia when she started blackmailing him with the evidence of Frank's infidelity, threatening to expose the evidence and ruin the reputation of a law firm Frank and his father ran together, then committed suicide to save Carol when she was committed to an asylum. Carol says she knew that because Julia phoned her father with a blackmail offer. The inspector asks how did she know that, since the man never talked about the blackmail to anyone but Frank in private after Carol was already committed. Suddenly, he realizes the simplest solution was right all along: Carol ''did'' have a passionate affair with Julia and murdered her when threatened with exposure - Julia made her call just before being slain and only the killer could have known what the call was all about.
273* In ''Film/MacheteKills'', [[spoiler:Miss San Antonio]] accidentally reveals they are a double agent when they mention the missile being in Texas. Machete then asks how they knew the missile had been moved from Mexico.
274* ''Film/MaskedAvengers'': TheMole is revealed when he mentions one of his victims being killed with a spear, even though the protagonist said nothing about that, and just said the victim was attacked.
275* In ''Film/{{Matilda}}'', Miss Honey makes a visit to Matilda's parents, to express how bright she is. When her parents laugh this off, making several jabs at educated people, Miss Honey tries to describe how an educated person would treat them in a hospital, or, say, defend them in court if they were accused of selling a faulty car. Mr. Wormwood, who does partake in such a shady business, replies "What car? Sued by who? Who you been talking to?"
276* ''Film/MinorityReport'' has the villain realize the protagonists are onto him when he's caught in one of these. [[spoiler:Anderton's wife asks about Anne Lively's death, and Burgess pretends not to know about it but says he'll see if "anyone drowned a woman by the name of—what did you say her name was?". "Anne Lively... but I never said she drowned."]]
277* In ''Film/MurderIsMyBeat'', Patrick questions the suspect Eden's roommate Patsy, telling her only that he's investigating a homicide. When Patsy correctly guesses that Frank Dean was the victim, Patrick says, "Who said Dean was the victim?" Patsy replies, "You. You were the one who was talking about him all evening." Patrick is still suspicious and says, "Jumped to a quick conclusion, didn't you?" [[spoiler:Sure enough, Patsy turns out to have been involved in the {{blackmail}} operation that led to the man's death, although she didn't kill him.]]
278* ''Film/MyBloodyValentine3D'': [[spoiler:Tom]] when he says that the message written in blood above Megan's body was the same one she had written in her Valentines card to Axel. Sarah then asks how he knew that Megan was dead, or what was written above her body.
279* In ''Film/NewTownKillers'', the protagonist Sean is offered a large sum of money by two businessmen for them to hunt him throughout the city until either they kill him or he survives the night. At one point he goes to hide out at his friend Sam's house and tells him there are guys trying to kill him. Sam later mentions the two guys. "I never said there were two of them."
280* In ''Film/OlympusHasFallen'', Mike Banning is a Secret Service agent who is apparently the only free survivor of an attack on the White House by Korean terrorists. He then comes across another survivor and fellow Secret Service agent who claims to have been hiding during the whole attack, but during their conversation mentions "This Kang guy is insane" referring to the leader of the attack. Banning then realizes that there's no way he could've known Kang's name if he was indeed hiding out in the White House the whole time and correctly deduces that he is a traitor working with the terrorists.
281* ''Film/PatriotGames'': A version of this is used after Jack Ryan's IRA informant gives him pictures of the people who had attempted to kill Ryan (and in a separate attack, his wife and daughter). Jack's superior dismisses the information, believing that mole is trying to mislead Jack. "All he has to do is show you a few pictures of a girl..." Jack realizes he never told the man he was looking for a female assassin and realizes the information must be legitimate.
282* ''Film/ThePoliceAreBlunderingInTheDark'': When the photographer realizes who must be responsible for the disappearance of the girls who modeled for him, he immediately confronts the culprit. The culprit in turn claims to believe that it’s ''the photographer'' who was driven by twisted psychology to murder the women. However, only the killer knows where the bodies went…
283* ''Film/PrimalFear'': Played with. Aaron is a suspect charged with murdering a Catholic Cardinal. The played with part comes in [[spoiler:when Aaron appears to have multiple-personality disorder and doesn't remember what his other personality, named Roy, does. It helps him beat the first-degree murder charges for an insanity verdict. During the trial, Aaron turns into Roy and he attacks the prosecutor while he's on the stand. This causes a mistrial and the judge to find him insane. After the trial, arrogant defense attorney Martin Vail, who begins to feel sorry and care for Aaron, feels proud of himself, only for Aaron to (possibly intentionally) let a detail that only Roy would know slip: Roy attacking the prosecutor. It's at this point that Aaron confesses that he never had multiple-personality disorder and faked his Aaron personality to con everybody.]]
284* In ''Literature/PrimaryColors'', Jack Stanton is accused of fathering a child with a 17-year-old girl. His wife explains to him that she doesn't think he's the father; however, the fact he tried to find out suggests he had a relationship with her.
285* In ''Film/TheProwler1951'', Susan is pretty much convinced that Webb murdered her husband John, but is in denial about it. However, when Webb slips and mentions the exact amount of John's life insurance policy, she can can no longer lie to herself and has to acknowledge that Webb's act was premeditated.
286* ''Film/RedEye'': Although the protagonist never realizes it and the film never makes a point of it later on, early in Jack ends up letting slip the name of the protagonist's father, which at that point she had never told him.
287* ''Film/RehearsalForMurder'': The murderer gives themselves away by revealing that they knew Monica had a flashlight in her dresser drawer: something only someone who was in her bedroom on the night she died could have known.
288* In ''Film/ReindeerGames'', when everything's seemingly over [[spoiler: and Rudy, Ashley, and Gabe -- the survivors of the casino robbery -- have gathered, Ashley mentions Rudy's cellmate Nick was stabbed with a shiv... but Rudy only told her his cellmate was killed; he never told her ''how''. A few moments later, a now-doubting Gabe gets offed by Ashley, and Nick turns out to have [[NotQuiteDead been hiding]]...]]
289* In ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'', when Brad asks if he can use the phone, Frank smirks into the camera and comments on Brad and Janet getting a flat tire, even though Brad never mentioned it. However, Brad doesn't pick up on this. Theatre productions vary on how meaningful this detail is, as any of the motorcyclists passing by on their way to the castle could have mentioned the unoccupied car. Some directors do try to establish there was a car-trap on the road, either to get random passersby [[spoiler: for fresh body parts if necessary]], Brad and Janet specifically [[spoiler: for their connection to Dr. Scott, although this colours his own arrival]], and in one instance the original trap was replaced by a tire-puncturer by one of the guests in an attempt to somehow incriminate Riff-Raff and Magenta after the play's normal ending. The movie leaves it unclear if Frank is just amused at this.
290* In ''Ruby Herring Mysteries: Her Last Breath'', when Ruby confronts the killer with her suspicions, her theory is further confirmed when the killer names the specific poison used on the victim when that information hasn't been revealed to the public.
291* In the third ''Film/RushHour'' film, Carter and Lee deliver Genevieve to [[spoiler:Minister Reynard]]. He orders her to take off her wig and show him the Shy Shen list tattooed on her head. Lee whispers to Carter that they never told him she was the list, revealing that [[spoiler:Reynard]] is working for the Triad.
292* ''Film/{{Scream}}'':
293** In ''Film/Scream3'', when John Milton tries to play down his connection to Rena Reynolds [[spoiler:a.k.a., Sidney Prescott's Mom]].
294--->'''Milton:''' Do you know how many actors I've worked with? Hundreds, thousands.\
295'''Gail:''' Dewey didn't say she was an actor...
296** ''Film/Scream4'': [[spoiler:Jill's]] master plan falls apart once she comments about having a similar wound to [[spoiler:Gail]], a fact only the latter's attacker could know.
297* In ''Film/{{Selfless}}'', after undergoing shedding and waking up in the new body, Damien starts experiencing hallucinations of a woman and a child. Albright explains that the hallucinations are probably just a combination of Damien getting used to the new body and having past memories getting jumbled. The Latino woman he's seen is probably a woman he used to date and forgot. Damien points out that he never said the woman was Latino.
298* ''Theatre/{{Sleuth}}'': Subverted; Wyke mocks Inspector Doppler for trying this tactic on him, pointing out that he hasn't said anything that wasn't an obvious inference from what Doppler ''had'' said.
299* The inverted form occurs in ''Film/SomeGuyWhoKillsPeople''. Sheriff Fuller is convinced Ben is making a FalseConfession, and talks to him about the notes the killer sent: saying he found the one reading "I am a monster" particularly chilling. Ben says "Thank you", and Fuller then tells him that there never was a note reading that. The "I am a monster" note was from the 'Son of Sam' case.
300* In ''Film/SuddenDeath'', one of the villains gives himself away by mentioning Darren's daughter by name when Darren had only told him he has a daughter and that she's being held hostage. He immediately {{Lampshade|Hanging}}s his mistake.
301-->Damn it. I always do things like that. You never said her name, did you?
302* Mario and Luigi are already suspicious of Koopa in ''Film/SuperMarioBros1993'' when he tries to play a lawyer, but it only intensifies when he asks about the meteorite piece they got from Daisy, which he'd have no reason to know about.
303* In ''Film/TheTerrorOfTinyTown'', Bat Haines tells Nancy that Tex has been murdered before anyone except the murderer could have known that he was dead.
304* In ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'', [=MI6=] becomes suspicious of corrupt media mogul Elliot Carver's involvement in a diplomatic incident between the UK and China when his newspaper, ''Tomorrow'', reports certain details of the incident (such as the British corpses being machine-gunned with the same type of ammo issued to the Chinese air force) before British Intelligence was able to confirm them.
305* At the end of ''Film/TransformersRiseOfTheBeasts'', [[spoiler:Noah is in the middle of a job interview and is having trouble relating his experiences from his time with the Autobots and Maximals to the interviewer without sounding irrational. Then, the interviewer specifically asks him about his time in Peru, to which Noah remarks that he never brought up which country he was abroad in. The interviewer reveals that the US government has been aware of what Noah has been doing the entire time and wants to thank him for his actions by not only giving him access to the healthcare his younger brother needs but by also giving Noah a position within a clandestine organization of which the interviewer is a member. He then reveals that the room they are is a front for a hangar containing Cybertronian artifacts and gives Noah a card with information about the organization in question: ''Franchise/GIJoe'']].
306* In ''Film/WildChild'', when Poppy is before the Honour Court for setting fire to the school, [[spoiler: head girl Harriet accidentally reveals that ''she'' was actually the one who started the fire by talking about the very specific lighter that Poppy supposedly used, when no one has mentioned anything about a lighter.]]
307* In ''Film/{{Wishmaster}}'', Alex becomes suspicious that the Djinn is impersonating Professor Derleth when the professor mentions Alex's boss, only for Alex to point out that she had never told the professor where she worked.
308* ''Film/TheWomanInTheWindow'': Played straight so often that it stops being suspenseful and becomes hilarious; the guilt-ridden professor lets slip every possible detail, including knowing the man was murdered (when the body hadn't turned up yet), knowing where the body was placed, that it happened at night, etc. His friends are so dense that they wave off every comment and never suspect him, but you would think he'd just learn to keep his mouth shut, especially when having casual conversations ''with the district attorney''.
309* ''Film/WomanOnTheRun'': Only the killer, the detective, and Eleanor know that the murderer shot at Frank but missed because he was aiming at his shadow. Danny inadvertently gives this slight information away, tipping Eleanor off right away that he's the murderer.
310[[/folder]]
311
312[[folder:Literature]]
313* At the end of the ''Literature/AToZMysteries'' book ''The Lucky Lottery'', the three main kids confront their prime suspect over a stolen lottery ticket.
314-->'''Ruth Rose:''' And ''your'' fingerprints are on the mantel where you stole the Christmas card!\
315'''Dot Calm:''' You're crazy, kid. I was wearing glov...
316* In one of the minor adventures the protagonists have while traveling from place to place in ''Literature/TheBalancedSword'', they're asked to investigate a murder, and the murderer gives himself away by mentioning a detail he shouldn't have known.
317* ''Literature/BenSnow'':
318** In "Frontier Street", the murderer gives himself away when he says how many times the victim had been struck over the head: something he would not have been able to tell just from looking at the body.
319** In "The Man in the Alley", Ben realises that the mastermind behind the assassination UsefulNotes/WilliamMcKinley is [[spoiler: Arthur Plenty]] because [[spoiler:his editorial mentions the exact price Leon Czolgosz paid for the gun he used before Czolgosz had confessed all the details. Ben knew the price because he had been tailing Czolgosz when he bought it, but Plenty could only have known if he was the person who provided the cash]].
320** In "Brothers on the Beach", the killer slips up when they mention that they didn't have someone holding the wingtip steady during the first attempted flight of the Wright Brothers Flyer, which was when the murder occurred. However, the killer had gone some trouble to establish an alibi of not being present at the first attempt, and shouldn't have known what Orville and Wilbur did or didn't do.
321* ''Literature/{{Brotherband}}'': Hal and his band ensnare Zavac by telling the Korpaljo, the leader of the town they're in, that Zavac is hiding their share of plundered emeralds in his hold, from the mines in Limmat. When the Korpaljo interrogates Zavac:
322-->'''Zavac:''' "That's not true! I was never anywhere near Limmat!"\
323'''Korpaljo:''' "Who said anything about ''Limmat?''"
324* ''Literature/BrotherCadfael'': The inversion happens in the third book, ''Monk's Hood''. The prime suspect (the victim's stepson) thinks the murder was a stabbing when it was actually a poisoning.
325* Creator/JohnDicksonCarr:
326** Creator/JohnDicksonCarr made one of the greatest examples of this trope in his novel ''The Emperor's Snuff-Box'', in which the killer's guilt is revealed by a small piece of information which obviously showed they had information they could only have known were they the killer, but which is accepted without question. At the beginning of the book, protagonist Eve Neill is suddenly visited by her ex-husband Ned Atwood in the middle of the night. While they are arguing, Ned looks out of Eve's bedroom window (which has a curtain drawn over it) and claims to see her future father-in-law, Sir Maurice Lawes, handling a "snuff-box thing" when somebody walks into Lawes' study. Later, they both see Sir Maurice with his head bashed in, the snuff-box smashed to bits, and a gloved hand turning off a light. Atwood later falls down a flight of stairs into a coma, causing Eve's testimony to become unsupported. [[spoiler:We later learn Sir Maurice had bought the snuff-box earlier that day, showing it off to his family. The snuff-box had the facade of a pocket-watch, and Lawes had written about it in a journal on his study desk. At the book's end, it is revealed that Atwood, from the distance he "saw" Sir Maurice with the snuff-box, could not have known it was a snuff-box due to its watch-facade, and that the only way he could have known it was that he had killed Sir Maurice himself, smashed the snuff-box without ever seeing what it looked like, and discerning its nature from seeing the words "snuff-box" written in Sir Maurice's journal. Since Atwood had convinced Neill she had seen Sir Maurice alive herself, she had repeated this testimony and convinced the police for awhile that she had lied and killed him.]]
327** ''The Emperor's Snuff-Box'' also has another version of this trope, in which another suspect is found to be lying about seeing the light through the closed door of Sir Maurice's study [[spoiler: when the carpeted floor would not allow light through, in order to hide the fact that they were trying to steal one of Sir Maurice's antiques when they found Sir Maurice already murdered.]]
328* In one of Creator/AgathaChristie's short stories, a man is killed by a blow on the head with a bronze statue. Two of the suspects--his wife and her lover--both confess to the crime: she says that she shot him, and he--that he stabbed him with a small dagger. On further interrogation, both tell that they assumed the other one was guilty and so lied to protect each other. [[spoiler:But actually this trope is [[InvokedTrope invoked]]: they are ''both'' guilty. They have planned the murder together and made the false confessions to make the police believe them to be innocent.]]
329* ''Literature/{{City of Bones|1995}}'' by Creator/MarthaWells: When Khat, Sagai, and Elen question the academia scholar about the BlackMarket relics they think he bought, they know his denials are false when he says he never had anything to do with a "fourth [[FantasticCasteSystem tier]]" dealer--they hadn't mentioned the dealer's social standing.
330* Reversed in Creator/TomClancy's ''Literature/ClearAndPresentDanger'', when the FBI is investigating the mistreatment of prisoners on a Coast Guard ship. He says that one of the prisoners was executed (he wasn't, but they staged an execution by hanging to get a second prisoner to confess everything) to which the captain replies "We captured two prisoners, we gave you two prisoners alive, so who did we shoot?"
331* ''Literature/TheCrownerJohnMysteries'': In ''The Sanctuary Seeker'', a suspect gives himself away when he says he has never heard of the victim Aelfgar of Totnes. John had said the victim was named Aelfgar, but not that he came from Totnes.
332* In the short story "Death of the King" by Theodore Mathieson, UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat is dying, not of sickness as the historical records will claim, but of poison. He and his physician are trying to find out WhodunnitToMe, [[spoiler:until the physician offers Alexander a cushion "for the great pain in your back", and the emperor realises he knows more about how this poison works than he admitted]].
333* In Creator/KatherineKurtz's ''[[Literature/{{Deryni}} The Quest for Saint Camber]]'', a member of the secretive Camberian Council is found dead in a secret passageway of the king's palace. In a conversation with Nigel (King Kelson's uncle/regent/heir presumptive), his eldest son Conall says the victim's entire name, which the younger man is not supposed to know. Nigel realizes Conall had been secretly working with the dead man (to obtain arcane powers reserved for the monarch) and killed him in that stairwell; Conall attacks his father with those powers and leaves him in a coma.
334* ''Literature/DesertStar'': Subverted. Detective Renee Ballard zeroes in on Nelson Hastings as the killer because Hastings said he didn't remember any black people volunteering for the Pearlman campaign, when Renee never told him that murder victim Laura Wilson was black. However, when Renee confronts Hastings with this gotcha, he says he looked up "Laura Wilson murder Los Angeles" on the internet and found a news story with Wilson's picture. And as it turns out, Hastings didn't do it.
335* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
336** In ''Literature/GuardsGuards'', Lupine Wonse's immediate response to Vimes reporting the destruction of the Elucidated Brethren's headquarters was a suspiciously specific "Any of them get out?" Because Vimes was distracted, he doesn't pick up on this until a EurekaMoment later on.
337** ''Literature/FeetOfClay'':
338*** Inverted when Carrot becomes sure that Dorfl didn't kill Dr. Hopkins when he agrees to Carrot's statement that Dorfl beat him to death with an iron bar, when in fact he was killed with a loaf of [[IndestructibleEdible dwarf bread]].
339*** Played straight later in the book, when Vimes figures out how the Patrician was being poisoned, [[spoiler: with arsenic in candles.]] He confronts the vampire he suspects being behind it, as well as many other suspicious events, and knows he is guilty when he implies the vampire got ATasteOfHisOwnMedicine and sees him [[spoiler: glance at the candles in the room]], despite having no way of knowing how Lord Vetinari was being poisoned.
340*** PlayedForLaughs earlier in the book, when Vimes tells Sergeant Detritus that he got a report that a troll in uniform nailed one of Crysophrase's men to a wall by his ears. Detritus asks if Hardcore saw the troll's badge, and when told no, says any troll can wear a uniform.
341---->'''Vimes''': By the way, that was a lucky guess of yours, guessing that it was Hardcore.\
342'''Detritus''': It come to me in a flash, sir. I fort: what bastard who sells Slab to kids deserves bein' nailed up by his ears, sir, and... bingo. Dis idea just formed in my head.\
343'''Vimes''': That's what I thought.
344** Played with in ''Literature/{{Night Watch|Discworld}}''. After an antagonist officer tells Vimes of a break-in, Vimes asked what had been stolen. The other officer tries to invoke this trope, replying "Did I say they stole anything, sir?" and Vimes shuts him down with "Well, no, you didn't. That was me jumping to what we call a ''conclusion''. Did they steal anything, then, or did they break in to deliver a box of chocolates and a small complimentary basket of fruit?" (Although to be fair to the officer, Discworld is home to anti-crimes such as 'breaking and ''decorating'''.)
345** Crispin Horsefry in ''Literature/GoingPostal'' has habit of protesting his innocence even when not directly accused of anything. When Vetinari has a meeting with him and the other "investors" in the Grand Trunk clacks system, Horsefry insists everything they have done is perfectly legal, and even drops this glaring clanger:
346--->'''Vetinari:''' And, indeed, some rumours about the death of young Mr. Dearheart last month.\
347'''Horsefry:''' There is no proof that we had anything to do with the boy's murder!\
348'''Vetinari:''' Ah, so you too have heard people saying he was murdered? These rumours just ''fly'' around, don't they...
349** Vimes uses it in ''Literature/{{Thud}}'' when talking to the Troll crime boss Chrysoprase. Chrysoprase lets slip that his knowledge of a crime scene is greater than what the public would know. When Vimes calls him out, Chrysoprase dismisses the accusation as gossip that he heard from the Dwarfs. Or well, had Dwarfs beaten up or threatened until they told him. He did, in fact, have no connection to it.
350** ''Literature/MakingMoney'' uses this in a rather meta way. Moist is being interrogated by [[ObfuscatingStupidity Carrot]], all while under the guise of being an upstanding pillar-of-the-community businessman. When he tries to shut Carrot down due to him, Moist, being aware of this trope...
351--->'''Moist:''' Look, [[LampshadeHanging I know how this sort of thing goes]]. You just [[PerpSweating sit here and ask questions]] and eventually, I slip up and [[DiscussedTrope reveal something incriminating]], right?\
352'''Carrot:''' Thank you, sir.\
353'''Moist:''' For what?\
354'''Carrot:''' For telling me that you know how this sort of thing goes, sir.
355* In Creator/OrsonScottCard's ''Literature/EndersShadow'':
356** [[BigBad Achilles]] slips up and tells the other orphans that Poke [[EyeScream had been stabbed in the eye]], when he couldn't possibly know that. Nice show, Achilles, nice show.
357** Colonel Graff does a slip up on the phone to Bean's caretaker (a very intelligent nun) when he says the name Bean told him about, Achilles (pronounced uh-kill-eez). The nun points out that since Bean is from the French section of Rotterdam he would have pronounced it ah-sheel and correctly calls him out for spying on Bean's journal.
358* In the ''Literature/FatherBrown'' short story "The Green Man", the victim is an Admiral who is found dead in a pond close to his home, on the evening when he was expected to return home from a longer sea voyage. Upon being told that the Admiral is drowned, the murderer asks: [[spoiler: "Where was he found?"]] which tips off Father Brown. Note that Father Brown is older than radio. If the Admiral had drowned at any time during the voyage, his family would probably not have found out until his ship came back to England. [[spoiler: Unless you know that he drowned in the pond, the reasonable thing would have been to assume that the body was lost at sea.]] Father Brown bites his tongue at the actual tip-off, but this trope comes into play in the big reveal at the end.
359* ''Literature/FelseInvestigates'': Played with in ''Death and The Joyful Woman'' by Creator/EllisPeters. Kitty confides in Dominic that she intends to confess to the murder; seeking to dissuade her, he tells her exactly why she couldn't have done it, because her story fits the vague description of the murder the police have made public, but not the reserved details he knows of through his father, the chief investigator. Too late, he realises he'd have done better to keep quiet: if she'd tried to confess, the police would have known she was innocent by the same reasoning, but now she actually knows details the police haven't made public, she's in danger of making the police think she's guilty. Which is exactly what happens.
360* In one of the ''Literature/FireThief'' trilogy, the Avenger almost pulls this off and discovers the boy he is talking to is helping Prometheus when the boy mentions the shopkeeper looking for a spade (to dig up some buried treasure). But the boy quickly says he was running down the street shouting "half a million dollars for a spade."
361* In ''Literature/HanSoloAtStarsEnd'', Han finds that one of the three rebels he's transporting has murdered their leader, who just managed to scrawl the name of the destination planet, Mytus VII, in the table in front of him before he died. Han figures out who the traitor is by [[spoiler:telling each one separately that he suspects another, and then telling them they're going to Mytus VIII, IX or X. He gets them all together, supposedly to research the target, and makes them show their datapads; the traitor is the one who mentally corrected it to the planet he already knew was the real destination]].
362* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'': Dobby inadvertently reveals that he has been stopping Harry's letters when he mentions that Harry's friends haven't written to him — which he should have no way of knowing.
363* ''Literature/TheHauntingOfAlaizabelCray'': Used near the beginning -- the hero finds a young woman in the part of London infested by gribbly things, and asks the governor of a local mental asylum if he's lost any patients- he mentions her being found in the Old Quarter, despite not being told. In this case, it could be a reasonable assumption but the hero decides to be careful and gives a false description- [[spoiler:a good idea, since said governor is part of the cult that had captured the girl...]]
364* This trope comes into play at the climax of ''Hope Never Dies'' by Andrew Shaffer. Amateur detective UsefulNotes/JoeBiden (just [[MST3KMantra roll with it]]) has retrieved a cache of drugs, and is on a train back to Delaware to hand it over to the authorities, when his FriendOnTheForce intercepts him and sits down to compare notes. He mentions [[spoiler:how fentanyl's potency makes it extremely valuable, gram for gram--enough that a fortune's worth could be hidden in an energy-drink can. It's plausible enough that he knows the drug being smuggled is fentanyl. The problem is, he has no ''[[DirtyCop legitimate]]'' way of knowing that Biden is carrying just such a can in his duffel bag...]]
365%%* ''Literature/InDeath'': Used at some point or another in ''almost every single book'' in the series.%%How?
366* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'':
367** Jaine clues in that [[spoiler:Pam]] is the killer in ''The PMS Murder'' after stating Rochelle talked to a building inspector on the day of the murder, despite Jaine never mentioning a building inspector. This is because [[spoiler:Pam ''was'' that building inspector]].
368** Sam Weinstock mentions that Jaine fixed the terrible hairdo Gustavo Mendez gave her in ''Death by Pantyhose''. Jaine notices she never mentioned where she got the crappy haircut, and Sam then reveals she set it up to drive Andrew Ferguson away from Jaine.
369** In ''Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge'', Scotty's ex-wife Elise describes the murder weapon (a frozen chocolate yule log), even down to the writing on it [[note]]"Merry Christmas, Aunt Harriet". Scotty was [[TheScrooge ''really''' cheap.]][[/note]], which had not been mentioned in the media. Elise explains that she learned it from talking to Scotty's current wife, Missy, which Detective Muntner confirms.
370* ''Literature/TheLegendOfSunKnight'': The plot is set off when a Death Knight (a powerful undead creature) appears and seems to hold a grudge against Sun Knight. Sun investigates and discovers that he was tortured to death; worse, a rumor spreads that Sun did it. During the summation, Sun points out that only the murderer could have spread this rumor because only he and his victim knew that he was ''tortured'', and a terrifying undead creature like the Death Knight couldn't just walk up to people and gossip. [[note]]This isn't ''entirely'' true; the necromancer who raised the Death Knight knew how he died, and the Death Knight has a magic item that lets him appear to be human. But Sun couldn't reveal his association with them, and he knew neither would implicate him.[[/note]]
371* ''Literature/TheMazeRunner'': In ''The Scorch Trials'', while Thomas never mentions to Brenda that his group calls themselves [[spoiler:Gladers]], she ends up mentioning it in casual conversation. This foreshadows the fact that she and Jorge had actually been working for [[spoiler:WICKED all along; she most likely knows the term because she heard them call themselves that while she monitored the Maze]].
372* ''Multiple Choice'', by Janet Tashjian, has the main character fall victim to this. Monica chooses to write something nasty about her best friend on the upstairs school bathroom's stalls. When confronted about it, she denies vehemently and convinces her friend that she wasn't the one who wrote it. As they walk away, she lets slip that "I'm never even up there"—despite her friend never saying which bathroom it was. A fight ensues.
373* ''Literature/NeroWolfe'': In ''Literature/TooManyCooks'', [[spoiler:Raymond Liggett]] casually mentions the name of the sauce used in the taste-testing contest the chefs engaged in, despite supposedly being out of the state at the time and having no possible way of learning the information.
374* ''Literature/NickVelvet'':
375** In "The Theft of the Lopsided Cobweb", the killer gives themself away when they say Nick should be more careful when being shot at. As no one else was present, only the killer could know Nick was shot at.
376** In "The Theft of the Picture Postcards", Nick deduces the identity of a blackmailer when they mention the amount of money demanded, despite the victim never mentioning it.
377* ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'': Ares falls victim to this in ''The Lightning Thief''; when Percy deduces that he's been taking orders from the thing in the pit, Ares angrily replies, "I'm the god of war! I take orders from no one! I don't have dreams!" when Percy didn't bring up dreams at all during his rundown.
378* ''Literature/TheRadix'': Hunting for Wurm, an escaped asylum patient, Adriana Borjia interrogates Cori. After Cori says "I didn't see him", Adrianna smiles and says: "I never said the patient was a man". It isn't considered "him" is often the default, or that it wouldn't be a bad guess to assume that someone able-bodied enough to escape an asylum would be a man...
379* In ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'', Elijah discusses the matter of Jander's deactivation with Amadiro, and suddenly Amadiro states that the woman at whose house the RidiculouslyHumanRobot was had a very unusual definition of husband. While it might have made sense for him that the robot was her ''lover'' (it's a FreeLoveFuture), there is no way he could have figured out the ''husband'' part; for Aurorans, marriage is a union with a potential for kids, so a RoboticSpouse in totally ridiculous. As such, he manages to prove Amadiro was attempting a GrandTheftPrototype (he desperately needed such robots, and their designer refused to cooperate) by thoroughly questioning Jander, so the guy is forced to fold before the investigation destroys his career completely.
380* A case of the villain inadvertently using this against the protagonist occurs in ''[[Literature/AlexRider Scorpia]]'', when Julia Rothman tells Alex that Scorpia intends to activate a bioweapon that will kill a significant portion of the population. Alex, knowing that the weapon is designed to specifically target schoolchildren, blurts out that they can't murder children, causing Rothman to realise that Alex is a triple agent for [=MI6=] and that [=MI6=] have figured out how the weapon operates.
381* ''Literature/TheSherlockHolmesStoriesOfEdwardDHoch'': In "The Addleton Tragedy", one academic gives away their involvement in Dr. Addleton's death when they remark "I do not want my head bashed in, like Dr. Addleton"; not realising that, at the time, everyone believed Addleton had burned to death.
382* ''Literature/SimonArk'': In [[spoiler:"The Avenger from Outer Space"]], the killer gives himself away when he mentions that the victim ''started'' to reach into the water with both hands. As the victim only had a burn mark on one hand, and the one witness did to the event not recall that detail, only someone else present at the scene could have known that detail.
383* ''Literature/SmallChange'': In ''Farthing'', the murder victim appears to have been stabbed. The police forensic techs figure out that he actually died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but don't reveal this to the press. A bit later, one character reveals that they know that the victim was gassed.
384* Creator/DonaldSobol:
385** ''Literature/EncyclopediaBrown'': This happens quite a bit. Not generally for murders, but it happens.
386*** One story had Encyclopedia figuring out which member of a gang robbed a grocery store, his only piece of evidence being a knife left stuck into a watermelon. When confronting the gang, one of the members says the blade of his knife is a half-inch longer... despite the knife never having been taken out of the melon, and the watermelon specifically having been described as "huge" so that even the longer knife blade would still be completely hidden. True to form, the member in question turns out to have been the robber.
387*** Another Encyclopedia Brown story has someone getting shot in the foot by a BB gun. One of Bugs' friends shows up, and Encyclopedia tells him to run to the kid's house and get his shoe. The kid grabs the correct shoe, and Encyclopedia points out that unless he was the one who shot him, he couldn't have known which shoe to get. [[ConvictionByCounterfactualClue An innocent person would have had a 50 percent chance of guessing right]], but would probably have asked 'Which shoe?'
388*** Another story had a pair of rollerskates stolen from Encyclopedia while the latter was at the dentist. He asks his main suspect (a kid who had a doctor's appointment in the same building) if he was in Dr. Vivian Wilson's office. The kid claims "I never heard of him until you mentioned his name" and that he didn't go near Wilson's office because he "had a sprained wrist, not a toothache". In other words, despite supposedly never having heard of him, the kid not only knew that Dr. Wilson was a dentist but that he was a man despite his [[GenderBlenderName first name being "Vivian"]].
389** Also common in ''Literature/TwoMinuteMysteries'', by the same author—things like "Dr. Smith was murdered, where were you at the time?" "I haven't been to a dentist in years."
390* ''{{Literature/Spenser}}'' gets one of several hints the Stapleton family in ''Small Vices'' is lying about their son and his alleged non-involvement in the case Spenser has been hired to investigate when they specifically refer to it as a sex crime, since the fact that the victim was also murdered was far more likely to be of note to people who had supposedly only heard of it in passing. Their referring to it only a sex crime makes sense when, at the end of the book, [[spoiler:it's revealed it wasn't actually a murder—the victim and their son were playing a sex game involving EroticAsphyxiation and she accidentally died during it.]]
391* In ''Literature/StarTrekMillennium'', Vash knows exactly what neurotoxin ''she'' was attacked with without being told, alerting Bashir that she's pulling a WoundedGazelleGambit.
392* ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'': The last book, ''The Last Command'', features [[spoiler:Niles Ferrier attempting to accuse Talon Karrde of hiring an imperial assault team to attack a group of smugglers as [[FalseFlagOperation an example of the threat the Empire posed.]] He slips up when he mentions the name of the lieutenant leading the assault team ''before'' it's brought up by the person reading the planted evidence, [[GuiltyUntilSomeoneElseIsGuilty proving Karrde's innocence beyond a reasonable doubt]]. He nearly slipped up before that by mentioning that incriminating evidence was ''on'' the datacard before anyone announced it had been found, only for Ellor to immediately confirm it ''had'' been found.]]
393* ''Literature/TheThreeInvestigators'':
394** ''The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale '' had a case involving a whale where a suspect accidentally blurted out its species. The person could not have known this at the time.
395** On another occasion, someone asks what the "???" on their business card means. This is a OnceAnEpisode thing which wouldn't normally be significant, but one of the group notices that they didn't actually ''read'' the card, and must have seen it before.
396* In the ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' book ''First Among Sequels'', Thursday and Spike accuse a plumber of stealing money from a pensioner. His boss joins in with the accusation, saying "A thousand pounds, from a defenceless pensioner? How ''could'' you?" Thursday and Spike had never mentioned the amount.
397* This is how George Smiley discovers TheMole in the Secret Intelligence Service in Creator/JohnLeCarre's ''Literature/TinkerTailorSoldierSpy'': the man in question turned up at the Circus with not enough information about the unfolding Operation Testify crisis for him to have got it from the radio report, but too much to have overheard it from a phone conversation.
398* In Creator/RuthFrancesLong's ''Literature/TheTreacheryOfBeautifulThings'', Jack tells Jenny that after [[RuleOfSeven seven]] long years, her brother was gone. But she only told him she was after her brother, not how long ago he had vanished.
399* In "True Lies", a short mystery story starring Lieutenant Johnson and Sgt. Bolton, the genius detective sergeant has narrowed down the possible murderers to two, but doesn't know which one. Since he thinks his lieutenant partner (who is the {{Narrator}}, and who would be TooDumbToLive if he didn't know how to [[{{Masquerade}} hide it]] from his fellow cops) is the genius detective, and so is dependent on him for his own genius, he asks the lieutenant for the solution. Our narrator doesn't know and is eating dry granola, so he chokes and says (as an excuse) "Tense!" [[EurekaMoment This gives the sergeant the solution]]; the murderer was the one who referred to the victim in the past tense before it was generally known that she was dead.
400* ''Literature/TwoKindsOfTruth'': [[spoiler:Terence Spencer tries to avoid a subpoena by telling the person delivering it he doesn't know a "Terry Spencer" but she points out she only called him "Mr. Spencer".]]
401* ''Literature/TwoLittleGirlsInBlue'': When the FBI interview Norman Bond about the Frawley twins' kidnapping, they bring up his currently missing ex-wife, to which he snaps he had nothing to do with his "late" wife's disappearance. The feds take note of this, pointedly asking how he knows she's dead. While someone missing for seventeen years without a trace probably is dead in all likelihood, it makes Norman nervous. [[spoiler:It's later revealed he ''was'' responsible for his ex-wife's disappearance]].
402* In the ''Waco'' series by Creator/JTEdson, Waco uses this trick a few times to trip up a killer.
403* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': In Creator/GrahamMcNeill's ''Literature/HorusHeresy'' novel ''False Gods'', Loken knows that Erebus is lying to him because he pointed out that the interex had accused them of stealing a kinebrach's sword—and in fact, the interex had only accused them of stealing a weapon.
404* ''A Widow For A Year'': Inverted when the policeman deliberately gives the press false information about a murdered prostitute, saying she was killed WITH a struggle when there was no struggle. This enabled him to dismiss the two men who confessed as they were covered in bruises and scratches.
405* In ''Literature/WingsOfFire'', Tsunami and Starlight figure out that Blister killed [[spoiler:Kestrel]] when Blister tells Tsunami that she would have wanted to slash her mother's throat like what happened to [[spoiler:Kestrel]], even though she was only told that [[spoiler:Kestrel]] was stabbed by a [=SandWing's=] tail.
406[[/folder]]
407
408[[folder:Myths & Religion]]
409* The Cranes of Ibycus is a classic example of this trope, making it OlderThanFeudalism. According to a legend first recorded in the 2nd century BCE, the ancient Greek poet Ibycus was murdered by bandits on his way to the Isthmian Games. Only the cranes flying above witnessed the murder. Later the criminals gave themselves away by pointing out "The Cranes of Ibycus" to one another in public.
410[[/folder]]
411
412[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
413* The following storyline has been done several times in ProfessionalWrestling: A babyface wrestler is late to the building, possibly even showing up after the match he's advertised in has already started without him. He explains to the crowd that he's late because of ''a'' flat tire. His adversary gets on the mic and says the babyface is simply a coward who made up some story about ''four'' flat tires, which exposes that the adversary slashed the tires of the babyface.
414* In All Out 2021, with his originally scheduled opponent Pac unable to attend due to travel issues (which had plagued Pac and the Lucha Bros. beforehand, all of which were implied to have been caused by Andrade), Andrade and Chavo Guerrero Jr. were interviewed backstage. After having been asked point blank if they were the cause of Pac's travel issues, Chavo quickly interjected that he didn't even know the number for American Airlines, and then quickly backtracked and said "if that's the flight he was using."
415[[/folder]]
416
417[[folder:Radio]]
418* Parodied in Season 3, Episode 1 of ''Radio/BleakExpectations'':
419-->'''Pip Bin:''' The body was covered in hundreds of tiny wounds?\
420'''Inspector Whackwallop:''' Aha! I never said the body was covered in hundreds of tiny wounds!\
421'''Ripley:''' Actually, you did.\
422'''Whackwallop:''' Did I? Damn, that normally works. Aha! I never said he was an apprentice blacksmith!\
423'''Pip Bin:''' And nor did I.\
424'''Whackwallop:''' Damn.
425* A "Five Minute Mystery" titled [[http://www.otr.net/r/fmin/74.ram The Return of Mr. Lawrence]] plays it by the book: a murdered woman's maid accuses the woman's former husband of poisoning her. The police never said it was poison.
426* In NPR's [[Radio/StarWarsRadioDramas radio adaptation]] of ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'', Leia's rebel allies inform her of the Death Star's existence, which at this point in time is still top secret. Knowing that a high-ranking Imperial officer is infatuated with Leia, she and her father invite them to pay him a visit, hoping that he might start bragging if he thinks he can impress Leia, allowing them to potentially glean some valuable details. He does, and everything is going according to plan until Leia accidentally refers to the station as the "Death Star" even though the officer hadn't mentioned the name. Things get ugly from there.
427[[/folder]]
428
429[[folder:Roleplay]]
430* ''Roleplay/NanQuest'': This is how [[spoiler: Henry]] gives himself away as the Pilgrim- making a reference to Nan's previous encounter with the Pilgrim, which he shouldn't have known about.
431-->'''[[spoiler: Henry]]:''' I'm not too worried about you, though. If anyone's gonna make it through this, it's you. You're a survivor. Besides, worst case scenario, if he comes for you, you can just go out the window again.\
432'''Nan:''' [[spoiler: Henry.]] ''[{{beat}}]'' How did you know that?\
433'''[[spoiler: Henry]]:''' What?\
434'''Nan:''' I never told you that I escaped out the window. You weren't there.\
435'''[[spoiler: Henry]]:''' ''[{{beat}}]'' Oops. ''[attacks Nan]''
436[[/folder]]
437
438[[folder:Theatre]]
439* In Creator/DavidMamet's ''Theatre/GlengarryGlenRoss'', this is how the culprit of the office robbery reveals himself. [[spoiler:Levene calls Williamson out on lying about cashing Lingk's check. But the previous night was the one night in Williamson's entire life that he forgot to cash the firm's checks at the bank. That means the only time Levene could have possibly seen Lingk's check was last night when the robbery occurred, thus implicating Levene as the thief.]]
440* From ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'':[[note]]Earlier in the scene, the group has learned that the dog whose death Angel orchestrated in return for a payout belonged to Benny.[[/note]]
441-->'''Angel:''' Have compassion, Benny just lost his cat.\
442'''Benny:''' My dog, but I appreciate that.\
443'''Angel:''' My cat had a fall, and I went through Hell.\
444'''Benny:''' It's like losing a--how did you know she fell?\
445'''Collins:''' CHAMPAGNE!?
446[[/folder]]
447
448[[folder:Video Games]]
449* The ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' games use this a lot.
450** In ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'':
451*** In the first case, Frank Sahwit claims that the murder weapon was a clock, when Phoenix thinks it's a statue. Prosecutor Winston Payne interjects and confirms that it's a clock made to ''look'' like a statue, which verbally tells you the time when you tilt its head. Phoenix then points out that this contradicts Sahwit's claim that he never entered the victim's apartment, because there's no way he could have guessed that it was a clock unless he'd interacted with it and heard it tell the time.
452*** April May, the witness of the second case, makes a similar mistake to Frank Sahwit above in revealing that she knew the Thinker statuette in Mia's office (the murder weapon), the twin of the one in the first case, was a clock. This contradicts her claims of being just a concerned bystander, because just like Sahwit, she couldn't have guessed on her own that the statuette was a clock. She initially claims that she heard it tell the time during the murder, but this proves impossible as Mia had had the statuette's clock mechanism removed prior to her death; she then declares that she saw the statuette in a store, which also doesn't hold up since both clocks were handmade by Phoenix's friend, Larry. In this case, she's not the murderer (obviously, considering that we saw the killer's face at the start), but she ''had'' been wiretapping Mia's phone on behalf of her boss, Redd White, to listen in on a conversation in which Mia said it was a clock.
453*** Later in the same case, Redd White describes a glass light stand falling over in his testimony. This immediately blows a hole in his account, as while there was indeed a glass light stand in the room and it did indeed fall over, White claims to have witnessed the whole thing from a nearby hotel window, which was at exactly the wrong angle to see the light stand. The only thing visible from the window was a pile of glass shards that could have been anything (and weren't particularly easy to make out, for that matter). Hence, Phoenix argues that the only way he could have recognized it was a light stand was if he'd actually been inside the office when he witnessed the crime... that is to say, he's the murderer. Edgeworth then has White confess to placing the wiretap in Mia's office a week prior instead of April May, during which time he claims White would have seen the light stand, but Phoenix presents the stand's receipt, which shows that Mia bought it the very day before she was killed.
454** ''[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations Trials and Tribulations]]'':
455*** In the second case, "The Stolen Turnabout", [[spoiler:Luke Atmey claims the [[AbsenceOfEvidence lack of fingerprints]] on the alarm button on the victim's office (which the murderer is known to have pressed) is proof that Ron [=DeLite=] is the culprit since Ron was wearing the [=Mask☆DeMasque=] costume at the time, which included gloves. Not exactly the best argument at the best of times, since [[SuspectIsHatless anyone can put on gloves]], but the only reason the ''court'' knew this little fact at the time is because Ron included it in his testimony... while Luke was on trial for a different crime, in a different courtroom. The only way he could've known that Ron was wearing his costume was if he'd seen it first-hand in the victim's office right after the crime was committed]].
456*** In Case 3, "Recipe for a Turnabout", this is done, ironically enough, by saying something was poison. Specifically, [[spoiler:Phoenix lies and says that a completely useless green plastic bottle (it contained ear medication used by the victim) that has Furio Tigre's fingerprints on it contained the poison used to kill the victim. Tigre laughs and calls Phoenix an idiot, since he should already know that the poison was in the ''brown glass'' bottle, not that one, so his evidence doesn't prove anything. And yes, Phoenix ''did'' already know that, as the bottles' contents had been established earlier in the trial. Thing is, Tigre hadn't been in the courtroom when the bottles were brought up, so the only way Tigre could've known which bottle contained the poison was if he'd ''used'' it]].
457*** [[spoiler:Tigre digs himself even deeper in the anime adaptation, where he attempts to justify his knowledge regarding the bottle by admitting to impersonationg Phoenix during the original trial and ensuring the defendent's conviction; Phoenix then points out that Tigre would have had no reason to do so if he had no connection to the murder.]]
458** ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'': The villain of the first case has a ''really'' bad habit of running his mouth and does this no less than three times in the first case.
459*** The first time, he mentions that the victim, Shadi Smith, was bald- Shadi had been wearing a hat up until he died and was a vagrant who no one really knew, so the only way the villain could've known was if he'd knocked the hat off while killing Shadi. This causes Phoenix to suspect his involvement.
460*** The second time, he states that the cards used in the poker game Phoenix and Shadi were playing had blue backs. They were actually ''red''-backed due to an anti-cheating safeguard, and everyone who was at the crime scene legitimately knew this... but the murderer had taken an incriminating card and replaced it with a blue card, so the murderer, and ''only'' the murderer, would have thought the cards were blue.
461*** The third time is played with, as the decisive evidence puts him in a bit of a MortonsFork; either he [[spoiler: calls it out as a forgery]] and gets caught because there's no way he would've known that if he wasn't the one to [[spoiler: destroy the real evidence]], or says nothing and gets caught because of the hole the evidence poked in his argument. However, he also immediately jumps to [[spoiler: calling the evidence forged]] instead of merely expressing doubts, making it obvious that he knew for a fact [[spoiler: the evidence was forged.]]
462*** In the third case, a witness who's trying to convince the court that she didn't see the crime slips up and mentions that the victim was shot. The crime was put under a gag order, so nobody who wasn't actively involved with the crime or its investigation should know its details.[[spoiler: Turns out, she didn't ''[[ExactWords see]]'' the crime, because she's secretly blind. She ''heard'' the sound of the shot.]]
463** ''VisualNovel/GyakutenKenji2'':
464*** In the first case, Shelly de Killer [[spoiler:refers to the victim by his full name during a cross-examination, while up until then Edgeworth had only ever referred to him by surname (and, in fact, didn't even ''know'' his first name until that point). It doesn't mean what you think it means, but it does reveal him as more connected to the case than he claims]].
465*** In Case 2, Frank Sahwit comments that he swears he didn't [[spoiler:hear the scream of the person who discovered the body]]. Edgeworth points out that, normally, [[spoiler:if someone is told a scream rang out during a murder, that'd they'd assume it belonged to the victim, not a witness]], and that he never mentioned [[spoiler:who they believe had screamed]]. Frank admits at this point that [[spoiler:he was the one who found the body]].
466*** Sawhit mentions [[spoiler:a ring]] on the body of Case 2's victim. Since the body was positioned such that [[spoiler:a sheet covered his hands]], Frank couldn't have known it was there if he had only observed from outside the room, as he claims. [[spoiler: It turns out he'd managed to enter the room and look at the body up close.]]
467*** During a Logic Chess segment in Case 2, a witness [[spoiler:refers to Edgeworth as "Prosecutor Edgeworth"]]. Edgeworth points out that [[spoiler:he never once told them his profession]] leading Edgeworth to conclude that [[spoiler:the witness was eavesdropping on his earlier conversations (particularly since he was pretending to be a defense attorney's assistant at the time).]]
468*** It turns up often in Logic Chess segments. Chances are that if you see a witness mention something you haven't heard of before, or that they couldn't possibly have known, you need to jump on it.
469** ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneySpiritOfJustice'':
470*** The final witness of case 3 knows a handful of things that only the killer would know. For example, [[spoiler:that Zeh'lot died between 2 and 3 PM, and that the stone slab fell onto him, even though he shouldn't reach that conclusion from the rebel hideout's photo alone. However, he's not the killer; his wife did it, and she told him how the crime happened]].
471*** In "Turnabout Time Traveler", Larry says that [[spoiler:there were two pegabulls at the reception hall in the night of the crime... yet that's something only someone who was in the cargo hold that night would know because the court didn't tell him. And he wasn't supposed to wander through the zeppelin]].
472* [[spoiler:Souma Miou]] is outed as the one who had been bullying Rizu in ''VisualNovel/AProfile'' because when confronted with a little evidence blurted out the location the evidence had been found in.
473* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'' uses the "innocent character taking the fall" variation. When Juwar is asked for more details of what he did in the city of Mintaka as [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters the Mourning Mistral]], he tells Sagi that he planted the bomb in a nearby building after the election speeches... not knowing that the real Mourning Mistral broke their pattern of targeting buildings to target an airpod instead.
474* In ''VideoGame/BatmanBegins'', Arkham Asylum doctor Emma Thomas ([[CanonForeigner not in the film]]) has been suspicious of Dr. Crane for a while. When Crane's thugs ask her why she was in the basement looking at the canisters, she claims she got lost and doesn't know anything about the toxin. The thug replies "I never said anything about a toxin."
475* ''VideoGame/CallOfJuarezGunslinger'' centers around bounty Hunter Silas Greaves describing his revenge quest against a gang of three outlaws who murdered his brothers to the patrons of a bar. At one point in his story, he is tracking down one of them, who Silas refers to as "some asshole named Jim". However later on, [[spoiler:the bartender]] refers to said outlaw as "Jim Reed", to which Silas replies "Yes, that ''was'' his last name", sounding oddly pleased. [[spoiler:This is one of the things that confirms to Silas that the bartender is actually the BigBad leader of the gang, Roscoe "Bob" Bryant]].
476* In ''VideoGame/{{Catherine}}'', [[spoiler:when Vincent shakes down Boss, demanding to know if he saw Catherine or not, it was simply to find out if Catherine was really an illusion. Boss, thinking Vincent had figured out that he was the mastermind, gives his MotiveRant and spills the whole story to him]].
477* During the first big plot twist of ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', [[spoiler:Lynx had just [[GrandTheftMe switched bodies with Serge]], and was about to kill his old body with Serge in it. Lynx tells Kid that he was going to do it to "avenge Lucca" for her. Kid stops him, pointing out that, while she did tell Serge that Lynx had taken away Lucca from her, not once had Kid said Lucca's name. Of course, this revelation comes too late...]] Needless to say, it seemed like a bad choice of words for Lynx.
478* ''VideoGame/CriminalCaseGrimsborough'': Subverted. In the fourth case, the victim's girlfriend tells the police that she didn't kill the victim. Jones points out that they hadn't told her he was murdered, only for her to angrily rebuke that the only time police care about junkies like them is when somebody dies. She later turns out to be innocent.
479* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'':
480** In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'':
481*** This is how you discover who the culprit of Chapter 2's murder is. Celeste, who met with the victim before the murder, noted that said victim was carrying a sports bag with a tracksuit in it (which the victim then stuffed fully into the bag, so no one who hypothetically met them afterward could have seen it). When she recounts the incident to Makoto, she states that the tracksuit is blue, but when she testifies at the trial, she leaves out the tracksuit's color. While everyone is puzzling over how this could be useful, Ishimaru posits that the victim and the killer wore matching tracksuits. [[InsaneTrollLogic He has no logical reason for this]], but [[spoiler: Mondo buys it and states that the killer couldn't be him, because Chihiro's tracksuit was blue and his was black... except, how'd he know the tracksuit's color unless he'd seen Chihiro ''in'' it in the changing room where he was murdered?]]
482*** Also in Chapter 2, this is part of how it's discovered that [[spoiler: Byakuya tampered with the crime scene]]: immediately after the body discovery announcement was made, he headed straight to the room where the body was, even though the location wasn't part of the announcement, and he couldn't have known exactly where it was unless he had already been there. Moreover [[spoiler:the body is found inside the girls' locker room, which none of the boys can normally enter (the same is true in reverse for the girls)]].
483*** In Chapter 3 [[spoiler:Celeste, [[{{Irony}} ironically enough given what happened in the second trial]], is nailed by this. In the case, she had engineered the circumstances in such a way that the students split into two groups; one group found the body of Ishimaru, while the other found the [[FakingTheDead "body"]] of Hifumi at the same time (so Monokuma would broadcast a 'Body Discovery' announcement, tricking the people who discovered Hifumi into thinking the announcement was for him). Shortly after, Celeste (who was part of the group that discovered Hifumi) glumly remarks that everyone is going to die "just like those guys died", despite having no way of knowing at that point that Ishimaru was also murdered- or, for that matter, that the second victim was a man, since Kyoko was also missing around that time.]]
484*** Then in Chapter 4, [[spoiler:Yasuhiro trips over this, though he isn't the culprit. He points out the message written in blood naming Toko as the killer... only, among other things, the magazine was hidden in the rack at the time the body was found, and Hina had kicked him out of the crime scene before he could take more than a look, so how did he know about it? [[SubvertedTrope However, he wasn't the murderer in this case. He ''thought'' he might have killed Sakura by hitting her on the head with a bottle and so tried to frame Toko for it, but Sakura was too tough for that to kill her and was merely knocked unconscious for a bit]]. Toko, who was also at the crime scene, then hid the magazine by putting it back on the rack.]]
485** ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'':
486*** Chapter 3's culprit is uncovered like this. [[spoiler:Mikan, who's accused of being the killer, is confronted with how she apparently impersonated Ibuki in the latter's "suicide video." Mikan keeps insisting that Ibuki was the one in the video and thus she did kill herself, and, that among other things, the camera angle should contain no proof that it was her and not Ibuki in that video. Hajime, the only one who saw the "suicide video", tells her that there's no way she could know about the camera angle, which he never mentioned at any point during the trial, unless she herself saw the crime. Mikan also makes a smaller mistake later on when she says that the tote bag used to cover Ibuki's head would have to be two places at once, and casually shrugs off inadvertently revealing another detail she shouldn't know.]]
487*** A variation happens in Chapter 5, [[spoiler:which leads to Chiaki being confirmed as TheMole. While investigating Nagito's death, they find a diary that Monomi claims to be hers in order to protect Chiaki's cover as the Future Foundation's spy. One of the entries revolves around Hajime nearly risking his life by entering the Final Dead Room in the Funhouse during a short-lived SanitySlippage in the previous chapter. However, aside from the fact that Monokuma states that Monomi doesn't know how to write, not only could she not have learned about the incident on her own (as she was trapped in a different part of that chapter's ClosedCircle until the following morning), but only one student other than Hajime knew about it-- Chiaki, due to her being the one to talk him down from doing it, meaning that either the diary was hers to begin with, or that she was close enough to Monomi (who the other students don't trust) to tell her about it, so in either case they're working together. This evidence ends up being the smoking gun that [[CassandraTruth finally convinces the other students to believe that she's telling the truth about being the spy despite how badly they don't want to believe it]], and makes them realize that she's the student who the [[WindsOfDestinyChange supernaturally lucky]] Nagito arranged to [[AccidentalMurder accidentally kill him]] in a way that he hoped the other students couldn't solve as part of a convoluted plan [[ThanatosGambit to use his death to allow the spy, whose identity he did not know]] to [[DeadlyGraduation "graduate"]] while killing off everyone else via the "graduation" rules.]]
488* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'', a ThievesGuild quest tasks you with freeing fellow member New-Shoes Bragor from jail. One option involves obtaining a certain [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Dwemer]] coherer and showing it to the Pelagiad prison guard, Shadbak gra-Burbug. She'll accuse you of stealing it from a local merchant, despite you having never mentioned how you got it, and when you point this out, she'll slip that said merchant has been bribing her into keeping quiet about the Dwemer artifact smuggling going on in the area. You can then use this info to blackmail her into freeing Bragor.
489* ''Eroge! Sex and Games Make Sexy Games'': In Kisara's Bad Ending, [[spoiler:after Tomoya cheats on Kisara with Tomoko, later on, Tomoko asks Kisara if she used Tomoya's penis as a reference for her (Kisara's) drawing, prompting Kisara to ask "Why do you know about his cock?" Disappearing ensues.]]
490* In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', a dialogue option invokes this trope when investigating missing refugees from Aerotech Office Park and talking to a suspect in Westside:
491-->'''[[PlayerCharacter Courier]]:''' Some people have gone missing, and they were last seen dealing with you.\
492'''Saint James:''' I don't know a thing about no missing refugees from that Aerotech camp. Go cry to somebody else.\
493'''Courier:''' I didn't mention Aerotech.\
494'''Saint James:''' Yeah, well, I must've heard rumors, and, uh... fuck you! You got nothing on me and Dermot.
495* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', Steiner asks Alleyway Jack if he'd seen a young woman, referring to Garnet. Jack (who had earlier stolen money from Garnet) replies that he hasn't seen any beautiful girls with long black hair. He then immediately freaks out as Steiner glowers at him, and he hands Steiner the object he'd bought with the stolen money as he runs off.
496* In the ''Revelation'' path of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'', [[spoiler:Gunter]] ends up outing himself as [[spoiler: Scarlet]]'s killer this way. He mentions a flower that she pinned onto her armor ''after'' everyone else but Corrin left the area, so the only time he would have been able to see it was during the murder.
497* ''VideoGame/GodOfWarRagnarok'': One happens but isn't picked up on at the time; after Kratos kills Heimdall, one of his allies protests that Odin had promised peace as long as Kratos didn't kill any Aesir. Kratos just says he didn't ''agree'' to that deal (true), but what goes unremarked on is that he also never ''told'' anyone that Odin had proposed a deal, or its specifics.[[spoiler: Tyr knows about it because he's Odin in disguise.]]
498* In ''VideoGame/IndigoProphecy'', taking too long to answer Detective Tyler (or Detective Carla depending on previous choices) can lead Lucas to blurt out one of these leading to an instant arrest and game over. Specifically, Tyler or Carla is in the middle of asking Lucas where he was on a certain night, and if you take too long to answer, Lucas blurts out that he wasn't even ''at'' the restaurant where a guy got murdered...then as Tyler or Carla points out, since they mentioned neither a restaurant nor a murder, why would Lucas randomly assume they're asking him about ''that particular murder'' unless he had something to do with it?
499* ''VideoGame/{{Judgment}}'':
500** As Yagami and Kaito wait for [[DirtyCop Ayabe]] at an indoor fishing pond, they get harrassed by some punks who are apparently looking for him. They claim they don't know who Ayabe is but Kaito ends up giving himself away:
501--->'''Kaito:''' We look like the type to hang out with cops?\
502'''Punk:''' Who said anything about him being a cop?\
503'''Kaito:''' Oh! Well... [[OhCrap Aw, fuck.]]
504** Yagami manages to corner [[spoiler:[[BigBad Shono]]]] and demands to know what he knows about the Mole. [[spoiler:Shono]] insists he doesn't know ''who'' the Mole is. Yagami immediately points out he had no way of knowing the Mole was a ''person''.
505* In ''VideoGame/LANoire'', a DLC case, [[MeaningfulName appropriate titled]] "A Slip of the Tongue" features one of these. If Phelps and Bekowski manage to catch up to Jean Archer, they'll mention Belasco (another suspect, [[spoiler:and Archer's accomplice]]). She later drops his full name, "James Belasco", which confirms to Phelps that she's connected to the case.
506* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrails'':
507** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'', Estelle and Joshua manage to oust the culprit behind the attempted fire of an orphanage after bluffing him to make him drop he had nothing to do with 'the mercenaries in black', with Estelle quickly mentioning that no one had said what the hired crooks were wearing when they started the fire.
508** A required quest in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsFromZeroAndTrailsToAzure The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero]]'' involves correctly identifying a counterfeit dealer from a group of suspects that came to Crossbell on a bus from Calvard. If you pick the correct suspect, the elderly woman, Lloyd identifies her as having lied about her last trip there: she claimed to have visited Mishelam Wonderland with her grandson three years before, even though it hadn't been built at the time. That, however, is not this. What is this is that after she continues trying to deny being involved in anything shady, eventually asking if he seriously thinks a kind elderly lady like herself would be heinous enough to pawn off counterfeit goods on unsuspecting people. Elie then tells her it's the final nail in the coffin, as they never mentioned anything about counterfeiting.
509** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel III'', a sidequest involves helping a client looking for a stolen gem that can be sold for a high price. After getting enough clues to find a suspect, the culprit ends up exposing himself after stating the gem's name and the price it would be sold for.
510* In ''Manor Cafe'', Meg calls her ex-boss to ask if he was in the cafe recently.
511-->'''Jacob:''' You'll never prove it was me who set the oven on fire!\
512'''Meg:''' Who said anything about an oven on fire?
513* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', when [[BigBad Saren]] is facing (correct) accusations of attacking a human colony and killing another Spectre, Nihlus, he addresses Shepard as "the one who let the beacon get destroyed." Shepard can respond by saying the only way he could have known that is if he was there. [[SubvertedTrope However, Saren quickly rebuffs him/her, saying that Nihlus' files transferred to him upon his death.]]
514* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': [[spoiler:The Worshipper]] killed a random woman with a blow to the back of the head, then strangled her corpse to make it look like the Nail Man could have done it. It was meant to look like a LockedRoomMystery that anyone could have set up... Except that the cause of death for all the victims was never made public knowledge. He was first on the scene for the prior two murders, so the only other people who would have known the actual cause of death were the Peacekeepers and the Nail Man himself.
515* ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'':
516** In ''VideoGame/Persona2: Eternal Punishment'', Katsuya's "Investigating" Contact references the trope. On a second use, Katsuya claims that the demon said something only the criminal would know; finish a Contact session with it, and Katsuya will state that he never said anything about the victim being a woman. This being a generic set of lines used for every demon, we're never told exactly what crime Katsuya's investigating, or what the demon actually said in response to his interrogation.
517** In ''VideoGame/Persona4'', [[spoiler:Adachi]] reveals himself to be the killer by declaring that everyone already knows that "[[spoiler:Namatame's]] the one who put them all in [the television]" — no one but the murderer and the protagonists could have known that that was how the victims were killed. He had also cast suspicion on himself in an earlier instance when the protagonists [[spoiler:find a list of everyone that Namatame had put into the television: Adachi shows no surprise at the contents of the list and declares that it proves Namatame is the murderer, despite the fact that it included people who were rescued before they could be murdered (and were therefore classed as mere "disappearances" that had no relation to the murders); Naoto becomes suspiscious of Adachi at this point, but she is unable to link him to the murders until his later slip up]].
518** ''VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth'': Theodore, when confronted over supposedly stealing Chie's meat gum, says he feels sorry for her but maintains his innocence. Unfortunately for Theo, Naoto had never said who the victim was, and by saying something he shouldn't have known, Theo ends up incriminating himself.
519** ''VideoGame/Persona5'': This is how Joker and [[TalkingAnimal Morgana]] figure out who the traitor in the Phantom Thieves is. [[spoiler:Right before Goro Akechi is encountered in June, Morgana makes a comment about a building that looks like a stack of pancakes. When Akechi makes his entrance, he says he heard someone talking about "delicious pancakes." Only those who have been in the {{Me|ntalWorld}}taverse at least long enough for the oddities to affect their cognition[[note]]Sae doesn't understand Morgana because she only learned she'd been in the Metaverse after the fact and, since she was in an area of her Palace outside the Palace proper, never encountered obvious distortions[[/note]] can understand Morgana's speech as anything except a cat's meowing, but Akechi later claims he didn't gain access to the Metaverse until September. This seemingly insignificant brainfart tips the Phantom Thieves off that Akechi has an ulterior motive to joining the group, and leads to them eventually discovering that he'd been lying to them from the start.]] The rest of the group keeps quiet and the traitor doesn't realize their mistake until much later, after their plan has already been thwarted.
520* ''VideoGame/ProfessorLayton'' games use this often.
521** ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheDiabolicalBox'': [[spoiler:the fake "Flora"]] is revealed when he looks at a photograph of the Elysian Box and mentions [[spoiler:the cute goat on it. The picture was missing a piece that identifies the emblem as a goat (it looks more like a frog without it), meaning "Flora" had seen the mysterious box before, making him the thief]].
522** ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheLastSpecter'': A surprisingly spoiler-free AND murder-free version of this is when Layton and co. are looking for some medals with certain parts of a raven on them. One of the kids you confront says "We don't know anything about a medal with a raven's tail on it!" To which Layton replies "I never said anything about a tail."
523** ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheAzranLegacy'': Layton also employs this tactic to identify [[spoiler:Bloom]] as the traitor within Scotland Yard in Chapter 3. [[spoiler:He incriminates himself by revealing something he shouldn't have known about the fake artifacts that were returned, indicating that he was the one that returned them as fakes.]]
524** In ''VideoGame/LaytonBrothersMysteryRoom'', the culprit of the fifth case used a bottle of female perfume to hold the poison he used to kill his victim, since he was trying to make her death look like a suicide. Unfortunately for him, the victim managed to use the last of her strength to hurl the bottle at a nearby wall in a desperate effort to leave ''some'' kind of mark to show that she was actually murdered, causing it to shatter into pieces. The culprit didn't know she did this and ends up referring to the shattered container as a perfume bottle ''three times'' before even the police knew what it originally was. Alfendi even ''recorded'' the entire thing and plays it back to him when the culprit makes the desperate claim that they must have misheard him.
525* In ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryV'', a string of assassinations (including the King himself) has been causing chaos in Silmaria. It's fairly [[ObviouslyEvil obvious]] that [[spoiler:Minos]] is behind it, but without proof, you can't do anything. After defeating the assassin, you have the option to bluff the prime suspect by saying that the assassin confessed before dying. The suspect responds "So [[spoiler:Bruno]] sold me out, did he?" and the king's advisor [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Logos]] points out that nobody never said the assassin's name. At this point [[spoiler:Minos]] drops all pretense of innocence and delivers a MotiveRant.
526* ''VisualNovel/RagingLoop'': Yasunaga manages to out [[spoiler:Chikamochi]] as a wolf in the ''Wit'' route when the latter mentions how [[spoiler:Kaori]] had been stabbed to death, when Yasunaga never specified ''how'' they died.
527* A kidnapping suspect in ''VisualNovel/TheShell'' admits that he has some relation to the person witnessed actually taking the person away before the name of the person is revealed.
528* In the ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' fangame ''Aya Shameimaru: Touhou Attorney'', based on the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' games, [[spoiler:the very final choice you have in the last case in the game]] hinges on this. While it's easy to miss, a player can easily pick up on the extra detail without even considering the situation. Specifically, outside the detectives and the attorneys, no one but the one who [[spoiler:planted the evidence]] would know [[spoiler:in which pocket it was found]].
529* ''VisualNovel/VirtuesLastReward'':
530** This is how Sigma gets [[spoiler:Dio/Left]] to reveal they were the one who [[spoiler:planted the bombs]] in some of the routes. Sigma reveals, from information he gathered [[spoiler:from time jumps]], that this person knows about the Myrmidons, and about [[GreaterScopeVillain Brother]]. [[spoiler:Dio/Left]] insists they don't know anything about ''who'' the Myrmidons are, and they don't know anything about some ''old fart'' like Brother. Well, Sigma never actually mentioned the Myrmidons were people or that Brother, their leader, was an old man, so how would [[spoiler:Dio/Left]] know that... unless the Myrmidons sent them?
531** Subverted at another point of time when the players discover [[spoiler:Alice]]'s body. When Dio says that the victim was stabbed with a knife, Phi asks how he knew it was a knife when all they can see is a handle. Dio, however, points out that anyone would assume it was a knife if they saw someone with a weapon protruding from a stab wound. [[spoiler:Although this makes sense, Phi was still right to be suspicious, since he knew about the knife because it was ''his'' knife. But he's not the killer; Alice [[SuicideNotMurder did it to herself]].]]
532* In ''VideoGame/TheWitcher,'' Geralt finds an old diary potentially implicating a traitor to the kingdom; the author of the diary, Ostrit, is dead, but new notes were scrawled into the margins. Later, he meets a Count who, after hearing of the book, asks for "Ostrit's diary". Geralt quickly notes that, in the conversation, he never said that the diary was Ostrit's.
533[[/folder]]
534
535[[folder:Web Animation]]
536* In the ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'' movie BROLY, Goku is trying to find out who is responsible for destroying South Galaxy. His first mention of his mission with Paragus present makes use of this trope without it leading anywhere, because A) none of the other heroes present know the context of what Goku is talking about, and B) Goku's an idiot.
537-->'''Goku:''' I'm actually looking for the person who blew up a galaxy.\
538'''Paragus:''' But who would blow up South Galaxy?
539* ''WebAnimation/EtraChanSawIt'': [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvXpblCtV08 When Azami finds the missing key to the safe]], [[spoiler:Tokusa reveals he had the key, so no one could have really found it without making a copy. When everyone asks her about this, she denies making a copy and stealing money from the safe. Tokusa then mentions he never told anyone about the stolen money, exposing her as the culprit.]]
540* ''WebAnimation/TheMostPopularGirlsInSchool'':
541** {{Parodied}} in Episode 9. Note that this exchange entirely takes place in the bathroom stalls of the girls' room.
542--->'''Trisha:''' Apparently, the Van Buren family [[LaxativePrank poisoned our pre-pep rally Pineapple juice.]]\
543'''Deandra:''' Oh yeah, I already knew about that.\
544'''Mackenzie, Trisha, and Brittnay:''' ''[[BigWhat WHAT?]]''\
545'''Deandra:''' I mean... I-already--did--''not''--''knew''--about that.
546** Played straight in Episode 21:
547--->'''Mackenzie:''' I wanted to ask you about the Atchison High Cheer Squad.\
548'''Deandra:''' What? I don't know anything about them. Never heard of 'em.\
549'''Brittnay:''' I find that hard to believe.\
550'''Mackenzie:''' You did go to Atchison right?\
551'''Deandra:''' Yes. Maybe. I don't know. All I know is I don't know them and they sure as fuck don't know me. Why? Did you talk to them? What did they say? Because they're liars. They're all fucking liars.\
552'''Mackenzie:''' I thought you said you didn't know them.\
553'''Deandra:''' I don't.\
554'''Mackenzie:''' Well, then how do you know they're all liars?\
555'''Brittnay:''' Yeah, Deandra, what are you hiding?\
556'''Deandra:''' Nothing, I'm an open book. Ask me anything.\
557'''Mackenzie:''' Alright, tell me about the Atchison Cheer Squad.\
558'''Deandra:''' [[AnythingButThat Not that. Anything else.]]
559* ''WebAnimation/RefreshingStories''
560** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzmU1EC8yNQ "Caught my wife cheating with my assistant..."]]: Hiroshi told his assistant he was worried about his wife Fumina cheating on him and his private investigator's failure. When the man expressed amazement at the PI getting caught by Fumina, this is when Hiroshi discovered the affair as he never mentioned the PI getting caught. What's more, the man turned out to be a PI himself, sent by Fumina to spy on Hiroshi. Therefore, Hiroshi sent another PI after the assistant.
561** [[https://youtu.be/NyMVKYB5NNU?si=Fj5-cinE5d-kd_qr "After I came home from work, I found that our place had been ransacked…"]]: When Hiroshi confronts Runo for cheating on him after the police showed him footage of her lover running out of the house, she denies having met a guy with a high-pitched voice, which ends up telling on her as Hiroshi didn't mention how did the guy sound.
562** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgESf6JZmAo "My wife went on holiday with her lover, so I decided to follow them"]]: After Jinan called the cops on Kazuma before he could tailgate Hiroshi, the former begged that he'd be fined if arrested for dangerous driving. When the police take it as a sign he had something he didn't want them to see, Hiroshi's cheating wife, Ichika, complained it would be an invasion of their privacy if they looked at their phones. However, this ends up worsening things for the lovebirds as the cops didn't mention looking at their phones. As a result, they found nude photos of Ichika while searching Kazuma's phone, giving Hiroshi the necessary evidence to sue both cheaters.
563* This is inverted with Mario in Episode 11 of ''WebAnimation/SmashKing''. His claim that he’s a friend of Bowser’s trying to help him fight off Ganondorf seems pretty substantiated for the most part, fooling both Wario and Meta Knight for a few minutes. However, Meta Knight's blue side quickly realizes something’s amiss when he takes into account that all of Bowser’s friends know where he lives, so the fact that Mario needs to be directed to his place of residence is nothing short of suspicious.
564* ''[[WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers SMG4's Mario Bloopers]]'': In "[[Recap/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64BloopersIfMarioWasAMONGUS If Mario was AMONG US]]", Mario realizes [[spoiler:Brown]] is the Impostor when he mentions that Mario and Green were in a room with an open vent... a room he shouldn't have been in.
565[[/folder]]
566
567[[folder:Webcomics]]
568* In ''Webcomic/AimForTheStars'', Kate's boss Grumpy the Martian tries to get in touch with his uncle, who happens to be the president of the colony ship Heart. When the President scolds Grumpy for getting involved with "commoners" such as Venusians, Grumpy hangs up and declares that they're on their own... because he never mentioned that Dr. Frank, the MadScientist they're trying to protect, was a Venusian.
569* In chapter 48 of ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'' Waes'soloth Val'Beldrobbaen catches the culprit behind the spread of a parasitic flower poison into their home using this, as the girl's family [[http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?sid=10782 had closed the gates to their tower]] [[http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?sid=10810 before any of Waes' messengers were formally able to contact them]]. And since Waes had only just learned of the poison when a messenger finally managed to get inside, the only way the family could already know about it was for one of their members to have been at the gathering where it was distributed.
570* ''Webcomic/EnnuiGo'': During the "Two Worlds" arc, one of the clowns in Lilooly's club attacks Kavya with a rock hidden in a cream pie; as they can't tell who threw it, Lilooly asks Max and his friends not to tell anyone until they figure it out. Later on, Kavya gets framed for doing the same to another clown and taken to "clown court"; during the session, the "prosechuckler" insinuates that she threw the rock-laden pie as vengeance for getting hit with one earlier. As they didn't mention Kavya getting hit to anyone, this makes Max realize that the "prosechuckler" is the culprit behind both cases.
571* ''Webcomic/MadameOutlaw'': In the tenth chapter, the magistrate accuses Estelle of illicit activities such as stealing staff from another estate. In an attempt to defend herself, she claims that the warden is ill of character. The magistrate replies that he had never even mentioned the warden, so why is she saying she encountered him?
572* Parodied in the ''Webcomic/MonsterOfTheWeek'' [[https://www.shaenon.com/monsteroftheweek/2013/04/12/04122013/ strip]] based on "[[Recap/TheXFilesS02E15FreshBones Fresh Bones]]":
573-->'''Mulder:''' We're here to investigate a string of suicides at your military base.\
574'''Colonel Wharton:''' I don't know about any voodoo revenge murders.
575* In ''Webcomic/NamirDeiter'', Ferdinand is [[DrowningMySorrows drinking away his sorrows]] after a run in with Joy. Isaac, Joy's most recent ex, talks to him when Blue tells him about Ferdinand and Joy. Isaac slips out Joy's name, and Ferdinand wonders how Isaac knows about Joy. Isaac tells him that he saw Ferdinand and Joy earlier, guessing that he was upset about her.
576* In ''Webcomic/WeakHero'', this is how Wolf susses out that his subordinate Jared was the one responsible for stealing his bag, not a student from Eunjang. After the battle against Eunjang, Jared makes mention of "additional companies" while talking about Donald Na. Said companies were only ever mentioned in the documents that Wolf kept in his bag.
577[[/folder]]
578
579[[folder:Web Original]]
580* ''Literature/ChakonaSpace'': Chapter 3 of Doove's ''Flight of the Phoenix'' series features a pair of "Ambassadors" who kill their servant and dump her body at the base of a stairwell. Captain Yote announces the death of said servant (without including details) to them and one of them snarks about making sure the stairwells are properly safe, instantly implicating "him"self in said death.
581* In [[https://web.archive.org/web/20091224180921/http://everything2.com/title/I+want+my+trail+to+grow+over+and+disappear%252C+but+now+someone+is+reading+it one chapter]] of ''Literature/NewYorkMagician'', Michel confronts a suspect in a girl's disappearance. Every word out of the man's mouth [[DiggingYourselfDeeper somehow gets him into more trouble]].
582* In one ''Literature/ShadowUnit'' episode, the gamma, whose manifestation involves causing real bullet wounds with a broken, unloaded gun, gives herself away by being the only person to have heard a gunshot at the death of her latest victim.
583* ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'':
584** "Sir... [[http://notalwaysright.com/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-woes/21598 when did I ever say the missing item was a camera?"]] The thief is an adult male, the owner of the camera is a minor female, and there are several pictures of her on the camera. The punchline?
585--->"Sir, I can either charge you with stealing, or I can charge you with stalking and pedophilia since this lady is obviously a minor. Which one is it going to be?"
586** [[https://notalwaysright.com/catching-this-criminal-is-a-piece-of-cake/120741/ "The cake wasn't chocolate! It was strawberry!"]]
587** [[http://notalwaysright.com/cant-erase-that-outburst This]] example fits here as well, although it's a very different situation. Someone throws a spitball at the submitter. When the submitter starts to tell the teacher, the thrower starts to rant [[spoiler:about how it's a bit of ''eraser'', thank you very much.]]
588** In [[https://notalwaysright.com/stripped-of-the-truth/304161/ this]] story, a customer disputes some credit card charges, saying he's never been to Las Vegas and would ''never'' go to a strip club. The submitter points out that the item on the bill says neither of those things.
589[[/folder]]
590
591[[folder:Web Videos]]
592* Although no one was able to pick up on it, Ryan nearly gave himself away with this when Creator/AchievementHunter was playing some ''VideoGame/TroubleInTerroristTown''. Ryan was the traitor and had taken out Michael, who was the detective. A short while later, Ryan asked: "Who's the detective this round?" He's told the answer, then replied, "Michael '''was'''?" The only person who caught this slip was Michael himself, who couldn't warn the others on account of his character being dead. After the round was over, Michael immediately chewed out the others for not picking up on Ryan's slip of the tongue.
593* WebVideo/{{Kitboga}} is a scambaiter popular on Platform/YouTube and Website/{{Twitch}}. During the 36+ hour bait with Adam and Alex, they at one point pretend to be a Google support line. Alex at one point rants about Matilda (Edna) having purchased Apple cards, something which Kit did mention at one point, but which "Google" shouldn't know anything about. When Kit asks how they know about this, Alex's reply is that "Google know everything." "You got me there," agrees Matilda.
594* ''WebVideo/SevenSecondRiddles'': A lot of riddle culprits end up being caught because they referenced details they shouldn't have known about- such as the contents of a stolen purse, or the fact that the victim's house was empty.
595* Parodied in the WebVideo/ScottTheWoz video "The Trial", where the murderer's defense attorney tries to claim that the witness shouldn't know what a gun is. As in, the general concept of a gun.
596[[/folder]]
597
598[[folder:Western Animation]]
599* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfPaddyThePelican'': When Freddie Fox tries to insist to Kenny that it was Paddy who stole the piggy bank, Paddy objects, pointing out that nobody said it was a piggy bank that got stolen. This lead to Kenny realizing that it was Freddie who stole it.
600* ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfSonicTheHedgehog'': In "Tails' New Home", Tails accidentally gets injured by Scratch and Grounder, so Sonic leaves Tails with his parents due to being concerned about Tails' well-being. Later, Sonic remembers that Tails' father said "Tails belongs with his own kind", giving Sonic a EurekaMoment that the people he saw had to be fakes; if the two elderly foxes were the real parents of Tails, they would've known that [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep "Tails" is not his actual name; his real name is Miles Prower]]. Sonic races back, and sure enough, the two elder foxes are Robotnik's minions.
601* Spoofed twice in ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'':
602** In "Black Mystery Month", a detective quizzes Steve at the scene of a murder and is instantly suspicious when Steve mentions details that are ''clearly visible at the scene''.
603--->'''Detective:''' I'm afraid the curator has been murdered.\
604'''Steve:''' Oh my God, someone killed him?!\
605'''Detective:''' Funny, I never said he was murdered.\
606'''Steve:''' Yes... yes, you did. God, he's wedged into the mouth of a giant bust of George Washington Carver!\
607'''Detective:''' That's classified, how do you know that?\
608'''Steve:''' Uh, I can see it from here.\
609''[the detective takes half a minute confirming that the body is visible from where Steve is standing]''\
610'''Detective:''' Okay, that checks out.
611** In "My Purity Ball and Chain", some characters build a water slide in the backyard so high that it kills a man named Kyle when he rides it. They get rid of Kyle's body, but [[FailedASpotCheck forget]] about the slide. Then a detective appears.
612--->'''Detective:''' Dick Turlington, waterpark detective. Got a report of a man missing after riding a waterslide.\
613'''Klaus:''' Well, not ours! This is a slide town, guy! Swing a dead Kyle, and you'll hit one.\
614'''Detective:''' I, uh, never mentioned the name Kyle.\
615'''Roger:''' These board shorts are mine!\
616'''Detective:''' ''[pulls out Kyle's photo, wearing the same shorts]'' ...Great.
617* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'': Terry visits Willy Watt in Juvie hall, whom he suspects is the "ghost" terrorizing his high school with telekinetic pranks. During their conversation, Willy brings up the school incidents, even though he's had no visitors or callers since having been locked up (and presumably [[ConvictionByContradiction the incidents never made the news]]).
618* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'' went on trial for [[{{Egging}} throwing eggs]] at Mr. Anderson's house. They were almost set to be pronounced not guilty when the plaintiff's lawyer noted that Butt-Head had called them "rotten eggs" instead of just "eggs". How did they know they were rotten? They could only stammer, and within a ''minute'' the jury pronounced them guilty. (Can you blame the jurors?) Ironically enough, this was the result of Butt-Head ''[[SmartBall gaining a short burst of intelligence]]'', [[ItMakesSenseInContext apparently by an imaginary version of someone they saw on TV at the beginning of the episode]].
619* ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6TheSeries'': At the end of "Small Hiro One", when Trevor Trengrove returns the flash drive to Wendy Wower and confesses that he stole it, Wendy mentions that she was just going to tell Trevor how nice it was to see him again.
620* ''WesternAnimation/{{Bratz}}'': In "Not So Hot For Teacher", the Tweevils frame the Bratz girls by putting up an embarrassing picture of Burdine all over school. When Kirstee and Kaycee pretend to call out the Bratz for doing such a thing the next morning, Burdine questions the twins of when they saw the pictures, revealing that she took them all down last night. Runaways ensue.
621* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'': {{Whodunit}} episode "Operation C.L.U.E.S." features one of these in the ending. Numbuh Two's family has Numbuh Three and her family over for dinner, but when Mrs. Gilligan brings out what's supposed to be a turkey, the group discovers a stabbed Rainbow Monkey doll in its place. After Numbuh Two solves who stabbed it, Mrs. Sanban suggests that he try to figure out what happened to the turkey. Hoagie claims that figuring out "who ate a lemon-basted turkey with cranberry stuffing" will be a daunting task... only for Mrs. Sanban to smugly point out that no one ever mentioned what kind of stuffing Mrs. Gilligan used for the bird. Cue an OhCrap expression from Hoagie.
622* In the ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'' episode "Jungle Duck", Scrooge and his nephews discover the eponymous NatureHero, and then find that he's the missing Prince Greydrake and have to return him home before his EvilUncle is crowned king. Leading to this confrontation:
623-->'''Uncle:''' That's impossible! Prince Greydrake's plane went down in the densest part of the African jungle!\
624'''Jungle Duck:''' Ungh, how you know where crash?\
625'''Uncle:''' ''[nervously]'' Uh... Lucky guess?
626* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': In "And Then There Were Fewer", [[spoiler: Tom Tucker is arrested for allegedly murdering several people at James Woods' mansion when Lois speaks to his partner Diane Simmons about the matter. Diane then shows off a blouse that her mother bought her for her first solo newscast. Lois soon realizes that that means Diane would have already known the murders were going to happen.]] [[spoiler:She knew because she was the one doing the murdering.]]
627* ''WesternAnimation/{{Fillmore}}'' is discussing a case with an old friend who's one of the witnesses, and he mentions that 4000 counterfeit baseball cards are still missing. She tells him not to worry, because "it's not like four thousand Cal Ripken cards are gonna just disappear." Fillmore realizes that she must have the cards because he never told her what player was on them.
628* ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'': Bloo gives himself away by saying too much once Jackie Khones finds Madame Foster's favorite doily in "Penny Saved".
629-->'''Bloo:''' I wonder how that got shoved under the squeaky top stair?\
630'''Jackie:''' Hey! How did you know it was under the squeaky top stair?\
631'''Bloo:''' Lucky guess?
632* In the ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'' episode "Darkblade", [[AlphaBitch Chloé]] orders her lackey Sabrina to steal Marinette's diary so they can use it to make her look bad; however, Sabrina ends up with her hand trapped in a box thanks to the security measures Marinette applied to said diary. When she appears in front of the rest of the class with the box, they immediately figure out that Chloé told her to steal it. Chloé tries to deny that she was involved in stealing Marinette's diary, only for Marinette to tell her that no one actually ''said'' what was in the box, meaning she wouldn't have known unless she was planning on stealing it.
633* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' had Angelica on the receiving end of this more than once.
634** [[Recap/RugratsS1E11TouchdownTommyTheTrial "The Trial"]]: Someone has broken Tommy's clown lamp, so the babies set up a fake court to find out who did it. Angelica serves as the attorney, confirming the other babies' stories about what they were doing when the lamp broke. Near the end, Tommy says that Angelica couldn't have done it since she was asleep, taking a nap... at which point everyone realizes Angelica couldn't have known what they were doing when the lamp broke unless she wasn't asleep. Angelica then gives a gloating confession to breaking the lamp and tries to pull a KarmaHoudini by pointing out that they can't get her in trouble because the adults can't understand the babies. Unfortunately for Angelica, while the adults can't understand the babies, they ''can'' understand ''her''; and this gloating confession is loud enough that Didi and Betty overhear her and promptly punish her.
635** [[Recap/RugratsS4E15RansomOfCynthiaTurtleRecall "Ransom of Cynthia"]]: Angelica tries to get a new Cynthia doll, along with the other babies' stash of candy, by faking Cynthia's kidnapping, complete with a ransom note and a phone call with the "kidnapper". However, the babies realize something's up when they figure out that the ransom note is a page torn out of Angelica's coloring book. Soon after, Angelica is found with chocolate smeared all over her face, and tells the other babies that the kidnapper demanded more candy... even though she wasn't there during the phone call where this happened. The babies immediately call her out on this, and Angelica's plan is exposed.
636* In the ''WesternAnimation/SallyBollywood'' episode "The Party", Sally and Doowee are investigating who gatecrashed a party. Whilst interrogating a known-gatecrasher, the gatecrasher points that it ''couldn't'' have been him and his buddies, since they don't wear masks when they gatecrash. It's then pointed out that no one had mentioned that the gatecrashers were wearing masks, and a ChaseScene ensues.
637* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'':
638** One of the villains in ''WesternAnimation/BigTopScoobyDoo'' gives himself away by referring to the black diamond, despite supposedly having been kidnapped when the gang learned that carbonado referred to a black diamond.
639** This was done often on ''WesternAnimation/APupNamedScoobyDoo'', usually cutting to Velma making a note of what was just said.
640** In ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooMeetsTheBooBrothers'', Scooby finds the Headless Horseman's horse is automated and ends up running the Sheriff into the pond. Just before he's sent into the drink, Sheriff Buzby yells to Scooby, "Push the button!" and that gets Shaggy wondering -- how did the Sheriff know the horse was mechanical? And for that matter, even if Buzby did know the horse was mechanical, how did he know how to stop it? It's a clue that the Sheriff is not what he seems.
641* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' (as always) spoofed it:
642** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS12E7TheGreatMoneyCaper The Great Money Caper]]":
643--->'''Lawyer:''' Will you tell the court your whereabouts at the time of the carjacking?\
644'''Willie:''' I was alone in me Unabomber-style shack; I had nothing to do with that carjacking.\
645'''Lawyer:''' Carjacking?! Who said anything about a carjacking?\
646''[galley and jury murmurs]''\
647'''Willie:''' But, didn't you just say--?\
648'''Lawyer:''' ''I'll'' ask the questions here, Carjacker Willie!
649** Another instance in the adaptation of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' from "Tales From The Public Domain". Prince Hamlet (Bart) is trying to get his uncle Claudius (Moe) to confess that he killed King Hamlet (Homer):
650--->'''Krusty:''' (''as a jester'') Now we would like to warn you, our performances tend to make audience members blurt out hidden secrets.\
651'''Moe!Claudius:''' (''nervously'') Oh, boy...\
652'''Krusty:''' Okay, we're going to up open it up with a little improv. Somebody shout out a location.\
653'''Bart!Hamlet:''' This castle!\
654'''Krusty:''' Okay, how about an occupation?\
655'''Bart!Hamlet:''' Usurper of the throne!\
656'''Moe!Claudius:''' (''tugs at his collar nervously'')\
657'''Krusty:''' I think I heard usurper of the throne. Now, finally, I need an object.\
658'''Bart!Hamlet:''' Ear poison!\
659'''Moe!Claudius:''' (''nervously to Gertrude/Marge'') Do you have diarrhea? I have diarrhea... (''tries to leave'')\
660'''Gertrude!Marge:''' (''annoyed'') Sit ''down.''\
661(''Sideshow Mel, Krusty and the Monkey begin acting out a situation in which Mel starts pouring ear poison down Krusty's ear'')\
662'''Moe!Claudius:''' Wait a minute, I didn't use that much poison!\
663(''everyone gasps'')\
664'''Moe!Claudius:''' I mean, I didn't use that much [[LameRhymeDodge poi, son]], at the royal luau. (''chuckles nervously'') Heh heh...
665** Used in a "Treehouse of Horror VI" segment "Nightmare On Evergreen Terrace", parodying ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet''.
666--->'''Lisa:''' Mom! Dad! Martin died at school today!\
667'''Marge:''' Mmm! I don't see what that has to do with Groundskeeper Willie.\
668'''Bart:''' Umm... we didn't mention Groundskeeper Willie, Mom.
669* ''WesternAnimation/{{Squidbillies}}'': In "Beware the Butt-Cutter", when Early mentions the bloody sweater Sheriff shows to Granny and assumes it belongs to the campers who had their butts cut off, Danny immediately wonders how Early knew that if the news of the murders haven't been made public yet. Early's reply is calling it an educated guess.
670* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': In [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS1E16TheHiddenEnemy "The Hidden Enemy"]], one of the clones betrays his brothers. Captain Rex and Commander Cody discover a listening device planted in their command center and begin to question a squad of suspected clones about it. During the interrogation, the turncoat — who wasn't one of the suspects — gives himself away by mentioning something only Rex and Cody should've known about.
671-->'''Chopper:''' No! Sir! I'm telling you, I did not–\
672'''[[spoiler:Slick]]:''' It's okay, we'll get you a proper investigation. You don't have to say anything 'til the Jedi come back and talk to you.\
673''[A few seconds later...]''\
674'''Cody:''' [[spoiler:Sergeant]], What did you mean "'til the Jedi come back"? How did you know the Jedi were gone?\
675'''[[spoiler:Slick]]:''' I really wish you hadn't noticed that, sir...
676** In [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS5E17Sabotage "Sabotage"]] Anakin is investigating the Jedi Temple bombing, and while talking to Letta Turmond, Anakin said "someone made Jackar (the suspect) the bomb". Letta is furious he'd accuse her of his murder, except he'd never said he was dead, and most people would interpret the sentence as "Someone made the bomb ''for'' Jackar".
677* ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': Lois Lane is able to deduce the identity of the man who tried to assassinate her at her acceptance ceremony for a journalistic award when her informant, Edward Lytener, congratulates her on winning the award. He'd said that he'd spent the night alone in his lab, which has no TV or radio because they'd be distracting. So, how'd he know she won it?
678* ''WesternAnimation/SwatKats'': In "Razor's Edge", Razor believes he injured two innocent elderly civilians in a chase and it negatively effects his skills to the point where he chooses to retire from being a vigilante. He sneaks his way into the hospital an attempt at forgiveness from the two. While choosing to give up, the old man says he wouldn't be able to defeat Dark Kat. That caught Razor's attention, since nobody knew that it was Dark Kat who was responsible for the recent attacks. The elderly couple are then revealed to be two much younger criminals Dark Kat hired to pose as victims to mess with the Swat Kats and Razor takes them down.
679* ''WesternAnimation/AThousandAndOneAmericas'': Near the end of the twelfth episode, Chris is rewarded by a priest for having helped capture a spy who wanted to learn the secret behind the making of bronze. But before he goes to see the priest for the honors, he's implicitly warned by a friendly old man that he shouldn't make anyone know that he knows about the secret (since Chris, at that point, is in the pre-Columbian era when only a few people knew about the metal's composition, and he had accidentally mentioned it was an alloy made of copper and tin). When the priest is told by an acquaintance that Chris received an indirect warning about something, he asks him what it was about;[[note]]the indirect warning the old man told Chris was simply "no matter what, you must not say a word"; the old man then lies to the priest's acquaintance by simply advising Chris to not say anything that may offend the local culture or costumes, due to him being a foreigner[[/note]] Chris simply says that he was advised to not say anything imprudent in front of the priest... before foolishly trying to assure that it was just that and nothing to do with the secret about the making of bronze. Chris quickly realizes his mistake, and then admits to know what bronze is made of. Things get ugly fast for him.
680* ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'': After Mal leaves Cameron hanging from a ledge, Alejandro later comes up and offers to rescue him, but Cameron declines. When Alejandro and Mal reunite (alongside others), Alejandro explains Cameron's absence, where Mal then accuses Alejandro of "leaving [Cameron] hanging there." However, as Alejandro points out in his ConfessionCam, he never said Cameron was hanging.
681* ''WesternAnimation/{{Trese}}'': When [[OccultDetective Alexandra Trese]] confronts [[CorruptPolitician the Mayor]] about his implication with the [[OurVampiresAreDifferent aswang]], she just mentions Ibwa by name and says that he "runs a bad crew". It's the mayor who answers about "fairytales of aswang and mermaids".
682-->'''Alexandra:''' I never said anything about aswang Mr. Mayor.
683* On ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries'', the Beast is the only X-Man to escape when the alien Phalanx attack the mansion. He gets away with renegade member Warlock to contact President Kelly about a huge threat. After getting their location, Kelly tells Beast that a helicopter is coming to "pick you both up at once."
684-->'''Warlock:''' Self-friend Hank, you did not tell the President about Self.\
685'''Beast:''' We can explain that in person...\
686'''Warlock:''' Query: Then why did the President refer to "both" of us?\
687''[cue OhCrap look from the Beast]''
688[[/folder]]
689
690[[folder:Real Life]]
691* As noted, police actually do rely on this as part of real life interrogation techniques. However, over-reliance on this technique has led to a significant number of false confessions and erroneous arrests. Police will either feed the suspect information he didn't know before and he'll repeat it back, and they'll use that to browbeat a confession out of him, or the suspect will make inferences that make it seem like he knows more about the crime than he really does (it's ''very'' easy to assume that the victim was shot in a murder case, for example - and if a suspect says many different things, the police can report only the inferences that were correct, making them sound incriminating out of context). This has caused police in some countries to abandon the technique entirely. There's also the issue that police can accidentally reveal their hand while doing so. If, for example, a detective tries to coerce a confession by saying that they found the suspect's fingerprints and the suspect wore gloves while committing the crime, they will know the police are bluffing and don't actually have any solid evidence.
692* In Brazil, there was suspicion that television presenter Wallace Souza had ordered or at least coordinated gangland murders for his TV show ''Canal Livre''. This suspicion only grew when he approached a still-smoldering body in a forest, saying, "It smells like a barbecue. It is a man. It has the smell of burning meat. The impression is that it was in the early hours... it was an execution." even though the police had never given a time of death. Also, he tended to be one of the first, if not the very first, to arrive at the scene of the crime. He died before he could be prosecuted.
693* As seen on the SayingTooMuch page, where a woman was arrested as a suspect in the murder of a man that had won the jackpot and had disappeared, then turned up dead several days later. She was also under suspicion of embezzling it, and after being released from a round of questioning tearfully professed that she had been falsely accused of shooting another human being. Police had yet to release exactly how the man had died.
694* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Warner_Powell Paul Warner Powell]] killed a teenage girl and raped and attempted to stab her sister, and was sentenced to death. There was insufficient evidence that Powell had attempted to rape Stacie Reed before killing her, so he could not be convicted of [[UsefulNotes/ThreeDegreesOfMurder Capital Murder]] and the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCourts Supreme Court of Virginia]] reversed his death sentence. So Paul believed he no longer faced a death sentence [[ArtisticLicenseLaw because of Double Jeopardy]], and he sent the prosecutor a taunting letter where he [[TooDumbToLive confessed, in detail,]] to attempting to rape Stacie before killing her. Because the court vacated his verdict instead of acquitting him, double jeopardy didn't apply, and so the letter [[HoistByHisOwnPetard was used by the Commonwealth to send him back to the electric chair]][[note]]His choice over lethal injection[[/note]]. He was named an [[http://darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid2003-01.html At-Risk Survivor]] by the Website/DarwinAwards.
695* Macedonian crime reporter [[http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jun/24/pressandpublishing.internationalcrime Vlado Taneski]] was suspected of being the very SerialKiller that stalked his hometown as well as the one he often wrote about when he included copious details about the crimes that only the killer themself would've been privy to, such as the type of phone cord used to strangle the victims or the fact that it had also been used to tie them.
696* Infamously happened in a Series/JudgeJudy case [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rh9w-CYBcM about a stolen wallet]] (contrary to the video's title, the segment was actually the same length of a normal case). After the plaintiff was finished listing the items that were in the stolen wallet, one of the defendants piped up that there was no earpiece in the wallet... but he had to have stolen the wallet to ''know'' that.
697* During the well-publicized trial of Aaron Hernandez for the shooting death of Odin Lloyd, [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball New England Patriots]] owner Robert Kraft testified that Hernandez had professed his innocence to him, claiming he was at a nightclub when Lloyd was killed. Even now, no one knows exactly what time the murder took place. Jurors specifically cited this testimony as part of their reasoning for finding Hernandez guilty.
698* This was how sportscaster Dale Hansen managed to trap three officials at Southern Methodist University into admitting they were still paying players under the table on their football team, which was against NCAA rules. SMU had already been caught doing it once, and swore up and down that they hadn't done it since, but Hansen was suspicious. Hansen had gotten an envelope from a former SMU player named David Stanley who had alleged that he'd been paid by the program, and that the envelope had money in it. Hansen then showed the envelope to the officials, and at first, administrator Henry Lee Parker admitted that he'd sent the envelope, but then immediately backtracked, as did the other two officials. At this point, Hansen knew the allegations were true because he'd never mentioned to Parker what was in the envelope. Until then, all Hansen had was David Stanley's word. If the officials hadn't sent money, they wouldn't have backtracked from their original admission, since there would have been nothing to lie about. Thanks to Hansen's discovery, this eventually led to SMU's football program being given the NCAA's "Death Penalty", resulting in the cancellation of their next two seasons and severe restrictions on their program like limits on coaching hires which so devastated the previously-successful program it took them over twenty years to play in another postseason bowl.
699* In 1995, the Spanish murderer Serafín Cervilla raped and killed his girlfriend due to [[IfICantHaveYou her intention to leave him]], then played the afflicted boyfriend on TV to cast suspicion off himself. However, the police had him as their main suspect from the beginning, and he only put himself in more trouble when, at the end of a massive demonstration clamoring for justice, he deposited a bouquet of flowers in the '''exact''' spot where the woman had been murdered... which wasn't the same place where the body was found, and nobody had told Serafín about.
700* Seen in the police interview with Texas serial killer Steven Hobbs on the episode "Predator" of ''Series/TheFirst48''. During interrogation, he asks what he's being arrested for. The detective replies that some prostitutes had accused him of getting rough during tricks (which they had, and how he'd been identified as a suspect in the murders).
701-->'''Hobbs:''' I never killed nobody.\
702'''Detective:''' I never said you killed anybody.
703* This (along with HoistByHisOwnPetard) is how Stephen [=McDaniel=] was arrested and eventually convicted of killing a fellow college student, Lauren Giddings. During a local news report about Lauren Giddings being missing, Stephen was interviewed as one of the witnesses who last saw her. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIroLgiCyP8 During the interview]], he was trying to act shocked and confused about her disappearance, but was saying things that were a little too detailed for someone who didn't know anything. The reporter caught on to this and revealed that a body was found, but she is not sure if it was Giddings. The facial expression from [=McDaniel=] gives him away, along with his panicking during the rest of the interview where he gives more details about things he shouldn't know.
704* One of the things that initially led to Creator/OJSimpson coming under suspicion for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman was that when informed that Nicole had died he asked "Who killed her?".
705* In UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain, seven members of the Marshall family were brutally murdered in their home in the village of Denham and the investigation led to a man named John Owen. When an officer found and arrested him, he immediately declared "I have murdered neither man, woman nor child" despite the officer having not had a chance to tell him what he was being arrested for and his having been out of town preventing him from having heard that he was a suspect.
706* An exaggerated version with New Zealand baby farmer John Makin. While awaiting trial, he had told his cellmate that the police could not prove he had poisoned any of the infants under his care. He was right. However, this was because the bodies were too decayed for a cause of death to be established, meaning that nobody other than Makin had ever suggested he had poisoned them.
707[[/folder]]
708

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