Accidental Public Confession / Western Animation

Accidental Public Confessions in Western Animation

Blurting it out in a moment of weakness

• The Simpsons:
  • Sideshow Bob does this a lot, most notably in "Sideshow Bob Roberts", when he reveals in open court how he rigged the mayoral election after Lisa implies he was just the face and the Rush Limbaugh expy was the real Man Behind the Man. But, Bart and Lisa are pretty good at getting him to do this almost every time.
  • In "Homer the Great", Homer has a spectacular one when he pretends to agree when Marge asks him not to stalk Lenny and Carl, only to then expose himself while thinking he's pulling an I Need to Go Iron My Dog.
    Homer: I'm going outside, to... stalk... Lenny and Carl... D'oh!
  • In "Homer the Vigilante", Homer similarly admits his vigilante group has been committing property destruction and felony assault while he's live on Eye of Springfield, thinking he's using Confusing Multiple Negatives. Since this is Springfield we're talking about, he doesn't see any consequences for this.
    Homer: Oh, Kent, I'd be lying if I said my men weren't committing crimes.
  • In the retelling of Hamlet from "Tales From The Public Domain", Hamlet (Bart) has the court jester (Krusty) reenact his father's (Homer) death. As Mister Teeny pours "ear poison" into the jester's ear, Claudius (Moe) yells "Hey, I didn't use that much poison!". After everybody gasps, he tries to explain it was "I didn't use that much poi, son, at the royal luau.".
• In the Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode, "Princess Problems", Calla and her snobbish rival Princess Marie gets into an argument in the midst of a war between their two kingdoms that was caused by a misunderstanding. Marie starts ranting to Calla about how if she tricked King Gregor and King Jean-Claude (Marie's father) into thinking that Calla ripped her dress on purpose, rather than the accident it was, then Calla would be forced to give Sunni (pretending to be a doll at that time) to Marie. However, once Marie realized that she said this out loud in front of the entire kingdom, her father becomes outraged, telling his daughter that he does not abide by anyone telling him lies in his kingdom.
• Non-verbal example in The Legend of Korra. Amon is knocked into the ocean and instinctively water bends himself out. Only after he's standing on a pillar of water does Amon realize that all of his anti-Bender followers can see him.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Truth or Ed", Eddy prints up lies in the school newspaper, under the pseudonym Bobby Blabby. But, when the other kids arrive at the printing press to confront this guy, Eddy tries to play dumb claiming he doesn't know who he is, but he accidentally spills it out when Ed mispronounces the name yet again.
  Ed: You dropped your loot, Bippy Booboo.
  Eddy: IT'S BOBBY BLABBY! GET IT RIGHT! (An Oh, Crap! look appears on his face) Oops.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Bubbles and Buttercup duke it out with Blossom ("A Very Special Blossom") before she finally confesses to stealing a valuable set of golf clubs.
• In one episode of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, an Emperor's sister uses mechanical devices to make it look like her brother is crazy so she can assume the throne. After the Rangers' give her a taste of her own medicine, she blurts out that what she experienced was different than her tricks...before realizing she just confessed in front of her brother and his ministers.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: In "McOne Armed and Dangerous", the Ninja tries to expose McFist as a villain during a ceremony but, since McFist isn't up to anything evil at this moment, he manages to preserve his reputation until the Ninja's efforts cause a commemorative statue to be destroyed and the first McSquiddle to be lost, making McFist too furious to remember he's in public and he ends up blurting his true purposes.
• My Dad the Rock Star: In "Angela D'Angelo", Willy lies about his parentage when visiting his new girlfriend's ultra-conservative, rockstar-hating parents. When Rock Zilla is brought up in a conversation, they go on a long, insulting tirade about him until Willy can't take it anymore and shouts "Hey, you can't talk about my parents like that!".

Thinks the other party already knows

• Doug's "Doug Didn't Do It" counts as both Type 2 and Type 3. Roger Klotz frames Doug for stealing Assistant Principal Bone's yodeling trophy and Doug spends the entirety of the episode either trying to prove he is innocent or get rid of the evidence. He decides to just return the trophy to Bone's office, but fails to remember it was in his lunchbag, which then makes Roger's prank go into fruition. However, Doug immediately suspects Roger as the true culprit when he sees him searching his locker for the trophy, then when Bone takes the former to his office for punishment, with it being he has to polish the rest of his trophies after school. This causes Roger to follow Doug to Bone's office with the threat of pounding him if he told the truth, then gloats about his crime while accidentally setting on the PA system, causing the whole school to know the truth. After Mr. Bone heard everything, he reverses Doug's punishment and gives Roger the punishment instead.
• From Kim Possible: When Ron and Kim (sorta) show up to ask Monty Fisk for help in finding a ninja who stole an artifact, Monkey Fist tells them that he was the ninja.
• Zuko from Avatar accidentally confesses in "sending that fire nation assassin". He cursed himself for blurting it out since he was trying to make a good impression after his true Heel–Face Turn.
• Fairly OddParents: When Cosmo, Wanda, and Timmy lose Poof they think either anti-Cosmo or Head Pixie stole him and bust into their castle/meeting accusing them. Unfortunately, it was neither of them and they inadvertently told the villains that there's a fairy baby for grabs.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: This is how Randy's best friend Howard becomes his Secret-Keeper in the first episode. The Ninja is normally sworn to keep his identity a secret from everyone, but Randy really wants to let his best friend know even though he's not allowed to. When Howard claims he knows the reason Randy disappears every time the Ninja shows up, Randy is relieved and puts the ninja suit on in front of Howard. Only thing is, Howard thought Randy was taking advantage of the attention the Ninja attracted to have the bathroom to himself and is surprised to learn his best friend is actually a legendary hero.

Accidentally caught on a live microphone

• Ben 10: Omniverse: After Billy Billions defames Ben with his new superhero team, the Vengers, he makes the mistake of trying to film Ben's defeat on Will Harangue's show. Predictably, the Vengers fall apart due to infighting, and Billy loudly proclaims that he can just defame Ben again on live camera. The Vengers don't last long after that.
• South Park has the boys engineering confessions this way, including having a totally not Mickey Mouse boss explain how he exploits the Jonas Brothers into selling sex to preteen girls.
• In The Fairly OddParents! episode "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker!", Timmy goes back in time to try and prevent what turned his teacher into such a miserable, evil and crazy person and learns that young Denzel was once a happy, popular kid who had none other than Cosmo and Wanda as his fairy godparents. Timmy deduces that Crocker must have accidentally revealed that he had fairies and had them taken away, and that a celebration of Denzel's good deeds is when it happens, and tries to keep Crocker away from the microphone. Thanks to a double dose of Cosmo's stupidity, Timmy ends up accidentally revealing Crocker's fairies to the crowd himself while trying to keep Crocker from doing so.
• In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, Plankton says that his customers are "Doo-Doo Dunderheads" and "The dumbest of the dumb" on the microphone he used to transmit the sounds of his cash register.
• Doug's "Doug Didn't Do It" counts as both Type 2 and Type 3. Roger Klotz is dealt this combined with a Hoist by His Own Petard moment. After he successfully frames Doug for stealing Assistant Principal Bone's yodeling trophy, with his punishment being he has to polish the rest of Bone's trophies after school, he goes to gloat about it to Doug, only to unwittingly activate the intercom while he was talking! To his credit, Doug did try to warn him. After Mr. Bone heard everything, he reverses Doug's punishment and gives Roger the punishment instead.
• This was also used in the Garfield and Friends episode "Supermarket Mania". When Jon confronts Corrupt Corporate Executive Mr. Baggit about why the prices of his Food Monster supermarket are high, Mr. Baggit then proceeds to explain to Jon about his true intentions, which are to put Gramps' Supermarket out of business so that he could charge the customers a lot more than they normally pay. However, he didn't count on Garfield holding the microphone directly in front of him while he was explaining this, resulting in hundreds of angry customers immediately leaving the Food Monster afterwards once they've learned the actual truth.
• In an episode of American Dad!, the school's announcement readers have a tendency to get Drunk with Power and go nuts, eventually getting taken down by Engineered Public Confession. After going through four such changes in as many days, the Principal grumbles about "stupid kids" and about how it was so much easier being a drug dealer in South America, where you got money, drugs, and girls — "Not women, girls, itty bitty things!". After he's said all this, a teacher enters the room to point out that the intercom mike has been on the whole time. The principal's reaction? "Aw, fuck me."
• One episode of Combo Niños featured Diadoro accidentally insulting potential voters while his assistant was working on the microphone wiring.
• In the tenth season finale of Family Guy this happens to Joe after he cheats on his wife Bonnie out of revenge for an affair that she'd had in Paris last season. During a birthday party at the Swanson house, Joe goes upstairs to talk privately with Peter and Quagmire and confesses to them about his affair and how guilty he feels about it. It isn't until an angry Bonnie bursts into the room that the guys realize that she - and everyone else at the party - had overheard the whole thing over Susie's baby monitor.
• In the Futurama episode "Crimes of the Hot", the robots of the world have been sent by the government to an island to be destroyed, led to believe that it's a party. Bender, the only robot who knows what's going to happen, prepares to say goodbye to a turtle he befriended and mentions the government's plan to it, not knowing that he's near a robot that looks like a boom mic.
• No microphone involved, but in the Rugrats (1991) episode "The Trial", after the babies figure out that Angelica was the one who broke Tommy's clown lamp, she gladly admits to it, boasting that the babies can't do anything about it because they can't talk to grown-ups. Unfortunately for her, she forgot that Didi and Betty were in the next room and heard everything.
• Sonic Boom: In "Dr. Eggman's Tomato Sauce", Team Sonic suspects there's something wrong with Eggman's brand of tomato sauce, but Tails' tests don't detect anything bad in it. Eggman appears on an episode of The Comedy Chimp Show, where he reveals that there really is nothing wrong with the sauce, but the cans it comes in are really robots that reprogram anything electronic to terrorize the Unnamed Village. At the end of the episode, Team Sonic foils Eggman's plan, but despite this, Eggman is still confident that it's not over yet.
  Eggman: You may have won this round, but no matter. I still have a warehouse full of thousands more of these evil robotic cans of sauce! (lets out his signature evil laugh... before realizing there was a live TV camera recording him; cut to the egg-shaped mad scientist sitting defeated inside his dimly-lit fortress, surrounded by tons of his unsold tomato sauce cans) Hmm. Probably shouldn't have said all that on TV.
• The Simpsons: In "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation", Homer gets so drunk that Moe gets a taxi to take him home. However, they were unaware that the taxi was part of a reality show, Taxicab Confessions, which was recording Homer's conversation with his driver. When the Simpson family learns out about this and sees the show, they find Homer's statements about his family start out heartwarming before becoming very bitter.
  Homer on TV: Can't imagine my life without them.
  Marge: Oh, you big fooler. Pretending not to remember so you could surprise us.
  Homer: Yeah, I'm pretty great.
  Homer on TV: At the end of a hard day there's no better feeling than coming home to the people that you love.
  Marge: Oh, Homie.
  Lisa: That is so sweet.
  Bart: I had no idea, Dad. I just assumed with all the stranglings, you know...
  Homer: That my family isn't the center of my universe? Are you nuts?
  Homer on TV: Then there's those other days, where you just wish you never got married or had kids. One minute, you're a carefree teenager with dreams of being a rock star, or a photographer for Playboy then, bam, some babe gets her claws in you. And, boom, you got a bunch of kids that always needs love. So whammo, you get stuck in some boring job where they don't let you play guitar or take pictures of naked women. And all you can do is watch yourself get bald and fat and kiss your dreams goodbye.