Caught on Tape

Nick: Well, it's my word against yours.
[Judy holds up a recorder and hits "replay"]
Judy: Actually, it's your word against yours.

— Zootopia

When you need rock-solid evidence that something happened or that someone committed a certain act, having it all caught on video (or audio) tape is just about the most convincing piece of proof there is. Even a Villain with Good Publicity won't be able to just wave criticism away when footage of them kicking dogs to death reaches the public.

In fact, the absolute certainty that video evidence provides is such a common trope that subverting it has become a very popular plot twist, usually by revealing that the footage has been doctored, or that the camera angle involved resulted in Not What It Looks Like.

And, yes, the video doesn't have to be recorded on actual tape; DVDs or computer files, or even perhaps that video recorded from your cell phone will work just as well, but old idioms die hard. However, the photographic version (which is frequently less damning due to being still) is Convenient Photograph.

Often used to achieve an Engineered Public Confession or an Accidental Public Confession. May be achieved by a Magical Security Cam.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fabricant 100: Luka invites Ashibi to another room, while questioning No 100 on camera. With her contractor away, she shows knowledge of stopping all Fabricants at once by taking down No 1, but withheld that information from Ashibi because she doesn't care about human victims, and she needs No 1's help to take Ashibi's body. Despite this, he still trusts her, as at least she'll act predictably.
• Subverted in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, where the Tachikomas discuss the fact that video footage is practically useless as evidence due to how easily it can be tampered with. Indeed, the Laughing Man's MO relies entirely on this, as he hacks into any recording devices around him (including other people's cyberbrains) and edits himself out of the footage, effectively letting him become invisible.
• Maria no Danzai:
  • Okaya and his gang would regularly record Kiritaka as they tormented him, before either sending the videos to him or posting them on the internet. For whatever reason, they did not seem to consider the possibility that Kiritaka would gather as many videos as he could get his hands on in order to eventually use them as evidence to turn them all in at the same time. Which he would've done if he hadn't gotten himself killed at the start of the story, as he still lacked concrete evidence on Okaya himself. On the other hand, he did keep a flash drive with a copy of all the videos he had collected hidden in a secret location, which he wrote down on his diary... which his grieving mother Mari would find after his death. The videos prove to be more than enough evidence for Mari to deduce the true circumstances of her son's "suicide", and she makes the decision to avenge her son by murdering his bullies herself.
  • Yashima once stole a few items from a convenience store in desperation, and had the rotten luck of being recorded by Kowase. Since that day he has been blackmailing Yashima to give him money, along with occasionally beating her up or even sexually abusing her.
  • After Yuda tells Maria how he came to learn about her, along with how he murdered Iijima for knowing that Maria was connected to Shikimi, he begs Maria to use him as her accomplice in order to kill off the rest of Okaya's friends. Maria responds by revealing that she recorded his confession to Iijima's murder on her phone and warning him not to associate himself with her again, under threat of incriminating him for the murders she's already committed.
• Zombie Land Saga: Okoba finds photos of all of Franchouhcou's members when they were alive, piecing together that they must have all been revived somehow. It's not until he catches video of Tae's head coming off that he suspects they're zombies.

Fan Works

• Burning Bridges, Building Confidence: Having been warned about Lila before meeting her, Cole makes a point of audio-recording every conversation she has with her to collect evidence proving that she's a Consummate Liar. She also geotags pictures of her and her friends whenever they're out having fun, and uses one such picture to prove that they couldn't have cornered and threatened Lila in the bathroom like she claims they were doing at the time.
• CONSEQUENCES:
  • In BREAKING AND ENTERING, Lila hits Marinette, steals her diary, and gloats that none of Marinette's "dumb little friends" will ever speak to her again once Lila's revealed all her secrets. Alya then reveals her presence — and that she's been filming the whole encounter. She promptly turns the video over to the police.
  • SUN'S WRATH has this screw Lila over twice. First, when she shoves Luka out in front of a car, the driver's dashboard camera catches it. He's then able to show the footage to Hell-ios when the vengeful akuma arrives, saving his life and pointing him towards the true culprit. Later, Hell-ios presents her with a Sadistic Choice, claiming that he'll kill an innocent child if Lila doesn't turn herself over. Her refusal to do so is recorded by one of the other civilians hiding out with her group.
• Crimson and Noire: After the events of Reverser in chapter 34, Lila claims that two of Reverser's paper-airplanes, which cause their targets to become the opposite of themselves, both hit Kagami when she stood to protect Marinette and made her terrified and scared, with Lila volunteering to keep watch over Kagami while the other students search for the heroes. When Alya reviewed the footage of the akuma attack at the end of the chapter, she finds out that Kagami was hit by a single airplane, and it was more than likely to Alya that the second plane hit Lila instead and made her act like the opposite of her true self.
• The Inciting Incident of Crumbling Down is Alya taping Lila trying to push a section of crumbling wall on top of Ladybug during an akuma attack.
• In Dekugate, Nitta Mari casually stalks Izuku and his friends, filming them without permission while they're trying to enjoy themselves on the beach and sneering at him about how he can't do anything to stop her. When Toshinori confronts her, he reveals that he's fully aware of her online activities slandering his family, giving her a massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech which is all caught on camera — and since Nitta's initial reaction is delight that he read her blog, this doubles as an Accidental Public Confession.
• The Devil's in the details: Having been raised by a lawyer (and being very clever himself), whenever Peter is backed into a corner, expect to have him secretly recording everything that was happening on his phone.
  • When he first meets Tony, he has their conversation recorded to ensure that Tony can't strong-arm him into Avengers business (complete with a legally binding restraining order against him).
  • In "Back in the Ring", Matt catches a loan company in the act of attempting to take May's home with a fraudulent mortgage loan claim allegedly signed by Ben after his death. When the manager attempts to get away with it by putting it into a protracted in-company investigation, Peter reveals that he recorded the entire thing with threats to use it against him.
• Fashion Upgrade has this happen to Lila twice over:
  • First, when she attempts to sneak into the dressing room used by Ms. Mendeleiev's class and sabotage their fashion show, she's caught on camera triggering an ink trap. In this case, the larger and more immediate punishment is that said ink means she can't go onstage, ceding her role to her understudy.
  • This leads to the second incident. Jealous of how Mylene and the other actors are being praised for their performances, Lila starts harassing her... and Ivan, Mylene's boyfriend, catches it on camera. Unlike Alicia, who spared Lila the extra humiliation of releasing the footage, Ivan is more than happy to reveal to the whole school just how she's been treating his girlfriend.
• Fox in the Bunnyhouse: When Robin is abducted, the kidnapper fails to notice a mouse who witnesses and records the crime on his phone. This leads to Amber alerts rapidly being issued as footage of the kidnapping is shown on the news.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Trip records several of Chloe's classmates bragging to her little brother about how they bullied her... and how much they enjoyed it. Several other bystanders also record their Engineered Public Confession on their cell phones.
• Juleka vs. the Forces of the Universe: While hiding in a closet, Juleka hears and records Chat Noir harassing Ladybug, with her angrily reminding him that every time they've kissed was under duress (such as when he was mind-controlled by Dark Cupid or they had their memories erased by Oblivio), as well as her repeating that she's in love with somebody else, not with him. Juleka then submits a Trojan Horse fanvid to Side-by-Side's call for "Best Ladybug and Chat Noir Moments" so that the public can hear said argument for themselves and get a taste for what the heroes' dynamic is really like.
• Happens twice during The Karma of Lies:
  • Hawkmoth's downfall is solidified when news cameras catch him detransforming, revealing his Secret Identity to the world.
  • During the Final Battle with Mayura, Adrien offers a hand up to Nathalie, only for her to steal the Black Cat Ring and use it alongside the Peacock Pin to transform again into a more powerful form. As with Hawkmoth's last fight, this is caught on camera, and completely ruins Adrien's reputation, as it looks as though he willingly handed his Ring over.
• Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: While interviewing one of Akatsuki's suspecting financial backers, Minato, Itachi and Yugito record the conversation with a hidden tape recorder. The suspect smoothly denies any involvement with Akatsuki before lawyering up; however, the tape still comes in handy when Yugito shares it with the Akatsuki's leader, Yahiko, proving that Kira was always intending to deny his involvement. This convinces Yahiko to serve as a state witness against him.
• Meanwhile, Back on Earth:
  • Phillip Whittebane/Emperor Belos is hated by the world due to his cold-blooded murder of his own brother, his hazing of his gimwalkers including Hunter,and his attempted genocide of all of the inhabitants of the Boilling Isles, among other things, being broadcasted on the internet and television.
  • In flashbacks from first Andrias's and then Leif's perspective, we get a first-hand look at just how oppressive and nightmarish the Newtopian Empire was at its height towards its conquered worlds, and (as is shown with the plight of the olms) many times its own people, with the former having all of their resources extracted and their people used as slaves at the whims of a small elite.
• Metal Gear: Green: When meeting Grizzly (who was known as Freezer Boy in his past life), Momo asks about the so-called relationship with Heart Star, only to find out Grizzly not only hated her guts, but had evidence of her bragging about running a money laundering scheme for years. Said money laundering scheme is an international charity hundreds of heroes and her family have donated to for said years.
  Grizzly: A crappy hero. Do you know that international charity she’s running? Not a single dollar goes to those in need. The entire thing is nothing but a massive laundering scheme,
  Momo: That, that can’t be true. My family has donated to that charity for years, as have hundreds of other well-known heroes. How could that money not reach those in need? How could you know that?
  Grizzly: Because little miss bitch bragged about it in class all those years ago. Hell, I’ve got the entire thing on camera!
• Recommencer (Miraculous Ladybug): When Mark gets akumatized into Musicifer, a witness records it on their camera phone. This all captures the fact that Mark offered his guitar pick to the akumatizing butterfly, proving that he wanted to be akumatized so he could attack Jay and their friends.
• The Scorpion Jar: Katsuki seals his own fate when he confronts Izuku, forcing him halfway out a window while declaring that he'll "throw you off the roof myself" if he doesn't bow to his whims. Izuku was banking on this, secretly recording the entire encounter with a hidden device.
• In Steven Universe: and the Hunters of Arcadia, the trollhunters go to Beach City to investigate the images of Jamie in his true form posted on Keep Beach City Weird.
• Supporting a Hero: Bakugou's attempts to murder Izuku are seen by the entire stadium and across the globe, resulting in his expulsion and blacklisting from heroics across every school except for the MLA front masquerading as a school. Bakugou still blames Izuku for it.
• Teenage Rebellion: Adrien has plenty of proof of Gabriel's Control Freak ways, be it videos or audio recordings. And he won't hesitate to post them either.
• When the heroes confront William Stryker in TMDDF: Danny Chooses Alex After the Many Dates, Alex makes sure to record his confession of having Nightcrawler attack the president in order to scare him because she knows that, as a high-ranking government official, he'll get off scot-free without any proof to their accusations.
• What Goes Around Comes Around:
  • As part of his record-keeping for his partner in crime Emilie, Gabriel recorded several of his discussions of Hawkmoth-related business with Nathalie. When investigators discover this, it provides plenty of evidence of their dirty dealings, along with evidence that he was working with both Chloe and Lila.
  • Chloe and Lila have further issues with this when Catastrophe sends them an Akuma butterfly while they're in holding cells. The two scramble and fight each other trying to reach it, with the whole chase caught on the station's security cameras.
• Whispered Tribulation: Despite Izuku only being in Gen-Ed, Katsuki still hates that he got into U.A. at all and confronts him with the intent of administering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to his favorite victim. Unfortunately for him, the room he confronts Izuku in has a security camera; not only is he stopped by help arriving in time, Principal Nedzu promptly expels him.
• With Confidence:
  • Many of Izuku's classmates have posted footage of him being bullied on their social media accounts. They instantly regret this when he points out how that can be used as evidence against them and their teachers.
  • Izuku records Bakugou issuing a Suicide Dare, then warns him that if he keeps picking on him, that recording will be going straight to U.A.
• Wolf in the Streets, Sardine in the Sheets: Valvatorez baits Majorita into bragging about how Void framed Killia and Christo for the murders Void himself had committed, as well as how she killed Usalia's parents. He recorded the whole conversation using an app on his phone.
• The Wolves in the Woods:
  • The New Transfer Students Ben, Amaia, and Andres record their time at Francoise Dupont, capturing how Ms. Bustier lets bullies go unchallenged while pressuring their victims to give in to their demands. This naturally comes into play when Bustier finds herself going on trial for encouraging her class to harass Marinette after she transferred to another school.
  • Alya gets another dose of this when she tries to recruit her classmates into a Malicious Slander campaign against Marinette's new friends. Among those who witness and record this is Alya's older sister Nora, who presents the footage to Alya's parents.

Films — Animation

• In Coco, the family is able to record Ernesto on a TV camera attacking Hector and admitting to murdering him and broadcasts it and his attempted murder of Miguel to the entire audience.
• Hey Arnold! The Movie: Scheck tried to demolish several homes and businesses to erect a shopping center and avenge one of his ancestors, who was a commanding Redcoat in the Revolutionary War. He gloated to Arnold and Gerald and burned the document that established the area as a historical site, thus making it illegal to demolish it. While it was important for Scheck to have surveillance cameras all over his building to prevent intruders from stealing the document, it proves to be a big mistake because his crime of burning it was recorded by his own surveillance cameras, at which point Arnold managed to obtain a videotape showing the document fully before it was burned, then he, Gerald and Helga (who secretly assisted the boys the whole time under the guise of "Deep Voice") show it to the infuriated townspeople, resulting in Scheck's eventual arrest.
• In The Incredibles, Dash's teacher suspects that he'd been pulling pranks during class, so he has a camera running to show the principal. But Dash moves so fast that it barely registers on the tape, and it just makes the teacher seem crazy.
• In Monsters, Inc., Sullivan lures Mr. Waternoose into the simulation chamber, where he unwittingly confesses to planning to kidnap human children for their screams. Mike then reviews the incriminating footage for the CDA agents in the control room.
  Mike: You know what? Let's play my favorite part again, shall we?
• In Onward, Barley denies to Officer Colt having anything to do with protesting the destruction of an ancient fountain and is immediately presented with a video of himself tying himself to the fountain to try to prevent it from being destroyed.
• Zootopia:
  • This is how Judy blackmails Nick into working with her. Using a pen with a built-in voice recorder, she records his boast about all the money his schemes have made, then threatens to bust him for tax evasion (since he hasn't reported it as income) unless he helps her.
  • Later, Judy uses her smartphone to record the conversation between Mayor Lionheart and a doctor about the berserk animals, making him look like the one responsible for their disappearance.
  • After Judy comes back to Nick after quitting the force, she apologizes to him saying "I really am just a dumb bunny." He records this, then plays it back, saying that he'll let her erase it in 48 hours.
  • Finally, Judy uses her pen to record Bellwether's confession, ensuring that the police she called herself now have evidence to arrest her.

Films — Live-Action

• Ajnabee: Raj manages to clear his name by recording Vicky as the later is gloating and explaining his entire plan to kill his wife and have Raj framed.
• Andhadhun: When Simi denies killing Mr. Sinha, Akash points out that she did kill Mrs. D'Sa. When she starts making excuses for it, it is revealed that her confession was recorded.
• The Avengers (1998). Emma Peel is the prime suspect in the destruction of the Prospero Project after the security tape shows her entering and killing people. It was actually her Evil Twin clone who did it.
• In Death Bell, Ji-Won accidentally videos her own murder when she drops her phone while being strangled.
• The 1997 Direct-to-Video thriller Exception to the Rule features two old school examples:
  • The villainess uses video footage of the protagonist's affair with her to blackmail him into doing her dirty work. Since this is a 1990s movie, an actual VHS tape is used.
  • Later on the hero turns the tables by recording an incriminating conversation using a Hidden Wire.
• Go: Leaving the rave Adam and Zack accidentally run over Ronna, panic, and drive away when they see Todd with a gun. Zack tries to reassure Adam that, even if Ronna had survived, Todd would have shot her. Adam realizes to his horror that he is still wearing his wire. Fearing they have been recorded, the two return to the scene to remove Ronna's body but discover she is just unconscious.
• Gorky Park (1983). The investigator Renko discovers that his friend the Chief Prosecutor is actually corrupt and working with the man who committed the Gorky Park murders. Renko pretends that he too is open to bribery, but then reveals that he has a tape recorder hidden under a nearby towel. This leads to a Gun Struggle and the Prosecutor's death.
• The plot of Heist (2001) starts when Joe Moore's face is captured on a security camera he wasn't expecting to be there.
• In The Invisible Guest, a bugged ball-point pen is used to record Adrian's confession.
• Subverted in Judge Dredd. A security cam captures the murder of a crusading newsman by what appears to be Judge Dredd. Instead of the tape proving his guilt, it's pointed out that anyone could obtain a Judge's uniform and appear to be Dredd, so more conclusive evidence is needed - a DNA match.
• Liane, Jungle Goddess: When Jacqueline confesses her love for Thoren to Tibor, it is recorded on the tape Tibor is using to record the Jungle Drums. Later, Thoren plays the recording back through the loudspeakers to scare off the Botos and hears Jacqueline's confession after the drums stop.
• The villains of Machete are completely Too Dumb to Live in regards to this trope. Booth is pretty dumb for crucifying a priest while explaining his villainous plan and not bothering to remove the clearly visible security cameras, but the Senator takes the cake for actually asking that someone videotape him while he's committing murder, and actually requesting that he get a copy of the DVD afterwards.
• Mannequin: How the inside man for The Rival is found out:
  “When I fired this idiot the other day, I decided to replace him with one of those fancy camera surveillance systems. I have Richards and this moron on videotape!”
  • Incidentally, the new security officer for The Rival is referred to as an idiot here.
• Mulholland Falls: Alison's gay friend recorded a lot of her liaisons at the motel on film through a two-way mirror. Both Hoover and the General are after these film reels because of the potential embarrassment they could bring to, respectively, the former's wife and the latter's reputation. It also turns out that Alison had filmed proof of illegal nuclear tests in the desert, which the bad guys killed her for.
• My Favorite Brunette: In the Montague gang's suite, Ronnie and Carlotta record the gang's confessions on a recording machine, including Kismet's confession that he murdered Collins.
• The Omega Code 2 has the "doctored" variant.
• Please Murder Me!: After dictating his message to district attorney Ray Willis, he leaves the tape recorder running in his desk drawer. Myra's Engineered Public Confession and subsequent murder of him is recorded on it. Although Myra tries to pass off his death as suicide, Willis winds the tape recorder and—thinking it might contain Craig's suicide note—rewinds it and plays it; ensuring Myra's capture.
• In Ruthless People, there's Carol and Earl's unintentional blackmail of police chief Benton: they think they sent him evidence of Sam Stone killing his wife Barbara. However, because Earl is Too Dumb to Live and he didn't watch while taping it, didn't realize he'd actually taped Benton having sex with a hooker.
• Robot Jox. Before he kills another character, The Mole's confession is videotaped, which eventually leads to his unmasking.
• Shandra: The Jungle Girl: Armstrong is recording his observations on tape when he is attacked by Shandra. He drops the still-running Dictaphone with the result that his near-fatal encounter with Shandra is recorded.
• Spies Like Us. Emmett Fitzhume and Austin Millbarge are videotaped while cheating on a State Department advancement test, which leads to them being chosen as expendable decoys.
• The entire plot of Strange Days revolves around a murder caught on tape, with the added problem that the murderers are cops.
• This Is Your Death: When the woman who suicides inside the car turns the engine off and attempts to get out, Adam pushes her back in and starts the engine again so she dies. However, he doesn't realize that the cameras inside the car are still recording and capture the murder. Sylvia copies the footage and then deletes it. At the end of the movie, she hands the recording over to the FBI.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: After a nursery visit to a farm, Adrian's son William claims that a goat ate his lunchbox: not only the contents but the lunchbox itself. Adrian complains to the nursery teacher, who contacts the farm, claiming that CCTV footage shows William throwing his lunchbox at the goat.
• A very, very nasty example in False Memory: a woman, who knows someone keeps breaking into her house and raping her in the night, suspects her ex-husband but has no idea how the hell he's doing it, since she locks her house up tight every night, and it's still locked in the morning. She sets up a video camera in a potted plant and discovers that it's her psychiatrist, who's pretty much mind-raped her into granting him complete control over her psyche with a series of code words. Ick.
• House of Robots: In the first book, Sammy brings Hayseed and Brittney 13 along when he confronts Cooper Elliot to get him to confess to kidnapping and dismantling E with the help of his brothers, Johnny and Trevor. He picks those robots because Hayseed has an internal recorder, and Brittney 13 can send out messages to the authorities once Cooper confesses.
• Millennium Series: In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth uses a video recording of her parole officer raping her to blackmail him.
• In No Way to Treat a First Lady by Christopher Buckley, a secret recording of the President and his mistress the night before he died exonerates his wife of murder.
• In Plague Ship, representatives of one of the big trading corporations try to push the Free Traders into giving up a lucrative trade arrangement. They make a not-especially veiled threat of armed attack, mentioning that they're far away from any authorities who might defend the Free Traders. Then J. Van Rycke pulls a small disc out of a belt pouch and comments, "Very interesting. I shall treasure this recording—"
• The plot of The Player of Games is triggered by a pseudo-aversion. Thousands of years into the future, video manipulation is so advanced and commonplace that no one would dream of considering videos as proof of anything, because it is trivially easy to produce pixel-perfect representations of anything you want. The eponymous grandmaster is very surprised when he is blackmailed by an unexpectedly advanced drone and has to learn that there are indeed levels of event-recording that will be accepted as genuine when a sufficiently sophisticated AI vouches for them.
• In Relativity, Sara and Greg have just gotten married when they bump into Sara's old flame, Martin Bling. When Bling finds out Greg is a chef, he mentions that he may want to visit his restaurant one day. Sara mutters under her breath, "Maybe you'll get food poisoning." Ten stories later (and over a year, in-universe), Bling does go to Greg's restaurant... and gets poisoned. His lawyers dig up the security footage of Sara and hire lip-readers to figure out what she said. Oops.
• Secrets Not Meant to be Kept has an example involving the victim rather than the villain. Realizing that no one believes Adri's warnings that her three-year-old sister Becky is being molested at preschool, Adri and her boyfriend devise a plan in which Adri gets Becky to talk about the molestation, secretly tape-recording the conversation.
• Star Wars:
  • In Revenge of the Sith, when the Jedi come to "arrest" him, Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious activates a recording and puts on a dumb show, just enough to make a great performance for playback at the first Empire Day before the Imperial Senate. Then he smiles, winks, and lightsabers the device to the point that it can no longer keep recording, declaring "That's enough of that."
  • In Star Wars Dark Disciple, Asajj Ventress lies to Quinlan Vos, telling him that Count Dooku killed his Jedi Master, Tholme. When Count Dooku captures Vos, after hearing this from Vos, he plays a holorecording showing that it was Ventress who did the deed. It doesn't convince him because Dooku has falsified tapes in the past. Dooku, however, knows that Vos has the skill of psychometry, the ability to experience past events by touching an object, so he makes him touch Tholme's lightsaber.
• Wolf Pack: The plot of the book happens because Bruno, Dr. Monk's cameraman, catches footage of the protagonists changing from wolf form to human form on tape and shows it to Monk.
• In You Don't Own Me, this proves to be the killer's undoing. After Leigh Ann unsuccessfully tries to kill Joe Brenner and they are both surrounded by the police, Leigh Ann tries to play innocent, saying that Brenner confessed to killing Martin Bell, has been blackmailing her (which is true) and kidnapped and tried to kill her. Leo and Laurie both know she's actually the killer, but have no hard evidence... until Brenner reveals he had been recording his and Leigh Ann's conversation, the way he does with all his conversations, including Leigh Ann admitting to having murdered Martin and her intention to kill Brenner too. At this point, Leigh Ann drops the act, knowing there's no way for her to wriggle out of this one.

Live-Action TV

• In the fifth season of 24, former President David Palmer is assassinated and the wife of current president Charles Logan, Martha Logan, is convinced it has something to do with something he wanted to tell her. She says that they had a phone conversation the night before in which he expressed that he wanted to talk to her in person about a matter of national security. So somebody dredges up a recording in which Palmer says that "it's hardly a matter of national security" but he wants to invite her to a charity dinner. Of course, everyone dismisses her as crazy because she's had mental issues in the past and is on meds, but later it turns out the recording is doctored or fake.
• Accused (2023): Just as it looks like the group is going to jail the Navaho bailiff reveals she recorded the FBI agent bragging about getting that guard to give false testimony on Derrick being armed, allowing the entire case to be thrown out.
• A key component of Americas Dumbest Criminals and a good portion of Maury episodes that don't involve parental/cheater DNA tests.
• In Better Call Saul, Chuck baits Jimmy into confessing to doctoring legal documents. Unbeknownst to Jimmy, he is recording the conversation on tape.
• In Better Off Ted Veronica turns out to have a tape of the time she and Ted had sex, confiscated off a security guard who apparently had dozens of similar tapes. Ted ends up showing the tape to Linda, not because of the sex (which she already knew about), but because it revealed that the e-mail Linda swore she had sent Ted had been accidentally deleted during the act, explaining why Ted never received it.
• The Bill. A Dirty Cop realises his informant is carrying a Hidden Wire, so says, "Are you threatening me?" Then he drops a knife into the informant's hand and starts to attack him in "self-defense". Which would have worked quite well, if they hadn't caught all this on video too.
• The Boys (2019). The Boys get their first break when they catch Popclaw on tape accidentally killing a man during sex, and use it to blackmail her into acting as their informant. Unfortunately Popclaw was secretly taping her own sex acts, so this subsequent blackmailing was also caught on tape, which is found after her death, revealing the faces of The Boys to the people they're investigating.
• A Babysitting Episode of Clarissa Explains It All has her having to babysit a monster child who always makes her life hell, and managing to get her to behave by recording her bragging about everything she's done and gotten away with.
• Columbo
  • The episode "Etude in Black" has this as what breaks the killer's alibi. The killer was filmed conducting a concert without his signature boutonniere, but later at the crime scene, the news crews present record him leaving with it. Faced with this, the killer's wife refuses to lie for him anymore.
  • Similarly, in "Playback" Columbo notices in security footage that a party invitation on the desk in the room where the victim was killed mysteriously vanishes. Since the man he suspects is the killer presented the invitation at the party, Columbo figures out that he prerecorded an empty room and spliced in the footage to convince the security guard on duty that the murder occurred after he had left.
    Columbo: How did it get to the art gallery? By your own testimony, you took it there. But in order to get it off the desk you practically had to step over the body. That woman was shot before you left the house... and you shot her.
• Death in Paradise: In "In the Footsteps of a Killer", the team reopens an old case where the victim was shot while on the phone, and her murder recorded on an answering machine.
• Eli Stone: One episode featured a baseballer who was charged with murder because a ball he hit had killed a person he hated and the prosecutor claimed the baseballer aimed for the victim. The prosecutor tried to introduce a DVD suggesting the defendant did have the skills to aim but, since the DVD was anonymous, it became inadmissible as evidence for being more prejudicial than reliable. (The prosecutor couldn't prove it wasn't doctored.)
• Family Matters:
  • Season 8's "The Jury" has Carl and Steve serving on the same jury when a janitor at a jewelry store is accused of stealing the store's merchandise. It seems as though with the whole thing caught on camera, they have him dead to rights, but Steve thinks he was framed and the footage was doctored to make it look like he did it. The jury refuses to believe Steve until the very end when he proves that the store's security guard is the real culprit, as he didn't count on anyone taking a closer look at the footage, which shows his reflection in a mirror.
  • Implied near the end of Season 8's "Karate Kids" when the Winslows' obnoxious neighbor, Nick Neidermeyer, feigns an injury and threatens to sue the family for the damages. The family stages a fake kitchen fire to drive him out of the house, with Eddie having captured everything on tape, forcing Neidermeyer to drop the lawsuit, though not before going through a Humiliation Conga.
• Forever (2014): In "Look Before You Leap," when a killer has taken Henry hostage with a knife at his throat, Henry obviously isn't worried about dying. He does, however, look nervously at the security camera which would record his death and his body disappearing.
• On Friends Ross and Rachel argue about which of them initiated the sex that resulted in Rachel getting pregnant. Ross insists that it was Rachel who hit on him, and shouts out that he can prove it because he videotaped the whole thing. This does not make the situation better.
• The Spanish drama Gran Hotel has a scene where the lead character gets his ex-girlfriend to admit to a murder that she'd framed him for... on a phonograph.
• Happy Endings has an early episode, with Dave newly moved into Max's apartment, with food going missing. After learning from Alex that Dave sleepwalks, Max borrows Jane's nanny-cam (that she uses to keep an eye on Brad, but that Brad uses to his own advantage) to catch in the act. Turns out, there's an artist squatting upstairs in their crawl space who's been stealing the food.
• Herman's Head: Herman helps a loony executive break into an office, but worries on hearing that the security cameras have caught it on tape. The executive isn't worried, producing a tangle of magnetic tape from his drawer and telling Herman that the night security guard just got promoted to Head of Security.
• JAG: Admiral Chegwidden is caught on tape hitting a high school student in the episode "Code of Conduct".
• On Joe Schmo 2, the second season of The Joe Schmo Show, this is one of the things that leads Ingrid Wiese (the show's first "Jane Schmo" character) to realize that something is very much off about what's going on and possibly the final nail in the coffin. Cammy leads her into the bathroom to tell her an embarrassing story about having been in a food fetish video called Porked 'n Beans, saying that she's worried the producers are going to find out about it and use it against her. As she's telling the story, the cameraman has to step outside because the batteries on his camera have gone out. Any normal person would keep telling the story and probably be grateful for not having the cameras there. Cammy, however, or rather her actress, Jana Speaker, stops telling the story, deliberately waiting until the cameraman returns to resume it, as if she actually wants everything she says to be on camera. (Which she does, as this whole scenario is going to be an important plot point going forward with the series.)
• The Leverage team love this way to take down marks. Notable is a few times, the marks almost know they're on camera, they just don't know how bad it'll look.
  • In "The Homecoming Job," a corrupt Congressman and his CEO partner are tricked into summoning reporters to find the truck packed with millions of dollars in cash they've been stealing from military contracts. The pair try to play off that they've uncovered this scam themselves...at which point, all the reporters' cell phones go off to play video of an argument the pair had exposing their greed so they both go down.
  • In the Leverage: Redemption episode "The Tower Job," just as it looks like Krista is about to get away with it, the team sends a video to her rich friends showing Krista practically bragging about knowingly building shoddy buildings so she could pocket more money for herself. Even if she avoids jail time for it, that friend makes it clear that once word gets around, Krista "will never sell so much as a timeshare again."
• Mathnet: The Karamasov brothers frame George for armed robbery by one of them wearing a George mask and robbing a bank. He stops to make sure the security camera has a clear view of him, even posing straight on and in profile like those pictures they take when the cops book someone.
• One episode of The Mentalist featured a suspected murderer that got off because the tape proving that he lied about his alibi hasn't been introduced on time to become admissible as evidence. It was later revealed he was really innocent and the real murderer had doctored the tape.
• Midsomer Murders: In "The Ballad of Midsomer County", the killings all centre around a murder accidentally recorded on a master tape 20 years earlier, with the master tape then being hidden.
• Monarch of the Glen: When Archie has his final break-up with Justine, this is witnessed in real time (complete with sound) by his whole family through the cameras around the estate; and by Katrina, with the children in her nursery. The mood is sombre among those watching. As a Brick Joke, Katrina switches off the camera, causing the children around her to utter a disappointed "Oh!". Hector does likewise, and Lexie says "Oh!" disappointedly.
• Murder, She Wrote: The murderer in "The Return of Preston Giles" accidentally records their confession on tape.
• In NCIS episode "Dead Reflection", a suspect is framed by the perpetrator being seen on a security camera while wearing a mask. the victim was killed because she recognized the voice wasn't right.
• On the fourth season of Profiler, slimy FBI boss Marks tries to get Rachel thrown off the team by planting a wire falsely implicating her in an affair with a student. Rachel confronts him in a men's room with Marks smugly saying he has the advantage.
  Marks: So yeah, I planted the wire. Because when you have someone by the short hairs, you pull.
  Rachel: Like this?
  ''(lifts her jacket collar to reveal her own wire and saunters out as Marks just stands there in shock.
• Sanford and Son: The 1976 episode "The Stakeout" has Fred (who had been smitten with a new resident of the Sanford Arms named Ms. Jenkins only to learn that "Ms. Jenkins" was a male thief named Charles Hacker) attempt to get a confession out of Hacker by sneaking a tape recorder under his sweater. He succeeds in doing so, but reality kicks in when the officer in charge of the stakeout notes that the recording was inadmissible evidence and could potentially blow the case. Eventually; Hacker ends up captured after Fred's friend Bubba - like Hacker wearing a dress - managed to follow Hacker (posing again as "Ms. Jenkins") into the ladies' room, heard him blabbing and reported it; managing to get the $1000 reward in the process.
• Search: A camcorder records the entire 1997 incident, including Min-guk's murder. The survivors assumed the camera either wasn't working or would never be found. Twenty years later Dong-jin finds it and watches the video. Then Jun-seong destroys it to protect his father, the murderer.
• In the series finale of Seinfeld the Main Characters are arrested because they watched an armed robbery take place and didn't call the police or do anything else to help. In court, footage that one of them shot themselves is used as evidence against them, showing them watching the robbery and, not only doing nothing to help but actually mocking the victim as the robbery's going on.
• Subverted on The Shield when Vic realizes a supposed ally is wearing a wire. He decides to use it to claim his supposed corrupt reputation is all an act to make crooks think he's a renegade cop so they'll give up information. Since they think Vic didn't know he was being recorded, Internal Affairs buys Vic's "confession."
• Silk Stalkings: In "S.O.B.", a charter boat skipper has a hidden camera concealed behind a two-way mirror in the master stateroom which he uses to record his rich clients having sex with a prostitute so he can blackmail them. It also records Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense trust-fund kid assaulting, and apparently killing, the Victim of the Week, and sends the tape to the police take the heat off himself. He had riled the rich kid up and sent him there hoping he would kill the victim, but he was only knocked out. The skipper finished him off and dumped him overboard.
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Court Martial". Captain Kirk is brought up on charges of causing the death of a crewman. The main evidence against him is the Enterprise computer log. It's later determined that the log was altered to frame Kirk for the crewman's death.
• Whodunnit? (UK): In "The Q43 Experiment", the murder of the Victim of the Week is caught on the tape recorder the victim was using to rerecord his lab notes. The killer, in fact, is planning on this and uses the tape to plant a Red Herring.
• The Wire being a show named after phone surveillance, naturally this comes up, but rarely straightforward:
  • The Unit gets some good intel about the Barksdale organization from hearing D'Angelo have phone sex with his girlfriend, but they can't mark it as pertinent evidence as they löistened to too long to a non-pertinent call.
  • Sergei's Blasé Boast to White Mike "Does he have hands? Does he have face? Yes? It wasn't us" is played back to him in the interrogation room, one of the more straightforward examples of this trope in the show.
  • The team tries to set up so that Proposition Joe's incompetent nephew Drac would get promoted so they'd hear more of his signature subtlety on the wire.
    "No, that other thing... cocaine, nigga!"
  • The team is surprised to hear the usually very disciplined Cheese mourn having to "shoot Dawg" on the phone, only to find out he was talking about his actual dog, and at best they can charge him with improper disposal of a dead animal.

Music

• This is just one of the many, many ways the guy in Shaggy's song "It Wasn't Me" is caught out by his girlfriend with the girl next door.
  Saw me banging on the sofa (Wasn't me) / I even had her in the shower (Wasn't me) / She even caught me on camera (Wasn't me)

Video Games

• Among Us: The Skeld and Polus maps include security cameras that Crewmates can use to try and spot the Impostor, who can also disable them by sabotaging the communication systems.
• In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, a camera in a studio filming Nod propaganda catches Kane in the middle of discussing copying and distributing his faked news reports. He then notices.
  Kane: Is that camera still running?! (gunshot)
• In Full Throttle, Ben has to expose Ripburger by placing the photos Miranda took of the murder of Malcolm Corley and the audio tape of Corley's will on the projector.
• Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective: In Chapter 5, Lynne is shown to have shot Sissel on a security camera. Chapter 17 reveals that Yomiel intentionally framed Lynne with his manipulation powers.
• In Heavy Rain, if Ethan is captured by the police, Jayden decides to help him escape. If the camera recording Ethan's interrogation room isn't turned off, Carter will call out Jayden for this and threatens that he will be suspended from duty.
• In Yakuza 2, the incident at the Amano Building with Date and Kawara in a standoff against Kazuki's impostor is caught on tape and used to implicate Date for murder, because it shows Date shooting the victim... and that's all. The angle of the footage shows only the two of them despite there being four other people at the scene (Kiryu, Sayama, Kawara, and Kazuki), and more importantly doesn't show that Date didn't shoot first.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
  • In Justice for All Case 2-4, you learn that Matt Engarde put a spying camera into the room that turned into the crime scene, specifically to record the murder happening. Later on, a videotape becomes evidence - whether the contents on the tape is the murder or something else is never revealed, as the video is never watched.
  • The case specifically created for the DS "Rise from the Ashes" deals with a murder in the evidence room at one point. Said room had a security camera recording everything, but nothing conclusive was seen because a moving thing was in the camera view all the time. Turns out that no murder took place in that room, merely a fight that resulted in two people being injured. Well, a murder DID happen in that room however the incident caught on tape wasn't this murder but just a fight between two people. The actual murder took place prior to this fight.
• Jonathan Ingram in Policenauts exposes Gates' true colors after exposing his motive rant on what he, Toscanini, and Tokugawa have been doing on Beyond by using a small camera on his ear.

Web Comics

• In Dominic Deegan, Nielen tried to break up Dominic and Luna by bottling words they said at some point and using his elemental powers to rearrange a few things. It doesn't fool either of them.
• In Homestuck, there is a scene where One of the many Araidabot's Soulbot Video Logs shows the battle against the Black King. This technically counts as caught on tape as proof for Andrew Hussie to prevent the readers from bugging him about what happened during the battle.

Web Original

• Quick, a ferret-like being uses Terra's digital camera to capture evidence of conspirators against the Kingdom of Halen in Engines of Creation.
• In Noob, Master Zen should really know better than to admit being behind the events of the Wham Episode while playing an MMORPG, in front of the other player he framed for the whole thing, especially if said other player has a habit of filming in-game events.
• Revenge Films: In this story, when Karen came over to Brad's house with her parents to chew him out for calling off the wedding after seeing her frenching one of her guy friends at the after party, his friend Jack (the OP's brother) showed them the recording of the affair, causing Karen's parents to turn on her for it.
• Stampy's Lovely World: Part of Stampy's evidence in favour of ruling Fizzy guilty of his crimes in his trial during Episode 653, "Trial", is that the entire thing was caught on Lovely World episode footage two episodes previously. The episode then proceeds to do a Flashback Cut to show the footage.

Western Animation

• On American Dad! a traffic camera records Roger running someone over and leaving them to die. However, he's wearing a paper thin Kevin Bacon disguise at the time, so it's the Hollywood actor who gets arrested. Even Bacon himself, who was thousands of miles away when the hit-and-run happened, believes he must have committed the crime and repressed the memory, because "it's clearly me on the tape!"
  • In "Bully for Steve", Principal Lewis showed the Smiths a tape of Stan bullying Steve caught on the security cameras. It also caught Principal Lewis downing a twelve-pack of beer and urinating on the basketball court, and a janitor turning into a werewolf and attacking a student.
• In "Movie Night" from Butterbean's Cafe, Butterbean and her crew decide to host a movie night at Butterbean's Cafe. Ms. Marmalady hatches a plan to ruin it and force everyone to come to her place for movie night. She goes around to the crew of the cafe one by one, each suggesting a different type of movie that's supposedly popular in Puddlebrook in order to get them arguing about it so they can't decide on what movie to show. Unfortunately for her, Cricket is onto her and films her interactions with everyone, then plays them back after the arguments begin to reveal that they're only fighting because Ms. Marmalady stoked them to.
• The Dinosaucers tried it with the Tyrannos once, but it failed because they put Bonehead in charge of taping the confession. Instead of doing so, he covered the villain with adhesive tape.
• DuckTales (1987) had an episode where Flintheart Glomgold framed Scrooge with art theft by showing a tape of 'Scrooge' stealing the painting. It worked at first but Huey, Dewey, and Louie eventually found out the tape caught a reflection of 'Scrooge' taking off his disguise, revealing himself as Flintheart Glomgold.
• The Fairly OddParents! episode "Inspection Detection" had Timmy being accused of shoplifting at a local department store while he is prepping for Fairy Inspection Day and he cannot explain where he got the stuff he wished for at the risk of losing Cosmo and Wanda since some of them were, by sheer coincidence, items shoplifted from the store. When his parents and the police are too dumb to believe him when he tries to tell them that the school bully, Francis, is the real culprit, having found a shoplifted walkie-talkie in his pants, Timmy is forced to go on the run in order to catch Francis red-handed and clear his name. Near the end of the episode, Timmy is able to prove it when Cosmo shapeshifts into a security camera and catches Francis stealing a tub of lard. He then plays the tape by pulling out a TV screen, a VCR and a power generator from Francis's pants.
• An Overly Long Gag in Futurama's Trust-Building Blunder episode, in which it seems that half the office has simultaneously decided to get hidden camera evidence against the other half (on floppy disks, no less).
• The House of Mouse short "Big House Mickey" had Mortimer try to get Mickey in jail to go on a date with Minnie. He did so by having Mickey arrested for stealing a baseball from his house and shows the court a tape of "Mickey" breaking into Mortimer's house to steal the ball. The court fell for it, but Mickey got released when the police found the words "Property of Mickey Mouse" on the ball.
• An episode of Johnny Bravo had the main character being sent to prison for littering, but Little Suzie and Mama Bravo were able to clear his name when the video taken from a security camera across the street showed that Johnny did throw the candy wrapper inside the trash can and that the wrapper on the ground was actually thrown by some random passer-by. However, Johnny, who was accidentally sent to a women's prison, didn't want to be released.
• The Loud House:
  • The Casagrandes episode "Just Be Coo" has Sergio's friend, Pancho, being accused of pooping on a statue and wanting to hide out at the Casagrandes' apartment to avoid being sent to the pound with all the rest of the pigeons having been captured, but he quickly proves to be too much of a hassle, forcing Sergio to kick him out. When Sancho is captured, Sergio and Lalo, feeling guilty, mount a rescue mission, where they discover that Marcus, the animal wrangler, framed the pigeons, as the poop was really pistachio ice cream. When Marcus captures Lalo and Sergio for learning the truth, the two call Ronnie Anne for help, where Sergio shows everyone the Mercado security footage via her laptop of Marcus splattering the statue with the ice cream. Ronnie Anne threatens to post the video on Jim Sparkletooth's website unless Marcus freed everyone, at which point he breaks down and confesses why he did it: the pigeons never invite him to their parties, and when he's not doing his job, he has a life outside of it. Sergio takes pity on Marcus and lets him join the party after he releases them.
• Parodied on an episode of The Mask series. When the Mask gets falsely accused of counterfeiting, he takes out a tape recorder and claims to have recorded a confession from the real criminal. But then when he hits the button, polka music plays instead and he goes "Alright, alright, who's the wise guy?!"
• In Megas XLR episode "Buggin' the System", after Jamie accidentally knocks Kiva out when fending off the metallic creatures, he claims one of them got Kiva. After leaving the archive world, Jamie presses a button in Megas that makes a monitor show the moment of him hitting Kiva, who proceeds to beat him up.
• In The Owl House episode "Yesterday's Lie"; Vee, a basilisk who impersonated Luz in the human realm is caught on a hidden camera set up by a museum curator to expose witches and demons. Luz's mother then threatens to go to the police because he set up the camera (and a bunch of animal traps) on her private property.
• A Paramount Modern Madcap had the quick-change villain Mike the Masquerader identified by an elephant as the robber of a bank. The elephant is put in police protection, while Mike schemes to get rid of him through his disguises. When he's exposed later, the elephant can now not remember him. He's got such a lousy memory he has to keep them all on a tape recorder—which was on "record" when Mike asked him if he remembered he robbed the bank.
• The Scooby-Doo episode "Jeepers, It's The Creeper." The flame will tell the Creeper.
• The Simpsons did it when Homer was accused of groping a woman. Apparently Groundskeeper Willy, like all Scottish people, secretly videotapes random people in cars, and he uses his tape to prove that Homer was just trying to grab a piece of candy off the woman's butt.
• The Smurfs (1981) episode "Memory Melons" had Selwyn trying to present an "I love you" message to his wife Tallulah using a magical melon that captures whatever a person speaks into it. However, the melon captures Selwyn speaking about needing to get rid of "that old bag of wind" (referring to a literal bag of wind) and Tallulah thinks that he's talking about her.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Accidents Will Happen", Squidward supposedly twists his ankle on the job after having an accident in the storage room and threatens to take legal action against Mr. Krabs unless he did what he said during his healing process. When it seems as though his ruse is about to succeed due to SpongeBob and Patrick having called the OWS (Office Worker Safety) Department for help in investigating the accident, it quickly falls apart when Mr. Krabs remembers the surveillance camera he set up. The footage reveals that Squidward faked his injuries while trying to sleep on the job, and he now has to spend the rest of his workday pampering Krabs as the latter did throughout the episode.
• In Todd McFarlane's Spawn, when Sam and Twitch manage to find Chief Banks, who attempted to murder Twitch since he knew too much about the alley murders, he tells them everything that happened. When Banks tells them that no one is going to believe what they heard, Sam pulls out a cassette that was recording the whole discussion.
• In The X's episode "To Err is Truman", after spending an entire day without misbehaving and pulling pranks in order to go on a trip to a water park, Truman takes the X-Jet for a joyride, but Home Base catches him in the act. Except he forgot that he disabled his cameras while he and Tuesday were busy trying to frame Truman for the toilet bomb prank earlier in the episode after their failed attempts at getting him to misbehave, so he didn't really record anything, and Tuesday is given Truman's original punishment of being sent to mime camp.
• Wheel Squad: Akim and Johnny were once arrested for robbery and a security tape from World Mart had been introduced as evidence against them. It turned out that Enzo, the manager of World Mart, doctored the tape because his boss wasn't satisfied that the extra cameras had yet to diminish the place's theft rate.

Real Life

• The fall of Richard Nixon gave this trope a big boost, as the tape recordings he had ensured would be made (after the model of Lyndon Johnson) damaged him not only by implicating him in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in and other crimes but destroyed the public image of him as a wholesome believer in American values he had carefully constructed when they displayed him as a profane, angry, bigot.
• Mitt Romney's campaign for the Presidency in 2012 was damaged when audio surfaced in which he claimed that 47% of the populace were would-be parasites who therefore wouldn't vote Republican.
• Averted; in 2008, Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency survived the damage inflicted by the surfacing of audio of him asserting that many middle-class Americans injured by the system instead 'bitterly cling' to guns, religion, racialism, and anti-immigrant sentiments rather than blaming those actually responsible and voting in their own best interests.
• Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for the Presidency in 2016 was damaged by the revelation of her assertion that half of Donald Trump's core supporters—that is, half of 40% of the Republican Party, that is at most 10% of Americans—had legitimate grievances, but the other half were simply a bigoted and/or extremist 'basket of deplorables', the already insulting remark frequently being distorted into a condemnation of all Trump supporters or of most Americans.
• Averted: In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President one month after an old tape surfaced in which he bragged of adultery attempted with the aid of a shopping trip and claimed that his celebrity allowed him to commit a form of sexual assault with impunity.
• Hillary Adams, daughter of Judge William Adams released a very disturbing video of her father beating her with a belt when she was a teen. It received national attention and Judge Adams will most likely Never Live It Down. He ultimately lost the re-election in 2014.
• In an age when cellphones have built-in cameras and High Def video cameras are very affordable, you can easily get caught on video; doubly so if you're brazen enough to commit your misdeeds in public. Need we mention that the video could even go viral on the net before you even get the chance to confiscate the person's phone/camera?
  • Check the laws in your area first, however—some places require all involved parties to consent to being recorded for it to be legal, at least where there's an expectation of privacy (i.e. not in public). Not, of course, that that stops some people anyway.
  • Many court cases these days involve video evidence. Still, even if they have you dead to rights, it's probably better to plead not guilty unless you get some sort of plea deal, as you can't be sure where things will go.
• Robert Durst was a millionaire real estate heir who was suspected of murdering several of his associates, and as he was interviewed for a documentary about the subject, he was caught muttering to himself in the toilet while still wearing his lavalier microphone, saying he "killed them all". While this wasn't the critical evidence of his guilt, it did provide confirmation and a tense finale to the documentary series.
• The murder of Tina Ise was caught on tape, but not for the usual reasons. Authorities had bugged her family's home because her father was suspected (and ultimately proven) to be a terrorist.
• Inverted in the case of Juan Catalan, who was able to prove his innocence in court when footage from shooting an episode of the show Curb Your Enthusiasm confirmed his alibi that he was at a baseball game at the time the murder he was accused of was committed.

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