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• Weirdness Isolation

It's a Just Between You And Me moment: the villain, secure in his superior planning or intellect, is monologuing in exquisite detail how his evil plan is going to profit him by screwing over all the people who trust or depend on him — completely and blissfully unaware that the hero has arranged a Hidden Wire, PA microphone or other relay of the villain's words, which are heard with perfect clarity by a figure of authority and/or the villain's dupes. They, of course, realize just how they've been deceived and turn on him. Alternatively, the hero may be concealing a tape recorder, and will replay the villain's words in front of authorities just when when it seems as if he'll get away with it all. Turns out that the hero has Recorded The Whole Thing.

Variation of Right Behind Me, but done intentionally, and usually with more people listening. Also similar to Bluffing The Murderer, but it relies on overconfidence rather than panic on the part of the villain.

Usually the Straw Hypocrite's and Villain With Good Publicity's moment of demise.

Compare Did I Just Say That Out Loud, Is This Thing Still On.

---

Examples:

Anime

• Full Metal Alchemist: In the second episode where Edward and Alphonse are battling the fake priest, Edward is trapped but has a huge microphone hidden as the priest explains how he is manipulating the populace and so on.
• Done in the last episode of Gunsmith Cats when Haints finds Radinov in his office and launches into a rant about her failures, only to discover that she's really Kate with a wig and a microphone.
• In Code Geass R2, Lelouch pulls a massive Xanatos Roulette just to get one of these, all in order to secure China as an ally in the fight against The Empire.
  • He himself also fell for one setup by his Brother, which led to his expulsions by the rest of the Black Knights. Though Schneizel's was a bit more selective with the recorded dialogue from said meeting, as it omitted Suzaku noting that Lelouch wasn't being truthful. But then Schneizel always loved taking liberties with the truth.

• This happens twice in Martian Successor Nadesico, transmitting some things Nergal would rather have remained hidden to the entire ship. The second time, in fact, Mr. Prospector seems to have some sort of "reveal bad guys' secret" button (designed to look like Ruri's face for some reason) on his shirt that he casually brushes as their captor gets rolling.
• Infinite Ryvius: Captain Airs Blue at one point considers betraying and abandoning the crew of the Ryvius, unaware that a treacherous subordinate has turned on the ship's intercom. Needless to say, he isn't Captain for much longer.
• A non-villainous (sorta-kinda) happened in Get Backers. Makubex finally explains that stealing the implosion lens wasn't just a plot to ransom the gods of Mugenjou and return things to how they before Ginji left; it was all prophesied in the Archive, and he was just doing his best to play his part and see if he could find a way to break the gods' control. He even revealed that his public persona as the "demon king" was largely a product of his virtual reality systems. Ren runs in after he finishes talking, reveals that she used his computer to broadcast it all over Lower Town, and that they're all waiting outside, cheering wildly and yelling things like "Long live Makubex!"
• One Piece had one during the Enies Lobby arc where Spandam, after foolishly activating the Buster Call, is gloating to Nico Robin about his future plans and how all the Marines under him are sheep. The kicker to this is that HE was the who left the radio on for all to hear and weakly tries to cover it up by trying to imitate Robin when he finally notices this. No one fooled of course.
• Sket Dance plays this completely straight when a teacher caught framing a pupil for his own misdeeds confesses all with the immortal lines: 'No matter what you say, nobody will believe you!' Unfortunately for him, he was being broadcasted over the school intercom system at that very moment, and the Sket-dan had fiddled with their classroom's speaker so that he wouldn't notice it.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, during his fight with Yusei, Divine reveals that he was the one who murdered Misty's brother (Misty was under the impression that Aki had, and had become a Dark Signer to seek revenge - acquiring the use of Jibakushin Ccarayhua).He discovers too late that Yusei's Duel Disk had a microphone in it, which he had activated beforehand, continues to brag about it in front of Misty even after Yusei tells him that Misty heard the conversation, and becomes Ccarayhua's dinner.
• Peach Girl evil mastermind Sae is tricked by Kairi into expounding on her patented Wounded Gazelle Gambit routine, and how she has repeatedly made Momo look like a monster before the class. Unknown to her Touji is right around the corner, and hearing her bragging finally wakes him up, and he in turn makes damn sure the class knows who and what Sae really is. The worst part was, they kind of already did, but admitted falling for an act they themselves had been victimized by before—and sadly, would again before all was done.
• In Ouran High School Host Club, the school's newspaper editor tries to engineer the downfall of the Host Club, only to have his plans thwarted by a recording machine disguised as a first aid kit which Kyouya placed into the newspaper room.
• Twentieth Century Boys: An incredible inversion. For the entire series, Friend's Villain With Good Publicity status was his greatest advantage over the heroes. And just before the endgame, he throws it away willingly, casually telling the entire world the atrocities he's done on live television. At that point, he's so crazy and his plan so close to fruition that it doesn't really matter anymore.
• Largely how Near manages to expose Light as Kira in Death Note, sans the tech equipment but Light's god complex ego is more then enough.

Comic Books

• Watchmen has probably the only example of someone who is confessing not being caught in this trap.
• The post-Zero Hour incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes spent an entire arc building up to one of these, complete with the Legion's leader becoming Not Himself to ingratiate himself to the target, several Legionnaires faking their deaths, and one of the presumed-dead Legionnaires then impersonating a third party to take credit for the villain's schemes in order to prompt the Just Between You And Me moment, which was of course broadcast on live TV - all without cluing the reader in until The Reveal. Xanatos Gambit? Xanatos Gambit.
• For a while, recently, in DC Comics, Lex Luthor was President of the US (really!), for a long time, through cataclysm after cataclysm, a few of which he genuinely tried to protect the country (and the Earth) from. When his hatred of Superman got the better of him, he tried, through a heavily convoluted and highly illegal scheme, to frame Superman for attempting to destroy the Earth by drawing an asteroid to Earth (really, it makes very little sense, even when you take into account that the asteroid was a piece of the destroyed Krypton). It almost worked, until he ranted to Superman that he truly thought he was guilty, repeatedly admitting to playing the public like a flute and that he intended to teleport off planet (using Illegal Alien Technology from Darkseid) before the asteroid hit, leaving everyone else to die (given that his actions in no way helped to stop the asteroid itself, just blame someone for it). Luckily, he didn't know Batman was taping the whole thing (in addition to, as Bruce Wayne, buying up all his assets so that he couldn't start over, as long as that lasted).
  • Lex may be completely crazy, but he's not completely wrong The asteroid IS headed for Earth because of Superman; it contains his cousin, Supergirl. Supergirl's escape ship was following Superman's journey, but unfortunatly came with a giant chuck of the plant Krypton attacted. Luthor's crime here wasn't framing Superman, but leading a manhunt for the hero instead of simply asking for his help in destroying it.
  • Lex gets this a lot. In an Elseworld story, he gives the villain speech in front of Supergirl while Batgirl was broadcasting it live on network TV, destroying his reputation.
• Mysterio starts out as a Villain With Good Publicity, but is foiled when he confesses everything to Spider-Man, who is holding a tape recorder.
• The first arc of Scott McCloud's Zot! ends with the titular hero interrupting the Evil Chancellor as he gives a live planet-wide broadcast about how their world's Holy War against Earth is going. The villain makes sure to turn off all the cameras before admitting to Zot that, yes, he killed the king, the queen, and his rivals, and engineered the war as a way of consolidating power—but then Zot reveals the tiny robot that's been following him around, which has video cameras for eyes and a built-in broadcast antenna. Guess what the robot's been doing?
• Spider Jerusalem uses this against the President in Transmetropolitan. He purposely gets seen using a real gun (something that's out of character for him) earlier in the day, so that the increasingly unstable President will make very sure he's not armed, instead of making a cursory check guns and then checking for bugs.
• This Marvel Adventures comic has Captain America doing this to Loki over a live broadcast. It's really just admitting to jealousy, but this does result in Loki leaving in a huff.
• Subverted in Y The Last Man, when ex-cop turned brothel owner You confronts Epiphany, a Canadian pop star who's using her influence among teenage Japanese girls to recreate the Yakuza, and broadcasts her comment ("Those retarded Japanese fangirls worship me like a god!") to the guards outside. When informed of this Epiphany simply retorts: "Oh please! Those groupies already know I couldn't give two shits about them!"
• There was one Donald Duck comic, where Donald, Scrooge, Huey-Dewey-Louie are teleported to a steampunk world, where Beagle Boys got the Money Bin, and sent alternate Scrooge to work in coal mine. He then takes his revenge by tricking them to confess how they did it, which was in fact broadcasted on a giant sheet.
• The 'Crazy Eights' storyline in the Marvel Comics "Wonder Man" book. Eight newly superpowered friends of Wonder Man manage to record L.A's top security firm as really being a bunch of murderous thugs for hire. A violent chase ensues all over town, ending with a Hail Mary pass to a reporter acquantice. Ironically, the reporter's view of costumed people tussling with the security firm just increases her curiosity to view the tape.

Film

• Batman Returns had Batman pull one of these on a Villain With Good Publicity, the Penguin (I played this stinkin' city like a harp from Hell!).
  • Good idea, poor realization. Not only does it sounds fake (would you believe a Batman that has been framed and discredited a while before?); Batman makes it surreal by scratching it. With a CD!
  • Batman just overrode the signal without giving provenance. The Penguin's voice is pretty much unmistakeable, methinks. As for the record scratch, Rule Of Funny.
• Similarly, in Batman And Robin, Batman shows Mr Freeze that he didn't kill his wife by playing-back a video of Poison Ivy mouthing off about "As I said to Lady Freeze when I pulled her plug, this is a one-woman show!!" Hilarity Ensues (unfortunately off-screen) when Mr. Freeze later becomes Poison Ivy's cellmate at Arkham Asylum, as he (presumably) beats the living hell out of her.
• In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Kevin recorded the "Sticky Bandits"' confessions with his toy tape recorder.
• 16 Blocks uses the tape recorder variety, in which the protagonist plays back the words of a corrupt cop as he dies on the courthouse steps.
• Colin Farrell's character in The Recruit uses his "Spartacus" program to transmit the gloating revelation Al Pacino's corrupt CIA agent to his superiors. Al Pacino emerges to find dozens of agents surrounding the building. However, in a subversion it turns out that Farrell was just bluffing, as the program wasn't able to get a signal. The agents still thought that he was the mole, and had arrived to capture him, not Pacino. However, Pacino believing they were here for him, delivers a rousing You Cant Handle The Truth speech and as a result is Hoist By His Own Petard. As the dozens of laser sights move from Farrell to him, he is given a moment to realize his error before committing Suicide By Cop.
• One of the greatest examples of The Libby, Courtney from Jawbreaker, spent the entire movie covering up her responsibility for a prank that got her friend killed. In the end, her recorded confession was spliced into the microphone as she gave her prom queen acceptance speech.
• Subverted in Star Trek VI. When Kirk asks who is involved in the conspiracy for the assassination, the villain responds "since you're all going to die anyway, why not tell you?" He is then interrupted as the heroes valiantly rescue him just before the nick of time, and is forced to get a confession through other means.
• Used to take down the villain in Big Fat Liar.
• Brilliant subversion (or perhaps Double Subversion) in the Eddie Murphy political comedy The Distinguished Gentleman. Murphy's conman-turned-congressman is secretly trying to prove that a more senior congressman is taking kickbacks from a lobbyist in return for blocking an investigation into the relationship between power lines and cancer. He claims in a committee hearing to have videotaped a meeting between himself, the senior member, and the lobbyist. When they grab him and pull him into the meeting and demand to watch the tape, they discover its a bluff- it was just an ad for the phone sex business he used to own. Secure that they've dodged the bullet, they launch into discussing their evil plan-as he surreptitiously tapes the whole thing and then plays it for the media as soon as they go back into the hearing.
• In the otherwise forgettable Norm MacDonald film Dirty Work, Norm's character uses his Note to Self tape recorder to nab a confession out of the bad guy at the end.
• In the Weird Al Yankovic film UHF, an evil network executive goes on a tirade about how little the community means to him and how stupid he thinks its inhabitants are. Eventually this gets broadcast to the entire community in question in place of the important message that the executive intended to make.
  • Odd in that the opening line of the confession that we see earlier in the film (the rest is saved to be revealed later) and the full confession that we see later on are obviously from two different takes, since the line is delivered differently, the character is seated instead of standing, etc.
• Done to the Man Behind The Man in Monsters, Inc.
  Waternoose: I'll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die!
• In Enemy of the State (1998), after the protagonists (Will Smith, Gene Hackman) have lost the original video record of a congressman's assassination ordered and overseen by the corrupt politician named Thomas Reynolds, senior advisor to the National Security Agency, they decide to bluff and try to trick him into incriminating himself during a meeting. Unfortunately, their plan of catching it on tape via a hidden mic fails, and they are captured by his goons. However, thinking he has won Reynolds then launches into a villain speech, confessing to the murder. Unbeknownst to Reynolds, one of his own NSA technical people gets cold feet and records the whole speech in their surveillance van, which is later used by the FBI as proof for the conspiracy to murder the congressman. Not that Reynolds cares anymore, because he's already dead at that point.
• Subverted in Four Brothers; the adopted brothers, in their quest to avenge their murdered adopted mother, have to take down a dirty cop. The brother assigned to take down the cop goes to the cop's house and gets him to confess and pretends to be wired. Meanwhile, the girlfriends go to the police station and say that they're afraid that he's going to kill a cop. Cop cars show up at the dirty cop's house, he starts sweating and takes the brother hostage. The cops end up shooting him.
• Pulled off by Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator.
• In The October Man, Mr. Peachy does one of these saying he is the murderer. No one is around to hear it, but it gives the hero enough incentive to prove it to the cops.
• Played pretty much straight in PCU, except that the unintentional broadcast didn't reveal past wrongdoing so much as current bigotry.
• Happens at the end of the French film District B13. The villain, however, only does it when threatened with a Karmic Death.
• In the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, Dantes meets Villefort in a bath house and turns up the steam, obscuring much of the room. He then gets Villefort to confess to his crimes, at which point the steam clears away revealing the authorities who have been standing there the whole time.
• Played straight in Robocop, when Corrupt Corporate Executive, Dick Jones, boasts of his many crimes in front of the titular hero. Of course, being part robot, Robocop visually records Jones' confession and plays it back for his bosses. Oops.
• The Well Intentioned Extremist and Villain With Good Publicity Big Bad in Minority Report fell victim to this.
• Jason Bourne pulled one on Ward Abbott in The Bourne Supremacy instead of killing him, which led to his suicide.
• Parodied in Johnny English, where the protagonist accidentally switches the vital confession recording with candid footage of himself lipsynching to Abba in front of the bathroom mirror.
• Played straight in the third Care Bears movie, Adventures in Wonderland, where the Big Bad goes into a rambling confession in public after being hit hard by a Care Bears Stare.
• Happens in the finale of Gamer, right before he gets knife in the gut.
• In Max Keeble's Big Move, Max is called into the principal's office. The guy rants about he doesn't care about the school because he's using 97 percent of the money to build a big football stadium and about 1 percent for the school (2 percent is on breath spray). Max turns on the camera that the principal uses to make the morning announcements and the entire school is shown just how much of a slimeball their principal is. Needless to say, he gets fired.

Literature

• In Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident Briar Cugeon gloats about his plan to kill Opal Kobi as Foaly records the conversation on Artemis' computer
• The Sherlock Holmes story The Dying Detective, in which a concealed Watson overhears the gloating of a villain who thinks he's given Holmes a fatal disease.
• During Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Princess Leia gets to do this to Smug Snake Borsk Fey'lya - the ship they were in went to arrest Han, Luke, and Rogue Squadron, and when an Imperial Star Destroyer showed up and the Rogues started flying cover, Fey'lya's ship and escorts started to abandon them and flee, nominally to get back and warn the Republic. Leia goaded him into admitting that the only use soldiers could have to a politician was political power, and his political enemies were his enemies in truth - the people on his ship and flying as his escort were his most ardent supporters, fleeing and letting his 'enemies' die could only benefit him. His supporters promptly mutiny and turn back to save the others.
  • Naturally he does recover all power and prestige for other books, because he's not generally a villain per se - he's an Obstructive Bureaucrat who happens to be on the Alliance's side. While he takes advantage of, say, a suspicious new lump of money in his rival Admiral Ackbar's account, which seems to point back to the Empire, he doesn't arrange to put it there himself, so they can't just kick him out.
• In The Sea of Monsters, the second book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Percy tricks Luke into confessing his crime of poisoning Thalia's tree to the entirety of Camp Half-Blood through an Iris-message, also proving Chiron's innocence.
• At the end of Ender's Shadow, Bean not only gets Achilles to confess his murders into tape recorders in front of witnesses, but manages to capture him as well.
• In "Gone Too Far", a Transformers text story, our heroes manage to use this to their advantage. It's unwise to admit you framed someone for murder when they're a communications 'bot who records everything they hear.
• At the end of the Alina Adams mystery Death Drop, the heroine engineers a situation for the murderer to make a confession to a certain acquaintance of his with a reality TV show in a storeroom full of cameras; he didn't check to make sure none of them were on. Thanks to a waiver he'd signed earlier, it was not only an on-camera confession, but a court admissible one.
• Averted in Seven Days in May — even with insurmountable evidence laid out before him, the antagonist never makes any explicit admission of guilt.

Live Action TV

• Most episodes of The Pretender ended with the Monster Of The Week bad guy forced to confess under the same circumstances that he hurt or killed another person.
• In the Dawsons Creek episode "Election", Pacey turns the school's PA on while Abby tells him, in a moment of private smugness, that the school is filled with idiots. She then loses the election.
• The fourth-season The Dead Zone episode "Heroes & Demons" ends with an Engineered Public Confession in which the crooked cop's superiors are hiding just within earshot.
• Done with Jesse's con man cousin in Full House.
• Though not a villain, Liz Lemon on the 30 Rock episode "The Aftermath" twice accidentally confesses her true opinion of other characters while being broadcasted, first on a microphone over the entire studio and then again over a closed-circuit television monitor. See Is This Thing Still On.
• In Season 5 of 24, President Charles Logan, responsible for the day's various murders and terrorist attacks, is taken hostage by Jack Bauer, who attempts to scare a confession out of him by threatening him with a gun. When that fails, Bauer is arrested, and President Logan returns to give a press conference. When his wife Martha goes hysterical with anger, the president takes her aside and threatens her, confessing to his involvement in the day's events while doing so. A few minutes later, much to Logan's surprise, it is revealed that Jack had placed a secret recording device on him while threatening him earlier, and his entire confession was recorded on it. Martha and Jack had planned this the entire time.
  • In Season 1 Keith Palmer gets in Carl's face and the latter threatens him. Later on it's revealed that Keith put the exchange on tape.
• Subversion: Emmerdale has an episode where Adam holds Steph hostage after she gets him to admit to killing Terrence. Steph manages to convince Adam that she loves him and they should run away together. When Adam unties her, she makes a break for it and runs to the police to show them the secret recording she made of Adam's confession. But all that's on the tape is Adam's doctor's notes.
• Also subverted in Coronation Street. Roy and Haley are trying to adopt an unhappy child but his abusive father won't let them take him without lots of cash exchanging hands. They try to trick him into confessing, but don't quite manage it. They hide the recorder under a newspaper and sit him next to it, then try to get him to remind them what the plot of the arc is. After a few hours he's fairly pissed off and wants them to get to the point of why they asked him to come over. Roy tries to pay him a meager sum in exchange for his signature on the papers. The guy freaks out, barking at them that he wants lots more money or they'll never see the kid, and how he'll get violent if they ever waste his time like this again. It's at this point that the recorder runs out of tape and makes a whirring noise. He finds it, smashes it, threatens them some more, and demands yet more money.
• Knight Rider did this at least once, probably more.
• How many episodes of Murder She Wrote or Remington Steele ended like this?
  • Jessica Fletcher would engineer this situation in almost every episode of Murder She Wrote. As a murderer in one episode put it, "The detective in the wings? Mrs. Fletcher, how... cliche."
• Happens a lot on Leverage, considering the Five Man Band are RobinHoods for hire. A prime example is the episode with the Iraq War vet: A congressman and the head of a Blackwater-style security company are basically using the Iraq war as a giant money laundering operation. The crew sends earlier proof of their collaboration the news outlets, and when reporters catch the two together they try to play it off as a secret plan to expose corruption. Cue the really incriminating conversation they had minutes earlier being sent to the reporters.
• The second season of Phoenix Nights ends with the main character's Evil Counterpart Den Perry being subjected to an Engineered Public Confession, having attempted to sabotage the titular club on numerous occasions including burning it down.
• A variation of this occurs on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Sisko is ordered not to tell the Cardassians of the Klingon plan to invade them. To get around this, he has himself measured for a suit by the resident Cardassian spy/tailor whilst discussing the invasion plan with his senior staff.
• In an episode of Just Shoot Me, Maya tries to expose Elliot's brother's fraud. She fails miserably.
  • He's eventually done in by one part this trope, one part Exasperated Perp, by the completely oblivious Pointy Haired Boss.
• In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Enemies," when Faith believes Buffy is tied up and Angel is his evil alter ego Angelus, she tells them about the Mayor's plans — only, Buffy isn't tied and Angel is still his soulful self.
• In the season 4 finale of Babylon 5, Michael Garibaldi (and the other main characters) are recreated as illusions 500 years in the future to blacken their characters. Garibaldi's illusion then proceeds to hack into the system, broadcasting the discussion between him and the scientist who created the illusions into the aether, while convincing the scientist to explain their side's plans on the virtue of being an illusion. It was awesome.
  • Much earlier, in the season 1 episode "Eyes", Sinclair executes the psychic version of this trope by taunting EarthForce agent Ari ben-Zayn until his hatred and resentment of Sinclair (that was the motivation behind his investigation and attempted coup) was revealed to the telepath he brought with him, who then helped Sinclair, Ivanova and Garibaldi to take him down. It was also awesome.
• Inverted in Clarissa Explains It All, while doing a science report on weekend of TV, her annoying brother, Ferguson, attempts to make her go insane. Clarissa and her pals find out about it, and she pays him back—by faking insane, but after removing batteries from Ferguson's tape recording.
• A non-villain version was seen in Neds Declassified School Survival Guide when Crubbs revealed the school's policy of replacing (only) broken property, leading to a cacophony of teachers smashing old, obsolete equipment.
• The pilot of Remington Steele has the heroes move a body from one room to another in a hotel. When the villain exclaims, "We left him in her room!" a door is opened to reveal a roomful of cops next door.
• Burn Notice: in "Bad Blood", a guy embezzling from a rap mogul shows up to kill someone who knows too much, but not before bragging about how clever his scheme was. Then it turns out the gun, which Michael gave him, was full of blanks, and the rap mogul is in the next room.
• Veronica Mars does this in the episode "Like a Virgin." Veronica gets the culprit to confess near her locker, then opens the locker to reveal a video camera; she then has the tape played during a television program broadcast to the entire school.
• In Bold and the Beautiful, Rick rubs in his brother Ridge's face how his marriage to his daughter (Steffy) was a revenge plot against Ridge. And all the while, Ridge is recording the conversation and later plays it to Steffy who then breaks up with Rick.
• Happens ALL THE TIME on Law And Order. Seriously, ALL THE TIME. David Cross famously got in hot water for badmouthing his own guest role on L&O and the somewhat lazy writing — leading to severely constrained opportunities for acting — of having the villain just break down and confess everything to the cops after a few prods.
• This was just another trope for Mission Impossible.
• Mocked hilariously on Saturday Night Live during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Linda Tripp (Played by John Goodman!) is wearing an Incredibly Obvious Bug and trying desperately to get Monica to confess to sex with Bill Clinton, but she keeps changing the subject.
  Tripp: "Speak into the flower, dear."

Video Games

• The Infocom Interactive Fiction Adventure Game A Mind Forever Voyaging ends this way.
• Also appears in the Lucas Arts Adventure Game Full Throttle.
• The end of Wing Commander IV is an interactive fiction segment where you must trick the Big Bad into forgetting about the crowd in front of him and doing this.
• Policenauts. Full stop.

Western Animation

• There is an episode of Doug where Rodger accidentally engineered one of these himself. While he's sitting with his feet on the principal's desk, he's blabbing about stealing a trophy and shoving it in Doug's locker, thereby framing Doug for the crime. However, his feet are also on an intercom switch, resulting in Rodger being heard all over the school. Next thing you know, Rodger's being punished.
• Teamo Supremo: The team exposes a pop singer's anti-individuality stance as being created by her producer at her concert, by showing the concert-goers the producer saying so to the singer.
• In the Futurama episode "A Head in the Polls", Richard Nixon rants about his plans for Earth after he is elected — in front of Bender, a robot with a tape recorder in his head. Nixon still won the election.
  • Spoofed in the same episode in that Bender is more interested in blackmailing him with the 'I'll go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place' than 'I'll sell our children's organs for drug money'.
• An episode of The Fairly OddParents has Timmy proving to the authorities that assign fairy godparents that Vicky (who had taken Cosmo and Wanda from him) was happy (and thus no longer needed the two) with a tape recorder.
  • A MANIPULATED tape recorder, at that. One side is her talking, the other is a faked voice. When she protests the fake voice, he reveals he recorded her protest. Probably counts as Karmic Death, as Vicky used the same trick earlier.
  • Another episode has Vicky and Timmy trying to frame each other over the use of a special microphone. Timmy had been using it to manipulat the town's parents into spending more time with their kids. When pissed-off FCC agents show up, Timmy simply raises the microphone to Vicky while she rants, causing the agents to believe she ran the illegal radio station. Jail time!
• In a variation, an episode of Superman The Animated Series had Lois tricking a crooked cop to confess to framing a man on death row for his murder... with Superman right outside, using his super-hearing to get every detail.
• An episode of The Galaxy Trio had the self-proclaimed emperor Lotar being taken down this way.
• In the Batman The Animated Series episode, "Almost Got Him," Batman finally reveals himself to the supervillains he has been listening to in a bar as Croc in disguise. They aim their weapons and note he's never getting out of the bar alive. However, seemingly every other patron and staff of the bar produces a weapon; they were actually all cops in disguise, including Commissioner Gordon and Det. Harvey Bullock, and were waiting for Batman to give the signal to arrest them once Joker blabbed about where he was keep Catwoman hostage.
  • "I hit him with a rock!"
    • "It was a big rock."
• In Mona the Vampire, the blond, villainous girl goes over the heroes with a metal detector (finding two tape recorders) before telling them all about the evil plan. Unfortunately for her, she forgot to check the cat.
• An episode of Justice League began with a triumphant Kryptonite-wielding Lex Luthor standing over the fallen Superman. Lex confesses to smuggling weapons and selling them to terrorists. Turns out it wasn't really Superman, but J'onn J'onzz in disguise, and Batman and Green Lantern have been listening the whole time. Whoops.
• In the thirteenth season premiere of South Park, Kyle turns on the microphone backstage at a Jonas Brothers concert, causing a live world-broadcast of the confession of a long-term plan to exploit the purported myopia of devout christians by secretly selling sex to girls under the guise of good, clean, family-friendly entertainment. And just for that extra South Park kick, the person he engineers this confession from is Mickey Mouse.
  • Didn't quite work, as Mickey was so powerfully homicidal that the world just knuckled under to him, waiting until his rage was spent and he went back to sleep.
• Spoofed in Drawn Together. Spanky Ham and Captain Hero were abusing a superhero-versus-villain gambling book, with Spanky Ham betting thousands of dollars for the monster and Captain Hero deliberately failing very miserably, when Captain Hero was overcome by greed and decided to do it himself. Spanky Ham then retaliates by recording Captain Hero confessing his actions... with an incredibly obvious recorder hanging from his neck and asking the most revealing questions he could think of.
• BuzzLightyear does this to Guzelian, who revealed that he tricked everyone into making peace with each other so that he could attack them both.
• Done in Fillmore to the corrupt cheif commissioner in "South of Friendship, North of Honor."

Real Life

• Roger Clemens tried to do this by secretly taping a phone conversation between former trainer Brian Mcnamee so that he would admit that Clemens did not take HGH; all it proved was that Mcnamee was either telling the truth, or not a complete idiot.

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