Finding the Bug

A character realizes they're being spied on and searches for the device, usually a tiny microphone or camera to get rid of it. They could go to such great lengths to tear apart their entire room to search every nook and cranny to find it.

To communicate the information to their allies, they may turn on some music to drown out their voices or use non-verbal means like writing or hand signals.

Though less common, it is possible the bug is found through standard security procedures. Sometimes a character will be able to instantly find a bug without an extensive search, usually to show that they are extremely skilled or because they know how the eavesdropper thinks. A common way to discover a bug is with a radio, since it may be able to pick up radio waves transmitted by the bug.

More often than not, it's a heroic character learning that the villain has been spying on them. It can be switched around if the hero is a spy character who gets their cover blown.

See also Bluff the Eavesdropper. In comedies this often overlaps with Incredibly Obvious Bug.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Early on in Death Note, Light realizes his room's been bugged, meaning he can no longer openly talk to Ryuk or use the Death Note while in his room, leading to him having to store a page of the notebook inside a bag of potato chips and noting names down on there.

Comic Books

• Josie and the Pussycats: Alexander Cabot III discovers that his sister has conversations with her mirror, and pranks her by installing a microphone and speaker behind it. He then supplies answers that infuriate Alexandra. Later, Alexandra reasons that her mirror only responds due to her witchcraft powers; it couldn't give lippy answers of its own volition. She finds the devices, plus a hidden camera, and decides to counter-prank her brother.
• Tintin: In Tintin and the Picaros, Tintin quickly deduces that the hotel in San Theodoros is bugged, and points out microphones and hidden cameras to Captain Haddock.

Comic Strips

• In one Doonesbury arc where Zonker is arrested for marijuana possession, he discovers a bug in a table lamp in his room. To troll the listeners, he and Mike have a conversation about what a strain this frame-up has been on him. They reveal the microphone to the judge, and the case is thrown out.
  Zonker: You know me — I hate grass! I just get high on life! And America!
  Listener: Wait a minute...

Fan Works

• In the Spy X Family h-doujin "Spy x Sex", Yuri gets to regret hiding several microphones in the Forgers' apartment in order to expose Loid as an abusive husband, and thus have a legitimate excuse to have him executed. Loid found the microphones, thinking Yuri wants to expose him as Twilight, but since he can't destroy the microphones or jam their signals without exposing himself as a spy, he asks Yor to sleep with him in order to get Yuri off his back. Loid's plan was to jam the microphones after he asked Yor to sleep with him, thinking Yuri would shut off his radio not wanting to hear his sister's answer, allowing Loid to destroy the microphones and have Yuri blame the lack of signal on equipment failure when he turned his radio back on. However, before Loid had a chance to get work on the radios, for the sake of his fake marriage/Operation Strix he had to apologize to Yor for pressuring her to have sex, since she freaked out and locked herself in her room. However, when she told him Camilla told her that he would leave her because she can't satisfy him, they spend their first night together as husband and wife. Eventually Loid notices that his portable jammer ran out power, and Yuri is shown crying inconsolably, having heard his beloved older sister and her husband go at it. After Loid tries to go back to his room to sleep, Yor pins him down on the bed, and the narrating text mentions he was too exhausted to go to work the next day.

Film — Live-Action

• The Cabin in the Woods: When Marty accidentally breaks a lamp, he discovers a camera wired into the wall. He comes to the conclusion he's on reality TV before thinking of what his parents will think of him.
• The Conversation: When Harry gets a phone call from Martin Stett making it clear his apartment's been bugged, he tears his entire apartment apart to find the bug to no avail.
• Enemy of the State has several instances of this, not only are the bugs shown to be planted, then shown how they are being exploited and ultimately shown to be searched for and neutralized and counter-exploited.
• James Bond:
  • In From Russia with Love, James Bond arrives at a hotel and checks in. He's shown to a nice room, and once the porter leaves, begins inspecting the room for transmitters. Bond finds one behind a painting, and detects another inside the room's telephone. He phones the front desk to ask for another room.
  • Bond continues his practice of finding bugs in A View to a Kill. While pretending to be a racing horse enthusiast visiting Max Zorin's thoroughbred sale, Bond and his associate speak as a snooty employer and his hapless valet while covertly scanning the room for bugs. Once they find a bug, they leave a tape player to continue the fake conversation while the men step out onto the room's balcony to have a real conversation.
• Parodied (of course) in The Kentucky Fried Movie, during the "Fistful of Yen" skit. The hostess who works for the villain shows the protagonist to his room, and points out three bugs in the room; the first is relatively hidden (though still pretty easy to see), the second is very obvious, and the third one is an actual human being holding a directional microphone and listening to the audio feed on earphones.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015): Napoleon Solo finds a number of Russian-made bugs in his hotel room. When he confronts his reluctant Russian ally Illya Kuryakin about it, Illya responds by returning all the American-made bugs that Napoleon had planted in his room.
• Now You See Him, Now You Don't: Dean Higgins is informed that the students have been bugging his audience, and immediately begins trying to find the bug. By the time he finds the flowers that had the bug in them, the students have already successfully retrieved the bug.
• Oldboy (2003): Oh Dae Su mentions wanting to chop off Mr. Park's hand. Later, the villain sends him Mr. Park's severed hand in a box. This causes Oh Dae Su to realize he is bugged and go to a professional to find it. It was located in the heel of his shoe.
• Parodied in The Pink Panther (2006): Inspector Clouseau, believing himself to be Properly Paranoid, goes on the hunt for bugs twice, but only winds up doing what he does best. The first time, he searches his new office, but just winds up cutting a lamp's power cord and electrocuting himself. The second time, he searches pop sensation Xania's hotel suite, finds a power connection box under a rug, and winds up sending the chandelier in the lobby below crashing to the ground.
• Runaway: Once in the custody of the police, the villain's girlfriend must have her clothes scanned for bugs, which can be done while she's still wearing them. The scanner confirms a ridiculously large number of bugs on her person.
  Scanner: BUG DETECTED!
• Sanctuary (2022): Rebecca tells Hal that she's been secretly recording their sessions together. Hal starts tearing apart the entire hotel room with Rebecca telling him he's getting hotter or colder. He gives up before he finds it.
• Sneakers: There's a tap added to one of the cameras in Playtronics, giving access to the entire security feed. When the alarm is raised, one of the guards sees something odd with one of the cameras and disconnects it.

Literature

• The Action Hero's Handbook: The very first chapter goes over where to look—and points out not to stop looking once the Incredibly Obvious Bug is found.
• The A.I. Gang: Done completely by accident in Operation Sherlock. While Ray is digging through his pockets for cash, he pulls out a random gizmo that catches the attention of his new friends and ends up explaining as his Current Detector — a gadget that picks up anything with electricity. When he demonstrates it, it picks up a bit of electricity coming from Rachel, which turns out to be an electronic listening device that subsequently disintegrates when the listener, Black Glove, smashes the reception device it's connected to.
• The Boys from Brazil: Nazi hunter Gorin has planted a homemade transmitter beneath a staircase in the room where Nazi officers and agents are meeting. By chance, a servant boy tunes his portable radio to the same frequency; a Nazi aide recognizes the signal, leading to the Nazis finding the transmitter and soon determining how it got there.
• CHERUB Series: In Sleepwalker, Fahim suspects his father Hassam of having caused a recent plane crash (he's Right for the Wrong Reasons, Hassam is responsible for the crash, but indirectly, due to illegally selling scrapped plane parts to airlines). He allows CHERUB agents into the house to bug the place, but one of the bugs is installed incorrectly, leading to Hassam discovering it and realizing he's under investigation, resulting in a rapid escalation.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Played with. Hermione wants to know how Rita Skeeter can keep getting the private information she's writing about, and Harry suggests that she's using bugs. Hermione investigates and does indeed find a bug... literally. Rita Skeeter turns out to be an animagus who can transform into a beetle, and Hermione eventually captures her in beetle form and keeps her in a jar.

Live-Action TV

• Bewitched: In one episode, Darrin's coworker Dan bugs his (Darrin's) daughter Tabitha's rattle so that he can steal Darrin's advertising ideas. He realises he must be being spied upon, and at one point, he grabs the microphone from the rattle and yells, "There's the bug!"
• The Boys (2019): In "The Name of the Game", Hughie attempts to bug the bathroom in the Seven's suite in Vought Tower but is immediately found out because Translucent was using his invisibility's Power Perversion Potential to peep on people in the bathroom, and spots him planting it.
• Breaking Bad:
  • Hank has become convinced that local businessman Gus Fring is actually a powerful drug kingpin (he's right, of course) and makes Walt plant a bug on Gus' car (he couldn't do it himself due to being in recovery from a gunfight at the time). Walt, who is secretly working for Gus, warns Gus before he does so, allowing Gus to get rid of the bug when driving to suspicious locations, and only put it back on the car when he's driving to and from his legitimate job.
  • In "Blood Money", Walt gets suspicious when his copy of Leaves of Grass is missing, and even more so when he's told Hank didn't go to work all week. On a hunch, he checks his car and finds the tracker they used on Gus' car several months ago. At that point he realizes with dread that Hank has discovered his criminal double life.
• Castle (2009): In "Under the Gun", Beckett and Castle are at the office of a murdered bail bondsman, investigating, when Beckett's radio emits high-pitched static. Using the radio and the volume of the static as a guide, they discover a bug hidden in the bondsman's calculator. It later turns out to have been planted by the guy's wife, who overheard him planning to cut her out of a million dollars in jewels being recovered from a robbery, and she murdered him for it.
• Columbo: In "The Most Crucial Game", Columbo notices that a strange sound can be heard on the radio in Hanlon's office whenever the phone is used, realizing that this means the phone was bugged. Later in the episode, he deduces that Hanlon had also discovered the bug through the same method and incorporated it into his Fake Alibi.
• Jack Ryan: In "Cargo", Harriet pulls a Honey Trap on Jack, seducing him to plant a bug in his hotel room. In "Tertia Optio", her cover is blown as they run into each other while investigating the same cargo ship. Next time they meet, Jack hands her a drink with her own listening device in it.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Gone", three rich teenagers rape a girl and murder her. They go to extreme lengths to ensure they won't get caught, including murdering the hesitant member of the trio and bribing a court officer to bug the judge's private chambers. Thanks to TARU tech Morales, they're able to find the bug and bring the remaining members to justice for their crimes.
• Leverage:
  • In the pilot episode, "The Nigerian Job", the mark, Victor Dubenich, discovers a bug with a flashing light as he expects the team is trying to get back at him for trying to kill them instead of paying them for services rendered. They wanted him to find that one, as it gave him enough rope to hang himself when he thought he was being clever.
  • At the beginning of Season 4, Hardison finds a bug in the light fixture of Nate's apartment. He'd been Genre Savvy enough to sweep for active burst listening devices but had initially missed the one they'd found as it used passive means of transmission. He had to adjust his methods to remove the new type of devices from the apartment and offices.
• In Season 2 of Preacher (2016), Tulip finds a bug planted by The Grail in her hotel room. Cassidy finds out when Tulip shows him, much to his dismay.
  Cassidy: Jesus... God, I think I masturbated in here!
  Tulip: Yeah. Me too.
• Smallville: One Saw-inspired episode sees Lionel Luthor kidnapped and put through a series of deadly traps. Clark and Lex investigate Lionel's office for clues, and Clark discovers a bug hidden in a small knickknack on a desk. Trouble is, Clark only finds it because of his X-Ray Vision, so he has to pretend that he noticed a flaw to maintain his secret.
• The Sopranos: In "Funhouse", Tony has a food poisoning-induced fever dream where his subconscious convinces himself that Big Pussy has become a government informant. He immediately acts on this personal revelation, making up an excuse to invite himself to Pussy's house, and then saying he needs to use the bathroom due to his lingering food poisoning, but is in reality searching the bedroom for a wire. Tony finds it hidden in a secret compartment inside a cigar box, confirming beyond a doubt what he had already known deep down, but refused to accept.
• Stranger Things: In "The Flea and the Acrobat", Hopper sneaks into Hawkins lab and discovers that Will's body is fake, but is caught in the act, drugged, and dropped off home to make him think it was all a dream. Hopper doesn't fall for it however and suspects the people of Hawkins might be spying on him now that he knows this much, so the first thing he does upon waking up is tear apart his trailer to find evidence of bugging. He eventually finds it in the very last place he looks and then proceeds to repeat the process at the Byers' house, though that doesn't bear any fruit.

Tabletop Games

• Some books in the BattleTech universe (e.g. Shadows of War) describe disposable bugs being planted throughout an area, waiting in a passive mode in order to avoid being detected and therefore avert the trope. When they detect something interesting and broadcast, their presence would be detected and therefore would be removed (or run out of batteries). In actual game terms, if an enemy has the cheek to deploy Remote Sensors on the battlefield, finding and destroying them becomes a game of 'find and squash the bug,' as Mechs and vehicles can destroy any Remote Sensor pods. Doing this requires a unit to either spend time shooting it or expend an additional movement point, presumably to reflect the act of finding and stepping on/running over the offending detection pod. Infantry has the luxury of turning their guns on any pods they find in passing, so deploying lots of inexpensive and plentiful infantry teams to find Remote Sensors is a viable counter-strategy.

Video Games

• In Gotham Knights (2022), the Penguin refuses to give you information on the Court of Owls because they've got his office bugged. You have to investigate his office to find them. When you examine a bugged object, Penguin will brag about it in a subtle hint, prompting your character to examine the object and destroy the bug.
• One side mission type in inFAMOUS: Second Son is you finding and destroying hidden cameras. Your phone patches into its feed and you have to determine where it is from that.
• Near the end of Nicktoons Unite!, Jimmy Neutron figures out that the way Professor Calamitous stole his portal technology is spying on him through a flea bot on Goddard. The heroes shrink down to battle the flea bot and trace its signal back to Calamitous.
• The scavenger hunt in Psychonauts 2 has you looking for an "Enemy Listening Device" planted by a rival organization known as the Gastronauts; Raz can't find it until the postgame, as it's located in Artifact Storage in the Motherlobe, in a room that has to be unlocked by the Projection power.
• This is a key gameplay mechanic for both sides in Rainbow Six Siege; attackers need to wipe out cameras throughout the map in order to avoid detection by the defender team, as dead defenders can still spectate through cameras and help their team. Defenders, meanwhile, need to stop remote-controlled drones sent in by the attacking team from discovering the location of the objective they're defending.

Visual Novels

• Gyakuten Kenji 2: Edgeworth catches on that someone is tracking his movements and realizes that something in his possession has a bug in it. Since the Yatagarasu badge is the only thing he and his group have had for the entire case, Edgeworth deduces that's where the bug was planted.

Web Animation

• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, Rogal Dorn is not happy upon hearing that the Imperial Palace is bugged. Being Rogal Dorn, he resorts to literally leave no stone unturned and reinstall the continent-sized palace to get rid of them.

Western Animation

• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Played for Laughs in "In Like Ed", in which Ed, Edd, and Eddy pretend to be spies to uncover what Kevin is up to. At one point, they hit upon the idea of tracking his movements with a hidden camera... unfortunately, they ask Ed to take care of it. Cue Kevin walking out of his house and immediately seeing a camcorder (complete with tripod) "disguised" as a tree — that is, there are a few leaves and branches on top, none of which do anything to conceal the camera.
• Freaky Stories: "The Rug Bug" is about a secret agent disguised as a travelling salesman. Knowing the room he's staying in is bugged, he checks through multiple items, finding various cameras and infrared devices hidden through them, down to a lens in the complimentary toothpaste. However, he notices a very obvious and stuck bolt on the floor. As it turns out, it's not a bug — it's the deadbolt to the chandelier located in the below floor's honeymoon suite. The couple using it are thankfully fine, as it merely crushed their suitcase, which included the wedding dress, a tuxedo...and a high-tech spy camera.
• Gravity Falls: In "Gideon Rises", Con Man Stan's hearing aid keeps picking up feedback from an unknown source. He returns after the climax to reveal to the town that what his hearing aid kept picking up on were the hidden cameras Gideon had bugged them all with, disguised as free Gideon pins, and was using the things he overheard to support his Phony Psychic scam. Takes a scammer to know a scammer.

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