History Main / RatsInABox

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': PlayedForLaughs in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E3RobotOfSherwood Robot of Sherwood]]". The Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara Oswald are chained up in a dungeon so that the Sheriff can figure out which of the three is in charge. After the Doctor and Robin spend the next few minutes bickering, Clara tells them to "shut up" and suggest plans one at a time. Then the Sheriff's lackey comes in and fetches Clara. [[WomenAreWiser Clearly, she's the sensible one]] and thus must be in charge.
* ''Series/PersonOfInterest'': Reese cites the trope by name in "Judgement". He has two villains [[PunkInTheTrunk in the trunk of his car]]. The first man doesn't have any useful information. The second refuses to cooperate, so Reese cuts the bonds of the first man and says he can go free if he gets the information. Cue first man immediately starts beating up the second until he talks.
* ''Series/ColdCase'': The team does this in one case to figure out which of three suspects murdered a young girl back when the four were in middle school together. While the three quickly turn on each other, they don't say anything incriminating. They're still able to figure it out thanks to behavior. [[spoiler:Since the stressed out AlphaBitch instinctively started digging through another woman's purse looking for drugs, they realized she probably had leverage due to witnessing the murder. They're right.]]

* Played with in the Franchise/{{Batman}} graphic novel ''ComicBook/TheLongHalloween''. A gang of Irish crooks are arrested for [[spoiler:the murder of Harvey Dent]]. They all confess, and their stories line up so perfectly that Batman and Gordon are convinced they're lying. They want the crooks to spill the name of their employer, hopefully Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, so Gordon locks them all in the one big cell hoping that they'll get chatty. The catch is, [[spoiler:one of the crooks is replaced with Harvey Dent, alive and in disguise, to try and prod the rest into talking.]]

* In Season 2 of ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', CTU agents put Bob Warner and Reza Nayieer in a room together in order to determine who [[MacGuffin transferred the funds to Syed Ali]]. Reza cracks and offers to show the CTU agents how the funds were transferred, [[spoiler:but they find out that Reza's fiancée Marie - the last person CTU or the audience would suspect - transferred the funds, and she kills Reza and the agents investigating the funds]].

* ''Series/TheCommish''. In this case, the guilty party was the one who fell asleep in the prison cell (apparently TruthInTelevision as it was mentioned in the non-fiction book ''Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets''. Based on the idea that the others don't know why they've been arrested, but the guilty party is resigned to the fact that he's been caught).
* ''Series/TheExpanse''. The protagonists are on the receiving end of this in "Remember The Cant". First the Martians interrogate the ''Canterbury'' survivors separately, then put them together in the same room having planted the seeds of doubt about each other.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. PlayedForLaughs in "Robot of Sherwood". The Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara Oswald are chained up in a dungeon so that the Sheriff can figure out which of the three is in charge. After the Doctor and Robin spend the next few minutes bickering, Clara tells them to "shut up" and suggest plans one at a time. Then the Sheriff's lackey comes in and fetches Clara. [[WomenAreWiser Clearly, she's the sensible one]] and thus must be in charge.
* ''Series/PersonOfInterest''. Reese cites the trope by name in "Judgement". He has two villains [[PunkInTheTrunk in the trunk of his car]]. The first man doesn't have any useful information. The second refuses to cooperate, so Reese cuts the bonds of the first man and says he can go free if he gets the information. Cue first man immediately starts beating up the second until he talks.

* Another variation combines RatsInABox and the Prisoner's Dilemma: one perp is taken away from the others, then immediately reinserted into the group solely to instill suspicion. For instance, the cops sit one of the perps in the interrogation room, then stand in total silence for some amount of time while the perp looks on in puzzlement. Then the cops return the perp to his accomplices, who ask what the cops wanted with him. The perp honestly replies "nothing", but now the suspicion that the cops offered him a deal is planted in everyone else's mind, and group solidarity quickly collapses.

* In Season 2 of ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', CTU agents put Bob Warner and Reza Nayieer in a room together in order to determine who [[MacGuffin transferred the funds to Syed Ali]]. Reza cracks and offers to show the CTU agents how the funds were transferred, [[spoiler:but they find out that Reza's fiancée Marie - the last person CTU or the audience would suspect - transferred the funds, and she kills Reza and the agents investigating the funds]].

* Sped up brilliantly in ''Literature/{{Night Watch|Discworld}}''. Vimes finds he has three assassins in custody, two of whom are thoroughly professional, but the third is a show-offy twerp; Vimes classifies him as "the sort that gets a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars". So, enjoying a [[LargeHam ham]] and [[ChewingTheScenery hoosegow]] sandwich, he drags the two others in back but leaves the door open so Showoff Dan (who Vimes has dubbed "Ferret" for his weaselly demeanour) can hear all the screaming. Before he gets a chance to even grab the keys so Ferret can have his turn, the guy spills - and Vimes reveals that the screaming was just him and the boys goofing around. Ferret notices his fellow crooks glaring at him, starts doing some mental arithmetic, then demands protective custody in return for ponying up everything ''else'' he knows.

* Sped up brilliantly in ''Discworld/NightWatch''. Vimes finds he has three assassins in custody, two of whom are thoroughly professional, but the third is a show-offy twerp; Vimes classifies him as "the sort that gets a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars". So, enjoying a [[LargeHam ham]] and [[ChewingTheScenery hoosegow]] sandwich, he drags the two others in back but leaves the door open so Showoff Dan (who Vimes has dubbed "Ferret" for his weaselly demeanour) can hear all the screaming. Before he gets a chance to even grab the keys so Ferret can have his turn, the guy spills - and Vimes reveals that the screaming was just him and the boys goofing around. Ferret notices his fellow crooks glaring at him, starts doing some mental arithmetic, then demands protective custody in return for ponying up everything ''else'' he knows.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. PlayedForLaughs in "Robot of Sherwood". The Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara Oswald are chained up in a dungeon so that the Sheriff can figure out which of the three is in charge. After [[CockFight the Doctor and Robin spend the next few minutes bickering]], his lackey comes in and fetches Clara since she ordered them to shut up and they obeyed.

This trope is the exact opposite of the classic "PrisonersDilemma" where you keep the prisoners ''apart'' and offer each one a reduced sentence if he rats out the other(s). You make sure each one knows that his friends have received the same offer. It only takes one to break and the other(s) go down for life, but if ''I'' decide to talk first....

* Sped up brilliantly in ''Discworld/NightWatch''. Vimes finds he has three assassins in custody, two of whom are thoroughly professional, but the third is a showoffy twerp; Vimes classifies him as "the sort that gets a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars". So, enjoying a [[LargeHam ham]] and [[ChewingTheScenery hoosegow]] sandwich, he drags the two others in back, but leaves the door open so Showoff Dan (who Vimes has dubbed "Ferret" for his weaselly demeanour) can hear all the screaming. Before he gets a chance to even grab the keys so Ferret can have his turn, the guy spills - and Vimes reveals that the screaming was just him and the boys goofing around. Ferret notices his fellow crooks glaring at him, starts doing some mental arithmetic, then demands protective custody in return for ponying up everything ''else'' he knows.

* ''Series/TheCommish''. In this case the guilty party was the one who fell asleep in the prison cell (apparently TruthInTelevision as it was mentioned in the non-fiction book ''Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets''. Based on the idea that the others don't know why they've been arrested, but the guilty party is resigned to the fact that he's been caught).

* Another variation combines RatsInABox and the Prisoner's Dilemma: one perp is taken away from the others, then immediately reinserted into the group solely to instill suspicion. For instance, the cops sits one of the perps in the interrogation room, then stand in total silence for some amount of time while the perp looks on in puzzlement. Then the cops return the perp to his accomplices, who ask what the cops wanted with him. The perp honestly replies "nothing", but now the suspicion that the cops offered him a deal is planted in everyone else's mind, and group solidarity quickly collapses.

[[AC:ComicBooks]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Done in ''Series/BurnNotice'', when the second rat is the ''main character'', trying to get some information out of the baddie by pretending to be a previously-unknown colleague.
** British intelligence once actually did that by putting spies disguised as Luftwaffe pilots in the same room with prisoners. It worked quite well.

[[AC:TruthInTelevision]]

** A variation has the above, then the guards acting suspiciously nice to the person they took away. Your comrades thinking you already took a deal is quite a bit of pressure to actually take it.

* Another variation combines RatsInABox and the Prisoner's Dilemma: one perp is taken away from the others, then immediately reinserted into the group solely to instill suspicion. For instance, the cops sits one of the perps in the interrogation room, then stand in total silence for some amount of time while the perp looks on in puzzlement. Then the cops return the perp to his accomplices, who ask what the cops wanted with him. The perp honestly replies "nothing", but now the suspicion that the cops offered him a deal is planted in everyone else's mind, and group solidarity quickly collapses. Tritter uses a variation of this in ''Series/{{House}}''.

* ''TheCommish''. In this case the guilty party was the one who fell asleep in the prison cell (apparently TruthInTelevision as it was mentioned in the non-fiction book ''Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets''. Based on the idea that the others don't know why they've been arrested, but the guilty party is resigned to the fact that he's been caught).

* The ''Nine Tailors'' variant listed above was used on captured German physicists after WorldWarTwo: they were kept together in a room which was bugged and their conversations studied to help figure out how far Germany had really got in developing nuclear bombs.

* Done in the LordPeterWimsey mystery ''The Nine Tailors''. Neither Wimsey nor the police can figure out which of two brothers murdered the victim, so they put the brothers alone in a room and secretly listen to what they say to each other. [[spoiler: It turns out that neither of them did it, but both thought the other did, and so they had been unnecessarily covering for each other.]]

Occasionally it turns out that they were all playing MoreHeroThanThou and are all innocent but trying to protect the others.

This trope is the exact opposite of the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma" where you keep the prisoners ''apart'' and offer each one a reduced sentence if he rats out the other(s). You make sure each one knows that his friends have received the same offer. It only takes one to break and the other(s) go down for life, but if ''I'' decide to talk first....

----

This trope isthe exact opposite of the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma" where you keep the prisoners ''apart'' and offer each one a reduced sentence if he rats out the other(s). You make sure each one knows that his friends have received the same offer. It only takes one to break and the other(s) go down for life, but if ''I'' decide to talk first....

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. PlayedForLaughs in "Robot of Sherwood". The Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara Oswald are chained up in a dungeon so that the Sheriff can figure out which of the three is in charge. After [[MoreHeroThanThou the Doctor and Robin spend the next few minutes bickering]], his lackey comes in and fetches Clara since she ordered them to shut up and they obeyed.

This trope is, of course, the exact opposite of the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma" where you keep the prisoners ''apart'' and offer each one a reduced sentence if he rats out the other(s). Of course you make sure each one knows that his friends have received the same offer. It only takes one to break and the other(s) go down for life, but if ''I'' decide to talk first....

* Done in ''BurnNotice'', when the second rat is the ''main character'', trying to get some information out of the baddie by pretending to be a previously-unknown colleague.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. PlayedForLaughs in "Robot of Sherwood". The Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara Oswald are chained up in a dungeon so that the Sheriff can figure out which of the three is in charge. After [[MoreHeroThanThou the Doctor and Robin spend the next few minutes bickering]], his lackey comes in and fetches Clara. Clearly, [[WomenAreWiser she's the sensible one]] and thus must be in charge.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. PlayedForLaughs in "Robot of Sherwood". The Doctor, Robin Hood, and Clara Oswald are chained up so that the Sheriff can figure out which of the three is in charge. After [[MoreHeroThanThou the Doctor and Robin spend the next few minutes bickering]], his lackey comes in and fetches Clara. Clearly, [[WomenAreWiser she's the sensible one]] and thus must be in charge.

* Sped up brilliantly in ''Discworld/NightWatch''. Vimes finds he has three assassins in custody, two of whom are thoroughly professional, but the third is a showoffy twerp; Vimes classifies him as "the sort that gets a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars". So, enjoying a [[LargeHam ham]] and [[ChewingTheScenery hoosegow]] sandwich, he drags the two others in back, but leaves the door open so Showoff Dan (who Vimes has dubbed "Ferret" for his weaselly demeanor) can hear all the screaming. Before he gets a chance to even grab the keys so Ferret can have his turn, the guy spills-and Vimes reveals that the screaming was just him and the boys goofing around. Ferret starts doing some mental arithmetic, then demands protective custody in return for ponying up everything ''else'' he knows.

* In Season 2 of ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', CTU agents put Bob Warner and Reza Nayieer in a room together in order to determine who [[MacGuffin transferred the funds to Syed Ali]]. Reza cracks and offers to show the CTU agents how the funds were transfered, [[spoiler:but they find out that Reza's fiancee Marie- the last person CTU or the audience would suspect- transferred the funds, and she kills Reza and the agents investigating the funds]].

* Played with in the Franchise/{{Batman}} graphic novel ''TheLongHalloween''. A gang of Irish crooks are arrested for [[spoiler:the murder of Harvey Dent]]. They all confess, and their stories line up so perfectly that Batman and Gordon are convinced they're lying. They want the crooks to spill the name of their employer, hopefully Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, so Gordon locks them all in the one big cell hoping that they'll get chatty. The catch is, [[spoiler:one of the crooks is replaced with Harvey Dent, alive and in disguise, to try and prod the rest into talking.]]

* Played with in the {{Batman}} graphic novel ''TheLongHalloween''. A gang of Irish crooks are arrested for [[spoiler:the murder of Harvey Dent]]. They all confess, and their stories line up so perfectly that Batman and Gordon are convinced they're lying. They want the crooks to spill the name of their employer, hopefully Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, so Gordon locks them all in the one big cell hoping that they'll get chatty. The catch is, [[spoiler:one of the crooks is replaced with Harvey Dent, very much alive and in disguise, to try and prod the rest into talking.]]