Ripped From The Headlines - Television Tropes & Idioms

...wait a minute.

Homer: Hey, when do we get the check for this?

Marge: Well, they said they changed it just enough so they don't have to pay us.

— The Simpsons Bart The Murderer, watching "Blood On The Blackboard, The Bart Simpson Story" Docu-drama

It's that mostly familiar, spiffed up and neatly tied off version of the sensational yet true story you didn't want to read in the papers anyway. (Double points if the real crime sounds like something fictional, and the fiction takes the real crime to an even further extreme.) About as often as not the real story doesn't even involve a murder, and they just add one to the real story to make it different (and to work as an episode)

Most often seen on Law And Order and its various spinoffs (in fact, the much-used phrase in promos trumpeting this fact is the Trope Namer), though many self-contained crime shows sneak one in here or there.

Can sometimes result in a Clueless Aesop. The evil cousin of this trope is But It Really Happened, and its Evil Twin is Could This Happen To You.

Examples:

Comic Books

Mainstream Comic Books don't do this too often (save for major events like World War II or 9/11) lest they date themselves, but in X-Men, one of the reasons Nightcrawler quit his divinity studies was the rash of child abuse cases surrounding the Catholic Church in the early 2000's. He wondered how God could allow such a thing.
- The more pertinent question that Nightcrawler should have asked was how God allowed Chuck Austen's X-Men story lines.
- Later it turns out he only hallucinated the studies. So, yeah.

Film

Fritz Lang did this a lot:
- The child serial killer in M, lynch mob justice in Fury.
- And You Only Live Once (1937) was based on Bonnie And Clyde, who had been gunned down just three years before that film hit the theatres.
Dirty Harry fought obvious stand-ins for the Zodiac Killer (in Dirty Harry) and the Symbionese Liberation Army. (in The Enforcer)
- Lampshaded in Zodiac (2007) with the obvious Aesop that Real Life crimes aren't always solved by shooting someone.
  - Or solved at all.

Literature

Deconstructed in Fahrenheit 451 Montag watches the police chase and shoot someone they claim is him. The police thought a chase is boring when it takes all night, so they decided to wrap it up quickly.
Agatha Christie example: part of Murder on the Orient Express, the Daisy Armstrong kidnapping, is clearly based on the Charles Lindbergh case.
Anything written by Jodi Picoult is Ripped From The Headlines and obfuscated just enough that Picoult doesn't need to get permission from the people involved.
Poe did it with The Mystery of Marie Roget, which is based on the real-life disappearance and apparent murder of an American woman named Mary Rogers.
Walter Gibson noted in an article in The Great Detectives (edited by Otto Penzler) that he based the Shadow's foe Double Z on the then contemporary terrorist Three X.
Joyce Carol Oates is very fond of fictionalizing real cases of murder and violent death, sometimes sticking very close to actual events but going inside the minds of the people involved, sometimes departing much farther. Some examples are My Sister My Love (Jon Benet Ramsey), Zombie (Jeffrey Dahmer), "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (Charles Schmid), "Dear Husband" (Andrea Yates), and "Landfill" (John Fiocco).
All We Know of Heaven by Jacquelyn Mitchard is based on a real story about two girls who are in a car accident. One girl dies. Unfortunately, the hospital identified the wrong one as dead. In real life, the families were very nice about it and handled themselves well. The book adds more drama and a love story.

Live Action Television

One of the first and most notable examples comes from the first season of Law And Order — "Out of the Half-Light", an episode which fictionalized the then-unresolved Tawana Brawley scandal/hoax.
- Another first season episode, "Indifference," is so obviously inspired by the Lisa Steinberg case that it concludes with a long disclaimer both displayed and spoken about how the real case differed from the story just shown. It is easily the creepiest moment of the entire series considering they used the same title sequence narrator to tell the audience that the horrific case and the depraved criminals involved have some basis in real life.
  - Of course, they needed the extra mile disclaimer, given the strong resemblance of the actors in this episode to the real-life Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum.
- One especially egregious Law And Order example took the infamous 2002 "Michael Jackson dangles his baby out of a hotel window" incident to its (il)logical extreme; a famous eccentric celebrity dangles his young son out a window... AND DROPS HIM! Cue Sting.
- One involved a variation of the Valerie Plame outing, although with the politics reversed: the target of the outing of his daughter as a covert undercover agent was a Republican politician, and the political operative responsible for the outing was a ruthless, vicious, scary Democrat.
- One story line was very obviously based off of Anna Nicole Smith (substituting her with a blonde bombshell named "Lorelei", probably not coincidentally the name of a siren-analogue from German legend) and featured suspicions about the deaths of her son and herself that have been raised in real life.
- There were actually three episodes mined from the Anna Nicole fiasco: one dealing with her son's death (L&O, "The Remains of the Day"), one dealing with her death (L&O:CI, "Bombshell"), and one that dealt with the complete ass Judge Larry Seldin made of himself at the trial for custody of her baby (L&O, "The Family Hour").
  - There was one episode even prior to those: season 7's Matrimony, which featured yet another blond bombshell being investigated for the murder of her octogenarian millionaire husband.
- The 2008 episode "Bottomless" has to win some kind of award for this trope: it managed to tie together no less than three thinly-veiled versions of real news stories (Wal-Mart ethics enforcement, Chinese quality control scandals, and Roy Pearson's multi-million dollar lawsuit over being given the wrong pair of pants by his dry cleaners) into one vaguely-coherent 44-minute episode.
  - L&O has pulled that trifecta at least once before: "True Crime" combined Courtney Love's coked-up exploits, Kurt Cobain's ~~murder~~ suicide, and the Dave Mustaine/Metallica split (With a layer of The Beatles/Yoko Ono thrown in for good measure).
  - SVU pulled a trifecta when they combined Rhianna's physical abuse, "sexting" (teens sending nude pics over their cellphones), and a scandal about two judges who'd send kids with very minor offenses to private juvenile facilities for cash (basically Holes if Stanley's judge was getting paid for each kid he sent to Camp Green Lake).
- A 2008 episode of L&O referenced the scientology Paranoia Fuel-ed suicides of a prominent New York artist couple (you've seen the husband's artwork if you saw the trailer for Adam Sandler's Punch Drunk Love or Beck's Sea Change album). Notable in the fact that it vaguely alluded that Assist. DA Cutter might be an expy-scientologist too; sadly, the expy-scilons have yet to return. ^*
  ^{The scientologists' harassment tactic isn't meant to drive their victim(s) to suicide, just away from investigating scientology. Going crazy and being committed (the ultimate hell for the psychiatry-loathing scientologists) or broke from filing libel suits is just a bonus.}
- Similarly, another episode of L&O: SVU dealt with a famous person advocating against psychiatric drugs, and the disastrous effects when someone with a mental disorder listens to him (this character wasn't a Happyologist, it was just his personal opinion).
- Just recently, they based an episode on the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. Their slant on the whole thing was... interesting, to be charitable.
- A recent episode of L&O combines conspicuous references to the Octomom, Kate and Jon Gosselin, and the Dugger family in a mess of reality-tv motivated familial drama.
- The Season 20 episode "Human Flesh Search Engine" managed the bizarre feat of being based both on the death of David Carridine and 4Chan.
- Another recent episode - at least this Troper caught the end of it recently - was clearly based on the Terry Schiavo case. Guess which side got to be the murderers?. If you guessed those wacky, fanatical Christians - you're right.
- This Rhode Island-resident troper still gets uncomfortable watching the episode based on the Station nightclub fire.
- An episode that riffed on the case of an apparently drunk woman killing a van-full of kids also had a tiny Shout Out to Michael Jackson: she was going to expose a drug her company made but give away the reward money, so her less-well-off fellow whistle-blower spiked her nasal spray with the same extremely strong anesthetic that killed MJ.
Played with a little in Blue Heelers, where a character might mention police quotas and revenue-raising. Can lead into Writer On Board.
In late 2006, Law And Order Criminal Intent fictionalized the already-fictional character of the YouTube "celebrity" lonelygirl15 as "WeepingWillow17" and made her the victim of a kidnapping, and by the end it's as hard for the detectives to tell what's real and what isn't as it is for the viewers.
- As of late December 2006, it looks like the creative minds behind lonelygirl15 might be incorporating a similar idea in their own storyline. Although since lonelygirl15 is supposed to be a cult escapee, this was probably in the works from the beginning.
Yet another Criminal Intent episode dramatized the John Mark Karr confession to the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, for the first half hour at least. And come on, you knew the creepy neighbor had to have something to do with it. Bonus: The character of Faith Yancy makes another appearance.
Basically Law & Order: Criminal Intent does a lot of these. The show is about high-profile crimes, after all.
- All of this makes watching True Crime shows like American Justice or Cold Case Files an interesting experience, especially when you recognize a case you didn't know had been Ripped From The Headlines.
Cold Case has done this a few times:
- Look Again is based on the Martha Moxley case.
- The Boy In The Box is based on the actual Philadelphia unsolved case.
- Thrill Kill is based on the case of the Memphis Three.
- Other episodes based on real crimes are Blackout, the upcoming Jurisprudence, based on a scandal about two judges who'd send kids with very minor offenses to private juvenile facilities for cash and Strange Fruit.
Criminal Minds has done this a few times:
- "Natural Born Killer" — based on real-life Mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski
- Two-parter "To Hell..." "...And Back" — based on the case of Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton
- "Empty Planet"" — seems to be based in part on the Unabomber
The first episode of the final season of Strong Medicine had a storyline that referenced the 2005 Glendale train derailment (where a guy left a truck on the track.) They made the suspect in the episode female...and bipolar.
Law And Order referenced itself, in a recent (2007-08) episode. In real life, Andrea Yates, killer of her own five children, was granted a new trial after appeal. The appeal was based y on the fact that a forensic psychiatrist testified Yates had borrowed her defense from an episode of Law and Order. The psychiatrist was mistaken, there had never been such an episode. Testimony from an NBC executive involved in Law and Order was part of the appellate case. In an episode of L&O, forensic pathologist Dr. Rogers makes a similar mistake testifying that a criminal borrowed elements of his crime from a novel. She is mistaken about the title, and this becomes part of the defendant's appeal.
Just about every Police Procedural show (Bones, Numb3rs and most recently Without A Trace ... remarkably I can't recall any of the Law And Orders participating) got to show off their China Towns for an episode based on the ancient Chinese custom of "ghost brides": the family of a young man who died before getting married arranges for a deceased girl to marry him in the afterlife; the episode typically dealt with someone who forgot the "deceased" part when selecting a bride.
L.A. Law once had an episode based on the case of Angela Carder, a pregnant woman terminally ill with cancer forced to undergo premature cesarean section by court order. In Real Life, both died. On TV, the baby survived.
This was common for whatever the 'light' sub-plot was for L.A. Law. Lawsuits and criminal charges based around toad-lickers and bull semen were often fictionalized news bites.
The first three seasons of the Canadian crime series DaVinci's Inquest dealt with the main characters attempting to find out who was behind the disappearances of prostitutes in and around the Vancouver area. The show was inspired by the real-life kidnappings of prostitutes by B.C. pig farmer Robert Pickton (he hadn't been caught at the time the show began), and numerous episodes contained characters speaking at length on the failure of the Vancouver police department to find the killer. When Pickton was caught, the creators dropped the plotline altogether.
- Although the show makes repeated reference to "the pig farm" in later seasons, so it's not as if they're pretending it never happened.
The episode 'As Nature Made Him' in Law And Order SVU used the story of the twin boy forced to live as a girl after a botched circumcision. In the episode the non-altered twin was charged with a crime based on the evidence that indicated there had been a young boy at the scene. Altered-twin eventually fessed up after being hit with the news that 'she' used to be male.
One episode of Grounded for Life was promo-ed as "ripped from the headlines", when a character's interference causes the Yankees to lose a game. Except that the real game was between the Marlins and Cubs, and the episode was a rerun.
- Law And Order had an episode in which a fan who interfered with a game was murdered.
One recent episode of Bones takes the pregnancy pact reportedly taken by a group of Mass. girls and incorporates it into the storyline.
- Bones herself thought it was a good idea for the girls to band together; meanwhile in Real Life the "pact" turned out to be a huge coincidence fanned by rumors and probably more then a little snarking.
A recent episode of Lie to Me was based on the Bernie Madoff blowup and the pilot had a similar plot line to the Elliot Spitzer scandal.
- An episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent had a very Affably Evil Madoff expy, who confessed to his incredible scheme to get protection from the Colombian(?) gangsters he swindled.
- The Leverage team also took down a Madoff expy and Hank-Med was hired to treat another one.
NUMB3RS does this - many episodes (including the pilot) are based on real-life cases, but not recent ones. For instance, the Season Five finale had a cult figure based off of Charles Manson, played by Gaius Baltar.
House did an episode based upon the case of Whitney Cerak and Laura VanRyn. Two young women similar in appearance and build were misidentified after sustaining horrific injuries in an accident. In the House episode, as in real life, one of the women did not survive and the other woman's care was supervised by the deceased woman's family.
- So did CSI:NY, with the twist (of course) being the "dead" girl's mother accidentally killed her own daughter, who she (and everyone else) thought was the party-girl "survivor".
- And of all things, Phoenix Wright used this plot as well. The women were sisters, and the surviving sister stole the identity of the one who died.
Ghost Whisperer and Law And Order Criminal Intent did episodes based on the Tri-State Crematory scandal, where corpses were never cremated and "piled like cord wood" in the undergrowth. Ghost Whisperers caretaker was just old and senile while CIs caretaker was both bad at business and using the undergrowth to hide bodies for his assassin brother. Said brother was also trying to give him business advice, to no avail.
Both CSI Miami and Law And Order have plots based on a census taker who found in the woods, strung up with the word "FED" pinned to his shirt. While both stories will undoubtedly be murders, Real Life revealed it was actually a staged suicide — he was attempting to pin his death on local rednecks so his family would get the insurance money.
- CSI: Miami went for quadruple plot points by adding slave labor, a repossessed house, and a meth lab.
The L Word gave us the closeted, tabloid-hounded starlet Nikki Stevens, an obvious Lindsay Lohan Expy. And then proceeded to Jump The Shark by knocking up trans man Max, an allusion to Thomas Beattie that was as obvious as the storyline was pointless.
And now there's a TV movie called Pregnancy Pact, "based on a true story" according to the ads. Just like with the example mentioned for Bones above, the true story is that there was no pact and the story was nothing but rumor and bad journalism. It could still be called "true" if it was a movie all about half-assed sensationalist reporting, but so far that's not how the ads are making it look.
Happened accidently on The Unit, in an episode where the members of the unit infiltrate Syria to rescue Jonas' daughter, despite being strictly told not to do so because it constitutes as an act of war against a sovereign nation. Just two weeks before the episode was aired, there were actual news reports of an American attack in Syria, involving an infiltration team and helicopters. While the episode itself was (probably) written and filmed long before these events, the fact that it aired two weeks after it actually happened make this a curious case of accidental Ripped From The Headlines.

Music

This was common during the Protest Song movement of the early 1960's. Singers like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs would write songs, often using old folk melodies, about current events. Three of the best examples of this are Dylan's "Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll," about the real life killing of a poor black maid by a bored aristocrat. "Hurricane", about Hurricane Carter a black boxer jailed instead of the two whites who started a shooting at a bar. And "Who Killed Davy Moore" about the boxer who died in the ring.
Dylan and Ochs both followed the footsteps of Woody Guthrie, who wrote songs like this; "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" are probably the most famous.
- His son Arlo Guthrie belongs here as well, the littering incident from "Alice's Restaurant" made the local newspaper before he wrote the song.
The idea for Stone Temple Pilots' song "Plush" is, according to singer Scott Weiland, partially taken from an article he read in the paper one day about a woman's murder.
Similarly, Nirvana's "Polly" was based on the kidnapping of a girl who eventually escaped from her abductor.
"18 and life" by Skid Row was written when guiarist Dave Sabo read a newspaper article about the event.
The album "The Crusade" by heavy metal band Trivium had four examples of this; "Entrance of the Conflagration" (about the murder of four children by their mother Andrea Yates), "Unrepentant" (about Nazir Ahmad's murder of his four daughters), "Contempt Breeds Contamination" (about the racially-influenced killing of a Guinean immigrant by four cops in New York), and "And Sadness Will Sear" (about the hate-driven torture and murder of Matthew Shepard).
Depeche Mode did a song in 1986 called "New Dress", where nearly every line was taken from an actual headline.
The song Maria Navarro by Was/Not Was. Maria Navarro called 911 because her estranged husband had threatened to kill her. Dispatchers ignored the call and Maria died.
To an extent, the song about Tom Dooley.

Radio

The radio show "Dragnet" claimed: "All you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent" at the start of every show.

Real Life

Dubbing companies like Four Kids Entertainment will remove episodes/clips to avoid this trope.
- They kept a scene in the first episode of Sonic X that involved Eggman ramming a giant mech into a building while the police officers below were shown covered in dust and ashes. It aired roughly a year and a half after 9-11, when networks were still excising planes/crumbling buildings/references to falling/whatever from shows, movies, and music.
This blog post by one of the writers of Leverage discusses this trope.
The first round of Eight Out Of Ten Cats is a poll of the news stories that the public have been talking about over the last week- as this tends to be more populist than the more politics-orientated Have I Got News For You, if the week sees something that might be in bad taste to joke about (such as the earthquake in Haiti in 2010), then the episode is replaced with a themed special (in that particular case, movies).

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