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"Those of you I find lacking will quit. And those of you who refuse to quit will have a training accident. This base suffers three training accidents a year. Unfortunate accidents that I will not hesitate to repeat if you cross me!"
Sgt. Nathan West, Basic

While disguising a murder is a common occurrence in crime fiction, sometimes — especially when the murderer is a corrupt government or similarly powerful body — the death is simply reported as something other than murder. This can also occur when criminals who are too desperate to care give an account of their actions. When Played for Laughs, the report describes such an implausible set of circumstances that the true cause is obvious.

To get technical, in order to avoid misuse of this trope, let's look at what the coroner (or physician who signs the death certificate) must determine following a death. There are three aspects that must be discovered: The Cause of death, the Mechanism of death, and the Manner of death. Taking them in order:

  1. The cause of death is the disease or injury that produces the physiological disruption inside the body resulting in death, for example, a gunshot wound to the chest.
  2. The mechanism of death is the physiological derangement that results in the death. Staying with the "gunshot wound to the chest" example, the mechanism of death could be "exsanguination" note  if the victim bled profusely, or it could be "cardiac failure" if the wound caused the heart to simply stop beating.
  3. The manner of death can only be one of six categories: 1) Natural, 2) Accident (or in some countries, "Misadventure"), 3) Suicide, 4) Homicide, 5) Undetermined, 6) Pending.

In this trope, it's almost always either the Cause or the Manner (or both) that's deliberately misstated; when determining if a work contains an example of this be careful not to confuse Cause and Mechanism.

This doesn't necessarily include circumstances like a suicide victim shooting themselves in the head twice. As unlikely as it seems, it has been well-documented that, unfortunately, suicide victims might not succeed with the first shot. With the state they're in after that, they tend to try and finish the job. Indeed, one poet shot himself in the heart three times before dying.

Compare Never Suicide or Make It Look Like an Accident — that's when someone takes significant steps to disguise a murder as such, instead of just proclaiming it not murder and suggesting you shouldn't disagree.

Compare Cut Himself Shaving. May overlap with Bad Liar or Suspiciously Specific Denial. Contrast Unperson.

Sub-Trope of Implausible Deniability. Despite the name, it doesn't have to involve the actual coroner.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.


Examples:

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Accidents

    Anime & Manga 
  • Apparently, the juvenile detention center in Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin doesn't have a coroner. The doctor instead doubles as one — the same doctor, incidentally, who regularly picks out pretty boys to rape. This means that if anyone who could potentially give proof of the rapes to outside authorities dies in an "accident", he can prevent word from getting out, so long as there are no external wounds on the body.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, Basque Grand kills a General Ripper in full view of his subordinates to prevent more pointless deaths. The surrounding officers all agree it was a "stray bullet" and ask Grand for orders since he's now the senior officer. Interestingly enough, this scene was not adapted in the Brotherhood anime.

    Comic Books 
  • Black Dynamite: Paul "the Pole" Monroe's death, despite being caused by an obviously exploding car witnessed by an entire stadium full of people, is officially listed as a steroid overdose. Lampshaded by a newspaper headline in the comic:
    DOCS: DEAD POLE DIED OF O.D.
    WIDOW: "HELL NO"
  • Ms. Marvel (1977): Steeplejack tells Joe Danvers his death will be arranged as an "accident". When he shoots Joe and throws him off a building at night, the day after he complained to his employer about lax safety standards. Joe Danvers is a lot of things, few of them likable, but he takes pride in his work, and safety standards are part of that..
  • In the My Little Pony G1 comic "Applejack and the Evil Wizard" a.k.a. "Applejack's Amazing Adventure", the narration states that Applejack collided with said evil wizard's throne (shattering it) and coincidentally a crevasse opened at that moment into which the wizard fell. The image shows Applejack deliberately kicking him into a preexisting crevasse.
  • The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Ratbat's death is ruled a suicide by Prowl, and Starscream backs him up for self-serving reasons. Ratbat's body is found pinned to a wall by Arcee's sword.

    Fan Works 
  • In one Medieval: Total War After-Action Report, the first time the author's faction assassinated another faction's leader, the cause of death was reported as a fall down a flight of stairs, with various outlandish and improbable explanations being given for the more suspicious injuries (such as impaling himself on the spiked banister for the various stab wounds). Saying that a character had "fallen down the stairs" became a euphemism for every assassination performed thereafter.
  • In a Let's Play of Ultima VI, the party concludes, after some intimidation from the Avatar, that "Chuckles fell down some stairs. And into a cannon."
  • An inversion occurs in the Harry Potter fanfic, Make a Wish. Almost all of the deaths that occur around the mysterious Mr. Black (really Harry on vacation) are indeed accidents. But after a few dozen, the authorities just wink and smile whenever this comes up. One particularly ridiculous example has Minister Fudge accidentally throwing himself down a flight of stairs several times before drinking acid.
  • In Who Silenced Elly Patterson, Elly is found dead, and murder is suspected. When the official coroner's report came back, an assistant came forward to the Ontario Provincial Police with suspicious of this trope, given that the autopsy report left off a number of puncture wounds and lacerations, as well as the contents of Elly's stomach, and that he had been pulled off the case in favor of the chief coroner doing the autopsy, and that the chief coroner might have connections to someone in the case with enough power and influence to cover it up. John turned out to be friends with the coroner (they were both in the model railroad club) and he asked for it to be done in a misguided attempt to protect his family. However, in a slight twist on this trope, he's not the murderer.
  • Subverted in Reload of ARSENAL when Fuyutsuki asks what he should tell SEELE about Gendo.
    Shinji: Tell them he fell down an elevator shaft.
    Fuyutsuki: Onto some bullets?
    Shinji: No, because I pushed him.
  • In Trick or Treat, after Senator Kinsey is killed for ordering a raid on Xander's Slayers (one of said Slayers died in the attack), it's reported as a burglary gone wrong despite Xander deliberately leaving behind the murder weapon with his prints on it. It's heavily implied SGC stepped in and explained the man basically brought it on himself.
  • In one Naruto story, Yugito has to meet a contact in a brothel. When she gets there, she finds him getting head from her daughter (whom she had given up for adoption at birth) and he remarks that the girl "sucks dick better than her mother". The next scene has Yugito's team agreeing that he got drunk and was mauled by a bear.
  • In the Sekirei story Reclamation, Minaka is killed by Minato after he turns the latter into a human-sekirei hybrid. Takami decides it's best for everyone to just have it reported that Minaka slipped and hit his head on the metal slap in the middle of his laboratory.
  • In The Weaver Option, during a training operation for the upcoming Operation Stalingrad, Wuhan's worst officers die when the training field is drowned in burning promethium. Major-General Schwarz reports it as a "tragic accident", and Taylor answers by making Schwarz pay for the wasted promethium out of his pay.
  • In Zero no Tsukaima: Saito the Onmyoji, there's a mention of cases where people died under unusual circumstances after they stood in the way of the Church. The example mentioned is an Earl who possessed a relic of Brimir and refused to let the Church have it. He was sixty years old and hated hunting, but he was found dead in a hunting accident and left the relic to the Church in his will.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Basic, Drill Sergeant West lampshades this and uses it as a threat against his recruits.
    Those of you I find lacking will quit. And those of you who refuse to quit will have a training accident. This base suffers three training accidents a year. Unfortunate accidents that I will not hesitate to repeat if you cross me!
  • Ugarte, in Casablanca.
    Renault: I'm making out the report now. We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape.
  • Chicago. "Cell Block Tango" has several of these, being claimed by the actual murderesses:
    "So I took the shotgun from the wall and I fired two warning shots. [drumbeat] Into his head." For popping bubblegum.
    "And then he ran into my knife! He ran into my knife ten times."
  • The official website for the Republic of Wadiya from The Dictator basically explained all of Aladeen's siblings and his father (the previous dictator) met these kinds of end; his dad was killed in a "hunting accident" with 97 stray bullets and a stray grenade.

  • In the Black Comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous, all of the obviously malicious deaths in the small town are ruled as accidents but none of the Eccentric Townsfolk are fooled.
  • Mort Agrippa in The Gamers: Dorkness Rising tripped, and on the way down, beat himself to death.
  • In Hot Fuzz, every murder committed is made to look like an accident. Each one seems improbable at the least, but the most obvious one is Leslie Tiller's death. "She tripped and fell on her own shears." Tiller's death seems to be the only death that's actually been witnessed in some time; the others were either staged for whoever found them, or they simply disappeared altogether.
  • In I, Robot, the robots attack while Spooner is driving on the highway and say "You are experiencing a car accident." "The hell I am!" he yells back at them.
  • In Jaws, Brody records the shark's first victim's cause of death as a "probable boating accident" under pressure from the mayor, who doesn't want to scare away beachgoers right before the Fourth of July.
    Hooper: This is not a boat accident! And it wasn't any propeller, and it wasn't any coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper. It was a shark!
  • In Mystery Men, the Bowler's father's death is described as follows:
    The Bowler: The police said it was an accident. He'd come home late one night and fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets.
    Blue Raja: You know, I always suspected a bit of foul play...
    The Bowler: Yeah. So did I.
    • Potentially averted in a Refuge in Audacity sense; Tony P claims that he is the one who gave Carmine the Bowler "the shaft." Whether this is simply a euphemism is unclear, but given the wacky nature of the film, it is entirely possible that Tony pushed him onto some bullets down an elevator shaft.
  • In The Phenix City Story, Al points out that the claim that Fred Gage died by falling out of a moving vehicle and fracturing his skull in the process is patently absurd considering the ditch he was found in was filled with sawdust and thus "as soft as any bed in town".
  • Slaughter in Xi'an have the coroner investigating the Undignified Death of a man murdered via an Ass Shove involving a meter-long iron rod by the villains. The main villain, being wealthy and in a position of authority, interrupts the investigation process by literally shoving his bribe into the coroner's pockets.
    Coroner: I don't know why, but it seems like there's a lot of blood leaking out of the dead man's anus.
    Villain: (shoving five hundred bucks into the coroner’s pockets) It must be the dead man having hemorrhaged in his dying spasms.
    Coroner: Why yes sir, of course it is.
  • Stonehearst Asylum: Lamb says that a man who was clearly stabbed in the back has been killed by a blow from a horse's hoof. He does point out, though, that he isn't a coroner or trained in pathology, nor is Newgate.
  • Reconstruction in Wind River. The coroner legally isn't allowed to declare Natalie's death a homicide since her actual cause of death was exposure to sub-zero temperatures... except that it was only through the actions of her rapists that she was in any position to die of exposure to begin with. The hair-splitting infuriates FBI Agent Jane Banner, since she knows her superiors won't let her stay on the case unless it's listed as a homicide, and without FBI support, the tribal police probably won't be able to solve it.

    Jokes 
  • An old anecdote:
    Defendant: I just peeled an orange, and this guy walked by, slipped on an orange peel and fell, right on my knife. So unfortunate.
    Judge: And then he got up and repeated this... seventeen times total?

    Literature 
  • Anansi Boys mentions the fate of the former dictator of the Caribbean island where the second half of the novel is set. After ruling with an iron fist for decades, he died by "falling out of bed". His fall was apparently hard enough to break a number of bones, and he didn't survive despite all of his bodyguards being in his room during this time, who did everything they could to "help" him.
  • In Big Trouble, Arthur Herk spends the entire book dodging several hitmen who were hired to kill him for embezzling from his less-than-honest company. The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue says that he died in a fishing accident, which was odd because he never fished.
  • In Bored of the Rings, the first Great Steward of Minas Troney, Paraffin the Climber, became ruler of Twodor after King Chloroplast "apparently fell backward by accident onto a dozen salad forks" and many of his relatives were felled by similar tragic accidents. The latest Steward of this line, Benelux the Booby, ties himself up and burns himself on a pyre after willing Goodgulf (who had uncannily foreseen Benelux's suicidal tendencies) to act as his successor.
  • Discworld:
    • Although it never actually happens, the murder of Queen Keli in the Discworld novel Mort would have been explained as being trampled by a rogue elephant. There are witnesses to the contrary but "You'd be amazed at what they haven't seen. Especially when they learn being trampled by rogue elephants is catching. You can even die of it in bed."
    • The increasingly erratic Duke Felmet's rambling Suspiciously Specific Denial in Wyrd Sisters starts off being this ("Tripped and fell. I wasn't even there."), before it becomes seriously confused ("And anyway he attacked me. It was self-defense. That was it. He tripped and fell on his own dagger in self-defense.") Previously, his wife's bodyguard had explained to the late king's doctor that falling down the stairs with a dagger in your back was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth.
    • On Discworld, assassination is actually considered to be a natural cause of death for a king, perhaps here using "natural" in the sense of "expected" or "inevitable" rather than strictly "found in nature."
    He died of natural causes. It's quite natural to die when someone stabs you.
  • In Dragon Bones, this is played for Black Comedy, when someone, after a beloved relative of his was assassinated by the king (this is easily concluded from the circumstances), walks up to the king, and tells him that he's heartbroken, but, of course, it can't have been murder. No, the poor man must have stumbled, fallen on a rose bush, and slit his own throat on one of the thorns. Only way it could have happened. He then hastily leaves the royal court.
  • Essentially the purpose of the Special Investigations department of the Chicago police in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. When a dozen victims are mauled by wolf-like animals in the middle of Chicago, they're the ones that make reports about strings of animal attacks and close the case. When three different people's hearts explode out of their chests, they're the ones to protest too much. Presumably, most of these are filed as accidents. In a Lampshade Hanging, one of the actual coroners didn't protest too much, called a vampire corpse a vampire corpse, and ended up in a mental institute for three months. He ends up being one of Dresden's close allies.
  • In a re-telling of Hamlet as a detective investigation, the detective protagonist tries to pass off every death as an accident instead of a murder, because the latter would require him filling out lots of paperwork, including 2B forms. You might be seeing the pun approaching...
  • J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Ministry of Magic, in denial about Lord Voldemort's return, declares Cedric Diggory's death an accident. Unfortunately, we never get to hear an explanation about what kind of accident supposedly killed a healthy teenager without leaving any marks on the body whatsoever, because no one ever asks.
  • In Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series:
    • The Prince Consort attempts to assassinate the queen and is killed by her bodyguard. They tell his brother, the king of a neighboring country, that he was killed in a Hunting "Accident". One of the characters remarks that it is nominally true: he was hunting the queen. It's indicated that the late Prince's brother knew what really happened and didn't mind much, since his brother was a budding Evil Prince who was bundled off to Valdemar partly to get him out of the line of succession.
    • There is also an in-universe song, "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night", where a Henpecked Husband is declared innocent due to a preponderance of alibis for the death of his wife, but nobody can figure out how she managed to eat her lute.
  • Honor Harrington: The rulers of The People's Republic of Haven loved killing off political dissidents in "air car accidents". This is lampshaded in one of the later novels after the despotic regime has been replaced by an actual democracy when a member of the political opposition is killed in a genuine aircar accident and the president points out that the conspiracy theorists are going to automatically assume that she had him killed. In a further bit of irony, they later discover that an aide to the character in question was assassinated in exactly that manner — just not by them.
  • When Oriole tells Karyn about Inez' death in The Howling (1977), she claims Sheriff Anton Gadak found Inez' car smashed against a tree near Karyn's driveway, with Anton believing she "must've fallen asleep at the wheel"; Oriole conveniently adds that it wouldn't be a good idea to view the body as Inez went through the windshield and got badly cut up. Karyn is immediately suspicious because the safety system built into Inez' car means the engine wouldn't even start without her seatbelt being clipped in, which should've kept her in her seat even if she crashed. Karyn also notes that there aren't any trees near her house large enough to cause that kind of crash, nor any signs of damage to the trees that are there. The reader already knows that Inez wound up as werewolf chow, with Karyn coming to the same grim conclusion.
  • The Hunger Games:
    • It's heavily implied in Mockingjay that this is the usual way for President Evil Coriolanus Snow to get rid of his opponents and just about anyone who threatens his position; Haymitch mentions that his entire family and his girlfriend all conveniently died in accidents after his actions in the Games were perceived as defiance towards the Capitol.
    • In the first book Katniss mentions a Tribute in a previous Hunger Games who went insane in the arena and started trying to eat the bodies of the other Tributes. He eventually died in an avalanche, which most citizens believe was deliberately triggered by the Gamemakers who didn't want to risk having a cannibal as the eventual winner.
  • A classic example from the Stephen King novel It. A sheriff is described as having died in a "falling accident" — he fell off a chair with a rope around his neck.
  • In The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul, the police's reaction to a Locked Room Mystery in which the victim's head is severed from his body and sitting on a record turntable is that he was a suicide who was just trying to be difficult. Dirk gives them an explanation as to how this could be possible, which prevents them getting in the way while he tries to find out what really happened.
  • In The Lost Fleet: Victorious, a ship's captain veers off at a critical moment during a firing run, which results in another ship being destroyed and a third ship being heavily damaged. However, the key issue is that he evaded battle, an obvious show of cowardice to the Attack! Attack! Attack! mentality of The Alliance fleet officers. Captain Desjani immediately tells Fleet Admiral Geary to relieve the captain of command and place him under armed guard. He hesitates until she explains that no officer could live with such shame. Geary then sends a message to the ship ordering this, but the ship's executive officer informs him that there was a terrible accident in the captain's stateroom, likely resulting from the captain cleaning his gun while it was loaded. Geary orders a full investigation into the death of the captain but privately hints to the XO of the ship what he "expects" to find (i.e. this trope). Why? Because he understands that the captain turned out to have been through one Pyrrhic Victory too many and broke under pressure, but that doesn't mean he should be remembered this way.
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, superheroes and supervillains are largely in it for fun or at least aren't actively trying to kill each other. Mourning Dove is one of the most powerful and thus most dangerous heroes because she has difficulty controlling her powers enough to not kill people. When a villain gets too violent (such as by directly targeting children), the other villains quietly provide Mourning Dove with their name and said villain "accidentally" gets killed in their next encounter.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise Relaunch: In the 22nd century, when the Obsidian Order didn't bother "disappearing" people who upset them, they'd often kill them and claim afterwards that the unfortunate soul had just had a domestic row that had gotten extremely out of hand. Of course, the Cardassians who knew what was going on could easily find themselves in a "domestic argument" of their own. (Curiously enough, the Cardassian wistfully recounting this doesn't specify what becomes of the supposed murderer... knowing Cardassians, that's probably for the best.)
  • The leader of the Sisters of Dark in Stone of Tears is introduced while filing a report about the death of a Wizarding School student whom she killed to steal his magical power. In the end, she writes it was a training accident (the teaching includes building up a high pain threshold). Apparently, she's careful about not using the same excuse too often, but we never see what other explanations there are.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird:
    • Boo's killing of Bob Ewell is said to be this. Atticus is initially under the impression that it was Jem who killed him and tries to rebuff sheriff Heck Tate's repeated insistence that "Bob Ewell fell on his knife," saying he's not going to pull any strings for his son, until Tate makes it clear that the person he's trying to protect is someone who needs privacy and whose life would be miserable if he suddenly became the center of local attention, much more so than Jem.
    • Tom Robinson's escape was likely another example. It's rather difficult to believe a man with one functioning hand could climb a fence at all, much less at a speed that necessitated the use of lethal force to prevent his escape, much less shooting him 17 times in the back to stop him.
  • In Diana Gabaldon's Voyager series, a man is shot while threatening to kill the baby his wife gave birth to, by the man who actually got her pregnant. The whole thing is covered up, as an accidental discharge of a weapon. It was ruled 'death by misadventure'. Upon learning this, one character states dazedly, "Well, I guess being shot is pretty misadventurous..."
  • In Wicked, Dr. Dillamond is found dead in his laboratory with a slit throat. The official verdict is that he accidentally cut himself when he bumped into a broken magnifying lens. No one believes this.
  • The Wolf Den Trilogy: A courtesan named Saturia is found strangled in her bed. This is ruled a tragic "accident" and certainly has nothing to do with having incurred the ire of her patron, Domitian.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In an episode of 'Allo 'Allo!, Herr Flick explains that an artist who knew too much "fell out of a Gestapo car, over a bridge, onto a railway and was run down by the Berlin Express. It was an accident."
  • A joke from a monologue on The Benny Hill Show went something like, "I didn't stab him, he accidentally ran into my knife. Seventeen times. Backwards."
  • Blackadder:
    • In the first series episode "The Archbishop", the various Archbishops of Canterbury are reported as dying in a series of suspicious accidents — including one incident in which the king's hired killer ran towards the archbishop with his head bowed, and supposedly forgot that he was wearing a disemboweling helmet with a four-foot spike on the top. And another in which the victim accidentally impaled himself — on the spire of Norwich Cathedral. Finally, one was struck by a falling Gargoyle... while swimming at the beach.
    • In the third series episode "Dish and Dishonesty", Blackadder replaces a rotten borough's sole eligible voter, who "accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving" and then manages also to simultaneously replace the election's returning officer, who "accidentally brutally cut his head off while combing his hair". It should go without saying that Blackadder's candidate, Baldrick, won handily.
    • In "Duel and Duality", Blackadder threatens to kill Baldrick by cutting him into thin strips and telling Prince George that he walked over an unusually sharp cattle grid while wearing an extremely heavy hat.
  • In The Boys, Supersonic is killed by the Homelander, offscreen, in a fashion so evidently brutal that his corpse is barely recognizable if not for his tattered outfit, including his leg being ripped off and his face reduced to a pile of ruined meat. Despite this, it ends up being credited to a drug overdose.
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
    • In "Unsolvable", a perp lies to Jake about how he ended up in hospital, leading to the following quote from Jake:
    "All right, Frank, let's recap, shall we? You slipped and fell onto a shiv, then you got up and fell backwards onto another shiv and, finally, one last shiv fell from the ceiling and into your body. I'm gonna go out on a limb here: I think you got shivved."
  • It seems that many people in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sunnydale have managed to trip and accidentally stab themselves in the throat with a barbecue fork. Or they officially suffer "neck rupture".
  • Black ops sociopath Gilroy from Burn Notice claims an accomplice, Claude, died of complications from his injuries; Michael notes that the only problem Claude had was a broken ankle.
  • Crossing Jordan: Inverted in the episode, "Justice Delayed": The coroner did an intentionally lazy job on a Civil Rights era murder. He left the shotgun pellets in the body, assuming the Feds would take up the case and see the discrepancy (the racist local cops ordered him to say the victim was shot with birdshot, instead of the much larger and heavier buckshot, to throw suspicion off the shooter). When the Feds never came, he was stuck with the lie for decades.
  • CSI:
    • Averted in "Ending Happy". Despite MULTIPLE attempts to get rid of a washed-up boxer with, among other things, allergic shellfish poisoning, an arrow through the trachea, a crowbar to the head, and snake venom injected into his bloodstream, his ultimate C.O.D was "accidental drowning" — because after all of that, he was alive enough to be unceremoniously dumped into the brothel's pool when his favorite chair broke. The coroner is seen shaking his head at the absurdity of having to write the attempted murders as contributing factors to an "accidental" death, but there's no cover-up; the actual cause of death was the drowning, and the manner was "Accident".
    • Another inversion occurs in ''Chaos Theory" when the team investigates the disappearance (and when her body is found, suspected murder) of a college student. Numerous suspects are identified. Which of them did it? None of them — her death is ultimately determined to have been an accident, though her parents don't accept this.
  • Doctor Who: In "Boom Town", Margaret/Blon explains the deaths of everyone who investigated her planned nuclear power station as accidents.
    Cathy: The number of deaths associated with this project. First of all, there was the entire team of European Safety Inspectors.
    Blon: But they were French! It's not my fault if "Danger: Explosives" was only written in Welsh.
    Cathy: And then there was that accident with the Cardiff Heritage Committee.
    Blon: The electrocution of that swimming pool was put down to natural wear and tear.
    Cathy: And then the architect?
    Blon: It was raining, visibility was low. My car simply couldn't stop.
    Cathy: And then just recently, Mr. Cleaver, the government's nuclear adviser.
    Blon: Slipped on an icy patch.
    Cathy: He was decapitated.
    Blon: It was a very icy patch.
  • Inspector George Gently: In "Goodbye China", the coroner's office rules the death of Gently's old mate an accident: a fall caused by him being drunk. Gently is suspicious because China would have had to fall in such a way as to both break his nose and smash the back of his skull. And leave no blood at the scene of the 'accident'.
  • Inverted in Life, when a man is found with a bullet hole through the back of his head, but no bullet. Turns out it was a bizarre accident involving an icicle in a vegetable freezer.
  • Subverted on Lost. Miles questions the story that a dead man with a hole in his head accidentally fell into a ditch, and asks, "The ditch had a gun?" As it turned out, he was not shot but died in a freak accident in which one of his dental fillings was pulled through his skull.
  • Monk: "Mr. Monk Goes to Mexico" does it twice. The reason Monk is there is because the son of some friend of San Francisco's mayor had died while skydiving but the coroner determined that he had actually drowned. In mid-air. Monk is called in to investigate how such a bizarre murder cover-up might have happened, but it turns out that the coroner is lying, and tampered with the body after death to support his story in case anyone checked. The staging is because he's got an old score to settle with Monk and wants to lure him in with an unusual death. Said corner had, in fact, attempted the same thing several times before with various other bizarre deaths, trying to lure Monk down to Mexico (most notably a wild lion), but this was the first one that the local police didn't just write off as related to the Mexican drug trade.
  • In the "Bicycle Tour" episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, a "Chinese" man (John Cleese with a horrible accent) claims to be the replacement British Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He says his predecessor "have a heart attack and fell out of a window onto an exploding bomb, and was killed in a shooting accident."
  • NCIS:
    • Jenny Shepard's death by multiple bullet wounds reported as being caused by a fire at their residence, mainly to avoid complications over The Mole and what they were doing vis-a-vis a certain French Arms Dealer.
    • They also encountered a town with no murders but an awful lot of "hunting accidents".
  • A very odd version in Pushing Daisies, where a man actually did die from accidentally falling on a very sharp letter opener about 5 times. Of course, it happened because he'd been poisoned and was losing muscle control.
  • The Red Dwarf episode "White Hole" gave us an unusual example where the victim of the "accident" was artificial intelligence. Lister said the accident involved "Me, the Toaster, the waste-disposal unit, and a 15-pound lumphammer". It was actually first-degree toastercide.
  • The Sopranos: Ralphie and Tracee have an argument outside the Bada Bing! that escalates, ending with a violent fight where Ralphie kills Tracee by repeatedly bashing her face into a nearby metal guardrail. He comes back in out of breath, his hand and face injured, and clothes crumpled, saying that Tracee "slipped". Once the other capos see her mangled body, they immediately realize what really happened, but Ralphie continues to insist vehemently that she just fell.
  • SOP in The Unit. Unit deaths in action are publicly reported as accidents. The families are told that they were killed, but not where or how.

    Puppet Shows 
  • When Ace Yu asks Bubba the bartender how his uncle died in the Dog City special, Bubba replies "The police said it was an accident. Said he put on a lead swimsuit by mistake and then accidentally stabbed himself on the way off the roof."

    Radio 
  • The use of this by the South African police is parodied in an episode of the British radio series The Very World of Milton Jones, in which Milton, whilst in prison in apartheid South Africa, slips on some soap in the shower, gets a towel wrapped around his neck and the light fitting, and then falls down some stairs, much to the bemusement of his guard — "What? But they'll never believe that. I mean, they have, they will." He doesn't die.
  • In the Gallifrey audio series, it's revealed Irving Braxiatel once was saved from a secret execution order when the intended assassin had a tragic accident with some electric equipment shortly after announcing how much he'd like to kill Brax. Irritated, the then-Lord President of Gallifrey ordered him to complete the killer's next assignment - the assassination of a particular Time Lord dissenter, and his granddaughter. The Lord President never managed to check the order was carried out, as he died unexpectedly the very same day following a tragic accident with some electric equipment. There was an inquest; happily, it was ruled accidental death, with no one really responsible for it, and Brax, of course, should know — he was in charge of the inquest. note 

    Tabletop Games 
  • In the Barathi society in Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, those who go mysteriously missing are said to have "regrettably drowned." Given that the Barathi enshrine violent, bloody vengeance as a social duty, there are quite a lot of drowning accidents. Mostly because if one goes about their vengeance in an indiscreet manner, thereby inspiring a return blow, drowning turns out to be contagious.
  • In Birthright Official Playtest Notes one king was "found by his guards to have suffered a terminally fatal mountaineering accident in his living room". "Mountaineering" here isn't a euphemism for "falling from the bed" but rather a reference to climbing spikes.
  • Devout followers of the minor Forgotten Realms deity Hoar, god of retribution, regard the accidental demise of wrongdoers to be the hand of their patron at work. Sometimes they provide a little hands-on assistance with such accidents, rather than wait around for divine intervention.
  • In the Scarred Lands sourcebook for Shelzar, it's mentioned that everyone in the Adazi district is well aware that Mahati Farzod, madame of the Merry Widow brothel, wasn't widowed when her abusive husband Fazeel got into an accident but instead she, quote, "bludgeoned the miserable old bastard to death with a frying pan and fed him to the pigs", but nobody bothered to report her because Fazeel was that unpopular, even outside of his wasting all of Mahati's money and beating her in drunken rages.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has a running theme regarding people the Inquisition want to be silenced or out of the way being killed by "ork snipers". Note that Orks tend to be about as accurate with ranged weapons as a drunk, blind man. Further brought into question by the fact that, via the Officio Assassinorum, the Inquisition has access to some of the best snipers in the galaxy.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: In the second edition "Knights of the Grail" sourcebook for Bretonnia it is mentioned that Bretonnian 'justice' is so badly tilted against the peasant class that peasants prefer informally dealing with peasant matters internally, rather than getting the nobility involved. In one specific example this led to a peasant who committed murder 'accidentally' tripping and stabbing himself a dozen times in the back with various farming implements... Or, at least, that was what the local lord was told happened. Bretonnian nobles think so little of the peasants the lord apparently found this an entirely plausible explanation.

    Theatre 

    Video Games 
  • In Tropico 3, it is possible to form secret police and have people disposed of, uh, end up in an unfortunate, yet convenient "accident" off screen. The regular excuse will be transmitted by radio not long after, this being that the victim tripped and fell out of the second story of their home onto the street, then being run over by an ambulance followed by a hearse.
  • In the timeline included with Zork: Grand Inquisitor, it's explained that the current Grand Inquisitor gained his title after his predecessor "tripped on the rug and accidentally strangled himself".
  • In the intro to Heroes of Might and Magic II, there's a series of scenes showing how the prince killed off all the officials who chose the new king. One of them is described as a "boating accident", and the scene shown is of a wizard blasting a boat with lightning. Another dies of food poisoning (i.e., he drank something that was poisoned). The implication is that Archibald Ironfist, the not-so-good brother, did the Royal Seers in. He apparently realizes how unlikely the rash of deaths were, since he accuses his brother of murdering the officials.
  • In the game Series 7: The Contenders, a man fleeing from the police tragically shoots himself in the back while resisting arrest.
  • In Dwarf Fortress, nobles are often rather... unpopular among players. Strangely, all sorts of unfortunate accidents seem to happen.
  • Jade Empire:
    • Encouraged in the Lotus Assassin fortress. And it's a good thing, too, or they might get suspicious after the 7th or 8th "training accident".
    • When you first meet Kang the Mad (an inventor), he'll offer you his services if you arrange some unfortunate accident to befall his employer Gao, such as "falling down a flight of punches".
  • In Mafia II, Chapter 10, apparently someone managed to fall and hit their head on a table. 5 or 6 times. And the bloodstain that occurs is a mite too big to be an accident, and it occurs about 6 feet away from the table. And the table lacks any bloodstains.
  • At the end of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Sweet stops CJ from shooting Officer Tenpenny, since he was already fatally wounded and this way it would be an 'accident' with 'no one to blame'. This might fly better if the car crash didn't come after a 5-minute wild chase through the entire city, with Tenpenny firing at you all the way, which started at a building that contains about 2 dozen dead gangsters. Then again, considering the quality of police forces in GTA games, perhaps it did work.
  • Portal: Upon entering the first level featuring an energy particle, GlaDOS informs you that contact with such particles has been known to cause "certain disabilities, such as vaporization".
  • From Fire Emblem Fates Conquest, we have a rare heroic example with Hands and Iago as the targets:
    Xander: Say what you will, coward. Our father is not here to protect his lapdog. We'll tell him you were murdered by some remaining Hoshidan rebels. How tragic.
  • Persona 4: Arena Ultimax reveals that the police files for Shuji Ikutsuki, who died in Persona 3, simply say that he fell off the roof of Gekkoukan High School. While true, it leaves out the important fact that he had been shot in the stomach right before.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: The death of Jien Garson is reported as being a result of the Scourge, and promptly ignored super-hard by the Initiative. Once Ryder does some investigating of their own, they find Garson was murdered, before anyone else should've been up and around, evidently by or on the orders of the Initiative's mysterious backer.
  • The player of Yandere Simulator can have rivals dispatched by having it pass as accidents. It allows the school climate to not become worse, thereby making vigilance lower.
  • "Accident kills" in Franchise/Hitman are their own category of kills that count towards challenges like Silent Assassin. What counts as an accident kill varies from more reasonable such as falling chandeliers to more suspicious such as exploding propane tanks, to a decorative cannon "accidentaly" firing a cannonball at the target.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • In the first B-Movie Comic flick, Pharaoh Rutentuten had a tragic hunting accident.
  • The coroner from Scary Go Round repeatedly blames deaths on snake bites, carrying around a staple-remover for the purpose of simulating fang wounds on the bodies. In his opinion, snakes have had it too good for too long.
  • In MegaTokyo, Pedobear wanted to show something to his cellmate Piro but fell off his bunk. Several times. What bunk?
  • The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon has Jack found surrounded by the unconscious bodies of about a dozen hackers, despite being explicitly told by his father to run away from all fights (yes, even if his life is in danger).
    Jack's Father: Thank goodness you're safe, Jack — did you do all this?
    Jack: What?! No! Of course not! They all slipped and fell... head first... onto my fists.
    (beat)
    Jack: ...uh, that one jumped onto a knife.
  • Oglaf uses this as a new ending to the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" fable.
  • Insecticomics: Talking Geewunner smack in a bar full of mixed-series Decepticons is considered suicide.
  • Latchkey Kingdom: The death of Duke Desmond Hillis IV in the History of Hilla:
    Narrator: The duke died in an accident shortly after the birth of his first heir. And there was nothing suspicious about that at all.
    Grieving widow: Oh my— YAWN — my husband has been crushed.

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation:
    • In this report from the Foundation, after Dr. Clef provokes his interrogator into a violent rage:
      It is determined that this is the point where Dr. Clef accidentally fell out of his chair and struck his head nine times against the corner of the desk, fracturing his skull and snapping his neck between the second and third vertebrae.
    • In another incident involving Dr. Clef, one hapless scientist tried to use Clef to terminate SCP-682. Clef escaped without harm (why 682 didn't see fit to attack him is just one more mystery about him), and a few minutes later SCP-682 somehow beat the scientist who did this to death, despite never having left the observation room or indeed moving.
    O5-7: Notes: This is the official story and we're sticking to it. The alternative, that someone tried to murder Dr. Clef by deliberately putting him in the same room as SCP-682, is completely inconceivable.

    Web Videos 
  • A Running Gag in Just A Pancake's videos on Kingdom Hearts is describing Xehanort's actions in some variation of planning to slice the other person some bread to calm them down, but accidentally falling over. This goes up to and including accidentally falling over and stabbing everyone in an entire facility including himself.

    Western Animation 
  • The Simpsons:
    • There is no death involved, but Snake uses something like this when checking himself into a hospital in "My Sister, My Sitter".
      Snake: Um, I must have like, fallen on a bullet, and it like, drove itself into my gut.
      [Receptionist ticks "Liquor Store Robbery" on her form]
    • In "Goo Goo Gai Pan", Homer is called on to be an acrobat when the main performer in a show has had "an onset of outspokenness and suffered a bullet-related death".
  • American Dad!: In "Faking Bad", Bullock tells Stan that he almost slept with a seventeen-year-old due to her fake ID, but her father burst in at the last moment and then "fell on all those bullets coming out of my gun".

Natural Causes

    Anime & Manga 
  • Inverted in Death Note. Most of Kira's targets die of perfectly "natural" heart attacks, though L does start to become suspicious of this. Even before L takes the case Interpol agents are suspicious about the sudden wave of heart attacks among criminals around the world. L is just the first to track it back to the first victim of Kira.
  • In Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Tokugawa Harusada is universally hated by the Shogunate's councillors. Upon learning that she has collapsed (i.e. she was poisoned), the council immediately agrees that she's had a stroke, it's just "one of those things", and promptly get on with ruling.
  • In the second major arc of Vinland Saga, Canute, having taken an enormous level in badass, arranges for several of his rivals for the throne of England to be poisoned, and their deaths are publicly described as being from illness. He does this again in the Baltic Sea War arc, this time to the leader of the elite mercenary army the Jomsvikings, counting on the resulting Succession Crisis to either diminish or destroy the Jomsvikings entirely so they no longer pose a threat to the peace.

    Comic Books 
  • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Nominus Prime's death, after being attacked by a suicide bomber, is labelled as "complications owing to a long-standing rust infection". It was actually Sentinel, killing him on his sickbed, once the Senate realized that the Matrix Nominus had was a fake. Ratchet, who'd served as Nominus' chief medical officer, calls foul on the Blatant Lies (Nominus never had a rust infection).

    Fan Works 
  • Itachi, Is That a Baby?:
    • Blaise Zabini mentions his mother's most recent husband died of natural causes.
      Blaise: Fell up and down the stairs. Six times. Onto a pile of knives. From the guest house kitchen. And then buried in a shallow grave. Alive.
    • It goes on to become a Running Gag that anyone who's murdered died of natural causes. One of Harry's friends even uses "Natural cause" as a verb at one point.
  • Seventh Horcrux has a minor Running Gag of sudden deaths being attributed to dragon pox (which is also stated to be only dangerous if you're very old). Particularly innocuous is the outbreak of deaths among the parents of pureblood Slytherin students, who all died the same night that Dumbledore claims Voldemort returned.
  • The Age of Dusk at one point tells the story of Orvec Chenkov, a distant descendant of notorious General Ripper Colonel Chenkov and ruler of Valhalla, who fought a long and very bloody war in defense of his homeland, sacrificing countless soldiers to keep the threat of the corrupted Templars contained. It concludes by saying that he passed away in his sleep once the Templars were driven off... which a footnote further elaborates on that it took fourteen stubber shots, multiple poisons, three bayonets, and a hatchet to make sure he died in his sleep.
  • Subverted in Hyperemesis gravidarum. After the insufferable, elderly and vastly wealthy Dowager Comptesse de Lapoignard dies, her hated heir, Assassin blademistress Emmanuelle de Lapoignard, receives knowing nods and winks despite her multiple protests that she certainly did nothing to her mother-in-law. Even when Lord Downey confirms in very public fashion that the ancient lady was not inhumed, everyone but Emmanuelle's closest circle of friends carries on with the certainty she killed her spiteful mother-in-law. While her husband did check with the doctors for poison, he thought it much more likely that if Emmanuelle had killed her, there would have been many, many stab wounds.
  • A Dragon's Roar: When Pycelle dies right around the time of the civil war breaking out and Rhaegar seizing power, his acolytes state that he died of natural causes in his sleep, despite the fact that he didn't seem too feeble beforehand.
  • The Weaver Option: At the implicit orders of Commissar Zuhev, Taylor sets off a razorbeetle on Priest Warchost Solar-Byukur as the latter threatens Zuhev and Taylor with trumped up charges of treason. After the priest dies drowned in his own blood, all present officers dismiss it as a "tragic heart attack".

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Back to the Future Part II, Biff says that Marty will either die due to falling off a building (which would be considered suicide), or "lead poisoning" (as in "I'm gonna shoot ya").
  • Collateral:
    Max: He... he... he fell on the cab. He fell, he fell from up there on the motherfucking cab! Shit! I think he's dead.
    Vincent: Good guess.
    Max: You killed him?
    Vincent: No, I shot him. Bullets and the fall killed him.
  • In Convicted Woman, one woman, Gracie Dunn, hangs herself in the laundry room after too many shifts there doing exhausting physical labour in unbearable heat. The staff report her death as pneumonia to hide the prison's awful conditions and their abusive treatment, and warn the protagonist that pneumonia can be "contagious" when she complains.
  • In No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Ed Tom states that a group of Mexican drug runners who were shot died of natural causes. The DEA officer he is working with questions his statement, to which he muses that it's natural causes for their line of work.
  • In Paycheck, the protagonist is being interrogated by the FBI after working on a secret project for two years and having all memory of this time wiped. The Feds explain that his research partner was found dead of "natural causes", natural being "gravity" in this case, as he "fell out of his apartment window". When the protagonist later tells the same thing to his friend, the guy immediately realizes that there was nothing natural about this and starts giggling nervously.
  • Inferred in Wag the Dog, regarding the death of Stanley Motss. He's last seen saying that he will expose the "war" with Albania as fake, and is then reported to have died of an heart attack. The implications are clear.
  • In Cry Freedom, black activist Steve Biko is stopped by South African police and beaten severely, resulting in a brain injury. Despite the doctor's protests, they take him to a police hospital seven hundred miles away, exacerbating his brain injury and killing him. The press officially states that he died of a hunger strike, later trying to silence Donald Woods when he attempts to expose the truth. The worst part of this? This was entirely Truth in Television and Biko was far from the only case of this in apartheid-era South Africa.
  • At the end of 13 Assassins, Lord Naritsugu is reported to have died of "a sudden illness" after a battle that killed two hundred of his sworn samurai protectors, completely destroyed a small town and left the shogun's brother in two pieces.

    Literature 
  • In Diane Duane's Star Trek Expanded Universe novel My Enemy, My Ally, Kirk reads intelligence reports from the Romulan Empire, which state (among other things) that several senators have recently died of natural causes. Kirk reflects that an inability to live after being poisoned is natural enough.
  • In Robert A. Heinlein's Between Planets, a family friend of the protagonist is interrogated by the brutal government officers. They tell the protagonist the cause of death was "heart failure". He then realizes that no matter how you die (or are killed), your heart is still going to stop... However, later in the story it is revealed that he was part of a conspiracy and may have committed suicide by concealed means while a prisoner.
  • In Heinlein's novelette, "Lost Legacy",
    Brother Artemis, "God's Angry Man", faced the television pick-up. "And if these things be not true," he thundered, "then may the Lord strike me down dead!"
    The coroner's verdict of heart failure did not fully account for the charred condition of his remains.note 
  • Discworld:
    • In the novel Wyrd Sisters, an assassinated king's death is reported as natural (the murderer's bodyguard explained to the king's doctor that it was a disease caused by unwise opening of the mouth). Other characters justified this as "Assassination is natural causes, for a king" and "It's only natural for someone to die after being stabbed so many times".
    • Assassination is also considered natural causes for Discworld wizards, thanks to Klingon Promotion tactics. At least, until Archchancellor Ridcully went and ruined it by being pretty much completely unkillable.
    • In Night Watch, readers actually witness the careful rearrangement of (few) allies and (many) enemies of the old patrician to assure that when an assassin walks right up to him and gives him a heart attack, nobody in the room sees anything at all. And the old patrician in question really did die of a heart attack; the assassin in question (namely, a young Havelock Vetinari, who would one day become patrician himself) scared him to death.
    • Interesting Times features an inversion of this trope. A character is described as "presumed dead in Skund" — they can't be sure because they only found his head.
  • The hilarious parody guide book Phaic Tan said that a famous president of the country eventually died of natural causes; "he was assassinated".
  • In R.A. Salvatore's Homeland, three drow trainees from Drizzt's class die over their nine years of training at the Melee-Magthere. One is killed in the training arena (possibly to Make It Look Like an Accident or as a Klingon Promotion), one is executed after his failed assassination attempt, and a third "died in his bunk of natural causes — for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life." Though this could be justified by the general disposition of the average drow. Maybe that IS a natural cause to them, being Always Chaotic Evil and all.
  • In the BattleTech novel Black Dragon, it's revealed that the reason behind there being such a low murder rate in the Draconis Combine is that the police classify yakuza murders under "natural causes".
  • Agatha Christie lampshaded this at least once, with Hercule Poirot observing that "if a doctor signs off a death as 'heart failure', that can be taken to mean that he actually has no idea as to the cause of death, since any death causes one's heart to fail".
  • Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium features cancer. In some cases, this cancer manifests itself as approximately a dozen knives, in other cases, several bullets, an explosion, and a several story fall. The -dire- cancer left only a cleanly severed head.
  • Some Tom Clancy novels poke fun at this by quipping that the subjects of Russian interrogations were often found to have died of a cerebral hemorrhage — nine millimeters in diameter. Subverted, however, in The Hunt for Red October, where the Admiral who gave Ramius the command of the eponymous sub is reported to have died of a 'cerebral hemorrhage' followed by the nine-millimeter quips. Later, a KGB agent regrets to himself that the Admiral died of an actual cerebral hemorrhage before they could start the interrogation.
  • Jon Arryn's poisoning in A Song of Ice and Fire was covered up by 'death from fever' by the corrupt Grand Maester Pycelle. It helped that the poison caused the victim to exhibit fever-like symptoms, Arryn was quite elderly on top of it, and that the only one who would know otherwise (apart from the actual poisoner) was in charge of Arryn's treatment.
  • In The Sunne in Splendour the elderly and saintly King Henry VI is deposed for the second time. King Edward IV knows that as long as Henry lives there will be rebellions around him and more bloodshed. So, he kills the man himself and puts out a story that he died of a broken heart. Edward, who is generally merciful, isn't happy about what he felt he had to do.
  • Willy Knight, Vice President of the Confederate States of America in the Settling Accounts series, is hauled off to Camp Dependable and executed when President Jake Featherston discovers his disloyalty. Featherston wanted the black prisoners to kill him on their own, but since they wouldn't touch him, he ordered his murder. His cause of death is listed as natural because "His heart stopped, didn't it?"
  • In 1066 and All That, shortly after Edward II is deposed by the Barons and Edward III becomes King:
    Horrible screams were heard issuing from the Berkeley where Edward II was imprisoned and the next day he was horribly dead. But since not even the Barons would confess to having horribly murdered him, it is just possible that Edward had merely been dying of a surfeit in the ordinary way.
  • In Wizard's First Rule, after Denna kills Queen Milena, she tells her advisors:
    "The Queen's heart has given out." She arched an eyebrow. "Unexpectedly. Please express my condolence to the people of Tamarang on the death of their ruler. I would suggest you find a new ruler who is more attentive to the wishes of Master Rahl."

    Live-Action TV 
  • In a similar vein to Tom Clancy, Burn Notice's resident Deadpan Snarker Michael Westen has been known to refer to death by gunshot as "dying of acute lead poisoning".
  • Comes up in Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Blasters" when a "John Doe" is exhumed after being identified as a former child star. Chief M.E. Rodgers finds the assistant who did the post-mortem was... less than thorough in his work.
    Rodgers: Natural causes?!? What did you do, a drive-by intake?
    Assistant: He was outdoors three to four weeks, exposed to the elements...
    Rodgers: He was hanged. After his ribs were broken. How do you miss that? Did you even look?
  • Saturday Night Live: In the great old sketch "Abe Lincoln and his Time Machine," Abe does this to himself.
    Mary Todd: Abe, do you know what this means? This means you could travel into the future and witness your own death!
    Abe: I know. I have!
    Mary Todd: How do you die?
    Abe: Um... I die peacefully, of natural causes.
    Mary Todd: And how do I die?
    Abe: [without hesitation] In an insane asylum.
    Mary Todd: I knew it!
  • The numerous deaths in Supernatural that attract hunters to various towns (being the results of monster attacks) are usually deemed "animal attacks" by the police. Apparently, it's a lot easier to believe that a bear ripped out a guy's heart and left the rest of the corpse behind than it is to believe a werewolf did it. What they decide the machete-decapitated vampires and silver bullet-shot werewolves as is never discussed.
  • A wrinkle was added in The Vampire Diaries when the local coroner and member of the secret council — his main responsibility is this trope, ruling that mysterious deaths are 'animal attacks' and most certainly not vampires — is himself murdered, in what may well be the first non-vampire-related murder Mystic Falls has had in years.
  • The homicide detectives of The Wire would like this trope to be in effect: It would mean fewer cases. Despite their wheedling, the show's coroners are generally honest. However, the trope is inverted on a few occasions. Det. McNulty overhears another detective arguing with a coroner who insists that a death was strangulation, when in fact it was an overdose. Rigor mortis had set in with the body in an awkward position, resulting in suspicious marks and fractures from being extricated by the EMTs. This inspires McNulty to do the same thing intentionally to kick off his crazy scheme of inventing a fake serial killer.

    Podcasts 
  • In On the Threshold Dr. Powell thinks professor Albertson's heart attack is the result of poison, not only because Dr. Powell suddenly experienced a sudden near-heart attack the same night, but because the next day the results of their research together were ransacked by an unknown perpetrator. Considering the genre and the presence of at least one conspiracy at the time with the clout to blackmail and kidnap an English baron into invasive brain surgery, he may be onto something.

    Tabletop Games 

    Theatre 
  • In a Show Within a Show Flashback scene of the musical City of Angels, the body of Hollywood film producer Irwin S. Irving is brought into the morgue. His press agent reports that he died peacefully in his sleep, while the coroner says of the two bullets that entered his body: "All in all, an obvious heart attack."
  • In A Very Potter Musical, Fudge manages to do this to himself, insisting that he's dying of a heart attack, rather than admit that Voldemort had come back from the dead and cast Avada Kedavra on him.

    Video Games 
  • The PC game Harvester has a memorable scene where the protagonist visits his girlfriend only to find a bloody skull and spinal cord lying in her bed. The sheriff rules the death "natural causes," as he puts it: "You can't live without a spinal cord, son. Nothing unnatural about that."
  • World of Warcraft: In the Cataclysm expansion, there is a quest in Westfall where you have to eavesdrop on (and subsequently kill) some thugs. When you kill them, you hear a gunshot, and the quest giver is dead. The detective investigating the scene gets this from the witnesses:"I-I didn't see anything. He died of natural causes." His reply? "He has two gunshot wounds and his shoes are on his head. How is that natural?"
  • In Might & Magic 7, after the arc where Player Characters intervene in the war between Erathia and the Tularean Forest, Judge Grey dies, supposedly of old age. It's possible this is what happened, and you can't prove otherwise, but it seems very, very much a coincidence. The PCs have proven to be the first competent lords of Harmondale, which is disputed territory, and strategically vital to both the Dark and Light forces, and Judge Grey was uncaring and likely unwilling to negotiate with either. Seeing as he's dead, the PCs have to decide between allying themselves with the Light or Dark forces - the most important decision of the game - so it's hard to believe that no foul play was involved.

    Web Animation 
  • In Metal Gear Awesome, a maddened Snake eventually ends up shooting people in the face and reporting their deaths as heart attacks. When the Colonel points out they have bullet wounds, he gets shot in the face through the radio.

    Webcomics 
  • Girl Genius has a poison called "Aunti Mehitabel's Natural Causes", known to be very hard to identify.
  • In The Order of the Stick, Tarquin's ninth wife is revealed to have died of "mysterious circumstances" (which Elan believes to be a disease). Given that Tarquin is currently managing an Obviously Evil empire, the obvious conclusion is obvious. And wrong. As far as Tarquin or anyone else in his camp knows, she really did just drop dead one day for no discernible reason. It eventually turns out to have been collateral damage from V's Familicide spell.

    Western Animation 
  • The Simpsons:
    • Fat Tony's wife was "whacked by natural causes". To be fair, it's played more as Fat Tony not being able to properly describe a genuinely natural death, rather than him covering for a murder.
    • Krusty claims that the tourists were decapitated before entering the KrustyLand House of Knives.
  • In one of the Lucky Luke animated features the Daltons are told that their uncle has died. Upon asking how he died and being told that he was hanged, one of them gives a relieved sigh and says something about it being a natural death.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: The circumstances surrounding Fire Lord Azulon's death are very, very suspicious. Sure, a 95-year-old man dying quietly in his sleep is not particularly remarkable. However, he was last seen loudly rejecting his younger son Ozai's bid for the throne and ordering his defenseless 10-year-old grandson's death. The next morning, Azulon is dead, Ozai is the Fire Lord, and the kid's mother has mysteriously disappeared...

Suicide

    Anime & Manga 
  • Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro: the main character's father was killed in a closed room by his head being cut off by a chainsaw, and then his blood was painted on the walls. Because the police had no leads and couldn't figure out how anyone could enter the room, it was classified a suicide.
  • Case Closed: Inverted in one episode. The ex-boyfriend (who had broken up with the suspect some time beforehand) of an up-and-coming pop idol is found dead in her apartment, face down, with a knife sticking out of his back. Conan investigates, and deduces, correctly, that the death was the result of a suicide. The "breakup" was arranged by the idol's manager, with both parties thinking that the other had called it off. The ex, thinking he had been betrayed, decided to not only take his own life, but frame her for his own murder out of revenge. He froze the handle of a butcher knife in a block of ice, with the blade sticking out. Then he snuck into her apartment, placed the block of ice by a chair, turned the thermostat way up, then got onto the chair, flung himself backward onto the blade, breaking the ice, and with his last bit of strength turned himself over. The ice melted, leaving what appeared to be a straightforward case of murder. However, the heat from the thermostat, moisture around the body and marks on the chair gave it away.

    Comic Books 
  • Button Man: Subverted. Harry makes a token attempt to disguise one of his kills as a suicide, but one of the cops who were pursuing the two men exchanging gunshots in broad daylight immediately notes that it doesn't explain multiple entry wounds all over the body and tells his men to keep looking for the other shooter.
  • At one point, the psychic Maxwell Lord used his powers to make everyone in the world forget about him, including thinking that Ted Kord, a man he'd shot in the head, killed himself. Part of the reason the conspiracy was uncovered was that Batman carried out an autopsy, and realized that Kord would have had to have shot himself in the forehead, from straight-on, with his non-dominant hand. Not impossible, sure, but if he were looking at the corpse in any other situation, he'd immediately declare it to be murder, and the fact that he's even considering that it's a suicide means that his brain is being tricked somehow.
  • In The Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Arcee assassinates Ratbat on Prowl's orders by cutting off his wings and pinning him to the wall with a sword. Prowl files it as suicide. This kind of thing would be why, when Prowl became the victim of Decepticon mind control, no-one noticed.

    Comic Strips 
  • A court jester suffers death by a comically large mallet to the back (his entire back) in a strip of Non Sequitur.

    Fan Works 
  • In The Weaver Option, Tithe-Master Varus Hyson is found dead in his quarters, which were forced open with a battering ram. Hyson had been stabbed more than fifty times with different blades, his throat was slit and his head plunged into the toilet. An Adeptus Arbites investigating the mess declares everything an obvious suicide.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Analyze That:
    • One character says he was set free because one key witness committed suicide. "He stabbed himself in the back four times and threw himself off a bridge. Very unfortunate."
    • Later mocked when a would-be assassin is thrown out of the penthouse window (during Sobel's wedding no less):
      Vitti: It was probably suicide. Jelly, have they found a suicide note yet?
      Jelly: [starting to write] No, but they will.
      Sobel: Oh, let me guess! "LIFE IS BULLSHIT! I CAN'T FUCKING TAKE IT ANYMORE! SIGNED, THE DEAD GUY!"
      Jelly: That's a good idea.
  • In Casablanca, Captain Renault reporting on Ugarte's in-custody death: "We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape."
  • The Constant Gardener falls in this category and the accident category. The hero investigates his wife's "accidental" death and ends up committing suicide by shooting himself... about a hundred times with nine different weapons.
  • God's Gun: The Claytons force the town judge to rule their killing of Father John as self-defense.
  • Parodied in Loaded Weapon 1. In a blood-splattered crime scene complete with those bullet-hole dotted lines in the wall from random automatic weapon spray, and a victim with a horrified expression on her death face and her hands grasped like claws in defense, this exchange follows:
    Coroner: Suicide?
    Luger: Yep, looks like she caught herself by surprise.
  • By the time of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, dream-killer Freddy's murders have become so widespread that the authorities, having no other leads to go on, have interpreted it as an epidemic of teenage suicides. Although Freddy does work to make some of them look self-inflicted, other official "suicides" include a girl apparently leaping three feet into the air to smash her own head through a TV set. It's considerably more absurd if you consider that they had to be including deaths from the previous movies as well — Glen from the original film evidently chose to kill himself by showering every gallon of his blood and his organs onto the ceiling from the giant hole that appeared in his bed, then hid his skeleton and skin so as not to worry anybody.
  • Brazilian film A Taça do Mundo é Nossa, by comedic group Casseta & Planeta, has a statue (!) being killed by the military. Later, a reporter comes to cover the incident, and the General Ripper in charge states it was suicide. The reporter promptly asks: "How do you commit suicide with a machine gun?" Then the general calls him ignorant and asks his men to show him how you "suicide" with such a weapon.
  • In Murder by Death, the butler Jamesir Bensonmum has the following conversation with Mr. Dick Charleston.
    Bensonmum: This is the room where Mrs. Twain murdered herself.
    Charleston: [confused] You mean suicide?
    Bensonmum: Oh, no, it was murder. Mrs. Twain hated herself.
  • Heathers is about killing the most awful hateful members of the student body and covering it up as suicides. Despite falling through glass tables and shooting themselves in the throat, apparently. To be fair, the throat-wound victim was set up to look like he was shot by someone else. It was just set up to look like a suicide pact, rather than the murder that it was.
  • In Thunderheart, Maggie tells Ray about a man who supposedly committed "suicide" by shooting himself in the back of the head.
  • In Bad Boys II, Johnny Tapia tells his mother that a thug killed himself. This would be plausible if the bullet hole in the side of his head rather than the front, and Johnny not holding a smoking gun even as he gives the excuse.
  • In End of Days when a man is found crucified against a ceiling with hospital scalpels, one police officer suggests that he did it himself. The main character asks how he got the last scalpel in which is... certainly a problem with this theory.
  • In Series 7: The Contenders an uncooperative contestant named Anthony is left seriously injured, incapacitated and vulnerable to attack after what the voiceover describes as a "self-inflicted knife wound to the back."
  • Averted in The Lives of Others, set in Communist East Germany, where one character muses on how there are no suicides in Germany as they are all listed as murder... by oneself.
  • In Fatal Instinct, the main character comments that he has his doubts that the death of his car mechanic was really a suicide. Said mechanic had died from a power drill being driven into his spine from behind.
  • In Shooter, a rookie FBI agent named Nick Memphis is investigating the shooting of a prominent figure, despite his superiors telling him to drop it. After he continues pushing, he is abducted and put into a special harness that is used by the captors to fake suicides. Basically, the harness points his hand at his temple, where they put the agent's own gun and use a rope to pull the trigger. He is saved just in time by Bob Lee Swagger, who has been framed for the shooting.
  • In The Skulls, the protagonist's Token Black Friend is investigating the Skulls secret society of which the protagonist is a new member. One day, he finds the friend in his dorm hanging from the ceiling, having apparently committed suicide. This is how the cops rule it. The protagonist is suspicious and finds evidence that appears to point to his new friend among the Skulls. He sneaks into the security room of the Skulls' secret meeting place and finds out that his now-dead friend sneaked into the building using a key he stole from his Skulls friend. The latter then confronted him and chased him to the second floor. The first guy trips and falls, only to be caught by his legs by the second guy. Unable to hold him, the first guy falls, and an audible crack is heard, an apparent Neck Snap. The second guy runs away. However, the protagonist keeps watching the security footage and sees the Skulls' security people arriving and confirming that the first guy was still alive. The head of security calls the second guy's father and then does another Neck Snap to finish the job. Presumably, a coroner would be able to tell if the death came from hanging or having one's neck snap (not to mention the big hit on the head), but the Skulls have a lot of connections and likely paid someone off.
  • In Batman (1989), Commissioner Gordon and the police try to keep Batman's existence under wraps, even when it becomes obvious he does exist. When Alex Knox calls them after Jack Napier's apparent death, it gets a little absurd:
    Knox: Hold on, if there's no Bat, who pushed Napier into the tank? (Listens) Suicide?? Hold on, can I get this... Hello?
  • In When Darkness Falls, Nina is honor murdered by her family who chases her over a high-speed street until she collapses on the street and gets hit by a truck. The family makes it look like a suicide and they later even tell Leyla, Nina's younger sister, that Nina killed herself, even though Leyla saw everything of the murder.
  • The Battle of Algiers: Ben M'Hidi supposedly killed himself in custody, but no one believes this.
  • Malcolm X: The death of Malcolm's father was claimed to be suicide by the insurance company since they can withhold payment on his life insurance policy, even though he'd been hit in the back of the head with a hammer and then pushed in front of a train.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: Bond returns to a hotel room to meet Paris Carver, only to be surprised with *Click* Hello from Dr. Kaufman who had already killed her, and was sent to stage the scene as a Murder-Suicide. Later, when Elliott Carver meets his end at sea, M dictates the official story is that he died in a "boating accident" and leaving deliberate ambiguity to imply suicide.
    Doctor Kaufman: I am a professor of forensic medicine. Believe me, Mr. Bond, I could shoot you from Stuttgart und still create ze proper effect.

    Literature 
  • In The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, Dirk Gently's employer is found decapitated, with his head sitting neatly on a record player. The police called it the trickiest suicide they had ever seen because the room was locked from the inside and they weren't about to write "killed by a demon" on the paperwork. Because they were irritated with the situation and with Gently, the police tell him to figure out how the guy did it. Or else. After some investigating, he dashes off an apparently improbable but plausible scenario.
  • In Dragaera: "He committed suicide by stabbing himself in the left eye" and "I said I believed he had committed suicide, and I meant it — it's suicide to go up against me." Vlad is, of course, entirely correct in that assessment.
  • In Cetaganda, by Lois McMaster Bujold:
    "It was suicide, wasn't it?"
    "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy when the principal won't cooperate."
    "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip.
    "Exactly, my lord."
  • In Dave Duncan's King's Blades books, there is a group of highly skilled bodyguards known as Blades. Attacking a Blade defending his ward is classed as suicide.
  • Discworld
    • The novels, especially ones revolving around the City Watch, feature a Running Gag where any death in Ankh-Morpork that results from stupid or reckless behavior is ruled as a "suicide." Examples of such behavior include but are not limited to: wandering around in the Shades, the toughest and most lawless neighborhood in Ankh-Morpork, at night; calling a troll a "rock"; trying to order a "short" beer in a dwarf bar; or going into the Mended Drum, a particularly (and deliberately) disreputable tavern, and calling yourself something like "Vincent The Invulnerable".
    • In I Shall Wear Midnight, it's revealed that the Nac Mac Feegle are violently protective of the mounds where they live, and anyone trying to dig up a Feegle mound is considered to be attempting suicide.
  • From the Honor Harrington novel Mission of Honor comes Admiral Crandall's death. On the one hand, committing suicide is a reasonable alternative to being the first Solarian Battle Fleet admiral to surrender ever, particularly since that defeat was due to gross incompetence on Crandall's part. On the other hand:
    "Most people who decide to shoot themselves in the head, don't shoot themselves in the back of the head."
  • In Harry Turtledove's The House of Daniel, near the end of the novel, the small town crime boss who instigated the plot is found dead in the office of his diner. He was shot three times in the back of his head. The police treat it as suicide.
  • In Sergey Suhinov's Shadows on Mercury, the main character's boss is talking to a police detective on Mercury. He brings up a case of a dead body that was found in the middle of nowhere not far from a cliff with an obvious blaster wound. The detective brushes it off as a likely suicide and mentions that it is a fairly common occurrence on Mercury due to the extreme heat causing people to eventually go crazy. The other guy sarcastically points out that the man must have tossed his gun off the cliff after shooting himself in the head, as no weapon was found in the vicinity. The detective admits that it is an unusual circumstance but doesn't bother to investigate. Since most of the settlements on the planet are private and corporate-owned mines, the population lives by The Wild West rules. While there is a token police presence, they can hardly be expected to maintain law and order through the settlements.
    • This gets even more ridiculous on Venus, where it is extremely easy to get away with murder due to most of the killing occurring outside the dome, where the "pleasant" Venusian atmosphere quickly gets rid of any evidence.
  • Polish fantasy novel Achaja has a hilarious example. An assassination attempt by mercenary crossbowman is countered with some other mercenaries. It's then reported by corrupt guardsmen as a ridiculous case of mass suicide, with such pearls as trying to shoot oneself in the heart but hitting a calf, and one assassin stabbing himself seventeen times in the back with a knife.
  • In one of their fake "man-on-the-streets" segments, The Onion asked people about the head of the CIA's recent resignation and conviction in the wake of a scandal. One woman said, "I guess now we just sit back and wait for the part where he commits suicide by shooting himself multiple times in the back of the head."
  • Galaxy of Fear has a convergence between this trope and Never Suicide. Early in City of the Dead, Doctor Evazan finds a child wandering the graveyard and force feeds him poisonous cryptberries, killing him quickly. Zak sees his body and Evazan almost does this to him, but a bounty hunter shows up, allowing Zak to spit them out. The bounty hunter's not talkative, and Zak is seen as incoherent since he's also babbling about zombies, but there was still clear evidence of murder here. Yet when the boy is referenced later by a skeptical character, he's said to have killed himself. Later Evazan injects Zak with diluted cryptberries and puts berries in his hands while he's near death. This is also ruled suicide since the undertaker is in with Evazan, though Zak's sister does not buy it.
  • In H. Beam Piper's novel Little Fuzzy, protagonist Jack Halloway is so good with a gun, the coroner ruled suicide when someone attempted to shoot him.
  • An inversion in the Robert A. Heinlein novel Citizen of the Galaxy. The oppressive government claims to have executed the protagonist's mentor by beheading, but the huge smile on the disembodied head indicates that he was able to poison himself before they found him.
  • Bit of inversion, courtesy of Brazilian writer Sergio Porto:
    In Mato Grosso, an enemy of the local politician died. The deputy finished his report: "The victim was found next to Sucuriu River, cut in four pieces, limbs separated from the body, inside a duffel bag, and tied to a heavy rock. All evidence considered, seems unlikely that it was a suicide."
  • At the end of the first Left Behind book, Nicolae Carpathia shoots and kills Jonathan Stonagal and Joshua Todd-Cothran in a conference room, then brainwashes everyone else present (except Buck Williams, who is immune to Carpathia's powers but goes along out of fear) to believe that Stonagal shot himself, killing as well Todd-Cothran on accident.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Angel, Kate is interviewing a suspect and the following conversation takes place:
    Spivey: I heard it was suicide.
    Kate: Supervisor Caffrey shot himself?
    Spivey: It happens.
    Kate: In the back of the head. Wrapped himself in plastic and locked himself in the trunk of his car?
    Spivey: He'd been depressed.
  • In the Blue Bloods episode "Officer Down", Henry Reagan tells the story of when the mob helped the NYPD track down a Cop Killer; the mob boss put two shots in the gunman's head and the coroner wrote if off as suicide.
  • CSI:
    • An interesting case in an episode: a man reports that his dead girlfriend shot herself in the head while he was in the bathroom. The problem is that she was shot through the head twice. It turns out to be an inversion: the first bullet fizzled and didn't make it out of the barrel, so she pulled the trigger again; the second bullet pushed the first through, giving her two bullets in one shot.
    • Another episode had the team going back and forth the entire episode between murder and suicide. After quite a lot of investigation, they realized what it actually was this: murder framing someone else for murder staged as suicide staged as murder staged as a suicide. The people involved were, um, very theatrical.
  • One episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus had a sketch/play where an old man was found dead in his living room with a train reservation ticket in his pocket. His grandson points out that he obviously shot himself and then hid the gun. The mother asks how he could have shot himself and then hid the gun without first canceling his reservation. Bear in mind, this Rail Enthusiast episode then degrades into a lengthy conversation about railroad schedule trivia.
  • Played straight and then inverted in Dark Angel: first, a gangster pushes a man out of a window to make it look like he killed himself after a deal went sour. When the gangster is attempting to flee the country with a stolen artifact, Logan takes the man's gun and shoots the assumed suicide vic in the head with it, then plants the gun in the gangster's luggage, effectively framing a guy for a murder he had actually committed.
  • Sharpe: in "Sharpe's Mission", the title character pushes a corrupt and murderous officer down a well in front of a room full of people (right after the man gloats about how he'll get away with it all). His trusty sidekick, when asked by Wellington's spymaster what they just saw, says "Sure, but Colonel Brand's a funny man. Just jumped straight down that well. Now, why do you think he'd go and do a thing like that?" Later, Wellington gives orders for the man's death to be reported as a heroic one in combat, and that appears to be the end of the matter.
  • Joked about in The Wire. One of the police officers comments on Brandon's murder that "This is the worst case of suicide I've ever seen." Brandon had been tortured, mutilated, and put on display as a lesson to the neighborhood.
  • In Picket Fences, a convicted sex offender moves to town and is harassed and rejected until he's eventually found dead in an apparent suicide, having been shot twice in the head. In a subversion, it turns out that it was suicide. The first head wound wasn't immediately fatal, so he shot himself again.
  • Copper:
    • A man is found hanged but the cops quickly determine that it was not a suicide. They later discover that it was a case of justified homicide. However, the killer was a black woman and the victim a white man so it will be impossible for her to get a fair trial in 1864 New York. To save her from hanging, they officially rule the death to be a suicide. The dead man's daughter protests the coverup until she's informed that with the case closed, she will receive her inheritance immediately (whereas if they have to reopen the case, she will probably have to wait for a long time before she sees any of the money). Since she never really liked her father, she quickly accepts the verdict, takes her money and goes on with her life.
    • This is played with in season 2 when Corcoran kills Brendan Donovan. He would normally hang for it but he strikes a deal with the corrupt politicians of Tammany Hall that lets him get away with the murder. Corcoran insists that the death be officially ruled a suicide but is informed that this is not possible since they already had the death reported as 'accident while cleaning his gun'.
  • Law & Order:
    • An episode had a biker wannabe stabbed in the back with an oil can opener. When one of the bikers in the bar was questioned about it, he said he stabbed himself with it. Briscoe's reply was "So he threw it in the air and laid down to let it fall on him?"
    • Deconstructed in "Suicide Box". A young black teen shoots a cop because he believed his older brother was murdered instead of committing suicide as the Medical Examiner claimed. The M.E. in question did a very sloppy job (blaming being overworked and the morgue being understaffed), there is no body to exhume for a new autopsy (the coffin was filled with old tires), and most of the paperwork has gone missing, so it's not possible for McCoy to prove one way or the other.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Undercover", a woman supposedly hangs herself in her prison cell just after SVU discovers that she is a victim of abuse by a guard who has also tracked down and raped her teenage daughter. The detectives, naturally, are suspicious.
  • In the Gotham episode "Welcome Back, Jim Gordon", Leon Winkler is stabbed in the back with an ice pick (which is not found at the scene) while he's at the police station waiting for the sketch artist so that he can describe the guy he saw stab someone to death with an ice pick. The M.E. rules Leon's death a suicide because the killer is an especially Dirty Cop.
  • Daredevil (2015):
    • When Karen Page first begins working with Ben Urich to expose the people that tried to have her killed for exposing Union Allied, the conversation shifts to Rance, the assassin that Wilson Fisk had sent to attack Karen in her apartment. Karen immediately realizes that everyone else involved with the case has been murdered to keep quiet.
      Karen Page: Well what about Rance? Do you really believe that he just—just up and hung himself in jail? I mean, that guard tried to do the same thing to me. Why-why don't you ask him?
      Ben Urich: Farnum? He's dead. Ate the barrel of his gun in his basement. And your old boss McClintock? Overdosed on pills or some such. You seeing a pattern here, Miss Page?
      Karen Page: ...Then why isn't anyone looking into this?
    • Metro-General Hospital decides to cover up the Hand's attack (and murder of one of their nurses) by claiming that the nurse was stabbed by a junkie. Claire decides to quit rather than go along with the cover-up, especially since she also observes that the body of one of the ninjas had already undergone an autopsy.
  • Les Inconnus once aired an ad for a fictional board game based on political dealings. One possible action in the game is "I suicide you in a parking lot".
  • Noughts & Crosses: Ryan was beaten to death by another prisoner, with a guard's connivance. The prison administration claims it was suicide.
  • Mock the Week had a "Scenes We'd Like To See" - "Unlikely Lines from a TV Detective Show" which yielded this joke.
    Larry Dean: Sigh Fourteen bullet wounds to the head...classic suicide.
  • Voice: Dong-chul's death in episode 1-4 is an obvious murder—he has head injuries that couldn't have come from a fall, and his feet are all sliced up, due to walking on broken glass—but the cops and the coroner call it suicide because of the ongoing cover-up of the murder of Jin-hyuk's wife.
  • Subverted in Paris Police 1905: A pathologist convinces everyone, including the audience, that a guy who was found shot four times in the head with a pistol in his hand genuinely did commit suicide. He just bungled it really badly.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Warhammer 40,000 once described an incident where Vilhelm von Strab, the heir to the title of Overlord of the planet Armageddon, was found in his room with multiple bolter wounds. His younger brother Herman, who was next in line for the throne, in the same room, and holding a smoking bolter, proclaimed it was suicide. Coincidentally, and following the equally mysterious deaths of Vilhelm's two older brothers, this made Herman the only remaining heir, so the investigators decided to take his word for it rather than risk a succession crisis.

    Video Games 
  • Kingdom of Loathing has the tale of St. Yule "Be Sorry" Brenner. Brenner apparently "committed suicide by stabbing himself repeatedly in the back, then throwing himself to wild dogs." Considering the similarity and the fact that it is Kingdom of Loathing, it's likely that this is a reference to the above example from Analyze That.
  • In Shadowrun: Hong Kong Josephine Tsang supposedly commits suicide in corporate prison if the player gives Kindly Cheng evidence tying her to the incident in the Walled City.
  • Happens in Persona 5, where The Conspiracy attempts to have the main character killed in the middle of an interrogation room and claims he stole a guard's gun and committed suicide. The protagonist and his friends, with the help of the prosecutor who had been questioning him, successfully trick the Conspiracy into believing they succeeded so they can take them down in secret. If the player misses a Palace deadline or sells out his friends, however, they get a Bad Ending where the murder attempt is successful.
  • Fallout 2 has Angela Bishop, a spoiled mob princess who will take an immediate dislike to a female PC. If you get tired of her haranguing you, you can threaten to throw her off a building and leave behind a very sad and heartfelt suicide note for the family to find. She shuts up very quickly. (Due to engine limitations, you can't actually follow through.)
  • In OMORI, prior to the events of the story, Sunny accidentally caused his sister’s death by pushing her down the stairs while they were having an argument. Him and his friend Basil had to make it look like suicide by hanging the body from a tree. It’s clearly not foolproof, as there were blood and grass stains on the body, and Mari was a girl who was happy with her life and didn’t have any reason to kill herself, but the police accepted it anyway.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • In Digitalph33r's series Hard Justice, one of the cops finds a mutilated torso with no limbs or head, with the door of the house knocked down and figures it was a suicide.
  • After the Seth Rich incident, this became a significant meme revolving around the Clinton e-mail scandal, usually involving the exact words "I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton" and "suicide by two shots to the back of the head."
  • New Deal Coalition Retained: In the power vacuum following Madam Mao's death, Li Peng's main political rival Liu Huanqing is noted to have died of suicide "from the back of the head".

    Western Animation 
  • The Boondocks: In the episode "The Red Ball", Ed Wuncler I hires Gin Rummy to murder a corrupt kickball referee, as punishment for accepting bribes from the Chinese team instead of Wuncler himself. The official story is that the referee strangled himself, jumped off a bridge, and then overdosed on amphetamines (all of which was actually caused by Rummy of course).
  • Family Guy: In "The Man with Two Brians", the scene following New Brian telling Stewie what he did to Rupert shows Peter reading the suicide note explaining how the dog chopped himself into pieces and placed himself in the garbage.
  • Robot Chicken: In a He-Man sketch, Beast Man accidentally kills the hero. A suicide note is then written stating that He-Man fell backwards on an axe like he always talked about.
  • In The Simpsons, a Mafia guy is said to have committed suicide "By stabbing himself. In the back. Fourteen times."


Alternative Title(s): Beheaded Himself Shaving

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