Basic Trope: A character denies doing something even in front of unquestionable evidence.
- Straight: After Bob burns a bunch of crates with a flamethrower, he drops the flamethrower and denies doing it, even though the flamethrower was just in his hand.
- Exaggerated: After Bob destroys an entire house and yard with a bulldozer, he denies doing it, while he's still in the bulldozer.
- Downplayed: Bob denies burning the crates despite smelling like burnt wood. Alice sarcastically asks if he's trying on a new gasoline-and-wood-smoke-scented cologne.
- Justified:
- Bob is drunk and has no idea what's going on.
- Bob is a pathological liar.
- Bob is possessed; he didn't do anything of his own free will.
- It's a threat: "I didn't do anything. You didn't see me do anything. Understand?"
- The bulldozer, due to a brake malfunction, was not under his control.
- Inverted:
- Sarcastic Confession
- Bob claims responsibility for any crime he hears about, even if there is no evidence.
- Subverted:
- Bob says that he did do it...
- Bob is caught with a flamethrower in his hand and a bunch of burnt crates at his feet, and claims that Santa Claus did it and shoved the flamethrower into his hands. As it turns out, a person in a Santa Claus outfit actually did do it, and Bob was telling the truth.
- Never the Obvious Suspect
- Double Subverted: When responded to with shock, Bob says he has no idea what they're talking about, either because he does these kinds of things all the time or for some other reason.
- Parodied:
- A group of special forces operators is hand-picked by The Government to have as many ties to their mission as possible, so that if anything goes wrong, the government can have Implausible Deniability.
- Bob claims he didn't burn down Charlie's house while he's shooting a flamethrower at Charlie's house.
- Zig Zagged: After Bob burns a bunch of crates with a flamethrower, he drops the flamethrower and denies doing it, however then a projector shuts off, revealing the Bob holding the flamethrower was a hologram, Alice goes to investigate the projector and finds Bob behind it with a switch labeled On and Off
- Averted:
- Plausible Deniability
- Bob straight up admits that the damage was his fault.
- Bob tries his hand at a Comically Small Bribe instead. ("I've got this nice new bottle of hand soap for you if you just pretend that this flamethrower has never existed!")
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "I have no idea how you expect me to believe you when you have that near you."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Bob's bluff works due to Refuge in Audacity.
- Defied: "You know what, nevermind, yeah. It was me."
- "Yeah, nobody's falling for it. You did it."
- Discussed: "No matter what people do, sometimes they don't want to admit it, even while the jig is up."
- Conversed: ???
I saw you go back to Implausible Deniability! How can you expect me to believe your claim?
