Basic Trope: Multiple accounts of the same event disagree with each other.
- Straight: Detective Charles is investigating a break-in into the recent robbery, and interviews Alice and Bob, who were at the scene; Alice says she saw someone lower from the ceiling and steal the diamond, while Bob states that he didn't see any such thing.
- Exaggerated: Detective Charles interviews well over 100 witnesses to the incident; every single one contradicts each other.
- Downplayed: Detective Charles interviews Alice and Bob; they mostly agree with each other, except that Alice said person who stole the diamond was black, while Bob thought it was blue.
- Justified:
- The incident was rather quick, so neither could get a good view of the person.
- Alice and/or Bob have something to hide that happened during the heist (an unrelated crime of their own, a shameful act such as cowardice or adultery, etc.) and giving a truthful witness statement would reveal it to the world.
- Alice and/or Bob are accomplices (or at least sympathetic to the crook) and trying to mislead the police.
- Alice and Bob dislike each other and refuse to agree even on what they saw as witnesses to a crime, and actually hope the other person gets egg on their face because they supplied erroneous data instead of helping.
- Alice and/or Bob have some kind of disability (probably a concealed one) that make them more unreliable as witnesses (ex. of course Bob would not see Jim's shirt as green if he is colorblind).
- Alice and/or Bob are idiots who could not be relied to remember what they ate for breakfast five minutes ago, let alone the description of an assailant.
- Inverted:
- Both Alice and Bob agree with each other to the exact details, including seeing a tiny tattoo on the thief's butt.
- The break-in could have happened in multiple different ways, but everyone suspects it was the same one.
- Steve focuses only on the details that Alice and Bob are constant about and refuses to seek the ones that differ and the audience is probably not even told (sure enough, Jim the thief does not has said details).
- Subverted: Bob has a better memory than Alice. After their initial disagreement, Alice realizes that Bob's probably correct.
- Double Subverted: But later on, Alice mentions something that Bob doesn't remember, so they argue again.
- Parodied: Each character involved is an Unreliable Narrator trying to skew the story in their favor.
- Zig-Zagged: Many details are the same or different between Alice and Bob's recounts. Additionally, Alice both arrived and left earlier, so she witnessed some events he didn't and we don't know which of those are true.
- Averted:
- Only Alice tells the story.
- Alice and Bob's recounts are generally consistent.
- Enforced: "We need to keep the mystery going. Let's say that the stories from the people who saw it are different."
- Lampshaded: Charles notes that the stories don't add up.
- Invoked: Alice intentionally disagrees with Bob.
- Exploited: Bob was an accomplice to the crime, so he lies about it to throw Alice and Charles off.
- Defied: Charles finds a security tape that shows exactly how the break-in happened, so he doesn't have to listen to any testimonies.
- Discussed: "You can ask the witnesses, but they might have different stories."
- Conversed: "How come two people on TV never seem to remember the same things happening?"
