History Main / AccidentNotMurder

** In "Tri-Borough," one of the three cases is of a construction worker who dies from a blow to the head. He had been targeted by his co-workers for getting someone else's job; they had even locked him in a porta-potty and rolled it, getting him covered in waste, so there are plenty of suspects. Turns out, the construction site is close to an airport and a block of blue ice fell from a plane coming in for a landing and hit him on the head just as he happened to remove his hard hat.
** In "The Fall", after spending the whole episode researching the dozens of people who would have wanted to kill [[AssholeVictim a truly big asshole of a studio executive]], the investigators figure out that his death (fall off his balcony) was not a murder, but an accident that happened when he was eating from a stash of chocolates that was hidden there ([[FatBastard his wife had forced him on a diet]]) and lost his footing.

* Not a murder, but on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", one of Mayor Quimby's nephews stands accused of beating up a waiter. Bart, who witnessed the event, reveals that the waiter actually had a series of clumsy accidents. The waiter denies it ever happened, only to suffer a series of similar accidents right there in court.

* ''Manga/CaseClosed'': [[spoiler:Yusaku Kudo's Cold Case]] is ultimately revealed to be this, at least in the flashback portion. The victim tripped while carrying a goldfish bowl and was fatally punctured by the glass shards, and the "SerialKiller CallingCard" left at the scene - the kanji for "death" - was accidentally created by his blood flowing around some hard candies and a flower left behind by a small child.

* In the Literature/DrThorndyke story "The Blue Sequin", a woman is found dead in a railway compartment after being stabbed in the head, and the police arrest a man who had been traveling on the same train. Thorndyke's investigation reveals that the woman had stuck her head out of the carriage window to watch a fire the train was passing, and while she was watching that a cattle car loaded with longhorn cattle went past on the other line; due to her distraction and a large fashionable hat blocking part of her field of vision, she didn't notice the cattle car's approach, and her head got in the way of a steer's horn protruding from the cattle car.

* ''Manga/CaseClosed'': [[Yusaku Kudo's Cold Case]] is ultimately revealed to be this, at least in the flashback portion. The victim tripped while carrying a goldfish bowl and was fatally punctured by the glass shards, and the "SerialKiller CallingCard" left at the scene - the kanji for "death" - was accidentally created by his blood flowing around some hard candies and a flower left behind by a small child.

[[quoteright:249:[[Series/JonathanCreek https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zolaandwardrobe.jpg]]]]

** Case 1-3 is a borderline case, [[spoiler: as the victim had attacked the killer, who pushed him away, which caused the victim to fall onto a sharp fence.]]
** In ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies''' DLC case, [[spoiler: the death was a complete accident. Marlon Rimes was trying to kill Orla the orca by draining her tank, when Jack Shipley intervened and accidentally slipped and fell into the drained tank, and Rimes tried to save him. Rimes then framed Orla for the death to get her put down.]]
** In the second case of ''The Great Ace Attorney'', [[spoiler: Kazuma]] wasn't murdered; he just got into an argument with someone else, was shoved, and hit his head wrong on a bedpost. [[spoiler: And he wasn't even dead, just unconscious and amnesiac.]]

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[[caption-width-right:249:No one is going to believe this was an accident]]

* ''ComicStrip/Dick/Tracy'': After Stooge Viller kidnapped his daughter Binnie, he was tussling with Dick Tracy. When he tried to kick the dropped gun his daughter Binnie had picked up and pointed at him out of her hands, it went off.