History Main / FallGuy

* ''Film/GangRelated'': At the center of the film is a fall guy scheme that goes horribly wrong. Two [[DirtyCop crooked LA cops]] murder a criminal who [[UndercoverCopReveal turns out to be an undercover DEA agent]], and to avoid their crimes from being exposed they try to pin it on a random homeless guy they picked up off the streets and get a prostitute who was working with them to identify him in a line-up. At first the subterfuge seems to work, as the man thinks he really did commit the murder and wants to take responsibility for his "actions". However, he is later revealed to be the missing member of a very wealthy family who used to personally provide medical aid in Africa as part of Doctors Without Borders, but had fallen into alcoholism and depression after the untimely death of his wife and daughter. As Tupac's character put it, they picked a saint to pin a murder on (a rich one too, as his family immediately provides very good lawyers, which doesn't help them). [[spoiler:It all ends up blowing up in their face, with the prostitute cracking on the witness stand and identifying her two accomplices after she's charged with perjury, the fall guy being released when the DA drops the charges, the instigators turning on each other, and both of the two corrupt cops ending up dead for different reasons of their own doing.]]

* ''Film/GangRelated'': At the center of the film is a fall guy scheme that goes horribly wrong. Two [[DirtyCop crooked LA cops]] murder a criminal who turns out to be an undercover DEA officer, and to avoid their crimes being exposed, pin it on a random homeless guy they picked up off the streets and get a prostitute who was working with them to identify him in a line-up. At first, the subterfuge seems to work, as the man thinks he really did commit the murder and wants to take responsibility for his actions. However, he is later revealed to be the missing member of a very wealthy family who used to personally provide medical aid in Africa as part of Doctors Without Borders, but had fallen into alcoholism and depresssion after the untimely death of his wife and daughter. As Tupac's character put it, they picked a saint to pin a murder on. [[spoiler:It all ends up blowing up in their face, with the prostitute cracking on the witness stand and identifying her two accomplices after she's charged with perjury, the fall guy being acquitted when the DA drops the charges, the instigators turning on each other, and both of the two corrupt cops ending up dead for different reasons of their own doing.]]

[[quoteright:350:[[Franchise/{{Batman}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_rco001_2.png]]]]

** In ''Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen (Volume 1)'' #3: ''The Man Who Collected Excitement'', a thief frames Jimmy Olsen by slipping him anonymous tips, ensuring he'll always be one of the first at the scene of the crime. However, Jimmy turns the tables by finding the real crook.

* In ''The Man Who Collected Excitement'', a thief frames ComicBook/JimmyOlsen by slipping him anonymous tips, ensuring he'll always be one of the first at the scene of the crime. However, Jimmy turns the tables by finding the real crook.

* [[spoiler:Drift]] from ''ComicBook/TransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'' turns out to be a fall guy of the willing variety. The plan in this case isn't exactly a crime, but could have deadly consequences if it goes wrong. Long story short, it does, and it does, and [[spoiler:Drift]] takes full responsibility because he feels one of the other people involved needs to stay in his current position to prevent a later disaster, and because he claims he was brought into the plan as a fall guy in the first place.
* ''ComicBook/TheTransformersIDW'': Daniel Klonowski from the Bumblebee miniseries. The Autobots are controlled by a rogue group of Skywatch agents under Colonel Gordon Horiuchi. After the whole operation fails due to Autobot ingenuity and Decepticon interference, Klonowski steps in to save Bumblebee and one of their scientists. Afterwards, he mentions that he took the fall for all the staff who went rogue and was dishonorably discharged. He's perfectly happy with this, though, as Horiuchi and the other unidentified commanders were quite grateful and he was suitably compensated.

* ''Fanfic/WhereTalentGoesToDie''

[[folder: Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': In one "Tracer Bullet" story, Calvin's mom drags Calvin into the living room and tells him to explain how the end table got knocked over. [[MrImagination Calvin re-imagines the events]] as his private detective alter ego, Tracer Bullet, getting hired to unwittingly serve as the fall guy for this particular crime.
-->'''Tracer Bullet:''' The dame had set me up! She didn't want me to solve the case at all! She just wanted a patsy to pin the crime on!
[[/folder]]

Maybe you choose the guy [[YouHaveToBelieveMe no one's going to believe]]. Better yet, you choose a well-meaning sap whose fears and goals you've been able to manipulate via FlawExploitation. Alternately, you could pull off a DeceasedFallGuyGambit, since a dead man can't defend himself.

Not to be confused with a [[Series/TheFallGuy television series]].

* In ''VisualNovel/MetroPDCloseToYou'', Hanai relates to the protagonist how, prior to the events of the VN, he arrested a man for a series of murders only to become convinced that he was innocent and had been set up to take the fall for someone else. He was not able to prove it or find the real culprit, and as of Hanai's epilogue the scapegoat is still in prison.

*** During the third trial [[spoiler:Celestia tries to set up a complicated series of events that let her get away with killing Yamada while pointing all the blame toward Yasuhiro, but the exacts of the case make it impossible for him to be the culprit[[note]]such as the robot costume he supposedly committed the crimes in being unable to bend at the knees, preventing him from moving the bodies around via cart like the students had established early on in the investigation[[/note]]]].
*** Toko is implicated in the fourth murder case by a message left in the victim's blood. [[spoiler:Hiro left it after he had attacked Sakura, thinking he'd killed her but his attack -- and Toko/Genocider Syo's attack immediately after -- was non-fatal. Sakura committed suicide.]]

** ''VisualNovel/SuperDanganRonpa2'': Hiyoko becomes this in the second trial. The killer tricks her into coming to the beach house before the victim, knocks her out and leaves her at the scene of the crime, while also planting a gummy to serve as proof she was there. [[spoiler:Interestingly enough, the true killer, Peko, was actually planning on making ''herself'' the fall guy for the killer, believing that if she was convicted and Monokuma concluded she was acting on Fuyuhiko's orders, Fuyuhiko would graduate. Meanwhile, Fuyuhiko, the one who most vigorously argued in favor of Hiyoko's guilt, presumably did so hoping that Peko would graduate]].
** ''VisualNovel/NewDanganRonpaV3''

* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' has this happen quite often, to the point at which it's easier to list the cases in which the killer didn't intentionally try to frame the defendant.
** A multi-layered example happens in "Rise From The Ashes." [[spoiler:Damon Gant kills Neil Marshall and makes it look like Ema Skye did it in order to {{blackmail}} her older sister Lana into doing his bidding, starting with framing the serial murder suspect Joe Darke for the crime. Two years later, Gant kills Bruce Goodman to prevent him from looking into Neil Marshall's killing, then tricks Edgeworth into driving Goodman's body to the prosecutor's office. Gant then calls Lana and has her stab Goodman's body with a knife, intending to frame Edgeworth, but Angel Starr catches Lana in the act, resulting in Lana being arrested(presumably not what Gant wanted, but it was preferable to him being caught)]].
** In "Reunion, and Turnabout," the killer works with [[spoiler:Morgan Fey]], who specifically wants to frame Maya for the murder so that [[spoiler:Pearl Fey, Maya's cousin and Morgan's daughter, will become Master of the Fey Clan]].
** In "Turnabout Academy," this becomes a plot point late in the trial. The killer claims that the defendant actually did the murder and convinced her to help get her off, but Athena points out that the killer was the one responsible for submitting evidence to the police, thus resulting in the defendant's arrest.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/AlphaProtocol'' should you stay on good terms with Steven Heck (''[[BerserkButton never]]'' Steve) in Taipei - [[spoiler: he'll tip off authorities that [[ButtMonkey his assistant, Wen]], was the one to kill the Prime Minister]].

* In the finale of ''Film/TheMalteseFalcon'', as Sam Spade is negotiating the terms for handing over the Falcon, one of his conditions is that someone needs to take the fall for the murder of his partner (since the police suspected Spade himself of having done the deed).

* In ''Film/TheLastWitchHunter'', Belial sets Ellic up to be arrested for 36th Dolan's murder to throw Kaulder off his tracks.
* ''Film/GangRelated'': At the center of the film is a fall guy scheme that goes horribly wrong. Two [[DirtyCop crooked LA cops]] murder a criminal who turns out to be an undercover DEA officer, and to avoid their crimes being exposed, pin it on a random homeless guy they picked up off the streets and get a prostitute who was working with them to identify him in a line-up. At first, the subterfuge seems to work, as the man thinks he really did commit the murder and wants to take responsibility for his actions. However, he is later revealed to be the missing member of a very wealthy family who used to personally provide medical aid in Africa as part of Doctors Without Borders, but had fallen into alcoholism and depresssion after the untimely death of his wife and daughter. As Tupac's character put it, they picked a saint to pin a murder on. [[spoiler:It all ends up blowing up in their face, with the prostitute cracking on the witness stand and identifying her two accomplices after she's charged with perjury, the fall guy being acquitted when the DA drops the charges, the instigators turning on each other, and both of the two corrupt cops ending up dead for different reasons of their own doing.]]
* In ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', [[TheCaptain Kirk]] is framed for the assassination of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon.

* ''VisualNovel/DanganRonpa'':
** Makoto ends up as this during the first trial, [[spoiler:unintentionally. Leon didn't know that his murder of Sayaka had happened in Makoto's room, and ended up just going along with it when this came to light and everyone began to suspect him. However, if she hadn't died by her intended victim's hand, Sayaka would have committed a murder and used the room swap to pin her crime on Makoto]].
** During the third trial [[spoiler:Celestia tries to set up a complicated series of events that let her get away with killing Yamada while pointing all the blame toward Yasuhiro, but the exacts of the case make it impossible for him to be the culprit[[note]]such as the robot costume he supposedly committed the crimes in being unable to bend at the knees, preventing him from moving the bodies around via cart like the students had established early on in the investigation[[/note]]]].
** Toko is implicated in the fourth murder case by a message left in the victim's blood. [[spoiler:Hiro left it after he had attacked Sakura, thinking he'd killed her but his attack -- and Toko/Genocider Syo's attack immediately after -- was non-fatal. Sakura committed suicide.]]
** The fifth murder case happens specifically to do this to [[spoiler:Kyoko, [[HeKnowsTooMuch who was coming too close to solving the mystery]]. The Mastermind takes a corpse they had murdered early in the game (Mukuro, who had been disguised as Junko), presents it as if it had just been murdered, uses a knife only Makoto had access to, and then destroys the face with a bomb to mask the body's identity. The entire thing is so convoluted that the fifth trial ends with either Kyoko or Makoto taking the blame (the former results in the bad ending), and it's not until the sixth trial that the whole thing is laid to rest]].
* ''VisualNovel/SuperDanganRonpa2'': Hiyoko becomes this in the second trial. The killer tricks her into coming to the beach house before the victim, knocks her out and leaves her at the scene of the crime, while also planting a gummy to serve as proof she was there. [[spoiler:Interestingly enough, the true killer, Peko, was actually planning on making ''herself'' the fall guy for the killer, believing that if she was convicted and Monokuma concluded she was acting on Fuyuhiko's orders, Fuyuhiko would graduate. Meanwhile, Fuyuhiko, the one who most vigorously argued in favor of Hiyoko's guilt, presumably did so hoping that Peko would graduate]].
* ''VisualNovel/NewDanganRonpaV3''
** Himiko becomes this in the second trial, when, during her magic show, [[spoiler:Ryoma is seemingly eaten alive by the piranhas that were dropped into the tank after the timer for her to escape ran out. In reality, he'd been killed the previous night]].
** Kaito serves as this in Chapter 4. [[spoiler:Miu's original plan was to frame Kaito for killing Kokichi, so she programmed the cell phone in the Virtual World to log out Kaito if ''anyone'' said his name (other people could only log out themselves), to make it seem as though he'd logged out to murder the victim in the real world. While Miu ultimately ends up as the murder victim, Kaito is the initial suspect for her murder]].

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/IvanhoeTheKingsKnight'': Prince John uses Front-de-Boeuf as one, to the latter's surprise, to prevent others from knowing he arranged his own kidnapping in "The Four Black Knights."

* Common's "Testify" is about a man who is on trial for killing two men. He gets sent to jail, but the ending reveals he didn't commit the crime. The actual murderer was actually his ''wife''. She's a drug king pin who framed her own husband by giving an anonymous tip, while at the trial she played the role of a sobbing wife.

* ''Film/GangRelated'': At the center of the film is a fall guy scheme that goes horribly wrong. Two [[DirtyCop crooked LA cops]] murder an undercover DEA officer without knowing he was one, and to avoid their crimes being exposed, pin it on a random homeless guy they picked up off the streets and get a prostitute who was working with them to identify him in a line-up. At first, the subterfuge seems to work, as the man thinks he really did commit the murder and wants to take responsibility for his actions. However, he is later revealed to be the missing member of a very wealthy family who used to personally provide medical aid in Africa as part of Doctors Without Borders, but had fallen into alcoholism and depresssion after the untimely death of his wife and daughter. As Tupac's character put it, they picked a saint to pin a murder on. [[spoiler:It all ends up blowing up in their face, with the prostitute cracking on the witness stand and identifying her two accomplices after she's charged with perjury, the fall guy being acquitted when the DA drops the charges, the instigators turning on each other, and both of the two corrupt cops ending up dead for different reasons of their own doing.]]

* Common's "Testify" is about a man who is on trial for killing two men. He gets sent to jail, but the ending reveals he didn't commit the crime. The actual murderer was actually his ''wife''. She's a drug king pin who framed her own husband by giving an anonymous tip, while at the trial she plays the role of a sobbing wife.

[[folder: Anime & Manga ]]

[[folder: Comicbooks ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Visual Novels ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/AlphaProtocol'' should you stay on good terms with [[CrazyAwesome Steven Heck]] (''[[BerserkButton never]]'' Steve) in Taipei - [[spoiler: he'll tip off authorities that [[ButtMonkey his assistant, Wen]], was the one to kill the Prime Minister]].

* ''Hard Rain'', by Creator/BarryEisler. The CIA station chief in Tokyo is running an operation that's been shut down under orders from Washington, and using his subordinate Kanezaki as the fall guy by arranging to frame ''him'' as the RogueAgent. Kanezaki only discovers this when he gets curious about some missing communication receipts, which include the order cancelling the operation the chief has assigned to him.