History Main / GasLeakCoverup

* The ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' fic "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5355766/1/Kissed-by-a-Rose Kissed by a Rose]]" ends with the castle residents deciding to claim that Alexander/the Beast has been in isolation for the last few years because he was ill, during which he met and married Belle and they have decided to return to public life following the birth of their daughter Gwen. In reality Gwen is the daughter of Gaston after he raped Belle, but Lumiere, Cogsworth and Mrs Potts assure Belle that nobody in the household will reveal the truth after Belle saved them all, and it's noted that Gwen's parentage doesn't matter in terms of her inheriting the throne as the title would always go to the oldest ''male'' heir.

* ''Series/TheSilentSea'': The Balhae Station moon base was supposedly abandoned and most of its crew killed by a radiation leak, but in reality the government had everyone killed to cover-up the experiments being done there.

** This explanation was also attempted when the Japanese used the gulf stream to fly timed balloon-bombs over the continental USA. While these random and unaimed bombs very rarely came to earth in places where they could do any damage or indeed even be noticed, the US authorities tried to explain the explosions as accidents involving their own tech, rather than let it be known Japan was bombing the USA.

* In ''VisualNovel/{{Nightbound}}'', this is the explanation given for the Mardi Gras Incident at the end of the story when [[BigBad Thomas]], turned into the Bloodwraith, goes on an unholy killing spree intent on killing not just the party, but the magical world. It's only if Alex has romanced Vera and goes with her to confront her mother, Lady Smoke, do they find she's the one who whipped up the story.

* In ''VisualNovel/{{Nightbound}}'', this is the explanation given for the Mardi Gras Incident at the end of the story when [[BigBad Thomas]], turned into the Bloodwraith, goes on an unholy killing spree intent on killing not just the party, but the magical world. It's only if Alex has romanced Vera and goes with her to confront her mother, Lady Smoke, do they find she's the one who whipped up the story.

-->'''Darth Vader''': The Senate has been informed that Jeddha has been destroyed in a mining disaster.
** ''Series/{{Andor}}'': Cassian’s true home of Kenari had a mining disaster to cover up something bad done there. Apparently, the Empire loves this excuse.

* In ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars: A New Hope]]'', Han Solo, answering the operator of a concerned nearby station following the dispatch of the Death Star detention block's guards and security cameras, attempts to buy time for Luke to find Princess Leia by claiming a "reactor leak" is in progress, asking for time to shut it down. It fails miserably.
** In the preceding ''Film/RogueOne'', Darth Vader informs that this is how the premature Death Star test on Jeddha was covered up.

** And in ''Series/{{Andor}}'', which precedes Rogue One by 5 years, [[note]] In terms of chronological order [[/note]] Cassian’s true home of Kenari had a mining disaster to cover up something bad done there. Apparently, the Empire loves this excuse.

** In ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24: Live Another Day]]'', a drone attack on a house that the CIA was investigating is covered up as being a gas main explosion.
* In the first episode of the second series of ''Series/{{Being Human|UK}}'', [[spoiler:the villains]] use a gas leak excuse to [[spoiler:clear out a whole neighborhood so they can use a psychic to find out which house the heroes -- one of whom is a ghost -- live in]].
* In Season 3 of ''Series/BlackLightning'', Freeland is the site of a war between the ASA and Markovia, with the entire area having been cordoned off and put under martial law, and a total blackout on information coming in or out. When the characters do manage to pick up an external news program, they're shocked to hear them talking about Freeland being under quarantine due to a SARS outbreak.
* In ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', the government is fond of using explanations like this, usually involving gangs on PCP, but the only time the actual "gas leak" excuse is used, it's by the heroes. SunnydaleSyndrome being what it is, it's a completely implausible and unanimously accepted explanation for what happened.

* Lampshaded in ''Series/{{Community}}'' when, in the Season 5 pilot, the (ex-)study group explains their strange behavior in season 4 by saying there was a gas leak. In reality, showrunner Dan Harmon had been fired at the end of Season 3, and many fans of the show felt that Season 4 was subpar and out of character. Dan Harmon rejoined the show for the final two season (5 and 6). Jeff, however, tells the group, "Don't blame everything on the gas leak year," perhaps acknowledging that characterizations and plots were slipping towards caricature even before Season 4.
* ''Series/CriminalMinds''

* In the ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' episode "Snow Day" [[spoiler:a criminal gang]] uses a fake gas leak to [[spoiler:clear out the Crime Lab's building so they can recover the drugs that the police had confiscated (worth about a hundred million dollars)]].
* Subverted in ''{{Series/Fringe}}'': a gas explosion ''was'' the event; however, it was what ''caused'' said explosion that needed to be investigated.

* ''Series/TheProfessionals''. In "Old Dog with New Tricks," the gas leak excuse is lampshaded by Crowley as to why the street outside a hostage situation is deserted. However the goal is not to cover up what happened, but to remove witnesses to the ruthless ([[CowboyCop and illegal]]) tactics that [=CI5=] will use to end the situation.
* Played with in ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'': An explosion is assumed to have been caused by a gas leak, but is then discovered to have in fact been a bombing.

** In the season one episode "Bugs", Dean attempts to use this to get a family out of their house so they'll be out of the way of a curse, but the father doesn't buy it -- Dean's on the phone impersonating a gas company employee that they met earlier in the episode, and the father knows that employee's voice.
** {{Lampshaded}} in the next-to-last episode of the same season ("Salvation") when the boys are trying to figure out how to get another family out of their house:

** They pull the asbestos variation a few seasons later in "Family Remains" when they need to keep a family out of the house that they're moving into. A gas leak is mentioned, but the people they're talking to only really pay attention to the "asbestos" part. Unfortunately, the people moving into the house have someone who knows how to identify asbestos with them. He informs them that there's no asbestos in the walls and no gas leak, so they disregard what Sam and Dean said -- including the truthful part that there's a health hazard to begin with -- and [[GenreBlindness all nearly die]] as a result.
** At the beginning of Season 15, they manage to convince an ''entire town'' that there's a gas leak in order to evacuate it while they contain and deal with a whole mess of ghosts.
* On Nickelodeon's ''Series/TheTroop'', the gym is destroyed by enormous worm monsters during a big dance. The Troop destroys the monsters and uses their miniature memory zapper monster (the snark) on everyone. As everyone surveys the wreckage, the Troop's adult advisor cheerily tells them that there had been a simple plumbing leak. In a later episode, they open a portal to a monster dimension and cover it with a tent and a gas leak sign. Unfortunately, the sign looks like one used by a band named "Gas Leak" and the heroes find themselves surrounded by fans who won't let anyone explain they're talking about an actual leak instead of the band.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'', "Jose Chung's ''From Outer Space''": Jesse Ventura plays a [[TheMenInBlack Man in Black]] who tries to persuade someone who saw a UFO into questioning his vision and perception and believing he only saw "the planet Venus."
-->"No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than ''[[LargeHam the planet Venus]]''."
-->"Even the former leader of your United States of America, [[UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter James Earl Carter, Jr.]], thought he saw a UFO once, but it's been proven he only saw ''the planet Venus''."
-->"If you tell anyone that you saw anything other than ''[[RuleOfThree the planet Venus]]'', you're a dead man!"

* In the ''TabletopGame/DarkMatter'' adventure "The Killing Jar", the bad guys use this ''modus operandi'' when killing more than two people. They call it "a tragic fire".

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* Website/SCPFoundation: Three hours after [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-239 SCP-239]] (''a.k.a.'' "the Witch Child") was born, the hospital was destroyed by an explosion. The press was informed that the explosion was due to a gas leak.
** Also, [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2602 SCP-2602, which used to be a library]], appears to be the subject of a particularly forceful and memetic one. It's clear that some ''serious'' stuff is going on there - torture devices, radiation, suspicious shrines, a ''toxic waste pit'' - but whatever anamlous effect its under forces people thinking about it to believe those things are either normal for a former library, or to creatively reinterpret them as library standards (e.g. the torture devices become "book binding machines" and the Cherenkov radiation becomes "Dewey radiation"). As noted in the report, this means that no one can ever refer to what was going on in the building between the time it ceased to be a library and when the Foundation found it - rendering the entire time {{Unperson}}ed.

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls''
** In "Into the Bunker", Grunkle Stan claims the damage caused to the Mystery Shack by an infestation of zombies was caused by "a big woodpecker". When the contractor doesn't seem to fall for that, Stan just straight-up bribes him.
** At the end of "A Tale of Two Stans", [[spoiler:Grunkle Stan's long-lost brother]] manages to get TheMenInBlack out of town by claiming the energy caused by the Interdimensional Portal was actually from an unreported meteorite shower. [[spoiler:It works because the agents just had their recent memories wiped]].
* Played with in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'': Lex Luthor secretly hacks into the Watchtower and fires its [[WaveMotionGun binary fusion generator]] at a Cadmus hideout, which is hidden beneath an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a town. The civilians don't know what happened and the League doesn't make a statement on it, but some assumed it was an industrial accident, while others saw a bright light in the sky and figured out it was from the Watchtower since the League had previously used their BFG on a previous mission, leading to the League getting hit hard with HeroWithBadPublicity.

* '' WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': In the episode "New Kids in Town", three members of the ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes travel back in time chasing after ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} who is trying to kill Superman when he was still a teenager in Smallville. At the end of the episode, Saturn Girl uses her {{Telepathy}} to erase the memories of all the locals who got involved or who witnessed anything, including Clark, and makes them believe that all the damage caused by the fighting was the result of a tornado.

* '' WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': In the episode "New Kids in Town", three members of the ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes travel back in time chasing after ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} who is trying to kill Superman when he was still a teenager in Smallville. At the end of the episode, Saturn Girl uses her {{Telepathy}} to erase the memories of all the locals who got involved or who witnessed anything, including Clark, and makes them believe that all the damage caused by the fighting was the result of a tornado.

* '' WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': In the episode "New Kids in Town", three members of the ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes travel back in time chasing after ComicBook/{{Brainiac}} who is trying to kill Superman when he was still a teenager in Smallville. At the end of the epsiode, Saturn Girl uses her {{Telepathy}} to erase the memories of everyone involved, including Clark, and makes them believe that all the damage caused by the fighting was the result of a tornado.

* In ''Film/MissionImpossibleGhostProtocol'', half the Kremlin blowing up is put down to gas lines exploding, and an unexploded nuclear warhead plunging down on San Francisco is a meteorite. When half the planet believes in UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories, why bother coming up with a plausible explanation as long as you can disavow it officially? Indeed, the way the civilian news reports are phrased indicates that pretty much no one believes the "accident with the gas mains" cover-up.

** And in ''Series/{{Andor}}'', which precedes Rouge One by 5 years, [[note]] In terms of chronological order [[/note]] Cassian’s true home of Kenari had a mining disaster to cover up something bad done there. Apparently, the Empire loves this excuse.

* In the chilean comic ''Zombies en la Moneda'', after Santiago, the capital city, had to be evacuated due to a zombie attack, the government claims that the cause of such evacuation –and of all the deaths at the hands of the zombies- it was for a vague “sanitary emergency”. This trope is partly [[Deconstruction deconstructed]] as it is implied that the only reason this zombie apocalypse cover-up works is because ordinary people prefer to think it was all the fault of a disease and forget that the dead came back to life ( something that many people witnessed)

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' uses this trope a lot. [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-10-02 Take this one, for example]]:
-->'''Mr. Verres:''' Ah, some of my best work! Though I have been using that weather balloon excuse a lot. I think I'll blame swamp gas next time.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation: Three hours after [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-239 SCP-239]] (''a.k.a.'' "the Witch Child") was born, the hospital was destroyed by an explosion. The press was informed that the explosion was due to a gas leak.

*** And in [[Series/Andor Andor]], which precedes Rouge One by 5 years, [[note]] In terms of chronological order [[/note]] Cassian’s true home of Kenari had a mining disaster to cover up something bad done there. Apparently, the Empire loves this excuse.