History Main / RealStitchesForFakeSnitches

* Played with in ''Film/BadBoys2''. The protagonist detectives get a man connected to an ecstasy-smuggling ring to talk by taking a picture with him and threatening to show it to his fellow criminals. To make things worse for him, both detectives are black and the man is a member of the KKK.

* Bodie from ''Series/TheWire'' survives five seasons of the show by sticking to the street code, and even has to kill one of is friends who snitched, but meets his end because he's seen getting into a car with [=McNulty=] after being released from lockup.

And those who keep their mouths shut? They can be marked for death too, if the right people ''think'' they snitched. In this trope, people involved in crime are [[{{Frameup}} framed]] for tattling. There can be a number of motives. Someone may be seeking {{revenge}} for an unrelated offense. Their removal might be good for someone else's career advancement. In some cases, police will manipulate things this way to bring down a target who seems immune to legitimate prosecution, create [[EnemyCivilWar dissention]] within the mob, and/or exploit underlings' [[TheMobBossIsScarier fear of their boss]] to force them to ''actually'' cooperate by threatening to make it ''look'' like they did.

* ''{{ComicBook/Asterix}}'': In ''Recap/AsterixAndTheRomanAgent'', the titular Roman agent Convovulus has managed to turn the village against each other until they think Asterix and Getafix are on their payroll and even sold them the secret of the magic potion (by staging fights between huge and tiny legionaries where the Gauls can see them). Once the Gauls are shamed into getting their act together, they trounce the Romans, and loudly congratulate Convovulus for his part in the Roman's defeat. He denies it, but of course now the Romans are turned against him and have him sent to Rome in chains.

* ''VideoGame/SleepingDogs'': Undercover officer Wei Shen does a string of helpful deeds to ingratiate himself with a Sun On Yee Red Pole, Winston Chu, as part of the HKPD's operation to take down the triad, but despite his attempts to seem like he walked in off the street, suspicions that he's a "rat" brew until it culminates in the arrest of a notorious drug dealer in Winston's territory. That gets him grabbed and threatened with death for snitching and possibly being a cop, but Wei turns it around on his accuser (actually a loyal member of the gang) by pointing out how he's still managing to sell despite the police's crackdown on the drug supply, making it seem like he's in with Dogeyes, another gang member, and exploiting Winston's rivalry with Dogeyes to play both sides. Winston gets angry enough to shoot the man dead and let Wei live.

* ''VideoGame/SleepingDogs'' has a scene in which undercover cop Wei Shen successfully reverses an accusation that he is a snitch, resulting in the accuser (actually a loyal gang member) getting murdered on the spot by a crime boss.
* In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' a quest [[PlayerCharacter the Courier]] investigates a series of murders committed by the Omertas crime family. Eventually the Courier is confronted by the Omertas' two leaders, Big Sal and Nero, who make it no secret that they want to kill them from getting too close. One possible solution is to convince Big Sal that you are actually working for Nero who plans to get rid of him by ratting him out to the authorities, leading to the two killing each other.

** In episode "Mind Games", Micheal tries to convince loan shark Wallace that his thug Carter is a undercover Police Officer, even hiding a kit in his house. Wallace has Carter's house searched, but [[FramingTheGuiltyParty instead finds Carter's real kit]], [[UndercoverCopReveal revealing he was an FBI Agent the whole time]].

* Patrick Jane has pulled this a few times on ''Series/TheMentalist''. Most notably with the head of a biker gang, where Jane arranged for it to look like the man was taking payments for informing on the gang. We don't see the final result, but it's implied that the gang's leader won't be around for very long.
* On ''Series/AmericanVandal'', Lou gives Gonzo a nasty black eye because he thinks Gonzo has been revealing Lou and [=DeMarcus's=] secrets. That attack prompts Gonzo to spill the beans for real.
* ''Series/TheBill''.
** After being arrested, a criminal tries to blackmail Dave Quinnan into letting him go. At the same time the detectives convince a minor associate of this man to grass their boss up. To preserve his cover, they arrest the grass on a minor charge, then let the other man think his blackmail plan has worked by releasing him without charge, knowing that suspicion will fall on him when his boss is arrested.
** While a school class is visiting the Sun Hill police station, a child notes that an identikit sketch looks a lot like his dad. They check out the dad and find he has a criminal record, so bring him in for questioning along with two of his associates so his son won't be blamed. But dad tells the detectives to stop wasting their time; he's been waiting to be arrested because his son told him all about his trip to the police station and what he saw there.
* ''Series/Daredevil2015'' provides a twisted variant of this. After snitching on an Albanian syndicate to gain Ray Nadeem's trust, Wilson Fisk pays Jasper Evans to shank him, just good enough to convince the Feds that he's been targeted for snitching, so that they'll move Fisk into a hotel penthouse suite that he's bought through a series of shell companies. Helping sell his fake story to Nadeem is that the convoy transferring Fisk is coincidentally attacked by an Albanian hit squad, who almost come close to killing Fisk before Dex intervenes and kills them first.
* Bodie from ''Series/TheWire'' survives five seasons of the show by sticking to the street code, and even has to kill one of is friends who snitched, but meets his end because he's seen getting into a car with McNulty after being released from lockup.

And those who keep their mouths shut? They can be marked for death too, if the right people ''think'' they snitched. In this trope, people involved in crime are [[{{Frameup}} framed]] for tattling. There can be a number of motives. Someone may be seeking {{revenge}} for an unrelated offense. Their removal might be good for someone else's career advancement. In some cases, police will manipulate things this way to get a target who seems immune to legitimate prosecution, perhaps as a counterplay to [[TheMobBossIsScarier the crime boss's reliance on fear]].