People being Convicted by Public Opinion in Video Games.
- Anna's Quest: Winfriede is heavily disliked by her peers; even her own mother sees her as a reckless, disobedient child. When she gets accused of murder, everybody's shocked, but nobody doubts for a minute that she actually did it. Naturally, she didn't.
- A Running Theme in Bully is how chasing after popularity isn't worth the effort, as well as how easily one's reputation can be wrecked — especially when you built that reputation and "respect" up through brute force. Time and again, the various cliques turn upon Jimmy on a time, culminating in him getting outright expelled based on pure word of mouth alone.
- Choice of Games: In The Fog Knows Your Name, most of the citizens of Arbor Isle are convinced that the protagonist had something to do with Rex's death. Sure, the police were never able to find anything that would have justified arresting you, but hey! You left town, and as far as most are concerned, that's a direct admission of guilt.
- In Duskwood, a video gets posted blaming the hacker and the player for Hannah's kidnapping, along with accusing them of being responsible for murdering the dead girl in the forest. The accuser has no proof for any of these claims, but doxxes the victims, leading to them getting angry messages.
- Inverted in Final Fantasy XIV. At the end of the A Realm Reborn arc, you're framed for killing the Sultana of Ul'Dah via poisoned wine. But you're the Warrior of Light, and everyone knows how heroic you are, so almost every NPC dismisses the accusations as plainly absurd — notable exceptions being those who are in on the frame job, but they know public opinion is against them and aren't willing to try taking you in under circumstances like this.
- Hiveswap: During the Jadeblood trial in Act 2, Lynera can be found guilty by being accused of acting the most guilty, despite there being no evidence pointing towards them. This gets them dragged away to Marvus's car while the rest of the Jadebloods wave goodbye.
- There are two cases in L.A. Noire where you must choose to convict one of two suspects, one of which the evidence points more heavily towards while the other is some kind of social deviant (a pedophile in the first case, a communist in the second). In both cases, there is immense pressure from everyone else to ignore the evidence and convict the latter suspect, and if you follow your principles and arrest the former one anyway, you get a lecture from your superiors and only a partial completion for that case. And in both cases, both suspects are really innocent and the crime was perpetrated by a third party.
- The Tribunal system in League of Legends allows players to vote on a case as to whether or not the accused deserves to be punished. The players assigned to a case can review logs of the in-game chat and vital game stats, a supermajority is needed for actual punishment, and the worst punishments are subject to manual review by Riot Games staff (as are randomly chosen cases that don't warrant particularly strong punishment). According to the summoner's code, celebrating a victory with "GG easy noobs" deserves a ban. Also, any time a player just has a bad game, there are people who will try to get them reported for intentionally feeding. The forums are rife with people who claim they got falsely banned, though it should be noted that they are usually hiding something. The Tribunal was removed in early 2014 and replaced with automated chat bans, similar to Dota 2. This cuts out the whole jury part of the equation and just punishes you automatically if enough people report you.
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: At the start of the game, a "viral news" internet channel puts out a Malicious Slander story about Ichiban, Nanba, and Adachi, accusing them of secretly running a massive theft ring due to Ichiban's status as ex-yakuza. This leads to all three of them losing their jobs and becoming social pariahs.
- The main plot of Nancy Drew: Alibi in Ashes is how the titular character is framed for arson and falls victim to this trope. Even though she hasn't been convicted yet and had a stellar reputation beforehand, people are throwing rocks at her house and sending threatening notes within a day.
- In the original campaign of Neverwinter Nights, Fenthick Moss is manipulated into assisting the Big Bad of the first act, publicly supporting him while being unaware of his true intentions or eventual actions. By the time of the second act, he has been hanged to appease the masses, who demanded blood for what happened and believed Fenthick to be complicit in the plot, no matter how ignorant he was of it.
- In Pathologic, the second playable character - Artemy Burakh, the Haruspex - starts out with his reputation critically low due to rumors that he killed his father (unsurprisingly spread by the real killer, Foreman Oyun, who sought to usurp the position Artemy would have otherwise inherited). Artemy was actually returning from ten years abroad when this happened, but a couple of townsfolk, already driven to hysteria by said murder and evidence of a deadly plague returning, spotted him at the train station and assumed he was trying to escape, forcing Artemy to defend himself. And he has to keep defending himself throughout the route, too, because a low enough reputation means that people will attack you on sight; as a result, it isn't long before everyone except his most trusted allies think he's a Serial Killer.
- This is the subject of the traditional Tales Series deconstruction in Tales of Crestoria. The world's justice system is built around broadcasts from magic necklaces called vision orbs that show someone in the act of committing a crime. Before the first chapter is out, someone who was falsely accused of a crime uses vision orb testimony to clear their name. The true culprit is Unpersoned and brought to justice in short order. However, the dark side of the system is revealed when protagonist Kanata forgets this fact when discovering something heinous. As such, his actions don't have their "Pay Evil unto Evil" context to drove him to do it, and the vision orb recordings of Kanata — all taken by bystanders and showing him in the aftermath of a crime of passion — depict him as a deranged maniac. Additionally, the citizens of Crestoria trust vision orb testimony to be infallible, ignoring all context or rationalization that would drive someone to break the law. Therefore, a transgressor's protestations and justifications are written off as self-serving excuses, leading to many a Miscarriage of Justice when the people decide they'd rather have everything be morally easy so they don't have to feel bad for condemning someone to a Fate Worse than Death.
