Engineered Public Confessions in Comic Books.
- Done at least twice in Archie Comics:
- In one story, Archie's rival Reggie convinces almost everyone that Archie is going insane but then Jughead leads Reggie into a storeroom by getting him curious about why Jughead is carrying and uncoiling a wire and gets Reggie to brag about his scheme seemingly in private, after which Jughead reveals that the wire is connected to a microphone leading to the school's public address system. Reggie is the one who ends up in therapy.
- In another story, Archie wants to make sure a sweet old lady who is moving house gets good prices on her antiques, so he gets help from a man who is knowledgeable enough to set fair prices but has a reputation as a shyster. Then Archie tricks him into confessing that he's intending to keep 80% of the sales for himself and records it on tape as leverage to force the shyster into giving the old lady all the profits.
- In Baker Street #5, Davenport admits to Sharon and Susan that he is the one behind the deaths in the recent gang wars, planning to shoot them immediately. Unknown to him, the area is surrounded by the Tower of Hell gang who have borne the brunt of losses in these wars.
- Daredevil made The Fixer believe this was the case, claiming to have a recorder inside his billy club. Then three issues later, he did it for real to the Purple Man.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
- In the comic "Outlanders", Donald, Scrooge, and Huey-Dewey-Louie are teleported to a steampunk world, where Beagle Boys took over the Money Bin and sent alternate Scrooge to work in a coal mine. He then takes his revenge by tricking them to confess how they did it, using Gyro's inventions to project their confession on a giant sheet in the street, and broadcast their words at full volume.
- In a comic story featuring a young Scrooge, he visits the bad guy and convinces him to speak about his crime, while recording his words on a hidden gramophone. Justified, as the comic is set in an era where gramophones are still new-fangled inventions, and the villain doesn't consider the possibility that his words can be recorded.
- Used in an issue of Doctor Strange, with Clea activating the crystal that Umar the Unrelenting used to make announcements to the public. It might have gone better if Umar hadn't drained the barrier that prevented the Mindless Ones from rampaging across the Dark Dimension; part of her power was drawn from popular support.
- The Flash has this a few times, often during Mark Waid run on the title.
- The Flash faces off against a crime boss who snaps on how he killed off some rivals himself. Right as his confession is starting, the Flash grabs him and races him across town. The guy has just finished admitting to having killed a rival when he realizes he's standing right in the middle of police headquarters with a half dozen cops listening.
- The Flash has been set up to look like a huge menace and attacking people. He's lured to rescue some hostages and is trapped by Abra Kadabra who does a massive speech on how he set the Flash up. At which point, the Flash easily escapes from the trap and points out the hostages are gone. Cue his captain ally and twenty cops stepping out of the shadows, the captain playing a recording of Kadabra's confession. Flash reveals he had already gotten the hostages out at super-speed and then brought the cops along before Kadabra even saw him enter. He then acted out being "trapped", knowing Kadabra's ego would drive him to gloat.Flash: That...is misdirection.
- In the story "The Joker's Mild" from Joker's Asylum, the Joker hijacks a game show and presents the contestants with impossibly difficult questions. When they fail to answer, they are subjected to harmless pranks like being sprayed with ginger ale. The joke was actually on the producer, who had kept the show on the air, made no effort to summon help, and was drooling over the audience the show was drawing... all of which the Joker had captured on hidden camera in order to amuse himself by posing the question of which of them was the worse villain.
- Josie and the Pussycats:
- The girls are singing for an animal preservation charity. After the rival boy band's leader sets them up by way of a fur coat, the girls pretend to be groupie journalists to get the guys back. They do, of course, and the boy band is thrown out and the Cats welcomed back with open arms.
- Valerie, where she pretends to be helping a con man so she can get him to tell her about the scam and what suckers people are — she is wearing a wire and broadcasting this to the entire school.
- In the second Katie the Catsitter book, the Eastern Screech, a superhero, commits various crimes to frame his superhero competitors. But he is lured into a TV studio that goes live 10 minutes before expected, where he is broadcast yelling at an underling (actually a different superhero in disguise) about his crimes and demanding the underling treat him better. He even lists his crimes out as he's chewing out the fake underling.
- Raana Tey from Knights of the Old Republic falls victim to this when she gloats about the murder she participated in and framed the protagonist for in front of the sister of one of her victims (who Raana had been manipulating). It doesn't end well for her. Subverted in that Zayne didn't really plan it to happen.
- The post-Zero Hour incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes spent an entire Story Arc building up to one of these, complete with the Legion's leader becoming Not Himself to ingratiate himself to the target, several Legionnaires faking their deaths, and one of the presumed-dead Legionnaires then impersonating a third party to take credit for the villain's schemes in order to prompt the Just Between You and Me moment, which was of course broadcast on live TV - all without cluing the reader in until The Reveal.
- Superman:
- For a while Lex Luthor was President of the US, and genuinely tried to protect the country (and Earth) from several of the cataclysms that occurred during his term. Then his hatred of Superman got the better of him in Public Enemies (2004) and he tried, through a heavily convoluted and highly illegal scheme, to frame Superman for attempting to destroy the Earth by drawing an asteroid to Earth. It almost worked, until he ranted to Superman that he truly thought he was guilty, repeatedly admitting to playing the public like a flute and that he intended to teleport off-planet (using illegal alien technology from Darkseid) before the asteroid hit, leaving everyone else to die. Luckily, he didn't know Batman was taping the whole thing (in addition to, as Bruce Wayne, buying up all his assets so that he couldn't start over, or at least for a while). Lex may be completely crazy, but he's not completely wrong — The asteroid IS headed for Earth because of Superman; it contains his cousin Supergirl, who would land on Earth in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004). Supergirl's escape ship was following Superman's journey but unfortunately came with a giant chunk of the planet Krypton attached. Luthor's crime here wasn't framing Superman, but leading a manhunt for the hero instead of simply asking for his help in destroying it.
- In Superboy (1949) #5, the treacherous Duke Norvello threatens to kill Queen Lucy if she does not insult her subjects publicly, and then he gloats that, after destroying Lucy's reputation, he can get rid of her puppet queen and do whatever he pleases to the "stupid peasants". Too bad for him, Superboy planted a microphone in his room and broadcast his gloating speech to everybody.
- In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, he gives the villain speech in front of Supergirl while Batgirl was broadcasting it live on network TV, destroying his reputation.
- In Action Comics #319, Donna Storm frames Linda Danvers for stealing. So Linda alters Donna's earrings into radio transmitters that would broadcast her voice through the school's P. A. system and then prods Donna into confessing.Donna: I wanted to get even with you, and with your friend, Supergirl. You've both been getting in my hair. I don't mind telling you this, because you can't prove I'm the guilty one.
Linda: Can't I? You'd be surprised!
"At that moment, Donna's confession is pouring out through the public address system in the nearby stadium..." - In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, Belinda asks Linda Lee how she is doing. Linda starts complaining about her shallow, petty, and bad-smelling schoolmates and teachers, not knowing she is being recorded.Linda: I didn't mean it that way... I have a really, really keen sense of smell is all... I didn't know she was recording me...
- Action Comics #556: Vandal Savage, then an immigrant from Earth-2, decided that being a Villain with Good Publicity wasn't enough, and began videotaping all his meetings with Superman as part of his plan to make Supes a Hero with Bad Publicity. Superman secretly places a transmitter on Savage's recording device which then feeds to local TV station WGBS, then goads the villain into revealing his plan and sneering at the "sheep" of Metropolis.
- A Marvel Adventures comic has Captain America doing this to Loki over a live broadcast. It's really just admitting to jealousy, but this does result in Loki leaving in a huff.
- The heroine of Les Nombrils pulls a pretty clever version of this to expose the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who's been ruining her life.
- In the last issue of Six Gun Gorilla, Blue manages to trick one of the people involved in a plot to prolong the civil war in the Blister so Bluetech can make a fortune broadcasting it to the masses into admitting the whole conspiracy when they think the transmitter in Blue's head is being jammed by psi-blockers.Blue: Them psi-blockers? They been down since you pulled the trigger.
- Spider-Man villain Mysterio starts out as a Villain with Good Publicity, but is foiled when he confesses everything to Spider-Man, who is holding a tape recorder.
- Star Wars: Darth Vader (2020): In Issue #32, this is how Sabé deals with Jul Tambor — she tricks him into believing that Vader has set up camp in a village full of Sakoan refugees, which he proceeds to bomb to try and earn his species' loyalty by killing Vader in a show of force, not caring about the innocent lives lost in the process. It's only after he's gloated about this in a transmission to Sabé that she reveals that the village was actually empty, and the refugees have been listening in on the whole thing. This ruins Jul's reputation, destroying his movement and turning him into a powerless fugitive.
- Star Wars: Doctor Aphra has a particularly ironic one at the climax of the Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon arc. After Minister Voor gloats about how she's manipulated both Aphra and the Rebellion into enabling her planned coup against the Emperor, Aphra reveals that she hacked Voor's own propaganda cameras to broadcast this confession live to the whole galaxy, exposing and ruining Voor's plans. Cue stormtroopers storming Voor's compound.
- Spider Jerusalem uses this against the President in Transmetropolitan. He purposely gets seen using a real gun (something that's out of character for him) earlier in the day, so that the increasingly unstable President will make very sure he's not armed, instead of making a cursory check for guns and then checking for bugs.
- Spider had tried to record him in an earlier issue, only to learn right after the confession that his bugs had been fried by an EMP, hence the Batman Gambit with the gun the second time.
- The 'Crazy Eights' storyline in the Marvel Comics Wonder Man book. Eight newly superpowered friends of Wonder Man manage to record L.A's top security firm as really being a bunch of murderous thugs for hire. A violent chase ensues all over town, ending with a Hail Mary pass to a reporter acquaintance. Ironically, the reporter's view of costumed people tussling with the security firm just increases her curiosity to view the tape.
- Subverted in Y: The Last Man, when ex-cop turned brothel owner You confronts Epiphany, a Canadian pop star who's using her influence among teenage Japanese girls to recreate the Yakuza, and broadcasts her comment ("Those retarded Japanese fangirls worship me like a god!") to the guards outside. When informed of this Epiphany simply retorts: "Oh please! Those groupies already know I couldn't give two shits about them!"
- The first arc of Scott McCloud's Zot! ends with the titular hero interrupting the Evil Chancellor as he gives a live planet-wide broadcast about how their world's Holy War against Earth is going. The villain makes sure to turn off all the cameras before admitting to Zot that, yes, he killed the king, the queen, and his rivals, and engineered the war as a way of consolidating power—but then Zot reveals the tiny robot that's been following him around, which has video cameras for eyes and a built-in broadcast antenna. Guess what the robot's been doing?
