History Main / RedHerring

* At the end of the ''WesternAnimation/{{Rollbots}}'' episode ''Teacher's Pet'', Ms. Appie acts incredibly suspicious, but it turns out that she had no evil intentions and that she was referring to Spin's secret.

* In debating, there is a related trick/fallacy called "Pivoting", where one person will ask a question that can either be answered with one word (such as "no" or "15") or a sentence or two of explanation, such as "because we ran out of money", and instead of answering the other person will go off topic (often rambling at length) to try to get out of answering and in some cases to drag on long enough the other person (and the audience) just forget what the original question was. Unfortunately, most novice debaters aren't adept enough to recognize this trick and say something like "you're not answering my question, did X happen or didn't it?"
* In terms of actual mysteries, [[http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888126,00.html The Phantom of Heilbronn]] was an epic one. From 1993 to 2009, crime scene investigators found DNA samples of the same woman at 40 crime scenes in Germany, Austria, and France. Searches for this mystery killer came up short. Then, someone noticed that all the cotton swabs used for the DNA testing at the crime scenes came from the same shipping. The DNA was then traced to the factory that made the cotton swabs and a worker who accidentally contaminated them.
* Puzzlehunt puzzles often don't intentionally contain red herrings, as most are found accidentally. With that said, the red herrings themselves are sometimes put up intentionally as a signpost to disregard information. One puzzle from the ARG/MITMysteryHunt plays with this trope -- [[https://puzzles.mit.edu/2022/puzzle/red-herring/ "Red Herring"]] from the 2022 Hunt.

It's also worth noting that quite a few schools of mystery writing is of the opinion that a Red Herring should at the very least have some kind of explanation attached to it, in the interest of avoiding an AssPull, whether said explanation is rooted in the plot or the characters involved. This explanation will either come up in the course of the investigation, where the detective will dwelve into the false lead alongside the audience and discover how it's unrelated to the case alongside them, or, alternatively, it will be brought up during TheSummation, where the detective will bring the Red Herring up, but also explain at the same time why and how they figured it turns out to be unrelated to the case.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' strongly implied through most of Season 2 that Emperor Belos' ultimate plan was to invade the human realm, and the "Day of Unity" would either merge the human and demon realms together or transport the Boiling Isles to Earth, which is why Belos was so intent on getting Eda's portal door to Earth. It's eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Belos is actually a human WitchHunter called Philip Wittebane]] and the Day of Unity [[spoiler:is actually a ritual to drain the life force of every witch on the Boiling Isles, and he just wants the portal to return home]].

* During his video on VideoGame/{{Polybius}}, ''WebVideo/{{Ahoy}}'' calls out "Steven Roach", a "Welshman" who "worked as a programmer in 1980s Czechoslovakia", as this, due to the many inaccuracies in the latter's claim about having created ''Polybius'', such as "being consulted by a South American company", "moving to Communist Czechia to do business" and having based his claims entirely on the established ''Polybius'' myth, not to mention sharing the name with an American ex-policeman who ran a scandalous troubled-youth camp in that country around the same time.

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* Part of the setup for Shadows over Innistrad block in ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' was a two-part mystery: why is everything mutating, and why has Avacyn declared war on humanity? The official Magic story articles and the card reveal schedule were aimed at creating this gradually unfolding mystery, and naturally, they put in a couple of fake-outs. There are references to a fourth angel sister, sibling to Gisela, Sigarda, and Bruna, who Avacyn killed a long time previously, but she's left as a background detail and the story has nothing to do with her[[note]]although the presumably white/black fourth sister rapidly became an EnsembleDarkhorse, and Magic has never been above giving characters who became unexpectedly popular more attention, so she may become relevant somehow in the future -- or at least get a card and some backstory in a Commander release or something[[/note]]. A corrupted angel drops the phrase "the Great Work", which is associated with the Phyrexians, but they turn out to be uninvolved. The actual culprit is eventually revealed to be [[EldritchAbomination Emrakul]]. Unfortunately, the attempt was SpoiledByTheFormat, specifically the Standard Format; the previous block had been about Eldrazi and there was no way they weren't adding the third Titan before the other two (and all the attendant support cards) rotated out. Pretty much everyone called it before the false leads could even be introduced.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' strongly implied through most of Season 2 that Emperor Belos' ultimate plan was to invade the human realm, and the "Day of Unity" would either merge the human and demon realms together or transport the Boiling Isles to Earth. It's eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Belos is actually a human WitchHunter called Philip Wittebane]] and the Day of Unity [[spoiler:is actually a ritual to drain the life force of every witch on the Boiling Isles and ]].

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Has nothing to do]] WithThisHerring. But there MIGHT be a connection with [[Creator/TaylorCole Hallmark movie TV News reporter and amateur detective Ruby Herring]].