There are many ways to blackmail people, but one method that has become more common in the information age is threatening to show indecent materials of a person. The type of material may vary; it might be a video of a person engaging in intercourse, a photo of someone changing, camera footage of someone in the shower, or any other material of a sexually explicit/suggestive nature. Since people are (usually) uncomfortable with strangers seeing them naked, especially if it's against their will, this is usually a very potent form of blackmail.
The consequences of having what is effectively involuntary pornography are myriad, especially if the person being blackmailed is someone of decent social standing. They include but are not limited to: slut-shaming, being made into laughingstocks, being kicked out of school, being disowned by one's parents, or being considered "easy." If the material involves them engaging in intercourse, it could end badly for them, depending on who they were doing it with. If the blackmail victim refuses to submit to the blackmailer's demands, they could potentially suffer one or more of the aforementioned fates, though it's not uncommon for the blackmailer to go back on their word and show the material anyway.
Just as victims of rape are typically portrayed as beautiful young women, the victims of this trope are often beautiful women and teenagers, though male and unattractive victims aren't particularly uncommon, as people regardless of gender or attractiveness tend to be uncomfortable with others seeing them naked against their will.
In real life, this is also called "Sextortion" and it's described as "the practice of extorting money or sexual favours from someone by threatening to reveal evidence of their sexual activity". The trope's name comes from the concept of "revenge porn", which refers to an illegal form of pornography that is made of someone without their consent.
A Sub-Trope of Blackmail. A favored tactic used in Model Scams and Sleazy Photoshoots. Less likable examples of The Peeping Tom sometimes engage in this behavior. Compare Embarrassing Old Photo and Instant Humiliation Just Add Youtube, which this trope can overlap with if the media in question is indecent in nature. Overlaps with Fabricated Blackmail if the material was photoshopped or deepfaked.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 55, Hahari threatens to disband the newspaper club if Toruru keeps harassing Meme for a photo. Toruru responds to this by blackmailing Hahari with photos of her amorous interactions with the students at the school.
- In the h-manga Bullied Revenge Hypnosis, in the chapter that recounts the girls' backstories as to how they became the most feared students in school, the trope is combined with Pay Evil unto Evil. As the girls made their way up some stairs in a train station, a middle-aged creep took pictures up their skirts, and when the girls took his phone, they made him give them all the cash he had on him, or they would send the pictures to all his contacts. As they walk away laughing, one of them asked their leader if they would let him off easily, only for her to say she sent the pictures soon after they snatched his phone. Also, they blackmailed another student into doing a "photo shoot" to pay back some money she borrowed, and when the pictures were leaked online, the other girl moved away due to to the ensuing scandal.
- In the one shot h-manga I Promise to Keep It Secret, a Salary Man who's been dating the same girl from high school is seduced by a normally unnoticeable female coworker who tricked him into taking her to a hotel to "sleep off her drunkenness". As they are in the middle of the act she remembers him when they were in the same committee in high school, and developed a crush on him, but because she was deemed unattractive and because he already had a girlfriend she didn't make a move on him, and she spent her young-adult years trying to forget him. When she realized she got a job in the same company as him, she hoped to ask him out, but when she found out he was still dating the girl he dated in high school, she made a plan where she would sleep with him one way or another. A week after spending the night together at the hotel, she asked him, not to break up with his girlfriend so they could be together, but to be his "side-piece" by showing him a picture in her phone of him sleeping naked in the hotel.
- Maria no Danzai:
- Initially, Yashima became another victim of Kowase after he caught her shoplifting on his phone, but eventually things escalated as he forced her to do sexual favors for him. While it's not explicitly clear if they actually had sex, he recorded the stuff he made her do and then threatened to spread that on top of her shoplifting video, leaving Yashima with no way to escape his torment.
- Maria gives Kowase A Taste Of His Own Medicine by hacking his phone, sending him a video of himself masturbating and demanding 3 million yen in exchange for not posting it on the internet (not that she actually plans to collect, as the money itself is inconsequential compared to making Kowase suffer).
- In the h-manga Anthology Monster Smash, the story/chapter "The Office Lady Centaur and her Junior," centers around a centaur woman goes drinking with her kōhai, to help her get over the fact that her, human, ex-boyfriend dumped her because he couldn't handle the idea of having sex with her. The next day, when she goes to apologize for bothering him with her issues the previous night, he shows her pictures of them in bed together, and despite asking to delete the pictures and forget what happened, he still manages to talk her into having sex with him again, and at the very end they end up becoming a couple.
- Rosario + Vampire: Nagare Kano is a voyeur who likes to take photos of girls in their underwear in order to blackmail them into letting him take photos of them in revealing outfits. Worse, he's done this to so many girls that he's lost count. Kurumu was a victim of his actions, and he planned on doing the same thing to Moka, but fortunately, Kurumu puts a stop to his sick games.
Comic Books
- In The Boys, the Seven took photos of Queen Maeve's "audition" for the team, which they've used for years as blackmail in case she ever got ideas about challenging Homelander's leadership or quitting the team.
- Fables has the residents of the Woodlands blackmail a Mundie who gets wise to their ways (though he thinks they're a community of immortal vampires rather than fairy tale characters) by having him knocked unconscious by Sleeping Beauty's curse, and then posing nude him alongside Pinnochio. It ends up not mattering, since Bluebeard ends up killing him.
Fan Works
- In My Immortal, Snape takes a video of Ebony taking a bath (with Lupin accompanying him and masticating to the show) and both threaten to show everyone at school the video if she doesn't kill Harry "Vampire" Potter.
- Vow of Nudity: In Fiora's backstory, after her schemes blow up in her face and she's standing trial for her crimes (with the village elders openly indicating they're going to vote for her death) she asks only for a private moment with the clan's matriarch...whereupon she reveals that she used encode thoughts to create a memory of their illicit tryst, and her mother will be delivering it to every clan in the barren if the matriarch doesn't get her off. Since matriarchs are forbidden from forming sexual attachments, the blackmail works and she gets her sentence commuted down to exile.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:
- Ratigan manipulated Bonnie into taking naked pictures of her brother Clemont, then threatened Clemont with sending them to all the colleges he applied to if he didn't let him rape him.
- Hacker manipulates Jackie, Matt and Inez into sending him footage of them performing innocent actions and uses that footage to create deepfakes of them, which he then uses to blackmail them into stripping on-camera for him.
Films — Live-Action
- 8mm 2 is about a couple honeymooning in Budapest and doing a threesome with an escort and having to pay off a blackmailer to get the pictures of the orgy back.
- In Bandidas, María Álvarez and Sara Sandoval blackmail Quentin Cooke, the American specialist criminal investigator hired by the land baron who's pursuing them, by taking racy photos of him after having made him drunk.
- Black Dynamite: The real reason behind the Watergate break-in was that Richard Nixon was trying to steal and destroy pornographic photos of himself in bondage gear. Black Dynamite gets ahold of these photos and threatens to leak them unless Nixon promises to stop interfering with the black community.
- In the French Canadian movie De Père en Flic 2 (Father and Guns 2), the father and the son, both cops, coerce the organizer of a therapy retreat for couples, to allow them to infiltrate it, by showing him CCTV footage of him buying a sex doll... then immediately trying it in the store.
- Clue: Colonel Mustard is blackmailed by Mr Boddy in this way, with photographs of himself and Yvette in Miss Scarlet's house of ill fame.
- In The Gentlemen, tabloid editor Big Dave has been a thorn in the side of Mickey for most of the film, trying to extort money out of him just to take revenge on Mickey for refusing to shake his hand at a party (which Mickey only did because Big Dave humiliated a gay aristocrat friend of Mickey's by printing a scandalous article about him). So, by the end of the film, Mickey's consigliere Raymond decides to repay Big Dave in turn by having the Toddlers kidnap him, drug him senseless, and then lock him in a barn with a pig for the night until he has sex with the pig, which they then film and threaten to release to the press, humiliating Big Dave the same way he ruins other people's lives, unless he agrees to stop antagonising Mickey. Judging by his disturbed reaction once he watches the video, Big Dave is suitably cowed into compliance.
- T2 Trainspotting: At the start of the film, Sick Boy's main scam is to pimp Veronicka out to respectable clients, film them on the job, and then blackmail them with the footage. Unfortunately for Sick Boy, he's been arrogant enough to deliver the threat in person, so the whole scheme backfires when one "client" just reports him to the police. As a result, Sick Boy is forced to blow most of his ill-gotten gains on legal fees, driving him and an extremely grumpy Renton onto the next big scam to recoup their losses.
- Tomorrow Never Dies establishes how much of a Corrupt Corporate Executive Eliot Carver is from the get-go by telling one of his subordinates to talk to a Congressman that unless he supports a bill lowering cable broadcast fees, the Carver Media Group will air a tape of him having sex with a younger woman — and once the Congressman signs the bill, air the tape anyway.
- In the PSA Tricky People, the Big Bad Reginald Charming is a child molester who takes indecent pictures of children. Among them, Carmen is blackmailed into not telling anyone what happened with the pictures he took of her.
- Widows: To get the security code for the Mulligans' vault, Veronica blackmails the CEO of their security company with photos of him having sex with his much younger niece.
Literature
- In the John Grisham novel The Firm, the titular mafia-backed law firm invokes this trope as a way to keep its staff in line—they hire prostitutes to get them drunk and seduce them, have a private detective on their payroll take photos of the incident, and threaten to send the photos to the staff member's spouse if they ever suspect they're ratting them out to the feds.
- Iron Widow: The Politically Incorrect Villain Gao Qiu forces Zetian to be filmed naked to seal a contract and threatens to release the footage when she stages her coup. By then, she's grown far beyond the need for him, so he gets unceremoniously roasted with lightning.
- In the Sir Henry Merrivale mystery The Judas Window, a female character is blackmailed using sexual photos of her taken with her consent by an ex-boyfriend.
- Making Money: The side villain Pucci Lavish tries to invoke this on her business rival Moist von Lipwig by arranging herself in a cab in her negligee, cameraman at the ready, and waiting for him to hop in. She drastically overestimated her charms — he takes one look and dives straight out the far window.
- Tony Hill and Carol Jordan: This befalls Paula McIntyre's adopted 15-year-old son Torin in "Insidious Intent" making up a minor subplot. Catfished online by someone he believed to be a beautiful older girl, he was persuaded into taking and sending her several explicit photos, then blackmailed for a large sum of money he didn't have under the threat of sending them to all his classmates. He finally opens up to Paula, whose friend Stacey Chen is able to track down the blackmailer, one of Torin's classmates whom he unintentionally humiliated when he turned her down for going to a school dance. Cornered by Stacy and Paula, she confesses to everything admitting she never would have actually shared the photos and just wanted to humiliate Thorin, and events just spiralled out of her control.
- In When Gods Laugh by Alexandra Marinina, Zhenya has her besotted admirer Kirill attempt it on Olga, who is having an extramarital affair with Roman, Zhenya's father, who lavishes his mistress with rich gifts while abusing his daughter and refusing even to pay the wages for her work at his firm. However, it results in a Blackmail Backfire, since Olga and her husband Pavel are in an open relationship and, to boot, a Chastity Couple towards each other, so Olga has zero problems with the videos of her affair being shown to Pavel.
Live-Action TV
- Blackadder: Parodied in "Money". To force the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath to forgive his debts, Blackadder drugs his wine, gets him in bed with Lord Percy, and threatens to send the sordid evidence to the Queen and Archbishop. Of course, being Elizabethan England, the evidence is a speed-painted portrait.
Bishop: By the horns of Beelzebub, how did you get me into that position?!Blackadder: It's beautifully framed, don't you think? Which is ironic, really, because that's exactly what's happened to you.
- Black Mirror:
- In "USS Callister", the digital clones' plan to escape from Robert Daly's virtual playground hinges on Clone Nanette stealing some intimate photos from her own PhotoCloud account and using them to blackmail her real-world self, threatening to upload the photos to Pornhub if Real Nanette doesn't help them. It works, resulting in the terrified Nanette stealing Daly's collection of DNA samples, ensuring that he won't be able to clone the crew again if their plan works.
- In "Shut Up and Dance", a teenager named Kenny is recorded masturbating by a group of hackers and forced to run errands for them under the threat of revealing the footage to Kenny's contact list. However, it's revealed that Kenny wasn't just being blackmailed with footage of him masturbating, he was masturbating to child pornography and he complied with the demands to save himself being exposed as a pedophile.
- Euphoria: Jules sends Nate nudes after they meet online and he catfishes her, because she had sex with his dad (which was filmed by him, the tape of which also becomes a plot point in Season 2 when Nate steals it to threaten his dad). Nate blackmails her with these pictures so she can testify against Tyler.
- In the Family Law (2021) episode "Under the Influence", the firm represents a woman who's trying to escape from a cult, but who is being blackmailed by the cult leader, who taped her having sex with him.
- FBI: International: "Don't Say Her Name Again" sees the team dealing with a Hungarian cybercriminal and sexual predator who runs this on an industrial scale. Targeting vulnerable teenage girls by possessing a fellow American teenager, he seduces them into agreeing to send him photos or videos. Then once he has the material he uses it to blackmail them into continuing to create increasingly explicit and degrading videos and pictures for him under the threat of sending what he has to all their contacts. Having targeted over two hundred individuals, with some as young as 12 years old, he likewise shares his material on private chat rooms his antics disgusting even a convicted ephebophile.
- In one episode of Greg the Bunny, one of Dottie's ex-boyfriends asked that she talk to the producers of "Sweetknuckle Junction" to get him a job. When Dottie refuses to help him in any way, he threatens to leak a Home Porn Movie videotape of her to the press, so she talks up her ex to the producers. But when his acting is not up to par, she considers quitting the show because her show-business career will be ruined if the video is leaked.
- In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Playboy", the suspect Monk is pursuing resorts to blackmailing him with the threat of publishing some photos of Sharona if he doesn't back off. Sharona admits that she posed for some skeevy pictures when she was younger to make a better life for herself and her son, Benji. She worries that Benji will get bullied if the photos come out, and threatens the suspect in Mama Bear mode about it.
- Sons of Anarchy: A twofer, when SAMCRO hires trans hooker Venus Van Dam to pose with an unconscious insurance salesman for porn pics that they plan to blackmail the guy with. The salesman's stepson stumbles onto the scene and wants a piece of the money; Venus offers him her "services" instead, but slyly records on a cell phone while she goes down on him and gives the footage to Jax, who then uses it to blackmail the kid into staying out of their business.
- SWAT: Revealed to be the MO of a gang of home invasion robbers the team investigates in "Imposters". Targeting wealthy families and gaining access by impersonating SWAT officers, the robbers MO is to forcibly drag the families teenager daughters away, strip them naked and then force them to do increasingly sexual activities on camera, with them threatening to publish the footage on the internet if the families cooperate with the police. To make matters worse it turns out this aspect of the plan was cooked up by a spoiled classmate of the girls, who had the extra intention of holding the videos over their heads as revenge for a perceived minor slight. Everyone involved is beyond disgusted that a 16-year-old could do something so horrific.
- Vienna Blood: In "Deadly Communion", while Max and Oskar are tracking a Serial Killer, they realize that the third victim, the housekeeper for Frau Vogl, a fashion designer whose employee was the second victim, doesn't fit the pattern of having been killed during orgasm: she was beaten unconscious and then killed. Selena turns out to have been murdered by Vogl herself in a way meant to imitate the killer's M.O. because she was blackmailing Vogl with pornographic photographs she had posed for when she was younger.
Video Games
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Implied at the Lotus Blossom massage parlor. It's a front for the Tongs, and the second-floor rooms have scantily-clad masseuses and peepholes with hidden recording equipment.
Web Animation
- Etra chan saw it!: Akamatsu
is the class bully who pushes people around via blackmail. After Tachibana saves Akane from being raped by Akamatsu and his gang, Akamatsu decides to take revenge by showing that he has a photo of Akane changing and threatens to post it online if Tachibana doesn't become his slave. As an adult, Akamatsu is no better, as he not only threatens to use the photo to force Tachibana to give him free food, his girlfriend Yuri is only dating him because he has photos of her. Fortunately, Hiiragi, Tachibana, and Akane manage to take revenge by exposing the photos he has of Akane and Yuri, as well as several other women, to the police.
Webcomics
- Sequential Art: Rich Bitch Hillary Locke visits Art's workplace as a client, seeking an ad campaign for ladies' lingerie. When she discovers that Art is flatmates with Kat Vance, Hillary goes maximum bitchy, poo-pooing every proposal Art submits. Fortunately, Pip recognizes Hillary's name and discovers her I Was Young and Needed the Money income: posing for lurid stag mags, which have made their way onto the internet. A Downplayed Trope, as Art merely seeks to have Hillary behave like a normal client to keep her lurid past secret, though Kat wants her to wear her panties on her head all day.
Web Videos
- Air Texts: Brett is Hector's old college bully who once forced Hector to bow to him in his underwear and recorded it. In order to force Hector's company to provide cheaper services to Brett's, Brett threatens to release the video online. Unfortunately for Brett, Hector has grown a spine since college and threatens to report Brett to his managers. Brett posts the video, expecting Hector to become a social pariah while he faces no consequences, but ends up getting fired from his job and becoming a pariah himself, not realizing that, when it comes to bullying, most people are going to side with the victim rather than the bully.
- Apple Texts Sharon truthfully claims to be the late Damien's mistress and also falsely claims that her son is Damien's child. In order to extort the inheritance money out of Damien's widow Ellen, Sharon threatens her via deepfaked pornography that was created by Jeff, Sharon's boyfriend and the actual father of Sharon's son.
- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012) is a Setting Updated adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1813). In both versions, Wickham takes advantage of Lydia's naivete and sexually endangers her in a way that could genuinely ruin her life. In the 1810s, Wickham means he ran off with Lydia and was presumably having unmarried sex with her while keeping her away from her family. In the 2010s, Wickham pushed Lydia to make a sex tape and then was about to publicize it.
- Exaggerated in Smosh's "TEXTING GONE WRONG" video. Timothy, who just broke up with Claire, threatens to take their dog with him, but Claire then threatens him with sending his nude pictures to everyone if he does so, up until Timothy threatens her with sending her nudes to everyone. When Claire reveals that she deleted all her nudes beforehand, Timothy reveals that he sent her nudes to Roger beforehand too for him to threaten her, up until Claire threatens to release Roger's nudes on his girlfriend's phone that she borrowed. This all leads to a snowball effect where Timothy's grandparents and troops of many more people come to threaten each other with the release of their nudes until Timothy and Claire realize that they've taken it too far and try to stop the fighting until Claire accidentally drops her phone and sends Timothy's nudes, which leads everyone else to send their phones' nudes too and to everyone to apparently die.
- Text Theater: Katy is Jane's old high school bully who's just as bad as an adult. Katy has nude photos of Jane on her phone from high school, which she threatens to release if Jane doesn't do Katy's bidding. Katy decides to upload the photos when she gets fired thanks to Jane reporting her to the manager (who's also Jane's brother), but when she learns that the manager is about to sue her, she deletes them (which doesn't help as Katy picked on Jane in many other ways and her brother refuses to let her get away).
Western Animation
- Codename: Kids Next Door: The plot of the episode "Operation BUTT" revolves around the Delightful Children From Down The Lane blackmailing Numbuh 1 into leaving the KND with a picture of his butt. At the end of the episode, The KND end up giving them a taste of their own medicine when they end up taking pictures of the Delightful Children stripped to their underwear.
