Not Me This Time / Video Games

• Absented Age: Squarebound: The Gangers are responsible for consuming the Heart Fragments of humans, but they didn't turn Karen into a ghost or rewrite reality so that people believe she died in a time paradox, and the true culprit is still unknown.
• In Avernum 3, your party is trying to figure out who created the plagues of monsters that are attacking The Empire. You can question the dragons, the Vahnatai, and the sorceress Erika, all of whom have grudges against the Empire and the means to create the monsters, but they all insist that while they hate the Empire with a passion, they have nothing to do with this. The Vahnatai are lying.
• Baldur's Gate: The game starts off with an iron crisis; the iron ore coming out of the mine in Nashkel makes brittle iron, and the miners are under constant attack by kobolds. Common knowledge is that the Zhentarim are behind it, trying to drive up iron prices for their own purposes. However, the first two recruitable NPCs are Zhentarim agents sent to investigate the Nashkel mines, and it very soon becomes clear that while the Zhentarim have a lot of sins to account for, this is not one of them.
• Batman: Arkham City invokes it for all its worth. Batman learns Hugo Strange is planning something called Protocol Ten, and assumes The Joker is involved, partly because he's one of the top gang leaders in Arkham City, partly because he tried to kill Catwoman, but mostly because, well, he's the Joker. After learning of Joker's Evil Plan, we have this exchange:
  Batman: So that's Protocol Ten. Poison Gotham. I expected more.
  Joker: Protocol Ten?! [dramatic gasp] ...never heard of it.
• Inverted in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. When the main characters run into Death, they are already aware that the castle is being run by a vampire who isn't Dracula. Thus, while they accuse him of working with the new villain, Death is the one surprised to discover that his master isn't around.
• In the Dragon Age series:
  • If Loghain is recruited in Dragon Age: Origins, he will mock Wynne's belief that he was behind the problems in the Chantry Tower, which worked purely against him. Of course, he was The Man Behind the Man in that plot, although it's possible that he didn't realize it. Uldred acted and tried to usurp control of the Circle specifically because he wanted to align the Circle to Loghain.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • An heroic example happens when a member of the Qunari suspects Hawke of being responsible for the deaths of a heavily-armed patrol sent to scout the Wounded Coast. Hawke remarks that they actually weren't involved for once, but are mildly flattered that they're at the top of the suspect list.
    • When Hawke learns about the plot to steal Qunari explosives, circumstantial evidence makes them believe that Javaris Tintop is responsible. They've had problems with him in the past concerning Qunari, so it's not an unreasonable assumption. They track him down only to learn that Javaris is on the run because he knows he's going to be suspected and he'd like to remain alive, since he's uninvolved this time.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, during the ball at Halamshiral, Briala will ask the Inquisitor if they're responsible for the death of a soldier in the palace courtyard. The Inquisitor does kill an awful lot of people (often in self-defense), so it's not an unwarranted question, but they reply that it really isn't them this time.
• Dragon Quest:
  • In Dragon Quest II, you get to meet the Dragonlord's grandson, and he's even sitting on his grandpa's throne. However, the fact that Charlock Castle looks like crap kinda disabuses you of the notion he had anything to do with the plot, and he outright confirms it. In fact, not only does he consider his and your family's past issues to be water under the bridge, he even considers Hargon a pretentious upstart and gives you some info on how to kick his ass.
  • Krystalinda from Dragon Quest XI is mistakenly blamed by Sniflheim's people for spreading the Golden Fever after Yggdrasil's fall, even though she was researching a cure for it. To her credit, she understands why someone with her reputation would be the first suspect and willingly imprisons herself until the epidemic is solved. The real culprit turns out to be Gyldygga, one of Mordegon's Spectral Sentinels, aka Mia, Erik's sister.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • At one point in the main questline, Delphine suspects the Thalmor are behind the recent reappearance of dragons. In search of information, the Dragonborn infiltrates a party being held by Thalmor diplomats, causes a good bit of havoc and death, and finds that no, the Thalmor aren't responsible at all, and are actually conducting their own investigation to see what's going on (and to find out if someone's trying to use the dragons against them). In fact, they believe that the Blades are responsible. Delphine lampshades this when you tell her. They did indirectly contribute to the situation by inadvertently helping fulfill the prophecy of the dragons' return, but that's all. The true culprit is that black dragon who attacked you in the tutorial, who's actually Alduin the World-Eater.
  • It's implied that Miraak, the Big Bad of the Dragonborn DLC, didn't actually send the ambush that starts off that quest line; for one thing, he doesn't recognize that you are the Dragonborn when you meet him in person, and for another, his evil plan was chugging along quite nicely without you butting in. It's likely Hermaeus Mora did it, to put a Spanner in the Works for Miraak's treasonous plan.
• Happens in Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two: the Mad Doctor claims that the Beetleworx attacking you through the game aren't his doing. Turns out they come from Gremlin Prescott. Except nope: the Mad Doc's the culprit.
• In Far Cry 4, everyone refers to how the Golden Path's original leader Mohan Ghale was killed by Pagan Min, and it's not an unreasonable assumption, since the two were enemies. Min, for his part, doesn't seem all that interested in correcting people, and it's only at the end of the game that the truth comes out: Min was involved, but only peripherally. Ghale was actually killed by his own wife, Ishwari, after Ghale murdered Ishwari's baby daughter Lakshmana after Ghale found out that his plan to have his wife serve as a Honey Trap spy on Min went too well and she genuinely fell for him and had a child, the aforementioned Lakshmana. After killing her husband, Ishwari took her son Ajay and fled to the United States, and the plot is kickstarted by Ajay wanting to fulfill his mother's dying request to have her ashes placed with Lakshmana's.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • At the Gold Saucer, the party finds several people were murdered. They at first suspect Sephiroth, but Cloud points out they were shot while Sephiroth Doesn't Like Guns. A survivor says they were shot by a man with a gun for an arm, which makes them suspect Barret, who had earlier run off in anger. The actual culprit was Barret's old friend Dyne, who also has a gun for an arm and has gone insane.
    • Sephiroth laughs at your party when you get attacked by a dragon in the Temple of the Ancients and think that he is responsible for it.
    • There's a variation on this during the Wutai sequence. As the party approaches Wutai, they are confronted by a group of Shinra soldiers and Yuffie comments "I have nothing to do with this one!" As they'd already been a bit suspicious but didn't yet know that she had done anything, this clues them in when, during the battle with the soldiers, she's gone and so is all their materia.
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy X, where the Church of Yevon likes to blame everything that goes wrong on the Al Bhed (no matter how little sense it may make), who are not followers of Yevon and try to recover and use advanced technology in defiance of Yevon's anti-technology philosophy. So when the Church blames the Al Bhed for Summoners mysteriously disappearing, you might think it's just another baseless accusation… but it really was the Al Bhed this time, although it was done with good intentions.
• Fire Emblem:
  • A rare heroic example happens in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. When Marth gets fed up with being treated like an errand boy by General Lang, Lang accuses Marth of orchestrating Ogma's rescue of Grustian prince and princess Jubelo and Yuliya. Marth admits he had nothing to do with it (it was actually his old buddy Lorenz), but he would have if he had the opportunity.
  • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Ike and company, after the revelations at Palmeni Temple, come to believe that King Ashnard orchestrated the assassination of Begnion's Apostle Misaha, and the resulting Serenes Massacre in order to get his hands on Lehran's Medallion. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn showed that they jumped to conclusions, as Rafiel's testimony in that game reveals that it was the Begnion Senate who was responsible for both the assassination and framing the Serenes Herons for it, resulting in the massacre. Ashnard had nothing to do with either event, though he did take advantage of the resulting chaos for his own purposes.
  • Also in Radiant Dawn, whilst Sephiran masterminded most of the events of both Tellius games, he never ordered Greil's death. That was all on Zelgius.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Dimitri's hatred of the Flame Emperor and the reveal that Edelgard is the person behind the Flame Emperor's mask began under the assumption that the Flame Emperor was allied with the ones who caused the tragedy that led to the deaths of Dimitri's family and friends. While it is true that the Flame Emperor is aligned with the perpetrators, it is a Teeth-Clenched Teamwork situation at best and they had only become allies long after the incident (Edelgard was only a child when the Tragedy of Duscur occurred, after all). Edelgard denies involvement in the Tragedy, but refuses to elaborate further because Dimitri is beyond listening at that point.
• In Futurama: The Game, Bender says this when they find the ship badly damaged. It turns out that he (as well as Fry and Leela) did do it.
• In the final installment of Gardens Inc, Agent Styles helps the heroes Mike and Jill lay a trap for the person responsible for their current predicament. Before the trap is sprung, he informs them that he's carefully investigated the current activities of everyone who's ever given them trouble in the past (which, for a pair of mild-mannered professional gardeners, is actually a fairly extensive list). He can confirm that whoever is causing their latest headache, it's none of their previous antagonists.
• Played for Laughs near the end of Grim Fandango: Manny fires off several shots at Big Bad Hector, punctuating each one with an "And This Is for..." for all the people that Hector's sprouted over the course of the game. When Manny accuses Hector of killing Lola, however, Hector is genuinely confused, since he had nothing to do with that one.
• In Hi-Fi RUSH, Chai has to fight his way through Zanzo's test chambers in Track 3: "Trial by (Volcanic) Fire", and Zanzo wants to see who the next test subjects are but is unable to because the hacker reduced the video quality on the security cameras. Chai asks his Hackette partner Peppermint if she was the one who did it, but she denies it.
• In Icewind Dale, the party gets asked to look into why the circle of warmth given off by the Great Tree in Kuldahar is shrinking. One villager points you toward the crypt of a Death Knight, so the party breaks in and proceeds to fight their way through all the undead and traps until they reach the Death Knight's chamber. He informs them that if they're looking for evil, they've certainly found it, but he has nothing to do with the Great Tree or Kuldahar — he's been spending his time keeping a priestess of Auril, the evil goddess of eternal winter, from freezing his tomb solid and now the party has taken out all his defenses.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Hades does this twice in the story, stating that he had nothing to do with the Aurum (and he even joins in on the fight against them) and later showing up when Pit is dealing with the Chaos Kin just to say that he also had nothing to do with this, as even he had no way of controlling it. Overall, this isn't entirely true (but not entirely false), though, since he was more or less the reason leading up to Pit attacking the Lunar Sanctum in the first place by dragging the Forces of Nature into the scene.
• Kirby often goes after King Dedede for whatever evil plot is going on, whether or not Dedede had anything to do with it. In fact, he's rarely at fault; he either doesn't have anything to do with it, is actually trying to fix it (and thus Kirby makes the situation worse), or is being controlled by another entity. This begs the question of why Kirby is so insistent that everything is his fault. Excluding spin-offs, the only times he's the villain is in the original Kirby's Dream Land, its remake Spring Breeze in Kirby Super Star, and Revenge of the King in Kirby Super Star Ultra. In fact, when he steals all of the food at the beginning of Kirby Star Allies just like he did in Kirby's Dream Land, his pause description suggests that Kirby is confused by this, meaning that it's gotten to the point that Kirby doesn't see King Dedede as a villain anymore.
  • The worst example of this is in Kirby: Squeak Squad. Kirby's cake is stolen at the beginning of the game by the eponymous gang of thieving mice, and Kirby immediately concludes that Dedede is responsible with no evidence other than the fact that he's greedy and a Big Eater just like him.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl is another case of this. The villains are all running around turning heroes into trophies. Dedede captures several, and keeps them in his castle, placing badges on them. He runs out of badges, and reluctantly takes his own off to attach it to the final hero trophy. After the real villain, Tabuu, uses his ability to turn every single character into a trophy, the purpose of the badges is revealed: they restore a trophy to life after a time delay. And with Dedede's contingency plan proven a good idea, he and the heroes he captured go off to rescue the entire rest of the cast.
• In League of Legends, the champion Sylas wants to execute King Jarvan III of Demacia for his anti-mage policies. He's just as shocked as everyone else when Jarvan III turns up mysteriously assassinated before he had a chance to do anything.
• Luminous Arc: Every time the player party bumps into Vanessa, they assume she's up to no good even before she attacks them, even when they happen to stumble onto her having a quiet drink at a bar. At no point is she ever up to anything villainous when they cross paths, and she's been framed for what atrocities she was present for. She starts fights because that's how she solves problems, and she knows the party will never believe her side of the story anyway.
• Despite Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny having the same Dark Piece problem as the previous Battle of Aces game where the Materials served as the main villains, it turns out that the Materials are not the ones responsible this time. This leads to much hilarity when an enraged Alph confronts the recently Heel Face Returned and child-like Material Levi, with intent to seal her for her apparent crimes.
  Levi: WAAAAAAAHHH!!! What is it?! Why are you bullying me?! Did I do anything bad to you? I haven't even done anything yet!
  Alph: Err… well…
  Levi: The fragments are not coming out because of us, they're doing so by themselves! How is that our fault? If you don't like blue then just say it!
  Alph: You don't have to put it that way…
  Levi: Who cares about you! WAAAAAH! I hate you!
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, Shepard passes through a police scanner when first visiting the Citadel. It lets out an alarm because it's sophisticated enough to scan the DNA of the people walking through it and Shepard is listed as killed in action. The operator assumes it's an error. If master thief Kasumi Goto is in the party when this happens, she immediately says, "I swear to god, I didn't touch anything."
  • Whenever the human supremacist organization Cerberus is caught doing something particularly nasty, the Illusive Man will usually respond with the excuse that it was a rogue cell in the organization operating without his approval. Almost nobody ever believes this. However, in Mass Effect 3, when a Cerberus force is found wantonly slaughtering human refugees, Hackett notes that the Alliance is, for once, inclined to believe him. The Illusive Man is very much a Pragmatic Villain: he only does something if he thinks he will gain something from it, and killing off fleeing human refugees is of no benefit to him.
  • Surprisingly, in one case, we find out that he wasn't lying: The Illusive Man did not order what happened to Subject Zero/Jack, as you learn from the security logs on Pragia that the staff were hiding their actions from The Illusive Man, going outside their parameters, and feared what he would do if he found out. Though whether the Illusive Man objected out of moral qualms or just because the whole incident ended with an incredibly powerful biotic out for Cerberus's blood is an open question.
  • In Mass Effect: Andromeda, Vetra's loyalty mission begins with her and Ryder winding up in a room filled with people who claim Vetra helped them escape a psychotic criminal, who's now after them and Vetra for revenge. Vetra, who frequently uses I Know A Guy due to the nature of her business (and to maintain plausible deniability with Ryder if she does something illegal), swears up and down she has no idea who these people are or why they're thanking her. Because she really doesn't. Her little sister is the one who helped them, while pretending to be Vetra.
• In the Mega Man series:
  • Dr. Wily claims in Mega Man 3 that he's a changed man and helps build the peace-keeping robot Gamma as a show of good faith. Then the Robot Masters rebel. As it turns out, he's lying.
  • Dr. Wily claims this in Mega Man 9, citing a video as proof that Dr. Light is the one wanting world domination. He's lying.
  • He does it again in Mega Man 10 when he claims that the The Virus wasn't his doing, except Mega Man and co. actually believe him. This shouldn't really be a spoiler, but he's still lying.
  • The fan game Mega Man Unlimited has Dr. Wily claim that his latest robots went out of his control and the resulting crisis is not his own doing. Dr. Light believes him and helps to solve the problem. He's lying yet again, but the robots going rogue during his plans was an unintentional side effect, so it's somewhat true.
• In Pathfinder: Kingmaker, the country is beset by a plague that transforms people into monsters, and when they discover worshippers of Lamashtu, the demonic goddess called the Mother of Monsters, they naturally assume she is to blame. The cause turns out to be completely different, with her human worshippers having assembled for unrelated and relatively benign reasons and her goblin worshippers having made the same mistake in attributing the plague to her.
• Persona 5: At one point, Sae, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the Phantom Thieves, accuses teenage detective Goro Akichi of hacking her laptop since it happened right after they had a conversation. Goro may have been responsible for the mental shutdowns, but he didn't do anything to her laptop; the true culprit was Sae's little sister Makoto, herself a Phantom Thief.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Mia's party suspects that Vanessa is forcing the king of Asala to work for her and that she usurped him behind the scenes. In reality, the king committed suicide due to the built-up trauma of his son's death and the appearance of the Revenant.
• In Psychonauts, Coach Oleander tries to kidnap everyone at the camp in order to create an army of psychic-powered war machines. As soon as he's thwarted and subsequently reformed, news comes in that the head of the Psychonauts has also been kidnapped. Oleander makes it clear that he had nothing to do with this one, stating "I was here the whole time, you saw me!"
• In Puyo Puyo Tetris, Lemres points out that the Dark Prince (that is, Satan) has been spotted around Primp Town about the same time that Tetriminos started falling from the sky. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that it must be another one of his evil plots, despite this not making a whole lot of sense. After everyone is done accusing him, making him cry, and eventually calming him down, Schezo points out that he doesn't actually seem guilty. The Prince reminds everyone of another recurring antagonist, one who has space-time warping powers, and who has a rather dangerous idea of what constitutes fun. This idea makes rather more sense… but Ecolo isn't the culprit either! The real culprit is Ex, an (admittedly Not Evil, Just Misunderstood) overseer of space-time who, in a bout of depression over being alone for so long, failed to notice an anomaly in the space-time continuum, leading to the two worlds merging together.
• Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One starts with Dr. Nefarious siccing a huge monster onto Ratchet, Clank, and Captain Qwark. After the monster is beaten, a massive spaceship appears in the sky, and as the four are staring up in wonder, Nefarious remarks, "That's not one of mine." just before they get abducted.
• In the last episode of the third season of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, The Devil himself shows up to refute any claims that the Devil's Toybox is in any way related to him. In fact, the Toybox predates the Devil by an order of magnitude and the object was named this way by mistake.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens: All the half-genies sans our titular heroine suddenly vanish during a magic show that they were supposed to perform at. The next day, Shantae stumbles upon her longtime adversary Risky Boots breaking into the local ruins and confronts her about the kidnapping. Risky doesn't even try to correct her at first and decides to humor her, waiting until after their ensuing battle to admit that while she does have some schemes going on that could possibly overlap with whatever Shantae's whining about, she isn't directly involved. She's lying. She set things up to get a Let's You and Him Fight between Shantae and the Sirens in case a deal to get an ancient, powerful airship went south.
• The Simpsons Hit & Run: When mysterious black vans and robotic wasp cameras appear all over Springfield, Homer follows one of the vans to Mr. Burns' mansion and thinks these events are all connected. The finale of Level 1 has him confronting Mr. Burns about this. It turns out that the black vans are just part of a pizza service and neither they nor Burns have anything to do with the Wasp Cameras. The actual villains of the game are Kang and Kodos.
• In Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Carmelita believes that Sly is responsible for the theft of the Clockwerk parts. While Sly had been planning to steal them, the Klaww Gang stole them first.
  Sly: Crime? I haven't stolen anything… yet.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In the Last Story of Sonic Adventure 2, Knuckles accuses Eggman of trying to crash the Space Colony ARK into the Earth. Eggman claims he would've done it long ago if given the chance. The one at fault this time is Eggman's grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik, who planned to use the ARK and Shadow to destroy the Earth after Maria's death.
  • In Sonic Heroes, Eggman announces that in 3 days, he'll send his Egg Fleet to conquer the world, even sending an interactive invitation to his usual enemy Sonic. As revealed at the end of Team Chaotix's story, as well as the beginning of the Last Story, however, Eggman himself was imprisoned in his own Final Fortress by the real culprit, Metal Sonic, who stole his identity and used the Egg Fleet in one big plot to copy the data of the 4 heroic teams and defeat Sonic himself to become the "real" Sonic.
  • In Sonic Frontiers's Prologue: Divergence, Knuckles is exploring Sky Sanctuary on Angel Island and comes across a Chao trying to get a Koco, which he helps. Afterwards, he discovers a Portal Gear stuck in the rubble, which leads to far older ruins than the current ones and puts the Gear into the Portal, getting transported to Cyber Space. Knuckles immediately assumes it's another one of Eggman's tricks, given that he was tricked by Eggman several times in the past. In this case, however, Eggman himself had nothing to do with it since he himself was already on the Starfall Islands trying to use the Ancients' technology for his Empire, but got trapped in Cyber Space while trying to pull the disc out of its data hacking. Said disc, later evolved into Sage, traps Knuckles in a Cyber Cage after the echidna defeated a couple Soldiers, since she witnessed THE END slaughtering the Ancients.
• Happens in Space Station 13. People assume that if you're the chemist, you're responsible for the the roiling cloud of thermite-napalm-superfoamsmoke that is destroying the station.
• Splatoon 3 incorporates it as a part of its First-Episode Twist. Cap'n Cuttlefish assumes that DJ Octavio is behind the disappearance of the Great Zapfish yet again. However, once you beat him he tells Cuttlefish he had nothing to do with it. Suddenly, the ground opens up and the real story mode begins...
• In Star Fox: Assault, after Pigma steals the memory core, the Star Fox team fights Star Wolf in the Sargasso Space Zone because they think that they were involved in Pigma's recent theft and want them to hand him over. However, after the fight, Wolf reveals that not only were they not involved in Pigma's theft, but they actually kicked Pigma out of Star Wolf long beforehand, and went as far as to order a shoot on sight command in regards to Pigma should he ever attempt to arrive at the Sargasso Space Zone. They do nonetheless give intel on where he is most likely at, however.
• In the Super Mario Bros. franchise:
  • In the opening FMV of the Nintendo 64 version of Mario Tennis, when Bowser arrives at the court, the other participants are understandably worried when he arrives, as they think he's planning to attack the tennis arena. However, instead, Bowser just challenges Mario to the tournament in a friendly fashion when he actually approaches Mario.
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Rawk Hawk reveals that he was behind the guards locking Mario and his party up in an abandoned locker room, as well as a poisoned cake before fighting the party (in order to dissuade them from challenging him). However, when the party claims that he must have been the one emailing the threatening messages regarding the Crystal Star, he doesn't know what they are talking about, and reacts in such a way that he is genuinely unfamiliar with the concept of Crystal Stars, meaning he was not behind the threatening emails. It was actually the emcee/promoter, Grubba, who was emailing the threatening messages, as he was using the Gold Star to retain his youth.
  • In Super Mario RPG, the princess is kidnapped once again, but the responsible party turns out to be not Bowser but Booster. Bowser is so unhappy about this turn of events that he agrees to join forces with Mario.
  • In Super Paper Mario, Peach is kidnapped at the beginning of the game. Immediately, Mario and Luigi go to Bowser's Castle to rescue her. When the bros get there, however, they find Bowser giving a rallying speech to his army in preparation for invading Peach's Castle. When the bros confront him, he just ends up confused:
    Luigi: Quiet, you big Bowser! We know you kidnapped Princess Peach! Now where'd you put her?!
    [Bowser has a ? appear above him]
    Bowser: Where'd I... Wait, what? We're only now about to launch our atta—
• In Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View, an incident disrupting the cycle of life and death causes flowers to bloom en masse. Suspicion naturally falls on Yuuka Kazami, an ages-old youkai of flowers, who has been involved in at least one incident before, was seen at the scene, and is strong and enough of a flower aficionada to pull something like that. Turns out it's a naturally occurring phenomenon that takes place every sixty years (it's a bit stronger this time, but Yuuka had nothing to do with that). Unfortunately (for the player), she's enough of a troll and a Blood Knight to realize she will be misblamed and lounge around in order to be challenged.
• Trails Series:
  • Chapter 2 of The Legend Of Heroes: Trails from Zero begins with the theatre troupe Arc en Ceil receiving a threat letter from the infamous Heiyue-affiliated assassin Yin. Heiyue claims no involvement, and Yin themselves later seeks assistance finding the culprit, claiming it to be a copycat. They're right, the culprit turns out to be a political secretary planning to assassinate the mayor, who'll also be attending the show. The threat letter was an attempt to keep the cops busy protecting the wrong person. Unfortunately for him, one of Arc en Ceil's stars is Yin, so she instantly realized the letter was fake and got the party involved.
  • In Trails to Azure, when your party investigates the Geofront C Sector, they find mechanical monsters that spit fire, similar to the out-of-control cleaning robots they encountered in the sector where Jona was originally holing up and which he admitted to being responsible for. These, however, he insists that he isn't, that he's never even been there before.
  • Later in the same game, Erebonian Chancellor Osborne hires the Red Constellation as his "private security" during the trade conference. They slaughter a group of terrorists attempting to assassinate him, which Osborne had seen coming and exploited to give Crossbell a show of force and prove their local army and police aren't enough to protect the nation. (i.e that it should be annexed by him) Later, the Red Constellation launch a full-scale attack on Crossbell itself, which stirs up enough anti-Erebonian sentiment for Mayor Dieter to elect himself president and declare Crosbell's independence. It turns out Osborne didn't hire the Red Constellation this time, Dieter did, in a False Flag Operation to make his bid for independence easier.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, an entire sidequest that usually has the Phantom Thief Bleublanc's work is at play and the heroes must solve his riddles. It turns out that no, he didn't do it this time, but a certain Big Bad of the Crossbell arc did it and stole his shtick.
• In Until Dawn, the Psycho/Josh is revealed and rants at length about their complex prank to humiliate everyone in revenge for what happened to Hannah and Beth. Mike then tells them that none of this was funny since he believed Jessica was dead, accusing the Psycho of murder. The Psycho reacts with honest confusion because while they were responsible for everything else that happened, they had nothing to do with what happened to Jessica. Which is when players learn there's more than one threat on the mountain.
• In the novel leading up to the Cataclysm expansion of World of Warcraft, a peaceful meeting between Alliance and Horde druids to discuss the current state of the world is interrupted and attacked by a group of Orc soldiers. When Cairne goes to confront Garrosh (who is very vocal about his hatred of peaceful resolution to conflicts, druidism in general, and the Alliance in particular) about it, accusing him of being behind it, Garrosh's reply amounts to "IF I had done it, I wouldn't hide it". And while he is telling the truth (the attackers were Twilight's Hammer cultists deliberately posing as Horde members to instigate conflicts between the two factions), his extremely callous attitude towards the event still convinces Cairne that he needs to be removed from his post of leader to the Horde. Then Cairne declares mak'gora (an orcish custom where a leader is challenged for his position) and Garrosh gets hit with this trope again when Cairne dies from it. (Garrosh was willing to stop the duel at first blood, but his weapon was poisoned without his knowledge.)