Basic Trope: A suspect in a criminal case has some evidence showing that either they weren't present when the crime was committed, or couldn't possibly have committed the crime, or both.
- Straight: Alice is found murdered in her apartment. Her ex-boyfriend Bob is suspected (or at least questioned) in the case, but he was away on business at the time of the murder.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is able to prove that not only was he away on business, he is not capable of wielding the weapon used even if he was around.
- Bob calls his boss to verify the details of his business trip right then and there, with the detectives on speaker-phone.
- Alice was shot in broad daylight in New York. When Bob is accused, he claims that he was in Los Angeles giving a speech in front of thousands of people, which is verified as he was also on TV.
- Downplayed: Bob produces his key from when he shared the apartment with Alice, and shows that Alice has since changed the lock and therefore the key doesn't fit.
- Justified: It helps to rule out suspects.
- Inverted: Bob can't show the evidence that he didn't kill Alice, as it would prove that he committed an even more heinous crime.
- Subverted:
- During investigations, it's revealed that Bob was never away on business.
- Alice was killed by a bomb in her mailbox; Bob didn't have to be anywhere near it to set it off.
- Bob hired a hit-man to kill Alice.
- Bob has not had any contact with Alice for years.
- The person Bob took that business trip to meet lies that Bob never showed up.
- Double Subverted:
- It also reveals that he never even left his apartment.
- It's revealed that Bob's schedule is too jam-packed to allow for the production of mail-bombs.
- The hit-man got delayed with a family emergency, and someone else did it.
- Parodied:
- A Delegation Relay.
- Bob's excuse is too absurd not to be true, or an amazingly lame excuse.
- Bob didn't commit the crime because he was busy on TV Tropes.
- When Bob is accused of killing Alice, he has NASA prove that he was on the Moon at the time.
- Alice accuses Bob of raping her...except Bob died ten years earlier. Video footage of his death (which occurred in public), official death records from the hospital and mortician, and his exhumed corpse from the cemetery prove his innocence.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Bob is not questioned or suspected in the murder of Alice.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Bob is the one who did it, and he created false evidence that he was away on business at the time of the murder.
- Exploited: Bob was alone with Carol at the time of the murder, so he tells the police that he cannot be the murderer because he has an alibi. But Carol is in cahoot with Dan, who killed Alice, so she tells the police that Bob was not with her, and that Bob wanted her to lie about that. So Bob becomes the prime suspect.
- Defied: Bob decides to Be as Unhelpful as Possible.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to The Alibi
