"Nobody's clean; everyone's got a little dirt on them. You just gotta know how to use it to make them squirm."
— B. Ransome, Alien: Isolation
"We have a host of employees. I can't know every one of them by name. I do, however, know that you are not one of them. These "encoded transmissions" you've been sending back to your little club... It's been educational. You forgot who owns the networks, who created the cryptography. You are trespassing. You are in violation of contracts signed in blood. You are breaking binding agreements made in Venice. The Council tends to frown upon such things... As do I. And I am both less forgiving than the Council, and much better armed. But... I'm also a reasonable man. It doesn't have to become ugly. Shall I continue?"
—Orochi Director, The Secret World
I don't need you - I'll send you back to the farm, worse off than you were, because you'll have seen the Sierra Madre, and had to let it all go. I could have gotten any leggy dame out of Hollywood to get out here and play Sinclair's heartstrings. You just happened to be the one I caught, and it was really your own fault, a little too much into the chems and meds, and... Aw, shhh, don't cry. Look, I'm not trying to hurt you. Just one last little job, a little less dirty, a little less messy. He trusts you, Vera. And so do I. After this, I promise you, all those other Holotapes, they'll go away.
— Dean Domino, Fallout: New Vegas
Max Shreck: Exactly why am I gonna help you?
The Penguin: Well... let's start. [he's handed a Christmas stocking with Max's name on it] Oh, what have we here? Let's see... [he pulls out a thermos and opens it] A batch of toxic waste from your "clean" textile plant! [he pours out some glowing green goo, and it burns a hole in the table in front of him] There's a whole lagoon of this crud in the back!
Max Shreck: That could've come from anywhere.
The Penguin: What about the documents that prove you own half the fire traps in Gotham City?
Max Shreck: If there were such documents — that's not an admission — I would have seen to it they were shredded.
The Penguin: Ah, a good idea. [he reaches into the stocking and pulls out a stack of papers that were visibly shredded and taped back together] A lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference! By the way... how's Fred Atkins, your old partner, huh?
Max Shreck: Fred? Fred's actually... I believe he's on an extended vacation. He's... he's good.
The Penguin: [snickering] Good? [he reaches into the stocking and pulls out a severed hand] "Hiya, Max! Remember me? I'm Fred's hand!" You wanna greet any other body parts? Remember, Max: you flush it, I flaunt it.
The Penguin: Well... let's start. [he's handed a Christmas stocking with Max's name on it] Oh, what have we here? Let's see... [he pulls out a thermos and opens it] A batch of toxic waste from your "clean" textile plant! [he pours out some glowing green goo, and it burns a hole in the table in front of him] There's a whole lagoon of this crud in the back!
Max Shreck: That could've come from anywhere.
The Penguin: What about the documents that prove you own half the fire traps in Gotham City?
Max Shreck: If there were such documents — that's not an admission — I would have seen to it they were shredded.
The Penguin: Ah, a good idea. [he reaches into the stocking and pulls out a stack of papers that were visibly shredded and taped back together] A lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference! By the way... how's Fred Atkins, your old partner, huh?
Max Shreck: Fred? Fred's actually... I believe he's on an extended vacation. He's... he's good.
The Penguin: [snickering] Good? [he reaches into the stocking and pulls out a severed hand] "Hiya, Max! Remember me? I'm Fred's hand!" You wanna greet any other body parts? Remember, Max: you flush it, I flaunt it.
Batman: You need to stop this.
Enigma: Stop what? Cleaning up the streets? Ensuring the GCPD actually does its job? Removing corruption from the system? Was it one of those in particular you took issue with, or All of Them?
Batman: You're using the data you've stolen to blackmail people.
Enigma: So? It gets the job done. And it's certainly kinder than the beatings you're so fond of doling out. Think on that.
Enigma: Stop what? Cleaning up the streets? Ensuring the GCPD actually does its job? Removing corruption from the system? Was it one of those in particular you took issue with, or All of Them?
Batman: You're using the data you've stolen to blackmail people.
Enigma: So? It gets the job done. And it's certainly kinder than the beatings you're so fond of doling out. Think on that.
"Well, just what sort of severance package is management prepared to offer me? Considering the information I have about our Editorial Director buying pussy with company money - which, I think, would interest the I.R.S., since it technically constitutes fraud; and I'm sure that some of our advertisers and rival publications might like to know about it as well. Not to mention Craig's wife!"
—Lester Burnham, American Beauty
The very first time, fifteen years ago, they had entered this very room as David spent himself in one of the mouths of some ruined, cadaverous Remade girl. The suited men had shown him their camera. They had told him they would send their pictures to the newspapers and the journals and the university. They had offered him a choice. They paid well.
"Unless you want the rest of this freaky shit to hit the news, I suggest you take good care of me and my people."
—Black Dynamite to Richard Nixon, Black Dynamite
Frank Osbaldistone: "Was he, then, not known at Osbaldistone Hall?”
Judge Inglewood: "To none but to his daughter, the old knight, and Rashleigh, who had got at that secret as he did at every one else, and held it like a twisted cord about poor Die's neck. I have seen her one hundred times she would have spit at him, if it had not been fear for her father, whose life would not have been worth five minutes' purchase if he had been discovered to the Government."
Judge Inglewood: "To none but to his daughter, the old knight, and Rashleigh, who had got at that secret as he did at every one else, and held it like a twisted cord about poor Die's neck. I have seen her one hundred times she would have spit at him, if it had not been fear for her father, whose life would not have been worth five minutes' purchase if he had been discovered to the Government."
— Rob Roy
"I have here information about the nineteen year old boy you maintain in the town of Shakti. And the apartment you have arranged for him... and the gifts that you have given him... and the dates of your last three overnight visits. If you attempt to fire Lieutenant Burakov... now, or at any time... I will send all this to your wife."
—Fetisov to Bondarchuk, Citizen X
James Reynolds: Dear Sir, I hope this letter finds you in good health
And in a prosperous enough position to put wealth
In the pockets of people like me down on their luck
You see, that was my wife who you decided to-
And in a prosperous enough position to put wealth
In the pockets of people like me down on their luck
You see, that was my wife who you decided to-
Alexander Hamilton: Fuuuuuuuu...
James Reynolds: Uh oh, you made the wrong sucker a cuckold
So time to pay the piper for the pants you unbuckled
And hey, you can keep seein' my whore wife
If the price is right, if not I'm telling your wife
So time to pay the piper for the pants you unbuckled
And hey, you can keep seein' my whore wife
If the price is right, if not I'm telling your wife
Yeah, AZT
. I want my own private stash, Martin. Of serious, honest-Abe medicine that I control, here in the room with me. No placebos, I'm no good at tests, Martin, I'd rather cheat. So, send me my pills with a get-well bouquet, pronto, or I'm gonna ring up CBS and sing Mike Wallace a song: the ballad of adorable Ollie North and his secret Contra slush fund. (Beat) Oh, you only think you know all I know. I don't even know what all I know. Half the time I just make it up and it still turns out to be true! We learned that trick in the fifties. Tomorrow, you two-bit scumsucking shitheel flypaper insignificant dried-out little turd! A nice big box of drugs for Uncle Roy - or there'll be seven different kinds of hell to pay!
. I want my own private stash, Martin. Of serious, honest-Abe medicine that I control, here in the room with me. No placebos, I'm no good at tests, Martin, I'd rather cheat. So, send me my pills with a get-well bouquet, pronto, or I'm gonna ring up CBS and sing Mike Wallace a song: the ballad of adorable Ollie North and his secret Contra slush fund. (Beat) Oh, you only think you know all I know. I don't even know what all I know. Half the time I just make it up and it still turns out to be true! We learned that trick in the fifties. Tomorrow, you two-bit scumsucking shitheel flypaper insignificant dried-out little turd! A nice big box of drugs for Uncle Roy - or there'll be seven different kinds of hell to pay!—Roy Cohn, Angels in America
Vigo Haman: How do you think the world would react, Mr Quinlan, should it be discovered that the respected Ben Dodds - held by his peers as the paradigm of journalistic integrity - had actually perpetrated an untrue story that had resulted in a man's death... and did so as an act of nepotism?
Jake Quinlan: ...then I guess we have an understanding. I won't print anything about you... for now.
Blackmail goes along with bribery and graft, in a way, so I'll cover that next. It's just another way of getting the politicians and the officials - or damn near anyone else, for that matter - to do what we want. We don't often blackmail for money. Most people who can afford to pay enough to make it worthwhile are in a position to do us other favors as well, favors that are worth a lot more than the cash we might get from them. If I've got photos of a city councilman with his dick in some 16-year-old ass, I'd rather use them to influence the next zoning referendum than to take him for an extra 50 grand.
The really nifty thing about blackmail is that, considering the other services we provide for the city's rich and famous, it's not that hard to get. Who do you think provided the councilman with that 16-year-old?
"I have the letters, therefore I have you. It isn't blackmail. It's...ownership."
—Chatles Augustus Magnussen, Sherlock
"Blackmail. If the First Child was really in that kind of condition, there's no way she could have put up a fight against the Third Angel. She was trotted out in front of you deliberately. 'Get in the fucking robot, Shinji. Or we'll send this cripple out to die'."
— Asuka, Read the Fine Print (Evangelion)
Contacts. Who needs contacts? This is Russia! You don't ask people to help you. You tell them. In 1961, the commissar who lives two doors down is arrested for keeping a rent boy in a dacha on the river; the boy had lived there for ten years, so lives there now! In 1971, a grave is uncovered in the bottom of the butcher's garden - the wife who "vanished" in 1949, he had no idea where. In three years' time, the commissioner of police is going to be arrested on the testimony of his deputy, who need a bigger house because his wife is pregnant again from her affair with her sergeant lover... Nothing changes. You don't need contacts – what you need is money and dirt.
—Madam Olga, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
