Engineered Public Confession - TV Tropes

I will never tell the hero, "Yes, I was the one who did it, but you'll never be able to prove it to that incompetent old fool." Chances are, that incompetent old fool is standing behind the curtain.

• Buso Renkin: During the assault on the protagonists' high school at the climax of the L.X.E. arc, one of the students was collaborating with the attacking homunculi and used the intercom to convince the other students that the heroes fighting against the monsters were also enemies so that the students would attack them. When the hero's friends call the student over the intercom they get him to reveal information that only the attackers would know, proving that he was working with them.
• One memorable episode of Case Closed had Conan cornering the killer-of-the-week in a parking lot and spouting off the details of the crime. The killer is at first taken aback at being found out, but calmly confesses to the murder when he realizes the police would never believe anything a little kid like Conan says. Conan admits this to be true — which is why he taped the whole conversation.
• In Code Geass R2, Lelouch pulls a massive Gambit Roulette just to get one of these, all in order to secure China as an ally in the fight against The Empire.
• This is largely how Near manages to expose Light as Kira in Death Note, sans the tech equipment but Light's God complex is more than enough.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: At the very start of the series, when Edward and Alphonse are battling the fake priest Cornello, Edward is trapped but has a huge microphone hidden as Cornello explains how he is manipulating the populace and so on. Too bad it's rendered moot by the Homunculi.
• A non-villainous (sorta-kinda) happened in Get Backers. Makubex finally explains that stealing the implosion lens wasn't just a plot to ransom the gods of Mugenjou and return things to how they before Ginji left; it was all prophesied in the Archive, and he was just doing his best to play his part and see if he could find a way to break the gods' control. He even revealed that his public persona as the "demon king" was largely a product of his virtual reality systems. Ren runs in after he finishes talking, reveals that she used his computer to broadcast it all over Lower Town and that they're all waiting outside, cheering wildly and yelling things like "Long live Makubex!"
• Great Teacher Onizuka: Kikuchi plays a recording of Anko and her friends talking about bullying Noboru through the PA system to show the school what really happened.
• Done in the last episode of Gunsmith Cats when Haints finds Radinov in his office and launches into a rant about her failures, only to discover that she's really Kate with a wig and a microphone.
• .hack//Roots: The player Tohta lure a group of merchants who are driving up prices into a dungeon and tricks them into admitting they're Real Money Traders, which violates the World's terms of services. The merchants do this in a public channel and Tohta reports them, resulting in all of their accounts being banned.
• Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?:
  • When Aizawa confronts Shinji over his history of bullying, he ensures that Shinji's daughter Shiori is in the room next door, eavesdropping on their conversation. Shinji proves to be The Unapologetic, unintentionally revealing his sadistic nature to his audience and shattering their perception of him beyond repair.
  • In the climax, the school principal and Ai's mother Kyoko attempt to paint Aizawa as The Scapegoat for all of the bullying Ai and her Gang of Bullies have done, holding a press conference and attempting to badger him into a False Confession. However, they didn't consider the possibility that Aizawa would have video evidence of Ai's actions, or that he'd show the physical scars from how he was bullied years before, causing their plans to blow up in their faces.
• Infinite Ryvius: Captain Airs Blue at one point considers betraying and abandoning the crew of the Ryvius, unaware that a treacherous subordinate has turned on the ship's intercom. Needless to say, he isn't Captain for much longer.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood: After obtaining proof of Dio poisoning George, Jonathan along with Speedwagon, bring police officers to the mansion in secrecy while waiting for Dio to return, who admits his schemes directly to Jonathan before the police emerge in an attempt to arrest him.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: In Hayato's seemingly failed effort to kill Yoshikage Kira, the latter mocks him for even trying until Hayato directly asks for his name, prompting Kira to boastfully admits who he is, unaware that Hayato had contacted Josuke to arrive earlier and letting him overhear Kira expose himself.
• Subverted in Kakegurui. Yumeko records Idol Singer Yumemi making disparaging remarks about her fan club, and plays the tape for all of them to hear after defeating Yumemi in the following episode. Yumemi braces herself for a loud chorus of boos and Produce Pelting, but her fan club is so moved by her "honesty" that they vow to continue supporting her, and even demand an encore performance right there on stage.
• This happens twice in Martian Successor Nadesico, transmitting some things Nergal would rather have remained hidden to the entire ship. The second time, in fact, Mr. Prospector seems to have some sort of "reveal bad guys' secret" button (designed to look like Ruri's face for some reason) on his shirt that he casually brushes as their captor gets rolling.
• Metal Armor Dragonar: Big Bad Dorchenov reveals he is the murderer of Marshall Guiltorre thanks to Min's strategy.
• In Ouran High School Host Club, the school's newspaper editor tries to engineer the downfall of the Host Club, only to have his plans thwarted by a recording machine disguised as a first aid kit which Kyouya placed into the newspaper room.
• Patlabor 2: The Movie: One of the people behind the terrorist attacks, Shigeki Arakawa, refuses to confess anything. Shigeki Arakawa is also Affably Evil. He went to Kiichi Goto when Yukihito Tsuge decided to alter the plan and start a limited war that would topple the Japanese government. Shigeki Arakawa’s original plan was a harsh political protest that used limited and controlled violence. Goto also agrees with Arakawa’s observations on the reality of peace, war, and political leaders exploit chaos instead of using a measured response.
• Peach Girl evil mastermind Sae is tricked by Kairi into expounding on her patented Wounded Gazelle Gambit routine, and how she has repeatedly made Momo look like a monster before the class. Unknown to her Touji is right around the corner, and hearing her bragging finally wakes him up, and he, in turn, makes damn sure the class knows who and what Sae really is. The worst part was, they kind of already did, but admitted falling for an act they themselves had been victimized by before—and sadly, would again before all was done.
• Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions has Grings Kodai's plan curving for a meteoric downward spiral after Zorua nicked his forearm. This had the side effect of breaking his illusion canceller, but he was too absorbed in both his own ego - as he gloats to Ash about his Dark Secret - and Zoroark's illusion to tell the difference as he drew power from a fake Time Ripple projected a few feet closer to Kodai than the real one, allowing Ash's friends to record his gloating on video. Then time rewinds in front of him, revealing the truth; he loses full functionality for his device shortly thereafter frying Zoroark, who fries it back, and stumbles into another illusion, whereupon he falls unconscious after falling off a podium in the Boccer arena, believing the railing for his "airship" was a few feet further ahead. This trope kicks in the next morning, where he wakes up to hear the aforementioned gloating broadcast to everyone in Crown City via his own TV network.
• Ramen Fighter Miki: Miki tries this in episode 7A Peel Off the Fake Smile when she becomes a client of Megumi’s bakery and acts like The Thing That Would Not Leave to make Megumi drop his façade of The Fake Cutie in front of her clients denouncing her as the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Sket Dance plays this completely straight when a teacher caught framing a pupil for his own misdeeds confesses all with the immortal lines: 'No matter what you say, nobody will believe you!' Unfortunately for him, he was being broadcast over the school intercom system at that very moment, and the Sket-dan had fiddled with their classroom's speaker so that he wouldn't notice it.
• In Tiger & Bunny, Agnes and her crew combine this with Hoist by His Own Petard when they expose Maverick by broadcasting his monologue live on Hero TV, a program of his own media company which he was using up to that point to further his schemes.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, during his fight with Yusei, Divine reveals that he was the one who murdered Misty's brother (Misty was under the impression that Aki had, and had become a Dark Signer to seek revenge - acquiring the use of Jibakushin (Earthbound God/Immortal) Ccarayhua). He discovers too late that Yusei's Duel Disk had a microphone in it, which he had activated beforehand, and becomes Ccarayhua's dinner. Though it certainly doesn't help that when Misty angrily speaks to him a few moments after Yusei reveals his trick, he responds with Evil Gloating.

• This is how Amanda Waller goes down in Absolute Power (2024). Despite the heroes getting their powers back, taking out her troops and shutting down Failsafe and Task Force VII, Waller rants that she's fooled the entire world into believing that they're all threats and they'll never taking them back. Nightwing, being Genre Savvy, had young hero Air Wave, whose power is basically living wi-fi, broadcast her entire rant to every electronic device in the entire world, tanking her popularity for good.
• Done at least twice in Archie Comics:
  • In one story, Archie's rival Reggie convinces almost everyone that Archie is going insane but then Jughead leads Reggie into a storeroom by getting him curious about why Jughead is carrying and uncoiling a wire and gets Reggie to brag about his scheme seemingly in private, after which Jughead reveals that the wire is connected to a microphone leading to the school's public address system. Reggie is the one who ends up in therapy.
  • In another story, Archie wants to make sure a sweet old lady who is moving house gets good prices on her antiques, so he gets help from a man who is knowledgeable enough to set fair prices but has a reputation as a shyster. Then Archie tricks him into confessing that he's intending to keep 80% of the sales for himself and records it on tape as leverage to force the shyster into giving the old lady all the profits.
• In Baker Street #5, Davenport admits to Sharon and Susan that he is the one behind the deaths in the recent gang wars, planning to shoot them immediately. Unknown to him, the area is surrounded by the Tower of Hell gang who have borne the brunt of losses in these wars.
• Daredevil made The Fixer believe this was the case, claiming to have a recorder inside his billy club. Then three issues later, he did it for real to the Purple Man.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • In the comic "Outlanders", Donald, Scrooge, and Huey-Dewey-Louie are teleported to a steampunk world, where Beagle Boys took over the Money Bin and sent alternate Scrooge to work in a coal mine. He then takes his revenge by tricking them to confess how they did it, using Gyro's inventions to project their confession on a giant sheet in the street, and broadcast their words at full volume.
  • In a comic story featuring a young Scrooge, he visits the bad guy and convinces him to speak about his crime, while recording his words on a hidden gramophone. Justified, as the comic is set in an era where gramophones are still new-fangled inventions, and the villain doesn't consider the possibility that his words can be recorded.
• Used in an issue of Doctor Strange, with Clea activating the crystal that Umar the Unrelenting used to make announcements to the public. It might have gone better if Umar hadn't drained the barrier that prevented the Mindless Ones from rampaging across the Dark Dimension; part of her power was drawn from popular support.
• The Flash has this a few times, often during Mark Waid run on the title.
  • The Flash faces off against a crime boss who snaps on how he killed off some rivals himself. Right as his confession is starting, the Flash grabs him and races him across town. The guy has just finished admitting to having killed a rival when he realizes he's standing right in the middle of police headquarters with a half dozen cops listening.
  • The Flash has been set up to look like a huge menace and attacking people. He's lured to rescue some hostages and is trapped by Abra Kadabra who does a massive speech on how he set the Flash up. At which point, the Flash easily escapes from the trap and points out the hostages are gone. Cue his captain ally and twenty cops stepping out of the shadows, the captain playing a recording of Kadabra's confession. Flash reveals he had already gotten the hostages out at super-speed and then brought the cops along before Kadabra even saw him enter. He then acted out being "trapped", knowing Kadabra's ego would drive him to gloat.

    Flash: That...is misdirection.

• Invoked in the Invincible Iron Man (2008) storyline "World's Most Wanted", when Tony Stark was being hunted by Norman Osborn after the world basically blamed Stark for the Skrull invasion of Earth. While Tony doesn’t explicitly make Norman “confess” to anything, he manages to provoke Norman into attacking Tony during a live broadcast when Norman was wearing the Iron Patriot armor (based on stolen Stark tech), when Tony was not only wearing nothing more elaborate than a version of the original Iron Man suit, but was so severely brain damaged by this point (having deliberately erased his own brain to stop Norman getting access to his secrets) that he couldn’t even fight back. Needless to say, Osborn’s attempt to sell himself as a ‘hero’ doesn’t hold up well when he’s shown beating a man who was legally mentally handicapped and not only wasn’t properly fighting back, but wouldn’t have been capable of doing anything against Osborn using such a basic armor.
• In the story "The Joker's Mild" from Joker's Asylum, the Joker hijacks a game show and presents the contestants with impossibly difficult questions. When they fail to answer, they are subjected to harmless pranks like being sprayed with ginger ale. The joke was actually on the producer, who had kept the show on the air, made no effort to summon help, and was drooling over the audience the show was drawing... all of which the Joker had captured on hidden camera in order to amuse himself by posing the question of which of them was the worse villain.
• Josie and the Pussycats:
  • The girls are singing for an animal preservation charity. After the rival boy band's leader sets them up by way of a fur coat, the girls pretend to be groupie journalists to get the guys back. They do, of course, and the boy band is thrown out and the Cats welcomed back with open arms.
  • Valerie, where she pretends to be helping a con man so she can get him to tell her about the scam and what suckers people are — she is wearing a wire and broadcasting this to the entire school.
• In the second Katie the Catsitter book, the Eastern Screech, a superhero, commits various crimes to frame his superhero competitors. But he is lured into a TV studio that goes live 10 minutes before expected, where he is broadcast yelling at an underling (actually a different superhero in disguise) about his crimes and demanding the underling treat him better. He even lists his crimes out as he's chewing out the fake underling.
• Raana Tey from Knights of the Old Republic falls victim to this when she gloats about the murder she participated in and framed the protagonist for in front of the sister of one of her victims (who Raana had been manipulating). It doesn't end well for her. Subverted in that Zayne didn't really plan it to happen.
• The post-Zero Hour incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes spent an entire Story Arc building up to one of these, complete with the Legion's leader becoming Not Himself to ingratiate himself to the target, several Legionnaires faking their deaths, and one of the presumed-dead Legionnaires then impersonating a third party to take credit for the villain's schemes in order to prompt the Just Between You and Me moment, which was of course broadcast on live TV - all without cluing the reader in until The Reveal.
• Superman:
  • For a while Lex Luthor was President of the US, and genuinely tried to protect the country (and Earth) from several of the cataclysms that occurred during his term. Then his hatred of Superman got the better of him in Public Enemies (2004) and he tried, through a heavily convoluted and highly illegal scheme, to frame Superman for attempting to destroy the Earth by drawing an asteroid to Earth. It almost worked, until he ranted to Superman that he truly thought he was guilty, repeatedly admitting to playing the public like a flute and that he intended to teleport off-planet (using illegal alien technology from Darkseid) before the asteroid hit, leaving everyone else to die. Luckily, he didn't know Batman was taping the whole thing (in addition to, as Bruce Wayne, buying up all his assets so that he couldn't start over, or at least for a while). Lex may be completely crazy, but he's not completely wrong — The asteroid IS headed for Earth because of Superman; it contains his cousin Supergirl, who would land on Earth in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004). Supergirl's escape ship was following Superman's journey but unfortunately came with a giant chunk of the planet Krypton attached. Luthor's crime here wasn't framing Superman, but leading a manhunt for the hero instead of simply asking for his help in destroying it.
  • In Superboy (1949) #5, the treacherous Duke Norvello threatens to kill Queen Lucy if she does not insult her subjects publicly, and then he gloats that, after destroying Lucy's reputation, he can get rid of her puppet queen and do whatever he pleases to the "stupid peasants". Too bad for him, Superboy planted a microphone in his room and broadcast his gloating speech to everybody.
  • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, he gives the villain speech in front of Supergirl while Batgirl was broadcasting it live on network TV, destroying his reputation.
  • In Action Comics #319, Donna Storm frames Linda Danvers for stealing. So Linda alters Donna's earrings into radio transmitters that would broadcast her voice through the school's P. A. system and then prods Donna into confessing.

    Donna: I wanted to get even with you, and with your friend, Supergirl. You've both been getting in my hair. I don't mind telling you this, because you can't prove I'm the guilty one.
    Linda: Can't I? You'd be surprised!
    "At that moment, Donna's confession is pouring out through the public address system in the nearby stadium..."

  • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, Belinda asks Linda Lee how she is doing. Linda starts complaining about her shallow, petty, and bad-smelling schoolmates and teachers, not knowing she is being recorded.

    Linda: I didn't mean it that way... I have a really, really keen sense of smell is all... I didn't know she was recording me...

  • Action Comics #556: Vandal Savage, then an immigrant from Earth-2, decided that being a Villain with Good Publicity wasn't enough, and began videotaping all his meetings with Superman as part of his plan to make Supes a Hero with Bad Publicity. Superman secretly places a transmitter on Savage's recording device which then feeds to local TV station WGBS, then goads the villain into revealing his plan and sneering at the "sheep" of Metropolis.
• A Marvel Adventures comic has Captain America doing this to Loki over a live broadcast. It's really just admitting to jealousy, but this does result in Loki leaving in a huff.
• The heroine of Les Nombrils pulls a pretty clever version of this to expose the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who's been ruining her life.
• In the last issue of Six Gun Gorilla, Blue manages to trick one of the people involved in a plot to prolong the civil war in the Blister so Bluetech can make a fortune broadcasting it to the masses into admitting the whole conspiracy when they think the transmitter in Blue's head is being jammed by psi-blockers.

  Blue: Them psi-blockers? They been down since you pulled the trigger.

• Spider-Man villain Mysterio starts out as a Villain with Good Publicity, but is foiled when he confesses everything to Spider-Man, who is holding a tape recorder.
• Star Wars: Darth Vader (2020): In Issue #32, this is how Sabé deals with Jul Tambor — she tricks him into believing that Vader has set up camp in a village full of Sakoan refugees, which he proceeds to bomb to try and earn his species' loyalty by killing Vader in a show of force, not caring about the innocent lives lost in the process. It's only after he's gloated about this in a transmission to Sabé that she reveals that the village was actually empty, and the refugees have been listening in on the whole thing. This ruins Jul's reputation, destroying his movement and turning him into a powerless fugitive.
• Star Wars: Doctor Aphra has a particularly ironic one at the climax of the Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon arc. After Minister Voor gloats about how she's manipulated both Aphra and the Rebellion into enabling her planned coup against the Emperor, Aphra reveals that she hacked Voor's own propaganda cameras to broadcast this confession live to the whole galaxy, exposing and ruining Voor's plans. Cue stormtroopers storming Voor's compound.
• Spider Jerusalem uses this against the President in Transmetropolitan. He purposely gets seen using a real gun (something that's out of character for him) earlier in the day, so that the increasingly unstable President will make very sure he's not armed, instead of making a cursory check for guns and then checking for bugs.
  • Spider had tried to record him in an earlier issue, only to learn right after the confession that his bugs had been fried by an EMP, hence the Batman Gambit with the gun the second time.
• The 'Crazy Eights' storyline in the Marvel Comics Wonder Man book. Eight newly superpowered friends of Wonder Man manage to record L.A's top security firm as really being a bunch of murderous thugs for hire. A violent chase ensues all over town, ending with a Hail Mary pass to a reporter acquaintance. Ironically, the reporter's view of costumed people tussling with the security firm just increases her curiosity to view the tape.
• Subverted in Y: The Last Man, when ex-cop turned brothel owner You confronts Epiphany, a Canadian pop star who's using her influence among teenage Japanese girls to recreate the Yakuza, and broadcasts her comment ("Those retarded Japanese fangirls worship me like a god!") to the guards outside. When informed of this Epiphany simply retorts: "Oh please! Those groupies already know I couldn't give two shits about them!"
• The first arc of Scott McCloud's Zot! ends with the titular hero interrupting the Evil Chancellor as he gives a live planet-wide broadcast about how their world's Holy War against Earth is going. The villain makes sure to turn off all the cameras before admitting to Zot that, yes, he killed the king, the queen, and his rivals, and engineered the war as a way of consolidating power—but then Zot reveals the tiny robot that's been following him around, which has video cameras for eyes and a built-in broadcast antenna. Guess what the robot's been doing?

• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: Terry gives the police the sound byte of Jordan Pryce telling the Jokerz that he gave them the security codes in exchange for hiring them to kill/ice Bruce Wayne.

  Pryce: ...I want my lawyer.

• In Coco, Miguel's aunts man the camera at the Sunrise Spectacular and turn on the sound to reveal the crimes of Ernesto de la Cruz to the audience. Not only does the crowd hear of his past crimes, the cameras catch de la Cruz throwing Miguel to his apparent death.
• Hey Arnold! The Movie: After Scheck burns the document that declares the neighborhood, the location of the "Tomato Incident," as a national landmark in front of Arnold and Gerald, Arnold gets around not having the actual document by using Scheck's own security camera footage of him burning the document to reveal the truth to everyone about both the neighborhood and Scheck himself. After the boys show the townspeople the video, Scheck is forced to flee and tries to run over the angry mob, including Arnold and Gerald, but finds that his tires were stripped, and he is then arrested.
• Justice League: Throne of Atlantis: After capturing the Justice League, Orm gloats to Arthur about murdering their mother Queen Atlanna and using a False Flag Operation to goad Atlantis into attacking the surface world. Cyborg uses his built-in computers to record it and then later play it to the Atlanteans, causing them to desert Orm.
• Done by Mike Wazowski to Mr. Waternoose in Monsters, Inc.:

  Waternoose: I have no choice! Times have changed. Scaring isn't enough anymore!
  Sulley: But kidnapping children?!
  Waternoose: I'll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die! And I'll silence anyone who gets in my way! (He knocks Sulley out of his way)
  Sulley: NO!!!
  (Waternoose attempts to grab Boo, but it's revealed he is caught on camera in the simulation room from the beginning of the movie)
  Mike: Well, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I spotted several big mistakes.
  Waternoose: (Bewildered) But, but... But how did you-?!
  Mike: You know what? Let's watch my favorite part again, shall we?
  (Mike replays the tape of Waternoose saying the kidnapping sentence over and over, ultimately resulting in his arrest by the CDA)

• My Life as a Zucchini: Camille's aunt is trying to adopt her for the money and acts nice in public while treating her badly in private. Luckily, Camille records her aunt's insults on tape and plays it for the judge.
• Rabbids Invasion: Mission to Mars: After Dr. Frank Nebula intentionally sabotages the Rabbids’ attempts to save Earth from the mutated Martian King, he begins yelling at them for how they went against his goal of bombing Mars and reveals himself to have been trying to use them as scapegoats to avoid suspicion which Scribbles manages to use against him by pulling out a phone to record his ramblings to the news, causing Dr. Nebula to lose his public reputation.
• Transformers One: Having lost the evidence Alpha Trion gave them, Orion and company manage to expose Sentinel Prime’s treachery by broadcasting Airachnid’s memories to Iacon City, including Sentinel taunting the group with the truth upon their return.
• Zootopia: Officer Judy Hopps blackmails Con Man Nick Wilde into helping her investigation by tricking him into boasting about his success at raking in cash that hasn't been properly taxed and then playing it back with her novelty recorder pen. At the climax, this is how Judy and Nick take down the Big Bad — cornered by Bellwether and her goons, she shoots Nick with her Night Howler serum gun, and as he menaces Judy, she gloats about how she'll turn the whole city against predators... at which point Nick and Judy reveal that he was faking having been affected (in fact, they'd managed to switch out the Night Howler pellets with blueberries), and Judy had recorded Bellwether's gloating with the very same novelty recorder pen, just as the police arrive.

• The Abandon Trilogy: Pierce tries to get one out of Mr. Mueller about Hannah by agreeing to a tutoring session and arming herself with a security camera. Subverted in that it's too dark to film due to Mr. Mueller turning off most of the lights and John interferes...
• In Animorphs it was an engineered public demonstration. Animorphs: The Proposal has William Roger Tennant, a New-Age Retro Hippie-type who genuinely is kindly and a serious Animal Lover. However, he's been infested by a particularly nasty-minded Yeerk who longs for violence. Having to stay in character as Tennant to recruit for the Sharing has him nearly batshit insane by the time the Animorphs meet him. The team makes several efforts to force him into an Engineered Public Revelation of True Colors, culminating in morphing a Small, Annoying Creature (a Mister Muffykins poodle belonging to Marco's stepmother) that regularly attacks the guru in public, where he can't fight back without blowing his cover, and then going after him on set when he thinks the camera is off.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident Briar Cugeon gloats about his plan to double-cross the B'wa Kell and position himself as a savior, then arrange for Opal Koboi to have "a tragic accident. Perhaps several tragic accidents" as Foaly records the conversation on Artemis' computer. First the B'wa Kell are shown Cugeon's plans of betrayal, but he is unperturbed as he always considered them disposable. Having Opal find out is a much bigger wrench in his plans.
• In the Andrew Vachss Burke book Dead and Gone, Burke manages to get the Big Bad to admit his planned duplicity while a gadget is transmitting his words to the mercenaries supposed to be guarding him.
• At the end of the Alina Adams mystery Death Drop, the heroine engineers a situation for the murderer to make a confession to a certain acquaintance of his with a reality TV show in a storeroom full of cameras; he didn't check to make sure none of them were on. Thanks to a waiver he'd signed earlier, it was not only an on-camera confession but a court-admissible one.
• Clive Cussler has his hero Dirk Pitt Adventures pull this in The Mediterranean Caper. It looks like Pitt and some aides have been caught by villain Bruno von Till thanks to how one of Pitt's police allies is secretly on von Till's payroll. Held captive in an underground cavern used as a sub bay, von Till and Pitt banter where Pitt basically lays out what von Till has been up to and von Till congratulating him on how he figured it all out and adding a few more details on how he's planning to unload tons of heroin into the United States. He tells his agent to shoot Pitt...at which point, in comes Pitt's buddy, Al, and a squad of soldiers and cops. It turns out Pitt was onto The Mole the whole time and sent Al for reinforcements who have been patiently waiting.

  Pitt: Did you get all that?

  Inspector: Every word. The acoustics here would do Carnegie Hall proud.

• In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Dying Days, the Doctor pulls off one of these on the alien warlord who has taken over Britain and declared himself King. After tricking him into breathing in helium, the Doctor then displays the whole conversation as a giant hologram in the sky with the villain's (squeaky) rant broadcast all over the world.

  The Doctor: I think you've just made your abdication speech, your Majesty.

• The Dresden Files: In White Night Lara Raith helps move Harry and Ramirez to a place in the Deeps that allows them to overhear Lady Malvora's proclamation that she is the power behind all the murders.
• At the end of Embedded, Lex Falk is able to talk Tedders into admitting everything about the alien artifact on the colony planet Eighty-Six, which is what the Bloc and SOMD armies are fighting over. Tedders admits this because Falk is in control of the body of Nestor Bloom, a SOMD soldier, and she feels that "Bloom" needs the whole story, even while the SOMD is trying to cover up the whole thing. She doesn't realize that Falk is there until he openly admits that everything that Bloom is seeing and hearing is being transmitted live to the various news agencies.
• Family Skeleton Mysteries: In the third book, Georgia bluffs a cyberbully into confessing while she has a tape recorder going. Both of them know the recording will be inadmissible, which makes her opponent cocky. At that point, several witnesses who've been hiding in the room at Georgia's instructions reveal themselves.
• Guardians of the Flame: Karl manipulates one from the Prince of Bieme after he betrayed them to the Holts, causing his own guardsmen to turn on him in disgust (they were listening behind a curtain).
• In The Golden Oecumene, Phaethon does this to himself during his trial, angrily replying to a rival on the private channel, and realizing a moment too late he's actually switched over to the public channel.
• Mistborn: The Lost Metal: Marasi tries to get Entrone to admit his lies in front of an active radio. It almost works, but unfortunately he hears the echo from outside before he says anything incriminating, and turns it off. He doesn't realize that enough people had crowded close enough outside to hear him anyway.
• In The Sea of Monsters, the second book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Percy tricks Luke into confessing his crime of poisoning Thalia's tree to the entirety of Camp Half-Blood through an Iris-message, also proving Chiron's innocence.
• In Joan Hess's Pride V. Prejudice, Claire Malloy tracks down a murderer to clear the name of the victim's widow, as well as a fugitive whom the real killer had also implicated. The culprit admits she's right when she presents her accusation, not realizing that Claire, whom the FBI have been looking for since she was seen with the fugitive, had switched on her cell phone: a device she knew the feds must be tapping in their efforts to locate her.
• Averted in Seven Days in May — even with insurmountable evidence laid out before him, the antagonist never makes any explicit admission of guilt.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • "The Dying Detective", in which a concealed Watson overhears the gloating of a villain who thinks he's given Holmes a fatal disease.
  • "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone", with a minor twist: Holmes didn't need the thieves to confess to stealing the missing diamond, as he had collected all the evidence he needed to convict before the story started. What he needed was to trick the thieves into saying where they had hidden it.
• The Spirit Thief uses a more magic-fuelled variant. As Adela has Josef pinned to the ground, half-dead, he manages to provoke her into gloating about her master plan, as there's no-one within their earshot. What she doesn't know is that Eli has talked a wind spirit into transmitting her words to the crowd that's gathered to watch her pummel the supposed bad guy.
• Stark's War uses a variant in which the intent is not so much to expose the villain as to disassociate the hero from him. The General who Stark's mutiny overthrew suggests a We Can Rule Together arrangement could be reached in which Stark sets up a few of his comrades as scapegoats. Stark doesn't know that his eloquent, vehement refusal was being recoded and spread around, leaving his fellow mutineers convinced of his integrity and therefore willing draft him as leader, which is what Stark's friends wanted.
• In one Star Trek: New Frontier novel, Captain Mackenzie Calhoun defeats an evil alien leader this way. In response to her attempt to extort him with the lives of Federation refugee hostages, he launched torpedoes at her world's capital city. Then he begs her to stand down and asks if she cares one bit about her people. She sneers "no". At the last second Calhoun aborts the attack. Calhoun promptly broadcasted a recording of the last few minutes across the planet — particularly the part with the villainess willing to gamble with the lives of her people. Almost immediately an angry mob tears her and her accomplices apart.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • During Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, Princess Leia gets to do this to Smug Snake Borsk Fey'lya—the ship they're in goes to arrest Han, Luke, and Rogue Squadron, and when an Imperial Star Destroyer shows up and the Rogues start flying cover, Fey'lya's ship and escorts go to abandon them and flee, nominally to get back and warn the Republic. Leia, at the covert suggestion of smuggler Talon Karrde (who had provided the location of the objective that Han & co. were going for), quietly turns on the ship's intercom and outgoing communications, then goads Fey'lya into admitting that the only use soldiers could have to a politician is political power, and his political enemies are his enemies in truth—the people on his ship and flying as his escort are his most ardent supporters; fleeing and letting his "enemies" die can only benefit him. Fey'lya's supporters promptly turn on him, and turn back to save the others.
  • In Zahn's Choices of One, Thrawn goads his nemesis Nuso Esva into revealing his true opinion of two other systems that have aligned with him. On an open comm channel. That Thrawn is rebroadcasting to those systems.

    Nuso Esva: I imagine you would delight in telling them. Not that they would believe you.
    Thrawn: There’s no need for them to believe me. They can hear it from your own mouth. In fact, they’re hearing it right now.

• In "Gone Too Far", a Transformers: TransTech text story, our heroes manage to use this to their advantage. It's unwise to admit you framed someone for murder when they're a communications 'bot who records everything they hear.
  • And in the Transformers: Shattered Glass story "Blitzwing Bop", Soundwave tricks Blaster into confessing a crime in front of a Cybertronian officer.

• Allison Danger stole the key card to rival Lexie Fyfe's hotel room to obtain video evidence Fyfe had previously volunteered to face Portia Perez when it was revealed she only had one SHIMMER match left.

• In the finale of Old Harry's Game Season 6, Satan engineers Rosemary's confession to Edith's murder ... live on Radio 4's Today programme.
• At the climax of the Radio 4 Afternoon Play Camberwell Green, Vincent is ranting that he has perfectly framed bus controller Marilyn and her husband, former bus mechanic Steve for robbery and a revenge attack on the bus network, and once they're dead everyone will believe it. Marilyn points out that her radio is on and every driver has just heard this.
• The Lone Ranger loves this tactic. Since he has no actual legal authority to arrest anyone, he often talks the sheriff or marshal into waiting within earshot but out of sight while whatever plan he's created to get the villain to confess plays out. That way the sheriff can hear the confession and arrest the guilty party.

• In Tartuffe, the titular character has been hitting on his host's wife, but when she tries to tell her husband, he refuses to believe her. So instead, she talks him into hiding under the table while she talks with Tartuffe. This has the desired effect.

• Ace Attorney:
  • In the final case of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney you put all of the clues together and they point to Kristoph Gavin, who gloats because they don't believe the evidence to be strong enough to convict them, and they believe that's the only way you'll be able to save the defendant... then they're reminded that the trial is the first one in which a jury gets to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and the defence believes that they've given the jury enough reasonable doubt. This cues the start of a Villainous Breakdown as the guilty party rants, raves, and insults the members of the jury...who are all watching, live.
  • In the final case of The Great Ace Attorney duology, the Big Bad is taken down by a variant; only one person outside the courtroom (and there's no jury because it's a closed trial) sees his attempt to cover up him using his position as Lord Chief Justice to orchestrate a series of murders, but that one is enough since it's Queen Victoria (watching from Buckingham Palace as Sholmes was secretly broadcasting the trial to her) who outranks him and is having absolutely none of his attempts to abuse his authority to get away with murder. This cues that start of a truly spectacular Villainous Breakdown which ends with the villain covered in soot and ash.
  • Ace Attorney has played with this trope before as well, by having a number of killers engineers a public confession for someone else, by confessing themselves while in disguise. For example, Florent L'Belle, the killer of case 5-2, told the defendant's daughter "I killed alderman Rex Kyubi." Due to extremely complex and elaborate reasons involving the etiquette of masked wrestling, L'Belle was able to trick her into thinking he was her father, despite looking and sounding nothing alike.
• In Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game, Marty does this to Edna Strickland to expose her as the speakeasy arsonist.
• Dishonored has this as an option to deal with the Big Bad non-lethally. Corvo can find and steal a recording of what ends up being his final target, wherein Lord Regent Hiram Burrows confesses that he intentionally brought the rat plague to Dunwall in an attempt to Kill the Poor. The reason he recorded such a confession is that Burrows had an obsession with order and control, resulting in a need to confess what he had done. The guards promptly find the confessor and arrest him.
• Fallout: should you want to help Killian Darkwater in Junktown to gather evidences on Gizmo, you could offer your services to Gizmo as an assassin to kill Killian. While wearing a hidden tape recorder on you of course! And coming back with the evidence.
• Appears in Full Throttle, in a variation: you're not getting the Big Bad to admit to killing Malcolm Corley, but rather showing pictures of him doing just that. For additional hilarity, these pictures are shown while the Big Bad is trying to tell people just how much he loved Malcolm.
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker: The Industrial Action mission at the end of the game's story sees an unintended example, in that the confession in question was never actively sought; the purpose of completely wrecking the vessel of the day and utterly ruining any salvage value of it was to protest the company's policies and cow Hal into negotiating once he understood no matter how much the shipbreakers were abused all profit LYNX could make was still up to them. But when Hal's reaction is a complete meltdown where he charges everyone with extra debt and threatens them with increasingly horrific punishments, culminating in nearly having a salvager Killed Off for Real when he deletes his backup at the worst moment... well, all communications in the salvage station are recorded, and leaking the whole convo to the press and public is easy enough.
• This is one way to kill Marco Abiatti in Hitman (2016). If 47 sabotages the stage, Abiatti will lose his temper and rant about what he really wants to do with the town of Sapienza. Turning on a microphone will ensure that Sapienza's people hear this. When he gets on stage to try to defuse the situation, 47 can fatally electrocute him.
• Pecker managed to do this to Mizo at the end of Jak X: Combat Racing, using one of the floating cameras that came with his job as race commentator.
• Subverted in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's in-game novel: "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth". Nastasha Romanenko and Richard Ames kept Snake's Codec on at all times for them to observe the mission, as well as recording various Codec conversations, including Master Miller/Liquid Snake's conversations with Snake. However, Liquid later reveals to them that he actually knew all along that they were recording everything he and the others stated, yet allowed it to happen anyway.
• The Infocom Interactive Fiction Adventure Game A Mind Forever Voyaging ends this way.
• Policenauts has Gates Becker's recorded "confession" at the end of the game.
• In Jet Li's Rise To Honor, Li's character Kit Yun had a suspicion that his Hong Kong Police Force supervising officer, Victor, was responsible for the death of his childhood friend's father, and was in league with the game's villain, Kwan. Kit's suspicions have been risen when Victor shoots Kwan after Kit has defeated the latter in hand-to-hand combat. While paying respects to the childhood friend's father's grave, his suspicions were proven correct, but Kit was smart enough to have Victor's confession recorded on an audiotape before arresting him.
• StarCraft II: This Engineered Public Confession was brought to you by Raynor's Raiders:

  "...these shocking revelations..." "...veritable firestorm of anti-Mengsk sentiment..."
  Donny Vermillion: The Emperor held a press conference earlier today.
  "Emperor, how do you respond to these allegations of genocide?! Of using aliens to-"
  Arcturus: I assure you these slanderous attacks against the throne are baseless and irresponsible!
  Kate Lockwell: Emperor, do you still stand by the sentiment that selfless devotion to the people is the basis of your rule?
  Arcturus: But of course. I was called upon to serve the greater interests of humanity! Personal power was never my goal.
  Kate Lockwell: Then how would you characterize this statement? (click)
  Recording: "I will not be stopped. Not by you or the Confederates or the Protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me!"
  (multiple camera flashes almost blind Arcturus Mengsk)
  Arcturus: I-I won't stand for this... do you jackals think you can come in here and question me?! THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER! (pushes interview booth, walks away)

• The end of Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom is an interactive fiction segment where you must trick the Big Bad into forgetting about the crowd in front of him and doing this.
• The climax of XCOM 2 sees you hijack the ADVENT Speaker's New Era Speech by replacing the uplifting propaganda footage displaying on the screens behind him with footage of the atrocities ADVENT has been visiting on humans living outside their control and the horrific genocidal experiments they've been conducting on mankind as part of the Avatar Project, creating a darkly ironic contrast with his words. It takes him a while to turn around and see what's being displayed, and unsurprisingly the crowd he's addressing riots as the global uprising begins.

  Speaker: ADVENT peacekeeping forces are traveling across the world carrying the greatest gift from the elders. (Scenes of refugee camps being attacked and people slaughtered in brutal crackdown attacks.) A revolutionary gene therapy, yes. But so much more. (Footage of humans being processed into green slurry, packaged into cryopods and experimented on, pools filled with corpses and hordes of hybrid ADVENT clone soldiers being mass-produced.) This is an end to disease. To decay. To pain. The beginnings of a new tomorrow. Available to all of us. Today. Truly humanity finally takes its rightful place among the stars. (The Speaker finally notices the crowd's growing distress and turns around to look at the screens, shortly before they rush the stage.)

• Groom: William records his father admitting that he amassed his business fortune by cheating.
• Manga-Waido:
  • The girl who stole my ex-BF came to my wedding to stir things up…: Saho entered Ayumi's dressing room and gloated about having doctored both her picture sleeping with Sora and a photo of Ayumi cheating on him and even announced she was pregnant with his baby to rub it in. Much to Saho's dismay, Ayumi laughs it off and reveals she has been recording her the whole time. After showing the guests said recording, Sora verbally assaulted Saho for tricking him and eventually divorced her when he realized the baby wasn't even his.
  • My girlfriend falls onto the ground with a red arm as a lady screams at her!: Fuyuki defended Aya from a beachside café waitress as the latter assaulted her and accused her of stealing her older sister's husband. While Aya convinced Fuyuki to not believe what the waitress said, the latter tells Fuyuki to listen to a recording of her conversation with Aya on her phone.

    Waitress: So you knew that he was married but you went and seduced him, yeah?
    Aya: Because he said that he'll increase my salary if I go out with him! It's not my fault I seduced him so I'm not wrong!
    Waitress: It's all your fault that my sister is crying everyday!
    Aya: So what? Kazuya picked me over your sister because she wasn't as attractive as I am!
    It's all her fault for being ugly and introverted! I paid the alimony so stop bothering me! [Ugh,] You two sisters are so annoying!

• Red vs. Blue: The Chorus Trilogy: Knowing that Felix loves to gloat, Tucker picks a fight he knows he can't win and baits him into bragging how he and Locus have been manipulating the Rebels and Feds into an unending civil war on Chorus with his helmet cam. Which Church/Epsilon then broadcasts to the Capital for everyone to see and hear.
• "Fairest Of Them All", the third episode of Star Trek Continues and a direct sequel to "Mirror Mirror" set entirely in the Mirror Universe, ends with this gambit. Kirk, enraged at Spock's mutiny against him, rants that his crew are nothing but pawns to be used and sacrificed for his own enrichment. Spock simply steps away from the wall, revealing that the communications panel was turned on and that the entire crew heard his rant.
• Youth & Consequences: During the Student Council President election, Farrah takes out one of the candidates, Hope out of the race by playing an incriminating part of an earlier conversation during one of Hope's speeches.

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: In "Dog Food Day Afternoon", in order to prove that Cruella is putting sawdust in her dog food and selling it to the public, the pups steal Cruella's tape recorder in which she recorded herself admitting to the deception and playing it on the loudspeakers at the fair.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Pact", Principal Brown asks Gumball to "take care" of Miss Simian's halitosis, in exchange for telling Penny about her annoying laughter. When Gumball gets detention for telling Miss Simian about her bad breath, Principal Brown reneges on his end of the deal, and Gumball haunts Principal Brown through a series of Nightmare Fuel hallucinations, threatening to spill the beans about Principal Brown putting him up to the task. Subverted when Principal Brown records Gumball's attacking the principal's office on the surveillance camera, then double subverted when Principal Brown blurts out his master plan and confesses how Gumball feels about Penny's annoying laughter as well as Miss Simian's paint-peeling halitosis, with Penny and Miss Simian walking in to hear the conversation in an awkward Oh, Crap! moment for Gumball and Principal Brown.
• Spoofed in an episode of American Dad!, where school announcement readers getting Drunk with Power, tricked into making an Engineered Public Confession, and losing their position is apparently a regular occurrence. Each one lasts even less time than his predecessor: Steve goes through this in a few days, then his friend Snot goes through it in one day, then their friend Barry snaps the second he sits down at the desk. And then the principal talks about his time as a cocaine dealer who had sex with little girls mere moments after kicking Barry out.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Deliberately inverting this trope with a confession she knows will be overheard by the Secret Police is how Azula worms her way into Long Feng's trust. Too bad for him that what she confesses is only half her plan.
• A variation occurs in the Batman Beyond episode "Ascension". Derek Powers intends to "retire" and place his son as his replacement so he can act behind the scenes. Unfortunately for him, his son has other plans and engineers a media circus with complaints about his polluting his stationed country's water supply, getting his father angry enough to disintegrate the skin grafts used to contain his mutated form, Blight, on live TV, which meant everybody (including Batman) now knows who the radioactive guy who was committing various crimes is.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • In "Almost Got 'Im", Batman finally reveals himself to the supervillains he has been listening to in a bar as Croc in disguise. They aim their weapons and note he's never getting out of the bar alive. However, seemingly every other patron and staff of the bar produces a weapon; they were actually all cops in disguise, including Commissioner Gordon and Det. Harvey Bullock, and were waiting for Batman to give the signal to arrest them once Joker blabbed about where he was keeping Catwoman hostage.
  • In "Riddler's Reform", Batman has just escaped a death trap set by Riddler, who's desperate to learn how he escaped — desperate enough to offer to confess his crimes. Rather than accepting the deal, Batman reveals that he has tricked Riddler into broadcasting the confession. Batman gets bonus points for using the same trick Riddler had previously used to humiliate him and a device Riddler invented.
• The Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode "War and Peace and War" has Buzz do this to Guzelian, who reveals that he tricked everyone into making peace with each other so that they'd be defenseless against his people's invasion. Buzz makes Guzelian's confession public by activating the villain's hologram projector while he's talking, allowing everyone he deceived to hear him admit the truth behind his agenda.
• The Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "Jail House Flock" has Hoggish Greedly's henchman Rigger tricked into confessing that his boss has no intention to replace the wetlands his construction project will destroy like he was made to promise, and that the crooks had Captain Planet and the Planeteers arrested under false pretenses... completely unaware that his every word is heard via a speaker in the courtroom during Captain Planet and the Planeteers' trial. Greedly escapes before Captain Planet slows him down while Rigger is arrested moments after setting foot into the courtroom.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: After the fiasco with Gallagher Elementary School's former fourth grade class president, the episode "Operation: E.L.E.C.T.I.O.N.S." has the Delightful Children from Down the Lane cheating in the election and becoming the new president as part of an Evil Plan to betray their school, turning the grades against each other so that the middle school which former KND operative Chad/Numbuh 274 attends can easily take over and they'll be promoted to the eighth grade. They say this plan out loud when it nears fruition, and as they finish, they look out the balcony to see the students looking angrily at them. The Delightful Children then turn around to see that Numbuh One had the PA button held down the whole time. As a result of their betrayal to Gallagher, the Delightful Children are automatically impeached, removed from office and sent to detention and Gallagher wins the war against the middle school.
• Spoofed in Drawn Together. Spanky Ham and Captain Hero are abusing a superhero-versus-villain gambling book, with Spanky Ham betting thousands of dollars for the monster and Captain Hero deliberately failing very miserably, when Captain Hero is overcome by greed and decides to do it himself. Spanky Ham then retaliates by recording Captain Hero confessing his actions... with an incredibly obvious recorder hanging from his neck and asking the most revealing questions he could think of. Captain Hero decides that since the whole thing looks suspicious, he's going to tell him everything in great detail.
• DuckTales (2017): In "The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!", Louie tricks the vendor who conned Launchpad into admitting that "Ice Fever" is made up, right in front of his latest (now dissatisfied) customers.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • "The Switch Glitch" has Vicky Quote Mining Timmy using two separate recordings, and then Timmy does it back after turning her into a child pertaining to her stealing from her mom's purse. When Cosmo and Wanda are reassigned to Vicky, Timmy later plays a recording of Vicky saying she's happy and doesn't need the fairies anymore; this time, it's one full recording all the way through.
  • "Micro Phony" has Vicky and Timmy trying to frame each other over the use of a special voice-changing microphone and a pirate radio station. While Vicky uses a radio advertisement to manipulate the town's parents into leaving their kids with her so she can torture them, Timmy uses the microphone to make the parents spend more time with their kids until Cosmo stupidly lures Vicky to Timmy's radio station, where she discovers his scheme. When pissed-off FCC agents show up, Timmy simply raises the microphone to Vicky while she rants, causing the agents to believe that she ran the illegal radio station. Jail time!
• In the Family Guy episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea", Lois tries to uncover insurance fraud by hiding her friends in the room and getting the villain to confess. He does, but the friends aren't there. Sanford and Son actor Demond Wilson is, but he didn't count. Fortunately, the insurance agent is hiding in the closet... with Demond.
• In the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Frightful", Reed tricks his Evil Counterpart, the Wizard, into confessing that he framed the Human Torch for setting a warehouse on fire, he never really cared about protecting the city, and he was just suckering the public as part of a plan to steal Reed’s unstable molecules.
• Fillmore!:
  • Done twice in "A Forgotten Yesterday".
    • The first time has Fillmore getting Rudy to reveal where he hid the stolen ledger with the term paper discs just by simply asking him... in his sleep.
    • The second time has Fillmore making Sonny think he stole the ledger from Rudy and will now go down for it if caught or going to the Safety Patrol to finger Sonny for coming after him and then setting him up with the fake hall passes and taking the ledger for him to then take as his own. It turns out Fillmore discovered that Sonny used the phone he gave him to call the Student Council and turn him in for the hall passes (which he hadn't done in the first place) and not only got a warrant for the ledger from Student Council but is wearing a wire that has recorded Sonny revealing his involvement in everything.
  • Also done to the corrupt chief commissioner in "South of Friendship, North of Honor".
• In the Futurama episode "A Head in the Polls", Richard Nixon rants about his plans for Earth after he is elected — in front of Bender, a robot with a tape recorder in his head. Subverted when he gives Nixon the tape in exchange for his old body, allowing him to win the election.
• The Galaxy Trio: The episode "The Battle of the Aquatrons" has the self-proclaimed emperor Lotar being taken down this way. Lotar has overthrown his brother Neptar, the rightful ruler of the planet Aqueous, and taken over. The Galaxy Trio free Neptar, who then turns on the video communicator in Lotar's throne room. The Galaxy Trio talk Lotar into admitting that the welfare of the people of Aqueous is of no concern to him and that he thinks they'll follow him blindly. When the public hears this, they turn against Notar, and he flees.
• Garfield:
  • The Garfield and Friends episode "Supermarket Mania" ends with this. When Jon was confronting Mr. Bagget, the head of the Food Monster Supermarket, about the expensive prices of his products, Mr. Bagget admits that he deliberately made the items more expensive as a means of making himself filthy rich, and that he wants to drive Gramp’s Market out of business because the latter offers fresher food at far more reasonable prices. Unbeknownst to him, Garfield, who he had been chasing moments before, used one of his store microphones to broadcast everything he said to Jon throughout the whole store. The customers immediately leave the store, dooming the Food Monster to bankruptcy.
  • The Garfield Show:
    • In one episode, Garfield gets sent to a professional pet trainer who turns out to be a fraud. After purposefully misbehaving during the demonstration that's supposed to show how well-behaved he is, he gets dragged backstage and reprimanded by the "trainer" for not playing along... except Garfield managed to grab a mic from the stage beforehand, which he uses to reveal his scam to the audience.
    • In a later episode, Garfield tries to get a refund on the worthless stuff he, Jon, and Odie bought on a shopping channel, since the commercial promised a refund to anyone who wasn’t satisfied with their purchase, but instead, security just laughs at him and chases him out of the building. In retaliation, he uses a futuristic-looking tape recorder to record a conversation between the channel owner, Mama Meany, and his salesman where they confess that everything they sell is garbage, and Mama Meany says that his customers are stupid and he’ll never give any of them a refund; when they try to use the tape recorder later during a live demonstration, it replays their conversation, ultimately leading to the police forcing Mama Meany to give full refunds to anyone who bought stuff from his channel, and the channel going off the air.
    • The "Lasagna Tree" special ends with Mama Meany having his reputation plummet when Garfield uses Eddie Gourmand's robotic cameraman to record Mama Meany gloating about making his fortune through cheaply-made and horrible-tasting substitutes to real food as well as calling his customers idiots for continuing to fall for his scam. This gets broadcasted throughout the entire world and results in Mama Meany going out of business.
• In one episode of Gargoyles, Elisa tries this on Fox in order to prove to her brother Derek that Xanatos is up to no good as usual. Fox gloats about Xanatos having trapped Derek, and that there was nothing Elisa could do about it. Elisa had the whole thing recorded and had intended to play it all for Derek but then decided to just give him the recording and let him play it on his own. He didn't.
• Justice League: "Injustice for All" begins with a triumphant Kryptonite-wielding Lex Luthor standing over the fallen Superman. Lex confesses to smuggling weapons and selling them to terrorists. It turns out that it isn't really Superman, but J'onn J'onzz in disguise, and Batman and Green Lantern have been listening the whole time. Whoops.
• In one episode of The Mask: Animated Series, Peggy tricks a southern Colonel into confessing illegal toxic waste dumping without knowing that the confession is being displayed.
• In the Miraculous Ladybug episode "Silencer", the titular akuma goes after Bob Roth because he plagiarized his band and threatened his crush. After he's de-akumatized, Roth gloats about how he'll still get away with said plagiarism, then realizes that Chat Noir turned the cameras in the TV studio on him, broadcasting his rant to all of Paris.
  • In "Confrontation", Marinette replaces the mirror in the temporary bathroom with a one-way mirror and has Sabrina trick Lila and Chloé into revealing the whole plan, while the class and entire faculty watches in secret. This also has the bonus of exposing Lila's previous acts of truancy, extortion, forgery, abuse of power and conspiracy against Marinette to everyone who didn't believe the latter beforehand.

    Lila: What's your so-called proof, Sabrina? A microphone? A video? It doesn't matter. I'll come up with a new lie and people will believe me. I had everyone believing that Marinette pushed me down the stairs. I had everyone believing that I was halfway around the world so I wouldn't have to go to school. And if I wanted to, I could even convince your own father to put you in jail, and that's what's gonna happen if you don't hand over that proof!
    Sabrina: [Beat, then smirks] There was no proof. Well, until now!

• In the Mona the Vampire episode "The Vampire Hunter", the local Alpha Bitch Angela checks Mona's friends Charley and Lily with a metal detector (finding two tape recorders) when they try to record her admission of lying to Nicole about Mona being bad. Unfortunately for her, she forgot to check Mona's cat Fang, who also had a recorder.
• The My Life as a Teenage Robot episode "Labor Day" has Jenny land a job delivering breakfast cereal prizes for M.J. Bryce, who eventually manipulates Jenny into eliminating his competition and pressures her into stealing the holographic ring prize made by one of his competitors. Jenny exposes Bryce's underhandedness by recording the man admitting that he's willing to steal from his competition and having that recording play on the holographic ring prizes Bryce gives out at the assembly for his next cereal prize.
• Happens a few times in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the two-parter season 5 opener, "The Cutie Map", Starlight Glimmer has been running her town like a cult, magically removing the cutie marks (and associated special talents) of ponies in the name of equality. When it's revealed that Starlight hasn't removed her own cutie mark (instead covering it with makeup), the Mane Six arrange to have her splashed with water in front of the gathered townsponies, revealing her secret.
  • In The Mane Attraction", the famous pop star, Countess Coloratura, comes to Ponyville to do a charity concert, which the kind pop star is passionate about, but her selfish Jerkass manager, Svengallop, secretly demands that Pinkie Pie do errands for him, such as giving him 500 peeled, cored apples within 24 hours, or else he’ll cancel the charity concert. Svengallop's second instance of making demands of Pinkie and threatening to cancel the concert is observed by Twilight Sparkle, who then uses a spell to record it and show everyone else, including Countess Coloratura, who fires him.
  • In "Viva Las Pegasus", the ponies try to get Gladmane to reveal he has been manipulating all his employees, engineering a public confession that was intended to fail, thus putting him off his guard and getting a real confession out of him behind closed doors. Thanks to a handy intercom, his secret Evil Gloating is made public.
• NASCAR Racers: Stunts tricks Rexton into giving one at the end of the second season by hiding a camera in his helmet.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Prankster", Superman knows that the Prankster has committed two counts of disturbing the peace but can't legally prove it (no witnesses or other evidence). He pulls multiple pranks on the Prankster and gets him so angry that he confesses to the crimes, after which Superman pulls out a microphone and tape recorder that he used to get the confession Caught on Tape.
• Rugrats:
  • In "The Trial", when Tommy's clown lamp mysteriously breaks, the Rugrats hold a faux court trial to see who was the one who broke the lamp, with Angelica as the prosecutor. As the episode culminates, it's revealed that Angelica was the culprit after the babies realize that Angelica was supposed to be taking a nap when the lamp broke in the first place, yet SOMEHOW knew what all the babies were doing at the same time. In her usual demeanor, Angelica gloats about the whole thing being her doing and that the babies couldn't do anything about since they're babies. Unfortunately for her, Didi and Betty were in the other room, listening the whole time...
  • "Angelica Orders Out" sees Angelica, due to not liking healthy food and wanting other things, using a prototype voice changer that her uncle invented to get several things, such as sweets, a Cynthia dollhouse (that her father promised to get if she was well behaved), and staging a fake surprise party for her. When Tommy's parents come home, about to take away Grandpa Lou's teeth (they threatened to do so if he didn't supervise the kids), Angelica attempts to keep the truth from coming out, until Tommy activates the voice changer and places it right near her mouth while she is speaking, causing them to realize just how Angelica managed to trick them big time. Needless to say, she has to eat the stuff (specifically flan, which she doesn't like) she ordered as punishment, and Stu puts away the voice changer in his safe, stating that some things were better off not being invented.
  • In "The Word of the Day", Angelica, while backstage at her favorite kids show, was nominated as one of the new on-stage kids, and she and the other nominees listened in on the show host's conversation with her second-in-command, about her audience, and she overheard her say the secret word, and was the only one who actually heard it. She then won, and she also thought she won due to hearing the secret word (which is implied to be a very, very dirty cuss word, due to various placements of cutoffs with a person honking his horn or someone jackhammering, or in the case of her repeating the word to her mom, a very loud anguished scream being heard in the distance), her parents, after initially grounding her, eventually allow her to go to the backstage showing of the show, under the condition that she not say the word. In her usual manners, she manages to trick the show hostess by making her lose control of her temper to utter that exact swear word on the air, to the shock of all watching, and Angelica then states that she proved that she did actually say it. The show hostess was later fired and replaced with her second-in-command.
• Rugrats (2021): In "Lady De-Clutter", Didi hires the titular character to help de-clutter and organize her house. However, Lady De-Clutter ends up taking a lot more than Didi had intended, including stuff that she and the rest of her family still need and/or want to keep (like Didi's supplies for her arts-and-crafts projects, Stu's videogames and even the family's toaster). Amidst the chaos, Tommy accidentally loses his toy screwdriver, and it ends up in Lady De-Clutter's possession, so he goes into her truck to get it back, using a pair of baby monitors as a pair of walkie-talkies so he can communicate with his friends. While onboard the truck, the grownups discover (via the baby monitors) that Lady De-Clutter's actually a con artist who takes other people's belongings to sell them on the internet. When Lady De-Clutter calls someone on her cell phone telling them this, which Didi and the other adults happen to overhear—the kids' parents ultimately have Lady De-Clutter arrested and get their things back.
• Sabrina: The Animated Series: In the episode Documagicary, the villain makes sure that none of Sabrina's first attempt to do this works, only to find out that she had Salem jack into their signal to broadcast the confession on a separate camera.
• The Simpsons: In "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington", the FBI runs a sting operation to trick Corrupt Politician Bob Arnold into accepting a bribe to allow drilling on Mount Rushmore.
• In the Sitting Ducks episode "Gonna Getcha Gator", Drill Sergeant Duck seeks to win the Outstanding Sergeant of the Year Award and hopes to do so by arresting an alligator. As expected, her target is Aldo, who hasn't even done anything wrong, but while Drill Sergeant Duck attempts to entrap him into doing something arrestable, Bill and Aldo, after having recently watched a martial arts action movie, always manage to stay a step ahead of her and both these instances end with their friends being arrested instead: first, it's Ed, Oly and Waddle for reckless driving into a dry cleaner (DSD hoped Aldo would run through a crosswalk by not seeing the sign after she splashed mud on it with her police scooter, but Bill pointed it out in time), then Bev for stealing a scooter (DSD ripped off the "test drive" part of the sign reading "take this scooter for a test drive free", but Bill pointed out the rips on the sign). Finally, when Aldo accidentally flicks his tail into Fred, causing him to bump into her, both are arrested. When Bill finds out why Drill Sergeant Duck wanted Aldo arrested in the first place, he makes sure the radio on her police scooter is active so he can trick her into admitting what she did and the chief hears everything; Drill Sergeant Duck, as a result, loses her award and receives disciplinary action for her actions and everyone she wrongly imprisoned is freed.
• South Park: In "The Ring", Kyle turns on the microphone backstage at a Jonas Brothers concert, causing a live world-broadcast of the confession of a long-term plan to exploit the purported myopia of devout Christians by secretly selling sex to girls under the guise of good, clean, family-friendly entertainment. And just for that extra kicker, the person he engineers this confession from is Mickey Mouse, whom Cartman ends up exposing to the audience by pressing the curtain controls to raise the stage curtains. Didn't quite work, as Mickey was so powerfully homicidal that the world just knuckled under to him, waiting until his rage was spent and he went back to Valhalla to slumber and feed.
• The Static Shock episode "Replay" had the titular villain use an energy duplicate of Static to frame the hero for various crimes. His scheme is exposed when Richie films and broadcasts the villain gloating about his plan while Static fought his energy duplicate.
• Street Sharks: The Street Sharks finally manage to put a dent in Dr. Paradigm's credibility by forcing him to assume his Pirahnoid form on national television.
• In a variation, an episode of Superman: The Animated Series has Lois tricking a crooked cop to confess to framing a man on death row for his murder... with Superman right outside, using his super-hearing to get every detail. Subverted in that the detective doesn't actually confess to the murder at that point. He does throw nosy Lois over a stair railing several stories up.
• The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: Tweety engineers one in "Double Take", hovering over the bad guy's head with a microphone as he blabs his plan to Sylvester.
• Teamo Supremo: The team exposes a pop singer's anti-individuality stance as being created by her producer at her concert, by showing the concert-goers the producer saying so to the singer.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): In "Doomquest", April finally convinces the public of New York that Lord Dregg, not the Turtles, is the bad guy by showing a video of Dregg boasting to the Turtles that the world will be his and there's nothing they can do to stop him.
• Done twice in Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • First at the end of "Citizen Max" when Babs makes Max confess on camera (that's simultaneously being broadcast in front of the audience he's about to speak to) that he framed Buster to make it look like he stole the test answers.
  • Again in "Son of the Wacko World of Sports" when Buster films Bicycle Bob reading cue cards to make him admit his products are a rip-off. After he orders Buster to destroy the film, Buster responds that it's live.
• Transformers: Animated has a variation. Starscream tells the Autobots that it was him, not them, that offlined Megatron... either not knowing or not caring that he was being filmed by news drones. When Megatron came back online, he saw the news broadcast of Starscream's gloating. Needless to say, he was less than thrilled upon learning the truth.
• Tuca & Bertie: After Bertie chews out Pastry Pete for trying to ruin her own bakery business, Tuca reveals that she taped his threats to her using her phone. The two of them send the video to every woman in town, shutting Pastry Pete down for good.

• Roger Clemens tried to do this by secretly taping a phone conversation between former trainer Brian Mcnamee so that he would admit that Clemens did not take hGH; all it proved was that Mcnamee was either telling the truth or not a complete idiot.
• In 2006, Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány held a private speech telling his own colleagues in the Hungarian Socialist Party that they had lied to the people about the state of Hungary in order to win the elections, how they had done pretty much nothing in the previous four years, and how they "fucked up" and needed to get themselves together to make things work again. Once the recorded speech was leaked to the public, all hell broke loose as massive protests flooded the country, followed very quickly by the prime minister's resignation after being defeated in a vote of no confidence.
• A recording of (former) Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was leaked. In it, he discussed his plan to sell the Senate seat vacated by newly-elected President Barack Obama to the highest bidder. Later, he would apologize for swearing so violently in the tape. He would eventually be convicted of (among many other things) misuse of power and corruption.
  • Note that of Illinois' ten governors between World War II and Blagojevich's term, five were tried for corruption and four were convicted. Of them, Blagojevich was the only one to be impeached and removed from office (the others had all resigned before things got that far).
• Linda Tripp, as stated above, taped Lewinsky's confession. Though she caught a lot of flack for it, it should be noted that a previous Clinton mistress had confided in Tripp and when Tripp had to go public with it, she was smeared in the press, and poked fun at with regard to her weight as in the latter example because it was her word against the president's. Call it Crazy-Prepared, but it's not that crazy under the circumstances.
• Hugh Grant helped bring down the News of the World by secretly recording a meeting with one of their former paparazzi, who spilt the beans about the phone-hacking affair. Doubles as a Take That! and a Moment of Awesome for all the stick the British tabloids have given him.
• WikiLeaks and Anonymous seek to be the Internet version of this. In fact, the HB Gary Federal leak is a fitting example. Edward Snowden has also ventured into this territory. In 2016, the "Panama Papers" documents that exposed tax haven activity set records for the sheer amount of data involved.
• The "Teapot Tapes" in New Zealand. Ironically the politicians at the centre of it have accused the media of "News of the World"-style tactics. Initially it wasn't completely played straight - the tapes are in the hands of the police after the initial controversy and the cameraman who made the original recording is fighting for his reputation and bank balance in the courts. In early 2012, however, it was subsequently inverted when the recording was leaked onto the Internet.
  • Still in New Zealand, investigative journalist Nicky Hager's 2014 book, Dirty Politics, was sourced from secret correspondence of a controversial blogger given to him by a suspected hacker. To Hager's supporters, he's blown the whistle on corruption and dirty tricks; to his detractors, he's a recipient of stolen property. Subverted twice, however; firstly when the hacker who supplied the documents to Hager leaked further dirt on Twitter, only to go into hiding after legal threats from the controversial blogger loomed; secondly, Dirty Politics came right before a general election and was intended to influence the outcome, which didn't happen. Hager, however, insisted in a post-election essay that it was only the beginning, given the ongoing investigations being carried out, and his legal victory over the police detectives involved.
• A number of public racial abuse incidents have been caught on smartphones. In the words of Will Smith, "racism isn't getting worse, it's getting filmed."
• The British Holocaust denier David Irving holds the unusual achievement of self-engineering his confession. When the Jewish-American historian Deborah Lipstadt wrote in her book Denying the Holocaust that he was a Holocaust denier and had deliberately falsified historical evidence, he sued her for libel. Unfortunately for him, Lipstadt's lawyers asked Richard J. Evans, one of the finest historians in Britain (if not the whole world) and a team of experts to go through Irving's work with a fine-tooth comb and found that it was patently obvious that he had lied and cheated in order to show Nazism in a better light. His personal diary also revealed numerous instances of anti-Semitic and racist screeds, which he wrote down and freely let them have, seemingly not thinking they would manage to get through it all. At the end of a humiliating trial (ironic, because Irving had hoped to humiliate and financially ruin Lipstadt by suing her in the first place), he accidentally addressed the judge as "Mein Führer." Hilarity, and a well-deserved comeuppance, ensued. He had to declare bankruptcy after the court ordered Irving to pay Lipstadt's fees for the suit.
• The infamous video of 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (not knowing that he was being recorded) saying that 47 percent of US citizens don't pay taxes and he wouldn't bother trying to sway them to his side. Romney, of course, lost the election, and only ended up receiving... wait for it... 47 percent of the popular vote.
• Defied by the Illinois Eavesdropping Act. Attempting to catch corrupt officers through recording them was made a felony. Courts have responded in various ways to challenges to the law, ultimately resulting in the law being declared unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court.
• The "Mister Big" sting used by Canadian law enforcement (where it is legal, unlike in the US) creates this situation. If the police are confident they know who the murderer is but don't have enough evidence to be confident of a conviction, they set up an elaborate operation where an undercover officer will befriend the suspect and gradually convince the suspect that the undercover is a member of some organized crime group, eventually leading to the suspect witnessing supposed crimes and sometimes becoming a participant in them, all faked and staged by the authorities. If it works, they reach a point where the suspect wants in on the operation and is taken to meet the boss ("Mr. Big"). The suspect is told that the only way into the organization is to prove they won't lie to the Boss and the way they can prove that is to reveal details about the murder, with the Boss insinuating that he already knows all about it and won't tolerate being lied to. Ideally, the suspect then confesses to the crime (while being secretly recorded) and reveals things only the real killer could know, and sometimes more evidence the police didn't know about.
• The greatest of them all is now accepted to be apocryphal - children's radio host "Uncle Don" who supposedly signed off (on a still live microphone) with "Well, that should hold the little bastards." In Poland, an urban legend has it that a radio host finished his teddy bear show in a similar fashion, stating "And now, dear children, you can kiss the bear's ass goodbye."
• In 2020, online clothing retailer Teezyli was stealing artwork and selling it on their merchandise. The internet figured out that an algorithm was collecting these artworks based on comments saying things along the lines of "I would love this on a shirt". They began baiting the algorithm by spamming those comments on images warning people about the art theft, along with things like copyrighted characters begging to be sued, and soon enough, their store page was flooded with automatically-generated shirts proudly bearing these admissions of theft◊.