Eat the Evidence: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** But the ultimate example is the "Ukyo's Secret Sauce" story where, when confessing that he (accidentally) ruined Ukyo's personal sauce that she has been aging for ten years failed to cause the whole mess to subside (Ukyo jumped to the conclusion that Akane forced Ranma to claim it, so it made things ''worse''), Ranma gulps down the ''whole cask'', and almost dies from it. Note that this was less to hide how terrible it tasted from her (she was the first person to find out), but more from desperation to [[Reset Button|return things to the way they were]], so that [[Status Quo Is God|he wouldn't have to reveal whether he loved Akane or Ukyo better]]. Before that, he devoured every okonomiyaki that Ukyo made with it, but that was to protect her from [[Masochist's Meal|eating them out of pride]], and potentially making herself terribly sick.

* One chapter of ''[[Franken Fran]]'' had a man attempt to serve his murdered daughter to the guests at her birthday dinner. Unfortunately, Fran instantly recognized the human meat for what it was, being a surgeon.

* Used in ''[[K-On!]]'' when the club is allowed to sell their teacher's guitar, Ritsu attempts to keep most of the money for the girls by telling her it sold for much less than what was paid. The teacher then asks for the receipt, which has the real amount on it. Ritsu tries to eat the receipt before finally handing it over.

** As seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY7NDLqF6Io&feature=related here.]

** In fact, the game ''Concrete Jungle'' explored what would happen if he didn't get rid of the evidence. It wasn't pretty.

* When a car full of college kids gets pulled over in ''[[Super Troopers]]'', one of them is forced to eat a bag of pot before the cops get close enough to see it. And then a bag of shrooms... The one tasked with eating it all was very reluctant, but the guy the drugs belonged to still insisted the eater pay him back after the fact.

* In [[Robert Altman]]'s ''[[Cookie's Fortune]]'', Glenn Close's character eats "Cookie"'s suicide note to make her suicide look like murder.

* In Danish film ''The Green Butchers'' (''De grønne slagtere'') by Anders Thomas Jensen, two butchers accidentally kill a man and sell the meat to hide the evidence. It ends up being very popular...

* In the famous [[Roald Dahl]] story ''Lamb to the Slaughter'' (filmed as an episode of ''[[Alfred Hitchcock Presents]]''), a woman beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, and feeds it to the detectives who investigate.

** This becomes a [[Running Gag]] in ''[[How Not to Write A Novel]]''.

* In the short story ''Two Bottles of Relish'' by [[Lord Dunsany]], a man uses the title items to help dispose of the corpse of the person he murdered. He also cuts down ten trees and chops them into logs, solely (as the last line of the story informs us), "in order to get an appetite."

* ''[[Thieves' World]]'' short story ''Blood Brothers''. After One-Thumb paralyzes a drug dealer, he slices him up and feeds him to his dogs.

* Dharma eats a court deposition in an episode of ''[[Dharma and Greg]]'', but ends up in jail for destroying evidence.

* In an episode of ''[[Green Wing]]'', Martin steals his girlfriend's phone out of her bag in order to erase a voice mail message. So that she doesn't see the phone, he decides to hide it...in his mouth. Somehow she fails to notice this and starts kissing him, causing him to swallow the phone whole. It's probably worth mentioning that the phone was not unusually small, and occupied most of the inside of his mouth.

* Alan Partridge does a bit about this in one episode of ''[[I'm Alan Partridge]]''.

* The last episode of ''[[Jonathan Creek]]'' features the theft of a porcelain idol in front of about twenty people - it turns out that it had previously been switched with an edible duplicate and scoffed. Unfortunately for the thieves, {{spoiler|the one who ate it happened to be allergic to one of the food colourings used on it}}.

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]:''

** In the episode "Dead Things," Warren kills Katrina, then suggests the Trio summon a demon large enough to devour her corpse. (Andrew points out that the only thing he can think of that could do that, would go for them too.)

* Not quite evidence, but in an old episode of ''[[Police Story]]'', a patrol officer, dealing with a motorist he pulled over ranting that he played golf with the Lt. Mayor and would have his job, walked over to his patrol car, pulled out his lunch box's jar of peanut butter, spread some on the motorist's (then just paper) licence, and ate it, challenging the motorist to tell the Lt. Mayor that. At the end of the episode, his sergeant is laughingly telling the officer about this call he got from the Lt. Mayor's office.

'''Bashir''': "...You're joking."

'''Garak''': "Yes doctor, I am." }}

{{quote|'''Jeremy Clarkson''': [''waving the chewed card''] Look what he's done. He's eaten it.

'''James May''': [''calmly''] Hamsters eat cardboard. }}

** Another episode had a woman chopping up her victims' organs in a blender and eating them

* As mentioned above, the "Lamb to the Slaughter" episode of ''[[Alfred Hitchcock Presents]]''.

* An episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' involves Lister and Rimmer having to finish off two huge jugs of moonshine in 10 minutes.

{{quote|'''Troy:''' Maybe nobody took it. Sometimes I think I lost something really important to me, and it turns out I already ate it.}}

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* A 1994 sequence in ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' involved some friends of Elizabeth trying to get her hooked up with Anthony (who liked her but was too shy to say so) by writing a fake note that claimed to be from Elizabeth to Anthony. When the note was discovered by a teacher, taken away and then returned to Anthony at the end of the class (still unread), one of the friends, Dawn, grabbed the note and ate it to avoid embarrassment for everybody involved. Elizabeth and Anthony still ended up getting together, and many years later (after various intervening twists and turns) got married.

* In one ''[[Dilbert]]'' strip, Mordack the Denier eats Wally's requisition form for a new computer (in front of him) and says "We lost the paperwork." Wally responds by holding up a giant stack and saying "Good thing I made 75 more copies."

 

* In the first case of "Trials and Tribulations" ''[[Phoenix Wright]]'', a suspect eats {{spoiler|a small glass bottle with poison that his girlfriend used to poison an attorney. He also ate the large gold necklace it was attached to. It was too big to swallow, so he chewed it up into pieces first.}}

** {{spoiler|The bottle was empty. It had been used for carrying poison previously, but there wasn't enough to hurt him.}} Also the shards of glass were apparently not a problem.

* Parodied in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'', upon decoding the Cobb's Knob map:

{{quote|You memorize the location of the door, then eat both the map and the encryption key. For no particular reason, really, it just seemed like a cool spy thing to do. }}

* An episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' has the kids being read various historical stories. When they gets to the end of the tale of Joan of Arc, Marge interrupts just before the burning, makes up a [[Happily Ever After]] ending, then tears out the last page and eats it, remarking "It's easier to swallow than that ''[[Bambi]]'' tape."

* Fritz has the hilariously stupid idea of eating a peace treaty that he doesn't want to happen in ''[[Princess Sissi]]''.

* Lo attempts to do this in an episode of ''[[Stoked]]!'', but spits out the piece of paper she tried to eat because she didn't like the taste.

 

** Parodied in a Michael Bentine sketch where a spy has to eat the secret plans of a rocket - and then a large ''model'' of the rocket.

** The paper was thought up by Jasper Maskenlyne, a famous magician who would create dozens of gadgets for the British, including a special boot issued to commandos that contained a compass, a little map, and a garrote wire. Apparently bedrolls made of similar paper were also used; they were soaked in vegetable oil to make them waterproof, and as an added bonus it made them taste better if you had to eat them.

* In a sad but amusing incident of a man attempting this, the mortally-wounded captain of a French ship captured during the Napoleonic Wars attempted to do this to his code papers. Unfortunately he picked the wrong set of papers and instead chewed up his own commission.

* Sun Tsu in Ancient Art of War tells of a spy who's given battle plans written in silk that's enclosed in a ball of wax. The spy is instructed to swallow the ball and proceed to a location, sneaking past the enemy; once there, the ball will pass through his digestive system and out the other end. The spy doesn't know it, but the plans are phony and his whereabouts are leaked to the enemy so they will capture him and think the phony plans are real.

* A related example, a man once tried to beat a DUI by eating his own underwear in the hopes that it would absorb the alcohol and defeat the Breathalyzer.

* [[wikipedia:Steve Brill|Steve Brill]], a man famous for foraging on plants that grow in natural parks and other public places in New York and encouraging such activity, was once arrested for such activity back in 1986 due to violating "nature preservation laws", but the charges were dropped when he (naturally) ate the evidence (i.e. the plants he picked), creating a public relations debacle for the authorities. He's become the official spokesperson for natural foraging ever since, and is tolerated by officals.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Food Tropes]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]