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.

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

 

* In the new ''[[Alvin and The Chipmunks]]'' movie, one of the Chipmunks is accused of defecating on a chair, but [[I Ate What?|another eats the... evidence,]] claiming it's just a raisin, while muttering "You owe me!". [[Squick]].

** I wonder how John Waters felt, realizing that a coprophagy gag was now mainstream enough for what was ostensibly a children's movie?

'''Drebin:''' ''I've had better!'' }}

* ''[[Fried Green Tomatoes]]'': "The secret's in the sauce."

* In ''[[The Big Easy]],'' when he realizes he's been caught accepting bribe money, Detective Remy McSwain tosses the cash to the crowd in the bar and eats the envelope it was given to him in.

* Not exactly ''eating'' the evidence, but in a variation on the theme, the title creature's [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]] (from all appearances a portable or remote activated micro-nuke) in the movie ''[[Predator]]'' not only prevents his being taken alive but presumably vaporizes him entirely, leaving behind no evidence for his clueless human prey to find (see also [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]).

** 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 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...

* At the beginning of ''[[The Eiger Sanction]]'' a courier eats the film he's carrying when he realises he's being followed. The opposition murder him so they can cut his stomach open to get it back.

* In ''[[The Hot Rock]]'' (and also the novel the film is based on), Greenberg is trapped in the museum with the diamond the gang was attempting to steal. He swallows the diamond before the police arrive.

* In [[American Pie|American Wedding]], Stiffler suspects the dog has eaten the wedding ring he's supposed to have custody of, which leads him to pick through the dog's droppings in an attempt to find it. When he's caught, he claims the droppings are chocolate truffles in order to hide the fact that he lost the ring, and then is forced to eat them to keep someone else from eating them.

 

== [[Fairy Tales]] ==

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* 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."

* In his book ''Marked Cards and Loaded Dice'', Frank Garcia told the story of a gambler who cheated by slipping an extra card into his hand. An angry victim insisted on searching him. If he was caught with the extra card, he would be killed. He did the only thing he could: he palmed the card into a sandwich, then ate it.

* In the short story ''Seventeen Oranges'' by Bill Naughton, a boy caught stealing seventeen oranges eats all seventeen, including the peels and pips, while the policeman is off fetching his parents. He also never eats another orange in his life.

* In the book ''You Don't Know Me'' by David Klass, the protagonist sends a love note to the girl he's after. She eats it, and he spends a chapter trying to work out what the gesture means until she explains to him that she saw the teacher coming and didn't want him reading the note out in class.

* In the story ''Eight Skilled Gentlemen'' by Barry Hughart, the heroes have killed a henchman of their enemy, but cannot get out of his castle to hide the body. They can get into the kitchen, however, so they cook every single part of him and put the food among that prepared for a banquet. Number Ten Ox is squicked by it all, but Master Li Kao gets really enthusiastic about making the food ''good'' (so the lord of the castle won't start asking questions to the kitchen staff), and we get a really good description of how to cook a man.

* In Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's "boys vs. girls" series (is there an official name for this series?), the Hatford boys pick apart a pumpkin pie brought over by the Malloy girls because they're sure it's been tainted or booby-trapped somehow. When it becomes clear nothing's wrong with it, they're forced to eat the entire thing to keep their mother from realizing there was ever a pie there.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* In ''[[Peep Show]]'', Jez runs over the dog which belongs to a woman who has expressed an interest in Mark. Rather than admit it, which would ruin Mark's chances of getting a job with her father, they try to burn it, only to find dog doesn't burn well. When caught by the love interest, they claim it's barbecued turkey, and eat it to prove it. Unfortunately, they can't eat the metal dog tag, which gives it away.

* Vyvyan of ''[[The Young Ones]]'' ate the TV on one occasion, in order to avoid paying the compulsory British television licence fee.

** "It's a toaster."

* 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.

* ''[[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.

* In an episode of ''[[Frasier]]'', after getting themselves involved with a black market dealer in caviar, Frasier and his brother Niles find themselves forced to eat [[American Customary Measurements|five pounds]] of the fish eggs in order to avoid arrest by U.S. Customs.

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

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

* In one episode of ''[[CSI]]'', a suicide victim is found with a loan voucher from a casino in his stomach.

** Another episode had the owner of a barbecue restaurant murdered by his wife and cook. They disposed of the body by cutting it up, cooking it and serving it to the customers.

** 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]]''.

 

== [[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."

 

 

== [[Theater]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* 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:

 

== [[Web Animation]] ==

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* 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]]