Gas Leak Coverup: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]'' has the government claiming a rail accident occurred with a train carrying nerve gas as a way to evacuate everyone from the area around Devil's Tower, Wyoming, where the Aliens are soon due to show up.

* Used in ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]] 2: Rise of the Fallen''. Sort of. Here, it's used in the same ways as in ''Close Encounters'', right down to the excuse:

* This was the excuse used in ''[[Hellboy II]]'' at the museum to keep people out while the team investigated.

* ''Ghostbusters II'' contains three, and ''neither'' of them work. It's the scene where Egon and Peter hold down the fort over a hole they dug while Ray abseils down it into the river of pink slime. First, Peter tries to convince the police that they're with [[Con Ed]]; he then tries to convince them that they're with the phone company; finally, he pulls out the gas leak line. And then all of NYC goes into a blackout!

* The government is fond of using explanations similar to this one in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', but the only time the "gas leak" excuse is used, it's done by the heroes.

* In an early season one episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', Dean attempts to use this to get a family out of their house, but the father doesn't buy it. Lampshaded in the next-to-last episode of the same season, when the boys are trying to figure out how to get another family out of their house:

'''Dean:''' Yeah, and how many times has that actually worked for us? }}

* In the first episode of the second series of ''[[Being Human]]'', {{spoiler|the villains use a gas leak excuse to clear out a whole neighbourhood so they can use a psychic to find out what house the heroes- one of whom is a ghost- live in}}.

* ''[[The X-Files|The X Files]]'' episode "Jose Chung's ''From Outer Space''" features Jesse Ventura playing a [[The Men in Black|Man in Black]] who tries to persuade someone who saw a UFO into questioning his vision and perception and believing he only saw "the planet Venus".

* In the ''[[Monk]]'' episode "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School," a science professor kills his school's groundkeeper by puncturing a gas line, filling the house with fumes, and rigs the door to the living room with a matchbook, glued with the match heads pointing down, towards a scratch pad glued to the floor. When the groundskeeper comes home, he opens the door, the match heads strike the scratch pad, igniting the gas fumes and causing the house to explode.

''"Even the former leader of your United States of America, James Earl Carter, Jr., thought he saw a UFO once, but it's been proven he only saw '''the planet Venus'''."''<br />

''"If you tell anyone that you saw anything other than '''[[Rule of Three|the planet Venus]]''', you're a dead man!"'' }}

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' uses this trope a lot. [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-10-02 Take this one, for example:]

* One story arc of ''[[The Wotch]]'' involved a conspiracy of militant mind-controlling feminists with an [[Elaborate Underground Base]] below the school. After everything has been resolved, most of the mind-control victims have no memory of what transpired, and them waking up groggy in the school basement is explained with... a gas leak, of course.

* In ''[[Ow, My Sanity]]'', David [[Genre Savvy|knew]] the dorm incident would be covered up with either arson or a gas leak. It was the latter.