It Was Here, I Swear: Difference between revisions

Our [[The Hero|hero]] has found the [[Serial Killer]]'s [[Torture Cellar|lair, complete with messages in blood]] and [[Room Full of Crazy|newspaper clippings of the murders]]. He needs backup, so he leaves the scene and informs the proper authorities. But when they get there, the room is bare, with no evidence that anyone was here. All the hero can say is, "It was here, I swear." Sometimes the killer has left some [[Finger in the Mail|item to taunt him with]], or a [[Linked-List Clue Methodology|clue to the next killing]].

 

Of course, the heroes will never actually walk in on the sinister government mooks or the brilliant serial killer in the process of cleaning everything away and thus catch them even more red-handed because there are [[No Delays for the Wicked]].

 

 

Compare [[Cassandra Truth]], [[Devil in Plain Sight]], [[Nothing Is Scarier]], [[Not-So-Imaginary Friend]]. See also [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]]. Contrast [[Crying Wolf]]. Can involve a character's friend who just got turned into an [[Unperson]].

* In the backstory of ''[[One Piece]]'', probably the grandest and [[Tear Jerker|most tragic]] example of them all happened to the explorer Montblanc Norland, where he finds a legendary gold city on the island of Jaya, but when he goes back with the king of his homeland in tow, the ''island'' is gone (most of it, at least), having been knocked into the cloud kingdom of Skypeia by the Knock-Up Stream some time ago. Which leads to Norland being executed, and him and his descendants becoming the subject of ridicule for ''centuries''.

* Kanoko's corpse in episode 4 of ''[[Ookamikakushi]]''. Unusually, the person Hiroshi tells about it believes him anyway.

 

== Film ==

* In the film ''[[In the Line of Fire]]'', Clint Eastwood is a Secret Service Agent, on the trail of someone determined to assassinate the American President. His first encounter with him is when a landlord notices her tenant has a "shrine" of sorts to other assassins. He visits the room, but when he comes back with a search warrant, the pictures have been replaced by a single one of him standing behind JFK, a president he failed to protect, a sign that [[It's Personal]].

** The scene where the murderer cleans a dead body and a hundred living crabs from a car's trunk in five minutes without leaving a trace of their being there has prompted a joke that he could have started a very successful cleaning company if he hadn't gone [[Ax Crazy]].

** ''[[Scary Movie]]'' mocked the ability of the killer to get away with this so readily. Finding no blood or body at a murder scene, the protagonists argue over whether it really happened. Meanwhile, ten feet away the killer, ''still in costume'', is mopping up a trail of blood before dragging out a trash bag with a leg sticking out of it.

* Inverted in the original ''[[Gone in Sixty Seconds]]'', where the protagonist is the leader of a group that steals cars, and in the process of stealing a car out of a man's garage, he spots them, but they take off. He gives chase at high speed, and is seen by the police. When he is pulled over, he tells the police the truth, that he was chasing a car thief. The police escort him back to his house, where his car is where it is supposed to be. So in this case he's trying to swear that it ''wasn't'' there. It seems that the guy they stole it from was [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|the president of a crooked insurance company]] known for cheating people on claims, so he "temporarily borrowed" it in order to do some payback on the guy.

** Oh, it's worse than that: the lab is replaced with a huge, opulent office. No explanation is ever given for how this happened.

*** The lab was smaller than the office, so presumably one had been kit-assembled inside the other.

* Used straight in ''The Number 23''.

* The conspirators in ''[[Day Of Wrath]]'' have the hero doubting his sanity by committing grisly murders, allowing him to come across the scene of the crime, and then cleaning it all up before he can show anybody.

* Happens a couple of times to Goldie Hawn's character in ''[[Foul Play (film)|Foul Play]]''.

* Happens a lot in the French ''[[Fantomas]]'' films with Louis de Funès. The titular criminal mastermind loves to do this to the inspector chasing him. In one of the movies, the inspector is staying at a castle. He wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a body hanging in his room. He runs out screaming. By the time he comes back with a crowd, the body is gone, prompting this trope. He next night, he prepares a camera on the nightstand. Once again, he wakes up to find a hanging body. Being smart, he snaps a picture and then runs out screaming. He does, however, make the stupid mistake of leaving the camera, allowing Fantomas to substitute it for an identical one with a picture of the room with no body.

'''Joe:''' '''IT'S A DEAD END!!!''' }}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* Matt from ''[[The Power of Five]]'' becomes victim to this when he's living in the [[Town with a Dark Secret]]. Someone who believes Matt is brutally, brutally murdered, and Matt sees the room where it was done. He goes to get someone, and comes back ''less than ten minutes later''. Everything is perfectly in order. Say what you want about the formula of Anthony Horowitz's writing, that was a freakin' creepy scene.

* Used in ''[[Pretty Little Liars|Killer]]'' when the girls tell the police about Ian's death, and his body is gone from the forest when they return.

 

* Inverted in Season 1 of ''[[Life]]'': the hero, Det. Charlie Crews has a locked closet in his home where he assembles evidence against the conspiracy that framed him. The DA's office obtains a search warrant for a related murder, and Charlie gets home too late to stop the search, but when the cops break into the closet, all the evidence is gone, having been removed by Charlie's roommate, Ted.

* There's an earlier episode in ''[[Smallville]]'' where Lana is chased by the "ghost" of a [[Dead Little Sister|childhood friend]]. Said ghost turns out to be a clone, and they find a room filled with lots of clones of the same girl. But when the police gets there, guess it, [[The Dark Knight|it's goooone]]. The sheriff even tells Clark that ''"David Copperfield must have gotten there first"''.

* The pilot episode of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', Sheppard and Rodney find the shuttlepod bay (eventually named 'Jumpers'), upon finding that Sheppard can pilot them, Rodney runs off to find Weir to inform her of the revelation. When they return, the Jumper is missing. After Rodney gives this tropes name, John uncloaks to impress Weir.

* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Leverage]]'' 'Three Days of the Hunter Job'. Nate and the episode bad walk into what she thinks is the apartment belonging to someone who is unraveling a government conspiracy, to find the material gone and Eliot coming out, cleaning up.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** Inverted in ''Shada'' where a man tells a police officer that a room has been stolen and so ''isn't'' there and of course when the policeman looks, it is.

* In the second episode of ''[[Sherlock]]'', John discovers a wall painted with graffiti that is vitally important evidence. By the time he finds Sherlock and brings him back, however, the evidence has been wiped clean. {{spoiler|It's subverted, since that trick is a lot more difficult to completely pull off when people have camera phones that allow them to take instant photos of such things...}}

== Theatre ==

* [[Older Than Steam]]: An interesting variant occurs in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Macbeth]]'', when Banquo's ghost appears during Macbeth's big banquet. No one else can see it, of course, and then it disappears ''while'' Macbeth is frantically trying to convince his wife that it's there.

 

 

== Video Games ==

* In the first chapter of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'', Keiichi stayed home from school because he was starting to get suspicious of some classmates. Two of the girls from his school showed up that night to bring him some food and tell him they hoped he was feeling better. While eating the food, he choked on a sewing needle baked into a pastry. After having a talk with the police, the half-eaten snack containing the needle was nowhere to be found. Its unexplained disappearance would be creepier if it weren't the sort of thing his parents could've reasonably thrown out with the garbage.

** This trope is arguably subverted in both cases since {{spoiler|the sewing needle and hypodermic syringe actually ''were'' paranoid delusions}}.

* ''[[Arcanum]]'''s (in)famous X-Files quest ends this (as well as [[You Have to Believe Me]]) way: when you try to expose the conspiracy, you realize your proof was just, let's say, stolen. For added trauma, when you return to the secret facility where you found it, there's nothing, not even a brick.

 

 

* Referenced - with an unusual level of [[Genre Savvy|Genre Savviness]] - by Ivan Bezdomny in ''[[The Wotch]]'', when he [http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2006-09-19 finds a cult of militant feminists in a secret sub-basement of the school].

 

== Western Animation ==

* Parodied in an episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', "Grift of the Magi", where Homer displays an unusual level of [[Genre Savvy|trope awareness]]:

** Used in the episode "Hungry, Hungry Homer", where the Springfield Isotopes' owner removes the evidence from his office closet. Just a trombone player giving him an appropriate flat note.

** Subverted in another episode, along with [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]]. When the family asks Homer where he got a cursed monkey paw, he says "I got it from that stall that was right over... there..?", realizing he's pointing to a empty alleyway on the last syllable. Then, the camera pans, showing the stall, and Homer continues "Oh wait, ''there'' it is."

* Used in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' when attempting to locate the headquarters of the Dai Li.

** Some viewers wondered how long anyone would expect the [[Beneath the Earth|underground base]] of the [[Evil Chancellor]]'s ''[[Elemental Powers|earthbending]]'' [[Secret Police]] to be there once the heroes escaped from it.

* In ''[[The Road to El Dorado]]'', exiled ex-High Priest Tzekel-Kan is planning on revealing his city of gold to appease the recently arrived gang led by Cortez. Upon learning of this, Tulio and Miguel devise a plan that would bury the entrace to the city behind rubble, which would have the drawback of preventing them from ever returning as well. Their plan succeeds, and Tzekel-Kan is taken for being a "lying heathen", with nothing to show for his claims.

* This is essentially Michigan J Frog's PURPOSE in [[Looney Tunes]]. Granted he only gets like one cartoon to himself, but the whole plot revolves around him being found, and performing so that ONLY the person who found him ever sees it. Any time the man is actually about to get someone to witness it, he stops singing at just the right moment. Then the man is left to try and insist on his super special singing frog, only to be assumed a loon.

*** He also showed up once in [[Tiny Toons]] with a slightly creepier variant. He's dead (or so it seems) and scheduled for dissection by Hamton, who is the only one he'll sing for. Whenever somebody else looks, he immediately [[Incredibly Lame Pun|croaks]].

* This happened in the ''[[Adventures of the Gummi Bears]]'' episode "Toadie's Wild Ride". Tummi is the only Gummi in Gummi Glen to have seen Toadie enter the glen, but because he had been lying about who ate the cake that Grammi made earlier, the other Gummis initially don't believe him about there being an ogre in the glen. Subverted at the end when the rest of the Gummis finally see Toadie when he tries to make off with their supply of Gummiberry juice.