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It Was Here, I Swear: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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 hero may not be tracking a serial killer, but could have uncovered evidence of a [[Government Conspiracy]] or the plan of some [[Diabolical Mastermind]]. It may even be evidence of some form of [[The Masquerade]], or a [[Not-So-Imaginary Friend]]. The key thing is, the evidence won't be there when he returns. The fact that the witness [[You Have to Believe Me|loses all ability to communicate rationally]] doesn't help.
If the witness hadn't told the other person anything except [[Never Give the Captain
Some [[The Men in Black|Men in Black]] shows have actual divisions called [[Cleanup Crew|"Cleaners" or "Sweepers"]] for whom this is their entire job. To show up (in [[Van in Black|black vans]], always) at a location filled with alien gore and debris and completely clean it up and remove all forensic evidence in 15 minutes or less. Maidservice on Steroids. Also, witnesses get [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] or [[Killed to Uphold
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
Technological advances may eventually make this trope obsolete; after all, who today (in the First World, at least) doesn't have a cell-phone with a digital camera feature? [[Can You Hear Me Now|Of course, writers already hate cell phones.]]
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== Anime and Manga ==
* 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 ''[[
* A Misaka clone's corpse in episode 11 of ''[[To Aru Majutsu no Index]]'' disappears by the time the police arrive. The police then berate Touma for "prank calling" them. Touma later finds that the other Misaka clones cleaned up the crime scene while he was busy calling the police.
== 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
* Used repeatedly -- and relentlessly -- in the ''[[
** 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]].
*** [[Required Secondary Powers]] [[X Meets Y|Meets]] [[Mundane Utility]] [[Trope Overdosed|Meets]] [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check]].
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** A bit harder to explain is the exclusive club Jimmy took him to which turns out to actually be a public restaurant.
* In the movie ''The Game'', Nicolas Van Orton is sick of being toyed with by CRS. He calls the cops into their offices, but there's nothing there. {{spoiler|CRS own the whole building and move their offices about for exactly this reason.}}
* In the [[James Bond (
** 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.
* Subverted in the ''[[Get Smart (
* ''[[North
* 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.
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* In ''All Through The Night'', Humphrey Bogart's character escapes from the headquarters of a gang of Nazi saboteurs during [[WW 2]]. When he attempts to lead the police (who are skeptical of his story, as he's a mobster himself) back to the lair, it's been tidied up and all the swastikas, Hilter portraits, etc., have been removed.
* In ''[[Count Yorga|Return of Count Yorga]]'', Yorga sends his vampire brides to kill a family of his main target and then kidnap her. They do the deed and leave a murder scene behind which their maid, who happens to be mute, stumbles upon the next morning as well as the living survivor, the family's youngest son. She calls the police, but before they get there. Yorga's servant, Burda, drops by unnoticed and clears the scene so by the time the police get arrive theres nothing left. She tries to get the boy to tell them but he, unfortunately under Yorga's control, denies her claims.
* Happens a couple of times to Goldie Hawn's character in ''[[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.
* Inverted in ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]''.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Matt from ''[[The Power of Five]]'' becomes victim to this when he's living in the [[Town
* In ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' by Hope Mirrlees, the protagonist and his friend discover a secret room in a public building lined with mysterious tapestries and filled with (illegally smuggled) fairy fruit. By the time they return with the authorities, the room is completely empty, much to their frustration. It is implied that this is because the first time they entered the room they accidentally gave the correct password while cursing at the locked door, while the second time they didn't remember what they had said and just broke down the door instead.
* 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.
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== Live Action TV ==
* In ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' episode ''One Giant Leap'', Eden and Mohinder find Sylar's apartment, which has the message, "Forgive me. I have sinned" written in blood. When they return with the police, everything in the room has gone.
** Also, in "Ink," Matt {{spoiler|who has Sylar's consciousness in his head so only he can see him}} ends up finding a stuffed animal, a ransom note from a hostage, a mind-read location of the victim and then the body of the victim found under the stairs. When his partner returns to find Matt beating the hell out of the hostage, Matt tells him to look under stairs and the body is gone. The ransom note and toy are gone too. {{spoiler|Turns out Mental!Sylar used Matt's powers against him to make him see all that and thus have to use his powers to erase his partner's memory of the lack of evidence.}}
* ''[[CSI]]'' episode ''Anonymous'' focuses on the hunt for a serial killer. Grissom concludes that the killer is Paul Millander, who owns a Halloween supplies company. When Grissom leads a raid on Millander's warehouse, it is bare apart from a stool with an envelope addressed to him. It has a blank piece of paper inside, a sign that Grissom interprets as meaning, "We have nothing".
* "Mr. [[Monk]] Is Up All Night"
** Also used once as a clue. {{spoiler|It was the maids who killed one of the other maids to cover up their committing insider trading by viewing the belongings of business men staying at the hotel.}} Monk figured it out because {{spoiler|they were the only people who could clean up a room that fast}}
* ''[[The Invaders (TV series)|The Invaders]]''.
* Every. Single. [[Myth Arc]]. Episode. In. ''[[The X
** Notably in 'Je Souhaite', when Scully finally has solid proof of the supernatural in the form of the corpse of an invisible man. Of course, when she brings in the experts to look at it, it's completely gone.
*** Just a few hours later, Scully herself starts to wonder if it was real, much to Mulder's annoyance.
* In the ''[[
* In ''[[Seinfeld]]'', George Costanza gets himself invited to a night club populated almost entirely by beautiful model-types by... well, [[It's a Long Story]]. Once he shows up after losing his 'credentials,' the next day the same building is devoid of anything but a meat packing plant.
* The gremlin that William Shatner sees in ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".
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== Video Games ==
* In the first chapter of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
** The hypodermic syringe is another, slightly creepier case in this arc, although at that point, of course, no one was left to actually say [[It Was Here, I Swear]].
** 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.
* One of these events marks the halfway point in ''[[Policenauts]]''' plot. For added humiliation, it's revealed {{spoiler|to be an [[Invoked Trope]]: the bad guys had had this trap set up at least since the moment you arrived on the station, [[Batman Gambit|just waiting for the right moment to lead you stumbling into it]].}}
* In ''[[Nancy Drew (
* ''[[Max Payne (
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== Western Animation ==
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[The Simpsons (
{{quote| '''Homer:''' Uh, is this going to be like one of those horror movies where we open the door and everything's normal and we think you're crazy, but then there really is a killer robot and the next morning you find me impaled on the weather vane? Is that what this is, Lisa?}}
** 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.
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** Likewise, [[Mad Scientist|Doctor Doofenshmirtz's]] daughter, Vanessa, attempts to show her mom (and his Ex-Wife), that Doofenshmirtz is an evil genius, but the evidence disappears. Ironically enough, it's shown that Doofenshmirtz's scheme (usually the B-Plot) is often what does away with Phineas and Ferb's thing, and when his scheme was the A-Plot, Phineas and Ferb did away with it.
** In [[The Movie]] Candace is shown to be believing in a mysterious force that protects the boys. She later shows how [[Genre Savvy]] she's become as {{spoiler|when the city is being attacked by killer robots she knows that trying to show it to her mom will ensure they all disappear. When she finally drags her mom to the now empty streets the mom just watches in confusion while Candace cheers about how she saved the world.}}
* Defied in ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' season two, where half the season is about combating and investigating Cadmus, the shadowy government organization [[Cape Busters|whose mandate is to prepare to take down the Justice League in the event that they overstep their bounds]]. When [[The Question]] is kidnapped and tortured by Cadmus the Huntress, recently kicked out of the League, goes to Superman for help and becomes frantic out of the fear that they will never find their headquarters. Superman, however, is perfectly at ease because ''the League already knows where Cadmus is''. They have held off on actually attacking the base because [[By-The-Book Cop|they have been quietly amassing evidence in preparation for going public about Cadmus's true activities]], and when the secret facility is moved after Superman and Huntress break in to rescue the Question ''the League know when and where they moved''. Batman [[Discussed Trope|explains it pretty clearly]] when he points out that they have been monitoring Cadmus for months, [[Defied Trope|so of]] ''[[Defied Trope|course]]'' [[Defied Trope|they have kept track of its whereabouts]]. Ironically, it is only Lex Luthor who is kept out of the loop, and when he betrays Waller and attacks the now-abandoned headquarters Batman uses that as evidence that it was not the League, [[If I Wanted You Dead...|since they would not have attacked an abandoned warehouse]].
* Doom Kitty is prone to falling into this scenario in ''[[Ruby Gloom]]'', where she is especially handicapped by only being able to communicate through (sometimes frantic) pantomime. Played with in "Doom With a View", when she tries to communicate to Ruby and her friends that a pair of ghosts are still ''in'' the closet in question, but unfortunately, only she can see them.
* Used and then avoided in the ''[[Kim Possible]]'' [[The Movie|movie]] ''So The Drama'': Ron is chased across town by a horde of tiny robots until he reaches the hall hosting the Junior Prom. When he opens the door, the robots hide. It looks like there's nothing there and [[The Mole|Erik]] notes how ludicrous the claim is, but Kim chooses to believe Ron anyway.
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*** 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.
* ''[[Taz
* Repeatedly subverted in ''[[
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