Police Brutality Gambit/Playing With

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Basic Trope: Employing a Wounded Gazelle Gambit against authority figures to avoid punishment.

  • Straight: Carol scratches her face and accuses officers Alice and Bob of assaulting her.
  • Exaggerated: Carol attempts suicide to frame Alice and Bob for murder.
  • Downplayed: Carol makes wild accusations of police brutality at her trial, which might sway the jury even if they can't be proven.
  • Justified: The Tropeville police force has a bad reputation which Carol was planning to exploit from the beginning.
  • Inverted: Alice and Bob fake injuries while they're interrogating Carol so they can charge her with two counts of assaulting an officer.
  • Subverted: The precinct has a camera in the interrogation room and Carol is caught.
    • Or, we are lead to believe that Carol was lying. But she shows footage of Alice and Bob hitting her.
    • Carol did hurt herself, but do to the psychological pain Alice and Bob inflicted on her.
  • Double Subverted: However Carol is able to convince enough people to make it matter that the footage was faked.
    • Alternatively, Carol injured herself in a part of the station where there are no cameras.
    • The people who hit Carol were Body Doubles.
  • Parodied: Carol claims that she's being beaten to Dennis the reporter. Dennis decides to gather his own evidence and ends up publishing a photo of Carol self harming, claiming that's it's Police Brutality.
  • Deconstructed: Criminals end up dying from self inflicted injuries, exposing the scam.
  • Reconstructed: Families of the criminals try to accuse Alice and Bob of murder.
  • Zig Zagged: Some criminals are able to make the allegations stick, others are laughed off.
  • Averted: Criminals are either shown as actual victims of Police Brutality or the possibility is never mentioned.
  • Enforced: The writers want to get the Bob in trouble, but they don't want to make him unsympathetic so they write an arc revolving around him being framed.
  • Lampshaded: "See, this is why we need to get a camera for the damn interrogation room!"
  • Defied: All interrogations are filmed, with sound, and watched by independent witnesses to prevent foul play on either side.
  • Discussed: "Why's he injuring himself?" "So he can get the charges dropped and a free lawsuit."
  • Conversed: "I heard Carol's going to break her arm and say the police did it if she's arrested."
  • Played For Laughs: Carol is the Lovable Rogue, putting one over on the clueless Alice and Bob.
  • Exploited: Carol plans to discredit the police force by pretending to be the victim of Police Brutality, allowing her gang to commit crimes more easily.

Quick! Get back to Police Brutality Gambit! I'm being assaulted!

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