Suspect Existence Failure: Difference between revisions

A standard way of revealing that a certain avenue of plot is a [[Red Herring]], and is fairly common in [[Cop Show|Cop Shows]]s, [[Spy Drama|Spy Dramas]]s, and [[Thriller|Thrillers]]s, although TV series tend to be fairly careful about overusing this particular trope, or they would lose the audience's trust. Often used as the reveal when [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]. Suspect Existence Failure victims often have a habit of popping up as [[Peek -a -Boo Corpse|Peek A Boo Corpses]].

* In ''[[Scream (Filmfilm)|Scream]]'', Billy asks, soulfully, what he has to do to prove his innocence. A second later the killer leaps into the room and stabs him. Because ''Scream'' never met a trope it didn't want to [[Playing Withwith a Trope|play with]], it turns out Billy's the killer ''anyway''. There were two killers and they engineered the whole thing to screw with Sidney.

* In ''[[Death Note (Manga)|Death Note]]: [[Another Note (Light Novel)|Another Note]], the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases'', {{spoiler|Rue Ryuzaki, a.k.a. Beyond Birthday,}} plans to create a case that L can't solve by committing suicide and making it look like a murder. Up until this point, he's been portrayed as the prime suspect.

** Done similarly in a [[Ten Little Murder Victims]] episode of ''[[Remington Steele (TV)|Remington Steele]]''.

** Ditto for a similar episode of the television program ''[[The Wild Wild West (TV series)|The Wild Wild West]]'', "The Night of the Tontine".

** And the John Steed/Emma Peel ''[[The Avengers (TV series)|The Avengers]]''. At least once.

** ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]].'' has a [[Ten Little Murder Victims]] episode with a gathering of [[Bounty Hunter|Bounty Hunters]]s at a secluded hotel.

* In ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "Shadow Play", Dennis Weaver is on [[Death Row]] trying to convince people that the [[OnlyAll Just a Dream|the world is a nightmare]] he keeps having, [[Groundhog Day Loop|night after night, over and over again]]. The Warden is finally convinced he must be insane, and calls the Governor to ask for a stay. The stay comes too late, the electric chair is fired up, and we find he was right: everyone else dies, and his nightmare starts all over again.

* Canadian comedy team [[Wayne and SchusterShuster]] did a ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' skit in which everyone Holmes accused of being the murderer would then be murdered in a different way, in some cases a quite ridiculous way. When he finally got down to accusing the ''butler'', a B-52 flying overhead dropped a load of bombs, and the butler was crushed by rubble. Then Holmes realized the truth; as he told Dr. Watson: "We're in the wrong bloody house!"

* One episode of ''[[Psych]]'' had Shawn suspect a fashion mogul of killing her husband right up until she died at his funeral. He then commented "Okay, probably not the wife." Ultimately subverted when it's learned that she actually did kill him. She died from the [[Time -Delayed Death|delayed effects]] of him [[Mutual Kill|poisoning her]].

* The ''[[Columbo (TV)|Columbo]]'' episode "Last Salute to the Commodore" starts out as a normal episode, with us seeing Robert Vaughn disposing of the victim's body and setting up his alibi, Lt Columbo comes in and starts his usual harassing of the suspect, and then half way through Robert Vaughn turns up dead, and the episode suddenly turns into a [[Fair Play Who DunnitWhodunnit|Whodunnit]].