The Butler Did It: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|"Perhaps it might be even subtler, [[Dead Unicorn Trope|if after all it ''was'' the butler."]]|'''[[Edward Gorey]]'''}}

The butler is the avatar of the most unlikely suspect that, of course, turns out to be guilty because the author wasn't creative enough to come up with a better way to surprise the reader. It's the mystery writer equivalent of the [[Ass Pull]], except that you can see it coming a mile away, making it, for modern readers, [[The Untwist]]. Ironically because this trope is so well known, when an 'actual' butler is involved he rarely 'did it' or when he did it is down as a parody and [[Played for Laughs]].

 

 

It is okay, however, for a butler to be a suspect, primarily to mislead the reader.

 

[[Captain Obvious|Obviously]], '''ending spoilers follow'''.

----

* It isn't a mystery, the butler did it. ''[[Black Butler]]'''s Sebastian is ''always'' the killer. But everyone loves him for it.

** It isn't always Sebastian, Grelle was playing a butler too, and no one thought it was her, murdering all those prostitutes. Then again, I guess no one suspects the Shinigami. They also don't suspect them to pretend to be butlers, ether.

 

 

* Played with by ''[[Diabolik]]: the ''actual'' butler is always innocent, but Diabolik tend to take his place (or the place of another house servant) to take a look of the place he's about to steal from and/or drug/kidnap his victim.

 

 

* The [[Buster Keaton]] film ''[[Sherlock, Jr.]]'' plays it straight, with a butler acting as the accomplice of the main villain.

* This is what sets the plot of ''[[The Aristocats]]'' in motion, pretty much. Butler Edgar is second in line for the fortune his wealthy mistress wants to leave to her cats (or so he believes, due to a combination of [[Poor Communication Kills]] and Edgar being stupid enough to think the cats will ''outlive him''), and so knocks them out with sleeping pills and tries to get rid of them. This being Disney, the kitties live, and then have wacky adventures before Edgar's comeuppance is delivered.

** Of course, it's not a mystery. The audience (but not the characters) knows it's Edgar right off the bat.

** Additionally, Edgar, while not elderly, is not a very young man, and it is possible for cats to live to be thirty. As three of the cats in question are kittens, they really could have outlived him. He also seems to forget that he would still be needed to take care of the cats, and considering that they take only very little in the form of food, litter and occasional vet bill, he'd still have himself a quite comfortable life, even if he wasn't the master of the house on paper.

* No murders involved, but ''Fitzwilly'' takes this trope [[Up to Eleven]] by starring a butler who's a [[Con Man]] criminal mastermind. Subverted in that all the other domestic servants in the household also Did It.

* Lawrence from ''[[The Princess and the Frog]]'' is a lesser villain, but still needs mentioning; He was Prince Naveen's butler on his visit to New Orleans before he became an accessory to [[Big Bad|Dr. Facilier]]'s plot to {{spoiler|feed all the souls in New Orleans to his friends on the Other Side by being magically disguised as the Prince (the real thing being transformed into a frog).}} [[It's a Long Story]].

* ''[[The Haunted Mansion (film)|The Haunted Mansion]]''

* ''[[The Three Stooges]]'' episode "If a Body Meets a Body".

 

* While they were never so common as popular belief holds them to be, they're not entirely nonexistent. In "The Strange Case of Mr. Challoner" by Herbert Jenkins (1921), and in Rinehart's own ''The Door'' (1930), the butler indeed does it.

* ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'', while it is a bit more complicated, ultimately plays this one straight.

* In [[The Dresden Files]], it's not exactly the Butler, but has the [[Beneath Suspicion]] slot down pat: the traitor on the White Council isn't the [[Jerkass]] leader, the mysterious Asian, the noble Native American shaman, the Captain of the Wardens, OR Harry's [[Jerkass]] parole officer Morgan - {{spoiler|it's Samuel Peabody, ''the secretary''.}}

* Invoked and lampshaded in ''[[Mary Russell|The Beekeeper's Apprentice]]''

'''Holmes''': I'm afraid it does happen. }}

* In a rare nonfiction book example, [[Richard Dawkins]] uses this trope for a series of thought experiments in his popular science book ''The Greatest Show on Earth''.

* In [[Mary Robinette Kowal]]'s Hugo- and Nebula-nominated SF novella ''[http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/i-am-43-today-have-a-novella-as-a-party-favor/ Kiss Me Twice]'', the killer is the [[AI]] butler, acting through a robotic tea tray.

 

* This is used in the ''[[Bones]]'' episode "Yanks in the UK", seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing them to use that line. On the other hand, it's arguably a subversion: The butler's confession conveniently stops the investigation and spares his employer's family the public scrutiny of a trial; it's unclear if he in fact "did it."

* ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]'': Parlor maid/servant Louanne is the one poisoning the Commodore.

* Happens in ''Lewis'' and its predecessor ''Inspector Morse'' occasionally, most recently in Wild Justice. Never trust a college servant.

 

 

* It's possible for this to be the case in the game ''[[Clue (game)|Clue]]'', if Mrs. White is the randomly selected murderer.

* In the setting of the role-playing game ''[[Over the Edge]]'' there is a [[Milkman Conspiracy]] of butlers and personal retainers around the world. They usually don't murder their patrons, but if there was a good reason...

 

 

* ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]: {{spoiler|Justice for All's final case, with Matt Engarde's butler, Shelly de Killer, a.k.a. "John Doe". He's not the victim's butler, though, and in point of fact is less of a 'butler' and more of a 'professional assassin using a butler's position as his cover'.}}

* Carltron, Professor Ruffleberg's robotic [[Battle Butler]] from ''[[Secret of Evermore]]'', is revealed to have been the one behind his disappearance, and also those of several of his contacts.

* In a non-mystery example, in Disgaea 3 both Mao and the player are lead to believe that Mao's Dad is the game's Big Bad, however, it turns out that {{spoiler|Super Hero Aurum in the guise of Mao's butler Geoffrey}} is the game's actual Big Bad.

* ''Grabbed by the Ghoulies'' features a kindly old butler named Crivens who helps you out for the majority of the game. When the final boss battle comes about, Crivens rushes in and seems to have things well under control after beating the boss for you. It is then revealed that {{spoiler|Crivens staged the entire fight and is in fact was the final boss the entire time.}}

 

 

* ''[[Hurricanes]]'' episode "The Curse of the Gorgon" had the Hispanola Hurricanes seemingly turned into stone by the legendary Medusa. It turns out they had just been replaced by statues and a butler working for the Hurricanes' host had been bribed into helping.

 

 

* Not a butler but a valet. The legendary spy Cicero at the British embassy in [[World War II]].

* William Marsh Rice was poisoned by his butler in a conspiracy involving one of his attorneys and a fake will. The mystery was solved by another of his attorneys, and his university endowment was restored.

* A [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/popes-butler-arrested-in-vatican-letters-leak.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss recent case] involving leaked letters from Pope Benedict XVI.

 

 

* The third episode of ''[[Devil May Cry: The Animated Series]]'', where the butler is the one who uses his master's blood as part of a demon summoning ritual. Partially subverted, in that {{spoiler|this doesn't occur until late in the episode, we actually see the butler telling the master, and the master is eventually healed after the demon and the butler are vanquished}}.

* In a ''[[Soul Eater]]'' [[Breather Episode]], Excalibur tells a tale of how he helped Sherlock Holmes solve a murder in which the butler can clearly be seen twirling around a butcher's knife in the background.

** {{spoiler|But it was Watson. Excalibur said it.}}

* In Kaori Yuki's [[Godchild]], a flashback chapter has the lead solving a mystery about a maid's murder. It turns out the butler ''didn't'' kill her, she died of her own greed and foolishness. He ''did,'' however, tamper the evidence to frame someone else.

** And even on a couple cases where it looks like the Butler or the housekeeper/groundskeeper ''could'' have done it because s/he had motive (Namely ''Billionaire Birthday Blues'' wherein the {{spoiler|two victims had caused the death of the housekeeper's granddaughter}}) s/he is shown to be above it. {{spoiler|She even delivers a [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] to the culprit, her granddaughter's suitor.}}

 

* There was a ''[[Batman]]'' story arc where Bruce Wayne was accused of murder. One background character, upon hearing the accusation, commented "He has a butler, doesn't he?".

** Later in the same arc, Bruce Wayne escapes custody. The detectives in charge of the inquiry, after piecing various hints together, finally reach the conclusion that "The butler did it", after spending much of the inquiry snarking that it ''cannot'' be the butler, [[Genre Savvy|because the butler ''always'' does it]].

* In one of the first issues of ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'', when Spider-Man defeated Electro for the first time and unmasked him, he thought "If this was a movie, I would be saying 'Good Heavens! The ''butler''!" but admitted that he had never seen him before.

** Some decades later, during [[JMS Spider-Man|JMS's]] "Spidey's a New Avenger" arc, he pauses while searching the closet of a HYDRA agent to deliver this line to an empty room, on the grounds that he's [[I Always Wanted to Say That|waited his whole life to say it]].

''[[Running Gag|Stop that.]]'' }}

* In ''Desolation Jones'', the Colonel's butler is briefly suspected of being the mastermind behind the crime. Jones remarks "wouldn't it be funny if the butler did it." Nobody gets why he's amused.

 

 

* ''[[Clue (film)|Clue]]'' (1985): {{spoiler|In one of the endings, the butler does it, but that's also the ending where he's not really the butler. And even then he never did the "it" that started the whole thing, the murder of Mr. Boddy...or rather, Mr. Boddy's butler, much to the disappointment of Professor Plum, who was the murderer of that man.}}

** Also, in the ''Clue'' VCR game, the butler (and narrator) is ''named'' Didit. In this case, though, he's not a suspect.

* ''[[Gosford Park]]'' is an exploration of this trope and other murder-mystery-related tropes:

** Lampshaded when one character, an American movie maker working on a new murder mystery set in England, calls his studio:

** The cast is separated between "above stairs" characters (the upper-class guests of a shooting party) and "below stairs" ones (their servants). During the first part of the movie, it's revealed that every single above stairs character has a reason to murder the future victim, {{spoiler|but he's murdered by a below stairs character, whose motivations are revealed in the second part of the movie. Basically, it's not "the butler did it" but "a servant did it".}}.

** The butler acts strangely after the murder {{spoiler|because other characters suspect he's the murderer and since he went to prison for desertion, he fears he'll be arrested even though he's innocent}}.

* ''[[The Haunted Mansion]]'' lampshades and plays it straight. While the butler did indeed do it {{spoiler|Heavily implied that the butler was racist}} The main character immediately after invokes this trope.

* ''Home Alone 4'' subverts and averts this trope. The main character belives that the butler of his dads rich girlfriend helped two burglars (his old enemys) get into her high tech Mansion. He made quite a mess driving them away so everybody belives its just an excuse (he was about 9 years old). It turns out it was the , erm, nice housekeeper who is revealed as one of the burglar's mum.

 

 

* ''Why Shoot a Butler?'' by [[Georgette Heyer]] (1933)

* "What, No Butler?" by [[Damon Runyon]] (1933)

* ''The Butler Did It'' by [[P. G. Wodehouse|PG Wodehouse]] (1957)

* ''[[To Say Nothing of the Dog]]'' by Connie Willis plays with this trope. First it's [[Discussed Trope|discussed]], when time-traveling main character Ned muses that the mystery they're solving is nothing like old-school detective stories, where the butler always does it. It actually becomes a [[Running Gag]] in the book, as when he travels to a [[Genteel Interbellum Setting]], people are complaining that it's becoming cliche in stories for the butler to do it. {{spoiler|And then in the end, it turns out the running gag is a Checkov's Gun, and butler really did do it... but the "it" that he does is "elope with the beautiful daughter", not "murder the victim"}}.

* In the [[Agatha Christie]] novel ''Three-Act Tragedy'', {{spoiler|the murderer posed as his friend's butler solely in order to murder him and then fled afterwards in a deliberately suspicious manner, returning in his usual guise as the victim's good friend.}}

** In ''Murder on the Orient—Express'', depending on which solution you believe, the butler did indeed do it {{spoiler|along with everyone else in the Calais Coach, including the coach attendant. Poirot and the victim are the only people in that coach who didn’t put their hands on the blade.}}

** In ''Black Coffee'', {{spoiler|the butler really did do it. However, since this was already a dead horse trope, you never see it coming because the butler never actually does it.}}

* In [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s [[Regency England|Regency-era]] novel ''Rodney Stone'', the butler was ''going to'' do it when the victim cut his own throat first.

* One [[Avram Davidson]] story presents a (fictional) crime writer who first used the phrase "the butler did it," and subsequently made a great deal of money off of murderous butler stories. When he stumbles into Butler Afterlife, its inhabitants are inclined to kill him for defaming their profession.

* A spy story written by Eric Ambler in the 1930s has an author as the main character. He gets into a conversation with a senior member of a foreign police force, who turns out to have literary ambitions of his own, but no talent: the cop's idea of a stunning resolution to the cliche-ridden murder mystery he dreams of writing is, in fact, this trope.

* In ''[[Nightside|Hell To Pay]]'', John Taylor admits that he was reluctant to suspect the Griffins' butler because it's such a cliche. {{spoiler|The butler ''did'' do it, but charging him with the crime becomes a bit beside the point when his true identity as an archdemon is exposed.}}

* ''[[In Death]]'': At one point in ''Divided In Death'', Eve talks to Baxter about his partner Trueheart. Baxter is letting Trueheart handle a case in which a woman was found manually strangled in Upper East Side, New York City. She had a lot of money, a miserable disposition, a huge mean streak, and a dozen heirs who are all glad to see her dead. Baxter then says, "I told him I thought the butler did it, and he just nodded, all serious, and said he'd do a probability. Christ, he's a sweet kid." Clearly, Baxter was just being funny.

* There's a short story where the members of the Retired Butler's Club are boasting about how they were each suspected of murder and then cleared by clever detectives {{spoiler|even though they were all actually guilty. Then, the club's butler murders all the members.}}

 

* An episode of ''[[Police Squad!]]!'' has "The Butler Did It" as the episode title displayed on-screen (while the [[Narrator]] solemnly intones a different title); true to form, the butler did in fact do it.

* In a televised version of one of the ''Hercule Poirot'' mysteries, Poirot and Hastings attend a murder-mystery play. The two agree to a game: Poirot will try to figure out which character is the murderer, and write it on a slip of paper which Hastings will read during the third act. Poirot's paper reads: "The butler did it." {{spoiler|The play's butler turns out ''not'' to be the culprit, much to Poirot's annoyance, and the Belgian detective spends several minutes complaining to Hastings about bad scripting.}}

* In an episode of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' that featured Dame Agatha as a character and was itself a murder mystery, Donna Noble at one point quips that "Well, at least we know the butler didn't do it."

* In a sketch on ''[[The Muppet Show]]'', with Rowlf as [[Sherlock Holmes]], the butler did it. However, because the butler is a Muppet monster, he then eats all the evidence, including the body and the only witness. Holmes therefore concludes that, in the absence of evidence, there was no crime at all (having briefly "deduced" that, in the absence of evidence pointing towards the butler, Watson did it).

* ''[[The Avengers (TV series)|The Avengers]]'' episode "What the Butler Saw" involved an entire school for butlers, which turned out to be a criminal enterprise. At the end, there's an exchange along the following lines:

'''Steed:''' The butler did it! }}

* In a ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]'' episode, the aliens attended a murder mystery dinner (thinking it was real, of course) and Tommy suggests this at one point. Harry replies "You think the ''butler'' did it? Well, that's a little far-fetched."

* In one episode of ''[[Monk]]'', the introduction implies that the butler dislikes his new employer, the son of his former, now dead employer, while delivering a drink. Instead of drinking the Manhattan, the employer {{spoiler|pulls out a pistol and shoots the butler.}}

* In an episode of ''[[The Golden Girls]]'', they're participating in a murder mystery weekend. The accusations start flying for the first mystery, [[The Ditz|Rose]] stands up, points to the waiter and the following exchange occurs:

'''Rose:''' Thank you. The maitre'd did it! }}

* ''[[The Closer]]'' had a parody, [[Lampshade Hanging]], and subversion all in one in the episode "The Butler Did It". The butler had confessed to a previous murder and was working on a plea bargain when he apparently committed suicide, and the detectives in charge were looking forward to actually being able to say "the butler did it". Turns out, {{spoiler|he didn't; he was likely to expose the true killer, who killed him instead and made it look like a suicide}}.

* Subverted in one ''[[Magnum, P.I.]]''. Magnum is following the "killer" of a rich and annoying person. It turns out the rich man faked his own death. When he comes out of hiding the valet holds him at gunpoint until he is well scared. And them shoots him with a stream of water out of a squirt gun.

* In an episode of ''[[Castle]]'' where Castle and Beckett are having trouble figuring out a suspect for the [[Body of the Week|Murder of the Week]]:

'''Castle''': That's who we always go with when we run out of ideas. }}

** Played with in a later episode, where it looks like the butler ''may'' actually have done it, leading to significant lampshading on the part of Castle. (It's averted at the end - he was merely ''stealing'' from his employer.)

* In an episode of ''[[Power Rangers Zeo]]'', this trope is invoked in a murder mystery game set up by Detective Stone.

* Used for a pun in an episode of ''[[Quincy]]''. {{spoiler|"Butler" was the surname of the [[Monster of the Week|Killers of the Week]].}}

 

 

* Reinhard Mey has a song "Der Mörder ist immer der Gärtner" (The Murderer is Always the Gardener). In the last verse, someone offs the sinister gardener: it's the butler.

 

 

** In another ''Far Side'' cartoon, a detective points to the Butler as the culprit when a victim is gored to death and trampled into the floor. [[Stealth Pun|Just ignore]] the [[Elephant in the Living Room|elephant in the trench coat]] sitting next to him...

* ''The Aesop Brothers,'' a ''[[National Lampoon]]'' cartoon strip by Charles Rodrigues about (non-identical) Siamese twins, once played this as an extended fart joke. The brothers as a Holmes-and-Watson pair are retained to find out who let go a wicked one in the presence of an elderly British nobleman. You can guess the ending.

 

 

* Seen in Anthony Shaffer's play ''Whodunnit'' which begins as a parody of the [[Genteel Interbellum Setting]] but is revealed to be a play within a play where a real murder occurs among the actors who were the performers. {{spoiler|The actor playing the butler turns out to be the murderer, and the [[Genre Savvy]] detective notes how he was at first misled into not suspecting that individual because the Butler is supposed to be a [[Red Herring]], but then realized that the actor [[I Know You Know I Know|expected him to think that]].}}

* In ''Something's Afoot'', a musical parody of Agatha Christie's ''Ten Little Indians'' and similar plots, the butler is killed before the first act, leading to the title song's opening line, "Something's afoot, and the butler didn't do it!"

 

 

* Played with in ''[[PvP (webcomic)|Pv P]]'' by having the butler secretly playing the role of "hero". Creator Scott Kurtz explanation of the idea was essentially "if anyone ever discovered the secret lair beneath the mansion, they would obviously suspect the [[Rich Idiot With No Day Job|millionaire playboy]] as the hero's secret identity. Meanwhile, [[Beneath Suspicion|the butler]] would have skipped town and hired his services out to the next rich employer far away, where he would start his hero gig anew."

* ''[[Bob and George]]'' [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/000411 lampshaded it.]

 

 

* In Rare's commercially unsuccessful ''Grabbed by the Ghoulies'', Ghoulhaven's [[Cloudcuckoolander|looney master]] Baron Von Ghoul has a few servants, but all of them aside from the also-mad Dr. Krackpot seem like generally good folk displeased with his actions. {{spoiler|It's revealed near the end that Crivens, the butler who seemed genuinely very helpful from the start, was actually Baron Von Ghoul himself in a [[Latex Perfection]] mask. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when the Baron himself states that he [[Didn't See That Coming|didn't think Cooper expected]] the butler to have done it}}.

* Definitely played with in ''[[My Sims]] Agents''. In one part of the story, a fortunite crystal, which is able to let people see the future, is the most-sought part of Cyrus [LeBodreaux]'s estate. However, when Madame Zoe goes into the crystal room for a pre-dinner reading, you find that the crystal there has been smashed! You follow the evidence which leads you to the conclusion that Carl, the zombie butler, was the one who smashed it. {{spoiler|However, it turns out that Zoe, a skilled hypnotist, was whispering hypnotic suggestions to him as he slept. Not only that, but it turns out that the crystal in the crystal room wasn't even the real fortunite crystal! Zoe, having foreseen that she wasn't the named inheritor of her uncle's estate, had intended to make people believe the fortunite had been destroyed so that the other potential inheritors would leave, allowing her to keep the estate anyway.}}

* {{spoiler|Straight with a twist}} in ''[[Ace Attorney]]''. {{spoiler|The butler technically did it--but he's not actually Matt Engarde's butler, he's assassin Shelly de Killer posing as a butler. The player knows this before Phoenix does, so it's a bit of [[Fridge Horror]] when you realize Phoenix is in the same house as the kidnapped Maya, but has no idea she's only two doors away.}}

* Subverted in ''[[Professor Layton and the Last Specter]]''. {{spoiler|The butler did it. But this time it is not the butler, the real one had been kidnapped and locked in a cellar while the mastermind took his place}}.

 

 

* One of the few examples that admits that it doesn't really happen is a [[Daffy Duck]] cartoon, were, after badgering the butler, Daffy notes that it's never really the butler.

** In a classic [[Chuck Jones]] cartoon, "Daffy Dilly", Daffy attempts to enter the mansion of an ailing millionaire who has offered a million dollars for anyone who can give him a good laugh before he passes on. After repeated attempts to get past an implacable butler, Daffy invokes this trope to get rid of the butler:

* In one of the original ''[[Scooby-Doo (animation)|Scooby Doo]]'' cartoons, the Scooby gang has to chase a ghost pirate. Their employer, Mr. Magnus, has a big, creepy-looking butler who is an obstacle into going to see him. At the end of the episode, when the pirate is unmasked, Shaggy is surprised:

* ''The New Adventures of [[Winnie the Pooh]]'' turned this into a [[Running Gag]] in the episode ''Tigger, Private Ear''. At the climax of the episode, Tigger [[Joker Jury|cross-examines himself]] at a trial to get Piglet off the hook:

* An episode of ''[[Mega Man (animation)|Mega Man]]'' involved Dr. Wily programming one of Dr. Light's new housekeeping robots to kill Megaman. After one attempt fails, Megaman utters, "I have a sneaking suspicion the butler did it". {{spoiler|Actually it was the [[Ninja Maid|maid]].}}

* Parodied in an episode of ''[[Cow and Chicken]]'', where the Red Guy presents a mystery story not entirely unlike [[The Orient Express]], to the two title characters. Interestingly while the butler clearly had a motivation to [[Never Say "Die"|injure his employer with his own denture]], Red's reasoning as to why he did it is this. Made weirder by the fact that in the very same episode, he's employed as the family's butler.

* [[The Backyardigans]] play with this in their genre spoof episode, "Whodunnit?". It ''was'' the butler (ie. Tyrone with his hair combed) who took the jewels, but only because the lady of the house (Tasha) gave them to him. Turns out it was all a put-up job in order to liven up a dull afternoon.

* In an episode of ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]'', [[Bugs Bunny]] is reading a mystery novel. And by the time he finishes it, this is how he said it went:

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Mystery Tropes]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]