History Main / CrimeAfterCrime

* OlderThanSteam: ''{{Macbeth}}'' is famous for this one.

Compare SnowballLie, JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope. Contrast RevealingCoverUp. A major cause of NeverOneMurder. and PlethoraOfMistakes...

-->--'''[[WeirdAl "Weird Al" Yankovic]]''', "Don't Download This Song"

** In another one there was a taxi driver who ran over a pickpocket who refused to pay her fare and ran off with his wallet, [[spoiler: but he only did it because another driver bumped into him on purpose, causing his car to hit her in the head when she tripped. He wouldn't have gone to jail but the other driver convinced him that they both would, so they fled the scene and lied about the whole thing, and tampered with evidence, all of which were crimes. Since he's an immigrant, the first driver is likely to be deported, the very thing he was trying to avoid in the first place.]]

* ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney''

* ''ColdCase''

* In ''BadLieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'' a DirtyCop's life starts to spiral out of control as he has to keep committing new crimes in order to deal with the fallout from his old crimes. And since his old crimes were motivated by ''massive'' drug and gambling addictions he hasn't kicked yet, he keeps creating new problems just as soon as it looks like he's solved the old ones.

* ''{{Macbeth}}'' is famous for this one, making this one of the OldestOnesInTheBook.
* '''The main character'' of ''{{Hamlet}}'' first kills his girlfriend's dad when he mistakes him for someone else...then hides the body...then arranges letters so that two of his friends are executed instead of him...by the end of the play nearly every main character is dead. Including Hamlet himself.

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'Cause you start out stealing songs and then you're robbing liquor stores\\

* A favored trope of ''LawAndOrder'' - especially when the defendant has a rich (or mobbed-up) family to bribe, perjure and intimidate his way to an acquittal.

* ''The Hot Rock'' involves an escalating series of crimes dedicated to stealing a particular diamond.
-->"I had heard of habitual criminals. I never expected to get involved in a habitual crime."

** Also, the infamous Max from the episode Loco Motives. It would have worked out much better for him if he had just called the police and told them he accidentally [[spoiler:killed his wife]] instead of what he actually did, which involved [[spoiler:killing his neighbor]] and failing in disposing of [[spoiler:his wife's body.]]

* The plot of ''VeryBadThings''.

* Steve Ditko's ''Mr. A'' stories always revolved around this, the Objectivist moral being that there's no such thing as toeing the line between good and evil.

* The plot of ''Very Bad Things''.

* In the HarryTurtledove novel ''Noninterference'', the head of TheFederation's pre-warp civilization Survey organization gets a report from a recent mission that the a violation of the titular PrimeDirective had longer-lasting effects than anyone had anticipated. Instead of working on Spin Control (the guy responsible for the inital screwup was cashiered, his mission is used as a case study in What Not To Do, and more to the point he has been dead for over ''fourteen centuries'') she orders the files erased... and goes after the copy downloaded by a xeno-anthropology professor... and tries to shut up the survey team... and tracks down which of the professor's students has a copy....

Commonly seen in crime dramas, especially of the noirish variety, this occurs when a character or characters, having committed one crime, perhaps one not even that serious, must then commit another crime to cover up the first, and so on, leading to an escalating series of crimes set off by what may have originally been just an accident. If the character had just come clean at the beginning, he might have gotten off with a relatively light sentence. After a little while with this trope, he's looking at death row if he gets caught.

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

[[AC:ComicBooks]]

* This happens from time to time in SinCity, most notably Dwight [=McCarthy=] stories since he regularly gets in more and more trouble and technically has to break another law in order to get out of it.


[[AC:{{Film}}]]

* Likewise, the plot of ''VeryBadThings''.
* And ''A Simple Plan''.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* The plot of the novel and film ''TheHotRock'' involves an escalating series of crimes dedicated to stealing a particular diamond.

* In the HarryTurtledove novel ''Noninterference'', the head of TheFederation's pre-warp civilization Survey organization gets a report from a recent mission that the a violation of the titular PrimeDirective had longer-lasting effects than anyone had anticipated. Instead of working on Spin Control (the guy responsible for the inital screwup was cashiered, his mission is used as a case study in What Not To Do, and more to the point he ''has been dead for over'' '''''fourteen centuries''''') she orders the files erased... and goes after the copy downloaded by a xeno-anthropology professor... and tries to shut up the survey team... and tracks down which of the professor's students has a copy....
* In ''Native Son'', Bigger Thomas accidentally suffocates a white girl in her bed. Believing that society would presume a black man like him guilty of having raped and murdered her, he burns her body and writes a ransom note claiming she's been kidnapped. Before Bigger is tracked down and arrested, he rapes and murders a black girlfriend.

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* Played with, or perhaps subverted in ''VeronicaMars'' season one, in which the Kanes commit various counts of conspiracy ([[DidNotDoTheResearch mislabeled]] in the show as obstruction of justice) in order to conceal that [[spoiler:Duncan did not kill]] Lilly.
** Well, technically, [[spoiler:they ''thought'' he killed her]] and that's why they covered it up. In their defense, they did find him [[spoiler:in a position where he was covered in her blood]].

* An early episode of ''ColdCase'' had a guy shoot a man to death, and in attempt to cover it up, he set a fire... which killed at least twenty-two others.
** In another one the BigBad doesn't even kill the victim - he just gets rid of the body to protect the idiot that killed her almost by accident. However, as the investigation goes on, he kills another man to keep the secret and when that also fails, he attempts to kill the detective in charge of the investigation.
* Only one episode of Monk did NOT feature this trope. Usually the villain starts with MurderIsTheOnlyAnswer and then just keeps running with it. Nobody with money is ever willing to pay for a divorce and the merest hint of any amount of unclaimed gold/money/treasure can set off a 10-state killing spree.
** Except for the guy who accidentally killed his mistress (mainly by not calling 911 for help) and then couldn't go through with the cover-up crime of murdering her dog and it's puppies (DNA would prove that his dog was the father, so he must have known her).

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[[AC:VideoGames]]
* The bonus case in the first ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' game has this as the motive for Joe Darke in the backstory - a seemingly normal man who accidentally killed a cyclist in a car accident, and then proceeded to go on a killing spree in an attempt to cover up this initial accident.
** There is also the BigBad of ''Trials and Tribulations'' [[spoiler: Dahlia Hawthorne]], who killed their sister to keep her from talking about a fake kidnapping they had staged years ago to steal a jewel from their family. [[spoiler: After that, she (count with us now!) 1) tried to frame her ex-boyfriend who was already convicted by the staged kidnapping; 2) when he was about to be cleared she convinced him to commit suicide so he wouldn't tell the truth to the court; 3) poisoned a lawyer that was tracking her; 4) hid the poison with a young Phoenix, disguising it as a gift of love; 5) she tried to get the poison back from him by killing him, only to end up killing another ex-boyfriend and 6) framing Phoenix for it. After that she was finally convicted and ''executed'', but still 7) returned from the dead years later to try to kill Maya, the sister of the lawyer (Mia) that got Dahlia on prison, to have her revenge. Note that she didn't go for directly killing Mia because Mia was already dead in the interim.]].

[[AC:{{Webcomics}}]]
* Lampshaded and averted in [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031017 this strip]] of ''GirlGenius''.

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-->--'''[[WeirdAl "Weird Al" Yankovic]]''', '''''Don't Download This Song'''''

-->'''''--"WeirdAl" Yankovic''', Don't Download This Song''

* Why hello Claudius! What's that? You want to marry your brother's wife? Well go on and kill him and marry her; I'm sure that won't have any repercussions that will eventually result in the death of almost every named character and your kingdom being invaded!

* In the HarryTurtledove novel ''Noninterference'', the head of TheFederation's pre-warp civilization Survey organization gets a report from a recent mission that the a violation of the titular PrimeDirective had longer-lasting effects than anyone had anticipated. Instead of working on Spin Control (the guy responsible for the inital screwup was cashired, his mission is used as a case study in What Not To Do, and more to the point he ''has been dead for over'' '''''fourteen centuries''''') she orders the files erased... and goes after the copy downloaded by a xeno-anthropology professor... and tries to shut up the survey team... and tracks down which of the professor's students has a copy....