History Main / EatTheEvidence

* At the end of ''Film/{{Thirteen}}'' [[spoiler:the protagonist is shot and the bag containing his money stolen. However [[ProperlyParanoid he's already sent the money by registered mail to his family]], so as he's dying he eats the receipts so the police won't track down the money and confiscate it as evidence.]]

* One story about why moon cakes are served for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival revolves around the conspiracy to launch a revolt against the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty then ruling China -- the cakes would be made imprinted with coded instructions on when to launch attacks so that all the cells could coordinate, then sent as gifts to the recipient who would then see the code and get thw signal, and then afterwards eat the cakes to destroy the evidence. Thus the Yuan Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Ming.

* One story about why moon cakes are served for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival revolves around the conspiracy to launch a revolt against the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty then ruling China -- the cakes would be made imprinted with coded instructions on when to launch attacks so that all the cells could coordinate, then sent as gifts to the recipient who would then see the code and get thw signal, and then afterwards eat the cakes to destroy the evidence.

* Happens in at least one instance during the second ''[[Anime/LupinIIIRedJacket Lupin III]]'' series. A small time thief actually managed to steal a rare diamond, but was caught. Just before his capture, he swallowed the diamond so it couldn't be found. While the authorities searched for it, he... retrieved it and hid it in the cistern of the toilet in his prison cell, but never got a chance to take it with him from the high security prison before he was released. The elaborate scheme for the episode revolves around Lupin and company breaking into the prison to retrieve the gem themselves.

* In the Creator/RoaldDahl story "Literature/LambToTheSlaughter" (filmed as an episode of ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' and later as an episode of ''Series/TalesOfTheUnexpected''), a woman clubs her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, and then puts it in the oven to roast as if nothing had happened. She later offers dinner to the detectives who come round to investigate the murder, and they sit around discussing the mystery of what happened to the murder weapon as they eat it.

* There is a tale of a wily courtier who offends a noble in a culture where the punishment for doing so is death. The noble purports to offer him a fair chance to live by proffering him two folded pieces of paper, supposedly with one saying "Live" and one saying "Die". The courtier is sure that both say "Die" and the noble is just trying to save face. He takes one piece and eats it without looking at it. When the other piece is opened and says "Die" he lives to tell the tale as the other piece he chose (and ate) must have said "Live".

* In RealLife, a man named Antonio Vasquez beat two men up with a sausage, and feed it to a dog, destroying the evidence. He was caught when he left his his pants at the scene with his wallet. Despite this, the plan worked, due to the charges against him being dropped.

* In ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'', when [[BigBad Araya Souren]] asks how Lio Shirazumi will hide the body of his first murder, he responds by EATING THE BODY IN '''THREE HOURS'''.

* In ''FanFic/BlackQueenRedKing,'' the Earth Changelings eat their kin's dead bodies and those of the humans they kill in order to keep the police and other humans from finding them. The main character also eats his own severed arm to keep it from being found[[note]] and because he needed the nutrients[[/note]].

* In the Creator/RoaldDahl story "Literature/LambToTheSlaughter" (filmed as an episode of ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' and later as an episode of ''Series/TalesOfTheUnexpected''), a woman clubs her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, and then puts it in the oven to roast as if nothing had happened. She later offers dinner to the detectives who come round to investigate the murder, and they sit around discussing the mystery of what happened to the murder weapon as they eat it.
** This becomes a RunningGag in ''Literature/HowNotToWriteANovel''.
** Dorothy Sayers did that exact plot thirty years earlier with Literature/LordPeterWimsey in "The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran".

* In the short story ''Two Bottles of Relish'' by Creator/LordDunsany, a man uses the title items to help dispose of the corpse of the person he murdered. He also cuts down ten trees and chops them into logs, solely (as the last line of the story informs us), "in order to get an appetite."
* ''Literature/ThievesWorld'' short story "Blood Brothers". After One-Thumb paralyzes a drug dealer, he slices him up and feeds him to his dogs.
* In one story in ''Star Wars: The Han Solo Adventures'', a skiptracer shows Chewbacca a thick warrant he has to repossess the Millenium Falcon. Chewie responds by eating it, only to be told that there are multiple copies of the warrant.

* In the short story ''Seventeen Oranges'' by Bill Naughton, a boy caught stealing seventeen oranges eats all seventeen, including the peels and pips, while the policeman is off fetching his parents. He also never eats another orange in his life.
* In ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'', Athos forces his servant Grimaud to eat an incriminating letter, to make sure the Cardinal won't ever find it.
* In the book ''You Don't Know Me'' by David Klass, the protagonist sends a love note to the girl he's after. She eats it, and he spends a chapter trying to work out what the gesture means until she explains to him that she saw the teacher coming and didn't want him reading the note out in class.

* In the story ''[[Literature/BridgeOfBirds Eight Skilled Gentlemen]]'' by Barry Hughart, the heroes have killed a henchman of their enemy, but cannot get out of his castle to hide the body. They can get into the kitchen, however, so they cook every single part of him and put the food among that prepared for a banquet. Number Ten Ox is squicked by it all, but Master Li Kao gets really enthusiastic about making the food ''good'' (so the lord of the castle won't start asking questions to the kitchen staff), and we get a really good description of how to cook a man.
* In Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's ''Boys vs. Girls'' series, the Hatford boys pick apart a pumpkin pie brought over by the Malloy girls because they're sure it's been tainted or booby-trapped somehow. When it becomes clear nothing's wrong with it, they're forced to eat the entire thing to keep their mother from realizing there was ever a pie there.
* In a Creator/BillPronzini short story, a man shoots the lawyer who embezzled from his late father. He's caught in the lawyer's locked high rise office, and there's no trace of the gun anywhere in the office or nearby. The police are baffled. They only find out two key facts when it's too late: one, the murder weapon was a homemade zip gun, easily disassembled into small component parts. Two, the killer for a time worked for a circus: as the Man With the Iron Stomach...
* ''Literature/IfThisGoesOn''. John Lyle, the rather naïve protagonist, receives a note from a Virgin sister being held incommunicado. Unfortunately his reaction to receiving the note is an OutOfCharacterAlert that will have tipped off his superiors, as his worldly-wise friend Zeb points out. Lyle promises to eat the note, but Zeb makes sure to give him an identical piece of paper, [[InfractionDistraction this one with a gambling system written on it]], as the complete disappearance of the note would have been doubly suspicious.

* In ''Film/TheHotRock'' (and also the novel the film is based on), Greenberg is trapped in the museum with the diamond the gang was attempting to steal. He swallows the diamond before the police arrive.

* In the first case of ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations'', a suspect eats [[spoiler: a small glass bottle that had been used for carrying poison his girlfriend used to poison an attorney. He also ate the large gold necklace it was attached to. It was too big to swallow, so he chewed it up into pieces first. The shards of glass were apparently not a problem, because this is [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat Feeny]] we're talking about.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
** Bart attempts this in the short "Shoplifting" when he's caught trying to steal a literal pantsload of candy bars and the security guard leaves him alone with the goods. When the guard returns, Bart claims he can't be held accountable without evidence -- then sees himself in a mirror and realizes there's chocolate smeared over his face and hands.
--->'''Bart:''' Uh, is it too late to make a full confession?
** The episode "Tales from the Public Domain" has the kids being read various historical stories. When they get to the end of the tale of Joan of Arc, Marge interrupts just before the burning, makes up a HappilyEverAfter ending, then tears out the last page and eats it, remarking "It's easier to swallow than that ''WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}}'' tape."
** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E16BartVsAustralia "Bart Vs Australia"]], a diplomat accidentally shows the Simpsons a [[EmbarrassingSlide slide]] about the US government's plan B for Cuba. Realizing his mistake, the diplomat eats the slide.
* Zottornick has the hilariously stupid idea of eating a peace treaty that he doesn't want to happen in ''WesternAnimation/PrincessSissi''. [[spoiler:It turns out that it wasn't even the peace treaty, but a party guest list]].
* In a variant, Franchise/ScoobyDoo and Shaggy start out the feature-length ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooOnZombieIsland'' having just been dismissed from their jobs contraband-sniffing dog and handler at a local airport. That's because they ate an entire storage room full of contraband food items that Scooby had detected in people's luggage, not realizing it was needed as evidence against the criminals.
* Lo attempts to do this in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Stoked}}'', but spits out the piece of paper she tried to eat because she didn't like the taste.

* In an episode of ''Gasp'', Gasp and the other pets have to dispose of the enormous number of disgusting cupcakes (somewhere over 300) that Gasp had baked before the family gets home. They do this by eating them.
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'': In "Laundry Day", Robin disposes of the roster that proves it is his turn to do the laundry by putting it into a blender, turning it into a smoothie and drinking it. He later burps it back up.

* The prisoner in the MGM Creator/TexAvery cartoon ''WesternAnimation/{{Cellbound}}'' is trying to escape from his cell by digging his way out, spoonful-by-spoonful. When he hears the warden approaching, he eats the spoonful of dirt present at the time.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Anthology of Interest I", Leela caps off her non-canon killing spree by taking out Zoidberg just before he can (finally) reveal her as the culprit. In the next scene, we see her enjoying a very familiar-looking lobster dinner.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'' episode "World Wide Wabbit", the gang tries to keep Mr. Herriman from knowing of his status as an Internet celebrity. At one point, he tries to fetch the newspaper, but because it has his picture on the front page, the gang takes it and plays KeepAway with it until it lands in Eduardo's hands; when Herriman demands that Ed gives him the paper, he swallows it.

* ''WesternAnimation/AllHailKingJulien'': When Clover points out the berries that led her to LALA headquarters in "Viva Mort", Abner starts trying to eat all of the fruit in the HQ. Clover watches in disbelief and points out all the other evidence, like the posters, which Abner immediately tries to eat.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': In "Knock It Off", when the girls confront Dick Hardly about using Chemical X to make knockoff Powerpuff Girls for profit, he tries to hide the bottle in his hand by swallowing it whole. [[OneWingedAngel And then...]]
* In an episode of Ninjago:Masters of Spinjitzu, the mayor helps Jay and Nya escape then eats the map just before Nadakhan and his crew enter the room.

* ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'':
** When Kodachi gets a photo of a NotWhatItLooksLike scene between her and Ranma, she makes hundreds of copies and scatters them everywhere. Ranma proceeds to catch and eat them all.
** But the ultimate example is the "Ukyo's Secret Sauce" story where, when confessing that he (accidentally) ruined Ukyo's personal sauce that she has been aging for ten years failed to cause the whole mess to subside (Ukyo jumped to the conclusion that Akane forced Ranma to claim it, so it made things ''worse''), Ranma gulps down the ''whole cask'', and almost dies from it. Note that this was less to hide how terrible it tasted from her (she was the first person to find out), but more from desperation to [[ResetButton return things to the way they were]], so that [[StatusQuoIsGod he wouldn't have to reveal whether he loved Akane or Ukyo better]]. Before that, he devoured every okonomiyaki that Ukyo made with it, but that was to protect her from [[MasochistsMeal eating them out of pride]], and potentially making herself terribly sick.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'', when a kidnapper realizes he abducted the wrong little girl and her parents won't be able to pay the ransom, he kills her and feeds her remains to his German shepherds to get rid of the evidence. When Rorschach realizes this, he [[HeroicBSOD snaps and burns the kidnapper alive]]. It was a defining moment in his life, [[CreepyMonotone and he never recovered from the psychological trauma]].
* The Creator/ECComics story [[http://randompanels.blogspot.com/2006/10/halloween-week-begins.html "Cold Cuts"]] uses a variant of this trope. A man who carves up his wife's body and stores it in a frozen food locker is forced by a business emergency to leave it all in a friend's hands. When he gets back, he finds his friend is throwing an impromptu dinner party. "The butcher was closed..."

* A less lethal example in ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}''. A message is smuggled to the boy reporter in his prison cell, so in case of a search, Tintin scrunches it up in a tiny ball and has his faithful dog Snowy swallow it.

* In ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', Calvin occasionally likes to pretend he is a forcibly detained space captain while at school. Upon being sent to the principal's office in one strip, he eats his hall pass since it is considered "evidence" in his imaginary world.

* In [[Creator/DetsniyOffSkiword Dahlia Hawthorne Escaps From Pirson]], there is a scene where [[VideoGame/WarioWare Wario]] decides not to directly eat the evidence against him, but instead, he somehow eats [[BeyondTheImpossible the fingerprints]] that are on it. This actually gets him acquitted.

* Frank Drebin in ''Film/TheNakedGunThirtyThreeAndAThird'' eats the plans for a prison break, as a sandwich and then shredded with spaghetti sauce (it didn't help that a large stack of paper got dropped in front of him while he was doing so, forcing Drebin to eat ''all'' of it to make sure he got the sheets that contained the plan).
-->'''Rocko:''' That was a good plan.\\
'''Drebin:''' I've had better!
* The excellent German short film ''Film/{{Schwarzfahrer}}'' has an extremely racist old lady sitting next to a black guy on a tram. She goes on and on about how horrible blacks and others are ("...They should at least have their names changed when they come over here, or else you can't tell them apart ''at all''. What's more, they smell awful. But there is no law against ''that''!"). When the conductor comes to check tickets, the black man reaches over and eats hers. She's hysterical when the conductor arrives ("That nigger just ate my tickets"), and [[CryingWolf he naturally doesn't believe]] her obviously racist story ("That's the stupidest excuse I have ever heard!"), so he takes her off the tram. None of the other passengers, who were silently listening to her antics, intervene.
* On the other hand in ''Fort Apache: The Bronx'' (1981) a policeman does the same trick and ''doesn't'' get away with it.
-->"I ate his driver's license. And right after that, I ate his registration. The registration tasted better than the driver's license. Well, he said, "[[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections My lawyer's gonna make one call and you're finished.]]" I said, "Finished?" [[TemptingFate So I laughed in his face.]] The lawyer made the call...and [[TurnInYourBadge they took away the shield]] and [[ReassignedToAntarctica put me back in a monkey suit]]."
* ''Film/FriedGreenTomatoes'': "The secret's in the sauce."
* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in ''Film/CatsAndDogs'' where the Russian Blue coughs up all sorts of previously swallowed stuff, including some fake evidence to plant.

* When a car full of college kids gets pulled over in ''Film/SuperTroopers'', one of them is forced to eat a bag of pot before the cops get close enough to see it. And then a bag of shrooms.
* In the Spielberg/Zemeckis movie ''Film/NineteenFortyOne'', the lost Japanese sailors capture an American merchant. When they discover a toy compass among his merchandise, and when he notices they are very much interested in that compass (because their own is broken), he eats it immediately. The Japanese then force-feed him a laxative.
* In Creator/RobertAltman's ''Film/CookiesFortune'', Glenn Close's character eats "Cookie"'s suicide note to make her suicide look like murder.
* In Danish film ''Film/TheGreenButchers'' (''De grønne slagtere'') by Anders Thomas Jensen, two butchers accidentally kill a man and sell the meat to hide the evidence. It ends up being very popular...
* In the film version of ''Film/TheNameOfTheRose'', the antagonist eats the pages of a rare book, denying the protagonist it, and both [[spoiler:committing suicide and eliminating the evidence of the poisoned pages. ]].

* ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'': James Bond accidentally swallows Francisco Scaramanga's bullet (in the belly button of a belly dancer) thanks to a heavy-handed thug. Later Bond quips: "You've no idea what that went through to get here."

* In ''Film/AmericanWedding'', Stiffler suspects the dog has eaten the wedding ring he's supposed to have custody of, which leads him to pick through the dog's droppings in an attempt to find it. When he's caught, he claims the droppings are chocolate truffles in order to hide the fact that he lost the ring, and then is forced to eat them to keep someone else from eating them.
* When Daphne finds Shaggy doodling his name and Velma's on a napkin in ''Film/ScoobyDooCurseOfTheLakeMonster'', he immediately eats the napkin.
* In ''Film/DeathScreams'', Sheriff Avery runs into a bunch of youths smoking dope, and one of them eats the stuff so they won't get busted.
* When the protagonists of ''Film/FridayThe13thPartIII'' spot two police cars with blaring sirens and all behind them, they promptly start eating their drug stash. After pulling over, the police just keep driving onward, much to their dismay.
* In the film, ''Film/TheDevilAndMissJones'' two employees eat a list naming 400 employees who want to unionize since their mean store manager was going to use it against them to fire all those people.
* In ''Film/TheBody2012'', when the toilet doesn't flush to dispose the torn pieces of a compromising dinner card Álex is forced to fish them out from the bowl and stuff them into his mouth.
* In ''Film/{{Napoleon}}'', the accusations against Napoleon and Joséphine are eaten by a couple of clerks who don't want to see them executed.

* At the end of ''13'' [[spoiler:the protagonist is shot and the bag containing his money stolen. However [[ProperlyParanoid he's already sent the money by registered mail to his family]], so as he's dying he eats the receipts so the police won't track down the money and confiscate it as evidence.]]

* ''Film/BirdsOfPrey2020'': After being arrested, Cassandra swallows the diamond she stole off Victor Zsasz while she is in the back of the patrol car.

* In ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'', Bruce swallows the flash drive containing information he needs, not because he needs to conceal it, but because he knows he'll be HulkingOut in a matter of minutes and he needs to make sure he doesn't lose the drive. He throws it up later, good as new.

* The last episode of ''Series/JonathanCreek'' features the theft of a porcelain idol in front of about twenty people - it turns out that it had previously been switched with an edible duplicate and scoffed. Unfortunately for the thieves, [[spoiler: the one who ate it happened to be allergic to one of the food colourings used on it]].

* At the beginning of ''Film/TheEigerSanction'' a courier eats the film he's carrying when he realises he's being followed. The opposition murders him so they can cut his stomach open to get it back.

* In the Creator/RoaldDahl story "Lamb to the Slaughter" (filmed as an episode of ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' and later as an episode of ''Series/TalesOfTheUnexpected''), a woman clubs her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, and then puts it in the oven to roast as if nothing had happened. She later offers dinner to the detectives who come round to investigate the murder, and they sit around discussing the mystery of what happened to the murder weapon as they eat it.

** The episode "Tales from the Public Domain" has the kids being read various historical stories. When they get to the end of the tale of Joan of Arc, Marge interrupts just before the burning, makes up a HappilyEverAfter ending, then tears out the last page and eats it, remarking "It's easier to swallow than that ''Disney/{{Bambi}}'' tape."

* In RealLife, a man named Antonio Vasquez beat two men up with a sausage, and a dog ate it, destroying the evidence. He was caught when he left his wallet at the scene. And his pants.

May induce IAteWhat afterward.

* Richard Hammond (aka "Hamster") has eaten things to keep Jeremy Clarkson from getting his hands on them in ''Series/TopGear'', including a cardboard picture of a car (intended for the Cool Wall) and a piece of paper with the points for that week's challenge (which would prove Richard won by more than just one point).