History Main / ImplausibleDeniability

* ''Film/{{Denial}}'': Irving claims he's not racist even as his own diaries and recorded speeches show him saying blatantly racist things.

** Actually, it's OlderThanTheyThink. Philogelos, a joke collection from the 4th century AD (and the first joke collection to survive) has a variant that a guy knocks at another man's door, asking for him. The man says "I'm not in". The first guy says "You're lying, I recognize your voice". The man answers, "Idiot. If it had been my slave who answered, you would have believed him. Don't you think I'm more credible than my slave?"

** He didn't even last that long, really... far from it... In the very first chapter he explains his plan to get rid of all evil humans by killing them off to Ryuk. Ryuk replies that if Light pulls through with his plan, he'll be the only evil human left... [[ObliviouslyEvil Light, in turn, seems completely unable to comprehend the logic in Ryuk's statement that what he's doing is in any way evil whatsoever.]] Clinical psychopaths have a tendency to never admit guilt for their actions.

* In a scene in ''Literature/BeastTamer'', Kanade and Tania are told to go easy on a couple of thieves so that Rein can interrogate them later but end up knocking them out. Tania's excuse is, "It's ''their'' fault! They just decided to [[SorryIFellOnYourFist run into my fist as hard as they could!]]"
* Karin of ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has the ability to see ghosts, but doesn't believe in them. When Yuzu points this out, Karin casually states she's in permanent denial.

* Evil bear from ''Webcomic/BearNuts'' does this a lot.
** Most notable, I think, being when Evil bear is turning a kid around on a spit, and Prozac exclaims, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?". Evil bear says, "....nothing", and then proceeds to keep turning the handle.

* During chapter two of ''Fanfic/PointOfDivergence'', Pekoyama continues to claim that she and Kuzuryuu didn't know each other, even though she's spent the entire investigation in a HeroicBSOD since [[spoiler:his death]]. Everyone quickly realizes she's grieving.

*** Which was once beautifully subverted in a stage version that took full advantage of the sketch's [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny over-familiarity]]: [[spoiler: after building up to the lengthy implausible deniability that forms the sketch's core, the shopkeeper amiably agrees with the customer, and gives him a full refund and a few holiday coupons to compensate]].

[-Image by [[http://www.taintedink.com Vincent Grisanti.]] Used with permission.-]]]

* In ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/6974590/chapters/15895687 Just One Word]]'', this is how the main characters meet. Mettaton, hoping to go unnoticed by his hordes of adoring fans, goes to a café in [[PaperThinDisguise "his best disguise"]]. This apparently involves wearing ''his own merchandise''. His love interest doesn't initially recognize him (or recall who he is), but naturally assumes that the guy who's wearing a scarf which has both his own face and bright pink text saying "METTATON" on it must be Mettaton. He denies it anyway.

* ''Webanimation/StupidKids'': Tony Macflane asks Boti if he stole his garland. Boti denies it besides the garland is being right in his hands in ''Boldogat és még boldogabbat'' (''Merry and even more'').

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow'': In "Gossamer is Awesomer", WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck drives through a papier-mâché statue of Gossamer in his parade float, then immediately announces "Winnie Yang did that!".

* In the film ''The Guide for the Married Man'', the main character's friend teaches him all the tricks of cheating, including denying it even if the wife walks in. However, when the friend is caught, all his teachings fail him.

'''Ares:''' NO!! [[RefugeInAudacity Blows from an unseen assailant have felled Wonder Man!!]] On my honor, I will not rest until I have tracked down those responsible!! [[VillainExitStageLeft (gets in a car and runs away with Wonder Man's unsconscious body)]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* British SerialRapist Delroy Grant, arrested on the evidence of DNA harvested from his semen, attempted to claim at trial that he was framed. How did he do this? He claimed that his ex-wife had taken a sample of his semen and paid a third party to carry out the rapes and deposit his semen at each crime scene. [[SarcasmMode Shockingly]], the jury didn't buy it.
* Kosovar immigrant Ali Qazimaj was arrested for a brutal double murder after the victims DNA was found in his car. When he was charged, he did not deny that the victims were killed by Ali Qazimaj, but instead claimed [[BlatantLies that he was not Ali Qazimaj, but a different person named Vital Dapi]]. Apparently it didn't occur to him that the police might have taken his DNA and fingerprints when he was arrested.
* In a [[https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/things-i-learn-from-my-patients.257985/page-2 forum thread about emergency room stories]], someone made a post about a teenage girl giving birth in the emergency room and her mother running around the department loudly yelling, "I don't know what y'all did or who that baby is, but my lil' girl wasn't pregnant when she come in here!"
* In an example which demonstrates that other Great Apes can understand how to use this trope, Koko the Gorilla once broke the sink in her room. Using the sign language she had been taught, she tried to blame the damage on her pet kitten, All Ball.
* [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels Biker gangs]] are known for their criminal exploits, and are alleged to be involved illegal activities such as methampetamine production, alliances with groups such as the [[TheMafia Italian-American Mafia]] and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking bar brawls]], but has continously maintained that they're just a group of bikers united by a shared preference for Harley-Davidsons; any incidents involving them are asserted by the group to be just isolated incidents involving what they perceive as members who have gone rogue.
* Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Saddam Hussein's Minister of Media and Foreign Affairs during the initial phase of the Iraq War, earned a lot of notoriety for making these kinds of claims, boasting of the Iraqi military's superiority despite the fact that it was pretty clearly being folded in half by the Coalition at the time. His most famous moment of this, though, was a press conference where he proclaimed that the enemy had yet to penetrate Baghdad; this was during Operation Thunder Run, where a convoy of tanks managed to make it all the way into the city center, and the sound of them firing was clearly audible during said press conference only a few hundred meters away.
* The phrase "not financial advice", a favourite among amateur market traders looking to skirt around laws that require financial advisors to be registered and certified, became a meme in financial circles due to how frequently it is tacked on to the end of statements that, despite the disclaimer, are blatantly intended to be taken as option recommendations and other investment advice.
* Despite overwhelming evidence that states the contrary, the Chinese Communist Party will let you know that the Tiananmen Square Massacre never happened, the lasers used to harass and temporarily blind passing ships and jets are "civilian laser designators" used for distance calculation, and the Chinese spy balloons are "civilian weather monitoring satellites", etc.
* Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov infamously claimed that the bombs dropped on Finland during the Winter War were in fact "bread baskets". The Finns countered by saying that the improvised firebombs they threw back were in fact "cocktails", [[MolotovCocktail coining a famous phrase in the process.]]
* During the 2022 trial of Darrell Brooks Jr, the defendant (who represented himself) was charged with over seventy counts ranging from domestic abuse all the way up to "Hit-And-Run Involving Death". During one point of the trial, a police investigator was asked to identify the vehicle Brooks used in the attack from a still image. The image was taken from a rap music video Brooks had recorded prior to the trial. The image depicted the vehicle used in the attack, a man unrelated to the crime, and Brooks himself who had his back to the camera. When Brooks cross-examined the claims by the police investigator that Brooks was the guy in the image, the Police Investigator repeatedly stated that he had viewed the video in its entirety and confirmed that the man with his back turned was definitely Brooks. Brooks continued to push, stating the question "Ignoring the video you saw, can you prove, from this image and this image alone, that the defendant is in this picture?" The police investigator answered that, from a single still image, it would be impossible to tell... and thus the prosecution presented the entire rap video. This enraged Brooks whose entire argument relied on a singular screencap of the video trying desperately to imply the guy pictured wasn't him, but with the entire video shown to the jury it was impossible to deny. He tried numerous times over the next few minutes, in a heated rage, to force the judge to remove the video and strike it from the record, but the judge refused and the prosecution defended their action since Brooks tried to discredit their argument. They were forced to play the video to prove Brooks was cherry-picking on small details and that his claim could be beaten. This would have never come to light if he didn't try so desperately to discredit the screencapped image that he ''knew'' he was in given ''he made the video in the first place'', and his argument was an inanely specific effort to try and mislead the evidence that he should have known could be easily discredited. This, of course, doesn't include the plethora of evidence already present in the trial that clearly showed Brooks in the driver seat of the vehicle during the attack, so his argument wasn't only a ridiculous stretch, it didn't dent the remainder of the prosecution's case and the other evidence present.
* Mobster Frank Gusenberg of the North Side Gang was the only man alive left from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and was found by the police with no fewer than fourteen bullet wounds in him. When they questioned him on who had attacked him and his companions, he simply said "No one. Nobody shot me," and then expired three hours later. His refusal to talk has been put down to a simple lack of interest in dying as a rat.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Manga/{{Monster}}'' after Doctor Tenma saves the inhabitants of a Turkish enclave from a neo-Nazi attack, the police try to question them about his whereabouts. They notice rather quickly that when the Turks see a photo of Tenma, they happily identify him, but whenever the topic shifts to him being wanted as a suspect for murder, they then promptly shift gears to claiming they've never met him in their lives.

* ''Series/ThePhilSilversShow:'' In one episode, Colonel Hall realizes that the reason the gambling-obsessed Bilko is so happy about the upcoming desert maneuvers is that the are near Las Vegas. Bilko and his men plan to abandon the maneuvers to hit the casinos. Usually, Bilko is a very good liar, but when Hall makes this accusation, Bilko is caught off guard, and his nervous denial is pretty weak.
--> '''Bilko:''' Las Vegas? What is a Las Vegas?

* In ''LetsPlay/MarikPlaysBloodlines'' part 6, while freaked out by Creator/MelGibson [[ItMakesSenseInContext attacking him]], Marik [[spoiler:admits that he's gay]]. After calming down, the first thing he says is that Bakura couldn't possibly have heard any of that yelling he was just doing. When it becomes obvious he ''did'', Marik claims it was the ghost. Somehow. Bakura doesn't push it much, but probably only because he knows it's a lost cause.

--->'''Superintendent Chalmers:''' Aurora Borealis? At this time of day, at this time of year, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen?!\\

* Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov infamously claimed that the bombs dropped on Finland during the Winter War were in fact "bread baskets". The right-wing Nazi-aligned Finnish nationalists countered by saying that the improvised firebombs they threw back were in fact "cocktails", [[MolotovCocktail coining a famous phrase in the process.]]

* Despite overwhelming evidence that states the contrary, western media will tell you that the Tiananmen Square Massacre was an incident where the Chinese government fired on thousands of protestors, despite the fact that even most of the U.S.-based western media mouthpieces just days later admitted the massacre didn't happen as described, that police and military were ordered by China to not bring weapons and were brought into the streets to peacefully calm and disperse the crowd, and that hundreds of people rioted and started beating, maiming, burning and stabbing PLA soldiers and police, hi-jacking, turning over, stealing and setting on fire tanks, equipment, guns and other civilians, and that many of the student protest leaders admitted to instigating violence and received money and tips from foreign intelligence services like the CIA, and some of them shed sociopathic crocodile tears at the fact that the PLA and police stopped the mass violence in the streets and saved civilian lives rather than firing into the crowd, and the Chinese weather balloon that entered into U.S. airspace was known for weeks to be a weather balloon, yet the Amerikkkan media apparatus asserted despite evidence to the contrary that it was a spy balloon, leading to the Amerikkkan imperialist military spent tens of millions of dollars destroying other weather balloons that were made by schoolchildren.

* Despite overwhelming evidence that states the contrary, the Chinese Communist Party will let you know that the Tiananmen Square Massacre never happened, the lasers used to harass and temporarily blind passing ships and jets are "civilian laser designators" used for distance calculation, and the Chinese spy balloons are "civilian weather monitoring satellites", etc.
* Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov infamously claimed that the bombs dropped on Finland during the Winter War were in fact "bread baskets". The Finns countered by saying that the improvised firebombs they threw back were in fact "cocktails", [[MolotovCocktail coining a famous phrase in the process.]]

* Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov infamously claimed that the bombs dropped on Finland during the Winter War were in fact "bread baskets". The Finns countered by saying the the improvised firebombs they threw back were in fact "cocktails", [[MolotovCocktail coining a famous phrase in the process.]]