History Main / ItWasHereISwear

* In the Film/JamesBond film ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'', Bond discovers a lab where they are constructing satellites with deadly chemical agents. When he brings "M" and the police back there, everything is gone. The lab is replaced with a huge, opulent office. No explanation is ever given for how this happened. The lab was smaller than the office, so presumably one had been kit-assembled inside the other. Luckily Bond did have a vial of the nerve gas that the lab was working with.

* In the ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'' movie, Joe Friday and Pep Streebeck infiltrate a P.A.G.A.N ritual with thousands of attendees, a fleet of stolen public vehicles, a giant television screen, and a huge pit with a giant snake inside of it. After they escape by the skin of their teeth, they go back there with their boss... and there's absolutely no trace of anything there.

* In ''BeverlyHillsCopIII'', Axel Foley discovers a counterfeiting ring being run in an amusement park. When the authorities come to investigate, all they see being printed is novelty money for use within the park. There's also a subversion in which a seized van turns out to be empty, except for, as it later turns out, a crucial piece of evidence.

* A variant appeared in ''PushingDaisies'' where the body of [[spoiler: Dwight Dixon]] undergoes a mysterious vanishing act from its grave, along with accompanying evidence that would have linked Emerson and Ned with his death. The body is later found in other (false) circumstances, planted by [[spoiler: Ned's father]] to throw suspicion off Ned and his friends.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheRoadToEldorado'', exiled ex-High Priest Tzekel-Kan is planning on revealing his city of gold to appease the recently arrived gang led by Cortez. Upon learning of this, Tulio and Miguel devise a plan that would bury the entrace to the city behind rubble, which would have the drawback of preventing them from ever returning as well. Their plan succeeds, and Tzekel-Kan is taken for being a "lying heathen", with nothing to show for his claims.

Technological advances may eventually make this trope obsolete; after all, who today (in the First World, at least) doesn't have a cell-phone with a digital camera feature? [[CellPhonesAreUseless Of course, writers already hate cell phones.]] In the rare case this ''is'' used, expect there to be a problem with the photograph--or the phone--that makes it useless. (If the photograph doesn't show the unusual thing at all, but is otherwise okay, either the phenomenon is immune to photography, or [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness another trope]] is in play.)

Compare CassandraTruth, DevilInPlainSight, NothingIsScarier, NotSoImaginaryFriend. See also TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday. Contrast CryingWolf. Can involve a character's friend who just got turned into an {{Unperson}}. See also {{Gaslighting}}, ThroughTheEyesOfMadness.

* Used to comedic effect many times in various AbbottAndCostello movies. The film with the most abundance of it is ''Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein'', in which slightly-eccentric Costello is constantly trying to inform straight-man Abbott about the existence/location of Frankenstein's Monster/Dracula/a secret room/Dracula's coffin, only to have it moved before he gets there (often within mere seconds).

* A ''Series/{{Mash}}'' episode has a variant of this. Klinger goes to a traveling black-market bazaar called "Little Chicago" to buy back a camera that was stolen from BJ and Hawkeye. On the way back he's nabbed by MPs for having stolen merchandise, and when he tries to take them back to "Little Chicago" to clear things up, the place has already moved on without a trace.

* This is essentially Michigan J Frog's PURPOSE in ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes''. This was the premise of both shorts Michigan J. Frog appeared in, ''One Froggy Evenin'' and the sequel, ''Another Froggy Evening''. In the first short, the box the aforementioned frog was found in contains a message stating that M.J. is part of a particular "species" of frog that sings only for their owners. The whole plot revolves around him being found, and performing so that only the person who found him ever sees it. Any time the man is actually about to get someone to witness it, he stops singing at just the right moment. Then the man is left to try and insist on his super special singing frog, only to be assumed a loon.

* Subverted in an episode of ''Series/{{Leverage}}'', "Three Days of the Hunter Job". Nate and the episode's bad guy walk into what she thinks is the apartment belonging to someone who is unraveling a government conspiracy, to find the material gone and Eliot coming out, cleaning up.

* ''NorthByNorthwest'' provides a slightly more low-key example in which Cary Grant's character is mistaken for a government agent and interrogated with the aid of lots of carelessly poured bourbon; when he alerts the police and tries to convince them of his story, they return to a room devoid of any evidence of alcohol -- or anything confirming what happened.

** Played straight in the episode "Extradition II: The Actual Extradition Part". Despereaux breaks out of prison to commit a crime, but by the time Shawn manages to report him to the authorities he's slipped back into his cell. The entire escape apparently went unnoticed.

** [[DefiedTrope Defied]] when Shawn refuses to leave a corpse at its dump site because it'll be gone when they get back. [[spoiler:They take the corpse with them instead, hiding it inside a school mascot uniform.]]

Compare CassandraTruth, DevilInPlainSight, NothingIsScarier, NotSoImaginaryFriend. See also TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday. Contrast CryingWolf. Can involve a character's friend who just got turned into an {{Unperson}}. See also {{Gaslighting}}.

* In ''LudInTheMist'' by Hope Mirrlees, the protagonist and his friend discover a secret room in a public building lined with mysterious tapestries and filled with (illegally smuggled) fairy fruit. By the time they return with the authorities, the room is completely empty, much to their frustration. It is implied that this is because the first time they entered the room they accidentally gave the correct password while cursing at the locked door, while the second time they didn't remember what they had said and just broke down the door instead.

* In ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' by Hope Mirrlees, the protagonist and his friend discover a secret room in a public building lined with mysterious tapestries and filled with (illegally smuggled) fairy fruit. By the time they return with the authorities, the room is completely empty, much to their frustration. It is implied that this is because the first time they entered the room they accidentally gave the correct password while cursing at the locked door, while the second time they didn't remember what they had said and just broke down the door instead.

* In the Film/JamesBond film ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'', Bond discovers a lab where they are constructing satellites with deadly chemical agents. When he brings "M" and the police back there, everything is gone. The lab is replaced with a huge, opulent office. No explanation is ever given for how this happened. The lab was smaller than the office, so presumably one had been kit-assembled inside the other.
** Somewhat subverted in that Bond did have a vial of the nerve gas that the lab was working with.

* In the ''Radio/{{Dragnet}}'' movie, Joe Friday and Pep Streebeck infiltrate a P.A.G.A.N ritual with thousands of attendees, a fleet of stolen public vehicles, a giant television screen, and a huge pit with a giant snake inside of it. After they escape by the skin of their teeth, they go back there with their boss... and there's absolutely no trace of anything there.

Technological advances may eventually make this trope obsolete; after all, who today (in the First World, at least) doesn't have a cell-phone with a digital camera feature? [[CanYouHearMeNow Of course, writers already hate cell phones.]] In the rare case this ''is'' used, expect there to be a problem with the photograph--or the phone--that makes it useless. (If the photograph doesn't show the unusual thing at all, but is otherwise okay, either the phenomenon is immune to photography, or [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness another trope]] is in play.)

** Used in the episode "Hungry, Hungry Homer", where the Springfield Isotopes' owner removes the evidence from his office closet. Just a trombone player giving him an appropriate flat note.

* In the backstory of ''Manga/OnePiece'', probably the grandest and [[TearJerker most tragic]] example of them all happened to the explorer Montblanc Norland, where he finds a legendary gold city on the island of Jaya, but when he goes back with the king of his homeland in tow, the ''island'' is gone (most of it, at least), having been knocked into the cloud kingdom of Skypeia by the Knock-Up Stream some time ago. Which leads to Norland being executed, and him and his descendants becoming the subject of ridicule for ''centuries''.