Engineered Public Confession / Live-Action TV

Engineered Public Confessions in Live-Action TV series.

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• 24:
  • In Season 1 Keith Palmer gets in Carl's face and the latter threatens him. Later on, it's revealed that Keith put the exchange on tape.
  • In Season 5, President Charles Logan, responsible for the day's various murders and terrorist attacks, is taken hostage by Jack Bauer, who attempts to scare a confession out of him by threatening him with a gun. When that fails, Bauer is arrested, and President Logan returns to give a press conference. When his wife Martha goes hysterical with anger, the president takes her aside and threatens her, confessing to his involvement in the day's events while doing so. A few minutes later, much to Logan's surprise, it is revealed that Jack had placed a secret recording device on him while threatening him earlier, and his entire confession was recorded on it. Martha and Jack had planned this the entire time.
• In an episode of Andromeda, Dylan Hunt is accused of murder. He finds out he was framed by people he has never met before. He then tracks down the last one, who laments losing his friends but brags about framing Hunt. Hunt, of course, is keeping his Comm Links channel open for Rommie to record and broadcast to the authorities.
• Anger Management: The episode "Charlie Has a Threesome" has Charlie, his girlfriend, and her friend doing just that. Afterward, she begins sabotaging their relationship as she wants the friend for herself. Charlie gets her to openly confess, but she does so knowing the girlfriend won't take it seriously. Eventually though, he gets her to confess to him again in confidence not knowing that his girlfriend is in the other room and knows now that she's wasn't kidding before and that she really meant what she said.
• Babylon 5:
  • In the season 1 episode "Eyes", Sinclair executes the psychic version of this trope by taunting EarthForce agent Ari ben-Zayn until his hatred and resentment of Sinclair (that was the motivation behind his investigation and attempted coup) was revealed to the telepath he brought with him, who then helped Sinclair, Ivanova, and Garibaldi to take him down.
  • In the season 4 finale "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", Michael Garibaldi (and the other main characters) are recreated as illusions 500 years in the future to blacken their characters. Garibaldi's illusion then proceeds to hack into the system, broadcasting the discussion between him and the scientist who created the illusions into the aether, while convincing the scientist to explain their side's plans on the virtue of being an illusion. It was awesome.
• A variation of this occurs on Best Friends Whenever when a website executive tries to con Shelby out of her fashion website. Shelby Cyd and Barry trick the executive into telling the entire school what he did by luring him into a holographic classroom created by Barry.
• In Better Call Saul, Jimmy realizes the only way he can save the reputation of his client is to destroy his own, so he intentionally invokes this trope and engineers his own confession, staging an "accidental" admission of his own crimes.
• In The Bold and the Beautiful, Rick rubs in his brother Ridge's face how his marriage to his daughter (Steffy) was a revenge plot against Ridge. And all the while, Ridge is recording the conversation and later plays it to Steffy who then breaks up with Rick.
• In The Boys (2019), after her attempts to expose him as a Villain with Good Publicity are sabotaged by Vought's stranglehold over the media, Starlight secretly records Homelander threatening her to her 190 million Instagram followers, leaving him scrambling to do damage control.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • "Enemies", when Faith believes Buffy is tied up and Angel is his evil alter ego Angelus, she tells them about the Mayor's plans — only, Buffy isn't tied and Angel is still his soulful self.
  • In "Intervention" Spike tells his Buffy Sex Bot that he'd die before giving up Dawn to Glory, unaware that it's actually Buffy pretending to be the bot. Realising that Spike's Heel–Face Turn is genuine earns him a kiss and Buffy's trust from then on.
• Burn Notice: in "Bad Blood", a guy embezzling from a rap mogul shows up to kill someone who knows too much, but not before bragging about how clever his scheme was. Then it turns out the gun, which Michael gave him, was full of blanks, and the rap mogul is in the next room.
• Castle:
  • "Demons" plays this entirely straight: Castle and Beckett confront the Murderer of the Week by themselves in a spooky old mansion, the murderer gets the upper hand, tells them everything because he's going to kill them anyway, and then they tell him they set up a recording device in the room and cops were waiting right outside the whole time.
  • This is (at least) the second time Castle has employed this trope. The previous was only two episodes prior. Ryan wired up the youngest kid in a crime family and had him try to get a confession out of his brother for killing his tutor. He gets it, with his brother pointing a gun at him. Cops bust in and the kid gets shot. He's not quite dead; the shooting was a ruse to get the kid into protective custody.
  • The episode "Undead Again": There is no tangible proof that a suspect drugged the guy who dressed up as a zombie to think he was a zombie so that he'd kill the victim. The guy, once again dressed up as the zombie incapacitates Esposito and angrily confronts him about it and the suspect confesses. It turns out Esposito was fine and as Beckett comes out to arrest the suspect, the guy dressed as the zombie is revealed to be Castle in disguise.
• Chicago Justice: In "AQD" Stone provokes the defendant into a confession by getting into a face-off with his ex-wife.
• On Chuck, Daniel Shaw is a good way toward taking over the CIA and has already made all the heroes look insane or murderous. Chuck sneaks into his private office during a meeting of agencies from all over the world and makes Shaw think his big plan was tricking Shaw into alerting the leaders of the evil organization The Ring, getting them to leave the conference and thus reveal themselves. Shaw points out that they're still considered outlaws who no one will listen to, and Chuck goads him into gloating about being a Ring agent, plus murdering Chuck's father. Then Chuck reveals that their whole conversation has been broadcast to everyone at the conference.
  Chuck: You know, your Nerd Herd associate can also help you with videoconferencing. Smile, Daniel... you're on TV.
• In The City Hunter, this is the hero's default method of dealing with the villains, destroying their credibility. In one case he allows himself to be filmed being beaten bloody by a presidential candidate's supposedly-disabled son in order to prove said disability was false.
• Inverted in Clarissa Explains It All, while doing a science report on weekend of TV, her annoying brother, Ferguson, attempts to make her go insane. Clarissa and her pals find out about it, and she pays him back—by faking insane, but after removing batteries from Ferguson's tape recording.
• While he usually preferred the confessions one-on-one, Columbo could turn this into an art form by tricking the killer into a confession and not even realizing it until too late.
  • "A Friend In Deed": At the apartment of a suspect, Columbo accuses his own deputy police commissioner of being the killer. The man snarls he'll ruin Columbo as he just led the cops to the killer's apartment...at which point Columbo reveals this is his new apartment and the cops realize the "evidence" was all faked by their boss.
  • "Negative Reaction": When Columbo shows a photograph that seems to ruin Galesko's alibi, the photographer scoffs Columbo flipped the image wrong and gets a camera off the wall to show the negative. Columbo asks the police with him "you see what he just did" and they confirm it. Too late, Galesko realizes Columbo tricked him into grabbing exactly the right camera with the negative, which only the killer could have known.
  • "Columbo Goes to College": The two arrogant crime students try to frame a suspect by telling the class of their "deductions" and leading to the guy's car with the evidence planted within. Columbo tells the class it's a good try except for one thing: "This isn't his car. This is my wife's car." The faces of the two punks fall as they realize they just revealed themselves to the whole class.
  • "Candidate For Crime": A Senate candidate tries to throw off suspicion of a murder he committed by making it look like he's a target too. He places a bullet from the same gun into the wall of his home. During a party that night, the senator sets off firecrackers and when people run in, he says someone just took a shot at him from the open window. He tells Columbo that if he checks the bullet, he'll find it came from the same gun. Columbo agrees...and confirms it by showing the ballistics report he just got back on the bullet he dug out of the wall three hours earlier.
  • "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo": Following his wife's funeral, Columbo leads Vivian to his home where she serves him some poisoned marmalade. She then gloats she murdered his wife and now Columbo as revenge for Columbo arresting her fiancee long ago and now he's going to die in his own house. "But this isn't my house," a suddenly perfectly fine Columbo says. It's his sergeant's, who enters to arrest Vivian as Columbo further reveals his wife is alive and well and the whole funeral was a sham.
• Coronation Street: Subversion: Roy and Haley are trying to adopt an unhappy child but his abusive father won't let them take him without lots of cash exchanging hands. They try to trick him into confessing but don't quite manage it. They hide the recorder under a newspaper and sit him next to it, then try to get him to remind them what the plot of the arc is. After a few hours, he's fairly pissed off and wants them to get to the point of why they asked him to come over. Roy tries to pay him a meager sum in exchange for his signature on the papers. The guy freaks out, barking at them that he wants lots more money or they'll never see the kid, and how he'll get violent if they ever waste his time like this again. It's at this point that the recorder runs out of tape and makes a whirring noise. He finds it, smashes it, threatens them some more, and demands yet more money.
• In the Dawson's Creek episode "Election", Pacey turns the school's PA on while Abby tells him, in a moment of private smugness, that the school is filled with idiots. She then loses the election.
• The fourth-season The Dead Zone episode "Heroes & Demons" ends with an Engineered Public Confession in which the crooked cop's superiors are hiding just within earshot.
• Death in Paradise: In "Pilot of the Airwaves", the killer is a well-known and much-loved TV presenter, and The Summation takes place in the studio for his show. When he proclaims that nobody will ever believe Neville over him, Neville announces that the entire summation (including video evidence) has just been broadcast live on air.
• On Desperate Housewives, Tom's evil love child Kayla gets Lynette arrested by burning herself and calling Children's Protective Services, saying that Lynette did it. Kayla confesses to Tom about it but says that she's going to keep lying to everyone else. Tom then reveals that his cell phone has been on the whole time, and the family's psychiatrist has heard the whole thing.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Day of the Moon": The Doctor and friends pull a variety of this on the Silence. "You tend to my wounds. You are foolish. You should kill us all on sight!" rants a wounded Silent. The last sentence is later replayed as one of these during the live footage of Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, all around the world, reinterpreted as a hypnotic command. The humans do as they're told. Even better, since the confession was spliced into one of humanity's biggest historical milestones, the Doctor ensured that humans will continue to see the message for a looooong time. To be fair, the Silent in question had no idea that the person her was talking to was holding a 21st-century smartphone set to record a video.
  • "Spyfall": The Doctor secretly records the Master boasting about how Daniel Barton and the Kasaavin are nothing but pawns to him and will be cast aside once they've outlived their usefulness. She then plays this recording to the Kasaavin while she's in the middle of banishing them from Earth, and they respond by turning on the Master.
• Drake & Josh: In "Believe Me Brother", one of Megan's pranks by secretly recording Drake and Josh and putting it into their project footage backfires and helps them instead when it reveals that Drake's girlfriend Susan was the one who flirted with and kissed Josh and that Josh was telling Drake the truth the whole time.
• At one point in Earth: Final Conflict, Renee Palmer is kidnapped and held on trial in a Kangaroo Court, being televised live. When the judge thinks the cameras are off he reveals his true colours, saying he is the only justice left in the world and that his will is law.
• Elementary: This is how Moriarty is brought down in the final episode of season one. The scheme that foils her is a Batman Gambit engineered by Joan Watson, who correctly deduced that Moriarty was in love with Sherlock and would come to his side and discuss her crimes if he faked an overdose.
• Emmerdale: Subversion: Has an episode where Adam holds Steph hostage after she gets him to admit to killing Terrence. Steph manages to convince Adam that she loves him and they should run away together. When Adam unties her, she makes a break for it and runs to the police to show them the secret recording she made of Adam's confession. But all that's on the tape is Adam's doctor's notes.
• On Eureka, noted scientist Jason Anderson and his wife Kim come to town to help create a new project for Stark. Various odd events soon have Carter, Allison, and Henry realize that Anderson is a fraud. He works on various projects, waits for the scientists to have a breakthrough, and then uses a device to wipe their short-term memories and claim their work as his own. This project is actually all the work of Kim who doesn't even know it. Even worse is that Anderson used the device to make Kim and Henry forget they were in love so he could have Kim for himself. As Anderson is in a chamber showing his energy device off, Carter races in to tell him that Kim knows what he did and it would have been easy for her to sabotage the experiment. Carter dryly notes that should be no problem...as long as Anderson really did create it. As the energy builds, a frantic Anderson begs Kim to tell him how to fix it. At which point, the device powers down and Kim dryly states the energy build was perfectly normal. Stark realizes Anderson had no idea how "his" device worked and coldly informs him his contract is terminated (with hints of criminal charges coming) as the man is exposed as a thief.

• The Gifted (2017): Near the end of the Season 2 finale, Esme makes Benedict Ryan confess his crimes to reporters, starting with his secretly being the leader of the Purifiers.
• Vanessa does this to Blair on Gossip Girl in Enough About Eve. In season 6 Chuck attempts to do this to his father; unfortunately, Bart sees right through it.
• Gotham: The second half of Season 2 features a multi-episode arc wherein Nygma frames Gordon for murder, in the paranoid belief that Gordon knows he murdered his girlfriend, and he has to subsequently go on the run. When he realizes who set him up and why, Gordon puts a Batman Gambit in place to expose him: he has Selina leak to the GCPD (with Nygma present) that Gordon is looking for Penguin for help finding "the body". Nygma panics and goes to dig up and move the body, only for Gordon to follow and confront him; Nygma gloats about how he set up Gordon on top of his other crimes, at which point the other cops who came along reveal themselves and arrest him.
• Hand of God: It turns out that Pernell's confession to getting Shane Caldwell killed is recorded, facilitating a blackmail exchange.
• Henry Danger: Somewhat subverted. Henry and Bianca kiss after he saves her. As Kid Danger. Realizing Bianca doesn't know that, Henry realizes she willingly kissed another guy and cheated on him. To find out if she'll do it again, he stages another incident in which Kid Danger saves her and then tries to kiss her, but she turns him down and says the earlier kiss was wrong and she'd rather be with Henry instead. Since she still doesn't know the two are one in the same, Henry knows she's being genuine.
• In Highlander, Duncan discovers that Kalas is using a sanctuary for Immortals as an easy way to take heads as they leave Holy Ground. He confronts Kalas in a hallway as Kalas confesses to having been doing this for centuries. He smirks that the sanctuary's Immortal, Paul, will never believe Macleod's words. "Aye, but he'll believe yours," Duncan replies as a horrified Paul steps out, having overheard everything.
• Used in Home and Away when Matt and Bobby cotton on to the fact that Al Simpson was the one who murdered Matt's older brother Shane years previous and put the blame on Donald Fisher. Tracking him down to his remote hiding place, the trio try to get him to admit it. Al eventually decides that it doesn't matter if he admits it: "So what if I do? I killed Shane. You hear that? I killed Shane!" Cue the detective on the case walking in and confirming that yep, he heard that all right. Made all the more delicious by the fact that Al's reaction isn't so much Oh, Crap! as This Is Gonna Suck.
• How to Rock: The episode "How to Rock a Good Deed" has Kasey receiving a minor foot injury, which she plays up as even bigger after it has healed so she doesn't have to do any of the volunteer work, but still get to take the credit. Nelson discovers the truth and tells the rest of Gravity 5 and Molly and Grace. Molly leaves boots behind and seems to leave while Kasey switches off the charade and tries on both boots and walks fine with them. It's not until she's made herself abundantly clear that she discovers the other six members of the gang all hiding behind a structure and watching her.
• In the Dark: Murphy records Dean covertly with her phone when she gets him to confess that he'd murdered Tyson. He finds out and wipes the recording from her phone. It turns out to have already gotten saved on the cloud though.
• JAG: In "Killer Instinct" (season 6), the defendant is a petty officer on an Aircraft Carrier suspected of murdering a subordinate (by throwing overboard at night), because they were incompetent at their jobs. One crucial piece of evidence is not admissible in court because the ship's CO did not have probable cause for issuing a search warrant, and this necessitates a different strategy from the prosecution. Harm does the standard Perry Mason Method, knowing beforehand that the defendant will not fall into the trap and make him overconfident. And when Bud later has his turn to question him, he begins by asking the defendant several questions that Harm had asked earlier, then proceeds to make several other basic errors before dropping his notes in mid-question, and finally drives the pedantic defendant into a rage, before revealing that he was Obfuscating Stupidity and it was all part of a plan.
  Petty Officer Duell: Some people don’t belong in the United States Navy.
  Lieutenant Roberts: No, but the Navy won’t kill them.
  Petty Officer Duell: No, but somebody has to.
  Lieutenant Roberts: Somebody has to, sir.
• Jessie:
  • In "Princess and the Pea Brain", a rich Jerkass whom Jessie has a date with is caught cheating on her by Bertram overhearing him talking on the phone and turning on the speaker for the entire family to hear.
  • In "Diary of a Mad Newswoman", Bryn tricks Emma into reporting a fake scoop on the school radio show. Emma finds out and has Ravi record Bryn's confession whilst hidden in a locker.
  • In "Jessie's Big Break", McD's pass at Jessie was recorded on Luke's video camera. Jessie uses this to prove to Shaylee that McD is a Jerkass whom she shouldn't be dating.
  • In "The Rosses Get Real", the family gets rid of a mean reporter by angering her into insulting her bosses on camera. Ravi then steals the memory chip and plays it live.
• In an episode of Just Shoot Me!, Maya tries to expose Elliot's brother's fraud. She fails miserably. He's eventually done in by one part this trope, one part Exasperated Perp, by the completely oblivious Pointy-Haired Boss.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Fourze presents an inverted version of the trope, in which a Monster of the Week is the one who exposes a good guy to the public. For more context, the Monster in question is the Chamaeleon Zodiarts, and as its name implies, is able to use camouflage. It uses this ability to film the school's Alpha Bitch, Miu, ripping the gifts that the students at the school made for her and showing just how much she doesn't care for them in the slightest. The Zodiarts then proceeds to show this film to everyone during a contest to see who would be the queen of their school. It's because of this that causes Miu to take a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Sento confronts Gentoku to try and get him to confess to being Night Rogue, but Ryuga flies off the handle, reveals himself and gives away that they are trying to record him confessing.
• In The Last Kingdom, in Season 4 at the Battle of Tettenhall, Uhtred tricks Cnut into admitting he goaded Aethelwold into murdering his brother Ragnar, only for Cnut to see that his lover Brida, Ragnar's widow, has heard everything. Before Cnut can try to explain, Brida runs him through and to twist the knife, Uhtred strips Cnut of his weapons so he can't get into Valhalla and taunts Cnut that his sons, who Uhtred took hostage and pretended to kill, are still alive, meaning that Cnut threw his army and his life away on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for nothing.
• Happens frequently on Law & Order.
  • David Cross famously got in hot water for badmouthing his own guest role on L&O and the somewhat lazy writing — leading to severely constrained opportunities for acting — of having the villain just break down and confess everything to the cops after a few prods.
  • A subverted and reverted example came in the Season 16 episode "Acid" when they get the current girlfriend of an abuser (who drove his last girlfriend, the daughter of one of Van Buren's friends, to hang herself by throwing a burning drain cleaner in her face) to wear a wire and get him to confess to the things he did. He doesn't take the bait and it seems to be all for naught. But then the dead girlfriend's sister shows up and throws a suspicious liquid in his face and begins hitting him. He confesses as the police break it up and the liquid is revealed to be vinegar, which never was intended to do any harm and just ellicit him to reveal what he did. The police's didn't work, but the sister's did.
• Happens a lot on Leverage:
  • Considering the Five-Man Band are Robin Hoods for hire. A prime example is the episode with the Iraq War vet: A congressman and the head of a Blackwater-style security company are basically using the Iraq war as a giant money-laundering operation. The crew sends earlier proof of their collaboration to the news outlets, and when reporters catch the two together they try to play it off as a secret plan to expose corruption. Cue the really incriminating conversation they had minutes earlier being sent to the reporters.
  • One episode combines this tactic hilariously with Gaslighting: the team engineer the villain of the episode to break down and admit to her boss (and, unknowingly, also through her store's speaker system) that she's been covering up a toxic waste spill (which never actually existed) - after which she goes on to detail the various other evil things she's also done.
  • A team member tries to prod the villain into a confession while they're in a nightclub's A/V room. The villain punches him and bends over to whisper "You think I'm gonna confess to a murder in a room full of microphones?" into the team member's ear...which has an earbud in it. Ooops!
  • They manage to engineer an elaborate way to get a Phony Psychic to out himself to his audience (and on live TV), even though their plan is initially threatened by a criminal kidnapping said psychic in order to find a stash his dead partner hid. In desperation, the psychic screams that he's not real and explains how he does what he does. Cue a controlled explosion taking down part of a wall and revealing not only was this storage unit adjacent to his television set, the audience and the cameras too. For added measure, they caught the criminal threatening the psychic too.
  • During "The Bottle Job" in order to drive away an up and coming loan shark who embedded himself deep into a neighborhood Nate tricks the mark into joining a poker game in the back of his neighborhood bar, where three high ranking policemen are playing. Nate just has them pretend to be part of various mobs and guarantees the mark will confess to at least one felony. Here is Nate's pitch to them.
    Police Captain: So you're telling me this Doyle kid's going to march right in here, confess to a crime, and give us all his money?
    Nathan: If all goes to plan.
    Det. Sergeant Mickey: I don't know what kind of schmuck would do that, but I'd sure as heck pay to see it.
• Magnum, P.I.:
  • Episode "The Curse of the King Kamehameha Club", Thomas Magnum does this to an unscrupulous TV reporter with her video camera.
  • "The Kona Winds" has a particularly dramatic variation—a Femme Fatale tries to manipulate Magnum into murdering her husband, but he catches on and convinces the husband to pretend to play dead. Magnum then draws the woman into confessing her entire plan, right over her husband's "dead body".
• Mama does this on Mama's Family to Naomi's boss who was sexually harassing her. While he's bragging to Mama in his office about how he "bagged every good-looking checker in the Tri-State Area," Mama turns on the store's PA system, letting his confession be heard by all the employees and customers. (And when he lunges at her/the microphone, beats him up with her purse while screaming into the mic.)
• Used by Patrick Jane in The Mentalist against another 'psychic' to get him to leave a woman alone.
• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: In "Dead Air", Phryne confronts a murderer in a radio studio. She switches on the microphone so that the killer's confession is broadcast live.
• Mission: Impossible: The IMF's other most commonly used operandi. If it isn't getting the villain killing themselves one way or another, it's getting the villain to confess to a higher power. This trope is usually used against villains with good publicity. The craziest round from the original series was when they conned a newspaper mogul into broadcasting the names of mob/mafia members seeking election for political positions. He was conspiring with them by giving the organized crime members good publicity, and the team got past his guard by pretending to be aliens and offering perfect health and immortal life. It has to be seen to be believed.
• Monk:
  • Subverted in the episode "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather", where Monk attempted to extract a confession out of the killer (a man who stole five double-headed pennies from the U.S. Mint) for the FBI to hear (he was wearing a tie that contained a bug), but the confession did not come through due to the bug being damaged (Monk had the tie dry cleaned due to a stain he accidentally got on the tie during an attempted sting on the Mafiosos for attempting to attack a gang earlier).
  • A Double Subversion occurs during the episode "Mr. Monk Is On the Run Part 2". Natalie attempts to record Dale the Whale's confession on tape, but he knew long before she attempted to do so that she was going to try that, and did not confirm that he was attempting to frame Monk. However, he did tell her to record his message to Monk about switching places with him... and invoked the trope on himself anyways by having her record while his computer was on a weather map on Riverton, causing Monk to deduce exactly what Dale was planning.
• Jessica Fletcher is a master of this on Murder, She Wrote. It's impossible to count the number of times a killer confronts a seemingly alone Jessica, brags about what they did and ready to silence her...and in walks the sheriff and other witnesses who overheard the entire thing.
• NCIS:
  • Ziva gets a suspect to confess that she is Iranian intelligence by letting her think she is beating Ziva up. Ziva was wearing a mic and got the confession on tape.
  • Tony gets one out of Eli David, the Director of Mossad regarding the motivations of Michael Rivkin. Bonus points because Tony was the one being interrogated for killing him. Eli realizes what happened as soon as the words leave his mouth and praises Tony for his cleverness.
• A non-villain version was seen in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide when Crubbs revealed the school's policy of replacing (only) broken property, leading to a cacophony of teachers smashing old, obsolete equipment.
• Only Murders in the Building: Season 2 has one in its finale that borders on a stage play featuring the people in the building, with two Fake Out Twists to eventually make Poppy admit she was the one who killed Bunny.
• Subverted in Parks and Recreation: the Gryzzl corporation starts delivering free packages to everyone in town, which all contain products related to their personal interests. This enrages the townspeople since they believe that Gryzzl, who provides internet services to the town, has been data-mining their search histories and learning their personal information. Leslie arranges a public meeting with a representative from Gryzzl, hoping to trick him into admitting it in front of the citizens, only for the rep (who is a programmer and not a PR guy) to cheerfully admit everything out of the gate, excited to show off how smart his algorithm is. He genuinely doesn't get that what he's saying sounds bad until he realises everyone is angry with him.
• In the pilot of Person of Interest, the hero tapes the lawyer talking about her crimes when she thought they were alone.
• The second season of Phoenix Nights ends with the main character's Evil Counterpart Den Perry being subjected to an Engineered Public Confession, having attempted to sabotage the titular club on numerous occasions including burning it down.
• Most episodes of The Pretender ended with the Monster of the Week bad guy forced to confess under the same circumstances that he hurt or killed another person.
• Pretty Little Liars features this in season 2. Hanna and Mona go riding with Kate(Hanna's quasi-step-sister)and two of Kate's friends. Neither Hanna nor Mona is very good so they decide to go rest in the lodge/main office. Hanna, who is not very happy about her father's upcoming nuptials, takes this opportunity to complain to Mona about how she hates Kate and Kate's mother Isobel. Unfortunately, Hanna doesn't realize until it's too late that "someone" (Mona acting as "A") had turned on the intercom so Kate, Kate's friends, and everyone else outside hears every word she said.
  • In the Season 2 finale "unmAsked," Spencer is captured by A and while they're in a car, video calls the others discreetly to show them that she's not only been captured by A but to reveal to them that A is Mona.
• In Primeval, when Christine has taken over the ARC, she's exposed when her rude remarks about the Minister are taped, and sent to him by Beckett, saving everyone's bacon, although earlier, Beckett had seemed to be Christine's loyal minion. It's hilarious!
• Radio Enfer:
  • After Mr. Giroux is fired by Carole Péloquin (the school inspector) and replaced by Laplante as the principal, Maria gets the idea of making Laplante state out loud how he truly feels about Péloquin without being aware of her presence. It works, resulting in Péloquin allowing Giroux to get his job back.
  • Vincent spends almost the entirety of Season 5 having a crush on Camille without having the courage to tell her about it. In the season finale, having enough of this, Carl decides to make Vincent express his feelings in the radio booth after discreetly turning on the microphone. Everyone at the school hears it... except Camille, who is listening to her Walkman at that moment.
• The pilot of Remington Steele has the heroes move a body from one room to another in a hotel. When the villain exclaims, "We left him in her room!" a door is opened to reveal a roomful of cops next door.
• Revolution: This is how the heroes finally take down the Patriots at the end of Season 2: after kidnapping President Davis, they're ambushed by Patriot soldiers. When Davis gets free, he flies into a rant about how he represents the true America, and how he's going to get Texas and California to wipe each other out for him. However, when he gives the order to have the heroes shot, it turns out that the "Patriots" are Texas Rangers, and the de facto leader of Texas is in the other room — this whole scenario was a setup to provide Texas with undeniable proof that the Patriots were playing them, and results in Davis' arrest and Texas declaring war on the outnumbered Patriots.
• In the penultimate episode of Season 3 of Revenge, Emily enacts her long-awaited eponymous revenge against Conrad Grayson via this. She kidnaps his daughter Charlotte and blackmails him into a public confession (for funding terrorism and framing Emily's father)- however, knowing that such a confession would be thrown out for being made under duress, Emily instead reveals the truth to Charlotte about her father's crimes, plants a hidden camera on her jacket and releases her (all while concealing her identity). Charlotte then returns home and immediately confronts Conrad about framing her biological father. Conrad flips out, declares Charlotte an ungrateful bastard, and threatens her to remain silent, confessing to everything in the process. As a final gesture, Nolan turns on the TV at Grayson manor just in time for Conrad to see that his confession has been broadcast on live TV for everyone to see- clearing David Clarke's name and sending Conrad to prison.
• Mocked hilariously on Saturday Night Live during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Linda Tripp (played by John Goodman!) is wearing an Incredibly Obvious Bug and trying desperately to get Monica to confess to sex with Bill Clinton, but she keeps changing the subject.
  Tripp: Speak into the flower, dear.
• On the series finale of Scrubs (at least until the Post-Script Season), right after JD leaves the hospital for good, one of the other doctors says good riddance and starts insulting him, only for Dr. Cox (who insults and belittles JD more than everyone else combined) to chew her out and give a lengthy speech praising JD as the best doctor who ever worked there. Then JD comes out of his hiding spot, revealing that he planned the whole thing and giving Cox a big hug. Cox was not amused.
• Sherlock:
  • In "His Last Vow", Sherlock's meeting with Mary at Leinster Gardens is revealed to be one. Sherlock tricks Mary into revealing details about her past as an assassin while John listens in from across the corridor. As you might expect, she gets an Oh, Crap! when Sherlock reveals the ruse and that John heard the whole thing.
  • In "The Lying Detective", Sherlock is admitted to Culverton Smith's hospital with the intent of recording Smith gloating (having identified Smith as someone who wouldn't be able to resist doing so). During the gloating, however, Smith says he found all three recording devices and removed them. People always stop at three.
• In the Season 9 finale of Smallville, Clark manages to turn Zod's followers on him by tricking him into confessing that he killed his lover Faora and their unborn child, an act he had previously blamed on Clark and the humans. Apparently, Zod forgot that his followers all had super hearing.
• In an episode of Sonny with a Chance, Chad uses Sonny to fake a good reputation about himself by intruding on her tv interview. He also indirectly frames Sonny into looking like a diva. Sonny tries to Pay Evil unto Evil, but it backfires when it only makes her reputation worse and Chad starts gloating about his victory. Unfortunately for Chad, Sonny had a camera hidden in her cap and recorded him admitting his ruse.
• The Spencer Sisters:
  • "The Scholar's Snafu" case is solved when Darby secretly records the fraudsters admitting to their crime, with the cops overhearing it.
  • In "The Virtuoso's Vexation" Darby and Victoria confront a student at her school who framed the caretaker for a crime. She admits it while the principal's listening nearby, who expels her immediately.
• A variation of this occurs in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Way of the Warrior". Sisko is ordered not to tell the Cardassians of the Klingon plan to invade them. To get around this, whilst discussing the invasion plan with his senior staff, he has himself measured for a suit by Garak, a resident Cardassian tailor who has an Open Secret that he's a former Obsidian Order operative. Savvy as he is, Garak didn't miss a beat and relayed the intel.
• Starsky & Hutch force two FBI agents to confess that they've been trying to unofficially intimidate S&H into backing off of a case. When the door swings open to reveal their boss has been listening in, he is not best pleased.
• In Suits, while in prison the former lawyer Stephen Huntley provides evidence against the firm. Knowing it's fake, Mike and Donna visit him in prison to confront him. Huntley initially assumes he's meeting his lawyer and then points out that Mike is not his lawyer. After they confront him, he admits to having faked the evidence in order to get back at the firm for their own fake evidence against him (although he was actually guilty of that crime). Mike then reminds him that there's all the visitations rooms are recorded. Huntley points out that, by law, cameras are shut off for client-attorney visits. Mike smugly explains that he is not Huntley's attorney. Therefore, the cameras have been recording all this time. Whoops.
• Supernatural: In Season 9's finale, "Do You Believe in Miracles", Castiel tricks Metatron into gloating about his evil master plan to turn the angels and humanity into his blind worshipers in sound range of the angel-radio mic.
• Parodied in The Thin Blue Line, where the chief admits to Raymond Fowler that he faked some evidence. Raymond then triumphantly pulls out a rather large tape recorder from his pocket. But when he tries to play the confession, the tape just runs the workout-training that used to be on the tape. Another policeman then shows that you have to press both record and play at the same time to start recording, "I don't know why either". As an added bonus, the recorder is turned on during that demonstration, resulting in it recording some fierce Innocent Innuendo between Raymond and his ex-girlfriend. And the tape belonged to Raymond's wife, and she uses it for her workout at the end of the episode...
• In Torchwood: Children of Earth, Torchwood record a meeting of the British cabinet in which they decide to give the 456 ten percent of the children and agree on the way to select the ten percent. They then blackmail the government using this: either the government let Torchwood deal with the 456, or the information will be released to the public. The government do as they're told, but later yet, it is implied that further damning information will indeed be made public.
• A variation takes place in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Obsolete Man". When Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith) was sentenced to death by the totalitarian State for "obsolescence" (i.e. collecting books and professing his belief in God in a world where both books and religion are outlawed), he requested that his death be administered by a time bomb and that his death be televised. When the Chancellor, who had earlier ordered his death, visited him before his execution at his request then, Wordsworth secretly locked him inside with him, so the Chancellor would be executed with him. Seconds before the bomb went off, the Chancellor cracked:
  Chancellor: In God's name, let me out!
  Wordsworth: Yes. In God's name, I will let you out. The Chancellor survived, but was declared obsolete for begging for his life "in God's Name".
• Veronica Mars does this in the episode "Like a Virgin". Veronica gets the culprit to confess near her locker, then opens the locker to reveal a video camera; she then has the tape played during a television program broadcast to the entire school.
• Wild Cards (2024):
  • In "Show Me the Murder," Max tricks the killer into wearing a wire, fixing the wiring so he thinks it's off and realizing too late he's confessed to murdering his partner to an entire MMA audience.
  • "Dead of Night" has the group setting up the cast of the vampire TV show to head to a part of the set and tricked into confessing how they were covering up accidentally killing a woman in a hit and run.
• Zero (2021): Omar tries to do this, getting Rico and Mr. Ricci on video discussing their illegal dealings while he's invisible, but Rico gets the recording back. However, it turns out this was added to the cload, so the police arrest them later.
• Z Nation: In the final episode, Warren and George confront Roman Estes over his actions, getting him to confess to staging the bombings on Altura and the other survivor settlements in order to seize emergency power for himself and scapegoat the Talkers (sentient zombies) enough that he can wipe them out. As soon as he's done gloating, they reveal that they've had a drone watching the whole exchange and broadcasting for everyone in Altura to hear, turning everyone against him.

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