Engineered Public Confessions in Western Animation.
- 101 Dalmatians: The Series: In "Dog Food Day Afternoon", in order to prove that Cruella is putting sawdust in her dog food and selling it to the public, the pups steal Cruella's tape recorder in which she recorded herself admitting to the deception and playing it on the loudspeakers at the fair.
- The Amazing World of Gumball:
- "The Pact": Principal Brown asks Gumball to "take care" of Miss Simian's halitosis, in exchange for telling Penny about her annoying laughter. When Gumball gets detention for telling Miss Simian about her bad breath, Principal Brown reneges on his end of the deal, and Gumball haunts Principal Brown through a series of Nightmare Fuel hallucinations, threatening to spill the beans about Principal Brown putting him up to the task.
- Subverted when Principal Brown records Gumball's attacking the principal's office on the surveillance camera, then double subverted when Principal Brown blurts out his master plan and confesses how Gumball feels about Penny's annoying laughter as well as Miss Simian's paint-peeling halitosis, with Penny and Miss Simian walking in to hear the conversation in an awkward Oh, Crap! moment for Gumball and Principal Brown.
- Spoofed in an episode of American Dad!, where school announcement readers getting Drunk with Power, tricked into making an Engineered Public Confession, and losing their position is apparently a regular occurrence. Each one lasts even less time than his predecessor: Steve goes through this in a few days, then his friend Snot goes through it in one day, then their friend Barry snaps the second he sits down at the desk. And then the principal talks about his time as a cocaine dealer who had sex with little girls mere moments after kicking Barry out.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Deliberately inverting this trope with a confession she knew would be overheard by the Secret Police is how Azula wormed her way into Long Feng's trust. Too bad for him that what she confessed was only half her plan.
- A variation occurred in the Batman Beyond episode "Ascension", Derek Powers intended to "retire" and place his son as his replacement so he could act behind the scenes. Unfortunately for him, his son had other plans. His son engineered a media circus with complaints about his polluting his stationed country's water supply, getting his father angry enough to disintegrate the skin grafts used to contain his mutated form, Blight, on live TV, which meant they now know who the radioactive guy who was committing various crimes was, including Terry McGinnis.
- Batman: The Animated Series:
- In the episode, "Almost Got Him," Batman finally reveals himself to the supervillains he has been listening to in a bar as Croc in disguise. They aim their weapons and note he's never getting out of the bar alive. However, seemingly every other patron and staff of the bar produces a weapon; they were actually all cops in disguise, including Commissioner Gordon and Det. Harvey Bullock, and were waiting for Batman to give the signal to arrest them once Joker blabbed about where he was keeping Catwoman hostage.
- In "Riddler's Reform", Batman had just escaped a death trap set by Riddler, who's desperate to learn how he escaped. Desperate enough to offer to confess his crimes. Rather than accepting the deal, Batman revealed that he had tricked Riddler into broadcasting the confession. Batman gets bonus points for using the same trick Riddler had previously used to humiliate him and a device Riddler invented.
- The Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode "War and Peace and War" had Buzz do this to Guzelian, who revealed that he tricked everyone into making peace with each other so that they'd be defenseless against his people's invasion. Buzz made Guzelian's confession public by activating the villain's hologram projector while he was talking, allowing everyone he deceived to hear him admit the truth behind his agenda.
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The episode "Jail House Flock" has Hoggish Greedly's henchman Rigger tricked into confessing that his boss has no intention to replace the wetlands his construction project will destroy like he was made to promise, and that the crooks had Captain Planet and the Planeteers arrested under false pretenses... completely unaware that his every word is heard via a speaker in the courtroom during Captain Planet and the Planeteers' trial. Greedly escapes before Captain Planet slows him down while Rigger is arrested moments after setting foot into the courtroom.
- Codename: Kids Next Door: After the fiasco with Gallagher Elementary School's former fourth grade class president, the episode "Operation: E.L.E.C.T.I.O.N.S." had the Delightful Children from Down the Lane cheating in the election and becoming the new president as part of an Evil Plan to betray their school, turning the grades against each other so the middle school which former KND operative Chad/Numbuh 274 attends can easily take over and they would be promoted to the eighth grade. They say this plan out loud when it nears fruition, and as they finish, look out the balcony to see the students looking angrily at them. The Delightful Children then turn around to see that Numbuh One had the PA button held down the whole time. As a result of their betrayal to Gallagher, the Delightful Children are automatically impeached, removed from office and sent to detention and Gallagher wins the war against the middle school.
- Doug: In "Doug Didn't Do It", Roger accidentally does this to himself in one episode, telling Doug how he stole Assistant Principal Bone's yodeling trophy and blamed it on him, without realizing that his foot was on the intercom switch, so the whole school could hear him. Doug's name is cleared and Roger is the one given the punishment of polishing Bone's yodeling trophies after school, which would've been the former's punishment had the latter not pressed the intercom switch.
- Spoofed in Drawn Together. Spanky Ham and Captain Hero were abusing a superhero-versus-villain gambling book, with Spanky Ham betting thousands of dollars for the monster and Captain Hero deliberately failing very miserably, when Captain Hero was overcome by greed and decided to do it himself. Spanky Ham then retaliates by recording Captain Hero confessing his actions... with an incredibly obvious recorder hanging from his neck and asking the most revealing questions he could think of. Captain Hero decides that, since the whole thing looks suspicious, he's going to tell him everything in great detail.
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- The episode "The Switch Glitch" has Vicky Quote Mining Timmy using two separate recordings, and then Timmy does it back after turning her into a child pertaining to her stealing from her mom's purse. When Cosmo and Wanda are reassigned to Vicky, Timmy later plays a recording of Vicky saying she's happy and doesn't need the fairies anymore; this time, it's one full recording all the way through.
- "Microphony" has Vicky and Timmy trying to frame each other over the use of a special voice-changing microphone and a pirate radio station. While Vicky was using a radio advertisement to manipulate the town's parents into leaving their kids with her so she could torture them, Timmy was using the microphone to make the parents spend more time with their kids, until Cosmo stupidly lured Vicky to Timmy's radio station, where she discovered his scheme. When pissed-off FCC agents show up, Timmy simply raises the microphone to Vicky while she rants, causing the agents to believe she ran the illegal radio station. Jail time!
- Family Guy in the episode "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea". Lois tries to uncover insurance fraud by hiding her friends in the room and getting the villain to confess. He does but the friends aren't there. Sanford and Son actor Demond Wilson is, but apparently he didn't count. Fortunately the insurance agent was hiding in the closet... with Demond.
- In the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Frightful", Reed tricks his Evil Counterpart, the Wizard, into confessing that he never really cared about protecting the city.
- Done in Fillmore! to the corrupt chief commissioner in "South of Friendship, North of Honor."
- Also done twice before that in "A Forgotten Yesterday." The first time has Fillmore getting Rudy to reveal where he hid the stolen ledger with the term paper discs just by simply asking him...in his sleep.
- The second time has Fillmore making Sonny think he stole the ledger from Rudy and will now go down for it if caught or going to the Safety Patrol to finger Sonny for coming after him and then setting him up with the fake hall passes and taking the ledger for him to then take as his own. It turns out Fillmore discovered that Sonny used the phone he gave him to call the Student Council and turn him in for the hall passes (which he hadn't done in the first place) and not only got a warrant for the ledger from Student Council but is wearing a wire that has recorded Sonny revealing his involvement in everything.
- In the Futurama episode "A Head in the Polls", Richard Nixon rants about his plans for Earth after he is elected — in front of Bender, a robot with a tape recorder in his head. Subverted when he gives Nixon the tape in exchange for his old body, allowing him to win the election.
- The Galaxy Trio episode "The Battle of the Aquatrons" had the self-proclaimed emperor Lotar being taken down this way. Lotar had overthrown his brother Neptar, the rightful ruler of the planet Aqueous, and taken over. The Galaxy Trio freed Neptar, who then turned on the video communicator in Lotar's throne room. The Galaxy Trio talked Lotar into admitting that the welfare of the people of Aqueous was of no concern to him and that he thought they would follow him blindly. When the public heard that they turned against Notar and he fled.
- Garfield
- The Garfield and Friends episode "Supermarket Mania" did a variation: when Jon was questioning the head of the Monster Market store about the expensive prices for eggs, the boss admits that he deliberately made the items more expensive as a means of making himself filthy rich. Unbeknownst to him, Garfield, who he had earlier chased in the episode, used one of his store microphones to broadcast everything he said to Jon throughout the whole store. The customers immediately leave the store, and it is implied that his store is going to go out of business.
- The Garfield Show:
- In one episode, Garfield tries to get a refund on the worthless stuff he, Jon, and Odie bought on a shopping channel, but gets laughed out and chased by security instead. In retaliation, he uses a futuristic-looking tape recorder to record a conversation between the channel owner, Mama Meany, and his salesman where they confess that everything they sell is garbage; when they try to use the tape recorder later during a live demonstration, it replays the message, ultimately leading to everyone who bought stuff from that channel getting a refund and the channel going off the air.
- In an earlier episode, Garfield gets sent to a professional pet trainer who turns out to be a fraud. After purposefully misbehaving during the demonstration that's supposed to show how well-behaved he is, he gets dragged backstage and reprimanded by the "trainer" for not playing along...except Garfield managed to grab a mic from the stage beforehand, which he uses to reveal his scam to the audience.
- The "Lasagna Tree" special ends with Mama Meany having his reputation plummet when Garfield uses Eddie Gourmand's robotic cameraman to record Mama Meany gloating about making his fortune through cheaply-made and horrible-tasting substitutes to real food as well as calling his customers idiots for continuing to fall for his scam. This gets broadcasted throughout the entire world and results in Mama Meany going out of business.
- In one episode of Gargoyles, Elisa tries this on Fox in order to prove to her brother Derek that Xanatos is up to no good as usual. Fox gloats about Xanatos having trapped Derek, and that there was nothing Elisa could do about it. Elisa had the whole thing recorded and had intended to play it all for Derek but then decided to just give him the recording and let him play it on his own. He didn't.
- An episode of Justice League began with a triumphant Kryptonite-wielding Lex Luthor standing over the fallen Superman. Lex confesses to smuggling weapons and selling them to terrorists. Turns out it wasn't really Superman, but J'onn J'onzz in disguise, and Batman and Green Lantern have been listening the whole time. Whoops.
- The Mask had an episode where Peggy tricked a southern Colonel into confessing illegal toxic waste dumping without knowing the confession was being displayed.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In the episode "Silencer", the titular akuma goes after Bob Roth because he plagiarized his band and threatened his crush. After he's de-akumatized, Roth gloats about how he'll still get away with said plagiarism, then realizes that Chat Noir turned the cameras in the TV studio on him, broadcasting his rant to all of Paris.
- In Mona the Vampire, the local Alpha Bitch checks the heroes with a metal detector (finding two tape recorders) before telling them all about her Evil Plan. Unfortunately for her, she forgot to check Mona's cat, who also had a recorder.
- The My Life as a Teenage Robot episode "Labor Day" had Jenny land a job delivering breakfast cereal prizes for M.J. Bryce, who eventually manipulates Jenny into eliminating his competition and pressures her into stealing the holographic ring prize made by one of his competitors. Jenny exposes Bryce's underhandedness by recording the man admitting that he's willing to steal from his competition and having that recording play on the holographic ring prizes Bryce gives out at the assembly for his next cereal prize.
- Happens a couple of times in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In the two-parter season 5 opener, "The Cutie Map", Starlight Glimmer has been running her town like a cult, magically removing the cutie marks (and associated special talents) of ponies in the name of equality. When it's revealed that Starlight hasn't removed her own cutie mark (instead covering it with makeup), the Mane Six arrange to have her splashed with water in front of the gathered townsponies, revealing her secret.
- In "Viva Las Pegasus", the ponies try to get Gladmane to reveal he has been manipulating all his employees, engineering a public confession that was intended to fail, thus putting him off his guard and getting a real confession out of him behind closed doors. Thanks to a handy intercom, his secret Evil Gloating is made public.
- NASCAR Racers: Stunts tricks Rexton into giving one at the end of the second season by hiding a camera in his helmet.
- The New Adventures of Superman episode "The Prankster". Superman knows that the Prankster has committed two counts of disturbing the peace but can't legally prove it (no witnesses or other evidence). He pulls multiple pranks on the Prankster and gets him so angry that he confesses to the crimes, after which Superman pulls out a microphone and tape recorder that he used to get the confession Caught on Tape.
- Rugrats:
- In the 1991 series episode "The Trial", when Tommy's clown lamp mysteriously breaks, the Rugrats hold a faux court trial to see who was the one who broke the lamp, with Angelica as the prosecutor. As the episode culminates, it's revealed that Angelica was the culprit after the babies realize that Angelica was supposed to be taking a nap when the lamp broke in the first place, yet SOMEHOW knew what all the babies were doing at the same time. In her usual demeanor, Angelica gloats about the whole thing being her doing and that the babies couldn't do anything about since they're babies. Unfortunately for her, Didi and Betty were in the other room, listening the whole time...
- "Angelica Orders Out", another episode from the 1991 series sees Angelica, due to not liking healthy food and wanting other things, using a prototype voice changer that her uncle invented to get several things, such as sweets, a Cynthia dollhouse (that her father promised to get if she was well behaved), and staging a fake surprise party for her. When Tommy's parents come home, about to take away Grandpa Lou's teeth (they threatened to do so if he didn't supervise the kids), Angelica attempts to keep the truth from coming out, until Tommy activates the voice changer and places it right near her mouth while she is speaking, causing them to realize just how Angelica managed to trick them big time. Needless to say, she has to eat the stuff (specifically flan, which she doesn't like) she ordered as punishment, and Stu puts away the voice changer in his safe, stating that some things were better off not being invented.
- In "The Word of the Day", yet another episode from the 1991 series, Angelica, while backstage at her favorite kids show, was nominated as one of the new on-stage kids, and she and the other nominees listened in on the show host's conversation with her second-in-command, about her audience, and she overheard her say the secret word, and was the only one who actually heard it. She then won, and she also thought she won due to hearing the secret word (which is implied to be a very, very dirty cuss word, due to various placements of cutoffs with a person honking his horn or someone jackhammering, or in the case of her repeating the word to her mom, a very loud anguished scream being heard in the distance), her parents, after initially grounding her, eventually allow her to go to the backstage showing of the show, under the condition that she not say the word. In her usual manners, she manages to trick the show hostess by making her lose control of her temper to utter that exact swear word on the air, to the shock of all watching, and Angelica then states that she proved that she did actually say it. The show hostess was later fired and replaced with her second-in-command.
- In the 2021 series episode "Lady De-Clutter", Didi hires the titular character to help de-clutter and organize her house. However, Lady De-Clutter ends up taking a lot more than Didi had intended, including stuff that she and the rest of her family still need and/or want to keep (like Didi's supplies for her arts-and-crafts projects, Stu's videogames and even the family's toaster). Amidst the chaos, Tommy accidentally loses his toy screwdriver, and it ends up in Lady De-Clutter's possession, so he goes into her truck to get it back, using a pair of baby monitors as a pair of walkie-talkies so he can communicate with his friends. While onboard the truck, the grownups discover (via the baby monitors) that Lady De-Clutter's actually a con artist who takes other people's belongings to sell them on the internet. When Lady De-Clutter calls someone on her cell phone telling them this, which Didi and the other adults happen to overhear—the kids' parents ultimately have Lady De-Clutter arrested and get their things back.
- In Sabrina: The Animated Series the villain made sure none of Sabrina's first attempt to do this works, only to find out she had Salem jack into their signal to broadcast the confession on a separate camera.
- In the The Simpsons "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington", the FBI runs a sting operation to trick Corrupt Politician Bob Arnold into accepting a bribe to allow drilling on Mount Rushmore.
- In the Sitting Ducks episode "Gonna Getcha Gator", Drill Sergeant Duck seeks to win the Outstanding Sergeant of the Year Award and hopes to do so by arresting an alligator. As expected, her target is Aldo, who hasn't even done anything wrong, but while Drill Sergeant Duck attempts to entrap him into doing something arrestable, Bill and Aldo, after having recently watched a martial arts action movie, always manage to stay a step ahead of her and both these instances end with their friends being arrested instead: first, it's Ed, Oly and Waddle for reckless driving into a dry cleaner (DSD hoped Aldo would run through a crosswalk by not seeing the sign after she splashed mud on it with her police scooter, but Bill pointed it out in time), then Bev for stealing a scooter (DSD ripped off the "test drive" part of the sign reading "take this scooter for a test drive free", but Bill pointed out the rips on the sign). Finally, when Aldo accidentally flicks his tail into Fred, causing him to bump into her, both are arrested. When Bill finds out why Drill Sergeant Duck wanted Aldo arrested in the first place, he makes sure the radio on her police scooter is active so he can trick her into admitting what she did and the chief hears everything; Drill Sergeant Duck, as a result, loses her award and receives disciplinary action for her actions and everyone she wrongly imprisoned is freed.
- In the thirteenth season premiere of South Park, Kyle turns on the microphone backstage at a Jonas Brothers concert, causing a live world-broadcast of the confession of a long-term plan to exploit the purported myopia of devout Christians by secretly selling sex to girls under the guise of good, clean, family-friendly entertainment. And just for that extra South Park kick, the person he engineers this confession from is Mickey Mouse, who Cartman ends up exposing to the audience by pressing the curtain controls to raise the stage curtains. Didn't quite work, as Mickey was so powerfully homicidal that the world just knuckled under to him, waiting until his rage was spent and he went back to Valhalla to slumber and feed.
- The Static Shock episode "Replay" had the titular villain use an energy duplicate of Static to frame the hero for various crimes. His scheme is exposed when Richie films and broadcasts the villain gloating about his plan while Static fought his energy duplicate.
- Street Sharks: The Street Sharks finally manage to put a dent in Dr. Paradigm's credibility by forcing him to assume his Pirahnoid form on national television.
- In a variation, an episode of Superman: The Animated Series had Lois tricking a crooked cop to confess to framing a man on death row for his murder... with Superman right outside, using his super-hearing to get every detail. Subverted in that the detective didn't actually confess to the murder at that point. He did throw nosy Lois over the stair railing -several stories up.
- The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: Tweety engineers one in "Double Take", hovering over the bad guy's head with a microphone as he blabs his plan to Sylvester.
- Teamo Supremo: The team exposes a pop singer's anti-individuality stance as being created by her producer at her concert, by showing the concert-goers the producer saying so to the singer.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): In the ninth season finale "Doomquest", April finally convinces the public of New York that Lord Dregg, not the Turtles, is the bad guy by showing a video of Dregg boasting to the Turtles that the world will be his and there's nothing they can do to stop him.
- Done twice in Tiny Toon Adventures:
- First at the end of "Citizen Max" where Babs makes Max confess on camera (that's simultaneously being broadcast in front of the audience he's about to speak to) that he framed Buster to make it look like he stole the test answers.
- Again in "Son of the Wacko World of Sports" where Buster films Bicycle Bob reading cue cards to make him admit his products are a ripoff. After he orders Buster to destroy the film, Buster responds it's live.
- Variation in Transformers: Animated. Starscream tells the Autobots that it was him, not them, that offlined Megatron... either not knowing or not caring that he was being filmed by news drones. When Megatron came back online, he saw the news broadcast of Starscream's gloating. Needless to say, he was less than thrilled upon learning the truth.
- Tuca & Bertie: After Bertie chews out Pastry Pete for trying to ruin her own bakery business, Tuca reveals that she taped his threats to her using her phone. The two of them send the video to every woman in town, shutting Pastry Pete down for good.
- This is how Spyke gets Quicksilver in jail in their introductory episode of X-Men: Evolution.
