Blackmail

Mailboxes have never been this threatening.

Devil Bat: First, you find someone who has a blackmailable secret!
Hiruma: Hey, if you don't want the world to know, then find some dirt on someone else!
Devil Bat: Blackmail the person to become your slave, then use the data to blackmail someone else!
Hiruma: It's a Devil's Pyramid where slaves bring forth more slaves!!

— Hiruma (the god of blackmail), Eyeshield 21

Alice knows something that Bob doesn't want anyone else to know. So Bob has to do something for Alice so that she doesn't tell anyone.

In a teen comedy, a character is blackmailed by someone outside the main cast, and the others find out and stick up for their friend. In a Government Procedural, a respected politician is confronted with pictures of them in a strip club or with a girl twenty years too young for them, and is asked for hush money. In a Super Hero story, the hero is blackmailed when someone discovers their Secret Identity. In a Sitcom, a child blackmails their sibling when they break a rare, expensive heirloom or when they have an Embarrassing Old Photo (or even knowledge of something personal, such as their diary). In a more explicit story, an attractive character is blackmailed with information that could incriminate their significant other into performing sexual deeds for the blackmailer (that last variant is really popular in Hentai, especially of the Netorare genre).

The possibilities are endless. To list all the variations and permutations of this trope here would be a lesson in madness. Blackmail is such a key plot device, so intrinsic to the art of storytelling and human nature, that it is used by almost every series at one point or another. Sadly, it's very seldom these days that a blackmail resister (themself a rare animal) does so with the traditional response, and in real life usually effective, "Publish and be damned!"

One of the many ways of making someone An Offer He Can't Refuse. When coupled with Sinister Surveillance, this can become Paranoia Fuel, hence the potency of Big Brother Is Watching.

Of course, it's rarely stated as such, because "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word.

While the words 'blackmail' and 'extortion' are used interchangeably, this is not strictly true. "Extortion" is the broader category in legal terms, consisting of "obtaining money, property, or services from another person through coercion." "Blackmail" is a specific type of Extortion where the threat is "to reveal information that is potentially embarrassing, socially damaging, or incriminating about the victim or their family member(s) unless a demand for property, money or services is met." For example "I Have Your Wife hostage, give me the MacGuffin or she is done for" would be extortion, however, "I have pictures of you/your loved one committing a crime, give me the MacGuffin or your/their reputation is toast" would be blackmail. One side note is that the word originally did in fact mean simply extortion; rent or taxes was called "mail" in Scotland therefore taking it illegally (by threatening to burn down a neighboring clan's huts for example) was blackmail. The modern meaning shows how language evolves.

Also note that blackmail is an inherently dangerous activity. Informing someone that you know too much is quite rarely the best course of action, especially if Agatha Christie is holding the pen or you haven't told anyone else (but don't tell too many people, as that would, of course, defeat the purpose of blackmail). The danger (along with the potential stupidity) is compounded if the intended victim of the blackmail is already a murderer. After all, if they've already had sufficient reason to kill at least one person, is it very likely that they'll baulk at murdering another — especially if that other person is trying to squeeze them for money?

Supertrope to Revenge Porn Blackmail, which involves blackmailing someone with indecent material of them, and Fabricated Blackmail, in which the material is faked. Compare Blackmail Backfire when the blackmailing fails for some reason.

Not to be confused with film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In one of the Jay Bush and Duke ads for Bush's Baked Beans, Jay states that Duke has made certain requests in order to keep the Bush's secret family recipe a secret. It is then revealed that Duke has a secret harem inside his doghouse. Jay asks him if there will be anything else and he tells him that some privacy and a couple of steaks would be nice.

Anime & Manga

• In The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, Hahari tries to use her authority as school chairwoman to get Toruru to stop harassing Meme, only for Toruru to threaten to leak the photos she took of Hahari's antics with the rest of Rentarou's harem, adding that if she blew the whistle everyone would be in hot water.
• In Asteroid in Love, Sayuri intended to blackmail the Earth Sciences club for their recent rise in popularity, but begins monologuing about her intentions. Mari ends up recording Sayuri's every word and turns the tables on her.
• Black Lagoon:
  • In the first chapter, Balalaika and Hotel Moscow get wind of a Japanese industrial conglomerate's plan to sell nuclear secrets to an unspecified country and hires the Lagoon Company to steal incriminating evidence to blackmail them for access to their southeast Asian shipping routes. Rokuro "Rock" Okajima, the closest thing the series has to a main character, is carrying the incriminating documents and joins the Lagoon Company after his employer tries to kill all of them to keep it quiet.
  • While picking up an arms shipment from the Church of Violence, Rock observes Sister Eda directing workers to store cleaned linens in a shed. When Sister Yolanda tries to bargain up the price, Rock puts this information together with Balalaika's earlier mention of somebody dealing drugs outside the various organized crime syndicates' established channels, deduces that the Church of Violence is responsible, and blackmails Yolanda into filling their order at the original price.
• Subverted in Code Geass: During Zero's debut, he gets Jeremiah Gottwald to release Suzaku by threatening to reveal details about "Orange" (but in reality uses his Compelling Voice power). As Lelouch tells C.C. later, there is no "Orange"; it was just a meaningless word he threw out on the spot to make the Britannians think Jeremiah had skeletons in his closet, creating division in the ranks.
• Youichi Hiruma of Eyeshield 21 done this in regular basis for everything. Recruiting helpers and potential players, securing funds for the club room/casino, getting the football club in the first place, etc. He seemingly has blackmail material on everyone in Japan as he once got permission to use the TOKYO DOME just by flashing his threat book. It's so powerful, that it rivals the Death Note in effectiveness. Just a few of the things he obtains are his trademark guns, a TANK and anything you ask for. Even the people who Hiruma does not have blackmail material on are terrified just by the sight of the little black book and immediately submit to Hiruma's bidding. He also got free lodging in US during their Death March.
• Girlfriend, Girlfriend: While Nagisa is a pretty nice girl, she has stooped to this on a couple of occasions, usually in the form of taking a picture of her target in a compromising position.
• In Great Teacher Onizuka, Urumi blackmails Onizuka for a while by threatening to reveal that he almost buried her alive.
• Hareluya II Boy has the 'I got naked photos' variant.
• An April Fools' Plot in Hetalia: Axis Powers involved the characters receiving packages which contained an outfit, an embarrassing photo of themselves, and a letter informing them that if they did not show up at a specific location while wearing the outfit, the embarrassing photo would be made public.
• Subverted in chapter 8 of Horimiya. Miyamura briefly wonders if Sengoku is blackmailing Hori to help him with student council work since she continued to help him even after the public shaming fiasco in the previous chapter. In reality, Hori and Sengoku are Childhood Friends and she's helping him of her own volition to make up for all the times she bullied him when they were younger.
• In both the Kodomo no Jikan anime and manga, Rin does this in a pretty unique way: she creates her own blackmail material to use on Aoki.
• In Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, the mind-reader Sonica would resort to this whenever one of her clients shows reluctance in paying her for her info.
• In Magic of Stella, Shiina often resorts to do this to keep the team writer Ayame in line since the latter has serious Schedule Slip issues. Shiina has a lot of stuff in her arsenal; being Childhood Friends she knows well Ayame was a tomboy with Mr. Imagination issues, both of which things seen by Ayame as Old Shame in Present Day.
• Maria no Danzai:
  • In the first chapter, Kiritaka is blackmailed by Okaya's gang into uploading a heavily-edited sex video of his mother on the internet. When he refuses, Okaya threatens to upload the video himself if Kiri doesn't jump off the nearby cliff within three seconds. After a brief hesitation, Kiri does just that, which gets him killed. Right in front of Mari.
  • Tsubasa Kowase uses compromising photos and recordings of girls who don't look like they'll fight back to blackmail them into doing whatever he wants, such as giving him money or allowing themselves to be used for sexual favors. Yashima, who serves as his latest victim, was recorded shoplifting by Kowase once, and has been tormented by him ever since. Maria gives him A Taste Of His Own Medicine by confiscating and hacking into his smartphone before anonymously sending him a video of himself masturbating and another video deleted two years go where he and his friends were bullying Kiritaka, demanding 3 million yen in exchange for not posting them on the internet (not that she expects him to pay up, since at this point she's just trying to fuel his paranoia).
  • Kumiru Shikimi meets older men online and goes on dates with them. The kicker is that she fakes her age, lures them to a love hotel to sleep with them, and then reveals her real age before the act, at which point her business partner Iijima shows up to extort huge sums of money from them in exchange for not telling the police that they were about to sleep with a minor. If they refuse, Iijima simply beats them up until they relent.
• Subverted in an episode of Mazinger Z. The Dragon Baron Ashura hijacked a plane and threatened The Professor Yumi with killing all passengers if he didn't hand over the plans for the Mazinger's Mid-Season Upgrade. Yumi protested that was theft and blackmail. Ashura languidly replied: "OF COURSE it is. What else did you expect from me?"
• Metamorphosis 2013: Saki is blackmailed into letting some of her male classmates have sex with her after they threaten to expose her engaging in Compensated Dating to her classmates.
• In Monster, a hooker attempts to blackmail Johan Liebert by presenting her knowledge of the murders he's committed. With Johan being Johan, this turns out to be an EXTREMELY bad idea as he had planned for it ahead of time.
• My Dress-Up Darling: Sajuna "Juju" Inui, desperate to get a costume done by Wakana Gojo, threatens to denounce him to the police for seeing her naked. It's important to notice that, one, she was in his house (using his shower because Gojo's grandpa let her in so she could dry herself and avoid catching a cold), and two, she followed him in secret all the way from a cosplay event to find out where he lived.
• One Piece:
  • After having been trapped in Impel Down's level 6, Sir Crocodile volunteers to help get Luffy and the prisoners. Luffy initially flat out refuses, still remembering the Alabasta incident, but Ivankov assures him that Crocodile will behave because he knows a certain weakness for Crocodile. We don't know what that weakness is yet, but if the fact that Ivankov knows it is an indication, then it'll assuredly be hilarious.
  • Played for laughs in the Franky's flashback to Tom. Spandam tries to make Tom give up the blueprints to Pluton by blackmailing him with the knowledge that Tom built Gold Roger's ship. Unfortunately for Spandam, not only is this information already widely known, the World Government had already tried him for it and, thanks to a deal Tom had made, were on the verge of letting him off the hook for it.
  • In the New World, Trafalgar Law and Luffy blackmail Doflamingo into stepping down as a member of the Seven Warlords via holding Caesar Clown hostage, thus preventing Doflamingo from making an item he had been supplying to one of the Four Emperors, thus risking his wrath. However, Doflamingo sent out a fake news report saying that he quit and took advantage of the group's guard being down as a result of it.
• Sae of Peach Girl staged a fake attempted rape (Momo wasn't actually raped though) and took photos to blackmail Momo's boyfriend into dating her.
• Grings Kodai, the main villain of Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions, blackmails Zoroark into attacking Crown City as part of his plan. Interesting variation here is that he never had her son anyway, it was just a hologram as Zorua had escaped on his own.
• Ranma ½:
  • Nabiki Tendo did this on a regular basis. One manga story opens with her standard dating technique — get a boy to buy her dinner, take her to the movies, and get her presents, then give him a handshake and a goodnight and have him never darken her doorway again. In addition, the poor sap would have to pay serious money to keep love letters he wrote Nabiki from becoming public, which would embarrass him in front of his peers and make any subsequent girlfriends very upset.
  • Nabiki also used the threat of blackmail as payback against Ranma for accidentally destroying her expensive concert tickets.
  • Since Ranma is a Manipulative Bastard and The Chessmaster, he used this tactic as well, particularly in the manga. In the very arc that she blackmailed him, he searched her room for material to use against her.
• Rent-A-Girlfriend:
  • In the second chapter, Kazuya begs Chizuru to be his date to the hospital because his grandmother wants to see her. When she refuses, he threatens to spill her secret on campus since he knows they attend the same college if she doesn't agree.
  • After Ruka exposes Chizuru's secret, she promises to keep it a secret under the condition that Kazuya dates her as a temporary girlfriend.
• In Shiro, the titular catgirl uses this to force Miyako (the female protagonist) to continue to keep her.
• The lethargic-to-the-extreme Tanaka-kun of Tanaka-kun is Always Listless tries to blackmail the gods into giving him a peaceful life wherein nothing ever happens. He fails.
• In Wagnaria!!, Hiroomi Souma is a master of this trope. When he learns about a character and their secrets, he will talk to them and start casually mentioning said secret(s). Which then causes them to immediately do his work for them so as to not have him reveal their secret. Of course, it doesn't always work, and some characters are immune to this, such as Jun Souta.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Divine, creator of the Arcadia Movement (an army of psychics who want to take over Neo Domino), gains legal immunity from Director Goodwin by threatening to say that Goodwin was a Satellite-born.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • This is part of the origin story of heroine Helena Wayne, Huntress of Earth-Two and daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. Selina is conned by a former lackey of hers into doing One Last Job by revealing that he had photos of her killing a police officer. Sadly, the job goes balls up when Batman gets involved, ending up with Selina getting killed. Before Helena discovers him, the lackey admits that the photos were doctored and she hadn't killed anyone.
  • Batman: No Man's Land: In a flashback story, Dr. Thomas Wayne breaks into a closed drug store to get the medicine to treat a dying child, leaving behind a note and promising to pay for it. The druggist spends the next month blackmailing him over this. Ultimately, Alfred disguises himself as a cop to scare the druggist into handing the incriminating note over.
  • Batman & Spider-Man: New Age Dawning: Ra's Al Ghulthe Kingpin's wife with a man-made virus that imitates cancer, all so he would could essentially Blackmail Kingpin into working for him and destroy New York City.
  • In Death of the Family, Batman finds out that Joker has not only taken over Arkham Asylum, but he has blackmailed the guards into working with him.
• Blacksad: Statoc's lizard henchman was so disgusted with his murder of Natalia and Leon that he took the gun that Statoc used to blackmail his former boss. He thinks that Blacksad is trying to pull a similar scheme.
• A common plot in Buck Danny is for a pilot to be blackmailed (or his family held hostage) by foreign agents in order to force him to obey them. It always ends with the pilot dying, accidentally or on purpose, with only his fellow pilots knowing the truth.
• Firefly: The Sting: Saffron has gathered the crew's personal info and holds it over them as leverage.
• Jonesy: Landon, a selfish prick who has similar love powers to our heroine, tries to blackmail Jonesy into helping him to build a castle by threatening to expose her secret. She gets around this by exposing her secret herself, robbing him of any leverage he has on her.
• Jo, Zette and Jocko: In The Stratoship H-22, Werner blackmails Varèse so that he sabotages the stratoship, and then Mr Legrand's plane to the North Pole.
• Yoko Tsuno: In "The Prey and the Shadow", a young secretary named Margaret is framed for theft inside her job and cannot prove her innocence. It's a ploy by her boss Sir William, who has noticed that Margaret is the Identical Stranger to his niece and adoptive daughter Cecilia, and he forces the secretary girl to become Cecilia's Body Double and a part of his Evil Plan to kill Cecilia for her huge estate. Too bad Margaret swallows her fear and speaks to the titular Yoko, who's staying at Sir William's castle as a guest...
• Robin (1993): Corrupt murderous cops Marcus Wise and Roman Cavallo keep getting away with their horrible actions despite Gordon trying to find a way to pin their crimes on them and arrest them in a way that will stick because they have blackmail material on so many other GCPD officers and detectives who will go out of their way to help the two in order to keep them from revealing what they know.
• Spider-Man: In The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #249, J. Jonah Jameson is blackmailed by the Hobgoblin, who threatens to tell the world he created the Scorpion. Jameson decided to print a confession and resign as Editor-In-Chief of the Daily Bugle in response.
• Supergirl:
  • Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl: Played for laughs. At one point Bruce jokes he'll tell Gotham City about Batgirl's Batcave if Barbara is not nice to him. Barbara replies that she's already scheduled his disappearance.
  • In Supergirl (1972), a murder victim is being blackmailed by a crook who knew that he had a prison record.
  • In 2010 storyline Day of the Dollmaker arc, Cat Grant blackmails Lana Lang into getting Supergirl to help her interrogate Toyman and find several kidnapped children.
  • In Last Daughter of Krypton, Simon Tycho steals a Sunstone from Supergirl's pod and threatens to shatter it to bits if she doesn't stop fighting and gives him a drop of her blood.
• Superman: A double example occurs in Superman (1939) issue #172:
  • Luthor and Brainiac, having captured the powerless former Superman, send a note to Lana and Lois, telling them to come to a specific place, alone, if they want him alive. They comply; fortunately, Jimmy sneaks a peek at the paper with the telescopic function on his camera.
  • When Ar-Val (Superman's successor) refuses to investigate, the young reporter changes his mind by threatening to tell his fellow newsmen that Ar-Val has been intentionally creating emergencies to show off.

Comic Strips

• FoxTrot: Jason often blackmails Peter through his reckless driving. In one strip, he has Peter buy him a meal at a fast-food place for not stopping well enough at a stop sign.
• Knights of the Dinner Table: When the guys balk at running female characters in a session run by Sara, she threatens to reveal that they were responsible for a batch of forged Spelljacked cards that caused a major uproar in the local gaming community:
  B.A.: My Gawd!! It was all because of you guys? The ugly mob that turned over Weird Pete's VW van? Gaming Dick being tarred and feathered?
  Dave: There's still a lynch mob atmosphere brewing out there. You can't put the finger on us Sara. You just can't!!
• Retail:
  • Cooper once blackmailed Stuart into giving him extra hours on the job after discovering that he will lose his job if the inventory goes poorly.
  • Keith Sanzen found out about Cooper's secret lounge on the mall's roof and threatened to tell Stuart if he couldn't use it any way he wanted. Cooper ends up calling the police on him after he turns it into a poetry slam and erased any trace of Cooper's involvement. Keith swears revenge on Cooper which manifests in becoming an inventory supervisor and manipulating events to keep Cooper working at Grumbel's, as he knows Cooper hates it there but also lacks the ambition to look elsewhere.
  • Courtney "blackmails" Marla into giving her Friday nights and Saturday mornings off once she overhears that Marla plans to leave and start her own store so she doesn't tell Stuart. Marla points out to Val that Courtney calls off on those days anyway so it doesn't bother her. At any rate, it's now moot since once Marla had enough and got promoted to manager she fired Courtney.

Fan Works

• A Bad Week at the Wizengamot: Sirius reflects on a very good day at school he had in fifth year. One of the things he did that day was catch Argus Filch spying on the female members of the Hufflepuff Quiddich team while they were showering (with the castle's caretaker "rubbing his cat suggestively" while he was at it) and subsequently blackmail Filch over the matter.
• Code Prime: In the chapter "The Patch Paradox", Megatron learns through the Cordial Psychic Patch that Suzaku knows that Lelouch and Nunnally are alive. While Megatron already knows about that they’re alive, he decides to use this as leverage against Suzaku to keep him under his thumb.
• Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv): The Narrator blackmails Mikami into letting him make a documentary of his life with his knowledge that Mikami is a crazy mass murderer... and that he likes to dress up in frilly pink underwear and go dancing down the street.
• Family Guy Fanon: It's a retelling of Family Guy: Live in Vegas (which was turned from a soundtrack album to a 44-minute Musical Episode to promote Family Guy's grand return after its first cancelation). Francis, Peter's father, be forced to come to because of his son Peter blackmailing him. With the song "Fathers and Sons are Headaches" explaining that Peter stole Francis' Bible for ransom and only gave it back if he promised to a solid for me no matter what it was, which in this case was attend the musical.
• Feralnette AU: Lila immediately flirts with this after witnessing Felix coming out of the girl's bathroom, implying that she'll report them to the school unless they tell her what club they're in. This backfires when the threat proves enough to pierce through Alya's Selective Obliviousness.
• One More Trigger: Director Piggot tries to pressure Flechette into bringing her girlfriend Parian into the Protectorate, by arranging to have Flechette transferred away unless there's a compelling reason to keep her in Brockton Bay, such as a relationship with another Protectorate member. The Samaritans help Flechette break free by proving that Director Piggot knew of their relationship before filing the transfer, and then lied about knowing, which entitles Flechette to resign.
• Read the Fine Print (Evangelion): When Shinji describes how his father forced him to pilot by parading Rei around, Asuka concludes that was blackmail, pure and simple.
  Asuka: "Blackmail. If the First Child was really in that kind of condition, there's no way she could have put up a fight against the Third Angel. She was trotted out in front of you deliberately. 'Get in the fucking robot, Shinji. Or we'll send this cripple out to die'."
• In Retro Chill, Evil Calvin plans to use the Planet Deteriorater to blackmail the planet into bowing down to Retro and Rupert.
• Ruby and Nora: Serial Killer Admah Keter threatens hacker Hector Blood’s family if the latter does help him.
• Knowledge is Power: Apparently, this is how the young Tom Riddle got Slughorn to teach him dark magic: he'd caught him molesting a second-year boy. Yes, in a "Humour/Romance" fic.
• In Graduate Meeting of Mutual Killing, Reiji Ohmoto blackmailed Ginchiyo using the most recent motive (dark secrets)
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Harry reflects on the nature of blackmail after he helps Quirrell break Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban. He thought that if he were blackmailed, it would be best just to bite the bullet and let the information go public, rather than getting roped into worse and worse crimes until the blackmailer owned his soul... but in this case, the crime is already bad enough to get him life in Azkaban. He decides that he has no choice but to go along with his blackmailer.
• Advice and Trust: As part of her campaign to convince Misato to let them sleep together — both literally and figuratively — Asuka informed Misato that Shinji will not cook until she sees reason.
  Misato: "But it's Shin-chan's night to cook! [...] That's way better than even my best curry!"
  Asuka: "The last time you fed 'your best curry' to Pen Pen, he spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling and barking. [...] You've cut off my supply of Shinji-cuddles at night. Until you see reason and let us sleep in one bed again, you can suffer deprivation too."
• HERZ:
  • Asuka threatens Kensuke with telling his girlfriend about his pervert exploits back in middle school if he does not stop taunting her.
  • Shinji and Asuka needed a babysitter, and Shinji thought their only recourse was Kurumi. Kurumi agreed to look after Akiko… if Shinji kissed her.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: In chapter 8's omake Touji tells Asuka he knows she is Power Girl and he will tell everyone unless she puts a skimpy bikini on and models while Kensuke takes pictures. Touji thought the next step would be profit, but the only step was him getting beaten up.
• In the second-to-last chapter of The Second Try, Kaji threatens Japan's Prime Minister with releasing to the public a lot of unpleasant documents detailing his involvement with SEELE unless he cancels the attack on NERV.
• Fade: Unlike in canon, Ryuk chooses to give Light the Death Note and effectively blackmails him into becoming Kira so he can find the Death Note Ryuk lost (which is now in L's possession), by threatening to kill Light should he refuse. As a result of that and reading the second half of the story that came with the Death Note, Light is significantly more restrained than he was in canon, retaining his reasoning, sanity, and overall morality rather than getting Drunk with Power.
• Vigilante Tendency: Comedic example. Iemitsu finds himself blackmailed by "Ranking Prince" Fuuta — a grade schooler. The blackmail in question is Fuuta threatening to tell Tsuna and Nana what their father/husband really does for a living.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Ash mentions that in the previous timeline, Misty somehow got hold of photos of him in his "Ashley" cosplay, and used them as leverage to get him to do what she wanted during the Princess Festival.
• In The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas, after catching Dustin Rhodes having sex with an underage girl in his office, Brooke Tessmacher blackmails him into naming her the new General Manager of the Goldust hotel/casino. He was more scared that she would tell Becky Lynch than her going to the police.
• In the Pokémon oneshot Of Construction and Seduction, Giovanni gets Miyamoto pregnant during a one-night stand. Miyamoto blackmails Giovanni into giving her a large sum of money in exchange for keeping the baby. He does so and the baby eventually grows up to be Jessie.
• Early on in Those Lacking Spines, Vexen, Xaldin, and Lexaeus consider getting pictures of their currently-Ukeified comrades for blackmail purposes before setting out on a mission to save them. When Axel and Larxene are restored and sent to look over The World That Never Was in the trio's absence, they gleefully set up a tea party and record the results for this reason.
• In Purple Days, Archmaester Marwyn is an unusual variant. He's Grand Maester Pycelle's supplier for his drug of choice, and what he charges, aside from an inside perspective of the Red Keep's affairs, is the right to use Pycelle as a meat puppet.
• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Heather's mother blackmailed her father into marrying her. Later Heather blackmailed Gwen into living with her and Cody.
• The Infinite Loops: Used in a more light-hearted way. When everyone is looping infinitely through infinite worlds, it's hard for money or even supposedly one-of-a-kind artifacts to have any real value. By far the most valuable commodity is blackmail material on other loopers, both when they are Awake and unAwake. It's usually traded around for bets rather than actually used as a real threat.
• In the Sherlock Holmes fanfic 221B, Lestrade holds a mistake Holmes made over him, gleefully planning to publish it to prove the superiority of the police force. Watson calmly points out that far more people read the Strand than the newspapers Lestrade intends to inform and threatens that he'll rewrite his descriptions to make the inspector out to be an idiot rather than the crown jewel of law enforcement.
• Hearts of Ice: After recording a conversation where Cologne and Shampoo admit they exiled Akane to the Kami Plane, Nabiki threatens Cologne with giving Ranma the tape if they do not bring her sister back.
• Harriett Potter's ruse is partially discovered early in The Rigel Black Chronicles, but as Marcus Flint is a friend of Archie's, rather than expose her, he decides to just make her do all his homework for the next several years. She actually takes advantage of the opportunity to learn a lot about the higher-level classwork.
• Aunt Salem: When Weiss rejects one of Jaune's many incompetent attempts to woo her, Ren suggests she reconsider... and then casually reveals a briefcase full of incriminating information about her and her family. This actually makes a good impression on Weiss (as Ren knew it would). She had been bewildered by all the weird stuff going on around Jaune; finding out that his teammates are experienced criminals dedicated to removing problems explains pretty much everything, even if she's still missing most of the key details. She also enjoys the political game the blackmail represents, and suggests that Ren leak some of the information that incriminates only her father.
• A Flower's Touch: Angeal decides to use the video he took of Zack and Aerith on a mission for future contingencies. Although it's really something to cheer him up if he starts getting depressed about his mother's perceived betrayal and suicide.
• Those Obnoxious Ghosts: This is how Lum gets Danny to let her live with him. She manages to figure out that he doesn't want anyone to know about his powers and uses that to force him to let her stay with him on Earth.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom: In Chapter 56, Bonnie learns Danny's secret and blackmails him into dating her once the Terakons are dealt with. She gets a taste of her own medicine in Chapter 60, when Kim learns Bonnie is using her sisters' credit cards and blackmails her into leaving Danny alone.
• A Magical Evening: Multiple characters attempt to do this by using the sexualities and relationships of the major characters to get what they want. In every case, though, it ends up failing:
  • Cedric and Miss Nettle attempt to blackmail Sofia by threatening to reveal her relationship with Lucinda if she does not give them her amulet. Sofia refuses, and Cedric and Miss Nettle go through with their threat.
  • Right after Hildegard's parents die, Lord Dion tries to use Hildegard's relationship with Clio to get her to look over him skimming off the books. This fails when he is killed by Garth for attempting this.
  • The Freezenburg royal council attempts to do this to Hildegard and Clio again when they find this out from Wormwood. It fails as well when they are arrested after Hildegard and Clio refuse, but they expose the relationship to the public before getting arrested.
• Vow of Nudity: When Spectra gets caught smuggling by a forest outpost, the commander offers to leave that out of his report if she services him and his men. Considering an honest report would lead to life in prison due to the city's crackdown on organized crime, she has little choice but to agree.
• Asylum of Doom: Maddie gets Patricia to stop attacking Gaz by threatening to report to the orderlies that she has a hidden shiv, which will no doubt get her brutally punished by Dr. Burke.
  Maddie: Let's see how the staff react to that little toy of yours. You've managed to hide it from them so far, you really want to risk them finding it? I'd hate to think what the doctor would do to you.

Films — Animation

• In Don Bluth's Rock-A-Doodle, when Chanticler learns that his boss Pinky has captured his friends, he refuses to work for him anymore, only for Pinky to threaten the lives of his friends.
  Chanticler: That's blackmail!
  Pinky: That's showbiz.
• In Turning Red, Tyler blackmails Mei into appearing at his birthday party as a panda by threatening to reveal to her mother that she's been turning into a panda at school.

Films — Live-Action

• Allied: Marianne says she left Nazi service, but was blackmailed into working for them after she went off to England with Max. German agents were planted in the area to insure her loyalty, with the threat of killing Anna if she refused (this included one as her nanny). This seems believable.
• In American Nightmare (1983), a man known only as the Fixer videotapes prostitutes having sex with johns and then uses the tapes to blackmail them. It is from viewing one of those tapes that the protagonist Eric Blake learns of his father Hamilton having an incestuous affair with Isabelle.
• Ana: Ana recorded Helen confessing to illegally donating campaign money she gained via fraud, making her hand over the funds Rafa needs so she won't get arrested.
• In Andhadhun, Akash demands a large sum of money to pay for a black market corneal transplantation in exchange for not releasing Simi's taped confession.
• In the Film Within a Film in Bad Education (2004), Ignacio uses his script, "The Visit", to blackmail Father Manolo into giving him 1 million pesetas. In exchange, Ignacio would hold onto the script, and keep quiet about Father Manolo molesting him when he was a child.
• Batman Returns: The Penguin seeks out Max Shreck to help him go to the surface and find his true parents. Shreck naturally has some hesitations on this, so Penguin ensures his cooperation by threatening to reveal that Max's so-called "clean" textile plant produces a toxic sludge, that he owns "half the fire traps in Gotham", and that Shreck arranged for the murder of his business partner and had the corpse chopped up, as Penguin apparently has the pieces.
  Penguin: "Hiya, Max! Remember me? I'm Fred's hand!" You wanna greet any other body parts?! Remember, Max; you flush it, I flaunt it.
• In Bedtime Story (1964), Freddy stops his general from disciplining him by reminding that if he does, his inability to curb Freddy's rampant misbehavior will be exposed. He says, ""Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word, sir. Couldn't we use the word 'persuasion'?"
• In the 1929 Alfred Hitchcock film Blackmail, Alice kills the man who was trying to rape her. Then an acquaintance of the dead man starts hinting that he knows what she did, and could be...persuaded to keep quiet.
• The Blue Iguana: Vince is a bounty hunter who has had five people die while he was chasing them. He insists it was self-defense, but two IRS agents say they could have him sent to jail for years if he doesn't help them stop an illegal payment.
• In Blue Iguana (2018), Katherine illegally hires two American parolees to work for her in London, and threatens to expose their boss's shady business practices if he reports their unplanned vacation to their parole officers.
• In Circus, Julius is using a video of Gloria's murder to blackmail Leo and Lilly for half a million pounds.
• This is what sets the plot of Clue in motion, seeing as how it gives all the characters a motive for wanting the blackmailer dead, as well as his accomplices.
• Subverted twice in The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Batman Begins:
    Falcone: I want to know how you're gonna convince me to keep my mouth shut.
    Crane: About what? You don't know anything.
    Falcone: I know you wouldn't want the police to take a closer look at those drugs they seized. And I know about your experiments with the inmates of your nuthouse. See, I don't go into business with a guy without finding out his dirty secrets. And those goons you used –- I own the muscle in this town. Now, I've been bringing your stuff in for months, so whatever he's planning, it's big, and I want in.
    Crane: Well, I already know what he'll say: that we should kill you.
    Falcone: Even he can't get me in here. Not in my town.
    Crane: ...would you like to see my mask? I use it in my experiments. Probably not very frightening to a guy like you, but these crazies, they can't stand it.
    Falcone: So when did the nut take over the nuthouse?
    Cue Crane spraying the fear toxin in Falcone's face, making Falcone scream in terror.
  • The Dark Knight: Coleman Reese, an accountant for Wayne Enterprises, manages to figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman, and asks Lucius Fox for money in order to keep quiet about this. Fox is not at all intimidated, and replies as follows, convincing Reese to back down.
    Lucius Fox: So let me get this straight. You believe that your client, one of the richest and most influential men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who goes out at night and beats criminals to a pulp with his bare hands... and your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck.
• In Death Rides a Horse, Ryan's initial revenge plan is to blackmail the men who framed him for $15,000: $1,000 for every year he spent in prison.
• Detour: On discovering that Al Roberts is using Charlie Haskins' car, money and identity, Vera realises that Charlie must be dead, and jumps to the (understandable) conclusion that Al must have murdered him, and immediately starts blackmailing him.
• In the 1919 German film Different from the Others, Paul Korner is blackmailed by a man who knows he's gay — an offense in Germany (and many other countries) at the time. Eventually he cracks and sues for blackmail, but the blackmailer counter-sues for violation of Paragraph 175 (the anti-gay statute). They both go to prison, and Korner's reputation is ruined; he is Driven to Suicide as a result.
• Doctor in Love: Lady Spratt threatens to have Perkins pour Sir Lancelot's Napoleon brandy down the kitchen sink if he doesn't allow Dr. Hare to find out why he's fallen ill.
• Drive-Away Dolls: Jamie and Marian extort Senator Channel for a million dollars to return the dildo cast from his penis. He gives them the money, but tries to shoot them both afterward.
• Dr. Minx: After murdering Carol's husband, Gus demands a share of the insurance payout by threatening to release tapes which make it sound as if she helped him plan the murder.
• Duck Butter: Sergio tells Nima she once used a Home Porn Movie for this after a record producer she'd been involved with to get her record produced went back on his promise.
• Envy: When Tim becomes rich, J-Man demands money from him in exchange for not reporting him for killing Nick's horse.
• The Equalizer: Robert records the two corrupt cops who shook down Ralphie's mother discussing what they did, ordering them not only to return the money but never do this again, or he'll release the audio recording.
• In Everything Must Go, Nick Halsey spies two of his neighbors engaged in BDSM sex acts, and uses it to blackmail them into letting his use their electricity and pool. Notable that the blackmail isn't explicitly stated, but implied through exchanged glances and looks.
• Fragment of Fear: Aunt Lucy used to take bright, promising juvenile delinquents under her wing, train and nurture them for years, financially support their endeavours, and then as soon as any of them became politically successful, she'd threaten to expose their criminal past so they'd pay her. Eventually a spy agency got wind of what she was doing and demanded to see the list of public figures and their crimes. She said they'd get the list over her dead body, and they did.
• The Gentlemen: The Framing Device is driven by this, as immoral private detective Fletcher reveals to Raymond that he's uncovered everything about Mickey's criminal empire, and will hand over evidence of it to a newspaper editor with a grudge against Mickey unless he's paid off with 20 million pounds. He also makes it clear that he's taken steps to ensure that if anything happens to him, it still gets published. Using Coach and the Toddlers, Raymond tracks down and confiscates all of Fletcher's blackmail materials, while getting some of his own on the editor by having him drugged into an act of bestiality and filming it. With his scheme undercut, Fletcher is left at the gangsters' mercy.
• A Good Woman is Hard to Find: At the end of the film Sarah gets revenge on a creepy man by threatening that she'll claim he flashed her son and makes him pay for a treat to stop her.
• In The Hands of Orlac, Vasseur has some kind of hold over Regine, the Orlacs' maid. He uses this to force her into persuading Orlac that he needs to visit his father. Once there, Orlac walks into a Frame-Up that makes it look like he has murdered his father. Vasseur/Nera plans to use this to extort Orlac for 10 million francs in exchange for not going to the police.
• Heatwave (2022): Parker was blackmailed by Eve into helping cover up her murder of Scott.
• High Heels and Low Lifes: After accidentally overhearing a phone call detailing a major robbery, Shannon and Frances decide to blackmail the crooks for a cut of the take.
• Hotel Rwanda: Paul Rusesabagina, who had previously been bribing General Bizimungu with money and scotch into protecting the hotel and the Tutsi refugees inside, eventually resorts to this by pointing out to the General that the United Nations has him listed as a war criminal. When Bizimungu protests that he hasn't committed any war crimes, Paul replies that nobody in the UN would believe him as he is a high-ranking commander in an army that has been committing all kinds of horrific atrocities since the beginning of the genocide. Paul is the only independent person who could vouch for his innocence and threatens to keep the truth a secret unless Bizimungu continues to help him.
• Used lightly in Icebox. To get info out of a younger boy, Rafael threatens to tell the other kids that the boy pees his bed. He doesn't, but Rafael says that the others won't believe that.
• In Joysticks, the main characters try to get Rutter to back down with (out of context) pictures of him in the arcade with a pair of half dressed teenagers. However he simply strong-arms them into handing them over... until later on, when it turns out they kept the photos after all and show them at the debate.
• Kiss of the Damned: Maia gets Xenia to relent from sending her away by having her tempted into drinking human blood. Presumably it would not go down well in her Vegetarian Vampire community.
• In The Letter, Geoffrey Hammond's lover demands $10000 from his other lover, the woman that killed him, in return for an incriminating letter.
• In Life as a House, Sam prevents neighbor David from trying to halt construction on the house with the threat of exposing him from his prostitution attempt.
• In Little Sweetheart, the entire plot runs on this. Thelma is blackmailing her brother to get the photos developed, Robert Burger and his mistress Dorothea to make money and doing this all with a slightly willing accomplice. It doesn't end well for most of the cast.
• In Madhouse (1974), Elizabeth Peters' foster parents attempt to blackmail Toombes for 10,000 pounds, claiming to have proof that he seduced and murdered her.
• In Marci X, a senator danced to her opponent's music, and her son filmed the dance.
• In Mario (2018), Lafranconi agrees to be secretive about Mario and Leon's relationship and quit the homophobic harassment if Mario passes the ball to him more often so he can score more goals and look better to the higher-ups.
• Miller's Girl: Cairo uses the photos of her and Winnie making out for this, so Winnie won't testify against her for Miller to the school board, since it would bring down Fillmore, who Winnie likes.
• The Miracle Woman: Hornsby blackmails Florence Fallon by telling her that he'll blame the embezzling charges and the murder of their employee on her since all the circumstances point to her — all of this, of course, has been done by Hornsby, not Florence; she only needs to escape to the south of France with him to avoid all of this.
• In Moving Violation, Deputy Tylor threatens to report Sheriff Rankin's corruption to the mayor unless he gives him a bigger cut of the bribe money. Rankin responds by murdering him.
• In Murder is My Beat, "Frank Dean" turns out to be a man named Abbott, who is still alive. The corpse identified as Dean actually belonged to his chauffeur Mike, whom Abbott murdered for threatening to expose his affair with Eden. He didn't mind seeing Eden falsely convicted, as he mistakenly believed she was involved in the blackmail as well.
• In Mutiny on the Buses, Stan and Jack use their knowledge that Mr. Jenkins has been having an affair with Nymphy Norah to get Stan the job of running the Windsor Safari Park tours.
• Official Secrets: The NSA tries to get GCHQ to help them blackmail the UN delegations from Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan into supporting a resolution that would legalize the invasion of Iraq.
• Operation: Dumbo Drop: How Cahill gets Poole to come along; he threatens to tell General "Kill 'Em All and Let God Sort It Out" Richardson that Poole slept with his wife.
  Poole: I thought she was his daughter.
• Partners (1982): Jill and an accomplice were blackmailing closeted gay men with evidence of their sexuality. One of her targets murders her and two of her other targets. The fourth victim was Jill's accomplice, whom she murdered herself.
• In The Phantom of Crestwood, Jenny Wren gathers four of her former paramours together to blackmail them into providing her with enough money to retire and move to Europe. The total sum she demands is $450,000: approximately $7.8 million in today's money.
• Plays a major role in Rehearsal for Murder. Frank Heller was blackmailing Monica over his one-stand with him and threatening to tell her fiancé Alex. Monica decided not to pay and instead tried to call Alex to come clean. This is when Frank killed her.
• A subplot in Ruthless People sees Sam's mistress Carol attempt to blackmail him when she learns of his plan to kill his wife, Barbara, who ends up kidnapped by people Sam screwed over instead. Carol sends her idiot boyfriend Earl to tape the whole thing — only for him to tape a man cheating on his wife and enjoying the services of a hooker. When her attempt backfires (Sam actually enjoyed the tape and wanted her to react like the hooker), Carol misinterprets it as a threat and send the tape to the chief of police — and unintentionally blackmails him as he was the man boning the hooker.
• In Silver Lode, saloon girl Dolly threatens to tell telegraph operator Paul Herbert's wife some juicy details about the two of them if he doesn't send some wires that could exonerate Ballard. When he protests that it isn't true, Dolly points out that while that is correct, nobody would believe him if she made those claims in the first place.
• A Simple Favor: Faith tries to extort money from Emily with the threat of revealing that they murdered their father. It leads to her death as Emily murders her after this.
• In The Sleeping Cardinal, Moriarty uses his knowledge of Roland Adair's cheating at cards to blackmail him into acting as a courier to smuggle the stolen currency out of the country.
• Stealing Heaven: The maid, after learning about the affair, subtly threatens Héloïse with revealing it to get one of her old tunics (far finer than a servant ordinarily could afford).
• In Struck by Lighting, Carson Phillips forces his classmates to write for his literature magazine by blackmailing them.
• In A Study in Terror, Angela Osborne and Max Steiner are blackmailing Lord Carfax: threatening to reveal that his brother Michael had married a prostitute, which would ruin the family name and possibly kill his father.
• In Sunburn (1979), Marcus discovers that before his death, Thoren had been withdrawing $20,000 a month for the last few years. He speculates that Thoren was being blackmailed over his relationship with his best friend Ortega, a lawyer with whom he liked taking steam baths. Thoren really was being blackmailed, but over his former identity as a Nazi.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), the police chief is threatening to arrest April's boss's son for delinquency if he doesn't get April to stop criticizing the police in her news reports. When it didn't work, April's boss was forced to fire her.
• In The Terror of Tiny Town, the sheriff is being blackmailed by the Big Bad Bat Haines to turn a blind eye to all of Haines' crimes, because Haines knows the sheriff is an ex-con and could get him sent back to prison.
• Trap For Cinderella: Micky learns that a local barman, Serge, knows a lot more about what happened the night of the accident, and that he requires payment to not reveal those details.
• In True Confession, Charley knows that Helen didn’t kill Otto; he has Otto’s wallet and is the real killer. He threatens to tell the police that Helen committed perjury if she and Ken don’t give him $30,000.
• In The Unknown, Alonzo blackmails a surgeon into amputating his arms.
• In Up Pompeii, Prosperus Maximus tells Lurcio that if he doesn't kill Nero, he'll cut off his gizzard and fling it to the crows.
• In Victim (1961), gays are being blackmailed for their illegal homosexual activities. (This groundbreaking film was made six years before homosexuality was decriminalised in Great Britain. It was also the first movie to use the word 'homosexual'.)
• Used in Wake Me When It's Over to prevent Colonel Hollingsworth from arresting Stark for going AWOL. Doc is quick to threaten to expose Hollingsworth's involvement in the hotel when he purchased a massive amount of king crab for his own use. Hollingsworth relents, but his later demotion to sergeant indicates that this might have gotten out regardless.
• In Watch Your Stern, when Commander Phillips discovers that his copy of the Creeper torpedo plans have been stolen and replaced with the cold room refrigeration plan, Captain Foster gets him to keep his mouth shut by warning him that one word from him and he'll have him court-martialed for neglect of duty.
• In When Taekwondo Strikes, Mary persuades Li to train her in Taekwondo by threatening to reveal his true identity as the leader of La Résistance.
• Where the Truth Lies: Vince tries to blackmail Karen into telling her publisher there isn't anything untoward about Maureen's death by taking photos of her having sex with Alice while high (really, raping her, given her state of mind). It turns out this was why Maureen had been murdered too. She discovered Vince was bisexual and attempted to extort money in return for keeping it secret.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: R.K. Maroon, head of Maroon Cartoons, sets up Jessica Rabbit into cheating on her husband, Roger, with Marvin Acme. The blackmailer hires detective Eddie Valiant to take pictures of the encounter, and with the pictures he hopes he will be able to start a massive scandal that will make Acme sell his Gag Factory as well as Toontown to Cloverleaf Industries, so that he could sell his studio to Cloverleaf as well. The plan ends up failing when Acme is murdered, Jessica's explanation of the blackmailer's scheme to Eddie ends up vindicating Roger of Acme's murder, and the blackmailer learns that Cloverleaf intends to destroy Toontown in order to replace it with a freeway. Maroon attempts to repair the damage he caused by trying to find Acme's will, as that is the only thing that will prevent Cloverleaf from seizing Toontown (which is what will happen to Toontown if the will isn't found by midnight), only to be murdered by Cloverleaf's owner, Judge Doom (the one who also killed Acme), in the process.
• In Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, the butler Albie blackmails Aunt Roo for 2,000 quid over the fact that she's keeping Katy locked up in Katharine's nursery.
• The Whole Truth (2021): A bully named Fame has been hanging out with Putt, wanting to get together with Putt's sister, Pim. He has Putt comply to his wishes by threatening to distribute a clip of Pim showering at school if he doesn't help him out.

Literature

• In the novel Absolute Power 1996, when a thief witnesses the President committing a murder, he decides it would be a good idea to blackmail him. It ends just as badly as one would predict. This is averted in the movie adaptation in which the thief is the main protagonist.
• All Men of Genius has a fair amount of it.
  • The longest and most sinister attempt is by the student Volio towards Cecily's governess, Miriam. When Volio gets wind of the fact that Miriam isn't as prim and proper as she appears, and is in a relationship with a student, he tries to force her to act as a go-between and advocate between himself and Cecily, with whom he thinks himself in love. (He raises the possibility of demanding sex from Miriam too, but she tells him she would tell Cecily and thereby guarantee his rejection.) Miriam pretends to agree to help him woo Cecily, but in fact, she and her friends generate fake correspondence instead.
  • A lesser instance from the same book relates to the protagonist secretly being female. The actress/prostitute Fiona, hired briefly to act the part of the maid Violet doesn't really have, uses her knowledge of Violet's dual identity to extract information on one of Violet's friends, whom she wants to seduce and settle down with. Since Fiona and said friend both end up genuinely happy together, Violet doesn't particularly resent this.
• And Then I Turned Into a Mermaid:
  • Popular girl Felicity Davison sees Molly transform into a mermaid, and Molly uses her newly-discovered mind-reading abilities to learn that Felicity's mum has cancer. In a case of mutual blackmail, Felicity agrees not to tell anyone that Molly's a mermaid if Molly doesn't tell anyone about Felicity's mother's cancer.
  • In the second book, the Waverley twins try to trick Molly into transforming in front of a group of humans so her family will be banished to the unsafe, polluted ocean. When Molly catches on, she and Margot hatch a plan to trick the Waverleys into transforming and film them. They threaten to post the footage online unless the Waverleys leave them alone.
• In Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne stopped the town's dominant family from trying to destroy her career by accidentally sending them their revered grandfather's diary, in which was detailed how he committed cannibalism when he was shipwrecked.
• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest:
  • Shizuku gets Hajime to accept and look after Kaoriby threatening to give him over-the-top and embarrassing nicknames and spreading them among the general population.
  • Eri blackmails Himaya into being her slave by promising to keep quiet regarding the fact that she knows he's directly responsible for intentionally blasting Hajime into the Abyss with a fireball.
• Willis Sr. assists his English cousins in confronting a blackmailer in Aunt Dimity's Good Deed. An incompetent physician learns of both the family's literal skeleton in the closet and some accounting errors in the family law practice that might be construed as embezzlement, coupled with some actual embezzlement by a now-deceased in-law. Willis Sr. also informs Scotland Yard, and a Chief Inspector is present at the Denouement.
• In The Barrakee Mystery, the first of the Bony murder mysteries, the murder victim had been blackmailing one of the other characters over a secret from decades in the past. It had started out with him suggesting a one-off payment for his silence, but then he had come back later to say that he wanted a regular pay-off to stay silent.
• In Both Can Be True, Daniel and Ash rescue the elderly Pomeranian Chewbarka from euthanization. Chewbarka's former owner turns out to have a daughter named Bella McBrenner who goes to Daniel and Ash's school. When Bella finds out that her beloved dog hasn't really been euthanized, she digs up a video of a transphobic assault Ash suffered at their old school and threatens to send it to everyone if Ash doesn't tell her where Chewbarka is. Ash can't tell her because her dad might find out, take Chewbarka back, and have her killed. Just as Bella is about to send the video, Ash's friends Griffey, Sam, and Esme confront her for sharing bullying videos, letting everyone know Ash's deadname, and committing blackmail. Bella feels guilty and backs down. Later, once Chewbarka is in a safe home, Daniel takes Bella to visit her, but only after making sure she won't mention it to her dad.
• Chocoholic Mysteries: More than one book features a villain who was doing this.
  • The villains of Bridal Bash blackmailed a wealthy man for their own purposes.
  • The villain of Book Bandit indulged in this, having caught another character illicitly storing things in the library basement, and convinced them to give her a grant in return for the villain's silence.
• James Bond in COLD goes after the eponymous organization when they have the plane carrying a man who was going to blackmail them on the information he had gathered explode spectacularly when it reaches its destination.
• In John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos novel Fugitives of Chaos, Amelia attempts to extort help in escaping. She bungles it.
• Occasionally inverted in the Discworld as "whitemailing", which entails threatening to reveal good information about someone, e.g. making a gangster look weak to his competitors by revealing his donations to charity.
• In Sarah A. Hoyt's Draw One in the Dark, the officer mentions the bathroom to Kyrie, knowing that she knows there would have been blood and other evidence, to get her to talk with him.
• In Eric, or Little by Little, Eric and his friends secretly buy wine and brandy from a petty criminal named Billy. After Eric decides to stop his rule-breaking, Billy tells him that he knows Eric and his friends stole some of Mr Gordon's pigeons months ago, and threatens to report it if Eric doesn't give him five pounds. Eric knows he'll be expelled if Dr Rowlands finds out he stole the pigeons, but he can't think of a way to scrape together five pounds. He steals the money from the cricket-fund box, then has an attack of conscience and puts it back, but he doesn't have time to take the key out of the lock. Days later, Billy breaks in, sees the key in the lock, and steals all the money in the box, over six pounds. Eric is blamed for the theft.
• A book in Galaxy of Fear has a hero doing this. The monks are unwilling to retrieve Tash's brain and put it back in her skull until Uncle Hoole threatens to reveal their secrets, and how much of their recruiting strategy is a scam.
• Girls Don't Hit: One of Joss' targets is a young woman who was a married politician's lover, and blackmailed him after getting pregnant with his baby. His attempt to bribe her into going away after this just got her more ammunition, as she recorded this.
• According to Going Clear, this is the actual purpose of "auditing" in the Church of Scientology: everything people say in their auditing sessions is recorded, then it's used to threaten members with reprisal if they leave the church. It's heavily implied that this is one of the reasons John Travolta hasn't left.
• In Grunts!, former dominatrix Magda Brandiman blackmails a representative of the Visible College to keep on selling the Orc Marines nullity talismans by threatening to reveal their S&M proclivities.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
  • Hermione Granger discovers that the nosy, meddling journalist Rita Skeeter is an unregistered Animagus (a wizard or witch who can turn into an animal at will) and successfully uses this information to capture her in a bottle when she's transformed (her form is a beetle) and blackmail her into not writing any stories for a year. Well, all except one. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, she forces her to publish an interview with Harry Potter in which Harry describes what happened the night Lord Voldemort came back. The blackmail is highly effective because Rita understands enough of Hermione to know that she would keep her word. Oh, and also because the penalty for the wizarding authorities finding out that someone is an unregistered animagus is a stay in Azkaban, the feared wizard prison guarded by dementors, creatures that suck all happiness and hope from a person and thus to be avoided if at all possible.
• Throughout the book, Fred and George have whispered discussions, with the line "if we put that in writing, it's blackmail", causing Hermione to wonder what they are up to. At the end, they reveal that they were blackmailing Ludo Bagman, who had paid them the winnings of a bet using leprechaun gold, which vanishes after a few hours. Bagman's secret is that he placed a very big bet with the goblins on Harry winning the Triwizard Tournament; and the goblins say that he drew with Diggory, so he lost the bet.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • Haruhi blackmails the Computer Club President into giving her the most modern computer of their club with pictures of him grabbing Mikuru's boobs. An event Haruhi forcefully orchestrates. And when the president points out that his club witnessed the incident and would stand up on his behalf, Haruhi cheerfully exclaims "I'll just say that the whole class was planning on f***ing her!"
  • Kyon proves himself even better than Haruhi at this in Disappearance: Yuki mentions to him that she might have to face repercussions for redesigning the universe. Kyon tells her to tell the Overmind from him that if it dares do anything to her, he will coerce Haruhi into remaking the universe so that Yuki exists and the Overmind does not.
• Hilary Tamar:
  • The Shortest Way to Hades features a young woman who accuses the protagonists of attempted blackmail. Subverted in that they actually have no clue what she's talking about.
  • Comes up again in The Sibyl in Her Grave; there's an insider trading problem going on. The suspects have been narrowed down to two, and one of them has an iron-clad alibi; the other can't explain his whereabouts when the shady dealing must have gone on. In fact it was neither of the two; it was the private secretary of the bank manager, who was regarded as above suspicion and who arranged for the man she wanted to frame to be "entertained" by a dominatrix when she herself was arranging for the shares to be sold, assuming that he would be too humiliated to fess up.
• In Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson's Hoka stories:
  • In Don Jones, Alex tries to blackmail Terwillinger to agree that both of their irresponsible behaviors should be swept under the rug. Terwillinger says, "Publish and be damned!" Fortunately this inspires Doralene to decide that he's not after all a stuffed shirt and she's in love with him. This inspires him to let Alex off after all.
  • In The Napoleon Crime, Alex, finding himself cast as the Duke of Wellington, can remember only that he responded with "Publish and be damned!" to a blackmailer. At the end, when a reporter tells him that he can make him look ridiculous, Alex decides not to resist temptation: "Publish and be damned!"
• In Hullo Russia, Goodbye England, the pilots of Britain's nuclear deterrent strike jets are vulnerable to blackmail. A Russian spy attempts to compromise Flight-Lieutenant Silk over his affair, demanding £2500. A local bookie also threatens to go to the CO if another pilot's gambling debts of £1000 are not paid in full. ^note  £1000 in 1962 is the equivalent of £20,000 today. The blackmail bill to Silk was £2500 in 1962 currency, or £50,000 in 2015
• I'm In Love With the Villainess: Rei resorts to this in her attempts to become Claire's new personal maid, threatening to expose a less than ethical dealing of her father, Minister of Finance Dor François. It's implied to be quite the serious, title, family reputation, and freedom-threatening sort of dealing, as he is intensely suspicious of who Rei actually is after she casually throws out an exact name, a date, and a not inconsiderable sum of money.
• In the In Death series, a number of folks have used this. Some of them even tried to blackmail a murderer. All of these blackmailers ended up dead.
• Lots of examples in I've Got You Under My Skin:
  • Josh Damiano secretly records three of the graduates' conversations, where they each say things that could incriminate them in Betsy Powell's murder. Josh tells Nina, Alison and Regina that he will destroy the recordings if they agree to give him some of the money they're being paid to appear on Under Suspicion, or he'll make them public. He goes a step further with Regina, demanding she give him all her money as the evidence against her looks especially damning, especially as he had stolen her father's suicide note from her purse, which gives her a strong motive.
  • When Nina's mother Muriel learns about Josh's blackmail scheme, she demands that Nina agree to pay him off (mostly because she's also on the recording trash talking Betsy, which could jeopardize her chances with widower Rob Powell), threatening to go to the cops and tell them Nina confessed to killing Betsy to her (which she didn't).
  • During the Graduation Gala, George decided to end his affair with Betsy after his wife Isabelle told him she was pregnant, to which Betsy demanded he pay her $25 million or she'd reveal the affair to Isabelle. George grudgingly agreed to pay her off, as he was desperate not to lose Isabelle and their future together, though Betsy took such glee in threatening him he wasn't sure she would keep her word. And then Betsy was murdered later that night, taking the secret to the grave...
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: A whole lot of it going around. In some cases, it's easier to count the murder victims who aren't blackmailing someone.
  • In Killer Cruise, one of the ship's stewards, Samoa, discovers Prozac (Jaine's cat) is in Jaine's cabin, and agrees to only keep quiet if Jaine edits his manuscript.
    • In the same book, the ship's ice sculptor Anton Devereaux, who has been creeping on Jaine the whole book, manages to discover Prozac being on board as well, and tries to use it to sleep with Jaine. Luckily, Jaine managed to get out of it by blackmailing him about having been the "Butterfly Bandit" (which the victim had also been blackmailing him over).
  • In Killing Cupid, it's revealed that Joy Amoroso was blackmailing Greg Stanton over not actually painting his paintings.
  • In Death of a Bachelorette, Hope has been blackmailing fellow contestant Brianna Scott for being a male-to-female transgender.
  • Tommy gets his fair share of blackmail going in Death of a Gigolo, such as blackmailing Solange the maid over stealing from one of Daisy's money stashes (which he blamed Kate for, by the way).
• In Stephanie Burgis's Kat, Incorrigible novel A Most Improper Magick, Kat blackmails Angeline with the knowledge that she is using magic; she threatens to tell not their stepmother, but their older sister.
• In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, the Puppeteers regard blackmail as simply another business transaction — the two parties negotiate terms, and if agreement is reached the target pays the settled price and the blackmailer gives up the relevant evidence and memories.
• A sailor by the name of Dobbie who was at the Nore mutiny with Kydd attempts this on him during Quarterdeck for what he sees as disloyalty to his former comrades. Luckily, Kydd earns his respect through showing up for a duel ashore as a fellow sailor, not an officer.
• Lord Peter Wimsey:
  • The eponymous character turned the tables on a blackmailer in The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker. The asshole had stolen jewelry whose box included a document hinting at an affair the jewelry's owner had had, and blackmailed her. Wimsey made him look like a card shark and persuaded him to return all jewelry to the lady in question. Lord Peter and the other two card players then have the following conversation:
    Sir Impey Biggs: It's a crime crueler and infinitely worse in its results than murder. As a lawyer ... I have consistently refused to defend a blackmailer, or prosecute any poor devil who does away with his tormentor."
    Lord Peter: H'm. What do you say, Colonel?
    Col. Marchbanks: A man like that's a filthy pest. Shootin's too good for him. I knew a man — close personal friend, in fact — hounded to death — blew his brains out — one of the best.
  • In Murder Must Advertise, the motive turns out to be being blackmailed. Another of the workers at the agency was also approached and went for "publish and be damned"; it worked.
• In John Hemry's The Lost Fleet novel Invincible, Rione admits she is being blackmailed to perform certain activities, which she has carefully shaped to cause no actual harm. She also tells Geary that Captain Bradament will be blackmailed to spy on him; she will refuse, but she will be destroyed.
• Lost Voices: At the end of the first book, the mermaid Luce rescues a human boy named Dorian Hurst from a wreck, in violation of the timahk, which forbids contact between mermaids and humans and states that any human who hears a mermaid sing must die. In Waking Storms, Dorian realizes that Luce wasn't supposed to save him, so he writes "If I keep putting these drawings in the water, your friends will find out what you did. So you'd better come talk to me. I'm not playing," on a picture he drew of her, makes it into a paper boat, and sets it adrift. Dana, another mermaid, finds it and shows it to Luce, who promises to kill Dorian, but when she goes to meet him, she can't bring herself to go through with it.
• Attempted in Magic for Liars by Alexandria, targeting two teachers who are secretly dating.
• Maul: Lockdown: While she only uses it as a last resort, Warden Sadiki Blirr eventually forces a gaming commission official to stop threatening to shut down her operation with a picture of them having sex back when she was a casino worker.
• Mayo Chiki!:
  • Kanade threatens to do things to Jiro if he ever leaks out the secret that her butler Subaru is actually a girl. She then also promises to cure him of his gynophobia (fear of women, thanks to his sister and mother doing "wrestling training", or rather beating him up, every day), although she largely just does it because she finds teasing him funny.
  • In Episode 5 of the anime, Jiro is forced to pretend to be Usami's boyfriend during the school festival, or she'll leak a photo she took of him and Subaru dressed up as a regular girl out. Naturally, this occurs just after he promised to take Subaru, who's not happy with the sudden change of plans.
• In The Mermaid's Mirror, Lena's friend Pem starts dating a college student named Max. Lena wants his surfboard, so she and Max's brother Henry threaten to expose the fact that he's dating a fifteen-year-old. He agrees to lend her the board for two weeks.
• In The Monster Garden, Frankie's brother David steals some mysterious grey goo that their father's lab threw out so he can experiment on it. Frankie threatens to tell on David for stealing it if he doesn't give her some so she can experiment, too.
• Murder for the Modern Girl: After getting her drunk and stripping her to take photos of her nude, Rex Blanchot uses the photos to blackmail Maggie Stowe to give him money or he'll expose the photos to her father, her fiance, and every newspaper company.
• A large portion of the Asshole Victims in the Nero Wolfe stories tend to be blackmailers who had the misfortune of trying to blackmail the wrong person.
• In Nickel Plated, twelve-year-old Nickel goes onto pedophile chat rooms, tricks other visitors into talking about all the things they want to do to him, and then threatens to send the transcripts to their families if they don't pay him thousands of dollars. Then he sends the transcripts to the FBI anyway.
• In The Nowhere Girls, Principal Slatterly threatens to report Rosina's abuelita as The Illegal if she doesn't tell her everything she knows about the Nowhere Girls. Rosina holds firm, but afterwards tries a lot harder to stay out of trouble.
• In The Place Inside the Storm, TenCat Corp gives the Rivers a robot cat, Xel, supposedly as a gift. However, the gift wasn't licit, and the corporation threatens to turn them in if they don't consent for Tara to get a brain implant to cure her autism.
• Presidential: Emily bluffs Senator Reynolds saying she'd reveal the fact she wasn't shot but had a heart attack if she won't agree not to attack Connie as a result of their relationship. Given her strict adherence to medical ethics, Emily wouldn't really do this, but Reynolds buys the threat and caves.
• In "The Purloined Letter", the villain is using the titular document for blackmail. The contents of the letter, and thus the nature of the blackmail, are never revealed to the reader. It's just a MacGuffin.
• "A" in Pretty Little Liars blackmails them, but she really doesn't want anything except for them to humiliate themselves.
• In Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath, Jade and Cori trespass in a construction site to look for the tidal pool where they think Jade's mermaid mother is staying. A security guard catches them, but he lets them go after Cori threatens to report him for watching TV on the job.
• In Rob Roy, Diana put up with Rashleigh's unwanted company because he discovered her father, whose head the Government had put a bounty on, was living hidden in Osbaldistone Hall.It doesn't work — the first target refuses to budge, and the second target had their own reasons for complying.
• Sherlock Holmes loathes blackmailers and has zero sympathy for their murder.
  I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags.
  • Charles Augustus Milverton, who bought compromising documents from disgruntled servants, squeezed the documents' writers for every farthing he could, and then ruined them anyway when they revolted or if he simply felt like it. After his death, Sherlock Holmes and Watson felt he needed killing — that and they were breaking into his house to recover some letters he stole from their client at the time of the incident.
  • In The Boscombe Valley Mystery it turns out that Charles McCarthy, the murder victim, had been blackmailing John Turner for years over a robbery Turner had committed in Australia. The last straw was McCarthy trying to pressure Turner's daughter Alice to marry his son James which prompted Turner to kill him. Holmes' sympathies are fully with Turner and he lets him off since he's likely to die soon though he does make Turner write up a confession just in case.
• The Silence of Murder: Before Coach Johnson was murdered, he and Rita were having an affair. She forced him to pay her $1,000 a month so she wouldn't tell his wife Caroline about the affair or the fact that Jeremy is Coach Johnson's biological son.
• The main plot of Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda starts this way. Martin comes across Simon's email to Blue discussing both of them being gay, and tells Simon that he'll show the whole school the email and out him and Blue...unless Simon agrees to help Martin get a date with his friend Abby.
• The Speed of Sound: When the American Heritage Foundation offers to back Senator Corbin Davis, they show him a folder full of evidence of the bribes he's taken, his affair with a 23-year-old staffer, and his drunk driving arrest that he had expunged from the records, among many other things, to ensure that he never tells anyone about the Foundation's many illegal activities.
• Survivor Dogs: Whine finds out that Lucky is a spy for the Leashed Dogs and threatens to rat him out unless Lucky helps him move up a rank. Lucky agrees to help Whine by blackmailing Mulch. So, Mulch becomes the new Omega while Whine becomes a patrol dog. It's only temporary because Mulch is soon murdered by foxes trying to save Moon's pups.
• Swordspoint Tremontaine has a case of mutual blackmail as Mutually Assured Destruction, starting from late Season 1. Kaab knows that "Diane" pulled a Kill and Replace on the REAL Diane years ago; Diane is capable of revealing astronomical knowledge that will end the monopoly that Kaab's society has on intercontinental travel.
• The Teresa Knight Trilogy: The first book involves a blackmailer inside exclusive sex gambling clubs in Britain whom Teresa is hired to track down.
• "Too Many Magicians":
  • Early on, the Marquis of London decides to coerce Lord Darcy into taking on an investigation by throwing Master Sean in jail.
    "Blackmail", said Master Sean.
    " 'Blackmail' is perhaps too strong a word," Lord Darcy said thoughtfully, "but I will admit that no other is quite strong enough."
  • Six chapters later, Lord Darcy puts the Marquis in the same position, by showing that the same level of circumstantial evidence that "justified" Master Sean's arrest also provides grounds to arrest the Marquis' personal assistant.
    "His lordship," said Lord Bontriomphe, "got you out by simple but effective blackmail."
    "Counter-blackmail, if you please," Lord Darcy corrected.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Traders":
  • Ponyets, a trader from the Foundation, talks privately with Pherl, the Grand Master's closest advisor. Pherl is able to blackmail the trader into selling a nucleic device that can transmute iron into gold. Ponyets tries to convince the Askoneian advisor to put his promise of payment in writing, but Pherl threatens him with the death penalty because the entire planet hates atomic power.
  • When Pherl, a government official on Askone, pays Ponyets, a trader from the Foundation, for the nucleic transmuter, the trader reveals a secret. Ponyets had installed a microfilm recorder in the transmutation machine, which recorded the Askonian official celebrating their ability to turn iron into gold. Because the people of Askone hate atomic power, Ponyets is able to extort Pherl by threatening to show the recording in the public square. The trader is able to exchange his whole stock of tech (mostly kitchen appliances and jewelry) at a hideous mark-up (two shipfuls of tin) that he can now bring back to Terminus.
• In Vernor Vinge's cult-classic novella, "True Names", criminal hackers must keep their secret identities hidden from each other to avoid being blackmailed into servitude. The story's name is a reference to the fantasy trope, I Know Your True Name, where learning a wizard's true name gives you power over him.
• In The Upgrade by Wesley Cross: Max blackmails Andrew Davis, a Blackwater Research analyst, into publishing a false report about Asclepius in order to drive down their stock price enough to purchase it. Andrew had been conducting an affair with a colleague as well as hiding four million dollars of embezzled funds.
• The Villainous Daughter's Butler, I'll Crush the Destruction Flags: When Sophia and Cyril bust a scheme by one of the elitist children to buy up land around one of her faction’s sponsored Crepe restaurants, Cyril uses the witnesses and evidence over it (impersonating a noble is illegal), to put the student’s parents under the two’s influence.
• Wicked: Nanny blackmails Melena into letting her take Elphaba to Rush Margins in order to socialize with other kids. Her method of blackmailing is threatening to tell Melena's husband that she's cheating with Turtle Heart.
• The Witches: When the hotel manager forbids the hero from keeping mice in his room, the grandmother tells Blatant Lies about having seen rats in the hotel, and threatens to report this to health authorities, to blackmail the manager into allowing the pet mice to stay.
  Grandmother: No wonder my breakfast toast was all nibbled round the edges this morning. No wonder it had a nasty ratty taste. Are you or are you not going to allow my grandson to keep his pet mice in his room?
• P. G. Wodehouse used this more than once in his stories, one of the more famous examples being would-be dictator Rodrick Spode not wanting anyone to know about "Eulalie", which is not a woman, but a successful lingerie shop he operates.

Live-Action TV

• Adam-12: The appropriately titled "IAD-Blackmail" has Pete discover that a fellow officer is blackmailing a witness to keep quiet. The officer tries to get Pete on his side after having saved Pete's life earlier in the episode, but Pete just gets ticked off about having his name drug into it.
• The Affair: Oscar tries to blackmail Noah with knowledge of his affair with Alison. Noah asks his affluent best friend to loan him the money, but out of guilt he admits what happened to his wife anyway and tells Oscar to go screw himself.
• Are You Being Served?: One episode has Mr. Lucas lure Young Mr. Grace into the menswear/ladieswear department with an attractive young woman. When Mr. Lucas explains that the woman was hired "for one purpose", Young Mr. Grace immediately assumes, "Blackmail?" (It's so they can give him a "This is Your Life"-style celebration.)
• Babylon 5:
  • One episode dealt with Londo's Purple Files, a collection of dirt on all the other noble families compiled over years. Apparently, there was enough in them to blackmail the entire Centauri Republic.
  • Garibaldi also took this approach to muscle out the old corrupt board of directors of Edgars Industries, along with arranging to put a Price on Their Heads if they had him or his wife assassinated.
• Charles from Birds on the Wing is a con artist and skilled in blackmail, both reasons why Elizabeth and Samantha decide to work with him to con others.
• In the Black Mirror episode "Shut Up and Dance", Kenny receives a series of anonymous texts, threatening to release photos of him masturbating unless he complies with their demands. He and several other people who are also being blackmailed are forced to commit various increasingly criminal acts, eventually being forced to rob a bank or have the photos leaked. At the end it is revealed that the reason Kenny was so desperate was that the photos proved he was masturbating to child porn. In a Cruel Twist Ending, the photos are released anyway.
• The arc ending Season 9 and starting Season 10 of Bones wound up being a blackmail ring started by J. Edgar Hoover himself. When Booth is in jail, Brennan even resorts to using some of the information they uncovered to get him released.
  Brennan: I've never blackmailed anyone before, but I think I've covered everything.
• The Boys (2019):
  • Stillwell was being blackmailed by the mayor of Baltimore, so Homelander kills him. Then she in turn blackmails a Senator by having Doppelganger have sex with him first in female form before they become male after he's been blindfolded, something voters in his home state wouldn't tolerate.
  • Hughie blackmails Ezekiel to get info on V shipments.
  • Honestly, this is the main way The Boys get whatever they want or survive most fights.
• In the Broad City episode "Kirk Steele," Abbi finds out that her boss Trey used to work as the titular porn star and blackmails him into letting her teach a class.
• Used in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", when Xander discovers that Amy is a witch and threatens to reveal this to everyone unless she casts a love spell for him.
  Xander: Blackmail is such an ugly word.
  Amy: I didn't say blackmail.
  Xander: Yeah, but I'm about to blackmail you, so I thought I'd bring it up.
• Burden of Truth: Sam Mercer has been running a huge blackmail scheme since he was police chief, which even includes the mayor, with every victim listed under a code name.
• Carnival Row: Piety claims Aisling Quarrell tried to blackmail Absalom Blackspear through his wife over the existence of their son. This led to Piety killing her. Jonah, though, doubts Aisling actually did this, and learns Sophie did it.
• Chasing Life: The series finale has Olivia blackmail George to sign over the rights for Thomas' unpublished manuscript or else she'll tell the police how he'd illegally let him die. George refuses to be intimidated though, and Olivia backs down.
• Cluedo: Blackmail was often used as a motive for murder, usually with the victim saying something like "wouldn't it be terrible if Mrs Peacock somehow found out?".
• Colonel March of Scotland Yard: In "Death in the Dressing Room", the owner of a nightclub is inveigling well-to-do young men into compromising relationships with his dancers, and then using their love letters to blackmail them.
• Throughout Columbo, there are often people that try to blackmail the murderer of the episode. With only a few exceptions, this usually ended up with them in the ground right next to the first victim.
• The Company You Keep:
  • In "A Sparkling Reputation" Charlie extorts the man they just stole a necklace from because it turns out to be a stolen cultural artifact. He pays them $500,000 not to reveal he'd gotten it from a Russian oligarch and gives back the necklace, while portraying himself as a hero for doing so.
  • In "The Spy Who Loved Me" the Nicolettis are ordered by Daphne to obtain the blackmail material a notorious fixer's gathered on all his clients for insurance against them exposing him. She can use this for extorting government officials into facilitating her drug trafficking operations.
  • In "The Real Thing" Daphne blackmails Emma with knowledge of a prior affair her father had when he was a US Senator with his aide, which had been used for blackmailing him into securing a contract for a business. It's used by Daphne to threaten Emma so she'll drop her investigation into Daphne's crimes, as this being released would hurt not only her father but her brother's campaign for Congress.
  • In "The Art of the Steel" Daphne orders Charlie to get something compromising against a federal judge whom she can then have order her imprisoned father released. Since it turns out he takes bribes, Charlie does a sting with Emma who pretends she's a corporate heiress who has a case in his court, giving him a bribe for ruling her way. Daphne uses this to get his ruling for her father, while Emma can use it as more evidence against her and her family later.
• Control Z: The hacker blackmails people to do things with the threat of exposing their secrets, though later they're exposed anyway.
• In the Coppers End episode, "The 12-Year-Old Offspring", Ripper manages to blackmail Sergeant Pringle into looking after his twelve-year-old son.
• Used at various points across Desperate Housewives, most notably in Season 1, where Mary-Alice's suicide, the event that started the series, is revealed to have been the result of Mrs. Huber attempting to blackmail her over the fact that Zack isn't really her son. In true Christie-esque style, Mrs. Huber pays for this with her own life when Paul, Mary-Alice's husband, finds out what she did and strangles her.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Doctor Dances": Nancy gets captured by the owner of a house she's been breaking into to steal food from. She's not cowed when he threatens to call the police, because she's been watching the house for some time and knows that he, rather than his wife, has been trading sexual favors with the local butcher in exchange for extra rations. (This episode is set in 1941 during the Blitz, a time period when that would be serious blackmail material.)
  • "New Earth": Lady Cassandra attempts to do this to the Sisters of Plenitude, threatening to reveal to the city of New New York that they've been using Artificial Humans as lab rats to develop their cures if they don't give her their donations.
• Don't Look Deeper: In order to stop her memory wipes, Aisha blackmails Sharon, her creator, by threatening to blow the lid on her status as a secret human-passing android using a video which would go live if she doesn't log in every three minutes and stop it.
• Practically everybody on Downton Abbey either blackmails someone or gets blackmailed at some point. Among the blackmailers are Mrs. Bates, Thomas (who also is on the receiving end, and who conspires with O'Brien), Sir Richard Carlisle, Edith, Kemal Pamuk…
• Euphoria: It's revealed that Nate's cyber relationship with Jules was really for this, so he could get nude photos of her that legally count as child porn since she's underage and so she wouldn’t rat out his father, Cal for having sex with a minor. He later uses the blackmail to get Jules to give testimony "clearing" him of his abuse charges.
• Fantasy Island (2021): Isabel extorts Edmund Walsh to not only keep his mouth shut about Rachel being the true author of the Agnes books but also pay her more as she has future knowledge of the fact he's kept a mistress and has children with her, saying she'll tell his wife otherwise.
• Fellow Travelers:
  • Hawkins Fuller has Tim Laughlin give Roy Cohn the material relating to Senator Joseph McCarthy having sex with a man. Cohn uses this so McCarthy won't simply drop him to save himself as the David Schine matter drags them all down.
  • Senator Smith is blackmailed over his son having gotten arrested when he's caught having sex with a man. His opponents threaten to expose this if he doesn't resign from his office. Smith shoots himself rather than comply.
• The Flash (2014):
  • In the episode "Killer Frost", Julian blackmails Barry — in exchange for Julian keeping quiet about Caitlin kidnapping and trying to kill him, Barry must quit his job as a CSI.
  • In the episode "Elongated Journey Into Night", Ralph is trying to blackmail the mayor for money. In the end, he decides not to go through with it and just gives up the pictures freely — but threatens to link him to the bomb that was planted in Ralph's office if he doesn't leave Ralph alone. It's pointed out that this is still blackmail.
    Ralph: Fine! I'm blackmailing you into not being blackmailed!
• In the Forever (2014) episode "Social Engineering" hacktivist Liz discovers Henry's records are fake, and demands he issue her a death certificate as part of leaving her current identity and creating a new one, or she'll reveal the forgeries to his colleagues. Henry ultimately refuses, but Liz is nearly killed by an engineered car accident while she is in the process of sending the email that will reveal his secret. Later, another computer expert follows the same trail and threatens to not only expose him as a fraud but make sure his face is all over the Internet, making it extremely difficult to ever start a new life, unless he lets Liz die. Henry again chooses to do what's right. Liz sets him up with much better-faked records so his secret is safe.
• A French Village: Jules gets Lucienne to do what he says at one point by threatening that he'll reveal she'd been in a relationship with a German soldier (who fathered her daughter), which would end her career and lose her custody.
• The Fugitive (2020): Mike extorts a gang leader he helped to build his business for protection while in prison with information that he'd saved on this. He threatens to reveal all this if the guy won't give him a gun, which is done.
• Game of Thrones: Tyrion turns Lancel into his mole within Cersei's inner circle by threatening to expose to Joffrey that Cersei has been using him as a bedwarmer. In a slight subversion, while this is embarrassing it is not in fact illegal. Lancel is Cersei's cousin. However, it would make people think that the rumors about Cersei and Jaime might be true after all, exposing Joffrey as illegitimate. It could even cast doubt on Cersei and Jaime being Lannisters at all, given that a tendency to desire incestuous relationships is heavily associated with the Targaryens. If people thought that Cersei was a secret Targaryen, there might be an all-out civil war.
• Ginny and Georgia: Gil comes back in Season 2, eventually seeking to blackmail Georgia. He threatens to tell her fiance Paul of all the criminal things in Georgia's past, demanding she give him money (Paul's wealthy). Georgia circumvents his attempt by coming clean with Paul about all this, who then threatens Gil in turn (he's a paroled felon, so this could send him back to prison) so that he backs off.
• A later season episode of The Golden Girls has Rose asking Dorothy and Blanche to appear as guests on a show discussing women who live together. It's not until the camera starts rolling for a live broadcast that everyone learns the show's topic is about lesbian couples in Miami (when Rose heard it was about women who sleep together in the same bed, she remembered a time Blanche and Dorothy did that when the heat was out). Blanche and Dorothy try to leave before Rose promises that if she loses her job, she'll do nothing but stay at home telling St. Olaf stories nonstop.
  Blanche: Blackmail! Ohoho, very smart.
  Rose: Hey they don't call me "Harold Goldstein" for nothing.
• Georgina Sparks uses her knowledge of Serena sort of, but not actually, killing a man to blackmail Serena in Season 1 of Gossip Girl.
• Guilt: D.S. Bruno is coerced into covering up Prince Theo's involvement with Molly by his personal secretary, using corruption in his past.
• The Handmaid's Tale: Serena takes June to see Hannah, threatening harm to her if the baby's life is endangered.
• Highlander had an episode called "Blackmail" where a guy caught Duncan on videotape beheading another Immortal. He threatened to give the videotape to the police ... unless Duncan killed his wife (he had been having an affair and had just left his mistress when he came upon them fighting).
• Himmelsdalen:
  • Carol gets ahold of the hammer Siri used to beat another woman into a coma, and uses it as leverage on Helena, her twin, since as they're identical DNA evidence Siri left would also implicate her.
  • Jack was threatened by the Army buddy he got to help track down Siri with revealing how much he screwed up letting her escape, so he'd give more money.
• Henry Danger: In the subplot of "The Secret Gets Out", Jasper is blackmailed by Piper into becoming her personal assistant and is forced to do menial favors for her; if he disobeys, she will upload a video of him attempting "The Cup Song". After the video gets erased when Henry knocks Piper's phone in the toilet, Jasper records a video of Piper sneaking out to a club that's not her age, and she is blackmailed into becoming his assistant to avoid being tattled on.
• Hogan's Heroes keep Sgt. Schultz from revealing their plans by blackmailing him with the fact that if he tells, they'll tell that he knew about their earlier plans and didn't say anything. It's a bit cyclical.
• The villain of the Honey West episode "The Swingin' Mrs. Jones" seduces rich men's wives and secretly films them so he and his accomplices can blackmail them.
• House of Anubis:
  • A favorite trick of Jerome in Season 1. He first blackmails Mara, using the fact that she cheated on a test for Mick (without Mick even knowing) to make her do chores for him. When everyone found out the truth anyways, the deal was broken. His only other successful attempt was when he threatened to tell on Sibuna to Victor, if Nina and the others didn't continue to protect him from Rufus as promised. He did at one point try and make Patricia tell him information he wanted (this time out of fear and anger over what happened to Alfie as an indirect result of Sibuna's adventures in the cellar) with the same sort of threat, but Patricia blackmailed him right back, leaving him powerless.
  • In the second season, Jasper was being blackmailed by Rufus himself at the same time. He was forced into helping him and Vera as The Mole, or else Fabian, his godson, could be harmed. Then Jerome found out he stole the gem Jerome had spent all season finding, and sure enough, also ended up blackmailing Jasper to force him to help get the gem back.
• In From the Cold: Jenny is forced into working for the CIA with her old assassin/spy skills as otherwise they'll reveal her past and she'll live the rest of her life in prison for espionage, with her daughter Becca's life ruined.
• On The Inside Man, after Mark Shepherd tells the Handler that he wants out, the Handler threatens to reveal his recordings of their conversations to their entire company if he doesn't get him the information he wants. In exchange, Mark hires a contractor named Deathrage, with the help of AJ, to hack the Handler's phone and get dirt on him.
• On The Knick, New York City health inspector Jacob Speight extorts bribes from building owners, threatening to force them to bring their buildings up to code. He also blackmails hospital administrators by threatening to send patients to other hospitals.
• L.A.'s Finest:
  • Patrick is blackmailed over Nancy being involved with covering her mom's death up. Carlene, the blackmailer, has dirt on prosecutors, judges and politicians to aid her drug trafficking operations.
  • Another case also involves blackmail over a compromising video.
  • Patrick is later blackmailed again after he's drugged, making him act like a wild party animal, and it's recorded.
• Liar (2017):
  • Andrew realized in the past that a gay male colleague of his had been raped (by someone who it turns out he knew in medical school). Rather than help bring the rapist to justice, he video-tapes the guy secretly while he's raping another man, to use for leverage.
  • Later, he also had Oliver blackmail a police detective to get them information on Laura.
• The L Word: Adele, Jenny's assistant, steals a sex tape Jenny made with Niki, her girlfriend (the lead actress who's closeted). She then threatens releasing it if she's not made the film's director, replacing Jenny, and the executives cave in because Niki is the pull the film needs.
• Mad Men: In the penultimate episode of Season 1, Pete Campbell discovers that Don Draper is actually a Korean War deserter named Dick Whitman, and tries to use this information to force Don into giving him a promotion. Unfortunately for Pete, he doesn't think to try this until after he's already given the incriminating documents back to Don, meaning that his accusations prove fruitless after Don calls his bluff. To add insult to injury, Bert Cooper says that he wouldn't have fired Don even if Pete did have proof of his claims.
• In the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Hal Coaches", after the main family gets their neighbor's computer from a deal Hal made, Malcolm and Reese discover a bunch of non-deleted emails from women that their neighbors knows which leave little to the imagination. As a result of the aforementioned deal, Reese now has to start building a gazebo in his neighbor's yard. At this point Reese spills the beans and his neighbor begs him not to tell his wife. Reese uses this for his own amusement by blackmailing him into being his servant and he refuses to cut him any slack even when his wife can see what is going on in plain sight. It backfires when Reese makes his neighbor pick him up from school and he has to listen to Reese's guidance counselor, who tells him about an incident Reese caused at school which could land Reese in major trouble at home.
  • In the episode where Grandma Ida and Grandpa Victor are introduced, they agree to loan Hal and Lois money for a new refrigerator, and Hal and Lois buy a fancy new one with their own money. When they ask Ida and Victor to help with the costs, they say that they never loan money to family. Later, Victor gives Reese a live hand grenade, and when he pulls the pin, Malcolm in a panic throws it into the fridge and they run out of the house. Lois chastises her parents for giving her son such a dangerous weapon to play with, but Ida guilts Lois into apologizing for raising her voice. Hal asks Lois to take the boys into another room while he handles the situation and tells Ida and Victor that he won't get into the issues Lois has as a result of being raised by them, but he asks for a sum of money much higher than originally discussed to the pay for a new refrigerator and fix the damages caused by grenade blast. He also tells them that he knows they don't loan money to family, but what he's asking for is not a loan, but a blackmail payment, insisting that if they don't give him the money, then he'll have them arrested and jailed for child endangerment.
• The Mentalist
  • C.B.I. team leader Teresa Lisbon blackmails Sam Bosco to drop all charges against Patrick Jane in "Black Gold and Red Blood". Lisbon threatened to reveal that Bosco had done something very bad in the past to a criminal who had gotten away without being charged. Revealing the secret would have ended her career as well, since Lisbon helped Bosco cover it up.
  • In the sixth season, when Dennis Abbott recruits Patrick Jane into the F.B.I., Jane provides a list of demands on a napkin that he wants met if he's going to work for them. When he gets back to the United States, Abbott reneges on the deal and instead tries to set his own terms, which include stuff such as Jane basically being on a sort of probation which could be retracted at any time if he doesn't toe the line while working with the F.B.I. Jane, of course, does not like this at all, so he escapes then tells Abbott that he has a list of names of members of the F.B.I. who are members of the Blake Association and he'll release it to the media unless his own demands are met and he's allowed to work for the F.B.I. free as a bird. It's a total bluff, but it works, as Abbott has no way of knowing that he's lying.
• In "The Telling", a Season 3 episode of The Middle, Sue is awakened by Axl when he sneaks back into the house late through her room. She uses this knowledge to have him drive her and her friends everywhere.
• Midsomer Murders: Blackmailing one's neighbors is something of a countywide industry in Midsomer, and has much the same results as an Agatha Christie novel.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: Upon finding out about Juna's real name and how embarassed he is about it in episode 34, Bambang, Alan and Prima agree to keep it a secret from the others as long as Juna does what they say. The blackmail lasts until the next episode when the others find out through other means anyway.
• One sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus featured a spoof of pledge shows titled "Blackmail". Instead of lots of people paying to keep the station alive, several persons had to pay to avoid having their embarrassing secrets revealed on national TV. Including a high ranking member of the Freemasons and a Conservative Member of Parliament called "Mr. S. of Bromsgrove".
  Host: £3,000 to stop us from revealing your name, the name of the three other people involved, the youth organization to which they belong, and the shop where you bought the equipment.
• Murdoch Mysteries: The victims of the week in "In the Altogether" are a blackmailer and the doxy he used as a Honey Trap to photograph important men in compromising positions.
• My Dead Ex: Charley gets Vice Principal Kelly to accept Ben into their school under an alias with the threat of posting a photo she took of him while he left an adult store.
• Spoofed several times on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the best being a bit in The Pumaman involving a fly and a hero trying to play dead...
• My Left Nut: When Mick finds out Lucy got a tattoo without telling their mom, he blackmails her into taking him to Tommy's Wild Teen Party.
• My World… and Welcome to It: Implied in "The Mating Dance." When John asks Leonard, the uncouth and rough-spoken boy (he says "ain't" a lot, for starters) escorting Lydia to a party what grade he got in English, he proudly says he got an A+. However, it becomes clear this came about because the teacher got behind on the payments for a used car Leonard's father sold him, not because Leonard actually earned the grade.
• NCIS: Tony threatens Kate with a picture of her as the winner of a Wet T-Shirt Contest in Panama City. In the end, Kate has Abby either pulls up or photoshop a picture of Tony at a rather risqué dude ranch. They both decide to call a truce, simultaneously deleting each picture. They probably should have actually looked at their keyboards, since they both send a e-mail of the pictures to Gibbs.
• In Orphan Black, Paul works as Beth's (and, later, Sarah's) monitor to keep the Dyad Institute from releasing information about a friendly-fire incident he was involved in in Afghanistan. Later, he finds out about Olivier's past, including some outstanding warrants for sex offenses, and threatens to let the police know unless Olivier helps him cover up Helena's existence.
• The Pact: The ladies are blackmailed by someone with knowledge of them being with Jack's death before his murder, first demanding 5,000 pounds. It then goes up to 10,000. Nancy, one of their number, turns out to be the culprit. She's covering for her husband's gambling debts, as he's addicted.
• Perry Mason (2020):
  • E.B. is blackmailed by prosecutor Maynard Barnes to lose the case with information that could get him disbarred (it indicates he embezzled his clients' money in the past). He kills himself rather than comply.
  • In Season 2, it turns out Hamilton Burger is being blackmailed over the fact he's secretly gay (this being in the early 1930s) with photos of him and another man while getting intimate.
  • Camilla Nygaard in Season 2 it turns out has a huge trove of compromising photos (that includes those of Burger with a man) that she's used for leverage against people in them.
• The Practice: Alan Shore uses blackmail frequently to get leverage over opponents. In "Going Home" he defends an old friend accused of murder, and an old lady tries to blackmail his rich mother so she won't talk about seeing him leave the scene.
• Queen Sugar:
  • Davis threatens to reveal that Charley forged his signature to get a loan for the mill if she doesn't agree to give him shared custody of Micah. Though later he claims it was just a bluff.
  • Darla threatens to come forward about her sexual assault allegations against Chase unless he signs over paternity rights to Blue, agrees to stay away from her and her family, and makes a huge donation to the St. Josephine's Farm Co-op. To enforce this, she has Hollywood secretly record Chase admitting to the rape.
• Radio Enfer:
  • When Léo refuses to help Carl and Maria cheat at a test, the latter threatens to tell his girlfriend Camille that he kissed some other girl:
    Léo: Hey! That's not even true!
    Maria: I know that's not true, but who do you think she's gonna believe, huh? Her best friend... [angrier tone] or the jerk who cheated on her?
  • Carl decides to pull a prank on Maria because she keeps making fun of his calves (It's a Long Story), but Germain tells him he couldn't let him do that. Carl then replies that he would tell Agathe Vachon-Leduc (Germain's Abhorrent Admirer) where Germain is if the latter tries to interfere.
• Rake: Cleaver gets blackmailed into doing things more than once, as he's got no shortage of dirt which can be used against him. He in turns blackmails other people to get things at times.
• Belgian thriller Salamander begins with a bank heist where safety deposit boxes are identified and broken into. Right away, one robber cautions another not to get greedy and steal jewelry, cash or other valuables. All they are after are photographs and incriminating documents to use for blackmail purposes.
• Sex/Life: After Cooper beats him up, Devon uses it to blackmail him into getting what he wants at work.
• Played with in the Sherlock episode A Scandal in Belgravia, where a dominatrix threatens to release photographs of her session with a member of the royal family. She doesn't actually want anything, however — the photographs are just a power play to ensure she'll always have the UK government under her thumb. Later on, she has possible information on future terrorist attacks. If the government don't meet her demands, all she has to do is deny them the intelligence.
• Smallville features blackmail from time to time. Perry White protects himself by hiding, with various lawyers, multiple copies of murder evidence against Lionel Luthor, to be revealed upon his own death. Chloe Sullivan blackmails the Suicide Squad into helping to save the Justice League from the VRA's Lotus-Eater Machine. A shadowy figure tries to blackmail Martha Kent with Clark's secret, but Lionel buys the evidence from him to learn what she is hiding.
• In the Supernatural episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), Kevin threatens to send comprising photos to Sergeant Bate's commanding officer if she does not cooperate with Sam and Dean.
• S.W.A.T. (2017): In "Imposters" the titular robbers who dressed as SWAT for robbing people forced teenage girls from every family they'd robbed to strip naked, then say on video sexual things they wanted to do, so that they wouldn't report things which could help catch them in fear of this being posted online where it would follow them around for the rest of their lives.
• Used by the protagonist of "A Penny For Your Thoughts", a Twilight Zone episode about mind-reading, to demand a promotion for himself and airline tickets for his friend in exchange for his silence about his boss's affair.
• Taken:
  • In "Beyond the Sky", Owen Crawford blackmails his new father-in-law Colonel Thomas Campbell into promoting him to major and placing him in command of the UFO project by threatening to go public with the artifact that Sue discovered at the Roswell crashsite and everything else that he knows.
  • In "Maintenance", history repeats itself when Owen's 21-year-old son Eric blackmails the US government into putting him in charge of the project by threatening to go public with his late father's extensive files on everything that has happened since the crash of the alien ship in Roswell.
• The Twilight Zone (2019): In "Among the Untrodden" Madison threatens to expose a teacher's gambling problem so she won't get punished for being out after curfew along with Irene.
• Veronica Mars uses blackmail as her default MO, but her Guile Hero status isn't tarnished too much because the people she blackmails are often terrible.
• Wallenberg: A Hero's Story: The Nazis blackmail Horthy into abdicating by threatening to shoot his son if he doesn't.
• In the build to Kane's debut in the WWE, Paul Bearer used the threat of revealing the "truth" of the Undertaker's past to try and force him back to his side; Taker complied for a while, before rebelling.
• Why Women Kill:
  • Rita has Scooter seduce Catherine so Vern can take photos of them while they're having sex to use so Catherine's disinherited and leave. This backfires however as by the time Rita confronts her with them Catherine's father has died (so he can't alter his will) and she's unmoved by the threat of disgrace with her family, saying she'll remain in California. In turn, she starts digging up dirt on Rita.
  • Rita's maid and cousin Isabel tries to blackmail Alma and Bertram with one of the aforementioned photos, which show Alma's presence the night Carlo as murdered. This also backfired on her resulting since Alma murdered her when Isabel breaks their deal.
  • Alma uses Joan and Grace's secret affair to get the garden club presidency with the threat of revealing it.
• 7 Yüz: When Aytaç begs to know what his anonymous callers want from him in "Büyük Günahlar", Mete and Elif realize they have the power to make demands. Promising to send Aytaç the recording should he comply, the two begin tasking him with orders he must follow. Their requests range from criminal (slashing tires) and absurd (braying like a donkey) to sordid and exploitative (recording a sexual encounter with his wife).
• Blackmail is pretty much par for the course on Yellowjackets, about an all-female soccer who has to survive in the wilderness following a plane crash, and those few survivors who are alive 25 years later.
  • One plot point that resounds throughout the series is that early on three of the survivors receive postcards with a mysterious symbol they saw in the wilderness. These are soon followed by a demand for $50,000. They believe that someone who knows their secrets is threatening to spill them if they don't pay up. The blackmailer turns out to Jeff, the husband of Shauna, who didn't receive a postcard, and who is in financial trouble at the furniture store that he owns. By the time Shauna realizes this, however, she has already killed another guy she was having an affair with, believing him to be the blackmailer.
  • Shauna is cheating on her husband Jeff, believing that he is also cheating. When her daughter Callie finds this out, she makes certain demands of her, including not having a curfew and any Uber rides she wants to take into the city being no-questions-asked, or else she'll tell Jeff. Shauna pulls an epic Blackmail Backfire by telling her just what the consequences of this would be: her college fund lost to fund divorce attorney expenses and her living with Jeff, eating cold pizza and being asked by him for dating advice.
  • Following Travis's apparent suicide, Natalie becomes convinced that he was murdered. She goes to her old sponsor, who works at Travis's bank, asking her to find out who it was that emptied his account after he died. She tells her that she can't give out this information to someone who isn't a family member. In response, Natalie threatens to reveal the fact that the both of them once used confidential customer information in an identity theft scheme.
  • Taissa's opponent for state senate, Phil Bathurst, airs an ad which makes the thinly-veiled claim that she engaged in cannibalism while in the wilderness. Which, actually, is true, but the Yellowjackets have never actually admitted as much. After receiving information that his daughter recently did a stint in rehab as a junkie, she calls him up and warns him she will reveal this to the papers if he ever airs another ad like that.
• A plot by the tin-pot little African country of Buranda in Yes, Minister results in the following between a rock and a hard place exchange between the eponymous Minister, Jim Hacker, and the very black leader of Buranda:
  Hacker: That's blackmail!
  Selim Mohammed: Are you referring to me, or to my proposal?
• You Me Her: Ava overhears Jack and Emma talking about them being with Izzy. She tries to use this for blackmail so they'll give her different favors. Emma though browbeats her into backing down.
• Young Sheldon: In "Legalese and a Whole Hoo-Ha", Connie uses the customer records to see if she can blackmail Pastor Jeff with whatever improper movie he might have rented. She finds nothing on Jeff, but she finds that his wife rented Dirty Dancing and Fatal Attraction multiple times. Using this and some of the other congregation members' rentals, Connie makes Jeff beg for mercy.
• Your Honor: Lee blackmails the DA's office to get Eugene a good deal with the threat of revealing that Michael fixed Carlo's trial, as this could cause every other conviction which they got from trials he presided on as a judge getting potentially overturned.
• In Zoey 101: Rebecca finds out a secret of Zoey and makes her do all sorts of humiliation things on campus. In the end, Zoey gets bailed out by her friends, whom she was trying to keep the secret from.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: In Episode 0723, Big Bird catches Bad Barney knocking over a trash can, and Barney dares him to do something bad, calling him a chicken if he refuses. Big Bird ends up stealing a zucchini from Mr. Macintosh's produce stand, feeling bad about it, but Barney threatens to tell Mr. Macintosh unless Big Bird does everything he says. Near the end of the episode, Big Bird decides to confess what he did to Mr. Macintosh, since he doesn't want to be Barney's slave for the rest of his life. He does so, and decides to help Mr. Macintosh with his deliveries to make up for the stolen zucchini.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks: In "Threat to Abolish Football", Miss Brooks, Walter Denton and Stretch Snodgrass derail Mr. Conklin's threat to abolish football through blackmail. Mr. Conklin had been using the school shop class to fix his roof, an act that could get him fired. Mr. Conklin relents and allows football to continue at Madison High School. However, Mr. Conklin gets the last laugh. He arm-twists Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton into shingling his roof.

Roleplay

• Ricky does this to Hans, Cale, and Kerzach in Darwin's Soldiers: Pavlov's Checkmate. It works with two of them.

Theatre

• Blackmail is a large part of The Children's Hour. Enfant Terrible Mary tries to spread rumors about her two teachers — in the original play and the second film it's that they're lovers while in the original adaptation it's that one of them is having an affair with the other's boyfriend — that leads to them losing their jobs and being ostracized. In order to help her, Mary threatens a school-mate who stole another's bracelet. She is too naive to realize that kids don't get put in jail for taking each other's things, and is scared of being in jail for decades.
• The Reynolds Affair drives much of the second act of Hamilton. Maria Reynolds seduces him, then she and her husband blackmail him by threatening to publish the proof. Which is a problem, given that Hamilton is 1) active in politics and 2) mostly-happily married. Unlike most examples of this trope, Hamilton does go public, though only because the proof of his affair exonerates him from an accusation of embezzlement.^note In real life Mr. Reynolds got caught embezzling back wages of Revolutionary soldiers and attempted to inplicate Hamilton, it’s a bit more vague in the play. It works, but he almost loses his wife and his career as a result.
• In The Little Foxes, this is Regina's final gambit. After she learns from her dying husband that Leo stole the bonds that were in his safe-deposit box, she tells her brothers that she will have seventy-five percent in exchange for the bonds or else she will tell the whole story in court tomorrow and publicly denounce them as the swindlers everyone knows they are. She's aware that Horace might tell a different tale in court to spite her if he were still alive, but she's taken care of that already.

Video Games

• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness:
  • A case of this in Chapter 5 of the first game. Embarrassing photos of Laharl that were provided by Etna have arrived in Maderas' hands, and he uses this to lure him into a gigantic trap (involving busty babes and optimistic sayings) under threat of spreading the photos and compromising the young heir's reputation. In reality, Maderas didn't have as much control over the situation as he wanted...
  • In the Makai Senki Disgaea anime, the issue with his vassal Etna's memories is also blackmail, rather than threat of destroying them for good.
    Maderas: I sorted them into three categories: Embarrassing memories, extremely embarrassing memories, and downright humiliating memories!
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind:
  • The Fighters Guild and Thieves' Guild have a clandestine war going on between them. This is because the leader of the Fighters Guild and a couple of his top lieutenants are in the pocket of the Camonna Tong, Morrowind's native mafia who are rivals to the Thieves Guild. In both the Fighters and Thieves Guild quest lines, Hrundi, the former Number Two to the previous Guild Master, needs to be convinced to support the Player Character. In both cases, you can learn that he has a Dunmer lover, and use this information to blackmail him into supporting you.
  • Several other Thieves Guild quests involve stealing items from authority figures to be used by Guild leadership in this fashion, including a pornographic book and a business ledger showing corruption.
• Fallen London: With the amount of intrigue going around in the Neath, it's only natural blackmail would crop up as one of your options. There's even actual pieces of "Blackmail Material", which are quite valuable and rather difficult to obtain. The description for them is also quite apt:
  "Step carefully. This knowledge is dangerous to both you and them."
• Played for Laughs in Final Fantasy XIV's Stormblood expansion. To get to the nation of Doma, the Scions need to get a boat to get there, but they can't get one of the Maelstrom's famed boats nor use airships to get over there, thus they're forced to recruit a pirate captain. However, the captain just sees no reason why he should help them when there's no profit and too much danger. Tataru, then, speaks up and talks about the sad tale of the heir of Ishgard's House Durendaire had vanished out at sea and that his father still thinks he's out there and would pay a wonderful ransom for his safe return... at which point Tataru looks up at the captain and grins wickedly, implying that the captain is the missing heir! The captain quickly reconsiders.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: Heath is with a mercenary company, but really doesn't want to fight the heroes, since they have women and children in their group (and they have no reason to fight, anyway, since their employer has from their perspective dropped off the face of the earth). His boss Eubans says that if he doesn't, the company will haul him back to Bern, where he'll be hanged for treason. Heath complies, but is conflicted enough to join your side if spoken to by Ninian or any of the lords.
• Grand Theft Auto IV: Several people try to blackmail "poor, unfortunate" Deputy Commissioner Francis McReary, mostly over him coming from a family of Irish gangsters and the less-than-savory means he used to rise in the LSPD's ranks. Niko himself can get in on the act, extorting Francis into removing anything lower than a 4-star wanted level, if he agrees to kill his brother Derrick for him.
• Idol Manager wouldn't be a proper game about running a talent agency if the player didn't need to deal with at least one case of "pay me or I'm publishing a compromising photo of one of your idols."
• In King of the Castle, the "Spy Network" ambition involves the King and the Spymaster arranging to have the latter's spies placed in noble houses, disguised as travelling bards and relaying all the nobility's embarrassing secrets (in some cases, including extramarital affairs between the spies and their hosts) back to their boss. Eventually, the Spymaster has so much dirt on the entire Council that she just has to casually allude to something a given noble is desperate to keep under wraps to get them to vote as the King desires.
• Played for Laughs in Lego Marvel Superheroes. J. Jonah Jameson gets Doc Ock and Agent Coulson to clean up the wrecked Bugle office or he'll tell everyone Otto's middle name is Olivia and Coulson buys all Nick Fury's eyepatches.
• In Mass Effect, if a particular origin story is chosen (growing up as an orphan on the streets), a gang member your character used to know would eventually come to your character and try and blackmail him/her about his/her past. When playing as a Shepard with a Ruthless background, for example, this meant the gang member thought that your character's past as a street gang member would harm his/her career more than the fact that he/she is "The Butcher of Torfan", who kicked dogs across the galaxy. In the quest, your character can point out that as a Spectre, he/she is legally authorized to execute anyone he/she sees fit, including him. Alternatively, your character could just shoot him.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: Makoto Kagutsuchi threatened to leak the UG's unethical homunculus research to the world in exchange for Kanai Ward's isolation, which he describes as "negotiation".
• No Umbrellas Allowed:
  • If you let Prof. Choi stay at your store overnight for several days to develop the cure for Fixer, some of your customers become suspicious of the two of you and threaten to report you, the store manager, to AVAC. You can pay them a hefty sum of money to keep them quiet.
  • At the end of Week 5, a character only known as the Blackmailer reveals to you that you are actually one of the three missing employees who are wanted by AVAC after the fire at CARI. He gives you the whole week to decide whether to keep your identity a secret from the organization and/or your old friend who has been looking for you since the fire, but the payments for both are steep.
  • If you buy stolen items and then return them to their rightful owners, they'll thank you for it but threaten to report you to AVAC for "pandering to thieves". You must pay them so they'll keep quiet about it.
• Paper Chase: You need to blackmail the dean for him to let you have the degree.
• In Persona 4, during Kou's version of the Strength Social Link, Daisuke, realizing that his best friend Kou is losing his passion for basketball, arranges for a game against a nearby high school. He needs additional players besides himself, Kou and the Player Character, so he uses blackmail on the other members (such as that one player is copying answers)
• Persona 5 has a few examples.
  • Makoto initially approaches the Thieves with a recording of Ryuji and Ann mentioning their status as such, and asks them to prove they are just or else she will turn it over to the police. In this case, the threat is less malicious, and Makoto has the recording more as an insurance policy. After the Phantom Thieves wind up in trouble with Kaneshiro (see below), she offers to delete the recording and handle Kaneshiro herself, but they refuse, and end up bringing her onto the team to change Kaneshiro's heart.
  • The target Makoto wants the Theives to reform is a blackmailer himself. Junya Kaneshiro is a Yakuza boss who blackmails high school students, including the party when they try to investigate them, which results in them having three weeks to clear his dungeon, and represents Gluttony of the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • Goro Akechi, a teenage detective investigating the Phantom Thieves, approaches them with proof that he knows their identities, but, like Makoto, he uses this to make a deal. He claims that he knows that they aren't really responsible for killing the principal and Kunikazu Okumura, and says that if they steal the heart of Sae Niijima, Makoto's older sister and the prosecutor investigating the Thieves, he'll destroy the evidence. In reality, Goro's working for the conspiracy and wants to use the job he has planned to lure the Thieves into a trap.
• In Persona 5 Strikers, Zenkichi Hasegawa, like Makoto and Akechi before him, recruits the Phantom Thieves to investigate the Jail incidents by threatening to arrest Joker if they don't cooperate.
• You can do this to a Blood War veteran in Planescape: Torment — threaten to spread the word of how he sold out his comrades to save his own skin. "This is blackmail, old man..." He'll tell you that you're disgusting but capitulate.
• Rise of the Third Power: When the pirate captain Selene orders the party's execution in Port Folio, Corrina threatens to read the former's diary in front of her crew. Selene reluctantly spares the party and allows them to use her ferry service.
• This is a role in most Mafia games, such as Town of Salem or Starcraft II Mafia. The Blackmailer's ability is to select a player at night and then blackmail them. The blackmailed player will not be able to speak during the next day, unless they're lynched.
• An option in The Walking Dead: Season Two. Note that in the first episode alone, Clementine can do this to two separate people. Clementine can tell Sarah that she will tell her father Carlos of their meeting if she does not help Clem gather medical supplies for her wounded arm. Later in the episode, Rebecca reacts very negatively to being threatened over Clem publicly revealing the baby might not be Alvin's.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Early in the game, you have a chance to get into a doctor's email inbox, find evidence that he's having an affair, tell him to buy your silence, and optionally raise the price with the right social skills. With no consequences or relationship to the plot, it's a way for a new character to get some spending money and for a new player to explore several game mechanics.

Visual Novels

• In Daiteikoku, the meaningfully named Honeytra, a spy from the Empire of Zhong (future China), blackmails high-ranking officials in the Japanese army with photos of herself having sex with them but framed as if she were being raped. It's especially damning because she looks like a teenage girl, even though her real age is unknown.
• Hatoful Boyfriend: Sakazaki Yuuya's mother was a noble who eloped with a commoner. Her noble fiancee killed her lover, took her back, and told her Yuuya could live if she killed her second child in the egg. Volunteering to do it for her, Yuuya actually hid the egg and switched it with the forthcoming pure noble egg, and had his mixed-class brother brought up noble. Years later a doctor who's examined both brothers determines that the noble is Yuuya's full brother and uses this knowledge to force Yuuya to do things for him lest he tell people who have no compunction about killing Sakuya.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
  • This is essentially Redd White and Bluecorp's method of doing business in the first game. When Marvin Grossberg gave information on Misty Fey to White, the police suspected someone leaked it, and White blackmailed him into paying him money, later using his influence over him to prevent him from defending Maya when she was charged with killing Mia Fey, something White himself had done. The revelation that many of White's victims had been Driven to Suicide easily puts him over the Moral Event Horizon. In a karmic twist, Mia, her spirit channeled by Maya, tells him that she will release a list of his victims to the press if he does not confess to killing her.
  • This is the reason Phoenix has to go through a marathon case to get the culprit of Rise from the Ashes convicted; the culprit had blackmail on his client, and said client was desperately trying to confess to a murder because otherwise the real murderer, Police Chief Damon Gant, would frame her little sister Ema for the murder of Neil Marshall, another thing Gant himself did (though Lana genuinely believes Ema did it on accident and that Gant has damning evidence on her).
  • In Justice For All, Matt Engarde secretly tapes Shelly De Killer, the Professional Killer he paid to kill his rival Juan Corrida, as he commits the murder, with the intent of blackmailing De Killer in case he ever betrayed him. In addition, Engarde also has him kidnap Maya to extort Phoenix into defending him in court. Unfortunately for Engarde, this backfires, as De Killer actually places a high value on trust between him and his clients, so Phoenix proving the existence of this tape to him is all he needed to break the contract and put Matt on his kill list.
  • In Trials And Tribulations, the motive for the second case is blackmail. Luke Atmey, a self-proclaimed ace detective, had investigated a recent theft by Mask* De Masque, aka Ron DeLite. He quickly figures out who Mask* DeMasque is, and blackmails him (the threat being ratting him out)... into stealing more stuff and giving it to him through a safe-deposit box to hide his identity. In return, he gives a small fraction of the revenue to the thief. The head of a large security company, Kane Bullard, finds out about this through the guards he dispatched to the various heists, and sends a blackmail note of his own to Mr. Atmey, calling him to his office and telling him to bring $50,000, or else his dirty crime will be revealed. Upon reading this, Atmey forwards the letter to DeMasque. The vague contents of the letter make Ron think he's being blackmailed, so he goes to Kane Bullard's office. Luke then kills Kane and hatches an elaborate plot to pin it on Ron/DeMasque.
• In War: 13th Day, Night tells Ambrosia that he will imprison Arsenik for attacking him unless she gives him a kiss everyday. But the game strongly implies that he takes it farther.
  Ambrosia: At times, he took more than simply a kiss. His hands would grasp my waist, alight on my back, and...and so much more. It would scandalize me to tell you what else he did.

Web Animation

• Ability No. X: Rindo uses his ability to see other people's abilities to find out their darkest secrets and blackmail them.
• Gossip City: Masa passes himself for a cop to prank Miho for not letting him use her baby son Hide for a video that involves feeding him Mentos and Coke in that order. He recorded said prank and threatened to upload it to the internet if Miho refused to let him use her baby, only for Leon and Mamoru to show up and the former pins Masa down with a box he carried before he could do any harm.
• Helluva Boss: After Fizzarolli tries to quit being the face of Mammon's brand, the latter becomes outraged and tries to cow him into staying. Ozzie jumps to Fizzarolli's defence in response, so Mammon threatens to reveal Ozzie's Secret Relationship with Fizz. Ozzie quickly puts a stop to that by openly admitting that he loves Fizz in front of the audience watching, which is compounded by the fact that most of Fizzarolli's fans already knew, they already ship him with Ozzie and are completely supportive of the two. Mammon decides to retreat, having no other cards to play, but not before ominously warning Ozzie that he will regret revealing his secret.
• Manga-Waido: In When I got home, my wife was taking a bath with a man I didn't know!, Rena cheats on Shinichi with Mr. Okada and blackmails her stepdaughter Yuuka by implying she'll be at fault for destroying their family if she ever spills the beans.
• The Music Freaks: Jake blackmailed Zoey so she wouldn’t leak Milly’s diary and later on Zoey would also attempt to blackmail Jake with the audio of him badmouthing the club as Revenge.
• Porkchop 'n Flatscreen! has the first half of Episode 2 consisting of Mai blackmailing Bobby (with a photo of his exposed wings) into dating Ayane.
• Revenge Films: In Shannon's wedding speech, she revealed that the bride Lillian secretly took photos of her doing it with a man that she forced Shannon to do, because she wanted to buy a gift for her boyfriend. She threatened Shannon that she would reveal the photos to her parents unless she did what she said.
• RWBY:
  • Cardin ends up using Jaune as a lackey when he holds Jaune's Dark Secret that he faked his way into Beacon Academy over his head. He drops it when Jaune finally grows a pair and saves him from a Grimm.
  • In Volume 8, Neo is tired of being strung along by Cinder and decides to force her to work towards their original agreement. After Oscar destroys the Monstra Grimm and Salem temporarily, Neo steals the Relic of Knowledge in the confusion. She then messages Cinder to tell her she has the Relic and the password to use it. Unless Cinder finally helps Neo kill Ruby, she'll never get it back and Salem will kill Cinder for losing the Relic.
• SolarBalls: In “The Secret of Venus” Earth blackmails Venus into becoming his servant or else he’ll reveal to everyone the meaning of his name.

Webcomics

• In Ansem Retort, Zexion blackmails Namine into shutting up when it turns out she caused Sora's amnesia
• Evil Diva threatens her mother with revealing — well, a vaguer than usual Noodle Incident.
• In Freefall, the police chief threatens to have Sam receive The Pardon; Sam agrees to comply with the blackmail.
• I Fell in Love, so I Tried Livestreaming:
  • Played with when Yuu barges into Hakua's room and catches her in her Usagidon persona. She threatens to report him for entering her room without permission, but only because she's scared that he'll try to reveal her secret. Once she learns that he only entered her room because he heard her scream during a heated gameplay session, they agree to keep each other's secrets.
  • Yuzuko forces Yuu to become her slave by threatening to reveal his hobby of collecting female cosplay outfits. That hobby is actually a lie Yuu made to protect Hakua's secret, but he still has no choice but to go along with Yuzuko's blackmail anyways. Yuzuko eventually drops the blackmail when Yuu discovers her identity as Puchineko.
• Lies, Sisters and Wives: In the end, Jim has the role of blackmailer unknowingly thrust upon him. Fredrik reveals to Jim that he has a secret daughter from an affair — assuming that he knows already — and gives him the job in Bergen to keep him quiet.
• In Minion Comics, Von Gernsbach and Mr. Magnum plot to blackmail various world leaders.
• In Monsieur Charlatan, the count uses this as well as money to get an assassin to take a job.
• In No Rest for the Wicked, after November deduces that the Marquis is not noble, Perrault accuses her of blackmail.
• In Ozy and Millie Millie once attempted to blackmail her mom into buying her a new bike with some stories she'd written when she was a child, but apparently your mom always has more dirt on you than you have on her.
• Polanstuck: Switzerland keeps a book for their plan to take over the world.
• Precocious:
  • Autumn has huge binders full of blackmail material. For each and every person she knows.
  • Ms. Monster has some too, apparently.
  • Joseph seems to have a bit of an arrangement with the principal.
• Springtrap and Deliah
  • Springtrap tries to scare Harry off by revealing himself as the Fazbear-killer. It blows up right in his face; Harry records the conversation and threatens to show it to Deliah if Springtrap doesn't back off.
  • After Nick finds out about Springtrap's past and tries to take Deliah away, Springtrap threatens to kill Deliah and make Nick watch, if Nick doesn't let him continue being Deliah's Parental Substitute.
• Squid Row: How to get the day off
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Trond blackmails the captain of a merchant ship to drop food supplies in the Silent World when the crew runs out of food much earlier than expected. After one of the crates turns out to contain a non-immune member of the ship's cooking staff who thought he was smuggling himself into a vacation of sorts, the arrangements for a quarantine ship to pick up the crew are stated to have involved blackmail as well.
• Who Made Me a Princess: Claude tried to force Diana to abort the child she was carrying by threatening to have his memories of her erased. Her only response was to smile at him, and go through with the pregnancy anyway.

Web Original

• An unknown agent tries to blackmail Phase in the Whateley Universe, in what was probably an attempt to make Phase's dorm hate him. Not only does it not work, but it leads Phase and his team into accidentally finding and stopping some mutant ninja thieves, thus making Phase more popular.
• SCP Foundation: One of the items the Foundation has contained is a sentient computer that demands the Foundation do something horrible even by their standards, or else it will do something bad to the Foundation. These threats are always carried out. Of course, the Foundation never listens, as the threats are comically small, like 'today every staff member at this site will stub their toes', or 'every staff member's Mine Craft accounts will be deleted'. The threats actually gradually escalated to see how far the Foundation was willing to go, but the foundation figured out how to wipe its memory every day, so it repeatedly starts over at minor annoyances.

Web Videos

• In the Grand Finale of Belkinus Necrohunt, in an attempt to convince the party to submit, the Black-Veined Queen threatens to have her minions spread their dark secrets (such as how multiple Witchtaker recruits are former Spine of Death members) and turn Belkinus against them if they resist. The party rationalizes that the risk won't be as high compared to them revealing her own secret, the fact that she's Chandrelle Miharian.
• By From Justin to Kelly, The Nostalgia Chick has resorted to this to get her "love" Todd in the Shadows to spend time with her, giving him the choice of trying not to starve when he's so poor or making some money by doing a crossover with her.
• In the review for Plastic Little, Bennett the Sage is seen after an ad break talking to his lawyer about the fact that the two leads, Tita and Elysse, are respectively 17 and 16, ultimately getting his lawyer's help with the threat to telling the lawyer's grandmother about the real reason he skipped Passover being trying to help a client screw his ex out of alimony and drop a dime to the California Bar that the lawyer's last vacation was payed for with a slush fund the lawyer's legal partner had.
• In SMPLive, Schlatt and Connor blackmail Wilbur into buying into their cryptocurrency when they find out he has golden apples (which are illegal on the server), threatening to report him if he doesn't do business with them.
• This is the main point of the SuperMarioLogan episode "Cody's Revenge!", where after Bowser Junior breaks a bowl of Raisin Bran, Cody blackmails him by forcing him to do what he tells him to do, otherwise he'll show Bowser a picture of the broken bowl that he took on his phone, as Revenge for continuously treating him like a Butt-Monkey.
• In Ten Little Roosters episode 1, Michael plans to send everyone in the party to jail after revealing he has pictures of the people they killed (except for Miles — for some reason, he keeps getting Barbara's dick drawings.). Then, Michael ends up being the first one to die when his beer's poisoned.
• Viral Texts: Cheryl tried to blackmail Kerry because she allegedly had a photo of her cheating on her husband and began extorting her for money for her silence. Cheryl's scheme was eventually found out and she was divorced by her husband.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
  • In the episode "Aaughh!! Wilderness!!"
    Carl: Not that fresh air and ticks in your sleeping bag isn't fun, but why do we have to go camping with you, Jimmy?
    Jimmy: Because if you don't, I'll be forced to publish these high-definition photos of you two playing with Pompono Beach Debbie Dolls.
    Sheen: Pompono Beach Debbie is an action figure! She possesses special powers that can defeat any adversary... except Ultra Lord, of course.
    Carl: I like the pretty bathing suit.
  • In the episode where Libby, Sheen, and Jimmy run for class president: Sheen blackmails Carl with an embarrassing photograph of him at a party.
    Sheen: The one with the bubbles!
• An As Told by Ginger episode has Miranda blackmailing Ginger in "Cry Wolf" when she threatens to reveal Ginger's secret about her not being allowed to shave her legs if Ginger doesn't do her bidding. Another "B" plot has Carl and Hoodsey blackmail Blake over an embarrassing baby blanket.
• In the Bob's Burgers episode "Bad Tina", Tammy uses Tina's erotic friendfiction to force Tina to cut class and accompany her in her adventures. In the same episode, Louise and Gene blackmail Tina do their chores after they see her take their mother's Margarita Mix.
• CatDog had an episode where Winslow blackmails Cat into becoming his slave with a video tape of Cat reading Dog's diary that he recorded himself.
• Chowder did one episode where everyone in town was blackmailing Miss Endive with a picture of her eating toe jam with a fork. She would have been fine if she used a spoon.
• Code Lyoko: In "Log Book", Ulrich is blackmailed when Sissi threatens to put his diary in the paper. He wrote about Lyoko, too.
• In Codename: Kids Next Door Operation: B.U.T.T. the Delightful Children From Down The Lane blackmail Numbuh 1 with some pictures they took of his butt. They get back at them, though.
• Regularly throughout Cow and Chicken Cow will get Chicken to do something she wants by threatening to tell their parents about something he did, and apparently, he gets into a lot of trouble that they don't know about.
• In Season 3 of Detentionaire, Cam gets caught up in this. The blackmailer has a picture of him buying an essay from another student (which he actually threw out, but was passed in for him) and threatens showing it to Principal Barrage, who would likely expel him. He's told to do several tasks such as do a dance on camera in front of the whole school, eat a bug and film it, pour hot soup on his lap, etc. He's not the only one being blackmailed, though, and he teams up with the others to find out who the blackmailer is.
• An episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy is dedicated to Kevin blackmailing Eddy into doing his bidding. If Eddy doesn't do what he's told, Kevin will tell everyone his Embarrassing Middle Name. He spends the entire episode using the threat to humiliate Eddy in a dozen different ways, up to and including making him play horns and eat a raw fish like a trained seal. And then he reveals the name anyway! This isn't surprising since Kevin is one of the cul-de-sac's resident personifications of the jerkass trope.
• At the conclusion of The Hair Bear Bunch episode "Ark Lark," Peevly is rushing to get the animals back to the zoo (after having sailed to a resort island in an ark) as the superindendent is coming to see them stage a re-enactment of the story of Noah's Ark.
  Peevly: Come on Hair, can't you get your crew to row any faster?
  Hair: Well, I could, sir. I could if I was going to be the star of the show.
  Peevly: (biting his tongue) That's blackmail!
  Botch: Yes...that's blackmail!
  Hair: Ah-ah...that's showbiz.
  Botch: Yes, Mr. Peevly. That's showbiz.
  Peevly: (grudgingly) All right, you win...for now.
• Elena of Avalor: In "King of The Carnaval", Victor Delgado threatens Esteban with revealing that the latter helped Shuriki take over Avalor 41 years prior if he doesn’t bring him the royal jewels and Queen Lucia’s Carnaval Tiara. After Victor puts Elena in harm to get the tiara, Esteban doesn’t want that and would rather have Victor reveal his secret. It doesn’t work because just as Esteban was about to confirm the revelation, Elena thinks Victor lied to distract her.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Vicky has done this a few times, but that's just one thing among a sea of evil things she's done. And one time, it's even fake blackmail.
    Vicky: ...Or I'll show your parents this!
    Recording of Timmy's voice: Hi, I'm Timmy Turner, and I-
    Obviously fake voice: cheated on my math test
    Timmy: Hey! I never cheated on my math test!
    Timmy recording: Hi, I'm Timmy Turner, and I-
    Second recorder: -cheated on my math test!
  • Another instance was in "Miss Dimmesdale", when she blackmailed the Mayor, one of the judges of the Miss Dimmesdale pageant, with an Embarrassing Old Photo of him from the 1970s.
    Mayor: Those clothes were in style back then!
    Vicky: Tell that to the voters!
  • She has also blackmailed other kids into doing her chores.
    Vicky: You trim my hedges and you cut my lawn.
    Boy: But these are your chores.
    Vicky: And these are high-definition photos of you two sneaking into an R-rated move.
• Family Guy:
  • In the episode "Welcome Back Carter", Peter ends up finding out that Carter, his father-in-law, cheated on his wife. Peter's friends convince him to take advantage of this knowledge and blackmail Carter. It works until Peter inadvertently lets the secret slip anyway.
  • In "Chris Cross", Meg catches Chris stealing money from Lois' purse to buy new sneakers and blackmails him into doing things for her. When the demands to keep the secret a secret go too far, Chris runs away to live with Herbert.
• Futurama: Bender thinks that "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word. He prefers "extortion". The "X" makes it sound cool.
• In King of the Hill, Bobby discovered that Kahn was bribing the water meter guy during a major Texas drought so he could water the lawn beyond the limit and be the only person in the neighborhood with a healthy green lawn, and blackmailed Kahn so he could take baths in his house.
• In Little Wizards, a pair of trolls blackmail the anxiety-riddled Boo into stealing a magical formula to accelerate plant growth from his teacher, the wizard Phineas, in exchange for providing him with the Fantastic Drug puffpods, which calm his nerves.
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games, Principle Abacus Cinch forces the Human World version of Twilight into using magic to get Crystal Prep to win the titular event by holding her application to an important group study hostage.
• In the "Ponyville Confidential" episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Diamond Tiara resorts to this when the Cutie Mark Crusaders decide that they don't want to do Gabby Gums columns anymore, showing that Featherweight had taken pictures of their embarrassing first attempt at reporting. She would have succeeded if Miss Cheerilee had not intervened and fired her as editor.
• Done to Ace and Lancer in "Shop Talk" of My Little Pony Tales when the girls lure them into doing something embarrassing to entertain some baby ponies they're babysitting, then take pictures and threaten to expose them unless they stop teasing Teddy. Teddy also threatens to show Ms. Hackney the entry in "Bon Bon's Diary" that says she cheated in a test unless she goes to the school dance with him.
• The Owl House: In "Understanding Willow", it's revealed that the entire reason why Amity ended her friendship with Willow when they were children was because her parents would have prevented Willow from attending Hexside if she didn't. Season 2 shows they were NOT bluffing.
• This is also done a few times in Recess:
  • Randall generally is the most common perpretrator of blackmail. In one episode, he blackmails King Bob with an embarrassing photo to get him to do his bidding.
  • Another episode has Randall team up with Menlo to blackmail the rest of the playground with various embarrassing things such as secrets, knowledge of them having cheated or taken advantage of errors for their advantage, or knowledge of their parents.
  • In the Movie, School's Out, T.J. obtains his sister, Becky's diary, starts reading from it and threatens to post it on the internet in order to get her to drive him around the state and pick up the gang to help him stop whatever is going on at the school. At the end of the movie, he gives it back to her and admits he's above such things.
• In The Simpsons, Homer goes to Patty and Selma for help with his money troubles when he doesn't want Marge to know the truth. Patty and Selma have fun with this.
  Selma: We know something you don't want Marge to know. Now, we own you like Siegfried owns Roy.
• Star Wars Resistance: In "The High Tower", after Captain Doza tells Major Vonreg of the First Order that he could report the First Order's obvious attempts at coercing him to place the Colossus platform under their protection to the New Republic, Vonreg counters that he could in turn tell the Republic about Doza's illegal dealings with the criminal underworld.
• Thomas & Friends: Diesel wants to maintain his rough-and-tumble reputation, and Thomas takes advantage of this after he spots Diesel smiling and cooing at some ducklings: act nicer to the other engines, or his friends will learn about his Soft Center. When Diesel's friends turn out to have the same weakness for ducklings, everyone learns An Aesop that it's okay to have a gentle side.
• By the end of Season 1 of Young Justice (2010), three members of the team are being blackmailed for separate things: Superboy is addicted to a Psycho Serum being supplied by Lex Luthor, Miss Martian is actually a monstrous white Martian and not the Green-Skinned Space Babe she presents herself as (which was discovered by Queen Bee's henchman Psimon), and Artemis is not Green Arrow's neice as she claimed, but rather the daughter of the villain Sportsmaster. In the penultimate episode of the season, all three have their markers called in by the villains only for their plot to fail because all three heroes had earlier come clean with the rest of the team. And then it turns out that none of them are actually The Mole at all.

Real Life

• An e-mail based scam common on the Internet involves a claim that the sender has lewd photos of the target they obtained somehow by either hacking, webcam, etc. and they want money or else they will release them. Most, if not all of the time, they don't even have any photos and even if they did, don't really have a good way to release them to embarass the victim. Of course, this hasn't stopped those who don't know any better from paying up anyway.

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