So, Alice and Bob are a Classy Cat-Burglar and Gentleman Thief who have cracked safes all over town. Eventually, the chief of police has someone announce that they have an unbreakable safe that would be impossible to break into, knowing that Alice and Bob cannot resist the challenge. Despite this being an obvious trap, the chief of police is right.
Compare with Criminal Mind Games, where a criminal consciously doesn't conceal themselves and Evil Gloating. For less sane criminals, this can play into why Sanity Has Advantages. Also compare Accidental Public Confession, Engineered Public Confession, Caught Monologuing, and Just Between You and Me.
As a note, while the description mentions getting caught, there are some instances where the character still manages to escape or avoid detection. However, it's still true that in those cases that they could have avoided detection entirely, but chose not to because of the urge to show off.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Subverted in a GEICO commercial where a robber is on trial, and the prosecution calls attention to his social media posts. One of them is a selfie where he poses with the money and gives a big thumbs up, and the other is a tweet reading "#JustRobbedTheSafe." However, the robber gets off scot-free because he reminds the judge of how switching to GEICO could save money on car insurance, which is always a great answer.
Comic Books
- The Riddler from Batman has a big problem with this. While sometimes, he's just playing Criminal Mind Games and wants Batman to "play", at other times, he isn't really intending to get Batman's attention but ends up doing so, leaving clues because of arrogance or compulsion.
- In one Lucky Luke story, we meet the master counterfeiter Fenimore Buttercup, who would have been successful, had he not printed 3-dollar bills and signed them with his name!
- Wonder Woman (1942): John Hunter, a thief famous for bragging under the false name Lon Logix, decides to go mess with and steal from his former fiancee after learning the police have uncovered his identity after speaking to her. He knows she's in contact with authorities including Wonder Woman and still shows up at her house expecting to get away scot-free.
Films — Live-Action
- Superman: The Movie: In the film's climax, Superman takes Lex Luthor and Otis to jail for their crimes. Despite Superman not having any actual evidence of Luthor's wrongdoing, Luthor arrogantly declares himself to be "The Greatest Criminal Mastermind of Our Time". All he would have had to do was deny Superman's accusations.
- In Wag the Dog, a Hollywood director gets tapped as part of a campaign to get a sleazy president reelected by inventing a fake war and making the president look like a competent wartime leader. However, at the end of the film, the director is absolutely furious that the president's bumbling campaign team and their genuinely awful campaign ads are getting all the credit for the president's reelection and the director will never be able to reveal the truth. He declares that he's going to tell the truth about what happened... and promptly suffers a fatal "heart attack".
Literature
- In the Raffles story "A Trap to Catch a Cracksman", a Barney Maguire shows his new friend Raffles (Gentleman Thief) his collection of trophies and jewels, and boasts that there's a trap for any would-be thieves. Naturally, Raffles waits until later, breaks in, collects up the loot, and is caught after helping himself to Maguire's most expensive whiskey — which Maguire had drugged.
Live-Action TV
- In the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode "The Box", Jake is able to get a confession out of Davidson by claiming that he was just some idiot who got lucky, getting him to confess to premeditated murder.
- Columbo is fond of having the murderer, believing they had committed The Perfect Crime, demand that Lt. Columbo prove his "crazy" theories... only for the rumpled detective to pull out the one piece of evidence or clue that the murderer didn't think to get rid of.
- Judge John Deed: Three members of a gang gain access to the hotel room of an enemy gang member, by posing as pizza delivery boys. After shooting their victim dead, they make their mark by squashing a pizza on his face, which happens to be seen by a call-girl hiding in the bathroom, and becomes a key piece of evidence.
- In Law & Order, the detectives manage to catch several criminals (after profiling them as egomaniacs) by deliberately posting false information in the papers to goad them into correcting them. Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent is especially fond of the trick.
- In the first episode of White Collar, Neal proves an art restorer is a forger by discovering that he surreptitiously signs all of his work, both legal and illegal, and notes that he (Neal) did the same with money he forged.
Myths & Folklore
- While he's the good guy, one of the more famous Robin Hood stories has Robin demonstrating this, as his enemies throw an archery contest, knowing that as a great archer, Robin can't help but participate. Depending on the telling, Robin's reason might be exactly that, or at best, it's because he can't resist the opportunity to walk into an obvious trap and emerge victorious.
Radio
- CBS Radio Mystery Theater provides an alternative ending to their adaptation of The Diary of a Madman. Judge Frank Wallace is finally brought down when the innocent man he's trying to railroad to death confesses on the stand to all Wallace's own murders (his wife providing him Wallace's journal on them after discovering the truth and before he can kill her). Wallace's ego being too much to stand someone else receiving the credit, he confesses in front of everyone that he is the real killer.
Web Animation
- Red vs. Blue: The Chorus Trilogy has Tucker expose Charon Industries' manipulation of the Chorus civil war by subtly playing to Felix's ego and sadism long enough to get him to lapse into his usual Evil Gloating while Church secretly records it and then shows it to everyone on the planet after the Reds and Blues bring down the radio jammer.
- Starky Smerkins of DUMMYMANIA’s Ego and materialism gets him sent off by a rocket, then arrested for his crimes, in several drawn depictions.
Webcomics
- In The Order of the Stick, Nale, the Evil Twin of Elan and a recurring enemy of the heroes, sometimes falls victim to this. Nale's Fatal Flaw is his ego, to the point where it gets observed in the comic that it's never enough for Nale to simply win, he has to make sure you know he won and he has a chance to rub your face in the fact that he beat you. As a result, Nale could never be satisfied taking part in a scheme like his father's who rules as the secret power behind the thrones of multiple nations, and he was once tricked into revealing his identity during a Spot the Impostor scenario simply by another member of the party calling Nale's plans boring and unoriginal. Furthermore, Nale dies right after insisting on bragging about killing his father's best friend right in front of his evil father and his father's equally evil and ruthless teammates when he could have at least attempted to deny responsibility.
- Prequel: When Imperial agent Briarbird is posing as a customer for a gang of slavers he's investigating, and he hears them talking about agent "Betterbard", he keeps correcting them when they get his name or exploits wrong. He eventually breaks into a rant about how awesome he is, listing his many achievements, at which point the criminals realize that he's the guy they were on the lookout for.
"You're totally him, aren't you? [...] No, I mean, dude. We weren't even suspicious of you until your tirade about how great Betterb—"
Western Animation
- In Batman: The Animated Series, the Joker is often shown as arrogant and unable to deal with being up staged. One example is in "Joker's Wild", in which a Corrupt Corporate Executive tries to pull Insurance Fraud by creating a Joker-themed casino, knowing that the Joker cannot resist attacking it.
- In The Boondocks episode "Thank You for Not Snitching", something along these lines is Played for Laughs. Huey comments in his narration that while rappers are often big about snitching being bad, they sometimes get in trouble for "snitching on themselves" (i.e., boasting about their crimes in lyrics). Cut to Gangstalicious being hauled off by police in the middle of a song due to this.
Uh, uh. Drop the beat, drop the beat. Uh.
Gangstalicious, my rhyme's too vicious
Eat MC's all day. Mmm, delicious.
My whole crew up in this, no doubt we gon' win this
Smacked up ya mom's like I smacked Johnny Guinness
3 o'clock yesterday, I don't care what they say
Suckaz really shouln't play, I hit 'em with the Hennessaaaay! - DuckTales (2017): This forms the crux of "The 87 Cent Solution!". Following it seeming that Scrooge has gone insane, causing all his investors to pull out and turn to his rivals, making Flintheart Glomgold the richest Duck in the world, and then died of gold fever, at his funeral Huey manages to bait Glomgold into confessing he was behind Scrooge's seeming descent into madness, by constantly stating in his eulogy that Scrooge demise was just bad luck and in the end, no one was smart enough to defeat Scrooge. Cue the reveal Scrooge only faked his death and Glomgold losing all his new investors due to the fraud being exposed.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In "Everyone Knows It's Bendy", Bloo decides to expose Bendy by tricking him into flooding the house. When Mr. Herriman and Frankie start to confront Bendy, Bloo can't resist the urge to brag and admits that he was the one to set Bendy up for that. As such, he gets in trouble too.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Viva Las Pegasus", Fluttershy and Applejack team up with Flim and Flam to bring down Gladmane, a business tycoon in Las Pegasus who has been spreading rumors to allow himself to get ahead. Their Kansas City Shuffle plan involves getting themselves caught trying to create an Engineered Public Confession, before allowing him to gloat in private to them while broadcasting everything to the ponies of the city.
- In the Rugrats episode "The Trial", when the babies manage to deduce that Angelica was the one who broke the Mr. Fluffles lamp, she loudly proclaims that she did it, tells the story of how she did, and tells the babies they can't out her because they can't talk (to the grown-ups). When she starts dancing around shouting, "I did it! I did it! I DID IT!"...
Didi: ANGELICA!
Angelica: Oops. I didn't do it! I didn't do it!
Betty: We heard the whole thing, Angelica. - The Simpsons: This is how Sideshow Bob's plot of rigging the mayoral election in "Sideshow Bob Roberts" is revealed. Enraged at being accused of being only Birch Barlow's The Man Behind the Man, he flaunts in open court how the scheme was all his idea and his alone, complete with two floppy disks and four binders worth of evidence. Naturally, this gets him arrested.
Sideshow Bob: Now, if you don't mind, I have a city to run.
Judge Snyder: Bailiffs, place the mayor under arrest.
Sideshow Bob: What?! Oh, yes. All that stuff I did. - A villainous version in the Sonic Underground episode "Winner Fakes All". Robotnik sets up a race to crown "the fastest being on Mobius", knowing that Sonic will be unable to resist such a challenge. Sure enough, Sonic signs up for the race, ignoring the protests of his siblings... then changes his mind and pulls out at the last minute.
- In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Quentin Beck could have made his Mysterio Bots have anyone's face and personality under the mask, but could not resist making them look and act like himself when unmasked, because as a hammy actor, he couldn't imagine the idea of not being credited for his "performance".
- Spider-Man (1967): This proves to be Mysterio's downfall twice over in "Menace of Mysterio". First, Spider-Man is able to trick him into confessing that he had framed the Wall-Crawler by getting Mysterio to brag about it on tape. Then, when their fight spills out onto a movie set in the middle of filming, Mysterio brags about being the greatest stuntman in the world. This allows Spider-Man to deduce his true identity and worst of all, Mysterio had said this in front of witnesses.
