Basic Trope: A character is accused of doing something, but they prove they're innocent when they're shown to be too competent or incompetent to do the deed.
- Straight:
- A valuable necklace is stolen at a fancy party and Alice is accused because she's a well-known thief. But Alice proves she's innocent when she points out she's a professional and if she was going to steal it, she wouldn't do it with so many people around and would have switched it with a fake one so the theft would never have been noticed.
- A valuable necklace is stolen at a fancy party and Alice is accused because she's a well-known thief. But Alice proves she’s innocent when she shows that she couldn’t have stolen the necklace because she doesn’t know how to remove necklaces off of necks.
- Exaggerated: Alice is accused of a crime that requires climbing up the outside of a building. She is confined to a wheelchair.
- Downplayed: The investigators are no longer suspicious of Alice, but they acknowledge that they don't have watertight proof of her innocence.
- Justified: Beatrice, The Rival, wanted to demonstrate to Alice that she is the superior thief band humiliate her by making her the Fall Guy. Ironically, the alibi proves the first part right.
- Inverted: Alice is caught because no one else's competency matches the competency of the crime.
- Subverted: Alice lied and it turns out she did steal the valuable necklace.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice did steal a necklace, but she stole a different one since that one was more easy to steal compared to the necklace that everyone is looking for.
- The small mistake that gets Alice caught is depending on Jenkins, the world's greatest Getaway Driver, for escaping. Jenkins is so damned good that his fees are astronomical (and no "half now, half on delivery" code, either) and Alice is the only person in the room with both a criminal record and the capacity to get enough money to cover said fee in short notice.
- Parodied: If Alice did steal it, she would have quietly and quickly stolen everyone's valuables at the party and once she got all the valuables, she would make a big announcement to everyone that she stole their stuff and then escape by jumping through a window while laughing evilly.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice did have the skills to steal the necklace.
- Enforced: The writers wanted Alice to be framed for committing a crime this week, but then they realized they'd established earlier in the series that she's too good at what she does for the accusation to be plausible. Then they thought, "Wait, what if we used that as part of her alibi?"
- Lampshaded: "With my set of skills, do you really think I'm capable of doing this?"
- Invoked: Alice had a motive to commit the crime, so she had an accomplice commit it and frame her to draw away attention and let the trail go cold, knowing she would later be exonerated because her accomplice isn't as good as she is.
- Exploited: Alice is falsely accused of an incompetently enacted crime and then cleared as a suspect because she's too good to have been caught so easily, so she decides to commit several other crimes in a similarly incompetent fashion in the hopes of similarly being ignored as a suspect.
- Defied: "Either you're a lousy criminal who got lucky or an impressive criminal who screwed up. Either way, you're one of our top suspects and you're gonna remain locked up until we finish our investigation."
- Discussed: "Gimme a break, Bob, Alice is a pro. If she'd committed the crime, we probably wouldn't have ever learned it happened in the first place."
- Conversed:
- "Oh come on, I can't believe Bob thinks Alice did that—from what she pulled off in last week's episode, if she had done it, he'd never have known it happened in the first place."
- "Alice thinks she is the reincarnation of Arsène Lupin the Third and has the skills to match. If she really was the one who did that theft, the only reason the police would know is because she would have super-glued her Calling Card to their faces as she ran off."
- Implied: Alice was established earlier in the show to be a very talented professional thief, and the crime of the week was committed with a high degree of incompetence. Alice is never brought up as a possible suspect, as if the cops had automatically discarded her from consideration because she wouldn't have botched the job so badly.
It's impossible for me to give you a link back to Varying Competency Alibi because my life is too good for me to be a troper!
