"If you want to guarantee that we obtain evidence of a Dominion plot to attack the Romulans, I suggest that we manufacture that evidence ourselves."
— Elim Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "In The Pale Moonlight"
Evidence is one of the most important factors in arguing a case; as a result, it's not uncommon for people who want to support their claims to forge evidence that "proves" their argument. Usually, people who do this are usually wrongdoers trying to cover up their actions, make someone else look bad, gain something unfairly, or have some other nefarious reason.
Certain reasons for faking evidence are more common than others. A typical example involves someone trying to frame someone else for a crime (usually one the framer did) by planting evidence that pins it on the innocent party. Another common example would be an Amoral Attorney trying to defend a guilty person or a Persecuting Prosecutor who wants to ensure a guilty verdict by presenting forged evidence to "prove" their cases. A person with a fake alibi might create fake evidence to "prove" that they were at the place they said they were.
Typically, if a character uses this tactic, the fake evidence will inevitably be discovered in some way. Sometimes the "evidence" is a Red Herring that is meant to trick the audience. Other times a character who looks over the evidence manages to realize that it's fake because it contradicts some other piece(s) of evidence.
Super-Trope to Believer Fakes Evidence. Sister Trope to Destroy the Evidence, in which (presumably) real evidence is destroyed. See Orgy of Evidence for when the person fabricates too much evidence. People who use Fabricated Blackmail or Malicious Slander will often use this. This Bear Was Framed is when someone uses fake evidence of an animal attack to cover up a crime. Some cases of Framing the Guilty Party involve this. Manipulative Editing can be used to create fake video evidence. Can go with Vigilante Injustice because vigilantes might conceal, tamper with, or outright make up evidence to confirm or validate their accusations. If someone fakes evidence of their own supposed achievements, see also Bringing Back Proof. Compare Mistaken for Evidence when there was no intention involved when an item is mistaken as evidence of a crime. A common tactic employed by the Dirty Cop. May take the form of Retconning the Wiki.
No Real Life Examples, Please! While people do indeed fake evidence in real life, there are many cases of real evidence being accused of fakes and vice-versa. The prevalence of deepfakes and Photoshop has exacerbated this, with genuine photos being accused of being fakes or edited.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Maria no Danzai: Kiritaka's death at the hands of Okaya's gang is framed as a suicide after they leave fake evidence both at the overlook he jumped off of and a fake Twitter account full of negative messages they posted after they started bullying him, both of which end up making it look as if Kiritaka killed himself because of Abusive Parents. That and Okaya's mother is the chief inspector of the police, who had Taijou falsify the investigation reports to match the evidence in order to cover up for her son.
- The Rising of the Shield Hero: During Naofumi's trial, one of the pieces of evidence used to "prove" that Naofumi tried to rape princess Malty is a negligee that was planted in Naofumi's room.
- In Samurai 7, the Imperial Envoy is found dead, with a sword left near the body. Ukyo's adoptive father decides to simply round up everyone wearing a sword, i.e., samurai. It isn't until later that it turns out that Ukyo himself orchestrated the murder as part of his own personal plans.
Asian Animation
- Lamput: "Prints": to get the docs out of his hair, Lamput - through his Voluntary Shapeshifting ability - pretends he is his own footprints to trick them into thinking he went into a sewer.
Comic Books
- Absolute Power (2024): Amanda Waller creates the appearance of a metahuman crisis by having the Brainiac Queen generate craploads of fake footage of superheroes on a rampage.
- "Born in the Grave": Aaron devises to use the zombie panic to get the villagers to execute Karl. He goes to the spot where Mrs. Vance got murdered and drops a handkerchief embroidered with Karl's initials that he stole earlier. He also finds Mrs. Vance's bloodied monogrammed scarf, which he places at Karl's doorsill. When the villagers return for clues, Karl's handkerchief leads them to Karl's home, where they find the dead woman's scarf. To seal the deal, Aaron removes a ring from his finger and presents it to the crowd as a ring he gave to another victim and which he just found along the wall. It convinces the villagers that Karl is the zombie and they kill him without further process.
Fan Works
- Media Firestorm: Khalisah tries to discredit Shepard and Tali’s relationship by creating a heavily edited picture of Tali being with Garrus, and tries to present it to Garrus. Unfortunately for Khalisah, Garrus is a former C-SEC Officer, and quickly points out the glaring flaws in the picture, which ends up discrediting her instead.
Films — Animated
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls 1: Sunset Shimmer has Snips and Snails take photos of Twilight Sparkle during her football match with Rainbow Dash, trash the Fall Formal decorations, take photos of the ruined venue, then manipulate the photos to make them look like Twilight was responsible for the deed, all for Sunset to convince Vice Principal Luna to drop Twilight out of the competition for Princess of the Fall Formal and keep her from reclaiming her crown containing the Element of Magic. Fortunately, Flash Sentry was able to save Twilight by showing Luna the disposed photos from which Twilight was cropped out.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Plankton initially frames Mr. Krabs for the theft of King Neptune's crown by leaving a note at the crime scene signed with Krabs' name. Then, when Neptune visits the Krusty Krab to confront Krabs, Plankton sends a fake voicemail claiming to be from "the guy you sold Neptune's crown to". Neptune falls for it, and only SpongeBob and Mindy's interventions prevent him from incinerating Krabs on the spot.
Films — Live-Action
- Gone Girl: For the first half of the movie, we follow the suspicious case of a woman gone missing and her husband's struggle to look sympathetic especially as detectives and Trashy True Crime media get a hold of details about the couple's lives, a journal detailing her fears of him killing her, the discovery of a positive pregnancy test, and finally a shed full of expensive crap bought with the husband's credit card. All of it set up by Amy, who had been keeping a fake journal, sneaking his credit card, and stealing urine from a pregnant neighbor to create the circumstantial evidence to frame him.
- Both versions of Insomnia feature this:
- In both versions, a detective investigating a murder gets blackmailed into helping the killer escape. This involves framing someone else by planting the murder weapon in the fall guy's house. Though it's downplayed, since the murder weapon was real, but relocated.
- The 2002 remake also reveals that the detective, Dormer, fabricated evidence in a past case. After arresting a man on charges of child molestation, he feared the suspect might be acquitted, so to ensure a conviction he stained some of the suspect's clothes with blood from the victim.
- Shattered Glass: When Stephen Glass's story "Hack Heaven" is investigated for its inaccuracies, Glass goes to the point of creating a fake website for a software company mentioned in the article and having his brother record a voicemail pretending to be the company's president. It ends up convincing no one and ultimately starts Glass's downfall when his other stories are investigated and most are found to be made up.
- Touch of Evil: A car bombing on the US-Mexico border becomes a joint investigation between American and Mexican forces. Veteran American detective Quinlan quickly settles on a prime suspect, and his suspicions seem confirmed when his right-hand man Menzies finds some bomb-making materials in that suspect's apartment. The only problem is that the Mexican narcotics agent Vargas also searched the room and knew those explosives weren't there before Quinlan arrived. Vargas digs through records and finds this precinct has a suspicious pattern of making arrests and convictions based on evidence that Quinlan or Menzies conveniently "found" after an initial sweep of the scene produced nothing useful.
Literature
- Safehold: Referenced in At the Sign of Triumph, when Rayno chooses to sit on a report of a secret meeting because the only source is an Inquisitor who hates both men involved. "After all, the Inquisition routinely fabricated evidence against people it knew were guilty rather than pursue the long, hard investigation to acquire the actual proof". (Though in this case, the Inquisitor in question was right about the meeting.)
- Paradise Prairie: After killing the Costains, Doug Madigan moved their bodies to different positions around the cabin, smashed the windows, ransacked the house, killed the livestock, stole various things Indians might find interesting, and shot a bunch of holes in the cabin from the outside to make it look like a Bannock raid.
- The Sleeping Beauty Killer: The real killer fabricated the evidence against Casey to frame her for killing her fiance, just as Casey always insisted. Casey had already passed out from being roofied, so the killer easily pressed the gun into her hand to leave her prints on the weapon and gunshot residue on her skin, then planted Rohypnol tablets in her purse so it would look like she drugged herself.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: Various characters use this sort of tactic multiple times:
- In "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place", Londo Mollari manufactures and plants evidence that "proves" his rival Lord Refa is guilty of treason so that Refa will be not only killed but discredited in the eyes of the Centauri Emperor.
- In "The Long Night", Captain Sheridan arranges to feed false information to the Shadow and Vorlon fleets, with the ultimate goal of drawing them into an all-out fight with each other as well as with Sheridan's own armada.
- In "Rumors, Bargains, and Lies", Captain Sheridan sends a squadron of White Stars to attack an invisible enemy, in a location where observers from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds will see it. In fact, there is no invisible enemy; the White Stars are firing on harmless asteroids. Sheridan also puts some true-but-very-misleading reports into the Voice of the Resistance news broadcasts. The point is to convince the League that there's a new, highly advanced enemy species running around, and the League needs the White Star Fleet to patrol their borders.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In "The 9-8", Jake Peralta and Charles Boyd are joined on a drug bust by Jake's old partner Stevie Shillens. When they search a suspected drug dealer's home, Stevie finds a drug stash inside the dishwasher. The celebratory mood comes to an end when Charles confides in Jake that he looked in the dishwasher first, and he's sure those drugs weren't there until Stevie "found" them. Jake confronts Stevie about this, and he admits to planting the evidence, but attempts to justify this as "streamlining" the investigation since they all know he's guilty anyway, right?
- CSI: NY: Ella McBride, Mac's Stalker with a Crush from Season 5, cuts up and glues together pieces of signature handbags to construct an item that points to the murder victim's business partner as a suspect in the case he's working on in "Forbidden Fruit." She doesn't have anything against the woman, she only makes the clue as an excuse to visit Mac at the Crime Lab so she can see him again.
- Hill Street Blues: A veteran cop is mentoring a rookie when they foot chase an armed perp. The corpulent veteran can't keep apace and lags behind. The rookie confronts the perp in an alley, sees a firearm, and shoots the perp dead. When the veteran arrives on the scene, the rookie is worried that he can't find the perp's firearm. The veteran tells him to call it in, and while the rookie is away, the veteran plants a .22 pistol nearby. Detectives find it, but it's missing its firing pin. They also find the perp's actual firearm and deduce the veteran cop planted it to cover for his inexperienced partner. The veteran gets dismissed from the police force.
- House of Anubis: Implied when KT is "caught" as the traitor. The audience soon learns that the true sinner was Patricia, who helped Fabian get everyone's fingerprints into his scanner just before the "truth" was revealed. This makes it likely that she swapped her fingerprints with KT's covertly, pinning the broken phonograph on her and making it impossible for KT to properly help her friends as they all fell for the trick. However, it's never outright stated that this is what happened.
- iZombie: A variation where the fake evidence is created not to incriminate, but to make the cops think nothing's wrong. Liv and Blaine find the report from the FBI lab proving that the brain in Suzuki's freezer was human. Liv rewrites it to say it was a cow brain and sends it back to Bozzio, so she won't discover that zombies are real.
- Law & Order:
- Law & Order:
- The twelfth season episode "Myth of Fingerprints" reveals that a forensics tech has been fabricating and fudging fingerprint results for years, including on one of Van Buren's cases that got her noticed and promoted to Detective.
- The season sixteen finale "Invaders" sees McCoy fabricate an entire trial to catch a pair of killers after ADA Alex Borgia is one of their victims. It's only through the intervention of the federal government that he isn't disbarred and prosecuted himself.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
- The season ten finale "Zebras" has Dale Stuckey falsify evidence to convict a Conspiracy Theorist of a crime he didn't commit, to make up for his failure to catch said theorist.
- The episode "Perverted" has a biker brutally murdered with Liv being framed. It's revealed one of the perps from her past had a shady scientist fabricate DNA evidence implicating Liv in the man's murder.
- Law & Order:
- Pobol y Cwm:
- In a 2024 storyline, deputy headmaster Cai almost gets Gwern expelled from school for bringing alcohol onto the premises — scapegoating him for something Cai knows his own daughter was responsible for. When Gwern gets a second chance after the truth starts to come out, Cai plants a bottle of vodka in his bag during a disciplinary meeting. He has second thoughts at the last minute and removes it again before it's discovered,
- In a March 2025 episode, the Fflamingo food van is raided by the police and Jason is arrested on drug-dealing charges. Jason's completely innocent, as it was all DJ's doing, but DJ's nowhere to be found. When DJ reappears he assures Jason that he's going to surrender to the police and tell the truth, but actually plants a mobile phone in Jason's jacket pocket as part of a Frame-Up, then vanishes.
- The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In The Pale Moonlight", Sisko and Garak fabricate evidence that the Dominion is preparing to turn against the Romulan Empire, who have stayed out of the Dominion War via a treaty, in hopes of getting the Romulans to aid the weakened and weary Federation and Klingon Empire. However, Senator Vreenak sees through their ruse ("It's a FAAAAAAAAAAAKE!") and vows to reveal their treachery... until Vreenak's shuttle is destroyed with Vreenak in it, which Garak had set up as a backup plan — with Vreenak dead, the Romulans will find the damaged evidence and believe the Dominion were planning on turning against them.
- In the fifth and final season of The Wire, detective McNulty, frustrated with the budget cuts to the police department decides to start staging crime scenes around recently deceased homeless men, adding bruising, signs of struggle, and as no-one notices or cares initially, teeth marks from dentures and a ribbon tied around the victim's wrist. Once the case finally picks up steam, he makes a phone call pretending to be the killer to get a warrant for a wiretap, which he and detective Freamon use to actually go after their real target, drug gang boss Marlo Stanfield.
Mythology & Religion
- Book of Genesis: After Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery, they decide to tell their father that Joseph was killed by an animal. As part of their plot, they cover Joseph's coat in goat blood and claim that it was Joseph's.
Video Games
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: In "555 WE TIP", CJ puts two tons of marijuana inside a District Attorney's car to incriminate him for possessing drugs because he was investigating Tenpenny and Pulaski's crimes. The D.A. is successfully framed and arrested by the police, making him unable to testify at Tenpenny's trial.
Visual Novels
- This is standard procedure in the Ace Attorney franchise:
- At least five separate cases — "Turnabout Sisters" and "Rise from the Ashes" in the first game, "The Lost Turnabout" in the second game, "Turnabout Visitor" in the first Investigations game, and "Turnabout Countdown" in the fifth game — involve the killer framing someone by making it look like the victim wrote their name in their dying moments. The third one proves especially flimsy: they're trying to frame the victim's girlfriend, but spell her name wrong.
- A sixth case - "Bridge to the Turnabout" in the third game - has the victim themselves (or at least, the person they were channelling at the time) trying to frame someone by writing their name in blood in their dying moments.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- In "Turnabout Samurai", the victim turns out to have been impaled on a fence post after being pushed in self-defence. The killer then dragged them elsewhere and pushed Will Powers' spear into the wound, obscuring both the killer and manner of death.
- Manfred von Karma, a feared prosecutor with a 40-year perfect record, is known to have forged evidence in order to maintain said perfect record. The only person who was able to catch him was defense attorney Gregory Edgeworth, who managed to get Manfred the only penalty he ever received in his career. Ironically, a later game reveals that the forged autopsy report in question wasn't actually forged by him, but by the chief prosecutor at the time, Excelsius Winner, who issued the penalty to Manfred to throw suspicion off himself.
- Manfred's protégé, Miles Edgeworth, is implied to have forged evidence as well, but later games (and the bonus case added in the DS release) retcon this to nothing more than a sinister rumor and unknowingly using a fabricated murder weapon forged by the detectives he was working with as evidence.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All: In "Farewell, My Turnabout", the three key pieces of evidence against Matt Engarde are that his dinner knife is found stuck in the victim, a bloody button from the victim's clothing is found in his pants, and the Nickel Samurai — his TV alter-ego — is seen leaving the victim's room at the scene of the crime. Adrian Andrews was responsible for all three, as she believed Engarde was to blame for the murder — and she's right.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: The victim of "Bridge to the Turnabout" is found in the Hazakura Temple Courtyard, impaled with the Shichishito. It soon turns out she was killed elsewhere and with a completely different weapon, and the body was later transported to the courtyard and impaled with the Shichishito to obfuscate the details.
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney:
- Played with; a key piece of evidence used against the culprit of the first case is a bloodstained Ace of Spades card. The culprit immediately calls it a fake, realizing too late that he indirectly admitted to taking the real card and put himself at the scene of the crime. Ironically, the forged evidence in question was done by the defendant Phoenix Wright to prove who the real murderer was after he's been branded "The Forging Attorney" after his nasty accusation of forging evidence in a case seven years ago. Although he was innocent of that case, the card is the only evidence he admits to forging.
- In the final case, Kristoph Gavin is revealed to have forged a key piece of evidence for a past trial to secure a victory for his client, only to suddenly get fired by his client who hires Phoenix Wright instead, so Kristoph instead uses it to frame Wright for forgery to get him disbarred.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies: In the final case, a bloodstained lighter hiding a miniature gun is claimed by Detective Fulbright to have Athena’s fingerprints, implicating her as the culprit. Said fingerprints actually belong to the victim, who was killed by the phantom impersonating Fulbright who fudged the fingerprint data.
- At least five separate cases — "Turnabout Sisters" and "Rise from the Ashes" in the first game, "The Lost Turnabout" in the second game, "Turnabout Visitor" in the first Investigations game, and "Turnabout Countdown" in the fifth game — involve the killer framing someone by making it look like the victim wrote their name in their dying moments. The third one proves especially flimsy: they're trying to frame the victim's girlfriend, but spell her name wrong.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: In the fourth case Monokuma manipulates Hina into trying to kill herself and the other students by making her believe that Sakura's reason for being Driven to Suicide was different from the actual reason. He did this by swapping Sakura's actual suicide note, which stated that she wanted the other students to work together, with a fake that claimed that Sakura killed herself because the other students hated her for being a a spy for Monokuma.
Web Animation
- Etra chan saw it!: Akane
is is envious of the fact that her daughter Yuzuriha prefers her uncle Kuroki over her. In order to keep Yuzuriha away from Kuroki, she decides to plant lolicon DVDs and magazines in his room in order to convince the rest of the family that Kuroki is a pedophile. Akane's deception isn't revealed until years later when Yuzuriha herself reveals that she saw Akane putting a bag in Kuroki's room.
- Refreshing Stories: Hiroshi's unfaithful wife Keiko is a photo editor who used her skills to create fake photos of herself with her friends to create an alibi after Hiroshi accuses her of cheating. Unfortunately for Keiko, Hiroshi is still suspicious because of the position of the shadows on the picture, and takes it to his friend Bunta, who's an expert in photo editing, who manages to prove that it, as well as various other pictures on Keiko's Instagram, were photoshopped.
- Revenge Films: After Mark exposes her affair with her boss and sues her for alimony, Rachel retaliates by accusing him of cheating on her and creating fake yet credible screenshots of Mark messaging a non-existent mistress. Needless to say, this turns the tables in Rachel's favor and she could have won the case if it wasn't for her ex-lover spilling the beans for fear of losing his wife and daughter.
Web Videos
- The Trial of Tim Heidecker: On the final day of his trial, Tim's witness Manuel says he has Dr. San's suicide note, which Tim claims is a Smoking Gun that would exonerate him of everything. Even ignoring the flagrant disregard for procedures for handling of evidence, the note is obviously a forgery: it's in Tim's handwriting, written on a piece of legal paper from Tim's notepad, and Tim was seen coaching Manuel on his responses before his testimony. Manuel admits under cross-examination that Tim gave him the note that morning.
Western Animation
- Bugtime Adventures: In the episode "You're All Wet", Roderick, as part of his mayoral campaign, promises to provide the citizens of Bugglesville with water during a draught. In order to sell his claim, he uses an invention that seemingly finds groundwater, but later it turns out that the "groundwater" actually came from the town's water supply.
- Captain Planet: In the episode "Polluting By Computer," Sly Sludge and Dr. Blight are able to get away with illegally dumping garbage in non-dumping grounds with forged government papers and by hacking into government computers. When the Planeteers try to expose Sludge as a crook, Dr. Blight has MAL hack into the government's computers and write bogus files that state that Sludge is an environmentalist and the Planeteers are a gang of polluters.
- Chicken Little (1943): Foxy Loxy, as part of his plot to manipulate and eat the farm animals, chucks a piece of blue wood at Chicken Little, which the latter unwittingly presents as evidence that the sky is falling. Cocky Locky reveals the deception, but Foxy Loxy is able to discredit Cocky Locky by throwing a wooden star at him, which convinces the other animals to ignore Cocky Locky and make Chicken Little their new leader.
- DuckTales (1987): In the episode "The Bride Wore Stripes," Ma Beagle manages to fool a judge into believing that she and Scrooge are legally married by showing fake photos of her and Scrooge together on romantic dates (though in real life, she would need marriage papers to prove the marriage was real.).
- House of Mouse: In the short "Big House Mickey", Mortimer Mouse learns that Mickey has a date with Minnie later, so when Mickey's baseball lands in his yard, he plants it in his house and convinces Mickey to go in and get it before accusing him of stealing "his" ball. At the trial, Mortimer presents a "surveillance tape" in which he, dressed as Mickey, breaks into his own house and steals the ball. The court buys it, but Mickey is eventually vindicated when a closer look at the ball reveals the words "Property of Mickey Mouse" written on it.
- In the Miraculous Ladybug episode "Collusion", Gabriel Agreste wants to remove Mayor Andre Bourgeois from power and replace him with a more reliable dupe. In order to make Bourgeois look more corrupt, he creates fake footage of Andre announcing plans to replace College Francois Dupont with a factory and spreads the fake footage over the Internet. As a bonus, former teacher Caline Bustier had a grudge against Bourgeois for getting her fired from her job, and the footage convinces her that her firing was part of a larger conspiracy, and her paranoia allows her to be akumatized into Miss Sans Culottes, a violent revolutionary, creating a crisis to force Bourgeois out of power.
- The Simpsons: In "Milhouse of Sand and Fog", Milhouse's divorced parents reconcile, causing him to feel like they're no longer paying as much attention to him. Bart concocts a plan to break them up again by planting a bra in Kirk's bed to make it look like he's having an affair, inspired by an episode of The O.C. where someone does that. However, he uses one of Marge's bras, which makes it look like she's the one Kirk's sleeping with and almost breaks up Homer and Marge's marriage instead.
- Sonic Boom: In "Vector Detector", Vector has a reality show where he solves crimes (with his manager directing the camera work). Together, Vector and Sonic try to find out who stole Amy's Hammer. The culprit creates two different pieces of false evidence to frame different people. Vector's manager had a grudge against his former client, Justin Beaver, and had Comedy Chimp bring him on the show, insult him, and then the manager would vandalize Comedy Chimp's building to get him arrested. After Justin was found with an alibi, the manager used a pie as evidence for Chimp's co-host to divert any attention from him. The fact that the evidence pointed towards one person, then immediately shifted helped Sonic and Vector realize the true intent.
