Implausible Deniability

It just went off while she was cleaning it!
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Used with permission.

Mrs. Teasdale: I saw you leave with my own eyes!
Chicolini: Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

— Duck Soup

People have trouble admitting to unpleasant things, even when the proof is right in front of their face. Whatever the situation, and for whatever reason, they will adamantly refuse to admit a situation is what it is.

It could be being caught red-handed in a theft (even if caught clearly on the security cameras). It could be losing a battle (not that the losing side might make a comeback; this would be denying that one was even at a disadvantage at all). It could be one's lie proven false. It could be getting caught cheating. This person will deny all of them, despite the most blatant and clear evidence, through Blatant Lies, Insane Troll Logic or both, perhaps hoping to bluster through by sheer brazenness.

As for why, this person may be delusional, desperate, playing coy, or would rather swallow poison than pride. Or someone might be forced to by another, for whatever reason (often politics or blackmail). In cases of a corrupt organization, the character may be aware that what they're saying is obviously untrue, but they're so insulated by the system that their words and connections are enough to invalidate any opposition.

Sometimes, this can be a whole group of people denying something due to fear of change.

A Sister Trope to I Reject Your Reality.

Compare Suspiciously Specific Denial, Blatant Lies, Never My Fault, I Was Never Here, You Didn't See That, Bad Liar, Everybody Knew Already, The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much, Obviously Not Fine, Transparent Closet, I Never Said It Was Poison, Insistent Terminology, and Photo Identification Denial.

Contrast Sarcastic Confession, Plausible Deniability, and Not What It Looks Like.

In-Universe Examples Only

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Advertising

A Cheetos Super Bowl Special featured a girl getting caught eating her friend's cheese puffs and repeatedly denying it despite having cheese dust all over her fingers, fittingly set to a parody of "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy.
GEICO:
- The in-commercial version of Geico claims they didn't know the cavemen were still around, even though the original commercial had the one offended be part of the film crew.
- The pirate captain in the parrot commercial swears up-and-down that he never said any of the mean things about his crew that the parrot is saying, even though it's fairly obvious the parrot got it from him.
A Starburst commercial features Ernie the Klepto. Ernie claims to have reformed from his thieving ways. A kid points out that Ernie stole his Starbursts. Ernie replies, "No, I didn't," while actually eating the candy. The kid accepts Ernie's denial, while Ernie steals the kid's helmet, his bike, his Starburst, his dog, and his shirt.
In the first of Troy Polamalu's Head and Shoulders commercials, one of his teammates asks if he's been using his shampoo, because it's for guys who want "thicker and fuller hair"; Troy's already impressive mane gets thicker and fuller each time the camera cuts to him when he denies it, until he sheepishly admits the obvious.
- A follow-up commercial has Troy asking his teammates who took his shampoo, one of whom has a beard as big as Troy's hair. The bearded one says it was the guy next to him, who is bald.

Anime and Manga

In a scene in Beast Tamer, Kanade and Tania are told to go easy on a couple of thieves so that Rein can interrogate them later but end up knocking them out. Tania's excuse is, "It's their fault! They just decided to run into my fist as hard as they could!"
Karin of Bleach has the ability to see ghosts, but doesn't believe in them. When Yuzu points this out, Karin casually states she's in permanent denial.
A delusional example occurs in the manga version of Chrono Crusade. When Rosette confronts Joshua about his dependency on Chrono's horns, he responds "You're not Rosette. My sister was nice." After seeing a flashback of her half-strangling him when he (correctly) tells Chrono that her cooking is horrible, as well as eight volumes of watching her do things like damage private property, abuse Chrono (at one point until he's lying in a pool of his own blood!), and calling her superior an "old hag", it's a tragic (and somewhat hilarious) illustration of how much of his memories he's lost.
Light Yagami of Death Note after irrefutable evidence to him being Kira was presented, his first answer was "I've been framed! This is all a set-up!". Aizawa told him to give up the act. Understandably, given that this evidence consisted of Light shouting "I win!", and his name being the only one of the people besides Mikami's not being in the notebook.
- He didn't even last that long, really... far from it... In the very first chapter he explains his plan to get rid of all evil humans by killing them off to Ryuk. Ryuk replies that if Light pulls through with his plan, he'll be the only evil human left... Light, in turn, seems completely unable to comprehend the logic in Ryuk's statement that what he's doing is in any way evil whatsoever. Clinical psychopaths have a tendency to never admit guilt for their actions.
Expecting to Fall into Ruin, I Aim to Become a Blacksmith: Eliza, due to being high class, and potatoes being peasant food, is horribly embarrassed for liking them, at one point insisting she was eating chiffon cake while potato crums are still on her face.
Full Metal Panic!: No, Kaname, Sousuke is not following you. He decided to stop at the same cafe, take the same train and — when accidentally missing his stop that he just now decided to get off on (which is, coincidentally, the same as yours) — jump out the window of a moving train for entirely non Kaname-related reasons. Really, it's entirely coincidence!
- He maintains an equal measure of implausible deniability when pretending to be Mizuki's boyfriend, still insisting the case even after everyone has just watched him chase off her real one with a loaded gun.
  Sousuke: Anyways, it's me, Satoru Shirai! Back with drinks!
  Kaname: Everyone already figured it out, Sousuke.
  Sousuke: Seriously!?
In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga Basque Grand shot his racist General Ripper superior at point-blank range to stop him killing the surrendering Ishbalan leader. The surrounding Amestrians calmly note it must have been a stray bullet.
In Girls und Panzer, Mako gets a phone call about her grandmother collapsing, and then claims that she's all right. She drops the phone immediately afterward.
In Hetalia: Axis Powers:
- Japan is seen at the end of a strip (Frequency), in bed, naked, with Greece lying next to him. He's trying to deny that they had sex, ("I'm so glad that "it was All Just a Dream"!"), but the fact that Greece is also naked makes that sound like Blatant Lies.
- In another strip, a young Romano blames his chronic bedwetting on a rogue squirrel.
- Iceland constantly insists that he's not lonely, despite the fact that it's obvious to both his companion and friend Mr. Puffin and the older Nordics.
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: After being told by Ishigami and Kaguya (Ice) that the things she's eating are actually high on carbs and sugar, Fujiwara tries to come up with excuses how wrong they are, despite clear evidence that she's gaining weight. For instance, her argument why drinking bubble tea is fine is because calories are a unit to measure heat, so anything that she perceives is cool must have zero calories. She also thinks eating ramen is fine, so long as it's spicy and she's sweating enough due to sweat being a sign of exercise. The fact that on top of the noodles, she countered the spicyness by eating fatty ice cream afterwards went right past her head.
Monster (1994): After Doctor Tenma saves the inhabitants of a Turkish enclave from a neo-Nazi attack, the police try to question them about his whereabouts. They notice rather quickly that when the Turks see a photo of Tenma, they happily identify him, but whenever the topic shifts to him being wanted as a suspect for murder, they then promptly shift gears to claiming they've never met him in their lives.
In Nagasarete Airantou, Ikuto refuses to believe in magic, no matter what he has seen. He assumes summoned spirits are just "creatures". One chapter has him partially transformed into an animal, which doesn't wipe his memory (unlike everyone who was fully transformed). Despite seeing friends look completely different and the changes to his own body, when he finally recovers, he believes it was just a dream. (Pitying friends try not to remind him of this.)
- It is later explained in the manga that Ikuto was put under a magic spell to keep him from believing in mystical creatures by his sister who is half snow fairy.
Onani Master Kurosawa: Sugawa asks for help with a math problem which Kurosawa helps her with, before she says how she would never want the help of someone like him, which makes him point out how he’s the only other person in the room so that can’t be true.
One Piece :
- As thanks for saving the country, King Nefertari allows the Straw Hats to recuperate in the royal palace, sheltering them from the Marines. The Marines want to search the palace, but the guards adamantly refuse to let them in and say there are absolutely no pirates in the palace. As they're saying this, Usopp and Sanji are walking right by them.
- Iceberg walks up to a government official who is looking for him and greets him with "As you can see, I'm not here."
Towards the end of Red River (1995), Queen Nakia bluntly refuses to acknowledge the charges of treason brought against her, despite the fact that the heroes have gathered damning physical evidence (such as state secrets sent to the Egyptian royal family with her personal seal), or the testimony of her own son, who she'd drugged as part of an attempt to frame the murder of the last emperor on the female lead. Having spent the rest of the series basically untouchable due to her skills at political manipulation, it's the first sign of her encroaching Villainous Breakdown from being backed into a corner.
The Rising of the Shield Hero: After Queen Mirellia marks her daughter Malty with a magic seal that electrocutes her when she lies, the sociopathic princess still continues to repeatedly deny her crimes, including her attempt to murder her younger sister to become heir to the throne and frame Naofumi for it. For added bonus, Motoyasu also refuse to believe that she was capable of that, despite the seal's effect giving her away, then reapplied his own seal onto Malty to prove her “innocence”, yet is unsurprisingly upset that she still got caught lying but continues to believe her. Even her own father was horrified by Malty denying her role in her sister’s attempted assassinations.
In the case of School Days, Kotonoha Katsura denies that she's been wronged, and frequently tells people that she's Makoto's girlfriend and that he wouldn't cheat on her. After he tells her in person that he doesn't like her any more, it goes from implausible deniability to psychosis. She leaves several voice messages for him to a recording saying her call could not be connected, detailing plans for their dates together. In the end she says "Finally... It's just the two of us..." as she clutches his severed head as she sails off into the sunset, although partially she is speaking the truth.
In Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, the main trait of Mitama Mayo is this. No matter what she did to anyone, everyone is just pulling a Double Standard even though most of the time she obviously did it. One of the time, she even burns an entire house, holding a gasoline, an igniter, and showing it in front of everyone. No one knows.
A Running Gag in The Story of Saiunkoku has Ri Kouyuu coming up with ridiculously implausible explanations whenever he got lost.
In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, despite his attempts to tell Kaiba that bringing Atem would yield nothing, Yugi decides to show Kaiba by reassembling the Millennium Puzzle. Atem does not return, as Yugi points out to Kaiba that Atem no longer has any connection to the puzzle and is gone forever. Kaiba becomes visibly shocked and starts shaking with anger, going to claims Yugi is lying and that the pharaoh is refusing to face Kaiba, and decides to make him come out forcefully by beating Yugi.

Asian Animation

Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In Flying Island: The Sky Adventure episode 11, Wolffy has Weslie and Paddi captured. Paddi pretends to sleep so that he doesn't catch Wolffy's attention and tries to wake up Weslie, who is legitimately sleeping. Wolffy catches Paddi awake, and the goat tries to convince him he's still asleep. Not that it does much to divert Wolffy's attention from him.

Comedy

One Adam Sandler sketch has his character, a radio host, asking random people on the street to guess if the sounds he plays for them are made by people having sex or working out. He'll then play a recording of an over-the-top porn soundtrack, with people saying things like, "You're fucking the shit out of me!" When the person tells him they were having sex, he'll respond with something like, "Nope, they were doing leg squats!" then mock them for having dirty minds. (The punchline in the skit is, all the people he asks initially are men; the last person he asks is a woman, whom he then has sex with, records the act, and when he plays it back she says, "That was you having sex with me." He agrees with her, then produces his findings: that women have less dirty minds than men.)
In one of Bill Cosby's routines, he tells a story illustrating why "Children are so honest" is bullshit. He tells his toddler daughter she can't have a cookie, then catches her with her hand in the cookie jar. When he asks her what she's doing, she says, "I was getting a cookie for you, Daddy!"
Cosby: (as himself) I don't want a cookie! (as his daughter) Well then, can I have it?!
Chris Rock has a bit about the hypocrisy of women in clubs dancing to songs that are sexist, and that if you point it out to them, they'll go to impossible lengths to justify it. Pointing out the artist's use of words like "bitch" or "ho" elicits the response "He ain't talkin' 'bout me!" He continues saying that even if it were bizarrely specific, they'd still deny it:
He just said your name.
...No he didn't! (continues dancing)
In Live on the Sunset Strip Richard Pryor dispenses some relationship advice to married men, to always deny having sex with another woman — even if you are caught in the act:
"I don't care what you think you saw, I was not fucking her. Now you going to believe me, or your lying eyes?"

Comic Books

Annihilation: A Running Gag in Nova's miniseries is people meeting Drax and asking if he's Drax the Destroyer, only for Drax to immediately reply "no."
Bullet Points: After Abraham Erskine is assassinated by a spy, the German government denies all involvement, even though the man was German and yelled the distinctly German honoriffic "herr" as he opened fire.
Oliver Queen's attempt to deny being Green Arrow to Mia despite being a blond guy with an identical beard who sounds exactly like Green Arrow. Maybe running for mayor and trying to keep a Secret Identity in the same town was a mistake.
Ares' appearances in the first issues of The Incredible Hercules are full of this in a very Does This Remind You of Anything? fashion. What a genius mastermind he is.
Ares: LETHAL FORCE IS AUTHORIZED! SUSPECT IS THREATENING THE LIFE OF MY TEAMMATE!
Wonder Man/Hercules: No, I'm/He's not.
Ares: I AM SORRY, TEAMMATE WONDER MAN! I CANNOT HEAR YOU OVER RETURNING FIRE!
(later, as he hits Wonder Man over the head with a cinder block)
Ares: NO!! Blows from an unseen assailant have felled Wonder Man!! On my honor, I will not rest until I have tracked down those responsible!! (gets in a car and runs away, leaving Wonder Man lying on the pavement)
Power Girl tried to maintain a secret identity as owner/president of a small cutting-edge tech firm in her 2010-2011 series. Unfortunately for her, that's a pretty highly visible profession, and there just weren't enough twenty-year-old, six-foot-two blondes (among a couple other attributes) in the public eye for her to maintain it for very long. It worked a lot better in her New 52 series, since she operated as Power Girl largely under the radar and across the globe, rather than publicly acting as a hero in one location.
In The Powerpuff Girls story "Monkey Business" (DC run), Mojo Jojo has done a Heel–Face Turn and opened a restaurant. Some misunderstandings prompt the girls to think Mojo is up to something but they are proven wrong. In the last act, the people (along with Bubbles and Buttercup) are enjoying some chili at the restaurant, but everyone's farting prompts Blossom to mistake it for a gas leak. Bubbles and Buttercup claim they can't smell anything, and at the ending panel with the pulsating hearts, Bubbles still doesn't admit it was her.
Star Wars: Legacy: After a major battle, Joker Squad informs Imperial high command that Darth Maleval was tragically killed by enemy fire in the midst of combat. Maleval, for the record, was shot in the back by his own troops after the battle was over. There's no real attempt at a cover-up, and Trask (who pulled the trigger) admits that it probably wasn't believed... but it doesn't matter because Maleval was evidently so hated, even by his fellow Sith, that nobody is overly concerned he's gone.

Comic Strips

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes denies everything even when caught red-handed, and has unlimited reserves of Insane Troll Logic and Blatant Lies to muster in his defense.

Fairy Tales

The Grimm Brothers' story "Our Lady's Child" (sometimes called "The Virgin Mary's Child" or "Fairy Tell-True") is built around this trope. The titular child, a foster-daughter of the Virgin Mary, denies disobeying Our Lady six times in total, even though it's clear that Mary had caught the child red-handed (or rather, gold-handed).

Films — Animated

At the end of An American Tail, when Warren T. Rat's disguise is shot off and it becomes obvious he's a cat, he still tries to maintain the charade, with the line "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?". They got that line from Chico Marx as seen in the page quote.
Beauty and the Beast (1991):
- Belle comments on the enchanted castle, and Cogsworth tries to deny it.
  Cogsworth: Enchanted? Who said anything about the castle being enchanted? (laughs weakly, then in an angry whisper to Lumiere) It was you, wasn't it?
  (Cogsworth and Lumiere start to scuffle)
  Belle: [watching a talking clock and a talking candelabrum wrestle each other] ...I figured it out for myself.
- Whenever Cogsworth wants to avoid something (like the fact that Belle's not coming down for dinner or the West Wing), he pretends he doesn't know what they're talking about.
  Belle: (literally on the steps to the West Wing) What's up there?
  Cogsworth: Where? There? Oh, nothing.
In The Boss Baby, when Tim catches the Boss Baby talking on the phone and calls him out on it, the Boss Baby's one attempt at denial is weak and perfunctory.
Boss Baby: (speaking in the same deep voice he always uses) Uh, goo-goo ga-ga?
Brave:
- The witch, who continually insists her shop is a normal store, that her carvings do not have magic spells enchanted in them and that she is most certainly not a witch.
  Merida: (gleefully) You're a witch!
  Witch: (furiously grinding on a lathe) Wood-carver!
- Merida has a few Implausible Deniability moments of the Never My Fault variety. She keeps saying it's not her fault that Elinor became a bear, but she finally takes the blame during the Holding the Floor scene.
"Frozen Fever":
- When Elsa catches Olaf taking a bite out of Anna's birthday cake:
  Elsa: Olaf, what are you doing?
  Olaf: (talking through a mouthful of cake) I'm not eating cake.
- Elsa herself falls victim to this, insisting she's not too sick to help Anna celebrate her birthday even as Elsa becomes increasingly delirious with fever.
In Hoodwinked!, Red comes across Japeth, a goat who claims he can only sing everything he says:
Red Puckett: Could you stop singing for one moment?
Japeth the Goat: (singing) No I can't, wish I could, but a mountain witch done put a spell on me, 37 years agoooooooo, and now I gotta sing every thing I saaaaaaaaayyyyyy...
Red Puckett: Everything?
Japeth the Goat: (speaks) That's right.
Red Puckett: You just talked! Just now!
Japeth the Goat: Oh, did I? (singing) Did I? Dididididodadidididoooo...
Used as a Running Gag in the Hotel Transylvania movies where an old gremlin woman will eat something in one bite and then quickly deny having done it.
Subverted in The Incredibles 1 when Dash puts a tack (drawing pin) on the teacher's chair, is caught on videotape and still gets away with it due to being too fast to see. All they catch on tape is a moment where he vanishes from his chair for a second. Before they zoom in on his chair though, watch the area between Dash and the teacher's table. The blur is much less implausible.
In Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, Zim attempts to have a Thunderous Confrontation with Dib... by setting up special effects and a sprinkler system. When Dib awkwardly points all this out, Zim promptly throws all the machines off-screen and feeds the strobe lights to GIR.
Zim: YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING!!
In Madagascar 1, Alex the lion reverts to his primal instincts and attacks his zebra friend Marty, then realises what he's doing just as he bites. Awkward pause:
Marty: Excuse me? You're biting my butt!
Alex: (with his teeth still sunk in Marty's butt) ...no, I'm not.
In Maya the Bee: The Movie, this is combined with Never My Fault. Maya insists that Buzzlina is hiding the royal jelly under her crown, but nobody believes her. Then, Buzzlina's crown gets knocked off, with the vial of jelly inside it, and when it lands on the ground, one of the bees goes to pick it up, which reveals the jelly to the shocked crowd.
In Mulan, a rocket in Mulan's cart suddenly goes off. She looks back and sees her sidekicks Mushu (a small fire-breathing dragon) and Cri-Kee (an ordinary cricket). Mushu's mouth is still smoking, but he points at Cri-Kee, as though he was somehow responsible.
Pocahontas: Ratcliffe denies to himself that there is no gold, just to reassure himself he won't have to return to England having failed his last assignment.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; Miles is trying to get back to his room after an embarrassing day at school (and right after his powers start manifesting) when he's stopped by a security guard.
Security Guard: I know you snuck out last night, Morales!
Miles: (thinking) Play dumb. (out loud) Who's Morales? (thinking) Not that dumb!
In Turning Red, Mei denies that the red panda fur that her grandma found belongs to her despite there being no other possible source for it besides Mei's panda form.
In Zootopia, Benjamin Clawhauser bursts in on Chief Bogo playing with a Gazelle app. Chief Bogo tries desperately to pretend he is not doing that, hiding it from view and blatantly denying that it was Gazelle that Clawhauser just heard even as the app's audio plays "I'm Gazelle and you are one hot dancer.", so this does absolutely nothing to convince Clawhauser. He eventually says that he's working on the missing mammal cases in an attempt to change the subject.

Folklore

There is a story told about the possibly fictional, possibly real Mulla Nasreddin (the Muslim World's trickster archetype):
- A neighbour came to the gate of Mulla Nasreddin's yard. The Mulla went to meet him outside. "Would you mind, Mulla," the neighbour asked, "lending me your donkey today? I have some goods to transport to the next town." Having heard that that particular man was occasionally rather harsh with his own donkeys, the Mulla didn't feel inclined to lend out the animal to that him, however. So, not to seem rude, he answered: "I'm sorry, but I've already lent him to somebody else." All of a sudden the donkey could be heard braying loudly behind the wall of the yard. "But Mulla," the neighbour exclaimed. "I can hear it behind that wall!" "Who do you believe," the Mulla replied indignantly. "The donkey or your Mulla?"

Jokes

A man visits The Shrink.
Man: Doctor, you've got to help me. I think I am actually dead!
Shrink: Come on, it should be obvious that's impossible.
Man: No, really, I'm positive I'm dead.
Shrink: I see. A question: Do you think that dead people can bleed?
Man: No, they can't.
[Shrink pricks man with a needle, causing him to bleed]
Shrink: And, do you still think you are right?
Man: No, doctor, I was wrong! Dead people can bleed!
A girl is brought to the doctor:
Doctor: What season is it?
Girl: Summer.
Doctor: Are you sure? Look out the window.
Girl: It's summer.
Doctor: But look, it's cold, snowing.
Girl: Summer.
Doctor: Look carefully, it's cold, snowing, everyone is dressed warm, the lake is frozen...
Girl: Yeah...a shitty summer.
An Ur-Example from the Philogelos, a 4th century Roman text that's the world's oldest known surviving jokebook:
A visitor arrives at a Deadpan Snarker's house, to which he replies "I'm not home!"
The visitor laughs and says, "Stop lying, I know that's your voice!"
"You bastard!" he replies. "If my slave said I wasn't home, you'd believe him—are you saying he's more credible than me?"

Let's Play

Chuggaaconroy always denies watching My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic when he brings it up on The Runaway Guys and ProtonJon calls him in on it. After all, nobody would bring up the show so much unless they were a brony. (As an insult, after Chugga tells Jon that he doesn't watch what Chugga watches, Jon flat out tells Chugga that "You watch My Little Pony!")
Jon: There's a law with you: there's like three or four things you always reference. And by default I assume horses.
True to form, on Lewis Brindley and Simon Lane's fourth series of TTT ^note, Ross does it again, shooting Sips, Duncan Jones (after telling them "poop into mouth", a euphemism for the "Eat Shit" meme that Ross started) and then Lewis. After the alarm is raised due to Ross missing, he continues to deny it, again while firing on the innocents.
Ross: (after having killed Duncan) Poop into mouth.
(Ross then wanders out, as Lewis enters to discover there's blood everywhere)
Lewis: Ross? (promptly gets shot at) Ross is shooting at me!
Ross: No I'm not! I'm not trying to make you eat shit at all! (keeps firing)
Lewis: It's definitely Ross, he's shooting me!
Ross: It's not me! It's not me! It's not me! Who is it?
(this continues for another few seconds)
Lewis: It's Ross!
Ross: It's not me!
Lewis: It really is!
He eventually admits it after the round ends and he and Hannah Rutherford emerge victorious.
In Outside Xbox's Dark Souls I run, a joke about Luke doing New Game Plus as a no-damage run kept going for a while no matter how much damage he actually took. At one point Luke and Johnny Chiodini of Eurogamer were talking about how he was succeeding on the no-damage thing while an arrow was still clearly stuck in his character.
During this episode of Sips' Garry's Mod Murder, Sips finds that he is the murderer and finally bumps into Hat Films' Smiffy, saying that he is innocent. This doesn't work, because Sips' evil presence is showing. Much like Ross, he continues to deny it over and over again, with the same results. He eventually gives up when he gets his knife back.
During this episode of Sips' Trouble in Terrorist Town series, Ross from Hat Films tries to deny that he is the traitor, even when his efforts to shoot at the rest and his killing of Trott make it blatantly obvious. Now with fanart.
Ross: IT'S NOT ME! IT'S NOT ME!
Smiffy: Why did you start shooting at us, then?
Ross: Honestly, it's not me! There's someone behind you! RUUUN!
Smiffy: Nah, it's Ross.
(Ross kills Trott, and then shouts over the chatter from the others)
Ross: It's not me!
Smiffy: You were fucking shooting at us!
Ross: No, it's not me!
(Ross and Smiffy run into each other, and Ross starts shooting at him, continuing to deny that he is responsible all the while. Observing the antics from beyond the grave, Sips is degenerating into helpless laughter)
Smiffy: FUCK OFF!
(Smiffy goes on to win the round anyway, bringing up the "Innocents Win" message)
Turps: You RDMing son of a bitch, he said it wasn't him!
Ross: It wasn't me!
When playing Garry's Mod Murder with the rest of the Yogscast, InTheLittleWood, due to his being new to the game mode, gives away the fact that he's the murderer by mentioning he can see footprints. His attempts to backpedal do not work at all, with his claiming that he can't be the murderer twice in a row (which is less likely but has happened to many players before) and that he was talking about last round.
This happens to the Yogscast in Garry's Mod again, when Smiffy gets trapped in a cupboard, admits to Trott that he's the murderer, then freaks out when Sjin comes in with the gun and tries framing Trott, despite the fact that Smiffy's evil presence is showing.

Literature

In the BattleTech Expanded Universe novel Black Dragon, a full blown Humongous Mecha fight breaks out between two rival yakuza families at a warehouse district on the capital world of the Draconis Combine during the Coordinator's birthday. Said fight involved at least four Mechs and two vehicles, with almost all of them destroyed and several buildings crushed and somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred casualties. The next day, when police begin investigating, no one in the area claims to have seen anything. This is despite the fact the Coordinator himself could see/hear the fighting.
Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World: Tokinada loves doing this. At several points he actually goes as far as confessing his evil intentions to various character, only to then say "Come now, that was just a jest! You didn't actually take it seriously, did you?" knowing that the characters cannot do anything against him without proof, even if he's being as transparently and Obviously Evil as possible. Frustrating them in this manner amuses him greatly.
In Dave Barry Slept Here, the mystery of the missing oil in the Teapot Dome Scandal is solved when Albert Fall is caught trying to board an ocean liner with a suitcase filled with 3.256 trillion barrels of petroleum products. Fall claimed that this was a "gift" from a "friend".
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In Hard Luck, Greg mentions that a kid named Aric Holbert got suspended for breaking into the school and spray painting "Aric Holbert is cool" on the lockers. He tried to deny it was him, but as Greg points out, "it was pretty pointless".
Several examples from the Discworld series:
- Carcer in Night Watch would deny he had done anything, even if caught (literally) red-handed.
- Trolls also tend to repeat "I never done nuffin" (they have learned that denying specific things doesn't work as well) when they suspect they may be in trouble. Coalface is quite emphatic in this regard.
- Detritus is the king of this. No of course he didn't nail that troll up by the ears for being the kind of scumbag that sells drugs to kids. Now, if you'll excuse him, he needs to go hide that hammer in his locker.
- And then there's the inversion of "Done It" Duncan, who confesses to every single crime ever committed^note, even if it's completely impossible for him to have committed it. The Watch humours him, because his confessions tend to include information about who absolutely did not commit the crime in question.
- In Unseen Academicals, the giant ever-burning candle known as the Emperor did not go out. Smeems says so, and is quick to correct Nutt when his assistant's vision shamelessly deceives him to make him believe it did. Smeems does at least trust Nutt enough to confide that this makes the third time the Emperor has "not gone out" in his long tenure as Keeper of the Candles. (Though of course it is also possible that this statement is literally true, and that out of every night that Smeems has been round to check on the candle, there have only been three when it was still burning.)
- In Jingo Vetinari denies that he can speak Klatchian right after he's translated everything the Klatchians on the ship are saying. Since he's talking to Colon and Nobby, it works. (He also later claims to not be able to juggle or do street magic after performing a masterful piece of street theatre, though he also claims that merely managing Ankh-Morpork is more of a balancing act than any juggling.)
- This is the stance the wizards are taking on the events of Sourcery; namely, each wizard is insisting that while the other wizards were causing The End of the World as We Know It, he was holed up in his room, studying, while humming very loudly. Or were out of town visiting relatives living in a country that wasn't destroyed in the chaos. So far, the only wizard not to do this is Mustrum Ridcully, who really was visiting relatives at the time.
Family Skeleton Mysteries: Georgia's older sister Deborah begins ignoring Sid around the time she graduated high school, after deciding his existence was impossible and therefore not worth acknowledging. Despite the fact that he's lived with their family for eight or nine years by that point. She begins to acknowledge him again after he saves Georgia's life near the end of book 1.
Heavy Object: Talent traffickers from the Capitalist Enterprise abduct young children with high grades and sell them to corporations interested in cultivating future employees. Parents looking to recover their children are forced into court where they're expected to prove the child is theirs. Unfortunately, those courts are owned by the corporations buying the children. Family resemblance is dismissed as coincidence, the child's testimony is not allowed, and DNA tests require a 100% match despite variation in testing preventing this.
Robert Zubrin's The Holy Land: The President and his advocates do this all the time; none of the significant characters actually BELIEVE them, but plenty of them find accepting the lie more profitable and useful than calling them on it. Back to that first entry under Truth in Television, below...
Honor Harrington, in the first novel of her series, ends up destroying the Havenite merchantman Sirius in the Basilisk system after discovering it is actually a disguised warship there as part of a False Flag Operation to take political control of the system away from Manticore. Haven unequivocally denies all of this, insisting that Manticore's copious evidence is all fabricated. (Sensor data can be faked, of course, but it is rather more difficult to explain how Fearless ended up half-wrecked by missiles if Sirius was indeed the unarmed victim it was pretending to be.) They go so far as to try and convict Harrington in absentia for murder. But Haven pretty much has to do this, preposterous as it is, as doing anything else would be tacitly admitting to the rest of the galaxy that they were caught committing an act of war.
Hurog: In Dragon Bones, there is a variant where a relative of the murder victim does this, apparently to not have to accuse a high-ranking person of murder: "He clearly stumbled and slit his own throat on a rose thorn in that hedge there. A tragic accident." Everyone knows who is to blame, of course, but the fact that he doesn't outright accuse the murderer enables everyone to save face.
In Lord of the Rings with his army defeated, his machines wrecked, his tower besieged, and the Rohirrim at his doorstep to hold him accountable for his many misdeeds, Saruman comes out and pretends this was all a misunderstanding which was probably their fault, but he will forgive and help them. Played seriously, as due to the power of his voice had Theoden been weaker willed, and had Gandalf not warned them and been present to split Saruman's focus, they could easily have come out of the conversation thinking about Saruman's wisdom and graciousness and how in future they should be more wary of any who speak ill of him.
Matthew Swift: In the first book, A Madness of Angels, Matthew's one-time mentor Robert Bakker refuses to acknowledge that his shadow comes alive and not only killed Matthew before the series began, has been hunting down Matthew and the angels since he came back from the dead — even after being presented with evidence and directly confronted.
Happens all the time in Nineteen Eighty-Four as the Party simply claims that since it can control records and memory, it can control anything that has happened. If everyone believes that something did or did not happen, than by all means it did or did not happen.
Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov's The Norby Chronicles: Norby is easily embarrassed and inclined to outrageous claims to defend himself against accusations. The fact that he ends up in unbelievable situations means that his honesty is often called into question, even when he isn't making up stories about winning walking contests and dignity being upside-down dancing. "I didn't intend to bring a lion from a Roman coliseum" is not a good excuse when the Admiral had to sacrifice his dinner to tame it.
In Robert Arthur's short story "Obstinate Uncle Otis", the main character is described as having "a lack of faith that can un-move [mountains]", including denying that a barn obstructing his view exists... and it instantly doesn't.
In Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series, pages are told they may never tell on another page. Incidents of fighting are addressed as "I fell", sometimes with 8-10 people apparently having fallen at the same time.
The Freys verge on this crossed with Insane Troll Logic in A Song of Ice and Fire after their Moral Event Horizon; No, no! Robb Stark and all his retainers weren't led into a trap and savagely murdered while protected by guest right! At all! Robb really turned into a werewolf! A very big one! And, then started murdering HIS OWN BANNERMEN and the shocked Freys he'd come to make amends with, all of his actions simply being For the Evulz! No, really: wargs, ammirite? A few characters suspect that, since everyone already knows what really happened, they're doing it this way just to dare someone to openly disagree. So, they warrant at least a couple of style points for the scale of the attempted over-the-top-lies, then... despite the shoddy execution, yes? General opinion is a resounding "no" on that.
There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: Mrs Dabberghast's garden has somehow sprouted a Terror Root that requires very specific conditions to grow; two cups of blood, a pinch of sulphur, and two bedtime stories a month.
Mrs Dabberghast: I just kept cutting myself on my gardening tools and I use sulphur perfume and you know how I love telling stories that last an hour to myself in the middle of my garden where no one can see me.
Natalia in The Tiger's Wife refuses point-blank to admit that she knew in advance that her grandfather was terminally ill, even though her grandmother knows perfectly well that Natalia knew, and is begging her to admit it.
To Be with You: Victoria tries to deny she and Leah were doing anything when they get caught making out by her homophobic mother. Naturally, no one buys this for a minute, and Leah is outraged by her denial. It leads to the end of their initial relationship.
Dodged in Wolf Hall when Francis Weston relates a funny story about how Thomas Cromwell got Thomas More convicted of treason: by locking the jury into a room and saying they couldn't have supper until they gave him a guilty verdict. Cromwell's son and ward don't appreciate Weston cheeking him, but Cromwell doesn't say anything to contradict it and is happy the conversation moves on because that's close enough to what he actually did.

Magazines

The back cover of MAD #166 depicts a retelling of the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, with Washington swapped for Richard Nixon blatantly trying to hide an axe behind his back.
Nixon: I cannot tell a lie! I DIDN'T DO IT!!

Music

"No Hablo Ingles" by Bowling for Soup is about using the titular phrase as an excuse to get out of trouble and includes using it on the singer's own mother for forgetting to call his father on his birthday.
Apparently a chronic habit of the girl from verse three of C+C Music Factory's "Things That Make You Go Hmmmm". Either that, or she honestly doesn't know the definition of "virgin".
"That's My Story" by Collin Raye. Similar to the Shaggy song, the singer sticks to his story of spending the night in his hammock, even in the face of his wife pointing out that she took it down a week earlier, then breaks down and apologizes... for having spent the night playing poker with his friends, with no women around, nuh-uh.
Daniel Amos's "I Didn't Build It for Me" (from Doppelganger), in which a televangelist uses his followers' donations to fund an obscenely lavish headquarters for his ministry. When others call him out on it, he claims that God told him to build it, and that it's really for the whole church to use. And this was based on a Real Life incident.
There's a plaque in the hall
My name's on the wall
And a statue of my family
It wasn't my decision
It was all in a vision
I didn't build it
I never would have built it
I really didn't build it for me...
Fillmore East, June 1971 by Frank Zappa has two tracks, "What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?" and "Do You Like My New Car?", where some groupies deny being groupies, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Mark: H-HEY! Listen! Hey, listen to me tellin' ya: We are not groupies!
Howard: Naw, I never— I never said—
Mark: We are not groupies! You better understand that! I told Robert Plant, I told Elton John, I told all those big guys...
Howard: Robert Plant?!
Mark: We are not groupies!
Howie: No, I never—
Mark: Roger Daltrey never laid a hand on me!
Howard: Yaw... It's obvious to see why... Listen, I never—
Jim: Howard...
Mark: Tell him! Tell him right now!
Second girl: We only like musicians for f-friends, you know?
FZ: Real straight arrow, Howie.
Mark: Really... just for friends, Howie...
Jim: But we still like you
FZ: Yeah, we wouldn't mind coming in your bus, but...
Irving Berlin wrote a duet called "Do You Believe Your Eyes, Or Do You Believe Your Baby?" where one singer accuses their romantic partner of cheating, saying "I saw you myself with my own eyes," and the other singer responds with the title.
"Not About You" by Jonathan Coulton. The entire song is a very contradictory attempt to claim that "this one is not about you!" Kind of like an inverse "You're So Vain".
The Lonely Island:
- Used at the end of "Like A Boss"
  Interviewer: So that's an... average day for you, then?
  Boss: No doubt.
  Interviewer: You chop your balls off and die?
  Boss: Hell yeah.
  Interviewer: And I think you said something about sucking your own dick?
  Boss: Nope.
  Interviewer: Actually, I'm pretty sure you did.
  Boss: Naw, that ain't me.
- "No Homo", where the things the dudes say get more and more blatantly homosexual as the song continues. They insist they're straight throughout, despite lyrics like...
  Jorma: No homo, but I wanna dress up like Dorothy, and buttfuck a dude while he 69s Morrissey!
In Les Luthiers's "Vote a Ortega", the titular character mentions he had been accused by a political opponent that he had been engaged in pharaonic project. Ortega, thus, asks what is so pharaonic in the three pyramids he had built.
"Passive Vengeance" by Psychostick "How can you prove it was me?!"
"It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy featuring RikRok is probably the best-known example of this trope in music. The evidence against RikRok’s cheating character in the song includes marks the other woman left on his shoulder, videotape showing the two in the act of cheating, hearing them having sex, and then walking in on them having sex in three separate rooms of the house, but Shaggy’s character keeps insisting he should deny it was him. In the bridge before the last chorus, RikRok decides to just admit he cheated and apologize, even calling out Shaggy's excuses as ridiculous ("I've been listening to your reasonin’ / It makes no sense at all!"). Interestingly, this has resulted in the concept of the "Shaggy Defense", which goes "It wasn't me", no matter how implausible that statement is. (Originated from press coverage of the 2008 trial of R. Kelly, and has since spread to legal circles because there wasn't a simple term for such a defense.^note)^note
German pop duo SDP released a song in 2022 called "Ich wars nicht" ("It Wasn't Me"), about ways to get out of being blatantly caught committing various crimes. Among the strategies used is saying the women hiding in the closet are "burglars" and claiming the blood on your hands from an obvious murder is "tomato sauce".
A Finnish traditional call and response is about a mother questioning her son about worse and worse things about his appearance, and the son waving off the mud and the blood as a result of watering the horses. She has to press him on his bloodied sword before he admits he's killed his brother.
The traditional folk song "Seven Drunken Nights" (Child Ballad #274) concerns a man who stumbles home every night from the pub to find evidence of his wife's infidelities. His wife keeps coming up with even more implausible explanations ('that's not someone's horse, it's a clothes rail'), finally culminating with 'that's not someone else's head on a pillow, it's a baby'. In some versions there are two more after that, including a man's naked butt hanging out of a sheet being a pumpkin and a naked lover fleeing after 3 AM being English. There are quite a few versions where the seventh verse is about implausible explanations of a penis.
Tom Cardy's "Business Man" has the eponymous business man, who quickly announces that he's definitely not a cop. He continues to deny any police connection in spite of the immediate and unshaking disbelief of the people he's talking to even as evidence continues to build up, such as: mentioning that he works in an unmarked black van and has a bulletproof vest and a gun; that his wife was murdered by a drug cartel; his radio asking an "Officer Jackson" if his cover's been blown; a sniper dot appearing on someone's head when they criticize the police (which he says is a chicken pock); the sniper getting offended when he claims not to know him, saying he was the best man at his wedding, and shooting him when he insists on it, shooting the other two people as well, and revealing he murdered his wife for the drug cartel. The only thing he bends on is admitting he knows the name of the sniper, "Dwink Beckson", after the third time he's shot for denying it, and refuses to call for backup even if it means they all die.

Professional Wrestling

A staple of American professional wrestling companies is to have the heel color commentator blatantly pretend to miss obvious cheating by the heels and even justify their most atrocious behaviour, much to the chagrin of the face play by play announcer. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler were perhaps the greatest combo in history and this trope was a large part of it. At Fully Loaded 2000, Shane McMahon interfered constantly on behalf of Chris Benoit as the latter challenged The Rock for the WWF Title. After Lawler continually lied and made excuses for what was happening, Ross finally had enough when Lawler claimed Shane pulling down the ropes to send the Rock onto the floor was an accident, and that Shane was trying to help Rocky out of the ring.
Jim Ross: How can you continue to say ridiculous things you know aren't true?!
Rarely, the face announcer will do this to justify less than honorable tactics by the face wrestlers. Jesse Ventura would often rage at how Gorilla Monsoon would justify anything Hulk Hogan would do, no matter how dishonarable. At the innagural Survivor Series in 1987, André the Giant was the sole survivor, his team winning fairly, with Hogan being counted out. Hogan returned to the ring before Andre had much time to celebrate, struck him with his WWF Title belt, knocked him out the ring and posed for the fans. Jesse was aghast, especially as Gorilla made excuse after excuse for Hogan's poor sportmanship. Over two decades later, CM Punk would call out John Cena on commentary when Cena would take shortcuts despite being the top face in WWE. Punk would also be met with resistance from the face announcers.
- Subverted and played straight during the 1989 Royal Rumble. After Hogan eliminated both Bad News Brown and Randy Savage (who was his tag team partner at the time) Ventura complains leading to Monsoon justifying it by stating it was "everyman for himself" (before trying to blame Savage, in the middle of a slow burn heal turn, for allowing himself to be eliminated). Hogan is then eliminated himself by the Twin Towers before illegally eliminating Big Boss Man. Monsoon tries to justify this by claiming it was karma, but Ventura points out that if the reverse had happened, Monsoon would be totally irrate about it. The WWF also tried to claim it was because the Towers had illegally manipulated the "random" draw with the help of Ted DiBiase, so that they entered one after the other. The problem was this same rumble saw two other teams also randomly enter one after the other with nothing of the sort mentioned.
Very common in the WWE, and TNA. What makes it worse, is that their websites tend to side with the Rudo's lies and exaggerations, so a fan who didn't actually watch the event may believe them.
At the first WrestleMania, Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik won the tag titles after Sheik hit one of their opponents in the head with their manager Freddie Blassie's trademark cane behind the referee's back. When questioned about it after the match, not only did Blassie deny that it happened that way, he also denied owning a cane to begin with.
A complicated example: the night after the 2008 Unforgiven (WWE), Chris Jericho said that the Unsanctioned Match between himself and Shawn Michaels "never happened", and that therefore Michaels did not defeat him - even as he stood in front of the entire world with his shirt off, baring the various red welts all over his torso that Michaels had whipped onto him with a strap at the conclusion of the match. Of course, what Jericho meant in this context was that, because WWE had (kayfabe) refused to recognize the aforementioned match due to its extreme violence, the Unsanctioned Match had never officially happened.

Puppet Shows

In the call "Hits a Deer" from Crank Yankers, Bobby Fletcher calls up his electrical company to talk about a problem with his bill on his cell phone while driving. He then crashes the car and claims to the representative on the other end of the line that he hit a deer, continuing to calmly talk about his electric bill even as the guy he actually hit moans in pain and shouts.
Man: You hit me! My leg!
Representative: Who's that?
Bobby: It's the deer.

Mythology and Religion

The Bible:
- Book of Genesis:
  - Cain openly denies killing his brother Abel to an all-knowing, all-seeing God.
  - Abraham's wife Sarah denied laughing when hearing God tell them they would have a son. Not only is God The Omniscient, she was also laughing right in front of one of His angels.
- In The Four Gospels, after Jesus' resurrection, the Pharisees bribed the guards at the tomb to say that they were asleep and the disciples stole His body. Quite talented of them to know what was going on while they were sleeping.
Classical Mythology: Hermes tries his best to deny having stolen Admetus' cattle from under Apollo's nose, but despite some clever tricks (such as having the cattle walk backwards to fudge the hoof prints), Zeus doesn't buy it. Maia's strong refusal to believe the accusations makes more sense, considering her son was one day old when he stole the cattle.

Radio

Dead Ringers: Jeremy Hunt's attempts at gaslighting Kirsty Wark generally involve him denying anything (including the fact he is clearly gaslighting her), up to and including denying the existence of the economy itself.
Our Miss Brooks: In "Taking the Rap for Mr. Boynton", Miss Brooks tries to frame Mr. Boynton by drawing a cartoon with Mr. Conklin as a mouse in with Mr. Boynton's reports. Mr. Boynton catches her redhanded, and Miss Brooks tries to deny it.
Miss Brooks: Eek, a mouse.

Theatre

Chicago:
- The denial is made by a cheating boyfriend while he's still in bed with two other women: "Who you gonna believe, your own eyes or me?"
- Roxie is packed off to the women's block in Cook County Jail, inhabited by Velma and other murderesses ("Cell Block Tango") ...not that they would admit it. Such highlights include:
"I fired two warning shots into his head."
"Y'know, some guys just can't hold their arsenic"
"He ran into my knife ten times."
"I completely blacked out, I can't remember a thing. It wasn't until later when I was washing the blood off my hands I even knew they were dead."
Played with (albeit in hypothetical situations) in "Picture This" in The Pajama Game where the secretary paints increasingly explicit scenes implying that the supervisor's wife is cheating on him, but after each, telling him that despite all indications to the contrary, he should trust her.
Also played with in the second act of Richard Wagner's Siegfried, where after tasting a few drops of Fafner's blood the titular hero not only can understand the bird's singing, but also hears what Mime thinks instead of what he says, thus immediately seeing through his lies. Thus the audience hears Mime telling Siegfried: "I only want to chop off your head a little."

Visual Novels

This is a favorite tactic among witnesses in Ace Attorney. Somehow it always works two or three times.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies gives us an Inversion. That is to say, Hugh O'Conner is trying to affirm an allegation against him in a ludicrous and unbelievable way, claiming that his alibi is false because he had a body double.
Miu Iruma from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony does this in her fourth Free Time Event with Shuichi. Here, she tries to insist that Shuichi is in love with her... but in reality, Miu is clearly lovesick for Shuichi, stripping herself and trying to get Shuichi to do the same and confessing to him in the middle of heartache.
In one scene in Little Busters!, Kyousuke says something that seems to indicate he has feelings for Riki right after Riki admitted mentally that he likes Kyousuke but denied it outwardly. Riki slowly grows bright red, as Masato points out with glee. Riki claims that he just probably has a cold or something.

Webcomics

Black Mage is willing to deny doing anything wrong in 8-Bit Theater. Even if caught stuffing a child's unconscious body into a garbage can.
The current story arc in David Reddick and Jason Williams' Barwench Tales deals with psychotic barwench Sarah, a girl whose attitude to customer service generally involves letting them live afterwards, attempting to deny responsibility for a corpse with a great big wound in his back - while she is holding the bloody knife. The story is currently stalled, but may be picked up here.
Evil bear from Bear Nuts does this a lot.
- Most notable, I think, being when Evil bear is turning a kid around on a spit, and Prozac exclaims, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?". Evil bear says, "....nothing", and then proceeds to keep turning the handle.
In a Breaking Cat News strip, Lupin repeatedly denies breaking open a pen even though he's covered in blue ink.
- In another strip, Elvis speaks from inside a paper bag to deny that he is in the bag.
In DM of the Rings during the scene from The Two Towers where the guard at Theoden's hall is telling everyone to leave their weapons, after Gandalf gets to carry in his staff, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli try to justify their own weapons as "walking sticks". Including the bow and arrows.
El Goonish Shive:
- Susan tries to claim her hair just spontaneously changed color. Nanase calls her out on it but Susan stands by her claim while acknowledging its ridiculousness. Ironically, while Susan was lying, Nanase's own hair does spontaneously change color at a later date as a side-effect of her magic burnout.
- We find out from the Mulder and Scully expies that as part of the cover-up of magic, "Spontaneous Hair Color Change" is a recognized medical condition. Apparently, it's one of the more common side effects of magic use.
- Talk about vampires causes Susan to reflexively use her weapon-summoning spell; when Ellen and Nanase react, Susan flatly denies having summoned the glowing meter-long sword in her hands.
- Lavender denies she's an alien. Despite the tail, antennae, large black eyes, lack of nose and ears... ironically, she could be telling the truth, at least technically — while she's clearly an extraterrestrial species, it had long ago been established that many Uryuoms are now being born and raised on Earth.
The main shtick of the Man In Black from Irregular Webcomic! is applying this to his job of covering up the existence of aliens. His first appearance had him claiming aliens do not exist... to a group of Martians. Believe it or not, his later attempts have gotten more ludicrous.
Jupiter-Men:
- In Episode 22, Nathan goes upstairs to get some air and locks Quintin and Jackie in the training room so they'll keep training without his supervision. Quintin follows Nathan and asks if he locked them down there on purpose. Nathan has a Beat Panel before saying "No." Quintin replies that it wouldn't have worked anyways because he memorized the passcodes with his Photographic Memory.
- In Episode 49, Jackie presses Nathan on how to start up the video games in his living room. She adds that she saw him playing so he can't deny it. He tries to change the subject by saying that if she saw him playing, then she wasn't training. Jackie fires back by asking why wasn't he training.
  Nathan: I'll let that one slide. I'm in a good mood.
  Arrio: I let things slide when I don't have a comeback too.
Kevin & Kell: In a 2015 strip, it's revealed that young boar Hockley has been posting online, asking for money to pay off people who'd otherwise tattle on him for bullying. When Rachel Einhorn asks outright if he's been trying to raise money for his bullying, he denies it... whereupon she shows him she's found the site where he's been doing so. And is not amused by it.
The Last Days of FOXHOUND: Glitch gets bothered by a dead body walking into his office, stealing his coffee, and then exploding. Que Glitch (covered in the corpse's gore) angrily confronting Psycho Mantis, who has spent the last four pages trying to reanimate corpses with telekinesis only for them to explode when he concentrates too much on them (and has a trio of them walking around in the background).
Psycho Mantis: ...And you think I had something to do with it?
Gary from Ménage à 3 is not exactly an accomplished liar.
- As this example shows.
  Gary: (to Yuki) YOUR DAD IS TAKERU "TENTACLE KING" OYAMA?! THE PREMIER TENTACLE HENTAI ARTIST OF THE DOUJIN WORLD?! (catches Yuki's look) I... I mean... I have no idea who that is.
- In a later strip, when Zii nibbles Gary's earlobe:
  Zii: D'you just cream your—?
  Gary: No, but on an unrelated topic, I need to go shower right away.
Oglaf presents a variation on the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story in which the boy obnoxiously gloats about repeatedly fooling the villagers, making one of them angry enough to shoot him dead with a crossbow. The shooter declares, "You all saw that — a wolf got him." Everyone else seems inclined to pretend to believe it.
The Order of the Stick:
- This is one of Haley's character traits. As usual, it's all justified by the universal handwave of RPG Mechanics 'Verse. As any D&D player will tell you, get your Bluff skill high enough and you can make anything stick.
  - In one strip she denies having stolen a healing potion from Belkar, even though she is standing there holding the empty bottle. He falls for it.
  - Shortly afterward she is sent to scout a room alone. When the others arrive they find that a statue is missing the gems it had for eyes, two goblins have been killed (with Haley's trademark green arrows), the lock of a treasure chest has been picked (and has one of her hairs snagged on it), and Haley now possesses a huge sack of treasure labeled "Haley's Loot". Needless to say, she claims everything was this way when she got here, and that the bag contains "Feminine products."
  - In one of the prequel books she awakens a guard while stealing a large diamond. She is able to convince him that he is still asleep and that she is just a rather Freudian dream.
  - One strip emphasizes this by having Haley take a potion that gives her a large bonus to her bluff skill. She manages to convince a series of guards that "you don't see or hear us", "you don't work here anymore", and "you're actually a yellow-footed rock wallaby". She even convinces Elan that Roy respects his opinions!
- And then there's the Knights and Knaves puzzle, where one guy cannot speak the truth. So when Haley solves the problem by shooting one of them (who happens to be the truthful one), the liar says "She did not just shoot you, and I totally expected it!".
A dumpster full of Jeremy's stuff in Platinum Grit was pushed into the lake by ghosts. That's Nils' story and she's sticking by it.
In Questionable Content, when Dora and Marten take an extra-long lunch break and come back in different clothes, they insist that the delay was from getting caught up in a kung fu monk showdown rather than anything sexy. Subverted when the monks walk in.
Seiyuu CRUSH!: Upon his stash of porn being discovered, Kaji loudly declares "These aren't mine!" despite the fact that he'd referred to the box as "my things" just a minute earlier.
Unsounded: "I'm always nice," says Elka, immediately after OHKOing a random guard. A few pages earlier she was gleefully terrorizing several other unruly guards.

Web Original

In ARaskin500's video Ganondorf's Kingdom, Ganondorf, fed up with Link always foiling his plans for world conquest, decides to pursue his other dream of opening a chicken and waffle house. When some of his minions ask if this means that he's giving up on his destiny, he tries to paint his restaurant as being evil, and that it represents another way to take over Hyrule. Nobody believes him, though Link still bursts in to kill him anyway.
Moblin A: So you're just giving up on world domination? What about your destiny? What about the Triforce of Power?
Ganondorf: (sighing) I... have a confession. You see, the Triforce is not made up of 'courage', 'wisdom', and 'power'. It's really made of 'chicken', 'waffles', and 'prices you just can't beat'. That's why I opened up this restaurant: to obtain the Triforce and finally rule Hyrule! ...and its restaurant establishment.
Moblin B: That's the worst premise for a Legend of Zelda that I ever heard.
Ganondorf: Yeah, well, suck it. Do you want some chicken and waffles or not?
Dayum:
- In “Types of Bad Students Portrayed by Minecraft”, Gavin denies having eaten Maya’s chocolate despite it being on his face.
- In “Types of People in the Bathroom Portrayed by Minecraft”, Tristan claims to be straight, despite spray-painting “I’M GAY” on the bathroom wall.
Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv):
- L proves that Light is obviously Kira (but no one on the taskforce cares):
  L: Seriously, you wrote your ransom note on Death Note paper?
  Light: But it was the only paper I could find... whoops I mean Sayu could find!
  ** Also:
  Light: (after calling for the guy's blood moments before) Oh right, cover... Dad, you idiot! We needed him alive!
Inanimate Insanity: Invitational: When MePhone sees that the New Thinkers's mile high pie is actually two half mile high pies stacked on top of each other, and calls the team out on it, Nickel gives him a Blunt "No". MePhone buys it—he trusts Nickel, after all.
In Marik Plays Bloodlines part 6, while freaked out by Mel Gibson attacking him, Marik admits that he's gay. After calming down, the first thing he says is that Bakura couldn't possibly have heard any of that yelling he was just doing. When it becomes obvious he did, Marik claims it was the ghost. Somehow. Bakura doesn't push it much, but probably only because he knows it's a lost cause.
Mitadake High. The video tapes. They're not 100% accurate: one is correct, the other is just a random possible color, and there's no knowing which is which. But when there's only one person in game with a hair color mentioned on either tape and they still deny it. Of course, some people only look at one tape, and go after one person with that hair color because they haven't seen anybody else with that color hair. That person is very likely NOT the killer.
The Nostalgia Critic went through this when reviewing Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, after Optimus Prime dies.
Critic: And I'm just like, "He's not dead, he's not dead, no no no, he's not dead!" (rocks back and forth, crying and/or screaming) "PRIME!"
In PONY.MOV: When the cops bust in on Fluttershy killing Rainbow Dash with a chainsaw, Fluttershy says "this... isn't what it looks like?" At which point the corpse falls in two.
In Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline, Henry Ford flees the UASR (the USA turned socialist after a revolution in 1932) and joins the Third Reich as Hitler's armament minister. His arrogance and belief the Nazis will win the war leads him to place his marque on everything, including weapons produced by slave labour. When Germany is defeated, Ford tries to deny his role in Nazi atrocities; this goes down about as well as you'd expect, and he receives no mercy from the victorious UASR.
This Spider-Man spoof◊.
Stupid Kids: Tony Macflane asks Boti if he stole his garland. Boti denies it besides the garland is being right in his hands in Boldogat és még boldogabbat (Merry and even more).
In the Web Serial Novel Thalia's Musings, Thalia tries this with Apollo when he asks for an explanation of the noise from a Wild Teen Party. She claims her sisters are just singing each other to sleep - with a parody of ''Tik Tok''.
Ultra Fast Pony:
- In "Fillin' Them Plot Holes, Bro!", Twilight insists that they haven't arrived at the castle yet, even though they're standing inside it.
- In "The Butts Family", Applejack insists that her new tree is not, in fact, Rarity's tree which was recently stolen. The name "Rarity" carved into the new tree's trunk? Anyone named Rarity could have carved that.
- In "Faith to Faith":
  Twilight: Maybe because Rainbow Dash peed in the water supply!
  Rainbow: Hey, you can't prove that was me!
  Twilight: You admitted doing it five minutes ago!
  Rainbow: Yeah, but maybe I can't prove that was me?
  Twilight: We saw you do it six minutes ago!
  Rainbow: Fluttershy told me to do it!
- In "Pirate Shipping":
  Sweetie Belle: You know, the recipe for this [love potion] looks a lot like the same one they use to make alcohol.
  Scootaloo: <Are you sure this is a good idea?>
  Apple Bloom: Of course! Why wouldn't it be?
  Sweetie Belle: You know, you could almost say it's exactly the same as what they use to make alcohol.
  Scootaloo: <I'm still not sure...>
  Apple Bloom: Trust me, it will be fine!
  Sweetie Belle: It even has "alcohol" written in brackets next to it.
In A Very Potter Musical, Fudge refuses to believe that Voldemort is back even as Voldemort is killing him.
In Welcome to Night Vale, Night Vale city officials are prone to this.
- Trish Hidge of the mayor's office once held a press conference in front of a brightly painted truck for the purpose of denying said truck existed. Most questions involved pointing at the truck. She later admitted that the conference was held for the purpose of practicing her denial skills. Then denied having any denial skills.
- The City Council declared that the waterfront pier they decided to build in the middle of a barren desert had not been built, and that they would not, of course, have been stupid enough to waste colossal amounts of money on any such thing. The entire town had simply had a mass hallucination that caused them to believe that a waterfront pier was being built, and any citizen who can still see the pier standing uselessly should dismiss it as evidence that they aren't over their hallucination yet. Of course, this is Night Vale, and frankly less believable things have happened.
- After Old Woman Josie's death, her daughter finds a poorly-written note supposedly leaving everything to the so-called "angels" that had been taking care of Josie before she died. When asked about it, the angels deny doing so while wiping their brows with hands coated in magic marker.

Web Video

American High Digital:
- Ryan as the Professor You Can't Reach, sitting at a desk in his office: "Sorry, I'm out of office for the entire week."
- Luke in "Bros Before Hoes" says he's helping Ryan even as he's walking away from his house to meet up with a girl.
Critical Role: In Campaign 3, Braius spends two episodes denying that he's a worshipper of Asmodeus, while having Asmodeus's symbol prominently displayed on his breastplate.
Kitboga is a scambaiter popular on Twitch and YouTube.
- In "When Scammers Lose $100,000", Kitboga convinces the scammers that his character, Ethel Goodglove (Granny Edna) is also working with a woman named Dr. Linda and her assistant, Igor, to resurrect her deceased husband Richard via a magic potion. About halfway through the call, Kit manipulates one of the scammers into pretending to be Igor, except that the scammer continues speaking using his own voice, even though Kit previous depicted Igor as having a heavy Russian accent. Kit plays along, but then asks "Igor" to turn the phone over to Dr. Linda. When the scammer then claims to be Dr. Linda, still using his regular voice, Kit can no longer deal and calls out the scammer in character for obviously not being Dr. Linda.
- In "Giving Scammers Empty Gift Cards", about a half hour in, the scammer wants the last six digits of Granny Edna's debit card. Granny Edna suggests that they call Bank of America, so the scammer starts pretending to be "Tina from Bank of America", using a terrible fake female voice. Kitboga goes into a paroxysm of silent giggles and just rolls with it, even though the scammer obviously isn't trying and, of course, "Tina from Bank of America" has the exact same behavior and speech patterns as the scammer.
In the Tony Zaret skit "When the LORE Is Surprisingly DARK", Sneaker from Outrageous Object Island asks why Pinecone is hiding the Immunity Staff. Pinecone denies it, even though the staff is visibly in a box right next to him.
Mike from the Wizards with Guns video "The Mysterious Case of Who Sh*t My Pants" claims that he was "framed" when he shits his pants and spends the whole video trying to "find out" who really shit his pants in the guise of a Hardboiled Detective. It doesn't help that he had yet to change his pants as he interrogates people.

Implausible Deniability
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In-Universe Examples Only

Video Example(s):

"It's a soap ad."

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"It's a soap ad."

Implausible Deniability 9 Following

In-Universe Examples Only

Video Example(s):

"It's a soap ad."

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Index

Next

"It's a soap ad."

Implausible Deniability
9 Following