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Trashy True Crime
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As a genre, True Crime is Older Than They Think. Penny dreadfuls circulated early in London, telling the gory details of whatever sensational crimes had occurred recently. The gorier, the better. As time went on, the medium of discussing true crime changed. Newspapers remained a constant source until the early twenty-first century; books are still popular, though less dominant than they were. Now, blogs and podcasts are likely to have overtaken them as the preferred method for hearing about horrible crimes. Due to their nature usually focusing on protagonists of a story, fiction's portrayal of true crime can still be extremely negative. They will often be portrayed as creepy voyeurs, sensationalists, or outright liars. The Immoral Journalist is nearly always a lynchpin, though not necessarily the protagonist. Also, expect true crime to be contrasted against other forms as a lowbrow or otherwise less intellectual topic. Now in the twenty-first century, the trashy true crime aficionado may be a Monster Fangirl, a Loony Fan, or a Nightmare Fetishist. Less overtly moralistic examples can, and often will, still fall under this trope. Often, true crime can be portrayed as cases of Jerkass Has a Point: where the true crime investigation has turned up useful or accurate information (even exonerating the innocent), but the medium itself is still portrayed as exploitative and insensitive. This is Truth in Television in that some true crime content is extremely disparaging towards victims and may further traumatize them or their families. However, as both an opinion and a morality trope, in-universe examples only, please. |
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Predator 2: Tony Pope (played by Real Life trash-talk show host Morton Downey Jr.) is a "journalist" for the blood-and-guts crime show Hardcore. He slithers around the edges of the story, sensationalizing the brutal deaths in a drug war tearing Los Angeles apart, criticizing the police, and even trespassing into active crime scenes for footage of dead gang members. He gets on Lt. Harrigan's bad side one too many times at the climax, and Harrigan punches Pope's lights out. | |
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It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The episode "Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer" is presented as a true crime documentary investigating whether Dennis was responsible for the death of Maureen Ponderosa. At the very end, it's revealed that the entire documentary was made by Mac and Charlie and Dennis really didn't kill Maureen. The police quickly found video footage showing she slipped off the roof and closed the investigation, but Mac and Charlie felt making Dennis appear guilty would make for a better story. | |
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Umineko: When They Cry: Eva and Ange Ushiromiya become victims of this, as without a clear answer about who committed the Rokkenjima Mass Murders, the public by default assumes that the only known survivor, Eva did the murders and treats her as a villain. When the contradictory message bottles describing the murders are found, public speculation is further ignited and perpetuated by the creation of forgeries that pretend to be additional message bottles sent by the culprit. The speculation then leads to the public rooting around in Ange's parents' backgrounds worsening the trauma that she was already dealing with from losing her entire family and having a hostile relationship with her only surviving relative. | |
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The Simpsons: "Realty Bites" has Marge selling the Flanders a house while concealing that it was the site of the "Jealous Jockey Murders". When they find out, the normally-wholesome family don't only show an encyclopedic knowledge of the case, they're downright ecstatic. "Podcast News" has Kent Brockman quit his job as news anchor to start a true crime podcast about an ongoing investigation about the death of actress Vivienne St. Charmaine, implicating Grampa Simpson as the culprit. Kent's podcast Guilty Grampa proves to be an instant success and Kent starts milking the case and the podcast for all it's worth, making merchandise for it. Meanwhile, the podcast's fans have formed an angry mob outside the Simpsons household, and the podcast's popularity convinces Grampa himself that he was guilty. He's not; Vivienne was still alive and this was all part of an Insurance Fraud scheme that Abe forgot about. |
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Castle: In "Ghosts", Castle is joined in shadowing Beckett's detective squad by Lee Wax, a true crime writer, when Cynthia Dern, a former Eco-Terrorist whose memoir she was ghostwriting, is found drowned in a bathtub full of oil. Wax is briefly suspected of being the killer, on the theory that she realized there were a lot of holes in Dern's version of her group's bombing of an oil tanker and didn't want the reputational damage; however, her alibi of dinner with her publisher checks out. Castle realizes later that Wax leaked Dern's story to her remorseful old comrade Susan Mailer, who had been believed dead in the bombing, hoping she would go public and get the remorseless Dern arrested so Wax could get out of her contract and write a better story about the fugitive terrorist being brought to justice. Instead Dern tried to murder Mailer and was killed in self-defense. In retaliation, Castle revokes Wax's access to the team and tells her she's going in one of his books as a bad guy. | |
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The Sandman (2022) Philip Sitz, the pretender infiltrating the Serial Killer convention is changed from a magazine editor to a blogger, but otherwise has the same arc as his comic book counterpart, being sussed out and killed by the real killers. | |
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In You Don't Own Me, Caroline complains that true crime fanatics touring infamous Manhattan murder sites keep showing up at the house where she works as a live-in nanny; five years ago her employer Dr Martin Bell was shot dead in the driveway, with it being suspected but never proven that his wife was involved. When Caroline confronted one touring group, saying that they were being disruptive and disrespectful as a family - including Martin's young children - still live in the house, the tour guide's response was to reveal Caroline was the one who first found the murder victim and encouraged people to ask questions and take pictures. | |
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Zigzagged in Hannibal. Freddie Lounds is an ambulance-chasing Immoral Journalist who blogs about gory murders and has a particular vendetta against Will. She gets a cop fired for helping her, and she tries to turn Abigail's severe trauma into a bestselling book. However, played with, because Abigail wanted her story told (if only so she could have money for the rest of her life) and agreed to write it with Freddie against Will and Hannibal's advice, and, as Freddie points out, she didn't force the cop to sleep with her — in fact, she then offers him a cushy security job to thank him for his help. | |
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Rick and Morty: The first "Interdimensional Cable" episode made a nod to the genre with the Show Within a Show Quick Mysteries, in which murders were introduced and the killer admitted to the crime within seconds. | |
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The Kindaichi Case Files has featured a few instances: The Lake Hiren Murder Case features non-fiction author Yousuke Itsuki, a sneering Jerkass who cackles about how well a book about the still ongoing serial killing case would sell and approaches one of the other suspects and starts forcefully asking them how it feels to see her own husband's corpse covered in ax wounds to the face immediately after said corpse is discovered. Though, afterwards he becomes a recurring character and quickly turns around to become essentially a freelance Intrepid Reporter with a strong sense of justice. The victim of Kindaichi the Killer is another non-fiction author, who is killed when he callously refuses to leave the name of the culprit, who only participated in the organ smuggling syndicate the victim was writing about because he needed a kidney for his daughter, out of his latest book. In contrast, when the newly softened Itsuki publishes the book posthumously, he cuts the culprit's name out of the book to spare his daughter the public scrutiny of being a murderer's daughter. The anime adaptation of the spin-off novel The Ghost Passenger Ship Murder Case (incidentally, a Sequel Episode to the aforementioned Lake Hiren case) makes Yoshikazu Akai, who in the original novel had been a humble photographer, into one of these. As a magazine writer, he had written a no-holds-barred exposé about an accident at sea several years ago, blaming the accident on the Captain of one of the vessels being drunk at the wheel with little evidence. As a result, he's pushed off a cliff by the culprit, the slandered captain's daughter, who had no grudge against him in the original book. Shinobu Tokita from the Doll Island Murder Case wrote a novel about a robbery-murder which contained so many details about the crime and so little effort to hide people's identities that the general public was quickly able to track down the true case... which proved problematic, as the story cast the culprit, who in real life had accidentally hit a girl with his car and killed a woman in a panic when she caught him robbing her house to pay the girl's family compensation money, as a craven villain. The resultant wave of harassment against the murderer's family drove them all to suicide with the exception of the mother's step-sister, who killed the author out of revenge years later. |
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Portlandia parodies both NPR podcasts and true crime with the sketch where podcasters observe police searching for the killer of a "dead homosexual". They insult the police to their faces, saying that they're poor and illiterate, and gets a police officer to call himself so they can record the ringing phone. They then record it to say that they're the only ones interested in solving the case. | |
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Zigzagged in American Vandal. Peter and Sam have good intentions, as does Chloe in Season 2 (exonerating the innocent). However, their documentary exploits its subjects (for which Mackenzie viciously calls them out), humiliating them and revealing their secrets. Although they exonerate Dylan, he becomes a graffiti artist and vandal at the end. | |
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Halloween (2018) depicts its pair of true crime podcasters as exploitive, opportunistic, and foolish. While the movie largely operates under the assumption only Michael truly understands how his mind and motives work, the podcasters were almost certainly poking the bear when they tried to communicate with him and presented his old mask. | |
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Based on a True Story: The exploitation of the true crime genre is the Central Theme of the show. Ava and Nathan start the podcast about Matt even though he's a Serial Killer and they are both in serious danger, and Matt takes great pleasure in being involved. The Sisters in Crime are also portrayed as pretending to be "victim-focused" but they only care about money. | |
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Sharp Objects: Camille offhandedly mentions at the end of the book that Marian's death has become content for many, many "dime store paperbacks". Though a writer herself, she refuses to participate as she finds them disgusting. | |
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A more lighthearted version in Arthur. Buster starts to get into podcast stories and decides to make one of his own. However, his content isn't all that interesting until he starts investigating D.W.'s missing cereal which she blames Arthur for. While investigating, Buster seems more interested in getting content for his podcast than helping Arthur. Later he finds that Pal was the one who ate D.W.'s cereal and debates on whether he should lie that Arthur did it because it is more exciting than the truth. Thankfully he decides to do the right thing and tell the truth about the crime. | |
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Sinister: Though Ellison is a fairly sympathetic protagonist with a respectable writing career, several elements of the plot cast shadows on his character and profession. Despite his claims otherwise, it's clear that his only motivation in writing his true crime book is to revive his flagging career. At least one of his previous books had incorrect conclusions that damaged the case. The sheriff bluntly tells Ellison that his decision to move into the victims' house for research was tasteless. And when Ellison uncovers bombshell evidence in his investigation, he makes the deeply questionable decision to not call the police and keep the info for his book instead. | |
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Scream 4 implied to be what Jill is courting at the end, when she believes that there's No Such Thing as Bad Publicity and frames herself as the victim of a massacre, killing her friends and boyfriend(s), solely to be front and centre as a Sidney expy to a new wave of exploitative content. She even notes that she had to film the massacre because nobody wanted to read about the gory details anymore — they had to see it. | |
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In The People v. O. J. Simpson, Dominick Dunne, one of the godfathers of the true crime genre, is portrayed as a self-important gossip using his access to the O.J. Simpson murder trial to entertain the morbid curiosities of his rich friends. | |
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Black Mirror - "Loch Henry". The show's theme is about the contemporary fascination with True Crime. Pia takes a detour to the farm where they found the bodies and pitches a documentary about it instead, because their original idea might have pleased niche documentarians but didn't have mass appeal. In their unethical efforts to do so, Pia finds that the truth is even worse — that Davis' mother and father were the killer's conspirators — and dies for it. And then it all becomes a sensationalized True Crime doc anyway, with a dramatization on the way. The whole experience destroys Davis emotionally. | |
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Red Dragon: Freddy Lounds from The Tattler crosses ethical and legal lines to report on "Tooth Fairy" investigation, and had in the past broken into the hospital where Will Graham was being treated after Hannibal Lecter had tried to kill him. | |
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Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: Both Dahmer's parents and the families of his victims are tormented by gruesome comic books detailing Dahmer's crimes. In Episode 8, when Lionel and his attorney mention Ed Gein to Jeffrey in an attempt to talk him into an insanity plea, Jeff recalls reading about Gein in a comic book. Both Lionel and the attorney are dumbfounded at the idea that someone would write a comic book about a real life killer's crimes. Lionel writes a book about his son, and while he claims noble intentions, the series doesn't exactly depict him or his book in a sympathetic light; Lionel and Shari seem quite overly pleased and even exploitative talking about the book's potential success. When Jeffrey's crimes become known worldwide, he was surprised to find out he had some admirers. While in prison he receives a letter and money from a high school girl who mentions him becoming a popular Halloween costume that year, asking for an autograph, and signing it as "[his] biggest fan". Another letter from a man included a Dahmer-themed Christmas card, said he was like a real-life Michael Myers or Freddy Kruger, and also asked for an autograph. This is Truth in Television as there are still some people even thirty years after his arrest who unironically admire Jeffrey Dahmer. |
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Scream: Scream (1996) presented Immoral Journalist Gale Weathers this way, as she had made her fame off covering Maureen Prescott's rape and murder in a way that centres Cotton, who, Sidney believed, committed the murder. She also follows Sidney (who is around seventeen at the start of the series) around, confronting her repeatedly and trying to mine her trauma for more content. However, this is also presented firmly as Jerkass Has a Point, as Gale is right that Cotton is wrongly accused. Though she and Cotton don't cover themselves in glory when they respond to being vindicated by stalking Sidney at college and trying to ambush her into an interview. Scream 4 implied to be what Jill is courting at the end, when she believes that there's No Such Thing as Bad Publicity and frames herself as the victim of a massacre, killing her friends and boyfriend(s), solely to be front and centre as a Sidney expy to a new wave of exploitative content. She even notes that she had to film the massacre because nobody wanted to read about the gory details anymore — they had to see it. |
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Adam Ruins Everything: 'Adam Ruins Sleep' has a brief joke where a true crime podcaster talks about how busy he is trying to solve a crime while treating it like a game. | |
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Done Disappeared is another parody of true crime podcasts, about the disappearance of a woman, Clara Pockets, in the 1980s. A filmmaker ("who's never made a film, but has also never made a podcast) seeks to investigate the murder, only to zone out during the actual confession and miss the confession of a legitimate serial killer. He then wastes episodes on whether or not all the geese were murdered by a Serial Killer...and then ultimately figures out that geese migrate, so they had presumably gotten lost. It also gives a specific Take That! to My Favorite Murder, as a podcast called My Dearest Disappearance gets a Shout-Out. | |
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Yellowjackets: The creepy, inappropriate, sociopathic Misty Quigley has grown into a true crime fanatic. She calls herself a "citizen detective...though nobody asked for our help" to Natalie's clear disdain. The coverage of the Yellowjackets crash is portrayed as being grubby, sensationalist, and uncomfortable. The only team member willing to participate is Ally, who had been sidelined with an injury and wasn't even on the plane. |
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Under Suspicion: In general, Laurie desperately tries to avoid turning the titular true crime show into this. While it is a reality TV show and needs interesting cold cases and scenarios to draw in viewers, Laurie sees the show as a way to genuinely help victims of crime and their loved ones get justice, for persons of interest to tell their side of things and to uncover new information that could solve the cases. She tries to stay away from sensationalising the crimes, focusing on graphic details of murders or hyper-focusing on a particular suspect or theory, instead approaching every case with an open mind, doing thorough research and treating the participants with respect. This does occasionally cause her to butt heads with her boss, Brett Young, who is less concerned with Laurie's crusade for justice than he is about getting higher ratings via juicy true crime stories, preferably involving rich and/or famous people he can get riled up on camera. He does, however, admit that Laurie and her team actually solving cases does cause viewership to go up significantly. Given the second book, The Cinderella Murder, revolves around a murder that occurred in Hollywood, it's almost a given that part of the focus is on sensationalistic and insensitive media coverage of crime. When Laurie first approaches Rosemary about featuring Susan's case on Under Suspicion, Rosemary tells Laurie that she's been "burned" before by people who claim they want to help solve her daughter's murder, but just ended up sensationalising it and making up all kinds of wild theories without a shred of evidence, including suggesting Susan was sleeping around with numerous men. Laurie finds a true crime blog covering the murder that Rosemary had agreed to be interviewed for, which is poorly researched, focuses on the most lurid details, and also strongly implies Susan had a sexual liaison with Frank Parker to get the role she was auditioning for, which "went wrong" and resulted in her death, while providing absolutely no proof anything of the sort happened. Brett Young initially tries to persuade Laurie to investigate the case of a murdered child beauty pageant queen, saying that "Every time we have an excuse to show those adorable pageant videos, our ratings skyrocket". Laurie finds the idea distasteful, especially as the victim is a child, and points out that not only has the case already been picked over by journalists numerous times, there aren't even any plausible suspects for them to investigate, which defeats the purpose of featuring the case on a show called Under Suspicion; Brett says they can just find the witnesses and have Alex Buckley grill them about the girl's murder on-camera, which sounds a lot like harassment. Brett is reluctant to greenlight the Cinderella Murder case because he says that without the Hollywood connection, it's "just another cold case" and that if Laurie can't get acclaimed director Frank Parker to sign on, she should take the beauty pageant case instead. Laurie is able to reassure Rosemary that the aim of her show is to remind viewers Susan was a real person who lost her life and to try to uncover what actually happened to her so her loved ones can have justice and closure. Laurie specifically demands that they focus more on things like establishing the timeline of Susan's last movements and the alibis of the suspects, rather than going into the graphic details of how she was killed. They also end the finished episode with Alex reminding viewers that while the victim became known as Cinderella, her real name is Susan and that's who they hope the viewers will remember her as. In You Don't Own Me, Caroline complains that true crime fanatics touring infamous Manhattan murder sites keep showing up at the house where she works as a live-in nanny; five years ago her employer Dr Martin Bell was shot dead in the driveway, with it being suspected but never proven that his wife was involved. When Caroline confronted one touring group, saying that they were being disruptive and disrespectful as a family - including Martin's young children - still live in the house, the tour guide's response was to reveal Caroline was the one who first found the murder victim and encouraged people to ask questions and take pictures. |
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Given the second book, The Cinderella Murder, revolves around a murder that occurred in Hollywood, it's almost a given that part of the focus is on sensationalistic and insensitive media coverage of crime. When Laurie first approaches Rosemary about featuring Susan's case on Under Suspicion, Rosemary tells Laurie that she's been "burned" before by people who claim they want to help solve her daughter's murder, but just ended up sensationalising it and making up all kinds of wild theories without a shred of evidence, including suggesting Susan was sleeping around with numerous men. Laurie finds a true crime blog covering the murder that Rosemary had agreed to be interviewed for, which is poorly researched, focuses on the most lurid details, and also strongly implies Susan had a sexual liaison with Frank Parker to get the role she was auditioning for, which "went wrong" and resulted in her death, while providing absolutely no proof anything of the sort happened. Brett Young initially tries to persuade Laurie to investigate the case of a murdered child beauty pageant queen, saying that "Every time we have an excuse to show those adorable pageant videos, our ratings skyrocket". Laurie finds the idea distasteful, especially as the victim is a child, and points out that not only has the case already been picked over by journalists numerous times, there aren't even any plausible suspects for them to investigate, which defeats the purpose of featuring the case on a show called Under Suspicion; Brett says they can just find the witnesses and have Alex Buckley grill them about the girl's murder on-camera, which sounds a lot like harassment. Brett is reluctant to greenlight the Cinderella Murder case because he says that without the Hollywood connection, it's "just another cold case" and that if Laurie can't get acclaimed director Frank Parker to sign on, she should take the beauty pageant case instead. Laurie is able to reassure Rosemary that the aim of her show is to remind viewers Susan was a real person who lost her life and to try to uncover what actually happened to her so her loved ones can have justice and closure. Laurie specifically demands that they focus more on things like establishing the timeline of Susan's last movements and the alibis of the suspects, rather than going into the graphic details of how she was killed. They also end the finished episode with Alex reminding viewers that while the victim became known as Cinderella, her real name is Susan and that's who they hope the viewers will remember her as. |
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Scream (1996) presented Immoral Journalist Gale Weathers this way, as she had made her fame off covering Maureen Prescott's rape and murder in a way that centres Cotton, who, Sidney believed, committed the murder. She also follows Sidney (who is around seventeen at the start of the series) around, confronting her repeatedly and trying to mine her trauma for more content. However, this is also presented firmly as Jerkass Has a Point, as Gale is right that Cotton is wrongly accused. Though she and Cotton don't cover themselves in glory when they respond to being vindicated by stalking Sidney at college and trying to ambush her into an interview. | |
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Lou Bloom, the eponymous Nightcrawler is a sociopathic opportunist who starts filming accidents and crime scenes for a local TV station, and in interest of more compelling footage, starts sneaking into crime scenes past the police, rearranges items, and even bodies to get better shots, and even sets up his rival and later his assistant to die. | |
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May December: There's a montage of different media (magazines and at least one made-for-TV movie) shown about Gracie's molestation of Joe, her pregnancy, and her imprisonment. They are all shown to be trashy in a stereotypically 1990s way. Elizabeth's movie is shown to be equally low-budget and exploitative. | |
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Close Enough: In Season 2's "Where'd You Go, Bridgette?", Bridgette tries to get over her phone addiction by isolating herself, and her friends all come to believe she's been kidnapped. When they try to seek help, they're contacted and interviewed by "PodNapped", a true crime podcast about kidnapping cases. The duo behind the podcast are portrayed as fake and shallow, only interested in cases as far as they bring them views, with them accusing the main characters, especially Emily, of being the kidnappers with no proof whatsoever. | |
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Documentary Now!: The Eye Doesn't Lie in a parody of true crime documentaries, specifically The Thin Blue Line. Though told in a very serious and portentous tone, the faux-documentary seriously repeats incidents like a "woman policeman" shooting an inflatable, the suspect telling a long story about jazz, and eating endless bags of trail mix while being framed for a crime. | |
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TotallyKiller: Chris Dubusage runs a podcast about a murderer known as the Sweet Sixteen Killer, who was last active in the 1980s. The protagonist's father Blake, who personally knew the victims, finds it to be in poor taste. Chris is revealed to have murdered the protagonist's mother Pam in 2023, hoping to immortalize the Sweet Sixteen Killer and become famous as the person most knowledgeable about them. | |
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A Very Fatal Murder is a series-long parody of true crime podcasts, and as such features mainstays like characters investigating "the perfect subject for a true crime podcast" - the death of a "really hot dead white girl" in a small, apparently corrupt town in Nebraska. Exaggerated with the revelation that ETHL murdered Hayley for the podcast, as she calculated that Hayley really was the perfect subject for one. | |
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When Jeffrey's crimes become known worldwide, he was surprised to find out he had some admirers. While in prison he receives a letter and money from a high school girl who mentions him becoming a popular Halloween costume that year, asking for an autograph, and signing it as "[his] biggest fan". Another letter from a man included a Dahmer-themed Christmas card, said he was like a real-life Michael Myers or Freddy Kruger, and also asked for an autograph. This is Truth in Television as there are still some people even thirty years after his arrest who unironically admire Jeffrey Dahmer. | |
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The Sandman (1989): During the serial killer convention, the Corinthian notices that there is a man going around claiming to be a serial killer called Bogeyman, but the Corinthian knows Bogeyman is dead. Corinthian, Nimrod and Flay-by-Night take him prisoner, and find out he is the Philip Sitz, editor and sole writer of a small print magazine called Chaste and a Wannabe Serial Killer, and had snuck his way into the convention to learn from the assembled Serial Killers. The trio decide to teach him by torturing him to death. | |
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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt shows one of the Reverend's fans, DJ Fingablast, creating a true crime documentary about how the Reverend was falsely accused of kidnapping Kimmy and the other women. The documentary itself is extremely tone-deaf, puts men's rights activists (including a riff on the Innocence Project called the Innocent Broject) front and center, and showcases a lot of self-aggrandizing lies and more both moronic and stupid behavior from the Reverend. | |
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Only Murders in the Building: Zigzagged. Mabel, Charles, and Oliver are all sympathetic fans of true crime who start their own true crime podcast upon the death of their neighbor Tim Kono. Though somewhat attention-seeking, they are portrayed very sympathetically. Their fans, on the other hand, are pretty creepy and over-invested, with Marv being revealed as a deadbeat dad who searches for respect through their coverage, though harmless (and, in one Season 2 episode, actually helpful). Cinda Canning, the famous podcaster that the group idolizes, is perhaps the worst of the lot, as a podcaster who plagiarized from her assistant and an all-around Bad Boss. Said assistant, Poppy White, turns out to be no better. She is the missing person from the podcast that Cinda plagiarized, having faked her own disappearance and given Cinda the idea to investigate it. Furthermore, she murdered Bunny Folger and framed the main trio for it with the intention of achieving success as a true crime podcaster by reporting on them. Also, Detective Williams, the only person who'll help the trio, is herself no fan of true crime, outwardly referring to it as disgusting and encouraging untrained citizens to think they can do police work. She does warm up to the trio, however. |
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One episode of South Park has the parents of the town develop an interest in True Crime murder shows, which quickly concerns the kids when one of the parents kills their partners, leading to the kids placing a reverse parental block over the offending content and the parents having to learn to play Minecraft to get back their shows. | |
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The Lincoln Lawyer: In season two, ambitious podcaster Herb Dahl inserts himself in the Lisa Trammel case, causing problems for Mickey by releasing parts of his interview with Lisa while the trial is still ongoing. | |
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Gone Girl: Ellen Abbott (an unflattering Expy of Nancy Grace) runs a TV talk show that's dedicated to tales of women being abused, kidnapped, and (most likely) killed. She lambasts Nick repeatedly on her show (a pre-existing bias before any of the damning evidence turns up). Amy notes that Ellen completely sanctifies the women she discusses, and prefers pregnant women and wives - generally white and middle- or upper-class for that reason. | |
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Dark Places: True crime fans are about the only people who'll give Libby money or attention, two things she badly needs. Lyle's Kill Club is full of people who ask invasive questions, and she notes that she's frequently tracked down by women who are in love with Ben and believe in his innocence. She describes them as creepy, voyeuristic, and invasive, as well as ugly. However, they're right both about Ben's innocence and about the existence of the "Angel of Debt", a Serial Killer they theorize exists. | |
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In the Family Guy episode "All About Alana," Lois is tossed off a cliff and begs "Please...please don't let two white women make a podcast about my disappearance." | |
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A common joke on The Flophouse is the popularity of True Crime Podcasts, frequently in the form of a Take That! based on the perception of these podcasts trivializing real-life tragedies. | |
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Daddy's Little Girl zig-zags this. On one hand we have true crime writer Jake Bern, who announces he's writing a book purporting to tell the 'true' story of Rob Westerfield and how he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. It looks likely he's being paid a lot of money by Rob's rich family to write the book and Rob is directly involved too, especially because he's seeking a retrial. Not only does Bern come off as sanitizing Rob's life, he also insinuates that Andrea, the 15-year-old girl Rob was convicted of murdering, wasn't his manipulated girlfriend but a "popular" girl who clung to Rob and may have been involved with lots of unsavory men. Bern further suggests that Ellie, Andrea's sister who was only 7 at the time and a key witness, was an emotionally unstable child with an over-active imagination and so wasn't a reliable witness, and feeds into the rumor that the intellectually disabled Paulie was potentially dangerous and obsessed with Andrea to the point of killing her. Lots of other journalists jump on this bandwagon too. Bern's book gets pulled before publication because Rob himself undermines the subject matter; getting caught trying to murder a journalist whose sister you already killed will do that. On the other hand, Ellie Cavanaugh herself is an investigative journalist who writes books and articles on true crime. Unlike Bern and some of the other journalists, she's presented as far more honorable and scrupulous. She genuinely wants to get to the truth of the matter and give victims of crime a voice; she has been praised for writing about victims and their loved ones in a sensitive manner, which is because she knows first-hand how it feels. Ellie is biased against her current subject Rob - which even she acknowledges to a degree - because she's always been convinced he's guilty, though not without good reason, and she goes to great lengths to find more evidence and witnesses backing up her beliefs. Her belief is vindicated in the end and she helps prove another man's innocence. |
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Tragedy Girls: The Villain Protagonists run a true crime website, being a satire of the worst the genre has to offer. Not only do they shamelessly milk local tragedies for attention while showing a total Lack of Empathy for the victims or their families, they're secretly on a killing spree so they can report on their own crimes. | |
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The Last Podcast on the Left has a running gag where, when talking about decades-old that attracted morbid attention from the public, one of the hosts will ask, "But why true crime now?", in a snobby tone. (One such example occurs when talking about serial killer Belle Gunness' farm being invaded by curious locals after news of her murders came up.) Apparently, the joke originated from a judgmental interviewer who asked the hosts why the genre became so popular in the 2010s when incidents like the aforementioned Gunness "fans" have existed for decades, if not centuries. | |
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