The fake lie detector TV meme strikes again! But did it actually happen? What does David Simon know that Snopes doesn't?

The show: ABC's new wacky-detectives series "The Unusuals." The scene: Two dicks grilling a guy about a series of cats being killed in the area. The suspect is made to put his hand on a glass surface. He's asked questions; after each one a button is pressed and a sheet dispensed with the words "TRUE" or "LIE" over it. Rigged, of course, in advance.

You may have recognized this scene from "The Wire." Extra credit if you remembered, which I didn't, that it also popped up in "Homicide: Life on the Street," with different demented cops and perps. When I asked if anyone else on the Twitscape had noticed the resemblances, the replies came flying back: yes, yes, and yes.

But now for double extra credit: Can anyone prove that this ever actually happened?

The scene first appeared on TV thanks to David Simon, who was responsible for both "The Wire" and "Homicide." Why lift it wholesale for "The Unusuals"? Well, why not? Apart from its entertainment value, the fake-lie-detector scene practically tells the viewer: This is what kind of show this is. In interviews, the creator of "The Unusuals," Noah Hawley, distinguishes a "cop show" from a "procedural": one's about the case, the other's about people.

But back to David Simon. As Patrick Brown pointed out in the comments when I posted an earlier version of this piece, Simon's 1991 book on which the NBC series "Homicide" was based discusses the lie-detection scam as though it was actually used in police departments in Detroit and Baltimore. But Snopes and Jan Harold Brunvand have classified it as a hoax, a never-proven urban legend dating back to the pre-copier era, when it involved a colander with wires placed on the suspect's head.

In his book, The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends, Brunvand details how he tried to confirm the fake-detector story, using the same accounts Simon mentions in his book. All for naught. Brunvand's conclusion? "I think various police officers with their 'slightly skewed' sense of humor have told the apocryphal colander story to newspaper reporters as a joke, and it was accepted by some of them as truth."

Which is it, then?