"There was a very famous Jewish girl who kept a diary. It... ended badly. But enough about Fran Drescher! You thought I was making a Holocaust joke! Shame on you!"
— Klaus, American Dad!, "Not Particularly Desperate Housewives"
A type of setup where a character leads the audience or other characters into thinking they are going to say or do something, but says or does something unexpected. This is usually a joke, and if the punch line of the joke causes the first part to take on a new meaning (e.g., "I just flew in from Chicago, and boy are my arms tired"), it is technically called a "paraprosdokian." Note that this trope doesn't have to be Played for Laughs; serious examples exist as well.
In Dialogue, Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking is one example. The first two words raise the expectation of another crime, equally severe, but then switch it out with jaywalking.
The origin of the name comes from a now-illegal advertising practice
in which a store would bait a customer into their store with an advertisement featuring a product selling for a reduced price, but when the customer got there, they would find out that they were "all out" of the advertised product... but the store would be happy to sell a similar product for just a few dollars more, thus performing the switch.
Can be a form of Subverted Trope, or a Double Subverted Trope if the thing being switched is a trope in itself. Sometimes turns into a Brick Joke if there's a later payoff. Compare Does This Remind You of Anything?, where the audience is meant to think about how a situation is similar to another situation, but without ever believing that it is the other situation.
Related to Anti-Humor and Near Misses (peak tension/comedy is achieved by an event just barely not happening).
This can also happen in film trailers and commercials as well.
Bait-and-Switch Index has a long list of subtropes and related tropes involving baiting and switchery.
These sources have so many of these gags that they have their own sub-pages:
- Anime & Manga
- Fan Works
- Film
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Joueur du Grenier
- Western Animation
Examples:
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Advertising
- Global Agenda's rather hilarious ad starts out about an elf, then has a laser point on his face, followed by a bullet all shot by a Recon agent who is the actual playable character shown here.
- Several of the original Energizer Bunny commercials used a similar trick, with the bunny interrupting a commercial for another (fictional) product.
- World of Tanks ads do this just about every single time, with the (Seeming) protagonist of the ad blown up in various ways by a tank.
- Here, with a Bog Standard fantasy MMO with an Orc who kills a legion of Elves only to be run over by a tank.
- Here, with a Shoot 'em Up space combat sim without Casual Interstellar Travel, resulting in the player travelling for 6 IRL months only to loose all the work when a lucky shot from a tank dirtside blows him to flinders.
- Here, where an illegal drag race is cut short by one of the cars pulping itself on a tank.
- Here,
- A series of commercials from 1999 and 2000 are ads for Disney Channel but are set up at first to make the viewer think they're about something else like a teen running home to go to the bathroom, or a group of teens running in horror like they're trying to escape something. They always ended with someone Breaking the Fourth Wall and saying, "What'd you expect?"
- There's a commercial that shows a man happily eating dinner with his girlfriend who's very obviously another man in a wig and dress. Halfway through the dinner, the "girlfriend" admits that there's something the man should know in advance about their relationship... that the pizza he's currently eating isn't delivery but DiGiorno.
- One PSA starts with a bunch of teens playing pool. One of them starts talking about something crazy he did and how his parents would probably cry when they find out. The rest of the group, obviously expecting something awful, asks what it is. Cut to him cleaning up his whole house for his parents and his parents' reaction when they return home.
- A very infamous example is a commercial showing a montage of animals in Africa with their young while Rod Stewart's "Forever Young" plays in the background. At the very end of the commercial, a watermark appears in the bottom of the screen showing that this was an advertisement for Pampers diapers.
- This is, unfortunately, Truth in Television, and isn't usually funny, even if the one doing the baiting-and-switching may (or may not) think so. Some parents have actually done this to their sons / daughters. One example appears in a radio ad, although it (the ad) was intended to be funny:
Mom: Hurry, or we'll be late for the Aerosmith concert!
(everyone gets in)
Mom: Did I say "Aerosmith concert"? I meant "dentist appointment!" - For Super Bowl 42, Career Builder.com released this ad featuring a singing firefly who attempts to inspire a poor schlub into loving his crapsack job...but he is promptly eaten by an enterprising spider, who gives an unmoved Aside Glance.
- An advertisement for the European Portuguese Cartoon Network appears to be at first for The Amazing World of Gumball—the narrator mentions a blue cat, and Gumball just happens to be a blue cat—but Darwin then mentions that they are probably not talking about Gumball, and the ad is revealed to be for Doraemon.
- A series of Geico commercials were set up like this where people were talking about their home and how great it was except for one problem, which would either be Fun with Homophones or I Thought That Was. One of them involved a couple talking about an animal in the attic. Specifically Animal from The Muppets.
- In 1992, Singaporean branch of Durex released a commercial, which just displayed color bars to give an imitation that the channel signal is broken. But at some point, a part of the bars shrinks to look like condoms and the beep quickly increases its pitch to sound funny during this, and then we see a Durex Fiesta logo and the text: "Colorful colors for colorful condoms" revealing that it was just ad for condoms in color.
- A non-funny example comes from an Australian domestic violence PSA. A man hears his neighbor beating his wife in the next apartment, so he grabs a baseball bat, runs into the next apartment and...gives his neighbor the bat to aid him with the beating.
"Do nothing, and you may as well lend a hand."
- Another set of domestic abuse PSAs start off being presented as PSAs for other dangers, like fires or not wearing a seatbelt, before dropping the punchline that women are more likely to die from domestic abuse than the situation that was originally presented but that despite this, the issue is often overlooked.
- Thai Health Promotion Foundation: "Broken-hearted" shows a man crying over a picture of his girlfriend, implying they broke up. Then the ad takes a dark turn when the man climbs up a chair and grabs what looks like a noose... then the camera pans away to reveal another noose next to him, both of which he uses as gymnastics rings to exercise.
- Early in 2016, BSkyB revealed their new Sky Q service with its Fluid Viewing feature. There were some adverts broadcast where it'd play out as a normal commercial for something else to begin with, then around 10 seconds into it, the Sky Q Guide menu would appear with the commercial playing at the side of the screen. A program would be selected (Most adverts used The Walking Dead), and then the Sky Q commercial would play as if it were the original advert.
- One commercial is seemingly a home appliance advert, complete with a badass, bearded, trucker-looking man dusting off his gloves as he prepares to remove a tree stump from the ground, complete with a badass rock song blaring in the background. He wraps a chain around the stump, attaches it to his pickup truck, speaks to the camera, and then gets in the truck and floors it....and the back of the pickup comes off. It's a tire advertisement.
- Sears has a very famous series of advertisements for home appliances that went like this.
- One has a young, attractive, fashionable couple playing around on a beach, very much in love, complete with stylized words appearing onscreen occasionally (obviously building itself up to be a clothing commercial.) They run down the beach, staring at each other as they do...and the guy runs into a refrigerator. The camera then zooms out to reveal a group of home appliances placed on the beach as text and a voiceover cheerfully announce the ongoing sale. Then the girl runs into the fridge.
- Another one had a Captain Morgan expy staring down a scope at a beach as his parrot flies towards it... and instead of seeing his parrot land on a beer stash, the parrot flies into a fridge.
- A third one dubbed "Connecting Flights" starts out as a trailer for a Christmas-themed Romantic Comedy... and then the guy runs into a fridge.
- One Anti-Drunk Driving ad from Budweiser shows a guy bidding his dog goodbye before heading out to the club, then the dog sadly waiting all night, looking up hopefully every time he hears a motor. So far, it's the typical "If you die in a drunk driving accident, your dog will never understand why you never came home" plotline. Then, the next morning, the man returns home safe and sound and apologizes to his dog, saying he decided not to drive home drunk and instead spent the night there, showing that it's better to leave your dog waiting for a night than forever.
- One Fruity Pebbles commercial from 1995 has Fred eating his Pebbles at a haunted house when Barney comes in pulling off a Bedsheet Ghost act. Fred buys it despite the fact that we can still clearly tell it's Barney, but soon, Fred sees through the disguise lifting off the bedsheet revealing...a skeleton! This causes Fred to run off to Uncanny Valley as we discover it really was Barney all along.
- A 1984 Smokey Bear PSA features a narrator describing man's discovery of fire while two rugged men light warm themselves around a fire and light a torch. However, as the narration mentions that man never learned to be responsible with fire, we pan out to see that the men are not cavemen, but modern-day campers, who proceed to carelessly leave their lit torch on the ground.
"After two million years, isn't it about time we acted our age?"
- Farmer's Insurance has a series of commercials showing some of the more bizarre things they've covered. One of these is referred to as a "Truck-cicle". We see a reenactment of the incident which shows two men ice fishing. One of them parks his truck on the ice and climbs out with a massive drill, implying he causes the truck to break through the ice by improper drilling. Instead, he puts his foot through the ice while carrying the drill and causes the truck to break through from the crack that forms from that.
- BigSpot.com has a series of commercials that start out looking like commercials for special as-seen-on-TV ads, but they get interrupted halfway through with someone saying how terrible that ad was, then they advertise the website.
- A Honey Nut Cheerios commercial from the early 1980's has a woman who just came home from the store. She tells her husband two things. The first was that Honey Nut Cheerios had no cholesterol, and the second was that she wrecked the car. The husband screams, "WHAT?!" Although the reason he did was in reaction to the first thing she said (even though the second was more worthy of that kind of reaction)!
- In a radio commercial for the Richmond, VA diamond-selling store Diamonds Direct, the commercial starts off with a burly-sounding man telling about how the "listener's" girlfriend has been checking him out, taking pictures of him and talking about him with other girls and requests talking it out with him. It's only when he says where he'll be that we find out that he's a diamond ring.
- One UNICEF public service announcement took place at a wedding, where all of the preparations are being made before the ceremony and at one point we see the bride's and the groom's shoes sitting next to one another. What looks like a fairytale wedding between a man and a petite woman (complete with a sign that says "She belongs to me") is in actuality a young girl being married off to a grown man in an anti-child bride advertisement.
- Another PSA has a man working in his living room and standing unsteadily on a ladder while his wife comes by, carrying both their infant daughter and a cup of tea, and warns him to be careful as she leaves the room. The next scene is of the wife crying in the hospital at someone's bedside and the father soon joins her in the room. Turns out, their baby was accidentally scalded by the tea the wife was drinking.
- One commercial has a teenage girl reveal to her parents that she got her tongue pierced. Her parents get visibly upset and launch into a "How could you? We thought we raised you better than this" lamentation — but it turns out that they're not upset that she got her tongue pierced; they're upset that she didn't take the time to find the lowest possible price for her piercing from some company/website that's the actual focus of the ad.
- One Australian ad starts with a confident young man racing in his car down an open country road while the upbeat song note Stumblin' by Powderfinger plays over it. It looks like any high-performance car ad, with quick shots focusing on the accelerator revving, the driver moving up the gears, the car blazing around corners at top speed, then the driver desperately swerves to the other side of the road to avoid smashing into the back of a truck he couldn't see coming up in front of him and the music cuts off as his car smashes brutally into the broadside of another car that had been coming the opposite direction. The rest of the ad sees the dazed and bloodied driver stagger out of his car, look into the vehicle he hit, and have a total breakdown as he realises he killed all the occupants with his stupidity. It's an anti-speeding ad.
- Similar to the aforementioned Energizer commercials, there was a time where a series of GEICO ads misdirected their viewers into trying to advertise something else. It's not until someone says, "...but it won't save you money on car insurance," when it is revealed to be a GEICO ad. The most popular of these ads is the one advertising the fake reality show, "Tiny House."
- This notable 1995 Pizza Hut commercial with Ringo Starr; Ringo muses about reuniting "The Lads" to make the ad (implying he's discussing the surviving Beatlesnote ) ....only for it to turn out to be The Monkees. Ringo is as dumbfounded as the viewers.
RINGO: "Wrong lads!"
- Long Long Man: Sakeru Gummy's meme-tastic commercials, about a young couple and a mysterious man whose gummy candies are longer than the boyfriend's (because Japanese commercials are weird). After repeatedly being tempted, the girlfriend "cheats" on her boyfriend by eating a loooong gummy with the Long Man, which almost destroys their relationship. The two ultimately reconcile and get engaged, only for the Long Man to show up at the wedding. In the final ad, he confesses his love...to the boyfriend, who reciprocates as the erstwhile bride looks on in disbelief and lets out a Rapid-Fire "No!".
- The memorable 90s Brazilian ad Carlinhos. Two boys are shown happily riding a carousel, one of them with Down syndrome. The subtitle tells us how Carlinhos goes to school regularly, and has piano and swimming classes, while his friend does not. Then the twist: Carlinhos is the one with Down syndrome. His friend, albeit healthy, is a street child.
Text: Thousands of children in Brazil need your help. People with Down syndrome only need your respect.
- A mid-2000s Levi's Jeans commercial (featuring Willie Nelson's version of "Always on My Mind") has a barefoot man in shorts bringing flowers to his girlfriend, with the implication that they were making up after a fight. When she goes to put the flowers in a vase, he rushes to her apartment window to grab his jeans that were thrown into a tree outside of it. He then sneaks out and walks calmly among his broken items on the street below as the girlfriend then throws the flowers and vase out the window behind him.
- In 2020, Facebook ran a commercial for their new Groups which featured several groups themed around "rock" in just about every definition of the word. (Skipping rocks, rocking chairs, driving rock crawlers.) The commercial ends with a group themed around Rocky and a man in a hooded sweatshirt running up the stairs. At the top, the man turns to the camera and it's...Chris Rock!
- Toward the end of "This is Sphero BOLT," a commercial promoting the Sphero BOLT, when a girl named Sam goes to school, she brings her Sphero BOLT with her, but is eventually caught by her teacher, and he appears to be angry. However, instead of punishing Sam, he reveals a case containing a bunch of Sphero BOLT units, revealing the educational concept Sphero BOLT provides on in schools.
- A commercial for Eggo Waffles has a young man watch a young woman surfer from a tent on the beach as he slips a pair of waffles into the toaster. He turns his back on the toaster as the woman walks by him and grabs one when they pop up. Someone else grabs the waffle as well. Thinking it's the girl (like the viewer, most likely), he says "You wanna let go, or do you wanna talk?" He turns around to discover the other person was actually an old man who says "Sure! Let's chat!"
- A PIF for St John's Ambulance begins with a father playing with his son and a woman named Julie, who is fully trained in first aid, doing the dishes. The son has an accident and is knocked out. Julie's face turns serious and she rushes outside to fetch the washing in as it starts to rain. The voice over says she cannot be there all the time as the father helplessly cries for help because he doesn't know first aid.
- A series of commercials in the mid 90s had a excited couple, including a memorable one featuring an older couple where the wife asks, "Could it be after all this time?", using a test to see if they have a positive result: it appears to be for pregnancy, but once they confirm the news, they say exasperatedly, "We have hard water". It was a commercial for Zest Soap.
- One PIF begins with a man walking down the street as an announcer says he is about to save someone's life. A car rolls past the man as a lady is about to cross the road but nothing happens. It then cuts to a hospital where the man's blood is being used in a life saving operation.
- A Super Bowl LVI commercial features a bunch of kids having a party while drinking tallboy cans of Liquid Death, as well as a pregnant woman doing the same. People not aware of the product may assume that a lot of illegal or unsafe alcohol drinking is going on...until the end reveals that Liquid Death is just water. In fact, the point of the product's appearance is that one can use it to consume water at parties and other functions where skipping out on alcohol is looked down upon, if they are limiting or abstaining from alcohol but don't want to feel or appear out of place.
- This advert for the 2012 Six Nations, which was pulled before it was to be broadcast. Everyone not wearing an England shirt were saying England as if they were supporting England, but it turns out that they were responding to the question "Who do you want to lose?" (Meanwhile at the end of the advert, the England fans were divided as to who they want to lose.)
The Six Nations. It's not about who you want to win… it's about who you want to lose.
- A Burger King ad says their burgers are so good even Ronald eats them. Ronald's first shot shows his feet and he's wearing shoes and socks similar to those worn by McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald but the customer turns out to be some random guy named Ronald.
- A Brazilian ad from Santander Bank near Mother's Day starts with a woman asking the viewers if they're looking for nice gifts for their mothers and telling them that, if it's the case, they should look for another ad because that one is about Santander Bank charging women 21% less to make up for the fact women are paid 21% less than men who do the same job.
- Nipper & Gramophone's Christmas Tales: In "Blades of Glory" it looks like Nipper is going to be subject to a Circling Saw-type gag when the ice first breaks, only for it to happen to Gramophone instead.
- A 1990s PSA has a teenage girl putting toys into a crib inside of a nursery while talking about teen pregnancy and how life-altering it is. While she was discussing the situation, we soon realize that the nursery isn't for the obviously not-pregnant girl, who states that she plans on waiting to have children until she's ready, but her heavily pregnant Mom who comes into the room, thanks her for helping out, and hugs her.
- This PSA from the U.S. Department of Transportation starts like a nature documentary about deer, until one runs into the middle of the road, causing a truck driver to swerve and crash, revealing it's actually a seatbelt PSA.
- In a 2022 M&M's commercial, some of the M&M's are at a family reunion when a teenage girl enters introducing her new boyfriend to the family. His face and arms are covered with very noticeable and disturbing tattoos. After he introduces himself, everyone gasps and pauses awkwardly. Eventually, Yellow comes in by asking, “What is all over your…feet?” and the camera shifts to the guy's shoes, which have flowers printed on them, which starts up a conversation about gardening.
- KFC did a particularly trollish one ahead of the holiday 2024 season, designed to trick you into thinking they'd given in to requests for them to start selling fried turkey at Christmas (including flashing said requests up on screen), only to gleefully pull the rug out from under you and reveal that nope, they're sticking to what they're good at: chicken.
- PSA from SWR depicts an elderly man going about his daily business as somber music plays. As he does so, a narrator mentions how "he" has seen many brutal acts of violence and that "he hasn't forgotten any of it", the obvious implication being that the old man is a Shell-Shocked Veteran. But as the man comes to play with his grandson, comes the Wham Line: "He's eight years old." Turns out the narrator was not referring to the old man, but his grandson, who is implied to have witnessed all of those violent acts on television.
- A 2023 Super Bowl Special promoting that year's Daytona 500 features Jeff Gordon hyping up the return of a seven-time champion to the state of Florida. Of course, he's referring to NASCAR Hall of Famer and his former teammate, Jimmie Johnson.
- Visit Las Vegas is rather fond of this trope:
- One ad features a news reporter talking about how a popular resort is mysteriously deserted. Once she finishes her reporter, the camera trucks back to reveal that she was only wearing a blouse on top of her bikini, only to rip the top off, shake her hair loose and she and the rest of her party begin to have fun at the resort, having rented it out.
- Another ad has four girlfriends at another resort as the one friend shows the others all of their various escapades on her cell phone, as they display nervous expressions. The girlfriend then announces that she's going for a swim in the pool, which she does with said phone.
- Another ad had a group of guys running around and cheering while holding up a trophy, which leads to others cheering them on and extravagantly celebrating their win. At the end of the night, one of the men puts the "trophy" back on a table in a hotel lobby and the flowers back inside of it.
- McDonald's: An ad for the Spicy McMuffin shows the Big Mac while describing it as "an icon, a classic, famous all over the world", but it is later revealed that they're describing the Egg McMuffin.
- A Ride For Cinderella: What initially appears to be a red carpet for the prince to enter the ball upon turns out to be the prince's cape.
- Fire Kills: One PSA shows a man laughing while footage of a fire flashes occasionally. However, it's eventually revealed that he's laughing at a show he's watching, unaware that there's a fire in another room.
- One PSA shows an old man struggling out of his bedroom with a walker, and a caption declares that he has two children who haven't visited him in twenty years. It looks like a message against elder abuse... until the end card:
"Child abuse. You might forget it. They never will."
Alternate Reality Games
- Omega Mart: The orange juice concentrate commercial sounds like it's going to be a recommendation. And it's recommending something.
"Have you tried Omega Mart Brand Orange Drink? If you or a loved one answered 'yes', please call Omega Mart consumer affairs immediately at 1-800-808-4094. That's 1-800-808-4094. Your safety is important to us."
Asian Animation
- BoBoiBoy: In Season 2 Episode 4, Papa Zola, as the referee for a footballnote game, inhales and holds his whistle, only to yell "PREET PREET!" instead. Amar Deep wonders out loud why he doesn't just use the whistle, and he gives Amar Deep a red card to leave the bleachers.
- Happy Friends frequently pulls bait-and-switch-type jokes. One of the earliest instances is at the beginning of episode 6; the heroes ask Doctor H. to take them outside to watch shooting stars in the sky. He lets them watch the shooting stars, and even comments that they look beautiful, before it's revealed that it's just a documentary on shooting stars he found online.
- Mechamato: At the start of episode 6, a man stops at a red light and looks around to make sure no one's watching, making it seem as if he's going to run the light, but instead he picks his nose.
- In the title card for Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf episode 60, Weslie and Wolffy look mad and have their fists clench as though they are about to fight each other. They end up playing a happy game of Rock–Paper–Scissors instead.
- In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Animals & Plants episode 1, after learning that elephant tusks are considered valuable, Wolffy brings out a gun and the goats worry he may hurt the elephants with it. The gun shoots out a toothbrush and Wolffy helps the goats to brush the elephants' tusks instead.
- In the Simple Samosa episode "Dadi Ke Saath", Vada misses a train he wanted to board, and we are led to believe the train has his friends on it. Another train arrives a few seconds later, and that one does have his friends in it.
Audio Plays
- A common tactic of the Stu Jamison character of the Touch Tone Terrorists is to start out sounding polite and reasonable, only to then flip to acting crazy, or to transfer the customer back to the terrorist that they had called to complain about.
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio War Doctor Rises: Unknown Soldiers, the first part of the audio suggests that the strike team of assassins being assembled are going after the War Doctor in the belief that his death will end the Time War, but it is subsequently revealed that the team actually intends to kill another soldier known as the Blind Bombmaker. In actuality, the team want to recruit the War Doctor to essentially act as their "driver", as there are so many temporal anomalies around their target's location that only someone with the Doctor's piloting experience could penetrate those anomalies safely.
Comedy
- While doing a bit about football Robin Williams described quarterbacks as "men with big hands and big feet, and you ladies know what that means. Yes... big gloves and big shoes."
- As was Mitch Hedberg. "I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."
- Anthony Jeselnik loves incorporating these into his comedy, especially if it falls under his trademark Black Comedy.
"My ex-girlfriend bought a parakeet. Oh my God, that fucking thing never shut up. But the bird was cool."
"My girlfriend makes me want to be a better person... so I can get a better girlfriend."
"I've spent the last two years looking for my ex-girlfriend's killer... but no-one will do it." - Wendy Liebman is a one-liner comedienne who thrives on this.
"I married a man with a five-year-old... mentality. And he cooks! Ladies, isn't it sexy when the guy cooks... naked?"
- Rowan Atkinson:
- The "Fatal Beatings" sketch focuses on a school headmaster, played by Atkinson, with profoundly Skewed Priorities, who seems more interested in the library card system than the fact that he beat a student to death. He informs the bewildered father that he's furious, because he had to cancel afternoon school on Wednesday for the funeral. Then he tells the father he was joking...he wouldn't cancel afternoon school to bury "that little shit".
- "The "Wedding Speeches" sketch has Atkinson play the father of a bride, giving a speech. He gives a speech at a wedding, and praises a man named Martin as perfect for his daughter. One would naturally assume he's talking about the groom, but then he asks why his daughter married Gerald instead.
Comic Books
- Aggretsuko: Meet Her World: At the end of #3, Momoko experiences an intense dressing-down from the wrestler she's been jeering all issue, causing her to burst into tears... of sheer joy, as she realizes she wants to become a wrestler and "make people cry! For money!"
- Aquaman: In Aquaman (2016), one of the Atlanteans who find Mera suffocating due to the magic of the Crown of Thorns says that they should take her to the king. However, rather than taking her to King Rath, they bring her to King Shark.
- Batgirl: A running gag in Batgirl (2011) for a while is Babs's friend Frankie having an idea for her codename as Batgirl's Voice with an Internet Connection, but never getting to say what it is, although on at least one occasion she gets as far as revealing it starts with "O". It eventually turns out to be "Operator", and not the obvious Mythology Gag.
- Batman:
- Batman: No Man's Land: The first issue has a scene where some thugs are extorting a family as a shadowy figure spies on them from the roof. He swings down on a roof to overpower the thugs, with a fluttering cape. Only it turns out that fluttering cape is a trench coat, and the rescuer isn't Batman, but GCPD cop Bock.
- Batman: Zero Year: During Phillip and Bruce's second meeting, Phillip urges his nephew to reveal his survival to the world and publicly take over Wayne Enterprises, but Bruce refuses. Earlier, Phillip's Toxic Friend Influence, Nygma, urged him to kill Bruce if he took that view. Phillip then tells Bruce that his nephew has left him no choice, and ominously presses a button on a remote control. However, rather than trigger a trap, or summon an assassin, the button merely turns on the lights, revealing that Phillip has organized a welcome back party to reveal that Bruce is still alive and push him back into public life.
- Batman (Chip Zdarsky): The first DC All In issue opens with a familiar scene: a father, mother and child are walking through a dark Gotham alley. A shady-looking guy appears in front of them, and says they look lost, and they aren't going to find the place they're going ... then explans that there's no through road and offers them directions. Batman, watching from a rooftop with Jim Gordon, is nonplussed.
- A very mild one in Be Prepared. Vera, after she's stuck at summer camp two more weeks, decides she's going to study for the Third Rank badge test with the belief that the badge will prove she "conquered" camp. This is followed by a long montage of her cramming. Until she finds fellow camper Kira's lost guinea pig, and makes friends with her. She instead then trains to win the last game of Capture the Flag—and skips taking the test altogether, instead taking some apples and eating them with Kira by the river during the test time.
- Conan the Barbarian: Issue #154 has a treatise on "Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War" by Jim Owsley (the assistant editor of the comic)... who soon denounces the book and instead reviews Jaws III. Read it here.◊
- Daredevil: Played for Drama during Daredevil's storyline in Original Sin. We're lead to believe that Matt Murdock's father, Jack, was actually an abusive dad all along as Matt's given a brief vision of an angry Jack. Matt confronts his mother about it and finds out oh, no, father was still a loving saint. It was her who was the potential abuser — she was suffering from post-natal depression and tried to kill baby Matt in a depression-induced hallucination, only to snap out of it when she slipped on some spaghetti. The angry look was less of anger and more of protection and confusion.
- A recurring theme in DC Rebirth has been particularly divergent New 52 versions of characters being replaced or supplemented by more traditional versions (Supes, Wally West, and Lobo being the most notable). So when Superwoman gives us a character who looks and acts a lot like the pre-Flashpoint Maxima declaring that she, not the lesbian from Supergirl (2011), is the true Maxima, it looks like it's happening again. But nope, turns out the supposed "true Maxima" is just a deluded Almeracian who thinks Max is betraying her heritage.
- Empress: The few times Emporia mentions her past, she talks about how she wasn't proud of how she earned a living or how her sister disapproved of her chosen profession. It's all worded in such a way that we assume she was a waitress (or...something else). And then she breaks Morax's jaw in Issue #7. Surprise! She was actually an undefeated cage fighter.
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): Special Missions #22 has the Joe team track down a trio of terrorists who have taken over a farmhouse where a family of three lives, and they don't have intel on what the family looks like due to them being very new in the area. During recon, they see an attractive couple in the kitchen with a sinister-looking couple and a man holding a little boy hostage upstairs. They send in Lady J posing as an Avon lady. She speaks to the attractive woman at the door and slips her a message telling her they're coming to rescue them. The woman then shoots hernote . It turns out that the attractive couple are the terrorists, and the sinister-looking couple are the boy's parents.
- Injustice: Year Zero opens with Batman lamenting the loss of the Justice Society of America and saying that things might have turned out differently had they still been around when Superman fell from grace. This, coupled with the fact that most of the JSA members don't appear in the Injustice video games, gives off the impression that the team had been Killed Off for Real in this continuity, and that the story would show how they died. In actuality, only the Sandman and Jay Garrick (the original Flash) are killed, while the most of the others are teleported to parts unknown by the Joker. The series ends with the few remaining members of the team heading off into the Multiverse to find their lost friends, explaining why they aren't around in the games.
- Marvel Adventures: Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four: Issue #17's inside cover shows the Thing with a piece of his rocky skin removed. "What could possibly have broken through the invulnerable skin of the ever-lovin' blue eyed Thing?", it asks us. "Read on to find out!" The cover itself shows the Absorbing Man coming down from above to strike the thing while he's out on a date, and we're led to believe he'll be the one to do it. But then every single attempt by Creel to break the Thing's skin off fails including turning himself into diamond, throwing him into construction equipment and even boiling him alive with lava! So what could possibly make the situation in the inside cover happen if not the Absorbing Man? Well, after Absorbing Man leaves in a huff, he reveals that the girl Ben was dating, Jennifer, got close to him so that she could get a piece of his skin for her company's research, and their entire relationship was a lie. Instead of punching her or anything of the sort, Ben rips a piece of his own skin off and hands it to her, telling her she should have just asked him because he had really thought she was his friend. In the end, there was only one thing that could have pierced the Thing's stone skin... love.
Mr. Fantastic: Hold still. Let me do a quick health scan.
The Thing: Don't waste your time... scan ain't gonna pick up where I'm hurt. - A very recurrent gag in Spanish comic book Mortadelo y Filemón. Its first story, El Sulfato Atómico, possibly inaugurated the custom. The very story opens with the title characters walking to their headquarters, which seem to be a magnificent government building... only to be revealed to be actually a small working shack next to the place. The joke then sees another iteration, as the shack is revealed to be the secret elevator entry of an underground facility, only for it not to be so secret after all given that burglars have somehow stolen the elevator itself. It only goes on and on, with the Supervisor giving them plane tickets which are actually tickets for a cheap bus brand named The Plane.
- New Champions: After Hellrune accidentally summons a whole host of potential recruits to the New Champions, Liberty is stoked to try to recruit some of them to join the team. She's crestfallen when most of them refuse the offer outright, due to competing obligations (i.e. Kid Juggernaut), not being allowed to (i.e. Spider-Boy), or general disinterest (i.e. Nightshade). Not only that, Hellrune decides to leave the team to stay with her Aunt Veleda, while street magician Monte is actively plotting to use his new membership to wreak havoc.
- New Super-Man has Anathema hoist the Batman of China over his head and make a big speech about how he's going to...
Kenan: GET PUNCHED IN THE FACE!
- Spider-Man: Spider-Man: Life Story #2 begins with a familiar grave-marking scheme and the dialogue and conversation implies that it's Uncle Ben Peter and Gwen are paying tribute to. It's actually Flash Thompson who is revealed to have been KIA in Vietnam in 1974.
- Tintin: In one story, Capt. Haddock is having trouble balancing on a bridge, and then there's a splash... because he threw a stone into the river.
- Ultimatum: If Hela allows Valkyrie to leave the land of the dead, someone has to stay in her place. Captain America tells Thor that he will stay: as far as they know, he's dead, how else can he be there? The focus moves to other parts of the plot, and we get the idea that he's the one who stays. But no: it was Thor who stayed.
- Ultimate Fantastic Four: "Crossover" starts with Ultimate Reed trying to build an interdimensional gate to what appears to be the Classic Marvel Universe, being helped by his Earth-616 counterpart through some form of interdimensional communicator. At the end of the issue it is revealed to be a ruse from the Zombieverse Reed Richards.
- Wolverine:
- Origin has a great example of this, especially in its intial run. The first two issues are centered around the narrator Rose (caretaker of the Delicate and Sickly rich boy James in the manor) meeting and dealing with a troubled boy called Dog who's abusive father Thomas bears a strong resemblance to the titular berserker X-Man. Dog's iconoclastic troublemaker behavior and growing wild bad boy appearance seems to leave little doubt to the first time reader this is Wolverine as a boy. Except he's not, as the Plot Twist in Issue 2# shows James the Lonely Rich Kid is actually Wolverine! Popping his claws for the first time to slay Thomas after the latter killed his father John before doing the Death Wail.
- The series then pulls a similar bait and switch with the identity of Wolverine's archenemy, Sabretooth. Twice. After the aforementioned reveal, Dog grows up to have lighter hair and a larger build that makes him look kind of like Sabretooth, seemingly implying that he's the villain in question in his youth and that he torments Logan out of vengeance over Thomas' death. But that reveal never happens and instead Logan later in life meets a man named Creed who looks even more like Sabretooth, developing a rivalry with him. It seems that rivalry is building towards Creed becoming Sabretooth... and then Creed dies. As the series closes, it seems we're not ever going to learn how the feud between Logan and Sabretooth started, until we switch perspectives to one Victor Creed as he learns that Logan just killed his little brother...
- Origin has a great example of this, especially in its intial run. The first two issues are centered around the narrator Rose (caretaker of the Delicate and Sickly rich boy James in the manor) meeting and dealing with a troubled boy called Dog who's abusive father Thomas bears a strong resemblance to the titular berserker X-Man. Dog's iconoclastic troublemaker behavior and growing wild bad boy appearance
Comic Strips
- A Dilbert strip had Dilbert telling Dogbert about his boss's secretary demanding that he "bring her the head of Willy the mail boy." He sets a bag with a large round bulge on the table...
Dilbert: What choice did I have? I went bowling.
- One week's Drabble strips (week of November 13-18 2017) were told as a nightmare Ralph was having of the Abominable Pumpkin-Man. As the week goes on, he tells of the Pumpkin-Man's creation, use as a Halloween decoration, disposal, and apparent rise from the garbage can. In the Friday strip, he hears a knock at the door. On Saturday, he opens it to find... his mother-in-law coming for Thanksgiving.
- Garfield:
- In the April 03, 1983 Sunday story, a dog approaches Garfield, giving the impression he'd maul the cat but then the dog instead invites Garfield for lunch. Garfield commented that "Things aren't always as they seem".
- In the July 16, 1989 strip, Jon asks Odie to guess who's going to the vet. Garfield, believing Odie to be the one, makes up a tale to make the experience seem scary and then Jon reveals that Garfield is the one going to the vet.
- Philippe Geluck's character Le Chat tends to deliver this kind of humor, like so:
The optimist sees the glass half full.
The pessimist sees the glass half empty.
Yet neither of those two dumbasses wondered why they were only being served half glasses.
Jokes
- It's at least Older Than Print. A tenth-century joke found in Britain goes What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? A key.
- Likewise, some of the jokes from the Philogelos, a joke book from The Roman Empire. For instance: "A foolish student dreams that he steps on a nail, and when he wakes up he bandages his foot. When his friend hears this, he says, 'No wonder people think we're stupid! ... You shouldn't sleep barefoot!'"
- There are several infamous jokes that are extremely lengthy stories that wind up leading up to a very misleading punchline. The Pink Gorilla joke is probably the most infamous.
- A couple goes to the doctor for bedroom troubles. The doctor gives them a jar for a semen sample and tells them to come back in a week. One week later, the couple returns. "Well doc, it's worse than either of us thought. I gave it my best, first with one hand, then both, then my wife joined in, we tried sticking it in a door, with a bottle opener, a meat cleaver, even the dog chewed on it for a while... all that, and we still didn't manage to get this damn bottle open!"
- Ask someone "Have you heard the one about the pervert with a micropenis and a talent for bait-and-switch?" When they inevitably say no, act like you're going to whisper the punchline in their ear, and then lick their ear.
- My dog kept biting my wife's arm, so we had to put her down.... My dog and I buried her in the backyard.
- A lot of the "dad jokes" the Game Grumps come up with contain this. "Why does Michael J. Fox make the best milkshakes? Because he uses the finest ingredients".
- A pretty young virgin with a fear of flying has to go on an important business trip where she has no choice but to travel by air. Despite her fear, she reluctantly agrees. While on board her flight, the captain warns them about some bad weather up ahead, and soon they're experiencing absolutely terrible turbulence. The poor young woman is terrified for her life, convinced she's going to die a virgin, and eventually she can't take it anymore. She stands up in her seat and shouts "My god, I'm twenty-three years old and still a virgin! I don't want to die without anyone ever having made me feel like a woman! Is there anyone on this plane who can make me feel like a woman?" The other passengers stare at her in shocked silence, all except for one man, who stands up. "I can make you feel like a woman", says the handsome stranger, who's six feet tall with huge muscles and dark flowing hair, and starts walking down the aisle towards her. "Know how I can make you feel like a real woman?" As he's walking, he starts taking his shirt off, then his pants. The young woman can barely contain herself as the smoldering, half-naked hunk walks up to her, hands her his clothes, and says "Iron these."
- Thanks to the power of Anti-Humor, "A man walks into a bar" jokes have plenty of bait-and-switch subsects:
- Punchlines of the "...and says 'ouch!'" variety, implying he hit himself on a literal bar.
- No banter with the bar patrons, the man just does his usual routine and leaves.
- A serious bar room scene follows.
- Using other definitions of "bar" as a punchline, such transitioning into an Evil Lawyer Joke (as in "legal profession") or eating it (as in "candy").
- A professor of anatomy looks around the lecture hall for a victim and selects the most timid and virginal Shrinking Violet he can see.
"Young lady! Perhaps you can tell us which part of the human body can expand to eight times its size when aroused?"
The poor girl blushes furiously and manages to stammer out that she doesn't know.
"On the contrary, you think you know but dare not say it. Unfortunately, you are wrong: First of all, the body part in question is the pupil. Second of all, you have a very dirty mind. Third of all... you are going to be so very disappointed on your wedding night."- A less medically-accurate version has the professor add the hint "It ends in -is".
- What starts with F and ends with -UCK? "Firetruck".
- John took a trip to Germany and met Heidi. After a whirlwind romance, the two got married and Heidi moved back to New York with John. However, while John was fluent in German, Heidi didn't speak a word of English. Still, she decided to try living in America while trying to learn the language. A couple of days after they moved in together, they decided on having rump roast for dinner. Heidi went to the local butcher, but was unable to remember the correct words. So, she patted her rear end and luckily, the butcher understood what she meant. A couple of nights later, John and Heidi decided on chicken breasts for dinner. Heidi went back to the butcher and again was unable to remember the correct words. She cupped her hands over her breasts and the butcher luckily understood what she meant again. A couple of nights later, they decided on sausages for dinner. Heidi went back to the butcher and again couldn't remember the correct words. She thought about it, went home, got John, and brought him back to the butcher. Then she got him to place the order. He speaks English, remember?
- What's something long and hard that you suck on? A candy cane.
- "When he first saw the Titanic set sail, my grandfather wasted no time telling everybody around him that it was going to sink. And he only stopped after staff kicked him out of the movie theater."
- "My cousin has the heart of a lion and a permanent ban from the zoo."
- A variant: "My doctor has the hands of a pianist... in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk."
- Horror writer Robert Bloch once said, "I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar, on my desk."
- A little boy asks his mother what it means when one person sleeps on top of another. His mother replies that it's called "sexual intercourse". The boy talks to his uncle, then comes back to his mother and says, "You're wrong — it's not called sexual intercourse; it's called bunkbeds."
- A nun and a priest are camping in the middle of nowhere, but the nun keeps getting cold and asking for blankets. Eventually, the priest says, "Seeing as no one's around, I think we should act as though we're married." The nun agrees, and the priest says, "Get your own blanket, you cow!".
- Two nuns named Sister Mathematical and Sister Logical are out on a walk, when a pervert begins following them. They split up, and Sister Logical arrives late to the convent. Sister Mathematical asks her what happened, and Sister Logical replies that she pulled her habit up, he pulled down his pants... and then she outran him easily, since he couldn't run very fast with his pants down!
- A joke subverting expectations of a Pun:
"What's a pirate's favorite branch of the military?"
"The ARRRRRH-my?"note
"No, the Navy! Pirates are sailors..." - I've got tickets to the game on Saturday, but I forgot that my wedding is on at the same time. If you want to go in my place, be at St. Mary's Church at 11:00.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger has a long one, Michael J. Fox has a short one, Cher doesn't have one, and The Pope has one but never uses it. What is it? A last name.
- What does a Polish man give to his wife on their wedding day that's long and hard? His surname.
- "My girlfriend found letters I was hiding and now she knows I've been cheating. She says she'll never play Scrabble with me again."
- There is a joke about a guy who walks into a pastry shop and asks for a pączek, but instead of just eating it, he rips it apart inside out and proceeds to pluck out its filling with his finger. After eating all of it, he simply throws away the rest and buys another pączek, doing exactly the same with it, and then the third one. At one moment, the clerk says "you are a motorcyclist, aren't you?". Surprised, the guy confirms that he, in fact, is one and asks the clerk how did they know that. Clerk replies: "because there is a motorcycle standing in front of the shop".
- A girl is about to meet her boyfriend's parents for the first time. Unfortunately, her Trademark Favorite Food is baked beans. Despite her boyfriend begging her not to eat any before the big dinner, she cannot help herself. After all, she'll have farted it all out by the time the meal rolls around, won't she? The girl meets the parents, the brother, the sister, and the family dog, who immediately takes a shine to her. They all settle down to the meal, with the dog sitting beneath the girl's chair. Appetisers are served, conversation is going well, when the girl lets off a fart. The father looks under the table and shouts "Skippy!" Next is the main course and conversation resumes, and the girl lets off another fart. The father looks under the table again and shouts "Skippy!" Finally, dessert is served, and she lets off a massive fart that stinks up the whole room. The father puts down his spoon, looks under the table and shouts. "Skippy! Move before she shits on you!"
- Sherlock Holmes and Watson are on a camping trip. At midnight, Holmes prods Watson awake.
Holmes: Look up, Watson. What do you see?
Watson: The... the stars? The moon?
Holmes: Precisely. And now that you have seen, what do you deduce?
Watson: Well, er... The weather will be clear tomorrow, I believe. And we are nearing a period of strong tides. A believer in astrology would likely be able to say a great deal more on the subject. And you, Holmes? What do you deduce?
Holmes: I deduce that you are an idiot, Watson. If we can see the sky, someone has stolen our tent!!
Literature
- Adrian Mole: A couple of in-universe examples is that a message will suddenly come through in a moment of high tension, but it turns out to be something extremely trivial.
- In Growing Pains, Adrian and his mother wait three weeks for a cheque from the Social Security office. In desperation, Adrian's mother contacts the local radio station, saying she will abandon Adrian in the office unless she receives her cheque by midday. Just as they head out of the door for this abandonment, the phone rings; it is Adrian's father pleading for his name not to be mentioned on the air.
- In Small Amphibians, Adrian is summoned to Brown's office to be told that a telephone message has come through from his mother; normally such messages are only allowed in "life or death matters". Adrian prepares himself for terrible news, and weakly mumbles "hello" into the object of his doom, the telephone. His mother wants to know (hysterically) if he would like to wear a carnation or a rose in his buttonhole, at her wedding.
- Alan Alone: When Alan's parents are looking for their son at the storm relief center, they hear a boy calling out to his father and anticipate to see Alan, but it turns out to be the son of Alan's teacher, Takara, running up to his father.
- The Beginning After the End: In Volume 10, one of the last chapters is titled "Unexpected Visitor". Given how Caera had just arrived in Dicathen, one would have expected Arthur to reunite with her for the first time since he left Alacrya. However, Caera is not who the chapter is referring to — that would in fact be Avier, the late Cynthia Goodsky's bond who had not been seen since the attack on Xyrus Academy and who is here on behalf of Aldir to summon Arthur. This results in Arthur completely missing out on Caera as he ends up departing for the Hearth, and he only hears of her arrival when he returns after two months of being stuck in the aether realm trying to resurrect Sylvie. This is much to Caera's chagrin as she was wrongfully imprisoned the entire time after being Mistaken for Spies without Arthur being there to vouch for her.
- The Berenstain Bears Big Chapter Books: In The Berenstain Bears at Camp Crush, when Mr. Grizzmeyer shows up at the Bear family's house, the cubs are initially worried and try to think of anything they could have done wrong to bring their vice-principal there. Then he explains that he isn't there for school reasons — he's there to invite them to attend the summer camp he's going to be running.
- Camp X: At the start of the book, we read the narrative of what sounds like a soldier tracking a Nazi in the woods, whom he eventually spots. After the two struggle to corner each other, they then pull out their guns... and shot "BANG!", then proceed to argue if they really did get shot or not. This is revealed to be Goerge and Jack playing war in the woods.
- The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: In book 12, when Madame Delphine du Jardin (Luke Lombardi's most recent mistress) first lays eyes on Diesel, she shrieks, causing Charlie to think she's frightened of him. Then she starts talking to the cat in French, and it immediately becomes clear from her tone that rather than being scared, she's actually quite taken with Diesel, and the few words Charlie understands confirm this.
- In The Chocolate Touch, John, the main character, is asked if he likes anything besides chocolate. John says he likes bananas... especially sliced ones covered in chocolate. They're called "Banana Surprises".
- In the Darwath series by Barbara Hambly, main character Gil Patterson is a graduate student in medieval history while on Earth. Fellow-traveler Rudy Solis is an auto mechanic. When they cross to the medieval, magic-using realm of Darwath, one would expect him to become a warrior and her to become a mage. Just the opposite actually happens: Gil discovers a knack for the sword and joins the elite fighting unit called simply "the Guards" (although she never stops being a scholar), while Rudy finds that he's mageborn and becomes an apprentice wizard with Ingold Inglorion as his teacher.
- Deadline at Durango: Jeff figuring out where stolen money is hidden and taking it for himself to build a fortune is the kind of thing normally used to send a Allan Vaughan Elston villain Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, but Jeff has just enough business ethics and distaste for violence to be truly villainous and acts as The Hero even before eventually deciding to give the money back.
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld:
- Carpe Jugulum: Agnes hits teenage vampire Vlad with the full contents of a bottle of water blessed by Mightily Oats the priest, and Vlad flings his arms wide and screams. He then winks at Agnes and proceeds to lament the damage to his waistcoat, "Do you know what water does to silk? You just can't get it out. No matter what you do, there's always a mark."
- Maskerade is a homage to The Phantom of the Opera. There's a giant, poorly attached chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the theater, which several characters proclaim is an accident waiting to happen. Unlike in the Broadway musical version of Phantom of the Opera, however, this chandelier never does fall down, despite the villain's best efforts.
- The Shepherd's Crown: Granny Weatherwax gets a vision of her death during the prologue, seemingly foreshadowing her fate in the coming battle with the elves. She dies in her sleep at the beginning of Chapter 2.
- At the end of the Dresden Files book Skin Game, Harry asks Grey how much he charges for betraying Nicodemus, and Grey tells him, but not the audience. Harry is stunned by this amount, and says he doesn't have that much on him (while carrying several million dollars worth of diamonds), so he has to go to his friend Michael to ask for one dollar.
- Elephant & Piggie:
- In "A Big Guy Took My Ball!", it turns out that the ball belonged to the "big guy" (a whale) all along, and Piggie just assumed it was hers because she found it lying on the ground.
- In "Pigs Make Me Sneeze", it seems like Gerald will sneeze loudly at one point, but he sneezes quietly instead.
- In "I am Going!", Gerald and the audience think Piggie is going away for good, but really she's just going to lunch.
- In "I Broke My Trunk", Piggie asks Gerald how he broke his trunk and he mentions that some other animals balanced on it... but that he didn't break his trunk that way; he broke it falling down while running to tell Piggie about his feat of strength.
- Common in Ephraim Kishon's stories. For example, if he describes the Sabras (an Israeli cactus fruit, or an Israeli born in the country). "On the outer side, very prickly, but on the inside, completely inedible."
- Full Disclosure: The second time the cabinet votes on whether to enact the 25th amendment, Ericson's supporters suspect trickery when The Secretary of the Treasury who replaced the fired Bannerman abruptly doesn't attend and his Wild Card deputy secretary attends in his place. It turns out the secretary really is just sick and the deputy secretary votes for Ericson like his boss would have.
- Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest: As the quest progresses, Helen and Troy learn that one or both of them are destined to die tragically at the end of the quest. That is if they were the protagonists. Turns out that the Wild Hunt gang were the "good guys" in this story, and it was Franklin who died heroically this time around.
- Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle. Early on, there are flashes of a dream sequence that show an elven ship, two figures taller than six more that are holding hands, and two dragons flying into the sky. Early speculation figured it'd be Eragon and Arya sailing away, as Eragon was foretold to leave Alagaesia by Angela. However, at the end of Inheritance, Eragon leaves, but Arya doesn't. The romance everyone thought was going to happen ends up not happening and more than a few readers were completely flabbergasted by this twist.
- Jack B Quick Sports Detective: In "The Case of the Stolen Signs," three consecutive scenes seem to definitively point to the culprit who is telling other teams about what a baseball coach's signals mean, only for each suspect to be quickly revealed as a Red Herring, all over just six pages.
- A cut player who gets caught stealing the balls to sabotage the team points out that if he'd given the signs away, he wouldn't still need revenge.
- The coach's Friendly Rival in both business and coaching walks away with his sealed briefcase, which contains all the team strategies, after replacing it with his own identical case. Then he comes racing back, having clearly made no efforts to open the case he took, apologizes for the switch — a genuine accident-and notes that all his secret signs and other team papers were in the briefcase he almost lost.
- A player with a cousin on a rival team that has been benefitting from the cheating covertly slips a slip of paper to his cousin. Nina pickpockets that paper, which turns out to just be the phone number of a girl the cousin wanted the suspect to set him up with and a message that the cousin owes the suspect a favor for this matchmaking.
- In Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, a letter with the seal and signature of the Duchess R is accompanied by an unlabeled photograph of the Duchess with Mr. Snicket's sister. Along with another unlabeled picture, which they told everyone was of them, but really wasn't.
- In The Lost Symbol, Robert Langdon is describing the horrors of the cult he belongs in: "I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh. And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion."
- "The Man Who Returned" by Edmond Hamilton is the story of a guy who was Buried Alive and managed to get out of his sarcophagus. Logically, one would think the title refers to him returning from the dead. In reality, it means that once he learns what his family and so-called-friends really think of him, he returns back into the sarcophagus.
- In May I Ask for One Final Thing?, a flashback shows a younger Lady Scarlet being chastised by her tutor for beating up thugs. Having already chased away previous tutors because of her violent nature, it seems she's again being told that violence is wrong. But instead, it turns out that he was chastising Scarlet for leaving her own hands unprotected while punching people.
Grahal: If you hit someone, your own fist will hurt too. Hurting others and hurting yourself, it's a futile thing. So when you hit people you should wear gloves like these, so you can punch those pigs without hurting yourself, and feel good about it.
- Near the end of Mr. Standfast by John Buchan, the hero learns that the villain has abducted the heroine, and rushes to the villain's lair, where he finds the villain standing over a figure in a chair — end of chapter. The next chapter is a flashback to the heroine's abduction, and ends with the revelation that she was rescued by their allies before reaching the villain's lair. The chapter after that identifies the figure in the chair as The Spymaster, come to tell the villain that his scheme has been defeated.
- Notes On An Execution: We are led to believe Baby Packer either died of malnutrition before social services got to the farm, or that four year old Ansel killed him himself. Baby Packer survived, and was adopted by a couple while Ansel was shuffled around in foster care.
- One Cool Friend: At the end of the book, when Elliot's father discovers Magellan in the bathtub, he calls to his son, "Young man, where did this penguin come from?", seemingly shocked or upset. Elliot answers the penguin came from the southern tip of Argentina. His father says that's right and points out that his tortoise, Captain Cook, is from the Galápagos Islands.
- Other Covenants: "And In This Corner…!" is setting up the climax to be the Foregone Conclusion of "David" killing "Goliath". The tension is increased by Isaac (David) catching Hanun (Goliath) cheating on him with Yamtisy. But then at the end, he throws down his sling and says "To hell with this!" He isn't even the same David as the one who becomes king.
- In the short story Pudding Like A Night On The Sea, the narrator and his younger brother get in trouble after they eat the pudding their father had made for the family's dessert and then try to lie about it. Their father, who the narrator had described as frightening when angry, threatens that there will be "whipping" and "beating" as punishment for their actions and orders them to the kitchen — where he directs them to whip egg whites and beat the yolks to make a replacement pudding.
- The Queen of Ieflaria: It initially appears that Esofi is a pampered but kind politician while Adale is a rough and tumble warrior. In reality, Esofi is a highly trained battlemage who personally killed quite a few dragons, while Adale is a spoiled rich girl who does nothing but party with her friends.
- Quincas Borba: In the first chapter, Rubião asks his servant if Quincas Borba wanted to go out. Only soon later does the reader find out that this Quincas Borba is not the philosopher from the previous book, but his dog, which recontextualizes his first mention.
- Space Brat: At the start of book 3, Blork gets summoned to the principal's office. He thinks he's in trouble, especially since the school secretary (who hates him for a prank he did on her a long time back) is smiling... but then it turns out Principal Yellin Bello has just called him in to give him some really good news: he's going to the Galactic Celebration to be given a medal for his heroic actions in stopping Krolb in book 2.
- Done to heartrending effect in the Warhammer 40,000 novel Rynn's World. Captain Cortez saves a mother and her children (one of whom is just a baby) from being murdered by Orks. Chapter Master Pedro Kantor is less than pleased with this development, as there are (to his knowledge) only a dozen or so Crimson Fists left after the destruction of their monastery, and they cannot afford to bring refugees along. But Kantor says that the family can tag along as long as they can keep pace with the Space Marines, which anyone will tell you is no small feat. After a while, the mother becomes tired and unable to keep up. Kantor moves to the back of the column, to "grant her the final mercy," and because this is Warhammer, the franchise that literally coined the term "grimdark", we have a very clear understanding of what "the final mercy" means. Then, after the mother pants that she tried, but her children were just so heavy, Kantor (who did not want her there in the first place) does indeed grant her "the final mercy", telling her "You did well to bring them this far...It is time that someone carried you now.", before picking her up in his arms and carrying her the rest of the journey.
- In one of Louis Sachar's Wayside School book series, a hypnotist brainwashes a character so that, if a certain student says the word "pencil", he will see her ear as candy. The rest of the chapter deals entirely with the subject of a lost pencil, but the girl in question, though involved in the conversation, never actually says the word "pencil" — although no one should really be surprised, given that the chapter is titled "A Story With a Disappointing Ending." Several chapters later, when you're not looking for it, the Brick Joke hits.
- In one of The Witcher stories, Geralt pulls out a bag of coins in order to get past a guard, saying "Money opens all doors." The guard insists he can't be bribed, and Geralt quips "I'm not going to," before using the coin purse as a cosh to knock the guy out.
Music
- "The Assumption Song" is based around this. Every line (save the last) ends in a Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion, which makes you think something rude is happening, but it isn't (e.g. "The girl in the meadow was rubbing her eyes at the fellow down by the dock. He looked like a man with a sizable... home.")
- The Dire Straits song "Industrial disease" contains a fairly subtle one: After listing two maladies caused by the protagonist's vices (smoker's cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer) the doctor in the song notes, "I don't know how you came to get the Bette Davis ...knees".
- Throughout most of the song, Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee" seems to be a typical story about a boy missing a girl. However, at the very end of the song, the singer reveals that he is missing his daughter; This causes the listener to reconsider everything they just heard.
- The cover for the Gentle Giant album Acquiring the Taste appears on the front to be a tongue licking between two round, flesh-coloured cheeks. Turning to the other side of the album cover reveals that the flesh-coloured object is, in fact, a peach.
- George Jones, "The One I Loved Back Then," has the narrator pulling up to a convenience store, and the clerk looking with envy toward his Corvette. The clerk reminisces in detail about having one back in 1963 that was "hotter than a two-dollar pistol, the fastest thing around, built and fun to handle." The narrator offers to let the clerk take her for a spin, much to the clerk's confusion. Turns out it wasn't the car the clerk was envying. It was the woman sitting inside it.
- Happens in HoneyWorks' "Ai no Scenario". The music video opens with Love Triangle between a noble lady who must choose between her rich but abusive fiance and her peasant lover. She eloped with the poor suitor and seemingly got killed on the run. Flash forward to the future, the girl is now dating a nice, brunet who looks like the poor lover, but their time together is constantly disrupted by an unpleasant blond who is rather reminiscent of the rich fiance. Later, it's revealed that the brunet is actually her past rich fiance who's just pretending to be nice, while the blond guy is the poor lover, who's behaving crudely because he knows of the other guy's scheme.
- John Frusciante has often been compared to Jesus because of his long-flowing hair and serene disposition during live shows. It's even gotten to the point where there's an old joke on the Internet that goes, "Why do people keep comparing John Frusciante and Jesus? I mean, he's great and all... but he's not as good as John Frusciante."
- The music video for Marshmello and CHVRCHES' collaboration track "Here With Me" features a benign example. A firefighter is called to a dangerous house fire while his wife and daughter watch on the news and is seemingly killed. Then the video cuts to the two women wearing black and in black hats, but they're not going to his funeral; the man survived and is receiving a medal for his valour in saving a fellow firefighter, although they both received burns on their face for their trouble.
- Noah's promotion for their August 2022 music video employs this. Noah's social media is filled with images similar to the one from the old "Tak Ada yang Abadi" music video accompanied by #takadayangabadi hashtags, implying another remake like the ones they have been making recently. Only to reveal at the release day that the music video is a brand new one for "Kota Mati" which uses those images to establish that this is a prequel to "Tak Ada yang Abadi" video.
- This is the bread-and-butter of SiIvaGunner: Presenting uploads as "high quality rips" of video game tracks, only for these tracks to turn out to be mashups, remixes, or "In the Style of" parodies upon listening.
- Songdrops: In "I Love U-Kuleles" and "I Love U, it's My Favourite Letter", the singer sounds like he's going to say he loves someone, but then it changes to something else.
- The "St. Louis Blues," the first modern jazz hit, achieved popularity thanks to this. The composer, WC Handy, began the song with a tango-like habanera melody (which was very popular at the time of the composition) which abruptly shifted into a high energy jazz tune that "electrified" the dancers.
- On The Hamilton Mixtape, Jimmy Fallon prefaces "You'll Be Back" by assuring the listener that he is classically trained, having been taught by a New Jersey man named Ed Classically from out of Ed's mother's basement.
- An interesting case with Twelve Foot Ninja and their song "Coming For You". It opens as heavy metal, and then about 30 seconds in switches to salsa, followed by disco, back to metal and then through a plethora of genres over the course of the song.
- In Vera Lynn's Easter song "Two Easter Sunday Sweethearts", the singer seems to be boasting that on Easter Sunday she'll be parading with a man on each arm, but at the very end, she reveals that her two sweethearts are "dear old Dad and darling Mother."
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Foil" starts off as one of his fairly standard "food parody" songs until he says "Oh, by the way, I cracked the code" at which point it turns into a song about a Conspiracy Theorist.
- "Marshmallow" by DECO*27 was first teased on social media with only a title card, rendered in puffy pastel letters on a bright and colourful background. Given that he had only released pop songs over the last three years, with "Cherry Pop" in particular being his most recent, fans were expecting yet another cutesy love song. However, once the music video premiered, the title card was covered in blood as the song revealed itself to be a nu-metal Sequel Song to "HIBANA"—the first rock song of its kind since "Chimera" three years prior.
- Used as a two-stage joke by KAJ in their song "Frassin":
- At the song's opening, the singer is heartbroken, and the audience is invited to believe that he's mourning a breakup with a romantic partner, but then learns that the singer's cat has run away.
- The singer then reveals that he's convinced that the cat ran away as revenge on the singer for having him neutered, and is wracked with guilt over it.
- In the song "Prejudice" by Tim Minchin, he begins with a slow ballad regarding the harm over the use of a word made of a few letters: "A couple of 'Gs', an 'R' and an 'E', an 'I' and an 'N'. During the second half of the song, he continues to outline how using this word harms these people, particularly him, a GINGER.
Pinballs
- In Aerosmith, making shots during "Dude Looks Like a Lady" shows silhouettes of various dancing women... that are soon unveiled as awkward, unattractive men (including a mime).
Podcasts
- Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe? has had several episodes where the film pitched doesn't quite line up with what one would expect with the source material.
- The pitch for The Phantom of the Opera is quickly revealed as actually being for The Phantom of The Phantom of the Opera, and taking place against the Broadway production of the Phantom musical.
- In a similar twist, the episode titled The Bride of Frankenstein actually pitches a story called The Bride and Frankenstein, and features Frankenstein teaming up with a bride-to-be to fight off her slasher-movie-style assailants. This is then given a further twist when, in the post-credits scene, one of the villains is resurrected by lightning in a way that makes her a visual match for the classic Bride.
- Branson Reese's guest pitch based on Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is two-fold: The pitch has nothing to do with the movie, but is more so about pitching the Dark Universe version of Abbott and Costello... and that winds up being the Blumhouse-produced, Peacock-exclusive series David and Davidson, where Larry David and Pete Davidson encounter Blumhouse-related shenanigans.
- Daniel Kibblesmith's pitch for a Darkman remake is actually a gender-bent version, Darkgirl.
- Let's Learn Everything!: Episode 71, "Good Invasive Species, Rock Climbing, and Ig Interviews" consists of each of the hosts presenting a topic as a a "gift" for one of the other hosts. Caroline's gift to Tom was rock climbing as a topic, but it was just a ruse, their real topic was rickrolling.
- Mom Can't Cook!: When discussing the production values of Stuck in the Suburbs'' before looking at it properly in the next episode, Luke has this to say:
And if you're wondering how they manage to show the life of an early-2000s pop star on a [Disney Channel Original Movie] budget... they can't.
- Random Assault:
- When Alex finally played Ghost Trick, he made it out to seem that he hated the game, much to the irritation of the other hosts. Turns out Alex loved the game, though.
- The banner for the Halloween Episode appears to be static, but is actually a Flash element. After a little bit, the banner starts to move, and all of the hosts get killed in horrific ways.
Poetry
- At the end of "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod", it's revealed that the eponymous boys were only the facial features of a kid, and the "shoe" they sailed in was said kid's trundle bed.
- St. Thomas More wrote an epigram called "What is the Best Form of Commonwealth?" Throughout, he seems to be arguing that a senate is a better regime than a monarchy, stating, among other things, that a senate may be middling, but it is rare to come across a middling king, which means that a king would either be very good or very bad. He also says that a bad senator may be guided by better senators, or even replaced by a better one, whereas a king chooses his own advisors and will not be so easily replaced, with very dire implications if the king is bad. The final lines, however, end with More saying that the question of what is the best regime is rather silly, and that the more important question is the more practical consideration of would the regime be useful or not.
"But all the same, why do you ask this question?
Is there a people anywhere whom you yourself can put a king or a senate
in charge of by your decision?
If you can do this, you reign: Consider no longer to whom you should hand over
supreme command; the more important question is “Would it be useful?”
Pro Wrestling
- In 2003, the International Wrestling Association hyped up their acquisition of the son of a former world champion and legend that is universally recognized, David Flair! Like Carly would ever work for another wrestling promotion! (Incidentally, Carly has since worked for several other promotions.)
- At the 2007 Victory Road Voodoo Kin Mafia, who had been antagonized by Christy Hemme, who was taking advantage of the fact man on woman violence had been banned to screw them over in matches against Lance Hoyt and the Bashams, announced they found a solution to the problem while in New Orleans Louisiana. Most of the crowd recognized the hometown of Jazz immediately and did a double take when instead they were introduced to Voodoo Queen Roxi Laveaux.
- The host of WrestleMania 27 was a subject of great contention up until the night it was revealed. WWE itself got in on this that night by initially teasing with a shot of a limo pulling up, and a close-up of a pair of feminine feet in high heels. Minutes later, with the sudden playing of the theme music of long-inactive wrestler The Rock, the host was finally announced to be Dwayne Johnson himself, to the raucous cheers of the crowd. Dwayne even includes a little bait-and-switch in his following speech.
Now, The Rock is back because I wanted to do something unprecedented. Something no man had ever done before. I wanted to host WrestleMania. So it happened. The Rock called Vince McMahon and Vince McMahon said "Rock, I know why you're calling. I know you know I need a host for WrestleMania. Rock, there's only one man electrifying enough to host WrestleMania. Rock, there's only one man that can captivate the world. Rock, that man can only be Justin Bieber!"[Crowd boos]
- Distractions from an attempted union with Dragon Gate USA have allowed the nefarious "A Lister" Larry Dallas to sneak his way into EVOLVE's Tribute To The Arena beneath the shadow of the monstrous Ahtu. Ahtu has an open contract, free to both companies and Dallas boasts that he's better than any man on either company's roster...suddenly the crowd falls silent at the sound of a familiar beat and then jump to their feet. Low Ki had made his EVOLVE Debut! He swiftly deals with Ahtu, who will not be seen in the promotion for the rest of the year, before declaring his intentions to destroy every boy, actor and wannabe wrestler who was disgracing his profession!
- Devon Storm, who hadn't been seen in Ring of Honor for a year, returned in January of 2012, only to step aside after being paid off by Truth Martini to give his return match with Grizzly Redwood to Michael Elgin.
- At the 2017 WrestleMania, the Undertaker did this as his entrance. The lights went out as lightning was flashing where he was supposed to enter from with everyone anticipating him to make his entrance. Suddenly, the lights all came back on, and he was already in the ring!
- At the 2018 event (a year after he'd ostensibly been retired by Roman Reigns), 'Taker pulled a double. John Cena had been angling for a WrestleMania match against the Deadman for weeks, but after receiving no response and having no other opponent lined up had eventually attended the show as a member of the audience instead. Partway through the show, an official ran down with a message for Cena, who excitedly ran backstage. A short while later, he came down to the ring in his wrestling gear, the lights went out and... nope, it was Elias, trolling Cena and the audience. Unamused, Cena made short work of Elias, then just as he was trudging disappointedly backstage again, the lights went out once again, the Undertaker's gear appeared in the ring where he'd left it the year before, lightning struck them, and the Deadman emerged to squash Cena after all.
Radio
- Giles Wemmbley-Hogg starts his trip to India episode at a market, lots of Indian voices calling out, Indian music playing, only to reveal he's in Birmingham, before he leaves England.
- From The Goon Show (one of many examples):
Grytpype-Thynne: I thought I saw a Greek urn buried in the sand.
Moriarty: What's a Greek urn?
Grytpype-Thynne: It's a vase made by Greeks for carrying liquids.
Moriarty: I didn't expect that answer.
Grytpype-Thynne: Neither did quite a few smart-alec listeners. - I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue had a recurring segment in which the panellists announced arrivals with Punny Names at a themed Charity Ball. (e.g. at the Christmas Ball: "Mr. and Mrs. Amanger, and their son Wayne.") One episode had a Cheesemakers' Ball, and one of the announcements was "Mr. and Mrs. Zola and their son... Emile." Or at the Menswear Ball, "From Scotland, Mr. and Mrs. Strap and their son... Dougal."
- You'll Have Had Your Tea: The Doings of Hamish and Dougal does this a lot, sometimes combining it with the Overly Long Gag. They take longer not to do the "Watson, someone has stolen our tent" gag than it takes to tell it.
- In The Frantics' "Last Will and Temperament" sketch, the late Arthur Muldoon's will states that his overly-emotional sister Jenny shall be bequeathed a boot to the head (and one for her wimpy husband Hanknote ). Subverted with his alcoholic brother Hedge, to whom he bequeathed three crates of whiskey and a boot to the head (and one for Jenny and the wimp). To his know-it-all cousin Ralston, he bequeathed a boot to the head. To Mrs. Mulroy, who took care of him, he bequeathed a boot to the head (and another for Jenny and the wimp). To his cat... you get the point. To his lawyer, he left not a boot to the head but a rabid Tasmanian Devil, to be placed in his trousers.
- In one episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, a man is insisting that the "so-called fire brigade" don't actually do anything about fires, in terms similar to someone attacking "the PC brigade", while a woman tries to explain that this isn't the case, to no avail. Eventually:
Woman: Tell me, how did you vote in the European referendum?
Man: Remain, as it happens. Surprised?
Woman: Not at all. And I, who have been presented as the voice of reason in this sketch, voted to leave.
Man: That is also unsurprising.
Scripts
- In Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 3D, a group of American forces are attacked by Godzilla on Oto Island. The scene then cuts to a giant lizard crawling over a city. It then turns out it's actually Kevin's pet lizard Rover crawling over a diorama made by one of his classmates.
Sports
- During an opening segment on the Keith Olbermann sports show, Keith described a Japanese pitcher who is hyped up as being a must sign; known for dominating in Japan, and is seen by experts as a future superstar in the sport of professional baseball. Given that Masahiro Tanaka was just signed to a huge money contract for the New York Yankees, people assumed Keith was talking about him. But he was actually taking about Hideki Irabu, who was hyped up just like Tanaka in the past. Was signed to a huge money contract for the New York Yankees, then crashed and burned as a huge sports bust. For what it's worth, Tanaka had a better career with the Yankees than Irabu did, though calling him a superstar is probably an exaggeration.
- ESPN ran this story during and after the 2026 FIFA World Cup, in which one of its writers gave grades to each team that was eliminated from that tournament, continually updating it through the last team out (Argentina, which lost to Spain in the final). When it came to Cape Verde, which had been eliminated in the round of 32, the writer started his description as follows:
How they got eliminated: Lost to Argentina in round of 32
Final grade: C
After a brief comment, he switched to:
Actual final grade: A
He then invoked this trope with "I had you going there for a second, didn't I?" before pointing out that a country that had never appeared in a World Cup tournament, with roughly the population of Fresno, California, had to face Spain, Uruguay, and Argentina, three countries that had combined for six World Cup trophies going into the tournament (with Spain eventually making it seven)—and didn't lose to any of them at the end of regular time (draws with Spain and Uruguay, with the Argentina loss being in extra time).
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Three Dragon magazine articles build up to one of these. Greyhawk Grimoires describes the spellbooks of three notable mages from the Greyhawk setting, including Acererak, the ancient demilich from Tomb of Horrors, whose spellbook is embossed with an "A" entwined with snakes. The sequel, Greyhawk Grimoires II, includes that of Keraptis, the immortal wizard from White Plume Mountain, which has a "K" intwined with snakes. It notes that no connection between the two wizards has ever been revealed before, so the significance of this similarity is unclear. And finally Hidden Agendas, about Greyhawk secret societies, includes the Society of the Serpent, a group of wizards who claim to go back thousands of years, who signify their membership by adding entwining snakes to their personal sigil ... and then says they aren't quite as ancient as they claim and their founder was actually inspired by this still-unexplained coincidence.
- One Paranoia mission starts out with a NPC being dragged off for termination, strongly suggesting to the players that it's going to be important somehow. It isn't — it's just there to mess with their heads when they fail to find anything else out about it.
Theatre
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) has an example similar to the very first one on this page. Austin's book is called "I Love My Willie" which he decides he wants to whip out. As the audience laughs, he takes his book out from his pants.
- In Into the Woods, the Witch requires the Baker and his Wife to gather four items: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, a slipper as pure as gold, and hair as yellow as corn. Since this is a Fairy Tale Free-for-All that combines the tales of Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, the solution seems easy to predict: Jack's cow, Little Red's cape, Cinderella's slipper, and Rapunzel's hair. But it turns out that Rapunzel's hair can't be used for the spell, because the Witch isn't allowed to have touched any of the items and she has touched her adopted daughter's hair. Instead they resort to Loophole Abuse by using actual cornsilk.
- In The Odd Couple, at the end of the first act, Oscar tells Felix that he's saving all the chips on the floor for his game tomorrow. Felix gets a vacuum and picks them up anyway. Oscar comes back in and yells, "Hey!" Then he follows up with..."I didn't know I had one of those!"
- In Six: The Musical Katherine Howard pulls this as she says, "He asked me to be his little piece of ass-istanance".
- Spies are Forever: As is traditional for a spy thriller, there are multiple nested evil plots revealed as the story progresses. The big one is the reveal that the Fourth Reich is only a front for a much more forward-thinking Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy, CHIMERA.
Visual Novels
- Danganronpa:
- Celestia's execution. At first, it seems as if she's going to be burned at the stake, only for Monokuma to suddenly ram into her with a firetruck at the last second.
- The entirety of the first chapter of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is most appropriately defined with this characteristic. The events are as follows: Kaede unifies everyone; everyone tries to escape; Monokuma retaliates against Kaede's efforts; Kaede takes advantage of said retaliation to kill the mastermind; the attempt fails in two gray ways; the perspective of the player switches from her to Shuichi; after explaining why she tried to kill, Shuichi exclaims about the fact that there was never a mastermind and that his deductive skills failed; after the lament and motivation given to the group, she's brutally executed by Monokuma.
- Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir: Chapter 8 begins with the protagonist heading to the archive building to meet with Kumada, only to see him sleeping. And not waking up. Given that this is a murder mystery game and that characters have been dropping like flies by this point, the protagonist assumes the worst and proceeds to repeatedly shake his body and call his name, the music turning tense and building in intensity as the protagonist becomes more and more panicked... until Kumada wakes up and angrily yells at him to calm down because he was just taking a nap.
- Harvest December:
- January's story ends with a Rock-Paper-Scissors match and the narrative is structured to make the reader think that the protagonist of that chapter utilized Poor, Predictable Rock.
- March's story begins with the main protagonist sheepishly looking at women's magazines for parenting tips. Everyone assumes he'd gotten his girlfriend pregnant but, in reality, was preparing for a babysitting job.
- August's chapter includes the series's obligatory bath peeping moment and the mother of the one of the heroines baits the boys into thinking she wants to join in. Once they lower their guard, she beats them up and delivers them to the girls for further punishment.
- Katawa Shoujo: Lilly suggests going to a large electronics store for Hanako's birthday present. Where does she actually take you? To get her ice cream.
- Last Chance in Xollywood: Randy Chance discusses the advertisement for the film Love Dies Screaming, mentioning that they are claiming it stars a famous actor to bait in viewers even though that actor has no involvement with the film at all.
- Magical Girl Witch Trials: The first time you go through the game's end credits, the screen fades to black, before the screen turns static. The game then proceeds to rewind itself rapidly back to the first day of the witch trials, where you play through the game again, but from the perspective of Hiro, not Ema.
Web Animation
- 13 Cards:
- In Spade's Image Song, he offers Felix a hug. Felix gladly accepts and hugs him back, and then Spade uses the opportunity to suplex him.
- Clones Clean Up The House
- After Fëdor throws the cockroaches out of the apartment's window, Waru approaches Felix and remarks that he must be sad, and he kneels next to him and lays a comforting hand on his shoulder... only to tell him that cockroaches only live for six months.
- Romeo is shown wearing Censor Suds when he suggests making clothes out of the soap bubbles flooding the apartment, to the disgust of the other clones, but it's revealed that he had clothes on underneath.
- Clones Make A Comic: Spade realizes that he can't put his ideas on paper since he can't draw, and Brolly has the opposite problem of not being able to come up with ideas. Sitting at the same table, they both realize that they need a partner and say this aloud... and walk off in opposite directions instead of asking each other. Subverted in that, later in the episode, they do team up.
- Clones In The Soup
- Romeo raises the knife in the air with a crazed expression, giving the impression that he will chop the vegetables quickly and violently. Instead, he slowly and meticulously slices them.
- After chopping the vegetables, Spade points the knife at Romeo, making it look like he's threatening him. Turns out he just wanted to return the knife that he borrowed.
- Kuromaku asks Dante for salt and water, and is handed these ingredients. After he adds them to the soup, the soup starts to fizz, and he realizes that the person who handed him the ingredients was not Dante but Waru, who swapped them for baking soda and vinegar.
- Clones Order Pizza: Felix tries to tip Fëdor for the pizza, but doesn't have any money for the tip, so he asks Romeo. Romeo, in turn, asks Fëdor if he can borrow some money, and this seems to be setting up a gag where he tips Fëdor with his own money. Instead, Romeo takes the money and slams the door in Fëdor's face.
- Clones Against The Mafia: When Brolly is turned into stone, Waru exclaims that they "can't just leave him like this"... and they should paint him green instead.
- 3D Mainichi Modern:
- In episode 2, Thompson's ambulocetus song gets a proper intro and the band begins to play the song, setting up for a full musical number like there is Once an Episode. However, Boss Polenta cuts it off near immediately, saying he "doesn't really like Vocaloid music". The Walgreen employee asks to hear the song in episode 3, setting up for it to properly play in full, but cuts it off in the exact same way when she realizes the store is nearing its closing time.
- At the end of episode 2, Kevin MacLeod's band setup may lead you to believe you're about to hear something more rock-oriented, only for a fully synthesizer-based song to kick in.
- The Amazing Digital Circus:
- "Pilot": A bowling ball sends Kinger and Gangle rolling down a slide, and some bowling pins appear at the bottom... only for the bowling ball to miss the pins, which Kinger and Gangle knock out instead (with Jax landing softly and kicking the last pin away).
- "Untitled": In the Softball Adventure, Caine starts the game by having Disappearing Guy sing the national anthem. But due to his quirk, the Disappearing Guy only gets up to two lyrics before vanishing in the midst of the song. Nevertheless, the audience cheered for him as loud clapping emits from the crowd. But when it cuts to the audience, none of the mannequins are clapping, as the numerous clapping sounds are coming from a single centipede, clapping with its many legs.
- "Hjsakldfhl":
- Kinger reveals that the very program the players are trapped in, is not actually a bugged/incomplete video game. His company was only trying to design a sentient AI program capable of spontaneous creation. All the wacky activities and interactive features (not to mention the routine of the daily adventures) are all Caine’s very own ideas.
- When Caine turns Ragatha, Zooble and Gangle into bowling pins and shoots a bowling ball at them, the ball knocks over Ragatha and Zooble, while narrowly missing Gangle… before it rolls toward Gangle and knocks them out too.
- asdfmovie:
- A guy is asked to hold a live bomb. The guy who gave him the bomb comes back a few seconds later and takes it back. No explosion, next skit.
- "This is a robbery." *dramatic sting and close-up* *hangs up and walks away*. Next skit.
- "WARNING POINTLESS BUTTON" is pointless.
- "Damnit Jenkins, a giraffe will never be president!" "Yeah, you're... probably right."
- "Die, potato!" "I like trains."
- "Dad, I'm gay!" "I have no son!" "*Gasp* This isn't my house!"
- In the Cartoon Hooligans episode "What if Hulk Ripped His Pants #4," after Iron Man gives Hulk a pair of "pants" from his spare armor parts, it appears that Hulk is about to go on another rampage, but it turns out that he likes Iron Man now for giving him "pants", and they become friends again.
- Dayum: In “Social Media Portrayed by Minecraft”, during the section on Reddit, a button crops up saying that pressing it will reveal either a chest of diamonds or a dead horse. At first, it seems to be setting up a gag about seeing a gross horse carcass, but when he presses the button, he gets a chest. Thus, it seems like it will be the chest of diamonds, but then the atmosphere tenses up, hinting that the dead horse is in the chest… It is, but only has an innocuous-looking piece of horse leather.
- In the third video of The Gaston Trilogy, "Gaston's Ultimate Mission to Obtain Some Taco Bell", Gaston says "Everyone knows her father's a lunatic! He was in here tonight raving!" Then we get to see Maurice dancing with glow sticks to an electronic remix of "Beauty and the Beast." Technically accurate, but not the definition that was led to.
- GEOWeasel often includes bait-and-switch jokes.
- After a character is sent to prison, an establishing shot of "The Big House" appears… with the jail of New Jersey next to it.
- After Sapphire launches the flying headquarters in an attempt to save Nar, Weas explains "Miss Caring over here" pushed the launch button… with a pan over to a different woman wearing a "care" shirt, and that Sapphire confirmed the launch with her push.
- In a Whole-Plot Reference to The Shining, Harvest Mooned 2 has Jack slowly going crazy throughout the day, hitting stumps with his axe while uttering "All work & no play makes Jack a dull boy." over & over again. The ending has him breaking the axe & saying "HEERE'S JOHNNY" &, you would think he completely lost it, but instead he just plays The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Jack: *sighs* THERE'S the playing.
- Homestar Runner:
- In "Strong Bad Sings", the announcer suggests that one might consider paying nearly $100 for Strong Bad's music collection. He then touts the entire product actually costs $193.75.
- Strong Bad's 100th email has him telling the story about how he and Homestar first met. At one point in the story he comes across a giant egg and wonders what could be inside it. Of course, Homestar...appears right next to the egg saying it was his. (What? Were you expecting him to hatch out of the egg?)
- In Strong Bad's email where he creates his own candy bar, he keeps making the viewer think he's going to cover it in chocolate, but keeps changing it to something else like: "cover it with smooth, rich, creamy...pepperoni!" Eventually, he does top it off with chocolate and calls it "the ol' BBC" (Boring, Brown Chocolate).
- In Hunt Down Freeman 2, a sequel to a parody of Hunt Down the Freeman, the narration before the final act parodies the scenes in the game in which Mitchell is on a tram after dying. When he's meeting a "highly popular character," the character is shown as an army man, slowly turning around... Before he suddenly morphs into one of the generic scientists at Black Mesa.
- Knights of Guinevere: In the opening monologue of the pilot, the narrator talks about a princess who needs saving. At first it may seem like they are describing a young Olivia. In actuality the "princess" is Guinevere who is constantly being mutilated by Olivia who believes she is "fixing".
- Manga Soprano: In this story, Alto came home drunk to his fiancée Kanade after hanging out with her sister Asako. Later on, he calls Asako on his wedding day because she wasn't present. Judging by the context, he seems to have dumped Kanade to marry Asako instead. When she picks up and reveals she never loved him, Alto was surprised until she heard Kanade's voice; it turns out he never dumped Kanade; she even knew about Asako's attempt to steal her fiancé.
- LEGO Friends: The Next Chapter:
- Nova codes a game in "Tap-Tap-Pup-Pup-Clean," and the next morning, everyone's playing something on their smartphones and congratulating Nova for her effort. When Nova takes a look at what they're playing, it's Autumn's game, but everyone assumes that Nova made it.
- Aliya seems to be giving a speech to the students in "The Heart of Heartlake." When it concludes, we see some of Autumn's barn animals staring at her; Aliya was only rehearsing.
- Dale halts the performance in "Decisions, Decisions" as if he's going to refuse the effort to rent out the annex, but:
Dale: Listen up. You can't always get what you want. However, today you can.
- Liann shrieks off-screen in "Friends Fright Challenge," which worries Olly and Autumn. While they assume Liann was in danger, she was shrieking because Nova texted her with hearts.
- In "Friends Prank Wars," Zac tries to prove that Leo and Autumn didn't really swap bodies by asking them personal questions. Zac then reveals that he doesn't know the answers to anything he asked.
- Aliya thinks that Amalia is airborne in "Babysitting Mishaps" and tries to catch her. It turns out that it was just a melon.
- In the TheOdd1sOut video talking about Bluey, he compares the show to another foreign cartoon about a family that has 2 toddlers, only that show is universally hated unlike Bluey. Peppa Pig, right? (and the silhouettes of the characters are shown) Nope, he's talking about Caillou.
- In season 8 of Red vs. Blue, Tex has been continually hitting Grif in the nuts throughout the episode. Then Simmons finally manages to shoot a heat-seeking rocket launcher at her. After a set of acrobatics with a set of portals, Tex (with the rocket still in hot pursuit) punches her way through Sarge, Tucker, and Simmons, and slides under Grif. Grif cringes, seeing the rocket coming right for him... and it flies harmlessly under his legs. Then it blows up the pile of rockets right behind him.
- Pig Me is about a pig who runs away from a slaughterhouse and wanders into a pet shop. When it appears he will be adopted, it turns out that the pet was adopted because its owner looks very similar to it. The pig imitates the pets so he can get picked, but in the end, all of the pets are chosen. However, the owner of the pet shop (whose face is never seen until the end) decides to keep the pig and the short ends on a happy note. Until it's revealed she actually wanted to eat him.
- Port by the Sea: The inventor hasn't been able to do much of anything ever since he lost Bonnie during "the shatter", and a picture shows him with his wife and a goldfish. It's eventually revealed that Bonnie was the goldfish, which was mutated into the sea monster Port and Umi were hunting in the beginning of the pilot; the wife was upstairs the whole time.
- In one of the Rhythm is Magic segments: Glee Club - Chorus Ponies, Twilight Sparkle is conducting a Glee Club of what looks like Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. The whole scene is sketched with no color, but at the very end, the pony who we think is Rainbow Dash gets colored in, and it turns out she was Derpy Hooves all along.
- RWBY Chibi: One short has Ruby and Weiss having confrontational actions angering each other, leading to the two having a showdown. The two brandish their weapons, leap at each other... then toss away their weapons and have a Sissy Fight.
- Sgt Ducky: In The Dawn of Sean, he repeatedly implies that he, PJ, and Heff were drug users due to the repeated references to cocaine. In Heaving in the Evening, Ducky reveals that they weren't using drugs and they were actually referencing caffeine. As Ducky points out, it's way too difficult and costly for Ducky and his friends to actually buy drugs in rural Ireland
- Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: In "Into the Marioverse", Mario tells Tari that the multiverse as we know it is in grave danger when a portal opens up behind Mario. Mario, thinking it's the Grand Mario's army of Marios, freaks out and flees ("THEY HAVE COME BACK FOR MARIO'S ASS" clip: "You'll never take me alive! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"). The figure that comes through the portal is Tari from Meta Runner.
- Alex.EXE created a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate video, "Who can reach Ridley's cupcake?!", where the roster tries to reach a cupcake that Ridley wants to eat before the lava ceiling crushes them, with most not making it (except when Squirtle doesn't get crushed and gets the pass) though there are select points where Ridley stops the ceiling to allow some of the fighters to enter the portal (or, in Villager's case, Villager attempting to get the pass like Squirtle did) and then cruelly finishes the job from behind...except for two instances; Ridley allows King K Rool to reach the cupcake without appearing from behind, thus causing "Best Friends" to appear, and when Isabelle's turn comes, Ridley stops the ceiling like normal, and then appears from behind to finish her off...only to then spare her, with "Best Friends" appearing.
- In Underverse, Owners starts out with Flowey talking to someone and correctly deducing that they are "not happy with what [they've] done". At first it seems like he's talking to Frisk/Chara after a genocide run — only for the very next few scenes to reveal that it was actually Sans he was talking to and that Sans and Frisk/Chara have teamed up to kill him.
- Zero Punctuation's review of Rocket League starts with this kind of gag, in relation to Yahtzee having originally dismissed the concept of vehicular soccer out of hand:
Yahtzee: I have bad memories from my school days of shivering on a frozen playing field in the mandatory tiny shorts, waiting for a ball to bounce past and shortly afterwards my head to be bounced between several pairs of studded boots. That's the last time I take a teaching job. Fuck you, that was an actual joke!
- When hololive's first generation of English-speaking male talents was announced, Mori Calliope, a member of the agency's female talents, took time out of one of her streams to vehemently ask her fans not to ship her with them. And considering the Contractual Purity-related drama that both Calliope herself as well as other talents in the agency have been was subjected to, it's easy to see why she would feel like she needed to set that boundary. However, in order to lighten the mood, the actual reason she gave for this request was that she saw them as her "sons", and thus she would find it weird to be shipped with them.
- At first glance, this video looks like just an average Alphabet Song video for little kids…but things take a hard left turn at the end:
"Now I know my ABC's, won’t you come and SUCK MY DICK, MOTHERFUCKER?! COME ON! I’M GONNA FUCK YOU UP! (gives the finger)"
Web Original
- Many trolls or people who are bored on a forum will post a topic title that grabs everyone's attention, but the actual opening post has nothing to do with the topic title. This is usually done by people who just want the attention; it's also how Rickrolling got started.
- Another method involves starting a topic with a double meaning, with one interpretation (usually the more obvious one) being highly shocking or offensive, but the actual post being about the more mundane interpretation. For example, starting a topic with the title "I HATE FAGGOTS", only for the post to actually be about the poster's distaste for the food item.
- Any post of on the Web that appears to lead up to something titillating will often inevitably turn out to be this. They will tease the bait long enough to hook in viewers, then dash their hopes of seeing any goodies by employing a Scenery Censor, Cutaway Gag, or Fan Disservice, at the climax of the post/video clip. (With one of the more popular clips to subvert this way being Phoebe Cates's bikini drop scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High). However, the fact that these supposedly "NSFW" clips somehow last the whole day without being quickly taken down tends to render the subsequent switch pretty obvious from the beginning; very few people would have the gall to post the actual uncensored version of a NSFW clip and risk a swift ban.
- TLF Travel Alerts claims is hot enough in the London Underground to literally fry eggs on the escalators. How ever you shouldn't try to do it ... they are on a diet.
- Duckyworth reviews:
- His review of A Troll in Central Park begins with Ducky deciding to review The Troll Hunter, what he describes as 'An awesome found footage horror film about Norwegian troll hunters'. However, he ends up finding a copy of the former film, along with a note from his Arch-enemy, Cheapass CeeGee, telling him to review the film. To rub salt in the wound, Duckyworth liked this film as a kid, and it came from his favourite director.
- Likewise, in the Thumbelina review, Usami sends him a copy of this film, instead of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, the film he originally believes he's going to review.
- His review
- In one Sporcle quiz released on April Fools' Day, you have to click on the correctly-spelled country that begins with a K from a huge cluster of incorrectly-spelled variations of Kyrgyzstan. The correctly-spelled answer is NOT "Kyrgyzstan" but "Kazakhstan".
- The "Concerned Tom" meme starts with a person describing a seemingly innocuous act, only to reveal a context that makes the act horrifying (the meme's name comes from a still Tom and Jerry image where Tom looks deeply unsettled). For example:
me: kills the boss and loots his body for cash and items
everyone else in the office: 0_o
me: Opens the door because it's stuffy in here
everyone else on the submarine/the plane/the International Space Station: 0_o - One hot take that became memetically famous in 2019 was that transgender people wouldn't survive a nuclear or climate apocalypse because it would cut off the supplies for hormone replacement therapy. In the "Climate Grief" episode of Philosophy Tube, which was posted before Abigail herself came out, she sounds like she's going to bring it up when she says that trans people might find it hard in the post-apocalypse, with a picture of some pills appearing next to her... only to clarify that the shortages she's actually talking about are synthesiser music and flannel shirts.
- A 4chan thread featured a post where an anon told a very long "imagine" prompt, where a person deliberately starts a relationship with a girl in a wheelchair in order to become her False Friend. They date for a few months, and the girl is the happiest she's ever been... until the other guy dumps her out of the wheelchair in public one day, lays out their entire plan to her, and finishes by telling her nobody would ever genuinely love her the way they falsely did before leaving her alone, miserable, and out of reach of her chair. Some anons wondered why they would want to self-insert as someone so heinous. The OP, however, meant for them to self-insert as the girl.
- On Twitter, starting around late 2017, there have been bait-and-switch videos that involve some sort of presentation only leading to the first few seconds of the first cutscene in Hotel Mario.
- Daily Pixar Cars Facts, a Twitter account dedicated to Cars trivia, pulled this off with #745, which compares Lightning McQueen talking to Harv in Cars to Candice talking to her father in Cars: Race-O-Rama due to Harv and Candice's father both being The Voice. While the latter video is actually from Race-O-Rama, the former video quickly segues into SuperDuperWaffleZ's Lightning McGroomer edit.
- A viral Twitter thread about body positivity suddenly segued into how its author supposedly lost 25 pounds in one month. The thread was, in fact, a pitch for bogus diet pills.
- One of Cut and Obscure Video Game Content's fake discoveries is a full version of Gaster's theme from Undertale that, once it reaches the "new" part, transitions into Buddy Holly by Weezer.
- This post starts off implying that the POV alien's son was the instigator of the conflict that he's been called in about; ultimately turns out that his son was bitten by a human classmate and the two wound up fast friends in the aftermath.
- In the Reddit comment section of a post in the Pokémon subreddit depicting a realistic Vaporeon, one user asked pre-emptively not for anyone else to repeat a memetic NSFW copypasta about Vaporeon, only for another to reply with the opening line of the copypasta... leading into the "Connection Terminated" speech from Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator.
Web Videos
- Twitch streamer The 8-Bit Drummer falls prey to this quite often. Eventually, he started taking bets as to whether or not a song he was about to play was a SiIvaGunner remix. 8-Bit has invoked this himself a few times. One example is when he was asked for his opinion on the then-rampant controversy for the Pokémon Sword and Shield dex cut. His response was to laugh as if he'd been waiting to vent reams of frustrations about it, put on the track "sans." from Undertale, then hype up what appeared to be a very long rant:
Jerod: Here's my opinion on the Pokémon Sword and Shield controversy...
[Abruptly stops the music]
Jerod: It's freakin' stupid. Let's move on. - Act Promptly: Jordan's take of the "Dragons" prompt starts with him lamenting the lack of gold, damsels and lairs in the current economy. He then states what he, as a dragon, is doing nowadays: fishing, loving it to the point of discarding the old dragon ways entirely.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd:
- When he looked at Final Fight Revenge, he concluded by saying that paying the several hundred dollars needed to buy the game second-hand would, most likely, make you "somebody who's addicted to buying shit and have no concept in the value of money" — "a total loser". You'd expect him to be describing himself, but then he immediately reveals that the copy of the game he has in his hands is actually from Matt McMuscles.
- When he reviewed the Superman games on Atari 2600 and NES, he acknowledged the large volume of requests for him to review Superman 64. He decided to start off the following episode by fulfilling those requests and reviewing Superman 64... as in Commodore 64. A few minutes later, he reviews the actual game.
- Back to the Whoture promises an epic crossover of Back to the Future and The Who. Then as they travel through time they happen to crash into the police box of a certain other Who...
- "Becoming Zeroranger", a scoring guide for ZeroRanger, weighs which of the two alternative firing directions to choose for the first loop: "The back shot is a fantastic weapon. It deals high damage and covers your most vulnerable angle. Definitely the practical choice." The player ship is then moved to the side shot powerup instead, cutting off "Weapons of Mass Destruction" upon collecting it.
- Episode 137 of Being the Elite has The Stinger where Kenny Omega stresses over a difficult choice with Nick Jackson of The Young Bucks. At the episode's airing, Omega was a free agent and rumors were rampant that he would sign with AEW. The choice Kenny stresses over turns out to be whether to start playing the PS4 remake of Resident Evil 2 as Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield.
- The Birch: It appears at first that both segments chronicle the Birch protecting two people, Evie and Lanie. But then it's revealed that Lanie isn't protected by the Birch, she is the Birch, transforming from a girl with control over plant life plant life, into a Plant Abomination when her powers skyrocketed in a bout of grief.
- Brocéliande: During a battle, Ziff the redcap screams a Big "NO!" when an orc by his side is killed by an arrow. When Ferrigno tells him to be strong and that he died with dignity, Ziff retorts he doesn't care about that, the dead orc owed him money!
- CawCophony: For the #7 segment for the Best Hit Songs of 2021 list, Crow begins by praising "Sand On My Boots", only to discuss why she's not comfortable with giving Morgan Wallen a platform; she instead gives the spot to another country song, "Starting Over" by Chris Stapleton.
- In Cybershell's Let's Play of the Genesis Sonic games, he measures how annoying an enemy is by using a "cunt-o-meter". When he gets to the infamous Red Barrel in Carnival Night Zone, the gameplay stops and slowly zooms in on the barrel as Also sprach Zarathustra plays in the background. After all that buildup, the Red Barrel gets a score of one on the Meter as Cybershell starts ranting that it wasn't that difficult to get past.
- In the fourth episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, Red Guy says "If only there was a way to learn more about the world..." and turns to the globe. Then Duck Guy says the same thing, also turning to the globe. The globe then suddenly grows a face, followed by a computer that wasn't even there before starting to sing.
- Drew Gooden: One Vine sets up the joke of him being a minute late for McDonalds breakfast, only to be informed that they serve breakfast all day. It turns out he was actually upset over his wife not getting to give birth in the restaurant's bathroom.
- Forgotten Weapons notes a real case of this in the video about the MP41(r). During World War II, German soldiers on the Eastern front eventually started to request that they just be issued the same PPSh-41 submachine gun used by the Russians, as they felt it was a better weapon than their own MP 40 due to its more-than-doubled capacity and rate of fire. Actual government testing was then performed, which determined that the best response to this would be an MP 40 with the barrel and magwell of the PPSh, as the MP 40 was a more robust and reliable weapon. For reasons that are not quite clear, what actually got delivered was the exact opposite, a PPSh with the barrel and magwell of an MP 40.
- Frostech's "This Country Has No Common Sense" manages a double bait-and-switch in a matter of seconds. First you assume he's saying that it's just common sense to ban cooking lobsters alive. Then it sounds like he's saying that countries that ban cooking lobsters alive are the ones with no sense. Finally you get to the punchline: "You're telling me I can only cook a lobster when I'm DEAD?!"
- Many cuts in Funday Night Gaming videos tend to show the results being completely opposite (or tangential) to the comment that was just made. This shows especially well in TJ's playthrough of Surgeon Simulator 2013.
- Gaming the Systems did a top 10 list of the worst Super NES games. The creator initially nominates Super Smash TV, as the fourth worst game, but after listing a few alleged reasons for its rank, he admits that it was a fake-out to keep people awake, says that the game is awesome, and declares that Shaq Fu is the actual fourth worst SNES game.
- GilvaSunner is a famous YouTube personality, known for uploading entire soundtracks of games for listening pleasure. In 2016, an account with the name GiIvaSunner (note that the third letter is not an L but an I) started making videos that would start off sounding like what they promised, before veering off into a mostly unexpected direction. At least one or more of the people who run the channel seems to be aware of Vinesauce memes, given that many the posts have a remix of the theme from The Flintstones' NES game (a reference to the "Grand Dad" moment from one of Joel's bootleg streams), and then there's the infamous edit of the Honeyhive Galaxy theme from a certain other stream.
- H.Bomberguy: In "Weighing the Value of Director's Cuts", he repeatedly looks like he's going to talk about George Lucas and the infamous tweaks he made to the original trilogy of Star Wars, the Trope Namer for George Lucas Altered Version, only to swing sideways into talking about other directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and he's just about to start on Federico Fellini when subverts the whole ordeal by giving up and snapping "Fine! George Lucas!"...and then starts talking about THX 1138 just to drive the point home.
- The short video "Inside" by DeniseVlogs is one big Bait-and-Switch — most of the video is just a man in his house late at night, occasionally hearing noises but dismissing them because It's Probably Nothing. Whatever's causing the noises is something terrible that's going to come in and kill him, right? No, the noises are being made by the tortured woman who's trapped in the basement. Turns out this guy is actually the story's antagonist.
- In "Irish People Try Stereotypical Irish Foods" a man shows us the front of a Lucky Charms cereal box. Lucky the leprechaun is levitating the marshmallow shapes in a magical rainbow between his hands so we can see them. One of the Irish guys says "This is not what we're like." He pauses so we can assume he means "Irish people don't all have red hair and wear green clothes all the time." Then the punchline, "Only half of my family can juggle marshmallows."
- j0rts: He begins to hype up a certain Zelda game as being his favorite, and perhaps one of the best games of all time, with footage of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the background... before the title screen for The Wand of Gamelon appears. He then quickly confirms that he was talking about Ocarina.
- Jreg: The entire The Mental Illnesses series is technically a bait-and-switch. The original "The Mental Illnesses" video came out directly after the last Centricide video. The video portrays the concept of personified mental illnesses as flawed and possibly harmful due to how complex disorders are simplified. Some took it as a satirization of Centricide's concept. At the end, Neurotypical declares the series a very bad idea and states "there should not be any more of this." On Twitter Jreg posted the video and made a poll captioned "Should this be the next series" with both answers of the poll being "no". Three months later? It's an actual series.
- Kyoto Video: In the beginning of KB's Comic Party video, he appears to heap more glowing praise on 90s anime as if to continue the route he started on his previous video. He then immediately switches to talking about anime in the early-2000s.
- "Let's Go Driving - rare shorter version" touts itself as a rarely-aired shorter version of the Sesame Street song "Let's Go Driving", only the reason it's "shorter" is because halfway through the song it's interrupted by a video of a different car hitting someone, and then a screen saying "April Fools!"
- The Mark Remark: Talking about when Seth Rollins "revealed some very revealing images... of his enormous, hard, throbbing car".
- Memeator Nixon:
- The video "The Secret Killer in Purple Version..." initially is set up to be about some special third version of Killer in Purple, complete with a custom game being shown called "Killer in Pie 3." But not long into the video, it switches to being about the first killer in purple, but he justifies calling it a "secret version" since it is the Christmas version.
- Nixon's Help Wanted 2 video has numerous instances where it seems like Nixon has encountered a situation where he can't win without using his other hand and is about to give up. Only to then reveal right after that he has a strategy for getting past it.
- Michael The Terrible Boyfriend: In "A Slice of the Action", Michael ponders how to get into his girlfriend's house without her parents noticing, and sees a pizza delivery truck come. He looks at it and asks "Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I think you are!". Cut to him riding a pterodactyl into her home, which then eats her.
- Minecraft SOS: Pixlriffs' 6th episode begins with a shot of the central island of the End dimension... and then the camera rotates, revealing it was actually of the underside of the island, as the obsidian pillars poke out the bottom as well as the top.
- The Nostalgia Critic:
- In his review of Catwoman, four Catwoman actresses confront him. They ask how attractive women dressed like cats can ever get as much attention as Halle Berry. The Critic (who previously encouraged them to flaunt their breasts) says that on the Internet, there's an easy way, as dramatic music starts. They star in cat videos.
- In his review of BloodRayne (2005), guest starring Spoony and Linkara, before they can get to the credits, Linkara says they have to address the elephant in the room involving all sorts of Internet drama centered around Spoony a few years ago. This seems to be leading up to something about Noah's acrimonious departure from Channel Awesome, but in fact Linkara is referring to the fact that he wore a Castleton jumper in their last Crossover despite never attending Castleton!
- One Piece Is Hilarious: After arriving on Skypiea, Luffy goes on a passionate rant about how he wants to fight God because God never answered any of Luffy's prayers. After a few minutes, Luffy mentions the "North Pole" and God "drinking milk and eating cookies", causing Usopp to realize Luffy isn't talking about God, he's talking about Santa Claus and Luffy just thinks he's God.
- Dungeons & Dragons comedy channel One Shot Quips has a series of videos called "How People THINK [Classes] are Played VS How They're ACTUALLY Played", contrasting the in-universe flavor of each class with how they act as player characters. For instance, clerics are supposed to be noble, selfless priests devoted to a divine calling, but usually played as irate, put-upon healers who the party takes for granted. Barbarians are shown to be apparently rage-happy Blood Knights who run everywhere screaming, when in actuality they're... rage-happy Blood Knights who run everywhere screaming in between roleplaying shenanigans. The barbarian even turns to the camera and cheerfully acknowledges, "Nah, people have the right idea about us!"
- One Take: In Episode 2, viewers hear a panicked phone call from a girl to her boyfriend about pregnancy. The Oner focuses on Jasmine, who is escaping her house. However, the voice is not Jasmine's: it belongs to her brother's one-time fling who has gotten pregnant from him.
- PlayStation Access does this gag a few times. Once Rob was playing Persona 5 and his Mum said the game was weird... because it didn't make sense for everyone to just take their turn hitting each other.
- The Polygon video "Why Bloodborne and Muppets are the exact same thing" has Patrick Gill deliver this line:
Pat: Big Bird's downy feathers make him a big, huggable friend, and in contrast, the Blood-Starved Beast's matted fur and wet flaps of skin...make him a big huggable friend.
- In Mathew Buck's Projector review of xXx: Return of Xander Cage:
In 2002, the James Bond franchise stumbled with Die Another Day, and found its throne threatened by a young upstart that showed how out of touch it was at that moment. And that movie was The Bourne Identity.
- Regular Car Reviews dropped hints that he was reviewing a 6-cylinder turbocharged rear-wheel drive rear-engine car, a.k.a. a Porsche. The actual "car" in question is a 40 foot long Freightliner RV, with a 7.7 liter V6 turbodiesel mounted behind the rear wheels.
- The Regular Pat video "Ranking Kingdom Hearts Ships" opens with Pat spending about two and a half minutes setting the viewer up to expect a potentially controversial discussion of Ship-to-Ship Combat in the Kingdom Hearts fandom. He is of course talking about the other kinds of ships: Royal Navy ships, Pirate ships and Gummi ships.
- Ryan George:
- "The First Guy to Ever Punch Someone" starts with a guy proclaiming another guy has an ugly face and that he is forcing his hand while raising a clenched fist, only to use the hand to list off every thing he doesn't like about the other guy's face. It is the insulted guy who first punch the first guy in the mouth to stop it from spewing out insults.
- "The Guy who Invented Sarcasm" begins with a guy responding to news of an office meeting in a sarcastic tone. Then his coworker Roger comes over and declares that he (Roger) just invented sarcasm, with Roger's coworkers telling him to go away. It's implied that the guy speaking in a sarcastic tone wasn't even doing it on purpose.
- In "Ghosts Are Bad At Revenge", the guy who just died learns the last thing he did was decide to jaywalk across a busy street, but it turns out he got stabbed to death before he could do it.
- "If Presidents Had Court Jesters" opens with the president insisting he get assistance from not his secretary of defense, but Blimpo, his court jester. In walks a guy in a full clown outfit... who is actually the secretary of defense called in on accident. The real Blimpo comes in next, and he's just dressed like an average businessman.
- Ryan very rarely includes anything from Screen Rant Pitch Meetings in his sketches or Extra Plus, but in “Making Fun Of Billionaires Because I’m Jealous”, he says it will be “super easy… barely not even difficult at all”. Bonus points for the TV in the background having a “he’s going to say it” countdown and then shorting out when he catchphrase-edges everyone.
- Sapnap: "Minecraft, But its raining Cats and Dogs..." starts off sounding like it's a typical Minecraft Let's Play and then cats and dogs fall from the sky..
- Solid jj:
- Near the end of "The Avengers Interview Hulk", Hulk looks like he is going to go berserk after his application is rejected, but abruptly calm down and explains that what he is going to do is sue the Avengers.
- In "The Justice League Remembers Hawkman Exists", after Hawkman sadly gives a speech about how superheroes like them shouldn't be bullying their teammate—referring to their treatment to him throughout the video—the team agrees... and apologizes to Aquaman for all the "Aquaman is lame" jokes throughout the years.
- In "Culturally Insensitive Captain America", Iron Man talks about a household item that's become much more common and plays a bigger role than it used to. Cap assumes he's talking about the television, only for Iron Man to instead say "Women".
- Sonic × Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings: "Shadow and Maria" starts with Maria pulling Shadow down a hallway, telling him to "hurry!" Anyone familiar with Shadow and his backstory may believe it is a flashback to 50 years ago, where the two were on the run from a group of G.U.N. soldiers. Turns out, she's dragging him to the ARK's observation deck so they can see the Aurora Borealis. This episode isn't a mere flashback, however, as it gradually turns into a Nightmare Sequence, Shadow spotting the various inconsistences that crop up.
- TB Skyen:
- Discussing Moira's design in Overwatch, mentioned that he had idly mentioned maybe doing that video sometime, and been bombarded with comments about "when are you getting to Moira, where's the Moira video", and he found it really, really frickin'...encouraging, and he was grateful for the engagement and enthusiasm.
- Done more seriously in "What's the Deal with Yuumi?" which breaks off the character design discussion after a few minutes to rip into Riot Games for having such terrible management and organisational culture.
- Todd in the Shadows:
- In the review of Chris Brown's Deuces, he does this while admitting that he does enjoy ragging on Brown.
Todd: Now, all critics have their favorite whipping boys, and from the beginning, one of mine was Chris Brown. I love beating on Chris Brown just as much as Chris Brown likes beating... [picture of Brown's head photo-edited onto a waitress at a breakfast restaurant] eggs for his famous homestyle breakfasts.
- Todd also has a particular line in opening best/worst list videos with fakeouts in one way or another. For example, in his Best of 2016 list, he talks about how the Chainsmokers rejoined the mainstream with "Roses" ft Rozes, then bluntly says he went with "Closer" for the slot anyway.
- In the Trainwreckords episode for Run–D.M.C.'s Crown Royal, he jokes that it's easy to clown on Fred Durst in 2023, but this was the early 2000s...when it was even easier to clown on Fred Durst.
- In the review of Chris Brown's Deuces, he does this while admitting that he does enjoy ragging on Brown.
- In the video A two-year old's solution to the trolley problem Nicholas moves the lone figure on the left track to the right track with the other people on it...and then moves the train down the right track.
- In Vision of Escaflowne Abridged, Dryden needs a book, but Lovable Sex Maniac Allen won't give it up. Ms. Fanservice Millerna offers to get it for him.
Dryden: Do I want to know how you intend to do that?
Millerna: A woman never reveals her methods. [unzips blouse]
[cut to later, fully clothed]
Millerna: Hey Allen, we're totally out of toilet paper! Can I borrow this book?
Allen: Sure.
Millerna: Killer. - Weird school rules in Hong Kong:
- In an Episode 6 skit, the teacher announces a ban on bringing "expensive mobile phones" to school. The students respond by bemoaning that they are using iPhone 7 or 7+ models and had to use Mainland brands like Huawei or Xiaomi, and another remarks that his phone was an even more old-fashioned and cheap Nokia brick. The narrator then steps in and asks what the main issue with the students was, which turns out to be that all of their phones were way out of date, and that the iPhone 10 was the latest model (at the time the episode was released).
- In an Episode 14 skit, a boy tries to call over a teacher to discipline a girl who was in the bathroom for longer than the four-minute limit imposed by the school rules, but ends up being told off by the teacher and is implied to be dragged away and arrested for "perverted behaviour" — since he was standing near the girls' bathroom (which wasn't near the boys' bathroom) for more than four minutes, the girl assumed he was The Peeping Tom.
- In the Wiiviewer's review of Pac-Man (1980), he explains that Pac-Man was originally going to be called "Puck Man", but they changed it because they knew teenagers would change the first letter to make it say something else. He says, "We all know what I'm talking about...DUCK Man!"
- World War Two: Host Indy Neidell does this a few times including in the first episode when he begins by saying that Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 began... The Polish-German War of 1939. Later, after months of Hitler planning to invade France, in May of 1940, an invasion happens... to Iceland, by the British.
- Wrestling With Wregret: "Who Are the Greatest American Wrestlers?" had Sgt. Slaughter in the #1 slot. Only to pull a reverse and disqualify Slaughter for IRL lying about being a Marine.. He then revealed the real #1: Kurt Angle (who had been conspicuously missing from the list).
Miscellaneous
- Penn & Teller are infamous for doing this in their magic acts.
- A palindrome is completely deterministic after the first half. You can thus sic Anti-Humor on the second half (too easy) or, more masterful, do this, referring to the well-known Panama palindrome:
Zeus, a plan, a canal, Pa...Suez!
- Likewise, the German Schüttelreim (Spoonerism... but in Germany it's a bit more of an art form) has a deterministic rhyme. Satire mag "Titanic" is a major subverter here.
- "Duckrolling" was a common internet prank in the mid-aughties wherein people would set up hyperlinks promising to lead to something interesting, only to lead to a picture of a duck on wheels. With the rise of YouTube, this would give way to "Rickrolling": the practice of tricking others into following a hyperlink leading to a music video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".
- Dangerous and abusive cults (religious or otherwise) use this as their M.O..
- Jim Jones' People's Temple presented itself as a tolerant Christian church that promoted Social Justice and Civil Rights....but was really just a controlling outfit that couldn't care less about faith, worshiping Jones as a "God"-like figure.
- More recently, Keith Rainere's NXIVM (pronounced 'Nexium') organization presented itself as a "human potential/motivational coach" group and its more esoteric DOS group as a feminist "woman's empowerment" thing. In reality, it was a Scam Religion that was similar to the Church of Happyology where Rainere was basically worshiped under the moniker "Vanguard". And DOS (which really stood for 'Master & Slave' in Latin) was really a hyper-misogynist Sex Slave scheme to force otherwise strong, successful, independent women into becoming starved, waif-thin, submissive harem for Rainere....complete with being branded like cattle. In fact, Rainere's general teachings about women in both groups was basically that women are inferior and the Double Standard is awesome.
- Groups headed up by a guru/minister/etc. will start off as a spiritual group headed by a person who's just a more adept believer and teacher....only for them to make the big A God Am I reveal only when you've really invested some time in the group.
- On a more political/warfare/terrorism variant, many who join DAESH note were simply disaffected Muslim youths who didn't feel they quite fit in with an oft-bigoted Western society and/or wanted to help out with the situation in Syria.note They were often presented with an idealized Islamic society (that retain modern features and food)note while Muslim girls were tempted with "Dashing heroic young fighters who will be kind and pious lovers, husbands, fathers" note or the gals were promised to get into some of the "cool" war-action.note Some guys joined DAESH for "adventure."note Of course, many who joined knew of the true nature of DAESH but didn't care because they were psychopathic criminally-minded goons who wanted to rape and pillage with impunity and not worry about such things like "The Police" or "Mom & Dad".
- One very famous rhetorical bait-and-switch from the 1984 US presidential election:
Henry Trewhitt: I want to raise an issue that I think has been out there for two or three weeks, and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff said you were tired after your recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall that President Kennedy had to go without sleep for days on end during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?Ronald Reagan: Not at all, and I would like you to know, Mr Trewhitt, that I am not going to make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.
- Birthday cards:
- One says, "I hope you enjoy your car—", then on the inside, it says, "—d".
- Another car-related one says, "You said you wanted a jaguar for your birthday", and on the inside it says, "But they roar a lot and it's dangerous to keep a big cat, so I got you money instead."
- At the beginning of Ken Block's Electrikhana, he's strolling through a crimson-lit parking garage, seemingly towards an old Audi rally car. However, the scene then cuts away to reveal him walking toward another vehicle, the one he'd use for the video: the Audi S1 Hoonitron.
- This video is a prime example. At first, it seems that the two men are gonna physically fight each other at the mall. Suddenly, they play a game of patty-cake.