Bed Trick



"Susan: "Oh Reed, that sex was wonderful." Reed" "Was it, hehe--" {transforms} Surprise! I was really a Skrull all along baby!""

- Twisted Toyfare Theater spoof of the Fantastic Four

In order to have sex with Bob, Eve pretends to be Alice.

This is one of The Oldest Tricks in The Book and a common origin story for mythological heroes (often with a god playing the role of Eve). The Unfortunate Implications make it something of a Discredited Trope. As a general rule, the farther back you go in time, the more likely it is that the person you're sleeping with isn't who you think they are, though it's seen something of a revival in Soap Operas (usually with the added justification that person being fooled is drunk).

When Played for Laughs, expect Eve-as-Alice to be much better in bed than the real Alice.

Compare with Bride and Switch and Double Standard Rape (Sci Fi). Not to be confused with a Trick Bed.

This is basically the definition of rape by deception (or rape by fraud), though that crime can also include acts like pretending to be a doctor and fondling someone. Not all areas recognize this crime, but in the U.S. under expanding federal definitions of rape to include any non-consensual penetration, it's very likely to be prosecuted in the same vein as all other forms of rape.

Anime & Manga

 * Sae poses as Momo and attempts to do this to Toji in Peach Girl. It nearly works...until Toji turns the lights on...
 * Attempted in episode 8 of Mawaru Penguindrum,  Luckily, she's stopped before anything can happen.

Ballads

 * In the Child Ballad "Gil Brenton", the heroine sends her maid to her wedding bed to hide that she is not a virgin and is pregnant. The groom discovers this. His mother investigates and discovers that the bride was in fact a woman the groom had dallied with earlier, and so informs her son without actually adding "You idiot."

Comic Books

 * In Runaways, Karolina is dating genderless/multigender/really-female-but-looks-like-a-dude-sometimes shapeshifter Xavin, but is also interested in Nico, who she has had a crush on for most of the series. At one point, Xavin tried appearing as Nico because she thought that this was what Karolina really wanted and that it would help Karolina deal with her emotions. It did not work; Karolina thought it was "some kind of sick test". Xavin, not being from around here, is somewhat baffled.
 * Lemurian supervillainess Lyra tricked Namor into sleeping with her by disguising herself as Susan Richards.
 * Also from Marvel, Hercules, as part of a Zany Scheme involving him pretending to be Thor, ended up sleeping with the queen of the Dark Elves. However, it's clear that Alflyse had sex with him because she was incredibly attracted to him and his macho mannerisms, rather than because he was posing as Thor.
 * One of Spider-Man's enemies, the Chameleon, impersonated Spidey and slept with his roommate. Somewhat unusual in that this is being played up as an inconvenience to Peter, and very unusual in that a very vocal segment of the fanbase has been loudly angry about that being an unacceptable use of a Spider-Man comic.
 * In a much better Spidey comic written well before this, the Chameleon attempted to do this to Mary Jane (as in the above case he was disguised as Peter). Only to be defied when he kisses her, she realizes it isn't him (with an extra spewing of information Peter should have known to be false to make sure), and then proceeded to Beat him senseless with a baseball bat.
 * Just to hop the fence from Marvel to DC, Dick Grayson was seduced by the shape-shifting Mirage in the form of his girlfriend Koriand'r. This was a large factor in them subsequently breaking up.
 * Typhoid Mary pulls this on Deadpool by disguising herself as Siryn. He does not take it well.
 * Brazilian newspaper comic Aline had one of the Aline's boyfriends disguising himself as her to trick a lesbian who had a crush on Aline.
 * In X-Factor, Multiple Man awakens one morning to find that one of his dupes got out accidentally and has been enjoying himself. Later, Siryn and M separately tell him how wonderful the night before was, indicating that he slept with one while the dupe got with the other, pretending to be him.
 * Mystique created a new identity in X-Men as a student known as Foxx, in order to seduce Gambit and break him and Rogue up. Later, when Gambit realizes who she is, she tries to seduce him again by taking Rogue's form and telling him that it wouldn't be cheating if they had sex while she appeared as Rogue.
 * Mystique is fond of this trope. In a Nightcrawler backstory, Mystique shapeshifts into a frigid maid to sleep with the driver and convinces him to sneak into the castle later that night and asks him to wake her up with sex...All so she can watch the driver be thrown from the house after the maid screams rape when he crawls into her bed that night. He's fired, the maid is mentally scarred, and Raven thinks it's all hilarious.
 * Another occasion had Mystique testing out her newly upgraded powers by seducing Wolverine in the form of his ninja ex Yukio. On a battlefield while surrounded by dead ninja. Mystique also took pictures and mailed them to Wolverine's current girlfriend, because again, Raven is a jerk.
 * Anton Arcane, Swamp Thing's primary nemesis, famously did this to Abby, his own niece, by possessing the body of her husband. And that isn't even the worst thing he's done to her.
 * In the second issue of the 2011 relaunch of Voodoo, the title (female) character shapeshifts into the (male) partner of Agent Fallon, whom Fallon is sleeping with and who Voodoo has just killed. Voodoo then goes back to Fallon's hotel room and sleeps with her, before the truth comes out the next morning. Though it is never described as 'rape,' and Fallon is more angry over the death of her lover, in issue #8, when Voodoo tries to claim that they shared a legitimate emotional connection, Fallon is quick to point out that she does not love Voodoo at all, and that was simply the bond that she had with her lover..
 * Cilla disguises herself as his student to have sex with Blade, but he doesn't do the deed willingly, there were other forces involved. The disguise was primarily to put him at ease, since he would have attacked her on sight otherwise.

Fairy Tales

 * In "Little Annie the Goose-Girl", an impure bride substitutes little Annie for herself to fool the bridegroom's magic stone, which will reveal her character to him. Then she discovers that the magic works getting out of the bed as well as in. After three attempts, the bridegroom marries little Annie.

Film

 * Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show pulls this in order to corrupt the innocent couple Brad and Janet. They both figure it out part way through, and they both go through with it anyway.
 * In Single White Female, Hedy Carlson disguises herself as Allison Jones in order to sleep with Allison's boyfriend. Made all the more chilling in that she previously dyed her hair to look exactly the same as well as, well generally being a nutjob.
 * In X-Men 2, Mystique shape shifts into Jean Grey in an attempt to sleep with Logan. One could probably say it was subverted, since Logan found out pretty much in the first minute when he felt a scar he previously had left on Mystique.
 * The novelization claims he identified her by scent before she even entered his tent, but he played along until he got bored/annoyed/angry, it's not especially clear which.
 * Lewis pulls this on Betty in Revenge of the Nerds. Apparently he's good enough to win her heart.
 * Multiplicity - A busy man starts making clones of himself to substitute at work, etc to make his life easier. His wife gets exceptionally horny one night while he's on a business trip and the clones are roaming about the house. Hilarity Ensues. This was lampshaded earlier in the movie where the protagonist explicitly tells his clone that this is absolutely forbidden.
 * In The Boat That Rocked, also known as Pirate Radio, one of the young protagonist's boat companions sets this up for him so he can lose his virginity.
 * Discussed in The Change Up, an upcoming film which involves a Freaky Friday Flip between a bored husband and an unattached playboy. The playboy asks what to do if the husband's wife propositions him for sex.
 * Face Off: After Castor Troy has Sean Archer's face surgically grafted onto his head, he taunts Sean (who has Castor's face grafted on his) about how among other things, he'll have his way with Sean's wife. Later, he romances and seduces Sean's wife.
 * In the Clash of the Titans remake, Perseus is born as the result of Zeus disguising himself as King Acrisius and sleeping with his wife Danae. Just as the real Acrisius enters the bedchamber, Zeus changes back with a smirk, having done the deed, turns into an eagle and flies off. Danae immediately gives birth, and Acrisius kills her in a fit of rage. He's about to do the same to baby Perseus, but standing on a cliff in the middle of a storm and waving your sword around like a lightning rod (while screaming insults to the gods) is not a very good idea.

Literature

 * The Reeve's Tale in The Canterbury Tales.
 * Gombert et les deus Clercs, a French fabliau.
 * This occurs in Whiskey & Water by Elizabeth Bear. Matthew Szczegelniak is both a wizard and a virgin, which means that whomever he sleeps with first will gain power. Morgan le Fay has made it clear that she wants this power, so Christopher Marlowe disguises himself as Matthew and offers to trade his virginity for the True Name of his adversary. She accepts, teaches him the name, and then reveals that she knew who he was all along, but had reasons of her own for wanting him to know the name.
 * In the Roald Dahl short story The Great Switcheroo, two neighboring husbands switch places in the night in order to have sex with each other's wives. They go to great lengths to cover - wearing each other's cologne, discussing each other's sexual techniques, etc., and get away with it... sort of. The protagonist's wife comments the next morning at breakfast on how fantastic the sex was last night, when she previously had not been very interested in it. Ouch.
 * In Robertson Davies's The Lyre of Orpheus, a man takes the place of a woman's husband in the dark. Probably an allusion to the Arthurian thing, since the novel is all about the completion of an unfinished opera by ETA Hoffmann about Arthur.
 * In The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan spends a night with Milady de Winter pretending to be Count de Wardes, both for the reason of getting information out of her and for the obvious reason. After that, he insults her (still acting as de Wardes!) and gets to sleep with her again, as himself this time, in exchange for challenging de Wardes to duel.
 * Deconstructed towards the end of the Sword of Truth novel Temple of the Winds. In order to access the titular Temple, Richard and Kahlan are made to marry separate spouses and then consummate their new marriages. Each of them must be sincere, otherwise it doesn't count. Kahlan lies back and thinks of the Midlands, but after time passes and the Temple doesn't reveal itself, she decides to try again. After she does, the Temple comes into being and she sees that . It turns out that this was the proper way to access the Temple, as it could only be entered by one who has been betrayed completely.
 * In Bedier's Tristan et Isolde, the handmaiden Branwen switches places with Isolde in King Mark's bed to hide the fact that Isolde is no longer a virgin. Occurs in most other versions of that story as well.
 * James Clavell's Shogun features a double-reverse version: after a drunken party, protagonist Blackthorne is visited in the dark by a woman he assumes to be his interpreter Mariko. Next morning, he learns from Mariko that it was in fact one of the maids. However, we later learn that it was in fact Mariko, who took the place of the maid, but didn't want him to know about it.
 * Happens in Lamb the Gospel According To Biff with Biff and Maggie.
 * In The Sirens Sang Of Murder by Sarah Caudwell, one of the protagonists has an intimate rendezvous that gets interrupted by a power outage before it goes anywhere. It later transpires that, unbeknownst to him, the remainder of the rendezvous was with the other woman spending the night in that particular inn, and

Live Action TV

 * In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith slept with Riley while she was in Buffy's body. This causes friction in Riley's and Buffy's relationship when Buffy finds out.
 * In Battlestar Galactica:
 * Not too hard, since as the same model Cylon they look identical.
 * The same principle is at work when later in the series
 * Friends:
 * Attempted by Chandler in the episode "The One With Five Steaks and an Eggplant." When a mysterious woman leaves a message on his machine looking for her old lover Bob, Chandler pretends to be Bob and makes a date with her. He then consoles her when "Bob" doesn't show up, and they sleep together. Later, Chandler is hoist by his own petard when the woman calls the machine and tells "Bob" that Chandler is nothing compared to him in bed.
 * In the episode "The One With The Stain", Phoebe is dating her twin sister's ex-fiance, and said twin sister pretends to be Phoebe in order to sleep with him.
 * In The Class, Kat and Ethan pretend to be other people's blind dates at a bar. Kat does this successfully, but Ethan does not understand the concept and attempts to pursue a relationship with the woman, all the while pretending to be Dan Slutsky.
 * An unintentional one in Frasier. Niles intends to have sex with his wife Maris, their marriage counselor also intends to have sex with Maris, and Niles and the marriage counselor end up in the same bed each thinking the other is Maris until the lights come on and they see that neither one is Maris before they actually do anything. Later, Niles claims his first tip-off was the heat coming from the other side of the bed.
 * In Soap, Burt Campbell is kidnapped by aliens, and replaced by a double. This alien sleeps with Mary, Burt's wife, several times while Burt is away.
 * Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass pretends to be Blair Waldorf's English boyfriend during a blackout in order to get to sleep with her. Subverted in that they are interrupted by the real boyfriend before they can go any further than making out, and Blair knew all along that it was Chuck.
 * In the Spartacus: Blood and Sand episode "Whore",  And the fallout includes both duped characters going into a murderous rage.
 * In How I Met Your Mother:
 * At one point, Barney pretends to be Ted in order to seduce a woman. Although this isn't a straight example as he's just using Ted's name (and job) on women who've never met either of them.
 * On another occasion we learn that Barney apparently slept with a woman twice, once as himself, and once as his Evil Twin "Larney".
 * In a sixth season episode, when they finally meet the last Doppelganger (Barney's), he turns out to be an acclaimed fertility specialist. Lily is unable to accept him examining her unless she can see the real Barney at the same time so she knows he isn't just pulling this trick to get a look at her "lady parts" (even having just seen the two nearly identical men together is not proof enough, as apparently he pulled a similar trick on the entire gang involving a fake Swedish cousin, "Bjarney", coming to visit). They solve the problem by having Barney in the room, but wearing the sensory deprivation rig that Ted created years earlier to not find out the Super Bowl outcome.
 * Inverted on Family Matters when Stefan (who was going out with Laura) pretended to be Steve to discover if Laura had feelings for Steve. To his shock, Laura comes onto him
 * On Smallville, Lana's nutty shapeshifting stalker Tina Greer took Clark's shape and declared his love to Lana and they kissed before the real Clark interrupted them.
 * Wild N' Out had a skit with Ne-Yo in which the black team sung about portraying his bodyguards. One of the comedians/bodyguards sung about a Ne-Yo groupie who would only sleep with him if she got with Ne-Yo first: he took her into a dark room with just him & her. After it was over, he told her "It's not Ne-Yo, it's me, ho."
 * In the third season of Fringe
 * This is attempted twice on The X-Files, both times with someone trying to seduce Scully while pretending to be Mulder. In "Small Potatos", a shape-shifting man transforms himself into Mulder first to avoid being arrested, and then uses his appearance to seduce Scully. She doesn't notice (to be fair, there was wine involved) and almost kisses the non-Mulder before the real Mulder bursts in. Scully, obviously, is not amused. The second time, Mulder switches bodies with an MIB, who decides to try and seduce Scully. This time, though, she does notice that it's not Mulder because the MIB acts nothing like Mulder—including slapping her butt and calling her "Dana" rather than "Scully". She tricks him into handcuffing himself to Mulder's bed, and warns him if he called her "baby" again, he'd be "peeing through a catheter."
 * On True Blood Tommy acquires the power to shapeshift into other people and accidentally shifts into Sam, his brother. He then spends the day pretending to be Sam and it culminates with him sleeping with Sam's girlfriend. When Sam finds out he kicks Tommy out and wants nothing to do with him ever again.
 * A borderline example from Crownies: a woman dresses up very provocatively for a blind date set up by a friend, with someone whose been told is an attractive dentist called Phil. Around the time she's expecting him, an average-looking campaign worker who has been going door-to-door stops by. Before he can get a word in, she asks "Are you Phil?" Distracted by the Sexy, he impulsively answers "Yes." She proceeds to sleep with him, even though he's nowhere near as attractive as she was led to believe Phil is, and never makes an effort to pretend to be the man she was expecting beyond lying about his name - the implication is that she never gave him a chance to talk after that. When the real Phil shows up, she reports the campaigner to the police and then to the Crown Prosecution Serivce. Though Richard acknowledges the man's actions could constitute rape by fraud, most of the characters are just dumbfounded by the fact that the woman slept with him for no reason beyond "He said he was Phil." Whether or not the man was charged is left unrevealed by the end of the episode.
 * Often a component of soaps Double Standard Rape (Female on Male) storylines. The woman often drugs the man or gets him drunk, then disguises herself as his wife or girlfriend:
 * On Passions, a girl uses a magic spell to literally morph her appearance into that of the man's girlfriend.
 * On As the World Turns, a man sleeps with his wife's twin.
 * Subverted on The Young and The Restless, where the man gets drunk on his own accord but the other woman in question deliberately does not protest (she wants him for herself) when he begins to make advances to her.
 * Sunset Beach has a man's evil twin seduce his unaware fiancee.
 * All My Children has an example where the (drunk) man genuinely does not realize that the woman (doped up on pain medication) doesn't know she's with someone other than her husband and feels genuinely horrible at the realization of what's happened.
 * An episode of FX the Series has an old enemy of Rollie's do that with his love interest. He then taunts her with "Every time you'll see Tyler, you'll remember me."

Music

 * A variation crops up in country music; it isn't so much "two different girls" as "the same girl plus/minus copious amounts of alcohol consumed by the victim."

Religion and Mythology

 * The Bible has a few examples:
 * Laban substitutes his older daughter Leah for his younger daughter Rachel when Jacob thinks he's marrying the latter. He is eventually allowed to marry both.
 * Tamar, a widow of Judah's sons, was due a marriage to another man of the family under the rules of levirate marriage. When it seemed Judah was not going to go through with this Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and met him on the road, taking his staff and sigil as payment. She conceived twins and, when Judah realized what had happened, he was shamed into admitting his mistakes and agreed to marry her himself.
 * According to the Talmud, King David was conceived this way. His father, Jesse, was the grandson of a Midianitess convert, and eventually became concerned that this made his marriage to a full-blooded Hebrew improper (Midianites are forbidden to marry Hebrews, though there was debate on whether or not this applied to women). He decided to forgo sexual relations with his wife, Nitzevet, but, wanting more sons, took his Canaanite servant as a concubine (since Canaanites are allowed to have relationship with Hebrews and Midianites). Nitzevet arranged to take the servant's place and conceived David, though Jesse and his sons spent years assuming that she had had an affair.
 * It should be noted that his grandmother, Ruth, was a proselyte (and therefore a Jewess under the Law) at the time his father Obed was conceived. She was legally recognized as a widow entitled to the law of levirate marriage, and her second husband (and Jesse's grandfather), Boaz, made sure that all the protocols were followed before marrying her.
 * In Arthurian legend:
 * Arthur is conceived when Uther Pendragon disguises himself as Gorlois of Cornwall to sleep with Ygraine.
 * Also, Elaine magically disguises herself as Guinevere in order to sleep with Lancelot. Their liaison results in the birth of the sinless, pious Galahad who achieves the Grail Quest.
 * And Arthur himself had this pulled on him by his sister, which resulted in Mordred.
 * Similarly, in Greek Mythology, Zeus does this a lot in his bid to bed attractive women he lays eyes on.
 * He disguises himself as Amphitryon, sleeps with Alcmene, and begets Herakles.
 * He also disguises himself as an injured sparrow to get close enough to Hera to rape her.
 * Later he seduces/date rapes Europa by turning into a bull and having his way with her, resulting in the birth of Minos I and Rhadamanthus.
 * Zeus uses that gambit a bunch of times, including when he disguises himself as a swan to rape Leda and impregnate her with Pollux and Helen (later of Troy) and, in some accounts, Castor and Klytaimnestra as well.
 * Also occurs when he disguises himself as a snake to rape Persephone—his own daughter—and impregnate her with Zagreus.
 * Again with Persephone, he disguises himself as Hades and seduces her, producing Melinoe, goddess of ghosts.
 * Not to mention turning into Artemis to rape Callisto, one of her nymphs. Becoming an animal is bad enough, but turning into your virgin daughter to get laid? Wow.
 * Not to mention the rape of Danae. Zeus transforms/disguises himself as a golden shower, impregnating her with Perseus. The modern meaning came much, much later than the original legend, but even so: rape by turning yourself into a rain of golden pieces? The mind boggles... (This one is subject to a fair amount of Values Dissonance: Zeus' impregnation of Danae wasn't so much about her as getting back at her father, who thought that he could avert his own fate by keeping Danae from having a son who would kill him. Since not even the gods can do that, this was hubris, a crime that must be punished by ensuring the fate occurs according to the prophecy.)
 * To avoid being impregnated by Zeus, avoid all people, all animals, any abnormal weather, and your divine boss.
 * The Mabinogion contains an inversion: Pwyll spends a year disguised as Arawn, so that he can kill Arawn's enemy. Arawn expects Pwyll to sleep with his queen, but he refuses her.
 * The Evangeline Walton retelling adds a straight example to counterbalance this; Pwyll is said to be infertile as the result of the time he spent in the underworld, and "his" son Pryderi is actually Manawyddan's son, conceived while Manawyddan is disguised as Pwyll.
 * The Volsunga Saga gives us a double-whammy: Signy disguises herself as a witch and sleeps with her brother Sigmund in order to conceive a son who is strong enough to avenge her father and brothers. The result is the fearsome Sinfjotli, who indeed lives up to the task.
 * In the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried pretends to be King Gunther to get into bed with Brunhild, his wife. However the twist is that Siegfried did this on Gunther's orders. Brunhild is very protective of her virginity as her superhuman strength comes from it. Gunther needed Siegfried to get into her bed and beat her half to death before he consummated his marriage with her.

Opera and Theater

 * In the Shakespearean canon:
 * In Alls Well That Ends Well, Bertram won't accept Helena as his wife until she can become pregnant by him; she discovers an assignation between him and Diana, and convinces Diana to let her go instead.
 * In Measure for Measure, Angelo attempts to use the Scarpia Ultimatum on Isabella; she convinces Mariana, who Angelo is technically married to, to go in her place.
 * This seems to be Susanna's and the Countess's plan in The Marriage of Figaro: the Count has an assignation with Susanna and the Countess shows up to it in Susanna's clothing. It doesn't quite get that far before the Count sees Figaro attempting to seduce the woman he thinks is the Countess, though.
 * Don Giovanni as well, when the eponymous villain protagonist tries to seduce Elvira's maid by switching clothes with his servant. Partly to make sure the already-seduced Elvira wouldn't cause any trouble, partly because he guessed correctly that a servant girl wouldn't consider a noble's intentions with her very noble.
 * The main female character (one hesitates to call her a heroine) of Middleton's The Changeling pulls a reverse bed trick, convincing a maidservant to take her place on her wedding night so that her husband won't discover that she isn't a virgin.

Tabletop Games

 * Some D&D settings, including Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms, depict the entire doppelganger race as reproducing via the Bed Trick. A few Changelings do the same thing in Eberron.

Western Animation
"Homer: My God, she's become a cat...! Though I mildly suspected that during the sex."
 * The Simpsons does a related variation on this in a Treehouse of Horrors special. Marge has been transformed into a cat-woman and has (violent, scratchy) sex with Homer. Homer doesn't realize she's turned into a cat-woman until he sees her in the morning, but the memorable part here is the heavy lampshade:


 * In the Justice League Unlimited epside "The Great Brain Robbery," Lex Luthor switches bodies with the Flash. The Flash, while posing as Luthor, has sex with Luthor's girlfriend Tala. Tala is the one who initiates it, and she clearly enjoys it, even remarking that Lex is being far more sensitive and attentive lover than usually, but she is having sex with a stranger and enemy who has fooled her into thinking that he's really her boyfriend. Flash most likely went along with it because otherwise he might have been discovered.
 * Used as much as Disney allows (kisses only, and not shown) and subverted in American Dragon: Jake Long: Spud tries to lure Stacy in a closet with an anonymous note, but she lost it without reading it and Trixie got it and thought it was from the guy she had the hots for. Hilarity Ensues when they realizes WHO they were kissing.

Webcomics

 * All the female leads of Olympic Dames dreamt they had an encounter with a cute guy they had met that day. They were actually visited by different Greek gods.
 * A king considers this in Oglaf, then decides it would be simpler to just have the wizard turn into a copy of the woman he desires. Said wizard is not happy about this.
 * This is a parody of the Arthurian legend above. It turns into a Brick Joke later when the wizard transforms into the king to meet the demand of a Hard Gay warrior who demands sex with the king as the price for crossing a bridge.
 * Being a retelling of King Arthur, Arthur, King of Time and Space naturally does Uther/Ygraine. It turns out they were soulmates, and Ygraine only married Gorlois because the force of her feelings for Uther were scary.
 * The hero and Author Avatar of Sonichu travels into the future in one chapter, where finds his future wife, tricks her into thinking he is his future self, and has sex with her. He then promptly goes back in his own time where he is single again so he can make out with Meg Griffin.
 * Abel's backstory in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures involves this when his father is revealed to be an incubus who killed his mother's real husband and has been impersonating him all these years.

Web Original

 * In The Gamers Alliance, the goddess Hivena takes the elfess Rhylian's shape in order to fool Rhylian's paladin boyfriend Nesa to sleep with her.
 * #5 on this list.