Abuse Mistake: Difference between revisions

When [[Played for Laughs]], the mistake is almost always Type A, and quickly corrected. When [[Played for Drama]], however, a real victim might be denied help (Type B), a innocent person might get his life ruined with unfair accusations of abuse (Type A), or the designated "victim" (again Type A) gets stalked or outright oppressed by [[Unwanted Rescue|unwanted "rescuers"]]. These helpers might even go to great lengths [[Manufacturing Victims|trying to force her to "realize" that she's a victim of abuse]]. And no, not the actual abuse that ''they'' are subjecting her to.

 

 

 

{{examples}}

== [[Advertising]] ==

* There was a cleaning ad that played with this trope. A woman is grocery shopping with her arm in a sling. She gives sympathetic shoppers a whole bunch of different stories about how it happened, leading the audience to mistake her injury for domestic abuse. At the end of the commercial, it's revealed she hurt her shoulder trying to scrub soap scum out of the bathtub. The product being sold solves her problem.

* Abiru of ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' has her injuries mistaken for the result of domestic abuse. She actually gets them after tugging on the tails of animals she cares for at the zoo.

* ''[[Love Hina]]''. The girls of the house will think that Keitaro, being [[Accidental Pervert|extremely unlucky and clumsy]], is trying to molest/abuse them, so type A. However, some of their punishments of him will slip the show into type B.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* In ''[[Tortall Universe|Protector Of The Small]]'', Keladry goes to the public baths one day to enjoy soaking in the warm water. Concerned women rush over to assure her that whoever he is, even if he's a noble, he'll be caught and tried and made to pay. Keladry is a squire, and her day-to-day injuries from combat training are apparently rather alarming out of context.

 

* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' has several of these. In one episode a patient gets attacked by a woman, who tries to murder him by strangulation. Or rather, that's what the audience and the doctors believe at first. It turns out that it was just erotic asphyxiation. Safe or not is debatable, but at least it was consensual. In another episode, a man rapes a woman, but everyone except the audience knows that it's just a game.

* In one episode of ''[[Law & Order: Special Victims Unit|Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'', a cop have a bad reputation as several other cops "know" that he used to beat his girlfriend. He even got arrested once. However, it turns out that he had nothing to do with her injuries. It wasn't even a [[Casual Kink|consensual game]], she was cutting herself because of a deep depression.

* Type A in an episode of ''[[Frasier]]''. When Martin reflects on raising his sons, he mentions that they were so bad at riding bikes they would be covered with bruises. He eventually gave up teaching them how to ride bikes, thinking that his sons' doctor was suspecting him of child abuse.

* In the episode "Driven" of ''[[NCIS]]'', Team Gibbs brings in a suspect for questioning after watching security footage of him sexually assaulting the victim shortly before her death. As it turns out, they were dating, and the "assault" was an entirely consensual expression of [[Casual Kink]].

 

== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

== [[Real Life]] ==

* Jeffery Dahmer (who killed [[I'm a Humanitarian|and ate]] several people) had one of his victims returned to him by a pair of cops, who thought it was a simple gay domestic quarrel when they found a naked 14 year old boy running away from Dahmer.

* Bullying is often treated as Type B, with a variety of excuses being used ("boys will be boys", "it's just part of growing up", etc).

* Female participants in full-contact martial arts (eg. [[Society for Creative Anachronism]] heavy combat) are often advised to tell their doctors about what they're doing as soon as they step in the door, to prevent a Type A incident.