Actually, That's My Assistant: Difference between revisions

== Advertising ==

* In an ad for Kenco, a man and woman arrive at a coffee plantation, and the owner greets the man enthusiastically. The woman says they'll take all the best beans for instant coffee, because Kenco uses the same beans for instant and roast. The owner says he'll have to clear that with the boss, to which the woman replies "You just have."

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Bleach]]'': A non-comedic example. Everybody, including the readers, thought [[Obviously Evil|Gin]] [[Devil in Plain Sight|Ichimaru]] was the [[Big Bad]]. Then came [[The Reveal]] that Gin was just [[The Man Behind the Man|the right-hand man]] of the true [[Big Bad]] - {{spoiler|Sousuke Aizen}}.

* Turned [[Up to Eleven]] and played for laughs in [[Dragonball Z]] when Goku starts training with whom he believes to be King Kai. When the real Kai shows up, he is rather amused at the stranger imitating his pet monkey.

 

== Comic Books ==

* The ''[[Tintin]]'' comic ''Flight 714'' had Captain Haddock suffer this when the millionaire they are to meet turns out to be {{spoiler|the sickly, worn-down looking fellow he'd just mistaken for a vagrant}}.

* When ''[[Nightwing]]'' first moves to Bludhaven, he notes that his landlady has a sexy Irish accent, but hasn't seen her face because it was always blocked by something when they spoke previously. Later on he's outside and overhears the accent again when passing a redheaded caucasian woman talking to an asian woman. He tells the redhead that he's finally glad to be able to meet her face to face, and she starts laughing. Turns out the asian woman is his landlady, she was adopted and raised in Ireland.

 

== Film ==

* Alfred Bester's short story, "Time is the Traitor" has John Strapp, who is known as a brilliant man who can solve multi-planetary corporation problems. We are first shown him as we see a tall, powerful, distinguished looking man, accompanied by a short, balding, harried, bags under eyes, man, obviously his accountant. No, the tall guy is just the decoy.

* ''The Scandal of [[Father Brown]]'' by [[G. K. Chesterton]] uses this trope; there's a beautiful rich American woman in a small town in Mexico. She is married to a respectable businessman named Potter, but had been linked to a fiery poet named Rudel Romanes. She is constantly in the company of a short, stooped hairy man with a bushy beard man, and is constantly being followed by a tall, darkly handsome man. There is also a journalist, who determines to write an expose of the whole mess, assuming that the short man is Potter and the tall man is Romanes. After she flees the hotel with the tall man, Father Brown explains that in fact, it was the other way 'round. The tall handsome man is her husband,and the old man is the poet. As he explains to the journalist, "You see, you are so incurably romantic that your whole case was founded on the idea that a man looking like a young god couldn't be called Potter."

* In the ''Retrievers'' books by Laura Anne Gilman, the titular Retrievers are Wren, a short, nondescript woman who is an accomplished thief and powerful magic-user, and Sergei, a tall, muscular man who handles the financial end of things. People usually assume their roles are the other way around.

* ''[[The Dark Side of the Sun]]'' by Terry Pratchett features [[Encyclopedia Exposita|several quotes]] from and descriptions of the works of Charles Sub-Lunar, who amongst his many acomploshments translated the Joker language - or co-deciphered, the work traditionally being attributed to "a poet and a mad computer". The main character, Dom, keeps running into (but not speaking to) "a thickset Earthman with a face criscrossed with dueling scars and a small battered Class One robot", and is told this is Sub-Lunar. Much later, when he mentions the "poet and mad computer" line, he's told "Yes, although he's not really mad. I don't know who the poet was. His servant is quite fascinating too, with all those scars."

* Played with in ''[[Garrett P.I.|Old Tin Sorrows]]'', when Garrett must secretly bring a doctor to examine a wealthy client who thinks he's there to track down some stolen property. Morley escorts both a doctor and a fence to the estate, and Garrett mentally mistakes each for the other ... because Morley [[Genre Savvy|deliberately sought out]] a doctor who looked sleazy enough to be passed off as a fence's assistant.

* In Natsume Soseki's ''I Am A Cat'', [[Woolseyism|Sneaze]]/Kushami is called on by a policeman bringing the recently-captured thief who robbed his (Sneaze's) house. Sneaze assumes the thief is the policeman because he's more smartly dressed.

 

* On ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' when Vincent Price guess starred, there was a skit in which Fozzie and Gonzo stop at a castle and are greeted by Price, who lives there with his lovely assistant and a hideous beast. A hideous looking character appears and Fozzie assumes he's the beast. "Watch it! ''I'm'' the lovely assistant."

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

* An episode of ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' had the characters eager to impress a prospective new student who was said to be a [[Child Prodigy]]. Unfortunately, they had heard conflicting stories about whether she's "eight and speaks four languages" or "four and speaks eight languages". They end up leading a perfectly normal four year old around the school, thinking she's smarter than they are (though considering their mistake, they might have a point there).

* ''[[Sister, Sister]]'' turns this one on its head in the SAT episode (well, the ''second'' SAT episode). The girls hire a tutor, and the man that arrives is older than they expected. He says as much, as he's just the district coordinator, then introduces the actual tutor...who's much ''younger'' than they expected.

 

== Video Games ==

* In the ''[[Knights of the Old Republic (video game)|Knights of the Old Republic]]'' [[Game Mod]] ''Brotherhood of Shadow,'' you and Shadow can take a job helping a dance company audition for Czerka. A human greets you and does much of the talking, but Czerka's "leisure officer" is actually a Gammorean!

 

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

{{quote|'''Leela:''' You know, this might actually work. The Omicronians seem to have trouble telling one person from another.

'''Zapp Brannigan:''' True. At the negotiations, they thought Kif here was the statesman and I was a jabbering mental patient. }}

 

== Real Life ==

{{quote|With Ali G, the interview requests come from a fake British production company (United World Productions). And until just before the cameras roll, the interviewee is under the impression that the clean-cut, well-dressed director is going to do the interview and the baggy-clothed, wraparound-shades-wearing character carrying equipment is just part of the crew.}}

* According to Arrianus, this happened to [[Alexander the Great]], as he met with Darius's daughter Strateira, who began to address Alexander's companion Hephaistion as Alexander. One of her subordinates corrected her. It seems they were [[Expecting Someone Taller]]. (Don't feel too bad, though; [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|he too is Alexander]].)