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A character approaches a situation under the impression that they're dealing with a prank, a con, or a staged event. Unfortunately for them, it's all quite real. When they eventually find out, expect mighty embarrassment or even [[Fainting]] if the situation was dangerous enough. Sometimes this is a [[Magic Feather]], and it's revealed that the character is [[Achievements in Ignorance|far more competent than they realize]].
Not always played for laughs, if the character realizes the reality of the situation before he succeeds (and especially if their oblivious actions have made things worse in the meantime).
In comedies, discovering that the situation is real often turns the poor shmuck [[Genre Savvy]].
Compare [[Real After All]], [[Mistaken for An Impostor]] and [[All Part of the Show]]. Contrast [[The Game Never Stopped]] and [[You Just Ruined the Shot]], where the character thinks events ''are'' real, but they aren't. See also [[Mistaken for Badass]], [[Not a Game]].
{{examples|page=this trope}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The main character of ''[[
** Suzuo also put on the suit because he didn't take the claims about fighting supervillains seriously, since the suits makers were a toy company. He realizes too late that toy companies can make weapons too.
* ''[[
** [[Digimon Adventure
** ''[[
* [[Haruhi Suzumiya
** This may have backfired disturbingly. {{spoiler|There's hints that Haruhi may have [[Reality Warper|unconsciously conjured up a real killer]] before realizing it was a game, to provide a suitable suspect that wasn't part her circle of friends. A killer who may well still be on that island.}}
* In ''[[Akagi]]'', the insanely talented title character agrees to play [[Mahjong]] against Yakuza rep player Urabe only if his mild-mannered coworker Osamu plays first. As it turns out, Osamu is actually quite good and holds his own against the professional... until he hears that the game is being played for a wager of 32 million yen between two rival Yakuza groups. His emotions overwhelm his ability to play, and Akagi has to step in and save him.
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* The protagonists in ''[[Bokurano]]'' are told they're going to pilot giant robots as part of a game. This is a massive, ''[[It Got Worse|massive]]'' [[Kill'Em All|lie]].
** At least from their point of view. For whoever's ''behind'' it, however...
* Played straight by the ''[[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* One of the [[DC Comics]] science fiction comics once had a one-shot story about a man stuck in his humdrum life who finds three discs. Each one, when activated, whisks him away into what he thinks is a particular vivid daydream where he gets to play the role of the hero, and vanishes when the 'daydream' ends. The final 'daydream' takes him to his hometown where he thwarts a gang of bank robbers. When he returns home, he finds himself being hailed as a hero and he realizes that all of the 'daydreams' were actually real. He faints.
* In the [[Lucky Luke]] "Nitroglycerine" story, Luke is escorting a shipment of nitroglycerine to a railroad tunnel site. The Daltons, spying on him, think the huge crate is filled with gold bars, being sent to the town of "Nitro". Hilarity Ensues when the Daltons try to shoot the lock off, jump bridges on the train, etc. At the end, Joe demands to know where the gold was, and faints upon learning what was inside.
* A comic about [[Donald Duck]], ''Lost Valley'', has him forced to become a tour guide in the Amazon. When he and the tourists come upon an ancient temple inhabited by evil sentient apes who kidnap his companions, initially he panics... until he finds a booklet that details the travel bureau's great plan to create a fake ancient temple with costumed actors to scare the gullible tourists. He then proceeds to kick ass and take names. After they're all back to civilization, Donald angrily storms into the office to protest about being included in a fraud, only to be told that he came upon a REAL temple with REAL monsters. He faints upon hearing this.
* In an old ''Eagle'' story from the ''Thirteenth Floor'', a bullied schoolboy is trained in Kung Fu by a computer using virtual reality, but he is still too afraid to fight the school bullies until the computer lures them into its VR suite and lets the little "wimp" spiflicate them thinking that they're part of the programme.
== [[Film]] ==
* In ''[[
* Tim Allen's character in ''[[
** To be fair, he was hung-over and didn't want to stay on the "set" any longer than necessary.
* Guido (Roberto Benigni) spends most of the film ''Life is Beautiful'' trying to maintain his son's condition as The Child Who Knew Too Little, to maintain his hope. The truth? They were both in a ''Nazi concentration camp''.
* In the movie ''[[Problem Child]]'', Ben Healy (John Ritter) encounters a bear at a campsite, and, believing it to be a friend in costume, acts playfully towards it. He soon realizes that the bear is an actual animal. During the ensuing panic, the bear retreats and the actual friend dressed as a bear arrives, whom Ben hits over the head with a skillet.
* A good 2/3 through ''Malibu's Most Wanted'', the main character B-rad finds out that the "thugs" who kidnapped him were actually just actors hired by his father to try to scare him straight. Instead of revealing that he knows what's really going on, he decides to play along and have fun with it. When actual thugs kidnap him and the actors, however, he doesn't realize anything's wrong, and his fearlessness puts him in terrible danger but also lets him become the ultimate gangsta.
* In the film ''[[¡Three Amigos!
** Double for the bit where they {{spoiler|attempt a ritual to summon the "invisible swordsman". They successfully summon the swordsman, but end up with Dusty shooting him because he didn't aim his guns safely upwards during the "fire gun" part.}}
* In the movie ''[[
** Although it does have an effect on him: since he thinks he's invisible, he gets confident enough to be able to fight with reckless abandon, which stupefies Blackdan's crew enough for him to beat several of them, and also inspire several of his own crew to fight.
* Nicholas Angel in ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'' being called about an "escaped swan". "And who might you be? P. I. Staker? Right. 'Pisstaker'? Come on!" Cut away to Nicholas taking Mr. Staker's statement.
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** Interestingly, the [[Big Bad]] does try to warn him, realizing the kind of embarrassment this is going to cause, but English isn't about to listen to a Frenchman.
* This is apparently premise of the film ''[[Tropic Thunder]]'': Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr. (As a method actor who has been surgically altered into a Black man) get dropped into a real war zone while still thinking they're filming a movie about the Vietnam War. Robert Downey Jr. almost immediately realizes the mistake. The others... take a little time.
* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in the 2008 Disney film ''[[
* Also inverted in ''[[
* In ''[[Indiana Jones and
* In ''[[My Name Is Bruce]]'' Bruce Campbell (playing himself) is kidnapped by a fan who wants his help fighting a monster that's killing the townsfolk. Bruce believes that he is there to star in an unscripted movie. Bruce realizes that the monster is real when he leads an attack on it, and he promptly turns around and flees.
* Happens with Commandant Lassard in the fifth [[Police Academy]].
** To the point of him ''helping'' the kidnappers get away.
** Subverted in that, when he finds out the truth, he doesn't faint or feel embarrassed. He immediately disarms the head kidnapper with a single move, who doesn't expect it from an old man.
* The entire premise of ''[[The Game (
** Or {{spoiler|is he really just going insane and having paranoid delusions?}}
* The first two victims in ''Westworld'' assume the androids will let them win their duels as they have been programmed to do, not realizing that [[
* This is the entire plot of the classic sci-fi film ''The Last Starfighter''.
** The main character is a teenager who is the best in his town at a video game. You can guess what happens next.
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* At the end of ''What About Bob?'' Bob thinks he is undergoing "Death Therapy" although Dr. Leo Marvin is actually {{spoiler|trying to kill him.}}
* Played with in the original ''[[Tron]]''. Flynn's been zapped into the computer system and captured by Master Control's forces. They take him to the Game Grid where Ram informs what he thinks is just another captive Program about the situation, and that he'll be forced to play video games. Flynn laughs it off, saying he plays games better than anyone...and then the poor bastard finds out just how differently things work on the other side of the screen.
* In ''[[
* In ''[[A Bug's Life
== [[Literature]] ==
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* The Endymion in Dan Simmons ''Rise of Endymion'' does some pretty bad ass acrobatics on a mountain cliff, all the while thinking that dropping would be such a hassle because somebody would have to retrieve him from the safety line. Just until he sees some fearful friend rush to him with just that safety line he forgot to attach. Considering the circumstances, his lapse of mind is easily forgiven, though.
* In John Dickson Carr's ''The Arabian Nights Murder'', a set of friends putting on an act to trick one of their buddies hires an actor to play a professor in an Arabian museum. They are surprised when a ''real'' professor, a friend of the museum's owner, arrives for a meeting and is treated as an actor who looks just like the real thing. In the meantime, the professor thinks that the actors are real, and attacks one of them in an act of misguided heroics.
* In ''Halting State'' by [[Charles Stross]], the British and Chinese intelligence agencies both run [[Alternate Reality Game
* The Howlers in K.A. Applegate's ''[[
* Another dramatic example: in the sci-fi novella "Wine of the Dreamers", Raul Kinson is raised in a dwindling [[Human Alien|alien compound]] and believes the devices he periodically sleeps in are advanced virtual reality devices that create three alternate worlds within the dreamers' minds. Killing or humiliating dream characters is a popular sport. Unfortunately, the dream worlds are actually long-lost colony planets, one of which is Earth! Over the course of millennia, the dreamers have destroyed space programs and even triggered nuclear wars due to a misremembered plan that the "dreams" must end when the colony worlds achieve interstellar flight.
* The plot of [[
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* When the holodeck in ''[[Star Trek:
* In one ''[[Star Trek
** In the episode "Move Along Home", Quark begins playing a game with some mysterious new visitors using four pieces, when he discovers that four crew members have been whisked off to the game world. {{spoiler|Subverted when he loses, and they all materialize back at Quark's. After all, it's just a game!}}
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' has the main characters attend a convention about the series of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' books, which exist in the universe. When they get there, they find a LARP going on in which an old urban myth is the basis of a 'hunt'. They team up with a [[Ho Yay|gay couple]] [[Bromance|who are LARPing]] [[Lampshade Hanging|as Sam & Dean]], and when they realise that the events of the book are real, they choose to team up (unknowingly) with the real Sam and Dean to help take down the [[Big Bad]], because "It's what Sam and Dean would do." The real Sam and Dean choose to play along, claiming to just be fans who are so into the books that they took up monster-hunting for real.
* In an episode of ''[[The Thin Blue Line]]'', Fowler confronts and talks down a group of dangerous bank robbers, while under the impression they were students playing a prank.
** Inverted in real life, when a street thief ran round a corner and encountered some people dressed as New York City cops, who he surrendered to. They held him for half an hour until a police car arrived... whereupon they informed him that he had just given himself up to [[Too Dumb to Live|actors]] [[You Just Ruined the Shot|filming on location.]]
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* On ''[[Frasier]]'' the exact same thing happens.
** Except Niles, etc. had the opposite goal; to convince everyone else that the recently deceased was just part of the game.
* In one episode of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', Sheppard and McKay are playing what they think is a simulation/strategy game similar to ''[[
* In the ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'' episode "Bye Bye Kenan: Part 2", Kenan comes up with a [[Zany Scheme]] to force his father to quit his new job as a park ranger by having one of his new friends dress up as a bear and frighten his father into quitting. [[Hilarity Ensues]] when <s>a slightly more realistic bear costume</s> a ''real'' bear shows up first.
* In "Rose", the first episode of the revived ''[[Doctor Who]]'', Rose encounters a crowd of Autons, plastic mannequins animated by the Nestene Consciousness, and is saved from certain death by the Doctor. She guesses that the Autons are in fact students dressed up as a prank. She is wrong.
* In one episode of ''[[M*A*S*H (
** Which is what many real-world heroes do, including a large percentage of Medal of Honor winners.
* In ''[[The Monkees]]'' episode "The Picture Frame", the Monkees are hired to play bank robbers in a movie holdup scene, not knowing they will actually be robbing the bank.
* Spike knows too little in the final series of ''Angel''. Confronting a wild young girl, he challenges the demon possessing her to come out and fight him. Sadly, demonic possession is not what's going on here. She is an insane vampire-slayer, and what she does to him is amongst the squickiest violence in the Buffy/Angel canon.
* Both played straight and inverted by the ''same situation'' in one episode of [[Castle]]: it starts by showing the victim, who paid good money to play at being a spy in a rather impressive personalized [[Alternate Reality Game]], being chased by someone who he assumed was part of the game, but was actually a real-life murderer. On discovering the body, complete with all sorts of cool spy props, Castle of course assumes actual espionage was involved - and proceeds to thoroughly confuse the actors hired as part of the ARG. Similarly, a man picked up in the course of the investigation is suave, confident, and refuses to tell the cops a goddamned thing... until they mention the ARG and he realizes that this isn't part of the game, he's ''really been arrested by the real police''. The super-spy promptly evaporates and is replaced with an ordinary man who's rather terrified at how over his head he's gotten.
* In one episode of ''[[
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Since the Holy Grail War in ''[[Fate Extra]]'' takes place in [[Cyberspace]], many of the participating Masters initially approached it as a game. The full impact of just what they'd signed up for and [[There Can Be Only One|the conditions for winning]] (namely that the losers ''have their body and soul erased from reality, no one but the surviving contestants remembering they ever even existed'') doesn't sink in until the first round ends. This is particularly driven home by {{spoiler|Shinji}}'s reaction.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Kent from ''[[
* In ''[http://clanofthecats.com/ Clan of the Cats]'', the main character is a [[Shape Shifter|shape-shifting witch]], who can transform into a black panther. After an incident during a vacation with her [[The Ditz|ditzy half-sister]], she runs off into the woods in a distressed state. Shortly after, a black panther is found hiding in a crawlspace under the house they're staying in, and The Ditz crawls in there to comfort her half-sister. After spending most of the night trying to cheer up her half-sister, she finally finds out that it's a REAL black panther, who has just escaped from a private zoo...
** Similarly, in one of the books by Laura Ingalls-Wilder, her mother goes out in the dark to see to the cows, and finds instead a bear. But, believing it to be her cow, she swats it on the rump. This leads to her ordering Laura to "go back inside--now" in an effective lesson on quick obedience.
* ''[[Killroy And Tina]]'': When an enemy of Killroy's [https://web.archive.org/web/20100617082351/http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/killroyandtina.php?name=killroyandtina&view=single&ID=4148 shows up while he's training Tina], Killroy lets Tina believe it's part of the test.
* ''[[The Wotch]]'': Anne [http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2006-01-30 mistakes an actual attack] for a training exercise.
* ''[[Captain SNES]]'' did this in the 2008 Halloween series, with Alex refusing to believe that the murders around him were real initially (they were in a "murder mystery" simulation) but even then, {{spoiler|it wasn't REALLY real as it was [[All Just a Dream]].}}
** Earlier, he'd been fearlessly facing his trials in The Desert and dealing with Zeromus, believing that if he did die he'd simply be able to reset to the last save point and try again. When he is able to later talk it over with Bob, he learns that, due to the rules of the save points, the danger was very real and he was quite capable of dying for real. Naturally, he freaked out.
* Inverted in ''[[Jump Leads]]'' issue 2, "It Came From Space!": {{spoiler|Meaney and Llewellyn believe that they are on a spaceship being attacked by an alien for real, but it turns out it's a historical re-enactment}}.
* In ''[[
* ''[[
* In the ''[[
* ''[[Full Frontal Nerdity]]'' presents: [http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=213 Endernomics]!
== [[Web Original]] ==
* The participants in ''[[Suburban Knights]]'' start their quest off believing that it's just some pseudo-LARP adventure. by the end of Part 2 they discover that there really ''are'' supernatural beings standing in their way, and [[Oh Crap|don't take it too well.]]
{{quote|
* Taken literally in ''[[One Hundred Yard Stare]]'' when Macy threatens to punch everyone if it is just a game...Unfortunately it is [[The Slender Man Mythos|much more than that]].
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In one episode of ''[[The Life and Times of Juniper Lee]]'', "The World According to LARP", June's brother Dennis is kidnapped by monsters (as opposed to the ''intended'' target, her other brother Ray Ray... the orders given were something to the tone of "the one who can see monsters"), but believes this to be his [[LARP]] (live-action role-play) group's new adventure. Since his "props" are ''real'' magical items that he stole from June's room (which also happen to make him able to see monsters like Ray Ray), he defeats his kidnappers and escapes the dungeon with no idea that any of it was real.
* In ''[[
* The ''[[Kim Possible]]'' episode "Larry's Birthday" featured Professor Dementor kidnapping Kim's [[
** Drakken's plan in "Clean Slate" was to set up a fake engine overload on a train in order to trigger an evacuation. After he and Shego boarded the train, and Kim and Ron showed up to stop them, he realized that he'd forgotten about the "fake" part....
* In one Goofy short, Goofy demonstrates to his son how he would deal with a mountain lion if one should attack, not realising that he has grabbed hold of an actual mountain lion in the process.
* This happened to [[Inspector Gadget]] all the time.
* Happens a lot on the cartoon show ''[[
** To be fair, she didn't think it was the co-host, but an extra. It's harder to believe that most of the other characters are scared of the co-host in a costume when he's only wearing a mask and is still in his regular clothes. Also, said co-host is scary even when not wearing a hockey mask.
* One episode of ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (
* Ine one episode of ''[[
* An episode of [[Pinky and The Brain]] had Brain staging a victory over a giant monster by having them grow to giant sizes and have Pinky dress up as one. Brain then finds an actual giant monster he at first believes to be Pinky.
* An odd case occurs in an episode of ''[[
== Real Life ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Mistaken for Index]]
[[Category:And You Thought It Was
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