Imagined Innuendo
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What happens when, in-story, Alice starts interpreting statements by Bob to be a variant of Double Entendre. Most common if Alice has either been given misinformation by a third party, or if she's simply not intelligent enough to realize what it is that Bob is actually referring to. Almost always, Hilarity Ensues.
Can result in I Didn't Mean to Turn You On.
Not to be confused with the Accidental Innuendo, where it's the audience who got the wrong impression. Compare and contrast Innocent Innuendo.
Examples of Imagined Innuendo include:
Literature
- This happens in P. G. Wodehouse novels all the time. Bertie Wooster mistakenly creates the impression that he is proposing to/hitting on/in love with various women on a regular basis (when usually he is, in fact, trying to set her up with a friend). Most of the time they aren't particularly interested in Bertie, but end up accepting his "proposal" anyway, for one reason or another.
- In The Stupidest Angel, during a bout of sex, Molly promises to wash Theo's car. Theo assumes this is a euphemism for something, but confesses he doesn't know what it means. Molly explains it means exactly what she said.
Live-Action TV
- In one episode of Just Shoot Me, a prankster switching around the "from" tags on birthday gifts ends up switching a gag gift of sex toys with a normal gift of video games. The guy with the presents is understandably uncertain when the woman who gave him video games asks if she can come to his house to "play with the present I gave you".
- In Glee, Mercedes suspects that Kurt is gay...at least until the cheerleaders tell her he likes her. Then she interprets every time they hang out as a date. Unfortunately, her first instincts were correct.
- Happens again in Season Two between Kurt and Blaine. There's even a throwback to the above example after it all comes crashing down.
- In I Love Lucy, Lucy goes to a job interview with Ricky in disguise. Unfortunately, Ricky can't really talk to women without sounding like he's propositioning them. When he asks to see her credentials, Lucy slaps him.
Theatre
- Used quite famously in Much Ado About Nothing. Once Benedick has been tricked into believing that Beatrice is in love with him, he immediately interprets his next vicious encounter with her as being a form of Slap Slap Kiss- ignoring the fact that this encounter is quite identical to every other encounter they've had where he saw no romantic subtext at all.
Web Original
- In Commodore HUSTLE, Alex invokes this in "Bros Clubbing Bros".
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Alex: Hey James, you wanna play Bros Twisting bros? |
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- Kämpfer Abridged. This happened in the anime as well, but poor Akane's confusion over Natsuru asking her to come over to his house is more hilarious than it was.
Western Animation
- One episode of The Simpsons has Homer as a Union Boss who Burns tries to deal with by making innuendos toward bribery. Unfortunately, Homer isn't smart enough to understand this and ends up concluding that Burns is trying to seduce him. Unfortunately for Burns, anyway.