Rashomon Style: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Marge''': ''Come on, Homer. Japan will be fun! You liked ''[[Rashomon]]''.''

 

 

More usually, the audience will get the definitive true version of the story at the end of the episode. One or more of the points of view will be obviously false and/or a transparent attempt to make the teller of the story look good. By the time a show does this plot, we often know which characters are less trustworthy.

 

This trope gets easily confused with [[POV Sequel]], [[Self-Serving Memory]], [[Simultaneous Arcs]] and [[Perspective Flip]], so before you add an example here, see these tropes.

 

* ''[[Akahori Gedou Hour Lovege]]'''s 11th episode has [[Boke and Tsukkomi Routine|comedy duo]] Love Pheromone recapping how they came to be while in the middle of preparation. Aimi's view of the events is centered around her and filled with romantic cliches. Kaoruko's view of the events reveals that Aimi's always been a bit self-centered, even as a kid.

* ''[[Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho]]'' has one episode where Momoko and Sanae give differing views on how the swim club was formed. Sanae, known to be a liar and a storyteller, spins a web of [[Hot for Student|student-teacher relationships]] and [[Schoolgirl Lesbians]], but Momoko's side discounts both of those. At the end of the episode, a sign is given that Sanae may not have been entirely lying...

* A rather touching case in ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]''. Simon tells about the time they were trapped in a cave-in, and he was only able to keep digging to get them out because Kamina was there to encourage him. Later we hear (via Yoko) Kamina's story about the time they were trapped in a cave-in, and he was only able to keep his cool because Simon kept digging.

* There are three important factions interested in Haruhi from the beginning in ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]].'' Those are the espers, time travelers and aliens. All of them offer different explanations for what exactly Haruhi is and what she did three years ago, as well as giving different explanations of their origins. The esper says Haruhi created all three groups, is possibly a god and remade the world three years ago. The time traveler says time travelers came to investigate a problem Haruhi caused, that she's just a normal person with an odd ability and that she broke the time plane three years ago rather than remaking the universe. The alien spews a lot of big words that Kyon can't really understand, then later says she's not going to offer any more explanations because Kyon has no way of knowing if she's telling the truth while pointing out all three groups have good reason to lie to him. The implication is that all three are partially correct, but also either withholding information, mistaken or outright lying. It only gets more complicated from there.

 

* In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' there was the story "Total Re:Genesis", in which a battle against an enemy robot is told four times, once by each of the heroes and once by Nicole (a computer, who reports on what really happened). Not only does each of the heroes make themselves out to be single-handedly responsible for defeating the robot, but each version of the story is drawn by a different artist.

* There is a ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' story by [[Peter David]], called ''Eye Witness'' (''Spectacular Spider-Man'' #121), where Mary Jane, Peter, and J. Jonah Jameson tell the story of a bank robbery where they were present. Mary Jane describes the robber as a menacing thug, Jameson acting bravely, and Spider-Man as a hero. Jameson describes the robber similarly, himself as the hero, and Spider-Man as a coward and a criminal. Peter tells the truth (apart from him being Spider-Man); the robber was an amateur with a BB gun, Jameson acted cowardly, and he (as Spider-Man) didn't have to do much.

* In ''[[Hero Squared]]'', the superhero and supervillain from the destroyed comic book universe briefly recount to other characters how the universe was destroyed from their perspective. In the superhero's narrative, he's attempting to save reality from an evil [[Omnicidal Maniac]] who ends up destroying all of creation out of spite. In the supervillain's story, she's innocently going about her business when the superhero and his cronies burst in in a fit of self-righteous violence and ham-fistedly smash up her lab despite her protests, destroying reality through blundering incompetence. Curiously, we never find out the truth, but while the supervillain's protestations of innocence are clearly unreliable based on what we've seen from her, the superhero is ''also'' an [[Unreliable Narrator]], as he's blinded by an overly simplistic [[Black and White Morality]] viewpoint and issues with the supervillain he'd rather not face up to.

 

* This ''[[One Piece]]'' fanfic; ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1580928/1/ Silver River]''.

* This ''[[When They Cry]]'' fic, ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6552286/1/ In a Shrine]''.

* This ''[[Glee]]'' fanfic, ''[http://miggy.livejournal.com/841553.html Three Tons]''.

 

* ''[[Hoodwinked]]'' applies this trope to Little Red Riding Hood. You get to see the events of the (very altered) story through Red Riding Hood, Grandma, the wolf, and the Lumberjack (currently a schnitzel salesperson).

* ''[[Rashomon]]'' is both the [[Trope Namer]] and the [[Trope Maker]]. In medieval Japan a husband and wife are accosted by a bandit. We see the story of the encounter only in flashback. Facts common to all stories: 1) The husband is overpowered and tied up by the bandit, 2) there is a sexual encounter between the bandit and the wife, and 3) the husband ends up dead. At the murder trial each principal tells a different story of the incident that puts him/herself in a good light, but each confesses to the murder, so we don't believe anyone is outright lying just to conceal his/her own guilt. For the sake of getting the husband's story first hand, we are asked to believe that a local witch doctor is able to summon his spirit to testify.

** The wife claims that she was raped. When her husband demonstrated a sneering contempt for her helpless submission to the bandit, she killed him with a knife in her shock at his betrayal.

* Played for laughs and set to music with [[Gene Kelly]] and ''Les Girls'' (1957). One of the titular Girls of Kelly's troupe writes a scandalous Tell-All book which another insists is a twisted version of what actually happened; the third Girl says neither one is telling the truth; Kelly untwists the tangled skein, or does he?

 

* Marco Denevi's ''Rosaura a las diez'' (''Rosaura at ten o'clock'').

* Santiago Gamboa's ''Necropolis'' has the life story of a speaker who killed himself during a writer's congress retold three times by himself, his partner, and his wife.

* The first half or so of the ''[[Star Wars]]'' novel ''I, Jedi'' is one of these for the ''[[Jedi Academy Trilogy]].'' It gives a contrasting point of view of the events of that series without actually contradicting any of it, while simultaneously filling in a variety of [[Plot Hole]]s. The second half of the book tells the conclusion of the conflict that Corran Horn went to the academy to learn to deal with, which is related to, but separate from, the story of the happenings at the academy. Most consider it better than the trilogy

* [[Agatha Christie]] 's ''[[Five Little Pigs]]'' has [[Hercule Poirot]] solve a murder that took place sixteen years before by listening to the stories of the people involved.

* Used in ''[[The Bartimaeus Trilogy]]''. All the narrators are unreliable, with Kitty being the closest to a reliable one.

** Nathaniel's [[Badass Longcoat]] outfit at the beginning of the second book. Whereas Nathaniel thinks that it is, well, badass, Bartimaeus finds it completely ridiculous and Kitty proclaims it kind of stupid, though it is not clear if she just says this because she hates magicians in general or because the outfit really is stupid.

* Not present through the whole text, but events in ''[[A Dirge for Prester John]]'' are sometimes told from different, and conflicting, points of view. Namely John and Hagia's narration. And Sefalet's two mouths.

 

* Done in a subtle way in [[The BBC]]'s horror [[Mockumentary]] ''Ghostwatch''. The same footage of apparent paranormal phenomena gets replayed with small differences in order to undermine the viewer's sense of reality.

* ''[[Coupling]]'' - This trope is used to great effect. Occurs a couple of times per season. They tend to take one of two forms: each re-telling gives only fragments of the story and the big jokes are not revealed until all the pieces are fitted together, or the classic Rashomon-style subjective viewpoints, such as the party episode mentioned below in which Sally's version of events completely omits the fact that she was {{spoiler|staggeringly drunk}}.

* ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]'' had an episode in which Raymond and Debra both retold the events of an afternoon. The most notable thing about this, is none of the events were actually changed in either retelling - both characters used the same lines, and the same things happened, albeit with different severity in both (example: In Debra's retelling Ray opens a can of tuna and overreacts to a small amount of spillage - in Ray's, the can almost explodes and he's rather nonchalant about it). The tone used by the characters in each version gives the exact same lines entirely different contexts.

* ''Empty Nest'': Harry and Laverne recall their first meeting at her job interview in a dispute over whether she ever promised to wear a nursing cap. In Harry's version, Laverne is a naive country bumpkin, in Laverne's she is competent and professional (perhaps overly so) and a weak and indecisive Harry defers to her.

** Hawkeye gave his version of events (which more or less, falls in line with the way the characters normally act).

* ''[[Boomtown]]'' was built entirely around this concept, although it was abandoned shortly before cancellation. The hook was you needed everyone's perspective to know what happened, but once you had that there was no argument over what really happened. Boomtown would be better described as objectively following various characters in overlapping timelines rather than showing their subjective perspectives on a single event, as in [[Rashomon]].

* ''[[ER]]'' - "Four Corners" was hyped as being in the style of [[Rashomon]], but ended up being more of a [[Perspective Flip]], as rather than subjective perspectives on one event, the episode followed four separate characters (Kerry, Benton, Greene, and Carter) in separate storylines that happened to overlap at certain points. The different viewpoints were literal—if Kerry saw something from one angle, Mark saw it from another.

* An episode of ''[[Maude]]'' featured a party in which Maude's prized punch bowl was smashed. The next day, Maude demanded to know how it happened. Each character told the story in a different way, but despite the obvious differences, each version was heartily endorsed by the maid, Mrs. Naugatuck, with "And that's the God's honest truth!" {{spoiler|It turned out the punch bowl had been smashed by an equally smashed Mrs. Naugatuck.}}

* In an episode of ''[[Thirtysomething]]'' a married couple had an argument after visiting friends. During the visit the wife, who had been a cheerleader in high school, was asked to perform an old routine. When analyzing the argument later, in the husband's flashback, the wife was being blatantly sexual toward the other husband while performing the cheer. In the wife's flashback, when the husband led her by the arm toward the door, he was brutally grabbing her, twisting her arm. Neither of those things had actually happened during the original scene.

 

 

* An independent theatre piece called "The Wedding Pool". Various scenes are reenacted a couple of times, often with only minor variations in what's actually said and done, but with radically altered pacing and tone of voice.

* ''[[Noises Off]]'' is a variation on this. First we see them performing [[Show Within a Show|''Nothing On'']] during rehearsal. Then we see the play again from back stage as everything starts to fall apart between the actors. Finally we see ''Nothing On'' on its final day as the burnt out performers start to forget the lines and blocking until the whole thing descends into chaos.

* ''[[The Norman Conquests]]'' is similar - three separate plays (on three separate nights) about the same party, each set in a different place in the house.

* There is an improv game that involves characters acting out a scene multiple times. Once normally, and then from a "character's perspective". The character will be portrayed as sympathetically as possible, while the others become caricatures.

* Used in ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'' to [[Playing with a Trope|play with]] the [[Greedy Jew]] trope. Launcelot, Shylock's servant, complains to his father that he's so starved in Shylock's service that his ribs are visible. However, Launcelot just spent the whole scene practicing deceptions on his father's blindness—which means that nothing he says about his appearance can really be trusted. (This is open to interpretation, since actors of all sizes have played Launcelot over the years—but even if he ''is'' skinny, you could chalk that up to a high metabolism.) The way Shylock tells it, Launcelot is a [[Big Eater|"huge feeder"]] who was eating him out of house and home. Of course, Shylock is a miser, so he can't really be trusted either. And so it goes...

 

* The first video game to use this trope was arguably ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', much of which revolves around the Nibelheim Incident five years ago. Cloud narrates the event to the other characters, {{spoiler|but his narration later turns out to be unreliable, and the real version of the event is finally revealed later in the game.}}

** The differences in the scenes from ''[[Crisis Core]]'' can be seen as a prequel variant of this since the events in the original game is seen from Cloud's {{spoiler|less-then-reliable}} recollections.. and the events in ''[[Crisis Core]]'' is seen from Zack's. Inconsistencies between the two versions can easily be seen as the two not being able to make out exactly what the other one was doing at all times.

* In ''[[Resident Evil 2]]'', the player can experience the first half of the story from one of the two main characters' perspectives and then play through the other character's account of the same events.

* The [[Hentai]] [[Visual Novel]] ''Gloria'' does the unintentional version of this, having three separate storylines each affected by the focus character's limited perspective. The protagonist's storyline has his girlfriend acting strange and eventually leaving him; in her storyline we see that the [[Jerk Jock]] is sexually abusing her (hence the strange behavior) and she chose him over the protagonist due to [[Victim Falls For Rapist]].

 

* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' - The Strong Bad Email [http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail88.html "couch patch"] asks where the patch on the couch in Strong Bad's basement came from. Strong Bad and several other characters then relate widely divergent versions of what happened.

 

* Every storyline in ''[http://www.khaoskomix.com/ Khaos Komix]'' (except, of course, the first) starts with a side character recapping the events so far, which become the beginning of his or her own plot (usually some version of the [[Coming Out Story]]).

* In the ''Con Screw'' storyline [http://www.conscrew.com/index.php?strip_id=628 Seven Stories], Gavin tries to find out what happened at Rashocon by asking the seven major characters that had been there.

** And in [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0441.html Palpatine's] and [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0449.html Dookû's] competing versions of how Palpatine was captured.

* The ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' story "Ten Minutes at a Party" jumped in and out of this mode, following different points of view alternatively and showing the occasional event according to how a given character saw it rather than how it actually happened. The real version was generally given later after the mistaken one, and the only thing that was really left ambiguous in the end was whether Broadman was shouting "Who owns you guys?" or "Who owns you cows?" after beating up two guys in cow suits.

** Funnily enough, there are some details that are consistent throughout, such as K's use of [[Country Matters]].

 

* ''[[Loading Ready Run]]''

** Rashomon is played with in the video [http://loadingreadyrun.com/videos/view/231/the_season_4_finale The Season 4 Finale]. In it, the usual characters are gathered as old men at the site's 30-year reunion. None of them can agree on what happened in the Season 4 Finale, each of them preposing their own self-interested version that the others claim is erroneous.

* Ex-columnist Ian Fortey's last article for ''[[Cracked.com|Cracked]]'' was [http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-fortey-first-day-a-cracked-murder-mystery/ Who Killed Ian Fortey? A Roshomon Style Murder Mystery] with Ian himself [[The Lovely Bones|as the narrator]]. They also misspelled Rashomon.

* Another ''[[Cracked.com|Cracked]]'' example shows up in ''[[Agents of Cracked]]'', where four major characters are trying to claim responsibility for increasing the site's traffic. Dan's version is very dark and melancholy, while Mike Vision looks like "[[Term O Vision]]" on LSD. Mandy's is closer to reality, but Dan is completely absent, or played by someone completely different. Sarge's version is a merge of the same office scenes and his flashbacks. It eventually turns into a bit of a mess when they all start narrating at the same time.

* ''[[Oktober]]'' is a webnovel that is based around this concept.

 

* The final season of ''[[Moral Orel]]''.

* The ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'' episode Operation: R.E.P.O.R.T.: The operatives of Sector V must report a failed mission, and each point of view is done in a different style; Numbuh One's mimics ''Tron'', Numbuh Two's is styled after superhero comic books, Numbuh Three's is told through crayon drawings, Numbuh Four's is a spoof of [[Dragonball Z]], and Numbuh Five's is modeled after old cartoons, and drawn in the style of series co-creator Mo Willems.

* ''[[Clerks the Animated Series]]'' occasionally features Randall recollecting how the duo gets into a certain situation, usually involving Randall dressed as a gentleman, or being absurdly intelligent, while Dante is in a diaper, swinging a cat around by its tail, saying things like "I'm the biggest idiot ever!"—even for an event that had just happened some minutes before (the two getting locked in the freezer) and which, without exception, would be Randall's fault in the first place.

* In one episode of ''[[Aaahh Real Monsters]]'' the viewfinder the Gromble uses to read the students' memories of their scares breaks down, so he just tries asking the [[Power Trio]] how they managed to scare everyone at the opera. Ickus recounts the story as a [[Film Noir]] (with him as the hero) while Oblina recounts it by casting herself as an imperturbable [[Mary Sue]] superheroine. The Gromble, annoyed by their blatant fabrications, asks the less egotistical Krumm what happened, but he narrates a childish, simplistic set of events that only clearly indicates that Ickus and Oblina spent most of the assignment arguing. Finally the viewfinder is fixed and he forces all three of them on it to determine the true course of events - {{spoiler|it turns out that the three kept screwing up the basic parts of the plan until they accidentally landed in the middle of the concert floor, at which point they panicked but fortunately so did the humans they landed in front of and soon the entire building was evacuated}}. Needless to say, the Gromble was <s>not</s> [[Sadist Teacher|only too happy]] to punish them for lying.

* In one of the "Slappy Squirrel" shorts on ''[[Animaniacs]]'', Slappy is on trial for the assault of her perennial nemesis Walter Wolf. The three witnesses called are Slappy's nephew Skippy (who portrays Slappy as an angelic [[Friend to All Living Things]] and Walter as a horrible monster), Walter (who portrays himself as an angelic [[Friend to All Living Things]] and Slappy as an evil, child-hating hag), and Slappy (who freely confesses to not only the initial accusation but a lot more screwball antics, including blowing the plaintiff to smithereens).

* In an ''[[Alvin and The Chipmunks]]'' episode, each chipmunk has a different version of how Dave's piano got destroyed and had instant pudding in it.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Might Be an Index]]

[[Category:Flashbacks and Chronology]]

[[Category:Something Completely Different]]

[[Category:Plots]]