Accidental Unfortunate Gesture: Difference between revisions

* From ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to Thethe Galaxy (Franchise)/And Another Thing|And Another Thing]]'' by [[Eoin Colfer]]:

* Briefly discussed in ''[[Help I'm Trapped]] In An Alien's Body!'' in which the protagonist, [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|in an alien's body due to a]] [[Freaky Friday Flip]], still serves his position as goalie in his soccer game. At some point he notices two other aliens watching off to the side, and they wave at him every time he sees them. He then begins worrying about it, because "Sure, waving is friendly on Earth, but maybe where they come from, it means 'We're gonna kill you!'"

* Also lampshaded in ''[[Discworld (Literature)|Discworld]]'', where inter-species communication has always been difficult. Apparently for trolls, saying hello involves a firm smack on the head, while a friendly handshake is actually an severe insult to their mother.

** In the Made For TV version of [[The Colour of Magic (Filmfilm)|The Colour of Magic]], Twoflower's handbook warns him that making a 2 with your index and middle fingers is rude if the back of the hand is facing forward but palm side is fine. Unfortunately he didn't read that until after using it when talking the bartender.

* In ''[[Scrubs (TV)|Scrubs]]'', JD tries to punch the air in the "Booyah!!" style to the deaf father of a deaf patient, as the Janitor was making the relay in sign language for them. He doesn't really make a fist as much as... Well, the Janitor calmly says "[[Those Wacky Nazis|Nazi salute]]."

* ''[[Friends (TV)|Friends]]'': Rachel goes to shake the hand of her prospective employer, and accidentally grabs his penis. ([[It Makes Sense in Context]].)

* ''[[Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip]]'': the plastic Santa the show has put up for its Christmas show is supposed to be waving but is giving the Nazi salute.

* On ''[[Star Trek: theThe Next Generation (TV)|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'', Picard recounts a story in which he tried to greet an alien ambassador with one of her culture's hand gestures, but ended up accidentally propositioning her instead.

** Once, when negotiating with a culture where body language was as important as words, [[Star Trek: Voyager|Janeway]] almost caused a diplomatic incident by putting her hands on her hips, a deadly insult. Fortunately Neelix was there to pour oil on the waves.

* Happens in an episode of ''[[Father Ted (TV)|Father Ted]]''. He's ranting about something entirely innocuous, but someone sees him from outside, and the confluence of a small rectangular black mark on the window which appears to them to be directly below his nose, and his repeated hand gestures, make him look like Hitler.

* ''[[Seinfeld (TV)|Seinfeld]]'': Elaine's boss Mr. Pitt raises his hand in a...familiar way...to indicate to his shareholders that their stock will rise "high". The fact that his upper lip is smeared with ink in the middle doesn't help.

* One episode of ''[[Are You Being Served? (TV)|Are You Being Served]]'' has a mechanical Santa Claus who opens his arms wide to give children hugs. Problem: the arms are stitched to the coat (and apparently can't be cut away without irrevocable damage). So when Santa opens his arms... Making it worse is that the robot also says, "Ho, ho, ho, little boy! [[Accidental Innuendo|Have I got a surprise for you!]]" (Fortunately, the robot is a mannequin under the coat. It still makes Mr. Humphries faint.)

* Example from ''[[Community (TV)|Community]]'' episode [[Community (TV)/Recap/S1 E08 Home Economics|Home Economics]], Annie does a had shaking gesture that is highly suggestive.

* A first season episode of ''[[JAG (TV)|JAG]]'' had Meg tell a story about how her Italian boyfriend got very confused by the "hook'em horns" sign being made by everyone at a University of Austin football game she took him to. (To many Europeans, the exact same gesture means "I'm screwing your wife.")

* On ''[[The Goodies (TV)|The Goodies]]'', Tim (as [[Winston Churchill]]), gives the "two fingered salute" gesture when he was actually indicating that he wanted a cigar. Graeme then has the idea of turning his hand around to create the iconic "V for Victory" symbol.

* In an episode of ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'', the crew land on Earth and hide out in an abandoned house in the USA. They find a photo of someone making the Middle Finger gesture, and believe it to be a greeting. [[Hilarity Ensues]] as they go out and meet the neighbours.

* In ''[[Dilbert (Comic Strip)|Dilbert]]'', Dilbert became a boss and enjoyed his newfound ability to command his underlings with a wave of his hand. However, they misinterpreted his wave and threw a guy out the window.

* A recent ''[[Girls Withwith Slingshots]]'' has an envisioning of Chris the Pirate's sweet attempts to speak ASL going horribly wrong as he places his fingers in an attempt to sign "I love you" but does the sign for [[wikipedia:Shocker (hand gesture)|"The Shocker"]] instead.

* One ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' story homages ''[[Around the World Inin Eighty Days]]'', and Pinky explains a bunch of offensive gestures (which are actually nonsense) in the country they arrive at to Brain, who winds up doing all of them at the wrong time because (1) he never even paid attention to Pinky, and (2) he was being swarmed by bees at the time. Cue the awkward hand swatting.

* When the ''[[Storm Hawks (Animation)|Storm Hawks]]'' visit Terra Wallop, they accidentally discover that extending both hands palms outward towards someone - the typical 'calm down' gesture - means "I am challenging you to a duel".

* In the [[Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness|Kung Fu Panda]] holiday special, Po discovers that many of his duties as the Dragon Warrior involving setting up the annual holiday ceremony are themselves very nearly ceremonies in their own right. When he's sampling foods to choose who will do the catering, Monkey passes by and waves hello; when Po returns the wave, everyone ''flips out'' and the chef he's talking to just about swears eternal revenge. It turns out that waving in that exact manner, with that hand, is the ceremonial signal for utter rejection; that the Dragon Warrior has found the food ''so abominable'' that the chef's entire village is essentially kicked out of China in disgrace.

** An example can be seen in the film ''[[Pod People]]'', which was made in Spain. A singer makes this gesture after recording a song, only to then say "It ''stinks''". Doing this became a running gag on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000 (TV)|Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' after this movie was featured. The confusing part is that he's ''smiling'' as he gives the sign.