All The Tropes

Unsettling Gender Reveal: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Unsettling Gender Reveal (view source)

Revision as of 02:14, 5 June 2020

69 bytes removed ,  3 years ago
Updated some dated language
VisualWikitext
(Updated some dated language)
Line 63:
* ''[[Wandering Son]]''
** This happens to Riku Seya, a classmate of the Shuichi's older sister, Maho. Seya saw Shuuichi dressed as a girl and became infatuated, and convinced Maho to set them up. A future date at the aquarium turns into a rather shocking revelation which is not helped by a friend of Shuu's, "Mako-chan" (No, not [[Minami-ke|that one]]) also revealing himself. Seya is left rather confused by it all.
** The series has had a few instances of the rare female-to-male [[Transsexualismtransgender]] case too.
* In ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'', [[Villainous Crossdresser]] Kamatari drops a Bridget on his opponent Misao (and everyone defending the Aoiya as well) quite dramatically, complete with pixellated naughty bits. Note that particular scene was only in the manga (though the actual reveal still happened).
** Kenshin himself often causes this with viewers, and the fact that he's [[Cross-Dressing Voices|voiced by a woman in the original Japanese]] makes it worse (and legend has it that the character designer for ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' first came up with the character Baiken after making this mistake) and he's in fact based on a historical samurai, [[wikipedia:Kawakami Gensai|Kawakami Gensai]], who used his feminine appearance to get close to his targets and even managed to assassinate a man in broad daylight. He even hid out in a brothel at one point after an assassination.
Line 95:
* In the Hideshi Hino short story ''Sailor Psycho'', a girl is invited to the school idol's house to paint her portrait. She ends up discovering that the school idol is really a crossdressing boy with a school uniform fetish. The girl is killed when she freaks out and we find out that the idol's "mother" is really his crossdresser father and the old caretakers of their mansion are ''also'' crossdressers.
* Subverted in ''[[The Day of Revolution]]'' [[Gender Bender|Former boy]] Megumi actually wants to drop a Bridget on the only boy at school who doesn't know her "secret" but the other girls forbid it for reasons of their own. (And when she finally did decide to tell him he wasn't listening.)
* Played with in all directions in the manga series ''[[Family Compo]]''. The main character moves into his aunt and uncle's place, and finds out that his aunt is really his uncleand and his uncle is really his aunt. They're aare transsexualboth couple[[transgender]].
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', Yoruichi debuts in the form of a male cat, complete with male voice actor. Her actual form is very feminine. Kisuke Urahara's first line spoken to her cat form was [[Hilarious in Hindsight|"Who's my favorite pussy?"]] in the English dub... [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] or [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]?
* In episode three of ''[[Kino's Journey]]'', a Bridget was dropped on all the audience members who thought [[Ambiguous Gender|Kino]] was {{spoiler|a boy}}. The ones who guessed right didn't hesitate to pat themselves on the back.
Line 126:
** This '''will''' happen with Crona if the author ever gets tired of their "gender will always remain ambiguous" concept. One side will go "I knew it, Crona ''was'' a guy/girl" and the other will go all "awwwww, not the gender I thought of."
* This happens to Wataru Takatsuki in ''[[Yubisaki Milk Tea]]'' in recent chapters. However, despite Yoshinori Ikeda's initial beliefs to the contrary, Wataru actually likes him even more.
* A [[Running Gag]] with Aoi from ''[[You're Under Arrest]]'', who's a [[Transsexualismtrasngender]] woman whose gender issues are portrayed fairly realistically,
* In ''[[Heartcatch Pretty Cure]]'', Tsubomi quickly becomes smitten with the handsome [[Student Council President]] Itsuki. When she learns that "he" is actually [[Bifauxnen|a handsome girl]], she's upset and shocked enough to end up staying home with a fever.
{{quote|'''Tsubomi''': O...[[Ojou|Ojou-sama]]?!}}
Line 148:
{{quote|'''Iono:''' Who would have thought even a dedicated skirt chaser like me could have been fooled.}}
* Subverted in ''[[Wild Rock]]''. Yuuen [[Disguised in Drag|dresses up as a girl]] for a [[Honey Trap]] plot, but eventually feels guilty and upset that Emba is [[Loves My Alter Ego|in love with his female persona]] and decides to run away rather than "drop a bridget" on himself. He then finds out Emba actually knew all along but didn't mention it because he didn't want him to stop coming.
* ''[[Ice Revolution]]'' is one long series of dropped Bridgets after martial artist and extreme [[Tomboy]] (so extreme her hairdresser likens her to a fellow [[Transsexualismtransgender]|trans person]) Masaki decides to take up the very girly sport of figure skating, culminating in her dropping a Bridget on an entire ice arena when she appears on the ice at her first public performance wearing a skating dress. Everyone at the rink had just assumed she was a boy up until that point.
* Poor Masamunya has one dropped by the title character of ''[[Nyanpire]]'' seconds after developing a crush on him.
* PG version in ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]''. When Sakura, Kero and Tomoyo have to catch a Clow Card that has taken residence in a painting, they meet with a boy named Yuuki whose [[Disappeared Dad]] is the artist who painted it. At the end of the episode Yuuki's nice hat falls off and reveals ''very'' long [[Rapunzel Hair]], thus showing the trio (and us) that Yuuki is a tomboyish girl.
Line 172:
* In ''[[Promethea]]'', this happens to Dennis Drucker, who finds out that his goddess lover (one incarnation of the eponymous Promethea) is actually comic book artist William Woolcott. This ends about as [[Bury Your Gays|humorously]] as most [[Real Life]] examples of this trope.
* Between [[X-Men]] characters Scott, Jean and Warren in ''Marvel1602''. Jean is a [[Bifauxnen]] who has been disguised as "John Grey" as part of her education, and when Warren shows up, he starts hitting on her. Scott confronts him angrily, revealing the secret that Warren must have obviously glimpsed... only for Warren to reveal he had no idea "John" was a woman.
* [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''Zenith'' had the title character propositioned by Metamaid, an attractive pre-op transsexualtransgender superheroine. After Zenith finds out, he passes the buck to the naive young superhero TNT Tom by suggesting that he and Metamaid might like to get acquainted. At least it apparently ends happily for both parties.
{{quote|'''Zenith:''' TNT Tom left with a smile on his face, mind...}}
 
Line 238:
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': The Doctor {{spoiler|actually manages to do this to himself after his regeneration into [[Matt Smith]].}}
** At the end of the 1999 [[Comic Relief]] [[Affectionate Parody]] ''Doctor Who and The Curse of Fatal Death'', the Doctor regenerates into Joanna Lumley. His companion and fiancée Emma is disappointed as with him being "Not the man I fell in love with".... [[Jumping the Gender Barrier|the Master, on the other hand]]....
* In the "Who Can Bone More Women?" Contest on ''Kenny vs. Spenny'', Kenny hires a pre-op transsexualtranswoman to get all buddy-buddy with Spenny. Spenny racks up points like crazy until The Big Reveal at the end. He is not happy.
* One episode of ''[[1000 Ways to Die]]'' featured a rapist targeting a lady as she left a gym. As it so happens, the "lady" was a cross-dressing semi-pro boxer, who killed the rapist with one punch.
* Inverted on ''[[Reno 911!]]'': Dangle once had sex with a woman he mistook for a man in drag.
Line 245:
* ''[[CSI: NY]]'' had one as well.
* ''[[Chicago Hope]]'' did it in the middle of its run when one of the doctors, a very manly hockey player, starts dating Mia Sara. When she informs that she has something to tell him, he says that he already knows... that she has fake boobs and he's fine with it, she informs him that she actually used to be his best friend and hockey teammate in high school.
* ''There's Something About Miriam'' features a sexy lady called Miriam and a group of stud males trying to woo her attention. Except that Miriam is actually a pre-op [[Transsexualismtransgender]] - somethingwoman—something the participants had no idea of but which the audience knew right from the start of episode one. The whole thing led to some of the competing men suing the TV network. And as one can imagine, transgender rights advocates were not thrilled at the show setting the movement back to the stone age.
* Similarly(ish): post-op Transsexualtranswoman Nadia Almeida, who won the fifth series of ''[[Big Brother]] UK'' didn't tell her housemates of her... "situation". Said Bridget was Dropped upon evicted housemates in her post-eviction interview, until LGBT right campaigners complained about five weeks into the game.
* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'': Shows up in more than one context:
** Invoked and subverted by Maeby, who wants Steve Holt to think Lindsay is her ''father'', not her mother. She goes so far as to buy her mother a shirt with a label "in French":
Line 253:
{{quote|'''Barry''': Hey, you’re not one of those silly men that’s dressed like a woman, are you?
'''Prostitute''': No, baby, I’m the real thing. (Barry floors it and drives away.) }}
* One episode of ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' involves a pre-op transsexualtranswoman who appearspasses as female in every conceivable way except actual plumbing, who apparently killed a friend of her boyfriend's to prevent a public revelation. When the SVU team confront the boyfriend (ignorant of the fact that the boyfriend had no idea his girlfriend was biologically male), he runs in, grabs her by the groin to determine sex, and then runs out to commit suicide with an overdose of heart condition pills. [[It Got Worse]]. A judge then decides to send the extremelyvery convincingwell-passing transsexualtranswoman to a men's prison because of her plumbing. She is promptly gang-raped and beaten. We are shown the aftermath, with her headed to a hospital, strapped to a gurney, basically a solid swollen bruise.
* In an episode of ''[[Dark Angel]]'', politically and socially conservative Normal discovers that his love interest is a trans woman. Unusually, he remains interested, but is dumped after she realizes she's a lesbian.
* ''[[Bones]]'': The subplot of an episode revolved around the team trying to figure out whether a Japanese assistant is a man or a woman. It is debated at some length before Angela figures it out in her own way. {{spoiler|The character is a man...the actress is a woman.}}
** Another episode has the team realize that the victim was a post-op male-to-female transsexualtranswoman. {{spoiler|This had absolutely nothing to do with the murder.}}
* An episode of ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]]'' plays this straight (as it were). The victim was an MTFa post-op TStranswoman, and Steve had been flirting with her before she was killed. To the show's credit, the victim was portrayed as a sympathetic character and none of the main characters freaked out about it. In fact, {{spoiler|she was killed by her former military buddy because he was [[squick]]ed, and the murderer is portrayed as a [[Jerkass]].}}
* ''[[Will and Grace]]'': Jack freaks out when he gets turned on by the stripper at Leo's bachelor party, until he finds out the stripper is a pre-op who dances to raise money for her operation.
* In ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'', Charlie Sheen meets an old flame who has had a sex change and become Chris O'Donnell. He is freaked out by it but eventually comes to terms with the idea {{spoiler|until his mother starts dating his ex}}.
Line 264:
{{quote|'''Charlie''': How was I supposed to know?"
'''Alan''': She had an Adam's apple the size of my fist and could palm a basketball. }}
* A one-episode B-plot in ''[[Century City]]'' followed a lawsuit a man filed against a female-looking [[Hermaphrodite]] for causing him to question his sexuality. {{spoiler|The case was dropped when he turned out to be a transsexualtrans too, but}} an in-universe ad for penis attachment surgery led to the observation that "someone should sue somebody for something."
* ''[[Nip Tuck]]'': In an early season, Matt starts a relationship with an older woman named Ava, much to the displeasure of his three parents. (Sidenote: It's f* ck'n' [[Famke Janssen]]! WHO WOULDN'T!?) Christian seduces her in an effort to get her to stay away from Matt and immediately deduces she used to be a man (and later describes her as "the goddamned Hope Diamond of transsexuals").
** After Matt finds out about Ava and she has disappeared, he trolls bars until he finds ana obviousnon-passing transsexualtranswoman, but as they start making out, Matt discovers [[Berserk Button|she is pre-op]] and beats her violently.
* Happens to Herb Tarlek on ''[[WKRP in Cincinnati]]'' twice (sort of):
** In one episode, Herb starts flirting with a woman who claims she knew him in high school. While making out with her, he learns he did know her in high school... [[Something's Different About You Now|before she had the operation]]. She was a teammate of his on the high school football team, in fact the center to Herb's quarterback. To say Herb had a case of the ''[[Squick]]'' is putting it midly.
** In an earlier episode, the trope is invoked and subverted by Johnny. To get Herb to stop hitting on Jennifer, he tells Herb "Our receptionist, the beautiful Jennifer Marlowe, is a result of the most cunningly successful sex change operation in the United States!" The ploy works... sort of.
* [[Double Subverted]] in ''[[The IT Crowd]]'' when, in a B-plot, Douglas embarks on a successful relationship with a post-op transsexual woman—buttranswoman—but it comes crashing down when he realises that she was saying "I used to be a man," not "I'm from Iran."
* ''[[Community]]'': Pierce has to be corrected as to the gender of the singer that made Hawthorne Wipes a gay icon. The same singer is seen later on, arm in arm with [[Casanova Wannabe|Chang]], leading to this beautifully ironic line:
{{quote|'''Chang:''' Winger, no date? Huh. ''[[Failed a Spot Check|Gaaaaayyyy.]]''}}
Line 320:
** This is taken to its logical extreme by Piko, who has a known reputation as a "Ryouseirui" - aka, a trap singer. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIo7ifkyuiY It's not hard to see why].
* [[Leet Street Boys]] song: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8WGCUHkucY "Lady And The Trap".]
* "Luisa" by the Peruvian band ''Chabelos''. It's about a guy who falls in love with a hooker called Luisa, and then discovers that "Luisa" is a transvestitecrossdresser, [[Fetish|and he thinks that's hot]].
* In Wilfrido Vargas's "Macho Man", a guy falls for a pretty girl that he later finds out, while they are almost intimate, is a pretty boy; he freaks out and runs away, losing his shoes in the process.
* In Rodney Carrington's appropriately named "I Think I'm Dancing with a Man" the singer begins to get suspicious of the woman he's been dancing with because of many masculine traits. His friend then takes "her" for a dance and "her" skirt falls off confirming it.
Line 383:
* While the title heroine of ''[[Atelier Annie]]'' has her moments due to her (unfortunate) [[Bifauxnen]] status, the game also gives a somewhat bizarre example when some men tried to hit on, of all people, ''Hans''. The bizarre part is that they genuinely mistook him as a girl, while his co-workers in the Committee see him as a guy just fine.
* Unsurprisingly, the Camwhore class in ''[[Forum Warz]]'' has this as a standard attack, if one not often seen. (It's down the line of a skill chain which many players respec out of before obtaining it.) Note that the gender, age and race of ''every'' player character is defined as "whatever happens to be squickiest at this instant". The same applies to any NPCs who use multiple or artificial personas, eliminating any potential shock value out of gender. (Especially as very few players would be attracted to most of the NPCs.)
* Erica from ''[[Catherine]]'' is actually a post op [[Transsexualismtransender]] woman. However, Vincent, Orlando and Jonny are aware of it, and there are several hints dropped over the course of the game before the actual reveal. It's only this trope to Toby, who lost his virginity to her.
* ''[[Dark Souls]]'' has the Dark Sun Gwyndolin, the last born son of the Lord of Sunlight, Gwyn. Because of his lunar magic and association with the moon, he was raised as a girl.
 
Line 415:
** In another story arc, the shapeshifting incubus Abel takes a job working at the Lost Lake Inn. Dan gripes that it'll be an unfortunate adventurer who comes into an inn hoping for the traditional greeting and service by a perky cute beer wench. Abel: "Oh, well if THAT's your only issue..." Dan * turns around to see Abel has put on a very convincing female form* "YIGG!" Page caption: "Don't worry, adventurers are used to dealing with traps."
** Later on Dan meets Mink, who is androgynously pretty, flat-chested, and runs around in a skirt and no shirt. Dan outright asks Mink whether they are a boy or a girl, only to find that Mink has forgotten hirself (being another shapeshifting 'cubi). Mink is on the point of taking a peak down hir skirt to refresh hir memory when Dan decides that he doesn't really need to know that badly.
* ''[[Venus Envy]]'' has this happen to Lisa when she assumes that Chris is a male-to-female [[Transsexualismtransgender]] woman only to discover that he's actually just a [[Wholesome Crossdresser]]. Chris gets experiences this trope when he first meets Lisa and Zoe, assumes they're crossdressing boys as well, and grabs Lisa's breast while telling her it "looks totally fake". They beat him up.
* ''[[Material Girl]]'', in which the character the title refers to isn't ''really'' a girl.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120629211315/http://doublek.thewebcomic.com/comics/1358248/chapter-1-03/ This page], from ''[[Double K]]''.
Line 433:
** Another has a man approach a suicidal woman whom he asks for a BJ before she jumps. After the act, he asks why she was going to jump. Turns out her parents disowned him for dressing up like a woman. {{spoiler|So the guy jumps before the cross-dresser does}}.
** And a final one has a subway groper realize this. {{spoiler|[[It Makes Sense in Context|It ends up with the "and that's how you were born"]] [[Running Gag]].}}
* Used in the NSFW comic ''[[Moon Over June]]'', where the very lesbian Hatsuki [http://moonoverjune.com/go/224 accidentally hooks up with a man], who points out that he thought she knew since she picked him up in a transvestite bar for crossdressers.
{{quote|'''Hatsuki:''': I just ''had'' to go someplace new, didn't I?!}}
 
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1786407"