History Main / LessDisturbingInContext

'''Rumisiel:''' You dirty, dirty girl. What would JAMES say?

-->'''Recording of Ash:''' ''My ass is still sore from last night. I don't know if it could take the kind of friction that would entail.''
-->'''Rumisiel:''' Keep going. This is great stuff.
-->'''Ash (highly alarmed):''' Don't you dare play that out of context... Ever...
-->'''Rumisiel:''' You dirty, dirty girl. What would JAMES say?

--->'''NH Boy''' I broke my G-string while fingering a minor :(\\

* Another is [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson's]] "Oh great, now my testicle's got ants on it!". (To top that, both Spanish dubs make it slightly worse, as the phrasing comes off more as "ants '''in''' it"). [[spoiler:It was the chapter where Homer gets sent to an island as a missionary, and he drops the ox testicle he was drinking from.]]

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', despite the fact that "There are no slaves in Hurog" (slavery is so thoroughly abolished that every slave who sets foot on Hurog land becomes free), the protagonist Ward owns a slave. Disturbing, isn't it? But the context is such that [[Really700YearsOld Oreg]] was MadeASlave by a distant ancestor of Ward, and is now bound to a ring, that apparently is magically compelled to be inherited by the son of the prior owner. Oreg cannot be freed. Neither can the magic ring be taken off. [[AWizardDidIt An evil sorcerer did it.]] At the end of the book, Ward kills his friend and ally [[spoiler: Oreg]], and also, castle Hurog collapses. Sounds bad? Fortunately, the castle was evacuated at the time, and [[spoiler: Oreg asked Ward to kill him in order to bring that about. And he comes back.]]
* A major plot point of the ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' trilogy involves the two main characters killing the Christian God. People hearing this without context probably imagine this as quite different from how it was actually portrayed. Technically, he dies of old age, and the two of them just happened to be there when it happens, and while they may have had a role in it they didn't do it intentionally, in essence making it a MercyKill. And under one interpretation, God is really the Dust, while the "God" that dies is an impostor.

* There's a ''Literature/BabysittersClub'' book that does this in-universe: Jessi goes to visit Stacey in NYC and overhears two guys discussing their plan to commit a robbery. She and her pseudo-boyfriend then spend the whole book following them around trying to get more concrete evidence, before hearing a repeat of the same scene, except this time with the two men bursting into laughter partway through and one exclaiming "Check your script!"

* In ''Literature/TheWasteLands'', some of the dialogue concerning the tribe of Pubes.

* Discussed in ''Literature/AppointmentWithDeath''. Literature/HerculePoirot overhears someone say "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?'. He then thinks of the story about Creator/AnthonyTrollope (in the RealLife section of this trope) but decides it's not as innocent as that.

* Like the example above, the subreddit for ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings II'' has a similar problem with strange topics, with titles that would be highly disturbing, offensive, or even criminal outside the context of the game, as the [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential cruelty]] and [[VideoGamePerversityPotential perversity]] potentials for this game are huge. Posts asking about how to [[CripplingCastration castrate]]/[[OffingTheOffspring murder]]/[[ParentalIncest seduce]] one's children are par for the course. Questions and memes on [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill mass murder]], [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar genocide]], [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and whether or not one should]] seduce one's [[TangledFamilyTree sister-daughter to produce a child who will marry her grandfather-uncle]] are also common. Such topics are frequent enough that a [[http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitCrusaderKingsSay separate subreddit]] in the spirit of /r/nocontext was set up to compile all such occurrences.

* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' has a tendency to create these situations. At least once a week a topic pops up on Reddit with a title that at first glance would offend anyone but suddenly becomes tamer once they notice it is in the DF subreddit. Though some of these things might not seem less disturbing to people who don't play ''Dwarf Fortress''. For example, a title along the lines of "I need to find a way to efficiently kill children." is not unheard of. And this doesn't count the various situations in-game that can occur by accident, like mothers using their babies as shields or occasionally weapons, since mothers carry their babies everywhere and dwarves like improvising weapons out of whatever they happen to be carrying.

* Website/{{Reddit}}'s [[http://www.reddit.com/r/nocontext/ r/nocontext]] is a repository of these moments. A number of subreddits about particular works, video games in particular, listed elsewhere on this page have also been soft-banned (technically permitted but usually downvoted) from r/nocontext for producing ''too many'' such lines too easily; ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', ''VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII'', and ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' are among those who hold this dubious honor.

** The Literature/BooksOfKings feature a rather infamous moment where a group of boys are mauled by bears for mocking the prophet Elisha's bald head--but there are several contextual clues suggesting that this moment wasn't ''quite'' as disturbing or [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment inexplicable]] as some modern readers might think. Firstly: the Hebrew word for "boys" in this passage refers to anyone under the age of 25, likely meaning that they were actually young men (children wouldn't be roaming freely on a dangerous highway, after all). There were also ''42'' of them, and they were specifically shouting ''"Go up, baldhead!"'', telling Elisha to "go up" to Heaven like Elijah before him--which was almost certainly an ImpliedDeathThreat. So instead of a few boys mocking a Elijah's bald head, it would be more accurate to picture a crowd of adult thugs surrounding him and threatening to kill him. And while having them '''mauled by bears''' was undeniably pretty harsh, it isn't entirely clear in the text whether they were killed; the Hebrew word for "maul" in that passage literally translates to "break open", and could refer to anything from killing someone to merely ripping their clothes.[[note]] Also the bears in question would have been Syrian brown bears, which are considerably smaller and more docile than their European and North American counterparts, putting them in a slightly less menacing light than the grizzly bears that most modern readers might picture.[[/note]]

-->-- '''qdb.us''' [[http://qdb.us/33726 #33726]] (abridged) [[labelnote:spoiler]]Opius is talking about the stroke tool in Photoshop.[[/labelnote]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* In Norway, a role-player had lost a note he'd written in first-person during a Modern Day game on the bus in Trondheim, and was pulled out of class in Olso by policemen who wanted to know why and how the hell he was going to do with a list of explosives, weapons and a plan to blow up an oil platform, and who he was working with, and who he was working for...
* Creator/AnthonyTrollope overheard some people discussing the latest installment of his novel, which was being published a chapter at a time in a magazine. One reader said, "I wish he'd kill off that horrible old woman!" Trollope interrupted to say, "That's an excellent idea. I'll kill her this afternoon!" (The same story is told about Charles Dickens and some other popular authors of the day.)
* Richmal Crompton used this as the plot of one of the ''Literature/JustWilliam'' stories: William eavesdrops on a man telling his friend that he's planning to kill William's sister, but he turns out to be a writer talking about one of his characters who happened to have the same name.
* An advice columnist once advised a victim of frequent eavesdropping to have a little fun with the situation by loudly debating where to hide the drugs, what girl to send on the next call or the like. A policeman wrote in to ask the column to print a correction, as he foresaw wasting time investigating calls from frightened gossips!
* If you study typesetting, you will learn how to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans eliminate widows and orphans]].
* An infamous screenshot appears to show [[Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood Fred Rogers]] FlippingTheBird at the camera. While the picture itself is indeed real, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlow12sSdmc the context]] makes it quite innocent, as it simply appears in the middle of a familiar children's finger play that involves raising your fingers one at a time ("Where is tall-man?"), and of course skipping one of them would have [[StreisandEffect just made kids wonder why.]] As a grown adult who participates in society, he likely knew perfectly well what the gesture would have meant out of context -- and the knowing grin is a hint, too.
** There's a similar image involving [[Creator/PatrickStewart Sir Patrick Stewart]] in his role as Captain Picard, but, in this case, it's because he's in the middle of snapping his fingers and the camera just happens to be at the right/wrong angle to hide his thumb.
* The phrase "balls to the wall" is widely assumed to be a crude sexual slang term, but it probably wasn't intended to be. The most widely accepted origin for the phrase is that it alludes to accelerating an aircraft to full throttle; throughout much of the 20th century, most aircrafts' throttle levers were topped with spherical handles that were shaped like balls—so accelerating an aircraft to its top speed usually entailed pushing its throttle levers as close to the walls of the cockpit as they would go.
[[/folder]]

* Music/DirEnGrey's "Mazohyst of Decadence" is another lyrical example, which, ripped from its context of abortion being a primary method of birth control in Japan, seems like a very extreme anti-abortion rant and UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming, when it's actually lashing out at a society that refuses to acknowledge the need for birth control and sex education and uses the most painful and traumatizing last-ditch procedure as a substitute for preventing pregnancy in the first place.

* In [[Creator/{{JohnMulaney}} John Mulaney's]] special 'The Comeback Kid', he tells the story of how his friend has a two-year old daughter, who according to her parents "is going through that phase where she says 'penis' and 'vagina' a lot." That led to a pretty awkward moment at a party when the young girl pointed at John and declared "Uncle John has a penis!" [[MistakenForPedophile and the crowd fell deadly silent.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' has a scene where Picard praises Riker for letting a little girl die. The scene is actually referring to a SecretTestOfCharacter in that episode where Riker was given [[PhysicalGod Q powers]] and yes Riker letting the girl[[note]]Who, as it turned out, never existed anyway[[/note]] die ''was'' an ultimately good thing. Out of context though it sounds like Picard is a total sociopath who hates children to murderous degrees.
** Similarly, ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' has an episode where Janeway [[{{Unperson}} Unpersons]] a dead crew member, forcing the rest of the crew to act like she never existed in an almost ''1984''-esque scene. Except it's only really scary out of context; the rule was actually only that they do so when the Doctor might be listening, and the reason for this was that the doctor had gone into a HeroicBSOD over her death, so they had altered the doctor's memories so he wouldn't remember her. It was ultimately a bit misguided, but the intention was understandable.
** For several episodes of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Major Kira is carrying Chief O'Brien's baby, and O'Brien's wife is completely OK with it. They even invite her to live in their quarters. Kinda strange unless you saw the episode in which the baby had an emergency transplant from Keiko to Kira. Played with when Kira informs Gul Dukat that she's carrying O'Brien's child ''without'' letting him in on the context, and he reacts about the same as anyone else would.
** There's a ''Next Generation'' episode where Data stabs Troi on the shoulder. The context is that she had an invisible space parasite on her shoulder and he was not right in the head but instinctively trying to kill the parasite.
** In an episode of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', there's a scene where it looks as though Hoshi and Phlox are beating each other up. In reality, Hoshi was possessed and Phlox was acting in self-defence. Still a little creepy, but not as disturbing as it would be at face value.
** There's a scene in ''Deep Space Nine'' where Bashir and O'Brien are chanting, "Kill Worf!". The context is that they were mad at Worf for having them participate in a painful ritual and were speaking hyperbolically.

* In the ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' DLC ''Overlord,'' a Paragon Shepard has the option to pistol whip Dr. Archer for [[spoiler:what he did to his autistic younger brother, essentially turning him into a living computer, the titular Overlord]]. In any other context this might come off as a JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope moment since Shepard, who's fully armored and makes a habit of taking out [[EldritchAbomination species destroying monsters]] is attacking an unarmed man, and as a Paragon isn't supposed to ''do'' stuff like that, but in context you'll probably be ''[[KickTheSonOfABitch cheering]]'' instead.

* Many fandom discussions are predicated on the assumption that the events described in the fictional work actually happened, since [[WatsonianVersusDoylist otherwise it could only be about the author’s motivations]], which isn’t as interesting, and because everyone in the discussion already knows this postulate, there is no need to explicitly state it. Older fandoms, such as the one for pulp magazines before the Internet existed, would often have fans (most famously, Creator/PhilipJoseFarmer) write long academic essays endeavoring to “prove” that every work of fiction took place in the real world and [[PlausibleDeniability was intentionally falsified by the writers]], in order to smoothe over any inconsistencies. If one did not know they were just playing a game, [[DaydreamBeliever one would think they were all insane]].

* Many fandom discussions are predicated on the assumption that the events described in the fictional work actually happened, since [[WatsonianVersusDoylist otherwise it could only be about the author’s motivations]], which isn’t as interesting, and because everyone in the discussion already knows this postulate, there is no need to explicitly state it. Older fandoms, such as the one for pulp magazines before the Internet existed, would often have fans write long academic essays endeavoring to “prove” that every work of fiction took place in the real world and [[PlausibleDeniability was intentionally falsified by the writers]], in order to smoothe over any inconsistencies. If one did not know they were just playing a game, [[DaydreamBeliever one would think they were all insane]].