History Main / MistakenForCheating

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[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* A series of ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot'' strips has Andy convinced that Roger is cheating on her when he's actually at work. ("Listen -- hear that squeaking? You know how my chair squeaks." "Sounds like bedsprings." "Fred, get in here and talk to my wife.") In the last strip, she apologizes for being paranoid and they hug...at which point she [[AffairHair plucks a hair from his jacket and asks whose it is]]. (No, Roger wasn't cheating; he's just balding.)

* On ''{{Glee}}'', the club's best dancers Brittany and Mike are tasked with coming up with a dance number for sectionals. All's fine and good until Mike's girlfriend Tina confides in Brittany's boyfriend Artie [[hottip:*:[[DatingDoSiDo who happens to be her ex, go figure]] that she suspects Mike and Brittany might be cheating on them with each other. When Artie asks Brittany if she wants to spend more time with him, she avoids the question, saying that she has to rehearse with Mike. Tensions run high all the way to right before the actual competition, and it turns out [[spoiler: Brittany didn't want to talk to him because she lost the "magic comb" he'd given her as an encouragement token and wasn't really cheating on him.]]

* OlderThanFeudalism: In the [[Literature/TheBible Biblical]] account of [[UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} the Nativity]] of Jesus, Joseph initially assumeed that Mary's virgin pregnancy was the result of infidelity, until an angel explained the truth to him.

* This often happens to good friends who happen to be of the opposite gender.

*** And another has her catching him in a hotel room with another woman. It's a long story, but it's completely innocent. However, she believes him instantly because she notices that he doesn't display the physical tic that usually tips her off to when he's lying.

* ''Series/BigLove'' does an interesting version of this as well. Husband Bill and his first wife Barb begin an "affair" (he is technically not supposed to sleep with her on nights designated for the other wives). Second wife Nikki notices his suspicious behavior, concludes that he is courting a fourth wife and is actually ''pleased'', as she thinks it means she will gain a friend and an ally in her clashes with Barb and third wife Margene. When she discovers he's fooling around with Barb, she's hurt and disappointed.

* The 16th Century Vietnamese ''Collection of Strange Tales'' has a story where a man after came home from the war got rejected by his 3 years-old son who claimed that 'his real father' has always 'appears every night, stands when mother stands, sits when mother sits'. The husband thought his wife was unfaithful with him and kicked her out of the house without waiting for an explanation. The wife, in despair, drown herself in a river. It wasn't until night came and the son pointed at his father's shadow on the wall, exclaiming 'That's my father!' that the husband realized that his deceased wife, who was just trying to calm their son (as he missed his father who was away for the war) with a white lie , had been innocent after all.

* In one comic, TheJoker decides to mess with a rehabilitative Two-Face by suggesting that his girlfriend and best friend [[{{Batman}} Bruce Wayne]] are fooling around behind his back and want to keep him locked up in Arkham. To give it one final push, Joker has one of his goons make a fake newspaper article that Bruce and the girlfriend were getting engaged and slipped it to an already suspicious Two-Face. Two-Face then loses it, escapes from Arkham, proceeds to kidnap his girlfriend and [[MurderTheHypotenuse attempt to murder]] Bruce.

Similar to MistakenForGay, this is when a character is wrongly accused of cheating on his spouse or girlfriend because of a series of misinterpreted clues. Usually these clues look very suspicious (a bra left in his apartment, [[LipstickMark lipstick on his collar]], a piece of AffairHair, a romantic note) and the real story is hard to believe. The wrongly accused may protest "Wait! ICanExplain!" or "It's NotWhatItLooksLike!" If the spouse or girlfriend is another major character, the conflict will be resolved; if the love interest is a GirlOfTheWeek, she may storm off, thus ending the relationship.

* ''TheJeffersons'' is another example. In this case, the "other woman" turns out to be an old war buddy of George who [[SomethingsDifferentAboutYouNow recently underwent a sex change]].

* In ThatSeventiesShow, Donna finds a pair of panties in Eric's car. She logically gets angry and believes Eric is cheating on her with a girl named Shelley. [[spoiler: The panties belong to Donna's HotMom Midge... since she and Bob [[AudioErotica had some "fun"]] in there.]]

* In [[http://smallville.slashdom.net/archive/18/allthe.html this fanfic]], [[{{Smallville}} Lex]] is caught "cheating" on Clark Kent with {{Superman}}, mixing MistakenForCheating with TwoPersonLoveTriangle in a PR disaster.

** Once happened with Lana's biological father's wife. Well, it is not like he never did it before...
** Jimmy once [[spoiler:found Chloe's love letter to Clark. She said she wrote it a long time ago.]]
** The page image is a scene from ''Escape''. [[spoiler:Chloe has been possessed by the silver banshee to seduce Clark by walking naked into his shower.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4267279/1/Hero_High_Sphinx_Academy Hero High: Sphinx Academy]], Ren suspects this of Ben when she has noticed him hanging out with Julie several times, though more often than not he is getting help from Julie to get a gift for Ren for their upcoming anniversary. It doesn't help that Susan is the one encouraging the idea.

* Thanks to a misinterpreted conversation eavesdrop in a chapter of ''TheTyrantFallsInLove,'' Morinaga comes to believe that Souichi is having a sexual relationship with Isogai. (The truth is far more embarrassing for Souichi: he was blackmailed by Isogai, who discovered the relationship between him and Morinaga, into singing the Doraemon theme song on karaoke nights at Isogai's place.) One part that does ''not'' follow this trope is the discovery of hickeys on Souichi's neck which Morinaga takes as solid proof, forgetting that he made them himself several days ago.

* In the manga version of ''ShamanKing'', Anna mistakes Yoh's new Oracle Bell as a pager that a girl gave him. It doesn't help his case that he had a long black hair on his clothes from Silva. In the game Power of Spirits, this is taken further when Meril, a girl Yoh had never met until this point, ''walks in and hugs him.''

* ''KyouKaraMaou'': Wolfram is always accusing Yuuri of cheating and Yuuri never is.

* Mary Jane Watson's Aunt Anna once tried to get her to face the "truth" about Peter Parker's apparent infidelity, what with all his sneaking around at odd hours and missing committments with the flimsiest of excuses; this aggravated MJ enough to evoke a SarcasticConfession: her husband was really [[Comicbook/SpiderMan Spider-Man]].

* ''BigLove'' does an interesting version of this as well. Husband Bill and his first wife Barb begin an "affair" (he is technically not supposed to sleep with her on nights designated for the other wives). Second wife Nikki notices his suspicious behavior, concludes that he is courting a fourth wife and is actually ''pleased'', as she thinks it means she will gain a friend and an ally in her clashes with Barb and third wife Margene. When she discovers he's fooling around with Barb, she's hurt and disappointed.

* Happens a lot in ''[[LightNovel/BakaToTestToShoukanjuu Baka and Test]]'' to the two main guys, Akihisa Yoshii and Yuuji Sakamoto. In one hilarious incident, [[{{Yandere}} Shouko]] demands access to Yuuji's cellphone, and after she starts to strip him in order to find it, he gives it to her. She then finds a text written to him by Akihisa, asking if Yuuji would let him stay over at his place that night. She immediately assumes that they're in some kind of [[BoysLove illicit relationship]]. Later the main characters go to his house for a study session (and to see why he didn't want to go home), and the two girls who like Akihisa immediately also start questioning him as to why there's women-related clothing and items in his apartment (which turns out to be his sister Akira's stuff, who's visiting him to make sure he's not goofing off).

* Happens multiple times to Ranma from ''[[RanmaOneHalf Ranma 1/2]],'' almost always in a way that goes far beyond mere [[LipstickMark lipstick on his collar]]. A few examples:

* The Incredibles:

* In the State Farm [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYxz6cluskQ "State of Unrest"]] commercial a woman finds her husband on the phone with a (male) State Farm rep at 3am and assumes he's talking to [[YourCheatingHeart The Other Woman]]. She grabs the phone and starts talking to him.