So you see a Knight In Shining Armor standing before a innocent maiden, taking a sword wound through the chest in order to defend her from the ominous Black Knight.

Now lets rewind that clip. Father this time.

What is this? The dashing Knight In Shining Armor isn't there, but the girl and the Black Knight are. And the Black Knight hasn't even noticed her! He's just practicing his swordplay! What is she doing? Is she... Conjuring a knight to defend her? But the Black Knight wasn't even doing anything wrong! She's getting her Knight to attack him even though he wasn't doing anything wrong!

Looking at things from a different angle can be pretty interesting, huh? And doing so has been a gold mine for plot twists since the practice was invented.

Naturally, this can happen in real life. Taking things out of context can lead to making things sound very different than what people had originally intended it to sound like, after all.

Needs More Examples

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Mobile Suit Gundam 00: In season two A-Laws does this to make their slaughtering of innocent civilians look like a terrorist attack.
• Pandora Hearts: Deconstructed. Jack takes advantage of this trope in order to manipulate Oz and friends.
• The first episode of Tasogare Otome X Amnesia is all about displaying this trope for comedic effect. It's done at more than one point in the series, often showing how Momoe, the only member of the Power Trio who can't see ghosts, interprets Niiya's comedic attempts at convincing her that there are no ghosts present as dramatic exorcisms.

Comic Books

• Spider Man: J. Jonah Jameson often takes advantage of this trope in order to make poor Spidery look bad.

Film

• The Running Man: Both the villains and the heroes take advantage of this, the former to make the rebels look bad and themselves look good, the latter to show the world the truth about what the ruling powers have been doing.
• As the title suggests, Vantage Point is all about displaying this trope.

Literature

• Alex Rider: The villain of Skeleton Key, Alexei Sarov, plans to use this trope in order to make the president of Russia look bad and further his plot to restore Russia to its former glory. He also wants to adopt the protagonist, Alex.

Western Animation

• Tron Uprising: Tessler does this to convince the population that Beck hadn't just saved Argon City from being destroyed, but had been the one to cause all the recent power outages.