[[SluggyFreelance http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vampirelarpers.jpg]]
[[caption-width:245:Not only was he just taken hostage by vampires, the character on the left '''is''' a vampire.]]
A character approaches a situation under the impression that they're dealing with a prank, a con, or a staged event. Unfortunately for them, it's all quite real. When they eventually find out, expect mighty embarrassment or even {{Fainting}} if the situation was dangerous enough. Sometimes this is a MagicFeather, and it's revealed that the character is far more competent than they realize.

Not always played for laughs, if the character realizes the reality of the situation before he succeeds (and especially if their oblivious actions have made things worse in the meantime).

In comedies, discovering that the situation is real often turns TheManWhoKnewTooLittle into GenreSavvy.

Named for [[Film/TheManWhoKnewTooLittle the 1997 film]] (which combines this with MistakenForSpies).

Compare RealAfterAll and AllPartOfTheShow. Contrast TheGameNeverStopped and YouJustRuinedTheShot, where the character thinks events ''are'' real, but they aren't. See also MistakenForBadass.

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* The main character of ''[[{{Dokkoida}} Dokkoida?!]]'' agrees to put on the costume and fight supervillains because the costume contains a special component which boosts his fighting ability, all while playing dramatic music... except that the end of the first episode reveals that the suit manufacturer forgot to put that specific component in, leaving only the music. The other characters don't bother to mention this fact to him until the ''last'' episode.
** Suzuo also put on the suit because he didn't take the claims about fighting supervillains seriously, since the suits makers were a toy company. He realizes too late that toy companies can make weapons too.
* In {{Digimon}} 02, Digimon Kaizer doesn't mind hurting digimon because he thinks he's just playing a [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential virtual MMORPG]]. When he is told otherwise he suffers a BSOD and makes a HeelFaceTurn.
* [[TheMelancholyOfHaruhiSuzumiya Suzumiya Haruhi]] and her SOS Brigade skip off to a remote island in, amusingly enough, ''Remote Island Syndrome'' and are thrown into a murder mystery. [[spoiler:It's later revealed to be a game set up by Koizumi Itsuki in order to keep Haruhi entertained. Hell, even ''Kyon'' suspected ''himself'' to be the killer at one point. Presumably, the only person who isn't in on it that knew it was a game all along was Nagato Yuki, but she certainly wouldn't say anything.]]
** This may have backfired disturbingly. [[spoiler:There's hints that Haruhi may have [[RealityWarper unconsciously conjured up a real killer]] before realizing it was a game, to provide a suitable suspect that wasn't part her circle of friends. A killer who may well still be on that island.]]
* In ''{{Akagi}}'', the insanely talented title character agrees to play {{Mahjong}} against Yakuza rep player Urabe only if his mild-mannered coworker Osamu plays first. As it turns out, Osamu is actually quite good and holds his own against the professional... until he hears that the game is being played for a wager of 32 million yen between two rival Yakuza groups. His emotions overwhelm his ability to play, and Akagi has to step in and save him.


[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* One of the DCComics science fiction comics once had a one-shot story about a man stuck in his humdrum life who finds three discs. Each one, when activated, whisks him away into what he thinks is a particular vivid daydream where he gets to play the role of the hero, and vanishes when the 'daydream' ends. The final 'daydream' takes him to his hometown where he thwarts a gang of bank robbers. When he returns home, he finds himself being hailed as a hero and he realizes that all of the 'daydreams' were actually real. He faints.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* The Trope Naming [[Film/TheManWhoKnewTooLittle Bill Murray film]] has Murray's character believing himself to be taking part in an avant-garde street theatre experience, when he has actually embroiled himself in an assassination plot.
* Tim Allen's character in ''GalaxyQuest'' orders the destruction of a threatening enemy spacecraft, believing himself to be shooting a promo for the fans of his show.
* Guido (Roberto Benigni) spends most of the film ''Life is Beautiful'' trying to maintain his son's condition as The Child Who Knew Too Little, to maintain his hope. The truth? They were both in a ''Nazi concentration camp''.
* In the movie ''ProblemChild'', Ben Healy (John Ritter) encounters a bear at a campsite, and, believing it to be a friend in costume, acts playfully towards it. He soon realizes that the bear is an actual animal. During the ensuing panic, the bear retreats and the actual friend dressed as a bear arrives, whom Ben hits over the head with a skillet.
* A good 2/3 through ''Malibu's Most Wanted'', the main character B-rad finds out that the "thugs" who kidnapped him were actually just actors hired by his father to try to scare him straight. Instead of revealing that he knows what's really going on, he decides to play along and have fun with it. When actual thugs kidnap him and the actors, however, he doesn't realize anything's wrong, and his fearlessness puts him in terrible danger but also lets him become the ultimate gangsta.
* In the film ''Film/ThreeAmigos!'', three movie stars who specialize in rescuing-Mexican-peasant-villages-from-marauding-bandits movies are invited to come and rescue a real Mexican peasant village from real marauding bandits; they assume the whole thing is staged until one of them finds out the hard way that their opponents are using real bullets.
** Double for the bit where they [[spoiler:attempt a ritual to summon the "invisible swordsman". They successfully summon the swordsman, but end up shooting him because they didn't aim their guns safely upwards during the "fire gun" part.]]
*** Correction: [[spoiler:only Dusty didn't didn't aim his gun up. Lucky and Ned subsequently blamed him for killing the invisible swordsmen.]]
* In the movie ''Erik The Viking'', the title character borrows Princess Aud's cloak of invisibility and bravely attacks Halfdan the Black's crew, not realizing that the cloak only makes its wearer invisible to Aud's father. (Not a MagicFeather because he wasn't misled about the powers of the cloak; he took it into battle before Aud could explain its limitations.)
** Although it does have an effect on him: since he thinks he's invisible, he gets confident enough to be able to fight with reckless abandon, which stupefies Blackdan's crew enough for him to beat several of them, and also inspire several of his own crew to fight.
* Jack Putter (played by Martin Short) in the film ''Innerspace'' believes that Tuck Pendleton (who has been [[FantasticVoyage shrunk and is inside Putter's body]] -- long story) can increase the power of his muscles during a confrontation with an evil henchman. He can't, but that doesn't stop Jack kicking his ass.
* Nicholas Angel in ''HotFuzz'' being called about an "escaped swan". "And who might you be? P. I. Staker? Right. 'Pisstaker'? Come on!" Cut away to Nicholas taking Mr. Staker's statement.
* Frank Drebin in ''The Naked Gun 2 1/2'' in a truly painful scene where he tries to "expose" an impostor, eventually going so far as to sand off the "fake" mole on his buttocks.
* The titular character in ''Johnny English'' faces a similar situation when he discovers a plot involving the coronation of BigBad Sauvage by a fake Archbishop of Canterbury. Unfortunately for English, the evil plan was scrapped, and he eventually tries to "expose" a man "disguised" as the Archbishop of Canterbury, leading him to attempt to pull off the "mask" and "reveal" a tattoo on the impostor's butt... on a coronation being broadcast to the entire world.
* This is apparently premise of the film ''{{Tropic Thunder}}'': Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr. (in blackface) get dropped into a real war zone while still thinking they're filming a movie about the Vietnam War.
* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in the 2008 Disney film ''{{Bolt}}''. The title character is the canine hero of a sci-fi/action show who, in the interests of verisimilitude, is kept in the dark about the fictional nature of his show. When one episode ends on a cliffhanger and Bolt accidentally escapes from the set in his efforts to save his human co-star Penny, things get complicated...
* Also inverted in ''{{The Truman Show}}''
* In ''IndianaJones And The Temple Of Doom'', Willie spends her first proper night in the jungle jumping and panicking at every sound and critter that appears, a tendency not helped by a tamed elephant's over-friendly tendency to lay its trunk on her shoulder. Then, after a particularly exhausting scream-a-thon and subsequent argument with Indy that wears her out, a deadly snake slithers down from a tree onto her shoulder. Whilst Indy himself is [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes paralysed with fear]], Willie -- fed-up and assuming it's just the elephant -- yells "''Quit it''!", grabs the snake and hurls it very far away without even looking.
* In ''My Name is Bruce'' Bruce Campbell (playing himself) is kidnapped by a fan who wants his help fighting a monster that's killing the townsfolk. Bruce believes that he is there to star in an unscripted movie. Bruce realizes that the monster is real when he leads an attack on it, and he promptly turns around and flees.
* Happens with Commandant Lassard in the fifth PoliceAcademy.
* The entire premise of ''{{Film/The Game}}''. Is the millionaire protagonist taking part in a role-playing adventure game, or is the whole thing merely a distraction so he can be stripped of his assets?
* The first two victims in ''Westworld'' assume the androids will let them win their duels as they have been programmed to do, not realising that AIIsACrapshoot.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* Dramatic example: In ''EndersGame'', [[spoiler:it turns out that the orders the characters give in the Command School training simulator are being carried out by ''real'' battleships and fighters. The orders including the destruction of a planet and the resulting xenocide, as well as sending an entire fleet of surprisingly-not-virtual pilots to their deaths in order to [[TakeAThirdOption destroy said planet]].]]
* Literary example: In the ''{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Going Postal'', Moist von Lipwig is totally unconcerned about facing down a pack of [[AngryGuardDog Angry Guard Dogs]] because he knows that all purebred Lipwigzers (the Disc's version of Rottweilers) were trained by his countrymen (They don't let females out of the country, to keep the breed price high). He successfully uses his granddad's commands to control them, but later learns they were Ankh-Morpork mongrels that ''looked'' like Lipwigzers.
** It's probably fortunate for Moist that he didn't put two and two together earlier, because he had all the information he needed to be ''really worried'' about that situation well in advance-not only his own knowledge that Lipwigzers are deliberately kept expensive, but earlier in the book, Mr. Groat mentions that at one point the paychecks stopped showing up, and he didn't check up after them because he was afraid not being noticed was the only thing standing between him and not having a job. I don't think they were really in a position to afford the mutts they had on hand (they'd been borrowed from "Piss Harry" King, if I recall - now better known as 'The King of the Golden River'), let alone expensive foreign dogs.
* Literary example: The titular character in Dan Simmons ''Rise of Endymion'' does some pretty bad ass acrobatics on a mountain cliff, all the while thinking that dropping would be such a hassle because somebody would have to retrieve him from the safety line. Just until he sees some fearful friend rush to him with just that safety line he forgot to attach. Considering the circumstances, his lapse of mind is easily forgiven, though.
* Literary example: In John Dickson Carr's ''The Arabian Nights Murder'', a set of friends putting on an act to trick one of their buddies hires an actor to play a professor in an Arabian museum. They are surprised when a ''real'' professor, a friend of the museum's owner, arrives for a meeting and is treated as an actor who looks just like the real thing. In the meantime, the professor thinks that the actors are real, and attacks one of them in an act of misguided heroics.
* In ''Halting State'' by CharlesStross, the British and Chinese intelligence agencies both run {{Alternate Reality Game}}s in which player-characters pretend (or rather, ''think'' they're pretending) to be spies, essentially creating hundreds of agents who Know Too Little.
* The Howlers in K.A. Applegate's ''Animorphs'' books are savage killers. However, their mind has been compared to a dolphin's in playfulness. They only kill because they have no idea that their victims are alive and feel pain and emotions. Seeing an emotional display causes their master to stop using them immediately as they were unwilling to fight.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* When the holodeck in ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' malfunctions, the players sometimes take a while to realize there's a problem. The most obvious example was the first such episode, "The Big Goodbye", in which a RedShirt practically dares a hologram to shoot him and is shocked when the bullet actually hurts him.
* In StarTrekDS9 there is an episode where Vic hologram hooks Kira and Odo. To do so, he tells to Odo that Kira is a hologram, which takes away Odo's insecurity.
*In an episode of ''TheThinBlueLine'', Fowler confronts, and talks down a group of dangerous bank robbers, while under the impression they were students playing a prank.
** Inverted in real life, when a street thief ran round a corner and encountered some people dressed as New York City cops, who he surrendered to. They held him for half an hour until a police car arrived... whereupon they informed him that he had just given himself up to [[TooDumbToLive actors filming on location.]]
* On ''JustShootMe'', Maya's Murder Game goes awry when an actual death occurs and she can't convince the others that it isn't part of the game.
* On ''{{Frasier}}'' the exact same thing happens.
** Except Niles, etc. had the opposite goal; to convince everyone else that the recently deceased was just part of the game.
* In one episode of ''StargateAtlantis'', Sheppard and [=McKay=] are playing what they think is a simulation/strategy game similar to ''{{Civilization}}.'' Their differing play styles and natural rivalry means that it's no surprise that this strategy game will quickly turn into a wargame. However, everything changes when they realize that the Ancient device they are playing the game on is actually manipulating two actual civilizations remotely, and they scramble to try to avert a ''real'' war.
* Subverted in a semi-recent episode of ''{{Supernatural}}''. Sam and Dean show up to help a beleaguered family beset by a ghost in the walls. Low on, well, everything, they still manage to set up the anti-ghost defenses, which the adversary walks right through because oops, surprise, it's just a crazy person with a knife. Much stabbing occurs.
* In the ''{{Kenan And Kel}}'' episode "Bye Bye Kenan: Part 2", Kenan comes up with a ZanyScheme to force his father to quit his new job as a park ranger by having one of his new friends dress up as a bear and frighten his father into quitting. HilarityEnsues when [[strike:a slightly more realistic bear costume]] a ''real'' bear shows up first.
* In ''Rose'', the first episode of the revived DoctorWho, Rose encounters a crowd of Autons, plastic mannequins animated by the Nestene Consciousness, and is saved from certain death by the Doctor. She guesses that the Autons are in fact students dressed up as a prank. She is wrong.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* The example at the page header is Kent from ''SluggyFreelance'', although in his case it endures in the face of all evidence because his WeirdnessCensor is incredibly strong - which in the Sluggy universe is another way of saying TooDumbToLive.
* Webcomic example: In ''[[http://clanofthecats.com/ Clan of the Cats]]'', the main character is a [[ShapeShifter shape-shifting witch]], who can transform into a black panther. After an incident during a vacation with her [[TheDitz ditzy half-sister]], she runs off into the woods in a distressed state. Shortly after, a black panther is found hiding in a crawlspace under the house they're staying in, and The Ditz crawls in there to comfort her half-sister. After spending most of the night trying to cheer up her half-sister, she finally finds out that it's a REAL black panther, who has just escaped from a private zoo...
** Similarly, in one of the books by Laura Ingalls-Wilder, her mother goes out in the dark to see to the cows, and finds instead a bear. But, believing it to be her cow, she swats it on the rump. This leads to her ordering Laura to "go back inside--now" in an effective lesson on quick obedience that this troper's mother drilled into her.
* ''KillroyAndTina'': When an enemy of Killroy's [[http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/killroyandtina.php?name=killroyandtina&view=single&ID=4148 shows up while he's training Tina]], Killroy lets Tina believe it's part of the test.
* ''TheWotch'': Anne [[http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2006-01-30 mistakes an actual attack]] for a training exercise.
* ''CaptainSNES'' did this in the 2008 Halloween series, with Alex refusing to believe that the murders around him were real initially (they were in a "murder mystery" simulation) but even then, [[spoiler: it wasn't REALLY real as it was AllJustADream.]]
* Inverted in ''JumpLeads'' issue 2, "It Came From Space!": [[spoiler:Meaney and Llewellyn believe that they are on a spaceship being attacked by an alien for real, but it turns out it's a historical re-enactment]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In one episode of ''TheLifeAndTimesOfJuniperLee'', "The World According to LARP", June's brother Dennis is kidnapped by monsters (as opposed to the ''intended'' target, her other brother Ray Ray... the orders given were something to the tone of "the one who can see monsters"), but believes this to be his LARP (live-action role-play) group's new adventure. Since his "props" are ''real'' magical items that he stole from June's room (which also happen to make him able to see monsters like Ray Ray), he defeats his kidnappers and escapes the dungeon with no idea that any of it was real.
* In ''AmericanDad'', Francine mistakes a real vacation for a fake one, after finding out that most family vacations have been fake. Thinking she is hallucinating the whole thing, she [[spoiler: kills people, sinks a boat, and wreaks havoc before finding out that this is all really happening]].
* The ''KimPossible'' episode "Larry's Birthday" featured Professor Dementor kidnapping Kim's {{Geek}}y cousin Larry by telling him that he's taking part of a LARP set up for his birthday. Larry buys it, and ends up almost putting Kim and Ron through a deathtrap, before [[spoiler: revealing he had seen through it.]]
* In one Goofy short, Goofy demonstrates to his son how he would deal with a mountain lion if one should attack, not realising that he has grabbed hold of an actual mountain lion in the process.
* This happened to InspectorGadget all the time.
* Happens a lot on the cartoon show ''TotalDramaIsland''. Owen manhandles a bear, thinking it is his insane friend Izzie in a bear costume. In a later episode, Gwen thinks she's encountering the beefy co-host in a generic movie-slasher costume. It's not. Despite Gwen's new found friend being white and the co-host being black, it takes the appearance of everyone else on the island before she realizes what is going on. Then she kicks his ass.
* In ''ChipAndDaleRescueRangers'', the Rangers once stage a spy story for Dale, so he would cheer up, but [[spoiler: real spies come into the mix and HilarityEnsues... in a way]].
* In ''ABugsLife'', Flick mistakes circus performers for real warriors, and they think he's looking for performers.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* [[http://www.cracked.com/article_15628_5-creepiest-urban-legends-that-happen-be-true.html There was this corpse in a Fun House...]]

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