Many of these examples are Plot Twists, so beware of spoilers ahead!
And You Thought It Was a Game moments in Live-Action TV series.
- In an episode of Bewitched, Samantha's identical cousin, Serena, was having an affair with a warlock, when his wife tracked her down to Darrin and Sam's house, she cursed Sam with amnesia and sent her to turn of the century New Orleans. At the end of the episode Darrin faints when he's told that his rescue of Sam included a sword fight with a Southern gentleman.
- In Castle:
- One episode both played straight and inverted this trope in the same situation in one episode: it starts by showing the victim, who paid good money to play at being a spy in a rather impressive personalized Alternate Reality Game, being chased by someone who he assumed was part of the game, but was actually a real-life murderer. On discovering the body, complete with all sorts of cool spy props, Castle of course assumes actual espionage was involved - and proceeds to thoroughly confuse the actors hired as part of the ARG. Similarly, a man picked up in the course of the investigation is suave, confident, and refuses to tell the cops a goddamned thing... until they mention the ARG and he realizes that this isn't part of the game, he's really been arrested by the real police. The super-spy promptly evaporates and is replaced with an ordinary man who's rather terrified at how over his head he's gotten.
- Another episode of Castle zigzags in a different way: Castle gets excited to find that the case he's on apparently involves a treasure hunt for mythical Masonic treasure. In following the trail of clues, he runs smack into reality: the treasure hunt was all just a game set up as part of a historical fundraiser (Castle was sad to discover the guy he had sword-dueled with was an actor, and the swords were props). Turns out, it actually wasn't a game: it was set up as a fundraiser by a guy who discovered real clues for real Masonic treasure, and decided to crowd-source the clues while telling everyone it was a game he made up. (Most of the participients believed it was a game, but a couple figured out the truth, and one killed the other for the treasure.)
- On Deception (2018), a lawyer is killed when someone sprays him with a water pistol filled with poison. The FBI agents hunt down the shooter to find him going after another target. Magician aide Cameron sees the man looking confused and asking "did I win?" He realizes the guy thinks he's part of some reality TV show and no idea he was just used to commit a real murder.
- Doc: Dr Hebert starts suffering a persistent case of hiccups. After it's continued for three days, Dr. Crane tells him that it's becoming a staff problem and he will get rid of those hiccups no matter how badly he has to scare his colleague to do it. The next morning, Dr. Hebert encounters a mugger. Too grouchy from the hiccups to put up with it, he comments on the effort Crane put into this and scares the guy off by claiming his hands are "lethal weapons." When he comes in, Crane tells him he's been too busy to put any pranks into effect. Dr. Hebert suddenly gets very quiet as he realizes he sassed an actual thug with a knife...and then realizes his hiccups are gone.
- Doctor Who: In "Rose", Rose encounters a crowd of Autons, plastic mannequins animated by the Nestene Consciousness to conquer the Earth and use it as a food source for the 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. Happens again later in the same episode — when the Doctor is attacked by the severed Auton arm, it takes her some time to realize he isn't just goofing around with it as Mickey had earlier.
- Numerous times on Fantasy Island, a guest's fantasy will involve a spy adventure or living out a historical era. At first, they'll assume they're in an elaborate role-play...until a real bullet nearly hits them or someone is struck down and they realize they're truly back in time and in real danger. Played with as, just as it looks bad, Mr. Roarke will suddenly whisk them back to safety. When asked if what happened was real, Roarke will generally just smile "what do you believe?" and the guest just decides it's better not to know the truth.
- On Frasier the exact same thing happens, except that Niles, etc. had the opposite goal; to convince everyone else that the recently deceased was just part of the game.
- On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will tries to impress his girlfriend by having Jazz hire an actor to rob her store. Will goes wildly over the top attacking the gunman with nutty "martial arts" moves and hamming it up knocking the guy out. Instead of being impressed, the girlfriend chews Will out for being reckless and leaves. Will tries to blame the guy Jazz hired for blowing it...at which point, Jazz states the actor is a guy who was watching Will beat down on a real robber with a real gun who's being arrested by the cops. Will faints.
- In one episode of Gilligan's Island, Gilligan is suffering from low self-esteem (and no wonder). The other inhabitants of the island set up increasingly insane situations for him to save them from, until they finally tie themselves to stakes and pretend a cannibal captured them and will eat them. At that moment, an actual cannibal happens upon the scene, but Gilligan thinks it's just the Skipper in disguise, and he drives the cannibal out.
- In one Hogan's Heroes episode, the plan is to use a fake unexploded bomb as a diversion. Hogan amuses himself at Klink's expense by "disarming" it with blatantly reckless and clumsy moves... until he's informed that the fake bomb was stuck in a tunnel cave-in and he's working on the real thing.
- On Just Shoot Me!, 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.
- In the Kenan & Kel episode "Bye Bye Kenan: Part 2", Kenan comes up with a Zany Scheme 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. Hilarity Ensues when a real bear shows up first.
- On Legends of Tomorrow, Nate and Zari are sent on a solo mission to 1936 to recover a mysterious egg. The duo find the egg only to discover it's fake. They immediately jump to the idea that Sara set up this entire fake mission as a way of having them get together, noting how it's all tailored after the action movies Nate loves. When a pair of men with German accents enter, Nate and Zari literally laugh on how Sara added in "Nazis" to the adventure. They're tied up with the Nazis demanding to know where the egg is while the duo mock their cliche accents and bad acting. They manage to call up Sara to joke about this...at which point Sara informs them this is a real mission and these are real Nazis with real guns aimed at them.
- In one episode of M*A*S*H, Radar runs unthinkingly into a minefield to save an injured Korean girl. When later told how brave he was by B.J., Radar responds "Did I just run into a minefield?" Granted, he knew the minefield was there before he ran into it, but didn't fully grasp what he had done until the danger was over, a situation common to many real-life Medal of Honor winners.
- In The Millionaire, each episode features somebody anonymously receiving a check for one million dollars from an Eccentric Millionaire. One recipient, Frank Harrigan, doesn't take the million dollar check seriously because he assumes it is a prank by his friends.
- In The Monkees episode "The Picture Frame", the Monkees are hired to play bank robbers in a movie holdup scene, not knowing they will actually be robbing the bank.
- An episode of NCIS has the team burst in to arrest a suspect... in the middle of a Halloween party. His first response is to mock their costumes for spelling CSI wrong.
- This is the core premise of The Peripheral (2022) — the protagonist Flynne Fisher believes she's testing a hyper-realistic VR system, whereas the headset she's using is actually controlling a cyborg body known as a 'peripheral', seventy years into the future (she's already living 20 Minutes into the Future, so this is less of a blatant lie than it sounds). Unfortunately for Flynne, her 'game' involves stealing something from a powerful person in this future, who very much wants it back, and as a result she and her brother are forced to fight assassins as they get tangled up in a timeline-hopping mystery.
- In one episode of Stargate Atlantis, 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. Slightly subverted later, when Zelenka and Lorne find another planet being monitored by the "game" and try to help the natives... only to, once again, devolve into rivalry (again, one is a scientist, the other is a soldier) and nearly start another war. Luckily, Weir shows up just in time to put an end to this once and for all.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- In an early episode, "The Big Goodbye", a Red Shirt practically dares a hologram to shoot him and is shocked when the bullet actually hurts him.
- In "A Fistful of Datas", Worf and his son Alexander are playing in a Western holoprogram, later joined by Counselor Troi. But thanks to a linkup between Data and the Enterprise computer, every character starts resembling Data. So, when Worf faces the character Frank Hollander, he initially thinks Data is also playing a part like Troi, until almost getting killed by him.
- In "Peak Performance", an actual Ferengi ship shows up during a combat-simulation exercise, catching the crew off guard when they find out the hard way that it's a real attack.note
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- In "His Way", the hologram Vic Fontaine gets Kira and Odo to hook up by telling Odo that he's dealing with a hologram of Kira, which takes Odo's insecurity out of the equation.
- In "Move Along Home", Quark begins playing a game with some mysterious new visitors using four pieces, when he discovers that four crew members have been whisked off to the game world. Subverted when he loses, and they all materialize back at Quark's. After all, it's just a game!
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Supernatural has the main characters attend a convention about the series of Supernatural books, which exist in the universe. When they get there, they find a LARP going on in which an old urban myth is the basis of a 'hunt'. They team up with a gay couple who are LARPing as Sam & Dean, and when they realise that the events of the book are real, they choose to team up (unknowingly) with the real Sam and Dean to help take down the Big Bad, because "It's what Sam and Dean would do." The real Sam and Dean choose to play along, claiming to just be fans who are so into the books that they took up monster-hunting for real.
- The Thin Blue Line:
- In "Rag Week", Fowler confronts and talks down a group of dangerous bank robbers, while under the impression they were students playing a prank.
- Inverted in "Fly on the Wall" — after Fowler talks down the old man with the gun, it turns out that he was going to turn it in to the weapons amnesty program and possibly get on television.
