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Grossly inaccurate covers for live-action movies.


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    General 
  • Taken to magnificent extremes during the 1980s with VHS home video releases. One excellent example is Survivors of the Last Race which at no time features anything at all on the front cover and instead is a film about a small group of bad actors trapped in a fallout bunker.

    # 
  • The made-for-TV Christmas movie 12 Wishes of Christmas was released on DVD as 12 Christmas Wishes for My Dog, and prominently features a dog on the cover. There is a dog in this movie, but despite what the cover and new title convey, it factors very little into the events of the film overall.
  • The cover of 13/13/13 depicts a bloody child holding a teddy bear and casting the shadow of a demon. The tagline states that humanity has become demons. The blurb on the back talks about a plague of demons. The film has no demons in it.
  • The DVD cover for the film version of 1776 features Richard Henry Lee twice, flanking Thomas and Martha Jefferson in an embrace and some Congressmen below. Nowhere appears John Adams, the actual protagonist. Now, John Adams did predict, and the line was used in the play, that he would be forgotten by history... but for a musical that specifically sought to give him credit for his role in American independence? Ouch.
    • Lee is a One-Scene Wonder, OK maybe two, but he disappears from the movie entirely after proposing independence. Also missing from the cover is Benjamin Franklin, who is clearly the second lead and acts as Adams' sounding board and advisor.

    A 
  • The Jackie Chan movie, The Accidental Spy has an official poster for its international releases filled up to the brim with stuff that never happens in the movie, such as a nuclear explosion behind Chan, a Token Black Friend (the movie doesn't have a single black character, due to taking place in Hong Kong, Korea and Istanbul), two female fatales (both which are Caucasian, when the film only has 1 female character, a civilian played by Taiwanese Vivian Hsu), and plenty of jet airplanes in the background (while the movie does have one airplane, it's not a jet, and it never took off. In fact, the film's climax involves Chan preventing the plane from lifting). The worst part… while the film IS set in Istanbul, at NO point did Chan or any character visit the Hagia Sophia, which is prominently seen in the poster's right! It's safe to assume that the poster's designer sees the word "Spy" in the title, and immediately goes on to create a James Bond-style poster without watching the movie first.
  • The poster for the DTV movie The Adventures of Young Van Helsing features The Hero, his love interest and a tough-looking black guy. This gives the impression that they are the three main characters of the film, when in fact the last guy is the drummer in the main character's band, appears in maybe two scenes, and neither has any impact on the film's plot.
  • The posters and most promotional material for Air America depict it as a light-hearted buddy romp. The poster features Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. smiling at the audience. However, this is a film set during The Vietnam War, about opium trading and corrupt generals, and it's also based on a non-fiction book.
  • This DVD release of the 1972 British film of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland makes the film look like a modern CGI-loaded production with an Hotter and Sexier grown-up Alice, a la the Tim Burton version. First of all, the film is from 1972 with entirely practical effects. Secondly, it's one of the most faithful adaptations of the book and faithfully recreates the look and feel of John Tenniel's classic illustrations, and that includes the childlike costume of 15-year-old Fiona Fullerton as Alice.
  • The poster for All I Want for Christmas gives the impression that the kids kidnap Santa in a Home Alone style trap, and demand tons of presents. In the actual film this is just a Mall Santa who appears for a couple scenes, and the film's plot is more in the vein of The Parent Trap.
  • The entire print campaign and video covers for Almost Famous depict it as starring Kate Hudson. The actual lead is Patrick Fugit (with Philip Seymour Hoffman's character having a lot of presence as Fugit's character's idol) and Billy Crudup with Hudson being a glorified supporting character. The studio decided that selling it as a generic 1970's movie instead of the semi-biopic of the director was an easier sell (either way, the film was still an expensive flop despite critical acclaim).
  • This Japanese poster for An American Werewolf in London. Apparently the artist only knew that it was a werewolf movie with comic elements done by the maker of Animal House and concluded that it was obviously a sex comedy... Notably, a second poster was made after it was clear it was a horror film.
  • A lesser example: American Psycho's uncut edition has a blurb on the back cover that states that Patrick Bateman rapes his female victims too. Yet not once is it shown or implied in the film that he actually rapes anybody. This was probably done as a ploy to get fans who hadn't seen the uncut edition to buy the DVD.
  • The front cover of the original DVD release of Angus slapped on a random publicity photo of the main cast posing with a woman who is never seen in the film. Said woman was the late Dawn Steel, who produced the film. That cover was later replaced with the film's theatrical poster.
  • The cover of Animal Farm (1999) makes the movie seem like any other nice, kid-friendly movie about talking animals. The plot summary on the back even uses words like "delightful" and "charming" in its description...
  • The poster and DVD cover of Apocalypto makes it look like Middle-Eye is the main character. He's actually The Dragon.
  • The original Blu-ray back cover for Atlas Shrugged stated it was a film about "self-sacrifice". Anyone who'd seen the film or read anything Ayn Rand wrote would know she and her protagonists had nothing but contempt for self-sacrifice.
  • The film poster and DVD cover for 2007's Atonement show Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, making it seem as if the film is about star-crossed lovers. The main character, however, is not featured on the cover.
  • The dvd cover for Asian School Girls shows all four school girls holding weapons in action poses. However, the other three only decide to take up weapons and extract vengeance after Suzie kills herself.
  • Most of the posters and print advertisements for Avengers: Infinity War feature Shuri sporting her hairstyle and battle outfit from Black Panther (2018). In the actual movie, she instead wears an orange lab outfit (since all of her scenes happen in her robotics laboratory), while her hair is done up in an Odango style.
    • In addition, the 2017 ComicCon poster for the film featured Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, who does not appear in the actual movie, instead being part of the sequel.

    B 
  • The DVD covers for the B-Movie The Barber featuring Malcolm McDowell use a grunge style typically associated with gory slasher flicks. However, the film has no onscreen violence or blood. It is more of a psychological "cat and mouse" thriller with a generous helping of Black Comedy.
  • The DVD cover of BASEketball depicts Jenny McCarthy in between Trey Parker and Matt Stone, seemingly implying that the film is a romantic comedy with sports elements. In actuality, McCarthy's character works for the villain and is never in a relationship with the two characters (Yasmine Bleeth played the love interest).
  • The Blu-ray cover for the "Special Edition" of Batman: The Movie (The 1966 Adam West one) makes it look like one of the later, darker, non-comedy movies.
  • This DVD cover for the boxing film Black Cloud. Although Cloud is the main character, of the four characters displayed he is pushed all the way to the back. Tim McGraw and Ricky Schroder occupy more of the cover than the protagonists.
  • On Beetlejuice movie's poster, clothes worn by four of the main characters (Adam and Barbara Maitland, Betelgueuse, and Lydia Deetz) aren't those they wear during most of the film, but during the climax only: the Maitlands wear their wedding clothes because those are personal effects that have been used in order to summon them to perform a séance, while Beetlejuice's striped suit and Lydia's red dress they only wear during the botched wedding which happens just after the séance (It Makes Sense in Context). Beetlejuice's striped suit became his Iconic Outfit in adaptations of the film. Also, due to the movie being a ghost story, and to how common the Jacob Marley Apparel trope isnote , showing the two main characters dressed in their wedding clothes implies to the audience they died during their wedding ceremony. In the movie's context, they're already married when they die. Also, on the poster, Adam is beheaded and carries his head under his arm; in the movie, he dies from a car accident while his body is intact, and is only beheaded during a short and completely unrelated scene where Adam intentionally removes his head to frightens the house's new inhabitants.
  • The cover for the movie Blue Valentine features the two leads along with the words "A love story". Oh honey. This is NOT a love story. Far from it.
  • This poster for Blurt! depicts Victoria Martin with an oversized bow, which she doesn't wear during the movie. This was likely to get fans of her actress JoJo Siwa into watching the film, as her hairbows are her most recognizable trait.
  • Boa was repackaged and sold under the title New Alcatraz, with the DVD box being rather coy about the fact that it is actually a killer snake Syfy Channel Original Movie.
  • Body Weapon depicts Angie Cheung's character in a Stripperiffic leotard-esque leather suit (complete with Cleavage Window!) on it's poster and covers. While the film does have plenty of nudity and Angie in barely-dressed conditions, at no point does she wear a suit like the one on the cover.
  • The poster for The Boss depicts Melissa McCarthy as Michelle Darnell sitting on a chair, burning banknotes while two Dobermans sit on either side of her. The Dobermans belong to Peter Dinklage's character, the film's villain, and not Michelle.
  • The cover of Brassed Off makes you think you're about to watch a romantic comedy starring Ewan McGregor and Tara Fitzgerald. They both are in the film, but their love story is one of five equally important plots, which deal with poverty, violence, destruction and death.
  • The Legend Films DVD cover for the Ed Wood film Bride of the Monster features Bela Lugosi as an Evil Overlooker and a woman in a wedding dress that turns into tentacles halfway down. Problem is, it's a picture of a Dracula (1931) era Bela, his character's monster-making plan does not involve the creation of any sort of human-animal hybrids, and the only tentacles in the movie are attached to a plain old octopus who basically acts as a waterlogged attack dog.
  • Hoo boy, The Brides of Dracula had a few:
    • One has a girl holding another, bride style, as she enters into a gate with the boarding school in the background along with other women and Dracula looming over menacingly. Implying the film was going to be about Dracula attacking the school and turning girls his titular brides. Not only is Dracula not in the film, the main vampire, the Baron Meinster, only manages one attack on a girl at the school and that's it. If anything it's more about a French girl unwittingly freeing a vampire and Van Helsing arriving to stop him. The school is barely even a setting. What's more none of the girls look remotely like the characters in the movie.
    • Another poster featured a row of women in white, about five total, while looking over at Dracula while Marianne and the Baron on in the other corner. This poster was half and half right, four of the people on the poster look like their actions now (Marianne, the Baron, Gina and the unnamed Village Girl). But again, Dracula wasn't in it as well as the other girls that were drawn in.
    • A DVD cover for the movie feature the Baron holding Marianne by a window (it's a image lifted from the movie) with a castle looming ominously in the background a few bats in the sky, implying he was the hero protecting her from vampires. As stated, he is the vampire threat in the movie.
  • The poster and tagline of Robert De Niro's A Bronx Tale makes the movie seem like an outright war between De Niro's and Chazz Palminteri's characters (an ordinary father and a local crime boss, respectively) over the life of the former's son, who is apparently getting caught up in the latter's evil crime syndicate. Their rivalry is barely noticeable, and they spent a mere two scenes together. The crime boss isn't a bad guy either: the movie is actually a Coming of Age Story, and he functions as the son's mentor, repeatedly advising him not to follow him in his criminal lifestyle and making sure he doesn't get himself into trouble. Also, at no point in the movie does the son have to run away from a huge explosion.
  • The DVD and Blu-Ray covers for Bodies Bodies Bodies is a group photo of the cast, a majority of them are holding cellphones and have lights on them. The only character not with a light or a phone is Pete Davidson's character David, who is holding a Gurkha knife. He's not the killer. In fact, nobody is the killer in this movie. David dies first, via accidentally slitting his throat with said Gurkha knife while attempting to make a video where he sabers a bottle of champagne. Everyone else dies from an accident, or in a hysteria-induced fight.

    C 
  • The only actor depicted on the DVD cover of Camp Hell is Jesse Eisenberg, in gigantic floating head form. He's also the only one whose name appears on the cover. In reality, he has a cameo that lasts for only a few minutes, and the real leads are Andrew McCarthy and Dana Delany. Eisenberg actually sued Lionsgate and Grindstone Entertainment for the misleading marketing.
  • Camp Nowhere:
    • First, there's this poster, which seems to make the movie out to be the second coming of Animal House. In fact, the movie was a kids' movie and NOTHING like Animal House, but you wouldn't know it by looking at that poster. To wit: there were no supermodels in string bikinis and daisy dukes (there was probably only one bikini in the entire movie, and it was far more modest), the kids didn't tie up a guy in a suit and spray him with water, and most of the cast was in junior high school. But there were Super Soakers, so that poster wasn't completely wrong.
    • Likewise this poster. The four leads don't tie Christopher Lloyd's character to a stake at any point in the movie. In fact, that character helps them with their con.
  • The Cannonball Run has a minor example in that the Lamborghini Countach that appears on the poster is red. The Countach in the film itself is black.
  • The Captain: For some reason (driving the point home that it's set in Nazi Germany?), foreign release posters of the film always add a swastika banner on the towed car with Willi Herold in it. There's none in the film (or on the original German poster, for that matter).
  • Look at the 2006 DVD cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, and you'll see Gordon Mcrae whisper sweet nothings into Shirley Jones's ear, as they stand near a carousel while green grass grows and colorful balloons float into the sky. Watch the actual movie, and you'll be treated to a musical about a Domestic Abuser who dies during his wife's pregnancy. Also, when they meet at that carousel, no grass is growing, no balloons float into the sky, and the sun doesn't even shine, since it's nighttime.
  • Most publicity photos for the original 1957 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's ''Cinderella'' show Julie Andrews as Cinderella wearing a lavish, full-skirted 19th century-style ballgown trimmed with gold and pearls. In the actual telecast, she wears a slender, simple yet chic white gown to the ball, similar to Eliza's Embassy Ball dress from My Fair Lady. Apparently in rehearsals, the lavish dress proved too difficult for the quick change the live telecast required and was too difficult for Andrews to dance in too.
  • Posters for The Cave give the impression that the caving team is attacked at one point by a massive waterdwelling fish monster. While there are in fact monsters that do travel through water as well (they can, among others things, even fly), they're all human-sized.
  • Chopping Mall does not feature robots with humanlike, scaly looking arms (instead they have stubby, robotic claws), and no-one's body parts get stuffed into a shopping bag.
  • When The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe hit the cinemas, the BBC re-released their direct to TV version on DVD with ... artwork really resembling the Cinema version.
  • The poster and DVD cover for Clerks would make you think there are five characters with the titular job. There are only two. The others are Silent Bob, who loiters outside the store with his Heterosexual Life-Partner, and the current and former girlfriends of the protagonist.
  • The VHS cover for Clifford has the title character chained up next to a dog house - nothing like this happens in the movie, and there aren't any dogs featured in it. The design is justified by a tagline making a Bait-and-Switch Comparison between Clifford and a Pitbull. However, it seems likely that the marketing department was hoping potential viewers would miss the tagline, read too much into the very prominent dog house, and mistakenly conclude that it was either a live-action adaptation of the Clifford the Big Red Dog books, something similar to the Beethoven films (which also starred Charles Grodin), or both.
    • There is actually a dog in the film which Clifford takes from the airport whom he calls "Sneakers".
  • The 1974 film, Cockfighter which is about cockfighting and bombed upon being released, was re-released under the title "Born to Kill" and given a poster that makes it look like a totally different movie that has nothing to do with cockfighting!
  • Cop Dog. The cover makes it look exactly like every other silly kids' movie about dogs ever. The summary of the movie describes it as " a heartfelt tale about a boy and his dog who set out to solve the death of the young boy's father." What the summary, the cover, and the movie's title fail to tell us, however, is that the dog is dead for most of the movie. That's right, not even a quarter-way through the movie, the dog is run over by a car. The whole movie is actually about helping the dog fulfill his final desire, which is solving his master's murder, so he can cross over.
  • The American release of the Australian film Cosi depicts it as being a Muriel's Wedding-type comedy with Toni Collette as the star. The film is actually a bit darker than that (it's set in a mental institution and Collette plays a recovering drug addict mistakenly placed in one) and Collette is the third-billed actor in the film (Ben Mendelsohn and Barry Otto are the stars, a writer and director who are staging a talent show that becomes "Cosi Fan Tutte").
  • The cover of the American release of Cotton Mary shows a scantily-clad young woman kissing a man, suggesting an incipient sex scene. In reality, the film is about a much older woman who goes crazy in a horrible and very unsexy way, and who actually interrupts the one brief sex scene before it gets very far.
  • The Crater Lake Monster is an infamous example, with the poster showing a gigantic Tyrannosaurus rex-like creature rising from the lake. It's pretty cool, but it looks nothing like the plesiosaurid monster in the actual movie.
  • The most commonly-used poster for the Woody Allen film Crimes and Misdemeanors shows Allen and Martin Landau sitting next to each other, implying the film is about the two of them. While each of them is the star of his own story within the film, the two interact with each other exactly once.

    D 
  • One of the several covers under which Day of the Dead (1985) has been marketed features many arms reaching to grab at a frightened woman, an event that occurs only in a brief dream-sequence. Another depicts an open-mouthed alligator among a crowd of zombies and other threats, as if it's one of the dangers the characters will face. An alligator briefly appears on-screen, but it's merely hauling itself out of the way of some zombies, and none of the living characters even see the creature.
  • Deadmate, a schlock 1990 DTV "horror" film, features on its cover a beautiful, naked, dead woman held in the arms of an amorous coroner in a perverted twist on a classic romance novel cover pose. The film is about a necropheliac coroner, but nothing like the scene depicted on the cover happens in the film. The two models on the cover aren't even actors in the film. It seems to have been created purely to scandalize and titillate video store customers.
  • Def-Con 4 is a rather infamous example. While there is a Kill Sat in the film, it looks nothing like the one on the poster, and there are no skeletal corpses in space suits. And while the film does take place in a post-apocalyptic setting, it's not located in a desert but rather on the eastern coast of Canada. In fact, the poster art is a reuse of 1976 artwork by Angus McKie with modifications by Rudy Obrero.
  • Dennis the Menace: Dinosaur Hunter: The VHS cover for this movie shows an actual dinosaur but none actually appear in the movie since the plots involves bones and fossils. The Dennis on the cover looks nothing like his actor Victor Di Mattia in this film, most likely being a stock actor.
  • The box art for The Devil Inside features a very scary-looking blind nun. She does appear in the film. For a few seconds as a background character.
  • Diamonds Are Forever:
    • The blurb on the back of the Fox covers mentions the Slumber Inc. scene taking place in Los Angeles. This is not true; the only scene that takes place in Los Angeles is James Bond's arrival and the inspection of the metal coffin, and the hearse is clearly shown passing a sign welcoming drivers to Nevada on the way to Slumber Inc., and Slumber Inc. is located on the outskirts of Las Vegas, as is the real-life funeral home, Palm Boulder Highway Mortuary, where the scene was filmed.
    • MGM's initial release mentions Willard Whyte being the Big Bad. In point of fact, it was Ernst Stavro Blofeld disguised as Willard Whyte, and the real Willard Whyte is his captive.
  • A poster for Seltzerand Friedberg's Disaster Movie references The Simpsons Movie. The film has absolutely nothing to do with The Simpsons in the least, yet there's a poster showing nothing but it. It may be the most misleading movie poster ever created.
  • One of the posters for Doctor in Trouble depicts Ophelia travelling via breeches boy alongside Dr. Burke, when only he makes the journey in the film.
  • The cover art for Doctor Mordrid shows the titular character wearing clothes that never appear in the film. It also implies that at least some of the film takes place in outer space, when it's actually in another dimension.
  • The DVD box-art for Dracula 3000 features a grotesque and awesome alien-looking vampire as if it was designed by H. R. Giger. Yet, no vampire even looks close to that. The main villain is just a rather silly-looking Classical Movie Vampire. To top it off, despite the story being a sci-fi adaptation of the Dracula novel IN SPACE!, the Big Bad is not Dracula, rather he is named Orlock instead.
  • In France the film for Dream Scenario, an American Black Comedy, makes it look like a straight comedy. In particular it has yellow font on a blue background, which is very typical of French comedies.
  • The poster for Dreamscape is almost an inversion, as all the images in the outer "framework" of the picture actually happen in the film. The exceptions are that the Snake Man's nature as a Humanoid Abomination are concealed, making the creature appear like a regular limbless snake, and the poster's central image - Alex holding a torch, standing protectively in front of Buddy and Jane - never happens. (He does protect Buddy in one of the nightmare sequences, but Jane is never directly endangered at any point in the film.)
  • Most posters note  of the CAT-III Exploitation Film, Dr. Lamb have the titular character, a necrophiliac Serial Killer, wearing a hospital garb, something he never wears throughout the entire film. There's also the Hong Kong poster (which made it to a few DVD covers) featuring Dr. Lamb threatening a bunch of nude women with a chainsaw. In the film itself, Dr. Lamb operates by murdering the women first via strangulation, before sneaking their carcasses - then fully-clothed - into his apartment, and then stripping them to have the time of his life with their corpses. There are naked women in the film, but none of them are alive by the time they're stripped, contrary to what the poster implies.
  • Dredd: The poster and DVD cover showcase the titular Judge Dredd standing on a rooftop as multiple skyscrapers behind him are on fire and crumbling, suggesting there will be some massive scale action and destruction happening to Mega-City One. In actuality all conflict in the movie is confined to one building, which doesn’t even catch on fire.
  • Drinking Buddies: The cover art shows both Luke and Chris as clean-shaven. They have a full beard and permastubble respectively. Presumably, this was done so people would recognize Jake Johnson from his role in New Girl.

    E 
  • The Hong Kong war epic An Empress And The Warriors depicts Leon Lai's character clad in armor similar to Donnie Yen's and Kelly Chen's, and facing the enemy army in the wide desert, implying he will join the Royal Army at some point or at least put on armor and enter the battlefield. Nope, his character is a Robin Hood-esque thief who spends the whole movie in casual clothing and never leaves his forest.
  • The sinister-looking, evil ghost queen as seen in the poster for The Enchantress is actually a Tragic Villain, a jilted lover who seeks revenge after being killed and betrayed by her former clan, and she is not really as evil as the poster art implies. Also, the protagonist is shown wearing an outfit inspired by Conan the Barbarian, which he doesn't wear at any point in the film at all.
  • Many posters and DVD covers for Epic Movie normally show Carmen Electra in a sexy Hermione outfit (it appears multiple times on the DVD cover). However, Carmen Electra as Hermione never appears in a film. Hermione does appear, but portrayed by old disgusting pregnant actor. Carmen Electra also appears in the film, but as a Mystique parody instead.
  • Look at any poster for Escape from New York and one of the big things they often show is the head of the decapitated Statue of Liberty lying in the street. In actuality, the statue only appears very briefly in the opening scene (the only moment in the film actually shot in New York), during which it is perfectly intact. (This brazen deceit was so outrageous that it actually inspired the creators of Cloverfield to make it happen for real in their movie.) Other minor details, such as the location of Snake's tattoo and the weapon he carries, are off-model too. The poster art was later given a Shout-Out in the boom! comic series of the same name, where Snake pulls The Duke/President Harker past the Statue's head and asks, "Don't you recognize her?"
  • Escape from Sobibór is a drama about the massive breakout of prisoners from a Nazi extermination camp in eastern Poland in 1943. At least one particularly puzzling poster depicts its most recognizable star Rutger Hauer (who plays a captured Red Army soldier) in a wife beater and holding a BFG while he runs away from a huge explosion. Needless to say it's far from an 80s action film...
  • In the advertisements for EuroTrip former Hollywood adorable moppet Michelle Tractenberg's burgeoning beauty is heavily played up, the Special Edition DVD/Bluescreen cover even implying a scene where she strips off her bikini. In fact she's the only one of the main cast who never gets naked onscreen, even when her character flashes motorists for a lift we never see anything.
  • One DVD cover for Evidence of Love shows star Barbara Hershey with long straight hair, even though she sports a short curly hairstyle in the movie.
  • The Italian poster for The Evil Dead (1981), which not only implies a Haunted House movie right from the title, but also tricks people by using the freaking Bates House as their 'Haunted House'.
  • Looking at the poster from the film version of Evita, one would think it to be about a tempestuous romance between the title character and Antonio Banderas. Banderas's character, Che, is in fact the narrator and Greek Chorus, and has no real interaction with Eva Peron. Che appears throughout the film as several characters, who are unlikely to "really" be the same person (he's seen as a both a poor railroad worker and a guest at a high-society party, for instance), showing up wherever he needs to be to tell the story. The scene depicted on the poster is in the film, but it's actually a dream sequence where Eva hallucinates a waltz between herself and Che, who in this scene takes on the role of Eva's conscience; rather than a love scene, this sequence depicts Eva struggling with herself. Eva's actual love interest, as per history, is her husband Juan Peron, who is played by Jonathan Pryce.
  • On the back of the DVD for the 1981 slasher Eyes of a Stranger, it says boldly, "Jennifer Jason Leigh is stalked by a killer." While Leigh's character does confront the killer at the end in true Final Girl fashion, it is her character's sister (played by the lesser-known Lauren Tewes) who is actually the investigative protagonist of the film. Despite all this, it can be argued that Tewes' character stalks the killer more than the other way around.
    • Also, the serial killer never stuffs a victim into a phone booth, as shown on the film's poster, although he does harass victims on the phone before killing them.

    F 
  • The famous poster for Falling Down shows D-Fens in a white shirt and tie with a shotgun in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He is never actually seen with that combination in the movie.
  • The posters for Fantastic Four (2015) features the team standing among crumbling city ruins. At no point in the film does anything like this happen, and the one time there is significant urban destruction, it happens off-screen.
  • The poster for Forbidden Planet depicts Robby in a far more unflattering light. Also, he never once carries a woman in the film (indeed, when he does carry someone, it's a man).
  • Zig-zagged in The Fifth Commandment. The hero, Chance (Rick Yune) does get to kick ass with Guns Akimbo more than once, like the poster and DVD cover implies. But at no point does he enter shootouts bare-chested - he have two or three Walking Shirtless Scenes in the film, but none of them have action in it.
  • Final Girl: The poster makes it seem like William is part of the group of psychopaths hunting girls in the woods, when in fact he's the one who trained Veronica to be an effective Serial-Killer Killer.
  • The international poster of Final Score (1986) (as seen on IMDb) depicts the main character as a flaming skeleton that looks more like something from Ghost Rider. The actual film is a schlocky 80s B-movie action-fest doesn't have any supernatural elements.
  • The original poster for The Final Sacrifice depicts a warrior holding a sword in a mystical city. Neither the warrior nor the sword show up in the film, though the city does appear to resemble the Ziox civilization model seen briefly at the end of the movie.
    • A different release of the film, Quest for the Lost City, depicts none of the actual actors in the film and appears to depict a Grecian ruin as the supposed city. In fact, the only thing on the cover that does appear in the film is the crude map that starts the plot in the first place.
      • The second example is worse because Rowsdower is not a hunky young Kevin Sorbo nor is Troy a teenage, darker-haired Val Kilmer clone (back when Kilmer was slim and hot).
  • The Troma Collectors' Edition cover of the godawful sex comedy The First Turn-On! boasts that co-star Vincent D'Onofrio (in his rather embarrassing film debut) is an Academy Award nominee. Vincent D'Onofrio has yet to be nominated for an Academy Awardnote .
  • Flesh+Blood (1985): Agnes does not wear a pink dress in the film. Instead, she is seen in red, blue or white dresses.
  • The DVD cover for the 2009 film Frenemy (or if you watched it before Lionsgate realized they had a bomb on their hands, Little Fish, Strange Pond) makes it seem like Zach Galifianakis (with a huge head badly Photoshopped onto another body) is the star of the film, but he barely appears. It's really an anthology film connected by two characters played by Matthew Modine and Callum Blue wandering around Los Angeles watching people do dark things.
  • From Dusk Till Dawn: The poster looks like a typical crime movie. The incredibly vague tagline would make sense to those who have seen the film, but those who haven't would have no idea of the vampire twist halfway through the film
    • The 2011 Echo Bridge release of the film on Blu-ray mistakenly included a picture of Rebecca Gayheart on the back cover even though she doesn't actually appear in the film. The picture was taken from the prequel The Hangman's Daughter.
  • Feast your eyes on this DVD cover for Future War. No one resembling the African American man on the left appears at any time in the film.

    G 
  • The UK DVD cover for Girl House depicts the eponymous house as a sleazy No-Tell Motel, complete with a 'Vacancy' sign. In the movie, the house is a privately-owned sumptuous mansion in a secret location, to ensure that no fans can locate it and bother the girls. The killer is depicted wearing a balaclava, rather the much creepier Live Doll mask he actually wears. He is, however, carrying an axe, which is one of the weapons he uses.
  • The cover for the MGM/CBS Home Video release of the 1974 film of a Bolshoi Ballet production of Giselle actually shows a still from their production of Romeo and Juliet, which MGM/CBS would release on videocassette the next year.
  • Godzilla movie posters most frequently tend to exaggerate the size of Godzilla and the other Kaiju (yes, even compared to how huge they actually are), though there are other misleading aspects as well:
    • One poster for King Kong vs. Godzilla shows Kong swinging Godzilla by the tail over a burning city. No such scene is in the actual movie.
    • The US marketing campaign and poster art for Mothra vs. Godzilla renamed the film "Godzilla Vs The Thing" and depicted Mothra as an entirely different, tentacled monster that towers over Godzilla, a monster claimed to be so terrifying that the art of it had to be censored—quite the opposite of Mothra herself, who is a good monster who isn't remotely terrifying.
    • The American poster for Frankenstein Conquers the World depicts Frankenstein as a vicious monster destroying the Golden Gate Bridge and stating he's "rolled THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD into ONE". The real movie isn't set in San Francisco and Frankenstein is shown a Gentle Giant (and despite the overdramatic retitling, no "conquering" of any sort occurs). The poster also makes Baragon resemble a green Notzilla with no ears (who is red, primarily quadrupedal, and has big, floppy ears).
    • The American poster for Godzilla vs. Megalon shows the two title characters attacking each other from atop the Twin Towers in New York. None of the film takes place in New York, let alone on top of the World Trade Center.
    • The poster for Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla implies that Godzilla, Anguirus and King Caesar all get in a big brawl with Mechagodzilla, with Anguirus being fired upon with Mechagodzilla's vast arsenal of energy weapons. In the actual movie, Anguirus only fights Mechagodzilla briefly near the beginning before disappearing for the rest of the time to nurse his wounds, and Mechagodzilla was still in his Godzilla disguise at the time.
    • Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth shows two Mothra larvae hatching from an egg. There is only one Mothra larva that hatches from an egg, and while there is another larva in the movie, it's the Battra larva. This was probably caused by confusion with the earlier Mothra vs. Godzilla, which does have two Mothra caterpillars.
    • The poster for Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II depicts Mechagodzilla as looking vastly different (and much cooler) from how he looks in the film proper. No Tron Lines or big exterior pumps and wires to be found. It's based on an early pitch of the film where Mechagodzilla was a full-blown Combining Mecha, and you can even see the vehicles that would have comprised him in the poster (in the final film, the only thing that made it in was a wing pack for a Super Mode).
    • The Hungarian VHS cover of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla omits Godzilla entirely, featuring King Caesar and Mechagodzilla instead.
    • The theatrical poster for the first fully American Godzilla film is also not accurate; in the movie itself, Zilla is depicted as 300 feet tall, with his feet barely being big enough to act as a ramp for a taxi. The poster would have you believe that Zilla was way bigger than that.
    • But perhaps the most egregious example in Godzilla history comes from these two Italian posters for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, a movie where Godzilla fights the title character, a gigantic lobster, with the aid of Mothra, on a remote island. To say that these two posters seem like they were created for a different film would be an understatement: one poster shows a blond woman in a red dress being menaced by a giant gorilla in a cave, and the other shows the same woman reacting in terror as the big ape derails a train, while being fired on by an airplane and some helicopters bearing the US Air Force roundel but identified as US Army by some writing on the side of the helicopters. There is a cave in the movie, but not much else.
  • Of the blurb variety. Golden Winter mentions a "bank robbery" on the back. No such bank robbery happens. The heist is at an Elk's Club, trying to steal a donation for a local Boy's Club.
  • This French poster of Goldfinger shows Bond seemingly overpowering Oddjob. That's not the case in the film, Oddjob easily no sells Bond's physical attacks (007 only manages to kill Oddjob by chance by electrifying some metal bars Oddjob was touching with his steel-rimmed hat, using a loose electric cable).
  • Many covers for Grease feature Sandy's black leather outfit in most of the pictures, giving the impression that's her typical style, rather than a radical departure from her usual style that she only wears for the last five minutes.
  • Gregory's Girl: The DVD cover shows Gregory in a white suit jacket and Dorothy in a blue blouse. They're never together when he's wearing the jacket, which he borrowed specifically for their date.
  • The poster of Gremlins 2: The New Batch makes it look a lot darker than it is; in reality it's a much more slapsticky movie than the first one. The DVD cover is more straightforward about this.
  • Both the old VHS and the DVD covers of the Guyver live-action film adaptation show the Guyver armor mergin with Mark Hamill's face... but Mark Hamill does not portray the lead character who becomes the Guyver.

    H 
  • A rather iconic example from the classic action film, Hard Boiled. The posters and most of the DVD covers depicts Chow Yun Fat's character clad in SWAT gear, holding a shotgun in one hand and a baby in another, but for the entirety of the climax, including the infamous baby scene, Chow is clad in civilian clothes. Our hero does dress up in SWAT armor in a raid halfway into the film, but there's nary a baby in sight at that point.
  • Invoked by the cover for Heathers. The poster and some of the DVD releases make it seem like a typical romantic teen comedy that was popular at the time (think anything by John Hughes, with the movie itself even starting like one too until JD pulls out a gun..
  • A poster for The Heiress shows Olivia de Havilland with her hair down, even though she never wears her hair that way in the film.
  • The title and cover art to Hell On The Shelf make it look like a horror spoof of the Elf On The Shelf book / toys - though it is a Found Footage horror movie about a living toy elf, the toy in question looks much less like the Elf On The Shelf toys than the cover art would have you believe.
  • The cover for The Help looks like some kind of awkward romantic comedy. It certainly does not suggest a serious period drama about a young woman secretly discovering what life is like for black maids in the 1960's and trying to expose the truth whilst avoiding persecution by her racist peers.
  • Despite what the poster and DVD covers for Her Name Is Cat claims, the titular protagonist is NOT a Cyborg with a bionic right arm and legs, but is merely a human Femme Fatale. Nor does the movie have any cyborgs (or sci-fi elements for that matter).
  • The American Hogfather DVD case goes out of its way to obscure the central concept of the movie (that Death is replacing the Discworld's Santa Claus for a night... For instance, his servant Albert appears on the cover, but not Death himself), and prominently features the young actors who play Bilious and Violet (who aren't really involved in the action). The whole effect is to make the whole thing seem much less dark. A second edition DVD released in the States is a small improvement; the new cover art focuses on Susan Sto Helit, who is more central to the plotline than Albert, with the two kids. But there's no images of Death on either the front or back of the cover.
    • The DVD case in Hogfather's home country admittedly isn't too much better despite actually having Death on the cover, Albert is the one front and center instead of either Death or Susan. Another version features Death more prominently, but still has Albert as the focus and now Susan is nowhere to be seen.
  • Every DVD cover for the 1951 film Hometown Story boasts Marilyn Monroe on the front cover with top billing, as if she's the star. In reality, she only had a small part as a secretary, on screen for maybe five minutes. The (otherwise forgettable) film has seen so many DVD releases because it has fallen into the Public Domain. There's even a box set of 100 public domain films with Monroe featured rather boldly on the front cover as the set's "big star". Hometown Story, and her very brief appearance in it, is actually all you get.
  • The international DVD cover of House of Fury depicts the main cast in a series of flashy-looking martial arts outfits that they didn't wear in the film itself. The local release is hardly any better, showing all the characters in matching red uniforms absent in the film, as well as the Big Bad wielding Wolverine Claws and standing on both feet (in the film he's an Evil Cripple who spends all his screentime in a wheelchair, and nope, no claws in the film either).
  • The poster for House on Haunted Hill (1959) shows a fairly conventional-looking Haunted House, as opposed to the stranger, Frank Lloyd Wright Mayincatec-inspired edifice that appears in the film's exterior shots.
  • Katniss never donned the red Spy Catsuit she wears in the posters and promotional materials for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.

    I 
  • The Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs is a subtle thriller with four male leads, but all the female leads are as window dressing. Unfortunately for the international poster, a random chick with a gun who never appears in the movie was added for titillation. The poster looks a campy Bond knockoff instead of a cop movie.
  • The poster for Invisible Avenger features a woman on a staircase being threatened by a madman with a knife: a scene that does not occur anywhere in the movie.
  • The poster for It Comes at Night depicts the family dog barking into a forest nightscape, clearly hinting that the dog is barking at the "it" of the title "coming at night". The scene this is taken from occurs during the day, and it's never made clear what the title refers to.
  • The 1975 film It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time was later marketed as being a John Candy film. While it was one of the earliest films he had appeared in his role in the film was minimal and Candy had only a couple spoken lines.
  • Posters & covers for Ichi the Killer feature Kakihara front and centre, as he's the main character, often leading one to believe he's the titular "Ichi the Killer".

    J 
  • If one is to see the Mexican advertisements for Jack and Jill, you would believe that Eugenio Derbez had a bigger role in the movie, since he's predominantly featured next to Adam Sandler.
  • The cover of the 1985 movie The Journey of Natty Gann might make the viewer think that John Cusack was one half of an established pairing, or at least in most of the movie. The viewer would be wrong on both counts. Not only does his presence not contribute all that much to the story, but it's all of twenty minutes.
  • This VHS cover of Julius Caesar starring Charlton Heston. The problem: the cover art proclaims that Heston plays Caesar; he actually plays Mark Antony. Just because he has top billing doesn't generally mean he played the title character.

    K 
  • The poster and DVD cover of Killer Party show a boy and girl dancing at a prom (or other formal occasion). No such scene happens in the movie. The 'party' of the title is an April Fools Day costume party.
  • Kings and Desperate Men: This 1981 cult film starring Patrick McGoohan and Alexis Kanner (a fellow alumnus from The Prisoner (1967)) didn't get released in the U.S until 1989, and that was on home video. The cover for this video release had a picture of McGoohan looking very action ready, and somewhat reminiscent of Bruce Willis on the classic Die Hard poster. This is also a terrorist hostage film that took place during Christmas season, but unlike its 1988 Spiritual Successor (Kanner was noted for calling Die Hard a ripoff), this is not an action thriller. It's actually a dialogue-driven character drama which could have been written as a stage play. Also, there is the fact that the picture of McGoohan on the cover of the video release is based on what he looked like in 1968's Ice Station Zebra thirteen years prior to the making of this film. It doesn't represent the stooped, greying McGoohan seen in Kings, let alone what he looked like in 1989.
  • One of the posters for Kiss of the Spider Woman makes it look like, as Cracked put it, "a ghost-faced monster lady who catches people in a giant spider web and eats them to death, or a superheroine with powers comparable to Spider-Woman breaking up cartel supply rings in the South American jungle". In reality, it's a film about two political prisoners sharing a cell in Brazil.

    L 
  • The reprint of The Last House on the Left (1972) makes the cover look so modern that it is easily mistaken for the 2009 remake of the film; it also doesn't appear to use the original actress on the cover. Only in tiny-text does it say on the bottom of the box that it is the 1972 version of the film. Arguably it says that it is written and directed by Wes Craven on the front, which the remake was not.
  • The Last Stand is about five Big Damn Heroes who are all that stand in the way of an escaped druglord reaching the Mexican border, but of course only Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Knoxville were deemed worthy of appearing on the cover.
  • Releases of The Lavender Hill Mob make much of the fact that Audrey Hepburn has a role in it - the blurb spends more time talking about that than it does about the plot of the film, in fact. In reality, the film was made long before Hepburn was famous, and she's in it for maybe ten seconds.
  • After Casino Royale (2006) came out, Daniel Craig's earlier film Layer Cake was given a new DVD release. Instead of the original cover, which showed a group photo of some of the film's ensemble cast, the new cover shows Craig in a very James Bond-style pose holding a Luger pistol. He does carry that pistol in the film...for exactly one scene. And he does pose like that...as a gag (and, again, only in that one scene). The cover also features an example of Billing Displacement: Sienna Miller is the only other cast member now deemed worthy to appear alongside Craig. In the film, she has a very minor role (which was reflected in the credits: she was listed third from the last in the opening titles). But she had become more famous since the film's original release due to her role in the remake of Alfie, so there she is.
  • There exists a DVD/Blu-Ray cover of Left Behind (2014) which includes screenshots on the back of the cover of Nicolas Cage walking in front of a crashed plane and a crowd during daytime. While this is seen at the end of the film, it is during the night time when it happens and Cage's character is wearing his pilot-captain's uniform insted of a casual looking jacket. It turns out that the screenshots in question are actually from the other apocalyptic disaster-themed Nic Cage movie, Knowing.
  • This VHS cover of the 1958 French film of Les Misérables doesn't lie, per se, but is clearly trying to trick buyers into thinking it's the musical. It features an illustration of little Cosette (not Émile Bayard's iconic one, but in a similar style), its font is similar to the Caslon Antique the musical's ads use, and it reads (in smaller letters) "A vivid retelling of the French classic that inspired the award-winning..." (in bigger letters) "... musical!"
  • Look at this video cover for The Little Shop of Horrors. What's wrong with this picture? Jack Nicholson's part is only about two minutes long, and the plant isn't even in that scene.
  • Looking at the poster for the British musical Little Voice, one would think that it's a warm, fluffy tale about a young woman's (Jane Horrocks) rise to stardom, and the colorful cast of characters, including Michael Caine, who help her get there. In actuality, the story is an extremely dark one about Horrocks being bullied into a singing career she doesn't want by Caine's character, a corrupt talent agent, in order to cover his debts to the mob.
  • The DVD synopsis for Live and Let Die states Kanaga wants to Take Over the World, when he actually only wants to make a considerable sum of money by flooding the heroin market with his own supply.
  • The DVD cover for Lizzie Borden's Revenge depicts an axe murder occurring on a lonely road in the middle of a dark forest. The entire movie takes place inside a sorority house.
  • Posters of The Long Goodbye show Marlowe holding a Colt snub nose revolver with the tagline "Nothing says goodbye like a bullet", despite neither showing up in the film (the line was from an early draft), and the DVD release shows him holding a Beretta 92SB. He only uses one gun in the entire film, a Smith and Wesson Model 10, at the very end.

    M 
  • The Magic Crystal's posters depict the titular object glowing blue. In the film it glows green.
  • The cover for Mazes and Monsters makes it appear to be a dark fantasy story, with a picture of a labyrinth, a dark tower, and a night sky filled with bats. Turns out it's just an Anvilicious story based on the D&D scare of the early '80s. Also, the picture of Tom Hanks on the cover was taken years after the movie was made.
  • The Meg: The poster exaggerates the size of the Megalodon quite a bit, making it appear to be the size of a blue whale when it's actually the equivalent size of a modern whale shark.
  • The DVD cover for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie depicts Maligore behind the Rangers as an Evil Overlooker and the main antagonist. Ironically, Maligore isn't in the film at all and only appears in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie.
  • The poster for the Disney Channel Original Movie Model Behavior contains no references whatsoever to the Identical Stranger plot.
  • Both posters for Mortal Kombat (2021) heavily empathise iconic rival ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero (with the first poster having them in a Juxtaposed Halves Shot) implying they’ll be the main focus of the movie. In actuality, Scorpion only appears in person in the film at the start and at the end, and is only wearing his yellow ninja suit in the latter. Overlaps with Never Trust a Trailer as well, since Scorpion and Sub-Zero‘s fights were heavily marketed despite taking up a comparatively small amount of the runtime.
  • The cover for the direct-to-video movie My Pet Monster showed the actual toy that the movie was named after (and loosely based on), but the monster in the actual movie looks nothing like that.
  • The cover for My Sister's Keeper has Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin’s mother and daughter characters Sara and Anna smiling at each other while the other daughter Sofia Vassilieva‘s Kate is cutely blowing bubbles. All in all it’s a sweet and lovely image which alludes to a happy Coming of Age family film, which absolutely isn’t indicative of the actual film which is an incredibly bleak and bittersweet story dealing with Leukemia, legal battles over organ transfusion and the morally suspect parents.
  • Mythica: A Quest for Heroes:
    • The UK DVD cover shows our heroine Marek wearing a combat mini dress and wielding a sword. In the film, she wears a long dress and does not have a sword.
    • The US and German covers show her wearing a white blouse and leather trousers. Instead of a sword, she has a staff glowing with magical power. She doesn't have one of those in the film either.

    N 
  • The Blu-Ray DVD cover for Near Dark is apparently meant to appeal to Twilight fans, who may be in for a bit of a shock.
  • The covers for The New Barbarians, aka Warriors of the Wasteland largely ignore Scorpion in favor of every other character, including the lead villain. As a bonus, Fred Williamson gets a Race Lift into a white man.
  • The official poster art for the 1982 Australian horror film Next of Kin (not to be confused with the Patrick Swayze film of the same name) makes the film look like a straightforward slasher flick rather than the suspenseful psychological thriller it actually is.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: The Theatrical Release Poster depicts two Dream Warriors (one could probably be Kincaid) wielding a baseball bat and a mace, which never appear in the actual film. Taryn is shown with 80s white punk hair when in reality she has a mohawk hairstyle and she's wielding what appear to be dagger rather than switchblades. The cover also features a brunette woman who doesn't resemble the main character Kristen, although she has white streak (which Nancy usually has in the film).
  • One poster for The Night Walker features the lead Barbara Stanwyck being menaced by a demonic goat horned creature, which never appears in the film.
  • This cover for the film Norma Rae, which features a cheerful Sally Field in jeans and a t-shirt and the film's title in pink cursive, implies "cheerful romantic comedy!" Norma Rae is actually a gritty and powerful drama about the title character's attempt to unionize textile workers, which won Sally Field an Academy Award for Best Actress and an enduring place in the pantheon of great American actresses.

    O 
  • The poster for Oblivion (2013) shows a waterfall cascading down by the Empire State Building, but in the film is buried up to the observation deck all around. Another poster shows the George Washington Bridge free and at an angle, while in the movie it is half-buried and standing straight.
  • The DVD cover for the Mike Judge movie Office Space features Jennifer Aniston on all 3 pictures on the back and the spine, but she's only on screen for barely 1/4 of the movie.
  • On the Buses films:
    • The cover of the Studio Canal DVD release of On the Buses depicts Stan as a clippie rather than a bus driver.
    • The poster for Mutiny on the Buses depicts a giraffe as one of the animals that gets onto the bus during the safari tour, but no giraffes do so in the film.
  • Operation: Dumbo Drop: The poster depicts an African elephant in camouflage depicted as going to war. The movie is about the delivery of an Asian elephant.

    P 
  • The international posters and US home video covers for Pain & Gain put the Sorina character with Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, despite the fact that the character appears for less than 10 minutes and has little to do with the film's plot. The US poster sold the film much more accurately (and paired Anthony Mackie with the two leads).
  • The original poster of The Phantom of the Opera (1962) depicts the Phantom swinging on the soon-to-be-falling chandelier as the audience below looks up in terror. Actually, he is not in any way responsible for the chandelier's fall in this version - in fact, he dies after he sees it coming down and pushes Christine out of its way. The Phantom also never holds the swooning Christine in his arms as the inset image would have you believe.
  • This early '90s VHS release of the 1960 Peter Pan starring Mary Martin is obviously trying to trick buyers into thinking it's the VHS of Hook. Even though Peter Pan is the title, Hook's name is billed in equally big letters, in a similar font and red color to the Spielberg film's title, and Hook's picture is the biggest of all the characters'. Tiger Lily's costume is inaccurate too.
  • Chow Yun-fat is featured on the DVD cover of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and is even given top billing along with the other four leads in the film. His actual role consists mostly of dying so Keira Knightley can get a MacGuffin.
  • Of the five "Arcade posters" for Pixels, three show the aliens attacking cities they don't even visit in the film itself, and two have Pac-Man and Donkey Kong as an Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever instead of being barely twice the height of human as they are in the film. Moreover, Donkey Kong is seen attacking a city, while in the movie he's the final boss and doesn't leave the Mothership.
  • Plan B: The DVD blurb and pretty much every other summary of the film say that Bruno comes up with his "Plan B" to get revenge after Laura dumps him for Pablo, despite the first five minutes of the film establishing that Bruno was the one who dumped Laura long ago and he wasn't even upset about it until he became jealous after seeing her happy with another man. The DVD blurb also says that one of Bruno's plans was to find another woman to seduce Pablo away from Laura, when there's absolutely no indication in the film that he considers any plans other than "seduce Laura and get her to leave Pablo for me" or "seduce Pablo away from Laura myself".
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: I Love Wolffy's posters do a good job presenting the animated Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf characters it stars, but do nothing to show the live-action element that the film is most known for.
  • In an early episode of Best of the Worst, the RedLetterMedia crew watched an action comedy called Playing Dangerous, starring a young protagonist who in passing resembles Macaulay Culkin. The VHS cover makes it look like a light-hearted Home Alone clone, with the tagline even proclaiming it as being "in the tradition of Home Alone," but in reality the film is a dark and violent action film that was edited by the distributor in order to ensure a PG-13 rating.

    Q 

    R 
  • The Raid UK DVD cover modified the original cover/poster adding helicopters and multiple explosions on the outside of the building. First of all, only one explosion happens in the movie and two: no helicopters appear in the film at all. This is really odd because when the movie was first released in theaters internationally, they all used the same original poster.
  • While most versions of the Re-Animator poster avert this, the Japanese version of the poster that was also used for the VHS covers along with having the amazing title of Zombio only shows stills from the climax, mainly the re-animated head of Dr. Hill and the scene where he tries to rape Megan giving the impression that it's an Eroguro film. Likely resulting in thousands of Otakus disappointed in the lack of Fanservice.
  • The cover to Red Riding Hood mentions Gary Oldman on top billing next to Amanda Seyfried (who's on the cover), and next to the two hearthrobs of the movie, with no figure of Oldman at all on the cover.
  • The incredibly metal poster and cover of Reign of Fire fragrantly suggests the film will be full on “Dragon Apocalypse” with numerous dragons burning London down. Except in the actual movie all that has already happened and past the prologue the protagonists are mainly dealing with only a couple of dragons at a time and no massive city-level destruction takes place as every city is destroyed and in ruins already. Additionally no 64 Apache helicopters (seen on the cover) are deployed to fight the dragons once throughout the film.
  • In a very similar vein to the Godzilla film posters listed above, the American poster for Reptilicus depicts the title monster destroying the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as more closely resembling a demonic Eastern-style dragon. The actual film, being a Danish production, is set almost entirely in Denmark, and Reptilicus' appearance is an accurate representation of a medieval Nordic dragon.
  • The cover for the DVD release of Return to Oz. There, we see Dorothy, Billina, Tik Tok and Jack Pumpkinhead flying over The Gump, but then you see the Tin Woodsman among them... Why? The Tin Man appears about a total of a minute or so in the whole movie, he doesn't take any important part in the plot and doesn't even have lines. Someone in the Design Department for some reason photoshopped the Tin Woodsman in there...
    • And let's not forget that those bright and happy colors can be a bit misleading about the real feeling of the film, if you compare it with The Wizard of Oz.
    • But also, there's the theatrical poster for the movie. Not only the Tin Woodsman, but also the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion... How can The Gump fly with all that weight?
    • An old Japanese VHS cover is more accurate to the actual film overall, showing Dorothy, Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump, with the Nome King, Mombi and a Wheeler as Evil Overlookers. However, it also depicts the Nome King's larger form slightly behind the actual character, implying they're separate characters, when they aren't in the actual movie - plus it implies the Wheelers as major antagonists, when they're minor henchmen in the film itself.
  • The cover of the In Name Only 1987 sequel A Return To Salem's Lot shows Barlow from the 1979 miniseries even though he does not appear in the film.
  • The posters for both Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us show the Gill-Man rampaging in a city, which doesn't happen in either film.
  • The cover for the 2000 made-for-TV film Road Rage shows a truck tailgating a mustang, but unfortunately in the actual film the protagonists are in a Lincoln, not a Mustang.
  • The DVD cover for Robowoman is a painting of a beautiful young woman covered in elaborate cybernetic implants, with glowing red eyes and cables attached to her brain. The actual character in the film is a blonde woman in her 60s wearing a Vorlon-style visor and a rubber robot arm.
  • Robot Holocaust is a low-budget, underwhelming movie that does not have the spectacular giant robots the cover promises.
  • At least one poster for Robot Monster includes what appears to be the rhedosaurus among its dinosaurs. Although Robot Monster's dinosaur scenes are indeed made of Stock Footage from other movies, the rhedosaurus does not appear.
  • Robot World: That humanoid robot wielding two guns? Never appears.
  • The poster for the cheesy sci-fi movie R.O.T.O.R. depicts an armored robot firing in an apocalyptic wasteland, two points that do not appear in the movie.

    S 
  • In Sands of the Kalahari, the baboons are definitely a major threat to the survivors, but at no point do they wield weapons as they shown doing in the poster.
  • Compare the US cover of the Australian film The Sapphires (left) with the Australian cover (right). You could say it's a clear cut case of institutional racism or just a marketing team doing its job while bearing in mind the fact that a white story simply sells better than a black story, and that O'Dowd is the film's biggest drawcard in the US, unlike in Australia where Jessica Mauboy and Deborah Mailman are both better known. Either way there are Unfortunate Implications.
  • The poster, cover and all general marketing for Saturday Night Fever all gives the impression that’s purely a fun slick Disco romp with John Travolta... not the dark and depressing 70s Teen Drama with heavy swearing (F bombs and even C bombs nearly every 20 minutes), racism, sex, misogyny, violence and rape that the film actually is. John Travolta said has interviews he’s really shocked the movie is considered such a fun cult classic, for incredibly brutal and politically incorrect it is.
  • All of the many covers for the movie Saved! depict Mandy Moore in the center as the star, while Jena Malone is off to the side, and given devil horns as if she is the antagonist. The exact opposite is true.
  • The poster for Saving Christmas suggests it to be a deliberately cheesy action-comedy flick with Kirk Cameron leaping through explosions and beating people up with a candy cane. The film is actually an Author Filibuster shot mostly in what appears to be Kirk Cameron's living room, and the only jokes or action are half-assed slapstick sequences aimed at the Straw Atheists who disagree with the film's bizarre message.
  • All of the marketing for Scary Movie 3 makes it look like Denise Richards has a prominent role in the film as a love interest to Charlie Sheen (they were married at the time) or playing a role similar to Carmen Electra's. She has a grand total of one scene in the movie (in a flashback parodying a scene from Signs) and adds no importance to the film.
  • The poster for Scary Movie 4 features among the others King Kong smoking a cigar, but there are no parodies of King Kong (2005) (or any other King Kong for that matter) in the actual film.
  • Not as major as most of these, but early promotional images for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World implied Lucas Lee was the leader of the League of Evil Exes, as he is depicted in the center of the group and looming directly over Scott. Later promos used the proper character for the position, Gideon Graves.
  • On the DVD cover for Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, Elmo is featured prominently on the cover. The film was made before Elmo became a major character and only appears as an extra towards the very end. Later prints rectify this and only feature Big Bird on the cover.
  • One look at the rad-as-hell cover for 1985 B-Movie The Sea Serpent immediately tells you that it will not keep all the promises it makes. Indeed, the serpent in the movie is much smaller and dumber-looking, and while the movie does climax with the monster destroying a lighthouse near a bridge, the heroes spend the scene simply standing on the bridge watching it happen, and not frantically rowing a raft toward the creature or shooting at it from helicopters in a spectacular battle sequence.
  • Judging by the poster for She Gods of Shark Reef, you'd think the movie was all kinds of awesome. In reality it's an hour long slog, badly shot and horribly dubbed, with nothing happening.
  • The cover for the Silent Night, Deadly Night box set of films III, IV and V shows a killer Santa, which is ironic, as they're the only films in the series without a killer Santa.
  • One version of the DVD cover for Siren (2010) shows a bikini-clad woman (the head is cut off so it is unclear if it is supposed to be Rachel or Silka) holding a large knife; strongly implying that it is a Slasher Movie rather than the psychological/supernatural thriller it really is. Needless to say, neither Rachel nor Silka hold a Bowie knife at any point in the film.
  • The poster for Sky High (2005) chose some... interesting positions to place the actors in relative to their characters' roles in the film; deuteragonist Layla is crammed into the back-right corner, and Warren is posed to look as menacing as possible (while he is antagonistic early on, he's not actually the main villain). Additionally, Gwen is shown wielding the freeze ray she and Will built in science class (which she never does in the film), and neither Zach nor Ethan appear on it even though Magenta does.
  • The cover of the film Slaughter In The Ring declares the star of the film to be a muscular fellow named Lee Van Dorn....except no one named Lee Van Dorn is in the movie. The cover also features a blonde woman holding a shotgun who doesn't appear in the movie, and the back cover has a picture of a funeral scene that is nowhere to be found in the film.
  • Both Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland feature hot, psycho chicks on the cover who are not Pamela Springsteen.
  • The German poster for the film Smooth Talk is especially funny given that it completely excises the protagonist Connie, played by Laura Dern, instead centering Treat Williams and a nameless blonde pin-up Fanservice-type.note 
  • The Snowman (2017): The most frequently used poster is a note from the killer reading "MISTER POLICE - YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER - I GAVE YOU ALL THE CLUES". This note is not present in the final movie. In fact, almost no notes are present in the final movie, presumably due to the Troubled Production. This makes the scene where Harry finds a stack of the paper and envelopes that were presumably used to send the notes particularly confusing without the context of the marketing; there hasn't been a note onscreen in like an hour, making it pretty meaningless.
  • The posters and DVD cover for Soul Survivors had Eliza Dushku in the centre placed in front of three other cast members, and a demonic evil eyed face above them, implying that the film was a Final Destination-ish supernatural 'slasher' film with Eliza Dusku as the Final Girl. In the film itself, Eliza Dushku doesn't play the main character. The main character is played by Melissa Sagemiller, who is in the background on the cover. The events in the film are a bit random and confusing, but the plot, such as it is, isn't so much a supernatural 'slasher' film as a ghost story set around a car accident.
  • Soup for One has an eye-catching poster with a man rowing in a bed down the Hudson River. Said scene never happens in the movie, where the guy just uses a regular sailboat.
  • The Netflix cover for Space Jam features a picture of Michael Jordan and Lola Bunny together, yet Bugs Bunny has a bigger role in the movie than his female counterpart. It’s possible that this is because Lola was subject to Fanservice on the internet, most other releases usually feature images of Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny together.
  • The '90s indie film Spanking the Monkey has a cover depicting the typical twenty-something slacker known to star in this sort of movie, making it seem to be a Sex Comedy in the vein of Clerks, possibly about masturbation. In reality, it is a Dark Comedy about Parental Incest.
  • The DVD cover to Stand and Deliver showed what many people thought that Lou Diamond Phillips was the main character, but in reality it was Edward James Olmos.
  • Star Trek
    • The teaser poster for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (with the cast faces and names) includes an early concept model for the upgraded Enterprise, painted by celebrated sci-fi artist, John Berkey. The ship seen on screen doesn't look like this.
    • One the most widespread movie poster images for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan depicts a space battle between the Enterprise and the Regula 1 space station instead of the stolen starship Reliant. Regula 1 was an unarmed science research station.
      • It also clusters Kirk, Spock, and Saavik together, implying that they went on the away mission to Regula 1 together. Except that Spock stayed on the Enterprise while Kirk investigated Regula 1.
    • The Star Trek III: The Search for Spock poster shows the Enterprise and Kruge's Bird-of-Prey exchanging phaser fire (from weird positions on their ships). They actually exchanged torpedo shots, and were never that close to each other. The Bird-of-Prey's wings were also never in the "up" position when dueling with the Enterprise.
    • The poster for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home shows the stolen Bird-of-Prey flying 'over' the Golden Gate Bridge during sunset or sunrise. In the film, the Bird-of-Prey flew under the bridge on a hellish, stormy afternoon.
    • The Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country poster shows the Enterprise being fired on by both Chang's Bird-of-Prey and Kronos One. Kronos One never fired on the Enterprise, and Chang's ship was cloaked when Kronos One and the Enterprise were anywhere near each other.

  • Star Wars:
    • One of the posters for the American release of A New Hope shows Luke as incredibly muscular and wearing an open shirt while Leia has bare legs, an Impossibly-Low Neckline, and a cape. In the vast majority of ANH covers in general, Luke tends to be holding a lightsaber in a fighting pose; in the movie, he only used one in the training scene, and wouldn't fight with one until the next movie.
    • The official promotional posters for the first Soviet release of A New Hope: three alien heads, a scrapyard-assembled cowboy, a panther with lightsaber mane and a rock head. By painters off their meds. The texts are technically correct: "Star Wars: a galactic Western" or "Star Wars: a space Western".
    • This article collects various international posters, including the aforementioned Soviet Russian release. The Hungarian posters feature only aliens that never appear in the movie and a vaguely Darth Vader-esque figure who looks almost nothing like him. One of the Polish posters for the series looks like a the cover to a Sega Master System flight sim as opposed to anything related to Star Wars. Another Polish poster depicts only C3-PO, as if he is the star of the film and not merely a supporting cast member. Safe to say, the posters from former communist states tend to be the most bizarre.
    • Several posters for Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi feature Luke wielding a blue lightsaber as he does in the first two films. In the actual movie, it's green.
    • Then there's the somewhat notorious Polish poster for Return of the Jedi, which depicts Darth Vader's head exploding. According to the artist, he was told that Darth Vader was going to die, so he felt free to go nuts with how it'd happen. Weirdly, Darth Vader's head sort of does explode in a dream sequence in The Empire Strikes Back, which could be where he got the idea.
    • This poster for the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi depicts Luke fighting Vader in his Empire Strikes Back attire (note the blue lightsaber and blaster pistol) [1].
    • The teaser posters for both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are not only tinted in an ominous red, but even depict Anakin Skywalker wielding a red lightsaber, signifying his turn to the Dark Side and his transformation into Darth Vader. In neither film however, does he receive or create his own Sith blade at all, and is only seen using the blue one that will eventually be passed to his son.
  • Stay Tuned's poster features a dog right next to the Knable children (implying that the dog belongs to the Knable family), but at no point in the film does it ever show the Knables owning a dog. There is a dog visible in the film, but it's a rottweiler rather a golden retriever like on the cover, and it belongs to a neighbor, not the Knables. It also doesn't help that the poster is (at least in North America) reused for all of the film's home video releases.
  • Stone Cold has an alternate cover that depicts the protagonist as a cyborg, an artwork ripped off from The Terminator. The movie is set in the present-day and revolves around a Cowboy Cop taking down a ruthless biker gang, it has zero sci-fi elements or cyborgs in it. The Skull ear-ring on the cover isn't in the film either.
  • The video cover to the B-movie Street Asylum features G. Gordon Liddy as a cyborg, when he actually turns out to be an S&M-obsessed, fascist human politician.

    T 
  • The 1994 VHS release of Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince shows Princess Melora kissing Kermit the Frog, obviously making it look like Kermit plays the title character. Nor does the synopsis on the back ever mention the fact that Kermit doesn't play the frog prince. The title role is actually played by Robin the Frog, while Kermit narrates and serves as Robin's friend and helper.
  • A Talking Cat!?!: The Cute Kitten on the cover looks nothing like the overweight adult cat in the actual movie.
  • Numerous DVD covers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III give the film the subtitle, "Turtles in Time", despite it not appearing in the film itself. This is likely due to confusion with the video game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, which has a similar plot.
  • A fan-made Photoshopped poster for Thor: The Dark World, with brothers Thor and Loki in a rather homoerotic (and kind of incestuous) embrace, accidentally wound up as legitimate advertising in Shanghai!
  • This poster for the 1960 version of The Time Machine will make one wonder if the designer had actually seen the film. The titular contraption bears no resemblance to the one featured in the movie.
  • The back of the DVD cover for Tootsie features an image of Dustin Hoffman's character, Michael, kissing his coworker Julie while in full Dorothy Michaels regalia, even though the two never kiss at any time while he is dressed as a woman.
  • Treasure Hunt features Chow Yun-fat in a badass-looking black overcoat on the cover, an attire he never wears in the film. It's very likely due to Chow's status as a Heroic Bloodshed icon at the time the movie was made.
  • Most of the Tremors movie covers showed a snake-like monster opening its jaws towards the surface. In the films, these "snakes" were just the monsters' tongues. The fourth movie was a notable exception and showed the graboid itself opening its maw with the three snake tongues slithering out.
  • The DVD cover of the '80s heavy-metal horror film Trick or Treat has Gene Simmons' and Ozzy Osbourne's floating heads, and their names above the title. However, each one of them has a mere cameo in the film.
  • Just take a look at this hilariously misleading cover art for Troll 2. Three guesses as to whether the big beastie actually appears in the film or not and the first two don't count. The plot synopsis on the back of the VHS cover is also misleading. It's like a mix between that movie's plot and the plot of the original Troll.
  • True Grit was re-released on DVD around the time of The Coen Brothers remake, with a monochrome gray tone and typography similar to the latter. The original was more of a comedy compared to the recent one.
  • The poster and cover for Two Weeks Notice show Sandra Bullock wearing a purple jumper that is never seen in the film.
  • Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a Hong Kong parody film released by Shaw Brothers combines this trope with Advertised Extra. The main poster (which is also the artwork of several VCD and DVD releases) depicts a gag early in the film, where an unnamed woman is subjected to a Marilyn Maneuver (she's in the film for around 70 seconds) but also shows a Flying Saucer descending above her. Said saucer comes from a separate part of the film unrelated to the Marilyn Maneuver gag, and in fact occurs half an hour later with the woman on the cover art nowhere in sight. Then again, the entire movie is kind of screwy and hardly makes a lick of sense.
  • The cover for the 2011 independent film Tyrannosaur got a lot of criticism, because many were drawn to its page expecting a Jurassic Park-style action film. It's actually a drama about abusive relationships that has nothing to do with dinosaurs.
  • Tyranno's Claw, an actual dinosaur movie unlike the above, does have most of the stock dinosaurs in media. However, the movie itself doesn't have any brontosauruses despite a few showing up in it's poster.

    U 
  • Ultraman Tiga Gaiden: Revival of the Ancient Giant, unlike other installments of the Ultra Series, is actually a Time Travel Episode fantasy-epic set in the Jomon Period, where the main character, Tsubasa Madoka (son of Daigo Madoka from Ultraman Tiga) accidentally enters the wormhole into an ancient village, and has to stop a prophecy. For the most part it feels more like a fantasy film rather than an Ultraman show, but you probably couldn't tell from it's poster and DVD covers which makes it looks like any other modern-day Ultraman film.
  • And then there's Ultraman Gaia: The Battle In Hyperspace, another offender, which is a Real-World Episode set in our world, which mostly deals with the struggles of a little boy being bullied at school and idolizing the Ultramen. The titular Ultra (and his host) doesn't even show up in person until the second act, from a wish-granting red ball, and the Ultraman action only takes up a small fraction of it's runtime. Too bad the poster and DVD cover make it look like an Ultra-vs-monster epic like any other entries in the franchise.
  • The poster of an earlier Tsuburaya film, Ultra Q The Movie: Legend of the Stars, depicts the Anti-Hero alien protagonist Wadatuzin as a Rubber-Forehead Alien who looks nothing like her gynoid appearance in the film itself.
  • Unbreakable has this problem since it’s poster, DVD cover and general advertising from Touchstone Pictures portray it as some kind of supernatural Psychological Horror film à la The Sixth Sense. While the film is dark, somber and frightening at times it’s actually a Superhero film at its core, but that doesn’t come across in its official covers note . The advertising also effected Unbreakable initial critical response with some detractors believing they’d been tricked into watching a superhero movie, director M. Night Shyamalan also blames Touchstone Pictures marketing for some of the backlash to the film upon release. Although regardless the film was still a success, became a cult classic, won multiple awards and eventually got a sequel.
  • While the original The Untold Story have a poster that averts this trope (showing the Villain Protagonist as played by Anthony Wong slicing up body parts, something that did happen in the film's climax), the standalone sequel's poster, The Untold Story II, have it's poster and promotional materials showing Anthony Wong's character performing the killings and mutilations or corpses. In actuality Wong plays a whole different character in the sequel, a policeman investigating an unrelated murder incident and was in fact one of the good guys.

    V 
  • The British and French DVD covers for Valhalla Rising show a charging Viking horde. It's also sold in a 2-DVD boxset alongside Outlander, which an action-heavy film about Vikings fighting aliens. Valhalla Rising is actually a slow-paced and hypnotic art film that is more in line with Aguirre, the Wrath of God than the historic action flick it's presented to be. Some covers show the main character set against a desolate landscape, which is keeping more in line with the actual plot.
  • The girl standing with Nicolas Cage in the movie poster for Valley Girl is not actually the titular character played by Deborah Foreman. Word of God says that the model in the poster is actress Tina Theberge, who played the ex-girlfriend of Cage's character. A budget DVD release of Valley Girl with The Sure Thing (as the Totally Awesome 80s Double Feature: The Sure Thing / Valley Girl) has Foreman's head obviously Photoshopped onto Theberge's body on the front cover.
  • The poster for the low-budget Valley Girl movie titled The Val$ features illustrations of three of the four titular "Vals" in outfits with lower-cut tops and shorter skirts than what was actually worn in the film. The fourth Valley Girl is shown in an outfit that never appears in the film, one that was obviously drawn to call attention to her ample bosom.
  • The back cover of the 1996 Vampirella movie shows the heroine in her traditional comic book costume, concealing the fact that it was actually substituted with a less skimpy version.
  • Virtual Combat: The VHS cover depicts the female lead in a white uniform that she doesn't wear at any point in the film.
  • One poster for A View to a Kill clearly exaggerates on May Day's height, as Grace Jones is tall, but not enough to almost reach Roger Moore, even with the heels. Another poster (currently the page image) shows a clip from the climax with Bond on the Golden Gate Bridge, wearing a tux and brandishing a pistol to take on Zorin; in the actual climax Bond was wearing the mine worker disguise and unarmed.
  • One poster for The Valley of Gwangi does a pretty good job establishing the tone of the movie and none of the text on it contains any outright lies. But it makes Gwangi himself way bigger than he is in the actual movie, effortlessly swatting aside an entire herd of horses with his tail.
  • The Velocipastor's cover shows off the titular monster with a computer-generated picture resembling a Jurassic Park-style raptor. The film itself, having No Budget, lacks anything resembling the effects work to pull off such a creature, which is instead portrayed by a man in a chunky costume vaguely resembling a T-rex.

    W 
  • Posters for the Japanese film Warning From Space exclusively present the movie as being about a starfish kaiju that attacks Japan. The story is actually about a friendly race of literal Starfish Aliens who came to Earth to warn them about a collision with a rogue planet called "Planet R".
  • The original poster for When Time Ran Out... shows only the three main stars, some helicopters, a vague explosion, and a man dangling from some sort of sci-fi elevator. Combined with the tagline - "Caught in a game of power. Playing time: 24 hours. Prize: Untold riches. Rules: None." - it makes it seem like some sort of action-packed political thriller. It's actually a disaster movie about a volcanic eruption; the "game of power" is just one of many subplots that sets up character conflicts before the mountain blows.
  • The DVD covers issued for the Korean horror movies The Wig and Voice are given bad direct to video horror covers, with a disturbing picture of a bloody hand reaching out from a stitched-up shaved head, and a bloody hand coming out of some woman's mouth, respectably. Both are advertised as unrated, even though both movies could probably just as easily get an R-rating as most. The cover to Voice is perhaps the most unreliable one ever seen, as it's unrelated to the movie's plot; the movie is a weird ghost/killer movie with some blood and gore, but no hands coming out of people's mouths. Likewise, there is also no hand coming out of anybody's stitched-up head in Wig, just a killer hair piece.
  • 'Some DVD and VHS covers for 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory'' depict Charlie wearing a red sweater, when he actually wears a blue sweater through most of the film.
  • The Wishmaster DVD cover suggests the villain is a vampire; he's actually a genie.
  • The Wizard of Oz: An Italian poster for the movie depicts Professor Marvel showing a crystal ball to Dorothy, which reflects an image of the Wicked Witch, and her gasping in horror. Obviously, this does not happen in the actual movie.
  • Wonder Seven has a poster that depicts Michelle Yeoh's character in a skimpy leather outfit and fishnet stockings, an attire she's never seen wearing at any point of the film. It's even the IMDb poster! (You can tell it's not Yeoh due to the awful Photoshop quality)
  • One poster for the film Would You Rather shows someone cutting a woman's eye with a razor blade. In the film it's a man's eye that's cut, and he does it to himself.

    X 
  • Several of the posters for X-Men: The Last Stand showed Angel clad in an X-Men uniform and acting as part of the team. Not only does Angel not wear a costume in the movie, he doesn't even officially join the X-Men either.
    • Cyclops was also shown in his X-Men uniform on the back of the DVD cover, but never dons it once in the film.
  • The X-Men: Dark Phoenix live action ensemble poster bafflingly deicides to depict Selene and Ariki as main figures in the bottom right. In actuality, they only appear briefly at the end to aid the X-Men.
    • The posters also portray Jean as the villainous Dark Phoenix when contrary to the title and tagline not once does Jean transform into her Superpowered Evil Side from the comics. The real Big Bad Jessica Chastain’s Vuk is given little prominence, the aforementioned poster even has her at the bottom as a tiny, easily missable shadowed figure.
    • Mystique and Quicksilver are also featured prominently, even though the former dies not too long into the film and the latter is put in an ambulance after getting injured and not seen until the ending.


Alternative Title(s): Live Action Film

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