Moments where a character has to hide the warning signs of abuse at the hands of parents/guardians and mean teachers from authority figures and friends in Anime & Manga.
- Ayakashi Triangle: Matsuri talks to Suzu's supernaturally-ignorant brother after being injured in battle and hesitantly claims he was a bike accident.
- In Bleach, the character Uryu Ishida once explains his injuries from a fight with hollows to a classroom by falling down stairs. To hang a lampshade on this, the class believes he's lying.
- In Blue Exorcist, Rin uses 'fell down the stairs' as his excuse for bruises he received in a fight. It gets funny when he attempts to explain his nosebleed.Rin: I landed on an insanely hot babe.
- In Change 123 a student fights with a kunoichi whose weapon of choice is a bunch of sharpened keys on a wire (sort of a disguised rope dart). These keys leave a serious wound on the student's leg, but in the school infirmary she tells the nurse that she accidentally cut herself with her own keys. The nurse doesn't buy this story (knowing that normal keys don't leave wounds like this), but pretends to accept it as she is also a kunoichi, from the same clan as the perpetrator, and has recognized her colleague's modus operandi.
- In Fushigi Yuugi, Miaka notices a suspicious cut on Yui's wrist and asks her about it. Yui casually explains it (at first) as a minor injury she sustained upon entering the book. Later, it's revealed that she did that deliberately because she had been attacked and believed she had been raped.
- Ga-Rei -Zero-: Kagura explains a large cut on her thigh (inflicted by a spirit armed with her katana) as her "walking through some glass".
- The titular character of Loveless uses the "fell down stairs" excuse to cover for one of the many times his mother attempted to murder him.
- Medabots: Henry used that excuse to justify an injury he got as the Phantom Renegade. It worked despite the injury being on his forehead.
- In Monster, when Dr. Tenma finds Dieter on the floor screaming in pain, his legal guardian claims that he fell while standing on a chair. This excuse works for all but thirty seconds before Tenma lifts the boy's shirt and discovers that he is covered with scars. It takes less than ten seconds for Tenma to call bullshit on the guardian's "the ambulance is coming, you can leave now" spiel.
- Ryouhei from Reborn! (2004) tells his sister that he is participating in a boxing tournament whenever she sees him and his friends fighting when it is glaringly obvious that both sides of the fight have every intention to kill and all kinds of dangerous weapons.
- Sakura Gari:
- Masataka explains away the burn mark on his hand that he got from when Katsuragi put his hand in boiling hot tea with "I got these burns when I was helping out in the kitchen because I was careless with the hot water."
- Earlier, when one of the maids catches him holding a knife unusually close to his throat, he claims to be sharpening his pencil. He's a student, so she believes him. We later discover that she does know that Souma has been raping him, however.
- Since the day she transferred Umino, from Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai, had been saying she was a mermaid. Nagisa does not believe her nonsense but one day questions her on the bruises on her body. In true Umino fashion she states that they're due to the pollution in the sea. It's really due to her dad's beatings.
- Subverted/parodied in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: Everyone assumes Kobushi Abiru is a victim of domestic violence, and her name is even read as "a flurry of punches," used in the context of said abuse. However, her injuries actually stem from her being attacked by animals after pulling their tails.
- Yuu of Seraph of the End gets into a fight with the equally Hot-Blooded Kimizuki. When Yoichi asks him why his face is all bruised up Yuu responds that he walked into a telephone pole.
- Yuuta from Shishunki Bitter Change is stuck in the body of his elementary classmate, Yui. One day she slapped him and when Yui's mom asked he said he hit a door.
- Spy X Family: After busting a smuggling ring, Loid shows up late for his first date with Yor with blood dripping down his face. His lame excuse to the other party-goers is that he was attacked by a criminally violent patient at his work as a psychiatrist.
- In the first episode of Stars Align, Maki gets physically assaulted by his abusive father while his mother is at work. When a teacher asks about the bruise on his cheek, Maki lies and that says that he fell out of bed.
- Parodied in the Hilarious Outtakes of Texhnolyze. In a "child-safe" redub of a gang fight, mooks exclaim things like "Ow, bee sting!" and "cut myself shaving" as they get shot.
