Moments where a character has to hide the warning signs of abuse at the hands of parents/guardians and mean teachers from their friends and teachers in Fan Works.
- Anger Management: Lynn tries to pretend that she got her injuries falling downstairs and accidentally punched herself in the eye, when actually Lincoln beat her up.
- In A Call To Arms, the Carrows' abuse results in many of the students, including Ginny, receiving injuries during detention. Wishing to conceal the reason for her hurt knee, Ginny tells her friends that she fell down.
- The Lord of the Rings Alternate Timeline fic Saruman of many Devices
features the disgraced lord of Dorwinion intentionally "cutting himself shaving" so as to avoid an inevitable death sentence, allowing his son to inherit. This is enabled by Prince Brand, who he betrayed by cowardice. - In the Death Note AU Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything after L beats up Light, Light tells everyone that he fell.
- In The Marriage of the Slave King, Second passes off Sombra's injuries after his torture as the result of falling down several flights of stairs. Repeatedly. Bizarrely, this actually works.
- In Fire Emblem: Awakening fanfic Pretender Robin explains his strange voice, which is because he attempted to hang himself and his throat was injured, as having Plegian sand stuck in his throat.
- Referenced in The Universe Doesn't Cheat. Eleya rhetorically asks one of the Kobayashi Maru exam proctors if he thinks the scar on her face is from her hairdresser screwing up.
- In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends fanfic More than My Friend, Mac is being abused by his older brother Terrence and his peers. Terrence uses Mac to get him his drugs and beats him up near daily. Their mother is too busy with work to notice, but Frankie does. When she questions Mac about his unusual behavior and bruises, he makes up various excuses, such as having to do homework or the bruises being from roughhousing with his friends.
- In the Naruto Peggy Sue fic I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!, Sasuke accidentally rips off one of his arms. He thought Sakura had attached a prosthetic arm against his permission, when in reality he had traveled back in time and was in his twelve year old body. When questioned by Kakashi on how he lost his arm within one day, he says he fell down the stairs.
- In Renegades after (another) particularly crappy/demeaning comment from Oliver, Laurel finally punches him in the face breaking his nose and giving him two black eyes. In the next chapter, Thea reveals she forced him to tell everyone his injuries came from a "jet ski accident".Laurel: [incredulous] Jet skiing?
Thea: Yeah, it was the douchiest thing I could think of, and now he's telling everyone. You're welcome. - In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Goku, arriving to fight what's left of the Ginyu Force, one-shots the guy who almost killed Vegeta and then asks Vegeta how he got all beat up. In a Shout-Out to Fight Club, Vegeta (with Ghost Nappa's prompting) says he fell down some stairs. Krillin interjects, but stops when Vegeta threatens to throw him down a flight.
- In The Joker Blogs, Batman is wounded by Harleen's shotgun blast. He escapes and the next day, it's mentioned on the news that Bruce Wayne was in a nasty hunting accident.
- In Birds Of a Feather after becoming the Black Canary, Laurel has to make up various excuses for the injuries she receives. Similar to (and possibly inspired by) Knightfall above, when she's very badly injured her allies pass it off as her crashing her motorcycle, and actually crash her motorcycle (much to her annoyance) to sell the lie. Oliver isn't fooled, usually because he knows the injuries don't match the story, leading to her coming up with a another lie: that she's been going to underground fight matches.
- A couple from the Hamilton fandom, both from the same series:
- In "I'm Not Stupid", John Laurens' father beats him up and locks him up in the trunk of his car and then stages it so that it looks like he fell in the shower. Emergency services, social workers, and doctors all fall for it, as John doesn't dispute it. His stepmother catches on and leaves his father but is unable to get custody of John.
- In "Misunderstandings", John and Lafayette (who are in a relationship that is based around a pain kink & BDSM) get called out multiple times for abusing each other. Only Eliza, a nurse, figures out what's going on and gives them condoms and advice on safe sex.
- In "I'm Not Stupid
- In Ambitious Love, a few years prior, Kumiko's sister Mamiko got a call that Kumiko had been in an "accident" at home. Mamiko however was well aware that it wasn't an accident but an Interrupted Suicide.
- Subverted in Bruises. Since Marinette can't explain the real reason that she's picking up new bruises on an almost daily basis (namely, that she is secretly a superhero), she's forced to through out an increasingly absurd series of lies to explain her bruising. Unfortunately, her best friend Alya is not convinced. To make matters worse, Alya first notices the bruising right around the time Marinette starts dating a new boyfriend, who she refuses to tell Alya anything about beyond the fact that he exists (because he's her superhero partner, and revealing that would give away her identity). Alya figures out that these things are connected, and comes to the conclusion that Marinette's in an abusive relationship.
- In Not this time, Fate, Yang is in the middle of threatening Team CRDL for throwing sap at Jaune and getting him attacked by Rapier Wasps when they admit it was actually meant for her. After beating the hell out of them for trying to get purple sap in her hair, Yang loudly declares that it's a good thing she killed the Ursa that attacked them.
- Weight of the World: In a childishly cruel attempt to force America to recover from his trauma and touch aversion, Russia attacks him in the bathroom, leaving him with noticeable cuts and bruises that include hand-shaped marks around his throat. When confronted about the injuries, America claims he tripped into the shower. Canada, Weiss, and Winter do not believe him and Winter sarcastically asks if he apologized to the shower for tripping into it.
- In Lost, Professor Oak mentions how years ago he once tried to kill himself after his son died. When he went to the hospital, he blamed the cut on a Scyther.
- RWBY: Scars:
- Weiss punches a mirror. She tries to later pass the blood on her sleeve as ketchup. No one buys it.
- The excuse Jacques gave for his daughter Weiss' eye injury is that she had a fencing accident. This is also what Weiss tells people when they ask about her scar. In reality, Weiss gave herself the scar.
- In one chapter of Lotus Jewel, protecting his owner, Zelda's dog Garo bites Link so hard that he tears muscle. Link later tries to pass off his limp as being due to a fall.
- Green's My Favorite Color: Harley Quinn is covered in bruises from her boyfriend's abuse. When questioned about them by Poison Ivy, she says that they're from being a criminal and getting into fights with Batman.
- A Feline's Birdy Love features Connor/Catboy allowing Night Ninja to abuse and enslave him to shield Amaya/Owlette (traumatized by the events of the prequel, which directly involved Night Ninja) and features this. When Greg and Amaya notice blood on his clothes, from the words Night Ninja carved into his stomach and told him to never tell anyone about, he claims he tripped and fell.
- Flowers Drenched in Vodka: Hanayo uses the old "walked into a door" excuse when she's asked about a bruise Eli gave her to her face.
- The Legend of Zelda: Paradise Calling: When Link inspects Malon's bruises after the bandit attack, he notes that a mark by her left eye looks older than the rest. She insists that she got it today and he lets the matter drop until they get back to the ranch and he sees how Ingo treats her.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Mr Schneider mentions that he thinks Reggie is self-harming because he blames himself for getting the class arrested and put through Hellhole Prison conditions. He isn't entirely sure because Reggie really does shave his very hairy arms.
- Shadow of a Doubt: Danny runs off to fight a ghost even though he's currently hospitalized, and Jazz, Sam and Tucker follow and try to help. Danny and Jazz are both injured in the fight, so Sam comes up with the cover story that Danny got restless and left his hospital room, Jazz came with, and they both fell down some stairs.Sam: Jazz, you got that?
Jazz: Fell down s'm ghosts. Stairs attacked.
Sam: Right. Okay, you'd better let me do the talking. - The Palaververse: From the last chapter of Treasures, Daring's unbelievable explanations for her injuries as she lampshades to herself immediately after using them:a [...] doctor [...] came out to take Daring into her office.
[...]
“That appears to be a burn on your snout,” she said at one point. “How did you get that, chookie?”
She drew upon her cunning. “I, um, I sniffed a candle too hard.”
Consarn her cunning.
[...]
“How did you hurt your wing, chookie?” the doctor asked.
Not candles, Daring told herself. “I … I tripped over a log.”
“Tripped over a log.”
“Uh-huh.” Consarn everything, was there a maximum cunning quota she had to stay under in a day?
