There was a cleaning ad that played with this trope. A woman is grocery shopping with her arm in a sling. She gives sympathetic shoppers a whole bunch of different stories about how it happened, leading the audience to mistake her injury for domestic abuse. At the end of the commercial, it's revealed she hurt her shoulder trying to scrub soap scum out of the bathtub. The product being sold solves her problem.
Abiru of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has her injuries mistaken for the result of domestic abuse. She actually gets them after tugging on the tails of animals she cares for at the zoo.
Love Hina. The girls of the house will think that Keitaro, being extremely unlucky and clumsy, is trying to molest/abuse them, so type A. However, some of their punishments of him will slip the show into type B.
In one episode of Girls (a James Bond parody about a reluctant Marty Stu named Lester Girls), our hero rescues a man from getting tortured by a beautiful woman. However, the "victim" gets mad at him for ruining the scene. What first looked like the Bastard Girlfriend kind of Fanservice turned out to be simple consensualCasual Kink.
Type A is a Stock plot in Donald Duck: Donald gets a new job of responsibility, and starts to see abuse and attempted crimes everywhere he looks. Chaos ensues.
Batman: Occasionally social workers at school will notice Robin's various injuries and bruises, and with the truth locked down tight, who can blame them for thinking abuse?
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Harry is extremely upset when McGonagall automatically falls into the cliche that evil adoptive parents are, well, evil. Harry is Happily Adopted, and to both of their credit, they resolve the misunderstanding quickly and relatively reasonably.
Though McGonagall says at the time here evidence is equivocal; Harry usually behaves like a well-adjusted boy, but sometimes behaves as if he were being abused. It's unclear whether Harry's rational personality or his presumed partial possession by Voldemort is to blame.
In The SM Judge, the ADA mistake the couple's BDSM sex-life for abuse. It's never made clear if he believed his own accusations, or if he merely used her bruises as an excuse to attack the judge.
In Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil, the college kids and the police take for granted that Dale is doing terrible things to Allison.
In GI Jane, Jordan and her crew are out celebrating at a bar when she goes to use the restroom. As she washes her hands, another female customer pauses as she passes by and, spotting Jordan's badly bruised face, remarks "Ain't really none of my business, but I say 'leave the bastard'." before exiting, which causes Jordan to laugh. (The abuse really happened, but it was part of her special forces training.)
God Bless America: In several scenes, the audience is led to believe that someone is about to accuse Frank of mistreating Roxy. Disturbingly, nobody ever get this wrong idea, not even when this little girl is covered in blood and alone in a car at night with an old man who shares no family resemblance with her. When someone finally gets the idea that the girl might be abused, it's a creep who asks because he wants to join in.
Titanic: When Rose tries to commit suicide, Jack talks her out of it. However... then she slips, nearly falling to her death. He manages to save her, but as he does so she's screaming for help. After he manages to drag her up to safety, some crewmen arrive and assume that he has assaulted her.
Oliver & Company: When Dodger and the other plan to steal Oliver back from Jenny's house, they see Winston brandishing a rolling pin, thinking he's going to harm Oliver. It turns out he's watching a boxing match on TV.
In National Treasure, when Ben, Riley and Abigail seek to evade Ian's hired goons, Abigail hides behind the meat counter at an open-air marketplace. The clerk at the counter initially tells her she can't stay, until Abigail, pointing out the large muscular Mook pursuing her, tells her she's hiding from her ex-husband. The clerk answers, "Honey, stay as long as you like," and then rudely shoos off the mook.
The third book of Slave World starts out with a female police officer getting raped by a corrupt male policeman. When caught, his violation is mistaken for consensual sex, so they both get in trouble for it. (She gets fired from the police force, and then hired by a government conspiracy trying to infiltrate an Alternate Timeline to steal their superior technology. But that's another story.)
In I Capture The Castle, the Cassandra's father was sent to jail for 3 months for mock-threatening his wife with a cake knife, breaking his spirit and will to write anything past his first book.
In Protector Of The Small, Keladry goes to the public baths one day to enjoy soaking in the warm water. Concerned women rush over to assure her that whoever he is, even if he's a noble, he'll be caught and tried and made to pay. Keladry is a squire, and her day-to-day injuries from combat training are apparently rather alarming out of context.
House has several of these. In one episode a patient gets attacked by a woman, who tries to murder him by strangulation. Or rather, that's what the audience and the doctors believe at first. It turns out that it was just erotic asphyxiation. Safe or not is debatable, but at least it was consensual. In another episode, a man rapes a woman, but everyone except the audience knows that it's just a game.
In one episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a cop have a bad reputation as several other cops "know" that he used to beat his girlfriend. He even got arrested once. However, it turns out that he had nothing to do with her injuries. It wasn't even a consensual game, she was cutting herself because of a deep depression.
Another episode opens up with cops bursting into an apartment where a "rape" is occurring. However, it's revealed to just be actors and a cameraman making a film.
This is the central premise of the episode "Doubt", where the woman's ex-boyfriend/professor uses type A and it being consensual as his defense, with the woman alleging type B. Notably, this was one of the few episodes where the verdict was never given, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions..
Played for Laughs in one episode of the UK SitcomCarrie And Barry, Carrie walks into an open kitchen cupboard door and gives herself a black eye. When Michelle, her friend, visits she asks Barry, Carrie's husband, about her black eye and he tells her about the cupboard door and about how clumsy Carrie is. Michelles comments that "there are a lot of cupboard doors out there" and makes another insinuating comment about Carrie's clumsiness. It takes Barry a few of these to realise what she's getting at.
Jam plays this for Black Comedy in a sketch wherein a wife is upset about her husband's apparent affair and he's making stereotypical excuses i.e. it was purely physical, the other woman didn't mean anything to him, it was an isolated incident. His wife is finally reassured of his fidelity after he reveals that he and the other woman weren't having an affair; he was just raping her.
Used as something of an Establishing Character Moment in the pilot episode of How I Met Your Mother. Marshall accidentally hits Lilly in the eye with a champagne cork while celebrating their engagement. When they get in a cab afterwards, with Marshall still apologizing profusely, the cab driver indignantly says "Wait, did you hit her?" Marshall and Lilly both stare at him blankly for a minute, then erupt into hysterical laughter at the very idea.
An early episode of Flashpoint, has a cop beating his wife until her sister takes matters into her own and holds up the husband at gunpoint. While investigating the situation, SRU officers quickly discover that the cop's partners and friends on the force knew, or at least strongly suspected, that the cop was beating his wife, but looked the other way out of misguided respect, writing it off as something else.
Type A in an episode of Frasier. When Martin reflects on raising his sons, he mentions that they were so bad at riding bikes they would be covered with bruises. He eventually gave up teaching them how to ride bikes, thinking that his sons' doctor was suspecting him of child abuse.
In the episode "Driven" of NCIS, Team Gibbs brings in a suspect for questioning after watching security footage of him sexually assaulting the victim shortly before her death. As it turns out, they were dating, and the "assault" was an entirely consensual expression of Casual Kink.
In one episode of ER Boulet is treating a pre-teen girl, and notices a number of old injuries that would indicate a history of being abused by her father. It's revealed that her father never abused her; the two of them enjoy attempting to establish world records in physical challenges(most consecutive jumping-jacks, most consecutive hours skipping rope, etc) and are even pictured in a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records. Boulet ends up joining them in their attempt to break the record for most consecutive hours jumping on a trampoline.
Another episode had the doctors discovering that a child had multiple fractures. Naturally, they assumed abuse before realizing that the child suffered from a genetic disorder known as osteogenesis imperfecta that causes the bones to break easily.
An episode of Strong Medicine had a doctor noticing odd bruises on her patient, who happened to be the wife of the Chief of Staff. That, coupled with her odd reaction and vague responses, had her convinced there was domestic abuse going on, and when the woman was rushed to the hospital a few days later after "falling down the stairs", she was even more certain. As it turns out the woman really had fallen down the stairs. This and the bruises were the result of her bumping into things because she was developing multiple sclerosis.
In the 2000 remake of the The Fugitive, the already suspicious Inspector Gerard becomes convinced that Richard Kimble is his wife's murderer when witnesses who saw them jogging in the park the day she was killed claim to have seen him grab her and throw her to the ground. They didn't—the Happily Married couple was playing and goofing off.
A variation in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates has Hetty sustaining some bruises after falling down the stairs while wearing high-heels (Hettie is more comfortable in sensible shoes). A police detective who had worked with Hettie on some cases before sees this as an opportunity and asks Hettie to go undercover at a shelter for abused women; someone had apparently revealed the center's location to the husbands of some of the tenants, possibly leading to one woman's death.
Veronica Mars In the season 3 premiere, a main character girl, Mac, has just moved into her new college dorm this episode. Veronica, her close friend also going to the college but living at home for monetary reasons, comes up to Mac's room, hoping to go out somewhere for a night of fun, but Mac is already sitting on the floor in the hallway outside the room because her new roommate (still a stranger/new acquaintance since this is the first episode of the college season), Parker, is "in there with some guy." Unfortunately, however, the tickets Mac & Veronica need are still in the room, so Veronica takes Mac's keys and braves going in and interrupting whatever Parker and the "some guy" might be doing. She walks in, and it's dark, with music playing, and she hears some "sex noises" from the guy - moaning or something similar. Veronica rolls her eyes and then says quietly (more to herself than anyone), "Don't mind me," grabs the tickets, and then runs out of there. After Mac & Veronica return, too drunk to drive home so Veronica plans to sleep on Mac's couch, they comment "and we're dude free" before actually entering. The last second of the episode is Veronica and Mac waking up to Parker's screams - she had been drugged, then raped and her hair completely shaved off her head. This grievous mistake is explored more in the next episode as well.
Call Of Cthulhu supplement Dreamlands adventure "Pickman's Student". When the investigators go to the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, they find a man tied to a chair with a bathrobe thrown over him. If they rescue him they discover that he's playing bondage games with his wife.
GURPS Goblins, adventure "The Horse Swapping". The ladies are playing Blind Man's Buff inside a house with some male customers while the PCs are outside waiting for them. While wearing the blindfold, one of the customers accidentally strikes one of the ladies. She lets out a scream that can be heard by the PCs, which may result in them rushing in to see what's wrong.
This is essentially the premise behind Clarissa's public life. It doesn't really help that the only way she shows it is through risque pictures.
In To Boldly Flee, Film Brain overhears what he believes to be Nostalgia Chick and Linkara (actually Mechakara impersonating Linkara) having sex. In actuality, Mechakara was subjecting the Nostalgia Chick to an Unwilling Roboticization and making her Brainwashed and Crazy.
Discussed and played with in Crap Shotep. 40: The Explanation. It's not abuse, but abuse is apparently less embarrassing, so they're prepared to go with that.
Slave Maker: The noble & religious people who try to rescue mistreated slaves are horribly bad at misjudging if a slave is actually mistreated or not. This works both ways: They will let real abuse go unnoticed, and they will mistake healthy happy relationships for abuse. See also the Activist Fundamentalist Antics example.
Webcomics
In Ansem Retort, Aeris gets a black eye from a moment of clumsiness, and her husband Axel tells her to make up a less embarrassing excuse.
The very first episode of King of the Hill had a misguided social worker suspect Hank of beating Bobby. His "evidence" included a black eye on Bobby (actually caused by a Little League accident) and an overheard conversation where Bobby and Joseph imitated Hank's tendency to deliver blustering, exaggerated threats when angry. He immediately moves to have Bobby taken away, only to have his supervisor chew him out for not getting anything more than circumstantial evidence and has him Reassigned to Antarctica.
American Dad episode "Rough Trade" had this happen to Stan. The neighbor sees him drunken and slovenly*
he was under house arrest for DUI (Roger's fault) and agreed to do a Swapped Roles with Roger, who does nothing but drink and watch game shows all day
and Francine has a black eye*
a stressed-out Roger slapped her
which she excuses by saying she walked into a doorknob (a common excuse). When the police come by, they find pictures of an underage boy in his underwear*
Steve, he took the pictures himself on Roger's advice to impress a girl
and a basement full of monkeys*
Hayley was looking after them for her animal rights group, Roger forgot to feed them
, and they hear Stan angrily yelling "I'm gonna kill him!"*
Roger, of course
and come in to see Francine on the floor with another black eye, saying "It was my fault for leaving the mop out."*
she tripped on the mop and did run into a door
.
An early episode of The Simpsons ("Home Sweet Home-Dum-Diddly-Doodily") features Bart and Lisa getting placed into foster care when Lisa has no shoes (because bullies took them to play Keep Away) and Bart has a case of head lice, and a social worker is called to investigate. They find the house a mess (because Marge went with Homer to a day spa instead of her usual housework), Maggie drinking out of the dog's water bowl (because she could), Grampa asleep on the couch, and the toilet paper hung in the "improper" overhand position. Marge and Homer didn't actually neglect the kids, but to the social workers, they looked like unfit parents, and had to take parenting classes in order to get their kids back from their foster parents, the Flanders family.
At one point in Toy Story 2, Woody's friends believe he is being tortured when he is only being tickled.
Jeffery Dahmer (who killed and ate several people) had one of his victims returned to him by a pair of cops, who thought it was a simple gay domestic quarrel when they found a naked 14 year old boy running away from Dahmer.
The "Something actually abusive is mistaken for something that doesn't need worrying about" factor is often the reason why reports of Female on Male abuse are treated in an off-hand way in comparison to Male on Female abuse. A man hauls off and slaps a woman in public, everyone is concerned for her safety because he's obviously a monstrous abuser. A woman hauls off and slaps a man in public, no one reacts in the same way because she probably had a good reason for doing so. Some witnesses will even assume he deserved being slapped.
Bullying is often treated as Type B, with a variety of excuses being used ("boys will be boys", "it's just part of growing up", etc).
Verbal bullying is similarly passed off as 'just words'.
Female participants in full-contact martial arts (eg. Society For Creative Anachronism heavy combat) are often advised to tell their doctors about what they're doing as soon as they step in the door, to prevent a Type A incident.
There have been occasions in the UK when BDSM participants have been charged with domestic violence on the grounds that the laws on the subject don't actually say it's okay if it's consensual.
A letter to "Dear Prudence referred to this. A woman who engaged in BDSM with her boyfriend was wondering how to handle the concern of her coworkers, who were seeing the bruises on her arms and legs and assuming the worst, without revealing the details of her sex life.
Sometimes, people really do just walk into doors, and there are several medical conditions and medication that cause extremely easy bruising.
Unfortunately, Type B is extremely common in Real Life, especially when the victim is a minor (or a young adult who still lives with their parent(s)) and the perpetrator is their older sibling or parent. If the victim tries to tell someone about the verbal and/or physical abuse they are receiving, it happens more often than you think that they person they try to talk to will say something along the lines of, "Oh (s)he didn't really mean that" and otherwise pass it off as not really a problem.
There was a case up in Canada that four Muslim women were found dead in a car. The girls had been trying to get help before hand and no one DID anything about it!
Often the problem is that people don't want to get into a Type A situation, which can be just as bad. There are cases of children being taken away from their family and put in foster care based on hearsay. It is often difficult to tell whether abuse is going on, and the consequences can be devastating if you are wrong in your assessment. When it comes to sexual activities between children, we also have the problem that the whole system is designed for protecting kids from adults. When everyone involved is underage, It doesn't work well for distinguishing between abuse and playful benign experimentation.
A fair number of diseases (leukemia and hemophilia, to name just two) cause easy bruising as one of their symptoms. Being the parent of a child with one of them can be rather problematic.
Sometimes sports injuries can be mistaken for child abuse. Played for Laughs in one high school newspaper; an avid sports player wrote an article entitled "It's Not Abuse, it's Rugby" all about how he would often be stopped and questioned over bruises he'd gotten as the result of rugby.
Bruiseplay is an actual Fetish. Dan Savage once got a letter from a woman complaining that her boyfriend couldn't bring himself to black her eye for her. Dan advised her that "the old cliche 'I walked into a door' really does work", and so she could open all the doors in her house and run from room to room with her eyes closed.
Fainting can result from vomiting too hard during illness, resulting in Type A situations. One young woman went into work after striking her table this way, and co-workers seeing the black eye made comments along the lines of, "Do I have to beat up your boyfriend for you?"
Other
Author David Sedaris tells a story in one of his books about his sister Amy, when she was invited to be part of a magazine's photoshoot on "Women in Comedy." While the other women got glammed and made-up, Amy's only instruction to the make-up artist was "I want to look like someone beat the shit out of me." So she had her photo taken in a couture dress with fake blood, bruises and a black eye. The real kicker came when she decided to go shopping afterwards without removing her make-up, and when a concerned citizen asked her if she was OK, she replied "I'm better than OK! I've finally found a man who loves me!"
