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While the wee wife's away, a word on the subject of onanism: in this house, we don't masturbate. It's not a very pleasant thing to do. One hates to imagine young Chloe or Radclyffe scampering down the stairs of a Saturday morning, only to find you, double-bent on the sofa, pumping your fist!

— Harvey Denton, The League Of Gentlemen

<@Chin^> My sister caught me jacking off the other week and calls me a pervert
<@Chin^> just the other day i walked into my room and caught my sister masturbating
<@Chin^> So she calls me a pervert again?!?
<@Chin^> there is no justice in the world...

— bash.org

Examples

• Happens to Satou when his mother walks in in the Welcome To The NHK manga, with the added embarrassment that he's looking at Lolicon Hentai at the time.
  • It's all sorts of pornography, and he's doing in with three computers at once.
    • Wasn't it more like he was butt naked, was snorting some weird drug and had a onahole with him at same time?
• Alice learns the hard way in Serial Experiments Lain that internet surveillance is more intensive than she thought... Of course, the fact her best friend is an omnipresent god who can materialise in Alice's room at will doesn't help either.
  • True, but not strictly relevant here- the 'Lain' that pulls this particular stunt seems to be the 'Wired' Lain, which acts largely as a consciousness independent of the 'real' Lain. To the point of driving 'real' Lain to attempt to kill her at one point. Although they can be treated as a single entity in interpretation, the relatively mundane origins of the 'Cyberia' Lain (mind-controlling club music) call into doubt the authenticity of any but the 'real' (corporeal) Lain.
    • More accurately, there are three main Lain-personas: the shy one, the cool one, and the sociopathic one. The last one was involved with the whole voyerism business. It's a foil to the other two, but gets eventually "killed", leaving the remaining two to gain traits from each other and her, and get once again turned against each other. Confusing, huh?
• F3: Frantic, Frustrated & Female opens with this trope, as a girl unable to climax has her big sister walk in on her. The sister, after exhausting herself trying to "help", hypnotizes the girl into orgasming — but a badly worded command makes it only happen whenever her sister touches her, and instantly happen then. Cue several random touchings of the shoulder, slaps on the back, etc. The manga goes for 3 more books after this, the whole thing never gets resolved.
• Happens in Code Geass (the infamous 'Table-kun' incident). Fortunately for Nina, Nunally couldn't see what was happening and is too innocent to realize what was going on. Probably. Hopefully.
• An implied near-miss happens to Maho Nitori in Hourou Musuko. She and her brother Shuuichi sleep in bunk beds and one chapter ends with Shuuichi being woken up by creaking sounds and looking to see a panicked Maho out of bed asking if he'd heard. As she leaves the room, her pajama bottoms appear to be stained. The situation implies either this trope, an aversion of No Periods Period, or a combination of.
• My Balls
  • Subverted when Elyse puts Kohta under a sort of "hypnosis" so she can take advantage of him without his knowledge. He snaps out of it several times with her in ... compromising positions.
• In the manga of Bokurano, it's implied that Dung Beetle catches Anko like this at one point. She's none too happy about it.
• In Hayate The Combat Butler, right as Nagi decides to get out of the bath, Hayate walks in with a towel. She couldn't get over it for quite some time.
  • Also, Miki sees Hayate shirtless, and discovers Hinagiku's Goofy Print Underwear.
• Light Yagami uses hidden dirty magazines as an excuse for making sure other people haven't entered his room. When L, his father and his sister see this, they don't see the Death Note, thankfully, but they do accuse Light of being a pervert (L even remarks it's perfectly natural for someone his age).
• In the 2nd and 3rd Pico OVAs. In the 2nd OVA, It's used as a plot device: Chico peeps through a crack in the ceiling to watch his sister schlick, (he doesn't even know what she's doing), and Pico, having experience, teaches him all about sex... In the 3rd OVA, Pico walks in on his new friend Coco fapping, gets aroused by it and faps while whatching him fap. Unfortunately, the curtain falls, blowing Pico's cover. It's a little bit creepy because Coco knew he was there the entire time.
• A double entry from Haruhi Suzumiya when Kyon was closing the pictures of Mikuru's chest with star-shaped mole: He forgot to close the folder which had the name of "Mikuru" written as the folder name.
  • Busted by Haruhi spotting Mikuru having some "fun" with Kyon which did not translate so well for the world.
• Yuria 100 Shiki pretty much runs on this trope.
• In Bible Black it's more like caught giving a Facial....and in front of your best friend who secretly has a crush on you to top it all off.
  • Overlaps with Coitus Uninterruptus because it wasn't exactly like he could stop by that point.
• Great Teacher Onizuka is a 22-year-old version living on the roof of the middle school where he teaches. He works off the frustrations that come with being a Chivalrous Pervert, so it's no surprise that he's been literally caught with his pants down.

• In the XXXenophile story "Touch Tone" a woman is indulging in some phone sex late at night at work when the guy she thought was on the other end of the phone walks into the room.
  • In "Trees A Crowd", a man enjoying some alone time in a forest is interrupted by a dryad.
• In The Boys, Wee Hughie is sent to infiltrate G-Wiz, a superhero team loosely modeled off one of the X-men spinoffs and a frat house, complete with a luxuriously-appointed porn theatre...in which he later finds the whole team.

• The infamous pie scene in American Pie.
  • And in American Pie 2, Jim accidentally superglues himself to himself when he mistakes a tube of superglue for lubricant, and has to go to hospital with one hand stuck to his penis and the other clutching the pornographic video he'd been watching (which had gotten glued to his other hand).
• Serial Mom
• Happened in Tommy Boy with Chris Farley walking in on David Spade.
• Fast Times At Ridgemont High - "Doesn't anybody ever fucking knock anymore?"
  • This scene was parodied in the "Stacy's Mom" video by Fountans of Wayne, with the added fillip that Stacy walks in on the boy, thinks he's doing it for her, and walks away happy. As the song's title suggests, it's not Stacy he was picturing.
• Parodied by Not Another Teen Movie: the teenage girl tries to have some "alone time" with a dildo on her eighteenth birthday, when her parents, grandparents, siblings, family pets, pastor, and the girl scout troop she mentors enter in quick succession.
• Donnie Darko's psychiatrist hypnotises him to encourage him to talk more openly, only for Donnie to go off on a tangent about Married... With Children and try to masturbate to Christina Applegate.
• In You, Me, and Dupree, husband and wife, Carl and Molly, catch Carl's best friend, Dupree, masturbating in their living room to a porno movie. Unfortunately, Dupree didn't put away a box labeled "camping gear" where he got the tape from which contained Carl's entire collection of Asian porn movies which his wife forced him to toss.
• Subverted in There's Something About Mary when Ted is caught looking at Mary out the window and they assume he is masturbating. His attempts to cover up lead to hilarity.
  • Plus he wasn't even looking at Mary, he was looking at a songbird in the same general direction as Mary.
  • This troper assumed that seeing Mary is what gave him his stiffy and caused the accident.
• In the movie The Calcium Kid, Jimmy Connolly (Orlando Bloom) is a dim amateur boxer who becomes the focus of a BBC documentary. Not knowing that his whole life is being documented, he wakes up one morning and starts masturbating, not realizing that the scene is being filmed. The film crew interrupts him and Hilarity Ensues.
• Angela's Ashes. It's set in Ireland, and there were four or five young boys as the main group of kids. They regularly went off to this rocky, hilly landscape and would jack off (next to each other, but apparently not "with" each other). Then, being Catholic, they'd have to confess their sin. It helped that the old priest was mostly deaf and didn't really pay attention to a word they said... until one day one of the boys slides into the booth all set to confess and finds a new and very alert priest there - the other one had died during the night.
  • A similar moment occurs when one boy charges his classmates to peep on his older sisters as they prepare for a bath. One of the boys gets a little overzealous, and ends up pulling the drainpipe he was clinging to off the wall, causing the rest of the boys to be caught in the act as well.
• The details are hazy in this tropers mind but in Slackers there was a scene where a male character had to steal something from a female characters dorm while she wasn't there. After trying the door he was impatiently allowed in by the female characters (also female) roommate who was annoyed at having been interrupted masturbating. She continues to masturbate (quite enthusiastically) in the main room while he goes to the bedroom to find the whatever it was.
• Happens to Moff in Human Traffic.
• In Little Children Sarah's husband becomes addicted to a specific porn persona on the internet, going to such an extreme that he is caught by Sarah masturbating to the porn girl with her online bought panties over his face.

• Snopes has a number of urban legends about this trope:
  • A girl who accidentally impaled herself on a broom after being caught in a compromising position with it. (link)
    • The stereotype of witches riding broomsticks has a similar origin.
  • A man who masturbates with his eyes covered - and then realizes his mother must have been in the room at the time. (link)
    • This is actually from stand up comedian Rob Newman's routine from the early 90s.
  • American Pie... with pumpkins! (link)

• Non-comedic example: The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, where one character is essentially blackmailed because he thinks another character has a photo of him masturbating in a school locker.
• The scene in The Time Travelers Wife that shows up on Screw Yourself probably also deserves a mention here.
• Happens to the teenage Bruce Wayne (the Michael Keaton version) in the parody "To The Batpole!" in the anthology Batman Unauthorized.
• The book Ghosts/Aliens finds the author with his pants down four times in one week. His explanations range from attempting to destroy anaerobic bacteria in that area to having had a bee fly into his pants.

• In According To Jim, we learn that Jim hates his birthday and surprise parties because on his thirteenth birthday, thinking everyone had forgotten his birthday, he decided to 'give himself a present' only to have his friends and family (including a nun) leap out shouting 'Surprise!'.
• A stand-up routine by comedian Alan Brough on The Smallest Room In The House centred around his father bringing him a cup of tea while he was masturbating.
• In Friends, Monica walks in on Chandler. He managed to change the channel from porn to a show about sharks... causing Monica to get the idea that he has a shark fetish.
• The basis of an entire That 70s Show episode.
• In one Seinfeld episode, George is at the parents' house, starts reading Glamour, then gets caught by his mother, who injures herself as a result...
• In an episode of Rules Of Engagement, Jennifer refers to Adam as "Spanky" and he thinks this is because she walked in on him one time. He launches into a spirited defence of his actions in front of his friends, only to discover she was making a reference to The Little Rascals.
• An episode of the HBO series Sessions revolved around the main character's embarassment over masturbating, and his fear of being caught as an adolescent.
• A particularly squicky example of this trope occurs in the BBC comedy-drama Grease Monkeys. When one of the main characters is caught masturbating by his sister, the shock causes him to ejaculate - all over her. Needless to say, she does not react well.
  • Similarly, this Youtube Poop involves Sonic The Hedgehog masturbating and ejaculating on Robotnik. Since Robotnik is Sonic's arch nemesis, Sonic is apparently pleased by this.
• Alluded to in Pushing Daisies. Chuck and Ned share an apartment, but if they touch Chuck will die, so they wear jingle-bell slippers to alert each other when they're coming into a room. Chuck tries to convince Ned that she should move out:
  Chuck: I'll stop walking in on you when you're doing things you don't want me to know you're doing—
  Ned: That would never have happened if you were wearing your slippers.
  (You'd think that since they can't touch, they might have resorted to mutual voyeurism as one of the only forms of sexual activity that would allow them to safely be in the same room, but Ned is a very self-conscious person.)
• There's an EXTREMELY uncomfortable example of female masturbation in season two Skins. Maxxie's stalker Sketch breaks into his house, sneaks into his room, fondles and smells his underwear, and proceeds to masturbate on his bed. When Maxxie comes home unexpectedly early, she quickly hides under his bed — where she stays for the rest of the night.
  • Karen and JJ walk in on Freddie at one point.
• An episode of Married... With Children focused on Bud getting caught by his college's librarian and and facing disciplinary action. Bud is saved by the fact the librarian, who has the hots for him, deliberately gave him books that would excite him. Bud is then humiliated by his father and his "No Ma'am" club members coming in protesting the proceedings with lines like "Four, three, two, one! Bud's alone but he has fun!"
• In Dead Set, Joplin's less-than-stealthy attempt to watch Veronica in the shower is less than successful (though as a wannabe "glamour" model, Veronica is unfazed by it).
• This happened to wannabee rapper J-Roc in Trailer Park Boys.
• Farscape. In a Body Surf episode, Aeryn (in Rygel's body) walks in on Crichton feeling up her own body. She threatens to break his legs. Even if they are hers. After the Reset Button is pushed however, it's hinted that Aeryn (who'd briefly entered Crichton's body) did some checking out of her own.
• Parodied and inverted on The League Of Gentlemen, where Harvey Denton has a peculiar paranoia about walking in on his nephew, Benjamin, and has an entire, Spit Take-inducing collection of Unusual Euphemisms ready. There has never been any concrete evidence of Benjamin actually masturbating.
• In one episode of This Is Wonderland, Elliot Sacks accidentally implies that his mother walked in on him once.
  Judge Serkis: That's enough, Mr. Sex. Sacks!
• Happens to Andrew (while looking at Hot Or Not on the internet) in the final episode of The Chasers War On Everything during the "Tech Talk" segment.
• Frances walking in on her husband Terry doing this is a running joke in The Librarians.
• Happens to Rory in Eight Simple Rules. Twice.
• On Snuff Box, apparently Matt Berry's father once walked in on him masturbating over a map of Scotland.

• The Lily Allen song Alfie (and in particular the music video) feature this trope, when Lily walks in on her brother Alfie.
• Stephen Lynch has a song called Talk to Me, Dad, on the subject. Well it seems last night you caught me spankin' it, No use denyin' it, I was really crankin' it...

• An example in hentai RPG Knights Of Xentar.
  Luna: Look, he's pointing north!

• In one of the early Sabrina Online strips, Sabrina decides to indulge in some "hands-on" "cybering" with her (then still-unseen) internet boyfriend, Richard. She's just getting into things when her roommate, Amy, walks in on her. (Which later earns Richard the nickname "Sticky Fingers")
• Variation in Eight Bit Theater: Black Mage manages to turn self-love into an atrocity (you really don't want to know how, but let's just say It Makes Sense In Context), and Thief somehow gets his hands on photos of the event to blackmail him with.
• In Sexy Losers, Mike and his sister Michelle are both completely unfazed by anyone walking in on them in the act. The humour comes from the reaction of Mike's house mate Mark.
• In a Menage a 3 comic, flaming gay Dillon walks in on Zii having some alone time. While calling out the name of her female roommate. And watching Perry Hotter, Part 16.
• Captain SNES
• Double Subverted in this Cyanide And Happiness strip.

• An entire episode of American Dad is dedicated to masturbation. Stan reveals he has never masturbated before in his life and rather has repressed his urges through other, more 'wholesome' activities. In an attempt to instill this mentality in Steve, he tries to teach him woodcraft. Stan directs Steve to plunge a hot poker into a piece of wood that is held directly over Stan's lap, resulting in obvious (and painful) injury. The doctor gives him a special cream which he mistakenly thinks he must rub over the 'affected area' each day, essentially masturbating with lubricant. Stan soon becomes addicted to it and attempts to masturbate at any chance he can get.
• On an episode of The Simpsons, after Bart had walked in on his parents having sex, Milhouse assures him that it's better to walk in on both your parents rather than just one.
  • Seeing as how Milhouses' parents are divorced, and his Mother has had a number of other relationships, I always took that line to mean that he had caught his Mother having sex with one of her boyfriends.
  • I took it the other way.
    • Dat's dah joke.
  • The episode "Like Father, Like Clown" parodies this with a flashback where Hyman Krustofski catches his son playing with a seltzer bottle in the bathroom, which is a parody of a scene in the play Brighton Beach Memoirs where this trope is played straight.

• Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate.
• In Survival Of The Fittest, this happens to Beth Vandelinder - as Melina Frost walks in her. Particularly squicky as Melina then forces her to keep going before effectively joining in. Depraved Bisexual indeed... Oh, and Melina uses a vase to help.

• In a controversial Truth In Television example, a man in Glasgow was put on probation after being caught "having sex with a bicycle". (BBC News)
• Billy Connolly gives up a step-by-step walkthrough of the situation.
• Less embarrassing (though still very humiliating) examples happen everyday. Everywhere. It's bound to happen, considering about one-half of the population owns a penis...
  • And the other half tends to own a vagina.
    • Don't forget the clitoris. Only organ that has no function other than pleasure.
• The whole point of a Danger Wank is to call a friend/family member to your room and achieve the task, from start to finish, and letting them have no idea what you were up to. So basically a highly successful aversion of this trope. Best to have a believable excuse when they walk in though.
  • You can up the "danger quotient", and hence the arousal, if you try it in more risky circumstances... such as at the back of a bus. User beware if security cameras are installed...