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alt title(s): Reverse Trap 
"I can't believe I just tried to seduce another man..."
"It's a TRAP!"
Just because the ( nearly always Male-to-Female) Transsexual character, Wholesome Crossdresser or victim of Gender Bending has worked things out doesn't mean everyone else has. Fair chance one of his friends never seems quite able to deal with it, and is stuck between trying to maintain a standard friendship and having really inopportune bouts of vaguely rationalized attraction if they get stuck in compromising positions.
This is often a comedic trope, possibly because the idea of being 'fooled' makes the attraction seem less genuine. Is usually followed by a Stupid Sexy Flanders moment. This can also open up the opportunity for the creator to let loose insensitivity.
The name is a pun on Dropped A Bridge On Him which references Bridget, the Wholesome Crossdresser teenage boy in a nun habit from the Guilty Gear series. It should be noted that Bridget's gender is never a secret in the game. It's spelled out right at the beginning of his storyline, and he never intentionally hides that fact (anymore. Long story). The problem is that most people simply assume he's a girl, because he's lived most of his childhood as one. Over here in Real Life, people have found it quite amusing to show Bridget to those who aren't familiar with the Guilty Gear series, and get their reactions before dropping the bombshell, as it were. One of the reasons they're called "traps." (The other being sometimes they're so attractive it's hard to remember your sexual orientation even if you do know.)
Compare with Shapeshifting Squick, Sweet On Polly Oliver (the gender inversion of this), Gender Blender Name.
Contrast Jumping The Gender Barrier and She's A Man In Japan.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- School Rumble: Second Semester plays this straight at the end of the third episode. One of the characters present lampshades the moment beautifully.
- Happens to people of both genders in Axis Powers Hetalia. Not only everyone in the surroundings of Chibitalia mistook him for a girl until he hit puberty, but his Cool Big Sis Hungary used to be so tomboyish that she was mistaken as a boy by her rivals (it doesn't help that she did think she'd grow up into a male, until she got chest pains...)
- And even more amusingly, fans that are new to the series often assume that the author of the comics is a woman. Imagine their surprise when they're told that Himaruya is a male
 and realize they had a bridget dropped on them.
- Also, Hong Kong is often mistaken as a Bifauxnen, when in reality he's male.
- This is a primary plot point in Blue Drop: Tenshitachi no Bokura. The main character must have sex on penalty of death with his best friend, who has been transformed into a girl by the evil lesbian aliens and impregnate her. Happens in the reverse, too; the friend in question is uncomfortable with having sex with the main character as well.
- Then it's found out that the best friend's mind was simply put over top a random alien girls mind. When they fully merge at the end of the manga, it's unknown if he is a she with a guy's mind, or a guy still trapped in a girl body. It's rather messed up regardless.
- Happens to a couple of Kuwabara's schoolmates at the end of Yu Yu Hakusho when they mistake Kurama for Kuwabara's pretty girlfriend. In the anime he's nonchalant, in the manga he gets homicidally angry.
- Happens twice in the same minute in the Flameof Recca anime. A dim bunch of henchmen have been told to apprehend a high-school-age boy, and they identify Fuko (a very tomboyish, macho girl) as their target. Immediately afterward, the rather feminine Tokiya screams at them, "You idiots! I bet you thought I was a girl!"
- Subverted in the manga. Recca asks Aoi three questions, the third being "Are you a guy or a girl?". Aoi answers that he's a guy, but instead of being stupefied about the gender, Recca merely brushes it off as a mean that he can fight as he pleases.
-
Seiko Seishiro from Lovely Complex.
- Asuta from Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, whose best friend Hazumu got turned into a girl, struggles with this a great deal. Strange enough this is only played for laughs, whereas the feelings that the female friends have for Hazumu get treated a lot more seriously.
- In Sailor Moon, Minako manages to nonchalantly gush over Haruka a few times well after everyone else was clued in to her being a girl.
- Happens in the anime Girls Bravo, where Fukuyama starts hitting on and eventually sticks his hand into the panties of a crossdressing Yukinari . His reaction is not pleasant considering the fact that he is extremely androphobic and is allergic to other men.
- In .hack//SIGN, Tsukasa is the Bridget that gets dropped on herself. Among the initial worries that come with a revelation like this is that her gender will affect her relationship with Subaru. Turns out, it didn't matter.
- The audience of Otome Wa Boku Ni Koishiteru gets the main character's gender dropped on them — if they didn't read the series synopsis before watching the first episode. Most of them, mortified at having cheered at the fanservice, firmly invoked Mandys Law Of Anime Gender Bending in their minds.
- The relatively obscure manga and animated movie They Were Eleven features an incredibly feminine recruit who is eventually revealed to be an alien who hasn't yet decided whether to be male or female.
- In the Hayate The Combat Butler manga, one butler falls in love with Hayate, who at the moment is under a crossdressing curse (...). Although initially devastated when Hayate's cover is blown, he quickly comes around and tries to convince Hayate to travel with him to the Netherlands, where same-sex marriages are legal. (Cue Nagi's Megaton Kick.)
- Ban and Ginji actually try peeping on Kazuki in a hot spring in an episode of Get Backers, mistaking him for a girl at a distance. Later, Amon Natsuki hits on him and tries to pull an I Kiss Your Hand. Juubei merrily skewers them both times.
- In Vandread, Bart Garsus gets a Bridget dropped on him with The Reveal that BC is a Gender Bender Mole. In the end, it doesn't stop him.
- Jan Suk in Monster has the Bridget to end all Bridgets dropped on him when he starts confiding in a cute blonde girl he met at a bar. Not only is she actually a man, but she's Johan.
- During the Land of Waves Story Arc, Naruto meets Haku, whom he takes for a girl (Not that that it's hard), and Haku corrected him on this assumption right before he left.
Naruto: Wait, that's a GUY?! He's girlier than Sakura-chan!
- Happened to Karin in Kamichama Karin at the end of volume 4 finding out her crush, Kirika-senpai is female through an incident of seeing (and accidentally feeling) her revealed cleavage in an unconscious state. The audience gets the Bridget dropped on them first as it's revealed in an earlier chapter.
- In Shaman King, Amamiya Ryu aka Bokuto no Ryu thinks that Lyserg Diethel is a girl at first. When Lyserg reveals his gender, Ryu can't believe it until Lyserg calmly lets him check in his underwear. Ryu doesn't seem to care and remains very protective and devoted to Lyserg even after Lyserg's defection to the X-Laws.
- In the manga, he drops his pants in front of everyone else in the group, in a hilarious (although with cute shota butt to the reader's angle) scene.
- In an episode of Macross Frontier, a salesman mistakes Alto Saotome (who actually used to crossdress for a living, as a Kabuki actor) for a girl and tries to sell him women's clothing. This prompts an annoyed response from Alto, who angrily points to his adam's apple.
- Hourou Musuko may well be the only series ever where Bridgets have been dropped on other Bridgets. Specifically, Cool Big Sis Yuki found out "Yoshino" and "Shuuichi" were actually Shuuichi and Yoshino at the same time they were told about Yuki herself.
- Another instance happens to Riku Seya, a classmate of the Shuichi's older sister, Maho. Seya saw Shuuichi dressed as a girl and became infatuated, and convinced Maho to set them up. A future date at the aquarium turns into a rather shocking revelation which is not helped by a friend of Shuu's, "Mako-chan" (No, not that one) also revealing himself. Seya is left rather confused by it all.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Villainous Crossdresser Kamatari drops a Bridget on his opponent Misao (and everyone defending the Aoiya as well) quite dramatically, complete with pixellated naughty bits.
- iirc, that particular scene was only in the manga (though the actual reveal still happened).
- Done way too often in Gravion, to the audience, sometimes. Right in the first episode, the show seems to take delight in showing off a beautiful young woman, Male Gaze and all, then a minute later revealing "her" to be the main character in disguise. A later episode begins with more Fanservice, panning up the backs of the legs of a maid washing dishes, only to then reveal that, yep, it's Eiji again.
- Happens to several characters in Ouran High School Host Club, most notably Tamaki, when they discover Haruhi's real gender.
- An oddly sexuality-inverted version occurs in Glass Fleet when Holy Emperor Vetti Sforza finally manages to get Michel Volban, the leader of La Resistance, into his clutches... and, upon drugging Michel in order to have his way with him, discovers that Michel is actually a woman. Vetti seems rather put out about it.
- Everyone in Ranma 1/2 believed Konatsu to be the legendary Genius Kunoichi (female ninja,) and had even braced themselves for her coming out of the closet to confess undying love for Ukyou. Then a stray bomb went off, blew apart Konatsu's outfit, and revealed "she" was a very feminine-looking "he." Ukyou was just as stunned as everyone.
- The same thing happened to Ranma, who tried to romance Tsubasa to get her to give up on Ukyou and his own female side. His reaction to finding out Tsubasa was a male Master Of Disguise (which includes crossdressing as a girl) was not pretty.
- Finally, the reverse happens to Akane at the very beginning of the series. She wasn't exactly thrilled to find out that the shy and awkward girl she had just made friends with was actually a guy.
- And finally-finally, a subversion: Hiroshi and Daisuke's discovery that the cute redheaded girl they were hot for is actually their male best friend does absolutely nothing to stifle their crush ("Why can't there be more girls like him?")... though this is because Ranma doesn't wear bras and tends to get "her" shirt destroyed in public fairly often, as well as being willing to dress up in deliberately "sexy" clothes in order to manipulate Kuno or some other sap.
- In Gankutsuou, Albert gets Bridgeted as early as Episode 2. The "woman" then proceeds to tease him about it for the rest of the series. And later appears to go on to a successful modelling career...
- A rather bizarre example occurs in Fist Of The North Star: Rei is introduced wearing a pink cloak and is mistaken for a woman, as only his eyes are visible. It's not until he speaks, and fully pulls the cloak off that his manly bod is revealed. It's worse in the anime, where Rei is pursued by several men trying to get a date.
- Omamori Himari did this recently with a side character. Right after Rinko mentioned about her having two more rivals...lampshaded by Himari.
- Pretty much the main premise of Stop!! Hibari-Kun! Main character Kohsaku moves in to his dead mother's yakuza friend and falls in love at first sight with the eldest and most beautiful of his four daughters... only to later find out that he is actually a very convincing crossdresser. Hilarity ensues.
- Classic example: Shun from Here Is Greenwood.
- In Fruits Basket, Tohru assumes that Ritsu is a girl...until she hugs him and he transforms into a monkey.
- There's also the whole Akito thing.
- Happens to Greed in one Fullmetal Alchemist OVA in which he flirts with "Winry" actually Envy, who is probably male in this version.
- "... WHICH one are you?!"
- The appropriately-titled No Bra centers around a guy who finds out that his Forgotten Childhood Friend Yuki is actually a guy, despite what he looks like◊.
- Happens once in +Anima, when a boy named Kevin falls in love with Husky, thinking he's a beautiful Mermaid Princess. Eventually, Husky tries to break the news him that he's really the 'Mermaid Princess' without overwhelming him, but ends up screaming it at Kevin before becoming human again. Kevin, is, to say the least, rather shocked that his Mermaid is Husky.
- In Hanazakari No Kimitachi E, this is reversed, where the plot revolves around a girl who uses her boyish features to infiltrate an all boys' boarding school and get close to a certain guy. She is so realistic that she leads one of the main male characters questions his sexuality.
- An episode of Kodocha has a subplot where one of Sana's friends develops a crush on an upperclassman tennis player. When she confesses her love, the object of her crush explains that she's a girl.
- In the anime of Rose Of Versailles, the Duke of Orleans tried to do this by having a young henchman impersonate Marie Antoinette, thus ruining the marriage to the Dauphin.
- In the first OVA of El Hazard, Makoto is forced to pose as the missing princess Fatora. Apparently, he pulls this off a little too well, because Fatora's lesbian lover Alielle climbs into bed with him. Her response basically boils down to: "Well, that's new... wait a minute... Oh, my God!"
- Subverted in The Day Of Revolution Former boy Megumi actually wants her bridget dropped on the only boy at school who doesn't know her "secret" but the other girls forbid it for reasons of their own. (And when she finally did decide to tell him he wasn't listening.)
- Played straight and inverted with the manga series Family Compo. The main character moves into his aunt and uncle's place. Inverted with his aunt who he thought was his uncle and his uncle who he thought was aunt They both even dress the opposite gender because there's no way for them to be able to pass themselves off as their real gender anyway.
- They're both transsexuals. There's a difference between dressing as their actual gender because they want to and dressing so because they look out of place as their biological gender.
- Show the average manga-reader a picture of Kei from the short manga Cristo, and it's incredibly likely that they'll think he's a girl. Especially with the long hair and the panel where he's wearing a suit-dress-thing.
- Prunus Girl: Logically, Maki "knows" that Aikawa is a guy, but he still can't help but be frequently embarrassed by Aikawa's antics (and occasionally be tempted to take up offers to personally verify gender). Meanwhile, his friend Kadoyama is hopeless over Aikawa, declaring "who cares as long as (s)he's cute!" and getting really worked up. A nameless herd of classmates seem to agree.
- Gundam00: Tieria Erde, although his voice and personality help to only keep the viewer in the dark for parts of the first episode. Still, his girly looks and the fact that he wears a fuzzy pink sweater when not burninating the countryside in his Gundam cause enough of a double-take to fit him in here.
- Doesn't the way Tieria refers to himself make things even more confusing? Doesn't he switch from 'Boku wa,' to 'Ore wa,' to 'Watashi wa,' if you're checking out the sub? They all mean 'I am' but usually guys will just say 'Boku wa,' while girls keeps it 'Watashi wa'.
- Not quite. Check the page on Japanese Pronouns for all the nuances. "Watashi wa" is gender neutral and "atashi wa" is strictly female (which he doesn't dip into. It would cause a whole lot of problems for the viewers...)
- to add to the confusion, iirc the people making the show claim Innovators have no sex (or maybe it was gender).
- In the Hideshi Hino short story Sailor Psycho, a girl is invited to the school idol's house to paint her portrait. She ends up discovering that the school idol is really a crossdressing boy with a school uniform fetish. The girl is killed when she freaks out and we find out that the idol's "mother" is really his crossdresser father and the old caretakers of their mansion are also crossdressers.
- In Bleach, Yoruichi debuts in the form of a male cat, complete with male voice actor. Her actual form is very feminine. Kisuke Urahara's first line spoken to her cat form was "Who's my favorite pussy?" in the English dub...
- In episode three of Kino No Tabi, a Bridget was dropped on all the audience members who thought Kino was a boy. The ones who guessed right didn't hesitate to pat themselves on the back.
- In Maria Holic Kanako, the lesbian protagonist, meets the girl of her dreams in the form of the Mariya after transferring to all girls school. Later she walks in on Mariya changing and discovers his secret. She spends the rest of the series being reletnlessly bullied by him into keeping his secret and suffering innumerable Stupid Sexy Flanders moments.
- Azami in Himawari!. "Wait...the hot one?"
- In the Arina Tanemura manga Gentleman's Alliance Cross (Shinshi Doumei Cross), the character Maora was so feminine in the first volume that even the staff who read it thought that he was a girl. His real gender wasn't revealed until the second volume.
- Pokemon Special
Gold: Hi there miss. Isn't it lonely to do sightseeing by yourself? Wanna go for a cup of tea together? The name's Gold. I'm from New Bark Town.
Bugsy: I...I'm Bugsy from Azalea Town. And...well...I'm a guy.
- In the anime, Brock wound up subverting this. He knew something was wrong when a ridiculously Hot Scientist didn't make him delusional. Turned out to be a man in disguise working for Team Magma. In a later episode, he identifies the same disguised man out of two otherwise indistinguishable Jennies by the same lack of a Raging Stiffie.
- And then later he accidentally hits on Harley, so I guess it's not 100% accurate.
- And on the other hand, he also failed to realize that Anabel was a Bifauxnen girl and not a Cute Shotaro Boy.
Brock: Hey, you're not changing with Ash and I? Is it because of May?
Anabel: No, it's because even if I don't look like the part... I'm a girl.
- Happened to Blade in a recent NEEDLESS chapter after rescuing a crossdressing Cruz.
- When Kouji Nanjo from Zetsuai and Bronze was a young boy, he once saw a rage-filled, beautiful Bokukko named Izumi. He fell in love with her at first sight, but she disappeared from his life as fast as she arrived. Several years later, Kouji is watching a high school soccer game and recognizes one of the players, soccer star Takuto Izumi, as the young girl that captivated him, since "Izumi" was the kid's surname. After quite some angst about it, Kouji decides that he doesn't care, is still in love with Izumi.
- Himemaru in Rappi Rangai. Despite being born male, he decided to become a kunoichi because he had the "prettiest face in the village," though Kisarabi claims it was because he didn't want to put himself through the hard training to become an actual male shinobi. In either case, he seduced Raizou in his introductory chapter, and even after his secret came out he continued making passes at him every so often.
Comic Books
- Even DC Comics' woman-lovin', homicidal, Anti Hero Bad Ass Lobo has had a Bridget Dropped On Him. In "Lobo's Big Babe Special", he was hired as a bodyguard for an intergalactic beauty pageant. But each of the ladies in the pageant had one nasty surprise or another (even the ones he knew!) and were subsequently eliminated. Each of them, that is, except the extremely busty T.V., the one Lobo had been drooling over the entire time. Once T.V. was crowned the winner, the horny Main Man made his move, despite "her" subtle hints that it wasn't a good idea. Finally, T.V. told him to "put your hand here." I think Lobo and everyone reading now knows what the name "T.V" stands for...
- Grant Morrison's Zenith had the title character propositioned by Metamaid, an attractive pre-op transsexual superheroine. After Zenith finds out, he gets revenge on his own Mirror Universe self (who eclipses the real Zenith in the heroism department) by suggesting that he and Metamaid might like to get acquainted.
- Marvel's Hercules: Prince of Power series in the eighties featured a Skrull named Skyppi who enjoyed using female forms. Bridgets were dropped on both Hercules and Starfox (not that one), amongst others.
- Used, of course, in Liberty Meadows. Dean goes to a bar and sees someone who, from behind, appears to be a lovely long-haired lady. He proceeds to crudely offer to play some "tonsil hockey" with her before discovering that "she" is in fact a long-haired man.
Dean: Damn hippies...
- In Camelot 3000, Tom Prentice awakens memories of Camelot in Sir Tristan's reincarnation, who happens to be a gorgeous young woman. Tom's instant crush on the reborn Tristan plays out this trope. Ultimately it proves hopeless, as Tristan refuses to accept life as a hetero female, eventually entering a lesbian relationship with Isolde's reincarnation.
Film
- How many of you out there thought Didier the French exchange student in Son Of Rambow was a rather cute girl until he spoke?
- Handled much more seriously in the case of Fergus and Dil from The Crying Game. But love conquers all, apparently.
- It helps if the Bridget in question is Jaye Davidson. Numerous people were puzzled that they chose a woman to play Ra in Stargate, after all...
- Madmartigan's performance in Willow.
- In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Ace Ventura figures out that detective Lois Einhorn is actually Ax Crazy former professional football player Ray Finkle and is responsible for the kidnapping of the Miami Dolphins's mascot Snowflake and quarterback Dan Marino. He then remembers that Lois had tried to make out with him earlier. He gets Squicked. Badly. Later, when Ace Ventura exposes her former identity to the rest of the police force, all the twenty-odd policemen present also get Squicked. Apparently she got around...
- A gender-swapped version of this trope occurs in The Associate, when Camille Scott, a business associate of main character Laurel Ayres (a black woman), goes public with a story about being pregnant with the child of Ayres' business partner, Robert Cutty (an elderly white man) after Cutty refuses to sleep with her when they meet privately one evening. The Bridget is dropped at the climax of the movie, when Cutty reveals that "he" actually is a well-disguised Ayres.
- The ending to Some Like It Hot has "Daphne" revealing his true identity to the millionaire who is about to marry "her". His response is priceless.
- In Without A Clue, Reginald Kincaid (playing Sherlock Holmes) is quite attracted to a woman impersonating Lesley Giles. The real Lesley Giles, who has been abducted, is a man who habitually dresses as a woman. After Giles is rescued, "Holmes" and Watson manage to palm Giles off to Lestrade, claiming (truthfully) that Giles "appears on the stage in Paris", in an act called "Les Femmes Fausses".
- In Trainspotting, Francis Begbie picks up a "woman" in a club. Outside, in the car, he's making out with "her", then goes to rub her down there, and finds "she" has a woodie.
- In Let The Right One In, Oskar finds out that Eli is actually a castrated boy. He doesn't mind, though.
- Played for laughs briefly in Bladesof Glory. When several people are interviewed to see how they feel about the male/male pair skating of Chaz and Jimmy, one guy comments in surprise "Wait, the blond chick's a dude?"
Literature
- There is a pornographic story that was written in first person, in which the narrator makes love to a man. In the last sentence of the story, it is revealed that the narrator is also male, dropping a Bridget on the reader.
- In the novel Ringu, Sadako has testicular feminization syndrome, presenting as an unnaturally beautiful woman in addition to her latent psychic abilities. Then she is the victim of attempted rape by the last carrier of smallpox, and it all goes to hell from there.
- Done with a twist in the Darkover novel Hawkmistress: the main character is a young woman disguised as a young man, and is traveling with a group of mercenaries. The leader of the group starts hitting on her. She figures he's seen through her disguise; turns out he's gay.
- At the end of the third Sir Apropos Of Nothing novel, Tong Lashing, the revelation that evil crime syndicate leader (and Apropos' brief lover) Verah Wang Ho is a man leads to his (anti)Heroic BSOD which ends with the Hiroshima-like destruction of the city they're all in.
- A variation of this happens to Ivan Vorpatril in A Civil Campaign when he, realizing how slim pickings were for long-term female companionship, decides to intercept his old (and older) lover Lady Donna Vorryuter on her way back from Beta Colony (something related to an inheritance dispute surrounding her brother the late Count Vorryuter) and perhaps renew matters with said divorcee. Now who is that fellow accompanying the Vorryuter Armsmen and why do his eyes look so familiar?
Live Action TV
- In the Who Can Bone More Women? Contest on Kenny vs. Spenny, Kenny hires a pre-op transexual (who is incredibly convincing) to get all buddy-buddy with Spenny. Spenny racks up points like crazy until The Big Reveal at the end. He is not happy.
- Oh, David Tennant! Or should I say, "Davina"... http://youtube.com/watch?v=xB-M_tYhLGU Seriously, watch this!
- One episode of House features a very beautiful teen supermodel who has been having sex with her manager (who is also her father). The Bridget gets dropped when House finds that the supposedly female supermodel actually has testicular feminization syndrome, and all "her" symptoms were caused by a cancer in one of "her" undescended testicles. House's reaction to the father's look of horror is classic: "Oh, now it's creepy."
- "Testicular feminization" (more properly known as complete androgen-insensitivity syndrome) is a case where an XY fetus develops as a normal girl due to non-responsiveness to androgens. The model is not a "he" in any sense save the extremely tenuous sense of having a Y chromosome.
- It's pretty obvious that House is being his usual Jerk Ass self and playing up this trope just to traumatize them.
- One episode of Law And Order SVU involves a pre-op transsexual who appears female in every conceivable way except actual plumbing, who apparently killed a friend of her boyfriend's to prevent a public Bridget-dropping. When the SVU team confront the boyfriend (ignorant of the fact that the boyfriend had no idea his girlfriend was biologically male), he runs in, grabs her by the groin to determine sex, and then runs out to commit suicide with an overdose of heart condition pills.
- ItGotWorse. A judge then decides to send the extremely convincing bridget to a men's prison because of her plumbing where she is promptly gangraped and beaten and we get shown the aftermath (headed to a hospital, strapped to a gurny, basically solid swollen bruise).
- In the episode of Quantum Leap What Price Gloria, Sam uses this trope to enact revenge on his (female) host's boss for his treatment of her best friend. Sam convinces him that his host, the woman he'd been lusting after all episode, is secretly a man, giving him a full-blown case of Dropped A Bridget On Him even though the host really is a woman.
- In Cory In The House, Newt Livingstone has a Bridget dropped on him when Cory poses as his sister Raven (for reasons too convoluted to get into here) and Newt falls for him despite "her" clearly being his best friend in a dress and a wig. Then again, Wig Dress Accent was a staple of CITH's parent show That's So Raven, and Newt is very stupid.
- Another sexuality-inverted instance occurs in an episode of Third Rock From The Sun, in which a Guy Of The Week dumps Sally when he finds out, to his dismay, that she isn't a guy in drag.
- In an episode of Dark Angel, politically and socially conservative Normal discovers that his love interest is a transsexual. Unusually, he remains interested, but is dumped after she realizes she's a lesbian.
- NCIS had a first season episode 'Dead Man Talking.' While investigating a missing embezzler, Tony ends up on a date with a woman connected to the missing man. Then learns that "she" is actually he, the missing embezzler
- Happened once to Sanchez from The Closer. He made the mistake of hitting on a pretty female witness...who turned out to be the perp in drag. In a somewhat darkly humorous twist, this was the incident that convinced him to start actually going to the mandatory therapy sessions with the department shrink.(Mandatory due to the fact that he was still suffering from PTSD after taking the bullet in the previous season finale; up until this incident, he'd been in denial about it.) Poor, poor Sanchez.
- Farscape episode "The Flax", D'Argo discovers that the scavenger Staanz, who appears to be a rather ugly male, turns out to be, in fact, a female of her species, and is "considered quite the looker". This becomes Squick material for D'Argo when Staanz announces her attraction to him.
- Parodied(?) in an episode of Celebrity Juice- host Keith Lemon, in the episode following Let's Dance For Comic Relief, in which he was a competitor with dancing partner Paddy Mc Guinness, opened the show saying that said partner got off with 'Roberta' Webb- only to discover 'she' had a 'tallywhacker'. 'Roberta' being Robert "Mitchell and" Webb, another competitor who performed 'Flashdance' in a leotard and frizzy wig.
- The subplot of a Bones episode revolved around the team trying to figure out whether a Japanese assistant was a man or a woman. It is debated at some length before Angela figures it out in her own way.
- People are still surprised to learn that Skippy (the Bush Kangaroo, who for inexplicable reasons does NOT have a page yet) was female.
- An episode of Diagnosis Murder played this straight (as it were). The victim was an MTF post-op TS, and Steve had been flirting with her before she was killed. To the show's credit, the victim was portrayed as a sympathetic character and none of the main characters freaked out about it. In fact, she was killed by her former military buddy because he was squicked, and the murderer is portrayed as a Jerk Ass.
- Will And Grace: Jack freaks out when he gets turned on by the stripper at Leo's bachelor party, until he finds out the stripper is a pre-op who dances to raise money for her operation.
- Inverted in an episode of The Drew Carey Show where Mr. Wick is challenged to find a crossdresser on the floor, after looking for a while Dionne Warwick walks in and wick declares her a drag queen and grabs the music legend in her crotch. It turns out that it was the real Dionne Warwick much to Wicks embarrassment but she seemed to like being groped by him and remarked about how friendly the stores staff was.
- The title character of Becker discovers that an old friend has now had a sex-change operation.
- The Doctor actually manages to do this to himself after his regeneration into Matt Smith.
- 'Two and a half Men' ; Charlie Sheen meets an old flame who has had a sex change and become Chris O'Donnell. He is freaked out by it but eventually comes to terms with the idea until his mother starts dating his ex.
Music
Professional Wrestling
- WWE wrestler Mark Henry was a victim of this trope years ago when he found out that a lady named Sammy which he fancied was actually a man.
- "Oh sweet Jesus she has a penis!"
Theater
Video Games
- Even Zappa from Guilty Gear XX has a Bridget dropped on him in Story Mode. As written in a letter to his mom (which he writes during his brief periods of lucidity), he says he found an injured young girl by the side of the road who he wished to make his wife. (He is unaware that he is the one who pounded her into the pavement). But when he attempted to pick her up and carry her, he finds...
- At least he isn't in Johnny's shoes. That poor goon has a story mode ending(pictured above) about finding out too late that Bridget is a guy. ("I can't believe I hit on another man!")
- This happens to Tink in Disgaea 2 when he tried to hit on a Cute Monster Girl after joining your group. Of course, nobody bothered to tell him that the aforementioned "girl" is, in fact, Bridget's Lawyer Friendly Cameo...
- In Metal Gear Solid 2, Raiden, a shameless Bishonen, drops a Bridget on the President of the United States. He literally grabs Raiden's package to check his sex, reacting in suppressed shock when he learns the terrible truth - the script says he'd misidentified him as the similar-looking female terrorist leader, Olga Gurlukovich, but Raiden's decidedly male voice and obvious bulge should have put that suspicion out the window. Besides, why didn't he just ask Raiden? ...What was he planning to do to Olga?! Who voted for that?!
- In Fire Emblem 7, Serra is rather cold to Lucius when she thinks he's a girl in their C support, but when she finds out he's a guy, their B support has her going all starry-eyed.
- Flea from Chrono Trigger has confused generations of gamers with his/her claim that he/she is actually a guy, despite having obvious cleavage in the artwork. Not to mention the actual heroes, of course. Luckily Flea plays no role whatsoever in the story other than to be a Mini Boss.
- Final Fantasy IV has a certain dancer in the town of Fabul.
- Final Fantasy V. The leader of a band of pirates called Faris is assumed to be a male due to occupation, but once the party gets halfway through the second dungeon it turns out he is a she. To quote a boss later on in the game, And now we shall fight like men. And women. And women who dress like men.
- Faris has long, purple hair, for gods' sake!
- Supposedly it's clearer in the original Japanese, where gender is reinforced by speech much more than in English. (For example, Japanese has first-person pronouns that are only used by men.)
- Gets a bit more hilarious in Final Fantasy XII with Larsa. Due to his very young age (around 13 more or less), his voice isn't deep and his physical features borderline on feminine. A good portion of fans have mistaken him for a girl.
- Final Fantasy VII: It's possible to get the Don to choose Cloud, in which case he reveals that he was in drag.
- While the idea of the Don picking Cloud over Tifa and Aerith may seem silly and unlikely based on the graphics in the original game (and their low polygon count), the Don's decision becomes much more understandable if one looks at Cloud's character design in Advent Children, especially if Cloud-in-drag appeared anything like THIS◊.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Vivian the ghost, despite a female name and appearance is, yes, a dude. Shes A Man In Japan. It doesn't help that the American version changed his gender out of political correctness, since he's a transvestite and even kisses Mario at some point.
- Jun Watarase of Happiness!, who dresses like a girl, looks like a girl, speaks like a girl and even has a crush on the main hero is actually a gay, androgynous boy which is revealed pretty soon. His motive for behaving like that is "because the female school uniform suits him better and does make him popular among male students." In the sequel for the game, Happiness! Re:Lucks a route of sorts was added for Jun, making him a valid target to pursue.
- And for the most famous female example, you have Sheik. Earlier in the game, Ruto called "him" a man. She was wrong. You know that you have an epic Reverse-Trap when the fandom spends ten years starting Flame Wars over it.
- In Fate Stay Night, there's a reason why Guinevere had that affair with Lancelot, since her husband, King Arthur, turns out to be a woman.
- In Pokemon, one of the Mons, Gardevoir, happens to particularly resemble a human female. Now, this aforementioned Mon can be of both genders (including male), a fact which managed to displease the FanDumb (who view Gardevoir as female, and wish "her" to be viewed as such) highly.
- It doesn't help that the middle stage of it's Evolutionary line, Kirlia, looks like a young girl in a skirt, or that the 4th geneation of games added an alternate 3rd stage, Gallade, that looks like a male version of a Gardevoir. To make matters worse Gallade can only be obtained by using an item on a male Kirlia.
- Gym leader Roark's long hair and ambiguous facial structure can make it rather easy to mistake him for a fairly attractive girl.
- The new THE iDOLM@STER DS game features three protagonists. One of them just happens to be in fact a crossdressing Cute Shotaro Boy.
- In Tales of the Abyss: Ion. PERIOD.
- Though it's mostly a trap to the players Bonita Soliel in Psychonauts is one hell of an attractive creature, He even has long eyelashes and feminine curves despite speaking with an obviously male voice.
- I thought she was just a woman with a disturbingly deep voice.
- And in Persona 4, there's Teddie, a cute blonde girl who dresses up like the Persona Alice to win a beauty contest. Except "she" is actually a cute blonde bishonen guy, and that was a cross-dressing gag paegant. And "he" is actually a lonely Shadow who's assumed that form to try to fit in with humans. Agh, my eyes! The fact that Teddie's first introduced to the player as a Nonhuman Sidekick does nothing!
- Princess Waltz offers us Chris Longfield, who is so Bifauxnen, the PLAYER occasionally has to remind themself she's actually a girl. The fact she acts and wants to be a boy only makes this more confusing. And, considering this is an H-Game, well.......So Yeah.
- Long before Bridget, a 90's fighting game titled Daraku Tenshi had a character named Yuiren, who was a young man disguised as a singing waitress to attract customers at his bar. Despite the characters knowing this fact, most newcomers to the game don't realize it until later on. And to throw a bit of irony into the mix, his sister dresses tomboyishly and is usually mistaken for a boy by players.
- Strange case in Guitar Hero World Tour: When the song "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel is played, the game selects a female avatar for the singer. The lead singer of Tokio Hotel is (just barely) a man.
Webcomics
- In Khaos Komix the homophobe, Jaime, has Charlie, the sweet transsexual boy-turned-goth-artist-girl, dropped on him. Only we don't know his reaction yet...
- In El Goonish Shive, this happens quite a lot when someone's stepped out of their normal gender. Somewhat unusually, it often gets milked for some drama in the process.
- Justin and Susan almost do something they'd regret later while both gender-bent for Grace's birthday party. Good thing they didn't, since Justin likes guys; things would have gotten awkward once Susan became a woman again.
- The "Sister" arc was full of this. Minor characters were falling at Elliot's feet, and that's before Ellen took on a life of her own.
- The Wotch manages to drop a Bridget on both participants, here when Jason is transformed into Satyr Sonja he has random flirty outbursts he can't control. When he "puts the moves" on Robin they both freak out. Jason continues to flirt-and-freak throughout the arc.
- And one flirt-and-freak recipient winds up wanting to date "Sonja" later.
- A rather ridiculous case in Ghastly's Ghastly Comic, when the two similar-looking characters in the rather ambiguous fighting game (within a webcomic) "Loli vs. Shota" both finally decide to actually check their genders... and are shocked to find out that they're both wrong on which one they thought they were.
- And yet even though we learn they're both wrong, the reader still is left in the dark about which character is which gender.
- A Running Gag is that masculine characters tend to have sex with Freddy... who, despite having breasts, is male and revels in it. They tend to be very drunk at the time.
- Subverted in Order Of The Stick when Belkar hits on a magically gender swapped Roy. Turns out, he knew it was Roy the whole time, and he was just doing it to piss him/her off.
- Averted very carefully by Vaarsuvius, an elf whose gender remains unspecified (and just to keep the readers guessing, the gender of V's lawfully wedded spouse is also unspecified and their kids are adopted.)
- Concession: Artie wakes up to discover he has engaged in inappropriate acts with hypersexual preteen Chelsie Warner while in a brain-tumour-induced - or, as it turned out, Joel-induced - trance, and confides in his boss:
But honestly, I'm not sure what disturbs me more ... the fact that this happened, or the fact that Chelsie is actually a boy.
- This strip of Something Positive.
- In this strip of Sluggy Freelance, Riff and Torg run into First Officer Brenas, a shapely woman who is actually the male of the species. Riff and Torg subvert the trope by not being bothered at all.
Torg: "Aw, you think what you want."
Riff: "Can you jump up and down for us, mister?"
- Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures: Dan infiltrates Twink Territories dressed as a woman. Later on, Biggs finds out. Quoth Biggs: "I'd probably feel more awkward if this was the first time this had happened..."
- Venus Envy has this happen to Lisa, technically twice; once when she discovers via over-eager groping on a date that Zoe is a pre-op Transsexual and once when she assumes that Chris is a male-to-female transsexual as well only to discover that he's actually just a Wholesome Crossdresser. Chris gets a reverse Bridget dropped on him when he first meets Lisa and Zoe, assumes they're crossdressing boys as well, and grabs Lisa's breast while telling her it "looks totally fake". They beat him up.
- Material Girl, in which the character the tittle refers to isn't really a girl.
- This page, from Double K.
- Used in Mega Tokyo early on, when Piro is reading through a section of girl's manga in a shop in Japan. A Japanese schoolgirl seems to think that Piro is a girl and is "cute". Her friend informs her that Piro is, in fact, a guy.
- A double inversion of this trope occurs in Teh Gladiators, first when the Murlocs that join the heroes turn out to actually be female, and then when one of them, Yolanda, develops a crush on Vallant rather than vice versa.
Web Original
Western Animation
- In the surprisingly serious short What's Opera, Doc?, Elmer Fudd finds out that the girl he fell for was Bugs Bunny in a dress - and actually kills Bugs with his magic helmet.
- Although it's unclear whether he does it because Bugs is male, or if it's because Bugs rejects him the moment the disguise is off!
- Or because, he's Bugs.
- "Well what didja expect in an opera? A happy ending?" — Bugs
- In one episode of Family Guy, pervert Glen Quagmire gets quite a Bridget dropped on him when he tells Peter and the gang that he loves Taylor Hanson from the 1996 boy-band Hanson.
Joe: Taylor Hanson's a guy.
Quagmire: Oh! Oh! Y-you guys are yanking me. Hey, hey, let's put one over on old Quagmire.
Peter: No, he's actually a guy, Quagmire.
Quagmire: W-well, this is insane! That's impossible! Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Oh, my God, I can't... Oh, God! I-oh, I got all these magazines. Oh G-oh God! Oh, God!
- The Cleveland Show has an absolutely brilliant moment in the Thanksgiving special wherein Cleveland gets revenge on his wayward and emotionally abusive father by not telling him that the "woman" he's about to get in bed with is actually a man (and totally not Tyler Perry / Madea). As it happens, the "woman" in question is actually Uncle Kevin, who disguised himself as a woman so Donna would have a positive female role model after her mother passed away.
- South Park: Cartman doesn't know who his father is because his mother basically did it with every guy in town. It's revealed in front of everyone that his true father is his mother. South Park probably ran out of Brain Bleach that night.
Chef: Wait a minute. You're telling me that the night of the Drunken Barn Dance... she was a he?
Mephisto: No. But she did have a penis.
Every man in the room proceeds to throw up.
- Futurama: Inverted. Zapp Brannigan starts developing "confusing" feelings for a soldier named "Leelemon". When he finds out that it was, in fact, Leela - a woman who he constantly attempts to flirt with - he is immensely relieved. Even though she beats him up.
Other
- The 1999 Comic Relief Affectionate Parody spoof serial of Doctor Who, Doctor Who and The Curse of Fatal Death: at the end, the Doctor regenerates into Johanna Lumley. His companion and fiancee Emma is disappointed as with him being "Not the man I fell in love with".... the Master, on the other hand...
- On the adoptable petsite Valenth, one of the NPCs is the person of intelligible gender of the week, Elliot Christoph. Considering many of the humanoid NPCs are like this, and all of them as such are men (plus the masculine name), many of the users expected Elliot to end up being male, referring to her as Sir Christoph and such. Every single one got a Bridget dropped on them when Elliot later is referred to as being female about twenty pages into the thread. The real kicker was the fact that she never bothered correcting them once. Lady looks like a dude indeed.
- In a rare example that has nothing to do with appearance, most people are surprised to learn that Angela Gossow, the vocalist of Swedish band Arch Enemy, is a woman. Why? Well... just listen.
Tabletop Games
- The Eberron setting of Dungeons And Dragons actually notes that this possibility of this occuring is one of the main reasons for the Fantastic Racism leveled against the shapeshifting Changeling race, whose members are fully capable of changing not just appearance but gender at will, regardless of the gender of their actual native form. It's a well known joke in Eberron fan circles to point to any depiction of an attractive male or female character and declare that it's really a changeling of the opposite gender.
- While technically androgynous in the new fluff, Daemonettes from Warhammer 40000 will drop a Bridget on one of their victims just to watch them squirm. Because, yanno, that's what they do.
- And then they gut their victims like pigs with their claws, which can go through Power Armor like a knife through butter.
Real Life
- There's Something About Miriam featured a sexy lady called Miriam and a group of stud males trying to woo her attention. Except that Miriam is actually a pre-op transsexual - something the participants had no idea of but which the audience knew right from the start of episode one. The whole thing led to some of the competing men suing the TV network.
- Similarly(ish): post-op Transsexual Nadia Almeida, who won the fifth series of Big Brother UK didn't tell her housemates of her... 'situation'. Said Bridget was Dropped upon evicted housemates in their post-eviction interview, until LGBT right campaigners complained about five weeks into the game.
- Tokio Hotel lead singer Bill Kaulitz
- Most J-Pop stars utilize this trope as a way to gain fans. Notable examples include Miyavi and Gackt. The latter was also a major inspiration for many of Tetsuya Nomura's character designs. The Crisis Core character, Genesis Rhapsodos was directly modled after him.
- And Hizaki.
- It's also getting harder and harder by the month to tell what gender Miyavi really is (male).
- Bou◊ from An Cafe as well.
- Super Junior member Kim Heechul's friend was once yelled at by his girlfriend because she saw the two of them eating lunch and thought he was cheating on her with another girl.
- Raven◊. Also known as Stephen Colbert in drag for Wigfield. Stephen's own brother was fooled by the photo.
- A common prank that people pull on the internet is to post a picture of a hot girl for everyone to oggle, only to reveal that the hot girl is really a very feminine man.
- Some goons at Something Awful did this by making a female Myspace profile with the lone picture of some cleavage, later revealed to be a guy pressing his manboobs together.
- Occured on a huge scale in an issue of Maximum PC with an advertisement. Sufficient numbers of people were surprised that the actor was male, that it was mentioned in the letter from the editor in the next issue. The ad in question featured Sexy Back, but a very effeminate male.
- Brazilian soccer player Ronaldo was arrested after a confusion in his apartment, when he discovered three prostitutes he hired were men (although the chief of the trio said Ronaldo knew they were men). This turned the footballer into joke fodder for months.
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