Hiding from Embarrassment

Marshall: Maybe we should just go out there.
Lily: No way! We can't go out there now. They'll know that we've been sitting in the bathroom the whole time. It'll be too weird.

— How I Met Your Mother, episode "Zip, Zip, Zip"

Alice and Bob are "stuck" hiding in a room. Not Locked in a Room, not physically stuck. Theirs is more of an Epiphanic Prison. The only way to exit would be to walk through a space where Charles is, and Charles seeing them leave would be—for whatever reason—deeply uncomfortable and some sort of social faux pas.

A common detail is that the longer Alice and Bob stay there, the more trapped they become. If they'd left in the first five minutes, it would've been uncomfortable, but probably not catastrophic. Two hours in, though, they definitely can't leave, because now they'd have to answer the question of what they were doing in there all that time.

Thanks to the looming threat of embarrassment, it's related to the Embarrassment Plot. Also see Closet Shuffle and Curtain Camouflage.

This is most commonly Played for Laughs, although it can be Played for Drama as well.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Chio's School Road: In "Thank You, George", Chio ends up going into the men's room by mistake after a bad Potty Emergency, but then she notices the urinals and realizes too late where she is. She knows that she can't leave or else someone outside might see her walking out of there, so she spends the rest of the episode formulating an escape plan.
• School Rumble: Tenma doesn't want to leave the girls' restroom at school while her crush, Kurasuma, is standing outside the door because she doesn't want him to know that she uses the restroom. Eventually she decides to scale the outer wall from the window using a pair of plungers as suction cups — which the series notes is impossible — only to find Kurasuma outside where she ends up.

Film — Live-Action

• Four Weddings and a Funeral: At the second wedding, Charles' Humiliation Conga kicks into high gear when he dodges into a hotel room to avoid his ex. It turns out to be the bridal suite, and the bridal couple soon appear for an enthusiastic round of sex while Charles hides in a cupboard, unable to even cover his ears because he has to hold the door shut. The couple finish and it appears he'll be able to leave... but then they gear up for round two. Unable to take any more, Charles finally gives up and leaves the cupboard, holding up a random object and saying, "found it!" to the startled couple. He hurries outside... straight into his ex, who explodes into a tearful "The Reason You Suck" Speech on his shoulder.
• In the Mood for Love: It's Played for Drama when neighbors Mr Chow and Mrs Chan spend a whole night chastely held up in a bedroom together because leaving would mean walking past where their landlords are playing mahjong all night long. If the landlords saw one leaving the other's room like that, they'd think they were having an affair. And they are definitely not having an affair.
• My Father the Hero: Teenage Niki fancies Ben, and tells him that Andre is her lover, rather than her father. When Niki and Andre are in their apartment together, Ben approaches. Niki hides in a cupboard, just as Ben comes in. Not knowing that Andre is Niki's father, he accuses her of seducing a much younger girl and tells him of his own plans for Niki. Andre plays along, pretending to be Niki's lover, and asks Ben if he has discussed this with her. When he says no, Andre tells Ben to wait there for Niki, and leaves the room. Meanwhile, Niki is stuck in her hiding place for half an hour, and cannot reveal that she had been there all along.

Literature

• Ciaphas Cain: After visiting a bureaucrat early in the morning and seeing evidence that he's hiding someone in his bedroom, Cain decides to wait in hiding to see who it is, thinking it'll be a servant. To his surprise, it's one of the veteran Sisters of Battle at the schola (Inquisitor Vail's footnote states that contrary to popular belief, the Sisters aren't automatically required to take vows of celibacy, but instead rarely have time to indulge in relationships with other people).
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: Greg hides from Rodrick in what he assumes is the men's room at Leisure Towers, but then he finds an old lady putting on her makeup, making him realize he's in the women's room. He knows he can't leave now or else he'll be caught, so tries to wait until all the women have left, but more people keep walking in and out. Eventually, he's found by security and is mislabeled a "peeping tom".
• In the second book of the Emily of New Moon series, teenage Emily is housecleaning in an ugly old "duster" dress when company unexpectedly comes to call. Emily hides in a closet, but then the visiting guests make themselves at home and start gossiping about Emily and her friends, with Emily able to eavesdrop on every unflattering word. After quite some time, the visitors start pitying Emily which causes her to leave the closet in a fit of pique, stare the guests down, and march away, leaving them completely baffled.
• In The Famous Five book Five Go to Smuggler's Top, George is hiding her dog Timmy in a secret passage to keep him hidden from the host, Mr Lenoir, who hates dogs. When the only access to the passage is through Mr Lenoir's study, she sneaks in when he leaves the room unlocked; but before she can open the passage, Mr Lenoir returns. In a panic, she hides in the room behind a sofa and has to stay there for a very long time, as she cannot possibly sneak out while he is there, or explain why she is there.

Live-Action TV

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In 2.11 "Stakeout", Detectives Jake Peralta and Charles Boyle volunteer for stakeout duty: observing a mob drop-off point from a single room in an abandoned building. The stakeout lasts eight days, and standard procedure is for two teams to cover four days each—but Jake and Charles brag beforehand that they'll be able to handle the entire eight days by themselves, and that their friendship is too strong for them to have any conflict. So when they find out the hard way that they're very capable of annoying each other, they stubbornly insist on finishing the stakeout anyway—choosing misery in confinement over admitting that they can't handle it.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode 1.06 "My First Thanksgiving with Josh!": Rebecca flees to the bathroom to have a Potty Emergency. Then, in the bedroom that bathroom is attached to, Josh — Rebecca's crush — proceeds to have sex with his girlfriend Valencia while she listens in, unable to leave until after they leave. Made extra bad by the fact that she's waiting to defecate until after they leave because she knows her explosive diarrhea will make enough noise to be heard one room away and doesn't want to attract their attention.
• Friends episode 3.16 "The One with the Morning After": Monica and Rachel are roommates. In the living room, Rachel and her boyfriend Ross are having an extremely prolonged break-up fight. It lasts so long they have to stop for a pizza break midway through, and it doesn't end until 3 in the morning. Monica — along with their friends Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe — are holed up in Monica's room the whole time, listening to the whole thing, because walking out in the middle of that fight would be super awkward.
  Joey: Y'know what, I don't think we should listen to this anymore. [goes to open the door]
  Monica: [stopping him] What are you doing? We can't go out there.
  Joey: Why not? I'm hungry.
  Monica: Because they'll know we've been listening.
• How I Met Your Mother episode 1.14 "Zip, Zip, Zip": Marshall and Lily are in the bathroom brushing their teeth before bed when their roommate Ted returns home with his date. Trying to be supportive of their friend and avoid being a Moment Killer, the two decide to wait until Ted and his date move it to the bedroom. Yet Ted and the date proceed to spend hours in the living room, have extremely drawn-out foreplay, and ultimately have sex right there, with the roommates stuck in the bathroom all the while. Marshall and Lily had travel plans which were canceled at the last minute, so Ted had good reason to believe he had the apartment to himself.
  Marshall: Maybe we should just go out there.
  Lily: No way! We can't go out there now. They'll know that we've been sitting in the bathroom the whole time. It'll be too weird.

Web Animation

• In this LittleBigPlanet 2 fan animation, a guy named Ray dashes into the women's room by mistake due to a Potty Emergency. Girls keep coming in while he's in a stall (and has run out of toilet paper), and he's afraid to leave because he thinks he'll be mistaken for a creep. The rest of the video is about his attempts to escape without being seen. At the end, though, his girlfriend tells him that he probably should've just left since it was an innocent mistake.

Webcomics

• Unwinder's Tall Comics: In comic 89, Dr. Minivan gets mistaken for a woman (on account of his long wig) while inside the men's restroom, so he panics and hides in a toilet stall. Too late, he realizes he's now stuck: if he emerges from the stall still wearing his wig, other men in the restroom will mistake him for a woman again, but the wig is bulky enough that he can't conceal it within his clothes without also embarrassing himself somehow. The page ends with night falling, and Dr. Minivan still trying to work up the nerve to leave the stall. Several pages later, in comic 95, he finally emerges from the stall—having waited so long that he grew a beard in the interim, solving the problem for him.

Western Animation

• Big City Greens: In "Swimming Fool", Bill's swim trunks are ripped off by the hot tub's jets and he's stuck in the tub, unable leave due to embarrassment. He's finally able to get out when Cricket's antics distract the crowd long enough for him to sneak out.
• In an episode of The Transporters, Jenny boasts that she's never late, only to be late for the first time. She decides not to continue on her way home, because she thinks everyone else will laugh at her for being late.

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