"Here is the starting point of our expedition - and here is our ultimate goal - the Interior!" (Beat) "Oh, and that is an interior decorator. Yes, that slide shouldn't have been there. The next one please!"
— Professor Inigo Tinkle, Carry On Up the Jungle Deleted Scene
A stock phrase and one of those Blatant Lies...
Someone is flipping through a slideshow, PowerPoint presentation or book of photos and has a slide of something they shouldn't, or that makes them look odd. It's usually not so accidental when it's embarrassing someone else, but either way the response is usually, "How did that get there?". Sometimes it works - but usually not. Of course, sometimes it's just being spoken in Sarcasm Mode.
Frequently accompanies Porn Stash. See also Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Kodachi Kuno of Ranma ½ has been known to do this. The time she hid tacks in her hand before shaking Akane's hand comes to mind.
- Another example would include the time when Akane tried to get Ranma to eat some magical sakura mochi that could tell whether or not they were destined to marry. Because he doesn't want her to find out that he's going to actually try it, he takes one when she's not looking then goes to eat it in peace. Unfortunately, he forgets himself when he sees Ryoga happily skip away after giving Akane flowers...
Ranma: I'm disappointed in you though. Ya switched to Ryoga just because of cherry blossom marks?
Akane: It's your fault for not eating a cake!
Ranma: Who can believe somethin' so silly?
Akane: What's that in your hand?
Ranma: ...How'd that get here?
Films — Animated
- Despicable Me: Gru's adopted daughters tamper with his presentation
about stealing the moon by inserting a drawing of him sitting on the toilet.
Gru: I fly to the moon, I shrink the moon, I grab the moon, I sit on the toi... wait, what? - Atlantis: The Lost Empire: While Milo is using an old-fashioned slide projector to demonstrate how the team will gain access to Atlantis, he accidentally inserts a slide of himself at the beach, wearing an embarrassing floaty. It didn't help that he was describing the Leviathan, "a creature so frightening, sailors were driven mad by the mere sight of it," beforehand.
Milo: (leafing through his slides, trying to find the right one) Uh, I'm sorry, that's... wrong.Audrey: I used to take lunch money from guys like this...Packard: Hubba hubba.
Films — Live-Action
- Austin Powers and the "Swedish-Made Penis Enlarger Pump". It's not his, despite the credit card receipt. And the warranty card. And the book about his life with it. Which he himself wrote. The pump becomes a Running Gag, making an appearance as a Chekhov's Gun in the final scene with Random Task. Sure enough, Austin's still trying to claim it isn't his. This is continued in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me: While unpacking Austin's kitbag (not realising that their relative positions are casting BaitAndSwitchSilhouettes on the tent wall), Felicity finds a gerbil and asks Austin how it got there, to which he responds he has no clue.
- The Mask: While being frisked by the police, the Mask says he's never before seen the pair of funny-eyeball glasses that come out of his pocket. The bazooka, on the other hand: "I have a permit for that."
- Russell Thompson, Sr., uses this line word-for-word near the end of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids after his wife finds a pack of cigarettes in his baseball cap.
- Death at a Funeral: "Oh My God! What are you doing in my dad's coffin?!"
- Subverted in the movie Gung Ho as auto manufacturing plant manager Michael Keaton feigns surprise that a not-really risque photo of a woman appears in his slide show about the plant's personnel. The woman in the photo is actually part of the management team.
- In The Hairy Bird, Mrs. Dewey finds the Porn Stash planted in Mr. Dewey's briefcase.
- In Jackie Brown, the title character reacts to ATF agents finding cocaine in a bag she was carrying with "What's that shit?" (although it's implied that she really hadn't been aware that she was carrying it).
Literature
- At the beginning of Men at Arms, Edward D'eath is showing a few select friends some slides to try and prove to them that the royal line of Ankh-Morpork still exists, despite it being 300 years since the last known member had their head chopped off. Among the slides showing paintings, engravings, and busts of former monarchs, there is one of a vase of delphiniums. The servant who was responsible for putting the slideshow together is told to report to the duty torturer for "a little something off the ears".
Live Action TV
- In The Worst Week of My Life, when Howard tries to steal the concrete-encased corpse of his fiancee's family dog (long story). It doesn't work at all.
- Another dog related example; there is an episode of Scrubs where JD and Turk keep trying to do this as a joke with their stuffed dog.
- The Office (US): Michael gives Toby a rock as a present when Toby is leaving Dunder Mifflin, but tries to backpedal so he can look good in front of Toby's replacement, Holly.
- In Monty Python's Flying Circus, mixed in with photographs of Uncle Ted standing next to the house is one of the Spanish Inquisition hiding behind the coal shed. Don't say you didn't expect it.
- Wolf of The 10th Kingdom says this to Virginia, post-impersonation-of-Grandma (yes, they went there) regarding the meat cleaver he 'happens' to have in his hand.
- In the BBC one-off drama Dis/Connected, one character accidentally takes a pair of knickers out of his pocket along with his phone... right after leaving his girlfriend's funeral.'I don't know how these got there...'
- Odyssey 5. Angela Perry asks hedonist lover Kurt Mendel how her expensive lingerie panties ended up in his fridge after their night of passion. He has no idea.
- Parodied in The Sketch Show by Inverted Trope. A college professor is presenting a slideshow about bikinis, with pictures of women wearing them. He then advances to a picture of a building and, well, you know.
- Taken to the max in a Cheers open. While Cliff recaps last week's episode, slides from his trip to Florida appear on screen. Cliff notices this, realizes it's the wrong slides, then continues on before someone pulls the plug.
- In Malcolm in the Middle, Francis once broke into Commandant Spangler's office to sabotage his sex ed slides, but found some embarrasing slides of the Commandant and decided to swap them instead. Spangler noticed, and replaced them with embarrassing images of Francis.
Spangler: I am so outraged that I cannot keep myself from pressing the "next" button.
- Babylon 5: In "The Parliament of Dreams", G'Kar finds a black flower — the Calling Card of the Narn assassins' guild — in his bed. He questions his newly arrived assistant:
G'Kar: And you have no idea how that got into my bed?
Na'Toth: Ambassador, it is not my place to speculate on how anything gets into your bed. Your reputed fascination with Earth women, for instance. - The X-Files: In "Excelsis Dei", Scully borrows Mulder's VCR:
Mulder: Whatever tape you found in that VCR, it isn't mine.
Scully: Good, because I put it back in that drawer with all those other videos that aren't yours.
Professional Wrestling
- When D-Generation X (Triple H & Shawn Michaels) were showing a slide-show of pictures on the jumbo screen, a picture from Michaels' infamous spread in Playgirl popped up on the screen...
Triple H: What?! How did that get in there?
Shawn Michaels: I was young! I was stupid! You told me girls read that magazine! (Playgirl's readership includes a lot of gay males.) - At a Ring of Honor show, Colt Cabana pulled double-duty, wrestling earlier in the show using his masked "Matt Classic" persona. Later in the show, as the referee is doing his pre-match check of the wrestler's knee-pads, he pulls out the Matt Classic mask. Cabana snatches it away with mock-surprise, and says "How did that get in there?"
Theatre
- In The Disney Afternoon Live! show at Disneyland, as the FBI agent is briefing the heroes on their mission, he accidentally shows a picture of Jessica Rabbit in his slideshow. See it here at the 2:47 mark.
Webcomics
- This Penny Arcade comic about airport security—though in a subversion, Tycho really didn't know it was in there, as he hadn't put it there himself. According to his subsequent post, this particular event actually happened, and he said the trope to the letter, and, in true trope fashion, it did not work. He was eventually exonerated, however.
Web Original
- Broken Saints: Raimi uses his computer to explain the situation to Oran, only to inadvertently open up windows on which he was looking up porn.
Raimi: "Uh, I have no idea where that came from. Damn spawned sites..."
Oran: "Is this how Americans use the Internet?"
Raimi: "You should see the crap online. It's all freaky sex and dumb cartoons. That's what I hear, anyway." - Llamas with Hats:
Paul: Carl, there is a dead human in our house!
Carl: Oh, hey, how did he get here? - The Strong Bad Email tape-leg. Strong Bad tries to prove that his legs are not made out of tape, only to find a piece of tape on the bottom of his shoe.
Western Animation
- A far more innocent example: a Running Gag in Animal Mechanicals is Komodo pulling a random, silly object (ex. a teddy bear, a toy sailboat, a lollipop, etc.) from his tool tail and saying something along the lines of this.
- In The Loud House episode "A Tale of Two Tables", Lincoln's friend Clyde uses flash cards to help him identify fancy eating utensils. During a study session, Lincoln spots a candid picture of his older sister Lori in the bunch, to which Clyde embarrassingly quips "How did that get in there?"
- Kaeloo: In one episode, Mr. Cat is giving a presentation with a slideshow to Kaeloo, Stumpy and Quack Quack when a "private" picture that Kaeloo sent him shows up on the screen. Mr. Cat's reaction makes it clear that that was not the image he'd intended to share.note
- In the Merrie Melodies short "Rhapsody Rabbit" starring Bugs Bunny, he flips through the pages of his music book, only to come across a pin-up of a woman in lingerie, which an audience member promptly wolf-whistles at. He then flips more pages while sheepishly looking at the camera as if to say "You weren't supposed to see that."
- In "To Duck...or Not To Duck", Daffy argues with Elmer about sportsmanship in the sport of duck hunting and of how defenseless he is:
Daffy: What protection have I got? A bulletproof vest, I suppose. (pulls the feathers from his chest to show he is wearing said vest; closes his feathers back then sheepishly) Heh...how'd that get in there? - Phineas and Ferb: In "The Lemonade Stand", Candace has only five contacts on her phone: Jeremy, Jenny, Stacy, Linda... and Buford! She promptly reacts this way and deletes him.
- In Tiny Toon Adventures, when Dizzy shows pictures of all of his human girlfriends, a photo of Elmyra somehow is there, and Diz says this trope word for word.
- Happens in a VeggieTales video, of all places. Larry made a slide show of illustrations to accompany his latest Silly Song, "The Song of the Cebú" in front of a live audience, and accidentally got his vacation photos mixed in, derailing the song. He tries to play it off casually, but then...
(cut away to direct shot of the audience)
Larry: Oh wow.
Guests: OOOOOOOOH!
Larry: (sheepishly) Forgot about that one.
