Never Trust A Trailer - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Trailers Always Lie

If Covers Always Lie, trailers can, too. Sometimes Tonight Someone Dies or hyping The Reveal might not be enough. And with the Internet an open window these days for writers and directors to viewers' likes, dislikes, hopes, predictions, and Shipping loyalties, it's easy to know exactly how to bait fans into watching the next episode. Be careful not to believe everything you see, though, because as all Fan Vid makers know, any scene can be mixed-and-matched with another to look completely different from their real context.

(Indeed, the creation of fake trailers to make a movie look like it's from a completely different genre has become one of the Internet's most beloved recent art forms, such as The Shining as a happy romantic comedy

, the one that started it all, or Mary Poppins as a slasher horror flick

In the worst examples, it'll actually drive away those who would have otherwise watched, by completely confusing the relevant demographic.

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Specific types:

Often a form of Misaimed Marketing. Contrast with Trailers Always Spoil, where the trailer is a little too honest. If it's a TV show's Title Sequence that lies, those are Bait And Switch Credits.

Examples

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Anime

The trailer for the fourth Naruto movie seems to strongly have this going. For those interested, the tagline is "Naruto Dies".
- Regular Naruto episodes do this from time to time, too — early in Shippuuden, one episode made Naruto's knowledge of the ending of an "Icha Icha" book a Plot Point. The On The Next consisted of Tsunade yelling at him for reading porn (wtf??), and telling him he'd be cleaning the Academy's toilets as punishment. The actual next episode was the start of the Rescue Gaara arc. That's probably a good thing.
- Much earlier, the trailer and title for one episode suggested the seal on the nine-tailed fox was about to be broken... but it was only loosened when Naruto began using its chakra for the first time, and we eventually find out that's only like one-tenth broken.
- In the Three-Tails arc trailer, Naruto stands beside the other members of Team 7 and Team 8 on the foggy lake, apparently facing off against Deidara and Tobi, and Orochimaru and Kabuto. He says "I'll never let them take the Three Tails!" The Akatsuki don't come for the beast until after the Leaf ninja have left, and Naruto doesn't meet Tobi until late in the next arc, so this scene never happens, and he never says that line.
- Hell, sometimes the recaps/descriptions on the covers of the manga lie. A recent chapter says that "War breaks out between the Fire and Thunder", which could barely have less basis in what actually happened. The actual fighting was only a minor skirmish between Team 7 and a group of Cloud nin that came to Konoha looking for permission to hunt down Sasuke for kidnapping/killing the Eight-Tails Host, their teacher which they received and where just pressing Team 7 for information, while the actual fighting had finished by the time the chapter started and by the end Naruto is offering to work together to find their teacher.
Cartoon Network's advertisements for Tenchi Muyo were infamous in this regard. Thanks to the Toonami-style editing that the trailers underwent, Tenchi Muyo was made to appear as an exciting, action-oriented anime full of guns and stuff. While the show does have some action sequences, it is certainly not action-oriented in any way, and the disappointment was reflected in the show's ratings. Note also that the trailers combined clips from all three of the series' incarnations.
- This might be a double example, as the trailer for the show also played up the show's steamier side (complete with an out-of-context clip of Sasami saying "You're a naughty boy, aren't you, Tenchi?") While the uncut show does have quite a bit of this, the version broadcast on Toonami cut out any and all sexual references.
Similarly, a TV-guide description of Tenchi Muyo in Love was "Police officers chase an escaped convict." While technically true, this leaves out the fact that they're Space Police officers, that the convict is a evil alien, that they're chasing it back in time, and that said officers are only two members of the group that goes back — and the ones who get the least attention, at that.
The trailer for the original Hellsing TV Series not only has almost nothing to do with the plot of the TV series, but also features a completely different style of music and higher quality/differently styled animation to that which occurs in the series. The problem is that the trailer is based mainly off a volume of the manga that never made it into the TV series.
- It also ends with a tease of the Major. Neither he or anything to do with Millenium end up in the series, as it Overtook The Manga just before the introduction of Millenium.
Sailor Moon was marketed by the dub company to US TV stations with this tape, informing potential business partners that "Boys will love the non-stop action!" I don't think that's what they loved.
The back of some of the DVD boxes for Gravitation are very carefully worded in just how they summarize the series and its events. It's entirely possible for someone to pick it up without realizing that it's a Boys Love series.
Planetes does this deliberately with its Post Episode Trailer. While they use clips from the next episode, all of them are stripped of context and out-of-order, making it completely impossible to accurately guess the next episode's contents.
Inuyasha is also known for misleading Post Episode Trailer. While the narration is usually fairly accurate, it's played over mostly random shots from the next episode, and is done by the characters themselves who have a tendency to exaggerate and/or go off topic. One notable instance includes 2 or 3 references to Jaken, Sesshomaru's minion who featured prominently in the next episode, but those references are drowned out by Kagome confusing his name for Jan-Ken-Pon, the japanese name for Rock-Paper-Scissors, and trying to convince the others to let her teach them how to play it.
For every Pokemon movie, the early Japanese teasers and trailers contain scenes not in the released film. The most noted one, a silhouette of Mewtwo in the first trailer of the third movie, given that Mewtwo already had a focal movie, the first one. Naturally Mewtwo did not appear in the final film.
The Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! trailer featured missiles destroying clocktowers and city-levelling explosions, absolutely none of which were featured in the show itself. This somewhat disappointed many viewers, who were hoping for a Twist Ending they had pre-emptively dubbed "The Lolicaust".
Wagaya No Oinari Sama plays its next episode previews completely straight at first, but as the series goes on, the previews start to consist entirely of scenes that never happen in the next episode. Such as a kaiju battle between Kuugen and Byakki.
Spoofed by Excel Saga by having trailers which have the scenes edited to resemble a romantic comedy and an action show.
Quite a lot of Neon Genesis Evangelion Post Episode Trailers had Misato Katsuragi promising "more fanservice!" in a cheery voice. Not many episodes delivered, or at least not as much as was promised
Spoofed in the fan-made flick, AMV Hell. At the end of the first AMV Hell, there is a trailer for AMV Hell 2, with several scenes set to epic music, with the note "Featuring none of the scenes shown here." Nothing is sacred, indeed.
Clannad's anime adaptation does this quite a lot with their Post Episode Trailer every episode. One implied a pretty explicit Ho Yay relationship that might form between the main character and his closest friend.
- Another particularly hilarious one is Nagisa seemingly agreeing that she's a bully.
Behold the trailer for Maho Shojo Tai (Magical Girls' Club.) Look exciting? Not a single frame of it appears anywhere in the actual (unfortunately mediocre) series.
The trailers for the anime adaptation of one Tear Jerker of a strip in Axis Powers Hetalia showed the episode being in English (the strip concerns America and England, both being English speakers). Fans feared some very serious Narm since the Engrish was barely understandable. However, the actual episode turned out to be in Japanese.
Mazinger Z used extreme hyperbole in its next-episode previews, and was not above outright lying to the audience to hype up an episode. The most famous example is an episode called "Koji Kabuto Drowns in Lava!"
Famously, some of the boxes for Ranma 1/2 described the series as a "sex comedy." Considering the lack of actual sex in the show, they probably meant "gender comedy."

Close Anime

Film

Fans of the book will know Bridge To Terabithia is not a fantasy adventure story, as depicted in the trailers for the movie, but more of a tale about bonding between two friends. The screenwriters have stated that they are not pleased with the way the film was marketed, and the actual movie is much more faithful to the book.
The trailer for the 2006 version of Black Christmas was full of interesting scenes, like a girl getting dragged by Christmas lights, or another one being trapped under the ice... scenes shot just for the trailer to make the movie look scarier and way less stupid than it actually is.
The trailer for the movie version of Bicentennial Man made it look like a goofy comedy about a family and their robot; all clips were taken from the first fifteen minutes or so of the two-hour movie.
- Likewise, the trailers for Jack played it up as a Big-like comedy, all because Robin Williams was in it. The actual movie? One big Tear Jerker.
  - Let's not forget the posters for Jack. They're all pictures of a happy guy with little kiddy writing. Quite inappropriate really, for a movie that is about a kid who, at the end of the film, is graduating from high school as an apparent 90 year old, and will in all likelihood be dead within months.
M. Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water, while marketed as a horror movie, is actually a semi-metafictional fantasy story with only a few moments of suspense.
- This was also true for another of his films, The Village. Its trailers present it as a scary horror film while in truth it's nothing but a drama/love story movie. Albeit with a couple of Shyamalan's trademark twists.
- This sort of marketing misrepresentation is so endemic to Shyamalan's films that when the trailers for The Happening came out, my sister predicted that the actual movie would be "the feel-good comedy of the summer." She was only half kidding. Neither of us can wait to see how the advertising handles this project.
Disney's film Snow Dogs was marketed with scenes of the title animals talking and joking, cartoon style - which only occurs during a Dream Sequence had by Cuba Gooding Jr.'s main character.
Similarly, the film Kangaroo Jack was marketed with scenes of a wisecracking, talking kangaroo who only appears during a hallucination had by one of the main characters; the title kangaroo does not talk, and the film is not as kid-friendly as one would get the impression of from the trailer.
- Also spawned a serious case of Did Not Do The Research in amateur film critics, many of which blasted the film as "another kid movie about talking animals." Anyone who saw the movie can tell you it is neither kiddy nor about talking animals.
- Ironically, there was a direct-to-video animated spinoff where the kangaroo did talk, by means of a magic spell.
A lot of trailers end up with scenes that don't make it into the final movie, because the final cut of the movie isn't done when the trailer is made. In some cases, the trailer looks like it has scenes from the movie but doesn't. For example, the trailer for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was shot on the film's set with the film's actors, but the footage was intended solely for the trailer and does not appear in the film at all.
- A trailer for The Pagemaster showed Macaulay Culkin's character receiving a sword that floated down from the library ceiling. It was really cool looking, but wasn't in the film at all.
- Some of the trailers for Superman Returns showed the destruction of Krypton, and a shot of Clark's ship travelling over rough terrain. In the final cut, the story picks up after he arrives on Earth.
The dramatic thriller Red Eye was named for the fact that it mostly takes place on a red eye airline flight. Trailers for the movie took footage from the film and used special effects to make the antagonist's eyes glow red in an attempt to attract undue interest.
- Also, the trailers usually tricked you into thinking it was a chick flick, until halfway through, when they'd usually play the "My business is all about you" clip.
The movie Goodbye Lenin was marketed on being a comedy with the outrageous concept of the main character making it appear the Communist world never fell for his ailing mother. In reality, it's an arthouse movie with very little humour in between the genuine drama of the son's Byzantine schemes. Given that it's a German film, this editor ought to have expected it...
- It is a comedy, it's just that it's a dark comedy with a bittersweet ending.
Two trailers were made for Solaris, one making it look like an action-adventure, the other focusing on the romance story. The film may have failed due to audiences expecting such types of movies, instead of the philosophical, dialogue-heavy film it turned out to be.
The trailer for Cry_Wolf makes the film out to have a much higher body count than it actually has. The film is actually best described as a "faux-slasher" and was rated 12 in the UK. The publicity probably contributed to the film not doing well at the box office. That's not saying it's a bad film. This contributor knew this before he watched it and enjoyed it more because of it.
A trailer in 2002 advertised the film Lucky Star directed by Michael Mann and starring Benicio Del Toro as a professional gambler milking vast amounts of money from casinos and the stock market before drawing the attention of government agents. Turned out that there was never going to be a film at all — the whole thing was actually an advert for the new Mercedes SL, his getaway car. The new Volvo S80 also used a film-trailer-style TV ad, and LG also pulled this stunt with its new Scarlet line of TVs.
- This particular variant was parodied by Samsung in a fake trailer promoting smartphone. "No Guns", "No Romance", "No Plot", "Just Phone". "The Greatest Product Placement Movie of All Time".
Trailers for Chasing Amy make it look like the plot is a man fruitlessly chasing after a lesbian (who isn't even named Amy, as it turns out); he gets her halfway through, and the bulk of the movie is an exploration of sexual self-definition.
The trailer for the 1987 movie The Gate included every single special effect in the entire film except one.
The trailer for The Negotiator featured Kevin Spacey saying something akin to "Now you have to deal with both of us", a line that would have indicated the movie taking a much different route than it actually did.
Rare example of this being done for a movie that doesn't exist: One of the fake trailers in Grindhouse, entitled "Don't!", is filmed so that you never hear the characters talking, and wouldn't know they were British. Many horror films of the '70s were marketed to Americans in this way.
Pan's Labyrinth was marketed as a family friendly fantasy adventure a la Narnia. In addition, the trailers and promotional material kinda left out one detail: The movie's in Spanish with subtitles. This resulted in so many complaints along the lines of "It's in the wrong language! I want it in English!" that movie theaters (and rental stores, once the film hit DVD) had to put up signs saying "Pan's Labyrinth is in Spanish and that's the way it's meant to be".
In order to explain what one of the characters does later, in the film Used Cars, there is a scene where it tells how honest they are, Kurt Russell says to a woman, "I want you to get up on that stand, and lie." While she does in fact do this, that scene never appears in the film.
The publicity campaign for Sweeney Todd said nothing about it being a musical.
- The trailer also showed several scenes out of context, changing their meaning. A random trial appears as Sweeney's. A scene in an asylum appears as Sweeney in prison. And eye spying on Joanna appears to spy on Sweeney. And Lovett's line "but what are we going to do about him?", coming after the song "Epiphany" instead appears to come after Sweeney's At last my arm is complete line.
The trailer for Lord Of War made it out to be more of an action comedy than the super-depressing drama it ended up being.
- And then they flipped it for another of Nicholas Cage's movies, Bangkok Dangerous, which the trailers made look like a slow, thoughtful examination of the assassination trade, when it was actually a pretty standard shoot 'em up action movie. Clearly, the promotional firms for the two movies should have been switched... as it is, they should just be fired.
The initial TV ads for Good Luck Chuck place all of their emphasis on Jessica Alba's clumsiness, making the movie out to be a slapstick romantic comedy. The titular "good luck" curse, where Chuck sleeps with a woman and the next man she meets is her "true love," is never mentioned. They did eventually start running commercials that focused on the curse, though.
During the promotion of a network broadcast of Spanglish, Adam Sandler screams in his typical wacky fashion at super-sexy Spaniard Paz Vega, completely misrepresenting the tone of the film.
When the film No Reservations was coming out in theaters, there were two trailers for it. One hyped up the "romantic comedy" angle, leaving the plot of the main female character having to care for her newly orphaned niece completely out, as if she didn't exist; another trailer, oddly enough usually shown much later at night, mostly did the reverse, focusing on the niece and only including a few shots of her tension with the guy as if he were just a minor complication to the whole thing. Now that it's coming out on DVD, the trailers used are for the "all romantic comedy" version, and the other side has been completely omitted.
There's the 1954 animated movie version of Orwell's Animal Farm which faithfully followed the novel... and then there's the 1999 made-for-TV version after a teleplay by some guy named Alan Janes, with talking animatropic animals, voiced by actors. And, um, it's apparently marketed for children, because you know... cute animals. this trailer implies that it's a family friendly Babe-type movie. This trailer, however, gets the tone of the story much more accurately.
The early teaser trailers for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial focused on the creepy alien POV sequence from the woodland escape scene, complete with chilling music and a creepy atmosphere, which gave the impression that ET was to be a sci-fi horror film. To be fair, though, it originally was.
In reverse, in the theatrical trailer of Gremlins, the Gremlins' presence is hinted and implied rather than shown, and next to no kills are shown, making it look like a fantasy children's film.
The original trailers and commercials for Resurrecting the Champ portrayed the growing bond between Samuel L. Jackson's homeless ex-champion and Josh Harnett's newspaper reporter and the latter's reconnection with his own family. This is actually what the movie is about. But, inexplicably, a couple weeks before the opening, the trailers shifted to portray what looked like a "One man crusade for justice" on behalf of the Jackson character.
One trailer for Spider-Man 2 actually used scenes from the movie to make it look like Peter Parker admits he is Spider-Man. He reveals voluntarily to just one person (Dr. Octopus) in the movie.
The trailer for Cold Creek Manor made it seem like the house was haunted. Instead, it was just some crazy guy messing with the family.
- Why can't it be both?
The UK network Sky's trailer for The Pursuit of Happyness made it out to be a comedy. It certainly isn't.
As American Football is not a very popular sport in the UK, trailers for Leatherheads completely disguised the fact that it is a sports movie, which leaves the title very, very bizarre. Some people thought it was about barnstormers and the name was a reference to flying helmets...
Subversion: One of the trailers for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is set up as the Guide's entry on movie trailers, detailing tricks such the inclusion of shots of violent explosions and scantily clad women which do not appear in the actual movie, implying the movie would be more clever.
The trailers for In Bruges make it sound like a harmless little comedy about fugitives. It really, really isn't. Some trailers for the film refer to it as an action-comedy. What does that say?
The film Syriana was marketed as though it were an almost Mad Max-esque thriller set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, and was full of stuff blowing up. In fact, the film was a ensemble piece on the effects of oil politics on a whole swath of people from totally divergent backgrounds.
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind had one particularly bad ad that made it look like some sort of madcap comedy starring Jim Carrey (which is not entirely surprising).
Who can forget the early trailer for Star Trek Generations? It gave the impression that Captain Kirk comes aboard the Enterprise-D to help Picard and his crew fight off a Klingon Bird of Prey. Of course, it probably jolted audiences when they actually saw the film and witnessed what happened to Kirk.
The trailer for Man of the Year, a film starring Robin Williams, makes the film look like a comedy. It is actually mostly a drama about a comedic talkshow host who runs for president... and gets elected half an hour in. The trailer also hides that it isn't only about him; it gives no hint of a more critical & dramatic plot in the film.
Spoofed in an ad for Starship Troopers on Showtime. The trailer begins by making it seem like a normal coming of age story before the transition, "...as a young man learns what he was born to do... kick the crap out of man eating alien mutant bugs!" as it switches to the action scenes.
The trailer for The Prince Of Egypt implied it as a very action-oriented animated movie. It wasn't of course - it was a religious story about everything from the birth of Moses to parting the Red Sea. Disappointment ensues.
- My local newspaper claimed it was the most violent animated movie of the decade, and that young children would be turned off by the blood and the violence. Nothing further from the truth.
The suspense thriller Hush had a trailer of the 'includes scenes shot but eventually cut from the final version' variety. Images which appeared included an overhead shot down a spiral staircase of a body being taken away on a gurney under a sheet; a shot which implied the son confronted his mother about her sinister doings; an all-out fight scene between Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Lange with shards of a broken mirror; and a climactic battle in a burning barn, complete with rearing horses and a collapsing hayloft. None of this happens at all in the film. Even if the makers are telling the truth about it being cut, it's obvious they made the most of their product seeming to be an action movie. It's hard to tell whether including the Genre Shift would have improved or ruined the original movie or not—but this editor was frankly disappointed it was cut/never there to begin with, although the fact the movie instead has a lackluster, trickle-off sort of ending probably didn't help.
The trailer for The Boondock Saints includes a clip of Willem Dafoe's character saying "This could just be the first international mob war," or something to that effect. That line is indeed in the movie, but then 3 minutes later his theory is shot down.
The trailer for The Proposition has David Wenham's quote "If you're going to kill one, make sure you bloody well kill them all," placed in such a way as to trick the viewer into thinking that the quote has some relevance to the main plot, regarding the Burns Gang. In the film, it's just a dog-kick regarding his character's views on Aborigine uprisings.
Sorcerer was marketed as a supernatural thriller since it was produced just after The Exorcist. In fact, it's a non-supernatural action thriller.
The David Mamet film Redbelt trailers made it look like an action movie that takes place in a Mixed Martial Arts tournament. Let's reiterate: a David Mamet film.
Minor example: The trailer to Be Kind, Rewind has Jack Black saying "I've got another idea, follow me" placed after Mos Def realizing that his tapes have been wiped. Since Jack's character is crazy, it sounds sensible to think he comes up with the Zany Scheme... until you watch the film and find that it's Mos who comes up with the idea. Jack's line is in there... just before he drags a Hollywood Homely into their scheme so he doesn't have to awkwardly kiss his mechanic.
- Heck, for that matter, the fact that the trail concentrates solely on the sweding, and not at all on the Fats Waller and community spirit angles.
The Watchmen trailer makes it look like an original comic book film, and not a novel adaptation. Sure fans of the book wanted that very thing, but mainstream audiences were likely very confused.
- It also makes it look like Dr. Manhattan, not Rorschach, is the point of view character.
Television ads for The Day The Earth Stood Still remake have the tagline promise that humanity will heroically "Fight Back!" Really. In reverse, some of the ads imply that humanity is completely and totally doomed, and there is no point trying to fight back, making Klaatu look invincible.
A TV spot for Fight Club portrayed it as a romantic comedy.
- Most ads for Fight Club made it look like an action movie all about fighting (and the name certainly seems to back it up). Many theatergoers likely skipped it because of this, and were probably miffed when they realized it was something they might have liked.
- Ironically, the author of the book stated in the foreword of a republishing of Fight Club that absolutely nobody noted that the novel was a romance; which in a really twisted way, it is.
'As Good As It Gets'' looked like it would have had a George Carlin type character using more cynical observations and one liners than the one in the preview. The subplot hijacking the main plot didn't help.
The preview for Anger Management looked like Jack Nicholson would have clever lines. Actually, any preview with Jack Nicholson looks like it would have clever lines. He just has to smile in front of the camera and it's implied there will be some cleverness. Unfortunately, the person who makes the preview knows this as well. Jack Nicholson should be considered false advertising.
They did this the film Prom Night. It began looking like a chick-flick comedy until the lights go out, then the true genre is revealed.
Hancock is either the saddest comedy ever or not a comedy at all.
- While it has definite comedic moments, it is not nearly the action comedy that the trailers implied it would be.
The trailer for Forbidden Kingdom totally omitted the basic premise and main character of the film in order to sell it as a typical wuxia film but with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It's not.
Warriors of Virtue looked like a serious martial arts fantasy movie. It took until Harry Potter to realize kid's movies don't have to be cheesy. Like The Forbidden Kingdom. Forget it.
The One looked like an excuse to show Jet Li fighting Jet Li the entire time, with crazy Matrix style effects, but there were only a few brief fights and more useless subplots.
Reign of Fire advertised with an image of dragons attacking London, with helicopters flying to defend. The real movie wasn't nearly as exciting.
- Multiple commercials for Reign Of Fire ended with Matthew McConaughey's character leaping off a tower tower straight at the dragon with an ax screaming at the top of his lungs. Just see what happens in the movie.
Parodied in Smokin' Aces. The trailer begins by suggesting it would be some sort of sappy romance, then abruptly switches to a frenetic action montage more fitting for a movie about competing assassins. The film itself was much slower paced and dramatic than the trailers suggested.
The dark comedy The Matador was billed as an action movie, which it is not. As a result, the film did very poorly in theaters even though critics generally liked it.
Water Horse trailers suggested it would be a kiddy film about a boy and his cute little water dragon, in the tone of Babe. One trailer even showed the bulldog saying it was the titular horse's "best friend". Sure, the movie starts out this way, but for the most part it's a lot more gritty than that, especially when the water horse grows up. It nearly kills the boy, and devours all the lake's wildlife. Towards the end, Drill Sergeant Nasty mistakes the water horse for an enemy sub and nearly kills him and the boy. Oh, and remember that bulldog who is supposedly the horse's best friend? Towards the end, when the water horse goes beserk, he swallows the dog whole and then tries to kill the owner. Make one wonder if the marketing people even watched the movie, there wasn't any hint of friendship between the dog and the water horse. The dog spends the earlier part of the film trying to catch the water horse when it's a baby, and then spend the end of the film in the water horse's belly. Combine all that with a boy who is counting down the days when his father will come home from the war, only to slowly realize his father is never coming back since he's dead and it's far from the happy go lucky mood of the trailer. That said, that doesn't make it a depressing film and there are some heartwarming moments.
The trailer for Max Payne emphasizes the winged beasts and walls of fire Max sees and has lines like "The Devil is building his army. Max Payne is looking for something that God wants to stay hidden." It's like they're trying to make it look like a supernatural movie. People who've actually played the games will know that these are merely hallucinations the protagonist suffers and the plot is actually more of a typical crime drama.
The promotion of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets seemed to really love Dobby, despite him being onscreen for no more than fifteen minutes of a two and a half hour film. Apparently, Warner Bros.' marketing department decided kids love funny CGI characters and almost went so far as to made it look like Dobby would be the new movie's Plucky Comic Relief. Instead, it just made reporters loudly raise the issue of whether or not Dobby was gong to be the next Jar Jar Binks.
An international example: Michaelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura is a very slow, high-concept, epic-length Italian film about a girl disappears and her friends being so empty inside that they have no remorse and merely get with each other to fill the void that the missing girl left (friend, lover). This is a film so difficult that it was BOOED AT CANNES. If you only had the trailer to go on, you'd boo it too, as the promotional clip makes it appear to be some sort of sexy, breeze romantic comedy, instead of the extensive, meandering ennui you get.
The trailer for The Prestige gives the viewer the impression that Christian Bale's character has actual magic powers which he uses for his stage magician act. Of course, nothing of the sort happens in the movie itself, but given the movie's theme of stage magic and it's use of misdirecting the audience, the use of this trope is rather appropriate.
- The closest to actual wizardry is Nikola Tesla's machine, used by Hugh Jackman... "Any sufficient advanced technology can be seen as magic in the eyes of primitive people."
A trailer for Doogal portrayed the film as being a comedy, specifically a parody of the adventure genre, i.e. Lord of the Rings. The film ended up being filled with more sugary sweetness and life lessons than a Care Bears movie. And the VA that they used for the main character (a dog) in the trailer? It was really the rabbit. Never Trust A Bunny.
Not a trailer, per-say, but the same idea for the first Riddick installment, Pitch Black. In order to promote it, Sci-Fi Channel made a 45 minute long faux-documentary/drama called Into Pitch Black about an insurance investigator hiring a mercenary to find Riddick and what was left of the ship. Seems like a good way to promo the movie, and reveal more backstory, doesn't it? Well, it would have been, if it didn't have the acting and production quality of a 1990s FMV game, any actors from the film, or even had any semblance of competent writing. Even the entire genre of the movie is misrepresented: The film is a sci-fi horror thriller in the vein of Alien about people fighting to survive a long distance journey through a desert in months long darkness, filled with monsters who can see in the dark. The video instead doesn't even show any of the aliens until the end, and only in quick flashes. Instead, it deliberately re-edits footage to make it seem like some kind of Friday The 13th slasher film, with Riddick stalking the main characters, when in fact, he's actually the "hero" of the film. There's no question they lost more viewers than they gained. If you're really feeling masochistic, have a search for it on You Tube.
This trailer for Gosford Park makes it look like a comedic whodunit rather than a dramatic movie about the British caste system.
- Someone has been killed. Their reaction? "Oh, whatever, let's have some more tea and crumpets and discuss love and marriage". Not even Ed Wood was this bad.
The theatrical trailer to Four Christmases made the film look like a Itsa Mad Mad Mad Mad World-esque race to visit four families in time despite a canceled flight, when the actual premise of the movie is that they have to visit four families because of the canceled flight.
Marley & Me, released during the same Christmas season. Just...Marley & Me. The trailer basically screams "See the cute puppy! See the cute puppy get into crazy antics!" The movie itself, however, says-"See the cute puppy! See the cute puppy get into crazy antics that get old after the first five minutes! See the cute puppy grow old and die." Wasn't that a fun movie, kids? (Cue kids crying.)
In The Simpsons Movie, the trailer shows, alongside clips from the actual movie, the scene from the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon short at the beginning where hundreds of nuclear missiles are launched.
- Even the newest trailers don't explain or show the plot.
Trailers made Click out to be another low brow Adam Sandler comedy. In actuality, it is quite the Tear Jerker, about a man being forced to skip through his own life as he grows old and dies.
The trailers for the movie Stranger Than Fiction made it out to be another wacky Will Ferrel comedy, when nearly all the humorous scenes were shown in the trailer. The tone of the movie was actually fairly serious.
The movie Horton Hears A Who had this. Even though the Box Office trailers showed a scene that is dark and may frighten small children or big babies, parents who didn't see the trailer or read the book assumed "Dr Seuss = kid friendly!". Boy, were they ever wrong.
In yet another example of a non-comedy starring a comedian marketed as a comedy, there's the 1994 Robin Williams film Being Human (no relation). The trailer made it look like it was going to be another one of those "sweet-but-unlucky Robin" movies, and hey, the premise was the story of the same man through different periods of history, that makes for good comedy. But the movie was really a drama. And it was boring. And now it's more or less forgotten.
You would be absolutely forgiven if you assumed, from the ads, that Burn After Reading was a wacky comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
George Miller's Happy Feet was advertised early on as a very Pixar-Dreamworksesque animation, with a very light tone. In fact, the film itself was anything but, instead opting for an approach not at all dissimilar to Watership Down or Don Bluth's early eighties work, and most of the scenes used in the trailer were either from the first half hour or never appeared in the film, to begin with.
In the trailer for Toy Story, there is a clip where Buzz Lightyear says, "You're mocking me, aren't ya?" and pushes a tool box off a shelf and onto Woody. Given the context of the prior scenes shown, it seemed as though Buzz was getting revenge. In the actual context of the scene, Buzz was really trying to help Woody escape (he continued to push the tool box without knowing that Woody managed to get out), and the real line he says was "Almost... there..." The line as said in the trailer was actually used earlier on in the film, around the point where Sid was introduced.
The trailers for The Wrestler made it out to be a bit of a modern Rocky, and one of those "sad person gets his or her life back together, heartwarming ensues," movies. It's actually quite the subversion - wrestling is his highly self-destructive form of escapism from his crappy life, which he tries and fails to get back together, then kills himself fighting in the ring.
- Except for the whited-out part (usually), that really is how most pro-wrestlers are. This editor dated one.
The trailer for Slumdog Millionaire makes it look like a happy love-and-success story, using only the shot of the kid with his girl to the tune of "The Sun Always Shines On TV". It completely fails to touch on how hellish his life is to that point. A poster also advertises the movie as "Two hours of unbelievable happiness!".
When Waiting For Godot made its American debut in Miami, its marketing prominently featured stars Bert Lahr (The Cowardly Lion) and Tom Ewell (from The Seven-Year Itch). Posters declared the play to be "the laugh sensation of two continents."
A television commercial for Batman Begins attempted to appeal to female audiences by playing Nickelback's "Someday" over shots of Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes looking at each other longingly. Not only did the TV spot spoil one of the climactic scenes of the movie (revealing that Wayne Manor had burnt down)), but it played up the expectation that the entire film was a love story with a bit of action on the side. Also, while not terribly misleading, a trailer for The Dark Knight made it look as though the Joker had caused a truck to flip just by firing a machine gun. The two moments are not connected.
- The Lord of the Rings films had trailers like this. One that was during daytime TV that featured only the Aragorn/Arwen romance scenes shown with soft melodies.
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow (2004). Angelina Jolie is in the movie for all of 15 minutes, but you'd think she was the star.
The theatrical trailer for Gattaca depicts it as a fast-paced action-thriller by constantly recycling a shot from the single moment of violence in the film, when Jerome punches a policeman while fleeing; it also includes virtually no footage of the film's third star, Jude Law, who is roughly as important to the plot as Ethan Hawke's character. There is no indication that the film is actually a slow, meditative exploration of bioethics and genetic cloning.
This sort of backfired for the movie 40 Days and 40 Nights. The trailer and TV spots have the main character Matt saying "No sex for Lent." Cue everybody who does have sex at least once every forty days roll their eyes and lose interest. The commercials also make it look like it's a light romantic comedy or something close to a chick flick when the guy meets a nice girl. What the commercials omit is that he was supposed to not have sex for Lent, or do anything remotely sexual, which probably would have made Matt more sympathetic to audiences. Not to mention a large part of the plot is that his friends are taking bets on whether he will make it which causes more problems when various people try to win the bet. Also, there boobs, lots and lots of boobs.
- And don't forget the rape!
Another backfiring example: Men In Black. An early trailer made it look like an eerie sci-fi FX extravaganza punctuated with mild humor. In truth, humor is its greatest strength. (Sadly, later trailers spoiled some of the best humor.)
- Moreover, the trailer included a number of scenes that weren't even in the movie.
The trailers for the movie version of Hitman heavily implied a religous angle that is completely absent from the film itself. The trailer narrator even blatanly lied with a claim that the protagonist was "raised by an exiled brotherhood of the Church" while showing what turns out to be a pefectly normal funeral service in a Russian Orthodox Church.
- "AND YOU SHALL KNOW THAT I AM THE LORD WHEN I LAY MY VENGEANCE UPON YOU!!!"
Stuart Little is a criminal offender. Several commercials show Stuart flying a plane or fighting the cat and other cool things, but none of that happens in the film. But it does happen in the ending credits as a montage for what happens after the story is over.
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist had commercials in which several epic battle scenes were shown. However some of them were just a teaser for the sequel (which has yet to be released, if it ever will) after the end credits and never had any impact on the real movie plot. In reality though they were just deleted scenes.
Adventureland, full stop. Some people thought it was going to be a raunchy teen comedy, and that the trailer that played on Oxygen which played up the romance was the one that lied- after all, it surely must be yet another Token Romance, right? Turns out, their relationship does drive the movie, and the movie as a whole was much more subtle and melancholy than was advertised. It was an excellent movie, but don't go in expecting Superbad set in an amusement park.
Stardust's trailer focuses on the word "ooh" so much that it appears to be something like Witches of Eastwick focusing on middle aged female spellcasters who like to get naked, and the rest of the trailer at least lets you know this is somewhere in the fantasy action genre. It might have driven away its intended audience.
Seven Pounds - the trailers only gave a small part of the plot: Will Smith's character is being The Atoner and helping seven people (drama ensues). The ads also imply this, adding that Smith's character is an IRS agent; his atonement could be monetary. Imagine my surprise when the critics described the film as a romantic comedy and Smith's atonement is donating his organs to seven people (the title refers to his heart, which is going to his love interest). Never trust a trailer, ads, or critics.
Grandma's Boy was marketed in the trailer as being about a dumb guy who lived with his grandma and smoked weed with his stoner friend and pet monkey. Hilarious antics of the trio would presumable ensue if the trailer was to believe. I need to emphasize how much trailer time his stone friend took up. When the film came out, it was actually about the protagonist being a video game developer whom had a big project and had to fight with his maniacal project lead. The actual stoner comedy was a small part in the film with the video game side taking up the bulk of the screen time. Oh, and his stoner friend who took up all the time in the trailer was a very minor character who had a handful of scenes. There was also NO indication in the trailer about video games.
Star Trek implied a Kirk/Uhura romance when, in actuality, she's already in a relationship with Spock.
A Back To The Future 3 trailer included what appeared to be Marty shooting at Doc Brown, knocking his hat off (two unrelated bits of the film)
Stateof Play does a good job of showing the plot of a political murder mystery, but it makes you think the victim was shot and killed by a professional assassin. She was really pushed in front of a train by a professional assassin. Someone else is shot. Both murders are early enough in the movie to not be a spoiler.
The Incredible Hulk. A trailer shows Dr Samson interviewing Banner in Betty Ross' house. This scene appears in neither the movie nor even in extra material from the DVD. This just causes a lot of confusion when we see that Samson is the one that turned Banner in when, given what we see in the movie, he never even should have known Banner was there.
The trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army implied via context that HB and the BPRD fight a stone giant. In the actual movie, the giant is just a doorway.
Trailers for Donnie Darko made it seem like the film was about an insane homicidal teenager.
The trailers make Drag Me To Hell look like a straight horror film when it is really a horror-comedy in the vein of the Evil Dead movies.
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian. "Only joking, that doesn't work."
The trailer for The Good The Bad and The Ugly had a narrator with annoying diction continually blurting out, "The Good... The Bad... and the UGLY" over footage of the three title characters. Unfortunately, because the original Italian title ('Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo') translates literally as 'The Good, The Ugly, The Bad', Angel Eyes and Tuco were swapped in the trailer, making poor Lee Van Cleef appear to be the 'ugly'.
Many of the trailers for Sunshine made it appear as a typical "ill-fated excursion" movie, except IN SPACE! (which, to be fair, is shared many elements with). The trailers didn't advertise a movie that provided a thoughtful, insightful character study of a group of people tasked with sacrificing their lives for the good of mankind.

Close Film

Live Action TV

A trailer for the newest season of Law And Order Special Victims Unit used a shot of Olivia looking surprised with a shot of Elliot and Dani about to kiss, adding up to sexual tension at its max. In the actual episode, Olivia never saw the kiss, which was just an accidental quickie after the two had a few drinks. The trailer made more fans squee than the episode.
- SVU does this a lot, actually, putting small shots together in trailers or just taking them out of context and making them seem far more interesting than they actually are.
- Another particularly bad SVU example: the trailer showed identical twin boys pressed against opposite sides of a wall, as the voiceover said "How can they tell which one committed the murder... when they have identical DNA?!" Not only was this not what the episode was about at all, not only was the aforementioned visual the last shot of the episode, not only was it that this spoiled the major twist of the episode (that the murder suspect's sister had been born a boy and raised as a girl after a botched circumcision), but it also spoiled the additional twist at the end of the episode (when the two collaborate to kill the doctor responsible). In fact, the question that the voiceover dramatically asks in the trailer is never even answered in the episode, and it's strongly suggested they'll go free.
Nowadays, "On The Next" TV trailers will often include footage and plot points that don't actually appear for several weeks yet. This is particularly egregious in Prison Break-style shows with heavy continuity, as it can give the impression of the story progressing more quickly than it really does. Heroes is a major offender here; for example, it incorporated material from the entire first season into the trailer for the second episode.
- Smallville is a worse offender. There have been several trailers that have cut one line of dialog into clips from several seasons past. The trailer for the seventh season finale was entirely a clip of Lex Luthor looking at the Fortress of Solitude. Not only was this teased two weeks previous, it was cut entirely from the episode it was shot for. Ironically, when a recent episode decided to reveal the adaptation of the Superman Suite, many fans believed they were being played (due to the show's "No Tights, No Flights" rule which is the whole reason why it took eight seasons to make something remotely close to Superman's tights) no one believed it. But the footage was used in the episode being teased.
In the middle of the Jasmine arc of Angel, an On The Next centered around Angel and Fred kissing, with the announcer going on about how the crisis will drive them together... in the actual episode, the kiss turns out to be a Fake Out Make Out and no romance comes of it.
A trailer for the 2007 Doctor Who episode "The Family Of Blood" showed John Smith getting married and having children. In the episode itself, this was just a Last Temptation to the life he could have if he didn't turn back into his usual self.
- The ad for "The Doctor's Daughter" put way too much emphasis on a blonde girl performing handsprings through a row of lasers. The scene was actually just a three-second filler with no importance to the plot whatsoever (except to further showcase the amazing talents of the Doctor's genetic daughter.)
- Let's not get started on "Turn Left"; let's just say that all the Doctor Who trailers tell us these days is the title of the episode and a few big shocks that WON'T be happening in the episode.
  - This only applies to the UK though. On the Sci-Fi Channel, the trailers frequently give away huge twists.
  - The Sci-Fi trailer for "Evolution of the Daleks" showed the Doctor standing below a hovering Dalek urging it to kill him followed immediately by a shot of someone standing in the same place, in the same position (arms spread, looking up) being blasted by the Dalek. Of course, this wasn't the Doctor but a secondary character, though you couldn't tell because of the "glowing skeleton" effect that victims of a Dalek blast get in the new series. Anyone watching the trailer would swear the Doctor was just executed.
One Star Trek Voyager episode trailer was particularly bad in this respect, being designed around the line "He violated me" in such a way as to make it sound very much as though Seven was going to be raped by a crew member; the trailer even featured a "Who did it?" sequence with flashes of various male crew members' faces. The actual episode, however, was just about an alien culture trapping her in a laboratory for study and stealing some of her nanoprobes.
- This might be justifable, though, when you consider the episode goes a little Does This Remind You Of Anything with the plot. With borg nanoprobes replacing date rape.
- In regards to Voyager, a website designed to nitpick the show refers to this phenomenon as PAL, for Previews Always Lie. See here.
- In a comparatively minor case, SPIKE's trademark preview for Voyager makes it out to be an action-packed, phasers-firing thrill ride. "Network for Men" and all that.
  - Voyager's action quotient is such that it's not entirely unwarranted. Now, when they tried to do the same with The Next Generation...
- A trailer for some season 7 Voyager episode during its run that featured Kim saying "Ambassador Spock" in a shocked voice, leading me and many in the audience to tune in in hopes that everyone's favorite Vulcan would show up. As it turns out, Spock was mentioned briefly in one conversation and that 'shocked take' wasn't even in the episode.
- The trailer for one Deep Space Nine episode showed the Enterprise being destroyed... or so we thought. Turns out it's a ship of the same class, called the Odyssey.
- The trailer for the Enterprise episode "Cogenitor", about an alien species with 3 genders, made it look like a comedic sex romp by focusing solely on the brief comic relief moments in the episode, such as Phlox offering to show Trip photos of tri-gendered sex and Malcolm awkwardly flirting with an alien. In actuality, it's one of the darkest episodes in Trek history, raising complex questions about human rights and moral relativism, capped off with a deeply tragic ending.
- Final Star Trek spin-off example: UK TV channel Virgin 1 markets Star Trek Enterprise on the basis of the handful of relatively sexy moments that make up the 4 seasons. While it might have featured more blatant sexual situations than the previous Star Trek series, the show was still pretty tame by most modern standards.
During the early 00s, the British Soap Opera Eastenders featured a number of intentionally misleading trailers. For example, one suggested that Saskia would kill club owner Steve; when the actual episode rolled around, the exact opposite happened. Much later, after Matthew was framed by Steve for Saskia's murder, a specially filmed trailer suggested that Matthew would get his revenge by setting up explosive death traps — in reality, his actual revenge plan was slightly less violent.
In a particularly egregious example, FOX's promo monkeys tried to make a contestant's brief moment of discomfort on Don't Forget the Lyrics much more dramatic than it actually was. (Source)
- And also promoting the same show, they managed to combine this with Trailers Always Spoil: The promos said that a contestant would win more money than anyone else, and said contestant only actually tied for the biggest win.
Played with in Arrested Development, in which the clips at the end of each episode were almost never actually featured in the next, but sometimes became important in their own right.
- Also, in one third-season episode, trailers advertised 3-D, that "the shocking final moments" would be live, and that "one of these people will die". Well, they did come through! ...In underwhelming ways:
  - On the 3D, it lasts for about one shot.
  - The old racist lady dies. The narrator made a point to mention it.
  - For the final scene, only that one 5 second part was done live.
A preview for the Lost episode "Stranger in a Strange Land" promised that three huge questions would be answered in it. These turned out to be the meaning of Jack's tattoos, what happened to the children the Others kidnapped and what happened to Cindy the flight attendant. Those last two have the same answer so many viewers argued they shouldn't count as separate questions, and it's not like many people were chomping at the bit about the first one either. The producers immediately said they never intended the episode to be one that was full of reveals like that, and blamed the network for unduly raising the viewers' hopes when it became one of the show's most unpopular episodes.
- A preview for the episode "Outlaws" made it look like Sawyer was pointing a gun at Jack. The clips of Sawyer pointing the gun and the clips of Jack looking scared were actually taken from two entirely different scenes. Sawyer spent the entire episode hunting a freakin' boar.
A preview for an episode of ER where a main character seems to suffer a very serious heart attack, with ominous music and worried onlookers. In the actual episode it turns out to simply be gas.
At the end of a season finale for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, there was a long preview hyping the next season's premiere, saying that Buffy would face her deadliest, strongest, most legendary foe ever... Dracula. The hype blitz continued during the entire off season, with every Buffy rerun containing a promo for the Buffy vs. Dracula showdown, commercials for it even ran in unconnected commercial spots, often during primetime. In all, it was built up as Dracula obviously being the Big Bad for the coming season, or perhaps even multiple seasons, so epic was the ad campaign for the upcoming meeting. When the episode finally came... it was a one-shot, essentially a gag episode, where Dracula's arrival was treated largely as a joke and Buffy doesn't actually defeat him, but essentially mocks him into laying down and playing dead. He was never heard from on the TV series again, reappearing only in comics once or twice. Hard to say whether it was just a really deceptive ad campaign or a rather mean-spirited Take That.
- To be fair, all Buffy seasons after the first had featured surprise supervillains, so serious fans would have known better.
There's a trailer for Supernatural which makes it look like Dean set Jessica on fire.
- And let's not forget the one that makes it look like the Crossroads Demon seduces Dean. And the episode summary even said that.
The trailer for the US version of Life On Mars is shot like a Starsky And Hutch parody. Seriously, watch it.
- This seems entirely in keeping with the UK version.
A trailer for an episode of Hell's Kitchen Season 4 did a rather spectacular version of this. The trailer showed that one chef sliced off a portion of his thumb, the team couldn't find it, and mentioned that two professional critics were attending that night's service - with the narrator all but saying that the severed portion of finger would end up on a critic's plate. As it turned out, the finger incident happened in the first part of the show, and was already resolved by the time dinner service rolled around - there was never any risk involved.
- The trailer for the final episode of Season 1 featured a clip of Michael yelling "Piss off!", but it was almost made to look like he was fighting with Ralph; when the episode actually aired, it was revealed that Michael was simply imitating Chef Ramsey's mannerisms, and Ralph was laughing along with it.
- Season 5 does this a lot. Near the end there's a cliffhanger that's resolved immediately the next week.
Bravo is notoriously bad for doing this with their reality TV shows. Misleading episode descriptions, cut n' paste editing, mismatched dialogue—they've used every trick in the book.
An interesting case on Battlestar Galactica: the trailer featured D'Anna telling Roslin that she's the final Cylon who has yet to be revealed. However, the cut revealing who she was talking to caused some speculation that Roslin actually wasn't the person she said it to. It turned out D'Anna was talking to Roslin, but was just playing a prank on her. Of course, had Roslin been the final Cylon this would have been a major case of both Trailers Always Spoil and Lying Creator (as showrunner and producer Ron Moore had officially declared that Roslin is not a Cylon).
- A trailer for the second half of Season 3 had Dee saying, "I'm going to bring Starbuck back to Apollo" in a cheery way. In the actual episode "Rapture", she said it with resignation.
- A trailer for the first half of Season 3 finishes with Baltar begging desperately for Gaeta to shoot him. In "Exodus Part 2," he is way calmer about the request.
A preview for an episode of Stargate SG-1 revolving around the team being trapped in an unpleasant version of a Lotus Eater Machine, with the trailer using Carter's line "How do we know this is real?" as if it were a serious question and dramatic concern. In the actual episode, this is just the set-up for a final joke to cap off what's otherwise a particularly dark episode.
- For several weeks there, the trailers for Stargate Atlantis alluded to replicator involvement. "Or is it a Replicator trap?" "Is he really back from the dead, or is it another Replicator?" Needless to say, Replicators weren't even mentioned in those episodes.
The trailers for the NBC miniseries Merlin implied there was going to be a big huge battle between the title character and Queen Mab. In reality, while there was some shrieking, a few fireballs thrown, and other cool magical effects, the whole thing actually ended with everyone just turning their backs on her and forgetting her, refusing to believe in her. A very effective and creative way to defeat a villain, but it was probably rather disappointing for those who wanted to see Mab turned into a crispy critter.
On the subject of Merlin, a trailer for one episode of the BBC series had Merlin dramatically reveal to the court that he was a wizard. In the actual episode, no one believed him and the scene had no impact on the plot.
- The trailer for another episode made it look very, very much like Arthur was going to find out about Merlin's magic. And just before the episode started, the announcer said 'it had to happen eventually!'. Everyone got very excited about this. Turns out what Arthur saw was just ambiguous enough for him to believe Merlin hadn't done anything.
The Sopranos tended to do this a lot, with the trailers playing up the mob violence that was rarely the center of the upcoming episode.
- The trailer for the final episode on A&E promised "You won't believe how it ends!" In case you were one of the people who missed the controversy at the time, it didn't. The showjust cut to black, leading many people to call their cable company and complain.
Sci-Fi Channel actually used expectations about never trusting a trailer to its advantage for the fourth episode of season three of Eureka, and at the same time did slip in a little bit of a lie. The trailer proclaimed "One of these people won't make it through [the episode]", including flashing up a character we'd never seen before, clearly a one-shot throwaway character, using your expectation that they threw him into the preview to be technically correct when one of "these characters" didn't make it through. Well, he didn't. But neither did Nathan Stark, series regular.
A rather dated example: The original "On the next" trailer for the War Of The Worlds episode "Candle in the Night" showed the aliens desperately tracking a rogue device to stop it falling into the hands of the humans, asking, "Can the team use the aliens' own episode against them? A View to a kill, on the next episode of War of the Worlds!". Answer: No. Because they're not even looking for it: it's a Bottle Episode about the team organizing a surprise birthday party. The events of the trailer refer to a throwaway B-plot about the aliens trying to find a lost probe.
A trailer for a Dexter episode asked "Which one of these suspects is the ice truck killer". The "suspects" seem to have been chosen completely at random, two are very well established characters who couldn't be the killer barring some bizarre Twist Ending. Another has the notable handicap of being dead. The process of elimination would seem to point to the fourth suspect who, having been only introduced in the previous episode, seems the natural candidate anyway, but since whoever made the trailer has clearly not watched a second of the show it would probably be hopelessly naive to think so. Another on asked if this was the episode were Dexter would be found out, which only did not happen, but had absolutely nothing to do with the plot.
Australia's Network Ten does this with all its comercials. Another example is its adds for Burn Notice, which always end by asking if this is the episode where Michael's plan fails, followed by footage of an unrelated car exploding from later in that episode.
Australian television always markets shows like The World's Worst Drivers as if they're comedies, when almost all take the form of overly tense When Animals Attack-style shows.
In the trailer for the fifth season opener of Greys Anatomy, Nurse Rose told Dr. Mc Dreamy that "I'm carrying your child." In the actual episode, she immediately follows those words with an admission that she was only kidding.
Happens far too often on House. For example, the trailer for an episode during the Tritter arc had the following exchange:
House: This test isn't exactly FDA-approved.
Wilson: You committed a crime! Do something!

The reality, however, was more like this (somewhat paraphrased):

House: This test isn't exactly FDA-approved. [the test goes exactly as planned with no ill effects]

House: [much later] Hey, Wilson, Tritter is still bugging me about my drug habits, which, As You Know, I did some illegal stuff to support.

Wilson: You committed a crime! Do something!

House: I don't wanna, cause I'm a Jerk Ass.

Also, the trailer for the season 5 ep. Lucky Thirteen made Thirteen's sex scene look way hotter than it was

Season 5 of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations was bloated with this. Every episode pointed out that he was going to have a bad time at his destination, but on the actual show, it was always just a minor moment of discomfort that took place in the first half of the episode, surrounded by Tony loving the place.
A On The Next trailer for Being Human showed (in order): A woman looking into her hand mirror and realising that Mitchell has no reflection, A Torches And Pitchforks mob of neighbours shouting and throwing things at the outside of the main characters house, and George saying "We were kidding ourselves to believe we could fit in here. We.. are MONSTERS!". The not so subtle implication was that the Vampire, Werewolf and Ghost would all be outed and they'd have to deal with the ramifications of that. In the episode itself Mitchell was accused of pedophilia because the womans son accidentally borrowed a vampire porn/snuff film from him. The Masquerade remaines unbroken, except for the boy and his mum finding out about Mitchell at the end before promptly leaving and telling the neighbours that they made a mistake.
In the network promo for the Season 4 episode of The West Wing "Election Night," there is a shot of Democratic strategist Will Bailey standing outside the campaign office in a thunderous rainstorm, shouting "NOOO" to the high heavens. In the actual episode, he is in fact shouting "NOW" in an attempt, however serious, to predict (and possibly cause?) the torrential rain that begins seconds later, thus leading to depressed voter turnout and increasing the chances that his liberal candidate, who is dead, might actually win in conservative Orange County.
A trailer for an episode of the New Zealand TV show Go Girls has a main character being told by her boyfriend that she's fat, ugly, and that he's gay. In actuality, this was a daydream of what she was expecting him to say— what he actually does is ask her to marry him.
A Desperate Housewives preview ended by promising "a twist so shocking, we can only hint at it," followed by the first line from the chorus of Kate Perry's "I Kissed a Girl": "I kissed a girl, and I liked it." The obvious implication was that one of the housewives would become a lesbian, or at least question her sexuality for a while. The episode did at least follow through with two lengthy girl on girl kisses, but it was part of a minor comic relief subplot where Susan's lesbian boss mistakes her for being interested, and the misunderstanding is entirely cleared up at the end never to be brought up again.
The fourth season of OZ went on hiatus following the stunning death of Simon Adebisi at the hands of the formerly pacifistic Kareem Said. When the show returned, one of the promos featured Said shouting "Adebisi lives!" In the actual episode the line didn't signify that Adebisi was actually alive; Said said it after killing someone else as a statement that his years in prison had turned him into a violent murderer just like Adebisi. It was still a powerful scene, but the previews had viewers feeling ripped off anyway.
Trailer for the seventh season finale of Monk. Narrator: "You'll never believe what he finds [at the site of his wife's murder]..." What did he find? Nothing. In fact, the episode was about him admitting that there wasn't anything to find. Though to be fair, no one believed it.
Parodied to extreme in the Arrested Development episode "S.O.B.s". And in its trailer, of course.
The Season 5 finale of Medium is being billed as the main character's "last vision". Which it is...on NBC. The show is moving to CBS next fall.

Close Live Action TV

Video Games

Taken to a science by Metal Gear director Hideo Kojima, most notably in the campaign for Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3. In MGS2, the main character was going to be the new character Raiden, but the general expectation of the audience, furthered by very selective news releases, was that it would be Solid Snake. Konami released extensive gameplay information and footage, but only from the game's prologue segment, when the player really does control Snake. When video was shown from later in the story (when Raiden would be the main character), footage was edited together, using out-of-context clips and dialogue, to almost completely hide the real main character from the audience — except for a few teasing flashes of his face behind the mask of a ninja. One scene showing Snake fighting the boss Fortune was footage from a hypothetical sequence serving as a metaphor for the Mind Screw the main character was suffering, and the real battle was fought by Raiden.
- And they still attempt to maintain it years after release, on a rerelease of the first 3 games, the [http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/PopBackofbox.aspx?Product_ID=69111 back of the box] makes it out as staring Snake.
- MGS 3 parodies this in the very beginning, where when you first land in the jungle(after selecting "I liked MGS 2" from the New Game menu), Naked Snake is wearing a convincing "Raiden" mask, likely causing more than a few fans' hearts to skip a beat.
The MGS3 trailers do this trick again, but portray final boss The Boss as a heartless Big Bad, nearly killing Snake and shooting out his eye, causing him to wake up in a cell from a terrible nightmare. In game, the Big Bad was Volgin, who was only shown in the trailer once; the eye was not shot out by The Boss — she merely pointed a gun at him; and the nightmare wakeup was from a near-comedy sequence resulting from a Dream Sequence minigame.
- Hideo Kojima claims he hates making trailers, because Trailers Always Spoil. He says the only way out is to make deliberately misleading trailers - hence his embracing of this trope.
Metal Gear Solid 4 trailers showed Snake in the Middle East, quietly committing suicide. The scene in the finished game was - modified. The most hilariously egregious example is the so-wrong-it's-awesome 'Summer Blockbuster' trailer, which cuts the gameplay footage together to make it look like a testosterone-pumping action flick. "Evil is powerful - but courage is Solid", booms the narrator, before Snake proudly proclaims to the narrator, begging for one man to save us all, "Sounds like the perfect job for me". In context, he was responding to Meryl saying that the only person who'd go on a specific mission is someone who wanted only to die. After playing the game you'll either find the trailer sick or squickily hilarious.
Disgaea both lampshades and subverts this trope within the game itself. The main storyline of the game is broken up into fourteen different episodes. At the end of each episode, Etna narrates a ridiculous trailer for the "upcoming episode", where each one is for a different off-the-wall series starring her as the main character. Examples include "Hyper Dimensional Demon Gal Etna", "Space Detective Etna", and "Fire Chef Cooking Gal Etna".
- It subverts the trope when one of the crazy trailers is, of course, an entirely accurate preview for the upcoming episode.
  - Then it subverts it again when Etna gives an entirely serious description of the final episode... And the entire cast starts panicking about how this is some sort of harbinger of the apocalypse.
- This tradition was resurrected for Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, with a different character voicing each 'Next Episode' spoof, each of which was declared to be the 'Final Episode' of the imaginary series. And, true to the tradition, the ACTUAL Final Chapter had a completely honest trailer, right down to being declared as the Final Episode...
The trailer for Half Life 2: Episode 2 at the end of Episode 1 implies that Alyx didn't survive the train crash at the end of Episode 1 and this would drive the plot of the second episode. This spectacularly fails to happen.
- To be fair she is grievously wounded a few minutes into the game, and you spend a significant chunk of it trying to save her life. It wasn't a total dodge.
Press material for Iguana Entertainment's South Park game said that it would feature the boys going up against the son of Scuzzlebutt. In the actual game, you fight evil Living Toys instead. Additionally, the press mentions Cartman's mom being kidnapped by the alien visitors as part of the plot. During the actual mission against the visitors, she serves no plot importance, instead merely serving as a background character trapped in suspended animation along with other townspeople.
Trailers for Halo 2 implied you would be defending Earth, when in fact you spent all of two missions on Earth, and the rest on another Halo ring. And nobody was prepared for the Arbiter's introduction. The Broken Base had mixed opinions about this. Either Bungie was great for doing something different and having a generic defend the Earth storyline, or they felt incredibly betrayed by the "lies" Bungie gave.
- Halo 3 seemed to be going this route, but you actually did spend nearly half the game fighting the Covenant invasion on Earth and most fans knew the game would take place on the Ark in some fashion.
In the trailers for the video game Portal they have a scene were the player has to outrun a crushing ceiling with spikes next to a pit full of flames. This scene does not actually appear in the game. There is a third-party add in, however, that does include it as a separate game from the regular game of Portal. It's a level add-on called Portal: The Flash Game Map Pack for Portal, available from http://wecreatestuff.com
- Please see Descending Ceiling for another fan-made pack that includes this in its entirety (with spikes).
Time Hollow on the DS' trailer culminates with one of the main characters falling seemingly to her death, only for the main character to dramatically grab her hand mid-air, still falling. In-game the scene is never used, and while the girl does fall, all the main character does is reach out through a portal while time is stopped and pull her through.
Nintendo's promotional slogan for Earthbound was "This game stinks", complete with scratch and smell stickers of rancid odors. No, seriously. It also pushed the crude humor (which actually doesn't appear all that often.)
- This was at the height of the Ren And Stimpy "gross out" fad in animation in the late '90s. It played up the Threed section of the game which featured putrid burping aliens creating zombies (especially the appearance of Master Belch) but it was only about 1/8th of the game's overall content.
  - It actually nearly DESTROYED any chance of it becoming very successful; Earthbounds's failure is most of the reasoning for Mother 3's absence in america.
- It was also a product of Nintendo's bizarre "Play It Loud" campaign, which was both an attempt to appeal to fans of the grunge movement and to shed their "kiddy" image. They were running TV ads with rapid-fire clips of game footage interspersed with other "extreme" imagery, all set to the music of The Butthole Surfers. They even used this for cutesy games like Yoshi's Island and Kirby Super Star.
The opening trailer for Oneechanbara Vortex shows clips from the game, including a rather cool scene of Aya saving Saki from an attacker by running into him with a motorcycle. Except that in the actual game, it's not returning Token Loli and Heel Face Turned ex-Big Bad Saki, but newcomer Anna who is saved in this manner.
Patrial example: the trailers and opening for Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has Emil, Marta, Alice, and Decus all fighting, hanging around, and doing innocuous things like the main characters from the first game did in their opening, and generally giving you the false impression that the latter two are (or at some point would become) allies instead part of the game's Terrible Trio. Weirdly, they're also treated the same way in the closing animated even after they both died fighting Emil and Marta.
The Tekken 5 trailer. Heihatchi Mishima is dead? No he is not!.
According to a former 3D Realms developer, the 2001 teaser trailer for Duke Nukem Forever was basically this trope embodified: Every single scene in the trailer was created from the ground-up as a non-interactive cinematic sequence, just so they would have something to show to the press. It worked like a charm.
In I Wanna Be the Guy, the list of items in the game fulfills this trope. The trick? Most of that shit is in the game, just not as items.
Parodied and lampshaded in Kagetsu Tohya with the Imogirisou trailer and sidestory. The side story is unlocked with a bizarre dreaming involving a fake Shiki, murders, Akiha's ex fiance and numerous other things, and when the game starts it has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the 'trailer' dream. Shiki gets irritated at how the story he's in now is even less interesting than the one he had a dream about. For clarification, the side story is something of a Take That to another series of games that This Troper doesn't believe has been released outside Japan.

Close Video Games

Western Animation

Shipping was also taken advantage of in the very first trailer for the second season finale of Avatar The Last Airbender by exploiting familiarity with the Locked In A Room trope. Later trailers served to help put the wham into the outcome of the finale.
- They did it again with the trailer for the second half of Season 3. Somewhat disappointingly, fans fell for it.
Parodied in this trailer for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, which gives a long list of things that do not appear in the movie. Except the flaming chicken.
- The commercials for upcoming episodes always use actual clips from the episode, but often show them out of context, out of order and with misleading narration.
There was a Cartoon Network trailer for The Woody Woodpecker Show which consisted entirely of classic Woody clips, and thought that CN was going to put more classic toons on, a reverse of the trend which had seen classics dwindled to just Tom and Jerry. Instead, it turned out to be a modern revival of Woody.
All of the trailers for Kung Fu Panda made it out to be a slapstick, comedic parody in the same vein as most of Dreamworks's animated features. Granted, this could be excused by the fact that the title character is voiced by Jack Black—but considering his usual style of acting and choice in film roles, this would seem to be a very strong example of Misaimed Marketing twice over—most fans of Jack Black's usual work would not go to see him in an animated feature, and most parents would not want their kids to see an animated feature which starred Jack Black. In any case, the movie instead turned out to be a pretty serious, epic action film with almost mythic proportions at times.
- The comedy was all still there, not made up, but spaced out and used as comic relief to lighten the tension. Which means people coming to the film solely for Jack Black comedy were probably disappointed, and those who might have enjoyed the action never got a chance to see it because they were driven away by the trailers. This editor's roommate was almost one of those, and he himself would not have been as interested or determined to see it if he hadn't read The Art of Kung Fu Panda at a bookstore. Fortunately, the eventual $600 million box office take, 3rd highest of the year and topping even Wall-E suggests that the film overcame this marketing botch.
The trailer for All Dogs Go To Heaven make it looks like a happy, sappy movie about a dog taking care of an orphan. If you ever saw the movie you would know its anything but that.
Some commercials for the Happy Tree Friends DVDs make it look like a harmless happy-go-lucky kids show. Anyone who watches the show or internet shorts will tell you otherwise, the footage usually consisted of the first few minutes of the cartoons.
A lot of people didn't want to see Coraline, even ranting about how it wasn't as scary as the book, after seeing the theatrical trailer, which made it seem more kid-friendly. This resulted in several people missing out on a great film, and many parents escorting terrified and crying children out of the theaters.
- And even more egregious, the trailers for Coraline, a claymation film that looks a lot like a Tim Burton movie, all went out of their way to note that it was "made by the producer of The Nightmare Before Christmas!" Naturally, the point was to make everybody think that it was a Tim Burton movie. Tim Burton had nothing to do with it.
The trailer for the fourth Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder features a clip of Professor Farnsworth lamenting that Planet Express is closing down, making it seem as if this is a major plot-point. However this scene mostly just exists to lampshade the fact that Fry, Bender, and Leela haven't worked for the entire movie and is directly before the company is hired for a huge job that Farnsworth just has Hermes, Zoidberg, and himself do it instead.
- There's also a part in the trailer where Zoidberg declares Fry is dead, and it's played for dramatic value. In the actual movie, this happens in the first ten minutes, and a couple seconds after Zoidberg says it, it's revealed he was only knocked down, albeit in pain.
A Network Ten (Australia) advertisement for the Simpsons episode "Mommy Beerest" (where Marge takes control of Moe's bar) made it look like a Lost parody, cleverly putting scenes together and putting in an image of the Lost logo with Simpsons characters.
The trailers for the All CGI Cartoon movie Battle For Terra shows things from the humans' side and barely shows the alien characters, which misleads the public about the fact that the humans are the invaders.

Close Western Animation

No Animals Were Harmed

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