History Main / OopsIForgotIWasMarried

* In ''ComicBook/Superman1939'' issue #415 "Supergirl: Bride Of- -X?" it happened to ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}, just after she died in ''Crisis on Infinite Earths''. An alien named Salkor showed up on Earth claiming to be her husband, which of course Superman didn't believe. Later in the story, he finds a video Supergirl made in his fortress where she relates being injured by a collision in space with a Kryptonite meteor. Salkor, the hero of his world, finds her and nurses her back to health. Since she has amnesia, she hangs around and falls in love with him. But eventually, her old memories return, in the process pushing aside her memories of the incidental marriage. She flies back to Earth and resumes her life. Her memories returned just in time for her to make the video before her death. A lot of fans forget this story because it was a time of way out stories as writers were cut loose to write any story they wanted before the reboot. Plus the marriage was a little bit gross by human standards.

* Happened in the '80s to ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}, in a story just after she died in ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'' (''Superman #415: Supergirl: Bride Of- -X?''). An alien named Salkor showed up on Earth claiming to be her husband, which of course Franchise/{{Superman}} didn't believe. Later in the story, he finds a video Supergirl made in his fortress where she relates being injured by a collision in space with a Kryptonite meteor. Salkor, the hero of his world, finds her and nurses her back to health. Since she has amnesia, she hangs around and falls in love with him. But eventually, her old memories return, in the process pushing aside her memories of the incidental marriage. She flies back to Earth and resumes her life. Her memories returned just in time for her to make the video before her death. A lot of fans forget this story because it was a time of way out stories as writers were cut loose to write any story they wanted before the reboot. Plus the marriage was a little bit gross [[UglyGuyHotWife by human standards]].

-> ''"See that girl''
-> ''With the diamond ring?''
-> ''She knows how to''
-> ''Shake that thing!''
-> ''Aww, mess around''
-> ''I declare she can mess around."''

* The first husband of Hatty Doran in the Literature/SherlockHolmes story "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" was reported killed in an Apache raid on his mining camp. She only learns that he didn't die when she sees him at her second wedding.
* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}},'' Marco's dad remarries a few years after his first wife "died." Unknown to him, his wife was still alive--she was the host of [[PuppeteerParasite Visser One]], who [[FakingTheDead Faked The Dead]] when it was time to leave the planet. Needless to say, this situation was quite awkward for Marco, who knew his mom was alive but couldn't tell anyone.

* About two-thirds of the way through the Literature/DrThorndyke novel ''Mr. Pottermack's Oversight'', Mr. Pottermack finally feels free to propose to the love of his life -- at which point, she reveals that she's not free to accept because she already has a husband, whom she walked out on before she met Mr. Pottermack but to whom she is officially still married.

* G.O.B. on ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'', explained as the logical conclusion to a series of drunken dares with a woman (played by [[RealLifeRelative Will Arnett's actual wife]] [[Series/SaturdayNightLive Amy]] [[Series/ParksAndRecreation Poehler]]) he met at a bar. The sad thing: he could have gotten it annulled if he'd just admit that he never actually had sex with the woman.
* Played with in a two-parter on ''Series/Batman1966''. Batman was being forced to marry Marcia, Queen Of Diamonds (long story). Before the wedding ceremony can be completed, Alfred arrived with Aunt Harriet and a fake marriage certificate saying that Harriet has been "Mrs. Batman" for the last seven years.

* Played for laughs on ''Series/TheBigLeap'' when Paula and Mike get engaged. He's already separated from his wife, but in the rush of everything he forgets that they haven't actually divorced until Paula pops the question. Fortunately, they know they can lean on Nick, the Executive Producer of the reality show they're on, to get it processed faster than normal in order to stage the wedding on the show.

-->'''Lilith''': "Oh look, it's my first husband."

-->'''Earl''': "Oh, my God! You're married?!"
-->'''Joy''': "Yeah, sweetie. To you!"
-->'''Earl''': ''{{Beat}}'' "'Scuse me." ''[VomitDiscretionShot]''
* In ''Series/OneBigHappy'', Luke discovers that Prudence had a husband in England who never signed the divorce papers. Lizzy, who brought the man over thinking he was Prudence's father, gets him to sign the papers, [[spoiler:but the incident has Luke rethinking his own marriage, questioning Prudence's intentions.]]
* Mr. [=McQueen=] on ''Series/{{Popular}}''

* Jimmy and Lucy on ''Series/RaisingHope''. It was revealed during the [[ShowWithinAShow Inside Probe]] episode that the two got married before the latter was executed. It was also revealed that she didn't actually die... so the next episode revolves around the custody battle that ensued for the titular toddler involving plenty of ArtisticLicenseLaw. Ultimately [[spoiler: the Chances lose the custody battle and Jimmy is forced to go with Lucy to Tibet to stay with his daughter, leaving his current flame, Sabrina behind. "Fortunately" Lucy notices this and gets out of the van to stab her, only to be hit by a bus herself.]]

-->'''Carla:''' ''[to Cox and Jordan's son]'' You have no chance to be normal.

* ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'' has a fascinating twist on this. As just when Dick Solomon is about to get married The Big Giant Head decides to send a wife to him. Thus he didn't 'forget' he was married but was suddenly forced to ret-con a wife into his life, and yes, hilarity ensues.

* Medea in [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Jason and the Argonauts]] and their Quest for the [[PlotCoupon Golden Fleece]]. Jason seduces Theatre/{{Medea}} with the help of Eros and secretly marries her at Hera's shrine. She helps him complete [[ImpossibleTask the insanely difficult tasks]] her [[SelfMadeOrphan father]]. She even kills her brother for him, to buy time for them to escape. After embarking on an adventure and obtaining said Golden Fleece, they eventually arrive in Corinth, where Jason engages himself to the daughter of the king. [[WomanScorned Medea was not happy]] and launched a famously brutal RoaringRampageOfRevenge. Makes this trope OlderThanFeudalism, and Jason an idiot for offending his patron goddess.

-->"Dirty married bachelor!"

* Trace in ''Webcomic/TwoKinds'', having amnesia, fully forgets that he was married. His wife, [[http://twokinds.keenspot.com/archive.php?p=150 Saria]], does not. Later on, it turns out [[spoiler:he's NOT married anymore as Saria has been dead for years; in fact, her murder at the hands of Keidran bandits was his StartOfDarkness. The woman they encountered is actually her ghost, [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy who's just happy that Trace has gone back to the person he used to be.]]]]

[[folder:RealLife]]

* Bill and Jo in ''Film/{{Twister}}''. Bill and Jo had long split up, but never signed the divorce papers until Bill shows up with his new fiancee. It makes one wonder exactly how and when Bill broke the news to her. First date? Second date? The marriage proposal? "Honey, will you marry me?" "Yes!" "Great! Would you mind coming along on a road trip to visit my current wife so she and I can get divorced?" "What?!"

* ''Move Over Darling'' (Doris Day, James Garner, and Polly Bergen) is a 1963 remake of a 1940 ScrewballComedy ''Film/MyFavoriteWife'' (Irene Dunne, Creator/CaryGrant and Randolph Scott). The plot is: a wife was lost off a ship that sunk. Presumed dead after 7 years, the husband remarries. However, the first wife has been living on a deserted island with another man, is rescued, and comes home on the wedding day.
* In ''Film/LibeledLady'' (1936), Bill Chandler is confident that his marriage to Gladys Benton isn't legal because her Mexican divorce from her previous husband is invalid, so he has no qualms about marrying Connie Allenbury. Gladys then subverts the trope by telling Bill that she knew the Mexican divorce was invalid, so she went back and got a proper DivorceInReno.

* The first husband of Hatty Doran in the Literature/SherlockHolmes story "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" was reported killed in an Apache raid on his mining camp. She only learns that he didn't die when she sees him at her second wedding.
* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}},'' Marco's dad remarries a few years after his first wife "died." Unknown to him, his wife was still alive--she was the host of [[PuppeteerParasite Visser One]], who [[FakingTheDead Faked The Dead]] when it was time to leave the planet. Needless to say, this situation was quite awkward for Marco, who knew his mom was alive but couldn't tell anyone.
* In ''The Premature Burial'' by Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, Victorine La Fourcade, [[UptownGirl a wealthy French girl]], was involved with a poor journalist named Julien Bossuet, whom [[ParentalMarriageVeto her family did not approve of]] [[SlobsVersusSnobs because of his socioeconomic status]]. She caved under family pressure and married a wealthy banker, who [[DomesticAbuse abused her]] until she fell ill and (apparently) died. It turns out she was ''not'' actually dead, just unconscious, and had been BuriedAlive! Julien came to her grave not long after her "death" to take a lock of her hair and found out the truth. He took her home, nursed her back to health, and eloped to America with her. The couple returned to France some 20 years later, and the banker recognized Victorine and tried to legally claim her back. Because of his bad treatment of her and her current marriage to Julien, Victorine refused, and the court ruled in her favor, saying that because of the unusual circumstances and the time that had passed, her marriage to the banker guy was herewith dissolved.
* Henry Crawford in the ''Literature/MrAndMrsDarcyMysteries'' conveniently forgets that he married Meg, under the name John Garret. She turns up looking for him at Mansfield Inn - while he's still dealing with the fallout to his marriage to Anne de Bourgh.
* In ''Literature/MissLuluBett'', Ninian waits a week after his marriage to Lulu to tell her that he was married 15 years ago and his wife is, as far as he knows, still floating around out there somewhere. A mortified Lulu leaves him and goes home.
* About two-thirds of the way through the Literature/DrThorndyke novel ''Mr. Pottermack's Oversight'', Mr. Pottermack finally feels free to propose to the love of his life -- at which point, she reveals that she's not free to accept because she already has a husband, whom she walked out on before she met Mr. Pottermack but to whom she is officially still married.
* In Tamar Cohen's ''The War of the Wives'', both the first wife and the second wife had ''no idea'' that they were married to the same man for nearly ''twenty years'' because he managed to lie to both of them about his job so that the two were never in the same place at the same time. Both find out that he's a bigamist at his funeral and how they handle each other in the course of the novel.
* In the fifth book of the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series, Richard is campaigning against the Imperial Order alongside his wife, Kahlan, when a woman he rescued in the second book shows up, calling herself his wife, based on a prophecy Richard had fulfilled in rescuing her. Worse yet, because of her tribe's customs, she considers her newborn child — born out of her being raped in captivity — to be Richard's as well. While this causes no issues with Kahlan, it seriously harms Richard's public image in the campaign.

* ''Series/{{Friends}}'':
** Phoebe is very fond of this trope. She married a Not-So-Gay Ice Dancer and conveniently forgot to mention it to even her best friends, and it is implied that she also married an unknown (to the viewers) man in Las Vegas.
** Rachel trusts Ross to annul their drunken Vegas marriage - and he doesn't go through with it.

* ''Series/{{Psych}}'':
** Gus.
** His best man was a goat since the whole wedding party was pretty drunk at the time. Shawn is pissed because ''he'' was supposed to be that goat!
* Mr. [=McQueen=] on ''Series/{{Popular}}''
* G.O.B. on ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'', explained as the logical conclusion to a series of drunken dares with a woman (played by [[RealLifeRelative Will Arnett's actual wife]] [[Series/SaturdayNightLive Amy]] [[Series/ParksAndRecreation Poehler]]) he met at a bar. The sad thing: he could have gotten it annulled if he'd just admit that he never actually had sex with the woman.
* Mimi on ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow''. She was married to Eddie Money for a week. She'd been divorced; the problem was that the church she wanted to be married in refused to do the ceremony unless she got an annulment.
* On the ''Series/{{Angel}}'' episode "[[Recap/AngelS01E07BachelorParty Bachelor Party]]", Doyle was married to some woman, which he neglected to tell Cordelia because they had separated due to Doyle's issues with his half-demon status. Said woman came looking for a divorce as she found a new husband. She called off her new engagement though because her demon fiancé's family would only approve of their marriage if he performed an obscure ritual that involved eating Doyle's brain. Presumably, the divorce stuck since she's never seen again.
* Edward and the [[UnusualEuphemism mistake he and Kitty swore never to talk about]] in ''Series/DharmaAndGreg''. He trusted her to file the paperwork, and she... forgot. The problem is never resolved, because it turns Kitty on that she's "the other woman", effectively un-probleming it.
* Karen Darling from ''Series/DirtySexyMoney''.

* [[Characters/{{JAG}} Sarah 'Mac' Mackenzie]] on ''Series/{{JAG}}'' especially horrible in that she is a lawyer and US Marine officer.
* ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'' has a fascinating twist on this. As just when Dick Solomon is about to get married The Big Giant Head decides to send a wife to him. Thus he didn't 'forget' he was married but was suddenly forced to ret-con a wife into his life, and yes, hilarity ensues.
* On ''Series/{{Wings}}'', Helen was about to marry Joe but she forgot to divorce Antonio whom she married for citizenship reasons.
* On ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' Dr. Cox and Jordan find out that they never correctly filed their divorce papers, and so are still legally married. Note that they're living together, have a child together, and are in a long-term committed relationship. But finding out that they're married drives them both crazy for some reason. In the end, they decided that they have to get divorced to save their relationship (their relationship remains exactly the same, but they're not officially bound together anymore), and even have a public, celebratory divorce ceremony. All their friends lampshade how ridiculous the whole thing is.
-->'''Carla:''' ''[to Cox and Jordan's son]'' You have no chance to be normal.

* On ''Series/ShamelessUS'', Kevin proposes to Veronica while drunk. It takes a while for him to confess to her that he never divorced his first wife. According to him, she was a total psycho and he is actually in hiding from her. If he asks her for a divorce now, he fears she will kill him. Veronica is actually fine with this and [[spoiler: they have a fake wedding]] just so they don't disappoint Veronica's mother and more importantly get wedding gifts.

* Subverted in the ''Series/{{MASH}}'' episode, "Cease Fire". The war is believed to be almost over. A nurse Hawkeye was dating asks him about what their relationship will be post-war, and he claimed to be "suffering from terminal marriage", even though he wasn't really married. And he does it several times. Hawkeye ReallyGetsAround, and after the events of that episode it's odd that anyone on the nursing staff would even talk to him again.
** Subverted again in a later episode where Charles is on leave in Tokyo and gets drunk. Photos taken during the binge show him getting married. His "wife" soon comes to visit the camp where after he finally reveals he doesn't remember anything from the evening, she explains that while inebriated he was so insistent they get married that they staged a fake wedding to appease him. They then get drunk and stage a fake divorce.
* In ''Series/MadLove'', due to a clerical error Kate turns out to be still married to her high school boyfriend she married on a dare.
* Rachel in British series ''Series/ColdFeet''. The series kicked off with her break-up with a super serious boyfriend of several years, but she immediately meets her new big love Adam. When Adam and Rachel are later moving together, he finds her marriage licence and thinks it's a just-for-fun fake thing. However, it's very real and she never got divorced, and she has no intention. She wants to live with Adam but doesn't want to be a divorced woman. Her friends call her on it, but when she goes to meet her estranged husband to deal with it, they sleep together and she gets pregnant. Rachel and Adam eventually patch things up and get back together, but they broke up over Rachel's cheating, even though Adam wanted to forgive her.
* Subverted in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother''. When Ted dates Robin, he finds out she has a secret. He desperately wants to find out what it is, and his friends bet on her being married because she hates marriage and commitment, and always talk about this friend who married way too young. Robin confirms it and Ted fusses over not being a boyfriend, but a "mistress". However, they later find out she lied. Her embarrassing secret is that [[spoiler:she used to be a teen pop star in Canada.]]
* On an episode of ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', we learn that Penny and Zack had engaged in matrimonial hijinks one drunken night in Vegas. She thought it didn't count or wasn't real, but...
* Played with in a two-parter on ''Series/Batman1966''. Batman was being forced to marry Marcia, Queen Of Diamonds (long story). Before the wedding ceremony can be completed, Alfred arrived with Aunt Harriet and a fake marriage certificate saying that Harriet has been "Mrs. Batman" for the last seven years.
* In ''Series/{{Reaper}}'', Ben gets into a CitizenshipMarriage with a British girl named Sara. Shortly after that, he meets a girl named Cassidy. After a few dates, she (with some humor) points out that he forgot to take off his wedding ring. He explains the whole thing... and she likes the idea of being a mistress. After the ruse is discovered, Sara goes on the lam, leaving Ben to go to jail for a few months. Cassidy is happy that Ben will be single after doing time... but then ends up dumping him while he's still in jail.
* In ''Series/{{Elementary}}'', Joan Watson starts dating a man while Sherlock is training her to be an investigator. Sherlock urges her to do a background check on the man in case he's already married, and under protest, she does, and he is. When she confronts her date about it, he explains that it was a CitizenshipMarriage for strong humanitarian reasons... and now she has to explain why she does background checks on her dates.
* In ''Series/DowntonAbbey'', Lady Edith finds herself dating Michael Gregson, a newspaper editor. Some digging on her part then reveals that Gregson is married, to a woman who now lives in an asylum and has no idea who he is. Under English law, he can't divorce her.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'': Pops up whenever Vala and Tomin encounter each other during season 10 and ''Film/StargateTheArkOfTruth''. It's unlikely that Vala actually forgets being married to Tomin at any point, but she does seem pretty convinced that it no longer "counts", while Tomin is quick to remind everyone that they are, technically, still married.

* In the season 2 finale of ''Series/{{Scorpion}}'', Happy turns down Toby's proposal after a season-long relationship, saying only, "I can't. I'm married to someone else. I'm sorry," and then walks out of the room. The early episodes of season 3 had Toby trying to figure out who her mystery husband is. It turns out [[CitizenshipMarriage she married Walter because his visa was going to expire]].
* ''Series/RizzoliAndIsles'': In "For Richer or Poorer", Jane is puzzled when a man discovered unconscious at a murder scene has a photo of himself and Maura at a Las Vegas wedding chapel. Maura reveals that he was her college boyfriend and they got married in Vegas, before deciding the whole thing was a mistake and getting it annulled the next day. However, it turns out the lawyer handling the annulment suffered a stroke before he could submit the papers, so Maura is still legally married. At the end of the episode, she and her 'husband' get divorced.
* ''Series/HotInCleveland'': Variant - at the end of season 2, Elka Ostrovsky's wedding to her boyfriend is interrupted when her supposedly ''deceased'' husband shows up. It's later revealed he was FakingTheDead because he was a fence for the mob, which gets him arrested soon after.
* A fairly common storyline on [[SoapOpera Soap Operas]] to bring the ConflictBall into a couple's life.

* A variant of this on ''Series/UnbreakableKimmySchmidt'', Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne asks Kimmy for a divorce and that's when she realized that the wedding performed when he held her captive was real.
* ''Series/AgathaRaisin'': In "Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage", Agatha and James' wedding is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Agatha's husband. In her defence, she has honestly believed him to be dead.

* Played for laughs on ''Series/TheBigLeap'' when Paula and Mike get engaged. He's already separated from his wife, but in the rush of everything he forgets that they haven't actually divorced until Paula pops the question. Fortunately, they know they can lean on Nick, the Executive Producer of the reality show they're on, to get it processed faster than normal in order to stage the wedding on the show.
* ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire'': In "[[Recap/TheBrittasEmpireS6E4AWalkOnTheWildside A Walk on the Wildside]]", Helen learns from a spiritual guru called Harry Johnson that the entire time she's been married to Brittas, she's been married to him as well (courtesy of the hippie who officiated the wedding going on to become the Bishop of Maidstone). She considers resolving the matter by leaving Brittas and heading off with him as the new husband until he dies to a falling sign at the end of the episode.

* Music/RayCharles' "Mess Around", per the page quote.

* In the music-hall Cockney song "Waiting at the Church," a bride is given this reason for being jilted: "Can't get away/To marry you today/My wife won't let me."
* In the song "Soldier, Soldier", the soldier says he can't get married as he doesn't have a coat, hat, gloves or boots. Only after his prospective bride has provided all these things does he say that the ''other'' reason he can't marry her is "I have a wife of my own".

* Done hilariously on ''WesternAnimation/CampLazlo''. One season ended with Jane, the love of Lumpus' life, getting engaged to the next guy who walked up: some old man. A season later, they almost got married---but in the middle of the wedding, his other three wives complained. His excuse? Senility.

* May be a borderline case, but in his ''Psychopathology of Everyday Life'', Sigmund Freud related an anecdote of a recently-married woman who was walking around Vienna with a friend of hers, and pointed to a man across the street, saying, "Look, there's Mr. X!" Mr. X, of course, was her new husband. The husband and wife had a good laugh over that story later, but Freud felt a chill when he first heard it. As he predicted, their marriage ended badly.

* Creator/JaneaneGarofalo was surprised to learn that for the past twenty years, she was married to producer Creator/RobCohen of ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' and forgot about it: more to the point, they didn't know their drive-thru Vegas wedding counted in the eyes of the law. They quickly divorced so Cohen could marry his new paramour, though the IRS might give them both a headache.
[[/folder]]

It might make it worse."