The Rashomon - Television Tropes & Idioms

An anime-only episode of Ranma ½, "The Case of the Missing Tako-yaki" features the residents of the Tendo household giving various and somewhat conflicting recounts of how the contents a box of tako-yaki were pilfered.
Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge's 11th episode has comedy duo Love Pheromone recapping how they came to be while in the middle of preparation. Aimi's view of the events is centered around her and filled with romantic cliches. Kaoruko's view of the events reveals that Aimi's always been a bit self-centered, even as a kid.
Umisho has one episode where Momoko and Sanae give differing views on how the swim club was formed. Sanae, known to be a liar and a storyteller, spins a web of student-teacher relationships and Schoolgirl Lesbians, but Momoko's side discounts both of those. At the end of the episode, a sign is given that Sanae may not have been entirely lying...
An episode of Love Hina has the gang trying to figure out how the rent money was stolen, even though everyone seems to have an alibi.
True Tears has this for the conversation when Shinichiro entered Hiromi's room.

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The Invisibles story "Best Man Fall" retells the events of King Mob's raid in Issue 1... from the perspective of one of the guards he mows down. We see the guard's life, from early childhood to the death of his brother to his rocky marriage to his service in the Falklands.
In Sonic The Hedgehog there was the story "Total Re:Genesis", in which a battle against an enemy robot is told four times, once by each of the heroes and once by Nicole (a computer, who reports on what really happened). Not only does each of the heroes make themselves out to be single-handedly responsible for defeating the robot, but each version of the story is drawn by a different artist.
There is a Spider-Man story, called Eye Witness, where Mary Jane, Peter and J. Jonah Jameson tell the story of a bank robbery where they were present. Mary Jane describes the robber as a menacing thug, Jameson acting bravely, and the Spider-Man as a hero. Jameson describes the robber similarly, himself as the hero, and the Spider-Man as a coward and a criminal. Peter tells the thruth; the robber was an amateur with a BB gun, Jameson acted cowardly, and he (as the Spider-Man) didn't have to do much.
The Phantom Stranger's issue of "Secret Origins" featured four alternate, contradictory origin stories and does not tell you which one is true.
The Question Quarterly #5 is one of these. It starts with The Question punching the mayor in the face. Then several characters speculate on why he did it, with each version drawn by a different artist. Izzy O'Toole tells a standard Film Noir story, a pair of crackheads claim that The Question was a disfigured psychopath, and the Mayor herself finally explained that he knocked her out to prevent a desperate deal with a group of gunrunners to bring in some money to the city. The Question finally shows up, and tells them they're all wrong. It turns out he went against his uncompromising nature and made the deal himself. He just didn't want Myra to meet the criminals face to face for fear they would double cross her.

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This One Piece fanfic; Silver River.

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Rashomon is both the Trope Namer and the Trope Maker.
Just as Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven, so Rashomon was remade into The Outrage.
In Courage Under Fire, Denzel Washington investigates the circumstances surrounding Meg Ryan's character's death in battle, and each member of her platoon has a different story about how it happened. One of the first people he asks later gives him the disturbing real version.
This happens in Narc where the protagonist first hears one version of how an undercover cop died from his partner, who is also investigating it and the protagonist was brought in to help wrap up the case. Along the way, things are not as they seem and when they supposedly catch the real killers, they tell a different version of what happened. In the final confrontation, the surviving partner is shot and gives what appears to be a deathbed confession of what really happened.
Elephant explores this trope so that the audience can know absolutely everything relevant to a school shooting except why it happened.
Basic centers on a pair of military investigators trying to figure out what happened during a training exercise in which all but one of a team of special-forces operatives died or disappeared.
He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not, a French film, plays with this by having the first half or so of the film follow a girl who a man is apparently cheating on (and going to leave) his wife with her. However, he repeatedly fails to show up at all to their arranged meetings. Growing increasingly distraught, she finally attempts suicide. In the second half, it's from the man's point of view, and it's revealed that he isn't even aware that she exists, and the entire relationship was the product of her being insane.
Clue, anyone? Towards the end of the movie, just when you think you've saw who killed who, a title card pops up saying "That's what could have happened." "How about this?" and then an alternative ending occurs. And then it happens again.
- This is how the video/DVD version handles it. The theatrical release had only one of the three endings, and the version one saw depended upon which theater one saw the film in.
In One Night At McCools three different male characters relate their often conflicting impressions of Liv Tyler's character Jewel, revealing the particular brand of misogyny present in each one.
The movie Hollywoodland features a detective investigating the death of actor George Reeves. He goes through the many possible (and ultimately conflicting) theories on what happened.
Gossip plays with this trope. The viewers think they know what happened at college party. Only as the movie progresses is it made clear that no character is entirely reliable in their account of things.
The animated movie Hoodwinked applies this trope to Little Red Riding Hood. You get to see the events of the (very altered) story through Red Riding Hood, Grandma, the wolf, and a schnitzel salesperson.
Ghost Dog The Way Of The Samurai. The mob boss is explaining to his fellow mobsters how he met the hitman — years ago he can across some hoods beating the protagonist as a child. When one of the hoods pulls a gun on the mobster when he asks what's going on, the mobster shoots him in self defence. Later we see what actually happened; the hood was actually going to shoot the protagonist, when the mobster shot him. Of course an Italian mobster can't admit he saved a black youth in a Pet The Dog moment, can he?
The Hole made use of this, but very early on in the story it is made abundantly clear that one of the two accounts of the events in the titular hole cannot be accurate, and is not believed by anyone.
The Jet Li film Hero used a variation. The same events were shown several times, but always from the same character's point of view. Each version got closer to the truth, as his audience figured out the lies.

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The Christian New Testament begins with the four Gospels, each credit as being "The Gospel according to" a different author. This makes it Older Than Feudalism. There are several contradictions between them, most notably, conflicting accounts of the Resurrection.
- Paul’s recollection of his own history and that of the Church is slightly different to Luke’s too, though both of them were summarizing a little.
- In discussing the discrepancies between the Gospels, those of Matthew, Luke and Mark are called the synoptic gospels (i.e. the disparity in the accounts of most of the events are fairly minor). John's, on the other hand, is quite different from these accounts; for example, Jesus carries out none of the famous miracles, only seven "signs".
- Older than the New Testament, the Old Testament features two entirely different (though similar) stories of Creation, one immediately after the other—the first being the famous "And on the Xth day, God Y." Which has humans created last, while the second account has humans created BEFORE animals, and has the whole Garden of Eden story. Many other stories have hugely conflicting problems in them, such as the story of David, and anyone from David to Saul to someone else to some random Israelite killing Goliath.
The Lover, a novel by Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua, is told from the view points of the six major characters.
The book As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is told from the heads of something like fourteen narrators, and the only half-sane one in the entire book gets sent to an insane asylum for trying to burn his mother's steadily-decaying body in someone else's barn and while inside the asylum, goes crazy. Major points to whoever can actually figure out who's reliable and what's going on.
- His mother is a fish.
- Let's not forget Absalom! Absalom!, where the true story of the Sutpens is pieced together from information given by three different tellings. Each of the tellers doesn't know the whole story, and may be changing or making up some of what they say. They don't call it a precursor of the modern mystery novel for nothing.
An Instance Of The Fingerpost by Iain Pears is an excellent Rashomon. It features 4 unreliable narrators, all with his particular take on the same intricate series of events. As an added twist, each subsequent narrator is moved to write his own version after reading the earlier ones, so each subsequent testimony also includes clarifications, annotations, comments, criticism, refutations and fillings of the blanks. There's no "definitive version of what really happened" either.
Waved in the plot of Chronicle of a Death Foretold: the narrator is trying to reconstruct the weird circumstances surrounding the honor murder of a childhood friend, so he investigates the surviving witnesses and the court records. While not made in the traditional way, only the main facts remain with each retelling, as people can't even remember what weather was that day, and it goes down from there.
James Joyce - Finnegans Wake
Surprisingly, a picture book: Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne.
The Real Story, the first in Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap series, revolves around telling more or less the same events several times to get to the truth of what happened.
Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, an epic-length series of dramatic monologues based on a real Italian murder case. Everybody involved chimes in, including the murderer and the victim.
Peter Matthiessen's Killing Mister Watson trilogy, recently revised into Shadow Country, relies heavily on the Rashomon effect.
Arthur Phillips' Angelica features the same (possibly supernatural) events told from four different P.O.V.s.
This can be seen in Harry Potter: Dumbledore and Trelawney both tell different versions of the story of Trelawney's first prophecy, neither of which turn out to be exactly true.
- Another interesting example in Harry Potter features a Rashomon-style retelling twice from the same character. In The Half-Blood Prince, Professor Slughorn is so ashamed of something he did in the past, that the first time his memory of the event is shown (literally - his memory is relived by Harry and Dumbledore through magical means) we see what his guilty conscience later wished he had done. When he is convinced to reveal the truth, the scene is replayed (magically again) without any edits.
Ken Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion makes heavy use of this trope, weaving together the narratives of several warring family members and townspeople to illustrate the interpersonal conflicts surrounding a town-wide lumber strike. For added fun, sometimes POV shifts happen mid-sentence.
Jeff Rackham's The Rag & Bone Shop tells the story of Charles Dickens' relationship with Ellen Ternan from three different points of view: Ellen's, Georgina Hogarth's (Dickens' sister-in-law) and Wilkie Collins'. All three suffer from various degrees of self-delusion, especially Georgina.
The first half or so of the Star Wars novel I, Jedi is one of these for the Jedi Academy Trilogy. It gives a contrasting point of view of the events of that series without actually contradicting any of it, while simultaneously filling in a variety of Plot Holes. The second half of the book tells the conclusion of the conflict that Corran Horn went to the academy to learn to deal with, which is related to, but separate from, the story of the happenings at the academy.
Agatha Christie 's Five Little Pigs has Hercule Poirot solve a murder that took place six years before by listening to the stories of the people involved.
An odd variation on this concept is used in Quills Window. Events are portrayed objectively as they happen- the important change, however, is that different characters interpret these events in different ways. We'll see the event in question from the point of view of one character in the book, but later on it will be referenced by other characters as having had entirely different personal connotations.
Used occaisonally in The Bartimaeus Trilogy, mainly to have Bartimaeus' illusions of grandeur dashed by the third-person (and therefore more accurate?) narration of Nathaniel or Kitty, though of course he's always damn cool, whether he calmly asks the whiny boy to "please be quiet" or shrieks at him to "SHUT UP!!".

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Done in a subtle way in the BBC's horror Mockumentary Ghostwatch. The same footage of apparent paranormal phenomena gets replayed with small differences in order to undermine the viewer's sense of reality.
This is used to great effect on the British sitcom Coupling. Examples include: a guy trying to get a date with the woman who doesn't speak English; a group of partygoers who recall the story about the party differently.
- This troper's favourite example: Patrick recalls his first meeting with Sally, in which they had a conversation that didn't entirely seem to make sense. Sally's recollection is that Patrick was staggeringly rude to her overweight friend, who didn't even appear in his version; the implication is that he's such a Jerkass Kavorka Man that the existence of unattractive women doesn't even register.
- Coupling seems to do this a couple of times per season, always to great comic effect (Steven Moffat is one helluva writer). They tend to take one of two forms: each re-telling gives only fragments of the story and the big jokes aren't revealed until all the pieces are fitted together, or the classic Rashomon-style subjective viewpoints, such as the party episode mentioned above in which Sally's version of events completely omits the fact that she was staggeringly drunk.
All In The Family had an episode where Archie, Michael, and Edith recount different versions meeting the same black character (to Archie he's a menacing street thug, to Michael he's sympathetic and repressed, Edith tells the real story).
Perfect Strangers had an episode involving an encounter with a thug at a camping lodge. There was a minor subversion in that the first two stories were so over the top, nobody believed them. The police officer then asked if someone could tell him what happened without trying to sound like Indiana Jones. Everyone pointed to Balkie.
Diffrent Strokes had an episode like this involving a burglary. Appropriately enough, the episode title was "Rashomon II".
Also used in The X Files, in the season 3 episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", and the season 5 episode "Bad Blood".
Happy Days Roger, Fonzie, and Potsie provide differing accounts over how the Fonz was shot in the ass.
The Dick Van Dyke Show: "The Night the Roof Fell In." Rob and Laura recount two different versions of a marital spat that ends with Rob storming out. Oddly, we get the real story from their pet goldfish.
Used in a March 2004 episode of Alias, (in which hilarity does not ensue - only ass-kicking).
Farscape, "The Ugly Truth", in which Crichton, Aeryn, Zhaan, D'Argo and Stark have to give their testimony of a coversation with Crais that ended up with a Plokavian merchant ship being blown up- each one being distorted for one reason or another. Hilariously enough, all the characters in Crichton's recollection refer to Plokavians as "Plokavoids." Not so hilariously, the judges don't appreciate the distortion and sentence all the witnesses to death until Stark takes the blame.
Frasier, "Perspectives On Christmas". In this example, the characters' perspectives differed mainly in what they were able to see and how they interpreted certain lines of dialogue (as is the norm for misunderstandings on this show), rather than blatantly skewing things in their favor as in most comedic examples.
Everybody Loves Raymond had an episode in which Raymond and Debra both retold the events of an afternoon. The most notable thing about this, is none of the events were actually changed in either retelling - both characters used the same lines, and the same things happened, albeit with different severity in both (example: In Debra's retelling Ray opens a can of tuna and overreacts to a small amount of spillage - in Ray's, the can almost explodes and he's rather nonchalant about it).
- And the tone used by the characters in each version gives the exact same lines entirely different contexts.
Empty Nest Harry and Laverne recall their first meeting at her job interview in a dispute over whether she ever promised to wear a nursing cap. In Harry's version, Laverne is a naive country bumpkin, in Laverne's she is competent and professional (perhaps overly so) and a weak and indecisive Harry defers to her.
M*A*S*H, Frank and Hawkeye testify when Frank accuses Hawk of mutiny. Frank speaks (and narrates) in scriptural prose while the other surgeons mewl and cower. In his version of events all shots of himself are soft-focus, gleaming and white while shots of Hawk and Beej are dingy and unflattering.
The television show Boomtown was built entirely around this concept, although it was abandoned shortly before cancellation.
The Veronica Mars episode "A Trip to the Dentist," the penultimate episode of the season, was about Veronica hearing differing accounts of the party where she was date-raped.
In an episode of Magnum PI, Magnum listens to Rick, T.C., and Higgins explaining the events of a robbery at Rick's nightclub. Each gives a different version of the events. Magnum focuses on the details of the robbery that don't change in the retelling, and cracks the case.
Power Rangers SPD "Perspective" did this very poorly, showing the same three minutes of Stock Footage six times with the ADR changed, the changes limited almost entirely to the name of the character everyone else was praising.
The last Small Wonder episode (by production sequence) had Brandon, Harriet and Jamie telling different versions of a foiled robbery. Although she can no longer talk, Vicki provides the real story when Ted connects her to the hotel TV set.
Thunder Alley Gil and his daughter argue over who owns some rare baseball cards. Their respective flashbacks to when Gil supposedly gave them to her contradict each other.
CSI: "Rashomama". This was a hilariously well-done episode. Nick's car is stolen — and with it all the evidence collected at a wedding where the bride's mother was murdered. The CSIs recount events to get their stories straight for when Internal Affairs questions them. Each start from listening to David the Coroner make a joke about the deceased and walking through an arch of flowers, and from there, things diverge. Sara injects her irritation with marriage, Nick thoroughly enjoys the atmosphere, Grissom waxes poetic about the floral arrangements, and Greg recalls events in film noir style.
- Pick a cop show, any cop show. Chances are one of the witnesses will be lying about something.
In My Name Is Earl, one story tells how four main character tricked each other on some stolen silverware, each "part" told from a different character's view.
- Interesting in that none of the accounts conflict with each other, only differing in events that the character telling the story couldn't have known about. They form one long storyline with each account following the previous instead.
In Lizzie McGuire, Lizzie, Kate, and Tudgeman all give their P.O.V.s of a food fight. For good measure, the episode starts with the very end of the food fight.
On News Radio, Catherine Duke decided to leave the station, but nobody was paying attention when she was telling why she decided to leave. The station owner, Jimmy James, wants to know why Catherine left, prompting about five different versions of the story, culminating with Jimmy's impression of what happened, a nonsensical sequence combining elements from each story.
The Odd Couple had an episode that described a party where Oscar and Blanche's marriage went on the rocks: first Oscar tells how Blanche was a drunk and Felix was a meddlesome whiner; then Blanche tells how Oscar was a lecher and Felix was a meddlesome whiner; then Felix tells how he was the life of the party and valiantly tried to save Oscar and Blanche's marriage.
Highlander The Series: "Through a Glass Darkly" features a Rashomon-style historical flashback.
The Star Trek The Next Generation episode "A Matter of Perspective" was a holodeck-aided version of this trope. Riker has one story; the people who think Riker murdered one of their scientists have another; and Deanna Troi tells Captain Picard that both sides are telling the truth, or rather what they believe is the truth. The actual truth does come out, but only because the holodeck recreates the crime scene almost exactly and is left on "crime scene."
- Also, while Riker is absolved of the murder, exactly what happens between Riker and the scientist's wife is left nebulous. The possibilities left open being her seducing him, him trying to rape her, and them mutually throwing themselves at each other. Sure, we know Riker as a ladies man, but you never know...
The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air episode "Will Goes a-Courtin'", where Will and Carlton refuse to pay Uncle Phil his rent because the air conditioner was broken (or something, this editor's memory is a bit fuzzy). They end up having a pool party without Uncle Phil's permission, and Uncle Phil takes them to court about the whole ordeal. In court they tell outrageously different versions of the pool party:
- In Uncle Phil's version, Will and Carlton are thuggish, and everyone is wearing revealing swimsuits, including the 15-year-old neighbor girl who wandered over. Uncle Phil himself is just a meek, quiet man who accidentally steps on Carlton's inflatable duckie inner tube. (He told his story seond and when stopped pointed out the others had been allowed to tell their cock and bull story)
- In Will and Carlton's version, the pool party is a classy, innocent affair where everyone is in old-style bathing suits and they dance in a circle holding hands. When Uncle Phil enters, a glass of water shakes ala Jurassic Park and he rips the head off of Carlton's duckie inner tube. He also yells at the 15-year-old neighbor girl who "wandered over, crying" as Will says.
- Of course, we saw the real pool party beforehand, where the party was not thuggish (but certainly not innocent), the 15-year-old neighbor wanders in on her own (not crying and not wearing a revealing swimsuit), and Uncle Phil pokes a pin in Carlton's duckie inner tube.
In one episode of How I Met Your Mother, Barney pretends to be Ted (as "Ted Mosby, Architect") while hooking up with a woman, but we hear the story from everyone else at the party (who don't know either Ted or Barney), making it look like Ted is cheating on Robin.
- Because Ted is also (sometimes) an Unreliable Narrator, we sometimes see something from Ted's point of view only to have someone else explain what really happened. (I would give examples, but they would either go on too long or make me sound insane. Well, more insane. Yes I tried...!)
- I'll give it a go, then. Ted is dating a woman who he introduces to his friends. At first we see it from Ted's point of view - Said woman says a sentence, then one of his friends seems to interrupt her with a thinly veiled 'Shut up!'. Then, the other characters reveal that she talks a lot (something an enamoured Ted hadn't noticed), and we cut back to her talking... and talking... and talking...
  - and talking...and talking...and talking...and talking...and talking...and talking...and talking...
- We also hear, but never see, an event of Marshall and Lily's past when Lily spends a summer in France. Marshall's story involves him going over and confronting "Gabriel", because he thought "he" was trying to hook up with Lily; Lily's side involve her only friend in France, Gabrielle, and how she felt so alone when she suddenly stopped talking to her for no reason.
In the 30 Rock episode "The Rural Juror", Liz has a series of flashbacks where a flighty Jenna glows after receiving random compliments from Liz. Later on, Jenna recalls the same events, but in her version Liz was being deliberately condescending.
- This is similarly-used in the episode "Reunion", in which Liz discovers she wasn't quite as lovable in her High School days as she thought.
Mamas Family also had an episode called "Rashomama", where Eunice, Ellen, and Naomi tell three different versions of the same story how Mama got hit on the head with a pot. The framing narrative takes place in a hospital, and at the end, Vint asks her what went on in the kitchen, and she says, "I've never seen any of you people before in my life!"
Supernatural had an episode, Tall Tales where in Dean's version of events, Sam is much more effeminate and much more deserving of his "Captain Empathy" nickname and in Sam's version of events, Dean's sluttiness, massive appetite and stupidity are all exaggerated.
Sam (from Dean): Dean, this is a very serious investigation. We don't have time for any of your blablablablah. Blablablablah? Blah, blablablablah. Blah, blablablablablabla. *pause* BLAAAH?
Real Sam: Right. And that's how it really happened. I don't sound like that, Dean!
Dean: That's what you sound like to me.
An episode of My Secret Identity involved a bank robbed by a singing man in a gorilla suit. Everyone told their own story to the cops, varying details like the style of music the robber used to announce his intentions, and often playing up their own role. The actual story, involving the protagonist's superpowers, was told at the end by the perp, but dismissed as a hallucination.
Series 2, episode 5 of ''Life On Mars' had a scene told from a vindictive and sympathetic point of view. Of course, the sympathetic one is eventually portrayed to have been 100% accurate.
In the Due South episode 'Seeing is Believing', three of the main characters witness a murder and each tells the story from their preconceived ideas. It takes Fraser hypnotising them to find out the truth.
The Nickelodeon program Radioactive did this in one episode - one student tries to find out what happened to cause a CD to get damaged, and so asks the other students. Each one had a different report on what happened in the room, how everyone acted and what happened to the CD (one student claims he caught it in his teeth after another threw it at him). The only constant in any of them is one of the students reading a comic book wearing a hat (which changes depending on who's telling it). That student's retelling consists entirely of a shot of a comic book while the voices of the other cast members can be heard babbling incoherently in the background.
Living Single did this with Kadijah and Regine. This editor forgets what they were arguing about, but Regine's story paints Kadijah (played by Queen Latifah) as a gruff, belicose she-thug, while Kadijah's story makes Regine out to be a snooty Rich Bitch. Both ladies pretend they themselves were perfectly innocent and agreeable. The one constant in both stories is that Maxine comes over at the end and says, "I'm too lazy to cook for myself, so I'm gonna mooch off you guys." (or something like that).
That 70s Show did this when Jackie and Hyde were explaining how they got together. In Jackie's version, Hyde is a perfect gentleman, and even calls her "my lady." Hyde's version is...simpler:
Hyde (VO): I'm hangin' out in the basement like I usually do, when Jackie showed up. It was obvious she wanted me.
Jackie: I want you.
Hyde: It's obvious.
- At the end, Eric mutters that he wonders what really happened, and the screen blacks out and the words "What really happened" appear. It turns out the two were watching TV together when they started talking and realized they were both lonely...and then they jumped each other.
Somewhat used in The Philanthropist. Every episode takes the form of a story being recounted, usually by Rist.
Subverted in the sixth season of Greys Anatomy: after a patient death, the chief interrogates a dozen doctors about the events of the night... and it turns out that all of the accounts are perfectly consistent with each other.

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An independent theatre piece called "The Wedding Pool". Various scenes are reenacted a couple of times, often with only minor variations in what's actually said and done, but with radically altered pacing and tone of voice.
Noises Off is a variation on this. First we see them performing ''Nothing On'' during rehearsal. Then we see the play again from back stage as everything starts to fall apart between the actors. Finally we see Nothing On on its final day as the burnt out performers start to forget the lines and blocking until the whole thing descends into chaos.

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Need For Speed Carbon uses this one to tell how the character's career got suddenly cut off.
Sonic Adventure does a watered-down version. It has six different main storylines which intersect every so often, and at every intersection point the dialogue is slightly different between the versions used in each character's story. Sometimes this is used more like other examples, in which multiple characters are present at the same event, and whichever character you're playing as ends up being the one to take charge. (Example of this: The battle against E-102 Gamma. In Sonic and Tails' storylines, the character you're playing as is about to beat Gamma but Amy steps in to stop him. In Gamma's storyline, Gamma is about to beat Sonic but Amy stops him instead. Amy's storyline goes with the Sonic storyline version of events.)
- The game's sequel, however, plays out this trope to great levels, and every character's POV is completely vital to the story, and in more than one place too. Even Knuckles, whom remains isolated for most of the game, is responsible for saving the world AND helping both Rouge and Sonic find Eggman's base (actually, he helped Rouge identify Eggman, allowing her to tail him).
This happens in Knights Of The Old Republic whenever anyone talks about Darth Revan.
- Especially Kreia, who has her own agenda, and is a SERIOUS Unreliable Narrator.
An extensive use of this was utilised in Mega Man Powered Up; in addition to the usual plotline where Mega Man battles robots reprogrammed by Dr. Wily, there are stories where Dr. Wily elects not to reprogram one of the eight boss robots, resulting in that robot becoming the protagonist of the game. Plus, there's a story where Mega decides to go as is rather than be properly remodeled into a fighting robot, a story where Roll takes matters into her own hands, and even a story where Proto Man drops in and decides to save the day himself.
In Sky Gunner, the game is told from the points of view of three main characters, with two unlockable ones. The missions vary in each character's game, as they all have different tasks to take care of in each stage.
In The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Dagoth Ur, Vivec, Azura, Tribunal Church (Which worships Vivec), the Ashlanders and the Dissenting Priests all have different accounts of the last days of Lord Nerevar Indoril, placing most of the blame on his death on either the Tribunal or Dagoth Ur.
In Jade Empire, early in the game you receive a cinematic narration from Master Li of the events leading up to your becoming an orphan and the destruction of the Spirit Monk temple. Later in the game, pretty much the same movie is shown from the perspective of another character....but with enough new details added to let you know what really happened.
There is no real "canon" plotline to Touhou, although many fans simply assume the first ending must be the "canon" one. This is particularly egregious in Imperishable Night, where, presumably, nearly the same events have to happen at least twice in a row for the Big Bad to be truly defeated (since you have to play one game being diverted first). Scarlet Weather Rhapsody is built around this, where playing different characters is not mutually exclusive plotlines, but apparently sequential plots that merely repeat similar battles over and over. It is because Tenshi seemingly goes out of her way to repeatedly get defeated in No Holds Barred Beatdowns that she is often called a masochist.
Odin Sphere toys with this. The game has five seperate main characters which interact at various points throughout the game. That said, the game's presentation of events does not change with a different character, but in learning their story you often discover reasons for seemingly inexpicable actions.
Virtually the entire middle of Grand Theft Auto IV has turned into this, with two expansions telling side stories about the characters Niko meets. Interestingly, as all three protagonists are killers, the Player Punch deaths in one game are missions in the other.

Close Video Games

Every storyline in Khaos Komix (except, of course, the first) starts with a side character recapping the events so far, which become the beginning of his or her own plot (usually some version of the Coming Out Story).
In the Con Screw storyline Seven Stories, Gavin tries to find out what happened at Rashocon by asking the seven major characters that had been there.
Discussed and used in this Joe Loves Crappy Movies strip.
- Ironically, it was used to describe the premise of Vantage Point, which wasn't a true example: the movie has several PO Vs but these are completely objective and merely follow certain characters.
The Heroes Of Middlecenter begins with the four main characters each showing their very different memories of the events leading to their first meeting.

Close Webcomics

The final season of Moral Orel.
The Codename: Kids Next Door episode Operation: R.E.P.O.R.T.: The operatives of Sector V must report a failed mission, and each point of view is done in a different style; Numbuh One's mimics Tron, Numbuh Two's is styled after superhero comic books, Numbuh Three's is told through crayon drawings, Numbuh Four's is a spoof of Dragon Ball Z, and Numbuh Five's is modeled after old cartoons, and drawn in the style of series co-creator Mo Willems.
In King Of The Hill, the guys are volunteering (poorly) as firefighters and the fire station accidentally burns down while they're away. The ensuing investigation leads to each of them recounting events from the incident's day, and most of the retellings are incredibly biased due to nobody knowing exactly what started the fire.
- Most hilariously, when Boomhauer gives his side of the story, everone has his... special speech patterns... except Boomhauer himself, who is intelligible for the first time ever.
The Ed Edd N Eddy episode "Once Upon An Ed" featured each of the Eds giving his skewed explanation of how the three of them wound up in Johnny and Plank's bedroom wall.
The Simpsons did its own Rashomon, in the sequence in "Bart Gets Hit by a Car" where Bart and Mr. Burns both describe a car accident. Both, however, are exaggerating deliberately in order to get the case on their side - Bart describes Mr. Burns weaving all over, deliberately trying to run him down, and Mr. Burns describes Bart as a madman riding wildly all over the road while he desperately attempts to get out of the way. After he hits Bart, he gets out and has a Big No.
An episode of Garfield And Friends involving a disastrous attempt at homemade yogurt was told this way.
The Space Ghost Coast To Coast episode Curling Flower Spaces has each character recounting the just-finished show in different ways: Space Ghost claims he "did sex" with Sarah Jessica Parker, Zorak says he traveled through space with the rock band Boston, and Moltar recalls a profound encounter with a talking car.
Batman The Animated Series, "P.O.V." While the actual events play out "straight" for the audience, each of the three officers narrating the events gives a different take.
The Animesque Batman: Gotham Knight contains the short Have I Got a Story for You. Each of four kids recounts a sighting of Batman, giving different portions of the same events, while also giving different descriptions of what he is. The first kid makes him a Living Shadow creature like Ebon; the girl an actual humanoid bat creature; the third a Ridiculously Human Robot. At the end they see the reality; he's a guy in a suit.
Powerpuff Girls used this one in "The Bare Facts", where the three girls tell The Mayor their versions of what happened while he was blindfolded and kidnapped by Mojo Jojo: Blossom tells a version that focuses almost entirely on her, Bubbles tells a cutesy version depicted with crayon drawings, and Buttercup tells an action-packed film noir version. None of their versions explain that The Mayor is naked because Mojo stole his clothes when he kidnapped him.
Kappa Mikey episode "Splashomon" presents an utterly and hilariously absurd version of this.
Subverted in Avatar The Last Airbender, where Aang recounts a memory from 100 years ago, and thereby reconciles two tribes that have been feuding over two very different views of the event. Afterward, he admits to his friends that he made it all up, just to stop the fighting.
Rugrats episode "The Trial".
Skunk Fu! episode "The Art of Memory".
In one episode of Sushi Pack, Tako and Maguro, finding themselves on an asteroid hurtling towards Earth with no memory of how they got there, go back and recount the day's events. Both remember things happening differently, and in the full disclosure denouement, Ben tells them that they were both right and wrong.
The Boondocks, from the episode "The Story Of Catcher Freeman". Grandad tells a stereotypical action movie plot, Ruckus tells a backward Card Carrying Villain story, and Huey finally sets both of them straight with the true version which portrays Catcher Freeman as a Fake Ultimate Hero, leaving Ruckus and Grandad in an agreement to disagree with Huey and each other.
Happens in the Johnny Bravo episode "Rashomoron".
Invader Zim: Dib goes onto a paranormal talk show with video evidence of Zim and GIR out of costume. In Zim's version, Dib is a bully who attacked him. In Gaz's, everyone is a drooling moron. But in GIR's story...they dance with a giant squirrel that eats Dib's geasy head and proceeds to return to his home planet to "fight all the bad guys", all while a chubby lady watches from the bushes. Yeah.
The Arthur episode "D.W.'s Snowball."
- Also, "Arthur's Family Feud".
In the Rockos Modern Life episode "Speaking Terms", Rocko & Heffer are on a trashy talk show discussing how Heffer forgot Rocko's birthday.
Clerks The Animated Series occasionally features Randall recollecting how the duo gets into a certain situation, usually involving Randall dressed as a gentleman, or being absurdly intelligent, while Dante is in a diaper, swinging a cat around by its tail, saying things like "I'm the biggest idiot ever!"—even for an event that had just happened some minutes before (the two getting locked in the freezer).

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Homestar Runner - One of Strong Bad's emails asks where the patch on the couch came from. Strong Bad and several other characters then relate widely divergent versions of what happened.

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Loading Ready Run plays with the Rashomon in the video The Season 4 Finale. In it, the usual characters are gathered as old men at the site's 30-year reunion. None of them can agree on what happened in the Season 4 Finale, each of them preposing their own self-interested version that the others claim is erroneous.
In the stories of the Whateley Universe, several events have been told from more than one perspective, but the perspectives are usually in different stories by different authors with different main characters. A good example is what happened the night that Solange sicked hitmen on some of the main characters.

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