Two-Timer Date

"You gotta set up tables at both restaurants. And if Ruth shows up, you can make an excuse and go back across the street."

"Oh, man, I've got two dates to the Spring Dance. It's sort of like that old episode of... well, every show."

— Malcolm, Malcolm in the Middle, "Malcolm Dates a Family"

A character schedules dates with two different people at the same time. But it's not like you can be two places at once, right? Rather than canceling one of the dates, the character tries to attend both simultaneously, constantly running back and forth between the two locations while making up various reasons to excuse themselves to avoid letting either party know where they are going. This ploy, which is most often used in comedies, is pretty much guaranteed not to end well.

Can also apply to other scheduling conflicts, where the character tries to juggle one event that he's required to attend with the more personal event that he really wants to attend.

If one of these scenes has a dress code of some form, expect a character to be caught wearing the outfit for one event at the other.

Alternatively, they may employ a lookalike (i.e. Twin Switch or Identical Stranger) for one of the dates/events.

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Examples of multiple romantic dates:

Anime & Manga

• Subverted in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. While Rentarou initially considers two-timing Karane and Hakari, he immediately realises that that would be a horrible thing to do, and simply tells them that he wants to date both of them.
• In Chapter 70 of Ai Kora, Hachibe ends up on a triple timer date: a trip to the amusement park with Sakurako, an eating contest with Yukari, and a ballroom dancing event with Ayame. And amazingly he pulls it off.
• Taken to extremes in Carnival Phantasm, as Shirou and Shiki have to plan around three and five commitments, respectively, complete with a huge whiteboard filled with plans, arrows and time signatures. Shiki's plan starts with him being in two places in exactly the same time, and gets even crazier from there. Unsurprisingly, their plans fail miserably, especially when they realize too late that each of them forgot another in their plan.
• Date A Live: Shidou is forced into a triple date with Kurumi (who is the priority of the date), Tohka (who somehow asked a date with Shidou), and Origami (who wants to keep Shidou safe by keeping him away from Kurumi, ironically enough). Shidou has the logistical support of Ratatoskr, including a teleportation device to help him move between the three dates. Even then, he has to pretend to go the bathroom thirty times and eat lunch three times in the same day, and Kurumi is fully aware of the triple-timing the entire time.
• Found in D.N.Angel, where the protagonist and his split personality alter-ego have conflicting dates with twin girls, forcing him/them (and his family) to plan out a minor Batman Gambit to try to cover for it... using some interesting methods.
• Gintama: In the Scandal Arc, Gintoki sleeps with six women and a guy in a drunken stupor and proposed to have a relationship with all of them. Due to some Cat Fight shenanigans, Gintoki is forced to watch a movie with his six girlfriends at the same time. He's forced to rely on Zenzo to maneuver some mannequins so he can be in six places at the same time, but everything spiraled out of control quickly and he's busted for his "infidelity". This is actually a ploy to stop him from drinking and all the women are involved with the plan except for Hasegawa, who he really had drunken sex with.
• Played with in I"s. Ichitaka sets up a date with Itsuki, and when he's asked to support Iori at a photo shoot of hers at the same time, he initially turns her down...but later apologetically leaves his date with Itsuki when he becomes worried that something at the shoot isn't right.
• In Kimagure Orange Road, Kyōsuke habitually goes on two-timing dates with Hikaru and Madoka. It helps that he can use his psychic powers to create distractions and teleport around. For example, while riding a roller coaster with Hikaru he teleports to his part-time job with Madoka, then teleports back and almost gets run over the roller coaster. One Christmas he even rewinds time so he can go to the same party with both girls (in a nutshell — first with Hikaru, then with Madoka, and then both together.)
• In Ranma ½, Ryōga invites Akane over to his house, but Akari (his would-be girlfriend) shows up ahead of time. When Akane comes by, he nearly goes mad keeping them separate and unaware of the other, while going back and forth to entertain them. Ranma (Akane's fiancé) is none too pleased. Ranma specifically expresses this displeasure by dressing up (again) and pretending to be Ryōga's maid, and "helping" Ryōga with his situation.
• Directly referenced in a Sailor Moon episode where Minako tries the same. Oddly enough, the two guys are both associated villains who brag to each other about their latest catch as if they were different people. They were pretty ticked when they realized they were dating the same girl and cooperated against her.
• An episode of Samurai Pizza Cats, "Speedy's Double Time Trick", had Speedy try to go on a date with Lucille and Polly on the same day. It should be noted that the English-dubbed version had a slightly different twist on this trope: Speedy still tries to go on a date with Lucille, but his outing with Polly is about Al Dente asking them to transport secret documents instead.
• In one episode of Sonic X, Sonic sets up a date with Amy and a race with Sam Speed on the same day. An interesting example as he doesn't show up for either, getting preoccupied with fighting Eggman's minions instead.
• Subverted in the Tenchi in Tokyo episode, "Ryoko's Big Date", in which both Ryoko and Sakuya offered to take Tenchi out on a date in Tokyo, but Tenchi opted to go with Ryoko, after hearing her warning on his answering machine.

Comic Books

• Every single Archie Comics digest is almost guaranteed to have at least one example of this type of plot therein, usually involving Archie two-timing Betty and Veronica. It goes as far back as Archie Comics #7. It's pretty much impossible for a story to do this plot now without some sort of Lampshade Hanging. One comic had Dilton calculate that Archie's done this 1,797 times before!
  • Even Jughead has done this. Jughead, who typically refuses to go on even one date. Hey, it was an excuse to have two meals.
  • In one storyline, Archie had a three-timer date, where he took Betty, Veronica, and Midge to the same dance. The event was crowded enough that Archie could pull it off, until Archie won the door prize and the announcer told him to come up and claim it — with his date!
• In one Daisy Duck comic, Daisy accidentally agrees to go to a movie with Gladstone Gander the same day she's to go to a fancy restaurant with Donald and the boys, forcing her to constantly run out on her current date in order to get to the other one. Eventually, Gladstone gives up on her, and all the running around tires Daisy out to the point where she falls asleep.
• Hack/Slash: In "Double Date", Father Wrath II takes advantage of some Archie Comics style hijinks involving a two-timer date to can access to a school date in search of victims.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World : 2 of Ramona's 7 evil exes are Kyle and Ken Katayanagi, who are her 5th and 6th exes respectively, were cheated on by Ramona with each other. The anime adaptation expands on this and reveals that she dated them at the same time as a petty way to one up their womanizer antics before they met her.
• The Simpsons
  • In "Springfield's Typical Teen-Ager", a teenage Homer accidentally plans a date with Mr. Burns's niece and Marge at the same time, forcing him to drive back and forth. Barney even compares Homer to Archie Andrews.
  • Another issue has Itchy and Scratchy being replaced (due to Cecil Terwilliger blackmailing Krusty) with Jeeves and Wooster, in a made-up episode where Bertie has two dates on the same day he's supposed to marry the queen. Homer complains about this... because it's based on the "later" novels.

Films — Live-Action

• Prom Wars: The two headmasters are just as invested in the prom war as some of their students are, due to wanting to show up each other. It's later revealed that the source of their rivalry is an incident where the same girl took both of them to prom.
• The Shaggy Dog featured a variation, where Buzz arranges for his friend Wilby to come along so he can pretend it's a double date—with each girl thinking she's Buzz's date and the other girl is Wilby's. It works remarkably well, considering. Right up until Wilby turns into a dog again and runs off.

Literature

• The title character of Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse manages to arrange dates with both his fiances at the same time and the same place.
• In Curse of the Wolfgirl Markus remembers a little too late that he is taking one of his girlfriends to an opera-party at which the other girlfriend is a senior member of the stage-design team. It was probably a relief when the werewolf hunters attacked.
• I Married An Earthling offers this plot as an example of a particularly bad episode of a putrid sitcom that main character Chester's younger brother is on.
  "Horrors, Devon has two dates! He seeks advice from his pals Benny, the dumb jock, and Oscar, the smart nerd. Hilarious hijinks too nauseating to mention ensue."
• In The Mortal Instruments book 4, Simon is dating both Isabelle and Maia. They both eventually find out. Maia dumps him and gets back with her ex, while Isabelle eventually forgives him.
• The Rise of Renegade X has a great example where our intrepid protagonist is simultaneously on a Supervillain date to steal an heirloom ring back from an antique shop and a Superhero date to keep his stepmom's antique shop from being robbed of a priceless trophy that cost her her power. Yes, it's the same job from both angles. Even he's not sure who he wants to win.

Live-Action TV

• Subverted/Parodied in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun: Harry's stupidity leads him to believe that he has a date with twins and fulfills the usual elements of this trope, never realizing that said twins are the same person. There wasn't any deception on the girl's part. Harry's just plain stupid.
• 7th Heaven had this in "Busted". Well, kind of. It actually was scheduled for one date, but Marsha Chalker, Simon's date, started leaning more towards Matt than Simon, with her even going as far as to look at Matt while kissing Simon goodnight.
• 8 Simple Rules has one guy asking Kerry and Bridget out on simultaneous dates seemingly For the Evulz.
• Every Superman TV series has done this with the title character's dual identities. In a few cases, both dates have been Lois, meaning she was doing this, too. In an episode of The Adventures of Superman, Superman solved this problem by literally being in two places at once—he split himself into two bodies.
• In an early episode of the original Battlestar Galactica entitled The Long Patrol, Starbuck has a date with both Cassiopeia and Athena, at the same time, on the same luxury restaurant ship — the starliner Rising Star. He is aided by the steward of the ship's restaurant, who calls his behavior "Very pre-War!".
• Bones had Brennan try this as well, though she didn't mean to. She just accidentally scheduled them both to pick her up at the same time.
• A Brady Bunch episode has Peter trying to pull one of these off after the Identical Stranger he's just met at school has to break off a date on the same night Peter has a date of his own.
• In the Cheers episode "Cliffie's Big Score", Cliff has a date with both Carla and Diane.
• In one episode of Clarissa Explains It All, Ferguson is depressed over his inability to attract Fiona, a girl he likes, and decides to turn to Clarissa for advice. She deliberately gives him bad advice, which somehow backfires and he ends up winning over Fiona. But then his success gets to his head and he decides to use the same strategy on several other girls. Naturally, Fiona finds out and dumps him. The others soon follow suit.
• Community: n "Herstory Of Dance" Shirley and Annie compete to find a date for Abed for the Sadie Hawkins dance — Abed accepts both of their fixups specifically for the opportunity to play this trope.
• In the prom episode of Derry Girls Michelle brings two boys to the prom without telling them about each other. She hopes that they'll just stay put in separate corners and she can go between them. They do find out about each other, but end up working it out and leaving to go to the pub together, much to Michelle's annoyance.
• In ER, Mark Greene, fresh after his divorce, being rather clumsy at asking women out, happened to invite three of them to the same time. A year earlier, Doug brought home his on-again, off-again girlfriend, only to be greeted by his OTHER on-again, off-again bedmate, a flight attendant who had managed to get her schedule shifted to come to town and surprise him. Neither woman is upset, given the casual nature of their relationship and there's even a vague hint that the night culminated in a threesome.
• The Family Ties episode "Double Date" is based around Alex, this trope, and a school dance. The deception hinges on him keeping the colour of the carnation in his buttonhole straight. Alex' two dates were played by pre-The Lost Boys Jamie Gertz and pre-Spaceballs Daphne Zuniga.
• Frasier continues the trend with both a straight example and an aversion. Frasier dates two women at one point, but he never forgets when he's dating each and if he accidentally schedules a date with both, he just calls one of the women to tell her he can't make it. Later, Martin dates two women on the same night and they end up talking to each other on his phone.
• Deconstructed on The Goldbergs episode "Baio and Switch", when Adam has to go to the school dance with both his platonic friend Emmy (who did not get asked out by anyone else) and his out-of-town girlfriend Dana (who came home from Seattle just to go to the dance). Adam watches various episodes with the same plot for research, only to despair when they all end in failure. Pops, who claims to have successfully done a two-timer date, helps him plan it out, only for both Emmy and Dana to find out beforehand (Dana was staying at Emmy's) and cancel the date. They do eventually both go with Adam to the dance after he apologized.
• Gary from Goodnight Sweetheart did this once, with the variation that the two dates were actually decades apart, but since he could only travel forward/backwards by a fixed amount of time, for him they were effectively at the same time. He tried to prevent suspicion by leaving the restaurant through the bathroom window while on the way to the time portal. This led Yvonne to wonder why he was (apparently) spending so much time in the bathroom, leading her to ask him "Are you bulimic, or pregnant?"
• On the Henry Danger episode "Henry and the Two Girls", Henry is put into this situation when he has to go to the ball with Bianca as himself and go to the ball with Cloe as Kid Danger. Ray gives him the idea to go first as Kid Danger and then pretend to be called away so he can spend the rest of the night as himself, but it doesn't work. Charlotte then gives him the idea to make up an excuse to leave for a bit so he can change into Henry to spend some time with Bianca, and leave again so he can spend time with Cloe as Kid Danger. When he asks if that would work, Charlotte responds no and lampshades that she's seen it fail on ever bad sitcom she's seen.
• A Show Within a Show on iCarly used this trope to show how stylistically sucky the shows on TV are. Played straighter in "iWon't Cancel The Show", where Spencer has scheduled his date with "sophisticated" Candice and has to do iCarly at the same time because Sam is in jail.
• One episode of Kenan & Kel had Kenan take three separate girls to three different movies in the same theater. In his defense, cancelling one wasn't an option because he had already failed a date with one, and the other was in a depressive mood. And the third one was Kel's fault.
• Life with Boys: In "Girl-Entine's Day With Boys", Tess is alone on Valentines Day, so she and Allie come up with the idea of "Girl-entines day". Then she gets a date with a cute boy named Blake. But she does not want to disappoint Allie so she tries to go on a date with him and spend the night with the girls simultaneously.
• In the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Malcolm Dates a Family," Malcolm engages in a bit of Lampshade Hanging when he realizes he's scheduled simultaneous dates: "This is like that episode of... well, everything."
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide has Cookie asking his crush Vanessa to Around the World Night at school, but when she turns him down, he agrees to go with Lisa after she asks him to be her date, only for Vanessa to suddenly change her mind afterwards and agree to be his date. Cookie then does his best to keep both his dates in separate rooms and bounce back and forth between them. He only gets found out when he tries dancing with both of them at the same time.
• In the Never Have I Ever episode "...thrown a rager", Devi is now dating both Ben and Paxton. She ends up hosting a house party with both of them as her dates. She plans on keeping them separate, so they don't find out she's seeing both of them.
• In the "Casino Night" episode of The Office (US), Michael, who often doesn't even have one date, accidentally gets one with his boss and real estate agent.
• Not restricted to comedy, it was played straight in Quantum Leap episode, "A Tale of Two Sweeties" where Sam, in the body of a bigamist, scheduled his two dates at the same time in the same cinema and had to keep going back and forth between them.
• This happens on Sanford and Son in an episode where Fred becomes a gigolo. He makes dates with three women and has them meet him in the same restaurant and goes from table to table without them noticing.
• Saved by the Bell: One episode had Zack stuck with two dates because he finally got a date with Kelly, which was to be at her birthday party, and blackmailed by principal Belding into taking his visiting niece on a date to show her around the town. Zack solved this by having Screech pretend to be him and go out with Belding's niece while the real Zack went to the party, though a jealous Slater convinced Screech to also come to the party so Zack would get caught. Kelly was actually flattered that Zack went to so much effort to be at her party.
• Saved by the Bell: The New Class:
  • In the Season 5 premier episode "Suddenly Ryan", after Rachel moves away and then breaks up with Ryan, he asks out three different girls "to make up for lost time". This backfires on him when all three of them show up simultaneously at the Max and find out the truth, resulting in them making a public announcement humiliating Ryan before storming off.
  • The Season 5 episode "Liz's Choices" has a mutually-agreed-upon version of this trope. Maria and Katie drag Eric into being their date after Maria and Katie are dateless for the formal dance due to Eric misleading them by mistake, resulting in Maria and Katie being unable to find their dates due to time constraint. Eric goes to the formal with Katie, while Maria is with "Derrick" — Eric with a dread-lock wig and a different outfit. This fails when principal Mr. Belding announces for a special dance for the members of the dance committee, which Maria and Katie both are, with their respective dates. Katie and Maria start to fight over Eric/Derrick, and Eric's wig falls off (he's still in his "Derrick" outfit at the moment) in the ensuing struggle as the result, much to the embarrassment of all three of them.
• Sex and the City had Charlotte do this, and get busted after she faked sick to get out date #1 early.
• Popular with guest actors in shows where the leads are twins. Sister, Sister did this a few times. In these series, the date usually leads to a Twin Switch.
• Smart Guy had TJ's dad hook him up with a date, TJ's brother hook him up with a date, and TJ's sister hook him up with a date. The fact that his not-so-smart big brother's best buddy is in charge of making the plan to keep his 3 dates separate but entertained only makes matters worse. Similarly, said big brother also later ends up asking twins out on a date completely by accident (he asked one girl out, and then asked her sister out thinking she was the same girl until TJ pointed it out to him), thus causing him to try and create a fake twin, only for it to unravel quickly.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Tapestry", Q takes Picard back in time to shortly before he entered a near-fatal fight. It starts with young Picard being slapped by a woman because she learned that he'd scheduled two dates at the same time. We see him with the second date, but with the Older and Wiser Picard instead of what was apparently a Casanova Wannabe, it doesn't go well and he gets a drink in the face for his troubles.
• Three's Company did this more than once, twice with Jack running back and forth between different dates in different apartments.
• At USA High, Jackson's father sets him up on blind dates a lot and the latest one is at a school dance (with the daughter of one of his colleagues). Then Lauren tells Jackson they'll be going together.^note To clarify: Lauren was hoping Jackson would ask her and started playing "hard to get"; then got worried that he hadn't asked her and just decided to ask him instead. In Jackson's defence, he did try to break it off with the other girl first. But she was in the bathroom and her hairdryer drowned out Jackson's speech. Of course the dance is a costume affair — and the fun starts where both girls are nominated for the best costume.
• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles does a three-timer in "The Scandal of 1920".

Video Games

• In Custom Robo for the Nintendo GameCube, you (a bounty hunter) are called to break up a fight between two would-be dates. When you get there, the girl they were dating explains that she had accidentally scheduled both dates at the same time, and she didn't cancel either date. Instead, she just let the two meet each other. She then leaves you to take care of her boyfriends. Ironically, the two later become best friends.
• Final Fantasy:
  • One sidequest in the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy IV has the party briefly helping Cheatingway employ this trope by distracting one of his dates with small talk while he dates the other.
  • One chain of missions in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has you provide clan members to date up to four people for a chronically overscheduled petitioner, and you have to use the dispatch system as the dates are all too far apart to personally attend them in the time limit. Amazingly, the lucky ladies care more about the level and MVP trophies of their dates than they do about things like species and gender.
• Implied in one of Paz's diary tapes in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Basically, Kazuhira Miller went on a date with two female members of the Militaires Sans Frontieres at the exact same time, and it is implied that Miller has done this before. When the girls report it to Big Boss, he proceeds to go and beat up Kaz in the showers.
• In the Dating Sim True Love, you can stupidly schedule dates with Mikae and Remi on the same day and then be busted when Remi arrives unexpectedly early while you're with Mikae.

Visual Novels

• In Magical Diary, after setting up a date with Ellen or Virginia, you can accept a date with Damien for the same weekend. You can either tell your original partner that it's canceled, or try to go to both at the same time. Unsusprisingly, this doesn't work out well.

Web Comics

• In Blip, we find out that being a cyborg with access to robotic duplicates makes short work of scheduling multiple dates at the same time.
  Mary: After we're done, their memories will be downloaded into mine. I hope that I had a good time.
• Gary ends up doing this in Ménage à 3, to his consternation.
  Gary: I thought that only happened in Archie comics... I've... I've become that guy!

Western Animation

• Chuckie in All Grown Up! attempts this with a Secret Identity. Essentially he wanted to talk to a popular girl and was given a makeover into a foreign exchange student called Chongo. Then when the girl meets Chuckie as himself, they hit it off.
• Lampshaded in The Amazing World of Gumball in the episode "The Test", in which this and several other sitcom cliches are mocked.
• Happened once to Babar, where he invited Celeste to a ball only to find out he was also expected to entertain the daughter of a visiting king. When he couldn't bring himself to un-invite Celeste he decided to try this trope, with the usual degree of success. He eventually manages to pawn the visiting princess off on a friend, and once he's explained himself Celeste was actually touched that he'd risk a diplomatic incident to keep her happy.
• Pulled in the DuckTales (1987) episode "Metal Attraction" where Fenton Crackshell has to reluctantly be both sides of a double date at the same time, switching between his normal identity and that of Gizmoduck. When it starts putting way too much pressure on him, as Gizmoduck he ultimately decides to tell the Yandere robot duck that despite what she thinks he's not interested in her and he's seeing someone else. She doesn't react well.
• Futurama lampshaded this trope and mentioned the Three's Company episode referenced above in "A Flight To Remember". Fry is forced to pretend to date Leela and Amy at the same time. While dealing with Zapp Branigan, Leela's stalker/one-sided-love-interest (the ship's captain) and Amy's parents. While at the same table as all of them.
• Hey Arnold!: "Arnold's Valentine", has this forced upon Arnold, when his French penpal Cecile (actually Helga pretending to be Cecile) supposedly arrives for a surprise visit "coincidentally" at the same time as Arnold's previously planned date with Ruth McDougal. His solution is to take them to French restaurants across the street from each other and bounce between the two. Arnold manages to pull it off well enough to fool Ruth, and when "Cecile" confronts him for his dishonesty, the real Cecile shows up for a real unannounced visit, making Helga-as-Cecile's accusations highly hypocritical at best and saving Arnold on that front as well.
• The Jetsons has George's boss force him to go on a date with a star to get a contract signed. Of course, this happens just as George is on a romantic outing with his wife. This example actually works out for the best, however: In the process of his date with the star, George Jetson ends up involved in some shenanigans with a circus troop, and he does them a favor. In return for this favor, the circus troop later confirms George's alibi that his date with the star had no meaning other than professionalism, and George and his wife's relationship is saved.
• Justice League:
  • Subverted. The Flash successfully pulls off dating two women simultaneously. Being the fastest man alive has its perks.
  • In another episode he intentionally does this in a chaster sense by "accidentally" scheduling lunch with both Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl at once, but he gets "caught" immediately, because that was the entire point: to trick the two (who at that point utterly despise each other) into sitting at a table together and talking. However, when it inevitably fails, he tries to brag about it at the end to a confused group of onlookers at the watchtower cafeteria.
• The Loud House:
  • "Dance, Dance Resolution" has Lincoln going on no less than FOUR dates simultaneously, none of whom are the girl he's in a Secret Relationship with. Granted, it wasn't his fault; his sisters set him up to it.
  • This also happens in the episode "In The Mick Of Time" where Luna has to not only spend time with Sam at the school's Cut a Rug dance, but also perform as Mick Swagger at the same time.
• In The Man Called Flintstone Fred must go repeatedly between a family gathering with Betty and Barney Rubble and Wilma and a date with Tanya.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "A Real Boy", this trope is referred to in passing as a sitcom cliche by Dr. Doofenshmirtz (when he gets embroiled in a case of Poor Communication Kills with his daughter).
• Spoofed in The Simpsons episode "Fear of Flying", where Homer walks into Cheers. At the bar, Carla Tortelli is telling Sam Malone he's too old to date twins on the same day he's supposed to marry Diane Chambers without Rebecca Howe knowing. Sam's unconcerned.
• The second season of W.I.T.C.H. saw Cornelia using her half-transformed Guardian state to date one of her friends' older brothers by appearing to be a few years older than she was. Ethics and Secret Identity issues aside, Cornelia already has a shaky relationship with her earlier paramour Caleb. It culminated at a date in a skating rink where Cornelia/"Lily" shows off her skating prowess and uses a snazzy light show courtesy of Will to juggle both boys until she and the brother kiss where Caleb can see them. Before she can resolve things with Caleb, the forces of evil come calling...

Examples of other scheduling conflicts:

Anime & Manga

• Detroit Metal City does this trope at least once, with Negishi having to switch between eating cake with Aizawa and being Krauser for a new album release.
• Episode 2 of Persona 4: The Golden Animation piles one scheduling conflict after another onto poor Yu. At first it looks like things will work out, but eventually he finds himself dashing back and forth between a pulling tournament with Yosuke and Kanji, and judging a fashion contest between Chie and Ebihara, all the while trying to get both done by 6pm so he can get back in time to cook dinner for Nanako...only for Dojima to get home from work and start cooking dinner at 5pm. Poor Yu's utterly exhausted by the end of the episode.
• At the beginning of chapter 11 of Shinozaki-san Ki wo Ota Shika ni!, both Kaede and Konatsu call Akina to ask if she wants to hang out the next day. Since Kaede called first, Akina turns down Konatsu, subverting the trope but setting up that both Konatsu's group and Akina's group are at the local water park at the same time.

Comic Books

• One comic from the Disney Ducks Comic Universe has Donald helping Daisy with a scheduling conflict by disguising himself as Daisy.
• Done in the pages of Suicide Squad where Captain Boomerang starts using the identity of Mirror Master, forcing him to rapidly change in and out of costumes to hide his second identity from his teammates.
• Superlópez: Towards the end of "La gran superproducción", López struggles at the movie premiere as he had promised to take Luisa, but still has to serve as Valerie Astro's bodyguard as Superlópez.

Films — Animation

• A Goofy Movie: Max hijacks a school assembly dressed like pop star Powerline to impress his crush Roxanne. It works, and she asks him to a watch party for Powerline's upcoming concert. Unfortunately, the assembly incident worries Max's father Goofy, who decides to repair his relationship with his son by taking a fishing trip... that conflicts with the concert. Max is upfront with Roxanne that he can't make it to the party, but lies that their trip is to see the concert live and perform onstage with Powerline, setting up another impossible scenario of having to be in two places at once.

Films — Live-Action

• In 27 Dresses, Jane is a bridesmaid at two different weddings on the same night.
• This is the device employed for the climactic sequence of the Dan Aykroyd movie Doctor Detroit — his character is running back and forth between a society function and a pimps'/hookers' bash, both in the same hotel, and has to switch clothes and personae between them as well. With predictable results.
• In Hannah Montana: The Movie, Miley/Hannah finds herself juggling between a dinner date with a boy (as Miley) and a reception with the mayor (as Hannah). At one point she finds herself wearing a lobster bib at the wrong dinner.
• A scene in Mrs. Doubtfire combines this version and the two-identities version, with a children's entertainer, Daniel Hillard switches between a dinner with his boss and a dinner at the same restaurant where he must pretend to be the elderly babysitter Mrs. Doubtfire. He gets caught by his boss when he forgets to change back, but manages to convince him that this is his idea for a new character.
• In the 1963 The Nutty Professor, geeky, sweet-natured Professor Kelp finds himself having to chaperone the big school dance his suave, loutish alter ego Buddy Love has been hired to perform at.
• This happens in The Secret of My Success, when a mailroom clerk played by Michael J. Fox decides to give himself a promotion. He secretly holds down two jobs and uses the elevator for a changing room when he dashes back and forth to fulfill his responsibilities. He even manages to carry off the charade on a weekend trip and manages to have a girlfriend while having an affair with his own aunt.
• In The Sitter, Noah has to balance between babysitting an old neighbor's kids (although he was primarily focused on another kind of "kids" when arriving to do the babysitting), as well as going over to a female friend's place to have sex.
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace pulls this when Clark had to go on a date with Lacey and give an interview to Lois as Superman at the same time. Thus Hilarity Ensues as even Superman has trouble maintaining the charade despite having superspeed and all that. Made all the more annoying because Clark had outed himself to Lois as Superman twice in the film series, one of those times in this movie, but erased her memory for reasons inscrutable (aside from Shipping Bed Death), thus making the entire sequence avoidable.

Literature

• In the second Dork Diaries book, Nikki, the protagonist, is meant to be doing three different things at the same time: hang out with her best friends at the Halloween dance (dressed as a trash bag), be on a date with her crush at the Halloween dance (dressed as Juliet) and be helping out at her little sister's ballet class Halloween party (dressed as a giant rat).
• The protagonist of William Sleator's The Duplicate accidentally schedules a date as the same time as his grandmother's birthday. In order to avoid the Hilarity that would ensue if he tried to run back in forth between the two, he uses a mysterious device to duplicate himself, so that he can attend both. Then his duplicate wins the coin toss and the original has to go to the grandma party, and it all goes downhill from there.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Though it's not accidental, Hermione's scheduling of simultaneous classes during her third year counts as this. She thinks she has the problem of taking all of the courses she needs sorted by using a time-turner secretly lent to her by the school, but her overlaps with her confused friends get slightly sloppier and the stress starts building up, leading to an uncharacteristic blow-up in divination class where she tells Prof. Trelawney it's all rubbish. Fortunate for the plot that she did it, though.
• In The Three Musketeers d'Artagnan innocently manages to offend each of the three of the eponymous musketeers on the same day, and each challenge him to a duel. d'Artagnan schedules all three duels for the same place and at short increments after each other. When they realize what he's done, he insists that he will do his best to be alive for each of his scheduled appointments and apologizes sincerely if he should be killed and unavailable for any following duels.

Live-Action TV

• Bella and the Bulldogs: Bella faces a crisis when a playoff game is moved to the same day as her friend Pepper's mother's baby shower. Unlike other versions of this trope, there's no question about which she's going to: She keeps her commitment to the baby shower, but speeds it up enough so she can get to the playoff game in time. Of course, this is involving pregnancy, so you can guess what happens next...
• Seen in the Blackadder episode "Beer," where Edmund winds up hosting a dinner with his Ultra-Puritan relatives and a drinking party with Lord Melchett's buddies at the same time, down the hall from each other. At one point he returns to the Puritan dinner table without removing the fake comedy breasts he was wearing at the drinking competition ("you appear to be wearing a pair of devil's dumplings!") and has to pass them off as earmuffs. He also has to explain why one of the guests from the drinking contest burst into the room yelling "Great booze up!!!" Then the Queen shows up and things get really crazy. In Edmund's defense, he didn't schedule either event; his aunt and uncle invited themselves to dinner that night, and the Queen insisted the drinking party be held that night too. He's also not in a position to dispute either — his relatives are there to discuss his inheritance and a request that they come some other time won't win him any brownie points, and you just don't say no to Queenie.
• It also happens, with a healthy dose of Lampshade Hanging, in Boy Meets World, when, in preparation for such a ruse (involving Topanga's birthday party and a wrestling match), Corey watches the aforementioned Flintstones episode. For the remainder of the episode, he makes comments about the prospect of being hit on the head with a frying pan. At the climax, he and Shawn refer to each other as Fred and Barney. Shawn preps him up on the pitfalls he faces, including the eventual inability of Fred to keep track of the lies and mixing up costume elements, which Corey inevitably ends up doing anyway by showing up at Topenga's ball in a tuxedo and Vader wrestling mask.
  Corey: What happens if something goes wrong?
  Shawn: I have another plan, but it involves Jonny Quest.
• In the Broad City episode "Burning Bridges," Abbi's date with Trey turns out to be at the same restaurant as Ilana's parents' anniversary celebration. Ilana recognizes Abbi, who's trying to keep her relationship with Trey a secret, as she's going to the bathroom. She spends much of the evening rushing back and forth between their tables.
• In one episode of Frasier, he juggled romantic and nonromantic commitments. He was trying to make a date with a woman but kept standing her up due to accidents or Contrived Coincidences. He scheduled the third attempt for his birthday. His friends threw him a surprise party. He finally snuck out of his own party too late for the date but managed to catch the woman in time to show her his date of birth on his driver's license and prove he was really willing to spend his birthday with her. (This immediately turned out to be a horrible idea, of course.)
• Friends does this in its "The One With The Two Parties" episode, where Rachel's recently-separated parents both show up for her surprise party, necessitating the creation of two simultaneously-held (and attended) parties happening across the hall from one another.
• Grimm: In "Kiss the Muse" Nick agrees to have dinner with his temporarily estranged girlfriend Juliette, forgetting he's made specific dinner plans with his friend Monroe. Except he forgets about both dinners thanks to the love potion secretions of the Monster of the Week. Monroe literally calls him on it (as in, after talking to Juliette he phones Nick just as he's about to get in too deep with the woman). Monroe's bitchiness over the meal he prepared going to waste might seem like it's played for laughs, but Nick not always fully appreciating Monroe is one of the subtexts of their relationship, and Monroe lets a bit of his hurt show.
  Nick: [on the phone, at Khloe's] Oh my god. I'm supposed to be at Juliette's.
  Monroe: Yeah, she called. That's when I began to suspect you might not be showing up. Unless you're planning on having two dinners tonight.
• In an episode of Hannah Montana, Miley ends up having to take a date to a Hannah Montana concert.
• History of the World Part II: One episode features Shirley Chissolm switching between two ballrooms at the Watergate Hotel trying to secure the endorsements of black and feminist groups for her presidential run, while her husband waits in their room for a romantic night.
• In Home Improvement, Tim Taylor attempts to go to a Japanese Suite with his wife for their anniversary. Unfortunately, one of the executives for the show ended up scheduling a meeting with one of the higher ups not only at the same location, but on the same day, forcing Tim to balance out the two occasions, predictably failing.
• As it does with many other Sitcom Tropes, Kevin Can F**k Himself gives this one a deconstructive treatment too. The titular character is such a huge narcissistic Jerkass that he very much treats the world as a sitcom centered on him, and therefore it should be no surprise that he is a huge fan of this trope. Kevin is such a huge fan, in fact, that he does this every year, because he wants both his wife Allison and his best friend Neil to think they're his favorite, and as such, he has a yearly tradition on his birthday to always schedule simultaneous dinners at an upscale restaurant with Alison and an arcade next door with Neil and proceeds to flitting between the two all evening. Allison has long since figured out what Kevin is doing, as he is not particularly bright and can only ever come up with completely implausible excuses for why he needs to duck out for a few minutes every once in a while during the dinner, so she brings a book with her to fill the dead time. Neil, meanwhile is both dumber than Kevin and hopelessly naïve to boot, as such he has been blissfully unaware about what has been happening for ten years.
• On Out of This World (1987), Evie had a date with Chris on the same night she was supposed to help her mother, Donna, with housework. Since Evie is a half-alien with superpowers, she was able to freeze time repeatedly to facilitate dashing between the two obligations. This led to Donna figuring out the ruse, as she is aware of Evie's powers, and Evie mistakenly thinking she had frozen Chris in time, when in actuality he was voguing—a new craze at the time.
• Power Rangers Ninja Storm has an episode where Tori uses her powers to both attend Shane's skateboarding competition with Dustin and see a movie with Blake and Hunter.
• In an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, a family get-together on Halloween conflicts with a party Sabrina wants to make an appearance at. Being a witch, she creates a duplicate that can only say three phrases and sends her to the mortal party (Salem points out her aunts would be more likely to catch on than her muggle schoolmates.) Sure enough, her aunt Hilda tries to send a duplicate to the witch party which Zelda unmasks almost instantly ("Hilda, what color is my dress?" "Pass the potatoes!")
• So Awkward: In "Friendundancy", Mufti Day is arriving, and Lily doesn't want to wear one of Jas' quirky and weird outfits again. She runs into Natasha Jones, and accidentally suggests they all wear yellow, and ends up trying to change between Jas' and Natasha's outfits.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody:
  • London has a birthday party where her mom and dad won't speak with each other, and gets increasingly stressed going back and forth between parties. Mr. Moseby helping micromanage her schedule to the dot didn't help matters either.
  • In The Suite Life on Deck, Zack's girlfriend's poetry reading conflicts with a video game tournament. Zack even shows up at the reading still wearing camo from the tournament.
• On That's My Bush!'s first episode, Laura demands a date night with George at the same time he has to have a meeting with the leaders of the pro-life and pro-choice campaigns. He changes between two suits when switching between them, but both suits are identical. The maid even lampshades that this won't work, as apparently other presidents have tried it.

Web Comics

• In The Wotch, Anne plans to play video games with Robin, go to band practice, make up a test she missed, and help plan the school dance all at the same time. Being a magic user, she summons up three duplicates. Unfortunately, these duplicates represent aspects of her personality, and shortly afterward, other aspects of her personality leave her as well. To make matters worse, they cause all sorts of trouble, some of which Anne doesn't even learn about until much, much later.

Web Original

• The Hard Times: One article has a music equivalent: a guitarist who's in both a hardcore punk and a metal band, and has to run back and forth between their gigs because they're playing at the same time. The guitarist manages to sneak away while the hardcore frontman is giving a long speech about scene unity, and applies his face paint while running between venues.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Puss in Boots episode "Copy Cat" has Puss so distracted with the ancient evil set to invade the city in a few months time that he accidentally agrees to ride the horse for two different teams in the town's annual horse race. He decides that the only reasonable thing to do is to use magic to create a clone of himself.
• In the Alvin and the Chipmunks episode "Sincerely Theodore", Alvin ends up on a scheduled date with a girl he isn't interested in, so he arranges for Theodore to take his place while he plays a role in a stage play. Then he learns the girl is the daughter of a famous movie director...
• In one episode of Arthur, Francine has to go back and forth between a bowling tournament that she has to win with her friends and a relative's bar mitzvah (because the Frenskies suddenly became Jewish in the Christmas Episode). She doesn't end up winning the bowling tournament and also misses the best parts of the bar mitzvah, so she learns her lesson in the end.
• In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, Ben has to choose between a museum stakeout with Kevin, Julie's tennis meet with Gwen, or the newest Sumo Slammers movie premiere. His solution is to use the Ultimatrix, turn into Echo-Echo, and create two clones, then transform back into regular Ben(s). It would have worked without a hitch, but the clone that went to the stakeout is very sensitive (which creeps Kevin out) and the clone that went to the tennis meet is an Attention Whore who distracts Julie from her match.
• Played straight and lampshaded in Bojack Horseman. While he's in prison, Todd calls Bojack, telling him he's landed in a "two-dates-to-the-prom" situation—the two dates being rival gangs. He asks Bojack what his character did when this plotline happened on his old sitcom. Later on, he enacts this trope.
• On Care Bears & Cousins, this is the basic premise of "Awesomest Day Ever," with the unusual twist that both Funshine and Wonderheart know that Brave Heart is running between them. Furthermore, he's actually being aided and abetted by Bright Heart, who has created a Get-Goin' watch to schedule him. Then, things get completely crazy when Brave Heart has him set the watch to schedule him for activities with all of the different bears and cousins, causing him to run madly between various locations. As all of this isn't enough, they're all also trying to get him distracted from the setup for a Surprise Party.
• In one episode Doug has to cover for Mr. Dink as Hamburger Boy, the mascot for the Honker Burger. When Patty asks him if he will join her and Skeeter at a picnic the next day, Doug immediately agrees. He then realizes he is supposed to be Hamburger Boy at the same picnic. He tries to juggle both but his commitment prevents him from joining Patty and Skeeter in a canoe race. Patty thinks she knows why Doug didn't participate in the race: he can't swim.
• "Model Sister" of Elena of Avalor focuses on Elena trying to focus on holding royal visit for King Toshi while also helping her sister Isa at an invention fair. Isa eventually becomes annoyed because she feels that Elena doesn't have time for her, even though she said she would always make time for her.
• The Flintstones:
  • In one episode, Fred has a big meeting of the Water Buffalo Lodge, but he has also promised to be at Pebbles' birthday party the same night, so he rushes back and forth between the two. He is eventually caught when he forgets to remove his Water Buffalo hat before entering the party. Further complicated by the fact that he was responsible for hiring the catering and entertainment for both parties, went to the same business to procure those services, and said company sent each package to the wrong party (clown at the lodge meeting, dancing girls at the kids' party).
  • In another episode, Fred had a Water Buffalo Lodge bowling tournament on the same night he promised Wilma he'd take her out to dinner and a movie.
  • In yet another episode, Seeing Doubles, Fred and Barney have a bowling tournament on the same night their wives want to go out to dinner. Great Gazoo comes to the rescue by making duplicates of the men; the "real" husbands bowl that night. Gazoo's doubles were imperfect, however, and the wives convince them to go to a super-expensive restaurant.
• In the original animated series of Franklin, this happened to Franklin in "Franklin in Two Places," when he promised to attend Bear's baseball game and Beaver's art show. He is of course, caught out in the end, but manages to do such a good job that they A.) are impressed that he did so well at being in both places at once and B.) pleased that he cared enough to honor his commitment to both of them.
• In the Animated Adaptation of Guess How Much I Love You, Little Nutbrown Hare tries to pull this in "The Promise" after he accidentally promises both Little Redwood Fox and Little Field Mouse that he'll play with them after lunch. He's not very good at it, however, and quickly gets caught. Neither of his friends is mad at him, though, and they find a way to all play together, combining their talents, since they're all friends with each other anyway.
• Kim Possible:
  • Kim has to chose between helping Ron talk to Monty Fiske (who, unknown to them as yet, had become the villainous Monkey Fist) or spending time with her annoying cousin Larry. It appeared that she'd gone on the mission, until it's revealed that she did choose Larry and that the "Kim" accompanying Ron was a projection made by Wade — a deception unknown to Kim until Wade 'fessed up to it while telling her about what Monkey Fist has become. Cue an All Up to You moment for Ron....
  • A Halloween episode has Kim choosing whether to go trick-or-treating with Ron, help her parents out at a charity event, or go to Monique's party. She chooses the last one (lying to get out of the other two commitments), but one her villains, who was after Kim because of a MacGuffin, assumed she's with Ron, while another baddie went to the charity.
• In "Spring Fever" from Llama Llama, Llama Llama is scheduled for both Nelly Gnu and Luna Giraffe's beginning-of-spring events and tries to help them both. Unlike most examples, however, they're aware of what he's doing and eventually have to admit they're making him do too much. They end up combining the two events.
• Metalocalypse: Dethklok manage to double-book themselves for gigs in Israel and Syria. With the band's world-economy-influencing popularity, this causes a huge amount of violence and unrest in the region. To satisfy both dates, the band builds 5 immense hologram projection towers in the Middle East and performs a show for the entire region at once.
• Beautifully subverted in Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. In "The Thinking Stone," Squirt promised to attend a hatchday party, but then accidentally agrees to attend a tuber tuba parade at the same time. Instead of any hanky panky, he is instead face with the difficult choice of which to attend. In the end, he comes up with his own ingenious solution by bringing the hatchday girl to attend the tuber tuba parade.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the episode "Sweet and Elite", Rarity has to constantly switch between going to her friend's birthday party and a rich stallion's garden party. Notably, this sequence is condensed into a montage that lasts less than a minute. Twilight Sparkle, the friend in question, never quite catches on that Rarity ditched her, even as Rarity becomes increasingly exhausted and her excuses to leave start losing coherency; instead, Twilight assumes that Rarity deliberately held the birthday party in a place where Rarity could get connections, which Twilight Sparkle is very understanding about.
  • In "Too Many Pinkie Pies", Pinkie considers this when she's faced with choosing between helping the Apples raise a new barn and hanging out with Rainbow Dash at the swimming hole. She's convinced that this isn't an option by that the fact that it takes her at least 20 minutes to run from one to the other. Having failed to invoke this trope, she instead opts to clone herself.
  • In "Triple Threat", Spike accidentally invites both Dragon Lord Ember and Changeling King Thorax to Ponyville on the same day, and fearing they might not get along tries to keep them apart and divide his time between them. They both quickly notice he keeps ditching them for lame reasons and grow increasingly annoyed by his behavior.
• Oswald: The episode "The Double Date" has Oswald agreeing on going to both Daisy's pool and watching Penguin Patrol with Henry and spends most of the episode going back and forth between his plans. The conflict gets resolved as the three friends decided to place the pool inside Henry's apartment so they can both play in the pool and watch TV.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Run, Candace Run", Candace ends up having to volunteer to read to kids at the library with her mother on the same day she accepted an invitation to Jeremy's family reunion (she's also supposed to go on-stage somewhere with Stacy, but she chooses to ignore that one), and uses a pair of Super-Speed boots developed by her brothers to try and be in two places at once. Complicating matters, Candace inadvertedly grabs the prototype version of the boots that makes her run at top speed uncontrollably whenever she tries to use them.
• In "Pete Over-Extended" from Pete the Cat, Pete tries this at the joking advice of his brother Bob when he wants to attend both a CatGo concert with Callie and a SpaceCat convention with Gustav. He doesn't really get to enjoy either until Bob finally intercepts him and gets him to make a choice.
• In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Jet 2", Jet wants to watch Commander Cressida with Sydney, but also promises to help Sean with something at the same time. Jet tries to remedy the situation by making a robot clone of himself called Jet 2 and having it watch Commander Cressida with Sydney while he helps Sean, but when Sean and Sydney start hanging out with the robot instead of the real Jet, he gets jealous.
• In "Lord of the Rink" from Sofia the First, Hugo darts between hockey practice and ice dancing practice to hide his Unmanly Secret of participation in ice dancing practice a secret. It doesn't work long.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Overbooked", the titular sponge has to help Sandy demonstrate an invention of hers, attend Patrick's birthday party, and build a telescope for Mr. Krabs. By the end of the episode, it's revealed that Sandy's invention was a cloning machine.
• In the Steven Universe: Future episode "A Very Special Episode", Rainbow Quartz 2.0 promised to hang out with Onion on the same day Sunstone scheduled a home safety seminar. Since Rainbow 2.0 and Sunstone are both fusions of Steven, he has to go back and forth between them; this leaves the other component of said fusion alone and attempting to perform that fusion's task whenever Steven leaves, with Pearl trying to babysit Onion (and bearing the brunt of his Creepy Child tendencies and his tantrums about wanting Rainbow back), and Garnet giving the seminar (and using her future vision to describe everything which could possibly go wrong in various scenarios, terrifying the folks she's "educating").

Real Life

• The Roman general Gaius Marius did this is in his last few weeks with two diplomatic delegations, feigning bouts of dysentery in order to rush from one end of his house to the other. It worked, but didn't help him much; he died quite soon afterwards and was in no real position to oppose a returning Sulla anyway.
• In one of his Dilbert books Scott Adams gives the example of a man who had received simultaneous job offers from two firms in the same office building. He accepted both, and negotiated that he would start at 8 am in one firm and 9 am in the other. He'd go into the first firm at 8, log onto his computer and so on, then at 9 he'd claim to have a meeting, go to the other firm, log on there, work for an hour or so, then go back to the first firm... and so. In this manner, he managed to draw two paychecks for several months, until one day there was a fire alarm and he had to figure out which group of workers to stand with...
• Hyper-threading in CPUs is basically one physical core pretending to be multiple logical cores. While a few parts are duplicated, most aren't. The result is the CPU having to switch back and forth, trying to take advantage of when one of the logical cores is stalled for some reason, typically memory access.
• In November of 1992, the Prairie View A&M University men's college basketball team played a home game against tiny Arkansas Baptist College and beat them 90-76, making national news because it broke a 30-game losing streak for Prairie View. The basketball team at Oklahoma City University scratched their heads when they heard about it, because the exact same night, 400 miles away, they'd hosted Arkansas Baptist and clobbered them 148-78. Two weeks later, once again two different schools were reported as having defeated Arkansas Baptist on the same night: Hendrix University and Oklahoma Baptist University, which are located around 300 miles from each other. Some journalists did some sleuthing and uncovered the fact that, for years, Arkansas Baptist had scheduled multiple games on the same day and split their squad into two teams, so they could collect two different financial guarantee payments, but hadn't been caught doing it up until that point. The access to instantaneous information in the era of the World Wide Web and social media put an end to the scheme once and for all.
• Polka legend Frankie Yankovic would sometimes schedule two simultaneous concerts in two different cities. He'd have a different band in each town, then would start off in one city, do a set there, then take a private plane to the other city and join the band for their second set.
• The Indianapolis 500 (Indianapolis, Indiana) and Coca-Cola 600 (Charlotte, North Carolina, about 430 miles away) races are typically scheduled for the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Since the Indy 500 is held in the afternoon and the Coca-Cola 600 is an evening race, this allows drivers a small window to try and compete in both. The physical demands of racing 1,100 miles in one day and the tight schedule and careful planning needed to pull it off (not just the races themselves, but pre-race qualifying and practice runs) mean that few drivers attempt it, and only one has ever completed all 1,100 miles of both races (Tony Stewart in 2001, finishing 6th at Indy and 3rd at Charlotte).
• In 1985, popular Dallas morning radio DJ Tom Joyner was offered an afternoon slot at a station in Chicago. Rather than give up his Dallas show, he accepted the Chicago job and, every weekday, did his morning show in Dallas, then flew to Chicago for his afternoon show, then flew back home to Dallas. He continued this routine until 1994, when he launched a nationally syndicated show (with computer automation and other technological advances, it's now common for DJs to remotely host local shows in multiple markets, but that infrastructure wasn't in place when Joyner was doing his jet hopping).

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Sometimes, the character ends up spurning the big personal event altogether, to deal with the other commitment:

Anime & Manga

• Ichigo of Tokyo Mew Mew misses her date with Aoyama because her alien Stalker with a Crush releases a moth monster to poison the whole city.

Comic Books

• The Flash: Wally West, a known womanizer in his early career as the Flash, pulled this off without a hitch because of his Super-Speed, taking one date to a basketball game and another to a dance. But he still gets in trouble because he also had a scheduled meeting with the Justice League, which he completely forgot about until the last second.
• Spider-Man and Daredevil seem to have a standing agreement to help each other out this way. It helps that the two have similar builds, costumes that conceal virtually all identifying features, and each one's abilities let him perform a decent enough approximation of the other's (at least enough to fool the average Marvel Universe civilian).
• Superman will occasionally have to appear as both Clark Kent and Superman. He'll get Batman or someone to help. In fact, most long-running superhero comics with secret identities have likely run into this.
• Batman: Urban Legends:
  • Tim's first date with Bernard occurs during the middle of his scheduled patrol times as Robin, and he slips away from his patrol route to quickly meet up with him.
  • Tim and Bernard have an ice skating date planned which Tim planned to get to just in time while dealing with his commitments as Robin, but then he ends up being in Bludhaven at the time of the date with no way to get back in time. Instead he talks to Bernard on the phone while patroling as Robin, claiming a family emergency and doing their date remotley while Bernard skates.

Films — Live-Action

• Max Keeble's Big Move had Max missing out on a going away party held by Megan and Robe, his friends in favor of going to a milkshake party with Jenna, which also qualifies as a What the Hell, Hero? moment. At the end of the movie, however, Max declines the invitation to Jenna’s next party so he can spend more time with Megan.
• In Mr. Popper's Penguins, it looks like Tom is going to do this with his scheduled meeting with Van Gundy and his date with his ex-wife Amanda, both of which were to take place at the Tavern on the Green. He ends up completely ditching the meeting; as he leaves the restaurant with Amanda, Van Gundy is seen peering out the window at them. This causes her to reconsider her earlier assessment of him as a shameless businessman who cares only for money.

Video Games

• The two-timer date is rather amusingly averted in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II. The final character events actually revolve around having Rean meet with a classmate (or Towa or Sara) in the Class VII dormitory once he's done with everything else he wants to do at Thors Academy and in Trista. You can have him agree to meet with any character with whom he has sufficient compatibility with and has shared a fateful moment with. If, however, you've already had him agree to meet with someone, he'll just say that he'll call to cancel to break his date with the person he already promised the meeting with. Doubles as an Anti-Frustration Feature, since the game allows to switch as many times as you want until you're satisfied with your choice, or even if you just want to see all the dialogue.

Western Animation

• All Grown Up!, "Runaround Susie": Susie doesn't participate in a singing audition because she's at a linguistics contest instead.
• An episode of The Fairly OddParents! has Timmy using magic to travel back and forth between Chester and A.J. The three had planned to watch a TV Movie together (Crash Nebula meets the Crimson Chin), but the latter two had gotten into a fight over which of the characters were better. They both invite Timmy to their houses to watch it with them alone, and Timmy does his best to juggle the two, but the problem was neither of them could access the movie (due to one of the boys' fathers putting parental blocks on his TVs and the other's TV just not working). So Timmy develops a plan to get the two to stop fighting.
• In an episode of The Mask, Stanley is handcuffed to Lt. Kellaway, who's trying to prove he's the Mask. Meanwhile, the villains Putty Thing and Fishguy are attacking. So, Stanley has to find ways to put on the mask and become the hero without the cop noticing. The Mask doesn't see why it's a big deal at first until he realises that Stanley might end up in prison and he will remain a lifeless object forever so he also has to get back in time to take his face off so that Kellaway does not find out that he and Stanley are the one and same person.
• Ned's Newt once exaggerated this by having Newton the newt set up Ned for a date with every girl in school (at the same time, of course). Newton is little help, since he just cites the example of the "sea newt" which mates with hundreds of females before they gang up and eat him.
• Rocket Power, "The Big Day": Otto, Twister and Sam withdraw from a skating contest to save a wedding.
• The Simpsons, "The Bart Wants What It Wants": Bart avoids a school dance that Greta invited him to in favor of watching Principal Skinner perform at a comedy club.

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