Wrong Bathroom Incident

It was at this moment that Jeff knew...he fucked up.

"We can't step into that most hallowed and forbidden no-man's-land without closing our eyes!?"

— Batman, Batman

The ultimate adventure for any pervert worth his salt is the (usually) women's restroom or changing room. Not only is this a forbidden zone to them, but it's also where they can see as much of the opposite gender's body as possible. Hence, many lecherous characters will try to sneak in there in order to get a peek. If it's a restroom they're sneaking into, the weirdness of getting turned on by someone else going to the bathroom will not be brought up. How likely they are to actually get a glimpse of what they came to see is inversely proportional to how much they wanted to see it. On the one hand, a character who intentionally machinates to get in and spy on helpless girls will usually either see something he didn't want to see, or he'll be introduced to the business end of a Hyperspace Mallet by a girl in Pervert Revenge Mode. On the other hand, a character who winds up there completely accidentally probably will get an eyeful of an attractive member of the opposite gender — and be scarred by the experience. When the person realizes their mistake, they'll usually be horrified (unless they're perverted). Of course, this is often Played for Laughs.

Usually this is a male going into the ladies' changing room, but other variations are possible. There are also situations where a person Disguised in Drag or a Gender Bender victim actually has to go to the opposite changing room than normal. Which of course doesn't mean that they or those around them are prepared for it. After all, the person in question has to hide their normal gender while changing clothes among others, while those who know about may have a hard time accepting it.

See also Wig, Dress, Accent when the character sneaks into the opposite gender's restroom (or anywhere else) disguised as the opposite gender. Overlaps with Not Where They Thought if the character mistakenly thought they were in the correct-gender bathroom or changing room at first. Perhaps a trip to the Wondrous Ladies Room was a goal of a Pervert Alliance. Compare "Which Restroom?" Dilemma, in which somebody is troubled about which one to enter, before going in. Often results in Cringe Comedy, and/or done by The Peeping Tom. Sister trope to Shower of Awkward.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 130, Rentarou's date with Ahko runs into a problem when the gal restaurant turns out to only have a girls' bathroom, which Rentarou refuses to use.
• Accel World: Seiji uses visual masking to trick Haruyuki into going to the girl's changing room, then threatening to blackmail Haruyuki into giving him Burst Points whenever he wants.
• Afterschool Charisma: Shiro and Freud are pushed into the girl's locker room by Ikkuyu and pals. They get quite an eyeful of fanservice from Elizabeth, Florence Nightingale, etc.
• Ayakashi Triangle: After a gender-swapped Matsuri starts attending Suzu's school, he initially enters the men's restroom, forgetting he's now physically a girl. This leads him to get lectured by the English teacher Masurao Sujimori and seen as weird by most of the other students.
• Chio's School Road: At the start of "Thank You, George", Chio has a bad Potty Emergency and runs into the first bathroom she comes across. When she opens her stall door after she's done, she sees urinals and realizes too late that she went into the men's room by mistake. The rest of the episode revolves around her attempts to sneak out without being spotted.
• Spoofed in a Crayon Shin-chan story where the titular Dirty Kid and his family went to a waterpark. While in the changing room, Shin-Chan finds his mom's bra inside his backpack, exclaims "she must have misplaced it! I'll return it to her..." and quickly makes a beeline for the ladies' room.
• Digimon Adventure: In "Evil Shows His Face", the girls are relaxing in a hot tub in their shower room until they realize Gomamon is floating in the water with them. A pissed-off Palmon then throws him over the wall where the guys' hot tub is.
• In Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, Tessa decides to take a vacation by briefly enrolling in Sousuke's school. Before her arrival, her executive officer Mardukas goes to scout the school and ends accidentally walking into the girls' locker room. Rumors of a pervert roaming the school reach Sousuke who then attacks the mysterious stranger at gunpoint before realizing who it is. This trip also includes the Hot Springs Episode; with Kurz attempting repeatedly to peep on the girls in the hot spring only to be constantly foiled by Sousuke.
• Interspecies Reviewers: The gender-swap brothel has a strict rule about patrons remaining on premises. An Imagine Spot illustrates a gender-swapped Stunk visiting a hot spring, and entering the women's section. There, Stunk, presenting as female but still having his horndog male brain, can ogle the other shapely women. This voyeurism would be done without consent, whereas those at the brothel are consenting and aware that their partner is a paying gender-swapped patron.
• Karin: An early chapter of the manga has Karin think about how she would have left her life behind if Usui revealed her secret of being a vampire while changing into her waitress uniform in the restaurant's dressing room. Usui comes in to get ready for his shift, and sees Karin in a stage of undress. She screams and he apologizes while running out of the dressing room, and notices that he ran out of the men's dressing room and informs Karin, through the door, of that fact. Karin comes out fully dressed in her clothes and explains that she was so focused on her thoughts that she didn't notice that she went into the wrong dressing room.
• Knights of Sidonia: Early on, Nagate is punished for forgetting his emergency tether by being required to travel around the Space Cadet Academy hooking and unhooking it to every railing. He accidentally wanders into the changing room off the women's photosynthesis chamber and gets kicked in the face for his trouble.
• Mayo Chiki!: The series begins when Kinjiro (who suffers from Gynophobia) comes into the men's restroom at school, to find Suburu Konoe, the butler of Kanade Suzutsuki and a fellow student, is not a male butler, but a girl his own age masquerading as a boy. It's part of an agreement that Suburu has with the Suzutsuki family, that if she can keep her true gender a secret, she can continue her family's tradition of serving as the retainers. As such, she has to use the men's room to keep her secret, which, after intervention by Kanade, Kinjiro agrees to keep.
• My Bride is a Mermaid: After Sun started attending the same school as Nagasumi, Chimp called over Nagasumi so they could peek in the girl's locker room. Nagasumi refuses the offer and walks away, unfortunately he's soon cornered by one of the Seto Clan's thugs who attack him, and in a split second, he calculates that the only way to avoid certain death is through the girl's locker room, which he dashes through while apologizing profusely.
• In the manga version of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kaworu (who Really Was Born Yesterday in this adaptation, so he has No Social Skills), hearing Asuka talking to herself, walks into NERV's women's bathroom and gives Asuka advice on EVA piloting. Played for Drama, as this leads to a breakdown of already exhausted Asuka.
• Nisekoi: After Riku rescues Tsugumi from the school's swimming pool, he takes her into the boy's locker room, not knowing Tsugumi is a girl. Riku undresses her so her wet clothes won't give her a chill. Tsugumi regains consciousness, realizes she's being denuded and reacts accordingly. Only then does Riku discover that Tsugumi is a girl. The two hide in a locker when the vengeful Chitoge bursts in seeking Riku.
• Photon: A wall of huge rocks separates the men's hot spring from the women's at Aun's sister's inn. Horndog villain Papacharino instructs Photon to punch a hole in this rock wall to allow him to peek at the girls. However, Papacharino's callousness makes Pochi cry, for which Photon hits Papacharino with a Megaton Punch that smashes him completely through the rocks and into the girls' waters. Not only does he survive this, but Papacharino exults at getting such a close view. The three young women beat him silly and throw him out. The innkeeper then makes a servant of Papacharino to recoup the necessary repairs to her hot springs.
• In Ranma ½, Ranma once uses his Gender Bender curse to gain access to the girls' changing area (he'd been led to believe he could find a cure there). Unfortunately he's picked the time the girls are using it, and Akane recognizes him. Violence ensues.
• Rosario + Vampire: Gin tricks Tsukune into peeking into the locker room in his first appearance. Fanservice and lady beatdowns ensue.
• The Way of the Househusband: While exercising with other women, Tatsu goes to get changed into his gym clothes but accidentally walks into the women's changing room. While the women understand that this was an accident, Tatsu throws himself into a wall and slams his face into the floor as punishment for his mistake.

Fan Works

• In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, early in the story, Nova Shine is trying to find Twilight at the Sparkles' residence, and being an energy sensor, he can feel two similar-feeling energies behind different doors. He checks one of them, only to dash out in embarrassment when he discovers it's Night Light sitting on the toilet.
• Baby Boom (Shawna Canon): Chapter 49: The ability to reverse time allows users to peep into the opposite gender's bathrooms:
  Reaching the door of the locker room, he glanced absently toward the girls’ bathroom, and a very disturbing thought occurred to him. Anything he did in the next few minutes could be erased, with no one but him remembering it.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles Mini-sodes: Naruto ends up in the girls changing room (where Hinata is changing into her two-piece swimsuit) as a result of Ino pulling a prank on him by claiming the room is unisex. However, what happens afterwards is not shown beyond Ino being confused to not hear any reaction, looking into the changing room, and then saying "Oh, that explains it."
• Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): "Ghost": Soma's second use of the Ghost soul, a.k.a Astral Projection power, would be to peep on girls, if it didn't have a short Arbitrary Maximum Range, and puts him into a suspicious Convenient Coma, making him Remote, Yet Vulnerable.
• The Rigel Black Chronicles: Harry, who is actually a girl but disguised as her male cousin so she can attend Hogwarts, sneaks into the girls' bathroom, disguised as a different girl, in order to plant an "elf on the shelf" puppet. Unfortunately, she gets caught by Professor Lockhart as she leaves, and he becomes suspicious of what she was doing there, so he makes her accompany him inside to check. Professor Snape then comes across what appears to be a male teacher manhandling a female student into the bathrooms, with Lockhart sputtering that it's Not What It Looks Like... and for extra irony, after sending him off, Snape sees through the wig, recognises "Rigel", and chastises "him" for being there.
  Snape: Go to breakfast, Mr. Black, and if I ever catch you entering a women's bathroom again, with or without a teacher, I will excommunicate you from Slytherin House faster than you can say Salazar.

Films — Animated

• Cars 2: While in Tokyo, Mater has to go to the bathroom, but can't tell which is the men's room. He goes through one door, and a high-pitched scream is heard, and Mater apologizes as he quickly exits and goes into the other bathroom.
• Space Jam: For the Ultimate Game, there are two locker rooms: one for the Monstars and one for the Tune Squad. The Tunes conduct a Lock-and-Load Montage in theirs, including the only girl player, namely Lola Bunny. She shares the same locker room as the boys and is seen taping her knuckles there. Presumably, she also stripped down and suited up there as well.

Films — Live-Action

• Deliberately set up by Stiffler in American Pie. In retaliation for Finch spreading a rumor that he had beaten Stiffler in a fight, Stiffler hit him back by poisoning Finch with laxatives. Since Finch normally refuses to use the bathrooms on campus he was desperate, so Stiffler held a door open for him to run into the toilets. He only realized he was in the girls' bathroom when several walked in gossiping among themselves and then Finch gave himself away with his horrible noises. After he left the bathroom he realized that Stiffler had told the entire student body in order to humiliate Finch.
• Bluffing It: This 1987 Made-for-TV movie has Jack Duggan become laid off from his auto plant job because he's illiterate. Trying to get by as a trucker, Jack finds himself at a seaside diner where the restrooms are labeled "Sailors" and "Mermaids." Stumped as to which is which, Jack goes by the "M" in mermaid as the same for "M" in men's. He learns quickly that this was a mistake.
• Carry On Behind has several instances of this, in the showers.
  • Funny Foreigner Anna Vooshka brazenly enters the men's showers, when the "men" sign has briefly been removed, leaving just "showers". In the face of Mr Roland's horrified reaction, she calmly accuses him of discrimination. When he then tells her to go next door, she misunderstands and takes the cubicle next to him. Soon afterwards, when Linda sees her coming out of the showers, she marches in herself, to accost her husband.
  • Later, the male-voiced mynah bird ends up in the ladies' showers, and Carol hears him and believes there is a man in there. She runs out to fetch Barnes and literally drags him in.
    Barnes: I can't go into the ladies' showers!
    Carol: There's a man in there already! He might attack someone.
    Barnes: You're right. Me.
• Carry On Constable: when male constables Benson and Gorse decide to investigate shoplifters in a department store, they enter the ladies' changing rooms to disguise themselves in drag.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In Rodrick Rules, Greg steals his diary back from Rodrick in Leisure Towers and hides in the first bathroom he comes across so he can rip out the pages. He sees a woman's legs in the stall next to him and realizes he's in the wrong bathroom. He is then mistaken for a "peeping tom" and the very angry old ladies start to attack him until he swaps himself with one of the other women and sneaks out.
• The Full Monty: During the night of the titular show, a group of women are commiserating in the men's room ^note which is reliably empty due to the only men there being the performers. For a laugh, one of the women urinates into one of the urinals.
• This happens in a Laurel and Hardy short movie, where Stan Laurel plays a visiting Scotsman. Seeing what looks like a kilted person in silhouette on the toilet door with what he reads as "LADDIES" underneath, Stan looks down at his kilt, compares it to the picture on the door, grins with relief, and walks in...
• Mallrats: Happens twice, both involving Silent Bob accidentally crashing through the wall into a woman's changing room. It's the same woman both times.
• In the Marx Brothers movie Monkey Business, Harpo is leaning against the wall by a restroom on the ship, and another man, seeing the sign Harpo's leaning on that says, "Men", goes into the restroom. The man gets thrown out a second later, stares at the sign again, and walks away. That's when Harpo gets up, and we see the sign actually says, "Women."
• My Favorite Year: Alan Swann obliviously uses the woman's room. When another attendee tells him that it's "for ladies only" he responds, "So is this, madam, but every now and again I have to run a little water through it."
• Necessary Roughness: Lucy (played by Kathy Ireland) is the only woman on the Armadillos and has to use the same locker rooms. However, to preserve her dignity, Manu forces the other players out and stands guard while she showers and changes.
• Nuns on the Run: Brian and Charlie are in disguise as nuns in an all-girls school/nunnery. Charlie is the gym teacher, and reluctantly goes into the locker room to oversee the girls as they shower and dress. Charlie is a devout Catholic and is sure he's going to Hell for this (plus all that other stuff).
• Played for drama in Radio: James Kennedy, an intellectually challenged man, becomes a mascot of sorts for the T.L. Hanna High School in South Carolina. Near the beginning of the film, he gains the nickname "Radio" for his interest in listening to transistor radios. As the film progresses, he also gains an interest in the high school's football practices. Unfortunately, he's bullied by the players, but the coach, Harold Jones, takes him under his wing, and Radio becomes popular as he inspires the team and school. Later in the film, one of the bullies tricks Radio into going into the girls' locker room. Thankfully, they're understanding about his mistake, but the initial shock of Radio being in there still traumatizes him, causing him to run off in shame. Again, thankfully, the bully gets Laser-Guided Karma from Coach Jones when Jones deduces who tricked Radio, and the bully is benched before an important football game.
• Porky's has the raunchy teen boys exploit the service crawlspaces in the gymnasium to get behind a wall in the girls' shower room. One of the fixtures is missing (presumably removed for repairs), leaving holes in the wall through which the boys ogle the naked girls.
• In Satan's Cheerleaders, Stevie swaps the signs on the locker room doors resulting in Coach leading the University Dean into the girls' locker room instead of the boys while giving him a tour. The locker room is, of course, full of mostly naked cheerleaders.
• The Sex Trip: Eddie, who'd been afflicted with a Gender Bender curse, attempted to go to the gym. While there, he wandered into the men's locker room on instinct and got booted out. Instead, he changed in the women's locker room and was very appreciative of all of the women changing around him.
• The three main characters in Sorority Boys always go to great lengths to make sure this doesn't happen in their undercover identities at the D.O.G. sorority house; but in once scene, Dave is still in the shower when his Love Interest Leah joins him, and only doesn't find out she's in the shower with a man because she is not wearing her glasses.
• The X-Files: Fight the Future: It looks like it will be played straight but is averted. Mulder needs to go to the bathroom in the bar he has been spending time drinking his sorrows. The men's bathroom is out of order and Mulder considers going to the women's but it is occupied just as he enters — this makes him go outside in the back alley instead, where Dr. Kurtzweil was waiting for him.

Literature

• Arthur: In "Arthur's Eyes", Arthur ditches his glasses, but due to how bad his eyesight is, he ends up walking into the girls' bathroom by mistake. Francine yells at him to Get Out!.
• Stephen King's novel Carrie was inspired by an incident when he was working as a high school custodian. He once found himself cleaning the girls' shower room (empty at the time) and was bemused to finally enter the space and notice things like shower curtains and pad dispensers. He idly wondered what would happen if, say, a student got her period and was harassed by her classmates, and also thought of an article he'd read about telekinesis...
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: Near the end of the book, Rodrick texts Greg's secret to everyone he knows: during the summer when they were staying with their grandpa at Leisure Towers (an assisted living center), Greg ran into the bathroom while trying to hide from Rodrick and locked himself in a stall, but it turned out to be the women's bathroom. He couldn't leave because it was never empty, and he was eventually caught and mislabeled a "peeping tom". He expects to come into school the next day and be bullied, but the constant spreading by mouth warps the story into him sneaking into the girls' locker room at Crossland High School and taking photos, making all the boys think he's incredibly cool.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: Two classes take P.E. together. The girls have to change in another classroom but the title character doesn't bother with going there and change between the boys. Changing her mind is impossible so they end up switching the rooms for changing between the boys and girls. Thus the other girls will change with Suzumiya, instead of her with them.
• In Here She Is, Ms. Teeny Wonderful by Martyn Godfrey, Carol's rivals swap the men's and women's changing room signs at the hotel pool, tricking Carol into going into the men's room. Carol only realizes what's going on after she's removed her clothes, when she notices the walls are a different colour; while she's still naked, she hears a pair of men coming in and hides in the only bathroom stall, which causes problems when one of the men insists he needs to use the toilet before he can swim.
• Kokoro Connect: During the Personality Exchange phenomenon, Taichi and Yui swap bodies randomly, which leads Taichi to go to the restroom to contact the others. He mistakenly enters the boys' restroom due to a force of habit, leading him to reluctantly enter the girls' restroom before contacting his friends on the phone.
• There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom: As the title states, this happens briefly when Jeff accidentally goes into the women's room, only for the girls inside to scream. Bradley comments that he occasionally goes in there to get a rise out of them. At one point, he checks the inside of the ladies' room, expecting it to be pretty and fancy, only for it to look almost exactly the same as the men's room.

Live-Action TV

• The Amanda Show: In the recurring "girls' room" sketch, one episode sees them unable to use their normal venue due to a burst pipe, so they have to use the boys' room instead. Debbie, the dimwit of the bunch, becomes obsessed and jealous of the boys' "waterfall machine" (urinal).
• Batman: "Catwoman's Dressed to Kill" has the most perfect page quote (above), as Batman and Robin exhibit one of their most Lawful Stupid moments when Catwoman flees into one. When Catwoman takes Batgirl hostage, they finally go in... with arms in front of their eyes. Cue the exasperated girls inside stating they covered themselves up already.
• The Brittas Empire:
  • In "Bye Bye Baby", Brittas makes Colin go into the woman's changing room to grab Carole's baby. Colin tries keeping his eyes closed so that he doesn't see any female nudity and ends up with the wrong baby.
  • In "A Walk on the Wildside", Colin is tasked with creating a path through the centre to comply with the public right of way which is seemingly still in effect. The problem is that this path goes right through the women's changing room, and Colin is perfectly fine wielding a chainsaw in front of a screaming woman who only wanted to use the toilets. Naturally, this ends with the woman in an apparently permanent catatonic state and Colin being flagged as a pervert.
• CSI: In one episode Warrick is following Catherine around, griping about the obstacles they're facing with their case. She enters the restroom with him right behind her, still ranting. When he stops at the sink to take a breath and looks in the mirror, she asks:
  Catherine: Are you okay?
  Warrick: Yeah, why?
  Catherine: This is the ladies room.
  Warrick: Oh. [leaves]
• A major plot point in the Farscape episode "A Human Reaction". John Crichton is led to think that he has returned to Earth from space, but is actually undergoing a Virtual-Reality Interrogation. When he realises that he hasn't seen any people or places that he didn't already know, because the system was using his memories to create the illusion, he breaks the illusion by going into the women's toilet in a nearby bar, the one place he's never been in.
  • Roughly a year later in "Won't Get Fooled Again", Crichton ends up in another simulation that tries to make him think he never left Earth at all. Crichton immediately knows something's up and as soon as he's free to explore he makes sure to check the first women's bathroom he comes across. The creators of this simulation were more thorough, as he finds a regular bathroom with a confused woman asking him what he's doing there.
• Father Brown: In one episode, a wealthy businesswoman with a taste for younger men walks into the men's room while Sid is using the urinal. She begins to flirt with him and nearly seduces him until one of her other boy toys catches them.
• Father Ted: Played for laughs in "A Christmassy Ted", in which a group of Catholic priests somehow find themselves in the women's underwear section of a department store and must sneak out without being seen to avoid causing a scandal for the church. The whole scene is played as a parody of rescue sequences in war movies.
• House of Anubis: There are a few cases in the first season where boys had to go into the girls' bathroom, though not for creepy reasons, and are instantly called out:
  • Fabian runs in to spy on the teachers, as one of the loose wall tiles in the bathroom acts as a peephole into the headmaster's office. Two girls walk in as he's spying, forcing him to very quickly put the tile back and then pretend that he came into the room by accident, before very awkwardly leaving.
  • Jerome spied on a conversation between Patricia and Mara, hiding in the next stall while the girls were talking. He reveals himself after Patricia leaves, getting a disgusted reaction from Mara, who shuts up as soon as he blackmails her. He does this again later to Patricia herself, but instead of being fazed by his presence, she just shuts his attempt down.
• Discussed but subverted in Malcolm in the Middle in the episode Evacuation. While evacuated to the civil shelter at the local school, Malcolm was about to go explore the girl's bathroom with his two friends. However Lois comes over and insists Malcolm is still grounded and is not to leave his cot; then she turns towards Malcolm's two friends with her angry mom glare, and the boys instantly confess that they were about to enter the girl's bathroom, give Lois the key, and beg her not to tell their mothers before slinking off.
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: A Running Gag throughout the series involves Ned accidentally running into the girl's restroom to deal with a Potty Emergency. He gets mocked by the school bullies about it, to the point that they put up signs that read "GIRLS and Ned".
• Night Court: "Harry and the Rocker" has a Downplayed example. Due to Harry dating the titular Rocker of the episode, the courthouse is inundated by hundreds of the musician's screaming (and highly androgynous) fans. Liz and Selma position themselves outside of the restroom area and begin taking bets on whether the person entering is a man or a woman. At one point, a person enters the restroom. Liz bets "Male" and "Selma" bets "Female". The individual turns to the left at the junction, heading for the Women's Room. Liz hands Selma a buck. But then the individual returns to the junction, proceeds to the men's room, and Selma has to return Liz's dollar and also fork over another to settle her incorrect wager.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures: Exploited in the pilot of this Doctor Who spin-off, "Invasion of the Bane". Maria wanders off while touring the Bubble Shock! factory and finds a strange boy with no memories. They evade their pursuers and escape the factory when Maria takes them through the ladies' room and out the window.
  Mrs Wormwood: Have you checked in [the ladies room]?
  Davey: No, that room is designated for females only. We are males; this culture says we must never go in.
  Mrs Wormwood: Oh, you idiot!
• Sex and the City: Samantha is dating a man with a small penis, so when she attends a baseball match with her friends, she sneaks a long look through the door of the changing room.
• Supernatural: In "Wishful Thinking", the boys go to a town to investigate the apparent haunting of the women's locker room of a gym (to Dean's delight). In fact, the town is afflicted by a working wishing well, and people are being none too careful about what they wish for. The locker room "haunting" is actually a high school kid who wished he could turn invisible so he could spy on women in the shower.
  Sam: So Let Me Get This Straight.... You walked up to a wishing well, dropped a dime, and wished to turn invisible so you could spy on women in the shower?
• Teen Wolf:
  • Played for Laughs in a very unusual way, as the Wild Hunt is taking over Beacon Hills and the leader is using Teleport Spam to keep the heroes from working together to stop him (and the heroes are about the only people left), Scott and Stiles finally reunite.
    Stiles: Finally saw the girls' locker room. Not that different, it's kind of disappointing.
  • Inverted in "Echo House" when Stiles goes into the male locker room and finds Malia showering there. She actually has to point out to him he hasn't accidentally wandered into the female locker room, she just likes using the male one to shower because the water there is hotter. It doesn't stop making him feel like he's an Accidental Pervert, especially since she's a Shameless Fanservice Girl who doesn't care about him seeing her naked.
• The X-Files: Downplayed in the episode "Piper Maru", Krycek, in Mulder's custody needs to go to the bathroom. While at the urinal, the black oil-possessed wife of the French diver walks next to him. Krycek, upon noticing this, is about to make a funny remark while looking at her, but his words are cut short as he swiftly gets attacked by the woman and possessed by the black oil.

Music

• Bob Rivers has written about this subject in one of his Christmas-carol parodies.
  The restroom door said "Gentlemen", so I just walked inside
  I took two steps and realized I'd been taken for a ride
  I heard high voices, turned and found the place was occupied
  By two nuns, three old ladies, and a nurse, what could be worse?
  Two nuns, three old ladies, and a nurse...

Video Games

• Deus Ex Universe: Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution both allow the male Player Characters to walk into the ladies bathroom at their office buildings. If you do, it will trigger a change in future cutscenes in which their superiors chastise them for unprofessional behavior.
• Dragon Quest XI: In Hotto, after using the sauna instead of going back into the male changing room you can instead step outside and then go into the female changing room. Doing so gains you an achievement, but an NPC will call you out for it.
• In Lunar: Eternal Blue, when our heroes find the hot spring, Lucia ends up trying to join Hiro in the men's side of the bath because she has no concept of the seperation of gender or why nudity is considered taboo.
• It's only a minor case and nothing substantial really happens with it, but in Mass Effect 2, if Shepard enters the bathroom of the opposite gender (depending on Shepard's own), the ship AI, EDI will promptly remind Shepard that the appropriate bathroom is on the opposite side of the ship. Come Mass Effect 3, the opposite gender bathroom is simply inaccessible.
• Mega Man does this to Roll in both games of Mega Man Legends. In 1 he accidentally walked in on her in the middle of changing clothes in her room and in 2 he walks in on her while she was taking a bath.

Web Animation

• BabyBus: In one short, Rudolph suddenly has a Potty Emergency at a costume party. He doesn't know which bathroom to enter due to the signs, so he mistakes the girls' bathroom sign for a penguin's bathroom and enters. The girls freak out at the sight of him and he barrels out of there.
• GoAnimate: In "(character) Uses the Girls'/Boys' Bathroom" videos, the troublemaker of the day will go into the opposite gender bathroom, either because they just wanted to, or because the appropriate bathroom for them was too messy.
• In Rest Room, a LittleBigPlanet fan animation, a guy named Ray has a Potty Emergency at the mall, and he's in such a rush that he unknowingly runs into the women's room. The rest of the video is about him trying to escape without being caught.

Webcomics

• In Aoi House, Alex walked into the bathroom to use the toilet, unaware that Morgan was in the tub. In later strips Morgan is also constantly talking Alex and Sandy into putting a video camera onto Sandy's hamster Echiboo, and then sending him into women's changing rooms on their college campus and at clothing stores at the mall.
• Better Days: The Black family are traveling out of state to attend their maternal grandfather's funeral. They stop at a filling station to relieve themselves. Fisk has to lug the men's room key on a chain attached to a cinder block, and the men's room itself is a pigsty. Lucy offers to stand guard while Fisk uses the ladies' room, which is a pristine facility. Fisk accepts, and the Blacks are soon on the road again.
• El Goonish Shive: Arc "Night Out", subarc "Elliott's Crew". Tedd uses a Gender Bender gun to transform himself into Grace's female human shape and masquerade as her. When he and the others go out to the movies, he ends up in the girl's bathroom.
• Megatokyo:
  • When Miho collapses on the floor, Largo is called to attend to her... and then takes a moment to look around and reflect on how he's never been in a girls' bathroom before. One of the students quickly calls him out for this.
  • Much later, Yuki has been teleporting or jumping^note it's unclear all over town with her friend Yutaka in tow, and lands at the public bath where Miho and Piro are hiding from Miho's raging fans. When Yutaka collapses from internal injuries unwittingly inflicted by Yuki, Piro hears the panicked screaming and rushes in... only to be violently stopped by Miho on grounds that Yuki would take it very badly if either boy were to see her in her current state of undress.

Web Videos

• Youth & Consequences: Episode 3 has a jock brazenly come into the girls' locker room to change, with the excuse he "feels like a girl today". The girls don't buy it and just see him as Jerk Jock using gender fluidity as an excuse to perv on them. Farrah gets him to leave the locker by doing a Defiant Strip in front of him, which causes him to get awkward and leave. This gets Subverted at the end of the episode when it's revealed he does have gender identity issues and his locker room stint was something of a Sarcastic Confession.

Western Animation

• 6teen: The episode "Dude of the Living Dead" has Not Quite Naked, a women's lingerie store said to contain a peephole in the wall of one of their fitting rooms. It's partly for this reason that the store rejects most male applicants, but Jonesy manages to get a job there by lying about being gay. Nikki doesn't hesitate to call Jonesy out for such a blatant invasion of privacy, although it gets ruined anyway when a zombified mallgoer breaks into the room and devours a customer in the middle of changing.
• In the Animaniacs episode "Potty Emergency", Wakko notices the men's bathroom is out of order, and, because of how bad he needs to go, decides to try the women's bathroom. He is kicked out as toilet paper rolls are thrown at him.
• Arthur: In the first episode, "Arthur's Eyes", Arthur puts his glasses in his lunch box to avoid getting teased at school. However, without his glasses, he doesn't seem to find the boys' room. Just like in the book mentioned above, he accidentally uses the girls' room, assuming to be the boys' room, he finds Francine there. All the girls screamed when they saw Arthur, attracting everyone at school.
• Big Mouth: Coach Steve has been known to walk into the women's bathroom from time to time. Not out of malice, but rather his own staggering idiocy.
  "Did I walk into the triangle-body locker room again?"
• Cow and Chicken: The episode "The Girls Bathroom" has Chicken volunteer to explore the girls' bathroom at school after closing hours. He treats it like an undercover spy mission, reporting his findings to Flem and Earl via walkie-talkie. One of the first things Chicken encounters is the tampon dispenser. "I think they sell cigars in here."
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: "Out with the Old... in with the Ed" has the Eds make a Deal with the Devil with the Kankers so they can be in same homeroom together. This unfortunately requires them to humiliate themselves by calling themselves the Kankers's boyfriends. After that, they get tricked by the Kankers into going into the girls' restroom where they are once again forcibly kissed by the Kankers.
• Played with in The Fairly OddParents!, episode "Parent Hoods". Mr. Turner does use the correct bathroom, but he drags his wife in with him, even as she protests that she doesn't need to go. Cue every man in the bathroom running out in a blind panic.
  Men: Agh! Female!
• Family Guy: In the episode where Peter starts singing the song "Surfin' Bird," he takes his singing into the women's room. This is initially played straight with women screaming and fleeing, but then subverted when one woman peeks her head out and responds to the chorus.
• Futurama:
  • Played with in "Mars University". A group of rowdy robot students sneak a peek at a girl's dormitory, but they actually want to see the girls' computer without "her" casing on.
  • In "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", Fry joins Leela and Amy in the women's steam room of a gym, believing it's co-ed. When they point out his mistake, he refuses to leave, so they get back at him by implying he has a Teeny Weenie (at least by 31st-century standards).
    Amy: Psst... look what life was like before genetic engineering.
    Leela: Those poor 20th-century women.
    [Fry crosses his legs, embarrassed]
• Gadget Boy & Heather: In the ancient Greece episode, Heather needs to disguise as a man to gain entry somewhere, so she preemptively covers her eyes and walks into the men's changing tent. All men inside leave in a hurry, allowing her to steal some male clothes (and somehow find a wig, fake beard and mustache).
• Goofy shorts: In "No Smoking", Goofy undergoes a nervous breakdown after stopping smoking cold turkey and rushes off his office to find anything to smoke. After some failed attempts, he finds a smoking room, but he's immediately kicked out because it's a lady smoking room. Still, judging from his chuckle, he definitely found his attempt Worth It.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: After Billy learns how to possess Mandy, he carelessly wanders into the boys' bathroom, forgetting that he's now in a girl's body. After being chased out, he sheepishly and uneasily makes his way into the girls'.
• Weaponized in Looney Tunes during Hare Do, where Elmer Fudd is hunting Bugs Bunny and eventually chases him into a theatre. After Bugs has dressed as a woman to have Elmer thrown out once, he lets Elmer chase him into the men's bathroom and then swaps the signs. Then he calls the same usher who, once again, throws Elmer out.
• Robot Chicken: During the Nerd's Ranma fantasy, he turns back into a man while in the girl's shower room and gets the crap kicked out of him. He still has no regrets.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Take My Wife, Sleaze", Lenny tries to go to the bathroom at a 1950s-themed nostalgia restaurant. He tries to go to the bathroom marked "Cool Cats", but that turns out to be the women's bathroom, who are heard screaming. So, he tries to go into the bathroom marked "Squares", which also has women in it. So, he runs out and he's left wondering what to do.
  • In "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation", Homer is making the most of his all-access pass for a rock concert and skips a long line for the men's bathroom by just walking into the women's bathroom. The women scream at first, but after Homer points out his all-access pass, they're suddenly fine with him and start complimenting Homer.
  • In "The Burns and the Bees", Bart spray paints over the WO in a "WOMEN" bathroom sign. Skinner walks by, sees that it says "MEN", and enters. The women inside are heard screaming.
• South Park: The episode "The Cissy" has Cartman pretending to be transgender so he can use the girls' bathroom. At first, he only goes in there when the men's room is full, but then he starts using the women's room more often when he likes how clean it is. The school staff eventually install a new transgender restroom for Cartman (designed with his specifications). When Wendy starts presenting as transgender to get back at him, Cartman reacts by manipulating Stan into thinking he's gay for dating someone who turned out to be a trans boy. This backfires on Cartman when Stan, now confused by the concept of gender, ends up going into Cartman's bathroom.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Rock Bottom", SpongeBob and Patrick can't tell the bathrooms apart because of the town's strange language. They wait to see who comes out of which door, but the strange citizens (being abyssal sea creatures) don't help at all.
  • In "The Chaperone", after SpongeBob gets upset about ruining Pearl's Prom night, he hastily runs into the bathroom to cry, and then it's revealed to be the women's restroom. It doesn't take long for the women in there to run out of the restroom screaming.
• W.I.T.C.H.: In "E is for Enemy", a man working at Will's mom's office ends up in the ladies' room due to Cornelia accidentally dumping a vacuum bag on his head and blinding him. He is quite embarrassed when Taranee enters the ladies' room and corrects him.
• X-Men: Evolution: Forge has been trapped in an invisible and intangible state inside the high school for decades. His existence is limited to a certain radius of his original experiment. Of course said radius stops just before the door to the girls' locker room. When Nightcrawler gets stuck in "Middlespace" as well he is informed of this by a disappointed Forge.

Real Life

• Japanese classrooms are sometimes used as changing rooms. Girls and boys are of course separated, but that doesn't prevent some surprises for people who are not aware of it.
• Michael McIntyre once did a routine about how, while on holiday in Ireland, he found himself unable to tell which bathroom was which as the signs were in Gaelic. He guessed wrong and only realised his mistake when a pair of women entered to use the stall he was currently occupying. After initially trying to pass himself off as a woman by pitching his voice up, he soon realised he'd have to walk past them on his way out anyway and had to come clean about his mistake.

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