Basic Trope: A promo for a story shows a well-known good character acting in a callous or outright evil manner, but put in context of the full story it turns out that the character had a good reason for their behavior.
- Straight: On the cover of "Troper Comics", series protagonist Bob is first seen grabbing a knife to slash a tied up Alice, saying "You deserve this after all you've done". In the book, he's slashing at ropes to free Alice after she helped him locate and defeat Emperor Evulz (who had Alice Bound and Gagged prior to his defeat with Bob).
- Exaggerated: The cover shows Bob dropping a nuke on a city. In the actual story, Bob is actually grabbing the nuke to prevent it from falling on the city.
- Downplayed: The cover shows Bob fighting with somebody, implied to be love interest Action Girl Alice, but instead he's fighting Diana in the actual story.
- Justified: It was a frameup in story, and the cover easily allows the readers to see how the people in universe saw the hero.
- Inverted:
- The cover for the comic makes it look like Evulz has done a Heel–Face Turn. Turns out he didn't.
- Bob looked like he was freeing Alice from Evulz's prison... when in the story, he's coming after her with intent to kill.
- Subverted:
- Bob is first seen chopping the binds on somebody. It turns out he was releasing a villain.
- Bob reveals that he is actually an Affably Evil or Well-Intentioned Extremist villain
- Double Subverted: Bob is sympathetic to the villain's tragic backstory and is giving him a chance to redeem himself.
- Parodied:
- The person being released is saying "Oh no, you're holding a knife up to me! What might you be planning to do with that thing?" And in a smaller text box it says "And I bet anybody watching this will get the wrong idea."
- Bob seems to be stomping something while splashing "blood" everywhere... then it turns out they were a bunch of tomatoes.
- Zig Zagged: The story is told in "Rashomon"-Style about the events on the cover, with many potential moral and immoral explanations offered, and it is never confirmed which one actually happened.
- Averted:
- Bob is fully shown to be cutting the ropes rather than the person.
- Bob is seen doing an evil action because he's genuinely done a Face–Heel Turn.
- Enforced: Bob is usually a pacifist. Showing him 'killing' someone will evoke curiosity among readers and make them want to read on to find out what had happened to Bob.
- Lampshaded: On the actual page it happens, police chief Charlie bursts in from what appears to be the place where the cover was looking in from, saying "The way I saw things I thought you were about to hurt somebody!"
- Invoked: One of Bob's enemies builds a room so that it would look he was committing a horrible act to Alice
- Exploited: The enemy then took a picture of the 'act' and reported to the police.
- Defied:
- Bob loudly exclaims that he's going to free the person and not stab him.
- Bob refuses to be a Hero with Bad Publicity and does not do anything that might look bad out of context.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob was helping the freed victim recover from the suspension. The victim says "For a second there, I thought you were going to use that knife on me."
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