Moments where a character has to hide the warning signs of abuse at the hands of parents/guardians and mean teachers from their friends and teachers in Live Action Films.
- Jonah Hex (2010): The phrase is seen in the trailer.Random gunslinger: Hey Hey! What happened to your face?
[Hex shoots the gunslinger in the face without looking away from his drink]
Hex: Cut myself shaving. What happened to yours? - Chinatown: When asked about his cut nose, the lead character gives a reply that would fit into the Chasing Amy scar comparison scene:Your wife got excited. She crossed her legs a little too quick.Yelburton: My goodness, what happened to your nose?
Jake Gittes: I cut myself shaving. - In To Live and Die in L.A., Secret Service agents are posing as businessmen to bust a famous counterfeiter. One of the agents gets a black eye during a prolonged chase and, when asked by the counterfeiter where the shiner came from, he replies: "I got hit by a tennis ball."
- Family Business stars Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick as three generations of crooks. Anticipating his grandson having to spend a year in jail, Connery tells him to find the biggest guy there and give him a beat down, and no one will bother him, and everyone knows the story is "He fell". At the end, it's Connery who ends up on a paddy wagon with a dozen others on their way to the big house. Someone gets mouthy, Connery clobbers him. When the cop opens the sliding window to the cab area and asks what happened, everyone says, in unison, "He fell."
- And, in an earlier scene, it's averted. Vito really does cut himself shaving on the morning he and Jesse meet with Adam's lawyer.
- In the TV movie No One Would Tell Candace Cameron's character tries to explain all her bruises this way to her best friend Nikki, and other people, when in reality her abusive boyfriend Bobby has been hitting her.
- In Philadelphia, Tom Hanks's character, attempting to hide his AIDS, explains a KS lesion on his forehead as being a bruise that he sustained from being hit by a racket ball.
- In Kindergarten Cop, Arnold Schwarzenegger gets the "I fell down" excuse from a little boy and his mother when he (the kid, not Arnold) keeps showing up to class with fresh bruises. Naturally, Arnold ain't buying it, so he confronts the abusive father and, after laying down the cardinal rule of "You hit the kid, I hit you," proceeds to beat the ever-lovin' crap out of him, much to the delight of the principal.
- The narrator of Fight Club, is asked to explain his fighting injuries to a doctor. His friend and alternate personality suggests that he "fell down some stairs." The narrator agrees. The repetition makes a lot more sense when you learn that "Tyler" is an alternate personality as the doctor wouldn't have heard him speaking as he isn't really there.
- Parodied cheerfully by Hugh Jackman's character in Someone Like You, who claims that he bit himself shaving.
- In One Night at McCool's, Liv Tyler's character Jewel received a black eye in an accident. A police officer later sees her at her boyfriend's house; he immediately assumes that the boyfriend had beat her and kicks him out of his own house. The boyfriend keeps imploring her to tell the officer the truth, but she says absolutely nothing the entire time because she's a Manipulative Bitch.
- Spider-Man: The Green Goblin sets a building on fire as bait for Spider-Man, then ambushes him for a fight after Spider-Man rescues all the trapped victims. In the resulting fight, the Goblin lobs several shurikens at Spider-Man, one of which cuts his left arm. Then at Thanksgiving dinner, Aunt May and Norman Osborn notice Peter bleeding from the cut. Peter claims to Harry, Aunt May and Mary Jane that he was knocked down by a bike messenger, but Norman recognizes it as the one he gave Spider-Man in the burning building.
- Invoked in Dr. Strangelove. When Mandrake tells Colonel Guano that General Ripper shot himself in the bathroom, Guano skeptically asks if it was "while he was shaving?" Notable in this instance that Mandrake was telling the truth; knowing that Mandrake was the one person who could provide a full explanation for what was really going on, Ripper deliberately lathered up his face before committing suicide to make it seem as though Mandrake had shot him.
- In The Art of Self-Defense, Thomas claims he's wearing bandages on his wrists due to weightlifting. It's really to cover bite marks received when he killed Casey's dachshund. Casey executes him after seeing the wound.
- In The Dirty Dozen, repeated shenanigans are explained by a character saying "he slipped on a bar of soap." At one point, the chief MP complains that "Everybody's slipping on soap."
- In The Elephant Man, a doctor is called to examine the badly-wounded titular sideshow performer. The circus manager, Bytes, answers that "He fell. He's a clumsy soul. Never looks where he's going, but that's alright. He has me to take care of him." And all the while he's saying this, his sidekick is giving some very meaningful glances at Bytes' walking stick.
- Parodied in Superhero Movie in one of its few genuinely funny moments. Dragonfly and the Big Bad get into a fight right before Thanksgiving dinner (in a scenario lifted directly from Spider-Man, just like most of the movie). Whenever somebody points out one of their cuts, they both come up with increasingly-bizarre excuses.
- Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny features a dour waitress played by Amy Poehler who, when asked how she received her black eye, she hesitates and mumbles, "Burned myself with a curling iron." In the deleted scenes, she gives various other lame excuses.
- In the movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Vicky tells her husband that she is going to lunch with her professor when she is actually going to see a man who she is sexually attracted to. While she is at the man's house, his ex-wife shows up with a gun and ends up shooting Vicky in the hand. She tells her husband that her "professor" was showing her the gun when it accidentally went off.
- An inversion in the interrogation in Scarface, notable for its bowdlerised rewording (from the infamous "melon farmer" version):Original: How'd you get that scar? Eatin' pussy?
Hilarious: How'd you get that scar? Eatin' pineapple? - In Under Siege, Commander Krill says he cut himself shaving as an explanation for Ryeback slashing his face.
- Played straight in Some Like It Hot with the gangster Spats and the federal agent investigating a murder that Spats is a suspect in.Federal Agent: You shave with your spats on?
Spats: I sleep with my spats on! - Thunderball begins with James Bond fighting it out with a bad guy in widow drag wielding a fireplace poker. Later, when a physical therapist (a hot one) is examining him, she comments on a scar on his back:Bond: Got it from a widow.
Therapist: Really — I thought you'd be just the type for a widow.
Bond: No, he didn't care for me at all. - In Mildred Pierce, Wally says this is where he got the cut on his hand when he was framed for murder.
- The Bowler in Mystery Men says, regarding the death of her father (the original Bowler) "The police ruled my father's death a suicide. They said he fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets."
- Space Cowboys has "slipped in the shower" as the explanation of bruises from a fight. (One of the participants even goes: "How did you know?" when asked if this is what happened.)
- The Waterboy: Bobby tells his Mama a fake story of an escaped gorilla that punched him in the eye to cover up his black eye from playing football which Mama forbids.
- In Stalag 17, the Geneva representative asks Sefton who beat him. Sefton's reply: "Nobody beat me. We were playing pinochle. It's a rough game."
- In The Karate Kid (2010), Dre excuses his black eye to Mr. Han as tripping and hitting a pole. Mr. Han responds that it's an "interesting" pole.
- Earlier than that, in The Karate Kid (1984), Daniel uses the "fell off my bike" excuse on his mom and Mr. Miyagi to hide how he got his black eye (from Johnny). His mom buys it without question, but Mr. Miyagi quips, "lucky not hurt hand."
- In The Santa Clause, Scott (at his first stage of his body turning into Santa) explains to the executives his sudden weight gain is from a bee sting. When the execs are ordering lunch, most of the others order things like fish or salads; Scott orders a large hot-fudge sundae, with big, chocolate cookies on the side.Executive: Bee sting, huh?
Scott: A big bee. - In Yellowbeard, a bar fight with Blind Pew leaves the entire tavern littered with corpses.Clement: What happened?
Betty: Plague!
Clement: Plague?
Betty: All sudden like! Lucky I was out.
Clement: That man's got a sword in him!
Betty: He fell on it. - In Kill Bill Volume 1, The Bride and Vernita Green are having a knock-down-drag-out slugfest when Vernita's daughter Nikki comes home from school and they have to call off the fight.Nikki: Mommy, what happened to you and the TV room?
Vernita: Oh... That good-for-nothing dog of yours got his little ass in the living room and acted a damn fool. That's what happened, baby.
Nikki: [understandably skeptical] Barney did this? - Every time someone gets beaten up in Scum.Warder: What happened?
Boy: I fell. - In 8 Mile, after getting his ass beat, Rabbit walks into his mom's trailer, and she asks what happened. "I fell down the stairs." The stairs in front of their house is comprised of only two steps.
- In The Professional, Mathilda tells Leon that she fell off a bike, more than once. She seems to figure nevertheless that he knows the truth of her abusive father.
- When Peter Loew of Vampire's Kiss is asked about the bandage covering the bite marks on his neck, he says he cut himself shaving.
- The Hunt for Red October: An inconvenient political officer "slips on his tea." Although Sean Connery's character at least has the foresight to actually spill some tea, giving his story some plausibility. The medical officer believes it; most of the other officers don't but since they're in cahoots with Ramius they go along with his lie.
- In 100 Feet, Famke Janssen's character didn't cover for her abusive husband back when he was alive, but when she's under house arrest and getting beaten up by his ghost, she has to resort to these sorts of excuses, since the truth wouldn't be plausible.
- Discussed in Batman Begins. When Bruce Wayne comes home bruised after his first night as Batman, Alfred suggests he should take up a suitably injury-prone hobby as cover against future mishaps - polo.Bruce Wayne: [disgusted] I'm not learning polo, Alfred.
- In Captain Clegg, Harry Cobtree is caught with a bullet wound in his arm.Captain: Cut yourself?
Harry: [smirks, gestures at his face] Shaving. - The Criminal: After Kelly is thrashed from his ankles to his neck, he tells the prison doctor that he fell down the stairs.
- Played with in The Devil's Brigade, where actual hand-to-hand combat training serves as a cover for characters to settle scores with each other.
- Mikey from Dominick and Eugene is being beaten by his father. He tells Nicky his bruises are from falling over.
- The Golden Child: Just after Tommy Tong is slain by the Big Bad, Kee Nang finds Chandler standing over his bloodied corpse and asks if Chandler killed him. A somewhat shaken Chandler quips that Tong maybe "cut himself shaving and bled to death looking for a Kleenex".
- In Hacksaw Ridge, Private Desmond Doss (a pacifist who signed up to serve as a medic) gets clobbered in the middle of the night by a bunch of his fellow Army trainees, who are sick of his refusal to use a gun. In the morning, when his drill sergeant asks who beat him, Doss answers with this trope.Sgt. Howell: Well, what the hell are you saying, Doss? That you bruised half your body sleeping?Doss: I ... I sleep pretty hard.
- This is the explanation Pa Rusk gives when Sheriff Buck asks him his head his covered in blood in Headless Horseman.
- Nearly every death that happens in Hot Fuzz is assumed to be this, to the point where the locals' stubborn insistence sends Sgt. Angel into a classic Enraged by Idiocy meltdown.Angel: *slamming a coin into The Swear Jar* Leslie Tiller was FUCKING murdered!
- In Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, Jesse unconvincingly attempts to explain away hank's gunshot wound by saying he shot himself while cleaning his gun.
- In Juncture, Anna gets injured when one of her targets fights back and strikes her several times with a poker. When her housemate and her boyfriend see the vicious cuts left on her back, she claims that she slipped leaving the jet and landed on her back on the stairs.
- Rather than admit to being beaten up by the female Dragon in Rush Hour 2, Carter tells Lee, "I slipped and I fell."
- The John Wayne film Sands of Iwo Jima has two marines explain away their fighting as being hand-to-hand combat training.
- Sleeping with the Enemy. Battered wife Laura tells her swimming class classmates that she also takes gymnastics lessons in order to explain "all those terrible bruises."
