I Need To Go Iron My Dog / Video Games

• Not an excuse to immediately leave, but Animal Crossing: New Leaf lets you respond to an invitation for some future event (whose date hasn't even been specified) with "I'm feeling sick that day."
• In Barbarous: Tavern of Emyr Lyselle sends O'rho out for some bomb components so she can talk to Emyr about his missing daughter, who happens to be her niece.
  Emyr: I think I left my sword in the furnace.
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time gives us this gem when Dr. N. Brio runs into the past and future versions of Dr. Cortex:
  N. Brio: Uh, uh... DING DONG, DING DONG! Oh my, sounds like the doorbell! I'd better go see who it is!
• In an old DOS game titled Crime City, your character is able to vandalize the local church unless he runs into the local priest, in which he case makes a clever retreat: "I have to go paint my dog!"
• Deltarune
  • Susie and Kris are about to return to the Dark World on the second day when Noelle shows up and invites them to join her and Berdly at the library where they're working on their group project. Susie prompts Kris to give an excuse, and your choices are "Hanging out alone in the closet" and "Crime". Whichever one you pick, she tries to run with it and makes it even more absurd:
    ("Hanging out alone in the closet") You know, just... chillin' out alone in the closet. Just two friends, chillin' out in the closet, like normal. Touchin'... brooms and stuff.
    ("Crime") Y'know, just... committin'... crimes. Just gonna do some crimes and go to... jail. Forever. It sucks.
  • In the endgame of Chapter 2, Rouxls Kaard claims to the King that he and Queen are together. When Queen (who is in the same room) expresses confusion at this, he hurries off, saying "I think I left my puzzle on".
• In Google's Doodle Champion Island Games, a cat shirking exercise at a ramen place sends you to find his sneakers and water bottle when you try to convince him to continue his workout. After getting each of these, he then says he lost his lucky bandana out at sea, which he says a fish ate and then exploded. You happen to have another one to spare, and he realizes then that he's only been avoiding his responsibilities.
• Asking the Bowerstone hairdresser to follow you in Fable will result in her telling you she has to wash her hair if she doesn't like you enough.
• In Fantasy Life, when you confront King Erik and his court about the letter you received (on cute apple-patterned stationary), he immediately tells you that he has an important meeting about eggs, while his top scholar Hughes then begins "analyzing" that the throne room is rather hot.
• In Farmington Tales, having to wash her hair is Kaylee's excuse when Floyd mentions that Manny's been thinking of asking her out. When Floyd comments that he hasn't even told her what day Manny mentioned, she replies that whatever the day, there'll be a lot of hair-washing and ironing going on.
• Fire Emblem Fates contains an especially paper-thin example in Charlotte's supports with Kaze. Their B Support features her pulling her usual seduction act, and, upon being turned down, Charlotte produces the line "I have to go. I left an excuse in the oven!"
• Futurama: At the end of the Sun level, the Sun Priest invites the crew to come celebrate having gotten rid of the evil god ruling them at a party at the sun temple. Which, in the process of getting rid of said evil god, Leela has set on fire, a fact the Sun Priest is oblivious to. Making it funnier, they do have a legit reason to not be there (trying to stop Mom taking over the universe), but can't even manage that.
  Leela: We, uh, we've got a thing.
  Fry: Yeah. That.
  (Beat)
  Bender: CHEESE IT!
• Hades: Thanatos's first reaction to Zagreus' abrupt Love Confession is to suddenly declare that he just remembered he has a bunch of mortals to fetch and immediately poof out of sight, too flustered to say whether he reciprocates enough.
• In Harvest Moon DS Cute, one Heart Event for Carter has him desperate to get away from Flora's cooking. He swears up, down, and sideways that he, uh...promised to eat lunch with the player character! Didn't he? If you play along with his ruse, you gain Love Points with him.
• Kingdom of Loathing:
  • Quoth you, in an adventure: "I wish I could, but my grandmother's on fire, so I'll just be going."
  • When adventuring in the Haunted Bathroom during a Bad Moon run, you might encounter a ghost just as you're about to use the toilet, leading your character to claim "I just remembered my grandmother's on fire and my cat has leprosy."
  • Quoth you if you choose not to fight the Crimbo 2013 boss right then, "I just remembered I left a squirrel baking cupcakes at my house, and he really needs supervision."
• Kingdom Hearts III: A piece of random NPC dialogue in Twilight Town is one kid telling another, "Sorry, my mom said I have to mow the... dog?"
• Kitty Powers' Matchmaker:
  • If you get three strikes in a date, the candidate will make a cheap excuse to leave such as needing to "take [their] hamster for a walk" and dump your client.
  • In Kitty Powers' Love Life, a location manager will sometimes ask your client to do an errand for them for 30 coins by making a cheap excuse such as "needing to see a man about a dog".
• These compilation videos of reasons people have been AFK in League of Legends.
  Brb, cat got launch codes again.
  Brb, pool's on fire.
  Brb, tax collector is escaping from the basement.
  Gtg, computer store's closing.
  Brb, got to pee. Will be 30-40 minutes.
  Brb, batsignal.
  Brb, gotta take my fish for a walk.
  Brb, woodpecker is attacking my house.
  Brb, I have to comb my lobster.
  Damn it, my power went out. I'll let you guys know when it comes back!
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, Rean can encounter Tatiana joining Muse and Maya for her first tea ceremony, which Musse suggests Tatiana pair with conversation about "the fascinating books you've been reading. Those beautiful stories about passionate men." When she asks if Rean would care to join them, he replies that it sounds fun, but he has to go polish his tachi.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: The entire team bursts out with various transparent excuses when Peebee asks for help cleaning up her room.
  Drack: Think I left the stove on.
  Liam: Making ice.
  Cora: Those reports won't file themselves.
  Jaal: It's an angaran holiday.
  Vetra: Helping Liam make ice.
• No One Lives Forever. Some of the mooks do this, such as one mook reacting to an extremely envious mook's jealousy with, "Uh...I have to stand over here now."
• No Straight Roads: To get away from DK West, Eve pretends she's going to "check if the editors need [her] input'', which completely goes against her character as a pop-culture abstract artist. He still doesn't get the hint.
• In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Geeta asks Penny to come help her with the technical issues she got assigned to work on at the end of the Starfall Street segment of the game. Penny tries to get out of this by saying she has a bunch of anime to go binge. Geeta immediately sees through this and drags her along anyway.
• In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal:
  Skid McMarx: Hey uhh...dudes...I uhh..forgot to feed my goldfish.
• The Teensies in Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc are full of these excuses. For example, "I have to go invent chocolate toothpaste." or "I have to walk my flowers and water my dog." Though whether these are excuses or the Teensies just being utterly insane has yet to be decided. Rayman actually lampshades this in the GBA game Hoodlums' Revenge, noting how they say the strangest things, only to be told that they're simply reading out their parts of the script.
• The Simpsons Hit & Run:
  • In an early mission, Ned Flanders tells Homer that he's been robbed and he's ready to call the police to look for whoever stole his belongings. This reminds Homer that he "borrowed" them a while ago, and attempts to sneak off to his car to find them by sheepishly telling him, "I have to go...shuck some corn."
  • While it's not really an excuse to leave, one of the quotes Homer says when requesting a new vehicle is, "I need your help, my car is...sleeping."
• The Sims:
  • If you try to invite a Sim over to your house and they reject (usually because their Relationship Values are too low), they'll use rather incredible excuses like "I have to feed my llama" or "My psychic advisor has forbidden me to leave the house today." Strangely, if they're already there and have to leave, their excuses actually make sense, like "It's getting late."
  • The French version includes "I need to water my turtle" and "watch my houseplants grow." Also when they refuse to keep talking to you because one of their "needs" gauge is full, they will usually say "I'm just too tired/hungry/etc. for this," except it they need to go to the toilet. They'll say "I need to go put on some make-up" instead...
  • The best, of course, is "I'm waiting for the telephone repairman." Uhh...
  • In the sequel, if they particularly don't like your Sim, they don't even bother with a lunatic excuse. They say something like "If my wanting to come over was on a scale of one to ten I'd still say 'No'."
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Imperial Agent's companion Doctor Lokin excuses himself because of the cold weather in order to escape an uncomfortable conversation. Reasonable enough, right? Except he was going outside...on Hoth.
• Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town: This trope is involved in an event that the Player Character can witness. Cindy wants to get out of spending time with Mikey, the only other child in the town besides her. So she decides to pretend she has plans to go shopping with someone else that day and enlists Jacopo, the mayor's slacker son, into pretending to be the person with whom she is supposed to go shopping. However, Mikey turns out to have decided he wanted to go shopping also, so Cindy gets out of that by pretending to have changed her mind about shopping and to want to do the activity she and Mikey were initially supposed to do together instead.
• In the Super Robot Wars franchise, many people (both the Original Generation characters and the licensed featured characters) do everything in their power to avoid the infamous health drink of Kusuha Mizuha (up to and including her own lover/boyfriend Bullet). Excuses range from the mundane ("I'm going to perform maintenance on my giant robot") to the weird (Giado Beneldi's excuse was to take his lover Garnet stargazing. During the middle of the day). Kusuha, for some reason or another, thinks nothing of the excuses, even if some come across as flat-out rude or insulting.
• In Super Paper Mario some of Count Bleck's henchmen leave the castle against his orders to attack the heroes. Mr. L's excuse is that 'I need to go deflavourise the Brobot's, uh...Flavouriser.'
• In Tomodachi Life, some of the "I can't think of a rhyme" lines in Rap Battles sound like this. For example, "I'm late for a dentist appointment!"
• Undertale: "I have to go to the bathroom" is apparently the standard lame excuse for monsters. Monster food is made out of magic, and is absorbed completely by the body- hence, there are no bathrooms in the entire Underground, nor reason to use any (which is established by a side conversation in Snowdin). And yet, you'll still hear 'I have to go to the bathroom' multiple times.
  • Papyrus excuses himself from Undyne's house with this line. It might have been more believable if he hadn't followed it up by leaving the house entirely. Face first. Through a window. Made even better by Undyne remarking on how strange Papyrus' behavior was...since he usually sticks the landing. Which means this is not even close to the first time he's made this kind of exit. And even if the above information regarding monster food was disregarded, Papyrus is a skeleton.
  • Alphys later uses the exact same excuse, but it's given a darker twist in the very late game, where you are able to enter the same room she hides in. It's actually the elevator to the True Lab.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Many people will use excuses like these to get out of a raid or dungeon crawl they see as a waste of time (e.g. obviously unskilled/underleveled/both players have joined, they want to wait for another queue, there aren't enough healers...). The most common is "BRB TORNADO" (which IS somewhat believable on US servers during the spring/early summer/early fall, but which is almost always this), that actually became a meme to the point of an entire guild being named "BRB TORNADO." Others are "brb fire," "brb burglars," "brb gf going into labor," and similar incredibly urgent emergency situations.
  • In at least three cases, they were real, which often led to people feeling bad about assuming they were this: one person actually did get his place wiped out by a tornado, logging on three days later from his laptop — all he had left from the storm. Another time "brb fire" was due to a fire in a neighboring apartment which the player had to go help put out, and another time "brb cops" involved the player's roommate being suddenly arrested by a SWAT team, to the surprise of the player.
  • One thread on the World of Warcraft forums was titled "Lamest excuse you've ever given for leaving a raid early." One contributor described a party member who was silent for the entire dungeon until, half way through the instance, the formerly-silent party member suddenly announced "I have to wash my steve" and left.

---