Bedroom Adultery Scene

Are Canadians always this polite?

The moment of revelation often leaves an indelible scar. How did you discover the affair? [...] [W]ere you treated to a full-frontal view? Simon walked in on his wife and the contractor in his own bed. He hasn’t slept in it since.

— The State of Affairs

Alice and Bob are having a tryst at Alice's house. Then they're interrupted when Alice's husband, Charles, returns home unexpectedly.

There are a few different ways things can play out. In the classic comedy version, Bob must hide from Charles inside the house, or that very room, until he can escape. Popular hiding spots include: under the bed, in the closet, and behind the curtains. The Closet Shuffle may be involved. Alternately, Bob may opt to flee immediately—often by jumping out a window while still undressed.

Some versions will imply the above, rather than outright showing it, by beginning the scene with Charles and Alice together in their bedroom—then Bob pops out of some hiding spot, surprising both Charles and the audience with Alice's infidelity.

Or, Charles may catch his wife and her lover completely off-guard, usually in the form of a Home-Early Surprise. This is what's most likely to happen if the scene is being Played for Drama. But there's plenty of comedy potential for this approach, as well. Charles could have some hilariously unexpected reaction to the discovery. Alice and Bob could make up a really implausible explanation for what they were doing, naked in bed together—and Charles might even fall for it. Tends to be used to invoke a Plot-Inciting Infidelity.

Subtrope of Interrupted Intimacy. Compare and contrast Bedmate Reveal, in which the couple is discovered after the act and thus can be used for the equivalent of a Sexy Discretion Shot, or a situation where it's Not What It Looks Like. It can overlap with Primal Scene if a kid catches their parent engaging in adultery, resulting in even more mental scarring than if they caught their parents doing it with each other.

---

Work Subpages:

• Revenge Films

Examples:

Advertising

• One 'Cleaner Close' ad for Daz washing powder has protagonist Pat convinced she's finally caught her husband Mick with Jackie. She bursts into Jackie's bedroom demanding to know where he is. Jackie plays dumb but Pat realises Mick is hiding in the closet due to the smell of Daz Citrus Blast on his underwear.

Comic Books

• Persepolis: Marjane walks in on her boyfriend in bed with another woman, ending their relationship instantaneously. Looking back, she recounts how it was straight out of a bad American romcom.
• Red Ears: This is a frequent scenario in this erotic comic strip series and several variations on the theme have been thought up.
• X-Men has a famous scene during Grant Morrison's New X-Men where Jean Grey bursts into the psychic room where Scott and Emma Frost had been having psychic trysts.

Comic Strips

• A cartoon in a magazine had a man come home to find another man in his bed. He opened the closet, finding his negligee-clad wife there, and asked her, "Can't you do anything right? He's supposed to hide in the closet."

Fan Works

• In A half elf's wish, after learning from Siesta that Louise is having an affair with Julio, Saito decides to find a way to surprise Louise so that he can see the truth. With help from Queen Henrietta and Agnes, he ends up in the basement of his mansion after using a mirror portal in Henrietta's bedroom. When Saito opens the door to Louise's room, he, Henrietta, and Agnes discover Louise and Julio having sex. Seeing this, Saito angrily says "Now I see what I was to you," alerting Louise and Julio to their presence before leaving the room, with Henrietta following him. Afterwards, Agnes tells Louise that she will be taking Louise to her family's estate.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: After being taken prisoner by the Wolf, Jaime is brought to a bedchamber from which several half-naked men emerge, one of them still pulling his pants up, and pushed inside to see Cersei naked in an obvious state of Interrupted Intimacy. He doesn't care, because he thought she was dead the past few weeks.
• Near the start of the Pokémon. fic Torn, Delia storms out of her house after she catches her new husband Will in bed with his ex. Will had only been using Delia as a rebound and married her only a few weeks after meeting her. Delia doesn't even get a chance to talk it out with Will afterwards. When she comes back home later she finds Will gone, with only a letter explaining how he left to be with his ex.
• In What About Witch Queen? this happens twice to the same couple. Once, Kristoff accidentally notices duchess Margaret cheating on her husband with Weselton spymaster Hunter while he's roaming around their castle. Second time, Eric, Margaret's husband, is sleeping after coming back late and hears somebody walking around the room. He thinks it's a servant, but it's strongly implied to be Hunter.

Films — Live-Action

• All About E: Trish broke up with E after coming home to find her in bed with another woman. She's still bitter about it when the two meet again in the present.
• In An American Werewolf in London, this is played for laughs in the spoof film See You Next Wednesday that's playing in the porno theater where David and Jack are talking. The fornicating couple on screen are suddenly interrupted by an angry man who bursts in on them and accuses his lover of cheating on him. The woman has no idea who he is. The man doesn't know either. The angry man apologizes and walks out. The couple get busy again, and then the phone rings... it's the wrong number. "Nice movie!" David remarks.
• At Midnight (2023): Near the start of the movie, Sophie walks into Adam's trailer to find him cheating on her with a makeup artist. He tries to make a lame excuse that he was "In-Character" so it "doesn't count", but she doesn't buy it.
• In Backstreet Dreams, Dean walks in on Lucy in bed with Paco and kicks him out of the house. A minute later, he learns that Lucy let Paco beat Shane to stop him from crying. Dean kicks Lucy out, too.
• Beaches. Hillary returns from a trip to find her husband sitting at the breakfast table with another woman—wearing her robe!
• Below Her Mouth: Jasmine is caught while having sex with Dallas by Rile, Jasmine's fiancé, in the tub.
• Also referred to in Closer. When Dan and Anna confess their affair to their respective partners, they answer "yes" when asked if they've ever brought them to the apartment.
• Referred to in The Descendants when a man confronts his wife's lover and asks him if he's ever been in his bedroom, which the man admits to.
• Dog Days (2018): When Liz comes home, her dog Sam trots up to her carrying a red bra that's not hers. Confused, she walks towards the bedroom, where she hears her boyfriend Peter with another woman. She kicks them both out.
• The Eel: Played as dark as this trope can get, when Takuro comes home, finds his wife having sex with another man, picks up a knife, and murders her.
• Girls Like Magic: Jamie and Maggie get caught by the latter's fiancé after they impulsively start to have sex in their room. They break up after this.
• The Last Boy Scout introduces Bruce Willis' character as the cuckolded husband in this scene... and as a cop, he correctly sniffs out that the other guy is hiding in the closet and nearly shoots him.
• In one of their films Laurel and Hardy are being pursued by their awful wives. As they run down an alley behind a hotel, one of the wives raises her shotgun and fires. At the sound of the shot men jump out of every window in the hotel, in their underwear and holding their pants, and run away.
• Comically seen in Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams when Cheech hides under the bed as the husband and wife have sex and the bed collapses on him.
• In On the Buses, Betty tries seducing Stan once he's in her bedroom but doesn't get very far until her old man comes home and Stan has to flee for his life.
• Perfect Addiction: Sienna comes home and finds her boyfriend having sex with her sister on the couch in the front room.
• In The Pink Panther (1963), Sir Charles Lytton is visiting his lover Simone in her hotel suite, when her husband Inspector Clouseau returns. A lengthy Closet Shuffle ensues, as Clouseau keeps almost discovering Charles.
• Pitch (2009): Gene discovers his wife and another man asleep and naked in bed together, their clothes strewn on the floor.
• She Hate Me: Jack and Fatima broke up after he caught her having sex with a woman in their bed.
• The protagonist of Silver Linings Playbook comes home to find his wife having a Shower of Love with her co-worker.
• A humorous variation in The Spanish Apartment when one character's boyfriend shows up unexpectedly, she ends up hiding under the bed while her brother, previously the Annoying Younger Sibling, gets into bed with her lover and passes him off as his.
• Steam (2007): Although they aren't married, Elizabeth catches Niala (her bisexual girlfriend) having sex with a guy in her bed. She's outraged naturally and dumps her at once.
• Throw Momma from the Train. Owen is hiding behind the couch upon which Margaret and Mr. Lopez are having sex...and takes the time to flip through an issue of Us Magazine. The phone rings, and Owen pushes it to where the oblivious Margaret can reach it leading to Margaret being able to have sex and carry on an intelligent telephone conversation with her agent at the same time.
• Danny DeVito's character is introduced this way in Twins (1988).
• In Wanda Nevada, Beau tells Wanda how his marriage ended. When he left the army after serving in World War II, he decided to surprise his wife at home instead of letting her know he was coming. He found her in bed with his best friend.
• The Woman in Red: Teddy is about to have sex with Charlotte when she gets a call from her husband to say he's come home early. He then has to hide outside on the window ledge to avoid them being caught together, with people below mistaking him for suicidal. They can then be heard having sex inside by Teddy.
• Early in Working Girl, Melanie Griffith's character walks in on her boyfriend and his mistress.
• A Year and Change: Owen catches Pam in bed with his friend Pete the morning after the New Year's Party. Owen pretty upset about it, despite having cheated on her at the party the night before with Pete's cousin and had given Vera his phone number.

Jokes

• A popular topic in Russian Humour.
  • Example:
    A man came home after a business trip. The same day in the middle of the night a naked man with a knife jumps out of the wardrobe and shouts: "I am fugitive criminal Ivanov!" and then run through the door. A few seconds after that another naked man jumps out of the wardrobe and shouts "I am police detective Petrov, have you seen where fugitive criminal Ivanov went?" The confused husband gestured to the door. "Thank you, citizen—SWAT team, follow me!"
  • Another example, with men of different nationalities react to walking in on their wives in bed with a lover:
    American: Ma'am, I must ask you to leave my house immediately.
    English: Excuse me, I seem to have come in at a bad time.
    French: Oh, may I join you?
    Russian: [during Soviet times] You slut! You're lying here, while they're selling fish around the corner!
    Scottish: You could have at least turned off the lights...
    Spanish: Just lay on top of her buddy, then one bullet will be enough!
• Three men arrive at the pearly gates at the same time. Saint Peter asks the first how he died. "I thought my wife was cheating on me, so I went home early and rushed into the bedroom. She was naked in bed but alone — then I spied a man out the kitchen window dressing himself as he ran down the front walk — I threw the refrigerator out the window at him and I had a heart attack from the strain." Saint Peter asks the second man how he died. "I was late for work and ran out the front door of my apartment building tying my tie when all of a sudden a refrigerator came down and crushed me to death!" Saint Peter turns to the third man and asks how he died. "Well, I was just sitting in this refrigerator, minding my own business..."
• A man arrives home early and finds his wife in their bed, only covered by a sheet.
  "Uh, honey, why are you in the bed in the middle of the day, buck naked?"
  "I... I have nothing to wear!"
  "Oh please," the man replies, steps over to the wardrobe closet and yanks the door open. "Let's see... here's a green t-shirt... a red dress... blue jeans... Oh, hi, Jim... a purple blouse..."
• 1950s comic Myron Cohen told the joke of the man returning home to find his wife in bed and a man hiding in the closet. He challenges the man to explain why he's in there and the man shrugs nonchalantly and answers "Everybody gotta be someplace."
• A man comes home early and finds his wife in bed with another man. The husband shouts "What the hell is going on here?" and his wife turns to her lover and says "See, I told you he was stupid."

Literature

• In a Maeve Binchy novel a woman realizes that her boyfriend is cheating on her when she calls their home and not only does another woman answer, she realizes that the woman must be in their bedroom, because that's where the phone is.
• Near the beginning of The Bone Clocks, Holly Sykes shows up unannounced at her boyfriend's place hoping to move in. Instead, she walks in on him in bed with her best friend, catching a good glimpse of her friend's naked body.
• The Crosses-Boy's Counselor: In the backstory, Dover walked in on his wife having sex with his best friend. It led to their marriage dissolving and Dover's friendship with the other man ending.
• In one of the Flashman novels, Flashman catches his wife and Lord Cardigan in the act. Lord Cardigan greets Flashman and calmly walks out the door. Despite the circumstances (not that he of all men is in any position to pass judgement), Flashman has to admire his sangfroid.
• Kea's Flight: Brandon walked in on his wife Caitlin in the arms of another woman. The other woman was executed for homosexuality; Brandon convinced the board that Caitlin was an innocent who had been led astray, but Caitlin was voluntarily put down the next day.
• Nickel Plated: Mikey, one of Nickel's former clients, paid him to help him with a divorce. Nickel slashed the wife's lover's tires so Mikey could catch them in the act.
• Of Fire and Stars: Thandilimon catches Dennaleia, who's engaged to him, in bed with his sister on the morning after they'd finally slept together.
• On the Street Where You Live: Emily recalls that she'd just arrived home in Albany after visiting her parents in Chicago and walked into the house with her suitcases, where she found her now ex-husband Gary and ex-best friend Barbara canoodling. Emily simply picked her cases up, walked right back out the house and checked into a hotel.
• Subverted on several counts in La Reine Margot: it doesn't involve sex but two unmarried couples enjoying a private dinner (which for the standards of the time was just as bad, even though the lovers are too romantic to actually try anything funny), and the husband doesn't care that his wife has a lover since he has a mistress, and is actually on good terms with the lover. The one who does care is the king of France, who does not care to see his sister the queen of Navarre caught in an adultery scandal with all the diplomatic complications that would ensue. It culminates in one of the funniest scenes in the book where the king demands entry, the lights go out, there's a Closet Shuffle where Margot's lover Le Mole runs into her husband Henry (who was coming through the secret passage on unrelated business), and the queen grabs a man's hand.
  "We are saved!" murmured Marguerite, seizing a hand which she took for that of La Mole. "The King thinks my husband is one of our guests."
  "And I shall let him think so, madame, you may be sure," said Henry, answering the queen in the same tone.
• Wicked Good: Archer and her husband Wayne divorced when Rory was eleven, after Archer caught him with a member of his acting troupe.

Live-Action TV

• In the Cold Case episode "The War At Home'', the Victim of the Week discovered her husband's affair with their neighbor after walking in on them in their bedroom. (Ironically, neither he nor his mistress was her killer).
• The Company You Keep: Emma comes to a hotel and finds her boyfriend in bed with another woman, learning he's been cheating this way.
• Desperate Housewives: In the first half of season 6, Bree is having an affair with Karl Mayer behind her husband Orson's back. By "The Coffee Cup", Orson becomes suspicious of her comings and goings, and asks Angie Bolen to investigate the matter for him while he's away on a golfing trip. Angie is hesitant to believe that Bree is the kind of person to cheat on her spouse, until she happens to see Karl show up at Bree's doorstep that night. Angie watches as Bree and Karl head upstairs to the bedroom to have sex. Things go awry when Orson unexpectedly comes home early, prompting Angie to call Bree up and warn her. Bree hastily stuffs Karl's clothes and shoes under her pillow while Karl is left having to hide outside on the roof fully naked, and (to his embarrassment) in a place where Angie can see him. Angie then heads inside, claims to Orson that she was the person that Bree was having wine with (to explain the wine glasses he'd found in the living room), and sends him out of the bedroom long enough to slip Karl his things. As she makes clear to Bree, though, her covering for her was to protect Orson, because she thinks that he may be suicidal.
• Subverted in a Devious Maids episode, Adrian finds about his cheating wife, but wants to film it as evidence for divorce. He ends up paying, er, paymurdering his cuckolder bodyguard to leave.
• In the second What If? episode of Friends, Rachel, who's has been married to Barry for several years in this reality, walks in on him and a dog walker.
• General Hospital. Bobbie drives to her family's cabin to surprise her husband Tony for their anniversary and finds him in bed with his girlfriend Carly.
• In the Heat of the Night: The plot of the 1990 episode "Triangle" is set up by one of these: An outwardly mild-mannered man, who is a community and church leader and presents himself and his family as the ideal all-American family ... kills his wife and her lover when he catches them in bed and in the act of hot, lustful sex. (FWIW, it's only afterward that his son reveals that their home life was not as his father made it out to be. And yes, the man is later caught, but only after the police track him and his daughter to their lakeside cabin, where he plans to rationalize his act to his daughter and hold her hostage to ensure his freedom.)
• One Life to Live. Nora's Sexy Secretary Georgie doctors photos to make it look as if she and Nora's husband Bo have engaged in this (they haven't).
• A Lifetime Movie of the Week has a woman coming home from a trip with her children to find her husband and his mistress cavorting—with the woman wearing her nightgown!
• Spoofed in the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Strangers in the Night," where there is a whole crowd of lovers. The husband doesn't notice them, and eventually wanders off, ruining the sketch.
• Motherland: Fort Salem: When Tally is caught with Gerit by his wife Hilary, it seems like this, but then gets subverted. It turns out Hilary not only knew about their affair, but set this up for her to find them. As a compromise, Hilary allowed Gerit to have sex with Tally so long as she could join them. However, Tally isn't interested in that idea.
• The Musketeers: Aramis is introduced in bed with Cardinal Richelieu's mistress. As they're getting dressed, the Cardinal arrives unexpectedly which sends the mistress into a panic. She persuades Aramis to climb out the window to avoid being caught. He avoids the Cardinal but Athos and Porthos walk past and make fun of him for his antics.
• My Name Is Earl: One Thanksgiving while Earl and Joy were still married and Joy was involved in an affair with Darnell, Earl came home with the turkey, and Darnell hid in the closet. Years later, Earl and Darnell bond over the naked dance Joy performed during that incident.
• On Port Charles, Karen flies home to surprise her husband. She doesn't find him, but she does find several items of women's clothing. Soon, the woman herself arrives. When Karen demands an explanation for the clothes, the woman feebly tries to claim that she stayed there a few times after a late shift (they're cops), but Karen doesn't buy it and presses further, forcing the woman to admit that she is indeed sleeping with him.
• The Spencer Sisters: Darby comes home early in "The Scholar's Snafu", the pilot, and soon discovers her boyfriend was having sex with another woman (who's hiding inside the closet).
• This trope gets Played for Drama in the Tales from the Crypt episodes that involve it, given the horror-themed nature of the show. Examples include "Split Second" and "Staired in Horror".
• In addition to a few straight examples, Two and a Half Men has an odd inversion: the lover is in the bed and the husband is in the closet. Except in this case the husband is actually a mannequin that Rose "married" in her latest scheme to win over Charlie.

Music

• A plot in many country music Murder Ballads. Often set up by having the main protagonist tell how he had been on the road or at work for several days and not been home, and was looking to arrive at home early and by surprise to greet his wife and kindle some passion ... only to discover that the wife had been cheating on him — often because he was away for days on end and she needed someone to satisfy her sexual needs — when he walks in on his wife and another man making love in bed, and then he kills them both in a fit of rage. Songs of this genre have included "The Cold Hard Facts Of Life" by Porter Wagoner, "Blood Red and Goin' Down" by Tanya Tucker, "Radio Lover" by George Jones and "Papa Loved Mama" by Garth Brooks.
• This would be why R. Kelly is Trapped in the Closet.
• Happens in the video for Jill Sobule's song "I Kissed a Girl" (not to be confused with the song of the same name by Katy Perry). The video shows the story of two neighbor women in a 1950s-esque neighborhood, one of whom is married to Fabio, and one afternoon they act on their Unresolved Sexual Tension. Fabio comes home and greets his wife, who is in bed, while the neighbor woman is hiding under the bed.
• "Melody" by The Rolling Stones from Black and Blue
  Open up, baby, you got someone else inside
  I'm going to come get you dead or alive
• "Hideaway", the opening track of Mystery Jets 2008 album Young Love, starts with this:
  I've been running around, running around
  Don't make a sound, don't wanna get found
  I've been hiding behind the blinds
  But in my mind I don't want to be that kind of guy

Trick's on him; he's been so indiscreet in other ways that the other man knows who he is and is plotting his revenge...

• The Mercedes Lackey song "Lovers Untrue" uses this as the setup for a joke. Two lovers swear to be true to each other until their dying day, then both immediately start having affairs with other people. In the final verse, they catch each other cheating on the other simultaneously, and then the man says "Well, I guess we must be dead!"
• The traditional song "Our Goodman" (Child Ballad #274, probably better known as "Seven Drunken Nights", as recorded by The Dubliners) involves a wife explaining away evidence of her adultery, with each explanation more of a stretch than the last. In the final verse, the husband catches his wife's lover in the bedroom. The wife tries to claim he's really a milkmaid, and the husband sarcastically notes that he's never seen a milkmaid with a beard before.
• In Jon Secada's song "Too Late, Too Soon", the protagonist takes an early flight to get back from a business trip. . . only to find his wife in bed with another man.
• Well, it's a bathroom adultery scene to be specific, but this is the basis of the whole song "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy:
  Honey came in and she caught me red handed
  Creeping with the girl next door
  Picture this, we were both butt naked,
  Banging on the bathroom floor
  How could I forget that I had
  Given her an extra key?
  All this time she was standing there
  She never took her eyes off me
• Sawyer Brown's "All These Years" starts off with one of these, but it's a wake-up call to both husband and wife about how much they've been neglecting their marriage.
• It's the topic of Maroon 5's song "Wake Up Call".
• it seems to happen at the beginning of Camila Cabello's music video for her song "Havana"... just to immediately turn into a weird Sex in a Shared Room and then into a Closet Shuffle, and then into an Identical Twin Mistake and then into a Wacky Marriage Proposal (whew!).
• Infamously, Renaissance Music composer Carlo Gesualdo discovered his wife in bed with another man and stabbed them both to death on the spot. He was acquitted on the grounds that it was a crime of passion, but most of his later madrigals have angsty texts reflecting the themes of guilt and betrayal.
• Wynonna Judd's "I Saw the Light," is a variation; she doesn't even need to make it into the house, only the porch, before she can see she's being cheated on.
  Baby when the curtains moved
  I couldn't believe the view
  I saw the light in your window tonight
  I saw two shadows holding each other tight
  I know the truth when I look in your eyes
  I saw the light in your window tonight

Mythology

• One Greek myth claims that Hephaetus was so wroth to learn that his wife Aphrodite was cheating on her with Ares, that he trapped her bed with a golden net under which the two gods were trapped during intercourse, after which Hephaestus confronted them, and humiliated them by inviting all of Olympus to look at their adultery.

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto V: In an early mission, Michael discovers his wife cheating on him at home with her tennis coach, triggering Michael's berserk button and leading to a conflict that sets off the game's main plot.
• An off-screen example in the backstory of The Walking Dead. Lee catches his wife in bed with a state senator and murders him, ending up in police custody at the start of the game.

Web Comics

• El Goonish Shive has a variant where Susan catches her father making out with another woman while her mother is out of town.
• Hark! A Vagrant uses this setup for a joke about Canadian politeness. When the husband finds his wife in bed with another man, everyone involved apologises profusely, including the husband.
• The Perry Bible Fellowship has a funny one where couple are two Anole lizards, and the interloper sneaking out is a Chameleon.

Web Original

• A motivational style◊ poster (link currently non-functional) showing a Japanese business man arriving home, passing through a corridor with a Wall of Weapons, with his supposed wife in bed with another man on the other side of the wall, with the words: "This will not end well." Which is then subverted with a follow-up showing the three of them in bed together.
• In Dina Marino, Trixie caughts her girlfriend Carla cheating on her with Geltrudino.
• Manga Soprano:
  • "My twin sister, whom I had insulated, pretended to be me and did evil things.": Ram caught her first husband sleeping with her twin sister Rui, causing the former to divorce him and go no contact with the latter for four years.
  • "My sister contacted me and reported that she and my fiancée went to the pool together.": Ram caught her younger sister Hideko sleeping with her first husband while she was pregnant with their daughter Wakana, which led to the couple's divorce and Ram suing Hideko for alimony.
  • "When I bought new underwear, my mother-in-law suspected me of cheating on her" [sic]: Shiho caught her daughter-in-law Kanade buying lingerie and accused her of cheating on Alto. When he prepares to go on a business trip, Shiho warned him about Kanade, implying he would catch Kanade cheating on him in the bedroom after returning.
• MoniRobo:
  • Tatsuya found his wife Kaori sleeping with a sleazy-looking man in the bed.
  • Mikoto finds her husband Tatsuki doing it with his coworker Maira in bed when she was notified he called in sick from work.
• Otakebi: When Toshiya found things belonging to a CFO at his home. When he returned the things to the company, they went to the CFO's house where they found Toshiya's girlfriend Yuki in bed with the CFO.
• Refreshing Stories: Hiroshi's episodes are mostly centered on him getting cheated on by the Girl of the Week, so these kinds of scenes are expected.

Web Videos

• In the first episode of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Bulma recounts walking in on Yamcha cheating on her, complete with a flashback about it.

---