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Mistaken for Spies

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"Pfah! Frazie... sounds like a spy's codename."

— Later, Traitor

The characters arrive in the Adventure Town, just as soon as something nasty happens. Often, the characters are dressed in a way that's out of the ordinary or they have possessions that seem suspicious to authorities. As a result, they will end up getting accused of doing it and/or being enemy agents and temporarily incarcerated for it. Happens often to time travellers to the past, since their clothing and gear seem futuristic.

More common in the Cold War-era, or in shows that travel back to that time. After 9/11, this trope was largely replaced by Mistaken for Terrorist.

See also The Corpse Stops Here and Mistaken for Badass.

Examples

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One credit card commercial had a traveler suffering a variety of mishaps due to not carrying the right credit card. The final one has him get concussed by his overhead luggage, and then telling the customs agent (Thanks to his injury and possibly a My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels grade phrasebook) 'I am a spy' when trying to request a doctor. This gets him thrown in jail.

Anime & Manga

In Digimon Frontier, the heroes are mistaken to be working with the Digimon that took some female KaratsukiNumemon from their village once they mention that they're Legendary Warriors (as the kidnapper turned out to also be one). Things don't get cleared up until they discover Grumblemon wants nothing to do with them as the kids are dangling from a cliff.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Ed and Al spend a decent amount of their time at Briggs Mountain getting accused of being Drachma spies by Captain Buccaneer, culminating in them being handcuffed and thrown in a cell while they're sleeping. The fact that they can't really explain the real reasons why they're there (investigating an Ancient Conspiracy) doesn't help.
The beginning of the Giant Robo manga has Daisaku captured by Big Fire agents in Taiwan after mistaking him for a sleeper agent trying to destroy their factory producing GR-1.
In This Corner of the World, which takes place during World War II, has a scene where main character Suzu takes a break from housework to sketch the battleships in the harbor, only for a military officer to spot her and mistake her drawing the battleships as espionage. The officer drags her back to the Houjou house and lectures the whole family, with everyone having tense and nervous faces the whole time. When the officer leaves, so does the tension...because everyone but Suzu was just barely holding in their laughter over the very idea of someone mistaking Suzu, of all people, for a spy.
Happened to Tsukune in Rosario + Vampire when the school thinks he is a spy for humans attempting to destroy the Monster World.
Sorta happens to Yukiko in The Rows of Cherry Trees, as she's mistaken for the typical "scoop kid" associated to gangs of thieves when she tries to take a closer look to her old home, which her family had to sell due to her father's illness and the associated hospital bills.
The 90s anime version of Sailor Moon has Ami Mizuno first being mistaken as an agent of Queen Beryl's before she is revealed to be Sailor Mercury.
Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry with some rather justified suspicion being thrown at Sara after her identity is revealed. The big bad is her brother, after all.
Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: When the main characters arrive in the town of Spirit, they are accused of being behind the disappearances of various local children.

Asian Animation

The premise of Season 7 episode 40 of Happy Heroes hinges on the Ambassadors of the dog and cat planets thinking that their assistants, Gongsun Dog and Show Cat, are acting as spies for their respective rival planets after a fight between the two comes off more like they're being nice to each other.
In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Mighty Little Defenders episode 3, Wolky gets a call from General Wolf informing him who the spy for the wolves is going to be... but the call ends abruptly before the General can tell him that Wolffy is the spy, and Wolky remembers a "we" sound from the General right before the call ended and thinks the spy is Weslie; he then goes to him for advice on his traps for the other goats. General Wolf was actually talking about washing apples.

Audio Plays

Big Finish Doctor Who:
- In The Church and the Crown, Buckingham is convinced that the Doctor is foreign spy, and tortures him in an effort to find out who he is working for and how much he knows.
- A recurring theme in Son of the Dragon. Maria accuses Erimem of being a spy for the Sultan (and the letter she is writing to Peri in English of being a secret cypher). Radu accuses the Doctor of being a spy for his brother when he returns to Radu's camp. Vlad accuses Erimem of being a Hungarian agent when Radu's troops are closing in and it becomes obvious that Hungary is not coming to his aid.

Comic Books

Archie Comics: In one of the time-travelling strips, Jughead ends up in the middle of the Civil War and is immediately accused of being a spy for the South until Lincoln himself pardons him.
The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In issue #3, Indy is arrested and imprisoned in an army camp after being mistaken for a saboteur by the the paranoid Colonel Bulldog Hannigan.
Tintin: In Destination: Moon, Detectives Thompson and Thomson were mistakenly arrested by Syldavian security officers who thought they were were Greek revolutionaries thanks to their habit of wearing the most stereotypical, often outdated foreign outfits. They seem more upset over being mistaken as Greeks when they wanted Syldavian outfits, before it's explained that they were sent by Interpol to provide protection for the scientists there.
The Warlord: This happens to Mariah when she is accidentally stranded back in the USSR after spending years in the Lost World of Skartaris.

Comic Strips

Dan Dare: Subverted in Operation Saturn. The Saturnian rebel leader Tharl accuses Dan and Digby of being spies of the ruling High Lords. It turns out, though, that Tharl never actually believed this and it was just a ruse to make sure he could trust them.

Fan Works

Yellowfang was killed in Bluefur's Choice when she crossed into ThunderClan territory. Despite being emaciated and old, Thistlestar still worried she was a ShadowClan spy.
Cadance of Cloudsdale: Cadance angrily tells off Cadet Shining Armor after bumping into him while leaving the Sparkle residence, thinking him sent by Celestia to monitor her (after she assured Cadance she would never do such a thing). Celestia says it best:
Celestia: The young guardstallion you startled outside the Shine residence was Twilight Velvet's son, on his way home after an unexpected reassignment. He is not a spy of mine. He was outside the house because it is his house."
Fear the Superhero: When Shirou is caught trying to smuggle guns into Japan, MBI assumes that Shirou is a spy for someone trying to learn about the Sekirei Plan. Not without reason, there were two others that very week, who were trying to do the same thing.
Flipside: Due to Nightmare Moon — who mistook him for a herald — forcing Spike to announce her return and overthrow of Celestia, all of Ponyville (led by Rainbow Dash) becomes convinced that Spike is working for her. After she's defeated and Celestia explains what happened, Spike ends up drowned in apologies. And no one seems willing to let Rainbow Dash forget her accusations.
In the MLP / Green Lantern crossover In Brightest Day, after getting the Red Lantern Ring, Rainbow Dash assumes that Twilight is secretly working for Nightmare Moon due to how she was asking around town (and was the only one who knew Nightmare Moon by name before she introduced herself) and immediately tries to kill her.
When first meeting Frazie in Later, Traitor, Coach Oleander thinks she was a spy who broke in, thinking her actual name is too ridiculous to be anything other than a codename.
The Team Fortress 2 fan-short Mann Swap features RED Scout and RED Heavy in a "Freaky Friday" Flip, which causes their teammates to mistake the pair for spies, as is only natural for the setting. It takes Engineer to discern that they're just a pair of squabbling idiots in the wrong bodies attempting to hide their mistake.
In Memento Vivere, a Final Fantasy X fanfiction, Rikku is mistaken for an assassin when she goes into Heroic Safe Mode in Bevelle.
In the Pony POV Series, a bout of paranoia over supposed Hooviet spies and a typo in the personnel files leads to an overeager Royal Guard believing Sunset — one of Cadence's hoofmaidens — is a spy and dangling her over the edge of an airship (her wings were bound, so she was in actual danger). Fortunately, another Guard realized what was going on and broke it up before she was hurt.
A Very Kara Christmas: In this story set in 1959, Linda Lee's odd accent -which she lost after a couple of weeks-, strange habits and unexplained absences make her roommate Jennifer think Linda may be a Communist plant.
In Wander over Foster's AU One-Shot, Bloo thinks that Wander is an alien spy sent to Foster's in order take back information to alien invaders. While Wander is an alien, he isn't a spy. He had an accident and became stuck on Earth without a way back to his friend Sylvia.
The general premise of Whispered Tribulation involves Eraserhead and a posey of UA teachers and heroes who, through a series of coincidences, come to the conclusion that Izuku has been gathering intel for the League of Villains.

Film — Animated

The plot of Cars 2 involves British intelligence agents mistaking Mater for an American ally.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Happens to Phoebus and Quasimodo when they try to sneak into the Court of Miracles to warn the Parisian Gypsy community of Frollo's imminent attack. Considering that both men are very heavily associated with Frollo (Phoebus is the former captain of Frollo's guard, and Quasimodo was raised by Frollo) it's no wonder they were accused of espionage. Oh, and the entire accusation is a musical number.

Film — Live-Action

In The Big Lebowski, The Dude is mistaken for a private detective by Delfino, another private detective who is searching for Bunny Lebowski.
Frantic. The wife of the protagonist is kidnapped when she's mistaken for the next link in a courier chain after picking up the wrong suitcase at the airport.
Ghosted: Cole Turner travels to London hoping to track down Sadie Rhodes, a woman he just had an all-night date with. Trying to locate her through a tracker on his inhaler that he accidentally left in her bag during the date, he tracks it to a remote underpass, where he's promptly ambushed and abducted by arms traffickers who think he's a legendary CIA operative known only as "the Taxman". It turns out that Sadie is the Taxman, a fact Cole finds out when she barges in to kill his captors as they're about to use insects to torture him for information.
The Italian comedy movie Go For It with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. Early in the movie, the two main characters seek to get free tickets at the airport. They claim to be individuals named Steinberg and Mason who had just been called for on the speaker. They get their tickets, not knowing that the tickets' original purchasers are two CIA top agents (killed from the villains). So, after they meet their CIA boss, they are forced to track down a mysterious secret organization hiding in Miami Beach.
Hot Tub Time Machine: Blaine and the ski patrol buddies mistake the gang for Soviet spies because of their 21^st century technology (cell phones and iPods), which are confused for spy equipment, and Lou's can of "Chernobly" (a Russian energy drink with Cyrillic writing), which they assume is some kind of bomb.
Happens in Laughter in Paradise, although not in the usual way. Captain Russell is attempting to explain to his fiancee and her father that he needs to postpone the wedding, without telling them it is because he is planning to be arrested and sent to jail for 28 days (It Makes Sense in Context). However, his evasive explanations cause them to think that he is undertaking a secret mission on behalf of the government. Deciding to roll with it, he gives answers that are technically accurate (such as saying the government will be paying his expenses while he is away), but imply that he is a secret agent.
In A Man Could Get Killed, a search is on for stolen diamonds and a government agent has been killed trying to recover them. When an unsuspecting William Beddoes (James Garner)arrives in Lisbon on behalf of an American bank, he is mistaken for the dead agent's replacement.
Wallace Ritchie from The Man Who Knew Too Little is mistaken for a secret agent by just about everyone. He doesn't mind, because he thinks it's all a play, with him cast in the role of a secret agent.
Minor variant in Moscow on the Hudson. Vladimir Ivanov, a Soviet defector, is being followed by a man in an overcoat down a street. Vladimir confronts him and demands to know why he's being followed and if he's from the FBI, CIA, or KGB. The man calmly replies he's G-A-Y to which Vladimir realizes what he means and laughs.
Subverted in Navy Seals (1990). On a rescue mission, two SEALs bust open a locked door to find a bleeding, bearded, bare-chested man lying on the floor. He screams that he is "an Egyptian sailor", causing one of the SEALs to surmise, "Bad guys thought he was a spy and beat the shit outta him!" He's actually a major terrorist leader, who cut his own face to avoid suspicion.
In the Mexican movie Ni de aquí, ni de allá (Neither from Here, nor There) starring la India Mariá, Maria is brought from her rural Mexican village to Los Angeles to work as a live-in maid for some millionaires. She gets separated from them on arrival in LAX, and due to the Language Barrier, accidentally wanders into a men's room, where she witnesses a KGB agent assassinate a defector, and through series of misunderstandings, the FBI comes to believe that she and the agent are in cahoots. Hilarity Ensues.
North By Northwest kicks off when New York City advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill is mistaken by the villains for a spy named George Kaplan. That the man he's been mistaken for doesn't actually exist and the fact that the villains adamantly refuse to believe his denials, don't help matters, leading to him being dragged into a massive espionage plot.
Subverted in the James Garner film The Pink Jungle. He goes through the whole film insisting that he's not a spy, just a fashion photographer. At the end everyone is finally convinced he's just a photographer, and then in the final scene, it's revealed he's really a spy.
Justified in Safety Not Guaranteed. Kenneth is suspected of being an enemy agent not because he's been asking highly detailed and inquisitive questions to the government's top scientists, but because he followed them up by breaking into nuclear facilities and stealing stuff from them.
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Russian officer Pavel Chekov is captured aboard the Cold War-era aircraft carrier Enterprise and detained as a Soviet spy. Younger Trekkies had to learn about the world before they realized just how ill-advised it was for Chekov to scope out "nuclear wessels" in the 1980s US. Hilariously, Chekhov is so earnestly confused during his detainment that even one of his interrogators has doubts - true, he made it to the reactor of an aircraft carrier and is obviously Russian... then again, would the Kremlin be so brazen as to send such a poorly-disguised agent who makes several bizarre claims and seems completely oblivious to the local culture and parlance?
Strange Brew: Brewmeister Smith initially writes off Bob and Doug as a couple of hicks. But when they stumble into the brewery's hidden Supervillain Lair and (unknowingly) take off with a disk detailing Smith's crimes, he suspects that they're saboteurs and takes steps to eliminate them.
Smith: They knew exactly what they were doing! They took the one disk that would incriminate me! ... We will move toward Oktoberfest as planned, and I will not underestimate our little friends again.
The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, a French comedy where the title character, an innocuous concert violinist, is marked as a spy by infighting government high-ups - he's blithely unaware of being a pawn in their scheming through the film. Played pretty straight-faced; the American remake, The Man with One Red Shoe, was considerably broader.
The Three Stooges Go Around The World In A Daze: The Stooges along with Phileas Fogg III and Amelia Carter are arrested by the Chinese after being found at the border of India and Communist China wearing Indian clothes as the justification.
François in the Timeline movie.
- While this is the reason given for killing him, it's possible that this was just an excuse, given that the English Lord who has him killed is an evil Jerkass.
WarGames: David Lightman is a teenaged hacker trying to get into the computer systems of a video game company. However, he unknowingly gets into the NORAD Master Computer, WOPR, and thinks the "Global Thermonuclear War" tactical simulation is one of the company's games, causing a scare of a potential nuclear attack. After the situation is (initially) defused, the FBI tracks him down and takes him in for interrogation, thinking he's working with the Soviets since he fits their profile of a collaborator. It didn't help that, prior to hacking into WOPR, he'd hacked into Pan-Am's systems and seemingly purchased two tickets to Paris.
In X-Men: First Class, when Charles demonstrates his telepathy to the CIA by revealing what they're thinking at that moment, they accuse him of espionage, since they can't believe he could have found out any other way. Luckily, Raven is present to demonstrate her shapeshifting abilities.

Literature

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Myne, who is in a Reincarnate in Another World situation, eventually gains an acquaintance who figures out that her behavior lines up more with an educated person enduring a Culture Clash than that of a Child Prodigy. Since the scope of that person's mind in limited to their own world, the first thing that comes to their mind is that Myne may be some sort of spy from another location.
In a The Baby-Sitters Club book, the Pike children are convinced that their new next-door neighbors are spies because they have foreign accents and proceed to spend much of the book basically harassing the couple—ringing their doorbell and running away, recording their voices, etc.
In Lawrence Block's The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep Evan is jailed in Istanbul on suspicion of being a CIA agent because he belongs to a large number of fringe organizations, at least two of which are perceived as hostile to Turkish interests.
In Brave Story, Wataru reaches the first Adventure Town just in time to be framed and imprisoned for a murder/theft. Fortunately(?), another attack that appears to be perpetrated by the same individual(s) happens while he's in jail, so the local law enforcement realizes he can't be the culprit and lets him go.
In Dead West, Gervas Klarenfeld and the Porcelain Doctor get mistaken for spies by an overzealous sheriff. Since they were newcomers from the Old World, and everybody in town mistook Gervas for an aristocrat, they were suspicious, and to top it off, they used five different languages in the same conversation (started off in German and English, switched to French as they were speaking with two French aristocrats, the two doctors used Latin for discussing the Porcelain Doctor's medical condition, with ancient Greek for some details). It was also implied that the sheriff acted on his suspicions since he wanted to take the Porcelain Doctor for a night.
Nick Velvet: Because Nick is a professional thief who frequently disappears at short notice for variable lengths of time, his girlfriend Gloria comes to the incorrect conclusion that he is a secret agent. Because it provides a convenient cover, and ensures that she won't discuss his absences with anyone, Nick allows to labour under this misapprehension for years.
Creator Isaac Asimov's Pebble in the Sky: In chapter 10, "Interpretation Of Events", Secretary Balkis is explaining to the High Minister of the Society of Ancients why Schwartz and Dr. Bel Arvardan must be spies from the Galactic Empire. Overlaps with Time-Travelers Are Spies in Schwartz's case.
Rebuild World: There is a Running Gag about enemies thinking this as part of a What the Hell Are You? reaction to Akira's apparent skill (when it's usually more his Virtual Sidekick Alpha moving his Powered Armor like People Puppets). At one point, an enemy Akira meets, Erde, takes this even further by pitying him for being a Tyke Bomb. He's not. Akira just gave him Silent Treatment instead of correcting.
In Silver on the Tree, Barney has the misfortune of being caught in Owain Glyndwr's camp while being English. Luckily for him, Merriman is on hand for a rescue.
Sonic the Hedgehog Adventure Gamebooks: In Zone Rangers, Sonic's mini adventure away from Tails in Scrap Brain City has him wander into the Outsiders camp and gets captured by the group, with the group leader Ravis believing Sonic is a city spy. If he chooses to go along with the lie instead of staying honest and getting tourted, he's called a coward and tied to a stake to be fed to vultures, ending his adventure.
Siri from Warbreaker is believed to be a spy for the Idrians when she arrives in Hallandren to be the God-King's bride, much to the shock of the court, who had expected her eldest sister Vivenna. Blushweaver, in particular, thinks this to be a masterstroke by the Idrian royal family: everyone focused their resources on studying Vivenna, and nobody gave the youngest daughter a thought. The rather sadder and more mundane reason for Siri's presence is that at the last second her father realized he was unable to hand over his favorite daughter, who really had been trained to be a spy and political actor, to the dangerous Hallandren court, and ended up sending the completely innocent Siri instead.
In The Wheel of Time when Rand first arrives to Cairhien everybody assumes him to be a young aristocrat travelling incognito with a secret mission from one of the kingdom's Houses. This suits him and he doesn't try to persuade them otherwise. Being a Ta'Veren (sort of Weirdness Magnet) helps. His actions provoke rush actions of Houses eventually leading to the murder of the king and a civil war.

Live-Action TV

Doctor Who had this happen so often, some of the audio dramas started doing a Lampshade Hanging on it.
- This is a plot point in "The Caves of Androzani". His unexplained presence on Androzani Minor leads Corrupt Corporate Executive Morgus to assume the Doctor is a spy for the President, leading to several fatal errors on his part.
- In "Cold War", the Doctor and Clara land on a Soviet submarine in 1983. Clara calmly tells the Soviets that of course she's not a spy as she can't speak Russian. The Doctor finally explains to her how the TARDIS is a Universal Translator so as far as the sailors are concerned, Clara just claimed she can't speak Russian in perfect Russian.
A couple of episodes of The Equalizer involve an innocent party who's inadvertently passed a MacGuffin by a spy ring, so have to call the Equalizer when strangers are suddenly trying to kidnap or kill them. It helps that Robert McCall is a former spy himself, so he knows how to deal with the situation.
In Goodnight Sweetheart, Gary is pretending to be a British spy. In one episode, however, the fact British Intelligence don't have him on file leads them to briefly suspect he's a German spy.
Played for laughs in an episode of Hogan's Heroes. Carter is trying to get himself arrested as part of the plan. He walks into a bar and purposely introduces himself as an American. Everyone he talks to thinks he's a Gestapo agent.
Monty Python's Flying Circus - a guest at a holiday boarding house asks fellow lodger Mister 'Hilter' how long he's staying - Hilter starts shrieking accusations of the man being a spy. Of course he was a little on edge; he hadn't slept since 1945.
Murder, She Wrote:
- One episode set in Washington, DC had the local detective convinced that Jessica Fletcher was one of these, taking everything she said as some kind of secret code. Her repeated denials only served to convince him that he was right.
  Ames: Mrs. Fletcher, just between the two of us, which one are you with?
  Jessica: I beg your pardon?
  Ames: Well, I first suspected after our talk in the garage, but that bit about Muslims and Hindus? Dead giveaway. So which is it? FBI, CIA, NSC?
  Jessica: Lieutenant Ames, I don't know who or what you think I am, but I assure you, I'm simply a mystery writer from Cabot Cove, Maine.
  Ames: Cabot Cove. Nice touch. Sounds almost real.
  Jessica: That's because it is real. Now, see here, Lieutenant. For the last time, I am not some sort of secret government agent. I'm simply Jessica Fletcher from Cabot Cove, Maine. Look. Here is my, my Social Security card, my library card, my voter's registration card. Now, do you believe me?
  Seth: Hey, Jess. You'd better hurry if you want to meet with that agent before he goes to Moscow.^note
  Ames: Mos... Best phony I.D. I've ever seen.
- A downplayed example was a regular element of episodes featuring MI-5 agent Michael Haggerty, who frequently used Jessica as cover, and whose enemies would inevitably assume that she was more involved than she was.
In the NewsRadio episode "The Trainer", the WNYX staff members discover that Dave Nelson was actually a Canadian-born citizen who moved to America when he was five. When Jimmy James asks him about this, Dave admits that when he moved, he was worried about being mistaken by the other kids in school for a canadian spy.
Jimmy James: Canadian spies. That is remarkably stupid.
Dave: Well, when you're five, you don't really understand the intricacies of international espionage.
Stargate SG-1:
- In "1969", a freak Stargate accident sends SG-1 to a missile silo in the titular year. Naturally, strangers materializing in a high-security area would likely be Mistaken for Spies; Daniel's responding in Russian to a question asking (in Russian) whether they were Russian spies didn't help matters much.
- The same thing happens at least twice more in later seasons on alien planets. Again, it's a case of strangers materializing in a high-security area, although the circumstances are a bit different. In "1969", a freak accident sent them to a missile silo in the past: the location of the stargate in the present day, but it wasn't there yet. In similar episodes later, they traveled to worlds where the Stargate had been found and was recognized as being important, but the locals hadn't figured out how to use it yet. Sometimes, some locals believe the team's story of being aliens who came through the religious artifact or museum piece or whatever they think the Stargate is, but other times, the locals jump to the conclusion that the team is attempting to steal or deface the Stargate or spy on something else of value in the same facility.
- The team is mistaken for a group of terrorists in the episode Bad Guys, forcing them to pretend to actually be terrorists while they stall to get the gate back online.
Star Trek:
- The original series had a couple examples, both involving time travel:
  - "Tomorrow is Yesterday" involves Kirk being assumed to be a spy after the Enterprise accidentally time-travels back to the 1960s — he's breaking into a U.S. Air Force base to retrieve anachronistic footage of his ship.
  - In "Assignment: Earth", the Enterprise is deliberately sent back in time to Earth in 1968. Kirk and Spock are arrested as spies when they're caught inside McKinley Rocket Base.
- This is the focus of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead". During an investigation following an explosion in Engineering, a Klingon exchange officer is caught smuggling top-secret information off the Enterprise by encoding it into his blood. Ensign Simon Tarses, a half-Vulcan member of Picard's crew, is questioned regarding his contact with the Klingon. The questioning quickly turns into a full-blown interrogation when Tarses is revealed to have been half-Romulan all along, not half-Vulcan - despite no evidence whatsoever that he actually had any part in the Klingon's treachery. Picard has to stand up against the stereotyping and obvious breach of Tarses' rights.
- In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Communicator", Malcolm accidentally leaves his communicator behind on a pre-warp planet that's on the brink of war. He and Archer go back to retrieve it, and are assumed to be spies from the other side of the war.
The Umbrella Academy (2019): In the second season, Viktor is arrested for being a Russian spy. He was going by the very Russian name Vanya, speaks fluent Russian (due to being taught it as a child), and didn't have any documents proving his American citizenship (due to a time-travel mishap).

Radio

In The Men from the Ministry during a trip to New York two poorly-worded notes One and Two left to their hotel and office back at London leave FBI and the British Government into thinking the two are spies planning on defecting to USSR.

Theatre

Woody Allen's play Don't Drink the Water. In an unnamed European country behind the Iron Curtain, the American Ambassador must leave the Embassy for business. In his absence he places his incompetent son Axel Magee in charge. Almost immediately the Embassy is thrust into a crisis as the Hollanders, an American family of tourists, come rushing in on the run from the Communist police. Walter Hollander, the father, had accidentally snuck into a high security area and taken pictures, causing the communists to believe that the family are spies. Axel digs the hole deeper and the embassy is surrounded, leaving the Hollanders trapped.

Video Games

This happens to your party in Final Fantasy V in Karnak. When you visit any of the shops, you find the prices for the equipment are unusually low. However, as soon as you try to purchase anything, your entire party is taken and thrown in jail in a cell next to one containing Cid, the inventor of the crystal amplifier. It turns out that one of the guards saw your party emerge from the meteor and thought them to be in league with the monsters.
Done to Tear and Luke in Tales of the Abyss, after a hyperresonence mishap teleports them both deep into a hostile country.
Can happen to anyone in Team Fortress 2, especially if you're among Pyros, who are tinfoil-hat wearing insane with paranoia. At least in Team Fortress 2, you can't hurt your own allies, so it's prudent to attack everyone in sight with your weapon of choice.
- The "Meet the Spy" video features this trope with the BLU Spy being mistaken for the RED Spy. The RED Spy is actually disguised as the BLU Scout. In this case, however, the characters can hurt their allies...
BLU Spy: He could be you! He could be me! He could even b—[BANG!]
BLU Soldier: [having just fired his shotgun] What? It was obvious! He's the RED Spy! Watch, he'll turn red any second now. [Beat] Aaaaaany second now... See? Red! No wait, that's blood.
Literally the beginning of Valkyria Chronicles has Welkin return to his hometown of Bruhl and gets arrested by Alicia after he sketches the wildlife and she assumes he was collecting intel for the Imperials. This gets cleared up when his adoptive sister Isara shows up.

Webcomics

In Order of Tales, Koark goes to Tenshells to visit Extranji, and finds the man mortally wounded. Upon leaving the house, Koark is accused of killing him and arrested.

Western Animation

In the very first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender Sokka accuses Aang of being a Fire Nation spy. And in the fourth ep. The Warriors of Kyoshi Aang, Katara and Sokka are accused of being this.
The Flintstones has Fred and Barney answering the wrong door to the mysterious Madame Yes. Before they know it, they're kidnapped by the mad Dr. Sinister at his volcano base, despite their constant attempts to explain themselves.
Fred: We were on our way to get some brontosaurus burgers...
Barney: And some buns...
Josie And The Pussy Cats: Happens frequently with the gang as they accidently stumble upon the bad guy's lair and discover their evil plans.
The Looney Tunes Show: The "Fawlty Towers" Plot of "Semper Lie" results as Bugs being arrested as spy when he flies into Albania disguised as his non-existent sister because he didn't want to go to the Peach Festival with Porky. It Makes Sense in Context.
In part 2 of the series premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic after Nightmare Moon took over, Twilight Sparkle was the only one who actually knew who Nightmare Moon was, thanks to her reading a book of Equestrian legends that pretty much told how Nightmare Moon would escape and when. After Twilight runs back to the library that was her house to look up more information, a suspicious Rainbow Dash aggressively accuses her of being a spy, but fortunately Applejack gets Rainbow to back off and lets Twilight explain herself.
Taz-Mania: Happens to Hugh, Drew and Taz in "Yet Another Road to Taz-Mania". Taz, Hugh, and Drew are driving to the Port Arthur Orange Juice Festival. Taz has to pee so Hugh stops at the Spy Gas station. Some spies follow him into the restroom. Meanwhile, as Hugh and Drew talk to the manager, he offers them a free orange bowling ball. When they leave, another spy arrives using the same code phrases that came up in Hugh and Drew's conversation, and the manager realizes he gave the ball to the wrong person. He sends spies to get it back.

Real Life

Happened to a delegation sent to the Khwarezmid Empire, asking for justice after one of the Shah's governors confiscated a trade caravan's goods; the governor claimed the merchants were spies. He had no more evidence they were spies than anyone else in that day had that merchants were spies. The Shah accused the delegation of being spies, killed most of them most grotesquely, and of the two he sent back as a warning, he shaved exactly half their faces and deliberately injured their buttocks. So Shah violated diplomatic immunity -definitely understood in the day as something to be respected, lest you tick off the gods- and infuriated Genghis Khan, not the nicest person on the average day. The irony is the Shah did all that as a show of strength, to try and intimidate this upstart ruler whose savagery he'd heard so much about; the Shah's troops outnumbered the Mongols, after all.^note
A trio of American hikers that were detained in Iran because the government thought that they were spies. The penalty for spying is death and the one woman they released was tried in absentia when she doesn't return, and naturally Iran was under a lot of international pressure to not do anything stupid (like killing three more than likely innocent people because of mindless paranoia). They were sentenced to something like three years in prison. Not enough to provoke the US into invading, but enough to seriously piss people off.
One of the theories about what happened to Amelia Earhart is that she and her navigator Fred Noonan were captured by the Japanese and mistaken for spies (it was shortly before World War II, after all). Another theory has the same happen, but with them actually being spies.
Due to the CIA having once used fake vaccinations to get DNA to track terrorists; actual polio vaccination workers along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have been falsely accused of spying for America, leading them to be targeted by militants. This is one contributing factor to polio having not yet been entirely eradicated.
The town of Hartlepool, UK, is famous (probably apocryphally) for hanging a monkey they believed to be a French spy during the Napoleonic Wars. The story goes that a French ship was wrecked off-shore, and when its monkey mascot was the only survivor to come ashore the locals (having never seen either a monkey or a Frenchman before) questioned him, then hanged him when he refused to answer. There's a darker version of the story - it wasn't a real monkey they hanged, but a powder monkey, i.e. a young boy employed on warships to prime the cannon with gunpowder.
When the developers of ARMA III were doing research on prospective locations for it, this happened to them.
A female reporter is repeatedly mistaken for a spy in North Korea leading to the somewhat amusing moment of a North Koean doubledealer repeatedly trying to have her buy into his spy ring and not understanding why she isn't taking the deal.

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