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Unsettling Gender-Reveal

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If it makes you feel any better, Bridget eventually turns out to be a girl!
"Not her! Not her! She pees standing up!"
Gary, Bachelor Party

Sexual attraction is a funny thing, and sometimes if a character physically appears to be the right gender to appeal to their sexual orientation, then they'll become attracted to them, regardless of what that character's actual gender might be. Usually, said character's true gender is being kept secret purposefully, and they are a male Disguised in Drag or a female disguised as a male (sometimes even using a realistic mask or a Full-Body Disguise), but, whether the misunderstanding was intentional or not, due to Rule of Drama, they will find out, and it will be awkward, hilarious and possibly traumatizing for all involved.

This works equally well with straight people as it does gay ones.note  A straight female might be shocked to realize that hot guy she's been daydreaming about was "actually" a woman. Her male Gay Best Friend, who was also daydreaming about the same guy (who is "really" a girl) will probably feel similarly. Almost always there is shock upon The Reveal, probably disappointment and maybe even disgust on the part of the character who was feeling the attraction, but usually the two characters can reconcile by the end and become friends. Other times it might not bother them, or after a period of consideration, they'll decide If It's You, It's Okay.

This is both a reveal trope and a character reaction trope, when what initially appears to be compatible gender attraction is later revealed to actually be incompatible gender attraction (Example: Straight boy likes a girl, girl turns out to be a boy). It is a sister trope to the related Sweet on Polly Oliver, which refers to when what initially appears to be inexplicable incompatible gender attraction is later revealed to actually be compatible gender attraction (Example: Straight boy likes a boy, boy turns out to be a girl), although since the unsettling part is averted, this is usually a subversion (usually).

It's also worth noting that, in many examples of this trope, it's not the gender (i.e., gender identity) that's a shocker, but the genitals (granted, examples portraying crossdressers vastly outnumber any portraying those who are transgender). One common example is that a straight man is attracted to a woman, but finds out that she's transgender and has a penis. In Real Life, "trans panic" can have violent or even lethal consequences, as numerous trans people—especially trans women, and especially especially trans women from marginalized ethnicities (for example, Black people in The United States)—have been physically or sexually assaulted, sometimes even murdered, when their genitals are revealed. With the growing LGBT Civil Rights movement catching on in the Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s, this is starting to lean more towards a Discredited Trope, though it still occasionally pops up.

Compare with Shapeshifting Squick, Dude Looks Like a Lady, Lady Looks Like a Dude, Bifauxnen, Gender-Blender Name, Samus Is a Girl, Female Monster Surprise, Incompatible Orientation, and Trans Relationship Troubles. Often accompanied by Attractive Bent-Gender. Contrast Jumping the Gender Barrier, Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person, and She's a Man in Japan. A subtrope of Gender Reveal.

Formerly called "Dropped A Bridget On Him", a play on the Guilty Gear character (shown above) and the Dropped a Bridge on Him trope; references back to this title are still scattered around the site.

Spoilered pronouns are by definition self-fulfilling, so don't bother doing that.

As with all Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes, No Real Life Examples, Please!


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • Happens in this Japanese commercial for the Toyota Auris, where a person who appears to be female walks down the aisle showing off their legs only to remove their coat to reveal a flat chest.
  • This ad for sushi delivery shop Gin no sara has a man's date reveal to be a man in drag after removing his fake breasts and washing off his makeup to scare a dog bothering him.
  • An unfortunate controversial commercial in the 1990s for the Holiday Inn sees a business man hitting on an attractive woman in the restaurant where their high school reunion is taking place, only to recognize her as his old coworker and friend then known as "Bob".
  • This 1998 Subaru Forester commercial, where in some kind of spy parody, a pretty red-haired woman (complete with suggestive feminine American voice) escapes the bad guys' hideout in a Subaru Forester SUV in a Rule of Sexy fashion, managing to get out before the exit door closes. Then once safely outside, the announcer says that the vehicle can be "full of surprises," as the woman peels off her rubber mask and her wig to reveal Paul Hogan, who says in his normal deep Australian accent, "Like mine for example!"

    Anime & Manga 
  • Happens once in +Anima, when a boy named Kevin falls in love with Husky, thinking he's a beautiful Mermaid Princess. Eventually, Husky tries to break the news him that he's really the 'Mermaid Princess' without overwhelming him, but ends up screaming it at Kevin before becoming human again. Kevin, is, to say the least, rather shocked that his Mermaid is Husky.
  • Adekan: Anri and Shiro, both being effeminate Pretty Boys, have gotten people to think they're women. In one scene, Shiro is walking in a public bath house and the men around him ogle him thinking he's a woman. When they get a look at his chest they're confused and horrified.
  • In chapter 279 of Air Gear while fighting Agito, Shalott reveals to Agito that he is actually a guy (and a VERY well endowed one) before knocking him down, sitting atop him and saying after he beats him up he can "have a lick" if he wants.
  • Ai no Shintairiku:
    • This happens to Naruse when he accidentally feels up Sara on the train. He falls for her by the end of the series and doesn't care that she's transgender.
    • This occurs to Sara's entire class when Sara is Forced Out of the Closet by her teacher.
  • In Akahori Gedou Hour Lovege episode 9, the son of a businessman that Kaoruko is babysitting (the kid, not the businessman) ends up being a girl, much to Kaoruko's dismay.
  • And You Thought There Is Never a Girl Online? plays with this quite a lot:
    • Two years prior to the start of the series, protagonist Hideki proposed to a female MMORPG player who then revealed herself to be a man in real life, causing him to believe that There Are No Girls on the Internet. Partway into the series, it's revealed that the player actually was a woman in real life, and was merely invoking this trope to avoid unwanted male attention, so the show manages to pull this off twice with the same character. Admittedly, part of the reason Hideki was unsettled by the second reveal was because the woman in question turned out to be his high-school teacher.
    • The best interesting part is during the offline meet where Hideki meets Ako in real life for the first time. When you look at the entire Alley Cats Guild online, you may assume that Ako's is the only female player. But the truth comes out when during the guild's first offline meet, it turns out that Hideki's the only male player in the guild. Turns out that his other two "male" guild-mates, Schwein and Apricot is actually his classmate Akane Segawa and the Student Council President Kyou Goshouin. Guess this anime really fits the title.
  • In Aphorism, this is how Hinata and Mino met for the first time. Hinata even had a crush on him for a while: his reaction at the Bridget-dropping was throughly expected.
  • Tenma in As the Gods Will is revealed to be a boy when Akashi solves a puzzle by finding a mannequin that most closely resembles Tenma; all the other mannequins were women, while the solution was the male mannequin.
  • She gets over it quickly, but Mira of Asteroid in Love is initially shocked to learn that the "boy" she'd been daydreaming about for years is actually the girl sitting next to her in the club she just joined.
  • Ayakashi Triangle:
    • Played with; when Suzu's family see Matsuri for the first time in years, they're shocked the kid they assumed was a boy grew into a pretty girl (Suzu's little brother paying special attention to Matsuri's breasts). The truth is, Matsuri was a boy back then and still identifies as one now, but he'd recently been turned female and adopted a female identity.
    • Double Subverted when Rochka see Matsuri's crotch the instant his transformation is partially reversed. Since Rochka is a naive ayakashi that only looks human, she's very confused, but continues thinking Matsuri is a girl. Eventually, she does realize he's a guy, and holds something of a grudge over the incident.
      Rochka: I don't have anything like that! [...] I can freeze that off for you!
      Matsuri: No, don't!
  • Black Butler: While undercover in a circus, Ciel shares a tent with a skinny teen that he calls "Freckles". Turns out that he is really a girl named Doll. She offers to show him her privates so he can be sure.
  • In an omake in Black Lagoon where everybody is Gender Flipped, Rock runs into Revy and is at first relieved that she's still the same, until she unashamedly pulls down her shorts and shows him/her... a little extra something underneath.
  • In Bleach, Yoruichi debuts in the form of a cat with a male voice actor. Actually, she is a female, who surprises the hell out of Ichigo, especially when she's reveals this while naked. (Making this funnier, Kisuke Urahara's first line spoken to her cat form in the English dub was "Who's my favorite pussy?")
  • This is a primary plot point in Blue Drop: Tenshitachi no Bokura. The main character must have sex on penalty of death with his best friend, who has been transformed into a girl by the evil lesbian aliens and impregnate him. Happens in the reverse, too; the friend in question is uncomfortable with having sex with the main character as well. Then it's found out that the best friend's mind was simply put over the top of a random alien girl's mind. When they fully merge at the end of the manga, it's unknown if he is a she with a guy's mind, or a guy still trapped in a girl body. It's rather messed up regardless.
  • Despite being an Otokonoko Genre deconstruction featuring several crossdressers, this doesn't really occur much in Bokura no Hentai:
    • One day at school, trans girl Marika (who was still living as a boy) is grabbed by a female student and gets asked if she's "a drag queen". Marika is uncomfortable by the question until the 'girl' reveals himself to be a boy named Satoshi. He crossdresses constantly and even several classmates don't realize his gender. He stops crossdressing by his second year because he hit a growth spurt and couldn't fit into his sisters hand-me-down anymore.
    • Marika invokes this when at a School Festival. She was having worries about her gender and entered a crossdressing competition by saying she was a crossdressing boy. She won it.
  • Kimino from Boku to Boku is asked out on a date by a shy looking girl named Asou. She doesn't like girls but goes anyway. At the end of the date Asou is revealed to be a boy when Kimino accidentally sees him peeing in the bushes, though the other Wholesome Crossdresser Yuuki says he already guessed it. Asou transfers to Kimino's school but is an Abhorrent Admirer because Kimino likes her other friend, Josei, and because Asou is a Covert Pervert.
  • PG version in Cardcaptor Sakura. When Sakura, Kero and Tomoyo have to catch a Clow Card that has taken residence in a painting, they meet with a kid named Yuuki whose Disappeared Dad is the artist who painted it. At the end of the episode Yuuki's hat falls off and reveals very long hair, thus showing the trio (and us) that Yuuki is a tomboyish girl.
  • Case Closed:
    • The entire population of Tsukugeshima in "Moonlight Sonata" case was not only surprised that the island's only doctor Narumi Asai is the Villain of the Week, but also that "she" is a man.
    • Much later, Conan, Hakuba and Heiji realize that the "Detective of the South", Natsuki Koshimizu, is a Bifauxnen instead of a waifish boy. They only find out when she puts on her school uniform... a feminine seifuku instead of a male gakuran like the one Heiji has just put on. (OTOH the "Detective of the North", Junya Tokitsu, already knew and didn't tell them; in fact, he was surprised to learn that they didn't know about Natsuki's gender.)
    • And the reverse-drop happens again when Action Girl Sera Masumi appears. Conan, Ran and Sonoko don't find out that the handsome and devil-may-care boy that said Ran was "his type" and helped them resolve a case, was actually a Bifauxnen... until she appears in a female highschool uniform and transfers to the girls's class.
    • In manga chapter 830, it comes up again. Sera is such a Bifauxnen that even Kaitou Kid mistakes her as a boy. After having knocked her out and stripped her down to her boyish underwear and shirt to steal her clothes. Said person doesn't find out until Conan explains it to him, and when that happens a VERY upset Sera returns and kicks him to the face.
  • Claudine: When he first sees Claude, Louis mistakes him for a cisboy. It isn't until Rosemarie mentions Claude's relation to Auguste de Montesse- who everyone knows has one "daughter"- that Louis realizes Claude was born female.
  • Code Geass: In the Turn 9.34 Picture Drama C.C., Kallen, and Lelouch dress up as belly dancers to sneak into the Chinese Federation. C.C. and Kallen introduce Lelouch as their "beautiful older sister" and the men ogle him. Of course, Lelouch has a masculine voice, so when he speaks, they realize that he's a guy. However, this is unsettling to us... but the person they're there to assassinate is fine with Lelouch being a boy. As long as it's pretty...
  • Cowboy Bebop:
    • Nobody finds out that Ed's a girl until Faye tickles her! Everyone else can be forgiven since she's a pre-pubescent Tomboy with No Social Skills, and it's also a Development Gag to when Ed really was a boy in the original version of the story before being changed to a girl for cast balance.
    • A downplayed version in "Jupiter Jazz (Part 1)" — Gren is a male with female breasts due to being used for drug testing.
  • In Date A Live Shido poses as a girl to get close to the man-hating Miku. When she discovers he's a boy she has an Oh, Crap! moment and tricks several thousand mind-controlled people to hunt him down.
  • Subverted in The Day of Revolution: Former boy Megumi actually wants to drop a Bridget on the only boy at school who doesn't know her "secret" but the other girls forbid it for reasons of their own. (And when she finally did decide to tell him he wasn't listening.)
  • DEVILMAN crybaby: Ryo/Satan reveals a fully male and female body when he adopts his beautiful, angelic true form. Since angels are both sexes and since this is Netflix we get to see the dick and everything. Of course, the characters (and possibly viewer) have too much on their mind at this point to really say anything so it goes unremarked on for the whole show.
  • In Digimon Fusion episode 28, it's revealed that Cutemon, the two-foot-tall, pink, scarf-wearing Healer of Team Xros Heart, is a boy. Boys dont cry!
  • .hack: Given that the entire series is based on a fictional MMORPG, there are plenty of GIRLs around.
    • In .hack//SIGN, Tsukasa is the Bridget that gets dropped on herself. Among the initial worries that come with a revelation like this is that her gender will affect her relationship with Subaru. Turns out, it didn't matter.
    • It also happened in .hack//Roots when two female players attacked Haseo and their voices change.
  • In Dragon Ball, Krillin tries to hit on Upa, then gets embarrassed when Goku tells him Upa is a boy.
  • In the D.N.Angel manga Satoshi once went Disguised in Drag and Dark nearly kisses him before realizing he's a guy.
  • Family Compo: Misahako moves into his aunt and uncle's place and finds out they're both transgender via accidentally seeing their privates.
  • A rather bizarre example occurs in Fist of the North Star. Rei is introduced wearing a pink cloak and is mistaken for a woman, as only his eyes are visible. It's not until he speaks, and fully pulls the cloak off that his manly bod is revealed. It's worse in the anime, where Rei is pursued by several men trying to get a date.
  • Played for laughs in Fate/Apocrypha. Throughout the series, Jeanne has shown signs of jealousy towards Astolfo over Sieg's attention, not knowing that Astolfo is a guy. Then, in episode 19 of the anime, Astolfo ends up walking out of the shower naked right in front of her, leading to her finally figuring it out, and letting out one hell of a scream. Astolfo is left laughing about even on the following day. Even funnier is that Jeanne has the True Name Discernment ability, which lets her figure out any Servant's identity, meaning there's no reason she SHOULDN'T have known Astolfo was a guy from the start. To quote Sieg on the matter:
    Sieg: I didn't expect her of all people not to know.
  • In Fire Candy, pretty much all of the gang members who see Prostitute Haru for the first time assume that he is a cute, young, flat-chested girl and only later (often already past the point when it would be just disturbing) are informed of the error in that assumption.
  • Flame of Recca:
    • Happens twice in the same minute in the anime. A dim bunch of henchmen have been told to apprehend a high-school-age boy, and they identify Fuko (a very tomboyish, macho girl) as their target. Immediately afterward, the rather feminine Tokiya screams at them, "You idiots! I bet you thought I was a girl!"
    • Subverted in the manga. Recca asks Aoi three questions, the third being "Are you a guy or a girl?". Aoi answers that he's a guy, but instead of being stupefied about the gender, Recca merely brushes it off to mean that he can fight as he pleases.
  • Fruits Basket:
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Happens to Greed in one OVA in which he flirts with "Winry", who is actually the shapeshifter Envy, who is male in this version.
  • In Gankutsuou, this happens to Albert as early as Episode 2. The "woman" then proceeds to tease him about it for the rest of the series. And later appears to go on to a successful modeling career... This is an expansion of a minor character from The Count of Monte Cristo, who lured Albert into Vampa's trap.
  • In the Arina Tanemura manga The Gentlemen's Alliance, the character Maora was so feminine in the first volume that even the staff who read it thought that he was a girl. His real gender wasn't revealed until the second volume.
  • Invoked Trope in Genzo: Princess Kiku has sworn to marry the man capable of defeating her in combat, and is skilled enough to beat all suitors, but just when her head retainer brings a huge numbers of suitors to challenge her, she sneezes so hard she breaks her ribs and begs for help from Genzo. The puppetmaster, however, warns her that while he can make a perfect puppet of her, he doesn't know anything of swordfighting and thus is unable to stage a duel, so he decides to use another way: namely, halfway through the duel, the puppet Kiku's hakama unfastens and drops to the floor, revealing an humongous, erect penis under the fundoshi, prompting everyone to leave disgusted. Kiku wasn't too amused.
  • Ban and Ginji actually try peeping on the very girlish-looking Kazuki in a hot spring in an episode of Get Backers, mistaking him for a girl at a distance. Later, Amon Natsuki hits on him and tries to pull an I Kiss Your Hand. Juubei merrily skewers them both times.
  • Happens in the anime Girls Bravo, where Fukuyama starts hitting on and eventually sticks his hand into the panties of a crossdressing Yukinari . His reaction is not pleasant considering the fact that he is extremely androphobic and is allergic to other men.
  • An oddly sexuality-inverted version occurs in Glass Fleet when Holy Emperor Vetti Sforza finally manages to get Michel Volban, the leader of La Résistance, into his clutches... and, upon drugging Michel in order to have his way with him, discovers that Michel is actually a woman. Vetti seems rather put out about it.
  • At least three times in GTO: The Early Years, with different reactions each time:
    • Jun Kamata reveals that his "sister" Kaoru Kamata is actually an Attractive Bent-Gender Crossdresser. However, Eikichi, who Kaoru ends up falling for, never finds out. Kaoru doesn't disappear after that arc, playing a supporting role in later chapters. In the 2020 live-action drama Eikichi does find out (and defends him/her from a transphobic/homophobic teacher).
    • The attractive female neighbor who Eikichi and Ryuji spy on through a hole in the wall is revealed to be a Drag Queen who pranks whoever moves into the neighboring room by pretending to be a masturbating woman. This one is mostly Played for Laughs and the boys are treated as having deserved it for peeping.
    • Misato Hazuki, who Eikichi seemed to be seriously in love with, is revealed to be a trans woman. The normally sympathetic Shinomi shows an ugly transphobic side (possibly because she felt her own Belligerent Sexual Tension with Eikichi was threatened), but Eikichi is devastated when Misato leaves town, and his best friend Ryuji is understanding.
  • Hanaukyō Maid Team: In one episode, Taro dresses up as a maid. The other maids (except the one who convinced him to do so) are really shocked when he reveals his true self.
  • Hatsukoi Zombie starts with one: the New Transfer Student in chapter 1 has the same name and face as the girl the protagonist Tarou liked as a child. Turns out he's a very male boy who used to dress as a girl because of his mother's weird tastes. Except not really. She really is a girl, but decided to pass as a guy because she didn't want any more boys to fall in love with her: she can see "first love zombies", and wasn't too fond of seeing multiple, scantily clad versions of herself floating in the air.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler:
    • Poor Hayate gets forced into female clothing often, and there have been several cases of this. However, the most amusing was when he had to crossdress in order to attend an anime convention, and ends up having to fight a giant robot while wearing a maid costume. Naturally, this makes all the fanboys happy and taking pictures, even mentioning 'I saw white!' only to have Hayate respond that he's a guy. Their response? HE'S A TRAP! and, of course, take more pictures.
    • Luca, a pop star that Hayate helps after the robot hurts her, falls for it too, even going so far as to change in front of him. Due to the large amount of stress she's under, Hayate tries to keep up the disguise, digging deeper and deeper with lies. The plan finally fails when she gets into a bath that he's in, along with more than one of his female classmates.
    • One butler falls in love with Hayate, who at the moment is under a crossdressing curse (...). Although initially devastated when Hayate's cover is blown, he quickly comes around and tries to convince Hayate to travel with him to the Netherlands, where same-sex marriages are legal. (Cue Nagi's Megaton Kick.)
  • Lesbian variant: In the first OVA of El-Hazard: The Magnificent World, Makoto is forced to pose as the missing princess Fatora. Apparently, he pulls this off a little too well, because Fatora's lesbian lover Alielle climbs into bed with him. Her response basically boils down to: "Well, that's new... wait a minute... Oh, my God!" The episode ends with both of them screaming. In The Alternative World, the real Fatora tries to return the favor to Alielle, but instead finds Alielle's very similar twin brother. "It just went... squish."
  • In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Tsubomi quickly becomes smitten with the handsome Student Council President Itsuki. When she learns that "he" is actually a handsome girl, she's upset and shocked enough to end up staying home with a fever.
    Tsubomi: O...Ojou-sama?!
    • Cobraja ends up choosing Itsuki to be a Desertian (mostly) because he thinks she's a beautiful man. Then when Itsuki-as-a-Desertian swoons over a girl's uniform and reveals her actual gender, he promptly freaks.
    • Also it's implied that before all these happened, Erika also had the same unsettling experience and stayed home with a fever like Tsubomi.
  • Classic example: Shun from Here is Greenwood. He's used for a prank because of this, and the reveal (more rage-inducing than unsettling) comes when he's caught in front of a urinal.
  • Happens to people of both genders in Hetalia: Axis Powers.
    • Everyone in the surroundings of Chibitalia mistook him for a girl until he hit puberty. In this fan comic, Holy Roman Empire gets the Chibitalia bridge dropped on him.
    • Hungary herself used to be so tomboyish that she was mistaken as a boy by her rivals, and she herself thought she was a boy due to chronic lack of sex-ed in these times. It wasn't until she was a teenager that other nations realized Hungary was a girl, starting with her old rival Prussia when he sees her badly beaten after a battle and notices that her blouse and armor are torn to Navel-Deep Neckline levels, much to his surprise.
    • Also, Hong Kong used to be mistaken as a Bifauxnen, when in reality he's male.
    • China. Then again, Dude Looks Like a Lady and has a girlish voice.
    • At one point, Italy calls Germany for help because "There was a pretty girl, so I hit on her, but it turns out the pretty girl was France in disguise!" Since France has a noticeable beard, one has to wonder how Italy made that mistake. Then again...
    • Germany referred to Kugelmugel as a boy, much to Liechtenstein's surprise, though she reacts with confusion over why he calls "her" a male rather than shock.
  • High School D×D:
    • When Issei is reminded of a childhood friend of his, he recalls this friend as a boy. He is quite surprised when the friend comes back several years later as an (attractive) girl, though the friend (Irina) laughs it off because she was very tomboyish back then and she could see how he made the mistake.
    • A running gag with Gasper Vladi the vampire, whose manner of dress and speaking makes it very easy for him to be mistaken as a cute girl.
  • A mild version pops up in How I Became a Pokémon Card. Akira and his best friend Akari, a transgender boy, are beginning junior high, and uniforms come into play. Akari has to wear the female uniform, which provokes Akira to mention how he didn't believe Akari really was a "girl".
  • Ice Revolution is one long series of dropped Bridgets after martial artist and extreme Tomboy (so extreme her hairdresser likens her to a fellow transgender person) Masaki decides to take up the very girly sport of figure skating, culminating in her dropping a Bridget on an entire ice arena when she appears on the ice at her first public performance wearing a skating dress. Everyone at the rink had just assumed she was a boy up until that point.
  • In the first episodes of Inazuma Eleven Orion no Kokuin, Iwato writes love letters to somebody named Hikaru, whom he has a crush on despite knowing nothing about that person other than the name. In episode 8, he receives a letter where Hikaru reveals he's a guy, which shocks him enough to keep him awake all night.
  • Happens twice with Charlotte in Infinite Stratos: the first when Ichika has a Shower of Awkward Full-Frontal Assault moment with her, and the second to a larger percentage of the school when she reintroduces herself.
  • Iono the Fanatics: Well, Dropped a Bridget on Her really. However, inverted. Iono not only isn't uncomfortable with Tomo Senoo when she finds out the cute girl she was crushing on is a he, she's actually impressed... although this does disqualify him from becoming one of her concubines.
    Iono: Who would have thought even a dedicated skirt chaser like me could have been fooled.
  • In Ixion Saga DT, Kon instantly becomes attracted to the hot maid Mariandale... until she's revealed to be a transgender woman. Whenever she reverts to her original male voice, he's creeped out.
  • In I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying Hajime hooks up his friend Miki with his younger sister. Said friend was not aware of the fact that said younger sister is actually Hijime's clingy cross dressing younger brother.
    Miki: Your sister has a palm tree and coconuts! Arabiki... elephant... wiener! ***k o* destiny!
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Stardust Crusaders: While posing as a boy aboard Captain Tennille's ship, Anne is revealed to be a girl when she gets knocked overboard and Jotaro jumps in afterward to rescue her from sharks. Upon pulling her out of the water, he accidentally grabs her chest, and then after a very awkward pause between the two, Jotaro takes off her cap to reveal her long hair underneath.
    • Stone Ocean: Anasui's original appearance (in the manga) is as a woman, presumably using Diver Down's internal restructuring ability to give him a disguise to infiltrate the women's prison ward. Later, when she finds out, Ermes is actually pretty surprised to find that Anasui's actually male.
    • Steel Ball Run: Johnny founds out that Hot Pants is a woman by accidentally almost touching her breasts.
    • The JoJoLands: When Dragona is sexually assaulting by an officer, the cop sticks his hand into Dragona's thong and finds out he's a man. Though, it's disturbingly subverted when the cop makes a comment that suggests he's turned on by this.
  • Jubei-chan 2. Dropped on the audience and on Jiyu, who spent the entire series thinking this person was either chibi spirit Koinosuke or reincarnated baby Koinosuke... only for it to end up being Koinosuke's never-before-mentioned daughter who looks exactly like him.
  • Happened to Karin in Kamichama Karin at the end of volume 4 finding out her crush, Kirika-senpai, is female through an incident of seeing (and accidentally feeling) her revealed cleavage in an unconscious state. The audience gets the Bridget dropped on them first as it's revealed in an earlier chapter.
  • In episode 6 of Kämpfer, Natsuru inadvertently does this to Mikoto when his identity is compromised. Apparently, his clothes only change during transformations if he/she is wearing the Seitetsu Academy uniform.
  • In Karakuridouji Ultimo, Service, who up till then was the source of much Viewer Gender Confusion, got his shirt blown off during a fight in Chapter 23, revealing... a flat chest. We next see Yamato's face with an expression of pure shock. The fandom was mind-blowned too.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora finds out that "Ping" is female by accidentally getting a glimpse of her breasts while both are washing up at the lake. His reaction to The Reveal is priceless, especially if you compare the scene with the one from the game, where he and Donald find out via Goofy.
  • Ichika Usami of KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode ends up falling head over heels for Akira Kenjou, whom she doesn't realize isn't a boy. Not even when Akira turns into Cure Chocolat right in front of her (to be fair, Cure Chocolat is one handsome Precure when transformed). It takes the end of the episode and Ichika's dad pointing it out for her to realize what's going on.
    Ichika: You're... you're a womaaaaaaaaaaan?!
  • The episode of Kochikame in which Maria is introduced. His real name is Ai Asato and he became a woman after falling in love with his old coach, who looked a lot like Ryotsu. When Ryotsu himself meets Maria, he immediately falls in love with Maria, up to the point of marriage. Luckily Ryotsu manages to realize in time that Maria is a man, by accidentally feeling Maria's private parts.
  • An episode of Kodocha has a subplot where one of Sana's friends develops a crush on an upperclassman tennis player. When she confesses her love, the object of her crush explains that she's a girl.
  • In Lovely★Complex, Otani has one when he learns that Seiko, the girl he was dating, is a trans woman. He's initially shocked upon the discovery and can barely face her for a few days, but he recovers and becomes friends with her.
  • Love Live! Sunshine!!: The post-series film, Over The Rainbow, has the now second and third years of Aquors catching You Watanabe seemingly on a date with a dark-haired boy. After some time spying on them only to be caught by You, the "boy", Tsuki, is not only revealed to be a girl but also You's cousin. The other girls collapse to the floor in disbelief of their mistake.
  • Alto Saotome from Macross Frontier, a former Kabuki actor who often played female roles, gets this a lot... but trust us, he's certainly not happy about it. In one episode a salesman mistakes him for a girl and tries to sell him women's clothing, to which Alto angrily points at his Adam's apple and says "Does THIS look like a woman to you?!" Teammate Mikael loves to jerk Alto's chain by referring to him as "Princess Alto" and similar nicknames.
  • In Maria†Holic Kanako, the lesbian protagonist, meets the girl of her dreams in the form of the Mariya after transferring to all girls school. Later she walks in on Mariya changing and discovers his secret. She spends the rest of the series being relentlessly bullied by him into keeping his secret and suffering innumerable Stupid Sexy Flanders moments.
  • In Mayo Chiki!, the butler for a local rich girl, Konoe Subaru, is actually a girl. She was allowed to be a butler, which is a men's only profession, on the condition that she can hide her gender from the students at school. Her cover is nearly blown when Ordinary High-School Student Jiro accidentally finds it out. But luckily for her, he agrees to keep it a secret (largely due to blackmail from said local rich girl, who also promises to help cure his gynophobia, or fear of women, as he suffers from nosebleeds anytime a woman touches him).
  • Michiko & Hatchin:
    • Hatchin is only ten and has Boyish Short Hair for most of the series. More than a few people mistake her for a boy.
    • One episode has Hatchin meeting a soft-spoken-looking girl her age. When his father leaves he reveals himself to be a jerkass and then reveals himself to really be a boy when he pulls up his dress. Bebel crossdresses because he wants to get into travesty acting like his dad.
  • Mnemosyne: Big Bad Apos's reveal as being intersex has some truly ominous implications. Your sex governs your powers in Mnemosyne's setting so Apos gets a full shot of everything and then some.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Tieria Erde, although his voice and personality help to only keep the viewer in the dark for parts of the first episode. Still, his girly looks and the fact that he wears a fuzzy pink sweater when not burninating the countryside in his Gundam cause enough of a double-take to fit him in here. To add to the confusion, the people making the show claimed Innovators have no sex. They actually meant that they were androgynous. It was just badly translated and underwent Memetic Mutation before the correction came around. He doesn't make it any easier in the 2nd season, when it's shown that when it's needed, he can really fill out a ballgown. Maybe Eiji gave him some tips...
  • Jan Suk in Monster starts confiding in a cute blonde girl he met at a bar. Not only is she actually a man, but she's Johan, who had been impersonating his twin sister as part of a plot to make her question her sanity, and his disguise and behavior were convincing enough that even the audience doesn't suspect the truth. The eventual reveal has caused anime clubs to riot.
  • Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun:
    • Wakamatsu is subject to this in Chapter 45. While spending time with the girls while they're swimsuit shopping, he assumes that Kashima is a boy (and didn't like him because of it), and it isn't until the very end that he's informed otherwise.
    • The stinger of episode 8 of the anime reveals that this happened to Hori, with regards to Kashima. When they first met, Hori assumed that Kashima was a boy, despite the obvious signs indicating otherwise, like that she wears a skirt with her uniform. It wasn't until he saw her head to use the girls' bathroom that he realized she was a girl. Up until then, he has treated her like a buddy kohai.
  • In Moyashimon, a certain cute goth-loli attired girl is not all she seems. Oikawa goes on a rampage when this is revealed to her after she witnesses a kiss. It turns out the Elegant Gothic Lolita wearing character is actually Kei Yuuki, a biologically male character who was Put on the Bus several chapters in. She also seems to like the protagonist.
  • MM! has Tatsukichi himself. The Crossdressing Voices help out a lot. Taro then gets disappointed since his crush in the first episode is his cross-dressing friend.
  • Naruto: During the Land of Waves Story Arc, Naruto meets Haku, whom he takes for a girl (Not that this is hard), and Haku corrected him on this assumption right before he left.
    Haku: Oh, and by the way? I'm a boy. [goes away]
    Naruto: No way?! He's prettier than Sakura!
  • Natsume Takashi from Natsume's Book of Friends tends to get mistaken for his grandmother, Reiko, by Youkai on an almost constant basis. One of these Youkai is Hinoe, who really liked Reiko and Does Not Like Men. She gets as far as groping Natsume's non-existent breasts before she learns her mistake.
    Hinoe: ... Where are your boobs!?
  • Nise x Koi Boyfriend:
    • In the first story of Nise x Koi Boyfriend this occurs to the protagonist with his own boyfriend. He saw a girl and asked her out. It turns out his 'girlfriend' was actually a boy from his school crossdressing. Satoi didn't intend for that to happen. He thought Soutarou knew he was crossdressing and realized who he was. When Soutarou learns who his boyfriend is he becomes mad at Satoi because he thought it was a prank. He doesn't mind dating Satoi after learning Satoi honestly liked him.
    • Two men tried to pick up Satoi without realizing he's a crossdresser. When they do learn they act violently, though Soutarou helps save Satoi.
  • The appropriately-titled No Bra centers around a guy who finds out that his Forgotten Childhood Friend Yuki is actually a guy, despite what he looks like.
  • Poor Masamunya has one dropped by the title character of Nyanpire: The Animation seconds after developing a crush on him. In a later episode, he fantasizes about marrying him and even get's jealous of seeing him drinking blood from Nyatenshi.
  • NEEDLESS: After Blade rescues a crossdressing Cruz, he goes catatonic in response to his real, male identity. Blades restores himself to consciousness upon concluding that Cruz is cute enough that is doesn't matter.
  • In Otomen, when he was a little boy, Kasuga developed a crush on his sweet, gentle cousin. Flash-forward ten years, and imagine his shock when he learned that his cousin grew up to be a tall, handsome guy.
  • The audience of Otoboku - Maidens Are Falling For Me gets the main character Mizuho's gender dropped on them — if they didn't read the series synopsis before watching the first episode. Most of them, mortified at having cheered at the fanservice, firmly invoked the First Law of Gender Bending in their minds.
  • Ouran High School Host Club:
    • Happens to several characters when they discover Haruhi's real gender, most notably Tamaki, Kasanoda, and in the last chapter, the entire female customer base of the Host Club. And then Double Subverted when Haruhi tries to explain the truth of her sex to the club's customers, the girls assure her that they've known all along and don't mind a bit. Only later, after Haruhi and Tamaki have left for America, is it revealed that what they "knew all along" was that Haruhi was a gay crossdresser and that Tamaki was in love with "him."
    • Surprisingly does not happen with Haruhi's Drag Queen father Ranka. The host club knows that he's her father from the moment he enters the scene.
  • Author Mineyo Maya of Patalliro!. Fans are shocked to find out that the shounen-ai author is a happily married man with three kids.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • In the anime, Brock wound up subverting this on one occasion. He knew something was wrong when a ridiculously sexy scientist didn't make him delusional. Turned out to be a man in disguise working for Team Magma. In a later episode, he identifies the same disguised man out of two otherwise indistinguishable Jennies by the same lack of a Raging Stiffie.
    • And then later he accidentally hits on Harley.
    • He also failed to realize that Anabel was a Bifauxnen:
      Brock: Hey, you're not changing with Ash and me? Is it because of May?
      Anabel: No, it's because even if I don't look like the part... I'm a girl.
    • Brock also sometimes falls for Ash whenever he dressed up as a girl.
    • An example between Pokémon: Meowth and Ash's Oshawott both fall for a Purrloin (who take their attraction to his advantage and hid his gender). The expressions on their faces following the surprise revelation are priceless. The pairing name for this Purrloin/Meowth became, appropriately enough, Bridgetshipping.
  • Pokémon Adventures:
    Gold: Hi there miss. Isn't it lonely to do sightseeing by yourself? Wanna go for a cup of tea together? The name's Gold. I'm from New Bark Town.
    Bugsy: I... I'm Bugsy from Azalea Town. And... well... I'm a guy.
  • Another Bugsy example happened in Pokémon Golden Boys, another adaptation of Pokémon Gold and Silver. When meeting Gold, Bugsy referred to himself as "... a bug keeper boy..." which provoked a "You're a boy?" from Gold. Nothing else was noted though.
  • Princess Jellyfish:
    • In the first episode Tsukimi allows a woman who helped her to sleep in her all-female dorm. The next morning Kuranosuke is revealed to be male when he wakes up with disheveled clothes.
    • This is subverted several other times. Tsukimi's friends, who are afraid of men, fail to notice that Kuranosuke is male even when they find out he pads his bra (they assume he's just very small chested).
  • The "tomboyish girl wears a hat and The Reveal happens when the hat's dropped and you see her long hair" also happens to Kunimitsu Tezuka from The Prince of Tennis, when he meets Miyuki Chitose. Except it's Girlish Pigtails instead of long hair.
  • The backstory of Prism has Megu spending a romantic day with a boy back in grade school... only to discover on her first day of high school that Hikaru is actually a girl.
  • Prunus Girl: Logically, Maki "knows" that Aikawa is a guy, but he still can't help but be frequently embarrassed by Aikawa's antics (and occasionally be tempted to take up offers to personally verify gender). Meanwhile, his friend Kadoyama is hopeless over Aikawa, declaring "who cares as long as (s)he's cute!" and getting really worked up. A nameless herd of classmates seem to agree.
  • Episode 5 of Punchline reveals the fact that Yuuta is biologically female to the girls. It isn't until later that it's revealed that he is a boy named Pine who bodyswapped with Chiyoko years ago.
  • Ranma ½:
    • This happens to Akane at the very beginning of the series. She wasn't exactly thrilled to find out that the shy and awkward girl she had just made friends with was actually a guy.
    • Zigzagged when it comes to guys lusting over Ranma's female form. Ranma turning back into a guy, or revealing he's actually a guy, often does disgust and repulse them — a late manga story even has Ranma try to get away from a genuinely nice guy who has fallen for his girl form without revealing the truth because he feels the guy doesn't deserve to have his romanticized image of the female Ranma destroyed so brutally (of course, he peeks and is left disgusted). But many of Ranma's male classmates continue to ogle Ranma's female form even after learning the truth, though admittedly they never do anything other than ogle. Nabiki Tendo is even shown in a late manga story to maintain a network for distributing ecchi (borderline softcore pornographic) photos for Ranma's girlform, though the inference is that they mostly go to buyers unaware of Ranma's Gender Bender nature.
    • This happens to Ranma too, when he tries to romance Tsubasa to get "her" to give up on Ukyô and his own female side. His reaction to finding out Tsubasa is a male Master of Disguise (which includes crossdressing as a girl) is not pretty.
    • Everyone believes Konatsu to be the legendary Genius Kunôichi (female ninja), and have even braced themselves for her coming out of the closet to confess undying love for Ukyô. Then a stray bomb goes off, blows apart Konatsu's outfit, and reveals "she" is a very feminine-looking "he". Ukyô is just as stunned as everyone.
  • Himemaru in Rappi Rangai. Despite being born male, he decided to become a kunôichi because he had the "prettiest face in the village," though Kisarabi claims it was because he didn't want to put himself through the hard training to become an actual male shinobi. In either case, he seduced Raizou in his introductory chapter, and even after his secret came out he continued making passes at him every so often.
  • In Adolescence of Utena, the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie, Utena is so bifauxnen that one of the main characters (Saionji) thinks she's a guy until halfway into a duel when he manages to cut her shirt open. While surprised, it's only evident in his choice of words, his face and voice remain as level as ever (for him) and he continues to attack her.
  • The Rose of Versailles:
    • In the anime the Duke of Orleans tried to invoke this by having a very girlish and young-looking henchman impersonate Marie-Antoinette, thus ruining the marriage to the Dauphin. It doesn't work, since Oscar manages to stop him and Marie shows up in time.
    • Also tends to happen fairly often that Oscar herself is mistaken for a gorgeous man, only for Oscar or someone in the known to clear the mistake and unsettle the poor woman. Note that this did nothing to stop the creation of a rather large all-female fan club for Oscar...
  • Rurouni Kenshin:
    • Villainous Crossdresser Kamatari drops this on his opponent Misao (and everyone defending the Aoiya as well) quite dramatically, complete with pixellated naughty bits. Note that particular scene was only in the manga; in the anime he does reveal his gender too, but without flashing anything.
    • Kenshin himself often causes this with viewers, and the fact that he's voiced by a woman in the original Japanese makes it worse (and legend has it that the character designer for Guilty Gear first came up with the character Baiken after making this mistake) and he's in fact based on a historical samurai, Kawakami Gensai, who used his feminine appearance to get close to his targets and even managed to assassinate a man in broad daylight. He even hid out in a brothel at one point after an assassination.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • In the first anime Minako manages to nonchalantly gush over Haruka a few times well after everyone else was clued in to her being a girl.
    • In the Stars season, Minako, who had been a total fangirl over the boy band the Three Lights, states that all her love for them has disappeared after finding out they were really girls in disguise. She could have also been trying to lighten the mood since Usagi was hurt that people she viewed as friends (mainly Seiya) had kept such a secret from them.
    • In an early episode of the anime's R season, Mamoru and Usagi team up to take care of a baby named Manami whose mother is hospitalised after an attack from the Monster of the Week. When they change the baby's diapers, it turns out Manami is a boy and not a girl; he has a Gender-Blender Name and had been referred to with gender-neutral pronouns. (The dubs generally handle it by referring to the baby as a girl first, and then as a boy.)
  • In Sakura Gari, we have a boy named Youya... better known as Sakurako Saiki. This is not Played for Laughs as s/he is an insane, thoroughly broken Yandere, who ends up Driven to Suicide.
  • Much to the shock of the heroes of Samurai Champloo, this is not the case with the tourist they meet in one episode. Granted he IS surprised to find out the kabuki actor he had a crush on is a man, but it's a pleasant surprise.
  • Sazanami Cherry:
    • When Ren reveal himself to be a crossdresser the protagonist is confused at first however gets over it and dates him.
    • Ren gets one of these from his own sister. His sister is considerably older than him and he didn't know she was transgender.
  • School Rumble: Second Semester plays this straight at the end of the third episode. One of the characters present lampshades the moment beautifully.
    "What... the hell?"
  • In The Secret Devil-chan: Kurosaki Sou discovers this about Devil-chan, after just 10 pages into the manga.
  • In the beginning of episode 5 of Servant × Service, Yamagami woke up from being drunk and saw a woman that looked suspiciously like her coworker Yutaka Hasebe next to her. The latter then said she was indeed Hasebe and asked Yamagami to hide it from their coworkers, causing the latter to go Blue with Shock. As it turned out, it was subverted. Hasebe brought Yamagami to his sister Kaoru's apartment, and it was Kaoru who was sleeping next to Yamagami—and messing with Yamagami for fun.
  • Played for Laughs with Karara's debut in Sgt. Frog: Tamama spends the entire episode flitting between jealousy at the thought of being replaced as the platoon's cute tadpole and being charmed by the new 'recruit's' Hero Worship of him. Then, when Karara heads home, she promises to become a good future bride for him...
  • Shaman King has Amamiya Ryu aka Bokuto no Ryu, who thinks that Lyserg Diethel is a girl at first. When Lyserg reveals his gender, Ryu can't believe it until Lyserg either lets him check in his underwear (2001 anime) or drops his pants in front of everyone (manga). Ryu doesn't seem to care and remains very protective and devoted to Lyserg even after Lyserg's Face–Heel Turn and defection to the X-Laws.
  • Shimoneta: It happens to Tanukichi and the readers in chapter 10, when he mistakes Oboro for a member of Gathered Fabric and wrestles him to the floor. Which is how his foot ends up trapped between Oboro's legs, directly on his bulge. Tanukichi uses his foot to double-check and inadvertently causes Oboro to silently arch his back. In the next set of panels, Oboro is seen smiling with a faint blush, while Tanukichi sweatdrops.
  • Shugo Chara!: Nadeshiko/Nagihiko, whose family has a long-standing tradition of making its boys dress, act, and, for all intents and purposes, be girls for about the first twelve years of their lives. He had to repress all boyish desires, no matter how slight, and was forbidden from revealing his true gender to anyone.
  • Slayers:
    • In the second season of the anime, during their tenure in a Lady Land kingdom for the cross-dressing episode, a disguised Zelgadis meets and becomes smitten with the kingdom's demure and burdened princess, Miwan. After he saves her from a water demon named Evia, Miwan declares herself free from her burdens...and promptly takes all of her clothes off and reveals herself as a man. It turns out that all of the Royal guard was formed by guys in exactly the same situation: like Miwan, they were raised as girls by their moms to not being killed or taken away.
    • A side story in the novels also has Zelgadis encounter another girl, named Miranda, dressed as a male bounty hunter. During his fight with another chimera, her gender is revealed.
  • The main premise of '80s series Stop Hibari Kun. Main character Kohsaku moves in to his dead mother's yakuza friend and falls in love at first sight with the eldest and most beautiful of his four daughters... only to later find out that she is actually biologically male. Hilarity ensues.
  • Subverted in the adult manga Sundome; Sahana tells Hideo that she used to be a guy, but it's a trick to try to get him to stop masturbating so much. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • The relatively obscure manga and animated movie They Were Eleven by Moto Hagio features an incredibly feminine recruit who is eventually revealed to be an alien who hasn't yet decided whether to be male or female, and actually became a recruit to avoid being forced to become a girl as well as a pawn in Arranged Marriage imposed by their family.
  • In the Hideshi Hino short story Sailor Psycho, a girl is invited to the school idol's house to paint her portrait. She ends up discovering that the school idol is really a crossdressing boy with a school uniform fetish. The girl is killed when she freaks out and we find out that the idol's "mother" is really his crossdresser father and the old caretakers of their mansion are also crossdressers.
  • Tomo-chan Is a Girl!: In an expanded flashback to the start of middle school, Junnote  responds to Tomo showing up in a girl's uniform with an "Okay bud, you got me" and a playful punch to the chest. Cue "squish" (somebody's mom insisted on her daughter finally getting an actual bra rather than binding herself flat), followed by screaming (entirely on Jun's part, as while Tomo would have slugged anyone else in earnest for that he is fine).
  • Shibisu from Tower of God finds out that the Bull is a female by kicking it in the groin to no avail.
  • In Vandread, Bart Garsus gets a Bridget dropped on him with The Reveal that BC is a Gender Bender Mole. In the end, it doesn't stop him. If anything, it made it easier for him to accept his own feelings: the premise behind the whole series has men and women living on completely different planets — so same-sex "loves" were common practice.
  • A variation appears in Kuroneko Guardian. An actor is assigned a bodyguard who he believes is a boy until he walks in on her topless (when she was taking a shower).
  • In Violence Jack both the audience and characters in universe think that Mondo’s friend Mido is a girl, it’s not until he’s held hostage and about to be executed by a gang member that his gender is revealed, he tells “her” that he might as well cop a feel before he executes her and finds that “she” has no breasts.
  • Wandering Son:
    • This happens to Riku Seya, a classmate of the Nitori's older sister Maho and her eventual boyfriend. Seya saw Nitori dressed as a girl and became infatuated, and convinced Maho to set them up. A future date at the aquarium turns into a rather shocking revelation which is not helped by a friend of Nitori's, "Mako-chan" (no, not that one) also revealing herself as biologically male. Seya is left rather confused by it all but they eventually become friends.
    • The series has had a few instances of the rare Transmasculine case too. For example, Shiina originally mistakes his (adult) girlfriend to be cheating with Takatsuki. He grabs his groin but notices he's biologically female. After it all clears up, Takatsuki and Shiina become good friends.
    • On the first day of middle school Chizuru goes to school in a gakuran and is mistaken for a boy until her best friend berates a girl for doing so. Chi often screws with the schools uniform code, be it wearing a tie instead of a ribbon or just outright crossdressing.
    • It's implied that Yuki knew Takatsuki was a trans boy, but she didn't realize Nitori was a trans girl. Neither of the two knew Yuki was a trans woman. The characters get a bit surprised at the reveals.
  • Subverted in Wild Rock. Yuuen dresses up as a girl for a Honey Trap plot, but eventually feels guilty and upset that Emba is in love with his female persona and decides to run away rather than "drop a bridget" on himself. He then finds out Emba actually knew all along but didn't mention it because he didn't want him to stop coming.
  • Chizuru from You and Me mistakes the feminine looking Shun for a girl when he sees him in the gym uniform. Even when the others tell Chizuru otherwise he doesn't believe them. Chizuru doesn't acknowledge that Shun is male until he sees him in his school uniform for the first time, which causes him to faint.
  • You're Under Arrest! uses it as a running gag with Aoi, whose crossdressing is treated fairly realistically:
    • His in-canon introduction involved this trope, along with his new co-workers' reaction to the reveal.
    • He invokes the trope deliberately in an episode of the anime, when he gets a marriage proposal from an Idol Singer that she's not interested in. Aoi asks for a meeting and shows up in male clothes, telling him about his issues. The guy respects Aoi's wish, withdraws the proposal, and they decide to stay friends.
  • This happens to Wataru Takatsuki in Yubisaki Milk Tea in recent chapters. However, despite Yoshinori Ikeda's initial beliefs to the contrary, Wataru actually likes him even more.
  • Tetsuo from Yuureitou is a trans man. It's always Played for Drama when he comes out. He's stated that in the past women have gotten mad at him when he does.
  • YuYu Hakusho:
    • Happens to a couple of Kuwabara's schoolmates at the end of YuYu Hakusho when they mistake Kurama for Kuwabara's pretty girlfriend. In the anime he's nonchalant and even jokes a little about it, but in the manga he gets homicidally angry.
    • Miyuki of the Triad looks very feminine, but is revealed as biologically male during her fight with Yusuke. In the manga, Yusuke is shown as somewhat nauseated before getting over it, and in the anime he and Botan don't even care; Yusuke's only problem with her is Miyuki's in between him and rescuing Yukina. Kuwabara, on the other hand, is extremely squicked, getting disgusted looks from Yusuke and Botan over it, and gets a whack from Botan's oar when he tries to look for himself.
  • When Kouji Nanjo from Zetsuai (1989) was a young boy, he once saw a rage-filled, beautiful tomboy named Izumi. He fell in love with her at first sight, but she disappeared from his life as fast as she arrived. Several years later, Kouji is watching a high school soccer game and recognizes one of the players, soccer star Takuto Izumi, as the young girl who captivated him, since "Izumi" was the kid's surname. After quite some Gayngst about it, Kouji quickly decides that it doesn't change his feelings for Izumi.

    Art 
  • A fresco was found in Pompeii where the god Pan flees from Hermaphroditus after getting frisky and uncovering their bottom half. It is unclear whether a genuine myth is behind the painting.
    Comedy 
  • Doug Stanhope: "[Transvestites nowadays] are good! You don't even have to pretend you got tricked any more!"
  • Patton Oswalt claims this is his favorite reason to watch Cops, even going so far as to give a name to the duped person's reaction: "The Transvestite Revelation Face".

    Comic Books 
  • In Camelot 3000, Tom Prentice awakens memories of Camelot in Sir Tristan's reincarnation, who happens to be a gorgeous young woman. Tom's instant crush on the reborn Tristan plays out this trope. Ultimately it proves hopeless, as Tristan refuses to accept life as a hetero female, eventually entering a lesbian relationship with Isolde's reincarnation.
  • Lobo: Even DC Comics' woman-lovin', homicidal, Anti-Hero Lobo has had this happen to him. In "Lobo's Big Babe Special", he is hired as a bodyguard for an intergalactic beauty pageant. But each of the ladies in the pageant has one nasty surprise or another (even the ones he knew!) and were subsequently eliminated. Each of them, that is, except the extremely busty T.V., the one Lobo has been drooling over the entire time. Once T.V. was crowned the winner, the horny Main Man made his move, despite her subtle hints that it wasn't a good idea. Finally, T.V. tells him to "put your hand here." Lobo and everyone reading now knows what the name "T.V." stands for...
  • One EC Comics story features human astronauts being forced to land on an uncharted planet to repair their ship. Commander Morrison falls for a beautiful female native and chooses to stay and marry her. Things go well, if a bit strangely, at first, but soon his new wife starts changing, cutting her hair short, losing her curves and spurning his advances. Morrison investigates, and comes to realize to his shock that the natives are biologically similar to snails. When he gets back home, his brand new husband expresses his hopes that Morrison will hurry up and change, so things can get back to normal.
  • Hellblazer: Played with in the "Ashes and Dust" arc. While interviewing a female witness named Joey, Agent Turro calls her a "pretty girl." Joey gives a mischievous smile and pulls her panties down. We don't see what she shows him, but a suggestively-placed microphone implies she has a penis. Turro is NOT unsettled and actually grins back.
    Agent Frank Turro: So which is fake... that, or the boobs?
    Joey: Honey, once they figure out how to implant one of these, everybody'll have one.
  • Subverted in Jem and the Holograms (IDW). Blaze feels the need to come out as a trans woman to her all-female band, however they don't care at all and her being trans is a non-issue.
  • Promethea: This happens to Dennis Drucker, who finds out that his goddess lover (one incarnation of the eponymous Promethea) is actually comic book artist William Woolcott. This ends about as humorously as most Real Life examples of this trope.
  • Runaways: Klara Prast was appalled when Xavin suddenly transformed from a tall white guy to a pretty black girl during their first encounter. She got over it, eventually.
  • Between X-Men characters Scott, Jean and Warren in Marvel 1602. Jean is a Bifauxnen who has been disguised as "John Grey" as part of her education, and when Warren shows up, he starts hitting on her. Scott confronts him angrily, revealing the secret that Warren must have obviously glimpsed... only for Warren to reveal he had no idea "John" was a woman.
  • Grant Morrison's Zenith had the title character propositioned by Metamaid, an attractive transgender superheroine. After Zenith finds out, he passes the buck to the naive young superhero TNT Tom by suggesting that he and Metamaid might like to get acquainted. At least it apparently ends happily for both parties.
    Zenith: TNT Tom left with a smile on his face, mind...

    Comic Strips 
  • Garfield thinks a cat is a "cute chicky-boo" in the strip here until he realizes it's a cat he knows, named Frank.
  • Used, of course, in Liberty Meadows. Dean goes to a bar and sees someone who, from behind, appears to be a lovely long-haired lady. He proceeds to crudely offer to play some "tonsil hockey" with her before discovering that "she" is in fact a long-haired man.
    Dean: Damn hippies...

    Fan Works 
  • Angel of the Bat: Times of Heresy: Subverted in the scene in which Lupe is outed as transgender. It's meant to be disturbing, but is only so because she is cornered in an alley and attacked by a Heteronormative Crusader when it occurs.
  • Becoming Female: Crystal Potter is Harry Potter!
  • Beochan: Paisean Agus Aiféala (an anime and cartoon crossover parody/deconstruction blog): Does this with The Great Pumpkin of all people turning out to be a cute little girl Linus has a crush on, much to the jealously of Sally.
  • Best Friends: Claire mentions that she had a budding interest in Skye until she learned he was a Pretty Boy, not a woman. That killed her crush.
  • Blessing in Disguise (a Spider-Man fanfic): Harry discovers that Peter Parker has turned into a girl when he startles her and she falls out of the shower in the locker room on top of him.
  • Blood Bullets: Nobody knew that Tails was female — even Tails was clueless until the age of seven. This appears to be the chief reason for Tails being Transgender: He simply can't think of himself any other way.
  • Brave New World (Pokémon): Buzz to Jessie; the latter had no idea that her long time admirer was a girl.
  • Camellias: Weiss was more than a little upset when her future spouse turned out to be a girl.
  • The CRONIES: Just like what happened to Johnny, Knuckles discovered Bridget's true gender due to a not-so-innocent grope.
    Knuckles: Must bleach hands until burning!
  • Danganronpa Re:Programmed: Everyone's individual reactions to Chihiro revealing that he is a crossdressing boy. While initially taken aback and unsettled, everyone lets it slide for the greater good. Junko (Mukuro), who is the first to react is particularly hilarious, as she screams "WHAT THE FUCK!?!?" at the top of her lungs.
  • Dave Stdider Pokemon Traner: "ZELDA WUZ KAFKAT? dave thog! NOOOO HE THOUGHT SHE WUZ HOTT!"
  • A Different Scroll: Naruto initially mistakes Haku for a girl and shudders when Kiba reveals the truth (his sense of smell being strong enough to identify it). Later lampshaded and comically deconstructed by Haku himself.
  • Different Tales, Different Lessons: An in-universe example happens to Kang, the Big Bad of the vignette "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", when the "concubine" he invited into his private bedroom finally unveils their true nature: Master Crane, who was Disguised in Drag until that point. Of course, since the story is focused on Crane's perspective, the readers know the truth all along, but Kang doesn't catch on until it's too late, and is rewarded with a Curb-Stomp Battle in Crane's favor and the villain's presumed arrest because of it.
  • A Diplomatic Visit: Swift-Pad was once in a relationship with a female wolf... then "she" turned out to be Maxilla, a biologically male (but mentally genderfluid) changeling in disguise, leaving Swift-Pad confused over his feelings.
  • The Disney Loops: Loop 40.13 has Belle more startled than disturbed when the curse breaks and reveals Beast isn't Prince Adam this Loop — he's been replaced by Natsuki from Doki Doki Literature Club!.
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
    • Freeza did this to Krillin, who's stunned to realize the effeminate-looking being is actually a guy.
    • Later, Dodoria did this to everyone, with Vegeta killing her just to repress the thought of her being "the most beautiful, and fertile, woman on my home planet." Granted, part of the joke is she's a man in the original series...
  • The End Is Near: Crossdressing Mello to Falstaff whom he's been flirting with all evening.
  • Eroninja: Naruko to herself, upon discovering that she doesn't have any more equipment that she had while being a part of Naruto.
  • Façade (Persona 4): Many readers have the tendency to assume that the author is male. Upon finding out the author's true gender, it becomes this.
  • Fates Collide: When Ruby enters the room and sees girl's clothes in the closet, she assumes her roommate is a girl. She is extremely shocked when she enters the bathroom without knocking and sees Astolfo out of the shower.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged: Cloud attempts this after crossdressing to gain an audience with Don Corneo, but...
    Cloud: I have a dick.
    Don Corneo: [gasps]
    Cloud: Surprise! I'm a guy!
    Don Corneo: Even better!
    Cloud: Whaaaaaaa-
  • Gender Confusion: Quite a few times, and about half the time it's not even true.
  • Hivefled: A literal unsettling gender, as opposed to sex, reveal; one of the many sources of Gamzee's current trauma is that his bloodlink's offhanded comments about Gamzee being feminine got him seriously thinking about his gender identity for the first time in his life and realising that he actually is genderqueer, though he doesn't currently know there's a word for it.
  • Infinity Train: Court of Cyclamen: When Chloe has a Cuteness Proximity moment with Bede's Gothorita, who's a girl in the games, he bluntly informs her that Gothorita's a guy. Bede comments that this is actually so common that Pokémon Professors are working on ways to further differentiate genders between Pokémon whose forms lean more towards one or the other.
  • Inseparable: Frisk. In spades. Chara too.
  • Kitsune On Campus: Evangeline’s older brother Pilip, mentioned in her backstory.
  • The Kirita Chronicles: Klein, PoH, Coper, Argo and Akio have all expressed surprise when they found out Kazuta's real gender. The results of this revelation differ in each case.
    • Kazuta feels the fact she is in an avatar that is an exact replica of her real body unsettling as well, especially since she is used to playing as a male avatar.
    • Akio is the only one that Kazuta willingly revealed her true gender to while the rest of the characters either learned this by accident and/or by spying on her.
  • A Little Angel on My Shoulder: Sachiel has a thing for the Evas. Bardiel's ghost form is a chibified Unit-03. No prizes for guessing what happened.
  • A Lonely Girl: In chapter 2, Timmy reveals that he is Trixie's friend Timantha. He tries to cover up Cosmo and Wanda's existence by saying his friends bet on him to dress like a girl.
  • Lucky Charm: For Tenten, she thought Lee was a girl and he rolled with it till she found out.
  • Metamorphosis (EndOfAbraxas): Sei is surprised in chapter 1 when she notices something different about the girl she's kissing. It turns out that Alice is transgender.
  • Mistakes: Least funny variation possible. Sadly it wasn't unsettling enough to make the guys stop.
  • More than My Friend: In the spinoff Dating Woes, Frankie (short for "Frances") accidentally goes on a date with a girl called Pat (short for "Patricia") because they both have unisex nicknames. They met online but assumed the other was male. It didn't work out due to Incompatible Orientation.
  • The MUSHU-Verse: Due to being a superhero Disguised in Drag, SheZow is subject to this by the cast of the other shows, especially those who had feelings for his super-identity.
  • Naru-Hina Chronicles:
    • After Naruto and Sasuke turn into girls in order to infiltrate the village during the Chunin Exam, Yori sees them, mistakes them for actual girls, and tries to seduce them. After Sasuke hurts him with a Chidori and he and Naruto turn back to their normal appearances, Yori realizes his mistake and isn't happy about it.
    • Naru-Hina Chronicles Mini-sodes: During an undercover mission at some hotel, Naruto takes on the appearance of Hinata while the latter is investigating. The pervy hotel manager is quite attracted to Naruto with that appearance. However, at the end of the mission, the Uzumaki reveals to the manager that he was a man all along, causing the manager to shout a Big "NO!" and to cry tears.
  • NBH: Naruto's reaction to learning Sasuke's gender (she was born female, but used a genjutsu to pose as a male to her peers).
    Naruto: "But... But... But... He saw me naked!"
  • Never Say Never: The students discover Chihiro is actually male during the second trial, much to their surprise.
  • Next Level: Nights After Dreams: Mikhail weaponized this trope whenever he and Victor's mother switched places especially when she began dating Konstantin.
  • The Non-Bronyverse: Played for Laughs when Philomeena tells Oswald that TD is his "father", not his "mother".
  • The Omega Chronicles: Reverse Gender. Calam Krakatoa, the Raider that has a reputation of doing perverted stuff to female opponents? Yeah, 'he' turns out to be a 'she'.
  • One night of the drop of rain: Kumajirou, Canada's male pet bear, abruptly turns into a human woman.
  • The One With The Angelic Face: The revelation that Angela was originally a male vampire before the curse restored her soul prompts shock from the entire Scooby Gang (aside from Jenny Calendar who already knew this); Xander in particular (having spent the last few months crushing on Angela, albeit to a lesser degree than his crush on Buffy) is unable to say anything but "You were a man?" for the next few minutes.
  • The Piratesverse: For Darwin, at least, when he discovers Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (whom he'd thought was a guy) is actually a woman. He gets over it.
  • Pokémon: Clefairy Tales: Leaf was a bit startled to find out that a certain "Youngster" on Route 3 is actually a Lass.
  • Pokémon XD Enigma Shadow Series: "I told you before...I am not a woman! I'm a man!"
  • Pretty Cure Crossovers:
    • In .hack PRETTY CURE, Miki thought that Itsuki was a very cute boy. Her reaction to finding out otherwise is very hilarious.
    • In Future Wars, Haruhi Fujioka (a Bifauxnen girl) does this to Setsuna Higashi just by revealing her name very early on in the fanfic.
  • Pretty Cure Seasons Delight: Kei started working for Tenma Anno's older sibling Takane, whom she thought is a girl. Guess again.
  • A Rabbit Among Wolves: Defied. When Sun learns a disguised Jaune is male, he isn't bothered in the slightest, and keeps calling Jaune pretty.
  • The Racket-Rotter Chronicles: Annette discovers The Builder has become a woman. In turn, the others find out The Twin has also become one.
  • Return of the Lawndale Militia: Repeating a joke about the extremely feminine Shun from Greenwood, except much creepier because it's part of a rape attempt by a yakuza member. Also, the sheer shock of said yakuza member in discovering his rape victim was still biologically male causes him to "comically" abandon the rape and run away screaming.
  • The Road to Cydonia:
    • How Ryu and Kuno found out Konatsu was a man.
    • Richard a fellow Xcom soldier was on the receiving end of one as well when Ranma splashed himself while in the gym shower.
  • Shadows Of The Azure: Happens to Eiji for Naoto, and in the past it's implied that he also got one with Amane, the trope is then passed on to Gan for that occasion. And previously, Carl also got the same reaction when Naoto blatantly declared her gender.
  • Shinji And Warhammer 40 K: Kaji is quite surprised to find out that the pale young woman he chats up at a festival turns out to be Kaworu Nagisa.
  • Skin (UsagiSquared): Jonouchi finds out Seto's a woman by attempting to break into her house to find out what was in her briefcase that was so important she asked him to get it for her. She was naked by the way.
  • Sold to the Highest Bidder: Subverted twice by Feliks; he reveals his gender to Norge, who takes it in stride, and to Eduard, who doesn't seem to particularly care. Neither change their opinions of him at all upon discovering he's male.
  • Super Sentai vs. Super Sentai: The boys have to crossdress at one point, much to the surprise of Miki Momozono (Goggle Pink) when she realizes who they are.
  • Thanks Kyubey (a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fancomic): An emotionfied Kyubey is turned into a human. Mami and Sayaka hoped Kyubey would be a hot male. They are not amused when Kyubey turns into a Moe girl.
  • The Trailblaze Trilogy: Doubles with Samus Is a Girl. When Tomas discovers that the Raven, the murderous anarchist Evil Overlord he's spent most of the story fighting against, is actually his former apprentice/girlfriend Carina, he doesn't take it well. At all.
  • White Eyes: Naruto discovers Haku is a boy instead of a girl, much to his stunned surprise.

    Films — Animation 
  • In The Boxtrolls, after Snatcher reveals himself to be Madam Frou-Frou, Lord Portley-Rind has a horrified look on his face and states "I regret so much".
  • Francis the ladybug in A Bug's Life has to constantly reveal his true sex. And given he's voiced by Denis Leary, he does it in the most caustic way possible.
    Francis: SO! Bein' a ladybug automatically makes me a girl! Is that it, flyboy?!
  • The Soothsayer in Kung Fu Panda 2 is initially mistaken for a man by Po due to her beard (she's a goat).
  • Played for laughs in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. Timon and Pumbaa declare that they're gonna show Simba's new son how to have fun at his unveiling. Rafiki corrects that that it is a girl and the two promptly double take at that.
  • In Robots, during the climax. It helps that the ugly lady in question is voiced by Jim Broadbent.
    Madame Gasket: Who are these losers?
    Fender: We, sir—
    Madame Gasket: (completely deadpan) I'm a woman.
    Crank: Ouch. (Diesel's eye lenses break)
  • Near the end of Strange Magic, Thang is surprised to learn that his fellow minion Stuff is a female troll. When she reveals this, he's left trying to find a way to explain how not obvious it was to him as her gender was never discussed beforehand. According to her, though, it may have been obvious to other trolls that she was female.
    Thang: Are you a girl?
    Stuff: Isn't it obvious? [Thang gasps]
    Thang: It's... kind of subtle.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Tanya's silhouette reveal as (possibly?) a joke in The Naked Gun 33 1/3. The DVD commentary revealed it was a stand-by and they were going to use a hairy butt instead. Luckily, the cable TV airing show this variant, while movie channel keep the silhouette intact.
  • In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Ace Ventura figures out that detective Lois Einhorn is actually Ax-Crazy former professional football player Ray Finkle and is responsible for the kidnapping of the Miami Dolphins' mascot Snowflake and quarterback Dan Marino. He then remembers that Lois had tried to make out with him earlier. He gets Squicked. Badly. Later, when Ace Ventura exposes her former identity to the rest of the police force, all the twenty-odd policemen present, Dan Marino and the dolphin also get Squicked. Apparently she got around... (and as a shout out to make it funnier, the song playing in both sequences is Boy George's "The Crying Game") Roger Podacter also found out, presumably during an intimate encounter with Einhorn, and as Ace declares during the reveal, that's why he wound up dead; "He found Captain Winkie!"
  • The Associate: A gender-swapped version of this trope occurs when Camille Scott, a business associate of main character Laurel Ayres (a black woman), goes public with a story about being pregnant with the child of Ayres' business partner, Robert Cutty (an elderly white man) after Cutty refuses to sleep with her when they meet privately one evening. At the climax of the movie, Cutty reveals that "he" actually is a well-disguised Ayres.
  • Played for laughs briefly in Blades of Glory. When several people are interviewed to see how they feel about the male/male pair skating of Chaz and Jimmy, one guy comments in surprise "Wait, the blond chick's a dude?"
  • Handled much more realistically in possibly the most famous example, Fergus and Dil from The Crying Game. Subverted in that, even after finding out Dil has a penis, Fergus realises that he still loves her.
  • Doctor in Trouble: After flirting with "Lavinia", the Master-at-Arms catches sight of "her" without a wig and discovers that it is Dr. Burke in disguise and is outraged.
  • In Good Luck Chuck, Chuck discovers that one of the many women he's been sleeping with to help them find their true loves was formerly his classmate - and a man.
  • In The Hangover Part II, Stu discovers he slept with a MTF prostitute. "You're in Bangkok, sweetie, there's a reason they don't call it Bang-cunt."
  • The Extended Version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has a funny example. At the Rivendell dinner party, Kili begins eyeing up some of the elven maidens, causing Dwalin to shoot him a glare. Kili defends himself by saying that elven women aren't that attractive note , but curtly points out that the one walking past him isn't too bad. Dwalin leans in and says "that isn't an elf maid" and the entertainer turns around... Kili has an Oh, Crap! moment as the other dwarves laugh at him.
  • The most well-known scene in Just One of the Guys.
    Rick: "Wait a minute, are those what I think they are?"
    Terry: "I'm sorry."
    Rick: "Where do you get off having tits?"
  • Is the plot of a Mexican comedy Los Dos Rivales.
  • A prime example of this occurs in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. While at an LGBT party, Chuck (Adam Sandler) hits on a curvacious playboy bunny whom he thinks is Jessica Biel, but is actually a cross-dresser played none other than by David Spade.
  • The Last Seduction: Mike used to live in Buffalo for a while, and got married to a woman named Trish, but he ran away on their wedding night because Trish turned out to be a pre-op transexual.
  • In Mabel's Blunder (1914), Mabel's boss hits on her—only to find out that it's her brother disguised in her clothes.
  • Mastizaade: Sunny and his lastest contest just had a Post-Coital Collapse and start cuddling and Talking in Bed. He notices the picture of a man on her nightstand and asks if it's her husband, which she denies. He starts to wonder if it's her brother, father, or other family members until she reveals it's a picture of her post-surgery. He's very distressed upon finding out and the scene ends with him screaming in horror.
  • Shi Pei Pu (Chinese: 时佩璞; pinyin: Shí Pèipú; December 21, 1938 – June 30, 2009) was a Chinese opera singer from Beijing. He became a spy who obtained secrets from Bernard Boursicot, an employee in the French embassy, during a 20-year-long sexual affair in which he convinced Bernard that he was a woman. This true story is the basis of the movie (and play) M. Butterfly.
  • Early in Mercenaries from Hong Kong after the titular team of mercs got together for the first time in years, meeting in a nightclub, the youngest of the bunch - Curry, the happy-go-lucky funnyman of the group - tries flirting with a beautiful Gorgeous Gaijin lady, which he easily hooks up with. Later on Curry is boasting on his flirting exploits to another one of the mercs in a bathroom when suddenly, the lady he's flirting with enters... and walks to a nearby men's urinal, taking a piss while standing up much to Curry's horror.
  • In Rat Race, Owen drives a bus full of I Love Lucy fans dressed in Lucy costumes. One of them asks for a pit stop as the bus' bathroom door was broken.
    Owen: So? You ain't got nothin' these other Lucys haven't seen before!
    Lucy: [in a deep voice] Not necessarily.
  • A Reflection of Fear: As Michael comes toward Marguerite with a troubled expression, we hear a recording of the call he made to the hospital in which Marguerite was delivered fifteen years ago, when the nurse informed him that Katherine had delivered not a girl but a boy. Right before this, we learn she'd been the killer all along, with it portrayed as another factor in how crazy Marquerite is, given her apparent split personality.
  • Rock Star: The morning after a wild party, Chris gets up in his hotel room and finds the lovely Tania in the bathroom... casually having a piss while standing up. While he's discomfited (as he probably had sex with her while drunk and high), she doesn't seem to care and they quickly move past it.
  • She's the Man: Twice, with Sebastian and Viola. When Sebastian is mistaken for being Viola impersonating him, he gladly drops his pants and exposes his genitals to the soccer teams, coaches and everyone watching to prove he is not lying. Malcolm is visibly traumatized by this. Later, when Viola confesses everything to the teams as well as her love for Duke, she ditches her wig and flashes her breasts when they're still in disbelief. Everyone's pretty shocked by the revelation at first, biut they get over it quickly.
  • The Cult Classic horror movie form the 80s, Sleepaway Camp sets this up as a big reveal. Angela, the main character and murderer, was really Peter, Angela's twin brother. Susie and Ronnie are mortified when they find out the truth. A rare instance where the *trope is played for horror. Robot Chicken even had a sketch about it!
    The Cinema Snob: That's a dick.
  • Subverted in Some Like It Hot. When "Daphne" reveals his true identity to the millionaire Osgood who is about to marry "her", Osgood isn't fazed in the slightest and nonchalantly replies, "Well, nobody's perfect!"
  • In Lotoman 2.0, we get a glance of one of Modesto's dates that invites him over at her apartment peeing while standing up instead of sitting in the toilet, which is Played for Laughs as Modesto visibly feels grossed out while Village People's "YMCA" plays on the background and he rushes out of the place, embarrassed. Very much later, his brother Manuel and Marcelo burst out laughing after he tells them.
  • In Surrogates, the beautiful lady surrogate that was killed alongside the inventor's son via feedback weapon, turns out to be an over-weight man. Considering that each person is usually allowed one Surrogate, it means this guy has been going around as a woman for quite some time.
  • The Tiger Makes Out - the antihero protagonist is scheming to strike out at an indifferent world by abducting and dominating a beautiful woman. He's mesmerized by a sultry cabaret singer, who he follows to the dressing room, never noticing the lobby sign advertising a female impersonator performance.
  • At the end of Tomboy. Laure is forced to don a dress and her mother makes her apologize to the boy she fought earlier. She also goes to visit her girlfriend, thus making the reveal to her too.
  • In Trainspotting, Francis Begbie picks up a woman in a club. Outside, in the car, he's making out with her, then goes to rub her down there, and finds she has a woodie...
  • As you can guess by its title, Victor/Victoria provides a few perfect examples of the reverse of this. The one that stands out most is when Victoria, dressed as Victor, pulls Norma into a bedroom and acts as if she wants to have sex with her. Norma later bursts out of the room and proceeds to yell angrily at her ex(?)-boyfriend (who is now dating Victoria) that Victor is a woman.
  • Played straight in the Japanese rock 'n' roll zombie epic Wild Zero, when the male lead finds out that the girl he's been chasing all movie is actually a guy in drag... then wondrously averted when the god of rock and roll himself tells the guy not to be such a wuss, as love knows no gender. One of the best film lines ever:
    Guitar Wolf: ACE! Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders! DO IT!!!
  • Madmartigan's performance in Willow.
    Lug: Not a woman?
    Madmartigan: (To soldiers) Gentlemen...
    Lug: Not a woman!?
    Madmartigan: Meet Lug.
  • In Without a Clue, Reginald Kincaid (playing Sherlock Holmes) is quite attracted to a woman impersonating Lesley Giles. The real Lesley Giles , who has been abducted, is a man who habitually dresses as a woman. After Giles is rescued, "Holmes" and Watson manage to palm Giles off to Lestrade, claiming (truthfully) that Giles "appears on the stage in Paris", in an act called "Les Femmes Faux".

    Literature 
  • In All Men of Genius, the revelation that "Ashton" is actually Violet (having disguised herself in order to attend the men-only scientific academy she's at) comes as rather a shock to the two people romantically entangled with him/her, though both get over it. Violet's non-romantic friends are pretty relaxed about it.
  • In Amante Doree, English spy Horatio Quentin falls in love with the beautiful pro-French courtesan-spy Annabel St. Clair, only to discover during a romantic interlude that she is transgender, although she still loves him.
  • Another similar incident like the one above happens in Jake's List, where the main character is seduced by a crossdresser and spends the rest of the novel dealing with a large amount of Gayngst.
  • The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: In book 10, Charlie learns that murder victim Gerry Albritton — who'd been flirting with him more than once, though he'd never returned her interest — was transgender, having been born male but undergone surgery at least twenty years before, transitioning from Jerry Albritton to Geraldine Albritton. He mentally admits that he doesn't know a time when he's been more shocked. Later, when Melba finds out, she's just as stunned.
  • Done with a twist in the Darkover novel Hawkmistress!: The main character is a young woman disguised as a young man, and is traveling with a group of mercenaries. The leader of the group starts hitting on her. She figures he's seen through her disguise; turns out he's gay.
  • In German novel Gottes Bodenpersonal: Eine unwahrscheinliche Liebesgeschichte, the protagonists are a hooker and a Christian preacher who gets on her nerves by trying to proselytise her customers (without much success). When one of the johns finds out the hooker is actually male, he freaks out and attacks him. Enter the preacher guy, who only heard fighting noises, and now attacks the john. After the police arrived, the preacher kneels down beside the unconscious hooker, sees "her" skirt ride up, and ... covers the hooker's private parts with his jacket. As he had no intention to have sex with the hooker, "her" gender is of no consequence to him. It turns out he's gay, and actually very attracted to the man behind the hooker mask.
  • In Getting Personal, three friends place personal ads for each other. They don't manage to find the person one of the trio met and was attracted to, which is revealed to be because she was a woman (although whether this is just a reveal to the audience/her friends, or whether she didn't realise either, is left unclear).
  • In Let the Right One In, Oskar finds out that Eli is actually a castrated boy. He doesn't mind, though. The Swedish film includes this plot point but is a bit more ambiguous about it, while in the American remake Abby is just a girl to begin with.
  • Subverted in Lidia Charskaya's A Brave Life, a fictionalized biography of Nadezhda Durova, one of the most famous examples of Sweet Polly Oliver. When Nadezhda is staying at a Polish officer's residence in her soldier guise, the officer's sister Zosya forms a crush on "Alexander". Nadezhda, unable to get away from the enamored girl, reveals the truth – and Zosya is very glad because she yearns more for a sister and a confidant than for a lover. Later the girl remains friends with Nadezhda and is shown as blissfully happy in a Perfectly Arranged Marriage.
  • This is how the plot for Out of Position starts. Devlin Miski, a straight football player, starts having sex with a crossdresser, then finishes even after he reveals he's male, causing him to question his sexual orientation and way of life.
  • In The Ring, Sadako appears to be a supernaturally beautiful woman but is a hermaphrodite with fully formed testicles. When the last carrier of smallpox tries to rape her, he discovers this, freaks out, kills her, and throws her down a well.
  • Rivers of London: In Moon Over Soho, Ash Thames (one of the river spirits from the Upper Thames river) picks up a girl in a bar, when he gets her into bed he discovers she is a very convincing crossdresser. It turns out not to bother him, because in his own words...
    "We were having so much fun I thought, 'why stop?'"
  • At the end of the third Sir Apropos of Nothing novel, Tong Lashing, the revelation that evil crime syndicate leader (and Apropos' brief lover) Verah Wang Ho is a man leads to his (anti)Heroic BSoD which ends with the Hiroshima-like destruction of the city they're all in.
  • Song at Dawn:
    • It happened to Estela and Dragonetz individually concerning the same person: Sanchez, one of Alienor's Ladies in Waiting.
    • Dragonetz was crusading and saw some thugs about to rape a woman after killing her husband. They ripped open her dress and the surprise they found was great enough for Dragonetz to kill them with ease.
    • Discovering the same thing was part of Estela's 'initation', so to speak, into Dragonetz' inner circle.
  • Star Wars Legends explains that Tatooine's Tusken Raiders only ever remove their body wrappings in the presence of their immediate family if young, or their spouses if married. The tribes try to keep good records of who's under those wraps when it comes to arranging marriages, but mistakes can happen, leading to some very unhappy wedding nights.
  • It's mentioned in Tailchaser's Song that neutered males can be mistaken for females. One legend told is of the legendary Firefoot having met the most gorgeous female he's ever seen, only to find out that Windflower is actually a neutered tom. He's especially horrified when he learns that humans can "defile" cats and turn them androgynous.
  • There is a pornographic story that was written in first person, in which the narrator makes love to a man. In the last sentence of the story, it is revealed that the narrator is also male, which is a revelation to the reader.
  • In the Neil Gaiman short story "Changes", all possible reactions to this are explored as a drug allows quick, easy sex-changes in a few hours. The few people in story who can always tell someone's birth gender, well, the one shown is the subject of severe violence when she denies entrance to certain clubs (this was her job).
  • In the novel Trainspotting, it happens to Renton, not Begbie. Furthermore, he doesn't panic, but admits to always being curious about what it would be like to sleep with a man. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he ends up getting to third base; however, his friends then walk in on him, scaring Renton off any same-sex encounters until he finds himself in London without a place to spend the night.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga: A variation of this happens to Ivan Vorpatril in A Civil Campaign when he, realizing how slim pickings were for long-term female companionship, decides to intercept his old (and older) lover Lady Donna Vorryuter on her way back from Beta Colony (something related to an inheritance dispute surrounding her brother the late Count Vorryuter) and perhaps renew matters with said divorcee. Now who is that fellow with the black beard accompanying the Vorryuter Armsmen and why do his eyes look so familiar?

    Live-Action TV 
  • One episode of 1000 Ways to Die features a rapist targeting a lady as she leaves a gym. As it so happens, the "lady" is a cross-dressing semi-pro boxer who kills the rapist with one punch.
  • All in the Family: In the 1975 episode "Archie the Hero", Archie saves the life of someone named Beverly LaSalle, who he thinks is a highly attractive woman ... only to realize (upon being told) that Beverly is a cross-dressing man. (Beverly had passed out in the back of Archie's taxi cab.)
  • Arrested Development: Shows up in more than one context:
    • Invoked and subverted by Maeby, who wants Steve Holt to think Lindsay is her father, not her mother. She goes so far as to buy her mother a shirt with a label "in French":
    • Barry Zuckerkorn apparently seeks out this trope, exclusively:
      Barry: Hey, you're not one of those silly men that’s dressed like a woman, are you?
      Prostitute: No, baby, I'm the real thing. [Barry floors it and drives away.]
  • Similarly(ish): transgender woman Nadia Almeida, who won the fifth series of Big Brother UK didn't tell her housemates of her... "situation". Said Bridget was Dropped upon evicted housemates in her post-eviction interview, until LGBT rights campaigners complained about five weeks into the game.
  • Big Sky: Jerrie shows Ronald her body (she's transgender) after he makes her strip and wash, in hopes of that ruining his plan to sell her as a sex slave (because apparently he only wants cis women) and he reacts with shock at seeing this.
  • The first episode of the second series of Blackadder inverts this trope. The episode opens with a beautiful but poor young woman named Kate deciding to disguise herself as a boy to find work and support her ailing father. She finds a job as Edmund's manservant, and the two fall in love over the course of the episode while he tries desperately to cognitively reframe the feelings he's having for another man. The relief he feels when she reveals her true gender is immense.
    Blackadder: Then come, kiss me, Kate!
  • Bones:
    • The subplot of an episode revolved around the team trying to figure out whether a Japanese assistant is a man or a woman. It is debated at some length before Angela figures it out in her own way. The character is a man...the actress is a woman.
    • Another episode has the team realize that the victim was a transgender woman. This had absolutely nothing to do with the murder.
  • An attempt to use this trope using a real-life trans person caused some controversy among the LGBT community in an episode of reality show Cake Boss, where Buddy invites Carmen Carrera (best known for being on RuPaul's Drag Race) and sets her up on a date with "cousin Anthony", the punchline being the reveal to Anthony that his date was "really" a man, with his shocked reaction Played for Laughs. Though usually thought of as a Drag Queen, since she was one before she started transitioning, Carmen is actually a trans woman and was not amused when made aware of the nature of her appearance on the show, citing the fact that this has led to real life murders of trans people. Buddy later apologized for the incident and the episode was removed from rotation.
  • CASUAL+Y once featured two patients from a car crash: a girl and her strangely high-pitched voiced boyfriend. The doctors realised the boyfriend needed a chest examination. This revealed what certainly wasn't a boy's chest.
  • Parodied(?) in an episode of Celebrity Juice. Host Keith Lemon, in the episode following "Let's Dance for Comic Relief", in which he was a competitor with dancing partner Paddy Mc Guinness, opened the show saying that said partner got off with 'Roberta' Webb- only to discover 'she' had a 'tallywhacker'. 'Roberta' being Robert "Mitchell and" Webb, another competitor who performed "Flashdance" in a leotard and frizzy wig.
  • A one-episode B-plot in Century City followed a lawsuit a man filed against a female-looking Hermaphrodite for causing him to question his sexuality. The case was dropped when he turned out to be trans too, but an in-universe ad for penis attachment surgery led to the observation that "someone should sue somebody for something."
  • Chicago Hope did it in the middle of its run when one of the doctors, a very manly hockey player, starts dating Mia Sara. When she informs that she has something to tell him, he says that he already knows... that she has fake boobs and he's fine with it, she informs him that she actually used to be his best friend and hockey teammate in high school.
  • Having just consummated his relationship with the gorgeous model Azure C. (and taken her virginity, no less), The City (1995)'s Bernardo has just gone out to get some coffee when he sees a tabloid headline revealing that she used to be a man.
  • Happened once to Sanchez from The Closer. He made the mistake of hitting on (and kissing) a pretty female witness...who turned out to be the perp in drag. In a somewhat darkly humorous twist, this was the incident that convinced him to start actually going to the mandatory therapy sessions with the department shrink. (Mandatory because he was still suffering from PTSD after taking the bullet in the previous season finale; up until this incident, he'd been in denial about it.) Poor, poor Sanchez.
  • Community: Pierce has to be corrected as to the gender of the singer that made Hawthorne Wipes a gay icon. The same singer is seen later on, arm in arm with Chang, leading to this beautifully ironic line:
    Chang: Winger, no date? Huh. Gaaaaayyyy.
  • In Cory in the House, it happens to Newt Livingstone when Cory poses as his sister Raven (for reasons too convoluted to get into here) and Newt falls for him despite "her" clearly being his best friend in a dress and a wig. Then again, Wig, Dress, Accent was a staple of CITH's parent show That's So Raven, and Newt is very stupid.
  • Control Z: Most of the school, including her boyfriend, are appalled when Isabela's revealed to be transgender. He dumps her, most of the girls shun Isabela, she's labeled male, questioned about her genitals and generally mocked or bullied. However, they are shown to be clearly in the wrong, and it's why Isabela wasn't open about her identity with them.
  • CSI: NY: The victim in "The Lying Game" is a mid-transition transgender woman who was killed due to a violent reaction by someone she was hitting on after he discovered the truth by groping her.
  • In an episode of Dark Angel, politically and socially conservative Normal discovers that his love interest is a trans woman. Unusually, he remains interested, but is dumped after she realizes she's a lesbian.
  • Dead of Summer: The end of the pilot "Patience" first shows that Drew was assigned female at birth, with him removing his shirt to show he has breasts and had on a sports bra underneath. It's then established that he's a trans boy. Before that he had been taken as cisgender. It's Played for Drama though when he and Blair, a cisgender gay boy, have a romance. Blair's displeased at learning Drew is a trans boy, and it aborts their romance. By the end though they're back together and got over this however after Blair's apologized.
  • An episode of Diagnosis: Murder plays this straight (as it were). The victim was a trans woman, and Steve had been flirting with her before she was killed. To the show's credit, the victim was portrayed as a sympathetic character and none of the main characters freaked out about it. In fact, she was killed by her former military buddy because he was squicked, and the murderer is portrayed as a Jerkass.
  • Doctor Who:
  • Inverted in an episode of The Drew Carey Show where Mr. Wick is challenged to find a crossdresser on the floor. After he looks for a while, Dionne Warwick walks in and Wick declares her a drag queen and grabs the music legend in her crotch. It turns out that it was the real Dionne Warwick much to Wick's embarrassment but she seemed to like being groped by him and remarked about how friendly the store's staff was.
  • Farscape: In "The Flax", D'Argo discovers that the scavenger Staanz, who appears to be a rather ugly male, turns out to be, in fact, a female of her species ("considered quite the looker") when Staanz makes an Anguished Declaration of Love to him. Crichton and Aeryn witness this and jokes they should Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone (D'Argo also makes a rapid departure) but afterwards Crichton asks Aeryn to confirm she's the female of her species. Aeryn responds by grabbing his crotch, which he takes as a yes.
  • Korean drama The First Shop of Coffee Prince is actually an odd example. The manager initially thought he was in a gay relationship, and was hesitant for this reason. But since he was trying to avoid arranged marriages and was so shocked to suddenly find this out, even though it was a workable relationship.
  • On Friends, Ross reminisces about how he and Chandler once tried to pick up women in a bar. Apparently, he was unsuccessful, while Chandler ended up making out with his conquest. Monica comments that such behavior for Chandler would be highly unusual. Ross agrees that Chandler isn't the type to go to bars and make out with girls...
  • In one episode of House, a beautiful teenage model appears to be female, but turns out to have Complete Androgen Insensitivity, with her symptoms being caused by a tumor on one of her undeveloped testicles. She is horrified to discover this, as is her manager/father, with whom she had been having sex. House's response to the manager's horror is priceless:
    House: Oh, sure. Now it's creepy.
  • Double Subversion in The IT Crowd when, in a B-plot, Douglas embarks on a successful relationship with a trans woman who insists on coming clean on their first date — but it comes crashing down when he reveals that he wasn't really listening and thought she was saying that she was from Iran, not "I used to be a man."
  • The Jeffersons: Twisted in the 1977 episode "Once a Friend" – Louise actually has this when a highly-attractive woman named Edie comes to visit George. George also experiences this when he doesn't immediately recognize Edie... and both are in for quite a shock when they realize Edie was once a man named Eddie (the man George knew during his service in the Navy).
  • A semi-common event on The Jerry Springer Show is a trans woman or man coming out as trans to their boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse. The person being told rarely reacts well, oftentimes because they're angry that they weren't informed sooner, feeling like their partner was lying to them or deliberately hiding information. Given this it's unsurprising that most of these events end with the spouse breaking things off with the transperson, sometimes due to Incompatible Orientation, other times due to no longer feeling like they can trust their partner if they were willing to hide something so major.
    • Subverted on at least one occasion; a transwoman confessed to her online boyfriend that she used to be male. He looked shocked for a moment before shrugging and saying he'd try anything once. They then locked lips to the audience's amusement.
  • JAG: In "Retrial," a sailor had unbeknownst to him hired a transgender prostitute. When finding out, the sailor changed his mind and the prostitute threatens him with a knife. The sailor defends himself and accidentally stabs the prostitute and runs away in fear and shame.
  • Kamen Rider Double:
    • The heroes use Wakana as bait to attract the Liar Dopant. Of course they couldn't really put Wakana in the line of fire. It's Philip in a dress and wig.
    • Also Akiko is one of the male-seeming bodyguards.
    • In Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze: Movie War Ultimatum, Kamen Rider Wizard meets a beautiful young woman while inside her Underworldnote  and they seem attracted to each other; when he gets back to the real world, the young woman is revealed to be the Camp Gay owner of Haruto's favorite donut shop. While there are elements of the trope's pure form (the Owner says "When I was younger, I was often mistaken for a girl"), for Haruto it's more of an Unsettling Identity Reveal.
  • In the "Who Can Bone More Women?" Contest on Kenny vs. Spenny, Kenny hires a trans woman to get all buddy-buddy with Spenny. Spenny racks up points like crazy until The Big Reveal at the end. He is not happy.
  • In episode "Fallacy" of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit involves a transgender woman who appears female in every conceivable way except her plumbing, who apparently killed a friend of her boyfriend's to prevent a public revelation. When the SVU team confront the boyfriend (ignorant of the fact that the boyfriend had no idea his girlfriend is trans), he runs in, grabs her by the groin to determine sex, and then runs out to commit suicide with an overdose of heart condition pills. A judge then decides to send the her to a men's prison because of her plumbing. She is promptly gang-raped and beaten. We are shown the aftermath, with her headed to a hospital, strapped to a gurney, basically a solid swollen bruise.
  • In Miranda (2009), a chap complimenting large-boned Miranda on her dolled-up appearance ("You look amazing. You totally pass!") is thoroughly embarrassed to discover that she really is a woman, and is unwittingly dressed as a transvestite.
  • Nip/Tuck:
    • Matt starts a relationship with an older woman named Ava (played by Famke Janssen), much to the displeasure of his three parents. Christian seduces her in an effort to get her to stay away from Matt and immediately deduces she used to be a man (and later describes her as "the goddamned Hope Diamond of transsexuals").
    • After Matt finds out about Ava and she has disappeared, he trolls bars until he finds a non-passing trans woman, but as they start making out, Matt discovers she is pre-op and beats her violently.
  • NCIS has a first-season episode "Dead Man Talking". While investigating a missing embezzler, Tony ends up on a date with a woman connected to the missing man. Then learns that she is actually the missing embezzler. Afterward, Kate rarely missed an opportunity to remind Tony of the incident.
  • In the episode of Quantum Leap What Price Gloria, Sam uses this trope to enact revenge on his (female) host's boss for his treatment of her best friend. Sam convinces him that his host, the woman he'd been lusting after all episode, is secretly a man, playing with this trope even though the host has always been a woman.
  • Done for revenge in Rab C. Nesbitt when Mary Nesbitt's sexually abusive boss is tricked into groping David Tennant.
  • Inverted on Reno 911!: Dangle once had sex with a woman he mistook for a man in drag.
  • Discussed on Rupauls Drag Race with Courtney Act, one of the few contestants in the entire series who can genuinely pass as a cisgender woman in appearance and voice. She has had sex in drag with men who claimed they didn't care that she was actually a man, but in those two minutes after a man climaxes where he's not thinking about sex, they'd be disgusted with themselves and her.
  • Tales from the Crypt: In the episode "The Assassin", a ditzy housewife is imprisoned in her home by three CIA agents looking for her husband, whom they believe is a renegade government assassin. The housewife inadvertently kills the two male agents and grapples with the female one, who spitefully reveals she was lovers with the titular assassin. She's beyond shocked when the housewife gleefully reveals she herself is the assassin, following a sex change (and still able to use her masculine voice).
  • There's Something About Miriam features a sexy lady called Miriam and a group of stud males trying to woo her attention. Except that Miriam is actually Transgender - something the participants had no idea of but which the audience knew right from the start of episode one. The whole thing led to some of the competing men suing the TV network. And as one can imagine, transgender advocates were not thrilled at the show setting the movement back to the stone age.
  • A sexuality-inverted instance occurs in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, in which a Guy Of The Week dumps Sally when he finds out, to his dismay, that she isn't a guy in drag.
  • One Title Sequence of Three's Company shows Larry getting into the same bumper car at an amusement park with who looks like a long-haired woman from the back. Then the bumper car turns around and the viewers (and Larry) discover that this "woman" has a mustache.
  • Two and a Half Men:
    • Charlie meets an old flame who has had a sex change and became Bill. He is freaked out by it but eventually comes to terms with the idea until his mother starts dating his ex. And Alan's reaction when he starts seeing the similarities in him and Jill is even funnier:
      Alan: (sees a picture of Jill) She's cute. Very tall. Broad shoulders- HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!
      Charlie: Welcome to the Matrix.
      Alan: So, s-s-so Jill is, i-is-
      Charlie: Yep.
      Alan: And, a-a-a-and you and Jill used to-
      Charlie: Every chance we got.
      Alan: A-A-And Mom is-
      Charlie: At this very moment.
      Alan: (looks at the picture once more) HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!
    • A Running Gag is a certain Noodle Incident where he hit on a woman who later turned out to be a man. And from such statements it was pretty obvious but Charlie was too drunk to notice at the time.
      Charlie: How was I supposed to know?
      Alan: She had an Adam's apple the size of my fist and could palm a basketball.
  • Subverted in Ugly Betty: Daniel is less freaked out by Alexis being transgender than he is at her being his supposedly-dead brother, who he'd just been hitting on.
  • Will & Grace: Jack freaks out when he gets turned on by the stripper at Leo's bachelor party, until he finds out the stripper is a trans woman who dances to raise money for her operation.
  • Happens to Herb Tarlek on WKRP in Cincinnati twice (sort of):
    • In one episode, Herb starts flirting with a woman who claims she knew him in high school. While making out with her, he learns he did know her in high school... before she had the operation. She was a teammate of his on the high school football team, in fact the center to Herb's quarterback. To say Herb had a case of the Squick is putting it mildly.
    • In an earlier episode, the trope is invoked and subverted by Johnny. To get Herb to stop hitting on Jennifer, he tells Herb "Our receptionist, the beautiful Jennifer Marlowe, is a result of the most cunningly successful sex change operation in the United States!" The ploy works... sort of.
  • The Korean Series You Are Beautiful has a convent novitiate dressing like her twin brother to join a pop band. And the drummer was the last to figure it out...

    Manhua 
  • The protagonist of "Obey Me," Jinyoo, develops a crush on the girl he's imprisoned alongside, Hanya, while they're both held captive by Jinyoo's Yandere captor, Gyuh-Wool. While rifling through some boxes in the room they're trapped in, Jinyoo finds that one of them is full of pads that Gyuh-Wool put there for Hanya in case she got her period, but when Jinyoo shows her, she becomes sullen and says that she should be having her period, but isn't. Jinyoo internally panics, thinking that maybe Gyuh-Wool raped and impregnated her in the two weeks she was alone with him, but she tearfully admits that she's Transgender and was afraid of telling Jinyoo in case he would shun and bully her for it like everyone else. He's distraught at first and calls her names, but quickly apologizes when he realizes that he's in love with her nonetheless.

    Music 
  • One of Aerosmith's '80s comeback singles was "Dude Looks Like A Lady," with a line that goes, "Love put me wise/To her love in disguise/She had the body of a Venus/Lord, imagine my surprise!"
  • In a rare example that has nothing to do with appearance, most people are surprised to learn that Angela Gossow, the vocalist of Swedish band Arch Enemy, is a woman. Why? Well... just listen.
  • From Eminem's Just Lose It:
    Eminem: Now what's your name, girl? What's your sign?
    "Girl": Man, you must be up out your mind. *[is actually Dr. Dre]*
  • EPMD's "Jane 3" off of Business As Usual: It all starts when Erick & Parrish befriend a hard gangsta named Jay... but when they visit "his" pad, the decor (and bathroom contents) don't seem right...
  • The lead singer/guitarist of The Silversun Pickups has a very high register, causing a mild version of this for someone who hasn't seen them perform before.
  • "Luisa" by the Peruvian band Chabelos. It's about a guy who falls in love with a hooker called Luisa, and then discovers that "Luisa" is a transvestite, and he thinks that's hot.
  • Being one of the VIPPERloids (a series of troll characters created by 2ch), the UTAU Ritsu Namine was deliberately designed with this trope in mind. See those breasts on his costume? Those aren't pads, they're missiles.
  • Most J-Pop stars utilize this trope as a way to gain fans. Notable examples include Miyavi and Gackt (though Gackt is quite competent at expressing his masculinity when need be). The latter was also a major inspiration for many of Tetsuya Nomura's character designs. The Crisis Core character, Genesis Rhapsodos was directly modeled after him.
    • And Hizaki.
    • It's also getting harder and harder by the month to tell what gender Miyavi really is (male).
    • Bou from An Cafe as well.
    • Just. Mana.
    • This is taken to its logical extreme by Piko, who has a known reputation as a "Ryouseirui" - aka, a trap singer. It's not hard to see why.
  • Pet Shop Boys' "One thing leads to another". The protagonist gets drunk, picks up a woman in a bar, attempts to make love to her, and discovers she's has a penis. He drives off, confused, and crashes his car and dies.
  • The Filipino song "Chiksilog" note  by Kamikazee is about a Ragnarok Online player's reaction to finding out the hard way that the "girl" his character hangs out with a lot turns out to be a Cross Player.
  • In Rodney Carrington's appropriately named "I Think I'm Dancing with a Man" the singer begins to get suspicious of the woman he's been dancing with because of many masculine traits. His friend then takes "her" for a dance and "her" skirt falls off confirming it.
  • Schoolly D's "Saturday Night": "What I thought was a girl was nothin' but a fag" (Needless to say he's not gonna win any GLAAD awards either)
  • The second version of "Uneasy Rider", when the singer and his friend go into a gay bar and the friend goes off dancing with a lovely lady.
    I grabbed her hair
    Came off in my hand
    And that beautiful girl
    Was just a beautiful man.
  • Biz Markie's "A Thing Named Kim": "She didn't look none like she looked across the room/She had big broad shoulders and her titties was big/They were filled with silicone, and her hair was a wig... So I hurried out and left, she said, "Please stay"/I said, "Sorry money grip, I don't go that way"/So I stepped out in a hurry, to gather my wits/And thought that's a damn shame, he had nice tits/And that's the last I ever saw of Kim/You wanna know why? Cause she's a he and her's a him." Needless to say, Markie didn't win many GLAAD awards for that one.
  • The Doug Anthony All Stars song Sailor's Arms also has this theme.
  • Tone Lōc's "Funky Cold Medina": "But when she got undressed it was a big ol' mess... Sheena was a MAN!"
  • One of the most famous songs by The Kinks, "Lola", is notable for subverting this trope at a time when that was unheard of (the year 1970). In the song, the narrator is attracted to someone he sees as a woman (with an Ambiguous Gender Identity, either a crossdresser or a trans woman) and after a while he realizes she seems to have been male at birth. While he's confused at first and almost leaves in shock, he changes his mind and decides in the end that he doesn't care and he likes her for who she is, reasoning "Well I'm not the world's most masculine man / But I know what I am". While the song uses a gender reveal as a plot twist, it's not shown as all that unsettling, more like surprising.
  • In Wilfrido Vargas's "Macho Man", a guy falls for a pretty girl that he later finds out, while they are almost intimate, is a pretty boy; he freaks out and runs away, losing his shoes in the process.
  • In Apollo 440's song "Disco Sucks", the singer runs into this at a disco club.
    Her heels were so high
    Girl was touchin' my eye
    She was movin' in time
    She was blowin' my mind
    She was takin' me there
    To my dreams in the sky
    It was to my surprise
    That the girl was a guy
  • The song "LOL, Internet" by Jakob Bienenhalm is about a man who tries to hook up with a girl named "Melli 17", but she turns out to be a man.

    Music Videos 
  • The music video for the song "Smack My Bitch Up" by The Prodigy does this to the viewer. It's a first person-camera accounting of a night of drunken carousing, drug use, and barhopping in which the protagonist gets into at least one fight with some guy, and molests a girl in a club, ultimately ending the night with a hooker. It's then revealed by a look in the mirror that the protagonist is actually a hot chick herself.
  • Stolen City's video for "Faces" features a man chatting up a girl in a bar. When his friends reveal the girl is transgender, he is not happy.

    Myths & Religion 

    Print Media 
  • Occurred on a huge scale in an issue of Maximum PC with an advertisement. Sufficient numbers of people were surprised that the actor was male, that it was mentioned in the letter from the editor in the next issue. The ad in question featured Toplessness from the Back, but a very effeminate male.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • WWE wrestler Mark Henry ran into this trope years ago. He had a fling with Chyna, who introduced Mark to her friend Sammi. A couple weeks later Mark found out the hard way that Sammi was a transvestite.
    "Oh sweet Jesus she has a penis!"

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Eberron setting of Dungeons & Dragons actually notes that this possibility of this occurring is one of the main reasons for the Fantastic Racism leveled against the shapeshifting Changeling race, whose members are fully capable of changing not just appearance but gender at will, regardless of the gender of their actual native form. It's a well-known joke in Eberron fan circles to point to any depiction of an attractive male or female character and declare that it's really a changeling of the opposite gender.
    • Nevermind that picture from the Sharn sourcebook that showed a couple of the working girls in the red-light district. The jokes that picture alone spawned...
  • While technically androgynous in the new fluff, Daemonettes from Warhammer 40,000 will play this trope on one of their victims just to watch them squirm. Because, you know, that's what they do. (And then they gut their victims like pigs with their claws, which can go through Powered Armor like a knife through butter.)

    Theatre 
  • This one's Older Than Steam because Shakespeare did it first. Someone falls for the Sweet Polly Oliver in both Twelfth Night and As You Like It. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Master and Mistress Page arrange for the suitors they prefer for their daughter Anne to elope with her (because they both like different ones), but Anne runs off with the man she actually loves and the two rejected suitors end up with cross-dressed boys. (Although it's not uncommon for at least one of them to be played as fairly happy with that, since they're both pretty camp.)
  • The play (and subsequent film) M. Butterfly is about a French diplomat who has an affair with a Chinese opera singer, unaware that she is a) a spy for the Chinese government and b) a man in disguise. This is, believe it or not, a case of Truth in Television: the play is partially based on the life of Bernard Boursicot.
    "There are no women in the Chinese Opera."
  • This is the plot twist in Epicene, or the Silent Woman, by Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson, in which the protagonist persuades his eccentric, noise-hating uncle Morose to marry the title character as part of a plot to secure his inheritance: since he stands to lose it if his uncle marries, his plan is to provide him with a wife he doesn't like and then offer Morose a reason to end the marriage on the condition he gets his inheritance. Which he does by revealing to both the characters and the audience that Epicene has been a boy in disguise all along — which would have been a big surprise to an audience accustomed to seeing female characters played by boys.
  • Inverted in A Very Potter Sequel: Dumbledore assumes that Umbridge is actually a man in drag (as she is played by one) and becomes attracted to her, only to find out that she's actually an extremely butch woman.

    Video Games 
  • The Japanese Animal Crossing has this according to Blanca's bio. It translates to: "When I suddenly met her she asked me to please paint her face, it really surprised me! Did her makeup fall off maybe? Huh? She’s a boy?!"
  • In ANNO: Mutationem, one side-quest by Ayane asking Ann to search for Noctis City's idol OK-Chan after finding evidence the idol might be in the area. Though, finding the apartment has OK-Chan turned out to be a bulky guy using a virtual move-set. Ayane took it in stride and compliments his incredible moves.
  • While the title heroine of Atelier Annie has her moments due to her (unfortunate) Bifauxnen status, the game also gives a somewhat bizarre example when some men tried to hit on, of all people, Hans. The bizarre part is that they genuinely mistook him as a girl, while his co-workers in the Committee see him as a guy just fine.
  • Iita in Blaze Union. Oh, ye gods, Iita. She's a perfectly adorable little Fille Fatale, cute and squeaky and very girly. Then night falls, and the other half of her Split Personality takes over — the side that is male, brash, Hot-Blooded, and downright thuggish. Her male half cheerfully announces to the stunned women of the game's cast that "oh right, sorry, I forgot to say: I'm a man at night". Equally shocking to people who first see Iita as a male and then realize that what they thought was a boy dressed in girl's clothes is actually still physically female.
  • Catherine:
    • Erica is actually a trans woman. However, Vincent, Orlando and Jonny are aware of it, and there are several hints dropped over the course of the game before the actual reveal. It's only this trope to Toby, who lost his virginity to her.
    • In the Updated Re-release, Vincent accidentally discovers that Qatherine/"Rin" is a Wholesome Crossdresser. Vincent's shocked reaction is played for drama; he panics and slaps Qatherine's hand away. While he immediately regrets it, he's unable to apologize in time to prevent Qatherine from running away in tears. If you choose to pursue a relationship with them, Vincent will quickly fix his mistake and eventually realize that Rin is the only one with whom he feels he can truly be himself around. He'll admit that gender doesn't matter him, basically outing himself as bisexual to his friends and the rest of the patrons at The Stray Sheep. Near the end, he even shuts down Mutton's homophobic ranting with a heartfelt Kirk Summation. In the True Ending, it's revealed that Rin is actually from a race of Angelic Aliens whose human form is that of an androgynous male. But by that point, it doesn't matter to Vincent; they get Happily Married and go on a music tour in outer space!
  • Flea from Chrono Trigger has confused generations of gamers with his/her claim that he/she is actually a guy, despite having obvious cleavage in the artwork. Not to mention the actual heroes, of course. Luckily Flea plays no role whatsoever in the story other than to be a Mini-Boss. It's possible that Flea could, however, be FTM or the result of a magical experiment that stuck him in a female body/gave him breasts.
  • Dark Souls has the Dark Sun Gwyndolin, the last born son of the Lord of Sunlight, Gwyn. Because of his lunar magic and association with the moon, he was raised as a girl. He even has tits.
  • The Digimon series has played with Renamon's gender (or lack thereof) for some time, but Digimon World Data Squad amped it up by giving us a male Renamon with a painfully obvious female voice (in fact, it was the same voice actress who played Renamon in Tamers). Let's ignore the Unfortunate Implications of a male Sakuyamon. The German fans must've been laughing hard at that one.
  • Disgaea:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, it turns out that Shale was actually once a female dwarf. Thanks to The Fog of Ages, even the character in question is stunned by this, making it a rare case of the character in question experiencing the unsettling reveal.
    • It's implied that she was aware of the fact beforehand, just considered it, for all intend and purposes, unimportant, since she is, after all, a genderless golem.
  • In Ensemble Stars!, Kaoru first encounters Souma at a live music venue, and when he sees his long ponytail, immediately gets excited at the prospect of meeting a 'black-haired Japanese beauty'. He calls out to him, but realises his mistake as soon as Souma starts talking, and tries to back out of the situation immediately out of embarrassment. Souma, however, has no idea why Kaoru approached him and is distinctly offended when Kaoru instantly turns cold to him, but his attempts to figure out what Kaoru wants from him only have him even more flustered and defensive. This, naturally, rather sets their relationship off on the wrong foot. It doesn't help that Souma doesn't approve of Kaoru's womanising in general - or that, even after learning that he's a man, Kaoru still seems to find him beautiful, musing in one conversation that Souma's hair 'really is silky' and that his figure from behind is 'deceptive'.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy IV has a certain dancer in the town of Fabul.
    • Final Fantasy V. The leader of a band of pirates called Faris is assumed to be a male due to occupation, but once the party gets halfway through the second dungeon it turns out he is a she. To quote a boss later on in the game, And now we shall fight like men. And women. And women who dress like men. She even occasionally mistaken refers to herself as male. It's clearer in the original Japanese, where gender is reinforced by speech much more than in English. (For example, Japanese has gender-specific first-person pronouns, not that this stops some people.)
    • Final Fantasy VII: It's possible to get the Don to choose Cloud, in which case he reveals that he was in drag. While the idea of the Don picking Cloud over Tifa and Aerith may seem silly and unlikely based on the graphics in the original game (and their low polygon count), the Don's decision becomes much more understandable if one looks at Cloud's character design in Advent Children, especially if Cloud-in-drag appeared anything like THIS. Stupid Sexy Cloud.
    • Final Fantasy VII Remake makes it clear that Cloud can go all out in looking like a woman, and the confusion on how Don Corneo can choose Cloud over Tifa and Aerith is much clearer.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • Unsurprisingly, the Camwhore class in Forum Warz has this as a standard attack, if one not often seen. (It's down the line of a skill chain which many players respec out of before obtaining it.) Note that the gender, age and race of every player character is defined as "whatever happens to be squickiest at this instant". The same applies to any NPCs who use multiple or artificial personas, eliminating any potential shock value out of gender. (Especially as very few players would be attracted to most of the NPCs.)
  • Guilty Gear: Bridget, the former Trope Namer, is introduced in XX as a crossdressing boy in a nun habit. She was born as the younger of two male twins, but as her hometown had a superstitious belief that male twins would bring disaster (and should be put to death or exiled), Bridget was secretly raised as a girl. Her birth gender is never a secret to the audience, as it's told at the beginning of her storyline, nor does she try to hide it from anyone and corrects them in casual conversation if they call her a girl. The problem is that most other characters simply assume she's a cis woman, due to her behavior, Moe nun outfit, and way of speakingNote, and they act on her before finding out the truth.
    • As seen on the page image, one of her story mode endings involves Johnny trying to flirt with her, only to discover her gender mid-fight and feeling humiliated ("I can't believe I just tried to seduce another man...").
    • In Zappa's win quote, he writes a letter to his mom (which he does during his brief periods of lucidity), saying he found an injured young girl by the side of the road whom he wished to make his wife. But when he attempted to pick her up and carry her...
    • In his win quote, resident Lovable Sex Maniac Robo-Ky asserts that he wasn't fooled by her, except he admits that he found out by using his See-Thru Specs on her.
    • Not to mention a little Yon Koma about Axl trying to hit on Bridget. Bridget gets fed up, grabs his arm and pulls it below the panel, with the word "TOUCH♡". The final panel has Axl gripping said hand with a horrified expression, going "What the hell did I just touch?". And "DESTROYED" in large letters above him, referencing the One-Hit Kill attacks from the games.
    • In Real Life, people have found it quite amusing to show Bridget to those who aren't familiar with the Guilty Gear series and get their reactions when they drop the bombshell. "Everyone is gay for Bridget" quickly became an infamous meme and her defining character trait outside of universe.
    • The trope is deconstructed in Guilty Gear -STRIVE-. During the in-universe six-year gap between XX and -STRIVE-, Bridget had succeeded as a bounty hunter, proving her village superstition bunk and allowing her to live openly as a man. However, doing so triggers her gender dysphoria, which she hides from her family. When mistaken for a girl by Goldlewis, she's more hesitant to correct him than before. Both Goldlewis and Ky recognize what's going on, and they give her the space to talk it out while gently encourage her to be true to herself. This finally gives Bridget to stop running from her feelings and come out as a transgender woman.
  • In BlazBlue, if you pit Bang Shishigami against Noel Vermillion in Continuum Shift, he mistakes her for "a young man" despite her rather girlish clothing including a short skirt. Noel will believe it's because of her lack of boobage and GET PISSED OFF.
    • Amane Nishiki makes that mistake in Arcade Mode, too. He comments how Noel would be perfect playing the roles of women (never mind Noel is a girl) with the kind of crossdressing she's wearing at the time.
    • Speaking of BlazBlue, Kagura Mutsuki has a match intro where he scans the female anatomy, complete with targeting reticules and readouts. He does this with Amane Nishiki as well, and expresses disappointment at the obvious. For Fridge Brilliance, Kagura's exact quote is "Not another dude...", which means he's already experienced this trope a lot and Amane wasn't his first case.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure, the SSS are shocked to discover the presumed-male assassin Yin is actually female, and even more surprised to discover she's actually Rixia Mao.
  • And for the most famous female example, you have Sheik of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Earlier in the game, Ruto called "him" a man. She was wrong. You know that you have an epic gender reveal when the fandom spends ten years starting Flame Wars over it.
  • Leisure Suit Larry has this happen twice:
    • Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!: The dark-skinned makeup artist Shablee turns out to be a cross-dresser/transvestite (according to documentation/development notes), still sporting a sizable phallus. As Larry learns the truth only after some passionate kissing, his immediate after-the-reveal reaction is to recoil and start spitting and gagging. The next morning's shot shows him in his room rinsing furiously.
    • Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude: Koko the troubled mime turns out to be a trans woman sporting a package that's large enough to make an audible *THUD* upon opening her fly. This revelation is enough to put Larry into the fetal position. The model viewer shows her equipment, but it's tiny enough to conform to her feminine character model... Must be a grow-er, not a show-er.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Raiden, a shameless Bishōnen, is revealed to the President of the United States. The president literally grabs Raiden's package to check his sex, reacting in suppressed shock when he learns the terrible truth — the script says he'd misidentified him as the similar-looking female terrorist leader, Olga Gurlukovich, but Raiden's decidedly male voice and obvious bulge should have put that suspicion out the window. Besides, why didn't he just ask Raiden?... What was he planning to do to Olga?! Who voted for that?!
    • According to an in-character Quinton Flynn, "Why would I even care? I'm not even anatomically correct! I run around naked and I got no junk!" ...That might say something...
  • NieR has an unusual version of this in that one of the main characters, Kainé, is revealed to be a hermaphrodite. This is done very subtly in-game, so a lot of people might have ended up not realizing it if that piece of information hadn't been leaked somehow before the game even came out.
  • Persona:
    • Persona 3 has the more basic Played for Laughs version of the trope during "Operation Babe Hunt."
    • In Persona 4, exactly how Unsettling Naoto's Gender Reveal is to Kanji is a vital piece of the latter's characterization. Kanji, who can be interpreted as struggling with very deep sexual identity issues, textually expresses almost the exact same mixture of anxiety and eagerness in interactions with Naoto before and after the scene in question. Perhaps most tellingly, though, Kanji is at his most resolute when Naoto's life is in imminent danger of Shadow-fueled destruction, only moments after the Reveal itself.
  • Pokémon:
  • Ratchet & Clank:
  • In Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die, Ichiro Ogami goes to take a bath in the hot springs during the Flower Division's vacation. When he sees Leni Milchstraße in the bath, it turns out that the latter is not a guy, but a girl. Cue an Oh, Crap! when Leni makes him aware of this.
  • Elh from Solatorobo talks and acts like a boy, but is revealed to be a girl when Red walks in on her bath.
  • Summertime Saga has the shy Eve, who is reticent about undressing in front of the Main character. This is more of an aversion: one reason for her reticence is that she has a disfiguring scar from a motorbike crash. The other is that she is really a he with a willy, or what the Japanese call a futunara. If you choose for her to have a bulge, the player character will be quick to accept it.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, this happens with Chihiro. Since this happens after he is murdered, it becomes even more unsettling.
  • Fate Series:
    • In Fate/stay night, there's a reason why Guinevere had that affair with Lancelot, since her husband, King Arthur, aka Saber, turns out to be a woman (and stopped aging at the age of 15), but Guinevere agreed to the marriage as political fiction only, and due to that reason Arthuria never blamed Guinevere nor Lancelot for their romance and was forced to take action against it by her enemies.
    • This also occurs in the stay night prequel series Fate/Zero, where Kiritsugu is quite shocked when he summons King Arthur and finds himself face to face with a young woman. While Saber initially thinks that it's because he's displeased by her sex, Kiritsugu's wife Irisviel explains to her that it's more that he's saddened because he realizes what Saber was forced to go through, including hiding her identity.
    • Fate/Apocrypha has Astolfo, who is so effeminate that at least Sieg and Jeanne thought he was a girl. Then Astolfo came out of the shower with no towel around his waist... granted, only Jeanne actually freaked out in embarrassed shock, while Sieg isn't really affected by such sights due to his emotional development.
    • However, in Fate/Grand Order, male heroes turning out to have been women in disguise all along (or openly female from the start) is an Unusually Uninteresting Sight to the protagonist.
  • Shika in Kira☆Kira, when a guy fell in love with him when he was forced to cross dress. Two years later, he was shocked to realize that Shika was in fact male, but quickly got over it even offering to be his wife since the idea seemed to make him uncomfortable.
  • Robin Newman in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. It catches EVERYONE in court off guard, including the usually stoic Simon Blackquill.
  • Steins;Gate:
    • Invoked and parodied by the narration when Ruka is introduced. Without prior knowledge of the character, you will assume they're a girl (the Miko outfit doesn't help), but Rintaro will eventually start making complementary remarks in narration "More feminine than any woman alive..." only to end them with "...But, he's a guy!".
    • Kurisu also appears quite disturbed the first time Rintaro corrects her when she talks about how nice Mayuri's 'female' friend was.
    • In-universe example for Rintaro after Ruka manages to change her sex to female (at birth) using D-Mail. The fact that she looks exactly the same either way doesn't help matters. Arguably, it's just as unsettling for Ruka herself, as Rintaro tries to grab 'his' area to prove 'his' gender.
    • Much later, Ruka receives one of these for herself, when she comes to remember parts of another world line where she was a he.
  • In Togainu no Chi, one of the main characters is Rin, who has a rather fair-looking and youthful appearance that both Akira and Keisuke even mistake him to be a girl until he cheerfully announces, "Sorry to break it to you, but I'm packing~"

    Web Animation 
  • AoHaru Manga Library: Downplayed in this episode, after wishing for a girlfriend in a shrine prayer, Keiichi is absolutely shocked when his 3 male friends come out of hot springs and reveal themselves to be girls. It's less severe than most examples because, after the initial shock, he quickly picks himself up because he's a calm introvert and asks calmly about their reasons.
    Keiichi: '"W,w,w,whyyy… What the heck? What is happening here? WHY ARE YOU ALL GIIIIRRRLSSSSS!?!?" (Hey, God, what am I supposed to do in a situation like this? Laugh about it? Am I supposed to laugh it off? Don't be absurd!)
  • This joke was done as a gag during a scene where Hal is trying hit on women in episode 6 of Bowser's Kingdom.
  • Unsettling in-universe for Carl from Llamas with Hats to learn that his roommate, who had been unidentified prior to that point, was a male named Paul (in Carl's defense, Paul's hat is rather feminine, but he couldn't even remember Paul's name after three years). After asking Paul if he's sure, which Paul confirms to his annoyance, Carl then says he has to go delete some pictures from his computer.

    Webcomics 
  • Alucard pulls this off as Girlycard in And Shine Heaven Now. Granted, the person he fooled is Bertie Wooster... And then many years later did it to Maggie Mui...
  • A blatantly explicit one is seen in Moon Over June when Hatsuki (a highly promiscuous lesbian) barely makes it to the parking lot before she had that evening's hookup's head between her legs. When she went to return the favor....
    "You picked me up in a transvestite bar! I thought you knew!"
    "I just had to go someplace new didn't I?"
    • While Hatsuki's roommate/lover/eventual spouse Summer does not get nearly that far (aside from that incident in Amsterdam), she has on several occasions seen someone from the back and started flirting before he turned around. Given her misandrist tendencies her shock and mortification is invariably Played for Laughs.
  • Concession: Artie wakes up to discover he has engaged in inappropriate acts with hypersexual preteen Chelsie Warner while in a brain-tumour-induced — or, as it turned out, Joel-induced — trance, and confides in his boss:
    Artie: But honestly, I'm not sure what disturbs me more... the fact that this happened, or the fact that Chelsie is actually a boy.
    • This later happens during an occasion where Joel, Matt, and Aaron "Nicole" O'Connor meet with a crude ursine associate of Matt's who initially believes Nicole is a girl after Joel introduces them. Needless to say, said ursine friend is moving to kick Joel's ass when he finds out the truth of Nicole's gender.
  • Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures:
    • Dan infiltrates Twink Territories dressed as a woman. Later on, Biggs finds out. Quoth Biggs: "I'd probably feel more awkward if this was the first time this had happened..."
    • Later on it turns out Biggs was mostly playing this for laughs, as he's actually one of Dan's childhood friends, just transmasc (and very much more secure in himself than he used to be), so Dan didn't recognize him. Being a Walking Shirtless Scene probably helped too.
    • In another story arc, the shapeshifting incubus Abel takes a job working at the Lost Lake Inn. Dan gripes that it'll be an unfortunate adventurer who comes into an inn hoping for the traditional greeting and service by a perky cute beer wench. Abel: "Oh, well if THAT's your only issue..." Dan *turns around to see Abel has put on a very convincing female form* "YIGG!" Page caption: "Don't worry, adventurers are used to dealing with traps."
    • Later on Dan meets Mink, who is androgynously pretty, flat-chested, and runs around in a skirt and no shirt. Dan outright asks Mink whether they are a boy or a girl, only to find that Mink has forgotten hirself (being another shapeshifting 'cubi). Mink is on the point of taking a peak down hir skirt to refresh hir memory when Dan decides that he doesn't really need to know that badly. (In an omake, the doctor delivering Mink at hir birth never gets to say.)
  • In Darths & Droids, this trope is used wonderfully with The Reveal. In this universe, Darth Vader is actually Padme Amidala, not Anakin Skywalker. When this bombshell was dropped during the RPing of The Empire Strikes Back, it totally waylays the entire team, who demand how this was possible.
  • In DM of the Rings, Aragorn hears Legolas described as a long-haired blond and tries to hit on Legolas assuming Legolas is a woman. Even after Legolas asserts that his character is a man, Aragorn refuses to believe it and continues trying to come on to him, to Legolas's growing irritation.
  • Doubled up in the now defunct comic Roomies with Corey and Dave(ina), they were both posing as men so their boss and co-workers in IT would take them seriously when they went on a date and revealed to one another that they were actually women. They started sleeping together anyways.
  • Ghastly's Ghastly Comic:
    • A rather ridiculous case when the two similar-looking characters in the rather ambiguous fighting game (within a webcomic) "Loli vs. Shota", both finally decide to actually check their genders... and are shocked to find out that they're both wrong on which one they thought they were. And yet even though we learn they're both wrong, the reader still is left in the dark about which character is which gender.
    • A Running Gag is that masculine characters tend to have sex with Freddy... who, despite having breasts, is male and revels in it. They tend to be very drunk at the time.
  • In El Goonish Shive, this happens quite a lot when someone's stepped out of their normal gender. Somewhat unusually, it often gets milked for some drama in the process.
    • Justin and Susan almost do something they'd regret later while both gender-bent for Grace's birthday party. Good thing they didn't, since Justin likes guys; things would have gotten awkward once Susan became a woman again.
    • The "Sister" arc was full of this. Minor characters were falling at Elliot's feet, and that's before Ellen took on a life of her own.
  • Two Sides is a Downplayed example as Damian thought he was going out on a date with a girl he saved from a groper on the train before "Heily/Haley" cautiously interrupts their kiss by admitting that that she's actually his classmate, Sebastian, who's been prostituting in drag himself to pay the bills and sadly expects Damian to never want to see him again. While Damian does have a minor Freak Out in processing this, he declares, "I don't care who you are... I like you", lays on The Big Damn Kiss and they go to a hotel to consummate their newfound relationship and after dealing with a blackmailer, live happily ever after. Ironically, this is the only time this happens in the entire comic as either people deliberately seek out that type of prostitute or just don't care such as a groper that go from feeling up his ass to jerking him off without missing a beat. Even a client that met "Heily/Haley" in the street without advertising as such yet wasn't surprised at what was under the skirt and was happily serviced without issue.
  • It was apparently a common occurrence for the flat-chested namesake of Shayla The Pink Mouse to be unknowingly picked up by gay men who thought she was a man until they got her to bed.
  • Jet Dream:
    • Averted by the Elle-Boys of J.E.T. T.E.E.N. Despite looking exactly like girls, they make no secret of the fact that they're actually boys. As a rule, they're also heterosexuals who exhibit many "traditionally masculine" traits.
    • In the story "South Pacific Powder-Puff Power!"note , there's a startling revelation about a longstanding character. The T-Girls learned that Ting, the Polynesian princess and only "female" member of the Thunderbirds, had actually always been a male. In Ting's matriarchal tribe, male royals are expected to live as women. When the rest of the team changed sex, so did Ting.
  • Kevin & Kell:
    • Reversed when it looks like Rachel (a rhinoceros) might be trying to romance Bruno (an herbivorous wolf)... until she realizes he's a boy. Rachel, as it turns out, is gay. Bruno was wearing a fake sheepskin covered with his girlfriend Corrie's wool, thus making him smell like a girl sheep and giving a species with poor eyesight no other cues to his actual gender. Bruno attaches ram horns to the sheepskin to prevent this from recurring.
    • Comes back again when Wendell (male rabbit) finds out Jess (female cow) is a girl. Jess has horns, but a lot of people don't realize both genders of cattle have horns.
      Jess: What part of "cow" don't you understand?
  • The big reveal in chapter one of Lavender Legend is that Felicia, the tall and dour maid in the employ of Princess Lavender (and also La Résistance), is actually male, but was raised as a female by his mother in order to keep him from being conscripted into the kingdom's ruinous war that also killed his father. That doesn't stop Princess Lavender from enjoying their earlier first kiss... or from constantly tempting Felicia with sleeping in her bed.
  • One Manly Guys Doing Manly Things comic has Jared unsettled and warning Commander Badass that Poison was, in his words 'a dude'. Commander Badass then points out that it shouldn't matter what a person has in their pants unless you're planning to get into them. He's more surprised that Jared thought he had a chance to score with Poison, gender aside.
    "Y'got an enviable sense'a self esteem, kid. I ain't gonna disrespect that."
  • Used in MegaTokyo early on, when Piro is reading through a section of girl's manga in a shop in Japan. A Japanese schoolgirl seems to think that Piro is a girl and is "cute". Her friend informs her that Piro is, in fact, a guy.
  • Oglaf:
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Averted very carefully by Vaarsuvius, an elf whose gender remains unspecified (and just to keep the readers guessing, the gender of V's lawfully wedded spouse is also unspecified and their kids are adopted.) The Giant revealed at one point that V hadn't told him their gender as anything but "genderqueer" and that V honestly does not care enough about the subject to worry about it.
    • Invoked when Belkar hits on a magically gender-swapped Roy. Turns out, he knew it was Roy the whole time, and he was just doing it to squick him out.
  • Happens to Pintsize in Questionable Content when he learns that the AnthroPC with whom he's been chatting with is actually a male AnthroPC whose online icon happens to be pink his shock at learning this angers the AnthroPC and he leaves. Pintsize appears to get over it fairly quickly and attempts to continue his relationship with the AnthroPC but at that point, the damage had already been done.
  • Rain (2010):
    • Gavin is rather shocked that the cute girl Rain is his childhood friend, formerly known as Ryan. He gets over it eventually.
    • Aiken is very angry when he finds out his fiancée Jessica is transgender, and breaks up the engagement. It doesn't help that she told him only because she knew she wouldn't be able to hide the truth any more. He calms down, but doesn't seem to really get over it. And then he finds out about Rain.
    • Ana once had an ex-boyfriend who attacked her when he found she’s intersex.
  • Discussed in this MOLEBASHED comic. Wes talks to his wife about reading a book in which characters live their lives in virtual reality. (The book is unnamed in the strip, but in the accompanying post, he confirms that he's talking about Ready Player One.)
    Wes: What if we are the computer-game-avatars for people in the "real world?" What if, in reality, I'm a seventy-year-old cat hoarder who smokes two packs a day?
    Kari: What if I'm a dude?
    Wes: NOOO!
  • Scandinavia and the World:
    • Averted. Denmark asks Thailand if he could buy 'the sexy lady' a cocktail, but Thailand admits he's Brother Thailand, not Sister Thailand. Denmark thinks about it for a Beat, then asks if he'd rather have a beer.
    • And in another strip we have Sister France hitting on Sister Denmark (she thought that it's a handsome long-haired guy). And when they get to the action...
    Sister France: Where did those breasts come from?! And where is the penis?!
    Sister Denmark: ...I don't know.
    Sister France: I WANTED PENIS!!!
  • Sexy Losers loves playing with this trope. Most notable is one comic in which a man picks up a woman with short hair at a bar, only to take her home and discover she is a woman, but he's gay and he thought he was hitting on a man to begin with.
    • Would that be a booby trap?
    • Another Sexy Losers strip has one guy get a pregnancy scare from his girlfriend ("I'm not on the pill"), only for her to reveal she used to be a man.
    • Another has a man approach a suicidal woman whom he asks for a BJ before she jumps. After the act, he asks why she was going to jump. Turns out her parents disowned him for dressing up like a woman. So the guy jumps before the cross-dresser does.
    • And a final one has a subway groper realize this. It ends up with the "and that's how you were born" Running Gag.
  • In the "Railway Children" arc of Skin Horse, Violet Bee tries to invoke this trope by revealing his gender to Tip. This plan falls flat because A) Tip was never particularly attracted to Violet and B) Tip is an Extreme Omnisexual.
  • In this strip of Sluggy Freelance, Riff and Torg run into First Officer Brenas, a shapely woman who is actually the male of the species. Riff and Torg subvert the trope by not being bothered at all.
    Torg: Aw, you think what you want.
    Riff: Can you jump up and down for us, mister?
  • A double inversion of this trope occurs in Teh Gladiators, first when the Murlocs that join the heroes turn out to actually be female, and then when one of them, Yolanda, develops a crush on Vallant rather than vice versa.
  • Venus Envy has this happen to Lisa when she assumes that Chris is a transgender woman only to discover that he's actually just a Wholesome Crossdresser. Chris gets experiences this trope when he first meets Lisa and Zoe, assumes they're crossdressing boys as well, and grabs Lisa's breast while telling her it "looks totally fake". They beat him up.
  • The Wotch manages to do this to both participants, here when Jason is transformed into Satyr Sonja he has random flirty outbursts he can't control. When he "puts the moves" on Robin they both freak out. Jason continues to flirt-and-freak throughout the arc. And one flirt-and-freak recipient winds up wanting to date "Sonja" later.

    Web Original 
  • The Awkward Compilation: Awkward 4 has a flashback sequence of a series of Alex's ill-fated blind dates, one of whom is a man who stammers "Alex" in shock and quickly checks to confirm that, yep, that's an adam's apple before running for dear life.
  • A CalebCity video had him trying for a baby with a girl, only for it to not work no matter how many times he tried. When he takes her to the hospital to find out what's wrong, that's when he finds out that she's actually a dude.
  • Fairly common in the Chakona Space setting considering how many characters are Hermaphrodites. Perhaps the most notable example being when Garrek and Chakat Goldfur first started seeing each other and he spotted hir male parts and freaked. Though Garrek later apologized, saying he should have looked up Chakats on the net and realized that they were herms, and they got back together, so far they've got two cubs by one another.
  • In the The Cinema Snob review of Sadomania, he repeatedly remarks how beautiful the female warden is and checks the back of the box to find out her name...and discovers she is played by "the stunning transsexual adult film star Ajita Wilson". Cue a horrified "Oh my God" followed by a Smash Cut of him sitting in the shower fully clothed calling Jillian on the phone claiming that they have to have sex "right NOW" since he's "so confused". According to the video description, this was based on a friend of Brad's having had the same revelation.
  • DesuDesBrigade: Professor Otaku admits in his Quick Hits review of Gravitation that he didn't realize Shuichi was male until he was halfway through an internet porn search of "her".
    Prof. Otaku: Well... wow, she really likes it in the butt. Hmm... Why does she... Oh.
  • In The Key of Awesome's parody of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," Carly meets a cute guy at the club. The two of them get drunk, then go to Carly's house and make out. The next morning, the guy wakes to find that Carly is actually a madman dressed as a young woman.
  • Discussed in an episode of Needs More Gay, where Rantasmo points out how hugely problematic it is that the vast majority of trans representation in media (which isn't very large to begin with), falls under this trope. Especially when the reaction of many male characters to discovering the girl they liked is actually trans is to throw up.
  • Not Always Learning has the story "New Meaning to Gender Displacement", where the submitter does this to a group of girls at her school ("OH, MY GOD! HE'S A GIRL!"). The sequel on Not Always Friendly has the same person do so again, in a different way; bonus points for the target being with her boyfriend, who started laughing hysterically in the aftermath.
  • Subverted at the end of the first episode of Pop Quiz Hotshot, as General Anesthetic reveals that he used to be a woman. Critic's surprised, but he ends up wanting to be invited to the General's BDSM parties.
  • The title Wholesome Crossdresser in The Saga of Tuck does this both when crossdressed and in his normal, baggy boy clothes. The latter tends to annoy him.
  • In Vaguely Recalling JoJo, Nena isn't a fat woman wearing the skin of another woman. Instead, Nena is a boy pretending to be a girl. Polnareff is shocked when he finds out.
  • On the adoptable petsite Valenth, one of the NPCs is the person of intelligible gender of the week, Elliot Christoph. Considering many of the humanoid NPCs are like this, and all of them as such are men (plus the masculine name), many of the users expected Elliot to end up being male, referring to her as Sir Christoph and such. Elliot later is referred to as being female about twenty pages into the thread. The real kicker was the fact that she never bothered correcting them once. Lady looks like a dude indeed.
  • Common for Phase in Whateley Universe, as he is an intersexed mutant whose body is mostly female (and extremely gorgeous) but who retains his original male gentalia, gender identity and sexual orientation. Unfortunately, more than a few males can't see past his appearance, and some (such as Imperious, who as the reincarnation of Zeus never gave much of a damn about the sex of his partners anyway) are actually more interested in him knowing that he's a 'she-male'.
    • Averted with Mega-Girl and Stronghold. When Mega-Girl reveals that she's both transgender and a Gender Bender (but still mostly male for the time being because of the slow manner in which she is changing), Stronghold answered that he loved her anyway.
    • Zig-zagged for Absinthe and Flytrap; Collin had been a bully to Adam, but they didn't know each other very well beyond that. When Gwen (formerly Adam) meets Collin again after she is 'rescued' by the Mutant Supremacist cell who were trying to recruit Collin, she let's Collin assume that she is Adam's sister. Later, on the trip out to Whateley, they hit it off as friends, and during the first month of school they quickly start feeling romantically towards each other - until Collin finds out that Gwen was Adam. Collin flips out, not because of the gender issue (well, not entirely) but because he thought she actually was just Adam using an illusion to trick and humiliate him. When she finally explains that she was a Gender Bender due to her mutation, he stops being quite as angry, but still feels betrayed because she wasn't upfront about it. They do eventually get back together, though.
    • For 2006 Transgender Day of Remembrance, the changeling students gather in private to memorialize the deaths of several transgender Whateley students and adult superheroes, most of which involve this.
  • Zigzagged in the Dead West Porcelain Doctor; the narrator, a journalist named Gervas meets the titular porcelain doctor on a steamship, and concludes that the waifish, slim redhead with the creamy skin and the narrow waist ("like wearing a corset") and soft voice, wearing dainty glasses must be a crossdressing woman. He swores to protect the doctor, who is quite baffled, but accepts... then later, on a train, after a clash with "shamblers", the doctor disrobes a bit. Our narrator promptly tries to look away, but peeks a little, and takes a Double Take. The doctor was, in fact, a he. Not that this stops Gervas. Even better, almost everybody mistakes him for a girl. Carolina even grabbed his loins (cue minor freakout, from both parties), and wasn't too sure even after that!
  • During the eighth part of WorstPremadeEver's Sea Of Thieves funny moments, Alex ends up getting stuck on a tree via bugs causing Ellis and Jake to try and get him out, during their attempts Ellis ends up finding out that Alex's character is a womannote , much to Jake's amusement. In Ellis' own words...
    Ellis: All I can see is lumps of lard and a shit beard!
    • This happens again in a blooper reel the gang released for their Ballad of Chestynote  music video though not to the the same extent where Jake, Gabby, Nick and Alex end up finding out that Ellis' own character is femalenote , but it took them so long to realise it that Ellis himself forgot that his character is a woman by the time they do.

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • In "The Coach", when it was revealed that Coach Russo was the mother of Jamie, the main characters aren't surprised about that, but that Russo (a big, red block with a masculine voice) is a woman.
      • Subverted in "The Fraud". After Principal Brown reveals that his diploma is fake, the other teachers proceed to reveal some secrets about them (e.g., Miss Simian's age). Coach Russo proceeds to reveal: "And I am not a woman..." (Beat, everyone stares at her) "...who can say she's never lied on her résumé either."
    • In "The Extras", a colorful bird attempts to impress what he thought was a female black pigeon with a dance. When the latter reveals that he's male, the former's reaction was more of dismay than surprise. Nevertheless, the pigeon tells the colorful bird to keep dancing.
  • Atomic Betty: At the end of the "No Business Like Snow Business" Betty gets on the boys' hockey team, unbeknownst to Penelope and her friends who swoon over "him" from the stands. Then Betty takes her helmet off. Penelope storms off angrily while her friends just laugh it off.
  • The Batman Beyond episode "Out of the Past" sees Ra's al Ghul transferring his mind into his daughter Talia's body... and Bruce Wayne has quite the history with her (well, as much as he does with anyone). What transpires thoroughly creeps both Bruce and Terry out.
    Ra: I did not mean for you to find out this way. But I suppose what's done is done... DETECTIVE!
    • And then later:
      Terry: Lady, that is the sickest thing I've ever seen! You're creeping me out!
      Bruce: You?! She kissed me!
    • Note that this is Batman saying this, and considering his career (which he is more-or-less retired from at this point), it should say a lot.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head watch a Ru Paul video:
    Beavis: Hey, Butt-head, that chick is pretty hot!
    Butt-head: Uhhh, ya think so?
    Beavis: Yeah, I'd do her in a minute!
    Butt-head: Huh huh, that's a guy, Beavis! Huh, huh, you wanna make out with a guy!
    Beavis: SHUT UP, BUTT-HEAD!
  • In CatDog no one seemed to realize that Shriek was a girl, not even her fellow Greaser Dogs. Everyone was horrified when they found out, mainly due to them not recognizing her, and finding her quite attractive when she wore a dress.
  • The Cleveland Show has a moment in the Thanksgiving special wherein Cleveland gets revenge on his wayward and emotionally abusive father by not telling him that the "woman" he's about to get in bed with is actually a man (and totally not Tyler Perry / Madea). As it happens, the "woman" in question is actually Uncle Kevin, who disguised himself as a woman so Donna would have a positive female role model after her mother abandoned her. And then when Cleveland DOES tell him, it's not heard, but you see the two men gesturing... then just like Brian Griffin in the above example, the dad vomits for thirty seconds.
  • Near the end of the Danny Phantom episode "One of a Kind", he discovers up close that the rare purple-back gorilla "Samson" is actually a "Delilah". This is his initial reaction. His second is to let people know so that she can get a proper mate, and hopefully save the species.
  • Family Guy:
    • In "To Love and Die in Dixie", Chris spends the episode making friends with a new Alabamian neighbor named Sam, but by the third act, he realizes Sam is actually a girl (who wasn't even trying to mislead Chris, she's just fairly androgynous and Chris didn't catch on). The "unsettled" part comes not from sexual squick, but rather because Chris in general gets very nervous when talking to girls, and thus he takes a while to build up the confidence to speak to her again.
    • In one episode, Peter and the guys are sitting around drinking and talking about who they would sleep with if they could have any woman in the world. Quagmire says Taylor Hanson.
      Joe: Taylor Hanson's a guy.
      Quagmire: Oh! Oh! Y-you guys are yanking me. "Hey, hey, let's put one over on old Quagmire."
      Peter: No, he's actually a guy, Quagmire.
      Quagmire: W-well, this is insane! That's impossible! Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Oh, my God, I can't... Oh, God! I-oh, I got all these magazines. Oh G-oh God! Oh, God!
    • Quagmire tends to get this trope fairly often. In one episode, Brian gets a job as a drug-sniffing dog for the police. He demonstrates his skill to Quagmire, who just got off a plane from Manila, by sniffing him and correctly guessing everything he did within the past day or so.
      Brian: And you had sex with two Filipino women. [sniffs again] And a man.
      Quagmire: You mean three Filipino women!
      Brian: [Disapproving Look]
      Quagmire: ...Noooooo!
    • In a similar vein, Brian, on the way home from a convention, goes to a hotel bar, meets up with a woman (who the audience knows the identity of), and they intellectually hit it off. After quite a few drinks he goes back to her room, and the next day is telling Stewie about his conquest...only to find that the woman he was with had all the correct parts now, but just a couple days ago was Quagmire's father; the main plot of the episode is the man going through a sex change operation and how everyone around was dealing with it.
  • Futurama:
    • There is the Valentine's Day episode in which Zapp Brannigan is on a blind date with a very burly man in drag, who leaves unexpectedly early...
    Zapp Brannigan: Honey! Wait! You didn't show me your surprise!
    • Inverted in "War is the H-Word," when Zapp finds himself attracted to "Lee Lemon." He is quite relieved when he finds out it was Leela all along.
    Zapp Brannigan: Leela! So it's you I've been attracted to! Oh, God, I've never been so happy to be beaten up by a woman.
    Leela: Let's do it again sometime.
  • High Guardian Spice: Cal flirts with Snapdragon when Snap is Disguised in Drag for Halloween. When Cal realizes it's Snapdragon under the costume, he gets angry and unsettled and Amaryllis has to stand up for Snap.
  • In the Johnny Bravo episode "As I Lay Hiccuping," Johnny goes to a very shapely female doctor to do something about his really bad case of the hiccups. When he returns to her for her "special treatment," the female doctor pulls off her rubber woman suit to reveal a male, bald and heavy doctor with a beard. Johnny's shocked reaction cures his hiccups, and the doctor reveals this trick works every time.
  • In a later episode of King of the Hill, Peggy befriends a drag queen, after discovering "she" has size 16 feet like her. The reveal is unsettling for both of them since Peggy thought Carolyn was a woman and Carolyn thought Peggy was a drag queen.
  • In The Legend of Korra, Bolin falls for both of Korra's cute twin cousins, Desna and Eska, before Korra reveals that they're actually Half-Identical Twins — Desna is a guy.
  • In The Looney Tunes Show apparently even Sylvester thought Tweety was a girl until Tweety himself told him.
  • In The Simpsons episode "Bart's Girlfriend", Bart hears angelic singing coming from the Springfield church, and assumes that it's Jessica Lovejoy. Turns out it's Ned Flanders.
    Bart: Ughhhh. That's very disturbing.
    • Similarily, in "Bart of Darkness, a series of incidents, starting with a woman screaming in horror, lead Bart to believe that Flanders killed his wife. At the end of the episode we see the clarification about Maude being missing because she was at a church trip and that the "murder" that Flanders commited was that he over-watered Maude's plant and killed it. Bart asks about the woman screaming, which Flanders says he can't explain... until Lou the policeman says they found the plant and show it. Ned proceeds to let out a very feminine scream.
  • Done in a two part episode of South Park when Cartman, who's stuck in the future (long story, basically one of his usual schemes backfired), calls back to the past to reach Mr. Garrison who's recently had a sex change operation. Garrison is currently having sex with Richard Dawkins, Dawkins is the one to answer the phone and Cartman lets slip that Garrison is a post-Op. Needless to say Dawkins is repulsed. Not only that but by revealing this, it completely changes the futureExplanation.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Patrick does this in the episode "That's No Lady" to everybody in the Krusty Krab, including Mr. Krabs and Squidward who had fallen for "her" after he tears off the girl disguise he was wearing. (Take note that he strips himself butt-naked in the process, resulting even more Squick to both suitors.)
    Squidward: Um... I think I need to take a shower.
  • The Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Pluck O' The Irish" ends with a pretty lass revealing to Plucky and Hamton that she is actually three male leprechauns stacked up with the top one in a rubber girl mask.
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • Inverted. Dr. Girlfriend tried to seduce Brock a couple of times. Brock thinks Dr. Girlfriend is a transgender woman because of her masculine voice, so it doesn't work. However, the real reason she has a deep voice is due to her smoking habits.
    • Inverted again. Doc never finds out Ginny is a woman because he's not even remotely attracted to her.
  • In the surprisingly serious short What's Opera, Doc?, Elmer Fudd finds out that the girl he fell for was Bugs Bunny in a dress — and actually kills Bugs with his magic helmet. Although it's unclear whether he does it because Bugs is male, or if it's because Bugs rejects him the moment the disguise is off! Or because, well, he's Bugs.
    Bug: Well, what didja expect in an opera? A happy ending?
    • In another episode, Mississippi Hare, Bugs disguises himself as a southern belle to escape the antagonist of the episode, Colonel Shuffle. Bugs enlists the help of another passenger, who throws Shuffle overboard the riverboat to protect the "little flower of the south". He's clearly quite smitten with Bugs until he gets a good look at his rear end after his skirt was ripped. Whether the gentleman realized the lady he helped was male or was a rabbit (or both) is unclear, but the poor schmuck makes a stupefied expression, and walks himself overboard while muttering incoherently.

Alternative Title(s): Sexual Disorientation

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We Sir, I'm a Woman. Ouch.

During the climax of the movie Robots, Fender briefly mistakes Madame Gasket the Big Bad of the film for a man though Madame Gasket quickly corrects him. Ironically she is voiced by a actual man, actor Jim Broadbent.

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Main / UnsettlingGenderReveal

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