Not What It Looks Like / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

Times where a situation is Not What It Looks Like to others in Live-Action Films.

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• One sequence in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen features the King and Queen of the Moon, who have detachable heads. At one point, the Queen's disembodied head begins making suggestive noises and expressions, prompting the Baron to awkwardly tell his Kid Sidekick that the King is tickling her feet in bed. Amazingly, that isn't an example of Lies to Children: the King is literally tickling the Queen's feet in bed.
• Aftermath (2021): After Kevin and Natalie move into their new house, Kevin gets the mail one morning, and discovers a pornography magazine among it. He tries calling the publishers to cancel it, and Natalie walks in and finds said pornography magazine.
• In American Pie, Jim says exactly this during the famous pie scene.
• American Wedding:
  • Stifler and Jim are in the room with the cake that was made to celebrate Jim's engagement to Michelle. Jim catches Stifler rearranging the letters to read "Congratulation Jism!", and the two get in an argument that ends with both of them getting cake all over their pants. Jim starts to take off his pants to clean them, while Stifler gets knocked to the floor by a dog, who starts licking the cake off his crotch. Jim, with his pants around his ankles, gets behind the dog and tries to pull it off of Stifler. Jim and Michelle's families then walk into the room and catch what looks like Jim and Stifler raping a dog. Stifler even blurts out the line "It's not what it looks like!"
  • This happens again with Stifler in the same movie. Jim's grandmother had been locked in the closet by some of his friends so that she wouldn't cause a fuss at the wedding (she objected to the fact that her Jewish grandson Jim was marrying Michelle, a gentile). Meanwhile, Cadence, Michelle's hot sister, had arranged with Stifler for the two to meet in that same closet to have sex. Cut to Stifler getting busted having sex with a granny.
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: Austin Powers disables a bunch of "fembots" by doing a striptease. Immediately afterwards, his girlfriend walks in and sees him in his underwear with what appear to be scantily dressed beautiful women. He tells her it's Not What It Looks Like and starts babbling; she cuts him off, laughs, and says "I believe you."
• The 1939 film Bachelor Mother starts with Polly seeing a woman abandoning a baby at the steps of an orphanage. When she tries to help the baby she is mistaken for the mother and is reprimanded for trying to abandon him. No one believes Polly when she says she isn't the childs mother.
• In Bad Boys II, Mike and Marcus head into a side room at an electronics store to have a private talk about the fact that Mike had accidentally shot Marcus in the ass earlier in the film. Unfortunately, there is an active camcorder in the room, which transmits their talk to the entire store. Without context, everybody in the store thinks that Mike and Marcus are gay. As they step out of the room, they get accosted by a Madea-esque woman telling them that they "need Jesus".
• Bend It Like Beckham:
  • When Jess and her friend Jules are walking along overwhelmed with laughter, they have to hold onto each other to keep from falling. The parents of Jess's sister's boyfriend think they're making out. They also mistake Jules for a boy due to her short hair.
  • In another scene, Jules' mother thinks her daughter and Jess are in a lesbian relationship when she hears them arguing in Jules' room (they were actually arguing about their coach Joe, who they have a crush on). Made even worse when they kiss during their excitement over being recruited for a college team.
• Black Sheep (1996):
  • Mike Donnelly sees a group of teenagers with beer in a parking lot and tries to give them a heart-to-heart talk in his characteristically buffoonish way. A paparazzi manages to take a picture of him in middle of the act, making it look like Mike is partying with minors when the picture ends up on the front page of the newspaper.
  • Later on, two of Governor Tracy's staff members set fire to the recreation center Mike was just fired from in order to frame him and discredit his brother, gubernatorial candidate Al Donnelly. A sleazy reporter takes a picture of Mike running out of the building, making it look like he set the fire, and then blackmails Tracy into paying him to release that picture instead of the one that shows her guys actually setting the building ablaze.
• Creep Van: By the time the police showed up, Campbell had already killed the real killer. Plus, he'd accidentally killed Amy, and Swami Ted is also dead, so there's no one to correct the police on what happened. As a result, Campbell ends up taking the blame for committing the murders.
• Crush: Gabby apologizes for drunkenly trying to kiss Paige in front of AJ. Naturally, AJ thinks Paige (whom she'd kissed as well) is really into Gabby, which was actually true until they kissed before this. Paige tries to explain, though AJ shuns her for a time.
• In DOA: Dead or Alive, Bass Armstrong walks in on his daughter Tina sleeping in the same bed with Christie, and mistakenly believes they are lovers. He constantly insists he is supportive of their relationship, despite Tina's protests that there is nothing going on. He later makes a similar assumption upon seeing Tina and Kasumi together.
• Doctor... Series:
  • Doctor at Sea:
    • Wendy's attempts to rub Dr. Sparrow's neck end with her falling on top of him. When her parents walk in, they think they're intruding on something romantic.
    • When Dr. Sparrow tries to tuck a drunken Jill into bed, her father catches them and believes he's drugged her to have his way with her.
  • Doctor at Large: Dr. Hatchet catches Dr. Sparrow and Jasmine fighting over a box of sleeping pills and believes they are embracing behind his back.
• In Double Wedding, Charles and Irene are practicing a torrid love scene from his The Sheik-esque film, when Margit walks in and thinks that Charles is seducing Irene.
• In Enchanted, Giselle in only a Modesty Towel falls out of the bathroom and on top of Robert just as Robert's girlfriend walks into the apartment. What makes it worse is that Giselle innocently doesn't help Robert clear up the misunderstanding because she herself doesn't understand the implications.
• In Fierce Creatures, its a Running Gag that John Cleese's character is constantly being caught with women (or animals!) in compromising positions with implausible explanations.
• Fight Club: Invoked by Norton's character who beats himself up at his boss' office but when the security guards arrive it looks like he was battered by his boss.
• Frantic:
  • Played for Drama when a concierge tells Walker he saw his missing wife leave with another man who was holding his arm around her. Walker fails to convince the US embassy staff that the man was doing this because he has a gun in her ribs.
  • Walker runs into some friends at the airport when he goes with Michelle to recover the suitcase. It's obvious what they think he's up to with a young trashy-looking French girl.
• In Hellfighters, Tish, who is about 20, is on the phone at an oil fire in Venezuela when she hears that her estranged parents are going to remarry after having divorced when she was 5. She hangs up the phone, and sits down, excited, and tells the oilworkers there, "My father is finally going to marry my mother, isn't that great?" One of the men, who has no idea that she means they're getting remarried, says, "That must be very nice." and everyone else there, realizing the guy has completely misunderstood what she meant, break up in laughter.
• After returning from the toilets without her glasses in Holiday on the Buses, Olive makes a Blind Mistake and ends up in Wally's bed, where she is joined by Wally. When she realises what's happening, she screams and awakens Lill, who assumes that she is trying to have it off with her husband.
• The Illusionist (2006): Invoked and inverted in-story not by The Protagonist, but by the man investigating him, of all things; who tells the protagonist that "while others may assume that a discreet carriage ride (with the Duchess and future empress) was what it looked like (a sexual encounter), I am willing to find out what it actually was." (As it turns out, a conversation between childhood friends.) It's also possibly subverted as the man is clearly skeptical of his explanation and warns him others will be even moreso.
• In Independence Day, Will Smith's wingman is down on one knee to demonstrate proper ass-kissing technique when Smith drops a box. The wingman dismisses Smith's assertion that it's nothing by remarking "This is a wedding ring." At which point another pilot walks by, holds up his hands in a "Don't mind me" pose, and quickly backtracks.
• Jennifer's Body: Played for some very dark laughs and also drama. After having a brutal fight with Jennifer and barely managing to kill her, Needy is found over the still warm body by Jennifer's mother. Needy gets incarcerated and put in a ward for the criminally insane, since obviously her claim about killing a man-eating demon isn't going to convince anyone.
• In The Last Jedi, this is the final straw in an already volatile Poor Communication Kills situation. Poe attempts again to get an explanation from Holdo about how she plans to keep the Resistance alive and sees that she is fueling up transports. Since Holdo is still refusing to provide any explanation for what those transports are for, Poe concludes that Holdo is fleeing with her command crew and leaving everyone else behind as a distraction. The transports are equipped with cloaking devices so that they can slip by the First Order unnoticed while the Resistance's capital ship is used as bait, which Poe admits is a good plan that he would have supported if he had known.
• In Lucky Number Slevin, Slevin walks into his bedroom to find a strange man having sex with his girlfriend doggy style.
  Girlfriend: This isn't what it looks like!
  Slevin: Oh right, so, he tripped and then you fell?
• When Shondra gets caught in a compromising position with kidnapee B-Rad in Malibu's Most Wanted, her boyfriend makes it quite clear that: "I use that line all the time, and you know it's always what it looks like!!!" (Though in fact, it wasn't what it looked like. She was merely trying to extract a bullet from his foot, and her face ended up on his crotch. Easy enough to explain.)
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man, this, along with the following "I can explain," is subverted when Tony Stark is discovered by Pepper in his battlesuit, apparently being molested by robots. His response? "Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing." The bullet holes, however, are a bit bad.
  • In Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy Carter walked in on Steve kissing a blond secretary and assumed he had become a womanizer. What she didn't see before was Steve trying to turn down the secretary's aggressive advances and being pulled into the kiss. Initially turning her down, at least. By the time Peggy showed up, Cap didn't look to be resisting that much...
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming: While out on patrol, Spider-Man discovers a guy using a crowbar to break into a car and quickly webs him up. After giving a Bond One-Liner, the guy angrily explains to Spider-Man that he's the owner of the car and he had accidentally locked his keys inside it.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home: While on a stop in Switzerland, Brad Davis antagonizes Peter by threatening to reveal a photo of him taking off his clothes in front of what appears to be a dominatrix. In reality, said "dominatrix" was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, who was ordering Peter to disrobe so he could try on his new stealth suit.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home: Rounding out the trilogy, the start of the film sees Peter and MJ swinging back home through the window following the immediate chaos of Peter's identity being revealed to the world. Unbeknownst to him, Aunt May and Happy have just entered the apartment, and they end up discovering MJ consoling a panicked Peter wearing nothing but his underwear (actually him just changing out of his costume). Happy turns away in embarrassment and May awkwardly tells them that whatever they're doing, perform it safely, all while Peter and MJ try to explain what's actually going on... until they all realize that news helicopters are circling the apartment in pursuit of Spider-Man.
• In Molly (1999), Buck has to remove Molly's pants after she wets herself. His girlfriend walks in on him as he's holding her down on the bed while she shrieks and giggles. She believes him after he shows her the letter telling him Molly is in his custody, but she still dumps him because she wants a more reliable partner to have kids with.
• In Monster-in-Law, the title character sends the ex-girlfriend up to the room where her son is getting dressed in order to try to break up his engagement to a girl she thinks is not good enough for him. So his fiancée walks in on him, half dressed, with his ex-girlfriend practically pasted on him.
• In Murder by Decree, Dr. Watson notices a used syringe. Holmes indulging in his cocaine habit? No. The detective was just using it to empty his pipe.
• From the The Naked Gun movies:
  • In the first film, Frank does a break-in at the main suspect's high-rise apartment to find evidence against him. Through his usual bumbling, he first manages to start a fire, and then trapping himself on the outside of the building. In an attempt to climb to safety, Frank has to hang on to the building's ornate statues, which all happen to be anatomically correct, resulting in him accidentally breaking off the shaft of one of the male statues. He finally manages to fall into an apartment, with the stone penis in hand. The apartments occupant happens to be a woman, who is rightly freaked out when Frank proceeds to stumble towards her with a wide-eyed expression on his face, groaning loudly (from the exertion of climbing the building), and brandishing what appears to be a huge dick made of cement in his hand. When Frank is later reprimanded by the mayor, she is confused that amongst the complaints of burglary and arson levelled against him, there is also an accusation of "sexual assault with a concrete dildo".
  • Inverted in the third film, Frank secretly does some undercover work for the police, even though he's promised his wife he's out of the force for good. When his wife discovers scratches on his back, she immediately figures out what's going on, and he says "No, it's another woman, I swear!"
• One Night at McCool's: Late in the film, Jewel arranges a "date" with both Carl and Dehling at the same time without their knowledge. At Jewel's request Carl gets into a submissive S&M outfit, while Dehling goes to meet her in his police uniform. When Dehling later finds Carl in the house he restrains the apparent stranger on the kitchen table. At this point Carl's cousin Randy walks in and asks them what the heck is going on.
• In Steve Martin's The Pink Panther (2006), this trope occurs twice. The second time is a particularly funny scene where Detective Ponton walks into Clouseau's apartment and it appears that he is having sex with his secretary, Nicole. In reality, she was choking on an egg and he rushed to perform the Heimlich. What makes the scene particularly amusing is that the two of them don't think that Ponton took it the wrong way and have the following conversation, which piques Ponton's interest:
  Nicole: You are so good! Where did you learn that?
  Clouseau: You know... I practiced on mannequins...
• In Please Turn Over, Gladys walks in on Dr. Manners on the floor with Mrs. Moore, however, Dr. Manners wasn't trying anything with her, she had forced him to the ground against his wishes.
• In Pretty Cool, Howard's sister walks in on him, Chuck and Miss Parker in a rather suggestive position.
• In Popeye, Popeye and Olive return to Olive’s place after finding Swee’pea in a basket. Bluto, who had come to propose to Olive, takes one look at Olive standing with Popeye and carrying Swee’pea in her arms and immediately assumes that they were together.
• In Red Eye, the flight attendants are under the impression that the heroine Lisa and the antagonist Rippner were in the Mile-High Club when they both exit a lavatory together, unaware that Rippner was really choking Lisa for lying to him following one of her attempts to thwart his assassination plot.
  Older Flight Attendant: Excuse me, this isn't a motel.
  [Beat]
  Rippner: Sure.
• Red Rock West: A darker example occurs when Michael spies on Suzanne (whose husband wants her dead) nervously meeting a pleased-looking Kurt in his trailer. They aren't having an affair: Kurt thinks she's there to pay off blackmail money and she's working up the nerve to shoot him.
• Rosaline: Rosaline is caught with what seems like the corpse of her cousin Juliet, about to haul her off the balcony. She is unable to tell her uncle that Juliet is faking her death and Rosaline is attempting to smuggle her to safety.
• In The Seven Year Itch the janitor walks in on the main character when he's having a late night drink with the neighbor while his wife is out of town, and assumes the worst. It doesn't help that the neighbor is played by Marilyn Monroe.
• In Shanghai Knights, we get one of these when Roy O'cannon (Owen Wilson) walks in on Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) adjusting a prostitute's back.
  Roy: Chon, you decadent philistine!
• In Short Cuts, Stuart Kane and his fishing buddies Gordon and Vern find a dead body on a fishing weekend, and Gordon takes photographs of the corpse (though they still wait three days to tell the police). Meanwhile, trainee makeup artist Bill Bush has taken photos of the bruise makeup he tried out on his wife Honey, enhancing the scene by having her stick a prop knife under her arm to make it look as though she has been brutally beaten and stabbed. Gordon and the Bushes stop by a photo developer to collect their photos at the same time, and when they accidentally knock the envelopes off the counter, they pick up each other's pictures. They are both horrified to see what look like murder scenes, and after suppressing their horror and politely exchanging envelopes, Honey begins repeating Gordon's number plate while Gordon begins repeating the phone number on the side of the van in which Honey is travelling, each clearly planning to report the other's "murder" to the police.
• Averted in State and Main. At first Joe goes to some length to keep Ann from finding out that a nude Claire is in his room (against his will), thinking that the trope will play out. Then when she suddenly walks back in and catches Claire, Joe immediately explains what's going on, and Ann believes him.
  Joe: Wait, you believe that? But it's insane!
  Ann: So's our electoral system but we still vote.
• Stroker Ace: The morning following a romantic evening, Lugs finds Pembrook crying at the hotel. The only word she gets out is Stroker's name, so Lugs tracks down Stroker and busts him in the face, believing that Stroker had sex with her. Neither one of them gets the chance to explain that Pembrook passed out from the champagne and Stroker didn't have the heart to take advantage of her like that.
• Played with in The Sweetest Thing. Christina Walters (Cameron Diaz) and Courtney Rockcliffe (Christina Applegate), in underwear, on a car. The latter (who's driving) drops her lipstick, the former decides to search for it. A biker sees the thing, thinks it's something else... and Courtney decides to play along and pretend it is what it looked like! Then the biker crashes.
• In Tango & Cash when Tango goes to hide out in his sister Katherine's house he sees her apparently having sex with Cash, (he sees her on top of the couch thrusting back and forth), she's actually giving him a massage to fix a slipped disc, it doesn't help with their dialogue, their moaning and grunting, and the fact that both are wearing very little clothing. However in an aversion of this trope, Katherine refuses to explain what she was doing to troll her brother.
• In Titanic, Jack saves Rose from falling off the back of the ship and pulls her to safety, accidentally falling on top of her in the process. Her clothes are torn and she's visibly terrified from the ordeal. At that moment, the crewmembers (attracted by Rose screaming for help when she slipped) run up and see them.
• In To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Lara Jean and Peter simply make out in the hot tub but did not do anything more. However, the alleged sex tape makes it look like they did otherwise and Lara Jean is ragged on for seemingly doing something like that in public.
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil: The entire premise of the film. Tucker and Dale are two Good Ol' Boys whose well-meaning actions unintentionally make them look a bunch of psycho hillbillies to the students camping in the area, who proceed to treat them as such. A particular highlight is Tucker and Dale trying to explain to the local Sheriff how the college kids ended up killing themselves on their property, only to end up Digging Themselves Deeper when Dale mentions that he (accidentally!) knocked out Allison with a shovel and put her unconscious body in his bedroom.
• WarGames: When David shows off his hacking skills to Jennifer, he hacks into Pan-Am's computers and seemingly purchases two tickets to Paris. Later, after unknowingly hacking into the NORAD Master Computer WOPR, the FBI tracks him down and takes him in for interrogation, and they point to the Pan-Am hacking as evidence about David possibly being a Soviet spy.
• A Wedding (1978): Muffin walks in on her new husband Dino and his gay groomsman Reedley in the shower, seemingly having oral sex. Actually, Dino is passed out drunk and Reedley is trying to use the shower to wake him up, but Dino fell down and slumped against his crotch.
• Wedding Season: Asha mistakes Ravi having dinner with a woman as him having moved on from her. It turns out that that was his cousin.
• Played for Drama in Welcome to the Punch (2013). Cowboy Cop Max Lewinsky is forced to take London crook Jacob Sternwood to the hospital to see his son; Sternwood is holding a gun in his pocket. As they're leaving the hospital they encounter another detective helping wheel a sheet-covered body into the morgue. Lewsinsky starts to explain that his being with a wanted criminal isn't what it looks like, but unknown to him the body is that of his female partner and Lewsinsky has been framed for her murder, so the detective isn't interested in his explanation.
• We're the Millers: Said by Kenny when David catches him kissing Casey. And then Melissa catches them, too.
  David: It looks like Casey is teaching you how to kiss out of pity.
  Kenny: Then it is what it looks like.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jessica (a toon) barges in to Eddie's office/apartment while he's getting dressed. A few minutes later, Eddie's love interest walks in on them, producing one of the more original gotcha lines ever: "Dabbling in watercolors, Eddie?"
• Every encounter between the bike cop and the heroes of Wild Hogs is exactly that. It doesn't help that whenever he spots or overhears them, they tend to be discussing such matters as "being ridden so hard by Woody" or taking naked baths together, as seen here.
• In Working Girl, the main character walks in on her boyfriend stark naked and having sex with another woman (also stark naked). "This is not what it looks like! (beat) Okay, this is what it looks like. But I can explain! Well, not exactly explain... Come on, Tess! I'm sorry! I really am! I love you!"

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