Basic Trope: An innocent situation is mistaken for abusive.
- Straight: Alice forgets that a door wasn't open and runs into it, getting visible bruises. Her partner Bob gets some accusing looks and Alice gets hints on breaking up with him, because 'I ran into the door' is one of the most basic Cut Himself Shaving excuses there is. In this case, it was actually true.
- Exaggerated: Alice gets a papercut and when her friend Daniel sees her with a bandage on her finger, he immediately assumes that her partner, Bob, injured her in some way.
- Downplayed:
- Alice's friends are suspicious at first, but they believe her when she says the injuries weren't caused by abuse and they don't cause drama by accusing Bob.
- Bob is not physically abusive, but he is a mental abuser who deals with her accidental injuries not with comfort and empathy but by getting angry at her.
- Justified:
- Alice is in a Safe, Sane, and Consensual BDSM relationship with her dearly loved husband Bob, but Daniel fervently believes that Bondage Is Bad.
- Alice is genuinely clumsy and used to hurting herself, but Daniel never sees her mistakes, thinking Bob has damaged her self-confidence making her believe she is clumsy.
- Daniel hears Bob yell before hearing a loud thump and Alice crying out in pain, and thinks that he was shouting in anger before attacking her. In reality Bob was trying to tell Alice about the floor he just mopped, but Alice didn't hear him in time and slipped on it.
- Daniel never liked Bob, and is assuming the worst of him.
- Alice is embarrassed about how she was injured, so she acts nervous and evasive when Daniel asks her what happened, who assumes the worst because of this.
- Daniel is paranoid.
- Alice's friends are aware that Bob is impulsive and short-tempered, so it's only natural that whenever Alice comes up with an injury, they will assume Bob had something to do with it. Problem is, Alice is also clumsy and absent-minded, so she genuinely hurts herself at times.
- Daniel has been abused, or known someone who was abused, making him quick to assume situations are abuse.
- Inverted: Bob did beat Alice up, but her friends thought she ran into a door.
- Subverted: Daniel decides to investigate Alice's situation, believing it to be abusive despite her repeated insistence that her husband is not abusing her. His assumptions turn out to be correct and Alice is either lying, has Stockholm Syndrome, or was gaslit.
- Double Subverted:
- But then it turns out that Alice purposefully made her husband out to be abusive with herself as a Love Martyr to achieve a goal..
- It turns out that the "abuse" is only part of her Safe, Sane, and Consensual BDSM relationship with Bob, and Daniel just so happens to miss the part where they drop character.
- Parodied:
- Bob gently pokes Alice in the arm. This results in Alice's friends starting the biggest drama ever and accusing Bob of being evil.
- Alice runs into every door she comes across, at one point being admitted into the hospital when she ran into a door five times a row because she never noticed it was closed. She joins a group of other women who have a tendency to run into doors, and laments that society doesn't care about door-running-into victims. Alice and Bob both have an increasingly difficult time explaining to people that he doesn't abuse her.
- Zig Zagged: Alice walked into a door, but her friends all believe her husband did it to her. But Alice was lying, her husband did hit her...in self defense, because it was Alice who attacked her husband. But all of his friends refuse to believe that he was abused by Alice.
- Averted:
- Everyone asks what happened to Alice or Bob when one of them gets injured or is arguing with the other instead of jumping to conclusions about what's going on. The closest they come to assuming that one of them is being abused is double-checking to make sure that he's not claiming that he Cut Himself Shaving (or she's not claiming she walked into a door) simply as a safety precaution.
- Alice never gets injured.
- Enforced: The writer wants to add some drama by causing a conflict between Alice's friends and Bob, but not at the expense of turning Bob into a Domestic Abuser.
- Lampshaded: "Why does everyone think that just because I am hurt, it means I have an abusive husband?"
- Invoked: Freda hates Bob, so she tells Alice's friends that he is abusive.
- Exploited: Alice injures herself on purpose, knowing that Bob will get blamed for it; she hopes to get rid of him using this as evidence for jail's sentence.
- Defied: Someone sees Alice walk into a door, and backs her up when she explains it to her friends.
- Discussed: "We'll want to proceed carefully when we ask about Alice's bruises. It's very easy for non-professionals to mistake an accident for abuse, and vice-versa."
- Conversed: "Huh, Alice is really bruised in this opening scene. The cause will always be the opposite of what the first person to interact with her thinks."
- Implied: Although it's never revealed how Alice got injured, it would be very Out of Character for Bob to abuse Alice.
- Played For Laughs: Every time Alice gets injured, no matter how minor it is, her friends immediately think that they're the result of physical abuse and come up with absurd theories as to exactly how she got them.
- Played For Drama: This leads to a Feud Episode.
This? No, I just tripped on my way to Abuse Mistake. Why would my husband want to hurt me?
