Basic Trope: Something secret or illegal is disguised as something embarrassing or disgusting to throw off people looking for the truth.
- Straight: Alice is planning a surprise party for Bob. She tells Bob that she's having that time of the month.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is trying to destroy the world. She tells Bob she has particularly gruesome disease that involves a cascade of nasty bodily functions going on at unison. Bob even throws up a bit after listening to the fake illness' description.
- To create herself an alibi after committing a murder, Alice goes streaking around the city.
- Downplayed: Alice is doing yoga. She tells Bob she has the sniffles.
- Justified:
- Alice isn't very tactful, and Bob's pressure was getting into him, she had to come up with something fast to misguide him.
- Bob knew Alice was hiding something from him. He just didn't know what and people like others to not know about their more embarrassing moments, so...
- Alice knows that telling an embarrassing lie will put people off, so she tells Bob this so he'll be less likely to be curious about her.
- Alice knows that Bob tends to get squeamish about menstruation, and sees no problem exploiting that weakness.
- Literally anything is better than Alice's secret getting out, so she takes Refuge in Audacity as a final effort to keep Bob away.
- Inverted: Alice received a call from Mother Nature. She tells Bob that she is planning a surprise party for Dale.
- Subverted:
- Alice actually is suffering from Mother Nature's curse.
- Alice lies that she's going shopping.
- Double Subverted:
- She's still planning the party, though.
- When she notices Bob disbelieves her, she lies that she has her period.
- Parodied:
- Zig Zagged: Alice was telling the truth when she said she was having that time of the month. However, Bob later finds out that she is planning the surprise party. Later on, he learns that the party was not for him, but for Charlie.
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't ask Alice about what she is doing.
- Alice isn't planning anything.
- Enforced: "How could Alice keep her surprise party a secret from Bob?" "I know! She could throw him off with an embarrassing lie."
- Lampshaded: "A surprise party? Thanks, Alice! So you're feeling better now?" "I wasn't sick at all, silly! I lied to keep you from finding out."
- Invoked:
- Alice knows that Bob will likely stumble upon his surprise party, so she comes up with a lie in advance.
- Bob asks Alice what's going on with her, knowing very well that he will lie to him.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Bob decides not to ask Alice what she is up to.
- Alice refuses to lie to Bob, and instead says nothing.
- Discussed: "Alice says she's feeling a bit sick. But she looks okay, and doesn't sound like she has the sniffles. I think she's planning a surprise party."
- Conversed: "Why did Alice lie to Bob? He clearly knows what she's doing back there!"
- Implied: Charlie asks Bob, "What did Alice say?" Bob replies, "I don't want to talk about it."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob doesn't believe Alice's lie.
- Alice's apparent "Brutal Honesty".
- Bob isn't fazed by menstruation like Alice thought he would be, and offers to take her home or get feminine products for her, forcing Alice to backtrack and come up with another excuse that Bob doesn't believe.
- Reconstructed:
- Not that he really cares what the truth is, so he just goes on his merry way.
- Alice covers it with a normal excuse, before following it with a more embarrassing one.
- Played For Laughs: Alice's excuse is overly complicated and utterly hilarious. (e.g. "I was knitting a pair of stockings for Charlie's giant turnip, when Dale crashed through my wall and challenged me to a game of sword-ball. I couldn't say no right away, so I threw on some bathroom slippers and...")
- Played For Drama: Alice's cover up isn't just embarrassing... it's scandalous. In trying to plan a party for Bob, she's accidentally made it look like she's cheating on him.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice uses the embarrassing cover-up to escape suspicion of something much more nefarious (oh, she was out buying porn - and kidnapping a couple of John Does to murder later).
- The cover-up is not just scandalous, but it directly leads to Alice getting killed (Bob murdering Alice as Honor-Related Abuse because it looked like she was cheating on him, for example).
- The cover-up is technically of the "embarrassing" kind but it's damn scary in context (Alice says she was with her church when she was out buying a gift for Bob, but unknown to her at that specific moment a Sinister Minister was leading them on a Heaven's Gate-style mass suicide. Alice arrives home to see her family shattered from hearing the news and she eventually has to prove she was not in on the plan to kill a dozen people).
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