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Right For The Wrong Reasons / Live-Action TV

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Times where somebody is Right for the Wrong Reasons in Live-Action TV series.

  • On the Game Show 1 vs. 100, a contestant was give the question, "How many US states do not touch any other state? One, two, or three?" Thinking out loud, the contestant said that Hawaii is in the ocean, and one of the Great Lakes states is completely surrounded by lakes, so the answer must be two. This is completely wrong; the Great Lakes state that borders the most states is Michigan, which borders three. The answer is two, but it's because the two states in question are Hawaii (which is indeed surrounded by ocean) and Alaska (which borders northwestern Canada).
  • During Day 6 of 24, a character attacks Kal Penn's character, assuming he's linked to terrorists. He is, though the guy has no way of knowing that (he's just a bigoted jerk).
  • In Andor, Lieutenant Dedra Meero of the ISB posits a theory that an organized Rebellion (which as far as most people know, doesn't exist yet at this point in the Star Wars timeline), is stealing valuable and sensitive Imperial military tech parts for use in a coordinated resistance to the Empire, and Luthen and Cassian's meeting in Episode 3 was part of smuggling this technology within the rebellion, which is why a valuable starpath unit (which can identify and give away the position of Imperial ships in a very large area of space), was left behind when the meeting was interrupted. She's right about most of it; there is the beginning of an organized rebellion against the Empire, they have been very carefully stealing Imperial military tech in bits and pieces from many different places, and Luthen is a key part of both the nascent Rebellion and distributing valuable resources and materiel to the scattered resistance cells. However the theft itself was not part of the pattern of the Rebellion covertly acquiring Imperial tech, as Cassian was an ordinary thief at the time and acted purely on his own with no goal except to make a profit from selling it, and Cassian had no connection to the Rebellion. Yet. The actions of the Empire itself would eventually make him Neutral No Longer.
  • Crops up often enough on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?:
    • One woman was asked "True or False: The female seahorse carries her baby in a pouch". Although seahorses are quite famous for the males doing this, her answer was no, because she'd never seen a pouch on a seahorse. (Which raises the question as to how many seahorses she's seen!)
    • On a celebrity edition, Kellie Pickler was given a question regarding which of the Founding Fathers went on to be a president. Of the choices given, she reasoned it had to be Franklin Pierce because... all the letters in his last name were in HER last name! How that was supposed to be relevant, we'll never know. The most common theory is that Pickler is a lot smarter than she seems and has gone the Jessica Simpson route of playing dumber than she is because it gets people talking about her and is good for business.
  • A Running Gag in Arrested Development has Oscar dropping very unsubtle hints that his "nephew" Buster is his biological son, which sail right over Buster's head. Buster doesn't figure it out until an exasperated Oscar tells him he's changed his mind about sharing his "Pop Secret" with him, referring to the popcorn brand with no double meaning intended.
    Buster: Pop secret?...Is Oscar my real father?
  • Arrow:
  • During the pilot miniseries of Battlestar Galactica (2003), the surviving humans find a Cylon device on the bridge, they realize there must be an infiltrator. Baltar, who had been manipulated by said Cylons and is desperate to make sure no one launches an investigation that might uncover his past actions, announces he's determined Doral, a civilian public relations flack that no one likes, was a Cylon. Baltar picked him based on the fact no one liked him and thus was unlikely to have anyone come to his defense, and he happened to be present. After they leave Doral behind on an old space station while the fleet jumps away, it's revealed they are in fact a human-replica Cylon.
  • Breaking Bad:
    • After Brock gets poisoned, Jesse assumes that Walt stole the ricin cigarette that Jesse was holding and used that to poison him. Walt convinces him that Gus Fring used the ricin to poison Brock instead, expecting Jesse to suspect and turn on Walter. What really happened was Walt did poison Brock, but stealing the ricin cigarette from Jesse was a ruse so that Walter could plausibly suggest that Gus was the culprit. Walt used a different and less dangerous method to poison Brock.
    • Midway through season 3, Hank is shot and critically wounded in a gunfight with Leonel and Marco Salamanca, who are seeking revenge for the death of their cousin Tuco. In the hospital, his wife Marie starts blaming Hank's DEA colleagues, along with Walt, for the shooting. Her reasoning, steeped mostly in grief, hysterics, and anger, is increasingly spurious on each front, especially the connection to Walt: as far as she knows, the only connection Walt has to any of this is that he (probably) once bought marijuana from Jesse, and Hank was on suspension for beating Jesse unconsciousnote , which led to Hank's gun being confiscated before the attack. Unbeknownst to her, though, Walt is almost entirely responsible. While Hank may have been the one to kill Tuco, that was because he ran into Tuco while following the LoJack on Jesse's car while searching for Walt (who had been kidnapped by Tuco). The Cousins had also originally been planning to go after Walt, since federal agents are off limits to the cartel, before Gus redirected them to go after Hank because Walt (as a meth cook) was too valuable to him. Not to mention, Jesse is Walt's partner in the meth manufacturing, and Hank was only involved in any of this because he was investigating crimes Walt had committed. It's evident on Walt's face that he realizes all of this.
    • In Ozymandias, Skyler and Junior correctly deduce that Hank is dead because the last time both of them heard of him, Walt was arrested by Hank but he's free now with Hank nowhere in sight. But they think that Walt intentionally killed him to avoid imprisonment and turn against him, not that Walt willingly surrendered to Hank to avoid harming him and he attempted his best to save Hank from getting killed by Jack, his actual killer.
  • Sister series Better Call Saul has a lot of this going on in the third season.
    • Jimmy is facing disbarment because his brother Chuck alleges that Jimmy stole some of his documents and tampered with them to add some errors, making Chuck look incompetent to Mesa Verde so that they would settle for retaining Jimmy's lover Kim Wexler as their legal counsel. Chuck realizes, correctly, that he didn't make the errors and it was Jimmy's fault... but the thing is, his assumption is pretty much strictly based on the idea that Jimmy is a slimy conman and he himself is without flaw, so when he did something wrong, obviously, it was Jimmy sabotaging him. The other characters surmise that even if Chuck had made the errors for real, he still would have blamed Jimmy. This screws him up at the trial, because it means that even a taped confession by Jimmy admitting he did the whole thing looks like it could just as easily be Jimmy consoling Chuck by validating his ego and absurd conspiracy theories.
    • Chuck claims to have a physical condition that causes him to become allergic to electricity. While he does feel the pain, it's revealed to be a trick of the mind, and that his nerves do not automatically react to electricity (as shown when characters turn on devices near him).
  • In an episode of Castle, a late-night talk show host tells Castle that someone wants him dead and winds up dead the next day... of a heart attack. Based on the man's suspicions, Castle presses Beckett to investigate, and it turns out he was murdered. It comes out that the studio had been trying to force him out, with a threatening-sounding mention of his bad heart. The studio had nothing to do with it it was actually a friend, who killed the victim for firing him from the show... in order to please the studio. Thus the victim was right about his upcoming death for the wrong reason, causing Castle to be right about murder for the wrong reason.
  • In an episode of Cheers, Diane picks the winners of football games using specious logic. ("A bear against a dolphin? That's hardly a fair fight!") Of course, she beats the pants off everyone else this way. Exasperated, Sam tries to duplicate her thought process, hoping to get the same result.
  • Happens a few times on Cold Case. The detectives reopen a case based on newly-discovered evidence that points to a particular suspect. The evidence turns out to be a Red Herring, but the suspect in question turns out to be guilty nonetheless.
  • In Chernobyl, plant director Bryukhanov dismisses the "good dosimeter" burning out by saying that Moscow sends them shit equipment and then complains that it doesn't work. Although he's trying to dismiss evidence that the accident is much worse than an equipment fire, he's right that they are suffering from the results of shit equipment: the emergency shutdown mechanism. Thanks to the Soviets Cutting Corners, the control rods were not made entirely of inert boron, but had graphite tips that could dramatically increase reactivity—and with every other safety feature disengaged, hitting the shutdown was the final trigger for the explosion.
  • An episode of Columbo has the titular detective deduce that the suspect, Ken, who is partner to a mystery writer, committed two murders: one was killing his partner, by recycling a plot from one of their planned books, and the other was killing a woman trying to blackmail him, which he did on his own. Columbo remarks that the first murder was elaborately covered-up, but the second murder was sloppy; he believes that this is because Ken (according to the victim's wife) had little-to-no role in the writing of their mystery stories, and when he was on his own, he couldn't come up with something to match what his partner came up with. To confirm this, Columbo produces a bit of writing by the victim that matches the first murder perfectly. Ken, realizing he's been caught, admits that Columbo actually did get one thing wrong: the first murder plot was entirely his own creation. By his own admission, he came up with it years ago during a brainstorming session, and felt it was pretty much the one good idea he ever come up with. He was surprised his partner had bothered to write it down.
  • Control Z: Marta, Luis's mother, somewhat blames Quintanilla for his mishandling the fight between Gerry and Luis, in which the latter was seriously injured. She also criticizes his incompetence as a principal in giving a good example for the students who often forget that the school is a place to learn, not to show off popularities or gossip about personal issues. While her points are valid, she is wrong in the fact that it isn't Quintanilla's fault that the students behave the way they do.
  • Covert Affairs once sent Annie back to the CIA academy to find a mole. (Episode "Bang and Blame".) During a firearms exercise, the other participants each grab a gun and shoot their way out of a maze. Annie, on the other hand, uses the gun she picks up to smash open a glass box and use the map inside to navigate the maze. The instructor says this was the right course of action since she didn't give away her position with gunfire. However, this wasn't the reason Annie eschewed the gun. It turns out she was sick the day they had firearms practice.
  • Criminal Minds:
    • In "A Higher Power", the detective who called the team in started investigating the spike in suicides because he didn't believe that his relative would have committed suicide. Turns out the unsub was faking the suicides but didn't have a trophy from the detective's relative... suggesting it really was a suicide that time.
    • The unsub of "Taboo" thought it was OK to lust after his older sister since he was adopted — they're not blood siblings so it should be fine, right? Actually no, since while they aren't siblings they are mother and child.
  • CSI:
    • A woman who'd made a living as a psychic was murdered after she'd been hired to contact another murder victim's spirit. The killer believed that she'd succeeded in this, and had learned that he'd hidden the body on his property in the Las Vegas neighborhood of Summerlin. In fact, she hadn't divined any such thing; rather, she'd said that the victim's spirit was in Summerland, a New Age-style counterpart to Heaven.
    • Used in another episode where a man suspects that his neighbor kidnapped and killed his daughter plants an already-dead body in the man's chimney to focus police attention on him. Turns out the dad was right and the neighbor not only killed his daughter, but her body was actually in the same chimney hidden behind a brick extension and is uncovered by the CSI team during their investigation of the planted body.
    • In another episode the team investigates the murder of several monks in a Buddhist temple, all shot between the eyes. They determine that they were all on their knees and didn't try to flee, but were praying for their aggressor, and hypothesize that the murderer frequented the temple and is a Buddhist himself because the place between the eyes is the sixth chakra in the Buddhist religion. They correctly pin the murders on the East Asian janitor, but when they ask him why he shot them in their sixth chakra, he shrugs and says "I shot them between the eyes".
    • In CSI: NY, one case in "City of the Dolls" had a waitress poisoned. It's deduced that the motive was to gain ownership of her apartment, but the suspect that fits that motive they questioned wasn't the culprit. The motive was completely correct, it was actually a different neighbour. In the end however, the murder was unnecessary as the victim had terminal cancer, meaning that the culprit could've legally gotten the apartment without murdering her had they waited 6 months.
  • Daredevil (2015):
    • Late in season 1, Ben Urich suspects that there's a mole at the New York Bulletin working for Wilson Fisk. He strongly suspects it to be his editor-in-chief Mitchell Ellison, given that Ellison has been hampering Ben's efforts to cover organized crime activity that's connected to Fisk by forcing him to cover puff-pieces to boost the paper's ailing circulation. When he publicly confronts Ellison with his allegations, he's forced to resign in disgrace. The mole then tips off Fisk, who visits Ben at his apartment and murders him for speaking to his mother Marlene Vistain. In the next episode, Matt and Foggy get a corrupt cop on Fisk's payroll to flip on him. As the FBI arrest Fisk's associates, it's revealed that while Ben was wrong about Ellison being the mole, he was right about the fact that someone at the Bulletin was feeding information to Fisk: Ellison's secretary Caldwell.
    • In the first episode of season 2, Matt Murdock accosts crooked arms dealer Turk Barrett and tries to interrogate him for information on recent massacres of the Kitchen Irish and Dogs of Hell. Turk says there are rumors that there's a new crew in town with military precision. However, it turns out that the rumors are wrong, as the shootings are all solely the work of Frank Castle. But then, near the end of the season, it turns out that there is a new crew in town with military precision shooters: the Blacksmith, who is actually Frank Castle's former commanding officer Colonel Schoonover, and many of his men are the former soldiers who served under him. Meaning that the rumors were true, just not in the way that the rumors were going.
    • Midway through season 3, Fisk sends the FBI after Matt, alleging to Ray Nadeem that Matt is a criminal. When Nadeem visits Foggy and interrogates him, he alleges that Matt is living a double life, a lawyer by day and a criminal by night, that Karen and Foggy know all about it, and that said double life is why Nelson & Murdock broke up in season 2. He is in fact absolutely right about everything, except that he thinks Matt does criminal work for Fisk, not beat criminals up as Daredevil.
    • When Nadeem interrogates Karen after the Bulletin attack, he alleges that Karen knows "Daredevil" personally because he spared her (when he killed most of her coworkers and wounded her boss), used her gun to kill Jasper Evans, and addressed her by name. Karen does know who Daredevil is, and Daredevil was at the Bulletin...but he's not the one in the video. The one seen in the video is actually Nadeem's coworker Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter wearing a suit that Fisk had built for him, and Fisk gave him specific orders to leave Karen alive and address her by name with the intention of discrediting her. The real Daredevil, Matt, meanwhile, had been wounded in the newsroom while fighting Dex.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Aztecs": Tlotoxl says they will be destroyed if they follow the command of "Yetaxa" (the Doctor's companion Barbara) to abolish Human Sacrifice, but it has less to do with the gods not being appeased, and more to do with the Clock Roaches.
    • "The Myth Makers": Vicki and Steven assume the Doctor will be inside the Trojan Horse because he's going to want to be sure he can get access to the TARDIS (currently inside Troy). The Doctor is in the Horse, but only because Odysseus forced him to be inside.
    • "The Claws of Axos": Chinn is right about not wanting the Axonite to be distributed over the entire world, though it's because he's greedy and wants to keep it in Britain rather than because the Axonite is dangerous.
    • "The Caves of Androzani": Morgus is a diabolical bastard who must be brought down, but the terrorist arms dealer Jek who is acting against him is only doing so for the sake of his own selfish revenge, while Timmin, who does bring Morgus down, only does it for the sake of pursuing her own ambitions.
    • "The Unquiet Dead": When the Doctor approved the Gelth's plan, Rose was opposed to the idea as the dead bodies belonged to living people. The Doctor considers it fair game "like recycling" because the corpses' previous owners have vacated them. Turns out Rose was almost right as the Gelth reveal that they just want to take over the planet.
    • "Midnight": The hostess suggests throwing the possessed Sky out of the shuttle bus into the deadly sunlight for pragmatic reasons (and by Word of God, this was the only practical option for dealing with the thing). The other passengers, scared out of their wits, seize on the idea out of panic instead of reason, which leads to things getting worse before they even begin to get better.
    • "Amy's Choice": When the children in the castle courtyard disappear, Rory remarks offhand that playtime's probably over. "Playtime's definitely over" because the kids have been disintegrated by the Eknodines' green mist.
    • "Closing Time": Craig appoints himself as a companion because the safest place is with the Doctor because the Doctor always wins. While the Doctor does win, this is due to Craig's actions, the Doctor requiring the support of people like Craig to win over his enemies.
    • "Robot of Sherwood": The Twelfth Doctor is convinced this whole Robin Hood thing must be a sham, because Robin Hood is supposed to be a myth and this man who is supposedly him is playing the role to the hilt. He is in fact right about the entire thing being a sham, as alien robots have infiltrated Sherwood Forest and are working with the Sheriff for their own ends, but Robin Hood is nevertheless very real.
    • "Fugitive of the Judoon": Conspiracy Theorist Allan is absolutely convinced that Lee Clayton isn't who he says he is, based on his own investigation, and assumes he's the fugitive the Judoon want. He's half-right: the fugitive is Lee's wife Ruth, whom Allan is obsessively in love with, that crush blinding him to similar holes in her background, the only difference between them being that Lee is aware of the situation while Ruth isn't.
  • In the fourth season of Downton Abbey, the new nanny for the children gets short with butler Thomas. Thomas, not caring much for her attitude, engages in a scheme to get Nanny West fired, throwing something of a Hail Mary by fabricating a story to Cora that he suspected she was neglecting the children. Upon telling Cora, she walks by the nursery one night... where she hears Nanny West verbally abusing baby Sybbie, calling her a "chauffeur's daughter" and a "wicked little cross-breed" (her mother was an English noblewoman, her father an Irish former employee). Nanny West is gone the next morning, and Thomas is visibly surprised when Cora thanks him for the warning.
  • In the pilot episode of Firefly, after Dobson reveals himself as an Alliance marshal, he scoffs at Mal's claim that Mal was ordered by the Alliance to deliver medical supplies to the backwater planet of Whitefall, and speculates that it was intended as a cover story to transport federal fugitive Simon Tam. Dobson is right that Mal's tale about the medical supplies is false, but it had nothing to do with Simon, who Mal had no idea was a fugitive when Simon paid to take a ride on the ship. (In fact, Mal had suspected Simon was a fed who was investigating Mal, rather than a fugitive.) Mal simply had to come up with an excuse to tell the passengers for why he was making a detour to Whitefall, where he hoped to sell some illegally scavenged cargo to a potential buyer.
  • In the Forever (2014) episode "The Art of Murder", Henry's analysis of the crime scene reveals that Gloria Carlyle, the 91-year-old woman who is the current apparent murder victim, dragged herself over thirty feet after falling down a flight of stairs despite being in considerable pain. Henry's only initial mistake was that he assumed she was driven by fear of her attacker, when in reality there was no attacker; Gloria had fallen down the stairs by accident as part of her planned suicide, but she was driven on by the memory of her lost lover to die in front of the painting that was her last memento of him.
  • In the first season of Galavant, King Richard's older, crueler, no nonsense brother Kingsley returns from a lifetime of conquest and pillaging to usurp Richard's place. Kingsley is Wrong Genre Savvy and believes he's in a serious tale of political intrigue with a Decadent Court rather than a musical which is an Affectionate Parody of your standard medievalish fantasy, so he expects Richard will inevitably try to kill him for power. Instead Richard spends the day moping, feeling sorry for himself and not even considering trying to do anything to Kingsley... until Galavant finds Richard, the two get astoundingly drunk together, and Galavant convinces Richard to kill Kingsley for entirely different reasons. The two men, who are still drunk out of their mind, make the least stealthy assassination attempt ever, and are promptly apprehended by Kingsley and his guards.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Robert's unsuccessful plot to assassinate Daenerys Targaryen seems to be vindicated in hindsight, given that she eventually invades Westeros and ends up becoming a vicious tyrant. However, said invasion only succeeds through the power of dragons, a complete Outside-Context Problem for Robert and those around him, who only expect an army of Dothraki as well as Westerosi lords who'd switch sides to the Targaryen cause. And while Robert (as well as Pycelle) make convincing-sounding arguments that the Dothraki would be a threat, said arguments ignore the problems that the all-cavalry Dothraki would face in even getting to Westeros.
    • Poor Jon Snow just can't catch a break from this.
      • Alliser Thorne immediately takes a dislike to Jon, both because he's too uppity for a bastard, and because his family co-led the rebellion that deposed Thorne's king. He genuinely does his best to break Jon, and recommends that he get assigned to be a steward, instead of a ranger (which his fighting skills qualified him for). Why does Commander Mormont let him get away with it? Because, despite Jon's skills and intelligence, he genuinely needs to be broken of his sense of superiority before he'll be accepted by his less privileged compatriots. They bond under common hardship and a shared loathing of their trainer, which turns them into True Companions who will fight and die together. As for assigning him to be a steward, Sam points out that the position he gets as Mormont's aide is the perfect path for someone being groomed for leadership.
      • He broke a few oaths of the Night's Watch but when he leads the Wildlings to live south of the Wall, it's the final straw for a group of his Watch brothers, who view Jon as betraying the Watch and execute him in a mutiny — except Jon actually allowed the Wildlings to go through the Wall so they won't come back as part of the growing undead army, not to malign the Watch.
      • The Season 6 finale reveals that this is his entire existence in a nutshell. All his life he was told that he is the illegitimate child of a highborn northerner, hence the surname "Snow". While that is true, his northerner parent is not the one he thinks. Ned telling Jon, "You might not have my name, but you have my blood," in Season 1 perfectly sums this up.
    • In Season 7, when Jaime Lannister kills Lady Olenna Tyrell by offering her poisoned wine as an alternative to a painful and degrading public execution, her last words are a confession that she was the one who murdered King Joffrey. When Jaime relays this fact to Joffrey's scheming mother Cersei, she doesn't believe him at first. He explains that Joffrey's timid brother Tommen would have been much easier for Olenna's granddaughter Margaery to control, and through Margaery, Olenna would have become the most powerful person in Westeros. This convinces Cersei and she's obviously pissed, but the truth is much less complicated: Olenna killed Joffrey because he was an unstable, sadistic psycho who would have inevitably turned his sadistic tendencies on Margaery. In the end Olenna took part in the poisoning simply to protect her granddaughter, nothing more, nothing less.
    • Joffrey Baratheon actually gets this about once a season:
      • In Season 1, he mentions that Westeros should have a standing, professional army loyal only to the crown, noting the feudal system of each lord having their own private army is illogical and it weakens the crown, since the King must rely on the loyalty of ambitious feudal lords (who themselves must rely on the loyalty of the lesser lords serving them), to provide the bulk of his army. This is actually a very fair point and a rather forward thinking stance, but his way of going about it is completely impractical.
      • In Season 2, he deduces that after the Greyjoys take the North, it's the perfect time to strike against Robb Stark. Normally he'd be right and it would in fact be the perfect time to try to hammer the Stark forces and remove them from the war, but he's completely overlooking that there are other factions besides the Starks at play, most notably the forces of Stannis Baratheon, which is both a larger army and much closer to the capital, which makes Stannis a much higher priority at the time than the Stark forces.
      • In Season 3, he declares in "Mhysa" that "My father won the real war", referring to Robert killing Rhaegar. Robert, of course, is not actually his father, but he did win the war when he crushed the Targaryen forces at the trident and killed Rhaegar. Additionally, it was his real father, Jaime, who actually ended the war when he assassinated Aerys.
      • In Season 3, Joffrey complains that Tywin is not sufficiently concerned that Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons are the primary threat to Westeros. He isn't wrong, but it comes off as him simply finding the dragons more interesting than people. Here, the situation is similar to the one mentioned in Season 2; he's ignoring the more pressing threat of Robb Stark and other forces that oppose him in Westeros while worrying over something that, objectively speaking, is nothing more than a rumor from half the world away. It makes an interesting contrast with Robert, whose fixation on the threat Dany posed was firmly a case of Jerkass Has a Point.
  • On Glee, before Kurt and Blaine started dating, Blaine was briefly attracted to Rachel and questioned whether or not he might be bi. Needless to say, Kurt was completely against this idea and told both of them separately that they had incompatible orientations and that such a relationship would go nowhere. He also went one step further and claimed bisexuality is nothing but a coping mechanism for closeted gays. Even though Blaine does eventually realize that he's 100% gay, he had every right to explore his sexuality. No one ever calls Kurt out on such an ignorant statement or the fact that he was acting out of jealousy the entire time.
  • The Golden Girls: When Blanche dates the much-younger Dirk, she's elated that a man half her age finds her desirable, and the vain Blanche doesn't hesitate to rub it in the other girls' faces. But during their next dinner date, it becomes plainly clear that Dirk is interested in her because he wants a mother figure.
  • In Season 3 of Grimm, when the Royals are tracing Adalind's flight from Europe, they notice it passed over Oregon, and conclude that she's decided to go home. Actually, she ended up in Portland because Nick's mother thought Nick could protect her, and if Kelly had realised who Adalind was, and that she came from Portland originally, she probably wouldn't have made that decision (for all sorts of reasons). Appropriately enough, the episode is called "Synchronicity".
  • Hotel Beau Séjour: Kristel's ex-husband Luc tells her that he can see the ghost of their daughter Kato and convinces her that Kato wants them to go out together. Kristel's current husband Marcus naturally accuses Luc of lying about seeing Kato in order to manipulate Kristel into getting back together with him. In fact, Luc actually can see Kato's ghost, but he was lying about what she said in order to manipulate Kristel into getting back together with him, because Kato doesn't care about him and has more important things on her mind.
  • House: Dr. House came up with an effective treatment for a soap opera actor's quinine allergy while convinced that the patient had something else. Cuddy was called out by an inspector for giving him as much leeway as she did. Which included, um, kidnapping the patient. This is because the treatment for all kinds of allergies is essentially the same thing, but more important is stopping exposure to the allergen, which is how House figured out he was wrong.
  • I Love Lucy: Ricky thinks Lucy is making money through the stock market, so when he sees the words "Can All Pet" on a notepad, he assumes it's a stock tip for a company called Canadian Allied Petroleum and buys shares. "Can All Pet" was actually an item on Lucy's grocery list, but it turns out Ricky was right about the stock and made money.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
    • An episode has Mac and Charlie invent Fight Milk, a special drink "by bodyguards, for bodyguards!", believing that it will become popular with fighters because it will imbue them with the fighting strength of a crow (being an alcoholic mix of crow eggs and milk). A later episode reveals it's very popular among UFC athletes... because it's so disgusting that it's basically a laxative, causing them to violently expel fluids and lose lots of weight quickly.
    • At one point, Charlie starts plotting against the waitress's fiancee Brad, claiming he's bad news. Charlie is obviously just being jealous because he's the waitress's Stalker with a Crush, but at the end of the episode, Brad explains to Charlie that he actually intends to jilt her to crush her spirit because she turned him down in high school.
  • On iZombie, Blaine tells Liv he's cut ties with all the shady characters from his previous life, so when she sees him talking to a pair of shady characters she figures he's full of it and decides not to supply him with brains. Actually, the shady characters are trying to kidnap him, because he has cut ties with them... in order to run a zombification/extortion scheme on his own. Liv is totally right not to trust him.
  • Jack Ryan season 2 has Jack trying to stop the bad guys because he thinks that they are turning Venezuela into a dictatorship as part of an anti-United States plot. They are actually turning Venezuela into a dictatorship as part of a pro-US, anti-China plot.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi:
    • The Third Sister Reva correctly senses that Owen is hiding something about the Jedi but she thinks he is sheltering the fugitive Jedi she and the other Inquisitors originally came to Tatooine for, when he knows nothing about the fugitive Jedi and he is actually protecting Obi-Wan (and Luke).
    • Reva decides to kidnap Leia as she found out there was a connection between Obi-Wan and Bail Organa and Obi-Wan would come out of hiding to help a friend. While it was partly a factor, the main reason is because Leia is one of the potential Chosen Ones.
  • Law & Order: ADA Southerlyn was fired not because she was a lesbian, but for becoming convinced a defendant was innocent essentially due to white guilt, and spending most of the episode playing for the other team. In fact, her boss is very noticeably surprised when she asks if she's being fired because she's gay — he'd honestly had no idea.
  • Law & Order: Criminal Intent: "Bombshell" has a former supermodel and reality TV star poisoned. The detectives suspect her sister is responsible for her murder, reasoning that the sister was envious of all the fame her sexy sibling received (which, ironically, is pretty disingenuous thinking because by that point the bombshell was an overweight alcoholic and drug addict and viewed with scorn by much of the public); they're right, but they were incorrect about the motive. It turns out that the sister committed the murder because the bombshell had recently given birth to a baby girl, and the sister believed her to be a bad mother and wanted to raise the child herself, resorting to murder in order to gain custody. For added irony, the detectives' suspicion of the sister also caused them to suspect that she also killed her nephew at the start of the episode (again by poisoning), whereas for most of the episode they had believed that his stepfather was responsible for the deed, and it turned out they were right in the first place.
  • On McDonald & Dodds, a woman appears to have committed suicide by hanging herself. Dodds conducts an experiment and concludes that the pipe the rope was tied to should have snapped from the shock of the falling body. The woman was hanged by someone else who secured the rope to the pipe after the woman was already dead. It is later demonstrated that Dodds used a wrong knot in his test. The original rope was tied to the pipe using a nautical knot that would have distributed the force and the pipe would not have snapped. He is correct about everything else. The woman was murdered and the murder was made to look like suicide.
  • Magnum, P.I. (2018): Magnum's client pays him in cash, which is actually counterfeit. The fake $100 bills were so realistic that it would have taken expert examination to tell that they were fake. But, they were modeled on the previous design which the teenage cashier Thomas gave them to had never seen, so he thought they were fake based on their appearance and called the Secret Service to report the counterfeit money.
  • Midsomer Murders:
    • In "Murder on St. Malley's Day". Conspiracy Theorist Dudley Carew is right in that there really is a secret and sinister purpose to the Pudding Club...just not the one he thinks; it's art-smuggling under a guise of diplomatic immunity.
    • In "A Talent for Life", Troy correctly guesses who the murderer is several times: he's just never right about the motive.
  • When Professor Bobo fall into a wormhole in Mystery Science Theater 3000, Pearl forces the others to go into the wormhole after him. When asked why, she points out he could be sent back in time and cause a Butterfly of Doom... which could retgone slot machines, her favorite hobby, In the next episode, when she starts to lose interest, Brain Guy has to explain it back to her and she gets back on it... to save Chicken in a Biscuit crackers.
  • The MythBusters have occasionally come to this conclusion regarding certain movie scenes.
    • The bus turn in Speed could have happened as depicted...but the turn would have been made even if the passengers aboard had not shifted to the inside of the turn.
    • Shooting the milk in Kiss the Girls wouldn't have helped...but the spark from the gun could never have ignited the methane. Both scenes were labeled as "Busted" because the reasoning behind them didn't fit with reality, even if they would have happened as depicted.
    • The same applies to the Crocodile Escape. Running around crazily on land does help you escape crocodiles, but it's because crocodiles are ambush predators that rarely engage in a chase on land in the first place. About all you have to do is stay out of the water and only run if one actually does lunge at you. Which all the crocs were too laid-back to do. The myth was Busted not because the maneuver failed, but because it was unnecessary.
    • In a more general example, while sourcing the hay needed for Needle in a haystack Adam and Jamie visit a hay/straw farm, where the former remarks that if someone were to ask him what hay was, he would actually point towards the straw, as it looks much closer to "movie style hay". The thing is that he isn't exactly wrong. Anyone who has worked with hay knows it's not the kind of stuff you would want to fall into or roll around in since it can both be really sharp and is far from soft. So when something is presented as hay in movies, it's 90% of the time actually straw since it's so much more pleasant to work with.
  • In the NCIS episode "Leap of Faith", Tony is convinced that a suicidal naval officer was killed by his wife simply because he always suspects the wife, especially if money's involved. It turns out that Tony's half-right—the wife did kill him, but it was because she was a Syrian Mole and he was a loose end.
  • Norsemen: Before their holmgang, Olvar warns Arvid that he's going to regret challenging him to a fight, because Olvar is secretly cheating and brought a poisoned knife to the fight. It turns out that Olvar is drastically overestimating his chances (Arvid kills him in one blow) but Arvid's victory results in him being stuck married to Liv, Olvar's domineering and obnoxious Gold Digger of a wife.
  • In one episode of NUMB3RS, a serial killer's accomplice is killed before he can be taken in, and the police zero in on Clay Porter, an ex-Army sniper and the boyfriend of the first victim, believing that he's the serial killer and that he killed the accomplice to keep him quiet. As it turns out, Porter isn't the serial killer, but he is the one who killed the accomplice, as an act of vengeance for his girlfriend's death (which the FBI realizes just barely too late to keep the real serial killer from meeting the same fate).
  • In Only Murders in the Building, Oliver takes a disliking to Charles' new girlfriend Jan, and when she tries to help with the murder investigation, she keeps referring back to cat-lover Howard even though they had already ruled him out as a suspect. Eventually Oliver gets so agitated that he kicks her out of his apartment and the investigation. At the time he simply thought she was an idiot who had no idea what she was talking about, but it's later revealed that she was deliberately trying to throw off the investigation because she herself was the killer.
  • The Pillars of the Earth: Tom confides Jack that he's aware he won't live long enough to see his cathedral finished, given the long times involved in the construction of such a project. He dies even earlier at the hands of William.
  • In one episode of QI, Johnny Vegas correctly guesses that cornflakes were originally conceived as an anti-masturbatory agent, supposing that it was for stuffing in mattresses, and the crunching would alert the monks. The real reason is that Kellogg believed that masturbation caused moral corruption among other things and that by eating healthily, one would avoid the urge to masturbate.
  • Richie Rich: In "The $et Up", when Manny and Darcy see Cliff's girlfriend hugging Richie, they mistake her for a threat and beat her up. It turns out she's a Gold Digger who only put up with the Riches' antics for Richie's money but, after the beating, she decides it's not worth it and leaves.
  • In The Rookie (2018), one ep sees Chen and Bradford rescue a store-front psychic from a man who attacked her after she mentioned that she saw him with a beautiful woman in the woods; as it turns out, the man was suspected of murdering his wife and disposing of her in the woods, but the psychic just said something that sounded good.
  • On the short-lived (October 2000-February 2001) syndicated late night Game Show Sex Wars, the women's teams would sometimes come up with the right answers, but would get there through the most backwards, nonsensical, illogical way.
  • In Seinfeld, Joe Mayo holds Elaine responsible for his missing fur coat because he put her "in charge of the coats" during his party. Elaine argues that that's a stupid reason to be blamed for the missing coat, even though the rest of the gang argues that she should be held responsible since she did, in fact, throw his coat out the window.
  • Sesame Street:
    • In one sketch, Ernie notices that his houseplant is growing faster when he plays music to it, and concludes that plants like music. While plants do respond to music (and other sounds) due to soundwaves causing vibrations, they can't have opinions or a concept of music.
    • In the hurricane episode, the farmer correctly assumes that a hurricane is coming. However, he thinks it's because his animals are dancing.
    • In one episode, Natasha (a baby) keeps crying and shouting, "Hoongie!". At one point, the older people wonder if this means she needs her diaper changed. As it turns out, Natasha does need her diaper changed, but that's not what she was sad about, nor why she was shouting, "Hoongie!".
  • In the second season Smallville episode "Lineage", Rachel Dunleavy appears in Smallville convinced that Clark is her son from an old affair she had with Lionel Luthor, and becomes convinced that the DNA test results claiming otherwise were rigged by Lionel to hide this fact. While she is correct that the DNA test results were faked, this was actually done by the Kents and Pete Ross, who switched samples to prevent anyone learning about Clark's alien heritage.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
      • In "Armageddon Game", Miles O'Brien's wife Keiko thinks footage showing his death is fake because he does not drink coffee in the afternoon, which he is doing in the video. When he is proven alive and returned safely, one of the first things he does is ask for a cup of coffee. In the afternoon.
        Keiko: Miles, you never drink coffee this late!
        Miles: What? Sure I do.
        Keiko: You do?!
      • In "Past Tense", when the crew goes back to the early 21st century, Dax has to get her com badge back from one of the residents of a glorified slum. He deduces she is a "good alien" from talking to her. Not because he had any medical knowledge or figured out she was a Fish out of Water, but because he is utterly insane.
      • In "The House of Quark", Quark refuses to fight D'ghor back and tells the Klingons that the duel is all a sham. His intention is to call them out on pitting him against an opponent he had no way of winning against just for their own satisfaction, but what the Klingons take from it is that D'ghor is dishonourable for trying to kill an unarmed man.
    • Star Trek: Voyager:
      • In "Nothing Human", B'Elanna is correct when she thinks a man is evil, but thinks it's because he's a Cardassian, when really he just happens to be evil.
      • In "Blink of an Eye", some aliens are right when they think the light in the sky (Voyager) is what's causing the earthquakes, but wrong when they think it's an angry deity.
      • In "Body and Soul", an alien woman is right when she concludes that Seven of Nine is part Borg, but thinks that's the secret she's nervous about, when really the secret is that she's being inhabited by the EMH.
  • Stranger Things:
    • In Season 1, during the hunt for Will, a thread of torn fabric is found on a narrow storm drain leading into the laboratory (where, unknown to the characters at this point, most of the trouble is originating from). Chief Hopper notes that while it's uncomfortably narrow, it is sufficiently large that a frightened child might indeed risk crawling through it if they were running away from something particularly scary. He's right about the scared child crawling through it to escape from something, but because he's missing some important facts he gets the order and identities wrong; he believes that Will crawled into the lab because he was running away, when in fact it was Eleven, whose existence he is unaware of, crawling out.
    • In Season 4, U.S. military officers are after Eleven because she's one of Dr. Brenner's experiments, and they suspect she's the one responsible for the mysterious deaths that have been occurring in Hawkins. They're right about the killer being one of Dr. Brenner's experiments, just not which one.
    • Also during Season 4, Hawkins high school jock Jason Carver begins targeting the members of the Hellfire Club (whose members include Mike, Eddie, Dustin and Erica) because he believes his girlfriend Chrissy's death was caused by a supernatural demon that was caused by the Club's playing of Dungeons and Dragons, which he correlates to Satanic worship. As it turns out, Chrissy's death was caused by a supernatural evil who is demonic in nature, but said evil did it of its own volition, with the Hellfire Club's D&D game being completely unrelated to his actions.
  • On Suits the various legal stunts the characters have pulled definitely warrant an SEC investigation into the way they do business. However, the SEC investigator is highly biased and focuses his investigation on things that are completely innocuous and/or taken out of context.
  • Supergirl (2015): When Astra sees a framed photograph of Alex and Kara in Kara's apartment, she tells Alex that "I knew there was more to you and my niece", mistaking them for a lesbian couple. Alex has to explain that Kara is her adoptive sister, so that their relationship is familial. This said, Alex came out as lesbian on season 2, starting a relationship with Maggie Sawyer.
  • Supernatural: In "Nightshifter", a shapeshifter is murdering people during robberies. Ronald Reznick, who worked at the bank, sees the eye flare in security footage and assumes that the robber isn't human, coming to the conclusion that it is a mandroid cyborg. Dean tells him that while it isn't completely human, it ain't a cyborg. Ronald, however, is so relieved to hear that he wasn't going crazy so he laughs.
    Dean: What are you, nuts?
    Ronald: That's just it. I'm not nuts. I mean, I was so scared that I was losing my marbles. But this is real! I mean, I, I, I was right! Except for the Mandroid thing. Thank you.
  • Subverted in Season 2 of The Tudors. At the end of the season, five men — Thomas Wyatt, Henry Norris, Mark Smeaton, George Boleyn and William Brereton — are all arrested and accused of adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII has no real belief in their genuine guilt — he just wants an excuse to get rid of Anne. Unbeknownst to him however, Wyatt genuinely did sleep with Anne and, perversely, is the only one let off.
  • In The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," weird things start happening in a suburban neighborhood. All the residents start suspecting the problems have been caused by aliens and start pointing fingers at one another until one of the residents shoots another one. Then, it's revealed that aliens really were causing the strange things, but none of the residents were aliens themselves.

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