Sandbox / Abuse Mistake Split

It was decided to rewrite Abuse Mistake to focus on definition 1 (something innocuous is mistaken as abuse), and send definition 2 (abuse is mistaken as something innocuous) to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard or TLP.. This sandbox was created to hold examples that fit definition 2 and no longer fit the revised definition of Abuse Mistake.

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Comic Books

• Spawn has two little boys (one of whom would grow up to become the Redeemer) whose abusive father claims to the other churchgoers that they play a lot of tackle football... until Spawn violently murders him, that is.

Fan Works

• The Bitter End: The members of the support group for victims of domestic abuse (all women) initially refuse to believe that Akane could abuse Ranma.
• Nine Eleven Ten: Charles and Logan, misinterpreting and underestimating the pain Emma has caused Hank, incorrectly assume she had simply seduced and abandoned the young man — neither realizing that she actually raped him.
• SV Wishes: When Mobei-jun comes across a whipped and beaten Shang Qinghua, which by demon standards is a sign of approval and thinks that Shang Qinghua managed to win his wife's affection...until he realizes that Shang Qinghua was left with his wounds untreated and in pain which reveals something is deeply wrong. The lack of aftercare tells him something is wrong even before Shang Qinghua reveals that he had been beaten by Second Wife for accidentally exposing her money laundering.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Moony thought the crooked cops got to them when he was sent to prison, but what actually happened was they witnessed Ace Yu being assaulted.

Films — Live-Action

• A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: Gigolo Joe notices bruises on a first-time client and asks if they are from "passion." Her ashamed reaction indicates that they're actually from abuse. It is not clear if Joe was genuinely mistaken, or if he was well aware that the cause he'd suggested was unlikely. His following comments can likewise be interpreted either as standard flattery for any client or as continuing a strategy to identify domestic abuse victims and put them at ease.

Literature

• In A Brother's Price:
  • Keifer Porter abused his wives, psychologically as well as physically, and managed to convince the eldest wives, who could have divorced him, that it was all in good fun (or, in one case, that the thirteen-year-old he tortured and raped provoked him).
  • Possibly, Balin Brindle is a victim of this. He is rumored to have sex with his aunts, which is seen as damage to his reputation, but no one does anything about it, like investigate whether he is forced to do it.
• In the Hurog duology, Garranon is introduced as the evil king's courtesan, and an antagonist of the heroes. Later, we learn that he had been sexually abused by the king ever since he was a child and hated the king all this time, but didn't dare fight back because the king would have killed all his friends and relatives if he had.
• In one of the Teenage Worrier books, Letty describes her friend Hazel being attacked by a man who dragged her into an alleyway. She was saved when someone else came along, but the man got away and convinced the bystander that he and Hazel were a couple fighting.
• The third book of Slave World starts out with a female police officer getting raped by a corrupt male policeman. When caught, his violation is mistaken for consensual sex, so they both get in trouble for it.
• The Joy Luck Club: In An-Mei's backstory, her mother was disowned by her family for being a whore and running off to be a wealthy man's concubine. It's revealed that the husband raped her mother after the man's second wife arranged for it.
• Teenage Worrier: Letty describes an incident where a man who attacked Hazel got away with it by convincing a bystander "She's my girlfriend; we're just having a row" (fighting.)

Live-Action TV

• One episode of Criminal Minds has the team looking for a missing woman whose boyfriend had put her in the hospital. When they talk to her father, he says he thought those injuries had been caused by a car accident (though his demeanor indicates that he at least suspected the truth, but was in denial and clinging to the excuse she gave him).
• An early episode of Flashpoint has a cop beating his wife until her sister takes matters into her own and holds up the husband at gunpoint. While investigating the situation, SRU officers quickly discover that the cop's partners and friends on the force knew, or at least strongly suspected, that the cop was beating his wife, but looked the other way out of misguided respect, writing it off as something else.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: This is the central premise of the episode "Doubt", where the woman's ex-boyfriend/professor uses it being consensual as his defense, with the woman alleging abuse. Notably, this was one of the few episodes where the verdict was never given, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions.
• Person of Interest: Jessica's abusive husband killed her, then staged a car accident. The small-town medical examiner dismissed her injuries as the result of the accident. Joss Carter took one look at the report and figured out what really happened to her.
• Veronica Mars In the season 3 premiere, Veronica and Mac need to get tickets from Mac's dorm room, but Mac's roommate Parker is "in there with some guy". Veronica walks in, hears some "sex noises" from the guy, quietly says "Don't mind me", then leaves with the tickets. At the end fo the episode, Veronica and Mac return to the apartment and wake up to Parker's screams as she had been drugged, then raped, and her hair was completely shaved off her head. This grievous mistake is explored more in the next episode as well.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: Desus's powers force everyone around him to rationalize away all evidence of the abuse he inflicts. In 2E, Lilith spent the entire First Age having everyone around her do this on account of Desus' mind-manipulating powers. Oh, the heroes of Creation all noticed Lilith was sporting an awful lot of bruises when she hadn't been in combat lately, they just figured she and Desus must get up to some kinky stuff in the bedroom.

Theater

• A pivotal moment in the play A Steady Rain involves the two cop characters returning a naked Vietnamese boy to the serial killer from whom the poor kid was trying to escape. This scene was directly inspired by an incident when police returned one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims to him.

Web Original

• In To Boldly Flee, Film Brain overhears what he believes to be Nostalgia Chick and Linkara having sex. In actuality, it was Mechakara impersonating Linkara, who was subjecting the Nostalgia Chick to an Unwilling Roboticization and making her Brainwashed and Crazy.

Western Animation

• Family Guy: In "Jerome is the New Black", Brian sees a battered woman leaving Quagmire's house and, in an attempt to bond with Quagmire, compliments him on the rough sex he must have just had. Quagmire coldly informs Brian that the woman is his sister, who's visiting him to get away from her abusive boyfriend.
• Implied (and Played for Laughs) in a quick Robot Chicken sketch. A man and bruised woman are at a councilor's office and she explains that she "Uh... ran into a door." The councilor happily offers her a catalogue of Nerf doors. The man then menacingly says that she's going to need some Nerf stairs too.

Playing with subpage

Basic Trope: An actually abusive situation is brushed off as something that doesn't need worrying about.

• Straight: Bob's wife Alice slaps him in the face and insults him for not cleaning the house, but when he tells his friend Charlie about it, he laughs it off and tells him that he deserved it for being lazy.
• Exaggerated: Bob is hiding in a closet from Alice, who is chasing him with a knife threatening to kill him, and has already seriously hurt him, but when he calls 911 to ask for help, the operator laughs at him and calls him a sissy.
• Downplayed: Alice shouts at Bob for not cleaning the house. When Charlie hears it, he gives the issue some consideration, but eventually comes to the conclusion that Alice wasn't being abusive at all.
• Justified: Alice is The Chessmaster and is so skilled at making Bob's home life look okay that no one ever believes him when she tries to tell them of the abuse she suffers at his hands.
• Inverted: Type B is an inversion of Type A, and vice versa.
• Subverted: Alice slaps Bob in the face and insults him for not cleaning the houses. When he tells people about this, nobody seems to show worry, except Charlie who contacts the authorities.
• Double Subverted: Who don't believe Bob, despite having Charlie to back him up.
• Parodied:
  • Bob is walking alongside Alice who punches him in the face every minute for no good reason. Alice's friends see this and comment about how Alice is such a sweet wife for being able to express her love for Bob so directly.
  • Alice shoots Bob at point-blank range for leaving the toilet seat up. When he returns as a ghost and orders Charlie to bring her to justice, he just laughs it off.
• Zig Zagged: Bob claims Alice hit him, but he was just lying. It turns out that Bob walked into a door, but his friends all believe his wife did it to him. But Bob was actually telling the truth the first time and is now lying, his wife did hit him...in self-defense, because it was Bob who attacked his wife. But all of his friends refuse to believe that she was abused by Bob.
• Averted:
  • Any claims of abuse are taken at face value and all steps are taken to ensure the victim's safety as well as come up with a plan for him or her to get out of the situation as soon as possible.
  • No abuse happens.
• Enforced: It's a Lifetime Movie of the Week, and the writer wants to crank up the drama.
• Lampshaded: "Why does everyone simply pass off the abusive situation I was in as something else?"
• Invoked: Alice knows that Bob is seeking help for escaping from the emotional and financial abuse that she's subjecting him to and does everything she can to make her actions look innocent so that no one believes him.
• Exploited: Alice just keeps abusing Bob. After all, nobody is able to tell that he is being abused.
• Defied: Bob collects proof through means of hidden camera, tape recorder, etc. of his abuse from Alice, and gives it to the authorities. Alice is imprisoned.
• Discussed: "We'll want to proceed carefully when we ask about Bob's bruises. It's very easy for non-professionals to mistake an accident for abuse, and vice-versa."
• Conversed: "Huh, Bob is really bruised in this opening scene. The cause will always be the opposite of what the first person to interact with him thinks."
• Deconstructed: That fact that no one tries to help Bob shows that everyone is too shallow to consider the needs of the people around.
• Reconstructed: It turns out that they're not shallow, they just genuinely thought Bob didn't need help out of naivete.
• Played For Laughs: Black Comedy where Alice keeps abusing Bob in increasingly ridiculous and obvious ways, with paper-thin explanations, and yet everything comes off as accidental. This falls under Crosses the Line Twice.
• Played For Drama: The abuse continues, and Bob is Driven to Suicide or dies from the bruises.

Quotes subpage

Now I'm pretty sure most people wrote stories about... normal things, like their dogs or their friends, but I wrote a story that had the title of... 'I Do Not Like This Family'. I don't know for sure, but I bet this title made my teachers very worried.
Here's what the cover looked like — Aren't I so cute? — As you can see, here I'm getting beaten up by my brother, here I'm being yelled at to wake up, and here I'm looking out the window at kids having fun on their scooters, while I have a list of chores to do right here.
If anyone's wondering, I had a great childhood. I mean, I wasn't abused or anything, my parents' marriage was stable. I guess I just really hated the chores my mom made me do.

— TheOdd1sOut, "A Book I Made as a Kid"