History Main / AndThatLittleGirlWasMe

* The entire FrameStory for Mark Helprin's ''Swan Lake'' turns out to be setting up one of these: [[spoiler: the little girl who is treated to the story turns out to be the young Queen.]]

* Played with in the short story "Hide-and-Seek" by Creator/ArthurCClarke. The narrator of the FramingStory is being told a tale of the Second Jovian War by the retired naval officer Kingman, who starts by saying he changed some names. The story involves a cunning spy codenamed K.15, pursued by a heavy cruiser near Mars, who uses the limited manoeuvrability of the cruiser to keep on the opposite side of Phobos. When the story is finished, the narrator suggests Kingman knows the story so well, he must have been K.15, and Kingman denies this and stalks off. The third member of the party explains that Kingman was commander of the cruiser.

--> '''Mittens''': [People] pretend they're going to always be there for you, and then one day they pack up and move away and take their 'love' with them, and [[spoiler:leave their declawed cat to fend for herself! ...They leave her, wondering what she did wrong...]]

* Villain example in ''Film/{{Cinderella|2015}}'': Lady Tremaine tells Ella the story about a young girl who married for love, and was happy, until her husband died. Out of concern for her daughters’ wellbeing, the girl, now a grown woman, decided to marry again to provide them with financial support. But then ''that'' husband died, too. Her last attempt was to get her daughters to marry the prince of their kingdom, but the prince was instead wooed by a simple servant girl "and ''I'' lived unhappily ever after".

* In the ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'' episode, team rookie Raf tells a woman who took her daughter's abuser hostage a story about "a guy I know" who was abused by a teacher, and how the kid's father attacked the teacher with a baseball bat and went to prison for it, and how the kid had wished his father had found another way to show his love... "So he could stay a part of my life."

* Maya Rudolph parodied Kamala Harris’ own That Girl Was Me moment (see Real Life below) several times while impersonating her on ‘’Series/SaturdayNightLive’’. In multiple Democratic Debate sketches aired in 2019, Maya-as-Kamala would claim that she was the true protagonist of every story her opponents were telling, no matter how ridiculous.

* This trope is commonly found in Quora answers.

** "Three Stories": House tells a class of medical students three stories about diagnosing three different patients, all complaining of leg pain. The third story is revealed, at the end, to be the story of the aneurysm, and infarction that caused House's permanent leg injury, and continuing chronic pain. He never tells the students the third patient was him, but his colleagues, sitting in the back, figure it out (they, unlike the students, know the general details of how House got his limp, and it's a very rare condition, so they know it pretty much has to be him).

** "Three Stories": House tells a class of medical students three stories about diagnosing three different patients, all complaining of leg pain. The third story is revealed, at the end, to be the story of the aneurysm, and infarction that caused House's permanent leg injury, and continuing chronic pain. He never tells the students the third patient was him. His colleagues, who're listening in, do figure it out, though.

* [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]] in ''Podcast/WithinTheWires'' when "Cassette #1: Stress, Shoulders," Side B has its {{Narrator}} instructing its listener, the patient in a research hospital, to imagine themself as a dragonfly handled by a little girl. While the metaphor would initially suggest that the Narrator is the girl grown up, Cassette #2 implies and Cassette #6 confirms that the girl is the patient, with the Narrator trying to cure her LaserGuidedAmnesia.

* ''[[Film/TheThreeMusketeers1973 The Four Musketeers]]'' (1974). Athos, when he tells d'Artagnan the story of the Comte de la Fere. d'Artagnan figures out that Athos was the Comte, and near the end of the film Athos admits it.
* The end of ''Film/MadMax2TheRoadWarrior'' reveals that the {{Narrator}} is none other than the Feral Kid.

* ''Series/{{Preacher}}'':

* In Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', the salesman from the beginning is in fact the Genie (which is part of why Creator/RobinWilliams voices him). The plan to have this revealed in the movie itself was dropped and had to be confirmed via WordOfGod years after it came out.

* In ''ComicBook/IncredibleHercules'' #139 ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} fights [[BigBad Hera]]'s Huntsman, who tells him a story about a hunter named Cephalus, who killed his own wife accidentally with his own javelin that never missed and then was DrivenToSuicide, relating the events of the story to Wolverine's own life. Wolverine retorts that his story isn't going to end with ''his'' death, but the huntsman's. The huntsman then replies that though his face his distorted in Tartarus as punishment for suicide, he himself is Cephalus, and impales Wolverine InTheBack with a javelin of light.

* ''Chocolate Fever'': Henry is cured of his titular "illness" after he meets a man named Alfred Cane, who tells a story of someone he knew who went through the same thing--who is revealed to be Alfred Cane himself.

* In "Father Brown's Story" a priest tells of a man, disillusioned by the death of his beloved sister, who turned to atheism and hated everything religious. Then one night he had a dream of a mysterious woman who he followed to the edge of the sea. It was his sister, who pointed at the ocean and said "It is the holy blood.". The man awoke with tears on his cheeks and changed his ways. As they are leaving the priest stops one man and tells him "I was that man."

* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': In the side story ''How The Paladin Got His Scar'' O-Chul and Saha discuss whether people are inherently evil or not. O-Chul tells the story of a sergeant in the army who, upon catching a pair of bandits and their teenage son, brought the son to his sister in another part of the country to be raised right. [[GenreSavvy Saha sees this trope coming,]] but says it proves nothing: Yeah it's great that he was kind to the bandit boy, but he was already a good man at that point. [[spoiler:O-Chul says he was not the sergeant, but the boy. Saha was shocked that ''O-Chul'' of all people used to be a bandit but that was the point of the story. If a former bandit child can become a righteous man because of the kindness he was shown, than other bad folk can change too]].

* In their second encounter in ''VideoGame/StarWarsJediFallenOrder'', [[spoiler: the Second Sister tells Cal Kestis that his new Jedi Master, Cere Junda was captured during [[ThePurge Order 66]] and tortured until she gave up the location of her Padawan and several Jedi younglings they'd been protecting. When Cal dismisses the story as a lie, the Second Sister removes her helmet, revealing herself to be Trilla Suduki, Cere's former Padawan, who was [[BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil tortured, mutilated and ultimately corrupted]] into becoming one of the Empire's Jedi-hunting Inquisitor's [[RageAgainstTheMentor because of her master's actions]].]]

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' short ''Meet the Medic'' combines this with OrphanedPunchline:
-->'''Medic''': "It gets better! When the patient woke up, his ''skeleton'' was missing... and the doctor was never heard from again! *Laughs* Anyway, that is how I lost my medical license".

* In another issue of ''Sandman'' (the Hunt) an old man is telling his granddaughter a story from TheOldCountry about a young man of "the People" who goes on a quest to find a princess, only to instead fall in love with a woman of the People he meets on the way. Oh, and the People are werewolves. When the girl is unimpressed by the story, he says he's sorry she never knew her grandmother who had a lot in common with her, and never let him forget that she won that hunt.

This trope can be subverted when the narrator is asked how the story is relevant, with bonus points for the story being depressing, and he replies with something along the lines of "Fuck if I know." Can be double-subverted if he follows up with something about the story that was inspirational. From here, it can encounter the rare triple-subversion if it is revealed afterwards, such as after the other characters leave, he reveals that he was in that story, such as pulling out a memento or taking one off of the wall/shelf, and talking about his companions or saying something along the lines of "Good times..."

* There's a famous RealLife subversion of this. American psychologist Gordon Allport was visiting UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud and told him a story of a boy he'd seen on the train who wouldn't sit near anyone dirty. Allport said that the boy's mother seemed to be domineering, which might have something to do with his behavior. Freud leaned over to him and said, "And was that little boy you?" It was not.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens "The Pandorica Opens"]], Amy assumes this is the case when the Doctor tells her about people "dropping out of the world", asking him if the "she" he lost was nice. The Doctor was ''actually'' talking about someone ''Amy herself'' lost, [[spoiler:her {{retgone}}d fiancé Rory]], so he immediately changes tack.

--->'''Toby:''' But I'll tell you why it should be front and center. It's not the First Amendment, it's not religious freedom, it's not church and state, it's not...abstract.\\

* On ''Series/LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver'', a woman debunks a psychic this way, by showing a picture of a girl whom the psychic had claimed was killed and then revealing that to be an old picture of her.