History Main / FakeOutOpening

** The second season did a fake-out when the Ghostface trying to kill Audrey turns out to be a harmless prankster (albeit only after she non-fatally stabs him), while Website/{{Vine}} star Lele Pons' opening-victim cameo is in a [[StylisticSuck cheesy]] [[ShowWithinAShow slasher movie]] being screened at the theater Audrey works at.

* ''Film/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' (2004) opens with a SickeninglySweet musical stop-motion animation about a happy little elf, which is stopped cold by Jude Law's first voice-over.

* The first 25 seconds of Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' starts with Creator/CharltonHeston narrating, setting up the movie to be a serious representation of the Hercules myth. Then the Muses cut in, tell him to lighten up, and sing "The Gospel Truth", establishing right then and there that the film is a musical comedy.

[[quoteright:229:[[Webcomic/{{XKCD}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fakeout3_1331.jpg]] ]]
[[caption-width-right:229: [[AltText "Let's get dinner after we promptly destroy all the X-7 we've manufactured."]]]]

* The opening for ''Film/Ghost1990'' is a lot spookier than the rest of the film.

* ''Film/CannibalTheMusical'' opens with protagonist Alferd Packer brutally hunting down, slaughtering and eating the fellow members of his expedition slasher-movie style, before it's revealed that the sequence is actually the District Attorney's speculative reconstruction of the events surrounding their deaths in a courtroom where Packer is on trial, leading to Packer's own reminiscences of what actually happened.

** Not to mention Music/ElvisCostello's famous 1977 performance on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', when he interrupted his scheduled performance of "Less Than Zero" to play "Radio Radio", a song he was specifically told not to perform due to being anti-media (the lyrics criticize the corporate takeover of nearly all radio stations in America, and showrunner Lorne Michaels was afraid of offending Creator/{{NBC}}'s then-parent company General Electric — which had already dismantled NBC's entire radio division). Costello got himself banned from the show for 12 years because of this. When he returned, he did it (with SNL's approval) by interrupting Music/TheBeastieBoys' performance of "Sabotage" to instead play... "Radio Radio" with the Beasties as backing band.

* The Music/BeastieBoys' 2006 concert film ''Awesome; I [[PrecisionFStrike Fuckin']] Shot That!'' begins by duplicating the opening crawl from ''Film/{{Scarface 1983}}'':

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E85ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]" begins with what appears to be two cowboys in TheWildWest discussing whether a man will show up, seemingly for a gunfight. Rance [=McGrew=] then drives up in his Ford Thunderbird with longhorns, revealing that the cowboys were actors who were wondering when the star of the show was going to turn up for shooting.

* Music/{{Primus}}'s ''Frizzle Fry'' starts the same way as their live debut ''Suck On This'', with a quote of the drum intro of Music/{{Rush}}'s "YYZ"... Except this time, it's followed by a swift LettingTheAirOutOfTheBand effect, and then the studio version of "To Defy The Laws Of Tradition" starts instead. Since it's a clip taken straight from ''Suck On This'' (even including the same audible cheer), it seems like an attempt to momentarily trick listeners into thinking that there's been a pressing mistake and they just bought a mislabeled album they most likely already had.

** The ''VideoGame/Superman64'' episode begins with the Nerd attempting to review the ''Superman'' game for the UsefulNotes/Commodore64 ("Yeah, that's what you mean, right?"), but he ends up {{Rage Quit}}ting on the third level. He then realizes which game was actually requested the most.
--->'''AVGN:''' Aw, come on. You really want to make me play [the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 game]? Well, I'm gonna do it just for you... 'cause I like ya alot. And don't take that too serious.

* While Music/WeirdAlYankovic's parodies, and most parodies in general, are designed to make the listener think they're the original song at first, the same is true for several of his polkas. "Polka Your Eyes Out", "Bohemian Polka" and "The Alternate Polka" start out as near-clones of Music/BillyIdol's "Cradle Of Love", Music/{{Queen}}'s "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Music/{{Beck}}'s "Loser" before introducing any traditional polka instruments.

* The first ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' movie opens with the opening scene of a movie that Team Seven is watching (whose lead actress the film centers around escorting).

* The first page of the ''Franchise/LoveLive'' doujin ''[[https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/as_our_lives_become_interwoven As Our Lives Become Interwoven]]'' has Eli remarking how she and Umi have been blessed with taking care of a young girl, happily picking it up and saying how much the girl looks like Umi since Eli's blonde hair and blue eyes are recessive. Then Umi enters the room and tells her girlfriend [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall to stop with the misleading monologue]]. As it turns out, Umi and Eli are visiting Umi's family, and the toddler is actually the daughter of Umi's older sister.

* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'': The WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail "[[Recap/StrongBadEmailE151SeniorProm senior prom]]" starts with an intro for "The King of Town's Very Own Quite Popular Cartoon Show", which is quickly interrupted by an announcement that it's being pre-empted for the Strong Bad Email, "already in progress". Played with later when we do get a cartoon with this name later, and the King of Town even lampshades it.

* The first three ''Film/{{Scream}}'' films are known for featuring a DeadStarWalking in their opening scenes (Creator/DrewBarrymore in [[Film/Scream1996 the first]], Creator/OmarEpps and Creator/{{Jada Pinkett|Smith}} in [[Film/Scream2 the second]], and Creator/LievSchreiber in [[Film/Scream3 the third]], the last one doubling as SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome). ''Film/Scream4'' plays around with this formula and goes all over the place with it. First, we get Creator/LucyHale and [[Series/{{Degrassi}} Shenae]] [[Series/BeverlyHills90210 Grimes]] as the opening victims in a very ''Scream''-like opening... only to reveal that they were actually the opening victims of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Stab 6]]'' as we cut to two women played by Creator/KristenBell and Creator/AnnaPaquin sitting on a couch watching the film, the latter [[SelfDeprecation complaining about its cliches]]. Then Bell stabs Paquin out of nowhere, indicating that this will be a film where we know Ghostface's identity from the start... except ''that'' turns out to be the opening of ''[[FranchiseZombie Stab 7]]'' as we finally cut to the ''real'' opening victims, [[Series/FridayNightLights Aimee Teegarden]] and [[Series/TheSecretCircle Britt Robertson]].

* On AprilFoolsDay 2012, it looked like Creator/AdultSwim was doing an April Fools marathon of ''Film/TheRoom2003'' for a fourth year in a row... until it cut to TOM-3 watching the movie and greeting viewers before [[{{Retraux}} cutting to the old intro]] for ''Creator/{{Toonami}}'' and staying as ''Toonami'' for the rest of the night.

* The ''Film/{{Scream}}'' films, as noted above, have a DeadStarWalking tradition with the opening scenes, and the first season of the [[Series/ScreamTVSeries TV adaptation]] continued with this tradition by having Creator/BellaThorne be the opening victim. Later seasons, however, played with this.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]

* ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'' opens with a 2D animation showing the main character Po as a martial arts master performing over the top attacks against thousands of opponents who are 'blinded by his awesomeness'. Then Po [[DreamSequence wakes up]] and the 3D animation begins.

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]

** The opening scene in "Spooky Fish" appears to set up an AlienInvasion story... only for the alien in question to get run over by the school bus. The rest of the episode revolves around an EvilTwin and a MirrorUniverse.

* ''Film/Shazam2019'': The movie opens with a boy meeting the Wizard...but the boy isn't protagonist Billy Batson, but rather the future BigBad Dr. Sivana, who the Wizard promptly rejects.

* The first three ''Film/{{Scream}}'' films are known for featuring a DeadStarWalking in their opening scenes (Creator/DrewBarrymore in [[Film/Scream1996 the first]], Omar Epps and Creator/{{Jada Pinkett|Smith}} in [[Film/Scream2 the second]], and Creator/LievSchreiber in [[Film/Scream3 the third]], the last one doubling as SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome). ''Film/Scream4'' plays around with this formula and goes all over the place with it. First, we get Creator/LucyHale and [[Series/{{Degrassi}} Shenae]] [[Series/BeverlyHills90210 Grimes]] as the opening victims in a very ''Scream''-like opening... only to reveal that they were actually the opening victims of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Stab 6]]'' as we cut to two women played by Creator/KristenBell and Creator/AnnaPaquin sitting on a couch watching the film, the latter [[SelfDeprecation complaining about its cliches]]. Then Bell stabs Paquin out of nowhere, indicating that this will be a film where we know Ghostface's identity from the start... except ''that'' turns out to be the opening of ''[[FranchiseZombie Stab 7]]'' as we finally cut to the ''real'' opening victims, [[Series/FridayNightLights Aimee Teegarden]] and [[Series/TheSecretCircle Britt Robertson]].

* Alluded to for laughs on German late night show ''Series/TVTotal'' when an audiobook narrated by band Music/{{Scooter}}'s [[FaceOfTheBand H.P. Baxxter]], in which machines were mentioned, was suggested by host Stefan Raab to be a Fake-Out Opening into a regular techno piece.