History Main / FakeOutOpening

* On AprilFoolsDay 2012, it looked like Creator/AdultSwim was doing an April Fools marathon of ''Film/TheRoom'' 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.

--->Shit! said the Mother Superior. Oh, don't be scared, I just always wanted to start a story like that. Actually, the story has nothing to do with this sentence. Actually, the story ends here.

* ''Webcomic/{{XKCD}}'' proposes [[http://www.xkcd.com/734/ this]] example (seen above), about a story that begins like a ZombieApocalypse, but the infection is successfully contained with the first infectee, so it goes on to become a RomanticComedy about the people who stopped it.

-->'''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.

-->'''Nerd:''' Well, in the chance that you were lookin' forward to ''VideoGame/CoolSpot'', or ''Yo! Noid''... can't play 'em because they're all ''Pepsiman'' now. Everything I want to play is ''Pepsiman''. Yeah.

* 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).

[[caption-width-right:229:[[http://xkcd.com/734/ "Let's get dinner after we promptly destroy all the X-7 we've manufactured."]]]]

* The first 10 seconds of the first episode of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' are basically a recreation of the opening of ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue''. It then transfers to an actual battle, which Ash is watching on TV.

* ''Manga/PopTeamEpic'' takes this trope to its ''[[ExaggeratedTrope logical extreme:]]'' The author said the series was cancelled to work on ''Manga/HoshiiroGirldrop'', an IdolSinger {{yonkoma}}. He spent four months advertising it, coming up with character bios, etc. When it came out, it seemed to be a fairly straightforward generic SliceOfLife manga...until the very end, where the main character ripped off her face to reveal [[TrollingCreator that it was Popuko, and that]] ''[[TrollingCreator Pop Team Epic]]'' [[TrollingCreator was coming back.]]
** The anime follows suit, dating all the way back to its AprilFoolsDay announcement using ''Girldrop'' instead of ''Pop Team'' to clue the viewers in and having Popuko tear through ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the announcement site]]'' the day after. The first episode even starts off with ''Hoshiiro Girldrop''. After the intro and title card, however, Popuko rips through it [[RuleOfThree once again]], shouts "Not!" and the real, [[WidgetSeries considerably weirder]], show starts. Strangely, the "Next Episode" segments at the very end of each episode are still for fictional episodes of ''Hoshiiro Girldrop''.

* In Disney's ''WesternAnimation/ChickenLittle'', the narrator (Buck Cluck, the main character's father) tries to find an opening to the film, apparently because he was so sick of starting with "Once upon a time.." He opts for another opening, which turns out to be [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKing a familiar sunrise]], then saying "Eh, that was used already." Next is a StorybookOpening ([[WhatCouldHaveBeen which was fully animated and narrated by Don Knotts]]), which he also rejects as too cliché, so he eventually settles on a flashback to when Chicken Little first thought the sky was falling.

* ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'': This fun SpaceOpera romp starts out with... a young boy watching his mother die of cancer.

* ''If On a Winter's Night a Traveller'', by Creator/ItaloCalvino. The whole book is a sequence of these, held together by a reader trying to continue the story he had begun but getting continually drawn off into new stories.

* The trailer for ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry-MPAkLRrI Green with Envy]]'', aka ''Film/TheMuppets'', is played like this.

* The movie ''Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' begins with a catchy number sung by dolphins, [[LyricalDissonance although about Earth's impending destruction]]. About 15 minutes in, after Earth is destroyed, comes the real title sequence with a remix of the franchise's traditional RealSongThemeTune.

* Issue 34 of the first volume of ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' opens with the Watcher preparing to tell another serious story -- only for a DensierAndWackier Uatu to interrupt and reveal the issue will likewise by silly.

* ''[[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' opens with an entire episode of a [[BadBadActing horribly made]] student film of a MagicalGirl adventure with a number of bizarre details, such as a talking cat that is quickly silenced. Only at the very end do the viewers see the titular character and realize that it was made by the protagonists at her insistence.

* ''LightNovel/BludgeoningAngelDokuroChan'' opens with a lighted hearted junior high drama as some kids walk back home from school. Once Sakura makes it home, he finds Dokuro wearing only panties in his room, who reacts by partially decapitating him with her club.

* The opening of ''[[Film/FortyEightHours 48 Hours]]'' shows a chain gang in the middle of the desert.

* ''[[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' opens with an entire episode of a [[BadBadActing horribly made]] student film of a MagicalGirl adventure with a number of bizarre details, such as a talking cat that is quickly silenced. Only at the very end do the viewers see the titular character and realize that it was made by the protagonists at her insistence.

* ''LightNovel/TheDevilIsAPartTimer'' starts off as HighFantasy, showing the Demon King Satan's invasion of Ente Isla and his near-defeat at the hands of the ChosenOne, forcing him to retreat through a portal while swearing to return and take his revenge. However, the portal dumps him onto Earth, where he loses his magical powers and is forced to get a BurgerFool job in order to keep a roof over his head, at which point the series turns into a goofy sitcom with occasional action beats. On the other hand, as the story progresses the original serious plotline starts coming back and taking center stage.

* ''[[Film/AttackOfTheKillerTomatoes Return of the Killer Tomatoes'' opens with a man appearing to be a host of an eighties "Movie of the Week" show, claiming that this week they're going to show "Return of the Killer Tomatoes". Then they show the opening credits of a fictional sexploitation film called "The Big Breasted Girls Who Take Their Tops Off". Then the show's producer gets a phone call telling him that he's already shown that movie three times recently and forcing him to actually put on the advertised comic horror film.

* The first few minutes of the first episode of ''LightNovel/ASistersAllYouNeed'', nicknamed the "normie filter", starts off as shameless sister fetish and glaring plot holes. Then when you think this is what the show is going to be about, it's revealed that this is just the protagonist's light novel draft and his editor calls him out for his poor writing.

* ''Curse Of Bigfoot'' Starts out with a scene of some kind of monster (not Bigfoot, some kind of zombie-thing) ''very'' slowly creeping towards a woman with a dog and attacking her. This turns out to be a [[ShowWithinAShow scene from a movie that a teacher is showing his class.]]

* On the DVD for ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' season 3, the intro shows a huge amount of explosions, gun shots, and action sequences (all of which actually happen, but generally as brief, isolated moments). Then it cuts to Grif and Simmons, the former of which is excited by the explosions in the opening, and the latter wondering what the hell a bunch of explosions have to do with a series that mostly consists of people standing around in a canyon and talking.

* ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'' franchise:

* ''ComicBook/{{Shakara}}'': The comic opens with the last survivor of the human race, an astronaut from the International Space Station named {{Major|lyAwesome}} Thorn, narrating how the Earth was swallowed up by a HordeOfAlienLocusts that came out of nowhere. This clearly sets up a human-centered AfterTheEnd scenario where the plucky wisecracking hero possibly becomes a wandering warrior or freedom figher against the evil Empire and ultimately proves that HumansAreSpecial. He's [[DecoyProtagonist unceremoniously killed off]] not two pages later, as the plot shifts to its ''real'' story: the war between TheJuggernaut KillerRobot Shakara and the AlwaysChaoticEvil Hierarchy.

* ''ComicBook/{{Shakara}}'': The comic opens with the last survivor of the human race, an astronaut from the International Space Station named {{Major|lyAwesome}} Thorn, narrating how the Earth was swallowed up by a HordeOfAlienLocusts that came out of nowhere. This clearly sets up a human-centered AfterTheEnd scenario where the plucky wisecracking hero possibly becomes a wandering warrior or freedom figher against the evil Empire and ultimately proves that HumansAreSpecial. He's [[DecoyProtagonist unceremoniously killed off]] not two pages later, as the plot shifts to its ''real'' story: the war between the KillerRobot Shakara and the AlwaysChaoticEvil Hierarchy.

** 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 WebOriginal/{{Vine}} star Lele Pons' opening-victim cameo is in a [[StylisticSuck cheesy]] [[ShowWithinAShow slasher movie]] being screened at the theater Audrey works at.