History Main / NonVerbalMiscommunication

* On ''Series/{{Friends}}'', Chandler is on the phone with a girl and Joey starts a really strange pantomime that he assumes is related to something Joey wants him to say to the girl. After he hangs up, he asks Joey what the hell he was signaling and Joey just explains he wanted to know if Chandler wanted to [[BigEater order a pizza]].

* ''Series/Danger5:'' As she's being led away by Nazi soldiers:
-->'''Claire:''' [winking] [subtitle: Stay on mission. We can handle ourselves.]\\
'''Tucker:''' [winking back] [subtitle: What?]

* In ''WesternAnimation/IceAge'', Scrat attempts to warn Manny and Sid of the ambush by Diego's pack. They understand "pack of..." but can't find out the last part, even when Scrat points directly at Diego.

* This is how a mountain on ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' ended up being called Your Finger You Fool (much like in Jokes above). An explorer pointed to the geographical feature he wanted the name of, got this response, and didn't realize what it actually meant.

* In the ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' fanfic ''FanFic/{{Symbiosis}}'', Ash misinterprets Pikachu's hand signals for leash as a noose.

* ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'': Peter Quill convinces [[LiteralMinded Drax the Destroyer]] not to kill Gamora as RevengeByProxy for the murders of his family at the hands of Ronan the Accuser, suggesting that they work together, as that will lead them to Ronan, and then Drax can kill him in person, which Quill emphasizes by doing the [[ThroatSlittingGesture slit-throat gesture]].

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E10Hush}} Hush]]" involved demons who stole everyone's ability to speak, forcing the heroes to communicate with each other through pantomime. While brainstorming on how they might slay the demons, Buffy shrugs and nonchalantly pumps her hand up and down in the air in front of her, drawing looks of startled disbelief from her friends. Embarrassed at their reactions, she pulls a wooden stake out of her bag and repeats the motion. Everyone gets it. Later, Buffy tries to signal to Riley that he needs to smash the box on a table that's holding all the voices inside it. Riley thinks she means the crystal next to it and hits that, then grins like a dope at her before an exasperated Buffy makes more specific gestures.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* Played for drama in ''Film/IngloriousBasterds'', where this trope, combined with CriticalResearchFailure, gets a lot of people killed. A British officer is inside Germany in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, impersonating a German officer. A real German officer gets suspicious and starts to quiz him. The Brit seems to have fended off the German's suspicions--until he orders drinks, signaling the waitress for three drinks by raising the index, middle, and ring fingers of his right hand...when a real German would use their index finger, middle finger, and ''thumb''. Cue a bloody shootout.

* In ''The Zone'' novels by James Rouch, Captain Revell is with a prostitute who doesn't speak English. He points at his watch and raises his fingers to show he'll be back in five minutes, but she thinks he wants to watch her masturbate and starts playing with herself.

* Mel Brooks' ''Film/YoungFrankenstein'' features a scene where the monster grabs and chokes Frankenstein. Since he cannot talk, he frantically uses Charades to communicate to his assistants that they should sedate his monster. They take a long time about it before Igor finally guesses "Sedagive!". Frankenstein is not pleased. In the Broadway version, it is 'Flying Down to Rio', which may be a reference to [[Film/TheProducers another Mel Brooks movie turned Broadway musical.]]

* Averted in ''On Wings of Eagles'' (set during the Ayatollah revolution in Iran) when an American reminds his companion not to flag a lift with a raised thumb, as it's an obscene gesture in Iran.

* Drives the plot of a NoDialogueEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'' that [[SomethingCompletelyDifferent parodied old, black-and-white silent works]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' episode "Speak No Evil", Jenny loses the language disc that allows her to speak English, and tries to explain the problem to Dr. Wakeman with a game of charades. Dr. Wakeman manages to understand "I cannot...", but gets confused when Jenny gets to "speak English", misinterpreting the sentence as "I cannot stop eating cheese in my milkshake" and "I cannot stop petting those cute little puppies". When Jenny exasperatedly starts explaining what she means in Japanese, Dr. Wakeman figures out that Jenny is unable to speak English, but ''doesn't'' figure out that this was what Jenny had already been trying to tell her.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' episode "Speak No Evil", Jenny loses the language disc that allows her to speak English, and tries to explain the problem to Dr. Wakeman with a game of charades. Dr. Wakeman manages to understand "I cannot...", but gets confused when Jenny gets to "speak English", instead misinterpreting the sentence as "I cannot stop eating cheese in my milkshake" and "I cannot stop petting those cute little puppies". When Jenny exasperatedly starts explaining what she means in Japanese, Dr. Wakeman figures out that Jenny is unable to speak English, but ''doesn't'' figure out that this was what Jenny had already been trying to tell her.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'': Jenny has lost the language disc that allows her to speak English, so she tries to convey the message to Dr. Wakeman with a game of charades. Wakeman manages to understand "I cannot...", but jumps to the wrong conclusions when Jenny is trying to make out "speak".

* This trope is the reason behind a lot of what people consider baffling behavior on the part of cats. For one example, cats generally avoid eye contact unless they're trying to be assertive/threatening. They get unnerved when unfamiliar people look directly at them. This is why cats have a reputation for sitting on the laps of people who dislike them: those people are the ones not staring at the cat! Note: cats actually communicate via winking their eyes. It's dogs who interpret direct eye contact as a threat. This is also why cats and dogs often do not get along, since many signals for one animal mean the opposite in the other. For instance, a dog waving its tail is happy, while a cat doing the same is showing aggression or fear. Similarly cats "bow" to say hello; dogs do it to signal playtime. So the dog sees the cat bow and assumes it's time to play, whereupon the cat's startled because all it was trying to do was offer a greeting.
** Interestingly, this is a similar case to the problem with different cultures: Animals who share the same environment need to understand each other, even if they aren't of the same species. Dogs and cats can't understand each other -- but not because they are not related, but because their ancestors lived so far apart. Desert foxes and Egyptian wild cats can understand each other, while wolves share part of their body language with lynxes and brown bears. Also, when cats and dogs live together long enough, they start understanding each other.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': In "Day Trip of Doom!", Webby is trying (and failing) to talk her way out of an awkward situation with the manager at Funso's Fun Zone. Louie makes [[ThroatSlittingGesture a throat-slashing "cut it out" gesture]], but Webby misinterprets it and briefly looks like she's seriously considering attacking the man with a spork before Louie stops her.

-->'''Woman 1''': Starry night!\\
'''Man 1''': Freezing!\\
'''Man 2''': Time's up!\\
'''Woman 2''': Hey, guys! Who wants the last two Blizzards?\\
'''DQ Lips''': (''repeatedly bangs self against the side of the opened door in exasperation'')

* Pretty much the entire premise of ''Manga/{{Mitsudomoe}}''.

* ''Series/{{Supergirl 2015}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/MyYouthIsYours'': Averted; Kara and Lena's nonverbal communication skills were so good in college they were banned from charades. This continues in the main story, where Lena nearly always interprets Kara's expressions perfectly (and vice versa) even when others have trouble.

* In ''FanFic/ThisBites'', this applies given that the city of octopi the Straw Hats run into communicate mainly by eight-tentacled sign language... and Vivi and Robin end up [[MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels insulting the shogun, his lineage]] and his [[SeriousBusiness surfing skills]] when Vivi accidentally uses [[AccidentalUnfortunateGesture the eight-tentacled dialect instead of the eight-jointed-limbed dialect]].

* Used in ''Series/ThirtyRock'' Liz Lemon tries to hide the fact that Tracy went to a strip club by telling his wife that he took his pet snake to the vet. When Tracy returns and his wife asks where he was (because "I'm back from doing whatever Liz Lemon said!" wasn't sufficient), Liz ALMOST saves the day.
-->(''Liz Lemon makes snake motion with hand and wiggles tongue)''\\

''(Liz mimes getting sick)''\\

''(Liz gives him a thumbs up and nods)''\\

* ''Series/{{Bones}}'' is given a signal to try and perk up an unconfident intern who had missed a small but important piece of evidence.

* ''Series/Danger5'', a spoof of 1960's TV spy series. Claire is being [[BatheHerAndBringHerToMe led away by enemy soldiers]].

* ''Series/Lucifer2016'': Charlotte tries to get Detective Chloe Decker to investigate a case without revealing Charlotte and Lucifer's prior involvement. Lucifer tries to mime signals from behind Chloe.
-->'''Charlotte''': I heard things on the phone call.\\
'''Chloe''': Like?\\
''(Lucifer makes a finger gun)''\\
'''Charlotte''': Fingers, pointing.\\
'''Chloe''': You heard fingers pointing?\\
'''Charlotte''': ''(Lucifer glares at her)'' Very angrily, yes. ''(Lucifer mimes shooting)'' Also a gunshot. ''(Lucifer clutches his chest, slumping on the desk)'' Sounded like he was dying, or...melting? It's hard to tell.

-''(He alternates between pointing down and pretending to drink tea.)''\\

* ''Website/NotAlwaysWorking'' provides us [[https://notalwaysright.com/so-easy-a-caveman-can-work-here/57237/ this]] fine example of workplace communication. At least they figured out ''some'' of it.

* In ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'', the LiteralMinded Drax doesn't understand why he would want to press his finger against Ronan's throat. Peter tries to explain it's a symbol for slitting his throat, but Drax doesn't want to do that either. He wants to behead him.

* Played for drama in ''Film/IngloriousBasterds'', where this trope, combined with CriticalResearchFailure, gets a lot of people killed. A British officer is inside Germany in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, impersonating a German officer. A real German officer gets suspicious and starts to quiz him. The Brit seems to have fended off the German's suspicions--until he orders drinks, signaling the waitress for three drinks by raising the index, middle, and ring fingers of his right hand. The German catches him out, noting that Germans signal "three" by raising their index finger, middle finger, and ''thumb''. Cue a bloody shootout.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E7TheUnicornAndTheWasp The Unicorn and the Wasp]]", an episode of ''Series/DoctorWho'', has a similar situation of Charades under pressure. [[spoiler:As the Doctor tries to flush cyanide out of his system, he has to silently ask for a list of seemingly random things to help detoxify himself. Donna has a great deal of trouble with this, interpreting "salt" (represented with a shaking fist, i.e. sprinkling salt on food) as a cocktail shaker ("What do you want, a Harvey Wallbanger?") and "a shock" as a song (for which she suggests "Camptown Races?")]]
-->[[spoiler:'''The Doctor: How is "Harvey Wallbanger" one word!?]]

'''DQ Lips''': (''bangs self against the side of the opened door in exasperation'')

* The "[[https://vimeo.com/27713251 Game Night]]" Dairy Queen commercial has the Dairy Queen Lips mascot utterly failing to get the other participants into guess that his Charades performance is acting out the word "blizzard", even when he resorts to opening the door to let in a frigid wind and in spite of everyone present eating one of Dairy Queen's Blizzards.

-->'''Woman 1''': Starry night!
'''Man 1''': Freezing!
'''Man 2''': Time's up!
'''Woman 2''': Hey, guys! Who wants the last two Blizzards?

'''(Lucifer makes a finger gun)''\\