Caught with Your Pants Down

"While the wee wife's away, a word on the subject of onanism: in this house, we don't masturbate. It's not a very pleasant thing to do. One hates to imagine young Chloe or Radclyffe scampering down the stairs of a Saturday morning, only to find you, double-bent on the sofa, pumping your fist!"

— Harvey Denton, The League of Gentlemen

A subtrope of Cringe Comedy. A character, thinking they are alone, decides to masturbate only to be interrupted by their partner, parent, sibling, best friend, The Vicar (for maximum laughs) or whatever. Seriously, people: next time just lock the door.

Usually Played for Laughs. Occasionally Played for Drama, except in Christian cinema, where masturbation, porn, and occasionally the internet frequently cause the primary conflict. Sometimes it may overlap with Mistaken for Masturbating. For when it is not a solo situation, see Interrupted Intimacy.

Compare with Parents Walk In at the Worst Time, when someone's parents catches them with another person. Contrast with I'll Be in My Bunk, when a character leaves the room in an awkward and obvious fashion which makes it clear that they are going to go masturbate.

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Examples:

Advertising

• For a long time, Holeproof underwear's slogan was "One day, you're gonna get caught with your pants down".
• An insurance advertisement had a similar slogan, with a naked man sneaking into their office to get his payout.
• A 1-888-Smile-Info ad has an Office Lady coming back exhausted from home, stripping herself naked on her way to the bathroom, but before she can reach it, she's caught naked by a surprise party in her living room.

Anime & Manga

• Featured in one of the fake volume previews for Attack on Titan, with Jean's mother walking in on him while he's dealing with the curse of puberty.
• Ayakashi Triangle:
  • Matsuri walks into Reo's room when she's barely-dressed and greatly enjoying running a fan over her bare crotch. Humorously, Matsuri doesn't react to her being scantily-clad (until her breasts pop out of his shirt), and Reo is only embarrassed because he saw her room was such a mess.
  • When Kanade shows Matsuri a Pensieve Flashback of Suzu's life to explain why she exists as a Split Personality inside Suzu, she unintentionally starts with Suzu's shower the previous day, treating Matsuri to the sight of Suzu masturbating to him. She's not technically "caught", as they weren't actually there.
• Bleach: In the manga, Ichigo returns from Soul Society only to walk in on Kon in his body with his hand down his pants, jerking off to an imagined threesome with Rukia and Orihime. Ichigo is not impressed.
• Bokurano:
  • In the manga, it's implied that Dung Beetle catches Anko like this at one point. She's none too happy about it. In a subversion, he caught her daydreaming and dancing when she's home alone, not masturbating.
  • Mako "Nakama" Nakarai invokes the trope before fighting. The Alpha Bitch who bullies Mako is having sex with a guy (presumably her boyfriend) inside a hotel room within the fight area, and she asks Koyemshi to rescue the couple before any of them get a chance to get dressed so they end up naked first in the cockpit, where all the pilot children are. After Mako gives the Alpha Bitch a slap and a What the Hell, Hero?, they're sent inside a van on which the girl's mother is leaving the battle area. Given that the fight had not even started, is pretty much given that Mako did it on purpose, to teach the Alpha Bitch a lesson about caring for other people: it ultimately works, as Mako's arc ends with said Alpha Bitch acting more humbly as she helps clean up the classroom.
• Happens in Code Geass (the infamous "Table-kun" incident). Fortunately for Nina, Nunally couldn't see what was happening and is too innocent to realize what was going on. Probably. Hopefully.
• At the end of the Cube×Cursed×Curious OVA, the gang catches Shiraho wiggling on top of Sovereignty's sleeping bag and breathing in her scent. Shiraho doesn't take it well.
• Death Note: Light Yagami uses hidden dirty magazines as an excuse for making sure other people haven't entered his room, knowing that there are cameras and bugs in his room. His father is shocked to see his son read such things, but L even remarks it's perfectly natural for someone his age.
• F3: Frantic, Frustrated & Female: The opening scene has Sayaka return home early and catch her kid sis, Hiroe, trying desperately to get herself off with a vibrating dildo — except she can't.
• Great Teacher Onizuka is a 22-year-old virgin living on the roof of the middle school where he teaches. He works off the frustrations that come with being a Chivalrous Pervert, so it's no surprise that he's been literally caught with his pants down.
• In one chapter of the Gunsmith Cats manga, Minnie May is masturbating to a photo of her missing boyfriend Kenny when Becky walks in on her.
• A double entry from Haruhi Suzumiya when Kyon is closing the pictures of Mikuru's chest with star-shaped mole: He forgot to close the folder which had the name of "Mikuru" written as the folder name. It's busted by Haruhi spotting Mikuru having some "fun" with Kyon — which does not translate so well for the world.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers strongly implies that France was caught by Germany, with his pants down. France had been reflecting on his military history and telling himself how strong he was, getting more agitated, and red and blue-striped in the face all the while. Then Germany bursts in with a gun drawn looks horrified for a second then says, "I hate to disturb you when you're busy, but put your hands in the air".
• In I Don’t Like You at All, Big Brother!!, Shuusuke was completely nonplussed when Iroha told him how much he masturbates (5 times a day!), down to which hand he uses. It turned out she snooped him through a telescope.
• The very first scene of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has Jolyne complaining that a prison guard caught her in the act.
• My Balls. Subverted when Elyse puts Kohta under a sort of "hypnosis" so she can take advantage of him without his knowledge. He snaps out of it several times with her in... compromising positions.
• My Wife is the Student Council President: It happens to Ui during episode 2, as she's fantasizing about having her first time with Izumi. She gets so into it that she starts dry-humping her mattress, which is the exact moment he walks in and catches her in the act!
  Ui: [mortified] H-how long were you standing there??
  Izumi: [matter-of-factly] Since right around the time you started to get into it.
• Subverted in My Dress-Up Darling when Wakana's grandfather walks in on him playing an H-Game as reference for the costume he's making. His grandfather writes it off as standard teenage behavior, but is more disturbed by his nonchalant attitude and the fact that he's taking notes.
• In chapter 337 of Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Eva walks in on Chachamaru winding herself up (technically, powering self up, but it has VERY similar effects to sexual arousal) while calling out Negi's name. Hilarity Ensues since Eva is very amused and pleased.
• The pivotal moment of episode 1 of O Maidens in Your Savage Season is Kazusa interrupting her childhood friend Izumi in his private moment of watching a porno about a woman getting molested on a public train. This greatly traumatizes Kazusa who had a crippling fear of sex.
• In Episode 13 of Osomatsu-san, Osomatsu walks in on Choromatsu masturbating to a porn mag, earning the latter the Embarrassing Nickname of "Fappymatsu".
• Played with in Seitokai Yakuindomo, naturally: Shino is concerned about her breasts, and then remembers a rumour that they become bigger if you massage them. So she starts to rub her breasts over her shirt when Takatoshi walks in. It's quite awkward, but then Shino tries to save face. How? By declaring that she's 'just sexually frustrated'. Takatoshi mutters that that isn't a very good excuse.
• Alice learns the hard way in Serial Experiments Lain that internet surveillance is more intensive than she thought... Of course, the fact her best friend is an omnipresent god who can materialise in Alice's room at will doesn't help either.
• Shimoneta: In chapter 10, Ayame enters the girls' locker-room and finds Oboro pinned on the floor, with Taunkichi holding "her" legs open. Made more incriminating since Oboro's skirt was bunched around his waist and his panties were visibly soaked. Ayame takes one look at the scene, assumes she's interrupting, and ducks back outside without saying a word.
• To Love Ru Darkness: Momo gets caught by her twin sister playing with her tail. Luckily for her, Nana is too innocent to realize what Momo was doing.
• Virgin Night: A student gets caught masturbating by his tutor, which kicks off "The First Goodbye".
• An implied near-miss happens to Maho Nitori in Wandering Son. She and her brother Shuuichi sleep in bunk beds and at the end of chapter 39 when Shuuichi is woken up by creaking sounds and looks to see a panicked Maho out of bed asking if he'd heard. As she leaves the room, her pajama bottoms have a dark stain. The situation implies either this trope, an aversion of No Periods, Period, or, what the heck, both. From the looks of it, it was probably a period stain; she also mutters something about whether had mom had "any", implying tampons or pads. Though she did act a bit too suspicious and embarrassed.
• Happens to Satou when his mother walks in on him in the Welcome to the NHK manga, with the added embarrassment that he's looking at Hentai at the time. And has set up a customized rig for internet porn in his parents' spare bedroom, complete with a leather massage chair. To make matters worse, he proceeds to stumble on the headphones cable, unplugging it and flooding the room with ultra-loud girly sex moaning. Satou freaking snaps then and there.
• Yuria 100 Shiki pretty much runs on this trope. At least, it does with the titular Yuria. The slightly more advanced Juria poses as an inanimate sex toy, so she's more likely to invert the trope, pretending to be "in use" by her owner to get out of situations that would reveal her true nature.

Comic Books

• In Agent X #14, Alex and Sandi accidentally walk in on Deadpool masturbating. Being temporarily mentally-impaired (not to mention being Deadpool), he doesn't stop.
• In Alias #22, a teenaged Jessica Jones is shown looking at a pin-up of Johnny Storm while masturbating. She is implied to orgasm just as her little brother walks in.
• In the first issue of Before Watchmen: Rorschach, Rorschach kicks down the door on a crook while he is in a booth at an adult cinema.
• In The Boys, Wee Hughie is sent to infiltrate G-Wiz, a superhero team loosely modeled off one of the X-Men spinoffs and a frat house, complete with a luxuriously-appointed porn theatre...in which he later finds the whole team.
• The Chronicles of Wormwood:
  • The fourth issue of the first miniseries has Danny, Jay and Jimmy walk in on the bartender Fucknose (who Danny has cursed to have his nose and penis switch places) sucking on his own penis-nose.
  • The concluding Last Battle miniseries starts with Jimmy trying to rub one out while watching porn of anthropomorphic rabbits porking, only to be startled by Danny sneaking up on him.
• The Foes and Fortunes arc of Hack/Slash had Vlad accidentally walk in on Cassie "daydreaming" about fellow Anti-Hero Samhain.
• Happens in a lot of gags in Red Ears.
• XXXenophile:
  • In the story "Touch Tone", a woman is indulging in some phone sex late at night at work when the guy she thought was on the other end of the phone walks into the room.
  • In "Trees a Crowd", a man enjoying some alone time in a forest is interrupted by a dryad.

Comic Strips

• Then there's that bit in Dykes to Watch Out For where Mo is having cybersex with her girlfriend in the bookshop she works in. Then all the employees walk in while she's busy. They seem surprised the Martha Stuart fantasy turns her on. Then her employer walks in and everything just gets better for Mo as she realises her fly is still undone.

Fan Works

• Before the Silver Doe by Metafrantic takes this to ludicrous levels. First, Hermione walks in on Harry masturbating. Then, Harry walks in on Hermione masturbating. Then Harry masturbates to the thought of Ginny masturbating in the same way that he had caught Hermione masturbating. Then Hermione decides to watch Harry masturbate. And THEN Harry watches Hermione masturbate with the latter's consent and ends up masturbating to Hermione's masturbation. It becomes rather funny after a while.
• Code MENT, naturally, handled the above Code Geass example with the amount of tact and subtlety one would expect from an Abridged Series:
  Nunally: I think Nina's really sick. I walked in on her in the Student-Faculty Room and she sounded like a dying coyote.
• In Cyberpunk: Another Daybreak, David is in the shower when he gets a call about Ark hacking a school bus full of elementary school kids. The time it takes for him to get dressed, transform, and get down to the garage to grab the Rise Cyclone means that he's ten minutes late to the scene. Rebecca ribs him over this to his embarassment.
• The Haruhi Suzumiya fic The Coin: Haruhi has just begun to discover her Reality Warper powers; unrelated, she's in the mood for some, ahem, relief. Her mind wanders to Kyon while she's doing it, and moments later Kyon gets teleported outside her bedroom door. She gets her pants back on before she lets him in. It says a lot about their lives that neither of them think too hard about exactly how he got teleported.
  Kyon: [peering closely] Are you flushed, Haruhi?
  Haruhi: You're imagining things.
• An ER fanfic had Doug walking in on Carol as she was doing this. She is of course, self-conscious and embarrassed that he caught her like this, even as he tries to reassure her that it was beautiful to see her that way—the very reason he walked in was that he was so turned on that he wanted to have sex right then and there.
• The Discworld fic The Graduation Class, by A.A. Pessimal, explores one of those little social embarrassments that are never, ever, talked about. What happens when two people of the same gender are forced by circumstances to share a bedroom - and during the night one feels a need to masturbate? Miss Alice Band is faced with this dilemma with her room-mate and turns over some possible reactions in her mind...
  • The same author mentions a scene where a group of female teachers are comparing notes concerning their respective schools. All are female, young enough to be attractive, and experienced enough to accept it happens with adolescent boys. The general consensus is expressed by a practically-minded Quirmian:
    Ma Foi! The kind way is to pretend to be unaware it happens but to privately take it as a compliment. Boys will be boys, after all, and a boy of fourteen who does not relieve his physical need is an un-natural boy. If he thinks of me while he is doing it, it is a compliment!
    ''Alice had agreed, relating what the Guild laundress had said to her about "it's true young boys are the focus for poltergeist activity, as the wizards say, miss. There's always a lot of bumping in the night, by all accounts, and lots of ectoplasm on their bedsheets the next morning!"
• Portal 2: This is essentially the entire premise of portalkink's "The Long Wait". As part of a Human Wheatley alternative story arc, GLaDOS and Chell catch Wheatley getting off to the testing euphoria and ultimately use this to break his spirit. Wheatley does not become aware that he was being watched until the very end.
• In Romano in the fanfic Peeping Romano. He gets caught masturbating while trying to "protect" Italy from Germany by sneaking into his house, he is caught with not only his pants down but with blood all over his hands.
• The start of the "Vs. Ponyville" arc in Progress sees Celestia finding Luna in the library, asking why, and not getting a straight answer. She figures it out within seconds: Luna walked in on Sundance (her roommate) and Hoyden (Sundance's coltfriend) mating (capping her long streak of luck walking in on them being romantic). In order to help avoid awkwardness, Celestia assigns Luna to duties that require her to leave Canterlot for a while.
• Narrowly avoided in RWBY: Scars. Pyrrha knocks on Weiss' dorm door during a private moment, but Weiss had locked her door beforehand. It's a bit embarrassing for Weiss but Pyrrha didn't notice anything amiss.
• In Stars Above, poor Kagami is interrupted during some private time in the bath by one of the most unwelcome visitors imaginable... Kyubey.
• In an adult Steven Universe parody comic by aval0nx (behind the infamous Grojband Porn with Plot fanstory), Steven and Connie, looking for Greg's car buffer, walk in on a naked, clearly getting-off Pearl literally polishing her gemstone with said car buffer.
  Connie: [deadpan] Huh so that's how they do it...
• At the start of The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1, Bizarro's son walks in on his father watching a porno movie with his pants down. Bizarro proceeds to swiftly pull his pants up, smash the monitor and ask: "What porno movies?"

Films — Animation

• In Beavis And Butthead Do America, Beavis (in his Cornholio persona) sees Mr. Anderson's camper, pulls out a picture of the woman he was sent to "do" and then goes into the camper. Later, Mr. Anderson is curious to find out why his camper is rocking and investigates. Hilarity Ensues.

Films — Live-Action

• In 68 Kill, Ken is masturbating to sex tape he secretly made of himself and Liza when Liza sneaks up on him and slits his throat.
• Jim Carrey also gets caught in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
  Ace: I was just...practicing my mantra.
• À l'aventure: Sandrine gets caught masturbating on the couch after she just had sex with her fiance Fred. He isn't happy to see this, and she confirms it's due to being unsated.
• A staple of American Pie and its sequels. Most iconic is the infamous pie scene, while Jim is also caught with a tube sock in the beginning.
  Mr. Loewenstein: We'll just tell your mother that we...ate it all.
  • American Pie 2: Jim accidentally super-glues himself to himself when he mistakes a tube of superglue for lubricant and has to go to the hospital with one hand stuck to his penis and the other clutching the pornographic video he'd been watching (which had gotten glued to his other hand).
  • American Wedding: Jim and Stifler get caught doing what looks like bestiality, Stifler having sex with Jim's grandmother, and Michelle under the table while Jim's dad interrupts.
  • American Reunion: The opening sequence has Jim being caught masturbating by his son. He injures himself, enters the bathroom to find medicine... and finds Michelle "using" the shower head.
  • And in American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile.
• Angela's Ashes:
  • Frank and his friends regularly go to a rocky, hilly landscape in the wilderness and wank off next to each other (but apparently not 'with' each other). Being Catholic, they have to confess their sins. It helps that the old priest is mostly deaf and doesn't really pay attention to a word they said — until one day Frank slides into the booth all set to confess and finds a new and very alert priest there; the other one had died during the night.
  • A similar moment occurs when one of Frank's friends charges his classmates to peep on his older sisters as they prepare for a bath. One of the boys climbing up the spout gets a little overzealous and ends up pulling the drainpipe off the wall, causing the rest of the boys to be caught in the act as well.
• The first scene in Another Gay Movie with Andy masturbating with vegetables; a later scene where he is caught having sex with a quiche, with a gerbil up his ass.
• In The Babadook, Amelia, after a stressful day, decides to relieve some of her tension with her vibrator. Unfortunately, her son Samuel, scared of the titular creature, barges into her room right as she reaches orgasm, much to her frustration. Partial example, as Sam never realises just what his mother was doing.
• In Baghead (2008), Matt is relieving some tension with the help of a shampoo bottle when Chad and Catherine jump him with bag masks, only to realize afterwards what they caught him in the midst of it.
• In Black Swan, while Nina is doing her homework, she rolls over and realizes that her mother is in the room with her. Only a partial example, because her mother was asleep.
• In The Blue Lagoon (1980), there's a scene where Richard, seen from behind, is clearly masturbating. Emmeline asks him "What are you doing?" and he guiltily says "Nothing!" ...Or So I Heard.
• In The Calcium Kid, Jimmy Connolly (Orlando Bloom) is a dim amateur boxer who becomes the focus of a BBC documentary. Not knowing that his whole life is being documented, he wakes up one morning and starts masturbating, not realizing that the scene is being filmed. The film crew interrupts him and Hilarity Ensues.
• Choke has one scene wherein Lord High Charlie, played by Clark Gregg, catches Victor (Sam Rockwell), with his pants down with "Ursula the Milkmaid's" hand on his penis. Ursula is Charlie's dream girl and so he is reasonably upset by this sight saying he can never look at her the same way again.
• In Crazy, Stupid, Love, Jessica walks in on Robbie, the 13-year-old boy she was babysitting. To make matters worse, he says he was thinking of her while he was doing it and declares his love for her. She is disgusted.
• Daddy Issues: Maya's stepdad abruptly comes into her room when she's got her hand down her pants masturbating, embarrassing her.
• In Dobermann, one of the dancers in Joe's club complains that Manu is jerking off while watching her and holding a gun in his other hand. Joe gives him a stern talking to and almost throws him out of the club.
• In Don Jon, Barbara walks in on Jon pleasuring himself while watching porn. She isn't pleased.
• Donnie Darko: Donnie's psychiatrist hypnotizes him to encourage him to talk more openly, only for Donnie to go off on a tangent about Married... with Children and try to masturbate to Christina Applegate. The psychiatrist quickly stops the treatment.
• In the French erotic film The Dreamers, Isabelle catches Matthew masturbating to old pictures of actress Marlene Dietrich, and then has him perform cunnilingus on her.
• In the mood-setting montage at the beginning of Eighth Grade, a boy in the protagonist's class is caught masturbating vigorously as the class watches a sex ed video.
• In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of Joel's memories is getting caught masturbating.
• In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Brad masturbates while daydreaming about Linda getting out of the pool and taking her top off. Unfortunately, the real Linda opens the door on him. He complains afterwards: "Doesn't anybody ever fucking knock anymore?"
  • This scene was parodied in the "Stacy's Mom" video by Fountains of Wayne, with the added flip that Stacy walks in on the boy, thinks he's doing it for her and appears somewhat happy. As the song's title suggests, it's not Stacy he was picturing.
• In Going Berserk, John Candy's character is recounting a recurring dream to a psychiatrist - it's seen as a parody of the above-mentioned example, where his advances to the girl he's on an island with are constantly rebuffed (in direct contradiction to his narrative) - he goes off to another part of the island to be "alone with his thoughts" as he says, which means to furiously masturbate. He then looks up and finds he's not alone - a cruise ship is passing by with everyone on board watching and laughing at him. As he ends the story, he's dismayed to find the psychiatrist laughing uproariously.
• Chuck in Good Luck Chuck finds his best friend masturbating with a Grapefruit.
• In Grandma's Boy (2006), a bored and sexually frustrated Alex gets up in the middle of the night to rub one out in his co-worker Jeff's bathroom, using a Lara Croft doll for stimulation. Unfortunately, Jeff's mom walks in at the worst possible time, leading to one of the funniest lines ever put on film.
  Jeff: I can't believe you came on my mom.
• A non-masturbatory example in Iron Man: When Pepper walks in on Tony being peeled out of the Mark III suit following his battle with Ten Rings.
  Tony: Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing.
• In The Last Supper (1996), the female character Paulie is caught masturbating while fully clothed and it doesn't really faze her.
• In Little Children, Sarah's husband becomes addicted to a specific porn persona on the internet, going to such an extreme that he is caught by Sarah masturbating to the porn girl with her online bought panties over his face. Whoops!
• In Lovers Lane, Chloe catches Doug playing with himself... in a public washroom.
• Early in A Man with a Maid, both Jack's father and mother (separately) catching him jerking off over a photograph of a naked woman. His mother attempts to prevent him from doing so again by tying boxing gloves to his hands.
• The Nice Guys has a non-sexual version: March is relieving himself in the toilet, and Healy arrives to talk to him. Extended Cringe Comedy for March to solve his downed pants ensue ("Turn around!" "You realize there is a mirror here, right?").
• Parodied by Not Another Teen Movie: the teenage girl tries to have some "alone time" with a dildo on her eighteenth birthday, when her parents, grandparents, siblings, family pets, pastor, and the girl scout troop she mentors enter in quick succession.
• Nowhere begins with a Fantasy Sequence of Dark masturbating in the shower that is interrupted by his mother banging on the door and demanding that he quit jerking off.
• Il Ragazzo Invisibile: Or rather, completely naked, and spying on semi-naked girls.
• In Ratter, the hacker lusts over Emma, and is shown taking snapshots of her feet and watching her as she showers, exercises, sleeps... and pleasures herself.
• In Serial Mom, Scotty—usually seen with a porno mag—is caught masturbating under his blanket when Chip, Misty and their dad bust in on him, thinking he's Beverly's next victim. Followed by two detectives.
• The film Shame holds a rare unfunny example when Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is shown pleasuring himself in the bathroom while his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) barges in, catches him, and leaves in an instant. At first, Sissy thought it was humorous but Brandon proceeds to tackle her onto his couch and verbally abuse her, scaring her in the process. It's one of the darkest parts of the whole movie.
• In Slackers, there was a scene where a male character had to steal something from a female characters dorm while she wasn't there. After trying the door he was impatiently allowed in by the female character's (also female) roommate who was annoyed at having been interrupted masturbating. She continues to masturbate (quite enthusiastically) in the main room while he goes to the bedroom to find the whatever it was.
• In Splice, Elsa walks in on her boyfriend Clive having sex with Dren, and is appropriately squicked out and pissed off by it.
• Invoked in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by Kirk.
  Sulu: Sir, you did it!
  Kirk: I did nothing! Except get caught with my britches down. I must be getting senile.
• Stripped to Kill: Thinking there is someone in her apartment, Cody bursts into her bathroom to discover her partner Heineman jerking off.
• Subverted in There's Something About Mary when Ted is caught looking at Mary out the window and they assume he is masturbating. His attempts to cover up lead to hilarity, word-of-mouth, and box office success. Plus he wasn't even looking at Mary, he was looking at a songbird in the same general direction as Mary.
• In Tommy Boy, Tommy (Chris Farley) catches Richard (David Spade) masturbating over a woman skinny-dipping in a hotel pool and mocks him for it. Bonus points towards WTF: That woman was Lorri Bagley, Farley's then-real life girlfriend.
• The protagonist of Turn Me On, Dammit manages to quickly pull her pants up before her mother walks in at the beginning, but later falls victim to this trope when her crush walks in on her humping a roll of coins behind the counter of the store she works at. Thankfully, she's wearing pants, but still awkward.
• This happens to Christian Bale's character in Velvet Goldmine, whose father finds him masturbating over a picture of two men kissing (and promptly kicks him out of the house). It's heart-wrenching.
• Weird Science had an entertaining Freak Out over tossing off. "You told me you were combing your hair!"
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Dolores walks into Eddie's apartment and found Eddie's pants around his ankles and Jessica Rabbit holding hands with him. It's obviously Not What It Looks Like.
• The beginning of World's Greatest Dad has the main character catching his son in the midst of Autoerotic Asphyxiation. Later on, he comes across the son's corpse after he dies in the act.
• In You, Me and Dupree, husband and wife, Carl and Molly, catch Carl's best friend, Dupree, masturbating in their living room to a porno movie. Unfortunately, Dupree didn't put away a box labeled "camping gear" where he got the tape from which contained Carl's entire collection of Asian porn movies which his wife forced him to toss.

Folklore

• Snopes has a number of urban legends about this trope:
  • A girl who accidentally impaled herself on a broom after being caught in a compromising position with it. (link) The stereotype of witches riding broomsticks has a similar origin.^note A German university analysed the available evidence and theorized that the "broomstick" was in fact used as a means of inserting a vaginal pessary composed of common plant extracts known to cause hallucinations. Primed with what to expect — a sort of guided drugs trip — the "witch" never left her home but had a vivid fantasy of flying to a Sabbat where she met other witches and interacted with things that are not of this world, who would impart wisdom for the price of sexual interaction. This was actually tried on willing student volunteers who reported visions of flight to a high dark place and sexual interaction with non-human entities. Compare modern tales of alien abduction?
  • A man who masturbates with his eyes covered - and then realizes his mother must have been in the room at the time. (link) This is actually from stand-up comedian Rob Newman's routine from the early 90s.
  • American Pie... with pumpkins! (link)

Literature

• Abused But Chosen has Elsie caught trying to pleasure herself by her mom, who proceeds to burn her hands in a wood stove. Non-comedic dark use of the trope.
• Happens to the teenage Bruce Wayne (the Michael Keaton version) in the parody "To The Batpole!" in the anthology Batman Unauthorized. Much humour is derived from Bruce continuing to absent-mindedly masturbate while Alfred is attempting to lecture him.
• A major plot point in The Chocolate War is when John Carter, president of the Vigils, is essentially blackmailed because he thinks another character has a photo of him masturbating in a school toilet cubicle.
• The book Ghosts Aliens finds the author with his pants down four times in one week. His explanations range from attempting to destroy anaerobic bacteria in that area to having had a bee fly into his pants.
• The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of Straights has an example in Dom, whose relationship with his ex-girlfriend ended when she caught him pleasuring himself to a text message.
• The second volume of My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister opens with Satori hiding in his room, with the titular sisters mad at him for stealing a rare brand of bread from them. Desperate to escape, he asks his AI Maxwell for help. Maxwell accomplishes this by complaining, in Satori's voice, that they've interrupted "him" masturbating to a porn video. This temporarily stuns said sisters, giving Satori time to escape. Unfortunately, Maxwell was loud enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear...
• In James Herbert's Once, the protagonist is first introduced to the love interest of the novel (a barely pubescent [he initially wonders, although her fully developed frame indicates an adult, albeit a short one] Elf girl) by his spying on her masturbating against a tree.
• In This Sunday, young Alvaro is found masturbating in the bathtub while fantasizing about his maid Violeta as he watches a couple of flies doing it. And then Violeta comes to the bathroom to scold him and catches him in the act. It led up to Their First Time, though.
• In Water for Elephants, Jacob walks in on Walter (aka Kinko) masturbating to a magazine, and ends up getting back at him by orchestrating for Jacob to be humiliated by the circus' resident hooker. They end up friends, though.
• Another distinctly non-comedic example: In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, when Kumiko was a child she caught her brother Noboru masturbating to their dead sister's underwear.
• In The Zone series by James Rouch, Captain Revell witnesses Andrea masturbating in the woods. When Andrea later says that she can take care of herself, Revell can't help quipping that he already knows that.

Live-Action TV

• An episode of 2 Broke Girls reveals that Max has twice walked in on Caroline while she was pleasuring herself in the tub.
  Max: I thought you'd be at home feeling bad for yourself, not feeling your bad self.
• Happens to Rory in 8 Simple Rules. Twice.
• In According to Jim, we learn that Jim hates his birthday and surprise parties because on his thirteenth birthday, thinking everyone had forgotten his birthday, he decided to 'give himself a present' only to have his friends and family (including a nun) leap out shouting 'Surprise!
• In Ana (2020) Ana sets up for a quiet date with herself with a pink vibrator and a laptop so she can watch sexy videos. Unfortunately, she's out of batteries. And then someone knocks on her door.
• On the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Gaius Baltar is haunted by visions of his Cylon ex that nobody else can see. She frequently gets romantic with him. It's shown that this looks like exactly what you'd expect it to look like when Starbuck drops by his lab and catches him "doing his exercises". She almost lets this pass without comment ... then she asks him to zip up his fly.
• In the Broad City episode "Apartment Hunters", Abbi comes home and is dismayed to find Bevers sitting on the living room couch, jerking off to Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife
• On Camelot, Morgan discovers Harwel spying on her in the bath and asks "What were you doing with that hand before you used it to sully my dress?".
• Happens to Andrew (while looking at Hot or Not on the internet) in the final episode of The Chaser's War On Everything during the "Tech Talk" segment.
• In Dead Set, Joplin's less-than-stealthy attempt to watch Veronica in the shower is less than successful (though as a wannabe "glamour" model, Veronica is unfazed by it).
• Dickinson: Austin is caught masturbating by his mother on the couch (unbeknownst to him, as his eyes are closed). She looks shocked and beats a hasty retreat. He does it for "inspiration" when writing.
• The Dinosaurs episode "Dirty Dancin'" had Robbie Sinclair having a problem with involuntarily doing the mating dance, which was used as a metaphor for masturbation and sexual attraction. At one point, his mother Fran walks in on him while he's dancing to women on the television, which causes Robbie to panic and Fran to desperately prevent the situation from being awkward by assuring her son that what he's doing is normal.
• Implied in season five opener of the new Doctor Who: A character is typing on his laptop in his bedroom when the Doctor, needing to get on the Internet, bursts in and grabs the laptop for himself. Having seen what is on the computer screen, the Doctor turns to him and says, scornfully, "Get a girlfriend!"
• At the beginning of the "It's Just Sex ..." episode of Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, Chloe walks in on June in the bath "playing her lady harp".
• In the first episode of Everything Sucks!, Kate Messner is about to masturbate to an adult magazine she stole from her friend before her dad barges into her room. Though, the clueless father told her she didn't need to look like the women in the magazine.
• One episode of Extras has Andy walk in on his agent masturbating to a pen with a naked woman's picture on it. His agent's secretary then comes in and takes the pen from him...and is also masturbating to it when Andy leaves.
• Farscape. In a Body Surf episode, Aeryn (in Rygel's body) walks in on Crichton feeling up her own body. She threatens to break his legs. Even if they are hers. After the Reset Button is pushed, however, it's hinted that Aeryn (who'd briefly entered Crichton's body) did some checking out of her own.
• Friends:
  • In "The One with the Sharks", Monica walks in on Chandler having some "alone time" in Oklahoma and mistakenly assumes that he is turned on by shark porn when he quickly changes the channel on the TV from (normal) porn to a shark movie.
  • Ross wears a pair of tight leather pants to a date's house and cannot get them back up after pulling them down in her bathroom. He calls his friend Joey who recommends he rub lotion and powder over his legs and Ross gets caught by his date.
• In Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf, who is desperate and horny for Chuck Bass, gets caught masturbating by her maid Dorota whose face is stern as she says, "Don't forget. God is watching, Miss Blair".
• In the BBC comedy-drama Grease Monkeys, one of the main characters is caught masturbating by his sister, the shock causes him to ejaculate - all over her. She does not react well.
• One episode of Him & Her, sees Steve all ready for some much needed alone time when Becky and co unexpectedly come back to the flat.
• In episode 6 of the first season of House of the Dragon, teen Aegon is standing naked in the window of his room masturbating in full view of King's Landing when Alicent interrupts him to scold him over his prank on Aemond.
• In The Inbetweeners, one of the characters is volunteering at an old folks' home, where he constantly wanks in empty rooms (which is quite in character for him). At one point he ends up looking for ANYTHING to do the deed to and finds a picture of a woman in a bikini, which is enough to get him going. As soon as he reaches the point of no return the woman in the picture (who was in the room the whole time) sees him and calmly says that she's seen it all before. Then a nurse comes in with a man, who shakes hands with him (only to realize that he has an unknown goo on his hand).
• Charlie, from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has been caught masturbating several times.
• Langt fra Las Vegas: Happens to Casper in the episode appropriately titled "Masturbation".
• Parodied and inverted on The League of Gentlemen, where Harvey Denton has a peculiar paranoia about walking in on his nephew, Benjamin, and has an entire, Spit Take-inducing collection of Unusual Euphemisms ready. There has never been any concrete evidence of Benjamin actually masturbating.
• Frances walking in on her husband Terry doing this (often to Poor Man's Porn) is a running joke in The Librarians (2007).
• There's a rather uncomfortable instance of this in Mad Men - Don's ten-year-old daughter Sally is watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. when she starts masturbating, without really knowing what it is she's doing, to Ilya Kuryakin at a friend's house while her friend is sleeping on the couch. She gets in trouble when the friend's mother walks in, and when she takes Sally back home her mother yells at her and threatens to cut her fingers off if she does it again - in public or in private. All the while Sally doesn't even know why the adults are mad at her.
• An episode of Married... with Children focused on Bud getting caught by his college's librarian and facing disciplinary action. Bud is saved by the fact the librarian, who has the hots for him, deliberately gave him books that would excite him. Bud is then humiliated by his father and his "No Ma'am" club members coming in protesting the proceedings with lines like "Four, three, two, one! Bud's alone but he has fun!"
• In Misfits, this happens to Curtis and Alisha, who Can't Have Sex, Ever and cope with it by watching each other masturbate. Unfortunately they choose to do this in a cupboard in their local community centre, and their activities are soon loudly interrupted and exposed by Nathan (who takes a rather unhealthy delight in the whole thing - and proceeds to perform a full re-enactment of what he has just seen, for the amusement of Kelly and Simon).
• Happens to Martin in an episode of Puberty Blues.
• Alluded to in Pushing Daisies. Chuck and Ned share an apartment, but if they touch Chuck will die, so they wear jingle-bell slippers to alert each other when they're coming into a room. Chuck tries to convince Ned that she should move out:
  Chuck: I'll stop walking in on you when you're doing things you don't want me to know you're doing—
  Ned: That would never have happened if you were wearing your slippers.

You'd think that since they can't touch, they might have resorted to mutual voyeurism as one of the only forms of sexual activity that would allow them to safely be in the same room, but Ned is a very self-conscious person.

• In an episode of Rules of Engagement, Jennifer refers to Adam as "Spanky" and he thinks this is because she walked in on him one time. He launches into a spirited defence of his actions in front of his friends, only to discover she was making a reference to The Little Rascals.
• This Saturday Night Live Amazon Mother's Day ad parody featuring three different mothers and Fifty Shades of Grey, where Dad and the kids get the bigger surprise when they deliver the gift.
• Seinfeld:
  • In "The Contest", George drops by his parents' house but no one is home. While waiting for them, he spots one of his mother's Glamour magazines and starts leafing through it to kill boredom. One thing leads to another, and eventually George's mother comes home and catches him masturbating, which shocks her so much it causes her to fall over and injure herself. Jerry is far more hung up on the fact that George was masturbating to Glamour in the first place than he is about anything else.
  • In "The Hamptons", Jerry's girlfriend walks in on George while he's changing after going swimming. While being seen naked would be embarrassing enough on its own, George also happened to be suffering "shrinkage" from being in the cold water, making the situation exponentially worse as it actually causes the girl to laugh when she gets a glimpse of him down there.
    George: [calling desperately after her] I WAS IN THE POOL! I WAS IN THE POOL!
• An episode of the HBO series Sessions revolved around the main character's embarrassment over masturbating, and his fear of being caught as an adolescent.
• Skins
  • In series 1, Tony is totally unfazed to find Sid masturbating over a picture of Michelle (Tony's girlfriend).
  • There's an EXTREMELY uncomfortable example of female masturbation in series 2. Maxxie's stalker Sketch breaks into his house, sneaks into his room, fondles and smells his underwear, and proceeds to masturbate on his bed. When Maxxie comes home unexpectedly early, she quickly hides under his bed where she stays for the rest of the night.
  • Karen and JJ walk in on Freddie at one point in series 3.
• A stand-up routine by comedian Alan Brough on The Smallest Room In The House centred around his father bringing him a cup of tea while he was masturbating.
• On Snuff Box, apparently Matt Berry's father once walked in on him masturbating over a map of Scotland.
• On an episode of Spicks and Specks, Christie Amphlett (who, of course, sang "I Touch Myself") claimed that there was a girl who threw up every time she heard Amphlett's name because she once walked in on her brother masturbating to a picture of Amphlett.
• In the Stargate Atlantis episode "Grace Under Pressure", Rodney McKay is badly injured and hallucinates seeing his long-time crush, Samantha Carter. Even though he's well aware that she's just a figment of his imagination, he works with 'her' to try to help his situation. When 'Samantha' comes up with an idea that gives him much-needed extra time, he jumps up and hugs 'her'. He suddenly turns serious and moves in for an amorous kiss, but 'Samantha' spoils the mood by pointing out, "You do realize what you're doing here, right?" Possibly only a partial example, because the person who caught him was actually his own subconscious. (Rodney was a complicated guy.)
  Rodney: You are the worst hallucination ever!
• Implied in an episode of Supernatural, although when two male characters who aren't having sex spend all their time together, it's to be expected.
  • More than just implied in the season six episode "Caged Heat" when Castiel (hilariously) discovers porn.
  • In the 5th season episode "I believe the Children are our Future", popular myths are coming true (joybuzzers kill, itch powder really works). Cue Dean walking out of the bathroom with furry palms...
• The basis of the entire That '70s Show episode "Happy Jack". Obviously, the culprit is Eric, but when Donna tells him to do it where he won't get caught, her explanation is so detailed that he realizes she does it too!
• In one episode of This is Wonderland, Elliot Sacks accidentally implies that his mother walked in on him once.
  Judge Serkis: That's enough, Mr. Sex. Sacks!
• This happened to wannabee rapper J-Roc in Trailer Park Boys.
• The Daily Mail Island sketch from TV Go Home has a particularly horrifying example, where a teenage girl is caught masturbating by her parents ("She was debasing everything! With her fingers!") and subjected to a show trial where she has to masturbate before the other islanders before being hung.
• You Me Her: Emma catches Jack masturbating to football, of all things, in the pilot, which showcases their marriage's lack of a fulfilling sex life.

Music

• The Lily Allen song "Alfie" (and in particular the music video) feature this trope when Lily walks in on her brother Alfie.
• "Masturbation Blues" by David Allan Coe.
• Stephen Lynch has a song about the subject.
  Well it seems last night you caught me spankin' it // No use denyin' it, I was really crankin' it // Well, dry your eyes, don't be so sad, // if you could just forgive me, and talk to me, Dad.
• This trope is essentially the premise of the SupRicky06 parody of Soulja Boy's song "Kiss Me Through the Phone", Caught You Watching Porn.
• In a parody of the scene of similar nature from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the music video for "Stacy's Mom" has Stacy catching the narrator stand-in going at it. She didn't mind the "Ocupado" indicator on the door! She's flattered because she thinks he was thinking about her, when in fact he was thinking about her mom.
• The TISM song "Been Caught Wankin'" starts off meaning the phrase literally, then moves on to mean anyone being shamefully pretentious in public.

Theater

• Spring Awakening: Hanschen keeps getting interrupted during "My Junk", but manages to finish the deed.
• Happens in Steve Martin's The Underpants.

Video Games

• Though you can't actually see it, Foxy was masturbating in Five Nights at Fuckboy's and you have to burn down Pirate Cove to get him to stop and join you on your quest of debauchery.
• A mission in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony is named after this trope. During the mission brief, Yusuf Amir, the mission's boss, is not wearing any pants while partaking in cocaine and a prostitute's services, with his father, Abdul, later walking in on him, showing disappointment in Yusuf's hedonistic lifestyle.
  Yusuf: Don't judge a book by its cover, Father. That's what you taught me.
  Abdul: When a book is called "Guns, Drugs, Hookers and No Pants" I think I don't need to read it.
• A downplayed example In Kathy Rain. As the titular character makes her escape from the Sheriff Station's lock-up, she walks past Sheriff Boyks' office and overhears him in the middle of what is heavy implied to be a bit of Intimate Telecommunications. She quickly decides not to listen in on him and just keep on walking.
• An example in hentai RPG Knights of Xentar.
  Luna: Look, he's pointing north!
• Can be done to Meryl in Metal Gear Solid if you're fast enough.
• In supplementary material for Nier, this happens to the hermaphrodite Kaine by a preacher she befriended. It's Played for Drama, as he's scared off by her Demonic Possession as well as the massive discomfort from the overall situation and undergoes Sanity Slippage from his repressed guilt.
• In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Bishop gets walked in on by his killers and he pulls his pants up and buckles his belt in a hurry, saying that he "was just doing inventory". Travis later gets caught by Henry while watching his Magical Girl Anime. If you listen closely, they were both watching the same thing, Bizarre Jelly 5.
• In Wasted Youth, this happens to Roger when he's caught using a peephole to watch the girls sleeping in their dorms.
• In Disco Elysium, completing the "Rigorous Self-Critique" thought allows the Detective to remember some the most personally embrassing and shameful moments of his life. One of them is that he once jerked off in a locker room and was caught in the act.

Visual Novels

• If My Heart Had Wings: Twice in Amane's route, Aoi accidentally walks in on Amane watching porn, causing him to freak the hell out, and get rather angry the second time as they're dating by that point. Though both times, it's quickly revealed that she's watching for educational purposes, not to masturbate. However, she seems to be pretty into it the second time (at least) and is quite peeved when Aoi demands she stop.
• In Katawa Shoujo, the first sex scene with Rin Tezuka begins like this. Hisao goes one night into her atelier and finds her naked save for her see-through shirt, barely lucid after spending several days trying to gain inspiration, and attempting to relieve herself with masturbation... or something similar, since she has no arms. (Maybe, repeatedly rubbing her inner thighs together). So Hisao gives Rin a Cooldown Hug, undoes her buttons, and then helps her finish. It's one of the rare instances where this trope is Played for Drama.
• You can catch all the love interests this way in Hitomi. And then you can help them out a little.
• Occurs in Giulio's route in Lucky Dog 1, after the team has escaped from prison Gian goes out the cabin they've broken into to masturbate in the car. Giulio, who was on watch, follows him to make sure he's okay and Gian only notices he's there until part way through. Giulio tells Gian not to mind him and carry on.
• In Sono Hanabira Ni Kuchizuke Wo, Nanami finds out about Yuuna's feelings for her when she catches Yuuna in this act. Sex ensues.

Web Animation

• Happens to Robert in the first episode of Adventure Friends.
• Arby 'n' the Chief: During a Halo 3 match between Chief and professional gamer Craig, Craig notices he has a hard-on and goes at it while Chief is temporarily distracted from the match. Craig, however, gets caught in the act by his parents, and the ensuing confusion on his side allows the normally incompetent Chief to win the match.
• In Dick Figures: The Movie, Blue mentions a past event where he caught Red beating off to Animal Planet.
• In the flash toon Nin10Doh to the 64th Power, Sonic is caught with his pants down while he's watching porn of Krystal on Tails' computer.
  Tails: Get off of my computer!
  Sonic: What do you think I've been trying to do?!
• Mongolian Erectile Dysfunction begins with Mr. Owl trying to masturbate until he's walked in on by the boy who always asks him how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

Webcomics

• Variation in 8-Bit Theater: Black Mage manages to turn self-love into an atrocity (you really don't want to know how, but let's just say It Makes Sense in Context), and Thief somehow gets his hands on photos of the event to blackmail him with.
• Roy in Confiscated Twins is caught by his sister.
• Double Subverted in this Cyanide and Happiness strip.
• Hilariously enough, this happens in Chapter 19 of Furry Fight Chronicles when Cookie finds a depressed Muko masturbating in her room while visiting her, much to their embarrassment.
• In Ménage à 3, this is a persistent danger for a sex-mad cast who never seem to have discovered door locks, although Interrupted Intimacy is actually more common.
  • Flamboyant Gay Dillon walks in on Zii having some alone time... while calling out the name of her female roommate and watching Perry Hotter, Part 16.
  • Much later, Zii gets interrupted again.
• This Oglaf strip. That branch has always been there.
• QUILTBAG: On their first night in the dorm, Lisa, assuming that Sara's asleep, has phone sex with Stan. In fact, Sara's awake, and more than a little weirded out.
• Rhymes With Witch: You know that rock tumbler that Sue Richards gave Ben Grimm for his birthday?
• In one of the early Sabrina Online strips, Sabrina decides to indulge in some "hands-on" "cybering" with her (then still-unseen) internet boyfriend, Richard. She's just getting into things when her roommate, Amy, walks in on her. (Which later earns Richard the nickname "Sticky Fingers")
• In Sexy Losers, Mike and his sister Michelle are both completely unfazed by anyone walking in on them in the act. The humour comes from the reaction of Mike's housemate Mark.
• In Sunstone, after a very memorable first night with Lisa, Ally is caught in the middle of some "alone time" by Alan.
• Twisted Tropes: A Mook catches Dr. Claw watching an indecent video, who quickly switches to a Windows desktop, orders Penny and Brian to be shot while they're captured, and asks to knock next time.

Web Originals

• This situation is the catalyst for the plot of The Awkward Compilation. More specifically, Lester walks in on housemate Alex making time with his hand, some lotion, and a video of Lester on the toilet... in Lester's room. Apparently, he wasn't expecting Lester home so early.
• An episode of The Brian & Jill Show opened with host Jill Whelan being pressed to explain something she'd told Brian prior to the show starting, which involved her mother catching her using a vibrator. The story earned Jill (and the episode in question) the title "Kneelin' Whelan", and she has yet to completely live it down.
• Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate.
• The Cracked video "The Most Surprising Problem With Making Homemade Porn" has a man arriving home to discover his roommate masturbating to his bizarrely specific fetish of pretending to direct a porno film. And, by 'pretending to direct, we mean having hired professional actors, set up cameras (that aren't rolling), lights, etc.
• The first question in this Dear Prudence article.
• When L beams everyone up in Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv), Soichiro complains about this.
• Fairy Tale Friday: Belle catches the Beast watching lesbian porn. Their relationship blossoms from there.
• In the big group review of The Last Airbender, the reviewers think that the The Nostalgia Critic set it up as he did for Dragonball Evolution the year before. It turns out that he doesn't even know their names and they catch him fapping to George Takei's biography for further insult.
  Critic: ...this is awkward.
• Sonichu GET AWAY FROM THE INTERNET! I'M CUTTIN' IT DOWN! The general consensus is that Bob never actually caught on that Chris was masturbating, so this is kind of an odd example.
• In Survival of the Fittest, this happens to Beth Vanallen - as Melina Frost walks in her. Particularly squicky as Melina then forces her to keep going before effectively joining in. Depraved Bisexual indeed... Oh, and Melina uses a vase to help.
• On Not Always Right, this woman is outraged at the appearance of pay-for-play pornography on her satellite TV bills, and even more so when the customer service representative asks if her adolescent son might be to blame. The representative sees another video being ordered right now and asks the mom to check on her son as proof that he's not ordering them. He is.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In the episode "The Shell", Gumball accidentally walks in on Banana Joe watching a video of a peeled orange being pulled apart. Considering that he treats taking his peel off like getting naked and has a box of tissues next to him... you get the idea.
• An entire episode of American Dad! is dedicated to masturbation. Stan reveals he has never masturbated before in his life and rather has repressed his urges through other, more 'wholesome' activities. In an attempt to instill this mentality in Steve, he tries to teach him woodcraft. Stan directs Steve to plunge a hot poker into a piece of wood that is held directly over Stan's lap, resulting in obvious (and painful) injury. The doctor gives him a special cream which he mistakenly thinks he must rub over the 'affected area' each day, essentially masturbating with lubricant. Stan soon becomes addicted to it and attempts to masturbate at any chance he can get. He is eventually caught by Steve while the latter was cleaning the gutters, causing him to fall off the ladder and break his arm. Somehow, they manage to not once in the entire episode ever use the words "masturbation" or "masturbate".
• The pilot to Archer has Archer walking in on his mom having a "private phone call" with the head of the KGB.
  Malory: And take a shower. God, you smell like a whorehouse.
  Archer: Yes, your own fingers.
  Malory: What was that?
  Archer: Nothing.
• Big Mouth: Being the chronic masturbator that he is, this happens to Andrew a few times over the series. The worst time was when he was caught masturbating while in the same room as his dead grandfather, right before the funeral!
• Family Guy: In "Screwed the Pooch", Peter and Lois try to enter the bathroom to fix the sink, but to their utter shock, they find Brian on the toilet with a porno magazine.
  Lois: Was... Was he just mastur...?
  Peter: Yes.
  Lois: Oh my...
  Peter: Do we... Do we rub his nose in it?
• Metalocalypse:
  • "Dethhealth" has a variation on this with Murderface. While he is getting the infamous "turn your head and cough" test administered by a doctor he imagines that a hot woman, not the doctor, has their hands on his penis. There was also a fireman, his grandma, Obama, The Golden Girls, and other weird things.
  • The episode where the band discusses "s*cking their own c*cks". It's time to take off for a show, Charles goes to gather the boys, only to find each in their room in a compromising position.
• Happens to Orel in the "second" episode of Moral Orel in the school bathroom by the janitor, which leads to the episode's... plot.
• Rick and Morty has these occasionally, generally involving the 14-year-old Morty.
  • In one flashback from "Total Rickall", Morty's 17-year-old sister Summer walks in on him. Although the context isn't necessary to understand the scene, it is worth mentioning that the flashback is shown in an episode in which psychic alien parasites are altering people's memories to trick potential hosts into trusting them, sometimes convincing a person that they've known the parasite for decades. The heroes eventually realize that the parasites can only create good memories, providing the protagonists with a way to figure out who's real and who's fake.
    Summer: Oh my god!
    Morty: I thought you went to a concert!
    Summer: We forgot the tickets! Why in the kitchen?!
    Morty: I do it everywhere! Stop shaming me!
    Summer: You're not the victim here!
    Morty: I hate you and I was thinking about your friend Grace!
    [Summer screams inarticulately]
  • Used bizarrely in the Season 3 opening credits, in which Morty is shown (from behind) to be watching a video on a PornHub-colored site which features a woman pulling down underwear to reveal faces on each buttcheek. Cue Beth walking in, and him immediately slamming the laptop closed and pretending to be asleep (and we can now see that he and Beth both have butts on their faces). Clearly, this is some Alternate Universe Morty's version of this trope.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Like Father, Like Clown" parodies this with a flashback where Hyman Krustofski catches his son playing with a seltzer bottle in the bathroom, which is a parody of a scene in the play Brighton Beach Memoirs where this trope is played straight.
  • In "The Haw-Hawed Couple", after Bart has walked in on his parents having sex, Milhouse assures him that it's better to walk in on both your parents rather than just one.
• South Park:
  • This is Played for Drama in one episode when Butters catches his father masturbating in a gay bathhouse while he's completely naked. Butters doesn't quite understand what's going on, but his father is mortified and ashamed.
  • In "Over Logging", Randy has gone for weeks without masturbating to internet porn, eventually near the end he sneaks into the camp's computer room, looks at a bunch of perverted things, and eventually ejaculates all over the room, everyone comes in thinking he was grunting in pain and with his pants down, he tells them that he was doing that because "a ghost was attacking him and left his ectoplasm everywhere".
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Even SpongeBob gets caught once in a while. The beginning of "Your Shoe's Untied" shows him relaxing in his easy chair, intensely watching a live-action anemone on TV. The anemone is gyrating to go-go music. SpongeBob leans forward, wide-eyed and smiling broadly... then his pet snail Gary slithers in.
  SpongeBob: [switching the channel] I... I was just looking for the sports channel, Gary!
• The Venture Bros. has The Monarch watching Dr. Girlfriend seduce Dr. Venture on a video monitor. He starts rubbing his chest, his hand drifts downward... and stops abruptly when a henchman passes through.

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