The main character has always loved or lusted for another character on the show. He gets his courage up to go tell her. Music swells, he takes a breath...
And somehow the whole thing gets derailed. Either he chickens out, she asks him a question about this hot guy she's been chasing, or she runs off to go fight vampires, or someone else barges into the room and destroys the opportunity entirely.
This can be a highly effective writing technique for a couple of episodes, but the writers typically find that it's impossible to maintain forever. Eventually, the character will tell the object of his affections, and the plot will move on...or the viewers will.
Name comes from the American football term when an offensive lineman moves before the snap (when the ball is put in motion).
Compare to Will They or Won't They? and Redundant Romance Attempt. See also Red Herring Twist, Cannot Spit It Out, and So You Were Saying...?.
Not to be confused with Deliberately Jumping the Gun or Confession Deferred, which is about telling the truth only when it's convenient.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Happens a few times in Ah! My Goddess, usually thanks to Skuld providing the interruption.
- Kaorin of Azumanga Daioh has this problem through the entire series. Any time she tried to work up the nerve to even talk to Sakaki, she fell to pieces in increasingly amusing and neurotic ways.
- Happens to Kosuda a few times in B Gata H Kei, including having getting his head caught in the door of a departing train while trying to confess his feelings to protagonist Yamada.
- Cardcaptor Sakura:
- Pretty much what happened constantly in the second arc with Syaoran trying to confess his love for Sakura.
- Also done with Touya and Yukito, with a few twists: Touya was trying to tell Yukito that the latter was dying, and all the interruptions caused by Nakuru were deliberate.
- In D.N.Angel this happens to Daisuke when he tries to confess his love for Risa in the first anime episode. (In the manga he managed to tell her, but she flat-out rejected him.)
- Watanabe in Excel♡Saga runs into out-of-left-field calamities every time he tries to get somewhere with "Miss Ayasugi" (Hyatt).
- The most devastating of which was, after they got engaged and are finally about to have sex, Il Palazzo appears and restores Hyatt's memory, and she leaves Watanabe. This ends up driving Watanabe insane.
- In episode 5 of The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses, Mie gets upset after seemingly running out of Platonic Valentines before she can give him one, and to make up for it, offers to do any one thing he asks. Komura decides this is a good opportunity to confess and asks her to listen to what he's about to say, only to find that he can't get the words out. He apologises and asks Mie to wait until he's ready to tell her.
- In Hayate the Combat Butler, Hinagiku asks Hayate how he feels for Athena. While he's struggling to try and figure out his feelings, she decides to try confessing, which he interrupts with the answer to the question, causing her for forget what she was about to say, and then sends him off to his own attempted confession.
- Happens to Miroku and Sango several times in Inuyasha, mostly because both of them are inveterate Moment Killers.
- At the start of the election arc in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Shirogane asks Kaguya to meet him behind the school so he can requst her help in his campaign, which the entire school ends up misinterpreting for something romantic and watches from nearby in the hopes of seeing a confession. Given the environment, he actually does briefly consider putting their whole Duel of Seduction aside and confessing to her right then and there, but he chickens out at the last second and goes with his original request. That said, she makes it clear in her response that she would have gladly said yes regardless of which question he had chosen to go with.
- One episode of Negima! Magister Negi Magi features this one in regards to Nodoka's feelings for Negi. She still manages to tell him by the end of the episode.
- A random schoolboy in Rozen Maiden is constantly interrupted by the cast from confessing to Jun's sister Nori.
- In Shakugan no Shana (at least in the second season), any movement towards resolving the Love Triangle is rudely interrupted by the sudden arrival of the next overpowering Big Bad.
- To Love Ru does this a lot. In the first episode alone the main character tries to confess to his love interest and is stopped in order by a soccer ball to the head, a flower pot to the head, a garbage truck, a herd of rampaging elephants, and finally a crashing alien spaceship.
- Yuppie Couple Menko ("Miss Noodle") and Shiruo ("Mr. Soup") in Urusei Yatsura are eternally on the verge of declaring their love for each other when the current episode's lunacy literally runs them over.
- In VanDread, a nervous Hibiki gets out an "I like y—"/'omae ga su—-' to Dita, before the attack alert sirens go off.
- Video Girl Ai has a moment where Yota and Moemi are out shopping and Yota seems to have gotten up his courage and a soft speechbubble appears with the words I love you... and it turns out he was just thinking it and Moemi is embarrassed cause he's just standing there with his mouth open.
- Ushio of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds is smitten with his lovely co-worker Mikage, but the moment he chose to make his feelings known to her unfortunately turned out to be the moment when she was having a rather intense conversation with Jack Atlas, which made it clear that she was in love with him. Either because Ushio knows that he can't compete with the younger, more glamorous, and better-looking Jack, or because he just wants her to be happy, he drops the attempt and apparently never works up the courage to try again.
Comic Books
- Gwen and Evan share a catastrophic first date in Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her.
Fan Works
- In A Delicate Balance, Twilight spends five chapters waffling over whether or not to tell Applejack about her crush on her. When she finally gets up the courage to do so, Apple Bloom appears out of nowhere to mess it up.
- In "The Shoebox Project" part sixteen, Sirius, overdramatizing that he and Remus are going to die, says he has a confession. He ends up confessing to getting chocolate on Remus' favorite sweater.
Film — Live Action
- Back to the Future: George McFly with Lorraine Baines in 1955 before they're married.
- Pretty much what Bedazzled (1967) is built around - very early on we see Stanley screwing up the courage to ask Margaret out, and then folding. When the Devil offers him seven wishes, he uses them all trying (and failing) to create a relationship with her.
Live Action TV
- In the Alias season 2 episode "The Counteragent," Vaughn pursues Sydney after a tender moment is interrupted; however, Sydney is nowhere to be found.
- Danny and Lindsay on CSI: NY; their romance was interrupted at first by Lindsay's trouble dealing with her turbulent past.
- Frasier pushed this trope about as far as possible with Niles. For several seasons, Niles struggles between lusting after Daphne and keeping his composure as she remains seemingly oblivious. The sheer number and intensity of the false starts is staggering, including several completely legitimate proclamations of love that are mistaken for something else. Most viewers agree that these were done well enough and kept far enough apart for the whole thing to work very well.
- A variation appears on Gossip Girl. Chuck and Blair are both well aware that the other one loves them, but both refuse to date the other until s/he says those words out loud. Eventually Blair decides to say those words to Chuck but right before she meets up with him Dan tells her she's crazy if she thinks anything good can come out of saying those words to Chuck Bass. So she ends up chickening out, Chuck gets really mad and by the end of the episode they both agree that while the feelings between them are real they shouldn't be together at present.
- This happens a lot on House of Anubis where everything from important information to kisses are interrupted on almost a daily basis, and the characters are forced to try again later, often to the same result.
- Most notably when Fabian kept trying to ask Nina to the prom. He got interrupted about four times before finally managing to ask at breakfast (once Nina told him to hurry and ask before something else stopped it from happening)
- Janda Kembang:
- Near the end of episode 23, Malik has prepared himself to confess his feelings to Salmah, even bringing in a flower. When he arrives, Kemal already asked out Salmah to a dinner. Malik feels defeated and gives the flower to Wulan instead.
- In episode 26, Wulan decides to take her aunt's advice and admits her feelings to Malik, but she chickens out mid-sentence and says she likes pizza instead.
- Happens a lot between Sam Tyler and Annie Cartwright in Life On Mars; they finally get it together in the finale.
- Mimpi Metropolitan: In episode 56, Alan is convinced that it is the time for him to make a love confession to Pipin. The problem is this trope happens. The first two times Alan's confession plans involve setting up heart-shaped decoration, but Pipin (who is not very smart) doesn't notice the Cardiovascular Love and calls out Alan for throwing away flowers in her shop or spooking her with candles. The third time is straight up stopped by bad luck as his donuts for Pipin gets mixed up with Prima's apology donuts for Mami Bibir.
- Happens quite a few times in Psych between Shawn and Juliet. In one season finale, the almost kiss becomes "close talking" as they have a full conversation with their lips a few centimeters apart. Then there was the time when Juliet went to ask him out but he was on a date with another girl. In another episode, Shawn goes off on a tangent about cereal boxes and toys until Lassiter comes in.
- To be fair, in that last example, the cereal box toys conversation was directly related to their situation, he just went on a little too long.
- And then there was the The Big Damn Kiss during the mid-season 5 finale, while Juliet has a boyfriend.
- Happens to Chase a few times in Zoey 101: he first tries to tell Zoey on a date (in which she shows up with her roommates, thinking it was just a friendly hangout), then he tries to tell her by sending her a text message only to have Zoey's phone get left by a fountain and fall in.
Video Games
Webcomics
- Peanut of Housepets! attempts to confess his feelings to his long-time friend Grape by presenting her with a dead chicken (on the advice of another dog) as a token of affection; before he gets the chance, however, he overhears her on the phone arranging a date with another guy. Ouch.
- The Order of the Stick: Haley's Last-Second Word Swap is enough to completely throw Elan off the track.
Haley: Elan... I think I'm in love with y—
Durkon: Cure Critical Wounds!
Haley: —ukuleles. - Sam Logan's guest strip
for Questionable Content.
Web Video
- ProZD both lampshades and parodies this trope (along with Fireworks of Love, as it happens), in "sports commentators commentating a romantic anime scene", using a scene from Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun.
Post-"game" analyst: Well Brian, it was a very strong offensive on Sakura's part, but unfortunately her opponent is very dumb.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender uses it a couple of times. The most noticeable example is The Earth King, when Sokka interrupts Aang's confession.
- Code Lyoko actually has an episode with this title. Jérémie has finally brought his beloved Aelita into the real world...only to find out she has to return back to her virtual one, for the moment at least.
- Used so much in Codename: Kids Next Door for Numbuh Four's crush on Numbuh Three that even most shippers got tired of it.
- Danny Phantom had Danny trying to ask his crush Paulina out to the dance, but Dash interrupts him by violently shoving him into a locker. He succeeds afterward through a magical pendent (though he didn't know it was magical at the time).
- On Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, this happened several times regarding Sprx trying to confess his feelings for Nova — either something would interrupt, or he'd chicken out at the last moment. In the end, she's the one who confesses first, which is enough to free him from his Brainwashed and Crazy state in the final episode.
