Basic Trope: Someone mistakenly believes that someone else killed or tried to kill someone.
- Straight: When Alice sees her next-door neighbour Bob with a knife through the window and hears his wife Carol scream, then sees Bob dig in the yard, she thinks he murdered Carol, but in reality, he was only cutting up vegetables and digging a vegetable garden and Carol had just stubbed her toe.
- Exaggerated: Alice thinks that Bob killed his entire family, but he didn't.
- Downplayed: Alice thinks Bob was thinking of murdering Carol, while he stands behind her holding a knife with a contemplative expression.
- Justified:
- Alice has a vivid imagination and Bob has a Hair-Trigger Temper and a morbid sense of humor which leads to him making jokes about killing.
- Bob was acting suspiciously around Carol before she went missing, because he was helping her fake her death.
- Inverted: Carol was already dead, but due to hearing a visitor's voice who sounds like Carol because she's related or something, Alice thinks that Bob resurrected Carol.
- Subverted: Bob admits to being a murderer.
- Double Subverted:
- He was only joking.
- He counts stepping on an ant as being a murderer.
- Parodied:Alice: I saw you pick up a knife and yell that you were going to kill your wife, what's going on?
Bob: Oh, nothing. Carol was just cheating on me, so I violently stabbed her.
Alice: Sorry for the misunderstanding, sir! For a second I thought you had killed Carol or something. - Zigzagged: Bob has a knife and Carol screams, then Bob digs in the garden...but he was just making salad and digging a garden and she had just stubbed her toe....then Alice finds Carol's body...but that's just a mannequin...then she sees the bodies of Bob's kids...but those were mannequins too.
- Averted: Alice does not think Bob killed Carol.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Dude, Bob wouldn't even kill a rat, let alone a person, how could he have murdered Carol?!"
- Invoked: Bob deliberately sets it up like he killed Carol as a prank.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice goes straight to Bob's house and asks why Carol screamed.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I wouldn't wanna be that character with my neighbours thinking I was a murderer!"
- Implied:
- It's never outright stated that Bob didn't kill Carol, but she's seen fine in the next episode.
- Alice is so relieved to see Carol, to Carol's confusion.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice ends up calling the police, who arrest her for wasting police time.
- Alice's reputation remains damaged even after she's proven innocent.
- Reconstructed: They don't believe it's a waste of time, just a false alarm.
- Played for Drama: Alice calls the police, which sets off a lot of drama.
Back to Mistaken for Murderer
