Poor Communication Kills / Literature

• Agatha Christie novel:
  • In Sparkling Cyanide, Sandra Farraday knows that her husband Stephan is having an affair with Rosemary Barton, is afraid Stephan will leave her for Rosemary, and is prepared to kill Rosemary to prevent that from happening. Stephan, on the other hand, has grown tired of Rosemary and realized that Sandra is his real true love, but he's afraid that Sandra will leave him when she finds out about it, and is prepared to kill Rosemary to prevent the affair from becoming public. Technically, poor communication didn't actually kill in this case, since neither Stephan nor Sandra was the murderer, but it very easily could have.
  • A Murder Is Announced: Remembering the scene of the crime, Miss Murgatroyd finally realizes something was wrong, but, not being very quick-minded, she only gets to work out that "She wasn't there!" instead of saying directly that Letitia Blacklock must be guilty. Her friend decides that the matter can be discussed later and goes away, leaving her alone in the house. Since the murderer has been eavesdropping, there is no "later" for poor Miss Murgatroyd.
• The book "Airport International" closed a chapter with an incident where a pilot called for "takeoff power"—IE "put the engines at takeoff power"—and his co-pilot heard "take off power", throttled down, and crashed the plane.
  Fortunately, these strangers met on a simulator.
• In The Andromeda Strain, some crucial information fails to get the Wildfire team in time because of a torn piece of paper jamming the alarm bell on a teletype machine (remember, this was SOTA technology in 1966).
  • Also, a crucial bit of information isn't discovered until it's almost too late, because of a character who was hiding the fact that they were epileptic, and was having a seizure when the vital info was first reported by the computer.
• Nearly the entire plot of Ariel (Block) is Poor Communication Kills, literally. Ariel's mother Roberta hates her, therefore believes that when Ariel asks if her brother is dead, she's really confessing she killed him. Ariel knew he was dead because of Roberta's expression as she left his room but "try telling a thing like that to Roberta". A series of incidents like this go into cascading failures ending with Roberta killing herself because she doesn't know Ariel has a cassette recorder.
• Being There is a variation; the whole plot is based on characters misinterpreting most everything Chance the Gardener says (with the twist that he cannot correct them because he isn't able to understand what's going on).
• Ben Safford Mysteries: In Murder, Sunny Side Up, the safety hazard in an egg preservative boils down to this. The preservative was tested at a temperature range of up to three hundred degrees, but the spraying unit heats eggs up to four hundred degrees. Kellog, the sprayer engineer, mentioned this in the report he sent in for the chemical company's final approval, assuming they would make any necessary changes to the chemical. However, he didn't think to emphasize that point, assuming its importance would be self-evident. However, his dry technical tone caused the chemist to skim the report, overlook the danger, and ultimately commit two murders to cover up his negligence.
• Herman Melville took this trope literally in his novella Billy Budd, in which Billy, a Christlike figure whose only flaw is a tendency to stutter when he gets upset, killed the master-at-arms, Claggart, after Claggart falsely accused him of conspiracy to mutiny. He got so upset when he couldn't stop stuttering long enough to defend himself that he punched Claggart in the temple and he died. All three main characters—Billy, Claggart, and Captain Vere—die. But, then again, without it all of Melville's lovely symbolism falls apart, and we can't have that.
• Blood Bond: In Ride for Vengeance, a feud between ranchers who were once best friends traces back to how one of them made a joke about how he was considering rustling cattle to pay off some debts, and then he suddenly had enough money to pay off his debts. The money came from his wife selling her jewelry, but he was too proud to admit this even after a feud started when his highly honest friend aroused his wrath by accusing him of rustling without asking him in private where the money was from first. The villains exploit the feud to kill a few people before the truth finally comes out and the ranchers reconcile.
• In Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Pelagia spends decades waiting for Corelli, during which time she adopts an abandoned baby (named after him, no less). Turns out that Corelli did come back relatively early on, but saw her with the baby, assumed she must've had it with another man, and stormed off without talking to her. When Pelagia asks if he didn't consider the possibility that she was raped in his absence, he admits that it probably wouldn't have made a difference to him.
• A Certain Magical Index: No one bothers explaining the existence of magic to Mikoto, even when she's brought along on a mission to fight against a magical organization. This eventually leads to her using the Anti-Art Attachment without knowing about the consequences of an esper using magic.
• In Jeramey Kraatz's /The Cloak Society novel Fall of Heroes, defied. Carla insists on talking with Lux and Lone Star and shutting out the kids. Amp enables them to eavesdrop, justifying it on the grounds that they should not have to.
• In Timothy Zahn's The Conquerors Trilogy's trilogy, when humans had First Contact with an alien race, they sent a peaceful first contact radio communication. Unfortunately, the aliens perceived it as one of their dreaded Elderdeath weapons. So, the aliens immediately opened fire, quickly shredding the human battle fleet in minutes and starting a nasty war, based on mutual misunderstandings.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses:
  • A lot of the first book needn't have happened if someone just bothered to explain to Feyre what was going on. It's especially egregious with Calanmai, as that wasn't made off-limits by the curse. While it's understandable Tamlin might not want to explain to Feyre about having to participate in the Great Rite, either he or Lucien or anyone else could've at least made it clearer that it was dangerous for her to leave and so she needed to stay indoors.
  • This one of the reasons Feyre and Tamlin's relationship breaks down in the second book. Feyre states early on that they "mutually agreed" to not talk about what happened Under the Mountain even though they're both traumatized by it; in doing so, they don't do themselves any favors because they either can't understand or misinterpret the other's actions. While we never see what Tamlin thinks exactly, we're constantly in Feyre's head and she tends to not make it clear if she's unhappy or why she's unhappy, just going along with whatever she thinks will make Tamlin happy, and then when she does speak up she tends to make inflammatory comments like saying it feels like he's "drowning [her]" and that he should "marry someone who can deal with this", which in turn makes him shut down from anger, so nothing gets resolved.
• Due to the secret nature of Dreamland ops, the characters of Dale Brown's books often find themselves going up against ostensible allies both within and without America even when there's not supposed to be overt conflict.
• In the fifth Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, Uncle Gary is dating a woman who says she has "30 thousand dollars, maybe 40", whereas Uncle Gary says that he has 45. He means that he has 45 dollars, but she thinks he means that he has 45 thousand dollars. The woman doesn't know the truth until they get married and the time comes to pay the band. This results in a divorce.
• Digitesque: Much of the series could have been avoided if Ada and Isavel just sat down and talked to each other. In fairness, it's not until about two-thirds of the way through the second book before they realize that they are both involved, but even then they avoid talking as much as they should because they assume they'll be enemies and would really prefer not to ruin their burgeoning friendship. It doesn't help that Ada is a Jerkass who is terrible at communicating on a good day and Isavel has an advisor who is telling her lies about the nature of the world and what Ada is trying to do.
• In Dirge for Prester John, John and his people have completely different ideas of what war is. He knows it means a lot of bloodshed (even if he naively also thinks of glory). His people think of the mating season of the cranes and pygmies.
• Dracula, where the excessively gentlemanly heroes deliberately choose not to tell Mina Harker about their vampire hunt so as not to distress her, thus making her the perfect target. Ironically, once the damage is done and they must let her in on it, she copes rather better than her husband did. And it's also the reason that Lucy and her mother died; if Van Helsing (who was the only guy who had any inkling of what was going on with Lucy at that point) had been upfront with the women, then there would be no plot. Due to Mrs. Westenra's poor health, too much stress could literally kill her, so Van Helsing avoids explaining how serious things really are lest he frighten her into a heart attack. Unfortunately, this leads directly to the even more stressful situation of a vampire breaking into her house to snack on her daughter, which does that exact thing.
• Lampshaded in the Dragaera novel Five Hundred Years After, a work of in-universe historical fiction. It's Dragaeran literary convention for lovers to a) incorrectly believe they can't be together because they're from different Houses (a huge no-no for Dragaerans), and b) to utterly fail to have a conversation about it for several thousand pages, allowing for all kinds of angsty misunderstandings and setbacks, often to the point of half the couple actually making it to the altar—or afterwards, if it's a tragedy—with someone else. When future spouses Khaavren and Daro clear this up in about five minutes, the narrator says he knows the reader is probably surprised and disappointed...but it's historically accurate, so don't complain.
• Dragonvarld: If, after seeing her lover Melisande running away with a man, Bellona had been willing to talk to her rather than sticking to her conclusion of infidelity and treason, the plot of the first book might have been rather different. They later reunite and talk it out, but by that stage, Melisande is on track to die in childbirth after being raped, while Bellona is on track to have to fight her own estranged troops.
• The Drawing of the Three: Averted. Roland alerts Eddie, who he is currently drawing, that the stewardesses on the plane have figured out that Eddie is smuggling cocaine. He doesn't quite have the vocabulary (referring to priests performing the ceremony of "Clearing of Customs"), but Eddie understands enough.
• In the early The Dresden Files books Harry has a chronic problem with not giving his mundane allies enough information. He wises up about it quite a bit in later books, but not before quite a bit of damage is done:
  • In Storm Front Murphy actually starts to suspect that he's the killer because he keeps balking at telling her anything about the case (partially because the White Council suspects him as well and would see him researching the curse as evidence) and walks right into a giant scorpion in Harry's office created by the actual killer.
  • At the beginning of Fool Moon Harry does not see fit to tell a young and inexperienced magic user everything he can about a magic circle diagram that she's asking about, instead simply telling her that a set of runes in the diagram must be a mistake, because he can tell it binds creatures of both flesh and spirit and he doesn't want her messing with demons. Only later does he learn that she was trying to use the circle to confine a loup-garou, and not having enough information about it has gotten her killed and left the loup-garou free to rampage around Chicago racking up a substantial body count.
    • This one actually goes both ways in that she doesn't tell him why she needs the information leaving him to assume the worst (that she's mucking about with demon summoning). If she'd told him why she wanted the information he'd probably have been willing to help.
    • Harry also fails to give Murphy relevant information again, causing her to suspect him to be involved, again.
  • In Grave Peril, Harry tells Susan pretty much everything about going to the vampire's party except for one thing: he's only allowed one guest and anyone else would be considered fair game. Susan then copies his invitation without his knowledge in order to crash the party. Of course it's pretty fair to blame Susan at least as much as Harry. He was insistent that he was not going to bring her, and it shouldn't be hard to figure out that a regular human crashing a Vampire party isn't going to work out well.
  • Harry is more open in later books, but he still has trouble handing out critical information. It took him multiple books until he finally told Michael about Lasciel (though it turns out Michael already knew, and was just waiting for him to fess up). In Cold Days, Thomas gives him a What the Hell, Hero? for not telling him that Harry was going to become the Winter Knight, because as someone used to struggling against his darker nature he could have helped. Kirby might have survived in Turn Coat, if Harry had warned the Alphas about the naagloshii (prompting another What the Hell, Hero?). This list goes on.
  • It gets really bad in Peace Talks, as Ebenezer McCoy is aghast at the fact that Thomas knows about Maggie, Harry's daughter and believes Harry is being stupid to the point of suicide in letting a White Court vampire get so close to him and his family. The thing is, Ebenezer doesn't know that Thomas is also Harry's brother and thus Ebenezer's grandson and Harry doesn't tell Ebenezer until literally the worst possible moment, leading to all kinds of conflict. It doesn't help that Ebenezer really, really hates vampires, for pretty good reasons. Like the fact that Thomas' dad murdered Harry's mom. Who was Ebenezer's daughter. If Harry told Ebenezer the truth, he might actually hate Thomas more.
  • The really tragic/ironic part of it all is that Harry refuses to give out information out of a misguided need to protect them. Despite his personal mantra of "knowledge is power," he thinks that what his friends don't know won't hurt them. He has to really get it rubbed in his face before he starts realizing how foolish he's being.
• In George R. R. Martin's first novel Dying of the Light, this trope remains supreme. Although the main theme of the novel is that people often tend to hold onto once fulfilling things that no longer have a purpose, which impedes their personal growth, a second theme could be that maybe it's better to communicate with your friends and loved ones. Almost none of the unfortunate plot developments would have occurred had the characters actually had reasonable conversations with each other. At some point, this stretches suspension of disbelief like how Gwen never asks the protagonist (who is her ex-boyfriend and visiting her and her husband after seven years of no communication), "So, why are you here, exactly?" It's also unbelievable that after leaving a relationship because of unreasonable expectations upon her, she enters a second one with a guy from a different culture and never inquires about what this whole "Betheyn" thing means, nor does he offer that information to her despite being enlightened and having a good understanding of how foreign a concept it would be to her.
• In the The Elenium series, an Eshandist leader had a speech problem and at one battle he yelled "Fall on your foes!" but mangled it and his followers heard "Fall on your swords!" He spent the next several years wondering why he lost.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Many of the events in Rielle's storyline happen because of the various lies told or secrets kept both by the primary participants or other characters:
  • After Rielle's accidental killing of her mother, Rielle's father forces her to keep her powers hidden from everyone. Because she doesn't have any healthy outlet for her power, it often bursts out of her in unpredictable and often destructive ways, as proven when innocent horse racers get caught up in her attempts to save Audric from some assassins.
  • Ludivine seems to die during the chaos at the fire trial, but she somehow survives the fall off a cliff thanks to actually being an angel. To cover for this, she makes a dramatic entrance at Rielle's anointing where she claims that Rielle resurrected her. This has the unintended side affect of turning the people who lost loved ones in the massacre against Rielle, some of them even trying to assassinate her.
• A large part of later books in the Ender's Game series. Turns out the formics were not hostile, but simply unaware that humans were intelligent, at least on an individual level. After the second war, they tried to apologize, but were destroyed before they learned to communicate with us. In addition, the whole debate over whether two alien species can communicate and coexist is dominant, especially as a situation gets closer and closer to "Communicate with them, or commit Xenocide." Placing our heroes in the exact same situation as the formics.
• Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte:
  • Lieselotte truly wanted to befriend Fiene even in Magikoi canon. Unfortunately, a combination of needing to put up noble decorum, her own embarrassment, and Siegwald's misinterpretation of their interactions leads to her appearing as an Alpha Bitch and Siegwald breaking off their engagement and Lieselotte being overcome with despair and being possessed by the Witch of Yore, resulting in her death.
  • This also applies to Lieselotte and her father when she became betrothed to Siegwald. His well-meaning intention was to protect her from any feelings of loneliness and neglect because of the many royal duties Sieg would need to fulfill when he became king, but what he said can be interpreted — at worst — as telling Lieselotte that she should expect herself to be akin to an Unwanted Spouse, and/or warning her that Silly Rabbit, Romance Is for Kids!. The result was unwittingly destroying Lieselotte's self-esteem and confidence, which affects how she behaves around other people and leaves her vulnerable to Demonic Possession.
• The Enemy. The misunderstanding between Jordan and Achilleus in the final book is caused by Jordan taking a dog which Achilleus gave to his friend, Paddy. Jordan's eyesight is failing and he needs the dog to act as his eyes, but he is reluctant to tell anyone and simply takes the animal without explanation, leaving Paddy heartbroken and Achilleus so angry with Jordan that he refuses to join the battle against the sickos. Jordan does eventually apologise to Achilleus for the way he behaved, but not before Paddy has been killed in a misguided attempt to fight the sickos himself.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fall of Númenor: King's Heir Aldarion's love of the sea and obsession with sailing and exploring creates strife between himself and his family and ends ruining his marriage due to his many extended absences. Nonetheless, Aldarion could have avoided his father's and possibly his wife's anger if he'd ever considered telling them that the reason his voyages always lasted longer than he promised was because there was a new threat to their Middle-Earth kin that he was helping them prepare for. His father Meneldur doesn't learn this until Aldarion huffily tosses him a letter from Gil-Galad.
• This is a running motif throughout the Family Tree Series. Much of the strife in the family (especially from mother to daughter) can be attributed to this trope. The biggest two are between Dana and Abby and Georgie and Francie. Dana didn't want to hurt her mother Abby by telling her the real reason she left for New York as Abby saw it abandonment; however, Dana left because she missed her father and felt guilty for her father's death even though she was a child) and went back because she missed him. Francie keeps the secret of almost being kidnapped to herself—and the guilt when her not telling anyone resulted in the kidnapping and murder of another child—for several decades and as a result becomes an overprotective mom that uproots her whole family out of fear and almost drives Georgia away by not letting her have any freedoms. It's when Georgie, frustrated after years of being forbidden to do anything, runs away to her Nana Dana's that Dana—of all people, oddly enough—decides they all need to sit down and finally talk about their family issues without keeping secrets. All four generations talk things out about their various burdens and secrets—and the fifth generation comes into play when Georgie presents the diaries of Nell, Abby's mother, who had fragile mental health that shattered after her only son was sent away by her controlling husband Luther for being disabled.
• Fatal Words: Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes, a non-fiction work by Steven Cushing. The title would appear to say everything.
• In The Forever War, a war that lasts centuries between humans and an alien race turns out to be based on a misunderstanding. Considering that the author is a Vietnam vet, one need merely read The Pentagon Papers to see where he gets his idea.
• In Foundation's Edge, it is mentioned that the Second Foundation has many urban legends about the importance of properly communicating in a report. The best known (and the one least likely to be true) says that the first report about the Mule was ignored because, due to some mistake, it was understood to be a report about a mule, leading to a very costly delay in response.
• Fox Demon Cultivation Manual: Jiang Liang would have been spared a lot of misery if Feng Zhuojun's twin had told him Feng Zhuojun was dead. Instead, Jiang Liang thinks Feng Zhuojun has abandoned him.
• Harry Potter:
  • Dumbledore:
    • During Order of the Phoenix, he takes steps to try and distance himself from Harry to prevent Voldemort from exploiting the mental connection between himself and the kid for his own ends. Unfortunately, he also decides to keep Harry in the dark about certain things, namely how Voldemort's planning to lure him to the Department Of Mysteries via mental visions so that he can retrieve a recording of a prophecy concerning the two. Had Dumbledore been upfront about this - as the man himself admits near the end of the book - the climatic events at the Ministry of Magic would never have happened. Dumbledore puts it down to his being old - and thus forgetting how impetuous those far younger than him can be - as well as not wanting to burden the young Harry with the knowledge of the prophecy.
    • During Half-Blood Prince, when Harry tells him that he overheard Snape and Draco discussing a plot against him, Dumbledore thanks Harry for the information, but tells him to put it out of his mind, and then insists that he trusts Snape without providing any explanation why. He doesn't tell Harry that he and Snape are already onto Draco, or that Snape is loyal due to wanting to honor the memory of Harry's mother - a fact that Snape himself insisted not be shared with Harry, making him at fault here too - with the result that Harry becomes obsessed with trying to figure out Snape and Draco's plot himself.
    • During Deathly Hallows, it's revealed that he never told Harry about his involvement with Gellert Grindlewald and their mutual interest in the titular Hallows during his youth. When Harry finds out about these things through second-hand sources, it shatters his faith in Dumbledore for a long time, with him thinking that the man never truly loved or trusted him.
  • The Dumbledore family as a whole provide an example of the trope in Deathly Hallows, when it's revealed that (Albus) Dumbledore had a sister named Arianna whom the family kept secret from the world. In truth, this was because Arianna was assaulted by three muggle boys who saw her doing magic, and the subsequent trauma left her unable to control her magical abilities, leading the family to fear the Ministry would lock her away as a risk to The Masquerade if they ever learned of her existence. Because the family never told anyone the full story about Arianna however, it becomes a smear on their reputation during Harry's time, with Rita Skeeter alleging that Arianna's mother forcibly hid her away out of shame at giving birth to a child with no magical abilities.
  • Sirius:
    • Following his escape from Azkaban, he doesn't try to tell anyone the true story of his crime - that Peter Pettigrew framed him by faking his death while blasting the street apart in the process - until Lupin confronts him and insists that he owes Harry the truth about it. Instead he just roams around the Hogwarts grounds while conspiring with Crookshanks to get his hands on Pettigrew.
    • The entire disaster in Order of the Phoenix could have been avoided if he'd simply outright said to Harry "Hey, here's this two way mirror your dad used to own, you can use it to talk to me any time". Presumably he assumed that Harry would open the package and learn about it through the attached note, rather than avoid it out of fear that the usage of it would put Sirius in danger.
• David Weber has this on a grander scale then most with his Hell's Gate series when poor communication causes two civilizations, which hadn't even known the other existed until recently, to start what is promising to be a long and brutal war.
• In Arrow's Fall, part of the Heralds of Valdemar series, the novel's primary romantic tension is caused by Dirk assuming himself to be part of a Love Triangle consisting of himself, Kris, and Talia, and trying to pull an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy, when in fact both Kris and Talia are trying to get her hooked up with Dirk. Dirk's stubborn refusal to discuss the matter with either of them sends him into a breakdown, and causes the resolution to be put off until after Talia nearly dies and Kris does die.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  • It's revealed that humanity was only the third most intelligent lifeform on Earth, behind mice and dolphins. Dolphins knew of the impending destruction of the planet Earth. They made many attempts to alert mankind to the impending doom, but they were mistaken as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually decided to leave Earth by their own means. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards somersault through a hoop while whistling the Star Spangled Banner, when in fact the message was this: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish."
  • This is also the reason why the builders of Deep Thought got "42" as an answer when trying to settle all the bickering about the meaning of life. Rather than simply ask Deep Thought what the meaning of life was, they asked it for "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything." This isn't actually a question, and without knowing what the ultimate question is, the answer is meaningless. Additionally, instead of clarifying what question they actually wanted an answer for, they end up undertaking an even more time-consuming project to learn the ultimate question.
• Honor Harrington:
  • Altered diplomatic communication restarts the Manticore-Haven war. The guy who did it wanted to make the Havenite president just angry enough that she was almost ready to go to war and he could step in and save the day. He underestimates by about one degree of anger, and millions die. Suffice it to say he's lucky he died in a genuine accident, because the president in question was preparing to have him charged with treason and executed. Ironically, Haven notes that he actually "died in an air-car crash". But coming clean about his lies would look exactly like they deliberately started the war and murdered him as a scapegoat to get out of it.
  • An unintentional example from that series was the attempted McQueen coup: McQueen knew that she'd eventually be considered too much of a threat by the Committee for Public Safety and would be eliminated, and so starts planning her contingency plan for when the time came. Pierre and St-Just also recognized she'd be a threat and would probably have to be eliminated so start planning their contingency plan for when the time came. A partially overheard conversation results in McQueen believing they were moving against her immediately (instead of merely planning to at some point in the future), causing her to launch her own plan prematurely.
  • Occurs in the very first book: Honor pursues the Havenite Q-Ship running from the Medusa system when she realizes that their plan to grab the system would have the Q-ship "fleeing" to a waiting squadron of warships. She's right, but the premature start of the Medusan uprising the Havenites were promoting screwed up their plan so the captain was running to tell the warships not to come into the system. But he couldn't admit it because it would confirm Haven's covert actions, and the resulting combat destroys the Q-ship, nearly destroys Harrington's ship, and costs her a large chunk of her crew, even though it was blazingly obvious to him that the jig was up and the Manticorans obviously knew what was going on. His problem was that surrendering the ship would provide concrete proof (not only of the plan, but Havenite Q-Ships). And even were he to be honest about what he was and that he was going to call the operation off, Harrington would have no reason to believe him.
• Examined in the first written Horatio Hornblower novel, not as a consequence of bad judgment but because transoceanic communication in 1808 was incredibly dodgy. Before leaving England, Hornblower was given orders to sail to the west coast of Nicaragua without sighting land and support a tinpot dictator fighting the Spanish. Though the order not to sight land is incredibly unrealistic, Hornblower manages it, provides materiel to El Supremo, and hands a captured Spanish frigate to him because he's still acting under orders to assist the rebels. Then he's visited by a Spanish ship which provides the happy news that England and Spain are allies! So Hornblower has to go and get the frigate back, nearly losing his own ship in the process, because otherwise his career would be destroyed for following his orders exactly.
• The Ice Palace is virtually built of this trope. The whole story begins with a tragic Cannot Spit It Out moment where one of the two main characters (two eleven year old girls) freaks the other one out, and the result is an incredibly huge guilt trip where one of them freezes to death inside a frozen waterfall, and the other goes through a long Despair Event Horizon for five months (i.e. the rest of the book).
• The Idiot. No one seems capable of actually saying what they mean—even Prince Myshkin, the most innocently outspoken character, falls prey to this tendency—and the misunderstandings and suspicions that arise from this are major driving forces on the plot.
• In the In Spiritu Et Veritate series by Zoe Reed, Kyla is forced under threat of death to break up with Camille over the phone during the climax of the first book. Fully three-quarters of the second book is spent with them still broken up, Kyla under the impression that Camille hasn't forgiven her and Camille under the impression that Kyla dumped her of her own volition. Camille is the more egregious case, since shortly after the phone call she finds Kyla tied up by the bad guy and doesn't connect the two.
• One of the Inspector Montalbano books has a bad case of mishearing- Montalbano's lieutenant, Mimi, comes to his house late at night, looking very stressed, and tells him that he's got something that he needs to tell him: he's decided to get married. He phrases this as 'I've decided to take a wife', but Montalbano hears it as 'I've decided to take my life' and freaks out. It takes a while to sort out the situation, but they get there.
• P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels: Almost everything bad that ever happened to Bertie Wooster. The rest of it seems to be blackmail.
• Junior Jedi Knights: Tahiri's parents rescued Sliven, an injured Tusken Raider, in the desert, and while he was recuperating, he taught them gaderffii combat in gratitude. Sliven's friends came looking for him and saw Tahiri's father swinging a gaderffii staff while Sliven looked hurt and helpless. They thought Tahiri's parents were attacking Sliven and killed them before he could explain.
• The Key To Rondo could plausibly have instead been titled: Poor Communication Kills: The Novel.
• The Kingdom of Little Wounds: Ava believes this is what happened when she reports on Countess Elinor. All she said was the woman had a lover, and then Elinor was arrested for high treason.
• In The Land Of Love And Drowning, the Star-Crossed Lovers Anette and Jacob are repeatedly told by their families they can't be together, but nobody tells the truth about why—they're half-siblings—so they don't listen. Jacob's mother at least has a sensible motive for keeping it a secret, because her in-laws will cut Jacob off financially if they find out he's illegitimate. But Anette's sister is just too proud to admit her beloved father had an affair. It takes until almost the end of the book for the pair to learn, by which point it's too late. They're irrevocably in love and already have a child, so all the knowledge does is make all three feel awful.
• The Culture Clash variety happens in The Left Hand of Darkness, in which a very large mess could have been avoided if Estraven had been more straightforward with Genly as to what his goals were. Justified, since in Gethenian culture advice is considered an insult, and Estraven was trying to avoid damaging Genly's honor; only later did he realize his mistake.
• A Lion in the Meadow: The lion, at one point, says that the boy and his mother should have left him alone as he only eats apples... but the thing is, he never told them that he ate only apples and that would be a strange thing to assume without being told.
• Manifestation: At one point, Gabby Palladino is unable to explain the supernatural dangers that she's been seeing all around her, and as a result, she fails to warn a group of innocent people of an impending disaster.
• Metro 2033 with the Dark Ones, they just want to find a way to help the humans out, but the telepathy caused people to go mad and thought they were out to kill them like other mutants. Needless to say Artyom realize this a bit too late as he plants the transmitter.
• This is a big reason why Neil and Maggie don't get together until the very end of Moonlight Becomes You, and leaves Maggie in a far more vulnerable position. A few weeks back, they both happened to be separately attending a film where the heroine loses her husband; Maggie has personal experience with this and began crying her eyes out in the cinema. Maggie realized Neil was behind her and that he could clearly see she was upset (she had previously confided in him that she was a widow); she thought to herself that if he cared for her he would come comfort her. However, Neil left without approaching her and when they saw each other at a restaurant later that evening, he didn't bring it up. As a result, Maggie believes that she's not important to Neil. In actual fact, Neil didn't approach Maggie about it because he wasn't sure she'd seen him and didn't want her to be embarrassed. Subsequently, Maggie is aloof towards Neil and reluctant to confide in him about her investigations into her stepmother's murder, when she could really use someone who cares about her in her corner. She confides in her other love interest Liam instead, who as it turns out is the killer and tries to silence Maggie.
• Mycroft And Sherlock by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse is a Prequel set when Mycroft is an up-and-coming young civil servant and his brother is an erratic university student. They are both looking into some strange events that seem to involve Mycroft's friend Douglas's business somehow, and which turn out to be connected to a series of killings. Since Mycroft disapproves of Sherlock's morbid fascination with murder, he glosses over this aspect for fear of encouraging it. Since Sherlock is aware of Mycroft's disapproval, he does likewise for fear of being stopped from investigating. Unfortunately, each brother has only discovered part of what's going on, and cannot make further connections without the other's information.
• "Northwestward": Mr Wayne's mystery comes from his butler (as a servant) being well-mannered enough not to question why his master suddenly flew across the country for no explained reason, and Mr Wayne not asking for clarification when his butler failed to explain why he seemed to lie about his destination. Fortunately, Henry is present to clarify matters.
• In The Onion's Our Dumb Century, all the casualties of World War I turn out to be this. Archduke Fraz Ferdinand wasn't assassinated he just went on vacation; when he finally returns, sees what happened, and explains the misunderstanding, the war is called off and the survivors go home mildly embarrassed.
• In Orconomics, the protagonists encounter a party of orcs, whose leader is abrasive, insulting, threatens them with weapons, takes them prisoner, separates them and marches them through the streets of their town, and then the tribe's chief offers to "honor" the prisoners with his axe. Before things get too bloody, though, the goblin among the protagonists intervenes and explains that this particular tribe of orcs are merchants, not warriors, and the perceived hostility was, in fact, an aggressive attempt to sell the protagonists the orcs' goods (namely, weapons). When the chief learns of the mix-up, he apologizes to the protagonists and berates his son (the orc party leader) for failing to make it more clear.
• Simona Ahrnstedt gives us a really painful example of Cannot Spit It Out in her debut novel, Överenskommelser. It's the story about young Beatrice, who's bullied and pressured by her abusive and tyrannical uncle into an engagement with a man. A man who's not only like forty years older than her, but he also treats women like they're dirt under his shoes. So what does she do? Of course, she tells nobody the truth about why she agreed to marry this man (he would get her beautiful but weak cousin instead, if she didn't sacrifice herself). And unfortunately, her love interest Seth is no better. Since he thinks that she willingly rejected him to marry an old disgusting aristocrat, stupid pride keeps him from admitting that he loves her. Several misunderstandings between them lead to much misery for them both (including that Beatrice gets brutally raped and battered on her wedding night).
• In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy, Lizzie, and Jane all feel terrible about not telling anyone what kind of person Wickham is before it's too late. While they have understandable reasons for keeping it on the down-low—Darcy doesn't want to embarrass the lady concerned in Wickham's prior misbehavior any further, while Lizzie and Jane don't want to spread around something Darcy revealed in confidence—they also acknowledge that if more people had known the truth, then Lydia's disastrous elopement with Wickham might've been prevented.
• In the Relativity story "Highway Robbery", the heroes are trying to catch a pair of car thieves, and send out two people as live bait to drive around aimlessly for several hours. There's a communicator in each car, so that if something happens, Mission Control will know about it. After doing this for several hours with no luck, they decide to go home and try again the next day. As she begins driving home, Melody's car is stolen (with her in it), but mission control has switched off their communicator and is unaware of it. In their defense, it was about 4 a.m. at this point and everyone was getting punchy.
• In The Republic Of Trees, Isobel tells Michael that she broke up with her previous boyfriend because he wanted something from her that she wouldn't give him... he wanted her to stop cheating on him As the result, Michael learns the truth at the worst possible moment and the already unstable situation spirals out of control to Lord of the Flies proportions.
• The Reynard Cycle: A lot of the tragedy could have been avoided if Persephone had only made it clearer to Reynard that, though she finds him charming, she would never seriously consider having a relationship with him.
• Justified in The Riddles Of Epsilon, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Epsilon has to leave puzzles and clues for Jess, the protagonist, because the forces of evil are watching her and her family. If he just tells her what's going on and how to stop them, they'll hear. Unfortunately, the riddle game causes just as much trouble; his last human ally, Sebastian, couldn't crack the riddles and never fully trusted Epsilon, which meant the Big Bad was able to kill Sebastian's mother after its attempt to mind-control her into finding its MacGuffin failed.
• Romeo and Juliet makes this Older Than Steam. The main characters die because Friar Laurence is unable to get word of the plan to fake Juliet's death to Romeo. Instead, Romeo receives news that Juliet really is dead, buys poison and goes to her family's tomb, kills Paris after Paris thinks he's there to do something unspeakable to Juliet's body (since he's not aware of their love for each other) where he commits suicide. Juliet then wakes up and, on finding Romeo dead, kills herself.
• In Romeo and/or Juliet, not only can the reader choose to have Romeo miss out on the information that Juliet's faked her death, they can also choose to engage in a multitude of ways of having poor communication killing them, like Juliet's nurse engaging in ambiguous syntax, confusing her into thinking that Romeo committed suicide and lashing out at either Verona or the entire world and trying to kill their population.
• Quite a bit of the violence and resentment in Saint Peter's Fair could've been averted, had Abbot Radulfus at least hinted at his intent to bestow a portion of the Fair's profits to Shrewsbury as a charitable gift. The abbot's reticence is due to his determination not to set any precedent that the town should expect such largess as a regular thing, and to his not realizing how badly the town's young hotheads would take his initial refusal to forfeit even a penny, when the Guild leaders beseeched him.
• In The Shahnameh, a series of accidents and deception both well and ill-intentioned result in Rostem killing Sohrab, the outcome neither of them wanted.
• In The Shattered Kingdoms, Jachad accuses Meiran/Lahlil of poor communication, saying that if she'd only trust him enough to reveal her objectives, their fight wouldn't have happened. She retorts that she'd waited in vain for a similar trust from him — she already knew his dark secret, but wanted him to tell it to her, and since he never did, why should she tell him anything? Regardless of whose fault it is, though, the secrets doesn't do either of them any favours.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • There's a major one in the first book combined with an Idiot Ball when Catelyn takes Tyrion to the Eyrie. She has taken Tyrion captive as a preemptive first strike against the Lannisters because she and Ned were told that he was responsible for the attempt on their son's life and because they believe that war is inevitable. She believes that war with the Lannisters is inevitable because her sister told her that they were responsible for Jon Arryn's death. She spends days with her sister, and never asks her something like "What evidence do you have that Jon Arryn was murdered?" or "Why do you think the Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn", especially when she realizes that her sister is changing her story about which Lannister is responsible. The answer basically is because asking her sister about the (non-existent) Lannister involvement would make her realize that the Starks were being set up and the plot would fall apart, as Lysa has no evidence at all and isn't the most reliable (or sane) co-conspirator.
  • In the second book, Robb could have avoided a whole mess of trouble if he'd just confided in his underlings a bit more. He goes off to fight the Lannister's western army and leaves his uncle Edmure to hold Riverrun. When the Lannister eastern army starts harrying Riverrun's borders, Edmure rides off with his army and succeeds beating them back to a full retreat. Cue celebrations and parties... until Robb returns and, after publicly honoring his uncle's success, browbeats him in private for disobeying his orders. Turns out he had planned to lure the eastern army into attacking Riverrun so he could come in from the south and crush it between his army and the castle.
    "But I was never told of this!"
    "You were told to hold the castle. What part of that did you fail to comprehend?"
  • Downplayed Trope, in that it's personal rather than political, but the Lannister twins spend most of A Feast for Crows having a falling out due to their inability to communicate properly. This it is a plot device (they can't communicate properly because it would break the plot if they did) — but it's also a Justified Trope for these two. Their entire relationship is premised on the idea of "one soul in two bodies". Within such a belief system, the logical next step is that if you're me — the other half of my soul — I shouldn't have to explain my feelings to you, you should just implicitly get it. So the Lannister twins aren't just incompetently bad at communication; they're in some ways willfully bad at it.
  • Doran Martell keeps much of his plans hidden from his family and their allies. This ultimately leads to an ill-fated round of Xanatos Speed Chess that led to Princess Myrcella losing an ear after his daughter Arianne's failed attempt to crown her and his son Quentyn dying in a slow, agonizing death after failing to woo Daenerys and attempting to tame her dragons instead when she's gone. Ser Barristan Selmy noted that if Doran revealed the marriage pact earlier then Daenerys wouldn't experience any trouble in Slavers' Bay.
• A lot of the plot of Soulmate happens because of Thierry's poor-planning and lack of clear communication with Hannah. He's aware that Maya, his Ax-Crazy Stalker with a Crush, is coming to kill Hannah and frame him for it, as this has happened multiple times over the centuries. While Thierry is understandably wary of scaring Hannah given he doesn't know how much she knows (and states a previous attempt to just carry her off ended disastrously), Thierry is still very vague about what's going on and doesn't properly explain that she's in grave danger (or at least have Lupe or his other agents explain this to her) so they can make a safety plan. He also gives her a ring with protective charms and has wards put around her house to prevent anyone from entering without her invitation...which he doesn't explain, either. As a result, Hannah continues assuming that Thierry has been killing her and tells him to buzz off. She refuses to wear the ring and she invites Maya into her house when she pops round to offer her advice about Thierry; Thierry even acknowledges how stupid the latter was, because of course Hannah would invite a seemingly kindly stranger into her property (especially as she didn't know about the wards). Thus, Maya is able to continue attacking and manipulating Hannah, and it takes Hannah much longer to figure out the truth herself.
• Space Force by Jeremy Robinson: The Canadian, Russian, and Chinese Special Forces units come to fight the aliens only to mostly kill each other off. All of them want Space Force's experimental space fighter and its sole pilot, Hale, who ends up killing most of them herself.
• The main plot of Speaker for the Dead occurs because no one stops to ask the Piggies "Say, why exactly did you kill those two people and ritually disembowel them?" Seemingly, neither of the people who got disemboweled (especially the second, who knew by then it could happen) thought to say anything along the lines of "Why are you doing this?...What's the third life?...Oh, I see. Uh, humans don't do that. It'll just kill us horribly. Please don't."
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In a novella, Imperial officer Kyle Katarn defects to the Rebel Alliance after he finds out that the Empire recently killed his father. He embarks on a black ops mission to recover part of the Death Star schematics, but is, naturally, monitored by the rebels to see if his turn was legitimate. When he's seen meeting with another Imperial, Mon Mothma gives the order to agent Jan Ors to kill him. What they don't know is that the officer was an old friend of Kyle's whom Kyle had persuaded to help him. Jan and Kyle end up in a Mexican Standoff, and if Jan hadn't found it impossible to kill the man that she was developing feelings for, the scenario would have ended in tragedy.
  • There have been some terrible cases of this trope occurring across the continuity. One of the biggest ones was the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. It turns out that a number of people like Palpatine/Sidious, Vergere, Thrawn, and Darth Krayt knew about their existence and simply did not tell the galaxy at large - and giving vague hints to only a few people at the most. Sure, most of these people were villains and some of them were neutral, but a lot of grief (among other things) could have spared if people were simply told about it. The same things can be applied to Jacen and Abeloth, as well as Darth Bane's Sith Order and the Jedi Order.
  • The entire plot of the third Darth Bane book, Dynasty of Evil, comes about because Bane becomes suspicious that his apprentice Darth Zannah is planning to break the Rule of Two and just wait for old age and dark side corruption to weaken her master, rather than grow strong enough to take him on directly, and starts plotting against her. Being a Sith, he naturally wasn't inclined to just ask: in actual fact, she just hadn't decided on her own apprentice yet. She ends up adopting Bane's new apprentice as Darth Cognus.
• The Stormlight Archive:
  • The Way of Kings (2010):
    • Every soldier in Sadeas' army refuses to tell the bridgemen why they are not allowed shields, and are forced to run into enemy arrows completely unprotected. When Kaladin thinks of a way to use the bridge as a shield, he turns the battle into a rout for his side, since the other bridgemen try to copy the maneuver without any practice, meaning none of the bridges get set. Kaladin then realizes there is a good reason the bridgemen weren't told: They're bait, there to get killed by the Parshendi instead of real soldiers, since untrained slaves are far cheaper than proper soldiers. Sadeas realizes that if the bridgemen knew that, many would likely just kill themselves.
    • A more minor example, but at one point Dalinar recommends that the king retreat from the war—which, to a Proud Warrior Race, is a horrific show of cowardice. What Dalinar meant was that they should approach the war more intelligently, finding a way to win either through extermination or forcing the enemy to surrender. By the time he explains this better to the king, rumors of Dalinar's cowardice have already spread through the camp and caused a few more problems.
    • During his visions, Dalinar asks the mysterious voice if he should trust Sadeas. The voice says "Yes. Act with honor, and honor shall aid you." This lets Sadeas betray Dalinar at the climax, killing off thousands of Dalinar's soldiers. It turns out that the voice in the visions isn't interactive, it's a pre-recorded message. The voice could never hear him, and all its "cryptic" answers were just the result of Dalinar misinterpreting statements as answers to his questions.
    • Even ignoring that mistake, Dalinar's visions are not very clear. Part of this is because his mind wasn't ready to accept the visions in the beginning, so when he woke up from the first one (which clearly outlined what was coming and what he needed to do) it was just a muddled dream. Fortunately, they're on repeat. Unfortunately, since they're just pre-recorded messages, the one who made them in the first place doesn't know what context Dalinar needs. He's thrust into fierce battles against enemies he's never heard of, and sees the powers of the Kn ights Radiant without being given more than a single clue as to how to bring them back.
  • Words of Radiance:
    • When assassins come for Jasnah, she assumed they would kill her and then leave. Instead, they started killing everyone on the ship. If she had told anyone else, they probably could have repelled the enemy, or at least known to stay in their cabins where the assassins would hopefully leave them alone.
    • Kaladin refuses to tell anyone outside Bridge Four that he's becoming a Knight Radiant, despite the fact that Dalinar is attempting to re-found them and Kaladin knows he is trustworthy. This very nearly results in all of Dalinar's plans falling apart and Elhokar being killed (both by the Assassin in White and other killers), not to mention nearly causing Kaladin's own fall from grace.
    • When Shallan reaches the Shattered Plains, she also doesn't tell anyone she's becoming a Knight Radiant. This doesn't get anyone directly killed, but it would have prevented Amaram from being named head of the new Order, which would have made several other plotlines go more smoothly.
    • Dalinar isn't immune to this himself. After Kaladin helps Adolin in his duel and gets thrown in prison for calling out Amaram, Dalinar treats Kaladin like a soldier who did something stupid (which he did), but doesn't mention that he has his own plan to vindicate Kaladin. This results in Kaladin aiding some people out to assassinate Elhokar, and nearly throwing the entire kingdom into chaos.
    • The Parshendi are collectively guilty of this as well. The entire plot of the books is kicked off when they have Gavilar assassinated, which they take full credit for but refuse to explain why. It isn't full explained until ''Oathbringer, but it turns out Gavilar was trying to trigger a Desolation by brining back the Parshendi Gods and the Heralds. The Parshendi had him assassinated to prevent this from happening, hoping to avoid another Desolation, but refuse to even try to explain this to the Alethi until they are nearly extinct. As a result they end up unintentionally bringing back Odium and triggering a Desolation themselves in desperation.
• Jeremy from Strength & Justice: Side: Strength has a bad case of Cannot Spit It Out with his girlfriend over sharing information that there is a possible implication that the Law Enforcement, Inc. they work for might be involved in taking away people's magical powers by force. It finally culminates in his girlfriend thinking he's cheating on her, complete with confrontation.
• Sweet & Bitter Magic: Marlena resented Tamsin's constant coddling, but never actually revealed this to her. This led her to push herself further and further until she nearly killed herself trying to prove she didn't need Tamsin, which in turn led Tamsin to cast dark magic to try and save her, a process that killed Amma, nearly killed Marlena, and laid a curse on the land.
• Discussed and averted in Tender by Belinda McKeon. The main character has grown steadily more obsessed with her gay best friend, culminating in her going to his boyfriend and saying she's sleeping with him (the best friend) in an attempt to break them up. Her now-ex-friend later asks her (during a well-deserved What the Hell, Hero?) if she seriously thought his boyfriend was just going to believe her without reservation and go haring off instead of talking to him about it.
• The Traveler's Gate:
  • The villagers had no idea that they were expected to provide sacrifices or even that they were officially under the domain of the Damascan Kingdom. Cormac certainly didn't help by jumping to slaughter as soon as possible.
  • Enosh is little more than an apocalypse cult, brainwashed to believe that freeing the Incarnations is the right thing to do because of the "natural order." Alin is not from Enosh, but it takes him a long time to start asking the right questions about why they're doing what they're doing.
  • Simon has the problem of just not being good at talking. Several major fights could have been avoided if he was better at explaining himself or asking the right questions. He's still better than Alin, though, who explicitly has no idea what kind of story he's in and thinks that heroic speeches can solve everything.
• Warrior Cats: This is the Achilles' Heel in Bramblestar and Squirrelflight's relationship, causing a great number of quarrels/falling outs that arguably could have been easily prevented if they had only talked things out.
  • In the second half of The New Prophecy series, Brambleclaw befriends his half-brother Hawkfrost, whom Squirrelflight openly distrusts due to his arrogance and overly ambitious nature. Brambleclaw doesn't fully explain why he wants to be friends with Hawkfrost and refuses to listen to Squirrelfight's warnings not to trust him, believing it be a sign of the discrimination that he and his half-brother endured as the evil Tigerstar's sons. Though she ultimately turns out to be right about Hawkfrost, Squirrelflight doesn't handle the situation much better; she expresses her suspicions of Hawkfrost rather tactlessly, doesn't provide any real evidence (up until Hawkfrost conspires with Mudclaw to take over WindClan there isn't any hard evidence that he is untrustworthy), or make any effort to understand Brambleclaw's desire to be friends with him, and jumps to the somewhat irrational conclusion that Brambleclaw not listening to her about Hawkfrost means that he doesn't trust or love her anymore. They eventually reconcile, and settle their disagreement by talking about it for perhaps the only time in the series.
  • Near the end of Power of Three, it turns out that even after they reconciled and Brambleclaw killed Hawkfrost to stop him from murdering Firestar, Squirrelflight chose not to trust him with the secret of Jayfeather, Lionblaze and Hollyleaf not being their biological children, which causes Brambleclaw to break up with her for at least two years before they finally get back together.
  • In Squirrelflight's Hope, Squirrelflight wants to have a second litter of kits and rather impulsively makes a major suggestion to the other Clans without speaking to Bramblestar about it first. Bramblestar doesn't agree with Squirrelflight's suggestion, as he thinks she's undermining him, and doesn't want kits as much as she does. Squirrelflight assumes this means Bramblestar doesn't respect or love her anymore. They spend the rest of book arguing most of the time, each believing the other is being unreasonable...until the end where they make up again, apologizing to each other but without really discussing the problems that plagued them. Bramblestar asks Squirrelflight to promise him that they'll always talk things out...instead Squirrelflight essentially insists that Bramblestar has to trust her unconditionally, which Bramblestar accepts without further argument, presumably because Squirrelflight was right and he was wrong.
• Every....single...protagonist in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series appears to suffer from this. Seriously. While the bad guys are also killing each other off to determine who gets to be The Dragon, the Big Bad at least can give clear orders and expect to see them carried out. Usually.
  • Considering the whole Aiel vs. the Whitecloaks vs. the Rebel Tower vs. the White Tower vs. Elaida vs. the Asha'man vs.... well, everyone the Dark one could probably just sit back and wait for the good guys to kill each other off, although at least half of the disputes arise or are at least made worse by agents of the Dark one amongst them.
    • Just looking at specific protagonists: Rand doesn't tell anyone anything about anything. He doesn't want his idyllic hometown or his lovers targeted by his enemies, people think he's a dangerous lunatic, and he's trying to fight several Chessmasters at once. Mat hasn't told Rand what he's been doing for the last five books partly because he likes avoiding responsibility, but mostly because he would need a channeler's help to do it and he doesn't trust or want to be indebted to them. Perrin hasn't told Rand anything for the last four books because it's taken him that long to accomplish what everyone thought would be a simple assignment. Elayne and Egwene have been keeping their distance from Rand for six books because being seen in contact with him would subvert their own political power. Nynaeve and Min don't tell anyone anything because they're worried about Rand's fragile mental state and don't want to do anything he could possibly interpret as a betrayal. Any one of those might make sense, but all of them together... especially considering how many problems the reader knows the lack of communication has caused...
  • The series also shows the corollary: when the protagonists finally get a clue and start working together and sharing information, plots get solved. Since Brandon Sanderson took over the series, the pattern of nobody talking to anyone else has broken, and this has allowed them to start preparing for Tarmon Gai'don. Even before then, Rand only survived the Battle of Shadar Logoth because Cadsuane forced him to take some backup along instead of running off and trying to cleanse saidin with only Nynaeve's assistance.
• While My Pretty One Sleeps has a justified example; after barely surviving being shot by the Sepetti gang, undercover cop Tony Vitale is stuck in a hospital bed and he's either unconscious or hardly lucid when he's awake because of all the medication he's on. He tries to tell his superiors that there's a contract to kill Neeve Kearny, but Nicky Sepetti isn't the one who ordered it. Unfortunately, all he's able to get across to the other cops is "Sepetti...no contract", which they assume to mean there's no contract at all and Neeve is safe. Tony is eventually able to communicate that he learned Gordon Steuber put out the hit, prompting the cops to move against him and bust him for heroin smuggling, though they still have to find a way to foil the assassin, not to mention Gordon is actually being set-up by the real killer.
• In Mary Stewart's The Wicked Day, the entire final battle between Mordred and Arthur and their respective armies is the result of a series of misunderstandings.
• In The Witchlands, at one point Iseult is pursued by a group of Cleaved and leads them onto a Nomatsi road, which they can't navigate and die on. Some time later, she has a dream conversation with Esme, who tells her that she actually Cleaved those men and sent them after Iseult to help her - they were carrying food and one of them had hunting gear to give Iseult.

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