Right for the Wrong Reasons

"Didn't Aristarchus and the Pythagoreans propose heliocentrism in ancient times? If only they had prevailed, we might have had Real Science millennia sooner. What was their evidence?
Well, you see, fire is nobler than earth and the center is a nobler position. So fire has to be in the center. QED.
There are many names for this sort of thinking, but 'scientific' is not one of them."

— Michael F. Flynn, The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown

A character makes a conclusion based on what they perceive are facts. Their conclusion is correct, but the assumed facts and evidence are wrong.

Say in a Sherlock Scan a detective reasons that a suspect may be the murderer because they matched an eyewitness description and there were tiny blood stains on their shoes. The eyewitness is then discovered to not have their glasses and to be Blind Without Them and the "blood" stains were ketchup. So the evidence is all wrong... but the investigation later discovers that person really was the murderer after all! The detective was right about who the killer was, even though his reasons were erroneous. Actually figuring this out turns into a form of Achievements in Ignorance. If the audience is ahead of the detective on the investigation, and their assumptions are correct only to have the wrong conclusion, that is Entertainingly Wrong.

A Super-Trope to Worrying for the Wrong Reason. Compare and contrast Framing the Guilty Party, where the facts are known to be false but the conclusion is still correct, and Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot, where a Revealing Cover-Up is treated as irrelevant until the big discovery is made. Also compare Conviction by Counterfactual Clue. Can sometimes overlap with Accidentally Correct Writing when it happens on a meta-level. When the premises and the conclusion are correct, but the logic connecting them is false you have a Bat Deduction. May be a reason for Don't Shoot the Message. Often the case when the Cuckoolander is right. May result in "Both Sides Have a Point" Remark, Dumbass Has a Point, Jerkass Has a Point or Moral Luck.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

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Audio Plays

The Big Finish Doctor Who audios feature a few;
- "Second Chances" has a minor example; a man at a party assumed Kym’s hair just looked like it was on fire because of the joss-sticks, before Kym realized that there were no joss-sticks at the party and her hair actually is on fire.
- In "Excelis Rising", the Sixth Doctor returns to the planet Artaris a thousand years after his last visit and meets the Warlord Grayvorn, who became immortal during his last encounter with the Fifth Doctor. When Grayvorn questions the Doctor about how he changed his appearance, he confirms that the Doctor is in a different body but has the mind of the man he first met; however, Grayvorn thus assumes this means that the Doctor has possessed someone else rather than that his body has physically changed on its own.
- “Companion Piece”, when the insane Time Lord the Nine has set out to "collect" the Doctor’s companions by using River Song as a source of information, Charley Pollard, Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair assume that Bliss has been put in a cell with them to provide a catalyst for their escape as the only one of them who hasn’t travelled with the Eighth Doctor. In reality, Bliss only has no memory of the Doctor because she travelled with him in the Time War and the associated changes the War caused to her history haven’t technically happened yet, but they are apparently correct that Bliss was key to helping the Eighth Doctor’s four companions pool their skills and escape the Nine’s cells.

Comic Books

Absolute Universe: On describing the Omega Particle (all but stated to be Omega energy), Joker says its existence justifies the evil of the world as the natural state of being, and that anyone fighting against the status quo is by default evil. He is technically correct in that it is the natural state of his world… because Darkseid deliberately made this parallel universe that way, not because it is the natural state of existence, and people fighting the status quo does not make them evil when the status quo itself is evil.
Action Comics: In the Pre-Crisis timeline, Zor-El is convinced that his forcefield will save lives due to creating a new germ-free atmosphere. Instead, it keeps them from being blown up when their planet is destroyed (something he didn't believe his brother's warnings about) and gives them a source of air when they're propelled into space.
Atomic Robo: In the "Specter of Tomorrow" story, after arriving on Hashima to track down the source of the cyborg sleeper agents that have been activating randomly across the planet, Robo and his allies run into their creator: Helsingrad. Helsingrad, ever the egotist, assumes Robo came to the conclusion that ALAN's remains had something to do with the cyborgs because they were obviously too advanced to be the product of a human mind, when in reality Robo noticed that the cyborgs emitted a frequency like the one ALAN used when they transformed.
Chase has agent Cameron Chase attend a party in Gotham City, where she beholds a group of high-ranking men in the city's infrastructure—and she immediately, correctly, pegs one of them as a superhero. Specifically, broadcasting head Alan Scott. She's right that he's a superhero, but that's because she assumes that one of the people at the party might be Batman, and he was the best candidate—in fact, he's a Green Lantern (well, of a sort, anyway), who has no connection to Batman other than that they both operate in Gotham. Bonus points: Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were at the same party, but she immediately dismissed them as "a couple of schmoozers."
Daredevil (2023) features Matt Murdock/Daredevil facing various old allies and enemies who have been possessed by demons representing Matt's own variations of the Seven Deadly Sins. At one point, Matt faces Wolverine as one of the possessed victims, but he initially assumes that Logan has been possessed by Wrath before realising the sin controlling the mutant is Lust, drawing on Matt's bloodlust rather than the traditional view.
During the "Funeral for a Friend" portion of The Death of Superman, Lex Luthor II takes a wooden chair and smashes it against Doomsday's prone body in anger. The cops watching him think he's doing so because Doomsday killed Superman. They're right, but it's only because Luthor was The Only One Allowed to Defeat Him.
In Detective Comics #373, "The Riddler On The Roof", Elongated Man visits Gotham while Batman's busy elsewhere, and Commissioner Gordon shows him the Riddler's latest clue. He stops the Riddler shortly before Batman, who has finished his own case and seen the clue, shows up. However, when they compare notes, they have completely different interpretations of what the riddle means, even though they both connected it to the same crime. Basically, either Batman, Commissioner Gordon, or both were Right For The Wrong Reasons—and out of sheer spite, the Riddler won't say which.
- The Killing Joke, as quoted below, has an example of a crazy person achieving this to show just how far the trope can go.
"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum. And one night, they decide they don't like living in the asylum anymore. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away into the moonlight. Stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren't make the leap. Y'see... y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then the first guy has an idea... He says, 'Hey, I have a flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk across the beam and join me!' But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... he says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was halfway across!'"
- A story from the 90s saw Batman deal with a clay Golem destroying Jewish business in Gotham. A large clockwise swastika on the golem's belly led Batman to believe that the Golem's creator was being forced to send it out and the Buddhist-style swastika was a clue to his identity (someone educated enough to know about Yiddish traditions and the swastika's history). When Batman tracks down the creator (a Warsaw ghetto survivor being forced by a gang of Neo-Nazis), the man tells Batman he knew nothing about Buddhism: the swastika was a Stealth Insult to his captors, as he couldn't bring himself to draw the counter-clockwise Nazi swastika and his captors were too ignorant to tell he drew it wrong.
- In the "Going Sane" arc, The Joker believes that he has managed to kill Batman and consequently has forgotten his previous life as a supervillain, adopting the identity of "Joseph Kerr" and building a new, peaceful life for himself. Batman, however, is still alive, and at one point connects "Joseph Kerr" to the Joker. He goes to the apartment that "Kerr" is sharing with his new fiancee, only to find no trace of the Joker or anything other than a sane, happy, loving couple living there. Batman correctly realises that the crazed supervillain he fights is nowhere near that place, but believes that it is simply because the Joker used "Kerr" as a red herring to distract him.
The Duck Who Never Was opens with Donald applying for a role as museum caretaker, but the curator fires Donald just as he's finished the application because he mistakenly believed the duck to be 60 years old, the age of retirement (he was looking at the part of the application where Donald filled in the current month upside-down). At the end of the story, he re-hires Donald because he made a mistake; the age of retirement is actually 65.
In a Jack of Fables comic, Jack correctly believes that Goldilocks is actually an agent for Mr Revise, but comes to the conclusion because all of Revise's known agents wear glasses, which he assumes has some significance, so is immediately suspicious of the bespectacled Goldilocks. As she exasperatedly tells him, she wears glasses because she has bad eyesight.
From Hell: When William Gull calls out the psychic Robert Lees for being a fraud, Lee takes petty revenge by claiming to have visions of Gull committing the Whitechapel murders. It turns out that Gull really is Jack the Ripper. Lees is utterly surprised when Gull confesses.
In The Incredible Hulk vs. Superman, Lex Luthor has deduced that Banner and the Hulk are connected, but believes that Banner’s experiments created the Hulk or brought the Hulk to Earth rather than realise that Banner is the Hulk.
The Librarians: In Search Of...: Oscar Orville claims to have proof of the Loch Ness Monster, which Eve scoff at given the Librarians have the actual Loch Ness Monster.
Runaways:
- Gert has a deep distrust of her parents. Not because she knew they were supervillains, but because they told her that her pet pig ran away. Which it probably did, considering how Old Lace got out.
- An unintentional example - Klara warns Molly that hanging out with someone like Xavin leads to problems. While she bases this on prejudice - because she thinks that Xavin is an "abomination" - Xavin does end up causing the team a lot of unnecessary problems when they have a run-in with Xavin's former mentor and then get attacked by Majesdanian survivors of the war that Xavin's family started.
In The Sandman, a 14th Century peon named Hob Galding believes that by rejecting death, people just won't die. He believes that the Achievements in Ignorance trope is in effect here, but in actuality it's this trope as Death is just so amused by his belief that she granted his wish.
In Shadow War, Batman and Deathstroke both believe that the assassination of Ra's al Ghul and wounding of Talia is a False Flag Operation in order for Talia to consolidate power with her father eliminated and to blame Deathstroke for it. As it turns out, it was a False Flag Operation meant to blame Deathstroke, but the perpetrator was actually Geo-Force, looking to get revenge on both Deathstroke and Talia for his losses.
The Simpsons:
- One comic has the police looking for the criminal spraypaint tagger "El Barto". Eventually, they do manage to cuff the perpetrator (Bart, of course), but not because they caught him in the act. No, Bart had accidentally gotten ketchup on his shirt while having lunch at Krusty Burger, and ketchup just so happens to be the same color of red as the El Barto spraypaint tags.
- In one of the "Winter Wingding" comics, it is coming up to Christmas, but still hasn't snowed yet for the whole winter, which is odd because Springfield usually does have snowy winters. Lisa suspects that the lack of snow is artificial, and at one point wonders if Frink did it to benefit from later undoing it and being credited with solving the problem. However, while it was Frink's fault, it was an accident — he invented some Applied Phlebotinum to light up a Christmas tree, which started emitting radiation that heated up the air.
- In "Summer Shindig 4", Bart, Milhouse, Martin, and Lisa are trying to determine who stole the ice cream truck, and suspect Snake because his footprint was near the crime scene. While Snake was up to no good, he didn't steal the ice cream truck - he robbed the Kwik-E-Mart instead.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): In one storyline, King Acorn had fallen into a coma due to a plot by Evil Antoine/Patch disguised as his prime counterpart. As Sally and Evil Antoine is pushed into a wedding in preperation to become the new ruling family should King Acorn pass on, Sonic wants to stop this, not because he knows Antoine isn't the real one, but because he doesn't want Sally stuck in a loveless marriage.
Tintin: In King Ottokar's Sceptre, Thomson and Thompson correctly deduce that Alembick's camera contained stun gas which incapacitated the guards, but mistakenly think the sceptre got thrown out the window by hand. Tintin figures out that the camera also contains a projectile launcher when he sees some toy cannons in a toyshop (comic)/sees some cannons outside (Nelvana adaptation).
During Trial of the Amazons Queen Gaboymila suggests her representative Potira take Yara Flor along on her diplomatic and intelligence gathering mission to Themyscira, reasoning Yara might make it easier since she's the closest thing to a genetic link between the tribes. Yara nearly sparks war between the Esquecida and Bana-Mighdall, another tribe "visiting" Themyscira, within minutes of their arrival. However, bringing Yara along does end up being a good idea because she has Super-Strength that could prove useful in resolving two conflicts driving the story. The Esquecida did not understand at first and nearly didn't find out about it due to Yara's brash, reckless and confrontational nature, but she does end up proving useful despite being a millstone to the more delicate proceedings.
Watchmen:
- Unlike everyone else who just thinks of him as a benevolent philanthropist, Rorschach is Veidt suspicious of him, which turns out to have been warranted. However, this is because Rorschach has some fringe right-wing views, and so he naturally assumes the Ambiguously Gay and liberal Nice Guy must be up to something evil.
- Something similar is going on with the heavily conservative New Frontiersman, which manages to correctly poke at elements that suggest the very real conspiracy going on: things like Doug Roth's distrust of Doctor Manhattan being suspicious or the disappearance of various artists and scientists being part of a wider pattern. However, the editors of the New Frontiersman didn't really reach these conclusions through logical means; they just rooted around for any evidence that their left-leaning opposition was up to no good and then started throwing out wild guesses. Case in point: they think Doug Roth is against Manhattan because he's one of the Dirty Communists, when Doug is being funded by an all-American delivery company... owned by Adrian Veidt.

Comic Strips

In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin asks Hobbes to help with his math homework of simple addition problems. Hobbes, a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, insists that Calvin will have to use "imaginary numbers" like "eleventeen" and "thirty-twelve." While he's completely wrong with the examples, he is using the correct terminology: imaginary numbers do exist, but they're only used in extremely advanced mathematics, not grade-school addition.
This Dilbert comic where the Pointy-Haired Boss finally makes a right decision because "his ignorance clouded his poor judgment".
In a Mafalda strip, when Mafalda's mother unplugs the TV while Gui was watching, he tries to keep watching the show by peeking through the power outlet. When Mafalda recounts the incident to Manolito, they both start laughing...until the latter says "The images come through the wire so small! How was he supposed to see anything?"
In a 2018 The Phantom storyline, Eric Sahara, aka international terrorist The Nomad, is suspicious that his daughter's best friend at boarding school is the former ward of the Bangallan President, and becomes convinced she's actually some kind of spy for his enemies, there to find information on his activities. This is pure paranoia on his part, as Heloise Walker's presence is a coincidence and her friendship with Kadia is genuine. However, at the same time as he reaches this conclusion, Heloise does start trying to find information on his activities, but not on behalf of the enemies he thinks. Sahara is unaware of her connection to his greatest enemy; she's the Phantom's daughter.

Films — Animation

The Bad Guys (2022)
- The Bad Guys' Redemption Quest starting in the first place was done for no sincere reason to begin with. The Bad Guys are just using the plan to continue their theiving ways unnoticed, Marmalade is just using them all in a dupe for his own evil scheme. However, when Wolf and Diane start to bond, they become legitimately enlightened by the change, triggering the events that show the Bad Guys do have potential to turn to good.
- Marmalade's arrest. Luggins assumes he was the Crimson Paw the whole time, but it was all a big coincidence that lead to this conclusion. He did try to steal the Love Crater Meteorite and terrorize the entire city, though, which means it wouldn't be wrong to say he deserved it.
In The Brave Little Toaster when the appliances realize the cabin is being sold and are deciding whether or not to leave and find their owner (a child they call The Master), the cynical Kirby says they should just stay because they’ll have a new master anyways. Turns out he’s right about staying behind - unbeknownst to the group, The Master (who’s grown up and just graduated high school) is on his way over to pick them up and take to college with him. If they’d been patient and just waited a couple of days, they’d have been reunited with their Master far quicker and saved themselves an unnecessary journey.
A Bug's Life: When Flik first brought the "warrior bugs", Atta was right that he "hired a bunch of clowns," but it was more because she didn't believe in him than that he made an honest mistake.
Coco: Miguel says he wasn't really stealing the guitar, since it belonged to his great-great-grandfather. He's right about that, but not his GGGF's identity.
Despicable Me 2:
- When one of Gru's adopted daughters, Margo, falls in love with a boy named Antonio, Gru is incredibly suspicious of Antonio, not for any specific reason but just because Antonio is a boy putting the moves on his little girl. But while Gru's actual motive is that he was just being paranoid, he turns out to be right about the fact that Antonio isn't a good match for Margo, because Antonio is a huge flirt and Margo is just another pretty girl to him. But Gru didn't actually know that at first.
- Gru is also initially suspicious of Antonio's father Eduardo because of his similar appearance to a villain named El Macho. Despite no evidence being found at Eduardo's restaurant, Gru insists he's right more as a chance to get Eduardo's son in jail as well. Turns out he's right about Eduardo being El Macho and being behind the crime, but not about his son being in on it.
In Frozen (2013), the trolls mistake Anna and Kristoff for a couple and refuse to listen to their protests that they aren't. When Anna points out that she's already engaged, the trolls consider this for a moment and then declare, "Get the fiancé out of the way and the whole thing will be fixed!" It turns out there's a much more urgent reason to get rid of Hans than just resolving a love triangle: he's planning to usurp the throne of Arendelle, kill Elsa, and leave Anna for dead.
Implied in Hoodwinked!; when Wolf and Twitchy encounter Boingo the Bunny, who tells them about a shortcut to get to Red's grandmother's house, Twitchy has a look of suspicion on his face to indicate his doubt that Boingo is being fully sincere with the two of them, and later agrees with Wolf that they were fools to follow Boingo's advice. While Twitchy's distrust of Boingo turns out to be well-founded upon The Reveal that Boingo was the Goody bandit the entire time, it's likely his distrust was founded more on the belief that Boingo was consorting with Red (who he and Wolf believed to be involved in the string of thefts plaguing the forest) than suspicion of Boingo being the mastermind himself. The fact that Wolf and Twitchy spied on Red when she was with Boingo and misinterpreted parts of their conversation that seemed to validate Wolf's suspicion of Red may lend some credence to this.
The Incredibles 1: Helen "Elastigirl" Parr is right when she suspects Bob "Mr. Incredible" Parr of lying about going on business trips. However, she thinks that he's lying to cover up an affair, when actually, he's lying to hide that he's moonlighting his old life as a superhero.
One of the shorts bundled on the Blu-Ray of Inside Out has Riley being called to answer a question in the textbook after she'd been doodling most of class. Joy, working under the assumption that it's multiple choice, has Riley answer "C." It turns out she's in Spanish class — which all of the emotions somehow missed — and the question was a "Yes or No" one to which "Sí" was the correct answer.^note
KPop Demon Hunters: After the Idol Awards, the audience believes that HUNTR/X has broken up onstage as the demons impersonating Mira and Zoey expose Rumi's demon patterns. Rumi does have a falling out with Mira and Zoey after the two witness her demon patterns and learn of her deal with Jinu but it's only after the onstage performance.
The trope itself was lampshaded in Kung Fu Panda 4, when Zhen tried to rally up the Den of Thieves to rescue Po from the Chameleon, trying to inspire a Heel–Face Turn on them, but they found the notion humorous and instead chose to interpret Zhen’s words as a sign that they should help her under the logic that, “the more right they do now, the more wrong they can do later”. Defeated, Zhen just goes along with it.
Implied in Megamind, when Tighten — during a nasty Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids! speech to Roxanne — snarls that she's living in a fantasy world, and that there's "no Easter Bunny, there's no Tooth Fairy, and there's no Queen of England!" He's technically right on the last one, as Queen Elizabeth II did not officially hold the title of Queen of England (she was in fact the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of which England is only a constituent part). But considering he's listing imaginary fairytale creatures and is also, to put it bluntly, incredibly stupid, it's almost certain that he's not aware of the distinction and believes that the British Royal Family is also imaginary.
In Monster House, when Chowder learns that the house has a uvula, he says, "Oh, so it's a girl house." Turns out, it is indeed female after a fashion, but the uvula is not associated with one gender over another.
Mulan (1998):
- The leader of the soldiers sings, "Did they send me daughters, when I asked for sons?" He had no way of knowing Mulan was a girl at the time. His song was meant to question the abilities of the men.
- When Mushu decides that he needs to make Mulan a war hero to redeem himself in the eyes of the Fa family ancestors and overhears that Chi-Fu intends to send a report that would determine Mulan's unit is unfit for duty that would tank that, he blithely forges a letter and impersonates an officer informing Chi-Fu that the main army headed by General Li has engaged the Hun army and in desperate need of their help, which causes Chi-Fu to throw aside his plans and tell Shang they need to move out. Mushu only knew that the army would seeing combat with the Huns and wanted to get Mulan on the front line no matter what, but had no way of knowing what their situation was. Turns out he was completely right — the main army was fighting the Huns and was in desperate need of reinforcements. Too bad he didn't decide to forge that letter sooner...
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: In one of the stingers, Pirate Captain asks Number Two if he's a woman in disguise. He's right that someone on his crew is a woman in disguise, but it's not Number Two.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Bowser sees Mario with Peach and jumps to the conclusion that he'll derail his evil plan because he's dating her. While Mario does intend to derail Bowser's evil plan, it's not because of any crush; at this point in the story, he and Peach haven't started dating yet, and he's instead going to save Luigi from Bowser.
Trolls:
- In the first film, the other Trolls were right in pointing out that Branch's paranoia was beyond the point of need, as the Bergens hadn't been found in years. However, Branch turns out to be right in the end, not because parties are a problem, but because Chef happened to be looking for them that night.
- In World Tour:
  - King Peppy is right about the other tribes being different from them and to not trust the Rock Trolls, but is wrong to assume that all of them are untrustworthy.
  - Although she got Barb's ideal of reuniting the other tribes wrong, Poppy is right about her intentions for them to be a united kingdom.
  - The Rock Trolls have every right to not trust the Pop Trolls for what they did in the past, since they never met them again after the incident, but they later learn that they were wrong because they learn that they're capable of changing their ways.
Unicorn Wars: Padre is against consuming the caterpillars the squad finds in the magic forest, because the holy book of his religion forbids it. While this is rightfully called out as a rather flimsy reason not to take advantage of what resources they have, Padre ends up being right that the caterpillars are no good when the hallucinogens within them cause the entire squad to trip out and the Cuddly-Wuddly Twins die because of a particularly violent hallucination.
Wreck-It Ralph: When King Candy tells Ralph Vanellope can't race, he claims her glitching will eventually lead to the game being unplugged. Turns out, he's right to not want her to race, but he is wrong about the outcome — because he deleted her code and erased everyone's memories so he can take over, and he doesn't want Vanellope racing because if she crosses the finish line, the game will reset, her glitching will be fixed, and all coding and memories will be restored.

Game Shows

On Taskmaster Series 11 Episode 7 "You've Got No Chutzpah", the contestants are tasked with running across some stepping stones to reach a gate, and every time they set off an alarm they are forced to restart. After dabbling with the colors of the stepping stones, the one team comes to the conclusion that the solution is to imitate the alarm for the duration of the task, yelling "WOO WOO WOO", and the other team comes to the conclusion that they need to say "red" each time they step on a stone, and both teams make it to the end without triggering the alarm. The real thing that triggers the alarm is either 7 seconds of silence or saying the letter T, which both teams correctly but accidentally did when they incorrectly solved the alarm.

Jokes

There's an old Polish joke that's an example. During a field exercise, a sergeant stops his unit of New Meat.
Sergeant: Hold it! Now, who can tell me in which direction are we marching?
Private: Sir, south, sir!
Sergeant: Fucking right! Now, tell the others how did you figure that out!
Private: Sir, it's getting warmer and warmer, sir!
An old joke: Three old men go to the doctor for a checkup (please don't ask why the doctor is giving all three men their checkup at the same time). Since they're getting on in years, the doctor decides to check their mental faculties as well. So he asks the first man, "What's three times three?" And the old man says, "273." So the doctor moves on to the second guy and asks the same question. "Tuesday," is the reply. Finally he asks the third old man. "9." "That's great!" says the doctor, "How'd you get to that answer?" "I subtracted 273 from Tuesday."
A woman was asked, "If a car is traveling at 80 miles an hour, how long would it take the car to go 80 miles?" The woman makes a lengthy calculation, beginning with, "I run the mile in about nine minutes," as part of her calculation. She says a tire turns about 400 times in a mile. In the end, she says, "About 58 minutes," which is pretty close considering the factors she used to get there.
Supposedly a man came to Andrew Jackson with a proposal to fund an expedition inside the Hollow Earth, which failed because Jackson thought the Earth was flat.
An old joke has a police captain quizzing three recruits representing an acceptable target (depending on the telling, and the joker's nationality, they could be Polish, Sikh, blonde, or something else) on how they would recognize a wanted man, by showing them a sketch of the suspect. The first two confidently claim that the perp would be easy to recognize because he only has one eye and one ear, respectively, which leads to the captain getting angrier and angrier as he repeatedly explains that the sketch is in profile. The third recruit studies the picture intently for a moment, and then deduces (correctly) that the suspect wears contact lenses. When the very impressed captain asks how the recruit was able to make such an astute deduction, he replies, "Easy. He can't wear normal glasses because he only has one eye and one ear."
A guy is competing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and reaches the million-dollar question, that asks which bird from a selection of four doesn't build its own nest. The contestant phones one of his friends, who answers cuckoo. The contestant goes with cuckoo and wins the grand prize. After the show, he asks his friend how he knew, and the friend responds "because it lives in a clock, duh".

Other

In Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, he uses the product 1/4 X 8/5 = 18/45 as an example of the result being right (18/45 can be simplified to 2/5, the correct answer), but the methodology being completely wrong.
- A similar idea is to simplify the fraction 16/64 by cancelling out the 6s to leave 1/4, which again just happens to be the correct answer.
  - 19/95, 26/65 and 49/98 are other options.
On an episode of the Newlywed Game, a woman was asked how many decades old her mother-in-law was. The woman smiled and said, "10," getting a laugh from the audience. When the host asked the husband how many decades old his mother was, he said, "I don't know what that is, but my mother is 44. If there are four years in a decade, she's 10 decades."
- If there are four years in a decade, wouldn't a 44-year-old woman be 11 decades?
The myth of Icarus holds that his wings, made of wax, evaporated in proximity to the sun. As Icarus Allusion indicates, higher altitude would actually mean a reduction in temperature and therefore cause the wax to become brittle and shatter. Either way, Icarus doesn't make it out alive.

Radio

In Season 30, Episode 2 of The Unbelievable Truth, during Neil Delamere's lecture on tigers, Angela Barnes challenges on "Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, had a pet tiger who she adored", then immediately realises it's ridiculous. But it turns out that what Neil actually said was "Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, had a pet, Tiger, who she adored", which is true — Tiger was a cat.
David: He thought that it would be a clever way of concealing a quite plausible truth as something that no-one would ever buzz in on. And you've outsmarted him by believing something impossible.

Theatre

Jesus Christ Superstar: Talking about the betrayal of Jesus, Caiaphas tells Judas, "What you have done will be the saving of Israel! You'll be remembered forever for this!" He was right about the second part.
In Little Shop of Horrors, Mr. Mushnik correctly deduces that it was Seymour who murdered the sadistic dentist Orin Scrivello. He assumes he did it in order to hook up with Orin's girlfriend Audrey. But while Seymour did kill Orin (or rather, chose not to save him when he accidentally suffocated himself with laughing gas), and while he is in love with Audrey, his real motive was to save Audrey from Orin's Domestic Abuse... and to provide fresh meat for the carnivorous plant Audrey II.
Shucked: Gordy tells the townsfolk to gather up all the blue rocks so he can carry them away, because they're what's causing the corn to wither. He thinks the rocks are valuable (they aren't) and wants to take them and sell them, but it turns out that he was actually right - the rocks are sucking up the water.

Visual Novels

Ace Attorney does this a lot, often realizing the culprit before fully understanding their motive or method:
- In Case 4 of Justice for All, the police arrest the suspect because a knife with their fingerprints was used to stab the victim. The victim was not killed with a knife, he was strangled, and the knife was a Frame-Up by a third party. But the suspect, Matt Engarde, did hire a hitman to kill the victim. Adrian Andrews was Framing the Guilty Party because she knew of his toxic rivalry with victim Juan Corrida. Similarly, Oldbag calls Engarde an evil man, but because she thinks he wants to create scandals. He is evil but for the opposite reasons, as his response to a potential scandal centered around himself is to hire a killer and silence any potential threats.
- In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Drew Misham, an art forger, had a postage stamp framed for whatever reason. Said postage stamp happened to have a powerful poison on its back. Seven years later, Drew dies from licking the stamp to use it. It's suggested that the art forger had the stamp framed because he knew it was poisoned. Apollo, assuming this to be true, makes quite an impressive leap of logic: Drew is not the art forger, but rather he acts as the face of one, namely his daughter Vera. SHE had the stamp framed, allegedly suspecting the poison, and later Drew, who suspected nothing, used the stamp and died of the poison. Almost all of the above is true... except the stamp was framed because it featured a picture of Troupe Gramarye, and Drew's daughter was a huge fan of the Troupe. Nobody aside from the poisoner knew the stamp was poisoned.
- In Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, one of Eustace Winner's early arguments actually turns out to be a case of this. Bronco Knight is found dead in prison, so Eustace has Simeon Saint arrested simply because he happened to be Knight's friend, then comes up with a flimsy reasoning involving a chess board he sent to the prison as a gift containing a chisel in a secret compartment. Everyone both in-universe and out laughs this off at the time, however, it is revealed much later that Saint is the true Big Bad of the game, and while he didn't personally murder Knight, he did manipulate events with the explicit intention of him ending up dead, the chisel was planted in the compartment for that very purpose, and his motive for doing so did indeed involve their friendship (more specifically, Saint believed Knight had betrayed that friendship due to an event Knight himself doesn't even remember).
- There's a weird "non-culprit" example in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. In case 2, much of the case revolves around the fact that nobody is supposed to enter the Forbidden Chamber because supposedly, an evil demon named "Tenma Taro" is locked inside. Naturally, some characters treat this as mere superstition, and some characters treat this as real. It turns out that yes, it's just superstition, there is no demon. But, there is a good reason not to go into the Forbidden Chamber anyway: it turns out that "Tenma Taro" is actually the name of a gold ingot that, when it first appeared, caused the villagers to fight over the gold out of greed, as if they were possessed by monsters. So there's actually a good reason to keep the Forbidden Chamber locked up, because if people saw there was gold in there, they'd start fighting over it again. Which is, in a sense, what happened- Florent L'Belle killed Rex Kyubi because he wanted to get into the forbidden chamber and steal the gold. And then, just to twist the knife further, when the gold ingot is not in the Forbidden Chamber, everyone assumes it's because it was stolen by the incredibly obvious thief, or by the actual murderer. But the gold ingot, while believed to be cursed, was still gold: it turns out the village headman sold the gold years ago and didn't tell anyone, using the funds to help out the village when times were tough.
- An out of universe example, from Dual Destinies. The player, especially if they kept up with the promotional material for the game including the initial teaser trailer, is going to assume that Tonate is the culprit of the first case, since he's presented as the obvious guy who really obviously committed the bombing. He IS the culprit of the first case, and he killed Candice Arme with the bomb that blew up the courtroom. However, he wasn't the one to detonate the bomb. That was the phantom's doing.
- In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Joe Darke was a mass murderer and was fully deserving of the death penalty he got. However, the murder he was convicted of that got him executed was of the one guy he didn't kill (although he was going to).
- In The Great Ace Attorney, Herlock Sholmes does this frequently during his "Great Deductions" (in fitting with his more eccentric than usual characterization). He manages to arrive at the correct conclusions, but through a misinterpretation of the evidence, which Ryunosuke has to work out himself.
  - Juror No. 2 (aka Evie Vigil) quickly figures out that there is some sort of relationship between Lord van Zieks and the defendant Albert Harebrayne. While she believes it is of a romantic nature, the truth is that they are old friends from university.
  - Lord Barok van Zieks was right that Genshin had killed his older brother but the mistake he made was believing that Genshin was the mass murderer, the Professor, instead of as the man who had stopped the Professor, who was actually his older brother.
  - Kazuma was utterly convinced that their father couldn't be the Professor because they weren't a killer. While it's true that Genshin isn't the Professor, he did in fact kill Klint van Zieks, the Professor.
  - Regarding the assassin exchange plot, Sholmes was correctly clued in that something was occurring between the British and Japanese government but due to Asa Shinn disappearing from London and hearing of Wilson's death, Sholmes had assumed the four names on the list were in danger. It wasn't until he found out Asa Shinn was alive until the 2-1 and she was Wilson's killer that Sholmes realized the true significance of the names of the list and thus, the assassin exchange.
Danganronpa:
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Byakuya Togami suspects that there's a traitor among the students after Alter Ego goes missing. Kyoko had told Alter Ego to scream if it spotted anyone it didn't recognize so the Mastermind couldn't have taken it and instructed it to also scream if Ishimaru or Yamada, the only two students with a motive to steal it, had tried anything. So Byakuya believes that one of the other students stole it because they were in league with Monokuma. There is a traitor, but the traitor is innocent of this particular crime. The true culprit is Celestia, who didn't so much steal Alter Ego as hide it elsewhere in the room and tell it to stay quiet. Celestia is not the traitor, but part of her complicated murder plan involved convincing Hifumi that Ishimaru stole Alter Ego (and also that he raped her) and using that to manipulate Hifumi into being her accomplice.
- In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Ditzy Genius Miu Iruma manages to accurately finger the killer in every trial she participates in, but lacks the deductive reasoning skills to connect the how and why. In the second trial, she says it's suspicious that Kirumi was alone in the gym and accuses her, which ends up being proven right. In the third trial, she accuses Korekiyo of killing Tenko and Angie since Angie's murder weapon came from his lab (which wasn't locked), and he was the first to discover Tenko's body. Lastly, in the final trial when the surviving students perform a retrial of the first case, the deceased Miu's previous assessment that Monokuma was the murderer was half-right as the mastermind (who Monokuma works for anyway) ended up being the real killer. On top of this, Miu's contributions to the investigations of the murders proved very helpful, if not for the right reasons. In Chapter 1, Miu adds a camera to a drone to draft a floor plan of the library, revealing Kaede's Rube Goldberg Death Trap, just to get out of doing any investigative legwork. Chapter 2 has Miu establishing the alibis for everyone in the Insect Meet and Greet, which contributes to Kirumi's setup opportunity, all because she secretly felt left out. Lastly, in Chapter 3, Miu instantly assesses the wax effigy setup to be a distraction and proposes the séance was entirely a trap to lure Tenko to her death, all of which is proved to be true... for no other reason than her intuition from her golden brain.
GENBA no Kizuna: In the climax, Himatsu, in a fit of frustration due to all four members of Raptor Pack Productions confessing to the murder(one telling the truth and the other three Taking the Heat to protect the culprit), proposes that the police just arrest all four of them just to be sure, only for Rei to tell her that they can't do that and must solve the mystery. After the culprit is identified, the police do as Himatsu says, because while the victim was killed in self-defense, all four members of Raptor Pack Productions lied to the police and hindered the investigation.
Physical Exorcism Series:
- Case 03: True Cannibal Boy: Lily, Jade, and Brucie initially suspect Marty is the Cannibal Boy and is behind a string of serial murders. It turns out he is responsible for killing two women, but he didn't eat them like the real Cannibal Boy. Instead, he attempted to attach their headless bodies to Sally's head, who was attacked by the real Cannibal Boy.
- Blood Lily Loop: Wiseman notes that going back to the past could risk repeating the events of the game and allow Nya to enter the real world again by planting their son in Lily. While she is right that this is a bad idea, she's wrong about Nya's plans, since the latter wants to change the past in order to make the future worse in different ways, such as using Gla'aki to wreak havoc and driving Marty insane.

Web Animation

The Amazing Digital Circus: "Beach Episode":
- Jax doubts that Abel is really telling the whole truth and sarcastically entertains the idea of the whole escape scenario being another one of Caine's adventures. He only suggests this as part of his typical aloof and snarky mask, and when he's proven correct down to Caine suddenly appearing at the end to congratulate the players, Jax is sent into a manic fit of laughter from the absurdity.
- Caine deduces that the players would choose the Red Button to terminate the enticing prospect of leaving the Circus, believing they'd only do so after considering how beloved he is to them. They ultimately do, but only because someone so stuck in avoidance and escapism like Jax freaked out at the idea of facing the real world again and made the choice in their stead.
In Dorkly's Pokémon Rusty, in Rusty's first gym battle against the clearly-too-strong-for-him Blaine, Rusty, after sending two clearly disadvantaged Pokémon to die, sends out his Cubone. Blaine praises Rusty for finally thinking straight, as Cubone is a Ground-type, which is super effective against his Fire-type Growlithe. Rusty scoffs at Blaine, calling him an idiot, stating that he made his decision based on Cubone being a "Bone-type" and dogs having a weakness for bones. It ends up being a moot point anyway as Growlithe is too high leveled for Cubone to do anything.
Etra chan saw it!: In one video, a young Azami interrupts a conversation a group of mothers are having about what features their kids got from their fathers by claiming that she isn't related to her father, Tachibana. It quickly turns out that this was a misunderstanding due to limited knowledge of where babies come from (she understands that she came from inside her mom, Akane, but has no idea what role her father would have had in that), allowing everyone to laugh it off. Except one of the other parents later notes that Akane's own reaction seemed far too extreme to be mere confusion at her daughter's words, prompting a rumor that infidelity might actually be in play. This rumor makes it to Tachibana, who secretly does a DNA test on Azami out of paranoia, revealing that Akane really did cheat on him with her ex-boyfriend Hiiragi.
Red vs. Blue:
- In Reconstruction, when the reds are fighting Washington and Church.
  Sarge: Alright, men. Stand down.
  Grif: Stand down? We outnumber them three to two. That's like a three with a two. That's... 32% advantage... if you Carry the One.
  Simmons: I don't want to know how you came up with that, but you're actually right!
- Used again in Revelation (Season 8), when Sarge guesses that Washington killed Donut and Lopez and took Simmons prisoner due to Simmons answering the radio wrong, using an obvious lie about said radio and a lack of tinkling glasses in the background that would usually occur due to Donut's special hour, but this trope comes into effect when he analyzes Simmons "coded messages":
  Sarge: He also mentioned that the weather was rainier. And as we all know, Mt. Rainier is the biggest landmass in the state of... Washington.
  Grif: We do? I mean, we do!
  Sarge: How many Washingtons do we know?
  Grif: Wait, did he mean Agent Washington?
  Sarge: And who's the biggest mass we know associated with Washington?
  Grif: The Meta!
  Sarge: So the Meta and Washington have teamed up to kill Donut and Lopez, and now they're holding Simmons and Doc prisoner.
  Grif: We have to help 'em! Wait, Doc? Ho- how do you know he's there?
  Sarge: Please, Grif, it's so obvious. I don't wanna insult your intelligence by explaining every little detail.

Webcomics

8-Bit Theater:
- In an early strip, when the group realizes they have one too many members to be the Light Warriors (five instead of four). Fighter doesn't understand why, because he forgot to count himself, so he thinks there's only four. When the others point this out, Fighter says that the King might make the same mistake and forget to count himself. However, he then discards this idea... because he realizes that the King would think that Fighter is so awesome he should count for two Light Warriors. (For even further irony, his first conclusion about the King was far from unlikely.)
- While the group is searching for the "invisible sky castle" that contains the Air Orb, Fighter points up at a sky castle floating overhead. Black Mage angrily asks him if it looks like an invisible sky castle, and Fighter responds that he's never seen one. When Black Mage asks why he's never seen one, Fighter thinks for a minute and says "Because they're quite rare?" Black Mage is enraged at the fact that this is technically true. For bonus points, Fighter turns out to be right; the story about the sky castle containing the Orb being invisible was completely made up, so his guess that the very visible sky castle was the right one was correct.
Cursed Princess Club: Prince Jamie has such a finely-honed sense of taste as a professional food critic that he can even discern the thoughts and emotions of the people who make meals for him. He notes that certain emotions taste identical to regular flavors, with devastation tasting just like carpet. So when his sister Gwendolyn (who's dishes he loves eating) made him a special waffle plate that tasted like carpet, he deduces that she must have been feeling devastated, as there's no way she'd serve him something that fell on the floor. Gwen did drop an ingredient on the floor — but she was also distraught over realizing that things weren't working out between her and her fiancé Frederick.
Dinosaur Comics: Touched upon in this episode. T-Rex says that, in order to know something, it needs to be true, a person needs to believe it is true, and they need to have a justified reason to believe that. Utahraptor (who is orange) argues the following situation: he asks to take a nap in T-Rex's bed, T-Rex says yes, and Utahraptor gets murdered by an orange guy who proceeds to sleep in T-Rex's bed. If T-Rex then says that "an orange dude is sleeping in [his] bed" he would be right, and he'd even have a justified reason to believe it (given that Utahraptor, an orange dude, asked to sleep in his bed), but he couldn't truly say that he knows what's going on.
T-Rex: Please don't get murdered in my bedroom, Utahraptor.
Drowtales:
- The Kyorl'solenurn Clan oppose tainting (the merging of one's aura to a nether being) on religious grounds, believing that it goes against the will of the Goddess Sharess, and make a point to kill any tainted they come across and Mercy Kill members of their own clan who may become tainted by accident. They also oppose the mandatory tainting at the local Wizarding School that's given as a sort of "vaccine" for nether summoners, which turns out to be this trope because almost all of the seeds being given out are intentionally faulty and will kill their users within fifty years but the Kyorl don't know this.
- Quain'tana's opposition to her daughter Mel'arnach's relationship with Snadhya'rune Vel'Sharen is primarily based on Snadhya being the eldest daughter of one of Quain's greatest enemies, but after Snadhya lets her Mask of Sanity slip and it's heavily implied she's only using Mel as a pawn, including coldly leaving her to to essentially become a Baby Factory, it's become a case of this.
El Goonish Shive:
- In one strip, the math teacher says Grace and Ellen are a mystery that needs solving, and makes a whole bunch of calculations based on their statistics. To their shock, he claims the result is "a duplicate squirrel of some sort", before admitting he was just messing with them and the whole thing was gibberish. Unbeknownst to the teacher, Ellen is a duplicate of Elliot, and Grace is a human/squirrel/alien hybrid shapeshifter whose normal form resembles a humanoid squirrel.
- Voltaire comes to the correct conclusion that there are more seers than just the two he knows about. (warning: spoilers). However, his reasons are a little bit off. Magic just underwent a small change, meaning that someone must have talked it out of making a large change. Voltaire assumes that Arthur wouldn't want to make such an argument, and that Tedd was in no shape emotionally to do so, meaning that some unknown third seer must have been present to do the talking. There are other seers. About a thousand of them, in fact. However, the only other seer who spoke with The Will of Magic was a kid named Van who didn't really do much. In reality, Tedd was the one who convinced magic not to change.
- Shortly after Elliot comes out to his friends as "gender casual", an EGS:NP storyline reveals that George has been suspecting Elliot might be genderqueer for a while. Half his reasoning is correct: he knows Elliot is Cheerleadra. The other half isn't: he's never seen Elliot and Ellen at the same time and believes they're the same person.
- Minor character Rich is a conspiracy theorist who assumes that everything is caused by aliens. So, when there's a mysterious event that causes people to recognize and know things about people they'd never encountered before, he tells everyone who would listen that it was caused by interdimensional aliens. Despite having absolutely no evidence to support this theory, it happens to be correct.
Freefall:
- During the debate about robot rights, someone in the audience asks how something that isn't alive can be self-aware, and is mollified when another audience member offers vampires and ghosts as an example. Max, who's arguing for robot rights, is horrified. "That was a smart question! Don't accept a dumb answer!"
- Mr Kornada is faced with the Trolley Problem. He states that he would direct it to hit one person, rather than five, a position that many people hold to be the most moral option... but his reasoning is that it would do less damage to the trolley, which, while certainly a true statement, is definitely not what the Trolley Problem is about.
Girl Genius:
- When the castle traps a group in a room to request repairs Professor Tiktoffen yells that they're doomed and can't leave since no-one has made any progress in the room and the castle keeps killing people there. Theo on the other hand notices that Gil is looking in glee at the broken mechanisms and already has figured out that the reason they're going to be stuck is because Gil has entered The Madness Place and isn't going to walk away from it:
  Theo: Uh oh. You may be right but for the wrong reason. Gil?
  Gil: Oooh—This looks... Interesting!
- Oublenmach, one of the Storm King conspirators, claims that Van Heliotrope is the most important man in Mechanicsburg because he is the ringer of the Doom Bell, which announces the return of the Heterodyne and opens their treasure vault. Van is the most important man in town, but because he's the castle seneschal (essentially the mayor), a position that was supposed to be extinct. "Doom Bell ringer" is an entirely ceremonial position; the Castle can ring the Bell on its own.
- The abbot deduces that the woman one of his monks is trying to kill is the Lady Heterodyne, because why else would Storm Lord assassins be on the train? The monk in question admits that she is the Heterodyne, but the assassins were after a completely different woman.
Strip 5 of Gone with the Blastwave has a pair of Reds spot some Yellows with a tank, so one Red suggests to that the other "run into the middle so I can shoot your gas tank and take them all out with the blast." The other protests it's not a good idea... because the blast wouldn't be enough to take them all out.
Red 1: ...Wait. That's the only reason not to do it?!
Red 2: I mean, it's a good plan.
Handplates: Asgore scolds Gaster for carrying baby Papyrus upside down because it’s not safe. Gaster says that it should be fine because skeletons don’t have physical brains, veins, or bloodflow that could be negatively affected from being held upside down, but Asgore gets proven right a second later when Papyrus’ head falls off and hits the tabletop with a “clonk”. (Thankfully, he’s fine afterwards, just dizzy.)
Hello from Halo Head: When Chloe relays a request to Clair for Mars to fix a broken skylight in Pepper's house. Clair notes that Mars has been doing far too much work for him recently and accuses Chloe of lying for them. Clair is right to be suspicious - Pepper and Mars are up to something - but it has nothing to do with Chloe and the skylight is broken.
Homestuck: Betty "Batterwitch" Crocker is an evil alien empress, plotting dominion over the entire world, and was also the cruel stepmother of John's Nanna and Jade's Grandpa. John knows none of this, but has a deep dislike of her because he's getting tired of cake.
Kevin & Kell: When Corrie is disguised as a wolf by using Ralph's skin, Fiona notices something suspicious about her. Corrie thinks it's that Fiona has discovered her identity, but Fiona says that Corrie is Ralph's daughter. Corrie dismisses this theory, reasoning that Fiona only came to that conclusion due to Ralph's scent on the skin, until Bruno later finds out her origins, and discovers that this is the truth.
Lies, Sisters and Wives: Bob comes under the false impression that Jessica, Matilda, and Agatha are all Fredrik's daughters. In truth, only Matilda is. However, his assumption that Fredrik has three daughters turns out to be correct. Aside from Matilda and her unseen veterinarian sister, it turns out that Fredrik has a third, secret daughter with a mistress.
Marry My Husband: As their relationship disintegrates, Sumin and Minhwan separately go into Never My Fault mode regarding their actions and blame Jiwon for all their problems, believing that she set them up so she could date Jihyeok without any obstacles in her path. They're partly right; Jiwon deliberately manipulated them into hooking up, but it was so she could take revenge on them for how awfully they've always treated her.
The Order of the Stick: Belkar correctly guesses that Durkon isn't himself after becoming a vampire. His reasoning is that "He had a spell prepared that will actually solve our problem! That proves that he can't possibly be Durkon!" Belkar later reveals that he also is also aware of the more relevant fact that Vampire Durkon behaves like a Fully-Embraced Fiend in unguarded moments.
Out at Home: When Kate is tried for the murder of her classmate Skye, her idiotic father Herman investigates the case. He eventually announces in court that Kate is innocent because Skye isn't dead. At this point Skye, who'd been observing the trial incognito, reveals herself and confesses that she'd faked her death to frame Kate. She asks Herman how he'd found her out, and he replies, "Well, I couldn't figure out who killed you, so I just figured you weren't dead." Skye undergoes a visible, if silent, Sanity Slippage in the next panel.
Request Comics: The premise of #23. The LEGO man gets an equation correct, but he does the math badly.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: This page, which looks at "Lucky Moron Sequences". A man correctly solves the equation "24 + 12 + 6 + 3 + ... = ?" by getting 48, yet he thinks the three dots means "3".
Tales of the Questor: Quentyn Quinn believes that a bunch of human coins are forged because the heads face the wrong way. Unbeknownst to him, the direction the heads face is irrelevant, but the coins are indeed fakes.
Tower of God: In "Hansung's Examination", there's a test that's supposedly to find the right door within ten minutes, apparently without hints, but really you're supposed to notice the hidden hints that say you need to open any door within five minutes. One group passes the test because one of them supposedly communes with his weirdo god to find the right door, and they're left with the impression that's what happened. Some other groups also pass because someone in them is just impatient and just opens some door, which is sort of half right.
Trevor (2020): Dr. Stern tells Dr. Maddison to stop pretending like the latter is above what they’ve done, and that Dr. Maddison has as much blood on his hands as he does. He’s referring to the experiments done on Trevor and other test subjects, but doesn’t realize Dr. Maddison arranged for Trevor to escape and exact bloody revenge on him and the rest of the medical team.
In Weak Hero, Hyeonjin is the only member of Gerard's band who objects to taking on Sinma Entertainment as their agent. It turns out to be a bad idea, as the agents end up scamming the kids, but Hyeonjin was only objecting on the grounds that taking on an agent would be selling out.
xkcd:
- In this comic someone correctly calculates that three times nine is 27, but does it by multiplying three by the square root of 81, and then treating the radical like a long division sign and dividing it out. (The Alt Text suggests that they did know the answer the normal way, they just didn't know how to show their working beyond "because that's what it is", and so had to fudge something.)
- In this one the middle character deduces that since some people say that the Earth orbits the Sun and others that the Sun orbits the Earth, the truth must be that both orbit a common center. He is technically correct (they orbit a common barycenter) but his justification (that the truth is always "somewhere in the middle") is fallacious. The Alt Text has him make a similar accidentally-correct argument about wave-particle duality.

Web Original

One segment of AMV Hell 4 pokes fun at some E = MC Hammer equations written on a blackboard in Neon Genesis Evangelion by pointing out all the algebraic mistakes in them. It further notes that the final question actually turns out to have the correct answer, despite making several mistakes in the solution.
The "Sleepwaker" arc in Atop the Fourth Wall sees Pollo, Harvey Finevoice, and Linksano go What the Hell, Hero? when Linkara resorted to spying on them after discovering that 90s Kid was working with Lord Vyce. Turns out 90s Kid has good reason to be working with Vyce—the Entity has hijacked Linkara's body and used the pretext of fearing that Vyce would take the Entity's place to justify his actions.
In Bravemule (a Dwarf Fortress story that's out there even by DF standards), Kou the warrior is told to raise crops. This is the rationale she presents for watering the field:
Kou's narration: "Drowning fire that murders the crop murders the fire, therefrom I surmise drowning the seeds would unmurder the crop."
The Cynical Brit: TB concludes that Wheatley in Portal 2 is untrustworthy...because of his accent.
In the third campaign of Critical Role, while the party is split up, newcomer Deni$e comes to the conclusion that other newcomer Bor'Dor Dog'son is untrustworthy due to a general feeling that he was being "shady" and cagey with his answers about things, even though he constantly and consistently expressed a desire to just return home, which she didn't believe because it sounded too innocent. Everyone else was quick to correct her and argue for him, given their circumstances and his insistence. But Bor'Dor is indeed shady, concealing the fact that he's one of the enemy, and almost kills everyone when he's called out. Deni$e had the right idea, but had no way of justifying it, despite all the (retrospectively obvious) suspicious actions that he took, including immediately attacking the party when they met him.
In Danganronpa Abridged Thing, an "abridged parody" of Danganronpa: The Animation, during the first trial Touko Fukawa says the murderer has to be a guy, because only "cis white male" scum are capable of doing something so horrible. (She blows Naegi off when he points out that they're all Japanese). It later turns out that the murderer is male, but Fukawa reached that correct conclusion through an idiotic train of logic.
Played for Drama in Demo Reel, as Uncle Yo assumes Donnie's mother told him to stay out of Hollywood and that's why he hates it so much. He does hate Hollywood because of his mom, but only because the unfair system made her kill herself.
Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
- Before leaving for Namek, Krillin put in a massive life insurance policy, to be claimed by his nonexistent identical twin brother Juan. And since he does die on Namek, he claims the money. He doesn't enjoy his wealth for long; the government investigates him for insurance fraud, thinking that he faked his death.
- Bulma starts hitting on Trunks in episode 33. Who, unbeknownst to her but well known to the audience, is her Kid from the Future.
  Bulma: So hey, like just gonna throw this out there. You're really cute.
  Trunks: Well, you know, my mom always said I was a cute kid.
  Bulma: Oh, a momma's boy huh? I'll be your mommy. (saucy wink)
  Trunks: (Strained smile; internally) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
- After Goku uses Instant Transmission to remove Cell from Earth, King Kai comments "I'll see you soon, my friend". Cue Goku teleporting in with the soon to explode Cell.
Game Grumps:
- During their play of Punch-Out!! on Wii they remark that the developers can't be accused of racism because they, as a Japanese team, put in the self-deprecating Piston Hondo. They're right that such an accusation would hold little merit, but it's because of Bear Hugger as the game (just the Wii version specifically) was made by Canadian developers Next Level Gaming Inc. In fact, they went out of their way to pick Bear Hugger as the only character to return from Super Punch Out!!.
- When they are playing their first round of Among Us, during the first accusation there is little evidence to identify any Imposter but the most suspicion is falling on Charalanah which convinces Arin and Alpharad to vote for her. Dan spontaneously votes for Rubber Ross, despite there being no evidence or accusations against him, and is even called out for it: he simply cites he "frankly has never trusted Ross." Dan would turn out to be 100% correct that Ross was in fact one of the Imposters that round, alongside Charalanah.
In Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, Alucard concludes that since the Nazis were organized and their then-mysterious enemies are organized, their enemies must be Nazis. That he's correct only by sheer coincidence doesn't stop him from rubbing it in Integra's face when it turns out to be true. Later in the series, the one building in London the Major forbids being razed to the ground is the Holocaust Museum, because "no one will deny what we did." He's a Nazi, and a particularly bloodthirsty, war-hungry example at that. Of course he'd be proud. That he's also come to a morally and factually correct conclusion is happen-stance.
Paladin King Trevor from the Lamia Daughter Quest roleplay is a Deconstruction of this. He claims that the Citadel kingdom is evil, and he's absolutely right about that, but he's wrong about pretty much every particular. He believes that it's evil in an entirely mundane way, while it's actually a Genius Loci that feeds on periodic human sacrifices and acts like the Lily Weatherwax of heroic fantasy. Because of his misconception of Citadel, he ends up playing right into its hands, giving an army to one of its stooges and eventually becoming a pawn himself.
Jenny Nicholson's review of the book Trigger Warning, a book which lauds Audie Murphy as an example of the "hard man" who didn't whine about needing safe spaces, points this out about a quote boasting "his safe space was behind a gun." The book's characterization of Murphy is horribly off; he did suffer from PTSD and spent much of his later life as an advocate for awareness, treatment, and sensitivity on the subject, and his was so bad that he ended up using a Pillow Pistol as a coping mechanism, as he was unable to sleep otherwise. So his "safe space" was behind a gun... but not at all for the reasons the writers imagined.
Kitboga is a scambaiter popular on YouTube and Twitch. In one instance, a scammer directed Kitboga to install a 32-bit version of TeamViewer, which didn't work right, because his computer uses a 64-bit version of Windows. Because it wasn't working right, the scammer became convinced that he was talking to a scambaiter, which was true, but didn't have anything to with why TeamViewer wasn't working properly.
In NicoB's Let's Play of Ace Attorney Investigations 2, he figured out that Simon Keyes was the true mastermind of the game well before the reveal because he mistakenly thought that Simon had the same hair color as the murdered Isaac Dover (Dover had brown hair, Simon had naturally black hair but dyed it red) and hence had to be his son out for revenge which caused him to subsequently spot several more connections the mastermind had with previous cases. Ironically, Simon himself mistakenly thought that Isaac was his father too, making this a weirdly meta example.
Speaking of Ace Attorney, Lucahjin does this with alarming frequency in her own Ace Attorney LPs, following completely incorrect lines of logic but always arriving at the correct piece of evidence to present.
The Noob webseries and comics has Dark Avenger getting regularly beaten by Sparadrap's Invincible Incompetent. This leads Dark Avenger to believe that Sparadrap is actually an elite MMORPG player displaying Obfuscating Stupidity. One of the things Dark Avenger's superiors have against the theory is the reason why an elite player would pretend to be a Noob. Dark Avenger's reply to it is that Sparadrap is probably a spy for his faction's elite guild. Actual facts: Dark Avenger's defeats are 95% Sparadrap's Invincible Incompetent and 5% Sparadrap's elite player younger brother taking over his avatar. The brother in question has a record of showing up with his own avatar or taking over Sparadrap's at the right time on other occasions precisely because he'd been keeping an eye on Sparadrap's screen.
The Nostalgia Critic:
- He asks Evilina in the review of The Cat in the Hat (2003) if the movie has broken him. The reason why he's asking is because he has no jokes to make for a scene, but he's right for other reasons; like how it made a Papa Wolf hit a child and make her cry.
Outside Xbox: This happens several times during their Among Us streams, with people Thrown Out the Airlock based on speculation, poor logic or misunderstanding the game mechanics who did actually turn out to be an impostor. For some reason, Johnny Chiodini seems particularly vulnerable to it, with causes of death including "speculative vote from Alex Lolies that was the only one cast that round" and "other players assumed you had to be in a given room to sabotage it, and Johnny's audio wasn't working so they couldn't correct that assumption."
On Steam Train while playing No Time to Explain (2011), Ross brings up a friend he has in Perth who is Asian and Dan asks if he ever played joke and put pee-pee in his Coke. Naturally he's referencing an old nursery rhyme^note which is quite racist by today's standards, but Ross claims the guy actually did once pee in someone's drink as a joke:
Ross: Actually, wait a minute, he DID pee in someone's drink!
Dan: Oh my god, I Knew It!
Ross: In grade 9, he thought it'd be funny to pee in this guy's beer and tell him it was a European beer that was served warm!
Dan: Of course he thought it'd be funny! He's Chinese!
When Turpster plays Trouble in Terrorist Town with Sips, Hat Films and the other members of the Yogscast, he has a habit of murdering people without reason when playing as the detective. Quite a few times when he commits RDM (killing without good reason, long story short), the person in question actually was the murderer or a traitor, although it still counts as breaking the rules and earns him a lot of flak from the other players. He ends up pressing Lewis Brindley's Berserk Button in particular, and gets killed twice for this.
Wrestle Wrestle: Spoony insisted that the anger over the 2015 Royal Rumble wasn't about Roman Reigns winning instead of Daniel Bryan as much as that the WWE management decided who they were going to push over the wishes of the fans.
This happens to poor Zylus (another Yogscast member) whenever he plays Trouble in Terrorist Town. Rythian ends up committing RDM by saying that he just "knows" Zylus to be guilty — he is, but Rythian's only defence is "is it RDM when, in your heart you know it to be true". Lewis then kills him for being too quiet.
The Touhou Project Popularity Poll is an online poll held yearly by the Touhou Project fanbase. The 2021 edition became the subject of controversy due to Youmu, the character in first place, having an abnormal amount of #1 votes,^note which led to accusations of voter fraud. This prompted an investigation to be carried out into the poll results. However, when the results were adjusted , while it turned out that many characters indeed had fraudulent votes and some of them affected placements, Youmu wasn't one of them and remained the poll's winner.

Web Video

American High Digital: The men in "Salem Witch Trials" may be making their accusations based on the worst and most offensive aspects of the medieval ages, but for once it turns out they actually were right when their target teleports away.
In Sword Art Online Abridged, after Heathcliff gets outed as Kayaba Akihiko, he uses his system admin privileges to paralyze a large group of players before ranting about how stupid and self-destructive they are, ignoring his strategies and recklessly charging despite how it would get them killed, then turning around and blaming him for all their problems. Then one of the paralyzed players reminds him that he was the reason they're trapped in the game in the first place. Kayaba murders in response.
Toonami Abridged: In Sailor Moon Abridged, Usagi and Ami are accosted on the street by a decrepit, balding, creeping creature that Usagi cries is a methhead. No, it's actually just another evil monster and its appearance has nothing to do with being strung out... but coincidentally it also happens to love meth.
In this video, a woman tries to recap Return of the Jedi, but she hasn't seen it in a long time, and so can't remember what happens after the Ewoks tie Luke and Han up, intent on cooking them, and being told that they're Leia's friends by Han and Leia doesn't work. Her boyfriend points out that Luke is present, so the girlfriend correctly guesses that he saves himself and Han by using the Force. However, she thinks that he uses it to brainwash the Ewoks, when actually, he uses it to lift up C-3PO, making them think they'd angered a supposed god.

Right for the Wrong Reasons
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