Misunderstandings. Miscommunications. Missed appointments.

They lead to more strife than any other thing I can personally think of. A misunderstanding can cause friction between allies, hearts to break, and even occasional “border disputes”. 

But in this case, we’re talking about the misunderstandings that cause the funny situations in fiction. The oft-used vehicle for creating (usually) non-violent conflict between characters. 

Misconstrued messages. Hearing only part of a conversation. Confusing someone’s gender. These are all time-honored ways of getting things wrong. And all have been used to great effect in anime, comics, sitcoms and many other forms of entertainment.

A personal favorite of mine is “hearing most, but not all, of what someone has to say, then filling in the blank with something completely wrong”. This is often used for romantic mix-ups, but it can also be used to induce unnecessary fear in the person doing the misunderstanding.

Another often used convention is the “broken telephone” – one person tells another to convey a message, and it ends up being fragmented so much that by the time it gets to the person it’s intended for, it’s completely wrong – yet they believe it’s truth.

 There are so many, it’s hard to list them all. But as cliché as they are, most people enjoy them, and they are here to stay. 

What are some of your favorite comic misunderstandings?

(I apologize for the kind of boring topic, but it’s been on my mind, and I’ve been busy as all get out at work.)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 1:30 am and is filed under Comedy, Richard Kim, art. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.