"Engineer Timofeev has summoned a living tsar to his apartment. (listens to the reply) I don't drink!"
— Shpak phoning the police, Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession
Someone may be a total teetotaler, just enjoy an occasional drink, or they may even be a recovering alcoholic. But otherwise, they are totally sober for the moment. But, for some reason, they act weird. Ranting like a madman, not really thinking straight, or even a Not What It Looks Like situation. But someone catches up with them and they suspect they've been hitting the bottle.
It could be something like them just acting all unusual, having the smell as a result of them spilling an alcoholic drink on themselves, or even innocently holding a bottle or can. But then someone comes by at an inopportune time and suspects that they are drunk. There may be arguments over them to try and get them to stop drinking. Whether they smell or act unusual, the "drinker" tries hard to prove their innocence, usually by insisting that they're sober, but more often than not falling to deaf ears. And should the situation involve cops, expect them to end up taking a sobriety test. In more serious situations, what an observer perceives as drunkenness can actually be a medical emergency such as a stroke or diabetic shock.
It can be more often than not Played for Laughs, often as Cringe Comedy, but sometimes can be played dramatically.
Compare Mistaken for Insane (for when a character is mistaken for being insane), Mistaken for Junkie (where the character is mistaken for a drug addict), No More for Me (when someone thinks they are drunk, due to having witnessed something unusual), and Fake High (for when the affected themselves thinks they're drugged), and Playing Drunk (an Invoked Trope form, where a character deliberately acts drunk). Contrast Sorry Occifer, whose users often say "I swear to drunk, I'm not God."
No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: When Koichi uses Echoes ACT 3 to weigh down Kira's left hand from a distance, he loses his balance and stumbles awkwardly down the street with a giant invisible weight dragging down one side of his body, getting him pegged as an easy mark by two thugs who think he's had too much to drink.
Comic Books
- Avengers Disassembled: At the beginning of the story, Tony Stark is talking to the United Nations when, upon spotting the Latverian Ambassador, he suddenly goes on a drunken rant, suggesting wanting to destroy his country. This prompts the US President to fire Tony as Secretary of State and the UN to unanimously cancel their charter with the Avengers. Tony is a recovering alcoholic, but he's completely sober and can't understand what happened; it's later revealed he was enchanted by Scarlet Witch.
- Tintin: In The Secret of the Unicorn, when a character sees the ship being taken by pirates, he tries to warn his friend, who replies, "Nonsense, you're seeing things! You're drunk!". Ironically, he says it with a lateral lisp, implying that he's drunk.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: A very strange idea from Ami leads her companion at the time, who had experience with a drunk Ami, to question if she'd been drinking. She had not.
- Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past: Invoked. After stunning the wizards who were chasing Sirius and erasing their recent memories, Harry has another idea, and conjures a fountain of wine to stain their lips and clothing, so that no one will be suspicious about the memory loss.
- Trump Card: Regent abducts Taylor (actually Alibi) by drugging her and puppeting her body with his power, but between his lack of familiarity with her nerves, and her lack of coordination, she's stumbling and leaning on him as they exit the bus — so he starts talking about how he needs to get her home "before Mom finds out how much you've been drinking," and the bystanders lose interest.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Lola Bunny got into an accident while texting and driving. Vachir arrived at the scene and assumed she was drunk when she failed to walk in a straight line, but was confused when the breathalyzer showed she was clean. He brought Lola to the station and used another one, which said the same thing, at which point the cops realized she was just ditzy.
Films — Animated
- The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Played for Drama. After Tintin entrusts Captain Haddock with the slips of parchment leading to the treasure, Haddock tries to remain solid in his attempt to stay sober. Unfortunately, one of the villains ambushes Haddock while he's alone, smashes a bottle of alcohol over his head and steals the slips. When Haddock tries to tell Tintin what happened, Tintin smells the alcohol on him and believes he lost the slips because he's gotten drunk, briefly putting a rift between the two.
- The Chipmunk Adventure: Alvin and the Chipmunks have a phone conversation with Dave, during which they record specific words that he says to make Miss Miller think he wants him with them in Europe. When they try to play it, however, Theodore keeps messing up. The second attempt has Theodore play the tape in slow motion, leading Miss Miller to ask "David, are you drunk?".
- Coraline: The Jones family's upstairs neighbour Mr. Bobinski is a total eccentric, often doing stunts, calling Coraline "Caroline", and claiming his pet mice can talk. As such, Mrs. Jones initially thinks he's drunk when she first meets him.
- The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Discussed. When Reverend Clement Hedges claims his stash of vegetables were stolen by a Were-Rabbit, Victor snarks that Hedges has probably had too much wine.
- Encanto: Implied. When Mirabel tries to show Alma that the walls of Casita have been cracking, only for the walls to have repaired the moment they arrive, Alma reassures the guests that the magic is strong, "and so are the drinks". Keep in mind she's talking about her teenage granddaughter.
- Onward: While Ian, Barley, and the bottom half of their dad Wilden are in the van, the police stop them and ask for them to pull over. When Wilden suddenly comes stumbling out of the van, one of the police officers assumes he's drunk and asks him, "You had a long night there, buddy?"
- The Secret World of Arrietty: When Hara insists that she has seen tiny people (referring to the Borrowers), Jessica asks if she's had too much sherry.
Films — Live-Action
- The 1987 romantic comedy Blind Date has the main character Walter Davis going on a disastrous blind date with Nadia Gates, a woman who has a disorder which makes her easily intoxicated with alcohol. The date goes from with him getting fired from his job, getting stalked by her ex and getting mugged. After the latter event, he rants like a madman to the police when they arrive and ask him how much he's been drinking before making him do a sobriety test.
- Darby O'Gill and the Little People: Invoked. When Darby finds Michael knocked out towards the end of the film, he thinks Michael is drunk. When Michael wakes up, he is able to convince Darby he's not; Pony Sugrue set Michael up to appear drunk in order to take his job.
- Dumb and Dumber: Lloyd fills up several bottles' worth of urine and a traffic cop mistakenly thinks he and Harry have been driving drunk. He pulls them over and demands a sip of their beer, only to unknowingly drink Lloyd's piss.
- Flubber: Mr. Hoenicker questions Smith and Wesson on what happened when they were spying on Dr. Brainerd, and upon hearing their description of a cream and a spray that turns respectively a golf ball and a bowling ball into a Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball, asks them, "Were you drinking?" They deny it, and show him the goose-eggs they each got from being hit in the head by flubberized projectiles.
Smith: Two beers with dinner. Wesson had a white wine.
Wesson: With dinner.
Hoenicker: (clearly unconvinced) Uh-huh. - Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession:
- Fish out of Temporal Water Czar Ivan the Terrible is mistaken for Identical Stranger Ivan Bunsha, and his moody attitude, Hair-Trigger Temper, insistence that he is Ivan the Terrible, and refusal to recognize Bunsha's wife lead the latter to believe he is drunk.
- Later implied when Bunsha's neighbor Shpak, after learning that Czar Ivan the Terrible is really who he claims to be, phones the police:
Shpak (speaking on the phone): Engineer Timofeev has summoned a living Czar to his apartment... I don't drink!
- The Odd Life of Timothy Green: When Jim cheers for Timothy when he appears to be gaining the upper hand in a soccer game, Cindy's bitchy sister asks in disbelief if he's drunk.
- In The Thirteenth Floor, when Whitney uploads himself into Ashton, the latter is driving, so the car gets into an accident while Whitney is still adjusting to the surroundings. The policeman's first question, after hearing his vague explanation on what happened, is whether Ashton/Whitney was drunk.
- Tommy Boy: Defied. Tommy drives in his car, with Richard drinking heavily, fearing they're both about to lose the factory, when a cop car pursues them. After Richard throws up and making Tommy swerve, making the cops blare their sirens, Tommy, fearing he'll get blamed for drinking, keeps swerving until he stops the car, where they both run out and scream over being attacked by bees just to get the cops off their tail.
Literature
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: When Brother Benedict, a Muggle, encountered a magical beast known as a Jarvey (which he mistook for a talking ferret), it bit him on the nose and shouted, "Get out of it, baldy!" When he told the friar about it, the other man didn't believe him and asked him if he'd been drinking Brother Boniface's Turnip Wine.
- James and the Giant Peach: When a captain of a sailing ship witnesses the giant peach and the huge insects, he starts to rave about them. The Second Officer wonders if he's been drinking whiskey again.
- In Jo's Boys young John Brooke was unsure of how serious his sweetheart Dora was, so he asks her about feelings in a roundabout way. Dora confirming her love for him, this sends him to Cloud Nine. He acts so goofy that a busybody at the party thinks that he's drunk.
Busybody: I saw no wine at any of the spreads; but it is plain that young Brooke has had too much. Quite gentlemanly, but evidently a trifle intoxicated, my dear.
Narrator: Ah, so he was! but with a diviner wine than any that ever sparkled at a class-day lunch, though many collegians know the taste of it. - Like Water for Chocolate: At a party, the way Pedro stares at Tita gets her hot and bothered, that she distractedly picks up some Noyó liqueur to calm down. To prevent gossipy neighbor Paquita Lobo (who has picked up on Tita being flushed and agitated) from telling her strict mom that she is drunk, Tita describes in thorough detail how the liqueur is made. It works. This bit did not make it into the film adaptation.
- Mort: Mort decides to buy a drink at a pub and is convinced by the locals to order something called "scumble", which, unbeknownst to him, is nearly lethal to consume and potent enough to dissolve pennies. However, the drink has no effect as Mort is gradually becoming more real than reality, and thus he cannot be impacted by things he is unaware of. Unfortunately, time suddenly alters itself, which only Mort notices thanks to his Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, causing the patrons to believe he has at last become wasted as he panics about reality changing.
- My Weird School: In "Mrs. Lilly is Silly!", when Mrs. Lilly hears that Miss Laney has spilled some juice, she mistakenly think Miss Laney is The Alcoholic and makes a headline for the school newspaper that says, "Miss Laney has a drinking problem".
- In the final act of Scoop (1938), Mr. Salter makes the trek to Boot Magna, hoping to convince William Boot to sign a lifetime contract to the Daily Beast. Having declined an offer of transportation from the train station to the manor (because the driver was clearly not competent), he tries to walk there, but gets lost, and by the time he finds Boot Magna, he's so exhausted that he passes out in the hallway. The residents of the manor all assume that he's drunk, as they can't conceive of why he didn't take the ride that they sent for him.
- At the end of The Winter Queen, we last see Erast Fandorin wandering Moscow streets in a disheveled state and bumping into walls and people, who look at the young "drunkard" with condemnation. In reality, he is in a severe state of shock after witnessing his newly-wed and madly-loved wife being blown into pieces by a bomb meant for him.
Live-Action TV
- The Addams Family
- "The Addams Family Goes to School": Wednesday's teacher believes Gomez and Morticia are Alcoholic Parents and says that they might have been having too much "B-O-O-Z-E". Wednesday can spell, and says, "Booze!".
- In one episode, Uncle Fester thinks he's turned Pugsley into a chimp when he hasn't. Gomez thinks that Fester must be drunk.
- The Big Bang Theory: Howard becomes paranoid the military is after him, and while going out with everyone, he mistakenly believes his friends' car is an undercover vehicle and drives strangely to avoid being followed. This causes a cop to believe he's driving under the influence, and Howard is forced to prove he's sober, which isn't helped by his performance anxiety causing him to fail to walk in a straight line.
- The Brittas Empire: In "The Lies Have It", Brittas catches Carole trying to keep herself awake with coffee and believes that she's nursing a hangover from overindulging in a party she had the previous night, even telling her that he intends to give her a leaflet on alcohol abuse. In reality, there was never any party — the reason why Carole was having coffee was because she had been up all night taking care of her sick daughter.
- El Chavo del ocho: Occassionally, Don Ramon has been left walking in a daze in the courtyard (often by being hit in the head or spun around by the kids running around him), and Doña Florinda sees him, and angrily assumes he's drunk.
- CHiPs: Jon pursues a driver who won't pull over for his siren. When the driver gets out of the car, he slurs his words and Jon tries to arrest him for driving drunk. Then Bonnie arrives and assesses the situation. It turns out the driver is deaf.
- CSI: In one episode, a couple of teens back their vehicle over a college student they thought was drunkenly trying to attack them after they'd asked him to buy booze for them. Turns out he was deaf and couldn't read their lips because it was nighttime in a badly lit area. He was trying to get them to understand himself and they took his emphatic gesturing to be threatening. Sadly, the driver took it too far and also drove over him as they fled the scene, killing him.
- Extras: "Kate Winslet" has a moment of Cringe Comedy when someone sees Francesca walking unsteadily and makes a crack about her day-drinking, only to be informed that she actually has cerebral palsy.
- The Facts of Life: Tootie mistook Mrs. Garrett for being drunk when really she just came back from the eye doctor. The gossip Tootie spreads nearly costs Mrs. Garrett her job.
- Fawlty Towers: In "Gourmet Night", when the hotel has important guests expecting to be served a grand dinner, Polly tells Basil that the chef has potted the shrimps, soused the herrings, pickled the onions, and smashed the eggs in his cups under the table; and then she rolls her eyes strangely. Basil angrily whispers to her to ask if she has been drinking; but she actually trying to tell him discreetly that the chef is drunk.
- Frasier (2023): It's a Running Gag that every time Frasier is in a room with the provost, who strongly believes that academia needs to distance itself from the image of excessive drinking, he ends up doing or saying something to make the provost believe he has a drinking problem.
- Full House: In the episode "Just Say No Way", DJ goes to a school dance with her crush Kevin, where Uncle Jesse is scheduled to perform. Things go wrong when Kevin and some other boys drink beer and DJ tries to stop them, but they don't listen and spray the beer all over her. DJ tries to talk them out of it as she holds a beer can when Jesse appears, and she gets in trouble for drinking when she really wasn't. The rest of the episode has DJ trying to prove to Jesse and Danny that she was really innocent.
- Get Smart: A human-looking robot named Hymie takes a sip of alcohol, only to start malfunctioning as the liquid got his circuits wet. Max, who thinks Hymie is a human, believes Hymie is drunk and notes that he Can't Hold His Liquor.
- Gilmore Girls: In "S'Wonderful, S'Marvelous", Emily gets pulled over for talking while driving. While showing her liscene, the officer arrests her after (incorrectly) assuming she's a Drunk Driver. Emily's refusal to take a Breathalyzer test certainly didn't help.
- The Good Wife: Played for Drama in "Threesome". Jonas Stern is charged with a DUI wherein he punched the arresting officer. In actual fact, Stern went into a bar to get drunk immediately after the crash and the arresting officer took his initial low result with a breathalyzer as a false negative. Alicia figures out from other symptoms such as mood swings and forgetfulness that Stern is actually in the early stages of dementia.
- Home Improvement: One episode has Jill flirting with a male police officer to get out of a speeding ticket and dealing with her guilt over it and trying to get the ticket she rightfully deserved. The Stinger of the episode has Tim trying to do the same with a female police officer, just making an idiot out of himself and her telling him to take a sobriety test.
- Laverne & Shirley: In "Guinea Pigs", Laverne (who is at a party with her roommate Shirley) is very tired after having been part of a sleep study. A man at the party sees her struggling to stand up and being inattentive, thinks she's drunk, and threatens to ban her from the party.
- Law & Order: In "Conduct Unbecoming", a female naval officer dies during a party. Eyewitnesses describe her as being wobbly on her feet and almost staggering. Later a sailor pleads guilty to manslaughter because he had thought she was "available", had sex with her, and concluded he'd been too rough and killed her by accident. He turns out to be the episode's Red Herring when the autopsy finds that the woman's blood-alcohol level was zero. Her death was really due to bleeding in the brain caused by blunt-force trauma; the initial symptoms just happened to resemble those of intoxication.
- One Piece (2023): Invoked when Luffy gets accidentally poisoned. His captors successfully deflect suspicion by claiming he just had too much ale.
- Only Murders in the Building: In "Open and Shut", Charles gets poisoned by the villain which makes his limbs and tongue numb. He manages to crawl into the elevator but the other tenants assume he's on a drunken bender and do nothing to help him.
- Return to Paradise: In season one's "Killer Climate" several people assume that the Victim of the Week, Recovered Addict Byron Jones, had relapsed and was intoxicated by something he'd taken on the night he died. The truth was that he'd already suffered the head wound that later killed him, which was confusing him and affecting his behaviour. The murderer later planted drugs to help convince the police that Byron was using again.
- RFDS (2021): Played for Drama in season 2. Wayne responds to a girl having seizures, but hears noises that the doctor filling in at the clinic tells him is some drunk who wandered in and she locked in the back to sober up. The "drunk" turns out to be Wayne's diabetic brother Timmy, who went on a camping trip and accidentally left his insulin at home, and was well into ketoacidosis by the time he reached the clinic. He goes into cardiac arrest on the hospital flight, and turns out to have signed a "Do Not Rescusitate", forcing a helpless Wayne to stand by as he dies.
- Son of a Critch: In "Beer Necessities", Silver and Middle goad Mark into drinking a beer, but he's interrupted in the act when Principal Sister Rose suddenly finds them, sending all three boys scattering and causing Mark to spill the beer on himself. Mark did not manage to imbibe enough of the booze to actually get drunk, but since he's never been drunk before, he assumes that his panicked state is actually drunkenness. This causes him to panic more and badly affects his coordination, and thus between his stumbling around and the smell of beer on his shirt, his older brother Mike assumes that he's hammered when he finds him.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In "Spirit Folk", when the doctor is pretending to be a priest in a simulated Irish village, he mentions that he's made of photons (he's a hologram). A woman on one of the pews mutters that he must have "been at the sacramental wine".
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "The Night of the Meek", a normally-drunken mall Santa named Henry Corwin finds a magic bag that allows him to give any person the gift they always wanted. He takes the bag to a church and begins giving out gifts. When confronted by a police officer who asks if him acting like Santa Claus is because of intoxication, Corwin happily responds "Of course I'm drunk. I'm intoxicated with the spirit of the Yule, drunk with the spirit of the Yule, intoxicated with the magic and wonder that is Christmas Eve, I'm inebriated with joy and delight. Yes, officer, I'm drunk."
- Untold Stories of the E.R.: One episode featured a middle-aged man bringing his college-aged son who is seemingly heavily intoxicated into the ER, clearly irritated by the boy's antics and his group of friends. While the staff initially believe that the mostly incoherent man was just drunk, a trickle of blood coming out of his ear ended with one particularly alert staffer performing an MRI on him. It soon revealed that he wasn't drunk: he was shot in the head and the bullet went clear through his ear, punctured his eardrum and just missed any severely damaging/deadly portion of the brain. It was then removed and he was sent to recovery.
- Wellington Paranormal: The pilot episode opens with O'Leary and Minogue picking up a teenage girl who's been wandering around in a daze and puking and insisting that she's a demon called Bezuar. They assume that she's just a bit drunk or high.
Myth & Religion
- The Bible
- Books of Samuel: In 1 Samuel 1:9-28
, Eli the priest sees Hannah praying and mistakes her for a drunk because her lips are moving, but her voice is not heard. The first chapter establishes that the behaviour Eli suspected was common at this time. He probably caught more than one person wandering into the temple drunk, and made an innocent mistake.
- Acts of the Apostles: In Acts 2:1-38, the first Christians receive the Holy Spirit during the Pentecost. The people who were filled with the Spirit began to speak in tongues, which confused those who passed them by — many of which were foreigners. Some of them recognized the crowd was speaking their own native languages and were left bewildered. Those who did not understand any of what they were saying, however, jokingly said they had had too much wine and were just speaking gibberish.
- Books of Samuel: In 1 Samuel 1:9-28
Tabletop Games
- Call of Cthulhu adventure "Pursuit to Kadath". Reginald Carstairs III is attending a party with his fiancée, Amelia Van Slyke. Nils Lindstrom wants access to Amelia, so he uses his magical powers to alter the blood flow in Reginald's cerebellum and make him appear to be raging drunk. Reginald is put in a cab and sent home, leaving Amelia available for Lindstrom's malicious attentions.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate III: During a long rest in Act 1, Astarion will exhibit some signs of being drunk: being excessively happy and his speech being drawn out. One of the possible responses is asking if he's drunk, to which his response is no, but he did fight and exsanguinate a bear, so he's having an adrenaline rush.
- Control (2019): The Emergency Call Summary's mention of "transcorporeality" implies that a Telephone Teleport was occurring in the conversation / transcript in the Emergency Call Supplement:
Voice: I'm, um, inside the wires. I'm lost.Dispatcher: Ma'am, have you been drinking tonight?Voice: I feel like I'm stretching through the wire. Towards you. Don't hang up. I might go if you hang up.
- God of War (2018): When chatting with Brok, he'll mention how a strange person approached him offscreen who he describes as "sounding drunk but is probably just slow". He's of course talking about the Stranger who Kratos fights earlier towards the beginning of the game, who always speaks in a slurred and disassociated tone.
Web Original
- In Brig Scarlet Flamingo, on Amelia's second day on Las Estrellas, she acts very giddy and distracted and is slow to react, leading Joseph to assume Little Billy had too much alcohol the night before. In fact, she has just slept with Walter for the first time.
- Not Always Legal: The submitter of this story thinks an extraordinarily erratic, way-too-slow driver is drunk until they catch him reading a book at the wheel.
- Smosh: In "Worst Parents Ever", Ian claims he's a great father when he's playing a virtual pet game, only for the ghost of his talking pet hamster Charlie to disagree. Ian tells him he's probably just drunk (since Charlie is already The Alcoholic), but Charlie claims he's sober this time because booze is not allowed in heaven.
Western Animation
- 3-South: In "My Name Is Todd W.", Todd attempts to drink a beer to shake his reputation as a total loser, and fails horribly. He sprays beer on his face as the can opens, slips on a fallen poster, and falls out the window. He lands on the dean, who strips him of his resident advisor position and sends him to alcohol rehab.
- The Adventures of Tintin: In an episode of the animated series, two night watchmen in an aquarium tell the police that a pearl disappeared and came back. The police don't believe them and believe the men have been "hitting the bottle".
- The Simpsons:
- "Homer Loves Flanders": Flanders finally manages to befriend Homer, but quickly grows tired of his antics, so when Homer invites him to play golf, Flanders gets in his car and speeds off. He's promptly pulled over by Chief Wiggum for speeding, forced to take the "walk in a straight line" sobriety test, and arrested for drunk-driving when he innocently trips.
- "Treehouse of Horror VII", "Citizen Kang": When Homer uncovers a plot by the aliens Kang and Kodos to replace Bill Clinton as US President, they spray him and his clothes with rum so that anyone who he tries to reveal their plan to will dismiss him as a drunken fool.
- "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer": Marge makes Homer promise not to drink at the chili cook-off. After Homer starts hallucinating from eating a "Guatemalan insanity pepper" and runs off acting all crazy, Helen tells Marge about his odd behavior, leading her to believe that he'd broken his promise.
- In "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", when Rex Banner resorts to randomly interrogating people on the street to find the Beer Baron, he has Lou and Eddie arrest Ned Flanders for public drunkenness because he mistakes Ned's Verbal Tic for him being intoxicated.