Worrying for the Wrong Reason

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Butch: Alright. I'll jump first.
Sundance: No.
Butch: Then you jump first.
Sundance: No, I said.
Butch: What's the matter with you?!
Sundance: I can't swim!
(Butch starts laughing hysterically.)

Butch: Are you crazy?! The fall will probably kill you!
—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

One character expresses some concern about a situation. Another character corrects them, telling them what they should really be worried about. Not to be confused with Skewed Priorities, which is about being disproportionately concerned over something comparatively trivial, or with It's All About Me, which is about putting one's own interests ahead of everyone else's. This trope is about a character who has a legitimate fear that is then replaced with another legitimate fear.

A subtrope of Right for the Wrong Reasons.

Examples of Worrying for the Wrong Reason include:

Advertising

  • This Castlemaine XXXX advert.

First fisherman: There aren't any sharks in here, are there?
Second fisherman: Nah. Crocodiles ate all the sharks.

Film

Because that pipe doesn't go to the marshmallow room; it goes to the fudge room!

Literature

  • When the Animorphs find themselves on a cliff on the meteor-wrecked Hork-Bajir planet, they notice the planet's molten core far below them. One character worries about the possibility of falling into the magma. Ax says that this won't happen—if they fell, they'd be vaporized by the heat long before they reached it.
  • Discworld:
    • Making Money introduces the drink Splot, a sort of Klatchian Coffee Up to Eleven. People are often reassured when they hear Splot is nonalchoholic... until they're told it's because "alcohol wouldn't survive."
    • And in The Last Continent, there are very few poisonous snakes in XXXX... because most of them have been eaten by the spiders.

Live-Action TV

  • Firefly: When Serenity's engine breaks down, shutting down life-support, the crew worries that they'll suffocate. River informs them that they don't have to worry about that; they'll freeze to death long before the air runs out.
  • On an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xander is in a panic because he has been cursed with a host of diseases. He's most stressed about the syphilis. Anya says comfortingly:

It'll make you blind and insane, but it won't kill you. The smallpox will.

  • Played with in Red Dwarf when the captain of the ship is talking with the ship's A.I about the crimes they are imprisoning the main characters for (they are innocent of those crimes) and then adds that they committed other crimes that have an equal imprisonment time.

Newspaper Comics

  • Recurring joke in Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!. "[Planet Name Here]... Isn't that the planet with the giant poisonous snakes?" "Good heavens, no. Those were all wiped out by the giant poisonous tarantulas."

Recorded and Stand Up Comedy

  • Peter Kay's standup act relates the story of a meal interrupted by a cellphone call from a child who's scared to go to sleep because of monsters in his cupboards. Our hero tells him he needn't worry about monsters in his cupboard - it's burglars breaking into the house he should be worried about.

Video Games

  • In the computer game Day of the Tentacle, Dr. Fred tries to send the main characters back in time using his... er... highly experimental time machine. Just before he turns it on, he and Bernard have the following exchange:

Bernard: Have any people ever been hurt in this?
Dr. Fred: Of course not!
(Grins all around.)
Dr. Fred: This is the first time I've ever tried it on people!

Web Comics

Ennesby: Uh-oh. Those look like real police.
Tagon: Uh-oh. Elf is smiling at them.

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