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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35989
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Show the character's motives involves a fact the character believes to be true, but which the reader has earlier seen is false.

Example from David Weber's Honor Harrington SF series: the Grand Alliance believes the resumption of the war between Manticore and Haven (which they eventually settled) was the result of the Mesan Alignment manipulating the situation and then later killing the man responsible for altering diplomatic messages in a traffic accident. From their point of view, the logic is completely plausible; the Alignment has been manipulating things behind the scenes for centuries, a resumption of the war was in their interest, and killing patsies is a standard operating procedure for them.

The Alignment leadership, however, is surprised to hear this accusation because they had nothing to do with it, as the readers (at least those who read about the incident in question in an earlier book), already knew. The man responsible did it for his own selfish goals, but it spun out of his control and he was killed in a legitimate traffic accident before he could be arrested and the truth found out.

In this case, what the protagonists believe about the incident flows from what they perceive to be the truth, which the reader knows is incorrect because they've seen how the belief the characters are acting on is wrong.

Another example, from television, and perhaps closer to what you're looking for. On _Agents of SHIELD_, the Superior, Anton Ivanov, starts his vendetta against Coulson because he's connected Coulson to all sorts of incidents involving aliens and other potential threats to humanity, and has come to the conclusion that Coulson is therefore somehow involved or responsible for these incidents. His facts are right; Coulson is connected to those incidents, but Ivanov has mixed up cause and effect. Coulson was _responding_ to the incidents, not instigating. From the audience point of view, Ivanov is nutty because they know the truth.

Original score: 7