The dark counterpart to the Magician Detective. Rather than using their knowledge of illusion and misdirection to help solve baffling crimes, these Stage Magicians use their skills for their own immoral agendas. Whether it's employing sleight of hand to pick pockets, hypnotizing a target into revealing valuable information, or setting up a massive spectacle on stage to lead an audience to believe they're still secure in some locked and bolted rig while they've already slipped away to commit murder, these crooked conjurors don't just fool the crowds, but law enforcement as well. Frequently responsible for pulling off an Impossible Theft with their Sleight of Handiness.
Not to be confused with Evil Sorcerer characters capable of actual magical feats.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dead Mount Death Play: Tena Sorimura, better known as the Phantom Solitaire, is a Phantom Thief who makes use of a bevy of Impossibly Awesome Magic Tricks for his various crimes, including theft and kidnapping, in hopes of drawing the attention of actual sorcerers.
- Kaitou Saint Tail: Meimi Haneoka, AKA Saint Tail, is a Magical Girl Phantom Thief who uses stage magic in her robberies. Her father is a stage magician and her mother is a former thief, explaining how she acquired her skills.
- The Kindaichi Case Files: The Arch-Enemy of Hajime Kindaichi is an extremely talented magician named Yoichi Takato, also known as the Puppeteer of Hell. In his first appearance, Takato uses his talent to take revenge on the magicians who caused his mother's (another gifted magician) death, and is almost always one step ahead of the police and Kindaichi every time. Any time the heroes think they have him cornered or he allowes himself be arrested, somehow Takato manages to escape. In every subsequent appearance Takato is The Man Behind the Man to several killers of the week, helping them commit their crimes and making seemingly impossible-to-solve Locked Room Mystery.
- Magic Kaito: The titular protagonist is a Phantom Thief who stages elaborate heists using his training as a stage magician. His skills include escapology, being a Master of Disguise, a variety of gadgets, and plain old sleight of hand to steal highly valuable items in hopes of finding the Pandora Gem and bringing his father's murderer to justice.
- Pokémon: Jirachi: Wish Maker: Butler is a stage magician who used to be a scientist working for Team Magma, vowing revenge against the organization after they threw him out of the organization when his experiments to resurrect a Groudon failed. Aided by his assistant/lover Diane, they attempted to capture Jirachi and use his powers to siphon energy from the Millennium Comet, hoping it would be enough to revive Groudon.
Comic Books
- Batman: While not a core aspect of their personas, several members of Batman's rogues gallery like Joker and Riddler possess knowledge of the magic arts, most notably escapology.
- The Flash: The villain Abra Kadabra uses advanced technology from the 64th century that can achieve feats indistinguishable to real magic to commit his crimes.
- Lucky Luke: in "Fingers", Luke has to deal with a kleptomaniac travelling stage magician. While the man is very much an affable Gentleman Thief who easily impresses the female members of his audience with his superficial good manners and suave charm, he just can't help himself to use his magician skills to rob his audience of their belongings. Not out of greed (as he also openly steals petty things), but simply for the sake of doing it.
- Watchmen: Moloch the Mystic was a magic-based supervillain who operated during the Golden Age of Superheroes and was a notorious nemesis to the Minutemen during the golden age of costumed adventurers. By the time of the comic's start, though, he's an old man who has hung up being a criminal. That doesn't stop him from being visited by the Comedian shortly before his plot-triggering suicide, which leads Rorschach to rough him up for answers during his investigation of Edward Blake's death.
Film — Live-Action
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Simon is a poor half-elf sorcerer who lives in the run down theater that he operates. He tries to make it to his next meal by performing some basic magic tricks to keep his audience distracted while he uses a mage hand spell to take the valuables out of their back pockets. His ruse is discovered when Edgin interrupts him and he's chased out of town.
- Now You See Me: The Four Horsemen are a group of Stage Magicians who are also a notorious Robin Hood-style heist crew that use their various illusions to commit their crimes, targeting wealthy and corrupt individuals to redistribute their ill-gotten earnings to people who need it more.
- "V/H/S: Viral": "Dante the Great" - John Mc Mullen is a mediocre magician who rockets to stardom after discovering a mysterious cloak that grants him actual magic powers. The cloak, however, requires frequent human sacrifices to keep working, which John provides by offering his assistants.
Literature
- Lincoln Rhyme: The Vanished Man features a serial killer known as Malerick, aka "The Conjuror", who murders his victims using torture devices inspired by stage illusions (one unfortunate soul is sawn in half) and relies on quick-changes to escape into crowds, as well as employing multiple techniques to try and misdirect the police as to what his next target will be.
- The Great Merlini: In Death From a Top Hat, escape artist David Duvallo used his skills with lockpicking to rob a bank in Paris in 1930. While he wasn't arrested or suspected by the police, two individuals, sleight of hand expert Eugene Tarot and occult scholar Cesare Sabbat, were able to piece together enough information to determine that Duvallo was the culprit and blackmailed him over it. He paid the two with a cut of his stolen goods, but years later they pressed him for more, forcing him to pull off another robbery. When they came to him again in 1938 demanding more money under threat of revealing his criminal past and ruining his reputation, Duvallo decided the only way to be free of his blackmailers was to murder them, killing both using methods that resulted in locked room mysteries.
Live-Action TV
- Magician Rudy Coby's 1996 special Ridiculously Dangerous features Coby as his superhero alter ego "Labman" escaping dangerous traps set by his eccentric rogues gallery. One of his enemies, Magic Dave, is a villainous expy of David Copperfield who imprisons Labman in a giant egg set to be crushed by a massive cinderblock.
- Batman (1966): "Zelda the Great/A Death Worse than Fate" - Zelda the Great robs banks so that she can pay crooked inventor Eivol Ekdal for new escape effects to add to her show.
- Columbo:
- "Now You See Him": The Great Santini is a stage magician who tried to erase his past as Stefan Mueller, a Nazi concentration camp officer. When his employer Jesse Jerome discovers this and proceeds to blackmail him, Santini decides to eliminate Jerome. He carries out the murder by secretly leaving the stage during his water tank escape, using a wireless mic set-up to make people think he's still in his dressing room until his grand return, disguising himself as part of the wait staff, then shooting Jerome in his office before returning to take his bows.
- "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine": Phony Psychic Elliot Blake is attempting to con the US government into thinking he has genuine powers of remote viewing that can be used against the Soviets. He pulls this deception off with help from professional magician and debunker Max Dyson, his former partner in the military. Blake, however, secretly resents Dyson for cutting a deal with the guards at a POW camp they were both held in that allowed the latter to get an early release while Blake spent another three years rotting, and murders Dyson with a guillotine rig in the magician's workshop, setting it up to make it appear like an accident or suicide.
- Criminal Minds: "Persuasion" — Hypnotist and mentalist Marvin Caul leads a group of homeless vagrants living in the tunnels around Las Vegas, ordering them to rob people and shoplift while giving him a cut of their takings so he can build up enough of a nest egg to afford a stage show at a major resort hotel. Caul's skills in manipulation and neurolinguistic programming means he can manipulate his followers into doing whatever he asks of them, including murder.
- CSI: NY: "Sleight Out of Hand" — Professional illusionist Luke Blade (portrayed by Criss Angel) murders people he believes wronged him in using methods inspired by classic stage magic (sawing one of his former assistants in half, attempting to drown his foster mother in a water tank)
- Deception (2018): Near the end of the series, Cameron Black discovers that his overbearing magician father was actually part of a criminal ring, planning heists in major cities that coincided with his international touring schedule.
- Diagnosis: Murder: "Murder With Mirrors" — David Baldwin fatally sabotages fellow performer Paul Madison's water tank escape by switching the handcuffs the latter regularly uses with a different pair his key won't be able to open. His motive: Madison stole the secret to one of Baldwin's greatest illusions and was planning to reveal it on television, and he was rude to Cleo Quinlin, another magician that Baldwin had feelings for.
- "iZombie: "Abra Cadaver" - double act Smoak and Meers (expies of Penn & Teller) murder goth magician Syd Wicked by slicing his throat with a razor-sharp playing card after he threatens to reveal the secret behind their signature trick.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: "Vanishing Act" — Traditional stage magician Dean Holiday grows insanely jealous that his fame is being eclipsed by the growing popularity of extreme illusionist (and clear David Blaine expy) Miles Stone. Wishing to rid himself of the competition, he learns of Stone's next planned stunt, where he will be buried alive for a month, and poisons the IV bags that will be providing him with nutrition during his entombment. As a final touch to demonstrate he is the superior performer, Holiday smuggles Stone's body out of the coffin before he can be examined and transports it to the Coney Island stage where Stone's mentor, an old school magician named Carmine, is doing a show.
- Monk: "Mr. Monk and the Magician" — Karl Torini (portrayed by professional magician Steve Valentine) has been smuggling drugs into the US using his illusion rigs. When Kevin Dorfman notices the discrepancy in his props' weight before and after overseas tours, Torini decides to kill him before the information gets out and he's exposed. After setting up a complex alibi suggesting he's out of state, he murders Kevin by strangling him with piano wire.
- The X-Files: "The Amazing Maleeni" — Herman Pinchbeck (aka "The Amazing Maleeni", portrayed by legendary magician Ricky Jay) and his protege, street magician Billy LaBonge, put together an elaborate con that involves faking the murder of Pinchbeck's already-deceased twin brother, framing a notorious loan shark for armed robbery, and emptying a bank vault which they had the perfect alibi for as they were supposed to be in prison at the time it happened, all with the ultimate end goal of lifting a federal agent's fingerprint so they can gain access to the Electronic Fund Transfer system.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate III: The "Arcane Trickster" Rogue subclass embodies this trope by using illusory spells to help set up opportunities to sneak, steal from, or strike your marks.
- Hitman 2: The Special Assignment "Illusions of Grandeur" centers around Agent 47 traveling to Mumbai to eliminate Basil Carnaby, an illusionist who hypnotized people into robbing wealthy people throughout the 60's and has been recognized by a past victim.
- No More Heroes (2007): Harvey Moiseiwitsch Volodarskii is a Russian stage magician who is also the 4th top-ranked assassin in the world. In addition to fighting with a pair of beam katanas, he also uses modified props like a deadly Zig-Zag cabinet and a giant saw blade to dispatch his victims.
- Skylanders: Nightshade is a master criminal with one or two fantastical tricks up his sleeve such as turning invisible for example. During the boss fights against him in both Skylanders: Trap Team and Skylanders: Ring of Heroes, he is able to create clones of himself to confuse the Skylander.
Nightshade: Hi, Skylander. Hi, Skylander! Hi, Skylander…
Visual Novels
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: The culprit of case 2, The Magical Turnabout, Roger Retinz, former stage name Mr. Reus, is a disgraced stage magician with a grudge against Troupe Gramarye for kicking him out. As a result, he orchestrates Revenge by Proxy against Trucy Wright, the granddaughter of the late Troupe Gramarye founder Magnifi Gramarye, by killing his apprentice Manov Mistree using a Rube Goldberg device and framing Trucy.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: Invoked in the episode "Zatanna". The magician Zatanna performs a trick in which she's supposed to make the Gotham mint and its money disappear and reappear, but when only the mint comes back and the money stays missing, she's accused of stealing it. However, it turns out the money was actually stolen by the skeptic Montague Kane, who figured out how Zatanna's trick was done and took the money after she'd made it 'disappear' so the police would focus on her while he fled the country.
- "Dan Vs.": The episode "Dan Vs. The Magician" has Dan, Chris, and Elise run afoul of Magnifico, leader of a group of magicians who rob audience members during their shows.
- Hong Kong Phooey: Professor Presto, also known as the Malevolent Magician, was the villain in one segment.
- The Mask: Animated Series: In "Magic", Stanley's old high school crush, Vicky Pratt, shows up in Edge City as a stage magician operating under the name "Davida Steelmine". The skills she's developed have not just made her a great performer, but also a master thief.
- While most of the villains of the week in the obscure Filmation series "Mission: Magic!" had genuine supernatural powers, a few like Modran and Pierre La Hoax were just ordinary people using their expertise in stage magic to commit daring robberies.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Abracadaver was once an ordinary magician named Al Lusion, until one fateful performance when a little girl accidentally exposed the secret to his tricks, and the performance spiraled out of control until he was killed by one of his own props. Decades later, when the theater he performed at was demolished, he arose as a zombie with actual magic powers, fixating on Blossom as the target for his revenge due to her resemblance to the little girl who humiliated him.
- Several criminal conjurors have shown up in multiple incarnations of the Scooby-Doo franchise:
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: "Hassle in the Castle" — Bluestone the Great is a former stage magician turned felon who uses his illusions to scare people away from Vasquez Castle by posing as a phantom, leaving him undisturbed while he searches the grounds for hidden treasure.
- The Scooby-Doo Show: "Scared a Lot in Camelot" — Stage Magician Zarko and his assistant disguise themselves as the ghosts of Merlin and a Black Knight, respectively, in a scheme to steal jewels from Shaggy's uncle.
- Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo: "The Sorcerer's a Menace" — Morgan the Magician uses sleight of hand to steal a priceless black pearl while relying on illusions to provide himself with a seemingly perfect alibi.
- What's New, Scooby-Doo?: "Riva Ras Regas" — Phylidia Flanders, former assistant to the (believed deceased) Rufus Raucous, wants to start her own show using the tricks she learned working under Raucous. After being denied the opportunity by hotel and casino manager Del Stone, she plans to ruin Stone's business by taking on the guise of Raucous' ghost, scaring away his customers and sabotaging other acts.
- Scooby-Doo! and the Goblin King: Krudsky fits this trope almost perfectly. Krudsky begins as a washed-up stage magician whose career is falling apart because nobody believes in his act anymore. Unlike a real sorcerer, he starts out as nothing more than a theatrical illusionist relying on cheap tricks, props, sleight of hand, and showmanship. His bitterness and desperation push him into villainy when he discovers genuine supernatural magic exists. After stealing the Fairy Princess’ wand, he uses his background as a performer and deceiver to pass himself off as an all-powerful magical figure. Even after gaining real magic, Krudsky still behaves like a stage magician at heart. He’s theatrical, flamboyant, loves dramatic entrances, and treats intimidation like part of a performance. His years of learning how to manipulate audiences make it easy for him to bluff, distract, and control situations. His attempted takeover of the magical world is essentially the ultimate extension of a crooked magician’s dream: going from fake magic used to fool crowds to actual magic used for power and domination.
- Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy!: Hypnotist Mr. Mysterio mesmerizes the crew and passengers of a cruise ship into helping him recover a meteor made of solid gold.
- Teen Titans: Mumbo is a member of the Titans' Rogues Gallery that uses magic for crime. He started as a minor character in "Sum of His Parts" before starring as the central villain in "Bunny Raven… or… How to Make a Titananimal Disappear".
- Time Squad: In "Houdini Whodunnit!?", Time Squad is assigned to correct Harry Houdini, who is using his illusions for thievery. Everyone around him is so impressed with his tricks that they don't hold that much of a grudge.
- Totally Spies!: "Do You Believe in Magic?" — The Great Kandinsky was a famous magician who faked his death after the secrets to his illusions were revealed. Now believed dead, he uses his effects to steal valuable works of art, believing his thefts will prove he's still the world's greatest magician.
Real Life
- Claude Alexander Conlin (aka Alexander, The Man Who Knows) was one of the most famous, highly paid magicians/mentalists of the early 20th century. He was also a con artist, serial bigamist, was arrested for several crimes over his adult life including extortion, tax evasion, and transporting bootleg liquor, and may have killed another man.
- Mediums and spiritualists of the 19th/early 20th century, if they weren't genuinely delusional in believing they could speak with spirits, were frauds that relied on parlor tricks coupled with emotional and psychological manipulation to swindle grieving families out of money with "proof" that they were contacting their dead relatives.