• Big Finish Doctor Who: "Blind" Maurice in The Church and the Crown. Later Maurice the Leper.

Examples by creator:

• In one of Horacio Altuna's Sex Comedy comics, a woman is walking up to her apartment when she notices a blind man with a cane sitting in the hallway. She decides to play with him by removing several articles of clothing with no reaction from the man before she leaves. The guy then gets up and takes off his blind-man glasses.

Examples by title:

• In 52, Ralph Dibny believes that minor villain Professor Milo is faking the need for a wheelchair so he can disguise a mystical artifact as one of the wheels. Ralph then rips off the wheel since he needs it for a ritual that will supposedly revive his late wife Sue. He is horrified when he realizes that Milo wasn't faking his disability. Milo really needed that wheelchair since he lost both of his legs.
• Rose the bird in Angel Love. She does get injured by a cyclist while Wendy teaches her how to fly but continues to have Wendy pamper her long after her foot heals.
• Subverted in Daredevil. Just about everyone who suspects Matt Murdock is Daredevil thinks he fakes being blind to throw off suspicion. This is probably because it's a much easier leap to make than "he has some really crazy Disability Superpower action going on."
  • When Foggy Nelson finally found out Matt's secret life, he snapped at Matt to "take off the glasses and drop the act" and ranted on how it felt to be treating Matt as if he was blind for years. Matt has to quickly relate he really is blind.
  • A possibly unintentional example during Mark Waid's run: Daredevil assumes his Evil Counterpart Ikari has the same disability as him because he has the same Super-Senses. Ikari ends the illusion when he suggests that Daredevil grab a red bat to use as a weapon, at which point Daredevil realises he's screwed.
• Dark Victory has Carmine Falcone's daughter Sofia fake being paralyzed to hide the fact that she's the Hangman.
• Doom Patrol: Near the end of Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol (1987), Niles Caulder's monologue towards Cliff Steele about how he had deliberately caused the accidents that created the original Doom Patrol and had orchestrated every major event the team had been through at that point includes Caulder confessing that he had regained the ability to walk a while ago because of his nanomachines and had pretended to still need his wheelchair up to that point.
• In one EC Comics story, a woman pretends to be paralyzed in an accident to gain control over her husband. She plays the role flawlessly for three months, then a fire breaks out in her house when she's alone and she learns that her legs have atrophied.
• Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion: "The Mystery of the Missing Bride", the main story of the comic's first issue in its erstwhile title of Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, has a man in a wheelchair named Sebastian Langfrey who reveals to Laura Chandler that he can actually walk.
  Laura: I'm not afraid of you. What can you do to me?
  Sebastian: What can I do? You see, my dear...I'm only crippled when it suits me!
• The mysterious Blind Chess Player in The Invisibles may actually be Satan, Enoch, or another character in the comic itself, but he definitely isn't actually blind. Positively the reverse.
• Marshal Law: Marshal Law's original Mission Control Danny Mallon, supposedly paraplegic due to injuries received in an earthquake, is actually faking the disability to avoid revealing that he has superpowers, and is the Sleepman, the serial killer Law pursues throughout the initial miniseries.
• New Warriors: Impulse had his back broken in a battle with the Galactus herald Terrax and the Psionex story in Annual #4 shows him using a wheelchair. After Night Thrasher and Rage drop by to warn him against rejoining Psionex, it is revealed that Impulse had regained use of his legs weeks ago but chose to stay in the wheelchair because he couldn't trust himself to return to his old ways.
• In The Question, Richard Dragon acts like he needs a wheelchair. This likely helped when he later went on to train the wheelchair-bound Oracle.
• Rawhide Kid villain the Masked Maverick was really a rancher named Mason. Mason had been crippled in an accident and confined to wheelchair years earlier. After suddenly regaining use of his legs, he adopted the identity of the Masked Maverick and started rustling cattle to rebuild his failing fortune, keeping his regained mobility a secret.
• In Red Robin, Vicky Vale was onto the fact that Tim Drake was the title character along with the rest of the Batfamily's identities with the understanding that they are all interconnected, so he engineered an assassination attempt he knew was coming to be at a very public event and used crutches in his civilian identity for months. The plan being to spend a year realistically and publicly recovering from the shooting while Red Robin was publicly working as a hero.
• In an issue of Runaways, a hostage shouts, "Don't shoot me! I have diabetes!"
• Superman character Lori Lemaris used a wheelchair with a blanket on her lap to hide the fact that she's actually a mermaid.
• In Sweet Tooth (2009), the man calling himself Walter Fish eventually reveals that he killed the real Fish and took his identity, along with his crutches, which he uses to appear crippled.
• Thor (2014): Two SHIELD agents figure out Jane Foster is the new Thor, but incorrectly assume she is faking her cancer. Jane eventually manages to convince them she isn't Thor and they leave. Hilariously, a throwaway line has one of them mentioning she has a hunch that Daredevil might be a blind lawyer from Hell's Kitchen, and her partner says, "We're really terrible at this job, you know that?"
• In early issues of Thunderbolts, Karla Sofen, a.k.a. the supervillain Moonstone, deliberately avoided using her ability to phase through solid objects in her new heroic identity of Meteorite, as this would limit the risk of people comparing Meteorite to Moonstone and could be a useful means of taking her enemies off-guard with an unexpected power.
• Charles Xavier in Twisted Toyfare Theatre has been shown to do this a few times; like jumping up and running when he was caught using his mental powers to cheat at Blackjack.

Examples by creator:

• A.A. Pessimal: Miss Ethylene Glynnie is a graduate Assassin who has returned to the Guild School as a resident tutor. Having heard that she is totally deaf, the girls of Raven House plot mayhem, sure in the knowledge that their Housemistress won't hear a thing. They are right. She cannot hear a thing. But she has made sensitivity to vibration take the place of hearing. She also has an Igorina-like ability to appear in what is to her the completely right place to be. Which for the girls is often the place they don't want her to be in. Miss Glynnie also teaches music in the Guild's music school. Specifically, percussion. Favoured girls also learn what else a set of drumsticks can do, with care.

Examples by title:

• Bastard (Harry Potter): Nobody knows whether Dumbledore is short-sighted or long-sighted; either way, people assume that he's lost without his glasses. In reality, his glasses are enchanted in order to let him see the traces of cast charms.
• A beacon in the dark: Izuku lost his sight when he turned four, yet Katsuki accuses him of faking his condition in order to garner pity and get into U.A. Izuku's reaction to this causes Katsuki to have a mild Jerkass Realization.
• The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Service Dog", Bolt encounters a chihuahua named Carmen who admits to being a fake service animal. Carmen wears a service dog vest so her owner can feign disability in order to bring the chihuahua wherever she goes, as well as get free bus rides she's not entitled to. Technically, Penny and Bolt qualify as well while participating in a dubious program allowing sighted people to experience what blind people go through during the course of the day, though this is part of a charity venture.
• Burning Bridges, Building Confidence: Lila falsely accuses Cole of faking her vision problems (even when Cole is very noticeably missing an eye). Ironic, given how Lila herself has used this tactic, having feigned tinnitus, arthritis, and a sprained wrist in order to garner sympathy from her classmates. Even more ironically, despite being fully aware of Lila's true nature, Adrien still buys into her claims about Cole. Mostly because he blames Cole for supposedly 'causing unnecessary drama' at their school by standing up for herself and Marinette.
• A Clear Pattern of Behavior has Izuku attempt to Invoke this on Katsuki's behalf, claiming that Katsuki wasn't ignoring all of All Might's efforts to warn him off from using excessive force so much as that he couldn't hear him. Katsuki doesn't realize his intent and immediately shoots down his efforts:
  Izuku: Um, All Might? I'm not sure he can hear you, he was right next to the explosion. And he was kind of hard of h—
  Katsuki: Don't you dare call me deaf, you deku! I was winning—
• Conversations with a Cryptid: Izuku accuses All For One of feigning his blindness to a certain degree, considering that he could still correctly perceive All Might's facial expressions multiple times at Kamino Ward. He, at the very least, has a capability to recognize his surroundings.
• Dæmorphing:
  • In Carry on Wayward Son, Tobias pretends to have a bad leg so Visser Three will think he's unfit to be a host.
  • Used longer by Loren. As in the source series, the morphing power repairs her eyes and restores her sight, but she continues living her life as a blind woman for months using a hologram.
• In Eleutherophobia: How I Live Now, Tom-as-Essa tells Efflit that he lobotomised Tom, and "proves" it by flopping onto the floor as soon as Yeerk-Cassie leaves his brain.
• Fire and Ice and the Occasional Wayward Spell: In order to break off from the group and avoid revealing his dragon form to them, Jake claims to have a head injury, rendering him unable to follow them.
• Fractures (ATLA): Upon hearing that Prince Zuko is scarred, wheelchair-bound, and frighteningly thin, the Gaang and White Lotus wrongly assume that he's either faking or exaggerating the extent of his disabilities in order to exploit this. He's not.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: After being raped by Rhouglar, Lady Ishol pretends that the trauma has turned her into an Empty Shell, so that her Rebel captors will drop their guard around her, allowing her to rescue her husband and escape.
• In The Handkerchief Files, Gandalf speculates that Óin's deafness is actually this, since he notes that Óin has no trouble understanding the other dwarves even when everyone is shouting at once.
• the high road (Miraculous Ladybug): Marinette exploits the fact that this is one of Lila's favorite tactics by pretending to be taken in and going out of her way to ensure she's fully accommodated... regardless of how this impacts the rest of the class.
• The Mortal Son: Inquisitor Ahmazzi leans heavily on a cane he has no need for whatsoever. It's quite an effective ruse as he really is ridiculously old, just a lot more physically capable than he pretends to be.
• Soliloquy: Matt has to desperately hide his secret identity when the precinct is attacked. During Bakuto's wave of the attack, Matt hangs back with Foggy, and they help Karen and Trish attend to a maimed Claire, while Luke and Jessica fight Bakuto and his men to keep them back while Misty and Matt lead the others out to safety. Once outside, Matt plans to slip into an alleyway to change into the Daredevil suit, but is forced to resort to his original costume because there's not enough time to change into the red armor before he has to rush in to keep Murakami away from Karen.
• In Troll Cops, the Nefarious and Notorious Mr. Pupa uses his wheelchair to lull his enemies into a false sense of security before making a getaway on his robotic legs. In a twist on the trope, his disability used to be genuine, before the secret operation that gave him the aforementioned robotic legs.
• In Twas a Dark and Stormy Night, Marybel Duckett, one of the art thieves, really was injured in a car accident but her injuries were reported to more severe than they really were and faked her disability to throw off anyone who might suspect her being an art thief.

• In Balto III: Wings of Change, Boris falls for a female goose named Stella but he's afraid to fly. He lies to her and tells her he's too injured to fly.
• In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Rufus Shinra always sits in a wheelchair and is covered in a long cloak, making him appear to be crippled and highly disfigured. That way Kadaj constantly keeps turning his back to him, which comes in handy in the end, as he can stand, walk, and use guns without many problems, at least for a short time. He is actually sick with Geostigma, but not to the extent that he pretends he is.
• This is why the Roma's haven beneath Paris in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney) is called the Court of Miracles: many of its inhabitants work as beggars in the city above, and often pretend to have some disability (being blind, lame, etc.) to gain sympathy and thus more generous donations from the citizens. Then, when they go home, their disabilities 'miraculously' disappear. It's (loosely) based on the actual Court of Miracles detailed in the Real Life section.
• In Rio, the Card-Carrying Villain cockatoo Nigel takes advantage of this. At first, he looks just as an old and sick bird being treated at a birds rehabilitation and research centre in Rio de Janeiro. Later, after taking active part in Blue and Jewel kidnapping, he shows himself as really is: a very dangerous sadistic janitor with cannibalistic tendencies.

• There have been a few angles over the years where a supposedly injured wrestler, standing nearby with crutches, will suddenly run into the ring and use the crutches to attack the person he's feuding with. Sometimes, it will be a wrestler returning from a lengthy absence due to an actual injury.
  • This was done in an utterly tasteless manner by WCW when Buff Bagwell used a wheelchair after a major spinal injury. Bagwell called the man who injured him, Rick Steiner, to the ring and forgave him... only to rise from the wheelchair and betray Steiner immediately afterward, turning this into yet another nWo angle.
  • ECW's "Sandman gets blinded" angle. The Sandman was apparently blinded in a match with Tommy Dreamer, and to help sell the angle, stayed at home for a month, never having contact with another human being apart from his wife— his commitment to the angle was phenomenal. Then he came to the arena to announce his retirement, and when he got to the ring, ripped the bandages off and beat the living crap out of Tommy Dreamer.
• Doink the Clown earned his first major feud when he faked an arm injury to gain sympathy from Crush, who had been speaking out about the clown's recent string of practical jokes and that they might hurt someone if he isn't careful. Crush agreed to let Doink alone... until he realized (after waking up at the hospital) that he was suckered into a severe beating with a fake prosthetic arm, leading Crush to vow bloody revenge.
• An infamous Brother Love show saw him play the part of a charlatan, hiring an actor to pretend he was blind and lame, before ordering him to see and walk on command.
• At the climax of the AEW championship match at AEW Revolution between Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley, Jericho (who'd stabbed Moxley in the right eye with a spike several weeks earlier) blinded Moxley in his left eye as well, leaving Moxley unable to see Jericho to pin him, only for Moxley to pull the eyepatch off his right eye and reveal that it had healed by now. He promptly beat Jericho to become champion.

• The traditional folk song "The Beggar", as recorded by Steeleye Span:
  Sometimes we call at a rich man's hall,
  To beg for bread and beer.
  Sometimes we're lame, sometimes we're blind,
  Sometimes too deaf to hear.

• Simon Fairchild of The Magnus Archives walks with a cane, but seems to use it for the sole purpose of reinforcing his image as a harmless old man. While he is old (a few centuries old in fact) he's quite spry, and one of his victims notes that he only really uses the cane when he notices people looking. And he is far from harmless.

• The Lone Ranger: When posing as an elderly Prospector, the Ranger would place a stone in his shoe to force himself to walk with a limp.
  • In one episode, former sheriff Baldy Bronson was injured and unable to walk afterwards. He recovered but never told anyone, so that he could commit crimes and escape suspicion due to being in a wheelchair.
• The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: In "The Case of the Baconian Cipher", Holmes realises the man pretending to be his wheelchair-bound uncle is a fake when he notices fresh dirt on the soles of his shoes.
• Troll Cops: The Nefarious and Notorious Mr. Pupa uses his wheelchair to lull his foes into a false sense of security, before escaping on his fully functional robotic legs.

• In Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Maniac wears an eyepatch despite having two functioning eyes. He pretends to lose a Glass Eye as a distraction several times.
• Some stage versions of And Then There Were None place Judge Lawrence Wargrave in a wheelchair, leading to a dramatic reveal of the murderer.
• Used as early as Henry VI part two, when Gloucester proves that a man who claims to have been divinely cured of blindness is a charlatan.
• In The Man Who Came to Dinner, Whiteside's doctor pronounces his injuries fully healed by the end of the first act, but he insists on keeping his recovery a secret so he won't have to leave town. So he stays in his wheelchair for a while longer.
• Used in We Must Kill Toni by a character in a wheelchair. Although he is injured, he exaggerated his injuries and can walk a few steps.

• Ike, the owner of the titular midway from Bad Day on the Midway, was supposedly paralyzed and used a wheelchair even before his accident that left him in a coma, and even his own wife, Dixie, believed this was the case. However, Dixie can find Ike's diary where he confirms that he is able to walk, but he faked being crippled because he wanted to preseve his strength in case he ever had to fight his enemies (like Communists). Ike even used this excuse to avoid having a baby with Dixie, feeling that raising a child would suck away his energy too much. The official strategy guide offers the alternate suggestion that in actuality, Ike was incredibly afraid of intimacy and created a psychosomatic paralysis to avoid physical contact with Dixie, though he could still walk if he had to.
• Quaestor Verus from Baten Kaitos Origins is a retired war hero who has a limp and thus needs a cane. At the end of the game, he tosses away the cane and stomps the ground, showing his leg is perfectly fine. This highlights just how far he went to deceive others, since the limp is far from the only thing he was lying about to everyone.
• Gehrman, the First Hunter, from Bloodborne is a one-legged old man who mostly comes off as senile and spends most of the game in a wheelchair. Then comes the end when he offers you a chance to leave the dream. If you refuse, you'll soon learn that the loss of his leg is no impediment.
• Played for laughs in the non-canon after-credits end to Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Woods, who is in a wheelchair because his knees were shot out during the story line, jumps up out of the chair when M. Shadow asks if he's ready to rock. Menendez (the guy who shot Woods' legs) asks, shocked, "What the fuck?" Woods' response? "Oh, that shit? Nah, I'm just fuckin' lazy."
• Colonel Dijon of The Colonel's Bequest was apparently wounded and rendered unable to walk during the Spanish-American War. You can see him stand and/or walk under his own power at two separate points in the game.
• Monaca from Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is revealed to be this at the end of the game (her Room Full of Crazy is only reachable by ladder). She did have her legs broken by her abusive father and brother in the past, but acted as though she'd lost complete use of them to make herself seem harmless and more easily manipulate others. It's likely she was crippled for real when the bottom half of her body is crushed under a pile of rubble at the end, and she's in a wheelchair again in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School.
• Belger, the final boss in Final Fight, is in a wheelchair at the fight's start. He does this to lure his victims into a false sense of security before he shoots them with his crossbow. (It also makes it easier to use Jessica as a Human Shield.) Partway through the fight, the player smashes his wheelchair and Belger continues the fight on foot.
• Kliff Undersn from Guilty Gear is an incredibly old man, and while he's clearly a badass, much of his absurd strength has faded with age...until he uses his abilities to temporarily restore himself to his prime.
• Inverted in Emi's route of Katawa Shoujo. She absolutely refuses to be seen in a wheelchair despite her disability, and will painstakingly wear her prosthetic legs if she has to step outside.
• Possibly with Swain in League of Legends; as a joke, his /dance has him check to make sure no-one's watching before tossing his cane away and dancing, and alt skin that makes him the Noxxian high general has no limp.
• Implied with Vitruvius in The LEGO Movie Videogame. In the missions "Flatbush Rooftops" and "Infiltrate the Octan Tower", he sarcastically remarks that the thin ledges he's sidling across don't have anything dangerous going on at all, which makes Emmet and Batman question whether or not he's actually blind.
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: Eiji Mitamura, a Seiryu Clan and Palekana spy, uses a localized anesthetic to feign being wheelchair-bound in order to win Kasuga's sympathies, due to Kasuga's history of taking care of the physically-frail son of his former patriarch Arakawa. By the end, after the whole plot has been thwarted, he acknowledges the irony of having actually injured his ankle while attempting to hide.
• Peter Stillman in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty who faked his disability to avoid facing the families of the victims of a bomb he was unable to defuse. By claiming to have been seriously injured himself, he's seen as another victim, not the guy who fucked up.
• Red Dead Redemption 2: In Saint Denis you can encounter beggars who claim to be blind. Pointing a gun at them will show if they're blind or not, since the fake ones will be startled by the sight of the gun. By the time you press them further they will reveal their act and run away.
• In The Roottrees are Dead, Lucinda pretends to use a wheelchair and be "cured" of her disability by Miracle Jr. as part of his "miracle healing" scam.
• Shenmue II: In Kowloon, Ryo is challenged to fight a man in a dark room. His opponent turns out to be the same blind elderly man he met earlier, who reveals he's not even blind at all, but pretended to be in order to hone his remaining senses in his martial arts training.
• SLAMMED!: Alex Dobbs was kicked in the head as a child as part of a storyline, and no one outside of the upper-echelons of the GWA know for certain that it's an act.

• Ace Attorney:
  • Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth's Quercus Alba. Ironically, faking his need to walk with a cane has given him an actual bad back, as he is constantly stooped down while moving in that fashion.
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Machi Tobaye is not actually blind, but Lamiroir, who is thought to be sighted, is.
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Armie Buff actually was disabled for a time following a fire that claimed her mother's life and left her crippled, but she regained the use of her legs a few months prior to the events of the game. She stayed in her wheelchair because she was too scared to go outside, having developed an overwhelming fear of fire. Thanks to Apollo and Athena, she gains the courage to stand on her own two feet again.
• The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty: Man Sui says she faked being mute to avoid Yin San suspecting her, especially since she knew Yin San is a trafficker, and because she's afraid that he'd ask too many questions. However, she also told the other kids she did it because it's easy for people to trust the mute.
• Beatrice Frega from Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is completely blind because of an accident some years ago, and this is used by the defense to argue that she couldn't have committed the murder she's accused of. However, she can see through the eyes of her demonic familiar, who is always close to her and hidden from other people via an invisibility spell.
• What a Legend!: Lana pretends to have difficulty standing without her staff, as part of her old beggar disguise. Her eyepatch is real enough, though.
• Zero Time Dilemma: Zero II spends the majority of the game pretending to be blind, deaf, mute, and in a wheelchair. This puts him so far Beneath Notice that not only do the other characters almost never acknowldege him (since what would be the point in trying to talk to someone who can't hear or respond?), but neither does the camera.

• In BIONICLE (2015)'s online animations, the Protector of Fire appears as a hunched, robe-wearing elder walking with a stick. When he decides it's time to start Tahu's training, he throws off his robe, straightens up, and reveals that his "hump" was in reality a shoulder-mounted gatling gun tucked under the robe.
• Dayum:
  • In "Types of Kids at the Dentist Portrayed by Minecraft", Carlos tries to pretend he has no arms as an excuse for not brushing his teeth.
  • In "Types of TikTokers Portrayed by Minecraft", the “Mental Illness Faker" pretends to have Tourette's.
• SparkTales: The titular mother-in-law from "【Furious MIL Demanded $2800 Allowance】 I Told Her 'Your Son Has Passed!' Her Reaction Was Priceless!" is revealed at the end to have been faking a bad leg to mooch off of Daiki's salary and squander it on gambling.

• Erma: The Tengu Monster Lord Osamu looks like a heavily stooped old man who walks with a cane. In his first appearance, however, he effortlessly massacres a group of youkai, then settles back into his hunched posture and shuffles on. Judging by the terror he inspires in his subjects, they're aware of the ruse.
• Feralnette AU:
  • Lila fakes having various disabilities in order to manipulate others into doting on her and catering to her whims. This includes making up a 'chronic lying disease' as a catch-all for when she's caught in her most Blatant Lies.
  • During the Enough Rope, Alya accidentally reveals that she knows about her so-called lying disease, prompting Ladybug to call her out for treating Lila as a 'trusted source' for the Ladyblog even while knowing that she has trouble with telling the truth. Lila then paints Ladybug as ableist for pointing the problems with her claimed condition, while also guilt-tripping Alya by implying she'd be a horrible friend if she held her responsible for anything she did.
• Rachel from Tower of God was supposedly paraplegic after Hoh stabbed her in the back and Yu Hansung prevented any treatment to stop Bam from climbing the tower. Then she stands up and pushes Bam down the "The Wineglass", the lake their test takes place in. This is only the beginning of the Wham Episode.
• Unsounded: When Sette talks about teaching fellow young thief Lucky Puppy how to be a better beggar so he could make jukrum it depicts her showing him to act like he needs a crutch.
• The Wolf at Weston Court gives us Remus, the supposedly deaf and mute assistant to the local printer (who also makes a brief cameo appearance in the prequel comic, The Ten Tailors Of Weston Court). We eventually learn he's actually neither, moments before he murders Neville to get him out of the way.

• In the SuperMarioLogan episode "Bowser Junior's Broken Leg", Bowser Junior breaks his leg and spends three weeks in bed waiting for it to heal, with Chef Pee Pee bringing him whatever he wants. After it heals, he pretends his leg is still broken to continue to get free stuff from Chef Pee Pee, despite a warning not to from Dr. Brooklyn T. Guy. This comes back to bite him two weeks later, when Doofy the Dragon hosts a meet and greet at the mall, which Junior wants to go to. After Junior admits to Chef Pee Pee that he's been lying about his leg for the last two weeks, Chef Pee Pee beats him up, breaking his other leg.