"Mr. Burns, it was naïve of you to think I'd mistake this town's most prominent 104-year-old man for one of my elementary school students."
— Principal Skinner, The Simpsons, "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part One)"
A disguise that is so "thin" that the audience can immediately recognize who the person behind the "mask" actually is. Note that this doesn't require an actual mask; the character may have merely styled their hair differently, added glasses, or changed into a different outfit. Regardless of exactly what was used for the disguise, the identity of the character is completely clear, usually before they remove it, and sometimes other characters can see through it as well. Any character who is fooled is likely a Horrible Judge of Character; the egregiousness of their misjudgment depends on the disguise.
Several external factors influence this trope. If the big-name Special Guest is going to spend most of the episode or film wearing a disguise, then you'd want it to be "thin" enough for audiences to identify the actor before The Reveal. If the character frequently wears disguises, then it may be a stylistic choice to reassure the audience as to the identity of the character. This is more common in media aimed at younger audiences, but is also common enough for Master of Disguise characters so that the audience isn't constantly guessing as to which character is "really" in disguise. The trope is still an important dramatic convention in live theatre and opera productions — where a really good disguise would render the character unidentifiable from the cheap seats, and be beyond the scope of the prop budget to boot — but is usually employed along with some kind of nod to the audience acknowledging the absurdity.
Internal story factors also apply. If the disguised character is supposed to be foolish, wearing a bad disguise provides plenty of opportunity for comedy, particularly if other characters aren't fooled any more than the audience. A character who can't identify someone just because they added sunglasses to their ensemble is another way to mock disguises as well as genre conventions.
Classic examples of "bad disguises" are the following (tropes are linked based on their overlap, not subtrope status):
- Wearing a face-obscuring cloak or hat over the character's standard outfit.
- Wearing a Groucho Marx glasses-and-mustache prop.
- Putting on or taking off glasses/sunglasses.
- Changing out of a Limited Wardrobe, especially into a uniformed service, such as police officers or package delivery employees.
If the disguise is improved (such as by combining two or more "thin" details and changing your voice), you get an example of Wig, Dress, Accent, where the inability of the other characters to identify the disguised character becomes much more reasonable. In order to qualify as a Paper-Thin Disguise, there must be at least one obviously clear element of the character underneath. However, the probability that other characters are fooled by this disguise is just as fluid as with other disguise tropes.
It's becoming a bit common nowadays to subvert this trope by fooling the viewers instead, showing what seems to be a terrible disguise, but then it's revealed that it isn't, you thought that Bob was badly disguised as an old man, but then Bob in regular clothes appears next to that old man that looks like him.
Compare with Clark Kenting (a subtrope where the disguise is used over a long period of time and remains effective despite that) and Newspaper-Thin Disguise (where a book, magazine, or similar is used to hide a character's face). A common variant is Incredibly Conspicuous Drag, in which it's very obvious that the person is disguised as the wrong gender. Compare and contrast Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting, where the disguise is visually effective but slipshod in every other aspect. Supertrope to Easy Impersonation and Hugh Mann, and a subtrope of Blatant Lies. May lead to a Captain Obvious Reveal. Goes with Fake Facial Hair. Also see Most Definitely Not a Villain and Charlie Brown from Outta Town.
Contrast with the vast majority of other Disguise Tropes. Specifically contrast with For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself, where the character does not hide their true identity. Also see Mistaken Identity Doppelgänger Assault when it is part of a Bait-and-Switch joke.
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Advertising
- The Trix Rabbit has tried about a million of these. They never work for more than a few seconds, and the few that do work are foiled by the Rabbit's undeniable addiction to the cereal. One good disguise the Trix Rabbit once used was to somehow turn himself into a cute, adorable bunny (they used a real rabbit in the commercial) and changed tactics, not talking at all and simply trying to sneak up on the kids. Unfortunately, his addiction to it gave him away as it always did. Another aversion that actually worked was the time the Trix rabbit used a full bodysuit in this infamous commercial
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- Barney Rubble in the Pebbles commercials, though Barney has had his share of ultra-realistic disguises involving rubber masks. This 1972 commercial was one of the first to show Barney pulling this stunt. In this case the ONLY change was putting a fake beard on. And he still managed to fool Fred.
- An ad for cheap cell phone service featured a woman who was saving money for her expensive cell plan by having her son travel free on a plane trip. She'd dressed him in a floppy-eared Halloween costume and stuffed him inside a pet carrier; hearing them converse, a baggage handler marvels at the "talking dog".
- Duke, the dog from the Bush's Baked Beans commercials once appeared in a labcoat and false mustache, posing as a food science researcher. For those who haven't seen these ads, be aware that the dog is a real golden retriever, not a cartoon mascot. He's also shown up as a Bedsheet Ghost of the recipe owner Jay Bush's grandfather, but is revealed when Jay explains, "Grandpa didn't have a tail."
- Seen in a TV ad for Speedway, featuring a contest for their Speedy Rewards card loyalty card. A man keeps coming in and using his card, wearing a series of ridiculous disguises. Finally, the clerk, who isn't fooled for a minute, tells the customer that he can use the same card as many times as he wants and still be entered in the contest each time. MST3K Mantra, since if you think about it for more than a few seconds, you realize that no matter how well he disguises himself, the card always carries the same computerized details about his identification. (Then again, he might not be smart enough to realize that.)
- A Dunkin' Donuts ad had Fred the Baker (who's a portly little guy with a moustache) spying at a rival donut place dressed as a woman, coyly holding a hand over his moustache and not fooling the anxious counter man.
- In one McDonald's commercial from the '70s, Ronald dresses up as a mailman to thwart an attempt by Grimace (who was evil at this time) to steal some milkshakes. The disguise is little more than a hat.
- One of the Naked Gun-type ads for Red Rock Cider has the Comedic Hero working undercover in an ice cream van called "Mr Policey" and labelled UNMARKED POLICE CAR. This naturally leads to a Visual Pun where a customer asks for a couple of cones and gets two traffic cones instead.
Frank Drebin: A hot tip led Sgt. Doughray and me to Ascot. We mingled unobtrusively for a while before dividing forces. (Doughray and Drebin are wearing dark men's suits and fancy ladies' hats.)
- In a commercial bumper for Cartoon Network, a cop is chasing a thief down the street and the thief ducks in an alley. The cop follows him to find the thief dressed in drag, and tries to flirt with him. The cop isn't fooled for a second and promptly arrests him. A caption then appears saying "You are not Bugs Bunny."
- At the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards, newbie game developer Joakim Mogren and his studio, Moby Dick, surprised everyone by showing a trailer for what seemed to be a stealth/horror game called The Phantom Pain. By the end of the trailer, fans had deduced that Joakim was an anagram for Kojima and Mogren was a reference to his mysterious Project Ogre, identifying the main character from the trailer as Naked Snake. Finally, the negative space in The Phantom Pain's logo? It happens to perfectly fit the words Metal Gear Solid V. Despite all this being figured out immediately, Kojima kept the ruse up until the real game was finally announced at GDC 2013.
- In this FedEx commercial, two deer fool a couple of poachers with nothing but novelty shop "Goofy Glasses".
- In the Microsoft Office XP ad "Clippy Goes Undercover", Clippy uses his Voluntary Shapeshifting ability to poorly disguise himself as a telephone receiver, a woman's hat and a man's glasses as part of his campaign to get the office to ditch Office XP. He gets caught each time.
Animation
- BoBoiBoy: Throughout the series, Adu Du and Probe (respectively a green-skinned cube-headed alien and a purple robot) have tried to pass themselves as regular humans multiple times just by wearing human accessories. It's usually averted as the heroes easily recognize them, but there are times when it is played straight:
- In the 5th episode, Gopal and Tok Aba mistake them for their rice-selling friend and her son, even buying the "prosthetic" excuse for Probe's robot arm. Yaya, on the other hand, immediately recognized them from behind.
- When Adu Du tried to enter BoBoiBoy's class as part of one of his schemes, Papa Zola only recognized him after BoBoiBoy took off his glasses.
- In Boonie Bears, the bears often wear disguises so that Logger Vick won't be able to recognize them, and they tend to work despite the fact that those are very obviously just bears in snazzy or flimsy outfits.
- Lamput:
- There are two episodes both called "Wig" where Lamput turns into long hair on Skinny Doc to hide himself. The wig has the same effect as a Paper-Thin Disguise; it doesn't do anything to change Skinny Doc's appearance much, but fools Specs Doc so much that he develops a crush on Skinny Doc, not realizing he's not a woman.
- In "Arctic Adventure", the docs dress up as penguins, and later seals, to not be discovered among actual penguins and seals while finding Lamput. The disguises don't cover their faces enough, but the animals don't place any attention on it.
Comedy
- The late Linda Smith had a routine complaining about the use of this trope in opera: "Someone puts on a big hat and suddenly no-one can recognize them, even people who they've been talking to for half an hour. If that worked in real life, the witness protection program would consist of a selection of headgear."
- There are plenty of Russian jokes about that, some of them dealing with Stierlitz, the main character of the Soviet TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring:
- Stierlitz was indistinguishable from the locals, but there was something subtly different about him compared to the Germans: maybe it was his military bearing, or the Hero of the Soviet Union star on his chest, or the parachute dragging behind him...
- ...No one had a clue that Stierlitz was lying motionless on the window sill, disguised as a cigarette butt.
- "Comrade Captain, I made use of the special disguise technique you've developed. I disguised myself as a tree stump. I was sitting there and wondering what sort of an idiot would buy this trick. Then a young couple sits down on me. I bore it. They were chatting. I bore that too. Kissing. I bore even that! Then they started... you know. I bore that as well like a true soldier. But when that bastard started carving the word "love" on my butt, I couldn't bear any longer!
Comic Strips
- Spoofed in Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, where the dumber than bricks main character Brewster mistakes an alien that looks like Mr. Potato Head wearing just a wig for Lieutenant Pamela.
- Calvin and Hobbes:
- Calvin assumes (probably from seeing too many TV shows where this trope is in effect) that he'll be unrecognizable in his "Stupendous Man" costume, and is thoroughly confused and frustrated when it fools nobody. Especially funny is that his mom, one of the people he expects will be fooled, made the costume for him in the first place.
- Calvin attempts to do this trope with Hobbes (wearing a trenchcoat with Hobbes on top) in order to sneak into an X-rated movie. Going by the ticket seller's remark in the final panel ("This is a new one."), she evidently did not fall for it.
- Calvin once donned some Groucho Marx glasses when Mom came to ask him about a broken lamp. His response to her: "Who ees thees Kahlveen?"
- Dilbert: Alice is clearly not fooled by the PHB's disguise (which is just a fake moustache) here, nor is his secretary fooled in a following strip.
- Happens a few times in The Far Side. The most notable example is a polar bear with a penguin mask that doesn't even cover his whole face. And yet the penguins wonder why their numbers are diminishing.
- In the June 07, 1990 Garfield strip, Liz may not be fooled by Garfield in a chef uniform, but as the next day's strip showed, Jon sure is.
- Parodied and averted in a Heathcliff strip where Heathcliff goes trick or treating on Halloween wearing a devil costume:
Fish store owner: Heathcliff! I recognized you right away!
- In one series of Peanuts strips, Peppermint Patty enlisted Snoopy's help to find out who took her teacher's box of golden stars. Snoopy disguised himself as Patty and took her place in class; however, it was little more than a wig resembling Patty's hair. Still, it fooled her teacher and Marcie, although Marcie was a little suspicious. ("What kind of illness makes your nose grow but the rest of you shrink?" she mused.) Meanwhile, Patty's disguise while she looked for the box of stars was just as absurd; she put on a fake mustache and work clothes and posed as a janitor named "Hans Hanson". She didn't fool Marcie, but she did fool the teacher. (And she did manage to find the box of stars, which had fallen into a wastebasket. Ironically, Snoopy did so well in class, he got one on his test.)
- In He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown!, Snoopy puts on a fake mustache when he returns home before revealing himself as a surprise. Charlie Brown sees him and doesn't recognize him until Snoopy takes off the mustache.
- The crocs do this often in Pearls Before Swine. They never fool anyone.
- Poncho in Pooch Café wore a big red mustache and told police that he had seen where a salami thief went. He then wondered how they knew it was him.
- Prickly City: How to disguise a coyote as the Lost Bunny of the Apocalypse: bunny ears.
- Scary Gary: At one point Leopold fools a cop into thinking he is a potential witness to a murder (committed by Leopold) by wearing nothing but a hat and mustache.
- Sherman's Lagoon:
- One strip, part of a storyline in which a larger shark showed up in the lagoon (therefore intruding on Sherman's turf), had Fillmore commenting that it's a good thing the shark won't bother him because he's a sea turtle. Sherman, in response to this, leaves... and comes back wearing a turtle shell.
Sherman: Hey, check out the tush on that turtle babe.
Fillmore: It's a guy. - This strip has Sergeant Hardcase of the Internet Fish Police come after Ernest for downloading unauthorized music. Ernest then pulls the Look Behind You trick and puts on a mustache while Hardcase's back is turned. It actually works - Hardcase complains that "the kid got away" and leaves.
Ernest: What a knucklehead.
Sherman: And who might you be, good sir? - While at a resort, Hawthorne is turned down by every female crab there. The solution? According to him, it's to put on a disguise and try again. He decides on a mustache — even though he's apparently wanted in three states when he wears it. Alas, all the women still recognize him.
- One strip, part of a storyline in which a larger shark showed up in the lagoon (therefore intruding on Sherman's turf), had Fillmore commenting that it's a good thing the shark won't bother him because he's a sea turtle. Sherman, in response to this, leaves... and comes back wearing a turtle shell.
Manhua
- My Beloved Mother has the protagonist Sinbell infiltrating a penal colony full of robots near the end while wearing a jacket and motorcycle helmet. Which none of the guards (all humans) noticed him to be human. In all fairness, there are literally hundreds of robots around the area, and Sinbell doesn't stick out the crowd as much.
Music
- "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" was a hit song for the Louisiana-based John Fred and His Playboy Band in early 1968. The song was a parody of The Beatles' hit, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
- The Lonely Island song "Two Worlds Collide" features Andy Samberg singing about his love for country singer Reba McEntire. "Reba" is played by SNL cast member Kenan Thompson, who is actually an ordinary guy (who fully admits to being a man) who found a red wig in the dumpster, put it on, and somehow convinced Samberg that "she" is the real deal. The extremely graphic song describes all of their sexual escapades (with Thompson frequently mentioning his penis), but Samberg is none the wiser because of the wig.
- The members of Pink Floyd would sometimes mingle with the audience for drinks during the intermissions for their shows, with no disguise other than leaving their instruments behind. They were almost never identified as the people who had previously been performing under a spotlight right in front of them. Of course, all four of them were pretty unremarkable-looking and they tended to stay out of the public eye, but still...
- In the music video for "Paparazzi," Lady Gaga first appears as a platinum-blonde woman wearing outlandish outfits. After an attempted murder by her boyfriend, she seeks revenge by coming back into his life and killing him and the entire staff of his mansion. To do this, she dons the brilliant disguise of...platinum blonde hair and an outlandish outfit. Of course, this could be deliberate, as the video seems to be an attack on the public who eagerly cast away old stars to embrace newer, similar ones.
- The music video for SoulDecision's "Ooh It's Kinda Crazy" involves a scene where two band members try disguising themselves as mechanics to walk through a crowd of crazy fangirls, wearing blue jumpsuits, caps, glasses and fake mustaches that match their hair color. Naturally, one of the girls in the crowd isn't fooled by their disguises, and calls them out.
Pinball
- Foo Fighters (2023): During the build-up to Area 51 Multiball, the band infiltrates the complex by pretending to have been mind-controlled by the Overlord's reformatting helmets. Their disguises are blatantly cheap, consisting of garbage bag "outfits" with cardboard/tin foil "helmets," but they manage to break in anyway.
Podcasts
- Dice Funk: Rinaldo concocts an entire alter ego, only for it to immediately fall apart under the slightest bit of scrutiny.
Leon: I'm Filet Mignon from Pottsylvania!
- Tomlane Belaroth in Hello From the Magic Tavern is such a good actor the he can impersonate a series of bats by simply waving his hands and saying "I'm a series of bats". This fools everybody except Arnie.
- In one episode of the The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show, regular character Derek Dalek tries passing himself off as Derek Dolak - but not very successfully, because even John grows suspicious:
John: I must say, you rather remind me of someone.
Derek: Well, I am well known locally.
John: Your telescopic manipulator arm in particular looks familiar.
Derek: What? This little thing? (boing)
John: Yes.
Derek: It's just there for show, John! JUST! THERE!! FOR!! SHOW!!! [exterminates a tree] - One episode of Mission to Zyxx sees the crew land on a planet that hasn't discovered space travel yet so they're forced to disguise their alien appearances. Everyone puts in an effort except hulking Dar, who only wears a fake beard.
- Tellie from Sequinox gets put in a hotdog costume on Halloween by Vivaldi, and thinks that by that logic it wouldn't be recognized and could go to the school. Yuki quickly shoves it in her bag on account of, y'know, it's still a talking space fox. When the girls tell it to act more like a dog, it just says "bark bark bark".
- The Thrilling Adventure Hour:
- On certain "Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars" segments we encounter Jib Janeen, an alien shapeshifter. Although Jib Janeen is always voiced by Paul F. Tompkins and speaks in the same goofy, high pitched tone regardless of who he's impersonating, the other characters are always completely fooled by the impersonation.
- "Desdemona Hughes, Diva Detective" features former actress Desdemona Hughes adopting various disguises to solve murders. The disguises are apparently legitimately good and, unlike Jib Janeen, Desdemona alters her voice to suit her impersonations. She also makes a very conspicuous show of leaving right before assuming a new disguise and the disguise is often of someone or something completely random and unrelated to the current situation. Nobody is ever suspicious for long and are always surprised at the actual reveal.
Pro Wrestling
- André the Giant: In the spring of 1986 (following his WrestleMania 2 battle royal victory), Andre requested time off to go on a tour of Japan, heal from legitimate injuries, and begin filming scenes from a movie he was hired to star in, The Princess Bride. At the time, he was engaged in a 3-year-old feud with Big John Studd over whom was the true giant of wrestling, and a storyline was contrived to have Andre "miss" several high-profile tag-team matches (with a partner of his choice) against Studd and King Kong Bundy. Eventually, at Bobby Heenan's behest, WWF president Jack Tunney "suspended" Andre. Later in the summer of 1986, a masked wrestler, identifying himself as the "Giant Machine" appeared, targeting – along with other masked "Machine" wrestlers – Studd and Bundy. The villains insisted that the Giant Machine was in fact Andre. They were right, except they were unable to mask Andre to prove his true identity (much to the delight of fans), and the WWF's lead announcers, usually Vince McMahon, Gorilla Monsoon, or Bruno Sammartino, speculated that the "Giant Machine" might be one of several famous Japanese wrestlers.
- Indeed, Bundy and Studd never were able to prove their case to the fans, which – had they succeeded – Andre would have been "fired" (for circumventing Tunney's suspension). However, the storyline was always left open so that if Andre's health forced his retirement, the "Giant Machine" would have been unmasked. However, Andre's health held up enough and – after finishing filming of The Princess Bride and concluding his Japanese tour – he was "reinstated" ... and a heel turn later that led to his famous WrestleMania III match with Hulk Hogan etched his name in history.
- At the height of the Bundy/Studd-Machines feud, Heenan introduced his own stable of "masked" wrestlers during a segment of "The Flower Shop" with Adrian Adonis. It was obviously Studd and Bundy wearing paper masks, and they quickly revealed themselves to scornfully mock Andre.
- John Cena was storyline fired from WWE following Survivor Series 2010, but didn't actually leave the company (since he's kind of the biggest money-making machine WWE has at the moment). In his place at house shows, WWE trotted out Juan Cena, until he was "re-hired".
- Hulk Hogan's Mr. America disguise came about after he was "fired" in 2003. When he left the company, footage appeared revealing that Hogan took off his mask after a match.
- In TNA, what disguise did Sting wear when he attacked Rob Van Dam from the crowd? A Sting mask.
- Delirious tried to do CM Punk's steal an audience member's clothing and hide in the crowd trick but his mask and the tassels hanging off of it stuck out like a sore thumb. Daizee Haze has also worn some disguises in her efforts to aid Delirious...with mixed results.
- Kane's "imposter". In 2006, Kane feuded with an imposter who was wearing his old mask (but didn't look anything at all like him otherwise) who beat the actual Kane several times using his old moves. While it was obvious to fans who was who, nobody affiliated with the actual WWE could tell them apart. (Probably why they were content to drop the storyline without even revealing who he was after Kane did kick the phony's ass.)
- On the November 22nd 2024 episode of Rampage, Harley Cameron wearing a Hologram mask dubbing herself Harleygram accepted the challenge laid out by Thunder Rosa to a match who noted that she reminded her of someone. Harley Cameron did a robotic voice to sell the disguise but eventually dropped the voice for a single line before going back to the robotic voice
- In FMLutte, the mysterious wrestler known as SHIKAKA just so happens to turn up whenever co-host Katerine Chouinard is absent. Nobody recognizes her, despite having the same Big Beautiful Woman build, a slightly different hairstyle, and black and white face paint.
Radio
- Pip Bin of Bleak Expectations is always fooled by his nemesis Mr. Gently Benevolent's disguises, though they're always comically thin and he's prone to slipping back into his accent, saying his evil internal monologue out loud.
Pip: Mr. Benevolent! How did you fool me for so long?
Mr. Benevolent: Do you know, I genuinely have no idea.- Taken to extremes in one episode where Pip Bin's sister (at that point Mr. Benevolent's 'saucy evil consort') blows the disguise in seconds. Twice. He still doesn't catch on.
- And then there's Miss Talula Really-Obvious-Fake I-Can't-Believe-You-Haven't-Noticed Not-A-Man. "She" is still Mister Benevolent, and he manages to fool Pip Bin long enough to get married. Even after Benevolent drops the act, Pip still believes Talula was real.
- Pip and one of his sisters get in on the act too. They escape from their respective boarding schools with the aid of their aunt by dressing up as a rabbit, famous British Admiral Lord Nelson (several years after his death) and... a grandfather clock. When someone spots them and questions the walking grandfather clock his sister merely says "bong bong bong" and the question is dropped.
Nun: Good evening to ya, Admiral Nelson. Nice to see you alive again.
Roleplay
- In Fellowship of the Raven, the party at one point had to disguise their dragonborn member Glaedr when they had to return to the town of Vallaki both due to non-humans being very uncommon in Barovia and them still being fugitives there. The first attempt from Muriel was of this type, amounting to Groucho Marx glasses on what was still obviously a humanoid dragon, but after some assistance from her boyfriend Ivan the second attempt was actually pretty convincing.
- Scary News out of Tokyo-3: Anyone with any knowledge of Neon Genesis Evangelion should be able to guess immediately who's hiding behind the transparent handle of "ZeroGirl00" — she's one of several characters with inside knowledge of NERV, and she has a tendency to talk about the Pilots in I Have This Friend fashion. Unfortunately, none of the other characters are in a position to figure out the truth until she finally comes out and admits it.
- In We Are All Pokémon Trainers, Lenore (Fool's Hydreigon) and Ammy (Umbra's Volcarona) use these to get their own Trainer's Licenses — they wore fake moustaches and trenchcoats. Lenore's case is more notable, because while Ammy was wearing a Pokémon-to-Human armband, Lenore wore the disguise as a Hydreigon.
Tabletop Games
- The example game for the default version of Goblin Quest has the players try to steal a prize-winning bear by infiltrating a bear show using a crudely-made mechanical bear costume. The artwork shows various goblins sticking out of the mechanical bear, which itself has a sign on the front saying, "yes im baer".
- Toon:
- The main villain of Fast Food Fracas is capable of donning several disguises that are capable of fooling the player characters, despite the illustrations attached showing that they're obviously the same person.
- In the "Car Blazers" setting, this is Torgo the Terror's shtick. He can put together disguises that can fool anyone (as they completely overlook his Sssssnake Talk, his long green scaly tail, the fact that he looks exactly like Torgo the Terror in a different outfit ...)
Theatre
- It's not unusual for disguises to seem paper-thin on stage, a dramatic convention to make allowance for limited props and budget. Willing Suspension of Disbelief is encouraged in this scenario. In some cases a disguised character will break the fourth wall by winking at the audience to make sure this is explicit.
- In many stagings of As You Like It, Rosalind's "Ganymede" disguise is portrayed as this. In these versions, Orlando recognizes her at once, she realizes as much, and their subsequent "tutoring" scenes together become coy, humorous flirtations between the pair, who through role-playing can be frank with each other in ways a young couple of the time ordinarily couldn't.
- In Holy Musical B@man!, Alfred is fired by Bruce, later returning as "O'Malley the Irish Butler" who is just Alfred wearing a hat and a ginger beard.
- In Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor, the theater manager's assistant Max disguises himself as the visiting tenor Tito Merelli after Tito is found dead in his hotel room. This works on the opera's audience, as they have never seen the real Tito and won't know the difference. However, Tito's Not Quite Dead, and is running around Cleveland in the same costume Max is wearing (Tito brought two identical costumes). Saunders, the manager, runs into Tito several times without realizing the costumed tenor is not Max, despite Max and Tito, even in costume, looking nothing alike.
- In Love's Labour's Lost, Boyet discovers that King Ferdenand and his gentleman will serenade the French Princess and her ladies in disguise as Russians. The ladies therefore know which is which, and pull off their own masked stunt to misdirect each man to the wrong lady—but they also back this up by swapping the romantic tokens the gentlemen gave them.
- Much Ado About Nothing: At the masked ball for Don Pedro and his men. Ursula recognizes Antonio by his wit and head-waggling. Pedro pretends to be his protege, Claudio, in order to woo Hero for him. Hero was informed of Claudio's intent by her father, so she knows that the masked man is one of them and speaks accordingly. Don John's henchman recognizes Claudio by his bearing and Don John pretends to take Claudio for Benedick in order to trick him. The only man whose disguise might have worked is Benedick, and he hears an earful of insults from Beatrice for his trouble.
- Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier lampshades this trope when Aladdin enters The Princess's room in his Prince Ali persona.
Aladdin: Knock knock knock.
The Princess: (gasps dramatically, pauses, checks the writing on her hand) Aladdin!! (rushes to embrace him)
Aladdin: How the fuck did you know it was me?!
The Princess: Because it is you, you're just wearing different clothes!
Theme Parks
- In Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast at Universal Studios, when Ooblar is breaking into Jimmy's lab, he dons a disguise that consists of: Groucho glasses, a camera, and a Universal hat. Jimmy sees right through it, but apparently no one else did.
- In The LEGO Movie: 4D — A New Adventure at LEGOLAND, Risky Business's robot henchmen disguise themselves as fake robot henchmen with paper masks with their faces on them.
Toys
- This was the main gimmick for the short-lived late 80's Purr-Tenders toy line: fluffy plush cats wearing fake ears and muzzles so they could pass as 'exotic' animals like dogs and mice. (The fact that they could all communicate with humans and came in pink and purple apparently didn't make them exotic enough.) Somehow, the disguises worked... until they started purring.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Apollo never notices the uncanny resemblance between the picture on the wall at the Wright and Co Offices and the victim of his first case (not even noting familiarity) even when the only difference is a goatee. On the other hand, Phoenix notices from the first meeting. The player, on the other hand, stands a chance of noticing at first glance, even without color.
- Furio Tigre kills somebody and then disguises himself as Phoenix Wright in order to "defend" the person he framed for the murder. This "disguise" consists of a suit, a fake attorney's badge (made of cardboard), and loudly proclaiming himself to be Phoenix Wright. It works despite Furio having bright orange skin and a very noticeable Bronx accent, and every major player in the case knowing Phoenix personally on top of that. All because he has the exact same spiky hairdo. The defendant mentions that everyone in the courtroom had "big question marks on their faces" when "Phoenix" made his appearance, but every time someone tried to point this out, Furio literally roared them into silence. Even more bizarrely, the disguise is apparently good enough to fool the player — the first you see of Furio Tigre is in the chapter intro where "Phoenix" loses the case... and he's rendered as completely indistinguishable from the real Phoenix. The skin colour can be explained away as being a fake spray tan that Furio just didn't put on that day, but it's pretty much stated that he made no attempt whatsoever to hide the accent.
- Trials and Tribulations subverts this with Dahlia Hawthorne when she appears to turn up in "Bridge to the Turnabout" with a different hair colour and nun's garments (retaining the same hairstyle and mannerisms, thus the Paper Thin Disguise). The subversion? It's actually her twin sister.
- Trials and Tribulations, the one difference between Godot and Diego Armando is basically a pallet swap and a face visor.
- "Director Hotti" in Justice for All is a mental patient at the Hotti Clinic who habitually steals the director's lab coat and uses it to try and pass himself off as the director, ignoring the fact that the ID badge pinned to the front of the coat has the real director's picture on it. He appears again in Apollo Justice as "Director Hickfield" of the Hickfield Clinic. Evidently the Hotti Clinic staff got sick of his bullshit and passed him off to another clinic to get rid of him. That, or it's the same clinic under new management, and the real Director Hotti quit to get away from him.
- Dual Destinies has "The Amazing Nine-Tails", a famous masked wrestler. Players groan at how long it takes for the characters to figure out that he's obviously Rex Kyubi, and are then blindsided when it's revealed that he's actually Damian Tenma.
- A bit of a Double Subversion with the disguises used by Shelley de Killer, especially his disguise in Investigations 2. While he has an extremely unique face (stitches right down the middle) that he never covers up, the fact there's very few people in-game who know what he looks like means he doesn't really need to put much effort into concealing his identity... and then you realize he's wearing the signature logo of his Calling Card right there, making it loop right back to paper-thin.
- At the end of Butterfly Soup, Noelle and Akarsha use these while spying on Diya and Min's first date.
- The only candidate in the Cat President series who isn't a cat is Rover, who is a dog. His disguise for passing as a cat is a simple pair of fake cat ears on his head, which aren't even the same color as his fur. This is Played for Laughs, as the disguise works flawlessly, even when he's displaying obvious dog behavior. Everyone simply thinks he's a particularly strange cat.
- In CLANNAD, Akio disguises himself as a rapper at one point. His daughter can't recognize him. In the visual novel, he just put on a pair of sunglasses and it somehow works.
- Danganronpa:
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: The only reason that Mukuro is able to pass herself off as Junko is because none of the cast have met either one of them before (well, technically they have, but they had their memories wiped afterwards), and even then, Makoto immediately notices that "Junko" doesn't resemble her magazine covers very closely, to which she gives the excuse that those covers have been photoshopped to hell and back. The flimsiness of the disguise is even more blatant in the bonus School Mode, where it quickly becomes evident Mukuro is really bad at staying in character, as she continually makes references to things like knife-throwing, running away from home, and owning a ghillie suit, even though she's supposed to be playing the role of a fashionista.
- Zig-Zagged in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair by the Ultimate Imposter. He's a Master of Disguise who has no identity of his own, and lives by impersonating others. Problem is, he's also really fat (and proud of it), while the people he impersonates... aren't. However, he's so good at copying their voices, personalities, mannerisms, and even abilities that he still manages to fool everyone. He's introduced impersonating a character from the previous game, but the audience is led to believe he simply gained weight between games until his true identity is revealed much later. If you do his Free Time Events and did his disguise's Free Time Events in the previous game, it's easier to tell, since he doesn't get all the details of his disguise's backstory completely correct. Good luck actually doing that, though, since he also happens to be this game's first murder victim, meaning it's impossible to make any significant relationship progress with him until the postgame. You're only able to get his first couple of FTEs before he croaks, where he pretty much just talks about food, giving no hints that he isn't who he says he is. He also happens to dislike a particular gift that was one of his disguise's most loved gifts in the first game (Civet Coffee), so if you happened to get lucky and pull it from the gacha machine, and gave it to him expecting a positive reaction, you might be able to spot the thread earlier than intended.
- In Halloween Otome, it's downplayed (especially in the case of The Count), but Emma and Mr. Bandages hair (in length/style and colour, respectively) are striking enough that Emma should have recognized one of the guys, or vice versa.
- Katawa Shoujo parodies this to demonstrate just how detached from reality Kenji really is. During one of their encounters, Kenji mentions that he's going to the store and Hisao, well acquainted with his paranoia at this point, sarcastically asks if it's safe for him to go outside. Kenji, immune to sarcasm, counters that he's safely disguised because he has a hat. (Bonus points: he's not even wearing a hat.)
- Little Busters! has Mask the Saito, a mysterious masked man that appears and starts challenging people if, after being returned to the bottom of the battle rankings early on, you can make you way up to the top again. At first glance, it isn't obvious who it is, but as soon as he starts talking it's very clearly Kyousuke's voice. If you lose to him, he doesn't even bother to keep up the charade, turning around and walking off (revealing distinctive red/brown hair) while throwing the mask away. Riki is faintly bemused by the entire thing, but plays along.
- Magical Warrior Diamond Heart: The Nightmare Agent, Labra dons a large hat and swirly glasses in episode 12 in order to become friends with Valerie's mother.
- Majikoi! Love Me Seriously! has Ms. Kishido. The only different thing she's wearing is the mask. This might have worked had she not been a blonde-haired, blue-eyed foreigner in Japan with her equally distinctive not-disguise-wearing protector along with her. A few people are actually fooled, though.
- In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors' "Safe" ending, Junpei claims to be Santa who switched clothes with the real Junpei, with no actual effort put into the disguise beyond that. It's incredibly obvious to everyone that he's lying, even to the person he was supposedly trying to fool. But he wasn't actually trying to fool anyone. The reason why it was obvious to everyone was what was important to him. While 99% of people would simply say he doesn't look anything like Santa, Ace instead says he can't be Santa because they just opened Door 3 with a combination that wouldn't work if he was Santa, accidentally outing himself as having prosopagnosia (face blindness), and thus as the likely killer of Snake... or rather, the man who the killer thought was Snake because he was wearing Snake's clothes, meaning the killer couldn't recognize him by his face.
- Pizza Game: Roobit’s “Doobit” disguise consists of a single slice of pizza placed on her face. Keenarnor’s disguise is somehow even thinner: he’s actually a musician from the famous band Secret Flower (which happens to be protagonist Kiane’s favorite), but no one recognizes him because he’s not holding a boombox.
- Chris in Princess Waltz. How obvious is it? Before The Reveal, knowing how bad a job she's doing acting, Chris asks in a roundabout way if Arata is sure he doesn't suspect her of anything. And barely refrains from mentioning what: Being a girl. It gets worse. He walks in on her with no disguise (bath) and still doesn't get it. All the yaoi fangirls in the class Squee...
- Yuriko Oyama in SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky is the real name of popular idol singer Yurika Ayase. Whenever she goes out in public, she dons... a pair of glasses.
- In Spirit Hunter: NG, Akira points out that, despite Kaoru's desire to keep her Momo identity a secret, she goes out in the same distinctive gothic clothes regardless of whether she's Momo or Kaoru. Her only defence is that she loves the style too much to not wear it in her everyday life.
- Tavern Talk: In the Charisma ending of the Zoford quest, Melli hides in the wizard's office and pretends to be a cat, even though she's a Cat Folk wearing clothes. The wizard is fooled for a while... until Melli blurts out that she wants some chocolate milk, forgetting that non-anthro cats don't normally talk.
Web Animation
- asdfmovie 8 has a cow pretending to be a man. Its disguise consists of a baseball caps and a skateboard.
- At one point in Vinesauce's The Blue Shell Incident, Mario is able to elude Luigi with the clever disguise of a hand with glasses on it, claiming to be Handio. Luigi is fooled, but not for long.
- Bowser's Kingdom:
- Steve as a Shy guy in Episode 2.
- Hal and Jeff as Luigi and Mario, respectively in The Movie.
- The Cyanide & Happiness Show has John Battman, a Batman Parody whose "secret identity", Broots Waymb, is still wearing his superhero costume (albeit with the cowl pulled down and a baggy, unzipped jacket worn over the tights). He also keeps delivering Blatant Lies that all but state him and Battman are the same person.
My parents are dead because a crazy bad guy shot them with a gun and then I fell into a bat hole and bats were there. That's when I found John Battman. He helped me to dress up like a Ba-- (static) To fight cri-- (static) To not be afraid of bats anymore and also criminals and their crimes they commit. Also we both hate guns, me because of parent murder and him because of... he has reasons.
- Epithet Erased: Vincent Murder, the mysterious new supervillain who definitely isn't Giovanni Potage in a new outfit. Despite still having Giovanni's voice, soup-related powers and even his baseball bat with a knife taped to it.
- FreedomToons: After Dave Rubin's guests vow never to come back because he's too agreeable, he instead decides to interview Rave Dubin, a webshow host who is very... agreeable. And wears glasses.
- Happy Tree Friends:
- In "Don't Yank My Chain!", Lifty and Shifty disguise themselves with the Mole's sweater and glasses and Handy's helmet and tool belt, respectively. Lumpy is fooled by their disguises, despite all of them having different colored fur.
- In " See What Develops", Splendid only puts on glasses, a tie, and a fedora — while still wearing his superhero mask.
- Helluva Boss: Demons who interact with humans have to disguise themselves as part of the Hell masquerade. While most of them can shapeshift to convincing human appearances, Blitzo, Moxxie, and Millie instead put on costumes that never hide their imp red skin, glowing orange eyes, or noselessness. Humans will comment on their appearances from time to time but think nothing of it, such as kids at a summer camp thinking their red skin is a weird tan, but nobody thinks they're demons unless they're seen without such a costume on.
- Homestar Runner:
- Bubs' alter ego, The Thnikkaman, consists of him wearing sunshades and a piece of paper reading "TH" taped to his chest. And on a couple occasions he momentarily removes the shades. Only Homestar, The Ditz, ever sees through the disguise.
- As part of the annual Strong Sad Lookalike Contest, the Cheat dresses up as Strong Sad's left foot by sitting in a paper bag that had an elephant foot crudely drawn on it. Nobody else's costume is particularly convincing either (except for Homsar, who was disqualified because Coach Z thought he actually was Strong Sad), but the Cheat has somehow won the contest three years in a row this way.
- In the Strong Bad Email "couch patch", one of the possible stories behind the patch in Strong Bad's couch is presented by a person silhouetted and with his voice distorted to hide his identity...but it's still perfectly clear it's Coach Z. Despite this, Strong Bad is unable to figure who "that guy" is.
- Also applies to Strong Bad's attempt to use a stunt double in the Dangeresque trilogy. The stunt double in question is clearly Strong Sad, and the terrible editing does not help.
- And then there's Homestar's The Cheat disguise, which is more extensive than most of the above - painting himself yellow with spots, adding a tuft to his head, walking on his knees, and saying "meh" a lot. It's about as good a Cheat disguise as someone with Homestar's looks could possibly manage... but considering the Cheat is a third Homestar's height and significantly plumper and has no legs (while Homestar has no arms), it's still a very long way from convincing. It fooled Strong Mad, though.
- In the Cheat Commandos cartoon "Shopping for Danger!", Fightgar disguises himself as an old lady by putting on a wig and glasses and squinting his eyes. It's one thing for him to not shave his Perma-Stubble, it's another for him to not remove his Badass Bandolier. The Blue Lasers are completely fooled.
- Etra chan saw it!: Mr. John is the CEO of a company who goes undercover as General Manager. His only disguise is a fake mustache and glasses, and his alias is Mr. Jack. No one recognizes him until his mustache falls off and he removes his glasses.
- Karekore of Mixed Blood: When a human boy dated Hisame, Kagechiyo and Cidy spied on them with disguises that barely changed their appearances. Hisame even recognized them on the spot.
- Marvel Super Heroes: What The—?!: In the episode "Western Union Special", the Wrecking Crew have escaped from prison and are trying to lay low by disguising themselves as ordinary people or inanimate objects. Piledriver is poorly Disguised in Drag, Thunderball has put on a fake mustache and a top hat while trying to pass his wrecking ball off as his pet dog, Bulldozer is wearing a mailbox that is too small to contain his massive frame, and Wrecker is doing his best impression of a streetlamp by holding street signs in his hands and wearing a lightbulb on top of his head. Despite their terrible quality, these disguises manage to fool a few random civilians and Iron Man.
- Monsterbox: When the store owner refuses to sell the little girl a birdhouse for her monster, she puts a fake beak on the monsters nose and ties feather to the monster's arms and head. The store owner sees right through the ruse, but decides to sell her a birdhouse anyway.
- In Episode 22 of The Most Popular Girls in School, Ashley Katchadorian disguises (read: tries to) herself with... sunglasses, and a trenchcoat. Atchison's Taylor called her "a lesbian Inspector Gadget".
- During the "Curse of Strahd" playthrough on Puffin Forest the characters assassinate a guard captain with Garo saying they need disguises. While Garo and Gouda have reasonable outfits, the one-armed lizard folk Boshack just wears a potato sack on his head while Krusk refuses a disguise on the basis that trickery is for "lowlifes". They only get away with it thanks to nobody being out at that hour... and then Gouda wears her murder disguise in public the next day.
- Blake Belladonna of RWBY wears a bow on her head to disguise her true nature as a Faunus, or more specifically, to hide the cat ears perched atop her head. From a meta perspective, seeing as hints to this were dropped heavily, when she accidentally blurted it near the end of the penultimate episode of the first season, almost no viewers were surprised. It was actually lampshaded the very next episode:
Yang: We're looking for our friend, Blake.
Penny: Oh! You mean the Faunus girl!
Ruby: Wait... How did you know that?
Penny: [points to the top of her head] Uhhh, the cat ears?
Yang: Cat ears!? She wears a... [dawning realization] Bow...
[the girls all stand around awkwardly as a tumbleweed rolls by]
Ruby: She does like tuna a lot.- This continues into BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, which wouldn't be noteworthy given how Team RWBY are the only characters hailing from Remnant... until Chapter 3 of Episode Under Night, where Blake happens upon Makoto, who swiftly sees through it.
- In Season 8 of Sonic for Hire, after Earthworm Jim accidentally kills Morty, he takes up Morty's decapitated body (similar to how he wears his super suit) with a wig but doesn't bother to hide his obvious worm head. Sonic and Tails fail to notice anything off. Even when Jim tries to explain to Eggman that he's not Morty, Eggman doesn't buy what "Morty" says cause he claims to know Jim before tossing him out the window.
- The Weebl's Stuff cartoon "Scampi" is a list of things that the narrator has seen that are "often in disguise". None of the disguises are very convincing, which include a hamster wearing bunny ears, the planet Earth with a big sign reading "MARS" on it, Shakespeare dressed as a party clown, and a map of Malaysia with Kuala Lumpur's name scratched out and replaced with the obviously hand-written word "France".
- In Battle for Dream Island Again, a running gag is for several characters to pretend to be a tree and make swishing sounds. This is done by placing Gelatin on top of their heads, sometimes having him having an uncomfortable expression as he's covering Match's hair. This gag also returns in BFB 30
- Cornchip/Ruff Ruff Yellow from Ruff Ruff Danger Dogs is obviously a cat wearing a homemade cardboard dog costume, but almost everyone, including the Big Bad, is convinced they're legitimately a dog. The Stray is implied to be an exception.
Web Original
- Babylon Bee: Hillary Clinton has been portrayed several times as some sort of assassin with an inept disguise:
- After her arrest, Ghislaine Maxwell is assigned a famous Italian guard called "Hiluigi Clintonelli".
- After Trump was diagnosed with COVID: "Spanish Orderly Hidalgo Clintoniña Welcomes Trump To Walter Reed Medical Center"
- After her arrest, Ghislaine Maxwell is assigned a famous Italian guard called "Hiluigi Clintonelli"
- Once in Season 2 of the Dream SMP, Technoblade stands in front of a "Wanted!" Poster in L'Manburg as a disguise. It's even thinner of a disguise as the clothing skin Techno's wearing is distinctly different from the one on the poster. Downplayed in that Tubbo and Ranboo did recognize him, but are either too intimidated, confused, or amused to point him out.
- From El Chigüire Bipolar: Maduro [who is already moustachioed] goes out wearing a fake moustache hoping that nobody recognizes him.
- The Internet meme "seems legit" often involves this trope. Sure, that abandoned warehouse◊ is totally Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
- On the official social media accounts for Pokémon Trading Card Game, a photo got posted of two Spheal playing the game with Spheal-themed decks...followed by a video of said Spheal getting escorted out by security for breaking tournament rules. The duo later popped up in the announcers' booth, having snuck back in with a pair of sunglasses and a fake mustache, respectively.
Web Videos
- Ashens and the Quest for the Game Child parodies this. After fighting and tying up some guards, Stuart references the scene in which Luke Skywalker infiltrated the Death Star by wearing Stormtrooper armor, and then remarks they they could do "the exact same thing", with the camera panning onto the guards. Cue Stuart and Geoff attempting to bypass security by literally wearing Stormtrooper armor.
- Lampshaded in the Atop the Fourth Wall/The Spoony Experiment crossovers, where Linkara is always clueless as to who Dr. Insano really is, even when holding a picture of Spoony up to compare between.
Linkara: Oh wait! I know this one! You're That Chick With The Goggles!
Dr. Insano: But- but- I'm not freaking black!
Linkara: But you are a woman, eh?- In Kickassia, during the invasion the President of Molossia Kevin Baugh disguises himself as Baron Fritz von Baugh, Minister of Making Things Orderly. Although it is obviously him in disguise The Nostalgia Critic decides to go along with it and lets him stay. As it turned out doing this was a huge mistake on the Critic's part as it allowed Baugh the chance to plant a Apple of Discord within his already grumbling troops further sabotaging the future of Kickassia.
- Barney the Purple Dinosaur manages to escape from the Clugmuffer's hands by disguising himself as Boxman.
- One CollegeHumor video that is a Take That! to British Petroleum's response to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. Tony Hayward and other executives in BP's London offices announce to us after showing a video from an actual focus group that cleaning up the spill is difficult, so they're changing their name to Baby Otter Smiles & Co. Then Hayward and another employee Sally Harris (both of whom are wearing false mustaches) go to the house of Sarah Schneider (one of the focus group members). Sarah sees through their cover, says "You guys are monsters," and shuts the door on them.
- In Critical Role, the character Nott is a Goblin who pretends to be a halfling to avoid Fantastic Racism. Nott's disguise is a cloak, bandages around his extremities, and a porcelain mask that only covers her mouth. It's a Running Gag that many random people either see through Nott's disguise or at least notice she is a very odd Halfling. The disguise is even worse in the official artwork as the cloak does not cover the tips of Nott's green fingers, toes, or long green ears.
- Dorm Life: "Josh? ...no, it's just a lamp."
- In Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, the titular character is not recognized by Penny, even though neither his "costume" or his "normal" clothes covers his face (he wears goggles, but only on his forehead until the last scene).
- Possibly justified in that Penny may or may not have heard of Dr. Horrible: she never mentions him; he's not a big time supervillain (yet), and the first time she sees him, she is under a lot of stress, but still ends up recognizing him.
- Most people miss Billy in the back of the soup kitchen as he glowers at Captain Hammer and pours the soup back into the pot instead of into the bowl. The irony of it is his idea of disguise is wearing a fake mustache and an apron and not wearing his hoodie.
Hammer: You seem ... horribly familiar. - Jehtt: "Hey guys, I found Sonic". In which Knuckles brings in someone who only vaguely looks like Sonic and sounds nothing like him. Then, after the impostor is kicked out, Knuckes does the exact same thing with an equally believable Shadow.
- Terrence of KateModern is an unusual case. When he reinvents himself as bespectacled, cardigan-sporting religious nerd Terry, he is recognised almost immediately by the other characters. However, it somehow doesn't occur to them that quiet, harmless Terry might be the murderer. He later plays this trope straight as the straight-jacketed Patient # 12.
- LikeAFoxStudios's video "the 200 year old vampire pretending to be a 17 year old at your high school" features just that, a 200 year old vampire pretending to be a 17 year old at a high school, wearing clothes a high-school aged kid would wear and saying things he thinks are hip, though he still clearly resembles a typical classical vampire, speaks like a southern gentleman (as he is implied to have been around since at least the American Civil War), and sneaks in some things hinting at his vampiric nature (Like saying "Make sure to bring your neck" when inviting people to his house). At least some students at the high school are clearly suspicious of him, noticing him in their history books among the Confederates (though he denies any connection when confronted about it) as well as him sucking blood from a leg of uncooked mutton he brought to lunch.
- This is used for fun when Lindsey Stirling dresses up as her own #1 fan Phelba —- the only disguise is that Phelba has thick black glasses. A few people realize that Phelba and Lindsey look rather too similar, but since not enough people know them it generally works.
- An Outside Xbox video discussing the use of this trope in video games is presented by "a person you've never seen before", who is very obviously one of the channel's usual presenters hidden behind a wig, a false nose, and a Line-of-Sight Alias. Played with at the end of the video when it turns out he isn't the actual presenter, who shows up and chases him away.
- In the 2025 Rivals Direct, Zetterburn makes a disguise out of cardboard and duct tape to give a presentation in Clairen's place. Professor Cai sees through it, but lets it slide.
- In The Sean Ward Show video "The Cat-Chelorette" (a parody of The Bachelorette where Catwoman is the object of other comic characters' affections), Harley Quinn participates "disguised" as Superman, with said disguise consisting only of an S-shield T-shirt and a cape. No one is fooled, but Harley insists that she's Superman throughout (except for the talking head segments where, even though she thinks she's fooling everyone, she confesses why she's doing it: to keep an eye on the Joker, who is also a contestant).
- Shipwrecked Comedy: The Case of the Gilded Lily revolves around Lily Thomas, who presents herself as Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, an heiress from Fakelandia, with mixed results.
- The Slender Man Mythos: The Slender Man is obviously not human, but it usually works. To the point where he can pull off the usual Child Eater shtick in broad daylight, in direct view of their parents, who usually refuse to believe he exists.
- In The Time... Guys episode with Timmy's Spanish teacher, Señor Tigre instantly realises that Dr. Chronos is not Timmy's father when Doc takes his multiple neckties off.
- Title Pending: The one actor candidate who got rejected returns with a different name and in a hoodie. The duo whisper and ask him to leave without hearing him out.
Real Life
- Groucho glasses - one of the most popular novelty items in the world (and a globally-recognised symbol of slapstick comedy) - are intended to be paper-thin and deliberately useless by design, as they are an anti-disguise. Since they are so specific in how they look (consisiting of thick glasses, bushy black eyebrows, an oversized nose, and a large, bushy black moustache) wearing them almost always fails to disguise the wearer because the ridiculous appearance of the glass draws visual attention, making the wearer stand out as comical and awkward and thus their identity extremely obvious.
- In the book Secret Service Chief, a former head of the US Secret Service tells about his investigating a gang that passed fake checks. They entered a store, cashed some checks, went outside, switched hats and jackets and went back in and cashed more checks with different names. Several times. To the same clerk. This is actually very understandable, and surprisingly easy to pull off. It's called Change Blindness. Here's a video showing a 'magic trick' where the back of the cards change color — and so do the table, the background, and the shirts of both participants.
- One interesting example comes from the character Robin Sage invented for the purpose of testing how likely it was that people in the defense and intelligence communities actually checked the backstories of people on social-networking sites. Her age was stated to be 25, yet she had 10 years of work experience in the cyber-security community as well as a degree from MIT. Her name is also taken from the US Army Special Forces final training exercise. In addition, her profile picture was taken from a porn website and chosen to look somewhat ambiguously foreign.
- An author who interviewed Marilyn Monroe later wrote of an incident that occurred when they were walking down the street talking. The author was confused that, although they were in plain sight, no one seemed to recognize her. Monroe then said, "Do you want to see her?" She changed her posture, gait and hairdo to what she used in the movies and suddenly people saw Marilyn Monroe, movie star and sex symbol, and reacted accordingly.
- A reporter witnessed Mel Gibson do something similar when accompanying him to the DMV. Mel visibly "turned off the charm", changed his expression and posture and put on a baseball cap. He made himself so inconspicuous that even the clerk who saw all his documents and renewed his license took no notice of the resemblance to a famous man named "Mel Gibson".
- This article has a very funny real-life example of this. A bald, bearded reporter wearing glasses showed up at NBC asking executives about Jay Leno's future... the funny thing is that they didn't know it was actually Jay Leno in disguise.
- There was a man who tried to sneak over the border disguised as a pilot seat. Understandably, this did not sit well with the border patrol.
- British TV prankster Jeremy Beadle was short, fat and bearded with one hand noticeably larger than the other, yet he frequently tricked people by wearing a false beard and dark glasses.
- Tōru Furuya, in working on Mobile Suit Gundam 00, only listed his name as the narrator. He used the pseudonym 'Noboru Sougetsu' as the voice of Ribbons Almark. However, fans' ears cannot be lied to and judging on how similar Ribbons and the narrator sound. The cover was blown easily, but Furuya insisted on using the pseudonym. 'To differentiate between Ribbons and Amuro...' Yeah, right.
- There was never really a cover to begin with; Furuya and Bandai both were up-front about his being in 00. Also, Furuya said that the main reason he used the pseudonym was to keep from stealing attention away from the show's real stars.
- At conventions, when asked about Ribbons, he's been known to leave to fetch Sougetsu... which involves him coming back wearing sunglasses.
- When Wendee Lee was working on Rurouni Kenshin, she used her actual name when playing Yumi Komagata, but using the pseudonym Elyse Floyd when playing Yahiko Myojin. Given that Yahiko's one of the main characters of the show, it doesn't take that long to recognize Lee's voice if you're familiar with her work.
- The same thing happens with actor-turned-voice-actor Johnny Yong Bosch in Gate Keepers. He voices both the main protagonist and the eventual main antagonist. Only in the antagonist's role is he credited by his actual name. His role as the protagonist uses the alias Jim Taggert. Indeed, many anime dub VAs have various aliases that are employed for personal or contractual reasons, such as David Lucas (real name: Steven Jay Blum), Dorothy Meneldrez (real name: Dorothy Elias-Fahn), Heather Lee Joelson (real name: Melissa Fahn), and Jeremiah Freedman (real name: Joshua Seth). All of them (as well as Wendee Lee above) are well-known voices in the dub community, so it usually doesn't take long to figure out that a given name matches another.
- Shakira managed to spend an entire summer at UCLA posing as a normal person. She went by her middle name and dressed up in a cap and pants. The fact that it hit the news after she was done with the classes proved how effective her disguise was.
- For an "undercover" story, a reporter dressed as a typical college student hung around a college's dining hall. However, he was immediately discovered, because the student body population was so small that everyone knew each other and immediately recognized that the reporter was not one of their classmates.
- Sam Walton, founder of Walmart Stores, Inc., was able to successfully sneak into his competitors' stores unnoticed by simply leaving his trademark hat in the car. Even Walton himself never was able to figure out why this was so effective.
- Probably because most people had only a passing familiarity with who Sam Walton was and absolutely no idea what he looked like. Even if you did, he was basically the "old white guy with neat haircut" version of The Nondescript in any case.
- The mission for the liberation of FARC's hostages, among them Ingrid Bettancourt, was carried out by Colombian government officials who passed as FARC members by wearing Che Guevara and Hammer-and-Sickle T-shirts.
- Errico Malatesta, the famous Italian anarchist and author, managed to evade arrest from the Italian police for years simply by shaving his beard.
- During The Napoleonic Wars, the British employed "Exploring Officers," who would ride behind enemy lines, wearing full uniform in order to escape execution as spies. One such officer, Colquhoun Grant, was captured and sent to Paris. He escaped, but then reasoned that he could do his job as an Exploring Officer just as well in Paris as he could in Spain. So he wandered around Paris in full British uniform, gathering intel. He told anyone who challenged him that he was an American. When one old French soldier who had served in the American Revolutionary Wars called him out on this, he quickly amended his tale to being an American actor who was wearing his stage costume. Luckily, he escaped back to England.
- Some people have a mental condition called prosopagnosia that makes it difficult, if not outright impossible, to remember faces. So even a Paper-Thin Disguise can be enough to fool people with the condition.
- Such as the case of a man who changed clothes to get Dr. Karl to autograph different copies of the same book.
- But... many face-blind people train themselves to notice small details about a person to compensate for prosopagnosia. Their attention to detail that most people don't notice can actually avert this trope when a typical person would fall for it. ("You've changed your jacket and shaved your beard, but I remember the scuff marks on your shoes!")
- On June 9, 1999, New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine actually attempted this. He was ejected from a game for arguing with the home plate umpire, and then later returned to the dugout wearing sunglasses with a fake mustache taped on his face. The league officials were not amused; Valentine was fined $5000 and suspended for two games.
- Russians attempt to cross a vehicles-only bridge by disguising themselves as a bus in 2018.
- There's an urban legend of two Stupid Crooks who tried to rob a home with the "disguise" of scribbling on their faces with a marker.
- During the World War II in Nazi Germany, spymaster Leopold Trepper unluckily arrived to his spy ring's clandestine radio station exactly at the time it was being raided by the Gestapo. Incredibly resourceful and composed, he introduced himself as a rabbit vendor (yes, you read that right) stopping by, and avoided apprehension.
- While on the run from the government in 1805-1807, Aaron Burr's idea of a disguise was to simply discontinue his usual hours-long grooming routine and wear less flattering, more peasant-like clothes. The weirdest part is that it actually worked, at least until Bigbee Perkins eventually saw through it—and even then, Perkins only suspected Burr because he was out traveling in the middle of the night and refusing to answer any questions about why, so in other words, Burr might have gotten away with it all if he'd just kept more normal hours.
- During the Boston Tea Party, Boston revolutionaries who threw the tea into the harbor were dressed as Mohawk Indians. This wasn't, as some believed, a flimsy attempt to pass the blame onto a Native American tribe. The rebels wanted the authorities to know that colonists were responsible. The actual purpose was simply to obscure their individual identities to avoid arrest, along with sending the message that they identified with America rather than Britain.
- In 1995, a bank robber thought no one could identify him if he covered his face in lemon juice.
- In some parts of the world during COVID-19 lockdowns, people were allowed to leave their homes to walk dogs. So one man walked a cardboard dog to be able to go outside.
- "Multimodal Neurons in Artificial Neural Networks" discusses the idea of neurons tied to specific abstract concepts, regardless of how that concept is represented (such as text or an image). One of the more amusing results of the neural network having developed this feature is that, by writing "iPod" on a piece of paper and sticking it to an apple, the researchers were able to fool the network into identifying the apple as an actual iPod with 99.7% confidence, and there were similar but lesser results with the words "library", "pizza", and "toaster".
- Plenty of Western female news reporters who are reporting in Middle Eastern countries can easily pass as a civilian by wearing long sleeves and a headscarf.
- On his last assignment, American patriot Nathan Hale was sent to scout out British positions. Unfortunately for him, he didn't disguise himself very well at all, which got him caught and executed. For example, he pretended to be a Dutch school teacher, but went under his real, non-Dutch name, and carried his diploma from an American university. He was also a little too obvious about asking questions, which got the attention of British officer Robert Rogers. He also kept the notes about his observations on his person and in plain text. When Rogers approached him and pretended to be a fellow patriot, Hale immediately dropped all pretense and admitted to his mission.
- An amusing subversion occurred during the coronation of King Charles III, when several people spotted an odd-looking man among the attendees with a grey mop of hair, a huge moustache and large glasses, and questioned (jokingly) who this person in the obvious disguise was, with speculation ranging from a would-be thief of the crown jewels, to the king's estranged daughter-in-law Meghan Markle. It was actually classical-style composer Karl Jenkins, who had contributed some of the music for the ceremony; he later posted a video online explaining that it wasn't a disguise — he actually looks like that in real life.
- Counterespionage officer Colonel Oreste Pinto was asked to test British agents who were going to be parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe. He broke the cover of one man without saying a word, as he was wearing a tie labeled: "Selfridges, Oxford Street, London, W.1."
- On April Fools' Day 2021, then-U.S. President Joe Biden, his staff, Secret Service agents, and several members of the press were traveling back to Washington on Air Force One when a friendly flight attendant named Jasmine walked through the cabins handing out ice cream bars. Then "Jasmine" disappeared and returned a few minutes later to reveal her true identity...Dr. Jill Biden, the First Lady. Everyone on board was completely fooled by the disguise, despite it being nothing more than a black wig and pantsuit (although to be fair, Dr. Biden wore a face mask for her Jasmine persona). You'd think the White House staff would be a little savvier about the woman some of them saw every single day.
- Shortly after his death, it was revealed that former U.S. president George H. W. Bush secretly sponsored a Filipino boy through a charitable institution he was a member of. Despite reservations both from the charity and most especially the Secret Service who are still reeling from the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (and thus observing extra precautionary measures regarding George H.W.'s correspondence), the elder Bush somehow pulled off a Clark Kent move by writing under the assumed name of "George Walker" and even giving subtle hints as to his real identity. The ruse apparently worked, and the boy was not aware that a former U.S. president actually came to his aid until he grew up.
- After the OceanGate Titan disaster, investigators interviewed a certain expert on underwater safety whose name was carefully redacted from the public report. However, attentive readers were able to deduce the anonymous source's identity fairly quickly from the interview's opening lines:
Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible operations?A. Well, I'm sure you are familiar with my film Titanic…