This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Most Definitely Not Secretly Evil: From YKTTW
Jisu: "Villain". ^^;
Fast Eddie: That typo has been repaired.
Andyzero: I don't think this would fit well in the trope, but the speech has to be listed somewhere.
Flash-in-Lex: My fellow bad-guys. I, Lex Luthor -your leader- will speak now about...My, Lex Luthor's, plan. My...villainous, villainous plan. Question the plan at your peril! ...um, any questions?
Meta Four: Removed the following examples because the description fails to point out how they fit this trope. If someone can explain how any specific one is an example of "character tries to impersonate X by acting like a bad parody of X and loudly proclaiming that they're X", then feel free to put it back.
- In Warrior Cats Hawkfrost manages to badmouth his superiors and abuse his sister, as well as occasionally lapse into a random world domination rant, without anyone taking much notice (Well, except for Squirrelflight and Leafpool). At one point he even yells about how one day he will be in charge in public, and yet no one even looks his way. Even after he helps organize a failed coup d'etat in Starlight, everyone still loves him.
- On an episode of Charmed, this trope is subverted when Cole immediately notices that Paige and Phoebe have switched bodies. He doesn't tell Phoebe that he noticed until after he has made a move on her whilst she was in Paige's body. ...Or So I Heard.
- Subverted in, of all things, Star Trek. In "Mirror, Mirror," (you know, the episode with the evil parallel universe where everyone has a beard), the prime-universe crew members manage, with great difficulty, to pass themselves off as their evil counterparts. After reversing whatever Negative Space Wedgie dumped them in the evil universe and returning home, they briefly worry about the damage that their evil doppelgangers might have caused, only to discover that Spock immediately noticed their odd behavior and confined them to the brig five minutes after their arrival.
- Blackadder the Third uses this trope in the episode "Duel and Duality". Blackadder plays George so that he can participate in a duel with Wellington. Baldrick is confused by, as Blackadder says, "Two people who you know well have exchanged coats and now you can't tell which is which." George ends up failing utterly to be subservient (as he usually does) and Blackadder displays tactical genius, advising Wellington to station Nelson in Trafalgar, while the real George would have been confused even by the explanation of where he put his men. In the end, even George's father doesn't recognize Blackadder as an impostor (perhaps justified in that he's mad).
- Also played with in the episode "Bells" in Blackadder II. Kate disguises herself — rather obviously — as "Bob." Blackadder has been handed the Idiot Ball here without question, as he generally tends to be an Only Sane Man character but, somehow, fails to recognize her for a girl. Cue much agonizing as Blackadder realizes he's falling for a boy.
- RPG World subverts this mightily, by having a character who looks almost exactly like the main villain show up out of nowhere and ask to join the hero's party for no real reason. Only one party member suspects that he might actually be hiding something, but no one believes her... and then it turns out she was wrong and he actually is a good guy who just happens to look like the villain.
- A rare heroic example of a subversion from Justice League: Gorilla Grodd's Secret Society has apparently defeated the Justice League. Clayface asks, like any reasonable villain would, why they aren't just going to kill them. Grodd, with his newfound appreciation for showmanship, insists they do it publically...but at the pivotal moment, it turns out Manhunter took Clayface's place; the "Manhunter" the Secret Society captured was in turn actually Clayface. J'onn being a psychic probably helped, though.
