History Main / BeneathNotice

* Franchise/SherlockHolmes occasionally makes use of the "Baker Street Irregulars", a gang of young street urchins, who because they are typically ignored by ''everyone'', can serve as his eyes and ears on the streets of London.

* A variant occurs in the ''Literature/EnolaHolmes'' series: in order to hide in plain sight from her brother Franchise/SherlockHolmes, Enola disguises herself as the one thing Sherlock will never look twice at: a beautiful woman!

---> '''Lex:''' [[RealityEnsues I have no idea who this is...]]

* In ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', the Heterodyne Spymaster infiltrates the target's army by [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20180704 signing up as some sort of low-ranking private]] and acting as a inocuous, bored grunt.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'': Emmet is TheChosenZero, an ordinary BlankSlate doofus. His plain appearance makes victory possible when [[spoiler:Finn's father interrupts and demands an explanation. Finn says that Emmet is the hero of this story, but his dad immediately dismisses this idea. He puts the ordinary construction worker aside and pays little attention to him, allowing Emmet to escape unnoticed]].

One way for a character to evade detection from someone who is looking for them is to disguise 'emself, not in a highly elaborate way, but rather as an incredibly plain, ordinary-looking person who isn't worthy of attention. The idea behind such subterfuge is that even if an authority figure comes looking around, they wouldn't demean themselves by looking a commoner straight in the face. Blending into your environment works for chameleons, after all, so why shouldn't it work for humans, too?

* Real {{Ninja}} (supposedly, since ninja are supposed to be a secret) were not actually invisible, but would take the role of an ordinary peasant and, sometimes for years, just blend in with everyone else until it was time to strike.

* In ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' Queen Amidala constantly dressed in regal royal attire behind face concealing makeup. She is always assisted with and surrounded by handmaidens with face obscuring cloaks. One of her key handmaidens in the film is Padme, who assists Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn while on Tatooine. In truth, the "Padme" on Tatooine is actually Queen Amidala dressed down and in disguise. No one, except possibly Qui-Gon, even noticed the Queen ever switch places with her handmaidens. Not only do all the handmaidens look alike, but no one pays attention to them because they are always in the background assisting others. Their role is expanded on in ''Literature/StarWarsQueensShadow''.

** Season 4 proves how well it works as FBI agent Phoebe has been slowly building a case on the girls and hunting them. In a meeting with her superiors, Phoebe is shocked to realize her bosses are operating under the belief that Beth's husband, Dean (an utter sad sack who openly says he doesn't want to know what his wife is up to) is the real criminal mastermind and thee wife isn't even on their radar.

* Both the titular ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' and Jasmine get away with {{Paper Thin Disguise}}s owing to this. With Aladdin, as a street rat, nobody ever paid him enough attention to recognize he is "Prince Ali", except for Jasmine who ''did'' and quickly surmises who he really is. With Jasmine, dressed as a street ''mouse'' (as Razoul puts it) nobody looks at her long enough to recognize her until she actually points out she is, in fact, the princess.

* This became one of the reasons why people don't recognize Clark Kent as ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' in stories ComicBook/PostCrisis, especially Lex Luthor. Not only is Clark too clumsy and mild-mannered, but even if someone did manage to catch the resemblance, they would never assume that a PhysicalGod with pretty much every superpower known to man would ever choose to live as someone so mundane. [[ClarkKenting The glasses are really just extra insurance.]]
* In ''Comicbook/AstroCity'', a comic-book publisher who got in a lot of trouble for basing comics on the actual superheroes and supervillains in the setting decides to switch to comics focusing on cosmic entities, thinking that any such beings wouldn't bother reading comics. [[spoiler:He turns out to be wrong about this.]]
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: Eviless enjoys that her slaver position is so low in the Saturnian Empire's hierarchy that her failures will be blamed on her superiors and they will get punished for them while she goes free. She spends her first several appearances just blending in with the other slavers and not bringing any extra attention to herself, not even being named, even though she's far more sadistic than the rest and has developed a business deal with Hypnota that gets her loads of human slaves with their minds already broken packed like sardines in boxes letting her be far more effective than other slavers for far less effort.

* In ''[[FanFic/MastermindStrategistForHire Mastermind: Strategist for Hire]]'', Izuku's public life as a bullied Quirkless teenager helps throw off police suspicion regarding the new villain Mastermind. Izuku notes that even if police look past his youth and Quirkless status, they'd assume he doesn't have the right attitude for plotting murder since he's never lashed out against his bullies, even indirectly.

* In ''WebComic/AwfulHospital,'' greyzoners (humans) are extremely vulnerable to [[WeirdnessCensor perception filtering,]] but since we only have five (maybe six) senses accross a narrow spectrum each, it's usually considered a waste of time, allowing certain characters, such as Fern and Dr. Man, to slip through the Parliament's net.

** Parker apparently learned this from her mentor [[GentlemanThief Archie]], as he also does this in "The Big Dam Job." As he says, "Nobody ever cuts the cake until someone tells them to cut the cake." [[spoiler: he was stealing a sword from an exhibit on opening night by smuggling it out through a fake cake, appearing as part of the catering staff. Once inside the party, he removed the white catering jacket and was just another gentleman at a nice party with a cane.]]

* Film/{{Tron}}: This bites Dillinger ''and'' Master Control in the ass within the first half hour of the film. they considered [[TheSmartGuy Alan Bradley]] to be a paper-pushing Boy Scout who couldn't actually pose any kind of a threat and was too naive to actually know there was anything wrong. And then, Alan lays out very casually that...oh, he's been working on new security software (the title character!) that is going to run monitor all the network traffic at Encom. Yes, the software is going to run independently. Yes, it's capable of shutting down Master Control if necessary. Yes, he submitted all the proper paperwork and kept his conduct squeaky-clean. Is any of this going to be a problem? After realizing that this naive Boy Scout rank and file programmer just pulled a whopper of a XanatosGambit, Dillinger all but pushes Alan out of the office in a panic. Made much more obvious in the {{Novelization}}.

** The true antagonist is [[spoiler:the gas station attendant who shakes your hand in the opening scenes of the game]].

* In the 1980s Franchise/JamesBond RPG, it's [[PointBuildSystem more expensive]] to build an average-looking character than a good-looking one, partly for game balance (blending into the crowd is [[InvokedTrope a very useful tactic for a spy]]) and partly to encourage players to go along with the larger-than-life genre.

** In ''Literature/TheABCMurders'', a breakthrough in a case against a ThemeSerialKiller is made when Poirot realizes a suspicious person had actually been seen at all the previous murders. The reason it took so long for anyone to realize this is because it was door-to-door salesman: "He wasn't the sort of man you'd notice".

* ''Series/NickVelvet'': In "The Theft of the General's Trash", Nick poses as a milkman in order to gain access to secure apartment block on the grounds that no one notices a milkman. He is right and none of the tenants pay him any attention. While the doorman does notice him, his only question is "Where's the regular guy?"

TheNondescript may be this. May result in TheDogWasTheMastermind. Related to TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse and JanitorImpersonationInfiltration. BeneathSuspicion is a subtrope, but should not be confused with this trope. FlawExploitation and BatmanGambit are supertropes, as successfully pulling this off depends on exploiting the pride of the one being evaded. See also HiddenInPlainSight.