History Main / LostInACrowd

* In ''Film/TheTown'', it's used by Doug [=MacRay=] and James Coughlin during the Fenway Park robbery and shootout climax, when they escape a shootout in the garage with the FBI SWAT team by disguising themselves as Boston Police Department officers at the same time that some real BPD cops shows up to back up the FBI SWAT team. Doug draws a Glock and joins the group of cops entering, while Coughlin flees out another door. While it works for the moment, outside, Agent Adam Frawley overhears a police captain telling Dino Ciampa that two cops robbed the cash room. This prompts Frawley to start scanning the area, looking for a uniformed police officer who is acting suspiciously. He quickly stumbles upon Coughlin walking through a parking lot (probably helped by the fact that Coughlin is walking away from the stadium, not towards it, and he's carrying his money satchels in plain sight). Doug, exiting out a nearby door, is never noticed by Frawley nor thought of as suspicious since he isn't carrying any money bags on him. He can only watch in shock as "Officer Coughlin" is chased across a parking lot by Frawley, gets cornered by the real BPD in the street, engages them in an intense close-range gunfight, and finally chooses to commit SuicideByCop. While Frawley and the cops are approaching Coughlin's lifeless body, Doug escapes by stealing a police car.

* Thomas Crown does this in the remake of ''TheThomasCrownAffair''. He clearly shows himself to the security cameras wearing a trench coat and bowler hat, and carrying a valise. Then he walks off - and about two hundred confederates break out trench coats, bowler hats, and valises and start walking around the museum, switching valises many times. At some point, Crown ditches his own trench coat and bowler hat, slipping out a side entrance while everyone is looking for trench coats and bowler hats.

* In [[TheFilmOfTheBook the film version]] of ''Film/VForVendetta'', V uses this tactic to escape after taking over the television studio by dressing his hostages to look just like him. Later, V distributes replicas of his Guy Fawkes mask across the country, and on the eve of his climactic attack on the government, London is overrun by thousands of people in V costumes.

* In ''Film/TheFugitive'', Richard Kimble walks out into a Saint Patrick's Day parade in downtown Chicago, pretending to be part of the crowd.

* Variation in ''Film/MenInBlack''. Whilst chasing the [[BigBad bug]], J spots a discarded bead seat cover and realises (correctly) that the bug has hijacked a NY cab. He runs out into the street to catch him and... well... it's New York, use your imagination.

*** In one scene, dozens of hostages are dressed in clown masks, their mouths duct taped shut (so they can't indicate that they're not bad guys) and guns duct taped to their hands. The impending SWAT team doesn't see anything amiss, but fortunately Batman is smarter.

*** After the attempted assassination on the Mayor is foiled, the Joker and his men (disguised as the honor guard) use the scattering police and confusion to get out, though one gets tagged in the leg.
** Reused and subverted in ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', when Bane and the three mercenaries who help him in the stock exchange heist for the hostages to walk out of the doors into the police. The police are GenreSavvy enough to get ready to issue orders to detain everyone while they figure it out... suddenly Bane and his crew burst out of the crowd on motorcycles.

* A funny ''unintentional'' version occurs in the movie ''TheFiftyFirstState'': SamuelLJackson is flying into London, and he's taken to wearing a kilt. A CorruptCop hoping to intercept him tells a subordinate to wait at the airport for a dark-skinned man "wearing a dress." It's the henchman's bad luck that just as Jackson arrives, so do several flights from African and Asian countries where men still wear robes, sarongs, etc....

* The Swedish police was put under heat when a murderer out on a day long permission (under surveillance) managed to flee by waiting until the Christmas Crowd was especially dense and then... started to run like hell.

Contrast with IAmSpartacus, wherein different people try to protect you by claiming they are you, but they don't necessarily look like you, and NeedleInAStackOfNeedles, which is this trope applied to objects.

* ''NorthByNorthwest'' - as his train arrives in Chicago, Roger evades detection by the waiting police by dressing as a redcap (railroad baggage handler) - by the time the police find the real redcap onboard without his uniform (which Roger paid him for), Roger has disappeared into a sea of redcaps.

* The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p87G6fSQzpc Australia version]] of LinkinPark's "What I've Done" music video involves this; a scientist at a corrupt pharmaceutical company does a HeelFaceTurn and steals a sample of TheVirus the company is developing to control the populace, handing it to a member of what's presumably a resistance fighter in a black hoodie with the band's logo on it. When the company's agents give chase, they're cockblocked by several ''other'' people in black hoodies with the band's logo on it. In a subversion, however, the purpose of this wasn't just to delay the goons long enough to get the sample to the appropriate authorities; they ''goaded'' the goons into following them, in order to expose to the company [[IAmSpartacus just how large]] the resistance against them is and intimidating them into backing down from their schemes.

* In one episode of ''{{Lupin III}}'', Lupin successfully convinces an entire crowd of attendees, children included, to dress as himself and his accomplices. While the police are being overwhelmed trying to arrest everyone to sort it out later, the real Lupin and company make off with an entire exhibit of things belonging to the original Arsene Lupin, as well as a model of him. This is done not only under the noses of the (heavily overwhelmed) police, but of his archnemesis Inspector Zenigata, plus a special guest antagonist, the descendant of Inspector Ganimard, who was the only man to ever arrest the original Arsene Lupin.

* ''HarryPotter/{{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows}}'' features this, with multiple Harrys created via polyjuice potions to protect the real one.

** [[FridgeLogic You'd think they'd spot the only ''black'' nun in the group.]]
** But they're wearing habits. If you spot one from behind, you can't tell whether she is black or white. So that tilts the odds a bit in her favor.

* In [[TheFilmOfTheBook the film version]] of ''VForVendetta'', V uses this tactic to escape after taking over the television studio by dressing his hostages to look just like him. Later, V distributes replicas of his Guy Fawkes mask across the country, and on the eve of his climactic attack on the government, London is overrun by thousands of people in V costumes.

* This happened to the Joker twice in ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries''. First came when a millionaire built a casino themed after the Joker, which naturally led the Clown Prince to decide to blow it up. When the Joker showed up to do the job though, he soon found all the card dealers and much of the staff were dressed in his clothes and wearing make-up and wigs to resemble him. This not only helped him escape Batman for a little while (Bats kept chasing down Jokers to find they were just casino employees), but also let him march right up to a Blackjack table and start dealing. A later example game when he decided to set off a bomb on New Year's, he handed out Joker-Masks to the crowd so he'd be tougher to find. Didn't work so well that time, though.

* The end of ''{{Darkman}}'' has a scene like this, with the titular hero leaving his love interest because ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies and disappearing into a crowd. The effect is increased by the fact that the hero has discovered a formula which gives him the ability to temporarily assume the appearance of anyone he chooses, meaning he could literally be any of them... and whilst the love interest is looking around desperately, we see a guy we've never seen before (one of Bruce Campbell's many appearances in Sam Raimi films) looking back at her with anguish before turning and walking away...
* Part of KansasCityShuffle that Clive Owen's team implements in ''InsideMan''. Everyone in the bank is (forcibly) dressed in the same outfit, making a proper SWAT Team siege impossible [[spoiler: and allowing the robbers to escape undetected]].

* In [[TheMovie the film version]] of ''TheSaint'', Simon Templar hides in plain sight from the Russian mobsters who are chasing him by putting on a homeless man's coat and hat, swigging from a bottle of vodka, and acting drunk... just like the dozen or so homeless drunks around him.

* Being LostInACrowd is a crucial part of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI''. Not only does the end of the opening movie shows this exact thing, but in-game Altaïr can use Scholars as (who are all dressed similarly to him) as "mobile hide points." He can "blend" on his own by making a praying pose and walking slowly, but he needs the Scholars to bypass guard posts... not least because he openly carries a longsword, short blade, and throwing knives, and he needs the Scholars to block the guards' view of his weapons.

* In an episode of ''{{Castle}}'', the cops drop off the ransom in a certain bag. Then they try to take down anyone with that bag. Naturally, everyone is carrying an identical bag as a part of a 'performance art' piece.
* Variation from ''{{Leverage}}'': In "The Second David Job", the team plants fake David statues in everyone's bag at the museum coat check. [[spoiler: The real Davids were both in the display case the whole time, covered by a cloud of steam. The whole thing was a decoy while the team stole every ''other'' work of art in the gallery.]]

** Reused and subverted in ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', when Bane and his mooks force all the stock exchange hostages to walk out of the doors into the police. The police are GenreSavvy enough to start issuing orders to detain everyone while they figure it out... until Bane and his crew plough through the crowd in motorcycles.

* In the ''{{Stargate SG-1}}'' episode "Insiders", all the Ba'al clones present claim to be the real Ba'al (thus also creating an IAmSpartacus moment. (Colonel Mitchell even refers to them collectively as "Spartacus" during a HurricaneOfPuns prompted by the name "Ba'al" and the word "ball").

* In one scene in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', dozens of hostages are dressed in clown masks, their mouths duct taped shut (so they can't indicate that they're not bad guys) and guns duct taped to their hands. The impending SWAT team doesn't see anything amiss, but fortunately Batman is smarter.
** Also, following the initial bank robbery scene, when [[spoiler: The Joker]] gets away in a school bus and merges into a long column of school buses.
* Reused and subverted in TheDarkKnightRises, when Bane and his mooks force all the stock exchange hostages to walk out of the doors into the police. The police are GenreSavvy enough to start issuing orders to detain everyone while they figure it out... until Bane and his crew plough through the crowd in motorcycles.

* Reused and subverted in TheDarkKnightRises, when Bane and his mooks force all the stock exchange hostages to walk out of the doors into the police. The police are GenreSaavy enough to start issuing orders to detain everyone while they figure it out... until Bane and his crew plough through the crowd in motorcycles.

* Being LostInACrowd is a crucial part of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreed''. Not only does the end of the opening movie shows this exact thing, but in-game Altaïr can use Scholars as (who are all dressed similarly to him) as "mobile hide points." He can "blend" on his own by making a praying pose and walking slowly, but he needs the Scholars to bypass guard posts... not least because he openly carries a longsword, short blade, and throwing knives, and he needs the Scholars to block the guards' view of his weapons.
** In ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII Assassin's Creed II]]'' this changes up somewhat with Ezio, who can now blend into any group of four or more (sometimes three, and with Courtesans as low as two), but the Assassin Robes he wears ''all the time'' are [[HighlyVisibleNinja extremely distinct, not least because he wears a Assassin emblem on the front of his belly]]. In ''Brotherhood'' this blending ability gets much more plausible if you choose to equip the Florentine Noble Attire (a Uplay Reward), since that outfit (his day wear from before he donned the Assassin Robes) is much more like the clothing worn by Roman civilians.

* In one scene in ''TheDarkKnight'', dozens of hostages are dressed in clown masks, their mouths duct taped shut (so they can't indicate that they're not bad guys) and guns duct taped to their hands. The impending SWAT team doesn't see anything amiss, but fortunately Batman is smarter.