History Main / PickACard

* In the ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' episode "Ghosts of Christmas Past", a boy who wants to be a magician when he grows up does an actually-quite-clever version of the trick while being interviewed by the police about the murder, and his explanation of how he did it (including the fact that he arranged matters to have his own choice of card come up at the end) inspires a EurekaMoment later.

* ''Film/LiveAndLetDie''. Solitaire is a fortune teller employed by the BigBad who can read the future in her tarot cards. When she first meets Film/JamesBond she invites him to pick a card, which turns out to be [[YouFool The Fool]] (Bond has just gotten captured thanks to his own overconfidence, so it's not like the cards are wrong). However Bond then picks a second card: The Lovers ("Us?"). Later Bond tricks Solitaire into sleeping with him using this trope, not knowing that Bond has replaced every card in the deck with The Lovers.

* ''Film/LiveAndLetDie''. Solitaire is a fortune teller employed by the BigBad who can read the future in her tarot cards. When she first meets Bond she invites him to pick a card, which turns out to be [[YouFool The Fool]] (Bond has just gotten captured thanks to his own overconfidence, so it's not like the cards are wrong). However Bond then picks a second card: The Lovers ("Us?"). Later Bond tricks Solitaire into sleeping with him using this trope, not knowing that Bond has replaced every card in the deck with The Lovers.

** Still another had an audience member pick a card. The deck is scattered on a table. A blindfolded Teller then tries to select the card by sticking it with a dagger. He gets it wrong, and Penn rescatters the cards. This continues a few times until Teller appears to stab Penn through his hand, which is holding the correct card.

* ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'': In the [[ 2022-01-29 strip]], for the stage magic-themed wedding of Edgar Carnassial and Miranda Hutch, Miranda asks her dads (biologically her uncle and his husband) to do this... then proceeds to subvert most of the trope by revealing that instead of putting the cards back, whichever of them drew the high card won the first dance with her (she loved them both so much that she had to choose randomly, and this was the method).

* On ''Series/GilmoreGirls,'' Rory is pressed into service tutoring BrilliantBuLazy Jess, who is at risk of repeating his junior year. He doesn't much are for the tutoring and just wants to use it as an excuse to spend time with her. He tries this trope as she's quizzing him on something. Annoyed, she takes the whole deck and throws it on the floor. He [[DeadpanSnarker remarks]] that this makes the trick a little harder.

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* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutron'': Sheen does this to distract the guards during the museum heist. However, he keeps showing the same card to the guards, even after they say it wasn't their card.

->''"Do you like card tricks?"\\
"No, I hate card tricks," I answered.\\
...\\
He showed me three.''
-->-- '''Creator/WSomersetMaugham''', "Mr. Know-All"

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* In ''ComicStrip/FrankAndErnest'', Frank had Ernest do this once -- and found it by checking the early edition of the paper.
* Jason Fox does this with Peter in ''ComicStrip/FoxTrot''. Peter quickly figures out how Jason does it- every card in the deck is the same.

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* Creator/PennAndTeller have done several deliberately over-the-top variations, such as the one where the number and suit of the card are revealed to be printed on Teller's eyeballs. They also, as habitual lampshaders of the fraudulent nature of stage magic, have a favorite card to make their marks randomly select, the three of clubs.
** In one of their books they claimed to have contacted ''every pizza restaurant in the country'' so that you could order a "P&T Special", which was a pizza with the three of clubs made of pepperoni on it so you could pull the "was this your card switcheroo" thing on your friends. "Was this your card? No? Oh well, I'm only learning. Let's order pizza." ''pizza comes, friend opens it to discover [[BrickJoke their card on the pizza]]''
** Another Penn and Teller version was to try to find the card whilst Teller is holding his breath in a large plexi-glass tank. Penn fails to find the card so Teller drowns. Then the card is seen inside the tank, with signature, underneath teller's googles. Teller is still dead though.
** Still another had an audience member pick a card. The deck is scattered on a table. A blindfolded Teller then tries to select the card by sticking it with a dagger. He gets it wrong, and Penn rescatters the cards. This continues a few times until Teller appears to stab Penn through his hand, which is holding the correct card.
* The most popular version of this trick amongst real magicians today is known as the ambitious card, where the chosen card, often signed to prevent duplicates, is placed in the middle of the deck before jumping to the top of the deck. This is often repeated multiple times, sometimes finishing with the card arriving in a pocket or stuck to the ceiling.
* Magician and psychologist Richard Wiseman has described performing a version of this trick for the Magic Circle in which none of the professional magicians could work out how he did it, since they could see he wasn't using the standard methods. It turned out that it would never occur to a professional magician that anyone would use a deck of cards that are all the same, despite it being the first thing you have to show a layman you aren't doing.
* Magician Ricky Jay pulls several versions of this in his stage shows, notably "Ricky Jay and his Fifty-two Assistants". In that show he has several audience members select different cards during the same trick, and then produces them in order in a series of elaborate shuffles and flourishes. After one complex cut he produces the Ace of Clubs and shows it to the lady who drew that card, only for her to inform him that she drew the Four of Diamonds. He turns the card around, revealing her card, saying, "If you insist."
* The Amazing Johnathan would lampoon this in his act, telling the person to think of a card, then shuffle the deck as many times as they wanted. When they hand the deck back to them, he confirms they've only thought of the card, they shuffled the deck as many times as they wanted, and thus there was no way he could possibly find their card. When the person said "that's correct", Johnathan would declare "Well, fuck that then!" and throw the deck over his shoulder, scattering cards everywhere.
* On ''Website/NotAlwaysRomantic'', a man flirting at a bar asks a girl to pick a card, sign her name on it, and add it back to the deck. After shuffling, he is unable to make her card "magically" rise to the top of the deck, apologizes, and returns to his seat... [[https://notalwaysright.com/love-is-in-the-cards/ only for her to find that he replaced her drink's coaster with the card, and added his phone number]].
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