History Main / SleepingDummy

* Hogarth, in ''WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant'', escapes an amoral government agent by doing this.

* An episode of the ''WesternAnimation/JoeOrioloFelixTheCat'' series had Felix and Poindexter (the Professor's nephew) charged with keeping things quiet while the Professor takes a nap but they're failing horribly at it. It turns out that the Professor they were watching over was a dummy while the real Professor was in an adjacent room napping.

* In Creator/AsbjornsenAndMoe's "Literature/TheOldDameAndHerHen", the main character is held captive by a troll. One day the troll leaves his lair, and the girl, she stuffs her clothes with straw, sticks up the dummy by the chimney and ties a besom to its hand so it looked like she was standing there. Then she sneaks out of the place.

[[folder:Folklore]]
* In ''The Hare's Bride'', the girl is taken away by a hare and made to prepare food. She dresses a straw doll in her clothes, puts a spoon in its hand, and leaves it beside the cooking pot while she runs away.
[[/folder]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' episode "[[Recap/DuckTales2017S2E22GlomTales [=GlomTales!=]", Louie is grounded to the mansion while the rest of the family goes on, as Louie calls it "the laziest adventure of all time". He obviously wants to leave to get there himself, but Della has programmed a security bot to make sure he stays put. One of his plans involves planting a sleeping dummy in his bed, seemingly getting out of the room and into a doorway, when in reality, the "Louie" the robot sees is another dummy on a remote-controlled vehicle. Unfortunately for Louie, the robot catches on faster than he expected and nonlethally zaps Louie back inside.

* In ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff'', this is elaborate to the point of being kinda silly; it includes a soundtrack of him snoring and a pulley system to make the dummy appear to react when the bedroom door is opened.

Bonus points if they use a tape recorder to add breathing/snoring.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' episode "[=GlomTales!=]", Louie is grounded to the mansion while the rest of the family goes on, as Louie calls it "the laziest adventure of all time". He obviously wants to leave to get there himself, but Della has programmed a security bot to make sure he stays put. One of his plans involves planting a sleeping dummy in his bed, seemingly getting out of the room and into a doorway, when in reality, the "Louie" the robot sees is another dummy on a remote-controlled vehicle. Unfortunately for Louie, the robot catches on faster than he expected and nonlethally zaps Louie back inside.

* Happens in ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'' when Szilard starts eating other alchemists onboard of Advena Avis. He leaves a sleeping dummy on his bed to cover up his doings. It is found when Maiza attempts to eat him himself.

* A convoluted version in an episode of ''Manga/CaseClosed'' - the employees at a restaurant are searching for the owner. He usually naps on the couch in the back room, but they look and see that he's not there. Later, they go back and see him sleeping there, but of course, it's not him, it's this - he's the BodyOfTheWeek, and this was used to confuse the time of the murder. The twist is [[spoiler: how the cushion got there - the murderer put some puffy jackets in a vacuum bag, vacuumed it flat, then, when they all went to check the first time, poked a hole in the bag through the blanket with a corkscrew, which wouldn't be odd for a restaurant employee to carry. The bag inflated and became this.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'' episode "The Belchies", Louis, Gene, and Tina each leave one of these when they sneak out of the house. Each dummy says something of its respective maker: Louise leaves a convincingly-shaped pile of clothes, Gene leaves a full bag of trash, and Tina leaves a note simply reading 'Tina'.

* ''Film/{{Lou}}'' (2022). The title character sees Philip is supposedly wrapped in a sleeping bag next to the little girl he kidnapped. Although she has the chance to snipe him from a distance, she chooses to try sneaking up on him and gets captured because the sleeping bag is a dummy. [[spoiler:The WhyDontYouJustShootHim moment foreshadows TheReveal that Philip is Lou's estranged son.]]

* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'': Paige does this to sneak out of jail after being arrested. She claims she used to do it all the time to get past her adoptive parents and go out at night.

* ''The Red House Mystery'' (by Creator/AAMilne): [[AmateurSleuth Anthony]] and [[TheWatson Bill]] do this before going off to tail a suspect at night so that the suspect (who is staying in the same house as they are) won't realize they're onto him. Bill is pretty proud of his sleeping dummy, but Anthony's is so convincing that it even fools Bill.

* ''Doubled Edge'' (by Creator/MercedesLackey): In one novel, Rhoslyn needs to go Underhill while seeming to stay in the mortal world. She arranges a couple pillows under her blanket ... and then casts an illusion of her sleeping mortal disguise on the pillows.

* In the 1953 POWCamp movie ''Albert R. N.'' the eponymous Albert is a dummy built by British POW's to fool the head count done by their German guards, based on the RealLife case mentioned below.

* ''Literature/OrkneyingaSaga'': Magnus Erlendsson, later better known as St. Magnus of Orkney, employed this trick to escape from being a hostage of King Magnus of Norway. When the king's ship lies off Scotland, Magnus "prepared his bunk so that it looked as if someone were sleeping in it, then slipped overboard and swam ashore." By the time the Norwegians realize Magnus is not actually in his bunk, he has already a good head start.

--> '''1 Samuel 19:11-15'''

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'' short "Christmas Caper", Private uses a bowling pin as a dummy. When Skipper discovers it, he slaps and interrogates it.