| 1 | [[quoteright:320:[[ComicStrip/TwistedToyfareTheatre https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/xavier_9651.jpg]]]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ->''"‘Ware the man who fakes a limp."'' |
| 4 | -->-- '''The Gunslinger''', ''Literature/TheGunslinger'' |
| 5 | |
| 6 | Sometimes a person with an apparent disability will be more than they seem. Sometimes they will turn out not to be disabled at all. The reasons for faking a disability vary, but it is usually to cause others to underestimate them. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | A particular form occurs in CrimeAndPunishmentSeries where one suspect will obviously be ruled out because they are in a wheelchair and [[DisabilityAlibi physically incapable of committing the crime]]. However, at TheSummation, the detective announces that the criminal is in fact the paraplegic. This is then followed by the supposed paraplegic getting up and attempting to run. Another variant, commonly used in {{Courtroom Episode}}s, involves an AmbulanceChaser lawyer persuading his client to feign injury such as whiplash in order to win a FrivolousLawsuit settlement. Or the StagedPedestrianAccident, where the "victim" allows himself to get hit by a car, and does a gruesome-looking but harmless tumble. Yet another form involves the character ''actually'' suffering some disabling injury, finding some way to exploit their condition for fame and/or fortune (such as a lawsuit, or advertising themselves as InspirationallyDisadvantaged), somehow making a full recovery, then trying to conceal said recovery to continue reaping the benefits. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | It is worth noting that a lot of disabled people may occasionally give the appearance of this trope, when it is anything but. Some conditions might require the use of a wheelchair to avoid exhaustion or discomfort, even though the person is technically capable of standing up and walking for a short while. Other disabilities can be a milder form of a more well-known condition or invisible, but make no mistake: the person in question is still disabled, and they're emphatically ''not'' faking it. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | See also FakingAmnesia, ObfuscatingStupidity, ObfuscatingInsanity, PillowPregnancy, PlayingSick, WoundedGazelleGambit, and DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery. Contrast ThrowingOffTheDisability, when a genuinely disabled person makes a miraculous recovery, and HidingTheHandicap, where a person conceals his disability. A villainous character who actually ''is'' disabled is an EvilCripple. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | '''Spoilers Ahoy!''' |
| 15 | ---- |
| 16 | !!Examples: |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 21 | * ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': When he infiltrated Liberio, Eren severed his own leg and put out one of his eyes to maintain the guise of a wounded Eldian soldier. Of course, being a Titan shifter means he can regenerate both those missing body parts without a hitch, and only does so after he gathers the intel he needs and is ready to commence the next part of his plan. |
| 22 | * ''Manga/BlackButler'' has the doctor from the Circus arc. A perfectly friendly, calm doctor and stuck in a wheelchair, making prosthetics for the top-tier members of the circus that are all missing some limb. When he sees Ciel and Sebastian in Baron Kelvin's house, he non-chalantly gets up from his wheelchair and proves to have no problems using his legs, much to Joker's amazement. The doctor reveals that sitting in a wheelchair makes him seem more friendly, then drops the entire charade and reveals what a twisted person he really is, and the [[HumanResources resource for his prosthetics]]. |
| 23 | * ''Manga/CaseClosed'': |
| 24 | ** The very first criminal in the series claimed to have a broken leg and couldn't walk, but a check of hospital records revealed otherwise. |
| 25 | ** In one case, one of the suspects was an old man pretending to be blind. [[spoiler:He wasn't the killer though, he was just trying to give himself an advantage at the mystery contest all of the cast came there for; after the case and the contest were over, he happily admits it when Conan points it out.]] |
| 26 | * ''Literature/TheFamiliarOfZero'': [[DirtyOldMan Osmand]] sometimes acts like he's senile when trying to get out of trouble like if he is caught peeping, but nobody is fooled. |
| 27 | * In ''Anime/FinalFantasyVIIAdventChildren'', Rufus Shinra always sits in a wheelchair and is covered in a long cloak, making him appear to be crippled and highly disfigured. That way Kadaj constantly keeps turning his back to him, which comes in handy in the end, as he can stand, walk, and use guns without many problems, at least for a short time. He is actually sick with Geostigma, but not to the extent that he pretends he is. |
| 28 | * In ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', the Laughing Man went into hiding by hacking the computers of a mental hospital for children and youths and creating a fake identity of being a patient suffering from severe mental disabilities and being almost unresponsive to other people. Which is particularly appropriate as his CallingCard was an image that included the quote from ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." |
| 29 | * This is possibly what Shiba'i in ''Manga/IkkiTousen'''s second season was doing, since in the final episode she gets up and starts running around. It might have been related to her now being the SoulJar of the BigBad, but it's never made clear. If she was faking it it's likely a reference to her ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'' counterpart Sima-Yi, who also faked an illness. |
| 30 | * Joseph Joestar during ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable'' seems like age has caught up to him, but it's heavily implied that he's only acting senile to get his wife off his case about [[spoiler:Josuke being conceived in an affair]]. In public, he acts like a doddering, addled, questionably lucid old man with a foot and four toes in the nursing home, but the minute he's out of the public eye, he steps up his game very fast, and once he realizes that the suspected serial killer they're after is a Stand user, he immediately begins working with Jotaro to develop a plan of action. At the end of the series, when Josuke steals his wallet, he also noticeably tries to act like he's too out of it to notice at first, before quickly breaking his facade as he goes from momentary anger to amusement. |
| 31 | * Miko from ''Manga/KaguyaSamaLoveIsWar'' ends up breaking her arm after protecting Ishigami when he falls down the stairs, and he ends having to look after her while her arm heals. During a shipping war between the characters who ship Ishgigami/Tsubame and Ishigami/Miko, Onodera (who is on team Ishigami/Miko) reveals that she actually kept the cast on two weeks longer than necessary and cites it as evidence that she likes him and was using it as an excuse to keep him around her at all times. |
| 32 | * ''Anime/MyHime'': The young-looking director of Fuuka Academy Mashiro is usually seen in a wheelchair, escorted by her maid helper Fumi. However, as she's actually inhabiting Fumi's [[{{Mons}} CHILD]] Suishouhime she can stand up and fight physically when needed. |
| 33 | * In one chapter of ''Manga/PetShopOfHorrors: Tokyo'', a rich businessman pretends to have had a stroke and be suffering from dementia, so that he can see how his family members acted when he seemingly wasn't watching. Because of this, he sees his wife work hard to take care of him, their child, and her in-laws, foils a plan to trick him into divorcing her, and leaves her half of his estate. |
| 34 | * ''Manga/SaintSeiya'' portrays at least two examples of this trope: |
| 35 | ** Libra Dohko: an old man of more than 250 years old that walks using a stick (and that's actually an {{expy}} of Franchise/StarWars Yoda), can be even more badass than any of the younger Saints. Not to mention that he actually hides his young shape intact, shelled inside his old body, ready to use if becomes necessary |
| 36 | ** In the spinoff ''Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas'', is revealed that the ancient Virgo Saint, Asmita, is in fact blind. However he absolutely doesn't need sight, as his powers and perception are in the ranges of Pure Awesomeness. |
| 37 | * In ''Anime/SpeedGrapher'', Suitengu spends a short time pretending to need a wheelchair after Shinzen shoots him in both knees. He drops the act at his earliest opportunity, as it annoyed him to act so confined. |
| 38 | * Director Kuramoto from the manga version of ''Manga/{{Strider}}'' suffers from senility, appearing very dispersed and oblivious about what's going on around him. Then, when a group of Matic's men show up with orders to kill him, Kuramoto suddenly stands up and kills them instantly, revealing his condition to be faked as he awaited for Matic to show his true colors. |
| 39 | * ''Literature/UndefeatedBahamutChronicle'': Fugil Arcadia, the first prince of the Arcadia Empire, is supposedly retired as a Drag-Knight due to a CareerEndingInjury. Even when he's outed as a villain, he's never seen fighting anyone directly and instead has other antagonists act as his proxy, making him seem like a NonActionBigBad. In reality, he's the WorldsStrongestMan who received enough Baptism to [[HealingFactor automatically heal from any injury]], and was only hiding his strength. He also went as far as to erase all memory of his Drag-Ride usage during the coup from the citizens in order to maintain this facade. |
| 40 | * At the start of ''Manga/YuriIsMyJob'', Mai Koshiba, manager of the Liebe Girls' Academy salon, injures her arm when Hime falls on her near the start of the school year in April, and thus pressgangs Hime into working for her until her arm heals. Later on in the series, it is revealed that Mai's arm healed later that spring, but she keeps her cast on in order to manipulate Hime into continuing to work for the salon. She eventually comes clean to Hime, at which point Hime, [[spoiler:despite almost quitting due to Mitsuki's LoveConfession]], ultimately decides to stay on. |
| 41 | [[/folder]] |
| 42 | |
| 43 | [[folder:Audio Plays]] |
| 44 | * ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'': "Blind" Maurice in ''[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho038TheChurchAndTheCrown The Church and the Crown]]''. Later Maurice the Leper. |
| 45 | [[/folder]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 48 | * In ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', Ralph Dibny believes that minor villain Professor Milo is faking the need for a wheelchair so he can disguise a mystical artifact as one of the wheels. Ralph then rips off the wheel since he needs it for a ritual that will supposedly revive his late wife Sue. He is horrified when he realizes that Milo wasn't faking his disability. Milo really needed that wheelchair ''since he lost both of his legs''. |
| 49 | * Rose the bird in ''ComicBook/AngelLove''. She ''does'' get injured by a cyclist while Wendy teaches her how to fly but continues to have Wendy pamper her long after her foot heals. |
| 50 | * ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' and ''ComicBook/{{Aquaman}}'' character Lori Lemaris used a wheelchair with a blanket on her lap to hide the fact that she's actually a [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent mermaid]]. |
| 51 | * {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}''. Just about everyone who suspects Matt Murdock is Daredevil ''thinks'' he fakes being blind to throw off suspicion. This is probably because it's a much easier leap to make than "he has some ''really'' crazy DisabilitySuperpower action going on." |
| 52 | ** When Foggy Nelson finally found out Matt's secret life, he snapped at Matt to "take off the glasses and drop the act" and ranted on how it felt to be treating Matt as if he was blind for years. Matt has to quickly relate he really is blind. |
| 53 | ** A possibly unintentional example during [[ComicBook/DaredevilMarkWaid Mark Waid's run]]: Daredevil assumes his EvilCounterpart Ikari has the same disability as him because of having the same SuperSenses. Ikari ends the illusion when he suggests that Daredevil grab a ''red'' bat to use as a weapon, at which point Daredevil [[OhCrap realises he's screwed]]. |
| 54 | * The ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'' comic ''ComicBook/DarkVictory'' has [[spoiler: Carmine Falcone's daughter Sofia fake being paralyzed to hide the fact that she's [[CopKiller the]] [[SamusIsAGirl Hangman]].]] |
| 55 | * In one Creator/ECComics story, a woman pretends to be paralyzed in an accident to gain control over her husband. She plays the role flawlessly for three months, then a fire breaks out in her house when she's alone and she learns that her legs have atrophied. |
| 56 | * The mysterious Blind Chess Player in ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles'' may actually be {{Satan}}, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_%28Biblical_figure%29 Enoch,]] or another character in the comic itself, but he definitely isn't actually blind. [[SuperSenses Positively the reverse.]] |
| 57 | * In ''ComicBook/MarshalLaw'', [[spoiler:Marshal Law's original MissionControl Danny Mallon, supposedly paraplegic due to injuries received in an earthquake, is actually faking the disability to avoid revealing that he has superpowers, and is the Sleepman, the serial killer Law pursues throughout the initial miniseries.]] |
| 58 | * ''ComicBook/NewWarriors'': Impulse had his back broken in a battle with the Galactus herald Terrax and the Psionex story in Annual #4 shows him using a wheelchair. After Night Thrasher and Rage drop by to warn him against rejoining Psionex, it is revealed that Impulse had regained use of his legs weeks ago but chose to stay in the wheelchair because he couldn't trust himself to return to his old ways. |
| 59 | * ComicBook/RichardDragon acts like he needs a wheelchair in ''ComicBook/TheQuestion''. This likely helped when he later went on to train the wheelchair bound ComicBook/{{Oracle}}. |
| 60 | * ComicBook/RawhideKid foe the Masked Maverick was really a rancher named Mason. Mason had been crippled in an accident and confined to wheelchair years earlier. After suddenly regaining use of his legs, he adopted the identity of the Masked Maverick and started rustling cattle to rebuild his failing fortune, keeping his regained mobility a secret. |
| 61 | * In ''ComicBook/RedRobin'', [[spoiler:Vicky Vale]] was onto the fact that Tim Drake was the title character along with the rest of the Batfamily's identities with the understanding that they are all interconnected, so he engineered an assassination attempt he knew was coming to be at a very public event and used crutches in his civilian identity for months. The plan being to spend a year realistically and publicly recovering from the shooting while Red Robin was publicly working as a hero. |
| 62 | * In an issue of ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}'', a hostage shouts, "Don't shoot me! I have diabetes!" |
| 63 | * In ''ComicBook/SweetTooth'', the man calling himself Walter Fish eventually reveals that he killed the real Fish and took his identity, along with his crutches, which he uses to appear crippled. |
| 64 | * In one of Horacio Altuna's SexComedy comics, a woman is walking up to her apartment when she notices a blind man with a cane sitting in the hallway. She decides to play with him by removing several articles of clothing with no reaction from the man before she leaves. The guy then gets up and takes off his blind-man glasses. |
| 65 | * ''ComicBook/Thor2014'': Two SHIELD agents figure out Jane Foster is the new Thor, but incorrectly assume she is faking her cancer. Jane eventually manages to convince them she isn't Thor and they leave. Hilariously, a throwaway line has one of them mentioning she has a hunch that Daredevil might be a blind lawyer from Hell's Kitchen, and her partner says, "[[DramaticIrony We're really terrible at this job, you know that?]]" |
| 66 | * In early issues of ''ComicBook/{{Thunderbolts}}'', Karla Sofen, [=AKA=] the supervillain Moonstone, deliberately avoided using her ability to phase through solid objects in her new heroic identity of Meteorite, as this would limit the risk of people comparing Meteorite to Moonstone and could be a useful means of taking her enemies off-guard with an unexpected power. |
| 67 | * Charles Xavier in ''ComicStrip/TwistedToyfareTheatre'' has been shown to do this a few times; like jumping up and running when he was caught using his mental powers to cheat at Blackjack. |
| 68 | [[/folder]] |
| 69 | |
| 70 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 71 | * ''Fanfic/FireAndIceAndTheOccasionalWaywardSpell'': In order to break off from the group and avoid revealing his dragon form to them, Jake claims to have a head injury, rendering him unable to follow them. |
| 72 | * ''Fanfic/GuardiansWizardsAndKungFuFighters'': After being raped by [[TokenEvilTeammate Rhouglar]], Lady Ishol pretends that the trauma has turned her into an EmptyShell, so that her Rebel captors will drop their guard around her, allowing her to rescue her husband and escape. |
| 73 | * ''Fanfic/{{Daemorphing}}'': |
| 74 | ** In ''Carry on Wayward Son'', Tobias pretends to have a bad leg so Visser Three will think he's unfit to be a [[MeatPuppet host]]. |
| 75 | ** Used longer by Loren. As in the source series, the morphing power repairs her eyes and restores her sight, but she continues living her life as a blind woman for months using a hologram. |
| 76 | * In ''Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}}: How I Live Now'', [[spoiler:Tom-as-Essa tells Efflit that he lobotomised Tom, and "proves" it by flopping onto the floor as soon as Yeerk-Cassie leaves his brain.]] |
| 77 | * ''[[Fanfic/FracturesATLA Fractures]]'': Upon hearing that Prince Zuko is scarred, wheelchair-bound, and frighteningly thin, the Gaang and White Lotus [[WrongGenreSavvy wrongly assume]] that he's either faking or exaggerating the extent of his disabilities in order to exploit this. He's not. |
| 78 | * ''(Various stories)'': [[MeaningfulName Miss Ethylene Glynnie]] is a graduate Assassin who has returned to the Guild School as a resident tutor. Having heard that she is totally deaf, the girls of Raven House plot mayhem, sure in the knowledge that their Housemistress won't hear a thing. They are right. She cannot hear a thing. But she has made sensitivity to vibration take the place of hearing. She also has an Igorina-like ability to appear in what is to her the completely right place to be. Which for the girls is often the place they ''don't'' want her to be in. [[DeafComposer Miss Glynnie]] also teaches music in the Guild's music school. Specifically, percussion. Favoured girls also learn what ''else'' a set of drumsticks can do, with care. Read more in the tales of Creator/AAPessimal. |
| 79 | * ''[[Fanfic/BastardHarryPotter Bastard]]'': Nobody knows whether Dumbledore is short-sighted or long-sighted; either way, people assume that he's lost without his glasses. In reality, his glasses are enchanted in order to let him see the traces of cast charms. |
| 80 | * In ''Fanfic/TrollCops'', the Nefarious and Notorious Mr Pupa uses his wheelchair to lull his enemies into a false sense of security before making a getaway on his robotic legs. In a twist on the trope, his disability used to be genuine, before the secret operation that gave him the aforementioned robotic legs. |
| 81 | * ''Fanfic/{{Soliloquy}}'': Matt has to desperately hide his secret identity when the precinct is attacked. During Bakuto's wave of the attack, Matt hangs back with Foggy, and they help Karen and Trish attend to a maimed Claire, while Luke and Jessica fight Bakuto and his men to keep them back while Misty and Matt lead the others out to safety. Once outside, Matt plans to slip into an alleyway to change into the Daredevil suit, but is forced to resort to his original costume because there's not enough time to change into the red armor before he has to rush in to keep Murakami away from Karen. |
| 82 | * ''FanFic/BurningBridgesBuildingConfidence'': Lila falsely accuses Cole of faking her vision problems (even when Cole is very noticeably [[EyeScream missing an eye]]). Ironic, given how Lila herself has used this tactic, having feigned tinnitus, arthritis, and a sprained wrist in order to garner sympathy from her classmates. Even more ironically, despite being fully aware of [[ConsummateLiar Lila's true nature]], Adrien still buys into her claims about Cole. Mostly because he [[TheScapegoat blames Cole]] for supposedly 'causing unnecessary drama' at their school. |
| 83 | * ''Webcomic/FeralnetteAU'': |
| 84 | ** [[BitchInSheepsClothing Lila]] fakes having various disabilities in order to manipulate others into doting on her and catering to her whims. This includes making up a 'chronic lying disease' as a catch-all for when she's caught in her most BlatantLies. |
| 85 | ** During the ''Enough Rope'', Alya [[SayingTooMuch accidentally reveals]] that she ''knows'' about her so-called lying disease, prompting Ladybug to [[WhatTheHellHero call her out]] for treating Lila as a 'trusted source' for the Ladyblog even while knowing that she has trouble with telling the truth. Lila then paints Ladybug as ableist for pointing the problems with her claimed condition, while also guilt-tripping Alya by implying she'd be a horrible friend if she held her responsible for anything she did. |
| 86 | * ''[[Fanfic/TheHighRoadMiraculousLadybug the high road]]'': Marinette exploits the fact that this is one of [[BitchInSheepsClothing Lila's]] favorite tactics by pretending to be taken in and [[BotheringByTheBook going out of her way to ensure she's fully accommodated]]... regardless of how this impacts the rest of the class. |
| 87 | * ''Fanfic/ABeaconInTheDark'': Izuku [[DisabledInTheAdaptation lost his sight]] when he turned four, yet Katsuki accuses him of faking his condition in order to garner pity and get into U.A. Izuku's reaction to this causes Katsuki to have a mild JerkassRealization. |
| 88 | * ''Fanfic/ConversationsWithACryptid'': Izuku accuses All For One of feigning his blindness to a certain degree, considering that he could still correctly perceive All Might's facial expressions multiple times at Kamino Ward. He, at the very least, has a capability to recognize his surroundings. |
| 89 | * In ''Fanfic/TwasADarkAndStormyNight'', Marybel Duckett, one of the art thieves, really was injured in a car accident but her injuries were reported to more severe than they really were and faked her disability to throw off anyone who might suspect her being an art thief. |
| 90 | * In ''Fanfic/TheHandkerchiefFiles'', Gandalf speculates that Óin's deafness is actually this, since he notes that Óin has no trouble understanding the other dwarves even when everyone is shouting at once. |
| 91 | * ''Fanfic/TheBoltChronicles'': In "The Service Dog," Bolt encounters a chihuahua named Carmen who admits to being a fake service animal. Carmen wears a service dog vest so her owner can feign disability in order to bring the chihuahua wherever she goes, as well as get free bus rides she's not entitled to. Technically, Penny and Bolt qualify as well while participating in a dubious program allowing sighted people to experience what blind people go through during the course of the day, though this is part of a charity venture. |
| 92 | [[/folder]] |
| 93 | |
| 94 | [[folder:Film — Animated]] |
| 95 | * In ''WesternAnimation/BaltoIIIWingsOfChange'', Boris falls for a female goose named Stella but he's afraid to fly. He lies to her and tells her he's too injured to fly. |
| 96 | * This is why the Roma's haven beneath Paris in ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney'' is called the Court of Miracles: many of its inhabitants work as beggars in the city above, and often pretend to have some disability (being blind, lame, etc.) to gain sympathy and thus more generous donations from the citizens. Then, when they go home, their disabilities 'miraculously' disappear. It's (loosely) based on the actual Court of Miracles detailed in the Real Life section. |
| 97 | * Nigel, the CardCarryingVillain cockatoo of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rio}}'' takes advantage of this: at first he looks just as an old and sick bird being treated at a birds rehabilitation and research centre in Rio de Janeiro. Later, after taking active part in Blue and Jewel kidnapping, he shows himself as really is: a very dangerous [[PsychoForHire sadistic janitor with cannibalistic tendencies]]. |
| 98 | [[/folder]] |
| 99 | |
| 100 | [[folder:Film – Live-Action]] |
| 101 | * ''Film/EightWomen'': Mamy is seemingly confined to a wheelchair, but it turns out to be a ruse as she gets up to go to Augustine, her younger daughter, to calm her down. She was faking it so Gaby, the older one, who's also wealthy, would take her in out of pity so that Mamy and Augustine can live comfortably off her money. |
| 102 | * Creator/ChristopherReeve starred in a TV movie called ''Film/{{Above Suspicion|1995}}''. His character faked having his legs disabled so he could murder his wife while standing so he would be... well, [[TitleDrop above suspicion]]. (Ironically, Reeve was paralyzed for real ''six days'' after the film's release.) |
| 103 | * ''Film/AcrossTheUniverse2007'': Max tries to fake an illness that would exempt him from the draft. It doesn't work. |
| 104 | * The eponymous villain in ''Film/TheAlphabetKiller'' fakes being wheelchair-bound to remove any suspicion that he might be the killer. |
| 105 | * ''Film/{{Ana}}'': Ana pretends she's disabled and cons people to gain money, performing fake miracles of walking again in an evangelical church in cahoots with its corrupt minister. |
| 106 | * In ''Film/{{Andhadhun}}'', Akash pretends to be blind. This gets him into trouble when he stumbles upon a crime scene and has to decide whether to keep pretending not to see to stay safe or to report the crime and expose his deception. |
| 107 | * ''Film/BackstreetDreams'': After Angelo is badly beaten, he pretends to be so brain-damaged that the only word he can utter is "Florida." He's hoping that his son and daughter-in-law will take pity on him and move him to their home in Florida, where he will make a miraculous recovery. |
| 108 | * The villain in the ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' serial ''Film/{{Batman and Robin|Serial}}'' is an old man in a wheelchair who can secretly walk. He can't walk very well or very fast, though, at least not without regular electric treatments. His servant who wheels him from place to place doesn't seem to be in on it. |
| 109 | * In ''Film/BedtimeStory1964'' and its remake ''Film/DirtyRottenScoundrels'', Freddy poses as a psychosomatically crippled U.S. Navy veteran who needs $50,000 for treatment by the celebrated (fictional) Liechtenstein psychiatrist Dr. Emil Schaffhausen in order to scam Janet. |
| 110 | * Subverted in ''Film/TheBigLebowski''. After the Dude and Walter find out the "Big" Lebowski stole the money, [[TheMillstone Walter]] assumes he's also faking his disability. He's not. |
| 111 | * The brother of one of the main characters of ''Film/BitterLake'' gets mentioned twice: Once in the movie and once on the movie's website. Both times he's alluded to as being mentally disabled. Then he actually appears at the end, and it turns out he's actually not handicapped in the slightest; his brother just always said he was on account of everyone in this movie is a giant, gaping asshole, and everyone else ever just automatically believed it. |
| 112 | * ''Film/TheBlackRoom'': When Gregor takes on Anton's identity, he also fakes his brother's hand deformity. |
| 113 | * Jean-François in ''Film/BrotherhoodOfTheWolf'', pretends to have only one arm, but has actually bound his fully-functional arm to his torso, because it was disfigured due to events related to his evil plot that would have been awkward to explain. |
| 114 | * ''Film/DeathWalksOnHighHeels'': Smith, the blind man Robert has been treating has actually regained far more of his sight than is letting on because it serves his purposes to have others believe he is totally blind. However, he still did not see who shot Roberts, as Robert had replaced the bandages over his eyes just before the shooting. |
| 115 | * Master Bai of the kung fu film, ''Film/TheDevilsMirror'', is introduced as a HandicappedBadass whose left leg ends in a metal prosthetic stump due to an accident years ago. But it turns out underneath the metal exterior is a ''perfect'', uninjured left leg -- turns out Master Bai had faked his injuries all these years in order to flush out a traitor of his clan, a fact that even his own daughter, the movie's heroine, is kept in the dark. |
| 116 | * In ''Film/DickTracysDilemma'', Sightless is a street peddler who pretends to be blind to generate sympathy and make more sales. He uses his fake blindness to spy on local criminals and [[TheInformant inform to Tracy]]. |
| 117 | * In ''Film/DjangoUnchained'', Stephen had been hunched over and hobbling on a cane the entire movie, but in the finale, he lets it drop to the floor, straightens his back, and walks just fine [[spoiler:(till Django [[KneeCapping kneecaps]] him, at least)]]. Turns out it was just another part of [[ObfuscatingStupidity his]] [[DragonInChief ruse]] at Candyland. |
| 118 | * In ''Film/DoctorInDistress1963'', Tommy pretends he is unable to use his legs to get closer to Iris, his physiotherapist. It seems the jig is up when he tries to attack Sir Lancelot in a fit of rage and is seen walking perfectly fine by Sir Lancelot, Dr. Sparrow, and Iris herself, but Iris just sees it as a miracle. |
| 119 | * ''Film/{{Dog|2022}}'': Protagonist Jackson pretends to be blind at one point so he'll be allowed to take Lulu (the Belgian Malinois dog he must bring to a funeral in Nogales, Arizona) with him in a hotel. |
| 120 | * ''Film/DrNo'': The three blind mice, assassins working for Dr. No, pretend to be blind. |
| 121 | * Jason Bateman's character in ''Film/TheEx''. The character needed to use a wheelchair temporarily and continued to use it years later to gain sympathy from others. The wheelchair allowed him to be a huge {{Jerkass}} without people calling him out on it, guaranteed his job security, and made it easier for him to pick up girls. |
| 122 | * In ''Film/FannysJourney'', Diane pretends to be mute to hide her German accent (which would reveal her to be a Jew in Nazi-controlled France). |
| 123 | * In ''Film/{{Faster}}'', Old Guy pretends to be far more decrepit than he actually is: feigning frailty to trick a teenage girl into helping carry his shopping to his apartment. After he [[SlippingAMickey drugs her]], he drops his cane and starts moving a lot more spryly. |
| 124 | * Creator/BillyWilder's ''Film/TheFortuneCookie'' has Creator/JackLemmon as a TV cameraman who's accidentally tackled during a football game. His AmbulanceChaser brother-in-law, played by Creator/WalterMatthau, convinces him to feign paralysis of the legs in order to collect a huge insurance indemnity. |
| 125 | * In ''Film/GuardNo47'', First World War veteran Josef Douša plagued by his time in trenches loses his hearing. Even though he eventually recovers, he keeps pretending he's deaf. For one, to get monetary support from the army, and two, because people around his town have no scruples when talking to and in front of the apparently deaf person. Due to this, he discovers the true nature of many people around the town, the most important of which is an affair his wife has with the local gravedigger. |
| 126 | * ''Film/GoodNeighbors'': Spencer is apparently wheelchair-bound. Halfway through the film, it's revealed that he can walk just fine, and enjoys escaping the apartment to enjoy the nightlife. He might also be the film's serial killer, although it's never made clear. |
| 127 | * In ''Film/TheGoodShepherd'', one woman is pretending to be deaf since she needed some way to use a recording device without being obvious, so she masks it as a hearing aid. She gets found out when the main character calls to her from behind, and she reacts. |
| 128 | * Played with in the Kirk Douglas/Michael J. Fox film ''Film/{{Greedy}}''. Douglas' character feigns feebleness to see which of his Jerkass family really cares for him. In the final scene, after being wheelchair-bound for the whole movie, he gets up and walks away. |
| 129 | ** Notably, he was faking two disabilities: he was pretending to suffer from dementia ''and'' he was pretending to be wheelchair-bound. |
| 130 | * ''Film/{{Gunless}}'': A minor example, but Sean pretends that the injury to his knee is much worse than it actually is and prevents him from dancing, to give the smitten Kent the opportunity of dancing with Jane during the dance at the fort. |
| 131 | %%* Sampson Simpson in ''Film/HalfBaked''. |
| 132 | * ''Film/HandOfDeath'' stars Creator/JackieChan as a simpleton, an ordinary woodcutter who acts like an idiot in the presence of the Manchurian overlords... and it turns out he's a highly capable kung-fu fighter and a secret member of the Shaolin LaResistance, who's idiocy is used to conceal his identity. |
| 133 | * ''Film/TheHandsOfOrlac'': While posing as Vasseur, Nera wears fake metal prostheses over his hands and forearms to make it look like his hands have been amputated. |
| 134 | * In ''Film/HobokenHollow'', Weldon Broderick pretends to be mentally retarded to disguise his level of involvement in the slave ranch and to make others underestimate him. |
| 135 | * Mei in ''Film/HouseOfFlyingDaggers''. |
| 136 | * Played with in ''Film/HouseOfWax1953''. Jarrod (Creator/VincentPrice's character) is caught in a fire and appears to come out of it wheelchair-bound and with his sculptor's hands disfigured, but with his face unscathed. Later on, it's revealed that he's the perfectly mobile but horribly facially scarred man that has been causing mayhem throughout the film. |
| 137 | * In ''Film/TheHustle'', Penny fakes being blind to scam a mark to win a bet with Josephine over who can steal the most money from him and gain ownership of the island. However, Josephine exploits this by posing as a [[{{Fauxreigner}} German]] opthalmologist and keeps trying to break her into confessing. |
| 138 | * In ''Film/JudasKiss'', Detective Grimes fakes having a broken foot to avoid having to investigate the murder of Becky Hornbeck. Friedman exposes him by subjecting him to some BulletDancing. |
| 139 | * In ''Film/TheKilling'', Nikki pretends to be crippled and to need crutches to walk in order to persuade the parking lot attendant to allow him to park in the position he needs to shoot the horse. |
| 140 | * ''Film/LuckyNumberSlevin'': |
| 141 | ** In the opening, Mr. Goodkat pretends to be confined to a wheelchair to enact a KansasCityShuffle on a passenger in an airport, distracting him so he won't anticipate Goodkat getting out of his chair and breaking his neck. |
| 142 | ** Slevin's ataraxia (inability to experience worry in appropriate situations). It's unclear if Slevin actually has ataraxia [[spoiler: or if he's just not worried because everything is actually going according to plan.]] Or both. |
| 143 | * The villain in the grade-Z ''Film/JamesBond'' knock-off ''Film/AManCalledDagger'' is another one who spends most of the flick in a wheelchair because.. he feels like it, evidently. |
| 144 | * The film version of ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenArm'' has the protagonist's emotionally-needy wife pretending to be wheelchair-bound from a car accident some years before. (In Nelson Algren's original novel, by contrast, her disability is implied to be psychosomatic rather than deliberately faked.) |
| 145 | * In ''Film/MorningDeparture'', Snipe pretends to have injured his arm during his struggle with Armstrong and allows Marks to take his breathing set as he won't be able to swim properly. This is one of the few decent acts Snipe performs. |
| 146 | * In ''Film/MyFavoriteBrunette'', Ronnie peeking through the window at Major Simon Montague's mansion when he sees the supposedly wheelchair bound Baron Montay stand up. |
| 147 | * In ''Film/MysteryOfTheWaxMuseum'', Ivan Igor appears to need either a wheelchair or crutches to get around due to the injuries he sustained in the fire. However, it turns out that while his hands are crippled, his legs work just fine. |
| 148 | * Dr. Meinheimer's double in ''Film/TheNakedGun 2½''. |
| 149 | * Creator/RonPerlman's version of the deformed, mentally disabled hunchback Salvatore in ''Film/TheNameOfTheRose'' is smarter than he seems. |
| 150 | * This occurs in one of the plots to ''Film/NewYorkILoveYou''. It was an actress practicing her disabled character around the outside all along. |
| 151 | * Huey in ''Film/NickOfTime'' pretends to be a deaf shoeshiner (complete with a sign identifying him as handicapped), allowing him to listen to Smith and Watson talk about the assassination plot. While Huey really is disabled, his disability is that he's an ''amputee''. |
| 152 | * In ''Film/NightMustFall'', Mrs. Bramson. It’s revealed that she can walk perfectly and it's not for nefarious reasons that she pretends to be unable to walk; she likes being able to boss people around when she’s in her chair. |
| 153 | * Joe from ''Film/OnceAThief'' appears to have lost the functions of both his legs after barely escaping a boat explosion, spending much of the film's middle act in a wheelchair. But in the climactic final shootout, it turns out he's merely faking it, and both his legs are perfectly functional. |
| 154 | * ''Film/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'': Randle, who pretends to be insane, but just does this to avoid serving a long prison sentence. And [[spoiler: Chief who supposedly never spoke a word in years, but turns out to have been faking his muteness all this time too.]] |
| 155 | * Sodnom from ''Film/APearlInTheForest'', a film set in 1937 UsefulNotes/{{Mongolia}} during Stalin's tyranny, is the village idiot, constantly grinning and acting stupidly. TheReveal is that he's faking it, as a survival tactic to survive the murderous purges and oppression. |
| 156 | * In ''Film/PetesDragon1977'', Doc Terminus, a quack doctor, comes to the town of Passamaquoddy. Unfortunately for him, the townspeople are well aware of his previous quackery and are getting ready to run him out of town. He gets them to believe him by performing fake miracle healings. They are performed on his assistant, Hoagy, in different disguises; he pretends to need a pair of crutches, Doc Terminus gives him a tonic, and Hoagy [[ThrowingOffTheDisability immediately throws off the crutches and dances in front of the onlookers]]. He also pretends to be a deaf old woman. |
| 157 | * An elderly Chinese stage magician in ''Film/ThePrestige'' is shown doing this. Borden deduces that the magician is pretending to have frail and stiff legs even off stage for the sole purpose of a trick where he makes a fishbowl appear: he carries the bowl between his legs but since the audience thinks he's a cripple, they don't consider the obvious.[[note]]The Chinese magician was actually a real historical figure, who indeed was recorded having done this very thing. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Ling_Soo He wasn't even Chinese!]][[/note]] This inspires one of the main characters to do something similar. [[spoiler:Not that "being only a single person and not twins" is a disability per se. Also inverted in that the secret twin brothers need to be identical in every way. When one loses a few fingers in a sabotaged stage trick, his brother has to amputate his own fingers as well, so the actual disability is not obfuscating.]] |
| 158 | * In ''Film/QuestOfTheDeltaKnights'', Tee pretends to be a mute while a slave. |
| 159 | * ''Film/TheQuiet'': Dot is pretending to be deaf and mute, which causes other teens to claim she's also mentally disabled, and for Nina and Connor to share their secrets with her. |
| 160 | * In ''Film/AReasonToLiveAReasonToDie'', ConMan Eli claims to be [[PhonyVeteran veteran of the Union army]] who lost a leg in the war. He beats a hasty retreat when a blacksmith tries to test his claim by hitting the 'fake' leg with a hammer. |
| 161 | * ''Film/TheReturnOfThePinkPanther'': The old blind beggar whom the CluelessDetective Clouseau questions for [[StreetPerformer unlicensed busking]] -- and/or unlicensed begging, and/or an unlicensed monkey -- turns out to be the lookout for the gang who [[BankRobbery rob the bank]] [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent behind Clouseau]]. Clouseau [[ComicallyMissingThePoint misses the point]] when DaChief dresses him down: |
| 162 | -->'''Clouseau:''' That is impossible... He was blind; how can a blind man be a lookout?\ |
| 163 | '''Dreyfus:''' How can an idiot be a policeman? Answer me that! |
| 164 | * PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/TheRinger''. The Johnny Knoxville character, hoping to win big, fakes being mentally handicapped to compete in the Special Olympics. The other athletes see through him ''immediately'', but help him keep up the facade because they're hoping he can defeat JerkJock frontrunner Jimmy. |
| 165 | * ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'': Riff Raff is ''supposedly'' a hunchback, but in many scenes it's quite obvious that he's standing quite straight while wearing some kind of padding under his jacket (the "hump" moves from one shoulder to the other between scenes, and it's especially clearly not part of him when he dances). First-time viewers if they notice at all often assume it's a SpecialEffectFailure until they reach his final scene, in which he appears without it, standing perfectly straight in the military uniform of his home planet. |
| 166 | * In ''Film/TheScarletClaw'', Judge Brisson pretends to be confined to a wheelchair following a stroke so as to have an excuse not to mingle with the local villagers. Holmes exposes him by dropping an envelope to tempt him into picking it up and then reentering the room before the judge has a chance to resume his wheelchair. |
| 167 | * A rare mental disability example with Doofy, the killer in the first ''Film/ScaryMovie''. |
| 168 | * Jack Teller (Edward Norton) in ''Film/TheScore'' pretends to be mentally disabled, although the viewer is in on the scam from the start. |
| 169 | * Yet another Creator/JackieChan film, ''Film/ShaolinWoodenMen'' has Chan playing a mute servant, only to reveal in the film's last minutes that he can speak - keeping himself silent is a way to hide himself while seeking his father's killer. |
| 170 | * In ''Film/ShutIn'', [[spoiler:Stephen is revealed to have been faking his paralysis the whole time]]. |
| 171 | * In ''Film/TheSleepingCardinal'', Col. Henslowe is missing his left arm as a result of a tiger attack. However, Henslowe is really another of Moriarty's disguises and his left arm is actually strapped to his side. |
| 172 | * The heroine of ''Film/SleepingWithTheEnemy'' is supposedly hydrophobic, due to almost drowning when she was a child. So her abusive husband has no reason to doubt that she drowned after falling overboard during a late-night sailing trip. It turns out she'd secretly been taking swimming lessons and seized the opportunity to escape from him. |
| 173 | * ''Film/SmokinAces2AssassinsBall'': A wheelchair-bound FBI desk agent who's due to retire is informed that he's become the target of a death contract. He's then quickly moved to a secure location that the agency can use to lure in and dispatch possible assassins. After the deaths of a whole bunch of people, it's revealed at the end that the guy in the wheelchair was a dirty cop who masterminded terrorist attacks during his career, and loses the wheelchair to escape on foot. |
| 174 | * In ''Film/SonOfAGun'', JR pretends to be confined to a wheelchair while travelling from Melbourne to Perth. |
| 175 | * In ''Film/SorryWrongNumber'', the only reason Henry has stayed so long with Leona (even though he’s clearly unhappy) is her heart condition. Once he finds out that her condition has only been in her head, it’s the catalyst to him planning her murder. |
| 176 | * Haghi, the leader of the spy ring in Creator/FritzLang's ''Film/{{Spies}}''. |
| 177 | * Yoda in ''Franchise/StarWars''. Don't piss him off. He will PWN you. |
| 178 | ** According to the [[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Expanded Universe]], Palpatine uses a cane in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' for this very reason. |
| 179 | ** One should never underestimate any old or crippled Jedi. One common power is the ability to reinforce and empower the body, which means even the most battle-worn Jedi can fight like they were young... for a short time at least. |
| 180 | * In ''Film/TheTerrorOfTheTongs'', Beggar is an agent of an underground movement against the tongs. He fakes having a crippled leg, hobbling around on a crutch, and wears an eyepatch when posing as a beggar on the waterfront. |
| 181 | * Tucker in ''Film/TheresSomethingAboutMary'' uses crutches because of a severe spinal injury, but it turns out he doesn't need them; he just uses them to get closer to Mary, the orthopedic surgeon. |
| 182 | * ''Film/{{Thunderheart}}'': Leo's real killer is Richard Yellow Hawk who is in a wheelchair. Roy eventually discovers that he is in the chair after taking an iron bar across his Leavenworth, and can still walk for short periods. When he stands up, Roy also realises exactly how tall he is: the killer's height having been another clue. |
| 183 | * [[PhonyVeteran "Four-Leaf" Tayback]] in ''Film/TropicThunder'' is a supposed hardened Vietnam Vet who wears hooks over both of his limbs... Until he gets captured by a drug cartel and it's revealed that not only does he have both functional limbs but he's been lying about his history from the beginning. |
| 184 | * ''Film/TurkeyHollow'': Eldridge pretends to need a cane to walk whenever he's around anybody other than his employees. When Sheriff Grover arrests him, he immediately runs away. |
| 185 | * In ''Film/TheUnknown'', Alonzo the Armless is a fugitive who masquerades as an armless knife thrower in a circus by strapping his arms to his torso. |
| 186 | * This basically applies to [[spoiler:Kevin Spacey]]'s character in ''Film/TheUsualSuspects''. He doesn't just pretend to be a spineless loser, but even [[spoiler: his limp]] is fake. |
| 187 | * In ''Film/AVeryLongEngagement'', Mathilde, who has a lame foot due to polio, pretends to be wheelchair-bound in order to play on her uncle's heartstrings and get him to help her investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. |
| 188 | * ''Film/VirginTerritory'': Lorenzo pretends he's deaf and mute so he can stay in a convent. He uses it as an opportunity to have sex with a number of the nuns until Pampinea exposes his ruse to the abbess. |
| 189 | * In ''Film/WakingNedDevine'', it turns out Lizzie can walk just fine without the scooter. |
| 190 | * The TV movie ''Film/WhatTheDeafManHeard'' had a young boy arrive in a small town and pretend to be a deaf-mute in order to protect himself. The story being set in mid-20th century smalltown America, where there were no suspicious checks or means to enable them, he is able to easily succeed and is taken as disabled for twenty years. [[spoiler: But when a scam takes place that threatens his town, he blows his front and reveals he can hear and speak.]] |
| 191 | * Willy Wonka's introduction in ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory''. As Wonka walks out limping with a cane, he suddenly stops...tumbles forward...and does a somersault. Gene Wilder wanted to do this so that [[EstablishingCharacterMoment neither the audience nor the characters could completely trust Wonka]]. |
| 192 | * In ''Film/TheWomanInGreen'', Watson is tailed by a seemingly one-armed street hawker. With his concealed arm, he produces a flick knife and is about to stab Watson when Moriarty reappears and indicates for him not to. |
| 193 | * ''Film/TheWomanInRed'': The guys have a regular "blind man" prank where one who pretends that he's blind goes into a restaurant or shop and [[DisabledMeansHelpless acts helpless]]. It's more than a bit cringe-worthy watching this now. and likely wouldn't be put in a film three decades on. |
| 194 | [[/folder]] |
| 195 | |
| 196 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 197 | * ''Literature/EightySeventhPrecinct'': While the Deaf Man wears a hearing aid, it's suggested on various occasions (including by the Deaf Man himself, in ''The Heckler'') that it may just be a prop. |
| 198 | * ''Literature/AdrianMole'': In ''True Confessions'', Adrian describes how when all second class compartments were full on a train journey, he sat in first class and pretended to be a lunatic; and fortunately the ticket inspector had a lunatic in his family, so was quite sympathetic. |
| 199 | * In the ''Literature/AlexCross'' novel ''London Bridges'', Geoffrey Shafer uses a wheelchair he does not need as part of his disguise. |
| 200 | * ''Literature/AlexRider'': The main character has been kidnapped and several agencies are looking for him. The bad guys need to get him through an airport without arousing suspicion. How do they do it? They drug him to make him look like a disabled person, they note that no one looks twice at a disabled person, working this to their advantage. |
| 201 | * ''Literature/AscendanceOfABookworm'' has the retired, but still alive, previous Count Leisegang: |
| 202 | ** He's more than old enough to legitimately display quite a few signs of old age, such as poor hearing and eyesight. However, those signs are prone to being at their worst right when something he doesn't want to hear is being said or someone he'd rather ignore is in the room. |
| 203 | ** The trope is zig-zagged with his tendency faint: it has been shown to be genuine, but it gains in intensity when his "hard of hearing and legally blind old man" act becomes too hard to keep up, allowing him to exploit FaintInShock as a means to force a change in topic. |
| 204 | * In ''Literature/LeBossu'', in order to infiltrate the inner circle of Philippe de Gonzague -- the murderer of Duke Philippe de Nevers, Henri de Lagardère disguises himself as a hunchback in order to prepare the ground to enact {{revenge}} for Nevers. Gonzague and his financiers think hunchbacks bring them luck, hence Lagardère's disguise. |
| 205 | * Lisl in ''Literature/ByRoyalCommand'' pretends to be incapacitated by drugs and needing a wheelchair while she waits for an opportunity to escape her captors. |
| 206 | * ''Literature/TheCosmere'': |
| 207 | ** In later ''Literature/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy'' books, the heroine consistently suspects that an enemy warlord is using this. Not without reason, as they live in a society where nobles and criminals alike regularly hide their magical abilities and feign weakness to appear less dangerous (she herself had done this in the previous book). Ultimately subverted though, as the warlord in question really is paraplegic. |
| 208 | ** [[EvilOrphanageLady The Stump]] in ''Literature/{{Edgedancer}} has no patience for children who fake disabilities to get free food from her orphanage. At least, until she discovers that [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope none of the children were faking]]. The Stump is a latent [[HealingHands Truthwatcher]] who was healing the children]]. |
| 209 | ** In ''Literature/{{Rhythm of War}}'', [[spoiler:the "mute" bridgeman Dabbid]] is revealed to have been faking PTSD to cover up [[spoiler:a speech impediment]]. |
| 210 | * A series of novels by Robert Ryan involved Franchise/SherlockHolmes and Dr. Watson during World War One. In ''The Dead Can Wait'', a German spy forces them to cross a hazardous tidal path at gunpoint, but abandons them to drown when the elderly Holmes collapses from exhaustion and Watson refuses to abandon him. Turns out Holmes had feigned a collapse near where he knew a local resident lived in a hut on the shore, who could guide them to safety. |
| 211 | * ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': |
| 212 | ** After being shot through the thigh in ''Literature/MenAtArms'', Vetinari walks with a cane for the rest of the series, but there's evidence he's not as dependent on it as he appears. MagnificentBastard that he is, Vetinari prefers that rivals and assassins underestimate his physical strength...to their own detriment. |
| 213 | ** Reacher Gilt in ''Literature/GoingPostal'' wears an eyepatch as part of his larger-than-life pirate persona. At the end of the book we see him captured by Vetinari, sans patch, and sure enough he's got two working eyes. |
| 214 | ** ''Literature/SmallGods'': [[BigBad Vorbis]] pulls an absolutely chilling example of this as he and Brutha are almost out of the desert. |
| 215 | * The killer in Creator/JohnDicksonCarr's ''Literature/DrGideonFell'' novel ''The Problem of the Wire Cage'' uses his recent car accident, and its attendant injuries, to pull off a murder he seemingly couldn't have physically committed. Unfortunately, circumstances turn it into a murder NO ONE could've committed. |
| 216 | * ''Literature/EncyclopediaBrown'': |
| 217 | ** Deliberately invoked in one story where the real thief made sandals out of cement-filled garden gloves to make it look like the guy in the chair had walked on his hands. |
| 218 | ** Another case had a fake blind guy as the culprit. |
| 219 | * In ''Literature/ElementalBlessings'', Garameno is thrown off his horse in an assassination attempt. Pretending to be wheelchair-bound means his prospects for the throne will be doubted, but he will be safe from further attempts. |
| 220 | * Hinted at in ''Literature/{{Emma}}''. Old Mrs. Bates really is hard of hearing... but for some reason she can always hear her granddaughter clearly, while her chatterbox daughter Miss Bates sometimes has to repeat herself two or three times. Miss Bates puts it down to Jane having a wonderful clear voice. |
| 221 | * When Literature/GarrettPI first meets Pular Singe, the genius ratgirl, she's been pretending to be deaf to conceal her unusual intelligence from Reliance, the ratman crime boss. She knew that if Reliance suspected just how gifted she was, he'd never leave her an opportunity to escape her indentured servitude. |
| 222 | * ''Literature/HarryPotter'': |
| 223 | ** The climax of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'' reveals that "p-p-poor, st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrell" was doing this all along. |
| 224 | ** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'' plays with this trope. Alastor Moody is genuinely missing an eye and a leg, and uses prosthetic body parts in their place (including a distinctive enchanted GlassEye, hence his nickname "Mad-Eye Moody"). But the TwistEnding reveals that the man we thought was Moody is actually an impostor, making Moody an ImpersonationExclusiveCharacter for most of this book (though the real guy is recovered at the end of the book and shows up from time to time in the subsequent installments). This impostor utilized a {{humanshifting}} potion as part of the act, so he was genuinely missing an eye and leg while impersonating the disabled Moody, but of course that wasn't his true form. |
| 225 | * Creator/AgathaChristie's ''Literature/HerculePoirot'' series: |
| 226 | ** In ''Literature/{{Curtain}}'', Creator/AgathaChristie's [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin last novel]] starring the Belgian detective, the aged Poirot pretends to be wheelchair-bound, but is in fact still able to walk. |
| 227 | ** In ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile'', a major suspect is ruled out because he had just been shot in the leg a few minutes before the murder, making it highly implausible that he decided to carry out the murder despite a serious, mobility-limiting injury. In fact, he faked being shot, rushed off to kill the victim and ran back, then shot his own leg for real to keep up the ruse. |
| 228 | * Claudius exaggerated his stutter, limp and general clumsiness in ''Literature/IClaudius''. This ''barely'' kept him alive when he had to work for TheCaligula. |
| 229 | * ''Literature/JoePickett'': In ''Endangered'', Nate pretends to be in a coma until an opportunity to escape presents itself. |
| 230 | * In ''The Lawmen of Rockabye County'' by Creator/JTEdson, escaped felon 'Crazy Doc' Christopher wears a prosthetic hand over his still functional right hand. |
| 231 | * In ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', when Gandalf and company pay a visit to King Theoden, the guards ask them to relinquish their weapons, including Gandalf's staff. He chides them for being disrespectful in separating an old man from his support. They're skeptical, but let him keep it... turns out that they were ProperlyParanoid, as a wizard's staff is more than just a simple walking-stick (though it's implied they knew he was faking it, but [[LivingLegend trusted him because]] [[HopeBringer he's Gandalf]]). |
| 232 | * ''Literature/MaulLockdown'': Dakarai Blirr presents himself as an autistic savant who hates sound too much to even speak. Really, he's able to function perfectly and has [[TwoAliasesOneCharacter infiltrated Radique's inmate organization in disguise]]. |
| 233 | * In ''Literature/MichaelStrogoff'' [[spoiler:the titular character acts as if he was effectively blinded by the Tartars until he appears in front of the Grand-Duke]]. |
| 234 | * In ''Literature/TheMysteriousBenedictSociety'', the main villain Ledroptha Curtain travels in a souped-up wheelchair, so it comes as quite a shock to the protagonists when, during the climax, he unstraps himself from the wheelchair and lunges for them. He has no problems walking, but actually uses the wheelchair (as well as goggles) to [[HidingTheHandicap hide the fact that he has narcolepsy]]. He uses the same trick to great effect again in the second book in the series, ''The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey'', this time to fool the police. |
| 235 | * In the ''Literature/NancyDrew'' book ''Captive Witness'', the plot centers around a plan to rescue 10 children from then-Communist Hungary. The ringleaders of the rescue mission are an elderly professor and his wheelchair bound nephew. It's soon revealed that the young man is not paralyzed and that the rescue plans were hidden in the seat of his chair, knowing that customs officials would not search it. |
| 236 | * The Tony Ross book ''Naughty Nigel'' has the titular character pretend to be deaf so he can misbehave. He eventually stops when he has a nightmare where he meets somebody who is genuinely hard of hearing that makes him look silly physically. |
| 237 | * Although he has ''significant'' mental problems, Bromden in ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'' is not "deaf and dumb." He got so used to people disregarding him that he gave up trying to communicate with them, and finds that being considered a deaf-mute has the advantage that staff are careless about what they discuss when he's around. He throws off the charade partway through the book and - aside from [=McMurphy=] - none of the patients notice because they never paid much attention to him in the first place. |
| 238 | * ''Literature/PartnersInCrime'': |
| 239 | ** ConversationalTroping in one story, where Tommy says his main suspect is the client's wheelchair-bound mother, who is only pretending, but is unable to come up with a reason ''why'' she's only pretending. (She isn't.) |
| 240 | ** In another story Tommy does this himself, pretending to be blind [[BlindPeopleWearSunglasses by wearing an opaque eyeshade]] in order to imitate the fictional detective Thonley Colton. [[spoiler: The eyeshade itself doesn't even impair his vision, although he pretends it does to Tuppence, and once he learns the villain knows he isn't really blind.]] |
| 241 | * In the ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' series, whenever Chiron the [[OurCentaursAreDifferent centaur]] goes among [[{{Muggles}} the mortal populace]], he uses his SuperWheelchair as a HammerspaceHideaway for his horse legs. |
| 242 | * The tactic of a famous magician (Ching Ling Foo) in ''Film/ThePrestige'' that inspired Borden and is used as a literary device to describe his methods without actually revealing them. |
| 243 | -->'''Borden's Memoir:''' My deception rules my life, informs every decision I make, regulates my every movement... everything in this account represents the shuffling walk of a fit man. |
| 244 | * In the romance novel ''A Proper Taming'', Lady Doncaster is crippled when she falls from a horse. She takes advantage of this to get companions and hopefully find one her son will marry. She also made a full recovery a full year before the story takes place. |
| 245 | * In the ''Literature/{{Raffles}}'' stories post-TimeSkip, Raffles takes full advantage of his grey hair and often pretends to be an invalid confined to a wheelchair when in public — despite still being spry and athletic. |
| 246 | * In ''Literature/{{Railsea}}'' by Creator/ChinaMieville, [[spoiler:Captain Naphi has disguised her uninjured arm as a prosthetic to replace a missing one. It's the subject of an UnroboticReveal. This was because her culture expects anyone in her social role to have lost a body part.]] |
| 247 | * ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'': In ''The Long Patrol'', Tammo and Midge Manycoats [[DressingAsTheEnemy disguise themselves as vermin]] to infiltrate Damug's camp. However, Tammo cannot imitate a vermin accent nearly as well as [[ManOfAThousandVoices Midge]] can, [[invoked]] so the two agree to have Tammo pretend to be mute and let Midge do all the talking. |
| 248 | * In Creator/MercedesLackey's Free Bards novel ''Literature/TheRobinAndTheKestrel'', the church of the city that the heroes are visiting uses this, among other techniques, in order to enact "miraculous healings." |
| 249 | * In ''Film/SierraBurgessIsALoser'', Sierra pretends to be deaf in order to avoid talking to Jamey. It quickly backfires, as Jamey has a deaf brother and is fluent in ASL (while Sierra isn't). |
| 250 | * The recruiter in the novel of ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' deliberately left his prosthetics off when working to scare away gutless applicants. [[DisabledCharacterDisabledActor In the film, the actor cast in the role of the recruiter is a genuine double amputee]]. |
| 251 | * Creator/StephenKing seems to like this one in his later works: |
| 252 | ** Norman Daniels in ''Literature/RoseMadder''. While hunting for his runaway wife, he shaves his head and pretends to be a paraplegic, to avoid being recognized by the (many) people on the lookout for him. |
| 253 | ** Brady Hartsfield in ''Literature/MrMercedes'' borrows the Daniels technique to get into a boy-band concert without attracting the suspicion that would normally attach to a man showing up solo at an event whose primary audience is tween-age girls. [[spoiler:He plans to blow up the venue, but is stopped in time and earns a real disability, in the form of brain injury, in the process.]] |
| 254 | * ''Literature/TreasureIsland'': Pew ''is'' blind, but he is also a lot more capable than what he initially seems to be. There's a reason why nearly all the other pirates are afraid of him. |
| 255 | * ''Literature/VillainsByNecessity'': When the Plainsmen take the protagonists captive, Kaylana pretends her staff (really a [[MagicStaff magical object]]) is a walking stick she needs due to having a limp. This results in them leaving her with it and unbound, so she can help the others escape later. |
| 256 | * ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'': After the destruction of his eidetic memory chip and medical retirement from [[SecretPolice ImpSec]] in ''Memory'', Simon Illyan makes a point of playing up the damage done to his mind when it seems useful or convenient. His short-to-medium-term memory is spotty enough that the PDA/voice recorder/GPS unit he wears on his belt is anything but a prop, but by every other cognitive measure, he remains solidly in the 'dangerously brilliant' area. |
| 257 | * In ''Literature/WiseBlood'', the street preacher Asa Hawks claims to have blinded himself. Later, though, we discover that he lacked the nerve to go through with it, he can see perfectly under his sunglasses, and his faintheartedness led him to renounce God and [[StartOfDarkness launch his second career as an itinerant con man]]. |
| 258 | * In "Literature/AWitchShallBeBorn", Salome tosses the head of a murdered man to a deaf beggar -- who proves to be Valerius, who heard that the true queen is prisoner there. |
| 259 | * In two points of the ''Literature/XWingSeries'', Wedge Antilles disguises himself as Colonel Roat, an Imperial pilot who was badly wounded and given clumsy, poorly-functioning [[ArtificialLimbs prosthetics]]. Imperials are biased against cyborgs, generally thinking that only someone very clumsy or unlucky can be injured so badly as to need cybernetics, and so no one managed to connect him to the second most famous Rebel pilot. |
| 260 | [[/folder]] |
| 261 | |
| 262 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 263 | * One episode of ''Series/TheATeam'' has Hannibal, B.A. and Murdock getting arrested so they could look into an underground prison fighting ring. To keep them from being separated, B.A. pretends to be a deaf-mute, with Hannibal as his sign language interpreter. |
| 264 | * Lori & Bolo tried this at the beginning of Season 6 of ''Series/TheAmazingRace'' to get help at airports. Luckily, they dropped it quickly. |
| 265 | * In ''Series/{{Angel}}'' the demon sorcerer Cyvus Vail appeared reliant on a complex intravenous drip, physically vulnerable and weak. However when under genuine attack his IV was broken and he ignored it, he shrugged off being hurled twice into a wall, and gutted his opponent with a [[KukrisAreKool kukri]]. |
| 266 | * ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' subverts the trope quite humorously. |
| 267 | ** A female attorney who can actually see claims to be blind in order to get the sympathy of her jurors; the Bluths try to expose her fake disability, but fail spectacularly because (only) on the day that they decided to prove she was not blind, she actually WAS temporarily blind due to an accident. She regained her sight in full the following day. It's even more wibbly woobly when you add the fact that Michael doesn't realize she's (faking) blind at first. |
| 268 | ** Maeby poses as Surely Wolfbeak during her time at school to achieve class presidency and scam people for donations. |
| 269 | * ''Series/{{Arrow}}''. In "Damaged", to throw off suspicions that he may be the Vigilante, Oliver Queen shows his torture scars to Laurel Lance and tells her his PTSD makes him barely able to sign his name, let alone shoot a bow and arrow. |
| 270 | * Subverted in the ''Series/BanjunDrama'' episode "Lovers." [[spoiler:Near the end, the blind female lead who happens to be the sole witness for a crime Kwang-hyun commited confronts him, confessing that she could see and saw his crime. But in reality, her "confession" was coached to get him to reveal he did it, and she was actually blind.]] |
| 271 | * On ''Series/{{Baywatch}}'' episode "Face of Fear," Caroline befriends Cory, a blind man who hangs out at her beach section. She's surprised when Logan identifies Cory as a former champion horse jockey who was blinded after suffering a terrible fall. When a trio of young girls are in danger, Cory seems to react, despite how there's no way he could have heard their screams over the sounds of the beach crowd. When at a cafe, the waitress appears about to pour hot coffee onto Caroline's lap with Cory yelling a warning...and Caroline reveals it's iced tea. Cory admits he was truly blinded but it was temporary. He was so shaken by the accident that he kept up being "blind" an excuse to never race again. Caroline points out Cory can't fake this for the rest of his life and gives him the confidence to (literally) get back in the saddle again. |
| 272 | * ''Series/BlueBloods'': "In Too Deep" has a man who was accused of being a {{serial killer}}, but seemingly could not be as he's paralyzed and uses a wheelchair. However, it turns out he faked it, and really did commit these murders (this is compared to Ted Bundy, who faked disabilities too so women wouldn't view him as a threat). |
| 273 | * An episode of ''Series/TheBradyBunch'' had a plot where a man claimed to have received a neck injury in a minor car accident with Mrs. Brady. Mr. Brady proved the man was lying by dropping his briefcase on a desk, startling him and causing him to turn his head. |
| 274 | * Downplayed in ''Series/BreakingBad'': Hector "Tio" Salamanca's disability, following a stroke, is legitimate. When he is introduced, however, he obfuscates senility to learn of Walt and Jesse's plan to kill his nephew Tuco with poisoned food, then use what motor control he still has to thwart the plan. |
| 275 | * An episode of ''Series/BrooklynNineNine'' sees Amy Santiago forced to share a desk with a detective from the Nine-Eight, leaving her frustrated as the other detective has an alleged "service dog" that triggers her allergies when there is no sign that the man is actually injured in any way. When tensions between the two precincts erupt into a fight, Amy forces the man to admit that he doesn't ''need'' the dog for any reason and its role as a service animal is basically made up. |
| 276 | * On ''Series/{{Bull}}'', Hazel Diaz has been a major drug lord for almost 30 years. She brilliantly acts in public like she's mentally ill, even talking to thin air and wild acts. Thus, any time she's arrested, her lawyer argues she's not fit for trial, she goes to a mental ward for a bit then back on the streets. Bull, of course, sees through her act (as he points out, she's showing ''too'' many symptoms to be real) and accepts the challenge of proving she's a fraud in court. |
| 277 | * ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. In Season 2, Angelus taunts his fellow vampire Spike who is confined to a wheelchair. At the end of one episode however after Angelus leaves the room, Spike gets to his feet and contemptuously kicks the wheelchair, making it clear he's just biding his time until the [[TheDogBitesBack right moment to take revenge on Angelus]]. |
| 278 | * Happened in an episode of ''Series/{{Cadfael}}'', when the cripple had hidden his disability-less-ness from everyone including his ''sister'', then tries to collect money after he is "healed" by touching a reliquary. He is revealed when he runs away, sans crutches. |
| 279 | * ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'': |
| 280 | ** In "Under the Gun", one of their suspects is an aging ex-con who needs a walker to get around...until he has to get away, at which point he ditches the walker and makes a run for it. |
| 281 | ** In "What Lies Beneath...", a blind priest is revealed not to be blind when he runs away from Castle and Alexis. He later admits that he faked the blindness so he would be given his choice of parishes. |
| 282 | %%* ''Series/CharliesAngels'' ("Angels in Springtime") |
| 283 | * ''Series/ColdCase'': The killer in "Metamorphosis" suffers from cerebral gigantism and uses the fact that people expect him to be mentally challenged to conceal his true intelligence. |
| 284 | * In ''Series/{{Copper}}'', Corcoran uses his badly broken leg as a great alibi. No matter what his superiors might suspect, people are not going to believe that someone in his condition could [[spoiler: travel across town, climb up to a second story window, kill two people and then get back to Five Points without anyone noticing him]]. |
| 285 | * In the ''Series/{{CSI}}'' episode "The Two Mrs. Grissoms", a student pretends to be deaf in order to get a scholarship. And he and his partner in the deception end up committing murder in order to keep the secret. |
| 286 | * In the ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' episode 'The Bowtie,' a man parks in a handicapped parking spot but doesn't appear physical disabled. Larry calls him out for it, and the man responds with a stutter, implying its his reason for using it. |
| 287 | --> ''Larry:'' What's with the walking? |
| 288 | --> ''Stuttering Man:'' F-fuck you! I have a s-stutter! |
| 289 | --> ''Larry:'' Yeah but you can walk. |
| 290 | --> ''Stuttering Man:'' Look at my l-license plate! I have p-p-permission! Ya' fucking p-p-prick! |
| 291 | ** Larry thinks it's absurd, but in a later scene tries it out himself. When he sees there's a long line in the bathroom, he notices the handicapped cubicle is empty. He walks over to use it when people begin criticising him. |
| 292 | --> ''Larry:'' I'm g-g-g-g-going to the b-b-b-bathroom! |
| 293 | --> ''Line of people:'' I don't think so. (That's a handicapped stall!) No! |
| 294 | --> ''Larry:'' I have a s-s-s-s-s-s-stutter you p-p-p-p-p-p-pricks! |
| 295 | --> ''Line of people:'' Stutter my ass! (Oh come on!) We've been waiting here! (Go!) Back of the line! |
| 296 | --> ''Larry:'' Oh alright fine okay! |
| 297 | * Matt Murdock in ''Series/Daredevil2015'' uses obfuscating ignorance in everyday life. He can effectively "see" just fine, can hear conversations from blocks away, and can tell whenever anybody is lying to him, but he has to act like an average blind man anyway and play along. |
| 298 | * Once used by Logan on ''Series/DarkAngel''. He's a real paraplegic [[ItMakesSenseInContext most of the time]], but an easily hidden exoskeleton allows him to walk. |
| 299 | * ''Series/DeadMansGun'': In [[spoiler:"Next of Kin"]] a seemingly infirm man is revealed to be in perfect health at the end of the episode and is lulling those disloyal to him, and who would pose a threat to his successor, into a false sense of security. |
| 300 | * In the ''Series/{{Decoy}}'' episode "Earthbound Satellite," Casey wears a cast on her left arm and tells people she sprained it. She's actually using the cast to hide a radio receiver that won't fit in a purse. |
| 301 | * Happened in ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'', probably more than once, usually discovered by Dick Van Dyke's character. |
| 302 | ** One prominent example is the Season Five episode "Slam Dunk Dead", where the killer [[spoiler:Dwayne]] is a man who appears to have cerebral palsy. [[spoiler:The man does have some disability, but it actually stems from the episode's AssholeVictim having slammed his head violently against a backboard during a game and ruining his future in basketball, so Dwayne exaggerated his illness to get closr to the victim and kill him. Mark eventually gets him to reveal it by talking of how great the victim was and that, even without his injury, the killer wouldn't have been as good, causing the man to yell back in a much clearer voice than before]]. |
| 303 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 304 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E3TheRescue "The Rescue"]]: Bennett pretends to have been crippled in the explosion which killed everyone else on the crashed spaceship apart from Vicki, disguising himself as the alien Koquillion to convince her that the natives of the planet Dido are monsters. In fact, he was the one who caused the explosion to cover his tracks after he killed another crew member shortly before the crash. |
| 305 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E7TheUnicornAndTheWasp "The Unicorn and the Wasp"]]: Colonel Curbishley, Lady Eddison's husband, is in a wheelchair. He is hosting a party where, among other things, Agatha Christie is a guest and there is a murder at the house. When Agatha goes through the summation to identify the killer, she looks at the Colonel[[spoiler:, and the Colonel reveals he has been faking it because he was scared his wife would leave him. Agatha was only going to say he was innocent, and had no idea he was faking it.]] |
| 306 | * In the ''Series/{{Dragnet}}'' episode "The Big Shipment," a drug smuggler pretends to be deaf and dumb so he can't be interrogated. He gives up the act when Friday looks in his wallet and finds a receipt for two phonograph records. |
| 307 | -->'''Accomplice''': You really are dumb. Why didn't you just say you bought them for a friend? |
| 308 | * On ''Series/Dynasty2017'', Claudia is the wife of an engineer who had an affair with Cristal and had a brain injury during an accident. When her husband is killed in an explosion, she blames Blake for it. After accidentally hitting her with their car, Blake and Cristal let Claudia stay with them, but Cristal is concerned when she discovers Claudia isn't taking her medications. She confronts her and when Claudia pulls a gun to hold the family hostage, Cristal realizes she was faking being sick. Fallon arrives and quickly figures out Claudia was ''never'' sick in the first place. She was faking it to ensure her husband never left her. But Fallon also points out there's another reason... |
| 309 | -->'''Fallon:''' Why keep faking it even after he died?\ |
| 310 | '''Cristal:''' Because it's the perfect alibi.\ |
| 311 | '''Steven:''' No one's going to suspect the brain-damaged widow. |
| 312 | * ''Series/{{Elementary}}'': An extreme example occurs in [[spoiler:"While You Were Sleeping"]]. The killer [[spoiler:fakes a suicide attempt via drug overdose, then has her doctor accomplice place her in a medically induced coma. She is admitted to the hospital in a comatose state: supposedly the result of the overdose. The doctor then revives her so she can commit the murders. She then returns to the hospital after each murder, and the doctor places her back in a coma. If anyone checks, she is still in a coma]] and appears to have an airtight alibi. |
| 313 | * ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'': In "Ride", a magician's assistant (actually his son) lives as a badly disfigured mute (supposedly crippled in the bombing of Coventry). This allows him to ditch and appear as someone else whenever the magician requires a stooge. |
| 314 | * In the Mexican soap opera ''Series/EnNombreDelAmor'', Carlota the head villainess pretends to be paralyzed in order to not go to prison after trying to murder her niece Paloma. Doctors cannot figure out what is wrong with her. The audience may even be fooled. Carlota tries to bribe a nurse in order to get assistance in leaving the hospital- but the nurse refuses. Carlota then hits the nurse with a bottle and steals her scrubs and mask, then places the unconscious nurse on the bed and flees the hospital without incident. |
| 315 | * ''Series/FatherBrown'': The killer in "The Shadow of the Scaffold". Father Brown discovers this when he realises that they could not have seen they claimed to have witnessed unless they were standing up. |
| 316 | * Dr. Harrison Wells in ''Series/TheFlash2014'' claims to have been injured during the [[FreakLabAccident S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator explosion]], and become paralysed from the waist down as a result. Nine months after the accident, he's shown to be riding around in a wheelchair. Except the end of the pilot episode shows that he needs neither his wheelchair nor his glasses. His reasons for faking the disability are eventually revealed to be twofold: 1) to avoid suspicion of being [[spoiler:the Reverse-Flash]], and 2) to use the wheelchair as storage for [[spoiler:the battery he uses to fuel his super speed]]. |
| 317 | * In the ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' episode ''Wheels of Fortune'', Lilith's conman brother Blaine turns up in a wheelchair, claiming to have found God, and Frasier spends the entire episode attempting to prove he's a charlatan, making himself look worse and worse in the process. In the final scene, he's proven right, [[KarmaHoudini but Blaine gets away]]. |
| 318 | %%* ''Series/FunkySquad'' ("Diamonds Are a Cat's Best Friend") |
| 319 | * Grand Maester Pycelle on ''Series/GameOfThrones'' feigns being a doddering, feeble old yes-man in order to out-maneuver his political enemies. It's an elaborately calculated act that involves pretending to have a hunched back, a chronic respiratory ailment of some sort, rheumatism, dementia, and a general lack of energy. Only twice has he dropped the act, when he was certain no one was looking, and while doing some EvilGloating over Tyrion's injuries and fall from power at the end of Season 2. It also happens in a deleted scene where BigBad Tywin Lannister calls him out on it and he reveals himself to be a physically formidable man whose real speaking voice is [[EvilSoundsDeep a deep commanding baritone]]. Tywin openly asks if he's the only person who can "see through this performance" and Pycelle admits even he's surprised it works so well. |
| 320 | * ''Series/GetSmart'' |
| 321 | ** Used in the two-part episode "Ship of Spies". It involves a wheelchair-bound water polo player. |
| 322 | ** Leadside (a parody of ''Series/Ironside1967'') is a VillainOfTheWeek confined to a wheelchair who, to Maxwell Smart's surprise, is somehow able to vanish from the room while he's distracted. Later he's able to get past security disguised as a jogger. It turns out that while Leadside is incapable of walking or standing up, the [[RuleOfFunny act of running is still within his power]]. |
| 323 | * Tina's stutter in early episodes of ''Series/{{Glee}}''. She reveals to Artie she was doing it to seem more unique but the wheelchair-bound Artie slams her for mocking people with real disabilities like himself. |
| 324 | * ''Series/GoodbyeMyPrincess'': A Du pretends to be mute so she can stay with Xiao Feng. |
| 325 | * ''Series/TheGoodWife'': Though he is legitimately disabled, Louis Canning ([[DisabledCharacterDisabledActor played by]] Creator/MichaelJFox) habitually plays up his disability to gain sympathy with the judges and juries he faces in court, much to Alicia's annoyance. |
| 326 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Highlander}}'' has Immortal Duncan having to revisit a club he used to frequent in the 1970s. Knowing it'll be suspicious if he shows up looking exactly the same after nearly 30 years, Duncan dyes his temples grey and and walks with a cane and a limp to sell being older like a mortal. |
| 327 | * ''Series/HoldTheSunset'': In "Roger the Carer", Bob convinces Roger to go for a carer role by passing Edith off as having little speech, severe mobility issues, and subject to fits of rage. However, he's told that they need to make an assessment of her before they can allow him, so he asks Queenie to pass herself off as his mother and act disabled. It seems to go well in spite of errors, until Sandra and Phil receive word and convince the interviewer that Roger's insane. |
| 328 | * A variation: in a flashback in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'', Barney pretends ''Ted'' is deaf to make him appear sympathetic to a woman. Little does he know that both that both the woman and Ted know sign language (while Barney does not), and Ted simply tells her, in sign language, that Barney is lying and to give him a fake phone number. |
| 329 | * The ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' episode "Picture Perfect" has an art forger who is pretending to have suffered a stroke to avoid having to stand trial for forgery. |
| 330 | * Roy ends up doing this on one episode of ''Series/TheITCrowd'' to avoid getting in trouble for using the disabled bathroom stall. |
| 331 | * A unique variation in ''Series/InTheDark'': Murphy truly is blind, which can get her in trouble from missing clues to a mystery to literally being unable to tell there's danger right in front of her. However, Murphy enjoys playing up being far more helpless than she really is, knowing people assume she's less intelligent because of her disability and makes them underestimate her. A common trick is Murphy acting like she can't go five steps without bumping into something when she easily gets used to her surroundings and more than one person has fallen for the "poor helpless blind girl" unaware she's taking them for a ride. |
| 332 | ** On at least one occasion, Murphy has saved her life by stepping into a room with a gunman and acting like she has no idea anyone is there so they let her leave. It never occurred to the assassin that just because Murphy couldn't ''see'' them didn't mean she couldn't hear or otherwise sense another person in the room and Murphy wisely playing dumb. |
| 333 | * ''Series/IronFist2017''. After stealing the power of the Iron Fist from Danny Rand, Davos uses it to break Danny's leg. Danny repairs the damage by focusing his chi, a state-of-the-art leg brace from Rand Enterprises, and the requisite TrainingMontage, but in his next confrontation exaggerates his limp when walking up to Davos so he can sucker-kick him. |
| 334 | * In the ''Series/{{JAG}}'' episode "Yesterday's Heroes"; retired navy diver Artemus Sullivan (played by Creator/ErnestBorgnine) is avenging the death of his grandson by a drug dealer. When meeting Harm & Mac at first, Sullivan pretends to be in a senile vegetable state of mind. |
| 335 | * ''Series/JonathanCreek'': In "The Problem at Gallows Gate", a friend of Adam's is a famous blind blues musician. However, he actually had an operation several years earlier which restored his sight. He maintains the pretense of being blind because people respect blind blues musicians, and because it allows him to spy on women and "accidentally" grope them. |
| 336 | * {{Downplayed|Trope}} on ''Series/{{Justified}}'': Johny Crowder really is disabled. He was shot in the gut with a shotgun and it did major damage to his body. He spends most of his time in a wheelchair and people tend to assume that he is a paraplegic. In fact he can walk on his own but it is painful and tires him out. When two men come to kill him they are surprised to find that he just walked out the back door and left his wheelchair behind. |
| 337 | * ''Series/JustShootMe'' |
| 338 | ** Elliott's brother Donnie pretended to be mentally disabled since he graduated from high school in order to avoid having to get a job and start supporting himself. Jack blew this for him when his idiocy caused Donnie to break the act chewing him out. |
| 339 | ** Later, Donnie's girlfriend appears to be deaf and they use sign language together. However, it turns out she's a sex worker and faking it for him. |
| 340 | * ''Series/TheKingsWoman'': Lao Ai is allowed to accompany the queen dowager everywhere because everyone thinks he's a eunuch. He isn't, and he's having an affair with the queen dowager. |
| 341 | * On ''Series/KnightRider'', Michael is tracking thefts by someone following the same M.O. as a legendary cat burglar. He briefly thinks it's the man's daughter (Creator/GeenaDavis) following in his footsteps. It turns out it's actually the man's former partner, a supposedly retired crook who has been walking with a heavy limp. He admits he was faking it to throw people off to get proof of who had his friend murdered. Notably, in the final scene, the man is still walking with the limp until Michael calls him on it. The man laughs that he's been doing it for so long, it's become natural before walking perfectly normal. |
| 342 | * ''Series/LaBrea'': Lilly and Veronica pretend she's mute, not having spoken for years. In reality she's capable of speech just fine. |
| 343 | * In several episodes of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' and its spinoffs; |
| 344 | ** ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' had a Stephen Hawking {{expy}} who still had more mobility than he let on. |
| 345 | ** Another episode had a man who stole a woman's identity and pretended to be deaf to excuse not being able to speak. |
| 346 | ** In "Assassin", a hitman pretends to be confined to a wheelchair in order to smuggle a gun through security checks. |
| 347 | ** An episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' had a woman who had long since made a full recovery from an accident keeping her wheelchair and making herself sick for the sympathy and to control her husband, who she was framing for a couple murders - it's revealed when he shoves her wheelchair into a pool. Just to double up on the trope, she may have been faking the Munchausen's Syndrome as a defense. |
| 348 | * The obscure TV movie ''Film/{{Lifepod}}'' featured a killer who faked being blind. He's given away when someone views camera footage that shows him dodging a thrown object; they then expose him by shining a bright light in his eyes. |
| 349 | * Played for laughs in ''Series/LittleBritain'' with Lou and Andy, Lou being a bumbling social worker helping Andy, who uses a wheelchair and is possibly mentally disabled. However, Lou always manages to turn his back, at which point Andy gets up from his chair and does something amusing and dramatically ironic. |
| 350 | * ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'': Nellie Olson faked paralysis after falling off a horse so her parents would give her presents and Laura would be her slave out of guilt. |
| 351 | ** Another episode featured a boy faking that an injury made him go blind in order to keep his parents from splitting up. Later in the episode, he suffers a serious head injury, but rather than it making him go blind for real, it simply gives him amnesia so he doesn't even remember pulling the prank. |
| 352 | * One episode of ''Series/LoisAndClark'' centered on a slacker whom Superman saved from an explosion; the slacker faked nerve damage to a broken arm to sue Superman for injuries he supposedly sustained while being rescued. When Superman prevented another bomb from taking out the courtroom, the slacker attempted to play up his "injuries" again, only for his put-upon girlfriend to blow the whistle on his charade, moments before dumping him. |
| 353 | * On ''Series/{{Lucifer}}'', the team investigate the murder of a ballerina. One suspect is Miles von Strucker, a brutal but respected dance teacher who lost a leg in a car accident just as his career was beginning. Under Lucifer's "deepest desire" trick, Miles confesses that he wears a prosthetic over his real leg as the accident did almost no damage. He realized the accident would actually help his career as he was just an average dancer but could now sell himself as a teacher on the idea he could have been a legend if not for this "tragic loss." The team sees video of him taking off the fake leg and then some rather poor dance moves. |
| 354 | * ''Series/MacGyver1985'': In "The Assassin", Piedra (the eponymous assassin) disguises himself as an infirm, elderly man in order to get close to the archbishop who is his next target. |
| 355 | * ''Series/TheMandalorian''. In "The Believer", Din and Mayfield are DressingAsTheEnemy to infiltrate an Imperial base. Din isn't used to this sort of thing and freezes up when an Imperial officer starts asking him questions, so Mayfield (a former Imperial soldier) provides the answers on his behalf, claiming that Din didn't hear the questions properly because of hearing loss after an ExplosiveDecompression incident. |
| 356 | * The premise of ''Series/{{MANTIS}}'' is a variant, in which the protagonist uses his disability as an alibi for his SecretIdentity as the titular [[PoweredArmor power-armoured]] vigilante. In the pilot it's taken even further, with Miles Hawkins[=/=]Mantis wearing a CoatHatMask getup over his exoskeleton to hide the exact nature of his superpowers, but the series proper dropped this element. |
| 357 | * ''Series/{{MASH}}'' |
| 358 | ** Radar apparently hits an elderly Korean villager with a jeep. When the uninjured man demands $50 not to report Radar to the [=MPs=], a visiting officer susses out that he's a well-known con man known as "Whiplash Hwang". |
| 359 | ** Hawkeye is temporarily blinded when he tries to fix the nurses' heater, and even though he can't see them some of the nurses still want him out of the tent as they change. Later he turns up at the same tent claiming to have suffered a "temporary relapse" but says they're free to go ahead and take off their clothes while he's there. Suspicious, one of the nurses tosses a cup at him, which he catches. Busted!! |
| 360 | * On ''Series/TheMentalist'' Jane knew the PerpOfTheWeek was the guy in the wheelchair because Jane checked his shoes; they were scuffed (but for the record, this is total BS; a wheelchair user's shoes get just as scuffed as everybody else's, believe it or not). Jane is apparently very wise about this. |
| 361 | -->'''Patrick Jane:''' Whenever I meet someone in a wheelchair I check the bottoms of their shoes. The bottoms of your shoes were scuffed. I've been checking shoes for years. This is the first time it's ever paid off. First time. That's gratifying, man. Very, very gratifying. |
| 362 | ** In another episode the killer was pretending to be mentally disabled. The killer came up with this dodge when caught stealing a car at 18, and kept it going because it rendered him effectively invisible. Jane says the guy went too far by showing up at a funeral wearing a death metal t-shirt (even a mentally disabled person would have enough realization not to wear a skull in front of a grieving family). |
| 363 | * There's one ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' episode where a guy who is always seen in a wheelchair is in fact revealed to be able to walk (when no one's around, possibly collecting disability benefits). However, the scene is a !red!herring, as he is neither the killer nor a victim. |
| 364 | * Regularly done in ''Series/MissionImpossible'' as part of a mission. For example, in "A Game of Chess", Rollin pretends to be a deaf chessmaster, so he can receive moves from a chess computer offstage. He soon gets discovered by the mark, but that's part of the plan. |
| 365 | * In one episode of ''Series/ModernFamily'', Phil, who has to wear dark glasses after eye surgery, uses a random wooden stick he finds as a cane and pretends to be blind so he can cut to the front of the line at a store as a way of getting a wedding gift for Mitch and Cam on time. |
| 366 | * ''Series/{{Monk}}'': |
| 367 | ** An early episode has Monk realize that the assassin is not really a cripple because his shoes are heavily scuffed, something that would not happen to a man who had to use a wheelchair all the time (again, not actually true - see above). This revelation does not come in time and the assassin manages to get away. |
| 368 | ** "Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus" - an unliked ringmaster is shot and killed by a masked acrobat at a restaurant. Monk immediately suspects the victim's ex-wife, Natasha Lovara, but Natasha had broken her leg in a fall from a trapeze weeks ago. Monk initially assumes that this trope was in play and Natasha faking her injury, especially when he finds out that as a Romany Gypsy, she doesn't believe in doctors and had set the bone herself. However, a quick trip to the hospital reveals that her leg was indeed "smashed." Monk eventually realizes that the doctor's evidence confirmed that her leg was broken but not when she'd broken it. She had faked the injury from the initial fall, then after the shooting, had an elephant crush her foot so that the X-rays the police demanded would show a broken leg. |
| 369 | ** Mentioned in season one episode "Dale the Whale." Dale, a massively overweight crime boss, is accused of killing a judge against him, but he's so fat he can't get out of bed. He quickly disproves any theories that he is faking his weight by lifting his bedsheets to them. [[NauseaFuel Sharona even vomits.]] {{Played straight}} by the ending. The judge was killed by a thin man in a fat suit who knew that suspicion would fall upon the boss, who could not be proven guilty. |
| 370 | ** "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger" has a variation when a woman who was pretending to be blind actually ''was'' blind since a drunk driver hit her as a child, killing her parents. She [[ThrowingOffTheDisability partially regains her sight when she slips in a store]] and pretends she's still blind, so that she can shoot the man and then have the cops rule her out as a suspect. |
| 371 | ** A TieInNovel subplot in ''Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop'' (an insta-solve file that is only mentioned in one page) involves something with a man smuggling secrets from a helicopter company factory to a rival by using his wheelchair to remove documents. |
| 372 | * ''Series/MurderSheWrote'': In "When Thieves Fall Out", one of the suspects is in a wheelchair following a car accident. It turns out he is faking paralysis to scam an insurance payout. Jessica becomes suspicious when she spots a footprint of a man's shoe in his size outside his home, and tricks him into revealing himself. |
| 373 | * In one episode of ''Series/MurdochMysteries'', the killer turned out to be someone who pretended to be a stroke victim so he would avoid suspicion. |
| 374 | * In the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' episode featuring ''Film/NightOfTheBloodBeast'', Crow attempts to [[FakePregnancy fake being pregnant]] (don't ask) because he feels that, if one is pregnant, the entire world bends over for them and he wants that attention. |
| 375 | * ''Series/NeverHaveIEver'': Some of Devi's peers accuse her of having faked her leg paralysis. She didn't. |
| 376 | * ''Series/NewTricks'': The killer of the week in "Magic Majestic" has pretended to need a wheelchair for his entire adult life, referencing RealLife magician Chung Ling Soo. This allows him to escape from custody at the end of the episode. |
| 377 | * A ''Series/NightGallery'' episode had a con man faking being crippled to collect a fat settlement visiting a shrine in Mexico with reputed miraculous healing powers visited by sick and infirm pilgrims - he intends to get "cured" and walk out scot-free in front of an insurance investigator. As he saunters out, a miracle ''does'' occur - he's miraculously stricken blind. |
| 378 | * ''Series/{{NTSFSDSUV}}'': Subverted when TheMole reveals himself in one episode and the agents expect him to get out of his wheelchair. |
| 379 | -->''No, actually I do need it. My parents didn't believe in vaccines. Bummer.'' |
| 380 | * In ''Series/OnceUponATime'', Rumplestiltskin walked with a limp before becoming the Dark One. He lost it when he got his powers but after the curse is cast and he becomes "Mr. Gold" his limp comes back and he walks with a cane. In Season Two the curse is broken and he gets his magic back but he continues to walk with a limp until Season Three, when he [[ThrowingOffTheDisability casts aside]] his cane, and walks just fine on both legs. Later seasons confirm that as long as he has his magic his leg is fine, meaning that he was faking the limp throughout Season Two. |
| 381 | * ''Series/OneLifeToLive'''s Sarah Gordon is on trial for murdering Carlo Hesser. Suspecting that a wheelchair-bound woman is the real killer, her lawyer badgers her when she's on the stand [[https://youtu.be/-HOz4gfnH50 until she finally leaps to her feet]], screaming about how much she herself hated Carlo. Ironically, she was ''not'' the murderer. |
| 382 | * ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'': Cindy and Suzanne pretend they're deaf in the wake of the riot to explain why they didn't come out from hiding before. The CERT team, who don't know otherwise, buy it. |
| 383 | %%* Used in the reveal of the ''Series/{{Poirot}}'' episode "Double Sin". |
| 384 | * On ''Series/ThePractice'', the firm is unsuccessful defending a man of murder. The only other suspect would be the man's wife who has a pretty good alibi of being in a wheelchair from a car accident some time earlier. In the final scene, after the man is found guilty, the camera focuses on a street in Boston where the perfectly healthy wife walks down the street with a smug smile. |
| 385 | * In ''Series/PrettyLittleLiars'', after Jenna gets surgery to restore her eyesight, she pretends it didn't work until it's discovered and she's confronted. |
| 386 | * In a season 2 episode of ''Series/PushingDaisies'', there's a brief flashback to Emerson Cod's childhood. His mother faked putting him in danger to expose a man who had made fraudulent insurance claims. She pushed a stroller with a baby doll in it down a flight of stairs- the allegedly wheelchair-bound man with a neck brace and a broken arm ran from his wheelchair to catch the baby with both hands. |
| 387 | * Happens several times on ''Series/QuantumLeap'': |
| 388 | ** Sam leaped into a blind piano player and had to pretend he was blind. The mother of the leapee's girlfriend caught him, though, and thought the character was really pretending. Later, she decides to test it while lighting a cigarette by holding the match right in front of his eyes. As it happened, Sam had earlier been up close to a camera bulb when it flashed and thus really ''is'' temporarily blind. His utter lack of reaction makes the stunned woman think she was wrong all along and apologizes. |
| 389 | ** He also leaped into the body of a legless Vietnam vet. To one "unfortunate" [[NurseRatched sadistic orderly]], Sam looked like he was floating above the ground when he got up and walked. Naturally, no one believed the orderly's claims as he was fired. |
| 390 | * ''Series/RedDwarf'': In "Cured", the hidden psychopath turns out to be the wheelchair bound Professor Telford, who reveals that he is not crippled when he stands up and points a rifle at the crew. |
| 391 | * An episode of ''Series/TheRiches'' has Dahlia seeing a little kid in a wheelchair with a bald head, holding a sign claiming to be a cancer victim at a fair. He's surrounded by local women who gladly donate money and wish the kid good luck. When they leave, Dahlia (a con artist herself) tells the kid he's doing a good job but he needs to shave his head more often and gives tips on how to look more sickly. The two share a knowing wink and smile before heading their separate ways. |
| 392 | * ''Series/ResurrectionErtugrul'': During season 5, while donning his Bell Ringer persona, [[BigBad Dragos]] uses a small pouch placed beneath his garbs to make it appear as though his back is hunched. |
| 393 | %%* The "Lost Ending" to ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife'' as seen on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' showed Mr. Potter was faking. |
| 394 | %%* Used by Guy Caballero, the owner of the TV station, "for respect" in ''Series/{{SCTV}}''. |
| 395 | * One ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' sketch in 1986 featured an alternate ending to ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife''. A mob lead by George Bailey goes after Mr. Potter, discovering that he is not actually a cripple. However, they start beating him before he can explain. |
| 396 | * In ''Series/{{See}}'', humans have gone blind due to ThePlague for centuries, and people who were born blessed with sight tend to be discriminated and treated as heretics. Therefore, they are either constantly on the run (like Jerlamarel) or pretend to be blind and try to blend in (like Kofun, Haniwa in their tribe and Wren in her city). Wren was able to get away with it since, obviously, no one else could see her faking it, but Haniwa grasps it fast. |
| 397 | -->'''Wren''': How did you know? |
| 398 | -->'''Haniwa''': I've spent my whole life hiding it. Just like you. I know what it looks like. |
| 399 | * Happens a few times on ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'': |
| 400 | ** In "The Butter Shave", George has to walk with a cane due to the injuries he received in "The Summer of George". He goes to a job interview and the cane makes his new employer think he's disabled. George is about to clear things up when the guy mentions that George would be getting a private bathroom because of his disability. George then fakes being disabled to keep the bathroom as well as getting a number of other perks, like [[DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery having a secretary]] ''[[DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery carry him]]'' [[DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery to his office]]. |
| 401 | ** In "The Jimmy", Kramer does this by accident when he meets a man who is organizing a charity dinner for the mentally challenged. He ends up as a guest of honor because the Novocaine he was injected with at the dentist made him slur his speech, and he's wearing strangely shaped training shoes, so the man thinks he's a shining example of a mentally challenged person able to live on their own. |
| 402 | ** In "The Lip-Reader", Elaine fakes being deaf so that she doesn't have to make conversation with the driver of the car service. It doesn't work for very long. To quote Elaine, "he caught me hearing". |
| 403 | * ''Series/ShakespeareAndHathawayPrivateInvestigators'': In "The Fairest Show Means Most Deceit", Shakespeare and Hathaway are hired to investigate an employee who is suspected of faking an injury as part of a workers' compensation scam. Later, [[spoiler:the employee uses the fake injury to establish an alibi while she murders her boss]]. |
| 404 | * Lionel Luthor of ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' uses this. In the beginning of Season 2, a life-saving surgery left him temporarily blind. [[ThrowingOffTheDisability He eventually regained his sight]], but neglected to mention it and faked being blind for a few more weeks because people let their guard down around someone they thought couldn't see. Street-wise Lucas Luthor, however, sees through the ruse immediately upon first meeting him; Lionel pours himself some water and doesn't put his finger inside the glass to know when it's full. Lucas tests his theory later by signing "BITE ME" on an important contract instead of his name, and when Lionel can't hide his reaction, Lucas forcibly throws a billiards ball at his head. Lionel reflexively dodges and is fully exposed. |
| 405 | ** In the episode "Precipice", Lana is attacked by a drunken frat boy, and Clark "injures" him by throwing him into a cop car. The frat boy sues Clark for one million dollars, but it turns out his severe neck injury is total bullshit, and Lana calls him out on it, forcing him to drop the lawsuit. |
| 406 | * In ''Series/SoLittleTime'', Riley goes to school in a wheelchair to get the attention of a paraplegic whom she has a crush on. |
| 407 | * In season 5 of ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'', Clay suffers a gunshot wound to the chest that damages his lungs and gets him put on an oxygen tank. Midway through the season it is revealed that he has completely healed and in perfect health, but he continues to wear the tank and pretend to be weak and frail. |
| 408 | * In an episode of ''Series/{{The Suite Life of Zack and Cody}}'', Zack fakes being dyslexic so his mother and teachers will get off his case about his poor grades. The ploy is short-lived, however, when his mother and the special-ed teacher get suspicious of his very quick progress in the special-ed classes and trick him into reading an essay out loud. |
| 409 | * Subverted in a ''Series/{{Taxi}}'' episode: an old lady sues Louie for hitting her with his cab, and he learns that she's a scam artist with a history of phony lawsuits. When he tries to "prove" his innocence in court by pushing the wheelchair-bound woman out the door and toward a staircase in the assumption that she'll jump off, he discovers that in this particular case she wasn't faking it. |
| 410 | * In ''Series/TrailerParkBoys'', Ricky's dad, Ray, pretends to be in a wheelchair to receive disability money. He only gets out of the chair when he's around Ricky or close friends. In season five he's finally caught and sent to jail. |
| 411 | * On ''Series/{{Undateable}}'', Adam meets an attractive woman just after he's gotten eye drops and she believes he's blind. Naturally, Adam continues to pretend to be blind to the disgust of the rest of the group. |
| 412 | -->'''Brett''': Hasn't she asked why you wear glasses? |
| 413 | -->'''Adam''': I told her it's meant ironically. |
| 414 | ** Finally having enough of seeing them together, Leslie goes over and pulls her shirt open. Naturally, Adam (who's had a huge crush on Leslie) can't help but stare, leading to an angry slap from his now ex-girlfriend. |
| 415 | * ''Series/WantedDeadOrAlive'': In "Dead End", a ranch manager confined to a wheelchair after an accident with a bronco hires Josh to track down a ranch hand who allegedly stole the cash from the ranch's cattle sales. When Josh finds the cowhand, he is already dead: shot in the back. The ranch manager then appears, walking with a limp. He faked how the bad accident was, then murdered the hand, stole the money, and hired Josh. He plans to murder Josh and frame him and the cowhand for the theft. |
| 416 | * Phil Olivetti in ''Series/WeCanBeHeroesFindingTheAustralianOfTheYear'' claims to have permanently lost mobility in one wrist. It's plainly not true - as demonstrated even within the scene where he makes the claim - but he somehow got a [[FrivolousLawsuit compensation payout]] for it anyway. |
| 417 | * The TV movie ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120498/ What The Deaf Man Heard]]'' is this trope in spades. A child whose mother was murdered sits in a small town diner waiting for his mother who will never arrive. The townsfolk think he's deaf and mute since he just sits there and doesn't react to anyone (based on his mother's last words to him, "Not one more word out of you"). For twenty years he decides to maintain this charade, because everyone drops their guard around him, so by the end of the movie, when he reveals that he can hear and speak, he's got plenty to talk about. |
| 418 | * Happens in one episode of ''Series/WhodunnitUK''. When the host called on the real murderer to please stand up, one of the policemen dropped his notebook. The man in a wheelchair next to him stood up and handed it back to him. |
| 419 | * The villain of ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' episode "The Night of the Brain" starts out in steam-powered wheelchair, but it is then revealed that he uses it because he he believes that literally every ounce of a person's energy should be devoted to thinking. |
| 420 | * On an episode of ''Series/TheWire'', Omar is able to get into a Barksdale stash house by pretending to be an old man in a wheelchair (with one of his crew pretending to be a nurse). |
| 421 | * ''Series/TheXFiles'': "The Amazing Maleeni". When a stage magician who made his head rotate 360 degrees as part of his act turns up decapitated, Mulder and Scully quickly believe his bank manager brother could have been his double - but the bank manager proves that couldn't be the case, as he lost both his legs in a car accident. That is, until later, when Mulder tumbles him out of the wheelchair; he's got both legs, because ''he'' was the stage magician and was pulling off an illusion. |
| 422 | [[/folder]] |
| 423 | |
| 424 | [[folder:Professional Wrestling]] |
| 425 | * There have been a few angles over the years where a supposedly injured wrestler, standing nearby with crutches, will suddenly run into the ring and use the crutches to attack the person he's feuding with. Sometimes, it will be a wrestler returning from a lengthy absence due to an actual injury. |
| 426 | ** This was done in an utterly tasteless manner by Wrestling/{{WCW}} when Buff Bagwell used a wheelchair after a major spinal injury. Bagwell called the man who injured him, Rick Steiner, to the ring and forgave him...only to rise from the wheelchair and betray Steiner immediately afterward, turning this into ''yet another'' [[Wrestling/NewWorldOrder nWo]] angle. |
| 427 | ** {{Wrestling/ECW}}'s "[[Wrestling/JimFullington Sandman]] gets blinded" angle. The Sandman was apparently blinded in a match with Wrestling/TommyDreamer, and to help sell the angle, stayed at home for a month, never having contact with another human being apart from his wife - his commitment to the angle was phenomenal. Then, he came to the arena to announce his retirement, and when he got to the ring, ripped the bandages off and beat the living crap out of Tommy Dreamer. |
| 428 | * Doink the Clown earned his first major feud when he faked an arm injury to gain sympathy from Crush, who had been speaking out about the clown's recent string of practical jokes and that they might hurt someone if he isn't careful. Crush agreed to let Doink alone ... until he realized (after waking up at the hospital) that he was suckered into a severe beating with a fake prosthetic arm, leading Crush to vow bloody revenge. |
| 429 | * An infamous Brother Love show saw him play the part of a charlatan, hiring an actor to pretend he was blind and lame, before ordering him to see and walk on command. |
| 430 | * At the climax of the [[Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling AEW]] championship match at ''AEW Revolution'' between Wrestling/ChrisJericho and Wrestling/JonMoxley, Jericho (who'd [[EyeScream stabbed Moxley in the right eye with a spike]] several weeks earlier) blinded Moxley in his left eye as well, leaving Moxley unable to see Jericho to pin him, only for Moxley to pull the eyepatch off his right eye and reveal that it had healed by now. He promptly beat Jericho to become champion. |
| 431 | [[/folder]] |
| 432 | |
| 433 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 434 | * The traditional folk song "[[https://mainlynorfolk.info/steeleye.span/songs/thebeggar.html The Beggar]]", as recorded by Music/SteeleyeSpan: |
| 435 | -->Sometimes we call at a rich man's hall,\ |
| 436 | To beg for bread and beer.\ |
| 437 | Sometimes we're lame, sometimes we're blind,\ |
| 438 | Sometimes too deaf to hear. |
| 439 | [[/folder]] |
| 440 | |
| 441 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 442 | * Simon Fairchild of ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives'' walks with a cane, but seems to use it for the sole purpose of reinforcing his image as a harmless old man. While he is old ([[ElderlyImmortal a few centuries old in fact]]) he's quite spry, and one of his victims notes that he only really uses the cane when he notices people looking. [[EvilOldFolks And he is far from harmless.]] |
| 443 | [[/folder]] |
| 444 | |
| 445 | [[folder:Radio]] |
| 446 | * ''Radio/TheLoneRanger'': When posing as an elderly {{Prospector}}, the Ranger would place a stone in his shoe to force himself to walk with a limp. |
| 447 | * ''Radio/TheNewAdventuresOfSherlockHolmes'': In "The Case of the Baconian Cipher", Holmes realises the man pretending to be his wheelchair-bound uncle is a fake when he notices fresh dirt on the soles of his shoes. |
| 448 | * ''Radio/TrollCops'': The Nefarious and Notorious Mr. Pupa uses his wheelchair to lull his foes into a false sense of security, before escaping on his fully functional robotic legs. |
| 449 | [[/folder]] |
| 450 | |
| 451 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 452 | * In ''Theatre/AccidentalDeathOfAnAnarchist'', The Maniac wears an eyepatch despite having two functioning eyes. He pretends to lose a GlassEye as a distraction several times. |
| 453 | * Some stage versions of ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'' place Judge Lawrence Wargrave in a wheelchair, leading to a dramatic reveal of the murderer. |
| 454 | * Used as early as ''Theatre/HenryVI'' part two, when Gloucester proves that a man who claims to have been divinely cured of blindness is a charlatan. |
| 455 | * In ''Theatre/TheManWhoCameToDinner'', Whiteside's doctor pronounces his injuries fully healed by the end of the first act, but he insists on keeping his recovery a secret so he won't have to leave town. So he stays in his wheelchair for a while longer. |
| 456 | * Used in ''Theatre/WeMustKillToni'' by a character in a wheelchair. Although he is injured, he exaggerated his injuries and can walk a few steps. |
| 457 | [[/folder]] |
| 458 | |
| 459 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 460 | * Quaestor Verus from ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' ''Origins'' is a retired war hero who has a limp and thus needs a cane. At the end of the game, he tosses away the cane and stomps the ground, showing his leg is perfectly fine. This highlights just how far he went to deceive others, since the limp is far from the only thing he was lying about to everyone. |
| 461 | * Gehrman, the First Hunter, from ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' is a one-legged old man who mostly comes off as senile and spends most of the game in a wheelchair. Then comes the end when he offers you a chance to leave the dream. If you refuse, [[LightningBruiser you'll soon learn that the loss of his leg is no impediment]]. |
| 462 | * Played for laughs in the non-canon after-credits end to ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII''. Woods, who is in a wheelchair because his knees were shot out during the story line, jumps up out of the chair when M. Shadow asks if he's ready to rock. Menendez (the [[BigBad guy]] who shot Woods' legs) asks, shocked, "What the fuck?" Woods' response? "Oh, that shit? Nah, I'm just fuckin' lazy." |
| 463 | * Colonel Dijon of ''VideoGame/TheColonelsBequest'' was apparently wounded and rendered unable to walk during the Spanish-American War. You can see him stand and/or walk under his own power at two separate points in the game. |
| 464 | * Monaca from ''VideoGame/DanganronpaAnotherEpisodeUltraDespairGirls'' is revealed to be this at the end of the game (her RoomFullOfCrazy is [[SpottingTheThread only reachable by ladder]]). She ''did'' have her legs broken by her [[AbusiveParents abusive father and brother]] in the past, but acted as though she'd lost complete use of them to [[TheFakeCutie make herself seem harmless and more easily manipulate others]]. [[spoiler:It's likely [[LaserGuidedKarma she was crippled for real]] when the bottom half of her body is crushed under a pile of rubble at the end, and she's in a wheelchair again in ''Anime/Danganronpa3TheEndOfHopesPeakHighSchool''.]] |
| 465 | * Belger, the final boss in ''VideoGame/FinalFight'', is in a wheelchair at the fight's start. He does this to lure his victims into a false sense of security before he shoots them with his crossbow. (It also makes it easier to use Jessica as a HumanShield.) Partway through the fight, the player smashes his wheelchair and Belger continues the fight on foot. |
| 466 | * Kliff Undersn from ''VideoGame/GuiltyGear'' is an ''incredibly'' old man, and while he's clearly a badass, much of his absurd strength has faded with age...until he uses his abilities to [[FountainOfYouth temporarily restore himself to his prime.]] |
| 467 | * {{Inverted|Trope}} in Emi's route of ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo''. She absolutely refuses to be seen in a wheelchair despite her disability, and will painstakingly wear her prosthetic legs if she has to step outside. |
| 468 | * Possibly with Swain in ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends''; as a joke, his /dance has him check to make sure no-one's watching before tossing his cane away and dancing, and alt skin that makes him the Noxxian high general has no limp. |
| 469 | * Implied with Vitruvius in ''VideoGame/TheLEGOMovieVideogame''. In the missions "Flatbush Rooftops" and "Infiltrate the Octan Tower", he sarcastically remarks that the thin ledges he's sidling across don't have anything dangerous going on at all, which makes Emmet and Batman question whether or not he's actually blind. |
| 470 | * ''VideoGame/LikeADragonInfiniteWealth'': [[spoiler:Eiji Mitamura, a Seiryu Clan and Palekana spy, uses a localized anesthetic to feign being wheelchair-bound in order to win Kasuga's sympathies, due to Kasuga's history of taking care of the physically-frail son of his former patriarch Arakawa. By the end, after the whole plot has been thwarted, he acknowledges the irony of having actually injured his ankle while attempting to hide.]] |
| 471 | * Peter Stillman in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' who faked his disability to avoid facing the families of the victims of a bomb he was unable to defuse. By claiming to have been seriously injured himself, he's seen as another victim, not the guy who fucked up. |
| 472 | * ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'': In Saint Denis you can encounter beggars who claim to be blind. Pointing a gun at them will show if they're blind or not, since the fake ones will be startled by the sight of the gun. By the time you press them further they will reveal their act and run away. |
| 473 | * ''VideoGame/ShenmueII'': In Kowloon, Ryo is challenged to fight a man in a dark room. His opponent turns out to be the same blind elderly man he met earlier, who reveals he's not even blind at all, but pretended to be in order to hone his remaining senses in his martial arts training. |
| 474 | * ''VideoGame/{{Slammed}}'': [[spoiler: Alex Dobbs was kicked in the head as a child as part of a storyline, and no one outside of the upper-echelons of the GWA know for certain that it's an act]]. |
| 475 | [[/folder]] |
| 476 | |
| 477 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 478 | * ''Franchise/AceAttorney'': |
| 479 | ** ''VisualNovel/AceAttorneyInvestigations'''s Quercus Alba. Ironically, faking his need to walk with a cane has given him an actual bad back. (''You'' try walking stooped over for that long!) |
| 480 | ** In ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'', Machi Tobaye is not actually blind, but Lamiroir, who is thought to be sighted, is. |
| 481 | ** In ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneySpiritOfJustice'', [[spoiler:Armie Buff actually ''was'' disabled for a time following a fire that claimed her mother's life and left her crippled, but she regained the use of her legs a few months prior to the events of the game. She stayed in her wheelchair because she was too scared to go outside, having developed an overwhelming fear of fire. Thanks to Apollo and Athena, she gains the courage to stand on her own two feet again]]. |
| 482 | * Beatrice Frega from ''VisualNovel/TyrionCuthbertAttorneyOfTheArcane'' is completely blind because of an accident some years ago, and this is used by the defense to argue that she couldn't have committed the murder she's accused of. ''However'', [[spoiler:she can see through the eyes of her demonic familiar, who is always close to her and hidden from other people via an invisibility spell]]. |
| 483 | [[/folder]] |
| 484 | |
| 485 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 486 | * In ''Toys/Bionicle2015'''s online animations, the Protector of Fire appears as a hunched, robe-wearing elder walking with a stick. When he decides it's time to start Tahu's training, he throws off his robe, straightens up, and reveals that his "hump" was in reality a shoulder-mounted [[GatlingGood gatling gun]] tucked under the robe. |
| 487 | [[/folder]] |
| 488 | |
| 489 | [[folder:Web Comics]] |
| 490 | * ''Webcomic/{{Erma}}'': The {{Tengu}} MonsterLord Osamu looks like a heavily stooped old man who walks with a {{cane|Fu}}. In his [[https://tapas.io/episode/1463192 first appearance]], however, he effortlessly massacres a group of youkai, then settles back into his hunched posture and shuffles on. Judging by the [[TheDreaded terror]] he inspires in his subjects, they're aware of the ruse. |
| 491 | * Rachel from ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'' was supposedly paraplegic after Hoh stabbed her in the back and Yu Hansung prevented any treatment to stop Bam from climbing the tower. Then she stands up and pushes Bam down the "The Wineglass", the lake their test takes place in. This is only the beginning of the WhamEpisode. |
| 492 | * ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': When Sette talks about teaching fellow young thief Lucky Puppy how to be a better beggar so he could make jukrum it depicts her showing him to act like he needs a crutch. |
| 493 | * ''Webcomic/TheWolfAtWestonCourt'' gives us Remus, the supposedly deaf and mute assistant to the local printer (who also makes a brief cameo appearance in the prequel comic, ''WebComic/TheTenTailorsOfWestonCourt''). We eventually learn he's actually neither, moments before he [[spoiler:murders Neville to get him out of the way.]] |
| 494 | [[/folder]] |
| 495 | |
| 496 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 497 | * ''Literature/CanYouSpareAQuarter'': Graham's lawyer pretends that Jamie is blind in order to allow him to bring the dog Cindy into the meeting with the Department of Child Welfare. |
| 498 | * In the ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan'' episode, "Bowser Junior's Broken Leg", Bowser Junior [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin breaks his leg]] and spends three weeks in bed waiting for it to heal, with Chef Pee Pee bringing him whatever he wants. After it heals, he pretends his leg is still broken to continue to get free stuff from Chef Pee Pee, despite a warning not to from Dr. Brooklyn T. Guy. This comes back to bite him two weeks later, when [[ShowWithinAShow Doofy the Dragon]] hosts a meet and greet at the mall, which Junior wants to go to. After Junior admits to Chef Pee Pee that he's been lying about his leg for the last two weeks, [[TheDogBitesBack Chef Pee Pee beats him up]], [[HereWeGoAgain breaking his other leg]]. |
| 499 | [[/folder]] |
| 500 | |
| 501 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 502 | * ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': Steve Smith pretends to be a paraplegic in a wheelchair whenever he takes on his detective persona of "Wheels", one half of the detective duo Wheels and the Legman (with Roger as the Legman). |
| 503 | * Invoked and then subverted in ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}''. During Archer's time as Pirate King, Ray gets shot through the stomach, which hits him in the spine and resigns him to a wheelchair for six months. However, it's eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Ray was just faking it, as they gave him a wheelchair when he left the hospital, and the rest of the cast just assumed he was paralyzed]]. In the season finale, he is [[spoiler:actually paralyzed]], forcing him to once again use his wheelchair. He is then un- and re-paralyzed several times throughout seasons 4 and 5. He is re-paralyzed again at the end of season 6, only for it to [[spoiler:once again be him faking it]], as revealed at the season 7 premier. |
| 504 | * ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': |
| 505 | ** The King of Omashu appears to be a deranged, frail old man hunched over in his billowing robes. When Aang challenges him to a duel, the King straightens up and throws off his robes revealing a HeroicBuild and the fact that he's one of the most powerful Earthbenders in the series. |
| 506 | ** Even though Toph is actually blind, her blindness is a DisabilitySuperpower that makes her a good deal more aware of her surroundings than her sighted friends. She pretended on more than one occasion to be helpless because of her blindness, in order to get what she wanted from someone. So much so that for most of her life, her parents believed she would never master Earthbending... While she was secretly the all-time champion of the Earth Kingdom analog to ProfessionalWrestling. Toph's parents always treated her like she was incapable of doing anything; she just learned to play it up since people underestimated her anyways because of her blindness. |
| 507 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'' episode "Gayle Makin' Bob Sled", Bob has to pick up his [[CloudCuckoolander wreck of a]] [[CrazyCatLady sister-in-law]], Gayle, for Thanksgiving. However, she has sprained her ankle and his car got buried in snow by a snowplow. Thinking quickly, he [[MacGyvering fashions]] snowshoes out of cat poop shovels and a sled out of a kiddie pool, with the intent of dragging Gayle to his apartment for Thanksgiving. After the requisite HilarityEnsues, Bob finally collapses from exhaustion, and Gayle stands up to help him, because she was pretending to be injured for attention, a la Munchausen Syndrome. |
| 508 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/ButterbeansCafe'' episode "The Queen of Quiche," Ms. Marmalady fakes having a twisted ankle when she realizes Butterbean is willing to help her out while she's injured. She takes advantage of Butterbean's help to make a quiche which she passes off as her own. Of course, since "her" quiche and Butterbean's look and taste identical, her ruse is quickly found out. |
| 509 | * An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'' had Dale fake a broken toe to get out of doing work, and get spoiled by Gadget. Later in the episode, Dale saved the day, breaking his toe for real, and got his comeuppance when he had to miss a party because of it. |
| 510 | * In the 1933 WesternAnimation/{{Classic Disney Short|s}} "Old King Cole" the three blind mice smell cheese and look at it from behind their glasses. |
| 511 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheClevelandShow'': In "Beer Walk", after Donna broke her leg, Cleveland had to do all of her chores. However, since Donna finally has her husband do some work, she fakes her injury after she's healed. It took a BatmanGambit to snap her out of it. |
| 512 | * On ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', Peter tried to make a quick buck by handing out sheets of stickers at the airport which said "I am deaf. Please buy this for $2." [[TooDumbToLive being Peter]], he blows his cover immediately. |
| 513 | -->'''Man:''' ''[annoyed]'' I'm supposed to pay 2 bucks for stickers just 'cause this guy can't hear?!\ |
| 514 | '''Peter:''' Hey! I might be deaf, but I have ''feelings''! ''[notices everyone staring at him]'' ...I mean, "what?" |
| 515 | * An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Fillmore}}'' had an exciting chase sequence when a wheelchair-bound suspect got up and ran unexpectedly. She claimed without much remorse that she never told anyone that she NEEDED the wheelchair, she just preferred it (having two fake leg casts helped). Unfortunately, she had spent so long in it that she didn't get very far. |
| 516 | * An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGarfieldShow'' has one where Nermal fakes a broken leg to get sympathy from Jon. Every time Garfield and Odie try to prove he's faking, they get in trouble with Jon. At the end where they unravel Nermal's foot, Jon believes Nermal's injury was healed. To make matters worse, Garfield and Odie were actually injured, but instead of getting rightful sympathy, they were put in full body casts and not able to eat anything while Nermal gets the last laugh. The whole episode was one large KarmaHoudini. |
| 517 | * ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'': |
| 518 | ** The episode "Phoebe Breaks a Leg" had Phoebe taking advantage of Helga's niceness when she broke her leg after being hit by a speeding bus while doing errands for her and kept the cast even after it healed to give her [[ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine a taste of her own medicine]]. [[spoiler:At the end of the episode, ''[[HereWeGoAgain Helga]]'' [[HereWeGoAgain is the one who breaks her leg]] after Phoebe saves her from a speeding semi and tells her the truth]]. |
| 519 | ** In "[[AprilFoolsPlot April Fools' Day]]", after being pranked too many times by Helga, Arnold gets revenge with a prank of his own that leaves her temporarily blind, and she decides to keep up the charade so a guilt-ridden Arnold would stay at her side and help her at anything (obviously, she secretly ''did'' enjoy having him all for herself too). [[spoiler:Gerald overhears Helga and Phoebe talking about the prank [[BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults through the bathroom vents]] and tells Arnold, prompting him to get revenge on her again, this time, without hurting her.]] |
| 520 | *** A similar plot occurred in "Beaned", when Helga was given EasyAmnesia from a TapOnTheHead caused by a baseball Arnold had hit. Though she recovered quickly, she kept it up because she loved having his attention. |
| 521 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': |
| 522 | ** In Episode 128, while trying various methods to trick people into giving him money, Stumpy tries faking being crippled. Since the show has a MinimalistCast, everyone already knows each other, and Kaeloo tells right away that he's faking. She pays him anyway because it was such a good act it would have seemed believable to anyone else. |
| 523 | ** In Episode 138, [[TheSmartGuy Mr. Cat]] wonders if Stumpy might have dyspraxia, and notes that that might explain his inability to do chores. In reality Stumpy is just lazy, but he sees this as an opportunity to get out of doing chores forever, so he deliberately fails all the tests Mr. Cat performs on him to check for the disorder. Kaeloo knows that Stumpy is faking, so after Stumpy is diagnosed with dyspraxia by Mr. Cat, Kaeloo decides to give Stumpy medication to treat his symptoms in the form of injections. Stumpy is AfraidOfNeedles and immediately cleans up his room to prove that he's been "cured" to avoid taking the medicine. |
| 524 | * ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'': |
| 525 | ** In "[[Recap/KingOfTheHillS5E5PeggyMakesTheBigLeagues Peggy Makes The Big Leagues]]", Peggy is fighting tooth and nail to keep a football player with bad grades from being allowed to play, when basically the whole town thinks that he should be passed without question. Eventually, the player's mom gets her and Hank to give up their crusade by tearfully explaining that her son is learning disabled, really ''has'' been trying to do his work, and that football is his only real chance of a bright future. This is, of course, a total lie, but it works. The kid himself actually wasn't in on the scheme, and has a HeelRealization once he finds out about it... sort of. Mostly he just seems embarrassed by how ''easy'' it is for people to believe that he's mentally challenged. |
| 526 | ** In "[[Recap/KingOfTheHillS13E1DiaBillIcShock Dia-Bill-Ic Shock]]", Bill is diagnosed with diabetes, and later ends up hospitalized for a sugar spike after bingeing on a box of cookies. [[DoctorJerk His Jerkass of a doctor]] assumes that there is no hope of Bill making any meaningful changes to his lifestyle, and tells him that he will eventually lose his legs to gangrene and that he may as well get himself a wheelchair now. Misinterpreting the doctor's angry ranting, Bill acquires a wheelchair and starts using it despite there being nothing wrong with his legs. Later, while getting drunk at a bar, he gets out of his wheelchair and walks to the restroom, shocking and majorly pissing off the wheelchair-bound rugby players he had befriended (he tried to explain having diabetes and tries proving it with a test, which comes out negative), along with his regular friends (who had remodeled his house to make it more wheelchair-accessible). However, Hank and the rugby players' leader figure out what actually happened (when he turned out negative in the aforementioned test), and help Bill realize that he should be proud of overcoming his diabetes after his doctor had written him off as a lost cause -- [[TheDogBitesBack even persuading him to get his revenge on the doctor (whose nurse is perfectly willing to look the other way after how she had been treated)]]. |
| 527 | ** In "[[Recap/KingOfTheHillS13E5NoBobbyLeftBehind No Bobby Left Behind]]", Principal Moss convinces Bobby and other underachieving students to pretend to be special needs so that they'll be exempt from taking the standardized tests, thereby raising the school's SAT scores and saving Moss' job. Promised no more schoolwork and a trip to "Alamoland", the kids eagerly go along with it and even start giving each other tips on how to look more convincingly special needs. |
| 528 | * ''Franchise/TheLoudHouse'': |
| 529 | ** In ''WesternAnimation/TheCasagrandes'' episode "[[Recap/TheCasagrandesS1E13GrandparentTrapMissStep Miss Step]]", Carlota, Ronnie Anne and Maria all fake being injured (Carlota with a sprained elbow, Ronnie Anne with an injured foot and Maria with a broken leg) to get out of having to dance at a baile folklorico showcase due to [[DrillSergeantNasty Frida being too intense of an instructor]]. |
| 530 | ** In ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' episode "[[Recap/TheLoudHouseS7E32TwasTheFightBeforeChristmas 'Twas the Fight Before Christmas]]", Lynn Sr. and Lance are shown to fake injuries every Christmas to avoid having to see each other. Their wives and kids are not fooled one bit, with Lynn Sr.'s daughters making a bingo game over the things he does when he fakes being sick. |
| 531 | * ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': [[ConsummateLiar Lila Rossi]] occasionally employs this tactic, in particularly low moments even by ''[[TheSociopath her]]'' standards. |
| 532 | ** In "Chameleon", she feigns tinnitus, arthritis, and a sprained wrist in order to take advantage of her classmates' kindness. |
| 533 | ** In "Ladybug", Adrien gets fed up with her bullshit and tells her to fix all the problems she caused with her lying or else he'll never speak to her again, even if she has to tell another lie to do it. She does so by making up a lie about suffering from a rare disease that causes her to lie compulsively against her will. Considering how often she lies, [[{{Irony}} this one might actually be true]] ([[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse not that it excuses anything she's done]]), even if she isn't actually aware of it herself. |
| 534 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}}'' cartoon "Seein' Red, White 'n' Blue", Bluto feigns illness and injury as a means to get out of being conscripted into the Navy. But after seeing Popeye getting attacked by Japanese saboteurs and following a can of spinach between him and Popeye (after which a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown against the saboteurs ensues), Bluto signs up. |
| 535 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' episode "[[Recap/RockosModernLifeS4E2TheHighFiveOfDoomFlyBurgers Fly Burgers]]", a fly named Flecko trips on a rock and acts as if he broke his leg and neck to [[CourtroomEpisode sue]] Rocko, since Rocko had earlier tried to swat him away for trying to eat the burgers he was grilling. Flecko wins the lawsuit and Judge Sockner sentences Rocko to thirty days as a fly as punishment, but Flecko's ruse is exposed and the spell placed on Rocko[[spoiler:, minus the removal of his wings,]] is reverted when Judge Sockner discovers he faked his injuries. |
| 536 | * The ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'' episode, "[[Recap/RugratsS3E7WhenWishesComeTrueAngelicaBreaksALeg Angelica Breaks a Leg]]" has Angelica pretending to break her leg by shoving a bowling ball down the stairs in an attempt to garner tons of attention from Stu and Didi. Thanks to [[Series/DoogieHowserMD a very young doctor]], [[FileMixUp her X-rays are mixed up with those of a]] ''[[FileMixUp football player's]]'', leading him to believe that Angelica's leg really is broken. The doctor does realize his mistake later, but not before Stu very nearly has a major breakdown. [[LaserGuidedKarma Karma soon catches up with Angelica]] when her mom really does break her leg at the end of the episode. Unfortunately for Antonio Peaches, the football player whose X-ray was mixed up with Angelica's, [[BodyHorror the doctor found out his leg was actually broken a little too late]]. |
| 537 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': |
| 538 | ** One episode has Bart pretending to be blind so he and Homer can pull off confidence tricks. |
| 539 | ** On another one, Bart had gone temporarily deaf as a result of a flu vaccine. When Marge is trying to explain this to Principal Skinner (after Bart accidentally moons an American flag), he refuses to believe that Marge is telling the truth, [[MistakenForAnImpostor confident that he's right because Bart has faked disability before]]. He even goes as far as to pull out photos of Bart with several fake disabilities. |
| 540 | --->'''Skinner:''' And my personal favorite: pregnant Bart! |
| 541 | ** In another, Homer goes into the Springfield Retirement Home and starts using a wheelchair as an excuse to slack off. |
| 542 | ** In "Little Big Mom", Marge gets injured and lands in the hospital. But since she doesn't have to do housework for the first time in her life, she fakes it after she's healed. |
| 543 | ** In "Bart Gets Hit by a Car", [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Mr. Burns hits Bart with his car]], and Lionel Hutz calls in Dr. Nick for a "second opinion" on Bart's minor injuries. Everyone played along, except for Marge: |
| 544 | ---> '''Marge''': He seemed a lot more concerned about wrapping Bart in bandages than in making him feel better. |
| 545 | * ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': |
| 546 | ** In the episode "Up the Down Steroid", Cartman fakes being mentally challenged in order to enter the Special Olympics and win the $1,000 prize. During the actual events, it becomes apparent that he spent more time on his efforts to appear disabled than actually training for the Special Olympics, as he's beaten in every competition by people with actual disabilities, although he's still given a consolation prize for never giving up despite his repeated humiliations. In the end, Jimmy outs Cartman as a cheater, then realizes that he cheated too with his use of steroids. After Jimmy apologizes publicly, Cartman claims that [[BlatantLies he only faked his disability to teach Jimmy a lesson on steroid abuse]]. |
| 547 | ** In "Bloody Mary", Randy starts to use a wheelchair, but it's more because of hypochondria--he heard that his alcoholism is "a disease" and began to look and act the part. |
| 548 | ** In "Le Petit Tourette", Cartman fakes having Tourette's Syndrome so that he can have an excuse to curse and use anti-Semetic language without consequence. It ends up biting him in the ass big time, since as it turns out, going so long without having to think before he speaks destroys his filter and he begins saying embarrassing secrets about himself, such as how he and his cousin touched penises or how he cries at night because he doesn't have a dad. |
| 549 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheSpectacularSpiderMan,'' [[spoiler:ComicBook/NormanOsborn fakes an injury as the Green Goblin, then twists his own son's ankle to frame him for the crimes]]. |
| 550 | * ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': |
| 551 | ** In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS4E2TheLostMattressKrabsVsPlankton Krabs vs. Plankton]]", Plankton does this after slipping at the Krusty Krab due to Mr. Krabs being too cheap to buy a "wet floor" sign and stages a FrivolousLawsuit in the hopes of finally getting the Krabby Patty formula. Whether the lawsuit proceeds or not, Plankton hopes he will finally walk away with his prize, until [=SpongeBob=] uses ThePerryMasonMethod to prove he's not really hurt. |
| 552 | ** "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS8E1AccidentsWillHappenTheOtherPatty Accidents Will Happen]]" sees Squidward supposedly twisting his ankle while trying to sleep on the job in the storage room and threatening to get Mr. Krabs fined by the Office Worker Safety (OWS) Department for negligence. Near the end of the episode, [[CaughtOnTape a security camera reveals he was faking his injuries the whole time]]. |
| 553 | * In ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse,'' episode "Joking Victim", a version with a temporary disability shows up. Lars (TotallyRadical teenage rebel) slips on some spilled soda while working at the Big Donut, and doesn't miss a beat in ''[[LargeHam faking a]]'' '''[[LargeHam severe back injury]]''' to get out of work for the rest of the day. He's later caught trampolining by his co-worker Sadie, setting off the plot of the episode. |
| 554 | * ''WesternAnimation/TazMania'': In "Nursemaid Taz", Digeri Dingo fakes having a broken leg in order to get the Tasmanian Devils to wait on him hand and foot. [[HilarityEnsues Digeri really didn't think this one through.]] |
| 555 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' episode "Love Me, Love My Mouse", Jerry fakes being defenseless to make Toots care for him. |
| 556 | * ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama All-Stars'': After being released from the robot suit he was sealed into after the events of ''World Tour'', Alejandro's legs are numb and useless. It only takes one night in the spa to get them back into working order, but Alejandro proceeds to act like he's still unable to walk around the other contestants to get them to lower their guard. He only reveals the truth once his plan to eliminate Heather has a guaranteed success. |
| 557 | * In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'', an old Team Venture foe named Brainulo has seemingly gone senile, but drops the act once his old partner Scaramantula calls him on it. [[spoiler:However, he ends up frying his brain trying to telepathically communicate with his old robot, and goes senile for real.]] |
| 558 | * Invoked in ''WesternAnimation/WhatsNewScoobyDoo'', by the villain of the day, Avalanche Anderson, to prevent anyone from knowing that he was behind the Snow Creature. |
| 559 | [[/folder]] |
| 560 | |
| 561 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 562 | * Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts, was completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other. She would play it up to get what she wanted by forcing people to repeat themselves until they said what she wanted to hear. Considering the barriers women had to face in 1912, this was probably a huge asset in the early days of the organization. |
| 563 | * Likewise Princess Alice of Battenberg, late mother-in-law to the former Queen of the UK, UsefulNotes/ElizabethII. She really ''was'' deaf, but could read lips (and understood multiple languages). During World War II, she lived in Greece, hiding a Jewish family from the Nazis...despite her house being literally yards away from Gestapo headquarters. She was brought in for questioning several times, but pretended that she couldn't understand anything they asked her. It also helped that she had been diagnosed with mental illness in the early '30s. She played up being a dotty old lady to the Nazis while efficiently organizing nursing circuits and soup kitchens in Athens. ''It worked''. |
| 564 | * Similarly, UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill would obfuscate deafness to irritate or bring off fellow politicians and aides with whom he did not agree. |
| 565 | * ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'': |
| 566 | ** [[http://notalwaysright.com/should-be-throne-out/12155 This]] woman on ''Not Always Right'', preferring to order an usher to remove a cinema seat (something they point out they cannot do as they are bolted to the floor) rather than get out of her chair or use one of the designated handicapped seats in the theater, even though she shows herself soon after to be entirely capable of that level of movement despite her earlier claims. |
| 567 | --->'''Me:''' I thought you couldn’t get out of your chair?\ |
| 568 | '''Customer:''' I can, but I don’t want to! |
| 569 | ** Subverted [[http://notalwaysright.com/making-a-spectacle-of-herself/76484 here]]: the customer decided the barista (who usually wears contacts but was wearing glasses that day) was [[PurelyAestheticGlasses wearing fake glasses to be "cool"]] or something. |
| 570 | ** Also subverted [[https://web.archive.org/web/20170709145831/https://notalwaysright.com/an-eye-for-an-eyepatch/74552/ here]] when a customer assumes an employee is wearing an eye patch as a fashion statement and finds out the hard way that it isn't when she forcefully removes it. |
| 571 | ** [[http://notalwaysright.com/not-always-right-on-so-many-levels/921 This]] customer, who, when she doesn't get her way after throwing a (rather racist) tantrum, ''throws'' down her crutches and stomps out the front door. |
| 572 | * At the 2000 UsefulNotes/ParalympicGames, the Spanish team got dragged into a scandal for allegedly winning 5 gold medals with non-disabled athletes, primarily [[MoneyDearBoy to get bigger sponsorship deals]]. Of most prominent note was the Spanish intellectually disabled basketball team, who was caught ObfuscatingStupidity and got stripped of their gold medals. Only two of their twelve members ended up being eligible, intellectually disabled athletes. |
| 573 | * Zip the Pinhead, who was an early 20th century sideshow performer known for his oddly shaped head and supposed mental disability, has also become suspect of "faking his handicap". According to an interview with his sister, Zip's last words to her were: "Well, we fooled 'em for a long time, didn't we?" |
| 574 | * American comedian Harpo Marx of the Creator/MarxBrothers fame played a mute character on stage, in his films and kept this image alive during public appearances. Though the general public never knew it and to this day you'll find a lot of people unsure about it, Harpo could in fact speak. Still, so far there's only one audio recording of his voice available. |
| 575 | * Platform/{{Twitch}} gamer Angel Hamilton (better known as [=ZilianOP=]) notoriously stood up from his wheelchair during a ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' webcast. [[https://www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/wheelchair-bound-twitch-streamer-zilianop-walks-banned-for-fraud/ He was swiftly banned from Twitch]], and the website offered refunds to people who were fooled into donating to him. |
| 576 | * An obscure inter-war American blues singer called Ben Covington had his nickname changed from [[BlindMusician Blind Ben Covington]] to Bogus Ben Covington after it was discovered that he was faking the blindness. |
| 577 | * Israeli musician Haim "Zino" Zinovich was a [[GenreMashup fusion rock]] musician who spent much of the '90s making music without much recognition in his country, and he disappeared without a trace at decade's end. In 2000, however, a new singer named "Hasaruf", the Burned Man, surfaced on the nation's music scene. He was a former Israeli soldier who suffered third degree burns across his entire body and was put into a wheelchair. He got prime-time news coverage all across the national media, and revealed himself to be Zinovich. The Israeli audience that was once indifferent to him were left in awe at his brilliant marketing gimmick, and ran out to buy his CD, which became one of the best selling in the nation's history. Afterwards, Zino and his friend Tomer "Tommy" Bilan started to get Hollywood deals, getting their music in media like Series/TheSopranos. |
| 578 | * According to legend (but not historical accuracy), Sixtus V entered the Vatican's electoral chamber on crutches, feigning infirmity so he'd be elected as an interim, short-term Pope. |
| 579 | * Some people fake having ADHD to get access to the stimulants used to treat it; unfortunately, this negatively affects those who actually have it, as some who don't believe in the disorder now assume that everyone who takes the medication is just lazy and addicted to it. |
| 580 | * Japanese composer Mamoru Samuragochi infamously pretended to be completely deaf. |
| 581 | * In late medieval France, a certain slum district of Paris was known as the "Court of Miracles" because of this trope. Residents would fake terrible injuries or diseases when out begging in more affluent areas of the city, then drop the act once they returned, leading people to joke that it was a place where the lame could walk and the blind could see. |
| 582 | * A supremely dark version. Part of serial killer UsefulNotes/TedBundy modus operandi was to combine this with the WoundedGazelleGambit. He did this by pre-existing injuries and/or disabilities, such as a cast on his leg or a sling on his arm, and even crutches. This was to make himself seem non-threatening and get the intended victims to approach his car by asking them for help, at which point he would use a weapon hidden in the car to incapacitate and murder them. |
| 583 | * Many businesses have a "no pets allowed except for service animals" rule. Some folks will lie that their dog is a service dog that they need for a made-up disability in order to slip their non-service dog into the establishment. In some countries, confirming whether a dog really is a service animal can be difficult for employees due to disability laws that skew heavily in favor of the customer; it's not unheard of for a business to get sued because they so much as asked to see a certificate or other evidence. In the US, "service animals" are [[https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/service_animal_qa.html not legally required]] to have any documentation, identification, or even professional training, making it easy to fake. |
| 584 | * [[https://agt.fandom.com/wiki/Tim_Poe Tim Poe]] was a contestant on season 7 of Series/AmericasGotTalent. An army veteran, he claimed to have received a brain injury from an RPG in Afghanistan in 2009, causing a pronounced stutter. He went on to sing, then speak to the judges, without stuttering. In the moment it seemed like a miracle, but evidence surfaced later that he had lied about the stutter, the injury, and his time in the army. |
| 585 | * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Ling_Soo "Chung Ling Soo"]] (Actual name William Ellsworth Robinson) was a magician who performed in {{Yellowface}}, and also pretended to be significantly older than he was and seriously infirm, in order to conceal how he did his tricks from his audience. An ersatz version of him appears in ''Film/ThePrestige'', and he's referred to in an episode of ''Series/NewTricks'' as well, both of which do so because characters in those stories take inspiration from his technique of staying in character even after the show is over. |
| 586 | [[/folder]] |
| 587 |
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