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[[quoteright:350:[[Literature/WinnieThePooh https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/efecto_woozle_1_696x398.jpg]]]]

When a character gets covered with dirt or is walking through the snow, he will look down and see his own footprints. However, because this character is either a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} or TheDitz, he will think that his footprints belong to someone else and start following the footprints. Eventually the character ends up back where he started and realizes that it was actually his own footprints that he had been following.

A subtrope of GoingInCircles.

When a person is following himself deliberately, that's HiredToHuntYourself.

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* A story of ''La Patrouille des [[ScoutOut Castors]]'' involves a bronze boar statuette that is later stolen from their campsite. The scouts notice tracks and decide to cast them in plaster for investigation, and the FatComicRelief ends up making a cast of his own shoe print.
* ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'':
** In the comic ''[[Recap/TintinLandOfBlackGold Land of Black Gold]]'', the Thompsons get lost in the desert. They're driving a jeep, and soon come across some tire tracks, which they follow. The tracks are joined by another set, and another... until eventually they are convinced they have found a major trail that dozens of vehicles have taken. Of course, it's their own tracks, as they have been driving in circles for ''hours''. Even when they run into a fuel can and notice their own can fell off they don't make the connection.
** In ''[[Recap/TintinExplorersOnTheMoon Explorers on the Moon]]'', the bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson walk around the moon's surface and soon, to their surprise (since this expedition marks the first time men set foot on the moon) find footprints and promptly radio the rest of the crew. When told it's likely their own tracks, they reminisce about the desert episode.
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[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/OpenSeason'''s sequel, Elliot starts following tracks to find Mr. Weenie, but keeps following his own tracks in every which way. It ends with him feeling sorry for his left at the altar soon-to-be wife Giselle in a semi drunk spiel.
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[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/{{Impostor}}'': The protagonist slips the detective his ID chip, which sets off the alarms when the detectives walks close to a scanner. Him and his men start running around the area, with the ID setting off numerous scanners, until he plays back the event in his mind and realizes what happened.
* A more high-tech version of this occurs in ''Film/NowYouSeeMe'', where the main character is using an electronic device to tail The Four Horsemen after one of their shows, only for the device to get tagged onto him by one of the persecutee, so the main character would begin tracking him instead. It takes until he plows into and out of a random bathroom before he realizes it.
* There's a hilarious version in ''Film/ThatDarnCat'', when [=FBI=] agents tracking the titular cat follow him to a house and barge in with guns drawn, expecting to find a lair of kidnappers. Only problem is, it's the cat's owners' house, which is where the FBI team has set up its headquarters.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* Happens in ''The Adventures of Captain Hatteras'' by Creator/JulesVerne, after the heroes get lost for awhile and turn out to have been walking in circles.
* In Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/ThePracticeEffect'', the hero is stranded on an alien world (just how alien, he doesn't know), and only knows it's inhabited by intelligent tool users. At one point he finds a campsite and explores it in growing excitement. They have shoes! Shoes with tread patterns! Patterns just like ''(falls down looking at his own soles)''... oh.
* In the original ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'' book, Pooh finds some snow tracks and starts to follow the "Woozle;" Piglet joins him, and then they discover that the Woozle has been joined by a friend, then two more, and then two more again. Christopher Robin informs them that they've just been following their own tracks around a tree.
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[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* In the ''Series/ILoveLucy'' episode "Desert Island", the Ricardos and Mertzes tow their gasless boat to a seemingly deserted island; after Ethel wanders around a little, Lucy notices huge footprints in the sand she deduces belong to a giant native, and proceeds to follow them, only to find they're Ethel's.
* In a ThanksgivingEpisode of ''Series/TheMiddle'' where Frankie's family goes to spend the holiday with the grandparents along with her sister's family Janet whose daughter is incredibly spoiled, when her favorite stuffed bear goes missing, Janet is quick to blame Brick for it, trying to prove his innocence Brick goes to gather clues which include following boot footprints with a star... which turn out to be his own.
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[[folder:Video Games]]
* Early in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald]]'', one NPC won't let you proceed west of Oldale because he's busy sketching footprints he believes belong to a rare Pokémon; he's rather embarrassed to find out they were just his own.
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[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Early in ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'', Fighter and Black Mage are lost in the Giant's Forest. Fighter announces that he found some footprints and has been tracking them in the hopes of getting the duo out of the forest. Black Mage asks if Fighter can intuit any details about the people leaving the footprints, and Fighter ends up describing themselves.
* In ''Webcomic/OlympicDames'', two sets of Bigfoot hunters, each ignorant of the other's existence, end up tracking each other, exacerbated by both putting out what the other recognises as Sasquatch mating calls... it doesn't help there are fugitive criminals holed up in the area, one of whom is big and mean enough to look like a shaved Sasquatch...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/SagwaTheChineseSiameseCat'' episode "Sheegwa and the Blizzard", after Sagwa thinks that Sheegwa ran away while it was snowing due to the former's own bossiness, Sagwa starts following what she thought was Sheegwa's tracks, but it later turns out that she was actually following her own tracks and that Sheegwa had never actually run away after all.
* Very briefly in ''WesternAnimation/TheScoobyDooProject'' they find some tracks (both human and dog) and declare it to be some kind of monstrous freak. Then Fred points out that those are their own footprints.
* ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh'':
** In ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh'' episode "The Piglet Who Would Be King", Pooh enters Rabbit's house by going down the chimney while trying to find Rabbit. Because Pooh gets covered with soot while doing so, he starts tracking soot all over the floor but mistakes his own footprints for "honeynapper tracks".
** In the earlier theatrical featurette ''[[WesternAnimation/TheManyAdventuresofWinnieThePooh Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too]]'', Pooh and Piglet follow snowprints in a circular path that seem to increase in number, unaware that they're following their own tracks.
--->'''Pooh:''' Piglet, whatever it was that made these tracks has now been joined by a whatever-it-is.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill The Ant Mill]]; Some ants use pheromone trails to track their way back to the nest. However if the lead ant gets lost and walks around back to the original trail laid down it'll just keep walking in that circle. The kicker is that it often isn't just one ant but 100's or 1000's of them all following this trail, walking around and around in a big circle until they drop down dead. Turkeys and caterpillars have also been recorded doing similar things.
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