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Strong Bad: What are you doing over there?
Homestar Runner: Oh, I'm pretty much here every week. It's just that usually I'm behind the black.
Strong Bad: Guess I should start looking to the right more often.
The tendency for a character, plot point etc. to be completely invisible to the on-screen characters simply because it is not visible to the camera, i.e. "behind the black" - even when the object should be in clear view.
One advantage the First Person Shooter has over the Third Person Shooter is that a first-person view allows for more realistic fields of vision, because the main character's viewpoint is literally the player's. Third-person can't really do the same; it's limited to what the screen can show of the character's surroundings. However, the player's field of vision in a typical first-person game is much narrower than in real life, meaning that first-person games aren't immune to this trope either. A compromise is the third-person "over-the-shoulder" perspective, where the player can see more of the character's peripheral vision but can't see something that's literally right under the character's nose.
This causes a strange situation, where enemies can hide just beyond what the screen shows of the battlefield and catch you off guard, even when a real person would have easily seen them. And then there's what happens in games where enemies have ranged weapons and can shoot you from way offscreen without you even knowing there are enemies.
Occasionally justified, as the player can see the edges of the character's visor in some games, like the Metroid Prime series and Star Wars: Republic Commando.
On the other hand, third-person games might use the converse of this as well: something is visible to the player, who can then use this knowledge, even if it should be impossible for the character to see anything.
This trope is not limited to videogames: some TV shows are guilty of assuming that characters can't see something just off-screen because, well, the viewer can't, and the viewer is the center of their universe. And don't start on the countless cartoons where somebody hides "behind" a tree...
In any visual medium, every single time a character runs out in the street, and we, the audience, can’t see if it’s safe, that character will be hit by a truck.
A subtrope of Rule Of Perception. The Stealth Hi Bye often takes advantage of this.
See: Failed A Spot Check, Offscreen Teleportation.
Not to be confused with Black Screen Of Death which is more about what you don't see.
Examples
Advertising
- Old Navy's 2009 Christmas commercials featured the mannequins going about town looking for Santa Claus. They think they might've finally found him at one point; he's got his back to the camera but he should be making eye contact with the mannequins, and they don't realize it's just some guy until he turns to face the camera, meaning he has his back to the mannequins.
Anime
Comic Books
- Newspaper comic example: Sally Forth for March 3, 2008: Hilary's friend emerges from Behind The... er, Off-White, in the third panel to deliver some sage advice on how to make Sally feel better. His response? "Was [Faye] there a second ago?"
- Used in Calvin And Hobbes, of all places. When Calvin picks out the garage for the meeting place of G.R.O.S.S., he cajoles Hobbes into helping him push the car out of the garage and onto the driveway. The car starts sliding backwards, even though according to every single panel, the ground is completely horizontal. Hobbes even says, "The driveway must be slanted downhill!"
- This is Truthin Television — a subtle grade that people don't really notice can still be enough to cause an improperly braked car to roll.
- Happens in an issue of New X-Men, where someone is trying to assassinate Professor Xavier in an airport. The assassin is covered in a shawl, and when some of the X-corp branch unmask the assassin, it is only then that the Professor, several yards away, tells Jean who it is. This is a telepath who should have been able to tell the other telepath who it was before the audience finds out.
- Used in one Garfield strip. Jon is sitting at a table eating, and Garfield's tail can be seen sneaking up on his right. Jon smirks and pulls the food away. Suddenly, the real Garfield pops up on his left side and devours the food, much to Jon's surprise. It is then revealed that the "tail" to Jon's right was a fake that Odie had strapped to his head.
Film
Live Action TV
- Super Sentai and Power Rangers have many instances of a Humongous Mecha or giant-sized monster suddenly appearing in the middle of a fight. Typically, the Rangers are just about to be struck down by the monster when the Sixth Ranger stealthily appears out of nowhere in his own Humongous Mecha and parries the monster's would-be killing blow.
- Depending on the series, the Humongous Mecha have different excuses; Transforming alien beasts (Galaxy), Magic machines (Ninja Storm), living embodiment of animal spirits, and thus magical (Wild Force)...You get the idea.
- In the fourth episode of Torchwood, Ianto and his cyberwoman love interest talk for approximately 5 minutes without realizing that four people are standing just beyond the screen's edge, until they reveal themselves through action.
- As this video
 shows, Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Weyoun could apparently only see what was in-frame. Somewhat justified as he explains that he has very weak eyesight, and his attention was with the guy he was talking to.
- This may have been more of a case of Weyoun treating him as a lackey by deliberately ignoring him until he wished to speak with him.
- Or Damar had just entered the room, and walked into Weyoun's field of view just as the camera revealed him. That was my initial interpretation of the scene.
- In an early episode of Boston Legal, Denny and Alan have a talk about how Denny's so-called son is not in fact so biologically. When the talk ends, they find out said son has been standing there for the whole discussion without either of them noticing it.
- Also, it was a recurring joke for Denny and Alan to talk about Denny's midget girlfriend Britney, with Denny saying something wildly inappropriate only to be told by Alan to look down, to find she's been standing just below the shot the whole time. Hilarity Ensues
- In the season 2 finale of the BBC's Robin Hood, Marian, Robin and most of the Merry Men have been tied to stakes and left to die in the desert (they're in the Holy Land). They exchange touching farewells at considerable length before being interrupted by an ally who has come to rescue them and who has managed to ride up across the desert, dismount his horse, TETHER HIS HORSE (to...something) about fifteen feet away from them without being noticed by any of them until he speaks and the camera swings round to reveal him. Even though several of them are facing in his direction.
- Chuck episode 2-14, "Chuck Versus the Best Friend", climaxes with Chuck taking a bomb and driving a car off. The car blows up, and Sarah, naturally, weeps, whereupon Chuck pops up about two feet behind her commenting on how sweet that was. They don't even bother to confirm that he was driving the car via the remote control Chekhovs Gun introduced less than ten minutes earlier.
- StargateSG-1 Season 6, in the episode "Nightwalker", a man is trying to follow the team when they notice him. They go down an alley and Teal'c hides behind a wall from the perspective of the camera, but in clear view of the guy following them. The guy runs down the alley, and stops next to Teal'c, who surprises and grabs the guy.
- In the last episode of Boy Meets World set in high school, Cory and Shawn meet up with Minkus, who hadn't been seen in the show for years. When asked where he'd been the whole time, Minkus points at the camera and says, "Down the hall."
"We don't go on that side of the school. You go on that side of the school and you never come back. . . "
- Similar to the Lethal Weapon 2 example above, in Quantum Leap, Sam often leaps into a situation that is far different from what it appears. Several times, he ends up on the set of a play, a movie, or a TV show, leading the audience to believe he's actually in a real-life situation, but when the episode is seen, it's revealed that he's on a TV set (or something similar). The only way this could actually fool Sam is if he was completely blind to everything that is not seen by the camera.
- Firefly featured an absolutely hilarious example in "Objects in Space" where Jubal Early steps out into an empty hallway and looks one direction; he then turns to look the other way as the camera pans to show a very confuddled Mal staring blankly at the intruder.
- An episode of Walker Texas Ranger had Walker and the bad guy of the week talking to each other (probably trying to out-tough-guy each other) when suddenly Walker is hit in the face with an oar. This clip was shown on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, where Conan pointed out that, in order for that to make sense, Walker must have no peripheral vision.
- An episode of The Tribe has Jack running down a hallway before Ebony sees him, the second he goes off screen Ebony appears on screen, there is no way they didn't see the other.
- The Doctor plays this for laughs after being captured by the Cybermen (though its clear he can see them):
Doctor: Well, I've been captured, but don't worry Pete and Rose can still rescue me—
(Pete and Rose appear at the edge of the screen)
Doctor: —oh well, nevermind.
Video Games
- Some Beat Em Ups will hide extra lives and health pickups behind pipes. The character would clearly see it but the player's view is blocked by the pipe. Final Fight 3 has a few.
- Justified in Super Paper Mario, as Mario is literally two-dimensional and must consciously move into the third dimension to find hidden goodies and avoid certain obstacles.
- This is averted in all third-person shooters where the player can rotate the camera around the character and zoom out. This allows the player to see around corners, over obstacles, and other impediments to line of sight without needing to expose the character. Until the game suddenly denies you camera control
- World Of Warcraft recently upgraded to a slightly more realistic form. You can still turn the camera around to look behind objects, but you can no longer scan for objects using your mouse (which used to show enemies even through solid stone walls).
- But you can still use a keyboard command to show the lifemeters of all hidden enemies around you, including those below the floor you're on and behind walls.
- So... Worldof Warcraft characters have Shinigami Eyes?
- Gears Of War gives you the opportunity to not just look but shoot blind around corners and over obstacles. The flipside of being able to do this is that that you have no accuracy, so firing an automatic weapon in this manner is a case of spray-n-pray.
- In turn-based games that keep track of what your character can see using fog of war, a four dimensional version of this can occur. Characters with enough movement points can pop out from cover, catch a glimpse of something, and return to safety all in the same turn. This often makes it impossible for other entities to react to or even SEE your character.
- An especially vicious abuse of turn-based games is to perform an action (like taking a potshot at somebody) when you do this. Some editions of Shadowrun allowed heavily enhanced characters to open a door, run in, knife someone, run out, close the door, and lock it in a single turn.
- The latest Syphon Filter installments take this to the logical next step. Aside from knowing what's around the corner without actually exposing Logan, you can now pre-aim shots from behind cover! This results in "peek-a-boo" headshots, where the agent will come out of cover, shoot the mook in the head, and duck behind cover in just half a second. Granted, this "pre-aiming" is only effective at close range and in a rather narrow angle of coverage - many situations need the manual aim which requires the player to come out of cover. Still, Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow takes the omniscience of the third person camera to a whole new level.
- Also present in Winback, which -when you sidle up to a corner- allows you to queue up multiple headshots for button-press execution.
- Some games have very simple cameras. Oni did not push the camera in or clip outside walls, so you could swing it right through walls and see all kinds of things (or block your view with the other side of the wall Konoko's backed up against!). Since this bug wasn't fixed with Halo's 3rd-person vehicle camera, it might be the reason why Halo became an FPS.
- Perfect Dark Zero switches to a third person view when you're in cover, and you can pre-aim from here.
- The devs of the Half Life series reveal in commentary how hard they sometimes have to work to get the player to actually look at an important plot point or visually impressive event.
- Gears Of War and a few other games will have a little icon pop up and a button the player can hit that will automatically center their view on the event of interest.
- This trope crops up fairly often in the Mega Man games.
- In all the platform games, it pays to check whether the screen scrolls even when that seems unlikely. Pharaoh Man's stage in Mega Man 4 is the best example: you're supposed to drop down the hole after the desert section, but if you try walking off the right side of the screen instead, you find more desert (leading to a secret item). Naturally, from Mega Man's perspective, this would be obvious.
- The X games are even sneakier, taking advantage of the fact that your movement through a stage is usually left-to-right; one capsule in X6 is "hidden" off the left side of the screen when you teleport in.
- Since X can cling to walls, his games do this on the vertical plane as well. What may look like a Bottomless Pit for the player may actually lead to a secret chamber below, hidden only by the screen's limits (but which should be obvious from X's point of view.) Particularly notable in Mega Man X 2, where X needs a helmet upgrade to point out a "secret path" down a pit that he should clearly see into.
- Similar with one of the sub-tanks and the entrance to Wire Sponge's level.
- The Zero games are particularly fond of hiding things behind background layers.
- The ZX series does this also, but gives Model P and Model L special abilities to help find such items.
- Cyberworld areas in the Mega Man Battle Network series are seen from overhead, but there's no movable camera since battles don't take place there. This allows Capcom to hide items and secrets on lower paths so that the upper paths block your view — and man, they love to do it. These items are staring MegaMan.EXE in the face as he walks by, but he won't say a word. (His movement may tip you off, though; if he walks under a path and doesn't come out the other side, he's probably stuck behind an item.)
- Many games with top-down views, such as the older Legend Of Zelda games and Golden Sun, have "secret doors" that are only not visible because of the bird's-eye view the player has.
- A great deal of isometric games, shot from a slightly slanted angle, will hide hidden characters or chests behind walls, staircases or the like, waiting for an investigative player to find them.
- In Illusion Of Gaia, Will climbs a set of stairs and walks towards the camera, past a pillar. But wait! On the side of the pillar facing the stairs is a man carrying a Plot Coupon for the Bonus Dungeon! And you can't come back here later in the game to get it...
- If you're paying attention, you can see this guy scurry behind the pillar as the camera scrolls up to the new room.
- Resident Evil's camera is known for this. Some areas have cameras in odd angles that result in items and enemies being hidden from the player. Even if, say, it's a giant mutated zombie right in front of the player character two feet away, the camera makes sure it's hidden.
- It leads to great, fear-inspiring atmospheric affects. In Resident Evil 2, for example, the player must head directly towards the camera, thus obscuring the character's actual view. When it switches to behind the player, you are treated the sight of a window and a scary creepy thing crawling by right outside the window!
- In Animal Crossing, during the Harvest Festival, a turkey named Franklin, concerned about whether he was invited to have dinner or to be dinner, hides in different locations in your town... but always to the north of buildings. This editor once saw him "hidden" behind a building in the acre just south of the Wishing Well, where the festivities were being held. Anyone attending would have a good chance of seeing him.
- Sometimes townsfolk will want to play hide-and-seek with you when you talk to them. When this is happening, you have a set time limit to find him/her and at least one other person somewhere in the town outside of buildings. They generally hide behind buildings and trees, where the player would not be able to see very well in many cases because of the overhead view, even though the character would probably be able to see them in the first person.
- Shows up a few times in Super Mario RPG.
- Mushroom Kingdom proper has an NPC standing up against the northeast wall of a building... which, thanks to the game's perspective, renders him completely invisible. Fortunately, he's more of an Easter Egg than anything else, as he'll only make meaningless comments about recent events if you manage to talk with him.
- Far more evil is the secret entrance to Marrymore Chapel, which is located on a wall that faces northeast. When you first show up in the level, the bad guys lock the front door, so you have to either walk around the chapel and press yourself against every wall or read the strategy guide to proceed.
- Fun, yet sadistic, example: Trampolines are scattered throughout the world of the game. Jumping on them generally launches you to a new area. There are even trampolines indoors—the new areas they launch you to have holes in the floors that you jump up through. By the time you've gotten used to the idea that every trampoline has a hole in the ceiling above it, you come across one in the Moleville Mines that, when used, sends you crashing violently into the ceiling and knocks you unconscious so the recurring minor villain can rob you blind. Naturally, you have to jump on this sooner or later.
- Final Fantasy IV provides a well-known example of this trope. In a number of dungeons/castles/towns/etc., the character (if he knows to look for it or accidentally just walks into the right wall) will find a hidden passage. Many of the final weapons for the characters are found this way at the end of the game.
- Final Fantasy V has these same hidden passages, but one of the abilities characters can learn actually lets the player see them as well. Apparently only thieves are capable of noticing gaping holes in walls that run North-South.
- And the overhead view "hidden passage" trick is back again in Final Fantasy VII, in several caverns and the Nibelheim mansion.
- The Gundam RPG MS Saga does this in the city of Eisengrad, where there are "secret pathways" that let you get on top of the buildings and find hidden items. These paths are hidden from the player by foreground elements that block one's view of the road, but would be in full view of the protagonist if the game were done in first person.
- Subverted in Live A Live for the SNES. The hero of the Western chapter and his rival are about to duel... and as they turn around they only turn 90 degrees and shoot two gang members who were hidden by the trees at the bottom of the screen, totally invisible to the player, but totally visible for everyone there.
- Silent Hill 2 does this on purpose, when the camera switches to show you the second half of a hallway you suddenly realize you are standing right next to Pyramid Head.
- Used for a lot of the secret items in Castle Crashers. One even requires you to go "behind the black" with a certain animal before you can get the sword.
- Used once in Sonic Advance. After the fight with Mecha Knuckles, Eggman is revealed to have been just to the right of where the fight took place. The second he gets scrolled on-screen, he panics and drops the level's animal capsule.
- In one cutscene from Sonic The Hedgehog 2006, Dr. Eggman is standing alone, in the middle of a large window. There is nothing in view that could possibly be hiding a person. Sonic asks Eggman where Princess Elise is; the camera zooms in on Eggman, and without moving from his position, he pulls Elise into view from just off-camera.
- Somewhat averted in the first Tenchu: Stealth Assassins game, which despite having a third person viewpoint has a camera which is actually pretty good at only letting you see what your character could realistically see from where he/she is.
- Super Robot Wars has had to do this a couple of times in games with sequels; the standout example is Alpha 3, with the debut of Gundam SEED. What are we told when a colony cluster full of Gattaca Babies seemingly springs into existence? "It's always been there, we just never had any reason to pay it any mind."
- The Alpha series also does this with series that leave and return; for example, the cast of Dancougar explained their absence in Alpha 2 by saying they had been assigned to a different front during that particular war.
- Very few of the things that are "hidden" in God of War would be hidden to Kratos. They're just hidden from the player by the camera angles.
- Also because there's no way to control the camera, any enemy that you can't see can't attack you. And yes, it is possible to use this tactically by deliberately keeping troublesome enemies out of your vision.
- Similarly, Pokemon: Diamond/Pearl/Platinum contains a "secret" entrance to Wayward Cave which is only hidden because it's under a cycling bridge and you have an aerial view. To make this even weirder it's apparently even unnoticeable to characters within the game, which seems to indicate that everyone sees with an overheard view.
- Lots of people get stuck on Heart Gold and Soul Silver's lighthouse. From an aerial view, you probably would not notice the open window you're supposed to drop through. From a first-person view though... well, it is the only open window in the lighthouse.
- Hype: The Time Quest is a third- person game.
- Shadow Complex absolutely loves this one, for hiding items. A lot of items are simply hidden from the player behind pipes or whatnot, but, given that it's a metroidvania sidescrolling platformer, these should be completely visible to the protagonist.
- A few times in the Metal Gear series:
- Supreme Commander is an RTS with a massive scale. In the single-player campaign every mission starts in a relatively small area, and then the map expands as the mission progresses. In almost every mission this will reveal that the strategy you were using is totally inappropriate given the new info. Also, enemy units can fire from unrevealed parts of the map; your own units cannot fire back, even though they should be able to see them a few yards away.
- The Donkey Kong Country series fiendishly uses this concept to make Hundred Percent Completion damn near impossible, especially given how many collectible items are in the GBA remakes. Fortunately, Rare was merciful enough to give occasional hints of secrets: that banana is visible through those tree leaves / half-off-screen / in that "bottomless" pit for a reason, and the field of view might gradually pan down / up / ahead, in preparation for a leap of faith.
- A lot of Shoot Em Ups have the rule of "if it's off-screen, you can't shoot it". In other words, you could be firing everything when the boss is about 100 meters away, but until the boss appears on the screen you can't damage it. Similarly, your movement is limited to what's onscreen; if you're at the edge of the screen and cornered by bullets, you simply can't move further off to the side.
- Used as the solution to a puzzle in Kings Quest 5: in order to hide from some desert bandits, the player has to position King Graham behind some nearby rocks. In three dimensions, Graham would be 100% visible to the bandits; however, as long as he's mostly hidden from the player, the bandits can't see him either. Perhaps a towel would have sufficed...
Web Original
- On one episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd it is revealed that Kyle Justin, who sings the theme song at the beginning of every episode, is actually crouching behind the couch, just out of view, the rest of the time.
Webcomics
- The webcomic Adventurers! makes fun of the video game version of this trope.
- In Order Of The Stick, when Nale kidnaps Elan, Roy demands to know why Belkar was eating potato chips instead of protecting Elan. Belkar answers that A: he was dealing with one of Nale's minions, and B: that they were tortilla chips... as he lifts the severed kobold head into the panel, which Squicks Roy (especially when the salsa container is shown). Thing is, Belkar is 3 feet tall, and so any conversations Roy has with him would involve him looking down, at the aforementioned kobold-derived containers.
- Of course, this being Order of the Stick, it is often intentional. Aternately, from the top, he could mostly only see the tortilla chips. It was only when he raised it up that Roy could properly see what he was eating them out of.
- Roy failed a spot check yet again.
- Zoe from Sluggy Freelance seems to have this problem with Sam.
- One of the many contentions the snarkers had with the Maltak arc of Dominic Deegan was that despite Maltak being a largely featureless plain, people repeatedly miss obvious things like other people walking up on them, or the context of a loud argument despite being right there, or armies attacking them until they appeared in-panel. Most egregious, however, is when the mountain the orcs were next to ditched them and no one noticed.
Western Animation
- Garfield & Friends episode 7: "Weighty Problem" plays with this a bit. Jon wants to jog west, while Garfield wants, though only "wants" in the loosest sense of the word, to jog east. Jon assumes it's because it's shorter, and jogs off... promptly discovering the real reason when he falls down an open manhole.
- Parodied on Homestar Runner in the 100th Strong Bad e-mail, "flashback": when Strong Bad turns the view "widescreen" (by literally pushing the edges away), he's shocked to find Homestar behind one edge, giving the page quote.
- Also, the trope name itself refers to the fact that the website is a flash player surrounded by black background.
- Batman: Mask of the Phantasm has one of the gangster pursued by the Phantasm falling into a grave that's out of view of the camera because it's over the edge of a hill. However, he should have been able to see it from his point of view. Since it was night this may be a case of Hollywood Darkness, but no one else had any trouble moving around before.
- Chowder once featured Chowder and Panini hiding behind the same dumpster, alternating which side they were on, and not noticing each other until the camera shift behind the dumpster.
- One episode of Moral Orel revealed that the opposite side of his father's study (the one the 'camera' would be in) contains a vast, obvious hallway covered in weaponry. Orel says he never noticed it before, and is given the response "It sort of blends into the woodwork"
- Spongebob Squarepants once had Plankton stealing a Krabby Patty by replacing it with a cutout even though it was on-screen the entire time, and Krabs fails to notice that it's a cutout until it falls over, even though the facade was only on the opposite side as him.
- This is Mr. Krabs... The man (crab?) has a grasp of reality about on par with the cardboard cutout.
- In another episode, Spongebob suspects someone is following him (a jellyfish is), and keeps turning around quickly to catch a glimpse of his pursuer. each time he does, the jellyfish ducks behind a rock or other piece of scenery. The problem lies in that the camera perspective during this scene is always either behind Spongebob or off to the side of him, and the jellyfish ducks out of the camera's view, which should leave it clearly visable from Spongebob's angle.
- At the end of the direct-to-video Wonder Woman movie, Diana and Steve Trevor leave work, banter for a minute or two, and start to get into a taxi before a police car speeds by with lights and sirens blaring, alerting them to an armed standoff with Cheetah, including over a dozen squad cars, all with lights going, that was taking place directly in front of them for the entire scene.
- Near the beginning of Disney's Robin Hood, Robin has the Prince distracted while Little John robs him blind. At one point, he cuts a hole in the bottom of a chest and drains its gold coins out. However, there are four rhinoceros guards holding the chest on their shoulders. The only reason they cannot see or hear the seven foot bear in drag under the chest is because they are off screen.
- Lampshaded in American Dad when Stan and Steve talk about the current plot in the living room. Francine interjects with a comment as the camera zooms out to show her standing in the doorway. Stan questions how he was completely unaware she was there despite him having a perfect view of the doorway from his present position. When the camera zooms back in to Stan and Steve, Stan starts a sentence, but squints back towards the doorway, as though he's trying to tell if Francine is still there.
- In another episode, Stan masters the art of exiting a room so stealthily that no one knows he's leaving until they see the empty space where he was standing three seconds ago. This works even when people are looking right at him, so long as he's just outside the frame.
- Roger has a similar version of this ability, being able to change his disguises so fast that all it takes is for the camera to do a closeup on the person talking to him, and when it goes back to a wideshot said person is shocked to find Roger wearing an entirely different outfit.
- In the episode "With Friends Like Steve's" Stan runs a fingerprint test on his home computer. When the results come up on screen, the shot's positioned in such a way so that Stan's head blocks the portion of the screen saying whose fingerprints they were. Stan then comments that all he needs to do now is move his head so he can see the other side of the screen, and only then does he react to the information displayed.
- Teen Titans has an interesting example. In "Betrayal" Terra sees Slade's reflection on a mirror, but when she turns around she can't see any sign of him. We're probably meant to believe that Slade simply left the room during the time it took Terra to turn her head, except that there is a very clear shot of Terra looking behind her while the mirror in front of her still shows Slade's motionless reflection.
- In Megas XLR, Coop, Kiva, and Jamie go to the Speedimart, during which time Megas is towed away for being in a no-parking zone. Nobody notices the 80-foot tall robot is gone until they get to the sidewalk and Jamie points it out.
- Unintentionally hilarious example in the Rankin & Bass version of Return Of The King. When Gandalf introduces the Minstrel of Gondor (who is standing in the corner of a fairly small room, all of the other characters look surprised. Apparently he was standing there the entire time without being noticed or introduced, just waiting for a cue. He's notably absent in the wide shots.
Real Life
- Probably Older Than They Think; a slight subversion of this was used in traditional Japanese theatre in that you weren't supposed to pay attention to the black-clothed prop hands. This is where the stereotypical black ninja getup comes from, since the best way for a guy to hide is to pretend to be one of said stage hands, and then flip out and kill people.
- Still in practice, as stagehands will either be in all-black or costumed to blend in with the actors.
- Colloquially known as "ninjas," incidentally.
- It was used very effectively in the stage production of His Dark Materials at the National Theatre. The daemons were represented by (rather beautiful) puppets, which were operated by black-clad puppeteers. In the scene where Lyra has to summon her Death, Pantalaimon's puppeteer stands up, removes his mask and announces that he is her Death.
- Long time bunraku puppeteers work while clearly visible. Audiences that are watching the play find them very easy to ignore, even though they're three times the size of the actors and looming over them. Less experienced workers do wear the all black costume to make themselves less visible.
- A combination of both the aforementioned tropes is Kankuro, one of the few ninja in Naruto who dresses like a traditional 'stagehand-style' ninja. And what's his specialty? He's a Puppeteer.
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