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One way for a character to evade detection from someone who is looking for him is to disguise himself, not in a highly elaborate way, but rather as an incredibly plain, ordinary-looking person who isn't worthy of attention. The idea behind such subterfuge is that even if an authority figure comes looking around, he won't demean himself by looking a commoner straight in the face. Blending into your environment works for chameleons, after all, so why shouldn't it work for humans, too?
This trope appears in many settings, its use generally depending on the values of the time period. In a class-stratified society, it is literally unthinkable for an aristocrat to even consider pretending to be a commoner simply for the sake of honor, so the idea never even occurs to anybody to look for a commoner. Contrast a modern setting, where rather than a whole underclass, usually certain peripheral professions will be utilized for this. In either case, the Selective Obliviousness of characters can become a plot point if a Genre Savvy character declares that Everyone Is A Suspect in hope of keeping others from failing to notice those usually Beneath Notice.
This is why The Butler Did It is such an attractive trope for mysteries: Nobody notices the butler, and he's usually the most trusted member of the household help.
The Nondescript may be this. May result in The Dog Was the Mastermind. Related to They Look Just Like Everyone Else.
Examples:
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Film
- In Sneakers, Carl disguises himself as a gardener in order to sneak into Playtronics' corporate headquarters.
- Actually subverted, in that the gardener is emphatically not beneath the guards' notice, and the only reason it works at all is because they get Mother to dress in an identical uniform as a body double.
- In The Mask of Zorro, this is how the old Zorro is able to masquerade literally right in front of Montero. Because he is masquerading as a servant, it would not even occur to Montero to take more than a passing glance at him.
- In X2: X-Men United, Mystique disguises herself as a janitor.
- In The Movie of The Fugitive, Dr. Kimble disguises himself by shaving off his beard, and is able to walk right by a few cops that way without being noticed. One even asks him if he's seen [Kimble's description]; he responds "every day in the mirror - except for the beard, of course."
- He caps it off by dressing in baggy, drab-colored clothes, making it easy to slip into a hospital disguised as a janitor.
- In Fist Of Fury Bruce Lee disguises himself as an Asian and Nerdy telephone repairman in order to infiltrate the home of the man who arranged his teacher's death.
Literature
Live Action TV
- On Leverage, while Sophie, Hardison and Nate are more likely to show up people of importance, Parker and Eliot generally fly under the radar by posing as irrelevant workers. Parker and Eliot are also much less likely to be captured, though that is also due to their respective skill sets allowing them to get out of danger more easily.
- Parker apparently learned this from her mentor Archie, as he also does this in "The Big Dam Job." As he says, "Nobody ever cuts the cake until someone tells them to cut the cake." he was stealing a sword from an exhibit on opening night by smuggling it out through a fake cake, appearing as part of the catering staff.
- On Hustle Ash uses this fairly often in terms of setting up their cons.
Tabletop RPG
- Shadowrun. Often used by runners infiltrating corporate facilities.
- Common in Shadowrun fiction also. In one of the first short stories written for the setting, a fugitive from the yakuza is successfully smuggled across town past a cordon of street thugs, all of them on high alert, because her escort bribed a pizza deliveryman to let them borrow his van.
- In 7th Sea, the Servant skill has a Knack (sub-skill) called Unobtrusive, which relies on this trope.
- In Vampire The Masquerade, characters with the Obfuscate discipline at a certain level can use it to hide in plain sight among groups of people. It's especially useful for a Nosferatu, who by definition Looks Like Orlock.
- Likewise, many games in the New World of Darkness not only have abilities like Obfuscate, but a Merit that makes it harder for someone to find records of the individual or track them down. It goes by various names depending on the game line, among them "Occultation," "Hidden Life," and "Anonymity". Often, though, these Merits also apply penalties to situations where being known would be useful ("Who're you to throw your weight around? Don't know you from Adam...").
Video Games
- The "Beggar Prince" book from TheElderScrolls
- Also the Thieves Guild uses beggars as spies
- In Hitman: Blood Money humble disguises like repairmen or janitors raise less suspicion from guards. They are, however, a disadvantage by restricting the areas you can enter while wearing them.
Web Comics
Real Life
- Real Ninja (supposedly, since ninja are supposed to be a secret) were not actually invisible, but would take the role of an ordinary peasant and, sometimes for years, just blend in with everyone else until it was time to strike.
- Then dictator of Mexico General Santa Anna de Antonio Lopez attempted this trope after the Mexican Army lost the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution. He hoped that the Anglo-Texans and Tejanos would be so busy looking for an officer in a flashy uniform that they would overlook a simple peasant farmer. It didn't work.
- Since disguising like a commoner is much more than just putting on common clothing, this trope isn't truly averted here, but played with. Commoners do notice other commoners and if they are behaving strangely and are also a stranger to everyone, they are a suspect.
- Also, dude had a wooden leg. Kinda hard to miss that.
- Jefferson Davis is rumored to have attempted to escape the victorious Union forces disguised as a woman.
- Sometime around (before?) the Russo-Japanese War, there was a Japanese spy in Singapore. He served food in the officers' mess in a British base, listening to the information they revealed talking to each other, and no-one looked at him.
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