Fake Danger Gambit

"I'm a professional beach bully. I pretend to steal your girl, you punch me, I go down, she swoons, you slip me 50 bucks."

— Beach Bully, Futurama

So, there's someone that you need to impress. Maybe it's a pretty girl that you'd like to date, or maybe it's someone that you need on your side. What's the best way to get their attention? Show off your hero cred, even if you have to fake it.

Basically, this trope is for when a character sets up a situation that seems like a spontaneous feat of derring-do, but is actually a deliberately concocted circumstance, possibly with friends taking the role of a fake "aggressor". The situation can go horribly wrong if the situation becomes one of real rather than simulated danger, such as a genuine aggressor showing up. However, depending on how the "hero" reacts, such a Spanner in the Works may serve as the perfect opportunity to show what they're made of for real.

This is the inverse of a Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Compare Framed for Heroism, Make It Look Like a Struggle, and Monster Protection Racket. Sub-Trope of Publicity Stunt. It's a perennial favorite of the Fake Ultimate Hero. Related to Rigged Spectacle Fight.

Contrast Engineered Heroics, where a villainous character puts someone in genuine danger (and occasionally kills them) to make themselves look "heroic" while trying to save them, and usually on a serial basis.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Yu-Gi-Oh!: One chapter of the manga featured a boy who loved superhero comics but wasn't strong himself. His father wanted to make him more self-confident so he hired some kids to pretend to attack someone while the boy was in a superhero costume. It worked, but then the hired kids turned it around and started really hurting the boy in order to get more money out of the father.

Comic Books

• Inverted in the Astro City story "Great Expectations" to make the protagonist look less heroic. After Mitch Goodman is mistaken for a real superhero and endangered as a result, his friends stage an "attack" where he is badly humiliated. The public quickly loses interest, allowing Mitch to return to a life of peace and safety.
• Before Watchmen: Minutemen:
  • Silk Spectre's pre-Minutemen superhero career consisted almost entirely of staged heroics by thwarting staged shop robberies, which the stores usually go along with it for the free publicity, to raise her profile. Naturally, she resented teammate Silhouette, whose pre-Minutemen career consisted of hunting down pedophiles and rescuing children.
  • The Minutemen succeed in stopping a criminal act, but rather than being Italian fascist saboteurs smuggling bombs, they blow up a warehouse full of smuggled fireworks. Nelly even holds up one of his armored car's own shells as proof the criminals were arms smugglers.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Happens in issue #112. Antoine feels the need to impress his dad, so he and Sonic arrange for Sonic to dress up like Evil Sonic (long before his upgrade to Scourge) and have Antoine pretend to defeat him. Then the real Evil Sonic shows up, and Antoine knocks him out with one karate chop. Antoine's so stunned when he finds out what happened, that he faints.
• Teen Titans: Bumblebee's first appearance has her pretending to be a villain so Mal Duncan could impress the Titans. They eventually find out but aren't too upset with either of them.
• The Tick: There is a professional service that sets up engineered fights so fledgling superheroes can build up their reputation. The Tick stumbles into one of these fights and tries to help, never realizing that the villain is just an actor.

Fan Works

• Infinity Crisis: In Justice Like Lightning, Mysterio creates the "Elements of Doom" to attack Los Angeles so the Thunderbolts can make a bit splash fighting them. The T-Bolts themselves are unaware this is all a scam. Generation Gaps makes an offhand reference to the fact that more such threats have been engineered for the Thunderbolts to fight since then.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: A variation when the Iron Fleet is spotted off Dragonstone while Daenerys is still AWOL: The Wolf is known to be Running Both Sides and participates in the defensive planning, but then the fleet sails away without explanation. As he explains later, he set up the threat of the fleet to ensure Daenerys' armies wouldn't disperse in her absence but stay to defend the city (and had the fleet disobeyed him and actually attacked, he would have joined in without hesitation).
• In The New Retcons, Elizabeth starts to suspect that Anthony deliberately set up "the going-after" in hopes of invoking a Rescue Romance. It doesn't help that instead of taking her to the police afterwards, he drove her to the park in order to plead with her to "wait for him" to divorce his wife. Eventually, it's revealed that her mother Elly was the one responsible.
• Side Story of Support: When his party encounters a group of Jioral Kingdom soldiers who kidnapped a group of ice wolf demi-humans, Vega's initial plan is to disguise himself as Princess Flare to force the soldiers to free the ice wolves. When this plan falls through, he then has Setsuna attack one of the soldiers and wipes their memories with Neuralize to convince them that it was a wild animal that attacked them and that it was the ice wolves who came to their rescue, forcing the two opposing factions to peace.

Film — Animated

• Downplayed in Town Musicians of Bremen. The musicians disguise themselves as robbers and capture the King, only for the Troubadour as himself to free him and pretend to defeat the robbers afterwards, so that the King allows the Troubadour to marry the Princess. However, before setting the whole thing up, the musicians frighten off real outlaws who have been planning a real attack on the King.

Films — Live-Action

• Back to the Future: This is how the time-traveling Marty McFly tries to get his parents to fall in love. Marty will drive Lorraine to the school dance, then start to make out with her in the parked car, then George McFly will arrive to "punch" Marty and "rescue" Lorraine from his unwanted advances. It goes wrong twice: first, Lorraine is far more eager to make out than Marty anticipated. Second, Lorraine's first "rescuer" is actually the bully Biff Tannen, who intends to take advantage of Lorraine for real. And in spite of these complications, the plan works better than intended: blissfully unaware, George arrives right on cue, and the sight of Lorraine in genuine danger gives him the strength to punch out Biff for real, and Lorraine immediately falls for him.
• George of the Jungle: A little capuchin monkey complains to George that the other monkeys bully him because he's a runt. In the next scene, the monkeys are attacked by a large lion; Little Monkey steps forward, pounds his chest and yells at the lion, fending it off and earning the other monkeys' respect. The lion, hiding in the bushes, winks at George, implying that it was him arranging the whole scene.
• Occurs at the start of Hitch, Will Smith entices a dog away from its owner so that his client can appear to have jumped in front of a car to save it so that the client can get a date with the owner.
• Maverick: The title character beats several baddies in a fistfight to scare Angel, only to later pay them money for throwing the fight.
• Mr. Deeds: Tabloid journalist Babe Bennett pretends to be a Damsel in Distress, getting mugged in order to meet Deeds and dig up dirt on him. Deeds, quite unaware that he's being tricked into a staged Rescue Romance, chases Babe's attacker down the sidewalk, shoves him over a trashcan, and then uses it as a bludgeoning weapon. Babe cringes sympathetically before settling on punching him about a dozen times.
• My Boyfriend's Back: Johnny tries this by having his friend gear up to pretend to rob the convenience store where his crush works but is unaware that an actual robber shows up until it's too late.
• Attempted by Ignacio in Nacho Libre, but he ends up picking a fight with a random passer-by instead, who kicks his butt.

Literature

• Animorphs -Visser: During the trial of Visser Three and Visser One, Visser Three executes a scheme where he has his officers secretly release wild animals in the courtroom, so he can kill them all and make a show of having seemingly defeated the Animorphs. However, Visser One notices some of the animals attacked each other, and covertly contacts the Animorphs to attack the courtroom for real, exposing Visser Three's deception.
• Encyclopedia Brown: Book 2, chapter 6 ("The Case of the Two-Fisted Poet") has a snooty newcomer to the neighborhood try to romance the detective's Action Girl sidekick Sally. To impress her, the newcomer fights with a bully who is rude to them on a date, putting his glasses away in his chest pocket before getting into a long, drawn-out fight where the bully lands many punches on his chest. When he pulls out his glasses after the fight and they are fine, Encyclopedia points out to Sally that if the fight were real the glasses should have been broken considering all the punches the bully was landing in the chest area. She promptly lays out the would-be boyfriend herself.
• In the children's book The Gruffalo, the Guile Hero mouse plays this trope brilliantly, fending off various predators by pretending that he's going to hang out with a bigger and more dangerous predator than them, which he's invented, and which he says preys on each of them. When he then, to his surprise, meets said Big Bad and realises that Big Bad wants to eat him, he succeeds in persuading it to follow him through the forest, in the course of which he meets all the predators he earlier scared off, and they are duly convinced that he really is the Big Bad's friend. The mouse having thus demonstrated that he's the scariest creature in the forest, the Big Bad runs off in terror.
• The Saga of the Noble Dead: The main characters are a pair of con artists who stage fake vampire hunts; he plays the vampire and she dramatically "slays" him, to scam people out of money. The plot is kicked off when they accidentally blunder into the lair of an actual vampire clan and have to become hunters for real.

Live-Action TV

• Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: In episode #17, Recently-dumped civilian Makoto enlists the help of Tsubasa (Inu Brother of the season's team) to help him impress his girlfriend into taking him back, who dumped him after he ran off on her during a monster attack in an earlier episode. Tsubasa commissions an off-screen friend to create an over-the-top villain costume for him to "attack" said girl so Makoto can "save her." Sixth Ranger Jiro stumbles onto Tsubasa before he can enact the plot and, mistaking him for an actual villain, suplexes him into submission before it can go anywhere.
• CSI: NY: Deconstructed in episode 'Battle Scars' where the Victim of the Week and his buddy set up a mugging similar to one that happened several months beforehand to impress his girlfriend only for the plan to collapse in on itself. First, the victim's gun was loaded with simulation rounds intended only to be shot at targets that he had stolen from a firing range. When the two 'struggled' for the gun it went off and the bullet struck the victim, disintegrating on contact but still causing a lethal wound. Second is the biggest problem with this plan — failing to properly predict what the patsy will do. She attacked the mugger and ripped his mask off, forcing him to strike her over the head and nearly killing her. Third is what happens when the scheme is exposed. She is angry and upset that her boyfriend would do something so stupid. Had he survived, she probably would have broken up with him.
• Frasier: Daphne's dad had a money-making scam that involved him making crude passes at women in Manchester pubs, then getting pretend beaten up by their dates.
• In one first-season episode of Gilligan's Island, Mary Ann gets into trouble while swimming. Gilligan goes in to rescue her, but gets himself in trouble, forcing the Skipper to save them both. When Gilligan goes into a Heroic BSoD as a result, the other Castaways conspire to create a setup where he can save the Skipper, who pretends to have gotten trapped under a fallen tree. Unbeknownst to anyone, a hostile islander makes it an actual rescue.
• House of Anubis: Early in season 1, Jerome tries to help Alfie win over Amber by making her into a "damsel in distress" who needs saving. They do this by setting up smoke bombs, and Amber's goes off when she's in the middle of patching things up with Mick. Alfie then tackles her to the floor in order to "save" her, which means she's not impressed or even grateful at all — she just blames him for ruining her chances at getting back with Mick. Jerome, meanwhile, had tried to impress Ms. Robinson and score a Teacher/Student Romance, by taking charge when the smoke started filling the room... and she wasn't impressed, either.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dennis created a whole system called the "D.E.N.N.I.S. System" which he uses as a way to sleep with women and then emotionally manipulate them. First he Demonstrates value so he can Engage them physically (hit on her then have sex), then he Nurtures dependence by doing this, which for his example, he prank calls his date pretending to be a creepy stalker so she goes to Dennis for emotional support. Then he proceeds to Neglect her emotionally by continuing to make prank calls but not answer her back, then Inspire hope by coming back to her at her lowest point so they can have Sex for Solace. After that, he Seprates entirely and never speaks to the girl again, before starting again with a different girl.
• Married... with Children had an episode of Peg saving Al from a robber, and worse, having it caught on the news, which as you can imagine is a major embarrassment to him. Jefferson tries to help by having Al take Peg to a seedy bar, where a contact would insult Peg, Al would knock him out, and Bud would get it on film. Unfortunately, when it comes time to deal the blow, Peg punches out the man herself just as Bud takes the photo. However, the end of the ep has Al successfully pulling this off using one of Kelly's dates.
• In Men Behaving Badly Gary hides behind a paper when his girlfriend is being threatened while driving and spends the whole episode worried about his reputation. So he rings up an agency to send over a big bloke in a leather jacket to his local pub for him to beat up. He finds a big bloke in a leather jacket who he quickly beats up. Then a much smaller, skinnier guy in a leather jacket appears wanting to fight Gary. He runs away shortly after.
• Monk: A villain exploits this in "Mr. Monk and the Billionaire Mugger." Back in college, a guy had gotten his friend to pose as a mugger so he could play the hero in front of his then-girlfriend. Years later, the friend is having an affair with the man's wife and suggests to him that they recreate the event, only trading places. The man agrees...not knowing the friend is planning to shoot him for real to get him out of the picture.
• Scrubs: Deconstructed when in season four's "My Quarantine" J.D. pays a hobo to fake a heart attack in front of his new girlfriend so he can rescue him. The hobo then proceeds to demand more money when J.D. tries it again and again.
• Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye: In "Elvis is in the Building", Bobby goes undercover as an Elvis Impersonator to bust a drug smuggler, Tommy Chen. The FBI zeroes in on Tommy's girlfriend, Nancy, as the weak link; she's tried to get out several times. To show Nancy that Bobby is someone she can trust, the team stages a scene at the nightclub. Dmitrius plays the role of an aggressive patron, who keeps flirting with Nancy against her will and even tries to drag her off. Bobby makes him leave her alone. Unfortunately, this draws Tommy's jealous rage.

Video Games

• Fallout: New Vegas: There are several bodyguards-for-hire around each of the entrances to Freeside. One sidequest has you investigate a particular bodyguard, Orris, who has been making a killing in repeat business. Once someone hires him, they never want anyone else again, and it's putting all the other bodyguards out of a job. You're told to pose as a client and hire him to see if he does anything suspicious. As he escorts you to the Strip, he runs ahead of you to "heroically" take out a group of thugs. At this point, there are several ways to expose him as a fraud.
  • A high enough Intelligence stat will let you point out that he only shot three times, but there are four dead thugs. He'll claim that he killed two with one bullet because he's just that awesome.
  • A high enough Medicine skill will let you examine the "bodies" and conclude that they are merely pretending to be dead.
  • Simply attacking one of the "dead" thugs will cause them all to drop the act, get up, and turn hostile, declaring that they aren't getting paid enough for this. Orris also turns hostile if he's still in the area.
  • Don't do any of that and report back to your questgiver that Orris seems legit. He doesn't believe it and will tell you to hire him again. This time, Orris catches on to what you're trying to do, and him and his thugs will attack you.
• Undertale: Dr. Alphys reactivates traps and puzzles that had been shut down, and convinces her friend the robot Mettaton to play the role of a human-killing monster, all so she can help the player character overcome them and feel good about herself for a change. Things go bad when Mettaton, growing tired of the charade, sabotages traps to make them genuinely dangerous and attacks the player for real.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "Make Room for Daddy-O", Jimmy realizes he can stop the cool-turned Hugh for abandoning him for good by re-awakening his true parental instincts by staging a scenario where is in danger by pretending to hang dangerously from a catwalk over a stage and have Carl and Sheen magnetically secure him with one of his inventions. It fails at first, and when Carl and Sheen accidentally break the invention, this places Jimmy in real danger and Hugh finally returns to his old self to save him from falling.
• In the American Dad! pilot, Stan stages a purse-snatching at the mall so that his son can save the day and be more attractive to the ladies. He unfortunately goes overboard, completely forgetting to let Steve catch him.
• Futurama: In the episode "When Aliens Attack", Fry and Leela are on the beach when a muscular, handsome man flirts with Leela. He explains to Fry that he's a professional beach bully who steals the girlfriend of some weak guy, then goes down in one punch to make the weak guy look good in front of his girl, for a price. Fry says that Leela isn't his girlfriend so the bully is free to date her if he wants, but he says he's actually gay and walks away.
• Kid Cosmic: Kid's fight with the robots in Episode 4 "Kid Cosmic and the Local Heroes" is revealed to have been set up by Papa G without Kid's knowledge. The reason he did this was because he saw Kid was depressed by everyone else having a win except him, so he tried to give him one. Unfortunately, Kid finds out in the next episode, and doesn't take this very well.
• Martha Speaks: Season One episode "Starstruck Martha" features Martha, Helen, and Truman trying to help Courageous Collie Carlo get back his fans after they tease him for being afraid of flowers. In their scenario, Helen pretends to be scared of Truman in a bear costume so Carlo can rescue her. No one falls for the act though. When a real bear shows up, Martha tells off the bear for chasing her friends, but decides to have him pretend to be chased away by Carlo so everyone can see him as a hero again.
• Miraculous Ladybug: The title villain of the episode "Volpina" uses her illusion powers to stage herself stopping a falling meteor in order to gain Ladybug and Cat Noir's trust so that she can manipulate them.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: After Applejack saves Spike's life in "Spike At Your Service", Spike swears to help her out due to his Dragon Code. However, his help is a lot more troublesome, so to put a stop to his less-than-helpful service, Applejack and the others stage an "attack" by fake timberwolves for Spike to save her so he can stop. Unfortunately, the staged attack turns into a real attack by real timberwolves, but Spike does save Applejack all the same.
• Phineas and Ferb: In the episode "The Bully Code". Buford accidentally chokes on a hotdog, but Baljeet was there and managed to save his life. Buford's "bully code" means that thanks to Baljeet saving him, Buford is now Baljeet's slave for life. Phineas and Ferb agree to help Baljeet engineer a situation so that Buford can save his life to no longer owe Baljeet and serve him, but decide not to. In the end, it is unnecessary because Buford saves Baljeet from being crushed by a giant wiener, at which point Buford declares that they're even and returns to bullying Baljeet as usual.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "I Had an Accident" Sandy has Patrick dress as a gorilla and pretend to attack her in a ploy to get SpongeBob out of his house. SpongeBob sees through the ruse, but then a real gorilla appears (in a subversion of Mistaken for an Imposter, the gorilla comes dressed as Patrick, while the real Patrick has on the gorilla costume), and SpongeBob has to come save them.
  • In "No Weenies Allowed", the "weenie" SpongeBob, wanting to get into the Salty Spitoon, stages a fight with Patrick in front of the bouncer. Patrick somehow manages to telekinetically beat up himself. The bouncer is duly impressed.

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