History Main / RingerPloy

Call in the ringers! They will either enlist friends to wear disguises and costumes that make them look like the beleaguered party, or the beleaguered party will call up their relatives with UncannyFamilyResemblance since they're all indistinguishable from one another.

* The villain never finds out, and the hero thanks his helpers once the villain has left the scene.
* The villain finds out and is ''not happy'' to have been duped.

* ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'': Jerry, overwhelmed by bullying Tom sends a distress call out to all his relatives, who all look exactly like him. They are onscreen simultaneously and Tom is freaked out trying to deal with them.
* On WesternAnimation/PunkinPussAndMushmouse, Mushmouse does the same thing with all his identical cousins to confound villain Punkin' Puss.

* PlayedWith in ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'': Jenny takes different battle forms to fight Megawatt. In the end, she defeats him by having Brad, Wakeman, and Tucker dress up as the other battle forms besides the one she's currently using herself.

** "Tortoise Beats Hare", a WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes short in which Cecil Turtle calls up all his identical relatives to beat WesternAnimation/BugsBunny in the fabled tortoise-hare race.
** ''WesternAnimation/NorthwestHoundedPolice'' a Droopy short with the punchline:

* The same joke was used on a WesternAnimation/HuckleberryHound short.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "All The Smurf's A Stage", Actor mimics various Smurfs that are involved in the production of Poet's play, even to the point of copying their voices, in order to show his acting talent.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SonicBoom'' episode, "Blue With Envy", Swifty the Shrew actually manages to beat Sonic himself in a race around the village, resulting in Sonic getting banished. It is later revealed that Swifty is a robot created by Dr. Eggman, and Eggman used an army of identical robots to help Swifty win the race as part of his plan to take over the village.

* ''Series/MaidMarianAndHerMerryMen'' had RobinHood do this with the aid of a ConArtist.

If the hero must use magic or AppliedPhlebotinum to pull off the "many of one person" effect, it's MesACrowd. If the hero is cloning himself, it may result in CloningBlues. If it's a bunch of non-identical-looking people all claiming to be the hero despite having no common appearance, you are looking at IAmSpartacus. Related to LostInACrowd. See also ShellGame. Doing this with objects rather than humans is a NeedleInAStackOfNeedles.

* ''Film/ThreeAmigos!''. The title characters dress everyone in the village of Santo Poco as themselves to trick and defeat El Guapo.
* A brilliant example in ''Film/TheThomasCrownAffair1999''. When the titular character returns to the art museum to 'return' a painting he stole, he draws attention in the lobby to his clothes, and then moves into the crowds. First he switches his case with an identically-dressed man's...then four more appear, before the penny finally drops and the security team realizes the museum is ''crawling'' with men in grey suits and bowler hats. And then while security is busy detaining all the guys in grey suits, he ditches his for a tan trenchcoat and passes completely unnoticed. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8W5wjXsrR0 See the whole scene.]]

* One episode of ''Series/PowerRangersInSpace'' had the team confuse the Psycho Rangers by having everyone dress up as the Blue Ranger.

* A Chinese folktale features 10 brothers, each with a different power. One is sentenced to be executed, but switches out with another brothers whose power makes him immune that the day's form of execution (one is fireproof and can't be burned, one can stretch his neck and can't drown, one eats rocks and can't be BuriedAlive, etc.) until [[FailedExecutionNoSentence finally the execution is cancelled]].

* In ''[[Literature/TheBelgariad Polgara the Sorceress]]'', Pol is unable to cut or dye her SkunkStripe, and knows her enemies are looking for her. The solution is to make the SkunkStripe fashionable amongst all the ladies of Aloria.