The Inspector Is Coming - Television Tropes & Idioms

In media involving certain businesses, it is inevitable that a specialized inspector, or critic, will come sooner or later to rate the business, usually holding its fate by his/her rating. Cue the employees working hard to keep everything in good condition to get a passable rating.

Hilarity Ensues if someone unrelated gets mistaken for the inspector. Compare House Inspection. In military settings, see the subtrope The Inquisitor General, while police settings will have Internal Affairs.

As many - particularly those in retail/customer service environments - can tell you, this is very much Truth in Television. Nothing can strike fear into the heart of a retail employee quite like the words "corporate visit."

Examples:

Film

Ratatouille
The Inspector General is a Danny Kaye movie, in which a vagrant is arrested in a small European town, and is mistakenly believed to be an inspector from the crown. It's based on the below-mentioned play, The Government Inspector.
An old Polish comedy featured a story about a hapless lab technician who accidentally takes a hydrometer with him after leaving work. He goes to a restaurant, orders a drink and absentmindedly starts stirring the drink with the hydrometer. The restaurant manager sees this and thinks that the guy is a government inspector testing if the restaurant is watering its drinks. As the protagonist is leaving the restaurant he is handed an envelope with money as a bribe to not report the restaurant. Once he figures out what happened he starts regularly going to restaurants with lab instruments and supplements his income with the bribe money.
We Bought a Zoo
- Ferris seems very harsh and acts like a jerk, but once he can't find any faults with the restored zoo, he passes them and wishes Benjamin good luck, although he still maintains that the zoo will probably fail and refuses to attend, as this would count as fraternization. There's also no proof beyond MacReady's word that Ferris stole his ideas.

Literature

In George McDonald Fraser's semi-autobiographical tales of Army life, The General Danced At Dawn, the General of the title story is conducting a full inspection of the Gordon Highlanders, who lurch from one catastrophe to another. The only things that save the Scottish soldiers are Highland dancing and bagpipe music - at the General's instigation, the Regiment dance progressively longer and more complex Highland dances until they break the world record with a 256-some. This pulls in Arabs and German prisoners-of-war to make up the numbers.
The kids' book Win One For The Sloths by Helen Lester has the sloth class being checked up on and the ways the sloths try to convince him they're learning and the class should stay open, despite their extreme love of napping.

Live-Action TV

A Fawlty Towers episode has Basil mistaking an officious idiot for a hotel inspector.
- Another episode had a health inspector visit.
In The Nanny episode "The Butler, the Husband, the Wife and Her Mother", Niles is anticipating the arrival of inspectors of the Professional Butler's Association to determine whether he's qualified to join. Unfortunately, Fran's mother Sylvia is trying to impress their in-laws by telling them that Fran's married to Maxwell Sheffield, and with Maxwell out at the time they arrive, Fran makes Niles pretend he's Maxwell. Worse, the inspectors arrive to evaluate Niles' performance. When Maxwell returns, Maxwell has to pretend he's Niles.
In M*A*S*H, there are a number of episodes with this trope as the focus. In one, Father Mulcahy becomes highly tense when he learns that the head chaplain of the army was coming to inspect his good works. In another, a particularly harsh top-level nurse comes to inspect Margaret's nursing staff, which results in Margaret herself becoming particularly harsh in an effort to satisfy her (she is relieved and happy at the end of the episode when the inspector rates her staff "satisfactory"). Somewhat lampshaded in another episode, where an inspector comes to learn about how the 4077 runs in order to duplicate it... but the entire camp becomes overrun with speculation that the inspector plans on breaking the camp up.
The Beverly Hillbillies: a "rich" socialite from back home comes to visit the Clampetts, with the Hidden Agenda of trying to marry Jed for his money. She gives the place the once over.
Adeline: I just wanted to see where some of these things is from. I see most of 'em is from France and England.
Granny: That's good, isn't it?
Adeline: Not to me. All my stuff comes from much further away then that. It's made in Japan.
CSI NY has an episode with the lab being inspected. She can't find a lot of faults but does fault Lindsay for leaving evidence out and endangering the chain of custody because Danny, er, distracted her. She also flirts a bit with Mac, reminding him of a time before his wife died when they got a little drunk and kissed at a party. Mac admits he didn't exactly hate it, but is firm that he loved his wife and would never have gone any further.

Theater

The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol is the Trope Maker: corrupt local government officials panic when they hear there's an inspector in town, but the guy they suspect of being him is a case of mistaken identity. Similar to the Fawlty Towers example.
- And yes, the real inspector is on the way.
In Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, The Maniac is able to pull off his impersonation because the police are expecting the visit of a judge to investigate the death.

Videogames

The Open for Business expansion pack for The Sims 2 lets you become a business owner. Once in a while a writer will come in and inspect your business, and depending on the state that it's in, will either give you a positive or negative review, affecting your business accordingly. You can do positive interactions and improve the environment to increase your chances of a good review. Bad interactions with either you, your staff, or other customers will make it more likely for them to write a negative one.
One of Harry The Handsome Executive's assignments is to destroy all traces of a dangerous substance invented by ScumCo R&D before the health inspector arrives.

Western Animation

Rocket Power
In one episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants, a health inspector visits the Krusty Krab. Mr. Krabs and Spongebob "kills" him with a bad Krabby Patty (thinking he was the fake inspector mentioned on TV) and try to bury him, but he's still alive.
- In another episode, the Krusty Krab gets a visit from a prominent food critic. Despite everyone's best efforts, the critic gives a bad review, except for SpongeBob, which leads to Mr. Krabs going overboard with making everything SpongeBob-themed, down to serving rotten patties that look yellow and spongy.
Bobs Burgers: Pilot episode.
Beavis And Butthead: a health inspector visits the boys while they're working at Burger World.
Futurama: The beginning of "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back".
On House of Mouse, the club is expecting a critic. Mortimer is mistaken for the critic and takes advantage of Mickey's hospitality.
Stoked: "The Very Very Very Very Very Important Guest" is about the resort expecting the arrival of a well-known hotel reviewer.
Camp Lazlo: In "The Weakest Link", Scoutmaster Lumpus attempts to get the Jelly Beans out of camp before Commander Hoo-Ha makes his inspection. It backfires horribly (of course) and he ends losing all of the scouts.
The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode "Games Ponies Play" revolves around an inspector coming to evalute the Crystal Empire's worthiness to host the Equestria Games.
This happens numerous times on The Simpsons in various forms. The nuclear plant has gotten many surprise inspections, including one in which Homer manages to botch a test so badly that he melts down a van despite there being no nuclear material in it. Moe Szyslak gets visited by a health inspector which he knows well...except he dies there. When the new inspector comes, Moe hasn't even cleaned up the body of the previous health inspector.