Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
When a character uses physical props to disguise herself. This is a staple of Spy Drama, where the hero will often use a wig and dress and affect an accent, thus the name of the trope.
While never as impenetrable a disguise as Latex Perfection, this disguise is usually plausible and may even fool the audience as well as other characters. If it isn't plausible, then it's a Paper Thin Disguise.
See also Clark Kenting for how a disguise can be complemented by mannerisms and behaviors.
Examples
Anime
- In one episode of Pokemon, Ash has to dress up like a girl to get into one of the gyms to battle its leader for a badge (But only because he'd insulted their perfume earlier so was turned away as himself. Here
 ◊ is the result.
- Jessie and James have a tendency to do this in a number of episodes, usually involving some Gender Swapping and including, but not limited to, dressing as vikings, Pokemon stylists and traditional Japanese samurai.
- An episode of Outlaw Star involves Gene dressing up as a woman so he can enter an all-female wrestling tournament. He is defeated in the first round. There was at least the explanation that they bribed the judges, and the one guy who knew him, but was not in on the plan, recognized him instantly.
- In the same episode, Aisha infiltrated the competition by stealing the costume of one of the regular entrants, since Ctarl-Ctarl weren't allowed to enter.
- Monster has an interesting take on this: a wig, dress, and an affected voice is quite literally all Johan needs to fool the reader. (Don't forget, in the Anime, some make-up for skin tone.)
- The first time I saw Johan dressed up as Nina, my reaction was, "What's wrong with her eyebrows? They look weird." Should have plucked them too.
- It was much easier to spot in the anime, what with the dialogue actually being heard rather than read since the twins have very different ways of speaking, regardless of how similar they look.
- The cheerleaders in Mahou Sensei Negima did this while spying on Konoka and Negi in Akihabara (they thought it was a date, but was really Not What It Looks Like.
- When they get to the Magic World, just about everyone does this to disguise themselves, using Cat Ears, Tails, and Glasses.
- Misa does this to avoid being spotted by Light and L in Aoyama, early on in the Death Note series.
- When Ranma Saotome needs further disguise then simply being a Gender Bender triggered by cold water can provide, this trope is more or less how he goes about it. At most he's gone a step further and played at being a Meganekko (see the Japanese Nanniichuan and Ryoga & Akane's First date storylines). This trope tends to work because the people he plays it against are either desperately lonely (Ryoga), utter perverts (Happosai) or have rotten vision (Mousse). He also applies make-up (lipstick on date with Tatewaki, make up powder when pretending to be Ryoga's fiancee, etc.), something made easier by the fact the anime apparently gives him eyeshadow when he changes form, and even he was surprised it worked the first time he tried it with Ryoga (he was expecting Ryoga to see through it, though since it did work, he does it again and again).
Comic Books
- When Thor lost his ability to transform into a nebbish doctor, some of his fellow Avengers (in their series) took him out to see "some guys they knew," to help him work up a "civilian" hairstyle and outfits. On the way out there's a shout-out to Clark Kent.
- As a long haired man, this troper objects to the notion that Thor couldn't pass as a perfectly normal civilian (though perhaps with a change of clothes and a beard trim).
- When Dinah Lance(either of them) fights crime as the Black Canary, she wears a disguise consisting of a wig and a [[Stripperiffic stripper-like]] outfit. Even though her face is covered up even less the Clark Kent, she still maintains a secret identity.
- In the Super Mario World comic, Luigi swaps clothes with Princess Peach (or Toadstool) and dons a wig to infiltrate the Koopa Kids' stronghold, in which Mario is kept. In his defense, he at least tried to hide his face with a mask, which also justified her deep voice as "having a nasty cold."
- He also did this in the Mario And Luigi video game.
- Didn't Peach once disguise herself as Luigi, too, in a comic? If memory serves, the difference in size between herself and Luigi was made up for with Bob-ombs.
Film
- Inspector Clouseau does this a lot, to mixed success. He is so committed to being the Master Of Disguise he thinks he is that the proprietor of the costume shop he frequents is a minor recurring character.
- In the Charlies Angels movie, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz are disguised as men in one scene. Maybe it was Lucy Liu in her dominatrix outfit who distracted everyone.
- The whole premise of the Wayans brothers' White Chicks.
- Subverted in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. When the three drag queens are stranded in a Midwestern hick town, it seems that the townsfolk don't know the true sex of the "career girls". However, it's revealed at the end that they knew for awhile and simply didn't care.
- The Crying Game.
- In the first Scooby Doo live action movie, dogs aren't allowed on the plane, so Shaggy brings his grandma...
- In Exodus (1960) with Paul Newman, his character's disguise involves a jeep, a British army uniform and an "accent" that essentially amounts to him throwing in "old chap" every once in awhile. Everyone is fooled.
- Used in Twelve Monkeys at the end, the protagonists use store bought disguises (a glued on mustache for the man and a blonde wig for the woman) to get through airport security and escape to Florida.
Literature
- Subverted in a Department 13 novel: an agent "disguises" himself by putting on a wig that looks like his own hair, colored contacts the same color as his real eyes, subtle makeup, and wears shoes that look like they have lifts (but really don't). When enemy agents look at him they easily spot the wig, contacts, makeup, and shoes and assume that they're seeing a decoy, not the agent himself.
- Older Than Dirt: The Bible, Old Testament, 1 Kings 20: A minor prophet disguises himself by wearing his headband down over his eyes.
- Even older than The Bible: Greek Mythology has the myth of goddess of wisdom and crafts Athena disguising herself as an old woman to confront the young and foolish Arachne about Arachne's boasts that her weave-work was better than Athena's. Athena thus took off her disguise and challenged Arachne to a weaving contest. Athena wins, naturally, and Arachne - so upset - hangs herself. Athena feels pity for the poor thing and thus turns Arachne into a spider, which is, according to the mythology of the Greks, why spiders weave webs.
- ...Another version has it that Arachne wove scenes which offended Athena or she was simply better (your call) and Athena transformed her out of anger.
- And yet another version combines all of the above. Arachne wove better but was arrogant and used designs making fun of Zeus and his many sexual conquests. Athena broke the loom over Arachne's head and the girl tried to hang herself out of humiliation. Athena then turns her into a spider.
- Many different tales of mythology deal with gods or other powerful beings disguising themselves as mortals (almost always old people or beggers). The usual reason is to request food, shelter, or some other sort of favor or aide as a test of goodness. If the person being tested is smart (or kind) enough to comply, they are granted wishes, good fortune, or the general favor of the magical being. If the person isn't that smart or good, they can expect things not to go so well for them in the future.
- Odysseus's return home, disguised as a beggar with rags and dirt smudges, is another example done for similar reasons; to test everyone present in his home, especially his wife.
- Sherlock Holmes successfully pulls this off a few times, even fooling his best friend Watson.
- Though it's implied he takes some great lengths to disguise himself, even using a combination of slouching and a special back brace to look at least a foot shorter (no mean feat since he's often described as being unusually tall). The Titular Man with the Twisted Lip is a better example of this trope. Not to mention one of the times he fooled Watson was because Watson had thought Holmes had died three years earlier.
- In Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment this is played straight by the only male in the group acting as a washerwoman to get into the enemy base (who fools the guards but not the other washerwomen who let him continue the charade because he seems to enjoy it) but it fails when the female soldiers (who have been pretending to be male) don the same disguise and are stopped by the guards. Of course, they get around this just by having one of them lift her dress...
- In Moving Pictures, in order to enter a clicky theatre without being found out, the wizards of UU remove their hats and use some wire to make their beards look like cheap fake beards. It works surprisingly well; no one would assume a guy in fake beard and without the trademark hat would be a wizard.
- Though wizards occasionally have trouble letting go of the hat; in Sourcery, Conina suggests Rincewind could avoid getting lynched as a wizard simply by taking off his hat and not be a wizard at the moment. Rincewind has severe trouble wrapping his mind around the concept, particularly "not be a wizard".
- In The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, the wizards have to disguise the Librarian to hide him from some eighteenth-century Englishmen. A dress and a large hat is all it takes to convince them that he's a Spanish lady. The Librarian is an orang-utan.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Leia's childhood friend, Winter Celchu, was frequently mistaken for Leia, due to Leia's tomboyishness and Winter's more ladylike behavior. As they grew older and joined the Rebellion, they had the bright idea to put this to good use, with Winter occasionally going in disguise as Leia to protect her. Winter would later become a full-fledged Intelligence agent and put Wig Dress Accent to more use.
- In perhaps the oldest example, it is often said that Odysseus recruited Achilles for the Trojan War by seeing through this. Achilles's mother sent him off to Scyros and disguised him as a girl, hoping to prevent his fated death in battle. Odysseus brought a cart of stereotypically feminine items and a cart of weapons to Scyros. Guess which ones Achilles found more interesting.
- There's a rather clever use of disguise by the villain Thenardier at the end of Les Miserables. The narrator discusses how his disguise as the respectable "Thenard" was simply purchased from a shop which sells clothing to rogues to make them look respectable, and that his oufit belonged to a Statesman. What makes his disguise clever, is that it came with quill pens as an accessory. Thenadier sticks the pens up his nose, altering the shape of his nose and changing his voice tone, rendering him unrecognizable.
- Valjean inadvertantly disguises himself from Javert, simply by dressing well and being clean (reflecting his status as mayor), simply because Javert doesn't expect an escaped convict to be successful. Javert himself uses a disguise when he infiltrates the barricades and Eponine disguises herself as a boy for most of the end of the story.
- Used repeatedly by Harry Dickson and his pupil Tom in Jean Ray's novels, so succesfully that they even fool close friends like their cook or the police chief.
Live Action TV
- Alias does this an average of Once An Episode.
- In Arrested Development, Tobias dons a dress, wig, and accent in order to disguise himself as a nanny and spend time with his daughter while he and his wife are separating, a la Mrs Doubtfire. He doesn't fool anyone, especially since he can't get rid of his habit of accidentally saying homoerotic things, but everyone plays along so he can keep the house clean.
- In Young Blades, the Musketeer Jacques LePonte is actually a woman who merely wears a fake mustache, and sometimes not even that.
- Due South: In the second-season episode "Some Like It Red", Fraser goes undercover as a female teacher in an all-girls' Catholic school. Kudos to the makeup department for this one. Paul Gross, who played Fraser, manages to make a convincing woman (and walk normally in high heels) despite the fact that he's six feet tall and not even close to slender and willowy.
- Thats So Raven is supposed to be about a girl with psychic powers, but said psychic is such a "master of disguise" the show could just as well be about a girl with a knack for disguises. While this trope is used as ridiculously as possible, Raven still manages to be more convincing than plenty of serious/non-comedic examples.
- Roseanne as gone in drag a few times on her sitcom, once in the Halloween Episode as her costume, and in a Christmas Episode where she acts as Santa Claus at her mall (Jackie was the Missus). In both cases, one would think her ear-piercing voice would give away her gender, but she actually got past most people. In the Halloween episode, she even almost gets into a fight with a drunk bar patron and has to be rescued by Dan, who inexplicably plays gay while defending her.
- The Granada TV production of Sherlock Holmes mostly manages to avoid this trope; Holmes' disguises tend to be fairly convincing. Once in a while they go overboard: in "The Final Problem", Watson boards a train and sits down in his cabin opposite a man with an unrealistically long nose and a frizz of grey hair under an enormous hat, and doesn't realize it's Holmes until Holmes addresses him by name. When you get a good look at him in the moment before he takes off the disguise, you wonder how anyone could look at him and not think "that's a bloke in a costume".
- Reality TV example: In a season premiere of Hell's Kitchen, Ramsey wanted to see what the contestants were like before he met them. So he put on a wig and some shabbier clothes and was on the bus with the real contestants. Nobody caught on.
Theater
- In Der Rosenkavalier by R. Strauss, the protagonist (an adolescent male played by a woman) dresses as a maid, supposedly his country-bumpkin relative, and dons an appropriate accent to avoid a relative of the woman he's having an affair with. The Baron then makes passes at our hero. Hilarity Ensues, along with plot devices.
- In Anyone Can Whistle, Fay Apple dons a slinky dress, red wig, and puts on a french accent to become The Lady From Lourdes. While she intends to reveal the town's miracle is a fraud, she reveals to her love interest that this is also the only way she can get herself to relax and cut loose.
VideoGames
- As part of the plot of Final Fantasy VII, Cloud has to dress up like a girl. This is the logical extension.◊
- Anyone else strangely reminded of those Disney Princess pictures?
- In one chapter of Mother 3, Lucas and his dog Boney need to gain access into a nightclub. However, the club doesn't allow minors or pets, so Boney dons a t-shirt and hat and stands on his hind legs to look more like a person. They're still rejected, but the waitress lets them in anyway (incidentally, the waitress is also another party member in disguise; she just happens to be better at it.)
- Iroquois Pliskin in Metal Gear Solid 2 is so obviously Snake in a different uniform with his hair down that it's genuinely shocking when he turns out to be Snake in a different uniform with his hair down. Word Of God is that Hideo Kojima kept pressuring them to make the disguise more and more transparent, the idea being to take advantage of paranoid gamers expecting his twisty plots to be more twisty than they actually are.
Webcomics
- Order Of The Stick has Roy forced into a Gender Bender once. Roy is bald, and in his own words, "The lesson here is, if the magic item doesn't specifically SAY it grows hair, it probably doesn't." So he gets forced into a literal Wig Dress Accent, minus accent 'cause it's a webcomic.
- And then there's the time Vaarsuvius' raven familiar disguised himself to buy materials from a store where they'd been banned. Yes, the raven disguised himself. with a moustache.
- Red Mage in 8-bit Theater. He already has long hair and he needs no accent (once again, because it's a webcomic). He simply puts on a dress and is able to fool anyone not in the party. He also tends to wear it even when not trying to disguise himself, which greatly disturbs both Black Mage and Thief. ("Cross-CHECKING").
- Probably worth noting that it's actually Thief's fault - Red Mage cross-dresses so often because he has a complex that developed due to his father hating him for being a boy (he wanted a girl.) The twist? This didn't actually happen - Thief just fabricated those memories.
Western Animation
- The Alias example is sent up on Robot Chicken with "Whalias", substituting an orca for Sydney. The whale's disguises work just as well as hers usually do.
- On American Dad, Roger the Alien wears many Wig Dress Accent disguises, and they all fool everyone who isn't acquainted with the real Roger. Storywise, the disguises' function of hiding his alienhood is taken for granted, and what Roger really has fun with is creating a new fictitious identity for himself in each episode. If Roger were a believer in creating a stable identity for himself, nothing would stop him from using the same disguise whenever he meets someone outside the Smith family—but he prefers to go through an endless succession of identities. Of both genders.
- Played straight in Avatar The Last Airbender, Aang disguises himself as a old man with a mustache and hair made of fur from Appa the flying bison the first time Team Avatar goes to Omashu. He gets found out when it blows off.
- The reason this worked was because no one knew who he was or what the Avatar looked like. All they knew was that he was an airbender as evident when even without the disguise no one knew who he was until he accidentally airbended.
- How can this trope be complete without a mention of Sokka's infamous 'Mr. Wang Fire', which consists of a goofy, deeper voice, and a beard in order to pretend to be Aang's father? Sokka likes it so much, he occasionally uses it randomly after, like when trying to give psychiatric advice to Aang (which pretty much consists of Aang screaming into a sheepkoala).
- Subverted in the Gargoyles episode, "Turf," where Elisa Maza goes undercover to stop Tomas Brode, wearing only a change of clothes and a blonde wig. Although that getup is able to fool Brode, the moment Elisa's long time gangster enemy, Anthony Dracon, gets a good close concentrated look at Elisa, he recognizes her instantly and reveals to his enemy.
- Kim Possible wears a wig and dress to infiltrate a club in So The Drama, about the only she wore a disguise. It didn't fool Shego for a moment.
- Two words. Bugs Bunny.
- Brain from Inspector Gadget does this a lot. Penny rarely does this, but has at least once; she likely gets points from Brain. No-one ever sees through the disguises. Brain, by the way, is a dog. Not a talking dog like Scooby, either.
- Pinky And The Brain find themselves, as lab mice, trying to disguise themselves during their plots and plans. (A minor Running Gag to some fans is that Pinky's outfits aren't meant for male mice.)
- The entire gag for the Chicken Boo shorts on Animaniacs. A giant chicken in nothing more than a wig/hat//suit/mustache. Everyone falls for it. Well, all except one person, who everyone regards as insane.
Real Life
- In Star Trek, the wife of Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barret, was in the first pilot episode as the female first officer. When that character was discarded for the actual show, she bleached her hair blonde and cut it short. It was specifically an attempt to get back in the show without the executives catching on. Even her husband didn't recognize her at first. She was recast in the smaller role of Nurse Chapel.
- Stephen Colbert waxed his chest, put on a wig and posed for this◊ photo as Raven, the stripper from Wigfield, who he voices on the audiobook.
- This troper now must rethink his attraction to The Colbert Report.
- This man, who ripped-off Social Security by disguising as his dead mother with a wig, a pair of glasses, a walking cane and heavy makeup. It definitely worked, because he managed to pocket $115,000 in welfare checks before Social Security found out.
- In a case of Wig Dress Foreign Language, one Allied prisoner broke out of a German prison camp in World War II by making a fake copy of a German uniform and simply walking out the front door.
- This was actually extremely common, especially in camps like Colditz Castle where conventional tunnels and wire-cutting were more difficult to pull off. The Colditz Dutch contingent were the acknowledged masters of the technique and they got so good at it that one attempted escape plan was for a prisoner with a strong resemblence to impersonate the camp warrant officer, relieve the guards on a side gate and replace them with other disguised prisoners, to be followed by the entire camp slipping out and down the road. It almost worked, only failing because the last guard got chatty and the real NCO came out to reprimand him for socialising on duty.
- Sasha Baron Cohen is famous for dressing up for his various alter egos (Borat, Bruno, Ali G, etc).
<<||>>
Manga: Happens quite often in Osamu Tezuka's works. In one comic, the protagaonist disguises himself as a suprisinigly attractive maiden to get himself closer and kill the rival king.
|
|
