Paper Thin Disguise / Video Games

"Seems trustworthy enough."

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• The Adventures of Robin Hood: Putting on a monk's robe fools guards every time — even when they see you doing it.
• Another Code: This is justified; The main antagonist, Bill, doesn't make any attempt to disguise himself when impersonating Ashley's father, Richard, since he knows that she was never told or shown what her father looks like. Indeed, while Ashley does admit to D that things felt a bit weird after talking to her "dad" for the first time, she passes off this uncertainty as her still trying to process that she actually has a living parent.
• In Arcana Heart, one of the characters, Kamui Tokonomiya, who is a thousand-something years old, and protector of Earth, is spotted by one of the other characters and it is immediately made known who she is. Her response? "But, my disguise was foolproof. I tied my hair back!". Add to the fact that she certainly STANDS OUT for carrying a katana everywhere...
• In Assassin's Creed, all Altaïr needs to do to become a monk is to start praying. Guards will completely ignore him, including the multiple swords on his body, dozens of knives, metal gauntlets, assassin sash, etc.
• In Aviary Attorney Jayjay and Sparrowson are instantly suspicious finding that Judge Romulus is posing as an earnest Manifesto-Making Malcontent. His clothes and attitude are the only change. Also, in 4B (Égalité) the King of France is exiled and tries a disguise which is expected to not last long enough for him to go down the street. That one of course is probably Double Subverted, since at least historically speaking, he did make it out of the country, and some of that history seems to be followed here.
• Lampshaded in Banjo-Tooie, when Banjo turns himself into a Stony in order to enter a kickball stadium (he still retains his backpack, his shorts, and the shape of his face). It seemed like he was foiled when the officer recognises him, but he is let in anyway as the participating players were running short.
• In Barbarous: Tavern of Emyr Lyselle disguises Emyr and O'rho as orcs so they can infiltrate an orcish camp and rescue Gwen. These "disguises" consist of fake ears, green gloves and a splash or two of body paint.
• In Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Balthios puts on a veil and becomes the Ultimate Hellbane. His speech avatar is identical except darker everywhere but his eyes. His battle sprite doesn't even change, and the battle interface refers to him as "Balthios". This is an unusual example: the disguise works on the PCs, but the first-time player hasn't met Balthios yet and so has no idea who UH is even supposed to be!
• Batman: Vengeance has Bruce Wayne infiltrate the Funnibones warehouse in what has to be the worst gangster disguise in history. Notably, the Joker's thugs aren't fooled; neither are his fire-breathing jack-in-the-boxes. It's rather odd, considering Batman is famously a master of disguise.
• In BROK the InvestiGator, Brok has to meet the Gloom, but his bodyguard, R.J., won't let him enter. You have the option to disguise Brok as an elephant using a pipe, broken wings from a statue, and some string. Because R.J. is R.J., he'll let Brok enter. Because the Gloom is not R.J., he sees through Brok's disguise in a matter of seconds and fires R.J. for being fooled so easily.
• Bug Fables:
  • The bartender of the Ant Kingdom's Underground Tavern is Doppel, a ladybug who disguises himself as a rhino beetle to bypass through the Ant Kingdom's ladybug ban. His disguise is simply him strapping a fake horn to his head and folding his antennae back. Leif immediately sees through his disguise, but not Kabbu, who insists that "this Doppel sir is a fine beetle".
  • Several enemies can ambush the team by taking various disguises. They range from fairly convincing (Wardens disguising as roach statue heads) to mildly suspicious (Cactilings and Plumplings disguising themselves as consistently small cacti and pumpkins, respectively) or obviously fake (Leafbug Ninjas disguising as foliage that doesn't match any in-game foliage, Mimic Spiders disguising as clearly fake-looking ants and Jellyshrooms or Bloatshrooms disguising as glowing mushrooms without a glow). Though Vi and Kabbu fall for said disguises easily, Leif is never convinced, and he even expresses disappointment that Vi and Kabbu are convinced by such obvious disguises.
  • On the same boat, Mantidflies mimick the wasps' appearance, prompting Vi and Kabbu to mistake them for Wasp Scouts (with Leif expressing disappointment at them falling for said disguise). However, it's very easy to tell that they aren't wasps by the fact that their heads are brown (a trait that does not match any wasp in game), their hands are replaced with claws, their anatomy is much more mantis-like, and they lack stingers.
  • One of the quests Team Snakemouth can take is a quest to return Zasp his Mothiva Doll. During the quest, he disguises himself with a hood and a coat, but his antennae, visible mouth area, legs and abdomen with a stinger easily give away his identity. Vi and Kabbu do notice something familiar about him, but Leif can easily tell it's Zasp, and even snarks to him to not trip on the way to Mothiva's concert (aware that he went there).
  • A Burglar will be resting by Stream Mountain in-between Chapter 3 and beating the Thief Hideout. He recognizes the team on sight and tries to pass himself off as a regular Ladybug citizen. The only thing setting him apart from the enemy Burglars is his lack of a hood with the thief symbol on it, but Vi and Kabbu fail to recognize that he's part of the criminal group in the Lost Sands — specifically, he's the same one that attacks the caravan in Chapter 3. Leif knows and says to himself in disbelief that Vi and Kabbu can't tell.
• The Bunny Graveyard has Boxers, a rabbit who runs a boxing ring that disallows rabbits and wears a cardboard box in order to hide his species. It's incredibly easy to see through his disguise, considering his box doesn't cover his ears. Subverted, in that the disguise is to hide the fact that he's a demon and to keep the Handy Pals comfortable around him. As for the ban of rabbits, the only other rabbit around is the abusive "Skye".
• In Cave Story, you wear a Mimiga Mask to make other Mimigas talk to you when they wouldn't talk to you before.
• In City of Heroes, Mender Silos, the leader of the Menders of Ouroboros, has the exact same hairstyle as Nemesis. To their credit, between that, the Significant Anagram, and the fact that most players would assume there's a connection between Ouroboros and Nemesis anyway, the developers know they're not fooling anyone.
• The Darkside Detective:
  • While investigating a situation where a train mysteriously switched places with its Dark World counterpart, leaving two train loads of commuters trapped in the wrong world, McQueen improvises an implausible disguise (featuring a fake beard fashioned out of mould) to impersonate his Darkside counterpart and get into a restricted area. Played with. McScream's superior sees through the disguise immediately, but gives McQueen points for initiative and decides to co-operate with McQueen's investigation because he's showing more signs of being capable of solving the case than McScream is.
  • An enormous, green, non-humanoid monster apparently successfully disguises itself as a human with nothing but a wig. (Then again, the only person it needs to fool is Dooley, who is not noted for his keen observational skills.)
• Day of the Tentacle: Laverne disguises herself as a tentacle with an outfit of the wrong color that leaves her head, arms and feet visible. None of the tentacles see through it, and a couple of them are attracted to her.
• One of the Fat Officials in Demon's Souls drops his hat, which you can then wear. It's enough to convince other Fat Officials that you're one of them. It also fools the prisoner that one of them is guarding — even if you take it off and put it back on in front of her.
• Inverted in Devil May Cry 4 where both Dante and Sanctus immediately recognize who Gloria/Trish is. Sanctus even mutters, "Oh, it's you, Gloria" to Trish when they weren't in disguise anymore. Yet Trish and Gloria look nothing alike, so the fans couldn't tell who Gloria is until The Reveal.
• Digital Devil Saga has a moment where Argilla disguises herself as Sera, simply by putting on a wig and her outfit. Anyone would be able to tell it's Argilla from close up (as Cielo points out), but it's justified in that the situation the Embryon are in only needs for the disguise to work from a distance.
• In Etna Mode in the 2 remakes of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Enta manages to convince many people that Laharl is still alive by attaching a pair of antenna to a Prinnie that resembles Laharl's Expressive Hair. Vyers/Mid-Boss is one of the few people it does not fool. Given who he is, this makes sense.
• In Divinity: Original Sin II, undead characters such as Fane are likely to be attacked on sight by most NPCs unless wearing a disguise. However, the game's definition of "disguise" is "any outfit that fills all the clothing slots", even if the specific clothing items leave plenty of bone exposed. Lampshaded if a PC confesses their undead nature to the Red Prince, who asks if they really expected him to be fooled by a few bandages.
• In Donkey Kong Country, King K. Rool seems to make a habit of this. Subverted in that he fools no one (except, oddly, whoever it was who wrote his trophy description in Super Smash Bros. Brawl), and there isn't even any real indication that he's trying to fool anyone. Apparently, he just likes dressing up in strange costumes and changing his title.
• The 1994 PC game Eagle Eye Mysteries in London has a mystery called "Case of Blood's Bold Bauble," where the protagonists have to get information from an obstructive hotel desk clerk. Your partner borrows another character's glasses and puts them on you, then pretends that you're the star of a new TV show and he/she is your agent. The kicker: the glasses is the only thing your (unseen by you) character's avatar wears in the way of a disguise, your partner doesn't even attempt to disguise him/herself, both of you are children (which means your partner shouldn't be old enough to be a TV actor's agent), the clerk will have presumably met you before (if you're playing the mysteries in the order they're presented), and the clerk still falls for it.
• In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion a single mask is the Gray Fox's only disguise, with no change in clothing or voice. Of course, the mask was Blessed with Suck by a godlike being, and in fantasy setting "A Wizard Did It" is justified.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: For your first quest for House Hlaalu, you're handed the helmet of a recently deceased Redoran soldier and told to steal some coded orders from Ald'ruhn by impersonating them. There are a couple of Contrived Coincidences at work that make this disguise at all plausible (The particular soldier you're impersonating was known for wearing said helmet at all times to conceal a hideous battle scar, and you just so happen to sound exactly like them anyway), but in practice, you can walk through Ald'ruhn stark naked and, as long as you're wearing the helmet, the Redorans will be none the wiser even if you are obviously not a Dunmer. This mission, and the absurdity of this disguise, are referenced with the Legends card "Imposter's Mission". The card spawns a tubby Orc "Imposter" who can't even wear the helm properly because of how thick his head is (though humorously, the Imposter's race is still listed as "Dark Elf").
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • In the Thalmor Embassy mission, it is possible to steal some hooded Thalmor robes and impersonate a Thalmor officer. If you are playing as a Khajiit or Argonian then the disguise does not work at all because your tail sticks out under the robe. The Thalmor are supremacists who continually underestimate humans and the Dragonborn, but they aren't that stupid (well, most aren't, see below).
  • Captain Valmir is a Thalmor agent posing as an Imperial or a Stormcloak soldier. The latter are especially egregious since he's an Altmer and the Stormcloaks are all xenophobic Nords intolerant towards all races but especially elves. It gets especially funny if you read the orders on his body, as his commanding officer who presumably came up with the ploy says that nobody in Skyrim could possibly be clever enough to see through the disguise. Even more hilariously, if you use a mod to adjust character heights by race to be more lore-friendly (an example◊), it is likely that Valmir towers over his Imperial "colleagues" and sticks out like a sore thumb.
• Elite Beat Agents has "Mr. X", who is nothing more than Commander Khan wearing a cat mask. He doesn't even change the rest of his outfit, he just puts on a cat mask.
• In Fallout 2 Goris, an intelligent talking Deathclaw companion for the player character would wear a brown robe to cover his appearance when not fighting. Absolutely nobody seems suspicious of the giant lumbering figure completely covered in brown cloth even though he's easily twice the size of any human.
• Fallout 3:
  • Averted; it is impossible to disguise yourself. Your character is instantly recognizable, even dressed like this◊. Perhaps the wiki puts it best:
    They are immediately hostile towards the PC, because he/she is American. (And that goes even for Asian-American characters wearing Chinese Army paraphernalia...)
  • If you walk up to the Outcast base in the DLC Operation Anchorage expansion wearing Outcast armor, you can fool them...for a few lines of dialog. It is a military organization, after all. On the other hand, if you walk up the Outcast base to trade high tech stuff with them while wearing their armor, you not only don't fool them, they will immediately take your armor without payment. (As they conclude that, at best, you stole it from a dead Outcast soldier, if you didn't kill them yourself.)
  • Although it is ridiculously easy to fool the guards at the gates of Fallout 3's 'The Pitt'', just put on a slave outfit, they don't notice your wrist mounted computer or get suspicious about all your carried equipment.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Putting on a faction's armor will automatically reset your reputation with them to Neutral so that if they're hostile to you they won't shoot you on sight so long as you have that on. This even works for things like Caesar's unique outfit, which can only be gained by either killing him or reverse-pickpocketing something with a better Damage Threshold. As usual, no one asks about your Pip-Boy, even if you're disguised as a member of the tech-hating Caesar's Legion. However, even putting on that disguise can make certain factions hostile to you, like the NCR while you wear a Legion uniform. Also, guards tend to see through the disguise and attack.
  • If Benny is allowed to escape Vegas, he infiltrates Caesar's Legion in an attempt to enact stage two of his plan and disguises himself as a legionary but gets caught because his fancy haircut made him stand out.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Amakusa's hidden identity as "Santa Island Mask" consists of him borrowing Mozart's mask and affecting a Tuxedo Mask persona. It does fool Jeanne Lily, but that's more because she's a very small child. Emiya also tries out the disguise, which fails to fool anybody.
  • Mash during the Camelot arc at one point goes undercover in a group of refugees through the old-fashioned "toss a cloak over your usual outfit" route. This does not disguise the fact that she is about fifteen shades paler than the Middle Eastern refugees, nor the fact that she is wearing ornate black-and-purple armor.
  • Nitocris decides to disguise herself as the obscure god Medjed in her Assassin persona, which, considering Medjed's look, basically amounts to a Bedsheet Ghost. Considering she still has a pair of jackal ears poking out of the top, leaves her legs uncovered, and is heavily associated with Medjed to begin with, the first response is generally less "who is this mysterious figure" and more "hey, Nito, why are you wearing that?" Despite this, she's convinced it's a perfect disguise and refuses to let people look under the sheet for fear of revealing her true identity.
  • In the "Christmas in the Underworld" event, Altera dresses up in a Santa outfit and claims to be Santa himself and not Altera. Keep in mind that Altera is a skinny young woman with brown skin and red eyes, and the outfit in question is a Sexy Santa Dress that leaves almost nothing to the imagination. Whenever pressed about it, she merely indicates her fake mustache, which she tends to only wear when people ask if she's really Santa. This is likely a Call-Back to "All the Statesmen", where she tried to pass herself off as, among other people, Wyatt Earp, despite not bothering with a disguise at all. Her companion Billy merely noted that the devs didn't allocate enough money for the event to make a Wyatt Earp portrait and animations, so you should probably just ignore it and move on.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VI has King Edgar Figaro, a character who, after an event in the game in which the entire party scatters, can be found again in his old hometown, pretending not to recognize you, and claims to be named Gerad — despite that it's an obvious anagram of his real name, the way he addresses Celes, and his in-game sprite only differing by hair and clothing color. Celes at least picked up on it fairly quickly, but Edgar kept pushing Celes away in order to keep her (and Sabin if he was there too) from blowing his cover — he had a good reason to dress up.
    Celes: Why the stupid farce?
    Edgar: I heard Figaro Castle got stuck after the Floating Continent fell. I wanted to help, but I didn't know where to look. Then I heard that those crooks had escaped from the jail.
    Celes: You intended to use them...
    Edgar: Bingo! I had to wait until they led me to their secret cave.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud and co. disguise themselves as Shinra soldiers and sailors in order to get aboard a Shinra vessel. The humans pull off the disguise rather well, but it's hard to believe Red XIII, the not-terribly-anthropomorphic dog/wolf creature, managed to fool anyone...especially considering his tail was poking through the top of his pants and he was struggling to walk on two legs.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, the Mimic line of monsters disguise themselves as treasures (which resemble pots with four long legs). They get the shape right, but their colors are different from actual treasures, something most noticeable with the very distinctive Pandora. Some are also larger than actual treasures.
  • Subverted in the Chocobo spinoffs of Final Fantasy. Mog wears an assortment of masks, disguising himself and giving himself a name like "Pop-Up Hero X", but thanks to his predictable use of "kupo", Chocobo eventually sees through him. In Choboco Tales, Shirma: "You're not fooling anyone except yourself."
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, the mysterious, highly-skilled, blonde-haired masked knight who's defensive of the Grustian royal family, Sirius, shows up some years after the highly-skilled blonde-haired Grustian knight Camus apparently fell in battle. He claims to be just a traveler, but it's implied that everyone who knew Camus well either knows or suspects that they're the same person.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, the player's army sneaks into Bern. The three lords don ragged brown cloaks without hoods. This is somewhat effective with Hector and Lyn, but Eliwood never bothers to take off his highly visible crown.
  • Subverted in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, in that both the protagonists disguise themselves as mercenaries. Also, their cover is never blown save for one random villager mentioning that one of them "carried himself in a royal manner".
  • However, it is double-subverted when one of your team members, reveals himself as long-lost, self-exiled prince Joshua. It's kept very well-concealed due to the fact that a fair amount of people from his country look similar (more so than most of the others), and also to the fact that he's a gambling addict who possesses no qualms about cheating on every game of chance he participates in and STILL manages to lose due to his famously low luck stats. The only hints we get of any noble nature whatsoever is his reluctance to kill pretty women, which can be attributed to his womanizing nature anyway.
  • Devdan/Danved in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has a disguise that's beyond paper thin. His constant denial is absolutely the only evidence that the two are not the same.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates:
    • Azura at one point dons an outfit that is completely identical to her normal outfit save for being black and having a transparent veil covering the lower half of her face. Absolutely nobody recognizes her. Even when she starts dancing and singing "Lost in Thoughts All Alone", everyone just wonders who this mysterious woman they've never seen before could possibly be.
    • Also from Fates, we have "Odin", "Laslow", and "Selena", who are fooling no one but themselves.^ExplanationIn case you can't tell simply by taking one passing glance at them, they are actually Owain, Inigo, and Severa from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Why they are disguised, considering that they're in a completely different world where no one has ever heard of them or their deeds, is unclear.
• In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, one item you have to defend yourself with is a helmet shaped like Freddy's head. It's not a very good disguise, but if you manage to put it on in time when an animatronic enters the office, most of them will think you're one of them and leave you alone. It won't fool Foxy, however.
• In Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, the disguise Freddy uses in the last act consists of a change of clothes, a neckerchief (which is actually worn around the neck), and a silver ear. Nobody realizes that the man with the silver ear is actually the one-eared pharmacist, up until the Big Bad captures him and removes the fake ear.
• Subverted in Full Throttle. The villain hosts a demolition derby as a ploy to lure out and kill protagonists Ben and Maureen. Ben and Maureen enter the derby in disguises deliberately made to fool everyone except the villain, all as part of a Batman Gambit to fake their own deaths while keeping their true identities hidden from the derby's spectators. The villain even lampshades upon seeing them, "Who do they think they're fooling with those ludicrous disguises?"
• In Fur Fighters, the Bear Disguise, which is just a cardboard box with a bear's head drawn in different angles on the sides. It works because the bears are Dumb Muscle.
• In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, two of the main antagonists show up in an early dungeon. One is a green-haired Blood Knight called Blados. The other is a bishonen guy with long blue hair, whom Kraden seems to know from thirty years ago, at the time of the first two games, in which one of the villains was a bishonen guy with long blue hair. But this can't be the same guy, he's wearing a mask!... that covers less than half his face. Justified, as the player characters have never met that man and those who'd even heard of him heard he'd died at the end of The Lost Age thirty years before (and well before most of them were born). Only Kraden, who does recognize him, knows what he looks like and that his death was never confirmed.
• In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, cops will lose track of you if you go into your house in front of their very eyes, put on a pair of joke glasses (y'know, thick frames, bushy eyebrows and a huge nose) and walk out the front door, waving to them.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the cops will lose track of you if you go into your house in front of their very eyes, put on a "clean" version of the same outfit you were wearing when you walked in and walk out the front door, as long as you don't have more than two wanted stars.
  • Not to mention that in every game from GTA3 onward, you can drive almost any vehicle into a Pay-n-Spray in full view of the fuzz and be completely ignored when you drive out in the exact same vehicle. There are a few exceptions (buses, police cars, etc) which the Pay-n-Spray employees will refuse to touch, probably because they only come in the one color scheme. Although amusingly, they will accept any taxi, even though they all have only one color scheme (usually yellow). This is especially prominent in the Vice City bank heist mission "The Job", where the mandatory getaway vehicle is a taxi, you have an automatic 4-Star wanted level (meaning SWAT teams), the Pay-n-Spray is literally down the street from the bank, and you don't even have to be out of the police's line of sight to use it.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV averts this trope while maintaining the game mechanic. You can escape the Police if you switch vehicles out of sight, though if they see you through the window, they'll recognize you and continue pursuit. Less realistically, you can still use the Pay-n-Spray to lose the cops, if they don't see you go in.
• Guilty Gear: Faust from the second game in the series onwards is very clearly just Doctor Baldhead from the first game wearing new clothes and a paper bag on his head, mostly on account of them both being nine feet tall and fighting with a gigantic scalpel.
• In Hearts of Iron 4, Germany can descend into civil war over the Rhineland issue. If this happens, and Hitler is found “dead”, there are several things that can happen, all invoking this trope;
  • After the German Civil War ends, there’s a 1/200 chance that the fascist party of Argentina gains a new leader with the name of “Señor Hilter”, who looks just like the late Nazi leader, just without his iconic moustache, wearing sunglasses and a fedora.
  • There’s another 1/200 chance that he instead escapes to the US. If the US descends into a civil war too, in the case of a militarist / fascist victory, among the presidential candidates will be one “Adam Hilt”, owner of Hilt & Partner Architecture Firm. His disguise is even flimsier this time, with the only difference being the lack of a moustache. The event to choose the new president even mentions “Mr. Hilt” having a pronounced German accent.
  • If one has the DLC “La Resistance”, which adds spy agencies into the game, they may get an event to acquire one of two German spies a few years after the German Civil War’s conclusion; Andrea Hund and Achim Hund. “Achim” is Hitler with a trenchcoat, fedora, monocle and a bushier moustache. “Andrea” is Hitler wearing a women’s outfit and glasses, with longer and gray-dyed hair, and his moustache shaved off. It’s a little bit better than his previous attempts, though still fairly obvious.
• Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue: While Spiderweb, the assassins, and the dark-aligned mages use polymorph magic to infiltrate the Cerulean Land, Sanguine just swaps out her witch's brooch for a cat brooch while changing no other part of her outfit, such as her skull-adorned staff. Somehow, no one in the castle suspects a thing.
• Hitman:
  • Played straight in every game of the classic series, where 47 can get away with some rather ridiculous disguises (Six foot white guy dressed as a Chinese triad member, for example). However, this is averted on harder difficulty settings where most "disguises" won't be all that effective, even against mooks.
  • Still applies but given more nuance in the World of Assassination Trilogy. Disguises will work on most under the Hand Wave "people see uniforms more than faces", but specific "enforcers" will see through them. The example given is a mechanic crew chief, who knows his workers and will see through the mechanic disguise.
• Hiveswap: Joey's troll disguise consists of one of Dammek's hoodies and some fake horns, but she doesn't do anything to make her skin grey. The other trolls don't get suspicious and think it's just due to her being ill. Except for Remele, who posts on her Chittr that she knows Joey is a badly-disguised alien.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1:
  • When Noire, Vert and Blanc leave their respective realms, they all disguise themselves with nothing more than a pair of spectacles. Despite their highly distinctive outfits, this actually works. They even manage to fool each other, bearing in mind that they've been fighting each other for decades and should be able to recognize each other at a glance, glasses or no glasses. It is, however, subverted when the party first visits Lowee, and the fake Blanc sees through Vert's disguise immediately, having been expecting them. Neptune then notes that Vert has certain other characteristics (her boobs) that give her away.
  • Noire manages to fool Chian that she is actually cosplaying as "Noire" and then she adds the glasses to convince other people that she is just a cosplayer.
• The Jackbox Party Pack: In "Roomerang" from Party Pack 9, if a player gets eliminated from the game they'll lose a few points, but come back for the next round with a new accessory for their avatar (like a hat, sunglasses, or a fake mustache), a slightly altered name, and a new character quirk.
• The King of Fighters:
  • The King of Fighters XIV has a humorous example with the new character King of Dinosaurs...or rather Tizoc/Griffon Mask from Garou: Mark of the Wolves wearing a dinosaur costume and trying to play a Heel. Obviously he's not very good at it: his official character profile is mostly the same, he has most of the same moves (but with less heroic-sounding names), and will occasionally slip into his trademark For Great Justice speeches before catching himself. Pretty much everybody who knows Tizoc sees right through the disguise (Terry Bogard strikes up a friendly conversation with him and he goes along with it before realizing and trying to cover himself), and even those who don't can tell that he's trying very hard to be something he isn't.
  • The King of Fighters XV: Meet Krohnen. Blue grown-out hair, yellow biker jacket, red scarf, goggles. Totally not formerly Exiled from Continuity Captain Ersatz of Tetsuo Shima, K9999. His teammate Ángel obviously sees right through it and outright calls him by his assigned name. Justified by in-universe pressure from NESTS agents out to kill him for going AWOL on them, and out-universe potential for a lawsuit by Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of AKIRA.
• The "Definitely Not Blitzcrank" skin in League of Legends. It's Blitzcrank with Groucho glasses and in a suit. The splash art even shows the silhouette of someone who's clearly stunned at the sight. There are other champs who have the same skin theme like Vel'koz, an eldritch tentacle monster with the Groucho glasses, and Udyr, who wears cute-looking pajama onesies based on the forms he transforms into.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • In Cold Steel III, to avoid gaining attention while visiting Crossbell, Rean hides himself as the Ashen Chevalier by simply wearing glasses.
  • In Cold Steel II, Machias conceals himself in rebel-held territory by taking his glasses off. The only people who fail to recognize him as the son of a recently overthrown government official are the local guard detachment. It helps that none of the locals actually like the guards, and therefore have no reason to rat him out.
• In the final chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, Rufus disguises himself just by wearing a pair of sunglasses, reasoning that walking around with a mask on would just invite unwanted attention.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, some of the characters fall for this when you wear masks from the Happy Mask shop, even though the masks only cover your face. The Gorons, for example, will assume you're a very short Goron who doesn't eat enough. Subverted in a number of cases, though — the Gerudo think you're making fun of them, get pissed off, and tell you to go away.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask:
    • The nighttime black market is run by the same person who runs the regular daytime market... in the same building. His "disguise" is a pair of sunglasses and taking off his wig.
    • A few of the non-transformative masks (namely Don Gero's Mask, the Captain's Hat, and the Gibdo Mask), will make certain people and/or monsters believe you are someone or something else.
    • A subversion happens if you put on the Captain's Hat in your fight with the undead King Ikana. He is briefly struck speechless at the sight of Captain Keeta...but he realizes the somewhat major size difference between Link and Keeta.
    • Kafei runs around Clock Town wearing nothing but a Keaton mask to hide his identity. In-universe it's justified because the Skull Kid turned him into a child and everyone who's searching for him is looking for an adult, but the player will likely not be fooled since they were given a mask modeled after him and his own mask fails to hide his distinctive hair. It's entirely possible to figure out who he is just by passing him on the street, but you can't call him out on it or tell anyone until you reach his Dramatic Unmask.
    • The Stone Mask, which looks like a weird stone face, apparently makes most people and monsters consider you to be as "inconspicuous as a stone". Interestingly, you can't see the NPC who gives it to you without using the Lens of Truth.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the traveling merchant Beedle apparently runs some sort of black market near one of the islands. His only disguise is a helmet. When you enter he immediately greets you as "Person who I have NEVER seen before."
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Cole's disguise consists of wearing two top hats to cover his horns. He doesn't even bother disguising his Black Eyes of Evil or trying to behave convincingly. It still fools everyone.
  • Breath of the Wild:
    • You can buy homemade monster disguise masks from a special merchant obsessed with monsters. They mostly look like button-eyed sockpuppets, but they're still enough to fool members of the species that each mask matches. The only exception to this rule are Lynels: whereas the other species are fooled by their respective masks until attacked or weeded out by another species, Lynels will only be fooled by their mask for a minute and see through it as soon as you do anything funny.
    • It's zig-zagged with the Vai Clothing, which is necessary to enter Gerudo Town. The Gerudo are an all-female, or "vai," race that do not allow men ("voe") into their town (though it's not that they hate men — they freely interact with them outside the village). To enter, Link must disguise himself as a vai using a veil, short tunic (which exposes his masculine arms and stomach), and harem pants. Some Gerudo, including the tribe's leader and an elderly woman, immediately see through the ruse, but accept the disguise as necessary due to the town's laws. Others seem somewhat suspicious of the outfit ("What a funny vai you are"), but let it go. It helps that Link is a Hylian, and there aren't many of those in the scalding Gerudo Desert, so it's easy to pass off his odd appearance as a regionalism. However, while it does trick most of the locals into believing Link is a vai, nobody is fooled into thinking Link is a Gerudo (and, yes, you can try to tell a few NPCs that you are.) Even the person who gave you the disguise (who comes a lot closer to looking like a Gerudo than Link does) was unable to convince anyone of being a Gerudo rather than a Hylian.
• LEGO Adaptation Game:
  • In LEGO Star Wars, one available extra is Disguise, which puts a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and stache on all playable characters. Yes, even the women. Hell, even the vehicles.
  • Stormtrooper disguises in LEGO Star Wars 2. Just the helmet. This looks frankly ludicrous when it's Chewbacca wearing one, because he can't fit it over his head, so it just sits off-kilter like a fez. It still fools everyone. The really ironic part is that in freeform mode, you can play as a fully uniformed Stormtrooper, but all the other Stormtroopers will immediately know that you're not on their side.
  • Also in LEGO Indiana Jones. It involves stealing a Nazi hat or a turban.
  • In LEGO The Lord of the Rings, Eowyn briefly wears a false mustache. There's also Frodo's Elven Cloak and the Mithril Camouflage Tome, which disguise you as pieces of scenery. What's paper-thin about that is that you can move while disguised and it works. Nobody wonders why that crate is moving by itself.
• Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places): Flat-out subverted. You need a perfect disguise at the beach to fool the KGB there. If not, they will mock you as they capture you ("Only in Russia do women wear leisure suits to the beach!", etc.). And even then, it doesn't work once you reach the airport — the guards there think you are a cross-dresser and let's just say that YOU ARE DEAD.
• Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth subverts this with Kiryu, who is Faking the Dead after the events of Yakuza 6. In the former game, his disguise is a black suit and sunglasses; while the latter game gives him in understated black button-up shirt and his hair grown out and noticeably greyer. However, a significant number of people with ties to the Japanese criminal underworld quickly peg him as Kiryu, particularly once he starts throwing down.
• Subverted in Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete. One of the five heroes of the game is Leo, a Knight Templar who eventually does a Heel–Face Turn. At a point in the game before he joins you permanently, the goddess he serves throws your party in jail. A masked man named Mystere (who looks exactly like Leo-plus-domino-mask and uses the same attacks) frees the party, denies any connection, and chews the scenery a bit. Later, Mystere vanishes and Leo returns. No one's fooled, though they keep up the illusion for Leo's sake. Another character speculates that Mystere is how Leo rebels against the elements of his job as Knight Templar which offend his sense of justice.
• Madagascar: At one point in Penguin Mutiny, Skipper can hide under a cardboard box to walk by the sailors without them noticing him. Even if he walks while under the cardboard box in the sailors' plain sight, they will somehow never notice him.
• In the Black Heaven arc of MapleStory, a few NPCs comment that Resistance leader Claudine's disguise really doesn't conceal her identity well. Of course, most rank-and-file members of the oppressive Black Wings that know who she is as a civilian can't see the forest for the trees.
• In Mary Le Chef: Cooking Passion Jennifer brings Mary's parents to a party at the restaurant where Mary's been secretly moonlighting. When Mary spots them she ducks out only to reappear wearing a bandana, glasses and fake mustache. While her parents somehow fail to recognize her, it's obvious that Jennifer knows exactly who she is.
• In the Medal of Honor series, someone always eventually sees through your disguise. For example, in Frontline, the guard at the entrance to the manor house says "You're not Friedrich! That uniform is wrong. You're an impostor!" Later, at the train station, you steal an officer's uniform, then the officer finds out and comes after you in his underwear. "Hey! That man stole my pants!"
• Double Subversion in the Medieval Cop spin-off Medieval Chronicles 7. Detective Dregg finds a wig and dons it to pass the guarded entrance to woman toilet. While this disguise is extremely crude, the guard is long-sighted, and therefore is not able to see Dregg's face, only the long-haired silhouette. This subversion of the trope is then double subverted when the guard comments that he can distinguish a woman from a long-haired man by voice, something that he has clearly failed in.
• Occurs twice in MediEvil 2: In the Whitechapel level, Dan needs to find a suit and fake beard so he can gain access to a nightclub, and in the second sewer level, he regains the trust of the Mullock clan by wearing the same mask as the clan shaman (despite being at least twice as tall as him).
• Mega Man (Classic)
  • In Mega Man 6 for the NES, a mysterious contest promoter known as Mr. X appears to be the villain of the piece...unfortunately he bears a staggering resemblance to the regular game Big Bad Dr. Wily, except he has sunglasses, a beard, and a dot on his forehead. Capcom had tried this in the last two games, with 4 having the Russian scientist Dr. Cossack as the villain until it is revealed Dr. Wily was simply blackmailing him with his daughter. 5 claimed Mega Man's brother Proto Man was the villain, but he was simply a robotic impostor called Dark Man built by — you guessed it — Dr. Wily. With this flimsy Mr. X disguise, Capcom were clearly not even trying anymore. Even Inafune lampshades it:
    "You know who this is, right? Yeah, I didn't do any of the design."
  • The mysterious ??? guy who manages Proto Man's shop in Mega Man 10 looks surprisingly similar to Auto with a Met helmet. With his cat sleeping on the counter. Yeah.
  • Charge Man in Mega Man 5 was reportedly designed by Wily to do resource shipments, with his design allowing him to camouflage as a regular train. Charge Man is no larger than a normal human, his design is clearly a humanoid figure wearing train parts, and unlike Turbo Man, he doesn't seem to have any kind of transformation ability. To add insult to injury, he's clearly meant to be a steam-powered locomotive, so presumably the future year of 200X is still employing a form of transport outdated in the 50s. A tongue-in-cheek theory is that Wily is just one of those people who's really into trains.
• Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar: During the game, Mega Man loses control over his inner Cybeast and goes berserk. Then when everything seems lost, a Netnavi appears out of nowhere and slashes Mega Man, so he is knocked out. This Netnavi is covered in a dark cape and hood so you can't see his face but you can see his arm, and it's a pink/purple sword arm. Any fan of the series would easily recognize that as Protoman.EXE, but Lan is such a Idiot Hero he has absolutely no idea who that is, despite fighting against him so many times.. The worst part is that Chaud had a good disguise (but becomes useless when you see Protoman).
• In Mercenaries, getting into the vehicle of a specific faction while you're not being observed will disguise you as that faction as long as you don't honk the horn or fire a weapon. Reasonable, if you're driving an APC or tank, but when you get on a civilian moped and drive past a group of enemies who are completely oblivious to the fact that you're a tattooed Swedish mercenary with a Mohawk instead one of the native Venezuelans, you can tell that this trope is in full force.
• Metal Gear Solid: "What's that? Huh, it's just a box."
  • Also, Liquid's disguise as Master Miller in MGS1 consisted of little more than putting his hair up, putting on some sunglasses, and changing his accent. He still had his distinctively dramatic way of speaking. It was pretty easy to see that it was Liquid at first glance. This was even more humorous upon the game's original release, as Master Miller had a very dark skin tone (not to mention black hair instead of blond hair) in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Of course it was retroactively subverted in the rerelease of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and especially in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, where it turns out that Master Miller really did look and sound like that.
  • Snake's "disguise" as Iroquois Pliskin in MGS2 has to count as well. It involves... wearing different clothes. That's it. Not to mention that the name he adopts is a reference to Escape from New York protagonist Snake Plisskin. Almost subverted, as the concept art for Pliskin had him with blonde hair instead of brown, which was presumably changed because it wasn't paper-thin enough.
  • Similarly, the "reveal" that Mr. X is actually Olga Gurlukovich is incredibly obvious, as the ninja's voice distorter does little to mask her American voice actress's very distinct fake Russian accent.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater had something similar: EVA disguised herself as a KGB operative named Tatyana so she could get closer to Volgin and steal the Philosopher's Legacy. Her disguise consisted of... glasses and a slightly different hairstyle. Oh, and also a different outfit. Kojima even lampshades this in the director's commentary. Amusingly enough, because the disguise relies so heavily on changes in body language and attitude, quite a few players were reportedly thrown off and thought the whimpering, demure lover/victim of Volgin and the shameless biker Action Girl were actually two different women who just happened to look the same.
    • Similarly enough, Snake can easily fool guards when wearing the Scientist and Maintenance disguise (as long as he doesn't wear facepaint as well), despite keeping the bandana among other things, and even if the guards get suspicious, all he has to do to confirm he's a scientist is readjust his glasses. Now, if he encounters other scientists/maintenance crew members (depending on the disguise) face to face, that's a different story.
    • Inverted in the case of Snake meeting Volgin while disguised as his boyfriend Raikov. Despite being disguised so well that Zero claimed that even Raikov's own mother would not tell the difference, Volgin easily saw through the disguise (after checking Snake by groping him twice). Hilariously double subverted during the final battle, where you can easily gain a free hit on Volgin if you wear the Raikov mask, without even changing into his officer uniform, and was missing the hat. To further add insult to injury, Volgin is fooled even though you put on the mask in front of him!
  • Laughing Octopus tries this numerous times, apparently not realizing that you need to shapeshift more than just your head to fool people into thinking you are someone else. Granted fooling the South American soldier into thinking that she was Snake MIGHT have worked if she hadn't changed shape right in front of him, but why on Earth would Snake believe Naomi came back dressed in Octopus's outfit (complete with the head tentacles) during his fight with Octopus?
  • Subverted in his appearance in the Subspace Emissary story mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where Lucario easily saw through Snake's cardboard box trick (literally in this case, as he used his Aura sight to detect him).
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Raiden's mariachi outfit. The minute he steps out of his car, two locals spot that he is a cyborg. They decide to keep their mouths shut and get out of there, however. Raiden even enters the sewers with Bladewolf right in front of them and says goodbye to them as he does it. While acting completely deadpan.
• Subverted in Mother 3, where Lucas and his dog want to get into a nightclub, only to be informed by the bouncers that "No Dogs Allowed". The two slink away and seconds later, Lucas and his dog (now wearing human clothes and walking upright) walk up and try to enter. The guards aren't fooled, and even mention that Lucas was just here with his dog, and now conveniently walks up with a dude who looks like a dog. They only get in due to one of the staff members vouching for them.
  • Also played seriously when you walk in a Pig Mask base with masks for everyone except Lucas... who they mistake for their commander, of all people. That's because the Masked Man, the aforementioned commander, is actually your disappeared twin brother Claus reconstructed.
  • Played straight in the Chimera Lab, where the party only dons Pig Mask helmets, yet it's just as effective as when they wore full uniforms.
• Then there's Nelly Cootalot, who can fool the aristocracy of Meeth into thinking she is Angelo Lightfoot, pilot extraordinaire...by stealing and using a fake moustache.
• In The Night of the Rabbit you find early on some lizards (poorly) masquerading as humans creep out everyone who sees them, in-universe. They're only able to start convincing people to take them seriously once the Big Bad's magic starts working.
• Nobody Saves the World: The "cunning disguises" that the aliens wear consist of coats and hats with some glasses and fake moustaches thrown in, which does nothing to hide that they are The Greys. Funnily enough, the aliens themselves are fooled by these "disguises".
• In Normality, the resistance group comes to the stadium at the end of the game wearing fake beards and wigs (and the same clothes they always wear).
• Octodad's entire disguise is sticking six tentacles through a three piece suit to act as arms and legs, use the two remaining ones to imitate a mustache, and causing plenty of property damage trying to walk and act humanlike. Despite this, only two people have caught on: Fujimoto, who is already so crazy that no one takes him seriously, and Stacy, who thought it was so obvious that it wasn't worth mentioning.
• When Osvald from Octopath Traveler II escapes from prison, he plans on destroying the inspectors' ship so everyone thinks he died in the escape attempt. However, he does very little beyond this to hide the fact that he used to be in prison. He's still wearing his prisoner's garb, with the only difference being a coat thrown on overtop of it. Somehow, Throné and an old scholar in Cape Cold are the only two characters who explicitly point out he looks like he just broke out of jail.
• OFF: Throughout Zone 3, Zacharie disguises as the Judge to take his role as the guide while the Judge is grieving the loss of his brother. He simply switches his usual mask for an unconvincing cat-like mask and says "meow" when talking. The Judge is a small cat. Zacharie is a full-sized human. Nobody is fooled. There is even one room where he can be seen walking back and forth switching between his Judge disguise to give advice and his usual mask to go back to his usual vendor role.
• Ōkami: A game based partially on using a celestial, godly paintbrush along your quest, the main character, the wolf goddess Amaterasu, must infiltrate a nest of demons whose faces are covered with a paper decorated with a Japanese character. To fit in, a piece of paper is taped to Amaterasu's nose, and the player can draw whatever squiggles they like on it. None of the demons are any the wiser, making this disguise literally paper thin. Lampshaded in that Issun, your Exposition Fairy, says that the mask probably won't work. He seems rather depressed that it actually does.
• Ōkamiden: This happens no less than Three times; they never catch on until the mask gets lost. Even more ridiculous, two of the three times has you infiltrating the exact same place and passing by the exact same demons, granted, you do re-paint the disguises all three times, but still...
• In Overlord: Dark Legend, the titular Overlord has to stir up a war between the Elves and the Dwarves by killing their leaders and framing the other side for it. While the Minions make pretty good dwarves, being the right height and all, nobody in their right mind could possibly mistake one for an elf - except possibly real elves, who are really stupid.
• Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside: Sam is able to disguise himself as a tree to trick some racist trees just by putting a hollow log on his head. The fact that the rest of his human body is still very visible doesn't seem to register to the trees.
• In Chapter 5 of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Lord Crump disguises himself as the sailor Four-Eyes, but it's quite obvious who he is. He even directly addressed the player about this and threatens them not to tell Mario.

Four-Eyes: "Hey you! In front of the TV! It may be pretty obvious to you who I really am, but no telling Mario! Or else!"

• In Peasant's Quest, Rather Dashing disguises himself as a bale of hay to sneak past the Jhonka and get its riches. When a strong gust of wind blows the hay away, revealing Rather Dashing, the Jhonka suddenly notices his presence, and asks him if he's seen his riches.
• In the Persona series:
  • Atlus used this in the rerelease of Persona 2: Innocent Sin. For some reason, probably due to an international release and/or a new Japanese law, Adolf Hitler needed to be censored. So, all swatstikas were replaced with iron crosses and Hitler himself was given a trench coat and sunglasses while being called Führer. Of course, anyone will know this is Hitler even though it turns out he's not really Hitler.
  • Persona 3: When Aigis starts attending school, all it takes to hide the fact that she’s a robot is to slap the school’s winter uniform on her, even when she starts attending in September when everyone is still wearing the summer uniforms. The information about her given to the school doesn’t even bother to hide the truth, though it’s naturally brushed off as ridiculous.
  • Persona 4:
    • The game expects even the player to think that all it takes for Naoto to be unmistakable for a boy is to put on a hat.
    • Rise manages to convince a horde of curious bystanders that she is an old lady by... putting on an apron and tying her hair up. In this instance, it works because they're looking for an idol, and she works in the back of the tofu store, keeping out of sight. When the police chase off all the bystanders and the main characters go to talk to her, her disguise lasts for about three seconds.
  • Persona 5:
    • Your team encounters the "Beauty Thief" and even deduces that she goes to your school... yet it takes some genuine diving to figure out which of the classmates with the floofy auburn hair that you've had recent run-ins with and is the daughter of the owner of the building you're breaking into. Admittedly, the player will realise her significance due to her being significantly better-detailed than the average student, but you'd think the Phantom Thieves could put two and two together a bit sooner...
    • After Joker fakes his death partway through the story to save himself from murder attempts by The Conspiracy, he hides his identity while out in public by... wearing a hoodie. That doesn't even cover the front of his face.
    • In Royal, one added Confidant sequence has you and Akechi dining at a café. After several passerbys begin to recognize him, Akechi begins to excuse himself before the player character pulls him aside. Cut to Akechi with messy hair and the protagonist's glasses, and the aforementioned passerbys brushing him off on the assumption that they were seeing things. You and he then proceed to joke about it for the rest of the scene.
• Zigzagged with Furio Tigre in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, who impersonates Phoenix in order to throw a trial he's involved in. When Phoenix finally meets him, he discovers that, other than similar hair style, the two neither look nor act anything alike (his fake attorney's badge is even made out of cardboard,) and wonders how the hell anyone could've mistaken them. Though it is suggested that most people were simply too afraid to call Furio Tigre out on this, because of his huge anger issues.
• Played with in Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver, where you have to infiltrate Team Rocket's activities at the Goldenrod Radio Tower by donning their uniform. Hilariously, the same Mook who just shoved you away from the door gives you a cursory look, then allows you to pass.
  • The trope is technically played straight, as despite having a full uniform, the disguise is still paper-thin. Ethan wears the cap backwards like his usual hat (all the other grunts have the brim forward), Lyra leaves her pigtails completely unbound (the Rocket Grunt dress code comes with very short hairstyles), their bags are white and stand out against the black uniform, you still have the first Pokémon in your party walking behind you (unless you have a sufficiently large Pokémon that they're returned to their Poké Ball indoors, like a Wailord) and you clearly being a preteen child. When your rival comes in, he recognizes you immediately, wonders what's up with the disguise, and strips you of it, leaving the grunt to finally recognize you.
  • Speaking of which, a variation involving inanimate objects was also used. The transmitter used to cause the Gyarados to evolve at a rapid rate at Lake of Rage (and was implied to be the cause of the Red Gyarados) was disguised as a tree near the shop. "Disguised" meaning rather obviously (the control box was clearly seen, not to mention most of the "tree" was metallic gray).
  • The "Ninja Boy" class of Trainers in Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are often disguised as scenery until you pass into their range. However, it's usually a tarp with a painting of the scenery (usually a tree). Some are disguised better than others; for instance, those who hide in sand mounds look indistinguishable from regular sand mounds.
  • Sudowoodo is a tree mimic (it's not a Grass-type at all) who tries to pass as an ordinary tree, and usually stands out if you pay any inkling of attention. In Pokémon X and Y, you can run into hordes of Trevenant (which are actual haunted trees) with a single Sudowoodo trying to pass itself off as being part of the horde. Legends: Arceus makes Sudowoodo's attempts at disguising even more absurd; when the player approaches they'll stand stock-still in an attempt to convince you that they are, in fact, a normal tree, even if you saw them move a second ago. While turning their heads to look at the player if they get close. And they'll start moving again as soon as you leave their line of sight.
  • Mimikyu wears old Pikachu merchandise in an attempt to become as popular as the Series Mascot. It's very easy to tell that it's not actually a Pikachu.
  • Downplayed at first in Sun and Moon, the Masked Royal is a Masked Luchador-slash-Pokémon trainer who you encounter first at the Battle Dome on Royal Avenue. Since his mask exposes his facial hair, he is pretty much instantly recognizable as Professor Kukui (just in even less of a shirt than usual), to the point that one of the dialogue options upon meeting him is "Professor...?"
  • Parodied in Pokémon Sword and Shield. Chairman Rose, when out and about in public and not on official business, is seen wearing civvie clothes, a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap over his head in an attempt to not get recognized. Literally nobody buys it, least of all because he is still accompanied by a completely un-disguised Oleana at all times.
  • Game Freak must really like this trope, since it's used again in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet:
    • Director Clavell disguises himself as a student named Clive in order to join you on your mission to take out Team Star. Said disguise consists of putting on a (mismatched) school uniform, switching out his glasses for sunglasses, and putting on a huge pompadour wig that would make a Tunnel Snake jealous. Like with the Masked Royal, you can see through the disguise immediately, and continue to address him as Director Clavell every time you encounter him (to which he will continue to insist that he's not). Even the alternative dialogue options sound more like you're just playing along rather than genuinely being fooled. Once he reveals his true identity in dramatic fashion, if you tell him you knew who he was, he will be quite shocked, as he was sure he had fooled you, even if you've been calling him Clavell the whole time, including just moments before the reveal. Ironically, the fact that he's an old man is not part of what makes his disguise paper-thin, as there are real students at the academy just as old as he is, if not older (one student you can encounter and battle out in the open world claims to have been attending the academy for over 60 years and is in no hurry to graduate). However, once he reveals himself, he refers to his Clive persona as a "boy", meaning he really was trying to pass himself off as a kid or teenager. Surprisingly, Cassiopeia/Penny, despite being the brains of the entire operation and a super-genius hacker, is completely fooled by the disguise and is shocked by the reveal... though they have to admit that the pompadour was ridiculous.
    • During one of Clavell's side stories, he asks the player what sort of hairstyle is trendy among young men these days, claiming to be asking for a friend. The player can ask if this "friend" is Clive, but it again sounds like they're just playing along instead of actually thinking Clavell and Clive are different people. You can also tell him that giant pompadours are the trendy hairstyle, to which Clavell will respond with delight that he guessed correctly... before realizing that he hasn't seen any male students with them and that he may need to buy a new wig after all.
• Pokemon Fangame Pokémon Clover has the legendary Pokemon Notridley. It looks like Ridley wearing a fake mustache, but its Pokedex entry assures us that it is, in fact, NOT Ridley.
• In Pound The Puss, 9-year-old Pound sneaks into a bar wearing nothing but a fake mustache, simply because the guard appreciates the effort.
• Psychonauts' Journey to the Center of the Mind of a mad conspiracy theorist has robot-M.I.B. monotonously mimic different everyday roles of Suburbia, ranging from a housewife to an assassin, often using nothing more than one article of the occupation as a disguise. This also works for the main character, though, as merely holding a red sign functions as the perfect disguise of a road worker.
  • Their lines of idle dialogue are just as hilariously paper thin:
    Road worker G-Man: My red sign helps me work on the road.
    Assassin G-Man: I like to shoot people.
    Sewer worker G-Man: Feces.
  • Made even more ridiculous by the fact that they aren't even using their props correctly. The road worker G-Men make shoveling motions with their signs, the sewer worker G-Men play their plungers like trumpets, and the grieving widow G-Men swing their flowers like golf clubs, amongst other things.
  • Possessing the items causes them to actually perceive you as a house wife/road worker/what have you rather than them taking for granted that the person who is holding the rolling pin is not someone remotely suspicious. Probably still qualifies but...
  • To a further degree, Raz can pass as the head of the mental asylum simply by using an award statue, an oil painting, and a strait jacket. The man working the elevator is nearly blind, but still....
• Masked Satan in Puyo Puyo 2's Alternate Ending. The only change is a gold mask that only covered his eyes, yet he expects Arle to be unable to identify him despite having long green hair, horns, not altering his voice, and wearing the same blue clothing. Arle isn't fooled for one second. Even his name is a Paper-Thin Disguise, as when Arle asks "Aren't you just Satan?", Satan corrects her by saying he is Masked Satan, as if that makes him a completely different person.
• Every disguise ever used in Radiant Historia consists solely of a hooded robe over the person's normal clothes, despite the fact that several of the main characters are intelligence agents. This silliest example is when Aht (a 9-year-old girl with goat legs and large horns) and Gafka (a gorilla-man about half-again the size of a human) manage to go unnoticed in a crowd of adult humans during a speech against their species.
• In Ragnarok Online, in order to get to the Rekenber Corporation's laboratory for various quests, you just have to wear a pair of geek glasses and a white mustache to get pass the guard guarding the laboratory, and the guard will allow you to pass even if you have a different hairstyle, clothing or even as a female.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Captain Qwark is a master of this, pulling off really cheap disguises and managing to fool many. In Going Commando after escaping from prison, he pass himself off as a shopkeeper called "Steve McQwark" only with a fake mustache. In Up Your Arsenal and A Crack in Time, he dresses as a woman despite his green costume being completely visible from the outside.
  • Ratchet gets in on it as well. He only wears a fake glasses and mustache set-up just to get into an arena that bans Lombaxes. In another game, he disguise himself as Dr. Nefarious, even as his height difference raises no questions from the guards and Lawrence.
• In Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Rayman's disguise manages to fool a Rabbid general holding a reference picture. Of course, the French titles of the original Raving Rabbids and this game translate as "Rayman vs. the Stupid Rabbits" and "Rayman vs. the Even Stupider Rabbits", respectively.
  • Of course, there was the immortal "It's just a big nosed bush" disguise in Rayman 2. Because big nosed bushes regularly spontaneously sprout on the way into your pirate stronghold. Sure.
• Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale features Recette and Tear utilizing a wooden-plank structure roughly crafted to be a tree prop, and labeled "totally a tree".
• Red Alert 3: Zigzagged: On the one hand, the only way to remove an infiltrated Spy (looks like an infantry unit) or Sudden Transport (looks like a vehicle)'s disguise is to bring a detector animal, or happen to click on them on notice they don't respond/see them headed the opposite way to the rest of your army. On the other hand, the disguises can be blatantly fake, like an infantry unit swimming, a ship or aircraft on land, or a Mighty Glacier zipping around at the transport's speed. Can even happen in-universe in the second Empire campaign, where a transport infiltrates a Soviet base to be carried away and take over a base from inside.
  Conscript: Um, why is one of our ships on land?
• In Red Dead Redemption, the player can unlock outfits which disguise them as members of specific gangs, allowing them to enter their hideouts undetected. The Bandito outfit is literally just John's default outfit, except with a sombrero instead of his usual hat.
• Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure has Raphael, who leads a double life as Phantom R, which is basically a suit, a fedora and no glasses. This isn't a massive change from his street clothes, and even his face isn't concealed. Despite this, even the police fall for it when Phantom R approaches and talks to them on the street. The people out in the streets — including citizens who have known him for a long while — aren't any better and pretend he is some guy trying to cosplay as the real phantom thief. The only ever occasions people make the connection only do so...but not because of the obvious same appearance, but because of very small things that look fishy.
• The title character in Rita James and the Race to Shangri La uses a Chinese peasant outfit and a fake mustache made of hair from the tail of her monkey sidekick to get into a miners-only bar, claiming that nobody knows her because she works "all day and all night" in the mines.
• RuneScape uses this trope quite a few times where sometimes only changing one to three articles completely trick the NPC.
  • In "Eagle's Peak" quest, the player tricks other humans and eagles by disguising him/herself with a fake beak and fake wings.
  • In the "Branches of Darkmeyer" quest, the player fools the entire vampyre society into believing that the player is a vyrelord (one of the highest ranking vampyres), using only some quest-specific robes — despite the fact that vyrewatch and vyrelords have wings and can fly. The player cannot.
    • Lampshaded in "The Lord of Vampyrium", where after exchanging some banter with Lowerniel Drakan, he mentions having noticed you were a human right away, wonders how none of the other vampyres did, and concludes that he's Surrounded by Idiots.
  • Also averted, in that even if you get a sex change, different skin color, different hair color and style, and a new basic wardrobe, most significant Non Player Characters will still recognize you and call you by name — unless you're wearing one of the aforementioned disguises.
  • In the pirate quests, you have to convince a legitimate pub to sell the very sketchy Braindeath "rum", by posing as four different customers to create the appearance of mass interest in the product. All you have to do for the disguises is wear some funny cosmetic accessories, such as Groucho glasses or a fake goatee.
• The Sam & Max games:
  • Bosco in the first season. He even leaves his name tag on. Sam and Max don't fall for the disguises, however.
  • And after Max becomes the President of the U.S., Secret Serv ice-cream vans become ubiquitous.
• In Sam & Max Hit the Road, the duo infiltrate a Bigfoot convention in a garish wig and a stilt suit covered in fake fur. The guard is actually not fooled at all, but if you do him a favor he'll let you in anyway, as long as your disguise is at least somewhat plausible. He'll even help you with the outfit and point out what you need to cover if you don't have everything together yet.
• Hessonite, main villain from Save the Light, returns in the sequel Unleash the Light in a scarf and new goggles, with complete confidence no one will know who she is. It works on exactly one character. She even pulls a …But He Sounds Handsome in her first appearance.
• The "Fake Health" secret in Serious Sam II, which is just a Primitive wearing an ill-fitting +50 health box while jumping up and down and spinning to try and simulate the floating and spinning properties of Serious Sam pickups. Sam nevertheless expresses shock over how good the disguise was (though he may have just been being sarcastic.)
• In the SNES Shadowrun game, two morgue workers become terrified of Jake after he rises from the slab they left him on (thinking he's a zombie), and refuse to have anything to do with him. Jake solves this problem by donning a pair of sunglasses, which stops them recognizing him.
• Shantae (2002): It's a Running Gag that every time Risky Boots attempts to steal one of the legendary relics, she instead gets blasted away by the boss of the labyrinth. After the third time, she gets wise and disguises herself as a genie, then helps Shantae enter the fourth labyrinth and lets her find the last relic so that Risky can take all of them from her at once. Her disguise should be obvious to the player, as she retains her red and black color palette.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens: The half-genie named "Filin the Blank" is clearly Rottytops, down to having the same looks. Shantae realizes this when she finds out the name she gave to Harmony was 'Ima Goodgirl'. Shantae figures out that this could only be Rottytops.
• In Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf, Ralph uses a couple throughout the game, all of which leave his face perfectly visible.
• Played straight in The Sims 3. If a sim who works as a private investigator goes on a stakeout, they will hold up a pair of shrub branches, and hide behind them, usually in plain sight. As seen here◊.
• "Bellena" from Skies of Arcadia. Apparently, changing one's name by a single letter and wearing less clothing than usual counts as the perfect disguise. Justified: Vyse and Co. hadn't met her before.
• In Sly 2: Band of Thieves, The Murray disguises himself as an anthropomorphic moose by wearing a stuffed moose head over his own.
  • In a later chapter, Sly, Bentley, and Murray must collect some of the Clockwerk Parts from Jean Bison, who's put them up as a prize in a Winter Olympic-like event he's holding near his sawmills. Problem is, Jean's competing in the event himself, and the duck judges all work for him, so they inevitably give him perfect scores even when he fails. Bentley schemes to replace each judge with one of the team wearing a cap, fake bill, and vest. It works for two rounds, until Jean looks closer and realizes the ruse. Cue a boss battle.
  • In Chapter 2, Sly must infiltrate a fancy ball being held by Rajan. He puts on a tuxedo (that does nothing to disguise his facial features, or the fact that he's a raccoon) and walks in. While there, he dances with both Interpol Agent Neela (who at least realizes something is fishy) and Inspector Carmelita Fox, the latter of whom is his sworn enemy that's been chasing him for years. Somehow, despite not disguising his voice or attitude, Sly completely pulls off the trick. And one wonders why Police Are Useless is a trope...
• In SmackDown VS. Raw 2011, at one point in Rey Mysterio's storyline after angering the All-American American Jack Swagger you play as Evan Bourne against newcomer Todo Americano (which means All-American) who other than wearing a mask looks like Swagger, wears gear similar to Swagger, and has all the same mannerisms and moves.
• SNK Gals Fighters has "Miss X", who is essentially the badass Iori Yagami in a sailor uniform and a bandit's mask. Predictably, no one in the rest of the all-female cast falls for it, and all of them point it out immediately. Also falls under Creepy Crossdresser and Rule 63. This bits him in the ass in Yuki's ending where he becomes a girl.
• In Soldier of Fortune's first Iraq level, you are provided with a disguise, but you soon run into a guard who asks you for identification (which you don't have), and your cover is blown.
• The Buzzy Beetles in Something Else disguise themselves as helpful ? Orbs, but that fails since they're always moving. Also, the ? Orbs are not used as exits.
• Strong Bad's Homestar costume in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner includes a makeshift head through which his eyes are clearly exposed. No one questions that fact. Nor do they question the fact that Strong Bad is several inches shorter than Homestar and has visible arms.
  • Averted in Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective, where Perducci's disguise is pulled off by using another actor.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Paper Mario 64:
    • The Koopa Bros. boss fight start off piloting a boxy, conspicuously fake disguise of Bowser. The four Koopa Troopas inside converse with each other loudly enough for Mario to overhear while in disguise, which doesn't help much, either. They are shown to be capable of making better disguises, as earlier in the game they use magic to make themselves look like convincing, if off-colored, Toads.
    • At one point in the Crystal Palace, Mario has to kick Kooper into a small hole, and then he comes out with four Duplighosts claiming to be him. However, they've taken on the forms and speech patterns of Kolorado, Koopa Koot, Goompa, and Luigi, with the last one even calling Mario "Bro." Naturally, Kooper is not amused.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:
    • "Four-Eyes", one of the members on the sailing crew you join up with is obviously Lord Crump, The Dragon to the head of the X-Nauts. Although no one notices, Crump himself admits that his disguise is pretty bad, and in an aside he does ask the person 'behind the TV' not to tell Mario his real identity or else, also lampshading the ridiculousness of the disguise in the process.
    • Mario can "disguise" as Luigi by wearing the L Badge. All this does is Palette Swap his clothes to green, but it's still enough for a self-proclaimed Luigi fan to mistake Mario for the real thing, to the point that when the real Luigi suddenly shows up the fan accuses him of being an impostor. It seems Luigi can never get any respect.
  • In Super Paper Mario, Nastasia dresses Luigi in black clothes and provides him with a mask, so Mario, Peach and Bowser won't find out that Mr. L is really Brainwashed and Crazy Luigi. However, he keeps his hat, his mustache, his way of moving, his shoes.... virtually everything about him is shouting: "HEY, I'M-A LUIGI IN-A EVIL-COSTUME!!!" Naturally, none of the other main characters — not even his own twin brother (though admittedly since he's a Silent Protagonist it's hard to tell) — manages to recognize him in this getup. Averted in Super Mario Bros. Manga Mania wherein Mario and Bowser are not only not fooled but Bowser even makes fun of Luigi for honestly thinking his "disguise" would work.
  • When Mario enters the forecourt for Big Sho' Theater in Paper Mario: The Origami King, he and his companions are instantly chased out by a mob of Folded and Paper Macho soldiers. Should he come back wearing a Paper Macho head (preferably the Goomba head), everyone just leaves him alone despite the fact that he's smaller than an actual Paper Macho Soldier. Given everything in this world is made of paper, the trope is practically literal at this point.
  • Super Mario Sunshine:
    • Shadow Mario commits vandalism on Isle Delfino and the Piantas believe Mario to be the culprit, as despite the fact that Shadow Mario is totally blue with a watery texture and that Mario wasn't even on the island when the vandalism took place.
    • Il Piantissimo, a guy disguised as a Pianta with a mask that doesn't cover his chin, fake hands and feet while the rest of his body is highly visible.
  • In Hotel Mario, Iggy wears a comically oversized Bowser mask (and nothing else to disguise himself) during his battle.
  • Super Mario 3D World features a power-up that disguises the character as a Goomba, avoiding any ambushes by them. However, the character's legs are still visible under the head, but they don't take notice. Made even more egregious by the fact that you can have many Goombas on your tail, but as soon as you put on the disguise they immediately stop. You'd think the Goombas would recognize those legs more easily, considering the countless times they've seen the bottom end of them.
  • In Mario Tennis: Power Tour, the Mario Bros, Princess Peach, Waluigi, Donkey Kong and Bowser are able to fool everyone at the Royal Tennis Academy just by putting on masks and saying they're masked challengers. While there are several new characters in the game, the coaches are characters from the GBC Mario Tennis game and should have realized who Mario and the gang are.
• Subverted in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 and Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2, in which Elzam V. Branstein dons the identity of Ratsel Feinschmecker (German for "Mysterious Gourmet", a fitting time for an avid chef like Elzam) in order to fight alongside the heroes again. The "disguise" consists of nothing more than a pair of sunglasses and a slightly different style of clothing. The other heroes see right through it (except Arado, who isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and Lefina, who is just too trusting when Ratsel tells her he isn't Elzam), but as officially having a former enemy pilot around might raise too many questions amongst the top brass, they play along with only the barest of efforts, often just substituting the name "Ratsel" when referring to Elzam, even if talking about something he did as Elzam.
  • The Elzam/Ratsel disguise is a Shout-Out to Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, where Char Aznable, The Ace for Zeon, swaps out his full-face mask and helmet for a pair of sunglasses and goes by the name Quattro Bageena (it helps that he also falsified official records). At one point Ratsel even says "I am Ratsel Feinschmecker, no more, no less", pretty much word-for-word what Quattro said when Kamille accused him of being Char.
  • Considering the number of other enemy pilots that have joined the team (for example, Elzam's very own niece, Leona Garstein), the going theory is that he's doing it as a form of penance. Or something. Mostly people just humor him because he pretty much is the best pilot on the planet. And he owns a battleship with a drill on the front.
  • Subverted with Wodan Ymir. At first glance he's just as obviously Sanger Zonvolt in a cheap mask as Ratsel is Elzam wearing sunglasses. The fact that Sanger was Elzam's constant companion and was last seen with him and Elzam himself is wearing a disguise makes it doubly obvious. Then during a fight with Wodan, Sanger suddenly appears as a clearly seperate person. Wodan wasn't Sanger after all. He was W-Series based on him.
• Judas, a mask-wearing swordsman who shows up in Tales of Destiny 2 and is quite blatantly Leon Magnus from the first game. As it happens, the mask is a hollowed out dragon skull that Leon chose not so much for disguise but for the protection against magic that it offered. It's such an open secret that it warrants a Mythology Gag in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, where Presea tells Emil about her invention the Judas Mask, which "hid your face without actually hiding it, yet mysteriously prevented anyone from realizing your true identity." (Said mask is unlockable for use in the PAL and Playstation 3 versions.) In fact, it's a bit of a Running Gag amongst the Tales Fandom — one of the DVD extras featured scenes in skit format wherein Judas is onscreen, only for Stahn to come over and say "Hi Leon", and Leon pointed out he wasn't Leon but Judas.
• Tales of Symphonia gets in on the action, if Zelos is chosen to participate in a plot-mandatory coliseum tournament. Problem: it's a Tethe'allan coliseum, and he's Tethe'alla's Chosen of Mana. So they give him a large hat, long gloves, and a beak-like mask. It actually does a decent job of obscuring most of his recognizing features... but the rest of his attire is unchanged. The receptionist at the coliseum realizes who he is and only lets it slide because he asks her to, but in the later-game event that bestows the outfit for normal use, his usual floozies fail to recognize him.
• Estelle in Tales of Vesperia is a princess, which she thinks is a secret. However, when her cover is "blown", she finds out that everyone in the party knew who she was...except Karol.
• This trope returns to the Tales series in the PS3 version of Tales of Graces:
  • There's a series of skits in which Richard takes on a superhero identity named "The Mask of Barona" to do good deeds for his friends. However, his 'costume' consists of little more than Richard putting on a turban and see-through veil on his face, worn along with his normal attire. And its shown as a small cut-in of said disguise blatantly overlaid on Richard's normal skit portrait. Of course, everyone instantly sees through it except for Asbel and Sophie.
  • Hubert unintentionally walks into this during his Disguised in Drag moment in the play in Fendel. It's lampshaded first, when an audience member points out that the evil queen looks just like Strahta's top Lieutentant. Then it's played straight when Hubert starts hamming it up and the man decides no respectable military officer would make such a spectacular fool of themselves.
• Tales of Xillia 2 has Gaius, King of Rieze Maxia, travelling the world under the name of Erston Outway (with "Outway" being Gaius' birth surname.) And other than going by a different name, he changes nothing about himself. He doesn't alter his voice, he doesn't change his appearance or acts in a different way and yet nobody outside the party makes the connection of Gaius and Erston being the same person. And late in game, the people of Kanbalar are convinced that Erston is a rich playboy, who is merely impersonating their king, to tarnish his reputation. CEO of Spirius Corporation, Bisley, and a sheriff in Gaius' character episodes do recognize him, though. At the very least the player is able to improve on the guise with unlockable glasses and DLC hairstyles.
• At one point in Tales of Hearts, Shing and his crew attempt to avoid any entanglements with the Valentin church and the Imperial Knights, and a friendly NPC offers them pairs of glasses for each of them as disguises.
• Team Fortress 2's Spy class (seen in picture at top) has a disguise ability that will make them indistinguishable from an opposite team member…to the opponents. To the Spy's teammates, he looks like a Spy with a cereal-box paper mask on (the mask shows his current disguise). Aside from the obvious comedic angle, this serves to make it obvious at a glance that the teammate you're looking at is a disguised spy.
  • Taken to a humorous extreme where one of the Spy's hats is a top hat that has a paper mask of a bowler hat on.
  • The original Team Fortress mod as well as Team Fortress Classic averted this trope, with the spy's disguise looking the same for all teams. Teammates had to aim their crosshairs at him to reveal his true identity.
  • The team's bases themselves, disguised as such things as granaries and shipping companies, sometimes qualify. The ones in Double Cross are said to "fool nobody", and 2fort's RED base, meant to be disguised as a farm, has a wooden cow. There are mooing sounds coming from somewhere, presumably a hidden tape recorder.
  • Lampshaded with the description of some of the maps, as they fool absolutely no one and sometimes the folks gather around to "watch the mercenaries fight over that spy base".
  • RED Soldier was contracted by Saxton Hale to disguise a old run down town as the Mann Co. International headquarters. This consist of crudely painting "Mann" over several signs, crossing out any letters after "Co", painting a "bomb hole" at the back of the town, and hastily building large, Hollywood-esque "MANN CO." letters over the main buildings. The Soldier even forgot to take his contract with him after halfway finishing the job. The result is the "Decoy" map used in Mann vs. Machine. The fact that legions of his robots are falling for this plan is what prompted Gray Mann to make the Engineer (although ironically the Engineer Bot can appear on this map, making it sort of Gameplay and Story Segregation and Hilarious in Hindsight).
  • RED Soldier also routinely sneaks into Gray Mann's base wearing a "robot" Halloween costume consisting of a cardboard box, two shoeboxes, and some dryer hoses. He doesn't even bother swapping his bright RED army fatigues for Grey ones. Hilariously, Gray himself doesn't notice the badly-disguised human either.
  • In "Ring of Fired" Miss Pauling disguises herself as a policeman with a baggy police officer's uniform and a mustache. It ends up fooling Merasmus (but not Soldier, who sees through her disguise immediately).
• Lee Chaolan from Tekken enters the King of Iron Fist Tournament 4 under the disguise of Violet — which consists of dyeing his hair purple and wearing sunglasses. One wonders who he was trying to fool.
• The titular character of Tin Star is run out of town for apparently shooting and killing Kid Johnson, the baby bandit, even though Tin Star didn't do it. When Tin Star rides back into town the following day, he puts on a tiny pink mask that barely covers his eyes, and does nothing to hide his Lantern Jaw of Justice. Somehow, everyone is fooled.
• The Cog Disguises in Toontown Online are modeled after the cog that your Toon is disguised as. These still have the Toon's head exposed^note Addressed in Toontown: Corporate Clash, which gives cog disguises the proper head and special species onomatopoeia for Speedchat+ which also reflects the currently active Cheesy Effect. The reactions of the boss cogs varies: the Sellbot Vice President is completely fooled, the Cashbot Chief Financial Officer and the Lawbot Chief Justice see through the disguise, and the Bossbot Chief Executive Officer only notices the disguised toons after they've blown up most of the cogs in the banquet he's holding by disguising themselves as the waiters and serving the guests toon food.
• The identity of the Cornstalker in Touch Detective 2 1/2 is supposed to be a big secret... but there is one character that has the same jawline, same hair, same basic build, very similar name, and most disconcerting of all, the same voice (or rather, squeaky tones). A visit to the portrait gallery after the very first episode is enough to figure out who he is.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron has a "Disguise" ability for the Scientist class in multiplayer. All it does is change your color scheme to your faction opposite colors. Body-types are distinctive (especially so in the case of poor Shockwave), so it's easy for an experienced player to spot someone trying this and reduce them to a pile of scrap.
• Parodied in Undertale. Sans tells you to hide behind a conveniently shaped lamp that has the exact same outline as the player character. Of course, the oblivious Papyrus does not notice.
• Valkyria Chronicles 4: Kai Schulen, who is actually Leena Schulen, is pulling a Sweet Polly Oliver to cover for her brother, the real Kai Schulen after he defected to the enemy. She does this by... saying that she's a man. She wears her hair long, doesn't cover her face, and while her outfit isn't Stripperiffic, it really doesn't hide her figure.Here's the link to her official character page.
• Yrliet the Aeldar of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader hides from the human supremacist Imperium of Man by... not hiding anything about her physical appearance and simply saying she is a "mutant", and it worked well enough she is a respected member of the security staff of the leader of the human world she settled on when you meet her. To her credit, there are a good number of weird-looking humans in-setting (one of your own crewmembers has a magical third eye, for example) so unless someone is familiar with how Space Elves look, her appearance wouldn't really shock anyone.
• Wario games:
  • Either under this or the Wig, Dress, Accent, Wario Land: Shake It! has a treasure called the 'Perfect Disguise'. Which is a pair of glasses and a false mustache, although apparently it works:
  No one will ever know it's you!
  • WarioWare: Touched!: Deconstructed In Mona's ending, rival pop singer Vanessa briefly tries to disguise herself as Mona, but she retains her green hair and purple clothing. No one buys it.
• Tse-tse Snaketail from Wizard101 does this multiple times using wooden noses and once some grass. Although he is an anthropomorphic zebra, manages to disguise himself as a lion, an elephant, and a rhino despite being nowhere near being the same size as any of the other species. Made worse by each time his fake names being just being a close variation of his real name like Tik-tik Snaketongue.
• In The World Ends with You Joshua does this in his human form. He looks exactly like his Composer form only as a teenage boy, and only 2 people figure it out: Sho Minamimoto and low-level reaper Koki Kariya. It figures this is the same form he killed Neku with. Heck, he could have just put on a shirt that said "I am not the person who killed you." and that would have been better. This is actually lampshaded in some post-game collectible reports, where it's mentioned that the only people who actually see the Composer in person most of the time are the Conductor (Kitaniji, who doesn't speak to Players in the Reaper's Game until the end of the week) and the Producer (Hanekoma, who watches things happen and writes to the Higher Plane about it). Both of the above realize who Joshua is because he's forced to utilize the Composer's abilities; Kariya watches him Jesus-Beam a Taboo Noise, and Minamimoto tries to shoot him in the RG and realizes the Composer can still do stuff in there.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Played for Laughs in Wrath of the Lich King. During the Death Knight (An unstoppable, undead killing machine) quest chain, you are required to intercept a messenger. You do this by disguising yourself as... a tree. Made of cardboard. Said messenger promptly remarks "What a strange tree. I must investigate". Shortly before the player leaps out and stabs him to death.
  • Later on in the Burning Steppes quest chain in Cataclysm, you're required to disguise yourself as a member of the Blackrock army using a mask that's the same model as the masks from Hallow's Eve (Which are just paper cut-outs). Most members of the army will fall for it, others will get suspicious requiring you to beat them to death with the cudgel one of the commanders gave you. Lampshaded by the person sending you to do the infiltration, who gives a dubious reaction on the order of "THIS is the brilliant disguise he's cooked up?! Okay, if he insists...." Which makes it even funnier when it does work.
    • Even more blatant when playing as a Worgen. Yes, your naked chest is covered in fur. Yes, you have paws. And yes, you're running on all fours. But that paper mask says you're an ogre dammit!
    • Or a female Draenei. Despite your tail, hooves, horns, slender figure, and breasts, everyone will believe you're an ogre.
    • Or a Forsaken. Just look at the face, ignore the fact that your skin is a disgusting, rotting color, you "bleed" green embalming fluid when hurt and many parts of your body have clearly exposed bones.
  • The aforementioned paper masks are used frequently as "disguises" in less serious situations, and are usually treated as extremely effective. As an example, the mercenary recruiters who allow members of one faction to join PvP battles for the opposing faction are obviously a human or orc wearing a paper mask of the other race.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Pyra is being sought after by Mor Adain's soldiers, and obviously needs some sort of disguise to avoid detection. The protagonists' solution is to simply have her wear a short (as in, knee length) cloak over her normal (quite distinctive) outfit. Naturally, absolutely nobody catches on.
  • Part of the reason for the cloak is to cover up Pyra's unique emerald core crystal, which the Ardanian soldiers were told to look for (apparently with no other distinguishing features to go on). Half of that core crystal is also in Rex's chest to patch a stab wound he took from Jin at the start of the game. Nobody considers that it might be a good idea for him to cover his chest as well, but like Pyra, it doesn't end up mattering. You can stroll right up to Captain Padraig and he won't catch on until his scripted fight later on.
• Xenosaga Episode III: The creator of T-elos, the more advanced version of KOS-MOS, is named "Roth Mantel". Roth Mantel translates to "Red Mantle". Guess who? Red Testament, aka Kevin. Granted, this is a bit stronger than most (since Roth only has a passing resemblance to his true self), but considering the thematic names of a lot of people in the series, and the fact that T-elos is remarkably similar to a prototype that had no plans that weren't encrypted ten ways from Sunday, Shion should have well picked up on it.
  • They player might pick up on this, but Shion had a pretty good reason for her obliviousness. Kevin was her Fiance who was killed right in front of her in a lab accident. She hadn't known how much of manipulative bastard he was, nor had any reason to suspect that he had been revived as the Big Bad's right hand.
• Inverted in Yandere Simulator, where even if the player character as Yan-Chan wears a huge box which conceals most of her except the lower legs, she still can't sneak into the Headmaster's office without him threatening her to electrocute her (it's a long story, really) if she doesn't leave him alone. He even points out that she can't fool anyone with this disguise, despite the only giveaway being her black stockings. However, other students and teachers won't blink an eye. She can even wear a simple theater mask if she joins the drama club, which leaves her completely recognizable by hair, uniform, body shape etc. and still perform murders undetected.
• In Yoku's Island Express, some areas of the map are off-limits until you don a disguise...which consists entirely of changing the colors or patterns on your ball.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, as Sol Chevalsky, Pegasus changes his name, ties his hair back, and wears an eyepatch. Nobody recognizes him until the Millennium Eye is received and reveals his image instead of Pegasus's normal appearance. The writer of the strategy guide wasn't fooled either, only referring to Pegasus as Sol Chevalsky three times and referring to him by his normal name everywhere else.
• Hugo from Yuppie Psycho has an alter ego kows a Super Frog, which is just him adding a frog mask and a cape to his usual get up. It fools nobody.
• Zombie Society Dead Detective has humans using a zombie mask to look like a normal resident and thus avoid being eaten. It's also recursive, as one of the villains disguises themself as a human wearing a zombie mask.

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