History Main / InfractionDistraction

Overlaps with EmbarrassingCoverUp if the decoy secret is disreputable as well as prohibited (or if the character is so LawfulGood or such a SlaveToPR that being caught breaking even minor rules is an embarrassment in and of itself). Overlap with WeNeedADistraction is possible but rare, since it usually is not to enable further actions. If a suspect is surprisingly quick to confess their BigSecret, there's a good chance it's this. See also HiddenInPlainSight. A CensorDecoy is this used in RealLife to [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar get crap past the radar]].

** Simon's plot in ''Live Free or Die Hard'' is another example of this, [[spoiler:detonating bombs around New York City, forcing [=McClane=] personally to jump through hoops to find the others, then convincing the police there's a bomb planted in an unspecified NYC school - all so the Federal Reserve Bank on Wall Street will be relatively free of emergency services]].

* [[http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1370-5-insane-things-i-learned-about-drugs-as-undercover-agent.html This Cracked]] article talks about some of the methods drug smugglers use. One method of keeping the smugglers' cars from being noticed is to have a "heat" car go barreling down the highway at full speed and get pulled over for speeding. While the police are detaining that driver, the actual smuggler drives by undetected.

* This is part of the plot in ''Literature/TheCaliforniaVoodooGame''. Bishop tries to make everybody [[spoiler:including his accomplice]] think he's trying to fix the Game, but in reality [[spoiler:he's committing industrial espionage]]. Averted in that nobody believes for a second that's all Bishop is really up to, [[spoiler:but subverted again in that, while they think he's trying to steal information, he's actually trying to find a way to circumvent the security system so that his handlers can steal anything they like in the future]].

* ''Literature/{{Flashman}}''. An accidental version happens in ''Flashman and the Great Game''. Flashman is posing as a recruit for a native cavalry unit in India. Despite claiming that he has no previous military experience, the OldSoldier quickly spots him as a fraud because Flashman is unconsciously standing the correct distance from his desk, and has bridled his pony in the regulation manner. Fortunately everyone assumes he's an ex-soldier on the run from a tribal blood feud, rather than a British officer in disguise.

* ''Series/BreakingBad'': in an early episode, when Skylar catches Walter being in contact with Jessie Pinkman, a known drug dealer, Walter pretends that he buys marijuana[[note]]which is illegal in New Mexico, at least when the episode aired[[/note]] from Jessie rather than admit to their budding meth operation. It's a plausible explanation, as Walter had recently found out about his cancer and was under severe stress: it's believable he would turn to marijuana in those circumstances.

** Dexter later manages an accidental example when Doakes catches him at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, which he was only attending as part of lie for his girlfriend. It gets Doakes off his case, at least for a while.

[[folder:Video Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/Hitman2SilentAssassin'', 47 must kill a rich hacker who's having a party with women in his jacuzzi inside the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. He must also steal money in the man's safe so it'll be covered as a robbery gone wrong.
* In ''VideoGame/SplinterCellChaosTheory'', Sam Fisher has to track down a dangerous algorithm from a server within the safe of a bank in Panama and steal ''$50 million'' in it as cover up.
[[/folder]]

* Inverted in the plots of the [[Film/DieHard first]] and [[Film/DieHardWithAVengeance third]] ''Franchise/DieHard'' movies; thefts are disguised by terrorist attacks.

* In one of the ''Literature/CommanderShaw'' spy thrillers by Philip [=McCutchan=], our hero seizes a briefcase full of documents written in Japanese that the villains seem desperate to retrieve from a sinking ship, only to be told on translation that it's a pornographic sex guide. It's only later that they realise it's actually a code.

* ''Series/BurnNotice'': Michael's go-to cover when caught breaking and entering is usually a disgruntled employee or a drunken vandal.

* If one is being ''almost'' [[CaughtWithYourPantsDown caught doing something]] (be it porn or a GuiltyPleasure or something else), it's always better to have something else to be "caught" with, thus explaining both being flustered and avoiding the AwkwardSilence that occurs when you are found staring at your blank desktop all the time with. As one Website/YouTube commenter put it:

* ''Literature/TwoMinuteMysteries'': In one of the mysteries, an official from an unnamed country comes in and tells Dr. Haledijan that a notorious criminal with a long history of successful smuggling has been regularly passing customs. He tools up in a shiny high-end car, and when it's searched, everything's fine except the false bottoms in his luggage, which contain three jars, containing molasses, ground oyster shells, and bits of colored glass. It's perfectly legal to have those, so they let him through. But the official ''knows'' he's smuggling ''something''. Dr. Haledijan sits, smokes a bit, and realizes exactly what's being smuggled -[[spoiler:the high-end car]].

Infraction Distraction is when a conspicuous but minor infraction -- possibly not even illegal but merely disreputable -- is made up or committed for the purposes of distracting authorities from something much more serious. (Usually a crime, but not always; a character can pretend to be distilling moonshine to hide that he's training with his new superpowers, for instance.) Not unlike a KansasCityShuffle, the guards in question know they're being tricked, but are wrong about what the trick is. If you confess (whether or not you actually comitted it), it's ConfessToALesserCrime, but you can also manufacture evidence against yourself or otherwise plant clues to the infraction, down to simply committing it. One common method is to plant an IncrediblyObviousTail -- to distract from the skilled and subtle tail. IncrediblyObviousBug can also be used, but is less common.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels''. In "Hera's Heroes", Hera Syndulla attempts to recover the Kalikori from her ancestral home, now being used as Imperial headquarters, but is caught red-handed by Grand Admiral Thrawn and so she pretends to be a servant who stole it to sell in the market. Unfortunately Thrawn has studied her culture and knows the Kalikori is worthless to anybody outside the Syndulla family, tipping him off as to her real identity.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels''. In "Hera's Heroes", Sera attempts to recover the Kalikori from her ancestral home, now being used as Imperial headquarters, but is caught red-handed by Grand Admiral Thrawn and so she pretends to be a servant who stole it to sell in the market. Unfortunately Thrawn has studied her culture and knows the Kalikori is worthless to anybody outside the Syndulla family, tipping him off as to her real identity.

* ''Literature/{{Flashman}}''. An accidental version happens in ''Flashman and the Great Game''. Flashman is posing as a recruit for a native cavalry unit in India. Despite claiming that he has no previous military experience, the OldSoldier quickly spots him as a fraud because Flashman is unconsciously standing the correct distance from his desk, and has bridled his pony in the regulation manner. Fortunately everyone assumes he's just on the run from a tribal blood feud, rather than a British officer in disguise.

* Back in the days of the Hays Office, movie directors would sometimes include in their scripts that were submitted for approval by the censors things that the censors would obviously object to and remove, in the hope that that would distract them from stuff that the directors didn't want removed. For example, Creator/OrsonWelles submitted a script for ''Film/CitizenKane'' that included a scene in a brothel, knowing fully well that the censors would never allow it, in the hope that it would distract them from other stuff in the movie that they might otherwise censor.

* Picture this: you receive an email attempting to sucker you with an almost-laughably anachronistic and tired scam: the "Nigerian prince" that needs a small transfer of money, and in return will provide a large reward. "Ha! I am much too canny to fall for this rudimentary con! What century are these scammers living in, anyway?" Perhaps the scammer is simply incompetent. But in a [[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WhyFromNigeria.pdf 2012 paper published by Microsoft]], researchers suggested that by intentionally using anachronistic and almost cartoonishly hackneyed tactics such as the "Nigerian prince" scam, a scammer could weed out potential "false positives" and improve their "hit rate" significantly. To illustrate this, imagine you're a scammer. It's relatively expensive (in terms of time and effort) to successfully pull off a scam. This is because each successful scam provides only a small marginal profit, due to the time it takes to correspond with them and the limited quantity of cash marks are willing to front for a promised "reward." Add to this the potential overhead cost of dealing with false positives (victims that consume time and resources but yield no profit) and the problem of victim selection becomes highly relevant. By using a routine that all but the most gullible person will easily identify as a scam, scammers gain a significant advantage, successfully decreasing their false/true positive ratio for a marked increase in efficiency.

* ''Series/TheProfessionals''. In "Slush Fund", Bodie is searching a house but the wife returns home unexpectedly. He quickly pockets some silverware and pretends to be an opportunistic burglar who's down on his luck after losing his job. Fortunately she elects to just throw him out instead of calling the police.

* Picture this: you receive an email attempting to sucker you with an almost-laughably anachronistic and tired scam: the "Nigerian prince" that needs a small transfer of money, and in return will provide a large reward. "Ha! I am much too canny to fall for this rudimentary con! What century are these scammers living in, anyway?" Perhaps the scammer is simply incompetent. But in a 2012 paper published by Microsoft, researchers suggested that by intentionally using anachronistic and almost cartoonishly hackneyed tactics such as the "Nigerian prince" scam, a scammer could weed out potential "false positives" and improve their "hit rate" significantly. To illustrate this, imagine you're a scammer. It's relatively expensive (in terms of time and effort) to successfully pull off a scam. This is because each successful scam provides only a small marginal profit, due to the time it takes to correspond with them and the limited quantity of cash marks are willing to front for a promised "reward." Add to this the potential overhead cost of dealing with false positives (victims that consume time and resources but yield no profit) and the problem of victim selection becomes highly relevant. By using a routine that all but the most gullible person will easily identify as a scam, scammers gain a significant advantage, successfully decreasing their false/true positive ratio for a marked increase in efficiency.

Infraction Distraction is when a conspicuous but minor infraction -- possibly not even illegal but merely disreputable -- is made up or committed for the purposes of distracting authorities from something much more serious. (Usually a crime, but not always; a character can pretend to be distilling moonshine to hide that he's training with his new superpowers, for instance.) Not unlike a KansasCityShuffle, the guards in question know they're being tricked, but are wrong about what the trick is. If you actually confess, it's ConfessToALesserCrime, but you can also manufacture evidence against yourself or otherwise plant clues to the infraction, down to simply committing it. One common method is to plant an IncrediblyObviousTail -- to distract from the skilled and subtle tail. IncrediblyObviousBug can also be used, but is less common.

* During the ColdWar, the US Air Force hid the development of the F-117 stealth fighter by running a different top secret program (using actual captured MiGs to train Air Force and Navy pilots how to fight them) at the same airfield, so that any hostile spy trying to unravel the secret of what was going on would find the captured-MiG program and stop there.

* During the ColdWar, the US Air Force hid the development of the F-117 stealth fighter by running a different top secret program (using actual captured =MiGs= to train Air Force and Navy pilots how to fight them) at the same airfield, so that any hostile spy trying to unravel the secret of what was going on would find the captured-=MiG= program and stop there.

* During the ColdWar, the US Air Force hid the development of the F-117 stealth fighter by running a different top secret program (using actual captured MiGs to train Air Force and Navy pilots how to fight them) at the same airfield, so that any hostile spy trying to unravel the secret of what was going on would find the captured-MiG program and stop there.

The cart comes rumbling up to the gates. The EvilOverlord's guards poke about, and find a jug under the seat. Fool peasant thought he could sneak some moonshine past ''them''. They take it, and the cart rumbles on -- with the {{rightful king|Returns}} hidden under its cargo.

* In ''Film/{{Tenet}}, the protagonist wants to steal a painting hidden in saferoom in a highly securised warehouse near an airport. So he hires a crew to highjack a plane carrying gold on the runaway and crash into the warehouse, in order to create a security breach that allows him to enter while hiding the true reason for the plane crash (with authorities assuming that it was either an attempt to steal the gold and that the thieves lost control of the plane, or an attempt at a terrorist attack).