History Main / PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo

* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''[[{{Disney/ptitle3if599v0}} The Emperor's New Groove]]'', Yzma tries to kill Kuzco by having his drink poisoned. During the meal, Kronk, the one to initially poison it, gets the drinks confused and ends up putting the poison in all three of them (and informs Yzma of this fact so she won't drink hers - Kronk pretends to drink but actually holds the glass just on the other side of his mouth and pours it onto his shoulder while making gulping noises), but it turns out none of the drinks were poisoned in the first place -- what he had put in them was a potion that changed Kuzco into a llama.

* Played straight in ''{{Merlin}}'', up until the point where [[spoiler:Arthur distracts Merlin to put both the poisoned drink and the safe one in his own goblet.]]

* {{Inverted}} in ''{{Shrek}} 2,'' when the King almost gives the love potion to Fiona, but swaps the glasses at the last second.

* While not being entirely 100% on the Trope, there is a story in a book in the ''{{Elder Scrolls}}'' games which recounts the story of a noble man inviting his most trusted followers to a great meal. Most attendees feared that the food was poisoned and thus faked eating it. Once the meal was finished, the lord said that instead of the meal, the cutlery was poisoned and only the people at the table who would confess of their wrongdoings against him would receive the antidote. Conclusion : [[spoiler:One man admitted consorting behind the lord's back and received the antidote only to find out it was a powerful poison. At this point the lord admitted that the meal and drink were perfectly fine and the actual poison was the antidote.]] At the end of the book the writer deduces that the ploy was more to inspire fear into the lord's servants than expose any spies and requests from his employer to be resigned from his position.

** An AdaptationDistillation from the comics, where Scott had nothing to do with Todd's downfall, beyond [[LampshadeHanging hoping for some kind of "last minute, poorly-set-up deus ex machina"]]. They still keep another element, though. It's not his first time to go against veganism...

* In ''ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'', Scott pulls this on Todd: after the vegan bass player Todd bests him in a bass battle, Scott attempts to reconcile with him by offering a coffee with soy milk in it. However, as Todd has PsychicPowers as a result of his veganism ([[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum yeah, we know]]), he knows Scott's actually "poisoned" the cup with half-and-half, so he takes the one Scott is going to drink... which is the one with half-and-half in it. The vegan police then come and take away Todd's powers for breaking the code ([[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome yeah, we know]]).
** An AdaptionDistillation from the comics, where Scott had nothing to do with it. They still keep another element, though. It's not his first time to go against veganism...

-->--''EvilOverlordList'', No.83

* In the Czech film ''Císařův pekař - Pekařův císař'' a group of conspirators attempt to poison Emperor Rudolf II. The plot is derailed when the chalices of wine - including the poisoned one - are used to demonstrate Copernicus' heliocentric system.

* Done openly in ''{{Sherlock}}'': the serial killer has two identical bottles of pills, one poisonous and one completely harmless, and forces his victims at gunpoint to choose one while he takes the other. [[spoiler: Sherlock realizes the gun is fake and is about to simply walk away, but the killer manipulates him into playing anyway. However, before they can actually take the pills, Watson shoots him, and we never do find out which was which.]]

* Amped up to eleven in one case in ''TanteiGakuenQ''. In order to trap the murderer who's planning to kill the last victim, they deliberately let him poison one of the coffee cups in a meeting with others. Then the detectives make an excuse so that everyone gets sent to another room. The coffee cups are then rearranged and re-served. Which one gets the poisoned one? [[spoiler: of course, the perp gets it, thanks to Megumi's photographic memory which remembers which cup is poisoned]]
* The 17th chapter of [[HunterxHunter HunterxHunter]] has this. Two candles, a long one and a short one will be lit. Gon has to predict which one will last the longer. Everyone instantly thinks this is a trap-in-a-trap-in-a-trap etc. [[IdiotHero but Gon obliviously chooses the long one, reasoning that it should last longer because of its size.]]

-->'''Husband''': * Drinks his tea* \\

'''Husband''': * Gasps, and then promptly dies* \\
* The butler enters the room.* \\

* In a flashback in ''{{Batman}} R.I.P'', we see Bruce Wayne drinking with a little Asian man in the Far East. The man then reveals he poisoned Bruce's cup. However, [[spoiler: the man himself begins to fall victim to the poison. Turns out, according to Bruce [[CrowningMomentofAwesome "You blinked. I switched the cups. Force of habit."]]]]
* The very first ''Spy Vs Spy'' cartoon in MadMagazine featured the black spy and white spy both subtly disposing tipping the tea they were supposed to be having. Two cats see the tea and lap it up, and are shown dead in the final panel.
* [[PlayingWithATrope Played With]] in a ''NikolaiDante'' story in a scene between the title character and his half-sister Anastasia, who typically kills people by poisoning them. When having a drink together, Nikolai's crest warns him that his glass may be poisoned so he makes an obvious effort to switch the glasses, at which point Anastasia remarks that, as an experienced poisoner, she would expect a weary individual to try and switch glasses so she would logically poison her own glass, instead. Then, when Dante switches glasses ''again'', she remarks that since she's immune to her own poison, anyway, she would logically poison both glasses.

** Ironically, Vizzini's argument is halfway correct. [[spoiler: He does realize that there's no way to discover which goblet is poisoned through reasoning. If only he'd realized that [[XanatosGambit Westley wouldn't have suggested the game unless he knew he would win it ...]]]]
*** More ironically, [[spoiler: ''both'' sides of his IKnowYouKnowIKnow were correct - "I cannot choose the wine in front of you" and "I cannot choose the wine in front of me" - even though he was only using them to fish for a reaction]].
* ''Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'' had a fairly straight use of the trope. Patricia brings Chuck Barris a tray with two drinks; Chuck's is poisoned. She loses her attention for a moment, then comes back and notices the tray has been reversed. While Chuck isn't looking she reverses it again. [[spoiler:And she winds up choking to death on poison. Chuck hadn't reversed the tray, he just moved the objects on the tray around to make it look like he had.]]

* In the movie (but not the book) of ''{{Stardust}}'' one of the brothers tried to poison the two remaining with drugged wine. Unfortunately for the priest who was also there on that occasion one of the brothers took the wrong glass.
** In the book all the brothers are GenreSavvy enough to only drink wine they themselves have poured from a sealed bottle.

* In ''ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'', Scott pulls this on Todd: after the vegan bass player Todd bests him in a bass battle, Scott attempts to reconcile with him by offering a coffee with soy milk in. However, as Todd has PsychicPowers as a result of his veganism ([[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum yeah, we know]]), he knows Scott's actually "poisoned" the cup with half-and-half, so he takes the one Scott is going to drink... which is the one with half-and-half in it. The vegan police then come and take away Todd's powers for breaking the code ([[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome yeah, we know]]).

[[AC:ComicBooks]]
* Colleen Doran uses this early on in her comic ''ADistantSoil''. Jason is offered some wine by the seemingly-kind Sere. He asks her to drink hers first, which she does. He then takes a few sips of his. One of Sere's servants then enters with a small metal tube, which Sere injects into her arm--it's the antidote. (Or inhibitor, or something--it's just drugged, not poisoned.) Cue Jason falling over.
* In a flashback in ''{{Batman}} R.I.P'', we see Bruce Wayne drinking with a little Asian man in the Far East. The man then reveals he poisoned Bruce's cup. However, [[spoiler: the man himself begins to fall victim to the poison. Turns out, according to Bruce [[CrowningMomentofAwesome "You blinked. I switched the cups. Force of habit."]]]]
* The very first ''Spy Vs Spy'' cartoon in MadMagazine featured the black spy and white spy both subtly disposing tipping the tea they were supposed to be having. Two cats see the tea and lap it up, and are shown dead in the final panel.
* [[PlayingWithATrope Played With]] in a ''NikolaiDante'' story in a scene between the title character and his half-sister Anastasia, who typically kills people by poisoning them. When having a drink together, Nikolai's crest warns him that his glass may be poisoned so he makes an obvious effort to switch the glasses, at which point Anastasia remarks that, as an experienced poisoner, she would expect a weary individual to try and switch glasses so she would logically poison her own glass, instead. Then, when Dante switches glasses ''again'', she remarks that since she's immune to her own poison, anyway, she would logically poison both glasses.

** Specifically, it was done with ''swords''. Laertes cut Hamlet with a poisoned sword in a fencing match, and in the ensuing scuffle Hamlet took Laertes' sword and cut him as well. In the exact same scene, Gertrude (accidentally or not, depending on the director) drinks the poisoned wine Claudius meant to use on Hamlet if the sword trick fialed.

* While not being entirely 100% on the Trope, there is a story in a book in the ''{{Elder Scrolls}}'' game which recounts the story of a noble man inviting his most trusted followers to a great meal. Once everyone was at the table and drank and ate all they could, the lord said that the meal and drink were poisoned and only the people at the table who would confess of their wrongdoings against him would receive the antidote. Conclusion : [[spoiler:One man admitted consorting behind the lord's back and received the antidote only to find out it was a powerful poison. All the other men were then relieved when the lord admitted that the meal and drink were perfectly fine and the actual poison was the antidote.]]. Needless to say this is a bit drastic and not entirely an accurate way to deal with these problems for the same reason torture doesn't work very well (false positives).

* In ''ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'', Scott pulls this on Todd: after the vegan bass player Todd bests him in a bass battle, Scott attempts to reconcile with him by offering a coffee with soy milk in. However, as Todd has PsychicPowers as a result of his veganism ([[ItRunsOnNonseleum yeah, we know]]), he knows Scott's actually "poisoned" the cup with half-and-half, so he takes the one Scott is going to drink... which is the one with half-and-half in it. The vegan police then come and take away Todd's powers for breaking the code ([[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome yeah, we know]]).

* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''TheEmperorsNewGroove'', Yzma tries to kill Kuzco by having his drink poisoned. During the meal, Kronk, the one to initially poison it, gets the drinks confused and ends up putting the poison in all three of them (and informs Yzma of this fact so she won't drink hers - Kronk pretends to drink but actually holds the glass just on the other side of his mouth and pours it onto his shoulder while making gulping noises), but it turns out none of the drinks were poisoned in the first place -- what he had put in them was a potion that changed Kuzco into a llama.

* In an episode of ''StarWarsTheCloneWars'', Obi-Wan and Anakin use {{the Force}} to pull this trick off on a gang of pirates. But then they get knocked out anyway, because apparently for some reason the cups of the random pirates next to them were ''also'' drugged.

* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''TheEmperorsNewGroove'', Yzma tries to kill Kuzco by having his drink poisoned. During the meal, Kronk, the one to initially poison it, gets the drinks confused and ends up putting the poison in all three of them (and informs Yzma of this fact so she won't drink hers - Kronk pretends to drink but actually holds the glass just on the other side of his mouth and pours it onto his shoulder while making gulping noises), but it turns out none of the drinks were poisoned in the first place -- what he had put in them was a potion that changed Kuzco into a llama.

* In ''ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'', Scott pulls this on Todd: after the vegan bass player Todd bests him in a bass battle, Scott attempts to reconcile with him by offering a coffee with soy milk in. However, as Todd has PsychicPowers as a result of his veganism ([[ItRunsOnNonsoleum yeah, we know]]), he knows Scott's actually "poisoned" the cup with half-and-half, so he takes the one Scott is going to drink... which is the one with half-and-half in it. The vegan police then come and take away Todd's powers for breaking the code ([[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome yeah, we know]]).

* In ''SherlockJr.'', the detective played by BusterKeaton accepts a poisoned drink, then politely offers it to the would-be murderer's accomplice (who doesn't know about the poison).