History Main / PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo

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

A DiscreditedTrope, more often parodied than played straight these days.

* [[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 while Yzma throws the drink into a nearby plant), 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. (The plant turns Llama-shaped)

* The 17th chapter of ''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.]]

-->--EvilOverlordList, No.83

* ''ThePrincessBride'' features a subversion. After going through a long IKnowYouKnowIKnow, Vizzini [[LookOverThere distracts]] the Man In Black and switches the goblets, then carefully waits for his opponent to drink first (since presumably the Man In Black would try to weasel out of drinking if he thought he was about to drink from the poisoned cup). Turns out [[spoiler:the Man In Black [[TakeAThirdOption poisoned]] ''[[TakeAThirdOption both]]'' [[TakeAThirdOption chalices]], revealing to Buttercup afterward that [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity he had built up a tolerance to the poison used]]]]. Ironically, ''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.

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

->''"You've got a revolving table! Brilliant!"''
-->--'''''The MitchellAndWebb Situation'''''

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* 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.]]

* Nakamura, a science teacher in ''{{Nichijou}}'' who's interested in RobotGirl Nano tries to see if she's susceptible to tranquilizers by giving her drugged coffee... only to realize too late that she'd poured and drank her own coffee ''after'' putting the tranquilizers in the pot.
** Later, she prepares this trick again, only for her adding the tranquilizers to make the coffee cup overflow. She instinctively leans forward to drink the excess off the top and... [[EpicFail well...]]

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* [[CrowningMomentOfFunny Hilariously]] done in a TV commercial announcing that, on Mondays, a DVD with episodes of a British crime show would be included when you bought the Swedish evening paper ''Expressen''. In the commercial, a British woman is preparing tea for herself and her husband, and secretly pours poison into his cup.
-->'''Husband''': *Drinks his tea* \\

'''Husband (also smiling)''': "Darling, I know! ...I switched the cups."\\

'''Husband''': *Gasps, and then promptly dies* \\

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* 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."]]]]

* [[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 wary 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.

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* In ''[=~Sherlock Jr.~=]'', 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).
* ''ThePrincessBride'' features a subversion which has arguably proven the most memorable example of the trope. After going through a long IKnowYouKnowIKnow, Vizzini [[LookOverThere distracts]] the Man In Black and switches the goblets, then carefully waits for his opponent to drink first (since presumably the Man In Black would try to weasel out of drinking if he thought he was about to drink from the poisoned cup). Turns out [[spoiler:the Man In Black [[TakeAThirdOption poisoned]] ''[[TakeAThirdOption both]]'' [[TakeAThirdOption chalices]], revealing to Buttercup afterward that [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity he had built up a tolerance to the poison used]]]].
** 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]].

* In the movie (but not the book) of ''{{Stardust}}'', one of the brothers tried to poison the remaining two 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.

** Turned UpToEleven in ''TheNaughtyNineties'', where Costello's character ends up having a drink with the BigBad. At one point Costello loses track of who has the poison, so he dumps it into a potted plant. ThatPoorPlant whithers away and dies, prompting Costello to wipe his glass out ''very thouroughly.''

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* Half-averted, half-subverted in TerryPratchett's ''{{Nation}}''. In order to prevent two men from killing the islanders (and after they had already killed one), Daphne gets them alone and poisons them with undiluted beer. Foxlip, the one who had killed, does ''not'' switch the cups as per the trope, instead having Daphne mix the drinks together so they all get the same. Like ''Princess Bride'', all the cups were poisoned. Unlike ''Princess Bride'', it wasn't that Daphne was immune so much as understood the trick to make the beer safe: Spitting into the beer to neutralize the poison, and singing the ritual beer song to count time it takes to work. Daphne did this right in front of the men and asked they do it too, knowing that they would never partake in "pagan mumbo jumbo." As a result, Foxlip drank and died. The other man survived only because of continued suspicion but was sent running soon after.

* Non-lethal drug example in the ''InDeath'' series. Whenever [[{{Determinator}} Eve]] goes too long without sleep in the middle of a case, Roarke will usually try to push food and sedatives on her. On one occasion, she switches their bowls of soup with a snarky comment and starts to eat... only to fall asleep. Roarke makes fun of her for for it before she goes under.

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* In ''FamilyMatters'', [[TheUrkel Steve Urkel]] sits next to a couple of bullies in the cafeteria, then has to leave the table for a moment. They sneak heavy amounts of salt into his lunch. Suspecting that they probably did something to his food, he uses a LookOverThere ploy to make the bullies look away. They sarcastically play along, and Urkel picks the trays up and puts them down ''without switching them''. They then use a LookOverThere ploy themselves ("Look, it's Steven Hawking!"), which Urkel plays along with more convincingly, allowing them to switch the trays "back". Urkel then takes the "unpoisoned" tray and leaves before the boys bite into their salty lunch.
** The exact same bully-vs-nerd ploy happened in at least one other series, [[YouKnowThatShow maybe]] ''SavedByTheBell''.
** This troper remembers the exact same thing happening in ''BoyMeetsWorld''.
** It also happened on ''FamilyMatters'' in a fantasy episode where Carl was a vampire.
* Played brilliantly in a sketch on ''{{Skithouse}}''. The inviting host enters with one, and only one, glass of wine on a tray. He puts it down, lays a distraction, adds the poison, and he and his captive play out the distract-then turn scene, while the single glass is in the center of the tray and not moving at all. In the end, the host picks it up, and drinks.
* Steve Martin, always eager to protect his status as hosting ''SaturdayNightLive'' more times than anybody else, once did a skit where he attempted to maintain his status by poisoning Tom Hanks before he could tie the record, by slipping poison from his ring into Tom's whiskey. A series of switcharoos took place, before Tom Hanks pulled a fake switcharoo. Steve Martin, now suspecting that, decided to throw out the whiskey and order champagne, which he again poisoned. After another couple switcharoos Tom resolved the issue by punching Steve in the jaw. Only then did Steve find out that this was only Tom Hank's fifteenth time hosting, meaning he was still one short of tying Steve. Both of them felt very foolish.
* Played almost-straight in ''{{House}}'' when House buys two coffees, grinding up amphetamines in one to give to Wilson. Being GenreSavvy, House offers the clean one to Wilson, who suspiciously declines House's offer and takes the drugged one from his desk.
* Seen in a ''{{Morecambe and Wise}}'' {{Hamlet}} parody in which Eric and Ernie resort to ever more desperate measures to distract each other as they switch the poison chalice concluding with; Ernie: Look, there's a naked lady. Eric: Look there's an even nakeder lady.
* A variation occurs in an episode of ''{{Dracula}}: The Series''. Only in this case, the involved parties are both vampires, the "poison" is holy water, and the exchange happens right in front of the poisoner who doesn't notice due to Dracula's fast reflexes.

* On ''{{Scrubs}}'', Turk informs Dr. Kelso he's giving Carla regular coffee instead of decaf, due to her proclamation that the two of them will be going to bed at the same time, ''early''. Dr. Kelso listens sympathetically, being an old hand at drugging one's spouse himself. Then, when Turk looks away, he switches Turk's decaf for Carla's caffeinated. Cut to: Turk awake all night as Carla slumbers.

* ''GetSmart''. Max is dining out with a female KAOS agent and slips a TruthSerum into her drink. Cue a gag where both of them keep pointing out things to look at behind the other's back, so they can switch drinks (Max of course ends up with the doped drink).
** If I recall, they were both trying to slip somethin into each others drinks. She was trying to give him a knockout pill while Max was doing the truth serum. It ends with the KAOS agent asleep at the table and Max telling everything he knows.

* 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 challenges him into playing anyway. However, before they can actually take the pills, Watson shoots him, and we never do find out which was which.]]
** The fact that the bottles of the previous victims were shown to have more than one pill indicates the killer might have been lying, and was simply using an approach that would play into Holmes' intellectual arrogance.

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* This happens multiple times during the dinner scene in ''{{Clue}} VCR Mystery Game''. It reaches the point were no one ends up eating anything at dinner as no one is sure what has been poisoned and what hasn't.

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* {{Shakespeare}} [[TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples did it]] in ''{{Hamlet}}''.
** 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 failed.

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* 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, but if attendees who deserved to be poisoned would confess of their wrongdoings against him, they would receive the antidote. [[spoiler:One man admitted consorting behind the lord's back and received the antidote. At this point the lord admitted that the meal and drink were perfectly fine and the "antidote" was actually an incurable deadly poison.]] 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.

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* 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 [[AllThereInTheManual between episodes]]. Because the lead pirate's pet sees them and uses a gas to knock out ''everyone''.

* In the ''DoctorWho'' episode "Boom Town" (9th Doctor), the evil Margaret Blaine distracts the Doctor during dinner and slips poison into his drink. Then the Doctor, still smiling and without missing a beat, deliberately and in full view switches the glasses.

* Used in multiple ''TheThreeStooges'' shorts. In one notable instance, Shemp and the villain take turns distracting each other and swapping their wine glasses. The GenreSavvy villain, however, simply taps the glasses together when it's her turn, causing Shemp to swap the glasses around again and give himself the poison.

* Used in a ''TheThreeStooges'' short.

Two enemies are sharing a drink and at ''least'' one will attempt to poison the other by switching glasses while the other's back is turned. Common joke is either that someone poisons a chalice, then they get switched over, or someone [[IKnowYouKnowIKnow knows he's got a poisoned drink]], and tries to find a chance to dispose of it without being obvious, or pretending to swap the glasses, waiting for the enemy to really swap them and drink.

* In the ''SherlockHolmes'' adventure ''A Study In Scarlet'', a former American settler, Jefferson Hope, tracks down two of his [[{{Vendetta}} mortal enemies]], Drebber and his secretary [[AssholeVictim Stangerson]] (who had kidnapped his fiancé and killed her father a few years earlier) in London. He gets employed as a cabman and picks up an inebriate Drebber one evening. He kidnaps him and forces him to choose between two pills (one harmless, the other one lethal poison), while he himself swallows the other one (thus claiming that God chooses who shall die). This first switcheroo conveniently kills Drebber. He then proceeds to locate Stangerson inside a hotel room and places him before the same choice. But Stangerson [[TakeAThirdOption refuses]], resulting in Hope stabbing him to death, and then accidentally abandoning the two pills to be found by the police.

* In the ''SherlockHolmes'' adventure ''A Study In Scarlet'', a former American settler, Jefferson Hope, tracks down two of his mortal enemies, Drebber and his secretary Stangerson (who had kidnapped his fiancé and killed her father a few years earlier) in London. He gets employed as a cabman, and one night picks up Drebber. He kidnaps him and forces him to choose between two pills (one harmless, the other one lethal poison), while he himself drowns the other one (thus claiming that God chooses who shall die). This first switcheroo conveniently kills Drebber. He then locates Stangerson inside a hotel room and placed him before the same choice. But Stangerson refuses, resulting in Hope stabbing him to death, and then accidentally abandoning the two pills to be found by the police.

* Nakamura, a science teacher in ''{{Nichijou}}'' who's interested in RobotGirl Nano tries to see if she's susceptible to tranquilizers by giving her drugged coffee... only to realize too late that she'd put the tranquilizers all in ''her own drink.''

* Once upon a time, an old man got tired of the neighbour kids mischieviously stealing apples from his big apple tree. So he takes a sign, and writes on it: "'''One of those apples is poisoned!!!'''". He considers the matter done and goes to sleep. After breakfast the next day, he sees a note attached to his big sign, which says, "[[spoiler:Ha! Now there's two!]]"

* 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.]]

* {{Inverted}} in ''{{Shrek}} 2,'' when Fiona's father the King brings two cups of tea into Fiona's room, one of which he had spiked with a love potion as part of a ploy to get her to marry Prince Charming. After talking for a bit, Fiona reaches for one cup, but the King nervously tells her to drink the other, making up a transparent excuse about one of them being decaf. Fiona obliges, having no reason to be suspicious of her father. At the movie's climax, it's revealed to the audience that the King had actually changed his mind at the last second, instead giving Fiona the untainted cup.

* {{Abbott and Costello}} sometimes did a variation: Lou gets a necklace from a mysterious woman, detective comes by and says a mysterious woman just stole a necklace, then Lou tries to hide it in Bud's hamburger so they don't get blamed for it. Eventually, Lou ends up eating it, just as the detective comes back and mentions there's a reward for it.
** Turned UpToEleven in TheNaughtyNineties, where Costello's character ends up having a drink with the BigBad. At one point Costello loses track of who has the poison, so he dumps it into a potted plant. ThatPoorPlant whithers away and dies, prompting Costello to wipe his glass out ''very thouroughly.''

* Used in a TheThreeStooges short.

* In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, [[spoiler: Jack Sparrow lies about which chalice contains the mermaid tear, and thus will grant life, while the other one will drain life. Blackbeard values his own life more than that of his daughter, drinks the one he thinks will give life, and ends up dying.]]

* 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.]]

* The very first ''Spy Vs Spy'' cartoon in MadMagazine featured the black spy and white spy both subtly disposing of the tea they were supposed to be having by tipping it onto the floor. Two cats see the tea and lap it up, and are shown dead in the final panel.

* ''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 1933 movie ''Roman Scandals'', the Roman emperor's food taster (Eddie Cantor) is told "The one without the parsley is the one without the poison." But some busybody in the kitchen notices the missing parsley and puts it on.

* In the novel ''The Sherwood Ring,'' Barbara is taken prisoner by Peaceable, and ''lets him know'' (she can't hide it, really) that she's got sleeping drops on her person after hitting the apothecary that morning. After he starts to get a crush on her, and lets her know about it, she decides to pull the chalice switcheroo and hands him the red glass. He's well aware of what she's doing (especially since the cups are of different colors) and points out to her that he doesn't blame her for trying, it's just the general stupidity of her trying that irritates him. He switches goblets and challenges her to drink hers, she does, he does...then he says, "It was in the green glass all the time, wasn't it?" Yup. He'd informed Barbara earlier that all the girls he ever met in his life came off as fools and he assumed when she pulled out the goblets that she wasn't as smart as she appeared, and she took advantage of it. He promptly proposed marriage before he passed out.

* The JamesBond parody in {{Concession}} mocked this trope:

* In oglaf comics the obviously gay Xoan ambassador who is friends with the apprentice's mistress offers the apprentice poisoned food claiming it's all the rage and pours the antidote over his penis in hopes that the apprentice will have to suck it off. The Apprentice says he's going to his room to write a letter to the mistress saying the Xoan ambassador murdered him. however when the Ambassador trys to turn it into a mystery drama including offering a Locket with the ambassadors picture inside {Which he has a bag of} the apprentice says he doesnt believe it was poison. Later The mistress calls the apprentice in to punish him for being in the room that the ambassador had called him to only for him to collapse from poison causing the ambassador to yell "He's been poisoned" later still when he's sent to be cured in an painfully disturbing way the Ambassador reveals the Apprentice made a smart move because the antidote was poison as well.

A less lethal variation is to shake a bottle or can of pop/beer.

* 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.