History Main / PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' video game, you poisoned someone with a truth serum, and both characters distracted each other with pictures in the inn while switching the table. You had to create a new picture to get your opponent to drink it.
* In ''SuikodenII'', the King gets poisoned not because there was poison in the cup or the wine given to him by Jowy; but because Jowy had poisoned ''himself'' before he symbolically bled himself into the wine to symbolize his loyalty. He then took a lot of antidote, but was still almost died.

* In KingdomOfLoathing, at the end of the 'Strange Leaflet Quest' you meet a giant who offers you two shotglasses of potion; he tells you that one is poisoned and if you drink the safe one, he'll take you to fairyland. [[spoiler:Both potions are poison, but if you TakeAThirdOption and use the [[BalefulPolymorph CLEESH]] spell on the giant, you can claim a ring from him.]]

* At the beginning of the ''{{Daredevil}}'' movie, the blind Matt is handed mustard instead of honey for his tea. As soon as the prankster turns his back, Matt switches the cups.

* Not so much a switcheroo in ''TheEmperorsNewGroove'', as much as Yzma's underling Kronk simply ''forgetting'' which chalice he poisoned. He deals with it by mixing the drinks in all the cups together, then frantically signaling to Yzma not to drink hers.

* ''{{Nation}}'', by TerryPratchett: Half-averted, half-subverted. 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.

* In the ''{{Discworld}}'' video game, you poisoned someone with a truth serum, and both characters distracted each other with pictures in the inn while switching the table. You had to create a new picture to get your opponent to drink it.
* In ''{{Suikoden II}}'', the King gets poisoned not because there was poison in the cup or the wine given to him by Jowy; but because Jowy had poisoned ''himself'' before he symbolically bled himself into the wine to symbolize his loyalty. He then took a lot of antidote, but was still almost died.

* Done in a ''LooneyTunes'' short where Bugs and Yosemite Sam keep swapping drinks. Bugs eventually starts the whole table spinning. Sam stops the table and forces Bugs to drink at gunpoint. He still gets the wrong glass.

* The very first ''SpyVsSpy'' 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.]]

* At the end of ''{{The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane}}'', as Rynn is making tea for herself and [[AffablyEvil Frank]], she puts potassium cyanide in her own cup. It's not clear if she anticipated that Frank would be suspicious and switch, or if she was initially intending to kill herself rather than submit to Frank's blackmail. But either way, Frank becomes suspicious and demands that they switch cups, so he ends up dying.

* Played straight in ''{{Series/Merlin}}'' (except that they're both ''trying'' to get the 'poison', to save the other) up until the point where [[spoiler:Arthur distracts Merlin to put both the 'poisoned' drink and the safe one in his own goblet. He drank it, but there was actually no poison in it, just a sleeping potion.]]

* 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.]]

* 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.
** You actually meet the nobleman in question in the expansion pack, ''Tribunal'' - [[DeadlyDecadentCourt King Helseth]].

* 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 RobinHobb's ''Farseer'' trilogy, [=FitzChivalry=] ostensibly poisons his "victim"'s glass, and gives him his own. He later takes a few sips of that unpoisoned glass, before noticing, a little too late, that [[spoiler:the ''bottle'' had been poisoned by the EvilPrince. He barely survives, the victim doesn't]].

** In ''Curtain'', [[spoiler:20th century Iago Stephen Norton has manipulated Barbara Franklin into trying to poison her husband. While everyone else is looking at meteors, Hastings, completely unsuspecting, swivels the table around to get at a book, and Barbara drinks the poisoned coffee.]]

* 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 should choose 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 AgathaChristie short story ''Accident'', a man suspects a woman of being a murderer. Before he can be certain, he must take a drink she offers him. He waits for her to drink first [[spoiler: but doesn't notice that she pours her drink into a plant]].

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* Played straight in ''{{Series/Merlin}}'' (except that they're both ''trying'' to get the poison, to save the other) up until the point where [[spoiler:Arthur distracts Merlin to put both the poisoned drink and the safe one in his own goblet.]]

* ''GetSmart''. Max is dining out with a female KAOS agent. She is trying to give him a knockout pill, while Max is attempting to spike her drink with truth serum. Both of them keep pointing out things to look at behind the other's back, so they can switch drinks. It ends with Max telling everything he knows to the KAOS agent, who is fast asleep.

* 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.

* This comes up in party banter in the ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' ''Mark of the Assassin'' DLC. Varric mentions a relative who tried to do this but was very bad at intrigue. "Wasn't finished gloating to his enemy when he keeled over.
I think the family always had a sense for terrible drama."

* 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.

* TheAssassinationBureau: Ivan Dragomiloff sees the countess pour poison into his chalice. He spins both chalices on a rotating table and the countess refuses to drink since she does not know where the poison is. Dragomiloff drinks the non-poisoned wine and fakes death. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassination_Bureau]]

* The [[TheThreeMusketeers2011 2011 version of The Three Musketeers]] has a variation where it's the chalice themselves that were poisoned.
* At the end of ''The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane'', as Rynn is making tea for herself and [[AffablyEvil Frank]], she puts potassium cyanide in her own cup. It's not clear if she anticipated that Frank would be suspicious and switch, or if she was initially intending to kill herself rather than submit to Frank's blackmail. But either way, Frank becomes suspicious and demands that they switch cups, so he ends up dying.

* 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, "You blinked. I switched the cups. Force of habit."]]

* ''{{Clue}} VCR Mystery Game'': This happens multiple times during the dinner scene. 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.

* Used in Brian Jacques's ''{{Redwall}}'' novel ''Marlfox'' by TheStarscream, Lantur, on her mother Silth. The mad old queen either overthinks it by several layers, or by one layer too few, depending on your point of view.

* In ''FamilyMatters'', ExtrovertedNerd 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.

* ''{{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 ''ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'', Scott pulls this: 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... but it turns out Scott offered him the one with soy milk and held the non-vegan cup close, and merely thought really hard about doing it the other way. The vegan police then come and take away Todd's powers for breaking the code ([[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome yeah, we know]]).

** Assuming the killer was telling the truth an interesting variation is created. [[spoiler:The killer cannot give away which pill is poison and which is inert because he himself doesn't know. It's pure roulette.]] Naturally Sherlock ''doesn't'' believe him.

* ''{{House}}'': Played almost-straight 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassination_Bureau
* TheAssassinationBureau: Ivan Dragomiloff sees the countess pour poison into his chalice. He spins both chalices on a rotating table and the countess refuses to drink since she does not know where the poison is. Dragomiloff drinks the non-poisoned wine and fakes death. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/]]

* 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.