History Main / WannabeSecretAgent

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in ''Series/{{Castle}}'': a company sells spy-themed fantasy vacations where normal people get to pretend that they are real spies performing secret missions. When one of the clients ends up as the VictimOfTheWeek, Beckett and Castle are initially fooled into thinking that they are dealing with real spies. They arrest one of the pretend spies and he stays completely in character until he realizes he is in a real jail cell. At that point he starts crying.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[BondJamesBond Bodine. Jethro Bodine]]

* WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck has this role in ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction'' where he helps a stuntman played by Brendan Fraser rescue his father Creator/TimothyDalton (who actually ''is'' a secret agent).

* ''Film/TrueLies'': Bill Paxton plays Simon, a used-car salesman who pretends he works for the CIA and tries to hit on Arnie's character's wife. Extra bonus irony points since Arnie's character is a real spy who pretends he's a computer salesman.
* ''Film/Ronin1998'': Spence is an Englishman who claims to be ex-SAS but is outed as utterly incompetent and nearly gets the team killed in the process.

* The children's novel ''Our Man Weston'' by Gordon Korman, involves a teenager (and his long-suffering twin brother, who keeps getting blamed for his antics) who becomes convinced there's an international spy ring in a hotel next to an air force base. There is a spy there as it happens, but our bumbling hero completely fails to uncover him.

* The Lone Gunmen trio of ''Series/TheXFiles'' have their moments, such as when they discover that the Cigarette-Smoking Man apparently kidnapped Scully in episode "En Ami" and visit Mulder disguised as... themselves. As in, they wear each other's usual outfits to blend in with the crowd.

* [[TheSpook Possibly]] Steven Heck from ''VideoGame/AlphaProtocol''. He claims to work for a top-secret branch of the CIA, but there's no evidence that he's ever worked for them at all. One character suggests that Heck is just a lunatic who has somehow deluded himself into thinking he's a CIA agent. Either way, he's [[BewareTheSillyOnes very]], ''[[LethalJokeCharacter very]]'' effective, contrasting with the usual portrayals of this trope.

* The Penguin quartet in ''WesternAnimation/{{Madagascar}}'' are a paranoid bunch who act like they are advance recon scouts deep in the enemy territory, a trait that carried over and taken more seriously in ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar''.

[[folder: Comic Books ]]
* The [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Donald Duck comic]] "Secret Agent 006 1/2" has Donald working as a janitor at a special operations agency. He likes to fantasize about being an actual secret agent, and claims to be one before his girlfriend Daisy. Of course, they both end up on an actual mission.

[[folder: Film -- Animated ]]

[[folder: Film -- Live-Action ]]

* ''Film/{{Ronin}}'': Creator/SeanBean plays Spence, a Englishman who claims to be ex-SAS but is outed as utterly incompetent and nearly gets the team killed in the process.

[[folder: Literature]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Machinima]]
* In season two of ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'', Griff and Donut are send to do recon on the Blue base to try and retrieve Lopez. Donut thinks of it like spy work and acts like this to the point of annoying Griff into sending him away.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Game ]]

* Possibly Steven Heck from ''VideoGame/AlphaProtocol''. He claims to work for a top-secret branch of the CIA but there's no evidence that he's ever worked for them at all. One character suggests that Heck is just a lunatic who has somehow deluded himself into thinking he's a CIA agent. Either way, he's [[BewareTheSillyOnes very]], ''[[LethalJokeCharacter very]]'' effective, contrasting with the usual portrayals of this trope.
* Irene from ''VisualNovel/MissingStars'' is first introduced accidentally having fallen out of a tree. She claims to have been doing "basic recon." Irene is curious and likes eaves-dropping on others around the school; she even has a laser microphone.

[[folder: Real Life]]
* In a rather bizarre case, 23-year-old [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kampiles William Kampiles]] swiped a top-secret satellite manual, sold it to the Soviet Union for 3,000 dollars, and then confessed what he had done to the CIA in the mistaken belief that they would employ him as a double agent. He spent 18 years in prison.

* In season two of ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', Griff and Donut are send to do recon on the Blue base to try and retrieve Lopez. Donut thinks of it like spy work and acts like this to the point of annoying Griff into sending him away.

* Possibly Steven Heck from ''VideoGame/AlphaProtocol''. He claims to work for a top-secret branch of the CIA but there's no evidence that he's ever worked for them at all. One character suggests that Heck has somehow deluded himself into thinking he's a CIA agent. Either way, he's [[BewareTheSillyOnes very]], ''[[LethalJokeCharacter very]]'' effective, contrasting with the usual portrayals of this trope.

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in ''Series/{{Castle}}'': a company sells spy-themed fantasy vacations where normal people get to pretend that they are real spies performing secret missions. When one of the clients ends up as the VictimOfTheWeek, Beckett and Castle are initially fooled into thinking that they are dealing with real spies. They arrest one of the pretend spies and he stays completely in character until he realized that he is in a real jail cell. At that point he starts crying.
* Similar to the above, an episode of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' involved a fantasy vacation company that sold spy-themed packages. The VictimOfTheWeek was a rich kid that was enjoying himself too much and pissed off the wrong man, getting kidnapped as a result. His new girlfriend who was playing the game with him was the first to die in the episode, pointing a fake gun at the man ("enemy agents" appearing at random was part of the package) when he cornered them making out on an alley (which made him shoot her in self-defense), and as a result her cadaver baffled the investigators for a little while.

* Irene from ''VisualNovel/MissingStars'' is first introduced accidentally having fallen out of a tree. She claims to have been doing "basic recon". Irene is curious and likes ease-droping on others around the school; she even has a laser microphone.

* Similar to the above, an episode of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' involved a fantasy vacation company that sold spy-themed packages. The VictimOfTheWeek was a rich kid that was enjoying himself too much and pissed off the wrong man, getting kidnapped as a result. His personal "Bond Girl" assigned by the company was the first to die in the episode, pointing a fake gun at the man ("enemy agents" appearing at random was part of the package) when he cornered them making out on an alley (which made him shoot her in self-defense), and as a result her cadaver baffled the investigators for a little while.

* In''Film/SpiesLikeUs'', Austin Millbarge is a basement-dwelling codebreaker at the Pentagon who aspires to escape his under-respected job to become a secret agent. Emmett Fitz-Hume, a wisecracking, pencil-pushing son of an envoy, takes the foreign service exam under peer pressure. Both of them fail (Fitz-Hume openly attempts to cheat, while Millbarge is woefully unprepared because his supervisor withheld notice of the test till the day before). Needing expendable agents to act as decoys to draw attention away from a more capable team, the DIA decides to enlist the two, promote them to be Foreign Service Operatives, put them through minimal training, and then send them on an undefined mission into Soviet Central Asia.

* In ''Film/TheSpyWhoDumpedMe'' the two protagonists get caught in a spy story (the eponymous spy is an ex-boyfriend) with [[GenkiGirl Kate]] being more than delighted to have some sparks in her life. She ends up begging the MI6 boss (played by Creator/GillianAnderson) to let her join the agency. [[spoiler: At the end of the film she obliges.]]

[[folder: Literature]]
* The children's novel ''Our Man Weston'' by Gordon Korman, involves a teenager (and his long-suffering twin brother, who keeps getting blamed for his antics) who becomes convinced there's an international spy ring in a hotel next to an air force base. There is a spy there as it happens, but our bumbling hero completely fails to uncover him.
[[/folder]]

* Similar to the above, an episode of ''Series/CSINewYork'' involved a fantasy vacation company that sold spy-themed packages. The VictimOfTheWeek was a rich kid that was enjoying himself too much and pissed off the wrong man, getting kidnapped as a result. His personal "Bond Girl" assigned by the company was the first to die in the episode, pointing a fake gun at the man ("enemy agents" appearing at random was part of the package) when he cornered them making out on an alley (which made him shoot her in self-defense), and as a result her cadaver baffled the investigators for a little while.

* Similar to the above, an episode of ''Series/CSINY'' involved a fantasy vacation company that sold spy-themed packages. The VictimOfTheWeek was a rich kid that was enjoying himself too much and pissed off the wrong man, getting kidnapped as a result. His personal "Bond Girl" assigned by the company was the first to die in the episode, pointing a fake gun at the man ("enemy agents" appearing at random was part of the package) when he cornered them making out on an alley (which made him shoot her in self-defense), and as a result her cadaver baffled the investigators for a little while.

* WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck has this role in ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction'' where he helps a stuntman played by Brendan Fraser rescue his father TimothyDalton (who actually ''is'' a secret agent).

In a way, a WannabeSecretAgent is similar to a ConspiracyTheorist in that both imagine themselves privy to secret knowledge that they believe puts them above the dreary everyday (though the former likes to play out his fantasy more than to discuss it). Both character types are portrayed as common amongst TheMentallyDisturbed, and as a result both often feature in plots revolving around TheSchizophreniaConspiracy.

* ''Film/{{Ronin}}'': SeanBean plays Spence, a Englishman who claims to be ex-SAS but is outed as utterly incompetent and nearly gets the team killed in the process.