History Sandbox / PlayingPossumWickCheck

# Roleplay.GalacticVoyageTransformers: Freezon's "nite-glow" means they wake up from stunning much faster than normal. However, they pretend to still be unconscious anyway to listen in on Jet Convoy.
# Film.GodzillaVsKong: Realizing they don't have much chance fighting Godzilla in the middle of the ocean, the surviving ships carrying Kong completely power down to make Godzilla think they've been destroyed (or the very least, that they're admitting defeat). Kong, already exhausted by his initial battle with Godzilla, is in no position to disagree, but does flash Godzilla a Death Glare as he swims away. Of course, now that they're "dead" they can't move or else Godzilla will realize they were just pretending and return, so they switch to carrying Kong by air.
# ComicBook.DarkNightATrueBatmanStory: ForWantOfANail: If not for the bad date with Vivien, Dini wouldn't have walked alone that night, which meant he wouldn't have been mugged. As Dini recounts, if he hadn't been PlayingPossum after being badly beaten, the muggers would have made sure he was dead.
# Film.JCVD: The opening prologue have Van Damme pretending to be a corpse during the fake movie. The credits are notably imposed over Van Damme.
# VideoGame.LittleMisfortune: When Misfortune trips and falls in front of Benjamin, there is a choice to let him pick you up or pretend to be dead. Should you pick the latter, he will do so, and as he touches her face, she goes beet red and she mentions in a awestruck voice that his paws are so soft.

# Characters.JohnWickTheHighTable: Played for tension during his first scuffle with John in Osaka — after a lengthy fight that includes John getting smashed through a glass display case, things get quiet immediately, and Caine even asks John if he's still alive. He is, and were it not for John running out of bullets in his gun at the time, Caine likely would've lost the fight entirely.
# Characters.SamuraiWarriors1: One of his iconic special skills since the second installment, where he plays dead to avoid anything that doesn't hit OTG. Makes him a pretty deadly character if combined with his Level 3 Musou (since he can cause the fireworks during it to extend for as long as he stays down). He instead regains some HP and/or Musou back instead as of the third title.In Warriors Orochi 3 as his Type Action however, he adds a spinning getup kemari kick that creates a tornado (and also makes him completely invincible for the move's whole duration as well).
# Recap.MightyMorphinPowerRangersS2EP14MissingGreen: After some back-and-forth hits, Pipebrain gets knocked over and makes a show of passing out. During Jason's moment of hesitation, he ensnares the Red Dragon Thunder Zord in a tentacle. Pipebrain: Just kidding!
# Film.RunawayJury: Marlee plays possum to stab a hitman's leg.
# WarriorCats.Tropes0ToG: BodyguardBetrayal: In Shattered Sky, Rain offers to watch over the wounded Darktail for a while. Violetpaw decides to bring a piece of prey for Darktail to eat when he wakes up, and she returns to find Rain suffocating their leader. It looks for a moment as if he's successful, but it turns out that Darktail was just PlayingPossum: when Rain turns away, Darktail jumps up and kills him in revenge.
# Characters.TouhouKoumakyouTheEmbodimentOfScarletDevil: As a fairy, she's an embodiment of nature and won't stay dead, reviving quickly after death. Alluded to in her game, Fairy Wars, as having a "Motivation Meter" instead of lives. She seemingly keeps dying until she becomes demotivated and gives up. The last stage reveals she's being hit by explicitly non-lethal spell cards.
# PlayingWith.BlackDudeDiesFirst: ...except Charlie is actually Not Quite Dead, and while gazing in horror at his "corpse", Bob is killed first, possibly by Charlie, who was feigning his death to lure Bob into a trap. Later, Bob dies for real. He's the first casualty in the story, in fact.
# Heartwarming.BigHero6TheSeries: Baymax PlayingPossum and pretending to be down for the count only to use a stealth attack on Bessie. "He lied" so "Hiro wouldn't get hurt".
# TheOrderOfTheStick.TropesMToO: MistakenDeathConfirmation: When the Order find a field of corpses in the aftermath of a vampire attack, Minrah cradles someone she knew and laments his death, missing that he — and all the others — are fresh vampire spawn PlayingPossum.
# VideoGame.GoddessOfVictoryNikke: EtTuBrute: Once Rapi and Dorothy force Chatterbox, Nihilister and Indivilia out of the Ark, a frustrated Nihilister tries to boss around her allies while touting the success of her PlayingPossum gambit to them. Indivilia and Chatterbox quickly grow tired of Nihilister and decide to turn her into scrap metal for the effort.
# Characters.PrinceOfPersiaTheSandsOfTime: In one of many attempts to get the Dagger back from Dastan.
# Characters.BloodborneEnemiesAndBosses: Some of them remain motionless on the ground waiting for you to take a step too close to them.
# Characters.KillingBites: Pretends to be dead so he can chomp on Tiger's leg when he's distracted.
# VideoGame.CerealSoup: Players can have their avatar pretend to be dead by selecting the action in the Ring Menu.
# Characters.LordMarksmanAndVanadis: SoleSurvivor: In the first half of Volume 1, Tigre appears to be the only survivor to survive Elen’s assault on Dinant; most of his allies are dead and/or have escaped, and Tigre himself was PlayingPossum after he was knocked down.
# IdiotBall.VideoGames: Perhaps the best use of this, though, is during the Rank Two fight, in which leaves the Idiot Ball out for the player to grab. Periodically, the boss will just collapse on the ground and start weeping. If the player decides that this is a perfect opportunity to take her out, the boss immediately parries the blow, and proceeds to beat Travis to death, regardless of his current health.There is a catch to this though. There are two different animations, one is her PlayingPossum and the other animation is the real deal. She is open for attack should the latter occur.
# Characters.MDK2: After being defeated by Kurt, he does this. Once Kurt is distracted by contacting the Doctor, Schwang escapes.
# GirlGenius.TropesPToT: Evidently Violetta has seen her aunt the Lady Margarella Selnikov play dead before and initially thinks she's doing so again when she is killed by the Beast, removing the cloth respectfully placed to cover her mangled face convinces Violetta that she's not faking this time.
# Recap.TsumuguLogic: Kotoko proposes that Nozaki will be playing dead again, this time more spectacularly. He is on board with the plan.
# Film.TwoDaysInTheValley: In the final shootout, Dosmo is unable to stand watching Woods torture Wes by repeatedly shooting Wes in the legs, so he comes out from behind cover to try to save Wes' life. Woods shoots him, but Dosmo is uninjured thanks to his Bulletproof Vest. Dosmo then plays dead to draw Woods out, and sure enough Woods comes over to be sure that Dosmo is dead, and Dosmo dramatically spins around and fires his gun at Woods... except it turns out he used up all his bullets earlier in the shootout.
# Characters.WallaceAndGromit: KickTheDog: Monty kidnaps strays dogs to move his ride the Muzzler. His exasperation with finding one of the dogs PlayingPossum in the cage implies that a couple of dogs died because of this.
# VideoGame.SpecOpsTheLine: The very first enemies Delta encounter do this, pretending to be a pile of corpses next to the radio beacon. Then they get up...
# WarriorCats.TropesNToT: One of Firestar's favorite moves. When in an enemy's grasp, he goes limp, making the enemy think he or she has won. Then when they're least suspecting it, he strikes!
# Film.Opera1987: After the killer knocks down Guilia with a thrown iron, Guilia feigns the injury being worse than it actually is to strike the killer in the head with the iron. It backfires on her when she goes to take off the killer's mask, and he reveals he wasn't unconscious and proceeds to kill her after she removes it from his face.
# Film.TheThing1982: The Thing does this, most notably with Norris-Thing. It doesn't quite work out as planned, though. Instead of being treated like a dead body, Norris-Thing is shocked with a defibrillator and retaliates by biting off Doc's arms when he goes in for a second shock. It was more successful with the attack on Bennings by what was assumed to be a completely dead and burned body.
# Characters.CultivationChatGroup: She has a habit of feigning her death without warning, often at inopportune moments, by making an elaborate death cry and then collapsing dramatically. It's usually more surprising than convincing.
# Awesome.LukeCage2016: When Tone starts shooting up the barbershop, Luke immediately charges forward and throws himself over the young boy getting his second haircut in as many days. As Shades and Tone come into the shop to grab Cottonmouth's money, Luke whispers "Play dead, play dead", and they both do. The boy comes through without a scratch.
# WebOriginal.HandsOfChaos: How Nezeki defeated Vellek in Round 1.

# Characters.{{Parasyte}}: In a battle with another Parasite who took over Shinichi's mother, Jaw/Parasite made it think they were dead, and bid its time before finishing it off when it was distracted by Shinichi.
# Film.Fury2014: Invoked by Gordo, who wants to be extra sure that none of the German soldiers will get up and burn their tank.Played straight with Fury at the end, the crew disguised the tank to look knocked out. They wait for the incoming SS battalion to be right on top of Fury before opening fire, killing many in the initial attack. In a form of Book Ends, Fury starts the movie in the same state, looking like a (slightly less beat-up) dead or abandoned tank like many other American and German models lying around it, all so that Wardaddy can get the drop on the horse-riding Nazi officer. So, the example at the end of the movie shows Serial Escalation both in terms of how well the tank plays possum and how many kills it scores this time round as a result of the deception. In the final battle, as Bible runs out of the tank to grab weapons from dead soldiers, one springs up and they engage in a Mud Wrestling fight to the death.
# Saw.TropesAToF: Nobody, not even the audience, ever thinks at any point that the "dead" body in the bathroom where Adam and Lawrence are trapped in is just PlayingPossum and is, in fact, the mastermind. At best, they'll think that the mastermind is Zep (one of the victims in the main game) before The Reveal at the end, due to him having been provided plenty of "mastermind equipment" like cameras.
# Angel.TropesPToZ: Penn does this after intentionally goading Kate to shoot him.
# SlashedThroat.LiveActionFilms: The Chang Cheh movie Vengeance! (1970) climaxes with the protagonist finishing off the Big Bad this way after feigning death to draw him close.Duel of the Ironfist, the Spiritual Successor of the aforementioned Vengeance!, shows loads and loads of faceless mooks getting their throats sliced throughout the movie. The Hero even lampshades this, by telling his protege during a fight scene that "Its easier to kill if you go for the throat"!
# Film.TheOldGuard: Andy does this by shooting the pilot of the cargo plane she and Nile are on, after telling him in Russian to play dead. Andy and Nile use the same trick on Merrick during their fight later in the film, with Andy being the one who pretends to be dead. Nile lets the guards at the tower shoot her, then kills them after they come up to search her body.
# Characters.MonsterHunterFirstGenerationMonsters: InterfaceScrew: When it's PlayingPossum, its icon darkens, and if it's painted or you're playing as a Prowler (in which monsters are marked at all times), its map icon will turn grey; both are normally signs of a dead monster.
# Characters.TheyAreMyNobleMasters: After being beaten by Natose in seconds, Ren injures his foot when landing. Or at least, that’s what he tells Natose. He’s actually fine.
# Characters.DeadSpaceExtraction: LongNeck: Although hidden when PlayingPossum, the neck of the Grabber has been mutated into a flexible tentacle which gives it an impressive reach, topped by a head with a tripartite maw filled with needle-like teeth.
# Characters.WarOfTheVisionsFinalFantasyBraveExvius: DirtyCoward: His Establishing Character Moment finally happens when he's PlayingPossum in order to land his kill on Skahal, with Loreila jumping in front of his attack to prevent it.
# Characters.SaikyouJuzokuTensei: Abel: All right, my body still works …… I still have some Ortems, I can fight ……
# Characters.FireEmblemAwakeningGrimaAndTheGrimleal: During Chapter 23's second half, right after the revelation that Basilio (who faked his death) switched the gems in the Fire Emblem with fakes thanks to Robin's quick thinking, throwing Validar's schemes to the gutter.
# Fanfic.TheLionKingAdventures: Zazu in Dead as a Dodo.
# Recap.DoctorWhoS15E6TheInvasionOfTime: IWillOnlySlowYouDown: One of the savage Gallifreyans to Leela. He then goes for PlayingPossum.
# Characters.MonsterVerseKaiju: After being awakened by Ghidorah, she fakes her death to catch the Monarch scientists off-guard and effortlessly break free from the outpost she was contained in.
# Recap.UltimateSpiderManLearningCurve: Spider-Man used this trick when he had to fight the Enforcers and Electro all at the same time, and Ox managed to grab and attack him.
# Characters.PowerRangersDinoChargeHeroes: This is how he tricks Fury, by playing dead and leaving a canister near him that Fury assumed was carrying the Energems.
# Characters.IceAge: After giving Sid a scare by not letting go after helping him fake his death, Diego does let go at Manny's prompt. When Sid admits he thought Diego might actually eat him, Diego quips that he doesn’t eat "junk food", implying he doesn’t consider Sid a worthwhile meal.
# Recap.JusticeLeagueUnlimitedS1E2ForTheManWhoHasEverything: Mongul sneers at Wonder Woman for apparently going down in one hit, but she was just trying to get him to talk a little more about what he did to Superman. Unfortunately, he really is much stronger than her. Wonder Woman: We "inferior specimens" call it "playing possum".
# ComicBook.KnightErrant: At one point in the fourth issue, Vaea has to lie amongst the corpses in a hallway to avoid detection by Starkhaven's guards, who would have found her if she attempted to hide elsewhere. She is decidedly unnerved by the experience.
# Characters.GuildWarsHeroes: One of her skills in her bonus mission.
# Characters.HeavyRainPlayerCharacters: During her boss fight with Dr. Baker, if the player completes all the QTEs, Madison will pretend to have been knocked out on the operating table, prompting the oblivious madman to let his guard down before she stabs him in the heart with his own drill.
# Film.TheHandThatRocksTheCradle: During the final confrontation in the film's climax, Claire fakes an asthma attack.
# Literature.TheLegendOfAnneBonny: This is how Anne escapes from the Jamaican prison-fortress. After she fools the guards by using her skill in holding her breath for a long period of time, Doctor Esteban – whom William Cormac convinced to help Anne and her baby – declares her dead and pretends to take her "corpse" for medical practice and to find a caretaker for her baby, allowing them to escape Jamaica.
# Fanfic.HellsisterTrilogy: Kara artificially stops her heartbeats while Satan Girl is pounding on her, so tricking her counterpart into lowering her guard.
# Film.BigGame: It's implied that Oskari's only playing unconscious when Hazar jumps aboard Air Force One, and he later uses this to attack Hazar from behind.
# Characters.TheWalkingDead2010Woodbury: She manages to escape the Governor's massacre of the other members of the Woodbury militia by hiding under a dead body. Luckily for her, the Governor ran out of bullets before shooting the corpse she was hiding under.
# Awesome.PlanetOfTheApes: Mandemus isn't afraid to defy the powerful (both physically and in terms of supporters) Aldo. Mandemus: There is a law that weapons from this armory may only be issued under direct orders from Caesar, and not under threats from one of his thicker-headed subordinates for whom war means only personal glory. Caesar's routing of Kolp and his army is quite impressive, given how it involves dozens of people PlayingPossum before they take out the mutants with guns, clubs, and nets.
# Fanfic.BoysDoTankary: AngerBornOfWorry: Hana smacks Ian after she finds out he was PlayingPossum after getting shot.
# Film.TheLostPatrol: How the sergeant takes out the Arabs at the end. He charges out, sets fire to the plane, and removes its machine gun. He then runs back to the oasis and plays dead. As the Arabs finally rise out of their hiding places in the desert and approach, the sergeant whips out the machine gun and massacres them.
# Characters.RisingThunder: The classic dog trick that Zib claims to be enacting what his robot is KO'd. Zib play dead!
# Characters.FinalFantasyVIIDeepground: After he was "beaten" by Vincent, he pretended to have died in order to destroy the WRO's headquarters from inside before the second Deepground force attacked.
# Literature.StarWarsVictorysPrice: While fleeing from the droids of Netalych, Kairos shuts down power on her U-wing to make it seem like they knocked out her power.
# SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute.VideoGames: Party member Midea has identical stats and techs to Saria, a prior party member who leaves after being revealed as The Mole. In fact, she joins with exactly as much experience as Saria had and with all of the techs Saria had learned. An odd example happens also with Leorina. She replaces Haman for a while, and despite having a projectile attack, she uses Haman's AI and thus always attempts to attack enemies in melee. A peculiar and amusing glitch can result in her sprite turning into Haman's whenever the party plays dead.
# Characters.RPGStuck: His solution for escaping Gladiator Games on his land.
# DarthWiki.SummersCauldron: He fakes being killed by Heathcliff in order to get the jump on him
# Characters.StarVsTheForcesOfEvilHeroes: In the Grand Finale, she reveals she can shut down her pulse for 60 seconds.
# Film.{{Splinter}}: To conserve energy, the infection will allow any body it's possessing to go limp as a corpse until it detects more food.
# Literature.ActionFigures: Carrie's escape from Manticore, the first time.
# Recap.MerlinS02E11TheWitchsQuickening: Alvarr, in his Establishing Character Moment, making him seem brave and cowardly at the same time.

# Recap.DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode: The Doctor does this to convince Lilith to leave after the first stab.
# Characters.BeeMovie: He and several other insects pretend to be dead while riding the windshield of a truck to avoid getting swiped away by the windshield wipers.
# KungFuPanda.TropesShortFilms: Mantis uses this to trick the crocodile bandits into opening the cage he was trapped in.
# Characters.ScarletHollow: Naturally. He'll play dead if offered the bag of boiled peanuts, and will advise the player to do the same if they ask for advice on dealing with the monsters in the forest.
# Film.P2: After losing the game of chicken against Thomas, Angela Plays Possum, and when Thomas checks on her to see if she's okay, she jams a sharp object into his eye.
# Characters.KungFuPandaTheFuriousFive: To escape a bandit trap in Secrets of the Furious Five, Mantis played dead for several days straight until the bandits finally opened the cage to check on him.
# Characters.WeAreAllPokemonTrainersIndependentVillains: One strategy of his is to play dead when someone lands what would be an otherwise lethal blow and then attack them while their back is turned.
# Webcomic.JonathinQuackupOfThePlanetWeralt: Jonathin pretended to be unconscious (after being struck by a Skincrawler) to listen in on the Skincrawlers evil plot.
# Characters.ErinDiesAlone: Does this in order to sneak into Shard Corporation during Ultimate Saga VII.

# Recap.BlakesSevenS1E10Breakdown: Gan pretends to be unconscious, hoping that Cally will let her guard down. When he can't get free of his Kind Restraints, he 'wakes up' and convinces her that he's better so she'll free him.
# Characters.TheWitchOfKnightcharm: She uses this tactic in fights, notably in her duel against Emily.
# Literature.SkyLord: You get to play dead in order to fool an alien spider.
# Film.PatientZero2018: When some soldiers are checking dead bodies in the crematorium, one of them is revealed to have been doing this when he jumps up and attacks.
# PlayingWith.SamusIsAGirl: Empress Evulz's attack on what was presumably an all-male group utilizes some substance that targets the Y-chromosome. Alice, inside the power armor and not having a Y-chromosome, pretends to be afflicted so that when Empress Evulz's forces pass her not-dead body, she gets up and pours a ton of rounds into their backs.
# Characters.TokyoGhoulReQuinx: After having his neck broken, he simply wakes up and resets his head when Mutsuki pokes him.
# Wrestling.AJLee: How she became the number one contender for Kaitlyn's title match. During a Battle Royale to determine said number one contender, AJ had been superkicked by Tamina, and spent most of the match lying on the floor, supposedly unconscious. Layla thought she had won, until a ref pointed out that to win, she had to get every other contender out of the ring. Layla then slowly dragged AJ over the ropes, note In a Diva Battle Royale, contestants don't have to be thrown/pushed over the top rope, all the ropes count. but when she nearly had AJ over them, AJ suddenly pulled away and kicked her out of the ring.
# TooDumbToLive.LiveActionFilms: Fallen Kingdom The movie averts the mistakes of The Lost World, with Owen and Claire not behaving like utter morons despite being Expies of Nick and Sarah respectively. Instead it is Ken Wheatley, supposed hunter that opens and enters the cage of Indoraptor when he thinks it is tranquilized when in reality it is only PlayingPossum, so he can extract its tooth for a trophy. Indoraptor even smirks and it wouldn't be too farfetched to assume that even it realizes Wheatley's stupidity. The mercenary at the start of the movie realizes that his comrades on the helicopter are yelling at him and frantically waving for him to get on the chopper. Rather than realize something bad must be coming his way, said mercenary stands out in the open and yells back that he can't hear them. Turns out the T. rex is right behind him. Double subverted in that while he survives Rexy, the Mosasaurus kills him.
# Recap.CarnivalRowS1E8TheGloaming: Vignette pretends she hanged herself in the holding cell to escape when the police open it. She then tries to flee but is caught.
# Characters.PacificRimKaiju: ItCanThink: A cunning and resourceful Kaiju like its partner Otachi, Leatherback not only is intelligent enough to use tools, he also has a sense of tactics: he stays near the disabled Striker Eureka and lumbers cautiously around it in case it is not completely out and just PlayingPossum as Kaiju themselves do. As Leatherback has no ranged weapons to safely maim him from away and Striker is his strongest foe in close quarter range, this is the safest stance for him to prevent a turn of the tables.
# YMMV.SecretCity: Cortes joins Santiaga in his fight with Cthulhy and Tasmit, deliberanely gets nearly killed, feigns death and is almost crushed by Cthulhu's spike foot, then stabs him in his only weak point with a gauntlet-mounted circular saw and puts inside an artifact that freezes Cthulhu's inner body to the absolute zero. What for? For he now has Cthulhu's undamaged corpse, so he can make a dummy of it and trade it for the final part of aforementioned MacGuffin.
# Characters.MyHeroAcademiaVillains: He played dead and bolted while the students stood around deducing the mystery of his death.
# VideoGame.{{Tenchu}}: It's possible to feign death but doing so causes you to slowly lose health as you bleed, so it's possible to actually die.
# Characters.MetroidRidley: His life cycle started off as a small, white fuzzball with big ears known as "Little Birdie." The creature was regarded as harmless by the Bottle Ship scientists... until it played dead to lure one into its cage and then attacked without warning. When Samus encounters Little Birdie, she is disturbed by its presence and wonders if it had been causing the wildlife to attack her with its ear-piercing cries.