Knight's Armor Hideout

You are Exploring the Evil Lair when suddenly you hear footsteps approaching. What should you do? You look around and notice that suit of armor by the door. Voila, wouldn't that make for a great hiding spot?

This trope covers any instance where a mounted knight's armor is used by a character for camouflage. Owes a lot to Rule of Funny given how long it would take for a single person to put on the armor. ^note Around 10 minutes in one test, and that was with someone helping.

Compare Nobody Here but Us Statues when a character hides in plain sight by pretending to be a statue or similar. Also compare Closet Shuffle when the hiding spot is a closet. See Animated Armor where a soul inhabits an empty suit of armor.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• On at least one occasion each in Fullmetal Alchemist, Mei, Mei's panda, Winry, and a cat, are hidden inside Al's armor.
• In the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tristan hid from Pegasus' guards in one of the suits of armor decorating his castle.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, during the flashback arc, an assassin sent by the Zabi family sneaks into Don Mass' mansion this way and manages to kill Jinba Ral and cripple Don Mass before being defeated in a particularly brutal fashion in a sword fight with a young Char. Notably, in the manga's version of the battle of A Baoa Qu, Char begins having flashbacks to this incident while fighting Amuro in a treasure room full of suits of historic armor belonging to Ghiren Zabi.
• In Yaiba, during the last encounter with the Bat Hakki, Yaiba, Sayaka and Kagetora hide inside empty samurai armors in the upper level of the castle they were camping near, using the distraction to land a decisive blow on him.

Comic Books

• Tintin:
  • In Tintin in America, Tintin sneaks into the castle where the members of the KIDNAP Inc. meet. He hides inside a knight's armor in the corridor and takes out one unsuspecting baddie after the other as they pass by.
  • Subverted in Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Tintin is trying to escape the Bird brothers in their antique-filled basement. Cut to the villains arriving and seeing a suit of armor standing in the corner. They suspect Tintin inside it and fire at it. It falls apart. Turns out, Tintin hid behind a desk.
• In the Scrooge McDuck story The Black Knight, Gentleman Thief Arpin Lusene hides in a suit of armor when Scrooge and Donald burst into the room Lusene is currently in looking for him. He then keeps moving around when they're not paying attention and eventually escapes with the armor. This becomes plot-relevant later since he uses the stolen armor to create the Black Knight by coating it with the Omnisolve.

Films — Animated

• NIMONA (2023): This is how Diego the Squire went undetected by someone who thought they were the only person in the room. He was trying on a full armor right next to its proper storage space and would get in trouble if caught, so he responded to hearing someone approach by going to stand in the storage space while still wearing the armor.

Films — Live-Action

• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure:
  • The titular duo dress in suits of armor off-screen while in medieval England. It's implied they somehow slipped into them as they comment on their first steps that it's really heavy.
    Ted: Heavy metal!
    [air guitar]
  • To really play this up, Ted falls down a set of stairs and somehow falls out of the suit while leaving the suit in a perfectly intact shape.
• The titular character in Johnny English Strikes Again performs exactly as pictured above. Because of Clingy Costume, he isn't able to remove it until he knocks out the Big Bad and is finally congratulated by the Prime minister.
• In the French comedy La Tour Montparnasse infernale, Eric and Ramzi are window washers trying to hide from a highly organized group of criminals during a bank heist. They decide to hide in full knight armor suits, which becomes a plot point and a way to make multiple jokes:
  • They make an attempt at being stealthy.
  • They use their disguises to hide in plain sight, but one of them gets beaten up by the leader of the bad guys who is taking out his frustration on what he thinks is an empty armor.
• In The Pirate Movie, Kristy McNichol's character (Mabel — it's an updated version of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance) hides in a suit of armor during the Pirates' final attack on the mansion. (It's also a bit of commentary on how difficult it is for Frederick to get to her.)
• In Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2, when Tyor's chased by Donar's guards, he hides inside a suit of armor on display. Then, in the suit of armor, he points down the hall and tells the guards that the kid they're chasing went that-a-way, and the guards fall for it.
• In Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession, Miloslavsky gets into a suit of armor to hide. He then takes out the unwitting guards one by one with his armored fist.
• In Paddington 2, Phoenix hides in a suit of armor to sneak by a night guard.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: During the climactic battle at Baron Bomburst's palace, Carractacus Potts is seen putting a mace in the hands of a suit of armor and is surprised when it gladly takes it. Soon afterwards, the Vulgarian General is conked in the head with the same mace, and the knight pulls its visor open, showing that there was somebody inside the suit the whole time.

Literature

• In Beau Geste, hiding in a suit of armor is how Michael "Beau" Geste knows that the Blue Water has been replaced with a fake — he sees his aunt selling the real Blue Water while she is unaware that he can see her from his hiding place in the armor.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this trope is Played With. Peeves the poltergeist enters suits of armor not to hide, but to replace the carols they had been bewitched to sing with rude versions.
• In the Enid Blyton book The Castle Of Adventure, one of the children, Phillip, ends up hiding all day inside a suit of armor from the criminal gang. He is rather blasé about it, and reckons the worst part was having to stifle a sneeze.
• One of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys crossover stories featured an attempt to steal a famous suit of armor custom made for a woman to follow her lover into battle. The sleuths get a tip a second attempt will be made, so they have time to set a trap in advance, deciding that Nancy will wear the targeted armor and the boys will wear two other sets from the collection. They need help to get the armor on from the professionals charged with its care, and remark about how cumbersome and hard to see in it is.
• In Blade of the Guillotine, a book in the Time Machine series, this happens unwillingly to the protagonist at one point—his time machine somehow deposits him exactly inside a knight armor, which allows him to eavesdrop on some people nearby.
• Catherine Aird's The Complete Steel shows that a suit of armor is also a handy place to stash a dead body.

Live-Action TV

• In the Ghosts (UK) episode "Bump in the Night", lead character Mike hides in a decorative suit of armor when he finds himself alone in the house with an unknown (to him) number of burglars. Then he tries to intimidate them by pretending to be a ghost. Unfortunately, he fails to allow for the weight and clumsiness of the armor and falls flat on his back.

Print Media

• From Dragon: "The Wizards Three", a series of humorous short stories by Ed Greenwood in which Mordenkainen of Greyhawk, Elminster of the Forgotten Realms, and Dalamar of Dragonlance met for friendly dinner parties in Ed's dining room while Ed hides in a suit of armor.

Video Games

• One puzzle in Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars involves hiding behind a suit of armor after drawing the attention of an NPC you have to sneak past. Looking at it has George contemplate actually putting it on, but admitting that it would be impractical.
• Various levels of Hitman: Absolution allow the player to hide in a stationary position if they are wearing the correct disguise. On one level, this takes the form of Samurai armor, which the player can put on and then use to hide in plain sight by standing on the armor's display pedestal.
• In 101 Dalmatians: Escape from DeVil Manor, the dalmatian puppies Patches and Whizzer can weaponize this with a suit of armor that's holding a mace. If Horace and Jasper are alerted, Patches can whack them with the mace and send them tumbling back down the stairs.
• A horrible subversion of this is in Clock Tower (1995). One of the jump scares you can find is if you investigate a suit of armor. It falls over and the body of Laura, your friend, is in there. Either she was shoved in there by Scissorsman or she tried to hide in it. It was most likely a decorative suit of armor and not fitted for a human being. She dies as her chest is compressed and she couldn't breathe. It most likely wasn't quick either.
• Laura Bow game The Dagger of Amon-Ra has the body of a murder victim hidden inside a suit of armor in the museum.
• The Medieval Europe stages from Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy have mooks hiding in suits of armour who will suddenly pounce their way out to attack when you're nearby.
• It Takes Two: Cody and May dress up in a wizard's robe and a suit of armour on display racks to avoid a guard in the castle stage. Being dolls, it works despite the costumes exposing their faces. Until Cody sneezes.

Web Original

• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, like the original source material, has Tristan sneak around Pegasus's castle in a suit of armor but additionally has fun with the fact that he's moving around in a large metal suit.
  SFX: CLANK CLANK CLANK
  Guard: What was that? Must have been the wind.
  (loud clanking continues)
  Guard: Yep. That's definitely the sound that wind makes.

Western Animation

• Used to happen every other week in Scooby-Doo. Sometimes This Week's Villain would hide inside the armor while the Mystery Gang charged past; sometimes Scooby and Shaggy would fit into the Hammerspace inside a suit of armor so as to evade detection; on one occasion they try to hide in the armor only to find the villain is already in there...
• Looney Tunes:
  • In "From Hare to Heir", Yosemite Sam hides in a tiny suit of armor to attack Bugs with an axe. However, he misses and proceeds to take a tumble down a long flight of stairs, cussing all the while.
  • Gossamer tries this once with a suit of armor, but his hair leaks out of the edges of the parts of the suit.

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