Nixon Mask

A perfect mask for a non-crook.

"I knew it was you all along, Richard Nixon!"

— Officer Barbrady, South Park

As might be inferred by the title, a Nixon Mask is a rubber mask with the caricatured features of Richard Nixon, specifically a large nose and creepy wide grin.

Its status as the best-selling political mask of all time (and in many ways the inspiration for all political masks), as a symbol of famous counterculturists like Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan, and as a hilarious remnant of The '70s have made it a classic go-to prop when a strange/funny mask is needed.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Used by a group of convenience store robbers as a throw-away gag in The Dark Knight Returns. Note that this group predates Point Break (1991) (see below) by a full five years.

• The gang of anti-clowns in Transmetropolitan are all dressed as Nixon.
• In Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing, on one page there is a satirical poster depicting a superhero with a face resembling a Nixon mask coming out of his crotch. The text on the poster says "Big Body, Small Dick", which is a reference to Nixon's nickname "Tricky Dick."

Fan Works

• Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises Max wears a rubber George W. Bush mask while committing an armed robbery of a gas station.

Films — Animated

• Hustler Kid wears one for Halloween in Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade

Films — Live-Action

• In Airplane II: The Sequel, when the shuttle goes to "Worp 0.5", the stewardess warns that the passengers may experience some slight metabolic changes. It then shows every passenger in a Nixon Mask.
• Army of Thieves: When the Walküre safe heist starts going south, Brad Cage puts a Nixon mask on and enters the banks to cause chaos for distraction in order to buy time for Gwendoline and Sebastian to escape unnoticed.
• Parodied in the French movie Brice de Nice, where the title character is obsessed with watching Point Break. When he tries his hand at his first own bank robbing, he's wearing a mask of... Jacques Chirac.
  Brice: Écoutezz [sic]... je ne suis pas un escroc.
• Point Break has its team of bank robbers each donning a mask of a former president (they identify themselves as the "Ex-Presidents" and declare that they already robbed us when they were in office, so why not do it again now?), making it almost required for future criminal-themed media to reference it.
  Bank-robber wearing Nixon mask: I'm not a crook!
• Parodied as well in the Italian movie Tre uomini e una gamba, where the main characters put on masks of former Italian presidents during an attempted robbery. Notably, of them mistakes the mask he's got for Karl Popper's and complains about it, only to complain even more when told that it's actually Cossiga's mask.
• Best Seller (1987) opens with the robbery of a police evidence room in 1972. The robbers are not only wearing Nixon masks, they're driving a van fitted with loudspeakers broadcasting political slogans for his Presidential re-election.
• The criminal in the B-Movie House On Highway 5 uses it as his scary mask of choice. It's actually kind of effective.
• Fulltime Killer: Andy Lau's titular hitman is shown wearing one of these mask while performing an assassination, in a rather blatant Shout-Out to Point Break.
• In the Jackie Chan movie Gorgeous, Chan fights a group of mooks wearing this type of rubber masks.
• The Ice Storm: Wendy Hood (as played by Christina Ricci) wears one while seducing her neighbor in a prime case of Fetish Retardant.
• The body in Men at Work (1990) is (not so cleverly) concealed with a Nixon mask.
• A recreation of the Watergate break in the Spike Lee film She Hate Me has the perpetrators wearing the masks.
• Worn by one of the cheerleaders in Sugar & Spice, in contrast to her partners in crime: she didn't want to go along with their heist at first, but later she changed her mind — however, there wasn't a matching costume for her, so she had to make do with a Nixon mask, suit and tie.

Literature

• Animorphs: When Erek's (an android modeled after dog-like aliens) Holographic Disguise goes on the fritz in the middle of a crowded mall the Animorphs shuffle him into a novelty shop and disguise him with a Nixon mask.
• Worn by three characters who just happen to take part in the same shootout in Gone Bush by Chris Amies.

Live-Action TV

• In the episode "Blood on the Tracks" of Cold Case, set in 1981, one of the witnesses rides a bike while drunk, wearing a Richard Nixon mask... and nothing else.
• One appears in the Doctor Who 1996 Telemovie, while the Doctor is rummaging through some costumes looking for something to wear. Amusingly, the music gets kind of scary and he looks at it like it's pretty terrifying.
• It also seems to be a popular disguise for streaking episodes: both Joey Gladstone of Full House and Eric Forman of That '70s Show have streaked in Nixon masks (the latter in front of Gerald Ford).
• Will & Grace:
  • Jack McFarland was conceived when his mother slept with a man in a Nixon mask at a Key Party. As a result, they're not exactly sure who his father is.
  • Also, in the first Halloween Episode, in which Will and Grace get roped into babysitting Harlan's kids for the night, one of the kids is dressed as Nixon, with a mask.
    Grace: (to "Nixon") My dad voted for you.
• An episode of Wings had a Nantucket bank being robbed by an unnamed criminal wearing a Nixon mask; however, he is later apprehended by Antonio and Brian.
• Kamen Rider Kiva subverts it by having a robber in a George W. Bush mask in one episode. This may be Truth in Television; Bush was president at the time the show aired, and masks of him were very popular in Japan.
• On iCarly the gang is trapped in psycho girl Nora's basement. They attempt to escape but are stopped by Nora wearing a Nixon mask and holding a hatchet.
• One episode of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge saw Alan Partridge complaining about a group of robbers who wore Alan Partridge masks.
• Used in Underbelly: Tell Them Lucifer Was Here by Bandali Debs and his accomplices. Also applies to the real life robberies.
• John Enos wears a Nixon mask once in World's Dumbest... to help introduce a series of clips of criminals wearing incredibly stupid "masks" (one of them uses his hands to cover his face, making them pretty useless for the actual robbery).
• For the Halloween episode of the short-lived game show Wipeout (1988), host Peter Tomarken walked out onto the set wearing one of these.

Music Videos

• In the video for Bow Wow Wow's "Do You Wanna Hold Me" the guitarist rocks out in a Reagan mask.
• The Manic Street Preachers wear the masks in the music video for "The Love of Richard Nixon".
• One of the costumes used in The Residents' 13th Anniversary Tour was one of these.
• In one of the shots in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" the kid of the couple is shown wearing the mask and holding a toy pistol.
• "Drive Me Wild" by Vanity 6 is set in a club where one of the dancing people wears the Nixon mask and juggles cassette tapes (an allusion to the tapes that precipitated Nixon's downfall).
• "Ain't My Fault" by Brothers Osborne features several robbers wearing masks of several presidents, and Nixon's face is among them.

Video Games

• A Nixon mask, along with a Clinton mask, George W. Bush mask, Obama mask, Trump mask, and Biden mask, is an unlockable cosmetic item in PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2. There's also another set of four masks in the latter game with interesting variation of this trope, specifically a set of masks based on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Franklin, with green and white color schemes meant to echo the appearance of US banknotes.
• In Wasteland 3, a Nixon mask is being worn by Long John, no doubt to convince everyone that he absolutely is a human with a regular human face and not a synth in a poor disguise. If you kill him, you can take it for yourself and put it on one of your Rangers. They'll look silly, but it offers a surprising amount of protection and increases the Nerd Stuff skill by 1, making it a useful helmet.

Western Animation

• Meatwad wears one for Halloween in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
• Hippie Teacher David Van Dreissen wears it for Halloween in Beavis and Butt-Head.
• Family Guy:
  • Meg has a Slumber Party which is interrupted by her Amazingly Embarrassing Parents. When she tells him that they if they cared for her they wouldn't show their faces for the rest of the night, Peter remarks that it's a good thing he's wearing a Nixon mask, then pulls on a Ronald Reagan mask, flashes a double peace sign and says "I am not a crook!" (Peter's not really that bright).
  • Spoofed by having a man in the mask rob money from a charity car wash; when Joe asks Lois to describe him, she says that he was wearing a Jimmy Carter mask like the robber in a movie but can't recall which one.
  • In "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou", Cleveland is snuck into a whites-only golf course using a Nixon mask.
• Johnny Bravo: A shark attempting to pass itself off as human in "Beach Blanket Bravo" wears one. It goes surprisingly well.
  Surfer: Wait a second. You're not a shark, are you?
  Shark: Uh... no! I'm... Richard Nixon!
  Surfer: Cool! Hey, thanks for getting us into China and everything! (does the V sign)
• Worn by the "Chicken Lover" in the South Park episode of the same name.
• In Squidbillies, worn by an aging stunt-hooker as part of rehearsing a sex scene with a double-amputee con artist... hu... Patrick Swayze.
• Frisky Dingo: One of the X-tacles wore a Nixon mask.
• In one episode of Home Movies, the kids are performing various impressions, mostly making fun of teachers or kids with funny accents. Jason says that he'll do his Richard Nixon, but needs to retrieve his mask first.
• The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: The episode "Spooker of the House" features a villain impersonating the ghost of William Howard Taft to scare the President away. After being unmasked, he says that he chose President Taft because, as the largest President in history, he'd make an impressive ghost — and the costume shop was out of Nixon masks.
• Averted in one episode of Code Monkeys. Dave and Jerry have to rob a bank (in one of multiple attempts to pay back a drug lord), and instead of the expected Nixon masks, they instead don masks based on Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, both Secretaries of State (a bystander suggests they call themselves that); they quickly become Stupid Crooks and get away without robbing anything (and the cops sent to stop them — inexplicably Ted Logan and Buddy Holly (??) — just end up shooting each other).

Real Life

• Etiquette Hell describes a wedding where "For reasons that were never revealed, the DJs put on mariachi sleeves and latex Richard Nixon masks(?!?!) before leading the conga line under the limbo bar [...] my date whispered to me: 'LSD could add nothing to this experience'."
• Stories tell of a man who robbed a bank using one of these as a disguise; he was armed and it was a very serious situation, but still. And, exactly like Richard Nixon himself, he was not a crook.
• A quirk of the United States electoral system is that, with the election being held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November (i.e. November 2 through 8), it's within, at most, eight days of Halloween. Since 1980, the candidate whose mask has sold better has gone on to become the next President. It should be noted that, as it's Halloween, the primary reason to purchase these masks are to mock the candidate.

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