History Main / CameraSpoofing

** In "[[Recap/ColumboS04E05 Playback]]" the villain, played by Creator/OskarWerner, spliced in a previously recorded camera shot of the study when it was empty, to fool the security guard. Then after he was done killing his mother-in-law in the study, he arranged for the tape of the murder to run on a delay so it would look like he had an alibi for when the security guard saw the video.

* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'' takes this a step further. The cleverer members of the Section 9 team can hack into the cyberbrains of ''people'', and edit their sight (this is in addition to the active camouflage that renders them invisible). The powerful cyber-hacker known as "The Laughing Man" can do this to whole crowds, including all cameras and other such devices in the area, replacing his face with a cartoonish logo. [[note]]Of course, that doesn't help if the witness is someone without a cyberbrain, such as a homeless person. However, he could hide his face from ''them'' with [[BoringButPractical a hoodie and scarf]].[[/note]]

* ''Anime/{{Planetes}}'': When [[spoiler:Hakim attempts to sabotage the ''Von Braun'']], he attaches magnets to the security cameras in the engine room. These cause the screens to jitter for a second and then display a static image.

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[[folder:Web Comics]]

* In the Literature/WhateleyUniverse, [[MadScientist devisors]] [[{{Jerkass}} Overclock and Make]] attempt to [[spoiler: [[DisproportionateRetribution assassinate]] most of Team Kimba]] ''during class''. Turns out, that session took place in [[InsideAComputerSystem the Sims]] without direct supervision. They just replace what the instructors see of the Kimbas with a 30-second loop.

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* In the ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' short "Career Day", Marzipan's students watch an informational slideshow/cartoon about [=SBASAF=] (Strong Bad's made-up space program), in which Space Captainface (Strong Bad with some tin foil pants) and Harold "Strap" Coopmore (The Cheat with sunglasses and a blue work hat) foil an Italian spy satellite that's trained on Strong Badia by sticking a photo of Strong Badia with the words "Oh, just nothing" written on it on the satellite's camera.
[[/folder]]

* The ''Film/{{Speed}}'' approach is parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', when Homer ditches work and feeds a loop of himself working into the security camera. The tape is absurdly out of date, showing Lenny and Carl in 1970s fashions and disco-dancing (with several jumps in the middle). Mr. Burns notices immediately, but simply remarks "It must be Friday" and starts talking to Smithers about his plans for the weekend.
-->'''Homer:''' I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to ''speed'' around the city, keeping its ''speed'' over fifty, and if its ''speed'' dropped, the bus would explode! I think it was called ''[[AreYouPonderingWhatImPondering The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down]].''

* Spoofed by ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'', "Tangled in the Web": instead of a Polaroid, they use a crudely drawn sketch on lined paper.
* Used in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' in the episode "Deus ex Machina," where Miko uses a picture on her cellphone's camera to fool one of the security cameras. It works, until Bumblebee gets into a fight outside, and the tremors cause the phone to shift off the camera.

* In ''WesternAnimation/OddJobJack'', Bobby and Leo break into a vault and replace a security camera's footage with a loop of a break in from a movie. The guards notice immediately, but don't care because the actress has such a nice butt.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanAssaultOnArkham'': After the Suicide Squad seizes control of the main security room at Arkham, they fix the cameras to play yesterday's footage. When Batman views the footage, he instantly realizes what they have done when he spots two guards who don't work Fridays.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'': When the turtles infiltrate the TCRI Building, Donnie takes a photo of the area the rooftop securty camera is looking at. He then tapes the photo to the camera lens.

* ''Manga/ACertainScientificRailgun'': Misaka Mikoto uses her [[ShockAndAwe electricity powers]] to get the "Splice and Dice" effect. It also worked against security robots.
* In ''Anime/{{Canaan}}'', Maria's father is believed to have been killed by a car bomb because a security camera showed him getting into a car moments before it explodes. A bit later, a technician rewinding the tape notices a bird that flies in front of the camera and disappears mid-air just before the explosion: it turns out, the villains have overridden the original feed at that moment with a staged video of a car explosion so they could kidnap the occupant without his security starting an immediate pursuit.

* ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureTheJOJOLands:'' Usagi Aloha'oe's [[FightingSpirit Stand]] The Matte Kudasai has the ability to transform into a replica of an object that [[NoSelfBuffs someone other than Usagi]] expresses a desire for. When transforming into a replica of a house's security camera, it provides an altered version of the footage wherein people are wearing slightly different clothes and have different facial features, rendering the original camera's footage unusable as evidence due to it being impossible to tell which footage is the real deal.

* In an issue of Comicbook/TheSimpsons comic, Homer, Lenny and Carl snuck out to go to a baseball game. Homer chose the ''Polaroid'' option, but accidentally attached the picture upside down. Burns, after having his TV viewer checked to make sure IT wasn't upside down, sent guards to investigate, but the picture fell off JUST as Homer got back to his seat. Burns never even noticed. Oh, and Lenny picked a third option, sticking a robot double in his seat.
* Donatello pulls a perfect Polaroid Punk in an early issue of ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesMirage. He even uses a puppet of a pigeon to cover swapping in the picture.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

[[folder:Film]]

* There's a subversion of this in Creator/BarryLevinson's film ''Film/{{Toys}}'', where the distraction created by the characters in the hallway is disguised as a music video, and the illusion is compounded by having another character replace that particular monitor's label with one reading "MTV."
* The splicing approach is used in ''Film/NationalTreasure'' to make Nicolas Cage's character invisible. The character doing the splicing (Riley) comments; "Ben Gates, you are now The Invisible Man."
* ''Film/OceansEleven'' revolves around use of both Splice and Dice and Polaroid Punk to an almost excessive degree. In fact, the vast majority of the movie consists of the heroes making Splice and Dice preparations and sneaking around. The mark discovers the subterfuge, [[spoiler:the word "Bellagio" on the floor that was only installed a few days before]], but too late to stop them.
* Something similar was done by Lex Luthor in ''Film/SupermanII'', though he was apparently able to project a hologram of himself and his henchman playing chess.
* Done in ''Film/HollowMan'' with a thermal camera so no-one notices his escape.

* In ''Film/UnaccompaniedMinors'', the characters escape from a holding cell by making a video of themselves with video-enabled cell phones and taping the cell phones in front of the security cameras. (Of course, in real life, this would have the same problem with being out of focus that the Polaroid Punk would have.)
* ''Film/HudsonHawk'' contains a textbook example of the Splice-and-Dice method, right down to the unusual occurrence captured on film which later tips off the security guys that something's amiss; to their credit, they immediately realize that someone's replaying earlier camera footage. (It helps that the unusual occurrence was both unique and highly distinctive; if it were just somebody walking by a camera, things might've been different.)
* In the Italian film ''Film/DangerDiabolik'' the main character uses a large camera and a standing candle to pull the Polaroid Punk. It works up until the point where the sound doesn't match up with the image, but by then he's long gone.
* ''Film/{{Entrapment}}'' used the splice-and-dice method to show the thieves (dressed as swanky party-goers) riding an elevator (played via a loop) while in reality they slipped into the main bank's database. The guards did notice they weren't moving at all. It wasn't the guards who noticed the time code looping, though, but an insurance investigator. They noticed something strange when the elevator began to move but the camera showed no one inside (because elevators ''[[SarcasmMode never]]'' move with no one inside).

* In ''Film/{{Speed}}'', Creator/KeanuReeves and his friends hacks into the camera that the villain installed onto the bus to observe them. They loop one clip of everyone sitting on the bus and while the video is looping they use this time to get everyone off the bus without the villain knowing. The villain eventually figures it out when he notices one woman moving her hand during the loop over and over again (specifically, there's a point during the loop where she drops her purse, and the splice point has the purse flash back into her lap)...
* Played completely straight in ''Film/{{Bloodfist}} VI'' by the terrorists, who spoof the cameras as they invade the facility so that no one within catches on.
* Parodied in an ''Film/OlsenBanden'' movie, where the gang manages to calm an elderly guard - not with a picture of the room the camera is pointing at, but a picture of the royal family. (The trope would later be played straight in the second licensed game, using a photo taken of a ship in daytime to obfuscate an outdoors camera... At night.)
* ''Film/TheArtOfWar'' (2000). TheDragon is in the security room of UN Headquarters when Shaw approaches and shoots out the camera pointing at the front entrance. The villain simply traps Shaw by locking him in the revolving door, but when he goes to finish the job, finds the InspectorJavert there instead, Shaw having slipped in by another entrance. FridgeLogic asks why the distant cameras didn't show the BaitAndSwitch, but maybe the SnowyScreenOfDeath drew his attention from it.
* In ''Film/SalvationBoulevard'', Jerry fixes the camera footage after the fact to remove any evidence of Pastor Dan being at the scene of the shooting.

* ''Film/{{Ghostwatch}}'': After they open the [[ItMakesSenseInContext 'Glory Hole']], the soundman gets koshed over the head with the hall mirror and the live feed, from inside the house, cuts out. The gallery say they've re-established the feed via the University Research Team's CCTV installed in the house, so communication via Creator/TheBBC link between studio and the outside broadcast is still down. So the gallery just put the picture on the big screen as Michael Parkinson and Dr Pascoe discuss the paranormal. Pascoe suddenly exclaims "It's in the machines!" Noting the images from the house aren't live, as a picture previously knocked of the wall suddenly appeared back wall.

* ''Film/{{Anon}}'' takes place in a world of total surveillance, as everyone is required to wear eye implants that record everything they see. The authorities then discover there are people who can evade this system when a murder is committed and the killer remains unidentified via this trope.
** The killer's victims have their ImpendingDoomPOV hacked onto their vision so there's no record of the killer's face. Later while being chased the killer hacks an image of a subway train onto the detective's vision when there's actually an empty platform, to try and make him step onto it and get run over by the real train which arrives moments later.
** This is what the Girl does for her clients, erasing the recorded memory and splicing an innocuous memory in its place. It's not a simple matter as anyone else the client was interacting with has to have ''their'' memories altered as well, preferably in a way they won't notice.
** The detective gets placed under house arrest after being framed by the killer, with a policeman outside watching what he's doing via his Minds Eye. He pretends to go to sleep, then with his eyes still closed feels his way out of the building until he's near where the policeman is, then rushes the policeman and knocks him out.
** In the climatic scene, [[spoiler:the detective is under house arrest again, so the Girl just slice-and-loops his vision so she can sneak into his apartment for when the killer tries to kill him.]]
* ''Film/Fortress2ReEntry'': After they discover that the implant inside them taps into the optic nerve and turns them into walking cameras, the prisoners are able to hack into one of them to transmit a loop of them in the shower so they can have conversations in peace. The people in charge of watching the feed don't notice because [[DistractedByTheSexy they are too busy ogling the prisoners]].
* ''Film/SoClose'': The younger sister, Sue, is fond of this trick, pulling it off on the opening to cover her sister escape and later tries pulling it off on her older sister, Lynn, to pretends she's at home and not pulling off a job on her own, but Lynn sees through it.
* Happens twice in ''Film/OperationFortuneRuseDeGuerre''. John does it to Sarah's feed at the Madrid airport to cover Mike's men abducting the courier. Sarah catches on when she sees the repeated jerky movement of a woman in the coffee shop. Later Sarah loops the security cameras in Simmonds' Turkish compound while she is hacking the money transfer. Emilia realises something is wrong when the cameras show Simmonds' office as empty when she knows he is in there.

* In ''[[Literature/XWingSeries X-Wing: Wraith Squadron]]'', code-slicer Grinder does a splice-and-dice on a camera he'd hacked into earlier (actually a server handling the footage). To keep the loop from being too obvious, he has everyone in-frame hold still (his compatriots are the only ones there at the time). He also mentions "blending the seam", likely a term for making sure the looped video didn't do an obvious JumpCut as it repeated. It seems to work, at least until [[ConfrontingYourImposter the maintenance crew they're pretending to be]] shows up.
** Grinder uses it again in the same novel to cover up one of his pranks involving a fellow pilot's X-Wing. In this case, the hangar was empty, so there was no background movement to worry about. [[spoiler: He's still caught, mostly because he pulls off the caper in a way that ''requires'' the skills of a good code-slicer--and he's the only code-slicer in the squadron who's ''that'' good.]]
** A more advanced version shows up in ''Solo Command''. When [[spoiler: Lara Notsil]] sets up residence on ''Iron Fist'', she creates a splice in the cameras monitoring her room. However, since an AI-level droid is handling the splice, it can modify and blend the footage as much as it wants so no one catches on to the repetition.
** Averted, however, in ''Iron Fist''. When breaking into a hangar to steal some enemy fighters, Castin merely forges a work order and has the cameras shut down for routine maintenance.

* Done by hackers in ''Literature/{{Relativity}}''. Fortunately, Ravenswood was paranoid enough to set-up a few cameras that were off the net.

* Wade Watts does this late in ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne''. He rigs the camera in his sleeping pod and the one attached to his ear so that they'd show looping footage of him sleeping, rather than hacking into the Sixer database every night.
* ''Literature/Aeon14'': In ''A Surreptitious Rescue of Friends and Foes'', Jessica does this to an enemy soldier's ''body'' by hacking his BrainComputerInterface to send his own senses into a VR sim of his surroundings, minus the team she's slipping past him. (She considered just shooting him, but it would have raised alarms.)
* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': In ''Crown of Slaves'', the Masadan team going after Princess Ruth has a device to effectively splice and dice the security system by grabbing some previous footage and looping it. It's not a long-term solution, but they don't need long-term because they expect to have the princess captive before the loop is noticed.
* ''Literature/PilgrennonsChildren'':
** When Pilgrennon, Jananin, and Dana break into the building where Cerberus's English computers are being held in ''Pilgrennon's Beacon'', Dana overrides the security camera feed with images of an empty hallway.
** She does the same thing to a school CCTV camera in ''The Emerald Forge'' so people won't know she and Eric went into the building alone after school.

* It's a standard part of ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}''. Runners are expected to do this to deal with cameras often. Helps that everything in the 2070 is wireless. There's even softwares specifically meant to spoof sensor footage.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' allows technically inclined characters to attempt the splice-and-dice, but it's usually impossible to get at the feed without showing yourself to the camera in anything officially published. Some psychics with a technical bent can beat the rules...and some others without it can subvert the trope by cutting out the electronic middleman and ''making the guard watching the camera screens see nothing'', effectively doing the splice and dice on the human element of the system.
* Los Angeles 2035 has an high-tech version of the Polaroid Punk: The anti-camera laser. It is an high tech device that detects cameras and use lasers to project an image of the room that doesn't includes the infiltrators on the camera.

* ''VideoGame/NoOneLivesForever'' combines ''both'' variants: one of your gadgets is a (rather bulky) device that is fixed in front of the camera (like the Polaroid) that contains a recording device that records looped footage then plays it back on a screen fixed in front of the camera lens. Part of the spy gear in the sequel is airgun ammo that sticks to the lenses of offending cameras, disabling them without drawing alarm like shooting it would.

* Polaroid Punk is used in ''The Lost Crown'', to deceive Professor Oogle's security system when Nigel swipes something from the museum. Visually {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in that the wire prop and edge of the photo are clearly seen on the closed-circuit TV screen, implying he only got away with it because Oogle never actually looks at the security footage.

* In one of the ''Literature/JackReacher'' books, a variation of the Splice and Dice is done by a security guard. The security system of the building records the survey lance footage on 6-hour tapes so he simply replaces the midnight-to-6 am tape with that from a previous night. He reset the date for the system each night for a week so all the tapes had the same date. His main problem was that the night cleaning crew usually cleaned the area around midnight and might show up on the footage. To counter this he made sure that he had tapes from multiple nights and substituted the one that best matched the night of the crime. He is caught because the cleaning crew started work in the area a few minutes before midnight and the only tape he had that would match was from the night where the crew started work almost at midnight. The investigator realizes that the cleaners took way longer then they usually do to clean the office of a neat freak and unravels the scheme.

** The loop-and-splice method was used in to cover up the theft of a prototype [=RADAR=].
** Splicing the camera video was used by [[GenreSavvy Tony]] in a third season episode. Although he tried to take all the credit, the team quickly pointed out he stole it from ''Film/{{Speed}}''.

** In another episode, a fake alibi was created by having an associate of the killer drive over the speed limit past a speeding camera, while wearing a mask printed with a photograph of the killer's face. Colombo realised what had happened when he saw the 'face' had no shadow under the nose.

* In ''Film/TheFifthElement'' an apparently drugged up dancing attempted thief spoofs a security video of the door by wearing a hat with a picture of the background. He puts the hat up to the camera, it shows the background, and the door opens, at which point he points a gun at Bruce Willis. Willis disarms him with a "[[NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont The Safety is Off]]" trick, and compliments the thief on his NiceHat.

-->-- ''Futures in the Memories Market'', by Nina Hoffman

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'', the opening scenes of "Monkey See, Doggy Do" - and, as a result, the first scenes of the series - have Mojo Jojo doing this as one of his precautions while stealing the Anubis Head.

'''The Polaroid Punk''' -- The heroes take an instant photograph from the camera's perspective and then place it in front of the camera. This may or may not require blocking or removing the camera in the process, but even if it does, the security officer on duty will [[TheGuardsMustBeCrazy dismiss it as just a temporary glitch]], because the image is back, showing no activity, before they can investigate. Whether or not (or exactly how long) this works depends on a number of factors, such as whether the security camera is capable of focusing that close to its own lens (otherwise the photo will be horribly blurred out) how well-illuminated the picture is (especially compared to the scene it's imitating), and whether or not there's any ambient movement (such as outside traffic or a flowing fountain) that normally ''should'' be in the scene -- because the guard might catch on that the image is ''too'' still to be a live feed.

'''The Splice and Dice''' -- The tech pro on the team manages (by means of infiltrating and/or [[EverythingIsOnline hacking]]) to capture some amount of live camera footage, then feeds the recorded footage to the security monitors in an endless loop. This avoids some of the problems posed by taking a still photograph, but if the footage contains any activity (as in the case of ''Film/{{Speed}}'') the guard may eventually notice that the same activity is looping over and over and catch on.

** In another episode a fake alibi was created by having an associate of the killer drive over the speed limit past a speeding camera, while wearing a mask printed with a photograph of the killer's face. Colombo realised what had happened when he saw the 'face' had no shadow under the nose.

* ''Series/TheProfessionals''. An alarm version happens in "Long Shot" when a hitman uses a ladder to climb an electric fence, leaving a dead rat on the fence for when the guards come to investigate the alarm. Cowley isn't fooled however, as the rat had been killed by a broken neck instead of electrocution.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'''s "[[Recap/ColumboS04E05 Playback]]": The villain, played by Creator/OskarWerner, spliced in a previously recorded camera shot of the study when it was empty, to fool the security guard. Then after he was done killing his mother-in-law in the study, he arranged for the tape of the murder to run on a delay so it would look like he had an alibi for when the security guard saw the video.

* Its a standard part of ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}''. Runners are expected to do this to deal with cameras often. Helps that everything in the 2070 is wireless. There's even softwares specifically meant to spoof sensor footage.

-->-- ''Literature/FuturesInTheMemoriesMarket'', by Nina Hoffman

-->'''Luthor:''' ''[Hearing explosions and seeing the screens show nothing out of the ordinary]'' Well, [[DeadpanSnarker this placid scene is hardly likely]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'', the team has hacked the cameras at one of Luthor's agricultural facilities. A battle ensues and Luthor is alerted, checking the screens:
-->'''Luthor:''' ''[Hearing explosions and seeing the tampered security screens show nothing out of the ordinary]'' Well, [[DeadpanSnarker this placid scene is hardly likely]].

-->'''Luthor:''' (After seeing the tampered security screens) Well, this placid scene is hardly likely. (has them fixed to get the actual feed)