History Main / LostInACrowd

* {{Voyager}}'s holographic Doctor has an episode where he's coerced to act against the ship (actually a few, but stay with me here). Eventually he's found out and on the run, and ducks into the holodeck. In a couple seconds, he conjures up an entire room full of... himself. A bunch of copies of his appearance. While the crew figures out how to determine which one's the real one, he's already escaped into a jeffries tube.

* In one episode of ''{{Charmed}}'', the sisters cast a spell that made every male everywhere look like Leo, hoping to outsmart [[TheGrimReaper the angel of death]] that way. (Of course, it doesn't work; nothing stops Death!)

* Part of the XanatosGambit that Clive Owen's team implements in ''InsideMan''. Everyone in the bank is (forcibly) dressed in the same outfit, making a proper SWAT Team siege impossible [[spoiler: and allowing the robbers to escape undetected]].

* In ''RaidersOfTheLostArk'', Indy is pursuing a pair of Egyptian men who are carrying a basket holding Marion Ravenwood. He runs into an open area filled with men, all dressed like the guys he's pursuing and carrying identical baskets.

* In ''CodeGeass R2'', Zero makes a deal with Britannia to let him be exiled to an island off of China instead of killed... and then dresses up all his followers as him who, because they are all "Zero", all get exiled to that same island, which they were planning to build a base on.

* Being LostInACrowd is a crucial part of ''AssassinsCreed''. Not only does the end of the opening movie shows this exact thing, but in-game Altaïr can use Scholars as (who are all dressed similarly to him) as "mobile hide points." He can "blend" on his own by making a praying pose and walking slowly, but he needs the Scholars to bypass guard posts... not least because he openly carries a longsword, short blade, and throwing knives, and he needs the Scholars to block the guards' view of his weapons.
** In ''[[AssassinsCreed2 Assassin's Creed II]]'' this changes up somewhat with Ezio, who can now blend into any group of four or more (sometimes three, and with Courtesans as low as two), but the Assassin Robes he wears ''all the time'' are [[HighlyVisibleNinja extremely distinct, not least because he wears a Assassin emblem on the front of his belly]]. In ''Brotherhood'' this blending ability gets much more plausible if you choose to equip the Florentine Noble Attire (a Uplay Reward), since that outfit (his day wear from before he donned the Assassin Robes) is much more like the clothing worn by Roman civilians.

* In an episode of The Mentalist, the killer dresses up as a clown to kill their victim (who has a clown phobia) and puts out a casting call on the internet for clowns. When the CBI shows up and tries to find the killer, based on the 'clown' description, there are more clowns there than you could shake a slapstick at. Meanwhile, the killer clown has vamoosed.

* Variation in ''MenInBlack''. Whilst chasing the [[BigBad bug]], J spots a discarded bead seat cover and realises (correctly) that the bug has hijacked a NY cab. He runs out into the street to catch him and... well... it's New York, use your imagination.

* In [[http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/20011019.html this]] ''{{Adventurers}}'' strip, an evil being from AnotherDimension shows up and announces, "I am looking for a [[AnimeHair large-haired]] hero and his friends". He really should have been more specific.

* In the ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'' episode "The Headband" - after Aang [[{{Footloose}} throws an illicit dance party]] for a bunch of Fire Nation schoolchildren, the kids help him escape from some soldiers by donning their belts as headbands, as Aang had done to conceal his Airbender tattoos. Since the soldiers had been told to go after the boy wearing the headband, this created enough confusion that Aang and his friends were able to escape unnoticed.

* Done with overlap with NeedleInAStackOfNeedles in a short story in IRobot: a robot with a modified [[ThreeLawsOfRobotics First Law]] is told to go lose itself, so it does. In a crowd of identical-looking but non-modified robots.

* The climax of ''SisterAct'' where Sister Mary Clarence's fellow nuns disperse throughout a Reno casino to confuse Mary Clarence's [[TheFamilyForTheWholeFamily ex-boyfriend's]] henchmen. However, they don't fully succeed because [[spoiler:the henchmen later see all the nuns running out the backway single file, leading them to where the whole group was hiding.]]

* Sonny, the titular character in the film version of ''IRobot'', pulls this by hiding in the ranks of hundreds of similar models, making this a crossover with NeedleInAStackOfNeedles.

* ''HarryPotter And The Deathly Hallows'' features this, with multiple Harrys created via polyjuice potions to protect the real one.
* One of the ''[[WheresWaldo Where's Waldo]]?'' books (''The Great Waldo Search'') features, on the last two-page spread, Waldo standing among members of "The Waldo Fan Club"... [[NeedleInAStackOfNeedles all of whom are wearing his trademark outfit]] (blue trousers, red and white sweater with matching bobble hat).

* This happened to the Joker twice in BatmanTheAnimatedSeries. First came when a millionaire built a casino themed after the Joker, which naturally led the Clown Prince to decide to blow it up. When the Joker showed up to do the job though, he soon found all the card dealers and much of the staff were dressed in his clothes and wearing make-up and wigs to resemble him. This not only helped him escape Batman for a little while (Bats kept chasing down Jokers to find they were just casino employees), but also let him march right up to a Blackjack table and start dealing. A later example game when he decided to set off a bomb on New Year's, he handed out Joker-Masks to the crowd so he'd be tougher to find. Didn't work so well that time, though.

* In ''TheFugitive'', Richard Kimble walks out into a Saint Patrick's Day parade in downtown Chicago, pretending to be part of the crowd.

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** The multiplayer mode in ''Brotherhood'' runs on this; the entire world is populated with [[OnlySixFaces only a handful of distinct character models]], and success is often a matter of finding a group of identical NPCs and trying not to act human.

* In ''TheFugitive'', Richard Kimball walks out into a Saint Patrick's Day parade in downtown Chicago, pretending to be part of the crowd.

For whatever reason, you find yourself being chased. You might have just pulled off the greatest heist in the history of crime. Or maybe you're an innocent man on the run, trying to prove you are innocent while dodging the cops trying to arrest you. You're dressed in a certain way, and some people who want to catch or kill you know you're dressed in a certain way. You can't change your clothing for some reason. So what do you do?

* The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p87G6fSQzpc Australia version]] of LinkinPark's "What I've Done" music video involves this; a scientist at a corrupt pharmaceutical company does a HeelFaceTurn and steals a sample of TheVirus the company is developing to control the populace, handing it to a member of what's presumably a resistance fighter in a black hoodie with the band's logo on it. When the company's agents give chase, they're cockblocked by several ''other'' people in black hoodies with the band's logo on it. In a subversion, however, the purpose of this wasn't just to delay the goons long enough to get the sample to the appropriate authorities; they ''goaded'' the goons into following them, in order to expose to the company [[IAmLegion just how large]] the resistance against them is and intimidating them into backing down from their schemes.

* A funny ''unintentional'' version occurs in the movie ''{{The 51st State}}'': SamuelLJackson is flying into London, and he's taken to wearing a kilt. A CorruptCop hoping to intercept him tells a subordinate to wait at the airport for a dark-skinned man "wearing a dress." It's the henchman's bad luck that just as Jackson arrives, so do several flights from African and Asian countries where men still wear robes, sarongs, etc....

* Sonny, the titular character in the film version of I, Robot, pulls this by hiding in the ranks of hundreds of similar models, making this a crossover with NeedleInAStackOfNeedles.

* In the film version of MinorityReport, Anderton and Agatha (the [[PsychicPowers Precog]]) get out of the mall as it starts raining, and he simply holds up a black umbrella ([[ChekhovsGun which Agatha had]] ''[[ChekhovsGun insisted]]'' [[ChekhovsGun on grabbing]]) as the cops run out on the roof overhead, and look at the sea of black umbrellas. Ironically, Anderton and Agatha didn't move after putting up the umbrella, so the cops were literally right over them, and never saw them.

[[AC:Folklore]]
* A classic trick of leprechauns, when caught by humans and forced to reveal where their gold is hidden, is to surround whatever object their captor used to mark its location with thousands of identical items.

* Being LostInACrowd is a crucial part of ''AssassinsCreed''. Not only does the opening movie shows this exact thing, Altair can use scholars and sages (who are all dressed similarly to him) as "mobile hide points".