History Main / NotMyDriver

* The villain [[EverythingsBetterWithSpinning Whirlwind]] did this one time to TheWasp, who he had a long-standing VillainousCrush on. Unfortunately, he decided to reveal himself immediately, while they were still parked in front of Avengers' Mansion. His fellow Masters of Evil coming to the rescue is the only reason Whirlwind didn't receive a severe asskicking.

* Beautifully subverted in series 2 episode 9 of ''{{Life}}'', where Charlie tries to kidnap one of the people involved in his imprisonment. "You misunderstand me, this isn't a kidnapping. This, detective, is a kidnapping".

* For an episode of Derren Brown's ''Trick or Treat'' series, he began by having an eerily silent taxi driver take his victim past his destination to a dark alleyway where a bunch of actors in hoodies surrounded the cab. [[YouJustRuinedTheShot By this point the guy was on the phone to the police.]]

* In the "It's a Wonderful Crisis" arc in ''ComicStrip/{{Alex}}'', Alex has a notices that his car isn't being driven by his usual driver. The driver turns out to be the Devil who has brought the car into the perfect place for Alex to be killed by Clive jumping off the roof of the bank.

-->Gil: Wait, you're... not Wulfenbach Jagers.
-->Jager: Nope.
-->Gil: Ah. Are you kidnapping me?

*** Made especially glaring, because the series started with an adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet": Sherlock really had a good reason to pay specific attention to cabbies.

* Variant occurs in the ''Comicbook/{{Catwoman}}'' tie-in to ''[[BatmanNoMansLand No Man's Land]]''. Selina hijacks a military helicopter after [[MuggedForDisguise replacing one of the pilots]], and her copilot doesn't realize this until she removes her helmet.

* In CharlesStross's ''Literature/HaltingState'', most of the cabs in 2017 are driven by remote control from call centres. The bad guys hack into the system to take control of the cab the main characters are in and crash it.

** In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'', Brody insists on going with the people the embassy send to pick him up, despite his local guide insisting that their story makes no sense and they are obviously German spies. They are.

* In ''{{Canaan}}'', not only do the main characters find probably the only Japanese-speaking cabbie in Shanghai, but he becomes a recurring character. Literally every time they need a car, the same exact cabbie [[ContrivedCoincidence miraculously happens to be nearby]].

* The heroine in ''Ten Yori Mo, Hoshi Yori Mo'' falls for one of these. Justified because she only just moved in with a rich family and wouldn't know all their drivers yet. What wasn't justified was why the driver didn't just pop her in the car right there before she caught on.

* Poked fun at in ''What's Up, Tiger Lily?'', a GagDub of a Japanese spy movie. The main characters walk into a random cab and promptly tell the driver they want to be kidnapped. He of course, obliges, seeing as how this was a NotMyDriver scene in the original dub of the movie.

* In OrsonScottCard's ''Shadow Puppets'', Bean and Petra, currently on the run from Achilles, are going to take separate cabs to the airport, to different locations. Bean is suspicious of the first two cabs in line, so he puts Petra into the third cab. He then gets into the first cab himself, and barely avoids being killed by the driver, one of Achilles' agents. After escaping, he learns that Petra's driver is an agent for one of their allies.

* Justified in ''The Religion War'' by Scott Adams, where the protagonist's extraordinary pattern spotting abilities enable him to deliberately [[spoiler:choose the one cab driver who is actually a terrorist]]

* Invoked in Clive Cussler's Vixen 03- an intelligence agent is told to catch a taxi to meet his contact, so he goes to hail the first one he sees when another taxi cuts in. He climbs in anyway, where it is revealed his contact is driving. The agent is then chewed out for bad fieldcraft (by trying to catch the first taxi he saw, which could have been a trap).

* In the Creator/AgathaChristie novel ''Cat Among the Pigeons'', Princess Shaista, a student at Meadowbrook School, gets into a car to meet her uncle in London and never arrives. [[spoiler: This is a subversion, though, because it actually ''was'' her driver. "Shaista" was an impostor, and the car had come to help her disappear before she met anyone who knew the real Princess, making it look like a kidnapping.]]

** And twice more in ''Liberty City Stories'': once with you pretending to be a union boss's chauffeur, and then an inversion of the series' norm when the Sindaccos kidnap Maria this way.

* ''Associated Space'' has Fatebane and David trying to escape a planet by hiring a space freighter captain to pick them up in mid-flight from a suborbital shuttle. They shouldn't have put the job of rescuing them out to bid online, since the guy who accepted their offer turned out to be the detective chasing them.

* ''{{NCIS}}''. In "Reveille" Ari pulls up alongside Kate on the street, knowing she'll [[FlashedBadgeHijack commandeer the first car she sees]] to chase him. Unfortunately it's full of Ari's mooks.

[-''You never take the first cab that comes along. A rookie knows that. And if a rookie knows that, then the opposition knows that too. Fine. So you never take the second cab that comes along. Which leaves the first cab or the third cab. But you never take the first cab that comes along. Which means it's the third cab. But they'll have thought of that, so you ignore the first three cabs. Which is just what they'll be expecting you to do, so they'll have their man in the fourth cab. Which means... Which means...''-]\\

* The ambulance variant is used to kidnap Scully in the first ''TheXFiles'' movie.

* The {{Rebus}} novel ''Hyde and Seek'', by Ian Rankin has a witness kidnapped by a fake ambulance.

** Made especially glaring, because the series started with an adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet": Sherlock really had a good reason to pay specific attention to cabbies.

Out of all the cabs in all the city, the [[{{Heroes}} Hero]], his [[DistressedDamsel significant other]], or another important person will invariably get on the one that the villain is driving. If they're particularly alert they might notice they aren't headed to the park ''before'' the villain reveals himself and uses KnockoutGas or locks all the doors from the front of the vehicle. (They never notice ''before'' they enter the car.)

As anyone who lives in a large metropolitan area can attest, cabbies and people looking for a taxi are aggressive and a dime a dozen; so [[XanatosRoulette the odds]] of a {{Villain}} or his EvilMinions actually catching their target without another cab swerving in ahead of them, or having a pushy [[{{Muggles}} fare]] cut in front of the victim, are particularly slim. This is also ignoring the possibility of the intended target biking, busing, taking the subway, metro, getting a friend to pick them up, or just plain walking.

This trope is named for the less common but more iconic scene where the target's personal driver is replaced by the villain, leading to a "You're NotMyDriver" quickly followed by a BondOneLiner from the impostor and some knockout gas or a gun to the face. It often comes with the added implication that the poor driver is laying face down in a ditch somewhere. This method is more believable than Taxi-napping a victim, since the target invariably comes to the villain. It is, however, slightly odd that nobody ever notices this until ''after'' they're in the car.

See also TheTaxi, FridgeLogic, XanatosRoulette.

* Japanese tokusatsu example: in ''KamenRiderTheFirst'', the Shocker operative Spider poses as a cabdriver for the explicit purpose of finding his victims and, when necessary, taking them somewhere secluded to dispose of them.

* {{Batman}} once impersonated the limo driver of a woman who nearly got away with two murders by playing on the Riddler's ego. She only noticed something was amiss when she realized the limo wasn't going to the airport. (''Detective Comics'' #822)

* For an episode of Derren Brown's ''Trick or Treat'' series, he began by having an eerily silent taxi driver take his victim past his destination to a dark alleyway where a bunch of actors in hoodies surrounded the cab. [[YouJustRuinedTheShot Of course, by this point the guy was on the phone to the police.]]

* 1998's ''Film/{{Godzilla}}'' featured a Taxi-napping of Matthew Broderick by Jean Reno.

* Done in the original ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Classic}}'' to trick Baltar into releasing the hostages. Though, to be fair, they had to do this, as Baltar demanded his centurions, who were already disassembled. They manage to rebuild them, but they can't do anything well. As soon as he releases the hostages, he orders the centurions to launch. Thr pilot says "By your command" and punches through the controls. The colonials then surround Baltar and take him prisoner again.
* In ''TheSandbaggers'', this happens to Wellingham on a routine visit to Brussels; he's suspicious when his regular driver doesn't show, but gets in his limo when the new driver shows him a set of proper NATO-issued credentials. [[spoiler:Since the kidnapping turns out to have been masterminded by the West German government as part of a BatmanGambit to arrest a terrorist cell outside their proper jurisdiction, the credentials are probably even real...]]

* The MO of the "Cabbie Killer" in ''CSINewYork''.
* This happens to the title character in the series two finale of ''Series/{{Sherlock}}''. After getting in the first cab he sees, he's treated to a video of Moriarty explaining his plan like something out of a kid's fairy-tale. He gets out of the cab, runs to the driver's window - and sees Moriarty, who quips "No charge" and drives off.

* Non-villainous variation on ''TheGoldenGirls'', although Dorothy kind of thinks he's kidnapping her at first. Her ex-husband Stan rented a limo and replaced the hired driver so he could take her to the church on her wedding day as his gift. She got annoyed for a while, then settled down for the most part.
* Jarod, the titular character from ThePretender, employs someone to replace a corrupt lawyer's limo driver to get him out of the way so he can track down evidence to bring down a killer and free an innocent man who was framed for the killing. Jarod also does this himself, replacing one of the regular villains' (Mr. Lyle) limo driver so as to kidnap him and get information out of him regarding a mass murderer who had escaped justice and was trying to find asylum in the U.S.

* In Book 2 of ''TheBartimaeusTrilogy'', the chauffeur Bartimaeus had spent several pages mentioning as particularly stolid and a pillar of the British work ethic turns out to be [[spoiler:covering the presence of a [[NightmareFuel homicidal]] [[DemBones possessed skeleton]], who [[NotQuiteDead promptly resumes]] wreaking havoc.]]

* In the LooneyTunes cartoon ''Baseball Bugs'', the dirty Gas House Gorillas need a home run to win the game. The batter knocks Bugs' first pitch clear out of the park. Bugs flags down a cab, telling the driver to "[[FollowThatCar follow that ball!]]", but the cab screams off in the wrong direction. It's being driven by one of the Gorilla's players, and according to the posted driver credentials, it really ''IS'' his cab. In ''The Unmentionables'', special-agent Bugs is taxi-napped by Rocky's gang in this way as he ''leaves FBI headquarters''.