Haplessly Hiding

"This is Mr. Nesbitt of Harlow New Town. Mr. Nesbitt, would you stand up, please... Mr. Nesbitt has learnt the value of not being seen. However, he has chosen a very obvious piece of cover."

— Monty Python's Flying Circus, "How Not to be Seen"

A character needs to hide from someone else for some reason, whether it be avoiding confrontation, sneaking up on them, or whatever. The character does some checking around, manages to find a way or a place to hide, and successfully does so. However, just when things are looking good, the hiding place immediately becomes less than desirable, unwittingly making the plan to hide backfire on the unfortunate person in hiding.

Note that for this trope to apply, the character must be trying to hide, and not just escaping from the threat; otherwise, it is just Out of the Frying Pan.

This can often be a byproduct of Didn't Think This Through. Garbage Hideout has the obvious Covered in Gunge risks of not only the preexisting garbage, but also someone adding more garbage on top of the hider. Mobile Shrubbery is another usual scenario where this may occur, since bushes are prime targets for dogs marking their territory or desperate humans resorting to Nature Tinkling. Can result in Hide-and-Seek Horror.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In the infamous Australian Train Safety ad filled with Black Comedy Dumb Ways to Die, one of the ways considered a dumb way to die was hiding in a clothes dryer, presumably because someone could turn it on.

Comic Books

• Asterix: In Asterix and the Big Fight, a Roman legionary gets volunteered to spy on the Gauls, disguised as a tree. An owl starts flying around him, causing him to get noticed by the Gauls and captured.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): During the Cobra Civil War, the recon patrol led by Lt. Falcon hides in a storm drain. The cooks of the Iron Grenadiers dump leftover food through the grates...right onto the Joes.
• One comic by the creator of Titeuf has a middle-aged couple go into their bathroom to have sex. Once they're done and leave, the shower opens to reveal their clearly horrified teenage son, who'd been there the whole time.

Comic Strips

• Self-inflicted in Foxtrot: In two different arcs, Jason/Peter are on the run from a sibling, having broken something of theirs. Jason hides in an overflowing trash can, Peter flees cross-country through briar patches and poison ivy, and while Peter comes to realize he punished himself, Jason doesn't.

Films — Live-Action

• At the midpoint of Burn After Reading, Chad enters Harry's house to try to find any information about him, and when he hears Harry has arrived he hides in the bedroom closet. When Harry opens the closet and sees Chad inside, Harry reflexively draws his gun and gives Chad a point-blank headshot in a panic, not even noticing that he did it until he has run out of the room and calmed down a minute later.
• The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo is pursued by the Imperial fleet and flies into an Asteroid Thicket to lose them. He then realizes that the odds in the asteroid field aren't much better than his odds against the Imperials, so he hides in a cave on a larger asteroid — and ends up flying down the mouth of a giant space slug.
• Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hugh Grant's character Charlie ducks into a hotel room bathroom. It turns out to be the honeymoon suite of one of the four weddings, and they are Insatiable Newlyweds. He stays hidden during one lengthy encounter, but when they are about to start up round 2, he has enough, reveals himself, and gets out.
• Hop: E.B. (an anthropomorphic, but still rabbit-sized, rabbit) hides among the soft toys on Fred's bed so that Fred's wife will think he's a soft toy. However, when she does, she picks him up and hugs him.
• Johnny English: English infiltrates the villain's headquarters via a sewage outflow while his long-suffering partner takes a more sensible route. Unfortunately for him, it leads to a group toilet, and, while he's waiting for the coast to clear, they flush.
• Police Academy: During the climactic riot of the first film, the two Jerkass rookie cops that have antagonized the protagonists, having had their guns stolen from them and racing from the angry mob, seek shelter in the first building they can find with an open door... which is "The Blue Oyster", the gay bar that they entered earlier in the film as a prank by the protagonists. Cue "El Bimbo" (the bar's Leit Motif) and their panicked screaming.
• Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins has the gang expelled from school. To continue investigating, everyone gets into disguises, with Shaggy and Scooby as walking trash cans. Of course, the vice principal ends up throwing trash into Shaggy's bin.
• In the third act of Top Secret!, Latrine the rebel and The Mole use a cow costume to infiltrate the German hideout where their target is in order to shut down the electrified fence and allow the rest of the team to enter. Unfortunately for the mole, the costume attracts the attention of an amorous bull and just as the mole reveals himself to Latrine, the bull mounts him (he's standing in for the rear part of the cow) and penetrates him so hard that he spends the next scene walking bow-legged.

Literature

• One of the America's Dumbest Criminals books had a man cause a ruckus at a bar which soon escalated into a full-on brawl. The troublemaker snuck out in the chaos and tried to escape only to find the police on their way. Knowing he couldn't escape from them, he hid in the back of a car in the parking lot. The police ended up arresting so many people, they didn't have enough cars to take them all to the police station. Their solution was to let some of the more sober patrons drive themselves. Guess which car was one of theirs.
• Animorphs: During one mission, the team goes to fly morph in an airport restroom. Unfortunately, Tobias ends up somewhere he doesn't recognize: inside a kind of huge, damp white bowl. And suddenly it gets dark...
  Marco: Caution: falling objects.
• Interesting Times sees an old barbarian hero looking to retire on one last grand adventure. Cohen the Barbarian decides to conquer the Discworld Expy of China. Having consolidated the Agatean Empire's throne room on the death of the elderly and senile previous Emperor, Cohen looks around him and sees the room is amply stocked with very large vases that could easily accommodate a man. Being Genre Savvy, he walks up to one and starts talking, apropos of nothing, of all the things that could happen to a man hiding in such a vase, like for instance several gallons of boiling water. After hearing somebody throwing up inside the vase in sheer fear, Cohen grins, his point having been made, and asks the spy in the next vase if he's got everything he needs, is he okay for a notebook and a pencil sharpener, for instance?
• Invoked Trope in The Adventure of Norwood Builder, where Holmes works out the titular character is hiding in order to frame Holmes's client. Therefore, he has policemen yell "fire!" and Watson burn some straw to make smoke, so the builder thinks there's a house fire and jumps out of hiding.
• The Tale of Georgie Grub: Georgie tries to hide from a bath in a trash can, but then the bin men collect the trash can and dump it into the garbage truck with him in it.

Live-Action TV

• The Brittas Empire: In "Stop Thief!", Brittas hides in a locker to catch a thief. It doesn't initially work, mainly because Helen needs him to come to a doctor's appointment, so he makes Colin hide in it whilst he leaves. It doesn't work out - Gavin and Angie mistake him for Brittas, sedate him using chloroform, and make the locker airborne. Poor Colin doesn't even find out until he opens the locker and goes plummeting down to the ground.
• Appears twice in the Dad's Army episode "Operation Kilt", when Captain Mainwaring's platoon tries to spy on a rival platoon who are headquartered at a local farm. The first time, Private Walker and Private Frazer try to sneak through the fields while wearing a cow costume, but they attract the attention of an amorous bull. The second time, Corporal Jones hides in a hay cart while the rival platoon leader Captain Ogilvie gives his men a briefing. Ogilvie attaches a map to the side of the hay cart and marks key points on it with long pins, stabbing Jones in several rather personal areas as he does so.
• Drake & Josh: In the episode "Alien Invasion", Drake and Josh prank Megan into thinking there is alien activity by tampering with the equipment she's been using to find some. The two hide in trash cans and hear her believing the prank, much to their pleasure. They are still in the cans when their dad Walter comes out to empty the trash and disposes of it in Josh's can. Drake remains safe, though.
• In the "Maggots" episode of Everything's Gonna Be Okay, Matilda invites Drea and Jeremy over to her house for an experimental threesome, but Jeremy quickly realizes that he's not really comfortable with any aspect of sex and flees after realizing that Matilda and Drea are going to make out with each other, hiding behind a wall in the hallway. Unfortunately for him, Matilda's big brother Nicholas and his boyfriend Alex are fooling around on the other side of the wall, and don't realize that he can hear them.
• The George Lopez Show: Invoked In "The Trouble with Ricky", where Max tries to hide Ricky from his parents (who banned him from the house for inadvertently burning down the garage) by disguising him as a garbage bag and claiming he's throwing out old clothes. George and Angie don't buy it for a second, and they try to scare Ricky out by asking to dump coffee grinds and bacon grease in the bag.
  Max: It's really full.
  George: Well then, I'll jump on it and squash it down!
  [Ricky gets up and makes a run for it]
  George: GET BACK HERE, RICKY!
  Benny: George, how many times have I told you? Make sure they're dead before you put 'em in the bag.
• The Goodies: In "Scoutrageous", Graeme and Bill are tailing Tim to his mysterious meeting. They hide in a pair of dustbins outside a restaurant, only for a restaurant employee to dump a pile of food scraps on top of them.
• Hannah Montana: In "Good Golly, Miss Dolly", Hannah confesses her love for Jake Ryan on a tape that Oliver then accidentally gives to Jake himself. As part of their plan to get the tape back before he sees it, Aunt Dolly disguises herself as a school janitor and Miley hides in the garbage can. Not only does Aunt Dolly have to convince Jake that Miley is a loud, undead, dissected frog after she makes noise, but she also gets Jake's smoothie dumped right on her head.
• House of Anubis:
  • Alfie and Jerome snuck into the cellar to scare their friends, who were going down there daily. After realizing he left his mask behind, Alfie has to go back to save it while Jerome stands guard. Jerome is forced to leave and Alfie gets trapped; he hides in a cupboard overnight and witnesses a creepy ceremony that leaves him in a state of shock for an entire episode.
  • After Jerome screws with Alfie's Sibuna mission and tricks the others into leaving, Alfie is alone when Victor walks by. He hides in the sarcophagus, and Jerome locks him in overnight.
• M*A*S*H: Colonel Flagg is a U.S. intelligence officer who sometimes visits the 4077th. In one episode he hides in a trash can outside the mess hall in order to talk with one of the show regulars. After the conversation ends, one of the soldiers working in the mess hall comes outside and unknowingly dumps some garbage in the trash can on top of him.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: The sketch "How Not to Be Seen" has the first two people hiding. The narrator tells them to stand up, whereupon they are promptly shot dead. The third person stays put. Unfortunately, "he has chosen a very obvious piece of cover." The bush he's hiding behind promptly blows sky-high.
• Peep Show had an episode where Mark and Jez were hiding behind a shower curtain at Zahra's apartment; while they were hiding there, Ben came in and used the toilet.
• Power Rangers in Space, "A Ranger Among Thieves": As part of the comedic relief for the episode (and keeping with the theme of the series), Bulk, Skull, and Professor Phenomenous have been searching for alien life to study, but expecting hostile creatures along the way. For this particular episode, the trio have hidden themselves in repurposed trash containers, with a nearby food trap, to catch any wildlife that they think is a hostile alien. Unfortunately for them, collectors mistake them for actual containers and dump actual trash into them.^note For sanitary production purposes, though, it's just shredded vegetables.
• School of Rock: In "Heroes & Villains", Clark hides in a trash can in the corridor so he can eavesdrop on the kids from Mr. Finn's class and take notes. Then the bell rings and the kids move away, and three girls who are passing dump their half-finished juices into the bin on top of him.
• Scream: When being pursued by the killer, Brooke runs and hides in a cooler. Of course, she gets locked in, the cooler gets stabbed through multiple times, and she nearly succumbs to hypothermia.
• A somewhat self-inflicted version happens in the Seinfeld episode "The Nap", where George decides to snooze under his new desk during office hours. At some point on, George's boss George Steinbrenner comes into his room to sit for a while. Making matters worse, Steinbrenner's four grandkids and their pet dog come over to see him^note with grandson Brian and the dog discovering George, but neither blow his cover. George then dials Jerry to call a faux bomb threat inside the building in the hopes that Steinbrenner and company will vacate the area. Instead, Steinbrenner orders everyone to hide under the desk.

Theatre

• Jean de La Fontaine: "The Cudgelled and Contented Cuckold" has a Mal Mariée and her lover (her husband's falconer) deal with her suspicious husband this way. She tells the husband that his falconer attempted to seduce her and told her to come see him at midnight, then convinces her husband to go in her stead, wearing her clothes, so as to catch the falconer in the act. The husband goes out at midnight in a dress, and the falconer spits a torrent of abuse at the faithless "wife", even beating "her" with a big branch, to the joy of the husband at having such a faithful wife and a loyal servant.
• The Merry Wives of Windsor: Falstaff, who is attempting to seduce a married woman who has no interest in him, is tricked by her into hiding in a laundry basket, which then gets dumped in the Thames.
• The Schemes of Scapin has Scapin convince his master Géronte to hide in a sack which he carries over his shoulders, then pretends to be attacked by bandits thrashing him to within an inch of his life. In fact, Scapin puts the sack on the ground and vigorously beats it with a heavy staff.

Video Games

• In the survival horror Haunting Ground, Fiona can hide from her pursuers in several spots, but if she's used a particular place too often or they're close enough to sense her entering it, they will catch her. Usually this just means that Fiona is discovered and attacked, but if she is caught in an iron maiden, Daniella will kill her with it.

Webcomics

• Questionable Content: Roko tries to tail Faye and Bubbles, then hides in a trash can when she's spotted, so Bubbles stacks it precariously on top of another trash can, trapping her. Roko is not amused.

Web Videos

• One of Calebcity's videos pokes fun at airline baggage handlers for their physical abuse of baggage, specifically with one character hiding themselves in luggage only to get beat up by a handler while still inside, unbeknownst to the handler.

Western Animation

• In Arthur episode "D.W. Blows the Whistle'', D.W. gets carried away blowing her whistle at everyone, thinking they're all doing something dangerous. Arthur and friends attempt to counteract this by sneaking on her to catch her doing something dangerous so they can blow a whistle at her. When D.W. makes her way to the Tibbles residence, everyone spies on her around the block, with Arthur hiding in a trash can. When D.W. gets to him, she spots ice cream dumped on the sidewalk and throws it in the trash can that her older brother is in, unknowingly getting him covered in it.
• In one episode of The Babaloos, Baby Towel is playing hide-and-seek and decides to hide in the washing machine. Then someone, unaware that he’s hiding there, turned the machine on. Eh, he was getting kinda dirty anyway.
• There was a joke in Fairly OddParents where a character arrived from elsewhere and hid in the dumpster when the police pulls over, only to bump his head on the lid and get trapped in the dumpster when the cops decide to sit on the dumpster to eat their donuts and drink coffee for as long as they want. The guy inside eventually gets out.
• Futurama: In "Decision 3012", President Nixon tasks Bender with getting dirt on political rival Chris Travers. While going through his file cabinet, Bender hears him coming and disguises himself as a bathroom urinal; Travers goes in and notices all the other urinals are out of order.
  Nixon: Well, you did manage to get a tremendous urine sample.
  Bender: [traumatized] Let's not talk about that.
• Gravity Falls: Mabel and Dipper end up the victims of a "Freaky Friday" Flip and as a result, Mabel is unable to attend her own sleepover. She tries to secretly observe the party while hiding behind a door, only for Grunkle Stan to badly misread the situation and decide it's time to give 'Dipper' The Talk.
• Happens to Skarr over and over again in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy episode "Herbicidal Maniac". Billy's stupidity gets Skarr turned into a plant-human and ruins his garden. Skarr gains powers and restores his garden, but still wants revenge on Billy for everything he's done. He attempts to sneak up on him as a bush three times but each time, Billy pees in it after noting it's been following him, Vegetarians eat all the leaves off him, and Jeff the Spider lays his eggs all over him then wraps him up in his webbing. He also disguised himself as a tree, only for a woodpecker to peck through his whole bad eye.
• Inspector Gadget does a variant of this. Once an Episode, Chief Quimby approaches Gadget through various secret tunnels and hidey-holes to provide him with the letter issuing the mission of the day. Though Gadget does note the chief at first, he constantly forgets about him after reading the letter, carelessly throwing the letter away and it falling into the place where the Chief is hidden, giving him a point-blank exposure to the letter's Self-Destruct Mechanism (usually a colossal explosion).
• Looney Tunes:
  • Invoked in "Bugs and Thugs" — Bugs makes Rocky and Mugsy think the police are coming and suggests that they hide inside the stove; he then turns on the gas and tosses in a match to produce an explosion. Then, the police show up for real and the criminals give themselves up rather than endure a repeat.
  • In "Chain Gangsters", Bugs Bunny is shackled to Rocky and Mugsy, and he gets them to hide in a garbage truck while he's disguised as the driver. Just then, Granny comes by to throw out some anvils, mousetraps, and nuclear waste before Bugs lets her turn on the compactor.
• In an episode of The Loud House, Lincoln is hiding under the bench where the spectators are sitting to watch a game because he's pretending that he's playing on the field when actually it's his sister Lynn. However, he keeps getting hit by food that the spectators accidentally drop.
• The Simpsons: In "Cape Fear", Sideshow Bob follows the Simpsons to Terror Lake by strapping himself to the bottom of their car. On the way, Homer drives over several speed bumps, dumps some hot coffee over the side, and gets the random idea to plow through a cactus patch.
  Homer: Hey kids, wanna drive through that cactus patch?
  Bart: Yeah!
  Lisa: Yeah!
  Bob: No!
  Homer: Oop! Two against One!
  [drives through cactus patch at Sideshow Bob's expense]
• SpongeBob SquarePants: This is what kicks off the episode "SB-129", where Squidward attempts to get away from SpongeBob and Patrick by hiding himself in the Krusty Krab freezer. This backfires on him spectacularly as he gets locked inside and frozen for 2000 years, ending up in the future. The plot then revolves around Squidward trying to get back to his own time period by using a time machine.

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