Basic Trope: A character tries to hide his identity with a disguise that shouldn't have fooled anyone.
- Straight: Bob wants to spy on Dan, the Corrupt Corporate Executive. Although they know each other, Bob thinks he can disguise himself if he puts on a pair of sunglasses and a suit.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob picks up a pen and becomes unrecognisable.
- Dan doesn't recognize Bob because he's carrying a briefcase.
- Bob puts on his sunglasses and suit and nobody recognizes him.
- Dan can identify everyone else on the planet (including the people he never met) even if they had put on elaborate disguises. Of course, the only one he can't identify is Bob, even without a disguise himself.
- Bob messes up his hair a bit. No one recognizes him.
- Bob's disguise consists of nothing more than insisting that he isn't Bob.
- In addition to an obvious disguise, Bob uses a Lazy Alias that clearly gives away his identity, e.g. Robert McNotBob.
- Downplayed: Dan is blind, so it makes sense that Bob disguising his voice is enough.
- Justified:
- Dan has only met Bob in person once, briefly, and Bob introduced himself with a pseudonym.
- Dan is The Ditz. Anyone else would see through the disguise, but Dan is just too stupid.
- Bob is a very good actor, so a simple change in clothing, accompanied by a change in mannerisms, can make him seem like a totally different person.
- In-Universe, Bob's disguise is very good. It just looks bad to the audience so that they can tell it's him.
- Bob is in a very sticky situation, and this shoddy, hastily thrown together mess is the best he can come up with in such an emergency. It will probably fail, but it might also buy him some much-needed time.
- Inverted:
- Bob puts on a very elaborate disguise, involving plastic surgery, voice coaching, a wig and a whole new wardrobe. He gets recognized, though.
- Latex Perfection
- Subverted:
- The disguise, by coincidence or design, does resemble an actual other person, who merely looks like Bob with a mustache. The Reveal happens when Bob passes by the stranger, proving they must be two different people.
- It was never Bob. It was somebody else using a Latex Perfection disguise that only looked like Bob using a paper-thin disguise.
- Bob is a public figure. His objective wasn't to fool Dan, but to obscure his identity just enough that casual viewers won't connect them.
- Bob is a Master of Illusion who projects a convincing illusion towards Dan, while casting an illusion of himself wearing a corny disguise to Alice.
- Double Subverted:
- The disguise, by coincidence or design, does resemble an actual other person — but Dan doesn't recognize Bob as that other person, either.
- It was never Bob. While Dan laughed about the obvious "Bob", the real Bob was standing two feet away with a fake mustache and elevator shoes, pretending to laugh with Dan.
- It wasn't Bob, but rather his long-lost twin or clone.
- Parodied:
- Bob puts on a T-shirt reading "I am not Bob."
- Bob doesn't even wear a disguise, but Dan still doesn't even know who he is.
- Bob walks in undisguised, and Dan recognizes him. Bob puts on a fake mustache right in front of Dan, and suddenly Dan doesn't recognize Bob at all.
- Bob always wears a Martial Arts Headband, but after he takes it off nobody recognizes him.
- Bob can take off his clothes, and people will act as if he is invisible.
- Bob can hide his identity by walking backwards.
- Bob's literally paper-thin disguise consists of cutting the eyes and nose out of a picture of somebody else's face and taping it onto his own. Bonus points if some combination of the following applies: the subject of the original picture is famous, has a distinctly different skin tone from Bob, the picture is clearly drawn, or in black and white.
- One person points out that Bob is present, but nobody listens.
- Bob putting on a fake mustache fools even himself, convinced that he's someone else until the mustache falls off.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob switches constantly between a Paper-Thin Disguise and a convincing one.
- Averted:
- Bob puts on a convincing Wig, Dress, Accent disguise.
- Bob doesn't disguise himself or try to fool Dan at all.
- The best disguise is the one that totally hides identity, not thin coverings and other stuff like that.
- Enforced: "We want to make sure the audience knows it's still Bob, so let's just give him a pair of sunglasses."
- Lampshaded:
- "I should have known! He looked just like Bob, only wearing a cowboy hat!"
- "They didn't recognize me because I was wearing sunglasses and a suit? What a bunch of idiots."
- Invoked: Bob puts on the sunglasses and expects Dan not to recognize him.
- Exploited: Dan doesn't see through the disguise, but someone else does and says "Hello there, Not Bob."
- Defied:
- Dan knows he's easily fooled by pathetic disguises, so he has everyone fingerprinted before entering his presence.
- Bob actually puts effort into his disguise to the point that not even the audience can recognize him.
- Discussed: "Just because nobody recognized Clark Kent in glasses and a suit doesn't mean they won't recognize you, Bob."
- Conversed: "These kids' shows are just shameless. Even my three-year-old, Alice, can see through that disguise."
- Implied: Bob's Paper-Thin Disguise is mentioned, but not seen.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob comes from an extremely superficial society in which people recognize one another not by any fundamental traits but by surface physical appearance. The author uses the success of Bob's ridiculous "disguise" to comment on human superficiality.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Dave isn't fooled for a second and has Bob ... taken care of.
- Reconstructed:
- If someone were to figure out his identity, or Bob were to tell someone his identity, it will inspire a new wave of free thought and creativity.
- Bob's terrible disguise doesn't fool Dan for a second: however, it's so absurdly ineffective it makes Dave completely dismiss Bob as a threat, resulting in Bob unintentionally invoking Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Or he may have shown himself to be a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, which has the same effect.
- Played for Laughs: Bob puts on a pair of bunny ears. Dan, taking him for a rabbit, ignores him.
- Played for Drama: Bob is working for an apathetic, incompetent investigative agency that won't or can't afford to supply him with convincing disguises. Consequently, whenever he's in the field, he angsts even more than the average secret agent about whether he'll make it back alive.
- Played for Horror: Bob is a Serial Killer, and uses his simple looking disguise to kill Dan.
- Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: The disguise only seems obvious to the audience. When Bob looks in the mirror, the audience gets to see how his disguise actually looks to himself and other characters.
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