Basic Trope: A character gets mistaken for a poor impersonator of himself.
- Straight: Superbob enters a "Superbob Cosplay Contest" and loses.
- Exaggerated: Superbob loses the contest to someone with a cheap junk costume that looks nothing like his.
- Downplayed:
- Superbob wins second place.
- Superbob's armored costume is considered too light and manueverable to be realistic but considered an Acceptable Break from Reality to wear on a convention floor.
- Justified:
- Superbob's costume is tattered and dirty from all the superhero work, while the competitors' costumes are spotless.
- Superbob is a great superhero, but a shoddy tailor, and his costume is badly made. Meanwhile, his fans are better at sewing.
- Superbob's normal costume has been stolen, and he's using a less flashy backup costume. Meanwhile, the competition is won by the crazed fan who stole Superbob's costume to win all cosplay contests.
- Because Superbob operates only at night, and nobody has ever seen him clearly, people think his costume looks completely different than what it really looks like.
- Superbob's costume is rarely actually seen by the judges, mainly because his exploits take him beyond the reach of cameras, like the moon, so they know what he's supposed to look like but not the exact details.
- Alice the Really 700 Years Old witch keeps trendy with the times, slowly updating her "outfit" with the current style. Because people expect her to dress as she did long ago they think the actual Alice is a "modern redesign" of the witch everybody knows.
- Superbob wants people to "know" for sure that he's not Superbob by getting his costume and persona totally wrong.
- Inverted:
- A very well-costumed fan gets mistaken for Superbob. Hilarity Ensues if the mistake is made e.g. by a supervillain out for revenge.
- Superbob gets recognized as the real deal, but he tells the others, à la Albert Einstein, that he is not Superbob.
- Subverted:
- Superbob gets recognized halfway through the judging.
- Someone in a crappy-looking Superbob costume is implied to be Superbob, but turns out to be just a fan.
- The costume is called out by fake by most but the judge notes Bob had Shown Their Work.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but someone else still wins, simply because their costume looks cooler. They would have disqualified the real Superbob anyway because it would have been an unfair advantage.
- ...except the fan is really Superbob in disguise, because no one would suspect someone in such a shoddy costume of being the real Superbob.
- Parodied: Bob the Giant Man-Eating Worm from Another World attacks people. They still refuse to believe that he's the actual Man-Eating Worm, and instead confuse a chubby kid in a cheap costume with the real deal because he looks more "authentic" to them!
- Zig-Zagged:
- Superbob is sometimes recognized, sometimes not.
- Superbob apparently wins the contest... but then the judges reveal that it's just a Consolation Prize, and the actual award goes to someone else. Who then reveals himself to be the real Superbob; the one who got the consolation prize, and the one whose adventures we've been seeing from the beginning of the episode, was just a good cosplayer.
- Averted:
- Superbob is declared winner. His win helps reinforce the masquerade that Bob is not Superbob.
- Nobody impersonates Superbob for any reason.
- Superbob is immediately identified as Superbob and maybe asked to be a judge instead.
- The use of Superbob costumes is banned. Or at the very least a certain kind of "fakeness" is enforced.
- Enforced: "Last rule, the best costume must be sewn properly."
- Lampshaded: "Guess they are more of a Superbob than I am."
- Invoked:
- Sought by a powerful enemy, Superbob hides among a group of costumed fans, knowing that the enemy will never consider him the real Superbob.
- "At least they're better at sewing."
- Exploited:
- Superbob really wants to uphold his masquerade, so he doesn't challenge rumours that Superbob looks different than he does.
- Superbob uses this for Refuge in Audacity.
- Defied:
- The contest rules specifically prohibit Superbob from participating.
- Superbob prohibits Superbob costume contests from being made, with the probability of harsh enforcement.
- Discussed: "It'd be funny if the actual Superbob took part in our contest, no?"
- Conversed: "Heh, heh. That gag where they think he's just someone in a cheap costume always cracks me up."
- Deconstructed:
- Superbob realizes that civilians love him not as a person, but as the image of him they crafted in their own minds — and that they only like him as long as he lives up to their image. This drives him to depression.
- Bloodshed happens because some idiot decided to attack the "real" Superbob.
- Reconstructed:
- Superbob decides that if his sole purpose is to be a symbol, he might as well be the most heroic symbol ever, and regains belief in himself.
- A degree of "fakeness" becomes enforced among Superbob cosplayers as a result. Superbob is fine with it because it gives some more leeway when Clark Kenting.
- Played for Laughs:
- Superbob's costume is depicted as laughably different from what everyone else thinks it is.
- Superbob is forced to endure a multiple-hour diatribe from a Straw Fan about how much he's getting the costume "wrong".
- Played for Drama: The situation carries An Aesop about the differences between heroes and our views of them.
- Played For Horror: Professor Evulz massacres a Superbob cosplayer convention precisely because of this trope.
- Implied: Somebody tells Bob that he looks like Superbob ... "but you can't be the real Superbob." After the other person leaves, Bob smiles to himself.
- Plotted a Good Waste: Bob shows up to his cosplay contest with a flawless costume (his actual one) but through The Power of Acting, acts like a rabid braggart cosplayer, thus getting docked points for his poor attitude, which was All According to Plan: He has been established as having a flawless costume he always brags about, but his empty bragging means nobody will believe him to be the real Superbob, who is a calm and collected Humble Hero.
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