Wallpaper Camouflage



This is when a character is decked out in an outfit that blends in seamlessly with the wallpaper or furniture upholstery, to the point they're either invisible or seem like a (not giant holographic) floating head and hands. Why are they wearing such a bizarre get up? They may have gotten the shirt/dress as a horribly tacky gift, worn a normal article of clothing and through sheer random chance end up in a place that they blend in to. Or they may be Crazy Prepared and created the outfit/camo paint combo from scratch precisely to blend in to the background.

Related to Stand in Portrait, if they are impersonating a figure in a mural it is that trope not this one. See also Nobody Here but Us Statues.

Advertising

 * There's an American ad for an antidepressant that utilizes this.

Anime and Manga

 * Onizuka pulls such a camouflage off in Great Teacher Onizuka during a paintball battle on school grounds.

Film

 * In Addams Family Values, Wednesday does this, face paint included, to spy on the babysitter/black widow.
 * In Garden State, this is a gift to Andrew from his aunt, who proudly says she had sewn it herself from leftover wallpaper.
 * The stoned girl in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, whose outfit blends perfectly into the couch upon which she passed out.
 * In the movie Toys, a few of Patrick's outfits are used to help him achieve this.
 * On The Muppet Movie, the psychedelic paint job the Electric Mayhem gives Fozzie's Studebaker serendipitously matches a billboard for soda, enabling Kermit and Fozzie to elude Doc Hopper.
 * Done by the killer in the remake of When a Stranger Calls.
 * Done by Holmes in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.

Literature

 * Played for horror in The Yellow Wallpaper, at the end of which the narrator tries to disguise herself by rubbing up against the wallpaper, trying to incorporate herself in its pattern. Earlier, she thought she saw other women hiding in the paper.

Live Action TV

 * Played for laughs in a French And Saunders sketch parodying some current Costume Drama. Part of a pair of curtains turn out to be our heroines' voluminous dresses.
 * Once on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Iolaus hid from some Mooks by covering himself in mud and lying down, blending in with the mud patch which the mooks ran through while looking for him.
 * Inverted in one episode of Home Improvement, when Tim pranks Al on Tool Time by wheeling out a portable wall decorated to resemble Al's plaid shirt, work pants, and tool belt, and then pretends he can't see Al when he walks in front of it.
 * Recurring trope in Arrested Development. Tobias, as an understudy for the Blue Man Group, is constantly camouflaged against blue backgrounds. A notable incident is . Tobias is also seen painting himself in his wife's 'diamond encrusted lotion' to camouflage himself against a glitter background.
 * Buster also wears clothes to match the wallpaper in one episode. Because Milford men are neither seen nor heard.
 * You can always tell a Milford man.
 * Titus: In one of the flashbacks of Titus's childhood, Titus hides his brother Dave from his dad by painting him to match the wall. When Titus's dad comes looking for Dave, Titus tells him that Dave joined the circus. Dave blows his cover by coming out of the wall and asking, "Can I be the fat lady?"
 * Mrs. Goadion from This Is Jinsy wears a dress that blends into the background of her hut, leaving her looking much like a floating head.

Music Videos

 * One version of the music video for OK Go's "Do What You Want" takes this to extremes, with the entire band in such a get-up.

Newspaper Comics

 * A Far Side comic has a woman wearing a flowered dress in a room full of a flower motif, and she's spared when a monster comes in an eats her husband, who stands out in his striped shirt, while she's practically invisible, thanks to her "camouflage".
 * Similar to some of the Western Animation examples, one Krazy Kat strip featured a lecturer demonstrating Krazy's natural camouflage by having him/her stand against a black background. (Ignatz gives Krazy a bottle of milk to ruin the lecture; the lecturer retaliates by giving Krazy a bottle of ink to drink.)

Other

 * A recent PSA uses people blending into the background this way as an analogy for clinical depression.

Video Games

 * In a rare serious example, the entire point of the Octocamo in Metal Gear Solid 4 is to do this.

Western Animation

 * On Futurama, Leela criticizes bureaucrats as pencil pushers who just blend into the walls. Camera turns to Hermes, who happens to be wearing a shirt the exact same color as the wall behind it.
 * In one Screwy Squirrel cartoon, Screwy paints a barn wall white, then paints himself white as well to appear invisible and hit the dog chasing him with a bat.
 * In his first cartoon, "The Pink Phink," (which also won an Academy Award) The Pink Panther hides by standing against a wall painted pink.
 * Caesar's spy in the animated Asterix and Cleopatra. Didn't use such camouflage in the book.
 * In the Classic Disney Short "Tiger Trouble", the tiger's natural camouflage is parodied by making it invisible in front of a thicket of bamboo.
 * In a Looney Tunes documentary-style short which features animals, a chameleon blends with many colors. But froze when he approaches plaid. He breaks down and shout that he can't do it.

Real Life

 * Chinese artist Liu Bolin.
 * The US Army ACU Uniform.
 * Invoked by Banksy at his 2006 "Barely Legal" exhibit in Los Angeles.