Disguised Hostage Gambit



Basically the villain has hostages. The Cavalry are ready to storm the fortress and rescue them. Suddenly the heroes (or just the viewer) realize that the villains have restrained the hostages, forced them into their uniforms, put tape on their mouths and fastened weapons to their hands. This can turn out in three different ways;


 * 1) The heroes manage to get the message across in time.
 * 2) The Cavalry end up accidentally shooting the hostages.
 * 3) The heroes must stop The Cavalry by force.

The Cavalry are always fooled by this.

Contrast Trojan Prisoner, where the heroes pretend to be villains with hostages so the real villains will let them go about their business and False Innocence Trick for when a Villain is pretending to be a hostage.

Anime and Manga

 * In Angel Sanctuary a variation of this was used against one of the supporting character's Backstory. Celestial Bureaucracy questioned said character's loyalty, and had suspected he had relations with another Angel (which was strictly forbidden and the punishment is severe), they sent him off to kill the leader of a rebel fraction in their Ghetto. Turned out the supposed leader was actually the Angel's lover - her hair was cut short, dyed red, and a gun tied to her hands so he wouldn't recognize her at first. He didn't realized this until after he shot and killed her.
 * Fujiko does this to an unlucky cult enforcer in the pilot episode of The Woman Named Fujiko Mine. She dresses the thug in her dress and gags him, leading to the unlucky mook getting beheaded in her place while she escapes in his uniform.

Comic Books

 * In a story in an issue of The Batman Chronicles, a killer nicknamed the Mimic tries to pull this stunt on private eye Jason Bard, using his facility at imitating voices to make it sound like Bard's client is calling for help. At the last moment, Bard realizes what is going on and shoots the correct target.
 * More than once Jonah Hex has captured a enemy, dressed the bad guy in his trademark jacket and hat, gagged him and bound him to the saddle before sending the horse galloping into the outlaw camp to draw fire.
 * In Flashpoint Batman: Knight of Vengeance, the Joker pulls this on Jim Gordon, causing Jim to shoot one of Harvey Dent's kids.
 * A variation occurs in the fist issue of Ninjak. The title character tapes a villainess' mouth shut and tapes her hand to a sword. When her mooks arrive, they see a shadowed figure holding a weapon and open fire, killing her and allowing Ninjak to escape.
 * An issue of Teen Titans Spotlight has Two-Face kidnapping Cyborg's girlfriend Sarah in order to lure him into a trap. He tapes her mouth shut and dresses her up in a convincing Two-Face costume, hoping that Cyborg will accidently kill her in a fit of rage. Fortunately, Cyborg sees through the ruse at the last second.
 * Superman foe Ruin once kidnapped Superman's friend Pete Ross (whom he tricked almost everyone into believing was Ruin) and his family (his wife Lana and their child), then dressed up Pete like Ruin and made it look like Pete was about to shoot his family when a detective whose fellow officers Ruin killed appeared on the scene. Fortunately, the detective was savvy enough to realize she was being set up.

Fan Fiction

 * In Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality:

Film

 * In Enemy At the Gates Germans dress a captured Soviet soldier as a German signaller and send him to the battlefield to sink a cable. Unfortunately enemy signallers are priority targets for snipers and the poor sob gets shot by his comrades. The German sniper uses the kill to pinpoint the location of the Soviets.
 * In The Dark Knight,.
 * An (anti-)heroic example: in the V for Vendetta film:
 * Slightly different in the graphic novel. Just one guy is dressed up as V, and he was pretty much one of the bad guys (a high ranking party member with some seriously sleazy Kick the Dog moments, though no outright Moral Event Horizon crossings).
 * Subverted in Quick Change (1990). Grimm (Bill Murray) robs a bank while dressed as a clown. He takes everyone inside hostage and demands getaway vehicles. Police Chief Ratzinger thinks Grimm will dress some of the hostages as clowns and take them out to the vehicles in a group so police snipers can't target him. Grimm actually has something else in mind:.
 * This kind of thing was done to the Big Bad in the F/X movie.
 * In Mission Impossible II,.
 * A grim variant occurs in Mission Impossible 3, where Ethan's girlfriend is apparently executed at the climax. We later learn that the victim was really the Big Bad's female mook dressed up like the girlfriend, with her mouth taped shut to prevent her from revealing the ruse.
 * Inside Man has a variant, in which the thieves make the hostages wear the same uniform as them, but with the full knowledge of the police outside. This keeps the police from interfering at first.
 * The title character does this in Darkman. After capturing one of the villainous mooks, he duct-tapes the man's mouth shut and then dresses him up in a realistic mask, making him resemble the hero.
 * A variation occurs in the film Master and Commander when
 * A variation is done in The a Team, with

Live-Action TV

 * The season 4 finale of CSI: New York had Irish terrorists do this to captured police officers. One of the main characters was able to free himself (he was tied up nearby) and stop the police from shooting them.
 * Occurs at the end of an episode of Millennium. The villain is a serial killer called the Avatar (based on the Zodiac Killer) who wears a burlap sack over his head to mask his face. He kidnaps a woman, and hero Frank chases him to his lair. After being injured by the Avatar, Frank chases him through the house and manages to corner the killer, who's pointing a gun at him. At the last moment, Frank realizes something's wrong, and doesn't pull the trigger. Turns out the "Avatar" is the hostage, who's been tied up, gagged, and posed with a gun in her hand. The real Avatar uses this opportunity to escape.
 * In an episode of Medium, the bad guy released an hostage through a back door with a balaclava on his head and a gun taped to his hand. The police shot him dead. Fortunately, it was All Just a Dream. A prophetic one, but the main character managed to save the victim when it happened for real.
 * An interesting variation is used in Burn Notice. After their attempts to defuse a hostage situation result in them accidentally becoming accomplices (someone pulled a gun and Mike took it away from him), Mike and Sam need to find a way out of the situation. After discussing trying this based on an urban legend, and the fact the cops haven't seen the hostage-taker, they manage to convince one of the two hostages (who just found out the other one, her boss, is really a sleazy con artist) to name the other as the gunman. Mike then engineers a situation where said sleazeball is able to take his gun back, and when the cops burst in the plan works without a hitch. Though the negotiator is kind of curious why somebody blew open a safe full of ill-gotten money...
 * A similar variation occurs on Leverage. Nathan is about to con a corrupt judge out of thousands of dollars when the bank is robbed and the robbers take everyone hostage when the police arrive. The robbers turn out to be father and son who only rob the place to get money to pay off some thugs holding the father's wife for ransom. The judge figures out that he is being scammed and when he disarms the robbers, he uses the gun to shoot Nathan. When the cops storm the bank in the end, the team has arranged things to look like the judge was the sole robber and hostage taker. All the witnesses back them up since the judge is reviled by everyone and the cops will not investigate further since they hate his guts as well.
 * In the Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Gang Gets Taken Hostage", the McPoyle's make the gang put on their signature bathrobes and briefs (in Dee's case it's an over sized Garfield t-shirt) because "it's far too obvious who the hostages are in this situation".
 * Someone pulls this on Clark in Smallville after he's begun officially superheroing. The rest of the episode is devoted to him needing to develop his "Kryptonian intuition" to avoid this sort of thing, something he could've done just by x-raying the "gunman," although he had no reason to suspect him.
 * Another episode has Roulette dressing up a bound and gagged Lois Lane in a replica of her costume in order to trick Green Arrow into shooting her.
 * On Psych (episode "Ferry Tale") escaping convicts on a ferry surrounded by the police
 * On the 1970's anthology show Police Story they had an episode which was the pilot for SWAT. A killer brings out his hostage

Newspaper Comics

 * Klang does this to Pat Ryan in Terry and The Pirates. Having captured Pat, Klang dresses him a Japanese uniform, gags him and ties him to a post so he looks like a sentry in the fake camp the Dragon Lady is about to attack.

Video Games

 * In the intro level of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the enemies do this to an archer. However, because it's an intro level, it functions more as a demo of how to recruit enemy units than a real challenge.

Western Animation

 * Avatar: The Last Airbender "Zuko Alone" it was mentioned that the Fire Nation did this with Earth Kingdom prisoners-of-war.
 * Inverted in the Thundercats 2011 episode "Omens Part Two," when Catfolk King Claudus learns that invading Lizards are holding Panthro, his friend and best General, in a Hostage for Macguffin. Rather than acquiece, Claudus promptly ditches his bodyguards to cut a rapid path to Panthro, who he successfully rescues. Panthro then stabs Claudus In the Back, and reveals himself to be Sorcerous Overlord and series Big Bad Mumm-Ra, in illusory disguise.
 * In Batman the Brave And The Bold,Star Sapphire does this to a British reporter named Georgette Taylor. She uses her power ring to immobilize Taylor and encase her in a Star Sapphire costume, and then sends her flying off into the distance. Batman and Green Lantern waste time trying to capture the fake Star Sapphire while the real one carries out her nefarious scheme.
 * The Powerpuff Girls: Sedusa once traded clothes with Miss Bellum and claimed to have captured 'Sedusa' to trick the girls, who fortunately wouldn't believe Ms. Bellum would singlehandedly defeat Sedusa.

Real Life

 * Sad Real Life example: The memoirs of a WWII soldier whose unit was pursuing some demoralized German troops through the Italian countryside. At one point, the Germans (who turned out to be deserters) forced two unlucky Italian farm wives out to check for an ambush, dressed up in German uniforms. The unfortunate women were shot from long range by the unknowing GIs, and the Americans ramped up their pursuit in outrage over being tricked into killing hapless civilians.