Bluffing the Advance Scout: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]'' #2, the first appearance of the [[Secret Invasion|Skrulls]], the FF bluff them into thinking that Earth is crawling with giant monsters by [https://web.archive.org/web/20150405232524/http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/10.jpg showing them pages from a comic book], pretending they're real photographs.

* In one issue of the ''[[West Coast Team|West Coast]] [[The Avengers (Comic Book)|Avengers]]'', the aliens test the WCA line-up individually, putting their battle robot (and ship's power systems) under increasing stress. Then they finally get to [[Moon Knight]], who is empowered by the ancient Egyptian moon god. And they're testing the heroes ''in a dimension filled with moons''.

* In one issue of ''[[Exiles (Comic Book)|Exiles]]'', the omniscient whatever-it-is that commands the Exiles sets up a chain of events that ends with some minor supervillain, feeling unappreciated, setting off a weapon that fills the Earth's atmosphere with foul-smelling gases for 72 hours. All because the omniscient whatever-it-is has foreseen that during those 72 hours an alien invasion fleet will arrive, scan the planet, and decide to move on to somewhere with a nicer atmosphere.

* A fairly recent{{when}} ''[[Mickey Mouse]]'' story had the mouse and his sidekick, Goofy, visiting an archaeologist-friend at Abu Simpel in Egypt, when they're abducted by [[Ancient Astronauts]] - specifically, the old egyptianEgyptian gods and pharaohs, who left Earth back in the day after being insulted (and nearly accidentally fed to the crocodiles) by one of Goofy's ancestors. Now they've returned with an invasion-fleet to wipe out humanity in repayment! Mickey tricks them into believing that humanity has developed [[Psychic Powers]] in the meantime, by taking advantage of the knowledge that Abu Simpel contains their landing-beacon, and claiming that he was using his powers to affect their advanced navigation-equipment. Sure enough, the UFO crashes on approach, and the aliens are scared off. How did it work? Well, Abu Simpel was moved - in a massive engineering undertaking - back in the 1980s, to protect it from a flooding. The new location obviously screwed up the navigational calculations, but the aliens obviously didn't imagine that anyone would tear down something that huge, stone for stone, and then rebuild it exactly identically somewhere nearby.

* ''[[Donald Duck]]'': One story has Scrooge McDuck make a bunch of money by producing and selling semi-sentient 'growing' cars to people. Things are already falling appartapart, however, when an alien race arrives and hits the planet with a shrink-ray, designed to leave the people of the planet helpless when the invasion-fleet shows up later... but since said aliens happens to be a race of sentient cars, they mistook the growing cars for the dominant species of Earth, and shrunk ''those'' instead of the people. Since there's [[Negative Continuity]], however, we never get to see the invasion-fleet show up, but presumably, they'd be in for a nasty surprise...

* "The Best Policy" by [[Randall Garrett (Creator)|Randall Garrett]]: Alien advance scouts kidnap a human, stick him in a [[Lie Detector]], and order him to describe Earth. He manages to give them a description in which every sentence is [[Exact Words|technically true]], but the overall effect is a misleading picture of humans who possess [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|immense, even supernatural powers]], and the aliens are frightened off.

* "Ginger's Secret Weapons" by Peter Wingham, originally published in ''Story Teller'' magazine: A schoolboy named Ginger is abducted by froglike aliens, and uses the contents of his pockets -- whichpockets—which include itching powder, a [[Hyper -Destructive Bouncing Ball|small rubber ball]], and a [[Brats Withwith Slingshots|slingshot]] -- to—to reduce them to a state where they're promising they'll go away and never return if he'll only just, please, leave them alone.

* ''The Demon Breed'' by [[James H. Schmitz]]: Aliens planning an invasion capture a remote scientific outpost to study what humanity is made of. The scientist at the outpost tries to sell them a story about humanity having secret mutant warlord protectors, the Tuvela. This being a more dramatic take on the trope, the aliens don't immediately buy it, even though it was ''their'' theory in the first place, and it's up to the heroine to cause enough of the right kind of trouble to persuade them it's true. Part of her way of doing it is to [[Method Acting|make herself think as if it '''is''' true]], so when she delivers an ultimatum, the narrative says it's a Tuvela speaking.

** And inverted in ''Geest Gun'' by the same author: the advance recon party has come and gone--findinggone—finding the world easy pickings--andpickings—and the protagonists essentially have to blackmail the government into getting the fleet ready.

* [[Spider Robinson]]'s ''[[CallahansCallahan's Crosstime Saloon]]'' story "The Guy With The Eyes": An alien is the advance scout for a race of extremely powerful aliens who plan to destroy the Earth. He comes up with the idea to render himself unconscious so the other aliens won't receive a transmission from him. Since he is exceptionally powerful himself, they'll conclude that humanity is too dangerous to attack and leave us alone.

* In the short story ''Iron Inferno'' from the [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] anthology ''Fear the Alien'', a Lord General, of the [[Redshirt Army|PDF]] of a [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|conspicuously Japanese system]], made a ploy against the [[Our Orcs Are Different|Waaagh!]] that had just made planetfall. The plan was an elaborate deception to convince a vanguard force that a poorly defended hive was a veritable fortress with many more defenses and men guarding it than there actually were. After a brief battle, the deception had indeed worked, but the Lord General [[My God, What Have I Done?|was horrified]] that his goal [[Gone Horribly Right|met failure]]. Because of his inexperience with Orks, he didn't foresee that not only would they ''not'' avoid a costly and hard-fought battle, but they would ''[[Blood Knight|jump right at it]]''.

* A story from an old issue of ''Boys' Life'' has a young boy doing this to a team of Martian scouts completely by accident. He's just moved into the neighborhood and thinks the scouts are neighbor kids playing spaceman, and decides to play along. Through a series of [[Contrived Coincidence|contrived coincidences]] he ends accidentally convincing the Martians that that all of humanity is fearless and morally incorruptible, and that humans far outmatch the Martians technologically. In the end the Martians decide to invade another planet.

* A version of this is attempted by Joshua in ''[[First Wave (TV)|First Wave]]'' in order to prevent the invasion of Earth by the Gua or, at least, forestall the Second Wave. He continually brings up the experiment that resulted in Cade Foster (AKA Subject 117) becoming their greatest enemy. Joshua argues that, if every 117th human is [[The Determinator]] like Foster, then the invasion is doomed from the start or, at least, will be a [[Pyrrhic Victory]]. Joshua does not succeed in cancelling the invasion, but it is put off indefinitely.

* ''[[The Phantom (Comiccomic Stripstrip)|The Phantom]]'', the 1970s story "The Blue Giant": Alien advance scouts land to check out whether humans are a good prospect for invasion. After encountering the Phantom, they decide that if all humans are like him, the planet's best left alone.

* Attempted in ''[[Iji (Video Game)|Iji]]'' by the invading Tasen, who are themselves fleeing a species of genocidal aliens known as the Komato - when they bring down a Komato scout team, they realize that when said scouts don't report in, their commanders will know that the Tasen are hiding on Earth, and [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomping]] [[Hilarity Ensues|will ensue]]. So, they fake a report from the scout team claiming that before they went down, their planetary scans failed to reveal any sign of Tasen habitation. {{spoiler|Assuming Iji doesn't [[Summon Bigger Fish|contact the Komato]] herself, they realize the report is BS [[Spotting the Thread|because the "planetary scan" technology never left the drawing board]], but the Tasen don't know that part. [[You Can't Thwart Stage One|Either way]], Curb Stomping Ensues.}}

[[Category:Bluffing The Advance Scout{{PAGENAME}}]]