Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: Difference between revisions

One possible reason behind this gesture is that when a person lies, they often unconsciously cover their mouth with their hand (as if to prevent the lie from escaping their lips). Thus, putting both hands in front of your mouth means that you're lying big time. Another reason is that in [[Real Life]] body language, people tend to automatically steeple the hands when feeling overly confident, or superior to whoever they happen to be speaking to. Someone who does this too often will quickly come across as arrogant. But this pose has the advantage of completely blocking arms and chest, making their body language impossible to read anymore.

 

 

A [[Just for Pun|play on]] [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]. Bonus points if combined with ominous lighting, [[Scary Shiny Glasses]], a slight [[Slouch of Villainy]], a [[Beard of Evil]] or a [[Kubrick Stare]]. Double bonus for a [[Psychotic Smirk]]. Not related to [[Intertwined Fingers]]. Usually.

** [[Subverted Trope|Oddly enough, scans from the original designs for Shinji show him doing a]] ''[http://wiki.evageeks.org/Image:Proposal_17_shinji.jpg happy version] [[Subverted Trope|of the pose]]''. [[In the Blood|It must be a tradition in the Ikari family.]]

* Roy Mustang from [[Fullmetal Alchemist]] does this, too, whenever he isn't out on a date.

* Lelouch from ''[[Code Geass]]'' commonly does this while his plans go as expected. When they fail... [[Large Ham|he does all sorts of different gestures.]]

** Schneizel does this while he's telling the ''truth'' about Lelouch to the Black Knights.

** Tsunade did this on occasions.

** Gaara seems to have picked up this habit when he's sitting down lately too. It seems to be a replacement for his usual standing-up habit of crossing his arms.

** [http://www.onemanga.com/Death_Note/62/09/ Most noticeably] after he talks the task force into {{spoiler|[[Big Brother Instinct|not making him kill his sister]].}}

*** Takashi Ooi does this a lot as well.

== Film ==

* ''[[The Matrix]]'': Agent Smith, while interrogating Neo.

* Nicolae Carpathia as depicted by Gordon Currie in the ''[[Left Behind]]'' film series.

* [[The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Judge Claude Frollo]] is often depicted as doing this in promotional material. [http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001863459/5516170360_frollo_answer_1_xlarge.jpeg See?]

* [[Magnificent Bastard|Dravis]] of the ''[[Descent]]'' novelizations is fond of this.

* [[Artemis Fowl]] often makes this pose when he's revealing something particularly devious/unexpected

* From ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', Marcone often steeples his hands, [[Expy|very much like]] Xanatos. In the illustrated RPG book, nearly every time you see Marcone he's doing this.

* Subverted in ''[[The Acts of Caine|Heroes Die]]'', where Kollberg laces his fingers together not as a sign of deception, but to try and keep calm while talking to [[He Who Must Not Be Seen|the Board of Governors]].

* Tang Shou Dian in the [[Dale Brown]] novel ''Sky Masters''.

* One of the trademark gestures of [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Tywin Lannister]], though other characters are known to do it too.

** One of the priests of the Many Faced God, when teaching {{spoiler|Arya}} how to lie, mentions that some people will instinctively cover their mouth when lying, which is the [[Truth in Television]] part of this trope.

* Kohaku in ''[[Tsukihime]]'' clasps her hands while talking with Shiki after having sex in her own route. Since {{spoiler|she'd been trying to manipulate him to kill Akiha}}, this might make sense, but it's actually a ''subversion''. {{spoiler|She wasn't lying to him, and she later tried to ''stop'' Shiki and the then-insane Akiha from killing each other}}.

** She {{spoiler|does drug him so he can't come after her immediately after that though.}}

* Shizune from ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'' seems to like "tenting" her hands and otherwise follows the personality tropes associated with this to the letter, though as far as [[The Chessmaster|chessmastery]] is concerned, all she's got to show for herself is a mean game of [[Risk]].

* In the ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' series, evil-aligned mage Edwin is shown clasping his hands in this fashion in his [http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG/npc/Edwin.jpg character] [http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/bg2/encounters/npcs/edwin/edwin.jpg portraits].

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* David Xanatos of ''[[Gargoyles]]''. Just [[media:Xanatos.jpg|see for youself]]. And yes, he is indeed [[Xanatos Planned This Index|magnificently]] [[Xanatos Gambit|devious]].

* After coming up with a plan to get back at someone he felt had wronged him, Roger from ''[[American Dad]]'' expressed delight that he would get to do this, calling it 'the finger pyramid of evil contemplation'.

* Slade from ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]''.