I Am One of Those, Too: Difference between revisions

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This situation can be part of a [[Spot the Imposter|Spot]] or [[Bluff the Impostor]] scene. See also [[Because I'm Jonesy]], which is going one step further: an impostor meets the very person he's masquerading as. If it actually works, consider [[Seamless Spontaneous Lie]].
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{{examples}}
== [[Film]] ==
* Somewhat related is the whole Winchestertonfieldsville scene in ''[[Mr. Deeds]]'', in which every lie Winona Ryder's character makes up about her childhood ends up actually existing.
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'''Maverick''': Mobile, Alabama? Hell, I've been there. I'll bet we know the same people. You start.
'''Mrs. Bransford''': I've tried so hard to forget that place. }}
* Done in ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'', when Frank's new girlfriend's father is trying to prove that he is lying about which school he went to. The father asks about the name of a certain professor's dog, knowing that Frank can't possibly know it -- Frankit—Frank manages to evade it by saying the dog died.
* In ''[[There's Something About Mary|Theres Something About Mary]]'', a crude, low-class private detective is trying to impress Mary by pretending to be a suave architect. Cue her architect friend. {{spoiler|Who was also only pretending.}}
* In ''[[Kate and Leopold]]'', Kate's boss is trying to impress her by claiming to either have an impressive manor in England or know someone who does (we don't hear this claim, only the reaction). Leopold immediately points out that such a manor doesn't exist. Kate tries to say that Leopold could be wrong, but Leopold is adamant. He grew up there, and he'd know.
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* In ''[[True Lies]]'' the main character's wife seems to be having an affair. The main character, being a spy uses his skills to track down the other man and while under surveilance hears the other man claiming to be a spy himself. However the other man claims to have been involved in an incident that the main character was responsible for and he immediately realises the guy is only pretending to be a spy to attract his wife.
* In ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'', because Lt. Aldo and his men don't know enough German to replace the spies originally chosen to attend a Nazi movie premiere, they confidently decide they can pass for Italian instead. The first Nazi they're introduced to is an SS officer, who greets them in perfect Italian.
* ''[[The A-Team (film)|The a A-Team]]'' movie has a scene where Face accidentally switched BA and Murdoch's fake passports. BA manages to bluff his way past his customs official but the one Murdoch went up to is also from Zimbabwe and asks him a question in Swahili. It ends up working out for the better as Murdoch turns out to know enough Swahili to answer the question while BA wouldn't have.
* In ''[[Ocean's Eleven|Ocean's Twelve]]'', Tess uses her [[Shaped Like Itself|uncanny resemblance]] [[Celebrity Paradox|to Julia Roberts]] to impersonate the famous actress. She finds herself having to bluff her way through a conversation with Bruce Willis.
* Speaking of Bruce Willis, in ''[[Live Free or Die Hard]]'', he uses one of these to expose the fake dispatcher, giving her a code for naked people running around, and then calling her out on it..
 
 
== [[Literature]] ==
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'''Questioner:''' Oh, you mean Christian Life Center?
'''You:''' That's the one. }}
* The [[Discworld]] novel ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'' does a Reverse on this trope. Rincewind runs into someone from the place he's pretending to be from, and being [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know that his challenger is going to try to trip him up by asking him about a fictional person or location, calls him on it-- onlyit—only instead the man asked him about a real person whose identity would be very obvious if Rincewind's story was true.
* Used by [[Sherlock Holmes]] in the short story ''The Three Garridebs'', in which he tests his suspicions of a con man posing as American by casually asking after the nonexistent mayor of the con man's claimed Kansas 'hometown'.
* A joke found in an issue of ''Readers' Digest'' (and possibly a real incident) referred to a man who liked to pretend he'd had the same operations that other people had been through so that he could share in their complaints. Eventually carelessness resulted in a pair of women asking him, "Really. When did you have your hysterectomy?"
* Linnea Sinclair uses this in ''An Accidental Goddess''. The time traveling protagonist claims to be visiting from another spaceport, which in her day didn't have a lot of traffic. Unfortunately, the woman sitting next to her at the bar is from there, and is suspicious when the protagonist doesn't recognize the name of a local bigshot. Fortunately, the protagonist is also telepathic, and can pull the relevant details out of the woman's mind.
* In ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'', con artist Frank Abagnale pretends to be a lawyer who studied at Harvard, which works fine until he meets someone else who actually ''did'' study there. The guy asks him a load of awkward questions, gets suspicious, and Frank soon has to cut his losses and disappear. Which makes this [[Truth in Television]].
* Donald Westlake's unlucky criminal John Dortmunder once, under pressure, claimed his name was "John Diddums," and then started to use it as a regular alias. Whenever people asked about the name that sounds like babytalk, he'd tell them, "It's Welsh," and they'd be embarrassed for questioning it, which made them a bit less likely to question anything else he said. And then he ran into a British gentleman who remarked, "I know a [[Accidental Truth|Diddums family near Caernarvon]]. Might you be a relative?"
* Used and played with in [[Josepha Sherman]]'s ''The Shattered Oath''. A prince of the Sidhe has been exiled into ~9th century AD Ireland, claiming to be an exiled prince from Cathay (China). Naturally a trader who's been in Cathay comes calling. Played with because, even then, China was a huge country. Ardagh, the prince, cannot answer the trader's questions...but the trader, who does know how big Cathay is (generally at least), also has to admit to not knowing how to answer Ardagh's questions, nor having heard of his family or even dialect (actually the Sidhe tongue).
* In the first [[Confessions of Georgia Nicolson|Georgia Nicolson book]], Georgia walks up to a cute guy on the street, pretending to have a limp, and starts speaking to him in fake French ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]... or, well, as much sense as [[Cloudcuckoolander|Georgia]] ever makes). The guy, in an attempt to help her, leads her to a restaurant nearby whose waitresses speak French.
* In Gregory Benford's short story ''Doing Lennon'', a man from the twentieth century hatches a plan to live out his dreams of stardom by having himself frozen and upon being revived in the future, claiming to be John Lennon. The plan hits a snag when he meets another cryogenically-frozen person claiming to be Paul [[McPaul CartneyMcCartney]].
 
== [[Live -Action TV]] ==
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* For complicated reasons Monica in ''[[Friends]]'' has claimed her name to be Monana, which she also claims is Dutch. Too bad the person she's trying to deceive is from the Netherlands, and starts speaking in Dutch. At least Monica can recover from this amazement by specifying Pennsylvania Dutch instead.
** A variation is used when for complicated reasons Ross is at the wedding reception for complete strangers and is posing for a picture at the rostrum. People start clinking their glasses to demand a speech. Ross pretends to be working for the hotel, saying that a certain car will be towed. A guy rushes up nervously. He has that ''exact'' make, model, and color of car. What are the odds?
** In another episode Phoebe found a lost police badge, which she then starts flashing around to intimidate people. Eventually she tries to pull it on a real cop and tries to bluff her way through his questions, like which precinct she works at. After a while he seems to believe her, then he asks "So where did you find my badge?"
* An episode of ''[[Coupling]]'' ("the man with two legs") has Jeff for various reasons claiming to a woman he fancies that he has only one leg: It's too bad her brother also lost a leg.
* Happens to [[Seinfeld|George Costanza]] all the time; since he's always making up more interesting jobs for himself -- tohimself—to the point that he has studied up on how to pass himself off as an architect.
** In one memorable example he tries to pass himself off as a marine biologist, and then he's asked to save a beached whale. {{spoiler|He saves it, but then admits he was lying and is dumped.}}
* In an episode of ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]'', Col. Hogan is trying to convince Col. Klink that he (Klink) is psychic as part of a complex scam (Business As Usual). As part of the convincing, he cites a "famous German scientist" who studies psychic powers, making up the name off the top of his head. Later, Klink has acquired a book about psychic powers by ''the same scientist'', leading Hogan to remark "Maybe ''I'm'' the one who's psychic!".
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** Watson then remarks in clear English something like "what are the odds?" causing the German to immediately realize he's a British spy.
* On an episode of ''[[The Drew Carey Show]]'', Oswald is pretending to be German while talking to a bartender to see if she cheats him. She immediately says she was born in Germany and starts talking to him in German. He then says he is actually from a small town France called Germany. She then says she went to school in France for several years and starts speaking French.
 
 
== [[Music]] ==
* A skit by Lorne Elliott tells the story of a St Patrick's Night gig where an angry audience member demanded that he play ''Danny Boy'' - which he didn't know the words to. In a desperate effort to placate him, he announces that he will sing Danny Boy in the original Gaelic - and [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|sings nonsense syllables to the tune]]. "Turns out he spoke fluent Gaelic..."
 
 
== [[Radio]] ==
* ''[[Adventures in Odyssey]]'': Happens to Monica when she poses as Missions Board intern Paula Jarvis. Walter is from near the real Paula's town and first realizes "Paula" is hiding something by asking her about phony details about it like the "annual blueberry festival."
 
== [[Theatre]] ==
 
== Theatre ==
* In the musical ''[[Anything Goes]]'', the mobster Moonface Martin sneaks onto the cruise ship that the play takes place on in the disguise of a minister. He then runs into a real minister not five minutes later. Being a "clever" man, he tries to deflect suspicion from the minister by claiming to be from somewhere far away, and settles on China. Guess where the real minister practices?
* In the opera ''[[Die Fledermaus]]'' by Johann Strauss II, two characters pretend to be French at a ball in Vienna. This results in an exchange of [[Gratuitous French|simple phrases and nonsense]] before the other characters insist they speak German. Later, they share a brief duet with the chorus 'Merci, merci, merci.'
* The short play ''The Old Lady Shows Her Medals'', by J. M. Barrie, creator of ''[[Peter Pan]]'', is a variant: Mrs. Dowey has pretended that her son Kenneth is a member of the Black Watch regiment serving in [[World War I]]. But she has no son; she simply saw the name of Private Kenneth Dowey in a newspaper article, and claimed he was her son in order not to be lorded over by those of her neighbors who '''do''' have sons in the service. Then an acquaintance brings Private Dowey, who's on leave, to the old woman. Since he has no living family, and he sees she's not doing this to collect government benefits or the like, he agrees to [[Secret Keeper|play along]] and spend his leave with "his mother." Shortly after he returns to the front, she sees another newspaper report: he's been killed in action.
 
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In ''[[Terror Island]]'', Stephen makes up the name "Ned Q. Sorcerer, D.D.S." on the spot when attempting to crash a class reunion at Center of the Earth University. The ''real'' Mr. Sorcerer shows up a few strips later (but is catapulted away.) Stephen must later do a presentation in front of all the university alumni entitled "Ned Q. Sorcerer answers trivia questions about his life." He attributes the real Ned showing up to bilocation.
* In ''[[Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy]]'' the alien "X" Hoshibana claims to be from USA. He [http://creamybeamy.comicgenesis.com/d/20071015.html eventually realizes] he should have picked a more obscure nation as his fake background.
 
 
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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'''Stewie''': Yes yes, you too. Oh and if you see Arnie, tell him 'boogity boogity boo.' He'll know what it means. }}
* In the ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' episode "My Feldmans, My Friends", the Brain attempts to persuade his neighbour that "Mr The Brain" was his high school nickname by inserting his picture into a high school yearbook. The high school he picks happens to be the one his neighbour attended, so Brain is left trying to convince his neighbour that they were, in fact, classmates.
 
 
== [[Real Life]] ==
* In one episode narrated in ''The Colditz Story'', a pair of British escapees pretending to be Flemish ("As Flamands we could pass off our bad German and our bad French -- a useful nationality!") were in a bar when a genuine Flamand came up. Fortunately, they were able to bluff their way through by bursting into laughter at the man's (presumably) hilarious story, buying him a drink, and quickly departing.
* [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32145277 Man impersonating police officer pulls over a real uncover cop car]. Some people have all the luck.
* Numerous stories on [[(The Customer is) Not Always Right]] have a scammer or angry customer impersonate a lawyer or someone with knowledge of law. Only to have a customer behind them step forward and reveal they are a lawyer as well, then disprove the customer. Which leads to the customer fleeing the store in shame. Another common variant is for the customer to angrily claim to be a friend of the owner, only for it to be revealed that they are actually ''speaking'' to the owner -- whoowner—who has, of course, never seen them before.
** Several examples have had the employee/sane customer ''also'' lying about being the owner/lawyer, but successfully scaring away the troublemaker
* Stanley Johnson, [[Like Father, Like Son|father]] of British politician [[Upper Class Twit|Boris]] [[Cloudcuckoolander|Johnson]], used to be a spy. Supposedly, the first time he tried out his cover story -- thatstory—that he was working in the Foreign Office as the desk officer for the Sudan -- itSudan—it was at the Foreign Office, to the actual desk officer for the Sudan.
** [[Too Dumb to Live|Runs in the family, then.]] Or...[[Obfuscating Stupidity|does it run in the family, rather, what?]]
*** In complete fairness, constructing the cover story would have been his superiors' responsibility.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:I Am an Index]]
[[Category:Truth and Lies]]
[[Category:I Am One Of Those Too]]
[[Category:I Am One of Those, Too]]