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{{trope}}
[[File:NoponyHereButUsStatuesShort 7932.png|link=My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|frame|[[Metal Gear|No relations.]]]]
{{quote|'''Greir:''' Okay then, mystery doctor- if you were me, who would you be investigating?
'''Navaan:''' Well you could start with those guys disguised as statues.|''[[Oglaf]]''}}
Alice tries to hide from Bob, so she pretends to be a statue (or, in more cartoonish settings, even a painting or a relief) in a museum, art gallery etc. Sometimes she has to [[Walk Like an Egyptian]] to fit in, or get in a suit of armour, or end up holding an empty picture frame in front of herself. Bob typically doesn't catch on, though he looks at Alice suspiciously (bonus points if he says "[[True Art Is Incomprehensible|I'll never understand this modern art]]" or "What an ugly statue!"). Sometimes Alice will accidentally reveal herself, typically by [[Sneeze of Doom|sneezing]], or in worst scenarios, Bob will sneeze and she will respond [[Gesundheit|"gesundheit"]].
Attempting to pass as a doll or a department store mannequin is a variant on this trope, particularly in big front-window displays.
Compare [[Mobile Shrubbery]], [[Stand in Portrait]] and [[Wallpaper Camouflage]], as well as [[Mistaken for Exhibit]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Subverted in the ''[[Appleseed]]'' manga where Alephia tries to hide from A-9 by covering herself in plaster, but nearly suffocates under it.
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* Honey does this in the original ''[[Cutey Honey]]'' manga, using her [[Voluntary Shapeshifter]] powers to color herself bronze. She successfully escaped Panther Claw, but then [[Dirty Old Man|Danbei]] and [[Kidanova|Junpei]] show up and start groping her and licking her breasts . . . because it's [[Ecchi|that kind of series.]]
* In ''[[Hellsing]]'', Alucard and Anderson start a fight in a museum. Seras breaks it up by guiding a group of [[Japanese Tourist]]s through said battle. Cue this trope.
== Comic Books ==
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"I wonder if they left parts of their bodies unpainted to allow their pores to breathe?" *sees supposed statue being taken away in ambulance* "Guess not." }}
* Happens in a very early issue of ''Cat Claw'', when the titular heroine is in a mall at night trying to find a suitable hero costume, and tries to hide from some burglars by posing as a half-dressed mannequin. It almost works, until one of the burglars feel her up while remarking how "these things feel almost real" and she decks him. Mostly over the "almost real" remark.
* In one issue of ''[[Gen 13]]'' Grunge and Roxy strike a suitable pose to hide among an array of marble statues. It works, mostly owing to Grunge being able to turn himself and what he's touching into various materials, so for the moment, he and Roxy really '''are''' made of stone.
* A risque magazine cartoon showed a woman meeting her lover at an art museum. She's pretending to be a nude statue. But her husband, who's "beginning to get suspicious," is '''also''' posing as a nude statue....
== Film ==
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* Mystique does it in the ''[[X-Men (film)|X-Men]]'' movie. Helps that she's a [[Voluntary Shapeshifter]].
* In the horror film ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0pilBYGK-0 Amusement]'', the killer hides by pretending to be a {{spoiler|life-sized clown doll in a room full of clown dolls.}}
* ''[[E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
* Ivan Bunsha pretends to be part of a sculpture when fleeing the Streltsy in ''[[Ivan Vasilievich]]''.
** Miloslavsky also gets into a suit of armor to hide.
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* There's a moment in ''[[Zardoz]]'' where the resurrected Arthur Frayn conceals himself amongst a group of wax figures, so he can startle Zed by coming to life.
* Done in the first live action ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' movie, when the gang is on the run from mooks in a haunted house. In classic Scooby Doo style they manage to climb into suits of armor in two seconds flat.
* Done in ''[[The Muppet Movie]]'', when Fozzie and Kermit were trying to escape from Doc Hopper in their rainbow
* ''[[The Witch Watch]]'' has a darker example, where the guards of the [[Big Bad]] routinely get mistaken for statues, possibly because of magic. It doesn't end well for people.
* Done ''both ways'' in ''[[Shanghai Knights]]'' - the scene starts with Chon Wang and Roy o'Bannon entering a waxworks museum to track down the boy who stole the Imperial Seal from them, and Wang walks right past two waxworks who turn out to be Mooks sent by the [[Big Bad]] after the same thing. Wang tries to battle them, then makes his escape, just as more Mooks head his way - upon which he goes completely still, and they miss him entirely.
== Literature ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** Incredibly subtly done in ''[[
** Also, the Death of Rats briefly took the place of the cardboard fairy atop a Hogswatch tree in ''[[
** The dragon from ''[[
* Corran Horn tries this in an ''[[X Wing Series]]'' novel; he's in the Emperor's private museum of Jedi memorabilia and he even puts on the old robe one of the statues or models was wearing. It was dark, and this ''almost'' worked, but the Imperials looking for him noticed that unlike all the others, his face and [[Eye Scream|eyes]] hadn't been gouged. Fortunately he'd also come across a working Lightsaber.
* In one installment of the French ''Langelot XXX'' series, the protagonist must suddenly hide in the workshop of a light artist and decides to impersonate a customized ''trompe l'oeil'' holographic statue of himself. This necessitates not just standing still, but actually ''repeating the same characteristic movement'' whenever the suspicious inspector walks past him. Needless to say, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|he pulls it off]].
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* Done in ''[[Welkin Weasels]]: Vampire Voles'' when Scruff is hiding from Count Flistagga in the crypt.
* One of the ''[[Nancy Drew]]'' books involved the revelation that a mannequin in a shop window was actually the shop owner's sweetheart, who was '''very''' good at sitting motionless for several hours at a stretch.
== Live-Action TV ==
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** The Riddler pulls this trick with all his henchmen in Madam's Soleil's House of Wax in "The Ring of Wax".
** And in "The Zodiac Crimes", Joker’s moll Venus (and some of his goons) disguise themselves as statues of the Gotham City Museum of Modern Art.
* Used to
** Taken to its extreme in "The Time of Angels" when a Weeping Angel hides out in a giant multi-storey cavern filled entirely with thousands of statues. {{spoiler|Except no, they're not statues. '''''They're all Weeping Angels'''''.}}
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* In ''Kids Praise 2'', two boys, freaked out by the sight of an approaching troop of kids being led by a giant anthropomorphic songbook, pretend to be statues to avoid being noticed.
== Tabletop Games ==
* The [[Board Game]] of ''[[The
== Theatre ==
* Has apparently been done in some productions of ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' when Toby Belch and his accomplices eavesdrop on Malvolio reading the fake love letter.
* At the end of ''[[The Winter's
== Video Games ==
* Mario gets disguised in this manner (with a full-body gold paint job) to infiltrate Nimbus Castle in ''[[Super Mario RPG]]''. It works perfectly, except that there's a minigame involved: an irritated Dodo marches in and takes out his frustration on the statues, and you have to jump his beak. Jump too early, or get hit by the beak, and he catches you.
* In ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'', the Tanooki costume has the power of temporarily turning into a statue, which monsters will just walk past.
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* In a few rooms in ''[[Super Princess Peach]]'', Peach must copy the pose of the statues as the wall opens its eyes, or else the wall will eat her.
== Web Comics ==
▲* The [[Board Game]] of ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' has Haley's Hide skill demonstrated by standing in a dramatic position upon a podium.
* In [http://dawnoftimecomics.com/index.php?id=277 this] ''[[Dawn of Time]]'' strip, when Dawn and her triceratops Blue are being chased by paleontologists in the 19th century, Blue takes refuge in a garden of dinosaur sculptures. The gag being that none of the sculptures (which are based on real ones) looks ''anything'' like the modern conception of what dinosaurs looked like.
* [[City of Reality|Ian Samson's]] ''[http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=2344 Idle Minds]'' combines this with [[Taken for Granite]], by having a girl petrified but conscious so she can spy on the [[Big Bad]]. She finds the experience... unusual.
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** Needless to say, the gargoyles' daylight "stone sleep" makes invoking this trope both mandatory and extremely convincing from dawn to dusk.
* Done by 21 and 24 in ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' by pretending to be exhibits in a museun. They even Lampshaded it. Doesn't hurt that they had another person who wasn't doing this to distract the pursuer. Then get surprised by the Pirate Captain, who ''they'' mistook for part of another exhibit.
* The first episode of ''[[Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?]]
* Occurs accidentally—and gets [[Discussed Trope|discussed]]—in a ''[[Futurama]]'' episode when the robotic janitor at the Wax Robot Museum (who happens to be made of wax) takes a break, and Fry mistakes him for an exhibit.
* In the ''[[My Little Pony:
== Real Life ==
* [[
* Done naughtily in a segment for the "adult" ''Candid Candid Camera'' video spinoff series in the 1980s ("they're a little more candid"). A nude woman pretends to be a white marble Greco-Roman statue in a museum to fool an unsuspecting curator [[What an Idiot!|(who, incredibly, failed to notice the woman's pretty conspicuous patch of brown pubic hair)]].
* Happens at least twice on the 80s British game show ''Treasure Hunt'', with "waxworks" coming to life to startle the runner and give her the next clue.
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* In the London Dungeon museum, the employees wearing heavy make-up often stand still among the various wax figures, to scare the unsuspecting visitors. All part of the historical experience, of course.
* This is a common prank pulled by visitors to wax museums, since the statues are so realistic it can be hard to tell it a person is real or fake is they are perfectly still.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MBkDhsaUnU Troy Polamalu] did this recently.{{when}}
** As did [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYCNbDLbpIo Ozzy Osbourne].
* [http://failblog.org/2012/05/02/epic-fail-fail-nation-ive-seen-this-movie-fail/ Miranda Hart] has a go.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Disguise Tropes]]
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:
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