39,327
edits
Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: Difference between revisions
update links
Derivative (talk | contribs) mNo edit summary |
(update links) |
||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
A [[File talk:Mystery Fiction|Murder Mystery]] trope.
The victim and the attacker are both actors, rehearsing or acting out a scene with a prop weapon. Unbeknownst to either, a third party has switched out the prop weapon for a real weapon, and the attacker kills the victim before realizing the switch.
Line 15:
* In ''The Clones of Bruce Lee'', the gold-smuggling director's yes-man suggests using this to kill the [[Bruce Lee Clone]] they suspect to be a secret agent. As [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony]] pointed out in his review, this is '''very badly''' [[Harsher in Hindsight]], since Bruce's son Brandon was killed on the set of ''[[The Crow]]'' by a weapons malfunction.
* Happens in the [[Elvis Presley]] film ''Frankie & Johnny'' with a prop gun that's been loaded with real bullets.
* In ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'', not only is the rifle displayed at the Winchester pub real, it's also loaded.
* In ''[[The Prestige]]'', Borden emphasizes that a bullet-catching trick where the (bulletless) gun is fired by an audience member is still dangerous, because the volunteer can slip something down the barrel and fire it for real. Guess what happens.
Line 23:
* The initial murder in ''[[In Death|Witness in Death]]'' is accomplished in this manner during a stage production of ''[[Witness for the Prosecution]]''. {{spoiler|It's subverted when it turns out that the actress who did the stabbing was the one who switched the prop knife with the real one, and knew very well what she was doing when she stabbed him.}}
* Caroline Graham's novel ''Death of a Hollow Man'' has the actor playing Salieri in a performance of ''Amadeus'' fatally injured when someone removes the protective tape from the blade of the prop razor that the character cuts his throat with. This stayed the same when the story was adapted into an episode of the ''[[Midsomer Murders]]'' TV show.
* [[Ngaio Marsh]]'s novel ''Enter A Murderer'' has a prop gun used for an on-stage killing loaded without the actors' knowledge.<ref>This was a rare fictional work to acknowledge the real-world hazards of blank ammunition: because of the very close on-stage range of the shooting the pistol wasn't meant to be loaded with anything and the bang would have been provided by an off-stage sound-effect.</ref>
* [[Ngaio Marsh]]'s novel ''Swing Brother Swing'' uses a sneaky variation of this. It's suggested that a musician was murdered during an on-stage gangster routine by a dart, not a bullet, being loaded into a blank-firing pistol. But actually {{spoiler|he acted the death as planned but was surreptitiously stabbed to death afterwards while playing dead before the scene ended, so everyone thought the on-stage killing had been real}}.
* Happens in the Joanne Fluke/Hannah Swenson mystery ''Cherry Cheesecake Murder'', when the director of a movie shoots himself with a supposed-to-be-not-loaded prop gun, to attempt to demonstrate the emotion required in the scene to the actors.
Line 31:
== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Psych]]'' has used this plot, during a telenovela episode. Until Shawn is able to prove otherwise, everyone is convinced that the actor with the knife was obviously completely responsible (and dumb enough to stab someone in the chest on live television). In true ''Psych'' fashion, proving his hypothesis almost resulted in Shawn's own death by not-fake prop weapon, this time a nail gun.
* ''[[Monk]]'' also did it. The weapon was switched {{spoiler|after the victim had already collapsed, due to peanut oil on the apple he had eaten}}. The actress accused of murder rightly points out that she would have been able to feel the difference in weight and balance between the prop knife and the real one.
* Done in ''[[Oz]]'' during the prison production of ''[[Macbeth]]'', though with a shank.
* ''[[Midsomer Murders]]'':
Line 40:
* ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]]'' featured a morning show staging a shooting between the hosts as a publicity stunt. Someone switched the real bullets for blanks and the cohost gets shot.
* ''[[Ellery Queen]]'': [[Who Would Want to Watch Us?|A movie is being filmed based on Ellery]] and the man playing Ellery is killed by a gun that was supposed to be filled with blanks.
* ''[[Castle]]'' had two variants:
** While the two guns used by the victim and the "murderer" were both real, they were so wildly inaccurate ([[Crowning Moment of Funny|as a disgruntled cop and a laser sight would attest]]) that there was no chance of one party hitting the other. The third party hid in a tree nearby.
** And another one earlier in the series, also with a real gun but the shooter didn´t know there was a bullet in the barrel.
Line 75:
[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]
[[Category:Infauxmation Desk]]
[[Category:
| |||