The Guards Must Be Crazy: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
 
[[File:guard_bots_5651guard bots 5651.jpg|link=Gunnerkrigg Court|frame|Elite security.]]
 
 
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* Sounding the alarm at the [[So Much for Stealth|crack of a twig]], even if it's [[Convenient Decoy Cat|just a cat]].
* When searching for people, [[Failed a Spot Check|not looking in ridiculously obvious hiding places]].
* Assuming anyone in a [[Dressing as the Enemy|guard outfit]] must be a guard, even if they don't [[Faceless Goons|recognize]] them .<ref>Although this may be [[Justified Trope]] for the [[New Meat]]</ref>.
* Not asking for identification when an unscheduled [[Trojan Prisoner|prisoner shipment]] of a large and dangerous captive shows up.
* Assuming that the heroes would never attempt to sneak by [[Right Under Their Noses]].
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* Never watching prisoners locked in a room [[Bedsheet Ladder|with a bed]].
* Not raising an alarm upon seeing something suspicious, especially the corpse of another guard.
* Particularly in [[Stealth Based Game|stealth-based video games]], staring at the wall or otherwise ignoring key entry and exit points. <ref>Stealth-game guards also tend to have very limited peripheral vision and a very predictable sweep of the head while patrolling, although it's a smidge unfair to call someone "stupid" for what are obvious physiological or psychological problems. Whoever ''hired'' them, on the other hand...</ref>
* Ignoring the fact that [[Mobile Shrubbery|Joe just put that box in the storage closet.]]
* Blurting out the [[The Password Is Always Swordfish|password]] to the door they're supposed to be guarding.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[The Chaser's War on Everything]]'' proved this was [[Truth in Television]] at the [http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/09/06/1188783415730.html APEC summit], getting to George W. Bush's hotel, past two security checkpoints in a fake motorcade, with "insecurity passes" that stated they were NOT official delegates. And a guy dressed as Osama bin Laden in the back seat. See it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zKuLgH_l8 here].
** The motorcade had ''runners with handheld cameras.'' Even the Chaser boys themselves started to get scared at how easy it was for them to get in -- theyin—they'd been expecting to be stopped at the very first checkpoint! The were finally nabbed when their motorcade began turning around, and "Osama" decided to exit his vehicle and began asking guards why he hadn't been invited. As one commentor pointed out, it appears that day the world's leaders were mainly under the protection of the ''honour system''.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':
** [[Playing with a Trope|Played with]] in the episode "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S24/E04 Dragonfire|Dragonfire]]", when the Doctor distracts a guard by engaging him in a philosophical discussion on the nature of existence, a subject about which the guard is particularly enthusiastic.
** Both averted and played straight in "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S18/E04 State of Decay|State of Decay]]" -- one—one of the guards recognises that the man claiming to be a guard is, in fact, a known deserter. But the other doesn't... and falls for "the old prisoner trick".
** Lampshaded in the epsiode "Deadly Assassin" by Security Chief Spandrell's criticisms of Commander Hilred for allowing the Doctor to escape:
{{quote|'''Spandrell:''' Well done, Hilred. An antiquated capsule, for which you get adequate early warning, transducts on the very steps of the Capital. You are warned that the occupant is a known criminal, therefore you allow him to escape and conceal himself in a building a mere 53 stories high. A clever stratagem, Hildred. You're trying to confuse him, I take it? }}
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* In the various games of the ''[[Thief]]'' series, guards are notoriously brain-challenged. They carry obviously important items dangling from their belts, they take a remarkably short time to go from "I saw something" to "must've been a rat", and they ignore fires and candles that get doused by water arrows (that would presumably leave a mess all over the floor). Heck, they don't even ''try'' to relight them. At least they go into full-alert mode if they notice a dead mate lying on the floor, which is more that can be said for some other games. And even then, in some of the titles, all you have to do is hide out for a while, and they'll conclude that "The murderer must be long gone by now" and resume their patrol, without even calling for assistance.
** Lampshaded in the first of level of ''Thief 2: The Metal Age'', where dousing one of the torches prompts a pair of nearby guards to argue about who should relight it, and then ultimately doing nothing as it transpires that they forgot their tinderbox.
** And lampshaded in the Gold and Platinum releases of ''Thief 1'', where one of the added levels has you infiltrating a thieves' guild: you watch two people go up to the guard at the front door (you'll probably use the back) and be challenged for a password. One points out that they've known each other for years -- noyears—no dice, the guard wants the password. The first visitor recites it exasperatedly, tries to enter and is stopped, as the guard points to the other man (who is standing right there) and complains, "Well, now ''he'' hasn't given me the password!" And yes, the first man comments on this.
** Occasionally the game goes to the opposite direction with the guards, as they recognize the main character as a thief even when he's walking in public areas (such as city streets) and doing nothing suspicious.
* In a memorable early-game sequence in ''[[Breath of Fire III]]'', your characters must sneak into a mansion guarded by a wide variety of inept guards. It's a puzzle sequence, so almost every single one of the types listed is played with, including a few who just don't care and will let you go by if you bribe them or even find their lost wallet. So hard to find good help these days. One [[Egregious]] example is a guard who admits he would be completely unable to stop the party, then ''orders'' them to go kill a guard dog to cover him, or he wouldn't let them pass. Wait a minute, couldn't we just kick ''you''?
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** The guards also engage in [[Mook Chivalry]] across all the games, waiting politely for their turn to attack you and get a Counter Kill to the face. This is so prevalent that the rare times when they ''do'' attack more rapidly are surprising and challenging. The games do a certain amount of [[Lampshade Hanging]] of this, in that the [[Enemy Chatter]] will occasionally reveal that they're carefully planning their attacks because they're ''scared shitless'' of you.
** By contrast, there are also scenarios where the guards are absurdly and unrealistically alert. In ''[[Assassin's Creed (video game)|Assassin's Creed I]]'', galloping on your horse in sight of any Templar soldiers will make them recognize you almost immediately. High Profile actions such as running after killing someone will also alert them, in contrast to strolling casually away, even if all the civilians around you are screaming and panicking.
* Similarly, the [[NPC|NPCs]]s in ''[[Oblivion]]'' have an amazing ability to mistake loud clanking sounds and arrows sticking out of their head for the wind, or their own imagination. The last words of many a bandit have been, "Damn rats, always sneaking about in the shadows, making [[Killed Mid-Sentence|me-ARGH!"]]
** Also, guards will only ever react to a corpse by muttering to themselves about a killer being on the loose, and resume patrolling. They'll also not react much to seeing their buddies being assassinated right beside them other than blankly staring and said muttering.
*** That said, kill someone out of the way with no witnesses outside of sneak mode, and every guard for miles around will rapidly converge on you with cries of [[Memetic Mutation|"STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!"]]
** Even better is when two [[NPC|NPCs]]s are talking, and you shoot one while sneaking. The other one turns and walks away, mid-conversation.
** The guards in ''[[Morrowind]]'' are never sure what to do with a naked (wo)man with a large pile of stolen goods at his feet except fine him a few septims and leave him to his business.
** In ''[[Skyrim]]'', some of the same problems that were in ''[[Oblivion]]'' return. If you attack an enemy while sneaking, they will look for their attacker for a few seconds, then stop looking and go back to whatever it was they were doing. This may include sitting down to return to dinner...with an arrow in their head...that was poisoned...''[[Kill It with Fire|and on fire]]''...
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** This is lampshaded by a boss in the aforesaid Shattered Halls dungeon, who will actually comment as you individually kill his henchmen. "Go ahead. I was going to kill him anyway." In fact if you don't attack them he ''will'' kill them, one by one, then attack you.
** There is one CoH mission where you are given a temporary power that is basically a guard suit. You can walk past any guard and get the objectives of the mission completed without anyone being the wiser. This wouldn't be bad if it didn't work on any enemy NPC in the game. Including a faction that actively hates the faction you are dressing up as.
* In ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]'', the heroine can shoot a projectile into a guard's air tank -- andtank—and unless she's in plain sight or really unlucky, the other guards present will just fix the tank, then declare "false alarm" and get back to their business.
** And even if she is seen, she can just run around a corner where they can't see her, and after a few seconds they'll do the same thing. Repeatedly.
** Perhaps the only (moderately) justified action they take is when Jade runs out of sight, they dispatch a droid to clear the area. Of course, they usually clear the area just out of sight and ignore any areas slightly farther out of sight.
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** Need to get rid of a soldier, but he and a buddy have covering fields of vision so you can't stealth kill either of them? If you disguise yourself as a soldier and bump into one enough, he'll turn toward you and shove you away, then ''remain facing that direction''. Even if there's just a wall right in front of his face.
** You can also use a combination of the "Patsy" power and the "stealth consume" to stealth-kill an entire combat base full of Marines and Blackwatch personnel. This causes much humor when you realize that ''an entire base full of heavily armed guards'' is slowly disappearing and ''nobody notices''. Even if it's just you and another guard left. But whatever you do, don't try Patsy on him. Because only then will he think something is wrong.
* ''[[Evil Genius (video game)|Evil Genius]]'' plays this absolutely straight and quite deliberately. Your [[Evil Minions]] will outright ''ignore'' any agent of the forces of justice unless they've been tagged for execution or capture. These include squads of heavily-armed soldiers, thieves in brightly-colored [[Spy Catsuit|Spy Catsuits]]s, [[Highly-Visible Ninja]], and musclebound supersoldiers [[Dual-Wielding]] machineguns.
** The infiltrating agents showcase an unusual variant of this. Locked doors are understandably much more interesting to them than an unlocked door. However, the end result is that if you lower the security level on the door an agent is trying to break through, they will usually lose interest immediately and wander off.
* ''[[Super Mario Bros.]].'': Why Princess Peach still pays her guards is a source of continual mystification to videogame fans. She'd have better luck with a "Do not kidnap the Princess" sign than her usual group of Toads.
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* Used, played with, subverted and lampshaded frequently in ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', most often through the misadventures of Number 21 and Number 24, [[Those Two Guys|two guards]] who [[Mauve Shirt|somehow manage to survive the carnage of the series]], and give plausible voice to the wit and social skills necessary for career henchmen.
* Subverted in the ''[[Gummi Bears]]'' episode when trolls are holding the Gummi hostage in Gummi Glen, to force the colony to recover a treasure hidden in a tree they uprooted and put in Castle Dunwin. Unfortunately, when Gummis get to the tree they find it empty, because the castle guards were apparently smart enough to discover the treasure and moved it to the castle treasury.
* Used and slightly lampshaded in an episode of ''[[DuckTales]]'' where Huey, Dewey, and Louie are imprisoned in a room with a guard looking in at them once every hour or so. While two of the identical triplets work on the means of their escape, the third one sits in front of a trifold mirror, giving the impressionimpression—sort -- sort of -- thatof—that there are three boys sitting there. Lampshaded in that one of the boys asks whether the guard won't notice that they're all wearing the same clothes, only to be told by the one devising the plan that "he's so tired, he's not going to care WHAT we're wearing, just so long as there's three of us." Improbably, this turns out to be true.
* The Trope was played with in ''[[Stroker and Hoop]]'', when Stroker has to knock a guard out to get deeper into a complex. After [[Dressing as the Enemy|dressing as the guard]], he gets into the next room where the guard is seemingly fooled by Stroker holding a clipboard over his face and using a bad falsetto... until he starts to continue, at which point the guard asks him if he thinks he's an idiot, and that he was on the monitor. To which Stroker asks if he's even supposed to be watching the monitors.
* In the ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'' episode "Conqueror Worm", Jim, Peter, and Snot have to get Jim's supersuit back from the labs where it was put after Jim was arrested, ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]) but first have to get past the security guards!... Which they stroll right past. The sight of a giant worm, talking dog, and living booger spurs only one reaction from the guards.
{{quote|'''Guard:''' ''(on phone)'' Hello, DNA lab? Whatever you guys are doing in there-- ''Cut it out!''}}
* ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers]]'' had several examples of Queenie's [[Mooks]] being either thoroughly incompetent... or very competent, [[Depending on the Writer]]. With the first examples, Doc could hijack their communicator signals and pull lines of BS on them ("New Frontier," "Badge of Power"), sending them on a wild goose chase... or right into Goose's blasters. The more competent ones, like in "Tortuna", could be bribed or needed to be fought.
* The guards of the "high security" prison in the ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' episodes "The Boiling Rock". Sokka and Zuko somehow obtain uniforms and pass themselves off as newbies. The [["Alone with Prisoner" Ploy]] occurs in the first of the two episodes. Strangely enough, Zuko slips up and is caught - but Sokka, who was the one alone with Suki, isn't suspected at all. Later on, Sokka pulls up his mask and goes to the side to talk to two prisoners. They're obviously not hiding particularly well because they ''are'' caught...by another prisoner. The second episode is rife with its own examples of [[The Guards Must Be Crazy]] as well.
** There's a bit of [[Fridge Horror]] regarding how Sokka was able to get alone time with Suki. She almost seems like she was ''expecting'' a random guard to come in and try kissing her. Maybe the male guards don't date the female ones because [[Prison Rape|they can get satisfaction somewhere else...]]
* Parodied in ''[[Family Guy]]'', where one of Peter's [[Manatee Gag|Manatee Gags]]s has him claiming it is easier to escape from Canada's Alcatraz. Cue the scene where an inmate simply walks up to a guard and asks if he can leave through this door. The guard simply says sure, just be back before bedtime, and letting the inmate leave.
 
 
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* So far, the Obama White House has been crashed [[Rule of Three|three times]] by uninvited guests. The first and third cases took advantage of a [[Bavarian Fire Drill]], while the second gatecrash was a result of some misguided tour organizers sending the tourists to a White House luncheon instead of on the tour.
* [[wikipedia:Mas Selamat bin Kastari|Mas Selamat bin Kastari]], one of the most influential terrorists in Southeast Asia escaped Singapore's most well-guarded prison by going to the toilet, changing quickly, and climbing out the window. When he was recaptured more than a year later, it was revealed that he climbed into the storm drains, went 20+ kilometers north in 3 days, created improvised flotation devices from trash, and swam across from Singapore to Malaysia and met up with other operatives. Apparently, it was so unexpected, that theories ranged from his escape a cover for the fact that he had died in detention, he used black magic to get out, or he was allowed to escape so that he could lead authorities to other terrorists.
* A notable aversion [http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Packers-linebacker-forgets-ID-can-t-get-into-Wh?urn=nfl-wp5018 when the Green Bay Packers went to the White House to be congratulated] on their [[Super Bowl]] Victory in 2011. Linebacker Desmond Bishop lost his photo ID on the plane and was thus denied entry to the White House. Before you say [[The Guards Must Be Crazy|"But he was on national television in the Super Bowl! He was with his team! How could they deny him entry?!!?"]], remember how often in fiction the "lost my ID" ruse works - and it works in [[Real Life]] too, due to this trope - and obviously no place should have better security than than the headquarters. So good job, guards!
** As noted above, the Obama administration has already had three unauthorized entries to the White House. It's already crazy security didn't get tighter after the first incident, let alone the fourth.
* In 1987 a 18 year old West German aviator named Mathias Rust managed to fly straight through several supposedly impregnable layers of Soviet air-defense systems and land his Cessna [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TXIGfL2iFw near the center of Red Square]. What made this worse was that he was spotted on several occasions by air defense crews and interceptors, but most of them either assumed he was friendly, thought he had crashed shortly afterwords, or otherwise failed to gain permission to shoot him down. The event ended up irreparably damaging the credibitly of the Soviet military and led to the firing of many senior officers.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Guards_Must_Be_Crazy"