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Undercover Cop Reveal: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
At its simplest form, a character reveals himself to be an undercover police officer, FBI agent, what have you. Often, he's acting as a [[Reverse Mole]], trying to get enough evidence on the villain to arrest him for [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]. It's entirely possible that we, the viewers, won't find out until the rest of the characters do as well. Depending on what side of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]], this may or may not end badly for the cop.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Done twice in "A Night at the Rose Petal" in ''[[The Maze Agency]] Annual'' #1.
* Happens twice in [[Jack Chick]] tracts. In "Bad Bob," Bob and his cousin deal drugs, and find out their buyer is a cop when he reads them their rights. In "Trust Me", the kid, to fund his drug habit, sells drugs to an undercover cop with a briefcase full of money, resulting in the cop pulling out a pistol and a badge, which is less surprising than most examples of the trope because he gets down on his knees and says "[[Title Drop|Trust]] [[Schmuck Bait|me]]!".
== [[
* In
== [[Film]] ==
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In Heinlein's ''[[Magic, Inc.]]'' the heroes are helped by an
* In ''[[
* ''[[Tricky Business]]'', a rare non-humor book by [[Dave Barry]] (although it does have it's moments), is about an illegal casino ship that is also a base for drug dealers, things go wrong, etc. On of the POV characters is a pretty young lady who works as a cocktail waitress, hates her job, and her mother always tells her to quit because it's so dangerous... Makes perfect sense, until the very last part of the book when it's revealed that "cocktail waitress" was just a disguise: she is actually a badass undercover cop, and now everything suddenly sounds a lot smarter.
* [[Timothy Zahn]]'s not-quite-[[Star Wars]] [[Space Opera]]-Mystery-action book ''[[The Icarus Hunt]]''. To say more would be to spoil it, though if the reader is both paying attention and actively trying to put the pieces together, it's not ''that'' hard to figure it out ahead of time.
* In the [[Tim Dorsey]] novel ''Hammerhead Ranch Motel'', one room at the motel holds two different drug gangs who are secretly undercover cops each of whom is trying to bust the other gang. They only discover this when a third jurisdiction of police shows up and tries to bust both of them.
== [[Live
* Turned [[Up to Eleven]] in a sketch in ''[[Do Not Adjust Your Set]]''. The undercover cop reveals himself to be one to a gang, now that he's got enough evidence to convict them...[[Flock of Wolves|and then ''all of them'' turn out to be undercover cops.]]
{{quote|'''Jenkinson:''' Blimey...we're all coppers...
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* ''[[Fastlane]]'' episode "Mighty Blue". When officers Van and Deaq confront a criminal gang, one of them reveals herself as an undercover police officer to save them.
* This happened to Sawyer in the "flash-sideways" on ''[[Lost]]'' - the scene deliberately echoed a season one flashback which showed him as a con man, only this time the mark called him on it, and he revealed that he was a cop.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S14/E05 The Robots of Death|The Robots of Death]]", one of the Sandminer's crewmembers is revealed to be an undercover
* Occurs in the first episode of ''[[Rookie Blue]]'', even though he tries to keep his cover even after being arrested. Its finally blown when an old friend greets him heartily as he is about to be processed.
* Happens in the episode of ''[[The Bill]]'' that re-introduced Frank Burnside. Burnside was undercover with a gang of soccer hooligans that are busted by Sun Hill. Burnside headbutts one of the arresting officers to maintain his cover.
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* Liam in ''[[The Chicago Code]]''
* In ''[[Suburgatory]]'', a student that Tessa assumed to be gay actually was an undercover narcotics agent.
* One episode of ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' involved a suspected plot to bomb the school. One of the prime suspects turned out to be an undercover ATF agent<ref>
* Michael Weston planned to do this in an episode of ''[[Burn Notice]]''. While trying to score points with the boss of a gang, he sets up [[The Dragon]] to look like an undercover cop and then be the hero when he exposes him. Since the guy had no problem destroying valuable property just to scare people, Michael didn't feel too bad for the guy. {{spoiler|Turns out he actually was undercover. Oops.}}
* This trope has been used at least once on ''[[Castle]]'', and probably several times. The protagonists are investigating a murder and an early suspect turns out to be an agent of the FBI or ATF who was investigating the victim (or employing the victim somehow, or investigating or another suspect) for their own reasons.
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* Agent Shepherd in ''[[Twisted Metal]]: Head On'' reveals himself to be FBI rather than take a wish from Calypso.
** John Doe from ''[[Twisted Metal]] Black'' discovers that he's an FBI agent, but not until he gets his memory back after the tournament...and standing in front of the number two most wanted man in the world.
* Doll in ''[[
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In one episode of ''[[Dog City]]'', the villain is posing as a school teacher to get into a mint under the cover of a field trip. He is thwarted when it turns out that only two of his students are ''not'' undercover cops.
* In the ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'' episode "Almost Got 'Im", as several of Batman's villains play poker at a seedy bar and exchange stories on how they had nearly killed Batman, Joker announces that he had just kidnapped Catwoman and was holding her at an abandoned
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:More Than Meets the Eye]]
[[Category:Cops and Detectives]]
[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
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