Your Costume Needs Work/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character gets mistaken for a poor impersonator of himself.

  • Straight: Superbob enters a "Superbob Cosplay Contest" and loses.
  • Downplayed: Suberbob wins second place.
  • Exaggerated: Superbob loses the contest to someone with a cheap junk costume that look nothing like his.
  • Justified: Superbob's costume is tattered and dirty from all the superhero work, while the competitors' costumes are spotless.
    • Superbob is a great superhero, but a shoddy tailor, and his costume is badly made. Meanwhile, his fans are better at sewing.
    • Superbob's normal costume has been stolen, and he's using a less flashy backup costume... meanwhile, the competition is won by the crazed fan who stole Superbob's costume to win all cosplay contests.
    • Superbob operates only at night, and no one ever saw him clearly; thus, people think his costume looks completely different than what it really looks like.
  • Inverted: A very well-costumed fan gets mistaken for Superbob. Hilarity Ensues if the mistake is made e.g. by a supervillain out for revenge.
  • Subverted: Superbob gets recognized halfway through the judging.
    • Someone in a crappy-looking Superbob costume is implied to be Superbob, but turns out to be just a fan.
  • Double Subverted: ...But still loses to someone, simply because their costume looks cooler.
    • ...except the fan is really Superbob in disguise, because no one would suspect someone in such a shoddy costume of being the real Superbob.
  • Parodied: Bob the Giant Man-Eating Worm from Another World attacks people. They still refuse to believe that he's the actual Man-Eating Worm.
  • Deconstructed: Superbob realizes that the civilians love him not as a person, but as the image of him they crafted in their own minds - and that they only like him as long as he lives up to their image. This drives him into depression.
  • Reconstructed: Superbob decides that if his sole purpose is to be a symbol, he might as well be the most heroic symbol ever, and regains belief in himself.
  • Zig Zagged: Superbob apparently wins the contest... but then the judges reveal that it's just a consolation prize, and the actual award goes to someone else. Who then reveals himself to be the real Superbob; the one who got the consolation prize, and the one whose adventures we've been seeing from the beginning of the episode, was just a good cosplayer.
  • Averted: Superbob is declared winner. His win helps reinforce the masquerade that Bob is not Superbob.
  • Enforced: "Last rule, the best costume must be sewn properly."
  • Lampshaded: "Guess they are more of a Superbob than me."
  • Invoked: Sought by a powerful enemy, Superbob hides among a group of costumed fans, knowing that the enemy will never consider him the real Superbob.
    • Alternatively "At least they're better at sewing."
  • Defied: The contest rules specifically prohibit Superbob from participating.
  • Discussed: "It'd be funny if the actual Superbob took part in our contest, no?"
  • Conversed: "Heh heh. That gag where they think he's just someone in a cheap costume always cracks me up."
  • Played For Drama: The whole situation carries a moral about how different heroes actually are from our views of them.

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