...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Bluff the Impostor
- 313 statements
- 60 feature instances
- 117 referencing feature instances
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Your best friend/loved one/respected figure of authority is acting strangely and you suspect — with good reason — that they may in fact be an impostor. So what do you do? Assuming that the impostor didn't research his role perfectly, you bluff the impostor: ask a question, make a comment, say something that sounds natural to the potential impostor... but mine it with an erroneous fact or two, like a wrong name or a fictional event, and see if they repeat the mistake, or try to bluff. Related to You Just Told Me and Spot the Imposter. May involve Spy Speak. See also Cover Identity Anomaly, Pull the Thread and Something Only They Would Say, for when the impostor says something that breaks his or her cover, intentionally or not. This is a classic way to expose a Legendary Impostor; if someone is posing as a famous figure, ask or make a statement about some little known detail of the famous person's life, and see if the impostor reacts properly. Contrast I Never Said It Was Poison and Trust Password. May involve Exasperated Perp. Compare Bluff the Eavesdropper. |
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| Bluff the Impostor / int_10bc0a19 | type |
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| Bluff the Impostor / int_10bc0a19 | comment |
In Night Watch, Vimes has to impersonate his (now dead) mentor John Keel in the past. His knowledge of Keel, combined with his knowledge of the events at the time and some information from the Monks of History, lets him answer the interrogating officer's questions better than the officer himself could. The interrogator assumed that the impostor is a criminal, so he starts off with questions meant to trip up a civilian and not someone who actually served as a policeman during that time. Before he can try more personal questions Vimes has him so browbeat that he does not realize that Vimes says the wrong amount when speaking of his promised wages. Vimes uses this to get more pay and a higher rank. | |
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Narbonic: Madblood uses this to prove that the disguised Dave isn't really him from the future. Later on, Helen immediately spots Madblood (disguised as Dave) as an impostor, and decides to mess with his head by pretending she and Dave had an affair, which Madblood is forced to play along with. |
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In Stephen Fry's Making History, the agents try to crack Michael's story by asking him if the man he claimed to see on a train had a white or gray beard. He says that the man was clean-shaven, which turns out to be the correct answer. | |
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In the Angel episode "The Shroud Of Rahmon", Angel acts like a Fan Boy to an incoming vampire and asks, "What's the password?" When the other guy says, "Password? There is no password." Angel stakes him, muttering, "Good, just checking," and goes on to impersonate him. | |
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In Arrow, during a flashback to his time on the island Oliver, impersonating one of Fyers' soldiers, is subjected to this with Fyers asking what boat he came in on, knowing that every soldier who comes to the island does so by airplane. Subverted in that Oliver manages to beat the bluff, but Fyers is actually already aware of who he is anyway. | |
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In House, Taub pretends to have started playing racketball regularly with Wilson, but House is almost certain he's lying and quizzes him on the sport. It's almost a double subversion in that House knows that Taub knows House is applying the trope (see the example below), but since Taub's answer was correct, he hasn't really caught him out. There's a double subversion in another episode when House suspects Cuddy is feigning interest in an artist. |
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An episode of Fringe has Peter and Olivia infiltrating a black market biological weapons deal with an NSA agent who's been working the case feeding Olivia information through an ear bud to get around testing questions about people they should know if they are who they say they are. But Peter — who doesn't have an ear bud — is eventually asked where he met a particular individual. Olivia, with the agent's help, chimes in that they would have met at Oxford but when asked exactly where the two met neither Olivia nor the agent can help. At which point Peter, being well-traveled and brilliant, completely improvises a description of the scenario using his knowledge of restaurants in the area. | |
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In the Adventures in Odyssey episode "Sheep's Clothing", a suspicious pastor asks "Paula Jarvis" (who has already slipped a few times) about the annual blueberry festival from where she supposedly grew up. He doesn't mention that they actually grow strawberries there... | |
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In G.I. Joe: Renegades, Zartan impersonates Duke shortly after gaining his trademark ability. Roadblock, recalling a long story he told in the beginning, asks them for a detail about it. Unfortunately, Roadblock's story was so mind-numbingly boring that no one was paying attention, and both Dukes look at him and say they have no idea what the answer is, at the same time. Shortly thereafter, Snake Eyes, who can tell the difference because Duke and Zartan have different heartbeats, appears from nowhere and kicks the impostor in the face. | |
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Coneheads: Beldar and Prymaat Conehead are aliens from the planet Remulak, though they tell everybody that they come from France. So, as INS agent Gorman Sneedling meets them, skeptical of their claims, he asks a question in French, prompting Beldar to answer perfectly fluently, thwarting Sneedling's suspicions (at least, for the time being). | |
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In Medium, when Ariel's body is possessed by the spirit of a murdered woman, Joe tries to pull this trope by suggesting an idea for her birthday party, and deliberately giving the wrong month. However, the woman in Ariel's body is prepared by now (not in the least because in a fit of desperation, Allison suggested, in front of "Ariel", that Joe ask her something only the real Ariel would know) and knows when Ariel's real birthday is (presumably from looking at her student ID). She calls him on his error, and he covers up by claiming that it's hard to keep track of everyone's birthday when you have three kids. | |
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In Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Bad Replicant", The Plutonians replace Shake with a badly deformed clone called "Major Shake" in a plan to deterraform the planet. Both Frylock and Meatwad aren't taken in by the clone's appearance, and Frylock asks Major Shake if they're interested in doing a blood drive since the real Shake considers blood drives to be a pyramid scheme ran by Dracula, with Major Shake casually explaining the whole situation after that. | |
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In Catch Me If You Can, Frank (posing as a lawyer) claims to have been taught by a professor who also taught his girlfriend's father, and her father asks what the professor's dog's name was. Frank, smelling a trap, replies simply that the dog had since died. The father remains suspicious. | |
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Discworld Interesting Times: Rincewind, trying to hide his foreign origins on the highly-xenophobic Counterweight Continent, is asked by a suspicious restaurateur about a specific man on a specific road. He quickly declares he's never heard of the man or the road... only to find out the man is a high-ranking government official that everyone would need to deal with and the road is the main street through the capital. It works out, however, as the restaurateur is the local equivalent to CMOT Dibbler and is quite pleased to meet a foreigner. In Night Watch, Vimes has to impersonate his (now dead) mentor John Keel in the past. His knowledge of Keel, combined with his knowledge of the events at the time and some information from the Monks of History, lets him answer the interrogating officer's questions better than the officer himself could. The interrogator assumed that the impostor is a criminal, so he starts off with questions meant to trip up a civilian and not someone who actually served as a policeman during that time. Before he can try more personal questions Vimes has him so browbeat that he does not realize that Vimes says the wrong amount when speaking of his promised wages. Vimes uses this to get more pay and a higher rank. |
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In The Bat, Brooks claims to be the new gardener, but does not seem to know that rubeola, alopecia and urticaria are not in fact hardy perennials. | |
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A variant occurs in The Odyssey: Penelope uses this to see whether the man claiming to be Odysseus after 20 years really is her husband. She orders their bed to be prepared and placed outside the bedroom; Odysseus protests that this couldn't be done as he carved the bedpost himself out of a living olive tree still rooted in the ground, thus proving his identity. Making this one Older Than Feudalism. | |
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Briefly subverted in The Transformers episode "Masquerade", where five Autobots disguise themselves to resemble the Decepticon car-based team, the Stunticons, and thwart Megatron's plan. The real Stunticons escape and confront their duplicates, but Megatron is smart enough to call for the Stunticons to combine into Menasor, figuring that the Autobot fakes won't be able to do the same. The real Stunticons immediately comply, while the Autobots...merge to form their own Menasor, much to everyone's confusion. The writers were being clever here, as the team of Autobots disguised as the Stunticons includes Mirage, an expert with holograms, and Windcharger, whose special power is his ability to control magnetism. Windcharger therefore 'links' the Autobots together in the rough shape of Menasor, at which point Mirage disguises them as a copy of the real thing. It works, up until Soundwave reminds Megatron that the real Menasor will be able to access the Stunticon's own special powers and weapons. | |
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Not Always Right's main archive has this lovely story, where a scammer tries to claim they weren't delivered any of the items they ordered. The cashier follows along until calling them out at the end. | |
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In Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, this can be avoided during the KGB infiltration mission where Bell and Adler disguise themselves as Soviet soldiers in order to break into a vault and steal a list of sleeper agent names. While making their way to the vault, a young Imran Zakhaev who is looking for the mole who helped both soldiers infiltrate, enters the elevator they are in and asks them two questions. If Bell answers correctly, Zakhaev exits at the next floor with no problems. But if Bell answers wrong, then the trope gets played straight with Zakhaev attacking both soldiers. During another playthrough of the level, Bell and Alder can avoid answering questions simply by knocking him out. | |
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A variation in My Cousin Vinny. During the climax, Vinny puts his girlfriend Mona on the stand as an expert witness. The prosecutor demands to test her claim as an automotive expert. He asks her a question about a specific feature on a very specific model of car, and she protests that it's a "bullshit" question. He assumes it means she's faking her expertise and tries to call her out on it. She responds that the model of car he was asking about didn't have the feature he asked about at all, then names the closest model that would actually have the feature and answers it correctly. | |
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In Die Hard, John encounters Hans alone on one of the upper floors. Hans quickly pretends to be an escaped hostage, speaking in a convincing American accent instead of his usual British (well, German-ish). John introduces himself, glances at a nearby office directory and asks Hans for his name. In this case, Crazy-Prepared Hans gave a name from the directory, Bill Clay. John still somehow sees through it — a deleted scene shows he recognized the watch Hans was wearing, because it matched some of the other terrorists. | |
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In The Long Goodbye, when a woman is giving a confession that Marlowe doubts, she talks of dumping a suitcase full of incriminating evidence in a reservoir and Marlowe asks her how she got it over the fence. She blusters about adrenaline and then Marlowe reveals that there is no fence. After she breaks down he admits that he's never been there and really doesn't know about fence or no fence. He just thought she was lying. | |
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Avatar: The Last Airbender has a hilarious Double Subversion in "The Awakening": | |
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In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Whispers", Bashir is performing a medical exam on Replicant O'Brien, who's quite irritated at the length of the exam. Bashir wraps up by asking if his parents are in good health. Bashir knows that the real man's mother died two years ago and is hoping to goad the imposter into a wrong answer. But the replicant, having all of O'Brien's memories, snaps that Bashir knows full well that his mother is dead. | |
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Interesting Times: Rincewind, trying to hide his foreign origins on the highly-xenophobic Counterweight Continent, is asked by a suspicious restaurateur about a specific man on a specific road. He quickly declares he's never heard of the man or the road... only to find out the man is a high-ranking government official that everyone would need to deal with and the road is the main street through the capital. It works out, however, as the restaurateur is the local equivalent to CMOT Dibbler and is quite pleased to meet a foreigner. | |
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In Trainspotting, at a job interview Renton claims to have gone to a posh secondary school, which the interviewer also went to. The interviewer then asks him if a particular teacher is still teaching there. Renton, sensing a trap, simply laughs and says "God, you're taking me back now!" | |
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Also, the Gileadite trap for Ephraimite spies in Judges 12. The Ephraimites were unable to pronounce "sh" properly, so the Gileadites used the word "shibboleth" as a password — if you couldn't make the sound correctly, and rendered the word "sibboleth", it was definitely not your lucky day... | |
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Star Trek: In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Face of the Enemy", Troi is forced to impersonate Major Rakal, a Romulan Tal Shiar officer, aboard a Romulan Warbird. The Warbird's commander, Toreth, already distrusting of Tal Shiar officers, tries to pull this on Troi by asking about Rakal's life story, e.g. where she went to school. Troi gets out of this by telling Toreth to just get to her point. In the two-part episode "Time's Arrow", Data passes himself off in 19th-century San Francisco as a Frenchman. One of the locals knows French, and speaks to Data in it. Data, having apparently stored many languages in his neural net, replies in the same tongue. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Whispers", Bashir is performing a medical exam on Replicant O'Brien, who's quite irritated at the length of the exam. Bashir wraps up by asking if his parents are in good health. Bashir knows that the real man's mother died two years ago and is hoping to goad the imposter into a wrong answer. But the replicant, having all of O'Brien's memories, snaps that Bashir knows full well that his mother is dead. |
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In General Protection Fault, Nick uses this to confirm whether he's dealing with the real Ki or not shortly after he's been kidnapped into what turns out to be the Negaverse. Nega-Ki gets the name of a place in an unfinished novel of Ki's wrong, which proves to Nick she's not his Ki. | |
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Girl Genius: Agatha uses this tactic to sound out whether Othar is the real deal. (He is.) Later, the Heterodyne's seneschal Carson von Mekkhan uses a variant on the same trick to test whether Agatha really has a Heterodyne heritage or not. (She does, but her performance fails to entirely convince him.) Eventually Agatha got tired of the questions and started telling him things that only a real Heterodyne should know, which caused him to end the interview and move on to the next stage of confirming her heritage. |
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Death Note: L does this to Light quite a bit to see if he slips up by saying something only Kira would know. For example, showing him three suicide notes Light had some criminals write and seeing if he can find the secret message Kira inserted into them to taunt L, who has intentionally given Light the notes in the wrong order. However, Light is also a supergenius, and quickly figures out what L is up to, and hence doesn't expose himself (by putting the notes into the right order or being surprised when L introduces a fake note to the mix). It takes a bit for Light to realize that the fake note makes sense, and L ends up being slightly more suspicious of Light than he was before the test. | |
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In Prison Break, Charles' first conversation with Michael is along these lines when Michael claims to have known his wife, but fails to trip him up. | |
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Casper uses this on "Komi" in Darken. It works, but Casper finds himself in a less than ideal situation as a result. | |
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Knight Rider: In the 2008 movie, Sarah Graiman is accosted by a security guard during her escape from a pursuer. KITT warns her that the guard may in fact be a fake, and Sarah tells the guard about where she was going — except all of the locations she lists don't exist. The guard — who is a fake — catches on, however. | |
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Mystery Science Theater 3000 When Tom Servo's evil pod clone shows up, Crow tries to discern which Servo is the real one by asking about the type of condiment Crow poured into his shoes — despite Servo having no feet — the previous week. The real Servo forgot, and the fake one correctly guesses "Was it... Ketchup?" Mike pulls it off by asking about Servo's collection of boxer shorts. Pod!Servo thinks this is another trick, until Servo rattles off his entire inventory in enough detail to drive the clone away in fear and "self"-loathing. |
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In Spinnerette, the real Heather fails one of these because she just can't remember what she had for breakfast on one particular day a while ago. | |
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When The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic do battle, the Critic finds himself hopelessly outgunned by all of the Nerd's NES accessories and, while cowering behind a box, tries to save himself by claiming he's the Nerd's brother. The Nerd immediately sees through it and challenges him to say their mother's name. | |
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The Bible Samson gives Delilah false information whenever she asks about his weakness. In a subversion of this trope, Samson doesn't seem to cotton on to her plot even when the Philistines try to kill him by exploiting the exact same false weakness he just told Delilah. Eventually, he tells Delilah his real weakness anyway, which gets him blinded and enslaved. Also, the Gileadite trap for Ephraimite spies in Judges 12. The Ephraimites were unable to pronounce "sh" properly, so the Gileadites used the word "shibboleth" as a password — if you couldn't make the sound correctly, and rendered the word "sibboleth", it was definitely not your lucky day... |
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Leverage: Sophie is nearly outed when the mark asks her if she's familiar with a certain person. Nate smiles and tells her (on her earpiece) to reply that the man is dead, which satisfies the mark. This is a bluff on Nate's part, though, as Hardison only confirmed the information several seconds later, which would've been too late for Sophie. For her part, Sophie tries to be as vague about it as possible, invoking Never Say "Die": | |
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In Kingdom of Heaven, when Balian meets his father's knights, one of them tries to discern if he really is his son. After mentioning the height, the knight goes on about the eye color of his liege, which is promptly corrected by Balian, thereby proving that he did the research, at least. | |
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In Jean M Auel's Earth's Children books, Ayla is asked about the leader of the Mamutoi tribe which she tells them she has been adopted into, but she knows the fake name (Lutie) for what it is and gives the correct information ("Tulie"). | |
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In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Imitation Krabs", SpongeBob quizzes Mr. Krabs and an obvious robot impostor (complete with smoke-spewing exhaust pipes and clanking gears) operated by Plankton on three things "only the really real Mr. Krabs would know". The first two questions are things that anyone who frequents the Krusty Krab would know (like "How much does a Krabby Patty cost?") so the imposter jumps in with the right answers. The last question is completely bizarre and nearly impossible to follow so Mr. Krabs fails on it, "exposing" him as the fake. Of course, it is SpongeBob. | |
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Basic Instructions recommends this over Kill Us Both when dealing with an Evil Twin, as it has less of a chance of backfiring. | |
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Bakugan: Gundalian Invaders. Suspicious of Jake's sudden escape from Kazarina, Shun tests him by mentioning the operation Jake participated in an earlier episode. He correctly replies that he didn't take the major role (Dan and Shun did). However, Jake was in fact brainwashed by Kazarina; she kept his memory intact. | |
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In Cat-Eyed Boy, the title character shapeshifts himself into the form of a young boy to tease him. When the mother discovers this, she demands to see a birthmark she claims the boy has, and Cat-Eyed Boy assumes it's an example of this... so is the one of the pair not to have the very real identifying birthmark. Oops. | |
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Blackadder Goes Forth: In "General Hospital", Blackadder does this when hunting a German spy in WWI. He unmasks the spy by asking the suspect if her boyfriend had been to one of the great universities: Oxford, Cambridge, or Hull. Any real Briton would have known that only two of those are great Universities — as General Melchett remarks, "That's right! Oxford's a complete dump!" Anyway, it goes fine until it's revealed that the suspect wasn't the spy after all. Again in Blackadder's Christmas Carol, when Pigmot asks the future Blackadder if he vanquished the Nibble-Pibblies, and the General replies "No, because you just made them up." |
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Ocean's Eleven: Terry Benedict, the owner of the casino the gang are trying to rob, tries this on Linus, who's disguised as a member of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It doesn't work, since Linus also has a Voice with an Internet Connection feeding him info. | |
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Late in Tsukihime, in a moment of uncharacteristic brilliance, Shiki inserts an incorrect detail into the story of how he received the ribbon he promised to return to its owner when he left the Tohno mansion. Hisui does not spot the detail, however, which lets Shiki figure out the Twin Switch, and that the twin who watched him from the window is actually the Stepford Smiler Kohaku. Since the reader already knows the truth from one of the previous routes, it is not a big surprise, but it does alter how the story unfolds after that point. | |
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In the third book of the Lone Wolf series, The Caverns of Kalte, Lone Wolf meets a prisoner in the enemy's fortress, who pretends to be a merchant from Ragadorn, but is in fact a Helghast shapeshifter sent by the Darklords. The game allows asking him a few questions about the city of Ragadorn (visited by Lone Wolf in his earlier quest), and the monster gets the answers wrong. The text never points out whether he is right or not, however: it is up to the player to remember what are the correct answers from the previous book. | |
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In Baldur's Gate, there is a quest that involves the player character doing investigations for Aldeth Sashenstar in his offices under the pretense of being his childhood friend. One of his business partners whose behaviour you are there to investigate (and who is himself in fact a doppleganger impostor) asks you whether, if you were Aldeth's childhood friend, you were friends with Dabron as well. Since Dabron is in truth Aldeth's real brother, it's showing ignorance that will give you away at this point, not that it makes a difference for the plot. It's not clear whether this is intended as a subversion, since the doppleganger could simply be straightforwardly trying to catch you not knowing what it's talking about... | |
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Dice Funk: Rinaldo does this to the fake lord's son by referring to a non-existent deceased aunt. | |
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In one episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, Patsy Straightwoman attempts to enter the special caff on ferries that's only for lorry drivers by pretending to be a lorry driver on her way to Portugal. The lorry drivers guarding the door are not convinced, but are particularly clueless about testing her ("What colour is your lorry?" "Blue." "Ooh, some lorries are blue."), culminating with: | |
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In Charmed, when Piper is possessed by a demonic spirit, the possessing spirit cannot access any of Piper's memories but can communicate with the real Piper's consciousness when looking at a reflective surface such as a mirror. The real Piper takes advantage of this by repeatedly withholding key details or intentionally feeding the spirit false information in attempts to trick her into blowing her cover. It finally works when Piper tricks the spirit into addressing her boyfriend, Leo, by the wrong name, tipping him off that she isn't the real Piper. However, the spirit catches on quickly and knocks Leo unconscious before he can take any action against her or alert the other sisters. | |
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In a Key & Peele sketch, a Nazi officer "tests" our two leads to see if they are "Das Negros" hiding somewhere in the neighborhood with some truly bizarre and baseless "tests" that they show no real trouble with. However, as he is about to leave again, it seems like one of them, alias Baron Helmut Schnitzelnazi, might actually be in trouble when he asks about his fellow Schnizelnazi relatives from another part of the country, and about Aunt Frieda in particular. ...and he leaves for real shortly afterward. Apparently he just thought he'd ask. |
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In an early episode of Burn Notice, Michael Westen tries to get close to a Con Man named Quentin, and as part of his cover ID he claims that after Quentin got out of prison Michael wound up sharing a cell with Quentin's former cellmate, Paco, and it was Paco who recommended that Michael work with Quentin someday. When Quentin tests Michael's cover ID, he asks about Paco's prison wine, and Michael replies "Paco doesn't drink. What are you trying to pull on me?" He and Sam lampshade this and how Michael had a Gut Feeling that Quentin was testing him and just took a shot in the dark. | |
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"The Mind of Stefan Miklos" episode of Mission: Impossible had foreign spy Simpson try to determine if the man he was talking to was really Stefan Miklos. Rollin, impersonating Miklos, not only corrected Simpson's false statements but then feigned irritation that Simpson, who was being investigated, had the gall to test Miklos. | |
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In YuYu Hakusho the heroes are told that one of them was replaced by an impostor who knows everything about the replaced person making this trope unusable. Though Yusuke still tries asking Botan her three sizes. Because, of course, she'd never told him. | |
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Minilife TV: In "The Vampodcast", Zach disguises himself as a zombie to gain access to the Burton Night Club, a monster-exclusive club, to help Snowball the vampire with his podcast. When they interview Arnold the Butcher Zombie, Arnold accidentally electrocutes Zach by spilling some water on the microphone, which causes him to react in pain. Arnold points out that zombies aren't supposed to feel pain and throws his mug at Zach to get him to react in pain again. | |
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In Visseria, done by a nameless guard to Jack after he casually mentions a nearby residence that he's supposedly leading the guard to. | |
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In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Face of the Enemy", Troi is forced to impersonate Major Rakal, a Romulan Tal Shiar officer, aboard a Romulan Warbird. The Warbird's commander, Toreth, already distrusting of Tal Shiar officers, tries to pull this on Troi by asking about Rakal's life story, e.g. where she went to school. Troi gets out of this by telling Toreth to just get to her point. | |
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