Good thing there was a conveniently-placed spot next to an actual statue!
"I have mastered the ability of standing so incredibly still that I become invisible to the eye."
— Drax the Destroyer, Avengers: Infinity War
Alice tries to hide from Bob, so she pretends to be a statue (or, in more cartoonish settings, even a painting or a relief) in a museum, art gallery, etc. Sometimes she has to Walk Like an Egyptian to fit in or ends up holding an empty picture frame in front of herself. Bob typically doesn't catch on, though he looks at Alice suspiciously. (Bonus points if he says "I'll never understand this modern art" or "What an ugly statue!")
Sometimes Alice will accidentally reveal herself, typically by sneezing, or in worst-case scenarios, Bob will sneeze and she will respond "gesundheit". Often Bob will pass Alice obliviously the first time, only to stop a few seconds later and run back; either they will have an awkward pause before she runs away and he chases her, or Bob will find that Alice has vanished.
Attempting to pass as a doll or a department store mannequin is a variant on this trope, particularly in big front-window displays.
Compare Mobile Shrubbery, Stand-In Portrait, Knight's Armor Hideout and Wallpaper Camouflage, as well as Mistaken for Exhibit. Contrast Mistaken for Granite, where an actual statue turns out to be mobile.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- In an ad
for Walkers Oven Baked starring the Spice Girls, Emma poses alongside the Spice cardboard cutouts in her dressing room to avoid sharing her crisps with the other girls. They quickly notice it.
Geri: Emma, I can see you blinking. Give us a crisp.
Mel B: And you're the "nice" one?
Mel C: Selfish Spice. - A watch commercial from 1997 featured a female spy evading an adversary following her first by diving into a large rain puddle on the street (which she was able to use to her advantage due to both wearing a black leather catsuit and it being nighttime) and then by pretending to be a mannequin in a warehouse due to painting "mannequin eyes" over her eyelids.
Anime & Manga
- Hotori and Tattsun pull one of these on Moriaki-sensei, the squarest man on Earth, in And Yet the Town Moves.
- In the Appleseed manga, Alephia tries to hide from A-9 by covering herself in plaster, but nearly suffocates under it.
- Ayakashi Triangle: Shirogane once hides from Matsuri by shapeshifting into a jizo statue. It works, even though the statue clearly looks like him and is in the middle of a high school hallway.
- Honey does this in the original Cutey Honey manga, using her Voluntary Shapeshifter powers to color herself bronze. She successfully escaped Panther Claw, but then Danbei and Junpei show up and start groping her and licking her breasts, and then Honey has a Potty Emergency... because it's that kind of series.
- Dirty Pair: An example from one of the OVA episodes. Kei and Yuri's current quarry flees into a museum to hide; entering the museum, they are confronted by rooms full of statues. Kei promptly concludes that the target is disguised as one of the statues (which he/it is), and begins firing randomly into the air, sending shots ricocheting all over the place... and three of the other statues — revealed as crooks who had hidden in the museum before closing time in order to rob it — throw themselves on the ground and surrender.
- Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen have Nobitania, Shizukaria and Doraemon infiltrating a dragon's cave. Said dragon breathes petrifying flames instead of regular fire, turning any unfortunate challengers into stone, and the dragon's cave is in fact littered with dozens and dozens of statues belonging to failed warriors. Doraemon's sentient broom then comes up with the idea of sweeping rock dust all over the trio, turning them grey in the process — this way, they can sneak into the cave and stay still, pretending to be one of those statues of defeated warriors to avoid detection.
- In Fist of the North Star a few Golan soldiers try to hide among the statues, waiting to ambush any intruders. Pity the intruder is Kenshiro, who detects and kills them before they are able to do anything.
- In Hellsing, Alucard and Anderson start a fight in a museum. Seras breaks it up by guiding a group of Japanese Tourists through said battle. Cue this trope.
- In Lapis Re:LiGHTs, Ashley attempts to use Metallization Magic and hides behind an actual metal statue to avoid detection. It fails as the guard quickly notices how much smaller she is compared to the real thing and how off she looks.
- In Love Live!, Nico does this during a chase scene in Akihabara, but instead of statues, it's life-size cardboard standees of anime schoolgirls.
- A rather clever (though unsuccessful) one is pulled by Naruto when he's trying to avoid detection by Ebisu. Ebisu reaches the last place he saw Naruto, but only sees a Make-Out Paradise billboard. He's about to leave when he notices the woman on the billboard wobbling a bit: Naruto used the transformation jutsu to disguise himself and then positioned himself so that he'd be virtually invisible from exactly that angle. It's pointed out to the audience by cutting to another angle and we see he's standing a few feet in front of the billboard in the exact same pose as the picture behind him.
- Used unsuccessfully in One Piece's Little Garden Arc; Near the end of his fight with Luffy, Mr. 3 uses his Wax-Wax Fruit powers to create a dozen or so statues of himself and hides himself among them. He's confident that Luffy will never figure out which one of him is real, but gets a serious wake-up call (And boot to the face), when Luffy does just by mere instinct.
- In an episode of Pokémon: The Series, Ash's Charizard does this as part of a stakeout.
- In Ranma ½, Principal Kuno pretends to be a statue to cut off Ranma's pigtail from behind. After pretending to fall for it, Ranma hits him and asks how stupid he thinks he is.
Asian Animation
- In episode 5 of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Wolffy pretends to be one of the wax statues of the village chiefs to disguise himself. It works; he's able to capture a goat (actually one of the real wax statues), and the others don't notice until after the fact.
Comic Books
- Roman Secret Service agent Dubbelosix does this in the Asterix volume Asterix and the Black Gold, while covered entirely in gray dust. It is surprisingly effective.
- In the Astro City story "Ellie's Friends", the elderly Ellie Jennnersen runs a modest roadside museum featuring various robots, drones, and other mechanical Mooks salvaged from superhero battles. But they only look like inert exhibits — in the evenings, they become active, helping Ellie with her chores and tending to her (and their) needs.
- Happens in a very early issue of Cat Claw, when the title heroine is in a mall at night trying to find a suitable hero costume, and tries to hide from some burglars by posing as a half-dressed mannequin. It almost works, until one of the burglars feel her up while remarking how "these things feel almost real" and she decks him. Mostly over the "almost real" remark.
- Ash pretends to be a mannequin in Darkman vs. Army of Darkness to avoid being found by the Deadites in the local S-Mart.
- In one issue of Gen¹³, Grunge and Roxy strike a suitable pose to hide among an array of marble statues. It works, mostly owing to Grunge being able to turn himself and what he's touching into various materials.
- In Generation X, Angelo's mutant power is having extra skin. It's usually treated as low-grade Rubber Man power. Normally it would be useless when he's on the run from a mutant-hunting villain, but when he finds himself in a carnival, that happens to have a wax museum, which happens to have a theme of movie monsters... the X-Cutioner figures that Angelo is disguised as a Grim Reaper-like figure with the face hidden in its hood, and blows that one up. Behind his back, the Mummy statue reveals himself as Angelo by unraveling his "bandages," stretching a flap of skin up to a skylight, and escaping that way.
- In one Legion of Super-Heroes story, Legion of Super-Villains member Ron-Karr (who has the power to turn two-dimensional) attempts to hide from the Legion by plastering himself against the wall and pretending to be a mural. It doesn't work.
- Mystique once hid from the North Korean police by disguising herself as a statue of the late "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung; when an officer threatened to shoot a child who he accused of being Mystique, she cried "No you won't!" and knocked him out with a hammer, saying, "Next time you'll get the scythe!"
- Parodied in The Simpsons comics, when the police dress up as statues to catch "El Barto". Bart and Lisa watch them.
Bart: If you squint your eyes and ignore the blinking and breathing, they do sort of look like statues.
Lisa: I wonder if they left parts of their bodies unpainted to allow their pores to breathe? [sees supposed statue being taken away in ambulance] Guess not.
Comic Strips
- Done in a Li'l Abner strip when Sandra Deepfreeze is pretending to be a statue (quite successfully, since she happens to be frozen in 'blue ice' at the time) and a bunch of art critics disparage her appearance for not being pretentiously abstract enough. This makes her so angry she thaws out.
Fan Works
- The Bolt Chronicles: Mittens hides E.T. style in a mall kiosk vendor's display of plushies to escape an angrily pursuing shop manager in “The Mall.”
- Loved and Lost: When Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy sneak in Canterlot's castle, they avoid a guard's detection by posing as three characters in a painting that's conveniently next to them.
- Luminosity: When Bella is a newborn vampire, too sensitive to blood to safely pass through a crowded airport, she instead travels inside Edward's luggage, with a tag attached, "Untitled: Mixed Media. 2004. Anonymous artist." Since vampires have rock-hard cold skin, don't need to breathe, and can hold themselves completely immobile, she's able to pass multiple inspections by staff who are bemused but not suspicious.
The time I was investigated during our stop Stateside, I heard some confused mumbles about why such a pretty statue was being transported without any packing peanuts and in the same bag as a set of assorted language primers and a box of contact lenses. I didn't think this inquisitiveness would go anywhere untoward. I probably wasn't even the strangest-looking thing they'd seen that month.
- In The Price is Right Harry pretends to be part of a fountain statue while playing hide-and-seek.
Films — Animation
- The Adventures of Tintin (2011). When Tintin breaks into derelict Marlinspike Hall, what appears to be a dummy standing in the darkened interior suddenly starts to follow him. This turns out to be Nestor, the loyal butler who is protecting the house.
- Beauty and the Beast:
- When Gaston makes Lebeau wait outside Belle's house until she and her father came back, he ends up getting covered in snow and looks like a snowman, which ends up working to his advantage as Belle and Maurice don't notice him when they finally come home.
- During his climatic fight with Gaston, the Beast hides amongst a bunch of gargoyles. It helps that it's at night and amidst some heavy rain, making Gaston's vision somewhat limited by the surroundings.
- Bee Movie, the bee poses in front a can of Bumblee tuna.
- Brave, Elinor, who was transformed into a bear, poses as a taxidermy trophy when trying to hide from the clans.
- The Emperor's New Groove:
- Pacha briefly jumps in front of a similarly-proportioned statue and imitates its pose while hiding from Yzma and Kronk in the Greasy Spoon.
- Kronk attempts this when he's trying to dispose of Kuzco's body. He flattens himself against a wall and tries to blend into the background (while still humming to himself). The two people he's "hiding from" see him but continue on their business, assuming Kronk's just a weirdo (not that he isn't).
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): When Esmeralda is escaping the cathedral with Quasimodo's help, she hides from the guards looking for her by posing next to a statue in a similar pose like the depicted saint, having her hands folded like in a prayer and and looking towards the sky. Admittedly, what sells it is probably less her convincing looks and more the fact that she doesn't move and hence the guards do not look at her more closely.
- The Iron Giant poses as one of Dean's junk sculptures to escape the army. Earlier, he stands in front of an Astro Burger billboard to hide from Dean.
- In The Jungle Book (1967), Bagheera does this as he tries to hide from a monkey parade, as there are a bunch of statues of panthers in the ruined human city where King Louie holds court, with one conveniently empty spot for him to sit in and assume the same pose as the statues, as pictured above. Even though he's solid black and the statues are light gray, it works. Unfortunately, it works too well: Baloo (disguised as a monkey) thinks nothing of pushing open the heavy wooden door so forcefully that it swings all the way against the wall and crushes Bagheera (although he's pretty much okay, having to suffer only a swollen black eye).
- In Mulan, Shan Yu hides as one of the statues atop the Imperial Palace.
- In Oliver & Company, when Fagin's dogs interrogate Georgette on where Oliver is, Georgette calls for Winston to take them away. When Winston comes up to check on Georgette, Fagin's dogs pose as statues around Georgette's bed to avoid being noticed.
- Pinocchio: During the "Little Wooden Head" scene, Jiminy Cricket avoids being seen by Geppetto by pretending to be one of the mechanical figures on the music box.
- Justin in The Secret of NIMH hides among the toy soldiers guarding the entrance to the rats' council hall to play a prank on Mr. Ages.
- In Toy Story 4, Woody, when trying to hide in an antiques shop, poses as a novelty phone similar to the Mickey Mouse phones made during the 1980s through the 2000s.
Films — Live-Action
- In Amusement, the killer hides by pretending to be a life-sized clown doll in a room full of clown dolls.
- This isn't always a comic trope. It's played seriously in Blade Runner, when Deckard is hunting down Pris and Roy at Sebastian's apartment. Sebastian makes lots of very realistic human-size doll-thingies, and Pris pretends to be one, which lets her manage a surprise attack on Deckard.
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: E.T. hides from Elliot's mother by pretending to be one of Gertie's stuffed dolls.
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: When Newt tracks his niffler down at a jewelry store, it first tries to pose as a display dummy. He isn't fooled.
- In The Freakmaker, Lynch stands stock still and poses as one of the dummies in the 'Haunted Goldmine' ride, and Tony runs straight past him.
- Played for Laughs in God of Gamblers Returns. When several mooks assault the mansion where Ko Chun and friends are at, Ko Chun gets busy killing mooks. The two resident Plucky Comic Relief tries finding a hiding spot, the first by covering himself in clay powder and pretending to be a life-sized Atlas statue. The second, unable to find enough clay, decide to remove the hands from a nearby grandfather clock and hold it in his mouth, and then make a "tick-tick-tick" noise verbally. It somehow works, with a few passing mooks doing a Double Take, and then running off.
- Gotcha is about a boy who likes to play pranks on people. His sister gets her revenge by turning off the water while he's in the shower. He goes outside to turn the water back on, but the front door slams shut behind him. While trying to get back in the house, he loses his towel and gets covered in gray paint. When a neighbor steps outside to see what the commotion is, he poses as a statue in her garden.
- In Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever, Crystal freezes like a mannequin during the paintball scene, to avoid detection.
- In The Hazing, Marsha poses as a mannequin in a display in order to steal a mannequin from the costume store for the Scavenger Hunt.
- Home Alone:
- Kevin hides from the Wet Bandits by becoming part of the 1/2 scale Nativity scene outside his church. They run right past without a second glance, or even a first.
- Harry and Marv themselves do it in the sequel. They're hiding in mini-houses in Duncan's Toy Chest; when people walk by they freeze, and the customers assume they're part of the decoration.
- In I, Robot, Del Spooner finds himself looking for a rogue robot inside a factory that makes that exact model of robot... and the 'bot in question is very good at standing still.
- Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession:
- Ivan Bunsha pretends to be part of a sculpture when fleeing the Streltsy.
- In Operation "Y", another Leonid Gaidai film, one of the robbers pretends to be a mannequin standing between two actual mannequins. It works.
- James Bond:
- In The Man with the Golden Gun, this is how James Bond defeats Scaramanga, disguising himself as the statue of himself in Scaramanga's lair to trick him and get him to lower his guard. Also done earlier in the film by Nick-Nack and a pair of sumo wrestlers to trick Bond.
- Played with in The Living Daylights, with Brad Whittaker standing amongst a line of statues of famous historic military figures, initially unresponsive until the camera stops on him for a few seconds. It's clearly more to impress Pushkin than to hide though. Pushkin's not in the mood to be impressed in the slightest.
- Jurassic Park III: A Velociraptor briefly manages to pull off this trick by pretending to be a preserved dinosaur head in a vat. Amanda goes in for a closer look and notices its eyeball twitch, at which point the raptor jumps out from behind and attacks. Fortunately, the gaps between the vats are too narrow for it to fit, so it gives her a chance to get away.
- Done in Kermit's Swamp Years, when Croaker hides from the pet shop owner at George Washington High School by posing as a trophy.
- Lady on a Train: While searching the attic for the slippers, Nikki avoids being noticed by Saunders by posing as an armchair under a dust sheet.
- In a classic The Little Rascals short, Spanky and Alfalfa are being chased by Butch and the Woim and they run into a ballet theatre. In the next cut, they have put on ballerina costumes and wigs to hide as mannequins. Unfortunately, Alfalfa was dumb enough to answer Butch's question of where they are with "Nobody here but us dummies" while Spanky can only turn his head and glare at his friend, the only real dummy in that room.
- A Man with a Maid: When the police search his house, Jack disguises the naked Alice as a Greek statue.
- Used in The Master of Disguise as part of a sequence of events from Disguisey history, when one such Disguisey poses as a statue to ambush a thief.
- Done in The Muppet Movie, when Fozzie and Kermit are trying to escape from Doc Hopper in their rainbow-colored Studebaker. They pull up in front of a billboard with wild coloring that exactly matches the car.
- In Nancy Drew, Nancy hides from some bad guys in a church by wearing a cloak and pretending to be one of the statues of saints.
- New Police Story have the Downer Beginning when Chan's entire team of police officers gets taken out by Joe and his gang. Three redshirts opens fire on who they assume to be enemies, only to realize they're shooting at mannequins. An automated door then opens behind, with a woman they assume to be another mannequin, but that turns out to be Sue, the Dark Action Girl, posing as a dummy before firing away at the cops.
- In Night of the Comet, Reggie gets the drop on the mall-stockboy half-zombies by posing alongside a pair of store mannequins.
- The Ωmega Man: The protagonist is apparently the last man on Earth after World War III. While exploring a department store for supplies, he sees a storefront dummy move; it turns out to be a woman trying this trope to hide from him. He pursues, but when she evades him, he just assumes that he's Gone Mad From The Isolation and imagined her.
- In Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Blart puts on a hockey goalie uniform and stands still outside a sporting goods store, pretending to be a display mannequin — not to hide from the bad guys, per se, but to get the drop on the first one to walk by him. Obviously, the fact that he was wearing a mask probably helped the illusion.
- Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge: After breaking into the sporting goods store, Eric poses as a mannequin when a security guard walks past. When the guard realises Eric isn't a mannequin, Eric stabs him to death.
- The Princess (2022): An accidental version. The Princess emerges from a secret passage, coming out directly between the legs of what she thinks is an empty suit of ceremonial armor. In fact it's an actual knight standing around in ceremonial armor for some reason, and a fight scene ensues.
- In Buster Keaton's short The Scarecrow, he disguises himself as a scarecrow in order to evade his pursuers.
- In Scavenger Hunt (1979), Dummitz attempts to steal a wedding dress by posing as a mannequin and sneaking out of the boutique.
- Done in the first live-action Scooby-Doo movie—the gang is in a haunted house attraction, and ends up standing in front of a medieval display just as Mooks are coming in from all sides. Fred announces that he has a plan; the camera pulls away for three seconds; we pull back to the display, and the group has somehow managed to climb into two suits of armor (Fred and Shaggy), a full princess ensemble (Daphne), a bearded scholar's outfit (Velma), and a metallic gargoyle (Scooby).
- Done both ways in Shanghai Knights. The scene starts with Chon Wang and Roy o'Bannon entering a waxworks museum to track down the boy who stole the Imperial Seal from them, and Wang walks right past two waxworks who turn out to be two Mooks sent by the Big Bad after the same thing. Wang tries to battle them, then makes his escape, just as more Mooks head his way — upon which he goes completely still, and they miss him entirely.
- When Holmes and Watson infiltrate the Big Bad's base in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, they find what they assume is an empty suit of armour standing in the centre of the room. Not until Watson raps on it and it attacks him do they realise that this is the Big Bad's Steampunk exoskeleton and he is inside it.
- In Sleeper, Woody Allen's character is on the run from the authorities; he ducks into a van full of domestic servant robots and hastily makes himself up as one. Maybe it's a sign of intelligence in the future that everyone who sees him is fooled.
- In Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, Jables and KG act as statues in the Rock and Roll History Museum to hide from a guard.
- They Call Me Bruce: Bruce is being chased by gangsters, so he hides in a dress shop disguised as a dummy. The gangsters are not idiots, though, so one of them stabs each dummy. As he's about to stab Bruce, the shop owner shrieks, distracting their attention so Bruce can change his position in the line. When Bruce is about to get stabbed again, the shop owner claims He Went That Way, but unfortunately a relieved Bruce makes the mistake of speaking.
- Tickle Me: One of the men harrassing Lonnie, Pam and Stanley at the hotel pretends to be a dummy decorating a hallway, but Lonnie figures him out quick through a staring contest.
- Wild Wild West: A group of armed Mooks hide as characters in paintings to guard a room from intruders. It almost works, until another character gives it away by looking at one of them. The hero kills that mook, and then shoots every other picture.
- There's a moment in Zardoz where the resurrected Arthur Frayn conceals himself amongst a group of wax figures, so he can startle Zed by coming to life.
Gamebooks
- Sorcery!: The second book, Cityport of Traps, have you encountering a Mantis Man, who poses as a statue convincingly owing to it's solid, stone-like shell. Anyone who inspects it will suddenly stare down the Mantis Man's teeth as the creature suddenly reveals itself and mauls it's victims to death instantly.
Literature
- One of Susan Dexter's early fantasy novels has a scene where a young wizard hides a dancing girl from pursuit by disguising her as a statue in a courtyard. She's not actually frozen, but has to use her dance skills to hold perfectly still for several hours so the illusion won't be broken until she can slip away under cover of darkness.
- Discworld:
- The dragon from Guards! Guards! was mistaken for a piece of rooftop statuary by the Night Watch. It's unclear if this was a deliberate ruse, or if the creature just happened to be sleeping there.
- Incredibly subtly done in Pyramids by Mericet, the Assassin's Guild instructor, who hides as a gargoyle from Teppic. In fact, the only clue you have that he did it is the description of him "wiping grey dust off his bony face". Of course, in this case it also helps that there are animate Gargoyles in the Discworld.
- The Death of Rats briefly took the place of the cardboard fairy atop a Hogswatch tree in Hogfather.
- The feat is done by Sam Vimes, when a fleeing criminal leaned against him to catch his breath thinking him a statue. Vetinari was also shown to master this during his team at the Guild of Assassins.
- In John Collier's "Evening Primrose" pretending to be a mannequin is one of the ways in which the people living in department stores maintain the masquerade.
- Done dramatically in Hercule Poirot's Christmas where one of the suspects hides amid a set of dimly-lit statues to disguise their presence at the crime scene.
- Played for horror in Frank Belknap Long's Cthulhu Mythos story "The Horror from the Hills". A museum displays what they think is a statue of the ancient vampiric god Chaugnar Faugn. It turns out they have the real thing, and he's just very, very good at holding still.
- In the Judge Dee mystery The Haunted Monastery, the eponymous monastery has a gallery of horrors depicting the torments awaiting sinners in the Taoist hell. A victim is abducted and displayed in the gallery, disguised as one of the figures.
- In one installment of the French Langelot XXX series, the protagonist must suddenly hide in the workshop of a light artist and decides to impersonate a customized trompe l'oeil holographic statue of himself. This necessitates not just standing still, but actually repeating the same characteristic movement whenever the suspicious inspector walks past him. He pulls it off.
- Invoked in A Museum Piece by Roger Zelazny. A failed artist decides to leave the world that doesn't understand him and moves to a museum where he pretends to be a Beaten Gladiator, post-Hellenic, "a monument to himself". Then he discovers he's not alone. First he meets Hecuba Lamenting — a girl, who ran away from parents who drove away her artist boyfriend. Then Roman Senators turn out to be retired art critics who wish to kill them to keep the masquerade. Then a mobile Xena ex Machina turns out to be a friendly shipwrecked alien ("somewhat narcissistic" and enjoying being admired).
- In one Nancy Drew story, Nancy visits an old estate with a statue that looks exactly like her. At one point, she gets up on the pedestal and stays still to evade some people chasing her (the fact that they're familiar with the statue and know it doesn't have two people on it somehow doesn't occur to them). At the end of the book, the estate is opened to the public with a reveal of the statue, and Nancy again poses as it as part of the festivities (she quickly reveals herself this time).
- In the Parker novel Slayground by Richard Stark, Parker sits in a wax museum display and his pursuers fail to notice him.
- Star Wars Legends:
- Corran Horn tries this in an X-Wing Series novel; he's in the Emperor's private museum of Jedi memorabilia and he even puts on the old robe one of the statues or models was wearing. It is dark, and this almost works, but the Imperials looking for him notice that unlike all the others, his face and eyes haven't been gouged out. Fortunately, he's also come across a working lightsaber.
- Done in Welkin Weasels: Vampire Voles when Scruff is hiding from Count Flistagga in the crypt.
- In The Witch Watch, the guards on the villain's estate are made to look like statues by an illusion, which fools everyone except wizards until they move.
Live-Action TV
- In one episode of The Andy Griffith Show Barney goes undercover at the local department store as a mannequin.
- In an episode of Are You Being Served?, Miss Brahms poses as a mannequin to avoid the notice of a couple of robbers. Of course, she sneezes and is taken hostage.
- In another episode, Mr Humphries accidentally pulls the head off a Mr Humphries mannequin, and has to stand in for it. Unfortunately for him, the mannequin was meant to advertise underwear.
- In The A-Team episode "Double Heat", Hannibal waits for Mr. Olsen by sitting on top of a horse statue, disguised as a rider.
- Batman (1966): Used a few times by the villains of the show to surprise the Dynamic Duo.
- "The Joker is Wild". The Joker hides himself and his band in statues from the Comedian Hall of Fame.
- The Riddler pulls this trick with all his henchmen in Madam's Soleil's House of Wax in "The Ring of Wax".
- And in "The Zodiac Crimes", Joker's moll Venus (and some of his goons) disguise themselves as statues of the Gotham City Museum of Modern Art.
- There's (possibly more than one) The Benny Hill Show sketch where Benny's character is pretending to be a statue when a sexy maid comes in and starts dusting him between the legs with a feather duster...
- In the second season of Blackadder, every episode's closing credits came with a Couch Gag where Edmund chases an annoying minstrel around a garden; in one episode, the minstrel poses as a statue and bonks Edmund on the head with his lute the moment Edmund's back is turned.
- When The Borrowers are living in a model village, they sometimes hide by standing dead still among the model inhabitants. Miss Menzies realises Arrietty is real because she made and painted the models herself.
- A pretty common prank in Candid Camera-style shows. Most of the time the "statue" simply jumps at the victim, sometimes yelling.
- The Ukrainian Naked and Funny ("Голые и смешны") series has an absolutely vicious prank. A topless woman would stand on a pedestal, body-painted and remaining still to resemble a statue - and kick passing men in the nuts. Justified (slightly) in that the nut-kicking would be largely restricted to men who groped or ogled the "statue".
- Each time El Chapulín Colorado has to help somebody in a museum, this eventually happens, more often pulled by El Chapulín himself.
- An early episode has El Peterete as the main antagonist, and he hides in a farm doing this with a scarecrow.
- Doctor Who:
- In "City of Death" (4th Doctor), the TARDIS is left in a Paris art museum. Some of the visitors to the museum see it and start discussing it as a work of art — and then the Doctor and two other people turn up and go dashing inside it. And then it dematerializes. And the visitors love it.
- Used to horrifying effect by the Weeping Angels. They're living creatures, but as soon as you look at them (or observe them) they turn into stone statues. Oh, and they move at very high speed. So if you are looking at one about fifty feet away, then blink, BAM! They're right there. Their top speed is hard to determine, but an experiment based upon the events of "Blink" indicates that their acceleration is about 8 metres per second squared (gravity on Earth is 9.8). Taken to its extreme in "The Time of Angels" when a Weeping Angel hides out in a giant multi-storey cavern filled entirely with thousands of statues. Except no, they're not statues. They're all Weeping Angels.
- This is also done in "The Day of the Doctor". The Doctors and Co know that something came out of the pictures in the gallery, but they can't find anything out of place. However, there is a lot of stone dust on the floor even though all of the statues (covered by sheets) are accounted for. Osgood eventually figures out that the Zygons broke out of the pictures, smashed all the statues, and hid under the sheets until the opportune time to attack.
- Forever Knight. In "Hunters", Don Schanke is being stalked through a "Hogan's Alley"-type Shooting Gallery by a Cop Killer. After firing several times at what turn out to be targets, he holds his fire on seeing what appears to be a Police Officer target silhouetted in a doorway. The target is then revealed to be the killer dressed as a uniformed cop, standing motionless in place until Schanke turns his back on him.
- Get Smart
- When in a KAOS bad guy's formal garden, his standoff with Max is broken by the reveal of a CONTROL agent posing as a statue — unbroken when a KAOS agent is also a statue — then again when another CONTROL agent... eventually the KAOS guy has to give up, as he's all out of statues, and Max still has one more he hasn't revealed at that point.
- In "The Wax Max", Max and 99 find several people who have been killed in a Wax Museum Morgue. Unfortunately one of the wax statues turns out to be the villain who put them in this condition, who then takes them prisoner.
- One episode of Hannah Montana has Miley, Jackson, Lily and Oliver pretend to be part of a cardboard movie display.
- The opening of one episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys involved Autolycus disguising himself as a statue to hide in a museum until the guards locked up. playing against type, the guards do realize the ploy before he gets too far and he nearly ends up killed before accidentally activating the time-controlling powers of a Mineral MacGuffin.
- There's also a very Nightmare Fuel-ish version in Highlander: The Series. The enemy of the moment an evil clown/mime, has a room FULL of mannequins with painted faces and identical clothing. He hides among them for the chance to stab Duncan.
- Lucy of I Love Lucy has been known to do this a time or two.
- During the three-part Vacation Episode of Married... with Children, the Bundy family visits the "Horrors" section of Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Kelly thinks the statue of Jack The Ripper is moving (he's a disguised assassin trying to kill them), but Al proves otherwise with a move that "would have broken his neck. No man could take that without screaming." Of course, as soon as they walk away, the man collapses in agony.
- Mind Your Language: An episode sees Juan and Maxmillain sneaking into Madam Tussauds' in London after closing hours, and when the guard arrive they put on disguises and tries hiding among the museum's many wax sculptures. It works until the feather on Juan's hat accidentally tickles him into sneezing.
- Keeping Up Appearances: When Hyacinth wonders why Richard has not "rescued" Mrs Fortescue from Daisy and Onslow in a pub, she sees a window cleaner's stepladder near a high window, and climbs it to peer in, since she is above frequenting public houses. Suddenly she sees Mrs Barker-Finch approaching, and is desperate to hide. She puts on the window cleaner's white protective garment, and stands next to the ladder, with her legs splayed like sloping parts of the ladder.
- A recurring sketch on MADtv (1995) featured a psychotic murderer who everyone (except the Only Sane Man) thought was just a mannequin because he would stand really still whenever anyone was looking directly at him. Anyone else who eventually noticed the mannequin kept changing positions would come to the conclusion the Only Sane Man must have been the one to move it in an attempt to scapegoat the mannequin.
- An early Married... with Children episode had Kelly repeatedly trying to sneak out to go to a rock concert after being grounded. Upon the family spending the night in Al's shoe store and he suddenly waking in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, Kelly poses as a store mannequin, which causes him to quip, "Damn mannequins look like hookers!"
- Midsomer Murders: In "The Scarecrow Murders", a killer sneaks on to the grounds of The Vicar's mansion and hides by posing as one of the scarecrows set for the festival. When the vicar goes out to check the gate that night, the killer ambushes him.
- An episode of Mission Top Secret has Big Bad Neville Savage and his Henchman Of The Week infiltrate a museum this way to steal a vase containing clues to a treasure.
- The New Avengers: Purdey poses as a mannequin in a store window in an attempt to avoid two of the robbers in "Sleeper". She is hampered by the fact that her pants keep falling down.
- In the Re-Animated Pilot Movie, Jimmy tries to evade Sonny Appleday, and takes the opportunity to test Sonny's stupidity by simply acting out the Milt Appleday hologram presentation from earlier in the film. Sonny turns away screaming for him, then turns back when Jimmy stutters on saying "Crocco the Alligator".
- In one episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Clyde hides from some robots by pretending to be a store mannequin.
- In an episode of Saved by the Bell, Zack, Kelly, Lisa, Screech, Jessie and Slater all dress in wedding clothes and pose as store mannequins in an attempt to hide from two guys who they believe are after them on account of a paper bag full of money. This produces some amusing poses as the group continues to bicker when no one else is around.
- On Scrubs Dr. Kelso pretends to be part of the painted mural outside the hospital. Dr. Cox has to grab his arm to convince him to give up the act.
Doctor Cox: Bob, I see you. [Beat] Oh, for God's sake, you're three-dimensional. [..] I'm...physically touching your arm now.
- Done in an episode of The Suite Life on Deck where Zack, Cody and Bailey put on white paint and pretend to be greco-roman-esque statues. Points for the fact that they interact with their teachers and Mr. Moseby and no-one notices.
Ms. Tutveiler: [to Moseby] Mr. Moseby? Does those statues look familiar to you?
Mr. Moseby: [slightly annoyed] How old do you think I am? - Star Trek: The Next Generation. In "The Most Toys", Data is kidnapped by Collector of the Strange Kivas Fajo. At one stage in the battle of wills between the two, Data pretends to be an immobile statue in the collection, humiliating Fajo when he brings round a rival collector to show him off as the only known positronic android.
Music
- In Kids Praise 2, two boys, freaked out by the sight of an approaching troop of kids being led by a giant anthropomorphic songbook, pretend to be statues to avoid being noticed.
- In this video, Lindsey Stirling's alter ego Phelba strikes a pose next to a statue as the security guard who has been pursuing her passes by.
Radio
- In the Our Miss Brooks episode Hobbies, Mr. Conklin and Mr. Boynton masquerade as wax figures to hide from Board Superintendent Mr. Stone. It Makes Sense in Context.
Tabletop Games
- The Perfect Stillness Merit in Changeling: The Lost allows the possessor to hold perfectly still, making this trope much easier to enact.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Gargoyles can very easily disguise themselves as stone statues thanks to their rocky skin.
- Even statues of humanoids can become animate and attack; living statues and golems are favorite guards in a wizard's abode.
- The Statue spell allow any character to duplicate this effect. He can even return to animate and back into a statue in a blink.
Theatre
- One of the lazzi, or classic bits, from Commedia dell'Arte plays with this. Harlequin is romancing a young woman when a knock at the door signals the return of Pantalone, the girl's father. To escape, Harlequin pretends to be a chair by squatting with his arms outstretched; the young woman then throws a blanket over him to complete the illusion. Of course, when Pantalone returns, he immediately sits in the chair, only to jump up, as a "pin" has hit him in the backside...but it's no problem, as the pin was extremely small.
- Has apparently been done in some productions of Twelfth Night when Toby Belch and his accomplices eavesdrop on Malvolio reading the fake love letter.
- At the end of The Winter's Tale Hermione (long since believed dead but actually in hiding) is disguised as a statue so she can effect a "magical" resurrection in front of Leontes. (That's assuming one doesn't accept the alternative interpretation.)
Theme Parks & Attractions
- At the London Dungeon, employees wearing heavy make-up often stand still among the various wax figures, to scare the unsuspecting visitors. All part of the historical experience, of course.
Video Games
- BioShock has 'Plastered Splicers' in Fort Frolic that appear as statues until awoken by a certain event. At which point they all attack the player in complete silence.
- In Blood, levels are peppered with gargoyle statues. Some of them are real gargoyles in disguise. Some aren't, and there isn't any way to tell which are real until they reveal themselves and attack - even the actual statues bleed if you try to hit them early.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: The Allied Mirage Tank has the ability to disguise itself as a tree when not moving. One of his quotes? "Nobody here but us trees."
- A level which takes place in a decrepit mall in Condemned: Criminal Origins has enemies wearing cracked plastic shells over their heads who hide in plain sight among the actual store mannequins.
- The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark: In one case, a thief goes to ground somewhere inside a large mansion, and McQueen eventually figures out that she's posing as one of the many statues of distinguished ancestors in the main hall.
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution has this happen with Namir. You think you've cornered the Big Bad in a room full of very odd statues of skinless humans constantly switching poses, then Namir (whose augmentations make him look like this naturally), who was standing behind you the entire time and acting like the rest of the statues, grabs you from behind and throws you against the wall.
- Gargoyles in The Elder Scrolls 5: Dawnguard behave more or less the same as ones from Blood.
- The animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy's; they don't move while you look at them, but constantly using the cameras to spy on them drains power. And if you run out of power, they either stuff an animatronic skeleton in you, or you in an animatronic costume.
- In the Sega Genesis version of Golden Axe, when the player reaches the end of Stage 7, they will come across what appear to be four statues. However, two of said statues are Heninger and Longmoan painted to look like statues, as they approach the player when they get close to them.
- In the Henry Stickmin Series, Henry can pretend to be a mannequin at one point to hide from a pair of Toppats on a train. It works a little too well: one of the Toppats thinks he's a fancy human-shaped coatrack and plays with him, which ends when the Toppat holds Henry out the window causing his head to be taken off by a passing object. Somehow, the Toppat still thinks the headless corpse in his arms is a coatrack, and it just broke.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Gerudo tradition states that vai (girls) are forbidden from meeting voe (guys) until they come of age, so Link is forbidden from attending the “Voe and You” children’s class. However, he can sneak in by dressing up in the Desert Voe outfit and standing next to dummies wearing the same clothes, despite that the dummies just have a hastily scribbled face.
- Metal Gear:
- You can have Snake pull this trick early in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, with the help of his active camouflage, which makes his suit match the texture of the statues. Do it too many times, though, and Snake will accidentally snap the nads off another statue while posing.
- Before that there was Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which features several rooms full of mannequin soldiers, with a couple of real soldiers hiding among them. Alert players would have to keep an eye on their radar to see which ones were real - lucky that the radar can differentiate between the mannequins (who show up as solid dots) and live soldiers (whose dots blink as normal).
- Nightmare Creatures: In the first game, certain enemies such as gargoyles and winged demons like to disguise themselves as statues, before revealing themselves to attack the players. But subverted in the first level: you can come across a gargoyle in a park, but that one was actually a statue. Real gargoyles don't show up until several levels later.
- Happens in Paperboy, of all games. One of the house owners is painted white as if to blend in with the tombstones and other statues, then runs at you.
- In various Pokémon games, Sudowoodo is said via the Pokédex to do an imitation of a tree when it's scared, even though it fails to fool even children. It doesn't help that it hates water, has skin that feels more like rock than wood, and happens to be a Rock-type rather than a Grass-type.
- In Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside, a group of living furniture inside Darkness' house dance to disco music. The instant they notice Sam come in, they instantly stop moving and pose as regular furniture. One of the game paths adds a puzzle where Sam has to make himself invisible to be able to take back his mask before a couch pins it down.
- Downplayed in Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure: The guards at The Louvre are at least smart enough to recognize Raphael is not a statue, and there are no empty pedestals, so he hides behind the existing statues instead. Amusingly, as the gameplay cannot work otherwise, each guard happens to be next to one or more of these statues as Raphael runs by.
- A strange (and terrifying) version similar to this trope occurs in Silent Hill 3. When Heather walks into a room full of mannequins, only for nothing useful to be in the room, she turns to leave. A hideous scream is then heard, and if the player chooses to walk back over to a particular mannequin, it will be covered in blood. Knowing this series, this could mean any number of things, none of which are comforting, but many speculate that this means that every mannequin in the game is actually a monster and is watching you.
- Sly Cooper can do this in the second Prague episode of Sly 2: Band Of Thieves to hide from some Mooks looking for him.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- In Super Mario Bros. 3, the Tanooki costume has the power of temporarily turning into a statue, which monsters will just walk past.
- Mario gets disguised in this manner (with a full-body gold paint job) to infiltrate Nimbus Castle in Super Mario RPG. It works perfectly, except that there's a minigame involved: an irritated Dodo marches in and takes out his frustration on the statues, and you have to jump his beak. Jump too early, or get hit by the beak, and he catches you. If you succeed, you get a special item, but still drop your disguise after a couple guards take out their frustration on you with spears.
- In a few rooms in Super Princess Peach, Peach must copy the pose of the statues as the wall opens its eyes, or else the wall will eat her.
- The final stage of Super Punch Patrol has a mook disguised as a David statue who will ambush you if you're nearby. In the nude.
- The Messy Neighbor in Untitled Goose Game has a goose sculpture in her backyard, and the titular goose can drag it away and pretend to be the sculpture by standing in its place. Doing so to fool the neighbor is actually required for one of the game's objectives.
- Wild Blood has gargoyle enemies who pretends to be scary-looking statues until you approach them. Two of them in fact pretends to be decorative pillars in their Mook Debut Cutscene before coming to life and attacking you from the sides.
- Aeviters and Cantors do this in Xenoblade Chronicles X. There are a few problems with their disguises, though: Disguised Cantors keep moving their heads with a loud clacking sound. And the Aeviters' disguises would have been perfect... if not for the fact that there are no non-Aeviter statues in the game.
- Zack in Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure has to do this before he gets a weapon.
Webcomics
- City of Reality: Ian Samson's Idle Minds combines this with Taken for Granite, by having a girl petrified but conscious so she can spy on the Big Bad. She finds the experience... unusual.
- In a strip from Dawn of Time, when Dawn and her triceratops Blue are being chased by paleontologists in the 19th century, Blue takes refuge in a garden of dinosaur sculptures. The gag being that none of the sculptures (which are based on real ones) looks anything like the modern conception of what dinosaurs looked like.
- In Freefall Sam Starfall escapes an angry mob by ducking into a sporting goods store and pretending to be one of the practice targets. As said store sells target dummies in his likeness due to apparent popular demand.
- During the Fun Cult arc of Oglaf, Navaan points out to Grier that two of the statues are Fun Cultists in disguise.
- The Board Game of The Order of the Stick has Haley's Hide skill demonstrated by standing in a dramatic position upon a podium.
- In this strip of Questionable Content, one of the robot clerks in a robot chassis store likes to scare the customers by first pretending to be a lifeless chassis and then shouting "BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA".
- There's a variation in the science fiction webcomic The Stormrunners. Ssuara, a warrior on ancient Mars, is a member of a species that can (among other things) camouflage themselves by taking on the appearance and texture of Martian rock — literally "going to ground". Image here (NSFW: female humanoid nudity).
Web Videos
- A metafictional example in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot: The three former Doctors, having finally got onto the set of "The Day of the Doctor", hide from the BBC security guards (and make it into the episode) by taking the roles of "Zygons concealed by dustcloths pretending to be statues".
- Seeing as how mentor mascots posing as stuffed toys is a frequent affair in magical girl works, this episode of Mother's Basement's Public Service Anime advises throwing said critter into the wash to open it up to interrogation.
Western Animation
- In the 24th episode of Alfred J. Kwak, the title hero and Colonel Rangpang sneak in the royal palace that's under the control of Dolf and his National Crows Party. At one point, they pose as a statue adorning a railing as Dolf's Dragon walks past them.
- The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan: In "The Greek Caper," Suzie, Alan, Anne, and Tom pretend to be Greek statues to hide themselves while being chased in a museum, but their cover is blown when Anne sneezes.
- The Batman: In "Grundy's Night", Clayface ducks into a wax museum with Batman in pursuit. He comments on the situation, "A shapeshifter in a wax museum. Great."
- Batman: The Animated Series:
- In the episode "Fire From Olympus", a huge snake ambushes Batman by pretending to be one of the heads of a statue of the Lernaean Hydra.
- In the episode "The Worry Men", Batman is investigating an abandoned warehouse that once supplied costumes and props for theatrical productions, believing it (correctly) to be the Mad Hatter's latest hideout. He sees what appears to be the Hatter seated in a throne-like chair and runs up to grab him - only to find himself holding a mannequin that doesn't look anything like the Hatter except for wearing one of his spare costumes. The voice of the real Mad Hatter then rings out from somewhere in the darkness, gleefully telling Batman that a few of his "old friends" have dropped by. Batman is promptly attacked by animated dummies and/or puppets made up to look like the Penguin, the Riddler, Harley Quinn, and the Joker, but manages to either evade or destroy all the fakes. Then he wanders past an exhibit depicting some ancient Mayan Indians in jaguar skins, noting that these dummies aren't on wheels or strings or any other sort of mechanism, so they can't hurt him. But then the "dummies" move, and Batman barely has time to hear "Oops! Should've warned you, old boy. That lot's real!" before he gets clubbed over the head by the chief warrior.
- The Beatles are at a wax museum to see wax statues of themselves (episode "Misery"). As a joke, John and Paul substitute their wax statues with themselves as a little old lady and a young lady approach it.
Young lady: It's amazing, ain't it? You'd swear that Ringo and George were alive.
Old lady: But whatever happened to Paul and John? They look like death warmed over. (John and Paul look nonplussed )
Young lady: Probably used a cheaper wax. - Craig of the Creek: In "Big Pinchy", when the Stump Trio are retracing J.P.'s steps in search of the giant crayfish he supposedly encountered, they end up in a neighbour's backyard, which is filled with cherub statues and one dog statue. Then the dog "statue" blinks, and Kelsey realizes that it's a real dog, which immediately starts angrily chasing them.
- Dennis the Menace:
- In "Strike Up the Band", Henry and Mr. Wilson chase a purse snatcher who tries to hide from them by posing as a mannequin in a department store display. He sneezes twice, but Henry and Mr. Wilson assume the other sneezed instead. The purse snatcher gives himself away with a "Thank you!" instead.
- In "Dennis in Venice", while hiding out in the warehouse of a pair of art thieves, Dennis and Gina pose as statues to avoid being noticed by them.
- Used twice in "No Bones About It"; First, in order to get into the museum, Ruff poses as a Siberian Prairie Wolf statue so the museum's workers will bring him in. His cover is blown when Mrs. Tompkins, an elderly lady touches him, having mistaken him for a Norwegian Elk Hound. Later in the episode, Dennis and Joey pose as eskimos and Ruff poses as a sled dog to avoid being detected by the museum guards. Their cover is blown when a worker brings in a statue of a cat, which Ruff chases.
- In one episode of Dragons: Riders of Berk, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, freaked out by a Terrible Terror that's following them around, hide among the village's statuary. Snotlout finds them and quickly realizes the Terror is just one of Hiccup's messenger dragons.
Snotlout: Muttonheads.
Ruffnut: No, statues.
Tuffnut: We could be statues of muttonheads.
They both pull imbecilic faces while remaining in their statue poses. - Occurs accidentally — and gets discussed — in a Futurama episode when the robotic janitor at the Wax Robot Museum (who happens to be made of wax) takes a break, and Fry mistakes him for an exhibit.
- Gargoyles:
- Needless to say, the gargoyles' daylight "stone sleep" makes invoking this trope both mandatory and extremely convincing from dawn to dusk.
- Goliath and Lexington pull this off among a roof-full of their structural descendants to ambush The Pack.
- Later in the Goliath Chronicles Lexington poses as a doll in a toy store. Leading to this exchange:
Store Owner: These things get uglier every year. [walks off]
Lexington: [under his breath] Who's ugly?
- In one episode of Gravity Falls to hide from a cult that hosts their meetings in a museum, Dipper, Soos and Old Man McGuckett pretend to be an exhibition of a typical settler family. The cultists see the exhibition and one of them tries to straighten McGuckett's Fish Eyes, which quickly return to their position, making him mutter that the quality of the exhibitions are getting worse.
- The Hey Arnold! episode "Helga's Locket" sees Helga trying to recover her locket with Arnold's picture—which she's just engraved with both her name and a poem declaring her love—from Arnold's Grandpa after she drops it. At one point, she sneaks into the boarding house basement just when Grandpa and Arnold are trying to open the locket, and quickly disables the fuse box to keep them from seeing the engraving. Helga grabs the jewelry and hides a nearby box when the lights come on, and Grandpa pulls open the lid to find the thief...however, the box just so happens to be filled with mannequin heads. Helga remains still and manages to escape detection (despite being the only "mannequin" with, you know, hair and facial features).
- In another episode she hides from Arnold and Gerald in the park by pretending to be a stone chimera on a gothic building.
- King of the Hill: They're probably not fooling anyone, but Bobby and a girl he meets at the mall pretend to be mannequins.
- In the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Sample", Lilo, Stitch and the titular experiment of the week attempt to hide from the self-proclaimed alien hunters Merwin and Dean as tiki statues. Which works... until Sample blows their cover.
- Looney Tunes:
- Daffy Doodles: Police officer Porky holds a frame in front of him to catch a graffiti artist (Daffy) who keeps drawing mustaches on posters.
- Louvre Come Back to Me: A cat pounces at Pepe LePew in the halls of the Louvre, but when he catches a whiff of Pepe's aroma, he freezes in mid-air, turns pale and falls to pieces. Pepe then muses out loud how he doesn't get modern sculpture.
- A Hare Grows in Manhattan: Bugs Bunny hides from a bulldog in an Egyptian-themed billboard.
- LEGO Jurassic World: Legend of Isla Nublar one scene in the episode "spit take!" has a Dilophosaurus escape his pen, while he is being searched for the dilophosaurus pretends to be a dinosaur mannequin in a gift shop.
- One Martin Mystery episode set in China have Martin and gang sent to a terracotta mausoleum, only to be attacked by a revived Chinese dragon. Java, the largest of the gang, managed to evade the dragon by standing still and pretending to be one of the terracotta statues.
- The Miraculous Ladybug episode "The Puppeteer 2" takes place in a wax museum, so several characters mistake living people for wax statues (and vice versa). Marinette, in particular, embarrasses herself by flirting with a wax figure of her crush, Adrien... who turns out to be the real Adrien playing a joke.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "It's About Time", Twilight Sparkle sneaks into the Canterlot Archives with Pinkie Pie and Spike (for reasons that made perfect sense at the time). At one point, Twilight disguises herself as a statue to avoid an approaching guard, and encourages Pinkie Pie and Spike to do the same. Hilariously enough, it seems to work. Turns out later the guard apparently did notice Twilight, and he just wrote off the behavior as another of Twilight's odd character tics. And Twilight wasn't doing anything wrong (she was allowed in both the Royal Garden and the Archives), so she had no reason to hide from the guard anyway.
- The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Imp-Practical Joker", Mister Mxyzptlk hides among statutes of gnomes on the roof of a carnival fun house.
- In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Toy to the World", Perry crash lands in the Har D Har factory that Phineas and Ferb took over while still wearing his secret agent getup, and as the brothers walk in he proceeds to stand completely still, prompting Phineas to mistake him for a toy design he already rejected prior and throw him out.
- In the Rugrats (1991) episode, "Reptar 2010", the babies imagine their own endings to the titular movie after Stu's VCR eats the tape. In Chuckie's Imagine Spot, Chuckie hides from the President and the Professor by posing as the Statue of Liberty, leading to this exchange;
President: Wow, the Statue of Lizardy sure looks big close up.
Professor: Yeah, and green, too.
(Beat)
President and Professor: The Statue of Lizardy?! - In one episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Scooby, Velma, and Shaggy are being chased by an evil mummy in a museum. Scooby hides in a large jar, while Shaggy and Velma hop onto a platform and pretend to be a display of Marc Antony (wearing a centurion helmet and carrying a sword) and Cleopatra (with a purple cloak and feather in the hair).
- This became a common trope in the Scooby-Doo francise as a whole, repeating in multiple series and films.
- When The Simpsons visit China to pick up Selma's newly adopted daughter; Homer ends up disguised as a Budda statue to infiltrate the adoption agency. Unfortunately they drag him inside using a hook in the nose, but still never notice he's not a real statue.
- Star Wars Rebels: In "Twilight of the Apprentice", Imperial Inquisitor the Eighth Brother hides among the petrified corpses around the Sith Temple on Malachor to ambush the Jedi trio.
- The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: In "The Fire of Hercufleas", Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool come to the ancient city of Mythis to seek out the titular Hercufleas so he can help them defeat King Koopa and his henchmen. When Mouser approaches the heroes, they jump onto the pedestals and pose as statues to avoid being spotted. Their ruse is nearly exposed when Luigi gears up to sneeze, but fortunately, Luigi doesn't sneeze until after Mouser leaves.
- A variant in the Thomas & Friends special, "Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure"; Sailor John and Skiff arrive at Knapford Station as the former attempts to steal the titular treasure that Sir Topham Hatt has locked in his safe, when Henry approaches them while pulling the Flying Kipper. To avoid being spotted, Sailor John stands in front of a poster for the Arlesburgh Beach, using the exact same pose as a lady holding a beach ball.
- A Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry cartoon is set in a department store where Jerry hides on a shelf of lookalike toy mice. Tom picks up one at a time and pulls its tail. We hear "Ma-ma!... Ma-ma!... Ma-ma!... YEEEOWCH!"
- In the Toucan Tecs episode "Peacock Palace Scoop", this is how the Mad Ducks disguise themselves.
- In Transformers: Prime episode "Partners", Bumblebee tries to get Airachnid by pretending to be hit with the Immobilizer.
- In "Oldie But a Ghoulie" from Vampirina, Vampirina in her bat form pretends to be a collectible bat knick-knack in order to hide from the collector who has bought Gregoria. It works, but then a bit afterwards when she moves and talks, she gets caught.
- Done by 21 and 24 in The Venture Bros. by pretending to be exhibits in a museum. They even Lampshaded it. Doesn't hurt that they had another person who wasn't doing this to distract the pursuer. They get surprised by the Pirate Captain, who they mistook for part of another exhibit.
- In an episode of We Bare Bears, while sneaking into a museum, Chloe and Ice Bear disguise themselves as an animal exhibit, with Chloe in Ice Bear's mouth. (What makes this rather egregious is that they did this in a display of tigers)
- The first episode of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? Zack and Ivy try to hide from Carmen's henchmen in an art museum. They try to hide by posing as statues. The henchmen recognize them right away and capture the two. Ivy berates Zack for such a stupid plan.
Real Life
- Cassandra Peterson once did this at a wax museum for a Candid Camera-type show.
- Done naughtily in a segment for the "adult" Candid Candid Camera video spinoff series in the 1980s ("they're a little more candid"). A nude woman pretends to be a white marble Greco-Roman statue in a museum to fool an unsuspecting curator (who, incredibly, failed to notice the woman's pretty conspicuous patch of brown pubic hair).
- Happens at least twice on the '80s British game show Treasure Hunt, with "waxworks" coming to life to startle the runner and give her the next clue.
- Increasingly common are street artists dressed up as stone or metal statues, standing still for a while and then suddenly deciding to move in a nicely choreographed manner. They can be quite good at scaring the shit out of unsuspecting tourists, although probably mostly due to the Uncanny Valley rather than actually being mistaken for real statues.
- This is a common prank pulled by visitors to wax museums, since the statues are so realistic it can be hard to tell if a person is real or fake if they are perfectly still.
- Celebrities who did this at Madame Tussauds include Troy Polamalu, Ozzy Osbourne, Al Roker, Carmelo Anthony, Jeremy Lin, One Direction, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Celebrities who did this at Madame Tussauds include Troy Polamalu,
- Miranda Hart has a go.
- There's an Urban Legend about an intruder who disguises himself as a clown statue and gets caught when a babysitter hired by the owners asks permission to cover the "statue" up.
- To promote Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Johnny Depp dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow and hid in the Ride at Disneyland.
