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Cunning Like a Fox - TV Tropes
Pvt. Baldric:
Don't worry sir, I have a cunning plan.
Cpt. Blackadder:
Is it as cunning as a fox that's just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University?
Foxes occupy a unique place among Animal Stereotypes. They can be good guys, bad guys, or completely neutral, but they're always crafty, clever, and cunning. Their sly nature sometimes results in illegal activities, so it's not uncommon to see them portrayed as thieves or con artists; in other words, they're a classic Trickster Archetype. Although it is not unknown for them to be too clever; another term for Too Clever by Half is "outfoxing yourself". Sometimes this trope is invoked under the phrase "crazy like a fox" for when the brilliant plan seems crazy to anyone who isn't quite as brilliant. They're sometimes your adventurous Canine Companion.
This stereotype is, to some extent, Truth in Television: foxes are fairly low down the food chain of most environments, and survive in large part by being stealthy, inventive, and adaptable. Among farmers, they are more known for stealing farm animals in the dark of the night than outright attacking them in broad daylight, and for being extremely difficult to track or chase down — a pursued fox will double back on its trail, dive inside burrows, swim across streams, and do everything it can to shake off pursuing men and dogs. In cities, foxes are instead notable for their ability to thrive in the heart of urban areas and stealing into locked food stores and garbage cans when foraging, always there but never seen. The "crazy like a fox" part has roots in real fox behavior as well; red foxes have been known to jump around and act crazy to entice curious rabbits into coming closer.
If the work in question is East Asian (or inspired by any East Asian culture), expect the fox to be a magical creature with the same stereotype of guile and trickery associated with it.
Compare Fantastic Foxes, which combines this archetype with a touch of the supernatural, and Foul Fox, for when foxes are outright cruel or evil. Compare further Those Wily Coyotes, for another stereotypically clever wild canine, and A Mischief of Mice, Rascally Rabbit, Rascally Raccoon, Sneaky Spider, and Stealthy Cephalopod for other trickster animals. It's not uncommon to pitch a Rascally Rabbit against a cunning fox, with the two of them trying to outsmart each other. If a fox is cast as a sneaky thief in particular, a Literal Cat Burglar may be present as a partner or a rival for it. Not to be confused with a certain Desert Fox, even if he was quite a cunning one. Also not to be confused with a Silver Fox.
See also Foxy Vixen, the other major stereotype associated with foxes.
Examples:
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Advertising
- "Mr. Fox, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" Though in a subversion, he actually admits that he's less well-informed than Mr. Turtle and Mr. Owl.
Anime & Manga
- Fenneko from Aggretsuko is a fennec fox. She is one of the smartest characters in the show and fittingly for an animal with huge ears, she is very observant and pays close attention to everything going on with her coworkers.
- Bleach: Ichimaru Gin gets nicknamed "Fox Face" by Ichigo fairly early on. He has proceeded to earn that nickname throughout the series.
- Similarly, Tamamo from Hell Teacher Nube is a youko, a "sorcerer fox" whose natural form is as an enormous half-fox, half-human demon who removes human skulls from his victim in order to assume a true human form. Very, very cunning as well.
- Hyper Police: Kyuubi-fox Sakura is an 8-and-1/5 tailed version. She tends to fall into Too Clever by Half role.
- Kamisama Kiss: Tomoe is a Little Bit Beastly fox demon. While most of the time he is a regular asshole, he is both intelligent and cunning.
- Mononoke: The Medicine Peddler, but you'll only notice if you're ready to read between the lines quite a bit. His Kitsune-mask-like face is not the only reason for this comparison — but it certainly helps.
- Naruto: The titular character has a fox-monster spirit inside him. He has come up with some diabolical Indy Ploys to get him through tough fights.
- Pom Poko: Kitsune were driven from their homes the exact same way tanuki are, by human cities expanding into their hills and forests. However, instead of declaring all-out war on humans like the tanuki do, kitsune found a more cunning solution. They used their transformation skills to become humans and live in their society. You can still distinguish them by their pointy, angular faces that vaguely resemble a fox's snout. This refers to the Japanese term 'kitsune kao', and traditionally someone with those features is held to be this clever. The opposite is a round, wide face, 'tanuki kao', which makes sense, considering the end of the film.
- Rurouni Kenshin: Megumi is often compared to a fox, being nicknamed Kitsune-onna (fox lady) by Sanosuke and others, having fox ears pop up above her head, and one memorable Imagine Spot by Saitou.
- Seymour "Big" Cheese from Samurai Pizza Cats is a conniving Evil Chancellor who is constantly scheming to take over Little Tokyo. He was designed to be an anthropomorphic fox in the original Japanese version, however, the English dub refers to him as a rat despite not changing his foxlike design.
- Kurama from YuYu Hakusho is a fox demon possessing the body of a human boy. He's as cunning as the trope would indicate. He always used to be a lot more a Jerkass than he is now. His arms and legs were once paralyzed during a fight. He still wins. Later all of his plant powers are sealed inside his body. He wins by wounding himself on the enemy's blade and planting seeds into the open wound.
Comic Books
- Bamse: Avoided with most fox characters, who aren't very sly or cunning, but played completely straight with the rather recent Reinard, who is a crafty villain more or less introduced because most "bad guys" in the comic had deteriorated to the point they only worked as Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains.
- Diabolik has Altea's uncle Fabio Von Waller, that for a long time was only known as Altea's Uncle, The Fox and Altea's Fox Uncle. He's possibly the most intelligent and cunning character in the series, with his debut having him getting Diabolik easily arrested (with him being savvy enough that, had he been in command, Diabolik would have been 'accidentally' shot in the process in case Diabolik somehow escaped Ginko's latest measures to keep him caught until execution, as he in fact did) and his latest appearance at the time of this writing showing him easily manipulating Diabolik (a Chessmaster on his own) into killing a group of terrorists and keeping Diabolik under surveillance just to enjoy the show. For obvious reasons, he doesn't appear often. On one occasion he was suspected of murder, with enough evidence to actually arrest him. The investigating officers, however, knew it was a frame-up the very simple reason that if it had been him, they wouldn't even know it had been a murder.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Ireyon in the Danish Paperinik stories is a cunning thief who runs a Robin Hood-like operation of taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
- Hieronymus Borsch: The eponymous Occult Detective main character is a fox. He is smart but thinks that he is smarter and is often hindered by his many psychological weaknesses more than by This Week's Murderer.
- Paulus de Boskabouter: Reintje is a very sneaky and cunning fox.
- Tellos: Rikk is a trickster thief and Lovable Rogue. That said, many of the characters argue that he isn't quite as clever as he likes to think he is.
- Usagi Yojimbo: Kitsune is a fox, but "Kitsune" is her artist name, not her real one. Averted with Jizonobu, the original incarnation of Jei, who is less "cunning" and more "pants-shittingly terrifying powerhouse".
Comic Strips
- Slylock Fox features a cunning fox detective. Even his name is a pun on "sly".
- Pogo had Seminole Sam, a con-man. He tended to wobble between antagonist and neutral.
- He partially subverts the trope, since he was often out-bamboozled by the superior brains and cunning of his intended victims.
- The opera The Cunning Little Vixen was based on an early comic strip with a similar premise.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
- Disney Animated Canon:
- Robin Hood (1973): Disney rather appropriately turned Robin Hood, the wily outlaw who hids in Sherwood Forest and runs rings around the Sheriff and wicked Prince John, into a fox. Maid Marian is also a fox, which leads to the amusing inversion of a chicken guarding a fox (her duenna is a white hen).
- Pinocchio (1940) features a trickster fox, just like the original novel, as the brains behind the child-kidnapping con.
- The Fox and the Hound plays with it, in part because the fox starts out as a pup. He did avoid getting killed on a hunt on more than one occasion.
- Zootopia has Nick Wilde, who's a fox con artist. As it turns out, this plays into his backstory: when he was a child, he wanted to be a Junior Ranger Scout but was bullied and muzzled by the other scouts for being a fox and considered untrustworthy. At that point, he decided that if others were going to consider him sneaky and untrustworthy just for being a fox then he might as well be just that. Finnick, his partner in crime is also a fox, specifically a fennec who exploits his small size and being a Ridiculously Cute Critter in hustles by pretending to be a child. Averted with Gideon, however: Although he is also a fox, Gideon is poor at critical and lateral thinking, though he has a keen memory.
- The title character of Vuk the Little Fox regularly outsmarts humans once he's grown up.
- The main villain of Wilbur's Great Adventure, a Direct-to-Video sequel to Charlotte's Web, is a fox named Farley, who even gets a Villain Song about how cunning he is. His main goal is to eat Cardigan the black sheep, luckily the little lamb takes cues from Wilbur by headbutting him to escape during the third act.
- Fantastic Mr. Fox: Fox, an incorrigible chicken thief (see also Literature).
- The Plague Dogs: The film version (see Literature) has the fox in the same role as in the novel, with a disarmingly guileful Geordie (i.e. Newcastle) accent.
- Wolf Children: An old fox, a guardian of the mountain, becomes Ame's sensei, teaching him everything he needs to learn about the wild. Near the end of the movie, the old fox gets flattened by a falling tree, leaving Ame to leave his human life behind and live as a wolf and the mountain's new guardian.
- The direct-to-video film The Adventures of Brer Rabbit features its version of Br'er Fox as the main villain of the movie.
- The Bad Guys (2022): Governor Diane Foxington, a red fox, at first appears to be an aversion of this; she's framed as a trusted, heroic and beloved politician in contrast to the Bad Guys. It's later revealed that she was once the Crimson Paw, one of the greatest thieves of all time. During what was supposed to be the biggest heist in her career, she was too ashamed to pull it off due to living up to the stereotypes of foxes being thieving tricksters, and left her criminal career behind.
- The Tale of the Fox (French: Le Roman de Renard), by Ladislas Starevich, composed in (1929–1930), is a stop-motion animated film of the cycle Reynard the Fox (see below, in Folklore and Literature). See also in the Referenced by... page.
- The Wild Robot (2024): Fink is a very sly and clever animal, fitting with fox stereotypes; he lies constantly and is clearly only working with Roz to take advantage of the various things she can do for him. However, as the movie progresses, he develops into a genuine friend and a more caring individual.
Films — Live-Action
- Song of the South features Br'er Fox, who is the main villain of the animated segments. He's clever enough to think up a Tar Baby (trapping Br'er Rabbit with his own temper) but isn't as clever as he thinks he is — something Br'er Rabbit can use to his advantage and does.
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The fox is definitely pretty cunning. He manages to outsmart a couple of wolves by giving them the wrong direction.
- Mary Poppins features a fox that needs rescuing from a foxhunt, but once safely on a merry-go-round horse will mock his pursuers - a common criticism of the Guile Hero is that he is, in essence, a coward.
Folklore
- The fox appears often in ancient Sumerian proverbs and sayings as a crafty and devious animal, making this trope Older Than Dirt.
- Br'er Fox is a common opponent to Br'er Rabbit in Joel Chandler Harris's Br'er Rabbit Tales. As is typical of folk stories, sometimes Br'er Fox wins, sometimes he's outsmarted.
- In Far East folklore, interpretation of the Asian Fox Spirit can vary, but most of them treat foxes as cunning, deceptive, and extremely intelligent shapeshifters and schemers that prefer to take the form of an attractive young woman to seduce the obviously-innocent man (modern interpretations also include the inverse happening), and possess up to nine tails.
- European folklore:
- Reynard the Fox is a classic Trickster Archetype from French folklore. Classic enough to rename the whole species after himself. (Before that, the French word for "fox" was "goupil").
- The fox (usually female) is most always a sly trickster in Russian folklore and works based on it.
- In "Kolobok", a living round bread who had managed to escape an old man and his wife, a hare, a wolf, and a bear, was easily tricked by a fox and eaten. (This is a variant of The Gingerbread Man where the living cookie is also tricked into being eaten by a clever fox.)
- If a fox shows up in a Scandinavian folktale, you know that it's going to at some point trick or at least deceive someone in an amusing way — and if a bear shows up in the same story, it's going to be the victim. There are several tales dedicated purely to the tricky rascal fox tricking and outwitting the simple-minded dimwit of a bear in various ways. (This is so common that the one story where the bear comes out on top Lampshades the entire thing by pointing out that this time the bear was the clever one, even if he's usually Too Dumb to Live.)
- A common punchline in Hungarian fairy tales is that a fox manages to trick several people (usually of a Slavic ethnicity) until he's double-crossed by a Szekler, who are also known for their wits and unusually non-conventional way of thinking.
- Aesop's Fables, probably the Ur-Example:
- In The Fox and the Crane, a fox invites a crane to dinner and plays a prank on her by giving her a flat dish of soup she can't drink from, because of the shape of her big bill. He gets hit by Laser-Guided Karma when she invites him to dinner and gives him a jug with a narrow neck that he can't drink from, either.
- Subverted in The Donkey, the Fox, and the Lion. A donkey and a fox are friends but they come across a lion. The fox promises to get the lion a meal, and tricks the donkey into hiding in a pit. The lion eats both of them.
- In The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail, a fox loses his tail in an accident and tries to persuade the other foxes that they should cut their tails off, too, because they're ugly and heavy. One of the foxes comments that he wouldn't be trying to get them to cut their own tails off if he hadn't lost his.
- In The Fox and the Goat, a fox falls into a deep well and a passing goat, who is thirsty asks if the water is good. The fox says it's the best water he ever tasted, and to come try it. The goat jumps in, and after drinking his fill, asks how to get out. The fox says that if the goat lets him climb on his horns and escape, he will help the goat out. The goat does so, but when he asks the fox to help him get out, the fox says it's his own fault for jumping into the well without realizing he couldn't get out again.
- In The Lion and His Three Councilors, a lion asks a sheep, a wolf, and a fox in turn if his breath smells bad. The sheep says yes, and gets eaten. The wolf says no, and gets eaten. The fox says that he has a cold and can't smell anything, and survives.
- The fox's place in British folklore is as a trickster similar to other cultures. However, it has a special emphasis because aristocrats began hunting them when the boar were played out. In Anglo-American culture, the term fox is often given to warriors renowned for cunning. Manfred Rommel, in the intro to one history, said he thought the lion would better fit his father Erwin Rommel. But the British preferred the fox.
- "The Wolf And The Fox": The fox sets up a scheme where it shows the wolf a cellar storing meat. The fox lets the wolf to eat until it gets so fat it cannot get out the way it came in, so the fox is able to escape when the farmer checks on his cellar and kills the wolf.
Literature
- Nightfall (Series): Prince Vladimir is a villainous example. He can outsmart all of his opponents while tricking them into doing exactly what he wants them to do.
- The Magic Garden had a fox known as "Crafty Fox".
- Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. A children's classic wherein a fox and his family help the rest of the burrowing creatures rob three evil farmers.
- The foxes in Redwall tend to be much more into subterfuge than all the other bad-guy species, which often veers into Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, especially when they're the main villains of the book.
- Le Roman de Rénart is an anthology of tales about a cunning fox called Renart who outwits other animals (see the Folklore folder above). Those stories were satires of medieval society at the time it was written. They were loosely adapted into an animated series, Moi Renart.
- In Dick King-Smith's books, especially The Foxbusters (an Affectionate Parody of The Dam Busters), foxes are occasionally portrayed as cunning. But this is decidedly secondary to their main characteristic of being vile Nazi stand-ins. (King-Smith, unlike most of the authors here, was a farmer...)
- Mat Cauthon from The Wheel of Time is associated with the fox as part of his trickster archetype. He has a fox head medallion that makes him invulnerable to the One Power and his signet ring has a fox scattering ravens. He is sometimes clever but at other times a bit of a buffoon.
- Carlo Collodi's novel Adventures Of Pinocchio features a con-artist fox.
- So does its Russian adaptation by A.Tolstoy, The Adventures of Buratino.
- Little Wolf: One of the characters Little ends up encountering on his way to Cunning College is a fox disguise salesman by the name of Mr Twister. As it turns out, he was a former colleague of Bigbad, the protagonist's uncle, and absolutely hates him. He stalks Little and Bigbad numerous times throughout the book, often in various disguises, and finally infiltrates Cunning College by disguising himself as a doctor, just so he can ambush Bigbad Wolf and try to find his secret pile of gold.
- Some versions of the The Odyssey have Circe saying that a fox would be a fitting animal for Odysseus, what with him being a Guile Hero. She says this because she's a sorceress who frequently does Forced Transformations.
- Daniel P. Mannix's The Fox and the Hound has the fox Tod constantly outsmarting the hunter pursuing him. He's not even anthropomorphic.
- Mr. Croup from Neverwhere is characterised extensively with fox-related imagery and is generally the more cunning of he and his associate, Mr. Vandemar, who's more oafish and is compared to a wolf or a hound in the same way.
- Lord Russel the fox in The Book of the Dun Cow is a chatty but well-meaning fellow who is, in an interesting case of Carnivore Confusion, a firm ally of the rooster hero, Chauntecleer.
- The crafty female tribute "Foxface" in The Hunger Games is described by Katniss as sly and elusive. Foxface demonstrated her cleverness by figuring out the path into the Careers' supply pyramid and reaching the bulk of supplies, takes an unnoticeable amount of food, and then runs back to the safety of the woods.
- Tom McCaughren's Run With the Wind and its five sequels (think Watership Down but with Irish foxes instead of British rabbits). All of them are depicted as being cleverer than any of the other animals but a few are crafty even for foxes, like Old Sage Brush, a blind Trickster Mentor or Hop-Along, who uses an eclipse to fool a hare into thinking he can leap high enough to take a bite of the moon.
- In Andre Norton's Catseye, two Uplifted Animals are foxes.
- In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli said that princes must be like this, as well as fight like lions.
A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about.
- In C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, the Greek slave bought as a tutor is called "the Fox" for it.
- Silas Fennec, villain, spy and Manipulative Bastard from The Scar by China Miéville.
- In Polish children's book Little Orphan Mary and the Gnomes by Maria Konopnicka, a fox is clever enough to trick a naive gnome scholar that he is also a great scholar because of the collection of goose feathers (allegedly quills) he has.
- The Spanish word for "fox" is Zorro. While better known for his swordsmanship, Zorro is just as cunning.
- The fox in The Plague Dogs helps the protagonists survive in the wild and avoid the humans chasing them. Without his help, they probably would have either starved or been caught.
- Dogs, wolves and foxes don't get along in Survivors. They're related enough to understand one another but they're too different to get along. Foxes are seen by dogs as "feral and wily and savage". Foxes are sneaky and some are malicious, such as the gray foxes that double-cross Bella in the first book and try to eat Moon's pups, but they're not inherently evil.
- Smirre the fox in The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. He only appears a few times in the book but becomes a recurring antagonist in the anime, constantly stalking the geese.
- Subverted in Stray (1987). Pufftail makes fun of this trope after narrowly escaping being killed by a fox. He considers foxes to be barely smarter than dogs and needlessly savage compared to cats.
- Agent Fox from The Bad Guys is a mysterious fox agent and member of the International League of Heroes, a secret organization of heroes that helps the main characters in situations. She's clever and brave, but it's hinted that she has a similar past to the main four as well. It was later revealed in "Superbad" that her parents were killed by hunters when she was a little girl, and the grief caused her to fall into a rebellious phase, until she met the other members of the International League of Heroes, bonded over their similar troubles, and then made a vow to become heroes.
- In the Amaranthine Saga, Foxes are noted as being among the trickster clans, and several characters warn Tsumiko about their devious natures. Argent is a silver fox and Guile Hero, and matches up against a pair of vixen who try to be devious but are outclassed by him.
- The protagonist of Hunter's Moon (1989) is a clever fox vixen named O-ha who lives in the English wilderness.
- In the children's book Hilda and Richie, the fox pup Richie plays this trope straight. After making a mess with bubble gum, he figures out a way to prevent any more messes in the future.
- The Sandman: The Dream Hunters: The kitsune is confident she can catch a baku to save her love because foxes are crafty creatures. She succeeds and later avenges him by elaborately seducing his enemy and causing his downfall.
Live-Action TV
- Crazy Like a Fox: Named after a variation of the trope, describes the lead Harry Fox, a crafty private eye with red hair.
- Criminal Minds: Serial Killer Karl Arnold's official nickname is "The Fox". Coincidentally, he is red-haired.
- "The Fox" is also the name of the episode he was in back in season one and he returns in a season five episode called "Outfoxed".
- Blackadder: Goes Forth gives us the page quote, in question to Baldrick's (final?) cunning plan.
- Becomes a brick joke at the end of Blackadder Back & Forth: Blackadder:
Baldrick, I have a very, very, very cunning plan.
Baldrick:
Is it as cunning as
a fox
what used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University but has since moved on, and is now working for the UN at the High Commission of International Cunning Planning?
Blackadder:
Yes, it is.
Baldrick:
(Impressed) Mmm!... That's cunning!
- One of the past lives of Clark Kent on Lois & Clark was as "The Fox," a Robin Hood/Zorro type hero. (Zorro is the Spanish word for "fox.")
- The Swamp Fox, a Disney mini-series that ran for eight episodes as part of the Walt Disney Presents series in 1959, featuring Leslie Nielsen before he was known for comedy as American Revolutionary War general Francis Marion, nicknamed "The Swamp Fox". Its theme song remarks: "Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, tail on his hat, Nobody knows where the Swamp Fox at; Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, hiding in the glen, He'll ride away to fight again."
- In real life, General Francis Marion was noted for his extensive use of guerrilla warfare and maneuver warfare which was considered unorthodox for its time, and was noted for quick surprise attacks against the British and equally quick withdrawal from the field. He also managed to elude the British forces by travelling along the South Carolina swamp paths.
- Don Diego de la Vega, better known as Zorro, who fought for justice back in the olden days when California was still a Spanish colony; as a Bilingual Bonus, "zorro" means "fox" in Spanish, which is even referenced by the theme song of the 1950's series: "Zorro, the fox so cunning and free..."
- Rosalee in Grimm is a fox-like Wesen and is very cunning.
- Ace Ukiyo, the titular Kamen Rider Geats, has a fox motif and frequently refers to himself as such. He's also a massive trickster, frequently manipulating everyone, friend or foe, to his own ends, such as by feeding Keiwa a false sob story to get him to give up the Boost Buckle. He often makes this clear by making a "fox ears" hand gesture. Despite this, he's still a good person deep down.
Music
- "The Fox" by Nickel Creek, is about a fox who steals a goose.
- "Raven" ('Foxwoman') by Hedningarma is the song of a wicked shape-shifting vixen who lures men to their deaths.
- "The Fox" by Steeleye Span is about an urban fox who can outwit the hunt, leading them into the town where it knows the terrain and they don't.
You can hound me, now you've found me,
But I'm far more cunning than you.
I'm a shy fox, I'm a sly fox,
And I'll teach you a lesson or two.
- CG5: Double subverted in "Let Me Through." Throughout the song, different versions of Foxy (A Hostile Animatronic fox) want to get into the security guard's room, presumably to kill him. The Foxys spend most of the song wandering aimlessly and attacking other animatronics, seemingly just to get them out of the way. However, Funtime Foxy eventually gets the idea to find the circuit breaker and turn off the power so he can get into the security room. Unlike the other Foxys, he succeeds.
Poetry
Radio
- In The Space Gypsy Adventures main characters Gemma and Damien Mildury are a brother-sister pair of anthropomorphized vulpine con artists.
Tabletop Games
- In Kitsune: Of Foxes and Fools the players are mystical foxes who compete with one another by playing tricks on foolish mortals. "Wits" is actually one of the key stats.
- Hanse Davion of BattleTech was known as The Fox during the days of his rule, and he proved more than deserving of the name; some of the setting's most brilliant plotting can be laid at his feet, not the least of which was laying the groundwork to unify two major realms and nearly conquer a third.
- In Dungeons & Dragons, the basic ability-boosting spells are all named after animals. The spell that grants a bonus to Intelligence is called fox's cunning.
- The Delver's Guide to Beast World: Vulpines get a bonus to Intelligence and a once-per-day Sherlock Scan ability. However, Varasta, the God of Chaos, Gambling, and Nature is commonly known as the "Idiot Dice Fox" because of his habit of manifesting a vulpine avatar and leaving the odds of the Beast World's survival in a casino bathroom where somebody might read it and destroy their mind.
- Pathfinder:
- Pipefoxes are a variation, in that they're clever and sneaky (the sneaky part being helped by the fact that they are very small creatures), but more scholarly than tricky.
- Pathfinder also has kitsune as a playable race, who fulfill the "quick-witted trickster" stereotype.
- Fading foxes are the result of centuries of selective breeding and judicious use of magic by Taldori nobles and their huntmasters to create increasingly challenging and exotic quarry, resulting in cunning, elusive, and agile creatures seemingly capable of bypassing any trap or barrier and eluding any pursuit. To the nobles, they're some of the finest quarries in the nation. Taldori peasants are considerably less thrilled; to them, the foxes are fiendishly cunning pests that can find their way into any henhouse, and they're legally prohibited from stopping the foxes since only nobles are allowed to hunt them.
- Crimestrikers, which is set on a World of Funny Animals called Creaturia, pits several clever foxes against each other. The Hero Diana Mastron is leader of the titular team, which also includes Genius Bruiser Hendrik Alquist. The Crimestrikers fight the international crime syndicate Outrage, which is led by Big Bad Vance Coffin; one of his main advisers is Diana's Archnemesis Dad, Walter Mastron.
Theatre
- The Cunning Little Vixen (Příhody lišky Bystroušky), best known as an opera by Leoš Janáček, tells the story of a vixen who is orphaned as a cub, captured by a forester, but eventually escapes, tricks a badger into leaving his hole and taking it for her own, finds and marries a handsome fox, and raises a family of cunning children.
- Referenced in The Taming of the Shrew when Gremio refers to himself as "an old Italian fox". Ironically, Gremio is a rather foolish character (being based on the Commedia dell'Arte character of the "pantaloon"), and at that point in the play, he's trying to talk down Tranio—a true trickster who's already thought circles around him.
Video Games
- Crazy Redd from Animal Crossing is a kitsune and a travelling salesman, pressuring customers to buy his "special deals" and selling famous artwork which is often fake. His deals are CRAAAAZY!!
- Renard Vulpes in Aviary Attorney is a very shady private investigator who takes up numerous names and guises. When the defense attorney that saved him from execution wants intelligence, he demands a hefty payment for every scrap of information, and when a much-disliked figure comes to him for his help in 'disappearing', Vulpes takes a ten thousand franc fee and gives him a very shoddy disguise and transparently false name. On the other hand, he's willing to help poor citizens quite extensively without mention of compensation, right down to needing said defense attorney.
- Balan Wonderworld: Subverted. Box Fox, a fox costume, has a wizard outfit, implying that it knows some powerful spells. As it turns out, its only ability is turning into an unmoving box, and it can't even control when this happens.
- In Everybody Edits Flash, the Flavor Text for the Fox describes it as sly.
- Vulpes Inculta (Latin for "Desert Fox") of Fallout: New Vegas is The Spymaster of Caesar's Legion.
- Foxy the Pirate Fox from Five Nights at Freddy's series is a villainous example, often having a trick up his sleeves that forces the player to watch out for him specifically.
- Inkulinati features humanoid foxes as some of the Beasts your Inkulinati can draw in battle. They're weaker than some other units that fill their roles in battle, but in keeping with the fox's stereotype as a trickster, they can steal ink from the enemy.
- Lonely Wolf Treat: Moxie at least tries to be the most proactive member of the fox gang, while her friends are all too lazy to put any significant effort into whatever scheme Moxie comes up with. When she runs into money troubles in the third game (appropriately titled Clever Fox Moxie), she manages to establish a small hotel business through sheer improvisation, and the fox gang is able to scrape by for a while. However, Moxie's friends soon become tired of running the hotel and decide to move out, forcing Moxie to close up shop due to lack of employees.
- Ōkami: Dark Lord Ninetails is an evil fox that spends more time on complex plots than most of the other villains.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon Red and Blue: Vulpix and Ninetales are kitsunes. Vulpix is known to feign injury to fool its foe and escape, while Ninetales is a vindictive and vengeful Pokémon said to curse those who touch its tails or otherwise cross it for 1000 years.
- Pokémon Black and White: Zorua and its evolution Zoroark are also based on Kitsune. The former is even called the Tricky Fox Pokémon. Both of them are able to cast illusions to disguise themselves, and are often depicted as infiltrating unseen into human society.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield: Nickit and Thievul are Dark-type Fox Pokémon with facial markings resembling domino masks — and a small black mustache in Thievul's case — who make their living by using stealth to steal the food and eggs of other Pokémon and use their brush-like tails to erase their tracks as they go. Their traditional rivals are the similarly stealthy felines Purrloin and Liepard, with whom they compete for territory, and the swift doglike Bolthund.
- Sly Cooper: Subverted with Carmelita Fox. She's a By-the-Book Cop all the way through, which probably explains why she's always getting outsmarted by Sly and his gang.
- Small Saga: It doesn't appear in the game itself, but Sir Leo got his reputation upon killing Ironfang, a fox that had been raiding a shrew settlement. The fox, as revealed in Needle Knight, had been allowing the shrews to live in one of its "many dens" and claiming tribute in the form of food as rent; when they ran out of provisions, it switched to eating the shrews. This was a great racket for it, and even "legal" given that even a Leonine Contract with a predator is generally held sancrosact by rodents.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Downplayed with Tails. Despite being a Child Prodigy with a knack for building gadgets, his otherwise humble personality prevents him from actually being cunning most of the time. The most notable exception however, is when he was able to hack into a computer using a sandwich pick with one of his tails in Sonic Lost World in order to prevent the Deadly Six from roboticizing him fully.
Web Animation
- No Evil: Kajortoq doesn't show it often, it would be beneath her, but she does have a Trickster streak as one jackalope salesman discovers when he tries to pull one over on her.
- Four Osratouna TV song videos feature a fox named Tha'loob who tries to be this but fails to fool anyone. In two of them ("In the house of the female squirrel" Part 1 and 2), he tries to get the squirrel kids to let him in by pretending to be various people but they figure out it's him because of his voice. In another ("Kukoo the farmer's rooster") he tries to convince the titular rooster to take a break claiming he'll fill in for him in order to get to the chickens but Kukoo figures out his intentions as well. Averted in the fourth video (Tha'loob the thief) where he just tries to break into the bird's house by breaking the door, prying the wood or breaking the window.
- Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination): Like his canonical counterpart, Foxy demonstrates to a certain extent, he played pranks on his friends without being seen, although he failed with Bonnie, he took advantage of tickling Bendy so that he died in Hide and Seek, among other feats where he demonstrates his intelligence.
Webcomics
- Gunnerkrigg Court features Reynard (The selfsame fox from folklore), who becomes the main character's companion. He's better known as Reynardine, the name given to him by Antimony's mother, Surma.
- Dusk from Faux Pas is the typical cunning vixen and also rather amoral. Cindy is much nicer but also clever. The guileless, naive Randy is an aversion.
- Kitsunefoxy in Gai-Gin is a Beast Man with fox tail and ears, and has a habit of telling elaborate lies about her supposed friends behind their backs.
- Hunter Ravenwood of Suicide for Hire doesn't seem particularly cunning at first glance, being something of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander (dancing around brandishing handguns on a public street, shooting the television on a regular basis, and telling random strangers he has "banged yer sister" being just a few of his eccentricities). However, he's deeply involved in highly illegal activities and has managed not to get caught yet, so evidently he has more street smarts than are obvious at first.
- In Strays the Affectionate Pickpocket is a Little Bit Beastly — fox form.
- Thistil Mistil Kistil Loki's first form.
- The embodiment of Greed in Jack is a fox, though he's so heavily mutilated that this is a bit hard to tell.
- The Story of Anima has Kit Vulpes, a fox beastkin who fights with his wits and agility.
- Alabaster: The Doomed Session 's Renart Azeban lives and breaths this trope.
- Housepets!: Karishad the fox is a trickster who is constantly pulling pranks and jokes that drive everyone around him nuts. After Keene falls for one of his tricks he decides to get Karishad to work for him and put him to good use. While the Great Kitsune is a divine being who acts as GM of the Cosmic Chess Game running in the background while being annoyingly helpful to the mortals caught up in it.
- Averted for Eastwood in Exterminatus Now, who could charitably be described as a lucky idiot who is only competent in dire situations or when the enemy is standing between him and his morning coffee. If a plan of his has more than two or three steps, and none of them contain the verbs "shoot" or "explode", it's time to make sure you've got the real Eastwood.
Web Original
- In the Dream SMP, Fundy (who is, essentially, a fox), is depicted as being clever and sly, especially in the first season, when he's always planning something to mess with the other members.
- SCP-953 is a very, very nasty nine-tailed Kumiho. She once slaughtered 27 people at a furry convention, and the first time a group of agents cornered her, she used Master of Illusion abilities and a Yamato Nadeshiko act to horribly murder all of them except the one Korean agent on the team; the rest assumed that she was a kitsune and fell for it badly. Yeah, she's smart. Really smart. In the most disgusting, horrifying way possible.
Web Videos
Western Animation
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