10 Masked wrestlers who weren't fooling anyone

#6 Giant Machine

Giant Machine was so popular he spawned an entire stable.

Stop me if you've heard this before...

Andre the Giant was suspended by the WWE for missing a tag team match, and didn't appear on television (in reality Andre was filming movies and touring Japan, while taking a break from the WWE's road schedule to heal.) A few months later, and a masked wrestler who also happened to be seven foot four inches tall started lumbering onto the scene.

Fans, of course, knew it was really Andre under the mask. Bobby Heenan nearly had a weekly conniption because he couldn't prove it was Andre the Giant under Giant Machine's mask. The gimmick was so over with the fans it went on for much longer than anticipated, with Andre adding other obvious maskers such as Piper Machine and Hulk Machine--Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan, of course.

As you can see, it's a trope that wrestling keeps re-visiting, perhaps because it is so successful when deployed.