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The fall guy

A fall guy, as you can imagine, is a guy that falls (dead) or becomes one of "the fallen" (fallen soldiers, for example, in the war in Iraq). The fall guy may drop dead, as Brando's character Vito Corleone actually does (drop dead in his back garden while playing with one of his grandchildren) in The Godfather.

This is the literal interpretation of The Fall Guy, the title of the Guardian article, which fits the bill perfectly that time - Brando got himself killed in almost all of him filming adventures.

But "fall guy" has other meanings. An American expression, a "fall guy" refers to "someone who is punished for someone else's crime or mistake:I knew what he had in mind. He'd kill Barak and set me up as the fall guy." Or "someone who is easily tricked or made to seem stupid" (Longman).

In other words, a fall guy is what we often call the "scapegoat": "someone who is blamed for something bad that happens, even if it is not their fault:He claimed he had been made a scapegoat for the administration's failures." (Longman).

In real life for example, Lewis Libby, former chief of staff for US Vice-President Dick Cheney, might have done exactly that. He could have, quoting Longman, "claimed he had been made a scapegoat for the administration's failures" (to find more justifiable reasons for going to war with Iraq). Libby, the star of the notorious CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) leak case, was found guilty of lying to investigators and was sentenced in March to two and a half years in prison. Earlier this month, however, President Bush commuted Libby's prison term, meaning he would not have to do time - spend any time behind bars.