Help me think of a good magic trick for my character to do. I don't want it to be a card trick or anything too common. The setting is a car garage kind of place where illegal activity takes place. I want it to be a good trick. I don't think I need to explain how it works so that's not too important. Looking forward to hearing your ideas. Thanks.
Pretty much every trick in the book that isn't a card trick is done through secret compartments and duplicate items. There's a million and one tricks where someone puts an item in a box, opens it, revealing it disappeared (hidden in a secret compartment), then revealing it's back in their hand (a duplicate of what disappeared), then closes the box and it's back (out of the secret compartment). Aside from that, most slight-of-hand tricks involve distracting the viewers by showing something more interesting than what they intend to hide, or distract the viewer by asking or revealing useless information to lure them into an incorrect conclusion from what they expect the trick to entail. Knowing that, you can look up magic tricks on YouTube or something and instinctively know how they work.
You can do something along the lines of what Michael Carbonaro does. Half time what he's doing is vanishing something and replacing it with something else, but it's in context with the area that he's in. For example, while working at a health food store he "made" a mouse into a rat when sticking the mouse in a container with a homemade "protein powder". He's also done simpler tricks such as making something disappear and reappear in a different area (a watch appearing in a pocket that was previously empty). I'd probably look through some of his videos to see if there's anything usable in the context you're looking for.
What does the topic title have to do with the actual topic of this thread? Other than including the word 'magic'? Is the intent to ask, what sort of magic trick it would take to get us to believe in the supernatural?