History Main / InventedIndividual

* PoulAnderson's short story ''Sam Hall'' details the effects of an Ernest on a repressive autocratic government during a rebellion (the Ernest created by a rebel sympathizer within the government). At one point several high-ranking Party officials are sacked due to their personal relationships with the eponymous Ernest.

* In ElliotSMaggin's {{Superman}} novels, ''LastSonOfKrypton'' and ''MiracleMonday'', LexLuthor has enough personas to populate an entire imaginary country. He only has to contribute a few of the reports on them -- after he's spread a couple of fanciful reports about his larger than life creations, people start imagining their own. Clark Kent is also treated as an Ernest -- in ''MiracleMonday'', [[spoiler:when C.W. Saturn reveals Clark Kent to be Superman in disguise, the other characters mourn his death]].

* The ''SherlockHolmes'' story "A Case of Identity" features one of literature's most vicious uses of an Ernest-type character. A young woman pleads with Holmes to find her bridegroom, who never showed at the church on their wedding day. Holmes, examining the situation, is disgusted to find that [[spoiler:the so-called bridegroom is actually the girl's stepfather, who disguised himself to woo his stepdaughter and extract a promise of fidelity from her. This was to keep her from marrying for real, so that he and the girl's mother -- ''who was in on the plan'' -- wouldn't lose their control over the money she inherited from her biological father. He made her promise to wait for the fake groom no matter how long it took, then made him "disappear." Holmes was so pissed off at the stepfather that [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome he chased him out of the apartment with a bull-whip]].]]
* ''{{Cryptonomicon}}'' has an operation clearly inspired by Operation Mincemeat (see real life section)

* ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' is named after the main character's invented identity.

* ''Film/{{Brazil}}'': The Tuttle/Buttle confusion that kicks off the stygian story. It is a ShoutOut to the ''[[{{MASH}} M* A* S* H]]'' episode, of all things.

** The characterisation is so accurate too, that the only difference between the protagonist's own ideas for the character and the individual the man at the opera house describes is the hairstyle.

* [[http://www.snopes.com/military/icecream.asp Johnny Klomberg.]] An icecream parlour offered free birthday icecream to local kids who registered their name, address and DOB. Two kids made up a fake friend with their own address. A few years pass, 'Johnny' turns eighteen and a reminder to sign up for the draft arrives. And it turns out the parlour hadn't given permission for its lists to be used, either. Whoops.

* In 1943 a ruse was conducted to trick the Germans into believing the invasion of southern Europe would start with Greece instead of Sicily. In [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat]], a homeless man's corpse was given the fictional identity of a Royal Marine named Major William Martin, his body was planted with fake documents detailing the planned invasion of Greece and he was dropped off near the Spanish coast. The Germans were completely taken in and redirected vital military units from Sicily to Greece, ensuring the success of the Sicilian Invasion. The subterfuge was extremely detailed; "Major Martin's" body was planted with fake letters from his 'fiancée' (one of the department secretaries contributed a photograph of herself) and 'Father', as well as facsimile concert stubs, restaurant receipts, an unpaid jeweller's invoice for an engagement ring, and other assorted pocket-clutter designed to tell a story of a slightly forgetful and occassionally careless man. This personality was concocted in order to provide an explanation of why the official document case was handcuffed to the body - which was necessary to ensure that body and case would wash up together, but not normal practice for military couriers. The story later became a book and a movie, under the name ''TheManWhoNeverWas''; more recently, a detailed investigative account was written by Ben [=MacIntyre=], which uncovered, among other things, the fact that someone had gone to the trouble of inserting a fake entry in an Inn's registration book, to make it appear that the equally fictional Father of "Martin" had been staying there during the period when one of the fake personal letters was written.

* Joan Pujol Garcia, to the British, agent Garbo, and to the Nazi's Arabel was a [[WorldWarII WWII]] spy, well, sorta. You see he never did any 'real' espionage. With the aid of his British handler Tomás Harris he did is he made up an almost entirely fictitious spy ring which had 27 fake individuals and the only real person in the ring was Joan. Joan tried to get hired by the british, 3 times in fact. This didn't work so he went to the Nazis to (supposedly) work for them and became agent Arabel. He then gave the Nazis useful but publicly available information there by gaining there trust, and while there were some mistakes, they weren't noticed. And then he successfully became a what is known as walk-in (basically someone who goes to a country, embassy or the like and asks to be a spy for them) for the British. Before he successfully joined the British, they thought his his information was legit (they intercepted at least some of it) and they launched a spy hunt. Anyways he joined the Brits and they [[FeedTheMole used him to feed the nazis information]], as he hoped. Sometimes they needed to give the legit information for trust reasons. This obviously this was handled with care, for example one of his imaginary spies 'sent him' useful information, but due to an 'unfortunate and entirely coincidental' mail mishap, it arrived to late for the Nazis to use it. Agent Arabel even got an iron cross, second class (which requires the Führer's personal authorization) for his contribution to the war effort, which would have been been bestowed upon him personally by the Hitler himself, if it wouldn't have blown his cover. One of his fictitious members was to well placed, so they killed him, and put his name in the obituary of a British newspaper. He told the nazis of the 'tragedy', who then proceeded to ''send the imaginary widow flowers''. Said imaginary spy was replaced his imaginary wife. His cover lasted so long that Hitler died not knowing his favored spy Agent Arabel, was a double agent, let alone never loyal from the start. You can read about this amazing tale including some of the fake spies several places, one of which is here https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/agent-garbo.html

* In RobertAHeinlein's ''TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'', the protagonists invent the persona of "Adam Selene" to run their revolution. "Adam" manages to turn up at all sorts of rallies, conventions, and even a few operas, and one person is even convinced that he once met him at an opera house. The Lunar Authority tries to track him down -- without success, naturally. He even gives a live, televised speech on one occasion. Of course, Adam Selene's true identity [[spoiler: happens to be Mike, the [[InstantAIJustAddWater sentient supercomputer]] who runs pretty much everything tied to the electronic grid in Luna City. He manages to be "present" in so many places by constantly monitoring the phone lines, and for his speech he created a digital avatar. In a further twist of irony, he's also the same supercomputer that the Authority's security branch relies on -- because only the main characters know he's sentient, no one else suspects a thing.]]

* In 1943 a ruse was conducted to trick the Germans into believing the invasion of southern Europe would start with Greece instead of Sicily. In [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat]], a homeless man's corpse was given the fictional identity of a Royal Marine named Major William Martin, his body was planted with fake documents detailing the planned invasion of Greece and he was dropped off near the Spanish coast. The Germans were completely taken in and redirected vital military units from Sicily to Greece, ensuring the success of the Sicilian Invasion. The subterfuge was extremely detailed; "Major Martin's" body was planted with fake letters from his 'fiancée' (one of the department secretaries contributed a photograph of herself) and 'Father', as well as facsimile concert stubs, restaurant receipts, an unpaid jeweller's invoice for an engagement ring, and other assorted pocket-clutter designed to tell a story of a slightly forgetful and occassionally careless man. This personality was concocted in order to provide an explanation of why the official document case was handcuffed to the body - which was necessary to ensure that body and case would wash up together, but not normal practice for military couriers. The story later became a book and a movie, under the name ''TheManWhoNeverWas''; more recently, a detailed investigative account was written by Ben [=MacIntyre=], which uncovered, among other things, the fact that someone had gone to the trouble of inserting a fake entry in an Inn's registration book, to make it appear that the equally fictional Father of "Martin" had been staying there during the period when one of the fake personal letters was written.

* In 1943 a ruse was conducted to trick the Germans into believing the invasion of southern Europe would start with Greece instead of Sicily. In [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat]], a homeless man's corpse was given the fictional identity of a Royal Marine named Major William Martin, his body was planted with fake documents detailing the planned invasion of Greece and he was dropped off near the Spanish coast. The Germans were completely taken in and redirected vital military units from Sicily to Greece, ensuring the success of the Sicilian Invasion. The subterfuge was extremely detailed; "Major Martin's" body was planted with fake letters from his 'fiancée' (one of the department secretaries contributed a photograph of herself) and 'Father', as well as facsimile concert stubs, restaurant receipts, an unpaid jeweller's invoice for an engagement ring, and other assorted pocket-clutter designed to tell a story of a slightly forgetful and occassionally careless man. This personality was concocted in order to provide an explanation of why the official document case was handcuffed to the body - which was necessary to ensure that body and case would wash up together, but not normal practice for military couriers. The story later became a book and a movie, under the name ''TheManWhoNeverWas''; more recently, a detailed investigative account was written by Ben [=MacIntyre=], which uncovered, among other things, the fact that someone had gone to the trouble of inserting a fake entry in an Inn's registration book, to make it appear that the equally fictional ''Father'' of "Martin" had been staying there during the period when one of the fake personal letters was written.

* In 1943 a ruse was conducted to trick the Germans into believing the invasion of southern Europe would start with Greece instead of Sicily. In Operation Mincemeat, a homeless man's corpse was given the fictional identity of a Royal Marine named Major William Martin, his body was planted with fake documents detailing the planned invasion of Greece and he was dropped off the coast of German-allied Spain. The Germans were completely taken in and redirected vital military units from Sicily to Greece, ensuring the success of the Sicilian Invasion. The subterfuge was so cunning that "Major Martin's" body was planted with fake letters from his 'fiancée' as well as facsimile concert stubs and restaurant receipts. The story later became a book and a movie, under the name ''TheManWhoNeverWas''.

* From ''{{Babylon 5}}'', the noted Centauri government minister Abrahamel Lincolni, who exists only in computer records and was created whole out of the cloth by Vir Cotto, was instrumental in setting up an underground railroad to ferry free Narn to safety after the Narn homeworld was conquered by the Centauri. When they find out about this scheme, all the human crewmembers on the Babylon station can't believe the Centauri actually fell for the ruse.

* ''NineteenEightyFour'': "Comrade Ogilvy" and, perhaps, Big Brother himself.

* In {{Robert A Heinlein}}'s ''TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'', the protagonists invent the persona of "Adam Selene" to run their revolution. "Adam" manages to turn up at all sorts of rallies, conventions, and even a few operas, and one person is even convinced that he once met him at an opera house. The Lunar Authority tries to track him down -- without success, naturally. He even gives a live, televised speech on one occasion. Of course, Adam Selene's true identity [[spoiler: happens to be Mike, the [[InstantAIJustAddWater sentient supercomputer]] who runs pretty much everything tied to the electronic grid in Luna City. He manages to be "present" in so many places by constantly monitoring the phone lines, and for his speech he created a digital avatar. In a further twist of irony, he's also the same supercomputer that the Authority's security branch relies on -- because only the main characters know he's sentient, no one else suspects a thing.]]

* From ''{{Babylon 5}}'', the noted Centauri government minister Abrahamel Lincolni, who exists only in computer records and was created whole out of the cloth by Vir Cotto, was instrumental in setting up an underground railroad to ferry free Narn to safety after the Narn homeworld was conquered by the Centauri. When they find out about this scheme, all the human crewmembers on the Babylon station can't believe the Centauri actually fell for the ruse.

A running gag is that many of the discussions about Todd could just as easily be religious debates.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Tate Nat Tate]], supposedly a famous artist who destroyed most of his work before killing himself, whose "biography" was written by William Boyd. In reality, Boyd seems to have just wanted to make fun of art critics. Only one editor at the book's launch party realized it was a hoax; he realized something was off when everyone ''except'' him claimed that yes, of course they were familiar with Tate and his work.

-->'''Dogbert:''' People want to believe that Todd exists, so anything you say in Todd's name they'll tend to buy. You see, you can play Todd but you can never play Dogbert. Where is your Todd now?! [[EvilLaugh Muahahahaha!]]

* In L. Sprague de Camp's story ''Wheels of If'' Allister Park, a New York lawyer from our world is transported into the body of his counterpart in an AlternateHistory world, a bishop named Ib Scoglund. He concocts a plan to get himself home and manipulates the political opposition by disguising himself and infiltrating them...under the name "[[SueDonym Allister Park]]". He finds the way to get home, [[spoiler:but decides he's enjoying a better life in this world, so adopts the Scoglund identity permanently and holds a funeral for "Allister Park"]].

* ''{{Brazil}}'': The Tuttle/Buttle confusion that kicks off the stygian story. It is a ShoutOut to the ''[[{{MASH}} M* A* S* H]]'' episode, of all things.

* In an episode of ''{{Community}}'', Jeff gets caught out having created a class (Conspiracy Theories in US History) and a teacher (Professor Professorson). Played straight, subverted, deconstructed, and, as this is ''Community'', [[spoiler:ending with a convoluted nested series of ploys to teach the characters a lesson.]]

See also SnowballLie, which is a superset of this trope. Supertrope of FakeTwinGambit. Compare TheRealRemingtonSteele. A PenName is a real life type of InventedIndividual. Contrast Unperson

* Joan Pujol Garcia, to the British, agent Garbo, and to the Nazi's Arabel was a [[WorldWarII WWII]] spy, well, sorta. You see he never did any 'real' espionage. What he did is he made up an almost entirely fictitious spy ring who's only real member was him, gave the nazis useful, but publicly available information there by gaining there trust. And then became a what is known as walk-in (basically someone who goes to a country, embassy or the like and asks to be a spy for them) for the British (he had to try 4 times, the 4th time he tricked the Brits). Before he successfully joined the British, they thought his his information was legit (they intercepted at least some of it) and they launched a spy hunt. Anyways he joined the Brits and they [[FeedTheMole used him to feed the nazis information]], as he hoped. Sometimes they needed to give the legit information for trust reasons. This obviously this was handled with care, for example one of his imaginary spies 'sent him' useful information, but due to an 'unfortunate and entirely coincidental' mail mishap, it arrived to late for the Nazis to use it. Agent Arabel even got an iron cross, second class (which requires the Führer's personal authorization) for his contribution to the war effort, which would have been been bestowed upon him personally by the Hitler himself, if it wouldn't have blown his cover. One of his fictitious members was to well placed, so they killed him, and put his name in the obituary of a British newspaper. He told the nazis of the 'tragedy', who then proceeded to ''send the imaginary widow flowers''. Said imaginary spy was replaced his imaginary wife. His cover lasted so long that Hitler died not knowing his favored spy Agent Arabel, was a double agent, let alone never loyal from the start. You can read about this amazing tale including some of the fake spies several places, one of which is here https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/agent-garbo.html

See also SnowballLie, which is a superset of this trope. Supertrope of FakeTwinGambit. Compare TheRealRemingtonSteele. A PenName is a real life type of InventedIndividual.

* Joan Pujol Garcia, to the british, agent Garbo, and to the Nazi's Arabel was a [[WorldWarII WWII]] spy, well, sorta. You see he never did any 'real' espionage. what he did is he made up an almost entirely fictitious spy ring who's only real member was him, gave the nazis useful, but publicly available information there by gaining there trust. and then became a walk in for the british (he had to try 4 times, the 4th time he tricked the brits). Before he successfully joined the british, they thought his his information was legit (they intercepted at least some of it) and they launched a spy hunt. anyways he joined the brits and they used him to feed the nazis information, as he hoped. sometimes they needed to give the information a cover story, for example one of his imaginary spies 'sent him' useful information, but due to an 'unfortunate and entirely coincidental' mail mishap, it sadly arrived to late for the nazis to use it. Agent Arabel even got an iron cross, second class (which requires the fuhrer's personal authorization) for his contribution to the war effort, which would have been been bestowed upon him personally by the fuhrer himself, if it wouldn't have blown his cover. One of his fictitious members was to well placed, so they killed him, and put his name in the obituary of a british newspaper. He told the nazis of the 'tragedy', who then proceeded to 'send the imaginary widow flowers'. Said imaginary spy was replaced his imaginary wife. His cover lasted so long that Hitler died not knowing his favored spy Agent Arabel, was a double agent, let alone never loyal from the start.

* A prank at Brown University several years ago played with this trope. A club dedicated to practical jokes (or something like that) picked a random freshman at the beginning of the year and began posting on school forums and message boards about how amazed and excited they were that he actually went to their school: "omg, can you believe it?", "I think I saw him in the lunchline!", "it's so cool, he goes here", etc, etc, etc. After only a month or two, practically everyone at the school knew the guy's name and face and that he was famous (though nobody was ever quite sure for what). The freshman target himself was probably the most confused by the whole thing until he finally ran into one of the perpetrators who explained what had been going on months later, but enjoyed the attention and minor acclaim for most of his time in college none-the-less.

** The characterisation is so accurate too, that the old difference between the protagonist's own ideas for the character, and the character the man at the opera house describes is the hairstyle.

* ''{{Brazil}}'': The Tuttle/Buttle confusion that kicks off the stygian story. It is a ShoutOut to the ''[[{{MASH}} M* A* S* H]]'' episode, of all things.

* On ''Series/{{Dilbert}}'', "Todd" is created by the employees to get an empty cubicle for storage. But when nobody at the company can locate him ("There is no Todd!"), Dilbert is sent to jail for his murder. Eventually, Todd is promoted above everyone, becomes a millionaire, and there's a law passed saying he can become a bigamist. ("That was a coup.")\\

* In one ''Anatole France'' story that had an imaginary friend blamed for childish misdeeds end up as the scapegoat for local crime including seducing and impregnating a maid.

* In 1943 a daring ruse under future James Bond writer, Ian Fleming was conducted to trick the Germans into believing the invasion of southern Europe would come from Greece instead of Sicily. In Operation Mincemeat, a homeless man's corpse was given the fictional identity of a Royal Marine named Major William Martin, his body was planted with fake documents detailing the planned invasion of Greece and he was dropped off the coast of German-allied Spain. The Germans were completely taken in and redirected vital military units from Sicily to Greece, ensuring the success of the Sicilian Invasion. The subterfuge was so cunning that "Major Martin's" body was planted with fake letters from his 'fiancée' as well as facsimile concert stubs and restaurant receipts. The story later became a book and a movie, under the name ''TheManWhoNeverWas''.

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* In the AlPacino film ''[[{{Ptitlefsqeat40}} S1m0ne]]'', Pacino played a bitter film director who created a beautiful fictional actress through an advanced computer/holographic technology. 'Simone' quickly became immensely popular, leaving her 'discoverer' behind in the dust and forcing him to kill her off... only to become a suspect in her disappearance and presumed murder.

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