False Flag Operation / Video Games

False Flag Operations seen in Video Games.

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• Ace Combat does this a few times:
  • In Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, the mission "Blind Spot" has the mysterious 8492nd Squadron commit a terrorist attack on a civilian university while the player's squadron is nearby. The player's squadron is framed for this, but is eventually cleared after repelling a retaliatory attack.
    • Eventually, it's revealed that the entire Circum-Pacific War is a false-flag, having been started by Belkans attempting to destroy Osea and Yuktobania as revenge for the two nations defeating them in a war fifteen years prior.
  • In Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown's mission "Faceless Soldier", a group of F/A-18Fs with Osean markings and allied IFF unexpectedly arrives midway through the mission. They're actually Erusean drones that immediately engage the player's squadron; however, due to them having allied IFF, they can't be targeted and blend in with allies, and the player must evade their attacks until the squadron's AWACS can mark them as enemies.
    • In Ace Combat 7's DLC missions, namely "Unexpected Visitor" and "Anchorhead Raid", Rage and Scream's Su-47s have Osean markings, despite them being enemies that attack the player seemingly out of nowhere and for no reason. They were actually hired by Brigadier-General Howard Clemens, the operation's commander, in an attempt to assassinate the player to "prove" to Osean high command that the military didn't need experienced aces.
• Sturm's plan in Advance Wars was to incite a war between various countries with clones of their commanders so that he could sweep in when each faction was at its weakest and attack. He gets found out at the last minute by Sonja, who notices that Orange Star forces (led by Andy) were attacking Green Earth at the same time the real Andy was attacking Blue Moon.
• Alpha Protocol has the Halbech corporation setting up one of these to trigger increased tensions between Taiwan and China, in order to sell weapons to both sides. The plan is to have an assassin kill the pro-independence Taiwanese president during an independence rally, thus turning him into a martyr for the independence movement, while at the same time having agitators in the crowds incite violence and riots, in order to push the island further toward favoring independence and thus toward conflict. Oh, and you can only stop one of these plans.
  • Likewise in Rome; the VCI are hired to set off a "terrorist" attack, in order to influence an upcoming vote on terror and terror protection device system things. Beyond that, of course, the evil plot is a False Flag Operation writ large; Halbech wants to keep the world angry and scared so they'll continue buying Halbech systems; The China/Taiwan war will make a huge market for weapons, as will the continued hunt for terrorists in the Middle East following the airliner incident that kicks everything off, and the Italian paranoia over terrorists will provide an endless market for terrorist-stopping systems.
• Midway through Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis, Orm uses stolen Atlantean subs to attack the Fire Trolls and make them move on Atlantis.
• In the climax of the Black Gauntlet campaign for the Private Military Company DLC for ARMA II the final mission ends up in this. The team discovers that the Takistani nuclears arms program was supported by China, the executives of Ion and western nations tell the team to disguise themselves as Insurgents and ambush the UN inspectors before they can publish the evidence so it won't cause chaos in the international market.
• In Harebrained Schemes' Battletech, the Perdition Massacre is revealed to be a false flag operation near the end of the game. Director Espinosa orchestrated a terror attack that killed thousands of Taurians, knowing that The Federated Suns would be the first and most likely suspect in any such act, before using a promise of a secure border (and a cache of Lost Technology) to goad the Taurians into an alliance. Discovering the true story instantly changes the fortunes of the war as the tricked party immediately withdraws from the Civil War. Upon winning, Kamea has Espinosa shipped to the Taurians, knowing they will try him for war crimes and execute him.
• Call of Duty:
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has Vladimir Makarov's massacre at a Russian airport during the level "No Russian". He and his team brandish American weapons, speak English the whole time, and leave behind the body of a CIA agent who was undercover in their ranks to pin the attack on the United States and provoke a Russian invasion of the country. This is later proved to be a Subversion or a Double False Flag because General Shepherd was behind the massacre the whole time, and wanted to use the resulting invasion to rekindle the country's patriotic fervor after the events of the previous game.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops has Lev Kravchenko conducting Nova 6 experiments that double as these. Using American-made cargo planes and the corpses of US servicemen, he makes it appear that all the horrific things being done to the Vietnamese and Laotians are of American doing, rather than Soviet.
• Command & Conquer occasionally does this with Nod campaigns. In Tiberian Dawn they steal GDI aircraft and bomb civilian targets to discredit GDI. In Tiberian Sun, the Brotherhood uses stolen GDI units against the mutant faction in order to win their trust. In the Kane's Wrath expansion to Tiberium Wars, Alexa Kovacs runs a double false flag - first she disguises her army as troops loyal to Kilian Qatar, then she has them assist GDI in attacking Temple Prime (thus framing Qatar as a GDI mole).
• Deus Ex had two (or more) examples of this trope.
  • The Statue of Liberty is reported to have been destroyed (beheaded) by terrorist groups. It is later suggested, and given the context of all you discover, very likely, that the government itself destroyed the Statue of Liberty to raise outrage against "terrorists."
  • The national pandemic "Grey Death" is revealed to be a corporate creation to reap massive profits off a vaccine, weed out the "undesirable" (poor) population, and ensure complete complicity from the population (even, in some cases, the government.)
• Dragon Age II has one in which Sister Petrice murders the Viscount's son and makes it look as though Qunari had murdered him on holy ground while he was praying in an attempt to start a war with the Qunari, whom she regards as blasphemous heathens.
  • In the first game, Dragon Age: Origins, Loghain intentionally throws the Battle of Ostagar by having his own troops retreat, resulting in a huge massacre. With hardly any survivors, no one is left to dispute Loghain's distorted tale of what really happened. Not only does this weaken the Grey Wardens' authority in Ferelden by shifting the blame to them, the battle also kills his son-in-law King Cailan, nearly making him the de facto ruler of the whole country (second only to his own daughter, the queen).
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: At the end of Chapter 2, Morgalia blows up Vulcanite's mine and power plan, all so Zetacorp can frame Akira for it and stop their resistance movement from gaining popular support.
• Used in a quest in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in which you have to murder the heads of two families and plant evidence on their bodies to implicate a member of the other family as the murderer. Why? Because the quest giver loves strife and wants to see the two families at war for their amusement.
• Endless Legend's Roving Clans specialize in false flag operations. Because they cannot declare war (it's bad for business), they can instead hire mercenaries to fight for them, and a research item will make the mercenary's allegiance hidden to other players. Other factions can also hire mercenaries and hide their allegiance, but the Roving Clans are by far the best at it due to their mercenaries having twice the health, faster movement, immediate access to the market, and earlier access to false-flag research. Players can infiltrate territory of two neutral powers and attack one to entice it to declare war on the other.
• In EndWar, a new World War erupts when the European Federation, leery of the United States achieving clear military dominance through completion of a militarized space station, fund terrorist attacks on them and when that fails, they use their anti-ballistic-missile Kill Sat to shoot down the Freedom IV shuttle headed up to complete the station. Actually, the terrorists were funded by Russia, who was leery of being the world's largest supplier of oil once several other nations have hit Hubbert's Peak, and wanted the US to declare war on Europe so they could "aid their allies" in making Europe go away before the United States and Europe would turn Russia into Iraq II for their oil. As false flag operations go, this one is subverted; the plan goes off without a hitch... until the United States wigs right out when Russia starts making gains in the conflict and declares war on them, too.
• Final Fantasy VII:
  • The AVALANCHE crew blows up the Sector 1 Reactor to prevent the mako extraction from damaging the planet, causing considerable life and property damage. A throwaway line later from Jessie implies that that wasn't the original plan, and that she may have made a miscalculation when following the bomb recipe, a hint that all may not necessarily be as it seemed. Final Fantasy VII Remake confirms that Jessie's original bomb did just enough damage to disable the reactor, but Shinra used the attack as an opportunity to cover for their own plan of destroying the reactor entirely and blaming it on AVALANCHE, making it a false flag on their part.
  • The same applies when Shinra later blows up the sector 7 pillar, dropping the upper plate onto the slums, killing thousands, and pinning it on AVALANCHE. In the remake, they step up their propaganda game by posing as troops trying to prevent AVALANCHE from blowing it up.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics, Dycedarg Beoulve and Duke Larg conspire to have Princess Ovelia kidnapped (and subsequently assassinated) by agents wearing the colors of Larg's rival, Duke Goltanna. This would remove Goltanna as a rival to the crown and allow Larg to enthrone his own candidate, Prince Orinus. However, the captain of the operation, a sellsword named Delita, is actually a Double Agent working in Goltanna's favor, and instead has Larg's agents die to Ovelia's bodyguards as he rescues the princess himself and delivers her to the Church.
• Final Fantasy XII begins with this as Gabranth poses as Basch and assassinates King Raminas, preventing him from signing Dalmasca's formal surrender to Archadia, giving Vayne Solidor the pretext to move in and serve as regent to clamp down on the resulting unrest. In a twist of fate, Basch permanently poses as Gabranth at the end.
  • This happens again near the end. Vaan uses Balthier's vocal modulator to pose as Larsa Solidor to convince Marquis Ondore to hold back his airship charge against the Sky Fortress Bahamut so they can board it and have a shot at taking out Vayne and the Mist Cannon before it destroys Ondore's fleet and drops the rubble on Rabanastre.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Twice, leading up to and into the Stormblood expansion.
  • In the 3.5 patch "The Far Edge of Fate", this is the Griffin's, alias Illberd, plan: gathering many of his fellow Ala Mhigans, they don outfits of the Grand Companies and assault Balshir's Wall, the border between Gridania and Ala Mhigo, forcing the Eorzean Alliance into war with Garlemald. In turn, some of his own men would dress as Imperials and help them slaughter their own allies, their grief, rage and desire being used by Illberd to fuel a Primal potentially stronger than Bahamut.
  • In Stormblood proper, the Eorzean Alliance and the Ala Mhigan Resistance pull off this plan: still without manpower, they decided to make a push towards a Castrum and use a glamour prism to make a flag take the form of the Eorzean Alliance, making it seem it was captured. The plan works and Imperial soldiers quickly fall back in a panic.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses has a couple of examples, one in the present and one in the backstory.
  • In Shamir and Alois's paralogue, pirates dress up as Almyrans in an attempt to deflect the wrath of the Leicester Alliance after attacking their capital. Claude, if he's deployed by the player, calls them out as being absolutely terrible at it.
  • Before the game's story, this is the truth of the Tragedy of Duscur, as revealed in Three Hopes. A conspiracy of Faerghus nobles killed the former king during a diplomatic mission and covered it up by blaming Duscur, ultimately resulting in the deaths of thousands and displacing the survivors.
• The Grand Theft Auto series is extremely fond of this trope. It starts in the second game when the Rednecks have the player use a Zaibatsu car to run down members of the Scientist gang, then vice versa.
  • In Grand Theft Auto III, corrupt businessman Donald Love wants to create a gang war that will lower real estate values across Liberty City. So, he hires your "services" to assassinate Kenji, one of the heads of the Yakuza in Staunton Island, while in the guise of a Colombian hitman. And you can do this while you're in Kenji and his sister Asuka's employ. In fact, Asuka, the ruthlessly intelligent and absolutely terrifying Yakuza mastermind, goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Colombians, and yet she never finds out who really killed her brother.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Love is shown to have learned the trick from his mentor, corrupt property developer and real estate mogul Avery Carrington, who starts a gang war between the Cuban and Haitian factions in Vice City by hiring Tommy to dress up as a member of the Cuban gang and shoot-up a Haitian gang member's funeral.
  • Gerald McReary's initial mission chain in Grand Theft Auto IV has him sending Niko to wreak havoc on the Ancelotti crime family and make it look like the Albanian mob (whom the Ancelotti's use as rented muscle) is responsible, in order to create a rift between the two mobs and make the Ancelotti's look weak before The Commission.
  • Grand Theft Auto V has foiling a plot like this as part of the storyline instead of committing it: the main protagonists are recruited by the FIB to stop the IAA from unleashing a deadly gas on a populated area and blaming it on terrorists to get gain more government funding. However, from the FIB's perspective, this is not done for moral reasons: they want to stop the IAA from getting funding over their own agency.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Online's "Lowriders" update begins with Lamar sending out two teams of players, one disguised as members of the Ballas, the other disguised as Vagos, to shoot up members of the opposite gang in an attempt to stir up a war between the two gangs. Unfortunately for Lamar, it isn't 1993 anymore, so rather than rolling out guns blazing, both gangs' first reaction to these sudden, unprovoked attacks is to reach out to each other and arrange a sit-down to try and sort out what the hell is going on. Lamar is then forced to scrap his half-baked plan and send both teams to bust up the Ballas-Vagos meet-up before they can figure out that he (and by association, the Families) was involved.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • During the Charr Ash Legion storyline, you have to fight a plot of the Flame Legion to attack Blood and Iron Legion leaders while wearing Iron and Blood Legion uniforms respectively.
  • There's also an event where players disguise themselves as Separatists to sabotage a Flame Legion camp, and vice-versa. Since both factions want to overthrow the current Charr leadership for their own reasons (the Separatists want all Charr dead, and the Flame Legion want to reinstall their Corrupt Church), it's better to have them weaken each other than have the Legions face two enemies at once on top of their recurring ghost problem.
  • Season 3 reveals that Minister Caudecus arranged the assassination of Modniir Ulgoth's family and planted evidence to lay the blame on the Seraphs and Queen Jennah. Caudecus then manipulated Ulgoth into becoming an ally against Jennah.
• Haegemonia: Legions of Iron: The intro has tension building up between Earth and its Solar System colonies. A peace summit is set on the Moon. Then unknown high-tech fighters attack and destroy the Martian ambassador's shuttle. Naturally, the colonists blame Earth, and war erupts, making up the first act of the single-player campaign. While some believe it was Earth, it doesn't make sense for the government to do that. On the other hand, it's possible a General Ripper in charge of a shadow organization did that deliberately. Especially since those fighters never appear in the game itself and anything either Earth or the colonists have is inferior.
• Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue: In the ending, Spiderweb plans on staging a false flap operation to justify a war against the two remaining human countries. She drops this plan when a messenger of the Light Spirit religion declares war on her anyways, giving her the justification she needs.
• Hitman (2016): The third mission has General Reza Zaydan planning to escalate the current unrest in Morocco by having some of his soldiers disguise themselves as members of a terrorist organization called Crystal Dawn and attack protestors outside the Swedish consulate in Marrakesh, then use the resulting turmoil to justify his Military Coup. Fortunately, 47 kills him and his co-conspirator Claus Hugo Strandberg before the attack can happen.
• Ketsui: The four protagonists, all pilots hand-picked by the United Nations, fly EVAC prototype helicopters with EVAC callsigns and pretend to be employees of the war-stimulating MegaCorp in order to successfully infiltrate the company, pose as rebellious employees of the company, and destroy them.
• Across the Trails Series, there's talk of the Hundred Days War, where the Erebonian Empire invaded the Southern Kingdom of Liberl and very nearly took it over in response to the genocide of a small village named Hamel on the Erebonian border. What the general public do not know is the massacre of Hamel was perpetrated by an Erebonian noble as a way to build up his name in response to the rise of non-nobles through the military ranks. A mercenary group hired by Erebonian nobility and dressed as Liberlian military slaughtered everyone in Hamel save for three people, which gave the Erebonian military an excuse to invade Liberl. After Liberl beat back the invaders, they signed a peace treaty with any mention of the goings-on at Hamel strictly forbidden on charges of treason and pain of death.
  • One happens during Trails to Azure when the jaeger corps Red Constellation attacks the city of Crossbell. Earlier in the game, the group was hired by Chancellor Osborne to serve as his personal security, so when the group attacks Crossbell, people are quick to assume that they were once again hired by Erebonia and are trying to destabilize Crossbell. In reality, it was Dieter Crois, Crossbell's mayor, who hired Red Constellation to attack Crossbell, expecting the public to blame Osborne so he could convince the public to support his political agenda of turning Crossbell into an independent nation.
  • Unfortunately, the Hamel tragedy repeats itself on a much bigger scale in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III where a third survivor of the Hamel Incident ends up shooting the emperor with a gun made in Calvard for revenge. Except said survivor is afflicted with a curse in Erebonia, the same curse that started the Hamel Incident in the first place.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: Jaal's Loyalty Mission has the Roekaar trying to bomb the Forge, a site of historical significance to the angaran people, and blame it on the Initiative.
• Max Payne 3: The Crachá Preto use gang-style executions in order to create the impression that the Gang Banger problem is worse than it actually is, and thus encourage people to hire their services.
• In MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, the sequel to the original Mechwarrior 2, the player takes the role of a Ghost Bear Mechwarrior and fights their canonical Inner Sphere enemy, the Draconis Combine, whose 'Mechs are responsible for a raid on a Ghost Bear genetics facility. Naturally, the Bears attack the Combine, but in this case, it actually is Draconis 'Mechs that were first captured by the Smoke Jaguars, which in turn leads you to fight the Jaguars, only for the Jaguars to admit they lost the 'Mechs to Clan Wolf's Crusader elements, finally leading you to the real culprits. That's a double false flag op, first discrediting the Combine, then the Jaguars.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: Dead Cell were essentially method actors employed by the Patriots and the US Government, staging impromptu terrorist attacks in order to better prepare a VR-trained US army for war. Eventually, they were so good at it that they went rogue.
  • The entire plant mission is revealed to be a thought experiment performed on Raiden, Solid Snake's heir apparent, based on the Shadow Moses incident. An isolated facility, full of hostages, is under siege by terrorists holding the plant for ransom. Even the architectural layout is based on Shadow Moses island, with identical hallways and elevators. The player will naturally dismiss this as a conceit of being a MGS1 sequel. Later, Ocelot openly trolls the gamer during a speech. ("Did you think it was ALL a coincidence?")
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker: Hot Coldman thinks that causing a nuclear war would scare other nations into submission. When he ends up fatally wounded in the finale, he types in a final command to Peace Walker to send out a false signal that nuclear warheads were launched and Snake can't convince the U.S Military otherwise when they see it on their radars. It's only due to Peace Walker suddenly moving on its own (implied to be the spirit of The Boss herself) and drowning itself in the ocean to disrupt the signal that the situation is averted.
• Midnight Fight Express: In Level 24, "Airport," the corrupt SWAT team wants to allow the Russian Mafia onto the plane to carry out Mission Kilitary. Their orders are to kill some of them, but let most of them go so that the outside world will think it was the Russians' own idea to hijack the plane. Their primary goal, however, is to kill Babyface.
• In New Horizons, a very crucial part of gameplay, mainly used to prevent getting annihilated by the next patrol, and to infiltrate enemy ports - or sneaking up to unsuspecting targets, before hissing the pirate flag and unleashing multiple dozens of barrels of hell. Just like real pirates did.
• Rave Heart: An Erran traitor bribed by Prince Eryn uses a psi-bomb to frame the Erran King Arcturo for attempting to kill humans and Draconians at the wedding. As a result, Arcturo is arrested and placed on trial while the rest of the galaxy believes the Errans are trying to conquer them. This is all part of Count Estuuban Vorakia's plan to remove the highest authority in the galaxy of Xerxes so he can slowly claim power for himself.
• Rise of the Third Power: In Tarindor, the Arkadyans secretly build a harbor full of ships that fly the Tariq flag. They plan on attacking Cirinthia with these ships in order to frame Tariq and turn the two countries against each other.
• Saints Row:
  • The first game has a mission where you and Johnny Gat try to break the tentative alliance between the Vice Kings gang and the Stilwater Police Department by dressing up in VK outfits, hijacking a VK car and wreaking havoc.
  • In The Third, Killbane and his Luchadores destroy Hughes Bridge in Stilwater, and later tries to frame the Saints for it.
    • In the game's climax, Kia attempts to destroy the Magarac Island statue in an attempt to frame the Saints as terrorists. It backfires, causing STAG to be evicted from Steelport for trying to destroy a national landmark.
• In Samurai Warriors 4-II, the final stage of Matsunaga Hisahide's story portrays the Honnōji Incident as this: having previously faked his own death, Hisahide marches on Honnōji with his army flying the Akechi clan's banners in order to assassinate Nobunaga while framing Mitsuhide as a traitor.
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the Spiritual Successor to Civilization, your Probe Teams can perform various acts of terrorism at your opponents - and with an additional expenditure in Energy Credits, and a somewhat higher risk of failure, blame it on another faction at the same time. Takes a lot of guts and funding, but can truly work wonders.
  • This is also an option for very successful spy missions in Master of Orion'.
    • Or just about any spy mission if you're the Darloks.
    • And in Birth of the Federation. After a successful espionage/sabotage op, you can either leave no trace, or plant evidence incriminating another faction. It's a lot easier for the Cardassians and Romulans to do this than the Federation though.
• Sniper Elite:
  • Sniper Elite V2 has Dr. Wolff's Evil Plan to prove his loyalty to the Soviets. He supervises the launch of a tabun-loaded V2 rocket at London. To cover-up the whole incident, the Soviets will promptly blame the launch on the Wehrmacht.
  • In the Deathstorm 3: Obliteration Downloadable Content mission of Sniper Elite 4, an optional objective has Karl Fairburne discover an armory's worth of captured Allied tanks and weapons intended for such as purpose, with German documents even calling the operation "False Flag".
• Star Shift Series: The Earth Systems Alliance is fond of framing their enemies for their own atrocities in order to maintain public support. In Origins, they framed Novus Federation for releasing deadly gas on Raxion II, who then framed it on Captain Carol Everson. In Rebellion, they intend to hold a conference among several galactic leaders so they can stage attacks on the attending nations and frame the Outer Rim Coalition, leading to the attending representatives handing over their command codes.
• Star Trek Online:
  • This is the reason the Undine began their campaign against the Alpha and Beta Quadrants: the Iconians had been launching ships resembling Federation and Klingon ships to attack Fluidic Space, pissing the creatures off and causing them to strike back.
  • In the mission "All That Glitters...", it turns out the ship that you first race in to check on with the help of The Doctor, claimed to have a bad but easily curable disease, was actually abandoned and was part of a plan by Gaul to try to get the Alpha Quadrant Alliance to side with him. The Doctor is quite pissed off at such a cowardly tactic.
• Happens often in the Suikoden games.
  • There's the infamous Kalekka Incident, mentioned a few times in the first Suikoden, in which Scarlet Moon soldiers slaughtered the entire town of civilians, while claiming it was actually Jowston soldiers that had done the horrible deed, in order to rouse support for the coming war among the anti-war citizens of the empire.
  • Early on in Suikoden II, the hero's army of about seven defend their castle from a major arm of the Highland Army, while the nebbishy Yamamoto slips between enemy platoons and plants false information. The immediate result of this false flagging Within one turn-of-play, THE ENTIRE ARMY outside of the main general's platoon- themselves- switch their flags before the player's eyes. The turncoats were actually conscripted soldiers that fought because they had no other choice, since the majority of the City-States have been taken over at that point. Only when they have a chance to win, basically, a hope, do they actually revert to their previous allegiance.
  • Another example in the same game, is the massacre of the Youth Brigade in the beginning. Prince Luca Blight, in order to justify starting a war with the enemy, betrays and slaughters his own Youth Brigade, for the sake of propaganda.
  • According to the Backstory of Suikoden IV and Suikoden Tactics, Scarlet Moon did this before, trying to spark a war with the Kooluk Empire. Unfortunately for them, they weren't aware that a little boy in the town they attacked had the Rune of Punishment, which he used to destroy them all before the Rune ate his soul and jumped to another host. That boy also happened to be the son of one Graham Cray; the empire then blamed him for the incident, causing his Start of Darkness, defection to Kooluk, and setting him up as the Big Bad of IV. So they had a history of pulling this sort of stunt, and having it blow up in their faces.
  • In Suikoden V, the whole story behind Lordlake and the riots before the game started was that Salum Barrows used the riot to incite more violence and storm the castle. During the confusion, Salum had the Dawn Rune stolen.
• Happens a lot in Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  • Multiple sidequests for Imperial players involve carrying out one.
  • The events of Chapter 1 of the Imperial Agent storyline are revealed to be a massive one. After a terrorist attack destroys an Imperial dreadnought and kills Darth Jadus (the member of the Sith council in charge of your agency, no less), the Player Character is tasked with dismantling a network of what they're led to believe are Republic-backed insurgents, except when they track them down to the source, the player finds themselves on the very dreadnought that was "destroyed", and quickly find out that the terrorists' leader is none other than Darth Jadus himself! Jadus' ultimate plan was to use devastating terror attacks to sow fear across the Empire, as part of his goal of spreading the Sith teachings across every level of Imperial society. Faced with this revelation, the player can choose to either stop Jadus' operation in its tracks, or join him, becoming the "Hand of Jadus", his top enforcer.
  • Later on in the Imperial Agent storyline, the Ancient Conspiracy trying to destroy both The Republic and The Empire massacres an entire mining colony and frames the Sith Empire in order to accelerate further conflict between the two.
• In Tactics Ogre, this is done at the end of chapter 1, by your own side. Whether or not you participate affects the rest of the game.
• In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, this trope is the Vanguard's standard operating procedure. They attack Palmacosta and later Luin, killing dozens while pretending to be Martel Knights who are working to suppress the Vanguard - thus driving recruitment to their cause. It helps that they also have a Master of Disguise in their employ. Tellingly, it is later revealed that Magnar, apparently the Commandant of the Martel Knights, was actually working for the Vanguard the whole time.
• Grand Maestro Mohs from Tales of the Abyss attempts to do this to restart the war between Malkuth and Kimlasca, using replicas for suicidal bombings, but the attempt is so shabby and poorly thought out that no one is fooled for even a second.
  • No one among the main characters, that is. But the average citizens don't know any better. Even if the tactic failed its main goal, it still led to panic and confusion.
• Clu pulls off a pretty epic one in TRON: Evolution, the video game tie-in to TRON: Legacy, in order to justify the Purging of the ISOs: he forcibly rewrites one of the ISO leaders, Jalen, into a deadly, sentient virus called Abraxas, unleashes him on the Grid, and then turns around and implies to the Basic Program population that all ISOs have this potential, thereby gaining their support for the total elimination of the "simmering ISO menace".
• In Tropico: Pirate Isle, you can order your ships to sail under false colors when raiding, in order to foster a war between two nations.
• You can pull this yourself, if you want to, in Uplink. When performing a high-profile hack, you can wipe the records incriminating yourself clean. Or, for added giggles, you can alter them and get some poor sap arrested.
• One quest in World of Warcraft on the Horde side involves setting the Scarlet Crusade (even more) against The Scourge by burning down their camp and planting a literal false flag.
  • There are a couple of other examples from that game, too. Often, you end up having to gather the flags yourself. Also, a short example from Warcraft III: in the expansion Undead campaign, a couple of banshees body-jack a group of guards in order to get close to Arthas, who is in for some serious hurt from the banshees' leader. They pull it again against a different foe's mooks to get into a fortified city.
  • Occurs again in The Burning Crusade during the Nagrand questline that puts you in service to Lantresor of the Blade. In order to stop the Boulderfist Ogres from attacking Telaar (Alliance) or to gain a powerful Ogre ally (Horde), the player needs to stop the two enemies of the Boulderfist Clan — the Laughing Skull Clan and the Warmaul Clan — from attacking. Obviously, Lantresor of the Blade suggests that you use flags and corpses to create the appearance of a battle between the two. It works.
  • In The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm, some orc members of the Twilight Hammer cult attack a meeting of druids and kill all the night elves present while pretending that Garrosh ordered the massacre. Cairne is outraged at Garrosh's apparent responsibility for the attack and challenges him to a duel for leadership of the Horde.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Attempted by Torna, where they commandeer a Mor Ardain superweapon in neutral territory and unleash it on Urayan forces with massive causalities. Despite the heroes managing to disable the weapon without triggering its self-destruct function, given the already-existing tension between the two nations, Uraya immediately gears up for a counterattack, and Mor Ardain, having no way to convince Uraya that they're not behind the attack, does the same. Fortunately, Indol breaks their neutral stance and interrupts before things escalate into open war, and together with the heroes are able to provide evidence that Mor Ardain was not behind the attack. Peace is upheld, barely.

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