False Flag Operations seen in Western Animation.
- Archer:
- Archer's mother, in a drunken fit of jealousy, issues a burn notice on her son after he quits ISIS to work for the agency's nemesis ODIN. To save Archer from being killed by his new coworkers, Lana sends a retraction of the burn notice from a Telex in the ODIN office building. Lana's false flag is compounded, as it implies that the burn notice itself was an ODIN false flag operation designed to discredit ISIS and its best field agent.
- Also happens in "The Papal Chase", with Lana realizing that the supposed hit on the Pope is a collaboration between the Camorra (disguised as the Swiss Guard) and a likely candidate for the Papacy.
- The end of Season 5 culminates in a particularly convoluted and pointless one; The CIA has been buying cocaine from Columbia, selling it, using the money to buy arms from Iran, giving the arms to the dictator of San Marcos to fight a long-running communist insurgency which they themselves are currently backing to justify staging a takeover of the country. And all this is being done to pad out the CIA's budget.
- The Dragon Prince: In the Season 2 finale, Viren conjures up the spirits of the elven assassins killed near the start of the series and sends them after the rulers of the other human kingdoms in order to convince them to join him in his planned war against Xadia.
- In the first episode of The Legend of Calamity Jane, outlaw Bill Doolin fakes raids by both the Comanche tribe and the Calvary, threatening to cause already-poor relations to flare into war. The long-term implications don't really concern him, though — he just wants to draw security off of a shipment of gold.
- In The Legend of Korra, Mako stumbles onto a bunch of terrorists who bomb the cultural center. While everyone else believes that the Northern Water Tribe is responsible for the bombing, Mako realizes that it's a False Flag Operation, due to one of the terrorists using Firebending. After some investigation, Mako figures out that it's actually Varrik who is really behind the bombing.
- The Life and Times of Juniper Lee Easter special had the villain, a rhinoceros looking creature name Mitch, pit the rabbits and the chickens against each other in order for them to wipe each other out so he can take over the holiday (Under the pretense that the holiday was promoting useless things like candy and colored eggs when he could do it better by giving kids things like batteries and socks. He likewise was just tired of looking after the two). Ironically the plan ends up self-defeating since, well, the sides were still kids and not exactly warriors. So at most they just end up slap fighting or general harmless roughhousing until their mothers, whom June had managed to free from Mitch, tell them to knock it off.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, during "The Collector", after (correctly) assuming that the heroes are suspecting him of being Hawk Moth, Gabriel Agreste akumatises himself and makes it look like he was targeted by the villain, successfully throwing Ladybug and Cat Noir off his trail for the time being. The reason this works is because the heroes are aware that the holder of the Butterfy Miraculous cannot akumatize themselves. Gabriel gets around this restriction by creating an akuma and then renouncing his Miraculous, therefore making him no longer the holder, and therefore able to be akumatized. After the Collector is defeated he just puts his Miraculous back on and becomes the holder again.
- It happens in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic of all places. It's revealed in the Grand Finale that Grogar was actually Discord in disguise, who decided to recruit the series other remaining villains and create a conflict for Twilight to save Equestria from to bolster her confidence. This backfires tremendously as they conspire to turn on Grogar, use his own bell to defeat him, discover his true identity, and simply decide to carry on with his plan of razing Equestria without him.Lord Tirek: That was unexpected.
Cozy Glow: Wait. Discord was Grogar? Like, the whole time? Should we follow him?
Queen Chrysalis: Without magic, he's no threat. Besides, we have plans. - The Owl House: This is in part how Emperor Belos rose to power. He held sermons in the center of towns, then had his Golden Guard throw explosives at the stage and into the crowd to make it look like they were being attacked by wild witches. He even had the Golden Guard set off the remainder of the explosives (a pile about the same height as the Guard) in the middle of a town after one of his sermons, and burned down an entire village at the peak of the Knee, the ruins of which can be seen in "Adventures in the Elements". All of this was to demonize wild magic and wild witches, and convince people to join him in his quest to brand them all with sigils and induct them into his Coven system, which would eventually culminate in complete genocide via the Draining Spell.
- South Park: In "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" the US Government is trying to convince the world that 9/11 was a False Flag in order to make them look more competent. They do this by posing as conspiracy nuts, and running an actual False Flag campaign. This is subverted in that the plan is apparently to prevent trouble: the idea is that if people are determined to suspect the Government of treachery, those people should believe the Government is all powerful, so that they don't cause problems. What's actually amazing is how many conspiracy theories have similarly sinister origins.
- In the Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 opener "Grounded", we find out that the destruction of Pakled Planet was caused by the Pakleds themselves. They had been able to convince a data fabricator to make it seem that Captain Carol Freeman had planted the bomb that destroyed their planet to force the Federation to relocate them to a resource-rich planet instead. However, Starfleet realized something was wrong and convinced Freeman to pull off their own Operation: they got her to go along with her trial to make it seem that their plan worked. Meanwhile, Captain Morgan Bateson (from the TNG episode "Cause and Effect") lead a team to discover the truth and helped exonerate Freeman.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
- In the Season 2 Mandalore arc, Pre Vizsla's Death Watch faction commits terrorist bombings on their homeworld, to make it appear that the Mandalorian goverment can't handle the situation on its own, so the Republic would send clone troops to keep peace. This however would turn the terrorists into heroes in the eyes of the public, destabilizing the pacifist government and resulting in the rebirth of the Mandalorian warrior culture. However, this failed when Duchess Satine and Padme exposed the conspiracy, convincing the galactic senate not to deploy Republic forces.
- In Season 5, this is Maul's plan to get the people of Mandalore on Vizsla's side. The criminals under his command would attack Mandalore and are then "defeated" by Death Watch, who are actually allied with said criminals. Death Watch would then claim credit as heroes of Mandalore and convince the Mandalorian to accept them as the new rulers.
- Star Wars Resistance: A large part of the first season involves the First Order attempting to take over the Colossus by hiring a pirate gang to attack the platform, with the intent of pressuring the station's owner, Captain Doza, into accepting the First Order's "protection" to prevent such attacks. It comes to a head in "The Doza Dilemma" when the First Order has the pirates kidnap Doza's daughter Torra, and then "rescue" her from their erstwhile pirate proxies, placing Captain Doza in the First Order's debt.
- Steven Universe:
- In "Cry for Help", Pearl and Garnet fuse to become Sardonyx to dismantle the Communication Hub. Peridot somehow keeps repairing the Hub overnight, which leads to Sardonyx dismantling it over and over again. Eventually, Steven and Amethyst stay up at night and spy on the Hub to catch Peridot in the act. Turns out Pearl is the true culprit for all but the first time. She was so desperate to share Garnet's power and self-confidence within Sardonyx that she kept repairing the Hub just to manufacture an excuse to fuse again and again. Garnet, to whom fusion is a deeply personal matter for very good reasons, is understandably furious when the truth is revealed to her.
- In "A Single Pale Rose", it is revealed that the Crystal Gems — the rebellion created to fight against Pink Diamond and free the Earth — was actually created by Pink Diamond in a plot meant to allow her leave the Earth alone and let it to thrive rather than let it be destroyed like all other colonies. When this failed to deter the other Diamonds, she faked her own death to become Rose Quartz permanently.
- The Transformers: The two parter "The Key to Vector Sigma" has an accidental example when Megatron has the Stunticons built. People automatically assume that 'car transformer = Autobot" and think they're the good guys, until the Stunticons go wild. The Autobots are naturally blamed for the attacks, though the misunderstanding is immediately cleared up when the Stunticons attack the Autobots while they're still trying to explain the situation to the military. This is an accidental example because Megatron created the Stunticons in order to fight the Autobots on the roads, rather than as part of a plan to discredit them.
- A straighter example occurs in "Traitor", when the Autobot Mirage steals Energon cubes from the Insecticons and deliberately leaves behind a torn Decepticon emblem. Sure enough, the Insecticons and Decepticons (who have no love lost between them) begin attacking each other, but the plan goes wrong when Mirage is accidentally discovered and both sides realise they've been tricked.
- The Venture Bros.: The "Pyramid Wars of '87" are revealed to be the result of one of these; back in the 80s, Red Death and a handful of supervillains decided to raid Gargantua to take Jonas Venture hostage, but things went wrong and it ended up turning into the infamous Movie Night Massacre. The Sovereign, sensing an opportunity, contacted the OSI afterwards while disguised as the S.P.H.I.N.X. leader to "claim" responsibility for it, thus tricking the OSI into taking out their main competition. Brock Sampson, having been recruited to the OSI during the Pyramid Wars, is absolutely gobsmacked to find out his career in espionage is built on a lie.
