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Some authors and writers will admit that they're producing fiction; that they take advantage of Acceptable Breaks From Reality, the Rule Of Cool, the Rule Of Funny or any of the other Rules of Whatever. Some acknowledge freely that Reality Is Unrealistic, which affects the choices they make in their works.
Others like to claim that what they produce is factually accurate, thinking that this somehow gives them more status, or will increase their sales.
But what happens when a creator has been making noticeable claims — or simply strongly implying — that their work is highly researched and as correct as they can make it, only for you to quickly discover it to be a big pile of pants? When that happens, you've been Dan Browned.
Please note that if the only error in an otherwise "factual" work is something that cannot be presented accurately due to legal considerations, (such as the Oscar ceremony in In And Out, which didn't resemble any Oscar ceremony ever because the Academy Of Television Arts And Sciences has trademarked and or copyrighted virtually every aspect of the actual ceremonies, and did not grant permission to use a realistic depiction to the movie's producers) the work is not Dan Browning the audience.
Some genres and media tend to be free from Dan Browning by their very nature. Comic books, manga and anime very rarely make claims of factuality. Advertising examples are rare, largely because of truth-in-advertising laws; companies are allowed to make all sorts of claims about their products as long as they avoid making clear statements of factuality.
When a point that is Dan Browned is the linchpin for the solution of a mystery, that work is Encyclopedia Browned.
This trope is obviously related to, but separated from, other topics of its creed. Did Not Do The Research is when an author shows general ignorance on a topic, whereas Critical Research Failure is that brain-frying occasion when Techno Babble goes horribly wrong.
Only examples that make claims of accuracy are valid examples of this trope. Please include why you consider that a claim of accuracy was made in all examples you add.
Examples:
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Film
- 21 is supposed to be "Based on a True Story." The tagline was "The story of five students who changed the game}...forever." Even aside from the ... liberties ... they took with the actual people involved, they also make blatant errors about gambling and math in a movie that is about how a bunch of MIT students beat blackjack.
- Errors like Mickey Rosa lecturing about the Monty Hall Problem in a Calculus class. What's wrong with that? This:
- One student gives the answer that is correct under the usual assumptions. Mickey then starts asking questions like "What if he would only give you the choice to switch if you picked the right one?" Possibilities like that completely destroy the standard solution to that problem, but the student says it doesn't matter, it's a strict math problem and is praised for it.
- In a later discussion, one of the players is talking about whether to split 8's against an Ace. This IS a strict math problem, given that the rules of casino games are pretty standard, stated up front, and often enforced by law. The character then gives an intuitive, non-mathematical explanation and gets it wrong
 .
- The Monty Hall Problem is not likely to come up in a Calculus class anyway.
- The character in question is close to graduating, and so should be in a fairly advanced Calculus course. They're being taught Newton's method, which is really some rather basic stuff covered back in the first month of Calculus 1.
- 300 director Zack Snyder stated that "the events are 90% accurate. It's just in the visualization that it's crazy.... I've shown this movie to world-class historians who have said it's amazing. They can't believe it's as accurate as it is." Sadly, Snyder's statement was somewhat less than 90% accurate itself. Cue several kerjillion very annoyed people in Iran (and most other places).
- The Day After Tomorrow is doubly Dan Browned, in that the movie was widely publicized as being based on the factual book The Coming Global Superstorm, the book even gets a credit in the film and the typical tactic of playing on current real world fears was employed and at the time there were articles of the sort of Could Ice Age occur over night with quotes like It may just be a movie. But to environmentalists, there is more than a kernel of truth in the catastrophic scenarios depicted in the upcoming summer flick The Day After Tomorrow. However if you really want a solid night's entertainment call your friendly neighborhood meteorologist, and offer to treat him to a showing of The Day After Tomorrow. One group did; Here's the result..
- Here's where the Double-Dan-Browning comes in: The Coming Global Superstorm, the "factual" book it was based on, was written by Art Bell (one of the hosts of Coast To Coast AM) and Whitley Strieber (who wrote Communion, an account of his own abduction by extraterrestrials).
- Being in the Air Force during the era of the Iron Eagle movies was very entertaining. From kids running around in secure areas to the Hades Bomb to a guy violating international airspace because he pulled a few too many Gs to E-5s calling captains by their last name to the brand new MiG being the venerable F-4 Phantom...truly a hoot watching those with a bunch of the guys in the barracks day room. Like MST 3 K for aviation geeks.
- Top Gun. The technical consultant, "Viper" aka Pete Pettigrew (not that one), was pretty much ignored even when it came to simple points about how technical debriefings wouldn't be done in large open hangars nor the shower room. But they paid for Tom Cruise's ass and dammit they were going to get a shot of Tom Cruise's ass.
- Interestingly, F-5s are used in USAFaggressor units specifically because they have similar flight characteristics to MiGs. If the USAF can use F-5s to play MiGs....
- Mission to Mars was supposed to have a physicist as a consultant to get the details right. It seems he was ignored.
- What The Bleep Do We Know mixes supposedly factual information about quantum physics and neuroscience with fictional narrative and speculation of spirituality and consciousness. The Narrative is OK, the speculation is plausible, but the science is just BAD. Complex concepts are oversimplified, muddled, and mashed, as when the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is implied to apply not only to subatomic particles, but also to everything — if you don't stub your toe on a rock, does the rock exist?
- David Mamet's Redbelt gets very little correct in its portrayal of Mixed Martial Arts. There were a number of experts consulted on the film, and this fact was made much of in promotional materials, but they were mostly old-school MMA fighters, and they have little interaction with the modern version of the sport.
- Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine pulls this off at least once in the short animation A Brief History of the United States of America. The cartoon alleges that the Ku Klux Klan became the National Rifle Association because the NRA was founded in 1871, the same year the KKK was officially outlawed by Congress. Actually, the NRA was founded as a sporting club in New York by former Union officers, not the bitter former Confederates that were the original Klansmen. Given that this is Michael Moore we're talking about here, it's hard to tell if he's trying to playing this for laughs or if he's actually serious.
- Actually, it says that it's just a coincidence and the two groups have nothing to do with one another. Very likely Rule Of Funny that the KKK members pull off their robes, get some guns, and suddenly become NRA members. The summary was "One group promoted responsible gun ownership, and the other group shot and lynched black people."
- Director Ridley Scott made numerous public statements about his intention to make Gladiator as historically accurate as possible. To support this goal, he hired several historians to serve as advisers. However, he made so many choices that were historically inaccurate that one adviser quit in protest and another (Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University) refused to allow her name to be put in the credits. The most aggravating thing, to many historians, is that many of the inaccuracies were completely unnecessary — getting it right wouldn't have made the film any less interesting or exciting.
- The film says Rome was founded as a republic. It wasn't; it was founded as a monarchy, and remained one for nearly 150 years.
- The film says the Roman Senate was an elected body. It never was. Senator was an appointed office and was limited to members of certain families.
- Marcus Aurelius wasn't murdered. However Commodus was - after a nine year reign.
- The Blair Witch Project notoriously ran a viral ad campaign (one of the first) trying to give the impression that it was actually a documentary, not a staged film. The secret got out before too long, but hell, there are probably still some people who don't know about it. That is, assuming they never heard about the
sequels sequel...
- This troper's sister still refuses to believe that the movie's fiction, despite being told up and down that "You can't legally do that, because the families of the victims would sue you into the poor house". She seems to think the sequel is a fictional "re-enactment" of something that happened afterwards. The reason? the actors have the same names as the characters, and the "Sticks and Stones" tape that comes with it looks too much like an actual documentary to be fake. In other words, my sister's a moron.
Literature
- As the trope title shows, Dan Brown is so well known for this he gets his own example page. I guess this kinda brings the whole thing full circle or something.
- Dale Brown, a writer known for several rather "creative" interpretations of military aircraft innovations also does this a lot. Particularly notable was his Sky Masters which featured a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the Philippine government and the mention of the Philippine Air Force having F-4 Phantoms, whereas in real life the PAF never had any F-4s in service. Made all the worse by having all the inaccurate facts presented alphabetically in a "fact page."
- Swedish author Liza Marklund published two novels about a woman abused, beaten and threatened by her Muslim boyfriend, subtitling them "true stories" and opening the books with a statement that only names and places had been changed, the rest was all fact. Like Dan Brown she then proceeded to make this claim in countless interviews and articles, and used the books as evidence in political debates. Then in late 2008 a woman named Monica Antonsson published a book pointing out the enormous factual errors in the book, proving that the book was almost entirely fiction. Marklund then stated that the book was never meant to be taken as true, only loosely based on truth. The Swedes had been Dan Browned. And were mad about it.
- Similarly to the above, Go Ask Alice is presented as (and was marketed for years as) the diary of a teenage drug abuser who died of an overdose, but is now known to be a work of fiction by its "editor", Barbara Sparks.
- Tom Clancy books tend to go into painstaking detail on lots of things like fighter jet steering and military technology and Clancy had accrued a lot of "accuracy cred". One of the most egregious cases ever was in Executive Orders when he described the makeup of an Armored Cavalry Regiment in action. His descriptions of the vehicles, and unit TO&Es are insanely off-base. But he had also published a non-fiction book detailing the equipment, organization, and tactics of an Armored Cavalry Regiment two years before. This reveals a major problem with the "accuracy cred" the books get: Tom Clancy doesn't actually write them anymore and the various ghostwriters who do, do varying levels of research.
- Michael Crichton, especially State of Fear: Not only is the reference list at the back of the book is incredibly shoddy work, but one of the researchers cited by Crichton actually wrote a letter to Discover magazine to complain about how the conclusions from his paper were misrepresented in the book.
Live Action TV
- CSI. At least they've stopped trying to claim it's accurate. In fact, the technical advisor invoked the MST 3 K Mantra (not quite in so many words, though) in an interview, saying essentially that the show focuses more on the character drama than the tedious, painstaking, underfunded work that is real life forensics.
- Bones. After a few biological anthropology and forensic courses, the science portion of the show just becomes too ridiculous and outright silly. What makes this a Dan Browning rather than simply Did Not Do The Research is that Kathy Reichs, a former respected forensic anthropologist, is a producer of the show. Sadly, this has led to quite a few hopeful forensic anthropology undergrads taking the show's "facts" as, well, fact, when most of the storylines are exaggerated for drama.
- The forensic anthropology teacher at this troper's university would offer extra credit if a student watched an episode and brought a list of at least ten things wrong with it to class.
- Numb3rs. The show often forgets little things like uncertainty, noise, statistical significance, common sense, and the most important problem with statistics.
- House's Dan Browning is notable because of all the obscure medical information they get right, but then make basic mistakes like shocking a flatline. Spawned an entire blog devoted to Medical Reviews of House.
Tabletop Role-playing Games
- The roleplaying game Ninjas and Superspies and later supplement Mystic China had great detail about a large number of martial arts, claiming to have come from exhaustive research. Much of this information was either wrong or changed radically to serve the goals of creating interesting plot hooks in the game world; nonetheless, to this very day the descriptions from the original game appear verbatim in discussions of real-life martial arts styles. This includes such pieces of fallacious trivia as the fact that Wing Chun, one of the more popular kung fu styles available and one of the original/core styles first studied by Bruce Lee is only taught to women.
- FATAL. FATAL claims to be "the most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available." (Emphasis added.) That was followed by this statement from the author of the game: "The odds in FATAL are that if you attack a character with a weapon, then they are likely to die. By the way, this is an obvious attempt at realism." Because, of course, most attacks with any weapon in real life is likely to be fatal. Except that, statistically, they aren't now, and they weren't in the Middle Ages, either. Or, again, the author's own words: "I searched for information on sexually transmitted diseases in the Middle Ages. Although I did not search with vigor, the few times that I have searched, I have failed to find any information." This editor just did a Google search on "sexually transmitted disease in the Middle Ages" and the first page of results contained 3 pages directly addressing the subject in some detail, including one that was a review of a book on "Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages". He certainly did "not search with vigor" if he missed those references. Let's not go into the "mythologically accurate" claim.
Close Tabletop Role-playing Games
Video Games
- The Mortal Kombat games from Deadly Alliance to Armageddon were known for their gross misrepresentation of supposedly real-world fighting styles, to the point that several styles such as Hapkido bear little to no resemblance to the actual styles. This is despite Carlos Pesina, the mo-cap choreographer, allegedly being a martial arts expert. This concept has wisely been abandoned.
- Music Quiz 2 on the iPod has at least two questions where the so-called "correct" answer is wrong:
- "How many great composers called Bach were there?": the "correct" answer is 2, but according to That Other Wiki the correct answer is at least 3 — Johann Sebastian, and his sons Carl Philip Emmanuel and Johann Christian.
- You forgot P. D. Q.
- The Harvard Dictionary of Music has six different Bachs listed, and considering the whole family was full of musicians and composers, there may be more, but it depends on what the definition of "great" is.
- "Which of these composers were not from the Classical era?": the "correct" answer is Strauss, which is OK as far as it goes (the two Johanns were from the Romantic era, Richard was from the Modern), but another of the possible choices is Bach, and the three(?) Bachs were from the Baroque, which predates the Classical.
- While Johann Sebastian (the "old Bach") practically defines Baroque, Carl Philipp is considered a founder of the Classical era and Johann Christian is firmly in it. Basically, the quiz seems to have a problem sorting out composers from the same family and expects you to guess what could be meant. Shockingly, the answers to both questions make sense if we count C. P. E. and J. C. Bach as the two great Bachs, leaving out the, ahem, lesser-known J. S. Bach, I guess.
Webcomics
- Darths And Droids gives a solution to Game Masters on how to nip this problem in the bud in regards to their campaigns. If there's a certified expert in the group who would nit-pick your valiant, yet ultimately doomed, attempts at realism, recruit them for their knowledge when designing your world. That way, not only will they not nit-pick your setting that much, they'll defend it when another player says something is unrealistic.
Other
- A frequent problem with open wikis generally is that any idiot can edit them — and idiots often do. Blatant misinformation once presented as "fact" on The Other Wiki include a claim that Abba's Mamma Mia is a "cover" of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (apparently on the grounds that the Abba song immediately followed the Queen one to the UK number 1 slot, and that both include the phrase "Mamma mia"), and another that Sting's Englishman in New York is "the same song" as Godley and Creme's An Englishman in New York (one of these pages was split off from the other) because "they have the same title" (they don't — Sting's has no article; and anyway, there are endless examples of vastly different songs having the same title, such as Time by Pink Floyd and later by the Alan Parsons Project). These two examples are of course long gone, but more appear (and are caught) every day.
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