Fake Mystery

The characters stumble across a crime. Perhaps some precious items are stolen. Perhaps someone has been receiving threatening messages from a potential stalker. Maybe someone's actually been murdered. Needless to say, this warrants an investigation, and so a Mystery Episode begins.

Well, as it turns out, the so-called mystery is a hoax. There is no crime, and the "culprit" (who might have played the role of the case's victim) had staged the crime to trick the "investigators".

The culprit's reasons for staging the show vary. The investigators might be (aspiring) detectives, and the prankster thought that this will be a fun game for them to indulge in. Or it might be a test to see how good the investigator really is. Or maybe the culprit wants to do something in secret and needs to distract the detectives for whatever reason. Or they're just tricksters who want to get a good laugh witnessing the deceived scramble about to piece the clues together.

Occasionally, the hoax may be exploited by an actual bad guy to commit a real crime (or a real crime may happen regardless), which would inevitably lead to complications in the investigation due to the misleading clues planted for the hoax.

Needless to say, the reveal of the prank often serves as the solution to the whodunnit stories, so most examples would be unmarked spoilers. Although this trope is almost always in play when a normally light-hearted Slice of Life story segues to a Mystery Episode.

Related to "Scooby-Doo" Hoax (where a reported paranormal sighting turns out to be fake as a cover for some other crime). Also compare Mockstery Tale (a story that starts with a mystery framing device before switching to a different plot thread altogether, leaving the initial mystery unsolved or forgotten at the end).

May overlap with Friendly Scheming if the prank was done in good humour.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Case Closed: The Special Spin-Off series has a story where Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi must solve a riddle to find some anaesthetic drugs that had been stolen from their dentist (Conan and Ai had disappeared when investigating on their own). Once they finally solve the case, the dentist admits that there is no theft—he just made the case up to give the kids a puzzle to work on while he is called to treat a different patient (Kogoro). Conan and Ai had already figured out everything and went to hide elsewhere to not give away the mystery too early.
• Detective School Q: In the "Tragedy of Kirisaki Island" arc, a group of DDS students are brought to a secluded island as a final exam to make it into the top "Q" (qualified) class. The candidates are supposed to revisit a serial murder case that happened on the island 50 years ago, and the ones who demonstrate the best deductive skills in solving the old case will be admitted to the Q class. However, things go wrong when an intruder snuck onto the island and murdered several students to repeat that past tragedy. By the end of the case, the five main characters reveal that the murders had been staged by the school staff (the "murdered" students were those who had already failed to qualify for the Q class), and that this was the true qualifying test for the rest.
• Heaven's Design Team: While the eponymous team are vacationing on Galapagos Island, they receive a threatening note to not leave the villa they're staying at. Later that night, Mercury is attacked, prompting Jupiter to start an investigation. However, there's actually no threat at all. The "threatening" note was sent by Shimoda to keep the group from seeing the surprise he and Saturn are preparing for them; Mercury simply passed out from a hangover, and Jupiter (who knew of the secret) performed the whole detective schtick to distract his colleagues until the surprise is ready.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: During the Culture Festival arc, notes left by a so-called phantom thief start showing up around the school, with various cryptic clues proclaiming his intent to "steal the festival". The riddle-loving Fujiwara spends most of the festival trying to solve the mystery, but Kaguya ultimately figures out that the clues are completely meaningless. The whole thing was set up by Shirogane, solely to keep Fujiwara occupied so there's no chance of her usual Spanner in the Works antics during his Grand Romantic Gesture to Kaguya.
• Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective: Ron and Toto visit the Blue Academy to investigate a case, and pretend to be teachers while they are there. After his first day of teaching, Toto is called by some of his students, who report that one of their friends is missing, only to find the girl dead in a locked room. The whole incident turns out to be a prank set by the students to scare their new teacher. Toto (actually Ron) managing to solve the case wins his students' respect.
• Sket Dance: In "The Last Day of the President", student council president Agata discovers that his little siter Saaya has been kidnapped, and her kidnappers force him to complete a series of riddles in exchange for her release. Once he solves all the puzzles, he realizes that the whole thing had been orchestrated by the rest of the council members, with Bossun and Saaya's help, in order leave one final "thank you" message before he steps down from the student council.
• Urusei Yatsura has an anime-exclusive episode titled "And Then There Were None", which is a Whole-Plot Reference to Agatha Christie's book of the same title. Except, in this case, the whole mystery is staged to prank Ataru as a "shock therapy" to cure his lechery.

Audio Plays

• Played with in A Voice from the Dark. Linkara gathers all his friends together in a spooky mansion and plans for them to investigate a fake mystery, even hiring party technicians to do special effects to heighten the mood and setting codes to important dates for his show. All of this is intended to lead to a surprise party. Then the floor collapses, separating the guests, and The Cult of the Voice hijacks his plans to resurrect their master.

Comic Books

• A recurring bit in the Elongated Man stories in The Silver Age Detective Comics was that, every year, Sue stages a mystery as a birthday present for Ralph, relying on the fact he never remembers his birthday so he'll think it's real. This continued in Justice League Quarterly #6 in which she got the whole of Justice League International involved (and when he did remember it was his birthday, Flash managed to convince him he'd got the day wrong). The last reference to the tradition so far is, sadly, that Sue was preparing one during the events of Identity Crisis #1.

Films — Live-Action

• The Big Lebowski: A rich man's wife is kidnapped and receives a ransom note demanding $1 Million in unmarked non-consecutive twenties, and the man hires a local deadbeat to confirm the identity of the kidnappers when the money is handed off, with the possible suspicion that she arranged the 'kidnapping' herself to steal the money from her husband. The wife was never kidnapped to begin with; she simply left town to visit some friends of hers without telling her husband. Meanwhile the kidnappers, knowing she was out of town, sent the ransom note on their own to try and scam the $1 Million for themselves.
• Murder by Death: Apparently what the entire "dinner and a murder" was about; Murder victim Lionel Twain reveals himself to be alive, and gives a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the gathered detectives (and the authors behind them), lambasting their methods and proclaiming their reputations are ruined now that he's outsmarted them... or did he?
• The Private Eyes: After Inspector Winship and Dr. Tart endure a great many comedic pratfalls for the sake of trying to figure out who murdered Lord and Lady Morley, as well as all of their servants, it turns out that there was only one person murdered. After Lord Morley barely dodged being killed alongside his wife, he faked his own death and then his servants faked being murdered one by one by a maniac in order to force a confession out of the person who really wanted to kill the Morleys, that being their vile heir Phyllis. Winship and Tart, after this reveal, then question the absurd amount of complexity of this scheme and then point out the more simple solution that was Lord Morley going to the police to accuse Phyllis, especially because he had all the evidence he needed at hand. The answer to that is simple: Lord Morley never could get anything right.
• The Wicker Man (1973): A detective is called out to an island near Scotland to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. The island's inhabitants are part of a pagan cult, and during his investigation notices various strange behaviours and rituals. He begins to suspect the worst, and in the final act, disguises himself in order to arrest the cult's leader. The leader is aware of the detective's attempt, and even laughs at the man's disguise. The young girl who was missing appears. It's revealed she was never missing, and was all a ploy to get the detective to the island. The detective is captured and placed in the titular Wicker Man, then burned to death.

Literature

• As the legendary "Queen of Crime," Dame Agatha Christie employed this tactic several times in her works (often for the first time in literature, making her an Ur-Example of the trope). Examples include:
  • In Dead Man's Folly, Hercule Poirot gets an urgent phone call from Ariadne Oliver (an Author Avatar of Christie herself), telling him that a crime is about to be committed at the mansion where she's staying. When he rushes to get there, it turns out that she was speaking literally—Oliver has been invited to create a mystery-puzzle game for an upcoming town fair hosted at the mansion, and she wanted Poirot to come down and make sure that what she's written is a good crime. It's then subverted when the girl hired to play the "corpse" in Oliver's fake mystery actually gets murdered during the game, leading Poirot to investigate her death
  • In "The Theft of the Royal Ruby," Poirot is staying at a manor for Christmas after receiving a tip that the titular jewel is going to be stolen by thieves. The teenagers who are also at the manor think that Poirot must be bored and decide to stage a fake murder to cheer him up. It's subverted when Bridget, who volunteered to play the corpse, actually does get murdered as part of the scheme to steal the ruby. But after the crook is exposed, Poirot reveals it was a double subversion: he overheard the teens planning their caper and, with Bridget's help, arranged for her to pretend to be dead so that the criminals would give themselves away.
    • In the same story, Poirot receives an anonymous note that reads "DON'T EAT NONE OF THE PLUM PUDDING" and suspects that an attempt is being made on his life. At the end of the adventure, he still hasn't figured out why the note was left—and then one of the housemaids confesses that she overheard the criminals talking about getting him out of the way, followed by the remarks "Where did you hide it?" "In the pudding." They were actually discussing the hiding place for the ruby, but the maid thought that the crooks planned to poison Poirot with the dessert and sent him the anonymous message to warn him.
  • In "The Adventure of Johnny Waverly," the prominent Waverly family hires Poirot to solve the kidnapping of their son, who was taken after several threatening messages were sent to their home. After investigating, Poirot quickly determines that it was Mr. Waverly who arranged the entire thing in an attempt to bilk his wealthy wife out of a huge ransom, as he lacks any actual funds himself.
• One Encyclopedia Brown story has Encyclopedia and his father, Police Chief Brown, cook up a pretend jewelry heist as a game for a convention of police officers from across the country. It also works as an In-Universe example, as the solution to the heist is that there wasn't one—the owner of the jewels staged the crime to collect on a valuable insurance policy.
• Father Brown: In The Insoluble Problem the villain stages a fake murder to distract Father Brown and Flambeau while he carries out a jewel heist elsewhere.
• Five Find-Outers: In The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat, the Five Find-Outers plant a bunch of suspicious trails as a prank to lead Mr. Goon into a wild goose chase. This gets played for drama later on when a real case inevitably shows up and the false clue they planted winds up almost incriminating an innocent suspect.
• In Haruhi Suzumiya's "Remote Island Syndrome" arc, the SOS Brigade stumbles into a murder case while staying at an island villa belonging to Itsuki's relative. By the end of the arc, it is revealed that the mystery had been staged by Itsuki and the supposed victim in order to entertain their guests, particularly Haruhi.
• "She Was Blonde, She Was Dead—And Only Jimmilich Opstromommo Could Find Out Why!!!" by Janet Kagan: The protagonist is an alien sociologist studying human culture, with a particular penchant for detective stories, who is asked by one of his human friends to investigate an assault and theft at her workplace. After successfully seeing the investigation through and unmasking the culprit, he reveals one final deduction: that his friends staged the entire thing as a present to him, to give him a chance to play at being a detective.

Live-Action TV

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • In "Ticking Clocks", Sgt. Knox reveals to the 99 that a hacker is trying to break through the precinct server and leak their list of undercover agents. They find out the hacker is inside the building and conduct a search, only to discover once Amy returns that Knox is actually a suspect in her case, and the real hacker, who sent them on a wild goose chase.
  • Played with in "Game of Boyles". While attending Pappy Boyle's funeral with Charles and discovering that his will is missing, Jake (recently suspended from police work) suggests that one of the Boyle cousins might have killed Pappy for the money, a la Knives Out. He finds traces of poison on Pappy's mouth, suggesting this, and find a hair in the poison. When they test the cousins' DNA against the hair, however, the hair turns out to be rat hair... but Charles is revealed not to be a Boyle in the process. Charles is so depressed that he gives his eulogy speech to cousin Sam. It turns out Sam stole the will and set up the fake murder mystery in order to create an excuse to have Charles's DNA tested, because he wanted to read the eulogy and suspected Charles of not being a Boyle. So while there was a real mystery, it wasn't a murder.
• In one episode of Castle, the title character is homebound with an injury and amuses himself by watching neighbors through his binoculars. He witnesses a crime, and goes to elaborate lengths to persuade his pals on the police force to look into the matter. Eventually it's revealed that said pals on the police force set the whole thing up to give him something to do while he recovers.
• In Community, Chang convinces himself that there's a conspiracy involving a matchbox company, and makes a tiny Conspiracy Wall with only one thread. The thread is a fire hazard though, and he ends up accidentally burning down part of the school. Unlike most of the examples here, nobody was faking a mystery, Chang just came up with it on his own.
• The InBESTigators: In "The Case of the Baffling Birthday", the 'mystery' the InBESTigators are called on to solve has actually been arranged by the rest of the team in collusion with Maudie's dad to keep Maudie distracted while Ava arranges a surprise birthday party for her.

Podcasts

• The Deca Tapes: In episode two, the Entertainer disappears and is suspected to have been murdered. Throughout the remainder of the season, a variety of clues that seemingly implicates different members of the cast emerge, and tensions runs high as they suspect each other for being responsible (not helped by the reveal that each member is a dangerous criminal who has been mindwiped (although the cast are unaware of this)). Come the final episode and the Preacher figures out the truth: there is no murder. Having realised that he was failing in his role, the Entertainer set up the mystery and committed suicide, after making sure that every member of the crew is implicated in his death, so they would have an everlasting "entertainment" to solve.

Video Games

• One mission in A Hat in Time involves a "Murder on the Owl Express", where a passenger is found dead and Hat Kid has to find clues to identify the culprit. In the end, it turns out there was never an actual murder in the first place — it was all staged as part of a movie by the Conductor.
• Hidden City has a couple of mystery side-quests where the whole thing turns out to be just a prank:
  • Juliette reports that a precious silver tea set has gone missing from the Manor she works at, and requests the Detective to help her find them. After the Detective finds them all (with the player character's assistance), Juliette admits that there's no theft at all; she hid the items herself to give the Detective something fun to do.
  • Kira finds a chain of vaguely threatening riddles at her office that alludes to her previous mission to the Lower City. Due to the scandalous crime that occurred in the Upper City while she was away on the mission, she quickly assumes that the riddles were sent as an attempt to blackmail or mock her, and asks the player to help her find this criminal. What she finds instead is a gift left by her mission partner, Rayden, who admits that he wants to give her a surprise—and to prank her because she wouldn't tell him her birth date.
  • One case story has Vera go to meet the League of Researcher for a secret talk, but things go awry when one of the Researcher's development plans go missing during the talk, with Vera being suspected as the thief. Vera is determined to find the real thief and clear her name. With Carlos and Lucas's help, they manage to find a clue left by the real thieves, which turns out to be a letter from Dr. Barry congratulating her for passing the test. It turns out that the "stolen blueprints" case was meant to be the League's test for Vera to see whether or not she's worthy to join their group.
• Investi-Gator: The Case of the Big Crime: Played for Laughs. In Episode 2, Mr. Crime puts Investi-Gator on a case to figure out who kidnapped his daughter, Grizzelda. From the get-go, it is hilariously obvious to the audience that Grizzelda faked her own kidnapping to guilt-trip her father into buying her a pony, but none of the characters realize this. Things go awry when Investi-Gator realizes that no one he knows could have kidnapped Grizzelda, so he somehow concludes that he is the kidnapper, even though he knows he didn't do it, and allows himself to be arrested. Grizzelda protests, saying she never meant for that to happen, but no one listens to her.
• Parodied in one My Cafe story where Watson the police officer suddenly declares himself as the evil Moriarty, and makes the player solve a series of puzzles and mysteries that he's set up under the threat of doing bad things to the cafe. You have to play along his games and find "clues" and whatnot to proceed from one investigation to the next, even though most of the answers to his "riddles" are really obvious.
• The thirteenth Nancy Drew game, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, opens with Lori, a spoiled heiress, inviting various crime-related celebrities—a police detective, a mystery novelist, a paranormal investigator, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy herself—to solve the mystery of what happened to Jake Hurley, the locomotive's original owner who vanished over a century ago. At the beginning of the trip, the train plunges into darkness, and Lori goes missing. The first half of the game is Nancy attempting to figure out what happened to her—as it turns out, she simply pretended to disappear to test the mettle of the various sleuths (and because she thought it would be funny), and Nancy is the first to figure out the truth. This selfish attitude foreshadows the fact that Lori turns out to be the actual villain of the game.
• In Only the Brave Can Rescue the Kidnapped Princess, it turns out Princess Abigail wasn't kidnapped and had been at the King's castle this whole time, rendering the whole "mystery" pointless. It's Played for Laughs, due to being a game for young children.
• A variation occurs in Chapter 7 of Paper Mario 64 in that the fake murder mystery is staged completely by accident. Mario and friends arrive in Shiver City to find that the mayor has apparently been murdered, and because he was the first one on the scene of the "crime," Mario ends up becoming suspect number one. It turns out that the mayor wasn't even dead in the first place, and that he'd simply slipped and knocked himself unconscious, causing the overly excitable residents of Shiver City to assume he'd been murdered, in part due to the popularity of the city's resident novelist's mystery books.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • In "Mystery Train", Finn attempts to solve a murder on a train, only for the entire thing to prove to be an elaborate game staged by Jake as a birthday treat for him.
  • The episode "The Creeps" focuses on Finn, Jake and their friends ending up trapped in a mansion and having to figure out which among them is possessed by a ghost intent on killing them all. Midway through the episode, Finn reveals there is no ghost, and that this entire mystery was a prank set up by him to get back at Jake for the events of "Mystery Train"... and then a real ghost shows up and begins killing them off for real... and then the end of the episode reveals that to be fake as well, as Jake had caught on to Finn's plan in advance and staged the entire thing as another prank... well, except for the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl Finn encounters at one point, that part was real.
• The Backyardigans episode "Whodunit" has Pablo as a detective who receives a letter from the elegant Lady Tasha, who suspects that someone will attempt to steal her priceless jewelry—a prediction that comes true after Pablo and the other characters arrive at Lady Tasha's mansion. After various twists and turns, the ending reveals that Lady Tasha herself staged the crime with the help of her butler Tyrone as a fun activity for the group on a dull day.
• DuckTales (2017): In "Treasure of the Found Lamp", Webby creates an elaborate quest for Djinn to find the Lamp of the First Genie, a relic sacred to Djinn's family which Scrooge recovered but Louie sold at a yard sale, in order to buy time for Louie to find the real lamp before Djinn finds out and turns his wrath on them.
• The Little Rascals: In "The Case of the Puzzled Pals", Alfalfa suspects Spanky of being a diamond smuggler and of stealing Darla's doll, especially after the gang sees Spanky visiting a butcher shop and a store called "Rocks Inc." Back at the treehouse, Spanky reveals that he bought treats for Pete and Porky at the butcher shop, he bought a rock for Buckwheat's collection, and he put a new dress on Darla's doll.

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