Malicious Slander in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Dungeon Keeper Ami features this prominently- most notably Ami's power and cunning... and her incredible, jaw-dropping, suicidal deviancy. Actually lies, "Baseless rumours founded on misunderstandings". But Ami has a hard time convincing anybody. The rumor mill insists Ami has these tendencies. Extreme Omnisexual, Bestiality Is Depraved: She simply cannot catch a break.
- Metal Gear: Green: When the MSF makes themselves known to the first world, the HPSC is forced to do this tactic because A: They are a largely unheard of mercenary company in the first world, with only select individuals knowing of them by chance encounters with them. And B: Any crime that could implicate the MSF as villains would also implicate the HPSC in even worse crimes. While it is successful in getting heroes to go to the Sports Festival, she cannot boot the MSF off of Japan.
- In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Shouto Todoroki starts spreading out rumors in the U.A. that Izuku is the illegitimate son of All Might. While he does it partly because he believes it to be true, there are hints he also does it because he's sore at Izuku for getting in his way and lecturing him during the League of Villains attack in the U.S.J.
- Back to the Future Prequel: Hank harasses Doc by spreading nasty stories about his sanity and activities.
- Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past has a heroic example when Harry goes to Rita Skeeter and denounces the many Death Eaters who were found not guilty — although it's only because he knows that a villainous version is coming.Harry: I’m just striking first this time. Right now, Fudge barely goes to the bathroom without Lucius Malfoy’s permission. Both of them have got to go. And if they start their smear campaign second... well, then it just looks like payback — and people might not take everything they claim about me as the gospel truth.
- A Thing of Vikings: Alvin and Delilah spread slander that the Hooligans of Berk are committing atrocities against Christians in Eire. It resulted in the Archbishop in Normandy demanding the arrest of Hiccup and those traveling with him when they arrive in Rouen, Normandy. Fortunately, Duke William of Normandy had them protected under hospitality.
- Burning Bridges, Building Confidence:
- Lila follows through on the threats she made in "Chameleon" by convincing most of Marinette's classmates that Marinette is a horrible, awful person that threatened her in the bathroom and other terrible things, most of which Lila herself actually did. After her cousin Cole moves to Paris and transfers into their class, she gives her three days before she starts slandering her as well, accusing her of faking her vision problems. Unbeknownst to her, Cole’s been recording every gloat Lila has been making on her phone to gather evidence to expose her as a liar.
- After the new heroine Vexxin debuts, Alya immediately writes a libelous piece accusing her of stealing the Fox miraculous and posts it on her blog. Ladybug later cites this as one of the reasons Alya has not only lost the Fox but will no longer be trusted with any miraculous in the future. Alya completely blows this off and continues slandering Vexxin, causing the Ladyblog to spiral further and further into disgrace.
- CONSEQUENCES: MAMA BEAR gives Lila a long history of engaging in this. In particular, while staying in Sweden, she took a photograph of one of her victims spending time with his young cousin and framed him for pedophilia, nearly getting him sent to jail before the truth came out.
- Feralnette AU: During "Enough Rope", Lila responds to witnessing Marinette resisting akumatization by accusing her of working with Hawkmoth. When Ladybug and Chat Noir call her out on this, Alya claims that they're overreacting, unintentionally revealing that she knows about Lila's so-called 'lying disease' by citing that in her defense.
- Here
uses the common Salt Fic premise of Alya letting Lila use the Ladyblog as a platform for her various lies. Central to the story is a video where they didn't bother with even the vaguest pretense of anything relating to Ladybug/Paris' superheroes, but gossiped about Lila babysitting Manon, whom they made out to be a Spoiled Brat. Unbeknownst to either, Manon had died in a car accident two months prior, leading to Alya getting sued for defamation of the deceased. - Long Con: After Alya tries to expose her as a liar, Lila draws Marinette aside and claims that Alya's been spreading nasty rumors about her, painting Marinette as a Stalker with a Crush on Adrien. While she recognizes that this is likely just another of Lila's tricks, she still struggles to tamp down her reaction... especially after realizing that she can't exactly put it past Alya to be so careless with her secrets.
- Missing: After Marinette disappears, Lila continues her campaign against her, even telling the police that she saw her meeting with an older man in hopes of both trashing her reputation further and sending them on a wild goose chase. Unfortunately for her, this backfires: the description she gave for the strange old man unwittingly points them towards Jagged Stone, getting her busted for slander on top of getting in trouble for interfering with an investigation.
- Villain Of Your Own Story:
- One of Alya's Fatal Flaws is how easily she falls for this since she takes whatever she's told at face value... unless it's coming from somebody like Marinette. Her alternate self gets into serious trouble at her old school for posting slanderous rumors on her 'news blog' and presenting them as factual, blaming her sources for her own lack of fact-checking.
- Played With through Adrien, who believes that Chloé was the victim of this when her bullying victims shared horror stories about how she treated them to the news, leading to her facing serious legal troubles and getting sentenced to juvie. In reality, he's just Blaming The Victims for her suffering Laser-Guided Karma.
- The Wolves in the Woods has this as a Running Theme:
- Firstly, Lila falsely claimed that Marinette was bullying her. While this works all too well, Lila didn't actually expect the class to turn so completely against her, and grows increasingly uncomfortable with what she's wrought.
- Despite being fully aware that Lila wasn't being truthful, Adrien attests otherwise during Bustier's trial, blaming Marinette for 'causing all the problems' in class. This bites him hard when Lila takes the stand and tells the truth, getting him busted for defaming Marinette's character.
- Alya schemes to ruin the reputations of all of Marinette's new friends at St. Catherine's in this fashion, much to the disgust of her classmates.
- One of the girls she intends to target this way was already the victim of one such campaign in the past, when one of her father's political opponents tried painting her as a Spoiled Brat. While this backfired on him, as he faced considerable backlash for attacking and tarnishing a child, Alya fully buys into his trash, claiming the girl is 'basically Chloé 2.0'.
- Alya was also the one who convinced most of the class to turn upon Marinette in the first place, and it's eventually revealed that she'd known Lila was lying the whole time. She was just exploiting the situation to attack her 'bestie' and 'knock her down a few pegs' out of envy over her recent achievements as a fashion designer.
- In the Announcer AU, Tsubasa is enfuriated by Izuku becoming an Accidental Celebrity, and sets out to ruin his reputation by contacting U.A. and Hawks, telling them that Izuku is Quirkless along with a host of Blatant Lies. Ironically enough, this actually helps: Nezu had been trying to track Izuku down, but he had so little social media presence that he wasn't having much luck... until he gets Tsubasa's email, from his school account, pointing his attention staight towards Aldera.
- Cain: On top of trying to convince everyone that Izuku is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who only pretends to be a victim to milk sympathy from others, he attempts to frame Toshinori for one of his assaults on Izuku, taking pictures of him in the locker room with marks from being pinched all over his body and trying to pass it off as evidence that Toshinori was taking advantage of him.
- In Think Before You Speak, Aizawa takes advantage of how Tenya was injured during his first training exercise to trick Tensei into helping him spread this. Specifically, he tells Tensei that Izuku was responsible for Tenya's injuries, not Katsuki, in hopes that Tensei will spread around the story that Izuku is careless and doesn't know how to control his own Super-Strength. By ruining his reputation, he hopes to force Principal Nedzu to let him boot Izuku out of his class. This blows up in his face, costing him his job, reputation and even his hero career.
- We're Not Friends Kacchan: Growing up, Aizawa was constantly subjected to this; his bullies falsely claimed that he was using his Quirk to bully them. Thanks to Psychological Projection, he assumes the same thing is happening with Katsuki and Izuku, and that the latter is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Playing the Victim Card. It takes being confronted with evidence of Katsuki telling Izuku to "take a swan dive off the roof" for him to realize just how badly he misjudged them both due to his own biases.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- A Moon and World Apart: When Luna hears that rumors are spreading that the visiting Equestrians were responsible for the Orion's destruction, it doesn't take her long to find out that Neighsay was behind it as part of his False Flag Operation to frame them.
- Incredibly, Equestria of all places undergoes this in the Alternate History fic The Son of the Emperor. Because nobody who goes into Equestria ever leaves and as such nobody knows what's there, people assume that it's a wasteland and the existence of the country itself is a fairy tale. Of course, this is untrue.
- In the First Try Series, Barako attempts to convince everyone that her daughter Sakura's team is made up of perverts, and that she's beside herself with worry over Sakura being forced to leave Konoha "under the guise of a training trip". Danzo turns the tables by starting some counter-rumors questioning her parenting abilities... using nothing but the truth.
- At The Food Court: Ash's father gave his life to buy his coworkers time to evacuate the power plant during a meltdown, and successfully prevented it from becoming like Chernobyl or worse. However, Team Rocket, angry that he had left their organization and turned his life around, viciously slandered him, painting him as a Dirty Coward who ran away and died by pissing on an electrified fence later that night. Few actually believe their claims aside from Jessie, James and Meowth.
- The Reason He Lies: Sigma's father is wrongly accused of high treason merely for disagreeing with Grande's plans.
