History Main / FauxtasticVoyage

* An episode of ''Series/{{Castle}}'' has a scientist doing a video chat to a classroom from Antartica, talking in his tent as a storm rages outside. The students are horrified when a massive shape attacks him, thinking the guy has been gorged by a bear. Castle and Beckett are confused when they're called to investigate...and then learn that the guy was broadcasting from a fake set in his New York apartment. It turns out he's been scamming colleges for years by getting them to pony up for "research trips" and then faking the journeys in his own home.

* The plot of ''Literature/WasteOfSpace'' by Gina Damico revolves around an intergalactic voyage reality show that, unknown to the teen participants, is really held in a desert warehouse equipped with state-of-the-art special effects.

* The early Creator/IsaacAsimov novel ''The Stars Like Dust'' has our hero leaving Earth for [[EarthAllAlong a distant and hidden planet]].

* An example of the dramatic sort: The ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" features a WellIntentionedExtremist who plans to wipe out industrial civilisation with AppliedPhlebotinum and start afresh; in a corner of his ElaborateUndergroundBase is a mock spaceship in which a group of volunteers are on a Fauxtastic Space Voyage to "colonise a new planet". They buy the idea of a "new type of drive" able to cross such distances but Sarah Jane (who has traveled through space for real) is able to see through the sham quickly.

* ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'': The episode "The Chimes of Big Ben" follows the title character as he escapes from The Village and makes his way back to report his experiences to his former employers. [[spoiler:The fact that the "escape" is a sham is revealed when the chimes of Big Ben sound the same hour shown on Number Six's watch... a watch he obtained when he was supposedly in Poland, which is in a different time zone from his agency office in London.]]
* One ''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]]'' host segment features Pearl pulling a travel agency scam, but when one of the couples she's conned inconveniently arrives at Castle Forrester, she, Bobo and Observer have to pull an elaborate ruse to convince the couple that they're on an ocean cruise. They even go so far as to get Mike and the bots to make ice sculptures for them. (Crow somehow manages to recreate a full-scale version of Michaelangelo's ''David'' using only ''two'' ice cubes.)
* The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Ship in a Bottle" ends with the holographic Dr. Moriarty and his lady friend [[spoiler: exploring a simulated world in a box]] under the guise of [[spoiler: having escaped the holodeck and stolen a shuttle]].
* The ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Projections" plays around with the idea that the EMH Doctor is really Dr. Louis Zimmerman and that his time on Voyager was really a Fauxtastic Voyage he had taken, with the crew of Voyager being holograms. As it turns out, the EMH Doctor is really himself and he has been trapped in a holographic simulation on board Voyager, subjected to an identity crisis.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode "Stratagem", the NX-01 crew use a rigged shuttlepod to pull the wool over Degra's eyes: [[spoiler:not only do they make him think he's in space, they convince him that he's lost his memory, that Archer is a FireForgedFriend, and [[FakedRipVanWinkle that it's the future]].]]

* Defied in a recurring sketch on ''Series/LateNight with Conan O'Brien'' has Conan interview a cast member (Brian [=McCann=]) who claims to be reporting from a distant location while actually standing in front of a projected background. When Conan expresses skepticism that the correspondent is actually at the distant location, the correspondent insists he really is there and purports to prove it by walking to another location (represented by another projected background). The sketch typically ends with Conan walking to where the correspondent is standing (a few feet away on the stage) to hit him with a chair.

* In the ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' episode "The (Very) Big Bird Job", the crew do this to convince the mark that he has stolen, and then crashed, the Spruce Goose.
* The first big secret in the miniseries "Ascension".
* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. In the episode "Gold", a luxury starliner is used to secretly transport gold shipments. The passengers are drugged and shown videos of the planets they're supposedly passing, while the starliner makes a direct journey to its destination.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters'': "Xmas Marks the Spot" had the Ghostbusters capturing, then having to take the place of, the ghosts from Dickens' ''A Christmas Carol''. Ray, standing in for the Ghost of Christmas Past, took Ebenezer Scrooge on a fake trip to the past using a wheelchair and a Viewmaster.

* In ''Have Spacesuit, Will Travel'' the protagonist notices that the gravity in the room he is in is much less than normal. He notes that if it continues for a long time, that he must be off Earth (it is possible to have low gravity for a short time on Earth, just be in an elevator going down) and therefore it is not a FauxtasticVoyage.

* An example of the dramatic sort: The ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" features a WellIntentionedExtremist who plans to wipe out industrial civilisation with AppliedPhlebotinum and start afresh; in a corner of his ElaborateUndergroundBase is a mock spaceship in which a group of volunteers are on a [[FauxtasticVoyage Fauxtastic Space Voyage]] to "colonise a new planet". They buy the idea of a "new type of drive" able to cross such distances but Sarah Jane (who has traveled through space for real) is able to see through the sham quickly.

* The ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Projections" plays around with the idea that the EMH Doctor is really Dr. Louis Zimmerman and that his time on Voyager was really a FauxtasticVoyage he had taken, with the crew of Voyager being holograms. As it turns out, the EMH Doctor is really himself and he has been trapped in a holographic simulation on board Voyager, subjected to an identity crisis.

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* A chapter of ''{{Manga/Kochikame}}'' manga has the main characters providing a trip for a group of senior citizens to Hawaii. They couldn't get a flight, Ryotsu being a tour guide tricked them by putting them on a plane which is just the chassis carried by a bus to a beach in another part of Japan. The windows were shut and opened when a slide scenery is placed. The elderly exit on a beach and unaware of the "shuttle" bus behind. Afterwards, they all went home by train drunk.

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* In ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'' story "Astro Smurf", the Smurfs pull this to "fulfill" one of their fellows' dream to travel to other worlds, including [[WeWillNotUseStageMakeupInTheFuture magically disguising themselves]] as [=ETs=] named the Schlips. This story also made it into the AnimatedAdaptation, with [[AdaptationNameChange the Schlips renamed the Swoofs]].

* A [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] Franchise/{{Superman}} story: A con man sells "suspended animation" to people, claiming they'll wake up in the glorious future of 1972. Superman turns this back on him by constructing a fake ruined future world for the con man and his clients to wake up in.
* A [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] Franchise/{{Batman}} story had the Joker pretending he had time machine and pretending to send fugitives into either the past or the future (in reality just movie lots) to escape the law, bilking them out of their loot in the process.

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* In the companion movie to the 60's ''Series/Batman1966'' show, Commodore Schmidlapp, an aged sailor with poor eyesight and partial dementia, is held prisoner by the villains completely unbeknown to him. They rig up his cell to make him think he's still on his yacht, and convince him that the Joker is just a pallid steward.
* The film ''Around the World in Eighty Ways''.
* In Film/{{Micmacs}}, the heroes use this trope to make some executives at an arms company [[EngineeredPublicConfession confess war crimes, which they quickly post to Youtube]]

* In ''Film/{{Leprechaun 2}}'' (when he searches for a wife), the male hero runs some kind of historical tour or something. He just drives them around in circles telling scary stories.

* A French movie uses this as its premise: A newsman is supposed to report live from Baghdad, but his cameraman lost the tickets. So they report from Baghdad from his apartment.
* ''Film/TheIpcressFile''. As part of his brainwashing, Harry Palmer is made to think his kidnappers have taken him to communist Albania. When he breaks out of his prison, he's surprised to find he's in the middle of London.

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* Used in the Creator/RayBradbury short story ''The Rocket'' for an entirely non-malevolent purpose -- the protagonist just wants to take his children on the space adventure they asked for.
** He revisits this idea in ''The Toynbee Convector''. A Bill Gates [[{{Expy}} stand-in]] announces that he has successfully traveled 100 years into the future and reveals that the human species will overcome war, poverty, disease and prejudice and create a utopia. 100 years later, after this utopia has indeed come to pass, the still living millionaire lets a reporter interview him, and reveals that he only made up the "time-machine" via special effects, [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans to give humanity hope for the future in a time when he believed that we would exterminate ourselves]].
* At the end of the Franchise/StarWarsLegends [[Literature/XWingSeries X-Wing book]] ''Wedge's Gamble'', Corran Horn gets the dramatic version of this treatment from Ysanne Isard when she takes him to her secret prison, Lusankya, which is believed to be on a distant planet. The truth of the situation isn't revealed until near the end of the next book, ''The Krytos Trap.'' [[spoiler: The Lusankya and its prison deck are a huge ship buried on the same planet where Corran was abducted.]] He clues in [[ObjectCeilingCling because of gravity]].

* In the third novel of ''TheDemonPrinces'' series the protagonist and others are taken from a spaceport to the villain's planet via a spaceship with no windows in the passenger compartment. He deduces that they are really on just another continent on the same planet after doing a few orbits around it as the gravity feels exactly the same as the planet they had left and the pilot neglected to perform the standard procedure of gradually equalizing the air pressure of the craft to the outside atmosphere when landing on a different planet.

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* ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'' episode "The Chimes of Big Ben" follows the title character as he escapes from The Village and makes his way back to report his experiences to his former employers. [[spoiler:The fact that the "escape" is a sham is revealed when the chimes of Big Ben sound the same hour shown on Number Six's watch... a watch he obtained when he was supposedly in Poland, which is in a different time zone from his agency office in London.]]

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Room 2426", Dr. Martin Decker's cellmate Joseph convinces him that he can [[{{Teleportation}} transport himself using the power of his mind]] to a safe location. Martin loses consciousness and later wakes up to find himself in a [[LaResistance resistance]] safehouse being tended to by Joseph, who explains that the first time teletransporting is difficult for everyone. Now that he is free, Martin intends to destroy the notebooks containing the information on how to create a bioweapon that the State is seeking. However, Joseph tells him that it is too dangerous for him to go out and gets Martin to reveal the notebooks' location to him. [[spoiler:After Joseph leaves, Martin pulls back a curtain and discovers what were seemingly the sounds of the street below are coming from a pair of speakers. He then realizes that it was all an elaborate trick and he is still a prisoner. Joseph and his superiors gloat on their success, seeing Martin overcome...only to stare in shock when [[RealAfterAll Martin uses Joseph's "lessons" to teleport from his cell to find his notebook]]]].

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* The WraparoundBackground trick in animation is sometimes lampooned by having the background turn out to be the backdrop of a FauxtasticVoyage. (See the WraparoundBackground page for examples.)

* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': Turns out, after Lila's appearance in "Volpina," she stopped attending school for a while. She told her mother school was closed due to supervillain activity and told the school she was traveling the world with her mother ([[CelebrityLie and various celebrities]]). To sell the story, she's been doing regular video chats with her class, using a poster on her wall as a "window" and pulling up facts about the area on her laptop so that she can counter Marinette's accusations.

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* ''Franchise/DocSavage'': In ''Devil on the Moon'', the Man on the Moon uses a fake rocket to convince his prisoners that they have been transported to the moon.

** Later in the series, he fakes a trip to Africa in order to escape from a life of respectability.

* A [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] {{Superman}} story: A con man sells "suspended animation" to people, claiming they'll wake up in the glorious future of 1972. Superman turns this back on him by constructing a fake ruined future world for the con man and his clients to wake up in.

Almost invariably played for laughs. There will inevitably be moments when the tour guide is called on to explain why the Sahara desert features an igloo and the friendly Bedouin tribesmen are wearing Indian headdresses, or conversely when the stagehands must rapidly improvise a suitable stand-in after the guide gets carried away and announces something not on the itinerary. The fakeness of the whole enterprise will be readily apparent to the audience, but not to TheMark (who may have the [[HandWave excuse]] of being short-sighted, but usually doesn't). The Mark will almost never realise they've been had unless the schemers have an attack of conscience and confess -- in which case, often, it will turn out that they had in fact figured it out but chose to play along.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Room 2426", Dr. Martin Decker's cellmate Joseph convinces him that he can [[{{Teleportation}} transport himself using the power of his mind]] to a safe location. Martin loses consciousness and later wakes up to find himself in a [[LaResistance resistance]] safehouse being tended to by Joseph, who explains that the first time teletransporting is difficult for everyone. Now that he is free, Martin intends to destroy the notebooks containing the information on how to create a bioweapon that the State is seeking. However, Joseph tells him that it is too dangerous for him to go out and gets Martin to reveal the notebooks' location to him. [[spoiler:After Joseph leaves, Martin pulls back a curtain and discovers what were seemingly the sounds of the street below are coming from a pair of speakers. He then realizes that it was all an elaborate trick and he is still a prisoner. Joseph and his superiors gloat on their success, seeing Martin overcome..only to stare in shock when [[RealAfterAll Martin uses Joseph's "lessons" to teleport from his cell to find his notebook]].

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Room 2426", Dr. Martin Decker's cellmate Joseph convinces him that he can [[{{Teleportation}} transport himself using the power of his mind]] to a safe location. Martin loses consciousness and later wakes up to find himself in a [[LaResistance resistance]] safehouse being tended to by Joseph, who explains that the first time teletransporting is difficult for everyone. Now that he is free, Martin intends to destroy the notebooks containing the information on how to create a bioweapon that the State is seeking. However, Joseph tells him that it is too dangerous for him to go out and gets Martin to reveal the notebooks' location to him. [[spoiler:After Joseph leaves, Martin pulls back a curtain and discovers what were seemingly the sounds of the street below are coming from a pair of speakers. He then realizes that it was all an elaborate trick and he is still a prisoner.]]

* ''Film/BoilerRoom'': The "companies" promoted by [[WhiteCollarCrime chop shop brokerage]] firm J.T. Marlin actually use run-down buildings, sham offices, and TooGoodToBeTrue returns to convince unwitting investors they're legit via a [[DelayedWire pump-and-dump scam]]. Even the main protagonist isn't aware the stock he's selling is fraudulent [[spoiler:until he physically visits the location of one such "company" and checks their records]].

* In ''TheSmurfs'' story "Astro Smurf", the Smurfs pull this to "fulfill" one of their fellows' dream to travel to other worlds, including [[WeWillNotUseStageMakeupInTheFuture magically disguising themselves]] as [=ETs=] named the Schlips. This story also made it into the AnimatedAdaptation, with [[AdaptationNameChange the Schlips renamed the Swoofs]].

The machinery of the Fauxtastic Voyage will sometimes appear in dramatic contexts, usually without painted scrolling scenery of any kind, with the villain using it to pull something on the hero. In these cases, the scenery is carefully prepared and much more convincing, and the audience usually starts out believing that it is real, although they may be tipped off before the hero discovers the truth (perhaps just as he realises something is not quite right), in order to fully appreciate the hero's danger. The dramatic FauxtasticVoyage may contain elements of, or appear as an element of, the FakedRipVanWinkle and/or the LotusEaterMachine.