False Flag Operations seen in Comic Books.
- In Aquaman (1986), Ocean Master plans for Atlantis and Thierna Na Oge to blame each other for the missing relics when he was the one that took them.
- Baker Street: In "Honour Among Punks", Davenport and his ally Boxe—who is a lieutenant in the Gothics gang—murder members of the Gothics and place the blame on rival gang the Towers: looking to ignite a gang war between the punk factions that they can use as a cover for their robberies.
- Batman:
- The GCPD pulled a few of these to get various gangs to fight each other during Batman: No Man's Land by painting over the territory markers of Gang A with the markers of Gang B and vice versa.
- In the Batman (James Tynion IV) run, Simon Saint, learning about Dr. Jonathan Crane's "Fear State theory" suggesting that a society could evolve into something better by an extremely traumatizing event, allies himself with Crane so he can push Gotham into accepting a Magistrate-ran city. To this end, they recruit outside help to torment a Gotham already rattled with The Joker War and the destruction of Arkham Asylum and discredit Batman and his allies further. In one universe, it worked. In the main universe? Crane pulls a Hijacked by Ganon and pushes Gotham further and further into total fear.
- In Shadow War, both Batman and Deathstroke muse that the idea of Ra's al Ghul's death and subsequent wounding of Talia and framing Deathstroke for it was one of these to consolidate Talia's power on the various Leagues connected to her family name. As it turns out, it was a False Flag, but it was orchestrated by Geo-Force to try and kill both Deathstroke and Talia.
- Black Moon Chronicles: Haazheel and Greldinard stage the death of Wismerhill's father at the hands of the empire so that Wismerhill will join the forces of evil in the final battle for the fate of the world.
- Deff Skwadron: When Uzgob and his boys commandeer an enemy bommer to escape the sinking battleship they just sabotaged, he decides to take a little detour to hit the airfield of a rival Skwadron on his own side on the way back. Both sides are already at open war, just... fuck those guys!Uzgob: We've got a bommer 'ere painted with enemy markings, so who's gonna know it's really us if we bombs da place ta zog?
- In The Dresden Files comic miniseries Wild Card, Puck's plan is basically just a series of these — he kills random civilians (and tries to kill Murphy) and makes it look like the work of the White Court, kills several White Court members and makes it look like Marcone did it, and kills one of Marcone's men while disguised as a police officer. All this causes the various factions of Chicago to act on their natural hate of each other and go to war.
- The origin of the Golden Age Western heroine Firehair involved a group of whites disguising themselves as Dakota Indians and attacking a wagon train to steal the shipment of rifles on board.
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): In an issue of G.I. Joe: Special Missions, the G.I. Joe team breaks a group of Russian soldiers out of prison in Afghanistan while posing as Russian military, and then gets the Russians to undertake a mission for them in the Middle East, posing as members of G.I. Joe in a bizarre double case.
- Green Arrow: In issue #49, the Patriots (an anti-Warg group) help a murderous Warg to escape from prison - killing several guards in the process - and leave behind evidence that other Wargs were responsible to give them an excuse to start a full-scale hunt for the Wargs.
- Hunter's Hellcats: In Our Fighting Forces #117, the Nazis stage Suicide Attacks on French trains, and then claim the resulting destruction is the result of Allied bombing raids.
- In Jon Sable, Freelance #9, a right-wing militia group headed by a former USAF colonel—who now styles himself a 'general'—plans to detonate a stolen nuclear bomb in New York, Moles inside NORAD will make it appear as if the strike came from the Soviet Union, causing the US to retaliate. The general believes that the Soviets, not expecting an attack, will be caught flatfooted and decimated by America's first strike: making the US the world's sole superpower.
- JLA (1997): In issue #100, the League fakes defeat to a group of radicals to unite the world's governments against them, in order to impress Mother Nature.
- JLApe: Gorilla Warfare!: Solovar's assassination is revealed to have been done by a Gorilla City militia known as Simian Scarlet, who framed a human supremacist group for killing Solovar as a pretext for their agenda of forcibly transforming humanity into apes.
- A comedic one in Katie the Catsitter: A giant robot with the logo BB on the side attacks the city, and says, "This robot attack brought to you by Buttersoft Bionics." The framing attempt could hardly be more transparent.
- Marvel Universe:
- An odd one in The Avengers, when Kang pretends to be another Kang to trick the Avengers into attacking him.
- In Prelude to Civil War, Iron Man hired his old enemy the Titanium Man to make an attempt on his life in order to provide a cause for not passing the registration act (basically, America's enemies would take advantage of the division and wipe them all out).
- A hideous version in Civil War II: afraid that someone will find out that he's The Mole for HYDRA and was unable to kill Ulysses after Iron Man kidnapped the boy, Captain America gets Erik Selvig to write a letter to Bruce Banner, who had been cured of being the Hulk, asking for help as an anonymous scientist to help get rid of other gamma-powered beings. This ends up setting up events for Bruce Banner's death at the hands of Hawkeye, which in turn keeps Ulysses from finding out the truth.
- An early issue of Daredevil featured the Masked Marauder having a bunch of minions dressed as Daredevil harass Spider-Man — to get him to pick a fight with the real Daredevil when lured to him. It worked.
- One of the stories in Fear Itself: The Home Front starred Jason Strongbow, the American Eagle, and involved rising hostility between the Navajo at the local reservation and the (mostly white) people in the surrounding area. Eventually strange Native American spirits start committing nightly raids on the town, but American Eagle exposes them as white townspeople trying to drive up anti-Native sentiment.
- Kid Colt (2009): When Kid Colt and Hawk find a burnt out cottage with the residents killed and arrows in the woodwork, Hawk assumes that Indians killed the residents. However, Colt notices that the arrows are from several different tribes - and decides that the killers were probably scavengers looking to cast blame elsewhere.
- In Operation: Galactic Storm, Skrulls pretend to be Shi'ar and attack the Kree, then pretend to be Kree and attack the Shi'ar, committing suicide once their attacks are done so no-one realizes they've been had (or, if they're caught, to prevent anyone having proof). It would have worked, had Living Lightning not accidentally killed their man replacing the Shi'ar chancellor (not that it mattered - the Supreme Intelligence knew what they were doing and had planned for it).
- There was a Spider-Man arc that proposed that the Superhero Paradox is due to billionaires conspiring to engineer supervillains for heroes like Spider-Man to fight superpowered blue-collared crime to keep them distracted from their white-collar crimes. Norman Osborn was a part of it but went off the rails because he went crazy and decided to become a supervillain.
- In the early issues of X-Factor, the original five X-Men thought it would be a good idea to locate mutants to save by pretending to be a mutant-hunting organization called X-Factor, Inc., and a group of mutant terrorists informally known as the X-Terminators.
- One version of the terrorist group the Mutant Liberation Front, recurring enemies of X-Force, was in fact organised by anti-mutant fanatic Simon Trask, and consisted of normal humans given drugs or wearing costumes to give them superpowers who masqueraded as mutants in order to convince the general populace that mutants were a dangerous threat that needed to be eliminated.
- Monstress: At the end of Issue #24, the Lord Doctor destroys the Holy City of Aurum with an infernal energy bomb. And as he expected, the Federation blames the Arcanics for this, destroying the fragile peace and kickstarting the long-looming war, which will provide an opportunity for his private army to swoop in and take over.
- Star Wars Expanded Universe:
- Star Wars: Doctor Aphra: The Coalition for Progress (the Empire's Propaganda Machine) routinely stages attacks on planets so that the military can swoop in and play hero, thus enhancing the Empire's public image. When Aphra realizes that the "raider" attack which killed her mother was one of these operations, she takes revenge by sabotaging the Coalition's attempted coup against Palpatine.
- As part of the Star Wars: Crimson Reign event, Crimson Dawn launches attacks on all the galaxy's syndicates, leaving no survivors and planting evidence to implicate other syndicates. Combined with them spreading rumors that the Empire is looking to replace the Hutts as their primary underworld partner with whoever proves themselves strong enough, and this all triggers a massive Mob War, which serves Qi'ra's plans of distracting the Empire with the resulting chaos.
- Superman:
- In The Hunt for Reactron, villains Reactron and Metallo magically disguise themselves as Supergirl's friend Thara Ak-Var -Flamebird- and attempt to kill her. As Supergirl seeks and attacks the real Flamebird and Nightwing, Metallo and Reactron attack and appear to kill Mon-El in front of a multitude disguised as Supergirl, Nightwing, and Flamebird so people blame his murder on the heroes.
- In Superman: Birthright, Lex Luthor fakes a Kryptonian invasion, with his mooks and war machines all wearing Superman's symbol. It almost works, as the public thinks Superman is with the invaders, but then Jimmy Olsen takes a picture of Superman protecting a child from them and spreads it.
- In Action Comics #600, Darkseid tried to take out Superman and Wonder Woman by sending Kalibak, disguised by Apokolips tech as Superman, to attack Wonder Woman, and Amazing Grace, disguised as Wonder Woman, to attack Superman. His plan was to get Superman and Wonder Woman to each believe the other to be an enemy in disguise, so that they would fight each other when they next met. And indeed they did fight each other...all the way to Darkseid's throneroom, whereupon they dropped the act. As Superman told Darkseid, "Just because we're mere mortals, that doesn't mean we're stupid!"
- The Phantom Zone: Per General Zod's instructions, his band of Kryptonian criminals destroy all of Earth's communications and espionage satellites, prompting both Americans and Russians to believe they are being attacked by each other and retaliate by launching their nuclear warheads.
- DC Retroactive Superman: In "The 90s" issue, Lex Luthor tries to get revenge on Superman, Project Cadmus and Metropolis by by recreating and unleashing the "Cruiser", a burrowing land whale-like creature originally created by Cadmus. In this way, when the Cruiser begins bringing buildings down, Luthor will spread fake information that the subterranean mutants known as the Underworlders are attacking the surface world; and should the Cruiser to be found, Cadmus will be blamed.
- In Superboy (New 52), Templar arranged for one of N.O.W.H.E.R.E.'s own bases to be attacked in order to set up his agenda.
- In the Tintin book Tintin: The Blue Lotus, Japanese agents dynamite a section of the Shanghai-Nanking railway and immediately report it as the work of "Chinese bandits," which serves as a pretext for Japan to invade and occupy the region.
- Transformers:
- The Transformers (Marvel): The Stunticons of all groups pull this. They end up realizing that the anti-robot human organization RAAT and their Psycho Electro Broken Bird Circuit Breaker are indiscriminately targeting Transformers, completely blind to faction affiliations. They wise up to the fact faster than the Autobots, and during a battle with the Aerialbots, the Stunticons rally around the Autobot Skids, pretending to protect him from his allies, and ultimately convincing the mentally unhinged Circuit Breaker that her hunch was right—all the robots were working in concert to overthrow Earth and that the factions are just a ruse. Naturally, she attacks the Aerialbots while the Stunticons make a hasty escape. This is a case of an inverted false flag operation, with one faction pretending to protect their enemies in the middle of a clear fight between the two groups in order to have their mutual enemies start blindly attacking. Now bear in mind that this is the Stunticons we're talking about here.
- In The Transformers (IDW), Prowl sets up one with the mad scientist Mesothulas. The two bomb a neutral city in order to drive up Autobot recruitment efforts.
- In The Transformers Megaseries, the Decepticons start using their vehicle modes to provoke international conflicts. Skywarp and Thundercracker bomb a Middle Eastern powerplant while disguised as American F-22 Raptors, while Blitzwing opens fire on Brasnyan border troops in the guise of a Russian tank.
- Ozymandias pulls one of these in Watchmen by creating a psychic "alien" to attack New York City. The idea was to create an outside threat to the entire world in order to pull the United States and the Soviet Union into an alliance, thereby cutting off the Cold War before it went hot.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Eviless and Hypnota tried to start a war between the Empire of Saturn and the United States of America by making it look like the American military attacked the Saturnian ambassador and that the Saturnian ambassador was abducting US citizens, both actions the two villains were actually behind.
