The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the Yeti, UFOs, Santa Claus... So many strange myths and legends of strange creatures out there.
Naturally, with myths and legends that have persisted for so long, there are believers and there are Agent Scullys.
But evidence of these fantastical beasts and events isn't easy to come by. That's why they're legends and not proven to exist.
What's a believer to do?
Well, in fiction, they might try faking evidence of the creature or phenomenon to get others to believe. Sometimes this is justified as hoping to gain funding for serious research to help prove the actual existence of their supernatural cause of choice. Other times it's simply the result of a break from reality and pure unbridled obsession. And sometimes it’s just an attempt to silence skeptics.
This almost never ends well for the person involved in the fakery, as they are inevitably discovered, and then belief in their cause is even further diminished.
Might happen during a Cryptid Episode.
See "Scooby-Doo" Hoax for examples of people faking cryptids and monsters for more nefarious purposes. See also Framing the Guilty Party for more mundane examples. See also Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious.
Agent Mulder could be either the perpetrator or the victim of this hoax.
Compare/Contrast Straw Hypocrite, for characters who promote ideas that they don't actually believe in.
See also Sham Supernatural, if the believer goes the extra mile of wearing the guise of the make-belief figures to generate interest.
While fakery of phenomena does occur in real life, it can be difficult or even impossible to discern whether their motivation for doing so is genuine belief, an attempt to make a profit, or merely to garner attention for themselves. That being the case, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In the Case Closed case Chiba's Difficult UFO Case, the culprit* is an unemployed UFO fanatic who killed the editor in chief of a cheap tabloid for rejecting his photos and mockingly suggesting he just fake some if he wants to sell them that badly. The culprit is immediately suspected due to having been caught at the scene of the crime, but can't be convicted due to there being no murder weapon and the footprints at the scene proving he couldn't have left to dispose of it then returned. Several months after the murder, the culprit begins posting on his blog that a UFO had appeared at the crime scene, and an alien had killed the victim in front of him... The culprit had suffocated the victim with a black trash bag, then filled with air before tying it off. The heat-absorbent black material heated the air inside the bag until it floated away like a hot air balloon. The culprit had been planning to frame the aliens from the beginning, but lost his nerve when he couldn't retrieve the murder weapon after the police interview due to security cameras being installed in the park where the bag landed. After the case, Chiba gives him a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech for faking alien evidence to cover up a murder he committed over someone faking alien evidence.
Films — Live-Action
- Contact: Discussed in the finale. Kitz suggests that the whole alien contact situation was concocted by the late Hadden to stir belief, pointing out he had the means, motive, and opportunity. Subverted, as Kitz is later informed that while Arroway's device did only record static, it recorded several hours worth of static when her trip seemed to be an instant failure.
- Lance in Grave Encounters does genuinely believe in ghosts, and is disappointed that he and his crew have had to resort to fakery in order to get juicy footage for the titular ghost-hunting reality show. That said, his motives also have a dash of glory-chasing to them, as he believes that being the guy who proves that ghosts are real is gonna make him rich and famous. When, in this case, the ghosts turn out to be Real After All, he's initially overjoyed that he doesn't have to fake it for once, blinding him to the danger he and his crew are in.
- Harry and the Hendersons: We see Lafluer planting bigfoot tracks earlier in the film to try and gin up belief in the creature. Ironically, his own technique would be used against him later, when the Henderson family strap on Bigfoot plaster casts to leave fake tracks, only in this case to lead Lafleur away from the creature, whom they have come to love as a member of the family.
- At the end of The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, with the titular creature having successfully escaped out into the open sea, its pursuers resort to faking evidence that it exists by cobbling together a replica out of junk and photographing it, resulting in the iconic Loch Ness Monster image
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Literature
- In the Hyperion Cantos, Father Duré gets into trouble for faking the results of an archaeological expedition. He was searching for evidence that another planet once had aliens who practiced something similar to Christianity, but the evidence was inconclusive, and the decline of his religion made him desperate for anything to strengthen it.
Live-Action TV
- The Addams Family: In "Christmas with the Addams Family", Santa Claus exists, and the adults presumably know he exists. However, when the neighbour tells the children, Wednesday and Pugsley, that he doesn't, the adults all try to convince them that he's real by disguising themselves as Santa. Fester gets stuck in the chimney, Gomez fools the kids, but the rest don't, since not only are they meeting multiple "Santas", their disguises don't hide the fact that Lurch is tall, Itt is short and hairy, and Morticia and Grandmama are women.
- Castle: In "The Fast and the Furriest", Castle and Beckett fall into a Bigfoot trap while looking for a murder suspect. Then they encounter Bigfoot. Who also falls into the trap. And then unmasks, revealing himself to be Dr. Daryl Meeks, who was faking being Bigfoot for the purpose of, as he claimed, "drawing in Bigfoot". He claimed to hear yowls and tapping earlier, signature sounds of Bigfoot. Ironically, viewers know those were Castle, who is also a believer in Bigfoot, and was also trying to draw out the mythical creature.
- In Criminal Minds S 3 E 13 Limelight, an female FBI discovers disturbing journals and drawings in an abandoned storage locker, and believes them to be the work of a previously-unknown serial killer. When the BAU team decides the material is inconclusive, the agent also produces a keepsake of a woman's hair. She says it was found in the storage locker, but later (after the unsub is discovered) Rossi deduces that the hair belonged to the agent herself, who wanted to keep attention on the case.
- iCarly: In iBelieve in Bigfoot, the iCarlys take a trip to Mount Baker National Forest after there are reported sightings of Bigfoot in the area. Carly, being a believer, wants to actually see him, having even invited alleged expert on Bigfoot, Dr. Sydney Van Gurbin, onto their show to talk about him, while he promotes his novel "Bigfoot: True or Real?". When they finally get there and set up a trap for Bigfoot, they discover it's Dr. Van Gurbin himself in a Bigfoot suit, having faked the sightings to drum up publicity for his failing novel. Even after being exposed though, he manages to escape, the iCarlys thinking he stole their camper and ran off, but he actually tried to trick another pair of Bigfoot hunters not even five minutes later, only for the iCarlys to expose him again. It's then everyone realizes the one who stole the camper was Bigfoot himself.
- In Lost Tapes, the episode covering the Dover Demon has a set of hoaxers attempting to create a hoax based around the cryptid in question to celebrate an anniversary of its sighting; this being Lost Tapes, the actual Dover Demon shows up.
- Midsomer Murders: In "The Incident at Cooper Hill" had the local UFO enthusiast (and murder victim) plant evidence because he just wanted other people to believe as he did (his murder had nothing to do with the UFO thing).
- Rome: Julius Caesar, with the help of the priests of Jupiter, engineers a good omen before he goes off to war so that the people would believe his cause was just and blessed by the gods. It may also have been intended to demoralize the Pompeian faction as well. Something of a Genius Bonus as well, as Julius Caesar was the pontifex maximus in real life, so this was a subtle way of showing how Caesar utilized his position to give himself an advantage in this civil war.
- In Taken, episode "Jacob and Jessie", Tom Clarke and his siblings attempt to make photographs of a UFO by using a car's hubcap tied to a string showing how easy it is to fake. This is in an effort to dissuade their mother, Sally Clarke, from believing in UFOs and extraterrestrials that she is convinced the father of her third child Jacob was apart of. She has also attended conferences and gatherings on the subject and even constructed a radio for communication. While Jacob is indeed special, he gets kidnapped by Owen Crawford to be studied. Jacob escapes and goes into hiding as does his family later on. Later, Tom, who has been fighting the UFO claims, becomes a believer through interactions with his grand-niece as well as fighting Owen Crawford and his family's efforts of persecution and cover-ups.
- The X-Files episode "Quagmire": In Millikan, Georgia, missing people allegedly attacked and taken by Big Blue, a cryptid, in a swamp, bring Mulder and Scully to investigate. While there are more disappearances happening, a local bait and tackle shop owner walks through the swamp in boots, making fake dinosaur tracks in order to promote his business and the mythical Big Blue.
Webcomic
- In the Skin Horse storyline "Purple Waves", amongst the teams fighting to claim the irradiator are a cryptozoologist named Dr Haller and his loyal manservant Mr Berk. Haller hopes to use the irradiator to create a sasquatch, having previously attempted to present the symposium with a knitted bigfoot.
Web Original
- In Norfolk Wizard Game, Bill Morgan and his friends made a paranormal investigation zine that never found anything until one of his friends tried to fake a UFO landing, reasoning that they needed something to draw in readership to fund a real investigation but infuriating the others when they found out. Unfortunately, at the site of the fake encounter, they wound up stumbling upon a Technocracy operation.
Western Animation
- Corneil and Bernie: In "Close Encounters of the Alien Kind", Bernie gets Corneil to disguise himself as an alien to prove to his classmates he's met one. It works a little too well; Corneil gets chased by Bernie's classmates and by episode's end, Bernie gets carted off by Mulder and Scully-esque FBI agents because he was able to "translate" the alien.
- Gravity Falls: A very unusual example in "Grunkle" Stan Pines. When first introduced, Stan is presented as a skeptic who didn't believe in the oddities of Gravity Falls but would put on a show as a shyster and huckster to make money off of tourists. Then comes the Wham Line where he reveals to Dipper that he's always known about the truth of Gravity Falls. He doesn't put on displays of actual supernatural phenomena because for the most part, they're dangerous and he has other objectives such as retrieving his brother, Ford, from the void.
- The Magic Roundabout: One episode focuses on Dougal refusing to believe in fairies, despite knowing magic exists. His friends get so frustrated at this that they pretend to be fairies in an attempt to trick him, but this backfires when he catches them out...then, real fairies show up, proving once and for all that they exist.
- Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster: Professor Fiona Pembrook creates a phony monster using a Submarine, and some help from a pair of local pranksters, in order to try and get Sir Ian Locksley to take up the cause again and help her search for the creature. Interestingly, sonar pings from below where her homemade sub could go do get Sir Ian's interest, despite having already been presented with faked evidence.
