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Fake Interactivity
(aka: Fake Interactive Childrens Show)

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Fake Interactivity (trope)
Phil: I'll get you out. We could make it a team effort.
Phred: Yep. Since there's a lot I can do behind a wall of extremely dense glass.
Phil: ...Okay, so it'll be more like what children's television shows consider a "team effort".

Sometimes works pretend to be interactive when, by the definition of their medium, they aren't. You know what this means, right?

Beat note 

You're absolutely right, it means that anything the audience does has no effect on the program!

Anyway, this is common in children's programming (e.g. Edutainment) to encourage a form of Audience Participation. Sometimes, instead of a blank pause, the work will have a chorus of voices chime in with the expected answer, in case kids either don't understand, are incapable of answering due to a disability, or are smart enough to know nothing they say or do will affect the episode.

This trope reached its zenith around the Turn of the Millennium thanks to overwhelming success of preschool programming such as Dora the Explorer and Blue's Clues, before becoming quite uncommon by the end of The New '10s. A 2010 survey conducted by Disney prior to their preschool block being rebranded to Disney Junior suggested that this might have occurred due to the rise of simple-to-use smart devices being able to teach concepts to preschoolers through actual interactivity. As such, writers no longer feel a need to do this. To the industry's credit, leaving this trope in the dust has lead to the creation of new preschool shows with dramatically improved writing quality and moral values.

When this trope is used in a Show Within a Show, it could involve The Tape Knew You Would Say That.

Shows with fake interactivity have No Fourth Wall. Characters in shows with fake interactivity have a tendency to assume you're a child.

Compare But Thou Must!, the video game equivalent, where the interactivity allowed by the medium isn't utilized. Not to be confused with the audience shouting at Too Dumb to Live characters. Contrast Audience Participation Failure, when the crowd's lack of response ruins the moment.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • There are some scuzzy online ads that pose as computer dialogue boxes and offer supposed choices such as "Do you want to update your drivers? Yes / No" It doesn't matter which choice you click, if you're stupid enough to click on it. You still get sent to the same page, most likely trying to get spyware of some sort onto your computer.
  • In one online ad for Dory toys at Target Dory hides and you have to find her. Regardless of whether you click or not, or tap or not if you're on your Phone, Dory still acts as if you did.
  • Publisher's Clearing House is fond of sending out emails that say stuff like "accept this prize entry or surrender your chances." Clicking the "accept" button will enter you in the contest or take you a page for entering. The "surrender" button isn't clickable.
  • The infomercial Absolutely Rose Street asks the viewer to call a phone number to decide if the Show Within a Show Game Beat makes it or if it's replaced with Styling With Stella. Of course, since it's an infomercial, it doesn't matter (and a magazine ad even notes this). Game Beat wins automatically in the end.

    Anime and Manga 
  • In a rare example of a show for older kids doing this, the Hailey episodes of Yo-kai Watch contain a segment called "Yo-Kai Search Quiz", where the viewer has to help Hailey find where that week's Yo-Kai is hiding. Hailey and USApyon usually count down while waiting for the viewer to choose the correct answer, but in one episode, this did not happen.
  • The Hinako Series is (in)famous as an attempt at this targeted towards the older Otaku crowd with the intent for them to act as companionship with stuff like training, sleeping, and bathing in the most Fanservicey possible. It was also one of the best selling OVAs in Japan at the time of release, being sold out rather quickly.
  • Hinako even has somewhat has Spear Counterparts in Makura no Danshi and Room Mate, although in the case of the latter a Reverse Harem with the viewer as the Heroine. Cue flame wars between Otakus of both sexes arguing over which is "creepier" (in this case invoking the Girl-Show Ghetto).
  • The home video release of the fifth Love Live! concert has an animated segment of the main characters doing the calls and responses, with the characters pausing for the viewers to say the chants. They act as if you said the response even if you didn't.
  • Each episode of The Helpful Fox Senko-san has a post-credits scene named "Super Senko-san Time", where Senko interacts with an unvoiced individual, with the audience taking his point of view.
  • The movie PriPara and Kiratto PriChan: Sparkling Memorial Live has a segment where the audience has to cheer on multicolored Takkis during one of three games. Usually, one will fail the task, and Laala will ask the audience to cheer for this particular one, which causes it to win the game.
  • The Pretty Cure films (save for the ones from Max Heart through Splash Star, as well as the Spring Carnival movie and the Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure movie) have objects called Miracle Lights that are used at the climax. Each patron in the theater is given one, and has to use it at the climax while shouting "You can do it, Pretty Cure!" or "Power to the Pretty Cure!". People who don't have the lights are encouraged to support them with all their heart.
  • In the Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō theatrical movies, the audience is encouraged to help Shimajiro and company. Similar to the Pretty Cure example above, the theater patrons are given a special cardboard megaphone in order to "respond" to Shimajiro.

    Asian Animation 
  • In Season 1 of Doby & Disy, the title characters frequently ask for the viewers' help on their adventures, having them do things such as find objects they are looking for.

    Comedy 
  • Discussed regarding Language Lab cassette tapes in an Eddie Izzard routine, segueing into The Tape Knew You Would Say That:
    Tape: Ou est le plume de ma tante? [pause] Ou est le plume de ma tante?
    Student: La plume de ma tante est pres de la chaise de ma tante. As well you know.
    Tape: Oui, la plume de ma tante est pres de la chaise de ma tante.
    Student: How does this tape know what I'm talking about?
    Tape: Ou est la plume de mon oncle?
    Student: Le plume de mon oncle est bingy-bongy-boogy-bongy.
    Tape: [affronted] Non! Pas de tout! Je ne me connais pas "bingy-bongy-boogy-bongy." Qu'est-ce que vous dites?
  • Mr. Zed, the Robotic Comic tries to work the room in standard cheesy comic fashion, but because A.I. Is a Crapshoot it devolves into this trope.
    Zed: Anyone here on a... first date?
    Audience: ...
    Zed: ...Good! Any... football supporters?
    Audience: [muffled cheering]
    Zed: ...Good! Anyone from... out of town?
    Audience: ...
    Zed: ...Good! Where are you from, sir?
    Audience: [inaudible]
    Zed: ...Good!

    Comic Books 

    Films — Animation 
  • In the climax of Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation, a girl named Christy is mortally wounded by dark magic (note that the Big Bad didn't intend to hurt her), and the Care Bears tell the audience that they have to chant "I care!" along with the other characters in order to save her. Even if you don't play along, or say you don't care or will Christy to die (you monster), she gets better regardless, and the villain pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Miffy The Movie plays this trope straight, with Miffy asking questions to the audience during the treasure hunt she and her friends play at the zoo.
  • Fly Out, PriPara: Aim For It With Everyone! Idol Grand Prix has Meganee tell the viewer to turn their hand as if they were cranking a Gashapon machine to pick the songs, which happens anyway even if the audience isn't doing the action.
  • Inside Out 2: Parodied. Bloofy, a character from Riley's favorite childhood show Bloofy's House, asked the audience how he can help Joy and her friends out, much like how Dora usually does. However, to the others, it looks like he's talking to a wall.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In the movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad, the audience is supposedly responsible for putting the cushion out to break Mr. Conductor's fall. This is averted in the two series on which the film was based, however, outside of educational segments made between Seasons 8-12. Not even All Engines Go falls under this trope. It's really awkward.
  • The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure tried to do this with instructions at the beginning of the film encouraging the children to do certain things when certain events in the film took place. The few parents who thought this would be a good idea regretted the decision when the kids would run loose all over the movie theater and disrupted everyone else's time there.
  • The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland begins with Bert and Ernie asking the kids to count down from ten to start the film. Kids' voices responding to Elmo are played during the parts when Elmo asks the audience where his blanket is and there is also a moment where the kids have to blow raspberries to help Elmo get past the Queen of Trash.
  • The Dancing Bear gag of the 1961 horror film Mr. Sardonicus was a simulated "vote" on the final fate of the movie's villain. Just before the closing scene, William Castle (the film's producer and director) appears onscreen and invites the audience to hold up the "thumbs up/down" cards they'd have been issued during the original theatrical release. He goes through the motions of calling on a few audience members to clarify their votes, mimes tallying the results, then calls the verdict and cues up the concluding scene. It's unclear if a "show mercy" option was ever filmed or not (most film historians agree that it wasn't), but the slanted way Castle describes the viewers' choice pretty much guarantees that "no mercy" will win, so only that outcome was ever actually shown. That's why it's Fake Interactivity.
  • In Barney's Great Adventure, this trope is used thrice: when Barney encourages the viewers to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, when Baby Bop asks them if they've seen her blanket and when Barney encourages them to imagine a log can fly in order to get the Egg MacGuffin back from a hot air balloon.
  • In the opening of Mary Poppins, Bert turns to address you, pauses, and then acts like you asked him for directions to 17 Cherry Tree Lane. This trope never occurs again for the rest of the movie.

    Literature 
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul: Discussed. Greg recalls watching TV shows that pretended to be interactive. He believed that the characters actually listened to what he told them, so his mother had to tell him that they couldn't.
  • Played for drama in Room. As a Child by Rape of a Bunker Woman kept in the titular Tailor-Made Prison, Jack's favorite TV show is Dora the Explorer because of this very trope. Later on (but well before they escape Room), he gets very confused when Ma tells him that while Dora is still fake, the people in the live-action shows are real. note 
    Dora always says she’s going to need my help, like can I find a magic thing, she waits for me to say, “Yeah.” I shout out, “Behind the palm tree,” and the blue arrow clicks right behind the palm tree, she says, “Thank you.” Every TV person else doesn’t listen.
  • Fahrenheit 451 has the protagonist's wife Millie, who is utterly obsessed with her TV Room. Not a room containing a TV, mind you; a room where nearly all the walls are televisions. Her favorite show (and many others, no doubt) has the gimmick of mailing episode's script a few days ahead of time, letting viewers memorize their lines. During the show, a light in the corner of the screen indicates when the viewer is supposed to speak. All Millie thinks about are the characters from the show, and she even demands that her husband replace the final wall of the room with a fourth TV so she can feel more immersed. No Fourth Wall, indeed.
    • The film adaptation simply presents a straightforward example of the trope, in the form of characters having a banal argument, turning to the viewer playing an unseen third character, and asking their opinion. Linda doesn't answer in time, but it continues anyway with a noncommittal reply, apparently shattering her immersion.
  • Mo Willems' Pigeon series of books, beginning with Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus present this in literary format, encouraging the readers to shout out "No!" when the Pigeon begs to do something he's not allowed to do, like driving the bus. Some of these stories were later adapted for DVD by Scholastic and Weston Woods. There are other children's picture books that have adopted this format as well.
  • The children's book Open Very Carefully has a similar concept; it follows the story of a crocodile who invades a book and encourages kids to shake the book, turn it, and other things in an attempt to get the crocodile out.
  • There are a pair of famous Sesame Street books with this effect.
    • The book The Monster at the End of This Book has Grover asking the reader not turn the page, going to greater and greater lengths to 'secure' the next page against turning, and getting increasingly desperate as the reader continues to read the book. (Because there's a monster at the end of the book, you see.) At the end, Grover himself turns out to be the monster, and becomes embarrassed when he realizes this.
    • The book got a sequel called Another Monster At The End Of This Book which had roughly the same formula except now Elmo was also involved in the story this time around and both encouraged the reader to keep going as well as impeding Grover from trying to stop the reader. As you probably guessed, the ending is the same - Grover and Elmo are the monsters in the title.
  • There's a series of three picture books by Jörg Mühle featuring a character called Little Rabbit: Tickle My Ears, Bathtime for Little Rabbit and Poor Little Rabbit! which rely on this premise. In each book, the reader is supposed to be performing a different task: getting Little Rabbit for bed, giving Little Rabbit a bath or providing first-aid to Little Rabbit's scraped elbow. The books, however, actually contain no real elements, leaving everything to the reader's imagination. This is actually opposed to some children's picture books, which actually do contain certain interactive elements, like an actual blanket to tuck the character in, or flaps and pull-tabs.
  • The novelization to the Doctor Who episode The Day Of The Doctor claims to be written on psychic paper so the author can see the readers through space and time as he's writing, occasionally commenting on what we're doing.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Pre-taped interviews ("via satellite") are usually done this way, with the announcers or another wrestler involved with the promo playing along to the video. Usually resorted to when someone like The Rock is off filming a movie.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Ants in Your Pants: Lickety Split would often pause to let the audience speak to him, or would react like they told him something, which is always very specific to the script.
  • After averting it for nearly ten seasons (although it did have Barney Says), Barney & Friends did this when the show switched sets.
  • Bear in the Big Blue House has "What Do You Think?", where Bear asks various kids about the episode's topic.
  • Oobi used this in the game segments, though kids' voices were used to answer the questions.
  • Readalong: Characters in the show would often hold conversations with the audience, even pausing and talking back to them. It being an Edutainment show from The '70s, it was as interactive as one would expect.
  • Sesame Street:
    • Aside from the occasional Fourth Wall break, the show avoided this as well for the most part. And even when the Fourth Wall was broken, the characters were usually just lecturing the audience on various topics, with the audience merely spectators witnessing as the lessons descend into anarchy. Then along came "Elmo's World" and "Journey to Ernie."
    • There's also "Abby's Flying Fairy School", but the characters ask each other questions rather than the audience.
    • Elmo's Playdate plays this straight, being done in a similar style to a virtual video chat. Elmo encourages the viewers to do several activities when promoted, the most notable of which being a certain noise causing him to ask the viewers to dance like crazy.
    • "Play With Me Sesame" features Ernie, Bert, Grover, and Prairie Dawn encouraging the viewers to play along with several activities.
  • In Toby Terrier and His Video Pals, some sections of the show paused in anticipation of the Toby toy responding, but it continued on if he didn't. In the only tape released for the Wonder Bone accessory, the show stopped dead to let you press the buttons on the toy to answer questions. However, since the Toby toy couldn't send signals back to the tape, it didn't matter if you got the right answer or even did nothing, the show would just keep going regardless.
  • Yo Gabba Gabba!: A few Season 1 segments used this trope, such as "Brobee Wants to Color," "Foofa Wants to Play a Game," "Muno Wants to Play Pretend," and "Let's Listen to Sounds with Toodee." Other than these, the series tends to avoid this trope.

    Radio 
  • An early (and iconic in Britain) example comes from Listen with Mother, The BBC's radio program for children in The '50s: "Are you sitting comfortably?" (Pause) "Then I'll begin." When the BBC moved to TV, it became Watch With Mother. Fifty-odd years later, the show inspired the villainous "Wire" in the Doctor Who episode "The Idiot's Lantern".
  • In New Dynamic English, Max would usually ask the listener questions regarding the interview. There's also "A Question for You" where Max asks a question with an answer that is up to the listener.
    • Elizabeth also does this to the listeners in Functioning in Business.

    Theater 
  • Most versions of Peter Pan ask the audience to "clap if you believe in fairies" to restore Tinkerbell back to life. In the unlikely event the audience doesn't cooperate, the orchestra makes it happen.
  • Doctor Who Live: The Monsters Are Coming! used mostly live actors, but featured the Doctor in the form of pre-recorded footage of Matt Smith on a screen. Several times, the Doctor asks the audience to help him break the Miniscopes by chanting "Geronimo!" as loud as they can. Of course, the footage just continues regardless of what the audience is doing.
  • Zig-zagged in The Trail to Oregon!. The audience really does get to name the five main characters by shouting out suggestions, and vote on which of the characters dies at the end. However, the part where the audience is allowed to choose how the character will meet their demise is only there on the assumption that the audience will always choose dysentery, a safe bet due to the disease's memetic nature in the game on which the musical is based.
  • In The Marvellous Wonderettes, the audience votes to choose one of the actresses as Prom Queen. But the votes are ignored and Suzy is always chosen.
  • Some stage adaptations of children's programs such as Dragon Tales Live or Bear in the Big Blue House Live will use a form of this in drawing an audience response, similar to the way a children's show that uses this will do. Even so, because the character voices in the show are usually pre-recorded, it must go on even if the audience response isn't particularly energetic that day, or even if some of the audience decide to be contrary.

    Video Games 
  • The trope is Played for Horror in Amanda the Adventurer: The game centers around the player watching episodes of a strange Show Within a Show that's a clear Expy of Dora the Explorer, including segments where the title character will stop and talk to the audience, prompting the player to type in a response or click on the screen. The twist is that if you accidentally (or deliberately) get the answers wrong, Amanda will repeat herself, getting increasingly annoyed, until she forces you to pick the right answer, often accompanied by creepy changes to the environment. Not only that, but the topics she teaches the viewer eventually devolve into things that would be very unsettling to the average toddler, such as the fact that all living things eventually die and rot. In the third and final tape from Pilot Episode, she sounds downright threatening if you get the wrong answers.
  • Sent up in Wonder Project J2. A selling point at the time was that Josette, the Robot Girl whom you have been tasked with raising, would respond in full voice to player input, which generally came in the form of simple "praise/scold" prompts. In one of them, if you praised her dancing ability, she would modestly deny her talent, insisting that since you'd taught her everything she knows, you must be a much better dancer, and asks for a demonstration. After staring out of the screen for a few seconds, she claps her hands and laughs happily, admitting that she can't actually see you, but she's certain you were fantastic!
  • Used somewhat bizarrely in Barney's Hide and Seek. If the player starts the game and then goes long enough without providing input, Barney will simply start walking toward the end of the level all by himself. He won't complete the actual objective of finding hidden kids or presents, but he will walk all the way from the beginning of the game to the end after only a single button press on the controller.
  • Steamshovel Harry is purportedly a game about jump physics where you have to save the earth from an asteroid that will strike in ten minutes. Unfortunately, the mandatory tutorial video takes ten minutes and you die immediately afterwards.
  • Hate Plus has a sequence where *Hyun-ae tells you to make a cake before you can progress. This is a real-world cake. The game suggests recipes for you and checks to see if the amount of time each recipe takes to complete has passed, but if you wait the correct time, *Hyun-ae has no way of knowing if you've actually made a cake or not (unless you tell her). There is an achievement for sending the developer a photo of you eating the cake with her, though.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the player is told to either press the middle stick on their controller or tilt their mouse to dodge a gun when affected by the Scarecrow's gas, you obviously fail and get a game over screen no matter what you do with the "quit" and "try again" buttons allowing you to continue past the fake interactivity.
  • This is actually a plot point in Act 2 of the Agent plotline in Star Wars: The Old Republic. What you tell your character to say and what he/she actually says are often two different things, because your character was brainwashed into following the orders of the group you were infiltrating.
  • This is used in a bonus scene in Odin Sphere you can get if you wait a few seconds after receiving the "Fin" screen in the ending. The merchant speaks to directly the player and waits for the response. The scene ends with the merchant asking, "Ah, you are a writer?" and then begging the player to tell him the title of the book they're writing, which then appears on a black screen in white letters: ODIN SPHERE.
  • Used fairly cleverly in The House in Fata Morgana. Every so often, the Maid will ask Your (yes, capitalized) thoughts on what happened or a character's actions. There is no minimum waiting time, and you can immediately go to the next text box, but it encourages you to think about the plot and potentially catch foreshadowing.
  • Used in HuniePop during the introductory and closing conversations. Most notably Momo who will still be your "kitty" no matter how much you try to get her away.
    Kyu: Good call! That's kinda who I was thinking too. But I'd say that no matter who you picked.
  • Both Shenzhen IO and EXAPUNKS have the tools to create basic games using their respective fictional programming languages and simulated hardware. Each game assigns you to create a game using these tools when you unlock them, but since there's no way for the game to tell you've done this, these assignments boil down to holding down a button to say you did it. Each game lampshades how its essentially working on the honor system as you do it.

    Web Animation 
  • Angel Hare: The VHS copies of the Show Within a Show have segments where Gabby would ask the audience a question and give a vague response. What clues in the narrator Jonah that something weird was going on was his old VCR copies had Gabby directly addressing him by name.
  • Bee and Puppycat sees this trope in the Show Within a Show Pretty Patrick. His Pretty Patrick Lunchtime series consists of him "eating" with the viewer and sharing his lunch of the day with them, but mostly talking to the camera as if the viewer was there with him.
  • Extra Credits: Done and lampshaded in "Choice Architecture: Manipulation for Fun and Profit!", where at the start of the episode, Matt quizzes the viewer about the video's topic, presenting four questions for a while before the correct answer is chosen. The second time this is done, the fourth choice says "This is a non-interactive YouTube Video that will make me pick #1, making this whole thing a flawed analogy," and predicably, the correct answer is #1.
  • The Fruitless Quests of Nabiu: The pilot contains timed pop-ups and buttons that make sense in the parodied videogames, but this is a web video.
  • Parodied in the Homestar Runner Strong Bad Email "for kids". Strong Bad demonstrates how bad of a kids' show host he would be with an Imagine Spot. He asks the kids to say "The Cheat", which they do (though one says "Christopher Columbus") and Strong Bad gives them an F-- regardless. Then when they fail to find The Cheat hiding behind a box (they say he is "right there" but do not specify), he flips out and threatens to kill their dogs.
  • Like most Object Shows, ONE. (2020) gives the viewer the choice on what character should be eliminated at the end of each episode. But as Stone later reveals right before he is eliminated, the viewer's votes don't matter, and the eliminated character had already been chosen before the show even began.
  • Parodied in Plancy's World, which is a Take That! towards Dora the Explorer. The webtoon's main character, Plancy, constantly talks to the viewers as if she were actually in a show made for preschoolers. The living flower in the pot on her head calls her out on this constantly.
  • In a SMG4 parody of Dora the Explorer, SMG4 (who is playing the role of Dora) asks the viewer to say "map". When he gets no reply, he gets angry and shouts at them to answer.
  • Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination): In the sponsoring video of the shirts from the same series, Freddy talks to viewers who buy said products mentioned above in link from the description below.

    Webcomics 
  • Played with in this Ozy and Millie strip, in which Timulty is upset because a TV show asked him if he could say "podiatrist" but didn't care that he couldn't.
  • Inverted in one Homestuck panel. Homestuck actually is frequently interactive, with Flash animations and game segments, but once trolled the readers by displaying a loading screen, followed by: "You spend no less than 90 seconds staring at this fucking GIF image before you realize the actual Flash animation is on the next page."
  • In one Litterbox Comics strip, baby Cooper is watching Dora the Explorer, and when she asks if they should open a treasure chest, he says "Noh." When she opens it anyway, he throws his sippy-cup at the TV.
    Cooper: I SAID NOH!

    Web Video 
  • In ASMR videos, it's standard for the "performer" to ask questions to the viewer as part of a roleplay. Of course the "performer" never can hear any answers the viewer would give, but it gives the viewer the feeling they are communicating with the "performer".
  • In a CollegeHumor live video. Hardly Working: Believe!, the above-referenced theatrical experience of Pan where the audience is clapped to keep Tinkerbell alive. However, this takes a dark turn as one of the audience members is violently threatened for not clapping hard enough.
  • Parodied in the epilogue of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, where Imperfect Cell stops and asks the audience what he should to do defeat Trunks. He is apparently told to use the Kamehameha, but Trunks kills him before he can.
  • Parodied in the Smosh video If Kids Shows Were Real.... After Anthony is shot, he tells Ian to ask the audience for advice on how to save him, as they just finished watching Dora the Explorer.
    Ian: [turns to camera] What do you think I should do? [Beat] Great idea!
    (He grabs a nearby baseball bat and hits himself in the head repeatedly, eventually falling down dead)
    Anthony: [turns to camera] Wow; thanks a lot, a**holes.
  • Also parodied in the SuperMarioLogan video "Jeffy Breaks His Helmet!"
    Mario: Kids, can you help Jeffy find out how many pieces he broke his helmet into?
    Offscreen viewer: Boo! This sucks! Where's Mr. Pig?
    Mario: He's dead!
  • TV Tropes: Hell, this very site has a tendency to do this by using video examples from video games.

    Other 
  • Par for the course in exercise videos, in which the trainer will invariably go right on counting off reps and voicing encouraging phrases like "Good job!" or "Keep it up, now!", even if the viewer has fallen out of step, quit from exhaustion, or popped out to the kitchen for a snack.
  • The above basically describes the DanceDanceRevolution DVD Game — there are stepcharts, but no actual interactivity, only encouraging phrases. They even provided a mat that doesn't have any electronics in it.
  • The Jolly Roger Telephone Company is a company that provides bots which handle telemarketer calls, such as "Whitey Whitebeard" or "Salty Sally." The bots are designed to trick the caller into thinking there's a person on the line, when actually the bot is just responding with pre-written routines such as "There's a bee on my arm. You keep talking, but I'm just going to stay quiet because of this bee" and "I can't concentrate because of this weather. How's your weather, by the way?" However, they can never actually directly respond to what the telemarketer or whoever's calling says and will fill spaces in-between with phrases like "Yes, yes" and "Uh-huh" to make the caller think that they're responding. Later iterations of the programming have gotten more advanced, such as being able to detect certain scams and engage custom routines ("Oh, my back's really hurting me, do you have medication for that?") as well as pass the call off to another bot once one runs out of material, but the same basic idea still applies.
    • Before Jolly Roger, there was a bot called "Lenny," designed to sound like a Scatterbrained Senior, for the same purpose. Unlike the Jolly Roger bots, though, Lenny didn't have AI capabilities to customize his routines, had a fairly limited repertoire, and there was only one "Lenny" bot (so no passing off the call to another bot when he ran out of material.) Not that this hasn't prevented scammers from getting bogged down by "him" for as long as an hour at a time.
  • Early versions of the Google searchbar widget for the Android smartphone operating system didn't actually allow the user to type text into the widget despite its apperance; it would just summon the Google app outright.
  • The SeaWorld ride Submarine Quest was a tracked ride that included a touchscreen game in the ride cars to make people feel like they had control of the ride's events. However, the events were automatic regardless of the riders' actions, a problem which was exacerbated by the game instructions never quite syncing up to the ride's mechanics. This results in things like being instructed to press a button to open a door that was already almost finished opening.

 
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Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Fake Interactive Childrens Show, Faux Interactivity, Non Interactivity

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The Werewolf Break

In the horror whodunnit The Beast Must Die, the film pauses for a minute (before the third night), and gives the viewer 30 seconds to guess who the werewolf is, before resuming the film. Milton Subotsk (one of the film's producers) added it in, going against the director's wishes.

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