3rd & 4th Messengers: My Lord, news: the Swiss have invaded France.
King Richard IV: Excellent! Wessex, while they're away, take ten thousand troops and pillage Geneva!
Lord Chiswick: But the Swiss are our allies, My Lord.
King Richard IV: Oh, yes... Well, er, get them to dress up as Germans, will you?
King Richard IV: Excellent! Wessex, while they're away, take ten thousand troops and pillage Geneva!
Lord Chiswick: But the Swiss are our allies, My Lord.
King Richard IV: Oh, yes... Well, er, get them to dress up as Germans, will you?
Whenever people from one nation or organization pretend to be members of another, to stir up trouble. Common scenarios include:
- Pretending to be an enemy and attacking another enemy, to get them to fight;
- Pretending to be an enemy and attacking yourself, to justify a counterattack;
- Secretly being an ally of the villains and having them "attack" you in order to shift suspicion away from yourself;
- Pretending to be a member of a terrorist organization and attacking your own people, to better control them;
- In espionage, pretending to be from either the victim's nation or an allied one to fool someone into betraying secrets.
- With Pirates, pretending to be the same as a victim's nation to get in close and attack the enemy.
- Using anonymity, such as that provided by some forum websites and via mail, to pretend to be on the side you're fighting against, and then saying something really extreme in order to turn people against whatever the other side is rooting for.
It's not limited to violence; spreading misinformation or committing sabotage in someone else's name can work wonders too. Basically it is a Frame-Up scaled up to target large organizations and nations. Heroes typically end up trying to Prevent the War or Avoiding the Great War.
This is an example of Truth in Television since false flag operations have been used in real life to do all of this. It's generally frowned upon by the Geneva Convention.
Any False Flag Operation can be used to generate a Pretext for War. If a False Flag Operation is perpetrated by an individual villain or group to start a war for private benefit, it's a case of War for Fun and Profit. If the attack is directed against the guys you're posing as (as opposed to your own), it's Dressing as the Enemy. When done on an individual level to justify a killing, it's a Self-Defense Ruse. When they disguise someone else, it's Disguised Hostage Gambit. If the intent is to incite two villainous groups to wipe each other out, it can either be Evil Versus Evil or Enemy Civil War. Thus, it is the third of The Thirty-Six Stratagems.
This was named after a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country in order to hide its true identity. However, unlike the modern definition of the term, it was originally used to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking them, provided the attacking vessel displayed its true flag once an attack had begun. You could also interpret the term to be a shortening of "false red flag", since the person employing the tactic is planting a false red flag on their opponent to taint their reputation.
Compare Government-Exploited Crisis, when the government causes, fakes or otherwise exploits a crisis to further its own goals. Also compare Staged Populist Uprising, when the leadership of a rebellion doesn't actually support the uprising's cause.
WARNING: Because this is often used as a plot twist, there will be spoilers below, many of which will not be covered.
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Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Aldnoah.Zero, the assassination attempt on the VERS princess was planned by a faction among the Orbital Knights to provide a Casus Belli for their invasion of Earth.
- Attack on Titan: Armin, thinking out loud, suggests causing a disaster and blaming it on either the Monarchy or the Brigade in order to get the populace as a whole to regard the Survey Corps as their saviors. He then looks up to the shocked and horrified faces of his comrades. He claims he was just joking. And the series doesn't like to leave Chekhov hanging: shortly afterward, the Brigade murders Edward Reebs and tries to blame it on the Survey Corps.
- In Carole & Tuesday, sleazy political advisor Jerry tries to drum up support for Valerie Simmons' xenophobic policies by orchestrating a terrorist attack on the Martian capital's climate control system, causing temperatures to plummet, and blaming it on immigrants from Earth. It works, but comes back to bite him in the series finale: when Valerie is shown irrefutable proof that Jerry was responsible, she's so disgusted by his methods that she withdraws her candidacy and fires him on the spot.
- Chainsaw Man: The entire Katana Man arc is this, given that the Gun Devil is long incapacitated. Makima claiming that Sawatari's Snake Devil executed her on behalf of the Gun Devil despite knowing that it's captured and Sawatari's corpse dressed up in Public Safety clothes to be used against the Gun Devil heavily points to Sawatari having been working under Makima the whole time to reduce resisitance in Division 4, with her death being a manner of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness.
- In Flying Phantom Ship, the giant robot that attacks the city claims to have been sent by the Phantom Ship. But the main character starts to wonder whether that's true when the Phantom Ship appears and engages the robot in a duel, destroying it. He later learns that the robot was sent by an evil corporation that's in cahoots with the military. The captain of the Phantom Ship and his crew are actually La Résistance fighting the corporation.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, the shape-changing homunculus Envy took the form of an Amestrian soldier and fired the shot that started the Ishballan War.
- In Chapter 106 of GTO: The Early Years, Minamino tries to kill Eikichi, dressing as a Kamakura Massacre gang member (who are already on bad terms with Eikichi's gang) so they'll get blamed. His plan doesn't work out.
- Gundam
- In Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO, the Zeons made a Zaku disguised as a GM for this purpose. It was so good that it was shot down by its own ship on the way back from its mission.
- In the flashback arc of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, the Zabi family use the death of former leader Zeon Deikun to stir up anti-Federation sentiment (it's never stated outright if they poisoned him or simply seized the opportunity when he died of a heart attack). Then, during his funeral, Kycilia Zabi kills her brother Sasro with a car bomb because he hit her during an argument and blames it on Deikun's Old Retainer Jimba Ral - the one person who up to that moment could have blocked the Zabis seizing control of Deikun's party.
- The "space pirates" who attack the Capital at the beginning of Gundam: Reconguista in G are really Amerian irregulars in disguise so that they can conduct raids without starting a war, and so they can violate the laws against technological development without the SU-Cordists in space cutting them off from Photon batteries. As multiple other factions start colliding with each other, it ends up as an Open Secret as the "pirates" are usually aligned with Amerian forces in battle.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans there are a group of Dort colonists protesting for better working conditions. They are armed but simply demand the right right to negotiate. It turns out Gjallarhorn actually planned for the protest. They set off a bomb at the protest site, blaming it on the protesters and using it as an excuse to butcher the entire protest. Then Gjallarhorn allows protesters on the other Dorts to steal Gjallarhorn weapons, which had been rendered unusable so that Gjallarhorn could then butcher all of THOSE protesters too. Even some members of Gjallarhorn were disgusted by the underhanded brutality.
- And at the same time, Kudelia's own financial supporters attempt to kill her to blame Gjallarhorn and make her a martyr.
- Gundam Wing: OZ leader, Treize, puts a plan into play by having the Gundam pilots think they're attacking an OZ base when in really it's a conference where most of the Alliance is trying to aim for peace with the space colonies. When Heero destroys the ship carrying the delegates who were going for that option. The surviving Earth Alliance takes it as an act of war. Whoops.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, the Earth Alliance learns of ZAFT's Operation Spit-Break, the invasion of the JOSH-A base in Alaska, and decide to do a little house cleaning. They let the invasion occur, but by that time, most of the bigwigs in the Atlantic Federation have skeedadled, leaving the base defended by their Eurasian counterparts and the remaining crew of the Archangel while they activate the Cyclops System hidden underneath and eradicate everyone there. Mu La Flaga discovering the Cyclops and Kira's arrival allows the Archangel and some of the forces to escape, but the death toll was high enough that the Atlantic Federation now had control and their controllers within Blue Cosmos can change the war into one of extermination.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Freedom shows the villains pull off a massive and complex one: First, Foundation arranges intelligence that states the leader of Blue Cosmos is hiding out in the demilitarized zone on the border between Foundation and the rest of the Eurasian Federation. Tensions in the area are high since the Eurasian Federation is not happy at all with Foundation's independence, but they agree to allow the heroes' peacekeeping organization, Compass, to apprehend the leader of Blue Cosmos, provided that they do not cross into Eurasian territory while doing so. Foundation's agents then mind-manipulate Kira into violating that condition, along with faking a Blue Cosmos suicide bombing on Eurasian forces to give Foundation's forces an excuse to move in to the demilitarized zone to assist with both apprehending the apparently rogue Kira and rescue operations for the Eurasian forces. That done, Foundation agents then launch nuclear missiles from within Eurasia at both their own nation of Foundation and Compass, wiping out most of the heroes' ships and mobile suits as well as the capital of Foundation. What the world sees: the peacekeeping organization of Compass is condemned for ignoring borders and provoking a nuclear attack, and Eurasia is implicated in launching said nuclear attack while Foundation is made out to be the victim in all this when they were only trying to "help". Foundation's leaders then move forward with using the sympathy they garnered as well as the world's outrage at Compass to try to restart the Destiny Plan and take over the world.
- Twice in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury:
- In episode 19, Prospera uses Aerial Rebuild's Data Storm ability to control a tank and make it fire on her, giving her a reason to escalate the situation by discovering and destroying an Ochs Earth bunker filled with Lfrith units, igniting a dormant powder keg between Earthians and Spacians.
- In the very next episode, Shaddiq orders the captive Nika, Elon #5 and Norea to be released, allowing Norea to rampage across Asticassia as a means to force the Space Assembly League to act against Benerict Group.
- Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: During the Siege against Apollo Familia, Lili captures an Apollo Familia Prum and uses her Cinder Ella spell to turn into him, allowing her to make it look like the Prum turned on the Familia by opening the gates and letting Hestia Familia in. Given that he was the one that kickstarted the conflict between both Familias by acting as an Agent Provocateur and faked being grievously wounded by Bell, this serves as Laser-Guided Karma.
- One Piece had several people and countries do this.
- Baroque Works occasionally pose as Alabastan troops attacking civilians in order to discredit the real army. Later, one agent actually transforms to look like the King of Alabasta to drive people into violent rebellion. Baroque Works agents were also placed among the rebels; agents on both sides are tasked with shooting key people on the other side if the Alabastan civil war appears to be reaching an end so that the war can continue. The organization's goal is to weaken both sides as much as possible so their leader, Crocodile, can take over the country with minimal effort.
- Don Krieg has also been known to use this strategy, specifically wanting to capture the Baratie to do it more easily.
- This was how the crooked and greedy king of Yvneel Kingdom screwed over Montblanc Noland after he "led" him on an apparent wild goose chase to what was supposed to be an island with a land of gold. He planted a fake member of Noland's crew from his servants and made him a "credible" source that Noland was a liar. In truth, the Knock-Up Stream blasted part of said island, Jaya, into the sky in between the time he left and returned. Too bad it was the part with the golden Shandora civilization.
- A big part of Fishman Island arc's flashback was that the mermaid queen Otohime was apparently shot by a human. In the present, Fishman pirate Hody Jones, near the end of his takeover, gloats that it was him who shot Otohime and framed a human pirate to instigate the Fantastic Racism between humans and fishmen.
- Doflamingo did this to King Riku when he took over Dressrosa. He claimed to Riku that he would leave the country be if he got a large sum of money to pay Doflamingo off, which Riku acquired by begging his citizens to lend him their money without sharing the reason and asking that they trust him. Since the people of the island trusted the king because he was The Good King, they willingly gave it up. Only once they nearly had the money, Doflamingo used his string powers to take control of Riku and his soldiers and attacked the kingdom, making it seem like he had gone mad until Doflamingo came in and "stopped the villainous king", gaining the people's favor and taking the throne in a single night.
- SPY×FAMILY:
- The previous war between Westalis and Ostania started after the Westalis town of Luwen was bombed. Westalis claims that it was done by Ostania, while Ostania cites that it was a false flag operation, alongside rumors of Westalis having worked with a third country to provoke Ostania into attacking. It's not clear what the truth is, if the stories were all propaganda made up by each country or a separate mastermind itself. Franky tells Twilight that the stories likely are mostly propaganda made up by Ostania to save face, but that soldiers like them will never hear the whole truth and that anyone that died during the war is just an Unwitting Pawn.
- The cruise arc has Snoops set up various bombs all over the ship, but he intentionally built the bombs to look like the work of western terrorists and put any blame on Westalis, should any residue of the bombs be found. Fortunately, Twilight manages to disarm the bombs, and the Ostanian government believes the bombs to have been planted by a third country to provoke trouble.
- In Transformers: Robots in Disguise, the Predacons disguise themselves as Autobots and fire on the Decepticons, hoping that the two groups will annihilate each other.
- In a scene not shown in the American airing of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Marik has his rare hunters punch him in the stomach to help sell the idea he is not Marik Ishtar, but rather the unsuspecting Namu.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: During the formation of the Tower of Hanoi, an unknown force had destroyed Cyberse World. Lightning—the leader of the Ignises—and Windy—his dragon—suspected that Aqua—the Water Ignis—was a spy who led Cyberse World to be destroyed. Turns out Lightning was the one who had destroyed Cyberse World. He wanted to escalate the human-Ignis conflict by provoking his fellow Ignises into hating humans and going against them.
- In Zoids: Chaotic Century, a member of the Guylos Empire hired some mercenaries to pose as members of the Republic to stage an attack on their own forces to start the war the Empire's been itching to have. While it worked initially, the commanders from both sides fortunately knew it was a False Flag Gambit and found an excuse to stop the fighting. Later, the same person hires the same mercs to kidnap and kill Prince Rudolph so he can take over the Empire and re-start the war. He didn't count on them falling in love with the target and nearly getting themselves killed trying to protect him. They later become his bodyguards.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who:
- In "The Church and the Crown", Buckingham stages a series of attacks designed to have the Musketeers and Cardinal's Guards at each other's throats so no one will be in a position to prevent his troops invading Paris.
- In "Mistfall", Solus is making his acts of sabotage look like the work of Outler radicals. He has even set up a naïve Outler to be killed and take the blame for the attacks.
Comic Books
- Aquaman: 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.
- The Avengers: An odd one when Kang pretends to be another Kang to trick the Avengers into attacking him.
- 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.
- Civil War (2006): 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).
- Civil War II: A hideous version. 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.
- Daredevil: Daredevil (1964) #16 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.
- 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?
- The Dresden Files: In the 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.
- Fear Itself: One of the stories in Fear Itself: The Home Front stars Jason Strongbow, the American Eagle, and involves 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.
- 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 Green Arrow (2011) #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.
- Jon Sable, Freelance: In issue #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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- Spider-Man:
- One arc proposes 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.
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2022): During a turf war between the criminal gangs of Manhattan, Tombstone captures Spider-Man and exposits about his plan to have some of his goons dress up as the minions of the Rose and shoot up the New York streets in order to get the police to take out his rival for him, then orders his men to kill Spider-Man and leaves. Spider-Man escapes, and rampages through Tombstone's disguised goons to stop this but discovers only after he's done that no such thing was going on — Tombstone never ordered the hit in the first place, but made Spider-Man think that he did so as to trick the hero into crippling the Rose's operations.
- Star Wars:
- Star Wars Expanded Universe:
- Shadows of the Empire: Evolution: Savan rises to the top of Black Sun's remnants through staging attacks which make a lot of the surviving Vigos believe that the others are behind it. They destroy each other in the fracas.
- 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.
- In Star Wars Legends: Boba Fett Overkill, Imperial Lieutenant Manech hires Boba Fett for extra force in a feud between his extortionist superior Buzk and the independent local monarchy, but Fett seemingly turns into an Overzealous Underling, blowing up important buildings while loudly announcing he has Buzk's backing, causing the monarchy to attack Imperial forces. It turns out the seemingly overwhelmed Manech knew the royals fighting back would justify the Empire sending in more troops to conquer the sector (and arrest Buzk for abuse of power and give Manech his job).
- Star Wars Expanded Universe:
- 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 (2011), 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.
- Tintin: In the 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.
- The Ultimates (2024): The titular team is branded as terrorists after The Illuminati attack New York with a Kill Sat and frame Tony Stark.
- Watchmen: Ozymandias pulls one of these 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. The Watchmen movie is more direct as Ozymandias frames Dr. Manhattan to for the attack.
- 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.
- X-Factor: In the early issues of X-Factor (1986), 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.
- X-Force: One version of the terrorist group the Mutant Liberation Front, recurring enemies of the 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.
Films — Animation
- This is pretty much Syndrome's plan in The Incredibles. He sends out a giant robot to destroy the city which he then will save so he can be the new superhero. Instead, it malfunctions and goes on an even worse rampage.
Professional Wrestling
- On the October 20, 1997 WWE Raw, D-Generation X raided The Nation of Domination's locker room and covered the walls with a mix of racist graffiti (e.g., "HOMIE GO HOME") and pro-Canadian slogans to make it look like The Hart Foundation were responsible. Nobody bought it.
Religion
- The Book of Mormon: Some Lamanites who have deserted to the Nephites conceal their change of allegiance, pretending to be escapees, in order to get close to the guards over the city of Gid.
Roleplay
- Tessa Cole in Survival of the Fittest believes the titular game to be a false flag operation by the US Government meant to encourage compliance and military support.
Tabletop Games
- Happens repeatedly in the BattleTech universe, where interstellar communications lag makes it hard enough to get accurate intelligence in a timely fashion even without any deliberate trickery. Which doesn't prevent the assorted players from trying their hand at deception anyway, of course. Just three of the better-known examples are: ComStar troops striking at a Davion research center disguised as Capellans, ComStar faking a Davion strike on one of their own installations as an excuse for Interdiction, and rogue Jade Falcons they actually had secret backing from the Khans posing as pirates in an attempt to break the truce between the Clans and the Inner Sphere.
- Unlike Stratego, you can totally do this in Game of the Generals since you can move the Flag, and is in fact an important factor in playing this game depending on your planned win condition. One example is having a Private or low-ranking officer impose as a "scared" Flag piece. Or, more daringly, move the flag like it was an officer to avoid being challenged.
- In the backstory for Shadowrun, the TerraFirst! attack on Shiawase's private nuclear power plant was one of these, with the real TerraFirst!'s headquarters bombed to destroy evidence that they weren't really responsible.
- In Warhammer, the Dark Elves used this to set in motion the events that led to the
War of the BeardWar of Vengeance between the High Elves and the Dwarfs. Later on Manfred von Carstein tried to do it again, by resurrecting dead Dwarfs in an Elf-Dwarf alliance and having them turn on their allies.
Visual Novels
- Aviary Attorney: During route 4A (Liberté), an element trying to make sure The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized murder a Disposable Vagrant while disguising themself as a member of the police force. Later they murder a random girl, lure the policeman over to her, and then tell the Rebel Leader it was his fault.
- In Victor Frankenstein's route of Code:Realize, Queen Victoria stages a "terrorist attack" involving chemical weaponry on Buckingham Palace itself and blames Victor for it, knowing that he will try to clear his own name and thus come to Buckingham to negotiate with her. This is only a precursor to a much larger plan involving several more Zicterium gas attacks on London which will be blamed on agents of other European nations, followed by similar attacks on the capitals of every other major European power, with the ultimate intent of sparking a world war while Britain still has a technological advantage decisive enough to allow them to come out on top.
Web Animation
- Happens on GoAnimate when a bad user false flags an innocent user's video from YouTube and giving them a community guideline strike. The innocent user would call the police to arrest the bad user for false flagging.
- Red vs. Blue; Season 12 reveals that a third party (the Space Pirates) are behind the civil war on the planet Chorus in Seasons 11-13. Their leaders (Locus and Felix) hired themselves and others off as mercenaries for one side or another, supplying them with weapons and alien technology in the hopes that they will kill each other off and allow their employer, Charon Industries, to move in and take all the relics hidden on Chorus for themselves.
- RWBY:
- By the end of Volume 3, the four kingdoms are on the verge of a world war, as the last thing anyone got out of Vale before the trans-continental network went down was images of Ironwood's Atlesian military robots attacking the city and shooting people. Of course, the robots had really been hacked by Salem's faction.
- In "Dread in the Air", Adam murders Sienna Khan, the leader of the White Fang, and claims the humans did it. This gets him leadership and galvanizes the White Fang for his anti-human cause.
Web Comics
- 8-Bit Theater: King Steve tried to hire the Dark Warriors to attack his own kingdom so that he could declare martial law, but his plan failed miserably.
- Fate/type Redline: The story is set near the end of WWII, when many of the Japanese are weary of war and advocate surrendering to the Allies. When one of the military commanders starts to think of surrender, Major Magatsu has him assassinated. He claims the factions talking surrender did it, angering his troops and ensuring they won't surrender anytime soon.
- Heroine Chic: Side-character superhero The Nation and his sidekick Liberteen foil what appears to be a terrorist attack on the Hudson Yards perpetrated by ISIS operatives in Episode 10
. When the terrorists are unmasked, they turn out to be blonde-haired, blue-eyed white men wearing brown-face makeup. The motive for their attack is debated briefly at the end of the episode, but the plotline is dropped and never re-visited.
- Phantomarine: Chapter 6 reveals that the Fata Morgana, the undead assassins of the malevolent God of the Dead Cheth, are actually puppets of his sister Cheline — the beloved patron goddess of the world's main religion. Cheth's markings, usually a Marked Change on his real agents, are painted on the Fata Morgana.
- Schlock Mercenary has one that happens right before the public reveal of immortality-granting nanotechnology. While it's presented as an In-Universe case of class warfare, the group (race) ultimately deemed responsible had already been shown to have tried once before, on a space station, with the only known rationalization being "surface dwellers are violent, so let's use that against them."
- TwoKinds has one that turns out to be two levels deep: Tiger Keidrans and one of the dwindlingly few well-meaning Templars meet up for peace talks, and are attacked by "Templars" that turn out to be wolf Keirdans... and were in turn, hired by a Templar.
- Unsounded: Lord General Bell orders Ethelmik destroyed and all citizens killed to hide his involvement with the First Silver weapon and the foreign smugglers in town. While his loyalists claim the city was too corrupt due to the presence of a foreign gangster it's really just an excuse to Leave No Witnesses and blame the town's destruction on Alderode to better support Bell's warmongering against the Aldish.
- One happens during the third arc of Weak Hero. Jared, an underling of Ganghak's Wolf Keum, gets two lackeys to steal Wolf's prized bag containing important business files. He also orders them to steal it while wearing Eunjang uniforms and then sets things up so that the Eunjang student Rowan ends up toting the empty bag. This is all to direct Wolf's attention to Eunjang High in the hopes that he'll conquer it.
Web Videos
- Critical Role Campaign 2 centers on one long operation, pitting the Dwendalian Empire against the Kryyn Dynasty to allow cultists worshipping Tharizdun, the Chained Oblivion, to open rifts between the Material Plane and the Abyss and weaken the boundaries between the planes unopposed—with the end goal of unbinding Tharizdun and allowing it to consume the world.
- Episode 85 has a more specific, immediate example: The Mighty Nein, having learned that agents of the cult are entering the Empire's capital city of Rexxentrum, teleport there in pursuit. They arrive to learn that the city has just come under attack by the forces of the Kryyn Dynasty. But after failing to ascertain any concrete information on the attack, Jester scrys on another man they know to be a part of the cult...and sees him in a cathedral in the city, delivering a rift-generating device to the church's cardinal, who is also a part of The Conspiracy. The Dynasty attack doesn't exist, and while the Crownsguard is preparing for it, demons will be able to overrun the city and break one of the chains binding Tharizdun.
- Internet Historian: While discussing The Independence Day Wars of 2014 between Tumblr and 4chan, he mentions at the end of the video the possible Conspiracy Theory that it was in fact 4chan's /pol/ board who originally riled up Tumblr with the "declaration of war" post that called for Tumblr to raid 4chan's /b/ board and start the whole thing, which ended in 4chan's decisive victory when they counter-raided. The reasoning? To watch the fireworks.
- In Noob, Tabris wants a total war between the factions, so he killed the Coalition's leader and framed spys from the Empire and the Order for it. The Coalition got hit with this again when the members of the council ruling in the dead leader's place all got killed by one of their own while the Coalition was having a Cooperation Gambit with the Empire. The killer pretended to be the Sole Survivor and pinned everything on the Empire via framing its help to fight a mutual threat as a cover for assassination.
- World War Two: One is conducted by German SS officers dressed in Polish uniforms on the radio station at Gleiwitz on the German-Polish border as a justification for the invasion of Poland.
- The Soviet Union shells the Russian village of Mainila near the border with Finland, claiming the artillery fire to have come from across the nearby Finnish border, despite Finland having withdrawn its artillery to preempt such an accusation.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: In "Toadcatcher", Sasha has Percy and Braddock pretend to be bounty hunters in an attempt to get Grime out of his funk, but Grime is too lazy to save himself and lets Sasha handle it, forcing her to give up on the ruse.
- Archer:
- Archer's mother, in a drunken fit of jealousy, issues a burn notice on her son after he quits ISIS to work for the agency's nemesis ODIN. To save Archer from being killed by his new coworkers, Lana sends a retraction of the burn notice from a Telex in the ODIN office building. Lana's false flag is compounded, as it implies that the burn notice itself was an ODIN false flag operation designed to discredit ISIS and its best field agent.
- Also happens in "The Papal Chase", with Lana realizing that the supposed hit on the Pope is a collaboration between the Camorra (disguised as the Swiss Guard) and a likely candidate for the Papacy.
- The end of Season 5 culminates in a particularly convoluted and pointless one; The CIA has been buying cocaine from Columbia, selling it, using the money to buy arms from Iran, giving the arms to the dictator of San Marcos to fight a long-running communist insurgency which they themselves are currently backing to justify staging a takeover of the country. And all this is being done to pad out the CIA's budget.
- The Dragon Prince: In the Season 2 finale, Viren conjures up the spirits of the elven assassins killed near the start of the series and sends them after the rulers of the other human kingdoms in order to convince them to join him in his planned war against Xadia.
- In the first episode of The Legend of Calamity Jane, outlaw Bill Doolin fakes raids by both the Comanche tribe and the Calvary, threatening to cause already-poor relations to flare into war. The long-term implications don't really concern him, though — he just wants to draw security off of a shipment of gold.
- In The Legend of Korra, Mako stumbles onto a bunch of terrorists who bomb the cultural center. While everyone else believes that the Northern Water Tribe is responsible for the bombing, Mako realizes that it's a False Flag Operation, due to one of the terrorists using Firebending. After some investigation, Mako figures out that it's actually Varrik who is really behind the bombing.
- The Life and Times of Juniper Lee Easter special had the villain, a rhinoceros looking creature name Mitch, pit the rabbits and the chickens against each other in order for them to wipe each other out so he can take over the holiday (Under the pretense that the holiday was promoting useless things like candy and colored eggs when he could do it better by giving kids things like batteries and socks. He likewise was just tired of looking after the two). Ironically the plan ends up self-defeating since, well, the sides were still kids and not exactly warriors. So at most they just end up slap fighting or general harmless roughhousing until their mothers, whom June had managed to free from Mitch, tell them to knock it off.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, during "The Collector", after (correctly) assuming that the heroes are suspecting him of being Hawk Moth, Gabriel Agreste akumatises himself and makes it look like he was targeted by the villain, successfully throwing Ladybug and Cat Noir off his trail for the time being. The reason this works is because the heroes are aware that the holder of the Butterfly Miraculous cannot akumatize themselves. Gabriel gets around this restriction by creating an akuma and then renouncing his Miraculous, therefore making him no longer the holder, and therefore able to be akumatized. After the Collector is defeated he just puts his Miraculous back on and becomes the holder again.
- It happens in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic of all places. It's revealed in the Grand Finale that Grogar was actually Discord in disguise, who decided to recruit the series other remaining villains and create a conflict for Twilight to save Equestria from to bolster her confidence. This backfires tremendously as they conspire to turn on Grogar, use his own bell to defeat him, discover his true identity, and simply decide to carry on with his plan of razing Equestria without him.
Lord Tirek: That was unexpected.
Cozy Glow: Wait. Discord was Grogar? Like, the whole time? Should we follow him?
Queen Chrysalis: Without magic, he's no threat. Besides, we have plans. - The Owl House: This is in part how Emperor Belos rose to power. He held sermons in the center of towns, then had his Golden Guard throw explosives at the stage and into the crowd to make it look like they were being attacked by wild witches. He even had the Golden Guard set off the remainder of the explosives (a pile about the same height as the Guard) in the middle of a town after one of his sermons, and burned down an entire village at the peak of the Knee, the ruins of which can be seen in "Adventures in the Elements". All of this was to demonize wild magic and wild witches, and convince people to join him in his quest to brand them all with sigils and induct them into his Coven system, which would eventually culminate in complete genocide via the Draining Spell.
- South Park: In "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" the US Government is trying to convince the world that 9/11 was a False Flag in order to make them look more competent. They do this by posing as conspiracy nuts, and running an actual False Flag campaign. This is subverted in that the plan is apparently to prevent trouble: the idea is that if people are determined to suspect the Government of treachery, those people should believe the Government is all powerful, so that they don't cause problems. What's actually amazing is how many conspiracy theories have similarly sinister origins.
- In the Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 opener "Grounded", we find out that the destruction of Pakled Planet was caused by the Pakleds themselves. They had been able to convince a data fabricator to make it seem that Captain Carol Freeman had planted the bomb that destroyed their planet to force the Federation to relocate them to a resource-rich planet instead. However, Starfleet realized something was wrong and convinced Freeman to pull off their own Operation: they got her to go along with her trial to make it seem that their plan worked. Meanwhile, Captain Morgan Bateson (from the TNG episode "Cause and Effect") lead a team to discover the truth and helped exonerate Freeman.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
- In the Season 2 Mandalore arc, Pre Vizsla's Death Watch faction commits terrorist bombings on their homeworld, to make it appear that the Mandalorian goverment can't handle the situation on its own, so the Republic would send clone troops to keep peace. This however would turn the terrorists into heroes in the eyes of the public, destabilizing the pacifist government and resulting in the rebirth of the Mandalorian warrior culture. However, this failed when Duchess Satine and Padme exposed the conspiracy, convincing the galactic senate not to deploy Republic forces.
- In Season 5, this is Maul's plan to get the people of Mandalore on Vizsla's side. The criminals under his command would attack Mandalore and are then "defeated" by Death Watch, who are actually allied with said criminals. Death Watch would then claim credit as heroes of Mandalore and convince the Mandalorian to accept them as the new rulers.
- Star Wars Resistance: A large part of the first season involves the First Order attempting to take over the Colossus by hiring a pirate gang to attack the platform, with the intent of pressuring the station's owner, Captain Doza, into accepting the First Order's "protection" to prevent such attacks. It comes to a head in "The Doza Dilemma" when the First Order has the pirates kidnap Doza's daughter Torra, and then "rescue" her from their erstwhile pirate proxies, placing Captain Doza in the First Order's debt.
- Steven Universe:
- In "Cry for Help", Pearl and Garnet fuse to become Sardonyx to dismantle the Communication Hub. Peridot somehow keeps repairing the Hub overnight, which leads to Sardonyx dismantling it over and over again. Eventually, Steven and Amethyst stay up at night and spy on the Hub to catch Peridot in the act. Turns out Pearl is the true culprit for all but the first time. She was so desperate to share Garnet's power and self-confidence within Sardonyx that she kept repairing the Hub just to manufacture an excuse to fuse again and again. Garnet, to whom fusion is a deeply personal matter for very good reasons, is understandably furious when the truth is revealed to her.
- In "A Single Pale Rose", it is revealed that the Crystal Gems — the rebellion created to fight against Pink Diamond and free the Earth — was actually created by Pink Diamond in a plot meant to allow her leave the Earth alone and let it to thrive rather than let it be destroyed like all other colonies. When this failed to deter the other Diamonds, she faked her own death to become Rose Quartz permanently.
- The Transformers:
- The two parter "The Key to Vector Sigma" has an accidental example when Megatron has the Stunticons built. People automatically assume that 'car transformer = Autobot" and think they're the good guys, until the Stunticons go wild. The Autobots are naturally blamed for the attacks, though the misunderstanding is immediately cleared up when the Stunticons attack the Autobots while they're still trying to explain the situation to the military. This is an accidental example because Megatron created the Stunticons in order to fight the Autobots on the roads, rather than as part of a plan to discredit them.
- A straighter example occurs in "Traitor", when the Autobot Mirage steals Energon cubes from the Insecticons and deliberately leaves behind a torn Decepticon emblem. Sure enough, the Insecticons and Decepticons (who have no love lost between them) begin attacking each other, but the plan goes wrong when Mirage is accidentally discovered and both sides realise they've been tricked.
- The Venture Bros.: The "Pyramid Wars of '87" are revealed to be the result of one of these; back in the 80s, Red Death and a handful of supervillains decided to raid Gargantua to take Jonas Venture hostage, but things went wrong and it ended up turning into the infamous Movie Night Massacre. The Sovereign, sensing an opportunity, contacted the OSI afterwards while disguised as the S.P.H.I.N.X. leader to "claim" responsibility for it, thus tricking the OSI into taking out their main competition. Brock Sampson, having been recruited to the OSI during the Pyramid Wars, is absolutely gobsmacked to find out his career in espionage is built on a lie.
Real Life
- The Gleiwitz incident, when Nazi Germany provided justification for its war with Poland at the start of World War II by dressing some soldiers up in Polish uniforms, then attacking a German radio outpost while leaving behind a body, was just one of a number of independent operations collectively named "Operation Himmler". Noteworthy in that this was such an Epic Fail (absolutely no-one believed it), the fact that Germany claimed self-defense as a reason to go to war is regarded as an interesting bit of trivia instead of an important historical fact.
- Later in 1939, the Shelling of Mainila started the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland. The event was semi-officially admitted as a false flag by the Soviet and Russian leaders from the '70s to the '90s, but under Vladimir Putin, the Russian official stance has reverted to Stalin's version of events.
- The Church of Scientology used stationery stolen from the apartment of author Paulette Cooper, who wrote an anti-Scientology book, to fake two bomb threat letters sent to Scientology facilities, and as part of Operation Freakout were planning on faking some more bomb threat letters to send to (among others) the US Secretary of State at the time, Henry Kissinger.
- The Lavon Affair: In 1954, Israeli agents in Egypt (mostly Egyptian Jews) planted bombs at British and American targets in Egypt, hoping it would be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, or any number of nationalistic groups in the country. The Egyptian authorities found out about it, informing the Brits and Americans, neither of whom were amused. As for the Egyptians themselves, they considered it evidence that their Jewish population was all potential agents of Israel, and could potentially be a threat to security (this was probably wrong, but that didn't matter at the time), and so proceeded to de facto expel the Jews from Egypt (they weren't direct about it of course; mostly, the government let life get unbearable for them). To this day, the episode is often called "haEsek haBish (the Unfortunate Affair)" in Israel. The eponymous Pinhas Lavon, who OKed the plot, was forced to resign as Defense Minister as a result of the botched operation.
- The Mukden Incident provided the pretext for the invasion of Manchuria by Japan. Two officers of the Imperial Japanese Army staged an act of sabotage on a railway under their control, then blamed it on the Chinese.
- Hostels in southern France inhabited mainly by Muslim immigrants were bombed in 1988; notes were left at the scene of one of the bombings with the perpetrators describing themselves as the Zionist "Masada Action and Defense Movement". Once French police tracked and caught the perpetrators, they found them to be neo-Nazis who were trying to stir up tensions between Muslims and Jews.
- In the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a Mormon militia disguised themselves as local Ute braves, attacking and massacring emigrants moving through the area. While the massacre was intended to Leave No Witnesses, this failed because one of the participants later confessed to his crimes and identified the ringleaders.
- In 1956, incensed that Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal, the British government conspired with France to encourage Israel to start a war with Egypt. The goal of the operation was for Britain and France to step in as peacekeepers and to make sure that hostilities did not spill over from the Sinai Peninsula once that conflict ended, Britain and France would occupy and control the canal. This backfired spectacularly. Israel made it to the edge of the Sinai Peninsula but was forced to withdraw. Alexandria was occupied, but the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. forced Britain and France to admit that they had violated Egypt's right as a sovereign nation to take control of the canal, and forced them to withdraw their forces from the territory they captured. In Britain, Prime Minister Anthony Eden was forced to resign, in no small part because U.S. President Eisenhower warned that the U.S. would in no way support Britain's endeavor in Suez, and warned that the U.S. would decrease military aid.
- During World War I, the German navy disguised the auxiliary cruisery SMS Cap Trafalgar as the British ocean liner RMS Carmania and sent it out to sink British shipping. The first (and last) British ship the Cap Trafalgar encountered was the real RMS Carmania, which the British navy had converted to an armed merchantman. The Carmania immediately recognized the deception and subsequently engaged and sank the Cap Trafalgar in the Battle of Trindade. It is often claimed that Carmania was also disguised as Cap Trafalgar, when in truth they both simply had the same wartime paint job that caused initial confusion on both sides. It is just more amusing to say that they were both disguised as each other.
