Based on a Great Big Lie: Difference between revisions

 

== Literature ==

* In the 1970s, the book ''The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail'' (retitled ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' in the United States) claimed to reveal the truth about a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene that was hidden in various Renaissance paintings. It was later revealed to be completely fictional, but not before hundreds of thousands of people had been conned.

** That book heavily inspired ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'', which caused an identical resurgence in public interest. Amusingly, the authors of the first book sued Brown for plagiarism, but it was pointed out that [[Morton's Fork|either they claim that the book is true, thus destroying their own case, as you cannot copyright history and facts; or that it was false, thus destroying whatever credibility they had and losing anyway as you can't copyright ideas. Needless to say, they lost.]] ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' got a name drop in [[The Da Vinci Code]], as one of Teabing's resources on the Grail yet many people seem to squall about the book being "ripped off" [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch|without ever noticing]] its acknowledgment within the book that apparently ripped it off so entirely. The ideas posited in ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' were essentially used as a [[MacGuffin]] in the story, as various Holy Grails so often are. The mistake [[Dan Browned|Dan Brown]] made was the same mistake the authors of ''Holy Blood'' made, which was claiming it was all based on fact instead of what could amount to [[Epileptic Trees]].

* Both a real example AND an in-universe example: ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' begins with the narrator (Huck) informing the reader that you won't know who he is unless you've read "a book by the name of ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]''. Huck tells us the book was written by Mark Twain, "and he told the truth, mainly. there was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth." He then goes on to make the same claim about the story the reader is about to be told.

* Done for satirical effect by ''[[wikipedia:The Report from Iron Mountain|The Report from Iron Mountain]]'', a [[The Sixties|'60s]] counterculture book written by Leonard Lewin as a [[Stealth Parody]] of [[The Vietnam War|Vietnam-era]] military think tanks. Posing as a leaked document written by a "secret government panel", it claimed that war was a necessary part of the economy and served to divert collective aggression, and that society would collapse without it—basically, the plot of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''. Therefore, in the event of peace, they recommended that new bodies be created to emulate the economic activities of war, including [[Blood Sport|blood sports]], the creation of new enemies to scare the people (including [[Alien Invasion|alien invaders]] and environmental destruction), and [[Refuge in Audacity|the reinstatement of slavery]].

* ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', a notorious anti-Semitic tract claiming to be the records of a meeting by a Jewish cabal plotting to [[Take Over the World]]. In reality, it was written by the Okhrana, the [[Secret Police]] of [[Tsarist Russia]], as a tool for starting pogroms with, and was later carried into western Europe and the US by White Russians in the wake of [[Red October]]. It was exposed as a forgery by ''[[British Newspapers|The Times]]'' of London in 1921, which revealed that large sections of the book were cribbed wholesale from a 19th century anti-Napoleonic tract. Even so, it was made part of the school curriculum in [[Nazi Germany]], and anti-Semites to this day cite it as "evidence" of a Jewish conspiracy.

* [http://www.cracked.com/article_17003_the-5-most-ridiculous-lies-ever-published-as-non-fiction.html Cracked.com has a whole article devoted to this.]

 

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