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Invented Individual: Difference between revisions
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* In an episode of ''[[Community]]'', Jeff gets caught out having created a class (Conspiracy Theories in US History) and a teacher (Professor Professorson). Played straight, subverted, deconstructed, and, as this is ''Community'', {{spoiler|ending with a convoluted nested series of ploys to teach the characters a lesson.}}
* ''[[Just Shoot Me]]'' had [[Line-of-Sight Name|Barry Toastman]], who replaced someone Finch fired just [[Zany Scheme|so that Finch could make him up]] so that he could get a Managerial parking spot. Subverted slightly that he only exists to a small group of people and Elliot finds out pretty quick and starts to try and prove his non-existence. Finch then quickly kills him off.
* From ''[[Babylon 5]]'', the noted Centauri government minister Abrahamel Lincolni, who exists only in computer records and was created whole out of the cloth by Vir Cotto, was instrumental in setting up an underground railroad to ferry free Narn to safety after the Narn homeworld was conquered by the Centauri. When they find out about this scheme, all the human crewmembers on the Babylon station can't believe the Centauri actually fell for the ruse.
* In ''[[Coupling]],'' there are several instances of people pretending to be other people, and having it blow up. The occasion that hews closest to this trope is when one of the girls talks about how she used to pretend to be twins when she went on vacation: "And I could get away with anything when I was my crazy sister Jane!" "But... ''you're'' Jane." "It kind of stuck. Long story."
* ''[[White Collar]]'' has a forger who spent decades perfecting a set of fake identities to the point where they can survive serious government scrutiny. Years ago he registered a number of non-existent births in various cities and then over the years he carefully manufactured official records for these individuals and inserted them into government archives. These identities have school records, employment and credit histories, driver licenses and even real passports issued in their name. They even pay all their taxes on time.
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== Western Animation ==
* On ''[[Dilbert (animation)|Dilbert]]'', "Todd" is created by the employees to get an empty cubicle for storage. But when nobody at the company can locate him ("There is no Todd!"), Dilbert is sent to jail for his murder. Eventually, Todd is promoted above everyone, becomes a millionaire, and there's a law passed saying he can become a bigamist. ("That was a coup.") A running gag is that many of the discussions about Todd could just as easily be religious debates.
{{quote|'''Dogbert:''' People want to believe that Todd exists, so anything you say in Todd's name they'll tend to buy. You see, you can play Todd but you can never play Dogbert. Where is your Todd now?! [[Evil Laugh|Muahahahaha!]]}}
* ''[[Doug]]'': In one episode, Doug wishes to go to a dance with Patti, but Connie asks him before he gets the chance to ask Patti. Afraid of hurting her feelings, Doug says he has to take care of his sick cousin, Melvin, who doesn't actually exist. Patti and Connie decide they're going to help him take care of Melvin as well, so Doug has to get help from Judy, who pretends to be Melvin. As usual, things don't go according to plan.
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** Take [[Up to Eleven]] later in the war with Operation Fortitude. The idea here was to fool the Germans into thinking the Invasion of Europe (D-Day) would happen at Calais and ''not'' Normandy. To this end the Allies invented an entire ''army'' and put actual General George S. Patton in charge of it. The ruse worked very well as the Nazis kept a ''lot'' of equipment away from Normandy and even thought Normandy was a ruse to distract them from the ''real'' invasion yet to come at Calais.
* A prank at Brown University several years ago played with this trope. A club dedicated to practical jokes (or something like that) picked a random freshman at the beginning of the year and began posting on school forums and message boards about how amazed and excited they were that he actually went to their school: "omg, can you believe it?", "I think I saw him in the lunchline!", "it's so cool, he goes here", etc, etc, etc. After only a month or two, practically everyone at the school knew the guy's name and face and that he was famous (though nobody was ever quite sure for what). The freshman target himself was probably the most confused by the whole thing until he finally ran into one of the perpetrators who explained what had been going on months later, but enjoyed the attention and minor acclaim for most of his time in college none-the-less.
* [[wikipedia:Joan Pujol Garcia|Joan Pujol Garcia]], known to the British as "Agent Garbo" and to the Nazis as "Arabel" was a [[World War II]] spy, well, sorta. You see he never did any ''real'' espionage. With the aid of his British handler Tomás Harris he made up an almost entirely fictitious spy ring which had 27 fake individuals and the only real person in the ring was Joan. Joan tried to get hired by the British, 3 times in fact. This didn't work so he went to the Nazis to (supposedly) work for them and became agent Arabel. He then gave the Nazis useful but publicly available information there by gaining there trust, and while there were some mistakes, they weren't noticed. And then he successfully became a what is known as walk-in (basically someone who goes to a country, embassy or the like and asks to be a spy for them) for the British. Before he successfully joined the British, they thought his his information was legit (they intercepted at least some of it) and they launched a spy hunt. Anyways he joined the Brits and they [[Feed the Mole|used him to feed the Nazis information]], as he hoped. Sometimes they needed to give the legit information for trust reasons. This obviously this was handled with care, for example one of his imaginary spies "sent him" useful information, but due to an "unfortunate and entirely coincidental" mail mishap, it arrived to late for the Nazis to use it. Agent Arabel even got an Iron Cross Second Class (which required the Führer's personal authorization) for his contribution to the war effort, and which would have been been bestowed upon him personally by the Hitler himself if it wouldn't have blown his cover. One of his fictitious members was too well-placed, so they killed him, and put his name in the obituary of a British newspaper. Said imaginary spy was replaced by his imaginary wife. Garcia's cover lasted so long that Hitler died not knowing his favored spy, Agent Arabel, was a double agent, let alone never loyal from the start.
* [[wikipedia:Nat Tate|Nat Tate]], supposedly a famous artist who destroyed most of his work before killing himself, whose "biography" was written by William Boyd. In reality, Boyd seems to have just wanted to make fun of art critics. Only one editor at the book's launch party realized it was a hoax; he realized something was off when everyone ''except'' him claimed that yes, of course they were familiar with Tate and his work.
* Similar to the fictional student is the fake building once created on the UBC campus in [[Stargate City|Vancouver]]. Students in the psychology and sociology programs inserted a non-existent building into the campus maps and records; the hoax remained undetected until the next semester when instructors assigned classrooms in the fictitious building were unable to find it, despite the alleged location of the building being in clear view of the front of the campus' primary administrative building.
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[[Category:Invented Individual]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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