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Scam Religion (view source)

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* ''[[Grand Theft Auto Vice City]]'' has Pastor Richards, who is raising money for a Salvation Statue to save himself and his followers from the apocalypse. He admits on the radio his plan to use the statue money to build a mansion in Hawaii.
* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' has the Church of Yevon. It teaches that Sin was a divine punishment for using machina, that machina weapons are evil, that Sin will go away with enough prayer and repentance, and that the Final Summoning can free the world from Sin. While it's true from one point of view that machina brought about Sin (Bevelle won the war because of their superior weaponry, and Yu Yevon created Sin as his revenge), they are not inherently evil and Sin is not divine; the church uses this lie to keep the populace under control (no advanced weaponry = harder to overthrow the church). Sin will not go away with any amount of prayer or repentance, and the Final Summoning is actually how Sin is reborn; this lie is used to give the people false hope and keep them ignorant of the true state of things. It's made very clear that the Maesters are fully aware of the continued lies they spread.
** ''[[[Final Fantasy X-2]]'' has Neo-Yevon. Despite most of the core concepts of the original clearly having been revealed to be a lie, they exist as a continuation because lie or not, it's all people knew. While they don't try to lie about the original anymore, even if they wanted to, they still adopt most of the trappings of the original and remain enemies of excessive dependency on machina, though they don't pretend they don't fall back on it themselves anymore. {{spoiler|Turns out this is not entirely a scam, in a way at least. While there is nothing wrong with machina in particular, they are still ashamed of Vegnagun, an anti-Sin weapon that went rogue and had to be sealed and they wanted to cover up what a horrific disaster it turned out to be for the ancient predecessors of modern-day Bevelle. Unfortunately, a third party is working to reactivate it despite them wanting to not let it be brought back}}. They also reveal, in a way, the original Yevon, while a scam, was truthfully protecting everyone from something worse: {{spoiler|The original lies they spread were making sure the Farplane was regulated so something far worse, namely Vegnagun, could not be reactivated.}}
* The usual game plan of the [[Big Bad]] of the last four ''[[Ultima]]'' games. The most obvious example is the [[Church of Happyology|Fellowship]] in Britannia, but he pulls the same trick in at least three other worlds to weaken them for conquest. Where he succeeds the scam quickly metamorphoses into a [[Religion of Evil]].
* In ''[[Persona 3]]'', the Moon Social Link for [[Fan Nickname|Minato]] at one point requires a "salvation fee" of 320,000 yen {{spoiler|which you don't actually have to pay.}} You can even later call out the person you share the link with.
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