Scooby-Doo Hoax: Difference between revisions

''The ghost is here,''

''Oh, give him the boot-''

 

The characters investigate a site with reported paranormal activity. By the end of the episode, they discover that the supposed supernatural activity is nothing but an elaborate hoax taking advantage of [[Haunted House Historian|local lore]] to frighten off the curious from discovering and interfering with their [[Evil Plan|main criminal activity.]]

 

 

The most common subversion is for all—or some—of it to prove [[Real After All]] or at least [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|of uncertain origin]]. Indeed, the investigators may discover the truth and haul the instigators off to jail, and the audience alone gets to see the unambiguous and real apparition. Just as often, at the climax of the story the criminal will be unmasked and attack the heroes just in time to be eaten by the ''real'' monster.

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** When this trope is played out, the real surprise was that in the end, in addition to the kids playing pranks, there was an actual ghost. It was a mostly harmless one, though.

** Another episode features a different variation. An irreverent chef comes to judge Chef Kawasaki's cooking skills, but it turns out he was in a costume and working for N.M.E. What's under the costume was worse.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** In ''[[Live and Let Die (film)|Live and Let Die]]'', as in the novel, the villain uses Voodoo, as his mistress / servant Solitaire, who has "the power of the Obeah" which supposedly lets her see the future), to maintain an iron grip over his island nation and drug empire. He even has someone pretending to be Baron Samedi on his side, plus a host of traps and tricks. Subverted in that Solitaire seems like she really ''does'' have the power to see the future, and the ending has Samedi riding the front of a train, laughing, implying he was [[Real After All]]. Most of the other stuff really is just an elaborate hoax, like scarecrows promising death to anyone who trespasses on the poppy fields (and hidden cameras and guns in case you don't take the hint).

* The movie ''[[Volver]]'': The whole population of a superstitious village is convinced that the spirit of a woman who died in a fire has come back to take care of her sister in her old age. When the sister dies, the ghost moves in with her daughter. It turns out that she never died in the first place; she burned the house where her husband and his lover were sleeping to the ground, and the lover's charred body was thought to be hers. She pretended to be a ghost to escape a murder investigation.

* Parodied in [[Multiple Endings|one of the endings]] of ''[[Wayne's World]]''

* ''[[Captain Clegg]]'' is about a circle of rumrunners, led by [[Peter Cushing]], who use this to try to scare away or distract the law.

* The 2009 ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes]]'' movie uses this, with apparent [[Big Bad]] Lord Blackwood deliberately cultivating a reputation as a fearsome [[Evil Sorcerer]], culminating in rising from his grave following a hanging, all as part of his [[Evil Plan]] to seize control of England. He's really "just" a [[Magnificent Bastard]] with good connections and an eye for the theatrical, and Holmes figures this out and explains it at the climax before exposing Blackwood for a fraud. Holmes does mention, though, that Blackwood performed all his spells and rituals perfectly and therefore he'd better ''hope'' it was all fake, or else [[Satan]]'s due a soul...

** In a nod to the original story though, the first run-in Ichabod has with the Horseman is a fraud - a jealous Brom Bones was disguised as the being as a prank. He also initially believes the Horseman really is a fraud, and sets out to "expose" him.

* Played with in the French supernatural thriller ''[[Vidocq]]'': powerful men die one after another from a lightning strike, bursting into flames in the process. It turns out that they were narcissistic perverts with a desire for young virgins. A sophisticated lightning rod mechanism along with a piece of gold in each of the men's hats, and gunpowder dust on their coats resolves that somebody simply wants to make a demonstration of divine retribution on these horrible people. Then it turns out that the killer ''was'' a supernatural creature all along, and used this method to hide his true nature, and the true motivation for the murders.

 

* Washington Irving's 1819 short story ''[[The Legend of Sleepy Hollow]]'' strongly implies that Brom Bones eliminates Ichabod Crane as a rival for his lover's hand by dressing up as the [[Headless Horseman]] and scaring him out of town.

* Literary example: Most of the Leaphorn/Chee mysteries by Tony Hillerman, with the supernatural elements in this case coming from the myths of the Navajo or other Native American tribes of the American Southwest.

** Who also was a member of the opera house.

** Although those scented rose stems actually ''do'' bloom into ghostly roses when in darkness. At the end, Agnes laments that she'll probably never know how the "Ghost" managed that. But Discworld runs on [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]], so it might have been enough that people ''thought'' the Ghost was supernatural.

* The ''Hound of the Baskervilles'', a [[Sherlock Holmes]] story by Sir [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], includes a similar plot twist. The story came out in 1902, making this [[Older Than Radio]].

* The [[Simon Ark]] short stories by Edward D. Hoch.

* In the [[James Bond]] novel ''[[Live and Let Die (novel)|Live and Let Die]]'', Mr. Big cultivates an air of voodoo around himself to deter investigation into his operations. Take a look at the entry in Films.

* In ''Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars'' by [[Daniel Pinkwater]], the Wozzle is an invisible monster employed by the Nafsulian bandits Manny, Moe and Jack to terrorize the citizens of Waka-Waka. It turns out to be no more than the three villains themselves.

* In ''[[Garrett P.I.|Bitter Gold Hearts]]'', Garrett recalls investigating one of these cases, in which a murder was rigged to look like a werewolf attack.

* These plots happen to [[Nancy Drew]] and the [[Hardy Boys]] all the time in their books, and have spilled over into the former's video game franchise.

* ''[[Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder]]'' has at least one case like this, with smugglers faking a haunting so they can use an abandoned building.

* In [[The Saint]] short story "The Convenient Monster", a murderer tries to make his killing look like the work of the Loch Ness Monster.

* The first Calendar Mysteries book revolves around an alien hoax that the big kids pull on their younger siblings out of revenge.

 

* Many episodes of ''[[Banacek]]'' featured apparently supernatural events, debunked by the title character in the climax.

* Ditto, in the short-lived series, ''[[Blackest Magic]]''.

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* In the White Wolf RPG ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'', there is an odd case of this. The genuinely supernatural Changelings of the Scarecrow Ministry have a tendency to create elaborate Scooby Doo hoaxes to keep people away from truly dangerous beings such as True Fae, werewolves and Spirits (either through fear of the hoax or through being attracted to it rather than the real monsters). Of course, sometimes they go a bit too far, and become the things they impersonate.

** 1st Edition module U1 ''The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh''. A group of smugglers tries to make the house they're operating out of appear to be haunted to keep the townsfolk of Saltmarsh from investigating.

** Another band of smugglers from ''Dungeon'' magazine got their hands on a magical boat that could travel underwater, so used seaweed and ghoul costumes to perpetuate an "undead sailors from the deep" Scooby-Doo Hoax.

* ''[[Double Switch]]'': Roughly around the middle of the game, an Egyptian mummy runs around trying to trap and/or kill people. {{spoiler|It's Eddie in disguise, and he dressed up like one so that he could get an Egyptian statue without anyone figuring out it was him}}.

* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'', on your pilgramage to visit the Greybeards (part of the main quest), you can talk to an innkeeper about a haunted barrow near the town. Turns out that it's just a guy who's invented a potion to make him look like a ghost to scare everyone away while he works out how to plunder the tomb... although he's apparently gone crazy and [[Becoming the Mask|actually thinks he's the tomb's guardian now.]] Then it turns out the deeper parts of the tomb really ''are'' infested with the undead.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Bloody Urban]]'' [[Zig-Zagging Trope|Zig-Zags]] this trope rather confusingly by having one type of monster dressing up as another type of monster. Specifically, Shaun (a [[Vegetarian Vampire]] who feeds on livestock) dresses up as a [[Chupacabra]] in order to get free food and not get caught.

 

* Virtually every episode of the original ''[[Scooby Doo]]'', [[Trope Namer|naming]] and [[Trope Codifier|codifying]] the trope. In the later shows and most of the movies, this would often be subverted, averted, lampshaded, and just all-around [[Playing with a Trope|played with]] as often as it was played straight—at least some of the monsters were real. In roughly chronological order:

** ''Scooby-Doo Where Are You!'': Played straight throughout the entire run. The sole exception is the episode ''Foul Play in Funland''—the out-of-control robot terrorizing an elderly couple's amusement park turned out to actually be an out-of-control robot, originally built by the elderly man as an assistant.

** ''Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost'': Subversion - The entire town pulls a Scooby-Doo Hoax for the opposite reason: to attract tourists. The real supernatural threat is actually working ''with the gang'' to investigate the fake one!

** ''Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders'': Subversion - there are both fake aliens and real aliens, but the real ones are ''good''.

** ''[[Scooby Doo Mystery Inc]]'': [[Playing with a Trope|Plays with it.]] Has a similar idea to ''Witch's Ghost'' of using the fake monster attacks as part of the tourism by ''pretending'' they're real. They even arrest Mystery Inc for trying to ''stop'' the criminal. One episode averted the trope by having the villain as an insane [[Trap Master]], who never tried to hide the fact that he just an ordinary man. However, in a subversion, his insanity is strongly implied to have been caused by an [[Artifact of Doom]].

* ''[[Max Steel]]'', "Sphinxes": The heroes investigate a pyramid and after discovering the hoax, [[Genre Savvy]] [[Ascended Fanboy]] Max reports that it's a "[[Scooby Doo]]" and explains what he means to his [[British Stuffiness|Stuffy British]] partner.

'''Rachel''': I'll study his teachings later. }}

* One ep of ''[[Teamo Supremo]]'' doesn't just feature a Scooby-Doo Hoax, the foiled villain in that ep even uses the "[[You Meddling Kids]]" line at the end.

** Played (painfully) straight in the first aired episode of ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures|The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]]'', featuring a pirate's "ghost" rampaging in the Bermuda area.

* Naturally, this trope was parodied in an early episode of ''[[The Venture Bros]]''.

** These plots were adapted from [[Carl Barks]]'s ''Hound of the Whiskervilles'' and ''The Old Castle's Secret'' (see above).

* An episode of ''[[Invader Zim]]'' featured Dib actually unveiling a hoax about a man who thought he was part chicken, when he was just an insane man in a chicken costume. At the end, he says that paranormal investigators can also debunk hoaxes like this, but the reports misinterpret his message and think that all supernatural claims are hoaxes.

 

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