false flag operation theme
A faction that wants to make war creates an incident and blames it on the enemy. The real warmongerers can then attack while falsely claiming that their targeted enemy started the hostilities.
Examples
The Enterprise-D nearly destroyed a Lysian space station in revenge but then it turned out the whole situation had been orchestrated by the Sataarans in tng5x14 "Conundrum".
7 total · 5 major · 2 minor
| Story | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| theexpanse1x03 | major | The attack on the Canterbury was so seemingly obviously a Martian perpetrated act that, when various people voiced skepticism, it becomes implied that it may have been a false flag operation intended to spark conflict between Earth and Mars. Towards the end, Avasarala explicitly concluded that someone was trying to start a war between Mars and Earth. |
| theexpanse1x04 | major | An unknown and mysterious new enemy attacked Mars' flagship, the Donager, in order to eliminate anyone who had witnessed them. It became apparent that the new faction was trying to provoke a war between Mars and Earth by making it seem like Mars had destroyed the Canterbury. |
| theexpanse1x09 | major | A grand revelation of the story is that the attack on the Canterbury, which was designed to draw Earth and Mars into a war, was orchestrated by the Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. |
| theexpanse1x10 | major | In the background of the story is that the attack on the Canterbury, which was designed to draw Earth and Mars into a war, was orchestrated by the Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. Apart from being a profitable experiment, the Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile perpetrated massacre on Eros was similarly meant to flame tensions between Earth and Mars. |
| tng5x14 | major | Satarran's faked a Lysian attack against the Federation |
| futurama7x05 | minor | Zapp's ruse was precisely such an operation by the definition we wrote. |
| movie: V for Vendetta (2005) | minor | The secret police executed a bio-terrorist attack and blamed it on religious extremists so that the elected fascist government could capitalize on the resulting public fear to consolidate power. |