False document

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A false document is often promoted in conjunction with a criminal enterprise, such as fraud or
aconfidence game.
However, a false document is also a technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of
fiction. By inventing and inserting documents that appear to be factual, an author tries to create a
sense of authenticity beyond the normal and expected suspension of disbelief for a work of art.
The goal of a false document is to convince an audience that what is being presented is factual.
Contents
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1In business
o

1.1Material certificates

1.2Safety certificates

2In politics

3In fiction
3.1In literature

3.1.1Novels

3.1.2Multiple works by individual authors

3.1.3Special cases
3.2In film

4In art

5In video games

6In cross-marketing

7Hoaxes

8As a field of study

9See also

10References

In business[edit]
Forged documents in business are typically for financial gain.

Material certificates[edit]

A material's certification, essentially a report of its composition and properties, may be forged. A
low-property material, produced for lower cost, may be passed as a higher-property material,
which has a higher price. The difference becomes illicit profit. Counterfeit fasteners have lowstrength alloys or inferior production processes, but are sold as high-strength fasteners.

Safety certificates[edit]
Similarly, parts, systems, and processes for high-valued operations may have their qualityassurance documents forged. Substandard items may be cheaper or simply more readily
available. Nuclear power plants in Japan and Korea have found components with forged safety
documents. See also: Information Assurance

In politics[edit]
A forged document, the Zinoviev Letter brought about the downfall of the first Labour
Government in Britain. Conspiracies within secret intelligence services have occurred more
recently, leading Harold Wilson to put in place rules to prevent in the 1960s phone
tapping of members of Parliament, for example.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination,
was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated
internationally in the early part of the 20th century.

In fiction[edit]
In literature[edit]
This section may contain excessive, poor, irrelevant, or selfsourcing examples. Please improve the article by adding more descriptive text and
removing less pertinent examples. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further
suggestions.(August 2009)
Fiction writers sometimes use the technique of inventing a piece of literature or non-fiction and
referring to this work as if it actually existed, typically by quoting from the work.
One of the earliest examples of the technique can be found in the 16th century chivalric
romance,Amadis of Gaul (1508), written by Garci Rodrguez de Montalvo. Montalvo claimed to
have discovered sections of a story that he had written himself.
Blurring the line of reality and fiction is an important component of horror, mystery, detective,
science fiction and fantasy narratives due to their unusual demands on verisimilitude; a typically
descriptive narrative form may not engender in the reader the necessary sense of wonder and
danger. For this reason, false documentary techniques have been in use for at least as long as
these literary genres have existed. Frankenstein draws heavily on a forged document feel, as
do Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and many of the works of Jules
Verne, Edgar Allan Poe and H.G. Wells.Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a particularly elaborate
variation.
False documents intentionally blur the boundaries between fiction and fact, and, in some cases,
the difference between an artistic achievement and a convincing forgery is slight. Sometimes the
false-document technique can be the subject of a work instead of the technique behind the work
itself; however, these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, as many texts that engage
"falseness" operate on both a literal and thematic level.
In practice, false-document effects can be achieved in many ways. Tactics have included the
following: fake police reports, newspaper articles, bibliographical references, documentary
footage, or using the legal names of performers or writers in a fictional context. Supplementary
material such as badges,identity cards (IC), diaries, letters or artifacts can also be included, and
this extends the exercise beyond the confines of the text.
The following is a partial list of false supporting documents in fiction:

Novels[edit]
Candide

Voltaire's novel Candide purports to be assembled from the notes of a deceased

"Monsieur le docteur Ralph", likely because the novel pokes fun at most of the powers of
Europe at the time.

Carrie

Stephen King's novel Carrie includes many excerpts from a fictional committee's findings
on the events in the novel, as well as excerpts from a book on the events in the novel
titled The Shadow Exploded.

Dictionary of the Khazars

Milorad Pavi's Dictionary of the Khazars is a work of fiction in the form of three
fictionalencyclopedias, which incorporate viewpoints that provide inconsistent descriptions of
the events they describe.

The Dirty Dozen

The climax of the novel by E.M. Nathanson is presented in the form of an official military
report. In the film based on the novel, The Dirty Dozen, the climactic attack on a German
chateau is done as an elaborate action sequence. The official military report appears as a
brief voice-over narration in the final scene.

Dracula

Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is told in the form of numerous documents, including
journals and newspaper articles. A brief introduction claims that they are all real.