History Literature / FoucaultsPendulum

* TheReveal: When we find out that the mysterious document that the Plan is based on [[spoiler:is basically a grocery list from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.]]

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Lia call out Casaubon: [[spoiler:“Your plan isn’t poetic; it’s grotesque. People don’t get the idea of going back to burn Troy just because they read Homer. With Homer, the burning of Troy became something that it never was and never will be, and yet the Iliad endures, full of meaning, because it’s all clear, limpid. Your Rosicrucian manifestoes are neither clear nor limpid; they’re mud, hot air, and promises. This is why so many people have tried to make them come true, each finding in them what he wants to find. In Homer there’s no secret, but your plan is full of secrets, full of contradictions. For that reason you could find thousands of insecure people ready to identify with it. Throw the whole thing out. Homer wasn’t faking, but you three have been faking. Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don’t go together, that he’s not being logical, that he’s not speaking in good faith. But they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to amiracle. You’ve invented hair oil. I don’t like it. It’s a nasty joke.”]]

* WorldOfMysteries: Parodied and deconstructed; by the end of the novel, Casaubon starts seeing our real world as this. Lampshaded in the scene at the museum, where he [[MuseumOfTheStrangeAndUnusual sees nearly every museum exhibit as having some sort of hidden meaning related to Agartha, Count of St. Germain, or other mystical/conspiracy subjects]].

* GoneHorriblyWrong: Belbo, Casaubon and Diotallevi create "The Plan", an elaborate and ridiculously JustForFun/TropeOverdosed UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory as nothing more than a fun project for killing some free time and [[StealthParody for mocking]] all the ConspiracyKitchenSink theories and secret histories they were forced to read while editing the manuscripts of various wacko authors for publishing. Their whole prank gradually starts getting out of hand and [[YourMindMakesItReal sounding]] [[ParanoiaFuel far too real]], since it's often even [[ShownTheirWork more convincing]] than all the [[WhoWritesThisCrap pulp conspiracy theories]] it was supposed to make fun of in the first place. [[spoiler:Then a secret society of whackjobs show up, and they might have [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight been telling the truth by accident all along.]]]]

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler: Diotallevi dies of cancer, Belbo and Lorenza are killed by the Tres members (probably, if Casaubon didn't hallucinate this), and Casaubon himself expects that Tres would soon come after him (this is, most likely, a delusion of him, even if everything before this was true).]]

* NumerologicalMotif: Lia gives Casaubon a talk about the real meanings. The number one is special because every human is, well, one human and has one head, heart, nose, mouth, private part etc.; two is special because two people make a couple, and humans generally have two hands, feet, eyes, ears etc.; three OTOH is so special because our bodies don't have three of anything (but man + woman + child make a family); etc.

* ContemptibleCover: A verbal variant. The protagonists use a computer nicknamed Abulafia to create the Plan. Some editions have blurbs calling Abulafia an immense computer, but really it's just a desktop model.

* GoneHorriblyWrong: Belbo, Casaubon and Diotallevi create "The Plan", an elaborate and ridiculously TropeOverdosed UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory as nothing more than a fun project for killing some free time and [[StealthParody for mocking]] all the ConspiracyKitchenSink theories and secret histories they were forced to read while editing the manuscripts of various wacko authors for publishing. Their whole prank gradually starts getting out of hand and [[YourMindMakesItReal sounding]] [[ParanoiaFuel far too real]], since it's often even [[ShownTheirWork more convincing]] than all the [[WhoWritesThisCrap pulp conspiracy theories]] it was supposed to make fun of in the first place. [[spoiler:Then a secret society of whackjobs show up, and they might have [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight been telling the truth by accident all along.]]]]

'''''Foucault's Pendulum''''' is a 1988 novel by Creator/UmbertoEco, and a notable work of [[AncientConspiracy conspiracy literature]].

* ShownTheirWork: After all, it is an Creator/UmbertoEco novel.

** Casaubon mentions the Borborites, who rip out fetuses from women's bodies, crush them in mortars and eat them with honey and pepper. Diotellavi says: "How revolting, honey and pepper!"

%%* GenreDeconstruction: The novel deconstructs all the stories of Conspiracy Theories.

** Then, the king orders the knights arrest. It takes one month from order to arrest, but the knights don't flee.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Diotallevi. His grandfather was a foundling, discovered near a Jewish ghetto, he loves Kabbalah, and really wants to believe he's Jewish; it remains ambiguous though whether he really is.

%%* AncientConspiracy / ConspiracyKitchenSink: Played with to SerialEscalation levels.
%%* AmbiguouslyJewish: Diotallevi.

%%* BigBad: [[spoiler: Agliè]].

* RealityRetcon: InUniverse, with the editors constructing a fake conspiracy.

* WomenAreWiser: Lia rejects all conspiracy theories, explains that there are very simple reasons for {{Numerological Motif}}s and the document the whole Plan was based upon is [[spoiler:simply a very old laundry list]].

%%* NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler:Ardenti. It turns out that he's alive and he's one of the Diabolicals.]]

* ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: {{Played with}}. Casaubon tries to figure out the password to Belbo's computer, which asks: "Do you know the password?" Since Belbo is his close friend, he tries numerous expressions he thinks Belbo could've used, but none of them work. Eventually, he angrily types: "No." This is the password. There's a deeper reason for this: In order to gain knowledge, you have to admit that you don't know a specific thing.

* GoneHorriblyWrong: Belbo, Casaubon and Diotallevi create "The Plan", an elaborate and ridiculously TropeOverdosed ConspiracyTheory as nothing more than a fun project for killing some free time and [[StealthParody for mocking]] all the ConspiracyKitchenSink theories and secret histories they were forced to read while editing the manuscripts of various wacko authors for publishing. Their whole prank gradually starts getting out of hand and [[YourMindMakesItReal sounding]] [[ParanoiaFuel far too real]], since it's often even [[ShownTheirWork more convincing]] than all the [[WhoWritesThisCrap pulp conspiracy theories]] it was supposed to make fun of in the first place. [[spoiler:Then a secret society of whackjobs show up, and they might have [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight been telling the truth by accident all along.]]]]

* RealityIsUnrealistic: The narrator notes how many contradictions and other unexplainable things happen in the story of the Knights Templar, which helped creating the mystery around them:

* {{Mockspiracy}}: The protagonists invent a centuries-old conspiracy involving Rosicrucians, Templars, Masons and other secret organizations to parody the real-life conspiracy theorists. [[spoilers:ZigZagged however, since the real occultists and conspiracy theorists take the story at face value, and ''actually'' [[FakeRealTurn create the secret society that the protagonists made up]].]]

* ConspiracyTheorist: Subverted. The three protagonists all start out as GenreSavvy {{Deadpan Snarker}}s lampooning ConspiracyKitchenSink theories in general, but as the the book nears its end, they become raving {{Conspiracy Theorist}}s themselves, seeing [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic symbolism]] and [[AncientConspiracy dark secrets]] behind absolutely everything.