History Main / BlankBook

* In ''VideoGame/PennyArcadeAdventures'', the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Necrowombicon]] appears to be blank to anyone not ''meant'' to read the book. To anyone planning on spreading horrific evil that will advance the goals of the four evil gods, it is full of handy step-by-step instructions.
* In ''VideoGame/NetHack'', there are blank spellbooks; using a magic marker, you can turn these into spellbooks of any spell you already know (or spells that you don't know, but there's a random failure chance for those).
* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening'', Dalish elf Velanna will mention the damage centuries of slavery and persecution has done to elven folklore. One of her gift items is a blank book, which you can give with the suggestion she make her own stories for future elves. ("It's got a tree on the front, you like trees, right?")
* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'', when everyone loses their memories, Jiminy Cricket tries consulting his journal, but the pages are all blank. In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', everyone loses their memories of the events of ''Chain of Memories'', and Jiminy's journal is erased again, except for the sentence "Thank Namine."
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', blank books are used as a gag in the FlavorText of two housing decorations in the form of a collection of books, implying that all they're good for is making the owner look well read.

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' has a red book where the pages are all blank. It's meant to be used as an obtuse way of opening a secret passage by placing the book on a shelf with other similar books and rearranging them to form a picture of a nude woman on the book bindings.

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Gateway}} Frederik Pohl's Gateway]]'' has a blank book "Everything We Know About the Heechee", much like in [[Literature/HeecheeSaga the original novel]]. Unlike the novel, in the game such books actually serve as logs of prospectors studying Heechee artefacts.
* ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark1992'' has a fake book used to open a BookcasePassage in the library.
* In ''[[VideoGame/DarkSun Dark Sun: Shattered Lands]]'' Keldar, assistant of an evil mage, carries a blank book, where he finds justification for his murders. Yes, he's insane.
* ''VideoGame/RakenzarnTales'': The titular book has a few pages filled with a mystery language and the magic word that transports the user into Rakenzarn, but the rest are blank. As the story progresses, the pages are filled with a recounting of the protagonist's journey, represented as the in-game journal feature.

[[caption-width-right:201:No wonder Jokey Smurf called it "The Never Starting Story".]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blankpages2_4813.jpg]]

* ''{{Film/Sphere}}'': none of the materialized copies of ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'' hava any print past page 87, since that's where the reader was too scared to read past while he was a child.

* ''Film/{{Goosebumps}}'': Whenever a monster escapes from one of R.L. Stine's manuscripts, the book becomes blank. Justified as the monsters are composed of the ink itself.

* ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' mentions a book called ''[[TimeTravelTenseTrouble Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations]]''. It notes that most people give up upon reaching the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Subjunctive Intentional and that in later editions the pages after this were left blank to save on printing costs.

* '' VideoGame/AloneInTheDark1992'' has a fake book used to open a BookcasePassage in the library.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext The Great Samuel-Pepys Fiasco]]''

** In the episode ''The Big Bang'', Amy Pond is given River Song's diary as a wedding present. However, the book is blank because the Doctor has been erased from time. Once Amy remembers the Doctor and brings him back, the diary's contents return.

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. In the episode ''The Big Bang'', Amy Pond is given River Song's diary as a wedding present. However, the book is blank because the Doctor has been erased from time. Once Amy remembers the Doctor and brings him back, the diary's contents return.

** When Willow's SuperpoweredEvilSide emerges at the end of Season 6, she absorbs the text from all the books in the Magic Box on dark magic. Her friends later try to find out about the magic she's using, but the books are now blank.

* In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Bashir realizes he's still in Sloan's mind when his copy of ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'' has "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," at the point where he left off; because he hadn't finished the book, Sloan's mind filled in the unread parts with repetitions of what he had read so far.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode ''The Big Bang'', Amy is given River Song's diary as a wedding present. However, the book is blank [[spoiler: because the Doctor has been erased from time. Once Amy remembers the Doctor and brings him back, the diary's contents return.]]

* When Willow's SuperpoweredEvilSide emerges in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', she absorbs the text from all the magic shop's books on dark magic. Her friends later try to find out about the magic she's using, but the books are now blank.

->''"The pages are blank! The pages are'' blan-"

* In ''ComicBook/GrantMorrisonsBatman'', the Joker's Joke Book is supposedly written in an ink that only the insane can read. It's intentionally unclear whether this is literally true, or simply a way of saying a crazy person will ''imagine'' there's writing in it. Either way, to most people, it's a Blank Book.

** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E8IRobotYouJane I Robot, You Jane]]", the book used to seal [[MailerDaemon Moloch]] was blank until the sealing ritual was performed, at which point it would fill up with words. When Willow scanned it into the library computer, it became blank again, as Moloch was released into the internet.

* The ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' cartoon episode "[[http://dcanimated.wikia.com/wiki/Legends Legends]]" where Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, and Flash got transported to an alternate universe where the Silver Age heroes John Stewart read about as a boy are real. Midway through, John gets suspicious that the world isn't all it seems, and goes to a library, where he finds all the books are blank.

* Fake books may also be used on movie sets. For example, the books in Dumbledore's office from the ''Film/HarryPotter'' films are actually [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ENVtSELiAg&t=6m24s phone books with the covers changed]].

* When prototyping the graphic layout of a book/poster/website/etc., it's common to use deliberately unrelated placeholder text (such as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum "Lorem ipsum"]], a fairly standard passage of [[CanisLatinicus broken Latin]]) so that the actual content of the text won't act as a distraction.

* In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', Bashir realizes he's still in Sloan's mind when his copy of ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'' has "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." at the point where he left off; because he hadn't finished the book, Sloan's mind filled in the unread parts with repetitions of what he had read so far.

* In ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'', Owl-Eyes expects that Gatsby's library is filled with blank books and just for show. He's partly right. The books are all real, but the pages are uncut, meaning Gatsby paid full price for real books to fill a purely decorative library. Owl-Eyes notices this and calls Gatsby "a regular [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Belasco#Influence_on_American_theatre Belasco]]", complimenting him on the thoroughness of the illusion.

* Lampshaded in ''Webcomic/NinthElsewhere''
--> "How ridiculous, my own subconscious is mocking my goals."
* In [[http://xkcd.com/971/ this]] ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' comic, a man has a shelf full of books, all of them blank except for a smudge of ink on one page, which he uses to make a profound point about imagination. His friend simply asks, [[ConMan "Who sold you all these blank books?"]] The alt text reveals the comic is actually a metaphor for [[TakeThat homeopathic and "alternative" medicine]].

* In ''[[VideoGame/DarkSun Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager]]'' Keldar, assistant of an evil mage, carries a blank book, where he finds justification for his murders. Yes, he's insane.

'''Type 1:''' It may be that the character is trapped in a LotusEaterMachine of some kind and the book being empty or filled with nonsense is a sign that something isn't right, since a MasterOfIllusion would have to manually "write" each and every book themself.

'''Type 2:''' It's also possible that the character is in some kind of stage filled with prop books, or the book is a deliberate fake intended to deceive.

'''Type 3:''' Someone (or thing) may have "stolen" the contents of the book and left it completely wordless in the process. In fact, some words may literally fly off the page or drip off as wet ink. Alternatively, the contents might technically exist but rendered invisible outside of the specific conditions required to read it.

'''Type 4:''' Lastly, the book being blank could be an Aesop for knowledge or lack of it. Perhaps the famed book of wisdom is blank because the person finding the book is supposed to write out the important knowledge themself because having gone through the quest to find the book, they now have the wisdom to write the book of wisdom themself. A case of AllThatGlitters. Or if the book was a blank holy text, it shows that character is denied the knowledge that will save their soul because they are now beyond redemption.

* ''Film/CircleOfIron'' uses the Zen Buddhist variant of Type 4: The seeker finally reaches the fabled book of wisdom after fighting through profound personal trials; only to find that on each page is not the answers he expected, but merely a mirror. The lesson being that "true wisdom comes only from within".

* The Book Chute in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Old World Blues'' turns books you put into it to blank books. The Chute itself claims a form of inverted Type 4 explanation about knowledge being dangerous and hence it being the chute's responsibility to remove knowledge from books for your safety, citizen. The Courier can turn it around and give the Chute books already too ruined to be read and then using the resultant blank books as one element in making educational books (that is, skill books).

* In ''ComicBook/GrantMorrisonsBatman'', the Joker's Joke Book is supposedly written in an ink that only the insane can read. It's intentionally unclear whether this is literally true, or simply a way of saying a crazy person will ''imagine'' there's writing in it. Either way, to most people, it's a BlankBook.

* Happens at the beginning of ''Film/{{Inception}}'' when Cobb steals the documents from the vault inside Saitos dream. When Saito catches on that someone is trying to steal his secret memories, he checks the documents in the vault to find literal Blank Pages placed there by Cobb. But now that Saito is aware that someones going through his memories, the pages in the document stolen by Cobb have most of the content blackened out, as Saito tries to block him out of his subconsciousness.

* When the Pilgrims in ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'' finish their journey to India to collect the Buddhist scrolls, they discover that the sacred text they were meant to find were, in-fact, blank. While horrified and angry at first, the Buddha himself explains that this is metaphorical of the state of existence and its lack of inherent meaning, the scrolls a BaitAndSwitch {{MacGuffin}} meant to teach them a lesson that their journey culminates into.

* Sassette in ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "Bookworm Smurf" encounters a book that's initially blank in Papa Smurf's laboratory, but then it has the words "if these words are read by you, whatever you say next will come true" suddenly appear on the pages. Sassette then uses the book to make a wish that she never wants to see another book again, and then suddenly all the books in the world vanish.

* ''Film/Goosebumps'': Whenever a monster escapes from one of R.L. Stine's manuscripts, the book becomes blank. Justified as the monsters are composed of the ink itself.

* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'': For some reason, the Kanker sisters have a shelf of blank books in their trailer. [[{{Nerd}} Edd]] seems to have a minor freakout when he discovers this.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarepants'': In the episode "Frankendoodle," Spongebob has a bookshelf full of these, and he later uses one to trap Doodlebob in the second dimension. Though given his interest in the arts, it's possible that they're just empty sketchbooks, or school notebooks.