History Main / GovernmentConspiracy

** The walls that surround and protect all that's left of humankind from [[HumanoidAbomination the Titans]][[spoiler:''have countless Colossal Titans inside of them.'' Only the royals and the high-ranking members of the Wall Cult know about them, and they keep it secret from all other humans.]]

* ''Series/{{Homeland}}'': A group of government officials conspires to discredit and then assassinate the President-elect in season six.

* ''Series/{{Humans}}'': The Season 3 finale. A contingency plan is launched to eliminate all the green eyed synths by shutting down the power to the synth compounds and then using power surges to destroy them when it's all turned back on. The extremist anti-synth groups are then unleashed to eliminate any survivors-the police are ordered to stand by rather than intervene. Meanwhile, news media receive false reports claiming the synths are attacking innocent humans, with violence toward them being self-defense. Luckily this is exposed by Laura with Neil's help, although she is charged with treason over it, and Mia sacrifices herself to show not all synths are bad.

** And then there's the secret known only to the highest level of the World Government: [[spoiler: despite the WG's official stance that there is no single ruler standing above all the constituent nations, there is in fact a ShadowDictator known only as Im, to whom even the Five Elder Stars (stated for years to be the highest authority in the WG) bow to.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Contra}} Contra: Shattered Soldier]]'' has [[spoiler: the Triumvirate, who is revealed by Lance Bean to be the ones truly responsible for provoking the Alien Wars as they had stolen a mysterious artifact from the aliens, known as the [[ArtifactOfDoom Relic of Moirai]].]]

* The ''ComicBook/IronMan vs. Whiplash'' miniseries features an organization called "Balance", a group dedicated to providing Iron Man armors for service to the various world governments, including the United States, due to Tony Stark's refusal to share the technology with them. They had created crude, but effective clones of Tony to bypass the security protocols needed to get to his suits, and deployed one such suit against a Russian village on behalf of UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin to eliminate protestors against his government. Doing so leads to Tony Stark's arrest for the attack, and to the rise of Whiplash, who's father was the primary target in the attack. Both Iron Man and Whiplash are forced to pull a brief EnemyMine situation to take them out, only for Tony to have to break it when Whiplash nearly kills the head of the agency. Nevertheless, despite the conspiracy being exposed, the FBI is unable (or unable) to press charges due to "lack of evidence" against them.
* In the 1998 comic two-part limited series ''Marvel: Conspiracy'', a reporter gradually discovers investigates a mysterious group called "Control". The investigation eventually leads him to a retired military general and the only surviving founder, who explains that "Control" was founded to control extranormals, but got completely ''out'' of control to the extent that the general hasn't got a clue who, or even whether anyone ''is'' controlling it anymore. Soon after the revelation, the reporter meets a ComicBook/{{SHIELD}} agent, who explains that the general is actually a nutcase who's been using his black ops resources to make his claims convincing. The comic leaves it ambiguous over who's telling the truth.
* Prior to The ComicBook/New52 reboot, Franchise/{{Superman}} had Project 7734, headed up by General Sam Lane with the express purpose of squashing all Kryptonians. Including Superman.

* The US government and army is having secret meetings with the [[ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures Evronians]] and keeps the population in the dark even when they realize they are hostile in order to not spread large panic that would cripple their ability to fight bad. There have been a couple of tries to inform the public of it,but even Paperinik thinks it is better this way.
* ''ComicBook/TheSimpsons:'' One issue has Homer and Lisa stumbling onto NASA's dark secret: After losing too many probes to Uranus, they decided to save money and effort by filming faked footage in the desert. Homer nearly blows the whole deal due to defacing their set with a golf-club, but the scientists are quickly able to bluff their way out.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': The walls that surround and protect all that's left of humankind from [[HumanoidAbomination the Titans]][[spoiler: ''have countless Colossal Titans inside of them.'' Only the royals and the high-ranking members of the Wall Cult know about them, and they keep it secret from all other humans.]]

** Even worse are the Military Police Secret Service, an elite death squad equipped with anti-soldier 3D-Maneuver gear and led by serial killer Kenny [[spoiler:Ackerman]]. They rule the military police and send MP grunts on murder missions. Most of the soldiers in the military police are JustFollowingOrders but some have taken a liking to the slaughter of civilians whose only crimes were quietly criticizing the government, getting in the way... or making weapons/technology that could better fight the titans. This slowly drives the survey corps (Rebels) insane.

*** And as a final insult, [[spoiler:[[BoomerangBigot the Kingdom of Marley is secretly ruled by an elite family of Eldians]], who have pulled the strings of their non-Eldian subjects with bigotry and fanaticism and threw the other Eldians under the bus with apartheid and forced conscription up to and including ''human sacrifice''.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': Queen Sonorie's alliance with the Black Tongues is controversial but not entirely a secret, nor is her alliance with Roger Foi-Hellick. What's not known is that Roger is far from the besotted fop he plays in public and he's allowing the Black Tongues to dismantle his soul so that Sonorie can find a way to attack Alderode through the Damakhert. Even more secret is that Sonorie is funding the Black Tongues to create a new kind of plod that will attack Aldishmen without leaving any evidence of plod involvement, since the use of plods in battle is one of the few agreed on war crimes on the continent.

* ''Webcomic/{{Marionetta}}'': The fascist nation of Kalgarett has lied through their teeth about the true source of their power [[RefugeInAudacity because the truth happens to be insane]]; they simply claim that magic is not real and that [[FantasticRacism Ak'hon mutants who once claimed to be magicians should be rounded up in camps]]. In truth, Kalgarett's military focus ''is'' the study of magic, learned by experimenting on Ah'kons, and they're willing to kill anyone to keep their monopoly on the supernatural a secret.

** Even worse are the Military Police Secret Service, an elite death squad equipped with anti-soldier 3D-Maneuver gear and led by serial killer Kenny [[spoiler:Ackerman]]. They effectively rule the military police and send mp grunts on murder missions. Most of the soldiers in the military police are JustFollowingOrders but some have taken a liking to the slaughter of civilians whose only crimes were quietly criticizing the government, getting in the way... or making weapons/technology that could better fight the titans. This slowly drives the survey corps (Rebels) insane.

** And the reason WHY they're such extreme isolationists? Because [[spoiler:everything right outside of the Titan continent is ''Naziland'', known as the Kingdom of Marley. ''Nazis with blimps, machine guns, and even their own spec-ops Titans''. They seek the enslavement and genocide of the 'Eldian' race. Guess which race the islanders are]]. It really is death out there.
*** And as a final insult, [[spoiler:the Kingdom of Marley is secretly ruled by an elite family of Eldians, who have generally pulled the strings of their non-Eldian subjects with bigoted fanaticism and threw the other Eldians under the bus with apartheid and forced conscription up to and including ''human sacrifice''.]]

* ''TabletopGame/DarkMatter'', inspired by the popularity of ''Series/TheXFiles'' and the general profusion of millennialist conspiracy theories in the late 90s, was an eager ConspiracyKitchenSink setting where any government could be said to have some kind of secret agenda. Various US government organizations such as the CIA and FBI got their own profiles, while the US government in general was broadly assessed to be such a NoSuchAgency and alphabet agency-ridden mess that any number of conspiracies could arise from within. And that maybe such... [[ObfuscatingStupidity obfuscations]] are intentional, and that there's a greater conspiracy that benefits from the illusion of jumbled incompetence.

* In ''Film/DefenceOfTheRealm'', when a teenage boy who escaped from jail is trying to escape from the police, he ends up breaking into [[spoiler: a U.S. Air Force base in Britain, and the boy is killed by those who don't want anyone to know the base isn't impregnable. When an MP asks questions about what happened that night, he's framed and discredited, and two reporters who try to break the story end up being killed. That said, the story eventually breaks and the conspiracy is eventually revealed]].

* Project Cadmus in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'' aimed [[spoiler:to destroy the Justice League if they ever went rogue like the Justice Lords]]. It came close to becoming a SelfFulfillingProphecy, but the Justice League discovered the ManBehindTheMan.

* On ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', the Republican Party is in cahoots with the FCC; the Fox network deliberately airs programs with morally reprehensible content so that they will be fined by the FCC, with the fines being funneled to the Republican Party. Kent Brockman says everyone in the entertainment business knows this, but no one is brave enough to report the scam; after he's fired, Lisa convinces him to gain that bravery, but he sells out after they offer to give him his job back with a 50% raise. (This is, of course, one of many examples of the show's BitingTheHandHumor.)
* Severely subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce," where the boys' investigation into the titular restroom incident leads them to uncover the truth about 9/11. Most Americans are smart enough to comprehend that 9/11 was done by "a bunch of pissed-off Muslims," but the rest are "retarded" and need a conspiracy to believe in. So the US government obliges them, creating websites and giving the impression that it's capable of carrying out such an enormous FalseFlagOperation. Or in other words, the 9/11 conspiracy ''is'' the government conspiracy.
* The ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'' episode "Butterfly Trap" reveals that the Magic High Commission conspired alongside Eclipsa's ex-husband and king of Mewni to replace Eclipsa's bastard, half-monster baby daughter (Meteora/Miss Heinous) with a peasant Mewman baby girl (Festivia), all because they couldn't allow someone of monster descent to take Mewni's throne. Since then, the Commission has gone through great lengths to make sure that Eclipsa's daughter would have her existence erased and then replaced by Festivia from all historical records.
* In ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' it's shown that Dooku manipulated the Kaminoan government into keeping Order 66 a secret under the pretense that it was a safeguard against Dark Jedi. [[spoiler:When Clone Trooper Fives discovers the mind control chips implanted in the troopers, the Kaminoans attempt to have his memory wiped before drugging him to make his testimony seem unreliable, and lie to the Jedi that the chips were to prevent the clones from becoming overly aggressive.]] Their efforts to conceal the truth ultimately turned them into unwitting accomplices to the fall of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order.
* Subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode [[Recap/SupermanTheAnimatedSeriesS3E1WhereTheresSmoke "Where There's Smoke"]]; the villains work for the government, but the project is unauthorized.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_John_Lewis The New Zealand police covered up an attempt to assassinate the Queen of England]] by an armed fame-seeking teenager during a 1981 visit to the country, out of fear it would damage New Zealand's international reputation and relationship with Britain. The attempted assassin was instead charged with discharging a firearm and given a sentence of only a few years, and was in fact ''disappointed'' that his attempt to kill the Queen was swept under the rug by the police. The assassination attempt wouldn't become public knowledge for almost 4 more decades until uncovered by the local press.

* This is the entire point of ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' -- a Government Conspiracy covering up the truth so thoroughly and so successfully that whatever it says effectively ''becomes'' the truth. Note that Orwell saw plenty of these in RealLife.
* In ''Literature/{{Adaptation}}'' by Malinda Lo, TheGovernment [[spoiler: is keeping it secret that aliens have visited earth. The government has also [[PlayingWithSyringes experimented with alien technology]] to create SuperSoldiers.]]
* In his novel ''Literature/AmericanGods,'' Creator/NeilGaiman includes the typical [[TheMenInBlack sinister government agents,]] complete with a "black train" that serves as a mobile prison. [[SubvertedTrope The real US government is not to blame, however.]] The conspiracy theorists ''themselves'' [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve created the Spookshow]] through their fervent belief in its existence. Even though the agents don't show authorization, they [[BavarianFireDrill successfully bully the local authorities into cooperating.]]
* ''Literature/Area51'': Initially the US government had long been covering up flying saucers which they held for decades and test-flew regularly with faked alien abductions, cattle mutilations, crop circles etc., besides trying to crack other mysterious technology they found on Earth while also hiding it from other people. Further, they hid the source of the above-aliens. Later it all gets exposed.
* David Wingrove's ''Literature/ChungKuo'' has the Ministry, the only ministry without a name, that is tasked with hiding the truth about the past by all means possible.
* ''Literature/TheCityOfEmber'':

* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote a short story called "Literature/TheDeadPast", where it turns out the government has a stranglehold on science in a massive conspiracy to prevent science from rediscovering [[{{Chronoscope}} an apparatus capable of looking into the past]]. [[spoiler:It's also a [[DeconstructedTrope deconstruction]], because it turns out that this is for humanity's own good, as "the past" starts at about a second ago, and the device can see anywhere in the world, thus making privacy obsolete. The protagonists fail to realize this until after they've managed to publicize the technology far and wide.]]
-->'''Araman''': [[spoiler:"Nobody knew anything, but you all just took it for granted that the government was stupidly bureaucratic, vicious, tyrannical, given to suppressing research for the hell of it. It never occurred to any of you that we were trying to protect mankind as best we could."]]

* In the Robert Harris novel ''Literature/{{Fatherland}}'', the [[AlternateHistoryLiterature victorious-in-WWII]] Nazis conduct a murderous conspiracy to keep [[spoiler: the Holocaust]] a secret.

* In ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'' books by Creator/CharlesStross, "The Laundry" is the name of a branch of the UK civil service responsible for dealing with incursions of monsters. Amongst other things, they make people who (accidentally or otherwise) attempt to summon an EldritchAbomination or other ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow disappear, either in the traditional way or by giving them a regular civil service job to keep them out of trouble. Definitely a case of a benign conspiracy, as nobody wants to end up [[DemonicPossession timesharing their cortex with a demonic intelligence]] because some computer nerd accidentally wrote a summoning algorithm...

Compare NoSuchAgency. Likely to reside in a BlackSite.

In fantasy examples, they might be the ones perpetuating the {{Masquerade}}, while the heroes want to reveal it.

* ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': In "And the Rocket's Dead Glare", Lewis and Crosetti head to Washington to investigate the political assassination of a Chinese immigrant who had participated in the Tiananmen Square protests, apparently ordered by the Chinese government. However, they are stonewalled by the Secret Service, who are actively trying to cover it up so that there won't be an international incident. [[TheBadGuyWins Eventually, Lewis and Crosetti are forced to leave and abandon their investigation.]]

* ''LightNovel/RebuildWorld'': Where to even begin? CyberPunk MegaCorp love these.

* The original ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' covered the aftermath of Project Valhalla, a US government-sponsored drug research that was TestedOnHumans during the UsefulNotes/GulfWar. There is also the Inner Circle, a group of filthily rich old men who more or less control the US government (and are hinted to have been behind the [[WhoShotJFK Kennedy assassination]]).

%%* Also the Gerry Anderson live action series ''Series/{{UFO}}'', a 70's version of...

* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', though the manga and the [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist 2003 anime adaptation]] differ in how many people are aware of/involved in the conspiracy. The conspiracy itself is different in the manga and first anime; in the manga, [[spoiler:Father and the upper echelons of the military are planning to create a utopia through HumanSacrifice]]. In the 2003 anime, the conspiracy is [[spoiler:[[VainSorceress Dante]] using the country (through Pride) to create situations that will lead to the creation of Philosopher's Stones (again through mass human sacrifice) that Dante needs to fuel her [[ImmortalityImmorality immortality]]]].