History Main / LuridTalesOfDoom

* In the Australian comedy ''Bligh'' (set in [=18th=] century New South Wales, but [[AnachronismStew parodying current events]]), Governor Bligh finds his SitcomArchNemesis John Macarthur has opened a newspaper with such articles like "Bearded Baby Born In Byron Bay".

-->'''Agent J:''' ''These'' are the hot sheets?
-->'''Agent K:''' Best investigative reporting on the planet. But go ahead, read the New York Times if you want, they get lucky sometimes.

Sometimes newspapers of a more questionable level of veracity publish news that is clearly bunk, in the case of {{Alien Abduction}}s, yetis being found and women giving birth to animals. Other times they'll print that which might be true but seems to be kinda loopy and of questionable newsworthiness - toast burned in the likeness of historical figures for example. These stories are of course either complete fabrications in the former case or are just questionable coincidences.

The news industry calls this type of "news" 'Man Bites Dog', a name that seems rather more mundane than some of these stories actually tend to be. This sort of publication shows up in fiction from time to time too, especially ones which heavily feature either journalists or well known people (within their universe) frequently or where weird happenings really do occur and these stories are true - or sometimes these stories are bizarre even for the setting.

-->'''Hobbes:''' "Space alien weds two-headed Elvis clone."\\

* ''Literature/TheStrangerTimes'' is dedicated to publishing news about all kinds of weird phenomena, ranging from demonically possessed rockstars to a random woman trying to marry the M26. One of their reporters specializes in alien stories.

* ''VideoGame/RockStarAteMyHamster'' parodies ''The Sun'' (which actually held a contest involving the game) with ''The Stun'', a sleazy tabloid which serves up shocking and frequently implausible headlines, several of which follow the formula "ROCK STAR ATE MY (noun)!" The game's manual is packaged as an issue of ''The Stun'', and includes the "exclusive" story "ALIENS STOLE MY VOLVO!", which is transparently based on the alibi of a DrunkDriver.

* ''VideoGame/RockStarAteMyHamster'' parodies ''The Sun'' (which actually held a contest involving the game) with ''The Stun'', a sleazy tabloid which serves up shocking and frequently implausible headlines, several of which follow the formula "ROCK STAR ATE MY (noun)!" The game's manual is packaged as an issue of ''The Stun'', and includes the "exclusive" story "ALIENS STOLE MY VOLVO!"

[[caption-width-right:300:There's no way this is real. That's an [[{{Slurpasaur}} iguana]], [[ComicallyMissingThePoint not a dinosaur.]]]]

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* Parodied in ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' where Buster Kincaid's newsplastic, ''The Interplanetary Telepress'' has headlines like ''[[Film/TheGiantGilaMonster Giant Gila Monster]] Does [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Absolutely Nothing]].''

[[folder: Film ]]

* In ''Film/MenInBlack'' Agent K says this sort of news is actually very trustworthy when it comes to tracking aliens.

* ''Film/{{Manhunter}}'' and ''Film/RedDragon'' has Freddy Lounds and ''The National Tattler''. See below under Literature for more.

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[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* On ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}},'' the title character is a frequent viewer of ''Sick Sad World,'' which features everything from the trashy (a severely disabled man supposedly sleeping with three members of the royal family) to the absurd (an orca who's a lawyer) to the outright supernatural (zombies). One of the tie-in books features "Stringer Guidelines" from the show, which basically reveal that they'll take anything.
* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' has ''[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mysteries]],'' [[ParanormalInvestigation Dib]]'s favorite show. However, over the course of the series it has been shown to report on supernatural phenomena both fake (Chickenfoot) and real (spell drives).

[[folder: Real Life ]]

-->'''Hijiri:''' They've been rumours among the occult groups that she's been [[VideoGame/Persona4 thrown into a television]]. Don't look at me like that. You have to take everything they say with a grain of salt. They talk about things like ghosts hanging out in apartment buildings[[note]]One of the characters in this fic[[/note]] , [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow someone killing Bigfoot in Russia,]] [[VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney secret military operations to fight demons in Antarctica,]] [[Franchise/{{Castlevania}} hidden monster hunter villages in Romania,]] [[VideoGame/Persona2 flying cities,]] shop owners selling guns[[note]]Hammer in this fic[[/note]], [[GiantRobot giant metal golems,]] [[{{Reincarnation}} Count Dracula returning,]] end of the world stuff...you know, things like that. Every once in a while, they turn out to be true. But you never know just by hearing them. There are things in this world that are too absurd to be made up.\\

* ''Literature/RedDragon'' has a slimy tabloid journalist named Freddy Lounds, who runs a paper called ''The Tattler'', reporting on the FBI investigation of the SerialKiller dubbed "The Tooth Fairy". He becomes a serious obstacle in the investigation before the agents eventually realize that the killer reads ''The Tattler'', and they feed Lounds a false story to try to lure the killer into making a mistake. [[spoiler: It doesn't work, but it does end up getting Lounds killed.]]

* ''[[VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Sam & Max Save the World]]'': Sybil opens a tabloid called ''Alien Love Triangle Times'' in episode 2, "Situation: Comedy". Sam and Max just happen to need proof of being involved in a juicy scandal to get onto Myra Stump's talk show as guests, so they [[spoiler: get Hugh Bliss to show off his powers of "Prismatology" by turning green, then take a photo with him and give it to Sybil as "proof" they're flirting with LittleGreenMen from space.]]

-->'''Hijiri:''' They've been rumours among the occult groups that she's been [[VideoGame/Persona4 thrown into a television]]. Don't look at me like that. You have to take everything they say with a grain of salt. They talk about things like ghosts hanging out in apartment buildings[[note]]One of the characters in this fic[[/note]] , [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow someone killing Bigfoot in Russia,]] [[VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney secret military operations to fight demons in Antarctica,]] [[Franchise/{{Castlevania}} hidden monster hunter villages in Romania,]] [[VideoGame/Persona2 flying cities,]] shop owners selling guns[[note]]Hammer in this fic[[/note]], [[GiantRobot giant metal golems,]] [[{{Reincarnation}} Count Dracula returning,]] end of the world stuff...you know, things like that. Every once in a while, they turn out to be true. But you never know just by hearing them. There are things in this world that are too absurd to be made up.\\

* There's a ''TabletopGame/FateCore'' module book called ''[[https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/251127/Weird-World-News-o-A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core#:~:text=Weird%20World%20News%20requires%20Fate,focused%20on%20classic%20WWN%20hijinks Weird World News]]'', a pastiche of the groovy mystery-solving cartoons of TheSeventies (like ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooWhereAreYou'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Jabberjaw}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Fangface}}''), with the main characters a gang of journalists for such a publication, and a [[ScoobyDooHoax pretty high chance of the supernatural stuff turning out to be fake]].

Not necessarily related to DoomyDoomsOfDoom, although it might overlap with IfItBleedsItLeads or YouCanPanicNow. A ClickbaitGag is sometimes a comedic depiction of online examples.

Not necessarily related to DoomyDoomsOfDoom, although it might overlap with IfItBleedsItLeads. A ClickbaitGag is sometimes a comedic depiction of online examples.

Sometimes newspapers of a more questionable level of veracity publish news that is clearly bunk, in the case of {{Alien Abduction}}s, yetis being found and women giving birth to animals. Other times they'll print that which might be true but seems to be kinda loopy and of questionable newsworthiness - toast burned in the likeness of historical figures for example. These stories are of course either complete fabrications in the former case (either made up by journalists or via bored AlanFridge-esque submissions), or are just questionable coincidences.

* [[http://ww2.wizards.com/Books/Wizards/?doc=fr_spinayarn2005 Enjoy]] the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' tabloid. Titles like "Bane vs. Cyric -- Winner Take All!!!!" and "Dire Pandas From Kara-Tur Invade the Unapproachable East!" -- and much worse.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pandemonium}}: Adventures in Tabloid World'' takes place in a world where all of the strange stories in this type of tabloid are true. {{PC}}s work as reporters for one of these papers, the Weekly Weird News, investigating things like werewolf secret societies and alien espionage.

* ''Lurid Tales of Doom!'' for West End Games' ''Ghostbusters'' is the TropeNamer.

* ''Film/{{Manhunter}}'' and ''Film/RedDragon'' has Freddy Lounds and ''The National Tattler''.

* Parodied in ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' where Buster Kincaid's newsplastic, ''The Interplanetary Telepress'' has headlines like ''[[Film/TheGiantGilaMonster Giant Gila Monster]] Does [[RealityEnsues Absolutely Nothing]].''

* Parodied in ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' where Buster Kincaid's newsplastic, ''The Interplanetary Telepress'' has headlines like ''[[Film/TheGiantGilaMonster Giant Gila Monster]] Does Absolutely Nothing.''

->''You think that publications like ''The Sun'' make everything up. I used to think that, too, before I checked into a story the ''Sun'' published a few months ago headlined "GIANT FLYING CAT TERRORIZES STATES." Remember? The article that featured the actual artist's depiction of an enormous cat? Flying? With wings? Well, I did some checking, and you will be interested to learn that every single word in the headline is true except for "GIANT," "FLYING," "TERRIFIES," and "STATES."''

* ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace''. Captain Proton is saddled with IntrepidReporter Buster Kincaid, whose newsplastic the ''Interplanetary Telepress'' is implied to be like this.
-->"What's this rubbish? ''[[Film/TheGiantGilaMonster Giant Gila Monster]] Does Absolutely Nothing. Football Hero Arrested for Indecent Exposure on [[Franchise/FlashGordon Planet Mongo]]. {{Chewbacca Defense}} Used in [[Film/ANewHope Greedo Shooting]] Trial. Erwin Schrodinger Charged with [[UsefulNotes/SchrodingersCat Cruelty To Cats]]. Ichneumon Fly Sues Scientifiction Writers for [[Literature/TheVoyageOfTheSpaceBeagle Ripping Off]] [[Film/{{Alien}} its Life Cycle]]. Survey Shows 78% of Americans Think Space Rangers Are A Bunch Of Poofs.'' You call this news, Kincaid?"