History Main / MoonLandingHoax

[[caption-width-right:350:[-Image by [[https://wronghands1.com/about/ John Atkinson.-]]]

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[[caption-width-right:350:CUT! It's "one small step for '''A''' man", Neil!]]

* Played with in ''VideoGame/Battlezone1998''. The moon landing was real, but not in the traditional sense as it was a cover-up to explore the solar system for [[{{Unobtanium}} Bio-Metal]]. The first mission starts by panning around the Apollo lander - then pans around to show a massive military base in the background full of {{Hover Tank}}s. The famous picture of Neil Armstrong standing alone on the moon was taken by the leader of the National Space Defense Force, General Collins.

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'''Michael''': Oh, right, from ''{{Film/Apollo 13}}''.\\

* ''{{Series/Friends}}'': While at a thanksgiving meal in the "The One With Rachel's Other Sister" episode, Joey realises he was meant to be on a parade float with his fellow ''Days of Our Lives'' stars and has difficulty trying to come up with a good excuse as to why he is not there.

* In "[[Recap/LeverageS02E05TheThreeDaysOfTheHunterJob The Three Days of the Hunter Job]]" episode of ''{{Series/Leverage}}'', when poking fun at Parker, Eliot says he's seen the moon landing sets, and that the reason they haven't been destroyed is that the government plans to paint them red and reuse them for Mars landings.

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* Played with in ''Videogame/BattleZone1998''. The moon landing was real, but not in the traditional sense as it was a cover-up to explore the solar system for [[UnObtanium Bio Metal]]. The first mission starts by panning around the Apollo lander - then pans around to show a massive military base in the background full of {{Hover Tank}}s. The famous picture of Neil Armstrong standing alone on the moon was taken by the leader of the National Space Defense Force, General Collins.

* When you read the thoughts of a male Russian in ''VideoGame/DestroyAllHumans 2'', they may comment on how they think the moon landing was filmed in [[PlaceWorseThanDeath Newark, New Jersey]]. Later in the game, when you really do go to the moon, one of the sidequests involves receiving a delivery from a courier.

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* Wiki/ScpFoundation:

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-->'''Neil Armstrong:''' Oh, uhh, there was a tape delay, and uh solar winds and... (Bashes the guy with his space helmet.)

* ''WesternAnimation/InsideJob2021'' ziz-zags this. America really ''did'' land on the moon in 1969, but also had to fake it shortly after. The reason being that the astronauts didn't want to come back to Earth, instead founding a free-love commune on the satellite. Revealing this to the world would have been far too embarrassing, so Cognito Inc. was tasked with rigged up a Hollywood set, getting Stanley Kubrick to film a fake landing, and having crisis response actors replace the real ones in their day-to-day lives.

* The music video for [[https://youtu.be/8XK7nzAW_b0 "Rocket Fuel"]] by Music/DJShadow and Music/DeLaSoul depicts a faked moon landing with Creator/StanleyKubrick directing it, only for the astronauts to physically fight eachother on-camera, with Nixon and Brezhnev also fighting during the live broadcast.

* The [[https://youtu.be/8XK7nzAW_b0 music video]] for "Rocket Fuel" by Music/DJShadow and Music/DeLaSoul depicts Creator/StanleyKubrick faking the moon landing, only for the astronauts to fight eachother on-camera, with Nixon and Brezhnev also fighting during the live broadcast.

* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'': "Operation: M.O.O.N." starts with Sector V watching footage from the 1969 landing and laughing about how KND had managed to fool the Apollo 11 crew into thinking that they had landed on the moon, to stop them finding their secret moon base. They then learn that for the anniversary, a family is going to be sent to the moon, and it happens to be Numbuh 4's family. They need to build a huge fake stage and control everything behind the scenes in order to convince Numbuh 4's family that they actually had flown to the moon, lived there for a while, and came back to Earth. Oh, and Numhub 4 has been LockedOutOfTheLoop as well.

* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'': "Operation: M.O.O.N." starts with Sector V watching footage from the 1969 landing and laughing about how KND had managed to fool the Apollo 11 crew into thinking that they had landed on the moon, to stop them finding their secret moon base. They then learn that for the anniversary, a family is going to be sent to the moon, and it happens to be Numbuh 4's family. They build a huge fake stage and control everything behind the scenes like ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' in order to convince Numbuh 4's family that they actually had flown to the moon, lived there for a while, and came back to Earth.

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* The December 8, 2019 ''ComicStrip/{{BC}}'' strip had Peter deliver the following speech:
-->''I declare that one day man will travel to the moon! And this achievement will instill great reverence in the collective accomplishment of our species and lead to a technological revolution that will eventually culminate in a social network so connected, so influential to our daily lives that it will seed an idea that the entire thing was a hoax to begin with.''

* In the ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' episode [[Recap/KimPossibleS4E12StopTeamGo "Stop Team Go"]] (the one where Shego is temporarily turned good), it's revealed that Ron is utterly convinced that the 1969 moon landing was a hoax (despite personally knowing a rocket scientist and actually going into space himself at one point).

* ''Website/TheOnion'' had the story, [[http://www.theonion.com/articles/conspiracy-theorist-convinces-neil-armstrong-moon,2796/ Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked]] that ''two'' Bangladesh newspapers[[note]]The Daily Manab Zami and New Nation[[/note]] reprinted as real news.

* ''WebOriginal/TheFootprintOfMussolini'': [[spoiler:To shore up flagging domestic support, the Soviet Union decides to give its government a boost in popularity by faking a moon landing. [[DeconstructedTrope The timeline demonstrates exactly why trying to do so is a very bad idea]]: Israeli intelligence agencies know the Soviets don't have the resources for a genuine moon landing, some of the people involved with the hoax are outraged at the idea and have to be coerced into participating, multiple scientific inaccuracies expose the fakery, and Soviet attempts to "[[BlatantLies debunk]]" hoax claims only result in them ending up even deeper in the hole they've dug themselves into. The whole debacle destroys any credibility the Soviet government still has, both at home and abroad, and a subsequent famine proves the final straw for not just the USSR, but communism in general.

-->--Old joke

* During the TravelMontage in ''WesternAnimation/{{Minions}}'', the Minion tribe casually wanders through the sound stage and interrupts the filming of the moon landing.
** Better yet, it's directed by a Creator/StanleyKubrick lookalike.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' episode "Stop Team Go": Shego is [[MirrorMoralityMachine temporarily turned good]] but Kim has trouble convincing Ron.

* In the CGI movie ''WesternAnimation/CaptureTheFlag'', an important part of the plot is that many people still believe the original moon landing was faked.

** During the Apollo era, NASA contractors had [[https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/lunar-mockup-bethpage?phrase=lunar%20mockup%20bethpage&sort=oldest mockups]] of space hardware at their factories for purposes of testing of equipment and procedures and for training astronauts. U.S. TV networks regularly featured these activities in their coverage of the program.

** During the Apollo era, NASA contractors had mockups of space hardware at their factories for purposes of testing of equipment and procedures and for training astronauts. U.S. TV networks regularly featured these activities in their coverage of the program.

* ConversationalTroping by Creator/TerryPratchett when asked in a Website/{{Usenet}} discussion why the moonshot from ''Discworld/TheLastHero'' hadn't had a lasting effect on society. He explained that it had been a one-shot deal, the Kite had never flown again, Leonard had lost interest and by now there were probably people denying it had ever happened ... before backtracking and saying Discworlders weren't ''that'' stupid.

This trope is a HistoricalInJoke where the moon landing ''really was'' staged behind closed doors, or the conspiracy is otherwise {{Discussed|Trope}}.

* ''Series/AdamRuinsEverything'' covers this topic in "Adam Ruins Conspiracy Theories". As is standard for his series, actual experts are brought in to explain the subject at hand. The expert explains that it was ''technologically impossible'' to stage the moon landing, using the fact that all the shadows in official pictures are completely parallel to each other, as there was only one single light source located 93 million miles away. Shadows produced by lighting in a sound stage would be conical from one point of origin, and the only way to replicate the same effect as the sun would be to use millions of lasers that could only be produced individually through huge bulky machines, and they could only be red lasers back in the 1960s. They also point out the fact that they would've had to prevent 400,000 NASA employees from talking about it, and that the broadcast was picked up in numerous countries across the planet, including the Soviet Union, who would've done anything in their power to prove it was faked just to stop from being one-upped by their Cold War enemies.