Major Man: Taking the concept of Kick the Dog and making it even worse.
Engineered Heroics in Western Animation.- Atomic Puppet: Mookie frequently tries this in order to gain the adoration of Mega City, usually by releasing a monster on the city or causing damage he pins on a supervillain, which he then declares he will save the city from. However, Atomic Puppet always ends up having to come in and rescue both him and Mega City, due to Mookie's ineptness at being a hero.
- Bob's Burgers: In "Motor, She Boat", Tina discovers that Troop 257 is planning to cheat in the Thundergirls' cardboard boat race by switching out their legal boat with one that has a remote-controlled motor hidden under the side. But she eventually learns they're in cahoots with Karen, an ambitious scout leader who's looking to get promoted to Regional Leader by catching them in the act, and that Karen has offered to give Troop 257 all the best cookie sales routes in exchange for taking the fall.
- Dragon Booster has one episode where Moordryd Paynn uses a stolen wraith dragon controller to stage wraith dragon attacks throughout Down City. He then makes a show of driving off the wraith dragons so that the people he "saves" will spread word of his heroics and improve his reputation.
- Family Guy has an episode in which Peter's shenanigans cost Quagmire his pilot's license, so Peter hatches a scheme where he and his friends drug the flight crew of a plane, then Quagmire steps up to the controls, lands the plane safely and gets his license back. The plan works (though not in the way Peter was expecting), and Peter is arrested for hijacking and thrown in prison.
- Futurama
- Zapp Brannigan does this sometimes, though his plans are rarely well-thought-out and they never go as well as he makes it out. More usually though he just causes disasters and shifts the blame onto somebody else.
- In one episode where the Planet Express crew become volunteer firefighters, the others notice that Bender has been present at most of the fires and think he's been setting them on purpose so he could play hero. For once, however, Bender is entirely innocent. In reality, the fires had been set by a fire elemental that Bender had unknowingly been harboring inside his body.
- Green Lantern: The Animated Series: Implied in the episode "In Love and War". At the start of the episode, a monster attacks the Interceptor, and the heroes have a tough time fighting it until the Star Sapphires arrive to aid them. Later on, when the Star Sapphires turn out to be Well-Intentioned Extremists, it's revealed that the monster is actually under their control, and they most likely had it attack the heroes in the beginning so that they could earn their trust by helping them "defeat" it.
- One episode of Iron Man: Armored Adventures has Stane creating two new "heroes" by outfitting a pair of ex-cons with counterfeit versions of the Iron Man armor, and then giving them some engineered crises to solve, all so that Iron Man would look obsolete.
- The Little Rascals: In "The Zero Hero", after hearing from the TV news that three bank robbers have escaped from prison, Spanky decides that he, Buckwheat and Porky should impersonate the crooks, so Alfalfa can "capture" them and make Darla lose interest in Captain Muscles. The incident doesn't quite go as Spanky planned it.
- Miraculous Ladybug: Shortly after finding the Bee Miraculous, and attempting to impress her mother, Chloe/Queen Bee paralyzes the driver of a subway train so that she can then save it. This backfires: she can't stop the train on her own, and after Ladybug and Cat Noir stop it for real, Ladybug discovers how the train lost control in the first place.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "The Best Night Ever", Rainbow Dash tries to get the attention of the Wonderbolts at a crowded party by bucking a guest, and then rushing in to "rescue" him. It doesn't work.
- In "Lesson Zero" Twilight Sparkle needs a friendship lesson to write about to send to Princess Celestia and when she fails to find one decides to brainwash some kids into fighting over a toy to solve it. It works a little too well.
- Played for Drama in the series finale, "The Ending of the End", when Discord reveals that he deliberately brought back a number of villains and planned to have them attack Twilight's coronation, with their defeat resulting in her confidence being boosted. However, this ends up backfiring horribly, as not only did Discord inadvertently give them more power than ever beforenote , which they then used to steal his magic (meaning he can't act as her safety net), but he also threatened and blackmailed them into working together "lest they end up like Sombra" which incentivized them to pool their resources and collaborate as a far bigger threat than they were individually. He doesn't even manage to boost her confidence as Twilight begins doubting whether any of her recent victories were real, causing her to have a crisis of confidence at the worst possible time.
- In the same finale, this is Chrysalis' plan for the Windigoes. Instead of dealing with them immediately, she'll wait for them to turn Equestria into a frozen wasteland, and then destroy them, to put all Equestria's citizens in her debt. She is seriously this close to realizing she could get everything she wants by just dropping the villainy and being a hero for real.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
- In "Major Competition", the girls seemingly find themselves bested by a new superhero named Major Man who always shows up in the nick of time whenever trouble is occurring. They start spying on him to figure out how he always shows up so fast, and see him doing things like bribing some thugs to rob a bank and kicking a dog into traffic so he can stop the cars and save it. They expose him by doing some engineering themselves, having a monster attack the city and showing Major Man to be completely helpless when faced with a threat he can't control.
- They pull off their own scheme in "Candy Is Dandy", when the Mayor promises them a piece of candy each time they stop a crime... only for a crime drought to ensue. Cue the girls breaking Mojo Jojo out of jail to commit more crimes for them to stop. Things go south when Mojo trolls them by stealing the candy from the Mayor.
- Princess Morbucks is a regular member of the girls' Rogues Gallery and started off like this, though she's more interested in having superpowers than acting the hero and is driven more by greed and revenge.
- In the anime version, Princess Morbucks' older sister does this: setting up everything in the episode she is in, even employing the services of Mojo, along with film editing, to make it look like she saved the day as well as bested the Power Puff Girls. One of the rare cases where she actually gets away with it.
- A positive example occurs in the Rick and Morty episode "Analyze Piss" where Rick performs a Dead Person Impersonation of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain to console his loved ones, and plants a bomb in a city with the intent of making it seem as though he performed a Heroic Sacrifice flying it away. It works, though at the cost of Jerry's reputation.
- She-Ra: Princess of Power: In "A Lesson In Love", Shadow Weaver summons a Giant Spider to attack Flutterina and her mind-controlled minion Kevin saves her from it, causing Flutterina to trust him and lead him to the Rebellion. Kevin eventually shakes off the mind control and becomes a hero for real.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Homer Goes To College", Homer plans to get his nerd friends unexpelled by having them save the dean from being hit by Homer's car... unfortunately the nerds distract themselves considering the impact of wind resistance on their calculation and miss their cue, leaving the dean to get run down.
- In "Dark Knight Court", Mr. Burns is inspired to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a superhero: Fruit Bat Man. While Burns believes that he's been successful in stopping crime, it actually turns out that the supposed "crimes" were actually engineered by Smithers. Burns does get the chance to stop a real crime though, when he helps prove Bart is innocent of a prank he didn't commit (it was Groundskeeper Willie).
- Star Trek: Lower Decks:
- In "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption", it's revealed that Peanut Hamper, an Exocomp who went AWOL, contacts both the Drookmani and Starfleet to the planet Areolus with the idea of luring the former for the planet's ancient spaceships so she can swoop in and defeat them as Starfleet gets there, showing that she was a hero and to welcome her back to the organization. However, the plan goes awry when it turns out the Drookmani she attacked hijacks one of the ships, which is still functioning, and reveals her duplicity. Even when given the chance to prove her worth again, Peanut Hamper to bail on everyone.
- In "The Stars at Night", it's revealed that Admiral Buenamigo deliberately sent the Cerritos to Brekka knowing the Breen had occupied the planet. His goal was to both show that the California class is obsolete and that his own Texas class of automated ships are far superior. The class is introduced when the USS Aledo swoops in to save the Cerritos from three Breen warships. He eventually admits to Freeman that he's been trying to get her to screw up all season long.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Pre Vizsla and Darth Maul's plan to take over Mandalore is to have the Black Sun invade and terrorize the capital so that the Death Watch can swoop in to save the day.
- Star Wars Resistance: In "The Doza Dilemma", the First Order cements their position on the Colossus by arranging for the Warbird pirate gang to kidnap Torra Doza, daughter of the platform's owner. When their representatives arrive to give the pirates their "payment", they instead turn on the pirates and rescue her, earning Captain Doza's gratitude.
- In one episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), the Shredder approached the retired super-hero Gadget-Man, who was trying to make a comeback, and claimed to be a "Super-Hero Agent", promising to do something like this to help put him in the spotlight. (Naturally, it would also be a strike against the Turtles.) Unfortunately for the Shredder, he underestimated how clever Gadget-Man was; he caught on and helped the younger heroes bring the villain down.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): In the episode "Aliens Among Us," Agent Bishop, needing funding for the Earth Protection Force, bio-engineers a race of aliens and sics them on New York as the president visits to make a speech. Though the Turtles realize the trick, their presence only further convinces the president of an alien threat, and Bishop successfully saves the president and receives unlimited funding. Sadly, the plan also backfires when genetic residue from the fake aliens makes its way into the sewers, leading to a mutant outbreak.
- Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo the commander of the local police. The only supervillain he ever caught was Brushogun, but Brushogun's Mook Maker powers gave him limitless criminals to capture for additional fame.
- In the ThunderCats (1985) episode "Pumm-Ra", first the Mutants capture Cheetara and knock her out. Then Mumm-Ra shapeshifts into a Thunderian called Pumm-Ra and Cheetara wakes up in relative safety with Pumm-Ra claiming he rescued her. It was a ploy to gain entry to Cat's Lair.
- After an incident that causes the Brotherhood to become Accidental Heroes on X-Men: Evolution, they create accidents to fix and gain fame. When they set out to stop a runaway train, they leave after being reminded that there is a second train that will cause a collision. Avalanche, however, does return to help the X-men avert the disaster - after which he tells them not to expect his help again but that the Hero Syndrome won't happen again. To his credit, he was generally the more responsible member of the group anyway, though he doesn't want to admit it.
- In The Yum Yums, to stop Sour Sue from getting in trouble for helping them escape, the Yum Yums have her sound the alarm and chase them, impressing the Sourpusses.
- In Young Justice (2010) Season 3, it's revealed that some of the heroic missions of the Outsiders were deliberately engineered to make them and by extension other heroes look good. Which was done to counter the Villains manipulating the media to make the heroes look bad.
