Blackmail is a criminal act in which someone threatens to reveal someone's secret(s) in exchange for some kind of favor(s). However, one of the issues with it is that it requires someone to have information and/or material on someone. One way to get around this limitation is to fabricate evidence that can be used to blackmail someone; after all, it doesn't matter if the information that's being "revealed" is actually true or not so long as it could potentially have repercussions for the person being threatened.
One of the most common ways to perform this type of blackmail is with fake material of someone doing something bad. This can be done by taking a video, recording, or pictures of someone out of context or using Photoshop and/or deepfakes of someone. Certain comedic variations of this trope will have the material being obviously faked, but having the blackmailed party still feeling threatened by it.
If the blackmailer is particularly liked and/or the blackmailed is disliked, the former could probably blackmail someone simply by threatening to tell a lie about the latter. Even if the lie is obviously shoddy, some people won't question it because of the person telling it, the person the lie is being told about, or both.
Sub-Trope of Blackmail and Malicious Slander. Overlaps with Revenge Porn Blackmail if someone uses Photoshop or deepfakes to blackmail someone with fake pornography. In a family that practices Parental Favoritism, the favorite could easily do The Unfavorite without any evidence, since their parents are likely to believe the former over the latter. Some humorous examples might overlap with Accidental Truth if the blackmailer thinks they made their threat up. A Bad Review Threat can also be this if the reviewer threatens to spread lies about an establishment.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Maria no Danzai begins when Kiritaka Nagare is told by a group of bullies that if he doesn’t jump off of a cliff, then they’ll post a video of his mother having sex on the internet. Unbeknownst to Kiritaka, the video was heavily edited, meaning that he jumped off the cliff and lost his life to a truck running him over a faked video, making his death All for Nothing.
- Princess Jellyfish: Shōko Inari tricks Shū into believing that he had sex with her by putting sleeping pills in his drink, undressing him in his sleep, then taking picture of them together in bed. When he wakes up in his underwear next to her in lingerie, he believes that he had sex with her but doesn't remember it due to the effects of alcohol. She then spends the following chapters/episodes using the pictures to lead him around and manipulate him.
Comic Books
- The origin of the Pre-Crisis Huntress, Helena Wayne, deals with this: the Golden Age Catwoman decides to retire from crime and settles down with the Golden Age Batman, both more than certain that she never killed a person in her life. Years later, an old associate of Catwoman's approaches her to force her into One Last Job using photos claiming that she indeed killed someone. However, the robbery goes sideways and Catwoman is killed in the process. With Bruce retiring fully as Batman because of this, Helena creates the role of Huntress to hunt down the man and learns that the photos were doctored, that Catwoman truly never took a life.
Films — Animated
- In Recess: School's Out, T.J. gets his sister to help him gather his friends from summer camp, threatening her by uploading copies of her diary online. At the end of the movie, when T.J. gives his sister her diary back, Spinelli asks him about the copies he threatened her with, only to reveal that he was bluffing about them.
Literature
- In And Be a Villain, Nero Wolfe's arch-nemesis Arnold Zeck runs a blackmail ring where the victims are being blackmailed for something they didn't do - something entirely made up. The genius of the idea comes from the fact that no real secrets are being threatened, and the blackmail for each victim only lasts one year. Of course, since this is a Nero Wolfe novel, the blackmailer accidentally gets one piece of blackmail correct and a murder ensues.
- Father Brown: In "The Vampire of the Village", the titular vampire is the village parson, actually an actor who's been mooching off a family member by threatening to reveal they'd killed someone in a fight years ago. Except the death was completely unrelated, and the first thing the victim does on learning this is punch the blackmailer, causing scandal at a young man attacking his father and a clergyman. But as Father Brown points out, the victim is completely justified: not only is the blackmailer not the victim's father at all, only posing as such, he was the murderer in the first place.
- The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (a series of stories by Arthur Conan Doyle's son and John Dickson Carr): "The Adventure of the Two Women" has a dead politician's family threatened (if certain state documents he kept aren't handed over) with the scandal of revealing he was in a bigamous marriage with a Frenchwoman, leaving the widow with a child. However, Holmes realizes the marriage certificate used as proof is a fraud since the type of ink used to write the man's name didn't exist at the time of the supposed signing.
Live-Action TV
- Al Rawabi School For Girls: Layan wants to know who told Principal Qadi she skipped school to see her boyfriend, so she asks the school caretaker Sumayyah to investigate for her. When Sumayyah refuses, Layan tells her she'll tell Principal Qadi that she was smoking in the bathrooms again. When Summayah says she never smoked, Layan asks if she thinks the Principal will believe the word of the daughter of a political official like her, or a janitor.
- Blackadder II: In "Money", Edmund drugs the Loan Shark Bishop and poses him in a compromising position with Percy, and commissions an artist to paint it, forcing the Bishop to forgive the debt Edmund owes to the Bank of the Black Monks.
- The Boys (2019): In the episode "Good for the Soul," Hughie is to Blackmail Ezekiel, a conservative Christian preacher, for information on The Seven by showing him footage of using his stretch powers to have sex with two other men. However, Hughie's phone shorted out while being baptized by Homelander, so Hughie has to resort to lying, saying he has footage of the two of them having sex. When Ezekiel threatens him, Hughie responds that he gave a copy of the video to an accomplice, who will upload it to social media if said accomplice doesn't hear from him after a set amount of time.
- Burn Notice:
- "Broken Rules": Michael gets rid of Jason Bly, a government agent harassing him, by fabricating evidence that the two of them have secretly started a black market business together. He uses this to force Bly to hand over the full dossier behind his burn notice and then leave.
- "Trust Me": Michael steals some random files from the Pakistani consulate and holds them hostage to find out what Pakistani intelligence knows about his handler Carla, whom he believes was once stationed in Kurdistan. The security chief, Waseem, tells him the files are worth less than the information, so Michael returns them and has Sam photograph the handoff, then threatens to make it look like Waseem is accepting a bribe (which he admits is too flimsy to get him in serious trouble, but Waseem would probably lose his cushy assignment in Miami). Waseem folds, and Michael gives him the negatives in exchange for the file ISI has on Carla.
- "Fearless Leader": Michael gets a Miami-Dade organized crime detective named Paxson off his back partly by pinning several bombings committed by Fiona in previous episodes on a gangster Paxson has been trying to put away for years. When questioned on this, Michael says she can either leave him alone or have the case against the gangster unravel. Justified because Michael needed her off his back, but he didn't want to do it by getting a good cop in trouble, and the gangster had it coming anyway.
- In one episode of CSI: Miami, a school principal was building a case against the resident Alpha Bitch, who was the Victim of the Week. When the team learns about it, they ask why he didn’t release the recordings he took of the AlphaBitch’s victims, he reveals that she threatened to send a fabricated message that he didn’t send her to the police that would implicate him having a sexual relationship with the Alpha Bitch.
- In the first season of Fargo, dimwitted criminal Don Chumph attempts to blackmail businessman Stavros, even though he doesn't have any blackmail material. Chumph 'reasons' that someone as rich as Stavros must have some skeletons in his closet. The scheme is hijacked by experienced criminal Lorne Malvo, who instead opts to psychologically torture Stavros, partially just for the hell of it.
- Glee: After being fired, Sue drugs Principal Figgins and takes pictures of the two of them in bed together. She uses this to get her job back. To drive home how staged the whole thing is, Sue pulls back the sheets to reveal she is fully clothed.
- Leverage: In "The Fifteen Minutes Job", the Villain of the Week has planted Xanax in the office of a local DA to make him drop out, because all he has to do is file a lawsuit, and the DA's aides will have to admit to finding the drugs in the office. Unfortunately for the Villain of the episode, the DA is a childhood friend of Nate's, and Nate eagerly signs on to take the guy down.
Video Games
- Arcanum: One of the steps to recruiting the follower Gar is to free him from his Indentured Servitude contract as a Living Museum Exhibit at H.T. Parnell's Museum of the Strange and Unusual. One option is to falsely accuse Parnell of keeping Gar as a slave and beating him mercilessly, then when Parnell objects, tell him that the truth has never gotten in the way of a good newspaper headline - which convinces Parnell that keeping Gar around on his current terms could be hazardous for his reputation.
- Mega Man & Bass: Burner Man was ordered by King to burn down forests lest he die, though this "Spare nature and you die" threat is all a lie.
- Persona 5: When Makoto attempts to investigate an extortion ring targeting her schoolmates, she is kidnapped and brought to the mob boss Junya Kaneshiro, with the Phantom Thieves in hot pursuit. As soon as they arrive, however, Kaneshiro takes several pictures of them inside his den of vice and immediately threatens to release these to the public if they don't pay him an exorbitant sum. While the threat is a complete fabrication, a mere association with Kaneshiro would be ruinous to Makoto and Joker in particular, because the former's sister is a public prosecutor, and the latter is a juvenile delinquent on probation (on likewise fabricated charges).
Web Original
- This story
from Not Always Legal has a woman trying to extort one hundred thousand dollars from a man or she will post confidential information on him. He doesn't pay and she makes good on her threat, but the information she releases is all untrue. He sues her for libel.
Web Videos
- Apple Texts: After Ellen receives inheritance money from her husband's death, Sharon, who truthfully claims to be her late husband's mistress, attempts to extort money out of her via deepfaked pornography of Ellen that was created by Sharon's boyfriend.
- I Text Pro: After Chloe receives money from her mother to buy a new softball uniform, her brother Max, who their father favors, demands that Chloe give him some. When Chloe refuses, Max threatens to tell their father that Chloe stole the money from him, which causes Chloe to relent out of fear of what her father will do to her.
- Ultra Fast Pony: In "Winning", Apple Bloom coerces Zecora into helping her by threatening to tell the police that Zecora sold her drugs. AB acknowledges this is a lie, but insists the police will believe her anyway because of anti-zebra racism. (And how exactly does she need Zecora's help? Ironically, AB wants to buy drugs from Zecora for real.)
Western Animation
- The Boondocks:
- In "The Red Ball" Ed Wuncler I tries to blackmail Huey (who's amazing at kickball) into playing in a kickball game that will determine the ownership of Woodcrest, by threatening to show a photoshopped picture of Huey in an embarrassing outfit. Huey doesn't budge. note
- An example that overlaps with Accidental Truth in "The Passion of Reverend Ruckus". In order to prevent the execution of Shabazz K. Milton Berle, a Black Panther who was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, one of Huey’s plans involves sending a letter to the Governor claiming that he knows about his gay lover. Huey thinks that he made it up, but when the letter arrives at the Governor’s office, it turns out he really does have a gay lover, and so the Governor calls off Shabazz’ execution.
- The Fairly OddParents! In "The Switch Glitch," Vicky blackmails Timmy into doing both her laundry and homework by using a (clearly fake) recording of Timmy admitting to cheating on his math test. Timmy later does the same to Vicky after wishing her into a child by blackmailing her with an equally false recording of her admitting to stealing from her mom's purse.
- South Park: At the climax of "The Red Badge of Gayness", Cartman leads his Confederate army onto Washington D.C. and sends Bill Clinton a message threatening to release the videotapes he has of Clinton with Marisa Tomei unless he officially recognizes the Confederacy. Clinton agrees, but Cartman later reveals to Jimbo he was only bluffing about the videotapes.
Real Life
- There's a common email scam where the sender alleges to have hacked the recipient's computer and obtained webcam footage of them Caught with Your Pants Down, and threatens to send the footage to everyone they know unless they're sent a certain amount of Bitcoin. There's no hack, no webcam footage (it's entirely possible the recipient doesn't even have a webcam), and no actual consequences if you don't send the Bitcoin - the scam relies entirely on people panicking and sending the money without stopping to consider whether the blackmailer is actually telling the truth.
