There's a reason why I Never Got Any Letters is such an effective device. The urge to know, however belatedly, that someone is looking out for you and has been talking to you is very great, even if you... didn't get them.
This is the Opposite Trope (to a degree): where somebody has written the letters to you, pretending to be the other person. This trope can cover poison pen letters, but it's more common for kind letters. If it's a positive thing, it will be a huge Pet the Dog moment; if a negative, it will Kick the Dog. This is especially common for cases of the Missing Mom or Disappeared Dad. It will probably involve a Forged Message, but the important part of this trope is The Reveal. Particularly influential letters may overlap with The Presents Were Never from Santa.
As this trope is often related to plot twists, all spoilers are unmarked in the examples below. You Have Been Warned!
Examples:
open/close all folders
Fan Works
- Pony POV Series: Twilight believes that the pile of returned friendship letters she was sent to snap her out of her Discord-induced Mind Rape were from her mentor Princess Celestia. They were actually sent by her sister Princess Luna, as Celestia was running around as an age-regressed filly at the time. However, Luna is content with Twilight not knowing the truth, since both she and Celestia know what she did.
Films — Live-Action
- The Affair of the Necklace: Hillary Swank plays the role of Comtesse Jeanne de La Motte Valois, as a vengeful aristocrat pre-French Revolution. She hatches a large and complex plan to regain her noble status. One step of her plan is to hire an actress to pose as Queen Marie Antoinette, and write torrid love letters to Cardinal de Rohan, to gain his help (since he bears some profound affection for the French Queen) — and to use the letters as blackmail material. When the conspiracy falls apart, Cardinal de Rohan is brought before the queen and mentions the love letters. When Maria Antoinette states she has no recollection of any correspondence between them, Rohan realizes he has been duped by the Comtesse.
- Blonde: Norma receives letters from her Disappeared Dad, alternately praising and Slut-Shaming her. The final straw that leads to her completely losing her mind, and either overdosing accidentally or deliberately, is that her one-time best friend Cass Chaplin reveals that her "father" in the letters didn't exist, heavily implying that he wrote them himself.
- Saw: A variant with an anonymous letter happens between Saw V and Saw 3D. In the former film, Hoffman receives a letter in his office that only reads "I know who you are". Hoffman likely believes the letter came from Strahm (with Jill also being a potential suspect for the viewer), but it's revealed in the latter film that it was actually sent by Dr. Gordon.
- Sunset Boulevard: Norma Desmond receives hundreds of fan letters a day — all written by her loving and dutiful butler, Max, to keep Norma in the sense of adoration that she's had since she was in the silent film system, and which has long since ended.
- Umrika: Ramakant spent his childhood thinking that his older brother Udai was writing him and their backwater village letters from America. After their father dies, Ramakant learns that his father was forging them with the help of the postman, and decides to travel to Mumbai to find his brother.
- In the 2002 made-for-TV movie Talking To Heaven (or Living with the Dead), starring Ted Danson and Queen Latifah, after they accidentally kill and bury the body of a runaway teenager in a forest reserve, a pair of brothers (adult men, at the time) send the teenage boy's mother cards and flowers every Mother's Day and Christmas, for the next 30 years. The woman believes for years that her son is still alive, until the man who killed him, on his deathbed, confesses to a priest about the incident and reveals to the woman that he killed her son.
Literature
- It's left ambiguous if he really sent them or if this is another manipulation technique, but Ray in Living Dead Girl tells Alice that her family doesn't want her back because of the cruel letters she wrote to them. Both Ray and Alice know that she didn't write them; if they existed, he did.
- In the fourth My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! novel, Keith, the heir of Duke Claes, went missing for several days before the Claes household receives a letter in Keith's hand, where he says he couldn't handle the stress of a ducal heir and is running away. As it turns out, Keith has been kidnapped, and his actions before and after the incident show he never even briefly considered doing this out of free will. Since the kidnappers include a dark mage with Mind Manipulation powers, it's unclear whether he wrote the letter under duress or under mind manipulation, but it's definitively not out of his own will.
- Under the Pendulum Sun: Cathy is sent to the Faelands by the missionary society, to follow up on her brother Laon who's there. Near the end of the book, Laon gets this letter:
The Society has recently received correspondence from your sister, Catherine Helstone, who appears to be under the impression that we both approve of and are financing her passage to Arcadia. This is not the case. We could but surmise that someone has been writing to her using our name. We have no idea why anyone would attempt such, but it is possible that they are trying to bring disrepute to the Society's good name. We urge you to proceed with the utmost caution...
Live-Action TV
- Castle: In "Ghosts", Sam Pike, disabled in an ecoterrorist bombing gone wrong 20 years before, has been receiving anonymous checks for years. The family assumes it was Victim of the Week Cynthia Dern, since the first check came with an apology and Cynthia was the only perpetrator of the incident not in jail at the time. However, Cynthia's biographer had no idea about this act of generosity, leading Castle and Beckett to conclude Cynthia didn't send the letters — Susan Mailer, a perpetrator presumed dead in the explosion, actually survived and went into hiding, sending the checks out of guilt. Downplayed, since Susan never pretended to be Cynthia specifically.
- On Cheers, Lilith has an affair with a colleague, Dr. Louis Pascal, and goes to work with him in an experimental eco-pod. In a later episode, Frasier receives a letter from her asking for a divorce. Shortly afterward, Lilith shows up after escaping from the eco=pod and Dr. Pascal who's gone crazy from claustrophobia. Pascal then takes the gang hostage and at one point, Frasier brings up the letter. Lilith denies having written it and Pascal reveals he wrote it in an attempt to have Lilith to himself.
- Criminal Minds: When Detective Rossi tries re-investigating a cold case that has haunted him for years, the victims' oldest daughter bluntly tells him to stop and leave it in the past. She then adds to stop sending her letters and gifts on the anniversary of the event, as while she found it sweet at first, she now finds it creepy. A shocked Rossi replies, "I never sent you any gifts". Realising they must instead have been sent by the killer as a show of remorse, Rossi proceeds to crack the case wide open and ultimately solves it.
- A Different World: Invoked and played with — Whitley herself did not mail her letters to Dwayne, both afraid of his rejection and wanting to play hard to get. Unfortunately, it backfires — assuming that her lack of response to him means she's not interested, Dwayne gives up and starts dating someone else. When the two finally do get together, she hands him a packet of her unsent missives.
- The End of the F***ing World: Alyssa runs away to find her dad because he's been writing her letters every birthday. When she meets him, he's an extremely lazy deadbeat and admits that he never wrote to her. The letters were actually written by Alyssa's mother.
- In the second season of Innocent (UK), Sally often received letters from her mother while she was in prison for a murder she didn't commit, which was a great source of comfort to her given everyone else in her life abandoned her. When her conviction is overturned, Sally eagerly goes to visit her mother in the nursing home she lives in, only to discover her mother has had dementia for much of Sally's imprisonment and barely even recognizes her now, nor is she capable of writing. It's explained that another resident wrote Sally letters pretending to be her mother so she wouldn't give up hope. Sally handles it graciously but is clearly devastated.
- Moon Knight (2022): Steven Grant has several postcards displayed in his apartment, and he believes that they were sent to him from his mother, who is travelling around the world and sending him postcards of the places she's been to. It's later revealed that Steven's mother was severely abusive and has been dead for two months, and the postcards were actually being sent to him from his alter, Marc Spector.
- My Mad Fat Diary: Rae believes that her father is sending her postcards from Scotland with inspirational quotes. She finds out that they're actually from her mother, Linda, and that Linda has no idea where her father is.
Tabletop Games
- A variant in the original I6 Ravenloft module and its Curse of Strahd remake. One possible adventure hook is a letter from the mayor of the Barovia Village asking the player party for help in defending his daughter from a vampire. When they get there, however, it turns out that the mayor has never written that letter... but he did write a similar one warning everyone to stay away from his village, as the vampire is already too powerful to defeat. The warning never got out of Barovia, however.
Theatre
- Everybody's Talking About Jamie: Jamie's mother Margaret gives him a card every year on his birthday that she says is from her estranged ex-husband, who actually disapproves of their son's sexuality. After Jamie's first drag performance, Margaret also sends him flowers and a card under Wayne's name. When Jamie goes to talk to his father about this, however, he is roughly rejected and told he never sent any cards. While Jamie initially doesn't take it well and gives her a What the Hell, Hero? speech, he later thanks her for her unconditional support.
Video Games
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a variant in the Dark Brotherhood quest line. You receive assassination orders from your handler Lucien via Dead Drop, but a traitor starts intercepting them and replacing them with orders that target the Brotherhood leadership. Lucien confronts you in a panic after your fifth murder as an Unwitting Pawn.
- Fallout 4: The leader of the raider gang occupying the Federal ration stockpile, Red Tourette, has a sister named Lily who was kidnapped some time prior by a rival gang leader, Tower Tom, and used as a hostage, writing letters to coerce her sister to exchange food from her stash to keep her safe. However, sometime later, Red notices something's off with the letters, namely that Lily calls her "Red" even though Red herself hates that name and both sisters know it. As the Sole Survivor can discover when at Tower Tom's hideout, Lily was actually killed by accident a while ago in a failed escape attempt, and Tom was forging her letters to try and keep up the food supply without Red finding out. If Tom is killed before Red, the female raider is convinced that Lily was moved elsewhere and continues her fruitless search, at least until the Sole Survivor decides to reunite the sisters a different way...
- Grand Theft Auto V: Trevor has struck up a pen-pal friendship with Brad, an imprisoned former crewmate from their heists a decade ago. However, it's revealed that Brad was actually killed in their last heist together, and the letters were all written by the federal agent who killed him.
- Final Fantasy VI: Cyan sends letters to Lola pretending to be her dead boyfriend and in the process comes to terms with his own grief.
- Final Fantasy XIV: In the level 60 botanist quest, the priest presiding over the case involving an ally of the player character mentions receiving a package from the botanist guild guildmaster, which causes him to be more inclined to a kind perspective. Later, the journalist that has been accompanying the player mutters something about expensive delivery, and the guildmaster mentions receiving a thank you letter for something she has no recollection of doing.
Web Video
- Critical Role: Fearne receives postcards from her parents as they travel around Exandria, but they're actually forgeries by her Grandma Morri, who felt terrible for the girl because of the Calloways' prolonged absence (made worse by Morri herself manipulating time so she could be with Fearne longer, making a six-year absence feel like 90 from Fearne's perspective). Fearne is disheartened when she learns her parents didn't send the letters after all, since they now feel like strangers.
Western Animation
- The Owl House: Throughout the first season, Luz's mother Camila thinks that her daughter is at summer camp, when she is really in another dimension. While Luz is in regular contact with her mother via text, one episode has Camila refer to getting letters as well, which Luz brushes off as her mom using the two terms interchangeably. We're immediately shown that Camila is getting letters from the camp, and we eventually learn in the second season that a shapeshifting basilisk named Vee went through the portal around the same time and took Luz's form on Earth, believing that Luz will never return and that she could safely replace her.
