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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Martin Savidge:''' When we talk about [[Leonardo da Vinci|da Vinci]] and your book, how much is true and how much is fabricated in your storyline?
'''Dan Brown:''' 99 percent of it is true. All of the architecture, the art, the secret rituals, the history, all of that is true... [A]ll that is fiction, of course, is that there's a Harvard symbologist named Robert Langdon, and all of his action is fictionalized. But the background is all true.
|''CNN Sunday Morning'', interview with [[Dan Brown]], aired May 25, 2003}}
What happens when a creator has been making noticeable claims—or simply strongly implying—that their work is highly researched and as correct as they can make it, only for you to quickly discover it to be a steaming pile of factual inaccuracies? When that happens, you've been '''Dan Browned'''.
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{{examples}}
== Comic Books ==
* [[Jack Chick]] [[Author Tract|tracts]] claim with 100% sincerity that they expose the truth behind [[All Myths Are True|D&D]], [[Path of Inspiration|the Vatican]], [[Evilutionary Biologist|evolution]], [[All Hallow's Eve|Halloween]], [[Burn the Witch|Wicca]], [[Rage Against the Heavens|atheists]], [[Bury Your Gays|homosexuality]] and many other aspects of modern life. Needless to say, they're a source of [[Bile Fascination]].
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== Film ==
* ''[[21 (2008 film)|21]]'' is supposed to be "Based on a True Story." The tagline was "The story of five students who changed the game...forever." Even aside from the [[Race Lift|liberties]] <ref>See [http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/21mitblackjack.php this].</ref> they took with the actual people involved, they also make blatant errors about gambling and math in a movie that is about how a bunch of MIT students beat blackjack. Errors like Mickey Rosa lecturing about the [[Monty Hall Problem]] in a Calculus class. What's wrong with that? This:
** One student gives the answer that is correct under the usual assumptions. Mickey then starts asking questions like "What if he would only give you the choice to switch if you picked the right one?" Possibilities like that completely destroy the standard solution to that problem, but the student says it doesn't matter, it's a strict math problem and is praised for it.
** In a later discussion, one of the players is talking about whether to split 8's against an Ace. This IS a strict math problem, given that the rules of casino games are pretty standard, stated up front, and often enforced by law. The character then gives an intuitive, non-mathematical explanation and [http://wizardofodds.com/blackjack/21movie.html gets it wrong].
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* Try watching ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' with a layman's knowledge of psychology. Take a first-year psychology course, then watch it again. You'll be able to refute 90% of what appears on the show.
== Newspaper Comics ==
* The Kwanza arcs of ''[[Curtis]]'' are stories presented as adaptations of African folk tales, although they are not. They are fiction written by the cartoonist, much like the rest of the strip.
== Tabletop Games ==
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* A great majority of [[Expert Village]]'s videos. Because of its name, we are expected to see how-to topics covered with a good sense of mastery, but it really is a mixed bag. Every other video seems to teach the wrong techniques or completely fall against common sense, as many commenters point out the mistakes that the instructors/presenters do.
* Chris Bores, who reviews video games online as [[The Irate Gamer]], claims to do research on everything. He peppers his shows with some variation of "After doing some research..." and claims that he only reviews games from the late eighties and early nineties because he's supposedly been playing said games for 20+ years and knows them forward and backward. However, he often makes literally dozens of mistakes in a single video.
* In [https://web.archive.org/web/20130818013753/http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/05/06/vlog-5-6-10-the-deadliest-warrior/ this] ''[[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony Experiment]]'' video, Spoony and his brother do an almost hour long Vlog on the Dan Browning in [[Deadliest Warrior]].
* ''[http://thesurrealist.co.uk/trivia.pl The Mechanical Contrivium]'' on thesurrealist.co.uk - it just minces up the given term with common "tabloid factoids" (whether true or not in the first place). Naturally, of 10 results some are probably sort-of-meaningful and actually funny:
{{quote|7. Jackrabbit once came third in a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest!
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1. It can take duct tape several days to move just through one tree.
5. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are duct tape. }}
* Political [[Twitter]] feeds are an inexhaustible source of this — twitchy.com team figured out long ago and made shooting fish in the barrel their job. For some really stunning ones, try:
** Talib Kweli [https://web.archive.org/web/20181223103214/http://https%3a/twitter.com/talibkweli/status/1076264241336930307 educates] people on the "fact" that Nazi built [[Berlin Wall]] and it "didn't work" for the intended purpose (sadly, he didn't elaborate on the latter, instead opting to attack anyone who disagreed).
** A [//twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/1221645982187823110 little history exercise] from David Hogg on "gun violence prevention movement" (jokes about Harvard abound, also some references to ''[[Billy Madison]]'').
* The ''Fake Science'' blog by Phil Edwards parodies pompous triviality vendors (as he explains [//www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fake-science-a-100-fact-free-alternative-17173232/ in an interview], it was inspired by clumsy attempts at [[Appeal to Authority]]), usually in the form of a bullet-point poster with obviously nonsensical "trivia" and [[Comically Missing the Point]] as a punchline. He also have published compilation of some entries as a book (''Fake Science 101''). It was banned in some schools, maybe because the parody hit too close to home (it comes in the format of dumbed-down posters for a reason, after all). The main result was more mockery explicitly focusing on the educrats themselves, like [//fakescience.substack.com/p/bread-baking-tips-and-dr-splat this]:
{{quote|Angstrom’s controversial claim that “the only way to beat gravity is through missiles,” was, while true, enough to get him banned from public schools.}}
== Other ==
* Bill Schnoebelen, who claims to be an ex-Mason, ex-Mormon, ex-Catholic, ex-Wiccan, ex-whatever-du-jour, has released a nine hour interview in which he talks about how he was an ''ex-vampire.''
* Christian comedian Mike Warnke claimed to have been a satanist, a satanic high priest with his own coven, and to have participated in several satanic rituals involving rape and possibly murder. His testimony was featured prominently in his speaking/comedy tours, and for a time in the mid-1980's, he was considered one of the foremost experts on satanism in the US and worked as a consultant for a number of law enforcement agencies. Then in 1992, [https://web.archive.org/web/20060117052519/http://www.answers.org/satan/warnke.html Cornerstone Magazine] did some digging and found out that Warnke's stories and dates simply didn't add up and found major discrepancies between different tellings as well as several witnesses who flatly denied Warnke's claims. Not to mention that there is, to date, no evidence whatsoever that any of the wildly hedonistic satanic rituals claimed by Warnke have ever taken place in the United States.
* In Germany, Newspapers which are usually expected to do their research and claim to have done so often just copy stories from other newspapers or websites that had the story earlier. Even if those newspapers they copy from are newspapers notorious for getting stories wrong all the time, like "Bild".
** A notable example was when they got a new minister's name wrong - because they just copied it from [[Wikipedia]].
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