http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FauxSymbolism

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

aka: What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic

River Tam, Firefly "It's just an object. It doesn't mean what you think."

There are times when works rely a lot on symbolism, taking note of things that have occurred in history, religious texts or other such things. Symbols can add a considerable amount of depth to a story, leaving the audience coming back for more to further analyze a work that they love. This also creates opportunities for the audience to see how said symbol relates to the plot or themes of the story. Several famous works have used religious symbolism successfully, garnering praise.

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Because of this, less experienced creators may try and slip some symbolism into a story, when in reality the event in question has nothing to do with the symbol, in hopes that people will look at it more seriously. That is where this trope comes in: when a creator just decides to throw a historical, religious or random reference into a scene just for the heck of it. Perhaps the creator misinterpreted the message that the symbol stood for, the creator wanted their work to be taken seriously as True Art, or the creator just wanted the scene to look cool.

This is especially problematic when in addition to faux symbolism, the author throws in symbolism that is meaningful and well thought-out. If such a piece of fiction happens to become popular, this usually results in a polarized fanbase where a large number of people either over-analyze it (try to find a meaning to both the faux symbolism and actually-meaningful-symbolism) or under-analyze it (assume that because some of the symbolism happens to be pointless, that it's all pointless).

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Not all such references are arbitrary; this trope specifically applies only when someone has added random symbolism as an afterthought to add (illusory) depth and meaning to an otherwise-standard story. Comparing your main character to the Devil or Jesus seems popular; the latter can be easily done by giving him the initials "JC."

This technique is particularly popular in anime, because the Japanese generally only have a passing familiarity with Christianity (making its symbolism recognizable but still exotic), and will often use names or apocrypha without regard for their actual significance. And of course the corollary being that Western productions likewise only have a passing familiarity with Eastern philosophies (for example, Karma). If Faux Symbolism is used purely in naming people or things, it's Squat's in a Name, a subtrope of this.

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Be wary though that this trope is often used not to point out use of fake symbolism, but to shut down discussion of what may actually be legitimate observation; remember, just because you may not personally understand or like a piece of symbolism doesn't change whether or not it is. When this trait is exhibited in music, it may overlap with Not Christian Rock.

Long story short, anything can be considered symbolic in the right frame of mind. There are actual academic essays and papers about the symbolism of pieces of art where none actually exists or was intended (see The Lord of the Rings and World War II) and some artists will even claim their piece has symbolism when they didn't put any actual thought into it (they may or may not actually believe it themselves). If you are at all unsure if the "symbolism" has any actual intended meaning, please try to look into it or bring it up in discussion.

Compare Crystal Dragon Jesus, Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory, and Mundane Made Awesome.

Contrast Rule of Symbolism, when something actually is symbolic. It is also not to be confused with a symbolic Easter Egg hunt where the writer, director and production design team purposefully insert numerous small but meaningful elements, the understanding of which are not necessary to appreciate the plot, theme or character development but create fan discussion and add to rewatch value.

Tropes often employed for Faux Symbolism:

Examples:

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Ads for TV series with a sufficient ensemble cast occasionally riff on Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper". To name just two examples the final seasons of Lost and Battlestar Galactica shall be mentioned.

Anime & Manga

Comic Books

In Huntress: Year One #4, the Huntress essentially crucifies Stephen Mandragora, but even though Huntress is all about the Catholic imagery, she only does it to restrain him, and presumably because impaling someone through the palmar radial nerve is one of the most excruciatingly painful injuries one can inflict on someone. Lampshaded when Mandragora points out to her, with his dying breath "You honor me, with...with the stigmata... I knew... I'd be a saint someday."

The trope is parodied in Preacher when someone pointed out that Jesse Custer's name has "J.C." for initials and Jesse says it's a ridiculous idea.

The X-Men went through a phase in the Dark Age when a lot of new characters had Biblical or religious names, sometimes appropriately (Apocalypse and his Horsemen), vaguely appropriately (Babel spires), or for no particular reason at all (Bishop, Gideon note In both cases, it would turn out that these were the characters' real names ). Ahab would count, except that he's an obvious reference to Moby-Dick. Other examples would be the Acolytes, Exodus and Joseph note who was, to be fair, named in-universe by a Catholic nun . But this type of thing had been going on since the 1960s when you had Professor Charles Xavier (the name of a Catholic saint, made even more blatant when they added the middle name Francis), the original X-Man Angel (the name "Beast" presumably is only coincidentally reminiscent of the Book of Revelation), and villains Juggernaut (who gets a Hindu-Judaeo-Christian trifecta as his civilian name is Cain and he is Professor X's step-brother) and Lucifer. In the 1970s and 1980s there would also be two characters called Ariel, the Hellfire Club, Jubilee, two Thunderbirds (of Amerindian fame), Karma, Nimrod, Rachel, and Legion. And names from Graeco-Roman mythology like Cyclops, Proteus and Callisto. And to really drive it home, in his original origin story, Xavier was crippled by an alien called Lucifer.

). Ahab would count, except that he's an obvious reference to Moby-Dick. At the beginning of Detective Comics Issue #64 "The Joker Walks the Last Mile ", The Joker discusses his master plan of putting his Joker Immunity to the test with his mooks to have them make sure they follow his instructions, exclaiming that "The Joker shall die so that he may live again!" Afterwards, being kind of Crazy-Prepared, he plays a villainous version of the Sacrificial Lion by turning himself in to the police and confessing to a long list of crimes (including robbery and murder), resulting in him being given a death sentence and in his execution by the electric chair at the midnight hour. Right after he is declared dead, his mooks quickly retrieve his body from the prison morgue and carry him to a nearby ambulance where they bring him Back from the Dead with some life serum; once he is revived, he becomes a free man and can no longer die for his same crimes. This is kind of similar to the same plot concerning Jesus' passion and resurrection, except that he had God the Father and his angels at his side in his moments of death.

", The Joker discusses his master plan of putting his Joker Immunity to the test with his mooks to have them make sure they follow his instructions, exclaiming that "The Joker shall die so that he may live again!" Afterwards, being kind of Crazy-Prepared, he plays a villainous version of the Sacrificial Lion by turning himself in to the police and confessing to a long list of crimes (including robbery and murder), resulting in him being given a death sentence and in his execution by the electric chair at the midnight hour. Right after he is declared dead, his mooks quickly retrieve his body from the prison morgue and carry him to a nearby ambulance where they bring him Back from the Dead with some life serum; once he is revived, he becomes a free man and can no longer die for his same crimes. This is kind of similar to the same plot concerning Jesus' passion and resurrection, except that he had God the Father and his angels at his side in his moments of death. Wonder Woman: It's fairly noticeable when you're looking for it, and those expounding on the idea on the internet abound, but there was supposedly no intended symbolism or deeper meaning behind DC trying to change the feminist hero's signature item from her gynic lasso to a phallic sword while they were making her Darker and Edgier from the '80s on.

Fan Fic

Films — Animated

The ending of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a big fat wad of this. Cloud is temporarily killed by Loz and Yazoo , vanishes in a blur of light, and reappears in a CHURCH that has been flooded with magical healing water. As if it isn't blatant enough, he wakes up surrounded by kids suffering from geostigma, whom he heals by cupping water in his hands and "baptizing" them on top of the head.

, vanishes in a blur of light, and reappears in a CHURCH that has been flooded with magical healing water. As if it isn't blatant enough, he wakes up surrounded by kids suffering from geostigma, whom he heals by cupping water in his hands and "baptizing" them on top of the head. At a Q&A session, the writer/director of We Are the Strange admitted to viewers that the Creepy Cool Crosses were put in just as an afterthought or because he thought it'd look cool.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Tabletop Games

Nobilis encourages merging this with Schrödinger's Gun to produce prophecies; just pick some random bits of symbolism, fire them at the players, and then run with the best explanation they come up with.

An in-universe example in Geist: The Sin-Eaters: the titular Sin-Eaters tend to cherry-pick symbols from religions, mythology, comics, movies and stuff they just flat-out make up for their fashion or rituals, with no regard whatsoever for their actual meaning.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Most of the Elshadoll are named after concepts in Judaism—heck, even the name "Elshadoll" is a play on El Shaddai, one of the names of God of Israel. The Qliphoth (lit. "peels", "shells" or "husks") are the representation of evil or impure spiritual forces in Jewish mysticism. They are documented in some texts of Kabbalah, a set of teachings originated in Judaism.

It's played mostly for laughs in Warhammer 40,000. The Imperium uses a lot of real-world (mostly Catholic) symbolism for purely aesthetic reasons, with the application fitting their archetype in modern fiction but being complete nonsense if taken at their original meaning. The most blatant are that the Black Templars wear Templar crosses and Sisters of Battle love fleur-de-lys imagery for literally no reason beyond it being their heraldry. It doesn't help that there is legitimate symbolism mixed in, like Horus who is a Satanic Archetype (but has nothing whatsoever to do with the Egyptian god he's named after).

Theater

Video Games

Web Comics

Web Original

Cody Jenson's discovery of a motorcycle in Survival of the Fittest, a mundane occurrence tooled up with as much symbolism and imagery as was humanly possible. Oh, and he named it too.

A running gag on Bad Movie Beatdown is for Film Brain to throw his hands in the air and yell "SYMBOLISM!!!11!!OMGWTFGENIUS!!!" when he encounters examples of this trope.

Mocked by Chip Cheezum and GeneralIronicus while retsupuraeing "A Demon Tale".

Rational Wiki refers to examples of this as "Deepity" . The term refers to statements that are at best true but completely irrelevant, at worst something that, while profound on the surface, is completely nonsensical (bonus points if said statement would be completely world shattering if true). An example given is the phrase "gravity is just a theory"; yes that's true since a theory is a well-established scientific explanation, but it's trivial and obvious to anyone with a brain. And if gravity was nonexistent like the statement implies than the way life functions would be changed forever.

. The term refers to statements that are at best true but completely irrelevant, at worst something that, while profound on the surface, is completely nonsensical (bonus points if said statement would be completely world shattering if true). Broken Saints has a lot of symbolism. A lot a lot. Much of it is just there for style and to set the mood.

Western Animation

Real Life