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Feed the Mole
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You have The Mole on your team. Perhaps you even know who they are, feeding information to the Big Bad, or (if Divided We Fall) to The Rival. How convenient! You can now spread whatever (dis)information you want spread! You may even manage to trigger an Enemy Civil War. This trope is when a group that has been infiltrated by The Mole ends up exploiting that Mole by deliberately spreading information, or more usually disinformation. There are at least two reasons why they'd do this: Someone in the group thinks there's a mole but doesn't know who it is, so they devise a Secret Test by picking out individuals and giving each one different information. The idea is that the loyal members will keep it to themselves, whereas the mole will pass it on to their boss on the other side. By watching what the boss does, the one who started the test can then gauge which information the boss heard and therefore deduce who the mole is. Feeding different stories to different suspects is a classic way to determine which, if any of them, is the mole. Alternatively, or additionally, seeing which of your enemies reacts as if in possession of a piece of false information determines which of them is the mole's boss, if that is unknown. Someone in the group knows who the mole is but hasn't exposed them yet (if they ever will). They simply arrange matters so that the mole ends up passing on bogus information to whomever they work for. The information is always to the other side's detriment. Perhaps it's useless or designed to throw them off the scent. Perhaps they'll act on it, in which case they may get caught in a trap or be led to their deaths. Perhaps, if they're getting more than one report, the information confuses them and thus buys the group some time as their enemies (it's usually an enemy) try to work out which of their contradictory reports are true and which aren't. Valid and accurate information that nevertheless causes useful reactions is another route, one that tends to prolong the usefulness of the mole. A "Mole" who willingly feeds the information you want is a Double Agent. A Mole who is Becoming the Mask may slowly move to being a Double Agent — though if the mole doesn't know you have twigged, there is the little problem that they will choose their own misinformation. Feed The Mole may lead to a You Have Failed Me moment for the unlucky mole concerned, if their boss ever figures out what they did. The boss may even accuse the mole of doing it of their own free will, when really the mole had no more idea what was going on than the boss did. On the other hand, if the Big Bad figures out or guesses that you know about the mole, he will know that you are feeding him information, false or manipulative, and therefore what you want him to think. If counterploys start forming on each side, this might tumble over into I Know You Know I Know and a Gambit Pileup may ensue. Note that this isn't exclusive to the hero; the Big Bad, The Dragon, or The Rival could just as easily manipulate The Mole in this fashion. The Chessmaster and the Magnificent Bastard are quite likely to use this tactic to confuse or to trick the hero. If that's the case, then the tactic will generally be condemned more strongly by the audience as playing dirty than if the hero had used it, obviously because the audience is usually (Designated Hero notwithstanding) on the hero's side, or because it's more likely an opponent will be more ruthless by, for example, using it to get the hero killed. Might make for a good Reveal when the hero or the villainous mole says "My God, What Have I Done?" This is one of The Thirty-Six Stratagems, making it Older Than Feudalism. Compare Bluff the Eavesdropper and Staging the Eavesdrop. |
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Kanta of Desert Punk, when asked to guard a town about to become an oasis from the Edo River Gang, starts partying around the village and gains a Professional Butt-Kisser in the process. When it's revealed said ass-kisser was a spy, Kanta explains that he knew this, and lead the spy to believe the villagers would all be defending the side of the village facing an abandoned city, when they were really defending the side facing the open desert. Unfortunately for Kanta, the Edo River Gang were smart enough to spot bad intel, and attacked from the city anyway, forcing him to fight them all himself. | |
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A Modest Destiny shows that you can use this even on a non-mole ditz, as seen when Gustav is deliberately given bad information so (when asked politely by a disguised villain) he'll accidentally lead the enemy into a trap. | |
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During Eren's first outside-the-walls expedition in Attack on Titan, Commander Smith, suspecting there might be a mole in his unit, gives different members different information regarding Eren's position in the formation. When an attack, indeed, comes, Smith is able to narrow the suspects down considerably (and eventually expose The Mole) by comparing its direction with his earlier misinformation. | |
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Irresponsible Captain Tylor: When Harumi fails to kill Tylor, he directly proposes this trope so she won't be executed for her failure. Amazingly, it works and keeps her superiors more and more interested in Tylor, who is careful enough to not give more information than necessary to avoid endangering the Soyokaze's crew. | |
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In Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. Hulk is wise to Skaars duplicity and allows him tidbits of information to give to Leader, hoping to win Skaar over in the end. | |
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Average Joe is likely showcasing a version of this, as most of the strip is a prolonged flashback story being told by The Hero to The Mole — whereby the Hero has recently noted (not to the mole) that he knows she's working for the unknown enemy... | |
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In 9 Chickweed Lane, Edda's grandmother tells how she was sent to sing for German prisoners of war to get them to give up sensitive information to her. They pretty quickly figure her out, but continue to feed her information simply because they like her. When she finds out, she asks if the information was correct. The answer is somewhat ambiguous. | |
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The Bots Master: When Paradigm finds out a mole planted by The Hero, he uses it to give Zulander misleading information. | |
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Girl Genius: It's spelled out more explicitly in the print novelizations than the original comic, but Klaus and Gil Wulfenbach do this with both the noble-family students/hostages on board Castle Wulfenbach, and Gil's manservant Ardley Wooster, who is a British spy. Explicitly done after the Time Skip: |
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In Vinland Saga the mole is given information that the group would find no harm in giving to the enemy the king. This was a test to see if the person was a mole. Simultaneously they use it to get the enemy to do what they want. | |
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Subverted in The Trenches: Q knows there is a mole in the company, leaking secrets to their game's user base, in particular what they plan on doing about an Infinite Gold Bug that slipped through QA and got released. He tells each of the QA testers something different, and then fires Marley when his version goes public. The subversion is that Marley isn't the mole, Cora is; Isaac figured out what was going on and leaked Marley's info himself. He did this protect Cora who ultimately had the users' best interest at heart, and to punish Marley the QA tester who let the bug go live in the first place by getting too stoned to do his work. | |
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Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "The Spy Humongous", a Pakled claiming to be a refugee is quickly deduced by Ransom and Kayshon to be a spy... and a quite inept one at that, taking photos of himself instead of the Cerritos and asking obviously suspicious questions, like asking to see the warp core and wanting all their codes. Ransom and Kayshon decide to play along and take him to see "classified" locations like the gift shop and the juice bar. He gives them the slip... only to mistake an airlock for the bathroom and flush himself out into space. He survives, but is transported to Pakled Planet at the end, where he triumphantly reveals himself to be a spy to "Janeway" (actually Captain Freeman). Freeman then tricks him to reveal that the Pakleds are building a bomb they plan to drop on Earth. | |
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In the original Police Academy film, Copeland and Blankes intimidate Barbara into asking Mahoney where the shore leave party is being held. Mahoney realizes fairly quickly that Barbara is too introverted to party, so he gives him the name of a tough Gay Bar. | |
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The Imitation Game: An unusual example in that the mole is fed true information. In the film, MI6 uses the mole to pass on information they want the Soviets to have but Churchill is unwilling to share. (Churchill was paranoid about sharing information with the Soviets, despite being allies.) Subverted, when Stalin refuses to believe it. |
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One Piece: Kin'emon manages to do this by complete accident. He manages to utterly derail the Arc Villain's plan and force The Mole to tip his hand by telling said mole incorrect information about a planned rendezvous... because he, and only he, completely misread Yasuie's message, and was the one to tell said misinterpretation to the mole. | |
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Planescape: Torment has an In-Universe example with the story of Vilquar; the Githzerai figured out he had sold them out to the Illithid, so they tricked him into believing that they had given up on their rebellion to fool the Illithid into becoming complacent, as well as prevent future treason by showing how the Illithid kill Vilquar upon getting the bad info. | |
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X Minus One: In "Project Trojan", Phase Three was identifying a German mole (Gogarty) and "losing" files connected to an unworkable Death Ray. Because they were only "losing" some of the files, it would look as if the lack of information meant the Allied powers had developed a solution. | |
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A small questline in the fan-made The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind mod pack Tamriel Rebuilt centers around the Enforced Cold War between the Mages Guild and House Telvanni, and both sides, regardless of which one you take, have a quest where you have to help root out a suspected mole/leak from the other side this way. The Telvanni version has you baiting out four suspected moles with "gossip" about a defecting Guild mage (with a different story/mage for each suspect), then laer checking if any of the "defectors" have suddenly disappeared. The Guild quest has you spread a rumor about a fake expedition to one of their agents within the Telvanni to see if they've been flipped. For extra points, the spy for both quests is the same person. | |
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She-Ra: Princess of Power: In "Birds of a Feather", Kowl's cousin Red-Eye seeks employment at the Horde and Shadow Weaver uses a spell to enable Red-Eye to see and hear what Kowl does. She-Ra takes advantage of this to give the Horde misleading information. | |
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In Skunk Fu!, a ninja monkey who pretends to be kicked out of the mountains by Baboon so he can spy is given bad info from the animals in the valley about when they'll attack next and who'll be leading to report back to Baboon. | |
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Copyright traps, either in the form of "phantom settlements" in terms of published maps, or "fictitious entries" for published dictionaries and encyclopedias, serve this function. Reference works like these are inherently based on factual information, and you can't copyright the true definition of a word or the actual layout of a city. So, to prevent lazy publishers from simply copying your reference, the idea is to plant a trivial bit of false information in your own work — a fake street in a big city, or a ghost word in a dictionary that has no true meaning. If you find the same bit of planted info in a rival publisher's work, you could use this as credible legal evidence that they are copying your work, rather than doing their own research. This actually came up in a legal case regarding Trivial Pursuit, when a fake trivia entry about Columbo's first name, inserted as a copyright trap into The Trivia Encyclopaedia by Fred L. Worth, was used as a question in the game; the verdict said, in effect, that taking extensively from one source might well be plagiarism, but taking from numerous sources, and comprehensively changing the way the material was used, meant this was instead research, and thus didn't constitute a crime. Worth pursued his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied cert (i.e., declined to hear the case) in March of 1988. | |
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Star Wars Rebels: Grand Admiral Thrawn says in "An Inside Man" that he plans to do this once he finds out who The Mole is, now that he knows there is one. At the end of "Through Imperial Eyes", now that he knows who the mole is, he tells Yularen that he can start actually doing it. | |
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In Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: The Steel Seven, the heroes become aware that Europa is an unwitting mole for the enemy, because the Big Bad can read her mind whenever he wants. As a result, they take the prudent measure and lock her up (at her own request). Then when Tobia comes in with her meal, he tells her exactly where they're going, and why they think the item they're after is in the area. When Europa protests this action, Tobia smirks and replies "What guarantee is there that I'm telling you the truth?" As it turns out, he actually was telling the truth, but the Big Bad took the bait and didn't trust his words. When they do end up meeting and fighting, the Big Bad had figured out the heroes' location through other evidence. | |
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The mole himself suggests this approach in The Departed. Of course, since he's in charge of the search it's all just part of keeping the other cops off his scent. | |
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Men in Black: The Series: An alien in the guise of an human woman once infiltrated MiB and gains the confidence of Frank the Pug. J and K cottoned on pretty quickly and provided Frank with bogus information. Frank was genuinely saddened when he learned of her intentions. | |
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