Faked death

Pseudocide is a neologism (or Americanism) for faking one's own death. It is usually carried out in order to commit fraud (falsely claiming against life insurance policies), avoid debt or legal trouble, or escape marital difficulties. The British expression "doing a Reggie Perrin" refers to pseudocide, after a popular 1970s British comedy series called The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. The lead character, played by Leonard Rossiter, fakes his own death by drowning, leaving his clothes and personal effects on a bench. However, Reggie soon misses his wife and returns home under the assumed identity of a Martin Wellbourne. His wife is pleased to have him back in any form and plays along with his pretence to be another person.

Pseudocides often consist of fake drownings, because it provides a plausible reason for the absence of a body. According to an urban legend, sometimes credited to an unnamed study, as many as a quarter of suicides from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in which no body was found could have been faked.

There are several how-to books on the subject, including Get Lost!, How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, How to Create a New Identity, and The Heavy Duty New Identity.

Notable pseudocides

• John Stonehouse, a British politician who faked his own suicide by drowning in order to escape financial difficulties and live with his mistress. He was discovered in Australia - where police initially thought he might be Lord Lucan - and jailed.
• Graham Cardwell, a Lincolnshire dockmaster who disappeared in September 1998 and was assumed drowned. Eight months later he was discovered living in secret in the West Midlands. He claimed he had thought he was suffering from cancer (though had not sought medical attention) and wanted to spare his family the trauma of it. He was not prosecuted.
• Alan Kirk Wolford, an American funeral home director who forged his own death certificate in order to evade significant debts.
• Steven Chin Leung, who faked his death in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in order to evade a charge of passport fraud.
• Dorothy Johnson, an American woman who allegedly faked her death in the September 11 attacks in order to collect on insurance claims allegedly filed by her daughter, Twila McKee. Johnson and McKee were charged in 2003 with insurance fraud.
• Ken Kesey, an American author who in 1966 faked his death and fled to Mexico in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid imprisonment on marijuana charges.
• John Darwin, a Briton who disappeared in March 2002 whilst canoeing and was assumed drowned.

Fictional cases

• Den Watts, from Eastenders faked his own death by jumping in the canal and getting the corpse of Vinnicombe to resemble him.
• Reginald Perrin, a character from the 1970s British book and sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, who tries various increasingly eccentric ways of changing his mundane life.
• In the Family Guy episode, I Take Thee Quagmire, Peter, Joe, and Cleveland try to help Glenn Quagmire escape from a clingy woman by faking his death, which doesn't work too well.
• Mr Polly, a character from the comic novel The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells.
• The title character of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• The main character of 24, Jack Bauer
• In the episode Mother Simpson of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson fakes his death by tossing a dummy of himself over a waterfall; this sets the whole episode's plot in motion. Another episode called Bart the Fink, Krusty the Clown faked his own death to escape an IRS investigation. Both of these episodes were from the seventh season. In My Mother the Carjacker, Mona fakes her own death, while escaping prison, by jumping out the prison bus and on a patch of grassland just as the prison bus was drove off a cliff and into a body of water. Mona leaves a coded letter, to let Homer knows she's alive and has escaped into another town.
• Josh Swensen/Larry from the book The Gospel According To Larry fakes his own death to avoid media attention.
• Ben Finney, in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Court Martial," whose fake death leads to the murder trial of Captain Kirk.
• James Bond, main character in the James Bond film series, fakes his death in the film 'You Only Live Twice'. He does this in order to fall off the radar and investigate a criminal organization being led by supervillain Ernst Blofeld
• Alex Meade of Ugly Betty faked his death in a skiing accident to undergo a sex change.
• MiNa Nam of What I Did for Love faked her death by drowning in order to find her love, Jin Woo.
• Joan Porter, protagonist of the novel Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood.
• In the movie Harold and Maude, Harold often comits pseudocide.
• In How To Kill A Rock Star, by Tiffanie DeBartolo, Paul Hudson fakes his own death by only allegedly jumping off a bridge into the Hudson River. It is then revealed he disguised himself as a witness to his own supposed suicide, in order to escape his disappointing life and leave the country; which ultimately reunites him with his love.
• In The Analyst (novel), by John Katzenbach, the psychologist Dr. Frederick Sparks pretends to drown in the sea, to escape a pursuer who intends to kill him.
• Sherlock Holmes pretends that his encounter at the Reichenbach Falls was fatal, in order to become incognito for 2 years.
• In The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket, Aunt Josephine is told to write a suicide note and commit suicide, but instead she throws a chair out the window and hides in Curdled Cave. In the suicide note, she left a number of mistakes to make a code she knew Klaus could decode so the Baudelaire orphans could find her.
• Earl Hickey fakes his own death to break up with a girl in Episode 104 of My Name is Earl.
• In Episode 54 of Hope & Faith, Sydney is late behind on her term paper so Faith tells her to say there was a family death to get an extension. So Sydney makes up the fact that Faith is dead. The media goes crazy over the news and Faith refuses to say she isn't dead because of all the attention she's getting.
• Peter Pettigrew (from the Harry Potter series) faked his death in order to frame Sirius Black for involvement with the deaths of James and Lily Potter, which he was responsible for.
• The movie Pauly Shore Is Dead centers around the fictional pseudocide and return of the titular character, real-life actor Pauly Shore, and the consequences thereof.