Not sure about the make-believe part. In 1983 I was a weapons
control systems mechanic on F-4Es at Moody AFB. I had a 4 year Weapons
Systems Officer write in the aircraft forms, Radar does not work in
O.F.F. mode. Took me about 5 minutes to figure out wtf he was talking
about.
The power switch had 4 "modes", Emergency, Operate, Standby and
OFF! I decided not to enter could not duplicate malfunction in the forms,
so I asked the next WSO how the dar operated in off mode. After a weird
look, he told me it worked fine in off.
I then entered Replaced Stick Actuator in the forms and went back to
the shop. It took the production supervisor 5 hours to find the fix and call
me on it
P.S. Stick Actuator=Operator