"Q" Clearance was a 1986 novel by Peter Benchley, satirizing Cold War secrecy and politics.[10] [11]
In "Nellis", episode 7 of season 6 of the television show Archer, Sterling Archer uses Q clearance to gain access to Area 51 after landing illegally on the airstrip.[citation needed]
The QAnon conspiracy theory is named such because the 4chan poster, who in 2017 created the persona behind the conspiracy, claims to be an individual with Q level security clearance,[12] despite the overwhelming majority of the conspiratorial predictions never materializing, which were dense, jargon heavy, nonsensical, self-contradictory, and contrary to known facts, which followers interpreted as a code to be cracked. As an online community sprouted up around QAnon, QAnon’s posts were disseminated by followers to other websites, drawing in more and more followers and launching YouTube channels, etc. Increasingly, QAnon has been booted from mainstream platforms, though it still thrives in some digital corners. Followers had a presence at the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.