What is the name of the pattern in which individual contributors (programmers/designers) developed an artifact for the sole purpose is to serve as a diversion so that management can remove that feature in the final product?

This is a folklore I heard from an ex-colleague who used to work at a large game development company. At that company, it is well known that middle management is pressurized to "give inputs" and "make changes" to the product otherwise they risk being seen as not contributing to the project. This situation have delayed many projects because of these superfluous "management inputs".

In one project at the above company, the artists and developers created a supernumerary animated character that appears in every cutscene and sticks out like a sore thumb. They designed it in such a way that it can be easily removed before the game is shipped (this was when games were still sold in physical media and not a downloadable product). Obviously the management then voted to remove the animation. On the positive side, management didn't introduced any unnecessary changes that would have delayed the project because they have shown that they provided constructive inputs to the product.

This process pattern has a name among game programmers that work in corporates, but I forgot what was the actual name. I believe it's duck-something.  Anybody can help pointing out the name and perhaps some rather credible reference to how the pattern develops?.

It’s called a duck, from a legend that allegedly comes from Interplay’s Battle Chess:

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn’t, they weren’t adding value.
The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen’s animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the “actual” animation.
Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, “That looks great. Just one thing—get rid of the duck.”

