Short answer

On a fake Audemars Piguet, a "complication" is usually a picture of one. The subdials, the moonphase window, the tourbillon cage at six o'clock: often cosmetic. Underneath sits a basic automatic movement with a printed or engraved bridge shaped to suggest an AP calibre. A replica with a genuinely working perpetual calendar, correct month lengths, or a real column-wheel chronograph exists, but it is rare, expensive, and no longer the bargain people imagine.

What counts as a complication

A complication is any function beyond hours, minutes, and seconds. On Audemars Piguet's line that means chronographs, perpetual and annual calendars, moonphases, GMT and dual time, equation of time, minute repeaters, and tourbillons. The Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar is the one most people search for, and it is also the hardest to fake convincingly. A perpetual calendar has to know that February 2024 has 29 days and February 2100 has 28. That is mechanical memory built into a wheel stack, not a dial layout.

Why replicas fall apart here

Dress-up is cheap. Timing is not. A factory can print a moonphase disc in an afternoon. Cutting a cam that skips from the 28th to the 1st on a short month takes tooling, tolerance control, and testing. So the shortcuts show up exactly where the money is:

• The moonphase disc rotates on a 24-hour cycle instead of a 29.53-day one, so it drifts within days.
• Month and day subdials are linked to the same wheel, so they move together and never independently.
• The date sits at 3 or 4:30 on a base movement and gets hidden behind a printed plate meant to look like a calendar aperture.
• Pushers on the case flank are decorative and press against nothing.
• The "tourbillon" is an open aperture with a spinning rotor weight, or a cage that turns at the wrong speed and has no escapement inside it.

The perpetual calendar problem

Genuine AP perpetual calendars run in-house calibres with a century wheel and a correction that a watchmaker sets once. Replicas almost never attempt this. What you get instead is an annual-calendar style display at best, or a date wheel with a fake leap-year indicator. Put one on a timing machine and compare the rate in six positions. Real complications hold steady; the decorated base movements wander.

Chronographs and tourbillons

A working chronograph is the one complication replicas do reach, because modular chrono movements are widely available. The catch is feel. A genuine AP chronograph has a crisp, immediate pusher and a reset that snaps to zero. Replicas often have a soft mush and a seconds hand that creeps instead of jumping back. Tourbillons are a different story. A real tourbillon is a functional escapement in a rotating cage, and it costs real money to make. Anything cheap that appears to spin is usually a balance wheel with a decorative ring around it.

What I check first

I ignore the dial for a minute and look at behavior. Does the date change at midnight or over two hours? Does the moonphase move at all week to week? Does the chronograph reset land at 12? Does the movement number under the balance bridge match the reference and the caseback? Then I compare proportions: pusher spacing, subdial spacing, hand length against the genuine reference photos published by the brand. On complicated fakes, spacing is almost always off, because the base movement has a different geometry than the calibre it is imitating.

Money and legal reality

Counterfeit watches carry trademark and customs exposure in the US. Importing them can mean seizure and, in commercial quantities, civil or criminal liability. There is also the money question. A fake with a genuinely complex movement costs close to what a used genuine watch costs, and it holds none of the value. If a listing brags about a working perpetual calendar at a price that makes no sense, that is the tell, not the feature.