I Am Who?

"Hagrid:"Yer a wizard, Harry." Harry:"I'm a what?""

- Harry Potter

The main character must be special somehow. The hero who would save the world cannot be just a farmer's son. In the rare case that the hero is not prophesied to do something or the current villain's relative, he or she is probably a powerful being, even a god, but does not know it.

The reason the character's true identity is hidden may range from simple lack of knowledge to a forced, magical amnesia. In this kind of story, this revelation is often the plot's main twist.

Often, this is an Awful Truth that must be withheld at all costs, because the character is unlikely to be able to control their immense powers or use them responsibly at this point in time, or ever.

May lead to Amnesiac Dissonance; may overlap with Luke, I Am Your Father in case the character is a god's relative. A particularly nasty revelation — for example, a Robotic Reveal — may drive the poor protagonist utterly mad. If it's not the protagonist who's secretly special, then this is King Incognito.

Subtropes include Amnesiac God. Often the result of a Changeling Fantasy. Related to Tomato in the Mirror. If everyone else knows the truth, the hero's been Locked Out of the Loop. Unrelated to I Am Not Who.

Anime andManga

 * Tenchi Masaki from Tenchi Muyo is The Anomaly that the Chousin were searching for - a mysterious all-powerful God who's even greater than them. Whether this means God didn't actually exist until 17 years ago or that Tenchi is simply the reincarnation of God is less than clear.
 * In the 2006 Ergo Proxy, it is revealed that.
 * Haruhi Suzumiya; she isn't "who?" so much as she is "WHO AM"
 * Kyon asks himself this at the end of "Mysterique Sign."
 * Lain of Serial Experiments Lain finds out that she is the rough equivalent to.
 * In The Big O, it is revealed that Angel ...
 * Ares of Vagrant Soldier Ares, suffers from Easy Amnesia and can't remember his previous life as Sebastian, bastard son of the king of Chronos.
 * The protagonists of Saiyuki are really, with the exception of Goku, who is the.
 * In Yu Yu Hakusho,
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, it turns out that.
 * In Best Student Council, we learn that
 * In addition to learning she's a Super Powered hero of Justice, Sailor Moon, Usagi also learns later that she's a princess. Mamoru is also a Prince and was her lover in a past life.
 * At the beginning of the series Naruto is told that he houses the Kyuubi. Later in the series Naruto is told that his father was one of the most powerful Shinobi ever and his mother was . Keep in mind that the Naruto-verse thrives on Superpowerful Genetics.
 * Saya starts off like this in Blood Plus.
 * In The Secret Agreement, Yuuichi thinks his uncle, who is a mystery writer, is making up the whole story about their family being life-stealing vampires. Unfortunately the evidence isn't in his favour.
 * Roughly translated, the title of Kyo Kara Maoh is "From Today, You Are Demon King". From today, Yuuri is king of the demons. He's a bit flummoxed.
 * In Bleach, everyone basically assumed that Ichigo was just one of those lucky humans born with increased spiritual sensitivity and an abnormally high Power Level who got super-charged by Rukia and underwent Training From Hell time after time. Then, around the time starts up his shenanigans, we learn that the reason he and his sisters are so sensitive is that  A couple of other characters already knew this (and it had been revealed to the readers earlier, though aside from the genre of the manga there was no explicit hint that it was relevant to Ichigo's powers), but they didn't bother to tell Ichigo or anybody else.
 * In Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, Tima is a robot that was designed to run the Ziggurat, a weapon capable of controlling all mankind. The only one's aware of this fact are Dr. Laughton who is killed in the first few minutes of the film, Duke Red who commissioned Tima to be built, and Rock who wants Tima destroyed.  This is a trope namer as this question is Tima's first words in the film.
 * Defied in Death Note: One of the first things Ryuk says to Light is that he is not 'special' or 'chosen': He just happened to be the first human to pick up the Death Note after Ryuk dropped it in a random location.
 * Happens in Tekkaman Blade when
 * In Rave Master, Elie turns out to be.
 * In Rave Master, Elie turns out to be.

Comic Books

 * From the Transformers fan club comic Skyfall, Landquake, Breakaway, Topspin, and Heatwave turn out to be . This was actually revealed before Topspin and Heatwave were introduced.
 * Superman's origin in more recent decades has this element. He gets a mostly normal early childhood, then starts developing special abilities then eventually encounters or is told about his rocketship which also eventually transmit a message or series of messages from Jor-El which usually tells him he has a great destiny. Typically he has at least two if not three of these in his origin.
 * Sometimes Aquaman's origin has this element. He's raised by a human and typically knows about his abilities. The moment this trope kicks in is when he learns that he's the King of Atlantis.
 * The Mighty Thor plays this trope too. Don Blake learns that he's actually Thor cast in a frail mortal form to be taught a lesson in humility by his father and at this time he gains the ability to tap into his divine powers.

Film

 * Luke Skywalker, of Star Wars fame, gets a double-dose of this. He lives the first nineteen years of his life completely unaware of his Force abilities. More importantly, though, he is unaware of his lineage; his aunt and uncle choose to tell him that his father was a "navigator on a spice freighter" and Obi-Wan and Yoda actively conceal the fact that his father is actually Darth Vader, the evil Emperor's right-hand man, formerly known as Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, The Chosen One who was to bring balance to the Force.
 * In Overboard the leading lady is incredibly rich, and (after falling overboard her yacht and getting amnesia) lives with a poor carpenter. The carpenter knowingly dupes her into believing that she was his wife.
 * The Matrix has two. Whilst Neo is, as he discovers in the first film, special, he's not quite as unique as he's been led to believe. Neo is at least the sixth of the Matrix's abnormalities, and has in fact been duped from the start by none other than the Oracle herself, who's engineered The Plan to ensure humanity's survival.
 * In Angel Heart, a private eye hired by "Loius Cypher" to track down a vicious killer who made a deal with the devil. Turns out that that pivate eye is himself the killer, each horrible murder he discovers along the way was actually done by himself, and "Loius Cypher" ...

Literature

 * In the third Green Rider book, The High King's Tomb, the protagonist finds out that.
 * Harry Potter, who spends his first eleven years unaware that he is actually a wizard..
 * Near the end of the fifth book, Harry learns about.
 * In Terry Pratchett's early novel Strata, it is eventually made clear at the climax of the story that is a member of the godlike "Disc Builders" who have taken on mortal form in order to learn new experiences..
 * The first Book of Amber starts with this.
 * In the Young Wizards series, a young autistic boy is revealed to be . The other characters can never tell him because the knowledge would kill him instantly.
 * Percy Jackson and The Olympians is.
 * The first Heroes of Olympus book does this with Jason's identity.
 * Eragon has at least two of these.
 * Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief manages to use this trope even though the book is written in first person. Even though we are privy to the main character's thoughts, the reveal still comes as a surprise. Of course, Gen himself know who he is--he's just hiding the truth from everyone else.
 * In Xanth, Umlaut was an avatar/creation of the Demon Jupiter, and there was a bet between Jupiter and a couple other Demons about whether he was going to figure this out before finishing his quest.
 * In Tamora Pierce's Immortals quartet, main character Daine's mysterious one-night-stand of a father turns out to be.
 * Furthermore, she learns in book three that, doubling the fun and irony of Daine's outcast status back in her hometown.
 * In The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy series, there is a minor character introduced for the sheer hilarity of the story as a Rain God. He has no idea of it, only that it has always rained wherever he was.
 * In Archer's Goon, it's revealed that
 * In Deltora Quest, Lief is
 * In the Belgariad series, by David Eddings, Garion learns after several books, first that he is, then that he is . Later it gets worse as he learns that Still, there were clues...
 * Yeah, there were clues. If the word "clue" was written six feet high in flashing neon letters.
 * In the His Dark Materials trilogy, this applies to Lyra. It gets subverted because even after the story is over, she still does not know what role she played.
 * Subverted somewhat in A. Lee. Martinez's In the Company of Ogres. First it's played straight with Never Dead Ned He couldn't be told of his identity as the  due to the fact that  However, later it turns out
 * The little boy who was nicknamed Wart in The Sword in the Stone turned out to be.
 * Lirael, in Lirael, turns out to be
 * Corran Horn, in the X Wing Series, finds out that he's the grandson of a Jedi; the man he's called Grandfather all of his life was that Jedi's partner, who married his wife after the Jedi died.
 * Thomas from The Maze Runner actually.
 * In the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the Doctor.
 * In "Lord Valentine's Castle" by Robert Silverberg, the protagonist who has been memory-wiped discovers that he is Lord Valentine.
 * Will Stanton's eleventh birthday in The Dark Is Rising was even more extreme than Harry Potter's. Oh, yes, your family is your real family and all...but you're also an immortal wizard with an incalculable eternal destiny to fight the personified forces of evil and be deeply disconnected from the human race, even those you love most, forever. And you're the last of us and the fate of the world hinges on your completing this Fetch Quest we refuse to explain within the next few weeks. Happy Birthday.
 * Also, I will never admit I am Merlin.
 * Being the youngest sucks.
 * Goosebumps protagonists in the end would discover they were not humans but actually ghosts, aliens, dogs, robots, monsters, etc.

Live Action TV

 * Reaper: In the season finale, it's revealed that Sam is . Not that.
 * The '90s Doctor Who TV Movie features the Eighth Doctor amnesiac after his regeneration.
 * After at the end of series 4,  Of course, for Tennant's "going-away" episode,
 * The two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" sees the Doctor turn himself human and wipe his own memories to protect him and his companion. Inevitably the companion has to reveal his true identity- and after a brief "I'm who" this 'John Smith' is absolutely terrified at the fact he's actually an alien, and that he'll have to 'die' to save everyone's lives.
 * The Doctor wasn't the only Time Lord to do this. Of course,
 * Parodied in a sketch on The State. The priest and nuns at a Catholic orphanage tell a young man on his eighteenth birthday that he's really a super-human alien from another planet. They tell him to "go out there and fight for truth and justice", and he jumps out the window...and falls. They then proceed to laugh their asses off, then decide to "do another one before lunch".

Oral Tradition

 * Many variants of the Arthur myth have King Arthur raised as a much lower-ranked if not common boy before proving himself in battle and being told of his lineage, or finding out upon the whole "sword in the stone" business.
 * Fate Stay Night happens to be one of those variants.
 * Although in this, Arthur is a girl... but is still called "King Arthur." It probably makes more sense in Japanese.
 * Think about what happened to Joan of Ark. Hundreds of years AFTER the time of Arthur, when people were much more open-minded about women in positions of power. There is a handwave about her pretending to be a boy, but it's hard to believe anyone would be fooled.
 * Not really that hard to believe - the paintings are not accurate. Joan of Arc was what we would call these days a "Bull Dyke". Oh, and the real Calamity Jane did not look a bit like Doris Day.
 * Actually, that's explained in-story. First off, after she was born (to an old king desperately needing an heir), her father sent her away, and Merlin took her to live with Sir Ector (as the legends claimed). Second, she was specifically raised in the manner of a boy by Ector, which helped in the mannerisms and personality requirements, not to mention most everyone outside believed she was one as well. Third, after she was crowned, Merlin cast spells of glamour upon her to make the deception a whole lot more convincing (although ... it kind of bit them in the rear end, though, when the glamour was so perfect people believed 'Arthur' didn't look like a normal person). She even admitted her reign wasn't as great as the legends made it out to be, but ... yeah.
 * Older Than Feudalism, from Classical Mythology: Paris or Oedipus the King, who were both prophesied to bring destruction and so were brought up as peasants instead of princes. Naturally, this didn't thwart their destinies. Oedipus's revelation was possibly the biggest tragic Heroic BSOD in theater ever, and led him to gouge his own eyes out.
 * The play about Oedipus has him raised by another king. His hamartia (Tragic Flaw) was his uncontrollable temper that drove him to club his father to death at the crossroad, to disregard Teiresias, and to jump to conclusions about Creon. His I Am Who? moment segued beautifully into his Heroic BSOD and exile.
 * Theseus, also. The son of Aethra (herself the daughter of a king) and King Aegeus (and also the god Poseidon ... however that works), he was only told his true heritage when he was strong enough to lift a massive boulder and reveal Aegeus's sword.
 * Actually, SMART enough. The point was that the boulder was really too massive for any single man to be likely to lift it up and move it. Theseus uses a fulcrum and a lever to begin his Guile Hero career.

Tabletop Games

 * The White Wolf Tabletop RPG Scion is based on the concept that the player characters are the children of the ancient Gods from various pantheons (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Japanese, Aztec, and Voodoo are in the main book; an expansion pack is available for Celtic, Chinese, and Indian pantheons).
 * And Scion's progenitor-game Exalted leaves the groundwork of this available to every single last one of the Celestial Exalted, each of whom has lived lifetime after lifetime of epic awesome heroism (in the classical Greek sense), but only allows the current incarnation at best partial recall of his legacy

Video Games

 * Baldurs Gate: The main character is revealed to be.
 * Beyond Good and Evil: With very little in the way of fore-warning, game throws you this curve-ball in the last act.
 * We'll be seeing it soon enough.
 * Neverwinter Nights Tales of Arterra, in which the player is . Also The Bastard of Kosigan, with.
 * Neverwinter Nights 2, when the Spirit-Eater Curse is explained.
 * Knights of the Old Republic: The main character is.
 * The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The main character, a former prisoner and a spy for the Empire, is revealed to be.
 * Two sequels later, in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Player Character eventually finds out that they are a Dragonborn; a prophecized being where a dragon soul ends up in a mortal body. Handy, since there seems to be a bit of a Dragon problem in Skyrim, and the Dragonborn is the only one who can permanently kill dragons. That, and the dragons' leader Alduin the World Eater isn't the only existential threat to the world at the time.
 * Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura copies the reincarnation variant of this trope. But subverts it when you find that the wizard/saint (whose soul you allegedly inherited) is in fact.
 * Zero struggles with various levels of amnesia in the Mega Man X series. He keeps getting flashbacks of his creator, Dr. Wily, but remembers nothing else from before Sigma captured him. In the Zero series, he's even lost his memory of the X series -- everyone tells him that he's a "legendary Reploid" and he just has to take their word for it.
 * from Lunar: The Silver Star (and its Updated Rerelease) is revealed to be the human incarnation of the Goddess Althena. not the main character, though. One of the main characters, but not the main character.
 * But she is arguably the most important character.
 * In Persona 3, the main character discovers that he is
 * In Persona 4, the main character is revealed to be
 * Devil Survivor,
 * Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow had a plot twist:
 * Then the direct sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, states this early on in the game, spoiling it for anyone who played it before Aria of Sorrow.
 * Kratos from God of War is revealed to be . Of course, it's not like this was uncommon in Greek mythology.
 * In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters the main character is revealed to be
 * The eponymous character in Lufia is . This also applies to in Lufia: The Legend Returns.
 * Subverted in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker. Unlike all of the other games in the series, this game's particular Link is not the reincarnation of the Hero of Time, and as a result he is required to go and find the Triforce of Courage by himself to be deemed worthy to hold the Master Sword. Played straight with the reveal that.
 * In Knights in The Nightmare, the Wisp is the soul of the late king, as well as the Arbitrator. This is absolutely no secret to the player, as Maria and Meria inform you of this very early on. The question of "Yes, but what does an Arbitrator do?" isn't explored until much later on. It leads to a bit of dramatic irony, as the player can piece things together a lot easier than the Wisp itself, which seems rather reluctant to remember much.
 * Also the case with Garlot in Blaze Union--he is the first pureblooded descendant of the demon god Brongaa to be born in centuries. He doesn't know this because his mother--who feared that his powers might be too strong and would lead him to becoming used by others... and just sort of feared his power--sealed said powers and Mind Raped him into believing himself to be human when he was a toddler. This even caused him to forget his real name, Gulcasa. His mother didn't think that the seal was strong enough, so she left the family to go find out how to make a stronger one... and then It Got Worse for Garlot. Much, much worse. Whether or not he realizes his true identity varies by route.
 * Three times in Gloria Union - Also,  Whether or not any of these facts are discovered may or may not depend on route.
 * Arx Fatalis featured, as I recall, partway through the game, the revelation that the main character was in fact a form of supernatural manhunter, sent specifically in order to prevent a particular deity from manifesting on the material world in which the game is set. The amnesia in this case, I believe, was said to be normal, usually being dealt with by virtue of a contact on the destination world. Alas, in this case, said contact ended up dead, and our protagonist started off in a goblin jail...
 * Zidane of Final Fantasy IX is told late in the game that . This, combined with, triggers a very uncharacteristic Heroic BSOD. Of course, Garland wasn't counting on his True Companions.
 * The Tales (series) loves these. The main character will inevitably be revealed to be special in some way:
 * Cless from Tales of Phantasia is the son of the warrior who sealed the Big Bad a generation ago (this is a minor example, as it is revealed fairly early).
 * Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia is
 * And in the sequel
 * In Tales of the Abyss, Luke turns out to be the Chosen One.
 * In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake discovers he's  rather than an ordinary but talented soldier like we'd initially assumed.
 * In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team, the hero eventually discovers . Notably,.
 * One-upped in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, where it turns out.
 * A large driving point behind Xion, and to a lesser extent, Roxas, in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Unlike the other members of Organization XIII, they have no memories of their previous lives and wield the Keyblade, the only thing able to accomplish the Organization's goal..
 * Parodied in Dragon Knights III (Xentar Knights in Western release.) Desmond's legendary prowess is revealed to be his birthright as the son of the God and Goddess of Good. To ensure he'd be prepared for his destined battle with the son of the Gods of Evil, they bestowed on him effeminate beauty and irresistibility to women, so he would always be faced with trouble. To disguise his nature as a god, they cursed him with foul body odor and laughable genitals. They did not offer to revoke those curses after the battle.
 * Radiant Historia: Stocke is This is why he was given the power of the White Chronicle at the beginning of the game.
 * EYE Divine Cybermancy: If you manage to get to the end of the hidden labyrinth,
 * Inverted in Ghost Trick. The information Sissel gathered on himself is being contradicted and discredited bit by bit, until he (and the player) thinks he knows nothing. Turns out he's wrong. He does know something about himself that's so basic that it's not worth noting ... then that gets overturned in an amazingly decisive way! It's that kind of game.
 * Dark Souls, according to both Darkstalker Kaathe and Word of God, humanity in it's entirety is descended from the Furtive Pygmy, and as a result inherited a piece of the titular Dark Soul through him. This means every human is a descendant of a god and has access to his powers like the Dark Hand.
 * Radiant Historia: Stocke is This is why he was given the power of the White Chronicle at the beginning of the game.
 * EYE Divine Cybermancy: If you manage to get to the end of the hidden labyrinth,
 * Inverted in Ghost Trick. The information Sissel gathered on himself is being contradicted and discredited bit by bit, until he (and the player) thinks he knows nothing. Turns out he's wrong. He does know something about himself that's so basic that it's not worth noting ... then that gets overturned in an amazingly decisive way! It's that kind of game.
 * Dark Souls, according to both Darkstalker Kaathe and Word of God, humanity in it's entirety is descended from the Furtive Pygmy, and as a result inherited a piece of the titular Dark Soul through him. This means every human is a descendant of a god and has access to his powers like the Dark Hand.

Web Comics / Web Original

 * Achilles of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe began his career as a superhero because of this trope, when he found out that his entire life up until that point (all twenty-three years of it) had been manipulated and engineered by his father, whose identity he didn't even know up until that point. Who was his father? LordDoom.
 * Inverloch
 * When Acheron discovers that
 * Narbonic:
 * Last Res0rt has an early plot that hinges on Jigsaw Forte, thanks to some Laser-Guided Amnesia and an annoying tendency to feed while sleepwalking, going on for quite a few months before finding out that she's actually a vampire. How important it is that she's also  is questionable.
 * Dept Heaven Apocrypha's Nessiah is . It's a Long Story, but remembering this greatly contributes to his Sanity Slippage.
 * In Concession, Artie is told at a key moment that he has power he was never aware of, and manages to use it in self-defense (prompting a Fourth Wall-breaking complaint from Joel).
 * In Girl Genius, although Agatha finds out about her heritage fairly early in the story (and it's obvious to the reader even earlier), it's still quite a surprise to her.
 * In The Ends, angyls are a supposedly superior race, lording it over ordinary humans (in as much as anyone in the postapocalyptic wasteland could be said to be "normal"). The protagonist, Jason, struggling with the core Ontological Mystery of the story,
 * In the weblit Addergoole, most of the characters (at least the students) have human mothers who raised them and mysterious fathers they've never met. Those fathers turn out to be Ellehemaei, variously known throughout history as angels, demons, faeries, and the like.
 * In Above Ground, the main character Lilith who has grown up underground her whole life, discovers
 * In the Whateley Universe, when Tennyo learns that she is bonded with an ancient being who was a cold-blooded killer. Then, in "Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel conspiracy", Tennyo is forced to 'remember' much of her/its past. That part of her is a thing known as the Star Stalker and the Scourge, and has killed millions and wiped out entire star systems. She has a breakdown when she recalls it.
 * In Greek Ninja, when Sasha finds out she is the reincarnation of Eli of Thrace.