Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: Difference between revisions

'''Boomer:''' The mining settlement? The accident.

'''Baltar:''' The explosion, right. That was tragic. Your family, uh...

Designing a good cover story is one of the most difficult and crucial parts of going undercover for [[The Mole]]. [[No True Scotsman|Lack]] of [[Did Not Do the Research|research]] into the details and customs of the identity they're assuming can be a [[Cross Cultural Kerfluffle|dead giveaway]] in casual dealings, and even the best falsified documents backed up with hacked databases and bribed records keepers can eventually be cracked with enough research and cross referencing. What a lot of moles end up doing is sacrificing authenticity for security by creating a [[Contrived Coincidence|conveniently]] unverifiable cover story. This cover story creates or [[Dead Person Impersonation|assumes]] an identity whose background can't be verified or disproved, by claiming to come from a place or period with no personal records or witnesses. Commonly, it's a [[Doomed Hometown|burned down]] [[Parental Abandonment|orphanage]], though being the "lone survivor" of an accident, or coming from a place that suffered a natural disaster or been in a civil war are also common. Potentially non-tragic unverifiable cover stories are coming from communities that shun modern things like hospitals and birth certificates, or where the hall of records has been destroyed.

A determined investigator will usually try to find someone who can prove if the mole is who they say they are. Like a family member, another survivor, records, or the corpse of the person they're impersonating. The odds of finding these records vary, but usually come just too late. This trope may be paired with [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]], [[Fake Memories]], and an implanted [[Split Personality]] to create a persona wholesale to sell the role, though these tactics have a [[Tomato in the Mirror|high risk of agent meltdown]] and [[Becoming the Mask|conversion]].

* Averted in ''[[Tenchi in Tokyo]]''. {{spoiler|Sakuya Kumashiro is a "shadow" created by Yugi, and inserted into Tenchi's class -- all of her classmates are given [[Fake Memories]] of her being the most popular girl in school, but she herself has ''no'' memories at all of any period before she met Tenchi. She doesn't even realize this until Tenchi starts inquiring into her background late in the series.}}

* ''[[Durarara!!]]'': Kazutano, an illegal immigrant living in Japan, once claimed his birth certificate was burned during the [[World War II]] firebombings. He's too young for that story to be at all credible, though.

* In [[The World God Only Knows]], Elsie uses her supposed status as illegitimate daughter of Keima's father to convince his mother to let her live with them. Since his father is pretty much never home, there was no way to really confirm the story, though the fact that he couldn't prove it false outright does raise some interesting questions.

* Subverted in the ''Symphony of the Sword'' subseries of ''[[Undocumented Features]]'': [[Revolutionary Girl Utena|Utena Tenjou]] and those of her friends from [[Magic Knight Rayearth|Cephiro]] who make it to Midgard are given elaborately detailed and otherwise ''genuine'' identities by Gryphon and MegaZone, who are for all practical purposes the legitimate government of Zeta Cygni.

* Inverted in the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' self-insert ''[[Mass Vexations]]''. [[Author Avatar]] Art arrives in the ''ME'' universe, and knows that nobody will believe him if he tells them he literally teleported into the Citadel from an alternate dimension where everything that Art now sees around him was part of a video game. Thus, he makes up a cover story about having taken a ton of stims before smuggling himself onto a ship headed to the Citadel to avoid suspicion. He's not actually a mole for anyone, fortunately.

** Not to mention, it doesn't entirely work- he ends up making both Kaidan and Jacob suspicious of him. Neither works it out, but they don't stop suspecting him, either.

== Film ==

* ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' has this with {{spoiler|Mr Orange}}. The made-up cover incident in question is referred to as "the commode story".

* In ''[[Salt]]'', a Russian operative claims that Evelyn Salt was a deep cover agent who was planted in America at the age of 12. They faked a car crash to kill an American family living in Russia and replaced the daughter's corpse with their agent. Because her supposed family is dead (and her other relatives haven't seen her in years) there's no one to dispute her identity.

== Literature ==

* One [[Captain Future]] novel featured the Captain trying to pass off as a pirate from a ship which was destroyed. There is a minor problem when he meets with a guy who really served on that ship, but he manages to convince those around him that it's because the real pirate was a gunner - and he was a mechanic, so they had no interaction.

* In the ''[[Merchant Princes]]'' series by Charles Stross, Miriam Beckstein manages to become the Widow Fletcher, returning from the New British Empire with her "deceased husband's fortune." The corrupt lawyer who affirms her identity lists her hometown as Shreveport, which was completely destroyed in the last World War. She [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] just how weak her identity is, and how basic SEC due diligence checks would completely shred it, but nobody in New Britain bats an eye at it.

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed]]'' has one of its heroes, Sharapov, infiltrating the gang that he and the rest of the police are trying to bring down. To win over the gang's highly suspicious leader, one story is not enough, and Sharapov is soon spinning lies that span into an entire (fictional) biography, complete with fictional girlfriend, fictional criminal father, fictional jobs, etc.

* In the "Vicki's Adoption" episode of ''[[Small Wonder]]'', Ted and Joan had Vicki write two letters, in different styles of handwriting, claiming that Vicki was born in the Seychelles (hence her being named Victoria), her birth parents had died while traveling (see [[Stereo Fibbing]]), and she was raised in a convent before being brought to the United States.

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' has the Denton brothers, whose parents were killed in some sort of vague accident or terrorist attack. Turns out {{spoiler|their parents were either actors employed by the [[Ancient Conspiracy]] or they were artificially aged clones with fake memories, depending on how the player interprets certain dialog and messages}}.

* In ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' Melissa Foster claims that she has no identity papers because she recently fled an unnamed country that had exploded into civil war. {{spoiler|Of course by now you already know she's Dahlia Hawthorne so the lie is revealed quickly.}}

== Western Animation ==

* In ''[[Justice League]]'', the backstory that Hawkgirl originally gave was that she was a Thanagarian police detective, and that she had been accidentally teleported to Earth by a stray Zeta Beam. And that Thanagar was too remote for her to find her way back (it's so remote that they hadn't even heard of the [[Green Lantern]] Corps)--and too remote for her teammates to check her story and find out why she's really on Earth.

** In the episode "Twilight of the Gods" has a subtle hint of [[Foreshadowing]] on this; when the League infiltrates Brainiac's base, Jon Stewart suggests that Brainiac's database may have information on Thanagar, including its location. In retrospect, you realise how desperate Shayera was to direct Jon away from that line of thinking.

== Real Life ==