I Am Who?: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Hagrid:'''''"Yer a wizard, Harry."''<br />

''' Harry''':''"[[Parrot Expowhat|I'm a what?]]"''|''[[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Franchisenovel)/|Harry Potter and Thethe Philosopher's Stone|Harry Potter]]''}}

The main character must be special somehow. The hero who would save the world cannot be just a [[Farm Boy|farmer's son]]. In the rare case that the hero is not [[The Chosen One|prophesied to do something]] or the [[Luke, I Am Your Father|current villain's relative]], he or she is probably a powerful being, even a god, but [[Amnesiac God|does not know it]].

Often, this is an [[Awful Truth]] that [[You Are Not Ready|must be withheld at all costs]], because the character is unlikely to be able to [[Superpower Meltdown|control their immense powers]] or [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|use them responsibly]] at this point in time, or [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|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 [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|utterly mad]]. If it's not the ''protagonist'' who's secretly special, then this is [[King Incognito]].

{{examples|Examples:Unmarked (Spoilers, read at own risk)}}

* Tenchi Masaki from ''[[Tenchi Muyo!|Tenchi Muyo]]'' is [[Amnesiac God|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(re)incarnation of God is less than clear.

* ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]''; Koizumi believes she isn't "who?" so much as she is "[[wikipedia:I Am that I Am|WHO AM]]"

* Lain of ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' finds out that she is the rough equivalent to {{spoiler|an artificial god, given that she is completely omnipotent. There's also something about her being an [[Artificial Human]] made to bridge the gap between the real world and the wiredWired, too, but the whole omnipotent thing is the key bit}}.

* 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 {{spoiler|reincarnations of gods who died 500 years ago}}, with the exception of Goku, who is the {{spoiler|Seiten Taisei (Great Sage Equaling Heaven), a golden-eyed being who is so powerful that his power limiter was made by heaven itself and who was thrown out of heaving for snapping and murdering many of the beings there after his best friend stabbed himself in front of Goku's eyes rather than kill him}}.

* In ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', it turns out that {{spoiler|Negi and Asuna are a prince and a princess of Ostia, one of the oldest kingdom in the Magical World. He never knew his lineage while she gave herself amnesia ten years back to hide from the bad guys}}.

* Saya starts off like this in ''[[Blood+|Blood Plus]]''.

* Roughly translated, the title of ''[[Kyo Kara Maoh!|Kyo Kara Maoh]]'' is "From Today, You Are Demon King". [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|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 Fromfrom Hell]] time after time. Then, around the time {{spoiler|Aizen}} starts up his shenanigans, we learn that the reason he and his sisters are so sensitive is that {{spoiler|their dad is a retired shinigami. Captain, to be precise.}} A couple of other characters already knew this (and it had been revealed to the readers earlier, though aside from the [[Shonen|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 (anime)|Metropolis]]'', Tima is a robot that was designed to run the Ziggurat, a weapon capable of controlling {{spoiler|and destroying}} 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. {{spoiler|when Tima finds out her purpose she loses memory of all the events that occurred in the film and tries to use the Ziggurat to destroy all mankind for its insolence and self destructive habits}} This is a trope namer as this question is Tima's first words in the film.

* ''[[The Matrix]]'' has two. Whilst Neo ''is'', as he discovers in the first film, [[The Chosen One|special]], he's not quite as unique as he's been led to believe. Neo is at least the sixth of the Matrix's [[Trial and Error Gameplay|abnormalities]], and has in fact been duped from the start by none other than the [[Magical Negro|Oracle]] herself, who's engineered [[The Plan]] to ensure humanity's survival.

== [[Literature]] ==

* [[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]], who spends his first eleven years unaware that he is actually a wizard. {{spoiler|And for sixteen years, neither he nor Voldemort know that he's also one of the latter's [[Soul Jar|Soul Jars]]s}}.

* ''[[Inheritance Cycle|Eragon]]'' has at least ''two'' of these.

* Megan Whalen Turner's ''[[The Queen's Thief|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--heis—he's just hiding the truth from everyone else.

* In ''[[The HitchhikersHitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (novel)|The Hitchhikers Guide to Thethe 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.

* 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.

* ''[[Goosebumps]]'' protagonists in the end would discover they were [[Tomato in the Mirror|not humans but actually ghosts, aliens, dogs, robots, monsters, etc. ]]

** After {{spoiler|the metacrisis}} at the end of new series 4, {{spoiler|the Doctor wipes the time she's spent with him from Donna's memory. If she ever remembers anything about the Doctor or her time traveling with him, her brain will overload and she'll die.}} Of course, for Tennant's "going-away" episode, {{spoiler|her memory gets triggered, and as soon as her brain is gonna fry, gold light comes out of her head and knocks out all the Master look-alike who are going to get her. The Doctor's response to this? "You didn't think I'd leave my best friend without a defense mechanism, did you?}}

** 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, {{spoiler|Professor Yana's reaction to his real identity- the Master- is to go evil, go on a killing rampage, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|become England's Prime Minister]], before killing 1/10th of the population of Earth.}}

* 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. <!-- MOD: ''Fate/stay night'' is not Oral Tradition. See Gender Flip/Visual Novels for the content related to that series that used to be here. -->

** 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.

** Actually, SMART''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.

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind]]''. The main character, a former prisoner and a spy for the Empire, is revealed to be {{spoiler|the reincarnation of the ancient king Nerevar, destined to defeat the [[Big Bad]] and the [[Corrupt Church]]}}.

* Two sequels later, in ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'', the Player Character eventually finds out that they are a Dragonborn; a prophecizedprophesied 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 [[Deader Than Dead|permanently kill dragons]]. That, and the dragons' leader [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Alduin the World Eater]] isn't the only existential threat to the world at the time.

* ''[[Arcanum: ofOf 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 {{spoiler|still alive}}.

* 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 ''[[Mega Man Zero|Zero]]'' series, he's even lost his memory of the ''X'' series -- everyoneseries—everyone tells him that he's a "legendary Reploid" and he just has to take their word for it.

* The eponymous character in ''[[Lufia]]'' is {{spoiler|Erim, Sinistral of Death}}. This also applies to {{spoiler|the blue-haired female party member}} in ''[[Lufia: theThe Legend Returns]]''.

* Subverted in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|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 {{spoiler|Tetra is Zelda}}.

** 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--whomother—who feared that his powers might be too strong and would lead him to becoming used by others... and just sort of [[Fantastic Racism|feared his power]]--sealed—sealed said powers and [[Mind Rape|Mind Raped]]d 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 [[Parental Abandonment|left the family]] to go find out how to make a stronger one... and then [[It Got Worse]] for Garlot. [[Abusive Parents|Much,]] [[Break the Cutie|much]] [[Yank the Dog's Chain|worse]]. Whether or not he realizes his true identity varies by route.

** And in the [[Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World|sequel]] {{spoiler|Emil, the main character, who is in fact effectively the closest thing the game's world has to [[God]].}}

* A large driving point behind Xion, and to a lesser extent, Roxas, in ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days Over 2|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. {{spoiler|Xion turns out to be a sort of "clone" of [[The Messiah|Sora]] that contains his memories. As she discovers this, she begins a [[Face Heel Turn]] that eventually results in [[Tear Jerker|Roxas killing her]]}}.

* ''[[E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy|EYE Divine Cybermancy]]'': If you manage to get to the end of the hidden labyrinth, {{spoiler|you speak with a woman named Circe and unlock the Dark Secret achievement. It's never outright stated but heavily implied that YOU''you'' are Rimanah, and the whole game is a construct of your conscience to deal with the guilt of putting your wife to death by torture.}}

* 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. [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|She has a breakdown]] [[Heroic BSOD|when she recalls it.]]

[[Category:Characterization Tropes{{PAGENAME}}]]

[[Category:IIdentity Am Who?Index]]