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The catch of course is that they also can't positively prove they are who they say they are, and a [[Genre Savvy]] character will instantly suspect them. Usually the mole will play patriotic and use the benefit of the doubt, or "innocent until proven guilty" to get their mission accomplished. One especially evil twist is for the mole to claim to come from a village his [[Big Bad]] boss personally razed explicitly to create this cover, and uses it to earn the sympathy and acceptance of the heroes by claiming to want revenge. It helps if the heroes are [[Genre Blind]] characters or [[Horrible Judge of Character|horrible judges of character]].
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
{{examples}}
== Anime ==
* Averted in ''[[
* ''[[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.
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== Fan Fiction ==
* 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 ''[[
** 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.
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* ''[[Total Recall]]'' has a double-example of this. Arnold's character initially infiltrated the Martian resistance, convincing them to trust him and believe that he was betraying the [[Big Bad]]. The [[Big Bad]] then captured him and erased his memory to stop him from revealing all of his secrets to the resistance. It later turns out that this was just an elaborate ruse to help him infiltrate ''deeper'' into the resistance, since they are then convinced he really had a major secret to reveal.
* ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' has this with {{spoiler|Mr Orange}}. The made-up cover incident in question is referred to as "the commode story".
* In ''[[
== Literature ==
* Done in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Friday (
* In [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Brothers in Arms]]'', Elli Quinn spots the bad guy partly because his cover identity is from a planet wrecked by a tectonic disaster. Indeed, it's implied that only amateurs use that planet for a cover identity any longer, as every professional intelligence agency in the Nexus considers 'survivor of Frost IV' an automatic red flag requiring double-checking.
* In ''SS-GB'' by [[Len Deighton]] the hero finds a fake ID on a member of [[La Résistance]]. The town listed as his birthplace had its records office destroyed in the war. The hero notes that lots of fake IDs use that town.
* {{spoiler|Trent, the offspring of the [[Big Bad|sorcerer Vade]]}} in Ursula Vernon's ''[[
* ''[[Lensman]]''. When Kinnison infiltrates the Boskone hierarchy, the [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|Arisians]] (unknown to him) adapt his cover even to the extent of correctly aging the ink on all the documents, knowing that he'll actually be up against their own evil counterparts, the Eddorians.
* In the [[Expanded Universe]] of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'', it's explained that Tuvok is able to infiltrate the Maquis by making a false cover story of how his family was killed by Cardassians on a border planet. He further endears himself to them by giving up a Starfleet Intelligence operative and putting a big hole in the ''Hood'' (but not killing anyone) when all was said and done.
** And in ''[[The Original Series]]'' novel ''Time Trap'', the Klingons do this repeatedly to surgically-altered agents, giving them false memories to match. Spock figures out the plot when he notices a suspicious number of people in critical positions who are from disaster areas.
* 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.
* In [[James Bond (
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' had [[Tomato in
** If you haven't seen the season three finale yet, don't highlight: {{spoiler|Tory, Anders, Ellen, Tigh, and the Chief all have their own [[Fake Memories]], though none have mentioned Troy-like accidents. It's likely they've all had their parents "die young" in order to explain their absence. Although strange in the case of Sam Anders. Even orphans have to grow up somewhere and sports stars' old acquaintances are frequently interviewed in the real world.}}
** {{spoiler|It's also likely that something unfortunate happened to everyone Tigh was supposed to have served with in the first war. Before you say it, he didn't serve with Adama in the first war. That's a common misconception}}.
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== Video Games ==
* This is {{spoiler|Grasshopper's}} ending in ''[[Twisted Metal]] 2''. {{spoiler|She's an android in the shape of Calypso's late daughter, who was killed in a car accident. When she gets close to Calypso, her programming kicks in and she explodes. She does seem remorseful for killing Calypso, even crying and asking him to hold her when it happens.}}
* Interesting variation in ''[[
* ''[[
* In ''[[
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[WITCH (
* 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.
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