The Greatest Story Never Told: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

So the character has finally rescued his friends, saved the world and done whatever deeds prove he is a true hero. But nobody will ever know. Maybe he's a mere buffoon or a comedy sidekick, or the outcast of the society. Sometimes the media [[Hero with Bad Publicity|just hates him]] and ended up turning his story upside-down. Sometimes the [[Fake Ultimate Hero]] takes all the spotlights. Sometimes nobody believes his story. Sometimes his [[Victory-Guided Amnesia|memory gets erased]]. Sometimes a weird time travel mechanism makes it so whatever happened didn't actually happen in time. Maybe it ends with [[Kill'Em All]]. Maybe the whole incident needs to be hushed up to protect important secrets. Or sometimes, for reasons of his own, he chooses not to tell anyone.

 

Contrast [[Famed in Story]]. Compare [[Victory-Guided Amnesia]], in which not even the ''hero'' gets to remember, and [[Hero of Another Story]], in which a someone other than the main character(s) is having their own adventures, and may or may not be recongized for it in-universe but will only be given token attention story-wise.See also [[Treachery Cover-Up]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In the aftermath of the Captain Kuro arc of ''[[One Piece]]'', Usopp swears the "Usopp Pirates" and Kaya to secrecy about them defeating the Black Cat Pirates, despite the fact that it would clear his reputation as a liar. He does this so that the villagers would not worry about pirate attacks.

** The [[Distant Finale]] at the end of [[The Movie]] may have seen them eventually recognized as heroes, if humanity's first two interstellar spaceships (the ''Sumeragi'' and the ''Tieria'') being named after members of Celestial Being is any indication.

* In the ''[[G Gundam]]'' prequel manga ''Fight 7th'', Shuji Kurosu and his friends {{spoiler|AKA the future Master Asia and Shuffle Alliance}} go to South Pole to keep a crazed terrorist from destroying the space colonies. They succeed, but fail to make it to Gundam Fight's Finals in time and are eliminated. Not only is their story is untold, their home nations also consider them cowards and traitors.

* The short film ''[[Kigeki]]'' is about a young girl who seeks out the Black Swordsman to save her village from an approaching army, in return for a special book. The Swordsman agrees and decimates all 200 soldiers in one night, {{spoiler|then being a vampire, he devours the corpses.}} The girl sees it all, and before he goes the Swordsman tells her that if she ever breathes a word of it he'll return and kill her too. Many years later she has continued to keep the secret.

* [[Naruto|Itachi]] assasinating the entire Uchiha clan to protect Konoha from a civilwar and another Ninja World War that would inevitably follow it.

 

== Comic Books ==

** In another story, Dr. Robotnik becomes all-powerful after stealing the power of the Chaos emeralds. Sonic and Knuckles defeat him and revert the changes he made to reality, then Sonic complains that it was the toughest challenge he'd ever won and nobody would ever know it happened.

* In [[Don Rosa]]'s [[Donald Duck]] stories, Donald saves the feathers of his uncle and his nephews numerous times on each of Scrooge's treasure ventures. Most of the time no-one seems to notice his involuntary self-sacrifices, though the trope might feel a bit ignored, as Scrooge often observes the hapless heroics while commenting calmly on the situation. The answer might be that Donald has saved them so many times the bravado has lost all effect.

* One of the many, many spinoffs to ''[[The Sandman]]'' was a miniseries called, ''Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of D.R.E.A.M.'' in which the eponymous character—who mostly exists in the main series as comic relief—saves the Earth from a madman who wants to use Morpheus' dream-sand to conquer it. Predictably, nobody in the Dreamworld believes a word of it.

* Depending on your views on Adrian, the main plot of ''[[Watchmen]]'' may or may not play it straight. {{spoiler|He ''claims'' to be saving the world- by killing millions of people and creating enough fear to prevent a nuclear holocaust that would kill ''billions'' instead. For obvious reasons, he doesn't admit to it, but he also loses likely ''trillions'' of dollars and his own peace of mind as well in the process and doesn't benefit from it at all.}}

* In ''Saga of the [[Swamp Thing]]'', even the other DC superheroes are surprised and stymied by Woodrue's attempts to unleash [[Gaia's Vengeance]], as none of them had ever seen fit to include backwoods Louisiana as part of their protected territory. After Swamp Thing get the Green to settle down and quit listening to the Floronic Man's ravings, the Justice League (and presumably the world at large) has no clue what it was that stopped the plants from attacking, they're just relieved that ''somebody'' is looking out for all those little unregarded dots on the map.

* A six-issue limited series from Marvel Comics told the story of a normal human who was down on his luck and borderline suicidal who gets killed right as an extra-dimensional big bad is opening a rift with a magic artifact intending to unleash the embodiment of Death upon the multiverse. His resulting passage through the gate closes it and bonds him to the weapon making him immortal and causing him to be reborn into another universe anytime he dies as only the weapon can end his life. He eventually foolishly returns the weapon to the Big Bad after getting a promise to leave Earth alone and return him there but upon seeing all the deaths occurring sacrifices his life and dies a noble hero to end the Big Bad's scheme once and for all. Meanwhile back on earth you see the heartbreaking disposal of his worldly possessions such as family photos in a trash can while being called a worthless loser.

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Wag the Dog]]'', Hollywood producer Stanley Motss is initially enthusiastic about the fictional war he'll be "producing" just because of the challenge, but as time goes on the fact that he can't tell anyone about it eats at him more and more. Eventually {{spoiler|his refusal to keep quiet gets him killed}}.

* In ''[[Source Code]]'', the main character is sent to find out who destroyed a train, a few minutes before it happens. After many failed attempts (after each, he is sent back to the time a few minutes before it happens), this trope is invoked when {{spoiler|he succeeds so well that nobody knew what he did--apparently he created an alternate world}}

 

== Literature ==

{{quote|'''McTurk''': ...and, besides, this is much too good to tell all the other brutes in the Coll. They'd ''never'' understand. They play cricket, [[Yes-Man|and say: 'Yes sir,' and 'O, sir,' and 'No, sir.']]}}

 

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': Xander chooses not to tell anyone about his role in saving the day in "The Zeppo." Namely, while the rest of the cast is in a battle to save the universe with each character getting a high drama moment, Xander escapes from a gang of reanimated corpses, <s> roots</s> gets rooted by Faith, then [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|works out the gang had built a bomb and plan to blow up the school.]] [[For the Evulz]]. As the rest of the cast was fighting in the school to stop the Hellmouth from opening, the bomb would have killed them, and allowed the Hellmouth to stay open. Near the end of the same episode, the other characters (unwittingly) lampshade the fact that they never got to see Xander kill most of the gang and make the leader stop the bomb with the line "The world will never know how close it came to ending last night".

** "I'm oddly full for some reason." Oz was going out of control as a werewolf and was placed in the school basement, where he eats the gang leader after Xander makes him switch off the bomb.

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'', this happens to the victors of the Shadow War when Earth restricts news about that conflict.

{{quote|'''Marcus Cole''': "Typical. First time in my life I'm a war hero, and nobody knows about it."}}

** Season 6 Episode 19 "In the Pale Moonlight"

* Early episodes of ''[[NCIS]]'' played with this, as they would be referred to at best as 'a federal agency' when their actions made the news, if their contributions were mentioned at all. Other times, other law enforcement members or agencies would take all the credit entirely, even if the team did all the actual work. This has fallen by the wayside as the show's gone on, though there are still a couple of occasions where civilians don't recognize the name.

** Gibbs does this to a serial killer in one episode. The killer killed multiple people in bizarre ways so when caught the trial would become a media sensation. Gibbs has enough of the case classified secret for (flimsy) national security reasons that the killer is barely mentioned on TV.

* One episode of [[The Outer Limits]] revolved around a trio of astronauts traveling back to Earth from Mars. Earlier, two of the astronauts had been replaced by aliens, leaving just the one human who eventually learns about the impostor. Forced to choose between making it back to Earth and the fame and glory he would receive and preventing the alien species from spreading to Earth, the final astronaut finally decides to be a hero and sabotages the re-entry procedure causing the ship to burn up, with Ground Control believing it to be a disasterous malfunction.

** The ending narration: The true measure of a hero is when a man lays down his life with the knowledge that those he saves... will never know.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

{{quote|Those people that cast you into this desert land will no longer remember you. You are once again free to travel the face of this world as you want. All to whom you tell this tale will believe it to be but a fable. Only you shall know the truth of what you have seen.}}

* ''[[Exalted]]'': The [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Lunars]]' sacrifice during the Balorian Crusade. Creation knows that the Scarlet Empress [[Fantastic Nuke]]'d [[The Fair Folk]], but they don't know ''who'' bought time for her to do that. Even worse, [[Hero with Bad Publicity|the Lunars remain anathema]] in the Scarlet Empress' reign.

** Though this should be taken with a grain of salt. While there is no question that the Scarlet Empress saved Creation, there are several books that "reveal" that the only reason she succeeded was because some other group helped her. So far the Lunars, Sidereals and Fair Folk themselves have all taken credit for her victory, which really brings into question whether any of them actually are responsible for what happened, [[Rashomon Style|or whether they just tell themselves that they are]].

** This is inevitable for the Sidereals. It's not that no one know their deed, it's that there's a strong magic that remove them from the public memory. It's a necessity, really.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The whole plot of ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]''. The Church [[Unperson|erases Ramza from history]] to hide its corruption. It then subverts this trope through the game's narrator, who is a historian who reveals the truth of the events{{spoiler|, and is a descendant of one of Ramza's (very few) allies}}.

* ''[[Betrayal at Krondor]]'' ends up being this in the context of the series on which the game was based, because it ties into the secret of the Lifestone beneath Sethanon, which is where the final struggle takes place. As a result, {{spoiler|Gorath may have died a hero and the best proof that the moredhel and enemies of the Kingdom are ''not'' [[Exclusively Evil]], but aside from his travelling companions, no one will ever know.}}

* The epilogue of ''[[Einhander]]'' mentions that {{spoiler|both the [[The Federation|Earth Force]] and Selene have deleted every record of the protagonist's existence and endeavours.}}

* The story of ''[[Halo 3: ODST]]'', being [[Gaiden Game|a mere aside]] to the fantastic adventures of the Master Chief. ''[[Halo: Reach]]'' shares this to some extent with Noble Six's role.

* ''[[Prince of Persia]]: Sands of Time''. {{spoiler|After falling in love with the Princess, and watching her plummet to her death, the Prince returns to the Hourglass of Time (which contained the Sands of Time whose released turned everyone in the kingdom into baddies), and used the Dagger of Time to re-seal the Sands into the Hourglass, and undoing the events of the night. The Prince wakes up in his camp with the Dagger in his hand, and steals his way in to the Princess's chambers to tell her the story. She doesn't remember a bit of it.}}

* The entirety of ''[[Valkyria Chronicles III]]''. Ordinary Gallians will never know of Squad 422's deeds, the unholy alliance between {{spoiler|Cardinal Borgia and Carl Isler}}, and how the world is spared from the devastation by {{spoiler|an ancient Valkyric superweapon}}. To make it worse, Kurt and co are still considered bad people by the society. [[Final Fantasy Tactics|Hm, I wonder why that sounds familiar...]]

* In the last act of ''[[Call of Duty]] 4: [[Modern Warfare]]'', you {{spoiler|save at least 15 million people, kill a major international figure, and watch your friends die. It's written off as missile tests and skirmishes. Only you and a handful of others, either in the highest echelons of NATO or on-site, know the truth.}}

* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories]]'', {{spoiler|at the end of the game Sora and company's memories are erased of their adventures during the game, but '''everyone else''' (Namine, Riku, Ansem the Wise) still remember everything that happened.}}

* The 1998 RTS/FPS game, ''[[Battlezone (1998 video game)|Battlezone 1998]]'', has the entire campaign taking place in a covered-up war between the Soviet Union and the United States on the planets of the Solar System to gain control of the [[Unobtainium|Bio-Metal]]. The protagonist, Grizzly One, ultimately {{spoiler|saves humanity from the [[And I Must Scream|Furies]], the man-biometal abominations that the Russians were building}}. His story is completely forgotten and/or covered up by the events of ''BattleZone II'', set 40 years later, in the [[Alternate History|high tech future of 2004]], where the Bio-Metal Wars are (mostly) public knowledge.

* Certain installments of ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series employ this trope. Most notably on display in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'', where Link is sent back in time following the events of the game in order to regain the seven years of life that he lost. This decision led to two primary timelines - the "adult" timeline where the trope is averted and the Hero of Time is loved and revered for generations to follow {{spoiler|even after Hyrule itself is long destroyed}}, and then the "child" timeline where it's played almost completely straight and Link is able to avoid the catastrophic events of the game by warning of Ganondorf's treachery in advance. This Hero of Time later goes on to rescue Termina from imminent destruction in the sequel game ''Majora's Mask'', and it's left ambiguous as to whether anyone other than a few individuals are even aware of the reality of what happened or Link's hand in stopping it.

 

* In the "A Girl And Her Blob" arc of ''[[The Wotch]],'' Mingmei and Myrrh have [[A Day in the Limelight]] as a massive battle goes on elsewhere... we get bits and pieces of what's going on there as Ming and Myrrh pass through and the plots intersect.

** At the end, the writer actually credits ''[[Justice League]]'s'' "The Greatest Story Never Told" for inspiration. The next arc has Jason reading a [[Booster Gold]] comic book, if you look closely.

* It is implied in ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'' that Quentyn's victory in "Hunter of Shadows" is victim of a governmental coverup.

* In the backstory of ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' one of the points of tension that leads to the break up of the older adventuring party "Order of the Scribble" is the fact that their struggle to contain the Snarl and the heroic sacrifice of their friend, Kraagor must be kept secret.

* [http://xkcd.com/693/ This] ''[[xkcd]]'' strip shows the predictable outcome of "[[Summon Everyman Hero]]" plot.

* ''[[The Perry Bible Fellowship]]'' got [http://www.pbfcomics.com/261/ Mr. Ortego].

 

== Web Original ==

* For all their goofiness, stupidity, and raging insanity, at the very end of ''[[Red vs. Blue]]: The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' the Blood Gulch soldiers actually do manage to finally defeat their [[Omnicidal Maniac]] nemesis, Omega, and prevent him from gaining control of an entire army of Aliens (heavy implied in the sequel series to be ''[[Halo|The Covenant]]'') with which he could have brought great destruction to the galaxy. And no one will ever know or care about it. Hell, more than half of the Blood Gulch soldiers themselves don't even realize the implications of their final act.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyzSPIMz0uo Played with by College Humor.] [[Butt Monkey|Poor, poor Gary...]]

 

== Western Animation ==

* The only people in ''[[Wakfu]]'' to ever know {{spoiler|[[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Nox]] as anything other than a power-motivated [[Evil Overlord]]}} are [[Muggle Foster Parents|Alibert]], [[Our Dragons Are Different|Grougaloragran]], and [[The Hero|Yugo]]. Only the last one cares.

* One episode of ''[[The Life and Times of Juniper Lee]]'' had June's littler brother, Ray Ray, suddenly become the Te Xuan Ze due to time wraiths rewriting history so that June never existed. Ray Ray manages to find the cause of the problem and save June. But in doing so erases all knowledge of the events save for his own. June doesn't believe him when he tries to tell, writing it off as a dream he was having. Ray Ray starts to doubt too...least till he see the photograph his older brother, Dennis, took of him in the alternate timeline much to his joy.

 

== Real Life ==

* How many feats of extraordinary talent by obscure people have gone unnoticed and possibly destined to be [[Lost Forever]] to the world?

* [http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-bitch.html Five Real-Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like A Pussy]. While the stories of these men haven't exactly never been told, most people wouldn't recognize their names. Simo Häyhä and Yogendra Singh Yadav are particularly impressive, but the whole list is full of complete [[Badass]]es. The last one apparently qualifies for [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]] too.

* The 1925 serum run to Nome, Alaska was run by some 150 dogs and 20 mushers, and the run saved the city of Nome from an epidemic. Now, the only one at all known was the lead dog of the last leg, Balto; this is regardless of the fact that Togo led the run on the longest leg, almost twice as the next longest, and also the most dangerous.

* For about 10 years, the story of Russian Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was this. In 1983, (during an extremely tense period in the [[Cold War]]) Petrov's new system for detecting a nuclear weapons launch at Russia incorrectly showed a missile being fired by the US and heading toward Russia. Petrov correctly believed that it was a system glitch, but the story remained buried and untold to the Russian public until the 90s, and didn't become widely known in the US until 2006. [[wikipedia:Stanislav Petrov|Link to that other wiki]].

* Intelligence agencies such as the DOD, DOJ, DHS, CIA, G2, KGB, MI-5, SIS, CSIS, DCRI, ASIS, etc. are built on this trope. They can't tell anyone about what they do, but the truth is that sometimes they save the world without our knowledge... and, well, [[Inverted Trope|sometimes they make things worse, without our knowledge either.]]

* Nondisclosure agreements and the sealing of court records exist to invoke this trope, usually to cover up The Greatest Scandals Never Told.

* Just think of all the books that have been burnt over the course of centuries, whether deliberately or by accident (the Ancient Library of Alexandria comes to mind).

* Many of the finest poets, philosophers and scientists of the ancient world are virtually unremembered because no extant copies of their work exists.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fame and Reputation Tropes]]

[[Category:Plots]]