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The Spook: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Mayor:''' [regarding [[The Joker]]] What do we got?
'''Jim Gordon:''' Nothing. No matches on prints, DNA, dental. Clothing is custom, no labels. Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint. No name, no other alias...
|''[[The Dark Knight]]''}}
[[Nothing Is Scarier]] than someone you know nothing about. He has nothing to identify him, nothing that even states that he is real. If this person simply disappears, you are terrified because you don't know if he is watching. Sometimes he is established as a myth, a ghost story to scare people. This person lacks not only a past, but also a present and a future. He just is, and you don't know why.
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* Captain Nemo from ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea''.
* Vying with Nemo for the earliest use of the trope is Professor Sunday, from ''[[The Man Who Was Thursday]]'', as described in the page quote.
* Mister Teatime is this way in ''[[
* The Jackal from ''[[The Day of the Jackal]]'' is this. That's what makes him a perfect assassin.
== [[Live
* ''[[Burn Notice]]'' invokes this several times. One of Michael's plans was based around infiltrating a family of gun dealers by playing off of one of the brothers. By skillfully stealing their supplies, he then simply dropped off the face of the Earth. He explained that nothing scares you more then a spook, someone you know nothing about. He could have been FBI, a rival group, the Mafia; the point was they didn't know who he was and if he was going to return. The group was so spooked, they left the city.
* Pick pretty much any member of the shadow government on ''[[The X-Files]]'' (particularly Deepthroat and X). The Cigarette smoking man is the only one that we ever learn anything about and what we know is vague and occasionally contradictory.
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* The Greek of ''[[The Wire]]''. By the end of the series, we only know one thing about him: {{spoiler|he's not really Greek}}.
== [[Radio]] ==
* Of all people, [[The Shadow]] was, in his original continuity, one of these. His secret identity was ''so'' secret that even the ''audience'' didn't know who he was, leading to much [[Wild Mass Guessing]].
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Thanks to the Arcane Fate, the Sidereals of ''[[Exalted]]'' turn this [[Up to Eleven]]. Not only are they completely unknown to the vast majority of Creation's inhabitants, but within a week or two of meeting them, you will forget them. And any records of their existence will be lost, accidentally destroyed, vanish mysteriously, or otherwise be rendered useless. A Sidereal could murder your parents right in front of you, and in a month you wouldn't be able to pick them out of a lineup or even remember the incident clearly—were they even murdered at all, or was it a freak accident of some kind?
* This is sort of a tradition in the ''[[Eberron]]'' setting, where identities and motivations of major villains are left ambiguous so that the DM can fill it in to suit his campaign's needs. For instance, nothing is known about the identity, motivations, or background of the [https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_of_Blades Lord of Blades], often regarded as the [[Big Bad]] of the setting; most assume he is a Warforged, but as the information in the link shows, there's even some doubt of ''that''.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Combustion Man from ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. The heroes don't know his name, never hear him speak (the only noises he makes are grunts which aren't even credited by a voice actor), and know nothing about his past. In their first encounter with him, they only escaped by the skin of their teeth. Zuko apparently knows more about him (name, past, etc.) but his portrayal is that of a [[Implacable Man|relentless shadow]].
== [[Real Life]] ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate) "Deep Throat"] was the name given to the informant who provided information to ''Washington Post'' reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal. His identity was a secret known only to them that they swore they would not reveal until his death, and for years, news agencies and other organizations could only propose theories as to his identity and motivation — some outright refused to believe he existed, given how suspiciously convenient of a figure he was. It wasn't until 2005 that Deep Throat was revealed to be FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, who came forward on his own. He was always the administration's main suspect, given the nature of the information he was doling out, so it's less of a revelation than it looks on the surface.
* "Spook" was, during the Cold War, a nickname for any spy who was not listed as an intelligence agent anywhere in the intelligence agency's official organization chart. (Both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary still list this meaning for the word.) Being off-the-books, they had no history or official existence.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:The Trickster]]
▲[[Category:The Spook]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spook, The}}
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