Unperson/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Alice pisses off a controlling regime, and they delete any evidence that she existed at all.

  • Straight: Alice is sent to some kind of prison by a repressive regime. They delete or doctor all photos of her and all records, etc.
  • Exaggerated: And then they erase all memories of her from everyone she's ever met.
  • Justified: Someone would rescue Alice if there were any record that she existed.
    • The chance exists that Alice's deeds, even if she died from them, would make her a martyr in some people's eyes and inspire rebellion if word got out, and the government in power wants to forestall that possibility.
  • Inverted: Alice erases all the government's records of her existence, either in order to hide from them or as a way to further scare the crap out of them when she attacks them as a one-person army and no one in power even knows who the hell she is.
    • The government invents a nonexistent person and gives them all kinds of records to make a plausible background.
  • Subverted: Alice is captured, and more pictures of her circulate to manipulate her family and friends.
  • Double Subverted: Alice is arrested, and all records of her are deleted. However, her family and friends are sent pictures of her in prison to crush their hopes.
  • Parodied: The police hand weapon is a big black pen. When someone robs a bank, policemen bring their pen: "hands up or we erase you!"
    • A government desk jockey accidental deletes Alice's profile, nobody remembers her.
  • Zig Zagged: All of the records that Alice are obliterated, and her family is brainwashed into believing that she never lived in the first place. Then Alice escapes, and everyone thinks she is some kind of crazy person. She gets put into a mental hospital that is just as bad or worse than the prison.
  • Averted: No one deletes the records.
  • Enforced: "We want to market this work as a spiritual successor to Nineteen Eighty-Four, so incorporate elements from that book."
  • Lampshaded: "You might as well take the photo albums while you're arresting me."
  • Invoked: Bob saves pictures of Alice, her financial records, and her birth certificate when she finds out that someone's after her.
    • The Big Bad founds a Department of Unpersons, with the aim being to erase other rebels' memories so they will be forgotten.
  • Exploited: Alice escapes and starts in a new place with a new identity in order to open the bakery she's always wanted.
  • Defied: Alice makes sure that she has extra copies of pictures and records because she joins La Résistance.
  • Discussed: "All this danger might make you a little paranoid, but everyone will remember you if you escape."
  • Conversed: "Whenever a member of La Résistance gets captured, they always delete all memory of him."
  • Deconstructed: Erasing all evidence of Alice's existence proves to be difficult. The regime carefully tracks down all photos of Alice, and burns them, but they missed a couple which Alice's family carefully hid. Alice's family makes photocopies, and puts them back into circulation. They start printing articles about Alice, most of which is confiscated by the regime, but some of them made it to other people's hands. This eventually leads to the Streisand Effect where more people knows about Alice because the regime tried to erase her.
  • Reconstructed: To prevent pictures of Alice being copied, the regime takes away all photocopiers in the country. All photos of people must be placed in a clear and conspicuous spot, or their family will be subject to punishment. Supplies of pens and paper are strongly regulated and their use monitored.

We deleted all evidence that the entry for Unperson ever existed.