Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,637
edits
Unperson: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
(→Web Original: fixed formatting in the new example) |
No edit summary |
||
| (6 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 5:
|''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', George Orwell}}
When some group systematically removes evidence of a character's existence, either through mundane conspiracy, or a little bit of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] (such as [[
In [[Real Life]]
Compare [[Ret-Gone]], where the affected person is ''literally'' erased from existence. See also [[Expendable Clone]], where clones either aren't given
[[I Thought It Meant|Not to be confused with]] a [[United Nations|UN person]], nor with so-called "cancel culture"
{{examples}}
Line 18:
* In the end of the Clow Card arc of ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'', Sakura is threatened with something like this should she fail: no one will actually be gone {{spoiler|except Yukito in the anime, who disappears with Kero, Yue, and the Cards}}, but everyone will forget that their most beloved person ever meant anything to them.
* This is the whole plot/premise of ''[[Madlax]]''.
* {{spoiler|Suou}} has this happen to her in the second season of ''[[Darker than Black]]'', as her family is killed/forced on the run, her house is wiped off the map, and all of her friends (excepting the also
* Johan from ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' is notable since he is the one
* In ''[[Shakugan no Shana]]'', a large amount of people have had their power of existence consumed and turned into torches. When a torch's flame dies out, they disappear completely, and no-one ever remembers they existed.
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', the prison Impel Down has six levels. The sixth level of the prison—reserved for those who are most dangerous (whether to society or simply the World Government)--does not officially exist; the same could be presumed of its inhabitants. {{spoiler|Which is why several of them escaping was covered up.}}
Line 41:
== Films
* ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'': In the "alternate reality" scenes, nobody knows who George Bailey is – after all, he wished he was never born, so Clarence decides to make him (temporarily) an "unperson." Combined with [[Ret-Gone]], George sees what the result of his being an "unperson" would be: Nothing but bad for Bedford Falls ... ah, er, Pottersville.
* In ''[[Power Rangers]]: [[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (film)|The Movie]]'', Ivan Ooze plans to do this to Zordon after he wins:
Line 52:
* In ''[[300]]'', Xerxes threatens to do this to all of Sparta if Leonidas doesn't bow down to the King of Kings.
* Quoth the [[Big Bad]] Amon Göth in ''[[Schindler's List]]'':
{{quote|"Six hundred years ago when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Casimir the Great - so called - told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, and the arts. With nothing, they came, and with nothing, they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. By this evening those six centuries
* This is the premise of [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[The Lady Vanishes]]'', which deals with the experiences of a young woman who receives a knock on the head while boarding a train and subsequently passes out. When she comes to and looks for the kind lady who tended to her in her injury, she finds that no one on the train remembers the woman existing. When she insists that the woman was real and searches for her, things begin to take a sinister turn.
* In ''[[Eraser]]'', the participants in the Witness Protection Program acquired a new identity and had all the fixings of their old one destroyed.
* In ''[[Harry Potter (film)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part I]]'', Hermione does this ''to herself'' in order to protect her parents from Voldemort's forces coming after her. It's a real [[Tear Jerker]] moment when you see her cast the spell, holding back tears, and her parents are acting like nothing's wrong ''as their only child is erased from their minds and all of their family photos''.
* In the ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street]]'' series, after it became known that Krueger grows more powerful based on how much he is feared and by how many people know of him, the town of Springwood tried to erase all knowledge of his existence and his murder spree to spare their children. But anyone who already came in contact with Freddy was put in Westin Hills Asylum and kept on Hypnocil permanently. There's even a ward for those who were put in comas from overdoses of the medication.
* In ''[[Coco]]'', much effort was made to erase the name and existence of the titular character's father, who allegedly abandoned the family back when she was a child, to the point that Miguel, her great-grandson, upon stumbling into the only photographic proof that the men existed (albeit with its head [[Plot-Based Photograph Obfuscation|conveniently ripped]]) can believe {{Spoiler|falsely}} that the man was his musical hero and no one of his immediate preceding generation can correct him because they aren't sure either.
== Folklore ==
Line 80 ⟶ 81:
** This is circumvented on occasion when guards decide to do target practice by shooting at the space which "just happened to be occupied by us nonexistent people", and when Grainger tells a captive he can pass the time by talking to his "imaginary" guard.
* In a few ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' books, this was the worst, and most disturbing, fate.
* In ''[[
* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' the Seachan strike the names of all damane from the records upon discovery.
* Happens in the ''[[Alex Rider]]'' novel, ''Crocodile Tears''. A journalist investigating the titular spy has this done to him by [[MI 6]], before it is reversed. This just makes him more bitter.
Line 180 ⟶ 181:
== Web Original ==
*
* The careful and systematic removal of That Aussie Guy from the website, wiki, and all other things related to ''[[That Guy With The Glasses]]'' turned him into this. This was apparently done for legal reasons after he went his own way, but while he was a founding member of [[Channel Awesome]], his only surviving contribution to the site is his appearance in [[TGWTG Year One Brawl|the first anniversary Brawl]].
* In ''[[Red vs. Blue]]: Reconstruction'', the Red Team "deletes" the Blue Team from the Command database, allowing them to achieve "victory". While this doesn't directly affect most of the Blues, it prevents Church from proving his identity when it comes into question.
{{quote|'''Church:''' Alright, great, that's fantastic. Now I can't prove him wrong, ''and'' I don't get a paycheck.}}
** This also {{spoiler|prevented the Epsilon unit from being detected by the UNSC, as Caboose was the last one to have it, and because the Red Team "deleted" the blues, the UNSC had no knowledge of them.}}
* Hitomi
* For a few years post-[[TV Tropes/The Second Google Incident|Second Google Incident]],
* [[Uncyclopedia]] was forked in January 2013 by some members who were unhappy with the way [[Wikia]] ran the site. They intended this to be a move, but a significant portion of the community remained at the original Wikia wiki. Nonetheless, supporters of the fork claimed that it was the "real" Uncyclopedia and "the community" as a whole had moved there, and they replaced links to the original with links to the fork on the [[Wikipedia]] entry and some foreign-language editions. When the original was closed in May 2019, the content and editors moved to a new independent wiki, but fork supporters claimed that the two wikis had merged and [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uncyclopedia&diff=898542969&oldid=898495796 tried to suppress mention of the new site].▼
== Western Animation ==
Line 196 ⟶ 199:
== Real Life ==
* Adobe Photoshop
** Usually, someone will request such photos be altered only in extreme cases – for instance, a professional photo of single mother, her children and her boyfriend ... but then the couple has a big falling out, and it is obvious the man will never have any contact with anyone in the family again. Yet, the photo – with or without him – is perfectly good to display (as opposed to disposing of them in a burn barrel), and the woman wants to do just that ... only she doesn't want anything with the jerk (the now "unperson") hanging on her walls.
** In addition, some people remove unwanted people from other types of photos, such as a high school sports team photo where several members are no longer part of a team. It can be a hassle to have a new picture taken, and rather than use other techniques (such as simple cropping or using blocks to cover up the ex-teammates), the photographer simply PhotoShops the ex-players out of existence ... as far as that picture is concerned. Usually, this will be done only if the player(s) are kicked off a team for severe offenses, such as drinking or serious crimes; if one simply leaves the team, even if on not the best terms, the original team photo will be left intact.
* Most restaurants have policies where the waitstaff can refuse service to a particular individual for any reason, sometimes by refusing to acknowledge them (and thus, fitting the trope). Usually, this is done to customers who have been particularly rude or obnoxious, drunk or acted "creepy" toward waitresses in the past.
* The Romans
* The Soviet Union did this often
** [[Josef Stalin]] was the biggest practitioner of this as alluded to in the main article, manipulating historical accounts and photographs to remove certain people, or, more rarely, insert people (usually himself). [[Leon Trotsky]], former head of the Red Army, is probably the most famous case of this.
*** This continued even after the
** Soviet actions frequently utilized this in Warsaw Pact countries, usually when leaders in nations such as Hungary dared to propose a more efficient form of communism that dealt with problems through means other than repression.
** Soviet relocation policies attempted to dilute the many different ethnic groups within its borders by bringing in large numbers of Russians in hopes. 20 years after the collapse, this proves to be a difficult situation in many former soviet republics with large Russian minorities.
Line 234 ⟶ 238:
** Noriko Sakai and her drug-abuse scandal caused her albums to be recalled, all her records about her career deleted by her agency and causing that her most known anime theme song "Active Heart" (used as the OP theme to ''[[Gunbuster]]'') can't be used in any Japanese-made product, especially in ''[[Super Robot Wars]]''.
** Pierre Taki also saw his works being purged or edited to remove his performances due to his arrest over cocaine possession charges, most notably the ''[[Yakuza (video game)|Yakuza]]'' spinoff ''Judgment'', where his likeness and voice was removed and replaced with a different character model and voice actor, and in the Japanese dub of the 2013 animated musical ''[[Frozen (Disney film)|Frozen]]'' where he previously voiced Olaf; he has since been replaced with Shunsuke Takeuchi in subsequent installments of the franchise.
* After Stalin died, the Soviet Union did this to Stalin (to a limited extent) after they remembered how much they should hate him. For example say Stalin had inserted himself into a movie with himself playing a historical role he never did using the actor Aleksei Dikiy as himself. The de-
* During the Pinochet regime in Chile from 1973 to 1990 people would randomly disappear; so much so that the verb "disappear" became transitive, as in "He was disappeared". Most simply never returned and their homes/possessions were taken by the government but in a few cases some of those who were disappeared would also lead to their family and anyone who spoke of them to disappear as well effectively removing a persons existence. Official estimates are around 3,000 people but some believe as many as 5-10,000 people had gone missing.
* Benjamin Cardozo (1870-1938) was a New York judge appointed to the Supreme Court by President [[Herbert Hoover]] in 1932. He and his family were Sephardic Jews, making him not only the second Jew to serve as a Supreme Court justice, but also the first Hispanic justice. But since the term "Hispanic" was not used to refer to people during Cardozo's lifetime, and since Cardozo was Portuguese (as opposed to Spanish) and white, he does not fit current perceptions of what a Hispanic-American is. As such, when President [[Barack Obama]] named a Puerto Rican woman, Sonia Sotomayor, to the Court in 2009, ''she'' was acknowledged the first Hispanic justice, effectively erasing Cardozo's existence, at least as a Hispanic-American.
▲* [[TV Tropes]] has applied this treatment to both [[All The Tropes]] and the [http://tropes.wikia.com Tropes Mirror Wiki]. Both sites are considered troll sites when they are brought up at all, and any mention of them is deleted by the moderators.
▲*[[Uncyclopedia]] was forked in January 2013 by some members who were unhappy with the way [[Wikia]] ran the site. They intended this to be a move, but a significant portion of the community remained at the original Wikia wiki. Nonetheless, supporters of the fork claimed that it was the "real" Uncyclopedia and "the community" as a whole had moved there, and they replaced links to the original with links to the fork on the [[Wikipedia]] entry and some foreign-language editions. When the original was closed in May 2019, the content and editors moved to a new independent wiki, but fork supporters claimed that the two wikis had merged and [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uncyclopedia&diff=898542969&oldid=898495796 tried to suppress mention of the new site].
* Jewish matriarchal decent has confusing roots. This Troper could not find something specific on the origin though at least one in the Chronicles seems to count both parents. Some google searches say, "the mother did most of the work". But one of the more common is that the father might have been a gentile though this was rare. And one folk tale This Troper remembers was that it was after Titus' siege, the (merely biological) father was a [[Rape, Pillage and Burn|Roman soldier]]. And as it would be unjust to honor-kill the mother they simply honor killed the father in records. This is an ambiguous example and one can take it or leave it.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:Help Help This Index Is Being Repressed]]
Line 247 ⟶ 250:
[[Category:This Index Does Not Exist]]
[[Category:The Index Is Watching You]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Identity Index]]
[[Category:Older Than Dirt]]
| |||