Unperson: Difference between revisions

[[File:yezhov 9576.png|link=History of the USSR|frame|The consequences of [[You Have Failed Me...|falling out of favor]] with [[Josef Stalin|the Father of Nations]].]]

{{quote|"''Nothing will remain of you: not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|You will never have existed]].''"|''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'', 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 [[Brainwashed|brainwashing]]). The purposes for doing so vary. This is more commonly done in enclosed or isolated areas, where it's easier to track evidence. This can lead to characters [[Pull the Thread|tracking the shreds of evidence]] the hiders left behind. Often any shred of evidence they find will [[It Was Here, I Swear|disappear]] when they [[Have You Told Anyone Else?|show someone]].

In [[Real Life]], this practice is called ''[[wikipedia:Damnatio Memoriaememoriae|damnatio memoriae]]'', which is [[Altum Videtur|Latin]] for]] "damning someone's memory". It often relies on the fact that History is [[Written by the Winners]], and of course, the winners would always like to remove evidence of opposition against their otherwise tyrannical rule as a warning for others and and to perpetuate their power. It is also done for other purposes, such as literally condemning questionable acts done by the person in histheir lifetime to deter possible future offenders.

Compare [[Ret-Gone]], where the affected person is ''literally'' erased from existence. See also [[Expendable Clone]], where clones either aren't given personpersonhood status (or have it's revoked upon [[Tomato in the Mirror|the discovery they're a clone]]). See alsoCompare [[IAppeal Was Neverto HereObscurity]]., Notwhere toknowing beas confusedlittle withas possible about someone is considered a perk. Contrast [[UnitedInvented Nations|UN personIndividual]], where someone who actually doesn't exist is treated as though they did. ContrastSee also [[InventedI IndividualWas Never Here]].

== Anime &and Manga ==

* {{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 -fugitive {{spoiler|Nika}}) have had their minds wiped of her existence.

* Johan from ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' is notable since he is the one who is removing the evidence of his own existence is himself. {{spoiler|He also did the same to General Wolf. All because the poor sap at one point asked him "how he felt".}}

== Films -- Live-Action ==

{{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 areis a rumor. They never happened."}}

* 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 ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', all evidence that Lobsang Ludd was ever at the Thieves' Guild is removed from history when he joins the History Monks.

* The [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] tried, and did a pretty good job of this, after [[Chris Benoit]]'s murder of his family and suicide. You can find examples of this in WWE.com's title history section where articles on Benoit's championship reigns have been deleted - Benoit is still listed in the title histories, but you can no longer see the summary of the title win. As far as archive footage goes, the WWE will no longer show Benoit matches or segments, unless Benoit's just a background figure, and will mute any audio referring to him. On DVD, if the match features Benoit but needs to be highlighted (Such as the first 'Money in the Bank' ladder match on an [[Edge]] DVD) will be cut down to highlights & either completely edit Benoit out of the match, or at least acknowledge that he was in the match, even if they don't show his in-ring performance.

* This happens from time to time with people the Inquisition of ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' sweeps under the rug, depending on how dangerous they were and how much harm could come of other people learning of them. It's called "Edict of Obliteration", and is also known as "Damnation Memoriae". Sometimes it happens informally which is referred to as "de facto damnation memoriae". It doesn't always work, however. In some stories, a certain Warmaster is routinely referenced as a bogeyman ("Horus take the hindmost") while in others, his name and very existence are forbidden lore. This may be either because [[Doylist|GW has relatively low standards on]] [[Canon]] [[Watsonian|or because [[Watsonian|the Imperium of Mankind is a pretty large place with information often being non-digitalized, but written down and stored in huge datacrypts]]. Finding and eliminating every trace of a man that has affected multiple planets with a few trillion inhabitants isn't exactly easy. Also sometimes "Edict of Obliteration" is used for political reasons against high ranking government officials, in fact that it is why it is usually used.

** GW's actions regarding the Squats are eerily similar to this trope. The official stance iswas that the Squats ''never existed'' and to reinforce this the publishers have removed all mentions of the Squats from publications and even ceased distributing any works where the Squats played a significant role. This changed when a Squat was mentioned in 6th edition, and was completely undone when the Squats were reintroduced into the setting in 8th edition.

* Featured in ''[[Sharin no Kuni]]'' in the form of The Maximum Penalty, the worst punishment an individual can receive. Basically, you're virtually isolated from society; no one can befriend you, no one can speak to you, no one can touch you, no one can even ''look at you''. No jobs, no fun, '''nothing'''. The only person allowed to interact with you is your assigned Special High Class Individual, and only for strictly monitoring purposes. Everyone subject to this punishment has a strange spiral-like mark tattooed in its skin and sewn in its clothes, so everyone can know its punishment.<br />{{spoiler|Ririko, being the daughter of Saburou Higuchi (the one that started the uprising years ago), receives this punishment, and Houzuki is the Special High Class Individual in charge of her. He uses her to put pressure on Kenichi (actually Ken, Ririko's brother) to become a Special High Class Individual, promising him that once he does, he'll let him take care of Ririko.}}

== WebcomicsWeb Comics ==

* ''[[Goblins]]'' has psion Minmax devoting the endless maze to oblivion. Any one or anything that falls into one of these holes never existed, and nobody remembers the person or thing.

* InHappens in season 2 of ''[[The Guild]]''. {{spoiler|Bladezz deletes Tink's online gaming character Tinkerballa, removing permanently from existenceremoving her gold, reputation and "two years of [her] life" from existence. She even phrases it as "I don't exist anymore.".}}

* 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]]. (This can be rather confusing to someone who didn't become a fan until after his departure, who then watches the Brawl and wonders who the guy with the boomerang is.)

* Adobe PhotoShopPhotoshop (and other computer photo editing/manipulation software programs): are often used for this. Professional photographers sometimes are requested to remove undesirable people from professional (and sometimes, other) photographs. Using the different cropping and cutting features, the "unperson"-ee is seamlessly removed from the photograph, and the background or another person's features are restored. The end result is a photograph that appears exactly as it might had the "unperson" never been in the original photograph. 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.

* The Romans didas thisa andculture theypracticed calledthis; itthe Latin term ''[[wikipedia:Damnatio memoriae|damnatio memoriae]]'' oris sometimes mistakenly attributed to them when it was coined long after the "damnationfact ofin memory"1689.

** This also happened in ancient Egypt to perceived traitors (most notably, the heretical Pharaoh Akhenaten, who had tried to Unperson ''the entire Egyptian Pantheon''). These disgraced people had their carved images, monuments, etc. either effaced or obliterated, wiping out not only their images but also their names. Given the Egyptian focus on the afterlife, and the need for a perpetual image and name to ensure that afterlife, this was a very serious punishment.

*** The 1956 version of ''[[The Ten Commandments]]'' has Moses killing a high-ranking Egyptian to rescue a Hebrew slave and then being declared an Unperson by his foster father Seti, after the crime is discovered.

*** Ironically, because of this modern scholars often have a better idea of the lineage of pharaohs than they themselves did, because we have access to records that were sealed in tombs and thus not altered to erase someone the way the records they would have access to were.

*** The latest{{when}} to receive this punishment are Hosni Mubarak and his wife.

* The Soviet Union did this often; - its use in ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'''s use of it is a direct allusion.

*** This continued even after the tiranttyrant's death: Cosmonauts were edited out of pictures. It is believed by some that there was a conspiracy: Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space... He was the first man in space ''to live to tell his tale''. The others may have died while returning to earth via burning in the athmosphereatmosphere or froze when their poorly-built shuttles decreased in temperature, leaving them floating in space. It is probable these cosmonauts were edited out of pictures because of their deaths in the Soviet space program.

* After [[The Pope|Pope Benedict XVI]] confirmed that Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, was really [[Paedophile Priest|a pederast]] thatwho sexually abused numerous underage seminarians and fathered at least three children with two women, created a "system of power" built on silence and obedience that enabled him to lead an "immoral" double life "devoid of scruples and authentic religious sentiment" and allowed him to abuse young boys for decades unchecked, the Legionaries of Christ, an economically and politically powerful Catholic organization have divulged new norms regarding their founder: [http://www.monkwhostolethecow.com/2010/12/legion-of-christ-adopts-new-norms.html They will not display any photo of him in their installations, they will not sell any of his writings nor cite him as the author when giving a sermon, they will not celebrate his birthday or the anniversary of his death, they will not build a mausoleum in his tomb.] To put it another way, they wanted to disassociate themselves from their founder especially in regards to Maciel's sexual deviancy, only tacitly acknowledging him when necessary.

** 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 [[Gunbuster|"Active Heart]]" (used as the OP theme to ''[[Gunbuster]]'') can't be used in any Japanese-made product, especialyespecially in ''[[Super Robot Wars]]''.

* 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 stalinStalin had inserted himself into a movie with himself playing a historical role he never did using the actor Aleksei Dikiy as himself. The de-stalinizedStalinized version would have the Aleksei Dikiy edited out, perhaps in one scene being covered up by a new unnamed extra.