Celebrity Masquerade: A superhero whose secret identity is famous in their own right sometimes more than the hero.Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: The villain tries to draw out the hero by holding the hero's secret identity hostage.Black Knight: A powerful, mysterious knight who wears black armor.Anti-Climactic Unmasking: Someone rips off a superhero's mask, expecting someone extraordinary, but they get someone ordinary.Angel Unaware: A mysterious character is implied to be an angel or other supernatural being.On the other hand, it's Older Than Steam as a trope and unlikely to die out as new ways are found to keep it going with society constantly changing.Ī Sub-Trope of Living a Double Life, Two Aliases, One Character, Invented Individual. While it's difficult to become a Dead Horse Trope, the rise in surveilance and forensic technology in the 21st Century has led to it becoming increasingly more difficult. Even so, it has become a staple of the Super Hero genre, to the point where it's easier to list exceptions, subversions and variations than straight examples. However, the Older Than Print Chivalric Romance Roswall and Lillian has the hero work as a servant at court and fight three times at The Tourney disguised in armor, without revealing his identity it also appears in various Fairy Tales, though in all these it is a temporary measure, and not the perpetual double identity of the modern secret identity, and so is more of an Ur-Example.īob Ingersoll considers secret identities to be actually detrimental to fighting crime. It's also common for these villains to have their identity hidden from even the audience, so it can be revealed later, often as a huge twist.Įxperts point to The Scarlet Pimpernel, written at the turn of the 20th century by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, as one of the earliest pure examples of this trope. The general public believes they are just another celebrity/businessman or even idolize them, while despising their evil alter ego. It's common for this kind of villain to be famous, rich, and powerful, and to secretly use their money and political powers for their evil deeds - on the other hand, the villain may have become rich and famous thanks to their secret evil powers in the first place.
These examples are easy to justify: most of these villains are wanted criminals that would be locked up in seconds if their true identity was known. It is less common, but villains may also have secret identities. Other good personas include the Ridiculously Average Guy, The Nondescript, or The Generic Guy. The family and friends of such a hero are usually at risk of having tea with the villain.
One of the archetypal Secret Identities is that of the Rich Idiot With No Day Job. For the logical inverse, see Collective Identity. See Secret Identity Identity for heroes where the secret identity isn't necessarily the "real" one. If one or both of a hero's parents were ever heroes themselves, they'll often be overjoyed rather than shocked at the child's heroism, and reveal it as part of their Secret Legacy.
If the relationship with the hero is deeper, at least on a professional basis, then the insider may be a Battle Butler. If they stay largely out of the action, outside an occasional errand or trap setup, they're simply Secret Keepers. Sometimes a select group of people are allowed to know the hero's secret identity. This is effectively a single-person variant of the Masquerade. In superhero stories, these are particularly vulnerable to to the superpower The Nose Knows. No matter how closely two superheroes resemble each other, no one will confuse them. People who guess at the connection almost invariably guess correctly. And those that survive may have to be secret. They may have to cut off most relationships to prevent this necessity. In more mundane moments, the superhero often has to quickly come up with a Secret Identity Change Trick in order to get out of sight. For instance, there is the Bruce Wayne Held Hostage scenario. While trying to protect that secret, the superhero is often placed in the worst kind of situations that threaten to expose it.