I Am Who?

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Hagrid:"Yer a wizard, Harry." Harry:"I'm a what?" —Harry Potter

The main character must be special somehow. The hero who would save the world cannot be just a farmer's son. In the rare case that the hero is not prophesied to do something or the current villain's relative, he or she is probably a powerful being, even a god, but does not know it.

The reason the character's true identity is hidden may range from simple lack of knowledge to a forced, magical amnesia. In this kind of story, this revelation is often the plot's main twist.

Often, this is an Awful Truth that must be withheld at all costs, because the character is unlikely to be able to control their immense powers or use them responsibly at this point in time, or ever.

May lead to Amnesiac Dissonance; may overlap with Luke, I Am Your Father in case the character is a god's relative. A particularly nasty revelation — for example, a Robotic Reveal — may drive the poor protagonist utterly mad. If it's not the protagonist who's secretly special, then this is King Incognito.

Subtropes include Amnesiac God. Often the result of a Changeling Fantasy. Related to Tomato in the Mirror. If everyone else knows the truth, the hero's been Locked Out of the Loop. Unrelated to I Am Not Who.

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Examples of I Am Who? include:

Anime and Manga

• Tenchi Masaki from Tenchi Muyo! is The Anomaly that the Chousin were searching for - a mysterious all-powerful God who's even greater than them. Whether this means God didn't actually exist until 17 years ago or that Tenchi is simply the (re)incarnation of God is less than clear.
• In the 2006 Ergo Proxy, it is revealed that the main protagonist, Vincent Law, is in fact the eponymous Ergo Proxy. It should be noted that all Proxies are man-made gods.
• Haruhi Suzumiya; Koizumi believes she isn't "who?" so much as she is "WHO AM"
  • Kyon asks himself this at the end of "Mysterique Sign."
• Lain of Serial Experiments Lain finds out that she is the rough equivalent to an artificial god, given that she is completely omnipotent. There's also something about her being an Artificial Human made to bridge the gap between the real world and the Wired, too, but the whole omnipotent thing is the key bit.
• In The Big O, it is revealed that Angel is one of/the memory she's been searching for the entire show. There might also be something about her being the director of Paradigm City or having immense powers, but it's hard to tell...
• Ares of Vagrant Soldier Ares, suffers from Easy Amnesia and can't remember his previous life as Sebastian, bastard son of the king of Chronos.
• The protagonists of Saiyuki are really reincarnations of gods who died 500 years ago, with the exception of Goku, who is the Seiten Taisei (Great Sage Equaling Heaven), a golden-eyed being who is so powerful that his power limiter was made by heaven itself and who was thrown out of heaving for snapping and murdering many of the beings there after his best friend stabbed himself in front of Goku's eyes rather than kill him.
• In Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke turns out to be the descendent of Raizen, an ancient demon lord.
• In Mahou Sensei Negima, it turns out that Negi and Asuna are a prince and a princess of Ostia, one of the oldest kingdom in the Magical World. He never knew his lineage while she gave herself amnesia ten years back to hide from the bad guys.
  • Don't forget that Asuna was the princess for almost a hundred years before she was rescued.
• In Best Student Council, we learn that Rino has the Jinguuji power. The reason Kanade arraigned for Rino to come to Miyagimi was to protect her from the family, knowing that if the Jinguuji learn of Rino, her freedom would be taken away. Even at the end, Rino is clueless about the power she has, though the rest of the council is aware.
• In addition to learning she's a Super Powered hero of Justice, Sailor Moon, Usagi also learns later that she's a princess. Mamoru is also a Prince and was her lover in a past life.
• At the beginning of the series Naruto is told that he houses the Kyuubi. Later in the series Naruto is told that his father was one of the most powerful Shinobi ever and his mother was the previous host of the Kyuubi. Keep in mind that the Naruto-verse thrives on Superpowerful Genetics.
• Saya starts off like this in Blood+.
• In The Secret Agreement, Yuuichi thinks his uncle, who is a mystery writer, is making up the whole story about their family being life-stealing vampires. Unfortunately the evidence isn't in his favour.
• Roughly translated, the title of Kyo Kara Maoh! is "From Today, You Are Demon King". From today, Yuuri is king of the demons. He's a bit flummoxed.
• In Bleach, everyone basically assumed that Ichigo was just one of those lucky humans born with increased spiritual sensitivity and an abnormally high Power Level who got super-charged by Rukia and underwent Training from Hell time after time. Then, around the time Aizen starts up his shenanigans, we learn that the reason he and his sisters are so sensitive is that their dad is a retired shinigami. Captain, to be precise. A couple of other characters already knew this (and it had been revealed to the readers earlier, though aside from the genre of the manga there was no explicit hint that it was relevant to Ichigo's powers), but they didn't bother to tell Ichigo or anybody else.
• In Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis, Tima is a robot that was designed to run the Ziggurat, a weapon capable of controlling and destroying all mankind. The only one's aware of this fact are Dr. Laughton who is killed in the first few minutes of the film, Duke Red who commissioned Tima to be built, and Rock who wants Tima destroyed. when Tima finds out her purpose she loses memory of all the events that occurred in the film and tries to use the Ziggurat to destroy all mankind for its insolence and self destructive habits This is a trope namer as this question is Tima's first words in the film.
• Defied in Death Note: One of the first things Ryuk says to Light is that he is not 'special' or 'chosen': He just happened to be the first human to pick up the Death Note after Ryuk dropped it in a random location.
• Happens in Tekkaman Blade when D-Boy/Takaya/Tekkaman Blade starts to lose his memory.
• In Rave Master, Elie turns out to be the legendary Resha Valentine.

Comic Books

• From the Transformers fan club comic Skyfall, Landquake, Breakaway, Topspin, and Heatwave turn out to be parts of Nexus Prime, one of the Thirteen original Transformers. This was actually revealed before Topspin and Heatwave were introduced.
• Superman's origin in more recent decades has this element. He gets a mostly normal early childhood, then starts developing special abilities then eventually encounters or is told about his rocketship which also eventually transmits a message or series of messages from Jor-El which usually tells him he has a great destiny. Typically he has at least two if not three of these in his origin.
• Sometimes Aquaman's origin has this element. He's raised by a human and typically knows about his abilities. The moment this trope kicks in is when he learns that he's the King of Atlantis.
• The Mighty Thor plays this trope too. Don Blake learns that he's actually Thor cast in a frail mortal form to be taught a lesson in humility by his father and at this time he gains the ability to tap into his divine powers.

Film

• Luke Skywalker, of Star Wars fame, gets a double-dose of this. He lives the first nineteen years of his life completely unaware of his Force abilities. More importantly, though, he is unaware of his lineage; his aunt and uncle choose to tell him that his father was a "navigator on a spice freighter" and Obi-Wan and Yoda actively conceal the fact that his father is actually Darth Vader, the evil Emperor's right-hand man, formerly known as Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, The Chosen One who was to bring balance to the Force.
• In Overboard the leading lady is incredibly rich, and (after falling overboard her yacht and getting amnesia) lives with a poor carpenter. The carpenter knowingly dupes her into believing that she was his wife.
• The Matrix has two. Whilst Neo is, as he discovers in the first film, special, he's not quite as unique as he's been led to believe. Neo is at least the sixth of the Matrix's abnormalities, and has in fact been duped from the start by none other than the Oracle herself, who's engineered The Plan to ensure humanity's survival.
• In Angel Heart, a private eye hired by "Loius Cypher" to track down a vicious killer who made a deal with the devil. Turns out that that pivate eye is himself the killer, each horrible murder he discovers along the way was actually done by himself, and "Loius Cypher" ...

Literature

• In the third Green Rider book, The High King's Tomb, the protagonist finds out that she's the avatar of the god of death. Said god possesses her just long enough to save the day, then erases her memory so she can go back to a normal life.
• Harry Potter, who spends his first eleven years unaware that he is actually a wizard. And for sixteen years, neither he nor Voldemort know that he's also one of the latter's Soul Jars.
  • Near the end of the fifth book, Harry learns about the prophesy that got Voldemort to start hunting him down.
• In Terry Pratchett's early novel Strata, it is eventually made clear at the climax of the story that every sentient being in existence is a member of the godlike "Disc Builders" who have taken on mortal form in order to learn new experiences. This is, in fact, what they created the entire known universe for.
• The first Book of Amber starts with this.
• In the Young Wizards series, a young autistic boy is revealed to be one of the living conduits through which the Universe is supplied with supernatural energy. The other characters can never tell him because the knowledge would kill him instantly.
• Percy Jackson and The Olympians is the son of Poseidon.
  • The first Heroes of Olympus book does this with Jason's identity.
• Eragon has at least two of these.
• Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief manages to use this trope even though the book is written in first person. Even though we are privy to the main character's thoughts, the reveal still comes as a surprise. Of course, Gen himself know who he is—he's just hiding the truth from everyone else.
• In Xanth, Umlaut was an avatar/creation of the Demon Jupiter, and there was a bet between Jupiter and a couple other Demons about whether he was going to figure this out before finishing his quest.
• In Tamora Pierce's Immortals quartet, main character Daine's mysterious one-night-stand of a father turns out to be Weiryn, god of the hunt.
  • Furthermore, she learns in book three that Her mother was declared a goddess after her untimely death, doubling the fun and irony of Daine's outcast status back in her hometown.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, there is a minor character introduced for the sheer hilarity of the story as a Rain God. He has no idea of it, only that it has always rained wherever he was.
• In Archer's Goon, it's revealed that Not only is the eponymous Goon, present since page one, not working for Archer, but actually one of Archer's possibly-alien-wizard-god brethren, the lot of whom they've spent the whole book being harassed by and tracking down...so is the main character.
• In Deltora Quest, Lief is the true heir, his father, Jarred, is actually Endon in disguise in a bait-and-switch plot to confuse the Shadow Lord.
• In the Belgariad series, by David Eddings, Garion learns after several books, first that he is a sorcerer, then that he is the last descendant of Riva, and is thus crowned King of the kings of the West. Later it gets worse as he learns that he is fated to fight an evil god all by himself. Still, there were clues...
  • Yeah, there were clues. If the word "clue" was written six feet high in flashing neon letters.
• In the His Dark Materials trilogy, this applies to Lyra. It gets subverted because even after the story is over, she still does not know what role she played (Eve).
• Subverted somewhat in A. Lee. Martinez's In the Company of Ogres. First it's played straight with Never Dead Ned not knowing what he was, or why he returned from the dead every time he died. No one knows except for the Red Goddess. He couldn't be told of his identity as the Mad Void due to the fact that it would wake up and destroy everyone. However, later it turns out that he has to find out that he's the Mad Void in order to remove the burden off of the Red Goddess.
• The little boy who was nicknamed Wart in The Sword in the Stone turned out to be King Arthur.
• Lirael, in Lirael, turns out to be the daughter of the last Abhorsen, the half-sister to the current Abhorsen, and the new Abhorsen-In-Waiting.
• Corran Horn, in the X Wing Series, finds out that he's the grandson of a Jedi; the man he's called Grandfather all of his life was that Jedi's partner, who married his wife after the Jedi died.
• Thomas from The Maze Runner actually helped design the maze that he's trapped in.
• In the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the Doctor loses his memory after destroying Gallifrey, and his companion Fitz devotes a lot of effort in some books to stopping his memory being jogged; it turns out this is a good thing as his brain had been used for a zipfile of the Time Lord Matrix.
• In "Lord Valentine's Castle" by Robert Silverberg, the protagonist who has been memory-wiped discovers that he is Lord Valentine.
• Will Stanton's eleventh birthday in The Dark Is Rising was even more extreme than Harry Potter's. Oh, yes, your family is your real family and all...but you're also an immortal wizard with an incalculable eternal destiny to fight the personified forces of evil and be deeply disconnected from the human race, even those you love most, forever. And you're the last of us and the fate of the world hinges on your completing this Fetch Quest we refuse to explain within the next few weeks. Happy Birthday.
  • Also, I will never admit I am Merlin.
  • In the end he's the only Old One left in the world, and all his human friends have had their memories of magic wiped. Being the youngest sucks.
• Goosebumps protagonists in the end would discover they were not humans but actually ghosts, aliens, dogs, robots, monsters, etc.

Live-Action TV

• Reaper: In the season finale, it's revealed that Sam is the Antichrist. Not that he's the only one.
• The '90s Doctor Who TV Movie features the Eighth Doctor amnesiac after his regeneration.
  • After the metacrisis at the end of new series 4, the Doctor wipes the time she's spent with him from Donna's memory. If she ever remembers anything about the Doctor or her time traveling with him, her brain will overload and she'll die. Of course, for Tennant's "going-away" episode, her memory gets triggered, and as soon as her brain is gonna fry, gold light comes out of her head and knocks out all the Master look-alike who are going to get her. The Doctor's response to this? "You didn't think I'd leave my best friend without a defense mechanism, did you?
  • The two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" sees the Doctor turn himself human and wipe his own memories to protect him and his companion. Inevitably the companion has to reveal his true identity- and after a brief "I'm who" this 'John Smith' is absolutely terrified at the fact he's actually an alien, and that he'll have to 'die' to save everyone's lives.
  • The Doctor wasn't the only Time Lord to do this. Of course, Professor Yana's reaction to his real identity- the Master- is to go evil, go on a killing rampage, and become England's Prime Minister, before killing 1/10th of the population of Earth.
• Parodied in a sketch on The State. The priest and nuns at a Catholic orphanage tell a young man on his eighteenth birthday that he's really a super-human alien from another planet. They tell him to "go out there and fight for truth and justice", and he jumps out the window...and falls. They then proceed to laugh their asses off, then decide to "do another one before lunch".

Oral Tradition

• Many variants of the Arthur myth have King Arthur raised as a much lower-ranked if not common boy before proving himself in battle and being told of his lineage, or finding out upon the whole "sword in the stone" business.