History Main / BackstoryInvader

* The ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' novel ''Border Princes'' by Creator/DanAbnett (published between series 1 and 2) has pretty much exactly the same plot as the episode "Adam" (below), except it's a RealityWarper, rather than a memory-alterer, and he isn't doing it intentionally.

* In ''Series/{{Angel}}'', Connor inverts the trope by being given fake memories of a normal life, so that no one except Angel and Cordelia remembered his true identity. The Beast's introduction also has shades of this, because [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Angelus]] remembers him but Angel (and thus the audience) doesn't.

* ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'': After the events of ''ComicBook/DaredevilCharlesSoule'' resulted in Mike Murdock, an identity Matt came up with as part of a FakeTwinGambit to throw Foggy and Karen off the trail of the trail of him being Daredevil and whose death he later faked, accidentally brought to life as a separate person by Reader, ''ComicBook/Daredevil2019'' saw him use a Norn Stone to give himself a real history, including not only being Matt's twin, but also having played a role in Matt's origin and their father Jack's death. The same spell also resulted in the creation of Butch Pharris, another son for the Kingpin, who was Mike's best friend.

* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': [[Recap/TorchwoodS2E5Adam "Adam"]] is all about this. Gwen enters the Hub one day to find a New Guy working like he's been there all along. She's never seen him bef- Oh, wait, of ''course'' she has. The New Guy is actually an extra-dimensional entity that implanted himself into everyone's memories because he has to be remembered to exist. They even did a SpecialEditionTitle sequence that implanted the mysterious new guy.

* In ''ComicBook/AdventureTime'', Finn and Jake destroy a magical statue and then discover that they now have an adopted sister, Gata, who is intimately familiar with everyone they know and has apparently lived with them for years. Gata was once actually their sister, but their father magically banished her to another universe and removed all memories of her existence after discovering she was an ApocalypseMaiden that created a portal to a dimension filled with powerful demons when she slept. The statue was the seal to that universe, and destroying it restored her to theirs. At the end, Gata decides to perform a HeroicSacrifice and re-banish herself and the demons (who are led by her birth mother). Finn and Jake instantly forget about her when she does so. This gets a BelatedHappyEnding at the end of the "Dungeon Master" arc, where the defeat of the villains of that storyline somehow strips her birth mother of her powers and allows Gata to safely exist again.
* ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'': This seemed to happen with Moonraker's sudden appearance in ''Force Works'' during''ComicBook/TheCrossing''. Everybody knew him and he even was in an ongoing relationship with ComicBook/SpiderWoman. However, Rachel (Spider-Woman's daughter) notices she had never seen him before. Some issues later, Moonraker reveals he was really implanted into the team's history via time travel to warn them and the Avengers about an upcoming attack by Kang -- and that he's really Libra, [[Characters/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyModern Mantis]]'s father. Much like everything else about ''The Crossing'', this was retconned to be a Space Phantom working for Immortus in ''ComicBook/AvengersForever'' and the real Libra was confused by the Avengers acting like Moonraker was him.
* A major plot point in the ''ComicBook/AvengersNoSurrender'' crossover involves the return of Voyager, a former Silver Age Avenger who was supposedly lost in time after a battle with the Squadron Sinister. It's eventually revealed that Voyager is really the Grandmaster's daughter, and that she used her powers to infiltrate the team by worming her way into everyone's memories, thus making them all believe she was a founding Avenger. She eventually does a HeelFaceTurn and restores everyone's memories voluntarily.
* ''ComicBook/Batgirl2011'' introduced Babs's old schoolfriend Greg, who turns out to be a memory-warping villain called Fugue, who Babs had never met before. Possibly a bit of lampshading on how often RememberTheNewGuy is played straight in her stories.
* ''ComicBook/CaptainMarvelMarvelComics'': When Genis-Vell went mad and helped destroy the universe, it was restored shortly afterward, but with slight changes: Genis discovered that he suddenly had a sister, Phyla, and apparently always had had one.
* After the events of ''ComicBook/DaredevilCharlesSoule'' resulted in Mike Murdock, an identity Matt came up with as part of a FakeTwinGambit to throw Foggy and Karen off the trail of the trail of him being Daredevil and whose death he later faked, accidentally brought to life as a separate person by Reader, ''ComicBook/DaredevilChipZdarsky'' saw him use a Norn Stone to give himself a real history, including not only being Matt's twin, but also having played a role in Matt's origin and their father Jack's death. The same spell also resulted in the creation of Butch Pharris, another son for the Kingpin, who was Mike's best friend.
* In ''ComicBook/DCRebirth'', the ComicBook/New52's version of Wally West was retconned to be a separate character from the original Wally West with ''ComicBook/TheButton'' and ''ComicBook/FlashWar'' later explaining that Wallace, as the New 52 Wally started going by, was the result of the {{Cosmic Retcon}}s [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} Dr. Manhattan]] had pulled on the DCU. Initially, ''Rebith'' had the original Wally mention that Wallace was a younger cousin and they were both named after the same grandfather. It wasn't until Wallace travelled to the 25th Century and learned from the Flash Museum the truth of his existence, seeing evidence that clearly indicated Wally ''never'' had a similarly named cousin in the pre-Flashpoint universe.
* One of the ''ComicBook/FearItself'' tie-ins to ''ComicBook/SecretAvengers'' introduced Leonard Gary, a friend of Beast's with Omega-level RealityWarper abilities. Leonard is shown to be so powerful that he literally brings Washington D.C. to life to repel Red Skull's Neo-Nazi invasion, and yet we've never heard of him before. It is, however, justified since Beast implies that Leonard deliberately used his powers to hide himself from people like the ComicBook/XMen.
* In the short-lived ''ComicBook/{{Rogue}}'' solo series, Blindspot was retconned into being a friend of Rogue and a member of the Brotherhood, but since she has the power to manipulate memories, she was able to erase all knowledge of her existence after going into hiding.
* The 2014 ''ComicBook/SheHulk'' story revealed that the obscure 90s hero Nightwatch was originally a villain named Nighteater who'd used a spell that retroactively made everyone think he was a superhero.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: The Silver-Age/Earth-One ComicBook/SteveTrevor's second death cannot seem to be undone so the version of Steve from another universe is brought in and he and Diana's memories are altered to ensure there are no discrepancies. When they find out about this manipulation they both sever ties almost entirely with Paradise Island, though by this point Steve had been merged with what remained of the Earth-One Steve after another near death experience.
* In ''ComicBook/XMen: Legacy'', Forgetmenot's mutant power made people forget his existence the moment they stop actively thinking about him. He's apparently been an X-Men for six, in-story years.

* ''Film/DarkCity'': A heroic example in the climax, wherein the protagonist Murdoch receives a memory altering injection that is his current set of memories with the addition of a supporting character sometimes assuming roles like a fireman, postman, or teacher that tutor him on his psychic powers. It's effective enough to grant instant mastery to the point of being on equal footing to the antagonistic aliens that used to be the only ones with this power.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E44TheLatenessOfTheHour The Lateness of the Hour]]", a wealthy, reclusive couple's android servants have implanted "memories" and are programmed to believe that they have been in their positions for years. All hell breaks loose when the couple's grown daughter figures out that this applies to her too.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Shukuro Tsukishima has the reality-warping variant as a power. He did a RememberTheNewGuy on near everyone Ichigo knows, as part of a gambit to confuse Ichigo into handing over his life. By adding details, he can do things such as change the environment, learn about others, or make them collapse from the stress of conflicting info. Most importantly, he can reality-warp an entire fanfiction about himself as a captain's personal sensei - which lets him use that one-on-one training against them when he undoes the insert. This particular method has a weakness, however, in that [[LogicalWeakness Tsukishima can't counter tactics or techniques his opponent has never used before]] (read "[[IndyPloy is improvising on the spot]]").

* In ''Manga/{{Boruto}}'', Kawaki ends up causing one via the Omnipotence power of Eida. Because he wishes to protect Naruto, and to eliminate all the Otsutsuki, which includes Boruto, he inadvertely causes the memories of everyone on the planet to be altered, and they now perceive Kawaki as the true son of Naruto, and Boruto as the adopted child. All because in this way, Kawaki's quest to kill Boruto is made easier. Omnipotence is also so powerful, that people are made to progressively ignore more and more any possible discrepancy between their new memories and the reality (such as why would Kawaki be modified by Kara, if he was the son of the Hokage who was born and raised in Konoha), and while it is possible to fight off its effects by focusing on said discrepancies or choosing to have faith, people do still feel the shinjutsu trying to numb any sense of doubt. Eida herself suggests that it's unlikely that it can be reversed, and believes it'd be better to overwrite it with new memories, which is risky in its own way.

* ''Anime/{{Scryed}}'' pulls an interesting version of this in regards to Ryuhou in the second half, after he's lost his memories and his former organization tracks him down. While he was implicitly already familiar with Kigetsuki's Alters, a trio of [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots almost-entirely-human beings]] called the Tokonatsu sisters, Unkei forces this trope on him by using ''his'' Alter, Mad Sprict, to implant false memories within Ryuhou and make him believe the Tokonatsu sisters were all his friends since childhood - complete with revisiting earlier flashbacks to Ryuhou's childhood when he first met Mimori, but with one of the three Tokonatsu sisters taking Mimori's place in the different flashbacks. Ryuhou is definitely ''not'' pleased when his memories actually return.

** Chibiusa hypnotizes Usagi's family into thinking she's a cousin who regularly stays with them. In the anime, this comes complete with a fake photo album. Granted, she technically is related to them being Usagi's time-travelling daughter from the future. Unlike most examples, we usually see this from the perspective of Usagi, who is completely aware something fishy is going on.

*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E14Conundrum Conundrum]]", the entire crew is hit with amnesia and forget their identities, histories and ranks. The person the ship's files say is the executive officer, [=MacDuff=], is someone the audience has never before met. Turns out he is an alien intruder, trying to trick the ''Enterprise'' into attacking the enemies of his species.

** Quite a clever example appears in the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS5E11LatentImage Latent Image]]" when the EMH finds evidence of [[RedShirt crew member Ahni Jetal]], whom he cannot remember ever being on ''Voyager''. It turns out that his memories of her were deleted by Captain Janeway after he failed to save Jetal's life because he chose to prioritize saving someone else's, an event [[HeroicBSOD too traumatic]] for [[LogicBomb his programming to take]]. Considering that she really had never appeared on the show before, a possible reading is that the entire series up until that point reflects the EMH's edited memories and Jetal could have been around and involved in major plot points.

** Quite a clever example appears in the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS5E11LatentImage Latent Image]]" when the EMH finds evidence of [[RedShirt crew member Ahni Jetal]] who he cannot remember ever being on ''Voyager''. It turns out that his memories of her were deleted when he failed to save her life, an event [[HeroicBSOD too traumatic]] [[LogicBomb for his programming to take]]. Considering that she really had never appeared on the show before, a possible reading is that the entire series up until that point reflects the EMH's edited memories, and Jetal could have been around and involved in major plot points.

*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E14Conundrum Conundrum]]", the entire crew is hit with amnesia and forget their ranks. The executive officer, [=MacDuff=], is someone the audience has never before met. Turns out he is an alien intruder, trying to trick the ''Enterprise'' into attacking the enemies of his species.

*** Played with in Tasha Yar during the AlternateTimeline in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E15YesterdaysEnterprise Yesterday's Enterprise]]", in which she insists that she's always been good friends with Guinan. Guinan, of course, never met Tasha and thanks to her species's RippleEffectProofMemory, instinctively knows this is untrue.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': "[[Recap/StargateSG1S5E4TheFifthMan The Fifth Man]]" starts with SG-1 having to leave Jack and new member Lt. Tyler behind as they flee a bunch of Jaffa. When they get to the SGC and say that Tyler was injured, Hammond says "who?" Tyler eventually comes clean that he's an alien who secretes a pheromone that makes one perceive them as a familiar (even if fictitious) figure they have always known. Since he was running from their mutual enemies, they let him go. In later episodes, they use the memory-altering compound to infiltrate enemy organizations.

* After the events of ''ComicBook/DaredevilCharlesSoule'' resulted in Mike Murdock, an identity Matt came up with as part of a FakeTwinGambit to throw Foggy and Karen off the trail of the trail of him being Daredevil and whose death he later faked, came to actual life, ''ComicBook/DaredevilChipZdarsky'' saw him use a Norn Stone to give himself a real history, including not only being Matt's twin, but also having played a role in Matt's origin and their father Jack's death. The same spell also resulted in the creation of Butch Pharris, another son for the Kingpin, who was Mike's best friend.

* After the events of ''ComicBook/DaredevilCharlesSoule'' resulted in Mike Murdock, an identity Matt came up with as part of a FakeTwinGambit to throw Foggy and Karen off the trail of the trail of him being Daredevil and whose death he later faked, came to actual life, ''ComicBook/DaredevilChipZdarsky'' saw him use a Norn Stone to give himself a real history, including not only being Matt's twin, but also having played a role in Matt's origin and their father Jack's death. The same spell also resulted in the creation of Butch Pharris, another son for the Kingpin, who saw Mike's best friend.