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Comic Books
"I do this to negate the individual. I cut off the flesh to overcome the flesh. What will be left is the idea. The act. The holy understanding that you must be forced to confront. If you cannot track my history and identity, you behaviorists and psychologists and profilers cannot confine my actions as effects of my childhood or various mistreatments or misfirings of synapses. You must indeed face the truth, the awesome and horrifying truth of the MEANING of the actions. Unclouded by labels and reasons and theories you can pin on a single individual. The more you study me and my actions, the more you will find the true ugliness and horror of yourselves. The more you look for me, the more you will find your own ugly world staring back at you. Your own black heart. All your fetid decay and slimy existence. And you will be forced to digest it. This is my body. Eat of it. This is my blood. Drink of it."
Fan Works
"But the fact that no one can get [Cinder's] real name is troubling. We've got names on all the other big players, but she's a blank. Impressive in this day and age when everything about us is recorded and kept on record."
— Ruby Rose talking about "Cinder", Vale's Underground
Film — Live-Action
"Kill Wombosi? We can do that any time we want. I can send Nikki to do that, for Chrissakes. Mr. Wombosi was supposed to be dead three weeks ago. He was supposed to have died in a way where the only possible explanation was that he'd been murdered by a member of his own entourage. I don't send you to kill. I send you to be invisible. I send you because you don't exist."
— Conklin, The Bourne Identity
Black Widow: I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited for over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years.
Captain America: So he's a ghost story.
Captain America: So he's a ghost story.
Police Sergeant: What's your name? Come on. What's your name? Do you have a name? Do you have a police record? Where are you from?
John Ryder: Disneyland.
John Ryder: Disneyland.
"What can we do, Barnes? Put a guy at the airport? How many identities do you think Hunt has? How many times has he slipped past customs and in how many countries? These guys are trained to be ghosts. We taught them to do it, for Christ's sake!"
— Eugene Kittridge, Mission: Impossible (1996)
Captain: He cuts off the skin of his fingertips. That's why we can't find a single usable print in the apartment. He's been doing it for quite a while. Keeps cutting before the papillary line can grow back.
Detective Mills: What about the trace on his bank account and the guns? There must be something to connect him with a past.
Captain: So far it's all dead ends. No credit history. No employment history. His bank account's only five years old and it started as cash. We're even trying to trace his furniture, but for now all we know is he's independently wealthy, well educated and totally insane. We may never know how he got that way.
Detective Somerset: Because he is John Doe, by choice.
Detective Mills: What about the trace on his bank account and the guns? There must be something to connect him with a past.
Captain: So far it's all dead ends. No credit history. No employment history. His bank account's only five years old and it started as cash. We're even trying to trace his furniture, but for now all we know is he's independently wealthy, well educated and totally insane. We may never know how he got that way.
Detective Somerset: Because he is John Doe, by choice.
— Se7en
"And like that, he's gone. Underground. Nobody's ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. "Rat on your pop and Keyser Söze will get you." But no one ever really believes... Keaton always said, "I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him." Well, I believe in God — and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze."
— Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects
"I've only touched one thing since I've been in here...and now it's clean. Like me. No police record, no known association with Lisa, nothing, in fact. I could let you go, and what would happen? I'd just evaporate."
—Harry Roat, Wait Until Dark
Literature
"...this chap'll turn out to be one of a comparatively new type of international criminal who's been turning up in rather frighteningly large numbers in the sabotage game, terrorism and so on. They're people without a traceable history of any sort, probably white Africans with a grudge, various fringe Americans - but that's all supposition because they turn up out of thin air. The lads in Records here call them Men From Nowhere."
— Bill Tanner, Colonel Sun
"We have only to look at some men to distrust them, for we feel the darkness of their souls in two directions. They are restless as to what is behind them, and threatening as to what is in front of them. They are full of mystery. We can answer no more for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadows in their eyes give them away. Hearing them utter a single word, or seeing them make one gesture, we catch glimpses of guilty secrets in their past and dark mysteries in their future."
"It is strange how John Grady's name is rarely spoken, except in reference to killings committed by others. No books have been written about him, even in this age of insatiable curiosity about the darkest among us, and the nature of his crimes remains unexplored in the popular imagination. True, if one is prepared to delve into the journals of criminology or the textbooks of violent crime then there will be attempts to come to grips with John Grady, but all of them will fail. John Grady is inexplicable, for to explain him one must first know about him. There must be facts: a background, a personality. There must be schoolmates and fellow workers; an absent father, an overbearing mother. There must be trauma and conflicted sexuality. For John Grady, there are none of these things."
"Mr. Hyde had numbered few familiars- even the master of the servant maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders."
Live-Action TV
Spiros: He knows my name, but my name is not my name. And to them, you are only "the Greek".
The Greek: And, of course...I'm not even Greek.
The Greek: And, of course...I'm not even Greek.
— The Wire
Tabletop Games
"What to say about Daniel Joseph Dial? He's a poised businessman, 45 years old, who never fails to impress people on first meetings. And for that precise reason, my hackles went up when I was introduced to him at last year's holiday affair. Everything in this guy's life seemed to fall so perfectly into place. The mysterious inheritance he used to start Avalon, knowing just the right place and time to introduce his signature product, that disgusting Gooshy Gooze, even finding a way to get Adrian Newberry to promote the toys in their early years... it seems awfully damned convenient. What's Dial got on his side? Who is he working for? None of my private contracts have a clue. And why the hell can't they find out anything? There's not a sign of contact by any unknown benefactors or outside agents. I must admit, Dial has me stumped."
— Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Subsidiaries: A Guide To Pentex
Video Games
"Who am I? There's a hundred guys in this building alone who fit my description. Middle aged men, paunchy, glasses... you bring them here? What's this? Empty office, leased to a man who died in the last days of Vietnam. Call me up — my number never existed."
— U.L. Paper Contact, Grand Theft Auto IV
The Terminator: I have no files on you.
The Joker: No one does, that's the beauty of it!
The Terminator: Unknowns must be terminated.
The Joker: No one does, that's the beauty of it!
The Terminator: Unknowns must be terminated.
Visual Novels
"That's right. I don't know who I am. I am always living as someone else for my assignments. I don't remember what my face looks like... or even what my personality was like. My face, memories, personality, beliefs, emotions, and soul... I left them all behind. I have no "self". I am no one. I am nothing but an endless abyss."
— "The Phantom", Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies
Web Video
I'm Public Enemy Number One with no stated motive. That's a dream come true for the powers that be. And they haven't been able to kill me! That commune, they cleared in two minutes, but they can't get me! I'm the gift that keeps on giving! I'm a boogeyman license for them to do whatever the hell they want. Too bad that doesn't help me any.
Miscellaneous
"Sqweegel hadn't just sprung up from the bowels of hell to terrorize mankind. Even monsters had relatives."
"Instead of being known by any particular name or costumey gimmick, you can simply be the mysterious 'thing' that no one ever sees but knows truly exists. The nightmarish monstrosity only hinted in rumors and whispered in folktales, existing out there somewhere, ready to eat them should they get to close. The fact that no one ever sees you will only add to the legend, making you even more terrible and fierce. People fear what they do not know, and even if you do not really exist, you will still be very fearsome indeed."
— So You've Decided To Be Evil by Neil Zawacki.
