Not only is this pretty much The Masquerade with added text, but Plausible Deniability is an actual term
that this trope doesn't address at all; at least, not in a clearcut way. I think this thing needs to be written in such a way that it's clearly different from any of The Masquerade tropes
Frankly, I agree. At very least, if this current trope isn't merged with The Masquerade, then it needs to be renamed so that a trope actually about plausible deniability can fill this namespace.
For those of you who want to see a real Plausible Deniability trope, I've started a YKTTW so we can at least gather examples.
How is this different from The Masquerade? It seems to be the same thing, only with a sci-fi focus. Except that it also includes Harry Potter.
And the Star Trek issues seem to be History Marches On.
I don't think this needs to be a trope.
Edited by surgoshan
I've tried to make this article more in-line with what plausible deniability actually is/means. I didn't really have time to comb through every single possible example, but I redid most of the comic book examples, some of which were close, others just weren't.
I do believe that this could be a great trope, I just don't have a concrete set of examples. "Real life" could definately use more, since the term originated with clandestine CIA operations.