History Main / BecomingTheMask

A much darker subtrope is when the person is actually the TheMole in a villain group, but the temptation of TheDarkSide gradually causes them to discard their initial good cause and [[HeWhoFightsMonsters become everything they originally despised]]. Or they grow to believe their own {{Masquerade}} a little ''too'' much and become a StepfordSmiler. Can be the result of a SecretIdentityIdentity crisis.

TheMole or the ConMan takes on a fake identity in order to gain something, be it information, money, a safe place or trust. As time progresses, he grows to love his new identity and the way people treat him. His new friends prove reliable and he is struck by the contrast. He might even fall in love with another person whom he is explicitly supposed to be taking advantage of. Either way, he wants to remain in his new identity forever.

'''Options''':
* Make a HeelFaceTurn and become TheAtoner and SixthRanger. May involve WelcomeBackTraitor.
* Go through with the con and say, "MyGodWhatHaveIDone" when it's all over.

Sometimes the friendship or relationship will dissolve when The Mole lets their true identity slip. For extra irony, have it happen in the process of confessing their love. ("You're so wonderful, I can't believe I was just seducing you to get the location of your secure base... whoops, DidIJustSayThatOutLoud") The usual response to TheReveal is "WasItAllALie" Occasionally, they will test the waters with a TrialBalloonQuestion.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused]] with [[Film/TheMask what Jim Carrey did]] or the ''WesternAnimation/{{Trollhunters}}'' [[Fanfic/BecomingTheMaskTrollhunters fanfic of the same name]].

* In the NSFW comic "Demon King gf" by Website/{{Twitter}} artist [=PeaCh88=], [[MaouTheDemonKing Alvida the Demon King]] has been defeated by the Hero and his party. She begs for mercy, and the Hero agrees to spare her if she becomes his wife. Alvida accepts, plotting to lull the Hero into a false sense of security and murder him once his guard is down so she can get back to her evil schemes. Instead, she falls in love with him for real. They settle down to raise a family and go on to enjoy seventy years of wedded bliss.

* In ''Roleplay/SurvivalOfTheFittest'' version three this happened to Dominica Shapiro, who initially joined the group SADD on the off chance their plan would work, with the intent on a double cross if not, but gradually became more and more part of the group properly.
* In ''LetsPlay/PlagueAndTreacheryOnTheOregonTrail'', it's revealed that [[spoiler: Susan was a British spy sent to overthrow America from the inside, but she eventually came to love the family she created as a cover, and abandoned her assignment]].

* Wannabe Heroine Taylor, the protagonist of ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' starts off joining the Undersiders due to a combination of [[ObviouslyEvil looking evil]] and the [[UngratefulBastard heroes]] [[TheInfiltration needing]] [[MysteriousBacker information]] on them. Over time her disillusionment with the heroes and the friendship she finds among her [[TrueCompanions team]] complicates things, and she decides to stay with them. Interesting in that it's a hero to villain example, although most of the superheroes and supervillains have GreyAndGrayMorality.
* While everybody in ''WebVideo/SuburbanKnights'' is trying to stay in-character, several of them do so with more...commitment than others. Creator/AllisonPregler claims that she should be useless in battle because of [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs her character choice]], WebVideo/PawDugan tries to [[Film/DungeonsAndDragons2000 gather rage]] from everybody (including the trees), and WebVideo/{{Phelous}} seems to have gone right off the deep end. WebVideo/MarzGurl also seems to be joining the throng, what with speaking only in Japanese, scenting the air and biting the Critic on various portions of his anatomy.
** In the end, Phelous reveals he was just acting and Lupa said 'fuck it' and [[spoiler: joined Angry Joe in shooting things with a machine gun]]
* A fair amount of the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanbase started out as Internet trolls who started pretending to be obsessive fans of the show just to get other people confused and/or irritated. It's ''Franchise/MyLittlePony''; what teenage boy or man could possibly enjoy such a series? Well, as the trolling went on, the majority of them started to find all the little {{Parental Bonus}}es and {{Shout Out}}s, and of course, Lauren Faust's contributions to the show, making it fun to watch even for the parents of the target demographic (girls aged 5-10). The trolls started legitimately liking the show. Some even stopped their pony-themed trolling out of respect.

* When she got turned into [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} Vriska]] in ''Roleplay/WeAreOurAvatars'', Nichole has attempted several times to convince people she's the actual Vriska for fun, and as a result has gained a lot of Vriska's habits such as the speech quirks and the obsession with levels. However, she's astonishingly terrified of becoming a [[ManipulativeBastard "8luh]][[SmugSnake 8luh]] [[{{Jerkass}} Huge 8itch"]] like Vriska, and is constantly asking people to keep her in check to prevent her from going off the deep end.
* ''WebVideo/SwordArtOnlineAbridged'' uses this in Episode 10 to explain how a couple of {{Heroic Comedic Sociopath}}s can form a family. Kirito and Asuna's FourthDateMarriage is the result of Kirito blurting out a proposal to fill an awkward post-coital silence and Asuna being so wrong-footed that she accepts, and afterward neither of them are willing to "blink" first and admit that the whole thing was a terrible idea. So when an amnesiac Yui shows up she's adopted by the two as a way to raise the stakes in this game of matrimonial chicken, yet Kirito and Asuna quickly bond with the LittleMissSnarker. By the end of the episode she apologizes for tricking them by faking her amnesia [[WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove just so she could explore their]] [[BelligerentSexualTension extremely dysfunctional relationship]], and says she wishes she could be their daughter - which is exactly what Kirito and Asuna have come to view her as. And Kirito and Asuna ultimately decide that they were stupid for rushing into marriage, but want to stay together anyway.
* In ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' Qrow and Raven Branwen were born to the Branwen bandit tribe, and entered Beacon Academy not to train as Huntsmen, but to learn how to fight ''against'' Huntsmen (because people tend to take exception to being raided and hire huntsmen to defend against bandits like the Branwens). Raven ended up returning to the tribe, but Qrow abandoned it and became a huntsman for real after Ozpin accepted him despite his bad luck semblance.
* In ''WebVideo/HellsingUltimateAbridged'', Creator/TeamFourStar adapted the background that Alexander Anderson had in ''Angel Dust'', the manga that ''Anime/HellsingUltimate's'' author had written before he wrote the latter, in which Anderson had been formerly a mob courier running drugs who was forced to hide out as a priest to avoid the pursuit of law enforcement. As a priest, he found life far more fulfilling than as a drug runner, and then when a vampire attacked the town he fully embraced the role, grabbing a holy blade and slaying the vampire, which would start his career as a professional DemonHunter.
* For the trolls on 4chan /pol/, some of them started as 'ironically' nazis, until people who did believe such things started to believe they were in good company.
* The [[https://www.reddit.com/r/PrequelMemes/ /PrequelMemes]] subreddit on Website/{{Reddit}} was started as another place to mock/ironically like the Franchise/StarWars Prequel Trilogy. Much to the mods' surprise, it soon flooded with users who actually like the PT, and the sub became one of the most famous on the site and is now a hub for PT fans, playing a big part in [[VindicatedByHistory the improved reception of the prequels]].
* ''WebVideo/{{Jreg}}'': In jris video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsuSveDAlpI "Post-Irony, Meta-Irony, and Post-Truth Satire,"]] Jreg brings up a hypothetical case of someone initially pretending to be homeless ironically, finding themselves enjoying the lifestyle, and starting to live on the streets because of it as an example of post-irony.

-->''All told, I exterminated over 200000 of my own people, in a campaign of tyranny and murder. The mainstream media may have forgotten the terrors I forced my people to endure, but I'm still haunted by their screams... and by one disturbing question: If the world did nothing when I did this once, would it ''still'' say nothing if I did it again?''

* In ''TabletopGame/{{BattleTech}}'', the Wolf's Dragoons mercenary unit was originally a scout unit from Clan Wolf sent to spy on the Inner Sphere. When the main Clan force invaded, however, the Dragoons changed sides and fought for the Successor States. Though this is a little complex given that they revealed that preparing the Inner Sphere to fight the Clans was, in fact, their real mission all along, as ordered by the Khan of Clan Wolf, who was a Warden and therefore didn't support the idea to invade the Inner Sphere in the first place.

* This has been the fate of more than one Scorpion spy in ''TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings''. In fact the sourcebook "Secrets of the Scorpion" notes that the spymaster who trains these men sometimes cries quietly in the night after having portrayed a brave and noble hero, beloved by many. He assumed the role by murdering the hero and living their life for five years, during which he performed true feats of heroism to maintain the cover. He has never impersonated anyone ever since.
* The Craftworld Eldar of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' once created a Chaos God from their excesses, and so the survivors follow a life of strict discipline called the Path. Each Eldar focuses on one role at a time - poet, artisan, warrior, seer, etc. - and cultivates a new personality based on that vocation, which can be set aside and returned to later. In the Aspect Warriors' case, part of their training is the construction of a figurative "war mask" allowing them to fully embrace their violent tendencies when needed and avoid being consumed by them, which must be mastered before the warrior is allowed to don the actual war mask of their armor. Despite such precautions, some Eldar become trapped on their current path, so that seers become Farseers obsessed with reading and altering the future, or a warrior becomes an Exarch who lives only to battle and train others for war, forgetting their past life and taking the name of the first to wear their armor.

* Personamancers in ''TabletopGame/UnknownArmies'' base all their magic around pretending to be other people (or screwing with other people's self-identification). They charge their magic through pretending to be other people. Here's the catch: to gain the power for such an act, they have to ''really believe'' they're somebody else, at least a little. And gaining recognition as themselves kills their power. One of the quickest ways to gain power is to pretend to be somebody else into a mirror for one hour. Do that every day for years and eventually, you start to buy it...

!!Examples:

Contrast BeneathTheMask where the audience is only given a peek. Similar in style to AmnesiacDissonance, but without amnesia. May involve ObliviousGuiltSlinging. Compare SecretIdentityIdentity, FakeRealTurn, RomanticFakeRealTurn and GoingNative. If the character does not even respond to his old name anymore, that is ThatManIsDead. When a ''literal'' mask starts to change someone's personality, it's EvilMask. Contrast LostInCharacter, where a character who is a professional actor lives and breathes a role. Do not confuse with BecomingTheCostume or BecomingTheBoast. Some spoilers ahead. Has overlap with TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask because the woman's true personality is often influenced or absorbed into the queenly persona, and consider as well ToKnowHimIMustBecomeHim when people try to figure out someone by thinking like them. Compare and contrast CopiedTheMoralsToo, where some kind of magical or sci-fi copy of a hero turns out to also have the hero's moral code.

* An (in)famous example is Wrestling/{{Undertaker}} during his "Wrestling/MinistryOfDarkness" days. During the storyline of him stalking Stephanie, many stated that Mark Calaway had gone off the deep end into believing in his gimmick and having the rest of the Ministry believing in what he now believed. After being kidnapped by the Ministry, Ryan Shamrock could only watch helplessly as her brother was ambushed & beaten by the Ministry when he tried to save her. JR and Lawler note that The Undertaker television persona has come to life.

* Personamancers in ''TabletopGame/UnknownArmies'' base all their magic around pretending to be other people (or screwing with other peoples's self-identification). They charge their magic through pretending to be other people. Here's the catch: to gain the power for such an act, they have to ''really believe'' they're somebody else, at least a little. And gaining recognition as themselves kills their power. One of the quickest ways to gain power is to pretend to be somebody else into a mirror for one hour. Do that every day for years and eventually, you start to buy it...

* Between ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'' and ''VideoGame/MeltyBlood'', [[spoiler:{{Meido}} Kohaku]] goes from sinister [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] with no emotions who is planning the downfall of the Tohno family through [[spoiler:drugging them]]; to really being [[spoiler:the lovable goofball she pretends to be; who possibly makes robots and rides around on a broom in her spare time]].

** Defied by the Harlequins, who take ''very'' strong precautions to ensure that this doesn't happen, especially to those whose designated part in the performance about the Fall of the Eldar is Slaanesh.

* According to Orthodox hagiographic texts, this was the case with the Righteous Ioann of Ustyug. He was a merciless tax collector who initially received baptism and married his concubine just to avoid TorchesAndPitchforks when the townsfolk had enough of his cruelty, but afterwards he gradually became a genuinely pious Christian and fell truly in love with his wife, [[TogetherInDeath both of them]] getting canonized as saints after death.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Some tribal cultures have rituals in which a mask causes the wearer to become the god or spirit it represents.
** This is especially true in ''topeng'', the art of Balinese masked dance-drama. The mask is extremely important, and the actor must consecrate him/herself and prepare carefully for any masked role.
** And here you have the origin of theatre and method acting.
* During the filming of ''The Edwardian Country House'', the Olliff-Cooper family adopted the lifestyle of the upper class and eventually began to consider themselves as such, despite knowing it was all for a reality television show. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edwardian_Country_House The other wiki has a small subsection on the effect]].
* Psychologist Philip Zimbardo cut short his famous StanfordPrisonExperiment [[HeelRealization when he realized]] that he was beginning to think like the sadistic prison guards he was studying. It only took ''six days'' out of a planned two weeks for his test subjects to fully internalize their roles; of these once ordinary people, those chosen to be guards exhibited genuine sadism, and those chosen to be prisoners exhibited genuine helplessness and submission. And Zimbardo himself noticed that he was starting to think and act more like a warden than a researcher. As a result, he stopped the experiment cold for everyone's safety when he realized how bad it had gotten.
* A Russian IntrepidReporter, Yaroslava Tankova, went undercover as a GoldDigger to write a series of articles about such women in 2008-2009. In the last article she admitted that she almost wanted to give up journalism and become one, but talked herself out of it.
* Creator/CSLewis said in the preface to "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" that while lots of people requested a sequel to ''Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters'', for the longest time he refused to write one because even though the original book was the easiest thing to write that he had ever produced in his life, it was a horrific and stifling experience to have to make himself think like Screwtape and basically become a demon.
** He also said that those who are afraid that they can't "love their neighbor" should just act as if they did and the rest would take care of itself. Lewis argued that the whole point of ritual and formalized prayer in religion was that you could 'dress up' as a saint - and thereby become one.
* In UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, after the Italians turned against the Nazis, the Germans coached an Italian petty thief to pose as an aristocratic Italian general and convince several captured resistance fighters to spill their secrets. He set out instead to be an inspiring figure who'd help the men hold onto their information and their pride. When the Germans executed him for betraying them, he died still maintaining the false identity. This was made into a movie, ''Film/GeneralDellaRovere'', in 1959.
* ATF agent William Queen spent two years undercover as Billy St. John, a member of the Mongols motorcycle gang, and admits he grew to liking the gang he was in and found them kinder than many law-abiding folks he knew. He felt somewhat sorry for turning them in when his job investigating and spying on the gang was over.
* FBI agent Joseph Pistone successfully infiltrated the New York mafia as a jewel thief named Donnie Brasco (see Live-Action Film above for the movie based on this case). While undercover, he formed close friendships with two mobsters and had conflicted feelings when the time came to reveal himself as a law enforcement official. Ultimately, this would become a subversion, as having to deal with the day-to-day brutality and lack of any basic humanity among mobsters led Pistone to despise almost all of the criminals he was working alongside.
** Nowadays, undercover agents and officers undergo extensive training and psychological testing ''specifically'' to avert this trope. Unfortunately for Pistone, he went deep cover before any of this and had to rely on his own values.
* This is the core concept behind "Fake It Till You Make It" in sociology. By forcing yourself to act a certain way even if you don't like it or it feels awkward, that behavior eventually becomes a habit. Therefore, if one should put on a mask of being happy, they will actually become happier. While this can't solve every problem by itself, it's a core tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous and the positivity movement. The idea is not so much that being happy automatically solves everything; rather, it's the optimism that you can overcome something with enough hard work and to break out of a cynical mindset that is stopping you from trying something.
* Creator/LallaWard once said in a ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' interview that the reason she and Creator/TomBaker [[RomanceOnTheSet got married]] was because they played the Doctor and Romana LikeAnOldMarriedCouple, and then mistook that for actually being in love.
* MethodActing is all about Becoming The Mask (or the character) for a role.
** Creator/PeterSellers had said on numerous occasions "There is no 'Me'; I do not exist." As an actor, he ''became'' his role and often had a hard time shaking it off afterward.
** Creator/RobertDeNiro is said to do this, "disappearing" into his roles.
** Creator/RobinWilliams stayed in character off set until whatever film he was working on had wrapped. When he performed the chilling lead role in ''Film/OneHourPhoto'', his wife was so upset she told him she would divorce him if he took another role like that.
** Creator/HughLaurie really did develop soreness in his back and leg from constantly limping in his role as Dr. Greg Series/{{House}}... though this is slightly different, since it actually does stress the body to force it to move unnaturally, and especially so because House uses the cane ''on the wrong side''. He also kept the accent even when flubbing lines.
** Creator/ChristianBale did interviews for the Batman movies in the same accent that he uses in the movies to avoid those who don't know his other works. Pretty jarring during the MTV Movie Awards when he spoke to Creator/BrandonRouth using his natural accent.
*** Similarly, Bale spoke with an American accent during his infamous rant on the set of ''Film/TerminatorSalvation''.
** Creator/AndyKaufman was a vegan in real life but ate meat when portraying the JerkAss lounge singer Tony Clifton because Clifton ate meat.
** Daniel Whitney, aka Creator/LarryTheCableGuy has started falling into this according to his friends. Larry was initially just one personality in Whitney's stand-up routine, but quickly became the entire show, and according to said friends, Whitney has been gradually taking in more and more of Larry's mannerisms over the years. Even when playing characters other than Larry (such as [[WesternAnimation/{{Cars}} Mater]]) he asks to be credited as "Larry the Cable Guy" as opposed to Daniel Whitney.
** Creator/HeathLedger may have done this before his death, production staff mention that the long hours tapped into the mind of [[ComicBook/TheJoker one of the most chaotically insane people in media]] made him a different person, and it's believed drove him to madness and suicide. However, this is deemed unlikely based on testimony from other production staff and associates, and it was far more likely that it was an accident due to job stress.
** Amusingly, a number of fans joke that Creator/RyanReynolds no longer exists, and he should now be regarded as ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}.
** Similarly, Creator/RobertDowneyJr quipped that his wife was now somewhat disgruntled to find herself married to Tony Stark, though after he left the role he made it quite clear that while he enjoyed the role, he is ''not'' Tony Stark.
** Creator/DanielDayLewis got extremely committed to the roles he played prior to his retirement, particularly villainous roles, that some actors or directors got alienated and were unwilling to work with him in the future. After a particularly intense day on the set of ''Film/GangsOfNewYork'', fellow actor Creator/LiamNeeson told Lewis "My god, man! Why don't you try ''acting?!''"
* It is quite common that actors portraying characters who are close friends will also become friends in RealLife.
** Creator/WilliamShatner and Creator/LeonardNimoy were almost as close as Captain Kirk and Commander Spock are. They were also both very close with Creator/DeForestKelley, who played Dr [=McCoy=].
** Cirroc Lofton and Avery Brooks of ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' developed a real son-father type relationship away from the set.
** The actors who play Literature/SherlockHolmes and [[TheWatson Dr. Watson]] always seem to end up being extremely close friends in real life. Casting for modern adaptations mainly focused on the chemistry of the two leads so they would invoke this trope.
*** Creator/JeremyBrett and [=Edward Hardwicke=] are prime examples: Hardwicke, who played Watson from "The Empty House" onward, would try to help Brett while he was battling bipolar disorder.
*** Creator/MartinFreeman and Creator/BenedictCumberbatch (Watson and Sherlock in ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'') are either really good friends and very close to each other or extremely good at faking it.
** ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' actors Creator/KelseyGrammer and John Mahoney. After Mahoney passed away in 2018, Grammer honored him by saying "He was my father, [[PlatonicDeclarationOfLove and I loved him.]]", adding that Mahoney played his father longer than he knew his own father and that he never had a brother either, meaning that the relationship with both men was very much like family.
** The core cast of ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'' (Creator/BenSavage, Creator/DanielleFishel, Rider Strong, and Creator/WillFriedle) have all become TrueCompanions in RealLife, much as their characters (Cory, Topanga, Shawn, and Eric, respectively) did on the show.
** Jack Klugman and Tony Randall when they played Oscar and Felix, respectively on ''Series/TheOddCouple1970''. Initially, both of them would have preferred to work with an actor that they'd co-starred with in their earlier performances of the original play. However, they very quickly bonded in the pursuit of an ever-funnier show-they'd argue all the time at work, sure, but it was always about the script and perfecting the scenes, never about them personally. Years later Klugman actually wrote a book in tribute to his and Randall's friendship, titled ''Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship''.
** The converse of this is sadly also possible. Warren Mitchell and Tony Booth, who played a feuding father- and son-in-law duo in ''Till Death Do Us Part'' came to loathe each other in real life. Mitchell still cannot bring himself to refer to Booth by his first name.
** The late Russi Taylor and the also late Creator/WayneAllwine, the previous voices of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, developed a romance after meeting each other for the first time while on the job, and were married till Allwine's passing.
** Creator/GatesMcFadden and Creator/WilWheaton played mother and son Dr. Beverly and Wesley Crusher on ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', and maintained that bond beyond TNG, with Wil frequently referring to Gates as "[[AffectionateNickname Space Mom]]".
** The original core cast of the Avengers apparently still maintain a WhatsApp group, years after half of them have left the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse.
* Creator/ChristopherReeve became to be considered as noble a man as Film/{{Superman|The Movie}} - first when he went to Chile under the tyranny of Augusto Pinochet to help some arrested actors despite the obvious risk to his life, and after he became a crusader for the disabled after his riding accident.
* An aversion is shown in ''A Bright Shining Lie'' by Neil Sheehan. US advisor John Vann builds up ARVN officer Colonel Huynh Van Cao as a BloodKnight anti-communist tiger in the belief that this trope would come into effect. However Cao often refused to close with and destroy Viet Cong forces when he had the opportunity to do so, as President Diem had ordered casualties to be kept to a minimum, and the propaganda image the Americans had built up now prevented them from acknowledging the flaws in the South Vietnamese military.
* UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt: Born a sickly asthmatic at the [[BlueBlood pinnacle]] of [[UpperClassTwit privilege]], he built up a persona as a rugged man of action. By the time of the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar, he ''was'' a rugged man of action.
** The same goes for Creator/RobertEHoward, who got a lot of his ambiance for his rugged action-packed stories from the oil drillers, boxers, sailors and other RatedMForManly Men he emulated.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky Jack Barsky]] was originally Albrecht Dittrich, an [[UsefulNotes/EastGermany East German]] spy working for the [[StateSec KGB]], and assumed the Jack Barsky persona while undercover in the United States. As time went on he found himself increasingly unable to separate his fake identity from his actual self, and when the Russians ordered him to return home in 1988 he "went native" and stayed with his American family. He later came clean to the FBI and became an American citizen, and now considers Jack Barsky his real identity and [[ThatManIsDead Albrecht Dittrich a dead one]].
* Music/DavidBowie apparently became very engrossed in some of his stage personas, to the point where they affected his offstage personality. He became so immersed in the character of Ziggy Stardust that, according to people around him, he started to think he ''was'' the character. This also applied to when he performed as the Thin White Duke -- which was even more troubling, since the Thin White Duke was a NaziNobleman and Bowie ended up expressing ''actual fascist ideology'' for a time. Bowie's period of PuttingOnTheReich is generally considered the lowest point of his drug-induced CreatorBreakdown -- as Rick James once said, "[[Series/ChappellesShow Cocaine is a hell of a drug.]]"
* Playing UsefulNotes/RichardNixon for ''Film/FrostNixon'', Creator/FrankLangella stayed in character all the time. When he wasn't in a scene he would just go stand quietly offstage and think. When it was his cue the stage manager would say "Mr. President, you are needed onstage."
* It can be argued that Øystein "Euonymous" Aarseth of the BlackMetal band Music/{{Mayhem}} underwent this, believing his own hype so much that he underwent severe SanitySlippage, crossed the MoralEventHorizon in regards to his treatment of their then-vocalist Dead, and cost himself multiple friendships and, if [[Music/{{Burzum}} Varg]]'s account of the stabbing is true, [[DiedDuringProduction his own life]].
** Dead himself could be considered an inversion of this trope in a very tragic way: He didn't become the mask, [[DrivenToSuicide the mask became him]].
* Japanese rockstar and entertainer [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Kakka Demon Kakka]] (formerly known as Demon Kogure) takes this to another level. He has never broken character while in his stage persona of a futuristic demon from another dimension, up to this day: his actual name is unknown and he's never seen without his heavy Kabuki-esque makeup and theatrical costumes. All this while being TheFaceOfTheBand Seikima-II from 1982 to 1999 and every time they reunited.
* EnforcedTrope in Ancient Rome: Enslaving a Roman citizen was generally illegal, so there were fraudsters that pretended to be slaves and sold themselves to other people, only to run away with the money. The legal punishment for such people was to lose their citizenship and become a slave.
* On the internet, it has been said that many people on the internet who've pretended to hold shocking or socially unacceptable positions (racism, fascism, ect) for the sake of ironic humor have ended up actually accepting those ideologies (becoming racist, fascist, etc. for real) without even noticing.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye Rye]] started out as a weed that was similar enough to wheat that it was hard to separate out. It evolved to be even more like wheat and even harder to separate out until it was similar enough to wheat that it was a perfectly good cereal crop on its own, and is now intentionally grown. In short, this is an entire species becoming the mask through evolution.
** Oats also followed the same path as Rye, being a wheat mimicker. In both cases the Romans felt they were poor grain substitutes. Thanks to active cultivation of both through selective breeding, both are now on par with wheat as a staple grain.
[[/folder]]

** ''TabletopGame/{PrometheanTheCreated'': The Promethean KarmaMeter represents this; the better they are at acting human, the more likely they are to internalise it. Thus, they have a higher chance of succeeding in the roll [[ToBecomeHuman to be reborn as a human]].

** ''TabletopGame/{{Promethean|TheCreated}}'': The Promethean KarmaMeter represents this; the better they are at acting human, the more likely they are to internalise it. Thus, they have a higher chance of succeeding in the roll [[ToBecomeHuman to be reborn as a human]].

** ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'': The Unwelcome Guest is an Abyssal entity that parasitizes its victims' souls by manifesting as their ideal companion, complete with enough FakeMemories to maintain the facade. It often comes to believe that its new identity is completely real, caring for its victim to the best of its understanding while unknowingly draining their life away.

** The ''TabletopGame/{{Promethean|TheCreated}}'' KarmaMeter represents this: the better they are at acting human, the more likely they are to internalise it. Thus, they have a higher chance of succeeding in the roll [[ToBecomeHuman to be reborn as a human]].
** This is likewise what happens when a TabletopGame/{{demon|TheDescent}} Falls. They've lived a cover story in order to fulfill the will of the God-Machine, perhaps one that had a profession, friends, even a family. But they only view such things intellectually, without any true connection. Once a demon Falls, the emotional context comes flooding in, and while there may still be some disconnect, all the elements of her Cover ''mean'' something.

* "Puss in Boots" features a talking cat who helps his poor master fool everyone into thinking he's a Lord. By the end of the story the boy is rich, well-liked and married into nobility. While mostly a story about a trickster's cleverness, one modern interpretation mulls over whether the cat's lies have technically become the truth.

** Creator/ChristopherReeve became to be considered as noble a man as Film/{{Superman|The Movie}} - first when he went to Chile under the tyranny of Augusto Pinochet to help some arrested actors despite the obvious risk to his life, and after he became a crusader for the disabled after his riding accident.